Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses (3/27-ish)
Title - Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses (3/27-ish)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, Jackie, OCs
Spoilers - None
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 - Brem goes to university.
Author's Notes - jlrpuck is my fantastic beta. I am so very lucky to have her.
Many, many, many thanks to Kristin, for all the ideas. Thanks also to bouncy_castle79, who once again gave it the first outside-eyes read-through.
The gorgeous icon was created by swankkat for me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.
1 - 2
Chapter Three
The Doctor was peering through his specs at a delicate set of wheels that he was calibrating when Rose kissed behind his ear. “Where are the girls?”
He looked at her over the top of his glasses as she settled on the couch in the library. “I’m not sure. Around, somewhere, I suppose.”
Rose looked amused. “Good to know you keep such a close eye on them.”
“I thought you were sleeping.”
“Yes, which means you’re supposed to be watching the girls.”
“They’re fine.” He turned his attention back to the wheels.
“I thought you might want to talk.”
“About what?” he asked, frowning and pushing his tongue forward in concentration.
“I don’t know. Anything. You always want to talk.”
“Mmm,” he allowed, noncommittally.
“C’mon,” she coaxed. “Drop your little wheels and tell me what’s wrong.”
“There’s nothing wrong, Rose. I’ve got to fix this.”
“You were practically presentable today, all through dinner, and now you’ve gone all quiet. That can’t be good. So tell me.”
He put the wheels down with such an abrupt clack that Rose jumped, startled. “Okay. I’ll tell you. I think you’re mad. I think this is a huge mistake. I think I should never, ever, ever have agreed to it. There. That enough talking for you?” He picked up his wheels again.
“Doctor-”
“You just left him there,” he continued, slamming the wheels down again. “In a dorm room. This is your plan, for us to just leave him there. And who knows what could happen to him, all alone, there, while the rest of us are…He’s one of the four most precious things in this entire universe, and you want to leave him. There.”
“It’s just as safe here as it is any of the places we go, and you know it. Probably safer. And he’ll be fine. Precisely because he’s one of the four most precious things in this entire universe. Time Lords have a bit of a reputation for being able to take care of themselves.”
“Really?” drawled the Doctor. “D’you think so? Then why are we almost bloody extinct?”
Rose looked at him, not really having an answer to that as he picked up the wheels again. She wanted to soothe him, to tell him everything would be fine, especially with Brem, but it was always difficult to soothe someone who had seen the things he’d seen. Nothing was ever alright, and no one knew that more than the Doctor.
He put the wheels down again, abruptly. “How can you leave him there? How can you think this is a good idea? I’m looking at you, and you’re so bloody calm I could shake you, because you know what sort of things live in this universe, you know what sort of things could happen to him-”
“We can’t wrap him in cotton wool-”
“No one’s saying we have to,” he snapped. “But we could keep him here with us-“
“No,” she retorted. “We can’t. Parents don’t do that. Not good parents. You were singing a very different tune about all of this when it was my mother who didn’t want me traveling space and time in a ramshackle spaceship with a lecherous alien!”
“Oi,” began the Doctor, breathing hard with fury.
“What? What’s your response to that? That it’s different because you say so and you’re the highest authority?”
The Doctor gestured with his wheels, and then dropped them and pinched his eyes under his glasses. “Don’t call her ‘ramshackle,’” he said, wearily, pulling his hands through his hair and leaving it sticking up all over his head.
She watched him silently for a moment, as he pulled off his specs and put them back in his pocket; he leaned back in his seat and watched her in return. She thought he might get up and come to her, and then decided he was too stubborn for that, so she stood up and went to him, dropping herself in his lap. He didn’t push her off.
She smoothed the hair he’d ruffled. “He’ll be fine. He’s Brem, yeah? He saved two universes before he was five years old. I’m sure he’ll excel at university.”
The Doctor looked off, beyond her. “When he was born I tried to leave him here with you, remember? I mean, here on Earth. A normal life, I thought. Give him this normal, human life. Did I really think I could let him out of my sight as a baby? When I can’t now?”
