Crossroads - A Blue Gravel Path (1/13)
Title: A Blue Gravel Path
Characters: The Doctor, Rose Tyler, among others
Warnings: PG. Oh, and it’s baby!fic.
Spoilers: For the sake of this story, S4 never happens.
Beta: runriggers
Story Summary..... This is the last place the Doctor wants to go. This is the last person Jackie wants to see. This is the last chance Rose will get. This is the last choice any of them will make.....Part Four of the Crossroads Series.
Part of the Crossroads series
A now AU and non-S4 compliant story. Ah well.
Part One: Reflections
Part Two: One Day
Part Three: Choices and Chances
Chapter One: Calm Before the Storm.....Rose Tyler and the Doctor are content to lead a quiet life with their two children aboard the Tardis. Dex, age four (minus one month), has other ideas about the “quiet life”.
Chapter One: Calm Before the Storm
“Just a little bite,” coaxed Rose Tyler as she held a baby spoon up to the toddler in the high chair. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed child kept her mouth firmly closed, and shook her head from side to side in an attempt to dodge the spoon. She only ended up with a thin raspberry-colored stripe on her cheeks, as if her mouth had been extended.
Rose sighed in exasperation. “They’re good raspberries, Nina, Mummy promises.”
Nina did not seem to care. She scrunched her nose up, which made her look perfectly adorable, and pressed her lips together. She couldn’t speak yet - or wouldn’t, no one was really certain - but Rose had the idea that if Nina could say something, she would happily tell her mother exactly what to do with the raspberries that were being served as her pre-nap snack.
Rose sighed and tried again. “Nina, sweetheart, just a little bit?”
“One Time Tot down, one to go,” said the Doctor cheerfully as he walked into the kitchen with a bounce in his step. “Mine’s asleep and dreaming - how’s the second one coming along?”
Rose sat back from the baby, disgruntled. Bad enough that Nina wouldn’t eat; worse that the Doctor had obviously had no trouble at all with Nina’s older brother. “She won’t eat the raspberries.”
“Of course not, they’re raspberries.” The Doctor leaned over the baby from behind and tickled her. Nina giggled, and strained in her chair towards him, careful to keep her mouth firmly closed. She was a baby, but not a fool. “Hello, Nina, are you being good for Mummy?”
Rose crossed her arms and glared at them both. She wasn’t sure which of the two were more impossible: the Doctor, who claimed that baby talk stunted mental growth and that it should never be spoken around infants (until he thought Rose was on the other side of the TARDIS, in which case the baby talk sprang forth), or their daughter, who for the previous two weeks had refused to eat anything that was not a banana.
“She’s flirting with you.”
“Do you think I’m going to save you from the nasty raspberries, Nina?” The Doctor tickled Nina again and grinned at her. “She’s a clever Time Baby.”
“She’s going to be a starving Time Baby, we’re clear out of bananas.”
“Easy enough to find more,” the Doctor said cheerfully, and lifted Nina out of the chair. He twisted her to face him and tossed her in the air, catching her easily. “You don’t want nasty old raspberries anyway, do you, Nina?”
“She won’t if you keep calling them nasty,” said Rose dryly. “I know bananas are good and all, but I’d like her to have something else in her diet.”
“She needs the potassium. It’s very important for the development of neuron functions, including brain patterns and nerve reactions. As well as a load of other things. The more bananas she eats, the better for her brain.”
“She’s going to get potassium poisoning!”
The Doctor frowned, bouncing Nina lightly. “You can have that?”
“If anyone could, it would be Nina. Being a clever Time Baby and all that. If she won’t eat anything in this kitchen, then I can’t exactly keep her fed.”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “You’ve managed to wean her in the last two hours?”
Rose sighed and tossed the bowl of mashed raspberries onto the table. “That’s just supplemental. She’s only nine months, and I won’t wean her for another three months at least. Dex got a whole year, Nina gets a whole year. And about Dex-"
“Asleep,” the Doctor said smugly as he sat across the table from Rose and pulled the bowl of raspberries closer. “Read him a chapter on temporal abnormalities in complex ecosystems and he was straight out.”
“I recall having Beatrix Potter before naptime, you know.”
“When you put him down, you can read him stories about bunnies in gardens. When I put him down, we lay the building blocks of a temporal education which will help him pilot the TARDIS someday.” The Doctor took a mouthful of raspberries and made a large show of chewing as Nina watched curiously.
Rose tried to be annoyed, but burst out laughing anyway. “He fell asleep, he won’t remember!”
“That’s the best time to learn something,” said the Doctor. “Children sleep in order to process the information they learn whilst awake. Mmm, raspberries.”
