The Family Man, Chapter 6
The Doctor stared at his daughter as she ran over to him and jumped in his lap, laughing giddily. She pressed her small fingers to his temple, concentrating briefly before breaking out into another huge smile.
“You’re coming home,” she said enigmatically.
The Doctor blinked, and saw himself reflected in her thick glasses.
“What does that mean?” he asked carefully.
“You don’t remember,” Sammy stated sadly. “But you will. The lens affects us all differently.”
The Doctor looked at her with confusion. “The lens? What is that, Sammy?”
She didn't answer, but watched his face for a long time before suddenly snapped out of her trance, digging her fingers into his arms with excitement.
“Can we order pizza tonight?” she asked distractedly. “I want pepperoni and artichoke, even though Wil won’t eat it.”
The Doctor struggled with his desire to rein her back in and return to their previous topic, but something about her expression made him leave it for the moment.
“Yes,” he answered decidedly. “We’ll get something else for Wil. How about...mushroom?”
Sammy let a slow smile spread over her face. “That’s right, daddy.”
At that point, Rose came into the room and dropped her purse down heavily, collapsing into a nearby chair with a look of defeat on her face.
Wil followed after briefly, waving a brochure in his hand.
“But don’t you see this is a wonderful opportunity for me?” he said, as if continuing a drawn-out argument. “There are only three intergalactic institutions in this sector with the qualifications necessary for my scope and ability. It would be a punishment NOT to allow me to attend!”
Rose sighed and pointed to the Doctor.
“You tell him,” she moaned.
The Doctor shrugged as Sammy jumped down and started to play with K9 on the floor.
“What am I telling him, exactly?” the Doctor asked.
“Why I’m not having my son raised on another planet away from his family, for one thing,” Rose started angrily. “And why there are plenty of opportunities here on earth for him to continue his education. Ivy league schools…”
“Princeton, Harvard, Yale…pfff!” Wil moaned. “You must be joking.”
“Don’t take that tone with your mother,” the Doctor warned automatically, and his son's surly expression wilted.
"Sorry mum..." he apologized.
The Doctor leaned back into the couch with folded arms, thinking through the problem rationally. How would he answer this question if he really was Wil's dad?
“There’s only one thing for it. A solution equanimical to both parties. I will supervise Wil’s advancing education,” he said, folding his hands neatly on his thigh.
“What?” Rose objected. “Where will you get the time between Torchwood and the TARDIS? You already have a million projects…”
“The better to include an assistant,” the Doctor reasoned.
Wil’s face lit up, hardly able to contain his pride and excitement.
“Really, dad?” he asked, turning his face back to his mother. “Please, mum? Oh, please! I can do it, I know I can!”
Rose stared at the Doctor. “Let me talk about this more with your father. Doctor, in private, please?”
The Doctor stood to follow her, turning toward Sammy before exiting the room.
“Call for the pizza!” he mimed, making her grin.
Rose had already made it to the bedroom, and was waiting for him with one hand on the door. When he crossed the threshold, she shut it firmly behind them. The Doctor went and sat on the bed, stretching out his long arms to prop himself up as he leaned back.
“Do you really think this is a good idea?” she asked nervously. “I’m worried about him getting involved in all this before he’s ready.”
The Doctor nodded, trying to understand her point of view. “I get that, but he’s no normal boy, Rose. At his age, I had already glimpsed the Untempered Schism.”
Rose groaned, as if she’d heard it a thousand times. “Yes, but he’s also no normal Time Lord, Doctor. He’s part human, and you have to remember that before you go throwing him into the space-time continuum. He’s still a little boy.”
“I wasn’t suggesting anything of the sort,” the Doctor replied, slightly miffed. “And we didn’t throw each other in, just to be clear. Believe me, I know how damaging it can be to suddenly get confronted with the whole knowledge of the time vortex, and actually, you do too…though you don’t remember it. I wouldn’t do that to Wil. All I’m saying is that he needs to be challenged, and I think I can do that in a productive way. Don’t you trust me to supervise our son’s education?”
“Don’t turn this into a question of my faith in you. I just worry that you don’t understand Wil’s human side. You’ve always been so excited about having partial Time Lords around to share your history with, and sometimes you forget that they have this whole other side to them…” Rose argued.
