Chaos Theory in Vortex Orbits in Relative Dimensions in Time and Space (16/27)
Title - Chaos Theory in Vortex Orbits in Relative Dimensions in Time and Space (16/27)
Author --
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters -- Ten, Rose, Jackie, Pete, Mickey, OCs
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 and Athena. They're all mine.)
Summary - And then there came a day when Rose said she was having a baby. Hijinks ensue from there.
Author’s Notes - It's always darkest right before the dawn, right? Isn't that what the poets say?
The icon was created by
punkinart , commissioned by
aibhinn , who graciously offered it to me for my use.
Thanks, as always, to
jlrpuck , who is a truly fantastic beta, a very brilliant sounding board, and a very happy hockey fan. Many thanks also 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 - Ch. 6 - Ch. 7 - Ch. 8 - Ch. 9 - Ch. 10 - Ch. 11 - Ch. 12 - Ch. 13 - Ch. 14 - Ch. 15
Chapter Sixteen
Rose pushed away from her father as soon as she could, whirled back toward the white wall. She was expecting it not to be solid, for some reason. She thought she’d be able to walk right through it, and the Doctor would be on the other side, white-faced but relieved as he held his arms open for her.
“Take me back,” she said, frantically, banging her hands against the wall, trying to find a weak spot in it. “Take me back.” She turned to Pete. “That yellow button-” She dove for it, slammed her hand down on it, but nothing happened. Mascara was running into her eyes, blinding her, and she wiped it away impatiently. “What’s wrong with it? It’s broken. Mum, press yours.”
“Rose…” began Jackie, and Rose knew what she was trying to say and refused to hear it.
“Press it!” she screamed.
Jackie did, but nothing happened. No one disappeared. No one materialized.
“No,” she said, and she couldn’t make her voice more than a whisper. Because this couldn’t be happening. “No, no, no, no, no.” She ran back to the wall, slamming into it. “Take me back!” she commanded, and she didn’t know who she expected to answer her. She pounded her fists against the wall, as sobs began to overwhelm her. And then she thought she could feel him. Which was a flight of fancy, as she had never been able to feel him. And, when she lifted up her pendant, it was a dull ashy grey, as if it had been burned by a match. No emotions to translate. There was no mish-mash of Brem and Athena, fighting over each other. There was just nothing. But she still pressed her hand against the wall, holding her breath, hoping that he was just there, just on the other side, that he would call her name and she would hear him and call back to him and he would find her and the kids would-
She thought she was going to be sick, as she slid to the floor, drawing her knees up and resting her forehead against them. She was no longer crying. She thought that what she was feeling was too much to allow for anything so simple as tears.
“Rose,” her mother whispered, hand hesitantly smoothing over her hair.
“The kids,” she said. “Oh, my God, the kids. I didn’t even say good-bye. I was so angry with the Doctor. I locked the kids in the nursery and Brem was trying to ask me and I didn’t have time for his questions and I said oh God I said-”
“Oh, Rose,” said Jackie, and Rose realized her mother was crying, as she pulled her into an embrace.
She thought of the Doctor. Everything you love is in that universe. No, everything she loved was in the other universe. And she had no idea what she was supposed to do now.
“Jackie,” inserted a voice, gently. Pete’s, she realized. “Jackie, let’s go. We’ll take her back to the house-”
“No,” said Rose, jerking out of her mother’s arms. “No. I can’t go. I can’t go yet.” She flailed desperately when her mother tried to hug her again, when Pete tried to grab her. “I can’t go. He’ll come to get me. If there’s any way-he won’t leave me here. He’ll come to get me. I need to give him time. He’ll just need a little time, that’s all.”
“Alright, sweetheart. We can give you time. Let’s just go-”
“No. He knows I’m here. I’ll wait here-”
“Rose, he said it was impossible,” Pete told her. “Once he closed the breach, he said it would be forever. No more jumping between worlds.”
“But you don’t know him!” she cried, fiercely. “He’s the Doctor! Impossible is…Impossible means nothing to him. And I’m here. I’m trapped here. He’ll do anything to get me back to them. Mum.” She turned to her mother, frantic. “You know him, Mum. Would he leave me here? Inseparable, you said we were. Inseparable. And Athena. She’s so small still. She needs me. He won’t leave me here. I have to wait five and a half hours. I promised him I’d always wait five and a half hours. Mickey! You know that! You were there! Five and a half hours, didn’t I promise him?”
Mickey cleared his throat. He looked as heartbroken as she felt. She wondered what a wreck she must look, that everyone was gazing at her with such pity. Did they not understand? She had the great good fortune to be loved by the Doctor. He would come for her. “It’s true,” he said. “She promised him five and a half hours.”
