A/N: Based off of ravens-nest head!canon for TWORS, it really just begged to be written. AU simply for the fact that Doctor Who is a family show and that's why we need Doctor Who: After Dark, just saying, oh, and I took the liberty and changed the only way time could restart. Yep. Actual lines from the episode are in italics. Also, I ignored that the Silence were in the pyramid . . . completely. What? What was that? I didn't see anything…

Disclaimer: All rights belong to the BBC and not me, because if they did belong to me, well then this would be what we would be watching.

"Because I refused to kill the man I love," River said smugly, her eyes bright in her joy. The Doctor gritted his teeth, his anger and frustration boiling over.

"Oh, you love me, do you?" he started towards her. "Oh, that's sweet of you. Isn't that sweet?" He moved closer, reaching out to touch her so he could end this, but just before he could reach her two guard's grabbed ahold of him and he vaguely remembered hearing Amy ordering them to grab him. He fought against them for a few moments before he they stopped dragging him back and let go of him.

"I'm not a fool, sweetie. I know what happens if we touch."

She was so smug and that angered him even more, so he gave a quick smile to the soldiers and lunged forward. His hand wrapped around her small wrist tightly.

"Get off me, get him off me!" she ordered as she tried to shake him off. He gripped even tighter.

"Doctor, no, let go! Please Doctor let go!" Amy called from behind them. The soldiers grabbed onto his arms and tried to pull him away but he grip was too tight.

"It's moving! Time's moving!" Kent called from the monitors as the clocks began to tick forward.

"Get him off me!"

"I'm sorry, River, it's the only way." The soldiers pulled him back harder but time was beginning to restore and he saw a flash of River's arm rising on the beach before the soldiers succeeded in pulling him away. River looked at him in shock.

"Cuff him," she ordered as she walked a safe distance away from him as she rubbed her wrist.

"Oh, why do you always have handcuffs?" he asked as the soldiers snapped the cold restraints around his wrist. "Your hands are the key River; if I touch them at all time will begin again."

"And I'll be by a lakeside killing you."

"And time won't fall apart. Reality will continue. There isn't another way."

"I didn't say there was, sweetie." Tears were beginning to well up in her eyes, but she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of that yet. She needed him to know. She needed him to see just how loved he was by the universe – that the last thing the universe wanted or needed was for him to die.

"River, it needs to happen, it has to happen, it always happens, please. You have to do it – can't you feel time breaking around us? Can't you sense it? Everything around us will cease to exist soon, because this must happen. You must kill me."

"No, why should I? She forced me into being a pawn my entire life," River nodded towards Kovarian, "why would you let her make me one again. I killed you once already, wasn't that enough?"

The Doctor sighed, he knew River could be stubborn but he never expected her to be this much hard work young. He looked up and saw her face, and the tears brimmed in her eyes, her efforts to conceal them going to waste. He felt a twinge of guilt, she was trying so hard and he could tell; he could see that she wanted to be the River that he fell in love with.

River looked away from him and towards Amy, they shared a moment and River nodded.

"Everyone out, there's nothing to see here, grab Kovarian and move it," Amy ordered the soldiers and scientists. Amy walked ahead, a few people following directly behind her.

Everyone vacated the room, with three guards carrying Madame Kovarian out, leaving the two by themselves. The Doctor stared at a wall refusing to look at River who was staring very intently at him.

"I wasn't sure if I could stop it you know, I just – I didn't want to lose you," she said as she looked away from him and stared down at her hands. "Why? Why do I have to do it? Why me? Tell me."

He looked over at her, saw the tears brimmed in her eyes and he sighed.

"Because that's how it's written River, it needs to happen, it must happen – it always does."

"But why? I love you, why do I have to be the one to kill you?"

"Doesn't love kill all of us in the end?" His thoughts strayed to her, so far in her future, sacrificing herself so he could survive and their story could go on.

"That doesn't answer it."

"It's what time says needs to happen."

"And do you always obey the laws of time?"

"It's taken me all these years to realize the laws of time are mine! AND THEY WILL OBEY ME!" The words echoed in his memories clear as day; Mars was a mistake, he should have never gone and he should have kept walking on when he had his chance to leave. But at that moment he couldn't help but think of Donna and how she had begged him to save just one person on Pompeii; he did it for her originally but in the aftermath he could never think of tying Donna to the disaster – it soiled her good name too much.

"Of course I do," he lied.

"You're lying again."

"And you know that how, sweetie?"

"You've been lying to me from the moment you entered the pyramid."

"You noticed that, did you?"

"Of course I noticed." She moved closer to his chair, still keeping her distance. "You've already told me that you loved me."

"Really? I'll keep it in mind not to when it comes time for me to do that."

