CHAPTER TWELVE

BRAND NEW SONG

The Library was finally safe. It had been a few hours since the planet had been saved by River, and the Shadow Architect and Judoon finally unsealed the atmosphere, reopening it after the lockdown. They had captured all remaining Librarians that lurked in the shadows, promising to convert them back into the lifeforms that had previously been. The Doctor and Clara left the lobby in the TARDIS and landed in the brightly lit corridor back up on Level Twenty-One.

"Why are we here, Doctor?" Clara whispered, following the Time Lord out of the police box. The Doctor glanced to his companion, "River said she had taken control the TARDIS and landed us in that room when we first got the Morse Code message."

"What, you think she's landed us there for a reason?"

"River never tells me things directly. Spoilers," the Doctor smiled, poking Clara's nose softly. They continued down the corridor.

A gigantic hole had blown through the side of the wall ahead. A pair of wooden door that should have been attached to the opposite side of the hallway had too been ripped off their hinges as well. The Doctor turned to Clara and winked, "My TARDIS did this, yes?"

Clara smirked and nodded. They walked through the wooden pieces and splinters that littered the floor and entered into the reading room the TARDIS had first landed in. The room was lit with warm lights and surprising, everything (apart from the front doors) was intact. Then, the Doctor and Clara saw it.

Sitting on a stand directly behind where the TARDIS had landed earlier was a blue book. It was the only book in the entire room. "Of course," scoffed the Doctor with amazement, "this building is called Song Tower so you could never throw away the hardcopy."

"Is that River's?" asked Clara, pointing at the book.

"The TARDIS was in the way when we landed. That's why we never saw it," explained the Doctor, "it's River's diary. All of her adventures and thoughts placed on pages in ink." The Doctor walked across the room and picked up the book from the stand.

"I think she'd want you to keep it, Doctor," said Clara, tilting her head with a smile. The Doctor nodded slightly and went to place it into his jacket.

"Aren't you going to see if there is a message in it?" asked Clara.

"Her past is my future, Clara. I can't read it."

"But she's gone, Doctor. Surely you could read the last page. She's probably left a message."

"But it was sudden. She didn't even she was going to die –" the Doctor broke off, staring at Clara. A deep silence fell across the room.

"She said she only had a few minutes before the Rip. I assume she meant being ripped into the Time Vortex. She already knew it was going to be the last time she saw you."

The Doctor opened to the last page of the book. His eyes widened and he looked up at Clara, not blinking.

"Doctor?"

He suddenly dropped the book and ran out of the room, disappearing out through the hole where the doors had been. "Doctor!" shouted Clara, but all she heard was his fading footsteps on the corridor floor outside. Clara picked up the book and opened it to the last page. She read the final entry and gasped:

I'm not dead. Check the Morse code.

R.S. xox

Clara raced out of the room at high speed and out into the hallway, still holding onto River's diary. She suddenly saw the TARDIS flying towards her from the end of the corridor, the lamp atop millimetres away from the ceiling. The doors flew open and the Doctor stood in front of them.

"STARTING RUNNING!" he roared, a wide grin upon his face.

Clara began to charge towards the TARDIS, her eyes wide in terror.

"On three, you're going to jump!"

Clara let out of squeal as the distance between her and the police box closed in.

"One!"

"This isn't going to work!" cried Clara, still running towards the blue box.

"Two!"

Clara screamed at the top of her lungs.

"THREE!"

Clara jumped into the air and flew into the TARDIS, landing perfectly on the Console Platform. She turned around to the Doctor, "let's do that again!"

The Doctor laughed as he snapped his fingers, closing the TARDIS doors. On the computer monitor, Clara watched as the TARDIS vanished from the corridor and entered the Time Vortex. The Doctor raced down to the console and pressed some buttons. The Morse code Clara heard on her mobile phone back in the cemetery, played loudly across the Console Room.

"So there's another message in this. Clara, what could it be?"

"Um," Clara thought for a second as she placed River's diary on the nearby steps leading to the police box doors, "um … ooh! Another language!"