She turned back to her mother, relieved. “Just give me five and a half hours. Please?”
Her mother relented, with a tiny nod.
They left her, in the dim white room. She was freezing, as she curled herself up into a ball and stared fixedly at the wall, waiting for it to dissolve, for Madrid to come bounding through, followed by Brem and Athena. They would fall on her, giggling with delight, while Madrid tried to lick her. The Doctor would stand, in his pinstripes, a bit behind, waiting his turn, but his eyes would be deep with emotion as they watched her.
“Rose,” said Mickey.
She looked up at him, startled. “Has it been five and a half hours?”
“It’s been six,” he told her.
Rose blinked, uncomprehending, stared at the stubborn wall. She lifted up the pendant to look at it. Still ashy gray. “It’s supposed to pick up Time Lord moods,” she said, dully, before dropping it.
“Babe,” said Mickey, and crouched down to look her in the eye. “He’ll find you. Wherever you are. So let’s go back to Pete’s house. We’ll feed you. You can get some sleep. Want to look good for when he shows up, right?”
“Yeah,” said Rose, but she wanted to say it was no use, wasn’t it? Her Time-Lord-mood detector pendant-she might as well fling it into the Thames. She stood up, shivering. “I’m freezin’, Mickey,” she said. “I’m jus’ so cold.”
**********************
The first thing he became aware of was his own breathing. It was too quick to be accomplishing anything, and he realized he was close to hyperventilating, even with a respiratory bypass system. He was still maintaining a stranglehold on the magnaclamp, and he forced himself to let go. It was a huge effort to do it, an even bigger effort to walk over to the wall. He stared at it. Hard and unyielding. The breach had closed. Exactly as he had planned it.
He pressed his hand to the wall, pressed his ear against it, tried desperately to feel her. His mind faltered, unable to find her, and the emptiness where she should have been was so alarming that he dropped his hand, stepped away.
He had no idea what to do. He tucked his hands into his pockets, more out of force of habit than anything else, and began walking away from the wall. His feet dragged. He felt as if he were walking through syrup. Every step pounded through his head. Rose, Rose, Rose…
What had he done? How had he given in, let her help? Why hadn’t he insisted she go back to the TARDIS, insisted she go back to Pete’s World? He had wanted her with him. He had so selfishly wanted her with him. And now he had-Now he had-
He stopped walking, taking a strangled breath and staring into space. What was he going to do? What was he going to do?
“Dad? Dad.”
The Doctor blinked and focused on Brem, standing in front of him. He wasn’t sure how many times Brem had said “Dad” before he had responded, but he had a feeling it had been more than twice. He looked at him for a second, tried to think of something to say. What could he possibly say? I’ve lost your mother. I trapped her in another universe.
“The nursery door unlocked,” said Brem, worriedly. “The TARDIS said I should find you.” His eyes flickered toward the wall. “Where’s…” He trailed off, and the Doctor wished he hadn’t. He wanted the question asked. He wanted to have to say the answer out loud.
Brem looked at him. Their eyes met, for a very long moment, and Brem’s softened. His little hand reached out, tugged the Doctor’s hand out of his pocket, threaded his fingers through his. “Come on,” he said, gently. “We have to go back to the TARDIS. Athena’s waiting.”
The Doctor let himself be led, because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. The TARDIS was loud in his head, and he knew if he could feel it, it would be trying to comfort him. But he couldn’t really feel it. He felt somewhat broken, like he was unable to translate the things going on around him.
Brem pulled him into the nursery. Athena was on the floor, drinking a bottle, and she looked with wide eyes at her father as he entered. “Mum?” she queried, taking the bottle out of her mouth for a moment.
The Doctor moved his mouth, trying to answer, but found no words would come out.
“Shh,” Brem told his sister, and then tugged on his hand. “Sit down,” he said.
There was nowhere to sit. This was ridiculous. But the Doctor, exhausted, sank to the floor and put his head in his hands. Madrid came sniffing over, but Brem pushed him away, then crawled onto his lap, underneath his arms, and cuddled into him, and the Doctor held him tightly, grateful for the contact.
“I’m so sorry, Dad,” Brem whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, Brem,” the Doctor choked out. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Athena had toddled over to them, crawled onto his lap as well. “Where’s Mum?” she begged, and then burst into tears.
**********************
Athena stopped crying eventually--when it became clear that her father was not going to go fetch her mother for her. The Doctor would have said something to her, except he had no idea what to say. He sat on the floor, his lap full of children and dog, and thought that the longer they sat on the floor, the longer he could delay getting up, doing something normal, without Rose.
Brem snuffled against him, finally, drawing him out of his stupor. He was doing this wrong. Rose would kill him if she knew he was letting Brem comfort him instead of the other way around. He fished around for something to say. “Are you hungry?” he asked.