“She won’t buy it,” sang Rose.
“Good, I like raspberries too much to share. Almost as good as bananas, they are.” The Doctor took another bite, and Nina’s gaze turned suspicious.
Rose sat back in her chair, watching them. It was funny, how easily they’d slipped into parenthood. According to her superwatch (which now kept track of the children’s information, including relative age, temperature, and distance from Rose) Dex would be four years old in another month. Rose couldn’t imagine life before him. Her son was curious and loud and funny and loving and exactly like his father in all the wrong ways. He was in trouble more often than he was not, and Rose absolutely adored him. Sarah Jane had given her a camera when he was born, and Rose used it every single day, from every single angle, and quickly learned how to transmit the photographs to her mother - as well as anyone else who cared to see them. Jack claimed to have wallpapered his office with them, but Rose knew better than to believe him.
Nina was another baby altogether. She was good and sweet and quiet and loved nothing more than to be cuddled, but she had enough personality to throw a tantrum so stupendous that even the TARDIS stopped mid-flight to observe, amazed at what one pair of lungs could manage. Rose dreaded the day when her daughter began talking, but still looked forward to hearing what that determined little mind had to say.
The Doctor took another bite of raspberries, and Nina’s bottom lip trembled, just a bit. He scraped the bowl with the spoon as he chewed, and offered her the last little bit. Nina hesitated, opened her mouth cautiously, and took a bite. The Doctor swallowed.
“There,” he said triumphantly. “They’re not so awful, are they?”
Nina blew, and raspberries splattered across the Doctor’s face and tie. Rose burst into a fresh round of laughter and reached for the baby.
“Good show, Nina,” she told her daughter as she carried her over to the sink to wash off her face. “Silly old Dad, making you eat the nasty raspberries.”
“Oi! Could I have a towel here?”
Rose tossed him one of the towels on the counter, and continued wiping Nina’s hands and face with a damp cloth. “So, duck, tell me which you’d rather - a pretty story about ducks and foxes with Mummy, or a scary Time Lord list with lots of long words with Dad?”
Nina leaned forward and wrapped her chubby arms around her mother’s neck, and Rose picked her back up from the counter.
“At least Dex likes me,” grumbled the Doctor as he furiously blotted his tie with the towel, and Rose leaned over to give him a kiss. Nina made a smacking sound to imitate her mother.
“We like you just fine. And Nina wants you to listen to the story, too.”
Nina nodded her head very solemnly. It amazed Rose, how quickly her babies began to understand speech, even if they couldn’t quite speak yet. She half thought that Nina was thinking in complex sentences sometimes, although she couldn’t say so much as Mummy or Dad, and hardly ever babbled in unintelligible baby-talk. Dex had babbled continuously since he was three months old, sometimes while eating, often while sleeping, and almost without any of them realizing it, his babbles had turned into actual English. No one knew what Dex’s first word was, because by the time Martha had pointed out that the boy was speaking fairly clearly for an 18-month old child, he’d been doing it for several days already.
The Doctor faked a great sigh and followed them down the corridor to the baby’s room, which was still connected to their own for nighttime emergencies. It was decorated in yellows and blues, with ducks running around the border - literally, running around the borders, changing their positions and activities only when no one was looking. Rose couldn’t determine if the ducks moved themselves, or if the TARDIS just liked to entertain herself. Either way, Nina loved the ducks. She would spend hours just staring at them, completely mesmerized. If on some remote planet, there existed anything remotely resembling a duck, Nina was guaranteed to spot it and demand a closer inspection.
Rose settled herself in the rocking chair and pulled a book from the shelves just beside it. “Listen to the story of Jemima Puddle-duck,” she began reading to Nina, who snuggled contentedly beside her, thumb firmly in her mouth.
“She’s sucking her thumb,” observed the Doctor from his position at the door. Gallifreyan babies, he claimed, did not suck their thumbs, and the fact that Nina had slipped into the habit bothered him considerably.
“She’s a baby, babies do that,” said Rose automatically before continuing mid-sentence. “Who was annoyed because the farmer’s wife would not let her hatch her own eggs.”
“The one about the little prince is quite good,” continued the Doctor. “Traveling through space, wanting sheep. Even has a rose in it.”
“Prissy flower wrapped in a glass cage. Not much better than cotton wool, if you ask me,” retorted Rose, and turned the page. “Her sister-in-law, Mrs. Rebeccah Puddle-duck, was perfectly willing to-"
“Of course, he does die at the end. Suicide by snake, nasty way to go. I suppose no one dies in a Beatrix Potter book. Especially not one about foxes and ducklings. Wouldn’t do at all.”
