Basically, this is an AU off the ending of 'Let's Kill Hitler', where River decided to go on a rampage instead of attending a university. My choice for Madame Kovarian's given name (if Kovarian is indeed her surname) comes from the fact that to me, she gives off a distinct Umbridge vibe, but more overtly dark. Thus, I named her after the actress who portrays Umbridge in the Harry Potter films.

I own nothing.

Melody Pond is young and scared, her head filled with things of fear and faraway places. She's killed a man, though oddly she doesn't remember much about that. She's trapped in a suit that moves regardless of her will and she has no idea where she's going.

And now, a woman, a woman with brilliant red hair whom Melody can't help but think should be as familiar to her as the sun has shot at her, but that's not why she screams.

It's him. It's the Doctor. The fixture of all her worst nightmares. The blood-soaked, nameless monster. The man she killed. She has dreaded him her whole life and he's standing right in front of her.

How can she do anything but scream?

-0-0-0-

Before she is anything else, River Song is a lost child.

Even with Amy and Rory, whom she knows love her, she is parentless. Even with places to go where everyone knows her face, she is homeless. And even when River Song knows exactly where she is going, she is utterly lost. A ship without an anchor can't do anything but fly aimlessly, crashing into every obstruction it comes upon.

"Is he hot?"

She said that, in another life. It wasn't so long ago, really. It hasn't even been six months since Berlin and River, still a newborn, can not sort her thoughts out at all.

It was fun watching Amy and Rory grow up around her. She knew who they were, naturally, back when she was Mels. Watching her parents was a bit weird though, even if it was as fun as 'borrowing' a bus and driving it through the botanical gardens. They had been completely hopeless, you know; if it hadn't been for Mels they probably never would have gotten together in the first place. It's positively painful watching your own parents dance circles around each other. I thought they'd never cut to the song.

Though free of Madame Kovarian and the Silence, Mels was not free of her conditioning and she still existed for one purpose and one only. Kill the Doctor, for the sake of all Creation, at all costs. He was responsible for all calamities through inaction; no matter how much Amy and her teachers at school tried to disabuse her of that notion, Mels knew it had to be true. Where was he? Where was he when so many were dying all around?

Of course, Amy managed to change some things over the years.

Mels could not draw a comparison between the monster of her nightmares and the benevolent wizard of Amy's memories. They were two completely different men, and Mels could not reconcile them however hard she tried.

Up until Berlin, Mels still thought the Doctor to be a menace that had to be stopped. A hot menace perhaps, a highly appealing menace perhaps, but Mels—Melody Pond again by now—was a psychopath after all. She wasn't about to let that stop her. Amy had softened her opinions, however. The Doctor, Mels realized, could be kind, unlike everything Madame Kovarian ever told about him. Common sense kicked in as she was older, too. Even with the TARDIS and time travel, the Doctor was just one man; he couldn't stop every catastrophe that ever happened. And in her original form she had been educated on fixed points; some things in time and space absolutely have to happen, no matter how much someone tries to change things.

Kovarian would chastise her stiffly for even entertaining the thought that the Doctor might not be so black as he's painted. But Kovarian's wasn't there when Mels spoke with Amy and Rory, and Melody Pond, nicknamed Mels, was fond of breaking rules and flirting with danger.

Before Berlin Melody had already been starting to wonder whether or not the Doctor was really this great, dark menace she had always been told he was. Menaces don't crash land a TARDIS into a little girl's shed. Menaces don't look at the crack in the little girl's bedroom wall for her. Menaces definitely don't eat fish custard. Kovarian demanded obedience and Melody would have had to be foolish to ever contradict her, but she starts to wonder whether Kovarian was right about the Doctor.

Then comes Berlin, and everything changes.

"He knows no kindness, no compassion, no morality. He leaves devastation in his wake with no regard for the ones he ruins. He cares for no one; do not make the mistake of sparing him when you come to face him."

These were the words fed in her early days, when a woman with sharp fingernails and a voice as hard as diamond and rough as gravel put a pulse pistol in her hands. These were the words to impress upon Melody just how important the mission was—not that she didn't already know.

But the Doctor… What Melody saw of him did not match at all with what Madame Kovarian had said of him.

"River, River, River. More than a friend, I think."

