Chapter 9.

Silence

Before he could say another word, Rose reached back and slapped him.

"You slapped me!" he said, looking at her in shock.

"You've been many things, Doctor, in the years I've known you, but never cruel," she said, glaring at him. He was rubbing his cheek theatrically and working his jaw. She rolled her eyes.

"You lot are all hiding something from me," he shot at her, pouting.

"Yes, and you listened in on enough of the conversation to know what it is and why they have to hide it," she answered, not in the mood to play games with him. As his brow rose in surprise at being caught, she finally realised what was bothering her about his face. "And what happened to your eyebrows!?"

He reached up and self-consciously rubbed them. "That's just how they are, I don't know!" he defended. He dropped his hand, and Rose saw it then, something he rarely allowed to cross his face - his age. "Is there anything you can tell me that I don't know?"

"It's fixed, but in flux," she said. "This'll be easier over tea. Take me to the kitchen, gangly one."

He looked affronted over the nickname, but led her to a cosy kitchen, where she made tea quickly and joined him at a low table in the corner, grateful to be off her feet and just relaxing after the long day. She finally took off her hat, and unbraided the twin tails her hair was in, shaking it free before sipping the tea.

"Never let River make tea," he said, taking a sip. "She burns it. I didn't even know you could burn tea."

"I think she does it on purpose," Rose said, silently admitting she knew River - at least a future River. His non-existent eyebrows went up again. "She always liked my tea, though."

"Well, you'll need all the help you can get," he muttered. "Now what did you mean - it's fixed, but in flux?"

Rose closed her eyes, trying to remember everything she could about the moment she'd seen. "There's something just - off - about time in general at that particular moment. It didn't feel right. Add in a fixed point, with me, you, Jack, and River involved, and there's so much that could be altered without actually altering it," she said, watching all the various outcomes play out.

"Who are you?" he said. "Because Rose Tyler would never know any of that. Not very clever, that bit."

She opened her eyes, allowing them to glow with everything she could see for just that moment. "I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself," she said. She let the glow die as the tea dribbled down his shirt down his shirt.

"Is that why you're here, and not there, with him?" he asked, very carefully. This time there was no Jack to save her.

"No, Doctor. Big Bang Two. You rebooted the Universe. Only, you rebooted the Universe in 1996, when I was still on this side of the wall. You erased yourself from existence, and while some of us did our best to preserve the timelines, and keep things intact, there were some events that just never came to pass while you were waiting for Amy to remember you - like Canary Wharf. Like the Medusa Cascade. Or Bad Wolf Bay." She tried not to sound bitter.

"You really were at Amy's wedding," he said. "I thought I was imagining you, but you were really there. Were you on the TARDIS, too, during that time?"

"I was sustaining her, and she was keeping me alive. We have a bond, you know," Rose said lightly, knowing that he didn't, actually, know. "It's what the Bad Wolf is, after all - it's me and the TARDIS, working together. It's how our letter was addressed, too. The Bad Wolf and the Face of Boe - not Rose Tyler and Captain Jack Harkness. That tells me that whatever we're getting into is bad, Doctor."

A throat cleared from the doorway, and River Song walked in, wearing a long white dressing gown of something silky-looking. "I just popped in for some tea," she said, and Rose realised the other woman was embarrassed. She thought she was interrupting something between her husband and another woman. In her position, Rose would have been furious, but River was withholding judgement. Rose's respect for this River went up several notches, and at the Doctor's awkward fumbling, she lost a bit for him. She'd never seen anyone look so guilty in her life.

"Doctor, go do whatever it is you normally do when your friends are sleeping," she said, waving him off. He looked at her, eyes wide, but whatever he saw in her face must have reassured him, because he shuffled out of the room, looking over his shoulder, where one woman sat, denims, boots, pink button-down blouse and black leather jacket, the other in a white dressing gown, both of them clearly waiting for him to leave.

Once he was gone, Rose pointed to the teapot. "Have a cup, please," she said. "You never could make tea."

