River

Happy belated Back to the Future Day, everyone! Here is a Timey-Wimey chapter to celebrate, and the last chapter in the series. Please review! Me no own da Doctor. How does everyone else come up with so many creative ways to say that?

My dear Friends and Family,

It has been a long time since I decided to write about my old life, but I put it off for far too long a time. A lot of you know I am not actually from the 1960's; that I was meant to be born and grow up in what is, for all of you, the very near future.

Before Rory and I came to Manhattan, the story goes that I was friends with a very strange man.

A Raggedy Man. A man in a bow tie. A man in a blue box called the Tardis that traveled in time and space.

He had an equally eccentric wife, too, whose name was Professor River Song. When I first met her, I saw her as my role model. My protector, if the Doctor happened to get distracted and run off and leave me behind.

What I didn't know was that that woman with her fierce, deadly temper and her surprisingly calming demeanor, along with her unbelievably wild curly hair, was actually my daughter.

I never saw it coming.

When I was in school, there was a girl nearly my age named Melody. She introduced herself as Mels.

Mels always got into trouble. I didn't want to be around her at first, but she dragged me into it, so I had to follow.

One day, a boy bumped her accidentally in the recess line.

"SMACK!"

I looked over.

Her fist was already across his jaw. Her eyes darted over the line furtively, and she grinned a wicked grin, right at me. I didn't know more than her name back then; I was horrified by this stupid girl. Who did she think she was?

Then the boy tackled her, and she tackled him back. By the time the teacher came and found out, they both had blood and dirt all over their clothes. Mels had some dribbled down her chin. She grinned at me again as they marched back inside.

I was very confused, of course, but I thought it was over.

Apparently, she was trying to get my attention, because three days later:

"THUNK!"

The next boy to pull her braid got an elbow to the stomach and there they were again, tussling around on the floor. I walked up and stared over them, frowning at what idiots they were being.

I mean, really, didn't this girl have a mum to talk some sense into her?

"Oh, get off of him," I shouted at her, hands on my hips.

She stopped, slowly sitting back on her heels, and peered up at me, the same stupid grin between her bloodstained lips. "You are seven years old," I scolded angrily. "You should know better. Owen, you'd better not pull on her hair again, or I'm telling!"

The other boy stuck his tongue out at Mels, which earned him another punch in the face. The teacher came over again, and recess ended rather promptly.

Three weeks after that, the same thing happened again! I don't even know what led up to it, but when I walked up, with a much younger Rory trailing behind me, and shouted at them, Mels stopped again. She grinned, the same as before, and stood up to face me.

Even though she was a year younger, she was exactly my height. I wasn't about to be afraid of her, though. "You need to stop," I folded my arms and gave her my best stern face.

"Make me then," she dared.

"Fine," I shrugged. "Come with me." I grabbed her hand, instead of punching her back, like she would've expected. We pushed through the other kids and sat down on a bench in the corner of the recess yard. We were going to have a 'talk', as my mum called it.

"You are one stupid girl," I told her, once we were seated, side by side. Rory was helpful by coming up and sitting on Mels' other side. "Why'd you have to hit him?" I continued. "He didn't mean to hurt you. Are you just the kind of person who thinks getting beat up is fun?"

Through the busted lip, Mels was grinning stupidly at me the whole time. I could NOT believe her.

"Your mother's got to say something to you about your uniform. It's a total disaster. And don't even get me started on you—"

I stopped, mouth wide open, when I noticed Mels was staring at me, evil look gone from her eyes and replaced with one that was absolutely ecstatic. She had a look on her face like I was the most wonderful thing in the world. "Will you be my friend?" Mels asked suddenly, grinning with the most adorable, pleading face than I'd ever seen her wear.

The blood and dirt, however, didn't add much to it.

"Why would I want to be friends with you?" I wrinkled up my eyebrows. "You're an idiot. You beat people up for no reason."

Mels rolled her eyes. And then, she punched ME.

I wonder if she got that arm from me or Rory?

