A/N: Nothing you recognize belongs to me! Quotes taken from "Forest of the Dead!" And this wraps up my Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead rewrite. Tune in next time for the beginning of "Midnight!"
Chapter Forty-Eight: Ouroboros
Rose pulled back and the Doctor fought the urge to follow her. He ached to hold her, to tell her that there was another way (even though that was a lie). He wished that he could tell Rose that River was from the far future, from after she was dead, but the woman knew them, both of them, and had expected to see both of them. It didn't make any sense. He wasn't exactly the marrying type, not after what had happened with his first marriage, but if he were to bind himself to anyone, it would be Rose.
"Where's Other Dave?" Anita asked from across the room.
The Doctor left Rose's side to stand in front of the young woman. "He's not coming. Sorry."
"If they've taken him," she continued, "why not me?"
"I don't know," he replied. "Maybe tinting your visor's making a difference."
Anita laughed. The Doctor admired her spirit. She was calm and collected in the face of death. She was taking it better than almost anyone he'd ever met—except for Rose. His thoughts winged back to a cellar in Cardiff, but Anita's voice pulled him back to the present. "No one's ever gonna see my face again."
"Can I get you anything?" he asked, wanting to be of some use. He'd really never felt more useless in his life, except maybe holding on to that lever and watching her fall.
"An old age would be nice," Anita joked, although it wasn't a joke, not really. "Anything you can do?"
He nodded. "I'm all over it." He turned to go, but she called him back.
"Doctor!" He turned around to face her. "When we first met you and Rose, you didn't trust Professor Song, but then she whispered something in your ear, and you did." She paused. "My life so far—I could do with a word like that. What did she say?"
He was silent.
"Give a dead girl a break," Anita asked in that same joking tone. "Your secrets are safe with me."
The Doctor looked like he was going to say something, and then stopped. "Safe," he repeated, and Rose knew that he had some brilliant idea going.
"What?" Anita asked, confused.
"Safe," he said again. "You don't say 'saved,' no one says 'saved,' you say 'safe!'" He whipped his head around at Mr. Lux. "The data fragment, what did it say?"
"4022 people saved," Mr. Lux told him. "No survivors."
Rose stepped forward. "Doctor?"
"Nobody says 'saved,'" he repeated, and began to pace. "Nutters say 'saved,' you say 'safe,' but see, it didn't mean to say 'safe,' it meant, it literally meant—saved!" He dashed over to the console at the edge of the circle of light. Rose, Mr. Lux, and River followed him. "See there?" he asked and gestured at the screen. "One hundred years ago—massive power surge, all the teleports going at once. The Vashta Nerada hit their hatching cycle; they attack. Someone hits the alarm. The computer tries to teleport everyone out."
"It tried to teleport 4022 people?" River asked, one eyebrow raised.
"It succeeded," the Doctor corrected. "Beamed them all out, but where to go? Nowhere safe in the whole library—Vashta Nerada growing in every shadow. So they're stuck in the system, waiting to be sent like emails. So what's a computer to do? What does a computer always do?"
Rose grinned. "It saved them."
The Doctor's grin matched hers. "The only way a computer can—it saved them to the hard drive." He pushed aside the books on one of the nearby tables and pulled a permanent marker out of his pocket. He drew a small circle and a larger circle around it. "The library," he denoted the outer circle, "a whole world of books, and right at the core—" He drew an 'x' through the small circle. "Right at the core is the index to everything ever written, the biggest hard drive in history—and that's where the computer saved them. It stored them as energy signatures, ready and waiting to be released."
An alarm blared. Red lights flashed and the console locked down. "What is it?" Mr. Lux demanded. What's wrong?"
"Autodestruct enabled in twenty minutes," an automatic voice said over the loudspeaker. Where there had been a graph of energy use displayed on the console, there was a ticking clock.
"What's maximum erasure?" River asked, her eyes on the dwindling numbers.
"Twenty minutes," the Doctor replied, "and this planet's going to crack like an egg."
Rose held the his hand. "You can fix it, right Doctor?" she asked. "Sonic's great for hacking."
