Author's Note:Hello everyone! I hope you had a good Christmas and are looking forward to the new year to come! Did you all see the Christmas special? I think I was almost in floods when The Doctor regenerated :p Anyway, sorry this chapter has taken such a long time in coming - I was caught in the crazy English weather on the way home so was unable to get to a computer for a bit. But now that it's all over, I hope you enjoy this chapter! :)

5. A Stitch in Time.

Rory pushed open the front door and was immediately pounced on by Amy, her red hair tickling his nose and threatening to make him sneeze. She was shaking, almost sobbing and yet sounded like she was also trying not to laugh. And she was clutching him so hard that it was becoming almost impossible to breathe.

"What, what is it? What's happened?"

Amy slapped his chest softly, pulling back. Her voice sounded hoarse. "Nothing. Nothing's happened. But something might happen."

"What?"

Amy closed the door behind him, and it was only then that Rory realised that he had forgotten to do so. "Well, you know how River said she had the Dimension Canon ready?"

"That was a week ago."

Rory found himself lead into the living room, coming face to face with a River who was raising a rueful eyebrow at him, obviously having overheard his last remark.

"I miscalculated," she said.

Rory eyed the device on the coffee table. It was small and round, like a giant button, and had a miniature radar sticking out of the side. A silver chain turned it into a necklace for convenient use.

"Is it finished?" He asked, in disbelief. "What happened to the UFO look?"

"Like I said," River replied, ruefully, "miscalculation. Turns out the Doctor is rather more sketchy on details than even I realised."

"But it works?" Rory asked. "It'll get you to the Doctor?"

"That's what she doesn't know yet," Amy said.

"I'm going to test it," River agreed. "Today." She checked her watch. "In five minutes, in fact."

Rory squinted at her. "Why in five minutes?"

"I have to give it time to charge first," River replied, as if it was obvious. She leaned over to the sofa and picked up a backpack, heaving it onto her shoulders with more effort than seemed necessary for such a small bag. "Bigger on the inside," she explained. "Unfortunately the Time Lords never found a way to make it lighter on the inside, as well."

"Is it really practical to take into battle?" Rory asked. Beside him, he saw Amy tense at the word "battle", though they both knew it was likely that the Doctor had been taken to one.

"Father, stop worrying."

The Dimension Cannon beeped, and River picked it up.

"Can we come with you?" Amy blurted.

River looked up, surprised. "What?"

"We want to come with you," Amy said. "Can we?"

"I'm afraid it can't carry several people."

Rory stared at her. "Then how are you going to get the Doctor back?" he pointed out.

River remained silent for a few moments, clearly caught out. "It's far too dangerous. I could be scattered into atoms."

Rory and Amy shared a silent look. Rory saw Amy's intense expression and knew immediately what their decision was going to be.

"We don't care," Rory summarised, turning back to River, "because you're our daughter."

"And we want you safe," Amy added. "Now more than ever."

River nodded. "I thought you might say that." She looked at them both seriously, looking like she hated to have to say her next words. "So I took the time to think of a good counter-argument."

She pressed the button and disappeared.

Rory stood still in shock, staring at the spot of carpet where his daughter had once been. Amy screamed in frustration and flung herself at the empty space, shouting River's name over and over. Tears were streaming down her face as she finally gave in and sank onto the sofa, hand covering her mouth as she tried desperately to regain control of herself. Rory tried to move over to her, to comfort her, he really did. But he found that he was stuck.

There was a slight scorch mark on the carpet where River had been.

oOo

River landed roughly on a hard surface that revealed itself to be, on closer inspection, a pavement. She stood up and looked around, her eyes widening. She was in London, present day London, but there were zeppelins in the sky. Yet no one was screaming, no one was taking photos or even asking what was going on. It was as if it was common place. She walked over to a bin and peered inside. Seeing what she wanted, she fished out a paper. 2006.

So… she considered the possibilities. She had either jumped into a time stream that was moving at a slower rate than the one she had just left, the calendar worked differently, or she had gone back in time and across universes.

