A/N: Thank you for your amazing response! :D I hope you enjoy this instalment!:D
Spoilers!
By Mizuki
Part Two
"Hi honey, I'm home!"
"And what sort of time do you call this?" River snarled in disbelief. "Are you out of your bloody mind?"
"What?" called the Doctor, popping his glasses on his nose. "Is that - ? No!... A bow-tie?"
"Hey!" protested the hologram. "Bow-ties are cool!"
River apparently didn't care. "What did you do? Do you have any idea of what you're doing? It was a fixed point in time! And now you're messing with your own personal timeline, too!"
"No, no, no, dear, it wasn't fixed! It wasn't fixed at all, it only looked that way from the outside!" the transparent man exclaimed in delight. "See, I didn't actually see you burn, because the light was so bright that I had to turn away! I didn't see what actually happened to you at all!"
"Is that – " said Rose in a hushed voice. "Is that you, Doctor?... So you've changed again in the future..."
"Into a baby!" laughed Jack. "I swear, Doc, you get younger every day!"
But the hologram didn't appear to hear them at all. He carried on with his prattling as if no one had spoken.
"And besides, it wasn't actually me who did the rescuing this time, River! It's all Sexy's doing! My brilliant, amazing Sexy!"
The name echoed in the TARDIS and the console thrummed humbly in response. The Doctor turned towards it with a look of wonder, his mouth falling open.
"She was the one who saved me?" River asked incredulously, and then felt herself be enveloped in the ship's loving presence. She closed her eyes and breathed a deep sigh of happiness, letting herself sink into the virtual hug with all of her mind. "Thank you."
"Oh, it was the least she could do after what you did in Berlin," said the hologram with a pleasant smile, successfully snapping her out of her daze.
"Sweetie, can we not go back to this?" she interjected, alarmed. "This isn't the time for spo - "
"Why shouldn't we? You have nothing to be ashamed of. And Sexy concurs! It was bloody dangerous and you shouldn't have done it, but it was also bloody marvellous, too. It's not every day that one dies from a kiss and then wakes up from the dead with another kiss, and finds out that his killer had given him all of her remaining regenerations. I felt sort of like Snow White!"
"What?" exclaimed both Doctors and Donna in perfect synchrony. The three of them turned towards River with accusatory eyes.
"Regenerations?" asked the Doctor.
"Killer?" demanded the duplicate.
"Snow White?" cried Donna.
"Or Sleeping Beauty – oh, I like that!"
River pressed her hand to her forehead. "Sweetie, would you please stop with the damn spoilers! What on earth are you doing?"
He didn't appear to hear her, or the meta-crisis trio, at all. "Anyway, it wasn't you that I uploaded into the system, it was actually Anita! She, the Daves and Miss Evangelista are all happily saved! Isn't that great?"
"Is it? Is it really? It's only half a life, after all. I think I'd rather die than live my life in that pretty, virtual cage. I've had enough of prisons for ten lifetimes! And I spent that time because of you, at your damn request and I barely got out and you were going to upload me into another one? Without my permission?"
The hologram visibly blanched. "Now, River, I was doing the best that I could think of at the time, really – "
"At the time? At the time? It was you, the real you, I mean, the older you, who put the bloody device into the screwdriver! You should have known by then that I would hate being artificially preserved like that!"
"It wasn't me who upgraded the screwdriver, actually, I only gave it to you – and besides, even so, I couldn't just simply let you die!"
"But I was already dead! I had to die! And you decided to play god again, didn't you? Against my will!"
And then, unexpectedly, the hologram got angry. "Look who's talking! You were going to sacrifice billions on billions of lives so that you wouldn't have to kill me! All of time, River! Remember that? Time was dying, all because of you and your 'fixed points can be rewritten'! Who told you that?"
"That was because you didn't trust me!"
"Trust you? Hah! How was I supposed to know that you were River Song yet? That you've overridden the conditioning to kill me?"
River's features twisted in pain as everyone listened in rapt attention.
"Melody Pond died in Berlin," she said softly.
The hologram calmed down and smiled at her with affection. "I know that now. I knew it then atop of the pyramid, that's why I decided to marry you."
"What...?" came Rose's gasp.
River choked on a bitter laugh. "Shortened, battlefield version? Is there really such a thing?"
"'Course there is!"
"Sweetie, don't be stupid, of course there isn't."
"Sure there is! It was a perfectly valid, Gallifreyan handfasting – "
"Oh, stop it! I've read up about Gallifreyan customs, and there was no 'handfasting' involved in real weddings... Besides, seriously? Marriage by bow-tie?"
"Bow-tie?" repeated the Doctor.
"Hey!" cried the hologram, "Bow-ties are – "
" – not cool! Admit it! You just used it as a ruse! You had absolutely no plans of marrying me, hell, no plans of telling me that you had a way out! If I hadn't forced your hand and made you tell me, you were just going to leave, letting me believe that I have killed the man I loved!"
