Disclaimer: Not mine.

AN: *nervously bites nails for the next week*

*o0O0o*
*5 Times The Doctor Talked About River Song With Graham*
*(+1 Time The Fam Finally Met Her)*
*o0O0o*

—
1
—

Graham finds it on the floor of the TARDIS control room.

Everyone else is asleep, emotionally wrung out from their latest trip, he thinks even the Doctor might have gone off for a nap and he's never actually seen that happen before now.

But Graham can't sleep. His mind is still painfully stuck on Grace. On having held her in his arms not even a few hours ago, on having lost her all over again. Logically he knows it wasn't really Grace. Now that it's over and he's looking back he even realizes a part of him knew all along.

It doesn't make the hurt of it lessen.

And it's not because the illusion was flawed, if anything it's because it was too perfect. She looked like Grace, sounded like her, fit in his arms like her. She even smelled like Grace, like Shea butter and vanilla, because all the products Grace liked to buy had those ingredients in them. Everything about her was as warm as he remembers, from her smile to the soft touch of her hand. Even her mischief twinkled like the fire from a candle in her eyes.

It was like a dream come alive, a dream he never would have been willing to wake from if not for Ryan.

He's so angry at himself for almost having abandoned his grandson for an imitation of the woman who was the love of his life. However flawless of an imitation it was.

He's pacing from one side of the console to the other, mind lost to self-recriminations, when he feels his foot step on something small, kicking it across the room with a light tinkle.

His eyes follow the small golden object as its slide down the floor stops in the middle of TARDIS, and finally focuses on the last thing he'd have ever expected to find here if he'd ever thought to consider it.

It's a ring.

He walks toward it, bending to pick it up. It turns out to be a simple gold band, moving it to catch better light he notices a small inscription on the inside that he can't read. The TARDIS isn't translating it. It's written in the same circular pattern that he's seen all over the ship since the start of this strange adventure into time and space.

It's also, unmistakably, a wedding ring.

Breath catches in Graham's chest, because in a moment between one heartbeat and the next, he knows. And his heart breaks for his alien friend.

The Doctor was married.

He stands frozen, uncertain if he should go looking for the Doctor now or to wait until later. Picturing her face the last time he saw her, those tight and drawn eyebrows and the dropping shoulders, he comes to a decision. He pockets the ring and goes back to his room.

The Doctor deserves some sleep too, he'll find her tomorrow morning and return it then.

Tomorrow morning turns into afternoon and then evening before Graham gets his chance. By the time he woke up, both Ryan and Yaz were awake too, and the Doctor was already busy with finding their next adventure.

And he knows if someone had found Grace's ring he'd want them to return it in private.

He loves his grandson and Yaz. But they are so young, their curiosity would have gotten the best of them and Graham doesn't want to put Doc on the spot like that.

So he waits until Yaz and Ryan have gone off exploring the dizzying number of rooms of Doc's ship, or whatever else it is they like to do when they're not running toward death defying adventures with grins on their faces, before he pulls the Doctor away from tinkering with the mechanisms of her time machine.

"You have a moment?"

She slides out from underneath the opening into the console, her sonic screwdriver between her teeth. The humming of the TARDIS engines grows softer as if in response.

"What's up Graham?" She asks, after taking the screwdriver out of her mouth and as she's pushing her goggles up to her hairline, making her hair go in all kinds of interesting directions. She looks like the mad scientist he might have found on the screen of one of Grace's science fiction shows.

In a way he supposes that's a pretty accurate picture of the Doctor, and any other time Graham might have smiled in amusement at his thought. Today he flinches at the smile she sends him, knowing he'd be taking it away with his next words.

"I found something yesterday. I think it's yours, Doc." He says, and pulls out the object that's been burning in his pocket the whole day.

The Doctor's eyes slide to his arm and once they narrow in on the ring laying in the palm of his hand, her face transforms from the carefree adventurer he's gotten to know in the past few months, to something painful and lost and hurting. It's a look that's far too old for that face. And so very familiar Graham can't help but look away.