Compassion, kindness, consideration, morality, regret. These words all have one thing in common: these and more are all things that Kovarian always claimed the Doctor to be totally without. Perhaps it was pure vindictiveness. Perhaps it was some small kindness on Kovarian's part, an attempt to make it easier on Melody the knowledge that she would be killing a man. No matter how ruthless, how grim, how terrifying Kovarian could be, Melody, as much as she would have liked to assert otherwise, could not deny that Kovarian was not totally without kindness. She could be kind, and that was what made everything so much worse.

Lies. All of it was nothing but lies. Melody's world fell apart in Berlin, and all that was left was a lost little girl who couldn't regenerate anymore.

He tried so hard to save Amy and Rory from the Antibodies. Melody had watched his struggles as he strained to drag himself up the stairs with no joy. Joy and exultation could not be anything but hollow when she watched this man practically begging her to help him, even if he was still calling her by a stranger's name.

He tried so hard to save her from the Tesselecta, even though he was dying from her poison.

Why is he doing this for me? she kept wondering. Why does he keep trying to save me?

The only conclusion Melody could come to was the one she least wanted to think about.

River Song's glassy eyes are hard and bright as she takes the Vortex Manipulator, the pad of psychic paper and the pistol from the prone form of the Time Agent, lying on his back on the floor. He may be dead or just unconscious; River honestly does not care at all. The dark room conceals what she has done but it won't forever; she has to move.

This is only the first of many Vortex Manipulators River will acquire over the years, whether due to black market transactions or outright theft. River has never cared much about theft—look at all the vehicles stolen during her time as Mels for proof—and does not care at all if the word 'thief' becomes a new appellation for her. She knows Kovarian has one too. It's the only way.

She has a lead.

Clad in shadows and still growing accustomed to a new face, River Song stands, and curls the Vortex Manipulator around her wrist, before inputting coordinates.

Even if she doesn't quite know where she's going yet, she knows exactly what she's going to do when she gets there.

-0-0-0-

It doesn't take long after River starts to cut a swath through the universe in her search that the Doctor catches wind of what she's doing. Neither River Song, Mels nor Melody Pond have ever been that good at doing things discreetly. There isn't a low-key bone in her body; everything she does, she must do loudly and flamboyantly.

Or, in this case, spectacularly destructively.

The transmissions come in grainy and jagged, and the Doctor casts a surreptitious glance in Amy and Rory's direction, sees they don't hear and then turns the volume down just a little more to make sure they don't hear. He doesn't want them to hear this.

He starts to follow the news, the whispers, the gossip. A human woman with a Vortex Manipulator, a pistol and psychic paper, raining destruction where she goes, tearing whole worlds apart looking for the woman known as Madame Kovarian. A human woman appearing to be of middle years. A human woman with a beautiful voice and incredibly curly hair.

This must be just after Berlin for her, the Doctor theorizes, or at least so he hopes. So he prays. This isn't the way his River behaves—he hadn't even been aware that there was a his River until now—and he can only pray that it's not her, not yet. She's not his River, not yet; she can't be.

Not like this.

River is racking up a not-inconsiderable body count. Dead soldiers—never non-combatants; at least there's that to be thankful for—and bounty hunters and anyone who dared to pull a gun on her in the course of her questions. Men who came after her, fearing where she goes with her inquiries, men who wanted to bring her back to her makers. There are dead left over all sorts of worlds, in all time zones. All this in her search for Madame Kovarian.

There's a gentle but worried nudging on his mind and the Doctor knows what the TARDIS wants. He gets the impression sometimes that if he didn't go running off after River every time she was in trouble the TARDIS would do it for him. "No need to fret, old girl," he murmurs very quietly, so his two companions don't hear. "I'm not just going to ignore this." The TARDIS' relief is palpable, expressed by a quiet song in his thoughts.

The Doctor takes one look at Amy and Rory and he knows what he has to do.

They are still overcoming the shock of Demon's Run and Berlin. They still experience worry and terror over the fate of their baby daughter, and the Doctor is not cruel enough to drag them along on this search and make them see what their daughter has done. He's not cruel enough to make them see every corpse, every scene of pain and terror she has left in her wake.