“No,” Brem mumbled. “Theenie’s sleeping.”
“Is she?” The Doctor shifted carefully. Athena moved sleepily against him. There you go, he thought. He could be of use. “We’ll put her in her cot,” he said, and Brem crawled off his lap, Madrid following.
The Doctor stood, jostling Athena as he did so. She was looking up at him with tear-filled eyes he laid her in her cot. He was going to have to get better at this, he thought. “Go back to sleep,” he said, leaning over and kissing her cheek.
“Where’s Pinky?” she said.
“Who?” the Doctor asked, bewildered.
Athena’s lower lip trembled. “I want Pinky,” she wailed, and began crying again.
“It’s her doll,” said Brem. The Doctor looked down at him. He was rummaging through the pile of Athena’s dolls. “It has pink hair. She needs it to sleep with.” Brem looked at him briefly. “Help me find it.”
The Doctor pushed himself into movement, crouching. “Pink hair, you said?”
“Pink hair,” Brem affirmed. “We’re looking for it, Theenie,” he directed toward his sobbing sister. “Give us a second.”
The Doctor pushed aside dolls with every colour hair but pink.
“Here it is,” said Brem. He was too short to hand it directly into the cot, handed it solemnly to his father instead.
The Doctor took it and gave it to Athena, who clutched it to her desperately and caught her breath. And then, pleased, she smiled at her father. One of those tongue-between-her-teeth smiles. And the Doctor thought, abruptly, that he might crash to the floor. He was barely functioning, he thought, and he was doing even that badly. His children had only had one parent who was any good at parenting, and they had just lost her. He didn’t even know what doll his daughter slept with. He had never heard her cry for a doll before. Rose must have taken care of that, making sure the doll was in the crib each night before she’d gone to bed, so that, whenever Athena felt like grabbing her hour of sleep, her beloved Pinky was already there. How many other things had Rose taken care of, that he had never noticed? The possibilities swamped him.
He turned, looking down at Brem, who was watching him as if he really did expect him to crash to the floor.
“Are you hungry?” asked the Doctor.
“No,” said Brem.
“I’ll make you something to eat,” he said. It was the only thing he could think of to do.
He made Brem peanut butter and jelly. There was no milk to serve. They never had stopped to get milk. He fixed iced tea instead, from the pitcher that Rose had labelled “Brem” for its perfect ratio of sugar to tea. There was a separate pitcher that she’d labelled “Athena.” He found himself standing with the refrigerator door open for the longest time, while he stared at Rose’s handwriting on the pitchers.
He finally turned back to Brem. Brem had eaten obediently and the Doctor was relieved, sending him a weak smile. “Was it good?”
“Excellent,” said Brem, softly.
“Good.” The Doctor ruffled his hair and tried to think what they could do next.
“You’re tired,” Brem remarked.
“Very tired,” the Doctor agreed.
“You could take a nap, if you wanted.”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
Brem shook his head.
The Doctor hesitated. He was tired, but what he really wanted was to be alone. Just a moment alone. Because he really needed, he thought, to fall apart before he could put himself back together. “We’ll set you up with something to watch,” he said. “What catches your fancy?” He took Brem’s hand as they walked toward the library.
Brem was silent for a second. “Maybe EastEnders?”
It was a Rose choice, but the Doctor didn’t comment on it as he pushed the on button. He paused, looking down at Brem as Brem looked up at him from his seat on the couch. And then he did something he realized he should have done years ago. “I love you,” he said, and kissed his forehead.
“I know,” said Brem.
The Doctor tousled Brem’s hair, then dragged his feet toward their bedroom. The room seemed impossibly large and impossibly silent, and he could barely make it to the bed. He pushed at the bedspread, grabbed at the sheet and pulled it up and over his head, turned his face into Rose’s pillow. It smelled like her, and he took a long inhale. And he exhaled on a sob.
**********************
The Doctor woke up to Athena crying, piped into the bedroom the way the TARDIS always piped the kids’ sounds of distress to wherever he and Rose were, and that was the only way he knew he’d fallen asleep. He certainly didn’t feel any better. His head ached and his brain felt sluggish and his hearts hurt. He opened his eyes, staring at the bedsheet, which was still over his head, before making himself move, stumbling out of the bed. He needed a cold shower badly, he thought, but he needed to get Athena more. He scrubbed his hands over his face as he left the bedroom, wiping at tearstains and wondering how much of a wreck he looked and how much he was going to alarm the children.
She was calling for him, “Daddy!” quite clearly, and he broke into a run of alarm as he skidded into the nursery.
Brem was standing at the crib, pushing what dolls he could through the spindles to her. “Please stop crying, Theenie,” he was saying. “Please stop.”
