Something About Stars (3/20)
Title - Something About Stars (3/20)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, OCs
Spoilers - I've started to think I may reference events without thinking, so, to be safe: Through the specials.
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids, they're all mine.)
Summary - Four Time Lords and a Bad Wolf human, gallivanting through time and space. What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Notes - Huge thanks to Kristin and chicklet73 , who talked through plot points. Special thanks to Kristin for coming up with the title. And even more thanks to jlrpuck and c73, who so graciously beta'd.
The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
Prologue - Ch 1
Chapter Two
Brem was not going looking for trouble. He never was. In fact, he was trying to avoid trouble. He sent his TARDIS into orbit around Inskip 12 and waited. He wasn’t sure quite what he was waiting for, to be honest. He’d read up in his library on time skips, but the books, dry and heavy in the way that Gallifreyan books tended to be-his father didn’t talk much about the Time Lords, and every time Brem had to read a Gallifreyan tome, he felt he knew exactly why that was-had not been very helpful. The books had no clue why they ever occurred, except that they were a bad sign…of something. They weren’t common, which was why more information about them had never been established, and the fact that Athena had run into a couple now was an alarming one. Brem didn’t like alarming occurrences in his universe. He preferred things to function in an orderly fashion. If there had to be time skips, then they ought to be caused by him. Was that too much to ask?
But Brem was having no luck coming across time skips around Inskip 12. Finally, he sighed and gave up, but not without first saving every reading he could. He sensed a lot of lazy Vortex days ahead of him, poring over obscure scientific measurements.
And Matt thought being a Time Lord was all flash, Brem mentally scoffed.
***
You had to be very careful when choosing a companion. Athena had found that out on the very first trip she’d ever taken in her own TARDIS. Delighted with the freedom, she had set it on random. She and her college boyfriend had ended up on Thrath, where the aliens looked a bit like cockroaches. Not for everyone, she knew that. But really, he could have complained about it a bit less. By the end of the trip, he was no longer her companion or her boyfriend.
Brittany, however, was a good companion. Athena had also met Brittany in uni. Brittany had, upon graduation, gone off to get her masters in European history, which she nearly done with now, and which the TARDIS had proven invaluable with research for. Brittany didn’t mind alien planets-didn’t flinch at them, to be honest-but she preferred historical sites, and Athena liked them, too, although she liked them a bit after their heyday. Stretched out in the middle of a picturesque Greek ruin, staring up at the sky above her, Athena thought how dull it would have been to have visited when this was brand new. All of its character was in its age.
“So,” remarked Brittany, sprawled out next to her. “Eighteenth century. What d’you suppose we can get around here to eat?”
Athena considered. “Olives?” she guessed.
“Works for me.” Brittany sat up and looked around them, shading her eyes. “Where d’you suppose we’d find these olives of yours?”
“Romantic poets,” said Athena, still looking up at the sky.
Brittany looked down at her. “What’s that?”
“This place is about to be overrun with Romantic poets. Time marches on.”
“Good thing you have a TARDIS and can keep coming back to before all the tourists arrive. Come on, let’s go tell these people how you’re the goddess Athena and you demand sustenance.” Brittany stood up.
Athena sighed and stretched and sat up. It was lovely in the sun. She would never tell her TARDIS but its artificial sunlight was nothing like the real thing.
The ground underneath her veered sharply to the left, and Athena, dizzy, dropped backward onto the grass with a gasp.
“Theenie?” Brittany knelt over her, her face a mask of concern.
Athena stared at the dusk spreading over the sky above her. “Brittany, what time is it?”
“I don’t know, you know my watch doesn’t work properly when we travel. What does your watch say?”
Athena didn’t need to look at her watch to know the readings would be going haywire. Because time had just skipped. “It wasn’t sunset,” she said.
“What?”
“Just a few minutes ago, you were talking about getting something to eat, and it was mid-afternoon, and now the sun is setting.”
Brittany looked up at the sky, and then looked back down at Athena. “Do you feel okay?”