"The Doctor Moon will stop it," Mr. Lux asserted. "It's programmed to protect CAL."
Then the console flickered and died. "No!" the Doctor yelled. "No, no, no, no!" He banged the side of the screen, but nothing happened. He climbed around the back of the wooden booth and turned the sonic on it from above. River pulled hers out and aimed it at the screen.
"All library systems are permanently off line," another automatic voice stated. "Sorry for the inconvenience."
"We need to stop this!" Mr. Lux declared. "We have to save CAL!"
"What is it?" the Doctor demanded. "What is CAL?"
He looked like he wanted to stonewall them again, but then he relented. "We need to get to the main computer," he told them. "And then I'll show you."
Rose frowned. "But that's at the core of the planet!"
River smiled. "Well then, let's go." She moved to the center of the room, to a circular panel of brass with a strange, wave-like design over it. She aimed her sonic at it, and the panel separated into two halves and withdrew. A pillar of bluish light stretched to the ceiling, and a metal platform hovered inside the circle. "Gravity platform," she explained.
The Doctor grabbed Rose's hand and bounded over, followed closely by Mr. Lux. "Bet we like you," he observed.
"Oh, you do," River replied with another grin.
The data core was a pulsing red ball surrounded by a swirling force field. It looked, Rose thought, like all the pictures of the Earth's core in her geography textbooks. The light was dusky red in the main computer room. The alarm was quieter, although an automatic voice periodically warned them of their dwindling time.
"There are over 4000 living minds trapped in that data core," the Doctor said.
"They won't be living for much longer unless we get them out," River noted. They dashed down a side corridor and found the primary access point. It was a group of four consoles, back to back like a compass rose.
"Help me," a voice said, "please help me."
Rose looked around wildly. "Is that a child?" she asked. "Is there a child down here?"
The Doctor was typing on the keyboard. "Computer's in sleep mode," he noted. "I'm trying to wake it up, but so far nothing's working." He pulled his brainy specs out of his suit pocket and slid them on.
River frowned. "Doctor, these readings—it's almost like it's dreaming, but machines don't dream."
Mr. Lux stepped forward, his helmet in one hand. "No," he agreed, "but little girls do. It's dreaming of a normal life and a lovely dad and of every book ever written." He pulled a lever on one of the panels surrounding the booths, and a mesh door rose.
"Help me," the voice continued. "Please help me."
They followed Mr. Lux through the door and into what looked to be a secret room. One of the strange statues was standing in front of them, and when it turned its faceplate toward them they saw that it was a little girl who was calling for help.
"Oh my god," River murmured.
"It's the girl," Rose realized, "the one we saw in the computer!"
"She's not in the computer," Mr. Lux corrected. "In a way, she is the computer—the main command node." He brushed the back of his hand against her cheek tenderly. "This is CAL."
"CAL is a child?" the Doctor asked incredulously. "A child hooked up to a mainframe? Why didn't you tell me this? I needed to know this!" He was glaring at Mr. Lux. If he had known—he could have behaved differently, maybe figured out what was going on when they first saw the little girl, and not after three people were dead.
"Because she's family!" Mr. Lux yelled back. "CAL—Charlotte Abigail Lux, my grandfather's youngest daughter." There was stunned silence from all and sundry. "She was dying," Mr. Lux continued. "So he built her a library and put her living mind inside, with the moon to watch over her and all of human history to pass the time. Any era to live in, any book to read." He smiled softly. "She loved books more than anything, and he gave her them all. He only asked that she be kept a secret—left in peace, not used as a freak show."
"So you weren't protecting a patent," the Doctor said softly. "You were protecting her." He thought better of Mr. Lux, even if he was tangentially responsible for three deaths. He knew a little bit about trying to protect those that you love. Rose too felt her heart go out to him. What wouldn't she do for her family?
"This is only half a life, of course," Mr. Lux told them, "but it's forever."
The Doctor pushed himself off the wall he'd been leaning against. "But then the shadows came."
"The Shadows," CAL repeated. "I—I have to save."
