Fic: Dragon Slayer (Doctor Who EDAs, Anji, Chloe, PG)
Title: Dragon Slayer
Author: livii
Characters: Anji Kapoor, Chloe, Jamais, Trix
Rating: PG
Summary: "Did she, er, say what type of robot it was?" Anji Kapoor's amazing adventures in motherhood.
Notes: Spoilers for the ending of the EDA Timeless; doesn't follow The Gallifrey Chronicles. ~ 2,200 words. Many thanks to ionlylurkhere for beta reading!
"Miss Kapoor." The clipped, cultured voice of her property manager rang in her ear as Anji tried to balance her mobile, her latte, and her briefcase. "This time your daughter's interest in robotics has gone too far. She's blown up all of the potted plants in the lobby."
Anji bristled at the way 'daughter' had been said, but kept her cool. "Did she, er, say what type of robot it was?"
There was a pause. "A Chumblie, I believe, Miss Kapoor, though I hardly think that matters. The thing is quite inoperable now, but the damage is extensive and you are aware that you will be personally liable for all costs, are you not?"
Damn, that's a new one, Anji thought. She'd have to head home to check it out, and on a day when she had three meetings scheduled. "Yes, of course, I'll transfer the money this afternoon. I'll be there shortly."
The click in her ear told her that the manager had already rung off. Anji sighed, and reversed direction to the Tube.
"Chloe," she said that evening, in her sternest Voice Of Authority, "I thought we talked about bringing aliens round, especially robots. They could be extremely dangerous."
Chloe hung her head, her lower lip pouting out slightly. "It was lost, mum, and so sweet! It didn't mean any harm. The plants were an accident. It thought they were hostile life forms."
Anji laughed. "It looked like an ice cream cone!"
Chloe looked up and smiled. Anji sighed to herself; she could never seem to stay mad for long these days. She cursed Fitz and the Doctor and the instincts they'd trained into her out of habit. Oh well; the property manager was a stuck-up busybody, anyway. Served her right to have an ice cream cone robot do some redecorating in the lobby.
In the doorway, Jamais barked as a curious metallic noise sounded from Chloe's room.
"The Chumblie does not stay," Anji said. "No, no, absolutely not."
At her next dinner party, her coworkers raved over the retro design of the serving robot, and Chloe smiled impishly through the crack in her door as she watched the goings-on.
At least the thing cleaned up dog hair well.
*
It turned out Greg had heard the whole exchange in the kitchen, and did think Anji was quite mad.
Chloe was sad, but not Anji.
"I think I have enough to be getting on with right now, without having to go on dates and make small talk and all of that," she said, bustling off to the spare room to make it up with fresh sheets. She eyed the carpet as she went. Jamais had better be well house-trained, she thought. "Anyway, it's a bit annoying that your book wanted to set me up with a black man. If I didn't know better, I'd think that book had some pretty stereotypical ideas of who it's socially acceptable for an Indian woman to date. Not that I limit who I date based on race, but honestly, it just feels a bit too pat, don't you think?"
Chloe just stared at Anji.
Later, of course, Anji did start dating a very nice man, also named Greg, who was half-Vietnamese, but the point was he wasn't in some book, and Chloe liked him just as much anyway.
*
It wasn't just that Anji had to suddenly learn how to be a mum (and not insignificantly, pet sitter to a huge dog that shed fur all over everything). It was that she had to suddenly learn how to be a mum to a little girl with an outsized intellect, a universe-wandering spirit, and no idea how to act like a normal human girl.
The papers Trix had given her made Chloe Kapoor officially nine years old. Anji wasn't sure she'd ever met a nine year old who both read physics books for fun and still carried around a dolly. Anji could sympathize with being bored by school - they'd rarely talked about the sorts of things that interested her at that age - but when Chloe managed to blow up the new wing of the school by testing out some alien technology she'd cobbled together in her room, well - Anji knew it was time to homeschool.
Which mainly consisted of giving Chloe lunch money every day and instructing her and Jamais to really truly stay out of trouble this time, she meant it, or there were boarding schools ready to deal with kids like her and they didn't allow dogs.
Once or twice, that even worked as a threat.
*
"I'm just saying that 'Jamais' is a little bit pretentious. It's like someone was trying to be all clever and trying to make him sound more important by using a French word when the rest of you had English ones, you know? I think Rex would be a good new name for him."
