Melody's Dream

Chapter One: Just for the Dancing

Authors Note: Hey y'all! First chapter of my first River/Doctor fic! I'll keep it short and simple. This is a rough draft so please forgive typos/grammar stuff. I don't own Doctor Who (wish I did) review if you feel so inclined. I love feedback! More coming soon hopefully :) (I'll try to shorten the chapters up ;) PEACE, LOVE, ALLONS-Y!

Chapter One: Just for the Dancing

"Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion." –The Time Traveller's Wife

The pain was so great. So vast. Like a never ending chasm, slowly sucking her in, and with every breath she forgot a little more what it felt like before this. What it felt like to laugh. To smile. To breath. Now there was nothing but agony.

Melody Pond stumbled out in to the plain sight of the alley. There was a man there. He was saying something.

"Are you okay?" Melody just coughed in response. She knew it was time. She could feel it. This body was dying. With a final reassurance to the man, she could feel her body changing. Looking down at her hands in awe, she smiled. They were golden. So pretty.

Melody let the force of the regeneration consume her. Throwing her head back and her arms open to the world, she felt the full power of her Timelord DNA. Just a couple of more seconds. That was all she needed. Then, she would be new again.

River opened her eyes to the darkness of her cell. How she hated that nightmare. The pain of regeneration. She used to never dream of that fateful night. She had even forgotten how it had felt for a while. But more and more frequently it came back to haunt her in her sleep.

She sat up and turned her head to make a startling discovery. The TARDIS was parked outside of her cell. She smiled to herself as she got up from her cot and walked over to the end of her cell, bare feet padding softly on the cold floor. Her fingers curled around the cool bars that imprisoned her.

"Hello, Sweetie."

The Doctor frantically wheeled around the TARDIS, flipping seemingly random switches and levers. He was on an all-time high. Just married, thought to be dead, no one looking for him. He hated to leave Amy and Rory out of the loop, but he had a feeling River wouldn't keep the secret for long. The joy on her face when she realized he was going to be okay made the bounce in his step come back. Now he had all of time and space to enjoy and no one to through him in to an impenetrable box or try to kill him. He could disappear.

The TARDIS suddenly jerked away from his intended path, a long-needed visit to the Face of Boe.

"Sexy! What are you doing?" he yelled, grabbing on to the nearest piece of sturdy equipment. In reply, the TARDIS just made its usual parking noise and landed.

Curiosity got the best of him, and he peeked out of the police box doors. Ah. He understood now. He was in Stormcage.

"Good girl," he whispered, rubbing the doorway of the newly polished TARDIS. River was lying on her cot, a look of pain on her usually confident face. How he hated to sit there and not be able to comfort her, but he knew it was best not to wake her. So instead, he closed the door to the TARDIS and ran to his room to grab his matching diary. He knew they would have to compare notes first. Make sure timelines didn't get messed up and secrets revealed. By the time he got back to the door he had already heard her call out with her usual greeting. Straightening his bow tie and taking one last check of his breath, he opened the door.

"Well hello there, River," he smiled, trying not to act as nervous as he felt whenever he was around her. "Care to join me?"

"Where are you?" he asked, thumbing through his diary. They were both lying on their stomachs on the floor of the TARDIS, propped up on their elbows.