She felt terrible, the way she usually felt when there was a time skip. She thought of what Matt had said. Maybe it was time to tell her father. A time skip happening outside of a TARDIS… She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard of anything like that before. Athena shivered, and then forced herself to sit up. “Olives,” she announced, almost grimly. “Weren’t we talking about olives?”
“Yeah.” Brittany watched her stand up as if she expected her to keel over.
“This way,” Athena told her, briskly, walking toward the town.
“The afternoon did seem to go by quickly, it’s true,” Brittany remarked, looking up at the sky. “But who knows, we’re in eighteenth-century Greece, it’s practically a whole different world, right?”
“Right,” said Athena, and untied and then re-tied her ponytail.
***
Athena dropped Brittany off, and then immediately went to her parents’.
Materializing a TARDIS inside another TARDIS was a tricky thing. In the beginning, Dad had said it was “impossible,” but Dad threw that word around so much that none of them listened to it anymore. It wasn’t impossible, it was just slightly dangerous. Brem had sat with equations, before figuring out the simplest thing of all: their TARDISes were related, which meant they were predisposed to working together to avoid any ill effects from their proximity.
To prove this, each TARDIS now had a room used entirely as a landing area for the other TARDISes, and as Athena stepped out of hers, she noticed that Fortuna’s was also parked beside her. Fortuna’s TARDIS was a pale yellow. Sunny, and Athena thought it suited her. They had teased her about making it pink, but it had been a while since Fortuna had been enamored of pink. It was Athena who still wore it in her hair every day.
Athena left the landing room and called, “Hello?” No one answered her, but she headed toward the control room, finding her father standing looking at the console with a finger on his lips. “Something wrong?” she asked.
He started and then focused on her. “Theenie,” he said, pleased, and accepted the hug she gave him. “I don’t think so,” he continued, answering her question. “She’s just…I don’t know. Woozy, or something.” He frowned momentarily, then turned his attention completely to her. “If you’re looking for your mother and sister, I think they’re in the garden having a cuppa.”
Athena sat in the captain’s chair, propping her pink-Chuck-clad feet up on the console. “I was looking for you, actually.”
“Really?” He folded his arms and propped his hip against the console to face her.”What’s up?”
Athena took a deep breath. “I’ve been running into time skips,” she said.
The look on his face sharpened. “Time skips? What do you mean?”
“Time. Skipping. I can’t find a pattern, it’s not like there’s one place. Today, it happened to me and I wasn’t even on the TARDIS.”
He stared at her.
“Do you know what it means?” she asked him.
He tugged on his earlobe. “No. I’ve never heard of this. But time’s been…violently in flux. If you’re telling me time’s skipping, then that explains why my TARDIS is woozy. And you weren’t even in a TARDIS?”
Athena shook her head.
“I’ve never even heard of that before,” he mused, ruffling at his hair.
Athena took the ribbon out of her hair, shook it out, and then re-fastened it. “Why would it only be me?”
He’d been staring into space, deep in thought, but he looked at her then. “Coincidence,” he said, firmly. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Coincidence,” Athena repeated. “Has Brem been here?”
“Not since your mother’s birthday.”
“Yeah. I can guarantee you Brem’s been out there looking for time skips since before that, and if he hasn’t shown up crowing about his discovery, then he hasn’t found any. And if Brem hasn’t found any time skips, then that means there’s something wrong with me, doesn’t it? Because I’m not even looking for them, and they’re all around me.”
“Why would Brem be looking for time skips?”
Athena pushed an unruly curl behind her ear. “I told him about them.”
“First, you should have told me, not your brother. That’s all I need, is him running off on some foolhardy quest for time skips. Second, there’s nothing wrong with you, and I’ll prove it. Come on.”
Athena followed him to the infirmary, where he hooked her up to all of the fancy machines Matt had ignored because she knew he didn’t know what they were. She watched her father pore over the read-outs, and then turn to her with a smile. “There you are.” He waved them about. “You are perfect. Just as I always knew. So. Stop worrying, yeah? It’s not you.”
“Have you ever been in a time skip?”
“No.”
“They’re not pleasant.”
“Go find your mother and sister. I’ll make us some fresh tea, and we’ll catch up. No time skips here. I guarantee it.”
“Oh, yeah?” She hopped off the bed. “How do you guarantee that?”
