The Best of Times (1/1)
Title - The Best of Times (1/1)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, Dickens, OCs
Spoilers - "The Unquiet Dead." Oh, and maybe, vaguely, some Dickens novels.
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 - The Doctor and his children disagree on literature.
Author's Note - Thanks to chicklet73 for the beta! And I think Kristin may have inspired this with an innocent comment about "Oliver Twist."
The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
FYI, on the subject of Dickens, I stand firmly with Brem.
Brem didn’t care for Dickens.
He started with A Christmas Carol.
“A good story,” he told his father, “but you can tell he was paid by the word.”
His father frowned and gave him Oliver Twist.
“Seriously?” said Brem. “She turns out to be his long-lost aunt? Seriously?”
Great Expectations.
“Two endings? That’s cheating.”
A Tale of Two Cities.
“Now, this one was decent,” Brem allowed.
“Decent?” scoffed the Doctor, while the fire crackled in the library fireplace and the rest of the family was engrossed in their own books, curled up on chairs scattered about. “He’s the best writer in the English language of all time, and Bremsstrahlung Tyler deems him ‘decent.’”
“You told me Shakespeare was the best writer in the English language of all time,” said Brem, in the same instant that Athena said, “You told me Agatha Christie was the best writer in the English language of all time.”
There was a moment of silence.
Fortuna, curled on her mother’s lap, piped up, “You told me J.K. Rowling was the best writer in the English language of all time.”
“There are many equally excellent writers of the English language,” said the Doctor, “and Dickens is one of them.”
Brem shrugged and tossed aside A Tale of Two Cities. “I just don’t think he’s that good.”
The Doctor looked chagrined. “Maybe you need to read something else. Pickwick Papers, maybe.”
“I think I’m done with Dickens,” said Brem.
“You can’t be done with Dickens!” protested the Doctor.
“Can we meet him?” asked Athena.
The Doctor was momentarily thrown off. “What?”
“I bet we’d like him better if we met him,” continued Athena.
“You don’t like him, either?” squeaked the Doctor.
“Dad, his sentences are really long.”
The Doctor looked at Rose. “These cannot possibly be my children.”
Rose snorted and turned a page of her book. “Yeah. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice how unlike you they are.”
“It’s Dickens, Rose. And we have met him,” he said to Athena.
Athena blinked. “We have?”
“Yes. Don’t you remember? It was Christmas. In Cardiff.” His kids were looking at him blankly.
“We didn’t have kids then, Doctor,” Rose pointed out. “Technically speaking, we didn’t even have you yet.”
“Oh,” he realized. Sometimes trips blurred together. But, of course, he thought, remembering. Rose had played dress-up. She’d looked beautiful. He’d been raw and hurting and, he knew now, already more in love with her than he could handle.
“You made a terrible pun,” she continued, into the pages of her book.
“You loved that pun,” he said.
“No, I didn’t,” she denied, but he could see the corner of the smile she tried to hide, and it made him smile in return.
“Welllllll,” he said, turning back to his kids. “You want to meet Dickens, then?”
“Yes! Yes!” chorused Athena and Fortuna.
“Not a good idea,” remarked Rose.
“What? Why not?” asked the Doctor.
“You’ll cross the timelines.”
“What?” The Doctor was affronted. “I most certainly will not!”
Rose looked up at him and lifted one eyebrow. “I don’t really feel like dealing with Reapers over Christmas in Cardiff.”
The Doctor frowned deeply. “That settles it,” he announced, standing. “We are off to visit Dickens.”
“Yay!” exclaimed Athena and Fortuna. Athena punctuated her joy with a little dance.
The Doctor ignored Rose’s sigh, walking into the control room. Fortuna scrambled off her mother’s lap, and she and Athena followed after him, skipping in his wake and singing an impromptu song about how Daddy was taking them to visit Dickens. They performed a few pirouettes around him as he set their course and guided them through the Vortex. Rose and Brem emerged from the library as the TARDIS landed. Rose, he noted, had grabbed a scarf.
“It isn’t going to be Christmas,” he assured her.
“Are we here, Daddy?” asked Fortuna.
“Can I open the door?” asked Athena.
“Yes,” he said, grabbing his coat from the strut where he’d thrown it.
Athena opened the door and she and Fortuna tumbled, giggling, out of it. The Doctor stood in the doorway for a second. Brem stuck his head out, blinked at the snow, and said, “So.”
“I know,” said the Doctor. “But it’s not necessarily Christmas, and it’s not necessarily Cardiff.”
“Girls,” called Rose, stepping past him with her arms full of coats. “Come put coats on.” She sighed, spotting them a few meters away in conversation with a man. “Look, they’re already talking to a stranger. I swear, it’s impossible to get them to stop doing that, and for that I blame you.”
“Me--?” the Doctor began to protest, but he was cut off by his daughters.
“Daddy! Daddy!” they shouted across the square to him. “Look, it’s Mr. Dickens!”
“I would just like to point out,” commented the Doctor, “that it would seem I landed perfectly.”
“If paradoxically,” agreed Rose, mildly.
“Come see! Come see!” the girls were calling, and the Doctor strolled across the square with Rose, Brem tagging along behind them.
“Daddy is your biggest fan,” the Doctor heard Athena tell Dickens.
“Again with that word,” replied Dickens. “How curious.”
The Doctor slowed. “Have you heard that word recently?” he asked.
But Dickens’s gaze was fixed on Rose. “It’s you!” he said, in surprise. And then, “Wearing trousers!”
