Love at First Sight and Other Fairy Tales (1/1)
Title - Love at First Sight and Other Fairy Tales (1/1)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, Jackie, OCs
Spoilers - Through the end of S2
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 - They don't often take the kids to Earth playgrounds...
Author's Notes - jlrpuckbetas for me on command. It's really very sweet of her. Thanks also to Kristin and bouncy_castle79for the brainstorming and read-throughs. The gorgeous icon was created by swankkatfor me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.
“Let’s take the kids to the playground,” said Jackie, and Rose hid her smile. Come and visit more often, her mum always begged, and then, after two days of Brem and his father trying to sonic the molecular structure of instant mashed potatoes so they could be used as a bubble bath-“There must be some way,” insisted the Doctor, after the fifth try, and Jackie complained, “But who wants to wash up in potatoes?”-Jackie was quite ready for them to all pack up and go away again. Except she wouldn’t say so, and instead she suggested the trip to the playground.
“I don’t have to go, do I?” asked the Doctor, watching as his three children were rounded up. Rounding up three children was like herding cats-not that he did much to help with that. As Jackie had just pointed out.
“Yes,” she said, sharply. “I’m not coming home to find my bathtub oozing over with butter-and-herb potatoes. Again.”
The Doctor looked uncomfortable and scratched his neck. “It should have worked-“
“Maybe we needed setting 4532889x8302j30 instead of 4532888x8302j30,” said Brem, ducking the comb in his mother’s hand as she tried to tame his hair a bit.
“Hold the baby,” Jackie said, thrusting Fortuna into his arms as she took Athena’s hand, apparently believing that she could thereby stop him from trying out Brem’s suggestion.
It worked, as the Doctor, grumbling, followed them out the door.
“What’s at playgrounds?” asked Fortuna, with interest.
“Don’t you take the kids to playgrounds?” asked Jackie.
“Not Earth ones,” said Brem. He was now performing a complicated backward skip.
“Careful you don’t fall,” Rose told him.
“Fall?” Brem wrinkled his nose indignantly, as if she was insulting him.
“What’s on Earth playgrounds?” asked Athena.
“Nothing very fun,” said the Doctor.
Jackie glared at him. “What are you talking about? They’ve got swings, and see-saws-”
“See-saws!” exclaimed Brem, dancing about in glee. “We can put Fortuna on one end of the see-saw-”
Rose guessed where this was going. “No,” she said.
He ignored her, appealing to his father, who he knew would be far more receptive to this idea. “-and then we can try to drop enough weight on the other end of the see-saw to propel Fortuna through the air.”
“What would she land on?” asked the Doctor with interest, while Fortuna burst into tears.
“I don’t want to fly through the air!” she protested.
Brem sighed in exasperation. “We’d catch you, Fort.”
Fortuna reached for her mother, clearly trying to get away from the parent who thought it might be an interesting idea to launch her off a see-saw. Rose took her.
“We could try it with one of Theenie’s dolls, I guess,” Brem decided, regrouping.
“You’re not doing any experiments with my dolls,” Athena told him, primly. “You’ll get mud all over them.”
“They wouldn’t fall,” Brem promised.
“Will there be a roller coaster at the playground?” asked Athena.
“No, sweetheart, roller coasters are at amusement parks,” Rose replied.
“See? Earth playgrounds are boring,” complained the Doctor. “The playgrounds on New Gfjsi have giant tortoises that you can ride around. Wellllll, I say ‘tortoises,’ but I mean ‘vumyns,’ which are these creatures that look like tortoises except that they eat hair.”
“Hair?” exclaimed Athena, hand going to her own precious ponytail in a protective gesture.
“It’s a challenge,” said her father, with a shrug. “Not like riding a swing, which is no challenge at all.”
“Ten quid says your dad can’t ride a swing properly,” Rose murmured to Fortuna, which made her giggle.
“What was that?” asked the Doctor.
“Speaking of hair, yours looks particularly good today,” Rose told him.
The Doctor beamed and ruffled at it. “D’you think so?”
Brem gasped suddenly and came to an abrupt halt.
“What is it, darling?” Jackie asked him in alarm.
“I forgot my journal! I left it in the bathroom! With the mashed potatoes!”
“It’ll be safe there,” Jackie told him, negligently.
“But I need it!”
