Across the Pond

by NinjaNovelist

So much should have been said in that graveyard, but everything came falling apart before they were given a chance. But when River arrives on her parents' doorstep with more unfinished business than just her Melody Malone manuscript, their unorthodox little family is at last given the opportunity to say their goodbyes. Oneshot, spoilers through the Snowmen.

In good Rory fashion, I am back from the dead! This story took FOREVER, so I hope you enjoy. :)

Disclaimer: Maybe if I wish really, really hard... nope, still don't own it.

I also don't own Norman F. Cantor's Civilization in the Middle Ages (of which I stuck in a few excerpts for this fic), though I had the displeasure of having to read it for school this year. I truly apologize for having to put you through such cruel and unusual punishment.

It had been so long since she heard the noise, Amy almost didn't recognize it. A long time ago she used to constantly go through life with an ear cocked to the side, waiting to hear the familiar racket of time and space being ripped open for the sake of an entrance, but now it seemed so foreign within the context of what she called normal life.

But there was no mistaking the sound of her daughter's Vortex Manipulator.

"River!" the ginger cried as she rushed to capture the other woman in an oxygen-depriving hug.

The professor's laugh was muffled by her mother's shoulder. "Been a while?"

"Eight years," Amy told her, nearly sobbing of happiness.

"Year and a half for me," River replied, voice just barely strained as well.

Amy pulled back to look at her daughter. "Why are you here? I'm sure you miss us, but even you wouldn't risk destroying New York for a chat with your parents."

"Well, unless it was for a good reason," River said with a smile, as she rummaged through her bag. "I have the manuscript for Melody Malone. Could do with an afterward, though."

Once the novel was handed over, the two sat themselves on the couch to catch up with each other: Amy detailing life in 1940's New York, River of 51st century Luna University. Neither brought up the topic of a certain madman in a box.

"-and I've never quite appreciated how well you've hidden your spoilers before now," Amy was saying some time later. "Keeping quiet during the war was nearly impossible. Rory served overseas for a few years, you know; said that he nearly gave it all away on D-Day."

River released a soft chuckle. "Where is Dad, anyway?"

"Oh, he's upstairs with the-" In an instant all the color drained away from Amy's face.

"What is it?" River asked, concerned.

In response, the piercing shrieks that could only belong to an infant resounded from above.

Amy's guilty gaze flitted between River and anything else but her. "We had talked of adopting for a while, even back in Leadworth. We decided to wait until after the war."

River's feet remained frozen stiff, but her eyes unwittingly traveled up the stairs in longing.

"Well go on then," Amy said, though much softer than usual. "It's time you met your brother."

Had it been anyone else, Amy would've sworn the woman before her appeared timid as she rose from her seat and made her way to the second floor.

Following the baby's wails, River focused all her strength into putting one foot in front of the other, eventually leading her before a perfectly innocent looking door with a duck painted on it. Daleks, easy. Cybermen, no issue. But given a peek into the life she never had and River bloody Song wanted to run as fast and far as she could.

Rule Seven, she reminded herself with a weak smile. Then with a deep breath her hand found the knob and she carefully cracked the door open.

Rory's back was turned away from her as he gently bounced a small bundle in his arms, the cries by now reduced to only the occasional whimper. The child was positioned so River could see the little face, eyes wide as he regarded the stranger.

For a long moment her voice was caught in her throat, marveling at her beautiful baby brother, but then her gaze drifted to the man holding him. All at once the painful memories came crashing back down on her, of everything left unsaid in that graveyard.

"Behold, the Last Centurion."

Rory wheeled around at her voice and, as he always does when he lays eyes on his daughter, his body tensed up and he simply stood there gaping at her, mind grasping for words that would never come. Her hearts couldn't help but sag at the sight.

"River," he finally greeted awkwardly.

She felt the corners of her mouth lift into a smile, to draw attention away from the hurt in her eyes. "Dad."

