A Brem Tale - Commentary, Part One
In response to this meme,
xphoenixrising requested A Brem Tale. I am the only loser who babbles so much that I had to make this two parts. Oops...
Shall I set the scene? When I finished writing “Chaos Theory,” I really thought I had come to the end of my writing in this universe. I don’t normally write children, I told myself, and I had nothing more to say about this family. Why, yes, I am frequently fantastically wrong, why do you ask? “A Brem Tale” was the first ficlet idea I had after finishing “Chaos Theory,” which is why it has such a generic name. At the time it was written, I still didn’t think there would be a large number of ficlets to follow it. But Brem just demanded to be heard, and heard some more. Anyway, I woke up one day thinking, What if Brem met Nine? This fic came out of that.
It was tricky traveling with three children.
Why the third child should push them over the edge, when they had handled the two without difficulty, was a mystery. The Doctor called Fortuna “the tipping point.”
It’s possible that I was reading “The Tipping Point” around the time I wrote this fic. Great book!
Brem asked why “the tipping point” was an acceptable nickname for Fortuna but “Fort” was not. The Doctor told Brem he asked far too many questions and nothing good ever came of little boys who asked too many questions.
Originally, this fic was going to be told with a more omniscient narrator. I hadn’t spent a ton of time in Brem’s head and was uncertain of my ability to stay there. It turned out I liked Brem’s head and settled in happily, but that’s way the Doctor is “the Doctor” here and not “Dad.” Jlrpuck actually says that she likes the idea that every once in a while Brem calls him “the Doctor” in his head, and I actually do, too, so we’ve left it.
Also, I really love the idea of the Doctor telling Brem that no good ever comes of little boys who ask too many questions. Because I’m sure that’s the type of little boy the Doctor was.
But it happened that, on a crowded asteroid bazaar, Brem realized that his parents had misplaced him.
Naturally, Brem had nothing to do with this. Brem is brilliant, his parents are wanderers.
His father had been bartering over a part for the TARDIS, frowning about its quality; his mother had been juggling both of his sisters as she leaned over a display of sparkly jewelry. He took two steps-honestly! Two! Steps!-because the next stall was displaying a game that looked like Earth checkers but seemed to be played in teams, and the next thing he knew he looked up and his entire family had vanished. Okay, he may have moved on to the next stall, where they were selling animals that looked like flying goldfish. And then on to the next stall, where they were selling tiny instruments that he thought he might need, and it was then he’d looked up to ask his parents if he might be allowed to buy some of them and found them inconveniently nowhere in sight.
I actually had a hard time coming up with stalls that would catch Brem’s attention, but I always knew he would end at a stall with tinkering material, because only tinkering material would actually make Brem want to find a parent for money.
Brem put his hands on his hips and frowned. Unacceptable, he thought. Completely unacceptable. He was going to give them quite a piece of his mind when he found them.
He looked up and down the crowded line of stalls, in search of his father’s coat. The color was distinctive, not one that existed in this alien culture, and Brem thought it would stand out.
I love alien fanfiction. It’s so great to just make up a detail like this.
He looked for Athena, who would surely realize he had been forgotten. He could feel them-they were clearly still on the asteroid, and he didn’t think his parents would be so thick as to not notice he was missing before moving the TARDIS-but feeling other Time Lords and pinning down their locations with any accuracy were two quite different things.
I also love how vaguely I always describe their Time Lord connection. This is so that I can do different things with it as I please.
Brem sighed. How troublesome, he thought. Really. It was so irritating having a family who kept wandering off.
Rule Number One, as his father reminds him. Brem is so much like his dad, in his belief that no one ever listens to Rule Number One.
And that was when he caught sight of his mother, a few stalls down, looking at bolts of cloth. She’d lost the rest of the family. And she was dressed differently. And he should have realized instantly what was going on-you would have thought he hadn’t been raised as a traveler in time, the way he reacted, and he was furious with himself later-but he headed toward her before thinking, already preparing the lecture he was going to give her.
I needed this last sentence, because I feared it might be obvious to the reader that Brem was marching toward an earlier version of his mother, and I needed to excuse Brem’s stupidity in stumbling into this situation. But really, we’re in his head so he’s not being completely honest about this, he’s a little boy who’s lost his parents and he spots his mother and is so relieved that he dashes toward her immediately. But Brem would never admit he committed this misstep because he was frightened.
