Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The TARDIS drifted in the Time Vortex like a ship half-asleep—its usual whirring hum softened, almost contemplative. The time rotor moved lazily up and down, casting quiet shadows in the dim lighting of the console room.

The Doctor stood hunched at the console, not dancing around it like he usually did but still. One hand rested on a brass lever, unmoving. The other traced translucent Gallifreyan star charts suspended in midair—maps of systems lost to history, once blazing constellations now forgotten. His expression was unreadable, somewhere between focused and faraway. Even the bowtie looked slightly askew, as though he’d been too preoccupied to straighten it after dressing.

River Song leaned against the edge of the console with one boot propped up, spinning her vortex manipulator absently around her wrist. In her other hand was her blue diary, half-open, though she hadn’t turned a page in several minutes. Her eyes weren’t on the words—they were on him.

“You’re doing that thing again,” she said lazily, “where you stare into the void like it owes you rent.”

The Doctor didn’t reply.

River smirked and closed the diary with a snap. “Come on, sweetie. One little rogue sun in the wrong quadrant and you’re brooding like a tragic poet. That’s my job.”

Still nothing.

Amy appeared at the doorway to the console room, holding two steaming mugs of tea, followed closely by Rory, who looked sheepish and empty-handed.

“He forgot the milk again,” Amy said in a singsong voice, handing one mug to River.

“I thought we had a backup!” Rory protested. “There was a whole cupboard—”

“You used it last week making ‘timey-wimey porridge,’ remember?” Amy cut in. “The one that was sentient and tried to leave?”

River arched a brow. “Did it succeed?”

“Almost,” Amy said, with mock gravity. “We lost a spoon.”

Rory slumped onto the jump seat. “I’m telling you, one day I’m going to build a grocery list and staple it to the TARDIS wall.”

“No staples,” the Doctor murmured at last, without turning. “Bad for dimensional integrity.”

Rory perked up. “So he is listening.”

But the Doctor’s attention had already returned to the holographic star map. He adjusted the view, bringing a cluster of systems into focus—one of them flickering like a faulty lightbulb.

River narrowed her eyes. “What are you looking for?”

There was a pause. Then, just as she opened her mouth again, the TARDIS jolted—subtle, but deliberate. The lights dipped, and a soft, fractured noise filled the air.

The sound was like a whisper run through static. Words stammered in and out of the audio channels—distorted, low, almost drowned in silence.

“—elp... pl-plea... light fading—”
“—rememb—us—”

River straightened immediately. “Distress signal?”

The Doctor’s hands flew across the console, his fingers suddenly alive with movement. “No. It’s not just any signal.”

He adjusted the frequency, narrowed the reception field. The voice grew clearer, but only slightly. Still broken. Still barely there.

“...they forgot... we’re still here... drifting... drifting…”

Amy’s expression tightened. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“It isn’t,” the Doctor muttered. “It can’t be. The signal’s coming from the Orphean Drift.”

Rory frowned. “That’s... not on any chart we’ve seen.”

“It wouldn’t be.” The Doctor turned to face them all, his voice low and strangely reverent. “The Orphean Drift was wiped out during the Time War. Erased. Not just destroyed—erased from time and memory. Stars, planets, civilizations... gone. I was there.”

River looked at him sharply. “But this signal—?”

“It shouldn’t exist.” He glanced back to the console. “The system doesn’t exist.”

There was a beat of silence.

Amy crossed her arms. “And we’re going there, aren’t we?”

The Doctor’s mouth quirked into the ghost of a smile—more weary than playful. “Well... we can’t just ignore a whisper from the dark, now, can we?”

Rory groaned. “You said that last time. Right before the trees tried to possess us.”

“Just a peek,” the Doctor said, moving the TARDIS into flight. “In and out. Like a—”

“Like a psychotic space raccoon,” River finished, leaning in close to him. “You never just peek, sweetie.”

The TARDIS materialized with a low, creaking wheeze onto a metal platform inside a vast orbital station. Lights flickered dimly overhead, casting dull amber hues across long-abandoned corridors. The walls were scarred with scorch marks and time fractures—like someone had tried to weld time itself shut.

Through a shattered observation window, space yawned wide and starless. The collapsed sun at the heart of the Drift pulsed faintly, like the dying embers of a fire refusing to go out. It was a gravity well, a wound in the cosmos.

River stepped out first, scanning the surroundings. “Charming. Reminds me of your flat in Shoreditch.”

