Something About Stars (2/20)
Title - Something About Stars (2/20)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Rose, Jackie, OCs
Spoilers - I've started to think I may reference events without thinking, so, to be safe: Through the specials.
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids, they're all mine.)
Summary - Four Time Lords and a Bad Wolf human, gallivanting through time and space. What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Notes - Huge thanks to Kristin and chicklet73 , who talked through plot points. Special thanks to Kristin for coming up with the title. And even more thanks to jlrpuck and c73, who so graciously beta'd.
The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
Prologue
Chapter One
Matt Mailloux, dragging himself home after a 36-hour shift, found an alien on his couch.
“Hey,” he yawned, passing by to disappear into the kitchen. He was starving. He snagged a banana and walked back out to the living room.
“Hey,” responded Athena, not really looking up from his TV. “Where’ve you been?”
The Tylers always asked this question as if they thought you were going to say that you’d been having dinner on Jupiter. “The hospital,” he answered. “Working. How long have you been here?”
“One hour, twelve minutes, and seven seconds. Eight. Nine. So I’ve been looking at your DVR list.”
“And?”
“And. You record a telenovela named Amor Caliente. Do you actually watch that?”
“No,” he said. “Of course not. Don’t you dare erase it.”
She finally looked at him and sent him that patented tongue between her teeth grin she had. “You look tired,” she said.
“Long day. Move over.” She obeyed, giving him room to settle on the couch next to her, and he stole the remote and switched it to basketball.
Athena rolled her eyes. “Matt, I’d much rather watch Amor Caliente.”
“Hi, Matt, how are you? Mind if I burgle your house and mock your television viewing habits?”
“Burgle? Did you just say burgle?”
“I did indeed.”
“I haven’t burgled anything. Do you even know the meaning of that word? The most I’ve done is a little…” She waved her hand about. “Light trespassing.”
“Are you in law school now?”
“No. Picked that up from Oliver Wendell Holmes himself, though.”
“Of course you did.” The basketball game went to commercial. Matt looked at Athena and took a bite of his banana. “So. What’s the purpose of your visit this time? Is it just to check up on my DVR list, or do you have an actual reason?”
Athena stole the remote control back and switched the channel, then grinned at him unrepentantly.
He shook his head a bit. “You are so lucky you’re cute.”
“I know.”
“And, also, that I’m a little worried you could probably kill me with your mind.”
“I can,” she said, seriously.
“Really?”
“No. Anyway.” She was flipping through the channels. “I’m here to visit my brother.”
“He’s not here.”
“He will be.”
And, just like that, as if on cue, the noise of a TARDIS materializing filled his apartment.
“There he is now,” said Athena.
“How do you do that?”
Athena looked at him as if he’d just dribbled on his shirt. “Matt, we’re Time Lords.”
Matt sighed and leaned his head back against the couch. He was kind of tired and he kind of wanted to sleep, and instead he was hosting an impromptu convention of half of the Time Lords in the universe.
Brem’s TARDIS had by now blinked fully into existence in the corner. The TARDIS, Matt had been lectured time and again, could look like anything. What it looked like-what they all looked like-was a police box. Brem’s was red. Athena said it was “too flash.” And it did look a bit strident next to Athena’s TARDIS, which was a soft, tasteful gray. With inevitable pink accents. Like the flash of pink in the ribbon in Athena’s hair, which she was never, ever without. Well. He supposed she was without it sometimes, like when she washed her hair, for instance. He just never got to see her at those times.
Brem came walking out of his TARDIS, in that huge Victorian greatcoat he insisted on wearing everywhere. Matt thought it looked ridiculous, but the general consensus among heterosexual females and homosexual males seemed to be that the coat looked very good. He said, “What’s up?” to his sister and tugged on her ponytail on his way past the couch and into the kitchen. Matt heard him exclaim, “Bananas!” in delight, and then he came back out to the living room, munching on a banana.
“Hello to you, too,” Matt said to him. “Why don’t you have a banana?”
“Thanks,” said Brem, and sat on the couch on the other side of Athena. “What are you watching?”
“Basketball,” answered Matt. “Theoretically.”
“Amor Caliente,” said Athena. “It’s a telenovela. Matt likes it.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Brem. “Yes! I love this!”
Athena looked at him in surprise. “You watch it, too?”
“Wellllll,” said Brem, “Matt needs to have a TARDIS here to translate. You don’t think Matt’s that fluent in Spanish, do you?”
“I am fluent in Spanish. You show up to watch it with me because you like it.”
“Humans,” said Brem, “suffer from so many self-delusions.”
Matt sighed.
“I’m seeing someone new,” said Athena.
“Oh, you don’t want to discuss your love life, do you? Nobody wants to hear about your love life. Do you want to hear about Athena’s love life, Matt?”
