Chaos Theory in Vortex Orbits in Relative Dimensions in Time and Space (6/27)
Title - Chaos Theory in Vortex Orbits in Relative Dimensions in Time and Space (6/27)
Author --
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters -- Ten, Rose, Jackie, OC
Spoilers: Through the end of S2.
Disclaimer: I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for Brem. He's all mine.)
Summary - And then there came a day when Rose said she was having a baby. Hijinks ensue from there.
Author’s Notes - Another front-loaded posting week. Sorry for that. Need to organize my schedule better.
The icon was created by
punkinart , commissioned by
aibhinn , who graciously offered it to me for my use.
jlrpuck remains my excellent beta. You know why she's so excellent? Because she knows everything about everything. Also thanks to Kristin-who-won't-get-an-LJ, who brainstormed this fic with me endlessly, and
bouncy_castle79 , who gave it the first major outside-eyes read-through.
Ch.1 - Ch. 2 - Ch. 3 - Ch. 4 - Ch. 5
Chapter Six
Brem Tyler’s first few days of life were decidedly uneventful. His mother was sore and couldn’t move much.
“Recuperating,” the Doctor told Rose, over enunciating the word with relish.
“Yeah,” shot back her mother. “From that…paint-by-numbers surgery he gave you.” She gestured with the hand that wasn’t cradling Brem to her shoulder.
The Doctor glared. “Recuperating,” he reiterated. “Give it a couple of days.”
But it was hard for Rose, who just wanted to spend time with Brem and found herself dragged down by her own exhaustion. It wasn’t that Brem was demanding, although he was uncompromising once he set his mind on something.
“Stubborn,” said Jackie.
“He must get that from you,” the Doctor and Rose told each other in unison, and then, still speaking in sync, “You think I’m the stubborn one?”
Brem was stubborn and uncompromising and an amazingly alert child who seemed to take in everything going on around him with a laid-back amusement. By the time he was five days old, he was laughing at the silliness of the adults around him.
“But that’s impossible,” sputtered Jackie. “How can he be laughing already?”
“He’s Gallifreyan,” said the Doctor, frowning.
And the most obvious evidence of his complicated Gallifreyan nature was the fact that he never slept. An hour a day was a great deal of sleep for Brem.
“Why does he sleep so much?” complained the Doctor.
“Sleep so much?” repeated Jackie, in disbelief. “He never sleeps at all.”
“He sleeps a lot for a Gallifreyan,” grumbled the Doctor.
“Well, he’s a Gallifreyan baby,” Rose pointed out. “Babies sleep.”
After a week, Rose was basically back to normal, but trying to keep up with Brem remained impossible.
“It doesn’t matter,” said the Doctor. “He’s no trouble while you’re sleeping.”
“But what do you do with him?” asked Rose, curiously.
“The same thing we do while you’re awake,” answered the Doctor, frowning as he poured a cup of hot tea over ice cubes in an attempt to cool it down.
“Would you stop it?” sighed Rose. “I don’t think you’re supposed to give infants iced tea.”
“He’s doing what now?” asked Jackie, entering the kitchen. Rose marvelled at the fact that her mother now wandered all through the TARDIS as if it were the most normal thing.
“Brem wants to try it,” said the Doctor. He had stopped insisting their son be called Bremsstrahlung after the first day when, in a rare moment of accord, he agreed with Jackie that the name was too long for such a small child.
Brem was indeed watching his father raptly, from his position snuggled in his mother’s arms.
“You can’t give him iced tea!” exclaimed Jackie. “He’s barely two weeks old!”
Brem turned his dark eyes on his grandmother, giving every impression of knowing full well that she was trying to deny him his iced tea.
“Jackie,” said the Doctor, as patiently as he could, pouring the iced tea into a bottle. “Tea is good for Gallifreyans. Super-heated infusion of free radicals and tannin. Remember? Brem and I have been trying to find how he takes his tea for a week now.”
“This is what you do when I’m sleeping?” Rose asked, as the Doctor handed her the bottle.
The Doctor shrugged.
“You’re not going to give him tea?” said her mother.
“Why not? It hasn’t been hurting him so far.” Rose offered Brem the bottle, and his tiny mouth sucked on it eagerly. She glanced down at her pendant, pulsing bright yellow. “Look at that, he likes it.”
“Good. Ten sugars,” said the Doctor to Brem. “That’s how you like your tea, young man.”
“How many sugars?” said Rose.
The Doctor looked at her. “Is that a lot?”
“What difference does it make?” drawled Jackie. “He doesn’t sleep as it is.”
