Chapter 2

He couldn't move. Couldn't think. Couldn't breathe. She was there, inches away from him, awakening parts of his brain that he thought had atrophied. Clara was doing something, but he really wasn't bothered with paying attention to what she was doing at the moment. He heard her babbling something to River and a part of his mind sincerely hoped she wasn't embarrassing him by choosing to banter of all things.

Then River's eyes met his. Those green eyes he'd seen filled with love, desire, curiosity, anger, and secrets. He knew her face better than he knew his own. Knew every laugh line, small wrinkle, where exactly she had taken the age down. He swallowed, forcing breath past the suddenly large obstruction in his throat. He backed up a step, body on autopilot as he pivoted and walked, walked, ran. The air roared in his ears, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he heard Clara shouting after him.

He didn't make it that far. He stumbled, instincts keeping him in a patch of sunlight as he collapsed against the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut as he slid to the floor and buried his face in his hands. She was alive. She was alive. Memories of his marriage broke through the barriers he'd carefully erected in his mind, and all of a sudden he was feeling too much. He rocked back and forth, back and forth, and wasn't sure if he wanted to thank Missy or throttle the life out of her – if there was any life left in her. If her goal had been to reduce the Doctor to an incoherent mess, it was well and truly accomplished.

His wife was alive. It had been a wish on the same level as the restoration of Gallifrey, and despite working with Ellie, part of him had been braced to fail. Well, to be fair, 93.45 percent of him was pretty sure they would fail, but he had to at least try. But it had worked. The Impossible Girl had performed her magic, and River was alive, and he was still a rubbish husband, and what the hell was he going to do now?

He dragged his hands down his face, swiping his arm over his eyes as he heard the footsteps approach. It was River. He could hear the swish of her clothes, and she was completely silent. Clara would be talking. Clara was always saying something. But River knew exactly what he needed. She always knew. Silence or laughter or sexual innuendo, she wielded her knowledge of his emotions like a samurai's katana.

She knelt by his side, and he found himself looking into her eyes once more. He expected censure from her, anger at the very least. He'd left her time and time again, and she'd been so hurt and confused on Trenzalore. Blaming herself because he'd been unable to cope with her loss. And, to be perfectly honest, he wasn't handling her resurrection very well either.

Everything he wanted to say to her rolled through his mind. Their first time meeting in centuries, and he wanted – no, needed – for his first words to her to be something meaningful. Something significant. Hi honey, I'm home. Sorry I'm late, I had to make one hell of a detour to get here. There's no words in the universe adequate enough to tell you how I still feel about you, but I'll find them somehow.

"I'm very Scottish," he blurted.

She smiled. "Yes, you are."

"I'm not pretty boy or your fella with the bow ties," he continued. "I'm old, I'm grumpy, and you've seen this face before, haven't you?"

"A time or two," River admitted with a pretty shrug of the shoulder, and he scowled at her.

"So when you said spoilers on Trenzalore …"

"It still applies. Hush, now." She reached for his hand, and he yanked it back in reflex, scooting away from her a bit. He cursed himself and let it drop to the ground.

"It's all right." She laid a single finger on the back of his hand and absently traced the vein there. He flinched, willing his hearts to calm as that gentle stroking sent chills down his spine. This time, he turned his hand until her finger traced over his palm. He recognized the Gallifreyan words she was scribing into his skin and once again shame rolled through him. He should be comforting her, not the other way around.

"Well then," he said. "Now that we've both been resurrected from the dead, what will we do now?"

"For starters, get out of the shadows." River quickly gained her feet as the Doctor noticed the shadows creeping dangerously close to his leg. He scrambled up and backed away, and unconsciously reaching for his wife's hand. It was an act as natural as breathing, something even his tenth self had recognized when she'd grabbed his hand for the very first time. He didn't clasp hands anymore, he didn't do that.

But when his hand closed over River's, it felt like the most natural thing in the universe.

The first time River had seen the TARDIS after she was uploaded to the Library, she'd nearly wept. All the warmth had gone, as if the Doctor had purged every single bit of light from his life now that she and her parents were gone. Warm yellow were replaced by cool greys, the ramshackle console of bits and bobs now had sleek controls.

This latest incarnation of her husband had kept the overall desktop theme but there were signs of life again. Bookcases ringed the gallery above the main part of the console room, interspersed with several comfortable chairs. A chalkboard covered in equations sat to one side, and River found herself starting to do the calculations in her head.

The Doctor and Clara were on the other side of the room, whispering to each other. The Doctor was making his point via gesticulating, while Clara looked quietly furious. River was willing to wager that the quiet part wouldn't last very long. Although she had seen this incarnation of the Doctor several times before, this was only her second time around Clara Oswald. The young woman had aged greatly in the time between Trenzalore and now, but you didn't notice it unless you looked into her eyes.

