The only thing
We cannot with all our heart forgive someone who does us wrong unless we possess real knowledge. For this knowledge shows us that we deserve all we experience. -St. Mark the Ascetic
Prologue: Time can be rewritten
Or rather, for us, my love, rewriting is time.
I love you because I want you to know how everything changed.
Leadworth, England, late 1990s: Childhood
Psychiatrist number four, Amy's on. Her aunt passed out of worrying a long time ago. Now she browses books with titles like Living with Mental Disorders.
"Nobody believes he's real," Amy tells me every time she brings it up, which is often.
When I say that Ido, I know that she thinks I'm a liar. She doesn't know yet that the lies of time travelers have a certain way of becoming true.
Leadworth, England, early 2000s: Rory and the Psychopaths
Rory's here, though it's the night before his nursing finals, the ones that count for his entire year's marks. He'd do cartwheels over broken glass for Amy, who knows it so well that she takes it for granted.
Rory's a nurse because Amy has a thing for doctors and he didn't make the cut.
This is how it happened. One night, when she was eight years old, she heard a terrific clattering coming from downstairs. She found a man in the kitchen, going through her refrigerator like he'd never seen one before.
"I'm the Doctor," he said, smiling.
"He was wearing a tweed suit," she insisted, "and a bow tie."
You can see why this would give her a reputation.
She helped him discover that he liked fish fingers and custard. He carried them to the front steps in a china bowl so they could talk without waking anyone in the house.
A blue telephone box was in the middle of her garden, beside the new tool shed.
"Is that yours?" she asked.
"She is," he said. "That's my time machine. The TARDIS. A real beauty. Would you like to see?"
She thought, What kind of a person says no? "Yes," she said.
He told her to pack her things; he'd return in five minutes. She didn't even wait to watch the phone box disappear. When she came back downstairs, it was gone. She sat on her trunk and waited for its return.
Her aunt found her outside, asleep in the garden. She'd tucked her nightgown into her wellingtons.
Amy told me all of this when I became her best friend. Or, I became her best friend when she needed someone to tell.
Sweetie, you must have loved that. The Raggedy Doctor. And the two of us girls, dreaming about marrying you.
Think of how many dreamers you must have created, across galaxies and millennia. You understand how hard it would have been to get your attention – if I hadn't tried to kill you.
Which explains now why you would forgive me. How else could we have met?
But, spoilers. I'm getting ahead of myself again.
"Mels," Amy's saying now, "you're going to spend a lot of time in prison."
Rory backs her up. "We can't always be there to bail you out."
Today I couldn't get a cab, so I stole a bus. Then I drove it through the Botanic Gardens for fun. It's not my fault that people get upset.
"Easy for you to say," I tell her. "You've got the Doctor here looking after you."
Her eyes go to the porcelain telephone booth she keeps by her bed. She spent nine years and a fortune on ceramic classes to make that. "Not now, Mels."
"I meant him," I say, nodding at Rory. He turns red.
She looks amazed. "Rory?" she says. "We're not together. He's –"
He says, "A friend," at the same time as she says, "Gay."
Rory says, "I'm not gay," as though he's saying, my heart will never be whole again.
"Oh, please," Amy says with her full measure of scorn. "Has there been one time, in all the years I've known you, that you've been interested in a girl?"
He runs out of the room. Typical Rory. The clever school epithet for him was Rory and the Psychopaths. Amy looks over at me.
"Penny drops," I tell her.
Her face changes. She runs out after him.
Don't get too full of yourself, Doctor, but waiting for you made even this worthwhile.
Berlin, Germany, 1930: Courtship
Now this moment is tricky. I tried to kill you, and I would have succeeded if you hadn't shown me that, in my future, I would be River Song, the woman who loved you.
The trick is that that future didn't exist yet. And then you made it mine.
Luckily for you, I was always a little in love with you. Or at least I think so now. For us, hindsight is not 20/20.
So much so that instead of killing you, I brought you back to life.
It was your move too – making sure I used up the rest of my regenerations, limiting me. You clever man.
Only you didn't foresee that you would fall in love with me. Not so pleased with yourself now, are you?
5123: A good student
As thanks for saving your life, you left me in the hospital run by the Sisters of the Infinite Schism. It wasn't anything brilliant. But I have a sense of humor too.
By my bedside was a book shaped like a blue phone box. You had written RIVER SONG on the inside cover. Nothing else. By then I'd already been named after myself, twice; I appreciate you expecting me to be unfazed.
Days later, I was enrolling in Luna University to study archaeology. Damn it, you would make me work harder than any human being in history to find you again. All those stories – that I'd kill you, marry you, live with you, leave you – I know it's our way of life. But youtry writing it as your dissertation.
Area 52, 22nd April 2011, 5:02 pm: Tit for tat
At Lake Silencio, I would not kill you.
Did you realize that you could have made me – easily? We were the poles of broken time, and if you had just held on to me, time would have mended.
You didn't have to marry me.
You didn't have to tell me your secret – that I was really killing the Teselecta, that you were going to be safe and thought dead for hundreds of years. But you did.
I bet you take that for granted now, but just try thinking about it. When did you know you loved me?
The Library, 51st century: At first sight
I'll tell you: It was the moment you met me.
When I think of how many clichés we've spun through the narrative of the universe – those are the only times I think the world would be better off without us. Really the only times.
You weren't lying when you saw me in the library. You really didn't know me at all. "I point and laugh at archaeologists," you said, not knowing how you'd thank me later, every time you needed me.
I knew then, that this must be the last I would see of you – I would have to die.
But first, this was my chance to change the whole life I'd have with you.
So I told you just enough that you had to be on the lookout for me, that you had to know more. "You've got all this to come," I told you, and real tears formed in my eyes, because the lie was perfect. "Time and space. You watch us run." And because I said so, you would.
Heel, boy. You can thank me later.
Denouement
Amy Hempel, The Harvest, 1998: "I leave a lot out when I tell the truth."
One thing this iteration excludes is how, when I told you I wanted to see the Singing Towers, you knew that was the last time you'd see me, and I didn't.
And you took me there anyway.
You can be the worst kind of bully, and that's all I'll say about who you've been.
Going back to before that – you were so sweet when you were younger. (Do you think it was because I hadn't happened to you yet? What a question. Time and space, every possible world, and I ask you about regret.)
That younger version of you, you pleaded with me. "Time can be rewritten," you said.
And indeed it could. So I was the one who told you that our last time together had been at Darillium. The towers sang, and you cried.
You hadn't, but now you would.
And that you'd shown up with a new suit and a haircut. Might as well make a proper job of the whole thing.
I worked you over. It was love.
Trust me, neither of us would have it any other way.
Stormcage, 52nd century: Husband and wife
I went to prison with a life sentence. Well, fifteen thousand consecutive life sentences, but who's counting.
"We won't meet in the same order," you told me then. You came for me from the very first night. "Time travelers."
I'd say, given how many times we'd pull the wool over each other's eyes, and already had.
The truth is that we're perfect for each other, as manipulative we are. Besides, choosing to be with someone like that isn't hitting bottom. Choosing to be alone is.
It's probably the only thing I know worth knowing.
Epilogue: Why the Library never happens
"River?"
"Hello, sweetie."
"What are you doing here?"
"I got tired of Stormcage telly," I sighed. "Rubbish endings. Everybody lives."
A traveler in a blue box is just romance.
But when there's two, oh, it can be love.