He flinched involuntarily at the title, and at this rate River guessed that her all-too-loyal hearts would sink to her shoes by the end of their meeting.

For Amy, after she had gotten over the initial shock of finding out that River was her daughter and accepted the fact that her baby wasn't coming back, she had welcomed River in with open arms. But Rory, oh Rory, even while he knew who River was he would nervously skirt around the edges during the simplest conversation in search of the nearest exit, and it only got worse as she moved farther back in his timeline.

But despite all that, she truly believed that her father did care for her, just rubbish at expressing the fact. But as time went on her faith became plagued with doubts that he had never been able to move past the loss of his little girl to accept the fact that the middle-aged, gun-slinging troublemaker he did have was just as much his as the child he had held on Demon's Run.

Rory began tapping his foot as he continued trying to think of what to say. "How did you, er..."

River held up her wrist in reply. "Vortex Manipulator."

Her father nodded. "A motorbike through traffic."

The forced smile on her lips melted into one more genuine. He remembered.

Courage seizing the controls, River took a step forward and ran her fingers along the infant's cheek. "What's his name?"

"Anthony," Rory replied as he looked down with a look of fatherly affection just for his son. "Anthony Brian Williams."

"Finally got someone willing to take your name?" River asked with a smile.

Rory scoffed. "Only took a couple decades to do it."

River chuckled softly, but she was too enraptured by the child before her to make a further witty remark.

Rory glanced at his daughter thoughtfully. "Would you like to hold him?"

Eyes widening, the woman removed her hand and began backing away. "Oh no, I couldn't-"

"Come on, River," he interrupted, amused. "It's only a baby."

But then he paused to take a closer look. The unnaturally pale face, the eyes darting back and forth anxiously, the hand subconsciously placed on her stomach. Rory had been a nurse long enough to recognize the signs.

"How far along?"

River's head snapped back to attention at her father's words. "What?"

"How far along are you, River?" Rory repeated, soft but firm.

She stared at him for a long time, but when she made her reply her head ducked down to avoid meeting his eyes. "Seven weeks."

Rory instantly responded by stepping in so that he was standing directly in front of her. "Then I'm going to insist on you holding your brother."

But River still hesitated. "I don't really know much about-"

"No excuses," Rory rebutted as he placed the half-asleep child into her arms. "You need to get as much practice in as you can. Doctor's orders."

Once she secured the baby against her chest, River glanced up at him. "Doctor?"

"Yeah," Rory replied sheepishly. "Being a male nurse isn't exactly an option here. Besides, it's a lot easier to get your degree."

"So Amy got her Doctor after all," River mused.

"And you've got yours," Rory pointed out.

Their eyes met, and they both shared a faint smile. It hadn't seemed possible at the time, but the three Ponds had finally learned to move on after their impossible, maddening, beautiful family was torn apart and trapped on opposite sides of a fixed point.

River's eyes returned to the baby in her arms, her hand grasping his lightly as she awed at the difference in size. "I haven't told him yet."

Rory knew that she could only mean his wife's not-so-imaginary-friend, and he nearly asked why. But no matter how wibbly-wobbly their relationship was, this was still his daughter, a little bit of Amy, a little bit of him; he should know her better than just about everyone.

"You're scared aren't you?"

"Terrified." And as she looked up at her father, all her fears and anxieties suddenly rushed out faster than her breath could catch up.

"I have no idea how to be a mother! I'm all about guns and archaeology and dirty jokes- definitely not parent material. And the Doctor, oh he's even worse. With all that time travel and constantly risking his neck to save the Universe, can I really expect him to do more than pop in from time to time for a bedtime story? I can't even guarantee this child's safety for God's sake, that whatever happened to me won't happen to him or her. If I never had a proper childhood, then how could I possibly provide one for the baby... I just don't know what to do, Dad."

Rory hesitated, a bit unsure of how to comfort a River Song (and a pregnant one no less). His hand flitted about uselessly for a moment before finally settling on her shoulder. His daughter looked up at him with a warm smile, but the usual light in her eyes was diminished with grief and worry. The hand migrated upward of its own accord, finally stopping to rest on her cheek.