Athena had pulled herself to standing and held her arms out for her father as soon as she caught sight of him. “Daddy,” she cried.
“I’m here,” he assured her, picking her up and kissing her tumbled hair. Another thing he was going to have to learn: how did one put Time Lord hair into a ponytail? “I’m so sorry I took so long getting here. But I’m here. I’ve got you.”
Athena turned her wet face into her neck. “Daddy,” she sobbed. “I want Mummy. Why can’t I have Mummy? Please?” she begged, heartbrokenly.
He thought he’d been done falling apart. He was no longer so sure. “Oh, Theenie,” he said, cradling her against him while she cried. He looked at Brem, whose watchful eyes were fastened on him. They were going to have to know. He had to tell them. “D’you want tea?” he asked.
“No,” said Athena, belligerently, sounding as if she thought he was daft. Maybe he was.
“Well, I need a cuppa,” he said. “And then we need to talk.”
He set Athena in her high chair while he went about making tea. She kept making little mewling sounds and wiping at her eyes as they overflowed, clearly unable to stop herself crying completely.
“Brem,” he said, “d’you think you’ll take milk in your tea?”
Brem blinked. “I get to have hot tea?” It was not something his mother had allowed him, with the idea that he was still too young.
“If you like. Although I’ve just remembered, we’ve no milk.”
He could tell that Brem was momentarily taken with the novelty of this; it was the first time since Brem had appeared before him in the lever room that his eyes looked bright. He peered into his cup as his father heavily spooned sugar into it. “I’ll be okay without milk.” He paused. “For now. I might like it with milk.” There was another pause. “Mum takes her tea with milk.”
“She does,” agreed the Doctor, carefully, pulling Athena out of the high chair and then picking up both cups of tea. “Here we go, into the library.”
Athena, still sniffling, let her brother lead her. One hand was still clutching Pinky, dragging her along behind her by the hair. The Doctor set both cups on the coffee table, settled on the couch. The kids clambered up to cuddle with him. Madrid leaped up as well and curled himself into a corner.
Brem and Athena both looked at him expectantly, ready for the story. Athena’s lower lip had started to tremble again, and he watched her bite it and blink at her tears. She was a baby, he thought. She was not even two years old. And already she was trying to figure out how to keep tears inside her. How had he gotten them to this point?
He cleared his throat. “Your mum,” he began, and then didn’t know what else to say. He started with the most obvious thing he could think of. “Your mum loves you,” he said. “More than anything in the universe.” He looked from Athena to Brem and back again. “You know that, don’t you? If she could be here, she would be.”
“But where is she?” wailed Athena.
The Doctor glanced at Brem, who was now looking fixedly at his cup of tea on the table. The Doctor realized he didn’t want to tell this tale. Brem had been so…comforting. He was terrified of the accusation that would replace it as soon as he figured out that this was all his father’s fault.
He looked back at Athena. “She’s…There are these things called…parallel worlds and they…I mean there’s a universe next to our universe, and another one next to that, with other Earths in them. Alternate Earths. And there was…The thing about the universes is…You can’t really…” He was doing a rubbish job explaining this. Athena looked totally perplexed.
“How did she get there?” Brem asked his teacup.
The Doctor looked at him. “What?”
“Mum’s in the parallel world, right? So how did she get there? Can’t we get her out the same way?”
“There…No. There was a breach, and…I closed it.”
Brem looked at him then. “You closed it while she was on the other side?”
“I didn’t mean to. It happened so quickly. She fell and-”
“So how are we getting her back?” Brem asked, patiently.
“I…” The Doctor trailed off, at a loss. He had no idea how to do it without ripping two universes apart.
Athena had picked up the thread of the conversation. “Can’t we just go to this other Earth?”
“We can’t, it would…We’d die. All of us. Mum, Grandma, us. We can’t do that.”
“Well, we’ve got to think of something,” said Brem. “We have to get Mum back. We can’t just leave her there. You have to think. I know you’re sad, we can feel that you’re sad, but we just need to think. There’s got to be a way.”
He said it so simply. There had to be a way. Of course. Didn’t his father fix everything? Everything in the universe? “I don’t…” he said, helplessly.
Brem looked at Athena, who looked shell-shocked. “Don’t worry, Theenie,” he assured her, confidently. “Dad’ll figure it out.” Brem slid off the couch to sit on the floor in front of the coffee table, pulling his teacup over to him, and looked at his father. “You’ll figure it out, won’t you?”
The Doctor took a deep breath. He was frightened he wouldn’t. But he promised things he was unsure of every day, to help people breathe easier. And he did it to Brem. “I’ll figure it out,” he said.
Brem, satisfied, blew on his tea.
Athena snuggled against him. “I love you, too, Dad, but I really miss Mummy,” she said.
