Human Nature in Chaos (2/2)
Title - Human Nature in Chaos (2/2)
Author -
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
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 - Many thanks to
jlrpuck for the beta on this, to
bouncy_castle79 , who let me run the original idea by her, and to Kristin for brainstorming.
The gorgeous icon was created by
swankkat for me, commissioned by
jlrpuck for my birthday.
Part One
When Rose called the Doctor, he picked up the phone with, “What’s wrong with the children?”
Rose was momentarily startled. “How do you know something’s wrong with the children?”
“They’re screaming, inside my head. Screaming. They’ve terrified Fortuna.” She could, indeed, hear Fortuna wailing bloody murder in the background. “Tell them to calm down. Tell them they’re alright.”
Rose tried to speak but choked on her own words.
“Rose, they’re alright, aren’t they?” he demanded. “Tell me they’re alright.”
“I don’t know,” she managed, finally. “We were attacked. I had to tell Brem to run. There were these creatures and they were after the children and there was nothing I could do, Doctor, I had to-”
“Get home,” he interrupted, harshly.
And then hung up the phone.
Jackie stared at him, where she was bouncing Fortuna up and down in an effort to quiet her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
He ran into the TARDIS, covering the space in long strides, his mind trying to reach out and calm Brem and Athena’s. Tell me where you are, he begged them, but they were a mess. He didn’t think they could sense him at all over the driving nature of their own panic. Not that he blamed them. “Panic” was a pretty accurate description of what he was feeling at the moment, too. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you! he shouted at them. The only effect of this was for Fortuna to cry more loudly.
The Doctor punched at buttons on the console, staring at the monitor. His kids should be easy enough to track down in the city of London. Creatures with two hearts. How many of them could there be? He’d isolate them, and then he’d go get them, and this would all be okay.
“Doctor, what’s wrong?” Jackie asked, again, from the TARDIS doorway.
He was right. Not difficult at all to isolate two-hearted children in the city of London. There they were, right there. Pressed against a dead-end wall in an alleyway. The creatures pursuing them were…
The Doctor stared at the readings, swallowing horror. Hunted, he thought. His children were being hunted.
He looked up at Jackie, still holding Fortuna, who was now so terrified she was actually silent. “You’re coming with me,” he said.
“What?” asked Jackie, looking shocked.
“There are creatures hunting Time Lords, I’m not letting Fortuna out of my sight.” He stalked over to the door and jerked Jackie inside, slamming it.
“Doctor,” Jackie said, firmly. “Where’s Rose? Where are the kids? What do you mean, creatures hunting you?”
He ignored her, forcing himself to take deep breaths so his respiratory bypass system wouldn’t kick in. He was so furious he practically couldn’t see straight, and yet deadly calm, as he walked around the console grimly pressing buttons and flipping levers.
It was a near thing. Had he been five seconds later, he didn’t think he would have had kids left to save. An idea which made him even more furious. But, when the TARDIS materialized in the alleyway, it turned out he was just in time.
He stood in the doorway and pushed his hands into his pockets and stared at Brem and Athena, Athena wedged between Brem and a brick wall, Brem with his sonic screwdriver up, and then at the Family of Blood, all four of whom had turned to him now.
“Oh,” he said, and he couldn’t believe how mild his voice sounded. “I don’t think so.”
The warning under his voice was enough to deter them from going after him. Instead they tried to pounce on Brem and Athena.
“No, I really don’t think so,” he said, aiming the sonic screwdriver.
The window to the side of Brem exploded outward, raining the alleyway with shards of glass. Brem and Athena, pressed against the wall, were shielded from the worst of it, but it hit the Family of Blood full on. They screamed with pain, and turned to run. Which was, at least, a fairly wise course of action, he thought. He stepped fully out of the TARDIS, aiming the sonic screwdriver again, sending every trash bin in the alleyway clattering over, tripping the members of the Family of Blood, who fell into terrified heaps and then scrambled to get back up again, even as he kept sending trash bins directly into their paths to cut off their means of escape.
He walked over to them, and they stopped struggling. There is always a moment, he thought, when the loser of a battle for life and death stops struggling. No one ever struggles right up until the end.
“Jackie,” he called, without taking his eyes off the Family of Blood in front of him. “Take the kids back to the flat. I’m going to need the TARDIS.”
*******
Rose, after the Doctor’s curt instruction to her, hailed herself a cab and went home, trying not to panic. There was no one at the flat when she got there, no TARDIS in the living room, and this did not help her panic any. She paced nervously around the flat, from room to room, biting at cuticles and telling herself it was all fine, it was all going to be fine.
