So, you guys are getting another update today since they've announced Peter Capaldi as the new Doctor. I like celebrating and the only way I can with you guys is by giving you another chapter. So here it is.
I own nothing, by the way. :)
The Doctor had a red car that was probably about twice as large as it really needed to be, but he began driving towards a diner. I had shotgun while my parents sat in the back. I listened to Amy and the Doctor chat excitedly. The Doctor was telling stories of what he had been doing since he left them.
"So, what have you two been doing?" the Doctor asked Amy curiously after he had told us a story of a princess he had saved from the Orpagon System.
"Well, after you dropped us off in Leadworth, we've been living pretty average lives. We had to find an excuse for our absence, but a friend of ours came up with something to tell our parents."
"Where do they think you've been?"
"Thailand."
My head shot up. That was my lie. Amy and Rory were just married. That meant that Amy was currently not Amy, if my memory was correct. It also meant she was already being controlled by the Silence, and was pregnant with me.
"Thailand, great place. Remind me to take you there sometime," the Doctor instructed as he pulled into a small diner.
We exited the car and went in to the fifty-style diner. The Doctor and I sat down, and Amy and Rory got something to eat. He looked at me and asked, "So where are we?"
We both pulled out our blue diaries and began flipping through the pages of them. I repeated, "Right then, where are we? Have we done Easter Island yet?"
The Doctor flipped through the pages before exclaiming, "Er, yes! I've got Easter Island."
"They worshipped you there," I reminded with enthusiasm. "Have you seen the statues?"
He ignored me, and looked down at his journal. "Jim the fish."
"Oh, Jim the fish!" I gushed. "How is he?"
"Still building his damn," he answered with a lot less emotion that I would have hoped. Amy and Rory came and sat down next to me at this point. Amy sat on the Doctor's side and Rory on mine, both with milkshakes in their hands.
"Sorry, what are you two doing?" Rory asked, extremely confused.
I was about to explain, but Amy beat me to. "They're both time travelers, so they never meet in the right order. They're syncing their diaries." I couldn't help but be proud of my mother. I lived a weird life many would have a hard time following, and she was completely aware. Amy's attention then turned to the Doctor. "So what's happening, then? Because you've been up to something."
The Doctor gave a slight smile before answering. "I've been running, faster than I've ever run. And I've been running my whole life," he said looking at me. I knew what he had been running from, and why he had chosen now to face it. But he had still been running from me. "Now, it's time for me to stop. And tonight, I'm going to need you all with me."
It killed me that he was asking me to be there for him, again, to watch him die. This man seemed to want to hurt me, and I just coming back for more.
"Okay, we're here, what's up?" my mother asked.
"A picnic, and a trip. Somewhere different, somewhere brand new."
"Where?"
"Space, 1969," he smiled.
I froze. 1969 was the first time I had seen the Doctor with myself and Rory. They had been looking for Amy. And it was going to be when we began facing the Silence together.
When Amy and Rory finished their milkshakes, the Doctor took us to what I knew to be his fake death. I had to pretend not to know what was going on though. When we arrived at Lake Silencio, we saw the Doctor had already been there and set up a picnic for us, including a bottle of wine. He poured everyone some, before announcing, "Salud!"
"Salud!" we repeated, mine with mock happiness. I was laying next to the Doctor while Amy and Rory were across from us.
"So when are we going to 1969?" Rory asked.
"And since when do you drink wine?" Amy asked, and I couldn't blame her. The Doctor hated drinking alcohol.
"I'm eleven hundred and three. I must've drunk it sometime." To prove his point he took a gulp of it, and almost immediately spat it back out. "Oh, it's horrid. I thought it would taste more like gums."
"Eleven hundred and three? You were nine hundred and eight last time we saw you."
"And you've put on a couple of pounds, but I wasn't going to mention it," he came back. I had to bite my tongue so I wouldn't reveal that it could be from her actual body being pregnant. But that would cause more problems.
It was surprising that he had spent so long away from my parents. I knew he cared a lot about them. I wondered if somehow their timelines were going to get out of order.
Amy just smiled at the Doctor's childish comment, but it fell off her face as she looked behind me and the Doctor. "Who's that?"
"Who's what?" Rory asked.
"Sorry, what?" Amy questioned.
"What did you see? You said you saw something."
