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, and mentions of River
Summary: Alec William Pond is about to discover that the bedtime stories his parents told so well were true.
The Children’s Story
7.Someone Of Mine
Alec realised that River, the Doctor’s wife, the most powerful woman in the galaxy, had never seemed quite real either. How could she? She had been in the stories, but there were no photographs of her. And the idea of sacrificing a woman who wasn’t real…
Well, he could never do that, because she was real, as real as the Doctor was, surely.
“Doctor, what do we do?” Dad asked, breathing heavily, panicking.
“Well, River…” the Doctor said, and trailed off. “She can’t die, not here, not now. Her death is set in time. Unchangable. Probably.”
“What are you saying?” Dad asked. Aunt Sharon was sitting off to the side, her face a mask of horror, not joining in. “Doctor, we can’t sacrifice anyone, but we can’t let Amy die! What do we do? What do I do?”
The Doctor said nothing.
“Doctor,” Dad said, and he was crying, “tell me we’re going to save her.” Something in him seemed to be cracking. “Doctor, THIS IS MY FAMILY! WE WERE WHOLE AND COMPLETE, AND THEN YOU CAME AND-”
“I know,” said the Doctor. “I know.”
That made Dad lower his voice, but just a bit. “That man had a point when he said you meddled! You get into people, you make them heroes and something, somewhere kills them! And Amy pushed me onto that transmat-”
“Rory Williams-Pond!” the Doctor shouted back, suddenly snapping back into action. “Do you love your wife?”
“YES!” Dad shouted back, and Alec just let them get on with it, he suspected they needed to.
“Did you always love her, even when she hurt you?!”
“YES!”
“Did you wait two thousand years guarding her lifeless form as she slept in a prison box?!” And the Doctor looked at Alec.
“YES!” roared Dad, and Alec gawped.
“Did you drag that girl in that box out of fires and out of floods, risking your own life and not minding?”
“YES!”
“THAT IS WHY SHE PUSHED YOU!” the Doctor shouted back. “She won’t die! No-one will! Everybody SHUT UP!”
Aunt Sharon finally snapped and ran for the door. She dropped the diary as she lunged away, and it hit the ground. The Doctor clicked his fingers to lock the TARDIS.
“Sorry, Sharon, none of us are going anywhere.”
Alec left his dad’s arms, ran forward and grabbed the diary. And then ran back to his dad, his head still reeling from the most recent revelation.
“Let me out!” Sharon screamed. “This is- this is kidnapping!”
“Yeah, I do that,” the Doctor said. “Sharon! If you ever cared about your niece- and you once left her alone in a big house on a dark night- you’ll stay right here and help us save her!”
Sharon opened her mouth, closed it, and sank to the ground with her back against the doors. For a minute Alec thought she was going to scream and shout, but she spoke softly instead.
“Once,” she said. “I left her alone there once.”
“The night I arrived, the night I met her. Funny,” said the Doctor, “but it could be said that the reason we’re all here is that you left her alone there, just once.”
The screen beeped. HURRY UP, DECIDE, it said.
“Right,” Dad said fiercely. “I’ll go, he can have me-”
“NO!” screamed Johnny. He was too young to really grasp the situation, Alec knew, he was just clinging desperately to the parent who was there. “NO! NO! NO!”
“I won’t go,” said Dad, clinging back. “No, no, I won’t, for you…”
It was then that Alec had an idea, a reckless and stupid idea.
He looked down at the diary, he looked at his dad and his brother- and forcing himself not to think, he walked up to the Doctor. As Dad tried to comfort Johnny, Alec whispered in the Doctor’s ear.
“Oh,” said the Doctor.
“Get Dad and Johnny out of here,” Alec whispered.
Dad looked up. “Alec! What are you-”
The Doctor seemed to make a split decision. “Rory! Johnny!” he said, turning around. “Sharon! I need you to go down the corridor, split up, and look in the two rooms down there! Find me a keyboard, wires, a skateboard, a pair of glasses and a clock! Alec, stay here and help me! Go! Go!”
“What are we doing?” Dad shouted, getting to his feet.
“We’re going to save your wife! Go!”
Two of them tore down the corridor, but Aunt Sharon remained, sitting where she was, barely registering them at all.
“Once,” she said.
The Doctor sighed, opened a panel on the console and took out a cup of tea. He handed it to her. Aunt Sharon looked at him like he had two heads.
“What’s this?”
“Tea. For you. You need something to calm you down, I reckon.”
“Is it poisoned?”
“Don’t be stupid! What do you think I am?”
“I saw what you are,” Aunt Sharon said. “In your mind, all that time ago. I saw whole worlds falling down, I saw the universe reborn, I saw children you lost and people you loved dying! I saw more than Amy ever saw, didn’t I?”
“Maybe,” said the Doctor, and turned back to Alec.
“I won’t let you get hurt. I know how I can end this. Don’t worry.”
Alec just swallowed and looked to the ceiling. “Peter?”
“Peter!” the Doctor yelled. “I have him!”
“Have who?” came the voice from the ceiling.
“Someone of mine,” the Doctor said.
“I’m his son,” said Alec. “I’m Amy and the Doctor’s son.”