Futilitarian

Onesmartcookie78

Summary: The crepuscule of my old life lay before me, I knew, as I stared at myself sleeping peacefully in the only bedroom that would ever be truly mine. I had two choices: strap the ever-so-troublesome malfunctioning Vortex Manipulator to my own wrist, thus validating everything that had occurred within the past few years; or walk away and hope that, by not creating my own future, by not keeping up my own timeline, I would cease to exist in this hellish world, and return back to the girl who could sleep in that bed, unaware.

Disclaimer: I don't own, nor will I probably ever own, Doctor Who.

A/N: Don't mind me, just posting when I feel like it lol


elysium (n.): the abode of the blessed after death


The first message is terrifying, but it's the second that haunts me.

"—if you want to live, count the shadows."

"Donna, Morgan?" the Doctor says more than asks. "Stay out of the shadows."

Count the shadows? Stay out of the shadows? I should have stayed with Prisoner Zero.

"Why, what's in the shadows?" Donna asks.

The Doctor ignores her. "I got a message on the psychic paper," he says in reply, holding up the object in question. A message? When had he received that? It must have happened earlier, when I was in the Med-Bay and he took that wallet out of his pocket.

The Library, come as soon as you can. x

"Cry for help? With a kiss?" Donna asks in slight disbelief, peering at the piece of paper speculatively. She snorts but looks at me in consideration. "And it wasn't from you, innit?"

I scoff. "I was with you two when he was sent it. I was barely conscious!"

Donna just looks at me.

I roll my eyes. "And," I add defensively, "do I really look like I would sign it with a kiss?"

"Not yet, maybe," Donna muttered.

"I heard that!"

"At first I thought it was from Morgan," the Doctor says, half to placate Donna, half because he had, in fact, thought that I had been the one to send it.

"With a kiss?" Donna repeats, deadpan.

The Doctor scoffs. "We've all done that," he dismisses with a wave of the so-called "psychic paper", folding the wallet back up and tucking it into the depths of his pocket.

Have we? I think to myself.

"Well. Then, who's it from?" asks Donna.

"No idea," the Doctor replies cheerily, though I can tell the question is weighing on him.

"So why did we come here? Why did you—"

The Doctor, however, is focused on something over both of our shoulders. "Donna, Morgan?"

"What's happening?" I hear Donna ask, but I'm already running, my soles quiet on the floor. I don't need to look to know that something bad is happening, because something bad always seems to be happening around the Doctor. I slam my body against the door to my right to no avail.

The Doctor moves me aside with an arm around my waist and points that cylindrical object at the door. The end of it lights up as the device whirrs, and yet, nothing happens. "Come on," the Doctor hisses.

"What's wrong, is it locked?" asks Donna.

"Jammed. The wood's warped," the Doctor replies. "I can vibrate the molecules, fry the bindings, shatterline the interface—"

"Out of the way," Donna says, unceremoniously shoving the two of us to the side. That done, she swings her leg back before throwing it forward once, twice—

My eyes widen as I finally realize that the lights have been going out. The darkness is almost upon us now, stay out of the shadows, and I clutch at the Doctor's coat almost without realizing I'm doing so.

Donna brings her leg back for a third time and something gives. Her momentum carrying her forward, Donna nearly falls to her knees inside the room. The Doctor and I skirt around her and he quickly slams the door shut behind us, plucking a book off the shelf and using it to bar the handles so that no one can enter behind us.

Feeling no more secure than before, I turn around, only to see a small metal ball floating in the air about five feet in front of us.

"Oh, hello," the Doctor says gently to it, as though it might be alive. Maybe it is. I wouldn't know. I furrow my brow, wondering what the hell it is. "Sorry to burst in on you like this. Okay if we stop here for a bit?"

In response, the ball falls to the ground with a metallic tink.

"What is that?" I ask, taking a few steps forward towards where the Doctor is crouched down examining the object and kneeling beside him.

"Security camera," he replies, as though this is what every security camera looks like. Maybe in the future, it is. "Switched itself off though." He pulls back out the object from earlier and points it at the ball. "Nice door skills, by the way, Donna," he compliments.

"Yeah, well, you know," she says, shrugging it off. "Boyfriends." No. No, I certainly don't know. "Sometimes you need the element of surprise," she continues.