"Right, well, taking you home," the Doctor said in a louder voice and with long-legged strides, crossed to the console.

"Oh, no, you're not," Clara informed him. His legs were longer, but she was faster. She slapped her hand over his just as he started to take them into the vortex. "You can't just drop a bombshell on me like that then drop me off at my flat. I know you. You're going to investigate and see this through, and I'm going with you."

"Even though I betrayed you? Even though I took advantage of our friendship and enabled you to watch as your doppleganger died?" It wasn't a statement. It was a matter of fact, punctuated by the calm look he gave Clara.

"As someone once told me, do you seriously think I care so little for you that betraying me would make a difference?"

The Doctor merely winged an eyebrow at Clara. "Visited the moon lately?"

She huffed. "OK, OK, point. God, it's infuriating when you're right."

"I live to be infuriating."

"Regardless," Clara bit out. "I'm entitled to know what happens."

"Humans. You think you're entitled to everything."

"You seriously want me to believe that Time Lords aren't entitled?"

River didn't bother hiding her amused snort.

"Ha!" Clara jabbed her finger at River. "Your wife agrees with me."

"My wife will agree with anyone who's yanking my chain."

"Your wife," River said mildly, "has a name."

"Oh?" With a half smile, he turned to her, waggling his eyebrows. "And just by what name do you preferred to be called?"

Something deep inside her unknotted at the familiar look he was giving her, half-teasing, a touch besotted, and attempting to come off as deadly serious. It was the expression he gave her younger self when she ran into this incarnation of the Doctor, and even with that foreknowledge, she was relieved.

"It depends on the context," she said and winked at him. He smirked back at her.

Clara blinked, then her jaw dropped. "Oh my God. You two are flirting. Properly flirting."

"I'm not flirting." In two steps, the Doctor was by River's side, gazing down into her eyes. Sparkles of desire flared to life, and she very nearly pulled him to her for a proper snog. "I do not flirt."

Clara gave an exaggerated snort. "Oh that is flirting, and I'm getting out of here before you two shag against the console or do something else that'll give me nightmares for the next year." She whirled around and ran up the stairs. "Just please, sanitize the console room after!" she yelled as she made her way deeper into the TARDIS.

"That wasn't flirting," the Doctor yelled after her.

River made a noncommittal sound and turned back to the chalkboard, and the Doctor grumbled. "I wasn't! … was I? I flirt now?" He jabbed a finger at it. "I flirt with you. Only you, understand me? No more of this flirty picking up women all over time and space thing."

"Yes, my love," she said casually, very amused by the exchange. She sensed him tense. "Doctor?"

"It's been a very long time since I've heard that," he murmured, and she turned away from the chalkboard.

"It's been a very long time since I've had anyone to say that to."

They didn't say anything for a moment, and in the silence, River thought for the first time. Like when she had disappeared into the Library's archives to begin with, everything had happened so fast. A day's adventures had culminated in a single moment, when she found herself face-to-face with an echo of Clara Oswald and a choice. Stay or go, and in the end, it was no choice at all.

She never let herself dare imagine returning from the Library. The Doctor had made a conscious decision to put her there, and she knew it was because he was unable to say good-bye to her. Their farewell on Trenzalore had allowed her to come to peace with that, and it allowed her to stop waiting. Her mother's daughter all over again. She knew that a future him would see a younger her, so she made sure he knew that was to come and faded away, returning to the Library to start all over.

But now blood hummed beneath her skin, and her lungs were filled with real oxygen, and she was standing next to her husband, who wasn't quite sure what to do with her. To be fair, she wasn't quite sure what to do with herself either.

"I have a question." His voice startled her from her thoughts, and she glanced over to see him regarding her as a puzzle. It was an expression she'd grown used to with his younger self. She already knew what he was going to ask. "How did you come back?"

She shrugged. "It's a bit complicated."

"Complicated! Well, easy wouldn't fit now, would it." The Doctor then smacked his forehead. "Oh, what am I saying, you just came back to life. We should give you a once-over in the med lab. Do you need sleep? Yes, sleep! Sleep for a week, then we'll chat."

"No, really, I'm fine," River insisted.

He scowled at her. "Tea? Do you at least want tea?"

She smiled, amused once more. "Yes, I'd love a cuppa."

"Great! Tea!" He clapped his hands together, rubbing his finggers. "I'm rubbish at making tea."