She had turned away from the bolts of clothing, turned out toward the crowd and was looking over it, clearly searching for him, but her eyes passed right over him without registering him, and that irritated him even further. “Mum,” he said, in frustration, as he marched up to her.
She blinked at him and said, “What did you call me?”
And that was when the penny finally dropped for him. His eyes widened, and he stared at this woman who was clearly his mother. Just not yet. “Oh,” he said, backpedaling quickly, and he turned to flat-out run and collided instead with the leg of someone who had come up behind him.
And Brem cleverly catches on quickly. I assumed that a kid raised in as timey-wimey a world as Brem would grasp immediately that a timeline had been crossed.
“Oi,” said a voice, reaching out to grab him.
Brem tried to squirm away from the hands that reached for him, suddenly panicked for the first time all day. “Let go of me,” he said, as fingers snagged into the sleeve of his jumper. “Let go of me or I’ll scream bloody murder,” he threatened, and kicked at the leg of his captor.
“Settle down. I’m not gonna hurt you,” the voice continued, stepping out of reach of Brem’s ineffectual kicks and punches. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
“He must have stolen something,” said another voice.
Brem frowned as he was lifted and turned around. The disadvantage of being only five years old, he thought. He was now directly facing his not-mother, who still looked astonished, and one of the very hairy aliens who manned the bazaar’s stalls.
Poor Brem. He hates being five. Also, notice how long I hold the reveal of Nine here…
“I didn’t steal anything,” Brem denied, firmly. “I’ve just got to-”
“Where’re your parents?” asked the voice of the man that was holding him.
“They…wandered off,” Brem said, sulkily.
I am a firm believer that Time Lords are very sulky creatures.
“Ah,” said the man, deeply amused. “Parents have a way of doing that.”
His not-mother was looking at him but she didn’t say anything, and Brem felt a burst of pride. She had always been brilliant, his mother. She wasn’t going to say anything that might cause some sort of horrible paradox. Dad would kill him if he started a paradox.
Brem just adores his mother.
“We don’t let children wander through the bazaar by themselves,” proclaimed the alien. “They steal things.”
“I haven’t stolen anything,” Brem retorted, hotly. “And if you don’t let me go-” He squirmed again in his captor’s hold-“my dad’ll be very angry. And he’s not the sort of man you want to make angry.”
Ah, making Oncoming Storm threats and everything!
His not-mother’s eyes were flickering from him to whoever was holding him captive. Her mouth quirked in a sudden smile, almost of disbelief. “No,” she agreed, grinning now. “I bet he isn’t.”
So. Rose is confronted by a little boy who calls her “Mum.” On an asteroid bazaar. If she really is this little boy’s mother, then this must be a little boy from her future. A little boy traveling space and time. Who would Rose have a time- and space-traveling child with? Well, obviously, the Doctor. It is in this moment that Rose realizes that maybe, at some point in her future, she actually has the Doctor’s child. I think at this point Rose is in love with him, but they definitely do not have that type of relationship, and it’s an amazing moment for Rose to realize that they’re going to get there.
“What’s so funny?” demanded the man, and even Brem wanted to know that.
I love that (a) the Doctor is in the dark here, because it’s good for his ego every once in a while; and (b) Brem cannot comprehend why his mother might be amazed to discover she’s going to have kids with his dad.
His not-mother shook her head. “Nothing.”
There was an uncertain pause, before the man said, “The boy hasn’t stolen anything. And I’ll find his parents.”
The alien’s eyes, already narrow slits, became practically nonexistent, then he muttered something and went back to work his stall.
Brem succeeded in jerking his arm out of the man’s grip. “I can find them myself.”
“What’s this, then?” asked the man. “No ‘thanks for helping me out?’”
“I didn’t steal anything,” Brem said. “I would’ve gotten free.”
Of course he didn’t need help. He’s Brem Tyler. Clearly, this man doesn’t have proper respect for his abilities.
He had to tip his head back to see the man, who was tall like his father, and dressed in an equally incongruous manner in a black leather jacket. He had a pair of piercing blue eyes that sliced into Brem.
And here, finally, we get a description of Nine. Such as it is. Because I lose interest very quickly when it comes to describing things.
“Plus, your threatening, powerful father would have shown up, right?”
