A/N: Hi guys :) Thanks for all of the alerts and reviews :) Here's the second installment :)
Spoilers!
By Mizuki
Part One
Sarah Jane was the one who saw her first. She squinted her eyes and bit back a shout of surprise as a figure appeared out of the light, falling to her knees. The others caught on quickly, pausing in their cheering and hugging, to stare at the intruder in stupefied silence. There was a brief moment of inaction, and then…
"What?"
"Doctor, who's that?"
"What's goin' on?"
"Doctor, seriously, who IS that?"
"What?"
"No way!"
"Doctor!"
The woman in the white space-suit lifted her curly-haired head and regarded the scene without understanding. Then, as sudden as her appearance, an angry frown descended upon her face.
"What did you do?" she demanded, shooting daggers at the Doctor. "You infuriating man, doesn't a girl deserve the dignity of a good sacrifice? I knew that the younger you got, the bigger was your ego, but this is really pushing it!"
Mickey and Jackie exchanged shocked glances as the Doctor was finally rendered speechless, standing at the console like a six foot tall rod with a mouth that opened and closed without emitting any sounds.
Donna was the first to recover.
"Oi, watch it, Mrs. He-Doesn't-Know-Me-Yet!" she snapped, striding over to the woman still kneeling on the floor. "Show some gratitude! He's saved your sorry ass!"
"I didn't do a – "
"Donna," said the woman with a sigh of wonder. "You're alive!"
"Yeah, and so are you! Why don't you act a little bit more decent about it?"
"But you're alive! That means that it worked, but then why am I not dead?"
Donna paused and blinked, her human outrage retreating and allowing her Time Lord brain to process the available data. She fell silent, staring at the curly-haired newcomer with a fish face similar to the Doctor's. Rose decided that it was high time for some answers and if Donna was not up for the challenge of obtaining them, then she would have to take over.
"Who are you?" she asked loudly, her tone accusatory, and then felt a pang of resentment as her question was thoroughly ignored. The woman turned towards the Doctor and her face split into an awed grin.
"You impossible man! Were all of those people returned? All four thousand and twenty two?"
The Doctor nodded wordlessly.
"Oh, sweetie!" she gushed. "How did you manage to do that?"
He swallowed and then cleared his throat. "I – I didn't do anything, actually. You did. You brought all of those people back when you short-circuited the hard-drive through your brain."
The woman frowned. "I remember that… But that would have killed me! How in the name of sanity did you manage to save me?"
"I didn't," he said simply. "We-ell, I did, sort of, later, save you into the library computer, but I didn't save you properly, no. You made that a tiny little bit difficult with the handcuffs!" he glared at her, before shaking his head. "Anyway. River, I watched you burn into nothing before my very eyes. And I'm so, so sorry, but you being here is completely impossible!"
The woman – River, apparently – regarded him with pursed lips. "And yet here I am. So if you didn't save me, then who – hang on! You saved me into the library computer?"
"Yes, well, I uploaded your data ghost into CAL. I thought it was a brilliant move, myself," he sniffed.
River, unfortunately, wasn't particularly impressed. She was seething with anger, ready to burst. "You uploaded me into the computer? Whatever gave you the idea that I wanted to be uploaded into that bloody system?" she hissed through clenched teeth.
The Doctor stepped back a bit as she heaved herself up from the floor and gave him a cold stare.
"Now, listen – it wasn't exactly my idea… Well, sort of mine, but future mine, you understand, the future me, the one that gave you the screwdriver, he put your neural relay inside, you see."
"And you just decided to stick it into the plug, didn't you," she grit out. "And how on earth did he manage to get it in the first place? Wouldn't it have burned into nothing together with the rest of me?"
There was a moment of silence.
"The lady does have a point, Doctor," said Jack merrily, sauntering over. "Captain Jack Harkness, nice to mee – "
"Hands off!"
Jack jerked away and looked at the Doctor in reproach. "I was only saying hello!"
The Doctor, taken aback by his outburst, passed a hand through his hair. "Yeah, right, sorry."
"Professor River Song," said the woman, sending the Doctor a dark look, and then turning to Jack with a furtive wink. "And let me say that it was very nice to meet you back in the day, Captain."
Intrigued, he cocked an eyebrow. "I'm not sure I remember meeting you before, Professor."
"Oh, you would have remembered it if you had. And I assure you, you most certainly will once you do."