“Welllllll, I’m a better pilot than you are, it’s clear.”
Athena rolled her eyes good-naturedly, but turned abruptly just as he was about to walk into the kitchen and hugged him, more tightly than she’d hugged him in years.
Which he noticed, of course. He hugged her back, physically and mentally, kissing the top of her head. “We’ll figure it out, Theenie,” he said. “The universe is a strange place and strange things happen and 99.99 percent of them happen for no reason. There are more Time Lords bouncing around now than there have been for a while, it could be we’re making time skip with our very presence. Maybe the universe needs to learn how to adjust to all this time travel inside it again.”
“You think so?”
“Just as plausible as any other theory. At any rate, I have your readings and the best library in the universe at my disposal, as well as my brilliant mind. I’ll figure this out.”
Athena straightened with a deep breath. “I know you will. It’s fine, sorry. They’re…disconcerting. Bring biscuits when you bring the tea, yeah?”
“Absolutely,” he promised, heading into the kitchen.
Athena went to the garden, where her mother and sister had set out a picnic blanket. They were about a dozen miffgiffs also on the blanket, eating some biscuit crumbs and chattering away about how they’d domesticated one of the goldfish.
“Theenie,” her mother said, in pleasant surprise, as Athena leaned down and gave her a kiss on her cheek. “What are you doing here?”
“Just a visit.” She kissed Fortuna’s cheek as well, before dropping onto the blanket. “Hi, guys,” she said to the miffgiffs, extending her hand, and the miffgiffs came chattering over with words of welcome and hugged her fingers in that way they had.
“I’m afraid we’re almost out of tea,” said Mum.
“Dad’s making more.”
“Oh, you saw him? He was fretting about the TARDIS, did you help him?”
Athena shook her head. “No, I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” Athena looked at Fortuna. “What are you doing here?”
Fortuna adjusted the knee-high argyle socks she was wearing. Always knee-high argyle socks with a skirt and a blouse and a cardigan. Mum always said Fort had got more of Dad than almost any of them, in the end, in that strange, tilted formality. “I was in the area,” she said.
“She really was,” said Mum. “We ran into each other on Woman Wept.”
“So I thought I’d stay for tea,” continued Fortuna.
“What have you been up to?” asked Mum.
“Not much. Brittany and I went to Greece today. Eighteenth-century.”
“Was it nice?”
“Yeah.” The miffgiffs had grown bored, and were now splashing their way back into the goldfish pond.
“You still dating that guy?” asked Fortuna. “What species was he again?”
Oh. Lim. She hadn’t thought about him in a while, but she supposed she was technically still dating him. “He’s a Cunodysian, and yeah, I guess we’re still dating, but it’s not going anywhere. I should just break up with him.” Athena considered. “Not that it not going anywhere is necessarily a reason to break with him, though. I mean, it’s not like I’m in a rush or anything, I’ve got hundreds and hundreds of years left, it’s just…not working. He’s dull.” Athena looked at Fortuna. “What about you?”
“Like you say, I’m taking my time. I’ve decided I like being between boyfriends. Everything with Frank is so much drama, it was the opposite of dull. It’s nice and calm right now.” Fortuna looked at Mum, grinning. “And what about you?”
“Oh,” she responded, negligently, watching their father as he headed toward them with a tea tray. “It’s still an open question, but I’m leaning toward keeping this one.”
“What are we discussing?” he asked, setting the tray down carefully.
“Our love lives,” said Fortuna.
He made a face, as he sat cross-legged on the blanket. “Let’s change that subject, then. Unless there’s any reason for me to go all Oncoming Storm and track down some vile young bloke who has ill-treated one of you?” He looked at his daughters, who both shook their heads. “Good. Then let’s change the subject.”
“I was in eighteenth-century Greece today,” said Athena. “The olives weren’t as good as I thought they would be.”
“Don’t you hate when that happens?” said Dad.
“It’s kind of like the bu on Dondi-Dondi,” remarked Fortuna. “You read about it everywhere in the universe, and then you get there and it can’t possibly live up to expectations.”
