And He Gave Her Them All, a doctor who fanfic

Disclaimer: No, I don't own Doctor Who. That lovely privilage belongs to BBC and Steven Moffat. *Shakes fist* BARROWM- oh sorry, wrong one. MOFFAT!

I'm a sick person. I know. I don't even know how I came up with this, but I'm sorry. Tenth Doctor sorry. Yup. It's that bad.

And on that pleasant note, hope you like this!

He shouldn't be here. The risks were far too great, the paradoxes that could erupt astronomical. He should just turn around, right now, and go somewhere, anywhere but where he was right now.

However, this man had never been very good at doing what he should do, so he stepped out of his blue box and into the biggest Library in the universe. He knew full well that a century later he would do the same thing, except with an older face and younger eyes that would watch his wife die right in front of him, before even knowing that she was his wife.

One false move and he could undo everything, all the times he's had with her. But then again, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing. He could prevent all these people around him, tearing through book after book without a care in the world, from being locked away in a little girl's mind for decades by the day's end. And even better, the woman he loves would never have her entire life ruined at his hands. No backward timelines, no heartbreak... it would be selfish not to want that for her.

But of course, the Doctor is a selfish man.

"Annalise," he offered, arms wrapped around her and his head resting on her middle.

River gave a hum of approval. "Isaiah."

"Not bad. Eleanor. Met one once, possibly my favorite First Lady. You'd have liked her."

"Bet I would. Charles."

"Charlie?"

"No."

"Boring. Flegakazomyn."

She snorted, making her growing stomach lurch from underneath him. "Seriously?"

"It's a respectable Gallifreyan name!"

"Ah, it all makes sense now. No wonder you never speak yours."

"Oy!" he called out irritably. "I get to pick the name if it's a girl, and you pick it if it's a boy. That was the deal."

"Yes, but since the kid is squirming around and kicking my intestines while you were the one who put it there in the first place, I get the last word either way."

The Doctor huffed, but wisely chose not to argue with his wildly hormonal pregnant wife. "Your turn."

River thought for a moment, then grinned wickedly. "How about Benjamin?"

The Doctor sputtered. "We are not going down that road again."

"But think about it," she teased. "You get 'hello sweetie', he gets 'hello Benjamin'..."

"And each time you say that I will get a lovely mental image of you seducing our son," he retorted. "No thank you, Mrs. Robinson."

River only shrugged, still smiling. "You're up."

Determined to even the score, the Doctor began to scheme. And when, as expected, a genius idea came upon him, his hands slid to her front so he could prop himself up and look at her.

As innocently as he could manage, he asked: "What do you think of Marilyn?"

That earned him a none-too-gentle smack to the head. Still worth it.

"You said no companion names."

"Technically speaking she was never a companion..." he pointed out with a grin.

"She snogged you. She's a companion."

After a beat, she added softly, "Why don't you want to name the baby after a companion?"

The Doctor sighed heavily, like he was expelling every burden, every loss he never wanted to remember again. "A lot of reasons. But mostly, I don't want him or her to be just a memorial for the people of my past. It deserves so much more." Then he allowed himself a smile as he ran soothing patterns along River's baby bump. "What it does deserve is a name beautiful and unique, because that's just what our baby is. Human and Time Lord." He kissed the spot where his child lay growing just beneath him, then shifted up the bed to kiss the mother. "Bit like someone else I know."

His grin was contagious to the point where it should be a health concern, and River soon found herself returning it, more happy than she had ever been her whole life.

Her husband settled beside her, hands still splayed across her middle as they continued to rattle off suggestions.

"Joshua."

"Lorraine."

"Matthew."

"Alexandra."

Abel.

Cassandra.

Frederick.

Juliet.

The names seemed to follow after him as he traversed ever deeper into the planet of books, torturing him, taunting him.

He should have known it had all been too perfect to last.