"Why are you being so cruel?" her voice cracked, he knew he was getting to her and it hurt for him to think about that, but he needed her to realize that this world was wrong – just as he had to realize once that the Time Lord Victorious was wrong.

"Did it ever occur to you that I was lying when I told you that I loved you? Even in Berlin when I told you the message to tell River Song. Did the fact that I could be lying ever cross your mind?"

"Of course it did," she whispered as she fell into Kovarian's chair. He looked away from her to the sarcophagus behind her head. "It always did."

"Then there you have it."

"But you wouldn't lie about your feelings; you could never lie about how you feel because you've already lost too many. The one time you did, you ruined what could have been a wonderful friendship; you treated Martha like she was second best when she was so much more than that, but you were still hurting from losing Rose."

He looked back at her, his eyes widening at the realization of how well she understood him. He bit the inside of his cheek trying to think of a new barb to throw at her, but she was well armed against him, probably because of him.

"Say you don't love me," she ordered as she stood up and moved directly in front of him. He looked up into her stale green eyes and noticed just how close she was to crying. "Look me in the eye and say you don't love me, if you can do that honestly I'll let you restart time and I'll kill you like you want me to."

"River…"

"Say it. Say it, and you'll get your way: just like you want."

"I don't love you," he said as his eyes fixed on a point just above her head.

"In my eye."

He looked back into her eyes.

"I can't."

"You can't tell me that you don't love me?"

"Yes."

"So you do love me?"

"Yes." The fact that she asked was surprising to him, she was there when he had begged for River in Berlin, and she knew he was lying when he was trying to hurt her, all of the lying aside, wasn't it obvious just how much he loved her?

The feel of her lips on his cut off his train of thought and he waited for the sizzling feel of time restarting to begin – but it didn't. She ran her tongue over his lips and he moved into the kiss opening his mouth. She had her hands bunched up at the bottom of her skirt, keeping them away from him so they didn't accidentally restart time before they wanted to.

They broke apart and she smirked.

"It's a shame you love me, because I don't love you," she said before nipping at his bottom lip playfully.

"Oh really now?" He bit her bottom lip in turn causing her to moan out. He pulled away and she looked at him, her pupils dilated.

"Yes." He kissed her then, pushing his tongue into her mouth – their teeth clacking together in their frenzied state. He slides his tongue against hers, trying to be as close as possible to her. He wants to pull her closer, to just be closer to her but his hands cuffed behind the chair were keeping him from doing just that. They pull apart and she takes a glance at his arms.

"I'll uncuff you, but only if you promise not to touch my arms," she said looking back into his eyes.

"And how do you plan on uncuffing me without touching me Dr Song?" he smiled as she smiled wickedly.

"Oh, sweetie, don't you know? I'm a woman of many talents." She winked at him, moving about his body to wear his hands were locked around the back of the chair. She kneeled down; she took the key out of a small pocket in her skirt and carefully slid a hand between the handcuffs and the chair without touching him and grabbed the middle section to steady his hands. She cautiously inserted the key with her free hand and twisted, the restraints opening and she moved her hands away. She stepped back, allowing him to have his movements back without the danger of her arms accidentally brushing any part of him.

He waited until he heard her soft footsteps stop before standing up and facing her. He took in the image of her, standing away from him so she didn't make the mistake of getting too close, hands twisting around one another, and her eyes were staring at his hands. He placed his hand behind his back and their eyes connected and held.

They stood in silence for several moments, neither of them willing to talk first. River looked away from his gaze and looked down at her own hands. She looked back up.

"We're a fine pair, aren't we?" she asked, a smile starting to creep on her face.

"We always have been," he responded, a matching smile beginning to emerge.

"I should hate you, shouldn't I? That's why you act how you do towards me, because you feel like you've ruined my life?"

"I have, haven't I? You were taken from your parents when you were three weeks old, you ran away from an orphanage while I was too busy trying to find your mother and you starved on the streets until you eventually regenerated, and then you gave up a long life for me, don't you think you should hate me?"

"No. I chose to give up my regenerations, I needed to. I ran away from the orphanage because I was afraid of you – they told me half-truth's, focused on all that you didn't stop from happening: the Titanic, Hitler's rise to power, the slaughter on Glaussian VII, Pompeii, the Great London Fire . . . all of it, they never showed me the good you had done to balance out the things that can't be changed. And you agreed easily enough to kill Hitler, provided we landed on the right date, I should have realized then that you obviously weren't all that willing to allow those things to just happen.