Athena popped a bite of biscuit in her mouth. “Matt keeps saying there’s all these great places to go in New Orleans, but I’m scared he’s built them up too much, so now I don’t even want to go.”
“How is Matt?” asked Mum.
“He’s good. Busy. He works way too hard.”
“I haven’t seen him in forever,” said Fortuna.
“You should go see him. He’d love to see you. He loves having visitors.”
“Maybe I will drop by,” mused Fortuna, and suddenly glanced at her watch. “Speaking of visitors, though, I promised Sadie I’d drop by, she just got a new puppy.” Fortuna leaned over to hug her mother good-bye.
“Be careful,” said Mum.
“Safe flying,” said Dad, as she hugged him as well.
“Yeah,” she responded. “Bye, Theenie.”
Athena returned her hug. “Bye, Fort.”
They watched her leave the garden, sending them a cheerful wave, and then Mum said, “What about you? Where are you off to next?”
“I was thinking of staying here for a few days,” Athena admitted. “If that’s okay.”
Mum looked surprised. “Of course it’s okay. Everything alright?”
Athena nodded. “Yeah, yeah, just…could use a bit of home.”
Mum smiled at her. “Well, we’re always glad to have you, you know that.”
Athena smiled back and then looked at her father. “What’s with the glasses?” she asked, because he was wearing a pair of 3-D glasses and looked fairly ridiculous.
“Nothing,” he said, and took them off. “Just found them in my pocket. Can’t remember the last time we went to a 3-D movie. We should go. I love them. Especially thirty-third century ones. It was the pinnacle of the art form.”
“I’m thinking of taking a bubble bath,” said Athena. She had a lovely tub on her own TARDIS, but, somehow, it wasn’t the same as the tub she’d grown up with.
“Oh,” responded Mum. “That sounds like a lovely idea. You should take one, and when you’re done, maybe we can go somewhere nice for dinner.”
“That would be a nice treat,” said Athena, standing up.
“I’ll avoid New Orleans,” said Dad.
Athena chuckled as she walked out of the garden.
Rose looked at the Doctor. “What’s wrong?”
He pinched at the bridge of his nose and said, “She’s covered in Void stuff.”
Next Chapter
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, OCs
Spoilers - I've started to think I may reference events without thinking, so, to be safe: Through the specials.
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids, they're all mine.)
Summary - Four Time Lords and a Bad Wolf human, gallivanting through time and space. What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Notes - Huge thanks to Kristin and chicklet73 , who talked through plot points. Special thanks to Kristin for coming up with the title. And even more thanks to jlrpuck and c73, who so graciously beta'd.
The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
Prologue - Ch 1
Chapter Two
Brem was not going looking for trouble. He never was. In fact, he was trying to avoid trouble. He sent his TARDIS into orbit around Inskip 12 and waited. He wasn’t sure quite what he was waiting for, to be honest. He’d read up in his library on time skips, but the books, dry and heavy in the way that Gallifreyan books tended to be-his father didn’t talk much about the Time Lords, and every time Brem had to read a Gallifreyan tome, he felt he knew exactly why that was-had not been very helpful. The books had no clue why they ever occurred, except that they were a bad sign…of something. They weren’t common, which was why more information about them had never been established, and the fact that Athena had run into a couple now was an alarming one. Brem didn’t like alarming occurrences in his universe. He preferred things to function in an orderly fashion. If there had to be time skips, then they ought to be caused by him. Was that too much to ask?
But Brem was having no luck coming across time skips around Inskip 12. Finally, he sighed and gave up, but not without first saving every reading he could. He sensed a lot of lazy Vortex days ahead of him, poring over obscure scientific measurements.
And Matt thought being a Time Lord was all flash, Brem mentally scoffed.
***
You had to be very careful when choosing a companion. Athena had found that out on the very first trip she’d ever taken in her own TARDIS. Delighted with the freedom, she had set it on random. She and her college boyfriend had ended up on Thrath, where the aliens looked a bit like cockroaches. Not for everyone, she knew that. But really, he could have complained about it a bit less. By the end of the trip, he was no longer her companion or her boyfriend.