His hand reached into his pocket and enclosed around his favorite tool, reassuring himself that this would work, that he could redeem himself. Though spending over a millennium in this universe leaves room for more mistakes than what can possibly fit in one lifetime- and he's lived through far too many- he refused to allow this to be one of them.

No sooner had she stumbled into the TARDIS than did River collapse into her husband's arms.

"River, River what is it?" he asked, trying to support her while running a hand all over her worriedly. "I got your message, but wha- stay with me, love. What happened?"

"Something's wrong," she gasped out before doubling over in pain. "The baby..."

"Shh, shh, don't panic," the Doctor soothed, hearing levers being pulled of their own accord from behind as he guided River to the med bay. "Everything will be alright."

Despite him trying to put his wife at ease, he was anything but. She was only five months along, far too early for the baby to be born. But that meant...

He pushed the thought as far from his mind as he could as the two arrived at the med bay. By now River had slipped out of consciousness and the Doctor wasted no time in situating her on the bed, but from there he was at a complete loss of what to do. He may be a Doctor, but by no means the kind his little family needed so desperately right now.

Just then, the doors burst open and a flood of familiar faces rushed through. Though the hours that followed were little more than a blur, the Doctor's brain picked out a few people from the crowds: a few of the feline Sisters of the Infinite Schism, Commander Strax from his nurse days... it seemed that every person he had ever come across with the least bit of medical expertise was here. His Old Girl was pulling every stop imaginable to help the child of her child.

While his old friends divided up the tasks and set about to complete them, the Doctor kept an unwavering eye on the med scanner, the steady double heartbeat of his baby bravely drumming on.

Until there was only one.

Orders were shouted above the blare of every machine in the room going berserk, people racing in every direction in a desperate attempt to preserve the miracle of another Time Lord. And all the while the Doctor stood gripping the scanner, eyes transfixed on the virtual spikes growing fainter and further.

Please, please hold on, keep fighting. We love you, we need you. Please.

But then all at once the room went dead quiet. The machines shut down, everyone stopped moving, and the beeps of the scanner all bled together into one monotone line, before it too went still.

No.

No.

After a moment of silence, people began to shuffle quietly about to stabilize the mother and prepare the fetus for the final stage of life that had arrived far too soon.

Swallowing hard, the Doctor braved a glance at the bed and saw her, tear tracks already running down her unconscious face. One of the strongest bonds in the universe was that between mother and child, and for a Time Lord it was quite literal, a psychic link between the two. River must have felt the connection sever.

Suddenly he became aware of something covering his clenched fist. Upon looking down he found a slender, cocoa colored hand, in stark contrast to his whitened knuckles, and his eyes followed up the arm until they rested on the face of the Rebound, the Girl Who Walked the Earth in the Year that Never Was.

A different hand found purchase on his shoulder, and he turned to look at the Last Centurion, the Boy Who Waited, and now the Almost Grandfather.

Both were misty-eyed, and as the Doctor looked from one dear friend to the other, he broke. He took one in each arm and drew them into him, his med student and his nurse.

And he wept.

It was a cold, hard fact, one that they had tried to overlook only to find themselves staring straight in its face once again. Humans and Time Lords weren't meant to reproduce.

And of course, the universe just couldn't help but rub a little salt into the wound. Damn those timelines, back-to-front-and-back-again and sometimes he wanted it to just stop.

But that certainly hadn't stopped a younger River from bounding into the TARDIS and blurting out the news before even synching their diaries, and she never forgot to do that. She was eight weeks along now and perfectly healthy and she could hardly wait for when they would be parents.

The Doctor plastered a smile to his face, too big and too bright, but River was too excited to notice. He pulled her into his arms so she couldn't see the tears he was choking back, because she didn't know yet. She would keep waiting.

At long last, the Doctor arrived at that achingly familiar room in the planet's core. As he approached the chair that would one day serve as a deathbed, he subconsciously gripped his screwdriver just a bit tighter, knowing all too well how much the lives within depended on him.