"No, I didn't," Amy tried to correct him. I had a bad feeling that the Silence had sent someone to make sure I had completed my job of killing him.
The Doctor suddenly changed the subject, "Ah, the moon. Look at it. Of course, you lot did a lot more than look, didn't you? Big, silvery thing in the sky. You couldn't resist. Quite right."
"The moon landing was in '69; is that where we're going?" Rory was excited. He had always been the nerd of the three of us. Doctor had taken them throughout time and space, and my father got excited over going to the moon.
"No. A lot more happens in '69 than anyone remembers. Human beings. I thought I'd never get done saving you."
I glanced at him. It sounded like he already knew something about the Silence, but yet Amy and Rory didn't. What had the Doctor been doing?
It suddenly hit me that this was the Doctor's goodbye to me and my parents. He wasn't planning on telling us that he was going to live. He wasn't planning on telling me! He had only told me on top of the pyramid that he wasn't going to die so that I would help him fix time. If I hadn't done that, I would have believed that he had died when I had shot him. He was going to let the three people who cared about him most think he was dead. Oh, I was having the urge to slap him again.
Rory called my attention back to the situation when he looked behind me, covering his eyes from the sun with his hand. I turned around and saw an old car with a man coming out. The Doctor acknowledged him after standing up.
"Who's he?" Amy asked.
But before anyone could say anything, I uttered climbing to my feet, "Oh my God." I watched as a younger version of me came out of the depths of the lake. This was it. This was what the Doctor called me here to do. Watch me kill him.
"You all need to stay back. Whatever happens now you do not interfere." Little late for me not to interfere. But I would try to keep my parents back. "Clear?"
He walked towards the spacesuit, and it was painful. I knew he would be fine, but it was hard watching him die once in front of my eyes. A second time would be worse, because I couldn't even try to stop it this time.
"That's an astronaut. That's an Apollo astronaut in a lake," Rory said, trying to wrap around his mind around the idea.
"Yeah."
We all sat there as the Doctor talked to the younger me. I was desperate not to do anything to change time, but I could barely stand to watch what I knew was coming. I had separated myself from Amy and Rory, so that they couldn't see how much this was affecting me. From where Amy, Rory, and I were, we could not see that it was me in the suit, or how painful it was for me to be there. The Doctor seemed to be okay, until he lowered his head. I watched as my arm came up to shoot him, knowing how hard I tried to stop it from happening. I suddenly realized that we could end up in the parallel world after this. This is when Amy and Rory would have come from, but with the all of time happening at once, they knew the truth about me. Well, Amy did.
"What's he doing?" Amy asked Rory.
And then we saw a green flash of light come from my suit and knock the Doctor back. I jumped when it happened, and Amy began running towards him, screaming his name. "Doctor!"
"Amy, stay back!" I told her as I chased after her, my voice was now betraying my emotions. I was ready to cry as I watched not only the man I love get shot by a past version of me, but how much it was affecting my parents. Amy was fighting against Rory and I to go to the Doctor's aid, and in any other situation, I would have been right beside her. But I couldn't this time; everyone had to think he was dead. "The Doctor said to stay back! You have to stay back!"
My words fell on deaf ears, however. "No, No! Doctor!"
We saw the Doctor begin to regenerate, but then another green flash of energy struck him. This is when he would have died. Dead by my hand. Even the thought of that made me rush over to him. The spacesuit was heading back into the water.
I was beside him within seconds, and pulled out me life sign device. Not surprisingly, there were multiple life signs that were disappearing fast. They were vacating the machine, probably at the Doctor's order. I knew from my research that the body of a Time Lord was something special, and that often they were burned upon death so no one would violate them to find the secrets that their body held.
"River," Amy was trying to get me to tell her that the Doctor was okay. I wish I could tell her the truth, but I had promised the Doctor that I would not tell anyone that he lived. "River! River?" The look in my eye apparently gave her the heartbreaking answer it was supposed. And then I remembered being shot at as I went back into the lake. I was the only one to have a gun. So, I pulled out the gun that had killed me once before and began shooting my past self, knowing it would be doing nothing. It did help to pretend that it was a member of the Silence who had forced me to do such. None of them hit, obviously. "Of course not," I reminded myself. I couldn't kill myself; that would cause another paradox here.
I turned back around to see Amy holding her knees to her chest crying over her best friend's death. "River, he can't be dead. This isn't possible."
