Beta: Miral-Romanov

Commemoration

River strolled gaily through the crowd, frizzy head turning in 360-degree turns to take in everything. There were several things different about this universe, some subtle and some enormous — they had someone called Harriet Jones campaigning for President, zeppelins roared in the sky in lieu of airplanes and the taxi cabs were a brilliant shade of violet instead of the standard banana yellow — and River, despite her reasons for being here, couldn't help but indulge the scientist side of her and smile at it. She thought gleefully about the archaeological finds in this universe, wondering which ones had been discovered yet and which of them hadn't.

She jolted when somebody in the crowd elbowed her in the back, forcing her out of her thoughts and making her remember what she'd actually came for, what she'd spent weeks with the near hysterical Doctor working to accomplish. Her expression turned sobering at once, head jerking downward and quickening her pace. Said Doctor had been ordered to stay back at the TARDIS, most likely silently panicking, as River sought out Rose's presence herself, just in case things with her were more complicated than expected. Well, that and River wanted to clear a few things with Rose as well, before they did anything.

Her heart stuttered in her chest when she spotted, over the heads of passers-by, the woman she'd seen as a child only a month ago, the face that had haunted her thoughts and her dreams. Rose was sitting on a park bench with a blonde man in his twenties, holding his hand, underneath an arching evergreen. River frowned at them, fury flaring in her chest as she wondered if Rose was cheating on the Doctor, but as she stormed up, their conversation met her ears and she paused her walking.

"… gone now, Tony, so what's keepin' us here?" Rose was saying, her lower class accent slightly faded but not entirely gone. River relaxed when she remembered the Doctor saying that 'Tony' was her little brother's name. Although, he didn't look very little in comparison to Rose…

"Mum and Dad were so proud of you when took over Dad's position as Director of Torchwood," Tony replied, a sad smile on his face. "Why would you want to go back to the parallel universe when you're doing so well here?"

"The original universe," Rose corrected, playing with the hem of her jumper with her free hand. "Tony, you were only a few months old when the Doctor died." River exhaled a bit raggedly— she'd been secretly hoping the metacrisis was still alive, so this could only be classified as a visit, but she'd been right. And it hurt. "You don't understand… you weren't—" Rose took a deep breath, and Tony squeezed her hand. "I can't stay in this universe anymore, Tony."

"Because it feels like prison," said Tony, sounding slightly annoyed. When Rose snapped her head up to stare at him, he smiled a bit sadly and said, "You told Mum that once. Before she died, you said the first time you got trapped here it felt like prison, and after the Doctor died it was the same, only this time you knew you couldn't get out."

"S'been twenty years, Tony," Rose said quietly, and River's frown deepened. She didn't look any different from when they'd seen her on Yakosa Zeta, save for longer hair and darker roots. "Twenty since the Doctor's mind imploded and seven since Mum and Dad died in the zeppelin crash. S'like this universe is one gigantic vat of poison and I'm the only one who it won't drown."

"Helps that you don't age much," supplied Tony a bit bitterly, and River's mouth dropped open. Oh. The Doctor was going to have a field day. A ringing sound started up in Tony's pocket, and he pulled out a rather old-looking mobile circa 1990, which was odd compared to all the highly advanced technology River had seen on her way. "Jake is calling me back," Tony said after a moment of chatter. "I have to go to class."

"Bye," she said a bit forlornly, leaning over and giving her brother a tight hug. "I'll see you Tuesday, yeah?"

"Yeah. Just… think before you try and use that cannon thing, okay?"

"What makes you think I'm gonna use the cannon?"

"You're my sister, and I know you," Tony said, giving her a sharp look before heading away down the path with his hands in his pockets.

Rose watched him leave with a gentle and simultaneously sad smile, leaning back on the bench when Tony was out of sight and playing with something around her neck— a key on a chain. River swallowed, trying to slow down her rapid heartbeat as though she was about to approach horror incarnate, and approaching her. "Rose?"

Rose turned around, blinking at her and raising a confused eyebrow. "Sorry, do I know you?"

