Title: The Children’s Story
Author: sarah531
Rating: PG13
Characters: Amy and Rory’s children Alec and Johnny; totally OCs- plus Amy, Rory, Aunt Sharon and the Doctor
Summary: Alec William Pond is about to discover that the bedtime stories his parents told so well were true.
A/N: Alec and Johnny made their first (fleeting) appearance in From Within.
A/N II: If you’re curious about where Amy and Rory got the name Alec from, have a glance at The Glamour Chase, one of the new novels…
There are many kinds of bedtime stories, and every parent tells them differently.
Some of them repeat one much-loved story, and others tell a different one each night. Some of them begin their tale with once upon a time, even though it was actually upon someone else’s time. And sometimes the cautious parent will set aside the monsters, because childhood is hard enough already…or sometimes they will bring them out, because children, in general, are brave. And sometimes they’re funny and sometimes they’re sad and sometimes they’re scary.
And sometimes they’re true.
The children, boys of seven and three, jumped on the beds and clamoured for their favourites.
“I wanna hear about the Doctor and the vampires!” the oldest yelled loudest. “Tell me, Mummy, Daddy!”
Mummy sat on the bed, and Daddy set the youngest child on his lap, and the story began and the children cheered at parts- the storm, the kiss, the win!- and hid behind their pillows at others. And when it was over the oldest boy said, “Mummy, did that really happen?”
And Mummy and Daddy looked at each other, and Daddy said, “No, son, it’s just a fairytale.”
“There’s no fairies!” the youngest boy said. “Not a fairytale, Daddy!”
Mummy and Daddy looked at each other again, and there was a look in their eyes that both boys saw but didn’t understand.
“Boys,” Mummy said, “tomorrow Aunt Sharon and…a lady are coming round. They just want to see you. So you need to be on your best behaviour, understand?”
Both boys nodded, despite not quite understanding. They understood the tone in her voice, but they were children, and despite the worried looks in their parents eyes, they simply did not believe yet that bad things happened to them.
“Goodnight,” Mummy said. “We love you both-”
And then she turned off the light. And outside the room she sank to the floor, and Daddy did too, and they waited until the children fell asleep and stared at them and their handmade toys and their new school uniforms and the uncracked wall for a very, very long time.
The Witch’s Son
It was the middle of autumn, just after school has restarted and Christmas is a long way off and leaves and rain turn to sludge on the pavements.
Alec William Pond entered the room and threw his schoolbooks on the floor.
“Alec,” Mum said. “Don’t.”
Crossly, Alec picked up his books and flung them on the nearest flat surface. Then he sank onto the sofa, pulled out a games console, and sat with his back to his mother, even though she was watching him with expectation in her eyes.
“Are you going to tell me, Alec?”
“No,” he muttered, digging himself into the sofa.
“It’s those boys, isn’t it? Stupid Christian and chubby Ben and the ugly one with the silly hair.”
“Mum!” said Alec. He was pleased, of course, but embarassed, for his mother made such statements all the time and in public. About people he went to school with! “You want to scare them, don’t you? They’re not scared of you.”
“Every kid in the village is scared of me,” Mum said, proudly. “Well, little Garry Angelo hasn’t stolen from the corner shop again, has he?”
“No.”
“And Keely Francis hasn’t thrown stones at an old lady’s puppy? Or an old lady? Patrick Jenkins hasn’t taken somebody’s dinner money? Robert Watson hasn’t smashed up the park?”
“No.” Everyone in town, children and adults, looked at Amy Pond with a sort of awe, and Alec did as well. Most children reached their teens, at least, before discovering that their mother was never just their mother- she had her own childhood, her own dreams and her own secrets. But Alec Pond had always known, from the moment he could talk, his mother was Amy and her secrets could fill a book.
Dad, on the other hand, was just Dad- solid, dependable, loving. He was walking through the door with Alec’s little brother in tow.
“How’d it go, Johnny?” Mum asked the nine-year-old, crossing the room.
“I scored a goal!” said Johnny. He was covered in mud, and treading it into the house. “I nearly scored two, I would have done but Jim West tackled me and I fell over and…”
Dad grinned and ruffled his hair and turned to Alec. “Are you okay?”