Brem stared into those blue eyes and felt instinctively uncomfortable. Because there was this odd feeling of…of…He couldn’t possibly have randomly run into another Time Lord, here in the middle of this asteroid bazaar, and yet he appeared to have. Brem scrambled with his consciousness. He knew there was a way to shield himself, knew his father did it all the time, but he’d never bothered to learn how, had never thought it important, but now he was faced with a strange Time Lord and he could think of nothing but how he ought to try to keep his own Time Lord status a secret.
Naturally, Brem would have no idea how to deal with a Time Lord he considers a stranger. I cannot imagine how much panic he must have felt to have someone in his head who wasn’t a father or a sister.
Too late.
He noticed the shift in those blue eyes, from casual interest to sharp regard.
I needed it to take a while for Nine to realize there were other Time Lords around, because you’d think he would have realized it immediately. I’ve decided that he maybe noticed something a bit off but thought it was impossible that it could have been other Time Lords, until he realized that he was holding one right here.
Brem took a tiny step back, but knew it would have been useless to flee. Here he was, trapped by an unknown Time Lord. He was ashamed by his own stupidity.
Poor Brem. Much like he’s dad, he’s hard on himself.
“Who exactly is your father?” asked this strange man, staring down at him.
Brem swallowed. And then the most stunning thought occurred to him. His head swung toward his not-mother, watching their interaction with interest. He looked back toward the strange man. What was Mum doing, traveling through space and time with a man who wasn’t Dad? Had she been kidnapped? Was it possible she was in trouble? Maybe Brem was supposed to have crossed his mother’s timeline so that he could save her from this crisis and push her back into the timeline where she had him and Athena and Fortuna. Maybe if he didn’t do something here, he would cause a massive paradox that would wipe them out of existence.
All, I thought, reasonable assumptions for a smart kid who doesn’t yet have all the facts about his superior biology.
He lifted his chin a bit. “I’ll tell you if you let her go.”
The man’s voice showed surprise. “Let who go?”
“Her.” He nodded his chin toward his not-mother.
The man, startled, looked from Brem to Not-Mum and back again. “What makes you think I’m holding her hostage?”
“I…know things,” said Brem, cursing himself. Dad would have had such a good comeback there. He needed to practice that more.
I love this. A lot of times Brem can pretend to be a bit cool about his father, a sort of “Yeah, I guess he’s alright, if you like that sort of thing” attitude. It’s all affected, and he actually loves and admires him fiercely, as little things like this show. (Is it allowed to say that you love something you wrote…?)
“What’s your name?” the man asked him, watching him speculatively.
“What’s your name?” Brem countered.
The man crouched, bringing his face level with Brem’s. Brem knew that, if he wanted, this man could push his way into his mind and he would be absolutely powerless.
Luckily, though Brem doesn’t yet know it, he’s dealing with his father, who’s far too kind to do something like that to a little kid.
He was suddenly furious with his father for not having told him how to protect himself against other Time Lords. The man’s eyes flickered toward Not-Mum, and then he leaned close and murmured, “I really need to know who your parents are.”
“I’m not going to tell you,” said Brem, firmly.
“It’s smart of you not to trust me. But you seem to be a living, breathing paradox, and I think I need to talk to your parents.” He was keeping his voice low, so Not-Mum couldn’t hear.
Had to make it so Rose couldn’t hear, because if Rose could hear what the interrogation was about, she might have revealed that Brem had called her “Mum.”
“Now tell me who your father is.”
“Not until you tell me who you are,” said Brem, buying time.
Not until I sat down to write a commentary did I realize how many times I can say that Brem’s a lot like his dad…
He was trying to figure out what he thought he ought to do. Maybe he ought to just raise a huge fuss. Surely his parents were looking for him by now. But did he want his parents running into Not-Mum and her kidnapper? What if this man was out to track down the only other remaining Time Lord, the one who had supposedly killed off the rest of them, to seek some revenge? It didn’t seem far-fetched. Kidnapping Not-Mum would certainly be the first step to getting at Dad. Kidnapping him or Athena or Fortuna would definitely be the second step.
I love how much role reversal exists for Brem. In his head, he is always the one in charge, the one who has to protect everyone else (again, much like someone else we know). He is the one who has to teach his parents not to wander off, and he is the one who has to protect his not-mum from this kidnapper, and he is the one who has to protect his father from this perceived threat. And I also love how clear-headed Brem is about the fact that he and his mother and sisters are huge targets for any of his father’s enemies.
“I’m the Doctor,” said the man in his ear.
