107(G)

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                Time Heals All Wounds
                    Holtzexmachina

River knew there was no point trying to teach Freya anything when the duck was in the room, let alone Gallifreyan. Why she had listened to the doctor when he begged her to let Duck in she didn’t know. Freya had been doing so well, almost able to say every vowel.

She sat on the floor with the doctor, who was laughing happily as the three year old toddled around the floor of the nursery, chasing a very happy duck. For a moment she considered where this all began, being raised and trained to kill one man, eventually succeeding and beginning a feeling of guilt and remorse that followed her for over 200 years.

When she first found out she was pregnant, her first thought was “I can’t be a mother. I’m a killer!” She was raised for assassin's work, not motherhood! But her husband had quelled her and soothed her, showing her more and more that she had changed, and she was ready. She humoured him for a while, hiding her fears in order to ease his burden. But over time, as she lay in the bed they shared, gazing up at a projection of the stars they might one day show their child together, she began to believe it.

She watched as her daughter ran and smiled, and she let the laughter bubble up from her chest and escape, a deep smooth laugh of pure joy, feeling her back against the chest of her husband, cackling furiously as he always did when Freya misbehaved. A terrible habit, but one she found tirelessly endearing.

And she realised in that moment, after all these years, all the pain and the guilt and the torment, losing her own parents and murdering the man she loved, spending her life running from the past she longed to escape. Time heals all wounds. And this wound had finally faded.

River realised she believed it. She was a mother. She was a wife. And she was happy.

Heaving a deep sigh, she leaned back into the warm, solid form of the doctor, an instinctive smile tugging at her face as she leaned her head back on to his shoulder.

“I want another one.” she said firmly.

She felt the doctor frown in slight confusion. “Another duck?”

Laughing at the idiot she married, River reached up behind her and gently patted his cheek.

“No, you idiot.

Another baby.”

The doctor smiled.

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