"How about I make the tea?" River led the way into the kitchen, relieved that it hadn't changed. She located tea bags for herself and coffee beans for the Doctor. She loaded the grinder, turned it on, and smiled. She could feel him frowning at her, and he was so grumpy that it made her want to run her hands through his shaggy grey hair and press a kiss to the top of his head. She loved the bow-tied, tweed-wearing madman she married, but she also utterly adored this version of him. She knew what he would be like in the future and held fast to it as she boiled water, grinded coffee, set up a French press for him, and steeped tea for herself.

"How often was I around you?" the Doctor demanded.

"Enough," River replied, setting the French press on the table. "Enough to know you are very fussy about your coffee and once took over a Scottish café to teach them all how to properly make it and as a result was three weeks late picking up Clara."

"You should had seen what they were doing to that coffee," he retorted as she pulled milk out of the refrigerator for herself. "Coffee masters. Ha! I taught them a thing of two."

"Did you now?" River took the seat opposite his as the Doctor flicked a glance at the watch on his wrist, then depressed the plunger on the French press. "And was Clara very cross when you finally remembered to pick her up?"

"She needs less coffee. It does odd things to her skin." He poured out a mug, sampled it and saluted her with the mug. "Good coffee."

River smiled and took a sip from her own mug. "I had an excellent teacher."

"Really now?" The Doctor's chest puffed up a bit with pride. "Well, I am an excellent instructor, as I was told quite frequently."

"Mmm … Strax was quite throughout in his teaching lessons."

The Doctor choked. "Strax?"

River hid her smile with another sip of tea, enjoying the Doctor grumble under his breath with jealously. Of course, Strax hadn't really taught her how to brew coffee like a master, but she had a feeling this was the nudge the Doctor needed to go pay a visit to her younger self on her first night in university. The Doctor's jealous tells were ever so apparent, no matter the regeneration.

He scowled at her. "You're having me on."

"A lady never tells." She winked at him, and he glowered further.

They sat in companionable silence, enjoying their drinks. River found her thoughts turning to the Doctor's sudden aversion to casual displays of affection. Not even his first body had such a reluctance to interact on a personal level. The Doctor had looked so baffled when he grabbed her hand, as if he hadn't done it very much. The flirting had caught him completely off-guard. The reactions were completely different from the tenth and eleventh incarnations. Any reticence on their ends had come from their mistrust of her. The current Doctor's issues appeared to be more with himself than with her, and it was a bit of a relief. She was tired of having to fight for the Doctor's trust. But despite the deep shock, he was acting like the Doctor she'd known after their marriage from his point of view – complete and absolute faith in her.

Though, she admitted, she dearly wanted to snog him.

The Doctor shoved away his mug and pushed to his feet. "OK, I need a sample."

"Of what?" River took her mug with her as she followed the Doctor out of the kitchen.

"DNA."

"You can't possibly think I'm not real."

"No, if you weren't, the TARDIS would have flagged it. Added some additional monitoring after your mother was taken." He frowned at her, then whipped a DNA tester from his pocket and jabbed it into the back of her hand.

"Ow!" She yanked the hand away, but he grabbed it back, wiping off the drop of blood with his thumb and tasting it.

"I'm pretty sure you're not an echo this time," he declared and thumbed the reader. "45 percent human, 55 percent Gallifreyan via altered DNA. Matches your previous medical records. Healthy and …" His voice died away as he squinted at the reader. "That's not possible."

"What's not?" River asked, but the Doctor all but pushed her into the med bay.

"Sit," he ordered.

"Do not treat me like a mere companion," River shot at him. She snatched the reader from him before he could react and studied it herself. She nearly dropped it in surprise. The data readout should be impossible. But hadn't this entire day been filled with impossibilities already? "This says-"

"Sit," he repeated as he pulled out equipment.

This time, she sat.

Together, they ran a battery of tests on her, comparing her last medical records from just before the Library to newly generated ones. They discussed data and theory, went over complicated calculations in Gallifreyan together. Test after test came back with the same data, until they had covered an entire counter with results.

She wasn't a ganger or an echo. She was healthy, in her prime for a Gallifreyan. She was capable of reproducing and had no diseases, no organ defects.

And she had enough regeneration energy to regenerate three more times.

"There's the difference," the Doctor said, standing next to her as he tapped an older record. "All of your post-Berlin records say you have no regeneration energy left. This shouldn't be possible."

"You didn't have any either, sweetie," River pointed out. "Yet, you're standing in front of me."

He gave her a thoughtful look. "I imagine I tell you that in the future."

"Only because I tried to kill you." She winked at him, and he muttered something beneath his breath. "Language," she purred in his ear, then decided to test the waters. She flicked her tongue over his earlobe and he shivered. But he didn't flinch away. Progress, she mentally declared, and turned back to the records. "But you didn't explain why."