I shoot her a weird look. "After this, we're going to need to have a chat," I say, then crack my knuckles. "And perhaps with those 'boyfriends' as well."

She laughs shortly, before remembering the gravity of the situation. "So, are we safe here?"

"Of course we're safe. There's a little shop," the Doctor answers, as if that makes all the difference. Donna and I share a look. I roll my eyes. "There we go! Gotcha!" he exclaims, holding up the ball for our perusal. There's now very clearly a camera facing our direction. Self-consciously, I run a hand through my messy hair; I hadn't thought to take a shower when I had the chance, and I still smelled like salt-water from my fall into the library-pool earlier.

No, stop it. No. No. The words scroll across the screen positioned above the camera.

"Ooo, I'm sorry," the Doctor says hastily, patting at the ball gently. "It's alive," he says to Donna and I. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"But you said it was a security camera," Donna says in confusion.

"That doesn't preclude it from being alive," I point out hesitantly. "You thought the books might be alive earlier. Why not the security camera?"

Donna opens and closes her mouth for a few seconds but seems to accept the answer.

Others are coming, the screen reads, The Library is breached. Others are coming.

Donna goes over to another one of those weird head statues, a node, the Doctor had called it, and starts asking it questions. The Doctor remains fixated on the ball for a few moments before standing. I follow him to my feet and start to make my way over to Donna, but he catches my wrist.

"Morgan," he says, and his expression is the most serious I've ever seen, perhaps on par with…on par with when I'd seen him die—no, that's not the terminology. What did he call it? Regeneration? "I'm not going to lie to you," he says quietly. "This is a very dangerous situation. If it ever gets too dangerous, I want you to hit that button," he says, tapping at the right side of the vortex manipulator to indicate which of the many buttons he means.

"Why, what's going—"

He drops my wrist and darts forward over to Donna, grabbing at her waist. "No, no wait!"

"Oi! Hands!" she exclaims, elbowing at him.

He ignores her attempts to break free and I realize what he's so worried about: before, where there had been nothing, is a large, triangular shadow.

"Doctor—?" I start.

There's nothing that can be casting that.

A shiver wracks my body.

"Oh, I'm thick!" he says, practically bouncing on his toes as he smacks at his forehead like an insane person. "Look at me, I'm old and thick. Head's too full of stuff. I need a bigger head!" Considering how much self-praise I've heard him throw around, I don't necessarily think that's true. Maybe more like a reprioritization?

"The shadow," Donna points out, "it's gone!"

Gone? A shadow can't just vanish, a shadow can't disappear. That shadow, that shadow must have—

I'm snapped from my thoughts by the Doctor hurriedly trying to shepherd us back over to where we left the TARDIS. "We need to go. Now," the Doctor says. "The shadow hasn't gone, it's moved."

Another shiver.

And then a door is crumbling down behind us.

I spin on my heel, startled, and yelp.

"Hello, sweetie," comes the voice of another woman, the one leading the pack. Even through her helmet, I can tell that her hair is a wild, curling mess of light brown locks, so different from my dark, mostly straight hair. As she pops her helmet, more of her face is revealed, and she's pretty, with full lips and beautiful green eyes.

"Tell me you're not archaeologists," the Doctor practically begs after he comes to the realization that telling them to leave isn't going to work. "I'm a time traveler, I point and laugh at archaeologists."

The woman laughs. "Ah. Professor River Song," she shoots a wink at me over the Doctor's shoulder. "Archeologist."

I give her a ghost of a smile, but I must still look rather terrified, because she tilts her head at me in question.

The Doctor tries to get everyone to leave again, and my finger is itching for that button when River approaches me. "You don't want to miss this adventure, sweetie," she tells me, bending down slightly, her finger tap-tap-tapping at the face of my vortex manipulator, almost as if she knows what it does, almost as if she's met me before. She says, almost conspiratorially, "We're only just getting started."

"No," says the Doctor, sounding steadily more irritated. "We're leaving. Something came to this library and killed everything in it. Killed a whole world."

Yeah, that's gonna be a no from me dawg.

I think about pressing the button, but then I remember the pain. Besides, things aren't that dangerous. Not yet.