“I know,” he said, and sighed. “I know.”
Next Chapter
Author --
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters -- Ten, Rose, Jackie, Pete, Mickey, OCs
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 and Athena. They're all mine.)
Summary - And then there came a day when Rose said she was having a baby. Hijinks ensue from there.
Author’s Notes - It's always darkest right before the dawn, right? Isn't that what the poets say?
The icon was created by
punkinart , commissioned by
aibhinn , who graciously offered it to me for my use.
Thanks, as always, to
jlrpuck , who is a truly fantastic beta, a very brilliant sounding board, and a very happy hockey fan. Many thanks also 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 - Ch. 6 - Ch. 7 - Ch. 8 - Ch. 9 - Ch. 10 - Ch. 11 - Ch. 12 - Ch. 13 - Ch. 14 - Ch. 15
Chapter Sixteen
Rose pushed away from her father as soon as she could, whirled back toward the white wall. She was expecting it not to be solid, for some reason. She thought she’d be able to walk right through it, and the Doctor would be on the other side, white-faced but relieved as he held his arms open for her.
“Take me back,” she said, frantically, banging her hands against the wall, trying to find a weak spot in it. “Take me back.” She turned to Pete. “That yellow button-” She dove for it, slammed her hand down on it, but nothing happened. Mascara was running into her eyes, blinding her, and she wiped it away impatiently. “What’s wrong with it? It’s broken. Mum, press yours.”
“Rose…” began Jackie, and Rose knew what she was trying to say and refused to hear it.
“Press it!” she screamed.
Jackie did, but nothing happened. No one disappeared. No one materialized.
“No,” she said, and she couldn’t make her voice more than a whisper. Because this couldn’t be happening. “No, no, no, no, no.” She ran back to the wall, slamming into it. “Take me back!” she commanded, and she didn’t know who she expected to answer her. She pounded her fists against the wall, as sobs began to overwhelm her. And then she thought she could feel him. Which was a flight of fancy, as she had never been able to feel him. And, when she lifted up her pendant, it was a dull ashy grey, as if it had been burned by a match. No emotions to translate. There was no mish-mash of Brem and Athena, fighting over each other. There was just nothing. But she still pressed her hand against the wall, holding her breath, hoping that he was just there, just on the other side, that he would call her name and she would hear him and call back to him and he would find her and the kids would-
She thought she was going to be sick, as she slid to the floor, drawing her knees up and resting her forehead against them. She was no longer crying. She thought that what she was feeling was too much to allow for anything so simple as tears.
“Rose,” her mother whispered, hand hesitantly smoothing over her hair.
“The kids,” she said. “Oh, my God, the kids. I didn’t even say good-bye. I was so angry with the Doctor. I locked the kids in the nursery and Brem was trying to ask me and I didn’t have time for his questions and I said oh God I said-”
“Oh, Rose,” said Jackie, and Rose realized her mother was crying, as she pulled her into an embrace.
She thought of the Doctor. Everything you love is in that universe. No, everything she loved was in the other universe. And she had no idea what she was supposed to do now.
“Jackie,” inserted a voice, gently. Pete’s, she realized. “Jackie, let’s go. We’ll take her back to the house-”
“No,” said Rose, jerking out of her mother’s arms. “No. I can’t go. I can’t go yet.” She flailed desperately when her mother tried to hug her again, when Pete tried to grab her. “I can’t go. He’ll come to get me. If there’s any way-he won’t leave me here. He’ll come to get me. I need to give him time. He’ll just need a little time, that’s all.”
“Alright, sweetheart. We can give you time. Let’s just go-”
“No. He knows I’m here. I’ll wait here-”
“Rose, he said it was impossible,” Pete told her. “Once he closed the breach, he said it would be forever. No more jumping between worlds.”
“But you don’t know him!” she cried, fiercely. “He’s the Doctor! Impossible is…Impossible means nothing to him. And I’m here. I’m trapped here. He’ll do anything to get me back to them. Mum.” She turned to her mother, frantic. “You know him, Mum. Would he leave me here? Inseparable, you said we were. Inseparable. And Athena. She’s so small still. She needs me. He won’t leave me here. I have to wait five and a half hours. I promised him I’d always wait five and a half hours. Mickey! You know that! You were there! Five and a half hours, didn’t I promise him?”
Mickey cleared his throat. He looked as heartbroken as she felt. She wondered what a wreck she must look, that everyone was gazing at her with such pity. Did they not understand? She had the great good fortune to be loved by the Doctor. He would come for her. “It’s true,” he said. “She promised him five and a half hours.”
She turned back to her mother, relieved. “Just give me five and a half hours. Please?”
Her mother relented, with a tiny nod.