"Are we friends, then?" River asked, her back towards Rose as she poured the tea with unsteady hands. "It's not unusual for me to travel with those who know things about me that I don't know, but not usually to this extent." She joined Rose at the table.

"The very best of friends," Rose said, sipping her tea and stretching her legs out. "We had a flat together, me, you, Jack, and Mickey. We preserved the timeline when Gangly out there got himself written out of existence, and we could never have done it without you. The very best of friends, River. Please, remember - no matter what you may feel towards me right now - we're the very best of friends."

River took a sip from her cup. "This is very good tea," she said, her voice very polite. "If I have you making tea like this for me, I can see why I've never bothered to learn how to do it properly for myself."

"How much did you overhear?" Rose asked, looking at the dust on her black boots.

"How much did he?" River retorted, and Rose smiled. River was still River.

"Enough to piece it together, of course," Rose said. "Everything dies, River. Everything comes to dust. Even the Doctor, someday. He, above everyone else, knows how true that is. How could he not, travelling as he does with those that he outlives, day after day?"

From old habit, Rose reached out, and grasped River's free hand in comfort, and the bond they shared through the TARDIS flared to life. River pulled her hand away immediately. "How did you do that?" she asked, her eyes wide. "You can't tell him - any of them!"

"Tell me, River, what you know of the Bad Wolf," Rose said, taking her cup in both hands and wrapping her fingers around it.

"Legends, mostly," River said, shrugging. "She's a Time Goddess, the only one in existence. There are rumors that she protects the Doctor, as the last of his kind, watches over him - a few sources claim she sometimes takes a human form and becomes his lover, but I think that's just romantic fancy. The Daleks fear her, and they fear nothing, supposedly. They call her 'the Abomination', though no one's quite sure where or when that name came into existence."

Rose smiled into her tea. "A goddess? Nah," she said, laughing. "Just a girl from the Estates. The Doctor tried to send her home, keep her safe, because he was facing a fleet of Daleks with no way out, but she wouldn't stay put. She pulled open the TARDIS, looked into the old girl's heart, and the two became one - the girl in the TARDIS, the TARDIS in the girl. She called herself the Bad Wolf, after the name of the place they were on at the time, and she scattered the words across time and space, as a message to lead herself to the Doctor."

River snorted into her tea. "That's even more unrealistic than some of the other fairytales I've read," River said, shaking her head. "A human girl took in the entire Vortex to save the Doctor? She'd have died. Painfully."

River looked up at Rose's silence, and when their eyes met, Rose continued. "It burned, but it was enough to wipe out the entire Dalek fleet - including the emperor. He's the one who called me the abomination, by the way. And the Doctor took it out, triggered a regeneration. But you can't just remove that sort of power and not expect anything to linger."

"You expect me to believe that you're the Bad Wolf, a Time Goddess of legend?" River said. "Oh, sweetie, I may not travel in the proper order, but I assure you I can not be made into a fool by ridiculous stories like that."

Rose allowed herself to flare gold again, enough to get River's attention, and then let the power settle; it was exhausting to call on it so much in one day. She'd be absolutely knackered soon.

"I am the Bad Wolf - well, we are," Rose said, shrugging as River stared at her. "The TARDIS and I, working together, are the Bad Wolf. I think you called what I actually am 'human-plus'." Rose paused. "Like you."

"You can't tell him," River repeated. "This is when he finds out - it's coming very soon. It was the last time I saw him, actually - and the first time I saw you. We didn't really have time to talk. But it's when he finds out everything. And he has to discover it on his own."

"You do realise that he knows why you're in prison, I hope," Rose said, side-stepping whatever it was she wasn't supposed to tell the Doctor, because there were some things River had been very close-lipped about, even at five hundred.

"He suspects, he doesn't have proof," River whispered, looking down into her tea.

"No, River," Rose said, standing and putting down her mug. "He knows. That he's giving you a chance to tell him means he's offering you the opportunity to prove that he can trust you, despite it - he's trying to give you a chance to make him trust you. And every single time you lie, evade the answer, or give him another reason not to, you're putting another nail in your own coffin."