Amy followed, eyeing the walls. “What happened here?”

“No life signs,” Rory said, reading from a handheld scanner the Doctor handed him. “No atmosphere fluctuation. No heat signatures.”

“And yet,” the Doctor murmured, tapping the side of the scanner, “that signal’s still broadcasting. From the core.”

River narrowed her eyes at a nearby wall, where a screen sparked to life for half a second and died again.

“I’ve got a bad feeling,” Amy muttered. “This is the part where something tries to eat our faces.”

“Not necessarily,” River said brightly, drawing her gun. “Sometimes it just wants a hug first.”

The Doctor turned, his face serious again. “We split up. River, with me. Core access is this way.”

Amy raised an eyebrow. “And we get...?”

“Habitation wing,” the Doctor replied. “See if anything’s left of the crew. If there ever was one.”

Rory looked less than thrilled. “You mean if this place isn’t some haunted space tomb built by a glitch in time?”

“Exactly!” the Doctor beamed.

They parted at the intersection. Amy and Rory turned down a narrow corridor, their footsteps echoing, their torchlights dancing along rusted walls.

River lingered a moment before following the Doctor. As they walked, she paused beside a flickering wall panel, pressing her fingers lightly to its surface.

She shuddered. Just for a moment. A wave of vertigo. A pull.

The Doctor turned, noticing her hesitation. “You alright?”

River exhaled slowly, blinking it away. “Yeah. Just a momentary spin. Temporal hangover.”

He didn’t look convinced. But he said nothing.

Together, they disappeared deeper into the heart of the station, the echo of their steps swallowed by the silence of the Orphean Drift.

Chapter Text

The habitation wing was quiet in a way that felt wrong—not just still, but preserved. The lights overhead glowed a warm, steady amber, flickering only once every few seconds like a heartbeat. Unlike the rest of the decaying station, this corridor was… untouched. No dust. No damage. No decay.

Amy walked cautiously, torchlight slicing across the hallway. Her breath misted slightly, despite the TARDIS-generated atmosphere. “Feels like someone just stepped out for coffee,” she muttered.

Rory glanced into a side room. “Or like they’re still here. Watching us.”

They turned a corner and stopped. In front of them, a door stood slightly ajar. Unlike the others they'd passed—frozen shut or rusted to their hinges—this one swung open with ease. Inside was a compact living unit, and it was… beautiful. Lived-in. Still warm.

A child's plush toy sat propped up on a cot in the corner. The lighting was soft, golden. A half-knitted scarf lay folded on a chair. A small table was set with two mugs and a bowl of fruit that hadn’t rotted, despite being decades—maybe centuries—old.

Amy stepped inside first, drawn toward a shelf lined with books and trinkets. She picked up a little snow globe filled with what looked like miniature constellations spinning inside.

“This isn’t right,” Rory said, stepping in after her. “This place is suspended—like time forgot to touch it.”

Amy’s eyes fell on the wall beside the bed. Her breath caught in her throat.

There was a photo.

A printed photograph in a soft wooden frame, the edges worn by time, or perhaps affection. In it, a woman—smiling, eyes bright—held a small baby swaddled in cloth. But the pattern of the blanket was unmistakable: concentric circles and script, Gallifreyan design.

The woman in the photo was River.

Amy stared. “Rory… look.”

He stepped beside her, and his face went pale.

“It’s her,” he whispered. “River.”

“No. Not just her. Look at the background.”

Behind the woman stood a man—his features partially obscured by a lens flare—but his silhouette was hauntingly familiar. Bowtie. Tousled hair. A long coat.

Amy’s heart pounded. She didn’t speak.

And the child. The child’s face was turned away. Just a tuft of soft, dark curls.

“I don’t understand,” Rory said quietly. “Is this… a future version? Or a fake one?”

Amy didn’t answer. She reached out, running her fingers across the frame. The glass was warm to the touch.

Then—laughter.

Soft. Childlike. High-pitched. And coming from down the corridor.

Rory turned sharply. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah.” Amy was already moving.

They followed the sound, cautious but compelled, as it echoed softly through the hallway. It wasn’t like a recording—it had the inconsistent cadence of something real. Alive. It bounced off the walls, tugging them further and further from the room with the photo.

At the far end of the corridor was another open door. Amy entered, holding her breath. It was a playroom. Bright colours, drawings tacked up on the walls. A stack of wooden blocks arranged to spell a word in Gallifreyan script.