“You’re not very smart sometimes,” she said, matter-of-factly, still brushing at his hair.
“A normal, human life, I wanted for him. And now he wants to do this normal, human thing and I…” He looked at her then. “I want it for him, I do, I think he could potentially have the time of his life, it’s the sort of thing I would have loved as a boy.”
“It’s the sort of thing you’d still love now,” she inserted.
He smiled faintly. “I’m so terrified of…everything. The universe gave me all of this and the universe could take it all away.”
“You’re forgetting. You’re talking like the universe holds any sway over Brem. The universe is Brem’s plaything.”
“We say that, but-”
“It’s true. Do you know what your problem is? You never get to believe anybody when they tell you this. But believe me.” She framed her hands around his face and forced him to look at her. “It will be alright. Yeah? Brem’ll be brilliant. Brem will be alright.”
He leaned forward, to bury his face against her. “Tell me again,” he said.
“Again?”
“If you tell me enough, I might believe it after a while.”
She kissed his tangled hair and whispered, “It’ll be alright.”
“It isn’t because he’s a Time Lord,” he mumbled.
“Hmm?”
“He isn’t one of the four most precious things in the universe because he’s a Time Lord. It’s nothing to do with that. After all, you’re one of the four most precious things in the universe.”
She breathed with him for a second. “It’ll be alright,” she whooshed at him, softly, even though they both knew that, when applied to her, nothing was farther from the truth.
He lifted his arms and hugged her tightly to him.
And she said, “Come to bed.”
********
There were many things Brem knew about. In fact, most things in the universe Brem knew everything about. But he knew nothing about this experience called “college orientation.” He’d no idea how to navigate its waters. Matt seemed to understand it instinctively, and Brem deduced that this was something human children just grasped, in a way that he did not. He should have watched more of those melodramas about teenagers that the girls were so keen on; he suspected he could have learned about “college orientation” from there.
Dinner went well, everyone got along, even Dad was on good behavior, but Brem lay awake for his first night in his college dorm room and felt instead the weight of all the things he didn’t know, all the things that could go wrong. All the things that were and had been and ever could be, and he couldn’t follow the thread of this university experience. Like everything to do with one’s own future, it was fuzzy and indistinct. Dad said one was never allowed to know the result of the paths not taken, that that was why even the buzz of the path taken was never in focus, but it had never bothered Brem to the extent it did that night. The TARDIS was still parked not far away, and Mum and Grandma would be sleeping while the rest of the family was tinkering and reading through the night, and they would go on doing this while he stayed here, in this dorm room, staring up at its ceiling and listening to its lack of hum, and was that really the right choice? A Time Lord not on a TARDIS?
When one does not sleep, it is very easy to be an early riser, and Brem was up and showered and out the door long before Matt had begun to stir. Only after he was halfway down the hallway did he think that maybe he should have left a note, so he went back to the room and scrawled a quick note that he was taking a walk.
He set out in the direction opposite where the TARDIS was parked. It was a warm, bright morning, and Brem walked up and down the streets of the neighbourhood surrounding the school, past houses and shops and restaurants, trying to imagine spending time in this place, human time, Earth days.
By the time he got back to his room, the rest of his family was already there, and Matt’s family as well, and he’d honestly forgotten that they were supposed to go to some sort of brunch reception for all of the families. He was rubbish at this orientation business, he really was.
When the brunch was over, Matt went to see his parents off from the hotel, and Brem walked his own family back to the TARDIS. Fortuna had had a blast during this brief excursion, was going on and on about it, and Brem rather envied her. He wished this were just a normal adventure for them, where they would jaunt off all together at the end. Instead, he was here, for an impossibly long period of time, and he was hoping he wasn’t fidgeting with anxiety. He was trying to keep his mind as calm as possible, so as not to alarm Dad and Athena and Fort.
They paused at the TARDIS door, all of them, and Brem realized he had no idea how to say good-bye to them. He’d never had to before in his life. Except that time on a beach, when he had been a very small boy, in what had been the defining moment of his life and had made him so determined not to say good-bye ever again.
