To everyone who reviewed. Thank you! To those who wonder why River didn't know Rose, spoilers! :)

Speaking of spoilers, this chapter has some pretty major spoilers for seasons 1 & 2 of Torchwood. Be warned. If you don't want to read these spoilers, skip the section between the dividers. There's a small reference to Torchwood before that, but no real spoilers there.

How much does it cost to buy Doctor Who? (Breaks piggy bank) Yep, more than I have.

BOOK I: Fixing the Doctor's Mistake

CHAPTER 9: Cry Me a River

Jack didn't wake up right away. Hours passed, and he was still dead. Rose, Jenny, Donna, and the others who were lost were restored, but Jack was still dead. Rose and Jenny tried to help Donna find her husband and were unsuccessful, and Jack was still dead. River held him in her arms and cried mournfully from the depths of her broken heart, and the immortal man was still dead. They loaded his body onto the TARDIS and jettisoned off into the vortex, and Jack was still dead. They were beginning to wonder if this really was the end of Captain Jack. Days passed, and they weren't wondering anymore: they were fairly certain. A week later, even the Doctor believed that Jack was gone for good. Everyone had given up.

Except River. She refused to give up. This was her Jack, the true love of her life! She may have once believed herself to be in love with the Doctor, but that was before she met Jack. Their relationship was unorthodox from the beginning. They both flirted with everyone, but really only had eyes for each other. Jack had confessed his unique condition early on in the relationship, and as a result, the couple regularly relieved stress together in an impossibly unorthodox way. When River got stressed, she wanted to kill someone, and when Jack got stressed, he wanted to die. Being dead was the only time he got any peace, he'd say. So they relieved stress together as River hunted Jack. They'd made a sport of it. But no matter how many times she killed him, he'd be back to life in a matter of minutes. To her knowledge, he'd never been gone this long before. Well, he'd told her about this one time when he'd died while working for Torchwood where he'd been gone for over a week, but that was a particularly unusual and painful death.

Like his faithful friend and co-worker, Gwen, before her, River held vigil by his bedside, refusing to give up. One day, Rose paid her a visit.

"You really still believe that he is going to wake up?" Rose asked, sympathetically.

"He has to! I can't lose him, not this way!" River cried. "Besides, the Doctor tells me that one day he will be the Face of Boe. That means that he still has a lot of living to do, right?"

"Time can be, and is, in fact, being rewritten even as we speak," Rose said, softly. "Maybe in the original time line, Jack did become the Face of Boe. But all I know is that something major has changed, and anything could happen. I'm sorry."

"Well, Sweetie, you'd better be, because this is all your fault!"

Rose knew that River spoke the truth. She may not have been the reason that Jack was there in the Library where he shouldn't have been, but if she wasn't mucking about with the Doctor's time line, Jack probably wouldn't have been there. The Doctor had told her that River had known his real name in the original time line, and there was only one way that that would have been possible. Now Rose is engaged to the man that River was supposed to have married. Granted, Rose is engaged to pinstripes, and River had presumably married bowtie, but the end result is the same: Rose's gain is River's loss. Rose didn't believe even for a moment that Jack and River met by mere coincidence. This had bowtie written all over it! He wanted to make sure that two people that he cared about had a chance at the same happiness that he had hoped to achieve.

After a lengthy silence, Rose spoke again. "You lied when you said that you didn't know me when we met in the Library, didn't you?"

River's head jerked up in shock. "How did you know?"

"I don't know. Just a hunch, I guess. What I don't know, is why."

"It was petty of me, really," River admitted. "I had a great life, you know? Sure, my childhood was rotten, and I spent most of my life in jail for a crime I didn't commit, but it was my life! I had parents and a husband that I adored. Then, suddenly I have new memories. Time had been rewritten and it all bends around you. Suddenly, I lost my husband, and this was at a time before my parents knew that they were my parents! Suddenly, I literally had no one, and it was all you fault!"

Rose raised an eyebrow at the remark about her parents. How could her parents not know... unless... "Your parents, their time lines run opposite yours as well, don't they?"

River nodded. "At least this part of their lines do."

"But that means that they travel with the Doctor, and that means... the Ponds!" When River didn't deny it, Rose rambled on. "Omigosh! Amy and Rory are your parents!"

"Yes," came the admission. "Yes they are, but you can't tell them. Nor the Doctor. Darn it, Rose! Why are you so nice!"

"Excuse me?!"

"I want to hate you, should hate you, but I can't. You've destroyed my life by coming back, and now the only good thing that has ever happened to me since you rewrote time is gone!"

"I know that you're upset, and you have every right to be, but Jack has given you a gift, River. The paradoxical loop that was your life is now over. Your time line now moves in the same direction as the Doctor's."

"How do you know that?"

"Because the Doctor, your Doctor, the one in the bowtie, told me about the Library. River, in the original time line, you should be dead right now!"

"Well, Sweetie, maybe I don't want to live! Oh, don't look at me that way, Rose Tyler. I mean it. I have no one! And if I want to live, I don't want it to be at the expense of the life of the one man I love!"

"Aww, thanks, Sweetie! I love you too!" Both women turned and looked at the bed where the once dead Captain was sitting up and grinning cheekily. River ran to him and embraced him. Rose quietly left the room and went to tell the others of his continuing immortality.

River and Jack were dropped off in Cardiff where they continued the work that was once done by Jack's Torchwood team. He missed his team. He had loved them like family, and didn't have it in his heart to replace them when they died. They had all died young. Susie had died first by her own hand, though that wasn't any real great loss. She had been promptly replaced by Gwen. Owen had died next, having been shot in the chest. Jack had used the resurrection glove to bring him back, and Owen lived in a sort of undead state for months after that until getting trapped inside a nuclear power plant during a meltdown. Tosh had died moments after that, a fatal gunshot wound to the abdomen. Ianto and Gwen lived on for awhile after that, but eventually they were lost as well. Finding River had been a godsend. Together, they were an unstoppable team!

After bidding farewell to River and Jack, the so-called Space Family and Donna traveled on their way.