“Good point. C’mere, Brem.” The Doctor reached for him. “He’s probably due for a changing.”
Or he was trying to scurry away from Jackie. Old habits died hard, Rose thought as she relinquished the baby.
“We can have a normal cuppa,” she said, turning to her mother with a smile. “No ten sugars for us.”
Jackie sat at the table as Rose filled the kettle--and then asked, abruptly, “How long will you be stayin’, then?”
Rose watched her hands as they put the kettle on, focusing on the ritual of the action, before turning back to her mother. “I don’t know,” she answered, honestly. “He hasn’t mentioned leaving yet. But it’s only been a couple of weeks.”
“You’ve been here months.”
“I mean, a couple of weeks since Brem was born.”
“I didn’t think he stayed in one place this long.”
“He doesn’t. Brem’s a special exception.”
“But you’ll never settle down, you two. He’ll want to leave again, and you’ll pack up and-”
“He’s the only other Time Lord in existence, Mum. We can’t raise him like he’s a normal little boy. He needs to see black holes and supernovas. He won’t be happy without it. Neither will the Doctor. And I’d rather not have to live with two miserable males. But, we’ll stay here. For as long as we can. And we’ll come back to visit constantly.”
Jackie stared at the sugar bowl the Doctor had left on the table. “When you told me you were pregnant, I thought it was this horrible mistake.”
“Mum-” said Rose, not wanting to hear this.
Jackie ploughed forward. “I thought, Have a baby with him? Is she mad?” Jackie looked up suddenly. “I was wrong, sweetheart.”
Rose, suddenly feeling in danger of crying, pushed away from the counter and went to sit across from her mother, taking her hand and squeezing it.
“Your baby’s beautiful,” continued Jackie. “And he’s so…He does mad things, and God knows I could never live with him. But you could never accuse him of not loving that child. And I’ve never seen either one of you look happier.” Jackie swallowed. “You were right to have a baby with him, Rose. He was the right one for you. He is the right one.”
“Yeah,” agreed Rose, sniffling a bit, as the Doctor walked back into the kitchen with Brem.
“Rose,” said the Doctor, “d’you think we could give Brem some more iced tea? He wants some.”
Rose looked at her mother and grinned. “Yeah, he is.”
**********************
Whenever she awoke and went in search of the Doctor and Brem, there was any number of activities she could find them engaged in. Sometimes they would be watching DVDs. Once she walked in on them watching Star Wars, the Doctor murmuring to the tiny baby in his arms, “Someday, when I bring you to Tatooine…” But The Muppet Movie, the Doctor pronounced, was a particular favourite of Brem’s. “Good taste, this little boy,” he said, and winked at Brem, who giggled in that way he had.
Rose didn’t know much about the Doctor’s childhood, but she knew it wasn’t like this, showered with adoration and attention. She liked to think that Brem’s nearly constant laughter was how the Doctor would have turned out had his life been a bit less traumatic. Certainly, the Doctor seemed to have settled into steady giddiness himself.
Sometimes she found them in the control room, the Doctor fiddling while Brem swung in the swing the TARDIS had placed next to the captain’s chair (Rose noticed that the Doctor did not complain about nurturing with that instalment). The Doctor would be playing music for him--the eclectic music he preferred himself--or else giving him lectures about how to repair the TARDIS. When Rose came upon them in the middle of a lecture, Brem gave her long-suffering, beseeching looks that always made her grin and cuddle him and reward him with that heavily sugared iced tea he so adored. “He looks just like you when you get cornered by my mum,” Rose told him, and the Doctor ruffled his hair in indignation that his TARDIS soliloquies should be compared to Jackie’s screechings.
Sometimes she found them in the library, the Doctor reading any number of tomes, from Pat the Bunny to heavy volumes in alien languages. The TARDIS always translated these books for her but she knew they were foreign. She never saw him choose one of the books in Gallifreyan, which the TARDIS never did translate for her, and she wondered if he was avoiding anything as sad as Gallifrey during this magical golden time.
Wherever she happened to find them, she always took a moment before making her presence known, a moment to just watch him with the baby. Once, she came upon them doing nothing, just the Doctor sitting in the rocking chair in the baby’s nursery and staring down at Brem, his gaze intent with amazement, like he still hadn’t quite figured the little creature out, and Brem returning the stare patiently, as if he was aware his father needed time to process him. As she watched, the Doctor leaned down and nuzzled against him. Despite the fact that he was clearly adoring, she had never really seen him so physically affectionate with the baby, and she felt suddenly like she was intruding. She withdrew from the door of the nursery and waited a moment, taking a deep breath, before poking her head in and saying, cheerfully, “Good morning.”