"She saved them," he continued. "Saved everyone in the library—folded them into her dreams and kept them safe." There was wonder in his voice, and sadness.
"But why didn't she tell us?" Anita asked.
"She's forgotten," the Doctor responded before Mr. Lux could take offense. "She's got over 4000 living minds chattering away inside her head. It must be like being, well, me."
Rose bumped his shoulder. "Rude," she reminded him without heat.
"So what do we do?" River wanted to know.
"Autodestruct in ten minutes," the mechanical voice reminded them.
The Doctor dropped Rose's hand and dashed over to one of the panels of computer circuitry. "Easy!" he declared. "We beam all of the people out of the data core. The computer will reset and stop the countdown." He whirled around and typed something on the console. The computer's answer was not good. He frowned and clutched at his hair with one hand. "Difficult—Charlotte doesn't have enough memory space left to make the transfer." His eyes slid across the computer equipment scattered around them, and he made a beeline for one instrument hidden behind a glass doors. "Easy!" He pulled out something that looked like a cross between a headband and a Direllian mindwiping machine. "I'll hook myself up to the computer—she can borrow my memory space."
River moved towards him, but Rose was already there. "That'll kill you!" she yelled. "Fry your brain, and I don't care how superior your biology is to humans. No one could survive that!"
"I've got the best chance," he told her. "I might just regenerate."
"You've got no chance," she snapped back, "cause you're not doing it!"
"You'll burn up both your hearts!" River put in. "And you won't regenerate!"
Rose made a grab for the thing in his hands. "Don't make me fight you, Doctor," she said and pulled out her gun. She aimed the snub-nosed barrel at him. "Don't make me do it."
He stopped what he was doing and stared at her. "You'd shoot me?" he asked, his voice even.
"To stop you from killing yourself," she replied, "in a heartsbeat."
He set the device down. "Then I'm sorry, Rose. I'm really, very sorry." Before she could react he pulled his sonic screwdriver from his sleeve, where he'd hidden it earlier, and aimed it at the Dimension Canon strapped to her wrist. She vanished in a flash of light.
"She really doesn't like it when you do that," River reminded him.
The Doctor pocketed his sonic. "As long as she's alive to be angry at me," he said grimly, "I don't care."
"When are you going to accept that other people might know better than you do?" the woman asked him, exasperation heavy in her voice.
"I'm the Doctor!" he told her. "I'm the highest authority. If you're looking for someone to go complain to, there isn't one, because it ends with me!" He grabbed the device. "Now, you and Luxy-boy back up to the main library. Prime any data cells you can for maximum download, and before you say anything else, professor, can I just mention in passing as you're here—shut up!" Then he dashed away back to the control console.
"Oh!" she huffed. "I hate you sometimes!"
"I know!" he replied snidely.
She stormed over to where Mr. Lux was waiting with Anita. "With me!" she snapped at him. "And Anita, if he dies, I'll kill him myself!" Then the two of them dashed off.
"What about the Vashta Nerada?" Anita asked as he danced between console and equipment, flicking switches and twisting dials.
"These are their forests!" the Doctor replied. "I'm going to seal Charlotte inside her world and take everybody else away. The shadows can swarm to their hearts' content."
"So you think they're just going to let us go?" she wanted to know.
"Best offer they're gonna get." He stuck his head inside one of the glass-covered sections.
"You're going to make them an offer?" Amusement dripped from her voice.
The Doctor pulled himself back out. "They'd better take it," he said viciously. "Because right now I'm finding it hard to make any kind of offer at all. 'Cause you know what?" He moved back to the console and turned to stare straight at her. "I really liked Anita." His face was thunderous. "She was brave, even when she was crying" like Rose was with the Dalek "and she never gave in—and you ate her." He buzzed the sonic at the thing that had been Anita, and the visor cleared. A bleached skull looked back at him. "But I'm going to let that pass," he continued. "Just as long as you let them pass."
"How long have you known?" the swarm asked.
He sneered. "I counted the shadows. You only have one now." He glanced to the neural relay on the neck of the suit. It was down to one bar and flickering. "She's nearly gone now." His voice was soft. "Be kind."