They left her, in the dim white room. She was freezing, as she curled herself up into a ball and stared fixedly at the wall, waiting for it to dissolve, for Madrid to come bounding through, followed by Brem and Athena. They would fall on her, giggling with delight, while Madrid tried to lick her. The Doctor would stand, in his pinstripes, a bit behind, waiting his turn, but his eyes would be deep with emotion as they watched her.
“Rose,” said Mickey.
She looked up at him, startled. “Has it been five and a half hours?”
“It’s been six,” he told her.
Rose blinked, uncomprehending, stared at the stubborn wall. She lifted up the pendant to look at it. Still ashy gray. “It’s supposed to pick up Time Lord moods,” she said, dully, before dropping it.
“Babe,” said Mickey, and crouched down to look her in the eye. “He’ll find you. Wherever you are. So let’s go back to Pete’s house. We’ll feed you. You can get some sleep. Want to look good for when he shows up, right?”
“Yeah,” said Rose, but she wanted to say it was no use, wasn’t it? Her Time-Lord-mood detector pendant-she might as well fling it into the Thames. She stood up, shivering. “I’m freezin’, Mickey,” she said. “I’m jus’ so cold.”
**********************
The first thing he became aware of was his own breathing. It was too quick to be accomplishing anything, and he realized he was close to hyperventilating, even with a respiratory bypass system. He was still maintaining a stranglehold on the magnaclamp, and he forced himself to let go. It was a huge effort to do it, an even bigger effort to walk over to the wall. He stared at it. Hard and unyielding. The breach had closed. Exactly as he had planned it.
He pressed his hand to the wall, pressed his ear against it, tried desperately to feel her. His mind faltered, unable to find her, and the emptiness where she should have been was so alarming that he dropped his hand, stepped away.
He had no idea what to do. He tucked his hands into his pockets, more out of force of habit than anything else, and began walking away from the wall. His feet dragged. He felt as if he were walking through syrup. Every step pounded through his head. Rose, Rose, Rose…
What had he done? How had he given in, let her help? Why hadn’t he insisted she go back to the TARDIS, insisted she go back to Pete’s World? He had wanted her with him. He had so selfishly wanted her with him. And now he had-Now he had-
He stopped walking, taking a strangled breath and staring into space. What was he going to do? What was he going to do?
“Dad? Dad.”
The Doctor blinked and focused on Brem, standing in front of him. He wasn’t sure how many times Brem had said “Dad” before he had responded, but he had a feeling it had been more than twice. He looked at him for a second, tried to think of something to say. What could he possibly say? I’ve lost your mother. I trapped her in another universe.
“The nursery door unlocked,” said Brem, worriedly. “The TARDIS said I should find you.” His eyes flickered toward the wall. “Where’s…” He trailed off, and the Doctor wished he hadn’t. He wanted the question asked. He wanted to have to say the answer out loud.
Brem looked at him. Their eyes met, for a very long moment, and Brem’s softened. His little hand reached out, tugged the Doctor’s hand out of his pocket, threaded his fingers through his. “Come on,” he said, gently. “We have to go back to the TARDIS. Athena’s waiting.”
The Doctor let himself be led, because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. The TARDIS was loud in his head, and he knew if he could feel it, it would be trying to comfort him. But he couldn’t really feel it. He felt somewhat broken, like he was unable to translate the things going on around him.
Brem pulled him into the nursery. Athena was on the floor, drinking a bottle, and she looked with wide eyes at her father as he entered. “Mum?” she queried, taking the bottle out of her mouth for a moment.
The Doctor moved his mouth, trying to answer, but found no words would come out.
“Shh,” Brem told his sister, and then tugged on his hand. “Sit down,” he said.
There was nowhere to sit. This was ridiculous. But the Doctor, exhausted, sank to the floor and put his head in his hands. Madrid came sniffing over, but Brem pushed him away, then crawled onto his lap, underneath his arms, and cuddled into him, and the Doctor held him tightly, grateful for the contact.
“I’m so sorry, Dad,” Brem whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, Brem,” the Doctor choked out. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Athena had toddled over to them, crawled onto his lap as well. “Where’s Mum?” she begged, and then burst into tears.
**********************
Athena stopped crying eventually--when it became clear that her father was not going to go fetch her mother for her. The Doctor would have said something to her, except he had no idea what to say. He sat on the floor, his lap full of children and dog, and thought that the longer they sat on the floor, the longer he could delay getting up, doing something normal, without Rose.
Brem snuffled against him, finally, drawing him out of his stupor. He was doing this wrong. Rose would kill him if she knew he was letting Brem comfort him instead of the other way around. He fished around for something to say. “Are you hungry?” he asked.
“No,” Brem mumbled. “Theenie’s sleeping.”
