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It fell to Rory to tell Melody's foster-mother that Melody wouldn't be coming home. He'd never met Rachel Zucker, and there was something intensely awkward about meeting the woman who had raised the girl that Rory now knew was his child. Still, she had to know, had to hear it from someone, and as a nurse Rory could speak about having seen her death in a way that Ms. Zucker might believe. And it wasn't false, Rory had in fact seen Melody die.
Rachel Zucker, as it turned out, was an older woman, in her eighties, with a soft voice and an accent that Rory couldn't place. She offered Rory tea in a glass with sugar-cubes and invited him to sit. Rory told the story he had prepared: Mels had died heroically, saving a child from drowning. Rachel Zucker listened quietly, like someone who was used to loss and to pain. "Is there a body?" she asked finally. Rory shook his head.
There was a long moment as he sat with her and she didn't speak. It was so unfair, so wrong, they go through time changing things and things get changed. River Song would have a good life but Rachel Zucker would never see her foster-daughter again. "She was all I had," Rachel said, her voice quiet. Rory could see that this was true. There was no husband, nor any other children, and no pictures on the wall of any family other than Melody. Rory looked down and saw Rachel's arm and the number tattooed on it. He knew the story behind those numbers, knew what this woman must have endured and how her family must have died. And now she had lost the daughter she had managed to find, had managed to raise and to love. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. He wanted to hold his daughter Melody as a baby in his arms, and he wanted to bring her back to Rachel, and neither of these could happen, not ever, not ever again.
"There's someone," Rory said. "She knows Mels better than anyone. Mels told her everything. I know she knows how much Mels loved you." Which presumably she did. Rory couldn't imagine that she wouldn't. "I know she'd want to be there for you. Can I bring her here?"
It was the most he could offer. River was clearly not Mels, couldn't be mistaken for her, there would be no way to explain that they were the same person, not in a way that Rachel could understand. Still, Rachel nodded. Rory supposed she just didn't want to be alone in her grief. Which made sense to Rory. "I'll bring her soon," Rory said.
When Rory told his daughter of the promise he made on her behalf it was to a much older River, one who had already been released from prison. Time didn't matter, she could go back and visit Rachel in that moment from any time that they were in. Immediately she agreed, they would go, and they would go together. They arrived in Leadworth ten minutes after Rory had left Rachel Zucker's house.
She wasn't there. She hadn't been there. There was no record of her, not anywhere in the town records. "This is crazy," Rory said. "I just saw her. I just spoke to her."
"But we changed things," River said. "We changed lots of things."
"Yeah," said Rory. He remembered the number tattooed on Rachel's arm. He knew exactly what it meant. "We changed things. We certainly did change things. We locked Hitler in a cupboard."
Finding the village Rachel came from was, for River, completely straightforward, all it took was breaking into a few archives and a bit of cross-time-stream archeology. They took the train there, although they could've just jumped into the TARDIS, because it felt right to take the route that Rachel would have taken. Having never been to Poland in his own time line Rory couldn't tell how it was different, but he knew it must be, and he stared at the towns as they passed them. The village they stopped at was unremarkable, like so many others, streets and factories and homes and people alive. The home they found was also unremarkable. They stopped and looked in the window.
Inside there was a table set with candles, and bread, and wine, and Rachel Zucker surrounded by family.