Title: Still a bit impossible.
Author: Yeziel Moore.
Pairings: Eleventh Doctor/River Song, Eleventh Doctor/Clara Oswald (not at the same time and no, he's not two-timing them, sheesh)
Warnings: None, I think.
Summary: If there is one thing River learned from the Doctor is that to keep an ace under your sleeve can and will save your life at a later date. Another thing to know about River Song is that she's a very stubborn woman, one who is tragically used to fight for her life, to fight dirty and to never pull her punches. Here is the story of how she survived.
Disclaimer: It's hilarious to think that anything but this plot belongs to me, *dies laughing*
Words: 2915.

AN: This was supposed to be it. But then my mind, who hates me, decided it was too cruel to leave it there, so this will have a couple more chapters to tie those loose ends you can see flapping around.

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. 01. River .

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"There's a neural relay in the communicator. Lets you send thought mail. That's it there. Those green lights. Sometimes it can hold an impression of a living consciousness for a short time after death. Like an afterimage." The Doctor in Silence in the Library.

~01~01~01~

River knew that this course of action would almost certainly kill her, but even as the knowledge made her heart pound harder, her hands never once faltered. There was no room for a miscalculation here, she had to get this right on the first try or not only would she die in vain but the Doctor would follow her like the stupid martyr he was. She couldn't let that happen, the Doctor wouldn't die here, he was too young, didn't even know her properly yet.

River finished connecting the right cables for the download, now all she had to do was connect the storage device or, in other words, her body, most specifically, her brain. She seated herself and with the efficiency of a soldier River started putting the finishing touches to the improvised device she had built. Just in time too, for the Doctor choose that moment to wake up and, typical of him, immediately proceeded to beg her not to sacrifice her life, to let him do it in her place, etcetera. Had she been anyone else or had he woken up one minute earlier she may've faltered. As things were, all his begging and cajoling didn't even tempt her and seeing him so young (to her at least) only solidified her resolve.

There wasn't much time left now, less than two minutes. The Doctor, bless his hearts, had finally shut up for more than a second and had resorted to staring at her with those big brown eyes, so beautiful, so utterly sad and so full of everything that was good and terrible in the Universe. And that thought was so utterly schoolgirl in love that River couldn't help but quirk her lips into the teasing smirk that would one day be utterly familiar to him. Even now, when he was a skinny thing inside a blue suit full to the brim of manic energy and barely concealed darkness, the Doctor had the ability to make her fall in love with him. Fortunately for everyone involved he still couldn't make her obey.

River hated to admit weakness, even to herself, but she couldn't deny that the prospect of dying terrified her, as would any sane person. Still, she didn't have any regrets, because there were only three people in the whole of Time and Space she would ever do something so monumentally stupid for and the Doctor was one of them. Well, there was one thing wrong with her previous statement, River Song did regret one thing and that was joining the list of people who had left the Doctor alone, whether it happened by choice or by force didn't matter. It happened and it kept happening and she knew that her actions would break his hearts now and for a long time to come. If only she could find another way! An idea, an utterly mad and absolutely brilliant idea sparked in River's mind. Maybe there was a way…

A long time ago in her past, far in the Doctor's future, when River Song was nothing but a name she had heard for the first time moments before, she killed the Doctor. Fortunately for him and her and the Universe at large, she reconsidered her actions soon after. Because, for the first time in her life as Mels, she not only wanted to be more than a well trained psychopath but she also had proof, in the form of a name, that she could be more that a psychopath. For the first time ever she could see a future beyond the darkness and the silence, she could see light, adventure and, best of all, freedom. And she wanted that future, she wanted it so badly... That was how Melody Pond, soon to be River Song, made the split-second decision to threw everything she had behind that bright and fantastic future.

In the end she'd succeeded in reviving the Doctor but it had cost her, it'd cost her a lot, eight lives to be precise. River Song, in all her curly glory, was her fourth body*. Nobody, not the Doctor and much less the Silence, knew how many regenerations she had in total. They hadn't known she could regenerate until it happened the first time in that dirty alleyway in the States. She had been alone then and she had remained that way, and in time she had managed to puzzle out some of the mysteries her body hid. She never found out exactly how many regenerations she had left but she learned a lot all the same. She learned that she could get by with a few hours sleep per day and still be full to the brim with energy and ready to survive a little longer. She learned that she didn't need a clock to tell the time or a map to know where she was standing and that if she concentrated hard enough she could faintly feel the Earth move under her feet. Finally she learned that she must be bigger on the inside because there was a huge space inside her slim body brimming with a scary amount of energy.

