Amy and River were sequestered in what River assumed was Rose's day room. The walls were a beautiful intricate pattern of roses creeping up to the ceiling; the carpet was a plush cream. There was a quilted sofa and arm chair bracketing a modest television. The back wall housed a bookshelf comprised mainly of magazines, picture frames, and scrapbooks. Against the far wall was a window seat with a false window looking out at the London metropolis.
The room was purely feminine, scented with rose perfume and with plastic stars stuck in precise constellations on the ceiling. Everything about it spoke of Rose and her warm bright personality; it spoke of how this was her true home, not some structure on Earth made of mortar and beams.
Therefore, it was probably the worst room for River to find herself in. Yet, here she was, bunched up on the sofa, knees curled into her chest, face blotchy as she fought off tears.
"Is she awful?" Amy asked, her eyes sparking with unreleased fury.
River glanced across at her mother sitting with her legs crossed in the arm chair, her short Rio skirt leaving her legs long streaks of pale skin. River shrugged, her impossible smile gracing her lips. "No, not really at all. She doesn't understand the Doctor and I, but – "
"Because she wants him? I saw the way she was eyeing him! And all that stuff about her husband –"
"Mom!" River laughed, cutting off the rant that was coating each of Amy's words in a progressively strong Scottish accent.
"It's true! Even Rory thinks so! I mean, what exactly is a half husband? What is he half of?"
"I don't think it's like that. I don't know exactly what it's like, but I get the impression that he is normal by all outwardly accounts." Her attention drifted behind her to the bookcase with all the picture frames.
Amy followed her gaze. "River! You're brilliant." In a flash, she was across the room, crouching before the bookshelf, a picture frame clutched in her hands. "Oh my god!"
"What?" River asked, her voice high with concern.
"This dress is amazing."
River's features fell into a frown; she heaved a sigh feeling Amy would demand she see the picture and left the comfort of the couch to join her mom on the ground. "What dr – Oh."
"Yeah." Amy offered the frame to River who took it in numb hands. "She looks gorgeous."
No words came, so River nodded stiffly. She stared down at the photograph; Rose beaming an impossibly wide smile, her hand intertwined with the tenth Doctor's. Well, not properly the tenth. Somehow, this was Ten and a Half, whatever that meant. He looked fully Doctor, so River didn't understand that bit.
Her heart wrenched, because the Doctor wasn't looking at the camera at all, his entire focus was on Rose, grinning at her with that maniac grin of his, the one that had set River's heart to racing when ever she saw it. Except the picture made it painfully clear that that smile existed because of this girl, for this girl. This little blonde girl in her beautiful wedding dress surrounded by friends.
Slightly blurred in the background River saw a woman with the exact same shade of hair as Rose who she took to be her mother. Standing beside Rose's mom was a red hair man with a boy in his arms. Rose's family, her parents the proper age, she even had a younger sibling.
This was the wedding River had imagined Rose speaking of while they walked through the jungle together. This horrible joyous occasion with properly aged parents, and friends rejoicing, and the Doctor looking at her as if she was the only thing that mattered in the universe. And he'd told her his name, leaned in and whispered it in Rose's ear during the ceremony, made her laugh at her wedding.
What had River gotten? Nothing at all like this, and certainly no photos since it didn't exist to begin with. No, she had gotten the Doctor waving to her from the eye of the robot she married while her parents, her impossibly young parents who didn't even fully know their daughter, stood on the sidelines, all of time crashing down around them. That's what River had gotten.
And she'd never been sad about it before, never felt that she'd missed out on something. She'd never expected those things from her life. She hadn't expected proper birthdays or being properly raised by her parents or meeting the Doctor in the proper order or having a proper life. Which is – which is what Rose had meant when she'd said the Doctor wasn't worth things you weren't willing to give up in the first place. But River had never had the choice of what to give up, it had all already been taken from her.
"River?" Amy prodded gently, one arm coming around her daughter's shoulder.
"Sorry – yes, she does look beautiful." River pushed the picture frame back onto the shelf hastily, it fell backwards, clattering downward and knocking into the other neatly aligned pictures, all of the Doctor and Rose looking obscenely happy.
She shoved to her feet, stumbling back against the couch. "I thought . . . "
Amy stood smoothly, watching her daughter with a worried expression. "He loves you, River. I've always known that. And I knew from the first that you were his wife –"
"Because of me," River interrupted, her tone filled with alarming realization. "You knew I was I was his wife because I knew that I was, not because he did. You know he loves me because I show that I love him. But they," she waved a hand at the photos. "They have a marriage."
"River, that's not even him, that's half him. Only half him could love her. The Doctor, the whole Doctor loves you," Amy soothed.
"Does he? He's been following Rose around like a lost puppy ever since she showed up. And they both talk about the other Doctor, the half Doctor, like he's interchangeable with ours."
"Once we help her find her Doctor, she'll leave, and things will go back to normal, you'll see."
"They can't go back to normal, Amy!" River kicked the sofa. "He never said a word about her, not a single word, and I've known him, all of him, but not a peep about Rose Tyler. The girl with the golden eyes. Why is she so special? What does she have that I – "
"Don't! Don't you dare say that, River. You know how important you are to him. This is ridiculous, his high school crush shows back up and he acts like a jerk falling all over her, but that's all it is, puppy love, you're his wife, it's you he needs."