When the door finally opened, and Brem and Athena rushed in, she collapsed to the floor in relief and cuddled them to her.
“You’re okay?” she said. “Are you really both okay?”
“We’re fine,” Brem answered her. “You were brilliant, Mum.”
“Oh, not at all. You were brilliant. The two of you.” And she hugged them to her again, so very relieved they were there. Then she looked beyond them, to her mother with the baby. “Where’s your father?” she asked the kids.
They both shrugged.
“Lord knows,” said her mother. “He said he needed the TARDIS and left me to get the kids home. And he rushed me out of here so fast I didn’t have any cash, so we couldn’t just grab a cab. I’d no idea where we were. We had to figure that out, then we had to beg money off strangers for the Tube.”
“I was excellent at begging,” said Brem. “Athena, too. She can look very pitiful.”
“Plus she’s beautiful,” Rose added, which made Athena beam.
“That, too,” Brem agreed.
“And you smell like…”
“It’s perfume,” said Brem, proudly. “They were hunters, Mum. They could smell us. So we had to disguise our scent.”
Hunters, thought Rose. Her children had been hunted today. Wherever the Doctor was, she hoped he was overflowing with Oncoming Storm-ness.
“Well,” she said. “Let’s take baths and get all this perfume off you, then.”
The baths distracted the kids for a little while, and there was a bit of negotiation for Brem to don a temporary replacement jumper while Rose washed his. As she tugged his jumper over his head, he said, voice muffled and thick with misery, “I lost my journal.”
“You what, darling?” she asked, balling his jumper up in her hands.
“I dropped it. At some point. I don’t even know where.”
Her heart broke just a bit for her frowning, intense little boy, who had almost been hunted to death today, and would it have been too much to ask from the universe that he get to keep his journal? She ruffled his hair. “We’ll buy you a new one.”
“Yeah, but it won’t have all my stuff in it.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry, Brem.”
“It’s not your fault.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have dropped it.”
“You had bigger things to worry about,” she reminded him, although it didn’t seem to cheer him up much, as he stepped into the tub.
She had him tip his head back, so he could wet his hair. He flinched, and she probed until she discovered the small cut just behind his ear.
“I think it was from the glass,” he said.
“The glass?”
“Dad exploded a window.”
Rose lifted her eyebrows, but said nothing as she set about cleaning the cut. Brem moaned and squirmed and complained--just like a normal little boy.
It was while she was moving Brem’s jumper from the washing machine to the dryer that her mobile rang, and she reached for it on the kitchen table. TARDIS, it blinked at her, and, relieved, she answered it.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he answered, and just that one word made him sound more exhausted than she’d ever heard him.
“You okay?” she asked, concerned.
“Fine, I’m fine. Are the kids with you?”
“Yes. All three of them. And my mum.”
“And they’re okay?”
“They’re brilliant,” she assured him. “The biggest casualty of the day appears to be Brem’s journal.”
“Brem’s journal?”
“He dropped it at some point. While running.”
The Doctor didn’t say anything. He breathed.
“Are you coming home?” she asked.
“Yes. Now. I’ll be there shortly,” he promised, and she hung up.
The TARDIS materialized in the living room fifteen minutes later, and they all went out to meet it. The Doctor opened the door, smiling broadly without it ever reaching his eyes.
“Wellllllll,” he drawled, strolling out into the living room and crouching to be on level with the children. “Anything interesting happen today?”
They threw their arms around his neck and snuggled against him in hugs, and Rose watched him close his eyes and kiss first Brem’s head and then Athena’s. He murmured something in what Rose recognized by now as Gallifreyan, a questioning note to his voice, and the kids answered him in Gallifreyan, mumbling into his shoulders.
“Good,” he said, and then pushed them gently away. “Look,” he announced, “what I’ve got for you.” He reached into his inner coat pocket, and pulled out a small book, handing it to Brem.
Brem’s face lit up. “My journal! You found it!”
For the first time since he’d returned, the Doctor’s smile looked genuine. “I did.”
Brem flipped through it, as if making sure all of the pages were in place, then looked up at his father suspiciously. “Did you read it?”
“Not a peek,” he promised.
Brem looked satisfied, carrying the book over to the couch, grabbing a pen off the coffee table, and settling down to write the story of his exciting day. The Doctor stood with Athena in his arms and kissed her cheek.