A tremble ran through River's body at the abrupt intimate gesture, and Rory quickly drew away, reverting back to the awkward man she both hated and loved. "What... what's wrong, River?"

She could have simply blamed hormones and been done with it, but she had been waiting so long to be able to run to daddy when things went wrong, and at last she's been given a first and last chance to do so. There was nothing across the stars that could keep her from him now.

"I'm sorry," she confessed. "But you had always seemed a bit... frightened of me. You always kept me at arm's length, so I had thought that you- that you didn't..."

Unknowingly she gripped her brother tighter in her arms, causing the infant to awaken and begin whimpering. River quickly placed him back into her father's arms and turned away to hide the sheen of tears threatening to spill over.

Rory bounced one child lightly to soothe him as he regarded the other. "You know, when Amy and I applied for the adoption, at first they offered us a girl. Your mother was all for it, but I convinced her to turn it down."

"Why'd you do that?" River asked, keeping a steady gaze out the window.

Rory placed Anthony in his crib before stepping towards River, crooking a finger under her chin and guiding her face so that her eyes met with his. "Because I already have a daughter, Melody."

Now River even didn't bother to stop the crying, and Rory immediately responded by pulling her into his arms.

"This is the last time we'll ever see you, won't it?" Rory asked, voice thick through his own tears.

River nodded against her father's shirt. "The risks are too great. I'm probably ripping a hole in deep space right now just by being here."

Rory gave a mirthless chuckle as he smoothed a hand down River's back. "I'm glad you came anyway. Back at that graveyard, everything happened so fast, and I didn't get to say goodbye." He swallowed before continuing. "To either of you."

River's mind wandered back to where she had left the Doctor, brooding on a cloud in her mother's reading glasses. Her husband and her father were the two most important men in her life, and for the first time it occurred to her that they could both do with some closure.

Pulling back from her father with a cheeky grin, River began hurriedly setting coordinates into her Manipulator.

"What are you doing?" Rory asked warily.

"Oh, disrupting the fabric of time, rewriting how history itself is to unfold." She looked at him with a smirk on her lips and a spark in her eyes. "You know, the usual."

~0~0~0~0~0~

Across the sea and half a century before, a crotchety old man sat reading, surrounded by his closest and oldest friend as his only companion while he tried to absorb himself in the book he was reading.

A more dramatic and direct factor in the economic depression in Europe was the Black Death. During the high Middle Ages an epidemic of the plague had decimated the-

Hmm, Black Death. He had never stopped to consider what that meant. How can death be black? He had always assumed it was some kind of abstract nonentity, and though describing it as black certainly gave an eerie feel to it, it could be no means be considered accurate since...

Right. Back to the reading.

Epidemic disease, certainly bubonic plague but possibly also a rare strain of murrain that in this rare instance affected humans as well as domestic animals, swept over Europe, killing at least a quarter and as much as 40 percent of the population in some areas-

Now that's just a load of rubbish. There had been no bubonic plague, but in fact a virus concocted by the Cybermen in order to increase the efficiency of mass upgrades. If he and the Ponds hadn't arrived in time...

No, stop. He was doing it again.

The Doctor sighed as he leaned back in his seat and rubbed a hand over his ragged face. That life was done. There was no use in dwelling on it now.

It was then that a sharp burning sensation suddenly seared itself into his skin, then dissipated just as quickly. Reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out his psychic paper for the first time in ages and read through the message laid before him in familiar, curvy handwriting.

Hello Sweetie,

Pull on the wibbly lever, yank the big stick on the other side three notches down, and hit the big yellow button directly to the left (and don't forget the stabilizers!). Trust me on this one. X

The Doctor gave a sullen frown that matched his true age. Putting aside the fact that she sounded as though she were giving instructions to a child, River of all people should understand what he's been going through; she loved her parents just as much as he, and they were gone because of him. Sweet little Amelia Pond, who aged twelve years in five minutes into the independent, troublesome, smart-ass, magnificent woman who would become his best friend. And Rory, quiet and just a bit awkward, but with a fierce devotion to those who mattered most to him. The Last Centurion he never got the chance to say goodbye to.

