Thank you hugely to everyone who's already followed this. I hope I can satisfy you with this chapter. The (twelfth) Doctor and Clara are in the Tardis when an unexpected visitor suddenly bursts back into their lives... (no prizes for guessing who it is).

This particular one sets everything up and makes the following chapters possible, so apologies for the lengthiness. They won't all be this long. Promise. Enjoy! x

Three knocks was all he received by way of warning.

"Clara, get that for me!"

The Doctor's voice was muffled, floating up from where he lay under the console with wires wrapped around his limbs. He was currently in the process of fixing something that he insisted was of unbelievable importance, though didn't exactly know what its function was.

Clara set her tea down, along with the spanner he'd instructed her to hold. "Do you even know where we are?"

A hand appeared from under the rotor to wave dismissively. "Oh, you know. Almost certainly somewhere relatively safe."

"Right. So you don't know."

"Look, the majority of places out in the Cosmos are perfectly safe! We're just unlucky most of the time. Or we go looking for trouble."

"It's the second one," Clara assured him. Her eyes trailed over to the door, narrowing suspiciously. "It could be anything out there! What if it's something terrifying that wants to… destroy the world, and wants you out of the way first?"

"Someone's clearly been here too long," he remarked wryly, rolling out from under the wires to throw her a withering look. "Clara. Because terrifying, world-destroying beings with murderous intentions…" He paused as the persistent rhythmic rapping rang out once again through the console room. "…Do not knock."

"Maybe it's a ruse!" she hissed.

"Yeah, give me a shout if it's someone important." He was under the console again before she could argue her case, so she advanced towards the door in tiny shuffles, eyebrows pinched together warily.

"Try to get there before they waste away."

"I'm going!" Hissing Scottish-related insults under her breath, she placed her hand over the door latch. "If I get killed in three seconds, I want my last words to go on record as: answer your own stupid door next time! I'm not your-"

Clara's sharp inhalation to replace the rest of her words was loud enough for it to float through to the Doctor, and in the dead silence that followed he began to wonder if she'd been right on her murder hunch after all.

He stilled his hands, listening for any indication of life. Then- "Doctor!"

Clara. Narrowly avoiding smacking his head against the console, he flipped onto his feet and scrambled to get the right way up.

"Yes- him, I need!"

That voice. His feet ground into the console floor, stopping dead.

Attempting frantically to rationalise the impossible in his head, he stood frozen and heard the awkwardly bizarre small-talk between Clara and the old voice as if it was floating up from underwater.

"You're new. Or are you?"

She sounded exactly as she had the last day, the first day, every day. The voice that had soothed and reproached him, sent him to sleep, woken him in beautiful whispers. A shiver drained through his bones.

"Um, not really."

"Wrong order- lovely. Can't wait for this to become a regular thing…"

"Doctor," Clara hissed with an edge more impatience, whipping her head back over her shoulder to shoot him a helpless look.

He heard her voice again. "Yes- I have bones to pick!"

She sounded angry- nothing new. Telling himself to push sentimentality to one side- an old procedure, given everything his first meeting with her had burdened him with- he allowed his feet to walk him to the door.

He sort of wished that he'd made the console room bigger; at least he would have had more time to prepare. Because in two staggering steps there she was, the same through new eyes. His River. With a face that could melt ice into fire and spin blood and bone into fragile cobwebs.

She was in a dishevelled ensemble consisting of a short black skirt, an oversized and creased white shirt with what looked like a hospital emblem printed on the breast pocket and no shoes. He felt Clara's eyes boring into him, glistening and anxious, and from somewhere felt a duty to remain strong.

It was a while before he managed to get a word in; nothing out of the ordinary and just as well, with the amount swimming restlessly in his head.

"Where the hell did you-? Oh."