“You’re going to be fine,” his mother said, giving him a fond hug. “You’re going to have a great time.”
“Yeah,” he said, jovially. “Of course I am.”
“I’m so proud of you,” Grandma said, mistily, smothering him in a bear hug. “My grandson! At Harvard! So proud!”
“Thanks, Grandma,” he said, genuinely amused by the ferocity of the hug.
He turned to Fortuna and winked at her. She hugged him tightly.
“I’ll miss you,” she said.
It was far easier to be breezily confident with someone who was close to falling apart than with someone who was being breezily confident on his behalf, so he could say, easily, “Nah. You and Theenie’ll have your run of the whole TARDIS.”
“Yeah, but it won’t be nearly as much fun without you there to annoy.”
He laughed. “No doubt.” He turned from Fortuna to Athena.
“Don’t you dare have too good a time without me.”
“Absolutely not.”
She hugged him and then kissed his cheek.
He turned to his father.
“Can we have a second?” Dad asked, glancing at the rest of the family.
Brem wasn’t sure whether to be surprised or not, as he watched the rest of the family file into the TARDIS, waving at them.
“Right,” said Dad, turning to him. “So here’s what you need to know.” He waved his hands around. “This is the biggest adventure you’ll ever have, living this life, day after day. So promise me you’ll enjoy it. Promise you won’t worry about us, that you’ll just enjoy this.”
Dad was not normally perceptive about these things, so he wondered if he’d known how much Brem had been worrying that this was not at all the sort of thing he ought to be doing. It made him feel much better just to hear his father say that. “I promise. And you’ll take care of Mum?”
Their eyes met. “Yes. Promise. Another word of advice?”
“Yes?”
“Bananas are good, Brem.”
“And tea is the basis of civilization.”
“It’s true!” Dad protested, then turned suddenly serious. “Take care of yourself.”
“I will.”
Dad surprised him then by stepping forward and pressing a kiss to the top of his head, an action Brem could never remember him taking before. At least, not in an incredibly long time.
“Okay,” he said, stepping back. “Have fun. Write it all down in that bloody journal.”
“Of course,” smiled Brem, as his father stepped into the TARDIS. Brem stood for a second, torn as to whether or not he wanted to watch the TARDIS de-materialize. He had just decided against it, and was going to turn away, when his mother slipped out the door.
“My turn for a private conversation,” she smiled at him, and then took both of his hands in hers. “Listen to me: I want you not to worry. Do you hear me? Just for a little while. Just…don’t worry. It isn’t your job to hold the universe together, to protect all of us, it really isn’t. It never should have been and, Brem, I’m sorry for that. I’m so sorry for that.”
He could not remember the last time he’d seen his mother cry, and the fact that she seemed close to tears alarmed him. “Mum,” he interrupted her. “Stop it. It’s fine-”
“It isn’t fine,” she protested. “It’s never been fine. You’re so much like your father. You always have been. And I had you and I saw how much you were like him and I thought, I’ll make him better. Brem will be exactly as the Doctor would be, if he’d lived every moment of his life wrapped in love and safety. I wanted that for you so badly and I ruined it-”
“You didn’t do anything-”
“I did. I did. All of us did. I came back, and you were taking care of everything, and somehow we all just let you, and we should never have done that. I want you to promise me not to worry about things. Just for a little while. Promise me.”
“Mum-”
“Promise me, Brem.”
He hesitated. “I promise.”
She smiled at him brilliantly. “Fine. Good. Fail every class if you want. Don’t even go to class if you don’t want to. Do whatever you want to do, and don’t worry about any of us. Yeah?”
He nodded, once. “Yes.”
She threw her arms around his neck. “And ring us constantly,” she mumbled into his shoulder.
“Yes. Of course,” he agreed, smiling at that, as he hugged her back.
“Alright.” She pulled back and wiped at her eyes. “Now I’m done being the embarrassing mother.”
“Not at all,” said Brem.