River scoffs. "That was a hundred years ago," she says, wrapping an arm about my shoulders companionably, as though she might find an ally in me if not in the Doctor. "The Library's been silent for a hundred years," she continues, squeezing me comfortingly. "Whatever came here is long dead."

The Doctor eyes her arm with disapproval and I catch her rolling her eyes at the edge of my vision. I think I'm starting to like her, much like I'd immediately liked Donna. Anyone who isn't afraid to sass the Doctor is alright in my book.

"Bet your life?" the Doctor asks.

"Always," River returns with another wink, then leaves me to help one of the Daves (there are two, one of whom goes by Proper Dave, and the other, creatively, by Other Dave) seal the door.

While she does that, another woman, Miss Evangelista, tries to get us to sign a contract to say that our experience inside The Library constitutes the intellectual property of the Felman Lux Corporation. Considering Lux himself is too much of a fucking coward to try and get us to sign the contract, I refuse to take a copy on principle. The Doctor and Donna reluctantly accept them (if only to make Evangelista stop brandishing them at us as if we'll die if we don't sign them) and then promptly tear them up in Mr. Lux's face.

Mr. Lux sputters. "My family built this Library," he says. "I have rights!"

The Doctor ignores him. "Torch?" the Doctor asks, holding out his hand expectantly.

Reluctantly, Lux complies.

"Spooky, isn't it?" the Doctor asks, shining the flashlight into the darkness. "Almost every species in the universe has an irrational fear of the dark." He pauses, passes the flashlight to me, then claps his hands together, facing everyone once more. "Except, it's not irrational. It's Vashta Nerada."

"Vashta Nerada?" Donna repeats.

For some reason that I can't even begin to explain, the words cause a lightbulb to flicker on and off in my brain. Like I've heard of this "Vashta Nerada" before. But that's impossible, because I can't. I've never seen Doctor Who, beyond the first episode, never come across the "Vashta Nerada" in a book, never so much as heard the words spoken before now.

"It's what's in the dark," I say, as if on autopilot.

"It's what's always in the dark," the Doctor finishes, looking at me. His expression is unreadable. "Lights!" he exclaims suddenly, turning away from me. "We need lights. You got lights?"

"Anita," River says, rejoining us and pointing to the other woman, "unpack the lights."

"In a circle!" the Doctor instructs. "Safe area, big as you can, lights pointing out."

"You're not seriously going to listen to this man," Lux asks in apparent disbelief.

"Considering he's the only person here who knows what's going on, I would," I return with a scowl.

River huffs a short laugh, putting her hand on my arm again. "Apparently, I am. Other Dave, make sure the door's secure, then help Anita," she orders. "Proper Dave, find an active terminal: I want access to the library database. See what you can find about what happened here a hundred years ago." She pauses, pulling me forward to walk over to a desk, where she takes a battered-looking blue book from the depths of her backpack. The cover reminds me of the panels on the outside of the TARDIS, and I swear that the color is an exact match. "Pretty boy," she says as she waves over at the Doctor to try and get his attention. "Step into my office." When he finally comes over, she thanks him.

"For what?" the Doctor asks in confusion.

"The usual," she says, her brows furrowing slightly. "Coming when I call."

"That was you?" the Doctor asks.

River laughs. "You're doing a very good job, acting like you don't know me," she says then turns to me, taking my hand kindly between both of hers. "How about you, sweetie?"

I stare at her, willing the same lightbulb of recognition to go off as before, but nothing happens. All I see when I look at her is a strong, confident woman who, for some reason, trusts us. Who, for some reason, is familiar with us. Who calls us "sweetie" and feels comfortable with casual intimacy. Whose warmth and familiarity calls into mind my mother.

"Okay then," she mutters as she searches my eyes. She abruptly drops my hand and I feel cold for it. "Shall we do diaries, then?" she asks, flipping through the pages of her book. "Morgan's hair's still quite dark, so early days." She peers at the Doctor from under her lashes and raises her brows at what she finds. "Very early days," she amends. "So, er, crash of the Byzantium. Have we done that yet?"

The Doctor and I exchange a glance. He raises a brow at me. I shake my head and raise a brow at him back. He shakes his head too.

"Obviously ringing no bells," River says, looking between the two of us. There's a peculiar expression on her face as she turns back to her "diary", continuing to flip through the pages. "Right. Oh, picnic at Asgard yet?"