Amy wants to stop off at her house to get a few fresh changes of clothes—doesn't like to have to use the wardrobe; at any rate, she's so much taller than most of the other women who've traveled with the Doctor that most of the women's clothes in the wardrobe just don't fit right. She and Rory step outside for just a minute and when they come back, there is nothing. Nothing but a note.

'Sorry Ponds. Urgent business, dangerous; don't want to get you involved. Be back as soon as possible.'

The Doctor doesn't know when 'as soon as possible' will be, and he dreads to think of Rory's expression of exasperation and Amy's betrayal at being abandoned again, but this is something he just has to do alone.

Parents should never have to watch their daughter in madness.

-0-0-0-

River's long since switched out her poisoned lipstick for hallucinogenic—can't quite stand to use it anymore, not with the memories of a man crawling on stone steps still so freshly burned into memory—but she thankfully doesn't need to use it, or the gun. This one seems to be a friend.

The female Silurian taps her gloved fingers on the table, some sort of nervous twitch. Her keen eyes dart to the pub-goers who pass this way and that, some raucous, others subdued, clearly wary of being overheard. River is not nearly so fearful. There are men after her, but if they come, she will be ready for them. Kovarian's conditioning has its uses.

"Now, tell me…" River keeps her voice at a whisper, regardless of her lack of concern. While she is uncaring of danger she'd rather not attract a crowd at this sort of place. "You said you had some information about the Headmistress of the Academy of the Question, Imelda Kovarian?"

After accepting the small pouch of coins proffered, the Silurian, who keeps her name a mystery to River, nods. Dim highlights gleam on her skin from the stark fluorescent lighting of the hanging lamps. "I don't know how much help it will be to you, but yes, I do."

-0-0-0-

There's so much blood, spilling everywhere, on the flagstones and messing up her hair, and River had forgotten how much blood can come from the human body. Wait, that's not present, it's past. She's not living it anymore; she's washing off all the sticky film of blood from her body and gently coaxing it from her hair with weary, aching fingers in a dingy hotel room shower.

River wrinkles her nose a little; the water smells of chlorine and other decontaminants. It's not exactly a comforting smell.

The faucet is turned off with a screech. River brushes back the shower curtain with a weary arm and wraps the rough, bleached-white towel around her midsection. She's too tired to dry herself off properly; the bed sheets and the pillow might end up drenched but she really doesn't care. River's slept in worse conditions.

She reaches out to wipe the fogged-up window so she can see her face—that new face. River is still startled every time she sees it, expecting to see smiling, sassy Mels staring back at her. This… This is just odd.

River misses her dark hair and her more lean body. She doesn't look into mirrors very often now—it's like looking at a stranger wearing her two hearts and looking out through her eyes. This is the first time since just moments after her regeneration that River has paid any mind to her new face.

Middle-aged she might appear, but River still seems radiant with youth to all who look on her—if they knew the truth. Bright, lively green eyes glint and sparkle, plump lips curl easily into smiles. Skin barely even lined; hair without a touch of gray. A strong face, with sharp lines and engaging form.

What River is really concerned with though, is her hair. She winds one of the stray curls clinging to her cheeks about her fingers, frowning pensively. Mels' hair was relatively easy to deal with, but this…

Caucasian, her hair has a completely different texture than it did before and has different needs to keep it clean and manageable. Well, River says that, but the most she can handle right now is clean; she doesn't know how she'll ever find a way to make it manageable. Oh yes, those wild, frenzied curls look subdued right now, clinging to her skull as they are, but River knows that, whether she blow-dries them or lets the air do the job, they'll be impossibly frizzy and tangled by the time they're dry. Not to say she doesn't like her curls; they've got character, and the sort of volume that Mels' hair never had.

I do like them. It's nice having hair like this. Sort of bouncy and sexy. Just so hard to keep up with. The textbook term for River's feelings towards her hair is a "love-hate relationship".

She frowns when her fingernail brushes against a small scratch. It's just at her hairline, barely noticeable, a thin, red line, but undeniably there.

Funny.

River thought the clerics had been the only ones who got hurt.

-0-0-0-

I know you can hear me.

The shadows creep across the darkened walls and ceilings like the monsters of River's childhood, the bogeymen hiding in her closet and under her bed. Even though she knows these drifting, dancing shadows to just be the effect of vehicles passing outside the window, she still finds herself fighting the urge to take the pistol in her hands and check under the bed, behind the curtains, in every cupboard and cabinet for intruders. That's her life, always has been.