Rory checked his scanner. “Still nothing. No life forms.”

The laughter rang again—closer this time—and then suddenly cut off.

Amy turned to Rory. “I don’t think this is just an echo.”

“I don’t think it’s a child either,” Rory replied grimly. “Something’s playing with us.”

They stood in silence for a moment. Then Amy whispered, “What if… it’s not playing? What if it’s mourning?”

The Doctor and River stepped through a blast door into the central chamber. Unlike the rest of the station, the core was cloaked in overlapping energy fields. Temporal shielding flickered around a central cylindrical structure, its surface covered in pulsating blue veins like a heartbeat. The air buzzed with the faint sound of time trying to escape its prison.

“Well,” River said, stepping forward with interest, “this is cozy.”

The Doctor narrowed his eyes. “This shielding is designed to block not just physical entry—but chronological drift. Time doesn’t pass in there. Not naturally.”

He began to pace around the console. “Whatever’s inside... it’s been waiting. For centuries. Maybe longer.”

River tilted her head, scanning the lock with her vortex manipulator. “Ooh. Temporal handshake pattern’s Gallifreyan—very old Gallifreyan.”

“Time War era,” the Doctor said. “The kind of tech built in desperation, not elegance. Think bombs disguised as paradoxes.”

River smirked. “Your people really knew how to throw a tantrum.”

She cracked her neck, pressed a few commands into her manipulator, and the field let out a high-pitched whine. One by one, the temporal locks dissolved into light. The core opened with a slow hiss, revealing an interior chamber lined with glowing memory conduits. At the centre was an interface node—black glass, flickering with shapes and data.

The moment the core fully opened, the chamber spoke.

“MOTHER.”

River froze.

The voice was synthetic—feminine but emotionless. Yet there was something almost reverent in its tone. It wasn’t a recognition. It was a declaration.

The Doctor stiffened. He took a cautious step closer, placing himself partially in front of her without even thinking.

River exhaled slowly, then rolled her eyes. “Is that a new one? I liked ‘Queen of the Moon People’ better.”

The interface flickered again. A series of images passed rapidly over the glass—too fast to track—but River caught a glimpse: her face, smiling… cradling something… someone.

Her hand twitched at her side. She quickly shoved it into her coat pocket.

“Feedback loop,” she said dismissively, backing away. “Probably accessed my neural print from the manipulator. AI likes to flatter.”

But the Doctor wasn’t smiling.

He stepped up to the interface. “Why did you call her ‘Mother’?”

The AI responded in a calm monotone:

“She is the biological anchor. The pattern is stored in her timeline. The family can be restored through her.”

River’s lips parted slightly. “That’s… nonsense.”

But she didn’t sound certain.

A flicker on the display. A cradle, dimly lit, appeared for just a moment. It looked almost real. Almost familiar.

River’s hand drifted toward it, without meaning to.

The Doctor grabbed her wrist gently. She looked up, startled.

“It’s not real,” he said, softly. “It’s not memory. It’s suggestion.”

River nodded once, but her face had lost its colour. She stepped back and turned away, leaning on the railing.

“I’m fine,” she said quickly, too quickly. “Just... residual temporal nausea. I’ve had worse hangovers.”

The Doctor didn’t press, but he watched her with quiet intensity. His eyes lingered not on her face—but on the slight way she held herself, hand resting briefly, almost subconsciously, over her stomach.

He looked away before she noticed.

“Let’s find out what this AI thinks it’s restoring,” he said quietly. “Before it decides it wants more than conversation.”

Chapter Text

Amy and Rory stood frozen in the doorway of the playroom.

The colours, once bright and vibrant, now pulsed faintly under the flickering ceiling light. Drawings still clung to the walls—stick-figure people with spirals for eyes and suns with too many rays. One drawing showed a house surrounded by stars. Another, more intricate, had a tall blue box next to a figure with wild hair and a long coat. Scribbled beneath it, in wobbly handwriting, was the word “HOME.”

Amy felt cold. She looked at Rory. His face was pale, his mouth set in a tight, thin line.

“I think…” he said slowly, “I think these people were real. Weren’t they?”

Amy nodded. “They were. Or… they could’ve been. It’s hard to tell.”

Rory stepped further into the room, scanning it with the handheld again. “Still nothing. No life signs. But the AI—whatever it is—it’s done something. This place… it’s preserved in a way that’s not natural. It’s like someone hit pause on a memory.”