That space was emptied in her successful attempt to revive the Doctor. Or so she and the Doctor had thought. Truth was that she had been so drained of energy after her stunt that if someone had told her that she had swallowed a black hole she wouldn't have been surprised. But once her new body had settled? Oh, she had known the truth then. She hadn't drained all her lives in one go, no, somehow or another she had clung onto one life, one more chance. River still didn't know how that was possible but it was and so she told no one. Not that she had anyone to tell, the Doctor and her parents were long gone by then.

"River! Please! No!"

Of course the Doctor couldn't be quiet for longer than five seconds, what had she been thinking? No matter, she had some very important things to tell him and she had to do it while finishing her work with the wires as well as looking for that almost empty space inside her. Thankfully she was excellent at multitasking. She hadn't been lying when she told the Doctor that he didn't have a chance and neither did she. Except for one little discrepancy, this Doctor, for all his energy and grandstanding, was tired and wouldn't fight nearly as hard to live; she, on the other hand, had a laundry of reasons to keep living and considering who her parents were survival was practically written in her DNA. That elevated her chances of pulling this off without dying from zero to almost zero. She could work with almost.

River was talking, telling the prone Doctor the story of their last meeting so that he knew what to do when the time came.

"Time can be rewritten."

That pulled her short.

"Not those times. Not one line! Don't you dare!" River snapped fiercely before checking herself. She continued, softly and reassuring. "It's OK. It's OK, it's not over for you. You'll see me again. You've got all of that to come. You and me, time and space. You watch us run!"

Her time was almost up, ten seconds now. She put the finished headset on her head, the metal cold and lifeless, like she would be if this didn't work out. Seven seconds left.

"River, you know my name! You whispered my name in my ear. There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time I could..."

Four, three…

"Hush, now! Spoilers..."

She smiled at him tenderly. She wished that she could tell him everything, that she had the time, that she was allowed but she wasn't and he knew that. Those were the rules, his rules, but did he care? No, of course not. Rules were boring and the Doctor didn't do boring unless it benefited him, which in this case didn't. He truly was a madman with a box, her madman with a box.

...three, two, one...

It was time. With tears in her eyes and a smile firmly planted on her face River plugged both cables together. His stricken face was the last thing she saw before light flashed all around her, pain like no other shot through the whole length of her body for an eternity and a half and then there was nothing.

~01~01~01~

The transition from unconsciousness to consciousness was more abrupt than River recalled. One moment there was nothing and the next she was standing in a carefully manicured lawn, just like that. She looked down at her very familiar body and her calloused hands from handling guns, the white dress barely registered in her shocked state. Disappointment washed over River when she realized that this meant she had failed and ultimately died

"It's OK. You're safe," said a familiar voice. She looked up and as she expected CAL, or Charlotte she supposed, was standing right in front of her and next to the little girl, almost like a shadow but more like a guardian, was Dr. Moon.

She didn't have the heart to tell the little girl that nothing was OK and would never be again.

"I failed," River muttered to herself and it simply took too much effort to hold back the tears so she left them fall. What did it matter anymore? A copy of her consciousness was alive in the data core but her body had died, she hadn't been able to regenerate and only now she realized how much hope she had put in that flimsy possibility. What a stupid thing to do!

Charlotte looked puzzled at the woman, and then at Dr. Moon, who looked equally confused, and back. "What did you fail to do?"

River focused on the little girl, a hero really, that had managed to save 4022 people and decided that it couldn't hurt to tell her the truth, but to do that she needed to establish a little bit of background. She cleared her throat. "I'm human, but due to some improbable circumstances during my conception I share some abilities with Time Lords, like the Doctor," she clarified, seeing Charlotte confusion who then nodded for her to continue. "Time Lords had this ability, called regeneration. They could, in the event of their dead, change their whole bodies, essentially gaining another life. I was going to do the same thing but..." River's voice trailed off.

It was obvious to her that she hadn't succeeded. That was why the wide and happy smile in the girl's face took her by surprise.

What...

"But you didn't fail."

What?!

"Look!" As soon as Charlotte said that the environment changed and the three of them were standing in a familiar living room. They were in Charlotte's dream house. In front of them was a television and in the screen she could see... she squinted, was that an infirmary? A very crowded infirmary by the look of things. "There!" Charlotte pointed and the angle of the camera shifted to show a single bed separated from the rest by a curtain and in the middle of the bed, barely visible under a white sheet, was a dark-haired toddler. That was all she could see from the awkward angle, at least until the toddler turned around and an eerily familiar face was shown on the screen.

"WHAT?!" Oh, and now she even sounded like the Doctor, but still!

"Is something wrong?"

"I... That's not... How is that...!"

Charlotte and Dr. Moon shared a look of shared confusion and worry. The worry intensified when the woman, River Song, asked to see the recording of her death. "I won't believe it until I see it," was all she said and Charlotte finally relented.