Rose sighed. “You could be looking for bananas.”
“You invited me to naptime reading.”
“Nina is dis-inviting you.”
“Nina is already asleep,” the Doctor pointed out, and when Rose glanced at her daughter, she was surprised to see the little girl already asleep, her mouth loose around her thumb.
The Doctor hopped up from the ground and gently took the baby. He cradled Nina for a moment, resting his forehead against hers with eyes closed. Rose lay her head back and watched them, once again adoring the sight of the Doctor and his daughter together. She knew, without hearing it, that the Doctor was speaking to the child in her sleep, whispering words in Gallifreyan, wrapping the baby’s mind in the comforting security of a world she’d never know. Nina’s hand drifted up to her father’s face and rested on his check. Rose grinned as her daughter copied the move long since signifying a desire to interact telepathically. Even in sleep, Nina imitated her mother. After a few moments, the Doctor settled the baby into her crib, gently pulled the thumb from her mouth, and brushed her forehead with his fingertips.
“How long?” asked Rose quietly. It was another moment before the Doctor turned to her, still wearing the soft, contented smile he had whenever he interacted with his children.
“Oh, she’ll be asleep for two hours at least,” he reported. “Dex, maybe another ninety minutes.”
“Useful skill you’ve picked up,” she said, lifting her hands so that he could pull her from the chair. “Reading their thoughts to determine how long they’ll sleep.”
“Well worth keeping me around for, I think,” the Doctor agreed, and pulled her into him, wrapping his arms around her. “So, ninety minutes with nothing to do and no children to watch - tell me, Rose Tyler, what would you like to do?”
“Hmm.” Rose wrinkled her nose. “Ninety minutes, children asleep, no cloister bells, no guests aboard. I think there’s only one thing we can do in this circumstance.”
The Doctor grinned.
“Obviously, we need to repair the damaged strut in the console room.”
The Doctor’s grin fell.
“Chin up, you said you needed help to do it, and I’ve got ninety child-free minutes, with your guarantee. That horrid crack has been hurting the TARDIS. We ought to repair it before she gets worse and deposits us somewhere entirely inappropriate.”
“The Sontorans,” said the Doctor glumly, thinking of the last “adventure”. “Or the Fendahls.”
“I was thinking Elizabethan England, actually, but yes, those would be bad too.”
The Doctor sighed. “I told you, I’ll take you back there any time you like. As long as it’s after Elizabeth is dead.”
“You have to go back sometime. Martha said that Elizabeth knew you in 1588 too, you’ve got to go back and actually meet her.”
“She thinks I have a companion named Janie,” said the Doctor. “No Janie, no need to go to Elizabeth. Ergo, sic, qui - I will not go.”
“You look silly spouting Latin when you aren’t wearing glasses.”
He stopped her mouth with a kiss, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, only too happy to oblige him. Two children who took very short naps and a cranky TARDIS which often needed repairs did not generally allow for an hour’s worth of together time.
“We’ll go find Jack,” murmured the Doctor through the kiss, and Rose pulled away.
“I - ah - what?”
“To repair the strut. You have children, I have Jack. TARDIS is repaired, the hour is ours, and I get what I want.”
“I have issues with you having Jack.”
“He has issues with me having you,” replied the Doctor cheekily, and without even a glance at his sleeping daughter, walked Rose backwards and into their adjoining room. “Let’s stop talking about Jack.”
“You brought him up.”
“Only to point out that fixing the strut now is entirely unnecessary. I’m sure they have bananas in Cardiff.”
“Are you sure? What about the Great Banana Shortage of 2015?”
“We’ll land in 2014.”
Rose’s knees hit the bed, and she tumbled onto it, with the Doctor following. “I think Jack said 2014 was off-limits - that’s the year it was on Pete’s World when you pulled me through, before you collapsed time. We aren’t to go anywhere near the crossroads in 2014, Jack said. Captain’s orders.”
“2013.” The Doctor laid a light trail of kisses from her ear to her neck, and Rose’s eyes fluttered shut.
“We spent six months in 2013 when Nina was born and Dex had flu.”
“Rose,” groaned the Doctor, his head falling against her shoulder. “If you don’t stop yammering on, I’m going to have to fix the strut in the console room.”
Rose grabbed him by his ears and pulled him up just enough to kiss his mouth. “Next stop, Cardiff,” she said sternly, and he nodded in reply because his tongue was otherwise occupied.