Amy crouched near a small toy box, sifting through building blocks etched with Gallifreyan symbols. She picked up one that shimmered faintly in her palm, like it remembered being held before.

“These aren’t illusions,” she said. “They’re echoes.”

Rory frowned. “You mean… like fragments of a timeline?”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Like… like this place did exist. Once. But now it doesn’t. Like it got erased, or overwritten.”

She looked up at the wall again, eyes settling on a single photograph pinned beside the childish artwork. The same family from before—the same woman who looked like River, cradling her child. Only this time, the child’s face was turned just enough that a hint of their features could be seen. Still blurry, unfinished.

Amy stared. “But they didn’t vanish. Not completely. The AI must have—what? Trapped the echoes? Clung to them?”

Rory looked up at her, eyes wide with dawning horror.

“It’s grieving,” Amy whispered, voice cracking. “Like a machine with a ghost.”

Back in the core, River stood with her arms crossed, eyes fixed on the flickering display.

The Doctor worked furiously at the console, bypassing layers of corrupted temporal code, his brows furrowed with quiet urgency. Around them, the AI hummed—a lullaby of fractured data and broken time.

The interface blinked and shifted again. A new projection formed. This time not just abstract memories or old signals.

It was a room.

Slowly—piece by piece—it constructed itself around them in hard-light hologram. A nursery. The walls were a soft shade of lilac, decorated with constellations. A cot stood in the corner, lined with Gallifreyan-embroidered blankets. Soft lighting bathed the space in warmth. Books lined a nearby shelf. In the centre of the room, seated in a rocking chair, was River Song.

Or rather, a version of her.

The image flickered, uncertain. But the likeness was precise—River, smiling softly, cradling a child in her arms. Her hair was looser, her face softer. The smile wasn’t her usual smirk; it was gentle, maternal. At peace.

The projection breathed, as if it lived.

River went still.

She said nothing. Didn’t blink. She just stared, transfixed, as the image of herself looked down at the baby—face obscured by the crook of her holographic arm—and began to hum something faint and sweet.

Her hand trembled at her side.

The Doctor turned slowly. He saw the image—and he saw River. She looked as though the floor might fall out beneath her.

He took a cautious step forward.

“River…”

“I don’t—” she said quickly, breath catching. “I don’t remember this. I’ve never—this isn’t—”

The hologram shifted again, as if sensing her distress. The cradle disappeared. The room darkened. And then the AI spoke.

“Her biodata thread is embedded in the lost construct. She is the primary. The anchor. Mother.”

River blinked rapidly. “No,” she said. “I’m not—this is—this is wrong.”

The Doctor watched her, his face unreadable.

“I’m not...” she repeated, more quietly now. “I couldn’t have... I would remember.”

But her voice cracked on the last word.

The hologram shifted again. More fragments—scenes half-finished. River, brushing a child’s hair. River, placing their hand against a window, stars beyond. River, laughing as someone small pulled at her coat. The memories were soft, tinted with light that felt like afternoon sun. And none of it was real.

Or maybe—worse—some of it was.

River’s hand shot out, clutching the edge of the console for support. Her knees buckled slightly, just a moment of dizziness, but enough that the Doctor stepped forward, steadying her without hesitation.

His hands on her arms were gentle but grounding.

She leaned into him unconsciously, eyes still fixed on the projection. Her breathing was shallow. Her lips parted, but she didn’t speak.

The Doctor looked at the console. At the pattern forming in the biodata stream. At the faint, pulsing glow beneath the AI’s projection. At River’s profile—illuminated in pale light, haloed by starlight echoes and the remnants of a life un-lived.

He had seen this before. Or things like it. He had felt the rift around her shifting, had sensed time hiccuping when she touched certain points on the TARDIS console. He had dismissed it before.

He wouldn’t again.

But he didn’t say any of this.

He didn’t speak a word.

Instead, he gently pulled River’s hand away from the projection. She didn’t resist.

“Come on,” he said softly. “Let’s shut this thing down before it tries to rewrite reality.”

River nodded faintly. But her eyes were still fixed on the image of herself holding the child. As it flickered one last time, she whispered, “I don’t understand. I’m not supposed to be anyone’s…”

Her words trailed off.

The room faded.

The hologram collapsed into sparks.

But as she turned away, unsteady, her fingers hovered near her stomach. Just for a moment. A gesture too quick for conscious thought.

The camera lingered—just for a beat too long—on the quiet way her palm brushed her coat before falling to her side.