They all seemed to do that, entrust their everything to a madman in a box, and he hoped to the high heavens that someday, one day, they would know better.

"Doctor, please. Just tell me one thing," River begged.

His gaze remained a fixed point on the machines his wife was hooked to, pointedly ignoring the scanner sitting placidly behind him. Empty.

"Get some rest, dear," he said, ignoring her pleas. "You need to get your strength back up."

Everyone else had already filed away one by one, offering goodbyes and words of condolence he didn't want to hear. He had asked Martha and Rory to stay, so after a quick kiss from the latter onto his daughter's forehead, they had gone to the console room to give the couple some space.

"I already lost the baby," River said bitterly. "What's the point now in-"

"Because I am not losing you too!" the Doctor shouted. "You will get better, you hear me River Song?"

After one long, tense moment River nodded, just barely, the look in her eyes so despondent that he instantly regretted his harsh words. Moving to sit on the edge of her bed, the Doctor took her hand and smiled wanly at her in silent apology.

"I just want to know one thing. Then I'll sleep, I promise," said River. "Was it a boy or a girl?"

He turned away from her then, lips pulled to a taut line as he shook his head.

"Answer me!" she cried, anger momentarily replacing grief. "Why won't you- goddammit Doctor, just say it. Boy or girl?"

Pressing their joined hands to his lips, he opened his mouth to speak but could only get out a strangled, tearless sob. After a few moments of battling with his speech, he at last wrestled it out. "Both."

He could have sworn he felt the pulse he held take pause, time itself stand still. "What?"

As the tears they had both been trying so valiantly to hide from each other spilled over at the exact same moment, the Doctor finally brought himself to look at River.

"They were twins."

Time Lords can't live without two hearts; it was a simple fact of their biology. If only he hadn't been so utterly stupid.

He had felt them inside of River, heard the two heartbeats with his own ears. He hadn't once thought that it hadn't been one child with two hearts, but rather two children with one heart apiece. If he had realized, then maybe, just maybe he could prevented all this.

But it wouldn't do to focus on the maybes. He had to move on, and despite the mind-numbing pain, he was still the Doctor. And whenever something bothered him or didn't make any sense, his mind would never let it go until it was answered.

This particular puzzle he had been working on was one he had mulled over for years. After his first trip to the Library, Donna had told him about the years never spent in the hard drive, and the most frequent subjects had been her family. She loved to talk about her little ones, the boy with brown hair and a million questions, and the girl with an attitude you shouldn't love but kinda do along with her golden yellow curls.

Though the children had never been real, the Doctor couldn't help but wonder. He had met Donna's family, all with mouths that stayed open more than closed but not a curl in sight. He had even gone so far as to search Lee's family (because he had known all along that Donna's make-believe husband had in fact been real; Rule One), and had come up with the same result.

Nothing can come from nothing. Even in a virtual world.

And that boy. Donna had once mentioned big green eyes that could ask for the stars and you would fly up yourself and get them, no questions asked. Eyes that now reminded the Doctor of a certain male nurse.

Then there were the names. He vaguely remembered Joshua being thrown out there as a suggestion, back when the days were hopeful and bright. And Ella. Short for Eleanor, perhaps?

All at once everything became startlingly simple. He knew just what to do.

He pulled out the tool that held what was left of his children and didn't hesitate for a moment to plug it in, uploading its contents to become part of the biggest library in the universe.

Two saved.

No survivors.

The TARDIS, bless her, had been tactful enough to remove anything related to what they had lost. She had deleted the nursery, still only half-painted a soft sky blue. The toys they had so lovingly picked out had strangely disappeared, and the Doctor and River's shared cot was now safely tucked away in a room full of memories best left forgotten, jumpers left behind by past companions and pictures of a lost world with red grass and two suns and silver trees. But brilliant as the Old Girl is, even she forgets sometimes.

Which was why River opened the fridge one day to find rows upon rows of baby bottles. Her husband had bought them almost as soon as he had heard the news, despite her protests that the formula would expire long before the baby was born. And now they stood there, staring innocently back at her, asking to be used.

