The Girl Scout Guide to Saving the Universe (2/3) by earlgreytea68-commentary by fishface44
The Girl Scout Guide to Saving the Universe (2/3) by earlgreytea68-commentary by fishface44
Author - earlgreytea68
Part 2
They were called Brownies.
“Brownies?” echoed the Doctor. “Like the…sweet?”
“Yes,” answered the woman in charge. Troop leader, she had said. Girl Scout Troop Leader. She was an extremely sunny woman, who never stopped smiling. The Doctor was a happy person. But he was quite sure one’s muscles ought to hurt from smiling that much.
Brownies? thought the Doctor. You may as well call them Faerie Cakes, or Meringues. “Don’t you think something adventure-y would be more appropriate?” he asked. [I think he is picturing the girls all dressed up as little cakes-with edible ball bearings, of course.]
The troop leader’s smile didn’t falter. She laughed like he was quite hilarious and then turned to Athena. “And what’s your name?” she asked.
“Athena,” she answered, clinging to her father’s hand and staring up at her in shock.
“That’s a lovely name,” said the troop leader. “Like that little girl. Christina Onassis’s daughter. Her name is Athena, isn’t it?”
“No,” corrected Athena. “It’s Athena like the Greek goddess of heroic endeavour.” Athena was the Greek goddess of many things. It was one of the things Athena liked about her name, that her namesake had been so versatile. [Of the three children, Athena always strikes me as the surest of Who She Is.]
“Well, isn’t that lovely?” responded the troop leader, smiling.
“Heroic endeavour,” inserted the Doctor. “You know, like the stuff the Brownies do.”
“That’s exactly right,” agreed the troop leader indulgently. “Athena what?” she asked.
“Athena Rose,” Athena answered.
“No, I mean last name,” smiled the troop leader.
“Tyler,” she offered.
“Athena Tyler. I will be right back with some paperwork for you to fill out.” She moved off.
Athena was silent for a second. Then she said, “She smiles too much.”
“I’m…sure she’s just happy to be a troop leader. I mean, it must be fun, don’t you think?”
Athena nodded, looking rather nervously toward the girls who were filling the next room.
The troop leader returned with the proper paperwork. “There now, Athena,” she said. “I’ll just do this boring paperwork with your dad, and you can go in and play with the girls. Today we’re making Brownie bracelets.”
Athena brightened at that. She paused before letting go of his hand, looking back toward him.
There were times, thought the Doctor, when he could almost convince himself that Rose abruptly disappearing, all those years ago, had not traumatized his children for life. And then he would sense Brem’s rising panic if his mother was even five minutes late at a rendezvous point, or Athena’s tremulous fear now, as she turned to him. [And because he was not completely certain he would be able to return to his children when he left them to go get Rose, I think his guilt about this is Huge.]
“You’ll wait for me, right?” she asked.
He crouched to be on her level. “I will wait for you,” he promised. “I will be right here, after you’ve made your…Brownie bracelet. Platypus,” he smiled, and tapped the tip of her nose with his finger.
She smiled back. “Platypus,” she said, and gave him a hug before skipping off.
The Doctor stood up.
“She’s just delightful,” the troop leader told him. “And she looks just like you.”
“So you’re making Brownie bracelets today?”
“Yes. Don’t worry, it’s very easy. Just gluing some fake gemstones on some fake leather.” The troop leader laughed merrily. “If you could just sign here? Just typical liability stuff.”
The Doctor scrawled unintelligibly, thinking that his Gallifreyan name-and the time it would take him to write it-might alarm the troop leader. [It made me laugh that he would consider signing his real name on a mundane Girl Scout form when through the entire TV series it is a Secret.] “When are you going to do something adenture-y?”
The troop leader bubbled laughter again. “Well, next week we’re going to make Girl Scout worry dolls.”
“Ah,” said the Doctor. “That doesn’t sound all that adventure-y.”
“Oh, believe me,” she assured him, bouncily. “It’s adventurous enough for eight-year-old girls.”
“Welllllllll, they could be…” He drew a blank as to what else the eight-year-old girls could be doing. Honestly, making a Girl Scout worry doll and a fake gemstone bracelet seemed to be exactly the sort of thing Athena was going to love. “What about camping? When are they going camping?”
“Well, not now, Mr. Tyler,” she said. “It’s cold outside. Not until summer.” [He never seems to have any idea what season it is on Earth, perhaps because his body temperature seems to be unaffected by the weather here.]
“Doctor,” he corrected her.
“Dr. Tyler.”
“No, just Doctor.”
“Just Doctor then,” she smiled, happily. “I’m sure Athena will be fine and get along with everyone, don’t you worry.”
“I’m not…I’m not worried, really, I-”
“See you in an hour,” she said, and walked into the meeting room of the little hall and then firmly closed its door in his face.