Ta-da! The big reveal moment for Brem.
“Now tell me who you are.”
Brem felt the breath rush out of him. “That’s impossible,” he managed.
Ah, yes, his father’s default reaction…
“What?”
“You can’t be…Let me go.” He began struggling violently. He didn’t care anymore. The most important thing was to get away, warn Dad, get him to fix this so things made sense again.
Confronted with something so totally unexpected and terrifying, Brem can think of nothing but getting his father to protect him, reminding us all once again that he’s still only five years old.
“Help!” he shouted. “Let me go. Help!”
“Hey.” The man almost let him go, just in surprise. “Hey. Stop it. What’s wrong with you?”
“Help! Help!” He was starting to attract a crowd now, people stopping to stare, as he writhed about.
“Let him go,” said Not-Mum.
“I can’t,” said the man holding him, grimly. “I’ve got to talk to his-”
Brem leaned forward and sank his teeth into the man’s wrist. The man jerked, swearing, and Brem hit the ground running. He ran so hard that when his father reached out and grabbed his arm, he turned immediately with his fist out and punched him as hard as he could.
I think Brem knows how to fight. Better than his pacifist father would wish. There’s something scrappy about Brem.
“Oof,” said Dad, and Brem paused long enough to register the familiar brown coat, the warm brown eyes, the wild tousled hair.
And I briefly grow interested in describing Ten…
He threw himself on him. “Dad!”
“Brem, where have you been?” the Doctor demanded, harshly, even as he returned the hug. “Your mother and I were worried sick. You should never have wandered off-”
Ah, look, another Doctor slip here. And I love that the Doctor hugs him even as he’s scolding him.
“Dad, there’s a man here,” said Brem, breathlessly, pushing out of the embrace. “He’s pretending to be you. And he’s kidnapped Mum.”
“Kidnapped Mum?” His father drew his eyebrows together. “What are you talking about?”
Brem shook his head. “Not Mum. I mean, not our Mum. Your mum.
Love the description of Rose before she was a mother as being his, versus ours.
Before she was Mum. Before she had kids. He’s kidnapped her and he’s taken her away from you and he’s going to destroy the timeline if you don’t go fix it-”
“You saw your mother? Before she was your mother?”
Part Two
xphoenixrising requested A Brem Tale. I am the only loser who babbles so much that I had to make this two parts. Oops...
Shall I set the scene? When I finished writing “Chaos Theory,” I really thought I had come to the end of my writing in this universe. I don’t normally write children, I told myself, and I had nothing more to say about this family. Why, yes, I am frequently fantastically wrong, why do you ask? “A Brem Tale” was the first ficlet idea I had after finishing “Chaos Theory,” which is why it has such a generic name. At the time it was written, I still didn’t think there would be a large number of ficlets to follow it. But Brem just demanded to be heard, and heard some more. Anyway, I woke up one day thinking, What if Brem met Nine? This fic came out of that.
It was tricky traveling with three children.
Why the third child should push them over the edge, when they had handled the two without difficulty, was a mystery. The Doctor called Fortuna “the tipping point.”
It’s possible that I was reading “The Tipping Point” around the time I wrote this fic. Great book!
Brem asked why “the tipping point” was an acceptable nickname for Fortuna but “Fort” was not. The Doctor told Brem he asked far too many questions and nothing good ever came of little boys who asked too many questions.
Originally, this fic was going to be told with a more omniscient narrator. I hadn’t spent a ton of time in Brem’s head and was uncertain of my ability to stay there. It turned out I liked Brem’s head and settled in happily, but that’s way the Doctor is “the Doctor” here and not “Dad.” Jlrpuck actually says that she likes the idea that every once in a while Brem calls him “the Doctor” in his head, and I actually do, too, so we’ve left it.
Also, I really love the idea of the Doctor telling Brem that no good ever comes of little boys who ask too many questions. Because I’m sure that’s the type of little boy the Doctor was.
But it happened that, on a crowded asteroid bazaar, Brem realized that his parents had misplaced him.
Naturally, Brem had nothing to do with this. Brem is brilliant, his parents are wanderers.