That night at dinner was humiliating. I had an ice pack on my face and had to keep moving it around to eat, and one time it fell straight into my mashed potatoes.

"Your teacher tells me you made a new friend on the playground today," Mum tells me, pointedly.

"No. I did NOT make a new friend," I mumble through my numb lips.

Dad starts laughing until I glare at him.

"Dad, it's not funny! She's evil. She might as well have come straight from jail."

"Why don't you bring her over after school some day?" Mum shrugged.

I gave her a totally dead-eyed stare. She apparently had completely forgotten about the giant bruise on my head and was now encouraging me to a playdate with the biggest troublemaker in the school.

I've done the exact same thing with Anthony (don't tell anyone).

Anyway, that's how Mels, and Rory (who was tagging along for the purpose of protecting me) ended up coming over three weeks later after school.

That playdate was the first of hundreds. Literally, hundreds. If you count teenagers and young adults as playmates, of course. I didn't even like either one of them; Mels or Rory; that much at first. We were just—the gang. We were slowly becoming family.

Now I look back and remember those looks Mels would give us whenever she thought Rory and I weren't looking. That blissfully happy look, like she was eyeing her favorite dream couple from the television, when she looked at us together. I had no idea what got her head in the clouds back then. Now I know.

I wonder where she actually lived all those years? She never told us; we never asked. The first time we came over to see HER was after she dropped out of high school and got an apartment (probably because she stole something and sold it on the black market. I don't even know how people sell things on the black market. Leave it to Mels to find out).

She didn't last long in that apartment and was homeless for a while, living God-knows-where, meaning with us, before she met the Doctor and regenerated into River Song.

I didn't do a fabulous job of raising my daughter, since she turned out to have been a psychotic assassin the entire time I'd known her. But then again, I WAS only a year older.

On a dark day when my soul was about to burst from my chest, I learned that Mels was my daughter. Mels was River Song. And that she'd been tortured and manipulated by the Silence, and that she was a psychopath engineered to kill the Doctor, my friend.

She was, in fact, so dangerous the Teselacta had been built to kill her. For killing the Doctor. Which she did, right in front of us.

And he died right in front of us. The stupid man had spent his last thirty minutes of life flirting and dressing up in ridiculous outfits. That was his way of trying to tell her that he loved her, before it was too late.

Melody turns to me, realizing the Doctor's time is up. "Who is River Song?" she demands.

I don't want to tell her. Before me is all I have left of my old friend, and the baby I held only a few weeks ago. River Song—is beautiful and bright and wonderful and strong, but I can't bring myself to let go of the old Melody, no matter how hurt and deranged she may be. She needs to move on. I can't.

Rory takes my hand. I know I have to let my baby grow up and be who she was meant to be. She's trapped, and I'm the only one who can free her.

"Show me River Song," my voice cracks.

The Tesselacta processes my request. The features change, the tiles that formed my image flipping and twisting until they're replaced by ones that form the figure of the woman standing in front of me.

I see her lip quiver as she realizes what she's done.

She brings the Doctor back, giving up all her regenerations.

I'm in a whirlwind. There's so much to process, so much to remember, I can't handle it all.

Rory takes my hand again and we follow the Doctor into the Tardis, bringing the unconscious River Song with us.

I don't want to leave her behind, but the Doctor warns us that she has to figure out who she is now that she's regenerated. I'm still not sure it was the best choice, but I now know we never could have kept the hurricane that was River under one roof, even if that roof did travel through all of time and space.

Everything and everywhere was boring to her. She had to throw herself into the danger of space and time without the comforts of home at her back.

So that's what we let her do. Rory and I headed back from the hospital on New Earth after she woke up the first time. We went back into the Tardis and continued with our life.

We'd hardly even begun raising our daughter, and already we were done.

I think the Doctor was just happy we didn't blame him.

He didn't understand, though, that we couldn't have done it if we wanted to.

It was he that loved our daughter, and him who our daughter loved. We would never have blamed him for anything.

He saved her life when we couldn't.

-Amelia Williams