“Is this really about Wil or is this about you?” the Doctor let out before he could stop himself. “I mean…” he tried to recover. “He has to grow up sometime, Rose.”
His wife shook her head silently, trying to keep the tears that had started to form around her eyes from spilling over, but failing. The Doctor looked up at her with clenched fists, and was reminded of her birthday video, when she was crying for a much different reason. Both times it was because of him.
He didn’t think, but crossed the room in a few short steps and grabbed his wife, holding her tightly as he rocked her back and forth.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have… I’m so sorry!”
Rose pulled back a little and pushed her hair from her wet cheeks.
“No, you’re right,” she admitted. “I’m scared about him growing up. It’s not like with other children his age. He’s supposed to be a little boy, but he isn't. He still looks like one and sometimes even talks like one. He definitely has the emotional capacity of one. But he isn’t just that. And I hate how sometimes I can’t relate to him the way I should, as his mother, because he’s so much closer to you, because he's so clever! Sometimes he looks at me like I’m just a stupid human and I wonder if I am!”
Rose broke down as the Doctor pulled her close again, nuzzling his nose in her hair and working his fingers over her tense back.
“Rose,” he said soothingly. “I know this life can't have been easy for you. Raising half-Time Lord children is an enormous undertaking, and I can't imagine dealing with me has been any better. But no one could have done better, Rose. I mean, just look at us! Ours is an extraordinary family!”
His last words were a revelation to himself, because he realized he didn’t need to have lived the past several years to see how strong his wife was, or what an amazing family she had created. They were extraordinary because she was.
The Doctor lowered his face to look Rose in the eyes, and saw she had stopped crying. She stared back up at him intensely, sending a low surge of heat through the Doctor’s belly. He opened his mouth by a fraction of an inch, and moved before rational thought could interrupt his overwhelming desire to kiss her.
She met him expectantly, in the practiced and familiar way of a woman who has kissed the same man a million times previously, but was shaken by the urgency and passion of this one. He squeezed her sides and moved his hands to her hips as he pulled her forward, walking himself backwards to the bed as his knees grew weak, and then collapsed. He fell back onto the mattress and Rose followed, tangling her hands in his hair as she brought a leg up around his hip.
The Doctor gasped when Rose’s lips wandered away toward his neck, and worked back up to his earlobe.
“I love you,” she whispered roughly, moving her hand down to reach under his shirt and feel his warm chest, where his two hearts beat rapidly.
The Doctor pulled her back into a searing kiss, feeling his whole stomach flip when she spoke those words. He subconsciously began to move Rose onto her back and was halfway on top of her when a series of knocks came at their bedroom door.
“Pizza’s here!” Sammy announced. Her hurried footsteps could be heard receding back down the hall.
“Oh,” the Doctor groaned lightly as Rose tumbled over and adjusted her shirt with a smirk.
“Mm, pizza!” she said, biting her tongue.
The Doctor put his face in his hands and laughed.
“Yes, that’s all I can think about,” he said unconvincingly. And then, “Rose?”
“Yes, Doctor?” she asked, just about to leave the bedroom.
“Do you feel better? I mean, about before?” he asked tentatively.
“Yeah,” she answered, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Thank you. I think it’s going to be the right thing for Wil…you teaching him how to be a man and all. I’m still his mum, though. And if he gets out of line he’ll have to answer to me.”
“You got it!” the Doctor replied as Rose nodded and left the room.
He closed his eyes and shook his head, only just starting to realize how caught up in the moment he’d been. He had been arguing with his (not actual) wife about their (not actual) son for the last half hour. Why had he been so passionate about the subject in the first place? He was frightened to think he might be getting overly invested in this fantasy world.
“It’s not real,” he reminded himself, rubbing at his temples as he sat down at the dinner table…although everything he felt and saw told him the contrary. From the scent of Rose’s subtle perfume to Sammy’s sticky fingers on his arm as she handed him a slice of pizza…but most of all, Wil’s eyes as they captured and held his own.
“I’m gonna be just like you when I grow up, dad,” Wil announced. “I’m gonna save the world.”
The Doctor leaned forward, as if seeing his son for the first time.
"I think you are, Wil," he answered. And he believed it.
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