And after they were taken, the Doctor had sworn up and down the Universe that they would be the last to suffer at his hands.

His mind made up, the Doctor shoved his psychic paper deep into his pocket and situated himself back into his former position to enjoy a bit of pleasure reading in peace. To officially settle the matter his hand instinctively went to his neck, but he was soon reminded that there was nothing there to straighten anymore. So the hand continued to rise upward to adjust the round specs perched on the bridge of his nose before cracking open his history book to a random spot once again.

The literary sources and documentary evidence for the Carolingian period are much more voluminous than they are for any era since the fourth century. Whereas our knowledge of sixth-century France is drawn heavily from the information supplied by Gregory of Tours, and the sources for the seventh-century Merovingian kingdom are extremely fragmentary, there survive from the period of 750 to 900 hundreds of pages of-

The Doctor's peaceful pleasure reading was interrupted by him promptly flinging the book over his shoulder. To hell with that dull nonsense.

Tucking Amy's glasses away in his pocket, the Time Lord soon slipped back into old habits like he had never abandoned them in the first place as he raced from one control to another. He was simply following orders, he told himself. It was never a good idea to get his wife upset (especially as of late, he couldn't help but notice). He even allowed himself to admit he was curious to see what she had in store for him.

He would never let himself think that a part of him missed this.

After following River's instructions- with only a few minor tweaks added here and there- the Doctor waited. And as he waited, he stretched his imagination to its very limits as he wondered what his wife could possibly be up to. Perhaps she had caught wind of the adjustments he had made to the shielding mechanisms and was determined to rectify that at once. Maybe ahe had sent him a slitheen or to to battle as a "gift", or she had gotten herself into a jam- again- and needed his assistance.

The very last thing he ever expected to see was a blurred hologram of the Boy Who Waited.

"Er, hang on- just give me a moment." The ghost of a man before him seemed to have not yet noticed the presence of the Doctor as he fiddled with the Vortex Manipulator on his arm. "Almost there- damn it. River, could you give me a hand?"

"Allow me," the Doctor offered, recovering from his shock just enough to raise his screwdriver and sonic the image of Rory Pond into focus.

The Centurion's head shot up at his friend's voice coupled with the familiar whiz of his choice weapon, and both men fell into a stupor as the stared at one another for the first time since that fateful day in the cemetery.

"Uh... hello there," the Time Lord began at last.

"Doctor, we've got about five minutes at best before the Manipulator shorts out," Rory told him. "Mind if we skip the awkward bit?"

"But how are you here..." He hesitantly reached a hand forward.

"Don't," said Rory. "If you try to touch, the projection will shut down completely."

The Doctor gulped back a lump in his throat as he let his hand drop to his side, reminded of the last time he spoke to someone for the last time without being able to hold her in his arms.

"This is only an image of me," his friend explained in answer of his previous question. "No paradoxes: you're still on one side and I'm on the other. Also much easier for a hologram to get through the time lock than an actual body, though it still takes a hell of a lot of power. But I don't care. I never got the chance to... the chance to..."

Don't say it, don't say it,the Doctor pleaded silently, closing his eyes. Saying goodbye meant admitting that all their times together were over.

"To thank you."

The Doctor didn't even try to hide his surprise. "For what?"

"Letting us see worlds outside of Leadworth, giving us adventures others can't even dream of-"

"Ripping you from family and friends forever, letting your daughter be taken from you, giving you half the lives you two deserve," the Doctor finished, a bitter edge to his voice.

But Rory's rebuttal was firm. "No, you gave us twice the life we would've had otherwise."

The Doctor chuckled fondly. "My Ponds. You lot never give up on me."