She refused to cry. She had done enough of that as it was. Instead she stoically picked up each bottle, one by one, and promptly emptied each one down the drain. Every last drop.

When the last one had been tossed into the bin she walked away, brushing past her husband as he stood in the doorway and quietly watched the scene unfold. She steadily avoided his look of concern, eyes haunted by everything he had ever done to cause her pain. It was quite the list.

But he could make it up to her. And even more, make it up to them.

For a time, his children who never were would be just that. Nothing more than strings of numbers in a computer, waiting to be activated. Dr. Moon would care for them, preserving what little amount the twins had, like a backup to the hard drive. But they would need a real mother. In a world that functioned off of thought alone, they would need someone to effectively "give birth" to them, allow them to grow and be raised into proper children by truly believing that that was what they were. One with a spitfire of red hair and a mouth to match.

If something can be remembered, it can come back.

After everything River had done for him- dying for him, going to prison for him, tearing time apart for him, living this horrible out-of-order life for him- he finally had the chance to return the favor. He could give her a normal, linear life, but more importantly, a family. It's only half a life, as Lux had once said. But it's forever.

Which suited the Doctor just fine. He doesn't like endings, anyway.

His entire body felt lighter as he headed back to the TARDIS, the burden of his children's deaths lifted from his chest, if only a little. Maybe someday he would return again once more, upload himself when all was over and done.

But he still had time, ages more with River until she would have to come to this place. And so, just as he had done so long ago, he snapped his fingers and illuminated his face with light from the welcoming doors of his ship, with the promise of a future still to come.

He watched as River fiddled with a switch on the console, not entirely aware of what she was doing. She meandered slowly around the console, pushing a button here and turning a dial there, completely lacking her usual certainty and vigor whenever she piloted the TARDIS.

It had been at least a week, maybe two, maybe three; the Doctor didn't bother to keep track. River did hardly anything- talking, sleeping, eating. Already the baby weight had been reduced to a small bump, barely even noticeable, like it never even happened.

But it did. He couldn't forget, and he didn't want to.

"Tell me a story."

Startled, the Doctor snapped out of his thoughts to look at his wife, who was shyly sweeping a finger in loops on the dashboard and toeing her foot across like a small child. It was the first time she had spoken in days, and worried as he had been he had learned long ago to wait for her to come to him, when she was ready.

Quickly regaining his senses, the Doctor smiled and patted the seat beside him. Without hesitance River abandoned the controls and walked over to the desired spot, and soon she was curled into him with her head resting on his shoulder. It was rare that she put herself in such a vulnerable position, when she was willing to open up so completely to him, and the Doctor never failed to make the most of these times.

"Which one do you want to hear?" he asked as a hand wound around her shoulders.

Her answer was immediate. "Tell me about the time that everybody lived."

Of all the marvelous adventures he had shared with her, this one was her favorite. After growing up with fables of every fault, every misstep the Oncoming Storm had ever taken, she loved to hear of one of the only times that everything went right.

His smile broadened, and he pressed it into her hair briefly before resting his head atop hers and beginning his tale.

"Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all..."

"... now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call- everybody lives."

She always ends it that way, in the exact way he used to begin them. Just as it always had been with them. His firsts, her lasts.

River closed her blue book and after kissing the head of Charlotte's sleeping form, crossed the room to the doorway.

But when she reached the switch, she turned to get one last look at the other two dozing children, one with floppy brown hair and her father's eyes, the other with curls in exact replica of her own save for the reddish tint borrowed from the girl's Scottish grandmum.

She hasn't dared touch them yet, in the fears that they will disappear right from under her. She just couldn't quite believe yet that they were here, not exactly alive but by no means dead either.

"Sweet dreams, everyone."

And just before turning off the lights she chances a smile at the life she never knew she had wanted, but now couldn't be more thankful that she had.