"Where did you find it?" the Doctor asks, voice a breathless whisper, her hand hovering over the ring, seeming unable to cross that final little bit of air to touch it.

"It was here on the ground. I don't know how it got there." He says with a nervous shrug.

"I do." The Doctor says, eyes momentarily glaring toward the center of the room. She doesn't explain, instead finally taking the ring from him in one quick movement and pulling it to her chest, squeezing it in a fist against her.

"I'm very sorry Doc." Graham says. The words are inadequate but sometimes they really are the only ones available.

"I know." She says, eyes looking to a point in empty air behind him.

He nods and pats her lightly on her shoulder, before turning around to leave her to whatever memories have washed over her with the return of that wedding band.

"Her name was River Song." She says once he's already taken a few steps. He stops, turning around, giving her the opportunity to continue or not as she needs. "She was an archaeologist. And a professor. And a criminal. And she was brilliant and absolutely mad."

"She must have been. Married you didn't she?" Graham jokes before he can help himself.

But Doc just grins like she agrees and laughs to herself.

Something uncoils in Graham's chest at seeing Doc's face regaining its natural brightness, however tinged with grief. The grief isn't new either, he's seen shadows of it in her all along but this is the first moment she doesn't seem to be trying to hide it. Or maybe the first time she's not trying to hide from it.

"She did do that. Married me at every point in history happening all at the same time. And a few times after." The Doctor tells him, leaning forward like she's revealing a secret instead of saying something that makes no sense at all.

"Sounds like quite a woman."

"She was." The Doctor says, eyes now down on the hand hiding the precious metal band within its hold.

There's an extended moment of silence and then; "Graham?"

"Yeah, Doc?"

"Thank you." She says, a serious and infinitely grateful look overtaking her face.

He nods at her and turns around, knows the conversation has come to a close and he should leave his friend to a moment that's something meant between her and the specter of her wife.

In the privacy of his own mind he wonders why the Solitract never took on the form of this River Song. Whatever the reason, he finds himself grateful, he wouldn't wish that cruelty on his worst enemy. And he certainly wouldn't wish it on Doc.

—
2
—

"She used to leave me coordinates and jump out of the most impossible places, waiting for me to catch her. I always did." The Doctor says out of nowhere, both of them chained to the stone wall of the dungeons of the Victorian castle, waiting to get executed, or getting saved by Yaz and Ryan. Whichever comes first.

Personally, Graham's hoping for the second one.

"What?" He asks, lost.

"River," the Doctor explains. "She once defaced the oldest cliff-face in the universe. And before that she left me a recording inside a Home Box so I'd come catch her jumping out of a space ship into vacuum. It was the day her mother met her. Well, that face anyway."

"That must have been frightening." Graham says, uncertain. He's not sure he wants to touch the bit about the mother. Sometimes he thinks she likes to confuse them on purpose.

"Oh no, she was absolutely fearless. Hell in high heels and it's the devils who ran." The Doctor says either misinterpreting his words or choosing to misunderstand on purpose, her voice full of spousal pride and a face painted with smitten adoration. It's so unexpected, so unlike the Doctor's usual disposition, that Graham needs to clear his throat to get past the sudden awkwardness of it.

"Sounds like she was made for you, Doc." He finally says, trying to picture this impossible woman who married the Doctor, and falling short. The only impression he can summon up is someone dangerous and larger than life.

He's so busy with his mental portrait it takes him a moment to notice the Doctor has fallen silent, once he looks at her though his breath stutters. Her face is so pained it's as if he'd landed a physical hit with his last words. She looks almost… ashamed.

He curses himself for whatever it was he said that put that expression there.

"You okay, Doc?" He asks, voice as gentle as he can make it, trying not to startle her into pulling back into herself.

The Doctor flinches and blinks rapidly like waking from a bad dream, then her face transforms into her usual bright but slightly removed facade, and she's back to trying to reassure him.

"I'm always alright." She lies and changes the subject. "I wonder what's keeping Yaz and Ryan, they should really have gotten past the sleeping guards by now."

