By Any Other Name

They dropped off Amy and Rory in their back garden. After kissing her parents goodbye and promising to visit when the baby was born, they took off again. River sighed and gave the Doctor a peck on the cheek before she wandered off to do…something. He didn't really know what and she didn't seem inclined to tell him. The Doctor being the Doctor, decided to fall back on his usual hobby—fiddling with the Tardis.

Sitting in his hammock, he repaired wires and fixed this cable to that and made little repairs to things that didn't need fixing really, he just needed something to fiddle with. Goggles were fastened securely over his eyes, making his hair fluff up this way and that, flattening the hair stuck underneath the elastic band that held the goggles onto his face. If he paused to listen, he could here distant splashing; she was in the swimming pool. After he had fixed everything that needed repair and a few things that didn't, he ambled through the Tardis and found himself by the side of the swimming pool where River was swimming a powerful butterfly stroke up and down the pool, propelling herself through the water. Her eyes were open and she smiled when she spotted him, stopping her stroke and dolphin-kicking all the way to the wall.

"Hello sweetie," she greeted him, resting her arms and chin on the pool deck and peering up at him through golden eyelashes and a face dotted with crystal beads of water.

He said the first thing that came to mind, blurting it out without letting it go through any sort of filter whatsoever.

"I swear you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

She smiled as he blushed like a schoolboy. Blinking those enormous eyes at him, she beckoned him with a crooked finger. He leaned down to smile at her, cocking his head curiously. She shook her head silently, still smiling, and beckoned him closer. Mystified, he got down onto his knees and leaned down to see what it was she wanted. With a radiant smile, she seized him by the lapels and dragged him bodily into the pool.

With a yell, he fell into the water with a splash. When his head bobbed back above the water, hair wet and bowtie sagging, he swiped his hair out of his face and glared at her, smiling despite his annoyance at being all wet.

"What was that for?" He asked, trying to sound outraged and only succeeding in sounding amused.

Smiling, she walked over to him, arms trailing in the chest-high water. She put her arms around his neck and in the reduced gravity of the water, easily lifted herself to wrap her legs around his waist, her whole body now pressed against his.

"You forgot clever."

He looked confused, a little overwhelmed by her nearness.

"What?"

She pressed her lips to his, carefully drawing a low, hungry moan from his throat.

"You forgot clever," she repeated, whispering it enticingly into his ear.

"Right," he gasped, trying to remember what they'd been talking about. Right. "Beautiful and clever," he agreed eagerly and pressed his lips to hers. She chuckled against his mouth and he could feel the laugh in her chest as she pressed closer to him.

"My parents aren't here anymore," she hinted to him.

He smiled and walk-swam over to the stairs and carried her from the pool, both of them sopping wet.

"I think I get where you're going with this."

"Do you?" she asked him teasingly.

"Well I've got this pair of handcuffs in a drawer in the console room…" he began smilingly, and she chuckled.

"You're clever as well, aren't you?"

The evening ended very satisfactorily for the both of them…needless to say they wouldn't have been able to have the same sort of evening if Amy and Rory had still been in the Tardis.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

They ran. They played and laughed and the universe smiled on them. Their baby grew steadily inside of River's belly. Her midsection swelled larger and the Doctor became increasingly fascinated with her belly and the baby within it. He took to talking to the baby, telepathically or out loud. They sang the little one lullabies and River learned more Gallifreyan songs in those next few weeks than she had during the any earlier in her life.

She was thirty-one weeks now and though her belly wasn't as large as was typical of a human, it was growing larger. Her moods had stabilized slightly, but her feet and back were still prone to aching. She began to worry about the birth and confided in the Doctor about it.

They were sitting in the kitchen having supper—she was enjoying spaghetti topped with some alien sweet-and-sour sauce and he ate…well she wasn't really sure what it was, but he seemed to be enjoying it despite the fact that it was blue and a little goopy-looking. Her legs swung freely at the stool and she looked up at the Doctor, speculative, and asked,

"What are we going to name the baby?"

The Doctor choked for a second, hacking blue…whatever…into his napkin before setting down his fork, looking rather pale.