River's eyes absorbed him, pinning him where he stood. Even after so very many years he knew in an instant; no blinding sparkle in her eyes to go with that smile, no rosy tint to her cheeks, no bounce in her hair. It wasn't as if the River in front of him simply didn't live up to his memories; he'd never had the need to rose-tint the vision of her in his head. It wasn't that. Something was wrong with her, and it was shocking how that realisation suddenly overrode everything else.

A smirk had crawled up her lips without him noticing; that classic smirk that only she could give. The very same that conveyed impossible things and stirred endless memories buried in his head. "Hello handsome. Now, this face isn't in my log! I'll have to do something about that. God, you are pretty. I might have to paint you. Older, too! Men always get better with age; you're like fine wines. What happened?" She grinned devilishly. "Was it me?"

"Uh." His voice was hoarse; he swallowed a lump down forcefully, opening eyes that had flickered shut involuntarily and scornfully applauding himself for letting an intelligible noise be the first thing he said to her after a thousand years. "No."

She gasped. "Someone got to you first? Well, I can't be having that. I always deal the fatal blow." Her cheeky smirk faded as she strolled forwards, jabbing him in the chest accusingly and making his feet pedal backwards. "You! Now, you. You love being all mysterious, I'll give you that. All I get is, "Rule One: the Doctor lies". Then half an hour later I wake up to find out you're gone! Did you run away from me?" she asked teasingly, voice dropping to a purr. "Never run when you're scared."

The manic rifling through his memories in an attempt to place when she had come from shuddered to an abrupt conclusion. "Berlin."

Early, then. Very early. He wondered if this was some sort of karma, if the Universe was capable of such things, shoving her on his doorstep in this state without warning.

"Berlin!" River echoed brightly. "Fun, wasn't it?" She smirked, letting her eyes trail away from him. "Who's this?"

"I'm- I'm Clara. Hi."

"Hello there. I'm Melody. But somebody insists on calling me River… I think it's a role-play thing," she whispered loudly. Her glassy eyes widened as they drifted around the console room. "It's different in here… everything's different!" she cried, sounding surprisingly distressed for someone who had only visited once before. "Is somebody having a midlife crisis?"

"River-" His tongue rolled back into his throat, almost choking on the name he hadn't spoken in so very long. Her eyebrows vaulted up her forehead. "River. You're sick."

"I'm not the one dishing out the kinky names, sweetie."

"No- no, you're unwell." He gestured at her, all ashen skin that was developing a sickly sheen with the mere effort of remaining upright; the dire effects of regeneration energy loss if he ever saw them. "You shouldn't have been allowed out of hospital like this."

"Oh, you sound like the nurses." She rolled her eyes, looking for all the world like her mother. "If everyone had just been a little less dramatic, I wouldn't have had to climb out that window…"

He gawped at her incredulously. "You broke out? Why?"

"I was bored! You left me, went swaggering off somewhere… left me nothing but a bloody blank book- thank you very much, by the way!" she scoffed, whipping her untarnished, still crisp diary from her pocket and waving it in front of him. "What am I supposed to do with this? You could at the very least have given me something decent to read if you were going to leave me all on my own without even saying goodbye."

She pouted, looking up at him with sorrowful pools of eyes. It may have, admittedly, been a trick that had worked in the past. Luckily, he was aware that he now possessed the face and voice to give him at least a slight air of authority- not that he expected it to make a difference with her, but even now if her wellbeing was at stake then anything else was of little importance. "River, there was a reason why I put you in there. You aren't well. You need to sleep."

"Ugh!" She grimaced, waving her hand dismissively even though it was shaking. "I'm not overly fond of spending hours in bed…. unless…"

What was supposed to be a wink culminated in River's eyes rolling back into her head; the Doctor leapt forwards just in time for her to slump into his arms.

Clara started forwards. "What's wrong, what's happening to her?"

"Oh, just an impromptu… sleep." He adjusted the dead weight of her in his arms, peering down at her shockingly pale face anxiously. "Nothing life-threatening; though you know she's bad when she can't even make it to the end of an innuendo."

