Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses (25/26)
Title - Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses (25/26)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, 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 - Thanks tojlrpuckfor the beta, and for keeping me somewhat honest by asking me all those questions.
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 byjlrpuckfor my birthday.
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24
Chapter Twenty-five
Brem, working as quickly as he could, finished with the first book electromagnetizer and went in search of the next. The campus was by now utter chaos. His family was doing its job. Fire alarms were going off in practically every building. Students were milling about on the Yard, bewildered. “Off campus!” he shouted at them. “Get off the campus!” But they just looked at him blankly and he didn’t have time to deal with them. He followed the buzz of the sonic screwdriver and came upon the next book electromagnetizer, and realized that the Owtvfa or Biblobolups or whatever the hell they were must have beat him there. The obvious weak points in the machine had all been deadlock sealed, which meant he was going to have to do everything the old-fashioned way. Which required a bit more knowledge than he had. He tried to contact one of his family members telepathically but their minds were overlapping fields of alarm and no one was listening to him.
Fortuna abruptly came running into the room he was in, crying, “Get out! Get out!” She paused, realizing who was in the room. “Oh, Brem.”
“Hey,” he said, futilely trying to open one of the connections. “Can you find Dad for me and bring him here? I need him to teach me how to take this apart.” He glanced up. “Oh, hi, Matt.”
“Kind of a fun way to spend a Tuesday afternoon, don’t you think?”
“Oh, all a typical day for us,” said Athena, and Brem realized she was there, too. “What’s up?” she asked him. “You need help?”
“Lots of it. They’ve deadlock sealed it, I’m sure they’ve deadlock sealed all of them.”
“We’ll find Dad,” she promised.
“Thanks,” he answered, distractedly, and did not look up as they left.
********
The man dropped her hand as soon as they got outside, but she grabbed for his sleeve. “Wait,” she said.
“Sorry,” he said, half turning back. “I’d love to stay and chat but I’ve got to-”
“You’re Brem’s father, right? You’ve got to be, you look just like him.”
He paused, looking at her appraisingly. “And who are you?”
“I’m Kate,” she told him.
“Kate…? Oh! Kate! Oh! Kate! But this is brilliant! Brilliant! How lovely to meet you!” He suddenly swept her up in a hug. “Brilliant!” He released her from the hug. “I’m the Doctor. But surely you know that, yes? I mean, Brem’s told you that much, right?” He scratched the back of his neck and tugged on his ear.
Father and son were almost exactly alike, she thought, amused. “So how can I help?” she asked.
The Doctor’s mouth tipped up into a smile. “Brilliant,” he said again.
“Dad!”
He turned in the direction of Athena and Fortuna as they came running up, Matt trailing behind them and gasping for breath.
“This is Kate!” the Doctor told them, delightedly, gesturing to her. “Brem’s Kate!”
Athena and Fortuna glanced at her.
“Yes,” said Athena, patiently. “We know.”
The Doctor pouted. “You know? But how do you know? That’s just not fair. It’s because of that teleport you lot have, isn’t it?”
The girls fell suddenly silent, both gaping at their father.
“Ha!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “Of course I knew you had a teleport! Honestly, kids, how thick d’you think I am? You have to get up pretty early in the morning-”
“Dad, Brem needs you,” Fortuna interrupted him. “He says they’ve deadlock sealed the devices, he can’t figure out how to disable them.”
They took off at a run, apparently toward Brem, and Kate looked at Matt.
“That family,” he panted, “can run.”
Kate took off after them, determined not to lose them, and skidded into a building and then into a room with a large machine in it. Brem was emerging from underneath the machine, with wires and tubes draped over his neck and his sonic screwdriver clenched between his teeth. He caught sight of her, frowned, and took the sonic out of his mouth.
“I thought I told you to-”
“Shut up,” she said, and tipped her head back to look at the machine. “What can I do to help?”
“Brem,” said his father. “This is your Kate.”
“I know who she is.”
The Doctor turned back to her. “It’s really so lovely to meet you. He’s kept you so secret-”
“Can we focus?” demanded Brem. “You need to tell me how to disable this machine.”