Brittany, however, was a good companion. Athena had also met Brittany in uni. Brittany had, upon graduation, gone off to get her masters in European history, which she nearly done with now, and which the TARDIS had proven invaluable with research for. Brittany didn’t mind alien planets-didn’t flinch at them, to be honest-but she preferred historical sites, and Athena liked them, too, although she liked them a bit after their heyday. Stretched out in the middle of a picturesque Greek ruin, staring up at the sky above her, Athena thought how dull it would have been to have visited when this was brand new. All of its character was in its age.
“So,” remarked Brittany, sprawled out next to her. “Eighteenth century. What d’you suppose we can get around here to eat?”
Athena considered. “Olives?” she guessed.
“Works for me.” Brittany sat up and looked around them, shading her eyes. “Where d’you suppose we’d find these olives of yours?”
“Romantic poets,” said Athena, still looking up at the sky.
Brittany looked down at her. “What’s that?”
“This place is about to be overrun with Romantic poets. Time marches on.”
“Good thing you have a TARDIS and can keep coming back to before all the tourists arrive. Come on, let’s go tell these people how you’re the goddess Athena and you demand sustenance.” Brittany stood up.
Athena sighed and stretched and sat up. It was lovely in the sun. She would never tell her TARDIS but its artificial sunlight was nothing like the real thing.
The ground underneath her veered sharply to the left, and Athena, dizzy, dropped backward onto the grass with a gasp.
“Theenie?” Brittany knelt over her, her face a mask of concern.
Athena stared at the dusk spreading over the sky above her. “Brittany, what time is it?”
“I don’t know, you know my watch doesn’t work properly when we travel. What does your watch say?”
Athena didn’t need to look at her watch to know the readings would be going haywire. Because time had just skipped. “It wasn’t sunset,” she said.
“What?”
“Just a few minutes ago, you were talking about getting something to eat, and it was mid-afternoon, and now the sun is setting.”
Brittany looked up at the sky, and then looked back down at Athena. “Do you feel okay?”
She felt terrible, the way she usually felt when there was a time skip. She thought of what Matt had said. Maybe it was time to tell her father. A time skip happening outside of a TARDIS… She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard of anything like that before. Athena shivered, and then forced herself to sit up. “Olives,” she announced, almost grimly. “Weren’t we talking about olives?”
“Yeah.” Brittany watched her stand up as if she expected her to keel over.
“This way,” Athena told her, briskly, walking toward the town.
“The afternoon did seem to go by quickly, it’s true,” Brittany remarked, looking up at the sky. “But who knows, we’re in eighteenth-century Greece, it’s practically a whole different world, right?”
“Right,” said Athena, and untied and then re-tied her ponytail.
***
Athena dropped Brittany off, and then immediately went to her parents’.
Materializing a TARDIS inside another TARDIS was a tricky thing. In the beginning, Dad had said it was “impossible,” but Dad threw that word around so much that none of them listened to it anymore. It wasn’t impossible, it was just slightly dangerous. Brem had sat with equations, before figuring out the simplest thing of all: their TARDISes were related, which meant they were predisposed to working together to avoid any ill effects from their proximity.
To prove this, each TARDIS now had a room used entirely as a landing area for the other TARDISes, and as Athena stepped out of hers, she noticed that Fortuna’s was also parked beside her. Fortuna’s TARDIS was a pale yellow. Sunny, and Athena thought it suited her. They had teased her about making it pink, but it had been a while since Fortuna had been enamored of pink. It was Athena who still wore it in her hair every day.
Athena left the landing room and called, “Hello?” No one answered her, but she headed toward the control room, finding her father standing looking at the console with a finger on his lips. “Something wrong?” she asked.
He started and then focused on her. “Theenie,” he said, pleased, and accepted the hug she gave him. “I don’t think so,” he continued, answering her question. “She’s just…I don’t know. Woozy, or something.” He frowned momentarily, then turned his attention completely to her. “If you’re looking for your mother and sister, I think they’re in the garden having a cuppa.”
Athena sat in the captain’s chair, propping her pink-Chuck-clad feet up on the console. “I was looking for you, actually.”
“Really?” He folded his arms and propped his hip against the console to face her.”What’s up?”
Athena took a deep breath. “I’ve been running into time skips,” she said.