Lying awake on her back, curled under sheets and comforter far softer and sweeter-smelling than what she expected from this venue, River can almost bring herself to smile when she hears that familiar voice. Almost, but not quite.

One of the troubles of being a human Time Lord is the issue of sleep. Time Lords don't need to sleep nearly as much as humans do, but Melody Pond's human mind still needed it so badly. No compromise could be reached and Melody was—River still is—afflicted with crippling insomnia.

Her caretakers, in the earliest days, would sometimes give Melody sleep aids, but for reasons Melody never did quite understand, there were some nights when they either couldn't or wouldn't. She would like awake for so long those nights, tossing and turning, so, so exhausted, but unable to turn to sleep. Melody spent those nights begging for sleep, and the morning after she would be dull-eyed and weary, a pale, flimsy shadow of herself. After a few nights of fruitless battles, her concentration was almost gone, her good temper evaporated, her judgment clouded.

On some of those nights, at the worst of the storm, there came the Voice.

A voice ancient beyond words, a thing of indescribable beauty and immeasurable sadness. A thing of compassion and love as deep and strong as the pull of a black hole. At the worst of Melody's sleepless Hell, the Voice would come, and sing her to sleep. Words Melody did not know, a language that she somehow knew to be long-since lost, but so achingly lovely. Under the influence of these lullabies, she slept like any other human child, untroubled and blissful.

All those who cared for her in her earliest days were afraid to so much as touch her. She was, in the most twisted sort of way, their leader's foster daughter. She was the Chosen One, the Hope, the Light. She was to be awed and feared, not seen as a normal child. She was not to be touched.

Naturally, a voice couldn't touch Melody, but she came as close as she ever did to feeling totally safe when a sweet, ancient voice that only she could hear whispered in her ear for her to sleep. It was the only experience Melody had with love.

(Mels never needed the Voice to sleep. She was given proper soporifics and even if she only ever slept under the influence of powerful sleeping pills, she still slept.

Still, sometimes, she wondered if she could hear the Voice if she just skipped her regimen for one night. Sometimes, Mels wanted to hear the Voice again so badly, wants to bask in that glorious song, if only for a little while.

But she doesn't. Mels takes her pills dutifully every night with a glass of water and a little something to eat so it doesn't hurt her stomach. Everyone before has left her, and that sense of abandonment is so ingrained that Mels doesn't dare open herself up to the possibility that the Voice might abandon her too.)

Melody never told anyone about the Voice. No one would have believed her; Madame Kovarian would have simply scoffed and directed Melody to focus on the task at hand. The Voice was her most cherished secret, and no matter how much she told herself that it likely wasn't real and was probably the sign or symptom of something deeply wrong with her, she still could not accept the thought that the Voice wasn't real.

Then Berlin had to go and prove her right.

'The child of the TARDIS'. Of all the sobriquets Melody-not-quite-River had had attached to her in the past, she had to admit, that was a new one. She's still not quite sure what the Doctor meant when he called her that. She just knows that when she stepped into that impossible, that marvelous, that wonderful ship, her ears were filled with a so-familiar voice, a voice she hadn't heard in years.

It's you. It was always you.

"Yes, I can hear you," River murmurs, fingers curling over the velvety comforter. "Come to sing me to sleep, have you?" There's a plea hidden in those words, the plea of a sleepless woman who wants, more than anything, to feel that love again.

Only the TARDIS has ever offered River completely unconditional love. Only the TARDIS has ever looked at her actions and not judged her on them. The TARDIS, who exists anywhere and everywhere, all at the same time.

River, what are you doing? The voice that greets her is sad and weary, all too knowing. This is a query that the TARDIS already knows the answer to.

"You know what I'm doing."

You don't have to do this, River.

She shakes her head of wild curls agitatedly, swallowing down hard. God, why is it so hard to breathe? "Yes, I do. Yes, I do." River holds a hand up over her eyes, before it falls flat at her side. "And you know exactly why."

The TARDIS offers something else. Stay right where you are, River. I can have us there in an instant, can take you away from all this…

"Don't."

River…

"Please, don't." A flash of light shimmers on the window and is gone. "And please, please don't come until it's over." River frowns. "He doesn't know where I am, does he?"