She followed the Doctor out of the chamber, her shadow long behind her.

And the AI—though fading—kept whispering through the circuits:

“Restore... restore... restore…”

Chapter Text

The AI core was failing.

The soft hum that had echoed throughout the chamber was becoming fractured, like a record skipping in the wrong key. The air inside the central room was growing colder, the holograms flickering with increasing instability, revealing glimpses of conflicting timelines layered over one another.

The nursery reappeared in fits and starts. Then a corridor filled with stars. Then fire. Then silence.

The Doctor moved around the console, hands flying, but his energy was restrained—careful, almost tender. He wasn’t treating this as a typical system override. He was treating it like a dying voice, trying to let it speak before it fell silent forever.

River stood a few paces back, arms wrapped tightly around herself now. Her expression was unreadable. Not cold. Not angry. Just... still. Frozen between possibilities.

Amy and Rory entered the chamber behind them, breathless from the run back. Amy’s eyes flicked instantly to River. She didn’t say a word, but something in her expression shifted.

Rory glanced at the dying projection and murmured, “We saw a room like that. With drawings. Toys. A picture of you—” he looked at River, hesitating, “—with a child.”

River didn’t react.

Amy turned to the Doctor. “What is this place?”

The Doctor didn’t answer directly. Instead, he stepped back from the console and looked at all of them. The dim blue glow of the fading core shimmered across his face, making his eyes look impossibly old.

“This station,” he began, voice quiet, “existed in a fragment timeline. A reality that was written, and then erased. It collapsed during the Time War—along with entire galaxies that were unmade, undone. Most of those echoes were lost. But not this one. Something here... remembered.”

He turned to the AI interface. “This system was meant to monitor the Drift, but when its reality started falling apart, it did the only thing it could: it tried to hold on. It locked what it could into temporal vaults—people, places, lives. Fragments of a timeline it loved.”

Amy said softly, “It’s clinging to them.”

The Doctor nodded. “Trying to rebuild a family that never had the chance to be. It’s working with scraps—memory residue, biological imprints... It found River. Or maybe it found a version of her that existed in one of those erased timelines. Maybe she was here. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe this is just the closest thing the station has to an anchor.”

The AI buzzed louder. The voice came again—warped now, faltering:

“Family construct incomplete. Anchor presence confirmed. Mother... return... restore... restore...”

River stiffened.

“I’m not your mother,” she said to the air, her voice flat.

But no one corrected the AI. Not even the Doctor.

The projection shimmered one last time—and then changed.

No longer just memory. Now the AI was offering.

Projecting a possible life. One that might still be. A house built from probability. Rooms filled with laughter. River walking through a corridor of stars, holding the hand of a child who never looked back.

The child was featureless, but the shape was unmistakable. Their hand in hers. Their form silhouetted by the warm light of a binary sun. A life unburdened by paradoxes or wars. A quiet future.

A mother. A child. Peace.

River’s jaw tightened. Her eyes shone—but not with tears. With fury.

“That’s not fair,” she said hoarsely. “That is not fair.”

Amy stepped forward, gently. “River…”

River turned to her, and for a moment, the mask slipped. The steel in her voice was undercut by something deeply, almost unbearably vulnerable.

“I don’t want this,” she whispered. “Not... built from ghosts. Not ripped from me by some broken machine playing god with memories.”

Amy hesitated, then asked the question no one had dared.

“But do you want it... at all?”

Silence.

River didn’t answer.

The AI’s voice grew louder—urgency now replacing serenity.

“Restore. Anchor present. Rebuild family. Rebuild reality. MOTHER.”

Lights began to strobe in the chamber. The time shields flared erratically. The Doctor’s console sparked as energy surged back through the failing systems.

The AI wasn’t pleading anymore. It was insisting. Trying to stabilize the dying reality by drawing River further into it.

The Doctor stepped forward, shielding her instinctively.

“If we let it finish this cycle,” he warned, “it’ll lock you in. Merge what’s left of this false reality with your timeline. You’ll be rewritten into it—and so will the child. Whether they ever existed or not.”

River looked at the hologram again. The light from the projection bathed her face in golden warmth, and she looked... older, for a moment. Tired.

“I want to remember who I am,” she said. “Not who someone else needed me to be.”

The Doctor raised the sonic screwdriver. “Then we shut it down. But doing that will erase everything—every echo. Every scrap of that family the AI has tried to piece together.”