He became slightly preoccupied with a stray curl across her cheek, brushing it back with more tenderness than was very probably necessary for an unconscious person. "She just needs rest. She'll be right as rain in…" He scooped her up into his arms, staggering over to one of the console seats. "…A few hours."

He picked a seat just wide enough to lay her down, lifting her bare feet onto it once her head was resting safely on the arm. "No shoes. We're in the middle of nowhere. She's been walking for miles, with no shoes. River…" he scolded under his breath, straightening up to find Clara at his side.

"How is she here? Where did she come from?"

"She said; Berlin. The first time she met me… which makes this the second."

"How did she find you?"

"I've no idea. There was no message; she must have just run into us- or us into her- whichever way around it is- through… luck. If it can be called that."

"I think it can." Clara extended her hand, offering him the Tardis-blue diary cupped in it. "Here, she dropped this."

"Thank you." He slipped it into his pocket, on the opposite side from the full and weathered version of itself, with a mental note to ensure that he did not mix up the two.

"Well. That was eventful." Clara puffed out a sigh, running a hand through her hair. A hushed minute floated by. "Doctor?"

He hummed distractedly, chewing on his fingernails and observing River as if she was possessed.

"Are you… alright?"

"Yes, yeah, I'm… well no, not particularly. This doesn't make any kind of sense…"

"Yeah… dead wife turning up on your doorstep, must be-"

He shushed her fiercely. "Clara! Spoilers!"

"What?" she whispered back.

"You can't go around just blurting things out like that! She's clearly not dead yet, not to her. And don't call her my wife in front of her either. This version of her hasn't even married me yet. She's right at the beginning."

Clara's eyebrows dipped, puzzling the conundrum over in her head. "So you can't mention anything about the future she'll go on to have with you? All the things you and her did when you had your other face? Not a single thing?"

"Not a single thing."

She pursed her lips, pushing a sigh between them. "That sounds… complicated."

"Oh, I'm more than used to it. Though this hasn't happened for a long, long time… I thought it never would again."

"She warmed to your new face quickly."

"Well, she has just changed herself. And she's only interacted with my last face once before anyway, so she probably doesn't mind it disappearing as much as… others."

A brief scowl cast over her face. "Well, that's just not- what do you mean, she's changed?"

"She regenerated yesterday- yesterday for her. Shot by Hitler."

"Hitler?"

"Yes."

Clara pressed a hand to her forehead. "Timey wimey."

He chuckled.

"She seemed a bit…"

"Bonkers?"

"That."

"Normal enough; you know what regeneration's like. It leads to all sorts of erratic behaviour."

Clara twirled one of her rings innocently. "So you mean she doesn't usually… flirt, or call you pretty?"

There was knowing in her voice; sure enough, he threw her a sidelong glance to find her smirking. "Well, that's what growing up with Amy Pond as your main influence does to you. Thing is, she's only just become River. She's not my wife yet… she's barely anything, from her point of view."

"And… from yours?"

He shook his head. "Spoilers, Clara. I've told you, I can't tell her anything about her future. She has to find that out for herself."

"Not really what I was asking…"

His hands dug in his pockets abruptly. He spun on his heel, wandering over to the controls to eye them pointlessly. "I'll make sure she's well enough before I drop her off," he muttered quickly.

Clara was hot on his heels. "Drop her off? Where?"

"At the University," he deadpanned, sighing impatiently at the puzzled look on Clara's face. His hands wriggled in mid-air as he talked, attempting to justify his plans even though he was struggling even to believe himself. "She's an archaeologist- she will be an archaeologist, she has to- become- that, so I'll just drop her off, and she can make her own way-"

"Hang on. So you're just going to leave her? You can't do that! What happened to "in sickness and in health"?"

"We didn't take those vows. We didn't take any vows, come to think of it… I just sort of, told her she was my wife."

"Lucky woman."

He shot her a glare. "She's a grown woman, Clara."

