When the Sun Sets in Winter

by pinesapgum

Summary:

After the Doctor leaves Darillium he thinks he's seen the last of River Song, but Madame Kovarian has other ideas.

Notes:

This isn't my first River Song story, but it is the first I feel good about posting. This chapter is from the Doctor's perspective but most chapters will be from River's point of view. I hope someone out there enjoys reading this as much as I enjoy writing it!

 

“He had lied to himself, she’s only in love with the fiction of you. What rubbish, to annihilate every thought of present happiness with the promise of spoilers.”

Chapter 1: An Empty House

So much has changed. And still you are fortunate:
The ideal burns in you like a fever.
Or not like a fever, like a second heart.

- Louise Glück, Averno

 

The Doctor would have kept her if he’d had the chance but she left before he woke. Half a day more. Still, she couldn’t have known what he was about to lose when she slipped away, down the hotel elevator, a quick trip to the launch ship. She couldn’t have known the pit of shadows she would give herself up to.

Somehow he found his way across the hotel room, and into the Tardis. The door slammed shut behind him, closing on the hotel room, and the singing bloody towers that had been their downfall. If only she hadn’t told him that day where she had been. What had compelled her to do it? Hadn’t she taught him spoilers! Had she already been resigned to her fate when she left this morning?

Amy and Rory’s deaths felt different to River’s. Their deaths had been a sudden snap, like a branch that had broken off quite cleanly. It hurt, it reverberated through him, but there was nothing left to recover. He only had to keep going. River’s, on the other hand, had grown in him like a cancer that wraps around the spine. His posture became hunched over, hands in pockets, hat pulled low. At his temples twin streaks of silver cut through his chestnut hair, and he was pretty sure his under eyes had never bruised like this before.

Back in the console room, searching the web for her. It’s a silly thing to do for someone you know, but he’s surprised to find a log of her articles and books, a record of her suspended over citations and social media posts. A picture taken before the expedition to the library had been uploaded just days ago. He found her obituary too, in the pages of Archeology Now, and in the Luna University paper.

Doctor Song Is survived by her friends, colleagues, and students.

Doctor Song will be remembered as among the most prolific archaeologists of our times and above all, we will remember her as kind, funny, and warm.

No mention is made of her family, but they probably didn’t know she had a family. What a cruel oversight to leave her appearing to be alone.

There was a recording of a panel she did a few months ago for an archaeological co-op, another where she was being interviewed about her latest book. He watched as she spoke eloquently about something… he couldn’t focus on her words. The movement of her hair when she shook her head. The little smiles that she forced back when she dismantled a question from an adversarial grad student. Her precious laugh condensed by the tinny speaker.

At first he had sought out the Ponds, went back through their timeline a few times, just to see them. They stopped the invasion of the black cubes, they got trapped in the Dalek Asylum and almost didn’t make it out alive, but emerged with their marriage intact.

They even had dinner one night with River. He put on a smile and didn’t let on to where he was in their timeline. She seemed younger than he’d seen in awhile, just out of Stormcage he supposed and so full of hope for their future.

She told him so on the porch later, before pressing her home coordinates into her vortex manipulator.

“I’ll be seeing you?” she asked. There was a vulnerability in her questioning smile that the Doctor had never noticed before. Or maybe he had just pretended to himself that he didn’t see it. He had lied to himself, thought that she was only in love with the fiction of him. What rubbish, to annihilate every thought of present happiness with the promise of spoilers. It’s almost enough to make him angry with her for starting it. He had to remind himself that from her perspective, he invented spoilers. How the idea used to thrill and galvanize them. Now it only served to remind him of their ouroboros of a relationship.

He grasped her arm before she could go, “Wait. Let me give you a lift.”

A mischievous grin lit up her face, “Hmm, I might just take you up on that…” she leaned a little into his side. Her curls brushed his shoulder, and he tentatively push her curls to the side to brush her neck. He’d thought Darillium would be their last night together, but then, temporal infidelity was kind of their thing. “But I’m busy tonight, I’m afraid. Future you called,” she said with a flirtatious wink. “I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

The Doctor flushed, “No, I’m future me. Definitely. Past me was stood-up.”

“Will you never get enough of me?” River said, with a knowing mischief in her eye up at him. Did she enjoy seeing him squirm? Why even ask that? Of course she did.

“Just wait till I go leaving you for Jack," he teased in return. 

“Been there, done that," she grinned, "But you won’t. Do you know how I know? Because I’m meeting the future you tonight. And I know it’s the future you.”

She slipped away from his grip easily. He had gone slack. She walked down the garden path, and he watched her go. She was wearing a new dress in olive green that suited her so well. It was fitted to the hips.He wanted to tell her it was impossible. He wouldn’t see her again; it wasn’t possible. Then again, this shouldn’t be possible either. So fuck it.

“River, wait!”

She stopped and turned around, as she tucked her hands, all demure, behind her back. She still wore that little smile that made him smile back every time he saw it.

“When are you?”

“Oh sweetie, you know how it is. Spoilers.”

---

He didn’t go back to the Ponds after that night.

Time in the Tardis had passed with abject regularity after he’d left Darillium that the Doctor had lost track of how long he had been under the Tardis console. She’d been trying to cheer him up by malfunctioning when he’d set out for London. It would have been so easy to keep going. To play at being the cheerful Doctor. One last run. He’d set things right with the circuitry instead, and reinstalled the swimming pool.

The Tardis wheezed to life of her own accord, sending him spinning out the vortex, as if pulled by some external force. Finally, something interesting, he thought with a resigned shake of his head as he pulled the blue stabilizers down. River had always been a better driver.

It was night when the Doctor swung open the door on River’s back yard. The earth loomed, blue above the rooftops and trees and the atmosphere of the moon was cold this deep into it’s month long night. Ice crunched on the lawn as The Doctor made his way to the back door.

Her house was colder than the night. She only left this place a week ago. It’s exactly as it was. If he didn’t know any better, he’d expect her to be reading on the couch, or in the shower, just a shout away. How long he stood in the darkened kitchen, eyes closed, waiting for something that would never happen, he couldn’t say.

But he wasn’t alone in the house. He was first alerted to this by a thump that ricocheted through the house. The Doctor leapt up. He went for the lightswitch, but paused before he turned on the lights. What in the universe was he planning to do? Well, he wasn’t about to leave River’s house while someone rifled through her bedroom.

He ventured around the corner toward the source of the crash. River’s house was cluttered with nick nacks that she had picked up over her life. The counter that separated the living room and the kitchen was taken over by a Mycenaean bowl that ought to have been in a museum. To the right of it sat River’s abandoned mug; “Archeology Is A Lot of Trowel and Error,” it read. He kept on, down the little corridor that led to their bedroom- well, River’s really.

He paused outside the bedroom door. Waited for some further disturbance. The intruder couldn’t stay in there forever. After a couple seconds, he convinced himself that he was being very silly. When did the Doctor ever pause before opening a door? River Song would laugh to see him standing there, allowing fear to consume him.

He threw the door open.

The room was empty. Well, no that’s not right. It was overflowing with stuff. River’s clothes, River’s journals, River’s bed, River’s collection of antique weaponry. He gripped the door knob to steady himself. He must be getting silly in his old age. It was probably just the next door neighbours making noise. He was about to shut the door and leave when something rubbed against his legs, a warm, hairy something that was giving a rather high pitched ‘Meow!’

“Osiris?” River’s fluffy grey tomcat whipped his tail against the Doctor’s shins.

“Haven’t you got food?” The Doctor followed the cat back to the kitchen. In the pantry he found a stash of canned cat food. Wincing at the pungent smell, the Doctor emptied the can into the cat’s ceramic dish.

Osiris had been River’s cat for such a long amount of time that the Doctor had begun to suspect she was using regeneration energy on him. But that was impossible. The Doctor sat on the counter and snacked on a pack of jammie dodgers he’d found next to the cat food. When the cat finished his meal he hopped up next on the counter and shoved his face into the Doctor’s hand.

“Alright little fellow,” the Doctor admits defeat and scoops Osiris into his arms. He lets out a breath. When had he started being this paranoid? He leaned back on the cabinets and closed his eyes. Maybe the Tardis had brought him here for a reason.

The Ponds smiled out of the many photos River had magneted to her fridge. One from the Pond’s fifth anniversary, Amy and Rory on their sofa, but all he saw was River. She had her arms around his waist. The shape and weight of her chin on his shoulder was pressed there still. In another, River pointed her sonic trowel at the camera. He had taken it on the day she had led her dig on a moon called Dorh. He’d teased her to no end about that trowel, but his hearts couldn’t contain his pride when she led her team to the dig site.

When the lights came on, the Doctor jumped. There was a woman in the doorway. Not River. She pulled out a chair, meaning for him to sit across from her. He had never seen her out of battle before, with both her eyes were exposed, their pale grey was eerie in the predawn light. Later he’d think of something clever to say, but in that moment he just sat and gaped at her. It was all wrong. Her hair was grey. She wore River’s terry cloth dressing gown and fluffy slippers.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Madame Kovarian said at last. Her voice pierced the deathly silence that had overtaken the house before.

The Doctor’s arms had gone tight around Osiris. He wriggled around in his arms until the Doctor gave up and let the furball scamper down across the counter.

“For a moment.” The Doctor was still half dazed. Then, regaining the use of his tongue, he said, “Come to gloat?”

“Gloat? Why in heaven would I gloat? I’m grieving.” She stared at him down the tip of her nose, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

The Doctor was bewildered. He thought they had left The Silence behind years ago. How did Kovarian even find out where River lived? He stayed leaning on the counter, unsure of his next move, except that he wanted her out of the house. Gone forever.