Chloe, for all she was supposed to be nine years old, was the master of the world-weary look and the long-suffering sigh. Anji wobbled. Chloe grinned.
"What will you do if I just call him 'Never', then?" Anji asked, knowing she'd already lost.
"Jamais and I will just say that you're being very silly, mum," Chloe said. "You can't just change someone's name, anyway."
Anji jumped on her last chance. She told herself, as always, that it wasn't that bad to be scoring points on a nine year old when the child in question wasn't really nine. "But my name wasn't always Mum - only when you came along!"
"But you're still Anji too," Chloe said. "Just like the property manager calls me 'that horrible child' and Greg calls you 'Anjikins' -"
"Right, right," Anji said quickly. "The extra names don't change the immutable fact of my one true name. Jamais it is. When did you hear Greg say that? I'm going to kill him."
Chloe giggled, and Jamais gave a short bark of just the sort that always made Anji suspect he was laughing at her.
*
The plastic surgeon was very professional, efficient, and discreet. When the operating room nurse ventured his opinion that Chloe's eyes were a very unusual birth defect the surgeon chastised him immediately, and smoothly apologized to Anji.
"We should be able to create a significant difference in Chloe's looks, Miss Kapoor," she said, shaking Anji's hand as if they were concluding a minor business transaction, not doing major reconstructive surgery on Anji's daughter's eyes. "You'll hardly recognize her once we're done."
Anji spent the two hours Chloe was in surgery wondering if she should have stopped them from going ahead with the procedure.
Chloe's recovery was startlingly quick; she seemed to have excellent healing capabilities. The transformation was quite remarkable: while her eyes were still slightly off-center, and that strange milky blue, she could easily pass for a normal human child.
They were sitting and reading a few nights later - the Financial Times for Anji, a textbook on advanced biochemistry for Chloe - when Chloe looked up.
"I heard what the surgeon said about not recognizing me," she said. Anji shook her head, since Chloe was supposed to be already going under the anesthetic at that point. "Do you recognize me, mum?"
Anji put down her paper. "It was a figure of speech, Chloe. Of course I do. You look lovely, and still entirely like yourself."
Chloe fidgeted, leaned over, and stroked Jamais' thick fur as he slept by their feet. "If I ever meet anyone like me again...will they recognize me?"
Anji suddenly had a lump in her throat; she was thrown, for a moment, but knew her next words mattered. "Yes," she said simply, "they're still your eyes; they're just back to normal, more or less, before the book got to them. And you'll recognize them, I bet."
Chloe grinned, then, and Jamais rolled over and let out one loud bark before starting to snore again. Anji and Chloe started giggling, and found they couldn't stop for a long time.
When Anji washed her face that night, she played with her face in the mirror - stretched the skin around her eyes to the sides, up, down, flattened her nose, pursed her lips. She decided the small lines developing around her eyes and mouth that she'd been concerned about could stay.
*
When Chloe met someone like her, they definitely recognized her for who - or what - she was.
Anji hadn't really been looking to replace her car again a year after Fitz and Guy had trashed her MG (she'd grown exceedingly fond of the little BMW she'd replaced it with), but surprisingly, driving her car through the plate glass front of that office tower downtown, later down the stairway from the fifth floor, and finally through a very long quarry had been the best way to rescue Chloe and Jamais from the Rani's clutches.
"For now," she said that night, "I think we're better off not looking for any of your people, okay?"
Chloe nodded vigorously, and curled up into Anji's embrace. Jamais, in an uncharacteristic display of emotion, licked Anji's feet. When she looked down, she could almost swear he was thanking her.
*
Anji did have to admit that Beep the Meep had appeared awfully cute and not the least bit homicidal and world-conquering when Chloe first started feeding him in the park around back.
*
Four years later, she opened the front door of her condo (three bedrooms, two baths, small backyard, beautifully appointed pool - perfect for the slightly expanded family) to find Fitz, Trix, and the Doctor standing there sheepishly, all looking rather a bit worse for the wear.
She let them in - making a mental note to call Greg and ask him to bring home a steam cleaner for the carpets after seeing the unidentifiable green gunk on Fitz's shoes - and fixed them tea while they took turns showering.
"Nice place here," Trix said, looking around appreciatively. "How's the little one? Enjoying playing mum?"
"She's good, and yes," Anji said. "Yes, I am. It's been incredibly weird, but, hell, no weirder than travelling through time and space with those two you're still hanging out with."