The Doctor was no longer nuzzling the baby, had returned to staring at him, and he looked up at her, his gaze a bit fuzzy, still turned inward. “Rose,” he said.
“I’m going to make breakfast,” she told him, jovially.
“Yes,” he agreed, slowly, looking back down at Brem. “Come here for a second.”
She walked over to him, confused. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Look at him.”
She looked at Brem, who looked serenely back up at them. He was not a baby who enjoyed pacifiers, and spat it out in obvious disgust whenever she’d tried to persuade him to suck on one. He was plainly content with things just as they were and saw no need to distract himself with the artificial device. Although he was attached to the blue blanket he’d been wrapped in directly after his birth, and would sob quite roundly for it if he woke in his cradle and didn’t find it near.
Rose wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be seeing. “He’s perfect,” she said.
“He is,” the Doctor agreed, “but that’s not what…Look at him.”
“I am,” Rose assured him, bewildered. She looked at his manic hair, which never looked like it wasn’t in need of a trim, even when it had been freshly trimmed. She looked at his skin, which was a rosy pink, relatively unfreckled, the only piece of him that did not mirror his father. Oh, sure, the Doctor and her mum both insisted Brem had Rose’s nose, but she knew that was people said when your baby looked nothing like you. Nonsense, he has your nose! Who could tell whether that tiny button resembled hers? And his eyes were beginning to droop for one of his rare naps. Rose saw him sleep so seldom that she rather hoped he’d give in to the drowse, so she could see him completely relaxed.
“He’s ours,” said the Doctor.
“He is,” said Rose, and rested her lips in the Doctor’s hair.
“We had a baby,” breathed the Doctor.
“Yes. About a month ago. His name is Brem. He looks just like you.”
“And he’s happy,” said the Doctor, still staring at his son as if he couldn’t believe it.
“Of course he is.”
“No, you don’t understand. He’s happy all the time. Even when he’s hungry, or tired, or needs changing, he’s still happy. I’ve never…In my head, he…And your pendant is always, always shaded yellow. He’s happy.” The Doctor looked up at her suddenly. “And do you know why?”
Rose didn’t think she was able to speak, because her heart was suddenly too full with love for both of them. She shook her head.
“It’s just because he’s here. He’s happy just because he’s here, with us. He doesn’t even know that unhappiness in life is a possibility, he just knows that, in his life, it doesn’t exist. He’s here, he’s with us, and we have him so wrapped in love, Rose, that…I wish you could feel how happy he is.”
And she understood suddenly. He was shielding himself, but he could still feel his son. And he had never felt another creature so unadulteratedly happy. She wished she could feel it then, too. And she wished that happiness hadn’t been so foreign to the Doctor that the experience of it could shock him so thoroughly.
The Doctor looked at Brem briefly. He was fully asleep now, breathing deeply and contentedly, his cheek lolling trustingly against his father’s suit coat. The Doctor looked back at her. “How are we going to keep him so happy?” he asked, anxiously.
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, Rose.” He sounded exhausted all of a sudden, scrubbed the hand that wasn’t holding Brem over his face. “The universe isn’t a happy place.”
“You can’t put the universe on his shoulders when he’s six weeks old, Doctor.”
“What if I never want to?”
“What do you mean?” asked Rose, quizzically, not understanding what he was talking about.
The Doctor spoke in a rush. He’d clearly been thinking of this for some time. “We could stay here. We could…buy a house. Get a mortgage. Pretend we’re perfectly normal. The psychic paper would take care of everything we might need. We’ll keep Brem away from doctors. He looks perfectly normal, nobody should suspect a thing. And if he’s a bit smarter than the rest of the kids, well…We’ll just…pretend. He can be this normal little boy who only worries about…football and…whatever else normal little human children like.”
Rose stared at him, shocked. Here it was, everything she’d ever wanted, wrapped up, in a bow. A normal life with her Doctor. Except it didn’t seem normal anymore. It didn’t seem anything like a life that would be theirs. “You want us to…” She tried to comprehend this.
“He’ll be happy, Rose. He’ll just be a happy little boy.”
“And what are you going to tell him when he wants to go to Mars for his birthday?”
“Why would he want to go to Mars for his birthday?”
“Because he’s complicated and Gallifreyan!” Rose pointed out.
The Doctor shook his head. “But he wouldn’t know that. Even if he wanted to go to Mars, why would he ask about it? He wouldn’t know about the TARDIS, that I could take him there.”
Rose felt cold suddenly. “You’re not even going to tell him?”