His father had been bartering over a part for the TARDIS, frowning about its quality; his mother had been juggling both of his sisters as she leaned over a display of sparkly jewelry. He took two steps-honestly! Two! Steps!-because the next stall was displaying a game that looked like Earth checkers but seemed to be played in teams, and the next thing he knew he looked up and his entire family had vanished. Okay, he may have moved on to the next stall, where they were selling animals that looked like flying goldfish. And then on to the next stall, where they were selling tiny instruments that he thought he might need, and it was then he’d looked up to ask his parents if he might be allowed to buy some of them and found them inconveniently nowhere in sight.
I actually had a hard time coming up with stalls that would catch Brem’s attention, but I always knew he would end at a stall with tinkering material, because only tinkering material would actually make Brem want to find a parent for money.
Brem put his hands on his hips and frowned. Unacceptable, he thought. Completely unacceptable. He was going to give them quite a piece of his mind when he found them.
He looked up and down the crowded line of stalls, in search of his father’s coat. The color was distinctive, not one that existed in this alien culture, and Brem thought it would stand out.
I love alien fanfiction. It’s so great to just make up a detail like this.
He looked for Athena, who would surely realize he had been forgotten. He could feel them-they were clearly still on the asteroid, and he didn’t think his parents would be so thick as to not notice he was missing before moving the TARDIS-but feeling other Time Lords and pinning down their locations with any accuracy were two quite different things.
I also love how vaguely I always describe their Time Lord connection. This is so that I can do different things with it as I please.
Brem sighed. How troublesome, he thought. Really. It was so irritating having a family who kept wandering off.
Rule Number One, as his father reminds him. Brem is so much like his dad, in his belief that no one ever listens to Rule Number One.
And that was when he caught sight of his mother, a few stalls down, looking at bolts of cloth. She’d lost the rest of the family. And she was dressed differently. And he should have realized instantly what was going on-you would have thought he hadn’t been raised as a traveler in time, the way he reacted, and he was furious with himself later-but he headed toward her before thinking, already preparing the lecture he was going to give her.
I needed this last sentence, because I feared it might be obvious to the reader that Brem was marching toward an earlier version of his mother, and I needed to excuse Brem’s stupidity in stumbling into this situation. But really, we’re in his head so he’s not being completely honest about this, he’s a little boy who’s lost his parents and he spots his mother and is so relieved that he dashes toward her immediately. But Brem would never admit he committed this misstep because he was frightened.
She had turned away from the bolts of clothing, turned out toward the crowd and was looking over it, clearly searching for him, but her eyes passed right over him without registering him, and that irritated him even further. “Mum,” he said, in frustration, as he marched up to her.
She blinked at him and said, “What did you call me?”
And that was when the penny finally dropped for him. His eyes widened, and he stared at this woman who was clearly his mother. Just not yet. “Oh,” he said, backpedaling quickly, and he turned to flat-out run and collided instead with the leg of someone who had come up behind him.
And Brem cleverly catches on quickly. I assumed that a kid raised in as timey-wimey a world as Brem would grasp immediately that a timeline had been crossed.
“Oi,” said a voice, reaching out to grab him.
Brem tried to squirm away from the hands that reached for him, suddenly panicked for the first time all day. “Let go of me,” he said, as fingers snagged into the sleeve of his jumper. “Let go of me or I’ll scream bloody murder,” he threatened, and kicked at the leg of his captor.
“Settle down. I’m not gonna hurt you,” the voice continued, stepping out of reach of Brem’s ineffectual kicks and punches. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
“He must have stolen something,” said another voice.
Brem frowned as he was lifted and turned around. The disadvantage of being only five years old, he thought. He was now directly facing his not-mother, who still looked astonished, and one of the very hairy aliens who manned the bazaar’s stalls.
Poor Brem. He hates being five. Also, notice how long I hold the reveal of Nine here…
“I didn’t steal anything,” Brem denied, firmly. “I’ve just got to-”
“Where’re your parents?” asked the voice of the man that was holding him.
“They…wandered off,” Brem said, sulkily.
I am a firm believer that Time Lords are very sulky creatures.
“Ah,” said the man, deeply amused. “Parents have a way of doing that.”
His not-mother was looking at him but she didn’t say anything, and Brem felt a burst of pride. She had always been brilliant, his mother. She wasn’t going to say anything that might cause some sort of horrible paradox. Dad would kill him if he started a paradox.
Brem just adores his mother.
“We don’t let children wander through the bazaar by themselves,” proclaimed the alien. “They steal things.”
“I haven’t stolen anything,” Brem retorted, hotly. “And if you don’t let me go-” He squirmed again in his captor’s hold-“my dad’ll be very angry. And he’s not the sort of man you want to make angry.”