Her arms folded across her chest, and he knew he was in trouble. She had this vexing habit of being able to talk him to anything under the sun. "Grown women can still need their husbands, Doctor."

He shook his head. "I'm not her husband."

"But you will be. That woman there, one day she's going to fall in love with you, and marry you-"

"And all of that has already happened for me. It's over. My life with her is… over." He nodded as if trying to convince himself, gritting his back teeth because despite endless nights of telling himself the same thing it was shockingly difficult to say out loud. "Once she's better, I'll see her on her way. She won't want to know me anyway. Not like this."

"Don't, don't do that. If there's anyone who isn't going to bruise that bus-sized ego of yours, it's her. She already wants to paint you," she reminded him with a cocked eyebrow and a suppressed snort of laughter.

He glared the amusement off her face. "That's not happening."

"Not tonight."

"Stop it."

"But what's going to happen to her if you drop her off like this? She's obviously massively vulnerable right now- anyone would be, getting shot by Hitler-"

"Look- she'll manage! She'll go to the University, study archaeology, get her doctorate; she'll be absolutely fine-"

"And how do you know that? Because that's what she told you? And I suppose she didn't mention this?"

"Well, she couldn't have."

"So if she couldn't have mentioned seeing you with this face at all, how do you know that she was alone? How can you know that you weren't there to help her?"

"I suppose I… can't… ooh."

The weight of worlds sprang off his shoulders, and he tried to force it back down, push the idea out of his head before it took seed. Wonderful things such as this, new things, simply did not happen to him; not any more. "But- but… no, this shouldn't be how it is. I've done our last date, I've said goodbye to her- a very long time ago. I'm not sure I can do this all over again."

"You can. Because you have to." She smiled, seeing the stubbornness set into his features melt away. "And anyway, you're not supposed to know when the last time of anything will be. It's better that way."

He surrendered, returning that impish smile of hers. "My impossible girl," he mused. "By the way, don't expect her to be too fond of you."

"What?"

"Well, think about it from her point of view. Last time she saw me I was still travelling with her parents; she runs into me a couple of days later and I'm older and living with a wee young thing who by Earth's conventional standards might be considered attractive."

Clara's tongue curled in her cheek, eyebrows shooting up. "Right. I'm just going to ignore that."

"Ignore what?"

"Yep. Exactly. Why, is she the… jealous type?"

His low laugh answered her alone. "Clara. There was one night where two different versions of her turned up, from different points in time-"

She winced. "Am I sure I want to hear this story?"

He shook his head. "That mind of yours! Always jumping to conclusions like that, you should be ashamed of yourself. No. She was jealous of herself; she demanded to know who this other woman on board was, and wasn't best pleased when I wouldn't tell her so stormed off to look for herself… herself. So feel free to come to your own conclusions on your question."

A sudden grin split across Clara's face like a sunbeam. He frowned at her. "What?"

She nudged his arm. "This'll be good for you."

"I'd love to know how you arrived at that conclusion."

He sounded weary even to himself. Apparently he must have seemed that way a lot, because Clara didn't even blink.

"Because she's brand new, which means… you're going to have to be patient with her." Clara cocked an eyebrow, apparently incredibly entertained by the whole concept. "Now, from what I've seen, this you," she made a sweeping gesture across him, "doesn't do patient. Grim and grumpy, and… Scottish, yeah, but patient…"

"What are friends for if not to boost each other's self-esteem," he muttered wryly.

A heavy groan made them spin where they stood. River was awake, perched on the edge of the seat he'd laid her on and staring into space with a lost expression.

It took a little dig in the back from Clara to make the Doctor wander forwards, gingerly taking a seat next to her. "How are you?"

Her head whipped towards him, eyes wide with alarm and shimmering with tears. "I don't understand!"

"What don't you understand?" he asked gently.

"I was in hospital, what…" Her bottom lip wobbled. "What happened to me? Where are my parents?"

"Not here, I'm afraid."

