Spoilers

A Pond in Prison

"Thanks for the ride, Sweetie," she said as she began making her way towards the doors. He caught her by slipping his arms around her waist and pulling her into a hug. She squirmed in his grasp.

"Did you think I'd just let you run off like that?" he murmured, his mouth near her ear and his voice muffled by his curls.

She turned in his arms to offer him a cheeky smile. "What? You need a goodbye kiss?"

The Doctor quickly let go of her and took a step back, blushing slightly. "N-no. Well, maybe, but there are things I need to tell you."

"Like what?"

"I'll be back to see you as soon as I can but the next time you'll see me, it will be an earlier version."

"An earlier version?" she said, crossing her arms and giving him a confused look.

"Yes, time travel. You and I never seem to meet in the right order. I've known you for a while now but mostly you when you're older. You'll see me again soon but it will be a younger version of me; a version who isn't married to you."

River pouted. "Why can't I have you instead?"

He laughed and pulled her back into a hug. "Because it's too late. I've already lived it."

"Well, you should have waited."

"I didn't know what was going to happen, I just wanted to spend time with you. I didn't know you were married to me. You didn't tell me."

"Should I tell you?" she asked.

"No," he replied quickly. "Spoilers."

She raised her eyebrows didn't say anything. Instead, she slipped her arms around his neck and pulled him into a kiss. He started before melting into the kiss. River pulled away a moment later.

"How much time do I have?"

"Uhh." The Doctor checked his watch. "Twenty minutes, I think."

"Okay. More than enough time to pack a few things." She pulled out of his arms and started towards the doors once more.

"Pack?" he exclaimed. "You're going to prison, not on holiday!"

River just laughed. The Doctor moved to make the Tardis invisible but his wife called over her shoulder before he had reached the control panel.

"Don't touch anything, dear. She's already invisible."

Scowling like a grumpy five-year-old, he followed her out of the Tardis. He stopped in the doorway and leaned against the frame. Taking a look around, he realized they must be in River's office. An amused smile replaced his frown when he realized she had arranged it like a proper office, with a desk in the middle of the room, positioned so that you'd be facing the door while working. A few bookcases lined the walls but there were more books scattered across the floor than there were on the shelves. The books on the floor were all open to different pages and the mess was added to by the files and papers that were strewn haphazardly among them.

River just stepped over the mess on her way to the door.

"Sweetie, could you pick all this up for me?" she said. "Books go on the shelves, files and papers on the desk. I doubt I'll be coming back here for a long while so it doesn't really matter that it'll all be a mess."

"It's already a mess," he pointed out.

"An organized mess," she said simply before vanishing through the door. Her head appeared around the frame. "Oh, and no reading anything."

The Doctor let out a sigh and moved to do as she had asked. Ten minutes later, he had stacked all of River's papers on her desk and organized the books on her shelves by color. Most of the books had been about Archeology or History and, at first, he hadn't been tempted to read them. However, he had soon realized that all the books were opened to events he had been involved in. He suspected the papers were all about him. His suspicions were confirmed when he spotted his name on several of the pages and he understood why she had told him not to read anything.