Because, as Jack recited: Fear gu aois, is bean gu bàs.
Translated: A son is a son until he comes of age; a daughter is a daughter all her life.
. . . . .
The wails coming from inside the small white container hurt Rory as if it were Amy making them. He dropped to his knees and fumbled with the latches in his anxiousness to get it open. He felt like tearing the lid off - until he saw her face. That tiny, beautiful, perfect face that stared up at him with wide eyes and wet lashes and a mouth that tried to decide if it should still cry or not.
He put the lid down very carefully then so it didn't make any noise to startle his boy - girl - oh god, he didn't even know. No big moves, nothing scary; he reached inside and brought his baby to his chest. "It's okay, Daddy's here."
Oh...I'm someone's Daddy.
It was so much more real than laying in that empty bed in the Tardis, pretending Amy had just stepped out of their room for a minute, and trying to get his head around the thought that he was going to be a father.
"That's me, I'm your Daddy." He was going to be cool about this, he reminded himself. Everyone was going to say, 'that Rory Williams has to be the coolest dad I know'.
He looked into those eyes and knew he just met the one person whom he fell for faster than he had for Amy. "I love you already. So much." Got to get it together, though. Who knew what Kovarian and her people had done. "Let me just see you, okay. Make sure everything's fine."
He opened the blanket wrapped around that fragile body and touched fingers, toes, chest, and tummy.
A daughter. God bless the Queen and let the world know, he had a daughter.
"Let's go find Mum." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. "She's going to be so happy."
. . . . .
He burst into the control room making Amy and the Doctor jump in their places by the console.
"Oi! Stupid! What's with coming in here and scaring everyone!"
He ignored Amy and got right in the Doctor's face. "You know what I remembered?"
"No, I don't actually. Could be a number of things. What you wanted to get for lunch, where you left your-"
He jabbed the Time Lord hard in the chest making Amy yell again and the Doctor more bewildered even as he gave a little Ow. "It's all about the little girl. Right? Who she is, why she's in a spacesuit in Florida. We should find her, she's important. Isn't that what you said?"
The Doctor swallowed.
"Or!" Rory yelled. "We could just go off and have some adventures! Forget her! Forget that she was so terrified that she kept screaming Help me! Forget that those monsters are torturing her and she's all alone on a street somewhere! Because you're in a mood for adventure!"
The Doctor didn't say anything. He just kept trying to meet Rory's eyes.
"Rory-" Amy began.
"She was Melody! Our Melody! And left behind so we could have good time! Even if she wasn't Melody, didn't you tell me that this is how it works, Amy? Don't get involved unless children are crying? Didn't she cry enough to get your attention, Doctor?" He turned on his wife. "How about you? She didn't say help me enough when you shot her!"
"RORY!"
"Don't! Just don't! Don't say anything. Because I left her behind too. And I'll never forgive myself for it."
He slammed a fist on the wall as he rushed out.
. . . . .
He leaned closer to the computer screen. He was back at it, researching, looking up everything he could find about something that once was outside of his world. The same as years ago after Prisoner Zero when he read up on scientific theories such as parallel universes and transdimensional engineering.
This time, he read whatever he could find on kidnapped children and their emotional-mental states if they made it back to their families. These lines pulled him eagerly to the screen:
They love their parents in a way only they could, having lost them and miraculously got them back. That love is unique; 'normal' children rightly don't know since they never had it taken away. It is desperate, fierce, thankful, fearful, great.In short: Melody Pond.
. . . . .
He drove up in his new car, his all time favourite car in the world, and pulled over in front of their new home with its Tardis blue door. He didn't see her until he had one leg out on the road.
She stood there, blonde curls falling around her face as she first held herself and then forced her arms down to her sides. She shook in a fine tremble like a cold breeze had run down her back. She sounded so small. "Hello."
Before he could do anything, she barely said, "I didn't know if you ever wanted to see me again."
He rushed to her without even closing the car door and grabbed her up close. "Of course I want to see you. I'll always want to see you," he whispered.
She clung to him. "Dad."
He called Amy to tell her Melody was here: "Yes, River but Melody. You know. Right after Berlin and the hospital for her. She said she came from her university and she thinks we don't want her because of what happened."
Amy borrowed a car and told him later that she earned three speeding violations in her rush to get home.
That wasn't important. What mattered was they sat with River in between them as if they were the walls that could keep everything horrible outside the fortress they made around her. She clutched their hands and spilled out years of pain.
"I wanted to be at your wedding. Remember, you said you'd save a dance for me, Dad, and I was supposed to stand next to you, Mother. Remember? You asked me."