Apparently, he was not allowed to participate in the secret Girl Scout goings-on. Bored, he wandered out into the cold and wished that he’d thought to bring something to amuse himself. An hour could go by terribly slowly. He thought maybe some sort of alien invasion would happen, but the little neighbourhood stayed quiet. Well, it was loud actually, cars going back and forth on the street and such, but they were human sorts of noises and not alarming. He supposed to he could go back to the TARDIS, but Athena would sense the distance between them, and he didn’t want to alarm her on her first meeting. If he wasn’t going to be allowed to participate, he supposed the two of them ought to have a discussion about whether he could just spend the hour on the TARDIS.
He sat on the steps and counted the number of red cars that drove by until other parents started arriving to collect their children. And, when he walked in, Athena came bounding over to him.
“Look!” she exclaimed, holding a small brown bracelet out to him. It was dotted over with dull blue gems.
Nothing in the universe could be less adventure-y than that, he thought, sadly.
“It’s beautiful,” he told her.
“It’s for you,” she said.
“Ah.” He took it. There was no way it would fit on his wrist. “I’ll just put it in my pocket for now, shall I?”
“Good-bye, Athena! Doctor!” called the troop leader.
“Bye, Buffy!” shouted Athena back, waving.
“Is her name Buffy?” asked the Doctor.
Athena nodded. “Yeah, like the vampire slayer. Except I don’t think she’d be able to slay any vampires.”
“No argument there,” said the Doctor, taking Athena’s hand and leading her out of the meeting hall.
“And I made one for Mum and one for Brem and one for Fort, too,” said Athena, as she skipped along next to him on their way back. “And next week, Daddy, we’re making dolls. Isn’t that gorgeous?”
“Yes,” he said, weakly.
“I asked about the camping for you. Buffy said not until summer. But she said you can definitely come along. I told her all about how you used to go camping all the time, and how you’re the cleverest being in the universe. [I pause here to huggle Athena.] Oh! Daddy! And it’s Erin’s birthday party next week and she said I can go! Can I?”
“I…Er…Yes?”
“They did ask me how come I don’t go to school, so I said that I’m home-schooled, just like you said to say, and they said that’s very cool, and there’s no chance we can have them over for tea, is there?”
“Not really, no.”
“Thought I’d ask anyway.” She burst through the TARDIS door, shouting, “Mum!” as she raced down the hallway. [They are a family of champion runners!]
Rose was in the library, watching Brem and Fortuna as they played Pretty Princess Perils, and she looked up as Athena barrelled in.
“Mum!” exclaimed Athena. “Look!” She handed her one of the Brownie bracelets.
Fortuna had abandoned Pretty Princess Perils as soon as her sister had arrived.
“I’ve got one for you, too, Fortuna,” said Athena, handing it to her.
“It’s beautiful,” said Fortuna.
“They didn’t have anything pink,” Athena explained.
“That’s silly,” said Fortuna.
“Yeah. I made one for you, too, Brem.”
“Hang on,” said Brem, staring at the digital princess on the television screen. “I’m almost through this Field of Evil Sparkles.”
“Brem loves Pretty Princess Perils now,” said Fortuna. [And as we learn in the story A Moment of Truth, Fortuna is always honest.]
“I don’t ‘love’ it, I just-” He sighed in frustration as an evil sparkle hit his princess and she clasped her hands over her heart, fluttered her eyelashes, and fainted.
“Here’s your Brownie bracelet,” Athena told him, and handed it across to him.
Brem took it, looked at it for a second. “This is what you did in adventure scouting?”
“Yes,” Athena affirmed, proudly.
Brem looked up at his father. His mouth twitched.
“Stop it,” the Doctor told him.
“Next week, we’re making dolls,” Athena told her audience. “Worry dolls! They’re Guatemalan. I think they’re like the worry dolls on Fughhh.”
“Except that you don’t bite off their heads when you’re worrying over something,” said Rose. “They’re not edible here on Earth.”
“Well, that’s good to know, then, isn’t it? Oh! And I got invited to a birthday party, Mum! And Dad said I could go!”
“That’s lovely, darling,” Rose smiled at her. “I’m so glad you had fun.”
“I had the best time! I can’t wait to go next week! Fort, come see! I bet TARDIS’ll let us make our own Brownie bracelets, only with pink!”
The girls raced each other out of the room.
Rose looked at the Doctor and lifted her eyebrows.
“They’re very…happy,” he said. “These Girl Scouts.”
“So next week, Athena’s going to scout for adventure while she makes a worry doll,” said Brem. “Just trying to make sure I understand.”
“They do adventure-y things,” the Doctor defended himself. “They just also…make…dolls and…bracelets…”
“Daddy?”
The Doctor turned toward where Athena had stuck her head back into the library.
“Platypus,” she said, sending her mother’s teeth-and-tongue grin his way.
He grinned back. “Platypus.”
She giggled and went racing off again.
“What’s that mean?” asked Brem.
“Nothing,” said the Doctor. “It’s a secret Girl Scout codeword.”
“Do you have to know the codeword before they’ll let you dress a teddy bear up in a bow and a pretty pink frock?”
