The Doctor's melody

By JacobKragoff

The Doctor never did like endings. I had known this ever since I watched him escape the closest he had ever come to certain death. For the Doctor, nothing is in stone; time can be rewritten…

Unless you've already read it.

I had just spent a day having a picnic with him at Asguard. Of course, that was his tenth face, and I have to admit that he had a much more adorable nose back then, and a more mature sort of look. Though he wasn't my Doctor, he definitely was the Doctor. As we sat beneath golden towers, resting on a cloudy surface, that insane man looked at me with not the love I had grown accustomed to, but the curiosity he always had when he was younger. The poor thing had absolutely no idea who I was, besides the fact that I was River Song.

I've never lived the day where he first meets me, because I know that is the day I'll finally break. The one thought I can never keep myself from thinking is the idea I can never put off such a day for too long, certainly not forever. After all, my dear husband is putting off a day where he must travel to the one place one must never go. I hope he never has to reach it, but I know that the day I fear will have to come in the end.

It was several weeks later when I was digging in the remains of the ancient city of New York on the barren ruins of Earth's western civilization. The century I happened to be in was the 51st, the one where I usually feel most at home. We had just reached beneath the surface of the rocks a few days previously, finally discovering the very first version of New York within a fortnight. Dave and Anita could hardly contain their excitement as we dressed up in out pale white suits, clambering down the long, winding tunnel with our equipment and torches. It was certainly harder than getting into the structure beneath the Byzantium, but I could just imagine the rewards of finding the city beneath.

Of course, I could have simply traveled back in time to the actual city of New York if I wanted. Maybe the roaring 20's, everything is much more fun when you're sporting a sparkling dress, with a shining pistol in one hand and a black market glass of champagne in the other. But Dave and Anita both meant something to me, and this little trio had been doing exceptional work for the Bad Wolf Corporation with me as the leader, and the other two as my right and left hands. We had found a millennia year old temple filled with rotting Cybermen on Talos, the crypt of the first ever emperor of the universe in a moon bathed in the light of one of the oldest stars in this galaxy, and had even managed to become the first people in the last two centuries to land on the remains of planet Earth. I was proud of my team.

We finally reached the bottom of the tunnel, deactivating the anti-grave systems in our suits before hopping onto the top of what looked like some sort of hotel.

"Oh my God," praised Anita in her innocent adolescent accented tone. She looked around. "Look at all the intact structures, after all this time!"

"Probably not safe though," Dave reminded. "Let's not go inside anywhere until we've assessed all the damage. This city has been buried ever since the 24th century."

"He's right," I agreed, mentally noting to kick myself later for actually being responsible. "We need to do a city wide scan once we get to the ground, and we'll make sure to set up the equipment in the middle of the street in case any rubble decides to come tumbling down."

"Could we find Times Square?" Anita inquired. "That would give us a wide open space and it'd be pretty impressive too."

"Probably nothing but a mound of wrecked dirt and rubble," Dave corrected. "When the Daleks raised the planet to end the war, Times Square was the part of the city where most of the people had run to for some reason. One missile from a ship above was enough to level the entire landscape, and kill anyone left standing."

"So, not Times Square, then" I commented. "Maybe we can just find a good four way crossing in a road, assuming the cracks in the concrete aren't too bad."

Twenty-seven centuries of being nothing but rubble, twenty of being completely buried, had been enough to destroy anything of value or even minor importance in this area. Not much was known to the public, or specialists, today about what life was like. All we have are scare remains of holographic files, and the interpretation of what we had managed to recover. People had gone underground to live in an emergency city called Ember during the Dalek's final attack, and some nations had been preparing to leave already. The United Kingdom and its neighbors had sailed into the sky, turning their nations into vessels to search for another home. Most of them never made it.