A long, dull silence filled the TARDIS console room, as some of the confusing dialogue went over the audience's heads, and some of it registered as extremely cruel and cold. Disappointed and accusatory glares fell on the hologram, but he didn't appear to see it at all, lost in his own indecipherable expression.
"River," he said eventually. "I've peeked into that blasted diary of yours. Before I went to Darillium, I made certain that there weren't any meetings between us that I've missed. I double checked. I triple checked! There was not one adventure left for me, River. So I took the screwdriver and took you to the Singing Towers, because there was nothing else that I could do. And then I headed off to Utah. So yes, I was going to leave. I wasn't going to see you ever again. I'm sorry for not trusting you, I really am. If it makes any difference, I really thought you wouldn't remember any of it."
River stared at him quietly, eyes brimming with emotion. "So what now? Where does that leave us?"
A brilliant smile bloomed on the hologram's face. "I was thinking... Since you are officially dead... And I am officially dead... And yet we're both still alive... Why don't we... you know... chuck those blasted diaries and try for linear this time? You know... as in... together... in the TARDIS... you know? You and me?"
She didn't answer for a long time, scrutinizing him with an unreadable expression. When she spoke, it was in a low, cold voice.
"And what if I say no?"
Rose, who had been listening to their conversation through a haze of her own pain, flinched in shock. Thousands of thoughts flashed through her mind, none of them pleasant, outrage and envy blinding her to anything apart from the grimace of grief on the hologram's face. How dare this – this – infuriating woman – how dare she refuse? How dare she spit in his face like that? It was the Doctor! The most amazing man Rose had ever met – would ever meet – and this woman, this maddening, curly-haired nobody, had managed to make him marry her – marry her! – and here she was, refusing him! If Rose had had the chance to – she would have – she would have stayed forever with him. Forever! Because he was the Doctor, so wonderful and lonely and sad – and she couldn't possibly imagine how could anyone be cruel enough to just refuse him when he went and put his hearts out there like this! Feeling tears stinging her eyes, Rose watched as the hologram's face morphed into a picture of the bleakest resignation.
"It's your choice, River," he said eventually, looking down. "So I guess this is good bye then, after all? Right, well. I'm really glad that you're alive. Tell your parents I said hi, will you? And I'm sorry. For wreaking up all of your lives. Oh, but, I forgot, they don't know I'm alive, do they? Poor, poor Ponds, the boy and girl who waited... Who stopped waiting. I saw that poster – Petrichor perfume? Amy's amazing like that, isn't she – they're all brilliant, all of them, they do some really great things after I leave them... And what are you going to do, River? Oh, I bet you're going to be an amazing professor, you'll make all of your students fall in love with you, won't you – "
"Doctor – "
"- you'll make your name known as a magnificent scholar and you'll discover so many great things – "
"Doctor, I told them."
" – and you'll look – what?"
"I told them. I told them that you were alive. Right after I climbed out of the Byzantium. So you can come visit them if you like. I'd love to tease mother – you should have seen her face when she realized she was your mother-in-law."
"Mother-in-law," he repeated, wonder colouring his voice. "I have a mother-in-law! And Rory! I have a father-in-law, too! Who's technically actually older than me!" he beamed. "This is brilliant! We have to go visit and celebrate! There's got to be dancing, you said that I always dance at weddings and I didn't dance at ours, now, did I – oh. Right. Sorry. You don't believe we got married at all – hang on! You told me you were married!"
"Well, you didn't even ask me! 'As you're told'? What kind of proposal is that?"
"I did so ask you! I asked if you were married, and then you asked if I was asking, and I said yes, and you said yes!"
"Nope, I'm not getting it," Mickey said under his breath.
"Actually, neither am I, and I can't believe I'm agreeing with you on anything," grumbled Jack.
The human Doctor leaned back against one of the branching pillars, highly amused, and a bit torn whether he was relieved or disappointed that what he was watching was no longer part of his future. This curly-haired beast of a woman was unmentionably annoying, but there was something intriguing in the level of trust she had managed to attain from him in the future – from the other Doctor, at least. It was also very entertaining to watch his future self – the other Doctor's future self – squabble with her like an old married couple. His amusement flickered out like a flame immediately when his eyes spied Rose.
She was standing next to the console, hands gripping its edge, face pallid and wet with tears. His single heart went out to her, but there wasn't really anything he could do. How could he reassure her in any way, when he wasn't quite sorted himself? He could remember the despair he'd felt when River had connected the cables, but now felt bare and raw, knowing that this particular future had been closed to him. Though extremely annoying, that woman had carried with her a hope for a better tomorrow. A tomorrow that wasn't going to be his. What was going to happen to him, then?
His musings were interrupted by Donna, who nudged him in the side.
"He looks sort of happy, doesn't he?" she said in disbelief. "She was annoying as hell when we met her, but now that he's on the same page with her, it seems like he's enjoying it."
The human Doctor hummed noncommittally in reply.
Because what was the most unsettling, was that the hologram did look almost happy (and devastated at the same time). And that was another ambiguous needle up his single heart.