Charlotte didn't want to see, it was very sad and she couldn't help but feel a bit guilty. She had saved all those people but in the end it was River Song's sacrifice that had saved and freed them all. Almost as if sensing her thoughts Dr. Moon's hand landed atop her head, and even if she now remembered that this wasn't really real, it comforted her all the same.

The events playing in the screen were all an incredible succession of coincidences that, compounded with the knowledge River had of the Doctor's future, didn't seem like coincidences anymore. She saw the moment she died, her brain and body overloaded by the huge download, and she had died, of that there was no doubt in her mind. It should've ended there but it miraculously didn't. Minutes passed, her body lay still in that parody of a throne, and the Doctor never once took his heartbroken eyes off of her. Not until someone came to find him. It was as if he had been freed from an enchantment, he stood up and reluctantly approached her body, it was clear in his body language that all he wanted to do then was to turn around and run far, far away. Instead he carefully untangled the wires form her body and lifted her dead weight gently. River couldn't see his expression from the angle of the camera but she could imagine it all too well, she had seen it plenty of times after all, the devastation and the accompanying darkness in his eyes. His face may be different but the man wasn't.

In the end he passed her body to the silent man that had freed him. He said nothing to him except that she had saved them all and then left without once looking back. She hadn't expected him to, once the danger was past the Doctor always left and never looked back or, well, almost never. The nameless man who had her body went to the infirmary and, respectfully, deposited it in an empty bed in an out-of-the-way corner. He even drew a curtain around her before leaving in a hurry. It was understandable, there were 4022 people to evacuate and only one day to do it, time was of the essence and she, for all that she was a hero to them, was dead.

But not for long. It was hours later but River caught the first signs of an impending regeneration**, a flicker of yellow-orange light underneath the white cloth that covered her. In the chaos of the evacuation nobody paid the miracle of life any mind, not that there was much to see, covered from prying eyes as her body had been. She noticed how her body shrunk until it was tiny (a toddler again, really?), she saw her new self squirm uncomfortably until her head surfaced, she saw her new eyes open for the first time and she saw herself glance around clueless, not a single shred of recognition in them. Oh, that was not good and, at the same time, it made a lot of sense.

So now here she was, as a consciousness in the data core of The Library and completely at a loss about what to do next. The live feed showed her new self contently sleeping away the exhausting effects of the regeneration while the last stragglers were rounded up. She managed to peel her eyes from the screen and focus on Charlotte.

"See? You did it!" The girl smiled but River could see that she was confused by her lack of enthusiasm.

"I did, but I did it wrong," River finally said.

CAL frowned. "Wrong how?"

River shook her head. "Something went wrong" she repeated and returned her eyes to the sleeping toddler, almost as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing, and she couldn't. "I know her, I saw her once, a few weeks ago actually. I wanted to see if the Doctor... if he was alright after what happened in New York. I miscalculated. I overshot my landing and arrived too far into his future." River laughed. "Or maybe I didn't and this was supposed to happen."

"I don't understand."

River looked back at Charlotte and Dr. Moon. "No, I supposed you don't, but I need you to do something for me."

"What?"

"I need information on someone and then I need to speak with Mr. Lux, can you do that?"

"Yes, but I..."

River squatted next to the confused girl and put her hands on her shoulders. She gave her a reassuring smile. "That little girl, me, when I saw her last, she was travelling with the Doctor and living in London in the 21st century." Charlotte's eyes widened "I know it doesn't make any sense, but Time Travel rarely does. I know what to do to get me, that me, back where I should be, but I'm going to need yours and Mr. Lux help for that. Will you help me?"

"Ok," nodded Charlotte after a few tense seconds had passed. "Who do I need to look up?"

River smiled, relieved, still a little disbelieving but mostly hopeful. Whatever had happened to her, River knew that she would find the Doctor and after that it was just a matter of time before everything got fixed again.

"Her name is Clara, Clara Oswald."

*I'm assuming River had the same amount of regenerations as a full Time Lord, that's to say, twelve regenerations, thirteen bodies in total.

1st body: baby Melody and the girl in the orphanage.

2nd body: unknown, girl in the alleyway.

3rd body: Mels

4th body: River Song.

5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th potential lives: used to revive the Doctor.

13th body: Clara Oswald.

**As far as I've seen, regenerations are tricky business. But our main point of reference is the Doctor and I think that he regenerates with the same finesse that he uses to drive the TARDIS, that's to say, none. I'm mentioning this because we have seen difficult or blotched regenerations before, for instance, the regeneration from the seventh to the eight Doctor which is pretty similar to River's here, except that he recovered his memories and Clara... well, we'll see, won't we?