“That’s likely,” he snapped. “How did you find us?”

“Finding you, Doctor, isn’t easy, but when you have the friends I do, nothing is impossible. I assumed you would show up here eventually.”

“You’ve been waiting? What, come to finish me off?”

“I relish the idea, but no.”

“What? I thought the Silence wanted me dead. Your mission in life, isn’t it?”

“So self obsessed. I do wonder at my daughter‘s taste... In any case, my faction fell out, and after that The Church… anyhow, I don’t come to you on their behalf. This is a personal matter, Doctor. This is about Melody.”

His breath caught at the mention of River. Madame Kovarian tilted her head to one side and didn’t shift her gaze from him.

“River Song is dead,” he rasped. “Or hadn’t you heard?”

“Yes. She was so selfless in the end. That, or maybe she just liked to play the martyr, particularly for you,” said Kovarian.

He wanted to rebuke this woman. Tell her that River was brave and in spite of her influence; that when she thought something was right she always saw it through. Thinking back to the River from earlier, that younger version of her, so sure of herself, sure of him, she knew Kovarion was wrong. Still, doubt was easy. 

You're wrong I could never have asked for someone more brave or-” the Doctor broke off, watching the cat pace the counters, as if even he could sense the unease that filled the room. He was not ashamed of his tears, but he didn’t want Madame Kovarian to think he was easily fooled by her display of sorrow.

He cleared his throat: “But I always knew her time would come.”

Madame Kovarian drummed her knuckles on the table. “I didn’t want to come here,” she said.

“Then leave.”

“Funny, funny, Doctor,” she closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair so that her head fell against the back. “There is a way to return Melody to the living.” She paused as if waiting for a response. She was lying. She had to be. She went on: “Some time ago, I obtained information from within The Library. Her body remains in a stasis chamber, you see the computer had enough time in the split second before she would have been burnt to nothing to retrieve the corpse, intact, though unable to regenerate of course, and her mind was uploaded, so to speak, into the database, making it difficult to retrieve her intact.”

“Why are you telling me this?” His voice cracked, and guilt snapped over his chest like an elastic band. The kitchen narrowed. He felt like he was about to faint, or perhaps wake up to find this whole evening had been a wine induced fugue.

“I want my daughter back. Is that not good enough for you, Doctor?”

“You're not her parent. I don't believe you.”

“And it’s so hard for you to believe that I care?”

“Why have you come to me? Because if you knew this- that she could be restored to life, then you would not tell the only person who would take her from you. Unless that person had something you need?” He realized he was pacing with the cat now. His hands fidgeted of their own accord with a forgotten bobby pin.

“We have the body, all we need is the mind. And the artron energy.”

“Who is “we”?”

Madame Kovarian did not respond. She stared into the darkened garden, over his head. Was she looking at The Tardis? Could she see it in the gloom, between the lilac bushes?

In some ways, he’d mourned River a long time ago. Wisdom says that time heals all wounds. But if anything the loss of her had only increased. When he’d seen her go that first time, he had been sorry, but he hadn’t known her yet. Saving her to the library’s computer had seemed an excellent solution once. But now it was clear how paltry his act of saving had been.

"I'm not lying. She's on this moon as we speak. Come and see for yourself." 

He was only wary because he knew there would be a price. But he couldn't refuse. He thought back to River's parting request. Not to change his own future to save her. He had followed through. Bringing her back, if it really was possible would not violate that request, would it? 

“I’ll help you,” he said. Her words were still sinking in. He gripped the counter with one hand. If what she said was true, he had to find River as soon as possible. “But I want to see her first.”

Madame Kovarian got up with a shrug, “I suppose I thought you would do the right thing by Melody and...” she gave him a cynical smile, like a card player about to take the deck, “and the baby.”

“What?”

“Did she not tell you? I can’t imagine why.”

 

Chapter 2: Who Suffered Death But Could Not Die

Summary:

Dragging the Doctor’s comatose body across the floor. His limp hands in hers as she clipped him to the post. The last time she would ever touch him.

 

Aw awful weight infinity Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.

- Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Milay 

 

The library was made as the resting place of a young girl. Nothing hurt. You could eat. You might imagine your hunger as a light feeling under your ribs but it wasn’t the kind of hunger that chews away in the pit of your stomach and sucks the marrow from your bones. The lack of discomfort was among the first things River had noticed. At first, it wasn’t so bad. She could imagine they were living inside a beautiful memory. 

Here lay the end: A garden, overgrown with elderberry and ivy. A white cottage. A mesh of code bound it all together. 

River chose an island for their home. At the highest point there was a house with long corridors, an airy main room, a loom and a lone weaver. From the windows they watched the moon pull the tides along like paper cut outs. After a while River and her team couldn’t tell the simulacrum of stars from the real things.

So why was the world fading? Their concerned faces hovered above a white sky. Anita clung to River’s shoulder. River could see her hand there but she could not feel it. Between one blink and the next, they’re gone. There is no darkness, no in between, no purgatory. Just the echoes of a chorus: 

“River!” 

“Professor Song?” 

“What’s wrong? Doctor Moon, what’s happened to her?” 

“She’s fading, Cal. It happens to everyone.” 

Her breath choked up in her throat. This was a nightmare. It had to be. A long time ago, she had dreamed of a life that was forced upon her even in the depths of still water nightly. But she wasn’t in the space suit at the bottom of a lake. This was a hospital bed. She looked down at her hands. They were folded neatly across her stomach. Her nails were painted pale blue, but she had not painted them. 

“Cal?” she tried to say. There was something in her throat and her voice came out as a coarse whisper. 

She’d been with them only a moment ago. Cal had picked up The Secret Garden, so they were having a picnic on a grassy knoll which looked onto the garden Mary learned to tend in the book. How could she have forgotten? 

But she wasn’t there anymore. Her body was sinking into a hospital bed. She looked up at white curtains. A fan cut like a sickle in the ceiling and sent a draft over her bare arms.

“Anita?” she called out. It should only take a thought to bring her back to them. This was an unusual sort of nightmare. She closed her eyes. 

The kids were playing house under the forsythia. Other Dave talked quietly about a documentary he’d seen. “Well no, I mean you’re talking about a totally forgotten planet. And the filmmaker travelled across- well somehow smuggled it out .” She saw Anita looking down at her with concern. 

In the memory, Cal tugged at a strand River’s hair and climbed onto her stomach. River strained to keep seeing it: Those big brown eyes. Like if the moon had a face, thought River as she pictured the anxious smile of a little girl who was doing her best to keep her small world just as it should be.

Cal’s face cracked through as River struggled to hold onto the image in her mind’s eye. She couldn’t maintain it. She could only remember Cals’ hand on her arm, and her pleas of, ‘don’t go.’ But River had no choice in the matter. She was fading. 

Above her, the ceiling fan whirred. And now she noticed the needles in her arms, fed by tubes that led up and up to clear bags. There was a clattering of footsteps outside. 

There was a feeding tube in her mouth. She tore off sticky squares on her chest that were supposed to monitor her heart rates and two more sensors at the base of her neck. There were needles tapped to her forearms. She pulled at the tube in her mouth, felt it slide up her esophagus, spat bile on the bed sheet. She had to get out of here. 

The white light stung her eyes. The clatter of heels on a tile floor. She squeezed her eyes shut to block it out, but it didn’t help. She could still feel sick on her hands and the sheets trapping her legs as she struggled to push her body out of the bed. The curtains zinged back before she could free herself of the tangled blue fabric. 

“Daring, you’ll hurt yourself,” said a voice River knew all too well. It was a voice that spoke to her only in long tucked away memories, but she hadn’t forgotten. She felt exposed with the curtain gone and even more so when she saw the people who were surrounding her bed. 

“You.” Her voice came out in a low whisper and she struggled to clear her throat. Madame Kovarian was different from the last time River had seen her. Older. But her eyes were the same. Her lips were painted in the same burgundy lipstick, and she drew them back over a set of small and even teeth. She was flanked by three others. A tall man in a white coat, the nurse in red scrubs and a stocky woman dressed in all black who stood a bit behind the others. 

“It’s been awhile for you,” Kovarian replied. “God, but you’ve been so hurt, Melody- I mean look at you.” 

Madame Kovarian reached out and touched her face. Her hand was like a dead fish, only more knobby, on River’s face and she flinched away on instinct, but Kovarain gripped onto her jaw. She remembered this touch well. The bite of her fingernails was all it took for River to reel back into her childhood. 

“My little psychopath,” she said softly, “Are you even sorry for what you did?” 

“I don’t remember,” said little Melody.

“You went against me! The Doctor was alerted to our presence and we’ve lost our hold on earth all because you were afraid of the dark.” 

“I’m not afraid. I’m-” 

“I’m fine, thanks,” said River. Her vision swam and she was struggling to adapt to the idea that she was here or that any of this was happening. Still, she gave a secret, closed mouth smile, and forced her hands to lay at her sides. 

“My doctor is quite interested in getting to know you.” She tilted her head to the side and stepped back, letting Melody’s- River’s head thump back on the pillow. The physician was a tall fellow whose lab coat strained at his shoulders when he hunched over to examine her. His brown hair flopped over his ears. She was immediately endeared to him. 

“I’m Doctor Syed. We’re going to have to go through a physical and cognitive assessment, but you don’t need to worry about that right now, I’m sure this all quite a shock to you,” he said in a low, but nonetheless professional, tone. “Do you have any questions?” 