“Absolutely not,” said Matt, emphatically.
“So,” began Athena, “Mum’s birthday is coming up, relatively speaking.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Fortuna told me, and you know Fortuna always knows these things. What should we get her?”
“Seriously, guys?” interrupted Matt. “This is what you came here to discuss? You couldn’t have just…used your cell phones?”
“Sure,” said Athena, “but then you wouldn’t have gotten to see us.”
“And whatever would I have done?” remarked Matt, mildly.
“Are you hungry?” asked Athena. “We can make you something. Not as good as Fortuna making you something, but better than nothing.”
There was something too calculatingly casual about Athena’s query. Trust the Tylers to choose a person’s house as a meeting place, and then go to lengths to avoid having the meeting in front of the person whose house it was. Really, aliens… But he helped her out. “I would love something to eat.”
“Excellent,” said Athena. She stood up. “Brem, let’s go cook.”
Once they were in the kitchen, Brem turned to her. “What’s really up?”
Athena was peering in Matt’s refrigerator. “I was by Inskip 12 the other day. There was a…skip.”
“A skip?”
“A time skip. I lost time.” Athena closed the refrigerator and began opening cupboards.
Brem frowned. “What time period were you there?”
“42nd century. But it happened to every time period I tried.”
“You kept trying?”
“It was weird, Brem. I had to figure out what was going on.”
“It was dangerous.”
Athena looked at him over her shoulder, crouching to look at the lower cupboards. Her look said, Seriously?
“You should have rung me,” Brem told her, pushing his coat back and sticking his fingers in the pockets of his jeans, his thumbs hooking through the belt loops.
“I did, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, and you said, ‘Meet me at Matt’s.’ You didn’t say, ‘I’m losing time in a dangerous time skip I might have gotten stuck in.’”
“Because I was out of the time skip by then.”
“Right. So you should have rung me before.”
“Brem, I was fine.” She gave up on the cupboards and turned to face him, leaning back against the counter and crossing her arms. “Except there’s another one.”
“Another what?”
“Another time skip.”
“Where?”
“By Parnolissus.”
Brem’s eyebrows were drawn together in concentration. “But that’s galaxies away from Inskip 12.”
“I know. So have you ever heard of it before? Two time skips, existing in every time period, galaxies away, that have apparently just sprung into being?”
“No,” said Brem. “Did you tell Dad?”
“He would freak out. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”
“You were worried enough to ring me.”
“I wanted to see if you’d encountered any. That would make them cause for alarm. But you haven’t, have you?”
“No. But I’ll look out for them now and let you know.”
“Good.”
“You know, you could have just told me this over the phone.”
Athena shrugged. “Yeah, but I like it here. It’s like…home without, you know, the possibility of Mum or Dad eavesdropping.”
Brem regarded her for a second.
“Anyway,” she continued, “Mum’s birthday really is coming up. We need to think about that.”
“Fort’ll have an idea,” said Brem, confidently.
“Matt has no food in this kitchen, really. If he wants dinner, we’ll need to use one of our TARDISes.”
“Makes more sense anyway,” said Brem. “We wouldn’t have to clean up. I’m not especially hungry, though.”
“But Matt is.”
“Does he have milk?” asked Brem, with interest.
“Why?”
“Because I’m out, and I can just steal his.”
Athena shook her head, and left Brem poking around the fridge, muttering, “Orange juice, I could use that, too…”
Matt was sleeping, his head tipped back on the couch, when Athena walked back into the room. He was snoring a little bit. Athena smiled.
When Matt woke up, several hours later, the television was off, he was draped in a blanket, and there was a note on his coffee table. “Lasagna in fridge. Just heat it up. A.”
***
They were cutting the cake. Well, Athena and Fortuna and Rose were. Brem and the Doctor were off in the control room, the Doctor gesturing to something on the console, while Brem ran his sonic screwdriver over it. The TARDIS had opened the dining room up so it flowed immediately into the control room, partly so the Doctor and Brem could wander off and still be in the room, and partly so that Jackie, who could no longer get around very well, could get in more easily.
“Have you still got that boyfriend?” Jackie asked Athena, as Athena sliced a piece of the chocolate and hoydenberry cake Fortuna had made (Mum’s favorite).
“No, got a new one now,” replied Athena, transferring the slice to a plate and handing it to her grandmother.
“And how long’ve you been seeing him?”
“Oh, I dunno.” Athena thought. “Couple of months, I suppose.”
“That’s a decent amount of time for you. Think you’ll marry him?”
“Mum, leave her alone,” inserted Rose.
“What? Is it so bad that I’d like to see some great-grandchildren before I die?”
“Mum,” sighed Rose.