“No worrying,” she repeated. “I want that serious little wrinkle between your eyes gone by the Christmas holiday.”
He smiled a bit. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She waved at him as she disappeared into the TARDIS, and he stood with his hands tucked in the pockets of his jeans and watched it de-materialize until all sound had faded and the first few fallen leaves settled back to the grass. Then he stood, feeling a bit at a loss, and finally walked back to his dorm room, not knowing what else to do.
Matt was not there. Still at a loss, he fished around for the journal and set to writing the events of the last few days. Dad still complained about the journal, mostly the old-fashioned nature of pen and paper that Brem insisted on, but Brem always pointed out that any man who used a screwdriver, even if sonic, didn’t have much to complain about in terms of old-fashionedness.
He had only gotten up to the part where they had had to get creative to fit all his books, writing it out in his careful Gallifreyan, when Matt walked in.
“See everyone off?” he asked, cheerfully.
“Yes,” said Brem, closing the journal over around his pen to hold his place. One advantage of this place was that no one would have any idea what the scratchings in his journal meant. “You?”
“On their way back home.” Matt flopped onto his bed, looking at him with interest. “So will your family fly?”
Brem smiled. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“What’s it like having sisters?” Matt was an only child; that had been established over dinner the night before.
“It’s…” Brem shrugged. “An irritating delight.”
Matt laughed at him. Brem decided that he liked Matt’s tendency to laugh at the intensely serious things he said. “I always wanted sisters,” continued Matt. “I thought I could date their friends. That’d be convenient. Did you do that? Date Athena’s friends?”
“Not really,” said Brem. “Friends” was not something any of them really had.
“Did your friends date Athena?”
“Did my friends…What?”
Matt laughed at him again. “She’s kind of cute, I would have thought at least one of your friends would have dated her.”
Brem was at a loss for words. He finally said, “Athena’s got a thing for tentacles.”
Matt blinked. “For…?”
“Tentacles.”
There was a pause. “You mean-”
“Tentacles,” said Brem. “I mean tentacles.”
More silence. “You mean she watches a lot of anime?”
“No. She’s big on m’ylong, actually.”
“What’s m’ylong?”
Brem thought for a second. “Kind of like reality TV. Only with vultures.”
Matt stared at him. “You say the weirdest things sometimes.”
“I have a very dry sense of humor,” said Brem.
“Huh,” responded Matt.
“What’s on the agenda next for this orientation stuff? Since we’ve established I’m rubbish at it.”
Matt scrambled on his bed, reaching for a piece of paper on his desk. “I don’t know why you should be ‘rubbish’ at it, there’s a schedule.” Matt waved it around.
“Time Lords are very bad at schedules,” said Brem, honestly. “Ironic, I know.”
“Time Lords?” said Matt.
“Very dry sense of humor,” said Brem.
“Uh-huh. Well, Lord Brem of Time, you’d better get used to schedules. How will you ever make it to all your classes on time?”
“Oh, bloody hell,” complained Brem. He hadn’t even thought about that. Having somewhere to be, at a particular time…What was that about?
Matt was reading his schedule. “Tomorrow we’ve got to meet with our advisors. Very important for you, as you’re undecided.” Matt was a biology concentration. He wanted to be a doctor. He’d told Brem’s father that, over dinner, asking what type of medicine he practiced. Dad had stared at him for a second, then rattled off, “Gythumukiliyuthsugeriax. It’s a very obscure specialty.”
“And then an activities fair,” continued Matt.
“What’s that?” asked Brem.
“You know, all the clubs and stuff that you might want to join make presentations. Do you think you’ll want to join something?”
“I…have no idea. What sort of clubs are there?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why you go to the activities fair, to find out. You know,” said Matt, “the clubs have meetings. You’d have to add the meetings to your schedule.”
Brem sighed. “Schedules are way overrated, Matt.”
“You’re going to be a great influence,” said Matt.
Brem glanced at him. Matt was grinning. Teasing him, he thought. He was being teased. Brem grinned back. “Oh, you’ve no idea,” he said.