“How long?” River rasped. She struggled up onto her elbows. After her initial surge of adrenaline, she had time to notice that she was frail. Her forearms had never shaken so much before. 

“It’s been twelve days since we took you out of the stasis chamber,” said Doctor Syed. 

She managed to inflect her voice with some authority this time and replied: “Am I being detained, yes or no?” 

“In a manner of speaking.” Again his gaze snapped to Madame Kovarian. 

“I’ll take that as a yes then.” 

Syed’s physical examination dragged on for an hour. She wondered if he really didn’t have anywhere else to be, or whether he was just being paid a lot by Madame Kovarian to stick around. She sat still and let him prod at her all the same. As she stared up at the ceiling she thought, ‘ I could snap his neck right here, between my ankles’ , but she couldn’t have fought back if she’d tried.

---

The cafeteria was the only part of the hospital that poked out above the blizzard at this time of the year. At least, the only part that was available to staff during working hours. It was Lido’s favourite place in the building. The lights from the barracks lightly grazed the clouds. The windows looked out at a purple sky, over the snow drifts and the buried Colony.  

Lido queued up with a tray in hand. She had only been working here for a month, so she usually sat at the back corner, far away from the other nurses and med techs. There were thirty seven medical workers in total. It was a fairly small number, considering the amount of patients they treated on a daily basis. 

“They’re bringing in new recruits tomorrow.” 

She was just settling into her usual spot with her lunch tray when Dara slid into the seat across the table. 

Dara was a sallow faced Tilcar native. She had that scrawny, short build, which spoke to the harsh environment in which they had been raised. Seeing her always reminded Lido of her job here. What a joy it was to be part of something that would turn the lives of all those poor people around. 

“What, already?” 

“Well, It’s difficult since we lost Lee’s cohort,” said Dara conspiratorially. “I don’t know about you, Goldilocks, but I wouldn’t go on another expedition, no matter what they were paying.” 

Goldilocks was not exactly an offensive nickname, but Lido was beginning to suspect that being born and raised in the relatively mild Kas region was a sign of weakness to the Night-hardened Tilcarans. 

“You’ve got to have the right gear, don’t you?” said Lido, squirming. She glanced over Dara’s shoulder at the expense of tundra, sinking off into the dark. “So, do you know who they’re bringing in?” 

“A nurse from Evening, and fifty other miners to replace the missing cohort.” 

Lido didn’t ask where Dara had gotten the news. They had scant access to the wider world out here, even stale crumbs of gossip felt like rarities.

“The patient on the fourth floor came around at the beginning of my shift,” she said, stirring the barley floating in her soup.

Dara leaned forward with interest, “They cleared the wing for her, right?” 

“Of course. To keep her well away from the ordinary patients and all that,” said Lido, hoping she was affecting the correct measure of scorn. 

“What’s she like though?” Dara prodded, “Is it true that she isn’t… fully human?” 

“I probably shouldn’t say…” 

“Oh go on then!” 

“Her anatomy is like nothing I’ve seen before. I don’t know if she’s an alien or something. It’s classified.” 

“Of course it’s classified. Everything in the goddamn colony is classified,” said Dara. She tucked into her meal. Lido finished up her salad while she watched a plow dig new snow off the long frozen ground far below, and tiny people shaped dots moved between buildings. “But really, you know I wouldn’t say a word.” 

“About the patient? I don’t know Dara...” 

“Come on then, Madame Kovarian’s long lost daughter, there’s got to be more to it than that. They say she’s mad.” 

“I’ve got another shift in a minute. Patient with frostbite,” Lido said too quickly as she scraped the dregs of her soup bowl. 

“The one who was trying to set off fireworks and got lost?” 

“The very same.” 

“Well, I’m not over Kovarain’s daughter, I want to know everything!” 

“Too bad for you. My lips are sealed. If you want to know more, maybe you should ask Syed. If you're very nice he might let you tag along.” Lido went to scrap the remains of her dinner into the bin before Dara could keep on pestering her. 

---

An hour later, River was following Madame Kovarian up a winding staircase. They were flanked on all sides by bodyguards. River gripped the railing and pulled herself up the remaining few stairs. 

“Don’t tell me I’m in better shape than you are,” said Kovarian, looking back. 

River didn’t answer. She straightened up and saw at last where Madame Kovarian had brought her. Blue light spilled across a polished floor. It was a cell, three walls, and thick iron bars as the fourth. 

The guard poked her between her shoulder blades and she stumbled through. She remembered this routine so well that it was muscle memory to stand with her hands through the bars so that the cuff might be unlocked. 

Before them stood a bed, a table and two chairs. But River paid little attention to those, as they only served to block the magnificent view before her. The lock on the door clicked shut between them as she moved, as if in a dream toward the window. 

Stars cast a quiet light, and under them lay nothing but snow. Pure white arctic as far as the eye could see. She went to the sill and looked down to see that they were only a few stories up. There was a road below, marked by lamps and orange pylons, and a single white vehicle rolled along slowly. 

She leaned on the wall as a sudden wave of nausea overcame her. Since when she was afraid of heights? She seemed to recall jumping from such heights before, always secure in the knowledge that she would not hit the ground, but the lone arctic and the fragile settlement that surrounded them shook her to her core. 

“Do you like the view?” Madame Kovarian spoke up. River cast her eyes over the frozen world bathed in blue light, then back at Madame Kovarian, who was still standing by the door as if she did not mean to stay long. “If you find it all a bit pedestrian, you will be forgiven. I know it’s not what you were used to in life.” 

“It’s not bad as prisons go,” said River. River swept her fingertips along the concrete walls. 

“I was born on this planet, Janus Six,” said Kovarian, “a town called Credence. My mother was just a local priestess, but I had bigger ambitions. I was exactly what The Church was looking for; bright and young and willing to do just about anything to get ahead. But all that changed as I rose to power. My sect was excommunicated for our failure at the Pandorica. We were almost redeemed when it seemed the Doctor was dead, once and for all, but that’s not what happened, is it?” 

“Pushed out of the big boys club. Must be hard. What are you now? Are you even a vicar or did the church strip you of all your titles?” 

“Being a big fish in a small pond has its advantages.” 

“No need to get defensive,” River said. “It’s tidally locked, isn’t it? The early colonists from earth thought these planets would be advantageous for supporting life. Of course, that turned out to be complete bollocks,” River said, “Word was that it was abandoned centuries ago.” 

“Well, you’re an archeologist, sort of. You should find this interesting,” said Kovarian. 

“And I’m sure I can do a lot of useful archeology from up here.” 

“Listen, pet, I found your body in the wreckage of that abandoned library and I can just as easily have you put back.” All pretense of the caring maternal figure dropped. She turned to the guard and said; “Don’t let her flirt with you. She’s very persuasive.” 

“Kovarian!” River called. Kovarian was already two steps down the stairs she had just come up, and she ignored River’s plea. “Why have you brought me here?” 

“You’re my daughter, I-” 

“No! No just tell me one true thing, please. You want me to be your daughter? Why bring me to a prison?” 

“You have always been a curiosity.” 

River releases a shaking breath to stop from crying, “I know. Answer my question.” 

She drummed her index finger on the chair back, “There are some very important people who want to study you. Your different abilities, and your perception. There’s no one  alive quite like you, you know.” 

Her hands clenched at her sides, as she resisted the urge to fold them over her chest. She sat down on the bed and looked out the window. 

Thoughts of her life, and what she remembered of the day she had given it up flooded back. Dragging the Doctor’s comatose body across the floor. His limp hands in hers as she clipped him to the post. The last time she would ever touch him. Still, dying had been the only way to protect her time with him, and she had not been afraid to go through with it. 

She wondered if he even knew she was alive. And if he did, would he come for her? 

The idea that she had somehow cheated death irked her somehow. She had not asked for this. Much less had she wanted it. Sure, there were days in the library where she thought it would be nice of the Doctor to pop by for a visit. And sure, at first she had been certain that he would come back for her, and saving her was all part of his plan, but when that kept on not happening she’d accepted it. 

What had Kovarian meant it was his fault? His fault perhaps, that she had died in his place. True, she would not have done it if she’d loved him less. You can’t make someone die for you. River had chosen her death. But she hadn’t chosen to come back. 

She curled up on the bed to keep warm, only the paper thin blanket around her. She was still wearing the hospital dress she had woken up in. 

She had thoughts of escape, but made no move to enact them just yet. She was tired. More tired than she had been since before she died. The Library provided sleep, because humans expect to sleep. But no one in a database is governed by silly things like a circadian rhythm. The tired feeling was heavy and dark. And sleep means unconsciousness, and that means helplessness. Every time River felt herself drift she gasped awake, bit the inside of her cheek, and dug her nails into her thighs. 

If she allowed herself to lose focus, anything could happen, they could do anything. But there was nothing in the cell to focus on except for the laborious passage of time.

Time. That was different out here too. If she closed her eyes she could feel it folding in around her like the snow, whiting out her vision. 

Madame Kovarian didn’t come back for days. The guards rotated every five hours, paced around the corridor outside River’s cell, sometimes they just sat and stared at her, but they never let her engage them in conversation. 

Twice a day, meals of soggy bread and stale water were slid through a slot in the door. The guard who brought the food never made eye contact. That was alright, RIver had no real interest in them, even though paying attention to them would prove useful when she decided to escape. 

Instead, she watched the weather shift between blizzard and dark blue sky, and she came to prefer the blizzards to the stillness they left in their wake. 