"The Time Lords sent them through a crack like the one in your mother's wall," he explained. "There was another crack on Trenzalore. It was a cry for help, and I guess they thought I was their best way of getting home. I think Clara had something to do with it, but I never asked. Full regeneration cycle. Yours is partial. So, the question is, who gave you three regenerations?"

"I figured that's obvious, sweetie," River said. "A future you?"

"High on the possibilities." The Doctor moved to a chalkboard and began scratching out information in Gallifryan. "There's me. There's the crack that was on Trenzalore. There's …" He scowled.

"There's?" she prompted.

"It's not important," he evaded, and this time she frowned at him. He had gone tense, and his jaw was set. His blue eyes bore into the chalkboard, as if he could ignite it on sight alone. He tossed the chalk back into the tray and stalked out of the med bay. River closed her eyes and debated going after him, then decided to wait it out. She didn't relish getting into a fight with him.

She looked back at the chalkboard and saw that the Doctor had started to write out a word in Gallifreyan. She traced her finger over the chalked line. "Mi …?"

The Doctor scowled at his chalkboard. He'd taken the liberty of setting them up in a number of places. This one was in the recess of the wardrobe, off the fifth corridor in the anteroom. He was relatively almost positively sure that neither River nor Clara would find him. Which was good, because he had to think. Thinking required diagrams, postulating, utter guesswork, and complete silence at times. Audiences were definitely useful, but he wasn't ready to have one for this particular problem yet.

Missy.

The Doctor began scribbling out his data.

Fact: The Nethersphere was crafted from a matrix data slice where people's minds were uploaded after they died. Time Lord technology was utilized to take these minds and rematerialize them as living bodies.

Fact: The Library contained the largest hard drive ever created where people could be converted to a virtual form to be saved to the hard drive. Being re-downloaded needed to be triggered by an increase in memory capacity, which resulted in the loss of a physical body.

Fact: Missy had convinced Ellie Oswin and Luna University that River was actually on an expedition and not trapped in a hard drive. Missy used this knowledge to manipulate Ellie into pursuing a trip to the Library herself and swapping herself out for River.

As he wrote that last sentence, the guilt eating away at the Doctor lessened just a smidge. He may have provided the access for Ellie, but the seeds of the idea came from Missy. Ellie was far too prepared to make this trip and believed that she was going to come back. He had attributed it to her knowing on some molecular level that she was an echo of Clara, but what if it was more than that? He started scribbling again.

Fact: River Song was restored to a physical body despite having lost hers. Something Ellie did in the transfer facilitated this.

How indeed. Why hadn't he questioned it before? He nearly slapped a palm against his forehead. Stupid, stupid Doctor.

Fact: River Song has enough regeneration energy for at least three more regenerations.

The Doctor dropped the chalk and stepped away from the board, studying the swirls of Gallifreyan writing. There were the facts, and he could see the parallels plain as day. The Nethersphere and the Library hard drive were vastly similar. Missy clearly knew of it, knew who River Song was and most likely who she was to him. So what was her plan?

Ah, that was a question, and he had lots of them now. The Doctor moved to the opposite side of the chalkboard, pondered over which to write down first. There were many angles to pursue. What exactly was Ellie told? Where was Lux? What was Missy's plan? How was River involved in this? Did she know the entire time they were in the kitchen that he wanted to snog her until they couldn't breathe?"

He had imagined plenty of times rescuing River from the Library. There were stretches of days and weeks when his previous self had done nothing but daydream about it. He would restore her to her physical form, and then she would slap the hell out of him for taking so long as he apologized. Then one thing would lead to another, and they would have spectacular reunion sex on the closest surface available, manage to make into the TARDIS, then start all over again.

His carnal appetite, very present in his previous two incarnations, was almost gone now. His tenth self, while in love with Rose, did not object to casual liaisons – especially during his self-destructive phase after Donna left. His eleventh self loved to flirt, but his sexual energies were focused on River.

He didn't have the desire to flirt with anyone in this body (curly-haired, green-eyed archaeologists excepted), and as Clara had pointed out with the wedding band, he still considered himself very married and devoted to one particular person. That person was somewhere on the TARDIS, making herself at home once more.

And with her return came the renewal of appetites he once thought were lost. He hadn't been kidding when he approached Clara about how to deal with River's possible return. But all the guesswork and research in the universe hadn't prepared him for getting a bloody erection while watching River fiddle with the French press and tease him over his new love of coffee.

With a frustrated huff, he abandoned the chalkboard and went in search of his wife.