“And this,” he said, reaching into his pocket again, “is for you.” He presented her, with a flourish, with a fuzzy pink hair elastic, and she clapped her hands in delight.
“It’s pink!”
“That it is,” he agreed, then looked across at Fortuna in her grandmother’s arms. “Sorry, love. Nothing for you today, but you had the easiest day of all of us.”
“Yes, Daddy will spoil you later,” Rose assured her. “Tell you what.” Rose pulled Athena out of the Doctor’s arms and put her down. “Grandma is going to make everyone some iced tea.”
“Hot tea for me,” said Brem, without looking up from his journal.
“Yes, yes, hot tea for you,” agreed Rose. “And we have biscuits on the TARDIS, Daddy and I will grab them.”
She intertwined her fingers with the Doctor’s and met her mother’s eyes. Jackie nodded imperceptibly.
“Come on, kids,” she said, shepherding Athena. “Let’s have some tea.”
“Can I have mine out here?” asked Brem.
“Absolutely not,” said Jackie.
“But I’m writing,” complained Brem.
Rose left them to the burgeoning argument, pulling the Doctor into the TARDIS and through the control room, to their bedroom. She pushed him gently onto the bed, and he went, unresisting, laying on his back. Then she curled into a ball next to him, resting her head on his chest, and he moved his arms suddenly after a moment, to crush her to him.
“I…” he began, and then seemed unable to go on.
“Shh,” she breathed, into his chest, her eyes closed and focused on the double beats of his hearts. “It’s okay.”
“They wanted to live forever, Rose. I made them live forever.”
She didn’t know what to say, because she didn’t know what he meant. He sounded anguished, but she didn’t understand exactly why. “It’s okay,” she said again, helplessly. “The kids are okay.”
“I trapped the Father in chains forged at the heart of a dwarf star,” said the Doctor.
Rose stilled on his chest. “You did what?” She wasn’t sure what it meant, but it chilled her to her bones.
“I tipped the Mother into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy. I imprisoned the Sister in every mirror in existence. I suspended the Son in time, dressed as a scarecrow to watch over the fields of England.”
Rose lifted herself up on her elbow, looking down at him as he spoke, slowly, deliberately, staring at the ceiling.
“That’s what I did,” he said, thoughtfully. “And I’d do it all again. I’d…I’d do it all again,” he concluded, and then finally looked at her. “I would. All of the things that I have seen in this universe, and you know the things that I’ve seen in this universe. All those things…all that destruction…all those creatures dying…and two children were at stake today and I…lost my temper. I used to have so much mercy, Rose. I really did.”
“They were our two children. I think you can be forgiven for coming up short on mercy. You didn’t do all of those things you’re telling me you did. You saved our kids’ lives. Do you hear me? You just saved their lives.”
“I can’t lose any of you, Rose. I just can’t.”
“We’ll have to make sure you don’t, then,” she said, and kissed him until he relented and kissed her back. She knew it was all fleeting, that they’d dodged today’s bullets but tomorrow would bring new ones. If they thought about that too hard, they’d go mad, she knew. She drew back, resting her forehead against his. “However did you find Brem’s journal?”
“I crossed his timeline,” he admitted. “It was almost to test if I still had enough self-discipline not to swoop in and grab all of you before you skipped right into the danger. And it turns out I did. But I picked up the journal as soon as the coast was clear.”
“Clever you,” she said.
“Least I could do. He’s had a tough day.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“Welllllll. I am where they get the Time Lord genes from. And they wouldn’t have been in danger today if they hadn’t been Time Lords.”
“If you’re going to blame yourself for the genes you gave them, at least blame yourself for that impossible hair you’ve given all of them. That’s by far the most annoying of the genes they’ve gotten from you.”
He chuckled a bit, and she stroked her hands through that hair. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said again, softly.
“Because I crossed your timelines, I got to see your act of panic.”
“It wasn’t an act.”
“It was brilliant, Rose. It was quick thinking and it was brilliant. And then you took on four members of the Family of Blood single-handedly. They’re living forever with a few scrapes and scratches they got from you.”
“We protect our children. It’s what parents do.” She pulled back a bit. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” he said.
“You’re always okay.”
“Yes. But I am okay.”
She traced the features of his face with her fingers. “You are such a marvelous father. And a wonderful man. And I love you. Are we agreed on all that?”
He smiled, and it looked less cloudy than it had before. “Yes. Agreed.”