Trix laughed. "You're a good person, Soft Touch. Thanks for the hot water and the grub. The Doctor thinks he should be able to get the TARDIS back - he just needs a lift and possibly a few pounds to get it out of police custody."
Later, Anji would swear that she'd go broke if she had to replace her car again - she'd loved that Aston Martin almost as much as if it was her own child - but at least Chloe hadn't actually been kidnapped by the Cybermen, the planet hadn't been conquered and reduced to rubble, and Fitz swore up and down he hadn't actually meant to drive the Aston Martin into a brick wall.
"Can we get a red car next?" Chloe asked that night, as Greg hoovered the hall carpet. "In a few years I can drive it, mum!"
Her insurance rates were going to go through the roof. Looking at Chloe's happy face, she found she didn't mind - much.
*
First night alone with her child. Anji was full of doubt. This was the rest of her life.
"And then mum swooped down and banished the horrible monster to the end of time," Chloe said, with a dramatic gesture. "The whole world was safe once again thanks to her." Jamais growled appreciatively, and Chloe snuggled into him, curled up under the blankets in her bed.
Anji moved away from the doorway quietly, not wanting Chloe to know she'd been overheard.
She went to the kitchen, poured herself a small glass of the good red she had out on the counter. She swirled it around in the glass, and looked at her reflection. It was fluid and ever-changing, but still her - same eyes, same nose, same mouth.
She watched the different combinations the same elements could make, then drank the glass down in one long swallow. Mum. It was new; it was new and different and scary, but somehow, it felt like just the sort of challenge she needed now, dropped back into the real world. She needed a new job, a new car, all that, sure; but this would be an adventure on a scale not even the TARDIS could provide.
She smiled, and put down the glass. She heard a small giggle from Chloe's room, and looked up to see blue eyes vanish back behind the door.
"When mum says it's bedtime, she means it," Anji called out. "If I can banish horrible monsters, I can make little girls go to sleep when they should!"
"Yes, mum," Chloe called back. Jamais barked once.
Anji shook her head, and poured herself a second glass. She looked out the window over the sink; the stars were glittering. She was home, and she had a little girl who thought she could slay dragons.
Maybe she could, she thought. Maybe she would.
Author: livii
Characters: Anji Kapoor, Chloe, Jamais, Trix
Rating: PG
Summary: "Did she, er, say what type of robot it was?" Anji Kapoor's amazing adventures in motherhood.
Notes: Spoilers for the ending of the EDA Timeless; doesn't follow The Gallifrey Chronicles. ~ 2,200 words. Many thanks to ionlylurkhere for beta reading!
"Miss Kapoor." The clipped, cultured voice of her property manager rang in her ear as Anji tried to balance her mobile, her latte, and her briefcase. "This time your daughter's interest in robotics has gone too far. She's blown up all of the potted plants in the lobby."
Anji bristled at the way 'daughter' had been said, but kept her cool. "Did she, er, say what type of robot it was?"
There was a pause. "A Chumblie, I believe, Miss Kapoor, though I hardly think that matters. The thing is quite inoperable now, but the damage is extensive and you are aware that you will be personally liable for all costs, are you not?"
Damn, that's a new one, Anji thought. She'd have to head home to check it out, and on a day when she had three meetings scheduled. "Yes, of course, I'll transfer the money this afternoon. I'll be there shortly."
The click in her ear told her that the manager had already rung off. Anji sighed, and reversed direction to the Tube.
"Chloe," she said that evening, in her sternest Voice Of Authority, "I thought we talked about bringing aliens round, especially robots. They could be extremely dangerous."
Chloe hung her head, her lower lip pouting out slightly. "It was lost, mum, and so sweet! It didn't mean any harm. The plants were an accident. It thought they were hostile life forms."
Anji laughed. "It looked like an ice cream cone!"
Chloe looked up and smiled. Anji sighed to herself; she could never seem to stay mad for long these days. She cursed Fitz and the Doctor and the instincts they'd trained into her out of habit. Oh well; the property manager was a stuck-up busybody, anyway. Served her right to have an ice cream cone robot do some redecorating in the lobby.
In the doorway, Jamais barked as a curious metallic noise sounded from Chloe's room.
"The Chumblie does not stay," Anji said. "No, no, absolutely not."