“Oh. Sorry.” The Doctor pulled glasses out of his coat and peered at the machine. “Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to be able to disable it.”
Brem said something in Gallifreyan.
“Your mother would yell at you if she heard you using words like that,” his father told him.
“Mum wouldn’t know what it means.”
“She’d be able to guess. She’s uncanny like that. Where is she anyway?” He looked at Athena and Fortuna.
“We split up once we got out there, to get to more people,” Athena told him.
“We need a plan,” said Brem, tearing his hands through his hair. “Because the plan we have isn’t going to work.”
“How are the machines connected to the books?” asked Fortuna.
“What?” said Brem.
“The machines are magnetizing the books, right? Charging them to explode? How?”
“Oh! Yes! Yes!” exclaimed the Doctor, suddenly, making both Kate and Matt jump. His children didn’t even look at him as he danced around. “Yes! We’ll block the-”
“Electromagnetic field,” Brem finished. “We’ll need something-”
“To charge, yes,” his father said.
“Here.” Athena reached into her pocket and pulled out a pile of bobby pins and handed them across.
“Excellent,” her father said, pleased. “Thank you.”
The ground suddenly began rumbling.
“What’s that?” Matt asked, looking down at it.
“Nothing good,” Brem answered, grimly.
The Doctor was not paying it any heed, instead focusing on buzzing his sonic screwdriver over the pile of bobby pins. “All we have to do is counter their charge with the reverse charge, it’ll block the field and it’ll block their ability to-”
There was an explosion that shook the building and blew the windows in. Brem knocked Kate down, shielding her from the worst of the glass. Screams sounded from outside, as finally the students began fleeing campus in a veritable stampede. Brem rolled off of Kate, looking down at her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded.
He turned back to his father, who was sticking the pile of bobby pins into the machine.
“It should block the entire field, right?” said Fortuna. “We won’t need to do it to every machine, right?”
“Nope,” answered the Doctor, popping the “p.” “This should block everything. Now.” He stepped back and surveyed his handiwork. “Let’s go out and wait for them to figure out they’ve been stymied.”
Brem took Kate’s hand as the group of them headed out to Harvard Yard.
“I wish you’d left when I asked,” he said.
“I had to stay here and help you,” she pointed out. “By the way, it was Yunny and Professor Smith.”
“I always knew that Professor Smith was suspicious,” he replied.
“I’ve just got to say,” Matt interjected, “that maybe you could have told me a bit earlier that I was wasting my time with your sister.”
“I did!” exclaimed Brem, exasperated.
“But I didn’t know you were serious.”
The Doctor was standing casually, leaning against the John Harvard statue on the Yard with his arms folded, watching Professor Smith, who was approaching him slowly, holding a device out at him.
“What is that?” asked the Doctor, mildly. “A gun? Tsk, tsk, tsk. So overdramatic. So…unnecessarily…violent.” The Doctor straightened, a sudden steel in his tone. “Really. What is this all about?”
“This planet,” spat out Professor Smith. “This marvelous planet, being wasted on these idiots.”
“Wellllll, they’re not all bad. Kylie Minogue, she’s a bit clever, wouldn’t you say?”
Professor Smith, looking disgusted, lifted the gun, fired. Kate flinched, but nothing happened.
“We’re blocking your electromagnetic field, you know,” the Doctor commented. “None of your little tricks are going to work. I think…you lose.” There came a rumbling noise suddenly, and a cadre of sausage-shaped ships began to slowly descend to the Yard. “Oh, look,” said the Doctor, relishing the pronunciation of the words. “The Judoon have arrived! Good job I alerted the Shadow Proclamation to a possible issue here on Earth, innit? Brem?” called the Doctor, without taking his eyes off Professor Smith. “I think the honour is yours, don’t you?”
“Absolutely,” agreed Brem, and called the Judoon over.
********
“Where is your mother?” asked the Doctor, distractedly, as they watched the Judoon processing members of Owtvfa.
“She’s probably playing Florence Nightingale, knowing her,” Brem responded.
“Well, come on.” He turned, hands in his pockets, to gather his children. “Our work here is done. Let’s go find your mother and then we will treat Kate to a lovely dinner on the TARDIS, which is bigger on the inside, you know.” He looked at Matt. “Who are you?”