“It’s those boys,” Mum said. “They’re still bullying-”
“Don’t say bullying,” Alec found himself saying. “It’s not bullying, that’s where they punch you and stick your head in the toilet, this is just…”
“What have they been doing?” Dad said, frowning. “They’re still at it? Even though your mother went right to Christian Miller’s house?”
Alec nodded. “That always makes it worse. I tried to tell you…”
“Time to talk to the teachers, now,” Mum said, eyes flickering just a little, almost smiling as well. “We’ll bring the kids in, make them think we’re gonna kick them out, watch them cry-”
“Fifteen years,” said Dad, “and you’re still a very, very disturbing woman.”
Mum just laughed.
“Don’t talk to them,” Alec said. “They’ll know it was me. Then they’ll bully.”
“Well,” Dad said, “at least consider at, Alec, we can’t ignore this.”
“Cake!” shouted Johnny from the kitchen. “Mum there’s cake! You made cake! Cake!”
“After-dinner cake,” Mum shouted.
“Awwww.”
“I’ll manage it,” Alec said. “They just call me names, I can put up with that.”
He went back to his games and tuned out his father’s talk. It wasn’t just him being called names- they had names for Mum as well. The flipside of people being scared of you was that people were scared of you. She’s a nutter, they said. She had an imaginary friend who she actually believed existed, who she built a shrine to. She used to disappear for weeks. She used to see therapists and fly into rages, hit people, bite people! She’s a witch, one overenthuastic little girl had suggested.
They could have hit him, it probably wouldn’t have hurt so much…
The evening dragged on, Alec had dinner and after-dinner cake, and watched TV and went to bed.
“We think we might have another word with Christian’s mother,” Dad said as he switched off the landing lights. “What d’ya think?”
Alec just shrugged.
As darkness crept into his bedroom he thought about bedtime stories. His parents had so many. They told them like they’d been there- the statues that moved when you didn’t look at them, the vampires in old Italy, the soldier who guarded his true love for two centuries (Dad told it as if the soldier had been a close friend, now gone) the goings-on in Utah, the tale of River Song, the Daleks and the Doctor.
He was in all the stories, the Doctor. When Alec had first asked who he was, Mum had said, “My imaginary friend,” and smiled sadly. And when Johnny had first asked if he was real, Dad had said “If you believe in him, he is.” A line parents often used, Alec knew, but Dad had meant it somehow.
Alec dozed off. Outside, a blue box slid into being…
…and out again.
A man’s voice howled “Bugger!”…
And then it was quiet.
*
Two days later, a Thursday, Alec sat on the playground wall drawing. Christian Miller came up behind him and snatched away his pen.
“I need that,” Alec said.
Christian threw it to the other side of the playground, where it rolled under a dustbin. Then Ben and Claude were there as well, appearing seemingly from nowhere like the stone angels Mum talked about, that moved when you weren’t looking.
“I gotta secret about your mum,” Christian said.
“What’s that?”
“She’s, like, an unfit mother!” Christian said, eyes glinting with malice but probably not understanding the enormity of what he was saying. “My mum was talking to Sharon Mason yesterday. She said loads of things about your mum. That she believes in imaginary friends, that she’s totally crazy. She thinks you and your brother should be taken away from her.”
Alec Pond froze. So the thing he’d once heard his parents whisper about had happened. Aunt Sharon had made her move.
Christian and the other two ran away, the damage done. Alec stayed where he was. Then he started walking home.
*
He burst in on Mum cooking.
“Alec!” she said. She put the bowl down and went to him. “Why aren’t you at school?”
“Is it true about Aunt Sharon?”
Mum looked at him, and a different expression came over her face, one Alec had hardly ever seen: fear. “You don’t want to listen to what those boys are saying…”
“Is it true? Does she think…?” He didn’t want to say the actual words, you’re an unfit mother. Because it would be a lie and it hurt.
“She…” Mum looked at the ground. “She…was at my wedding. She saw things. Things that she didn’t believe in. And she didn’t want to accept that, and she blamed me, yeah?”
Alec was confused. “What things?”
Mum raised a hand to her long red hair and ran her hand through it, and then she said…
“Oh, Alec, sweetheart…we didn’t want to tell you, not until you were older. But you’re old enough now, you both are. And it’s time you knew the truth.”