A/N: Final part! Even though I took forever in uploading it.

The Damage

Part Three

"'Hello old friend, and here we are. You and me, on the last page. By the time you read these words, Rory and I will be long gone. So know that we lived well and we're very happy. And above all else, know that we will love you, always.'" Tabetha set the book down, unable to push the sting out of her eyes. Her daughter had chosen to say goodbye to that Doctor, but not her own parents. That couldn't not hurt.

The grass was still yellow beneath the headstone, even a little brown. It wasn't like in the movies, an undisturbed patch of green Earth just days after a funeral. And this had been weeks. She'd visited every day because how could she not? After Brian had given her the Pond River Publications – he had a copy of every book ever published by Amy's publishing house – she'd begun bringing them with her to the graveyard and reading them to the temporary grave marker until yesterday, when it had been replaced with a heavy marble rectangle that she'd paid a small fortunate for. But now, on the last page of the first novel, she simply couldn't bring herself to finish it. It wasn't for her anyway.

Tabetha reached to her left, grabbing for what looked like a cross between lunchbox and a backpack. In actuality, it was a modernized and insulated picnic backpack. She'd bought it through a shopping program that offered unique gifts in exchange for the points she'd built up at the store. The picnic bag was built for two: it came with two plastic plates, two sets of silverware, two cloth napkins, a side holster for wine, and two Velcro straps on the opposite side for a rolled up blanket. It was once a pleasant spring green color, but from all the use it had sustained, it had since faded to a silvery mint color. She pulled it into her lap and opened the main compartment. It was only packed for one this time and thus it seemed like her arm took forever to touch the bottom.

When she'd found what she wanted she pulled her hand back and revealed a ripe red apple in her clutches, plucked from the fruit bowl just that morning. Tabetha shined the apple with one of the cloth napkins and moved it towards her teeth. But, however hard she tried, she couldn't do it. Instead, she set the apple onto the cover of Melody Malone and reached for the stack of Pond River books. She hadn't actually gone through all of them, just the top two or three, and even at that, she'd only cracked the cover of Melody Malone. So she was surprised when somewhere in the middle of the stack, she found a recipe book titled Fish Fingers and Custard or: How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Have Fun Eating with Your Kids.

Curious, she turned the cover and scanned the index page. One section, "The Apple of My Eye," caught her attention. After locating the page number she turned to it and found a bright red happy faced apple staring back at her beneath the subtitle. It was a reprint of a hand drawing, but there was no mistaking where the inspiration had come from. "'I used to hate apples,'" she read. "'But my mum put faces on them.'" Her eyes swept across the words, growing wetter and wetter as she got closer to the end. There was a P.S. "'And if you really want to stop worrying, just know that a little caramel 'lipstick' kiss never hurt nobody. I'll never forget those times, Daddy.'"

Tabetha felt a hot trickle curl over the curve of her cheek. She'd wiped Amelia's tears away so many times as a baby and toddler, always getting herself into some sort of bloody scrape, but no more so than the day that they left toward the airport in Scotland for their new home in Leadworth. When Tabetha closed her eyes she remembered the first time Amelia had wiped away her tears; the day that her mother had made a long distance call from Scotland to inform her that Snuggles, a cat she and her mother had adopted when Tabetha was just a teenager, had passed away in his sleep. It had become something between them, but for too many years now Amelia was the source of her tears. She tried to remember how her daughter's five-year-old fingers felt on her face. In their place, she used the cloth napkin from her lunch sack.

She sniffed thrice and once as composed as she was going to get, she pried her cell phone out of her purse and located Brian's name in her contacts. It rang twice before he picked up. Tabetha could hear the surprise in his voice and pictured how his eyes must have rounded when he saw her name on his caller I.D.

"Tabetha?"

"Is she with you?"

"Who?"

"You know who."

On the other end, Brian cleared his throat. "Sh—ts—al—to—ou."

Although she couldn't see him, she knew when someone was trying to cover the speaker with their palms when she heard it. The muffled words for one, but it was the telltale scratch of the skin on the receiver that confirmed it for her. Deadly calm, she waited.

"Hello?"

"Bring him here."

"Him?"

"Him," Tabetha snapped. "The Doctor. Your husband and his magic box. I'm at the cemetery. You know where." She hung up before River could respond and tucked her phone back into her purse. Minutes passed as she gathered up Brian's books and repacked her lunch box, including the apple. Still, no rush of wind; no blue box. Frankly, there was no excuse. It was a time machine. A time and space machine. And then there was a crackle, like live wires in water. Tabetha whirled to see gray smoke dissipating into the breeze and before her stood River and Brian, arm-in-arm. She stood abruptly. "Where is he?"

"He's not coming," River said calmly. She unwound her arm from her grandfather's and stepped cautiously around Augustus's headstone, so that she could see the inscription.

