I have watched A Good Man Goes to War and Let's Kill Hitler way to many times...this is the result. Chronicling the time that the Doctor spent searching for River that first summer as well as his interactions with her after she meets him for the first time.

Prologue

"Fairy tales do not tell children that the dragons exist.
Children already know that dragons exist.
Fairy tales tell children that the dragons can be killed."
-G.K. Chesterton

Thousands of light years away from the planet called Earth a very good man once took up arms and went to war. This was particularly strange since this man (who was actually not a man at all in the strictly human sense) never carried weapons and did not spill a drop of blood in this war.

Still there it was. He gathered an army (more for show than for any other reason) of some of those who he had aided in the past and stormed the enemies' castle (well, asteroid battle-station- but the principle was the same).

Technically speaking there was actually no storming involved, besides the oncoming wrath of a Timelord whose friend had been kidnapped. There was sneaking and surprises (which the enemies really should have expected) and clever destruction of equipment, also lots of running and an army surrendering without having lost a man.

But even good men and clever men and Timelords who are both can be tricked as this one was. At the end of the day the friend (Amelia Pond with the fairytale name) was rescued at the highest of all costs, broken friendship and a lost child.

The Timelord who called himself the Doctor realized the trap too late and despite his unrelenting efforts to stop it, it was closed around all of them, Amelia, her husband, the Last Centurion, their daughter Melody and most firmly and painfully around the Doctor which was of course exactly as it was meant to.

It is perhaps too over-dramatic to say that this disaster broke the friendship between the Ponds and the Doctor, it staggered and slipped and bent back into shape a little worse for the wear but it was enough. Humans (and other rational species) can be very cruel without meaning to be.

Amelia and Rory lost their daughter within an hour of first finding her and it was very natural that they should subconsciously blame their friend since it was his enemies that had stolen her in the first place. But even subconscious and unmeaning blame can be cruel especially when the person on whom it was centered is telepathic and naturally prone to feeling others' anguish not to mention given to extensive self-blame.

So when little Amelia Pond, the girl with the universe pouring through her head flinched away from him it hurt, badly. He didn't show it, not really because he was the Doctor and if there was one thing that he did best besides running and toppling planet-hungry megalomaniacs it was hiding the slightest bit of pain from everyone, friends and enemies alike.

Then River showed up and his hurt surged up as he asked her where she had been. River's anger was easily explainable once he realized who she was but it hurt almost more than Amy's unconscious distaste for him.

He had tried to tell himself that it wasn't his fault, that he couldn't have prevented it, that he had done everything that he could. Naturally it hadn't worked just as it never did. And the coldness in her voice as she tore open all his worst healed wounds was devastating.

"Well then soldier"

Memories of the Time War and the things he saw done, the things he had tried to prevent and the terrible thing he had done.

"This was exactly you"

Every companion he had ever lost, who had been hurt because of him, the whole long excruciating list right back from River herself. Amy almost-dead in the Pandorica, Rory dying underground, Donna memory-wiped of all the wonderful things she had done, Martha and her family and their year of suffering. Captain Jack, fixed-point, abandoned, tortured for a year because of him, Rose trapped in a parallel world…

"You make them so afraid"

Sontarans, Daleks, Silurians, Jadoon, the Nestene Consciousness and the rest sealing him into a stone prison forever. Bitter metal biting into his collarbone, cold manacles trapping his wrists, iron bars digging into his torso as he was sealed away from a dying world, because they were terrified of what he would do to the universe.

"The word for healer and wise man throughout the universe"

All those people and planets and beautiful, wonderful pieces of creation that he couldn't save. Everything that he had ever wanted to heal and failed to right back to the young Gallifreyan who had barely passed his classes and who could never see another in pain without trying to stop it.

"And now they've taken a child. The child of your best friends. And they're going to turn her into a weapon"

No, by all the good he had ever done, please not that. The man who hated weapons, who abhorred bloodshed and violence, who never would. Please heaven, not to be the cause of child becoming one. But River didn't have to say it because he already knew and it was the most unbearable of all.

It burned in his mind even as he realized who she was, Melody Pond, the lost child, the weapon, his death. His personal fixed point and appointed killer, it all made sense now. And he loved her, just as loved her parents.

So he hid all his pain deep in his two stuttering hearts, and laughed hollowly and sent them all away.

He swore on his lives that she would be safe, because while her accusation hurt horribly in its truth he was still the Doctor.

"The man who makes people better" mocked a voice in his head.

And never ever let children cry if he could help it, and never ever walked away. And most of all he never abandoned his friends when they needed him most and he never would, not even if they betrayed him and stabbed him in both his hearts.

So he promised her safety on his remaining lives and turned about to meet his enemy without an army.