Next Chapter
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, Jackie, OCs
Spoilers - None
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 - Brem goes to university.
Author's Notes - jlrpuck is my fantastic beta. I am so very lucky to have her.
Many, many, many thanks to Kristin, for all the ideas. Thanks also to bouncy_castle79, who once again gave it the first outside-eyes read-through.
The gorgeous icon was created by swankkat for me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.
1 - 2
Chapter Three
The Doctor was peering through his specs at a delicate set of wheels that he was calibrating when Rose kissed behind his ear. “Where are the girls?”
He looked at her over the top of his glasses as she settled on the couch in the library. “I’m not sure. Around, somewhere, I suppose.”
Rose looked amused. “Good to know you keep such a close eye on them.”
“I thought you were sleeping.”
“Yes, which means you’re supposed to be watching the girls.”
“They’re fine.” He turned his attention back to the wheels.
“I thought you might want to talk.”
“About what?” he asked, frowning and pushing his tongue forward in concentration.
“I don’t know. Anything. You always want to talk.”
“Mmm,” he allowed, noncommittally.
“C’mon,” she coaxed. “Drop your little wheels and tell me what’s wrong.”
“There’s nothing wrong, Rose. I’ve got to fix this.”
“You were practically presentable today, all through dinner, and now you’ve gone all quiet. That can’t be good. So tell me.”
He put the wheels down with such an abrupt clack that Rose jumped, startled. “Okay. I’ll tell you. I think you’re mad. I think this is a huge mistake. I think I should never, ever, ever have agreed to it. There. That enough talking for you?” He picked up his wheels again.
“Doctor-”
“You just left him there,” he continued, slamming the wheels down again. “In a dorm room. This is your plan, for us to just leave him there. And who knows what could happen to him, all alone, there, while the rest of us are…He’s one of the four most precious things in this entire universe, and you want to leave him. There.”
“It’s just as safe here as it is any of the places we go, and you know it. Probably safer. And he’ll be fine. Precisely because he’s one of the four most precious things in this entire universe. Time Lords have a bit of a reputation for being able to take care of themselves.”
“Really?” drawled the Doctor. “D’you think so? Then why are we almost bloody extinct?”
Rose looked at him, not really having an answer to that as he picked up the wheels again. She wanted to soothe him, to tell him everything would be fine, especially with Brem, but it was always difficult to soothe someone who had seen the things he’d seen. Nothing was ever alright, and no one knew that more than the Doctor.
He put the wheels down again, abruptly. “How can you leave him there? How can you think this is a good idea? I’m looking at you, and you’re so bloody calm I could shake you, because you know what sort of things live in this universe, you know what sort of things could happen to him-”
“We can’t wrap him in cotton wool-”
“No one’s saying we have to,” he snapped. “But we could keep him here with us-“
“No,” she retorted. “We can’t. Parents don’t do that. Not good parents. You were singing a very different tune about all of this when it was my mother who didn’t want me traveling space and time in a ramshackle spaceship with a lecherous alien!”
“Oi,” began the Doctor, breathing hard with fury.
“What? What’s your response to that? That it’s different because you say so and you’re the highest authority?”
The Doctor gestured with his wheels, and then dropped them and pinched his eyes under his glasses. “Don’t call her ‘ramshackle,’” he said, wearily, pulling his hands through his hair and leaving it sticking up all over his head.
She watched him silently for a moment, as he pulled off his specs and put them back in his pocket; he leaned back in his seat and watched her in return. She thought he might get up and come to her, and then decided he was too stubborn for that, so she stood up and went to him, dropping herself in his lap. He didn’t push her off.
She smoothed the hair he’d ruffled. “He’ll be fine. He’s Brem, yeah? He saved two universes before he was five years old. I’m sure he’ll excel at university.”
The Doctor looked off, beyond her. “When he was born I tried to leave him here with you, remember? I mean, here on Earth. A normal life, I thought. Give him this normal, human life. Did I really think I could let him out of my sight as a baby? When I can’t now?”
