In her dreams the Doctor is still a Scottish man trying to break through a sheet of diamond.

She wakes to gentle hands and tender kisses and stares at her wife in disbelief. This soon after regeneration the Doctor knows not to trust her senses.

River has barely left the Doctor's side, and the Doctor knows just how afraid she made her wife with her talk of not caring if she hadn't regenerated. It helps having River so close, touching her and holding her, and trying so very hard to prove in any way possible that she is really alive.

But it's so hard to believe. The despair had been so deep after Darillium that the Doctor had barely known how to continue on. Waking each morning had been a struggle, one the Doctor wasn't sure she had truly wanted to win. And then Bill came into the Doctor's life with her wonder and her smile. Bill. Her face haunts the Doctor's dreams. A face of metal and steel where warm eyes had once lived.

"Sweetie?" River looks up from her archeology book. She's so beautiful, curls messy from sleep, sitting on the kitchen counter in the TARDIS while their coffee brews. They've fallen back into the domesticity of their years on Darillium these last days together. It's perfect and wonderful and the Doctor just wants to embrace it. She just wants to let go so badly and let herself believe.

"River." Her voice cracks and she feels like her chest will burst with pain at the thought that River's presence is all some kind of regeneration fueled hallucination

"What's wrong?" River is jumping down from the counter top and crossing the room in an instant.

"Is this real?" the Doctor asks, hating herself at the pained expression the appears on River's face. "Please tell me that you're real."

"Oh Sweetie." River's palm presses to the Doctor's cheek, her other arm wrapping around her waist. "I'm real and I'm right here with you. You can feel my hand on your face can't you?"

The Doctor closes her eyes. "You feel just like you do in my dreams. I stopped sleeping after you left for the library. It felt like losing you again every time I woke up."

River's arms are around her then, crushing the Doctor to her chest. She can feel River's consciousness pressing in at the edges of her mind. "May I?" River asks. Her request for permission reminds the Doctor of all those who violated River's mind as a child. The Doctor opens her eyes, meets her wife's eyes, bright and clear and so in love, even after so much suffering.

The Doctor nods her consent, staring at her wife. And then she can feel River around her, inside her. She lets her walls down, lets her own mind flood into River's.

She sees everything. Every corner of River's mind is open. River lets the Doctor see her gnawing fear. She sees River sitting outside the library afraid to return to the Doctor, wondering if she will still be wanted and loved.

It breaks the Doctor's heart. All this time and River still doubts that the Doctor loves her. She guides River through her own mind, shows her how terribly lost and heartbroken she was without River. She pours all her love into River, pours every memory of loving River Song with every inch of her being into her wife.

She feels River react, feels her shock, her love. The Doctor can feel River searching cautiously, as if half afraid of what she will find in the Doctor's mind. Oh how it hurts that River still doesn't believe in the Doctor's love. The Doctor opens her mind, lets River see everything, cannot bare for these to be a single doubt. Finally there are no spoilers, every ugly corner of her mind is laid bare before her wife. She feels more connected to River than she ever has as her wife explores so many painful memories, loss after loss that the Doctor keeps buried. She lets River see the bloody mangled bodies of the time war and the deep pain of staring into Bill's metallic eyes and the sting of Missy's betrayal.

River is there soothing, staying, present in the Doctor's mind and so, so full of love. She feels like River, a presence so familiar and so in sync with the Doctor's mind that it could be no one other than River. The Doctor knows this feeling, cherishes it so deeply, has never forgotten it even in when she had lost River for so long. It can't possibly be a dream.

This is real, her wife is here with her, the wife she thought dead for centuries, her wife who she mourned from the moment they met is alive and real, warm arms around her. The Doctor focuses on the feel of River's arms, the warmth of her chest, the beating of her hearts. "I love you," the Doctor whispers. She presses a kiss above River's breast.

"I know Sweetie." River catches the Doctor's eyes, and the Doctor comes back to the physical, her mind still joined with River's.

"I'll keep proving it to you, I promise."

"I know." River wipes tears from the Doctor's cheeks. She hadn't realized she was crying, hadn't realized River was too, but now notices the matching tear marks on her wife's face. The Doctor cradles River's wet cheeks in her palms so overcome by love and joy she feels like her hearts will burst with it.

They stand there together, minds still intertwined, bodies tangled together, the TARDIS humming peacefully around them. The Doctor lets herself get lost in her wife and the comfort of her mind. She feels peace settle over River too, feels the fear fade as the Doctor floods her mind with love and acceptance.

The Doctor loses track of time, a rare occurrence for someone who has spent her life navigating the intricacies of time and space. But now there is only River and this moment.

River presses a gentle kiss to the Doctor's lips. It's chaste, just as all the others have been since she regenerated. She trusts from the way River stares at her when she changes her clothes or steps out of the shower that her wife has no problem with her new body. The Doctor knows that River is trying to respect whatever it is that the Doctor needs, letting her find herself again after regenerating.

But they've lost so much time already and the Doctor wants River so much. She wants to explore every inch of her wife's body with new hands and a new mouth. She feels overwhelmed with the need to be close to River, to feel their naked bodies pressed together.

The Doctor intertwines their hands bringing her wife's fingers to her lips and pressing a kiss to her knuckles. She leads River down the hallway to their bedroom.

River stops frozen in her tracks as she walks in. The Doctor follows her line of sight to the tattered old blue diary. She had taken it out this morning while River was getting dressed. The book that had been the only remaining piece of her wife.

"You read it?" River looks upset and the Doctor suddenly feels so guilty. She hadn't thought of it as a betrayal of River's trust. Rather the diary had been her salvation, the one piece of River than was still with her. The Doctor read it in her darkest times, let it remind her of who she was, kept her from slipping into darkness. She kept it in her coat, read it when she needed to feel close to her wife, stroked it lovingly when she lost her sight. She knew the feel of every inch of that book, had memorized every word.

"I'm sorry."

River releases the Doctor's hand and walks to the bedside table where the diary lays, picking it up in her hands. She stares down at the book that the Doctor has always seen her wife caress fondly, the record of their love. But now River looks so very scared, her eyes fixed on the blue cover.

"River? Please look at me." She glances up reluctantly. They'd dealt with this in their first years on Darillium, River's deep fear that if the Doctor saw who she really was that she wouldn't be worth loving. The Doctor knows how deeply her wife is afraid that the Doctor won't love her if she knows the dark corners of her hearts.

"Oh Sweetie," the Doctor sighs. "I'm sorry. I just missed you, and there were days when your diary was the only thing that kept me sane."

"Some of the things that I wrote – "

"Every word made me love you more. River, you're my wife."

"Your bespoke psychopath." She tries to smile, but the Doctor will not allow her to make light of this or play it off as some joke.

"I've never believed that." The Doctor brings her palm to River's cheek, holding River's face up and refusing to let her look away. "You are a good woman River Song."

"I'm really not."

"You are. The best woman I've ever known. Let me show you." The Doctor presses her lips to River's.

River's laughing then, her breath brushing against the Doctor's mouth, and that beautiful sound ringing out in the quiet of their bedroom. "So suave this go around," she mutters between laughs.

This Doctor succumbs to it too them, lets her wife's joy infect her. Her own laughter mixing with River's. They can't seem to stop, the both of them shaking with laughter as the tension and fear seeps away.

"Your nose crinkles when you laugh now Doctor. And that laugh. I don't think you've ever been this adorable before."

"River Song, I am not adorable."

"If you say so Sweetie. Now come to bed with me."

"As you wish wife."