“Good.” She kissed the tip of his nose. “Let’s go have tea with our children.”
Author -
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
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 - Many thanks to
jlrpuck for the beta on this, to
bouncy_castle79 , who let me run the original idea by her, and to Kristin for brainstorming.
The gorgeous icon was created by
swankkat for me, commissioned by
jlrpuck for my birthday.
Part One
When Rose called the Doctor, he picked up the phone with, “What’s wrong with the children?”
Rose was momentarily startled. “How do you know something’s wrong with the children?”
“They’re screaming, inside my head. Screaming. They’ve terrified Fortuna.” She could, indeed, hear Fortuna wailing bloody murder in the background. “Tell them to calm down. Tell them they’re alright.”
Rose tried to speak but choked on her own words.
“Rose, they’re alright, aren’t they?” he demanded. “Tell me they’re alright.”
“I don’t know,” she managed, finally. “We were attacked. I had to tell Brem to run. There were these creatures and they were after the children and there was nothing I could do, Doctor, I had to-”
“Get home,” he interrupted, harshly.
And then hung up the phone.
Jackie stared at him, where she was bouncing Fortuna up and down in an effort to quiet her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
He ran into the TARDIS, covering the space in long strides, his mind trying to reach out and calm Brem and Athena’s. Tell me where you are, he begged them, but they were a mess. He didn’t think they could sense him at all over the driving nature of their own panic. Not that he blamed them. “Panic” was a pretty accurate description of what he was feeling at the moment, too. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you! he shouted at them. The only effect of this was for Fortuna to cry more loudly.
The Doctor punched at buttons on the console, staring at the monitor. His kids should be easy enough to track down in the city of London. Creatures with two hearts. How many of them could there be? He’d isolate them, and then he’d go get them, and this would all be okay.
“Doctor, what’s wrong?” Jackie asked, again, from the TARDIS doorway.
He was right. Not difficult at all to isolate two-hearted children in the city of London. There they were, right there. Pressed against a dead-end wall in an alleyway. The creatures pursuing them were…
The Doctor stared at the readings, swallowing horror. Hunted, he thought. His children were being hunted.
He looked up at Jackie, still holding Fortuna, who was now so terrified she was actually silent. “You’re coming with me,” he said.
“What?” asked Jackie, looking shocked.
“There are creatures hunting Time Lords, I’m not letting Fortuna out of my sight.” He stalked over to the door and jerked Jackie inside, slamming it.
“Doctor,” Jackie said, firmly. “Where’s Rose? Where are the kids? What do you mean, creatures hunting you?”
He ignored her, forcing himself to take deep breaths so his respiratory bypass system wouldn’t kick in. He was so furious he practically couldn’t see straight, and yet deadly calm, as he walked around the console grimly pressing buttons and flipping levers.
It was a near thing. Had he been five seconds later, he didn’t think he would have had kids left to save. An idea which made him even more furious. But, when the TARDIS materialized in the alleyway, it turned out he was just in time.
He stood in the doorway and pushed his hands into his pockets and stared at Brem and Athena, Athena wedged between Brem and a brick wall, Brem with his sonic screwdriver up, and then at the Family of Blood, all four of whom had turned to him now.
“Oh,” he said, and he couldn’t believe how mild his voice sounded. “I don’t think so.”
The warning under his voice was enough to deter them from going after him. Instead they tried to pounce on Brem and Athena.
“No, I really don’t think so,” he said, aiming the sonic screwdriver.
The window to the side of Brem exploded outward, raining the alleyway with shards of glass. Brem and Athena, pressed against the wall, were shielded from the worst of it, but it hit the Family of Blood full on. They screamed with pain, and turned to run. Which was, at least, a fairly wise course of action, he thought. He stepped fully out of the TARDIS, aiming the sonic screwdriver again, sending every trash bin in the alleyway clattering over, tripping the members of the Family of Blood, who fell into terrified heaps and then scrambled to get back up again, even as he kept sending trash bins directly into their paths to cut off their means of escape.
He walked over to them, and they stopped struggling. There is always a moment, he thought, when the loser of a battle for life and death stops struggling. No one ever struggles right up until the end.
“Jackie,” he called, without taking his eyes off the Family of Blood in front of him. “Take the kids back to the flat. I’m going to need the TARDIS.”
*******
Rose, after the Doctor’s curt instruction to her, hailed herself a cab and went home, trying not to panic. There was no one at the flat when she got there, no TARDIS in the living room, and this did not help her panic any. She paced nervously around the flat, from room to room, biting at cuticles and telling herself it was all fine, it was all going to be fine.