Matt lifted his eyebrows. “I’m Matt. We’ve met.”
“He’s my roommate, Dad,” Brem reminded him.
“Oh, of course, of course. Sorry. You can have dinner on the TARDIS as well. Here we go. I’m sure if we follow in the direction of the most chaos, we will find your mother. Jeopardy-friendly, that one.”
The building that had exploded had been Lamont Library, and they sauntered in its direction, scattering a bit in different directions as they wandered. The scene was chaos, ambulances lined up and emergency workers dotting around to help people.
“Won’t they wonder about those rhino people?” Kate asked him.
“Nah. You humans are surprisingly-” He cut himself off, the blood draining from his face.
Kate looked at him in alarm. “Brem. What is it?”
“My sister,” he said, looking around him desperately. “In my head. In our heads. She-” He spotted Fortuna, behind him and to the right, along the expanse of grass that led to the rest of campus, stumbling over herself in haste, her fist in her mouth. And then his eyes found his father, who had been ahead of them, nearer to Lamont itself, and was now turned back. He was not looking at Fortuna. He was looking beyond her, toward the grassy area. And Brem was well aware what was beyond Fortuna and refused to look. He stayed very still, watching his frozen father, who suddenly broke into a run toward Fortuna, coat flapping behind him. Athena appeared almost out of nowhere, catching Fortuna, who turned into her and immediately began sobbing.
“Brem,” he vaguely heard Kate saying. “Brem.”
He broke into a run as well, after his father, coming up to him just as he dropped to his knees in front of his mother, lying supine on the grassy area, beyond the circle of rubble. She was so still she could have been sleeping, one of the thousand times he’d crawled into her bed to watch her sleep, to reassure himself she was there, and alive, and there, and alive.
“Rose,” his father was saying. “Rose. C’mon, love, here we go.” He was running the sonic screwdriver over her, and Brem was well aware he was looking for any spark of life, anything for him to work with. “Rose. Darling. Dammit, open your eyes,” he snapped suddenly, and shook her.
Brem looked over at Athena, who looked back at him. She was still cradling Fortuna. Brem was dimly aware that Kate and Matt were both standing just behind them, looking uncertain what to do. He looked back at his father, who was snuffling now, had dropped the sonic screwdriver to the ground beside him and had his hands caught in his hair. Brem realized suddenly that this was what he had been talking about, in the TARDIS kitchen with his father on the day after Christmas. He had promised he would never leave him on his own ever again, and this was the time he’d been preparing for. He had thought, or hoped, that there would be decades before they would get here, but they were here now. And he didn’t allow himself to think of anything but that he had a father who had now lowered his head to his mother’s chest in despair and who needed him, and he could focus on that, and he could deal with all the rest later.
He moved forward, knelt next to his father and put a hand on his shoulder. “Dad,” he ventured, softly.
His father took a deep breath, but did not lift his head.
“Dad,” he said again.
“Not like this,” his father mumbled. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Now. There was supposed to be…I was supposed to be…I was supposed to be ready, I was supposed to be-” Abruptly, his father straightened and clutched at him in a desperate hug. Brem had a sudden vivid flashback to sitting cuddled in his father’s arms right after his mother had first disappeared, with Athena sobbing for her, and his father so cold and empty inside his head that Brem had been terrified. He had known only that his father had needed to know then that he was there, and needed to know it now just as badly.
“We’ll-” he began, and then stopped, staring down at his mother’s motionless form. Because he could have sworn he had seen a flicker of gold darting underneath that skin. He’d imagined it, clearly. “We’ll-” he began again, and then stopped. No, that was definite gold. Definite gold, glowing through her, within her, from her. The sound of the TARDIS exploded suddenly in his head, so loud he winced, a song he’d never exactly heard from her before but knew, immediately, ought to be called Bad Wolf. “Dad,” he said, but his father, responding to the same thing, had straightened, wiping hastily at tears, and was staring down at his mother.
She coughed suddenly and sat straight up, gasping for air. She looked at him, dazed and bewildered. And then she smiled and said, “Hello."