*
If the TARDIS could frown, she would. Not being in possession of a mouth, frowning wasn’t a possibility. She could hum disapprovingly, however, so this is what she did the moment Dex slipped into the console room, his hair still mussed from sleep and his brown eyes bright and curious.
The hum did nothing to deter the small boy creeping toward the console, however. Dex nearly always heard the TARDIS hum disapprovingly; it was as familiar to him as his own hearts beating, so he didn’t pay any attention at all. If Dex made breakfast for his parents to eat in bed - disapproving hum, mostly about the resulting fire in the kitchen. If Dex crawled into Nina’s crib - disapproving hum, mostly about the crib collapsing under his weight. If Dex watered the vines in the garden - disapproving hum, but how was Dex to know you only fed Krespan vines with vinegar?
Dex was four years old - well, nearly, close enough to call himself four, surely, and that was only according to Mum’s watch. Dex felt much older. He’d met four-year-olds on most of the planets and while some of them were quite old indeed, most of them couldn’t do half the things he could. He could read, and write, and do algebraic computations in his head with only a little bit of prompting from Dad. He could make a prawn mayo sandwich and pour a glass of milk without spilling a drop. He could arm-wrestle Uncle Jack and win, and he could name every bone in the human body in Latin, just like Aunt Martha had taught him.
Aunt Sarah Jane called him clever, and seemed to think he was very funny. Dex didn’t know why, because he never tried to be funny. She was always laughing at him, which didn’t exactly sit well with Dex, and once they were married when Dex was older, he’d put a stop to it. Wives didn’t laugh at husbands. Mum didn’t laugh at Dad, except when she was with Aunt Sarah Jane, and that was only because Aunt Sarah Jane was a Bad Influence. But Aunt Sarah Jane wouldn’t be a Bad Influence once Dex married her and showed her how it was done.
“I can fly the TARDIS,” Dex had told Aunt Sarah Jane the previous week. “I’m going to fly it to Alpha Centauri and back.”
“Oh, can you?” asked Aunt Sarah Jane, eyes full of mirth and pretty hair curling on her shoulders.
Dex stomped his foot. “I can. I’m the best pilot ever, I’m heaps better than Dad.”
“Hard to be worse,” Aunt Sarah Jane said, and she and Mum laughed for a long time. Dad picked Dex up, tucked him under an arm, and carried him out to the sound of their amusement.
“Please don’t encourage them,” Dad said. Dex hadn’t actually meant to encourage anyone to do anything, but he was still plopped in the rose garden with Nina, unable to further impress his future wife.
He could fly the TARDIS.
Well, sort of fly the TARDIS. Dad let him hold a control lever while he raced around like mad. Mummy and Nina didn’t do anything; they just sat on the jump seat and watched. It was very important work, Dex knew. Without holding that lever, they might crash into the Vortex and land in some awful horrible place, like Lezzabethangland, which was full of dragons and pirates and ghost-ships and some frightening race called Thees Panyards, who would sprinkle him with salt and sour cream and eat him up like a baked potato. (No butter, though, Panyards don’t like butter.) Sometimes, when even Dad tired of temporal abnormalities as bedtime stories, he told the most fantastic tales of how bloodthirsty and horrible Panyards were, how they’d split him in two and gobble him up, and if he should ever find himself in Lezzabethangland, where the horrid Panyards lived, he should stay in the TARDIS, in his room, preferably under his bed.
Dex desperately wanted to meet a Panyard, and see if they had jagged teeth. And then he wanted to catch a dragon for a pet, and name it Henry.
(Henry would be a good name for a dragon, Dex thought.)
Dex approached the control panel and tried to lift himself up to see the instruments better, his feet kicking out below. The disapproving hum was louder now as Dex flailed, trying to find a foothold before his toes found root on exposed piping. He looked eagerly at the panel, trying to determine which was the proper start-up button. Dex thought it was a button. It was mostly likely a button. He was fairly certain he remembered his father hitting a button.
Maybe.
Go to Lezzabethangland, see a Panyard, find a dragon and bring it back to Aunt Sarah Jane, who would be so overcome with remorse for not believing him in the first place, she would instantly agree to marry him when he was older. Besides, Dex really did know how to fly the TARDIS. He’d watched his father do it a thousand times. This button, that lever, run around in circles, bang the keyboard with the mallet, and they were always there.
The TARDIS’s hum turned from disapproving to frantic.
Dex slipped a little, and his toes flailed out again, banging against wires and levers and knocking one particular connection out of alignment. The TARDIS let out a rather impatient and abused squeal, like metal running against each other, and Dex caught his foothold again.
“Next stop, Lezzabethangland!” he hollered, and banged down hard on the closest button he could reach.