“Tell him what?”
“Who he is.”
The Doctor’s eyes hardened suddenly. “He knows who he is. He’s Bremsstrahlung Jack Tyler, that’s who he is.”
“Who happens to be one of the last-”
“Why does he need to know that, Rose?” the Doctor argued. “What will he gain from knowing that? I’m not going to burden him with that. Not my son. He never needs to know.”
“Doctor,” she said, trying to get through to him. “You can’t…What happens when he regenerates? What happens when he falls in love and has children of his own and his wife is pregnant for a year with a baby with two hearts? What happens if he ever falls at school and gets rushed to the hospital and-Doctor. You can’t lie to him. Can you imagine, how unhappy he’ll be when he finds out? And he will find out. You can’t keep a secret of this magnitude. He’ll find out. He’ll figure it out. And he won’t understand, and he’ll hate us for it-”
“But he’ll have been happy, Rose. He will have had years of happiness.”
“He will have the same years of happiness being who he is. Because he’ll be with us. And that’s what makes him happy. Just having us. And he’ll have that, no matter what.”
“You don’t understand,” said the Doctor. “You don’t understand what it feels like to be the last. To know that there’s nothing after you and if you make one mistake existence as you know it-We’ve been sitting here in London for months now. And every minute that goes by-every minute I spend here with Brem and you-I’m wondering what threads in the universe are coming undone because I’m being selfish and playing at being a family man, and the thing is, Rose, I like it. This is why I didn’t want my life to get domestic, because I like it. I-I love it. I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to…leave you.”
“You’re not going to,” she said. “You don’t have to. We’ll always be here.”
He shook his head. “No, don’t you see? You have to stay here with Brem. Fine, tell him he’s a Time Lord, be stubborn about it if you want to be, but you’ve got to try to get him to lead as normal a life as possible. Don’t tell him he’s the last, don’t tell him what Time Lords do, don’t tell him what I do-”
“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked, sharply. “First of all, you’re going to tell him all that yourself. Second of all, you’ve lost your mind if you think I’m staying here with Brem.”
“Rose. You have to. He needs you. We can’t leave him here without you.”
“We’re not leaving him anywhere. You’re talking nonsense.”
“I could do it, you know. I could stay here on Earth, with you and with Brem.”
“You could never stay in one place-”
“I could. I’ve done it before. I’m doing it now. Do you know the only reason I can’t? Because I feel it. Not just the turn of this planet but the turn of every planet and, Rose, there is no one out there but me who feels that anymore.”
“There’s Brem,” she whispered.
“And that’s why he has to stay here with you,” he whispered back.
“We’re not staying anywhere.” Her voice shook when she said it, with the force of her conviction. She cupped his face. “You don’t do this alone anymore. You don’t. You need to get used to that. The universe has taken enough from you. I will not let you sacrifice Brem and me as well.”
“That’s what I’m trying not to do,” he protested. “I’m trying to keep you safe-”
“I get it, that your life is dangerous. That our life is dangerous. But we’ve made it this far. And we won’t jeopardize Brem. I’ll stay here with him, while you save the universe. And then we’ll celebrate by pushing his pram down the promenade on Barcelona. The planet, not the city.”
The Doctor was silent for a second. “Rose-”
“You will not send me away again. I swear to you, I will track you down and regenerate you myself. Which would be a shame, because I rather think we made a beautiful baby and I’m not sure how beautiful the next baby would be with a new you as a father.”
“The next baby?” he echoed, disbelievingly.
Rose kissed him, kissed him until he gave in and kissed her back. And then she rested her forehead against his. “Do you feel that?” she whispered.
“What?” His eyes were closed.
She combed her hands through his hair lovingly. “What you’re feeling right now. It’s happiness. Get used to it.”
He took a shuddering breath, lifted his free hand and brushed it over her hair. “I…” His voice trembled.
“What?”
Words, unspoken, shimmered between them. The Doctor cleared his throat. “He might like to visit Thhhhhhhhhhhmyr. Best sweets in the universe. And he apparently has a sweet tooth.”
Rose smiled. “You know what I’ve been meaning to ask you?”
“What?”
“If he only sleeps an hour a day-and only that much because he’s so little right now-when are we going to be able to make the second baby?”
“Well. First of all. It’s a bit too soon to be thinking about making a second baby. Or any activities that might lead to a second baby. You need to rest a bit longer.”
“Fine,” she agreed. “What about activities after I’m cleared for such things?”
“Wellllllll.” He rubbed his nose against hers. “You’re going to laugh at me when I tell you this, but it’s the truth.” He paused. “The TARDIS is a brilliant baby-sitter.”