"I look in his eyes, and I see my death," River said. "I know he was there. He looks at me like he's looking at a ghost. For him, it's already happened. Tell me, Rose Tyler, how do I get out of a coffin that's already been closed?"

The temptation to spin around and smirk, whisper 'spoilers', because of course, River had only been able to say it once she was leaving the room - it was so strong. But Rose knew this would be it, the tipping point for her and River. They might never get another chance, and it would probably never work out for them, not this River and her, but she could try and give this River something to live for, because as far as the woman behind her was concerned, she was already dead - it was only a matter of waiting for the day. "Trust me, trust Jack, and remember something very important, something I never, ever thought I'd say - 'The Doctor lies'," Rose said.

"Thank you," River said as Rose walked out of the room. The TARDIS hummed in her head, leading her down a hallway towards the familiar door, the circular symbol she knew by heart engraved on the door.

She laughed when she opened it. Her room looked far more lived in than it had before, and she noticed a rather large array of empty jam-pots, a rather filthy pair of Converse, a tattered pinstriped suit, and a black leather jacket that had never, in any lifetime, belonged to her cluttering up the room. He'd been living in her room at some point, that much was obvious. Oh, that idiotic man. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She pulled out a worn pair of knit pajamas from the wardrobe and stripped down for a long, soothing shower. The shower was warm enough to work out most of the knots in her shoulders from the long day, and she finally settled herself into her bed, snuggling down under the covers, giggling a bit to herself as she inhaled the scent that seemed to cling to her bedding.

Yep, he'd definitely been living in her room.

River Song was not stupid. She knew the Doctor had companions beyond herself and her parents. She'd seen them with him, from time to time, and always known that it wasn't quite safe to approach. Especially the one with the big ears and leather coat. Even to her, he was a bit intimidating. She'd even, once, from a distance, seen Rose Tyler. She'd been younger then – young and innocent and the everyday kind of pretty that most girls that young are. Heavily made up and bottle blonde, innocence and youth dripping from her pores, River hadn't pictured her as a threat. Amy was a greater threat to her place in the Doctor's heart than little blonde Rose Tyler.

And then the teenager had smiled. It was a wide grin, with a hint of little pink tongue peeking out, snuggling up into the leather-clad arm of that forebidding man, her face turned up to him and her eyes alight – and he, of the heavy brows and the fierce expression - he'd lit up. He'd grinned down at the little human girl clinging to his arm, and River could swear that centuries of blood and war had fallen from him in that little movement. The Doctor – the large, scary Doctor who wore battered armor with the look of a world-weary soldier – he was in love with this tiny little human girl.

Her only consolotion was that this girl, this Rose Tyler, would be long gone before she ever met the Doctor.

But she was here. In the TARDIS, with the Doctor, in a place and time she wasn't supposed to be. It was wrong – not just because Rose Tyler was the Doctor's past, intruding on her future with him – she'd seen the way even this man, her own husband, had looked when he'd realised the girl was real. Which, in and of itself, was worrying. He'd been seeing her, thinking he was imagining her, for years, possibly centuries. And Rose claimed they were friends, but she couldn't imagine being friends with the woman who would steal her husband from her. Oh, she knew the Doctor loved her – but he only ever loved her with one heart. The same one he loved Rory, and Amy, and Strax, and Vastra – it was the heart he loved everyone with. She'd always thought the other one must have been broken in the War, but she now suspected it was Rose Tyler responsible for that. She'd caught enough of the implications in the diner – Rose Tyler was supposed to be living in a parallel world.

A knock on the door pulled her from her musings, and she opened it, unsurprised to see the handsome man whose very existence grated on every sense she had.

"Doctor Song," he said, bobbing his head. "Wondered if I might have a word."

She opened the door wider to allow him entry and leaned against it as he took in her private space. She was a daughter of the TARDIS, and it showed.

"Never saw the old girl go out of her way for someone like this before," he said, casually. "She must like you."

"Don't play games with me, Harkness."

"Careful, sweetheart, your Doctor is showing." He dropped into the chair at her desk, stretching his long legs out in front of him. "Other you told Rosie that you weren't his daughter – that your parents were completely human. And little Amelia Pond is pregnant. Is that a coincidence, River?"