Jump to Chapter Two
Characters: The Doctor, Rose Tyler, among others
Warnings: PG. Oh, and it’s baby!fic.
Spoilers: For the sake of this story, S4 never happens.
Beta: runriggers
Story Summary..... This is the last place the Doctor wants to go. This is the last person Jackie wants to see. This is the last chance Rose will get. This is the last choice any of them will make.....Part Four of the Crossroads Series.
Part of the Crossroads series
A now AU and non-S4 compliant story. Ah well.
Part One: Reflections
Part Two: One Day
Part Three: Choices and Chances
Chapter One: Calm Before the Storm.....Rose Tyler and the Doctor are content to lead a quiet life with their two children aboard the Tardis. Dex, age four (minus one month), has other ideas about the “quiet life”.
Chapter One: Calm Before the Storm
“Just a little bite,” coaxed Rose Tyler as she held a baby spoon up to the toddler in the high chair. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed child kept her mouth firmly closed, and shook her head from side to side in an attempt to dodge the spoon. She only ended up with a thin raspberry-colored stripe on her cheeks, as if her mouth had been extended.
Rose sighed in exasperation. “They’re good raspberries, Nina, Mummy promises.”
Nina did not seem to care. She scrunched her nose up, which made her look perfectly adorable, and pressed her lips together. She couldn’t speak yet - or wouldn’t, no one was really certain - but Rose had the idea that if Nina could say something, she would happily tell her mother exactly what to do with the raspberries that were being served as her pre-nap snack.
Rose sighed and tried again. “Nina, sweetheart, just a little bit?”
“One Time Tot down, one to go,” said the Doctor cheerfully as he walked into the kitchen with a bounce in his step. “Mine’s asleep and dreaming - how’s the second one coming along?”
Rose sat back from the baby, disgruntled. Bad enough that Nina wouldn’t eat; worse that the Doctor had obviously had no trouble at all with Nina’s older brother. “She won’t eat the raspberries.”
“Of course not, they’re raspberries.” The Doctor leaned over the baby from behind and tickled her. Nina giggled, and strained in her chair towards him, careful to keep her mouth firmly closed. She was a baby, but not a fool. “Hello, Nina, are you being good for Mummy?”
Rose crossed her arms and glared at them both. She wasn’t sure which of the two were more impossible: the Doctor, who claimed that baby talk stunted mental growth and that it should never be spoken around infants (until he thought Rose was on the other side of the TARDIS, in which case the baby talk sprang forth), or their daughter, who for the previous two weeks had refused to eat anything that was not a banana.
“She’s flirting with you.”
“Do you think I’m going to save you from the nasty raspberries, Nina?” The Doctor tickled Nina again and grinned at her. “She’s a clever Time Baby.”
“She’s going to be a starving Time Baby, we’re clear out of bananas.”
“Easy enough to find more,” the Doctor said cheerfully, and lifted Nina out of the chair. He twisted her to face him and tossed her in the air, catching her easily. “You don’t want nasty old raspberries anyway, do you, Nina?”
“She won’t if you keep calling them nasty,” said Rose dryly. “I know bananas are good and all, but I’d like her to have something else in her diet.”
“She needs the potassium. It’s very important for the development of neuron functions, including brain patterns and nerve reactions. As well as a load of other things. The more bananas she eats, the better for her brain.”
“She’s going to get potassium poisoning!”
The Doctor frowned, bouncing Nina lightly. “You can have that?”
“If anyone could, it would be Nina. Being a clever Time Baby and all that. If she won’t eat anything in this kitchen, then I can’t exactly keep her fed.”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “You’ve managed to wean her in the last two hours?”
Rose sighed and tossed the bowl of mashed raspberries onto the table. “That’s just supplemental. She’s only nine months, and I won’t wean her for another three months at least. Dex got a whole year, Nina gets a whole year. And about Dex-"
“Asleep,” the Doctor said smugly as he sat across the table from Rose and pulled the bowl of raspberries closer. “Read him a chapter on temporal abnormalities in complex ecosystems and he was straight out.”
“I recall having Beatrix Potter before naptime, you know.”
“When you put him down, you can read him stories about bunnies in gardens. When I put him down, we lay the building blocks of a temporal education which will help him pilot the TARDIS someday.” The Doctor took a mouthful of raspberries and made a large show of chewing as Nina watched curiously.
Rose tried to be annoyed, but burst out laughing anyway. “He fell asleep, he won’t remember!”
“That’s the best time to learn something,” said the Doctor. “Children sleep in order to process the information they learn whilst awake. Mmm, raspberries.”
