A/N: Not really a chapter I wanted to write ... but I only had about 90 mins to write today, and so knowing it would be short, I went back to the TARDIS for a bit 'cause the Doctor had some 'splainin' to do.

Back to Pete's World and some serious darkness in the next chapter. Seriously ... enjoy whatever lightheartedness there is here, because I have a feeling that madame muse has plans for the next chapter that not even I'm ready for...

~~oooOOOooo~~

The TARDIS hummed a sound of sorrow as the Doctor burst in through the front doors and stalked a purposeful stride toward her computers. He was completely ignorant to the presence of both Rory and Amy on the jump seat, and even managed to bustle a knock against Amy's leg as he passed.

She opened her mouth to loudly express her annoyance at being knocked without apology, but was silenced by her husband at her side.

"Leave it," he warned gently with a shake of his head. "Something's wrong. Let him work through it."

Amy huffed and folded her arms across her breast. "But…"

"But nothing," Rory warned. He then lightly nudged her shoulder with his and gestured toward River Song with a jut of his chin. "I'll lay money that River's going to ask all the questions that you have."

"Yeah, so?"

"And she's much more likely to get him to answer than you are."

Amy curled a lip. She shot a look toward the Doctor, who was currently staring through his brows at the monitor as his fingers tapped fiercely at the keyboard below it. Her eyes then shifted toward Rover Song, who stood back just shy of the Console landing.

That was a rather uncharacteristic behaviour, Amy noted with surprise. Ordinarily River Song would be at the Doctor's side with a flirt or a tease. But not this time. Right now the feisty blonde woman was quietly standing a respectful distance behind him, giving him space, and no doubt formulating a rather long list of questions that the Doctor wouldn't want to answer…

…But that he'd have absolutely no choice in answering.

Rory snuffled slightly against Amy's ear – or was he chuckling – and tapped his fingertip on her knee. "River's grinding her teeth right now," he noted with amusement. "I give her less than ten seconds before the curiosity gets the better of her."

"Five," Amy challenged. "You might want to consider jealousy as the guiding factor here."

Rory's face tightened up. "Oh. Yeah. Missed that."

Amy gave a theatrical sigh and rolled her eyes. "Of course you did. You're a man."

"And in three. Two. One…"

River Song broke from her stoic position at the edge of the landing and quickly found her place beside the Doctor. Her voice was flat, void of any emotion, when she spoke.

"So who is she?"

For a moment, the Doctor continued to let his fingers dance over the keyboard without speaking. His eyes remained on the data stream on the monitor above, flicking left to right, then down and left to right again. When River Song repeated the question, he licked at his lip and shifted the set of his jaw as though he was actually going to answer her. No words left his lips, however. He merely motioned his jaw enough to silently mouth out the Gallifreyan words that were answering his own questions.

River Song let out a growl of annoyance that may or may not have included his name. She then repeated her question with a hiss through her teeth, punctuating each word with both a pause in her delivery and a tap of the side of her firearm on the TARDIS console.

The Doctor violently shoved himself off the console and struck both of his hands against the monitor's edge. "Sepulchasm!"

Rory and Amy flinched at the Doctor's outburst, whereas River Song merely blinked slowly as she wiped spittle from the corner of her eye. "Language, Doctor."

He didn't appear to hear her.

"You can't tell me that," he spat hotly at the monitor. "I just saw her there. Her. Him. Both of them. With both my eyes." He gestured widly between his eyes with a finger. "Four if you count River's. So don't you dare tell me that you can't find any trace of them." He slapped the monitor with both hands as though it might be enough to change the results posted on the screen. "Keep looking!" The screen blinked out with a blip and then clicked back to life with a window full of aggressively spinning Circular Gallifreyan text.

The Doctor laughed darkly under his breath. "I don't want excuses. I want answers. All of them. Every answer to every question, and then give me some bonus information just to make me happy."

River Song put her hand on his arm. "Sweetie," she warned low. "The TARDIS is working through what she can. You pestering her is not going to make her give you the answers you want."

He raised his voice enough to ensure that the TARDIS was listening. "Maybe not, but I'm very sure that she'll try looking a little harder if I threaten to take out her Banshee circuits and…" He jumped back as the monitor sparked and crackled. "Oh," he huffed. "A tantrum. Really?" He began a stalk around the console, careful not to touch it directly, but staying very close to it. "You were the one who brought us here. You were the one who thought it was so very important to drop us off here instead of where I had actually programmed you to go."