“I’m sure they don’t dress teddy bears up, Brem. You’re being deliberately ridiculous.” The Doctor sat next to Rose and glanced at the television. “Also, boys who are playing Pretty Princess Perils shouldn’t throw stones.”
Brem looked a bit sheepish, as he leaned over and turned the game off.
“So when do you get to go camping?” Rose asked him.
“Not until summer.”
“I gather it isn’t summer now?”
“No, it’s winter and it’s cold. I suppose I should have given a bit more thought to the whens and wheres of this Girl Scout idea.”
“Well, at least Athena seems to love it. You wanted to get her out of the TARDIS, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” the Doctor admitted.
Rose smiled at him. “What about you? Did you have fun?”
He hesitated before he responded, thinking. It had not been his typical idea of fun. But he realized suddenly that it had been very nice to spend an afternoon with Athena. He realized he was rather looking forward to next week, to the hopping-and-skipping walk to the meeting hall, to Athena’s accompanying sunny soliloquy. “I did,” he said, sounding surprised to have discovered it.
“Good.” Rose kissed his cheek. “I knew it was destined to be when her uniform matched your suit so nicely.”
********
Week after week, Athena returned from Girl Scouts with a new craft. Worry dolls, macaroni sculptures, magnets, little things she called “yarn bugs.” She even came back one week with a teddy bear that she’d dressed in a bow and a pretty pink frock. That particular outing had required chaperones, so the Doctor had gone along, and he came back with a teddy bear that he’d dressed, predictably, in a tiny suit. Brem had laughed for hours. Rose had found it extremely adorable and locked him in their bedroom and treated him to a striptease that he found so delightful that he asked if he’d get another one if he went back to the store and made her a dressed-up teddy bear.
She learned how to play Duck, Duck, Goose and taught Fortuna and Brem how to play.
“But you can’t play it with only three people,” said Brem. [In yet another example of Why I Adore Wikipedia, here are the Basic Rules for Duck Duck Goose. The full article is Splendid and includes multiple variations of the game And a Photo in case you have any problem visualizing the game!:
A group of players sit in a circle, facing inward, while another player, the 'picker' (a.k.a. the 'fox'), walks around tapping or pointing to each player in turn, calling each a 'duck' until finally picking one to be a 'goose' The 'goose' then rises and chases and tries to tag the 'picker', while the 'picker' tries to return to and sit where the 'goose' had been sitting. If the picker succeeds, the 'goose' is now the new picker and the process begins again. If the 'goose' succeeds in tagging the picker, the 'goose' may return to sit in the previous spot and the 'picker' resumes the process. With older children, such as in high school, the 'goose' may attempt to tackle the 'picker'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck,_duck,_goose]
The Doctor was not a fan of Duck, Duck, Goose. Of all the games in the world-all the adventure-y games-why the Girl Scouts should be so fond of Duck, Duck, Goose was beyond him. “That’s your only issue with Duck, Duck, Goose?” he asked Brem. “That you haven’t enough people to play it properly?”
“What if we have four people?” asked Athena, studying her father thoughtfully.
“Four people works,” said Brem. [And according to Wikipedia, four is the minimum.]
Athena took her father’s hand. “Come play, Daddy.”
“Theenie,” he protested, half-heartedly, as he was led to the circle.
“This Girl Scout thing was your idea,” Brem reminded him.
“Someday you’re going to have daughters,” the Doctor told him. “And on that day, I am going to laugh and laugh.”
“Having sisters is quite enough for me. I will not be having daughters or getting married or any folderol like that. We have more than enough girls on this ship,” responded Brem.
“Maybe you can marry a man,” said Fortuna. “Like Uncle Jack.”
“Also,” continued Brem, “I told Mum that the two of you are allowed to have another baby if you like. But only if it’s a boy.”
“Well, isn’t that gracious of you?” said the Doctor.
“Okay.” Athena settled happily into the circle. “Fortuna, your turn.”
Fortuna stood up and began walking around the circle, tapping their heads. Madrid and the one puppy Rose had allowed them to keep, called Seville, followed Fortuna with interest. “Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck-”
“You’re supposed to say ‘goose’ at some point,” Brem pointed out.
“Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck,” continued Fortuna.
Brem sighed.
“Duck, duck, duck, goose!” she exclaimed, tapping her father’s head.
Nothing happened. Brem and Athena looked at him. So did Fortuna.
“You’re supposed to run,” Brem told him.
“Run where?” he asked, blankly.
“Run and chase Fortuna, before she can run around the circle,” Athena told him. She looked at Brem. “We may have to practice this.”
The Doctor scrambled to his feet. Fortuna finally took off, giggling, but he caught her easily and spun her around. “What happens now that I’ve caught her?” he asked.
“Well, technically,” said Athena, “Fortuna has to pick again. But you can do it.”
The Doctor settled Fortuna into the circle, and began walking around the kids. “Duck, duck, duck-”
“What are you doing?” asked Rose, curiously, as she entered the nursery.