Next Chapter
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, 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 - Thanks tojlrpuckfor the beta, and for keeping me somewhat honest by asking me all those questions.
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 byjlrpuckfor my birthday.
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24
Chapter Twenty-five
Brem, working as quickly as he could, finished with the first book electromagnetizer and went in search of the next. The campus was by now utter chaos. His family was doing its job. Fire alarms were going off in practically every building. Students were milling about on the Yard, bewildered. “Off campus!” he shouted at them. “Get off the campus!” But they just looked at him blankly and he didn’t have time to deal with them. He followed the buzz of the sonic screwdriver and came upon the next book electromagnetizer, and realized that the Owtvfa or Biblobolups or whatever the hell they were must have beat him there. The obvious weak points in the machine had all been deadlock sealed, which meant he was going to have to do everything the old-fashioned way. Which required a bit more knowledge than he had. He tried to contact one of his family members telepathically but their minds were overlapping fields of alarm and no one was listening to him.
Fortuna abruptly came running into the room he was in, crying, “Get out! Get out!” She paused, realizing who was in the room. “Oh, Brem.”
“Hey,” he said, futilely trying to open one of the connections. “Can you find Dad for me and bring him here? I need him to teach me how to take this apart.” He glanced up. “Oh, hi, Matt.”
“Kind of a fun way to spend a Tuesday afternoon, don’t you think?”
“Oh, all a typical day for us,” said Athena, and Brem realized she was there, too. “What’s up?” she asked him. “You need help?”
“Lots of it. They’ve deadlock sealed it, I’m sure they’ve deadlock sealed all of them.”
“We’ll find Dad,” she promised.
“Thanks,” he answered, distractedly, and did not look up as they left.
********
The man dropped her hand as soon as they got outside, but she grabbed for his sleeve. “Wait,” she said.
“Sorry,” he said, half turning back. “I’d love to stay and chat but I’ve got to-”
“You’re Brem’s father, right? You’ve got to be, you look just like him.”
He paused, looking at her appraisingly. “And who are you?”
“I’m Kate,” she told him.
“Kate…? Oh! Kate! Oh! Kate! But this is brilliant! Brilliant! How lovely to meet you!” He suddenly swept her up in a hug. “Brilliant!” He released her from the hug. “I’m the Doctor. But surely you know that, yes? I mean, Brem’s told you that much, right?” He scratched the back of his neck and tugged on his ear.
Father and son were almost exactly alike, she thought, amused. “So how can I help?” she asked.
The Doctor’s mouth tipped up into a smile. “Brilliant,” he said again.
“Dad!”
He turned in the direction of Athena and Fortuna as they came running up, Matt trailing behind them and gasping for breath.
“This is Kate!” the Doctor told them, delightedly, gesturing to her. “Brem’s Kate!”
Athena and Fortuna glanced at her.
“Yes,” said Athena, patiently. “We know.”
The Doctor pouted. “You know? But how do you know? That’s just not fair. It’s because of that teleport you lot have, isn’t it?”
The girls fell suddenly silent, both gaping at their father.
“Ha!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “Of course I knew you had a teleport! Honestly, kids, how thick d’you think I am? You have to get up pretty early in the morning-”
“Dad, Brem needs you,” Fortuna interrupted him. “He says they’ve deadlock sealed the devices, he can’t figure out how to disable them.”
They took off at a run, apparently toward Brem, and Kate looked at Matt.
“That family,” he panted, “can run.”
Kate took off after them, determined not to lose them, and skidded into a building and then into a room with a large machine in it. Brem was emerging from underneath the machine, with wires and tubes draped over his neck and his sonic screwdriver clenched between his teeth. He caught sight of her, frowned, and took the sonic out of his mouth.
“I thought I told you to-”
“Shut up,” she said, and tipped her head back to look at the machine. “What can I do to help?”
“Brem,” said his father. “This is your Kate.”
“I know who she is.”
The Doctor turned back to her. “It’s really so lovely to meet you. He’s kept you so secret-”
“Can we focus?” demanded Brem. “You need to tell me how to disable this machine.”