“Is she?” The Doctor shifted carefully. Athena moved sleepily against him. There you go, he thought. He could be of use. “We’ll put her in her cot,” he said, and Brem crawled off his lap, Madrid following.
The Doctor stood, jostling Athena as he did so. She was looking up at him with tear-filled eyes he laid her in her cot. He was going to have to get better at this, he thought. “Go back to sleep,” he said, leaning over and kissing her cheek.
“Where’s Pinky?” she said.
“Who?” the Doctor asked, bewildered.
Athena’s lower lip trembled. “I want Pinky,” she wailed, and began crying again.
“It’s her doll,” said Brem. The Doctor looked down at him. He was rummaging through the pile of Athena’s dolls. “It has pink hair. She needs it to sleep with.” Brem looked at him briefly. “Help me find it.”
The Doctor pushed himself into movement, crouching. “Pink hair, you said?”
“Pink hair,” Brem affirmed. “We’re looking for it, Theenie,” he directed toward his sobbing sister. “Give us a second.”
The Doctor pushed aside dolls with every colour hair but pink.
“Here it is,” said Brem. He was too short to hand it directly into the cot, handed it solemnly to his father instead.
The Doctor took it and gave it to Athena, who clutched it to her desperately and caught her breath. And then, pleased, she smiled at her father. One of those tongue-between-her-teeth smiles. And the Doctor thought, abruptly, that he might crash to the floor. He was barely functioning, he thought, and he was doing even that badly. His children had only had one parent who was any good at parenting, and they had just lost her. He didn’t even know what doll his daughter slept with. He had never heard her cry for a doll before. Rose must have taken care of that, making sure the doll was in the crib each night before she’d gone to bed, so that, whenever Athena felt like grabbing her hour of sleep, her beloved Pinky was already there. How many other things had Rose taken care of, that he had never noticed? The possibilities swamped him.
He turned, looking down at Brem, who was watching him as if he really did expect him to crash to the floor.
“Are you hungry?” asked the Doctor.
“No,” said Brem.
“I’ll make you something to eat,” he said. It was the only thing he could think of to do.
He made Brem peanut butter and jelly. There was no milk to serve. They never had stopped to get milk. He fixed iced tea instead, from the pitcher that Rose had labelled “Brem” for its perfect ratio of sugar to tea. There was a separate pitcher that she’d labelled “Athena.” He found himself standing with the refrigerator door open for the longest time, while he stared at Rose’s handwriting on the pitchers.
He finally turned back to Brem. Brem had eaten obediently and the Doctor was relieved, sending him a weak smile. “Was it good?”
“Excellent,” said Brem, softly.
“Good.” The Doctor ruffled his hair and tried to think what they could do next.
“You’re tired,” Brem remarked.
“Very tired,” the Doctor agreed.
“You could take a nap, if you wanted.”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
Brem shook his head.
The Doctor hesitated. He was tired, but what he really wanted was to be alone. Just a moment alone. Because he really needed, he thought, to fall apart before he could put himself back together. “We’ll set you up with something to watch,” he said. “What catches your fancy?” He took Brem’s hand as they walked toward the library.
Brem was silent for a second. “Maybe EastEnders?”
It was a Rose choice, but the Doctor didn’t comment on it as he pushed the on button. He paused, looking down at Brem as Brem looked up at him from his seat on the couch. And then he did something he realized he should have done years ago. “I love you,” he said, and kissed his forehead.
“I know,” said Brem.
The Doctor tousled Brem’s hair, then dragged his feet toward their bedroom. The room seemed impossibly large and impossibly silent, and he could barely make it to the bed. He pushed at the bedspread, grabbed at the sheet and pulled it up and over his head, turned his face into Rose’s pillow. It smelled like her, and he took a long inhale. And he exhaled on a sob.
**********************
The Doctor woke up to Athena crying, piped into the bedroom the way the TARDIS always piped the kids’ sounds of distress to wherever he and Rose were, and that was the only way he knew he’d fallen asleep. He certainly didn’t feel any better. His head ached and his brain felt sluggish and his hearts hurt. He opened his eyes, staring at the bedsheet, which was still over his head, before making himself move, stumbling out of the bed. He needed a cold shower badly, he thought, but he needed to get Athena more. He scrubbed his hands over his face as he left the bedroom, wiping at tearstains and wondering how much of a wreck he looked and how much he was going to alarm the children.
She was calling for him, “Daddy!” quite clearly, and he broke into a run of alarm as he skidded into the nursery.
Brem was standing at the crib, pushing what dolls he could through the spindles to her. “Please stop crying, Theenie,” he was saying. “Please stop.”
Athena had pulled herself to standing and held her arms out for her father as soon as she caught sight of him. “Daddy,” she cried.