At her next dinner party, her coworkers raved over the retro design of the serving robot, and Chloe smiled impishly through the crack in her door as she watched the goings-on.
At least the thing cleaned up dog hair well.
*
It turned out Greg had heard the whole exchange in the kitchen, and did think Anji was quite mad.
Chloe was sad, but not Anji.
"I think I have enough to be getting on with right now, without having to go on dates and make small talk and all of that," she said, bustling off to the spare room to make it up with fresh sheets. She eyed the carpet as she went. Jamais had better be well house-trained, she thought. "Anyway, it's a bit annoying that your book wanted to set me up with a black man. If I didn't know better, I'd think that book had some pretty stereotypical ideas of who it's socially acceptable for an Indian woman to date. Not that I limit who I date based on race, but honestly, it just feels a bit too pat, don't you think?"
Chloe just stared at Anji.
Later, of course, Anji did start dating a very nice man, also named Greg, who was half-Vietnamese, but the point was he wasn't in some book, and Chloe liked him just as much anyway.
*
It wasn't just that Anji had to suddenly learn how to be a mum (and not insignificantly, pet sitter to a huge dog that shed fur all over everything). It was that she had to suddenly learn how to be a mum to a little girl with an outsized intellect, a universe-wandering spirit, and no idea how to act like a normal human girl.
The papers Trix had given her made Chloe Kapoor officially nine years old. Anji wasn't sure she'd ever met a nine year old who both read physics books for fun and still carried around a dolly. Anji could sympathize with being bored by school - they'd rarely talked about the sorts of things that interested her at that age - but when Chloe managed to blow up the new wing of the school by testing out some alien technology she'd cobbled together in her room, well - Anji knew it was time to homeschool.
Which mainly consisted of giving Chloe lunch money every day and instructing her and Jamais to really truly stay out of trouble this time, she meant it, or there were boarding schools ready to deal with kids like her and they didn't allow dogs.
Once or twice, that even worked as a threat.
*
"I'm just saying that 'Jamais' is a little bit pretentious. It's like someone was trying to be all clever and trying to make him sound more important by using a French word when the rest of you had English ones, you know? I think Rex would be a good new name for him."
Chloe, for all she was supposed to be nine years old, was the master of the world-weary look and the long-suffering sigh. Anji wobbled. Chloe grinned.
"What will you do if I just call him 'Never', then?" Anji asked, knowing she'd already lost.
"Jamais and I will just say that you're being very silly, mum," Chloe said. "You can't just change someone's name, anyway."
Anji jumped on her last chance. She told herself, as always, that it wasn't that bad to be scoring points on a nine year old when the child in question wasn't really nine. "But my name wasn't always Mum - only when you came along!"
"But you're still Anji too," Chloe said. "Just like the property manager calls me 'that horrible child' and Greg calls you 'Anjikins' -"
"Right, right," Anji said quickly. "The extra names don't change the immutable fact of my one true name. Jamais it is. When did you hear Greg say that? I'm going to kill him."
Chloe giggled, and Jamais gave a short bark of just the sort that always made Anji suspect he was laughing at her.
*
The plastic surgeon was very professional, efficient, and discreet. When the operating room nurse ventured his opinion that Chloe's eyes were a very unusual birth defect the surgeon chastised him immediately, and smoothly apologized to Anji.
"We should be able to create a significant difference in Chloe's looks, Miss Kapoor," she said, shaking Anji's hand as if they were concluding a minor business transaction, not doing major reconstructive surgery on Anji's daughter's eyes. "You'll hardly recognize her once we're done."
Anji spent the two hours Chloe was in surgery wondering if she should have stopped them from going ahead with the procedure.
Chloe's recovery was startlingly quick; she seemed to have excellent healing capabilities. The transformation was quite remarkable: while her eyes were still slightly off-center, and that strange milky blue, she could easily pass for a normal human child.
They were sitting and reading a few nights later - the Financial Times for Anji, a textbook on advanced biochemistry for Chloe - when Chloe looked up.
"I heard what the surgeon said about not recognizing me," she said. Anji shook her head, since Chloe was supposed to be already going under the anesthetic at that point. "Do you recognize me, mum?"
Anji put down her paper. "It was a figure of speech, Chloe. Of course I do. You look lovely, and still entirely like yourself."
Chloe fidgeted, leaned over, and stroked Jamais' thick fur as he slept by their feet. "If I ever meet anyone like me again...will they recognize me?"