He doesn't call her on it and moves his mind back to the problem at hand. The problem at hand of course being; the part where they're chained to a prison wall for trying to assassinate Queen Victoria. The fact Queen Victoria has been replaced by a homicidal alien copy asks for some worrying too and Graham is more than willing to oblige.

In the end it turns out there's no need for either worry, Yaz and his grandson find them twenty minutes later and they're away from 1882, London within an hour.

The real Queen back on her rightful throne, though still yelling threats to the Doctor's back even as they're being whisked away by the little blue box.

—
3
—

They've split into pairs again. Usually he prefers to watch his grandson's back when that happens but today is March 18 - or would have been if they weren't jumping all over time and space, - and Ryan had been snapping at him since morning.

He knows Ryan well enough to know that if he doesn't give him some space before trying to talk to him about it, they won't talk at all.

"Everything okay with Ryan?" The Doctor asks as they're traveling through the apparently semi-sentient crystal tunnels of the newest planet she's brought them to, trying to find and stop whoever it is that's been attempting to mine it.

Grace would have loved it here. The sapphire-like stone itself is the familiar blue of what he's pretty sure is Doc's favorite color but it's mixed with golden strands that run through the fault-lines and leave the strange impression of blood vessels, veins running through the body of the living crystal.

"It would have been Grace's birthday today." Graham says, heart clenching in his chest at saying it aloud. In a perfect universe he would be home right now, standing over her favorite cake - red velvet with cherry frosting, - and singing a 'Happy Birthday' with their grandson.

In a perfect universe she would be here beside him, just as in awe of their surroundings as he is.

"Oh." The Doctor says and grows quiet.

"It'll be alright tomorrow. It's just… today is hard. For both of us." He hopes he's not lying. Hopes Ryan will let Graham find him once they're back in the TARDIS so they can spend the evening talking and laughing and crying about Grace. So they can pick themselves up tomorrow and continue living in her honor like she'd have wanted them to.

They spend a few minutes just walking when the silence finally becomes too much for Graham.

"How long were you married?" It's the first time he's initiated the subject of the Doctor's wife himself, the two previous times it was her who opened up first, so he's not entirely sure how she'll respond. But he's ready to fall back into silence and not press if it looks like she doesn't want to talk about it.

"I don't know." She says, still steps ahead and with her back to him.

"How can you not know?" Graham asks, mind heavy with confusion.

"If I count only all the days we were together; then two, maybe three centuries. If I count all my days from our first wedding to the last time I saw her, then almost half my life." She says with a forcefully easy tone.

Graham stops in his tracks as the implication hits. "Centuries?"

She turns around and looks at him like she's measuring the words she's planning to say, or if she'll say them at all. After a moment her face clears and she seems to come to some sort of decision.

"I'm more than two thousand years old, Graham. I've loved River Song through four of my faces and had more than twice as many before that, most of them male. I'm not human."

Graham had known that, that the Doc wasn't human, that she had two hearts and enough lives to make a cat jealous. In an abstract way that they were a man before they were a woman, because she's dropped enough comments to that effect by now. But he hadn't realized the differences between them were quite so vast as two millennia.

"Was she?" He asks and immediately thinks better. "Wait, no, you said three centuries, she couldn't have been."

"What?"

"Your wife." He doesn't know why he's asking that, except maybe because he knows Grace would have, and so especially today of all days he has to in her place. Or maybe it's just that pesky human curiosity.

"She wasn't. And she was." She says after a moment and turns back around to continue walking. "She was the daughter of my two best friends. And the daughter of TARDIS."

She doesn't explain further than that, so he's left puzzling over the new contradiction on his own for the rest of the way through the alien tunnels with his strange alien friend as his company, a silent one now.

He turns his head back toward the faintly glowing walls and once he looks more carefully notices the slightly irregular pulsing of the golden veins. Fascinated he again thinks about how much Grace would have loved to see this.

'Happy birthday!' He thinks toward her, hoping she's seeing this from wherever it is she's watching over him and Ryan.

—
4
—

They're back in Sheffield the next time the subject of River Song comes up.