Next Chapter
Author --
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters -- Ten, Rose, Jackie, OC
Spoilers: Through the end of S2.
Disclaimer: I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for Brem. He's all mine.)
Summary - And then there came a day when Rose said she was having a baby. Hijinks ensue from there.
Author’s Notes - Another front-loaded posting week. Sorry for that. Need to organize my schedule better.
The icon was created by
punkinart , commissioned by
aibhinn , who graciously offered it to me for my use.
jlrpuck remains my excellent beta. You know why she's so excellent? Because she knows everything about everything. Also thanks to Kristin-who-won't-get-an-LJ, who brainstormed this fic with me endlessly, and
bouncy_castle79 , who gave it the first major outside-eyes read-through.
Ch.1 - Ch. 2 - Ch. 3 - Ch. 4 - Ch. 5
Chapter Six
Brem Tyler’s first few days of life were decidedly uneventful. His mother was sore and couldn’t move much.
“Recuperating,” the Doctor told Rose, over enunciating the word with relish.
“Yeah,” shot back her mother. “From that…paint-by-numbers surgery he gave you.” She gestured with the hand that wasn’t cradling Brem to her shoulder.
The Doctor glared. “Recuperating,” he reiterated. “Give it a couple of days.”
But it was hard for Rose, who just wanted to spend time with Brem and found herself dragged down by her own exhaustion. It wasn’t that Brem was demanding, although he was uncompromising once he set his mind on something.
“Stubborn,” said Jackie.
“He must get that from you,” the Doctor and Rose told each other in unison, and then, still speaking in sync, “You think I’m the stubborn one?”
Brem was stubborn and uncompromising and an amazingly alert child who seemed to take in everything going on around him with a laid-back amusement. By the time he was five days old, he was laughing at the silliness of the adults around him.
“But that’s impossible,” sputtered Jackie. “How can he be laughing already?”
“He’s Gallifreyan,” said the Doctor, frowning.
And the most obvious evidence of his complicated Gallifreyan nature was the fact that he never slept. An hour a day was a great deal of sleep for Brem.
“Why does he sleep so much?” complained the Doctor.
“Sleep so much?” repeated Jackie, in disbelief. “He never sleeps at all.”
“He sleeps a lot for a Gallifreyan,” grumbled the Doctor.
“Well, he’s a Gallifreyan baby,” Rose pointed out. “Babies sleep.”
After a week, Rose was basically back to normal, but trying to keep up with Brem remained impossible.
“It doesn’t matter,” said the Doctor. “He’s no trouble while you’re sleeping.”
“But what do you do with him?” asked Rose, curiously.
“The same thing we do while you’re awake,” answered the Doctor, frowning as he poured a cup of hot tea over ice cubes in an attempt to cool it down.
“Would you stop it?” sighed Rose. “I don’t think you’re supposed to give infants iced tea.”
“He’s doing what now?” asked Jackie, entering the kitchen. Rose marvelled at the fact that her mother now wandered all through the TARDIS as if it were the most normal thing.
“Brem wants to try it,” said the Doctor. He had stopped insisting their son be called Bremsstrahlung after the first day when, in a rare moment of accord, he agreed with Jackie that the name was too long for such a small child.
Brem was indeed watching his father raptly, from his position snuggled in his mother’s arms.
“You can’t give him iced tea!” exclaimed Jackie. “He’s barely two weeks old!”
Brem turned his dark eyes on his grandmother, giving every impression of knowing full well that she was trying to deny him his iced tea.
“Jackie,” said the Doctor, as patiently as he could, pouring the iced tea into a bottle. “Tea is good for Gallifreyans. Super-heated infusion of free radicals and tannin. Remember? Brem and I have been trying to find how he takes his tea for a week now.”
“This is what you do when I’m sleeping?” Rose asked, as the Doctor handed her the bottle.
The Doctor shrugged.
“You’re not going to give him tea?” said her mother.
“Why not? It hasn’t been hurting him so far.” Rose offered Brem the bottle, and his tiny mouth sucked on it eagerly. She glanced down at her pendant, pulsing bright yellow. “Look at that, he likes it.”
“Good. Ten sugars,” said the Doctor to Brem. “That’s how you like your tea, young man.”
“How many sugars?” said Rose.
The Doctor looked at her. “Is that a lot?”
“What difference does it make?” drawled Jackie. “He doesn’t sleep as it is.”
“Good point. C’mere, Brem.” The Doctor reached for him. “He’s probably due for a changing.”