Anji suddenly had a lump in her throat; she was thrown, for a moment, but knew her next words mattered. "Yes," she said simply, "they're still your eyes; they're just back to normal, more or less, before the book got to them. And you'll recognize them, I bet."
Chloe grinned, then, and Jamais rolled over and let out one loud bark before starting to snore again. Anji and Chloe started giggling, and found they couldn't stop for a long time.
When Anji washed her face that night, she played with her face in the mirror - stretched the skin around her eyes to the sides, up, down, flattened her nose, pursed her lips. She decided the small lines developing around her eyes and mouth that she'd been concerned about could stay.
*
When Chloe met someone like her, they definitely recognized her for who - or what - she was.
Anji hadn't really been looking to replace her car again a year after Fitz and Guy had trashed her MG (she'd grown exceedingly fond of the little BMW she'd replaced it with), but surprisingly, driving her car through the plate glass front of that office tower downtown, later down the stairway from the fifth floor, and finally through a very long quarry had been the best way to rescue Chloe and Jamais from the Rani's clutches.
"For now," she said that night, "I think we're better off not looking for any of your people, okay?"
Chloe nodded vigorously, and curled up into Anji's embrace. Jamais, in an uncharacteristic display of emotion, licked Anji's feet. When she looked down, she could almost swear he was thanking her.
*
Anji did have to admit that Beep the Meep had appeared awfully cute and not the least bit homicidal and world-conquering when Chloe first started feeding him in the park around back.
*
Four years later, she opened the front door of her condo (three bedrooms, two baths, small backyard, beautifully appointed pool - perfect for the slightly expanded family) to find Fitz, Trix, and the Doctor standing there sheepishly, all looking rather a bit worse for the wear.
She let them in - making a mental note to call Greg and ask him to bring home a steam cleaner for the carpets after seeing the unidentifiable green gunk on Fitz's shoes - and fixed them tea while they took turns showering.
"Nice place here," Trix said, looking around appreciatively. "How's the little one? Enjoying playing mum?"
"She's good, and yes," Anji said. "Yes, I am. It's been incredibly weird, but, hell, no weirder than travelling through time and space with those two you're still hanging out with."
Trix laughed. "You're a good person, Soft Touch. Thanks for the hot water and the grub. The Doctor thinks he should be able to get the TARDIS back - he just needs a lift and possibly a few pounds to get it out of police custody."
Later, Anji would swear that she'd go broke if she had to replace her car again - she'd loved that Aston Martin almost as much as if it was her own child - but at least Chloe hadn't actually been kidnapped by the Cybermen, the planet hadn't been conquered and reduced to rubble, and Fitz swore up and down he hadn't actually meant to drive the Aston Martin into a brick wall.
"Can we get a red car next?" Chloe asked that night, as Greg hoovered the hall carpet. "In a few years I can drive it, mum!"
Her insurance rates were going to go through the roof. Looking at Chloe's happy face, she found she didn't mind - much.
*
First night alone with her child. Anji was full of doubt. This was the rest of her life.
"And then mum swooped down and banished the horrible monster to the end of time," Chloe said, with a dramatic gesture. "The whole world was safe once again thanks to her." Jamais growled appreciatively, and Chloe snuggled into him, curled up under the blankets in her bed.
Anji moved away from the doorway quietly, not wanting Chloe to know she'd been overheard.
She went to the kitchen, poured herself a small glass of the good red she had out on the counter. She swirled it around in the glass, and looked at her reflection. It was fluid and ever-changing, but still her - same eyes, same nose, same mouth.
She watched the different combinations the same elements could make, then drank the glass down in one long swallow. Mum. It was new; it was new and different and scary, but somehow, it felt like just the sort of challenge she needed now, dropped back into the real world. She needed a new job, a new car, all that, sure; but this would be an adventure on a scale not even the TARDIS could provide.
She smiled, and put down the glass. She heard a small giggle from Chloe's room, and looked up to see blue eyes vanish back behind the door.
"When mum says it's bedtime, she means it," Anji called out. "If I can banish horrible monsters, I can make little girls go to sleep when they should!"
"Yes, mum," Chloe called back. Jamais barked once.
Anji shook her head, and poured herself a second glass. She looked out the window over the sink; the stars were glittering. She was home, and she had a little girl who thought she could slay dragons.
Maybe she could, she thought. Maybe she would.