"Asgard?" I ask, making a face. "Like from Thor?"

She laughs.

I don't laugh with her, casting another glance at the Doctor instead.

She coughs. "Alright, obviously not. Blimey, very early days then. Whew, life of a time traveler. Never knew it could be such hard work." She freezes in her tracks, stops the flipping, and then looks, really looks at us as we look at each other. Her hand comes up to cup the Doctor's cheek and something shoots through me at the casualness of the touch. Something hot and bright and unnamable. "Look at you," she whispers. "Oh, you're young."

"I'm really not, you know," the Doctor says, glancing at her fingers.

She doesn't take the hint. "No, but you are." She traces his cheekbone with her thumb, then withdraws, picking at my long hair this time. She brings it up to her face for inspection, rubbing the strands between her fingers. "You're younger than I've ever seen you," she says, and her voice is full of wonder. Of wonder and of heartbreak.

But how can I have broken her heart when I've never met her?

Unless—

Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey.

She's from our future.

"Doctor, Morgan," she begins pleadingly. "Please tell me you know who I am?"

I bite my lip, loath to tell her that, in fact, I've never met her before in my life, but the Doctor has no such qualms. "Who are you?" he asks, and I can see the moment her heart shatters.


Miss Evangelista and Proper Dave end up skeletons in their space suits. The Doctor tries to teleport Donna out of the Library, but something goes wrong and we end up hearing "Donna Noble has been saved," though what that means is beyond any of us.

All in all, things aren't going so well, and I have no idea how to help them go any better. The Doctor, for his part, is furious about what happened with Donna, vowing to get her back. It's all I can do to keep up with all the running, though I don't have much of a choice—the Doctor clings to me like a lifeline, holding my hand tightly, his panic and fear so palpable that I can nearly taste them. I'm not sure if he holds my hand for my sake, or for his, but I'm grateful for the allowance all the same. River is a little more confident, but I can tell that the Library is getting to her too; she should have listened when the Doctor first told her to leave. But she doesn't need any such hand holding from him. She's strong enough, independent enough, clever enough without it.

She's an archeologist who seems to have experience with these sorts of dangers, and I'm…I'm just a philosophy student. I'd never even managed to get my doctorate, pulled into this world before I had my PhD firmly in my grasp. What am I even doing here? I don't belong here.

My finger hovers over the button once more, again, I'm disrupted by River.

"I know it's tough," she says quietly as she comes up to me, "but stick around as long as you can."

As long as I can?

I'm still puzzling over what she's said when she turns to the Doctor. "Use the red settings," she advises him as he scans at the shadows.

"It doesn't have a red setting," the Doctor says impatiently.

"Well, use the dampers," she tells him.

"It doesn't have dampers." I can tell he's getting steadily more irritated, and in return, I place a hand on his arm.

"It will do one day," she says, in that all-knowing, cat-that-ate-the-canary way of hers.

The Doctor takes the sonic screwdriver she'd showed off earlier and examines it closely. "So, some day in the future I just—what—give you my sonic screwdriver?"

"Yeah," River replies easily.

"Why would I do that?" the Doctor asks, sounding positively aghast.

"Well," says River sardonically, "I didn't pluck it from your cold, dead hands, if that's what you're worried about."

Though, considering her aim with that squareness gun, it wouldn't shock me if she had.

"Listen to me," River begins, laying her hand over his and taking back the screwdriver gently. "You're angry. I understand that. But you need to be less emotional right now. There are six people in this room still alive. Focus on that." Then, she mutters, almost as an afterthought, "Dear God, you're hard work young."

"Young?" the Doctor splutters.

"That's the second time you've said that," I say, narrowing my eyes at her. "Are you really—?"

She puts a finger to my lips and winks. "Spoilers."

She focuses back on the Doctor, and I can't tell if I'm annoyed at how easily she dismissed me, or just how quickly her attention is drawn to the man beside me instead.

"Doctor," she begins softly, patiently, "one day, I'm going to be someone that you trust completely, but I can't wait for you to find that out." She glances at me once more and her expression drops, lips curling down. "And I'm really, truly sorry," she says, and then she whispers something in the Doctor's ear. When she pulls back, she apologizes to me again before asking the Doctor if the two of them are okay.