There had been human colonies all over the universe, so the species itself was in no danger of extinction. However, when the survivors of the attack resurfaced three centuries afterword, they created a very unstable government out of what they could. Panem was born out of the ruins, and it wasn't until the 31st century when Earth began to make contact with the humans that had spread across the universe, letting everyone know that Earth was still alive and had people living there. This had been a shock beyond comprehension.

At the same time, the humans had also begun to learn more about their predecessors, the Silurians. These human-like reptiles had owned the planet millions of years before the first humans, and it was only in that century that the biggest colony of Silurians living near the Earth's core in cryogenic sleep had awoken. It's a fair guess who set that alarm clock.

I had so much knowledge of life before that time since I had lived there, visited there, but I could not reveal too much. More spoilers for the world, I suppose. However, I am still determined to rebuild the knowledge of that ancient time with the help of my team. We dig, we discover, and we teach. And today I finally get the challenge I've been waiting for; to find the secret behind the forgotten years of Earth, the ancient civilizations and what they stood for. If I played my cards right, I could find churches and monasteries, so that I could begin the process of putting together the puzzle about long-forgotten religions like Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, the religions that the people of that time held dear.

I was hoping we could find the remains of the old governments and how they operated, or maybe theaters and how people back then were entertained. With our hopes up, the three of us set out to find our work station. It was time for the time-travelling archeologist to set to work. River Song was back in the game.

At least, that's what I had thought. As I sit here, righting in my journal, I shudder to remember the hateful creature that I will never forgive, the creature that had slept beneath the surface for countless centuries, waiting to devour the thing it hungered for more than anything…my years.

After we had set up the work station, Dave activated the scanner and watched as the blue screen lit up, listening for sounds and searching for anything we might find interesting.

Anita had asked about my journal as I searched through it. I told her to help Dave, even though he really didn't need it. This journal is sacred, the Doctor made sure I understood that. In it, there are secrets that could topple the worlds in seconds. My memories are valuable, as are the days I have lived and will live. I'm not the only one who understands this. Angels above who listen to your heart understand this as well. If demons are evil, than Angels are even worse. The Lone Assassins, the creatures that out of all I have ever met, would probably be the only ones I can truthfully say I am terrified of. I remember the first time I met one, starring at it through a screen and not knowing what danger even an image of them could bring. My mother nearly died that day, and the good Doctor just barely managed to save us in time.

As I scanned the pages of this journal, searching for notes about the different times I had visited New York City, Dave called my name, "Professor Song!" urgently. He sounded surprised, yet excited.

I hurriedly rushed over to his side, looking down at the screen as a small dot flashed on it. I pressed the screen a few times and the image spread out from the frame and was directly in front of us. I pressed the image again as if it were a button and watched closely as it gave me the location of what it had picked up.

"What'd we find?" Anita asked.

"I'm not quite sure," I said, reading the information the machine gave me. It told me that beneath an old theater, it had found something. The only information it gave was that the thing was some sort of manmade object, built out of a primitive material it could not yet identify. We needed to get closer.

I instructed the others to pack up the scanner so that we could move it into the theater, which was just three miles down the road. After about an hour or so, we reached the theater. It was incredibly old, like everything else there, and looked as though it could collapse in on itself at any moment. It was Dave who mentioned this.

"Well, we've got to find out what's under there," I said. "So let's set up out here and see if the machine can scan under the building."

Even though the space in the road was narrow and there wasn't much flat road from all the cracks and erosion, we did our best to set up the scanner and our workstation.

"What's so important about the thing we're looking for?" Anita asked. "It's a manmade object out of some primitive material. That's basically everything down here."

"The machine said that it wasn't a building, it thinks it's some kind of statue," Dave replied. "Maybe it might give us a clue to what these people worshipped."

"Like the image of a god," I added.

Or an Angel…

After another couple of minutes, the machine detected the object again. This time it could tell us that it was made out of the ancient material of stone, something nobody used to build anything these days. After another number of minutes, the machine began to compile an image.

"Look, we've got something, guys," Dave called behind his shoulder.

Anita and I rushed over to his side, abandoning out packed-chicken lunches.

