Human Nature in Chaos (1/2)
Title - Human Nature in Chaos (1/2)
Author -
earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, Jackie, OCs
Spoilers - Through the end of S2, and for the S3 episodes "Human Nature" / "Family of Blood"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - What if the events of "Human Nature" had happened to a Doctor who was a father?
Author's Notes - I fail, but I think several readers, whom I can't recall, raised the suggestion of a "Human Nature" in the Chaosverse. This is what came out of that plot bunny. It is not what you typically think of when you think of "Human Nature," but I could not imagine this story going any other way if the Doctor had kids to worry about.
Many thanks to
jlrpuck for providing me with lots of DT photos. Oh, also she betas or something. Thanks also to
bouncy_castle79 , who told me to write this story once I sketched her my synopsis, and Kristin for all the brainstorming.
The gorgeous icon was created by
swankkat for me, commissioned by
jlrpuck for my birthday.
“I can take Theenie to the museum by myself, you know,” said Brem, and Rose looked at him.
“No,” she said. “You most definitely cannot. You may have saved the world but you’re still only four years old.”
Brem sulked, sitting on the couch and swinging his legs back and forth and watching as his mother finished the intensely complicated operation that was fixing Athena’s hair. “You and Dad are so obsessed with my age.”
“Yeah, we’re unreasonable like that,” responded his mother, giving Athena’s hair one last brush. “There. All set to go.”
Athena, beaming, pulled Brem off the couch. “I’m ready to go now!”
“No one’s going anywhere without me,” warned Rose, and poked her head into the TARDIS that was sitting in her mother’s living room. The Doctor was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the control room, surrounded by parts he was frowning at. “I’m taking the kids to the museum,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed, absently, ruffling his hair as he thought.
“Aren’t you going to ask me who’s watching Fortuna?”
“She’s not going with you?”
“No. She doesn’t want to go to the British Museum. She’s a baby. No kids want to go to the British Museum except for our kids.”
“The museum is nice,” he said, still not really paying attention. “Take them to see your statue.”
“I will. And my mum’s watching the baby.”
“Uh-huh.”
Rose, feeling one of those moments that sometimes overtook her, one of those moments of amazement that she was here, being ignored by her Doctor while he tinkered, walked into the TARDIS and dropped a kiss into his hair-a kiss which she knew he barely felt. Then she walked back out, to where Brem and Athena were obediently-if impatiently-waiting for her by the door.
“You have to hold my hand,” she told Brem, who looked about to dash out of the flat.
Brem sighed heavily but he took her hand and they headed out of the flat, Rose calling good-bye to her mother as they went. Brem and Athena were chattering happily, asking all sorts of questions about their mother’s statue. It was a beautiful spring day, and Rose listened to them contentedly, as they walked toward the Tube. It had not been very long ago that she had thought she might never see these children again, and here they were, hands caught in hers, on an outing to a museum, which would almost be a normal thing to do if toddlers normally liked art museums.
They negotiated their way onto the Tube, bumping into a man on their way to seats. “Sorry,” Rose smiled at him, settling into the seat with Athena on her lap. Brem sat next to her, babbling about the speed of the Tube, and the number of people that used the system every day, and which stop was the busiest…
Rose glanced furtively over at the man they’d bumped into on their way into the Tube. He seemed to be staring fixedly at Brem, who was chattering on, oblivious. Rose interlaced her fingers with Brem’s more tightly, inched him closer to her. The man who was staring at Brem glanced up, met her eyes and smiled a bit. Rose smiled back, tightly, keeping close hold of Brem.
When they reached their stop, she almost leaped up, herding the kids off the Tube and out into the sunlight. The man didn’t seem to follow them, and Rose breathed a sigh of relief, settling back down and relaxing again into the warmth of the day. Brem was skipping next to her now, and it was Athena’s turn to talk, asking about posing for the statue, and whether it had been scary, and whether Daddy might make statues of all of them, if he was so good at it.
“Excuse me,” said a man, stepping in front of their path as she went to answer Athena’s question.
Rose looked up. At the man who’d been staring at them on the Tube. Hand tightening around Brem’s, she took a step back.
“It’s quite alright,” said the man, cocking his head in an odd manner and smiling at her icily. “It isn’t you we’re after. You can just leave the children.”