"Then why–"
"For the same reason they never wanted me around you when you were first meeting with the Doctor. I wasn't born yet - in your timelines -" and like Prisoner Zero, the Clerics were too worried that her programming would be triggered by seeing the Doctor (because of course the Doctor would make an appearance at their wedding), and they couldn't afford an early attack. If she killed the Doctor before her parents created her, the problems were obvious and deadly. It was too high a risk with Lake Silencio waiting for Kovarian's Melody Pond.
"I told them I could handle it if the Doctor showed up, that I wasn't going to have a shoot out at your wedding." But the Clerics knew her conditioning better than she did and removed her from Leadworth.
Their Melody, their still new River Song, cried. Not openly, but in the tears that she kept from falling and the hunch in her shoulders. It broke Rory's heart.
When children cry silently it's cos they just can't stop. Any parent knows that, Amy remembered later. Including, as they found out, small children in grown up bodies.
He cradled her in his arms and met Amy's coming around from the other side, kissed those blonde curls, and whispered over and over again how he loved her, they both did, as it all poured out.
"We know it wasn't you," he said again. "It's what they did to you. It's Kovarian."
She sniffled and tried to hide it. She looked up with wet lashes and wide eyes. "Who's Kovarian?"
He wanted to throw up. He wanted to snap Kovarian's neck for what she had done to his daughter. Amy looked at him with the same sick realization that the Silence had twisted River's memory so she didn't remember them or the women who arranged everything done to her.
He ground his teeth against the nausea rolling up his throat. He wouldn't say it, he couldn't say it. If he was supposed to tell her who was Kovarian, an older version of her would have said so. That left him with only thing.
He forced it out past clenched teeth. "Spoilers."
. . . . .
For their first Mother's Day together, River gave Amy the picture of them taken shortly after she was born.
Amy gave River a tender smile that suddenly changed. "You went back to Greystark?!"
"Mother, I wasn't in any danger. I went after we had left."
"That's not what I meant and you know it!"
Rory stayed out of it, although he agreed with Amy, because a wise soldier knew which battles needed him and which ones needed him to stay away. It paid off, because once things calmed down, River showed that the other present she had brought was the Tardis' ultrasound recordings from when Amy was pregnant. Mixed in with them were videos of Amy moving around the ship with this transparency at her middle showing unborn Melody surrounded by fine threads of golden light that she reached for with hands that looked like mittens.
Rory fell into the closest seat, although he would happily flop on the floor for this. Amy's hand grabbed his and they watched fascinated as Melody grew finger buds and sprouted toes, and they counted the twin heartbeats that showed through the translucent skin as the gold light reflected in the dark, dark eyes.
"Cute little thing, wasn't I?" River teased.
They laughed and threw their arms around her as they plopped her down between them on the sofa where they watched it again together.
. . . . .
"It just gets confusing," he said. "I can say Mels and you know who I mean, but you're Melody! So I can't say Melody when we're talking about little you."
He was putting up a shelf while River flipped through a magazine where she sat. He spoke mostly in jest because he needed to at least once talk about something light-hearted concerning his daughter's first life.
"Little Melody?" She answered. "Young Melody? How about Melody with the American accent?"
"Yeah, that rolls off the tongue. Wait... you had an American accent?"
The light-heartedness came to an abrupt end.
She looked up at the loss in his voice. Her face closed off, obviously yelling at herself for cruelly reminding her father that he didn't know anything about her at that age. That wasn't fair and he knew it. He had started this talk. She shouldn't blame herself.
She dropped her magazine next to her. "I had an American accent," she said softly.
Of course she did. She had spent that life in America after all. He just hadn't let it register as they listened to that recording: It's here! The Spaceman's here. It's gonna get me. It's gonna eat me!
He knelt down next to her chair. "What else?" He didn't know how much she could remember, but he wanted to know whatever it was. The positive things, he reminded himself. He needed to hear the positives.
"Well, let me think..."
"Favourite treat?" he suggested, for both their sakes.
She gave a sweet smile. "Hershey Kisses. Those little chocolates shaped like teardrops? One of the women there snuck them to me. I would chew off the point so I could put the rest of it against the roof of my mouth. To make it last longer."
Rory felt instant thanks for that woman who was thoughtful to his daughter; then he remembered that woman, whoever she was, still helped keep Melody captive. She was no Lorna Bucket.
"What else? ...Favourite doll? Stuffed animal?"
"My teddy bear. He was my favourite. That's why he got to be on my pillow, although the stuffed cat and horse were close seconds so they stayed on the bed too."
He was holding her hands. "What was the bear's name?"