“We’re almost to the playground,” said Jackie.
“Mum!” he whined, dramatically.
“I’ll take you back to get your journal,” offered the Doctor.
“No way,” Jackie inserted, immediately. “The two of you aren’t goin’ anywhere together. Look, here we are at the playground, Brem.”
It was a gorgeous day, and the playground was crowded with children, and Rose could tell immediately that all three of her kids were impressed with Earth playgrounds, even Brem. They fell silent, which was so rare for her family that Rose couldn’t quite remember what it sounded like anymore, and stared at all the other children.
It was Brem who spoke first, which Rose should have expected. “Can I go on the slide?” he asked, sounding breathless with anticipation over this.
Rose smiled down at him. He looked transfixed by the number of activities he could choose from, dark, wise, Time Lord eyes flickering wildly over everything. “You can go on anything you like,” she told him.
He dashed off, then came immediately back and thrust his sonic screwdriver at his father. “I don’t wanna break it,” he explained, quickly, before turning and running back toward the beckoning slide.
“Come on, girls,” said Jackie, taking Fortuna out of Rose’s arms. “Why don’t we attack those swings?”
“I bet I could swing all by myself,” Athena proclaimed, frankly, as she took her grandmother’s hand.
Rose watched Brem, who was bouncing impatiently as he waited his turn at the slide, and then turned to the Doctor, who was watching a knot of young mothers with narrowed eyes. She sighed. “What?”
“I don’t like it here,” he said.
“What don’t you like about it? The lack of hair-eating tortoises?”
“Yes-No. Those women. What do you think they’re doing?”
Rose looked over at them. “Gossiping?” she guessed.
He frowned. “What makes you think that?”
She shrugged. “It’s what mums do at playgrounds.”
“They’re…weird,” he said.
“D’you think we’re in the middle of an alien invasion here?” Rose drawled.
He looked affronted. “Maybe. You don’t know that we’re not.”
“Mum!”
Rose turned her head toward Brem, who waved at her from the top of the slide and then, face set in concentration, slid down it.
“I’m just going to go over there and investigate a bit,” said the Doctor.
“Fine,” Rose told him, distractedly, as Brem came running up to her.
“Did you see?” he asked, looking pleased with himself.
“I did. Was it fun?”
“It could’ve been longer, can I go on that…spinning thing now?”
“Yeah. You can go on anything you want, you don’t have to keep coming back to ask me.”
“Okay,” said Brem, as he ran off in the direction of the small roundabout.
But Rose suspected he would keep coming back, just to make sure she hadn’t vanished into thin air. Brem did that, would sometimes leave whatever project he was working on just to pop into the room she was in. He would always ask her some ridiculous question he’d concocted as an excuse, but she was very aware he was just checking she was still there. She suspected he also checked on her when she was sleeping. But she suspected the Doctor did the same thing. She rather thought that if she woke suddenly one night, she would find four pairs of Time Lord eyes riveted on her.
She watched him for a second. He was waiting for the roundabout to slow enough so he could jump on it, his face its typical mask of concentration. She wondered if he was doing physics equations to determine the safest speed at which to jump on. It wouldn’t surprise her in the least to find out that was true.
She looked toward her mother, who had managed to procure a baby swing for Fortuna and was pushing her back and forth in it. Fortuna was clinging to the strings of the swing, and looked uncertain about the entire experience. Athena was swinging by herself, attempting to copy the movements of the older children to get the swing to gain some height.
That made all Time Lords present and accounted for except for the most troublesome one.
“What do you think you’re doing?” shrieked a woman’s voice.
And there he was, thought Rose, turning in the direction of the knot of mothers.
The Doctor had his sonic screwdriver out and was unabashedly buzzing it at one of the mothers.
“What do you think you’re doin’, you lunatic?” demanded the mother, and then lifted her purse and began hitting the Doctor with it.
“Oi!” he said, lifting up his arms to try to deflect the blows. “I’m trying to-”
Rose stalked over to him and grabbed his arm. “Sorry,” she said to the irate mother. “Sorry.”
“D’you know this bloke?” the mother demanded. “He has this…thing. And he was pointing it at me!”
“Yeah, it’s just a toy, ‘s harmless,” Rose assured her.
“It is not-” began the Doctor.