He stopped his stalk to turn fully toward the rotor column. "You show her to me. You let me see that she's distressed and probably very much in danger and therefore in need of my help." He sniffed and spun on his heel to resume his stalk around the console. "And then, when I ask you to find her, you tell me it's impossible."

He spun and slammed both hands down onto the console's top. "Nothing is impossible!" he thundered out. "Do you hear me? Nothing."

He shoved back off the console and continued to walk. "Not where she's concerned. You know that. I know that." He ran his hand over his neck. "I think the entire multiverse knows that. Impossible just means she might break a bit of a sweat…" He stopped both his word and his stalk when his stride brought him face to face with an obviously frustrated River Song. He dared crack a smile. "Ahh. Yes. That's right. Hello River."

Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, and she didn't look to want to release that hold any time soon. "Are you about finished admonishing the TARDIS for not being immediately able to bypass her programmed scanning protocols…"

"Don't you start sticking up for her," he muttered in reply with a rather facetious roll of his eyes. "Especially not when it was because of her bypassing programming protocols set by her pilot that we are even here to begin with." He kept his eyes on River Song's look of disapproval and flicked out a hand to point at the rotor column. His petulance was such that he was perfectly able to hide his wince of both pain and embarrassment that his arm collided with a thick cable that hung from the ceiling.

"She doesn't listen to a single command that I give her," he continued in a growl.

River Song released one arm from her hold on her breast to roughly slap down the Doctor's arm. "She's doing her best," she seethed in defense of the ship. "And if you continue to berate her like this, then I'll kick you out of the TARDIS doors and leave you here."

"Don't threaten me, River."

"Don't challenge me," she countered with a smile. "Trust me, Doctor. I'm the child of the TARDIS, she'd be more than happy to travel with me." She petted the console and cooed to it. "Wouldn't you, old girl?"

The Doctor's eyes flicked to an unreadable sound that emanated from the rotor column in response, and then switched back to River. His guarded posture relaxed slightly. "Females," he cursed under his breath as he slowly shifted up a suitcase handle lever. "It doesn't matter what species, you are always such a fickle gender. So easy to switch allegiances and break hearts, aren't you?"

"We can be," River agreed flatly. "Especially when we find ourselves faced with a 1200-year old man-child who can throw a tantrum better than any toddler I've ever encountered." She flicked her hand toward the jump seat. "Now. How about you take a seat and explain just who it is that has you all bothered right now."

He shook his head. "No. I think it's probably a better idea that I take you home, Rory and Amy, and let you take your own leave, River." He threw another lever on the console. "I'd rather not have an audience for the next little while if you don't mind."

"Actually I do," she countered. "You see, I just witnessed a woman from your past get kidnapped by a man you seem to know." She pursed her lips and slouched to one side. "And one you don't seem to like too much."

The Doctor sniffed. His expression fell into petulant grimace. He looked away from her to stare toward the console. "She wasn't being kidnapped. She went with him willingly – like she did before and always will."

River Song shook her head, letting her blonde curls dance around her shoulders. "There wasn't anything willing about that, Sweetie. That girl was terrified…"

He lifted his chin at that. "And if I do recall, Dear, she was also quite frightened of you, too." A smile touched at the very edge of his lips. "Would you care to explain how you know Rose Tyler and why she's completely terrified of you?"

River wore a smile as she lifted her hand to look at her nails. "I think you'll find, Doctor, that there are a lot of people who are scared of me." She flicked at her nails and waggled her brows as she lifted her eyes to him. "I have a bit of a reputation across the universe, you know."

"A fact I am aware, and most certainly don't approve of."

"I'm certainly not looking for your approval," she countered coyly. "Now. As to the name Rose Tyler?" Her brows dropped into a frown. "I can't say I've ever heard the name during my travels, but people do tend to go by pseudonyms when they're being evasive, so you never know. Perhaps she and I have crossed paths."

"I would hope not," he breathed, irritated. "The missus and the Ex," he muttered under his breath. "The Universe wouldn't survive it."

River Song frowned finding herself unable to hear his muttered words. "What was that?"

He shook his head and inhaled a deep voice. "It was nothing complimentary, nor conducive to the discussion."