She grinned. "I was a highly intelligent child. What do you think I named him?"
Something in that twinkle told him to take it the opposite way. "Pooh? Paddington?" he teased. She shook her head, eyes sparkling. He thought for a second. "Bear?"
She nodded, all but laughing, just like him. "Bear," she said. "His name was Bear."
He kissed her cheek. "Clever girl."
. . . . .
On their first Father's Day together, River gave him a picture of Melody with the American accent who loved Hershey Kisses and Bear. In it, she held a dandelion in a bright spot of colour against her brown dress as she reenacted a cheap painting she had kept on her windowsill. On the back, River wrote her age in the photo with Happy Father's Day. Love you, Dad.
She said softly, "I wanted you to know I had your colouring."
Amy looked over his shoulder. She wrapped her arms around his waist and tucked her head against him. Then she suddenly leaned closer for a better look. "Melody Pond! Stop going back to Greystark! Don't roll your eyes at me!"
"Mother, it was the same trip!"
He didn't even hear them. He looked at his little girl who had his colouring and Amy's round face. He hadn't seen her in Florida. That was probably for the best.
He wasn't going to cry.
Yeah, he was.
. . . . .
Who would have thought he had to be a disciplinarian? That had been a surprise. The first time he had needed to say something (at least, had to say something since she had been Mels), he put some of the Centurion behind it. "Melody. Enough."
To his complete astonishment, she listened and left the room grumbling under her breath that it shouldn't work on her. He watched her turn the corner out of the kitchen before letting the stern father facade break . He turned to Amy, the two of them mutually gasping and wildly gesturing in the air. "Did you see that? It worked!"
"I know!" she whispered back fiercely, trying to keep River from hearing them. "I can't wait until it's my turn!"
But Amy's stern voice only made River bristle and rebel or grin, just as it had in her last regeneration, leaving Rory with the both of them on his hands. If he wasn't quick enough or smart enough to see the warning signs and get out with some mates to the pub or to some other safe escape, his wife would drag him into it, claiming "United front! You have to back me up!" in case he thought he could say their daughter was right.
So they figured out Amy's job was to pick River up when she fell, hold on to her when she hurt, listen, guide her when her Pond temper got her in trouble, and push when her daughter needed the push.
(Just tell him, River! when her daughter faltered under the Doctor's onslaught at the top of the pyramid.)
His job was to comfort, listen, guide her when the Williams part of her hurt, and roll the Dad voice out when she needed to be stopped. He also needed to treat any wounds she brought to him.
"Glad to see you listened to our talk about you being careful," he muttered as he put in a last stitch.
"I was careful."
"River-"
"If I wasn't careful, it would have been worse."
He sighed. "You need to give me everything I need to know about your physiology. What your heart rate should be, your pulse, blood pressure - all of it." He shook his head as he finished with the last stitch. "How did I miss that you had two hearts? Sorry, rhetorical question. I meant when I examined you as a baby. Your Ganger, actually. Never mind, you don't know."
She made the tiniest noise like a breath and joy mixed together. It made him look up and her expression grew so soft. "I was crying and terrified in the dark, and then the lid was suddenly lifted off the carrier. You moved into the light so I wouldn't be blinded by it, and then you picked me up and cuddled me to your chest. You were warm and safe and... glorious." Her voice trembled and hitched on the next words. "You said to me, 'It's okay, Daddy's here.' I remember. Dad, I remember."
"Melody."
. . . . .
She came to him for advice on university life:
"How did you put up with some of those people? I swear I need to thin out this herd. Some of them might breed and then where the universe be?"
As well as sharing her triumphs:
Amy held out her mobile. "University call. Why couldn't she get you on your mobile?"
He took it from her. "It's charging in the other room. River? Everything okay?"
"I'm the only undergraduate picked for the field team, Dad!"
And trials:
"I swear the only thing I could learn from Professor Bungard is how to sleep with my eyes open. If I hadn't learned it already back in Leadworth."
- plus needing their experience on being time travelers. They also needed to give advice on being married and the Doctor to the younger versions (once they told a younger River that they knew the Doctor was alive, that she had told them, and it was good that she did), and give their understanding and support with what she was facing when the older versions came home. Depending on whatever facet of them their daughter needed at the time.
That was how they settled into raising River Song.
. . . . .
He came home from his shift at the hospital to find River asleep and draped over the sofa, textbooks and papers everywhere on the table and her computer in need of a charge. Oh how he remembered his own student days and now the image of his daughter was superimposed over the memory of it being him sprawled out and with his school work all over.
He packed books and her papers carefully together, so she could find everything, and saved all open work on her computer before setting it to charge, then got it all put away in her bag.