“And I’ve got to rely on your girls because Brem’s got too much of his father in him. He’ll be 900 years old before he’ll settle down, and even then he’ll only do it because he’ll accidentally get some girl pregnant.”
“Mum!” exclaimed Rose, in horror.
“Well, it’s true,” said Fortuna and Jackie at the same time, and then they grinned at each other.
“Anyway, that means I’ve got to rely on you girls for new babies,” continued Jackie. “Since your mother doesn’t seem inclined to add any.”
“I’ve raised my children,” replied Rose, mildly, cutting into her own piece of cake.
“Doesn’t mean you couldn’t have more. Your father and I talked about having another one, in the other universe.”
There was a moment of silence around the table while everyone stared at Jackie. Jackie blithely went on eating her cake, either oblivious to the shock she had caused or not caring. Rose had found that her mother’s natural bluntness had done nothing but increase as she’d gotten older.
“Did you really?” Rose said, after a moment, her mind back on a beach in Norway on another planet, realizing anew just how much her mother must love her to have come back with her that day. She knew her mother loved her-Rose, being a mother herself, was well aware just how much a mother loved her children-but it was still amazing to be reminded of it.
Jackie nodded, still looking unconcerned.
“You never told me that,” said Rose, and suddenly got up and startled her mother by giving her a hug.
“Oh,” said Jackie, in surprise. “I’m trying to eat my cake,” she protested, while hugging Rose in return.
Rose sat back in her own seat and smiled at her, then raised her voice a bit. “Boys! Come have cake!”
***
She had it happen to her again, weeks later on standard Earth time, when she was orbiting around the planet of Sou Minn. To a Time Lord, with a keen sense of time, a time skip was an unsettling experience. It made her feel wobbly and shaky, dizzy and a bit queasy, like being shaken about upside down for a little while. Her TARDIS shuddered, the read-outs shouting out in alarmed Gallifreyan, and Athena gripped the edge of her console and blinked through the stars dancing in her vision, staring at the screen. According to the relative time of the planet below her, she’d just lost six Earth hours.
Athena took a deep breath. The dizziness was fading, although she still felt slightly off-kilter. She tried to consider what to do. The first time she had hit a time skip, she had gone over her TARDIS with a fine-toothed comb, feeling very much like her father as she crawled around under the console, sonic between her teeth. TARDISes did not need constant attention. Her father was a born tinkerer, and Athena also suspected he’d grown so used to the TARDIS being his only friend that his constant tinkering was the equivalent of a couple of human blokes having a pint together at a pub. But Athena, although not a constant tinkerer, knew her way around a TARDIS. Hers was absolutely fine, save for her slight distress at having been forced through a time skip. TARDISes didn’t like time skips any more than Time Lords did, and her TARDIS was a bit of a whine in her head.
The second time she’d hit a time skip, she’d realized that it wasn’t her TARDIS. There was something off about time in the spot where she was, almost like turbulence. And that could possibly be dismissed. Weird things happened in space and time. Parallel universes leaked through, black holes popped into and out of existence. Inskip 12 might have been settled near a weak point, and she’d moved on without giving it a second thought.
Until she’d hit her next time skip. In all the years of travelling she’d done, both alone and with various members of her family, she had never encountered a time skip. And now, suddenly, they seemed to be everywhere. Athena paid a visit to her parents’ TARDIS and used her father’s superior library to read up on time skips. But there wasn’t much. They were supposed to be rare. Why did she keep tripping over them?
She’d rung Brem at that point and met him at Matt’s, and Brem had been alarmed, yes, but not to the point where she had felt frightened. It had been just typical protective-brother-Brem alarm, and Athena had felt better after talking to him, the way she always did; but now that it had happened to her again, she wasn’t sure what to think. And why did it seem to only be happening to her? She was a good pilot, she knew she was; so there was no reason for this to be this way.
She decided she needed chocolate, and punched in a flight on her TARDIS. The TARDIS landed a bit hesitantly, and Athena stroked at her inner column and thought maybe a bit of a rest was necessary. Then she opened the door and stepped out.
“Matt?” she called.
“Yeah?” he called back, from the direction of his bedroom.
“Have you got any ice cream?” she asked, heading toward the kitchen and poking her head in his freezer. He did. Strawberry and not chocolate, but it would have to do. She pulled it out, as she felt him walk into the kitchen behind her. “You’ve been grocery shopping,” she remarked, approvingly. “Last time I was here, your cupboards were bare.”
“That was a few weeks ago, Theenie,” he pointed out, pulling two bowls out of the cupboards for her.
“I know.” She sighed a bit, as she opened his drawer and pulled out his ice cream scoop. “I’ve been busy.”
“With your boyfriend?”