"Then how did you get here?"

River raised her wrist, revealing the weathered leather of her vortex manipulator. "Think of it like a motorbike. Where ever you want to go, we can use this."

"What makes you think I want to go anywhere? Maybe I wanted to see him."

Still looking at the marble, River shook her head. "You've obviously been thinking about this for a while now, probably as soon as you got home and began looking through those clippings." She finally turned to catch Tabetha's steely gaze. "The only question is where? Where in contemporary New York do you want to go?"

Tabetha sucked in her chest. "Space travel but not time travel?" she asked, her eyes on the leather strip.

River shifted her eyes to Brian, who shrugged from the spot that he'd been teleported into.

"So it does go through time?" Tabetha demanded, not missing a beat.

"Depends on where you have in mind."

Tabetha pointed to the second date on Augustus's headstone. "Take me to his hospital room."

Brian gawked. "Can you–"

"No," River interjected. "I told you: you can't go back on your own timeline."

Tabetha's hand shook at her side, almost as though it might rise up and strike River across the cheek again, but it didn't. Instead the books fell from her hands and crunched against the nearly dead grass covering Augustus's grave. "I wasn't with him when he – when it happened."

Her words were microscopic, but River heard them.

"I went to the loo. I went to the loo and when I came back…"

River took another look at the date. Without warning, she pressed her finger to her vortex manipulator and her form dissolved into an electric spark, leaving only a smoky cough in her space.

Brian moved to fill it before the smoke had cleared, but Tabetha violently shoved him away. "She is no daughter of Amelia's! How do you let a man die alone when you have the power to stop it? How?!" She pummeled the sack into Brian's chest and then continued to beat his chest and shoulders with the pads of her fists. She was so consumed in her fury that she didn't even register the smoke until she felt someone restrain her by the wrists and realized it was River. In the thick of the moment, she thought she saw tears in the woman's eyes, but her own brimmed over and when she was able to blink away the flood, River's eyes were dry again. Or maybe they had always been.

"I'll take you, on one condition."

"What?" Tabetha asked, grinding the word between her teeth.

"Whatever you see, you cannot interfere."

"What sort of rubbish are you on about?"

"Promise me or we don't go."

Tabetha swallowed thickly. She wrenched her hands away and bent down to grab the lunch sack, though it was more a distraction than anything, so she could have a moment to collect herself. She rose slowly, her teeth still drawn together like two magnets, and she nodded though she still didn't understand River's condition.

River offered one hand to Tabetha and the other to Brian, but the latter shook his head. "Are you sure?"

"It should be you two."

River nodded slowly, if uneasily. "Are you ready?"

"Does – does it hurt?" Tabetha whispered. She made a scribbling motion with her fingers. "The frying bit?"

"It tingles," River replied softly. "A bit like peppermint, across your body simultaneously. But it doesn't hurt."

Tabetha inclined her head and let her hand fall into River's. Just as River had described, she felt a cool tingle engulf her. It was almost soothing. Then the next thing she knew, she was standing in a familiar hospital room, and the door was clicking into its lock. She had literally just missed herself from weeks earlier. And on the bed, she saw him, August, alive, though sleeping. Tabetha looked to River, who nodded quickly.

"Hurry."

"Augustus?" Tabetha whispered as she neared the side of the bed. "Gràdh?"

The sweet Scottish Gaelic endearment seemed to rouse Augustus from his slumber and his eyes fluttered deliriously at his wife. "Tabby?"

Tabetha stroked the side of his face. "My Augustus Gloop," she whispered, trying not to let her voice crack. She leaned in over him, smothering his face with her hair and kisses. "I have something to tell you."

"Hmm?" he murmured, as if saying anything else required too much effort.

Tabetha swallowed. "Am - Amelia," she choked. "She's okay, Gràdh. She – she can't –"

"Explain everything just now, but don't you worry, Dad, I'll explain everything when you wake up."

Tabetha used the side of the bedrail to shove herself up, scarcely believing the Scottish voice. She knew she was hallucinating when she saw her daughter standing at the foot of Augustus's bed.

"A-Amy!" Augustus hacked.

Amy rounded the bed and leaned over, her fruity hair falling over her shoulder but not touching Augustus's face. "I'm okay, Dad. I want you to know that."

"But h – how?" he asked, coughing as he tried to sit up.

Amy motioned for her mother to hold him down and she did. "Shhh." She motioned for River, who obliged. "I have someone very special for you to meet. My daughter."

Augustus's eyes watered. "I don't under–"

River reached for her grandfather's hand and tucked it between her own like a clam. "Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something very, very blue."

Augustus coughed again, but lied back and nodded. "Amy's Raggedy M—Man."

River nodded and lifted his hand to her lips to kiss the back. She looked discretely at Tabetha. "It's time to sleep."

"I love you, Dad."