“She won’t buy it,” sang Rose.
“Good, I like raspberries too much to share. Almost as good as bananas, they are.” The Doctor took another bite, and Nina’s gaze turned suspicious.
Rose sat back in her chair, watching them. It was funny, how easily they’d slipped into parenthood. According to her superwatch (which now kept track of the children’s information, including relative age, temperature, and distance from Rose) Dex would be four years old in another month. Rose couldn’t imagine life before him. Her son was curious and loud and funny and loving and exactly like his father in all the wrong ways. He was in trouble more often than he was not, and Rose absolutely adored him. Sarah Jane had given her a camera when he was born, and Rose used it every single day, from every single angle, and quickly learned how to transmit the photographs to her mother - as well as anyone else who cared to see them. Jack claimed to have wallpapered his office with them, but Rose knew better than to believe him.
Nina was another baby altogether. She was good and sweet and quiet and loved nothing more than to be cuddled, but she had enough personality to throw a tantrum so stupendous that even the TARDIS stopped mid-flight to observe, amazed at what one pair of lungs could manage. Rose dreaded the day when her daughter began talking, but still looked forward to hearing what that determined little mind had to say.
The Doctor took another bite of raspberries, and Nina’s bottom lip trembled, just a bit. He scraped the bowl with the spoon as he chewed, and offered her the last little bit. Nina hesitated, opened her mouth cautiously, and took a bite. The Doctor swallowed.
“There,” he said triumphantly. “They’re not so awful, are they?”
Nina blew, and raspberries splattered across the Doctor’s face and tie. Rose burst into a fresh round of laughter and reached for the baby.
“Good show, Nina,” she told her daughter as she carried her over to the sink to wash off her face. “Silly old Dad, making you eat the nasty raspberries.”
“Oi! Could I have a towel here?”
Rose tossed him one of the towels on the counter, and continued wiping Nina’s hands and face with a damp cloth. “So, duck, tell me which you’d rather - a pretty story about ducks and foxes with Mummy, or a scary Time Lord list with lots of long words with Dad?”
Nina leaned forward and wrapped her chubby arms around her mother’s neck, and Rose picked her back up from the counter.
“At least Dex likes me,” grumbled the Doctor as he furiously blotted his tie with the towel, and Rose leaned over to give him a kiss. Nina made a smacking sound to imitate her mother.
“We like you just fine. And Nina wants you to listen to the story, too.”
Nina nodded her head very solemnly. It amazed Rose, how quickly her babies began to understand speech, even if they couldn’t quite speak yet. She half thought that Nina was thinking in complex sentences sometimes, although she couldn’t say so much as Mummy or Dad, and hardly ever babbled in unintelligible baby-talk. Dex had babbled continuously since he was three months old, sometimes while eating, often while sleeping, and almost without any of them realizing it, his babbles had turned into actual English. No one knew what Dex’s first word was, because by the time Martha had pointed out that the boy was speaking fairly clearly for an 18-month old child, he’d been doing it for several days already.
The Doctor faked a great sigh and followed them down the corridor to the baby’s room, which was still connected to their own for nighttime emergencies. It was decorated in yellows and blues, with ducks running around the border - literally, running around the borders, changing their positions and activities only when no one was looking. Rose couldn’t determine if the ducks moved themselves, or if the TARDIS just liked to entertain herself. Either way, Nina loved the ducks. She would spend hours just staring at them, completely mesmerized. If on some remote planet, there existed anything remotely resembling a duck, Nina was guaranteed to spot it and demand a closer inspection.
Rose settled herself in the rocking chair and pulled a book from the shelves just beside it. “Listen to the story of Jemima Puddle-duck,” she began reading to Nina, who snuggled contentedly beside her, thumb firmly in her mouth.
“She’s sucking her thumb,” observed the Doctor from his position at the door. Gallifreyan babies, he claimed, did not suck their thumbs, and the fact that Nina had slipped into the habit bothered him considerably.
“She’s a baby, babies do that,” said Rose automatically before continuing mid-sentence. “Who was annoyed because the farmer’s wife would not let her hatch her own eggs.”
“The one about the little prince is quite good,” continued the Doctor. “Traveling through space, wanting sheep. Even has a rose in it.”
“Prissy flower wrapped in a glass cage. Not much better than cotton wool, if you ask me,” retorted Rose, and turned the page. “Her sister-in-law, Mrs. Rebeccah Puddle-duck, was perfectly willing to-"
“Of course, he does die at the end. Suicide by snake, nasty way to go. I suppose no one dies in a Beatrix Potter book. Especially not one about foxes and ducklings. Wouldn’t do at all.”