He looks completely stunned, and worse still, thunderous, but all he does is nod mutely.

"What did she—"

"Not here," he says. And then launches into a lengthy explanation about his screwdriver, wherein we find that Donna is still probably alive. Anita's shadow gets infected by the Vashta Nerada and, in a flash of brilliance, the Doctor has Anita put her helmet back on. He darkens the visor to try and trick the Vashta Nerada into thinking that they've already infested the suit. After that, the Doctor tries to talk to Proper Dave, aka the Vashta Nerada now inhabiting his suit. He insists that I follow River instead of staying with him, which is certainly odd; earlier he'd seemed almost loath to let her near me, let alone to leave me with her, instead preferring to drag me about by the hand, but now he's trusting her with my life.

What did she say to him? Something only the Doctor would know.

Oh, the Doctor. I don't want to be worried about him, but I am. I can't help it. He's the only one who seems to know how to get out of here, the only one who ever seems to know what's going on. And I'm worried that he's going to get himself killed if he's not in my line of sight for just one minute. It's an odd thing, being worried about someone you barely know. I can hardly explain why it's getting to me so much, but it is. At least if I could see him, then I could verify that he's alright.

River must notice my distraction, for she shoots me a reassuring smile and comments to me quietly as she scans the shadows with her own sonic screwdriver. "It's funny," she says, "but I keep wishing the Doctor were here."

"He is," Anita and I say at the same time.

"No," River shakes her head with a soft smile. "You know like when you see a photograph of someone you know, but it's from years before you knew them? It's like they're not quite finished. They're not done yet. Well," she sighs, "the Doctor is here. Morgan is here. But they're not my Doctor, not my Morgan. My Doctor—my Doctor," she says, a faraway look in her eyes. "I've seen whole armies turn and run away. And he'd just swagger off back to his TARDIS and open the doors with a snap of his fingers." She looks—she looks almost lovesick, and that something deep inside me pangs once more. "The Doctor and his TARDIS," she says dreamily. "Next stop, everywhere."

"And me?" I ask before I can help myself, and her gaze turns on me, almost apologetic all over again, though why—for what reason—I don't know. "What about m—"

"Spoilers. No one can open the TARDIS by snapping their fingers," the Doctor scoffs as he rejoins us. "It doesn't work like that."

"It does for the Doctor," River counters.

"I am the Doctor."

"Yeah, some day."

"Doctor," asks Anita. "When we first met, you didn't trust Professor Song. And then she whispered a word in your ear, and you did. My life so far…I could use a word like that. What did she say? Give a dead girl a break. Your secrets are safe with me."

"'Safe,'" the Doctor repeats, and I can tell that his mind is racing, can see it in the expression on his face, in the way his eyes dart back and forth between me and Anita and River. "'Safe,'" he repeats. "Nobody says 'saved'. Nutters say 'saved'. You say 'safe.' It did mean 'safe', it meant—it literally meant saved!"

"Like on a computer?" I ask, trying to follow his logic.

"Yes, Morgan, you brilliant, brilliant girl!" he says, kissing me on the mouth, then runs over to the computer. "See, there it is, right here. A hundred years ago, massive power surge," he explains. "All the teleports going at once. Soon as the Vashta Nerada hit their hatching cycle, they attack. Someone hits the alarm. The computer tries to teleport them out, but—"

"It tried to teleport four thousand twenty-two people?" River asks incredulously.

"And it saved them! The computer saved them!" I say in realization. The Doctor grins at me encouragingly. "Nowhere was safe in the whole Library, so they're stuck in the system, waiting to be sent like an email."

"The Library, a whole world of books, and right at the core, biggest hard-drive in history," the Doctor continues. "The index to everything ever written with backup copies of every single book, and the computer saved four thousand twenty-two people the only way a computer can. It saved them to the hard drive."

Just as he's gesturing towards the computer, the screen goes blank.

All Library systems are permanently offline. Sorry for any inconvenience, reads the message.

"We need to save Cal," Lux says. "Have to get to the main computer. C'mon, I'll show you."