"You mean I never told my very best friend who my parents are?" Her eyes narrowed – she'd suspected that Rose Tyler was lying to her when she'd claimed they were friends.

Jack laughed. "You were five hundred years old, River. There was a lot you couldn't tell her. But you loved her. And she loved you – gods, River, she adored you. You were mother, sister, daughter, best friend – you were Professor River Song, the woman who saved her, who made sure she could find the Doctor, who held her after her Mum died, who explained why her Mum had to die – which was a damn shame, mind you. Jackie Tyler was one hell of a woman, and she was the only mother the Doctor had after the War. And she's gone. He'll never see her again."

A part of her registered that – even felt sorry for the Doctor, once he realised that Rose's mother was dead – but most of her mind was trying to wrap around the idea that she would live to be at least five hundred years old. "You can't tell me this – this is future knowledge. I can't have this!"

Harkness laughed. "There was a lot you couldn't, or wouldn't, say, River. But something I picked up on pretty quickly was that the River Song we met wasn't just preserving the history of the Earth while the Doctor was missing during those fourteen years – she was rewriting quite a few things, too." He smiled at her shocked expression. "The way she'd look at Rose, Donna, Mickey, and Martha – as much as she acted like she'd known them forever, she had such a hunger in her eyes. They were strangers to her. She never met them."

"Donna Noble?" River's voice was strained. In a long history of failing companions, there were few that he allowed to haunt him for so long – and Donna Noble's was one of them. "Why aren't my memories changing? If you lot are really rewriting history, why don't I remember things differently. I never even met you until Demon's Run." She's completely given up on trying to keep secrets from this impossible man.

He shrugged, settling further back into the chair and stretching his long legs out in front of him. "My guess is that, for him, most of those things haven't happened yet. He barely knows you, River, and he doesn't trust you – then again, this him doesn't seem to trust easily, so I might be off base. You said you met us at Demon's Run – I've got a passing familiarity with the place, but we haven't been there yet. Things will probably change more rapidly as we start intersecting with your past."

His conclusions were logical. Unlike what most people believed, timelines weren't straight lines that lead from one fixed point to another. There was a lot of wiggle room in there, and when introducing new scenarios between two time-travellers (or more, in this case), there was a certain amount of unpredictability to the results. It wasn't as though there was a handbook for rewriting time, after all. There were, however, a few things she knew that she had to warn him about.

"Demon's Run – you can't change it. I know she," and there was no need to elaborate on whom she meant, "has that power, but she can't. My entire life hinges on it. I was born there. I have to be born there."

"Amelia Pond's daughter, and the Doctor doesn't know…" he trailed off; a few moments later his eyes narrowed. "I think, River Song, I understand perfectly, now. I can keep your secrets, but this is something you're going to have to talk to Rosie about. If she isn't to interfere, she's going to want to know why."

"I can't tell her."

"I can't promise she'll agree, then." Jack took a deep breath. "I know you think that things have to happen this way, but Rose is very, very good. She'll know if it is something that absolutely cannot be changed – fixed points and all that. But if it can be, I can't promise you she won't."

He smiled kindly at her and left the room, leaving River to finally let loose the tears that were threatening. She wasn't afraid that Rose wouldn't be able to fix her life, but that she could. If Rose changed her life, then River didn't know who she would be. And that terrified her.

The Doctor waited in the console room, his mind awhirl; Rose knew River – a future River – but how? River was dead. It was one of the hardest things about her – yes, it was difficult to think that he was meant to fulfill a circular paradox with her at some point in the future, but every time he saw her, her watched her die again. Every time he saw her, she was getting closer and closer to that point. The second time he'd met her, the first time she'd seen Amy, she was probably within months or weeks of her death.