“Oh. Yes. I suppose.” She handed him the ice cream scoop and then waved her hand about negligently, watching him begin to scoop them bowls of ice cream. He was wearing a white dress shirt, the sleeves of which he’d rolled up to keep them out of the ice cream container, and Athena, surprised by the shirt choice, glanced at the trouser choice. They were dark gray. They were…nice. “You look nice,” she said.
He handed her a bowl of ice cream and licked some excess ice cream off the scoop before dropping it in the sink. “You sound surprised,” he remarked.
“Well, normally, you look kind of…a mess.”
“Because you have a knack for showing up when I look like a mess.” He replaced the ice cream in the freezer.
She sat at the kitchen table and took a bite of her ice cream. “So normally you look like this?”
He chuckled as he sat opposite her with his own ice cream. “No. I have a date.”
Athena watched him deliver this news and then calmly go on eating his ice cream. “Oh,” she said. There was another moment of silence. He continued to eat. “Won’t you ruin your appetite?”
“I’ll be fine. So. What’s wrong?”
“What makes you think anything’s wrong?”
“You’re upset. I can tell. So what is it?”
Athena took a deep breath and pushed her ice cream away. She suddenly didn’t feel like eating anymore. “Time’s skipping around me.”
“What does that mean?” asked Matt.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, frustrated.
“No, I don’t mean ‘what’s the importance of that.’ I mean that I literally didn’t understand the words in your sentence.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well.” She thought. “What time is it right now?”
Matt glanced at his watch. It was a nice watch that Athena had always liked. She had teased him about its Earth simplicity many times. “6:07.”
“And what time is it right now?”
Matt lifted his eyebrows and glanced at his watch again. “It’s…6:07.”
“No, it’s 11:05.”
“It’s not.”
“But it would be if time had skipped. And that’s exactly what it feels like. You’d look at your watch that second time, and it would read 11:05.”
Matt looked at his watch, as if to ascertain it was still 6:07, and then looked back at her. “Okay. So what causes time to skip that way?”
“I don’t know. I read up on it, but I couldn’t figure anything out, really. It seems to be something different every time it happens.”
“What did your father say?”
Athena fiddled with the spoon anchored in her melting ice cream. “I didn’t tell him.”
“Theenie,” said Matt.
“I know, I know, I…I talked to Brem,” she offered.
“And what did Brem say?”
“He didn’t seem overly concerned.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, right?”
Athena was silent.
“You think he’s wrong not to be more concerned,” Matt concluded.
“He’s never been in a time skip. He doesn’t know how it feels.”
“How does it feel?”
Athena shuddered unconsciously. “Terrible.”
Matt stood abruptly. “Come on.”
“What? Where?”
“Come on,” he said again, mildly, walking out into the living room. Athena followed, in time to see him disappear into her TARDIS. She hurried after him. “Got an infirmary on this?” he asked. Brem’s did, and he’d traveled with Brem lots, but he wasn’t sure if an infirmary was standard on a TARDIS or if Brem’s provided him with one because of Brem’s inclination toward recklessness.
“This way,” said Athena, leading him to it.
“They all look the same, huh?” remarked Matt. “I thought maybe your brother’s was just copying your parents’ because…Well.”
“Because Brem copies Dad even as he pretends not to?” finished Athena, wryly. “The rooms are always different, but our TARDISES are all related, as are we, so they tend to hew to the same basic desktop theme. Here we are.”
Athena’s infirmary was as well-equipped as Brem’s had been. Matt nodded toward the examination table, “Up you go,” and pulled out a stethoscope, listening to Athena’s left heart and then her right.
“Your left heart is beating too quickly, and your right heart is beating too slowly. In other words, very healthy for a Time Lord. Arm out.” He attached a blood pressure cuff around her arm and took her blood pressure. “Perfect,” he pronounced, and then grabbed a pen light. “Now, look at the light.” She did, obediently, and he watched the irises in her eyes expand and contract. He sat back finally, satisfied. “You are in perfect health, Athena Tyler. For an alien. Nothing time-skip-causing about you.”
Athena grinned at him. “’S that your expert opinion?”
“Absolutely.” Matt looked at her seriously. “You should talk to your father, though. I am no substitute for an actual Doctor.”
“I feel better,” she said, honestly.
“Good. That was my goal.” He glanced at his watch again. “I’ve got to go.”
“Oh,” she said. “Right. Yeah. Of course.” She hopped off the examination table. “Have fun on your date.”
“Thanks.” They were walking out of the TARDIS together. “Stay as long as you like, eat all of my food, watch my terrible television.” He held the door of her TARDIS open for her.
“Thank you, Matt.” She leaned up and hugged him.
He returned the hug. “You’re welcome. Promise me you won’t go looking for any time skips.”
“I won’t,” she promised.
He sighed as he grabbed his keys. “I know. You never go looking for trouble, it always just finds you."