The screen began to load, drawing the image for one final, dragging minute before it showed us what we wanted to see. Well, what I thought I wanted to see.

The large statue of a stone Angel was in front of us on the screen, its hands shielding its face as it wept. I gasped.

"Turn it off!" I yelled at Dave. "TURN IT OFF NOW!"
Dave obliged, quickly shutting off the image and reducing the screen back to the scanner.

"What is it?" said Anita, looking shocked. "What's wrong?"

I could barely breathe from the fear I felt. I had just brought two of my closest friends down beneath the surface of the Earth and put miles between us and our exit. We were basically trapped, trapped with a Weeping Angel.

"Dave, keep the scanner running, I want to see something," I said, looking at the screen once more. My worst fear was realized.

The dot on the screen had moved up a level in the theater.

"It moved," Dave stated, his eyes wide. "How the hell can it move?"

"We need to get out of here," I urged, drawing my pistol as if it would do any good.

"What about all of the equipment?" Anita demanded.

"To hell with the equipment, we need to get out of here, NOW!" I shouted.

"Doctor Song!" Dave yelled.

I looked back at the screen to see that the dot was now on the first floor, no, it was in the entrance.

Looking up, I caught one brief glance of a shadowy image darting once in the dark of the theater.

"Shit!" I yelped. Then, I had an idea. "Start running, I'm right behind you!"

Anita and Dave knew better than to disobey me, so they began to run back from where we came. I activated my pistol at the top setting and raised it in both hands, keeping my eyes on the shadow of the statue whilst pointing the gun directly at the structure.

"Here we go," I muttered. "Geronimo."

I fired, sending one bright orange tackeon blast at the building and causing it to explode in a shower of flame.

I turned on my heel without a second's hesitation and tore off after my friends. Just as I nearly caught up to them, my foot caught on a large crack in the surface of the aging road and I tumbled onto the gravel.

"Doctor Song!" Anita screeched. "River!"

I knew what was coming next. Just as I wheeled around to look at the statue, the Angel's pointed finger brushed my nose.

The next I knew, I was in the same spot at night, the city suddenly restored around me. There were lights on in the buildings, I could hear music from the theater next to me, and the laughter of an audience inside. Parked along the sidewalk were several 20's style cars and some people walking by who stared at me in bemusement. I glanced down and realized that I was still wearing the pale spacesuit.

Jumping up, I darted into the nearest alleyway, pulling out my tricorder and reading the signals carefully.

"Well," I muttered. "I did want a visit to the 20's."

Author's Note: If there happened to be a spinoff with River Song as the protagonist, I always imagined it would take place in the 51st century or something around that time, with at least two of the other archeologists we met in "Silence in the Library" as supporting characters. It would be a sort of Doctor Who style Indiana Jones story with River travelling the universe, finding ancient temples and places that the peoples of that time just couldn't wait to learn about. However, that far in the future, the "ancient" places she would discover would probably be in our future. I feel that this would be what her life would look like and this is how I'm leading her into "The Angels Take Manhattan" and then on to the story I came here to right about, with the Doctor and River travelling in the TARDIS. But patience, my dear readers. That will come quite soon. If there is any confusion, please understand that this beginning leads into the Melody Malone book that was released after Amy and Rory's final episode. In that we see River investigating angels while trying to locate her vortex manipulator so that she can eventually get back to the 51st century. Then after that, we all remember the certain centurion she runs into, "Hello, dad". PLEASE be sure to read and review what you feel about this story. How is my characterization of River? Was the scene with the Angel scary enough if you could picture it? What can I do to improve on weak spots? Overall, does this feel like you're reading a very in depth version of River Song's diary? PLEASE REVIEW!

P.S- If this River spinoff story is popular, I feel that I might wanna right a story that works as a spinoff about Vastra, Jenny, and Strax. Does anyone have any suggestions for what a good title for those three could be, because I'm a little stumped.