Leave the children? She processed the instruction in something like a haze, pressing Athena against her and taking another step back. Run, her mind screamed at her. Grab the kids and run. Because whatever was going on here was not something she was equipped to handle.
She wheeled abruptly, throwing Brem off-balance. He stumbled but she pulled him up, and took only a few steps before a little girl, out of nowhere, stepped into her way. Rose barreled into her.
“Well done, Sister of Mine,” said the man, behind her.
Rose recovered and tried to jerk around the child, and then an older man appeared in front of her, head cocked in the same weird manner as the first man, same weird smile on his face. Rose skidded to a halt, looked around her. She was surrounded by them, these weird, disturbing, human-looking creatures. The first man, on the younger side; the older man; the little girl; and a woman, Rose saw, who had appeared virtually out of nowhere.
“Just the children,” said the younger of the two men, pleasantly. “That’s all we need.”
There was no time to think. She could feel Brem’s hand clinging to hers, so tightly she thought he might be cutting off circulation. Slowly, Rose set Athena on the ground, next to Brem, watched by these weird creatures. “Run,” she whispered, as softly as possible, meeting Brem’s wide, terrified eyes.
Then she straightened and screamed. “Help!” she shouted. “Help! He’s got a gun!”
The pedestrians around them looked up in alarm. The creatures around her froze momentarily, confused.
“He’s going to kill all of us!” shrieked Rose.
A woman standing next to her suddenly let out a hysterical scream, which provoked pandemonium. Rose kept her eyes on the four weird creatures, as people swarmed away from them. Including, she hoped, Brem and Athena. Rose wasn’t actually sure that Brem made a run for it, because she was busy launching herself on top of the first weird guy’s back when he turned to make a move, tumbling him down. It was impossible to keep all four of them occupied at the same time, but she tried, giving Brem as much of a head start as she could, clawing and grabbing and scratching at them, every time one of them moved away. When the police finally came, separating all of them, the weird creatures all took off, running with purpose. The police gave chase but Rose didn’t think they’d be successful.
“Ma’am,” said one of the police officers. “You’re looking a bit peaky. Maybe you ought to sit down. What started the fight?”
“My husband,” she said. “I have to call my husband.”
*******
When Mum whispered, “Run,” for a moment he didn’t know what she meant. It was silly, because it was the most obvious thing in the world. Run, they had to run. But she said it to him, and he froze. Until she started screaming, and panic broke loose around them, and it clicked into place. Run. They were supposed to run.
So he grabbed Athena’s hand and he ran with her. They were good runners, he and Athena. Dad said they came by it genetically. “Descended from champion runners,” he always said. So they could run. They could out-run those weird things, surely. He bobbed through the crowd, ducking under people, zig-zagging through side streets. Eventually the crowds thinned out. They were in a part of London he’d never seen before, and it was fairly deserted.
He slowed to a walk. Athena was gasping for breath behind him but had otherwise not said a word, as she toddled along in his wake. He was out of breath, too, and he paused to take stock of their surroundings.
“What are we going to do now?” asked Athena, sensing that it was permissible to speak to him now.
“I dunno,” he answered, wishing she wasn’t depending on him and wishing he had a better answer and wishing he could come up with a plan and wishing Mum or Dad was there.
“What happened to Mum?” asked Athena, sniffling a bit.
“She’s fine,” Brem assured her, hastily. “I’m sure she went back to the TARDIS. We just have to get back to the TARDIS.”
“Do you know how to get back to TARDIS?”
He hadn’t a clue. “It’s probably this way,” he said, picking a direction and walking in it resolutely.
He and Athena heard it at the same time, lifting their heads. Footsteps. Running.
“We should hide,” whispered Athena.
Brem nodded mutely, pulling her down one of the alleyways and behind a few garbage bins.
“We know you’re here, Time Lords,” called a voice. “You can try to hide. But you won’t be successful.”
Brem listened, thinking furiously. He could hear their pursuers walking around, looking for them. Sniffing. They kept sniffing. Long and hard. It dawned on him suddenly. Smell. They could, somehow, smell them.
