So, just keep in mind I originally wrote this story before any of the 11 & River episodes :)

I own nothing, am making no money, & mean no disrespect.

The Rivers Beginning

around 2060

An alarm went off in the TARDIS.

Now this in itself was not all that strange, but this particular bell had never actually gone off before. Not in the 50 odd years since he had installed it.

That paired with his psychic paper reading 'Incoming. I know you'll take good care of her. So stop worrying & don't blame us.' was extremely troubling.

So the question was what to do? "The alarm, the alarm! Turn off the alarm." He said to himself. He was between companions at the moment. The last one having run off to marry the strangest Carbonatiite he had ever met. The wedding had been great fun though, marvelous dancers those carbonatitte's.

As he hurried around the TARDIS console to hit the button to turn off the alarm, he recalled all that had led to him installing it.

"Rose" all of her dimension hoping, her lovely, lovely, almost destroying the universes, dimension hoping.

50ish years ago after her coming back & him not knowing about it he had installed the alarm to tell him if anyone entered from a parallel world.

It had then promptly, never gone off.

He wouldn't say he had forgotten about it, but he had a lot of alarms to worry about.

Now, this alarm was supposed to override the TARDIS directional/space/time movements & take him straight to the source of the disturbance.

As he walked down the catwalk to open the door a thought came to him, stopping him in his tracks.

"What if he wasn't human enough? What if I open the door & it's me standing there, well the old me? No, no, can't be the psychic paper said her. Hmmm." He smiled a large smile "Only one way to find out I suppose!"

The spring back in his step the Doctor opened the door to see...no one.

"Maybe were just turned around." he walked around his blue police box to see...a cow.

"Well now," he said walking towards the cow,"I don't suppose you ripped a hole through parallel world's just to get a different bit of grass, eh girl?" he patted the cow, not entirely surprised when it did not in fact reply.

He took one more look around making a full 360 sweep & taking out his sonic screwdriver to take a few scans."This is definitely the time & place. Maybe what ever it was was only particles by the time it reached this side?"

With that he walked back down the field & away from the cow, to the TARDIS. Walking through the blue door he said, "Well girl, I guess it was just a false..." That's when he noticed some one sitting in his jump seat.

She jumped up & headed toward him. "Wow, hello. I can't believe I'm here. And you, you look so different. I mean I knew you'd look different but, wow." The Doctor stood mouth agape.

"Oh, sorry. Grandma would kill me for my bad manners." She stuck out her hand. "I'm River, River Song. Nice to meet you Doctor."

She smiled up at him waiting for him to take her hand. He slowly moved his hand towards her. "What, where, how did you get in here?" He asked while shaking her hand.

"Oh right. Granddad said he created a program that would change the target scanners to take me into the TARDIS instead of it just coming to me. I mean I could have materialized under water or something, you never know. He said I just had to," she pulled what looked like a lipstick tube out of her pocket,"twist this till the tube changed colour."

As she twisted the tube turned from green to red. "There we go, back to the original setting. Never know what might pop through. Don't necessarily want a way inside the impenetrable time/space machine, eh?"

"So, River?"

"Yep, that's me." River had never before given him any kind indication that she was from a different dimension.

Sometimes he kind of disliked time travel, though not very much just a little bit, when it made things hard to understand & backwards. "So your from a parallel dimension?"

"Yep."

"& your Grandparents sent you?"

"Wellll, not really sent. I all ways wanted to come & Granddad finally relented. Welll I say that but he had all this stuff ready, so I suppose he might have always known I would come. Maybe he did & just left that story out."

With that she took out her blue book & flipped through the pages. "Sorry, how would your Granddad know how to write a program the TARDIS would respond to? Was he part of Torchwood, or UNIT, or something?"

She looked back up at the Doctor. "Well all my families done a stint or two at Torchwood, you kind of have too being us. Granddad was with Unit for a while back in its inception, but that's not how."

She walked away from him & started fiddling with the console "Doctor how many parallel universes do you think have easy access to this one?"

"With all the possibilities, several dozen."

"Easy access?"

"At least a hand full of"

"& how many have you seen?"

"Just the one but that doesn't mean you come from"

"Pete's world." She said it exactly the same time as him. He was in so much trouble

"So who does that mean my Granddad was?"River asked turning around & giving him her I know more then you smile.

"If you are from Pete's world as you seem to imply, with knowledge like that, it would be best to assume that the familial relation to which you are referring is in fact, me. Well my hand/Donna clone, but for all intents and purposes me."

She smiled her 'you got it smile' at him. "Good job, Granddad Meredith said..."

The Doctor looked at River with horror on his face. "He obviously didn't tell you everything about us in that little book. In this universe you do not under any circumstances use that name out loud!"

THE END

I came across this story I had written a long while ago & still liked it. So I thought I'd share it with you too(I hope you enjoyed it, if you did give me a nice little review).

As a Canadian I have only ever been exposed to the new Doctor Who, so if there is something in the old series that implies a name or reason for him keeping it secret, sorry, I thought it would be funny if the whole reason his name was a secret was that it was girly & it embarrassed him.