Next Chapter
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Rose, Jackie, OCs
Spoilers - I've started to think I may reference events without thinking, so, to be safe: Through the specials.
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids, they're all mine.)
Summary - Four Time Lords and a Bad Wolf human, gallivanting through time and space. What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Notes - Huge thanks to Kristin and chicklet73 , who talked through plot points. Special thanks to Kristin for coming up with the title. And even more thanks to jlrpuck and c73, who so graciously beta'd.
The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
Prologue
Chapter One
Matt Mailloux, dragging himself home after a 36-hour shift, found an alien on his couch.
“Hey,” he yawned, passing by to disappear into the kitchen. He was starving. He snagged a banana and walked back out to the living room.
“Hey,” responded Athena, not really looking up from his TV. “Where’ve you been?”
The Tylers always asked this question as if they thought you were going to say that you’d been having dinner on Jupiter. “The hospital,” he answered. “Working. How long have you been here?”
“One hour, twelve minutes, and seven seconds. Eight. Nine. So I’ve been looking at your DVR list.”
“And?”
“And. You record a telenovela named Amor Caliente. Do you actually watch that?”
“No,” he said. “Of course not. Don’t you dare erase it.”
She finally looked at him and sent him that patented tongue between her teeth grin she had. “You look tired,” she said.
“Long day. Move over.” She obeyed, giving him room to settle on the couch next to her, and he stole the remote and switched it to basketball.
Athena rolled her eyes. “Matt, I’d much rather watch Amor Caliente.”
“Hi, Matt, how are you? Mind if I burgle your house and mock your television viewing habits?”
“Burgle? Did you just say burgle?”
“I did indeed.”
“I haven’t burgled anything. Do you even know the meaning of that word? The most I’ve done is a little…” She waved her hand about. “Light trespassing.”
“Are you in law school now?”
“No. Picked that up from Oliver Wendell Holmes himself, though.”
“Of course you did.” The basketball game went to commercial. Matt looked at Athena and took a bite of his banana. “So. What’s the purpose of your visit this time? Is it just to check up on my DVR list, or do you have an actual reason?”
Athena stole the remote control back and switched the channel, then grinned at him unrepentantly.
He shook his head a bit. “You are so lucky you’re cute.”
“I know.”
“And, also, that I’m a little worried you could probably kill me with your mind.”
“I can,” she said, seriously.
“Really?”
“No. Anyway.” She was flipping through the channels. “I’m here to visit my brother.”
“He’s not here.”
“He will be.”
And, just like that, as if on cue, the noise of a TARDIS materializing filled his apartment.
“There he is now,” said Athena.
“How do you do that?”
Athena looked at him as if he’d just dribbled on his shirt. “Matt, we’re Time Lords.”
Matt sighed and leaned his head back against the couch. He was kind of tired and he kind of wanted to sleep, and instead he was hosting an impromptu convention of half of the Time Lords in the universe.
Brem’s TARDIS had by now blinked fully into existence in the corner. The TARDIS, Matt had been lectured time and again, could look like anything. What it looked like-what they all looked like-was a police box. Brem’s was red. Athena said it was “too flash.” And it did look a bit strident next to Athena’s TARDIS, which was a soft, tasteful gray. With inevitable pink accents. Like the flash of pink in the ribbon in Athena’s hair, which she was never, ever without. Well. He supposed she was without it sometimes, like when she washed her hair, for instance. He just never got to see her at those times.
Brem came walking out of his TARDIS, in that huge Victorian greatcoat he insisted on wearing everywhere. Matt thought it looked ridiculous, but the general consensus among heterosexual females and homosexual males seemed to be that the coat looked very good. He said, “What’s up?” to his sister and tugged on her ponytail on his way past the couch and into the kitchen. Matt heard him exclaim, “Bananas!” in delight, and then he came back out to the living room, munching on a banana.
“Hello to you, too,” Matt said to him. “Why don’t you have a banana?”
“Thanks,” said Brem, and sat on the couch on the other side of Athena. “What are you watching?”
“Basketball,” answered Matt. “Theoretically.”
“Amor Caliente,” said Athena. “It’s a telenovela. Matt likes it.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Brem. “Yes! I love this!”
Athena looked at him in surprise. “You watch it, too?”
“Wellllll,” said Brem, “Matt needs to have a TARDIS here to translate. You don’t think Matt’s that fluent in Spanish, do you?”
“I am fluent in Spanish. You show up to watch it with me because you like it.”
“Humans,” said Brem, “suffer from so many self-delusions.”
Matt sighed.
“I’m seeing someone new,” said Athena.
“Oh, you don’t want to discuss your love life, do you? Nobody wants to hear about your love life. Do you want to hear about Athena’s love life, Matt?”