“You’re not very smart sometimes,” she said, matter-of-factly, still brushing at his hair.
“A normal, human life, I wanted for him. And now he wants to do this normal, human thing and I…” He looked at her then. “I want it for him, I do, I think he could potentially have the time of his life, it’s the sort of thing I would have loved as a boy.”
“It’s the sort of thing you’d still love now,” she inserted.
He smiled faintly. “I’m so terrified of…everything. The universe gave me all of this and the universe could take it all away.”
“You’re forgetting. You’re talking like the universe holds any sway over Brem. The universe is Brem’s plaything.”
“We say that, but-”
“It’s true. Do you know what your problem is? You never get to believe anybody when they tell you this. But believe me.” She framed her hands around his face and forced him to look at her. “It will be alright. Yeah? Brem’ll be brilliant. Brem will be alright.”
He leaned forward, to bury his face against her. “Tell me again,” he said.
“Again?”
“If you tell me enough, I might believe it after a while.”
She kissed his tangled hair and whispered, “It’ll be alright.”
“It isn’t because he’s a Time Lord,” he mumbled.
“Hmm?”
“He isn’t one of the four most precious things in the universe because he’s a Time Lord. It’s nothing to do with that. After all, you’re one of the four most precious things in the universe.”
She breathed with him for a second. “It’ll be alright,” she whooshed at him, softly, even though they both knew that, when applied to her, nothing was farther from the truth.
He lifted his arms and hugged her tightly to him.
And she said, “Come to bed.”
********
There were many things Brem knew about. In fact, most things in the universe Brem knew everything about. But he knew nothing about this experience called “college orientation.” He’d no idea how to navigate its waters. Matt seemed to understand it instinctively, and Brem deduced that this was something human children just grasped, in a way that he did not. He should have watched more of those melodramas about teenagers that the girls were so keen on; he suspected he could have learned about “college orientation” from there.
Dinner went well, everyone got along, even Dad was on good behavior, but Brem lay awake for his first night in his college dorm room and felt instead the weight of all the things he didn’t know, all the things that could go wrong. All the things that were and had been and ever could be, and he couldn’t follow the thread of this university experience. Like everything to do with one’s own future, it was fuzzy and indistinct. Dad said one was never allowed to know the result of the paths not taken, that that was why even the buzz of the path taken was never in focus, but it had never bothered Brem to the extent it did that night. The TARDIS was still parked not far away, and Mum and Grandma would be sleeping while the rest of the family was tinkering and reading through the night, and they would go on doing this while he stayed here, in this dorm room, staring up at its ceiling and listening to its lack of hum, and was that really the right choice? A Time Lord not on a TARDIS?
When one does not sleep, it is very easy to be an early riser, and Brem was up and showered and out the door long before Matt had begun to stir. Only after he was halfway down the hallway did he think that maybe he should have left a note, so he went back to the room and scrawled a quick note that he was taking a walk.
He set out in the direction opposite where the TARDIS was parked. It was a warm, bright morning, and Brem walked up and down the streets of the neighbourhood surrounding the school, past houses and shops and restaurants, trying to imagine spending time in this place, human time, Earth days.
By the time he got back to his room, the rest of his family was already there, and Matt’s family as well, and he’d honestly forgotten that they were supposed to go to some sort of brunch reception for all of the families. He was rubbish at this orientation business, he really was.
When the brunch was over, Matt went to see his parents off from the hotel, and Brem walked his own family back to the TARDIS. Fortuna had had a blast during this brief excursion, was going on and on about it, and Brem rather envied her. He wished this were just a normal adventure for them, where they would jaunt off all together at the end. Instead, he was here, for an impossibly long period of time, and he was hoping he wasn’t fidgeting with anxiety. He was trying to keep his mind as calm as possible, so as not to alarm Dad and Athena and Fort.
They paused at the TARDIS door, all of them, and Brem realized he had no idea how to say good-bye to them. He’d never had to before in his life. Except that time on a beach, when he had been a very small boy, in what had been the defining moment of his life and had made him so determined not to say good-bye ever again.