"Yes! I know how important I am to him, how I help him, how he needs me. But I'm more than that, I deserve more than being needed, being helpful. I need him to look at me the way he looks at her, like he would rip universes apart to get to her, that he would let time come to ruin just to keep her, because I would do that for him, my entire life has been about him, and I need at least a part of him to be entirely about me." Her hands gripped the top of the sofa so strongly she felt her nails clawing into it.
"River, I'm sure he does, I know he does," Amy pleaded.
"What I need, Mom, is for the Doctor to feel about me the way you and Dad feel about each other, how it doesn't really matter what happens to the rest of us as long as you two are together. And – " Her features pinched down into a pained frown. "I don't think that's ever what this is going to be."
"River, please, stop this. Let's find Rose's Doctor, send them back to where ever it is they came from, and then – you'll see and all this will have been about nothing."
A knock sounded at the door a moment before Rory stuck his head through effectively ending the conversation and River's epiphany.
He told them everyone was meeting up in the console room to get together a plan to find the half Doctor, his eyes shooting questioning looks to Amy the whole time. River's thoughts stayed stuck on Rose though. Everything she meant, everything she made River question, everything she'd said to River. It was all churning in her mind
Rose sat on the jump seat while the Doctor fiddle with the console, pulling up images on the console screen then mumbling negatively under his breath about them. "Find anything?" Rose asked.
He grunted indeterminately, a very good impression of his ninth self if that's what he'd been aiming for. The Doctor hadn't said a word to her since their quiet blow out in front of Rory. She hadn't exactly forgiven him for calling her an idiot, it was hardly better than being called a stupid ape. The Doctor, for his part, seemed determined to ignore her until she admitted to being an idiot or begged for his help.
Rose wasn't likely to do either, so she was choosing to pretend that nothing was wrong instead. "The new console room you have is a lot brighter. Makes me think we should do this place up a bit more, once we find you of course."
"I'm right here," he groused, fingers clacking against the keyboard as he craned his neck back to look at the screen.
"One of you is, kind of referring to the other."
"You'll be off then, once you find him? Back to Pete's World?" His fingers stilled, waiting for her answer.
Rose shrugged carefully, watching him cautiously. "If we can find a way back, I imagine that's what we'll do. Nothing here for either of us. Can't have two Doctors in one universe and my family's back in the other."
The Doctor rattled off another line of clacking. "You never used to care about that, about leaving your family."
"No," Rose agreed judiciously, "but it's different now. It's not a choice of them or you. It's choosing you and deciding to go back to them as well. They don't need to be left behind for me to be with you."
"With half of me," he countered.
"The better half, at the moment," Rose said lowly.
His head tipped up at that, eyes skirting over to her then back again. "What was I investigating before I left?" he asked, changing the subject.
Rose thought this over, the weeks before his leaving had been rather dull from her perspective. "Dunno, really. We'd picked up something odd on the wifi, some kind of strange glitch with a strange wifi name showing up on everyone's router. Any where you went, any place at all, that wifi was waiting. You thought there was something off about it, had Pete put out a huge PR thing about not using that wifi because it was a virus. Dull stuff, really from our end, no aliens to chase down and try and arrange peace with."
"Wifi?" The Doctor clicked more keys.
Gallifreyan words spiraled over the console screen, scrolling down to fill up at least three pages with text. Rose hopped down from her perch, coming to stand behind the Doctor and squint at the screen. She couldn't read it. Well, she could read one Gallifreyan word, one name, but other than that, it was just a bunch of pretty circles to her.
"What's it say?" she asked.
The Doctor was staring at the writing, his lips forming each word as his eyes ran rapidly over the text. He didn't answer until he'd finished the whole thing, then what he did say did nothing to clear matters up. "Impossible!"
"What is, Sweetie?"
Rose and the Doctor looked behind them to where River and her parents were lingering near the hallway off from the console room. Whatever she had been doing, River looked as drained as Rose felt. Rose stepped back from the Doctor, wanting to show the other woman that she wasn't trying to encroach on her man. And really, honestly she wasn't. This whole thing – well, she'd already succinctly conveyed to herself what a bungled mess it was.
"River!" The Doctor's eyes lit up. "Wonderful. Come look at this."
Rose took another step back. With only a moment's hesitation, River crossed the console room, her parents trailing after her to huddle by the jump seat. River peered up at the screen, frowning. After a few moments, she said, "But, he's gone. I mean, I thought he was."
"Who?" Amy asked.
"Don't have a clue," Rose sighed.
"Wait, what's this bit?" River pointed at the screen. The Doctor scrolled down to center the words. "Pete's World? What does that mean?"
A.N. Thanks so much for the reviews, follows, and favorites! They are amazing to receive, especially reviews that let me know what your'e thinking of the story as it progresses. =] & If you've watched season 7 you should kind of know where I'm going with this . . . / In other news, I'm heading to the Philippines for a week so the next update will be delayed a bit.