A/N- I own nothing but a curiosity as to why the font at the top of the page is a dull grey instead of black.

"Lights out!"

The call came over the PA system, startling both occupants of cell 408. River had been sitting on her bed sorting what few possessions she had. The Doctor had clearly dropped in to visit Amy and Rory and raided their house for her belongings but aside from clothes that no longer suited her and a few knick knacks, River had never really owned that many things. She's been trained to see everything and everyone as disposable.

A trait the Doctor clearly didn't share.

Currently he was lying on the concrete floor of the cell playing with a puzzle cube from the sixty-eighth century, "Puzzles are cool" he'd announced before starting the game. As far as River could tell the large, oblong object was an advanced rubik cube. Covered in millions of tiny slots and sliding pieces, the patterns altered as each task was solved, it went from a simple matching of the squares to long riddles in different languages and codes where you had to first sort out the question and then the answer. It seemed like an expensive waste of time to her, then again she found she could appreciate anything that distracted her intergalactic immature husband long enough to keep him out of trouble.

At the sound of the Storm Cage switching to night mode, the Doctor sat up and looked around with a mixture of surprise and mild bewilderment on his face, as though he'd forgotten where he was and wanted to see what was coming. Their eyes met and their gazes held until the sound of a guard stomping through the halls reminded them of the world of responsibilities and lies outside the small cell.

Fixing his defensive smile on his face, the Doctor pulled himself up and held out his hand,

"Come along Song, bed time"

Confused River considered the bed underneath her, the tiny cot and the old mattress, the thin sheets and the lumpy pillow. She barely fit in the bed, how on earth would it take the both of them?

Then she remembered the TARDIS parked just outside.

"No" she told him, not taking his hand and her left eye twitching when she saw the flash of hurt in his eyes, and that hurt tears through her hearts- one that pumps blood with the strength of a Timelord, one that hardly functions and is barely detectable to twenty-first century medics.

But she can't leave her cell to go gallivanting across the universe.

Not yet.

"Doctor," she gets to her feet and the blood rushes from her head, leaving her with a sense of disorientation and a slight blankness in her mind, as though she is no longer part of her own body. Slowly and gently her hand runs up his chest and stops at his neck, cupping it and automatically finding the pressure points of his miraculous but fragile body. She has to actually tell herself not to squeeze, has to make a conscious effort not to kill him and that frightens her.

But not as much as the look on his face.

He's watching her with infinite understanding, able to see the battle raging within her and he stands there patiently, tenderness etched on his features as she takes his life into her dangerously unstable hands.

This is why she was the perfect weapon against the Doctor. All that training to make her one of the best killers in the universe was unnecessary because, at the end of the day, the last of the Timelords would never physically hurt her, he would never take a hand to her, not even in defence of his own life.

With a shudder, she turned to face the wall, the long blank wall broken only by a window and bars,

"Please leave" she begged, crossing her arms to try and prevent herself from attacking him. He fidgeted but made no move to go,

"I have a tendency to run late River" he admitted grimly, "I don't want to come and see you tomorrow only to find that tomorrow is several years later and you've come to hate me"

The fear of the eleventh Doctor, that he would be too late and those he loved would come to resent the mad man with the box who could seemingly do anything but arrive in time to save them.

She still laughed at the concept, "I could never hate you my love, not even in the deepest of my conditioning- surely you know that?"

He ran a hand along her back, shyness coupled with desire and a longing to reach a point where they weren't still strangers to one another.

"Surely you know me well enough to know the emotions I can inspire in people when I hurt them"

Oh yes, as a child she had been shown and taught about how those whom the Doctor hurt or scared, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes very deliberately left scars and twists in the universe. On the top of the pyramid in the alternate universe, although it was a struggle to remember anything else, she remembered quite clearly the searing heart-rending agony when the man she loved had looked at her with fury and spoken words of hate.

She musters her best fake smile and turns in his arms, her breath catching when she sees the look of desire and burgeoning affection on his face, she pushes gently on his chest and is surprised with how easily he moves. "Go sweetie, I'll see you tomorrow night"