The Doctor looked almost guilty. He scratched the back of his neck. [EGT is so good at capturing DT in this role!] “We’re, er, playing Duck, Duck, Goose. Not that I approve of this, but the kids wanted to-”
“Will you play, Mummy?” Fortuna asked her.
“Play Duck, Duck, Goose with you and your father?” Rose settled herself onto the floor. “Oh, absolutely.” She grinned up at the Doctor. [And really, who amongst us would turn down the opportunity?]
He sighed and resumed his path around the circle, and they played Duck, Duck, Goose for what seemed to him to be an impossibly long time, the children never getting tired of it. He remembered the day, so very long ago, when they had first taught Brem peek-a-boo and he had kept dissolving in hysterical laughter over something so simple.
“Time,” said Rose, finally, “for the dull, boring humans in the family to go to bed.” She picked herself up off the floor, wincing a bit. “I may be getting too old for this stuff.”
There was a moment of silence in the nursery. Four pairs of anxious Time Lord eyes examined her. She bit her lip and wished she could have had the last five seconds back. [And throughout most of this series, I felt exactly like the Time Lords whenever Rose’s short lifespan was alluded to.]
“Not really,” she backtracked, hastily. “Not really. I’ve plenty of Duck, Duck, Goose games in front of me.”
Brem glanced at his wide-eyed sisters, said, “I’m sure if we think of it, we can come up with a way to play three-person Duck, Duck, Goose.”
Athena looked at him, met his effort halfway. “Yes,” she agreed.
“Fort,” he said, and Fortuna tore her eyes away from her mother.
“Yeah, three-person Duck, Duck, Goose,” she agreed.
The Doctor stood up, followed Rose out of the nursery.
She turned to him, about to apologize for upsetting the children.
“Don’t say things like that,” he said, before she could speak. “You’re not…You’re not…getting old.”
And she realized the possibility that she had upset him more than any of them. She stepped into his arms, and he crushed her to him.
“Come to bed,” she said, against his throat.
He let her go, found her hand as they walked toward their bedroom.
“I wanted to tell you to come to bed as soon as I saw you playing Duck, Duck, Goose,” she said. “I could have torn your clothes off you right there.”
“What is about my acting daft that you find so attractive?”
“You weren’t acting daft, you were playing with the kids.”
“Hmm,” he said. “I bet it’s some evolutionary protection. Human females are probably genetically predisposed to want to have sex with human males who they see acting in a fatherly role-”
“Oh, shut up.” She pushed him onto the bed.
********
They were finally going camping.
“I have been waiting for this day for so long,” commented Brem, watching them as they packed their backpacks. Not-bigger-on-the-inside backpacks. Rose had said that was cheating. When she had figured out that the TARDIS did not contain any backpacks that weren’t bigger on the inside, she had taken the children to a store to buy regular backpacks. Fortuna was fascinated by them. She kept sticking her arm in to feel the end, exclaiming, “Look! My arm just about fits in here!”
Athena was reading aloud from the list she had been given to make sure that they had packed everything. The Girl Scouts had given her a guide to camping the month before. [ I could not find this book, but maybe one of you would have better luck, however, I did find the Brownie Handbook for sale on the Girl Scout site.] She had kept reading its helpful hints out loud to her father all month, driving him a bit mad. “I do not think,” he announced, finally, “that the Girl Scouts are going to tell me how to fix the TARDIS.”
The Doctor listened to her list of necessary items-again-and interrupted, “How do they expect you to bring all this stuff with you using backpacks that aren’t bigger on the inside?”
“Your problem,” said Rose, dumping everything out of the Doctor’s backpack while he made a noise of protest, “is that you’ve never learned how to pack properly.”
“Time Lords don’t have to know how to pack properly,” the Doctor informed her, “because we were smart enough to come up with bigger-on-the-inside backpacks, so we don’t need to waste time learning how to pack.” [Ever since I heard Four explain to Leela in Robots of Death that Transdimensional Engineering was a key Time Lord discovery, I have wanted it to become a human discovery too.]
Rose ignored him, rearranging the order of things in the backpack.
“I guess Scouts of Adventure have to know how to pack,” remarked Brem.
Rose zipped up the backpack and held out her hand.
“What’s that for?” asked the Doctor.
“The sonic screwdriver.”
“What?” yelped the Doctor.
“You’re going to go camping. You’re not going to cheat. Now let me have the sonic screwdriver.”
“I-I-I-”
Rose waggled her fingers. “Give it over.”
The Doctor sighed, pulled it out of his suit coat, and handed it over reluctantly. “Rose, I really don’t think-”
“Now. It’s one night. The two of you should be fine. You should have an excellent time and watch out for each other. And I can’t wait to hear all about it tomorrow.”
Athena, practically bouncing with excitement, kissed everyone good-bye and grabbed her backpack.
The Doctor looked a bit less excited. “Camping like this,” he said, “with tiny backpacks and no sonic screwdriver? It’s uncivilized.”
“That’s the point of camping,” said Rose, and kissed him. “I love you. Come home in one piece.”