"But that doesn't make me hate you, because when I was in Leadworth I was so conflicted about you. Amy adored you, Rory resented you, I was taught to fear you – I never knew what to feel when we played our games. When you showed me who River Song was in Berlin, when you whispered your message to her in my ear, you revealed a different path for me. So I restarted, I was done being Melody Pond or Melody Zucker; I wanted to be River Song and to find her first I needed to find the good man in you first, so I took up archaeology and I read accounts of the good things you had done and found I enjoyed the subject beyond the searching for you. I became better because of you, how could I ever hate you for that?"

He stared at her in disbelief, he knew that in the future she didn't hate him or hold a single thing against him, but he had expected with her so young that she would hold some resentment towards her for how unfair her life had been. He started towards her and she locked her hands behind her back. He stopped walking to her, bringing his hands out from behind his back; he looked down at his hands and back up to her.

"You should hate me; I'm just going to destroy your life more and more. And that's not fair to either of us, because I don't want to hurt you and you shouldn't have your life ruined because of me."

She took a step towards him.

"Maybe, just maybe, I've moved on from hate," she smiled uneasily. "Maybe, I want to love you because I don't want to hate you anymore." She stopped in front of him and looked up into his eyes.

"River, why? Why me?"

"Because you made me love you, you built the foundation with the message and I built the rest from every time you visited me at University and from finding the good man you are. How many times do I have to say it?"

He bent down slightly and pressed his lips to hers, moving one of his hands to the back of her neck so he could bring her closer and the other to her hair. She opened her mouth and he slid his tongue in, sliding it against hers as she gripped the hem of her skirt to keep her arms away from his body. He moved his hands to both sides of her face as he ended the kiss and he started to walk forward – forcing her to walk backwards.

They stopped at one of the pillars, her back pressed up against it and her hands reached back, gripping the stone pillar tightly. He ran a hand down her neck to the low neckline of her shirt and traced along it, his eyes fixated on his fingers as they trailed next to the imitation leather and across the smooth skin of her chest. She watched him as he mapped the route three times until he finally removed his hand from her body and looked back at her face.

"This world can't exist, River, you know that right? You know it's wrong for time and the universe to be like this?" He moved the hand that had remained on the side of her face to her neck.

"Are you just going to start lecturing me again?" she questioned as she stared into his eyes.

"If I need to, then, yes."

She rolled her eyes and tapped her heel on the pyramid's ground.

"I understand that it's wrong, but that doesn't mean I see it as wrong – it's kept you alive hasn't it?"

"And I have to die River, that's how it's supposed to be, I always die there: April 22, 2011 at 5:02pm in Lake Silencio, Utah. That's how it has to be."

"So I just have to let it happen? No questions asked, no answers, I just have to kill you?"

"Yes."

"That's not good enough for me," she said looking down and away from him.

He threw up his hands and walked away, his irritation at her stubbornness returning in spades. He paced a few times, rubbing his hands together, concentrating on a thought as she watched him from her place at the pillar. He turned back to her, pursing his lips and imitating her foot tapping.

"What would make it good enough?" he asked finally, she looked up – her blue-green eyes bright with anticipation.

"Prove it to me."

"Prove what?"

"That you love me, because this doesn't feel like love."

"Oh, and you're an expert on what love feels like, River Song?" he mocked, carefully pronouncing each syllable if her name. He walked over to her and placed his hands on either side of her head, resting them on the pillar.

"Stop mocking me." Her eyes flashed dangerously. He laughed and placed his head near her shoulders, his lips next to her ear.

"And why should I?" he whispered into her ear. He pulled back and smiled when he saw the fire in her eyes. He placed a hand at the back of her neck and pulled her face to his and kissed her, his tongue snaking into her mouth. She bit down on his tongue slightly, just enough to make him jump back. She looked at him innocently as he placed a hand at his mouth and felt at his tongue, he moved his hand back and looked at her.

"Okay, I deserved that," he said as walking back towards her. She nodded and he placed a hand on her waist and the other at her neck. She gave him a warning glance and he grinned.

"I'm going to kiss you now River," he whispered into her ear, "and I hope that this time you won't bite me." He moved his lips to hers and kissed her lightly, his hand at her neck cupped her head as he ran his tongue over her bottom lip. She opened her mouth to him, her tongue slipping out to slide against his, their hips pressed against each other as they kissed.

His hand on her waist slipped down the skirt before trailing under it, bunching up the fabric as it ran across her leg. She moaned into his mouth and he pulled away, placing his lips on her jaw and kissing down her neck as his hand reached her thin knickers. He bit lightly on her neck as his hand pushed the fabric away and he slid his fingers against her wet folds, dancing along and finding her clit and tugging at it.

She cried out as two of his fingers entered her, her head tilted back causing her skull to lightly hit the stone pillar. He moved his lips to her now better exposed pulse point and he sucked lightly as his fingers ran up to her clit and teased it. Her hands were scratching against the pillar as she tried to keep her grip on it.