She had meandering dreams, first of the library, then of her house on Luna. They always began in her bedroom. She would tread along the dusty corridor, and there was a bureau with a mirror over it that stood across from the front door. Three knocks echoed throughout the house. River turned to answer it, and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. But it wasn’t her face in the mirror. A white spacesuit loomed, too big for the corridor, too big for the house. Inside, the helmet was pitch black.

She awoke to howling storms and clutched at her face. It was soft skin, not cold plastic. Oxygen pressed its hands around her throat. There could be no doubt that she was alive. The blue light wore on her eyes as time crouched like a hunter in the corner, stock-still but unable to rest his head. 

Notes:

Thank you to ElsaIsThereLifeOnMars for beta reading this chapter! Your input was invaluable!! Any kind of feedback is welcomed.

Chapter 3: Dreadful Reunions

She has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter.

-- Louse Glück, Persephone The Wanderer

Previously…

If only her hair had been warm as the sun around her. If only she looked the same as ever. If only he could forget all that had happened in the last two hundred years and imagine that he was here after Berlin. That the bigger on the inside dairy he held was full of clean white pages, and he could turn to Amy and say, “she will be amazing.” They were just at the start of their adventure. It was not to be so.

Instead, The Doctor stood behind glass. The diary he held was soft with use and fraying at the corners. And lay on the other side of the glass was not the River Song from his memory. She was a corpse in an oxygen chamber. Tubes connected to its every orifice. Her skin stretched across her cheeks, lavender splotches stained her forearms and neck. Moon-blue.

He held his breath and let it out slowly, counting down from ten, and forced himself to keep looking. Her hair was the only part of her that looked alive at all. There were patches at her temples that looked shorter than the rest of it, fuzzy curls across her forehead. That, and the subtle rise and fall of her chest were the only signs that she was alive.

In his pocket burned the vial the artron energy he’d been asked to bring.

“How do you find my ship, Doctor?” Kovarian stood at the door. The LED brightness of the corridor spilled in after her and put spots in the Doctor’s eyes even after she closed it.

“A touch sterile. terrible acoustics.”

Kovarian arched a painted brow as she came nearer to the window. In River’s room, a doctor and nurses worried over her. The nurse brushed River’s hair while another held her, slumped over her arms, and they looked like two children playing with a doll. When they lay her down, one of them styled her hands so they lay demurely atop her abdomen and pulled a cover over her legs.

“Life is such a fragile thing, don’t you think? I mean, the labours we go through to create it hardly seem worth it when you think of the ease with which it can be spent.”

The Doctor couldn’t take his eyes from River, but he was aware of Kovarian close at his side, her reflection in the glass.

“I don’t find life easy to spend,” he said.

“Not your own at any rate,” Kovarian snapped, “we wouldn’t be here if you could.”

He pressed his hand to the glass and felt his pulse in the ends of fingers and wondered if he’d meant that. It was the sort of thing Rory might say, and if there would be no doubt that he'd meant it. The Doctor didn't want to think about River's death, or about whether it had been easy for her to go through with it. In a way, he suspected it had been easy, because it had been his life or hers, and for River that was not a choice at all.

“That was River’s decision. Not mine.”

“Tell yourself that. Was her choice to spare you? Her choice to imprint on you, when you made her believe she loved you. Go on telling yourself that if it helps you sleep—”

“I don’t sleep!” His hand was still pressed to the windowpane and his hand shook with the effort it took him not to pound on it like a madman. “You think it doesn’t consume me?”

Her hand clawed at his forearm.

“It did the same to me!” Her voice fell like an anchor. He looked down at her for the first time, into her cold grey eyes. She looked like she knew grief and terror, for what it was worth. The Doctor considered for the first time that maybe Madame Kovarian did feel some kind of affection for River.

“How did you get her out?” he said, sounding cooler than he felt.

“The library saved people. It saved her body as well- kept it in stasis like this for centuries. Of course, you let the Vashta Nerada in, which provided incidental protection for her body. My team and I had to work our way through, and hack into the mainframe to liberate her. Yet we fear she will expire shortly should we remove her from life support.”

“But the library's hard drive…,” said the Doctor. “The details of that day are fuzzy in my mind, but I know the Library needed River’s mind. A complex space-time event; that's what it needed. What will it do without her?”

Kovarian laughed a short ringing laugh that echoed unpleasantly against the metal walls. Whatever vulnerability he had seen in her eyes a moment before had passed.

“I suppose it will run out of memory. It’s not the concern of me or my people. Now, to the meat of the matter, did you bring it like I asked of you? Say you did, like a good dog.”

“Here,” he grunted. He had extracted it from the heart of the TARDIS and now the vial on the stuff was heavy in the pocket of his coat.

After all his sleepless months in search of some solution she’d been saved by someone she likely never wanted to see again.

“And… the foetus?” His mouth formed uncomfortably around the word.

“Alive. Though I’d have had the little devil down away with, but I suppose it comes in handy now and then…,” said Kovarian. From her pocket, she pulled a print of a sonogram, and shoved it at him. “See? Now show what you have brought we and the exchange will be done.”

The vial swirled with the bioluminescent substance. It cast a thin band of gold across Kovarian’s face in the dimly lit room. She squinted at it, as if unsure it really was what he said it was.

“Well,” he said, tightening his fist around the vial. “You first, Kovarian.”

“Let my physician administer the cure. Just half of that will be enough. Or don’t you trust me?” His expression must have told her the answer. She went on, “Alright then, plan b.” She smiled smugly as if she’d just make a joke. She went to the far end of the room and pulled a phone out of her pocket.

“Well what is your plan b? texting?” said the Doctor, feeling suddenly like he was missing something. He hated missing things!

But as luck would have it, the Doctor also had a plan B. His sonic screwdriver. All he had to do was get close enough to River, then he would summon her, and they’d be done with Kovarian. The idea that in a few minutes they would be together, the Doctor and River Song in the TARDIS made him hearts stutter with a deadly rush of hope.

Kovarian cleared her throat. The Doctor had been so lost in thought he hadn’t noticed that the physician and the nurse were back in River’s room. The door of the observation room slid over silently, and in came three others. And. Oh dear. Guns.

“Hand it over. Now.”

---

Present…

Two escape attempts and four weeks had come and gone since River had been imprisoned. Three, if you counted her most recent escapade, but she didn’t because she hadn’t made it past the door.

It was official: River Song had lost her touch.

There was no definite night and day on Janus, but everyone here seemed to operate on a standard twenty-four-hour clock. The lights went dim every twelve hours, and guards rotated every hour. Breakfast should arrive ten minutes after the lights came up.

River lay face up in the cot, watching the new guard in her peripheral vision. She was new, having replaced the one River overpowered in her third escape attempt. She was taller than River and broad in the shoulders.

Unlike the last guard, who wore his naivety in his easy smile, this one folded her large arms over her broad chest.

River could hardly congratulate herself for that half-baked escape attempt; he’d been easy. All she had done was chosen a spot just out of sight of the cameras, and collapsed to the ground, clutching at her stomach as if in pain. It worked.

The guard was at her side in an instant. He’d cursed at her, at himself. He would be in trouble if she came to any harm.

But he’d thrown his ring of key cards down the hall and far out of River’s grasp before she could steal them. She wasn’t proud of what she’d done next. Two good whacks against the prison bars. By the time his back up arrived, the guard had a concussion, and River had a few packets of sugar, which she’d found in the pocket of his vest.

The question of what to do with the stolen sugar packets bothered her. She frayed at their hiding place when she was falling asleep while she watched the light of snow refract a warm glow on the ceiling. She was doing it now- poking her index finger into the tear she’d made in the mattress to feel the packet’s crimped edge.

With each passing day, the likelihood that her cell would be searched grew, and her tiny contraband would be taken away. She should just use it today. On her oatmeal. After that was over, she could work out a new plan of escape. She needed sugar. She needed more food than she was getting. The hunger made her head hurt.

These days, River woke already so hungry she felt ill, but even after she ate, she never kept the meals down. She was doing her best not to think too hard about why: add that to the list of things about which she was certainly not thinking.

It should have been impossible, so it was easy at first to chalk the nausea up as a side effect of resurrection. She’d even considered that they might be poisoning her. But ignoring pregnancy was not known to make it go away.

Being in the coma had made her thin, and yesterday when she gotten a change of clothes she’s looked down and seen the evidence plain as day. She was starting to show.

Not that she was thinking about it. She couldn’t.

A line from a book of poems she used to read all the time in Stormcage came back to her: She has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter.

Then, footsteps, down the hall. River sat bolt upright and regretted it at once as her nausea reared its head again. In the corner of her eye, the guard stood to attention, but River was too busy diving towards the sink to see who was coming down the hall. Once she was done being sick, River rinsed out her mouth over the stainless-steel sink.

Madame Kovarian was standing on the outside the cell. She wasn’t looking at River, but rather seemed to have been exchanging words with the guard. Her silver nails clicked a steady rhythm against a matching steel bar.

The guard looked somehow dwarfed by Kovarian’s presence, despite being a head taller than her. She was making herself smaller, shoulders hunched, head not-quite-bowed. River knew that stance.

“-and we cannot keep losing young people like yourself to this terror,” Kovarian was saying.

“There is nothing we would not do for the cause, Madame. I am sure Lee’s Cohort felt the same.”

“Thank you, Jonna. I’m sure you’re right,” Kovarian said. Temporarily appeased, but she looked as if she could snap at any hint of quarrel from Jonna.

Then she turned away from Jonna sharply, and suddenly River was trapped under her pale and scouring gaze. She wasn’t just here to talk to the guard.

