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When River first begins her research she doesn’t believe the stories: of blue boxes and girls who waited, of captains that lived forever and medical students who saved the world by telling tales.
So she tracks them down, one by one.
--
She has tea with Sarah Jane Smith on the second Thursday of each month.
“You loved him, didn’t you?” River asks one rainy afternoon, sitting at Sarah Jane’s kitchen table with no sunlight coming in through the window.
“Yes, I do,” says Sarah Jane, and River doesn’t miss the use of present tense.
“You mean you still love him, even after all this time? After everything that happened?” she asks, and Sarah Jane smiles.
“You don’t just stop loving the Doctor, dear. You’ll see,” she promises, and their tea’s gone cold.
Sarah Jane is kind and lovely, and she doesn’t tell River much but she always listens.
--
Martha Jones and Mickey Smith she finds investigating strange energy fluctuations in the Australian outback.
“We can’t give you the answers you’re looking for,” Martha tells her, and sounds sorry.
She takes Mickey’s hand, and they walk away from her.
“But you travelled with him, didn’t you?” River calls, and runs to catch up with them. “You travelled with the Doctor, both of you.”
They stop but do not turn around, and River speaks to their backs.
“They say you saved the world, Martha Jones,” she says, and fancies she can see Martha’s fingers tighten around Mickey’s. “They say you spent a year that never was walking the earth to tell a story of a man in a blue box.” Neither of them speaks, and so River goes on, “And you, Mickey Smith, they say you crossed entire universes to defend the planet.”
“You shouldn’t even be asking any of this,” Martha says, and sounds sad.
“Just tell me who the Doctor is,” River says, and then, “Please.”
Martha turns her head to look at River, and she says, “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
“Is it all true then?” River presses, “All those impossible, mad stories, are they really true?”
“I’m sorry,” Martha repeats, and she looks it too.
“Come on,” Mickey says, and tugs at Martha’s hand. “Let’s go.”
They walk away from River, and disappear into the heat haze.
--
On Saturday nights she sits in the grass and watches the stars with Wilfred Mott, and he tells her stories of Donna Noble and River listens to him like he’s the grandfather she never had.
When he passes away she goes to his funeral, and squeezing the hand of the most important woman in the whole wide universe she says, “I’m sorry.”
Donna says, “What for?”
--
She finds Astrid Peth working as a waitress in a rundown pub, and River gets a drink there every night for a month before she talks to her.
“Is it true that you met the Doctor?” she asks, and the tray of empty glasses Astrid is carrying wobbles dangerously before she sets it down.
“Doctor who?” she asks, and River smiles.
“He asked you to come with him, didn’t he?” she asks, and Astrid wipes her hands on her apron.
“I really need to get back to work,” she says, and pushes past River.
“They say you died aboard the Titanic on Christmas Day 2007,” River calls after her.
Astrid stops, and turns back around, and she says, “Maybe I did.”
River never sees her again, after that.
--
She bumps into Adelaide Brooke, once, and David Bowie filters through a kid’s headphones as he passes them in the street.
--
“Rumour has it,” Jack Harkness says, and plops down on the barstool next to her, “that a stunningly beautiful woman has been asking for me.”
“Oh, really,” River says, and he orders her a new drink.
“I’ve got to say, they weren’t promising too much,” Jack says, and leers.
River smirks. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Just the boys, usually,” Jack says, and winks.
“If you know I’ve been looking for you, then you must also know what I want,” River says, and the suggestive grin slides off Jack’s face. It leaves him looking worn out and tired.
“You’ve hardly made it a secret that you’ve been tracking down the Doctor’s former associates,” he says.
“Associates?” River quotes back at him, and raises an eyebrow. “In most historical accounts you’re referred to as companions.”
“Same thing in a world like this,” Jack says, and downs his drink. “Anyway, I just came here to tell you to stop. Because if you don’t there’s really only one way this can end.”
She ignores him, and asks, “Is it true you can’t die?”
Jack throws his head back to laugh, and it sounds sad, and he says, “You have no idea.”
River wants to ask him what he means, but he grabs her glass and empties that as well, and then he gets up to leave.
“Wait,” she says, and grabs the edge of his coat. “I need to know who he is.”
Jack smiles, and untangles her fingers from his coat. “You’ll know,” he says, and kisses her knuckles.
“How?” she yells after him, and he turns back to look at her.
“You’re River Song,” he says, like that’s the answer.
--
Rose Tyler still lives in her mother’s council estate flat, and she opens the door before River has even knocked and says, “I was wondering when you’d show up.”
