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earlgreytea68) wrote2009-04-30 10:25 pm
Athena's First Date -- Commentary
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jellybean728 requested "Athena's First Date."
Athena, coming into the TARDIS, paused in the empty control room. She had not expected it to be empty, and she was very impressed with her father. Smiling, she headed through the TARDIS, which helpfully moved the door to her father’s study to immediately off the control room.
The Doctor was trying very hard here. Rose had told him to give Athena space, and he really was trying. The Doctor is actually a far more reasonable father than Athena often gives him credit for. But Athena is a hormonal teenage girl, after all.
The study was a newer room on the TARDIS, and not one her father used very often--usually only if she and Fortuna were monopolizing the library with a movie her father did not wish to subject himself to, and then he would retreat to his study to tinker in peace, as he called it. But Athena was well aware her father was an extremely social creature who hated quiet and alone time, and, despite the sulk he would sometimes throw for show, he was almost always to be found near one member of the family, even if they were not engaged in active conversation. Athena thought there must be something about having been the only Time Lord in the universe that made proximity to others necessary, as Fortuna suffered from the same compulsion.
Athena has never been alone, ever. This means that she is completely incapable of imagining how it was for her father and her sister. She understands it was terrible and they found it traumatic, but she only understands it in an abstract way, which is why she can think about it in a way that sounds so casual.
Athena knocked on the door, and her father’s voice called, “It’s open!”
She swung the door open, and he looked up from where he was kicked back in the chair behind the desk, Converse-clad feet up on the desk, enormous Gallifreyan book on his lap, hand absently tangled in his hair. He lifted his eyebrows when he saw her and said, “You’re home.”
“Yes.” She folded her arms and leaned against the doorjamb. “And you waited up.”
He looked affronted. “I did not ‘wait up!’ It’s just that I don’t sleep! So it always seems like I’m waiting up! Even when I’m not!”
The Doctor has a bit of a point. But oh, yes, you’d better believe he was waiting up.
Athena smiled at him. “D’you want to get a cuppa?” she asked.
In the drabble that preceded this fic, Rose basically says that Athena is a great deal like her. And I think it shows here, in Athena’s gesture toward her father. Rose has always been known as a character with great compassion, and I think Athena, for all her rebellious edges, is the same way.
His face lit up, and Athena wondered if he’d really thought, as her mother had warned her, that she would never speak to him again now that she had started talking to other male creatures. Boys were really so silly, even nine-hundred-year-old ones. “Yes! Absolutement!” He dropped his feet to the ground and stood up, dropping his book negligently on his desk and walking out into the hallway with her.
Of course, Athena does have the insight to ask her father to have a cuppa with her because Rose tells her she ought to.
“Where’s Mum? Sleeping?” asked Athena, as they walked to the kitchen together.
“Yes,” he answered.
“And where are the others?”
He looked surprised. “I dunno. Around, somewhere. You haven’t seen them?”
She shook her head, walking over to fill the kettle with water. “Came to find you first.”
“Why me first?”
He sounded suspicious. She looked at him as she set the kettle on. “I thought you might want to hear about my evening.”
“Why would I have to hear about your evening? What did he do to you?”
“Dad.” She huffed in a bit of exasperation and sat down at the table. “Nothing. It was a lovely evening. I thought you might want to hear about it.”
I think the Doctor suspects he may have been a bit unreasonable earlier in the evening, and so he can’t quite comprehend how nice to him Athena is being.
He still looked wary, but he sat opposite her. He pulled at his earlobe, and then he said, “Where did he take you?”
“To this nice little restaurant. I had grilled K.J.D., and it was delicious. And he was a perfect gentleman, the entire time.”
What’s a K.J.D.? Well, I suppose it’s like a BLT, only alien.
“Yeah? Was he nice?”
“Very nice. Very sweet. Very polite. Funny.”
“Really? Good.”
Athena smiled at him as the kettle clicked. “Ah, say it like you mean it.”
“I do mean it,” he protested, as she stood and commenced to preparing their cups of tea. “Surely you know I never want you to have an evening that’s anything other than amazing.”
I must say this rather kills me. The Doctor is not really worried that Athena will fall in love. The Doctor is mostly worried Athena will fall in love and have her heart broken. The Doctor has always wanted to keep his children blissfully happy, protected from how harsh the universe is. And I think that surprises Athena, who did not realize this. I don’t think she thought her father wanted her to have a terrible time, but I think she thought he would rather she have an indifferent sort of time.
Athena concentrated for a moment on his cup of tea, before turning and presenting it to him and then saying, sincerely, “Thank you.”
He tipped the corner of his mouth up at her in a smile. “I’m glad you had a good time tonight, Theenie. I am. I’m glad he turned out to be lovely.”
Athena smiled back. “Welllll, let’s not go overboard.” She retrieved her own cup of tea and sat opposite her dad again. “I’m not going to marry him or anything. But he was nice. It was nice. Thank you for letting me go.”
Her father looked at her for a second, then sighed heavily and shook his head a bit.
“What?” she asked, alarmed.
He propped his head on his fist and chuckled. “Nothing. It’s just…You’re so much like your mother. I should keep you locked in this TARDIS for the good of the general young male population out there, rather than worrying about you.”
Athena laughed. “Good. Maybe you’ll remember that the next time a boy asks me out and not take such a huge fit about it.”
The Doctor considered, then concluded, “Probably not.”
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Thank you, I really enjoyed this.
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