River stomped into the Tardis wearing a prison unitard, and seething. Her hair boiled around her head like an angry thunderstorm. Her vortex manipulator hung, clunky, on one slender wrist.

"You'd better be able to reverse this, Sweetie." She frowned at the high, piping sound of her voice.

The others followed her in. The Doctor ran immediately for the console, his face wearing a sternly repressed, determined expression, fiercely biting down on the corners of his mouth that kept trying to tilt up. If he smiled, he knew he'd live to regret it.

Amy and Rory walked in, staring at River, both of them with gooey, besotted looks on their faces.

Rory shut the door. The Doctor threw the Tardis into flight.

"You're just so cute!" Amy gushed, leaning over, reaching out to stroke the silky curls on River's childlike, six-year-old head.

River's pudgy child's arm whipped up and knocked her wrist aside. Her newly infantalized face scowling. "Don't even think about it, Amy," she said sternly.

The Doctor choked down a suspicious sounding snort.

River turned and leveled a glare at her husband, childishly pudgy hands going to her nonexistent hips. "And what are you laughing about, Sweetie?" she demanded, tapping one tiny foot.

Rory, behind her, went all gooey and "Awww"-looking at his little girl. His princess.

The Doctor coughed and shook his head, keeping the console between him and River. "Nothing," he choked out, frantically working useless controls.

He cleared his throat and stepped out where he could see her. Standing below in the entrance well, her parents hovering adoringly on each side, his miniature wife scowled up at him from a six-year-old body.

"You're lucky you were only convicted of theft of the queen's spaceship. A more severe crime could have resulting in them reverting you all the way back to infancy. They figure it's best to simply start over and raise someone right, so they don't become a criminal again."

River made a disgusted noise and threw her arms out. "Look at me!" She was little more than waist high to Amy and Rory, delicate as a china doll, but with that intimidating childish sturdiness. She still had her wide mouth, and her riveting eyes, and her sleek eyebrows, but now it was coupled with a little button nose and an adorable little chin. And, of course, the hair, a veritable deadly dandelion of light yellow curls.

He grinned. "You are adorable."

"Aargh!" she stomped in a circle and tore at her hair with little fists. "I am not doing this again!" she yelled in a high, but very distinctly River, voice. "I've already gone through childhood twice, I am not doing it again." She glared at the Doctor. Demanding he fix it.

"Now, sweetie," Rory cajoled, walking up, arms held out as if he meant to pick her up.

She whirled and pointed a tiny finger at him. "Don't you dare 'Sweetie' me, Rory Williams," she declared in an offputting voice. Brows down.

Rory stopped and looked uncertainly toward Amy.

"But River, don't you see. This means we could raise you after all," Amy said in a hopeful voice.

River turned to stare at her with horrified eyes.

She whirled, her small body dashing across the Tardis and jumping up, catching the dais railing with one hand and swung lithely up under the railing onto the console floor. She ran behind the Doctor, then turned and stood at bay.

"Tell them, Doctor. Explain," she said in a quiet, but slightly terrified voice.

He turned and looked down at her. She looked up with eyes he recognized. Eyes that had been through fire. Eyes that did not want to destroy all she loved. But sometimes had no choice.

The amusement dropped off his face, and he nodded. She sighed out, and some of the tension left her small form.

Amy and Rory were walking up the dais stairs, River had never realized how tall they were, how very large. Somehow, the Doctor didn't loom as much.

It wasn't that she was hiding behind him. Even this size she knew ways of dealing with much larger opponents. But this was Amy and Rory. Her parents. Who had never had the chance to parent her.

And she knew exactly the kind of temptation this situation must be for them. She stared down at her hands. Child's hands. Little and tender and seemingly clumsy. But she'd learned just how deadly a child's hands could be.

She squared her small shoulders. No. She would not go through this again. Two childhoods were enough. A darkness passed over her vision, one of those voids in her memory she tried so hard to ignore. Possibly two childhoods. Maybe more. She'd been trained in techniques that could be deadly to anyone else. Regeneration had already felt all too familiar that day in New York, in that cold dirty alley.