It was impossible that Rose Tyler – fantastic, brilliant, amazing Rose Tyler – was actually friends with a River Song who had a future. But then, Rose Tyler should be in a parallel universe. But here she was, in his universe, glowing with the power of the Bad Wolf. He dropped in the middle of the drunken giraffe into the nearest jumpseat. All that time she'd spent on his TARDIS, all those months they'd travelled together, long after the Gamestation, and he'd never once checked her. Oh, he'd scanned her with the sonic, but it hadn't turned up anything, and he hadn't wanted to subject her to something more invasive without reason, so he'd let it go, reasoning if she'd still had any lingering traces of the Vortex inside her, they'd have manifested.

Stupid - he was so very bloody stupid. And now – the Bad Wolf was involved in something that was utterly terrifying – his death. "I want you safe, my Doctor," she said, all those years ago. Was that why she was here? Was she protecting him?

He didn't have time to ponder it, because the others arrived in a rather large clump of chatty humans, and he wondered if his bloody-minded ship was interfering on purpose, but he danced around the console, throwing them into the fray.

He switched the TARDIS into invisible and silent, glowering at River when she tried to interfere – reminded him of the Byzantium, that, where she'd insisted that his ship had stabilizers! As if he wouldn't know!

Rose and Jack were hanging back while the others tried to follow him out, but he pushed them off to the side and made his way into the Oval Office as silently as possible. He listened to the the recorded voice – definitnely a girl's voice, despite what the President thought, and started taking notes.

And then he was discovered.

While Jack and Rose smoothed things over, he convinced Nixon to give him a chance.

Amelia Pond-Williams was more than a little unsettled. First, friends of the Doctor's, friends she'd never heard of (and that Rose was definitely more than a friend) appeared out of nowhere, and then the Doctor died, only he wasn't dead yet, it was still hundreds of years in his future, and now – now her so-called "morning" sickness was rearing its ugly head. She turned her head, caught a glimpse of something – a tall, thin thing in a black suit, even. Wait, hadn't she seen one of those before? Earlier, at the lake. Rose touched her shoulder, and Amy turned towards her, her stomach roiling in protest.

"I need a loo," she muttered.

"Right," the blonde said. "Doctor, Captain, I'm taking her to the ladies. Anyone got a problem with that?" Rose glared up at the tall black-suited man who was blocking her path, and then to Amy's hands on her stomach, and back at the man again. He didn't stop them.

As soon as they were out of the Doctor's range of hearing, she paused, and looked over at the blonde woman. "How did you know?"

"For someone trying to keep it a secret, you're holding your stomach a lot," Rose said, shrugging.

"You can't tell the Doctor," Amy pleaded, surprised when Rose just laughed and shook her head. "What?"

"S'nothing – just a lot of people have things I can't tell the Doctor. That's all." Rose pushed open the door into the ladies' room and Amy rushed into a cubicle as her stomach gave another particularly violent lurch.

She flushed when she was done, and was about to step out, when Rose's voice stopped her. "Amelia Pond, whatever you do, stay in that cubicle, and do not come out." The was a pause. "I mean it, Amy" the blonde called as though she could see Amy's hand on the latch, and she shoved it into her pocket.

The lights flickered, and Amy reached for the latch again, but Rose's voice came again – though Amy was pretty sure she wasn't talking to her.

"I don't know know who you are, or what your interest in Amy is, but you'll leave her alone, or you'll be dealing with me, yeah?" A long silence, and then she continued. "Yeah? You sure about that, mate?" Another pause, and it seemed like there must be someone, or something, on the other side of the door, that Rose was talking to – something Amy couldn't hear. When Rose's voice came again, it was oddly hollow and layered, her usual deep accent changed to something posh and cultured – she sounded like some sort of divine being.

"I am the Bad Wolf – ah, you've heard of me then." The lights stopped flickering, but the room was suddenly too bright, a glowing, gold brightness that made Amy close her eyes to avoid being blinded, and for half a moment, she thought something screamed, but the bright glow beyond her eyelids dimmed and she risked peeking through them, not surprised to see that the light levels had returned to normal.

"We're going now, Amy. It's safe to come out."

Amy looked around the room – there was a small pile of dust in front of the far stall, but nothing else. "Rose?"

"Silence, Amy. That's what this is about. Silence."