No, he doesn't. But he has a fair idea of what you're going to do. He's worried, and in pain and guilt. And he's running himself ragged looking for you.

Beyond that, there is nothing but silence and the sound of River's hearts beating slowly in her chest. He's looking for me. This provokes two things within her that, though utterly incompatible, somehow co-exist perfectly.

Anger, that someone wants to stop her.

Elation, that someone cares enough to try.

-0-0-0-

The name of River Song is fast becoming every bit as notorious across the stars as that of Melody Pond. One among the most infamous war criminals of all time, and the other a new woman, who brings terror in her wake on a quest that can only end in tears and poisoning pain. The Doctor is running himself and the TARDIS into the ground trying to find her, to stop her, but somehow, River is always a step ahead of him.

It's always the same story when he comes to a place where she's been. Dead men and a terrified populace. The dead are always soldiers or bounty hunters. Some of them were sent to stop her (but in a different way from the Doctor) or soldiers of the Academy of the Question, sent to bring her back. Some wanted to collect the reward from apprehending her. Some just wanted to kill her. Either way, they have all ended up dead.

Blood-soaked, mighty warrior that she is, River Song extends no mercy to her foes. None at all.

And everywhere the Doctor goes, the people shy away from him. They cower, they glare, they curse his name. They blame him for the dead war since resurrected, they blame him for the destruction, the fear. Not just for River's deeds, but for his own—because the Doctor is asking questions of his own and sometimes, he's not at all nice about the way he goes about getting his answers.

Why shouldn't they? After all, there were people so terrified of him that they kidnapped a pregnant woman just because her child had been conceived in the TARDIS, replaced her with a Flesh Avatar and went so far as to raise that child to kill him. They took an innocent little girl, crushed her, utterly destroyed her, and rebuilt her in their image. Made her into something new, something dangerous, something so devastatingly, heartbreakingly beautiful and repugnant at the same time.

Why shouldn't they blame him? Why shouldn't they be afraid?

The Doctor doesn't care. At the moment, he doesn't really care.

He just knows he needs to find River.

-0-0-0-

She could be cruel. So, so cruel.

It's been three weeks since the thought occurred to young Melody, been three weeks since she first started trying to work up the nerve to ask the question. Though Madame Kovarian encourages curiosity, she does not encourage impertinent questions. If she considers this question to be impertinent, then God help young Melody.

"Madame?" Melody's keen green eyes narrow as they look up at the woman standing beside her on the lift. Madame Kovarian is like a living shadow, given form and gliding across space. Always dressed entirely in black, with pale, slightly sagging skin, dark curls knotted tightly on her head. The only bit of color ever on her is a cruel smear of dark red lipstick, trying (and failing) to give the impression that her lips are fuller than they actually are. She seems a woman trying to grasp at something, though Melody isn't sure what.

A single dark eye levels down on Melody. "What is it, child?" Her rough, gravelly voice, low and sharp, fills the lift.

Melody smiles tremulously, barely able to keep eye contact. "What happened to my parents?"

For the longest time, Kovarian does not answer, and Melody fears that this is one of those questions, one of those questions that can provoke a response of cold anger. Then, Kovarian sighs deeply and squares her shoulders, looking straight ahead.

"They gave you to us willingly. They feared what you would be come, and did not wish to have to bear the responsibility in case the worst happened."

River pulls the knife out of the rib cage of the hapless soldier, and she knows he's dead when a gush of blood doesn't come spilling forth, a torrent against the earth. Instead, there is only a dull trickle, the calling card of a dead man.

He was getting in the way.

Of course, she could be kind, too.

"I'm sorry," Melody apologizes, over and over again, cradling her cut, bleeding hand. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Madame Kovarian shakes her head wearily and drops to one knee beside her, reaching for her injured hand and examining it closely. "You should have been properly educated in how to hold the weapon before being told to fire. There is no need for remorse, Melody."

A rare smile flits over the woman's stony, implacable face. "The infirmary is the place for you right now. Follow me."

Oddly, River hates her more now, far more, for her kindness, rather than her cruelty. If it were just cruelty than she wouldn't feel so much trepidation about what she's doing. If it had just been cruelty, and that was the only bond between them, then this would all be so much easier.