She clenched her hands, little fists so tight they shook. No. Not again.

"River?" the Doctor looked down at her. He had started forward to explain to Amy and Rory, but he'd seen the look that passed over her.

She raised dark eyes to his. Her eyes glimmered. He dropped to one knee before her and grabbed her into strong arms. She threw her arms around his neck and held on tight, body shaking.

Rory made a hurt noise behind him. The Doctor held up a warding hand, holding off the young father.

He hugged River tight. She hid her face in his neck. Her whole small body shaking. "I can't do this again," she whispered.

She hid her face in his neck, just as his wife always had. Bodies didn't matter. They were Time Lords, they understood that. But some things could not be borne.

"We'll fix it," he promised, fiercely, whispering into her hair. He ran his hands up and down her small back until she stopped shivering. He set her on her feet. "There's nothing you and I can't do," he reminded her.

"Damn straight," she said, sniffling a bit. She wiped the tears off her cheeks with the middle fingers of each hand. An oddly elegant motion for a child. But very much River.

The Doctor stood up, and they turned to a confused and anxious looking Amy and Rory. Rory was looking a bit angry, as if he felt his place as father and comforter had been usurped.

The Doctor and River stood side by side, she was only half his size, with the breastless and hipless body of a child, but it was very much the stance of equals.

"She's not a child," the Doctor said, with unusual gravity. "You can't raise her again. Her mind is already mature. That's part of the Kestus punishment system, to revert an adult mind, back into the body of a helpless child."

River snorted beside him.

He grinned and looked down at her, she tipped that stubborn little chin up to him and gave him a very River wink. She had that smirky, flirtatious look on her face.

He threw back his head and laughed.

He looked back down at the confused Amy and Rory, wiping the laughter tears out of his eyes. "No doubt they'd never come across a child like River before."

"Certainly," she said, "they didn't expect a child to have the physical skills to get out of those prisons of theirs." River buffed her varnish-free nails on her prison onesie. "It was literally child's play."

Amy groaned.

River grinned at her. "I'm sorry 'mum' but this is entirely temporary." She waved a hand down her short form.

Rory gave her a hurt look, but, as usual, tried to mask it with stoicism.

River walked up to him, cautiously. Slowly, deliberately, she held her arms up to him, like a child wanting to be picked up by her father.

He choked and scooped her up, squeezing her tight.

She could feel his tears, scalding on her cheek. She gave him this moment, a moment he'd never have again. And, frankly, a moment she'd never had either. To be held in her father's strong loving arms, as a child. He'd always been a child with her.

She laid her head on his shoulder. He made a choking sound and turned his face into her neck. She could feel him breathing in the clean, childish scent of this new body.

"Okay, that's enough. Now it's getting weird," she said in her oddly adult "River" voice.

"Okay, yes, sorry," he started to set her down. But Amy yelled, "Just a minute!"

They turned in surprise, to be caught by a flash from Amy's camera phone. Both of them held identical surprised expressions.

Amy laughed. "That's perfect!"

River promptly posed in Rory's arms. Amy grinned and snapped another picture.

And another, and another, and another.

Rory set her down, and River stood and held his hand like a proper little "daughter." Amy snapped a picture. River went and stood by the Doctor, who also struck a pose. And Amy snapped a picture.

River went to start a biology scan on the console, having to stand on tiptoe to reach the controls. Amy snapped a picture. River turned and frowned at her. Amy snapped a picture. River rolled her eyes. Rory snapped a picture.

River sighed, and ignored them. The Doctor joined her at the console and together they started putting together a picture of how the criminal punishment system had altered her DNA. The Tardis, not one to miss out on the action, materialized a step stool, to allow River better reach.

Amy and Rory both took a picture.

River sighed.

"You can't blame them," the Doctor whispered, as they worked. "This may be their only chance to see you as a child. Their only child."

"I know," she whispered back, resigned, standing on her stepstool, childish hands competently working the controls.

Then she turned a twinkling, flirty eye on him. "I just wish I didn't look so awful. Really, prison garb? No makeup? No nail polish?

"And my hair..."

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