“If you’d called ahead, I would have put the kettle on,” River broke the silence. She was surprised to find her voice clear and low as it had always been.

“What a sense of humor. She is not just another pretty face,” Kovarian parried quite well. This was their banter, which River only half recalled after her years of memory wipes from the Silents, she only had fragments of her time with Madame Kovarian and Mr. Renfrew.

“Not at all, I’m also a ruthless killer,” she replied in a dull tone.

“I hate to see you locked away,” Kovarian said.

“Why am here? Want me to kill someone? I might do it anyway...”

“I know. You are my work after all.”

River didn’t want to think about Kovarian’s work, but all the things she had tried to put behind her were had come rushing back when Kovarian walked in.

“So how’d you escape Brooke?” River said with a grunt as she lowered herself onto her cot, careful not to upset her stomach. It was good to her talking, and try to gain what information she could

Madame Kovarian’s eyes darted between River and back down the hall. She gave a nod, and three others stepped into view; another guard, the doctor who had examined River on her first day here, and an unfamiliar woman who looked much too young to be a nurse in her scrubs and trainers.

“My family was incensed that I should be put away like that without so much as a fair trial.”

“That must have been awful for you,” said River, balling her fists into the sheets.

Kovarian tipped her head to the side, her brows drawing together a little. She was trying for sympathy. “I can see what you’re thinking, but it’s not the same, River. Each one of us has our proper place in this world, and yours is here with me.”

“It isn’t. It won’t ever be. My place was in the library and you—” River broke off. Everyone, the guards, the nurse and the doctor had averted their eyes. They looked like pillars of ice in their blue uniforms, and the fractured light made everyone look blue. “What is it you want me to do?” asked River at last, and this time her voice was strong.

“Don’t cry dear,” said Kovarian instead of answering. She looked to the nurse beside her. “She wants to be of use. Is that not quite sweet of her, Dara?”

The tip of Dara’s long nose turned lilac-pink, “Yes Ma’am, very sweet.”

“Right,” Kovarian looked pleased a cat. “River, you asked what you could do for me, how do you feel about a little road trip?”

Kovarian didn’t wait for an answer.

---

River could barely see anything beyond the van’s headlights, the guards, whose anxious faces watched the snow spray at the windows. River was strapped down to a chair by thick belts around her upper arms, waist, and legs. Her hands were in cuffed in an uncomfortable position behind her back.

“Where are we going?” River demanded after twenty minutes of bouncing around in her seat.

She sounded like an insolent child, but she didn’t care. Hunger made her irritable, and worse the sleighs’ relentless ups and downs felt like the swaying of ship. Sailing had never been her forte even when she was alive- before her death, rather.

“We’re heading deeper into the night to the outpost where Lee’s Cohort had set up camp.”

“How did they die, and who was Lee?” River didn’t want to imply that she was afraid. She needed to calm down and make Kovarian believe she had no hope of escape. She hated all this asking, it felt more like pleading.

The cold was finding its timid way into River’s hands, which were braced on the outer wall behind her.

“We hope you can help us uncover the cause of death,” said Kovarian. She was poised, even with one hand braced against the side of the car. “It will be a nasty sight, hence the lack of breakfast.”

River would have bet both her sugar packets that Kovarian knew about the pregnancy. That must be why they thought she couldn’t stomach looking at a dead body. She was pregnant, not twelve, she thought, rolling her eyes.

She needed to bide her time and figure out what Kovarian knew. The thought of that hag tampering with the fetus sent a spike of ice into the pit of her stomach.

“You’ll need these.” A guard was standing over her with an armful of snow gear.

River wasn’t sure when they had come to a stop.

---

Amy Pond was no stranger to people barging into her house without so much a knock, but this was really pushing it.

She’d only been out for forty-five minutes: A jog before it got too hot, and now she’d returned to her bedroom to find her best friend passed out in bed next to her husband. She stripped out of her jogging outfit and put her nightie back on.

The aspen’s leaves were lit by dawn outside, and made the window look like honey. Amy contemplated the description “like honey” it seemed a little cliched. She was full of cliches these days, and the more she tried to avoid them, the worse it got. Working at the newspaper made it worse.

Ten cliches to avoid like the plague. Vague. Old rag. Court of last resort: Hague.

Great. Now she was rhyming as well.

The Doctor took up space on her side of the bed, sprawled out, remorseless as a cat. She grinned, remembering all the times he’d claimed Time Lords didn’t need sleep. Hah. He was going to suffer for this. But waking him would mean being dragged off on another world-ending adventure, and despite her early morning running, Amy was not a natural morning person.

There was nothing for it. She crawled onto the bed between Rory and the Doctor.

But the nap didn’t last. Apparently, he couldn’t even be still in slumber. Not able to see how she’d ended up face-down across his front, she propped herself up on her elbows, poking him in the ribs. He peered up at her.

“You’re a terrible pillow,” she said.

“Oi!” He looked very young for a moment, a flash of the lost child crossed his face before he grinned and scratched his stubble. “Oh good! You’re home. I only just sat down to wait… And you reek by the way!” He shoved gently at her shoulder, but she didn’t budge.

“Yes, I’ve been jogging,” said Amy, jabbing him again in the ribs. “Imagine my surprise to find me best friend sleeping with my husband.”

“Next to!” the Doctor protested, his ears turning pink.

“I know, stupid head. My god you’re boney. I don’t know how River sleeps. I’d go mad.” The Doctors face shutter at the mention of River. Had she hit a sore spot? He’s closed up like a clam shell. Spongy insides no longer on display. More clichés.

“She’s already mad, remember? She’s your daughter,” he said, recovering his pleasant facade within seconds. “River’s why I’m here as a matter of fact.”

“Anything to be worried about?” said Amy. Could be a quarrel. Maybe the Doctor was just laying low here for a couple days before River would show up, and they would go on again like nothing ever happened.

“A spot of trouble. Nothing we haven’t faced before,” he replied. He met her stare for a moment and looked down at her hands. Even if what he said was true, his words didn’t still the flutter in Amy’s chest.

The grey hairs on the Doctor’s unshaven face caught light from the window where sunlight was now pouring in. There was something off about him today. He was trying to hide it, but Amy felt a distance between them (not physically, of course). She brushed his hair off his forehead.

“It’s bad. Isn’t it? Don’t for a second think I can’t see though you,” Amy said sharply.

There was a rustling behind Amy. Rory interrupted the conversion with a loud groan, just when Amy was about to ask what The Doctor could mean by that.

“Ams? What time’s it?” he said.

“A quarter past seven,” the Doctor supplied before Amy could glance at the clock.

“Doctor?” Rory said, pulling the duvet over his ears, “It couldn’t possibly wait until the sun was up, could it?”

“Wake up, sleepyhead, he says something’s up with River,” Amy jostled his shoulder, but he needed no more prompting.

The Doctor sat up, cross legged, adjusting his bowtie over his sleep crumpled collar.

“I’m sensing I might have come at the wrong time-”

“Where is she?” She said. Her hands clench around the sheets.

“I’m sorry. So so very sorry,” said the Doctor. “Please just, settle down, Pond.” He sounded like he was delivering condolences. Amy knew she was catastrophizing, but she could help it.

“No promises, raggedy man. Out with it!”

“She’s well--” he gulped, “she’s been kidnapped by Madame Kovarian, and it does get worse.”

Rory found Amy’s clenched hand under the covers. His other hand braced on her hip, their cheeks nearly brushing.

“Doctor…”

“I’m afraid so.”

“How could you?” Amy said between gasps of stuffy air. “I thought we were done with that awful woman.” White walls. White ceiling. Kovarian’s watchful grey eyes. It had been a long labour. The first birth is usually the most difficult, a nurse had said.

the Doctor snapped, “Because I was foolish enough to believe I could trick Kovarian into letting me see her and we’d just escape, but I was tricked.”

“I know this must have been hard for you, Doctor,” said Rory. Ever her rock. “Telling us, I mean.”

“Well. River wouldn’t want me to go alone, and you’re her parents. You have a right to know when she’s in trouble. I might not have come to fetch you at all, but the TARDIS was very persistent.”

They exchanged a look that said, ‘what else is new?’

Amy broke the silence in the only way she could think to: “Then where is she now?”

“Janus Six. The only habitable planet that orbits Gamma Two you know, though I’ve yet to pinpoint the exact location, you see the dominant group there are isolationists and that makes research difficult—”

“Good. Let’s go there. You’ll tell us everything on the way,” said Amy. She hoped said it in a way that brooked no argument. She got up to take a shower.

Notes:

I'm aware it has been... a long time since the last chapter. What can I say? I'm the slowest writer ever! Thanks to everyone who commented on the last chapter. I am determined to write this story no matter how long it takes.

Bye for now!

Chapter 4: Barbed and Spined

Notes:

sorry if there are mistakes in this. I have to go to a class in thirty minutes, but I just really wanted to get in posted!! please tell me what you think, and also if there are any really stupid typos!!

The ties that bind, they are barbed and spined, and hold us close forever.

    - Joanna Newson, Emily

The van began to slow. No one moved. Not Kovarian, not the driver, not nurse Dara, not Doctor Syed. The guards wore their guard faces. River watched them all in her periphery, waiting to see what they would do.

Kovarian had been uncharacteristically silent for most of the drive, but even sitting there, she was not idle. Not really. She was watching River, and she was doing it with the whole of her attention. River pretended she didn’t notice.