"These are our forests," the swarm replied. "We are not kind."
His face hardened, and if the swarm had eyes to see it would have flinched back in fear from the fury in his eyes. "I am giving you back your forests," he said, his voice deadly dangerous. "But you are giving me them. You are letting them go." He turned away, back to his work.
"These are our forests," the swarm told him. "They are our meat." It stretched out the suit's hand and shadows spread in front of it.
The Doctor glanced down, but seemed untroubled as the darkness grew nearer. If anything, he was angrier. There was a mad light in his eyes, the kind that had surfaced when he hovered over the pit on the impossible planet. "Don't play games with me," he told the swarm. He was fire and ice, danger and destruction—he was the thunder and lightning, the tornado's winds—he was the sea in a hurricane and the heart of a volcanic eruption. He was over a thousand years old, and it showed. "You just killed someone I like," he informed the Vashta Nerada in a voice like the cracking of a glacier and the roar of an avalanche. "That is not a safe place to stand! I'm the Doctor," he continued. "And you're in the biggest library in the universe." He leaned in. "Look me up."
The swarm paused, and then retreated. He continued to stare at it with eyes that reflected starfire. "You have one day," it informed him, and then it collapsed.
River Song left Mr. Lux priming the data cells and returned to the main computer room at the heart of the planet. A strange kind of crystalline calm had settled over her. She knew what she had to do. If the Doctor went ahead with his plan he would die. If he died now the results would be catastrophic. There were fixed points in time that hadn't yet been fulfilled—and she'd seen what happened when a fixed point was altered.
She knew that he wouldn't like her plan, but really, she didn't care. She had changed the time line for him (and for Rose, but he didn't know that) and she wasn't about to let him negate her sacrifice—even if she didn't remember it most of the time. Being at the center of an altered timeline was—odd. River took a deep breath and ran into the control room.
Anita was crumpled on the floor. The Doctor was working at one of the consoles. "Oh!" River cried and knelt beside her.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "She's been dead a while now." He paused, as if noticing her for the first time. "I told you to go!" he snapped.
"Lux can manage without me." She tried to keep her voice level, but some of the tears that were collecting in her eyes had crept in, and there was a waver in her speech. She took a breath and reached for the steel she knew she possessed. "But you can't." He was turned away from her. It was now or never. She moved to stand beside him. He turned, probably to tell her off, and she decked him in the face.
It took Rose longer than she liked to fix the Dimension Canon. The sneaky bastard had randomized the controls in an attempt to keep her from jumping, but the TARDIS had shown her one of his workrooms and she raided his spare sonic to undo the damage. In the process she'd run through every curse she knew (and there were quite a few—her misspent youth on the Powell Estate was good for something) and when she exhausted that supply she went back and started over in Mandarin. How many times did she have to slap him before he got it through that thick skull and into his enormous brain that they were partners, and partners did not send each other away? If he was still alive when she found him she was going to kill him, or at the very least, make him regenerate. Maybe the next incarnation would understand that Rose Tyler knows what she wants, and can handle whatever he can.
She was geared up for a full-out fight with the Doctor when she reappeared in the control room, but what she saw gave her pause. The Doctor was unconscious and handcuffed to the control console, which was a good distance from where River Song sat, twisting wires together and feeding them into the strange metal headband.
"Stop," Rose said. She didn't want to. Really, she wanted to let River get on with it and go her merry way with the Doctor. She knew, though, that she couldn't. Not when River was—yes. Well. "What are you doing?"
River glanced up. "Don't you hate when he does that? Honestly, I don't know how you put up with this one. I thought you said he was better at letting you stay that the other one."
"He needs to be reminded every-so-often," Rose acknowledged with a shrug. "But you didn't answer my question."
River was silent for a few moments. "If he did this, he would die. His hearts would burn up and his brain would liquefy and he wouldn't regenerate. That can't happen. The universe needs the Doctor."
"So let me." The words were easier than she thought they would be. She tried to keep in mind that the Doctor loved this woman, that he needed her. She thought she could do anything if it would help him. "He told me that you know his name—and he told me what that meant." She couldn't keep the heartbreak out of her voice, not completely. "River—he needs you. And I can't help but think that he wouldn't marry you if I'm alive. Maybe that's what's supposed to happen."
