"Happy fifteenth birthday, Evalin!" River embraced her lanky daughter who had somehow grown several inches taller than her. Evalin's body had shed its childhood chubbiness for a figure that seemed the perfect meld of her father's slimness and her mother's curves. She had let her dark brown hair, highlighted with a few strands of bright auburn, grow to her waist, where it curled wildly, seemingly beyond control.
"Thank you, Mum!" Anticipation, pure and almost childlike gleamed in her blue eyes, the exact shade as her father's, as she took the small square package from her mother's hands. "What can it be?" she mused, gently shaking the carefully wrapped box.
"You'll need to open it to find out, Evie."
She flashed her mother the cocky grin she almost always wore on her angular face. Without further ado, she drew the knife she kept hidden at her waist and deftly sliced open the wrappings.
"A Vortex Manipulator! Just what I wanted!" A hint of sarcasm lurked in Evie's deceptively bright tone. It wasn't that she did not want the present; on the contrary, she had desired owning it since she was a small child. Travel through time and space seemed to call to her, as if the stuff of the cosmos ran in her veins instead of blood. She just wanted to be shocked by something she had not been waiting for since childhood.
So it came as a total surprise to her when River pulled what appeared to be a matched set of medallions, each on a heavy chain, from one of her many pockets.
"What's this, Mum?" Evie asked curiously as she buckled the Vortex Manipulator almost absently to her right wrist. The device seemed to be a newer, more compact model than her mother's was.
"I had the Sages of Sh'Ni'Nahl make us tracking pendants. No matter where we are in space and time, we'll always be able to find each other. The pendants will also tell you if I'm in danger or hurt and vice versa."
"I didn't even know that the Sages were anything more than legend, and yet you tracked them down and commissioned these from them." She held her pendant close to her eyes and studied the strange pattern of circles and lines closely.
River smiled enigmatically. "Let's just say that they owed me a favor."
"Oh, I don't doubt that for a second, Mum. Everyone seems to owe you a favor. So, how do these work?" Evie continued a bit absently as she turned the object over and over in her hands.
"Inside the medallion is a piece of me. I chose to use a strand of hair, but a drop of blood or anything else personally connected to me would have worked just as well."
"And the writing on it- what does it mean?"
"You can't read it?" She was surprised; her daughter had an inborn talent for deciphering other languages that went beyond strange into the nearly impossible.
"It's like nothing I've tried to translate before," Evie admitted.
"Have you ever heard of Gallifrey?" River began.
"The home world of the Time Lords, right? But what have to do with our pendants?"
River slid the chain of her necklace over her head and clutched the medallion tightly in one hand. She was nearing the point of no return for telling Evie about her father, and truth be told, she was afraid. She did not know how the news would be received, nor even if her daughter would believe her.
"The inscription is in Circular Gallifreyan, the main written language of the Time Lords. One side is a compass rose and the other says 'I love you.'"
"How do you know Gallifreyan? As far as I know, only one Time Lord is still alive. He's called..." Evie paused and tapped her chin thoughtfully as she struggled to remember what she had learned about Gallifrey while traveling with her mother.
"The Doctor," River finished for her, her voice filled with pain and eyes darkened by emotions that Evie had never seen in her mother before- sadness so strong that she nearly had to take a step back from the weight of it and longing that bled into a hint of desire.
"Ah, yes. The Doctor. I know that most cultures have songs, stories, or at the very least, legends about him. The last of the Time Lords. He travels in a blue box from world, century to century, helping the helpless. His name became synonymous with healer and wise man on Earth and other worlds. He takes companions to travel with him through the stars; he shows them the splendor of the universe..."
"I know, Evalin," interrupted her mother softly. Strangely enough, tears were glistening in her pain-glazed eyes, tracking shining paths down her cheeks.
"Mum, what's wrong?" Understanding dawned in Evie's mind even as she spoke. "You knew him, didn't you. Were you his companion?"
"Something like that," River choked out, pressing the knuckles of the hand not holding her medallion to her lips to stifle her sobs.
Evalin wrapped her arms tightly around her mother. "Did you love him?" River nodded wordlessly, looking more broken than Evie had ever seen. She had always seemed so unbendable, unbreakable, indestructible e. And yet the mere mention of the Doctor shattered her in a way that nothing else could.
Gently as she could, Evie led her mother to the kitchen of their tiny one bedroom apartment they had began to rent merely a month before. As she put a kettle of water on to boil, she continued to talk. "The Doctor seems to have a record of leaving his companions and never looking back. Did he leave you, too?"
"No," she replied simply, wiping the tears from her face and running her hands through her short-cropped light brown curls.
"But then why aren't you still with him, if you loved him? Unless he didn't love you back."
"He loved me as much as I loved him." River gave a quiet, humorless laugh. "Maybe even more. He has two hearts to love with."
"Then why..." Evie began again, only to be silenced by a sharp gesture from her mother.
"I'll explain it all if you will kindly quit interrupting me, sweetie."
"Sorry, Mum," she quickly apologized, ducking her head in a respectful nod.
"I chose to leave the Doctor. It wasn't truly a choice, now that I think about it- I left to protect him. I had something that his enemies could have used against him, other than our love for each other. I never meant for anything like that to happen, but once it did, I knew that I had to leave. It was the most difficult decision that I have ever had to make. My heart shattered and I've never been able to pick up all of the pieces." River smiled sadly at her daughter, willing her to understand the true reason she had left the love of her life.
"Then who is my fath..." River could sense the exact instant that Evie finally connected the dots. "No!" She look two quick steps back, slamming hard into the compact stove, somehow managing to both knock the kettle of water onto the floor and brush her arm across the burner. Her soft cry of pain intermingled with the words, "He can't be...
"The Doctor was my husband and your father!"
A/N: Don't forget to review the story and give me your thoughts!