“Oh. Sorry.” The Doctor pulled glasses out of his coat and peered at the machine. “Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to be able to disable it.”
Brem said something in Gallifreyan.
“Your mother would yell at you if she heard you using words like that,” his father told him.
“Mum wouldn’t know what it means.”
“She’d be able to guess. She’s uncanny like that. Where is she anyway?” He looked at Athena and Fortuna.
“We split up once we got out there, to get to more people,” Athena told him.
“We need a plan,” said Brem, tearing his hands through his hair. “Because the plan we have isn’t going to work.”
“How are the machines connected to the books?” asked Fortuna.
“What?” said Brem.
“The machines are magnetizing the books, right? Charging them to explode? How?”
“Oh! Yes! Yes!” exclaimed the Doctor, suddenly, making both Kate and Matt jump. His children didn’t even look at him as he danced around. “Yes! We’ll block the-”
“Electromagnetic field,” Brem finished. “We’ll need something-”
“To charge, yes,” his father said.
“Here.” Athena reached into her pocket and pulled out a pile of bobby pins and handed them across.
“Excellent,” her father said, pleased. “Thank you.”
The ground suddenly began rumbling.
“What’s that?” Matt asked, looking down at it.
“Nothing good,” Brem answered, grimly.
The Doctor was not paying it any heed, instead focusing on buzzing his sonic screwdriver over the pile of bobby pins. “All we have to do is counter their charge with the reverse charge, it’ll block the field and it’ll block their ability to-”
There was an explosion that shook the building and blew the windows in. Brem knocked Kate down, shielding her from the worst of the glass. Screams sounded from outside, as finally the students began fleeing campus in a veritable stampede. Brem rolled off of Kate, looking down at her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded.
He turned back to his father, who was sticking the pile of bobby pins into the machine.
“It should block the entire field, right?” said Fortuna. “We won’t need to do it to every machine, right?”
“Nope,” answered the Doctor, popping the “p.” “This should block everything. Now.” He stepped back and surveyed his handiwork. “Let’s go out and wait for them to figure out they’ve been stymied.”
Brem took Kate’s hand as the group of them headed out to Harvard Yard.
“I wish you’d left when I asked,” he said.
“I had to stay here and help you,” she pointed out. “By the way, it was Yunny and Professor Smith.”
“I always knew that Professor Smith was suspicious,” he replied.
“I’ve just got to say,” Matt interjected, “that maybe you could have told me a bit earlier that I was wasting my time with your sister.”
“I did!” exclaimed Brem, exasperated.
“But I didn’t know you were serious.”
The Doctor was standing casually, leaning against the John Harvard statue on the Yard with his arms folded, watching Professor Smith, who was approaching him slowly, holding a device out at him.
“What is that?” asked the Doctor, mildly. “A gun? Tsk, tsk, tsk. So overdramatic. So…unnecessarily…violent.” The Doctor straightened, a sudden steel in his tone. “Really. What is this all about?”
“This planet,” spat out Professor Smith. “This marvelous planet, being wasted on these idiots.”
“Wellllll, they’re not all bad. Kylie Minogue, she’s a bit clever, wouldn’t you say?”
Professor Smith, looking disgusted, lifted the gun, fired. Kate flinched, but nothing happened.
“We’re blocking your electromagnetic field, you know,” the Doctor commented. “None of your little tricks are going to work. I think…you lose.” There came a rumbling noise suddenly, and a cadre of sausage-shaped ships began to slowly descend to the Yard. “Oh, look,” said the Doctor, relishing the pronunciation of the words. “The Judoon have arrived! Good job I alerted the Shadow Proclamation to a possible issue here on Earth, innit? Brem?” called the Doctor, without taking his eyes off Professor Smith. “I think the honour is yours, don’t you?”
“Absolutely,” agreed Brem, and called the Judoon over.
********
“Where is your mother?” asked the Doctor, distractedly, as they watched the Judoon processing members of Owtvfa.
“She’s probably playing Florence Nightingale, knowing her,” Brem responded.
“Well, come on.” He turned, hands in his pockets, to gather his children. “Our work here is done. Let’s go find your mother and then we will treat Kate to a lovely dinner on the TARDIS, which is bigger on the inside, you know.” He looked at Matt. “Who are you?”