"My name's River Song." She was shocked when Rose jumped off the bench, staring at her with the utmost expression of astonishment. "You know who I am?"

The corner of her mouth quirked up into an awkward smile, eyes turning both kind and a bit pitying. "Yeah." Her eyebrows furrowed together. "How did you…?"

"I'll explain later." River gestured towards the bench. "Can we sit?"

Rose's eyes narrowed a bit suspiciously but she nodded, sinking back down onto the bench and scooted over so River could sit as well. River opened her mouth to speak, but found, now that she was finally here, she had no idea what to say. Should she start with telling Rose that the Doctor was here — the real one, who was probably having a panic-attack on Amy and Rory right now — or should she explain how she got here, or perhaps ask why Rose apparently didn't age?

"Why're you here?" Rose asked, sparing her the choice. "More importantly, how are you here?"

River inhaled to steel herself, folding her hands in her lap. "I'm here to take you back."

"Back?"

"To our universe."

Rose simply stared at her for the longest time, with an expression changing between shock to disbelief to confusion and back again. Then she laughed mirthlessly, swivelling her eyes away to stare ahead of her. "I've gone mad, haven't I?"

River chuckled just as forlornly. "No, I'm really here."

"Yeah, 'cos River Song, the Doctor's wife, managed to get past universal barriers just to take me back home," Rose snorted, leaning her elbows on her knees.

"Well, not 'just'," Rive said, brushing her hair out of her eyes and emulating Rose's position.

"How do you even know who I am?" Rose said, frowning at a pinecone at the base of the tree. "'Cos I know the Doctor didn't tell you about me."

"Actually, he told me everything about you," River said. "But no, you're right, that's not how I found out you existed."

"How then?"

"Do you remember Yakosa Zeta?" River asked gently.

Rose frowned, a line between her eyebrows as she contemplated. "Sort of, yeah. The Doctor and I went there ages ago, to get chips a couple of times."

River nodded, biting back a smirk. "Well a few weeks ago we went there too. Amy, Rory, the Doctor and I, I mean. It was on the same day, so we saw you and that Doctor with the ears making googly eyes at each other."

Rose's cheeks went up in flames at once, and she buried her scarlet face in her hands, mumbling with embarrassment, "Oh my God…" as River started to laugh at her.

"Yes, sweetie, we saw it all." She ducked her head towards her lap, grin fading a little. "So did the Doctor."

"He did?" River nodded bitterly, and Rose swallowed. "Did he… how did…?"

"How did he react?" When Rose nodded, looking a bit ashamed of herself, River quirked the side of her mouth up without mirth and said, "I'll tell you, after you tell me what happened after he left you on the beach."

"If you didn't know, why did you come in the first place?" Rose said bitterly, before sighing at River's sharp look. "He died, all right?"

"When?"

"A week after the other Doctor left us behind."

"Mental implosion?"

Rose frowned at her. "Yeah, how did you know?"

River kicked at a stone with her boot, glad that she'd already slapped the Doctor once in case she was right about the metacrisis during the weeks they worked on transforming the TARDIS into a void ship. "I told the idiot that human-Time Lord biological metacrises were known for their instability!"

"Like Donna." Rose nodded, looking at her shoes. "Only the Doctor couldn't forget, 'cos there wasn't another Time Lord around to do it, so he told me as much about himself as he could before he…"

Her breath hitched in her throat and River turned to look at her in case she'd started crying— it was like she was refusing to, staring hard at the base of a tree with red eyes, fists clenched and lips pressed together. River automatically lifted a hand to place it on her shoulder, but uncertainty seized up her limbs and she pulled her hand back, settling it in her lap. "Why don't you age?"

The strained expression left Rose's face and a sad smile replaced it. "Did the Doctor tell you about Bad Wolf?"

River nodded, frowning in contemplation. "But he said he took the Vortex's energy out of you."