How long did I go thinking my parents didn't want me? How long did I go thinking she was the only one who would accept me, that that was the only place where I would ever be wanted?

Next, after wiping the knife clean and sticking it back in her belt, River gently plies the documents in question from the soldier's vest, and holds them up against the sun, trying to differentiate letters from glittering splotches of blood.

Love, fear, and hatred. These are the three emotions River associates with Madame Kovarian, the first of the three easily the most problematic. Whether she likes it or not (and she doesn't like it), River was essentially raised by this woman, and she could be kind. Even when she was terrified of her, she still loved her, and even if she doesn't anymore, even if she hates her more than she has ever hated anyone, she still remembers. Still a bit in awe, still a little afraid.

Hearts pounding in her chest like twin drumbeats, River starts inputting coordinates. She has a planet, and a time zone.

Even as a lost child, River knows where she's going now.

-0-0-0-

The Doctor finds himself thinking, as the TARDIS speeds along through the vortex. Well, not thinking, as much as musing, and if you want to be completely maudlin, wallowing in his own guilt and regret.

This girl who's tearing apart the stars, she's not his River, not yet. She wears River's face and now answers to her name, but she's not his brilliant, wonderful, maddening River Song. River would tear apart the stars with a bit more finesse, and River would know when and where to stop—this girl has no restraint, none at all.

And River…

River would call him when she needed help.

She hasn't called him, and the Doctor has to remind himself that this is a girl who barely knows him, who is still getting over the conditioning that identifies him as the greatest menace existence has ever known. He still has to earn the trust—Huh, actually having to earn it; that's new—that River has expressed in him every time she's seen him before Berlin. She won't call him and the Doctor is still chasing after her, no idea where she's going but afraid he knows exactly what she's going to do.

It's not going to bring you happiness. It won't make your life any easier. It will just hurt, so much, and you'll have everyone who fought for her out for your blood. Please just think, River. Just think.

As much as the Doctor tries to be angry with her, because he knows he should, he can't be. He tries to dredge up anger and all he can think of instead is his ownership in this mess.

The fear he caused with his at times thoughtless actions led a number of people to train River to kill him. She is simply carrying out years of conditioning, of brainwashing, simply carrying out what she was bred to do.

Everywhere he goes he sees dead soldiers, and the Doctor frowns at each one of their corpses, human or alien, male or female. He tries to be angry with her and can't quite manage it, and instead the Doctor looks at all the bodies and begins to wonder whether River even knows how to shoot to wound. After all, she's been trained to kill; perhaps the only way she knows how to shoot at all is to shoot to kill. The Doctor, in all his adventures with River, doesn't think he's ever seen her shoot to disable before. She can shoot his hat straight off his head, but when aiming for a warm body always makes a fatal shot.

It would explain a lot.

Good grief. So much fear, so many tears, and the Doctor knows exactly the part he has to play in all this. He also knows that the TARDIS must know when and where River is, and she who hasn't always "taken him where he wants to go" but always took him "where he needs to be", could have him to River in a heartbeat, but doesn't. It's not time yet, he supposes.

His failure. His fault. His responsibility. The Doctor can't be angry at the River who isn't quite his River yet. He can only wish for the days when she trusted him, wish he had trusted her more, and still look for her now, praying he won't find her with blood on her hands.

Then again, there's always been blood on River's hands. To be more accurate, the Doctor prays he won't find her with a fresh coating.

-0-0-0-

Victory is all but won, moments away, but River can't bring herself to smile, or laugh, or feel anything but an aching, screaming void, and bitterness and vitriol springing forth like pus from a wound.

Kovarian stands, gasping heavily, with her back pressed against the wall. She's slumped over slightly, knees buckled. River knew Kovarian was a warrior through and through, but she hadn't expected the older woman to put up the sort of fight that she did. In the end, however, it didn't matter, not at all; the living weapon more than outmatched the woman who created her. Kovarian slumps against the wall with broken ribs and internal bleeding, her clothes torn, her eye patch ripped off to reveal the hollow behind it and a fine trickle of blood cascading from her hair, and the most River has to show from the fight is a lacerated left hand. (Doesn't matter which hand it would be, either. River can remember all the times during her childhood when they deliberately broke her right wrist to force her to use her left hand in combat. Either hand will do.)