As Augustus smiled, Tabetha pressed her mouth to his. She felt him return to kiss and then the suction of his lips sagged away, stealing away her breath as well as his own.

River laid a hand on Tabetha's shoulder. "We have to go." She gently set Augustus's limp hand onto his chest.

But Tabetha was too busy staring at her daughter on the other side of the bed. "But–" As the word fell from her lips, Amy faded into thin air. She felt her tears cascade down her cheeks and drip like a rainfall from her chin. "But that was Amelia!"

River shook her head and motioned to the empty corner of the room. As if by the wave of her hand, the TARDIS appeared just as suddenly as Amy had disappeared, and the door opened seemingly on its own. "Before the past you gets back."

Tabetha watched breathlessly as River stole into the blue box. She felt her pulse galloping under her skin. She suddenly heard her own voice outside the door, prompting a memory of speaking to one of the nurses before she entered the room to find her husband having passed. She quickly laid Augustus's other hand onto the one that River had set on his chest, grabbed their lunch sack, and ran into the TARDIS. She heard the handle on the hospital door turn, but as she looked back, the TARDIS door shut soundlessly behind her. She ran to the door and stood on her tiptoes, staring out the window where she could see – and hear – her past self crying over Augustus's body. Tabetha turned and sunk down the door into a heap on the floor.

"The TARDIS is cloaked," River said. "That's why you don't remember seeing her. And that wasn't Amy, it was a holographic projection, also the TARDIS's doing. I'm sorry."

Tabetha shook her head. "I'm not," she whispered. "Short of Amelia herself, that's the best thing anyone could have given him in his final moments." She wiped the sticky strands of her hair from her cheeks. "This was your idea?"

River bowed her head.

Tabetha scrambled to her feet and strode up the walk to stand face-to-face with the woman who claimed to be River. And Mels. And Melody. And above all, her granddaughter. In such a close proximity, she noticed the liquid glass in the woman's eyes and when it finally spilled over her lashes, Tabetha brushed her fingers across the apples of River's cheeks to wipe the tears away.

River silently returned the gesture.

"Is he here?"

River didn't have to answer, as the sound of rubber soles scraping against metal stairs was answer enough. The Doctor descended onto the glass floor without a word and took his place beside the control panel, his head hung, unable to look Tabetha in the eyes. He waited until she moved to stand within inches of him and then, still without lifting his head, announced: "Do it. Whatever you have to do, do it. I can take it. I deserve it."

Tabetha flexed her fingers at her side. "Look at me."

Obediently, The Doctor lifted his head.

Tabetha raised her hand and brought it down against his cheek, but it was no sharp slap, it was a gentle cup of her fingers. She moved her hand up around his neck and surprised him by pulling him into an embrace. "I can see that her leaving did far worse to you than anything I could ever inflict, Raggedy Man."

The Doctor flinched.

"I do, however, have a request."

"Anything," The Doctor whispered.

Tabetha smiled. "We'll need to pick up Brian first."

The Doctor sniffed as she released him from her arms. He turned to the control panel and stared at his wife through the bobbing blown glass time rotor as he flicked levers and twisted knobs.

Five minutes and two stops later, Tabetha found herself standing in front of the TARDIS doors, with Brian behind her, then River, and finally The Doctor. She pushed open the door and stepped outside, greeted by a chilly gust of New York air. Everything outside was still, save for the whistling leaves of grass that stretched out in front of her, dotted with granite pillars in varying shapes, sizes, and colors. But only one was of importance to her and she made a beeline to it.

Several feet behind her, she heard Brian whimper, confirming the fact that this was likely his first time visiting his child's grave as well. Tabetha unzipped the lunch sack in her hands and dropped to her knees in front of Amy and Rory's headstone. She retrieved the apple, shined it on her skirt, and then took out a melon baller and carved a smiley face into the apple. She heard the grass crunch behind her and she reached into the lunch sack to pull out a small container. "Melody," she said, holding both of them up.

River accepted the items and knelt beside her grandmother. She pulled the top of the container, revealing rich, gooey caramel, and dipped her finger into the semi-solid liquid before painting the mouth of apple with it.

"I'm so proud of you, Son," Brian whispered.

Tabetha took the apple as River offered it back to her and pressed a chaste kiss to the red skin, then laid the fruit at the base of the headstone, below her daughter's married name. No tears, no words. Tabetha rose fluidly with her sack in hand and walked halfway to the TARDIS before stopping. Soon she found herself joined by Brian, who stood by her, though he said nothing himself. Over her shoulder, she saw that River and The Doctor still stood before the headstone, hand-in-hand. She saw The Doctor reach out to touch the top of the granite.

"Go along, Pond."

Sometime later, Tabetha was the final one to board the TARDIS. She hung in the open doorway and the last thing she saw before she closed the door was the happy face of Amelia's apple staring back at her.