So I wrote this at 3am while babysitting, so it might not make any sense. Timey-Whimey distortions, so the first part takes place at the end of The Big Bang. I own nothing. Woot woot.

Something was wrong.

Jumping out of my bed at Storm Cage, I took in my surroundings. I was in the same place I'd been for years. Not that I'd ever really been confined. But something was different about today; something was gone. Suddenly really anxious, I reached my diary from where it sat next to my prison bed, but instead of grabbing it, I missed and it hit the floor. It was empty.

But the fact that it was empty wasn't what surprised me… It was the fact that I was actually surprised at seeing the empty diary that surprised me. It was unused, but I knew that, I had never opened it in my life. A diary that is never opened will always be empty, so why was seeing my blank diary so… unexpected to me?

I knelt down next to the diary, examining it carefully, fingering the pages, the utterly old, used pages… If it had never been written in, why did it look like every page had been used, worn, written and rewritten in over and over again? The diary looked used, abused, loved, toted… but never once have I even glanced at it. Why had I never thought about it until now? Something was very, very wrong.

And something was missing.

But there! In the bottom corner of the back of a page: coordinates.

One zap from the vortex manipulator that I kept under my mattress, and I landed, diary in hand at… a wedding venue? I looked down, I was dressed for the occasion amazingly. As if I had known this was going to happen. A man met me at the front door, and I handed him the diary to give to the bride. It was just what I needed to do. And then he was there. That man, that impossible man. And I remembered, because how could I ever forget?

He would come and take me out on dates, and we would flirt without caring who was around, and then we would steal kisses while no one was watching. We never had a normal relationship, no, there was no hope for that with the two of us being time travelers. But I took what I could get when I could get it. There were days when she would strut into the TARDIS and he would sweep his eyes over her body and scoop her up in his arms afterwards. Those were the good days, the ones where we knew who the other was without even saying it. We could just tell by the age in each other's eyes and the need etched on our faces.

And then there were the bad days, the ones when I had to be cautious with how much I told him, or when I had to pretend to not know something that I've already lived through.

Do you have that friend or boyfriend or husband, to whom you can tell your deepest darkest secrets, and they just understand you because that's who they were? That was my Doctor to me. I trusted him with everything, with my life, with my love, with my soul… but most of the time, I just couldn't tell him a thing. And if you don't have that, then what do you have? It was those days that really killed me.

"Did you dance?" I asked from my spot hidden in the garden, "well, you always dance at weddings, don't you?"

"You tell me," he replied.

"Spoilers," I said sadly. Oh how I hated that word.

One zap of my vortex manipulator, and I was back home… If you could call prison home. But I guess I had nowhere else to go.

"Hi honey, I'm home" came a voice from the corner of my cell. And there he stood, the same man I had been with mere seconds ago, but this version of him was far older and understanding.

"And what sort of time do you call this?" I replied as I normally do. "You know, you erased yourself from history today," I said solemnly, not knowing what I was hoping to accomplish by telling him this. I just stood there staring at him until he came to meet me with open arms. He swept me into a warm hug that lasted minutes but felt like days and ended far too soon. "Never. NEVER. Do that to me again. Do you understand?"

"I know dear, I'm sorry, I'm really so sorry. It was the only way to fix the universe. That's what happened, right? You're not talking about some other time that I erased myself?"

I looked into his eyes, and the expression on my face must have been terrifying, full of fear that he would erase himself again, because he stopped kidding and pulled me back into another hug.

"River, darling, have we done Utah yet?"

"Twice" I replied, looking down at my hands as the fixed the lapels on his tweed jacket.

He sat down on my prison cot and took my hands in his. He placed them over both of his hearts and I could feel his life in my hands. My life, technically, seeing as I had given him my regenerations. We were so intertwined, our lives, our timelines, our histories… Neither of us would have been here had it not been for the other. He kept saying that time could be rewritten, but our times could never be.

"I'm sorry, River, that it has to be this hard. I know what you're going through, when I meet younger versions of you, I don't know what to do. I want to greet you like a husband greets his wife, but that can never be that easy for us."

I looked into his eyes, they were truthful, full of passion and regret. Regret that our lives were intertwined as they were, that it would never be a simple love story between us. But at the same time, neither of us would have it any other way.

"It won't be easy for us, and you know that," he continued, releasing my hands and breaking his gaze to reach in his jacket pocket, "but I want you to know that just because things aren't easy, doesn't mean that they aren't good," he pulled his hand out of his jacket pocket, and held something out to me. When he looked up to meet my gaze again, I looked down to see two silver bands in his hand. I felt the breath get caught in my throat, wrapped up in the moment. That very day, he had asked me if I was married, and now here he was, in my jail cell, essentially telling me as he slipped a ring onto my left hand, and held out the other for me to put on his own finger, that what had happened in the aborted timeline had meant something to him… That even though it was a combat zone and it was rushed and I had embarrassed him with my emotions; I was still something that he could not and would not live without. As he placed the ring on my finger, my doubts had melted away. Sure we had flirted since that day, and spent many nights on adventures and dates, but I was never truly certain about our marriage, as it was in an aborted timeline and we had never spoken of it. The flirting is fun, but when it comes to real, true, lasting emotion, we tend to run in the opposite direction.

But as he held out the sturdy, medium thick, silver band to me… As he looked down at my hand and would not meet my eyes… I knew right then how much I meant to him. He was so embarrassed, so shy in front of me… to be this vulnerable; not knowing if I would take the ring into my own hands.

I stared at it upon my finger, holding it up to the faint Storm Cage light. That is when I saw the small circles etched on the band. I ran my thumb across the small Gallifreyan word and I knew that he must have made them himself. No one but the two of us really understood the ancient language, and there's nowhere in this universe that he could have bought them.

I'd given some thought to what kind of ring I would want for my wedding, but I had never expected something so heartfelt and meaningful as the ring that I held up to the faint blue tinted light of my cell.

"Melody…" he said quietly, and when I looked away from the ring to see him watching me, he got embarrassed and almost choked on his own tongue, "ah, um, River…" he looked down and ran his hand through his hair nervously before meeting my eyes, "If you, uh… I don't know if you…" He really looked adorable when he was embarrassed.

"Oh, shut up," I said before pulling him closer. He smirked and closed his eyes before closing the gap between us, finally relaxing under my touch.

"You know, darling…" I whispered to him, my hands running down his arms until our fingers were intertwined, "you know how much I love you. Always and forever."

"We're connected now River. No matter how long I'm gone, no matter what versions of me you encounter, you will always know where we end up."

Yeah, I don't know how to end it. Wrote it at 3 AM, hope it makes sense. If not, then too bad. You should review it so that I know people actually read it.

~live long and prosper