Rose kicked his shin and waved at the mothers as she led him away. “Bye now.”
“Rose-”
“Hush,” she said. “Stop getting into trouble.” Her eyes sought out Brem, to make sure he was still alright after her brief distraction with his father. He was on the roundabout now, and seemed to have made friends with another little boy. They were talking animatedly, clinging to the outside edge of the roundabout as it whirled.
“I wasn’t getting into trouble, I just-”
“Was she an alien?” Rose asked, eyes on Brem.
He sulked for a moment. “The readings were normal.”
“Yes. Let’s go push Athena on the swing.” She took his hand and led him over to the swing set.
“It’s all in your legs,” he told Athena, as he gave her a push of assistance.
Rose looked back over at the roundabout, just in time to see an older boy, eight or nine, blatantly push Brem off. Brem had not been paying attention to the older boy at all, was clearly caught completely off-guard, as he went flying off the roundabout rather spectacularly. She felt all three Time Lords around her go still and look up at the same moment, and she wondered what sound of distress Brem had made in their heads to attract their attention.
Rose could feel the tangible Oncoming Storm-ness in the air around the rest of her family, as they watched Brem pick himself up and dust himself off, looking cross.
Athena hopped off her swing and put her hands on her hips. “Who pushed him, Mum? Did you see?” she demanded.
And then the most remarkable thing happened. The older boy came flying off the roundabout, landing next to an astonished-looking Brem. The older boy looked just as astonished. A girl-a small blonde in a ballerina tutu and a ridiculous tiara-hopped off the roundabout, stood over the older boy, and launched into what was very clearly a tirade, gesturing at Brem and stamping her foot. Brem stared at her, his mouth hanging open.
And those, Rose thought, were definitely stars in his eyes. She knew that look, because she’d had it directed at her out of eyes nine hundred years older than Brem’s.
***************
Her name was Amy, and she was six years old, and she had a baby sister, and an older brother, and a purple bicycle, and excelled at Candy Land, and had agreed to marry Brem.
“You move a lot quicker than your dad,” Rose told him, upon hearing this news, thinking of how very long it had been before the Doctor had taken one of her very broad hints and kissed her silly.
Brem looked as if he didn’t quite know what that meant, but he enjoyed any time he was told he did something better than his father and puffed up with pride.
Brem talked about Amy endlessly. He was thoroughly smitten. He begged constantly to be brought back to Earth to visit her.
“We don’t know where she lives,” said his father.
“She lives in London,” answered Brem. “And she plays at that playground.”
“We’re not just standing around a playground waiting for this girl to appear, Brem.”
“She’s going to marry me, Dad,” Brem proclaimed, dramatically. “You cannot keep us apart. Not like the Montagues and the Capulets, look what happened to them.”
“Rule number one,” said the Doctor. “No more reading of Shakespeare.”
“I don’t get it,” commented Athena, nose wrinkled. “She wears a tiara. When I wear a tiara, you say I look ridiculous.”
“It’s complicated, Athena,” Brem explained to her. Which was really no explanation at all.
There was a day when Brem walked into the control room and gravely handed his father a piece of paper and said, “Would you read this for me, please? And tell me what you think?”
The Doctor was delighted. He thought it was the first step to the reading of that journal that Brem kept so secretively. “Absolutely,” he said, accepting the piece of paper.
“Thank you,” said Brem and turned and walked out of the control room.
Rose was trying to finish a book in the library, but was forced to look up when the Doctor entered and proclaimed, loudly, “This has gone far enough.”
“What has?” she asked, mildly.
“Brem and his…Do you know what this is?” He waved a piece of paper around.
“I couldn’t even begin to guess,” answered Rose.
“It is a poem. A love poem, to be more specific. Actually, it is a sonnet.”
“A sonnet?”
“In! Gallifreyan!”
Rose’s lips twitched. “Did Brem write that for Amy? How sweet.”
“It isn’t ‘sweet,’ Rose! What’s sweet about it?”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Silly me. Writing a sonnet, for the woman you love? How ridiculous of him.” She turned back to her book, grumbling, “Four years old, and he already leaves you in the dust when it comes to romantic instincts.”
The Doctor sat next to her, earnest. “This is important, Rose. Our son is writing Gallifreyan love poetry to a little human girl who wears tiaras and tutus.”
