Doctor Who fanfic: The Children’s Story (4/9)

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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.

The Children’s Story
4. World In A Box

Mum reached him first.

“Doctor!” she screamed, and crushed him into a hug. “Doctor! These are my boys!”

The Doctor hugged her back, grinning widly and then grabbing Dad and drawing him in too. “Amy! Rory! How brilliant is this! And look!” He let them go and turned to Alec and Johnny. “Look! Little Rorys! Tiny little- aw, this is fantastic!” He hugged them too. “Just wonderful! I love it when this happens, I love it!” He let them go. “By the way, you’re all in danger.”

The celebration stopped.

“Doctor.” Dad said wearily.

“What is it?” Mum demanded, reaching an arm out to him. “Doctor! What kind of danger?”

“Oh, not instant danger,” the Doctor said. “No, no, no, more like possible danger. No, wait-” He thought things over. “Perfectly safe danger. Shall we go inside?” And he strolled up the pathway like it was his own. Mum and Dad watched him, hands clasped-

“Doctor!” Mum said.

The Doctor turned around. “What?”

Mum gestured to Alec and Johnny. “Doctor. This is Alec and this is Johnny. Well, John. These are our children.”

“Oh,” the Doctor said. “Oh. Good names.”

“Yeah.” Mum said.

“Yeah.” the Doctor said.

They went inside.

*

They sat at the dinner table and the Doctor helped himself to the lasagne.

“Amy! You cook?”

“I like making unusual food,” Mum said. “Wonder where that came from.”

The Doctor grinned. “So! What are you two up to now?”

“Doctor,” Dad said, “shouldn’t we talk about, you know, the danger?”

“Oh, it can wait. I just met you again! I’ve been trying to get here for ages, might be something a bit wrong with the TARDIS, old girl’s been through a lot lately…” He trailed off. “What do you do now, Mr Pond?”

Dad frowned, but answered. “Head nurse at Leadworth general.”

“Excellent! Amy?”

“I have a charity,” Mum said, with a proud smile despite her uneasiness. “We send books out to children in poor countries, teach them to read. I set it up myself…”

“What’s it called?”

“The Fairytale Foundation.”

The Doctor gave a smile.

“The danger,” Mum said pointedly.

“Oh, all right,” the Doctor said. “There’s a man who’s vowed to hunt down all my friends and kill them.”

Johnny froze in the act of chewing his food, and Mum and Dad stared, appalled.

“That’s really serious!” Dad yelled. “Damn you, you’re so casual about this sort of thing!”

The Doctor barely reacted to Dad’s anger, just looked at them all. “Been in touch with everyone I can find. Martha, Mickey, Sarah, Jo, Jack- not that it matters to him- Liz, Tegan…” Alec and Johnny stared open-mouthed as he rettled off a huge list of names. “I left you two until last. Well, you’re sort of…” But he didn’t finish the sentence. Instead he turned to Alec and Johnny.

“You’ve got Rory’s eyes, Alec! And Johnny has Amy’s eyes and a massive nose! Isn’t human reproduction brilliant?”

“What were you going to say just now?” Alec asked, but the Doctor ignored that and said excitedly, “Come and see the TARDIS! I bet your mum and dad told you everything, but it’s not like seeing it! Come on!”

“We thought you were a story,” Johnny said, still in total awe.

“Until about a week ago,” Alec added.

“Oh,” said the Doctor. He looked at Mum and Dad curiously, and Mum said, “We’ll explain why later. They know the truth now.”

The Doctor frowned, just a bit.

“Go and see the TARDIS,” Mum said.

“Yes!” Johnny squeaked excitedly. “I want to see the TARDIS!”

“Come along,” the Doctor said.

*

As they crossed the garden Alec worried about his parents. Right now Mum was probably filling Dad in on the secret diary Alec had now read, and both would be going over the danger in their minds, wondering what the Doctor had brought crashing down…

The Doctor flung open the doors of the police box. Alec and Johnny peered in, not daring to actually go inside just yet, and even though they knew what to expect, it dazzled them.

“It is bigger on the inside!” Johnny yelled. And out of instinct he turned and yelled, “Mummy!” But she was, of course, not there, and Alec suddenly felt oddly nervous, left alone with this superbeing. He took Johnny’s hand.