Matt lifted his eyebrows. “I’m Matt. We’ve met.”
“He’s my roommate, Dad,” Brem reminded him.
“Oh, of course, of course. Sorry. You can have dinner on the TARDIS as well. Here we go. I’m sure if we follow in the direction of the most chaos, we will find your mother. Jeopardy-friendly, that one.”
The building that had exploded had been Lamont Library, and they sauntered in its direction, scattering a bit in different directions as they wandered. The scene was chaos, ambulances lined up and emergency workers dotting around to help people.
“Won’t they wonder about those rhino people?” Kate asked him.
“Nah. You humans are surprisingly-” He cut himself off, the blood draining from his face.
Kate looked at him in alarm. “Brem. What is it?”
“My sister,” he said, looking around him desperately. “In my head. In our heads. She-” He spotted Fortuna, behind him and to the right, along the expanse of grass that led to the rest of campus, stumbling over herself in haste, her fist in her mouth. And then his eyes found his father, who had been ahead of them, nearer to Lamont itself, and was now turned back. He was not looking at Fortuna. He was looking beyond her, toward the grassy area. And Brem was well aware what was beyond Fortuna and refused to look. He stayed very still, watching his frozen father, who suddenly broke into a run toward Fortuna, coat flapping behind him. Athena appeared almost out of nowhere, catching Fortuna, who turned into her and immediately began sobbing.
“Brem,” he vaguely heard Kate saying. “Brem.”
He broke into a run as well, after his father, coming up to him just as he dropped to his knees in front of his mother, lying supine on the grassy area, beyond the circle of rubble. She was so still she could have been sleeping, one of the thousand times he’d crawled into her bed to watch her sleep, to reassure himself she was there, and alive, and there, and alive.
“Rose,” his father was saying. “Rose. C’mon, love, here we go.” He was running the sonic screwdriver over her, and Brem was well aware he was looking for any spark of life, anything for him to work with. “Rose. Darling. Dammit, open your eyes,” he snapped suddenly, and shook her.
Brem looked over at Athena, who looked back at him. She was still cradling Fortuna. Brem was dimly aware that Kate and Matt were both standing just behind them, looking uncertain what to do. He looked back at his father, who was snuffling now, had dropped the sonic screwdriver to the ground beside him and had his hands caught in his hair. Brem realized suddenly that this was what he had been talking about, in the TARDIS kitchen with his father on the day after Christmas. He had promised he would never leave him on his own ever again, and this was the time he’d been preparing for. He had thought, or hoped, that there would be decades before they would get here, but they were here now. And he didn’t allow himself to think of anything but that he had a father who had now lowered his head to his mother’s chest in despair and who needed him, and he could focus on that, and he could deal with all the rest later.
He moved forward, knelt next to his father and put a hand on his shoulder. “Dad,” he ventured, softly.
His father took a deep breath, but did not lift his head.
“Dad,” he said again.
“Not like this,” his father mumbled. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Now. There was supposed to be…I was supposed to be…I was supposed to be ready, I was supposed to be-” Abruptly, his father straightened and clutched at him in a desperate hug. Brem had a sudden vivid flashback to sitting cuddled in his father’s arms right after his mother had first disappeared, with Athena sobbing for her, and his father so cold and empty inside his head that Brem had been terrified. He had known only that his father had needed to know then that he was there, and needed to know it now just as badly.
“We’ll-” he began, and then stopped, staring down at his mother’s motionless form. Because he could have sworn he had seen a flicker of gold darting underneath that skin. He’d imagined it, clearly. “We’ll-” he began again, and then stopped. No, that was definite gold. Definite gold, glowing through her, within her, from her. The sound of the TARDIS exploded suddenly in his head, so loud he winced, a song he’d never exactly heard from her before but knew, immediately, ought to be called Bad Wolf. “Dad,” he said, but his father, responding to the same thing, had straightened, wiping hastily at tears, and was staring down at his mother.
She coughed suddenly and sat straight up, gasping for air. She looked at him, dazed and bewildered. And then she smiled and said, “Hello."
Next Chapter