Outside, the snow lay, new and unbroken over a semi-circle of vans just like the one they rode in. Only the rear windows were visible, black squares in a sea of white. Behind them, the vague outline of what she assumed were tented, but they were only shapes in the snow.

“Everybody out,” Kovarian said. It was clear by everybody she did not mean River, but the other’s rose at once as if shocked. All but the guard Jonna, who stopped by Kovarian’s seat on the way out the door.

“Our orders are to never leave her, Madame,” she said, nodding towards River.

“I would appreciate it if you followed my directions,” Kovarian replied primly.

Jonna put her head down and followed the others out the door, sealing it shut behind her. A cold rush of air accompanied her departure.

“We brought proper gear for you, of course,” said Kovarian.

“You’ll have to uncuff so I can put it on.” River tried to calm the faint tremor of hunger in her hands when she held then out. Kovarian didn’t hesitate to pull the key from a pocket- such was her confidence in River’s inability to hurt her.

Kovarian pulled a large duffle bag from under her seat.

“I knew the journey might make you ill, so I thought we could delay breakfast until after. Have some water and crackers,” said Kovarian. She held out a box of saltines and

River’s survival instincts kicked in. She took the offered water and three plain crackers without question.

“My stomach is still adjusting to solid foods,” said River. She needed to probe for answers without making it seem like she was up to anything.

“It will become easier with time.”

“I have gone hungry long enough to know that after a while you stop feeling it. But the problem persists long after the first symptoms have faded.”

“I admit my methods were too harsh,” Kovarian cooed, handing River a jumper. “But how was I to know you would be so sensitive. Two bleeding hearts in one body.”

“Me, sensitive?” River couldn’t help and harsh laugh that sprung from her lips at that. Kovarian had said as much before, the last time River had seen her. It was no apology, and River had long given up hoping for one. It could never make for what Kovarian had done.

“It’s not an insult, darling.”

“I thought I was a monster,” River said. Her pulse was racing, and the back of her neck was damp and clammy inside under her hair. She dragged the satchel of gear nearer and began to rummage through it. Boot. Gloves. Coveralls. Goggles. Woolen socks. They had thought of everything.

“Do you still want to kill me?” Kovarian sat back in one of the seats facing River. She forced her gloved hand down the sleeve of the coveralls. Many years ago, River would have shot Kovarian without question. Would have at least given it a try. If she had the chance now, she wondered whether she would take it. How far did the psychic block extend? Could she leave Kovarian out here in the cold? Could she tell someone else to do the deed? Bargaining with such a thing was probably a losing game, but she couldn’t stop looking for a way out.

I was younger.” It wouldn’t bring the closure and satisfaction she longed for, but still, it would feel good, and that was the raison d’etre behind most things River Song had done in life.

“The Doctor poisoned you against me.”

“You’ll find I did most of the poisoning,” River quipped. She wondered if poison would work on Kovarian. She could have it dropped in her tea. Now wouldn’t that be poetic?

“Don’t be cute,” Kovarian snapped. “Perhaps now, since he left you like a book on a shelf, something to be discarded after you get what you want out of it, you’ll come to see how foolish he made you. Can you try to imagine the life we might have here, River?”

“The Doctor never saw books just as something to use and discard. I have seen him pick up Orlando just to hold it and remember how it was to read it for the first time. My husband can hold whole galaxies in his hearts. I like to think he might have made a little room for me.”

Kovarian shrugged one heavily clad shoulder. Just then a thunderous knock came from the front of the bus.

“Madame, have you finished the briefing?” Syed shouted through the door. Kovarian rolled her eyes, and muttered:

“Oh yes, the briefing, how could I forget,” then she went to the door and conversed quickly with Syed and the others. It was the perfect opportunity to push Kovarian out and make off with the van. Kovarian’s back was turned. The double doors could be easily locked from the inside and the van was still running, which meant all she had to do was drive. She inched up the isle toward Kovarian.

“River!” Kovarian’s grey eyes locked with hers. River stopped. It was a foolish plan after all. She didn’t even know her way around here, and she was likely to die in the snow even with the van. “We have brought you to Lee’s outpost in aid in our ongoing investigation into the deaths of his cohort.”

No coat could shield them from the frozen wind that met them when the doors of the van opened. 

River held onto the step with her gloved hand, as the guard shoved her out. She sank into the snow. Struggling to get her footing for a moment, and still delirious with hunger, River allowed the guard to steer her after Kovarian and Dr. Syed who had just disappeared behind a large bank of snow. 

The nurse, Dara, hung back, looking like a child in her knee-length puffer. Only her dark, serious eyes gave her away; watching intently as River crossed the deep snow towards her.

River had no time to appreciate the environment that she’d spent so long observing from the relative warmth of the cell, only focused on one foot in front of the other. The winter night held itself perfectly still around her. 

“How are you feeling?” said Dara. 

“Does it matter?” River groused. She no longer cared if it sounded like a whine. “And I don’t see the point in coming out here. Does Kovarian really want me to believe she wants my ‘expertise?’ There is nothing out here.” 

“There is Tilcar,” said Dara. Her mouth and nose were covered by a scarf, but the corners of her eyes squeezed like she was trying to see something just out of focus. River was too tired to ask what she meant by that. They kept on. Kovarian and Doctor Syed took up the lead, River and Dara in the middle with the guards at their backs. 

“Why did they bring you?” River directed the question at Dara. 

“To care for you,” Dara answered politely, “and because I asked.” 

“I don’t need a nurse,” said River. Dara’s eyes widened, then she looked down, as if offended. 

Just then, they came around the snowbank and the ring of vehicles that surrounded the camp. tuck in the snow when they saw what lay in front of them. The thing splayed there must have been human once. Must have walked and sang and slaved here. Now contorted beyond recognition. Its eye sockets were gouged violet holes spotted with white. It’s outstretched hand clawed at the icy path on which it lay as if the person had crawled from a nearby tent. Shades of blue and red ran together in the snow. River had expected frozen, serene corpses, but this was carnage. 

Dead bodies weren’t the least bit foreign to her, but her stomach lurched of its own will. On hands and knees, black gloves buried in white, nothing comes up. There was nothing left in her stomach to throw up. 

Dara patted River’s shoulder. She only felt it distantly through her thick coat, nevertheless she knew Madame Kovarian’s eyes on her like a cold hand wrapped around the back of her neck. Dara gripped her forearm, helping to pull her upright. 

“There are more inside the tent,” Kovarian’s voice cut in. 

“More?” River echoed stupidly. She had forgotten that look of death.

“There were thirty-two.” 

“Oleana. She was Tilcaran,” Dara said, referring to the corpse. River looked around at Kovarian, Syed, Dara, and the guards. If any of them were affected by the gruesome sight before them they didn’t show it.

 Dara didn’t let go of River’s left arm until they reached the first tent. There were four in a neat semi-circle that faced away from the more open part of the camp where they had come from. Other vehicles sat behind, huge treaders on the back and skies on the front. 

Inside, more dead. Just as gruesome, all with the eyes gone. Frosted over sockets gazed at the ceiling. 

“Come here,” Kovarian stood over one of the bodies. Next to her, Syed crouched. She was once again struck by the largeness of him. He looked more like a soldier picking over the dead for his spoils than a scientist. 

River stooped down next to Syed. 

“Have you seen anything like this before?” said Syed. 

The man was stripped from the waist up, a sign of hypothermia. The emptied sockets were another matter, all the faces fixed blindly on the canvas ceiling. Her fists curled inside her mittens. The dead man did not seem entirely other to her now, nor was he vacant. There was a breath trapped between his blue lips, a scream frozen in the folds of his vocal cords. 

 “Well?” Syed pressed. 

 “I have seen it all,” River replied. But every death was unique, so that was not true. Not really. She thought of her various encounters with the dead and the dying, of her sister Lily who had died in her arms so many years ago, of Mels trying to hold back regeneration by pressing her hands into the bloody mess where she’d been shot. 

Then, deep under skin and muscle, held in the liminal space between the living and dead, something that had been silent for a hundred years drummed once, twice, three times, and jerked River back to the present. Her hand went to her stomach.

Syed watched her from the corner of his eye. Pressing her hand into the hard shell of her coat, though River could not feel the little being inside her squirm with her hand. It wasn’t big enough to kick yet (she knew enough about pregnancy to know that) but it had stirred, she was sure of it. 

“Then tell me, what is the cause of death?” Syed shoved the body onto its side with his big hands. He was pointing at a spot on its bare upper arm, black skin was shot through with pale lilac veins, they were raised and symmetrical, all leading upward from over ribs, twisted vine-like up his spine and formed a trio of welts at the base of his head. They glinted black. 

Reaching out, River stroked a hand over the petrified skin, up the lines. She cradled his head. His skin was naturally dark, but she could see how his extremities were dead-blue. 

“I would say frostbite if it weren’t for the eyes,” she said quietly. 

“They are all as he is. There was no distress call, nothing. They were out here for thirty-six hours after we lost contact.” 

River mentally ruled out the possibility of avalanche or murder. The team’s things were set perfectly about, there was no real sign of struggle. It seemed improbable that a group who were used to harsh weather would succumb to frostbite in their own tents. For a start, they had vehicles, they could have just left. Why didn’t they? 

Then she realized she was helping Syed and Kovarian.

Chapter 5: Girl in Amber

Notes:

Hey I hope there's still people interested in reading this fic!! You probably thought I had abandonned it. Honestly I kinda thought I did too. I got tangled up without a clear plan of how it was going to go, but recently I opened up the old documents and thought to myself, oh this isn't so bad. Writing DW fic is so fun. Enjoy!