("What are these blacked out areas?" he asked her the next day, pointing to a spot in a textbook.
"It's about me." How did he not recognize that grin as Mels'? "And of course I can't study my future, so they black out the passages."
He blinked as what she said sunk in. "Does that happen a lot?"
She shrugged as in What's a lot. "Enough, I suppose. But how's that for bragging rights? I'm in history books already. So are you and Mum. I'm not allowed to see those either. Spoilsports.")
He checked the cupboards to make sure they had something decent for her to eat - he knew she'd either be eating whatever was quick or not eating at all - and made a list for the shops tomorrow. Finally, he carefully tucked in the arm and leg hanging off the sofa before gently scooping her up in his arms. She fretted, peeked out of barely open lids as soon as he touched her, and settled against him when she saw who had her. Her lips moved and she probably thought she was saying something, but she was already asleep again and made no sound.
Amy went up ahead to hold the bedroom door open and folded back the covers on River's bed. Rory placed her down and then waited next to Amy. Just like when she was Mels, River went from her body straggling all over the mattress to cuddling up around a pillow, hugging it under her head and shoulders. They made sure she wasn't stirring before turning out the light and closing the door with one more look back at her.
. . . . .
He watched Louis Baker dying and struggled against the sad fact that a nurse's life included patients dying. But what made this time hurt Rory personally was the damage to the man's vocal cords making it impossible for him to speak to his wife. All Rory could think about was what if that was him with Amy.
He called River. "Can you-" He turned his back to the room and hunched over his mobile. "I know it sounds - well, weird. But do you have the telepathic abilities that the Doctor has?"
She barely said hold on and showed up in seconds with this bright look of hope. "Are you asking if I would connect with you that way?"
No, he wanted to know if she could speak for the dying man to his wife, and he wanted the answer to be yes so much that he didn't notice that hope dwindling in her eyes.
"Dad, how am I supposed to explain it?"
"They believe in psychics. So, I'm thinking –"
Of course she did it; he knew she wouldn't refuse him. She gave the couple those last moments and their messages of love to each other. It wasn't until it was over and Rory saw she had given them some peace that he realized what River had offered him.
He could touch his daughter's mind.
What would it have been like? Would he sense young Melody? Would Mels leap up in recognition? Was River separate as the Centurion was or would he feel the unique taste of each of them while, at the same time, all of them together?
For the first time, he realized what else it meant that she gave up her regenerations to save the Doctor, because he would never see the other women his daughter could have been. Melody had his colouring at first. Would there had been another face like his? Or Amy's?
If he had lived to see them at all. Because his child would outlive him... wouldn't she? That's the way it worked; she would survive him –- just how much was her life shortened with what she gave up? He wouldn't have to see her... see her die – he had to be spared that, the thing no parent wanted to feel, surviving their child – wouldn't he? He had already lived one of the worst moments as a father, finding he couldn't protect his child –
The people at the next bed broke into the moment before he could ask River if she really would let him touch her mind. He had forgotten about the other family in the room. How could he forget the patient lying in bed with his eyes darting around everyone sitting near him. His wife who held his hand, anguish in her every line with tears being held back - how many years had they been together. A lifetime, but he didn't know that anymore. She had become a stranger that barged into his privacy.
His wife, however, wasn't the one who had interrupted Rory's thoughts. It was the daughter who pressed against the edge of her father's bed, holding his other hand in both of hers. "Dad? C'mon, Dad. It's me. Please, it's me. You know me. You know me!"
There's a far worse day coming for me.
The Doctor wasn't the only one who was forgetting River as she moved back-to-front. Who looked at her as a stranger, unloved. Doctor Song, he had called her that day in Stormcage. He was rubbish, absolute rubbish, in keeping the timelines straight, which was bizarre considering how many he had lived through. Even so, he hadn't called her River when he could have. Doctor Song? It's Rory. Sorry, have we met yet?
No wonder she had looked at him with that restrained sadness.
It's going to kill me.
She had left the hospital immediately, saving one family and leaving behind the other one who acted as a crystal ball to her future.
. . . . .
"Rory!"
He burrowed into his pillow and set himself on pretending Amy wasn't shaking him.
"Wake up, this is important!"
It didn't sound important. It sounded like Something-is-annoying-me- and - I'm-going-to-make-you-listen-because-I-can.
"Go back to sleep, Amy."
"I wasn't sleeping. Wake up, stupid! Remember a little while before we were married when you told Mels you thought all her boyfriends where the same?"
He pulled the pillow over his head. "I'm not remembering that. Go away."