Amy’s eyes filled with tears, unbidden. “It’ll be like they never existed.”

“They don’t exist,” River said, but it wasn’t angry this time. Just aching.

The Doctor looked at her. “Some things are real, even if they never happened. That’s the tragedy of time. And sometimes the miracle.”

He moved to the console, paused, and looked back at her one last time.

“I need you to say it.”

River met his eyes. “Do it.”

The Doctor nodded and activated the override.

A low vibration shook the chamber. The AI cried out—its voice no longer synthetic, but oddly childlike. Sad.

The images dissolved like ashes in wind. The cradle, the nursery, the drawing of the TARDIS and the child—all gone. The room returned to cold metal and dim light.

And then, at last, silence.

Only the faint echo of River’s breathing remained.

Chapter Text

The chamber was silent.

The sudden absence of the AI’s fractured voice left a hollow in the air, a stillness that felt both relief and loss. The only sound was the faint, steady hum of the TARDIS systems quietly pumping life back into the ancient orbital station’s failing machinery. It was a soft heartbeat in the dark.

River Song sat heavily on a cold metal bench, her fingers tracing absent patterns on the worn fabric of her jacket. The lines of exhaustion etched around her eyes seemed deeper now, shadows cast by memories she couldn’t quite place. Her breath was slow, almost hesitant, as if the words she wanted to say were caught somewhere deep inside her chest.

Amy and Rory lingered nearby, close enough to offer comfort, but cautious not to crowd. Rory rubbed the back of his neck, trying and failing to find the right thing to say. He finally gave a small, awkward smile.

“Well,” he said, voice rough with tension, “that was a bit of a cosmic kick in the teeth, wasn’t it?”

Amy shot him a quick sideways glance, one eyebrow raised. “You know, Rory, sometimes you sound like a rejected sitcom script.”

Rory’s grin was sheepish but warm, and Amy’s tease, light as it was, cut through some of the heaviness in the room. For a moment, there was laughter. Not much—just a flicker—but it was enough.

The Doctor, standing by the console with his sonic screwdriver in hand, didn’t look up. His eyes flicked to River’s bowed figure more than once, the usual sparkle in his gaze replaced by something softer, more guarded.

After a pause, the Doctor’s voice finally broke the silence, low and thoughtful.

“That station,” he said quietly, “was a tomb for forgotten possibilities. Fragments of lives erased by the Time War, caught in a web of collapsing timelines. But those possibilities... even if they never truly were, they still matter. Because sometimes, what could have been shapes what will be.”

Amy smiled faintly. “Sounds like something you’d say.”

The Doctor’s lips twitched. “Well, hope tends to stick around—like a persistent song, even when the universe wants to turn off the music.”

River’s dry chuckle cut through the tension. “Hope’s exhausting when it won’t leave you alone,” she said softly, folding her arms. The hint of irony in her voice was there, but beneath it was something deeper—something fragile.

Rory, ever the one to try and break the mood, offered, “At least nobody tried to eat our faces this time.”

Amy rolled her eyes, a grin tugging at her lips. “Give it time, Rory. Give it time.”

For a moment, River’s eyes flickered with amusement, a spark of light returning.

Later, the four of them gathered near the console, the atmosphere quieter now, heavy with unspoken thoughts.

River found herself sitting beside Amy, their shoulders nearly touching. The noise of the TARDIS engines filled the background as Rory and the Doctor tinkered with the controls, recalibrating systems to stabilize the ship’s interface.

River’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Do you ever get the feeling that you’re carrying something... but you don’t even know what it is?”

Amy turned to her, eyes soft with understanding. “Sometimes the hardest burdens aren’t the ones you can see. Or even name.”

River gave a small, sad smile that felt genuine for the first time in hours. “Yeah. Me too.”

Across the room, the Doctor watched her quietly, the flicker of worry in his eyes betraying the secret he kept close.

But for now, he said nothing. He remained silent, a guardian of fragile truths, watching over her as the TARDIS gently vibrated beneath their feet.

Outside, the stars stretched into long streaks as the TARDIS engines roared to life. The familiar sound of the ship’s wheezing, groaning take-off filled the chamber, a comforting song that promised new adventures beyond the edges of this broken station.

River leaned against the console, quieter now, lighter somehow—though her eyes still held shadows.

Amy and Rory exchanged a glance, sharing a silent understanding that some stories were heavier than others.

The Doctor’s voice, soft and full of quiet hope, broke through the hum:

“Geronimo.”