Yowzah Oneshot Collection (3)

165(G)

                            Rehab

                         Wildecate

River Song was nothing if not pragmatic. Her cell at Stormcage was one of the largest available and she was always grateful for that although she'd never have said it to their faces. She was allowed books and she read. Oh how she read, losing herself in the literature of her parents' home planet: Shakespeare, Austen, Wordsworth, Whitman,talented people who never set foot off their home planet yet managed to frame her thoughts, her anger, her frustration, her loss so perfectly with language that thrilled her heart. In time she moved on to the galactic classics, written in the languages of planets she one day hoped to visit. Languages had always come easily to her. In those first years of her incarceration she held out hope that He would come for her, that it was all a terrible mistake, that she would be shown mercy. It was only after she first figured out how to break out of her cell that she had headed straight for the Warden's office to find her file and, on reading it, realised she WAS being shown mercy. The blood had run cold through her veins when she scanned her trial transcript, read that the standard galactic penalty for murder she committed was death but that the Doctor had spoken up on her behalf and as her intended victim was supporting her, she was given leniency. If you could call a lifetime in prison leniency.

Throughout the long nights she watched the four moons wheel slowly across the sky, dreaming of her Doctor. He never visited, not then, but she was not left to rot alone in Stormcage. Her rehabilitation began at the beginning of her second week on the prison planet just as she began to think she would go insane from boredom.

You're Dr River Song? I'm Dr Martha Jones. Take a seat please. No Commander, we don't need those cuffs. I'm sure Dr Song will behave herself. How are you doing today Dr Song? I understand that you've not been sleeping well.

It was four or five years later when the Doctor had liberated her from her cell to take her to see the sunsets on the planet Cheem, she had been fishing around in the TARDIS' databanks and finds the image of her counsellor. It suddenly became very clear to her how much more Martha Jones was than just her doctor. During their sessions River had acknowledged to Dr Jones that she felt lost and abandoned during that time. She had hoped that perhaps she would end up back with the Sisters of the Infinite Schism but had slowly begun to realise that whether she remembered the crime or not, she had committed it and would be punished accordingly. During that time there had been days when River had raged at Martha, days when she had sat silently unable to speak, days when she had spun stories that Martha had listened to with a half smile and days when she had cried in Martha's arms. Not once during those times had Martha told her she could empathise with her. Not once had Martha said she had known the man that River was so. Not once.

But now here she is, her picture smiling out at River from the TARDIS screen.

"I wanted to make sure you were safe. Cared for."

River does not turn at the sound of his voice, but stares at the screen in wonder, taking in the list of Dr Martha Jones' accomplishments, her date of death. Her stomach twists unpleasantly as it occurs to her that she has not seen Dr Jones for about two years, her time, and had not given her absence much thought other than an active dislike for her current therapist.

"Martha was with me through a difficult time. After Rose. Before Donna. Before you. And she walked away from me." She could hear the wonder in his voice. "How many people do that?"

"But she's just a doctor. Just a normal doctor. Not a psychiatrist."

River read the biography again and there is no mention in there of any interest in behavioural conditioning, of psychology, of anything that would prompt her to be a good choice for River's rehabilitation. Trauma had been Martha's specialty, working with UNIT as an A&E consultant for the majority of her professional life.