“You’re going to be fine,” his mother said, giving him a fond hug. “You’re going to have a great time.”
“Yeah,” he said, jovially. “Of course I am.”
“I’m so proud of you,” Grandma said, mistily, smothering him in a bear hug. “My grandson! At Harvard! So proud!”
“Thanks, Grandma,” he said, genuinely amused by the ferocity of the hug.
He turned to Fortuna and winked at her. She hugged him tightly.
“I’ll miss you,” she said.
It was far easier to be breezily confident with someone who was close to falling apart than with someone who was being breezily confident on his behalf, so he could say, easily, “Nah. You and Theenie’ll have your run of the whole TARDIS.”
“Yeah, but it won’t be nearly as much fun without you there to annoy.”
He laughed. “No doubt.” He turned from Fortuna to Athena.
“Don’t you dare have too good a time without me.”
“Absolutely not.”
She hugged him and then kissed his cheek.
He turned to his father.
“Can we have a second?” Dad asked, glancing at the rest of the family.
Brem wasn’t sure whether to be surprised or not, as he watched the rest of the family file into the TARDIS, waving at them.
“Right,” said Dad, turning to him. “So here’s what you need to know.” He waved his hands around. “This is the biggest adventure you’ll ever have, living this life, day after day. So promise me you’ll enjoy it. Promise you won’t worry about us, that you’ll just enjoy this.”
Dad was not normally perceptive about these things, so he wondered if he’d known how much Brem had been worrying that this was not at all the sort of thing he ought to be doing. It made him feel much better just to hear his father say that. “I promise. And you’ll take care of Mum?”
Their eyes met. “Yes. Promise. Another word of advice?”
“Yes?”
“Bananas are good, Brem.”
“And tea is the basis of civilization.”
“It’s true!” Dad protested, then turned suddenly serious. “Take care of yourself.”
“I will.”
Dad surprised him then by stepping forward and pressing a kiss to the top of his head, an action Brem could never remember him taking before. At least, not in an incredibly long time.
“Okay,” he said, stepping back. “Have fun. Write it all down in that bloody journal.”
“Of course,” smiled Brem, as his father stepped into the TARDIS. Brem stood for a second, torn as to whether or not he wanted to watch the TARDIS de-materialize. He had just decided against it, and was going to turn away, when his mother slipped out the door.
“My turn for a private conversation,” she smiled at him, and then took both of his hands in hers. “Listen to me: I want you not to worry. Do you hear me? Just for a little while. Just…don’t worry. It isn’t your job to hold the universe together, to protect all of us, it really isn’t. It never should have been and, Brem, I’m sorry for that. I’m so sorry for that.”
He could not remember the last time he’d seen his mother cry, and the fact that she seemed close to tears alarmed him. “Mum,” he interrupted her. “Stop it. It’s fine-”
“It isn’t fine,” she protested. “It’s never been fine. You’re so much like your father. You always have been. And I had you and I saw how much you were like him and I thought, I’ll make him better. Brem will be exactly as the Doctor would be, if he’d lived every moment of his life wrapped in love and safety. I wanted that for you so badly and I ruined it-”
“You didn’t do anything-”
“I did. I did. All of us did. I came back, and you were taking care of everything, and somehow we all just let you, and we should never have done that. I want you to promise me not to worry about things. Just for a little while. Promise me.”
“Mum-”
“Promise me, Brem.”
He hesitated. “I promise.”
She smiled at him brilliantly. “Fine. Good. Fail every class if you want. Don’t even go to class if you don’t want to. Do whatever you want to do, and don’t worry about any of us. Yeah?”
He nodded, once. “Yes.”
She threw her arms around his neck. “And ring us constantly,” she mumbled into his shoulder.
“Yes. Of course,” he agreed, smiling at that, as he hugged her back.
“Alright.” She pulled back and wiped at her eyes. “Now I’m done being the embarrassing mother.”
“Not at all,” said Brem.