Rose sighed. “You could be looking for bananas.”
“You invited me to naptime reading.”
“Nina is dis-inviting you.”
“Nina is already asleep,” the Doctor pointed out, and when Rose glanced at her daughter, she was surprised to see the little girl already asleep, her mouth loose around her thumb.
The Doctor hopped up from the ground and gently took the baby. He cradled Nina for a moment, resting his forehead against hers with eyes closed. Rose lay her head back and watched them, once again adoring the sight of the Doctor and his daughter together. She knew, without hearing it, that the Doctor was speaking to the child in her sleep, whispering words in Gallifreyan, wrapping the baby’s mind in the comforting security of a world she’d never know. Nina’s hand drifted up to her father’s face and rested on his check. Rose grinned as her daughter copied the move long since signifying a desire to interact telepathically. Even in sleep, Nina imitated her mother. After a few moments, the Doctor settled the baby into her crib, gently pulled the thumb from her mouth, and brushed her forehead with his fingertips.
“How long?” asked Rose quietly. It was another moment before the Doctor turned to her, still wearing the soft, contented smile he had whenever he interacted with his children.
“Oh, she’ll be asleep for two hours at least,” he reported. “Dex, maybe another ninety minutes.”
“Useful skill you’ve picked up,” she said, lifting her hands so that he could pull her from the chair. “Reading their thoughts to determine how long they’ll sleep.”
“Well worth keeping me around for, I think,” the Doctor agreed, and pulled her into him, wrapping his arms around her. “So, ninety minutes with nothing to do and no children to watch - tell me, Rose Tyler, what would you like to do?”
“Hmm.” Rose wrinkled her nose. “Ninety minutes, children asleep, no cloister bells, no guests aboard. I think there’s only one thing we can do in this circumstance.”
The Doctor grinned.
“Obviously, we need to repair the damaged strut in the console room.”
The Doctor’s grin fell.
“Chin up, you said you needed help to do it, and I’ve got ninety child-free minutes, with your guarantee. That horrid crack has been hurting the TARDIS. We ought to repair it before she gets worse and deposits us somewhere entirely inappropriate.”
“The Sontorans,” said the Doctor glumly, thinking of the last “adventure”. “Or the Fendahls.”
“I was thinking Elizabethan England, actually, but yes, those would be bad too.”
The Doctor sighed. “I told you, I’ll take you back there any time you like. As long as it’s after Elizabeth is dead.”
“You have to go back sometime. Martha said that Elizabeth knew you in 1588 too, you’ve got to go back and actually meet her.”
“She thinks I have a companion named Janie,” said the Doctor. “No Janie, no need to go to Elizabeth. Ergo, sic, qui - I will not go.”
“You look silly spouting Latin when you aren’t wearing glasses.”
He stopped her mouth with a kiss, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, only too happy to oblige him. Two children who took very short naps and a cranky TARDIS which often needed repairs did not generally allow for an hour’s worth of together time.
“We’ll go find Jack,” murmured the Doctor through the kiss, and Rose pulled away.
“I - ah - what?”
“To repair the strut. You have children, I have Jack. TARDIS is repaired, the hour is ours, and I get what I want.”
“I have issues with you having Jack.”
“He has issues with me having you,” replied the Doctor cheekily, and without even a glance at his sleeping daughter, walked Rose backwards and into their adjoining room. “Let’s stop talking about Jack.”
“You brought him up.”
“Only to point out that fixing the strut now is entirely unnecessary. I’m sure they have bananas in Cardiff.”
“Are you sure? What about the Great Banana Shortage of 2015?”
“We’ll land in 2014.”
Rose’s knees hit the bed, and she tumbled onto it, with the Doctor following. “I think Jack said 2014 was off-limits - that’s the year it was on Pete’s World when you pulled me through, before you collapsed time. We aren’t to go anywhere near the crossroads in 2014, Jack said. Captain’s orders.”
“2013.” The Doctor laid a light trail of kisses from her ear to her neck, and Rose’s eyes fluttered shut.
“We spent six months in 2013 when Nina was born and Dex had flu.”
“Rose,” groaned the Doctor, his head falling against her shoulder. “If you don’t stop yammering on, I’m going to have to fix the strut in the console room.”
Rose grabbed him by his ears and pulled him up just enough to kiss his mouth. “Next stop, Cardiff,” she said sternly, and he nodded in reply because his tongue was otherwise occupied.
*
If the TARDIS could frown, she would. Not being in possession of a mouth, frowning wasn’t a possibility. She could hum disapprovingly, however, so this is what she did the moment Dex slipped into the console room, his hair still mussed from sleep and his brown eyes bright and curious.