Before she could even think "I hope the Doctor is here after all", she watched the TARDIS literally plummet from the sky and hurtle into the ground with an almighty crash, sending passers-by scrambling to get out the way.

Well, that was easier than expected. Or it would be, if the missing Doctor had gone missing in the TARDIS.

River took the newspaper over to a nearby bench and sat down, pretending to read, though in actuality watching over the top of the paper as three people exited the TARDIS. She recognised two of them: Rose and the Tenth Doctor. The TARDIS had shown them when she had (politely) asked to see them. Purely out of curiosity, of course.

It wasn't because the Doctor had mentioned their adventures and her younger self had thought she had had competition. Not at all.

The third one though, she didn't recognise. He was of medium height, black, wearing a jacket and jeans, and seemed quite glad to be where they were. The Doctor, meanwhile, was looking up at the sky in shock.

She was just close enough to eavesdrop in their conversation which, she thought to herself, she might as well do now that she was here and waiting for the Dimension Canon to recharge. And in any case, she was hardly able to move and reveal herself, just in case it was a version of him that had met her. The Doctor had accidentally let it slip that she had met her before his newest regeneration, though he had managed to be rather secretive about the particulars.

"So this is London?" The Doctor asked, stuffing his hands into his pockets and joining the other two.

"Yep," the man replied, still staring at the newspaper.

"Your city."

"That's the one."

The Doctor moved to stand in front of him. "Just as you left it."

"Bang on."

The Doctor looked pointedly up at the sky. "And that includes the zeppelins?"

Despite the circumstances, River could not help but smile. He was quite the cheeky one in this regeneration, it would seem.

"What the hell?"

"That's beautiful," Rose said. River could immediately see why he had liked her so much.

"Ok," the man said, clutching at straws, "so it's London with a big international zeppelin festival."

River winced, unable to tell if he was joking or serious. The Doctor, for his part, let it slide and instead jumped straight to an explanation. "This is not your world."

Too right it wasn't. For one thing, it smelt wrong. River peered at the TARDIS, wondering why they had crash landed there, and noticed that the light on the top was off. She had completely lost power. River raised an eyebrow. Quite the pickle, though one she knew the Doctor would get himself out of.

"But," the man said slowly, following the Doctor as he walked down the street, "if the date's the same, it's parallel, right?"

They were getting further and further out of earshot now, and facing the wrong direction, staring at something away from her. Reluctantly abandoning the idea of stalking this interesting new (though technically old) incarnation of the Doctor as he worked out how to get them all back home (that was always such fun), River put down her newspaper and checked to see if the Dimension Canon was charged.

It was. She quickly glanced in the direction of the group to verify they weren't looking – even on a parallel world this technology would be suspicious – and pressed the button. The shocked expression of a man walking his dog faded in front of her eyes and was replaced with her parents' living room.

The room was empty and the house sounded as though no one was home, so River sat down on the sofa and made herself at home. She would need to modify the Doctor Detector, as she had dubbed it, so that it took her to the correct regeneration, now that she knew that the Doctor had already travelled across universes. She sighed, unable to stop herself from thinking that this would have been a lot simpler if the Doctor had simply told her that he had done this before.

Though, she conceded, the excursion that she had just witnessed seemed to have been entirely accidental and left the TARDIS dangerously low on power. Anyway, even if he had told her how he had managed to get there, in a TARDIS, she would have deliberately used a different method to get to him this time. She didn't like the fact that whoever had taken him had managed to get into the TARDIS to do so. It wouldn't do to then take said TARDIS into the battle zone, so to speak. She hated to think what someone that determined and that powerful could do with such a ship. At least this way only one person could get through.

Unless they modified it, which was a very real possibility that she did not really want to think about.

She ran the possibilities for improving the Doctor Detector through in her mind, determining that she would need some of this regeneration's DNA for a more accurate result. She smiled to herself. This should be fun.

Stowing the Dimension Canon in her bigger-on-the-inside backpack, River keyed in some coordinates in the vortex manipulator.