“Absolutely not,” said Matt, emphatically.
“So,” began Athena, “Mum’s birthday is coming up, relatively speaking.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Fortuna told me, and you know Fortuna always knows these things. What should we get her?”
“Seriously, guys?” interrupted Matt. “This is what you came here to discuss? You couldn’t have just…used your cell phones?”
“Sure,” said Athena, “but then you wouldn’t have gotten to see us.”
“And whatever would I have done?” remarked Matt, mildly.
“Are you hungry?” asked Athena. “We can make you something. Not as good as Fortuna making you something, but better than nothing.”
There was something too calculatingly casual about Athena’s query. Trust the Tylers to choose a person’s house as a meeting place, and then go to lengths to avoid having the meeting in front of the person whose house it was. Really, aliens… But he helped her out. “I would love something to eat.”
“Excellent,” said Athena. She stood up. “Brem, let’s go cook.”
Once they were in the kitchen, Brem turned to her. “What’s really up?”
Athena was peering in Matt’s refrigerator. “I was by Inskip 12 the other day. There was a…skip.”
“A skip?”
“A time skip. I lost time.” Athena closed the refrigerator and began opening cupboards.
Brem frowned. “What time period were you there?”
“42nd century. But it happened to every time period I tried.”
“You kept trying?”
“It was weird, Brem. I had to figure out what was going on.”
“It was dangerous.”
Athena looked at him over her shoulder, crouching to look at the lower cupboards. Her look said, Seriously?
“You should have rung me,” Brem told her, pushing his coat back and sticking his fingers in the pockets of his jeans, his thumbs hooking through the belt loops.
“I did, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, and you said, ‘Meet me at Matt’s.’ You didn’t say, ‘I’m losing time in a dangerous time skip I might have gotten stuck in.’”
“Because I was out of the time skip by then.”
“Right. So you should have rung me before.”
“Brem, I was fine.” She gave up on the cupboards and turned to face him, leaning back against the counter and crossing her arms. “Except there’s another one.”
“Another what?”
“Another time skip.”
“Where?”
“By Parnolissus.”
Brem’s eyebrows were drawn together in concentration. “But that’s galaxies away from Inskip 12.”
“I know. So have you ever heard of it before? Two time skips, existing in every time period, galaxies away, that have apparently just sprung into being?”
“No,” said Brem. “Did you tell Dad?”
“He would freak out. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”
“You were worried enough to ring me.”
“I wanted to see if you’d encountered any. That would make them cause for alarm. But you haven’t, have you?”
“No. But I’ll look out for them now and let you know.”
“Good.”
“You know, you could have just told me this over the phone.”
Athena shrugged. “Yeah, but I like it here. It’s like…home without, you know, the possibility of Mum or Dad eavesdropping.”
Brem regarded her for a second.
“Anyway,” she continued, “Mum’s birthday really is coming up. We need to think about that.”
“Fort’ll have an idea,” said Brem, confidently.
“Matt has no food in this kitchen, really. If he wants dinner, we’ll need to use one of our TARDISes.”
“Makes more sense anyway,” said Brem. “We wouldn’t have to clean up. I’m not especially hungry, though.”
“But Matt is.”
“Does he have milk?” asked Brem, with interest.
“Why?”
“Because I’m out, and I can just steal his.”
Athena shook her head, and left Brem poking around the fridge, muttering, “Orange juice, I could use that, too…”
Matt was sleeping, his head tipped back on the couch, when Athena walked back into the room. He was snoring a little bit. Athena smiled.
When Matt woke up, several hours later, the television was off, he was draped in a blanket, and there was a note on his coffee table. “Lasagna in fridge. Just heat it up. A.”
***
They were cutting the cake. Well, Athena and Fortuna and Rose were. Brem and the Doctor were off in the control room, the Doctor gesturing to something on the console, while Brem ran his sonic screwdriver over it. The TARDIS had opened the dining room up so it flowed immediately into the control room, partly so the Doctor and Brem could wander off and still be in the room, and partly so that Jackie, who could no longer get around very well, could get in more easily.
“Have you still got that boyfriend?” Jackie asked Athena, as Athena sliced a piece of the chocolate and hoydenberry cake Fortuna had made (Mum’s favorite).
“No, got a new one now,” replied Athena, transferring the slice to a plate and handing it to her grandmother.
“And how long’ve you been seeing him?”
“Oh, I dunno.” Athena thought. “Couple of months, I suppose.”
“That’s a decent amount of time for you. Think you’ll marry him?”
“Mum, leave her alone,” inserted Rose.
“What? Is it so bad that I’d like to see some great-grandchildren before I die?”
“Mum,” sighed Rose.