"Listen! You said they basically looked alike and acted like each other. Remember? She had that string of blokes for awhile there? My mum called them the clones."
"Don't call them a string. It was a few guys. I am NOT remembering this!"
She shook him harder. "Rory! Think about it! Remember what River said? About dating a plastic guy with swappable heads?"
"No, no, no, no!" He pulled the pillow harder around his head. "Don't say it!"
"But, stupid, think! What if those guys Mels dated were that one plastic guy who was changing his head!"
"WHY!" he shouted. He shot up in the bed, pillow and blanket flying. "Why would you make me think about that!"
"I'm supposed to suffer alone? But to be fair to Mels, I did snog you when you were plastic. So... maybe we can't tell our daughter she shouldn't have snogged plastic. Oh ew! What if she did more?! I mean, when you think about it, I'd have shagged you. Rory! Do you think she-"
He hunched in a ball under every pillow and all the blankets. "No, no, no, no!"
. . . . .
"So this is what? You bringing us to see your science fair project?"
River made a face at Amy's teasing. "Is that what you call this?"
Rory couldn't stop looking at their view. They were high in orbit above a world being reborn at their feet. "You made a planet."
"I didn't make the planet. That happened in the usual way, but it's been classified dead for centuries. Then I read an article written by the professor who's in charge here and when I saw pictures of the ruins and their symbols - well, long story short, they had been mistranslated. They didn't account for Time. The energy was dormant as its native species spanned Time as an evolution of the planet. By not fulfilling the natural succession of life here, people had caused the planet's dormancy. See? I only translated it so the link between Life here and Time was made. Now the planet's reborn."
"Oh well." Amy turned back to the planet, vibrant and alive again with archeologists, historians, and linguists filling ships that dotted its orbit in a huge array like a net. "When you put it like that, it's no big deal really." She grinned and hugged River who had rolled her eyes.
Someone called River away from them and Rory took advantage of it. "Did you understand any of that?" he asked Amy.
"Not a bit. I have about fifteen questions to look up in the Tardis whenever the Doctor decides to stop pretending he's dead." She looked over at River answering some question they couldn't hear. She beamed at Rory. "Do you see what she's doing? She's showing off to us."
"I know." He leaned closer in conspiracy. "I love it."
Sure they had seen River do amazing things and Amy had wondered what effect the Tardis would have on their unborn child, but to see this: people running around, coming here in droves and doing what she said based on something she could see that they couldn't. Then climbing over each other to try and get her notice when it all worked out - like she had blown a breath and given the planet life. This was Melody Pond, superhero and River Song, archeologist mixed with our baby has a Time Head.
So River could show off all she wanted as far as her father was concerned. Frankly, he was overawed that this was their daughter and more than a little chuffed when she introduced them as "my mother and father" to the professor in charge.
"I have to go to Central Control," River explained. "It could take a little while."
"Go, go!" the Professor said. "It will give me a chance to speak to your family."
It struck Rory that this was the first time they were recognized publicly as a family. The first good time, anyway. People pointing and saying to each other, "Look over there. They're River Song's mum and dad."
He really loved it.
The project head's short fur ruffled with puffed up excitement as he nearly hurt himself in congratulating them on their daughter and her accomplishments.
Which is when the chuffed feeling fizzled under the thought that they weren't responsible. "We can't take credit for any of it," Amy explained.
"Yes, you can. Aren't you her parents? And forgive me for my bluntness, but I read her record or I would not have her here. These Clerics underfoot are a nuisance," he grumbled under his breath. "Yes, she was taken from you, but you think because of it, you have no claim of her? While I heard her say privately, if not for you, she would never have been able to come back from the damage they had done. You give her the ground she needs to stand on, you give her the steadying hand. Because of you, your daughter can come here and do this marvelous thing. Why else would she ask you here. To show off, eh? To show off what she does because of you and herself. Take pride. In all of you."
You are not a psychopath! Why would she be a psychopath?
So maybe they could be puffed up a bit about the whole thing. Maybe River would have been a real psychopath if she hadn't had them as an anchor, even back then and as she fought against the conditioning ingrained in her very core. They with the Doctor were the thin lifeline against the overwhelming force of Kovarian's conditioning.
"Parenthood does not stop at adulthood," the professor continued as they all watched River coming back towards them before she was stopped again. She turned around and checked on them every couple of minutes. The project head chuckled. "Mine are the same. Always worrying when I do something like this."
Amy shared in his laugh and Rory shook his head. Oh, didn't they know it. River hovered around them like a protective guard dog who bristled and snapped when a Cleric looked at either of them wrong. Of course, just about every Cleric looked at River the wrong way and Amy had to be pulled off from ending them giving any looks ever again.