Rose makes them tea, and there’s a blue envelope pinned to her fridge with a yellow d.
“So,” Rose says, and stirs sugar into her tea, “what do you know about the Doctor?”
River pauses with her lips pressed against the chipped rim of her mug, and says, “Just what the stories say.”
“And what’s that?” Rose asks.
River hesitates, and then says, “That he’s lived for hundreds of years.” She stops, and watches Rose’s face, and then she says the rest in a rush, like she’s been waiting to get it out for decades. “They say that he travels through time and space in a blue box, and that he’s never alone. They tell legends of those who have travelled with him, of girls who toppled gods and boys who waited.”
She pauses, and Rose just looks at her and drinks her tea.
“They say he can change his face,” River says, and clutches the edges of the kitchen table, “and that he makes people better.”
“Do you believe that?” Rose asks, and the late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the window makes her burn golden.
“They’re just stories,” River says.
“Oh, but stories are powerful,” Rose says, “especially in a world like this.”
“Are they true?” River asks, and Rose shrugs.
“Do you want them to be?” she asks, like that’s all that matters.
River looks away, and whispers into her cooling tea, “Yes.”
Rose’s smile is wide and blinding, and she says, “There’s something I want to show you.” She opens a drawer, and takes out a worn blue notebook, and slides it across the table to River. “Go on,” she says, “open it.”
It’s filled with stories of the Doctor and his companions, told in ink and ballpoint pen and watercolour drawings, and at the back a list: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven, and a picture of a different man for each number.
“Is that him?” River asks, and traces the seams of a velvet jacket with the tip of one finger, words like fantastic scribbled in the margins.
“That’s all the Doctor’s currently known incarnations, yes,” says Rose.
River reads and reads and reads until the sun’s gone down and Rose has had to switch on the single naked light bulb that illuminates the kitchen. “I don’t understand,” she says, eventually.
“What’s that?” Rose asks, and tries to stifle a yawn with her fist.
“It’s just a storybook,” River says, and sounds confused. “There’s no answer in here.”
“What’s the question?” Rose asks.
“Did any of it ever happen?” River says, and Rose looks disappointed.
“Have you spoken to Amy Pond and Rory Williams yet?” she asks, and River shakes her head. “You should go and see them, they just moved back to Leadworth.”
When River wants to give her back the notebook Rose shakes her head and tells her to keep it, and River says, “Do you mind if I ask how old you are now?”
Rose laughs, and says, “Blimey, I don’t think I ever really stopped being nineteen.”
River leaves, and the magnets on Rose Tyler’s fridge spell BAd woLf in red and green and yellow.
--
She watches Susan Foreman walk home from school once a year every year for nearly a decade, and Susan is always exactly the same right down to her horizontally striped shirt.
In the blue notebook River has reached the part where the Doctor burns up a sun to say goodbye to Rose Tyler, and Susan, like Rose, like all the others, cannot possibly be here.
--
In Leadworth Amelia Pond opens a bottle of white wine for them as they sit in her garden in the middle of the night. She says, “Call me Amy.”
“Alright, Amy,” River says, and takes a sip of wine, “Rose Tyler sent me here.”
“Is that why you’re here, then?” Amy asks, “Because Rose Tyler sent you?”
“Well, yes,” River admits. “That, and because some say you travelled with the Doctor.”
“Ah,” Amy says, and drains half her glass with one swallow.
“Is that all?” River asks, “Ah?”
Amy shrugs, and says, “What do you want me to say? You’ve got to know by now that none of us can give you the answer you’re looking for.”
“But you’ve met him, travelled with him,” River says, and leans forward in her chair, “it’s even said you conceived a child aboard his spaceship,” the edges of the notebook are digging into her palms, “the, um.”
“The TARDIS,” Amy says before River can, and the angles of her face have hardened.
“Yes,” River says, and when Amy stays silent, “Look, I just want to know who he is.”
“You really don’t know, do you?” Amy asks, and sounds awed.
“Then tell me,” River says, and Amy opens her mouth as Rory joins them in the garden.
“Amy,” he says, and she clears her throat and walks back into the house. “There’s, um, there’s something you need to see,” he says, and he seems to find it difficult to look at River.
In the kitchen Amy is waiting with a blue envelope in her hands, and her fingers brush River’s as she hands it over, and her nails are painted purple.
“What’s this?” River asks, and Rory stands next to Amy to take her hand.