Rose looked at him. “News flash.” She indicated herself. “Little human girl.”
The Doctor sighed. “That’s-”
“And you’ve got two daughters who like tiaras and tutus. So I might revise my opinion of Brem’s choice, if I were you.”
“See, that’s my point! It’s not his ‘choice!’ He’s four years old! He’s not making ‘choices.’ He’s a little boy. Yesterday he thought he might want to marry Mrs. Frisby.”
Rose considered. “Not a bad choice, either.”
“She’s a mouse.”
“So? You married a different species.”
“This is your fault.”
“How?”
“You keep reading them all these Earth fairy tales, full of…love at first sight and all that nonsense.”
Rose closed her book. “D’you know what I’ve learned about you tonight, Doctor?”
“What?”
“You don’t want me to shag you ever again.”
The Doctor frowned. “Fine. Don’t take this seriously.”
“Doctor, it’s a little crush. What’s to take seriously? He’ll moon after her for a while, and then he’ll forget all about her. When I was four, I had a huge crush on Billy Doherty.”
“Billy Doherty?” asked the Doctor, sharply. “Who’s that?”
“The man I’ll go shag instead of you if you keep being difficult.”
The Doctor huffed and slumped against the couch. Rose picked up her book again. As soon as she’d located the right page, he resumed speaking again. “Four is too young to have your heart broken.”
Rose lowered the book and looked at him. “Nine hundred is too young to have your heart broken,” she noted. “There’s nothing you can do about that.”
The Doctor said nothing. He looked down at the Gallifreyan love poem in his hand.
“How’s the poem?” Rose asked him.
“You know,” he admitted, “it’s not half-bad.”
************
They went to visit Amy. Well, they went to visit Amy’s playground, Brem practically dancing with excitement, clutching his Gallifreyan love poem. Amy was not there, and Brem was inconsolable. Rose kept trying to explain to him that little girls didn’t go to the playground every day, that maybe she would be there some other day, but Brem was convinced that she’d forgotten all about him. When they went back to the playground again, Amy still was not there, and Brem sat glumly on a swing and pouted. Athena and Fortuna tried to get him to play, but he was not interested.
Brem’s Gallifreyan poetry shifted toward the melancholic. He moped about the TARDIS, dragging his feet into his parents’ bedroom a few days after the second disappointing playground visit, clambering onto their bed, and then collapsing dramatically onto his back, with a heavy sigh.
Rose had just crawled into bed, ready for sleep, but she looked at her son, amused. He was staring up at the ceiling, and she wasn’t sure if he wanted her to be awake or not, so she closed her eyes.
“You sleeping?” he asked her, finally, and she felt him shift as he rolled toward her.
Rose smiled and opened her eyes. “No. What’s up?”
He took a deep breath. “Mum. I am older. And I am wiser.”
“Are you now?”
“Hearts live by being wounded,” continued Brem, dead serious. “Oscar Wilde said that.”
“Ah.”
“Maybe we could go meet Oscar Wilde,” mused Brem.
“Maybe. You’d have to talk to your dad about that one.”
Brem rolled back onto his back, contemplating. “I guess Amy just wasn’t the one.”
“Probably not. You’re young still.”
“Not that young,” said Brem, quickly, who hated to be reminded of his age.
“Not that young. But young enough. And so devastatingly handsome, and charming, and you write love poetry. You need to be choosy, because you’re a catch.”
“You’re my mum, you have to say that,” said Brem.
“Yeah, they made me promise to say that before they let me hold you after you were born.”
“I’m keeping you up,” Brem realized.
“Yeah. A bit. But I don’t mind.”
“I’m okay now. Amy did look kind of silly, with the tiara, and the tutu. I think I’m over her.”
Rose smiled again. “Good. Can I have a good night kiss?”
“Yes,” Brem decided, with the air that he was doing a huge favor, and kissed her cheek and hugged her.
“Have your dad make you a chocolate milkshake,” said Rose. “Best break-up food.”
“I’ll tell him,” said Brem, sliding off the bed.
“Brem,” she said, suddenly, and he turned back to her. She sat up, leaning toward him seriously. “Don’t give up on love at first sight. It happens. Never stop believin’ in fairy tales, yeah?”
Brem looked at her for a second. “I make it a point to believe in everything,” he said, finally. “As far as I can tell, it’s the only safe way to go.”