River is proud of how unaffected she can keep her expression, her pale eyes as clear and cold as chips of ice. Fingers taut and knuckles white, she keeps the pistol trained on Kovarian's heart, and finally manages to drag the words from her throat. "Why did you lie to me?"

To her credit, Kovarian doesn't pretend not to know what River's talking about, though she's not sure of the specifics. River isn't sure how but Kovarian recognized her almost as soon as she opened fire, shouting for her to stop as River cut a swath through the clerics with her and then zeroed in on Kovarian herself. "You're going to have to be a bit more specific than that, child," she answers, disturbingly calm and even-voiced. Always able to keep her poise in all matters unrelated to the Doctor.

Finally, River smiles, but it is the most icy thing she has ever been able to manage. Not even at her most psychotic when fighting the Doctor were her smiles like this one. "Two things, Madame." I still call her that, River realizes dully. "First. Why did you say that the Doctor had to be killed?"

Plainly Kovarian thinks this an infantile question, because she scoffs and shakes her head, not even wincing at the intense pain that must provoke. "You know why as well as I do. The Doctor is a blood-soaked menace. No one should ever have the sort of power that he does. He plays God with the lives of whole worlds—"

"That's not true," River cuts her off abruptly, fingers tightening, if that's even possible, further around the gun. Any more pressure on the trigger and the gun will fire.

A single dark eye, veiled and inscrutable, looks her up and down. "You have two hearts," Kovarian says, very softly. "You have two hearts, because you are much Time Lord as you are human. Of the Time Lords, there are none left. None but him, and you. And this is because he killed them. Every last one. This should be reason enough for you to see why he must be killed."

River just shakes her head and laughs hollowly. Kovarian's lips thin. "I believe you had another question for me." If she is aware of how this conversation is going to end, she gives no sign of it. There is no fear in that one eye, none at all.

Yes, River did, and one much harder than the last. Feeling the pace of her hearts start to skip and her throat grow sore and achingly tight. Eyes entirely too bright and keen, yet still smiling, she finally asks the question she has asked herself since Berlin. "Why did you tell me that my parents didn't want me?"

Kovarian doesn't answer and River, composure lost entirely, bursts out, "You said they gave me up when they learned what I was. I know better. I've met them and I know better." Her smile is gone, broken and evaporated.

To this, only silence.

"Do you have any idea how long I thought there was nowhere for me? Do you have any idea how long I thought that there was no one I could go to? Do you?" River grits her teeth. "Answer me!"

A shadow of what, River dares to believe, might actually be sadness flits over Kovarian's face. "Melody…"

River smiles coldly. "No. Not Melody. Melody Pond was the child you controlled. I am not her anymore. My name is River Song."

And she fires.

-0-0-0-

At the exact moment, thousands of light years and hundreds of years away, that Madame Imelda Kovarian, Headmistress of the Academy of the Question dies, the last TARDIS in existence lurches and lays in a new course, the Doctor shouting around at the control panels and to thin air until he realizes exactly what's going on.

"It's time, then?"

The TARDIS' resolute progress towards where she knows River will be found is all the answer the Doctor needs.

He sighs, rubbing his forehead, and, for once, showing every one of his years.

-0-0-0-

Still walking through the dimly lit hall on her way out, River is surprised to receive a message over her pad of psychic paper.

I'm coming.

River licks her lips. She is still numb from what she has just done, from whom she has just killed and can't even begin to sort out the jumble of her emotions. She doesn't know whether the message she has just received elates or terrifies her.

On his end, the Doctor is equally surprised to receive a message over his pad of psychic paper.

Alright.

…

You're alright?

…

No.

…

I'm sorry.

…

Berlin destroyed my whole world, you know.

…

I know. I'm so sorry.

…

You said that then too. Why do you keep apologizing?

This is the one question the Doctor can't quite bring himself to answer.

-0-0-0-

Now, she sits outside, on the curb, in the rain, and waits for him to come. River doesn't know whether she will receive condemnation or comfort when he comes, but she can't bring herself to run. For right now, she is so, so tired of running. Whatever she is given when he comes, she will take, though the thought of being condemned by him sends thrills of fear down her back.