. . . . .
He wasn't one of those car enthusiasts that could tell you about every part of every car and how to torque the thingit to get that infinitesimal noch more of whatever. But he and Mels loved going over something they liked, debating each other's choices, and running to the computer to check out the 365º views.
So River inevitably showed up one day, pulling up next to him in a metallic Tardis blue muscle car. She had gunned the engine, challenging him with that Melody smile. He had mouthed Can't. I got work as he shrugged Sorry, tapped his watch, and then slammed the gas pedal of his beloved car to the floor and leapt away.
She blazed by him, laughing as she went, and he joined in as they raced out of town, mugging at each other through their windows as they passed one another. It was a helluva lot of fun and one of his brightest memories with her. Until the police showed up.
She didn't help any by laughing through the whole thing, calling constables by name and saying, "It's like old times, isn't it?" when they naturally didn't recognize her as Mels.
"A '66 Shelby Cobra Super Snake CSX3303, Dad. One of only two ever made," she said as the police crawled over her car.
"I know, River. You've been wanting to get your hands on one ever since the first owner said it was too much speed for anyone to handle. How did you get it here?"
She shrugged that off like it wasn't even worth discussing. "Archeologist. It's not the toughest relic I had to move around. But after all, one reporter called it a 'stark terror that ate up the tracks and could bite you on the streets'. How am I supposed to resist?"
One constable overheard that and gave them a stunned look before going over to Rory's car to write up the speeding fine.
He nudged her shoulder. "A 1961 Ferrari 250GT California Spyder."
"I know, Dad. You've wanted one ever since you saw it in Ferris Bueller's Day Off."
Amy had found out (of course) and raged at them over how they could have been killed and dammit, she had better be on somebody's team next time.
. . . . .
Rory had the trunk out where he kept his Centurion's sword and leather armour, just to sharpen the blade, oil the leather bits and make sure everything was in good shape. River found him at it when she popped into the back garden. He had casually held out the sword to her when she showed interest.
The Centurion was out from behind his door before Rory even knew it. He was always close to the surface when the trunk was open and the sword was out and a part of his hands. River had started holding it out to look down the blade.
"No," he said without thinking. He shifted her grip as she murmured, "I understand, you mean like this?" and moved into a balanced position.
"That was Latin!" he exclaimed, switching to English again himself.
"Of course."
"You learned Latin?" he asked before thinking she would have to for her archeology work.
But that wasn't the answer. "Of course," she repeated casually. "You're my father. You speak it. I learned it for you."
He stared, mouth open, before he blinked at the tears and reminded himself that a crying Roman with a daughter is cool and set his arm alongside hers, moving them together. The Centurion had thousands of years protecting Amy and a day at her side. He was let free again to chase after her and fight for her on Demon's Run. But he was set back behind his door before he had anything with Melody. Now he sang in Rory's veins in time with his daughter.
He told her the memories he had sworn he didn't have about fallen, glorious Rome. What he loved about it, whom he had liked in the soldiers he had commanded and who were absolute stulte. They talked about the city and its cultures, the bits he liked and where he saw what was wrong.
His Father's Day gift that year was a Roman subucula, the tunic worn closest to the skin in cold weather. He knew as soon as it touched his hands that it was authentic. She had actually gone to Ancient Rome and had this made for him. The rare sea silk fabric was luxurious and meant for the richest Senators far beyond his Centurion class. It was a perfect colour to match his medical uniforms and measured to fit him exactly. He used to wear it under his scrubs.
The gift was signed as always Love you, Dad.
. . . . .
"But don't you want a real wedding?"
Amy's voice interrupted Rory watching the Doctor flit around the Tardis console. Not that he was complaining. Watching his wife and daughter chatting happily was a lot better. The four of them together again on the Tardis for the first time since the Doctor had faked his death. It felt... right. Whole.
This River came from her first night in Stormcage while he and Amy slept. His wife had mumbled, "So they're starting that whole thing again" when she found River at breakfast.
The Doctor turned around with a jerk when Amy said real wedding. He looked - Rory wasn't sure but he'd guess the Time Lord - oh good god, his son-in-law! - was stuck somewhere between puzzled and hurt.
River, on the other hand, was all smirks and feigned innocence. Like that combination could possibly work. "What sort of wedding did you have in mind, Mother? Earth has so many."
"Don't be so – Mels. You know what I mean."
"In the Church? After what they've done to me? No, thank you. They will not taint anymore of my life. Besides, such ceremonies are meaningless. The license marries you. Nothing else."
"My ceremony to Rory meant something to me!"