She reappeared on Earth during her parents' wedding. She was technically already here, so she would have to avoid being seen by anyone who knew her. Luckily, she had appeared in the garden while everyone was still inside dancing. Using her memories of who had been where, River managed to avoid her parents and sneak up on the Doctor while he was dancing.

He ran across the dance floor, arms stuck rod straight in the air, wiggling his head about like a nodding dog and his knees bending more and more the further he went, looking as though he were walking down invisible stairs. River observed with amusement, hiding between a small crowd of relatives.

Ah, the birth of his famous Drunken Giraffe. Always a treat to watch. Quite possibly the only thing in existence more embarrassing than his Feztish.

If she didn't know better, she would say that he was drunk if she went solely off his dancing skills, and Amy seemed to agree with her – she was laughing so hard she was almost falling over. River waited until the Doctor tried to do break dancing – cheered on by a truly large number of children – to sneak up on him. She knew that he wouldn't be able to see her through that huge mop of hair of his, as it was currently falling over his eyes as he attempted – without much success, she noted – to do a handstand.

She deftly plucked out a hair and ducked behind a surly looking teenager before moving on to hide behind a group of tipsy looking adults arguing about which type of cheese smelt the worst.

"Ok, who did that?" She heard the Doctor shouting over the music. "I know my hair is cool, but you don't have to steal it! Really, children today, I don't know…"

River slipped back out into the garden, avoiding someone on a smoking break, and hid behind a bush. Taking out her vortex manipulator, she keyed in coordinates and disappeared again as quickly as she could.

Her parents' house flashed back into view, though this time both Rory and Amy were in the living room when she materialised, gracefully, in front of the television that they were currently watching. They both stared at her, mouths agape.

"Mum, Dad, I'm home," she announced rather pointlessly, but she felt their expressions warranted some sort of dramatic line. "Please don't get up."

"River?" Amy asked, her voice almost breaking. "Is that really you?"

River sat down in the armchair across from them. "Yes, of course it's me." When both parents continued to stare at her, she frowned. "Why?"

"You've been gone for weeks!" Amy finally said, raising her voice.

"Oh dear. Curfew is definitely broken," River muttered.

"It's not funny," Rory said, some of the Centurion rearing his head again. "We thought you'd died. You said you could be blasted into atoms, and then you just disappeared!"

Amy nodded. "Don't you ever do that to us again!" She agreed, pointing at a small scorch mark on the floor where River had disappeared.

"What's the date?"

"That's it?" Amy asked incredulously. "We haven't seen you for weeks and you ask the date?"

River nodded. "Yes, sorry." She gestured to the vortex manipulator. "I was just at your wedding and I had to disappear quite quickly – I must have mixed up a few numbers."

"Oh," Rory said in a deceptively calm voice. "A few numbers."

River sighed. "It makes quite a difference. And I'm sorry, I really am, but the more time we spend here discussing where I've been and how long I've been away the longer it takes to get to the Doctor."

"You didn't see him?" Amy asked anxiously.

River shook her head. "No. Well, yes. But it was the wrong incarnation. So I went to your wedding and stole some of his hair while he was breakdancing." She held up the few strands she had pulled out as if to prove her point. "I need it to modify the Doctor Detector."

Rory nodded, the first to calm down of the two of them, but he still seemed a bit off. "So what now?"

"I modify it. But from the sounds of it, I need to be quick, if I've been gone for a few weeks. I'll need to use the TARDIS," she added, leaving the question for permission hanging in the air.

Amy nodded. "I'm sorry, River. I know you're a time traveller and that things like this will happen," she said, gesturing to the scorch mark, "but you gave us quite a scare."

River nodded. "I understand. And I'm sorry, Mother."

Rory managed a small smile, getting up to give her a hug, Amy following suite. "We're just glad you're actually safe and not floating around in our living room." He leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, "Amy wouldn't let me open the window for two weeks after you left, in case you disappeared. I probably shouldn't have told her that we would have been breathing you anyway."

River pursed her lips. "Definitely not the best move, no." Amy just nodded, her eyes beginning to tear up. River decided to beat a tactful retreat. "If anyone needs me, I'll be in the TARDIS playing with the Doctor's hair."