“And I’ve got to rely on your girls because Brem’s got too much of his father in him. He’ll be 900 years old before he’ll settle down, and even then he’ll only do it because he’ll accidentally get some girl pregnant.”
“Mum!” exclaimed Rose, in horror.
“Well, it’s true,” said Fortuna and Jackie at the same time, and then they grinned at each other.
“Anyway, that means I’ve got to rely on you girls for new babies,” continued Jackie. “Since your mother doesn’t seem inclined to add any.”
“I’ve raised my children,” replied Rose, mildly, cutting into her own piece of cake.
“Doesn’t mean you couldn’t have more. Your father and I talked about having another one, in the other universe.”
There was a moment of silence around the table while everyone stared at Jackie. Jackie blithely went on eating her cake, either oblivious to the shock she had caused or not caring. Rose had found that her mother’s natural bluntness had done nothing but increase as she’d gotten older.
“Did you really?” Rose said, after a moment, her mind back on a beach in Norway on another planet, realizing anew just how much her mother must love her to have come back with her that day. She knew her mother loved her-Rose, being a mother herself, was well aware just how much a mother loved her children-but it was still amazing to be reminded of it.
Jackie nodded, still looking unconcerned.
“You never told me that,” said Rose, and suddenly got up and startled her mother by giving her a hug.
“Oh,” said Jackie, in surprise. “I’m trying to eat my cake,” she protested, while hugging Rose in return.
Rose sat back in her own seat and smiled at her, then raised her voice a bit. “Boys! Come have cake!”
***
She had it happen to her again, weeks later on standard Earth time, when she was orbiting around the planet of Sou Minn. To a Time Lord, with a keen sense of time, a time skip was an unsettling experience. It made her feel wobbly and shaky, dizzy and a bit queasy, like being shaken about upside down for a little while. Her TARDIS shuddered, the read-outs shouting out in alarmed Gallifreyan, and Athena gripped the edge of her console and blinked through the stars dancing in her vision, staring at the screen. According to the relative time of the planet below her, she’d just lost six Earth hours.
Athena took a deep breath. The dizziness was fading, although she still felt slightly off-kilter. She tried to consider what to do. The first time she had hit a time skip, she had gone over her TARDIS with a fine-toothed comb, feeling very much like her father as she crawled around under the console, sonic between her teeth. TARDISes did not need constant attention. Her father was a born tinkerer, and Athena also suspected he’d grown so used to the TARDIS being his only friend that his constant tinkering was the equivalent of a couple of human blokes having a pint together at a pub. But Athena, although not a constant tinkerer, knew her way around a TARDIS. Hers was absolutely fine, save for her slight distress at having been forced through a time skip. TARDISes didn’t like time skips any more than Time Lords did, and her TARDIS was a bit of a whine in her head.
The second time she’d hit a time skip, she’d realized that it wasn’t her TARDIS. There was something off about time in the spot where she was, almost like turbulence. And that could possibly be dismissed. Weird things happened in space and time. Parallel universes leaked through, black holes popped into and out of existence. Inskip 12 might have been settled near a weak point, and she’d moved on without giving it a second thought.
Until she’d hit her next time skip. In all the years of travelling she’d done, both alone and with various members of her family, she had never encountered a time skip. And now, suddenly, they seemed to be everywhere. Athena paid a visit to her parents’ TARDIS and used her father’s superior library to read up on time skips. But there wasn’t much. They were supposed to be rare. Why did she keep tripping over them?
She’d rung Brem at that point and met him at Matt’s, and Brem had been alarmed, yes, but not to the point where she had felt frightened. It had been just typical protective-brother-Brem alarm, and Athena had felt better after talking to him, the way she always did; but now that it had happened to her again, she wasn’t sure what to think. And why did it seem to only be happening to her? She was a good pilot, she knew she was; so there was no reason for this to be this way.
She decided she needed chocolate, and punched in a flight on her TARDIS. The TARDIS landed a bit hesitantly, and Athena stroked at her inner column and thought maybe a bit of a rest was necessary. Then she opened the door and stepped out.
“Matt?” she called.
“Yeah?” he called back, from the direction of his bedroom.
“Have you got any ice cream?” she asked, heading toward the kitchen and poking her head in his freezer. He did. Strawberry and not chocolate, but it would have to do. She pulled it out, as she felt him walk into the kitchen behind her. “You’ve been grocery shopping,” she remarked, approvingly. “Last time I was here, your cupboards were bare.”
“That was a few weeks ago, Theenie,” he pointed out, pulling two bowls out of the cupboards for her.
“I know.” She sighed a bit, as she opened his drawer and pulled out his ice cream scoop. “I’ve been busy.”
“With your boyfriend?”