“It’s where you need to go,” Rory says, and doesn’t meet her eyes, “if you want to know who the Doctor is.”
On the way out River sees a picture of a little girl put up on the wall, and on the frame it says Melody Pond, and she says, “Your daughter is beautiful.”
“Yes,” Amy says, and her smile is unsteady. “Yes, she is.”
--
At an airport in Utah an old man is waiting, and the sign he’s holding says Pond/Song.
He says, “The Doctor told me you’d be here,” and, “I’m Canton Everett Delaware the Third.”
“I’m River Song,” she says, and then, “I’m sorry if you’ve been waiting for Amelia Pond, she’s not here.”
“I wasn’t waiting for Amy,” he says, and that’s that.
They drive for hours in his red pickup and don’t speak much, and a road sign says Lake Silencio and Canton pulls over.
He says, “This is it.”
“This is what?” River asks, and she squints against the sunlight glinting off the water in the distance.
“This is where you meet the Doctor, sweetheart,” Canton says, and sounds sorry.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“Just walk down to the lake, he’ll be there,” Canton tells her, and River unbuckles her seatbelt and opens the door. “Oh,” he says when she’s got one foot outside of the car, “and I think you’ll need this.”
He hands her a canister of gasoline, and she doesn’t understand.
--
When she reaches the lake there’s no one there, and Canton’s car is still parked by the road, and she sits cross-legged in the sand until the sun hangs low and heavy in the sky.
“You came,” he says, and River scrambles to her feet. “I hoped you would.”
“Are you the Doctor?” she asks, and he grins.
He says, “If you like.”
“I don’t understand,” River says, and whenever she’ll look back on this moment his image will flicker in her mind, all his faces merged into one in her memory, and she’ll never remember what he wore. “Why are we here?”
“I’m here to die,” he says, and River takes a step back. “As for you, I was hoping you’d have figured that out by now. Do you really not know?”
She shakes her head, and says, “No.”
“You have a question,” he says, and River nods even though he’s not asking. “What is the question?”
“Are you the Doctor?” she asks, and he steps closer to her.
“You’ve already asked me that,” he says, “and I’ve already answered.”
“Are the stories true, then?” she asks, instead, and her heart beats an unrelenting tattoo against the inside of her ribcage.
“Absolutely,” he says, and his grin is quick and mad, “and not at all.” River frowns, and he says, “That isn’t the question that lead you here.”
“Who are you?” she asks, and it comes out in a whisper.
His smile is wide and eager, and he says, “I’m the Doctor.”
“Doctor who?” River asks, and this is why she’s here: to ask the oldest question in the universe.
The Doctor smiles, and says, “I’m about to whisper something in your ear, and you have to remember it very, very carefully.” River nods, and he leans in to whisper in her ear, and then he says, “I just told you my name.”
“Oh,” River says, and blinks rapidly against the blinding glare of the sinking sun.
--
“Who was he?” Canton asks, and they stand on the edge of the lake with gasoline soaked into their clothes.
“He was the Doctor,” River says, “and he was Rose Tyler. He was Martha Jones, and Donna Noble. He was Jack Harkness, and he was Wilfred Mott and Astrid Peth and Sarah Jane Smith. He was Amelia Pond and Rory Williams, and he was their daughter.” She smiles, and looks sad.
“He was you,” River says, and Canton looks at her like he doesn’t understand, “and me. He was all of us, and we were all of him.”
On the opposite shore a crowd has gathered: pink and yellow girls who brought down empires, holding hands with big-eared men in worn leather jackets; ancient young men in RAF coats; women who do not remember, and grandfathers who swore to do it for them; girls who waited and their centurions, and daughters that grew old before them; medical students who saved the world by telling a story and boys who crossed entire universes; mad men in pinstripe suits and tweed jackets and with stalks of celery pinned to their lapels; and the sky above their heads is the bluest blue.
“Do you hear that?” Canton asks.
River closes her eyes, and her tears catch in the dimpled corners of her mouth. Far out on Lake Silencio the Doctor’s body is burning, and the universe is singing songs of impossible blue boxes and telling tales of brilliant, mad men.
--
River Song spends her life telling stories, of lonely boys who became lonelier gods and had friends scattered across the whole of time and space, of good men who went to war and women who died before they were born.
When they ask her how the story ends, she says, “spoilers,” because the truth is this: it doesn’t.
--
And at the back of a worn blue notebook, a list: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven, and a picture of a different man for each number.
River Song picks up a pen, and writes twelve.
the universe is made of stories, not atoms