Chapter One: Time Lord Blood

River's most personal project was a book she planned to publish someday. Its working title was In Memory of the the Doctor: an Oral History. She'd been following rumors about him through space and time, and interviewing the people whose lives he'd touched. It was beautiful and painful and therapeutic. She usually tried to classify which face they'd met, but it wasn't always easy. Some of the stories were a bit far from the source and clearly exaggerated: 'when my great-granddad met him, he was over two thousand years old!' or 'he breathed flames and the monsters ran away!' Those stories made her smile.

Some of the hardest-to-classify stories were most probably about his third face, from the way they described his dark coat and gray curls. It was strange, though-his third face hadn't traveled much. She always showed the interviewee pictures of the Doctor's faces. Usually they could pick it out right away, but sometimes they hesitated: 'I'm not sure it was any of those,' they'd say. She sometimes imagined the Doctor laughing at the imperfections of archeology. This isn't science! You're just guessing! she could almost hear him say.

River was following his timeline when she and Anita arrived on Theron IV in the midst of its slavery era. It was, at the time, a brutal little world. It had the misfortune of being a rich source of several rare minerals necessary in 42nd Century space travel. It had been conquered by Earth, and its native population, called the V'Lak (who looked rather like large voles), were enslaved and pressed into hard labor in the mines. Earth would eventually be deeply ashamed by its actions, and a thousand years later would rebuild the world into a galactic wildlife preserve. For now, though, it was a tortured planet. There was a rumor that the Doctor had been there several times before the Insurrection of 4197, and River hoped to collect those stories.

Unfortunately, the mere mention of his name was enough to get them surrounded by a dozen over-eager paramilitary types, arrested, and summarily stuffed into a dungeon at the bottom of the mine. Ordinarily, River would have been able to take a few cops without breaking a sweat, but it would have put a number of innocent V'Lak in danger.

"And that's how we got arrested on Theron IV," River said wryly to Anita as the door slammed shut behind them, as though she was telling the story at a dinner party to an appreciative crowd back home.

"Stay tuned to find out about our thrilling escape," Anita murmured, and then sighed. "I honestly don't know how I let you talk me in to these things, River." In truth, it usually didn't take much convincing for Anita to run away with her friend. Before the Library, Anita had been rather awed of the fearsome Professor Song. Nine hundred years in the computer together had made them friends. Their shared rebirth into a new millennium had forged them into sisters. She often accompanied River on digs and research trips, if for no other reason than to throw off the feeling of displacement and anachronism that sometimes plagued her. This was her first "Doctor Trip," however. River usually went on those when she was missing him the most, and always went alone, but this time had invited Anita on a whim.

"So, how are we going to escape?" Anita asked.

"No idea," River replied. "Let's look around our accommodations, and see if there is anything useful." The dungeon was a dank, dark hole carved out of the rock, but apparently also served as a rubbish bin when it wasn't holding prisoners. River quickly pocketed several sharp pointy things, some twine, a boot, and was digging through the next pile when she heard Anita.

"Uh oh," Anita called out, "we aren't alone." Anita was kneeling next to something - someone, apparently - in a dark corner of the dungeon.

"A V'Lak?" River asked.

"No, a human," Anita replied. "And he's hurt bad. God, that's a lot of blood."

"Is he alive?"

"I don't think so, he's ice cold ... no, wait. A heartbeat, but just barely. Oh, River," Anita said, puzzled. "This doesn't look like human blood."

River stopped her rummaging and made her way over to the unconscious form. Anita stepped aside so that the dim light slanting from the door fell across his body. River touched his chest and lifted her hands, her fingers wet with his blood ... and froze. Too dark, too orange.

"He's a Time Lord!" she gasped.

River talked herself down immediately. He couldn't be a Time Lord. There were no more Time Lords. His blood could not be orange; the light was just poor. She felt for his pulse. No, surely that was not a double pulse, but merely a bradycardiac, dying, rapidly cooling human. Not a Time Lord. She examined his face in the dim light. It was pained and worn, and completely unfamiliar. Not any of Doctor's faces. She wondered what he'd done to deserve death alone in this dungeon, and brushed his short gray hair back from his brow.

At her touch, his mind exploded into hers, all spinning stars and time. He is a Time Lord! River reeled backward with a wordless cry. It only took a second to collect herself, her face going still as stone. She grabbed his lapels and pried his mind out of its healing coma. His eyes flew open in pained confusion, and widened in shock as he focused on her face.

"River!" he gasped.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"River..." he whispered, begging.

"No, don't you 'River' me," she said, and slammed his shoulders and head into the ground. He groaned, and Anita reached out to restrain her. "Who are you? The Master? The Valeyard? And don't say 'the Doctor.' The Doctor is dead. He may have been called the eleventh doctor, but he was on his thirteenth regeneration. He's dead."

"Are you ... you seriously quoting ... the rules to me?" he asked breathlessly, and reached up to cup her face. "If ... you really ... really don't know me ... then I can't help you."

River stared at him in wonder. She tucked her hands behind his head, her thumbs tracing the delicate telepathic nerves at his temples, and lowered her forehead to his. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, closing his fingers into her wild hair. "How are you alive?" she murmured, her throat closing as his mind hovered in the threshold of her own, accompanied, as always, by the symbiotic purr of the Tardis.

He cracked an eyelid, "River ... when are you?" he whispered in agony, starting to lose consciousness again.

"Shhh, rest," River gentled him, but then something urgent occurred to her, and she shook him carefully. "Wait, Doctor, are you traveling alone? Do you have a companion with you somewhere?"

"... alone ..." he said, and was gone.