“Little chance of that without the sonic screwdriver,” grumbled the Doctor, as Rose unceremoniously pushed him out the door.
Author - earlgreytea68
Part 2
They were called Brownies.
“Brownies?” echoed the Doctor. “Like the…sweet?”
“Yes,” answered the woman in charge. Troop leader, she had said. Girl Scout Troop Leader. She was an extremely sunny woman, who never stopped smiling. The Doctor was a happy person. But he was quite sure one’s muscles ought to hurt from smiling that much.
Brownies? thought the Doctor. You may as well call them Faerie Cakes, or Meringues. “Don’t you think something adventure-y would be more appropriate?” he asked. [I think he is picturing the girls all dressed up as little cakes-with edible ball bearings, of course.]
The troop leader’s smile didn’t falter. She laughed like he was quite hilarious and then turned to Athena. “And what’s your name?” she asked.
“Athena,” she answered, clinging to her father’s hand and staring up at her in shock.
“That’s a lovely name,” said the troop leader. “Like that little girl. Christina Onassis’s daughter. Her name is Athena, isn’t it?”
“No,” corrected Athena. “It’s Athena like the Greek goddess of heroic endeavour.” Athena was the Greek goddess of many things. It was one of the things Athena liked about her name, that her namesake had been so versatile. [Of the three children, Athena always strikes me as the surest of Who She Is.]
“Well, isn’t that lovely?” responded the troop leader, smiling.
“Heroic endeavour,” inserted the Doctor. “You know, like the stuff the Brownies do.”
“That’s exactly right,” agreed the troop leader indulgently. “Athena what?” she asked.
“Athena Rose,” Athena answered.
“No, I mean last name,” smiled the troop leader.
“Tyler,” she offered.
“Athena Tyler. I will be right back with some paperwork for you to fill out.” She moved off.
Athena was silent for a second. Then she said, “She smiles too much.”
“I’m…sure she’s just happy to be a troop leader. I mean, it must be fun, don’t you think?”
Athena nodded, looking rather nervously toward the girls who were filling the next room.
The troop leader returned with the proper paperwork. “There now, Athena,” she said. “I’ll just do this boring paperwork with your dad, and you can go in and play with the girls. Today we’re making Brownie bracelets.”
Athena brightened at that. She paused before letting go of his hand, looking back toward him.
There were times, thought the Doctor, when he could almost convince himself that Rose abruptly disappearing, all those years ago, had not traumatized his children for life. And then he would sense Brem’s rising panic if his mother was even five minutes late at a rendezvous point, or Athena’s tremulous fear now, as she turned to him. [And because he was not completely certain he would be able to return to his children when he left them to go get Rose, I think his guilt about this is Huge.]
“You’ll wait for me, right?” she asked.
He crouched to be on her level. “I will wait for you,” he promised. “I will be right here, after you’ve made your…Brownie bracelet. Platypus,” he smiled, and tapped the tip of her nose with his finger.
She smiled back. “Platypus,” she said, and gave him a hug before skipping off.
The Doctor stood up.
“She’s just delightful,” the troop leader told him. “And she looks just like you.”
“So you’re making Brownie bracelets today?”
“Yes. Don’t worry, it’s very easy. Just gluing some fake gemstones on some fake leather.” The troop leader laughed merrily. “If you could just sign here? Just typical liability stuff.”
The Doctor scrawled unintelligibly, thinking that his Gallifreyan name-and the time it would take him to write it-might alarm the troop leader. [It made me laugh that he would consider signing his real name on a mundane Girl Scout form when through the entire TV series it is a Secret.] “When are you going to do something adenture-y?”
The troop leader bubbled laughter again. “Well, next week we’re going to make Girl Scout worry dolls.”
“Ah,” said the Doctor. “That doesn’t sound all that adventure-y.”
“Oh, believe me,” she assured him, bouncily. “It’s adventurous enough for eight-year-old girls.”
“Welllllllll, they could be…” He drew a blank as to what else the eight-year-old girls could be doing. Honestly, making a Girl Scout worry doll and a fake gemstone bracelet seemed to be exactly the sort of thing Athena was going to love. “What about camping? When are they going camping?”
“Well, not now, Mr. Tyler,” she said. “It’s cold outside. Not until summer.” [He never seems to have any idea what season it is on Earth, perhaps because his body temperature seems to be unaffected by the weather here.]
“Doctor,” he corrected her.
“Dr. Tyler.”
“No, just Doctor.”
“Just Doctor then,” she smiled, happily. “I’m sure Athena will be fine and get along with everyone, don’t you worry.”
“I’m not…I’m not worried, really, I-”
“See you in an hour,” she said, and walked into the meeting room of the little hall and then firmly closed its door in his face.