Her smile at him across the console reassured Rory that his daughter was going somewhere with this. "Why?"
"You know very well why! He was there telling me that he was – well, that it was me and him. Together. Everyone I love was there, except you. So of course it's real - and I just fell right into what you were saying."
River gave Amy the same warm smile she had just given him. "The people I love were there, except the Tardis. He bound his life with mine. And he did it in the way that has meaning to him. Probably even more than the ceremonial Gallifreyan cloth. That bowtie." A warm smile, a wife's grin. "It holds more meaning for him in this life."
Rory heard the Doctor give a breath of laughter as he shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned over to whisper. "It's true. My fourth self would have used the scarf. One would have used his tie - I should point out that I tied into a bow. As Eight, I'd have used my cravat. My fifth – well, I probably would have tried to make binding strands from my celery."
"You're what?"
"Celery. Safety precaution, of course, because of problems I had back then with certain gases in the praxis range. Celery turns purple if the gases are present, I eat the celery - excellent restorative from where I come from - and it's good for my teeth if nothing else."
"You wore celery?"
"Don't diss the celery."
"Right." Rory reminded himself not everything the Doctor had to make sense. Like now. "But, Doctor, this wedding."
"What about it?"
The way he faced the Time Lord let him now they weren't just two mates having a chat while the women went back and forth. This was too important. "Was it real?"
The Doctor looked as puzzled as when Amy said it. "Of course it was. Absolutely it was real. Why would you even question it?"
"It was an alternate universe."
"And you were a Roman Centurion made of plastic who guarded Amy for two thousand years in a universe that doesn't exist anymore. Is that real to you?"
He didn't have to even think about it. "Yeah. Very real."
"Well then!"
"What about all those other weddings then? Marilyn Monroe-"
"I told you it was a fake chapel."
"And Elizabeth the First and - I don't even know all of them. What about them? Were those real?" Because if they were, he was going to give into the ache in his hand to make a fist and connect with that prominent chin.
"Rory the Roman." The Doctor's look was the old man of the universe who had told so many lies speaking to the even older Centurion as well as Rory Williams, River's father. "Nothing could be more real than my marrying River. That wedding told her so, both for me as a Time Lord and me as The Doctor. I said the words and I wrapped the cloth binding our hands at all points in Time. It may have been in another universe inside the universe, but it is the binding ceremony of my people. I gave her the commitment I made to only one other person. My first wife, back on Gallifrey."
Rory became aware that Amy and River were also listening.
"And yes, we made that commitment in another universe. It's still as real as those two thousand years that didn't happen for the rest of this universe. So very us anyway, isn't it? For me to marry the daughter of the Centurion who protected his love for two millenia and the Girl who restored the last Time Lord with a thought. And I did it with the best vow ever: River Song. Melody Pond. You're the woman who married me. Really married me, Rory. I promise you that. No rule one."
Amy shoved Rory aside, so he didn't get a chance to say anything. She grabbed the Doctor in a crushing hug. "I get it now, Raggedy Man. Good on you." Because he elevated River to a place no one else ever held with him since his first wife. Then Amy punched him in the arm at the shoulder. "Make sure you keep that up."
"On threat of your wrath, Amelia Pond. Still! For Ponds' sake, River and I can have that other wedding the way you want it. Think about it, River!" He whirled around the console in a flurry of limbs flipping levers and cranking cranks until he reached her. "All the different weddings on all the different worlds and we could do them all! We've done the everywhen, nothing can top the - the epicness of it. Marry me, River, this time everywhere. All across the universe until no one is more married than you and I, River Song. Melody Pond. Child of the Tardis. I would like there to be dancing at all of them, unless it's some taboo that could get us killed, because you know I love to dance at a wedding. Except you might not know it now, so it's a good thing I told you in case you ever want to bring it up. And don't worry about the Tardis. I got her consent. She's fine with us. More than that, more than fine." He had twirled away in a happy spin. "She's ecstatic. She probably told you so herself."
River watched her husband ramble on like a sugar energized toddler with a tolerant smile and a besotted gaze. Rory let out a deep breath. The besotted part: that was the Williams in her. So. He had something to say now..
"It's all right, Doctor." He shared a glance with Amy that spoke in silent shorthand. "We understand. But, there's still one more thing. Something real for me."
Everyone's eyes followed him as he walked over to River to stand next to her. "Right," he said and with great formality, he held out his arm to her.
Amy gave a small exclamation as she brought her hands up to her mouth under happy tear filled eyes. River's eyes glittered too; she smiled at him as she took his arm with as much ceremony as he gave it to her. He could tell she wanted this gesture between them as much as he did; only, she wouldn't have asked, wouldn't have forced him to make it. Who knows? Maybe she thought he wouldn't want to make it.