"He did. Well, most of it anyway." The corner of her mouth quirked up and she ducked her head. "We did scans over at Torchwood. The radiation mutated my cells. Tosh reckons I've got about five hundred years left," she added with a bitter laugh. "Why are you here?"

"You asked that already," River pointed out.

"Yeah, an' you said it was to take me back to the original universe. But why? What d'you possibly gain?"

"It's not for me," she said quietly, looking at her knees. "It's for the Doctor." Rose lifted an eyebrow in her direction, but she didn't elaborate until a few minutes of silence had passed. "I've been with the Doctor for a long time. I've seen him make all kinds of faces— usually silly ones—" Rose let out a low chuckle, "— but I have never seen him make the one he did when he saw the two of you. Was like he just shut down. I went after him and found him in your old bedroom."

Her breath hitched again. "H-he told me he used to do that after I got trapped here the first time." River nodded— he'd mentioned that too. "He's here too, isn't he?"

River started. "What?"

"If you managed to get here, then he probably came with you." Rose glanced around like she expected the Doctor to be hiding in a tree watching them— River wouldn't put it past him. "Where is he?"

"He's not here," River lied.

"I don't believe you," Rose said shortly, glaring at her. "To get here you'd have to have a TARDIS or a void ship, and since the latter don't exist anymore and the only TARDIS left in the multiverse is his, there's no way he'd let you just take his ship and cross universes just to find me without coming with you."

River stayed silent, brushing her hair off her forehead again. "He's waiting in the TARDIS a few blocks away. Practically had to chain him to the time rotor to keep him from bolting over here."

Rose let out a hollow-sounding chuckle, ducking her head so her hair curtained her face, which had tinged slightly pink. "Why did you come instead?"

"Because we weren't sure if the metacrisis was alive or not, and if we'd be welcome. And because I wanted to talk to you first." Rose raised an eyebrow at her. "I'm his wife."

The statement could have been taken as cold, demanding and possessive, and for a moment River was a little nervous at how Rose would interpret it, but to River's astonishment Rose merely smiled at her with a shocking amount of warmth. "I know." River was starting to understand what the Doctor saw in this woman. "S'kind of impressive actually, that you managed to get him to do that. The only reason the human Doctor was gonna marry me was 'cos Mum would have slapped him sideways if he didn't. How'd you do it?"

River couldn't help but grin smugly. "Oh, you know, a little flirting, a little blackmail…"

Rose's entire face lit up as she let out an audible laugh. "Sounds like what my mum did." Then, at River's look of alarm, Rose added hastily, "The blackmail, not the… other thing—" They both started to laugh, loud enough to gain them some annoyed looks from other patrons in the park, Rose nearly falling off the bench and River actually having to wipe her eyes. When they finally quietened, Rose beamed at the other woman. "I like you, River Song."

River felt a kind of warm happiness bloom in her chest, pleased— during the past few weeks she'd been imagining various scenarios of meeting 'the other woman'. Most of them ended with them being indifferent to each other, fighting and arguing, or hating each other, because it would be far too easy to hate Rose Tyler. Or she'd thought, anyway. "I like you too."

Rose hummed happily. "So what else did you want to say?"

River grew sombre again, playing with a thread in her leggings. "I'm going to die soon."

Rose's smile slid off at once. "You—"

"Yes, I know," River interrupted. "My team and I are scheduled to go to the Library in a week." Rose's eyes were now locked on her knees. "But I'm leaving tomorrow."

"Why?" Rose whispered. "You could have another week with him and—"

"It's not me he wants to spend time with." River smiled sadly. "Not anymore, not now that he knows he can see you again."

"But you're going to die," Rose snapped, looking furious. "I think that's a bit more important, yeah?"

"Not really." Rose simply stared at her, mouth agape, and River said kindly, "I know I die saving him. That's enough for me. You can understand that." At Rose's frown, she elaborated, "When you looked into the heart of the TARDIS."

Rose nodded and shrugged her shoulder as though to say 'true'. "S'pose."