She opened her mouth as if to persist, but with one fleeting moment where their eyes met she seemed to know to decide against it. "You're different," she remarked flatly, forehead creasing with the effort of attempting to remember what had dissolved into fog. "Were you different when I got here?"

"Yes…" he answered, slightly wary of being robbed of her rather positive reaction to his new face.

"How did I…?" She swallowed, screwing her bleary eyes shut when the console room's cool lights became too much for her. "How did I get here?"

"Even I don't know that. But I do believe it involved a hospital window."

"Oh…" Her weak laugh trailed off into a moan, and she buried her face in her hands. "How long have I been here?"

"All of five minutes."

Her eyes fell on Clara, and she almost recoiled in fright before leaning close to the Doctor to whisper in his ear. "Who's that?"

She smiled patiently, taking a hesitant step forwards. "I'm Clara. I'm a friend of your- um- the Doctor's."

River blinked rapidly, pressing her mouth shut into a thin line. "I see. I should… I'm sorry for- imposing, I should… go…"

She swayed dangerously on her feet within seconds of managing to stand up. The Doctor rose up to catch her. "Whoa. You're not going anywhere like this."

"I…" What little colour had graced her face had ebbed away; her eyes were ringed with grey and kept flickering shut. "I'm alright."

He held onto her arms, keeping her upright when she attempted to advance towards the door and her knees buckled. Hiding the damage. He hadn't missed that. "Melody." She looked up at him helplessly with cloudy eyes. "You don't have to do that."

Her mouth opened and closed uselessly. River Song lost for words; perhaps the Universe worked miracles after all, he mused. "I should…"

He tried to ask as kindly as he could. "Where else have you got to go?"

She threw a glance at the door, chewing her lip. "I could… find somewhere."

His hand was tucking her curls behind her ears before he could tell it not to. "You have."

River sank down into the chair, defeated. "Are you sure?" she asked when he perched next to her.

"It's not like I'm short on space."

It made her laugh, albeit feebly. "Just… you only met me yesterday."

"No; you only met me yesterday," he reminded her.

She exhaled slowly, puffing out her cheeks. "Right… still trying to get my head round that. But I did cause you a fair bit of trouble." She gave him a watery smile. "You don't owe me this."

"You always cause me trouble." It was amazing how much joy slipped without force into those words. He loved her mischief more than he'd known at the time, it would seem. "And it's my privilege."

She looked up at him with soft eyes through a mop of unruly hair. "Look at you. They showed me all your faces, they made me memorise them, but this one never came up. I'm assuming this is the one after the one you had at Berlin?"

"Yes."

"That's more faces than should be possible." Her puffy eyes narrowed, a wry smile curling up her lips. "Let me guess. You found an ingenious way around the regeneration limit."

"You could say that."

"You acted like you knew me with your last face… you must really know me now."

He shook his head gently. "Spoilers."

River scoffed. "You really overuse that word, you know. Berlin was a long time ago for you, then? Surely you can tell me that."

"Yes, it was."

Her smile was unexpectedly sad. "This must be weird for you."

"A lot stranger has happened."

"I'll bet."

She kept regarding the console room with strangeness bordering on hostility. There were days to come, he thought, when she would stroll in and pilot the ship she was now looking at with cold unfamiliarity better than he ever could. She had always been the woman who'd known.

It was sort of wonderful to see her brand new, without all the psychopathic shenanigans tied on; especially when even with all of that, even with her being lost and alone and most likely feeling awful, she was still giving him that smile that could keep supernovas burning.

"Do you have any spare clothes on here?" she asked, tugging uncomfortably on the hem of the skirt she was wearing. "My mother left some outfits at the hospital for me, but they're all… well, Amy."

"I think there might be some women's clothes somewhere around here…"

Clara pressed her lips together to stop her smirk growing, seeing the Doctor shoot her a look. He sighed under his breath, getting to his feet and beckoning River. "Come with me. I'll find you something."

Hope you liked it. There will be following chapters soon! x