“Hello,” said Rose, cheerfully, and held out the girls’ coats. “Here you go, girls.”
“But you just…” sputtered Dickens. “Didn’t you just…” He turned to the Doctor. “Who are you?”
“It’s…complicated,” the Doctor suggested. “Tell me, are you doing another Christmas Carol performance? To make up for the one that, you know, ended abruptly?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Dickens confessed. “I suppose it might make sense. People with tickets…The organizer might…But then, people might expect a phantasmagoria to appear every night.”
“True,” allowed the Doctor. “Good point.” The Doctor stuck his hands in his pockets. “I have to be honest, I love A Christmas Carol, but my son here, not such a big fan. Might need some persuading. The story told by the author himself? Might convince him, eh?”
Dickens eyes Brem suspiciously. “Not a ‘fan,’ young man?”
Brem looked as if he were considering the politest way to answer this question. Rose was quite proud of him for seeking to overcome the natural Time Lord tendency toward rudeness. “Not as much as my dad,” Brem decided, finally, and Rose thought that was a lovely, neutral response and she would have to be sure to praise him for it later.
“Would you do a reading for us?” asked the Doctor. “Just a quick chapter.”
“I don’t know,” said Dickens, slowly. “It’s been…quite an evening…”
“Please?” begged Athena and Fortuna. “Please oh please oh please?”
Rose had never yet seen people able to resist the concentrated cuteness of her daughters. She tried not to let this power go to their heads, while simultaneously acknowledging that there were worse methods of manipulation.
“Well,” said Dickens, as Rose had expected. “Maybe a short reading.”
***
He read to them from the last chapter, as they settled in the dim and darkened auditorium, huddled close to the stage, the six of them in the room where, so very long ago, Gelth had possessed a poor old woman, and, in reaction, a different Doctor whom she’d loved just as much had told her he was glad he’d met her. Rose snuggled against her present Doctor and watched her kids, in the row in front of her, even Brem looking a bit rapt.
Yes! and the bedpost was his own, read Dickens. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!
The Doctor’s nose nuzzled behind her ear. “I’m so glad I met you,” he murmured.
“Me, too,” she whispered back, eyes on Dickens, and then realized she was crying and abruptly brushed away tears.
He straightened in alarm. “What’s wrong?” he asked, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the reading.
“I was thinking of Gwyneth. I was thinking of how…”
“There was nothing we could do,” said the Doctor. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“I know,” she said, and wiped again at her tears. “I know.” She turned and kissed him quickly. “I’m so glad I met you,” she reiterated.
“Even though I cross timelines sometimes?”
“Even though you cross timelines sometimes.”
“Even though I make terrible puns sometimes?”
“Even though you make terrible puns sometimes.” She thought for a second. “Even though you told me John Donne was the best writer in the English language of all time.”
“I only told you that because I wanted an excuse to read you filthy poetry.”
“Well, that I approve of,” grinned Rose, kissing him again.
“Shhhh!” Athena hissed at them, frowning.
“Sorry,” apologized Rose, and settled back against her Doctor, listening.
I am light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy, read Dickens.
***
They left much later, when the story was finished. Athena and Brem applauded enthusiastically when Dickens had finished, and the Doctor thought Brem may have at least been convinced of the genius of Dickens the man, if not the writer. Fortuna was drowsing in her seat, and the Doctor leaned over and lifted her into his arms. “Come on, sleepy, little girl,” he said, kissing her blonde head, and she burrowed her head against his shoulder. He watched her grow older every day, but there were still times, like now, when he could see the baby she was shedding, and he was keenly aware they were moments to cherish, as time kept marching. “Time to go home. Let’s go, kids. Thank Mr. Dickens.”
“Thank you,” chorused Brem and Athena.
“Did you enjoy it, young man?” Dickens inquired of Brem.
“It was very good,” Brem told him.
“Mission accomplished, then,” said the Doctor, and smiled at Dickens.
“It is you, isn’t it?” said Dickens to Rose, peering at her.
“It was a beautiful reading,” said Rose, warmly. “Thank you so much for it.”
“You are quite welcome,” replied Dickens, dropping the issue, and executed an exaggerated, courtly bow over her hand. “God bless you, every one.”
“Happy Christmas,” responded Rose.
“C’mon,” said the Doctor. “Brem and Athena have already run on ahead, they’re probably getting into loads of trouble.”
***
The Doctor, standing in the snow, looked about him. Cardiff seemed quiet. But so was his TARDIS, with Rose Tyler asleep in her bed, and suddenly a TARDIS where Rose was sleeping was too quiet for him to keep still. An excuse to go back to Cardiff and make sure it was safe, before he took Rose home for good and his TARDIS was that quiet always.
A small boy and a smaller girl emerged from the auditorium, talking animatedly, and they pulled up short, and the little boy said, “Oh, it’s you again.”
“Do I know you?” he asked, in surprise, and there was a brush along his mind, a brush like a fingertip, like the striking of a match, like the impossible upside-down-ing of the world. He blinked, but even as he went to pursue it, the children had turned, dashing back to the auditorium. “Not this exit,” he heard the little boy say to someone just inside the door. “We have to go out another way…We just do,” the little boy insisted, and then the door swung shut, and whoever they had been, the girl and the boy, they were gone forever, and he was imagining things, because Rose Tyler was distracting him.
He stood in the quiet snow of Cardiff. He looked at the poster on the auditorium. A Christmas Carol. He thought of Rose, sleeping in his TARDIS. The time before him was his own, he thought. To make amends in.
He turned and tugged his leather coat a bit tighter around him.