She was sobbing. I had only seen her cry a handful of times before. The most memorable was when Rory had died. It was not as bad now, but it was still bad. Trying to hold back my own tears, I sat across from Amy. "Whatever that was, it killed him in the middle of a regeneration cycle. His body was already dead. He didn't make it to the next one."
Part of me was just waiting for the Doctor's eyes to spring open and him yell something like 'Gotcha' but I knew that wouldn't happen.
Suddenly the mysterious old man came up behind us with a can of the petrol can. "I believe I can save you some time. That most certainly is the Doctor. And he is most certainly dead. He said you'd need this."
I couldn't help but wonder which Doctor had given him these instructions. But I knew what I needed to do.
"Gasoline?" Rory asked.
"A Time Lord's body is a miracle," I explained, "even a dead one. There are whole empires out there who'd rip this world apart for just one cell. We can't leave him here. Or anywhere."
Amy wasn't listening to us, still focusing on the Doctor. "Wake up. Come on, wake up, you stupid, bloody idiot." She hugged him and pleaded for an answer, "What do we do, Rory?"
Rory didn't answer right away, so I did. "We're his friends. We do what the Doctor's friends always do: as we're told," I told them as I picked up the gasoline.
"There's a boat," Rory pointed out. "If we're going to do this, let's do this properly."
The man and Rory moved the Doctor into the boat, and Rory was kind enough to be the one to set the Doctor on fire. I couldn't do it. Not even to the robot that had tried to torture me; not as long as it looked like him. We pushed the Doctor onto the lake and watched as what everyone thought was his body burn. I stayed behind everyone else, knowing it was my fault we were here in the first place, me, the Silence, and the Doctor. I hated seeing Amy and Rory so upset, but I didn't have a choice. I told him I would keep this secret and I would.
But the man in front of me was still a mystery. He had not said much, but seemed to be paying his respects to the Doctor.
Finally, I asked, "Who are you? Why did you come?"
"The same reason as you," he told me as he showed me a familiar blue envelope just like the one I had received. I pulled out mine as well. His had a 4 on it, while mine had a 2. These had come from a Doctor who knew who I was. The one who had just been shot. Did Amy and Rory have 1 and 3, or just one of them? And if they only had one number, who was the other person that was supposed to come?
"Dr. Song, Amy, Rory," Canton greeted us individually. "I'm Canton Everett Delaware the third. I won't be seeing again, but you'll be seeing me."
He walked away after replacing his hat, leaving all of us confused. As soon as he was gone, I turned to my parents. "Four."
"Sorry, what?" Rory asked.
"The Doctor numbered the envelopes," I explained. "What number was on yours?"
They looked at each other before Rory pulled it out of his pocket. There was a 3 on it, and that meant only 1 was missing.
"River, what's going on?" Amy asked.
I looked out on the lake, and was ready to leave the burning body. "I'll explain on the way back to the diner."
Rory took the driver's seat, Amy in shotgun, and I took the back seat as the child. "River, what are the numbers about?"
"The Doctor numbered the envelopes. I don't know why, but it was obviously something important. The Doctor wouldn't have done it otherwise."
"But that doesn't make sense," Rory argued.
"Since when did he ever?" I said, forcing the past tense.
"He always knew what he was talking about, even if the rest of us didn't," Amy said gloomily.
"Amy-" Rory started.
"I can't believe he left us like that. He knew what was going to happen, didn't he?" she bit.
"Yes, he did," I confirmed. "He knew his time was coming to an end, and he wanted to share it with the people he cared most about."
"I wish he had just left us alone. Let us think he was busy and got distracted," Amy pouted.
"No, you don't. The worst thing is not knowing. It would drive you insane." I knew. Even at a young age, I had experienced thinking my mother had been killed, but never really certain who was to blame. It was only for a few months, but it was terrible.
"Worse than watching your best friend die?"
"Yes," I answered shortly. Granted, mine had come back to life, but I didn't know he was going to do that at the time. And he didn't know he was going to die and plan it out. I still needed to find Jack and talk to him.
We were silent after that. It wasn't until we got to the diner that Rory repeated. "So, the numbers. What do they mean?"
"You got 3, I was 2, Mr. Delaware was 4," I said trying to talk through it.
"So?"
"So where's 1?"