 

Two weeks had passed since Kovarian and taken River out to see the dead bodies at Lee' s Cohort.

River lay face up in her cot, watching the new guard. She was taller than the last, and River liked to stare at her bright blue eyes, because they reflected everything they saw but held no sympathy at all.

She had talked her last guard into getting close enough for River to reach through the bars and steal his keys. She had timed it well, so that the lights were going down. She had chosen a spot just out of sight of the cameras, but the guard was loyal to his employers and had thrown his ring of key cards down the hall and far out of River grasp. Still, River had taken a few packets of sugar from the pocket of his vest.

He was just an employee. This wasn’t personal to him as it was to her. He didn’t deserve the concussion. But maybe it would give him time to think about finding a more honest career.

River shifted her legs with discomfort, and felt along the line of her side. Even after a few weeks of consciousness she felt all wrong inside her flesh. The sheets itched. The light was always too bright or too dim. Clothes were a particular annoyance as the winter climate made it so that she was given overly thick jumpsuit material that piled on the inside.

A nurse had brought her a change of clothes yesterday. I puzzled River how she could receive special treatment after the incident with the guard. Kovarian still hadn’t shown her face, but if word of the guard’s concussion had reached her, River thought she would be punished for it. She hated lying here; hated the guard who watched her with a hand clenched around the gun at her hip.

Thinking of Cal, Anita, and the rest of her crew sent a dull ache up from her gut and through her chest, ending in her throat where it had nowhere to go. Did they know where she was? Would they be able to tell the Doctor if they thought she had been taken? Or would they think she was gone forever?

She was chasing Silents in America the first time it happened. That pregnancy came to an end a month later in a New Jersey motel room. A bottle of Midol, and a very uncomfortable night in a 1960s belt and pad get-up.

The guard was looking at River more intently than earlier. River stared back but said nothing.

The guard cleared her throat and averted her eyes, looking suddenly unsure of herself.

“Would you stop that?” the guard said gruffly. River didn’t move or stop staring. She knew she had started crying, but being in prison before had made her stop caring what other people saw.

“Is that any way to make an introduction?” River spoke for the first time in hours; her throat was thick with sleep and tears.

She raised a hand to her face and felt a cold dampness had seeped into her hair and behind her ears. How long had she been crying? These days she either felt everything all at once or had to stop feeling altogether. She bit her lower lip and blinked at the last of the tears.

“Don’t try to look pathetic. It won’t work on me.”

“I’m not trying to win your sympathy,” River said with amusement. She shook her head, and turned her back to the guard. She’d known a fair number of prison guards in her lifetime, the vast majority of whom had less than a teaspoon of compassion in their entire bodies.

“They say you escaped from the highest security prison in the universe,” said the guard.

“A lifetime ago,” River said. She was bored and she wondered how long the guard would keep talking.

“Then why-” the guard started to say, but just there was a long scraping sound.

River sat up and wiped the remaining tears from her cheeks. The door that led to the stairwell opened for the first time since the guard had taken up her post. The nurse Dara and Doctor Syed stepped through. Syed carried a black medicine bag and the nurse set down two folding chairs facing the cell.

“Good afternoon. I trust you’ve had time to rest up, Miss Pond,” said Dr Syed, addressing her by her maiden name. At least it wasn’t Miss Kovarian this time. His white coat was still too small with the seams straining a little at his shoulders when he leaned forward.

“Well, you’re not going to ask me to go out again, I hope?” she replied, moving with what grace she could to the bars. She had to brace herself against them when she got there.

“I had hoped you might be about to put your expert knowledge of the spore ships to use. Since you’ve already seen the sight and the bodies, and we’ve brought them in for further testing”

River’s interest was piqued, but she tried not to show it. “The last time someone told me that he was an impostor pretending to be my husband, drugging me, and convincing me I had a terminal illness.”

The nurse, Dara, fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. Her wide eyes questioning what on earth River could be referring to.

“It’s all in the diary, dear.”

“The diary?” The nurse held herself like a dancer in her chair, with perfect posture, her long neck ended with a sharp little chin that jutted out in Syed’s direction. Her hands fluttered in her lap.

“Nevermind her for now Dara, she is trying to drag us off course. You’ll have your time to inspect her after we’re done with the Lee Outpost business.” Then addressing River, “You’re far away from the Doctor now, Miss Pond. He shan't find you here, I trust.”

“You’re much too trusting,” said River. “You shouldn’t have brought them in. Who knows what made them do that, if they did it to themselves. I mean if you think it’s fungi that can spread very quickly.”

“We are taking every precaution,” he replied.

“Lead on then sir.”

Syed unclasped his black briefcase and brought out a manilla folder. He pulled a sheet of paper.

“What is this?”

River folded her arms and looked down her nose at the piece of paper he was holding out. On it was printed a lilac-brown circle that formed a lace pattern. It was a spore print.

“Do you know the genus?” Syed pressed. River glared. Weeks had passed, and no word from this doctor or Madame Kovarian until now, and he was showing her a spore print?

“It’s hard to say from just a spore print, but at a guess-” River cut herself off. What was she doing? Was she so starved for human interaction that she would consider answering these questions so unthinkingly? Who knew what kind of scheme Kovarian was involved with. “I don’t see how this is relevant at all.”

“We found this in our biologist’s rucksack,” said Syed. “I’ve read your paper on the spore ships. Anything that might help us identify it would be greatly appreciated.”

“Were they your only biologist?” River hedged.

“Yes.”

River looked between the nurse, whose hair was black as the sky behind her and back to Syed, his hunched shoulders and shamelessly hopeful smile. Well, they would probably get in a new one soon to tell them what it was anyway.

“Lilac-brown, circular, medium sized, I think it’s from the psilocybe genus. Did they find it out there?” River gestured at the window. “And you believe it’s connected to their deaths.” It was a statement, not a question, but Syed nodded, and seemed pleased by her answers. He reached into the manilla folder, replacing the spore print, he pulled out a stack of photographs.

“Once the bodies began to thaw, this happened.”

He held up a shiny printed photo this time. River leaned closer to the bars to get a look at the photo and instantly regretted it.

She saw why they believed the fungi to be connected to these deaths, the photograph was taken in the lab. A pale outstretched palm cupped a bulbus clump of yellow capped mushrooms.

“Can I get you anything?” said Dara.

Dara’s voice cut through the chatter in River’s own head just in time for her to realize she was going to be sick. River lunged across the cell, and made it to the sink before she heaved up her breakfast of oatmeal.

Her head was spinning, but she thought, this was the second time today she had reacted in a way that was unexpected to herself to others. First the guard had caught her crying, now she was being sick. Again. She had been quite sick the first few days she was here, but had assumed it was the result of coming off whatever drugs they’d pumped through her veins.

Doctor Syed and Dara had both come up to the bars.

Her stomach lurched again, but there was nothing left. She turned on the tap and watched grayish bile ooze down the drain, then did her best to clean out her mouth and face, shoulders hunched away from her spectators.

“They tore themselves apart,” said River. Two weeks stuck in this stupid cell and Kovarian was sending a man who only demanded information that River obviously didn’t possess. Yet she was piecing it together for them anyways. Was this their grand purpose for her?

“It didn’t occur to me that you’d be… how to put it? Shaken?” Syed said haltingly.

“I’m not shaken.” River pushed her hair out of her face and sat down hard on her cot, her elbows propped on her knees.

Even so, she was a little interested in what might have happened to the poor dead biologist, whose empty sockets had begun to crop up in her nightmares. “It’s just the food in this place.”

Syed glanced sidelong at Nurse Dara who just looked uncomfortable.

“It’s not psilocybe. Cap’s too dark. Plus it shouldn’t survive this climate.”

“By all rights it shouldn’t, then again neither should we. Why do you think that might be?” said Syed.

“Some kind of antifreeze property?” River considered the possibility of antifreeze proteins, and what genus’ might have the potential to develop in this environment. She remembered the spore ships. Her false Doctor’s face was blurry in her memory. She had been hard to hold back then. In those days she would have been out of this little colony on the first day.

“But do you believe a psychedelic agent could induce this havoc?”

River had to stay sitting, cross legged on the cot. There was a chair and table in her cell, but they were fixed to the floor, and faced the big windows.

“It would be one hell of a trip. But psychedelics usually don’t cause people to become violent unless they were predisposed to violence in the first place. What stops you from running a diagnostic on the spore to create a chemical profile?”

“I wanted your unbiased opinion,” Syed replied almost too quickly.

“You were testing me,” said River. “Did I pass?”

“You seem to pass every test we put forward, yet I do not trust you one bit.”

“Nor should you,” said River before considering the wisdom of the remark. Either the man did not believe in her expertise in archeology, or he was foolish enough to ‘test’ her loyalty with this strange and rather stupid exercise.

“Perhaps not.”

There was a pause.

“Well, shall we proceed?” River took the initiative, and backed up against the opposite wall of the cell, assuming the guard would have to come in and cuff her.

The nurse, Dara, bore a more professional affect than her superior. She looked between Syed and the guard with an uplifted chin, her hands clasped and said, “What is the protocol for this?”

“Watch and learn, Dara,” said Syed. “Cuff her to the bed if you please, we wouldn’t like a repeat of last time.” To River he said, “I am sorry, but we’re under strict instruction to exercise the utmost caution.”

“Oh I’m sure,” River said. She really hated this affable man.

The door slid open. She stayed in position, hands up, facing the wall. The guard took her hands behind her waist and marched her to the cot.