It didn't matter that he was in shorts and a polo. He folded his other hand on top of where River had laid hers on his arm, and escorted his daughter around the console with the same feeling filling his chest that he saw in Augustus' eyes as he escorted Amy down the wedding aisle.
The Doctor moved away a few steps so he wasn't tangled in machinery and stood tall, waiting.
Rory stopped in front of him. "The last time... I didn't know. I didn't know Amy was my wife and River was ours. So. This is me, knowing it."
He looked at River. He could have asked if she was sure. He could have said he and Amy would always be there for her, whatever she needed. He could say he'd kill the Doctor if he ever hurt her. But he knew she would say she was sure. She knew he'd always be there. The Doctor knew no Teselecta could save him from Rory - or Amy - if he failed River.
He squeezed her hand and felt her answering squeeze on his arm. He took a breath. "I consent and gladly give." And put River's hand in the Doctor's.
Amy openly cried now and bounced with little noises of joy.
The Doctor turned to him. "The gladly sounded a bit reluctant. I could have done without that bit."
. . . . .
The next day, he put together that this was River right after Area 52 and the Doctor hadn't gone to her until he and Amy were back aboard.
Those years when the Doctor pretended to be dead even to them - he hadn't seen River. His wife. The woman who sacrificed everything she had built to sit in a prison as his murderer so he'd be safe.
Rory got his sword first before he hunted down the Time Lord.
. . . . .
He and Amy were pretty sure the Doctor had been a father. He hinted about a family on Gallifrey, but they definitely knew he also had a daughter that came to him as an adult. No diapers to change, no raising her from an infant, but a grownup calling him Dad. He had been shaken by it, but had then embraced being her father and looked forward to their life together.
"Then he lost her," River had said, finishing the story she began with explaining the discussion she and the Doctor had on why he didn't sense her or his daughter Jenny's Time Lord DNA. He had told River he needed to use a stethoscope to hear Jenny's twin hearts to confirm it instead of just sensing who she was. Had something happened physically that he no longer had the ability? It would explain why he should have sensed if any Time Lords really had crash landed on House, but hadn't. Or was it that she and Jenny didn't have native born Gallifreyan DNA and what happened with House was simply his desperation to believe Time Lords were there, even though he didn't sense them?
But his story with Jenny ended so sadly, he had abruptly ended their discussion and the sadness tainted River's voice as she told Rory. "Someone tried to kill him and she stepped in front of the gun."
That was what woke Rory up that night. He padded down the corridor to River's room. His heart both broke and froze at the story about Jenny. Broke for the Doctor who had a second chance and then lost the daughter who couldn't come back as Melody had. Frozen in fear over the possibility that his own child could someday die for the Doctor. She was certainly capable of making that sacrifice. Amy had joined him in the doorway and they stood there watching River sleep.
. . . . .
His eyes flew open just before he fell asleep. The scramble of thoughts and memories had suddenly caught on the Doctor collapsing from one of his hearts failing when the cubes opened.
They hadn't called River.
The thrum of the Tardis around him seemed to growl deeper and he felt it as a vibration in his chest. Their first night back on board, truly traveling with the Doctor again. Maybe that's why he was remembering that day. Maybe the Tardis had made him think about how he had acted on that same meaningless pattern they had lived with the last few years. Bury the thought of their daughter, don't make the connections because it could hurt. Remembering it now not only made the father in him curse, but the nurse in him yell.
What if the Doctor had died? He would have kept River from saying goodbye to her husband by not calling her. Every medical person knew to get the next of kin in an emergency. It was as ingrained in him as every nursing procedure he had ever learned. But not in this case. Not with his own daughter.
In fact - he punched his pillow and Amy murmured something nasty in her sleep. But the truth was he should have called River as soon as the Doctor collapsed. She would have been there in an instant and, in the same blink of an eye, gotten the Time Lord to the Tardis where he'd have gotten real care for his physiology instead of risking him with the defibrillator. He, a trusted nurse praised for saving lives, had endangered one over a wound that wasn't River's fault. If he had failed and the Doctor died, what would it have done to his daughter?
And he would have no excuse for it as a nurse or as her father.
He had to stop this. The Doctor said they were going somewhere to just relax, so he'd get his bearings and figure out how he was going to heal this rift.
He felt better just making the resolution, so he wrapped himself against Amy's back and drifted into sleep thinking sleepy promises.
Tomorrow, they landed in Manhattan and after that was plenty of time.