Yaz is off spending some time with her family and Ryan is meeting his father for dinner. Graham is trying really hard not to stress himself into growing ulcers over that last one.

It's not that he thinks he's going to lose to Aaron the bond he's finally building with his grandson. He understands Ryan's wish to repair the relationship between him and his father. It's just that despite Graham's belief in Aaron's genuine regret, he can't help worry that Ryan will get his heart broken again.

He doesn't think he could stand seeing Ryan disappointed like that again.

Which leaves him at home. Worrying. With the Doctor as company.

"He'll be fine, Graham." The Doctor says, not for the first time this hour.

"I know that." Graham says back, eyes still on the door.

"Oh, do frowns and scrunched up foreheads not mean what they used to mean in you humans?" The Doctor's voice sounds amused so he can't help but glare at her a bit.

"Hilarious." He mutters under his breath.

"I am, aren't I?" She says.

He huffs loudly and goes back to staring at the door. Waiting for Ryan to come home.

"Do you want to talk about something else then?" She offers. "Might distract you."

"Be my guest."

"The first time River met me she shot the TARDIS, tried to kill Hitler and poisoned me with a kiss." The Doctor drops, and to give credit where it's due, distracts Graham absolutely.

"What?" He doesn't even know which part to touch first.

"Poisoned lipstick. So glad she switched to hallucinogenic ones later." She almost sounds dreamy. Graham feels his brain beginning to hurt.

"She poisoned you?" Honestly, he doesn't even know why he's shocked, it's the Doc after all. But still, how do you marry someone who poisoned you in their first interaction?

"Only a little bit. And she saved me right after."

"And that makes it okay?" Graham says, furious on her behalf.

"There were… reasons. She didn't know me yet but she knew about me and- well, there were reasons." The Doctor explains. Even though Graham doesn't really think it explains all that much at all. Something about her expression though tells him to leave it alone, there's that guilty, haunted look in her eyes again and Graham isn't sure he wants to know what's behind it.

So maybe it's a good thing that before he has a chance to put his foot in his mouth there comes the sound of a key turning in the lock and the front door slamming open.

"Hey, gramps." Ryan says walking in, a wide smile on his young face.

Graham exhales, the knot of worry loosening for now and smiles back, hiding the stress he'd been struggling with for the past few hours. "Hello, son. How did it go?"

"Good." Ryan says, a slightly shy happiness dancing like starlight in his eyes.

—
5
—

It's almost three months since Graham found the ring and gave it back to the Doctor before a moment comes where he feels like it might finally be the right time to touch on the one thing that's been implied but never addressed in their conversations about the Doctor's wife.

The day isn't particularly different from any of the previous ones.

It's late and Graham can't sleep so he walks to the kitchen for a cup of tea when he finds the Doctor already there, eating custard cream biscuits.

He nods tiredly in her direction, grabbing two blue cups from a shelf and going through the motions of making both of them the peppermint tea he finds on the counter-top - he's pretty sure it wasn't there a moment ago but he's also gotten used to not questioning things like that while aboard the TARDIS.

"Sugar?" He asks, because he's noticed she never puts the same amount in any of her cups. He thinks it might depend on her mood.

"Two and a half teaspoons, please." She tells him and he tries not to grimace as he follows her instructions.

"Here." He says and passes her the cup once he's done. Pulling his own cup - no sugar - with him to the other side of the table.

She gives him a few biscuits in exchange and for a few minutes they share their midnight snack in peace. And then the thought that has been ruminating unvoiced for a long time now surfaces in his mind again, and for the first time he doesn't push it back down.

"How did you lose her?" He asks.

The biscuit halts halfway to her mouth and then lands heavily back on the plate. For a long time she just stares into her tea and Graham thinks she'll choose not to answer.

But then she looks up into his eyes and breathes out very slowly.

"She died the day I met her." She says.

"I thought you said you were the one who almost died when you met." Graham says, confused again.