As it turns out, by 'Cal', he means his aunt, a child who was dying. Instead of just letting her die, they implanted her mind into the computer so that she could live some semblance of a life. He hadn't been trying to protect his patent by trying to get us to sign those papers earlier; he'd been trying to keep us from disclosing the secret that is Cal.

"She saved everyone in the Library," the Doctor breathes. "Folded them into her dreams and kept them safe."

"Why didn't she say something?" asks Anita sensibly.

"Because she'd forgotten. She's got over four thousand living minds chatting away inside her head," the Doctor says.

AUTO-DESTRUCT IN TEN MINUTES! the computer blares.

"What do we do, then?" asks River, looking to the Doctor to respond.

"Easy!" he proclaims. "We beam all the people out of the data core. The computer resets and stops the countdown." Then he frowns. "Difficult: Cal doesn't have enough memory space left to make the transfer." He brightens again. "Easy!" he says, then catches sight of me, and his expression falls once more, smile fading. "I'll hook myself up to the computer," he says slowly, "so that she can borrow my memory space." He reaches out and takes my hand.

"Difficult," River interjects. "It'll kill you stone dead."

I squeeze his hand harder. This is not how he ends. I know. I saw him die. This can't be how it happens. He squeezes back, shooting me a small, secretive smile. "It's easy to criticize," he says to River, as though it's still a great plan.

"There's got to be another way," I say quietly.

River shakes her head. "It'll burn out both your hearts, and you won't regenerate."

But he has to. I saw him do as much. But I can't say that, not right now. Because that's the future, and if there's one thing I learned from reading science fiction, it's that you can't disclose someone's future to them. It's why River keeps that diary, it's why I never mentioned Amelia and Prisoner Zero to this Doctor, it's why the Doctor can't die today.

So I exchange a glance with River, begging her with my eyes for something, anything, some kind of lifeline. She gives me the slightest of nods: she has a plan.

As it turns out, Anita has been dead for a while now, though the Vashta Nerada look up the Doctor in their books and deem him enough of a threat to give him one day to fix this whole mess before they start feeding on everything and anything dumb enough to enter this library.

Lux leaves to go prime data cells for maximum download, and although the Doctor instructs her to follow, River doesn't. "Lux can manage without me," she says. "You can't."

The Doctor nods once, eyeing her speculatively, and takes me to a slightly more secluded area. I can still see River behind him from our position, but there's no way for him to see her.

She nods at me once in return and starts to creep forward slowly, step by step.

The Doctor, meanwhile, has his sad eyes fixed wholly and solely on me. "I know," he begins softly, "I know that it's early for you. But you—you're—" He takes a breath and leans down to press his forehead against mine. I try to hold his eyes, his warm brown eyes that have been so welcoming of me, so understanding even when I've been nothing but rude and confused towards him. "You're everything," he says, reaching up to brush a strand of hair away from my face. "My everything," he repeats, closing his eyes, and I follow suit. He takes a shaky inhale. I feel his breath washing over my face, my lips. His fingers linger on my cheek, and then he's angling my face towards his.

Everything.

His mouth brushes softly against mine and then—

"Thanks for distracting him, sweetie," says River, and then she knocks him out.

For a few seconds, I just stare at her, unable to believe that this has just happened, that she'd just punched him hard enough to knock him out, that he'd nearly kissed me, but River literally snaps in my face, drawing my focus back to her. "Stay with me a few more minutes, sweetie," she says, and begins roughly dragging the Doctor over to some copper piping where she can more easily tie him up. "Handcuffs in his left pocket, love," she tells me, patting me on the cheek gently before heading over to the machine and starting to twist some wires together.

"How do you—?"

"Spoilers." I hesitantly reach into the Doctor's pocket, surprised to find that they are really quite unassumingly deep. After floundering around in them for a few seconds, I finally manage to latch onto something distinctly metallic. I withdraw a set of handcuffs and set to work chaining up the Doctor. I'm careful to get both hands, as per River's instruction, so that he won't just be able to sonic them off.

"River," I say, once that's done. "What are you going to do?"

She gives me a small smile. "Even this young, you're worried about me."

I furrow my brow. "Of course I am," I breathe. "You've been—"

Kind, wonderful, clever. Funny. My friend.

"No, I don't want to hear it," she says, and there are tears in her eyes. "You'll make me ruin my makeup."