“No worrying,” she repeated. “I want that serious little wrinkle between your eyes gone by the Christmas holiday.”
He smiled a bit. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She waved at him as she disappeared into the TARDIS, and he stood with his hands tucked in the pockets of his jeans and watched it de-materialize until all sound had faded and the first few fallen leaves settled back to the grass. Then he stood, feeling a bit at a loss, and finally walked back to his dorm room, not knowing what else to do.
Matt was not there. Still at a loss, he fished around for the journal and set to writing the events of the last few days. Dad still complained about the journal, mostly the old-fashioned nature of pen and paper that Brem insisted on, but Brem always pointed out that any man who used a screwdriver, even if sonic, didn’t have much to complain about in terms of old-fashionedness.
He had only gotten up to the part where they had had to get creative to fit all his books, writing it out in his careful Gallifreyan, when Matt walked in.
“See everyone off?” he asked, cheerfully.
“Yes,” said Brem, closing the journal over around his pen to hold his place. One advantage of this place was that no one would have any idea what the scratchings in his journal meant. “You?”
“On their way back home.” Matt flopped onto his bed, looking at him with interest. “So will your family fly?”
Brem smiled. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“What’s it like having sisters?” Matt was an only child; that had been established over dinner the night before.
“It’s…” Brem shrugged. “An irritating delight.”
Matt laughed at him. Brem decided that he liked Matt’s tendency to laugh at the intensely serious things he said. “I always wanted sisters,” continued Matt. “I thought I could date their friends. That’d be convenient. Did you do that? Date Athena’s friends?”
“Not really,” said Brem. “Friends” was not something any of them really had.
“Did your friends date Athena?”
“Did my friends…What?”
Matt laughed at him again. “She’s kind of cute, I would have thought at least one of your friends would have dated her.”
Brem was at a loss for words. He finally said, “Athena’s got a thing for tentacles.”
Matt blinked. “For…?”
“Tentacles.”
There was a pause. “You mean-”
“Tentacles,” said Brem. “I mean tentacles.”
More silence. “You mean she watches a lot of anime?”
“No. She’s big on m’ylong, actually.”
“What’s m’ylong?”
Brem thought for a second. “Kind of like reality TV. Only with vultures.”
Matt stared at him. “You say the weirdest things sometimes.”
“I have a very dry sense of humor,” said Brem.
“Huh,” responded Matt.
“What’s on the agenda next for this orientation stuff? Since we’ve established I’m rubbish at it.”
Matt scrambled on his bed, reaching for a piece of paper on his desk. “I don’t know why you should be ‘rubbish’ at it, there’s a schedule.” Matt waved it around.
“Time Lords are very bad at schedules,” said Brem, honestly. “Ironic, I know.”
“Time Lords?” said Matt.
“Very dry sense of humor,” said Brem.
“Uh-huh. Well, Lord Brem of Time, you’d better get used to schedules. How will you ever make it to all your classes on time?”
“Oh, bloody hell,” complained Brem. He hadn’t even thought about that. Having somewhere to be, at a particular time…What was that about?
Matt was reading his schedule. “Tomorrow we’ve got to meet with our advisors. Very important for you, as you’re undecided.” Matt was a biology concentration. He wanted to be a doctor. He’d told Brem’s father that, over dinner, asking what type of medicine he practiced. Dad had stared at him for a second, then rattled off, “Gythumukiliyuthsugeriax. It’s a very obscure specialty.”
“And then an activities fair,” continued Matt.
“What’s that?” asked Brem.
“You know, all the clubs and stuff that you might want to join make presentations. Do you think you’ll want to join something?”
“I…have no idea. What sort of clubs are there?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why you go to the activities fair, to find out. You know,” said Matt, “the clubs have meetings. You’d have to add the meetings to your schedule.”
Brem sighed. “Schedules are way overrated, Matt.”
“You’re going to be a great influence,” said Matt.
Brem glanced at him. Matt was grinning. Teasing him, he thought. He was being teased. Brem grinned back. “Oh, you’ve no idea,” he said.
Next Chapter