Apparently, he was not allowed to participate in the secret Girl Scout goings-on. Bored, he wandered out into the cold and wished that he’d thought to bring something to amuse himself. An hour could go by terribly slowly. He thought maybe some sort of alien invasion would happen, but the little neighbourhood stayed quiet. Well, it was loud actually, cars going back and forth on the street and such, but they were human sorts of noises and not alarming. He supposed to he could go back to the TARDIS, but Athena would sense the distance between them, and he didn’t want to alarm her on her first meeting. If he wasn’t going to be allowed to participate, he supposed the two of them ought to have a discussion about whether he could just spend the hour on the TARDIS.
He sat on the steps and counted the number of red cars that drove by until other parents started arriving to collect their children. And, when he walked in, Athena came bounding over to him.
“Look!” she exclaimed, holding a small brown bracelet out to him. It was dotted over with dull blue gems.
Nothing in the universe could be less adventure-y than that, he thought, sadly.
“It’s beautiful,” he told her.
“It’s for you,” she said.
“Ah.” He took it. There was no way it would fit on his wrist. “I’ll just put it in my pocket for now, shall I?”
“Good-bye, Athena! Doctor!” called the troop leader.
“Bye, Buffy!” shouted Athena back, waving.
“Is her name Buffy?” asked the Doctor.
Athena nodded. “Yeah, like the vampire slayer. Except I don’t think she’d be able to slay any vampires.”
“No argument there,” said the Doctor, taking Athena’s hand and leading her out of the meeting hall.
“And I made one for Mum and one for Brem and one for Fort, too,” said Athena, as she skipped along next to him on their way back. “And next week, Daddy, we’re making dolls. Isn’t that gorgeous?”
“Yes,” he said, weakly.
“I asked about the camping for you. Buffy said not until summer. But she said you can definitely come along. I told her all about how you used to go camping all the time, and how you’re the cleverest being in the universe. [I pause here to huggle Athena.] Oh! Daddy! And it’s Erin’s birthday party next week and she said I can go! Can I?”
“I…Er…Yes?”
“They did ask me how come I don’t go to school, so I said that I’m home-schooled, just like you said to say, and they said that’s very cool, and there’s no chance we can have them over for tea, is there?”
“Not really, no.”
“Thought I’d ask anyway.” She burst through the TARDIS door, shouting, “Mum!” as she raced down the hallway. [They are a family of champion runners!]
Rose was in the library, watching Brem and Fortuna as they played Pretty Princess Perils, and she looked up as Athena barrelled in.
“Mum!” exclaimed Athena. “Look!” She handed her one of the Brownie bracelets.
Fortuna had abandoned Pretty Princess Perils as soon as her sister had arrived.
“I’ve got one for you, too, Fortuna,” said Athena, handing it to her.
“It’s beautiful,” said Fortuna.
“They didn’t have anything pink,” Athena explained.
“That’s silly,” said Fortuna.
“Yeah. I made one for you, too, Brem.”
“Hang on,” said Brem, staring at the digital princess on the television screen. “I’m almost through this Field of Evil Sparkles.”
“Brem loves Pretty Princess Perils now,” said Fortuna. [And as we learn in the story A Moment of Truth, Fortuna is always honest.]
“I don’t ‘love’ it, I just-” He sighed in frustration as an evil sparkle hit his princess and she clasped her hands over her heart, fluttered her eyelashes, and fainted.
“Here’s your Brownie bracelet,” Athena told him, and handed it across to him.
Brem took it, looked at it for a second. “This is what you did in adventure scouting?”
“Yes,” Athena affirmed, proudly.
Brem looked up at his father. His mouth twitched.
“Stop it,” the Doctor told him.
“Next week, we’re making dolls,” Athena told her audience. “Worry dolls! They’re Guatemalan. I think they’re like the worry dolls on Fughhh.”
“Except that you don’t bite off their heads when you’re worrying over something,” said Rose. “They’re not edible here on Earth.”
“Well, that’s good to know, then, isn’t it? Oh! And I got invited to a birthday party, Mum! And Dad said I could go!”
“That’s lovely, darling,” Rose smiled at her. “I’m so glad you had fun.”
“I had the best time! I can’t wait to go next week! Fort, come see! I bet TARDIS’ll let us make our own Brownie bracelets, only with pink!”
The girls raced each other out of the room.
Rose looked at the Doctor and lifted her eyebrows.
“They’re very…happy,” he said. “These Girl Scouts.”
“So next week, Athena’s going to scout for adventure while she makes a worry doll,” said Brem. “Just trying to make sure I understand.”
“They do adventure-y things,” the Doctor defended himself. “They just also…make…dolls and…bracelets…”
“Daddy?”
The Doctor turned toward where Athena had stuck her head back into the library.
“Platypus,” she said, sending her mother’s teeth-and-tongue grin his way.
He grinned back. “Platypus.”
She giggled and went racing off again.
“What’s that mean?” asked Brem.
“Nothing,” said the Doctor. “It’s a secret Girl Scout codeword.”
“Do you have to know the codeword before they’ll let you dress a teddy bear up in a bow and a pretty pink frock?”
“I’m sure they don’t dress teddy bears up, Brem. You’re being deliberately ridiculous.” The Doctor sat next to Rose and glanced at the television. “Also, boys who are playing Pretty Princess Perils shouldn’t throw stones.”