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, Jackie, OCs
Spoilers - Through the end of S2
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 - They don't often take the kids to Earth playgrounds...
Author's Notes - jlrpuckbetas for me on command. It's really very sweet of her. Thanks also to Kristin and bouncy_castle79for the brainstorming and read-throughs. The gorgeous icon was created by swankkatfor me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.
“Let’s take the kids to the playground,” said Jackie, and Rose hid her smile. Come and visit more often, her mum always begged, and then, after two days of Brem and his father trying to sonic the molecular structure of instant mashed potatoes so they could be used as a bubble bath-“There must be some way,” insisted the Doctor, after the fifth try, and Jackie complained, “But who wants to wash up in potatoes?”-Jackie was quite ready for them to all pack up and go away again. Except she wouldn’t say so, and instead she suggested the trip to the playground.
“I don’t have to go, do I?” asked the Doctor, watching as his three children were rounded up. Rounding up three children was like herding cats-not that he did much to help with that. As Jackie had just pointed out.
“Yes,” she said, sharply. “I’m not coming home to find my bathtub oozing over with butter-and-herb potatoes. Again.”
The Doctor looked uncomfortable and scratched his neck. “It should have worked-“
“Maybe we needed setting 4532889x8302j30 instead of 4532888x8302j30,” said Brem, ducking the comb in his mother’s hand as she tried to tame his hair a bit.
“Hold the baby,” Jackie said, thrusting Fortuna into his arms as she took Athena’s hand, apparently believing that she could thereby stop him from trying out Brem’s suggestion.
It worked, as the Doctor, grumbling, followed them out the door.
“What’s at playgrounds?” asked Fortuna, with interest.
“Don’t you take the kids to playgrounds?” asked Jackie.
“Not Earth ones,” said Brem. He was now performing a complicated backward skip.
“Careful you don’t fall,” Rose told him.
“Fall?” Brem wrinkled his nose indignantly, as if she was insulting him.
“What’s on Earth playgrounds?” asked Athena.
“Nothing very fun,” said the Doctor.
Jackie glared at him. “What are you talking about? They’ve got swings, and see-saws-”
“See-saws!” exclaimed Brem, dancing about in glee. “We can put Fortuna on one end of the see-saw-”
Rose guessed where this was going. “No,” she said.
He ignored her, appealing to his father, who he knew would be far more receptive to this idea. “-and then we can try to drop enough weight on the other end of the see-saw to propel Fortuna through the air.”
“What would she land on?” asked the Doctor with interest, while Fortuna burst into tears.
“I don’t want to fly through the air!” she protested.
Brem sighed in exasperation. “We’d catch you, Fort.”
Fortuna reached for her mother, clearly trying to get away from the parent who thought it might be an interesting idea to launch her off a see-saw. Rose took her.
“We could try it with one of Theenie’s dolls, I guess,” Brem decided, regrouping.
“You’re not doing any experiments with my dolls,” Athena told him, primly. “You’ll get mud all over them.”
“They wouldn’t fall,” Brem promised.
“Will there be a roller coaster at the playground?” asked Athena.
“No, sweetheart, roller coasters are at amusement parks,” Rose replied.
“See? Earth playgrounds are boring,” complained the Doctor. “The playgrounds on New Gfjsi have giant tortoises that you can ride around. Wellllll, I say ‘tortoises,’ but I mean ‘vumyns,’ which are these creatures that look like tortoises except that they eat hair.”
“Hair?” exclaimed Athena, hand going to her own precious ponytail in a protective gesture.
“It’s a challenge,” said her father, with a shrug. “Not like riding a swing, which is no challenge at all.”
“Ten quid says your dad can’t ride a swing properly,” Rose murmured to Fortuna, which made her giggle.
“What was that?” asked the Doctor.
“Speaking of hair, yours looks particularly good today,” Rose told him.
The Doctor beamed and ruffled at it. “D’you think so?”
Brem gasped suddenly and came to an abrupt halt.
“What is it, darling?” Jackie asked him in alarm.
“I forgot my journal! I left it in the bathroom! With the mashed potatoes!”
“It’ll be safe there,” Jackie told him, negligently.
“But I need it!”
“We’re almost to the playground,” said Jackie.