The look on his face sharpened. “Time skips? What do you mean?”
“Time. Skipping. I can’t find a pattern, it’s not like there’s one place. Today, it happened to me and I wasn’t even on the TARDIS.”
He stared at her.
“Do you know what it means?” she asked him.
He tugged on his earlobe. “No. I’ve never heard of this. But time’s been…violently in flux. If you’re telling me time’s skipping, then that explains why my TARDIS is woozy. And you weren’t even in a TARDIS?”
Athena shook her head.
“I’ve never even heard of that before,” he mused, ruffling at his hair.
Athena took the ribbon out of her hair, shook it out, and then re-fastened it. “Why would it only be me?”
He’d been staring into space, deep in thought, but he looked at her then. “Coincidence,” he said, firmly. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Coincidence,” Athena repeated. “Has Brem been here?”
“Not since your mother’s birthday.”
“Yeah. I can guarantee you Brem’s been out there looking for time skips since before that, and if he hasn’t shown up crowing about his discovery, then he hasn’t found any. And if Brem hasn’t found any time skips, then that means there’s something wrong with me, doesn’t it? Because I’m not even looking for them, and they’re all around me.”
“Why would Brem be looking for time skips?”
Athena pushed an unruly curl behind her ear. “I told him about them.”
“First, you should have told me, not your brother. That’s all I need, is him running off on some foolhardy quest for time skips. Second, there’s nothing wrong with you, and I’ll prove it. Come on.”
Athena followed him to the infirmary, where he hooked her up to all of the fancy machines Matt had ignored because she knew he didn’t know what they were. She watched her father pore over the read-outs, and then turn to her with a smile. “There you are.” He waved them about. “You are perfect. Just as I always knew. So. Stop worrying, yeah? It’s not you.”
“Have you ever been in a time skip?”
“No.”
“They’re not pleasant.”
“Go find your mother and sister. I’ll make us some fresh tea, and we’ll catch up. No time skips here. I guarantee it.”
“Oh, yeah?” She hopped off the bed. “How do you guarantee that?”
“Welllllll, I’m a better pilot than you are, it’s clear.”
Athena rolled her eyes good-naturedly, but turned abruptly just as he was about to walk into the kitchen and hugged him, more tightly than she’d hugged him in years.
Which he noticed, of course. He hugged her back, physically and mentally, kissing the top of her head. “We’ll figure it out, Theenie,” he said. “The universe is a strange place and strange things happen and 99.99 percent of them happen for no reason. There are more Time Lords bouncing around now than there have been for a while, it could be we’re making time skip with our very presence. Maybe the universe needs to learn how to adjust to all this time travel inside it again.”
“You think so?”
“Just as plausible as any other theory. At any rate, I have your readings and the best library in the universe at my disposal, as well as my brilliant mind. I’ll figure this out.”
Athena straightened with a deep breath. “I know you will. It’s fine, sorry. They’re…disconcerting. Bring biscuits when you bring the tea, yeah?”
“Absolutely,” he promised, heading into the kitchen.
Athena went to the garden, where her mother and sister had set out a picnic blanket. They were about a dozen miffgiffs also on the blanket, eating some biscuit crumbs and chattering away about how they’d domesticated one of the goldfish.
“Theenie,” her mother said, in pleasant surprise, as Athena leaned down and gave her a kiss on her cheek. “What are you doing here?”
“Just a visit.” She kissed Fortuna’s cheek as well, before dropping onto the blanket. “Hi, guys,” she said to the miffgiffs, extending her hand, and the miffgiffs came chattering over with words of welcome and hugged her fingers in that way they had.
“I’m afraid we’re almost out of tea,” said Mum.
“Dad’s making more.”
“Oh, you saw him? He was fretting about the TARDIS, did you help him?”
Athena shook her head. “No, I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” Athena looked at Fortuna. “What are you doing here?”
Fortuna adjusted the knee-high argyle socks she was wearing. Always knee-high argyle socks with a skirt and a blouse and a cardigan. Mum always said Fort had got more of Dad than almost any of them, in the end, in that strange, tilted formality. “I was in the area,” she said.