"When she met me. This was before that- well, from my point of view at least. We never met in the right order. She was a time traveler too, had a vortex manipulator, I think she might have stolen it from an old friend of mine actually, not that she ever actually admitted where she got it." She says, growing more animate as she switches gears mid-tangent. "Our timelines went in opposite directions. Not entirely of course, there were loops and twists and exceptions but for the most part the older I got, the more often the River I ran into was a younger and younger version of her."

"So the day you met her…" He says not finishing the thought, horrified as he realizes what she's saying.

"She died saving four thousand and twenty-two people." She finishes for him with a shrug that belies the pain he knows she must be feeling at saying it.

"That couldn't have been easy, knowing the entire time what would happen to her."

"I spent centuries running away from the last date we'd have before she went to the Library." She snaps. "So, no, not easy."

"Did you ever try to-"

"What? Change it? Save her? Go back and make sure she never died there? Take her place?" She glares at him and for a fraction of a moment she looks her age, millennia old and furious and terrifying beyond reason, and for that one moment Graham is almost scared of her. And then she blinks, her gaze losing it's terrible intensity, and he's not even sure that he didn't imagine it. "She would never have forgiven me. And- and her timeline is complicated, even if I tried to- there's a very good chance if I did it that I'd be erasing her from the universe entirely."

He stares at her, heart full of grief for the pain she must have lived through. He tries to imagine having known the entire time about the day he'd lose Grace to that fall and almost breaks with it. He doesn't think he could have survived that.

"You're like a Greek tragedy, Doc." He breathes past the knot in his throat.

"Always preferred the Romans." She says and goes back to eating her biscuits, eyes skittering away from meeting his.

He knows the conversation is over and by the way she's starting to fidget with that chain around her neck, - the one that wasn't there three months ago but which she hasn't taken off since, - and by the way she is decisively avoiding his gaze. He knows she wants to be left alone.

Respecting her wish for privacy he finishes the last of his tea and gets up to leave. "Goodnight, Doctor."

She doesn't answer but by the time he's reached the door he does hear her say something. Something he's pretty certain isn't addressed at him. Both because he doesn't understand it and because he's pretty sure she's already forgotten that he's still in the room at all.

"Not those times, not one line. I promise."

—
+1
—

It ends the way it began. With Graham noticing something small in the control room of the TARDIS. Though this time it's not the middle of the night and he's not there all by himself.

It's mid-afternoon and the Doctor is laying on her stomach, playing with the insides of the ship, sparks flying around her whenever she touches a wire with her sonic and once in a while being interrupted by what sounds like the irritated humming of the TARDIS itself. Yaz and Ryan are on either side of her trying to figure out exactly what she's doing, though Graham is not at all sure even Doc knows what that is.

And then something catches his eye.

"There's a blinking button, Doctor." He says and goes over to it for a closer look.

"Red or green?" She asks, not moving from her place halfway into the console.

"Blue."

"Oh, someone's left a voicemail. Put it on speaker, will you?" She says louder, in answer to the sudden shudder that runs through the ship and makes Graham catch the console for balance.

"Sure. How do I do that?" He asks, eyes running over the large number of doodads in front of him.

"Flip the first switch to the right down, and then press the blinking button."

He follows her instructions and as soon as he's done so, a low female voice with a Southern British accent rings across the room, a playful lilt to her tone.

"Hello Sweetie, be a dear and come pick me up, please?" There's the sound of an explosion from the other side of the call echoed by the unmistakable clang of someone hitting their head against metal from under the TARDIS console. Before Graham can do more than lean over to check that they're all okay, the Doctor is already up and pushing him out of her way. "I've sent you the coordinates."

"Who was that?" Yaz asks with obvious concern as soon as she and Ryan join them.

Graham has a feeling he already knows.

"River." The Doctor exhales more than says, Graham notices her hands shaking as she pulls up the mentioned coordinates.

"Doctor?" Ryan asks, looking just as worried as Yaz.

"My wife." The Doctor says and starts running around them, flicking switches all around the control table even quicker than Graham's already used to seeing from her.

"Your what?" Yaz exclaims in tandem with Ryan's: "What?"