“Mum!” he whined, dramatically.
“I’ll take you back to get your journal,” offered the Doctor.
“No way,” Jackie inserted, immediately. “The two of you aren’t goin’ anywhere together. Look, here we are at the playground, Brem.”
It was a gorgeous day, and the playground was crowded with children, and Rose could tell immediately that all three of her kids were impressed with Earth playgrounds, even Brem. They fell silent, which was so rare for her family that Rose couldn’t quite remember what it sounded like anymore, and stared at all the other children.
It was Brem who spoke first, which Rose should have expected. “Can I go on the slide?” he asked, sounding breathless with anticipation over this.
Rose smiled down at him. He looked transfixed by the number of activities he could choose from, dark, wise, Time Lord eyes flickering wildly over everything. “You can go on anything you like,” she told him.
He dashed off, then came immediately back and thrust his sonic screwdriver at his father. “I don’t wanna break it,” he explained, quickly, before turning and running back toward the beckoning slide.
“Come on, girls,” said Jackie, taking Fortuna out of Rose’s arms. “Why don’t we attack those swings?”
“I bet I could swing all by myself,” Athena proclaimed, frankly, as she took her grandmother’s hand.
Rose watched Brem, who was bouncing impatiently as he waited his turn at the slide, and then turned to the Doctor, who was watching a knot of young mothers with narrowed eyes. She sighed. “What?”
“I don’t like it here,” he said.
“What don’t you like about it? The lack of hair-eating tortoises?”
“Yes-No. Those women. What do you think they’re doing?”
Rose looked over at them. “Gossiping?” she guessed.
He frowned. “What makes you think that?”
She shrugged. “It’s what mums do at playgrounds.”
“They’re…weird,” he said.
“D’you think we’re in the middle of an alien invasion here?” Rose drawled.
He looked affronted. “Maybe. You don’t know that we’re not.”
“Mum!”
Rose turned her head toward Brem, who waved at her from the top of the slide and then, face set in concentration, slid down it.
“I’m just going to go over there and investigate a bit,” said the Doctor.
“Fine,” Rose told him, distractedly, as Brem came running up to her.
“Did you see?” he asked, looking pleased with himself.
“I did. Was it fun?”
“It could’ve been longer, can I go on that…spinning thing now?”
“Yeah. You can go on anything you want, you don’t have to keep coming back to ask me.”
“Okay,” said Brem, as he ran off in the direction of the small roundabout.
But Rose suspected he would keep coming back, just to make sure she hadn’t vanished into thin air. Brem did that, would sometimes leave whatever project he was working on just to pop into the room she was in. He would always ask her some ridiculous question he’d concocted as an excuse, but she was very aware he was just checking she was still there. She suspected he also checked on her when she was sleeping. But she suspected the Doctor did the same thing. She rather thought that if she woke suddenly one night, she would find four pairs of Time Lord eyes riveted on her.
She watched him for a second. He was waiting for the roundabout to slow enough so he could jump on it, his face its typical mask of concentration. She wondered if he was doing physics equations to determine the safest speed at which to jump on. It wouldn’t surprise her in the least to find out that was true.
She looked toward her mother, who had managed to procure a baby swing for Fortuna and was pushing her back and forth in it. Fortuna was clinging to the strings of the swing, and looked uncertain about the entire experience. Athena was swinging by herself, attempting to copy the movements of the older children to get the swing to gain some height.
That made all Time Lords present and accounted for except for the most troublesome one.
“What do you think you’re doing?” shrieked a woman’s voice.
And there he was, thought Rose, turning in the direction of the knot of mothers.
The Doctor had his sonic screwdriver out and was unabashedly buzzing it at one of the mothers.
“What do you think you’re doin’, you lunatic?” demanded the mother, and then lifted her purse and began hitting the Doctor with it.
“Oi!” he said, lifting up his arms to try to deflect the blows. “I’m trying to-”
Rose stalked over to him and grabbed his arm. “Sorry,” she said to the irate mother. “Sorry.”
“D’you know this bloke?” the mother demanded. “He has this…thing. And he was pointing it at me!”
“Yeah, it’s just a toy, ‘s harmless,” Rose assured her.
“It is not-” began the Doctor.
Rose kicked his shin and waved at the mothers as she led him away. “Bye now.”