"What you think he invited someone else?" Rory asked astonished.
"Well, he must have. He planned all of this, to the last detail."
"Will you two shut up?" Amy asked, still not entirely with us. "It doesn't matter."
"He was up to something," I fought.
"He's dead."
"Space, 1969. What did he mean?" I knew it was because of me and the Silence, but they couldn't know yet.
"You're still talking, but it doesn't matter."
"Hey, it mattered to him," Rory argued.
"So it matters to us."
"He's dead!"
"But he still needs us. I know. Amy, I know; but right now we have to focus." The Doctor was still out there. I needed to help him, and obviously he wanted us in 1969. I would do anything for that man, even go through my own past.
"Look," Rory said, directing our attention to a seat and a blue envelope. I immediately rushed over to compare the envelope, while Rory asked who had been sitting there with no helpful answer.
I turned to Amy and Rory. "The Doctor knew he was going to his death, so he sent out messages. When you know it's the end, who do you call?"
"Your friends; the people you trust," Rory repeated back from our earlier conversation.
"Number 1. Who did the Doctor trust the most?" I asked. I was a little hurt it wasn't me, but I would get over it.
Suddenly, we heard the bathroom open and turned around to see that damn man standing there with a straw in his mouth. He smiled when he saw us. How could he stand there after what he had just put us through?
"This is cold. Even by your standards, this is cold," I informed him.
"Or hello, as people used to say," he told us cheerfully.
"Doctor?" Amy said carefully. This was the man she had spent her entire childhood waiting for, and she had just watched him die. Now he was standing in front of us again.
"I just popped out to get my special straw. It adds more fizz," he said as if that was what we were surprised about.
"You're okay. How can you be okay?" Amy asked, still in a bit of shock as she inspected the man in front of her.
"Hey, of course I'm okay. I'm always okay. I'm the King of Okay," he told her as he pulled her into a hug. "Oh, that's a rubbish title. Forget that title. Rory the Roman! That's a good title," he said as he let go of Amy to give a shocked Rory a big hug. "Hello, Rory." Then he turned to me. "And Dr. River Song. Oh, you bad, bad girl. What trouble do you got for me this time?" he asked flirtatiously.
He got his answer in the form of a slap. It was bad enough that he made me watch a past me kill him. It was cruel that to make Amy and Rory suffer through it. I at least knew he survived. I was ready to hurt him, not for harming me as much as for hurting my parents. I had been ready to beat people up for picking on Rory when we were kids and defend Amy even when she was getting into trouble. I would do anything for them. And the Doctor, the one person I wouldn't actually kill, just hurt. Oh, that slap was a small release of anger that was boiling inside of me.
"Okay, I'm assuming that's for something I haven't done yet."
"Yes, it is," I said trying not to lose my temper even more.
"Good, looking forward to it," he answered hesitantly. I wanted to slap him again.
"I don't understand," Rory interrupted. "How can you be here?"
"I was invited. Date, map reference. Same as you lot, I assume, otherwise it's a hell of a coincidence." This Doctor was had received the envelope with a 1 marked on it. Well, it was nice to know that he trusted himself since he clearly didn't trust anyone else he had a sent a letter to, except for maybe me.
"River, what's going on?"
I suddenly realized what was going on. The Doctor had said he was two hundred years older than last time Amy and Rory had seen him. What if that was no longer the case? "Amy, ask him how old he is."
"That's a bit personal," he complained.
"Tell her. Tell her what age you are," I demanded.
"Nine-hundred and nine," he answered.
"You, but you said you were," I started, but stopped. He didn't know he would be here a couple hundred years in his future. "So where does that leave us, huh? Jim the fish? Have we done Jim the fish yet?"
"Who's Jim the fish?" I realized this Doctor didn't know me, not really. This was the youngest I'd really seen him.
"I don't understand."
"Yeah, you do."
"I don't! What are we all doing here?" the Doctor asked.
I made a quick decision. We still had to go to 1969. If a future Doctor was trying to send us there, then we must have gone at some point. "We've been recruited. Something to do with space, 1969, and a man called Canton Everett Delaware the third.
"Recruited by who?"
"Someone who trusts you more than anybody else in the universe," I told him, knowing it would drive him insane not knowing. Another form of revenge for doing this to us.
"And who's that?"
"Spoilers."