Brem turned to Athena, who was curled against the brick wall behind them, trying not to look terrified. He took her hand and pulled her up and dashed them down the end of the alleyway. Back to civilization, he thought. He knew what he needed to find, and eventually he ran into one. Perfect.
He ran into the store and directly to the perfume counter, wasting no time in grabbing one of the bottles, twisting its top off, and dumping its entire contents over Athena’s head. Athena let out a shocked cry at finding herself drenched in the smelly liquid.
“They can smell us,” Brem explained, quickly, reaching for another bottle. “We have to cover our smell.”
“Oi!” shouted a store clerk, hurrying over to them, as Brem twisted the cover off another perfume bottle.
“Sorry,” said Brem, pouring the perfume over his head. He squeezed his eyes shut and wiped it away from his face with the sleeve of his jumper. “My dad’ll pay you back, I swear.”
“You’re not kidding, your dad’ll pay us back,” retorted the store clerk. “Now where-”
“C’mon,” said Brem, grabbing Athena’s hand and pulling her back into a run.
“Oi!” shouted the store clerk again. “Stop them!”
Brem dodged them around the people who made grabs for them, wheeled them outside and around the corner, and after a while the only pursuers he had to worry about were the original weird ones and not the offended store clerks. Athena had slowed down considerably, gasping for breath. He was practically dragging her along behind him, as her feet tripped over each other.
“Can’t we stop, Brem?” she whined.
“No. Theenie. We have to keep moving. Come on.” He glanced at her, gave her an encouraging smile.
“I can’t run anymore, Brem,” she continued. “My tummy hurts and my legs hurt and I want Mummy.”
“I’m getting us back to the TARDIS.”
“You don’t know where TARDIS is,” she accused.
He paused and turned to Athena. “Theenie. We have to keep moving. We can’t let those people catch us. Dad will find us, we just have to keep moving until then.”
Athena regarded him for a second. “Can you carry me?”
“You’re too big,” he said, helplessly. “Come on. You’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. Maybe I can find the museum again and we can go see Mum’s statue. Let’s just keep moving.” He tugged on her hand, and she did start moving in his wake, but they were moving at an achingly slow pace. He couldn’t increase it. His legs hurt as much as Athena’s. They were world-class runners, sure, but they had been running for a long time now. He wanted to sit down and rest, he wanted a glass of water.
“Tell a story,” said Athena.
“Good idea,” he replied. A distraction. They weren’t running at all now, were limping along, but he hoped the perfume had thrown their pursuers off the scent, long enough for Dad to find them. “What story?”
“The one about Mum’s statue.”
He launched into the story, of how the evil man had made an imposter statue of Mum, and Dad had gone to meet Michelangelo so he could make the real statue of Mum, and how they had been in ancient Rome, with a real GENIE who had granted wishes and had scales and a beak, and a girl from the future, and the goddess Fortuna was-
He drew to a slow halt, listening to the footsteps beginning to come up behind them. He looked at Athena. “We have to run again now, Theenie.”
She nodded, and he forced himself to start running, again pulling Athena behind him. He was running so slowly. He was too exhausted to run faster. He couldn’t do it. He rounded a corner into an alleyway, tried to race down it as quickly as he could, so quickly he was all the way down it before he realized it was a dead end. He stared at the brick walls on all sides of him, turned to re-trace his steps-
And found the head of the alleyway blocked by four creatures.
“You’re trapped,” said the woman, sounding delighted, as they began walking down the alleyway toward them.
Brem swallowed, looking frantically around them. They were trapped. He backed toward the wall, pushing Athena behind him and pulling his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. A useless sonic screwdriver, because Dad wouldn’t let him have any good settings, but it was better than nothing.
“Don’t come any closer!” he shouted. “Or I’ll kill you with my sonic weapon.”
“That isn’t a weapon,” said the younger of the two men, silkily. “It’s a toy.”
“It isn’t,” protested Brem, desperately. “It is-”
Brem had never heard any noise more beautiful in his life than the sound he heard at that moment. The TARDIS, materializing, in the alleyway. He could have fallen to the ground with relief. The four creatures, now pressing in around Brem and Athena, looked toward the noise curiously, as the TARDIS blinked into being.
The door opened, silhouetting Dad, long coat pushed back and hands in his pockets. “Oh,” he said, mildly, surveying the scene. “I don’t think so.”