“Rose-”
“Hush,” she said. “Stop getting into trouble.” Her eyes sought out Brem, to make sure he was still alright after her brief distraction with his father. He was on the roundabout now, and seemed to have made friends with another little boy. They were talking animatedly, clinging to the outside edge of the roundabout as it whirled.
“I wasn’t getting into trouble, I just-”
“Was she an alien?” Rose asked, eyes on Brem.
He sulked for a moment. “The readings were normal.”
“Yes. Let’s go push Athena on the swing.” She took his hand and led him over to the swing set.
“It’s all in your legs,” he told Athena, as he gave her a push of assistance.
Rose looked back over at the roundabout, just in time to see an older boy, eight or nine, blatantly push Brem off. Brem had not been paying attention to the older boy at all, was clearly caught completely off-guard, as he went flying off the roundabout rather spectacularly. She felt all three Time Lords around her go still and look up at the same moment, and she wondered what sound of distress Brem had made in their heads to attract their attention.
Rose could feel the tangible Oncoming Storm-ness in the air around the rest of her family, as they watched Brem pick himself up and dust himself off, looking cross.
Athena hopped off her swing and put her hands on her hips. “Who pushed him, Mum? Did you see?” she demanded.
And then the most remarkable thing happened. The older boy came flying off the roundabout, landing next to an astonished-looking Brem. The older boy looked just as astonished. A girl-a small blonde in a ballerina tutu and a ridiculous tiara-hopped off the roundabout, stood over the older boy, and launched into what was very clearly a tirade, gesturing at Brem and stamping her foot. Brem stared at her, his mouth hanging open.
And those, Rose thought, were definitely stars in his eyes. She knew that look, because she’d had it directed at her out of eyes nine hundred years older than Brem’s.
***************
Her name was Amy, and she was six years old, and she had a baby sister, and an older brother, and a purple bicycle, and excelled at Candy Land, and had agreed to marry Brem.
“You move a lot quicker than your dad,” Rose told him, upon hearing this news, thinking of how very long it had been before the Doctor had taken one of her very broad hints and kissed her silly.
Brem looked as if he didn’t quite know what that meant, but he enjoyed any time he was told he did something better than his father and puffed up with pride.
Brem talked about Amy endlessly. He was thoroughly smitten. He begged constantly to be brought back to Earth to visit her.
“We don’t know where she lives,” said his father.
“She lives in London,” answered Brem. “And she plays at that playground.”
“We’re not just standing around a playground waiting for this girl to appear, Brem.”
“She’s going to marry me, Dad,” Brem proclaimed, dramatically. “You cannot keep us apart. Not like the Montagues and the Capulets, look what happened to them.”
“Rule number one,” said the Doctor. “No more reading of Shakespeare.”
“I don’t get it,” commented Athena, nose wrinkled. “She wears a tiara. When I wear a tiara, you say I look ridiculous.”
“It’s complicated, Athena,” Brem explained to her. Which was really no explanation at all.
There was a day when Brem walked into the control room and gravely handed his father a piece of paper and said, “Would you read this for me, please? And tell me what you think?”
The Doctor was delighted. He thought it was the first step to the reading of that journal that Brem kept so secretively. “Absolutely,” he said, accepting the piece of paper.
“Thank you,” said Brem and turned and walked out of the control room.
Rose was trying to finish a book in the library, but was forced to look up when the Doctor entered and proclaimed, loudly, “This has gone far enough.”
“What has?” she asked, mildly.
“Brem and his…Do you know what this is?” He waved a piece of paper around.
“I couldn’t even begin to guess,” answered Rose.
“It is a poem. A love poem, to be more specific. Actually, it is a sonnet.”
“A sonnet?”
“In! Gallifreyan!”
Rose’s lips twitched. “Did Brem write that for Amy? How sweet.”
“It isn’t ‘sweet,’ Rose! What’s sweet about it?”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Silly me. Writing a sonnet, for the woman you love? How ridiculous of him.” She turned back to her book, grumbling, “Four years old, and he already leaves you in the dust when it comes to romantic instincts.”
The Doctor sat next to her, earnest. “This is important, Rose. Our son is writing Gallifreyan love poetry to a little human girl who wears tiaras and tutus.”
Rose looked at him. “News flash.” She indicated herself. “Little human girl.”
