She'd been planning to go back for Anthony later, when the baby was safe and her time on the Tardis was through. But between the distinctly non-cooperative vibe she's getting from the Tardis and the thought of having to vortex around while massively pregnant, River makes an impromptu decision to move up her schedule.

(If there's a half-formed thought in the back of her head about a little breathing space making her inevitable departure a little more bearable, well….)

So one evening after saying goodnight to Clara and locking her bedroom door, River digs her vortex manipulator up from the depths of her duffel.

She materializes next to Rory's car, already acquiring a film of dust.

"Why red, Rory, really," He thrusts his head in between the front seats, face close to Rory's as he says, hopefully, "Let me paint it blue!"

"Absolutely not. Do not, under any circumstances, touch my car. Ever."

"I like the red," Amy says. She's still oblivious. River's never been though, and she catches Rory's eye in the rearview mirror with a pointed little smirk.

"It's always been his favorite," she says, and Rory blushes.

A car passes on the street, tossing a lock of River's hair across her eyes, and she pushes it away.

As usual with blue doors, she doesn't bother respecting the lock, letting herself inside to the familiar entry.

"Anthony, are you here? Brian?"

Nobody answers, and River wanders into the kitchen. There's a note on the fridge in Anthony's familiar doctor scrawl.

Gone to Leadworth with Brian, probably with the Ponds. Come along Melody.

She smiles, tucking the note in her pocket before re-setting her vortex manipulator.

The Ponds do not have a blue door. River stands in front of it for a few minutes, breathing in the familiarity through a new face. The Ponds won't recognize her, of course.

There are memories in their house though.

River takes a long, slow breath and knocks firmly on the door.

Amy's mother (and that is how she will always think of her) answers. It's been literally hundreds of years since River has seen her. For Mrs. Pond, it's only been ten years, and the lack of change in her is almost startling.

There is, of course, no recognition on her face. She smiles distantly, her gaze flickering curiously down to River's clearly pregnant belly.

"Hello there, can I help you?" she asks, in her formal, grow-up voice.

Not like she talked to Mels, with her, "You be careful now"s and her, "What are you up to in the flowerbeds, girls?"

"I'm looking for Anthony Williams, I heard he might be here?"

Surprise flickers across the other woman's face, and then her eyes widen. She glances down at River's stomach again, and then up to her face, tracing around the swirls of her hair, the angles of her chin and the (unfortunate) length of her nose.

"Oh," she says, softly.

She then proceeds to burst into tears.

To Mrs. Pond's credit and River's relief, she's not sobbing really. There are an awful lot of tears though, and her hand is pressed over her mouth.

Her eyes stay locked on River's face.

River is too startled by the obvious recognition to respond for a moment, standing awkwardly on the doorstep,

in front of her grandmother's tears. They'd made cookies once, shaped like little men, with candy buttons up their fronts and lop-sided frosting faces.

"I'm sorry Mrs. Pond, I should have called ahead, um…"

Mrs. Pond shakes her head, wrapping her hand around the top of River's arm and gently pulling her into the house, closing the door behind her.

"So, Anthony mentioned me then?" River asks (not looking at all the familiar things lining the hallway, the way the afternoon light falls weakly through the windows like it always did after school).

Mrs. Pond takes a deep breath, still leaking tears, "Yes he did," she says, sniffling. "I'm sorry, dear, I need a tissue," she doesn't let go of River's arm, pulling her into the kitchen and not even releasing her as she blows her nose and dabs at her eyes, awkwardly one-handed.

It's quiet except for the sniffling and River shifts uncomfortably, her gaze catching on Amy's graduation photo on the counter despite herself.

"Where's Mr. Pond today?" she asks, quickly looking back at Mrs. Pond.

"Off with Anthony and Brian – they're playing golf," she manages to say after another tissue.

"Oh, I see, should I come back la-"

"No!" Mrs. Pond cuts her off quickly, the hand on River's arm tightening almost painfully.

"No, please stay, dear, I'm fine, just a little surprised, all at once you know. First Anthony and then Amy and Rory being gone, and …you, and there's the little one too. And you're Mels, and then there you were, at the door, and you just," she looks like she's going to lose break down again, but pulls herself together with a shuddering breath, "you look like them," she says, softly.

"Sorry, I should have called ahead," River says again, because she just can't seem to figure out what to say.

Much like Amy and Rory, really, and she understands completely why they hadn't managed this.

"Yes you should have," Mrs. Pond says, "you should have called years ago, but that's all water under the bridge now. I'll make some tea, and we can chat, alright?"

Honestly River feels like running.

Go back to Amy and Rory's house with the blue door and sit in the (too) quiet living room with the more familiar ghosts.

But Mrs. Pond's grip on River's arm doesn't loosen, and there's something a little desperate in her fingers.

"Alright, I'll just go wait in the living room then…."

"Oh, yes, alright, you remember where it is of course."

River nods, and waits, Mrs. Pond doesn't move.

"Um," says River, "My arm, it's—"

"Oh! I'm sorry dear," she peels her fingers away from River's arm, looking a little embarrassed as she turns around and starts making tea. River escapes into the living room before Mrs. Pond can change her mind and take hold again.