Next Part
Author -
earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, Jackie, OCs
Spoilers - Through the end of S2, and for the S3 episodes "Human Nature" / "Family of Blood"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - What if the events of "Human Nature" had happened to a Doctor who was a father?
Author's Notes - I fail, but I think several readers, whom I can't recall, raised the suggestion of a "Human Nature" in the Chaosverse. This is what came out of that plot bunny. It is not what you typically think of when you think of "Human Nature," but I could not imagine this story going any other way if the Doctor had kids to worry about.
Many thanks to
jlrpuck for providing me with lots of DT photos. Oh, also she betas or something. Thanks also to
bouncy_castle79 , who told me to write this story once I sketched her my synopsis, and Kristin for all the brainstorming.
The gorgeous icon was created by
swankkat for me, commissioned by
jlrpuck for my birthday.
“I can take Theenie to the museum by myself, you know,” said Brem, and Rose looked at him.
“No,” she said. “You most definitely cannot. You may have saved the world but you’re still only four years old.”
Brem sulked, sitting on the couch and swinging his legs back and forth and watching as his mother finished the intensely complicated operation that was fixing Athena’s hair. “You and Dad are so obsessed with my age.”
“Yeah, we’re unreasonable like that,” responded his mother, giving Athena’s hair one last brush. “There. All set to go.”
Athena, beaming, pulled Brem off the couch. “I’m ready to go now!”
“No one’s going anywhere without me,” warned Rose, and poked her head into the TARDIS that was sitting in her mother’s living room. The Doctor was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the control room, surrounded by parts he was frowning at. “I’m taking the kids to the museum,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed, absently, ruffling his hair as he thought.
“Aren’t you going to ask me who’s watching Fortuna?”
“She’s not going with you?”
“No. She doesn’t want to go to the British Museum. She’s a baby. No kids want to go to the British Museum except for our kids.”
“The museum is nice,” he said, still not really paying attention. “Take them to see your statue.”
“I will. And my mum’s watching the baby.”
“Uh-huh.”
Rose, feeling one of those moments that sometimes overtook her, one of those moments of amazement that she was here, being ignored by her Doctor while he tinkered, walked into the TARDIS and dropped a kiss into his hair-a kiss which she knew he barely felt. Then she walked back out, to where Brem and Athena were obediently-if impatiently-waiting for her by the door.
“You have to hold my hand,” she told Brem, who looked about to dash out of the flat.
Brem sighed heavily but he took her hand and they headed out of the flat, Rose calling good-bye to her mother as they went. Brem and Athena were chattering happily, asking all sorts of questions about their mother’s statue. It was a beautiful spring day, and Rose listened to them contentedly, as they walked toward the Tube. It had not been very long ago that she had thought she might never see these children again, and here they were, hands caught in hers, on an outing to a museum, which would almost be a normal thing to do if toddlers normally liked art museums.
They negotiated their way onto the Tube, bumping into a man on their way to seats. “Sorry,” Rose smiled at him, settling into the seat with Athena on her lap. Brem sat next to her, babbling about the speed of the Tube, and the number of people that used the system every day, and which stop was the busiest…
Rose glanced furtively over at the man they’d bumped into on their way into the Tube. He seemed to be staring fixedly at Brem, who was chattering on, oblivious. Rose interlaced her fingers with Brem’s more tightly, inched him closer to her. The man who was staring at Brem glanced up, met her eyes and smiled a bit. Rose smiled back, tightly, keeping close hold of Brem.
When they reached their stop, she almost leaped up, herding the kids off the Tube and out into the sunlight. The man didn’t seem to follow them, and Rose breathed a sigh of relief, settling back down and relaxing again into the warmth of the day. Brem was skipping next to her now, and it was Athena’s turn to talk, asking about posing for the statue, and whether it had been scary, and whether Daddy might make statues of all of them, if he was so good at it.
“Excuse me,” said a man, stepping in front of their path as she went to answer Athena’s question.
Rose looked up. At the man who’d been staring at them on the Tube. Hand tightening around Brem’s, she took a step back.
“It’s quite alright,” said the man, cocking his head in an odd manner and smiling at her icily. “It isn’t you we’re after. You can just leave the children.”