"It's not." The denial was swift and firm. "I know both of you in the future."
"Time can be rewritten," Rose replied softly.
River shook her head. "Not those times, not one line. If you do this there will be worse than Reapers, Rose. All of time will disintegrate. There are fixed points ahead, in his personal future and yours."
Behind her the Doctor began to stir. "River!" he barked when he saw them. "What are you doing? That's my job!"
The woman laughed at him. "And what, I'm not allowed to have a career?"
He glared at her. "Why am I handcuffed? Why do you even have handcuffs?"
River was smiling, although her eyes were full. "Spoilers," she told him smugly.
"Rose," he said in his best Doctor-voice, "let me loose."
"Why?" she asked him.
"So that I can do what needs to be done."
Rose snorted. "You aren't the only person who can save the world, Doctor."
"I'm the only one who'd have a chance!" he snapped. "She doesn't have any!"
"You wouldn't have a chance!" River replied harshly. "And neither do I! No one does." There was silence for a moment as she made a minute adjustment to one of the cables. "I'm timing it for the end of the countdown. There will be a blip in the command flow—should improve our chances of a clean download." He opened his mouth to say something, but she continued on. "It's funny, really. This means that both of you have always known. Every time I saw you, was this at the back of your minds?" She blinked and tears carved tracks down her cheeks. "The last time I saw you—the you that I know, you showed up at my door with a new suit and a haircut." She smiled tearfully. "And you," she said to Rose, "were wearing a little black dress and the most gorgeous pair of red heels. We went to Darillium to see the singing towers. It was—magical. The towers sang," she told the Doctor, "and you cried. You wouldn't tell me why." She was smiling at them again, a secretive smile that hinted at greater knowledge. "A Time Lord only tells his wife his name—but who said I learned it from him?"
They stared at her. "Do you mean—" Rose began, but River shook her head.
"Spoilers," she told them.
"Autodestruct in thirty seconds," the automatic voice reminded them.
The Doctor strained at the cuffs, desperately trying to grab the sonic screwdrivers—his and hers—that lay just beyond his reach. "There has to be another way!"
"There isn't." She set the headband on top of her skull and it slid down to rest at her temples. "It's not over for you two—you've got all of that to come. The three of us—time and space. Oh, you just watch us run," she told him fervently.
10
"Let me loose, Rose," the Doctor ordered. "I can fix this."
Rose glanced at River, and then shook her head. "No, Doctor."
"You don't understand yet," River told them. "But you will. I promise, you will."
5
The Doctor was staring at her, Rose knew, and she couldn't meet his eyes. There was a look she didn't want to see. She didn't want him to be disappointed in her, to be angry at her, but she couldn't let him go, not if what River said was true. She remembered her father and the chaos that had come from her attempt to save his life. No, she would not make that mistake again.
1
River plugged two cables together as the countdown ended and a blinding white light filled the room. She yelled something, Rose couldn't tell what, and then she was still.
Donna Noble sat on the stairs of her house—her imaginary house from her imaginary life. The children were gone, but then they were never real in the first place. Oh, but they felt real. It all felt real and she desperately wanted it to stop. The front door slammed open and her husband—but was he really her husband, or did she just make him up—bolted inside.
"Donna!" he called. "What's happening?"
She ran to him and grabbed his arms. He felt solid, comforting—real. "I don't know," she managed to choke out. "But it isn't real!" Tears slid down her cheeks and dripped off her chin. "Nothing here is real. The whole world—it isn't real!"
He stared at her. "Am I real?" he asked.
She blinked. "Of course you're real!" she replied, with a certainty she did not feel. She lay her hands on his cheeks and stared into his eyes. "I hope you're real—oh god!" The world was turning white. Brilliant light surrounded them, pulled them apart. "I'll find you!" she yelled as he stretched out his hand to her. "I'll find you, I promise I will!" And then he was gone.