"What?"

River took another bite of her noodles, chewed, swallowed, and repeated her question.

"What are we going to name the baby?"

He looked down at his plate full of blue goopy…whatever…and sighed a tad grouchily.

"That's what I thought you said."

She set down her fork and cocked her head curiously, resting her elbow on the table, her cheek nestled in her palm.

"What's the matter?"

The Doctor looked towards the ceiling, trying to find the words,

"On Gallifrey…things are different."

"Different how?"

The Doctor leaned back in his chair and sighed,

"It's sort of a long story. Why don't we clean up first and then I'll tell you about it?"

River was so startled she nearly fell off her chair. The Doctor, though he had adjusted to little domestic things like eating dinner at a table together and occasionally making the bed, hadn't really gotten accustomed to clearing up messes and he definitely didn't do dishes. Keeping her cool, she nodded, knowing that he had to have a reason for stalling and she knew better than to push. Picking up her plate, she slid off of her chair and carried her plate to the trash can, scraping the last scraps of her noodles into it before she stacked it in the sink. They had gotten take-out, but she had insisted eating off plates and drinking out of glasses.

He scraped his plate into the garbage agonizingly slowly as River cleared up the glasses and the leftover takeout containers. She wiped the table off as he painstakingly scraped blue goop off of his plate. She ran warm water in the sink and pulled the tea mugs from the morning into the sink as well as their breakfast dishes. Pouring a little soap onto the sponge, River began doing dishes. The Doctor meandered over and slipped behind her, burying his face in her hair. She continued the dishes, gently pressing her back into his chest. With a sigh, he released her and slid his plate into the sink and moved to stand next to her, rinsing and drying the dishes she scrubbed. They were silent, and the only real sound was the clink of dishes and the hum of the Tardis along with the gentle sound of water running as they cleaned up.

Once everything was finished, she dried her hands off on a towel and he wiped his palms on his trousers. He didn't seem to be walking anywhere in particular so she slipped her warm hand into his and lead him gently to their bedroom. Once inside she closed the door; despite the fact that there was no one else in the Tardis, she thought it would make him feel more secure. Unfortunately, he seemed to be getting the wrong idea of what was about to happen. Despite his sad eyes, his hand left hers and began eagerly skimming up and down her body. His expression relaxed and she could see his pupils dilating. He pulled her closer and she could sense his hunger in that weird Time Lord sense that they shared. He pressed kisses to her neck and collarbone and she wanted to talk about the baby, but right now it was evident in the raw emotion that was bleeding out with the lust he emitted that he needed this intimacy, this closeness, the safeness of being able to expose himself to her in the literal sense of the word.

She relaxed into his arms and let herself enjoy the feeling of his lips at her neck, his hand tracing the line of her spine. Her back arched, pressing into his touch. Her breath hitched. Inside her mind she could still feel his desire, feel that he loved her and he needed this right now, needed to be secure in this moment, in this time of vulnerability. She let all of her worries and outside thoughts fall away as he moved his mouth against hers and she wrapped her arms around him, caressing the soft hair at the nape of his neck, running her fingers up through his hair, massaging his skull as their lips collided, tongues dueled, hands wandered and lingered.

They removed each others' clothes one-handed, too immersed in each other to devote their full attention to the task. When they fell onto the bed, mostly naked by this point, River could feel the desperation in his kisses and she wondered if this was the right time, if they ought to be talking instead of…this. Carefully, she cradled his face in her hands and pulled away.

"Doctor," she said softly, tracing his jaw line with her thumbs. His pupils were large and his expression was all lust. Still, he managed to respond,

"What?" and managed to sound as though he was thinking with at least some coherency.

"What's the matter?" She could feel her body straining towards his, wanting him, wanting this, but there was something glimmering in the back of his mind, something not-quite-right in his eyes.

"Please River," he whispered, pressing his lips to hers. "Please."

"There's something wrong," she insisted softly, and he again pressed his mouth to hers again, drawing away her logic as he used her own body's reactions to try and draw her mind away from the present topic.