"Tell me who they are, Doctor," River asked him in a voice that suggested that she was switching tactics to ge the information she wanted. "And how can we help?"

They are both part of my past," he muttered quickly. His voice held slight frustration and perhaps reigned fury. "Which means it's my problem to deal with and doesn't concern you."

"But they're here now," she corrected sharply. "And they've upset you, which very much makes it my business. So you, dear husband, had better start talking or I'll get the TARDIS to spell it out to us."

Amy's voice sang in from behind the Doctor. "Rose Tyler. Human, early Twenty-first century from London, Earth. Companion of the Doctor in his Ninth and Tenth incarnations…"

River Song immediately snaked herself around the Doctor to look at the monitor that Amy was reading from. "She was with him through a regeneration?" She looked toward the Doctor's back with a lifted brow. "Not that I imagine she was the first of your companions to witness it…"

"She wasn't," he answered slowly as he turned around. "Nor was she the first one to be directly responsible for a regeneration." He leaned a hand on the console's edge. He smiled slightly. "Actually, if I am to be purely technical I can cite her indirect responsibility on my aborted regeneration."

River Song frowned. "I didn't know that you could abort a regeneration."

His face screwed up in self-loathing. "Conditions need to be optimal and a bio-matching receptacle available in order to do so, of course. But. Yes. It's entirely possible to abort if one is vain enough to want to keep his current face."

"And you were being vain?" she queried with a frown.

"Don't pretend to be surprised by that, River," he shot back . "You know as well as most of the universe that the Doctor is rather fond of himself… Well… Of the incarnation he is currently in. We don't tend to like each other when we're faced with the unfortunate circumstance of being in each other's presence."

"At that moment," River clarified with a sigh.

"I was hopelessly in love," he said in rapid english, quite possibly in the hope that it was a comment that could be ignored.

Apparently not.

"Excuse me," she breathed in shock. "What? You were what?"

"I was hopelessly, shamelessly, desperately in love," he clarified. "Rose and I were. We were…" He dropped his head. "We were in love. Quite obviously so. But before we could explore …" He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "We ran out of time. There was a tear between the walls of dimensions. Cybermen, Daleks, death destruction…"

River Song hitched in her breath. "Oh Doctor," she breathed sympathetically. "You lost her?"

He nodded. "By the end of the battle, we found ourselves separated on opposite sides of a dimensional wall. The cracks were sealed and there was no way for me to get back to her."

Amy's voice was soft and reassuring. "There must be a way now, if she's back, Doctor."

He nodded.

River flicked a look to Amy then shifted her gaze back to Amy. "And what about this boyfriend of hers?"

"Yes," the Doctor answered with a nod. "She's wearing a wedding ring. He's her husband."

"Okay," Amy breathed out with a slow nod of her head. "So she's moved on, then?"

River Song blinked a slow close of her eyes. She held them closed for a long second and slowly opened them again. "And him, Doctor. Her husband. Who is he?"

"Me," he answered almost inaudibly.

"Why did I think you were going to say that?" River said sadly. "So she was more than your companion. She was your wife."

The Doctor smiled at that and released a breath through his nose. He inhaled just as sharply as he exhaled and shook his head. "Yes. And no. She's married to the Meta-Crisis version of my Tenth incarnation." Before any of his companions could ask the obvious, he inhaled another deep breath and let his words fly quickly from his mouth. "My aborted regeneration resulted in him. My bio-matching receptacle was my severed hand. Long story, lost it in a sword fight. But that man grew from my hand when the situation was dire enough to need a second me to help out."

He walked to the monitor and looked down at the keyboard as he entered in an array of touch commands. He lifted his eyes as the image of the meta crisis flicked up onto the screen. "Half Human/Half Time Lord." His eyes shifted to River Song. "Same as you are – to some degree I expect. An anomaly in time and space. Unique. Never been another one like him." He smirked. "Well. Until you I suppose."

"How'd she end up with him, then?" Amy asked with a frown. "And not you?"

"I gave him to her," he answered with a shrug. "I sent her back home to her family across the other side of the dimensional wall with a direct copy of myself to grow old and be happy with. I gave my other self the life I'd never be able to give her and then moved on." He sighed. "Moved along and moved on. New life, new body, new friends, new everything, really."

River's eyes twitched. "It doesn't sound like you gave her much of a choice in the matter, does it?" She straightened up and looked along his shoulder to his ear. "Did you?"