In the Library proper Mr. Lux was surrounded by people, all of them dressed in simple, black clothing. It was instantaneous—one minute he was alone, and the next they were there, talking, laughing, living.
"You're back!" he cried and embraced a young man, who patted him awkwardly on the back. "You're all back!" He was almost skipping as he moved through the room. "He did it!"
Rose picked up the Doctor's sonic screwdriver and let him out of the cuffs. He stayed on the floor, staring at River's body. The room smelled of roast pork and it made Rose nauseous. "You could have released me," he said roughly.
She bit her lip. "No." Her voice was soft and full of regret. "I really couldn't." She was quiet for a moment. "You could have let me stay."
The Doctor snorted. "So what, so you could take River's place?"
She looked at him levelly until he met her gaze. "One of these days, Doctor, I'm going to take the hint, and when you send me away I won't come back." The she turned on her heel and walked away.
Donna found the two of them hours later. The Doctor was leaning up against a wall near one of the teleport pads and Rose stood a few feet away, her arms crossed. They were not touching. They weren't even looking at one another. Donna knew she should ask what happened. The two of them were so bloody stubborn sometimes—but right now all she could feel was empty.
"Any luck?" the Doctor asked.
She shook her head. She'd been searching ever since she found herself back in the library. "Wasn't even anyone called 'Lee' in the Library that day. I suppose he could have had a different name out here, but let's be honest." She smiled, although it was far from cheerful. "He wasn't real, was he. I made up the perfect man—gorgeous, adores me, and hardly able to speak a word." She paused. "What does that say about me, then?"
"Everything," Rose replied. Donna and the Doctor turned to stare at her. She blinked. "Sorry, I meant to say nothing, just ended up saying 'everything.'" She didn't look at them. "I'm going back to the TARDIS," she said. "Bit knackered, and I could really use a shower."
"What about the two of you?" Donna asked after she'd gone.
The Doctor was silent for a moment. "I sent her away again," he confessed. "I used the sonic to make the Cannon take her back to the TARDIS." He sighed. "She said—she said that the next time I do that she might not come back. And then there was this misunderstanding with River—Rose thought she was my wife from the future." He laughed. It was not a happy sound. "Of course, so did I for a while."
Donna cocked an eyebrow at him. "Oh, spaceman, you are hopeless."
He ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, Donna. We've established that."
They were silent for a while, just watching the throng of people move around them. "Take us somewhere pretty," she told him eventually. "Somewhere romantic—somewhere with a spa." She smiled crookedly at him. "I think we could use a rest."
He nodded. "I know just the place. I've been meaning to go there, actually. It's a planet called Midnight, and it's one gigantic diamond."
Donna smiled. "Yeah, that sounds nice."
He held out his hand. "Come on."
They turned to go, and as she stepped through the door a man looked up from the teleport pad—a man with dark curly hair, eyes that twinkled with mischief, and a wide, generous smile. He opened his mouth. "D—d-d—d" but as he tried to speak, he faded from sight.
The Doctor made a slight detour on the route to the TARDIS. They were standing in one of the open hallways that looked out over the rest of the Library. It was a beautiful view. She would like it, he thought, as he pulled the TARDIS blue book—River Song's diary—out of his pocket. Donna stood a few steps behind him as he laid it on the railing next to other books scattered about the smooth surface.
"You friend," Donna began hesitantly, "Professor Song—she knew you and Rose in the future, and she knew me. Maybe—we'll see her again soon."
The Doctor patted the book lightly. "This is her journal. Her past—but my future. We could take a look, see what's coming."
Donna bit her lip, and shook her head. "Spoilers," she reminded him.
He nodded. "Yeah." Then he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out River's sonic screwdriver, and laid it gently on top of the book. "Come on," he told her and thrust his hands into his pockets as they started up the stairs. "The next chapter is this way."
They were halfway up when he froze. "Why?" he demanded.
Donna blinked at him. "What?" she asked.