Ah, making Oncoming Storm threats and everything!
His not-mother’s eyes were flickering from him to whoever was holding him captive. Her mouth quirked in a sudden smile, almost of disbelief. “No,” she agreed, grinning now. “I bet he isn’t.”
So. Rose is confronted by a little boy who calls her “Mum.” On an asteroid bazaar. If she really is this little boy’s mother, then this must be a little boy from her future. A little boy traveling space and time. Who would Rose have a time- and space-traveling child with? Well, obviously, the Doctor. It is in this moment that Rose realizes that maybe, at some point in her future, she actually has the Doctor’s child. I think at this point Rose is in love with him, but they definitely do not have that type of relationship, and it’s an amazing moment for Rose to realize that they’re going to get there.
“What’s so funny?” demanded the man, and even Brem wanted to know that.
I love that (a) the Doctor is in the dark here, because it’s good for his ego every once in a while; and (b) Brem cannot comprehend why his mother might be amazed to discover she’s going to have kids with his dad.
His not-mother shook her head. “Nothing.”
There was an uncertain pause, before the man said, “The boy hasn’t stolen anything. And I’ll find his parents.”
The alien’s eyes, already narrow slits, became practically nonexistent, then he muttered something and went back to work his stall.
Brem succeeded in jerking his arm out of the man’s grip. “I can find them myself.”
“What’s this, then?” asked the man. “No ‘thanks for helping me out?’”
“I didn’t steal anything,” Brem said. “I would’ve gotten free.”
Of course he didn’t need help. He’s Brem Tyler. Clearly, this man doesn’t have proper respect for his abilities.
He had to tip his head back to see the man, who was tall like his father, and dressed in an equally incongruous manner in a black leather jacket. He had a pair of piercing blue eyes that sliced into Brem.
And here, finally, we get a description of Nine. Such as it is. Because I lose interest very quickly when it comes to describing things.
“Plus, your threatening, powerful father would have shown up, right?”
Brem stared into those blue eyes and felt instinctively uncomfortable. Because there was this odd feeling of…of…He couldn’t possibly have randomly run into another Time Lord, here in the middle of this asteroid bazaar, and yet he appeared to have. Brem scrambled with his consciousness. He knew there was a way to shield himself, knew his father did it all the time, but he’d never bothered to learn how, had never thought it important, but now he was faced with a strange Time Lord and he could think of nothing but how he ought to try to keep his own Time Lord status a secret.
Naturally, Brem would have no idea how to deal with a Time Lord he considers a stranger. I cannot imagine how much panic he must have felt to have someone in his head who wasn’t a father or a sister.
Too late.
He noticed the shift in those blue eyes, from casual interest to sharp regard.
I needed it to take a while for Nine to realize there were other Time Lords around, because you’d think he would have realized it immediately. I’ve decided that he maybe noticed something a bit off but thought it was impossible that it could have been other Time Lords, until he realized that he was holding one right here.
Brem took a tiny step back, but knew it would have been useless to flee. Here he was, trapped by an unknown Time Lord. He was ashamed by his own stupidity.
Poor Brem. Much like he’s dad, he’s hard on himself.
“Who exactly is your father?” asked this strange man, staring down at him.
Brem swallowed. And then the most stunning thought occurred to him. His head swung toward his not-mother, watching their interaction with interest. He looked back toward the strange man. What was Mum doing, traveling through space and time with a man who wasn’t Dad? Had she been kidnapped? Was it possible she was in trouble? Maybe Brem was supposed to have crossed his mother’s timeline so that he could save her from this crisis and push her back into the timeline where she had him and Athena and Fortuna. Maybe if he didn’t do something here, he would cause a massive paradox that would wipe them out of existence.
All, I thought, reasonable assumptions for a smart kid who doesn’t yet have all the facts about his superior biology.
He lifted his chin a bit. “I’ll tell you if you let her go.”
The man’s voice showed surprise. “Let who go?”
“Her.” He nodded his chin toward his not-mother.
The man, startled, looked from Brem to Not-Mum and back again. “What makes you think I’m holding her hostage?”
“I…know things,” said Brem, cursing himself. Dad would have had such a good comeback there. He needed to practice that more.