"Will someone please just explain what the bloody hell is going on?" came a sudden screech, cutting through the questionably-married couple's argument.
River whirled around, her eyes widening as she remembered where she was and who she was with. She'd been so distracted by her hurt and resentment and the opportunity to voice them to the correct version of the Doctor, that she'd completely tuned out her surroundings. Judging by Jackie's murderous glare, this had been a huge mistake.
"Who are you?" demanded the platinum blonde. "And who is he?"
"Jackie!" called the Doctor – the real one – the present one – the Time Lord one – just how many of him were on the TARDIS at the moment, anyway? – angry and shaken, half out of his depth and half furious as a bee. He turned to River and the hologram. "What do you two think you're doing? You're interfering with space-time continuum! Couldn't you have your – your – your quarrel – in a more appropriate place?"
Mickey snorted. "When do you do anything that's appropriate?"
"Mickey!" the Doctor exclaimed, appalled.
"He does have a point," said Martha, her face splitting into a grin.
"Not you too!"
"So let me get this straight," Sarah Jane piped up, addressing River. "You're his wife from the future, whom he's supposedly watched die quite recently, and he's the future Doctor, whom you'd supposedly killed, but he somehow survived, but for which you still served time in prison?"
River blinked. "Is it too late to plead spoilers?"
"Plead spoilers?" asked the hologram, bemused. "Whatever for? You can't possibly have any more secrets from me!"
Momentarily distracted from the brewing timeline disaster, River smirked.
"Oh, sweetie, you never learn, I always have se – wait. What did you just say?"
"There can't be any more spoilers between us! I quadruple checked that diary! I read it backwards, forwards and sideways! In both directions!"
She frowned. "Doctor, you do realize that I'm standing in the TARDIS with all of your friends, fresh out of the Medusa Cascade, don't you?"
"Wait, what?" he asked in surprise, deflating from his outrage, and the hologram blurred as he started moving. A piece of paper appeared in his hands. "What? That wasn't on the transcript before!"
"Ooh!" cried Martha, beginning to understand.
"Transcript? So you mean that you couldn't actually hear what I was saying?"
"Well of course I couldn't, it's not a bloody communicator, it's a recording! You think you're so smart and you couldn't figure that one out? And what do you mean, the Medusa Cascade? But that means - !"
"I'm afraid it does!" she snapped. "All of your recent friends are here! All of them!"
"But - ! Sexy, what on earth were you thinking? This could blow up my whole time stream! Foreknowledge is dangerous!" he paled. "And all the things I've said... River, why didn't you stop me!"
"Stop it, both of you!" ordered the Doctor. "Right now we need to fix this mess – "
" – before time collapses again! This is impossible, I can't have met you at the Medusa Cascade, I met you again when you jumped out of a spaceship and I was already at my eleventh face!"
The Doctor jerked as if slapped.
"Sweetie, just shut up!"
"Oh. Right. Spoilers. Right," the hologram mumbled, chagrined, scratching his cheek. "Right, then, what are we going to do?"
"You!" the Doctor growled, pointing at River. "Are going to leave, immediately. And get that horrid screwdriver out of my TARDIS! And the diary, too!" His hands went up to tear at his hair in extreme vexation. "And I'm going to wipe all of your memories of this, and then figure out how to do the same to myself!"
An uproar of raised, indignant voices rose in response to his words.
"You're not wiping my mind, Sunshine!" cried Donna.
"There's no way I'm going to let you make me forget this!" sniggered Mickey.
"You're not getting anywhere near my head!" screeched Jackie.
"Wiping our memories, are you serious?" yelled Martha.
"Doctor, is that really necessary?" asked Sarah Jane.
"I'm not letting you poke around my mind, Doctor, 'cause you might just like what you see, and where will that leave our gorgeous professor?" drawled Jack.
"All of you, listen to me!" shouted the Doctor, already operating beyond all acknowledged levels of frustration. "This was not supposed to happen! We shouldn't have heard any of – of – ofthatconversation – otherwise I'd have known – known that – that – "
"Oh, but you don't need to wipe all of their memories, sweetie."
"What?"
"The only one who has to forget is you, Doctor."
"Oh, of course!" cried the hologram in delight. "River, seems like you have it all figured out, I'm sure you'll manage famously. In fact, I'm certain of it, because I can't remember ever seeing you before the whole Weeping Angels affair – "
"Weeping Angels?" yelped the Doctor. River rolled her eyes, thoroughly exasperated.
"Well, I'll be going then, I'm sure you'll do great, but good luck anyway, because you know, someone once told me that I'm 'hard work young'," he followed that with a giggle, and then halfway through, the image flickered and disappeared like a switched off telly. River stared at it in disbelief, before letting out a growl of frustration.
"Oh, I hate you sometimes!"
A faint chuckle floated through the TARDIS and the echo of his voice sang, "No, you don't!"
The Doctor followed that exchange with wide eyes. "What do you mean, only me – but who would – No!"
"Yes, me. So be a dear and stand still. Or better yet, lie down."