"Good thinking!"

The Doctor fiddled with some knobs and the Morse code warped and buzzed through the speakers. "Hmm … nothing Earth-based," mumbled the Doctor, "let's try local galactic languages."

There was more warping noises and still the Doctor shook his head. "Nothing."

There was silence from the Time Lord again while the Morse code echoed around the Console Room. Clara then had a thought.

"Of course," she whispered, looking to the Doctor. "What?" he asked, pressing more buttons on the console.

"Gallifrey."

The Doctor froze, his head lowering slightly, "How did I miss that? She's part-Time Lord. I'm such an idiot." He slapped his forehead hard and began inputting the Gallifreyian translation software.

Clara shook her head fondly. She knew what he was going through. He'd simply forgotten because his mind was on other things. Even though he wasn't aware it, his brain was still processing the grief that River had gone. In fact, she was still gone. He had no physical evidence other than a diary entry that proved she had survived the Rip that sealed the Crack in the Library's data core. Clara knew exactly what was going on inside his head – she knew because she'd been there before, nine years ago.

"Okay. Here we go. Where are you, River …" the Doctor muttered as he pulled the monitor around to face him, "hmm … okay, it's a holographic file."

The Doctor tapped the screen and suddenly, a holographic version of River Song appeared on the steps behind them. "Hello sweetie," River called as both Clara and the Doctor jumped in fright, turning around to the steps.

"Can she hear us?" whispered Clara, watching the hologram closely. "No," said the Doctor, his voice broken, "she's just a recording."

"I hope this message gets through to the TARDIS in one piece," the holographic River began, "by the time you and Clara get this, I will have sealed the Crack in the Library's computer core and restored all of the books and information that had vanished from the data core. The Time Lords will not be able to use the Crack as a passage anymore, however I can tell you that they've had a back-up plan in case this one faulted."

The Doctor closed his eyes and sighed. Clara took his hand and held it tight. River continued, "Since the Time Lords broke down their universe's wall, they are now unable to go back to it. The back-up plan was simple. If the Cracks in Time were to close, the Time Lords would use the Time Vortex as a means of transport and travel into the future where the Cracks that are still sealing and use them just like they did with the Library's, to enter back into this universe before they closed."

The Doctor shook his head, "A plan designed to use its flaw as the back-up. Typical."

"But don't fret, sweetie. I'm joining them on the ride."

Clara looked up confused, "What?"

River continued, as if responding to Clara's question, "Since I closed that Crack, I have appeared on the opposite side – in the Time Vortex. My growing concern is that when the pocket universe collided into this one, it wasn't just the Time Lords that were breaking through. You saved something else in that universe, a lot bigger and greater than a civilisation."

"Oh, no," the Doctor uttered, his hand squeezing Clara's.

"Doctor, what's wrong?" asked Clara with a worried voice.

River answered her question, "Doctor, if the Time Lords were bleeding through the Cracks, then that means the thing from which they came from is coming with them."

"And what's that?!" cried Clara, attempting to ask the hologram a question.

"Gallifrey. Gallifrey is breaking back into the universe," the Doctor whispered.

Clara gulped, shaking her head in disbelief, "But you saw the Crack the Nightmare Child made when he was through. If Gallifrey does the same thing –"

"It's going to a lot bigger, I can tell you that," whispered the Doctor, his voice dry and husky.

"But like I said in my diary, Doctor, I am not dead. It's in the future – way in the future so once I've acuminated enough regeneration energy from these dying Time Lords here in the Vortex, I will have a brand new body to fight the masterminds behind this all. Brand new body, I like the sound of that," the hologram River smirked flirtatiously, "Brand new body, brand new Song! I'll see you around, sweetie!"

The Doctor chuckled as the hologram vanished.

Clara looked to the Time Lord, "Doctor …"

"Mm?" the Doctor responded, a wide smile appearing on his face.

"Gallifrey's coming back," she replied.