“Well?” the Doctor said. “Get on in!”

They did.

Mum had talked about it so much. A world in a box, she said. And Dad had talked of oranges and greens, staircases that led to great ceilings, pools of water lit by lights…

Johnny squealed loudly and ran to the central console. Alec stayed rooted to the spot, taking it all in- and Dad walked through the door behind him.

“Johnny!” he yelled. “Don’t touch anything!”

Johnny jumped back in surprise, and the Doctor picked him up and handed him over to Dad, who was hurrying two steps at a time up the stairs.

“Why the shouting, Mr Pond?” he asked, although he sounded like he knew the answer.

“What if he’d touched something?” Dad asked, putting Johnny down. “Doctor, he could hit one button on this thing and be…and be blown into World War Four! You know that! You shouldn’t let them near it!”

“I was watching,” the Doctor said, and Alec was surprised because for some reason he’d expected him to yell. “Where’s your missus?”

Alec took Johnny’s hand again and drifted into the corner, looking at things, pretending he wasn’t listening.

“Thought I was being overprotective,” Dad said.

“Rory,” the Doctor said, more thoughfully than anything, “don’t you trust me?”

“With my life,” said Dad. “But not with my children.”

“Fair enough.”

Mum came through the door. Alec saw his father hurriedly hide what might have been a look of triumph. “Amy!” he said.

“Everything okay in here?” she asked, in a deceptively light tone.

“Fine,” the Doctor said. And things were quiet for a couple of seconds, and he twiddled a lever on the console. “So! Where would you like to go?”

“We’re not going anywhere!” said Dad, and Mum looked…sad…for just a moment before she nodded. Then she checked to be sure Alec and John weren’t listening, even though Alec was. “Doctor,” she said firmly. “perhaps now you might want to tell us about this man who wants to kill all your friends?”

“Oh yeah,” said the Doctor. “Bloke called Peter. Don’t know his last name, never thought to ask. Wants revenge on me…”

“And your friends,” Dad said.

“Yep. He’s one of those men who…” He finished there. “Anyway. A empty threat. No-one’s been hurt, killed or anything of the sort, he’s not from your era, and he has no technology or weapons of any kind.”

Mum frowned. “Still sounds like a threat.”

“We have children,” Dad said, in a voice so low Alec hardly heard.

“And they will be fine,” the Doctor said firmly.

“What did you do?” Mum asked. “To make this bloke hate you?”

“I took his girlfriend in the TARDIS, and she died.”

There was a long silence. Johnny climbed up on a chair.

“You did what?” Dad finally said.

“She died,” the Doctor said. “Angela. Lovely girl. Barely got to know her.” He trailed off. “She made one mistake, got too close to the monster. And she had a boyfriend, you see, he seemed to really love her, and he was there when she died…saw it happen.”

Mum and Dad were silent, touching hands, and Alec thought they were thinking of long-ago events.

“He was so angry,” the Doctor said. “It was her who wanted to come with me, she wanted the adventure and he was the careful one. And one misstep, one change of heart, one turning back to save someone and she was dead.”

Mum and Dad looked at each other. Alec didn’t understand the look. He cleared his throat to let them know he was listening.

“Knew you were listening,” the Doctor said. He got up and went to him, picking up Johnny along the way. “He told me I was going to suffer the way he suffered. Threw grief and threw cliches at me.”

“And when was this?” asked Dad

“It was far off in the future, Rory, 2080. And you’re…well…not to upset you or anything, but you’ll probably be dead by then. And Peter can’t leave his own time. He’s not me. You’re safe, you’re always gonna be safe.”

Mum stared at him thoughtfully and changed the subject.

“How’s River?” she asked.

“River is River,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “It’s been interesting times.”

There was silence.

“I need the toilet,” Johnny said.

Dad got up from where he sat. “Come on, then.” He took Johnny’s hand, and looked expectantly at Alec. And at Mum, and then at the Doctor. “Doctor, we can’t come with you.”

“No,” said Mum. “No.” She said it as if her mind was made up, and she took Alec’s hand, but he was too old for that and pulled it away.

The Doctor smiled sadly.