Nights with River Song

River had the control of the TARDIS at night, which was an entirely different time.

With the rest of the crew asleep she breathed in their dreams and nightmares, depending on how the day when.

At times she was perky, dancing about from place to place and time to time, merrily going about the scans and feedback like a happy maid. Other times she was near inconsolable when the mind in the time vortex, Juliet, was having a particularly bad run.

She tried to have the other Romeo move about and visit her at such hours, but it depended on the main, lonely, him's mood. He was still the strongest tide. As much as the TARDIS wanted things in a nice neat bow, it would have to deal with the Paradox somehow.

Direct contact with that timeline had caused the rescue in the first place, and that was a wonderful thing to look upon. Still, the tide argued that it hadn't happened yet, and that she would have to go into this timeline to facilitate it.

During these times River would go back to the scene, at different times and different ways, to place memory filters borrowed from the Tower of London, scanners from Torchwood. Experimenting with a rehearsed Romeo re-enacting the scene again and again.

She would play the fudged footage to the rest of the team, and with feedback do it all again the next day. Wiping the memory of the happy, but now slightly confused Romeo until they hit upon the combination that would unlock the puzzle.

The TARDIS would then breath more of the story to the happy, but ignorant fledgeling couple.

As she pieced it together he got more depressed, knowing that something drastic had to happen to reunite the timelines.

On a hunch from something Jack had said, River set the coordinates to the Movie Theatre in Cardiff. It was shortly before the Wedding and they were the only ones there.

The equipment from Torchwood made an awful noise. This place was strange, it was fairly crackling with all sorts of time energy.

She couldn't go into the actually room showing the movie, but she could hear it well enough. Most of the time. River got dizzy at some parts, but suddenly it passed when bits she was familiar with played on the screen. She took notes, filling in bits of the dialogue that she had missed, or places and times she had been too but had not checked the recordings.

She looked at her readings again. This building was the TARDIS. Somehow more mature and more prepared, the music in the lobby swelled, as if to acknowledge her insight.

She heard a shot from the theater, then moans of delight.

It couldn't be that simple, could it? The TARDIS would simply take her to the movie theatre to join the lonely him who would act as if nothing odd had happened, then pretend to shoot himself and have the TARDIS teleport him to a control room, then back to the scene to do the rescue?

“The mind races” she said to herself. The music in the lobby played a happy poppy tune.