The living room brings back a flood of memories from her childhood – her second childhood, anyway – and she closes her eyes against

("The couch is the moon, Mels, and we're stuck here, but the Doctor is coming,")

them and the memory of Mrs. Pond's desperate fingers and tears.

When she opens her eyes, she's looking down at the coffee table and a small stack of envelopes, yellowing with age around the edges. She frowns, recognizing the one on top as Rory's letter to his father that Anthony had brought. Curiously she pulls the letter under it out of the pile. It's addressed simply to, 'Our Parents'.

She pulls the brittle paper from the envelope, and only has enough time to realize the letter is about her before Mrs. Pond rattles into the room with a tray. River quickly shoves the letter back where she'd found it, sitting back and wondering exactly how much Amy and Rory had said in that letter.

"We're not sure what to tell them," Rory tells her, while Amy is in the loo, " We're going to though, they should know about you."

River shrugs, because she's still young, and it's too fresh and she doesn't know how to talk about it yet either.

A week later, Amy won't answer her phone. Worried, she takes a break from her midterms, makes a trip back to the house. Rory answers the door, and his smile is strained.

"It didn't go well, did it?"

He shakes his head, "I'm sorry," he says, "We tried, but…..maybe someday."

They'd never quite figured out how to explain River to their family. It always hurt too much, so they waited, and then they were out of time.

Almost as soon as Mrs. Pond opens her mouth, River realizes they had, at last, managed to tell it all, because Mrs. Pond doesn't ask questions. Not the expected one's anyway.

She grips her tea cup so tight her fingers are white, and she doesn't let go, but she holds her voice calm. She asks about the baby, where she's living (in a hospital, and that answer doesn't go over very well), how long she's planning to stay (just to pick up Anthony, and Mrs. Ponds shoulder's sink sadly even as she nods politely). She doesn't ask any questions about the past, and River wonders at how completely they must have managed to tell her story. She wonders when they wrote it, how many years passed, watching Anthony grow up between them before they could finally sit down and talk about the baby girl they'd lost.

The thought is a warm one, to think that they'd found peace with it all.

Mrs. Pond holds herself together for 8 minutes and 14 seconds of stiff, white-fingered conversation before she breaks the handle of her tea cup. She cuts her finger on the jagged edge in the process, with a sharp little "Ow!" and then she dissolves again, crying over her bleeding finger.

When they were young, River could never trace the similarities between Amy and her mother. But now she can see that they cry the same; emotions breaking out, messy and loud. River picks up a napkin and walks around the coffee table to sit next to Mrs. Pond on the couch. As she gently wraps the napkin around her Grandmother's bleeding finger, River can feel her own years, piled up under her new skin, and the meager handful gathered up under Mrs. Ponds' in comparison.

She wraps an arm around the younger woman's shoulder and shushes her softly, like Amy long ago, and Clara not so very long ago.

Brian, Mr. Pond and Anthony make their return into the middle of the scene. Brian knows her instantly, she can feel the recognition in his gaze (and if it centers around her nose she's just not going to think about it). Mr. Pond looks confused, and worried about his crying wife, and the stranger next to her. Antony's whole face lights up,

Like sunlight, safe from those teethed shadows.

"Melody, you came!" he says, and Mr. Pond, on his haunches in front of Mrs. Pond trying to get her to talk, falls back on his rear in surprise.

"Melody?" he repeats, staring at her.

Feeling awkward under his gaze, River is all too happy to get up from the couch and accept Anthony's offered hug. He takes the opportunity to say softly into her ear, "are you okay?"

"I am now," she answers, just as soft.

The last centurion, kept her safe for 2000 years.

He pulls back to smile down at her, a little bit worried, more relieved and mostly happy, simply happy to see her. She smiles too, the out-of-balance feeling she'd been fighting since the front door fading

as if it were blue after all.

Mrs. Pond moves to make sandwiches, but she keeps dropping things in the kitchen, and River and Anthony take her place, leaving her with her husband and Brian to process quietly in the living room. She can hear their voices, a soft and strained hum drifting through the doorway.

She doesn't try to listen.

River surprises herself by remembering where the Ponds keep all their cutlery, and Anthony asks questions as he washes a head of lettuce in the sink. She doesn't want to talk about the Doctor here in the Pond's kitchen though, and Anthony catches on quickly.

"But you're alright? Both of you?"

"Meh, we're managing," she tell him cheerfully, stealing a crisp from one of the plates and re-directing the conversation, "Have you had a good visit?"

He grins, nodding, "It's been really good. Probably helps that we're, you know, close in age."

She laughs lightly,

At the desk next to her, Amy's tiny little girl's hand wrapped around a blue crayon catches her eye.

"I'm glad. How many letters did mum and dad send you with though? I noticed a stack up to my eyeballs on the table out there."

"Oh, yeah, they got kind of chatty in their old age. Well, they weren't that old, really, I just thought they were because, you know, teenagers. They wrote the one about you around the time they explained the whole thing to me.",

She takes the lettuce out of his hands, tearing distractedly. She tries to picture them, bent over stationary, calmly relating the events of Demon's Run, Florida and Berlin.

Amy crying on the couch, mascara staining her cheeks.

She shakes her head, "I'm glad they were able to do that, eventually."

He smiles, "Me too."