“I’m here,” he assured her, picking her up and kissing her tumbled hair. Another thing he was going to have to learn: how did one put Time Lord hair into a ponytail? “I’m so sorry I took so long getting here. But I’m here. I’ve got you.”
Athena turned her wet face into her neck. “Daddy,” she sobbed. “I want Mummy. Why can’t I have Mummy? Please?” she begged, heartbrokenly.
He thought he’d been done falling apart. He was no longer so sure. “Oh, Theenie,” he said, cradling her against him while she cried. He looked at Brem, whose watchful eyes were fastened on him. They were going to have to know. He had to tell them. “D’you want tea?” he asked.
“No,” said Athena, belligerently, sounding as if she thought he was daft. Maybe he was.
“Well, I need a cuppa,” he said. “And then we need to talk.”
He set Athena in her high chair while he went about making tea. She kept making little mewling sounds and wiping at her eyes as they overflowed, clearly unable to stop herself crying completely.
“Brem,” he said, “d’you think you’ll take milk in your tea?”
Brem blinked. “I get to have hot tea?” It was not something his mother had allowed him, with the idea that he was still too young.
“If you like. Although I’ve just remembered, we’ve no milk.”
He could tell that Brem was momentarily taken with the novelty of this; it was the first time since Brem had appeared before him in the lever room that his eyes looked bright. He peered into his cup as his father heavily spooned sugar into it. “I’ll be okay without milk.” He paused. “For now. I might like it with milk.” There was another pause. “Mum takes her tea with milk.”
“She does,” agreed the Doctor, carefully, pulling Athena out of the high chair and then picking up both cups of tea. “Here we go, into the library.”
Athena, still sniffling, let her brother lead her. One hand was still clutching Pinky, dragging her along behind her by the hair. The Doctor set both cups on the coffee table, settled on the couch. The kids clambered up to cuddle with him. Madrid leaped up as well and curled himself into a corner.
Brem and Athena both looked at him expectantly, ready for the story. Athena’s lower lip had started to tremble again, and he watched her bite it and blink at her tears. She was a baby, he thought. She was not even two years old. And already she was trying to figure out how to keep tears inside her. How had he gotten them to this point?
He cleared his throat. “Your mum,” he began, and then didn’t know what else to say. He started with the most obvious thing he could think of. “Your mum loves you,” he said. “More than anything in the universe.” He looked from Athena to Brem and back again. “You know that, don’t you? If she could be here, she would be.”
“But where is she?” wailed Athena.
The Doctor glanced at Brem, who was now looking fixedly at his cup of tea on the table. The Doctor realized he didn’t want to tell this tale. Brem had been so…comforting. He was terrified of the accusation that would replace it as soon as he figured out that this was all his father’s fault.
He looked back at Athena. “She’s…There are these things called…parallel worlds and they…I mean there’s a universe next to our universe, and another one next to that, with other Earths in them. Alternate Earths. And there was…The thing about the universes is…You can’t really…” He was doing a rubbish job explaining this. Athena looked totally perplexed.
“How did she get there?” Brem asked his teacup.
The Doctor looked at him. “What?”
“Mum’s in the parallel world, right? So how did she get there? Can’t we get her out the same way?”
“There…No. There was a breach, and…I closed it.”
Brem looked at him then. “You closed it while she was on the other side?”
“I didn’t mean to. It happened so quickly. She fell and-”
“So how are we getting her back?” Brem asked, patiently.
“I…” The Doctor trailed off, at a loss. He had no idea how to do it without ripping two universes apart.
Athena had picked up the thread of the conversation. “Can’t we just go to this other Earth?”
“We can’t, it would…We’d die. All of us. Mum, Grandma, us. We can’t do that.”
“Well, we’ve got to think of something,” said Brem. “We have to get Mum back. We can’t just leave her there. You have to think. I know you’re sad, we can feel that you’re sad, but we just need to think. There’s got to be a way.”
He said it so simply. There had to be a way. Of course. Didn’t his father fix everything? Everything in the universe? “I don’t…” he said, helplessly.
Brem looked at Athena, who looked shell-shocked. “Don’t worry, Theenie,” he assured her, confidently. “Dad’ll figure it out.” Brem slid off the couch to sit on the floor in front of the coffee table, pulling his teacup over to him, and looked at his father. “You’ll figure it out, won’t you?”
The Doctor took a deep breath. He was frightened he wouldn’t. But he promised things he was unsure of every day, to help people breathe easier. And he did it to Brem. “I’ll figure it out,” he said.
Brem, satisfied, blew on his tea.
Athena snuggled against him. “I love you, too, Dad, but I really miss Mummy,” she said.
“I know,” he said, and sighed. “I know.”
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