The Doctor sighed. “That’s-”
“And you’ve got two daughters who like tiaras and tutus. So I might revise my opinion of Brem’s choice, if I were you.”
“See, that’s my point! It’s not his ‘choice!’ He’s four years old! He’s not making ‘choices.’ He’s a little boy. Yesterday he thought he might want to marry Mrs. Frisby.”
Rose considered. “Not a bad choice, either.”
“She’s a mouse.”
“So? You married a different species.”
“This is your fault.”
“How?”
“You keep reading them all these Earth fairy tales, full of…love at first sight and all that nonsense.”
Rose closed her book. “D’you know what I’ve learned about you tonight, Doctor?”
“What?”
“You don’t want me to shag you ever again.”
The Doctor frowned. “Fine. Don’t take this seriously.”
“Doctor, it’s a little crush. What’s to take seriously? He’ll moon after her for a while, and then he’ll forget all about her. When I was four, I had a huge crush on Billy Doherty.”
“Billy Doherty?” asked the Doctor, sharply. “Who’s that?”
“The man I’ll go shag instead of you if you keep being difficult.”
The Doctor huffed and slumped against the couch. Rose picked up her book again. As soon as she’d located the right page, he resumed speaking again. “Four is too young to have your heart broken.”
Rose lowered the book and looked at him. “Nine hundred is too young to have your heart broken,” she noted. “There’s nothing you can do about that.”
The Doctor said nothing. He looked down at the Gallifreyan love poem in his hand.
“How’s the poem?” Rose asked him.
“You know,” he admitted, “it’s not half-bad.”
************
They went to visit Amy. Well, they went to visit Amy’s playground, Brem practically dancing with excitement, clutching his Gallifreyan love poem. Amy was not there, and Brem was inconsolable. Rose kept trying to explain to him that little girls didn’t go to the playground every day, that maybe she would be there some other day, but Brem was convinced that she’d forgotten all about him. When they went back to the playground again, Amy still was not there, and Brem sat glumly on a swing and pouted. Athena and Fortuna tried to get him to play, but he was not interested.
Brem’s Gallifreyan poetry shifted toward the melancholic. He moped about the TARDIS, dragging his feet into his parents’ bedroom a few days after the second disappointing playground visit, clambering onto their bed, and then collapsing dramatically onto his back, with a heavy sigh.
Rose had just crawled into bed, ready for sleep, but she looked at her son, amused. He was staring up at the ceiling, and she wasn’t sure if he wanted her to be awake or not, so she closed her eyes.
“You sleeping?” he asked her, finally, and she felt him shift as he rolled toward her.
Rose smiled and opened her eyes. “No. What’s up?”
He took a deep breath. “Mum. I am older. And I am wiser.”
“Are you now?”
“Hearts live by being wounded,” continued Brem, dead serious. “Oscar Wilde said that.”
“Ah.”
“Maybe we could go meet Oscar Wilde,” mused Brem.
“Maybe. You’d have to talk to your dad about that one.”
Brem rolled back onto his back, contemplating. “I guess Amy just wasn’t the one.”
“Probably not. You’re young still.”
“Not that young,” said Brem, quickly, who hated to be reminded of his age.
“Not that young. But young enough. And so devastatingly handsome, and charming, and you write love poetry. You need to be choosy, because you’re a catch.”
“You’re my mum, you have to say that,” said Brem.
“Yeah, they made me promise to say that before they let me hold you after you were born.”
“I’m keeping you up,” Brem realized.
“Yeah. A bit. But I don’t mind.”
“I’m okay now. Amy did look kind of silly, with the tiara, and the tutu. I think I’m over her.”
Rose smiled again. “Good. Can I have a good night kiss?”
“Yes,” Brem decided, with the air that he was doing a huge favor, and kissed her cheek and hugged her.
“Have your dad make you a chocolate milkshake,” said Rose. “Best break-up food.”
“I’ll tell him,” said Brem, sliding off the bed.
“Brem,” she said, suddenly, and he turned back to her. She sat up, leaning toward him seriously. “Don’t give up on love at first sight. It happens. Never stop believin’ in fairy tales, yeah?”
Brem looked at her for a second. “I make it a point to believe in everything,” he said, finally. “As far as I can tell, it’s the only safe way to go.”