Yowzah Oneshot Collection (1)

92(G)1

Chapter 1
Chapter Text
You Are Here

It wasn’t bad as far as a last chance save went. CAL told River, she had been uploaded here as real as the people she had saved. It was a multi part success story. Herself with the sonic and some vague foreknowledge, the 11th Doctor knowing what happened, making the sonic with its secret copy of her- his gift at Darillium, CAL saving and uploading her actual body and consciousness, and the 10th Doctor uploading the sonic copy to CAL.

There had been some damage to her body before it was uploaded. CAL had used that last bit of extra energy River had provided, allowing the transfer of the 4,023, to save her physical body intact, then with the copy of River’s DNA uploaded by the Doctor, repaired much of the damage.

From River’s memories and their data ghosts, the supercomputer brought to digital life her archeologists friends and Miss Evangelista. Then Charlotte had seen River was a mother when she scanned her memories, and had immediately adopted her as her own mother.

River’s babies had a live-in caregiver while she was on this expedition. It was her first expedition since Amelia Song’s birth. She felt compelled to go. She had uneasy dreams about it though; they felt like foreknowledge. That prompted her to create an emergency child custody agreement with a colleague. If she was reported dead or missing, her colleague would become Jonothon and Amelia Song’s foster parent. She hadn’t told the Doctor about the children. It made her feel a bit guilty, despite knowing the Eleventh Doctor wasn’t to know of them. Would a later Doctor? She didn’t know.

She still hoped the Doctor would figure out how to get her out of CAL alive. After Trenzalore, he knew she existed inside of CAL, and had admitted his feelings. That moment… it had made coming back here and being without him both easier and more painful at the same time. But painful feelings and the Doctor, that she was used to.

She wondered if he fully understood his actions had saved her, allowing a chance for her to be with him physically again, should he dare it. He did understand he’d “made a backup copy”. That’s what gave her hope. She vowed, after her first “post saving” encounter to never push him to see this, though, let him figure it out in his own time. Perhaps it was another example of how foolish her love for him was, but she still wanted to trust he’d realize it and come for her.

They’d had a few brief encounters after that where things were better between emotionally than they’d ever been, but then they stopped. She had misunderstood how she had gotten out the first time and told him what she thought it had been. But after a long time with no contact she feared the worst and her intense emotions had drawn her out of the Library.

She’d discovered then it was actually a link to his Tardis, and that link would be there even after his death. As long as some form of his Tardis existed then she could get out. She was the “child of the Tardis” after all; the link to it made perfect sense, while the link to what she thought was the companion confused her. She hadn’t known the girl before that meeting. She should have realized it was never the companion much sooner than she did. There was no reason at all to have a connection to a companion she’d never known before, and every reason to be linked to the Tardis. She realized now that the Tardis was trying to tell her that at Trenzalore with her false tombstone, but things just moved too fast, it was a desperate bid to save the Doctor that was foremost in her mind. She had faded and returned to the Library that time, because she thought she was supposed to.

On the day she discovered her link was to his Tardis, she found herself in its library. But a search of the rooms gave no signs of him or any companion. She could feel no one living was there; it was as if the Tardis was abandoned. Then she wandered into the console room and understood why. She had arrived on Trenzalore shortly after his burial there. His time stream was even brighter and stronger than it had been the first time. The Tardis itself was evolving into the form she’d seen that first time, but they could still speak.