Author's Note: My first "Doctor Who" piece. This is mostly a drabble to explore character voices. Obviously, I don't own the Doctor or River Song.
"Making Memories, Part 1"
It was quiet on her solitary cell block, as it always was. Usually was. Sometimes was. If she wasn't escaping and the alarms weren't going off. That happened to be the case tonight.
It was making the guards nervous, but she didn't care.
River Song reclined on her bunk, knees bent and a battered blue journal propped open against her thighs. She wasn't writing, merely flipping through the pages slowly, reading back through her wealth of memories. It was her most cherished possession, and she'd only given it up once.
The first few pages weren't in her handwriting. They were in a somewhat careless, masculine scrawl, another's hand that was as familiar as her own. She traced the words with a fingertip, smiling as she read the long-ago memorised passages.
"You think you know who you are, but you've really no idea. You know the facts, that you were born on Demon's Run to Amelia Pond and Rory Williams, and that you were taken by one Madame Kovarian and raised to kill me. And I know that you think you know your parents, because you befriended them as Mels and 'grew up' with them.
"But you don't know where you came from. You don't know how hard and long your father and I hunted for you and your mother, how heartbroken your mother was when you were taken away, how guilty I felt for not stopping it. For us, as I write this, that was only weeks ago. For you, it was a lifetime, or even several.
"You know by now that I know you, the future you. That I know you as well as I can. You like to keep secrets. But that works, because I like mysteries."
A whirring, wheezing noise interrupted the silence. River didn't look up, but she did smile.
"River."
She finally tore her gaze away from the pages before her and the smile grew into a big grin. "Hello, sweetie."
"Were you expecting me?"
She closed the book and put it aside, swinging her legs off the bed to stand and walk to the bars, where he stood, just on the other side. "Always. Never. Somewhere in between. Take your pick."
River gripped the bars, separated by a scant inch of metal from the love of her entire existence, ironically the very reason for her entire existence. He looked uncomfortable for a moment, hesitant and uncertain, and she reached through the bars to straighten his bowtie.
"But no," she continued. "I wasn't expecting you tonight."
He still didn't speak, and she wondered what had happened to make him regard her so intently. She liked it when he looked at her that way, but she hadn't seen it in a while.
"Are you my Doctor, or their Doctor?" she asked quietly. There was no hint of flippancy in her voice or her face, her golden-brown eyes solemn as death for once.
He caught her hand. "When does there stop being a distinction?"
Her gaze dropped to their clasped hands. "Have we done Berlin yet? 1938?"
The Doctor pressed his forehead to the cold metal, and through sheer force of will, seemed to make her look at him again. "Yes," he whispered.
"I suppose you could say that's when," she sighed. "But then, I suppose you could say that you've always been my Doctor, haven't you?"
"I think," he said, "we need to have a long conversation."
"Mmm. If that's what you want to call it." She grinned saucily, but there was a tremour of fear in her voice.
His sonic screwdriver appeared in his hand and the light turned green. The lock on her cell clicked open.
"That's what I'm calling it. For now," he said, and he forced lightness into his voice. "I'm thinking a picnic. Come along, River."
She glanced back into the cell, then dashed back for her journal.
Five minutes later, the guard assigned to her floor did a sweep and found her gone. He sighed and went to the phone on the wall.
"Sir. Yes, sir. She's gone. Again."