Brem looked a bit sheepish, as he leaned over and turned the game off.
“So when do you get to go camping?” Rose asked him.
“Not until summer.”
“I gather it isn’t summer now?”
“No, it’s winter and it’s cold. I suppose I should have given a bit more thought to the whens and wheres of this Girl Scout idea.”
“Well, at least Athena seems to love it. You wanted to get her out of the TARDIS, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” the Doctor admitted.
Rose smiled at him. “What about you? Did you have fun?”
He hesitated before he responded, thinking. It had not been his typical idea of fun. But he realized suddenly that it had been very nice to spend an afternoon with Athena. He realized he was rather looking forward to next week, to the hopping-and-skipping walk to the meeting hall, to Athena’s accompanying sunny soliloquy. “I did,” he said, sounding surprised to have discovered it.
“Good.” Rose kissed his cheek. “I knew it was destined to be when her uniform matched your suit so nicely.”
********
Week after week, Athena returned from Girl Scouts with a new craft. Worry dolls, macaroni sculptures, magnets, little things she called “yarn bugs.” She even came back one week with a teddy bear that she’d dressed in a bow and a pretty pink frock. That particular outing had required chaperones, so the Doctor had gone along, and he came back with a teddy bear that he’d dressed, predictably, in a tiny suit. Brem had laughed for hours. Rose had found it extremely adorable and locked him in their bedroom and treated him to a striptease that he found so delightful that he asked if he’d get another one if he went back to the store and made her a dressed-up teddy bear.
She learned how to play Duck, Duck, Goose and taught Fortuna and Brem how to play.
“But you can’t play it with only three people,” said Brem. [In yet another example of Why I Adore Wikipedia, here are the Basic Rules for Duck Duck Goose. The full article is Splendid and includes multiple variations of the game And a Photo in case you have any problem visualizing the game!:
A group of players sit in a circle, facing inward, while another player, the 'picker' (a.k.a. the 'fox'), walks around tapping or pointing to each player in turn, calling each a 'duck' until finally picking one to be a 'goose' The 'goose' then rises and chases and tries to tag the 'picker', while the 'picker' tries to return to and sit where the 'goose' had been sitting. If the picker succeeds, the 'goose' is now the new picker and the process begins again. If the 'goose' succeeds in tagging the picker, the 'goose' may return to sit in the previous spot and the 'picker' resumes the process. With older children, such as in high school, the 'goose' may attempt to tackle the 'picker'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck,_duck,_goose]
The Doctor was not a fan of Duck, Duck, Goose. Of all the games in the world-all the adventure-y games-why the Girl Scouts should be so fond of Duck, Duck, Goose was beyond him. “That’s your only issue with Duck, Duck, Goose?” he asked Brem. “That you haven’t enough people to play it properly?”
“What if we have four people?” asked Athena, studying her father thoughtfully.
“Four people works,” said Brem. [And according to Wikipedia, four is the minimum.]
Athena took her father’s hand. “Come play, Daddy.”
“Theenie,” he protested, half-heartedly, as he was led to the circle.
“This Girl Scout thing was your idea,” Brem reminded him.
“Someday you’re going to have daughters,” the Doctor told him. “And on that day, I am going to laugh and laugh.”
“Having sisters is quite enough for me. I will not be having daughters or getting married or any folderol like that. We have more than enough girls on this ship,” responded Brem.
“Maybe you can marry a man,” said Fortuna. “Like Uncle Jack.”
“Also,” continued Brem, “I told Mum that the two of you are allowed to have another baby if you like. But only if it’s a boy.”
“Well, isn’t that gracious of you?” said the Doctor.
“Okay.” Athena settled happily into the circle. “Fortuna, your turn.”
Fortuna stood up and began walking around the circle, tapping their heads. Madrid and the one puppy Rose had allowed them to keep, called Seville, followed Fortuna with interest. “Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck-”
“You’re supposed to say ‘goose’ at some point,” Brem pointed out.
“Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck,” continued Fortuna.
Brem sighed.
“Duck, duck, duck, goose!” she exclaimed, tapping her father’s head.
Nothing happened. Brem and Athena looked at him. So did Fortuna.
“You’re supposed to run,” Brem told him.
“Run where?” he asked, blankly.
“Run and chase Fortuna, before she can run around the circle,” Athena told him. She looked at Brem. “We may have to practice this.”
The Doctor scrambled to his feet. Fortuna finally took off, giggling, but he caught her easily and spun her around. “What happens now that I’ve caught her?” he asked.
“Well, technically,” said Athena, “Fortuna has to pick again. But you can do it.”
The Doctor settled Fortuna into the circle, and began walking around the kids. “Duck, duck, duck-”
“What are you doing?” asked Rose, curiously, as she entered the nursery.
The Doctor looked almost guilty. He scratched the back of his neck. [EGT is so good at capturing DT in this role!] “We’re, er, playing Duck, Duck, Goose. Not that I approve of this, but the kids wanted to-”
“Will you play, Mummy?” Fortuna asked her.