"It was for the best," he replied without looking at her. "He could give her what I couldn't. Marriage, stability, love, a house, children." He exhaled a breath. "Together they'd grow old. By Rassilon, I figured the two of them would die in each other's arms in their sleep when they turned 100."

River Song frowned tightly. "Obviously that's not going to be the case."

The Doctor agreed with a nod of his head. "Judging by what we saw today. No. Quite possibly not." He frowned. "Although I can't understand why not. When I left them they were doing that…" he flicked a hand toward Amy. "That kissing thing that you and Rory do … sometimes. I thought they'd be happy together."

River Song shook her head. "I suppose the honeymoon period wore off – and pretty quickly I might add," she said with a sigh as she looked over the image given to her by the TARDIS of Rose and Tentoo on the beach. "They can't be any more than a year or two older than this picture."

The Doctor screwed up his face. "Slight greying at his temple and sideburn. He's trying to colour it out, but roots are roots. They are persistent. I'd put him at about fifteen to twenty years older."

River Song hummed. "And Rose?"

"I may as well have said goodbye yesterday," he admitted sadly. His eyes then widened and his head shot upward. "No. No that's not right. It can't be." He shoved through both Amy and River and rapidly moved his fingers across the keyboard. "She should be much, much older than that. She should have lines and creases and the faults in the figure that age affords her." He shook his head as he read through the new information given by the TARDIS. "But she was perfect. As perfect as the day I left her. Probably moreso, in fact. Lovely, simply lovely, but not anywhere near her fourties as his age suggests she should be."

River tucked her hair behind her ear and leaned down beside him to watch as he worked through the information. "Do you think something happened to her and he went back in time…?"

He shook his head. "He has no way of moving through time to do that," he admitted. "When I left them on the beach – I left the both of them with nothing from this universe. He has no ability at all to travel through time and space."

River Song hummed her displeasure. "How very kind of you to have just deserted them like that."

"He still got the best end of the deal," the Doctor admitted softly. "He got her. She got the perfect version of me to have and to hold for the rest of their short human lives."

River Swallowed hard. "You still love her, don't you?"

"I've moved on," he answered flatly.

"I'm really not sure that you have."

"We both have." The Doctor stepped back and folded his arms across his chest as he waited for the final data download and analysis from the TARDIS. "She married him. I moved on. Everyone's happy."

"Yes. That's obvious, isn't it?"

The Doctor leaned forward to read through the new information. "If there's one thing that I can't really let myself fall into," he murmured with obvious distain. "Is domestics. I don't have the time, nor the inclination for it."

River Song husked her voice into his ear. "Just keep trying to convince yourself of that, will you? We both know it's a lie."

"By Rassilon no," the Doctor breathed, obviously not listening to a word River was saying into his hear. He abruptly straightened and covered his mouth with his hand as he shook his head and backed away a step from the console's edge. "This can't be right. It can't be."

River Song looked to the monitor with an expression of confusion. "What's she saying, Sweetie?"

The Doctor rushed back to the monitor and let his hand fly frantically across the keyboard once again. "No," he demanded to the computer. "Check again. Double and triple check that information, because what you're saying is impossible, absolutely impossible."

River Song's brows twitched as she tried to make sense of the Gallifreyan text scrolling rapidly along the screen in front of her. "Vale," she said softly. "Vale-Yard? What, or who, is Vale-Yard?"

"It's pronounced Val-e-yard," the Doctor corrected with horror draining the colour in his face. He dropped his head and let it hang between his shoulders. "Omega, please tell me that I didn't create the Valeyard and just left her there with him. Please."

"Who is the Valeyard, Doctor?"

The Doctor didn't lift his head. "He's me," he admitted ruefully. "Created in the midst of blood, fire and battle. He represents the very worst of me. He has the memories of ten men – and carries the most vicious and evil traits of each and every one of them. Anything good inside me, he doesn't have."

Her breath drew in deep and hard. "Doctor…"

"He's an evil man," the Doctor continued. "And I just left her there with him." He lifted his head and looked blindly ahead of him. "I told her to fix him, to make him better." He closed his eyes. "But there is no making the Valeyard better." He swallowed a lump. "And I've got no way of getting to her. I've got no way of stopping him from hurting her – or destroying the universe I locked them in."

He twisted his head to look remorsefully toward River Song. "Oh, River. What have I done?"