“She really was,” said Mum. “We ran into each other on Woman Wept.”
“So I thought I’d stay for tea,” continued Fortuna.
“What have you been up to?” asked Mum.
“Not much. Brittany and I went to Greece today. Eighteenth-century.”
“Was it nice?”
“Yeah.” The miffgiffs had grown bored, and were now splashing their way back into the goldfish pond.
“You still dating that guy?” asked Fortuna. “What species was he again?”
Oh. Lim. She hadn’t thought about him in a while, but she supposed she was technically still dating him. “He’s a Cunodysian, and yeah, I guess we’re still dating, but it’s not going anywhere. I should just break up with him.” Athena considered. “Not that it not going anywhere is necessarily a reason to break with him, though. I mean, it’s not like I’m in a rush or anything, I’ve got hundreds and hundreds of years left, it’s just…not working. He’s dull.” Athena looked at Fortuna. “What about you?”
“Like you say, I’m taking my time. I’ve decided I like being between boyfriends. Everything with Frank is so much drama, it was the opposite of dull. It’s nice and calm right now.” Fortuna looked at Mum, grinning. “And what about you?”
“Oh,” she responded, negligently, watching their father as he headed toward them with a tea tray. “It’s still an open question, but I’m leaning toward keeping this one.”
“What are we discussing?” he asked, setting the tray down carefully.
“Our love lives,” said Fortuna.
He made a face, as he sat cross-legged on the blanket. “Let’s change that subject, then. Unless there’s any reason for me to go all Oncoming Storm and track down some vile young bloke who has ill-treated one of you?” He looked at his daughters, who both shook their heads. “Good. Then let’s change the subject.”
“I was in eighteenth-century Greece today,” said Athena. “The olives weren’t as good as I thought they would be.”
“Don’t you hate when that happens?” said Dad.
“It’s kind of like the bu on Dondi-Dondi,” remarked Fortuna. “You read about it everywhere in the universe, and then you get there and it can’t possibly live up to expectations.”
Athena popped a bite of biscuit in her mouth. “Matt keeps saying there’s all these great places to go in New Orleans, but I’m scared he’s built them up too much, so now I don’t even want to go.”
“How is Matt?” asked Mum.
“He’s good. Busy. He works way too hard.”
“I haven’t seen him in forever,” said Fortuna.
“You should go see him. He’d love to see you. He loves having visitors.”
“Maybe I will drop by,” mused Fortuna, and suddenly glanced at her watch. “Speaking of visitors, though, I promised Sadie I’d drop by, she just got a new puppy.” Fortuna leaned over to hug her mother good-bye.
“Be careful,” said Mum.
“Safe flying,” said Dad, as she hugged him as well.
“Yeah,” she responded. “Bye, Theenie.”
Athena returned her hug. “Bye, Fort.”
They watched her leave the garden, sending them a cheerful wave, and then Mum said, “What about you? Where are you off to next?”
“I was thinking of staying here for a few days,” Athena admitted. “If that’s okay.”
Mum looked surprised. “Of course it’s okay. Everything alright?”
Athena nodded. “Yeah, yeah, just…could use a bit of home.”
Mum smiled at her. “Well, we’re always glad to have you, you know that.”
Athena smiled back and then looked at her father. “What’s with the glasses?” she asked, because he was wearing a pair of 3-D glasses and looked fairly ridiculous.
“Nothing,” he said, and took them off. “Just found them in my pocket. Can’t remember the last time we went to a 3-D movie. We should go. I love them. Especially thirty-third century ones. It was the pinnacle of the art form.”
“I’m thinking of taking a bubble bath,” said Athena. She had a lovely tub on her own TARDIS, but, somehow, it wasn’t the same as the tub she’d grown up with.
“Oh,” responded Mum. “That sounds like a lovely idea. You should take one, and when you’re done, maybe we can go somewhere nice for dinner.”
“That would be a nice treat,” said Athena, standing up.
“I’ll avoid New Orleans,” said Dad.
Athena chuckled as she walked out of the garden.
Rose looked at the Doctor. “What’s wrong?”
He pinched at the bridge of his nose and said, “She’s covered in Void stuff.”
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