"Yep," laughed the Doctor, "and River's about to introduce herself to its founding fathers."

"Are we ever going to see her again?"

"Oh yes. We're both lonely psychopaths – we're inseparable. But I do have to do something."

The Doctor turned around to the Console and pushed down the handbrake. The TARDIS groaned alive and after a minute or so, landed silently. The Doctor bent down and picked up River's diary from the steps. "Follow me," he said as he exited the police box. Clara followed and soon realised they were back in Lancashire Cemetery. The Doctor wandered off through the graveyard as Clara followed him.

Where's he going, Clara thought. She realised he was following the same path she took to go to her mother's grave. Soon, she appeared by the Doctor's side. "I saw your Mum once, when you were a little girl. She always had the biggest smile on her face."

Clara smirked, "I remember she'd continually get annoyed when I put my hand up in from the camera. I hated photos back then. She'd always said 'Just smile, Clara. It's only a picture!'."

"She's right, you know," whispered the Doctor.

"What do you mean?" asked Clara.

"You can take a photo," the Doctor explained, "that photo holds more just a face, a smile and a background. It holds our memories, conversations and perspectives in a fragment of time; a time that you can never experience ever again, Clara. I have a TARDIS. I can go anywhere and everywhere I like. So when I can go anywhere and everywhere, I can never cherish a moment that I can never ever go back and see, because I can go back and do it all again."

Clara smiled and turned to the Doctor, "I assume there is a reason we are here."

"I think it's time I cherish a moment I won't come back for, but will always remember. If you don't mind, of course."

"By all means," Clara said, stepping back.

The Doctor smiled and walked over to the headstone Ellie Oswald's grave. He dug out a small hole next to it and placed the diary inside it. "Brand new Song," he whispered, as he buried the diary into the earth.

The Doctor stood to his feet and walked back over to Clara, "Fancy a trip to the annual Intergalactic Flower Show?"

Clara grinned and they both jogged back to the TARDIS and entered inside. As the doors closed, the lamp atop the police box pulsed blue and after a couple of seconds, the TARDIS began to dematerialise, away from Lancashire Cemetery and into time and space.

oOo

Millions of years in the future, a low, misty fog blanketed the rocky surface of Bilbibsky, a deserted and uninhabited dwarf planet. It orbited no sun and was located by no nearby planets. It was completely cut off from any local civilisations and was left abandoned with no population. The surface was made of a hard rock and had no vegetation or life. It was simply dark, dirty and not worth any value. No one had visited the planet in years, however it would inevitably become the battlefield of a war in the near future.

Among the mist, a brilliant white light appeared and a woman with fuzzy blond hair in a white dress dropped onto the hard, cold surface. She sat up and dusted herself off. River Song looked at her hands, legs and body. She laughed loudly and shouted into the air, "It worked!"

She stood to her feet and ruffled the dirt out of her hair. She looked up to the sky and sighed happily.

An enormous Crack ripped across the starry sky; it was miles away from the dwarf planet, yet it stretched from western to eastern horizon. However, what intrigued River the most was the red surface appearing through the Time Winds of the Vortex. The edge of Gallifrey, the Time Lord's home world, was breaking through the Crack in Time, tearing it open as the entire planet entered back into the Universe.

River pulled out her small electronic device and began clicking buttons. She finally clicked it off and put it back into her pocket. "Well, well, well," River called sarcastically as yellow regeneration energy flared from the sides of the Crack, "bring it on, Time Lords. Brand you body, brand new Song! Time to stop your planet from ripping the Universe apart."

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

IT'S FINALLY FINISHED!
I hope you all enjoyed reading this story! It's my first ever Doctor Who FanFiction novel so I really hope you all liked it! I hope I can learn a bit more to improve my writing skills (cuz I know they're not the greatest) but I really hope this won't be my only Doctor Who story. Message me on Tumblr via thatfilmcomposer and tell me if you really liked it, your thoughts on it and if I should write another ;)

Thanks for you support, guys! Really means a lot!