Hello everyone! I've seen and read a lot of these one-shot series about River and the Doctor, but there's a lot of River by herself that we don't see. What does River do when the Doctor isn't around? That's what this little one-shot series hopes to address. All one-shots will be in a random order of whatever I feel like writing. The Doctor may or may not make an appearance, depending on the chapter, but these will largely be River without him mucking about. Hope you all like! I will absolutely take prompts, so feel free to give them.

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. I'm just borrowing the pretty lady for a while.

The Thing about Mels was, you never really knew what she was up to. She would fight and steal and, most of time, you wouldn't know she did it until a week later. She was unpredictable, like a wildfire that seemed to feed on nothing, yet still grow in size and strength.

The Thing about Mels was, she never really told the truth. She liked to make up stories, fanciful notions that she told herself, all the while keeping others firmly grounded in reality. It took talent, that much was certain. Amy mothered her same-age daughter, though that daughter was often rebellious and questionably sane.

It was funny to her, after it was all over. They never asked her where she'd been. When she regenerated and gave the Doctor her lives, they left her in that space hospital all alone. And she was glad, after a fashion, because otherwise they'd have realised something that she really didn't feel like explaining.

She regenerated in 1969. She found her parents around 1990. Mels did not want to explain where those twenty years went.

Oh, it wasn't all bad. She was an urchin on the street for a good bit of it. Pickpocketing became her favorite past time and she was good. She'd only been caught once, by a funny-looking man in a leather coat, with big ears and a British accent, who insisted he didn't have a wallet to steal. He looked a bit familiar to her, but she brushed it off. Maybe she'd seen him before; she was in New York now, after all, where the same people did the same things every same day. New York, New York was a much better place to leech off the populace, and there were boats. Marvelous, amazing boats that would take her to her parents when it was time. But they were not yet born, so she waited.

It was 1986 when she finally got a proper job. Well, it wasn't a proper proper job. She didn't have an identity in this country, after all. They paid her in cash, a bit under the table, but she was a waitress in 1986. Melody would schmooze every last cent out of the old geezers that would come in every morning for coffee. She was pretty in this regeneration, there was no doubt about that. Thin waist, creamy skin, and bright green eyes. The young woman made record tips, much to the chagrin of the other working girls.

She saved up for a fancy, fake passport, one that could get her safely to England. And to Leadworth. It took longer to save for a boat ticket. As nice as it would have been to sneak onto a boat, paying for one ensured that the crew wouldn't do what they liked with her if they found her as a stowaway. She wasn't particularly strong, unfortunately. Not this time. And she didn't have a gun, though getting one might be easy. She decided against it. This regeneration was a bit more cautious, it seemed.

And so it was that she boarded a boat in early 1990 and set off for England. She was done with all this American Cold War rubbish. It was all so boring.

Physically, she was about 20 years old, which was 20 years too old. After arriving in England, she pondered about regeneration on her trek to Leadworth. Maps were not useful in the least, so it took her a bit longer than she wanted to get there. But nevertheless, she arrived in early summer, 1990.

Leadworth was tiny. She didn't quite remember all the details of her parents, only that they both lived here, and met here, and got married here. Some day.

After much stalking around, she came upon the Williams residence, where a young boy of one or two lived. She almost pretended to be new in town, to give them a chance to get to know her, so that she could babysit her father (how odd was that thought?), but eventually decided against it. She needed to regenerate, to grow up alongside him. Them. Her mother and father.

She pondered... what would it even be? It couldn't be suicide, she wouldn't actually die. Melody, for she did not call herself Mels yet, pondered the thought that, perhaps, she could simply force herself to regenerate. It wasn't a completely ludicrous idea, in her mind. She only had to force it out.

As Fate would have it, she never got the chance to try. Deep in thought with this conundrum left her walking the streets and sidewalks of Leadworth alone at night. An elderly man driving a car turned the corner just as she stepped off the curb.

It was an accident - a freak accident - made ever more strange by the glowing girl on the pavement. Melody only told the man not to be afraid, that she would be okay. The man blubbered apology after apology, but she managed to calm him down. She promised him that she would be alright, and that no harm would come to him. To placate him, Melody told him that she would change soon, and he had to take her to the nearest orphanage. He nodded, promising her that he would, not quite understanding what she meant.

After she regenerated, he screamed in fright and ran, leaving his car in the middle of the road.

Thankfully, a middle aged woman in a nearby house heard the screams and saw the man's car. The woman knew the man well, but she had no idea why he'd suddenly leave his vehicle out, and running no less. She walked outside in the cool air and heard a baby crying.

Melody, now Mels with her dark skin and hair, lay blubbering in the middle of the street, all wrapped up in clothes much too big for her. The woman stared in amazement, then scooped up the child and took her inside. In time, the baby would grow into Mels and attend the same school as Rory Williams and Amelia Pond.

They would later figure out that Melody-Mels-River had quite a reputation for showing up places whether she was wanted there or not. She hijacked TARDISes, kissed Doctors, and generally made a ruckus everywhere she went. She always made her presence known, after twenty years of being by herself.

After all, she was the daughter of two time travellers, and that warranted some attention.