My heart squeezes in my chest because I already know the answer. "You didn't answer the question though," I point out weakly.

"The same thing the Doctor was going to do," she finally says after a long moment.

So she'll die? Isn't that, like, not allowed? She's clearly had so many adventures with us, with me and the Doctor both, and just like that…just like this she'll be gone. Just as we're meeting her for the first time, it'll be her last. There's something so cosmically unfair about all of this that I start to laugh. I laugh until I cry, and then I keep crying.

River just smiles at me sadly.

"I can't let you do this," I tell her once I've calmed down slightly. "I'll—I'll fight you."

She laughs. "No you won't," she says, her eyes sparkling fondly.

"River, you can—"

"Do I have to handcuff you, too?" she asks, all sly sadness.

I raise my eyebrows. "So you carry around handcuffs as well?"

"Spoilers." She winks at me.

The Doctor chooses this moment to wake up. "Oh, no, no, no, no! Come on, what are you doing? That's my job!"

"Oh, and I'm not allowed to have a career, I suppose?" River jokes, her lips twisting into a facsimile of a smile.

"This is not a joke!" the Doctor hisses, and he's mad. "Stop this, now! This is going to kill you! I'd have a chance. You don't have any!"

River scoffs. "You wouldn't, and neither do I. I'm timing it for the end of the countdown. There'll be a blip in the command flow, that way it should improve our chances of a clean download."

"River," the Doctor begs. "Please."

"Funny thing is," she continues as though he hasn't said anything, "this means you two have always known how I was going to die. All the time we've been together and you both knew I was coming here. The last time I saw you, the future you, I mean, you turned up on my doorstep with a new haircut and a suit. You took me to Darillium to see the Singing Towers, and what a night that was. The Towers sang and you cried."

"Morgan, let me go," the Doctor turns to me next. "Let me go. I know you have the key."

And there are silent tears dripping down my cheeks, unbidden. "I—I can't," I whisper, like I've lost my voice.

"There's a good girl," River says fondly. "You can't die here. It'll mean I never met you."

"Time can be rewritten," the Doctor says.

"Not those times," River says sadly. "Not one line. Don't you dare. It's okay. It's not over for you two. You'll see me again. You've got all that to come. You, me, and Morgan. Time and space. You watch us run."

"River," the Doctor says pleadingly. "You know my name. You whispered it in my ear."

"So I did," she says, and for some reason looks right at me, as though this is significant. "I'm sorry," she apologizes again.

"There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time I could—and Morgan—"

"Hush now, sweetie," she says. "Spoilers." And with that, she joins together the two power cables she's been holding.

The light is so blinding I have to look away. I wish I didn't; it only seems fair that if she's going to die for all of us, at least one of us could witness the moment of her death, at least one of us could look on in farewell. I strain and strain, eyes squinting at the brightness, but it's too much.

And I have to look away.


Lux finds us there some time later. I'm staring at where River had been, tears still trailing down my cheeks, and the Doctor is still chained to his copper pipe. None of us say anything. When Lux clears his throat, I wipe the tears from my face and pull the key from my pocket to undo the handcuffs. My hands are shaking so badly that it takes a few tries to get his right hand free, and when it finally is, the Doctor carefully extracts the key from my hand so that he can undo his left.

When he's done, he puts a gentle hand on my back, and we go to find Donna. When we meet up with her, she tells us about the dream she was having, with two kids and a man named Lee. The Doctor picks up the diary and the sonic screwdriver River had been carrying, and we start making our way back to the TARDIS, the Doctor's arm firm around my waist.

"Are you alright?" Donna finally asks me and the Doctor.

I open my mouth, but no words come out.

"We're always alright," the Doctor answers for us both.

"Is that special Time Lord code for not really alright at all? Because I'm alright too," Donna says with a weak smile.

"C'mon," the Doctor says with a small smile of his own, leading us inside the TARDIS. But something is still bothering him. "My screwdriver," he says. "Why, why would I give this to her? Thing is, 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. Why?"

He holds the screwdriver up for our inspection and for some reason I blurt out, "Neural relay!"

He looks between me and the screwdriver in bewilderment and then kisses me hard. "Morgan, you genius! Oh I am good, I am very good!"

"What have you done?" asks Donna.

"Saved her."