Or he was trying to scurry away from Jackie. Old habits died hard, Rose thought as she relinquished the baby.
“We can have a normal cuppa,” she said, turning to her mother with a smile. “No ten sugars for us.”
Jackie sat at the table as Rose filled the kettle--and then asked, abruptly, “How long will you be stayin’, then?”
Rose watched her hands as they put the kettle on, focusing on the ritual of the action, before turning back to her mother. “I don’t know,” she answered, honestly. “He hasn’t mentioned leaving yet. But it’s only been a couple of weeks.”
“You’ve been here months.”
“I mean, a couple of weeks since Brem was born.”
“I didn’t think he stayed in one place this long.”
“He doesn’t. Brem’s a special exception.”
“But you’ll never settle down, you two. He’ll want to leave again, and you’ll pack up and-”
“He’s the only other Time Lord in existence, Mum. We can’t raise him like he’s a normal little boy. He needs to see black holes and supernovas. He won’t be happy without it. Neither will the Doctor. And I’d rather not have to live with two miserable males. But, we’ll stay here. For as long as we can. And we’ll come back to visit constantly.”
Jackie stared at the sugar bowl the Doctor had left on the table. “When you told me you were pregnant, I thought it was this horrible mistake.”
“Mum-” said Rose, not wanting to hear this.
Jackie ploughed forward. “I thought, Have a baby with him? Is she mad?” Jackie looked up suddenly. “I was wrong, sweetheart.”
Rose, suddenly feeling in danger of crying, pushed away from the counter and went to sit across from her mother, taking her hand and squeezing it.
“Your baby’s beautiful,” continued Jackie. “And he’s so…He does mad things, and God knows I could never live with him. But you could never accuse him of not loving that child. And I’ve never seen either one of you look happier.” Jackie swallowed. “You were right to have a baby with him, Rose. He was the right one for you. He is the right one.”
“Yeah,” agreed Rose, sniffling a bit, as the Doctor walked back into the kitchen with Brem.
“Rose,” said the Doctor, “d’you think we could give Brem some more iced tea? He wants some.”
Rose looked at her mother and grinned. “Yeah, he is.”
**********************
Whenever she awoke and went in search of the Doctor and Brem, there was any number of activities she could find them engaged in. Sometimes they would be watching DVDs. Once she walked in on them watching Star Wars, the Doctor murmuring to the tiny baby in his arms, “Someday, when I bring you to Tatooine…” But The Muppet Movie, the Doctor pronounced, was a particular favourite of Brem’s. “Good taste, this little boy,” he said, and winked at Brem, who giggled in that way he had.
Rose didn’t know much about the Doctor’s childhood, but she knew it wasn’t like this, showered with adoration and attention. She liked to think that Brem’s nearly constant laughter was how the Doctor would have turned out had his life been a bit less traumatic. Certainly, the Doctor seemed to have settled into steady giddiness himself.
Sometimes she found them in the control room, the Doctor fiddling while Brem swung in the swing the TARDIS had placed next to the captain’s chair (Rose noticed that the Doctor did not complain about nurturing with that instalment). The Doctor would be playing music for him--the eclectic music he preferred himself--or else giving him lectures about how to repair the TARDIS. When Rose came upon them in the middle of a lecture, Brem gave her long-suffering, beseeching looks that always made her grin and cuddle him and reward him with that heavily sugared iced tea he so adored. “He looks just like you when you get cornered by my mum,” Rose told him, and the Doctor ruffled his hair in indignation that his TARDIS soliloquies should be compared to Jackie’s screechings.
Sometimes she found them in the library, the Doctor reading any number of tomes, from Pat the Bunny to heavy volumes in alien languages. The TARDIS always translated these books for her but she knew they were foreign. She never saw him choose one of the books in Gallifreyan, which the TARDIS never did translate for her, and she wondered if he was avoiding anything as sad as Gallifrey during this magical golden time.
Wherever she happened to find them, she always took a moment before making her presence known, a moment to just watch him with the baby. Once, she came upon them doing nothing, just the Doctor sitting in the rocking chair in the baby’s nursery and staring down at Brem, his gaze intent with amazement, like he still hadn’t quite figured the little creature out, and Brem returning the stare patiently, as if he was aware his father needed time to process him. As she watched, the Doctor leaned down and nuzzled against him. Despite the fact that he was clearly adoring, she had never really seen him so physically affectionate with the baby, and she felt suddenly like she was intruding. She withdrew from the door of the nursery and waited a moment, taking a deep breath, before poking her head in and saying, cheerfully, “Good morning.”