Amy is screaming for help from within the Tesselecta, and Melody, who was watching, rather bored, from a chair, feels her mouth fall open in shock as the Doctor's eyes open and he, so close to death, struggles towards his TARDIS, snarling in frustration as the stone steps prove to be an obstacle.

Melody can only watch in shock as he tries and tries, and fails every time, to get up, to get to his TARDIS. Is this the menace she was sent to destroy? "Look at you," she breathes, hearts pounding in her chest for some reason. She should be calmer than this. "You still care." He's dying. He ought to be more concerned with saving his own life, but no. The Doctor instead labors to get to his ship, not to save himself but his two companions. Melody isn't even entirely sure what she's seeing.

She had thought, that when she killed Kovarian, finally put an end to all the screaming inside of her, that she would be happy. She had been so sure that she would finally be at some measure of peace, that the weight would lift off of her shoulders and she would be free of her. Free at last.

No. River was wrong. The inside is all jagged and broken, and she wants nothing more than to sleep for the rest of eternity. She can still see that one eye rolling into the back of Kovarian's skull as she fell, can still see the way her body crumpled, and, absurdly (or perhaps not), River had to bite back a scream when she realized she really was dead.

Melody leans down over the Doctor, and puts a hand on his shoulder. He is lying prostrate on the stone steps, so far gone now that he can't even form an expression. "Find her," he whispers. His voice is slurred, but very deliberate; he is forcing the words from lungs that don't want to work anymore. "Find River Song, and tell her something from me."

"Tell her what?" The Doctor's mouth moves but Melody can't hear the words, so she dips her head down, leveling her ear just over his mouth.

"Tell her… Tell her that I love her, and I am so sorry."

Feeling her hearts skip, Melody forces out a little laugh. "Well, I'm sure she kno—"

Then, she looks at his face, and sees his eyes shut. There's no more need for words.

There's nothing, but an aching emptiness even worse than before.

"Show me her." Amy's voice cracks as she addresses the Tesselecta. "Show me River Song."

Melody watches, unable to tear her eyes away as the form of the Tesselecta shifts. Her breathing hitches and the lump in her throat doubles in pain. But… That's me.

Here is the answer to all the riddles.

All her life, it had been impressed upon Melody, over and over, just how much of a danger the Doctor was. How much he needed to be stopped. How much she had to kill him, for the sake of all creation.

But Melody has seen the Doctor, has seen what he can do and just who he is, and she drew her own conclusions from the chaos.

Melody Pond had not known too many good men, but the Doctor, she was sure even then, was the best she would ever know. There had never been a man like him. He was the Doctor. He was mad, utterly mad and just… Just so wonderful. So obviously, there was only one things she could do in a situation like that.

Melody Pond's first act as River Song was to bring the Doctor back to life, and in so doing give all of her future regenerations to save him.

"Hello, sweetie."

It still doesn't make any of it feel any better.

The rain is not particularly gentle, but not cruel on her skin either. It drenches her skin, makes her clothes weigh down like millstones. Her curls cling to her cheeks and neck, and the blood is washed away from the wound on her hand. It's a long, clean cut, not particularly deep, but it has bled so much.

Everything shouldn't hurt, shouldn't weigh down as much as it does. It shouldn't, but River can find no satisfaction in what she has done. There is no absolution in death.

Then, she hears that familiar sound—he's left the parking brake on again; hasn't she told him not to do that before—and River looks up, but doesn't stand, as the TARDIS materializes four feet away from her.

She watches, white-lipped, as the door opens and the light from inside pours out, but doesn't quite reach her. She sits on the border of that light, still swathed in shadows. Her eyes are open wide and she feels cold, so cold.

The Doctor comes, and stands in the door. The man River has never wanted to see less, or more. He looks down at the lost child before him and their eyes lock, and there is nothing but silence for what seems an eternity. His sadness reaches down into his bones and into River's as well, is written all over his face, and for one terrible moment, she fears more than anything that he will reject her. That he will turn his back and leave her there.

But he doesn't. He just sighs heavily, his eyes shadowed with lack of sleep and grief. A dull boom of thunder sounds overhead. And then, the Doctor says to River the likes of which no one has ever said to her before before.

"Come in out of the rain."

—They will talk tomorrow, but for now…

Silently, unable to form words to articulate her feelings, unable to even identify what she's feeling at all, River does.