Final chapter, short though it may be. Thanks for listening!

The Doctor was not surprised to hear the story of how Amelia Pond and Rory Williams married in June of 2010, and had me nine months later. He was not surprised that I grew up loved and normal, with an aptitude for biology and history. He asked if my either of my parents have an inexplicable fascination with Ancient Rome, and I told him they both do. He was not surprised to find that my father was a nurse, and my mother had once been a model. He was not surprised to learn that my middle name is Brianne, after my grandfather Brian, who is the very spirit of tranquility, adaptability and patience.

And then he told me of how he had met a seven-year-old girl named Amelia Pond in 1996, how he had interfered with her life, her destiny, her emotional state and her wedding day fourteen years later. Though he had got her back in time to marry the ever-steadfast nurse, Rory Williams. He promised to tell me how and why at that point, Rory had waited over two millennia to be with her, on another day. He told me that they did, indeed, have a daughter nine months later, but that the daughter had been conceived in the TARDIS, exposed to the Time Vortex, and that she had been infused with knowledge of the universe intertwined with Time Lord physiology as a gift from the TARDIS. The daughter, Melody, was named after a childhood friend of Amelia and Rory's, who was later revealed to be none other than the daughter herself, implanted in their lives via a Vortex Manipulator, after the daughter had been stolen by people who wanted to take down the Doctor.

"So I'm... your wife?" I asked, my face contorted

"No," he told me emphatically. "You will never be her."

"Oh, good," I sighed. "That would just be too much responsibility."

He looked me over and smiled, only slightly. "You are who she might have been, if Amelia Pond had never met me. Say, if I didn't exist in her universe. Which I don't."

"Wow."

"Without the TARDIS, Amy and Rory's daughter wouldn't have had Time Lord qualities. She would never have regenerated, but rather, would have grown up with the face and hair and voice that her beautiful mother and father gave her." He gestured to me and smiled again. Then continued, "Without me in their lives, their daughter would not have been taken, nor used as a weapon, and there would have been no teenage girl named Mel to name her after. They would have named her Reed, and she would have followed the path of whatever proclivities she'd been born with - namely, biology and history. Tell the truth, Reed: did you ever want to be an archaeologist?"

"Yes! Until I was eighteen and my dad talked me into medical school, it's what I thought I would do!"

"That's what River did. She was also a professor."

"Secretly, I've always thought I would teach Hippocratic Theory and Medical Ethics."

He smiled. "But you're not her."

"Really not," I agreed. "Except... erm, I know your name."

"Do you?"

"When I had the final vision of her, when I felt her die, I knew it," I explained.

He nodded. "The question of my name was important that day because it was the first time I ever saw her, and the last time she ever saw me. I didn't know who she was. Time travel... it's just bizarre."

"But you worked it out after she said your name," I filled in. "I never heard it, I just knew it. Like my mind, or her mind, had given me a gift."

He sighed. "That's all right. Just keep it to yourself."

"Okay, I promised Rose anyhow. And Doctor, I know I'm not her... I can feel that I'm not her because I can tell from the visions that River and I, and Mel and Melody, we have nothing in common."

"You should feel glad of that. River had a terrible childhood, and her adulthood wasn't always sunshine and lollipops. She spent more time than she needed to under lock and key. Her whole life."

"I could see that. But why? Why could I see her?"

"I think that you saw her at times when she was close to the Vortex, or pressing against the void," he said. "She worked on the TARDIS with me, we travelled and had hanging-by-your-ankles-in-swirling-pools-of-intang ible-energy adventures. She had her training as a child in Vortex Manipulation... and when she died, I would guess that CAL inadvertently spread her consciousness through the Vortex in an effort the accommodate the overload that River caused."

"Who is CAL?"

"Charlotte Lux," the Doctor told me. "A little girl whose mind was made into a computer, and eventually she absorbed River as data. I had a hand in that."

"Oh, Charlotte! I remember her!"

"And I wouldn't be surprised if River saw an image or two of you in those times as well. Though, because she had knowledge that you don't, she would not have been as confused by the visions as you were."

"Do you think all people who have a twin in a parallel universe have those visions?"

The Doctor shrugged. "I would say, probably not. Most people have a twin in a parallel universe, but not many of them get that close to the Vortex or the void. River's life was a bit different from other folks'."

"Ah, of course," I said, feeling silly for asking.

"And if they do have visions, most of their counterparts look just like them, so they wouldn't notice."

"That's true!"

"Not everyone is unlucky enough to be counterparted in an alternate dimension with a pseudo-Time Lord."

I smiled. "I had not expected ever to hear that sentence spoken aloud to me."

"Well, get used to it. I say a lot of things like that."

"You're giving me time to get used to it?"

"If you want it. The one thing I can give you lots of is time."

"I ask a lot of questions, you know. I'd be kind of annoying."

"I wouldn't have it any other way. Just don't call me sweetie."