"Well, I could never really just let you be, could I?" Rory joked. "All that dying and coming back, probably got pretty sick of me after a while."

The Doctor smiled, but it felt foreign, unwanted on his face. If only his friend had been able to defy the laws of reason that last time.

After a brief moment of silence, Rory chose to speak up again. "Amy's doing well."

The Time Lord nodded, hands sliding into his pockets absently. "I know. She told me so."

At Rory's confused expression, the Doctor drew his hands out into the open again, one of them clutching Amy's afterward.

Understanding washed over Rory's face as he read the excerpt. "So you got two goodbyes from her."

The Doctor felt his twin heartbeats stutter as he realized what Rory was not saying. Two for Amy. None for Rory.

"Listen-"

"No, it's fine. I get it," Rory said dismissively. "Amy's always been special to you. Traveled with you longer, first face this face saw. I know she means more to you than I do, and that's okay."

The Doctor opened his mouth to argue, but he found that he couldn't. In any other case, lies could roll off his tongue as easily as air from his lungs, but Rory had been nothing but honest with him all these years, and the very least he could do was return the favor.

But the way Rory had said it broke the old man's fragile hearts. He wasn't angry or upset, but just so accepting about the whole thing, like there was no point in even hoping for it to be otherwise, and that was even worse.

But it was a Doctor's job to heal his patients when they were hurting.

"I've had more companions than I can count, Rory," the Doctor explained. "And yes, some were closer to me than others. But that doesn't make those others any less special." He chuckled quietly to himself. "1,200 years old, and you young, naïve little humans still teach me knew things, every one of you. Martha Jones taught me not to live so far in the past that I miss what's right in front of me. Donna Noble me that there's not a single person in the Universe who isn't important."

The Doctor glanced up at this point, a smile equal parts forlorn and affectionate tugging at his lips. "And you, Rory Pond, Last Centurion, have taught me how to love. Without boundaries. Always and completely."

His eyes traveled behind Rory to rest on the woman standing just behind him, blonde curls springing every which way and eyes filled with more love than he ever thought possible.

"And I couldn't be more grateful."

He held his gaze with River a moment more, just long enough to see her tensed body relax and the last hints of anxiety drain from her face. He hadn't the faintest clue why his fearless wife had been so fearful, but he knew her well enough to realize that sometimes it took nothing more than a meaningful glance from him to put her at ease, and his hearts warmed at the thought.

He turned back to Rory just as the hologram began to flicker warningly. "We don't have much time."

The Doctor grinned at his father-in-law. "So I suppose we have to cut our usual over-protective father lecture?"

"Nice try, but you're not getting off that easy," Rory threatened with a hint of a smile. "Especially since River's not the only matter of concern now."

The Doctor frowned in confusion. "What do you mean?"

Rory's mouth slid into something almost akin to a smirk. Never before did the Doctor see so much of his daughter in him. "Spoilers."

Then his face went serious. "Just... take care of her. She deserves that and more."

The Doctor brought his hand up into a salute. "Understood, Centurion."

The image wavered again, and looking to his friend the Doctor gave an appreciative nod. "Live well, Pond."

And as the Centurion reurned the gesture, his final words cut through thick, stubborn skin to rest in his best friend's hearts forevermore. "Love well, Doctor."

And with that, Rory Williams faded from sight.

The Doctor didn't move for a long time, almost expecting the Ponds to come from nowhere so they could have adventures once again. But he knew that would never be so.

After retrieving his book, he slumped back into his seat and continued thumbing through it, reading glasses on his nose once again. Maybe there was a reason he's been reading on history, despite it being utterly boring- not to mention inaccurate- and choosing to experience these events through the pages of a textbook rather than firsthand. Because even when the book is completed, history doesn't end. Time doesn't end.

And he hates endings.

Then the phone rings, and he picks up to hear Vastra on the other end, going on about a barmaid turned governess and malevolent snow and a test and a single word, the one word that could get the Doctor interested in his former way of life again.

Now beginnings, that's another story entirely.