She was having none of it and she pulled her mouth away gently, running her thumbs up and down his jaw bone, searching his eyes for some clue as to what was bothering him—it was something about the baby's name, but she didn't know what and he wasn't telling her.

"Tell me," she whispered.

"Please, not now. Later River, I swear, but not now." He was begging now, his face open and vulnerable. Gently, she lowered her soft lips to each of his eyelids and then kissed his mouth.

"There is nothing that you can say or do that will make me stop loving you," she whispered into his ear, her lips brushing against his skin. He shivered and nodded slowly at her before she kissed him again and undressed him the rest of the way, carefully tossing aside his socks, boxers, and bowtie.

After they finished, they lay entangled on the bed, she holding him in her arms, his head resting in the curve of her neck. His breathing was slow and sleepy, relaxed.

"I don't like to see you hurting, my love," she whispered and his closed eyelids fluttered open and then shut again, cuddling against her. She held him closer, whispering to him in Gallifreyan,

"What makes you sad, darling? Let me fight it away for you."

He sighed and rolled over to face her, opening his eyes. They were drooping from fatigue and his usual post-coital drowsiness. She didn't know if it was a Time Lord thing or just specific to him, but he was always slow and sleepy to the point of laziness after this sort of thing; all he wanted to do was cuddle close to her and then either lay there or fall asleep.

"On Gallifrey," he began softly, his voice still low and sleepy, "A name is a very special thing. I could only tell you mine once. Not all Time Lords work that way, but a name is very important to my people—our people. With humans, your name identifies you, says who else is in your family, gives your teachers something to call you. In the Time Lord culture, your name carries on a tradition. You're named for someone your parents loved or named for meaning, for something they hope you'll be. You can take a title, as I did, but your name is something deep, something important. It's so hard to explain."

She pressed a kiss to his temple, whispered his Gallifreyan name gently against his hair, reassuring. He looked up at her.

"I had children once, you know. Three of them, two boys and a girl."

"I know, my love. You've told me about them. I have their names written in my diary. I couldn't ever forget them."

"My wife and I then, we picked out their names so carefully—the boys were named for what we hoped they would be. The older one—" He whispered his eldest son's name, letting the Gallifreyan sounds slide off his tongue. "His name meant courage. We hoped that he would be courageous and good. My other boy—" He whispered his other son's name. "His name meant kindness. Our society was already crumbling and we hoped that he would be kind and would show others love." He paused a moment and his eyes were teary. He rested a hand on her belly and kissed it, just above the belly button. River held him closer, knowing how much it hurt him to talk about his children, knowing how this baby brought him great joy and sometimes, like at that moment, great pain.

He was silent for a long time before he could speak again. "Our little girl, my youngest…we named her after her grandmother. She was a wonderful woman, my mother—she would have liked you, River. She would have liked your fire. And the littlest one, my baby girl…she was going to be amazing."

He blinked tears back, but they flowed down his cheeks anyway.

"I lost them, River. I tried to save them all but to save them I had to kill them and I'll never see those little faces smiling at me again."

She cradled him in her arms, pressing gentle kisses to his forehead, and sang him a lullaby, one of the ones he himself had taught her in their language. He relaxed slowly and when his breathing grew steady and slow, she knew that he was asleep. It wasn't just his breathing, it was his everything, the way he abandoned himself into slumber in the same way he threw himself into anything else he did. Resting a gentle hand on her belly, she kept the other arm wrapped around her husband. She looked down at the swollen belly, imagining the perfect little person underneath it.

"You'll help him to heal, little one. He's so broken in places that I can't always fix…but you're going to fill some of the holes in his heart. And he's so terribly easy to love, our Doctor. He's so beautiful and wise and strong…and a little bit broken. But we love him, don't we? I because I chose to and you because you cannot help it. We were made for him, you and I. Our Doctor. Our beautifully broken man."

She closed her eyes, knowing that they could save the discussion of names for another day.

I'm back! My vacation was lovely and relaxing and exhausting and wonderful. Time Tots is now back on schedule, my loves!