When the door finally opened, and Brem and Athena rushed in, she collapsed to the floor in relief and cuddled them to her.
“You’re okay?” she said. “Are you really both okay?”
“We’re fine,” Brem answered her. “You were brilliant, Mum.”
“Oh, not at all. You were brilliant. The two of you.” And she hugged them to her again, so very relieved they were there. Then she looked beyond them, to her mother with the baby. “Where’s your father?” she asked the kids.
They both shrugged.
“Lord knows,” said her mother. “He said he needed the TARDIS and left me to get the kids home. And he rushed me out of here so fast I didn’t have any cash, so we couldn’t just grab a cab. I’d no idea where we were. We had to figure that out, then we had to beg money off strangers for the Tube.”
“I was excellent at begging,” said Brem. “Athena, too. She can look very pitiful.”
“Plus she’s beautiful,” Rose added, which made Athena beam.
“That, too,” Brem agreed.
“And you smell like…”
“It’s perfume,” said Brem, proudly. “They were hunters, Mum. They could smell us. So we had to disguise our scent.”
Hunters, thought Rose. Her children had been hunted today. Wherever the Doctor was, she hoped he was overflowing with Oncoming Storm-ness.
“Well,” she said. “Let’s take baths and get all this perfume off you, then.”
The baths distracted the kids for a little while, and there was a bit of negotiation for Brem to don a temporary replacement jumper while Rose washed his. As she tugged his jumper over his head, he said, voice muffled and thick with misery, “I lost my journal.”
“You what, darling?” she asked, balling his jumper up in her hands.
“I dropped it. At some point. I don’t even know where.”
Her heart broke just a bit for her frowning, intense little boy, who had almost been hunted to death today, and would it have been too much to ask from the universe that he get to keep his journal? She ruffled his hair. “We’ll buy you a new one.”
“Yeah, but it won’t have all my stuff in it.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry, Brem.”
“It’s not your fault.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have dropped it.”
“You had bigger things to worry about,” she reminded him, although it didn’t seem to cheer him up much, as he stepped into the tub.
She had him tip his head back, so he could wet his hair. He flinched, and she probed until she discovered the small cut just behind his ear.
“I think it was from the glass,” he said.
“The glass?”
“Dad exploded a window.”
Rose lifted her eyebrows, but said nothing as she set about cleaning the cut. Brem moaned and squirmed and complained--just like a normal little boy.
It was while she was moving Brem’s jumper from the washing machine to the dryer that her mobile rang, and she reached for it on the kitchen table. TARDIS, it blinked at her, and, relieved, she answered it.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he answered, and just that one word made him sound more exhausted than she’d ever heard him.
“You okay?” she asked, concerned.
“Fine, I’m fine. Are the kids with you?”
“Yes. All three of them. And my mum.”
“And they’re okay?”
“They’re brilliant,” she assured him. “The biggest casualty of the day appears to be Brem’s journal.”
“Brem’s journal?”
“He dropped it at some point. While running.”
The Doctor didn’t say anything. He breathed.
“Are you coming home?” she asked.
“Yes. Now. I’ll be there shortly,” he promised, and she hung up.
The TARDIS materialized in the living room fifteen minutes later, and they all went out to meet it. The Doctor opened the door, smiling broadly without it ever reaching his eyes.
“Wellllllll,” he drawled, strolling out into the living room and crouching to be on level with the children. “Anything interesting happen today?”
They threw their arms around his neck and snuggled against him in hugs, and Rose watched him close his eyes and kiss first Brem’s head and then Athena’s. He murmured something in what Rose recognized by now as Gallifreyan, a questioning note to his voice, and the kids answered him in Gallifreyan, mumbling into his shoulders.
“Good,” he said, and then pushed them gently away. “Look,” he announced, “what I’ve got for you.” He reached into his inner coat pocket, and pulled out a small book, handing it to Brem.
Brem’s face lit up. “My journal! You found it!”
For the first time since he’d returned, the Doctor’s smile looked genuine. “I did.”
Brem flipped through it, as if making sure all of the pages were in place, then looked up at his father suspiciously. “Did you read it?”
“Not a peek,” he promised.
Brem looked satisfied, carrying the book over to the couch, grabbing a pen off the coffee table, and settling down to write the story of his exciting day. The Doctor stood with Athena in his arms and kissed her cheek.