He moved his hand from her folds, smiling against her neck as his fingers went to the waistband of her knickers and began to pull them down. He moved the hand from her neck down to her skirt as he left light kisses up her neck to her jawline. The hand moved swiftly up her leg, her skirt now bunched around her waist, and began pulling her knickers down.

When they were down to her knees he moved down her body, his nose trailing along the fabric of her shirt as he kneeled in front of her. He finished pushing the knickers down until they were around her ankles, and he looked up at her. Her head was still bent back and her breathing was slowing down. He smiled to himself as he brought a hand back up and pressed his thumb to her clit, her breathing sped up and he began to move his thumb up and down across it.

He continued to do that, watching her breathing increase and get shallower as he pressed against her clit harder and moved his thumb faster. He moved his lips up to the spot his thumb was teasing and blew hot air against it, she moaned loudly. He smiled and quickly flicked his tongue against the spot as he moved his thumb down and away from it. She moaned again and he repeated, this time pressing his tongue harder against her.

He moved his tongue down pressing it deeply into her, savoring her taste as he moved his tongue in her. She gasped and let out soft cries as his tongue returned to her clit and flicked against it. He moved his tongue faster on her clit and her cries became louder.

He removed his tongue and pushed his thumb back against her clit, pressing against it harder as she gasped and moaned. He used his other hand and pushed two fingers into her, her muscles clenching down on them hard. He removed his hands and she moaned at the loss of the pressure. He nipped at her thighs before moving up her body, his hands trailing along her legs and coming to a rest at her waist. He kissed her neck as his hands moved to the snaps of his braces and undid them. His lips moved to hers and he kisses her swiftly as his hands undid the button and zipper to his trousers, he pushed them and his pants down and pressed his now bare hips against hers.

She could feel him hot and hard against her hips, and that made her gasp – her hands desperately clenching at the pillar to not touch him. She moved her hips against his, moaning as he pressed his lips to her jaw while standing very still against her. She rolled them one last time and hooked a leg around his waist as good as she could as he nibbled at her jaw and he groaned. He reached a hand down and pulled her other leg up, settling it round his waist; he moved the hand to himself and directed it into her.

He slid in and they both gasped at the sensation, he began to move slowly in her, his thrusts shallow at first before burying himself deep inside her. He held himself there for a minute as they both groaned at the feeling. He kissed her neck as he began to thrust faster and harder.

"Yes," she moaned as he bit harder than he had before at her neck, "oh, yes, yes, Doctor, yes."

Her verbal responses spurred him to move harder, his hips snapping back and forth as he moved within her. He felt her clench around him and she came with a shriek of his name. He smiled and moved his lips to her ears.

"You really are quite the screamer River," he panted into her ear as the sensations of her clenching pussy rolled around him. He pounded into her harder as her shriek branched off into loud gasps. He groaned her ear. "And no one, not a single person in this entire Universe, has such a hold over me as you do."

"Ah, ah," she moaned as he bit at her earlobe and his thrusts became quicker and deeper. He reached a hand down to her clit, his thumb pressing against it as he pounded into her harder.

"Come on River, prove to me you're a screamer," he panted into her ear as he pushed her close to her second orgasm. He moved his lips from her ear to her neck and he sucked hard, nipping at the skin as her gasps came quicker. He could feel how close she was, and he pressed his thumb down harder on her clit as he increased his thrusts.

Her body tenses up and she bites her lip as he moves his lips to the pulse point on her neck and bites down. She screams out his name, her voice rough and ragged as she comes around him. He moves his lips farther over on her neck and thrusts once, twice more before coming with a shout of her name on his lips.

He moves a hand to the pillar, bracing himself up as she unhooks her legs from his waist. They're both breathing heavy, their bodies limp as they try to regain their strength.

"Was that enough proof for you River?" the Doctor asked, watching her carefully as she opened her eyes.

"For now, yes. And I'd ask you to help me up, but that would involve you touching my hands and there's still something you need to see," she said slumped against the wall.

"And what could that possibly be?" he laughed as he pushed off of the wall to stand on his own. He pulled up his pants and trousers and carefully tucked himself back in.

"You'll see; it's in the receptor room at the top of the pyramid." She stood up shakily, bending down slightly to pick up her knickers from around her ankles to pull them up. She looked at him as she did so and smiled as she saw the smile plastered on his face. "What?"

"Nothing Dr. Song," he said as he placed a hand on her waist to steady her a bit. "Receptor room at the top you say? We should go have a look."

"Oh, sweetie, I've had a look," she said saucily, "in fact, I've had several." She winked at him and began to walk ahead, heading towards the stairs that led up to the top of the pyramid.