Leave the children? She processed the instruction in something like a haze, pressing Athena against her and taking another step back. Run, her mind screamed at her. Grab the kids and run. Because whatever was going on here was not something she was equipped to handle.
She wheeled abruptly, throwing Brem off-balance. He stumbled but she pulled him up, and took only a few steps before a little girl, out of nowhere, stepped into her way. Rose barreled into her.
“Well done, Sister of Mine,” said the man, behind her.
Rose recovered and tried to jerk around the child, and then an older man appeared in front of her, head cocked in the same weird manner as the first man, same weird smile on his face. Rose skidded to a halt, looked around her. She was surrounded by them, these weird, disturbing, human-looking creatures. The first man, on the younger side; the older man; the little girl; and a woman, Rose saw, who had appeared virtually out of nowhere.
“Just the children,” said the younger of the two men, pleasantly. “That’s all we need.”
There was no time to think. She could feel Brem’s hand clinging to hers, so tightly she thought he might be cutting off circulation. Slowly, Rose set Athena on the ground, next to Brem, watched by these weird creatures. “Run,” she whispered, as softly as possible, meeting Brem’s wide, terrified eyes.
Then she straightened and screamed. “Help!” she shouted. “Help! He’s got a gun!”
The pedestrians around them looked up in alarm. The creatures around her froze momentarily, confused.
“He’s going to kill all of us!” shrieked Rose.
A woman standing next to her suddenly let out a hysterical scream, which provoked pandemonium. Rose kept her eyes on the four weird creatures, as people swarmed away from them. Including, she hoped, Brem and Athena. Rose wasn’t actually sure that Brem made a run for it, because she was busy launching herself on top of the first weird guy’s back when he turned to make a move, tumbling him down. It was impossible to keep all four of them occupied at the same time, but she tried, giving Brem as much of a head start as she could, clawing and grabbing and scratching at them, every time one of them moved away. When the police finally came, separating all of them, the weird creatures all took off, running with purpose. The police gave chase but Rose didn’t think they’d be successful.
“Ma’am,” said one of the police officers. “You’re looking a bit peaky. Maybe you ought to sit down. What started the fight?”
“My husband,” she said. “I have to call my husband.”
*******
When Mum whispered, “Run,” for a moment he didn’t know what she meant. It was silly, because it was the most obvious thing in the world. Run, they had to run. But she said it to him, and he froze. Until she started screaming, and panic broke loose around them, and it clicked into place. Run. They were supposed to run.
So he grabbed Athena’s hand and he ran with her. They were good runners, he and Athena. Dad said they came by it genetically. “Descended from champion runners,” he always said. So they could run. They could out-run those weird things, surely. He bobbed through the crowd, ducking under people, zig-zagging through side streets. Eventually the crowds thinned out. They were in a part of London he’d never seen before, and it was fairly deserted.
He slowed to a walk. Athena was gasping for breath behind him but had otherwise not said a word, as she toddled along in his wake. He was out of breath, too, and he paused to take stock of their surroundings.
“What are we going to do now?” asked Athena, sensing that it was permissible to speak to him now.
“I dunno,” he answered, wishing she wasn’t depending on him and wishing he had a better answer and wishing he could come up with a plan and wishing Mum or Dad was there.
“What happened to Mum?” asked Athena, sniffling a bit.
“She’s fine,” Brem assured her, hastily. “I’m sure she went back to the TARDIS. We just have to get back to the TARDIS.”
“Do you know how to get back to TARDIS?”
He hadn’t a clue. “It’s probably this way,” he said, picking a direction and walking in it resolutely.
He and Athena heard it at the same time, lifting their heads. Footsteps. Running.
“We should hide,” whispered Athena.
Brem nodded mutely, pulling her down one of the alleyways and behind a few garbage bins.
“We know you’re here, Time Lords,” called a voice. “You can try to hide. But you won’t be successful.”
Brem listened, thinking furiously. He could hear their pursuers walking around, looking for them. Sniffing. They kept sniffing. Long and hard. It dawned on him suddenly. Smell. They could, somehow, smell them.
Brem turned to Athena, who was curled against the brick wall behind them, trying not to look terrified. He took her hand and pulled her up and dashed them down the end of the alleyway. Back to civilization, he thought. He knew what he needed to find, and eventually he ran into one. Perfect.