“And this,” he said, reaching into his pocket again, “is for you.” He presented her, with a flourish, with a fuzzy pink hair elastic, and she clapped her hands in delight.
“It’s pink!”
“That it is,” he agreed, then looked across at Fortuna in her grandmother’s arms. “Sorry, love. Nothing for you today, but you had the easiest day of all of us.”
“Yes, Daddy will spoil you later,” Rose assured her. “Tell you what.” Rose pulled Athena out of the Doctor’s arms and put her down. “Grandma is going to make everyone some iced tea.”
“Hot tea for me,” said Brem, without looking up from his journal.
“Yes, yes, hot tea for you,” agreed Rose. “And we have biscuits on the TARDIS, Daddy and I will grab them.”
She intertwined her fingers with the Doctor’s and met her mother’s eyes. Jackie nodded imperceptibly.
“Come on, kids,” she said, shepherding Athena. “Let’s have some tea.”
“Can I have mine out here?” asked Brem.
“Absolutely not,” said Jackie.
“But I’m writing,” complained Brem.
Rose left them to the burgeoning argument, pulling the Doctor into the TARDIS and through the control room, to their bedroom. She pushed him gently onto the bed, and he went, unresisting, laying on his back. Then she curled into a ball next to him, resting her head on his chest, and he moved his arms suddenly after a moment, to crush her to him.
“I…” he began, and then seemed unable to go on.
“Shh,” she breathed, into his chest, her eyes closed and focused on the double beats of his hearts. “It’s okay.”
“They wanted to live forever, Rose. I made them live forever.”
She didn’t know what to say, because she didn’t know what he meant. He sounded anguished, but she didn’t understand exactly why. “It’s okay,” she said again, helplessly. “The kids are okay.”
“I trapped the Father in chains forged at the heart of a dwarf star,” said the Doctor.
Rose stilled on his chest. “You did what?” She wasn’t sure what it meant, but it chilled her to her bones.
“I tipped the Mother into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy. I imprisoned the Sister in every mirror in existence. I suspended the Son in time, dressed as a scarecrow to watch over the fields of England.”
Rose lifted herself up on her elbow, looking down at him as he spoke, slowly, deliberately, staring at the ceiling.
“That’s what I did,” he said, thoughtfully. “And I’d do it all again. I’d…I’d do it all again,” he concluded, and then finally looked at her. “I would. All of the things that I have seen in this universe, and you know the things that I’ve seen in this universe. All those things…all that destruction…all those creatures dying…and two children were at stake today and I…lost my temper. I used to have so much mercy, Rose. I really did.”
“They were our two children. I think you can be forgiven for coming up short on mercy. You didn’t do all of those things you’re telling me you did. You saved our kids’ lives. Do you hear me? You just saved their lives.”
“I can’t lose any of you, Rose. I just can’t.”
“We’ll have to make sure you don’t, then,” she said, and kissed him until he relented and kissed her back. She knew it was all fleeting, that they’d dodged today’s bullets but tomorrow would bring new ones. If they thought about that too hard, they’d go mad, she knew. She drew back, resting her forehead against his. “However did you find Brem’s journal?”
“I crossed his timeline,” he admitted. “It was almost to test if I still had enough self-discipline not to swoop in and grab all of you before you skipped right into the danger. And it turns out I did. But I picked up the journal as soon as the coast was clear.”
“Clever you,” she said.
“Least I could do. He’s had a tough day.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“Welllllll. I am where they get the Time Lord genes from. And they wouldn’t have been in danger today if they hadn’t been Time Lords.”
“If you’re going to blame yourself for the genes you gave them, at least blame yourself for that impossible hair you’ve given all of them. That’s by far the most annoying of the genes they’ve gotten from you.”
He chuckled a bit, and she stroked her hands through that hair. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said again, softly.
“Because I crossed your timelines, I got to see your act of panic.”
“It wasn’t an act.”
“It was brilliant, Rose. It was quick thinking and it was brilliant. And then you took on four members of the Family of Blood single-handedly. They’re living forever with a few scrapes and scratches they got from you.”
“We protect our children. It’s what parents do.” She pulled back a bit. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” he said.
“You’re always okay.”
“Yes. But I am okay.”
She traced the features of his face with her fingers. “You are such a marvelous father. And a wonderful man. And I love you. Are we agreed on all that?”
He smiled, and it looked less cloudy than it had before. “Yes. Agreed.”
“Good.” She kissed the tip of his nose. “Let’s go have tea with our children.”