The hum did nothing to deter the small boy creeping toward the console, however. Dex nearly always heard the TARDIS hum disapprovingly; it was as familiar to him as his own hearts beating, so he didn’t pay any attention at all. If Dex made breakfast for his parents to eat in bed - disapproving hum, mostly about the resulting fire in the kitchen. If Dex crawled into Nina’s crib - disapproving hum, mostly about the crib collapsing under his weight. If Dex watered the vines in the garden - disapproving hum, but how was Dex to know you only fed Krespan vines with vinegar?
Dex was four years old - well, nearly, close enough to call himself four, surely, and that was only according to Mum’s watch. Dex felt much older. He’d met four-year-olds on most of the planets and while some of them were quite old indeed, most of them couldn’t do half the things he could. He could read, and write, and do algebraic computations in his head with only a little bit of prompting from Dad. He could make a prawn mayo sandwich and pour a glass of milk without spilling a drop. He could arm-wrestle Uncle Jack and win, and he could name every bone in the human body in Latin, just like Aunt Martha had taught him.
Aunt Sarah Jane called him clever, and seemed to think he was very funny. Dex didn’t know why, because he never tried to be funny. She was always laughing at him, which didn’t exactly sit well with Dex, and once they were married when Dex was older, he’d put a stop to it. Wives didn’t laugh at husbands. Mum didn’t laugh at Dad, except when she was with Aunt Sarah Jane, and that was only because Aunt Sarah Jane was a Bad Influence. But Aunt Sarah Jane wouldn’t be a Bad Influence once Dex married her and showed her how it was done.
“I can fly the TARDIS,” Dex had told Aunt Sarah Jane the previous week. “I’m going to fly it to Alpha Centauri and back.”
“Oh, can you?” asked Aunt Sarah Jane, eyes full of mirth and pretty hair curling on her shoulders.
Dex stomped his foot. “I can. I’m the best pilot ever, I’m heaps better than Dad.”
“Hard to be worse,” Aunt Sarah Jane said, and she and Mum laughed for a long time. Dad picked Dex up, tucked him under an arm, and carried him out to the sound of their amusement.
“Please don’t encourage them,” Dad said. Dex hadn’t actually meant to encourage anyone to do anything, but he was still plopped in the rose garden with Nina, unable to further impress his future wife.
He could fly the TARDIS.
Well, sort of fly the TARDIS. Dad let him hold a control lever while he raced around like mad. Mummy and Nina didn’t do anything; they just sat on the jump seat and watched. It was very important work, Dex knew. Without holding that lever, they might crash into the Vortex and land in some awful horrible place, like Lezzabethangland, which was full of dragons and pirates and ghost-ships and some frightening race called Thees Panyards, who would sprinkle him with salt and sour cream and eat him up like a baked potato. (No butter, though, Panyards don’t like butter.) Sometimes, when even Dad tired of temporal abnormalities as bedtime stories, he told the most fantastic tales of how bloodthirsty and horrible Panyards were, how they’d split him in two and gobble him up, and if he should ever find himself in Lezzabethangland, where the horrid Panyards lived, he should stay in the TARDIS, in his room, preferably under his bed.
Dex desperately wanted to meet a Panyard, and see if they had jagged teeth. And then he wanted to catch a dragon for a pet, and name it Henry.
(Henry would be a good name for a dragon, Dex thought.)
Dex approached the control panel and tried to lift himself up to see the instruments better, his feet kicking out below. The disapproving hum was louder now as Dex flailed, trying to find a foothold before his toes found root on exposed piping. He looked eagerly at the panel, trying to determine which was the proper start-up button. Dex thought it was a button. It was mostly likely a button. He was fairly certain he remembered his father hitting a button.
Maybe.
Go to Lezzabethangland, see a Panyard, find a dragon and bring it back to Aunt Sarah Jane, who would be so overcome with remorse for not believing him in the first place, she would instantly agree to marry him when he was older. Besides, Dex really did know how to fly the TARDIS. He’d watched his father do it a thousand times. This button, that lever, run around in circles, bang the keyboard with the mallet, and they were always there.
The TARDIS’s hum turned from disapproving to frantic.
Dex slipped a little, and his toes flailed out again, banging against wires and levers and knocking one particular connection out of alignment. The TARDIS let out a rather impatient and abused squeal, like metal running against each other, and Dex caught his foothold again.
“Next stop, Lezzabethangland!” he hollered, and banged down hard on the closest button he could reach.
Jump to Chapter Two