He ran into the store and directly to the perfume counter, wasting no time in grabbing one of the bottles, twisting its top off, and dumping its entire contents over Athena’s head. Athena let out a shocked cry at finding herself drenched in the smelly liquid.
“They can smell us,” Brem explained, quickly, reaching for another bottle. “We have to cover our smell.”
“Oi!” shouted a store clerk, hurrying over to them, as Brem twisted the cover off another perfume bottle.
“Sorry,” said Brem, pouring the perfume over his head. He squeezed his eyes shut and wiped it away from his face with the sleeve of his jumper. “My dad’ll pay you back, I swear.”
“You’re not kidding, your dad’ll pay us back,” retorted the store clerk. “Now where-”
“C’mon,” said Brem, grabbing Athena’s hand and pulling her back into a run.
“Oi!” shouted the store clerk again. “Stop them!”
Brem dodged them around the people who made grabs for them, wheeled them outside and around the corner, and after a while the only pursuers he had to worry about were the original weird ones and not the offended store clerks. Athena had slowed down considerably, gasping for breath. He was practically dragging her along behind him, as her feet tripped over each other.
“Can’t we stop, Brem?” she whined.
“No. Theenie. We have to keep moving. Come on.” He glanced at her, gave her an encouraging smile.
“I can’t run anymore, Brem,” she continued. “My tummy hurts and my legs hurt and I want Mummy.”
“I’m getting us back to the TARDIS.”
“You don’t know where TARDIS is,” she accused.
He paused and turned to Athena. “Theenie. We have to keep moving. We can’t let those people catch us. Dad will find us, we just have to keep moving until then.”
Athena regarded him for a second. “Can you carry me?”
“You’re too big,” he said, helplessly. “Come on. You’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. Maybe I can find the museum again and we can go see Mum’s statue. Let’s just keep moving.” He tugged on her hand, and she did start moving in his wake, but they were moving at an achingly slow pace. He couldn’t increase it. His legs hurt as much as Athena’s. They were world-class runners, sure, but they had been running for a long time now. He wanted to sit down and rest, he wanted a glass of water.
“Tell a story,” said Athena.
“Good idea,” he replied. A distraction. They weren’t running at all now, were limping along, but he hoped the perfume had thrown their pursuers off the scent, long enough for Dad to find them. “What story?”
“The one about Mum’s statue.”
He launched into the story, of how the evil man had made an imposter statue of Mum, and Dad had gone to meet Michelangelo so he could make the real statue of Mum, and how they had been in ancient Rome, with a real GENIE who had granted wishes and had scales and a beak, and a girl from the future, and the goddess Fortuna was-
He drew to a slow halt, listening to the footsteps beginning to come up behind them. He looked at Athena. “We have to run again now, Theenie.”
She nodded, and he forced himself to start running, again pulling Athena behind him. He was running so slowly. He was too exhausted to run faster. He couldn’t do it. He rounded a corner into an alleyway, tried to race down it as quickly as he could, so quickly he was all the way down it before he realized it was a dead end. He stared at the brick walls on all sides of him, turned to re-trace his steps-
And found the head of the alleyway blocked by four creatures.
“You’re trapped,” said the woman, sounding delighted, as they began walking down the alleyway toward them.
Brem swallowed, looking frantically around them. They were trapped. He backed toward the wall, pushing Athena behind him and pulling his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. A useless sonic screwdriver, because Dad wouldn’t let him have any good settings, but it was better than nothing.
“Don’t come any closer!” he shouted. “Or I’ll kill you with my sonic weapon.”
“That isn’t a weapon,” said the younger of the two men, silkily. “It’s a toy.”
“It isn’t,” protested Brem, desperately. “It is-”
Brem had never heard any noise more beautiful in his life than the sound he heard at that moment. The TARDIS, materializing, in the alleyway. He could have fallen to the ground with relief. The four creatures, now pressing in around Brem and Athena, looked toward the noise curiously, as the TARDIS blinked into being.
The door opened, silhouetting Dad, long coat pushed back and hands in his pockets. “Oh,” he said, mildly, surveying the scene. “I don’t think so.”
Next Part