The Doctor was no longer nuzzling the baby, had returned to staring at him, and he looked up at her, his gaze a bit fuzzy, still turned inward. “Rose,” he said.
“I’m going to make breakfast,” she told him, jovially.
“Yes,” he agreed, slowly, looking back down at Brem. “Come here for a second.”
She walked over to him, confused. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Look at him.”
She looked at Brem, who looked serenely back up at them. He was not a baby who enjoyed pacifiers, and spat it out in obvious disgust whenever she’d tried to persuade him to suck on one. He was plainly content with things just as they were and saw no need to distract himself with the artificial device. Although he was attached to the blue blanket he’d been wrapped in directly after his birth, and would sob quite roundly for it if he woke in his cradle and didn’t find it near.
Rose wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be seeing. “He’s perfect,” she said.
“He is,” the Doctor agreed, “but that’s not what…Look at him.”
“I am,” Rose assured him, bewildered. She looked at his manic hair, which never looked like it wasn’t in need of a trim, even when it had been freshly trimmed. She looked at his skin, which was a rosy pink, relatively unfreckled, the only piece of him that did not mirror his father. Oh, sure, the Doctor and her mum both insisted Brem had Rose’s nose, but she knew that was people said when your baby looked nothing like you. Nonsense, he has your nose! Who could tell whether that tiny button resembled hers? And his eyes were beginning to droop for one of his rare naps. Rose saw him sleep so seldom that she rather hoped he’d give in to the drowse, so she could see him completely relaxed.
“He’s ours,” said the Doctor.
“He is,” said Rose, and rested her lips in the Doctor’s hair.
“We had a baby,” breathed the Doctor.
“Yes. About a month ago. His name is Brem. He looks just like you.”
“And he’s happy,” said the Doctor, still staring at his son as if he couldn’t believe it.
“Of course he is.”
“No, you don’t understand. He’s happy all the time. Even when he’s hungry, or tired, or needs changing, he’s still happy. I’ve never…In my head, he…And your pendant is always, always shaded yellow. He’s happy.” The Doctor looked up at her suddenly. “And do you know why?”
Rose didn’t think she was able to speak, because her heart was suddenly too full with love for both of them. She shook her head.
“It’s just because he’s here. He’s happy just because he’s here, with us. He doesn’t even know that unhappiness in life is a possibility, he just knows that, in his life, it doesn’t exist. He’s here, he’s with us, and we have him so wrapped in love, Rose, that…I wish you could feel how happy he is.”
And she understood suddenly. He was shielding himself, but he could still feel his son. And he had never felt another creature so unadulteratedly happy. She wished she could feel it then, too. And she wished that happiness hadn’t been so foreign to the Doctor that the experience of it could shock him so thoroughly.
The Doctor looked at Brem briefly. He was fully asleep now, breathing deeply and contentedly, his cheek lolling trustingly against his father’s suit coat. The Doctor looked back at her. “How are we going to keep him so happy?” he asked, anxiously.
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, Rose.” He sounded exhausted all of a sudden, scrubbed the hand that wasn’t holding Brem over his face. “The universe isn’t a happy place.”
“You can’t put the universe on his shoulders when he’s six weeks old, Doctor.”
“What if I never want to?”
“What do you mean?” asked Rose, quizzically, not understanding what he was talking about.
The Doctor spoke in a rush. He’d clearly been thinking of this for some time. “We could stay here. We could…buy a house. Get a mortgage. Pretend we’re perfectly normal. The psychic paper would take care of everything we might need. We’ll keep Brem away from doctors. He looks perfectly normal, nobody should suspect a thing. And if he’s a bit smarter than the rest of the kids, well…We’ll just…pretend. He can be this normal little boy who only worries about…football and…whatever else normal little human children like.”
Rose stared at him, shocked. Here it was, everything she’d ever wanted, wrapped up, in a bow. A normal life with her Doctor. Except it didn’t seem normal anymore. It didn’t seem anything like a life that would be theirs. “You want us to…” She tried to comprehend this.
“He’ll be happy, Rose. He’ll just be a happy little boy.”
“And what are you going to tell him when he wants to go to Mars for his birthday?”
“Why would he want to go to Mars for his birthday?”
“Because he’s complicated and Gallifreyan!” Rose pointed out.
The Doctor shook his head. “But he wouldn’t know that. Even if he wanted to go to Mars, why would he ask about it? He wouldn’t know about the TARDIS, that I could take him there.”
Rose felt cold suddenly. “You’re not even going to tell him?”
“Tell him what?”
“Who he is.”