“You don’t want to know what happened to me the last time I was in this position,” said River as the guard manhandled her into lying face up on the bed, wrists cuffed to the headboard.

The guard went, wordless again and let Dara and Syed inside.

They stood over her body on either side without a word. She had little in the way of sight from this position. Instinctively, she strained against the cuffs at her wrists and her ankles, but apparently Madame Kovarian had made sure they were strong enough to hold her.

Dara caught her eye and gave a small smile. River realized her hands had a mind of her own and were gripped into fights, her entire body was taut as a bowstring.

“We are going to need you to relax, River,” said Dara, “can you do that?”

She felt Syed lift her top up to her ribs, and press a stethoscope to her stomach. She felt as if she could be sick all over again, looking up at this placid man as he did her mother’s bidding.

“Why did you not tell me?” she said, and was surprised to find her voice sounded low and sure. She kept her gaze on Syed’s averted eyes. He squared up, must have thought the right words already, must have realized there would be some explaining to do.

“You are not my patient, here, you are the daughter of Madame Kovarian, as your next of kin she is privy to medical information, and made the decision that such… delicate matters should be delayed until you are of sound mind and may be able to deal with the consequences.”

River glared up at him.

“I may have been resurrected yesterday but I wasn’t born yesterday. I recognized the symptoms for pregnancy weeks ago."

She had never felt more at a loss for what to say or do, but found she was once again fighting the urge to burst into tears. The idea that there was something growing inside of her didn’t seem real. If they had not come here today she would have continued to doubt, and chalk up her missed periods to stress or something they put in her food.

Syed and Dara glanced at each other. Syed nodded. Dara sat down and gently took one of River’s cuffed hands.

“You're thirteen weeks along now, according to our testing,” said Dara, “the fetus is the size of a lemon.”

River frowned. She was thinking back on the blurry months before her departure to the library. The research, the lecturing she had been doing, and a series of Archaeology co-ops and conventions had kept her preoccupied. Busy enough to ignore the symptoms of early pregnancy.

She had been pregnant twice before so she knew it was possible for her. The first time she found out she was pregnant was when she was chasing Silents in America with the Doctor and her parents. She had lost that pregnancy two and a half months. It had been for the best. After all, she couldn’t return to the Stormcage to have her baby in captivity. She never would have allowed it to happen back then. She would have found a way to get the baby out, but she hadn’t known if the Doctor wanted a newborn to lug around- anyway it just hadn’t been in the cards.

The second time was different because she’d wanted it. She’d been a professor. She’d been working up the courage to tell the Doctor.

It could work. He could stop all his running and they could have a family. She would wake up to their noises in the morning and come downstairs to a kitchen with the Doctor and a toddler with soft black hair on his head. A big shaggy dog would lounge in front of the door. In her imagination it was Christmas time and a layer of snow was covering her back yard like carded wool. But that was impossible. It had taken ages to get the blood out of her powder blue skirt.

“I know it’s a lot to take in.” River was shaken rudely back to the moment. Syed still had his hand up her shirt. He was soft eyed and smiling again. She wanted to slap the look off his face. He had no right to be kind to her.

“I’ve processed it. Now I’m wondering what fresh horrors Kovarian is planning to subject us to.” Us. River and the kind of baby.

“No harm is supposed to come to either of you, as long as you stay put and accommodate our requests.”

The thought was so sickening it preoccupied her for the rest of the visit. Didn't Kovarian always want time lords? Her sisters had been proof enough of that. But a child of the Tardis's child and the Doctor. It would be too tempting. They were just trying to distract her with the mystery, she concluded as the guard uncuffed her and she sat once again on the cot watching the blizzard outside.

Those people who had died, who knew what they were all doing out here at this remote station? But perhaps by offering her help more, River could finally begin to understand where she was, even if she sometimes felt like she would have prefered to be put back in situ.

---

Amy Pond was no stranger to having people barge into her house without so much a knock, but this was really pushing it. She’d only been out for forty five minutes, for a jog before it got too hot, and now she’d returned to her bedroom, hoping to squeeze in a few more precious minutes of sleep before she had to get up for work to find her best friend passed out in bed next to her husband. 

Kicking off her runners at the door, she glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was half past five. She still had three hours before she had to be at work, and now the Doctor was here, she suspected she wouldn’t be going today anyway.

The quaking aspen outside the window looked like stained glass in the dawn light, and as Amy contemplated the description “stained glass” it seemed a little cliched. She was full of cliches these days, and the more she tried to avoid them, the worse it got. The issue was that she was having trouble getting at anything honest. It was the news writing, it made her overflow with cliches and catchy phrases. 

She considered the Doctor, remorselessly taking up space on her side of the bed, and smiled, remembering all the times he’d claimed Time Lords didn’t need sleep. Hah. He was going to suffer for this. But waking him would mean being dragged off on another world-ending adventure, and despite her early morning running, Amy was not a morning person. 

There was nothing for it. She crawled onto the bed, and sprawled out between Rory and the Doctor. Within seconds she was drifting off. 

She was awakened by the Doctor’s constant fidgeting. Apparently he couldn’t even be still in slumber. Not able to see how she had ended up draped across his front, she propped herself up on her elbows, poking him in the ribs. It worked. 

“You’re a terrible pillow,” she said.

“Oi!” The Doctor peered up at her. He looked very young for a moment, a flash of lost little boy crossed his face before he grinned and scratched his stubble. “Oh good you’re home. I only just sat down to wait… And you reek by the way!” He shoved gently at her shoulder, but she didn’t budge. 

 “Yes, I’ve been jogging,” said Amy, jabbing him again in the ribs. “I came home to find my best friend sleeping with my husband and now I’m being insulted?” 

“Next to!” the Doctor protested, his ears turning pink. 

“I know, stupid head. My god you’re bony. I don’t know how River can rest beside you. I’d go mad.” The Doctor’s face fell at the mention of River Song. It was subtle, but Amy knew him well enough to see that something was the matter. 

“She’s already mad, remember? She’s your daughter,” he said, recovering his pleasant facade within seconds. “River’s why I’m here as a matter of fact.” 

There was a rustling behind Amy. Rory interrupted the conversion with a loud groan, just when Amy was about to ask what The Doctor could mean by that. Had they quarrelled? Or worse, Amy’s stomach squeeze, had something happened to River? 

“Ams? What time’s it?” he said. 

“A quarter past seven,” the Doctor supplied before Amy could glance at the clock.

“Doctor?” Rory said, and pulled the duvet over his ears, “It couldn’t possibly wait until the sun was up, could it?” 

“Wake up, sleepyhead, he says something’s the matter with River,” Amy jostled his shoulder, but he needed no more prompting. 

The Doctor now looked uncomfortable, he sat up, cross legged, adjusting his bow-tie. 

“I’m sensing I might have picked the wrong moment-” 

“You better tell us River’s okay right now, ” Amy interrupted.

“She's alive!” his eyes were wide with what Amy hoped was terror. There weren’t many people who could scare the Doctor, aside from them when they were discussing River.

“Why wouldn’t she be?” 

“I don’t know- you wouldn’t! How silly,” the Doctor was quick to reply, squirming his shoulders under Amy’s grasp. He sobered again; “of course she’s alive.”

Up close, the grey hairs on the Doctor’s unshaven face caught light from the window where sunlight was now pouring in. There was something off about him today. He was trying to hide it, but Amy felt a distance between them (not physically, of course). She brushed his hair off his forehead, and saw the wrinkles there. Yup, this Doctor was farther along in the timeline. How frustratingly tangled his timeline must be. She didn’t know how he kept it straight. 

Her head was full of possibilities of what could be the matter between her daughter and The Doctor. Could be a quarrel. Maybe the Doctor was just laying low here for a couple days before River would show up, and they would go on again like nothing ever happened. That could be it, but Amy sensed it was something worse. 

“You mustn’t get angry,” said the Doctor. 

Amy narrowed her eyes, “No promises, raggedy man. Out with it!”

“River’s been captured by Madame Kovarian... and it does get worse from there.” Ringing silence met with his words. Amy drew her hand back. She felt Rory lunge over her, his hand braced on her hip, their cheeks nearly brushing. 

“Fuck!” Amy broke the silence in the only way she could think to.  

“Then what are you doing lying in my bed,” said Rory in a sharp but low tone. “We haven’t got time for a lie in, where is she!?” 

“You know I’m beginning to think the bedroom may not be the best place for this discussion, it’s rather a long story and you’ll probably want breakfast before we leave-” 

“Doctor…”

“I’m afraid so.”

“How could you?” Amy said between gasps of stuffy air. “I thought we were done with that awful woman.” White walls. White ceiling. Kovarian’s watchful grey eyes. It had been a long labour. The first birth is usually the most difficult, a nurse had said.

the Doctor snapped, “Because I was foolish enough to believe I could trick Kovarian into letting me see her and we’d just escape, but I was tricked.” 

“I know this must have been hard for you, Doctor,” said Rory. Ever her rock. “Telling us, I mean.”

“Well. River wouldn’t want me to go alone, and you’re her parents. You have a right to know when she’s in trouble. I might not have come to fetch you at all, but the TARDIS was very persistent.”

They exchanged a look that said, ‘what else is new?’

 Amy broke the silence in the only way she could think to: “Then where is she now?”

“Janus Six. The only habitable planet that orbits Gamma Two you know, though I’ve yet to pinpoint the exact location, you see the dominant group there are isolationists and that makes research difficult—” 

“Good. Let’s go there. You’ll tell us everything on the way,” said Amy. She hoped said it in a way that brooked no argument. She got up to take a shower.