I love this. A lot of times Brem can pretend to be a bit cool about his father, a sort of “Yeah, I guess he’s alright, if you like that sort of thing” attitude. It’s all affected, and he actually loves and admires him fiercely, as little things like this show. (Is it allowed to say that you love something you wrote…?)
“What’s your name?” the man asked him, watching him speculatively.
“What’s your name?” Brem countered.
The man crouched, bringing his face level with Brem’s. Brem knew that, if he wanted, this man could push his way into his mind and he would be absolutely powerless.
Luckily, though Brem doesn’t yet know it, he’s dealing with his father, who’s far too kind to do something like that to a little kid.
He was suddenly furious with his father for not having told him how to protect himself against other Time Lords. The man’s eyes flickered toward Not-Mum, and then he leaned close and murmured, “I really need to know who your parents are.”
“I’m not going to tell you,” said Brem, firmly.
“It’s smart of you not to trust me. But you seem to be a living, breathing paradox, and I think I need to talk to your parents.” He was keeping his voice low, so Not-Mum couldn’t hear.
Had to make it so Rose couldn’t hear, because if Rose could hear what the interrogation was about, she might have revealed that Brem had called her “Mum.”
“Now tell me who your father is.”
“Not until you tell me who you are,” said Brem, buying time.
Not until I sat down to write a commentary did I realize how many times I can say that Brem’s a lot like his dad…
He was trying to figure out what he thought he ought to do. Maybe he ought to just raise a huge fuss. Surely his parents were looking for him by now. But did he want his parents running into Not-Mum and her kidnapper? What if this man was out to track down the only other remaining Time Lord, the one who had supposedly killed off the rest of them, to seek some revenge? It didn’t seem far-fetched. Kidnapping Not-Mum would certainly be the first step to getting at Dad. Kidnapping him or Athena or Fortuna would definitely be the second step.
I love how much role reversal exists for Brem. In his head, he is always the one in charge, the one who has to protect everyone else (again, much like someone else we know). He is the one who has to teach his parents not to wander off, and he is the one who has to protect his not-mum from this kidnapper, and he is the one who has to protect his father from this perceived threat. And I also love how clear-headed Brem is about the fact that he and his mother and sisters are huge targets for any of his father’s enemies.
“I’m the Doctor,” said the man in his ear.
Ta-da! The big reveal moment for Brem.
“Now tell me who you are.”
Brem felt the breath rush out of him. “That’s impossible,” he managed.
Ah, yes, his father’s default reaction…
“What?”
“You can’t be…Let me go.” He began struggling violently. He didn’t care anymore. The most important thing was to get away, warn Dad, get him to fix this so things made sense again.
Confronted with something so totally unexpected and terrifying, Brem can think of nothing but getting his father to protect him, reminding us all once again that he’s still only five years old.
“Help!” he shouted. “Let me go. Help!”
“Hey.” The man almost let him go, just in surprise. “Hey. Stop it. What’s wrong with you?”
“Help! Help!” He was starting to attract a crowd now, people stopping to stare, as he writhed about.
“Let him go,” said Not-Mum.
“I can’t,” said the man holding him, grimly. “I’ve got to talk to his-”
Brem leaned forward and sank his teeth into the man’s wrist. The man jerked, swearing, and Brem hit the ground running. He ran so hard that when his father reached out and grabbed his arm, he turned immediately with his fist out and punched him as hard as he could.
I think Brem knows how to fight. Better than his pacifist father would wish. There’s something scrappy about Brem.
“Oof,” said Dad, and Brem paused long enough to register the familiar brown coat, the warm brown eyes, the wild tousled hair.
And I briefly grow interested in describing Ten…
He threw himself on him. “Dad!”
“Brem, where have you been?” the Doctor demanded, harshly, even as he returned the hug. “Your mother and I were worried sick. You should never have wandered off-”
Ah, look, another Doctor slip here. And I love that the Doctor hugs him even as he’s scolding him.
“Dad, there’s a man here,” said Brem, breathlessly, pushing out of the embrace. “He’s pretending to be you. And he’s kidnapped Mum.”
“Kidnapped Mum?” His father drew his eyebrows together. “What are you talking about?”
Brem shook his head. “Not Mum. I mean, not our Mum. Your mum.
Love the description of Rose before she was a mother as being his, versus ours.
Before she was Mum. Before she had kids. He’s kidnapped her and he’s taken her away from you and he’s going to destroy the timeline if you don’t go fix it-”
“You saw your mother? Before she was your mother?”
Part Two