"Why would I give her my screwdriver? Why would I do that?" he continued. "I'm a genius, Donna, and future me had years to think about it, all those years to think of a way to save her—and what he did was give her a screwdriver, albeit a sonic one. Why would I do that?" He bolted back down and grabbed the device in question. He ran his fingers over it, testing, probing, and a piece of the outer shell came loose, revealing a bar of green lights that flickered, slowly fading. It was a neural relay. "Oh," he breathed. "Oh!" And then he grinned. "I'm very good!"
"What have you done?" Donna asked.
He held up the screwdriver so she could see the lights. "Saved her." And then he was off.
River Song blinked. She'd been in the control room strapped into the chair. She remembered the chair, and the device, and a searing pain, and then—nothing. She was not in the control room any longer. She was standing on a lawn and there was just a hint of a chill in the air. The sky was overcast and the smell of rain lingered. She was wearing a dress, a long, white dress and a beautiful wrap over it.
"It's okay." A little girl was standing in front of her—the girl from the computer. Next to her was a tall, bald, black man who wore round spectacles and a kindly expression. The girl smiled at her. "You're safe. You'll always be safe here. The Doctor fixed the data core." She gestured to their surroundings. "This is a good place now." River looked around, took in the picket fence and the imposing stone building behind them. "I was worried you might be lonely," the girl continued, "so I brought you some friends."
River turned around and found that her team was looking back at her. Proper Dave and Other Dave, Anita, and Miss Evangelista were all there, all smiling. River felt tears welling up in her eyes as they moved forward to embrace her. "Oh, for heaven's sake," she murmured as they hugged her, each in turn. "They just can't do it, can they? They just can't give in."
Rose Tyler lay curled in a ball beneath the thick, pink duvet that covered her old bed, the bed she'd slept in before she started sharing a room with the Doctor. She knew that he was probably looking for her, but she didn't want to see him at the moment, and she also knew that the TARDIS would understand and keep him away until she was ready. The cold, hard ball of fear that had clawed its way into her chest was melting. The Doctor hadn't told River his name—so who had? She didn't want to examine the question too closely, didn't want to get her hopes up. After all, she was still furious with him. Like Donna, he'd tricked her, sent her away supposedly to keep her safe—but really to keep her from interfering with his plans.
She wasn't the same girl that she had been when she first traveled with him. She was almost two centuries older, with a vast amount of time traveling experience under her belt. She'd been a Torchwood Agent for close to sixty years before she became their prisoner. She had her own transport, which he'd sabotaged, and her own weapon, which she would have used to stop him from essentially killing himself.
She knew that she loved him more than anything else in the universe. She also knew that a marriage of unequal partners could not last. He said that she was more than a companion—but she needed him to believe it. She couldn't keep being more than a companion, in that she shared his bed, but less than his equal when it came time to take action.
"Your pilot," she murmured, "is a bit of an idiot." The TARDIS hummed comfortingly, and Rose knew that the ship agreed with her. She cracked a smile. "But I suppose you know all about that." The lights flickered, and when they came back up Rose discovered a slim, dark blue book sitting on her bedside table, It was tied shut with a golden ribbon that disappeared into the spine. "Thanks," she said, and stroked the wall gently. The TARDIS thrummed her appreciation. It was always nice to feel wanted.
Rose pulled a pen out of her pocket and opened the book. 'Today,' she began to write, 'we met a woman from our future, a woman named River Song.'
If the Doctor had opened River's journal, which he wouldn't have done even if Donna had asked because he knew all too well the dangers of foreknowledge, he would have found a record of his life. There were newspaper clippings and poloroids, copied documents and journal entries, legends and eye-witness interviews in the book. And if he'd turned to the middle he would have found, beneath a picture of a bottle-blonde woman with a blue dress and a knowing smile and a gangly man who'd traded his bowtie and tweed jacket in for a pair of khaki trousers and a white cotton shirt, this revelation from the journal's owner:
When you run with Rose and the Doctor it feels like it will never end, but however hard you try you can't run forever. Everybody knows that everybody dies and nobody knows it like they do, but I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if they ever, for one moment, accepted it.
Everybody knows that everybody dies, but not every day—not today. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days nobody dies at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days when the wind stands fair and the Doctor and Rose come to call—
On those days, everybody lives.