And with that, the Doctor sprints away.

He later explains to us, as we eat dinner, that he'd been able to transfer River's consciousness into the computer, and now she'll be able to live her life the same way Cal does, with every book ever at her disposal and Cal for company.

I cry when I hear this, but by the time we're ready to part our separate ways for the night, my fingers are itching, an old itch that I thought I had rid myself of long ago. I wander the hallways that had confused me earlier today with a mission in mind, and as I weave in and out of corridors, I don't stop until I hit the door that—for some reason—I know will lead me to a piano. I don't know how I know, I can't explain it, haven't been able to explain a lot of things today, but for now I'm not worried about it. For now, I have a goal.

I play because my heart hurts and I can't say why. I didn't know her, had never met her, and yet…and yet this feels right. Everyone deserves a proper send off. Although she'd alluded to a lifetime of familiarity with me, I had only known her for but a few short hours, and so perhaps I cannot mourn her now, not truly, not while I stand on the very precipice of acquaintanceship. But something tells me that one day, I'll feel the true pain of her death; one day I'll have to let her go, knowing that when she next sees me, it'll be as a stranger, sharing none of her inside jokes, none of her easy warmth. Knowing that she'll be on her way to her death.

And I'll be on the lookout for that day. The day the Doctor and I take her to Darillium to see the Singing Towers.

"Chopin's first nocturne," the Doctor comments quietly, and I jump slightly at the bench, my fingers faltering over the keys for a few seconds as my concentration breaks. "It's said that he hated it so much, it was only published after his death."

I frown. "He didn't hate it, he just didn't think it was his best work," I say as I bring the piece to a soft close, hands landing naturally on the keys as I move into another piece. As I begin the opening notes of Liszt's "Consolation No. 3", I can practically feel him opening his mouth to say something, like we're marionettes connected on a string, an instinct I've never taken notice of until now. "Before you say anything," I interrupt him, determination a mask on my face as I try to keep the pace of the piece relaxed. I've never been anxious about performing in front of others; I'd played in competitions and, for a while, I'd even considered studying at a conservatory. And yet— "I know we didn't know her."

The Doctor sighs. "We'd barely even met her." Faintly, I hear his approaching footsteps. "We'd barely even said 'hello.'" He comes to a stop right beside me. "And you're playing the song Liszt wrote when his best friend died."

"Not yet," I say in reply, my fingers growing stiff. It's been a while since I've played for longer than fifteen minutes at a time, and while this song is still in my repertoire, still engrained in my every neuron, the finger placement in my bones, my body just isn't used to this anymore. "But she knew."

He sighs. "It means nothing, Morgan."

I slam down on the keys harder than I had intended, and just like that, the spell I'd been casting is broken. "Maybe," I concede, turning completely to face him, "but she still knew."

His expression drops. "What do you want me to say?" he asks, and there's an odd sort of hurt to his voice. "She's not you. And you're not—" he pauses, but I can almost hear the "in love with me, not yet." He takes a deep breath. "So, why does it even matter?"

"So just because I'm 'young', I'm not allowed to feel anything? Not even when you told her your real name?"

His hands tighten at his side, and for just one second, he allows himself to feel pain. To feel sadness. I can see it in the way his chin drops and his jaw slackens. "You know that's not what I mean," he says, eyes glassy. "I just—we have to move on. Maybe one day we'll meet her, Professor River Song, but not today. For me, this is a blink of the eye, Morgan." He cautiously reaches for my hand, and for once I let him. For once, I don't think about the consequences, about my determination to not fall in love with him. I don't think about anything except for how warm he is, how comforting and sure. "When you've lived as long as I have…well, this, too, shall pass."

He's right. But just because I know that he is, just because I'm all too aware that our time is a brief, fragile thing, just because I know she'd been ready—willing—to die, doesn't mean—

Fuck.

"Is this what traveling with you turns me into? Someone who can get over death just like that?" I bite my lip. "I can't—I haven't—" I break away from him, from the piano, rising to my feet and bringing the same hand he'd touched to my chest. "She was funny, and kind, and it hurts. And I know it's going to hurt even more later when we do know her."

Warm brown eyes soften, and he crosses the space between us easily. "I know it does," he says, and I don't say anything in return. I just hug him back.