“Play Duck, Duck, Goose with you and your father?” Rose settled herself onto the floor. “Oh, absolutely.” She grinned up at the Doctor. [And really, who amongst us would turn down the opportunity?]
He sighed and resumed his path around the circle, and they played Duck, Duck, Goose for what seemed to him to be an impossibly long time, the children never getting tired of it. He remembered the day, so very long ago, when they had first taught Brem peek-a-boo and he had kept dissolving in hysterical laughter over something so simple.
“Time,” said Rose, finally, “for the dull, boring humans in the family to go to bed.” She picked herself up off the floor, wincing a bit. “I may be getting too old for this stuff.”
There was a moment of silence in the nursery. Four pairs of anxious Time Lord eyes examined her. She bit her lip and wished she could have had the last five seconds back. [And throughout most of this series, I felt exactly like the Time Lords whenever Rose’s short lifespan was alluded to.]
“Not really,” she backtracked, hastily. “Not really. I’ve plenty of Duck, Duck, Goose games in front of me.”
Brem glanced at his wide-eyed sisters, said, “I’m sure if we think of it, we can come up with a way to play three-person Duck, Duck, Goose.”
Athena looked at him, met his effort halfway. “Yes,” she agreed.
“Fort,” he said, and Fortuna tore her eyes away from her mother.
“Yeah, three-person Duck, Duck, Goose,” she agreed.
The Doctor stood up, followed Rose out of the nursery.
She turned to him, about to apologize for upsetting the children.
“Don’t say things like that,” he said, before she could speak. “You’re not…You’re not…getting old.”
And she realized the possibility that she had upset him more than any of them. She stepped into his arms, and he crushed her to him.
“Come to bed,” she said, against his throat.
He let her go, found her hand as they walked toward their bedroom.
“I wanted to tell you to come to bed as soon as I saw you playing Duck, Duck, Goose,” she said. “I could have torn your clothes off you right there.”
“What is about my acting daft that you find so attractive?”
“You weren’t acting daft, you were playing with the kids.”
“Hmm,” he said. “I bet it’s some evolutionary protection. Human females are probably genetically predisposed to want to have sex with human males who they see acting in a fatherly role-”
“Oh, shut up.” She pushed him onto the bed.
********
They were finally going camping.
“I have been waiting for this day for so long,” commented Brem, watching them as they packed their backpacks. Not-bigger-on-the-inside backpacks. Rose had said that was cheating. When she had figured out that the TARDIS did not contain any backpacks that weren’t bigger on the inside, she had taken the children to a store to buy regular backpacks. Fortuna was fascinated by them. She kept sticking her arm in to feel the end, exclaiming, “Look! My arm just about fits in here!”
Athena was reading aloud from the list she had been given to make sure that they had packed everything. The Girl Scouts had given her a guide to camping the month before. [ I could not find this book, but maybe one of you would have better luck, however, I did find the Brownie Handbook for sale on the Girl Scout site.] She had kept reading its helpful hints out loud to her father all month, driving him a bit mad. “I do not think,” he announced, finally, “that the Girl Scouts are going to tell me how to fix the TARDIS.”
The Doctor listened to her list of necessary items-again-and interrupted, “How do they expect you to bring all this stuff with you using backpacks that aren’t bigger on the inside?”
“Your problem,” said Rose, dumping everything out of the Doctor’s backpack while he made a noise of protest, “is that you’ve never learned how to pack properly.”
“Time Lords don’t have to know how to pack properly,” the Doctor informed her, “because we were smart enough to come up with bigger-on-the-inside backpacks, so we don’t need to waste time learning how to pack.” [Ever since I heard Four explain to Leela in Robots of Death that Transdimensional Engineering was a key Time Lord discovery, I have wanted it to become a human discovery too.]
Rose ignored him, rearranging the order of things in the backpack.
“I guess Scouts of Adventure have to know how to pack,” remarked Brem.
Rose zipped up the backpack and held out her hand.
“What’s that for?” asked the Doctor.
“The sonic screwdriver.”
“What?” yelped the Doctor.
“You’re going to go camping. You’re not going to cheat. Now let me have the sonic screwdriver.”
“I-I-I-”
Rose waggled her fingers. “Give it over.”
The Doctor sighed, pulled it out of his suit coat, and handed it over reluctantly. “Rose, I really don’t think-”
“Now. It’s one night. The two of you should be fine. You should have an excellent time and watch out for each other. And I can’t wait to hear all about it tomorrow.”
Athena, practically bouncing with excitement, kissed everyone good-bye and grabbed her backpack.
The Doctor looked a bit less excited. “Camping like this,” he said, “with tiny backpacks and no sonic screwdriver? It’s uncivilized.”
“That’s the point of camping,” said Rose, and kissed him. “I love you. Come home in one piece.”
“Little chance of that without the sonic screwdriver,” grumbled the Doctor, as Rose unceremoniously pushed him out the door.