Rory and Amy were glad to have their oldest daughter stay with them. Though at first it was an unusual arrangement for all of them and took some time to adjust to since it was the first time they had all lived together as something resembling a normal family. While Rory and Amy worked, River spent time watching her younger sisters and brother.

It took her a little while before she opened Donna Noble's journal. Some of the pages were torn and some of the words had faded away, but she could still read most of it.

"Granddad told me to write down my dreams; they're too bonkers to tell people about. My head hurts so much when I wake up sometimes. I don't tell Shaun about them.

The dreams feel so real sometimes, which is insane because they can't be real.

There were these enormous bees once... which obviously can't be real.

There's always this man though, a man in a suit.

He's in every dream, every crazy dream.

Him and a blue box."

In her studies about the Doctor River had learned about many of his companions. She had read about Donna Noble and the battle inside the Medusa Cascade. The stories she had heard didn't quite capture the essence of the woman whose journal she was reading. Donna was smart but not in the conventional way, sensitive, and not very sure of herself. Eventually River was able to find what Sophia wanted her to know.

"There were shadows. Shadows and bones.

Books, tons of books, they were everywhere.

There were these people in spacesuits, and a woman. She had the curliest hair I've ever seen. She knew the man in the suit but he didn't seem to know her.

She had a book, a blue book. It looked like the box.

He was so sad.

She died, she died saving people."

It was early in the morning when Rory came home. He saw River reading and rereading the passages in the journal about herself. He looked over at her and realized that she was crying and had been for some time. He put his hands on her shoulder, startling her from her reverie.

"Melody, are you ok?"

She shook her head but fought to smile. "I know where I'm going to die. I always knew I would die some day but... And he knows dad, he knows when I'm going to die, he knows how I'm going to die."

Rory looked angry and confused. "How do you know?"

"It's in this journal, written by one of the people he traveled with, Sophia gave it to me. He would never have wanted me to know my future, for the same reasons I never told him his future. It'll be ok dad, we all die some day."

He hugged her tightly and kissed her head. "I just don't want you to be hurt any more than you have been."

"I'll be fine, always am. I'll be here to see my brother and sisters grow up, I wouldn't miss it for anything. Right now I just wish I knew how his search is going, there aren't that many months left in this pregnancy."

"Two years," the Doctor was ranting. "We've been searching for two years and haven't had a single successful lead or even a lead at all. This is pointless."

"We've had this argument before, and two years is no time at all compared to all of the ages we need to search!"

Jack walked over to him to try calming the older Timelord down, while Sophia stormed off towards the pool, she had taken to swimming laps when she was angry. "Doctor, she seems to think this will work, why not keep giving it a try. The three of us have a lot of time we can spend on this."

"I know that Jack, I know we can keep going on about this for centuries, but I let go of Gallifrey. When you met me it was just after the war had ended. I had lost everything. It took a long time for me to be ok, and the more time I spend on this search the less ok I become. I'm an old man Jack; I've seen and done terrible things. Sophia, for as much as I love the link she gives me to my old family, to my old life, it hurts me every time I see her.

Jack laughed a little. "Doctor I've lived a lot longer than you and done far worse things. Talk to her, find out why this means so much to her, why she seems so sure it's going to work. That's the only way you'll get any answers that make sense."

The Doctor waited awhile before going to see Sophia. He found her in the library. She was wrapped in a bathrobe, her hair still damp from swimming laps.

"Can we talk," he asked, she looked at him and nodded but didn't voice a reply. So after an awkward moment he sat across from her and started talking. "I know we haven't gotten along and that I've ignored you. I know that this search means a lot to you. I just want to know why this means so much to you. You've had to have spent hundreds of years without Gallifrey, just like I have. I know you were there during the war, and you met my companions after the war ended, so you know how much it impacted me. You seem so sure that it can all be undone and I've never bothered asking you why. I'm sorry."

She set her book down and considered him thoughtfully. "I left Gallifrey when my parents were killed. They were struck down in one of the Dalek assaults. I used a time jump and arrived in the middle of Europe in the 1800s. I moved from place to place, hiding, thinking that I would be found and killed. Then the war ended. I found Jack and other people who had traveled with you, and finally found some sort of peace. But I miss Gallifrey; I miss the planet I grew up on. I grew up reading about you, the things you had done and were doing. I never forgot any of the stories, not for a moment."

She laughed a bit and smiled. "When I learned that you were safe I knew that Gallifrey would return there was no other possibility. You know it too, if you remember your own past."

The Doctor shook his head; he had no idea what she was talking about. She grinned like a little girl, holding a huge secret that she couldn't wait to tell. "The Valeyard," she whispered.

Then suddenly it all fell into place for the Doctor. A dark version of himself from beyond his twelfth lifetime that had put him on trial on Gallifrey so very long ago, would only be possible if Gallifrey were out of the timelock. He stood up and paced for the longest time, considering all of the possibilities and outcomes, and he realized that her belief had to be at least somewhat true.

"If I was able to return to my past self from my future self then there must be a way through the timelock. The only way in theory that you've found of resolving the difficulties with the timelock is to find more Timelords who can help us shift Gallifrey from the lock into an inbetween plane which would enable us to separate the War from Gallifrey and prevent any interference with past events in non-linear time streams... You're brilliant!" He pulled her up out of her seat and gave her a hug.

"Ready to keep searching for other survivors now?" She asked him, laughing at his new found enthusiasm.

"For however long it takes."

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