The Doctor ignores them both, halting with her hand atop the lever that will make them take off and turns her head to face Graham. She's paler than normal, eyes blown wide from terror and tears starting to visibly gather in the corners. Graham has never seen her scared, not truly, but right now she looks on the edge of breaking.

"I can't go through this again. I've already lost her three times I can't- not again."

Graham stands frozen, for a moment absolutely uncertain about what he could possibly say to help her. And then the answer hits him and it is so very simple.

"It sounds like she's in trouble, Doc." He says, remembering one of the things she'd told him."You said you always showed up to catch her."

The Doctor lets out a shuddering breath and seems to steel herself. She pulls the lever and they all grab for the nearest steady surface to stay on their feet as TARDIS takes off with an almost exhilarated sounding wheeze.

"Is someone going to explain what is going on? Where are we going?" Yaz yells again, this time directing the question at Graham.

"It's not my place to say." He says, holding on to the table for dear life but upon noticing Yaz's frustrated expression expands on his words. "But I'm pretty sure you're about to find out."

When they come to a halt a moment later the Doctor is already running toward the Police Box door, flinging it open with a snap of her fingers before she's even halfway there and then crashing to the ground as a woman lands sprawling on top of her.

"Well hello there," River Song purrs for all of them to hear. "That's new."

"River!" The Doctor says, like all the breath has been knocked out of her. To be fair, Graham's pretty sure that's literally the case.

"Yes, Sweetie?"

"What were you doing breaking onto the Museum Planet. They execute their thieves." The Doctor says from underneath her wife, looking all too happy to stay where she is even as her voice turns chiding. "Also it's boring down there."

"Yes, well, it's not my fault that I'm so infamous that when I'm presumed dead all my personal possessions suddenly turn into priceless artifacts they want to put on display. They were practically begging me to steal them back." The Doctor's wife says with a smirk Graham can hear even without seeing her face.

"Presumed dead?" The Doctor asks, voice turning small again.

"Oh, honestly, Doctor! Did you expect me to spend all of my eternity in that data core? It took me a while, I'll give you that, but at the end of the day it was just another Stormcage."

Graham is starting to feel like he might not have gotten anywhere near the entire story himself here. But he's also beginning to get the feeling that the Doctor might be getting her wife back from the dead after all.

"You've been to the Library." The Doctor says, starting to struggle to be let up and Graham finally catches a glimpse of her face. She looks overwhelmed, but where just minutes ago it was with fear of having to say goodbye again, right now there's a dawning realization of something akin to bliss.

Graham feels his own heart tremble in his chest. It hurts. River Song is alive and Grace is still dead and no matter how happy he is for the Doctor, there's sudden gnawing envy trying to swallow the heart that he'd only barely started to mend.

He has just enough time to see the Doctor pull River into her arms, crushing her mouth against her wife's, before his eyes turn away and land on the shocked faces of Ryan and Yaz.

He walks over to the two of them and turns them around by their shoulders to steer them out of the control room and into the deeper hallways of the TARDIS.

"Come on son, Yasmin, we should give them some privacy to catch up. I think they haven't seen each other for a very long time."

*o0O0o*

AN2: This is me combining in one fic three things I've wanted to write for this ship.

First of all, someone finding the ring and returning it. Second of all, a Post-Library River. And third of all for the Doctor to actually open up about River, because a lot of the 13/River fics out there either end with River showing up and the Fam being shocked speechless (like my previous ones) or it has all the exposition off screen and you don't really get to see the reactions.

I wanted to figure out what would make the Doctor open up, and exactly which stuff she would reveal. And I did always think Graham, as someone who recently lost his own wife, was the most likely person the Doctor would talk to about River Song. And you probably noticed how much of the relationship the Doctor kept to herself in my fic, well... that's not JUST because it would make the story too long to include everything. For example she just would NOT say anything about the whole thing about Madame Kovarian, and that's because I don't think River would have been comfortable with that.

Anyways, I hope you'll tell me if you liked this because I honestly put a lot of effort in it and just... validate me, please ❤❤