The Doctor’s eyes hardened suddenly. “He knows who he is. He’s Bremsstrahlung Jack Tyler, that’s who he is.”
“Who happens to be one of the last-”
“Why does he need to know that, Rose?” the Doctor argued. “What will he gain from knowing that? I’m not going to burden him with that. Not my son. He never needs to know.”
“Doctor,” she said, trying to get through to him. “You can’t…What happens when he regenerates? What happens when he falls in love and has children of his own and his wife is pregnant for a year with a baby with two hearts? What happens if he ever falls at school and gets rushed to the hospital and-Doctor. You can’t lie to him. Can you imagine, how unhappy he’ll be when he finds out? And he will find out. You can’t keep a secret of this magnitude. He’ll find out. He’ll figure it out. And he won’t understand, and he’ll hate us for it-”
“But he’ll have been happy, Rose. He will have had years of happiness.”
“He will have the same years of happiness being who he is. Because he’ll be with us. And that’s what makes him happy. Just having us. And he’ll have that, no matter what.”
“You don’t understand,” said the Doctor. “You don’t understand what it feels like to be the last. To know that there’s nothing after you and if you make one mistake existence as you know it-We’ve been sitting here in London for months now. And every minute that goes by-every minute I spend here with Brem and you-I’m wondering what threads in the universe are coming undone because I’m being selfish and playing at being a family man, and the thing is, Rose, I like it. This is why I didn’t want my life to get domestic, because I like it. I-I love it. I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to…leave you.”
“You’re not going to,” she said. “You don’t have to. We’ll always be here.”
He shook his head. “No, don’t you see? You have to stay here with Brem. Fine, tell him he’s a Time Lord, be stubborn about it if you want to be, but you’ve got to try to get him to lead as normal a life as possible. Don’t tell him he’s the last, don’t tell him what Time Lords do, don’t tell him what I do-”
“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked, sharply. “First of all, you’re going to tell him all that yourself. Second of all, you’ve lost your mind if you think I’m staying here with Brem.”
“Rose. You have to. He needs you. We can’t leave him here without you.”
“We’re not leaving him anywhere. You’re talking nonsense.”
“I could do it, you know. I could stay here on Earth, with you and with Brem.”
“You could never stay in one place-”
“I could. I’ve done it before. I’m doing it now. Do you know the only reason I can’t? Because I feel it. Not just the turn of this planet but the turn of every planet and, Rose, there is no one out there but me who feels that anymore.”
“There’s Brem,” she whispered.
“And that’s why he has to stay here with you,” he whispered back.
“We’re not staying anywhere.” Her voice shook when she said it, with the force of her conviction. She cupped his face. “You don’t do this alone anymore. You don’t. You need to get used to that. The universe has taken enough from you. I will not let you sacrifice Brem and me as well.”
“That’s what I’m trying not to do,” he protested. “I’m trying to keep you safe-”
“I get it, that your life is dangerous. That our life is dangerous. But we’ve made it this far. And we won’t jeopardize Brem. I’ll stay here with him, while you save the universe. And then we’ll celebrate by pushing his pram down the promenade on Barcelona. The planet, not the city.”
The Doctor was silent for a second. “Rose-”
“You will not send me away again. I swear to you, I will track you down and regenerate you myself. Which would be a shame, because I rather think we made a beautiful baby and I’m not sure how beautiful the next baby would be with a new you as a father.”
“The next baby?” he echoed, disbelievingly.
Rose kissed him, kissed him until he gave in and kissed her back. And then she rested her forehead against his. “Do you feel that?” she whispered.
“What?” His eyes were closed.
She combed her hands through his hair lovingly. “What you’re feeling right now. It’s happiness. Get used to it.”
He took a shuddering breath, lifted his free hand and brushed it over her hair. “I…” His voice trembled.
“What?”
Words, unspoken, shimmered between them. The Doctor cleared his throat. “He might like to visit Thhhhhhhhhhhmyr. Best sweets in the universe. And he apparently has a sweet tooth.”
Rose smiled. “You know what I’ve been meaning to ask you?”
“What?”
“If he only sleeps an hour a day-and only that much because he’s so little right now-when are we going to be able to make the second baby?”
“Well. First of all. It’s a bit too soon to be thinking about making a second baby. Or any activities that might lead to a second baby. You need to rest a bit longer.”
“Fine,” she agreed. “What about activities after I’m cleared for such things?”
“Wellllllll.” He rubbed his nose against hers. “You’re going to laugh at me when I tell you this, but it’s the truth.” He paused. “The TARDIS is a brilliant baby-sitter.”
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