"Good." River stood abruptly, motioning for Rose to do the same by outstretching her hand for her to take. "I imagine the Doctor's nearly spontaneously combusting from worry. Time for you to go see him."

Rose all but jumped off the bench, clutching at the key around her neck and looking terrified. "But—"

"No buts. We did come all this way."

Rose swallowed and nodded, taking River's hand obediently and letting her guide them out of the park and down the path she'd taken earlier. They gained some looks from the rare passer-by who, naturally, immediately jumped to conclusions, but both women ignored it, hands clasped the whole way back to the TARDIS. Rose's breath and pace stuttered as she spotted the TARDIS, partially shielded from the view of onlookers by a gathering of leaning oaks.

"S'different," Rose said quietly, pointing with her free hand to the St. John's Ambulance sticker. "Didn't have that. An' it used to look sort of… well, older, I s'pose."

"The inside's changed too," River said. She wasn't smiling anymore. Dropping Rose's hand, she said, "Wait here. I'll get him."

Rose nodded, still clutching onto the TARDIS key, but when River was halfway to opening the doors she called, "Hang on!" River turned her head curiously, and Rose grinned with her tongue between her teeth, just like the Doctor had said. "I just wanna know first… is he ginger?"

River had to smirk at that and said, "Nope," causing Rose's grin to widen.

River walked into the TARDIS smiling, but it quickly dissipated at the sight that met her in the console room. Amy and Rory were curled up on the jump seat looking a little bit concerned and the Doctor was pacing in frantic circles, his usually floppy hair sticking up in places, the bags under his eyes that had been present the last three weeks looking even darker and more hollow. The floor was scattered with little bits and bobs, like the Doctor had tried at one point to tinker and had given up halfway through— they made a gigantic skittering noise as the Doctor nearly jumped out of his shoes when he finally spotted River by the doors.

Before he could start to babble, River said abruptly, "She's outside." His expression flickered between terror and hope. River sidestepped all the alien junk and added with bitterness, "And I was right. He died in a week," before striding out of the console room into the corridor.

His gigantic gulp seemed to last for a full minute, hanging his head for a moment before his eyes darted back to the door. "For God's sake, Raggedy Man, move your arse," Amy snapped, and once again he jumped nearly high enough to hit his head on the ceiling before tripping over his own feet in an effort to fling himself towards the door.

After spending three weeks in his dimly lit TARDIS with nothing to look at but the underside of a console, the brightness of outside blinded him for a brief second, making him stumble and blink. Once his vision returned to him, the Doctor's hearts stopped— standing a few metres away, holding onto something on a gold chain for dear life and looking equally astonished to see him was Rose. His mind was wiped blank of everything else and the only thing of importance — prioritised even over breathing — was to get to her. Now.

Just as the Doctor's legs finally kicked into gear and he started to race towards her, she ran forward as well, letting go of the chain to show her glowing TARDIS key bouncing on her cleavage with every sprint. Thankfully there were no rogue Daleks to interrupt them, so he was able to crash into her as planned, weaving his arms around her so tightly he nearly crushed her and pulling her into his chest as though trying to merge the two of them into one being. He let out a sob into her neck when her scent filled his nose, pure and not simply clinging to cloth fibres, and he only half-acknowledged when she made a similar sounding noise and held him just as tightly. Images of bringing her back to their universe, getting to hold her hand again as they ran through time and space together, snogging her for dear life against any possible surface, made elation blossom in his chest, and his face contorted into a beam, squeezing his eyes shut so tightly the corners crinkled and previously unshed tears spilled over his cheeks. Inhaling deeply to try and steady his voice, he wove one hand into her hair, pressed his lips to her ear and whispered the most magnificent word in his entire extensive vocabulary.

"Rose."

A/N: Ta-da! River gets a reality check and Rose gets her Doctor. Once again, no bashing happened, nor was there a catfight (I hate those in fics -_-) This unfortunately IS the conclusion, although I did promise you another sequel; I'm staying true to that promise, except it's a sequel to the first story and a prequel to this story :p Hope you enjoyed!