"River!" exclaimed the Doctor, scandalized.
"What?" the question was delivered with scathing mockery. "First I'm not allowed a career, and now you're saying that you get to prance about the universe with pretty girls and I'm supposed to stay clear of all the fun? Sweetie, you're very good, but not that good."
A stunned silence stretched into oblivion. The Doctor's cheeks flushed and he took a step back, trying not to notice Jack's choked laughter. He hazarded a glance at Rose and saw her staring at River with undisguised horror, which very quickly melted into betrayal and outrage. His hearts clenched in pain.
"Anyway, back to the matter at hand," River said, before taking a deep, calming breath. "Why am I not dead?"
"What's the last thing you remember?" asked Martha, coming to stand next to Jack. You could always count on her to keep a level head in the most impossible of circumstances.
Several emotions crossed River's face, none of them pleasant. "I wired myself in, waited for the countdown, talked the idiot out of his stupidity, and then connected the cables. I'd expected pain, but there was nothing, just a bright light… and then I found myself here."
Martha frowned. "And what were you planning to do, exactly?"
"Give up her memory space to download four thousand and twenty two people from a sentient computer, and then reboot it so it wouldn't self-destruct," interjected the Doctor, his face twisting into an expression that Martha recognized as guilt. "Which was my job! But she knocked me out and took my place!"
Martha grinned with appreciation. "Really?"
"Oh, yes," River smirked. "And then I handcuffed him to a pole."
"Oh, you're good!" Martha cried in delight. "I always wanted to meet someone who could knock some sense into him! I'm Martha Jones, by the way, very nice to meet you!"
The woman broke into an excited smile. "Martha Jones! Oh, this is brilliant!"
"You've heard of me then?"
"Of course I've heard all about you! I've always wanted to meet you." She took a couple of glances around the room and frowned. "Why are there so many people on the TAR - Oh, this must be the Medusa Cascade!" She fell silent, surveying their faces pensively, and then spoke again, with reverence. "It went down in history as an Ood song, you know, very moving. And a myth, of gods who towed the Earth back home with a rope of stars. Might want to write a paper on that, since I'm here and alive… Maybe something about how the god turned out to be an arrogant prick!"
The Doctor's companions were well accustomed to experiencing things that defied imagination. A blue box that was bigger on the inside? Piece of cake. Time-travel? Old news. Saving the world from green, farting aliens? Well, bit of a stretch, that, but still understandable. Even a strange person appearing on the TARDIS out of the blue was nothing that would phase them, (Donna, wedding dress, Christmas? Been there, done that!). But this was something no one had been expecting.
A woman who could walk and talk circles around the Doctor long enough to handcuff him to a pole and steal his show, managing to render him speechless and saving the day all at the same time! This was simply not done. And not borne in silence.
"Oi!" cried Rose, finally having had enough of the woman's antics. "Just who do you think you are, insulting the Doctor like that?"
"Rose – " the Doctor moved towards the blonde girl, trying to placate her.
River froze, her smirk falling off her lips. "You're Rose," she said slowly.
"Yes! Yes, I am! I'm Rose Tyler, the Bad Wolf, that's me! And who are you?"
The woman took a deep breath. "Professor River Song, University of – "
"No, no, who are you to the Doctor?"
"That's what I would like to know, too!" Jackie pitched in from behind her daughter, brimming with indignation. "You waltz in through a strange light, act like you've a right to do anything and drop off innuendo left, right and centre! Just who the hell are you?"
River clammed up, staring at the other woman in terse silence. She was rescued by, out of all people, the duplicate Doctor.
"Spoilers, right?" he quipped. "She can't tell you without severely altering the timeline."
Rose turned to him with pleading eyes. "But what does that even mean?"
"It means," said River patiently, "that foreknowledge is dangerous and I'm not even supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be dead, or at least I think I am, and yet I'm here, alive and well, meeting people I'm never supposed to meet, and my neural relay is still right here and working perfectly well!"
"Because it wasn't really your neural relay in the first place, dear," said a voice from behind them.
"What?" cried River, whirling around.
A hologram of a young, floppy-haired man in tweed and a bow-tie appeared to be programmed into a large sonic screwdriver, which was lying innocently upon a blue book next to the TARDIS door. The man grinned and rocked back on his feet.
"Hi honey, I'm home!"