“Oh. Yes. I suppose.” She handed him the ice cream scoop and then waved her hand about negligently, watching him begin to scoop them bowls of ice cream. He was wearing a white dress shirt, the sleeves of which he’d rolled up to keep them out of the ice cream container, and Athena, surprised by the shirt choice, glanced at the trouser choice. They were dark gray. They were…nice. “You look nice,” she said.
He handed her a bowl of ice cream and licked some excess ice cream off the scoop before dropping it in the sink. “You sound surprised,” he remarked.
“Well, normally, you look kind of…a mess.”
“Because you have a knack for showing up when I look like a mess.” He replaced the ice cream in the freezer.
She sat at the kitchen table and took a bite of her ice cream. “So normally you look like this?”
He chuckled as he sat opposite her with his own ice cream. “No. I have a date.”
Athena watched him deliver this news and then calmly go on eating his ice cream. “Oh,” she said. There was another moment of silence. He continued to eat. “Won’t you ruin your appetite?”
“I’ll be fine. So. What’s wrong?”
“What makes you think anything’s wrong?”
“You’re upset. I can tell. So what is it?”
Athena took a deep breath and pushed her ice cream away. She suddenly didn’t feel like eating anymore. “Time’s skipping around me.”
“What does that mean?” asked Matt.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, frustrated.
“No, I don’t mean ‘what’s the importance of that.’ I mean that I literally didn’t understand the words in your sentence.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well.” She thought. “What time is it right now?”
Matt glanced at his watch. It was a nice watch that Athena had always liked. She had teased him about its Earth simplicity many times. “6:07.”
“And what time is it right now?”
Matt lifted his eyebrows and glanced at his watch again. “It’s…6:07.”
“No, it’s 11:05.”
“It’s not.”
“But it would be if time had skipped. And that’s exactly what it feels like. You’d look at your watch that second time, and it would read 11:05.”
Matt looked at his watch, as if to ascertain it was still 6:07, and then looked back at her. “Okay. So what causes time to skip that way?”
“I don’t know. I read up on it, but I couldn’t figure anything out, really. It seems to be something different every time it happens.”
“What did your father say?”
Athena fiddled with the spoon anchored in her melting ice cream. “I didn’t tell him.”
“Theenie,” said Matt.
“I know, I know, I…I talked to Brem,” she offered.
“And what did Brem say?”
“He didn’t seem overly concerned.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, right?”
Athena was silent.
“You think he’s wrong not to be more concerned,” Matt concluded.
“He’s never been in a time skip. He doesn’t know how it feels.”
“How does it feel?”
Athena shuddered unconsciously. “Terrible.”
Matt stood abruptly. “Come on.”
“What? Where?”
“Come on,” he said again, mildly, walking out into the living room. Athena followed, in time to see him disappear into her TARDIS. She hurried after him. “Got an infirmary on this?” he asked. Brem’s did, and he’d traveled with Brem lots, but he wasn’t sure if an infirmary was standard on a TARDIS or if Brem’s provided him with one because of Brem’s inclination toward recklessness.
“This way,” said Athena, leading him to it.
“They all look the same, huh?” remarked Matt. “I thought maybe your brother’s was just copying your parents’ because…Well.”
“Because Brem copies Dad even as he pretends not to?” finished Athena, wryly. “The rooms are always different, but our TARDISES are all related, as are we, so they tend to hew to the same basic desktop theme. Here we are.”
Athena’s infirmary was as well-equipped as Brem’s had been. Matt nodded toward the examination table, “Up you go,” and pulled out a stethoscope, listening to Athena’s left heart and then her right.
“Your left heart is beating too quickly, and your right heart is beating too slowly. In other words, very healthy for a Time Lord. Arm out.” He attached a blood pressure cuff around her arm and took her blood pressure. “Perfect,” he pronounced, and then grabbed a pen light. “Now, look at the light.” She did, obediently, and he watched the irises in her eyes expand and contract. He sat back finally, satisfied. “You are in perfect health, Athena Tyler. For an alien. Nothing time-skip-causing about you.”
Athena grinned at him. “’S that your expert opinion?”
“Absolutely.” Matt looked at her seriously. “You should talk to your father, though. I am no substitute for an actual Doctor.”
“I feel better,” she said, honestly.
“Good. That was my goal.” He glanced at his watch again. “I’ve got to go.”
“Oh,” she said. “Right. Yeah. Of course.” She hopped off the examination table. “Have fun on your date.”
“Thanks.” They were walking out of the TARDIS together. “Stay as long as you like, eat all of my food, watch my terrible television.” He held the door of her TARDIS open for her.
“Thank you, Matt.” She leaned up and hugged him.
He returned the hug. “You’re welcome. Promise me you won’t go looking for any time skips.”
“I won’t,” she promised.
He sighed as he grabbed his keys. “I know. You never go looking for trouble, it always just finds you."
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