Something About Stars (18/20)

[earlgreytea68]

Title - Something About Stars (18/20)
Author - earlgreytea68 
Rating - General 
Characters - Ten, Rose, Master, OCs
Spoilers - Through the specials.   
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 the kids, they're all mine.)
Summary - Four Time Lords and a Bad Wolf human, gallivanting through time and space. What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Notes -  Huge thanks to Kristin and chicklet73 , who talked through plot points. Special thanks to Kristin for coming up with the title. And even more thanks to jlrpuck  and c73, who so graciously beta'd.

The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck   for my birthday. 

Prologue - 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 - Ch 16

 

Chapter Seventeen

Rose tumbled into the TARDIS and slammed the door behind her.

“Got it?” said Fortuna.

She held up the white-point star and nodded. “Got it.”

“Good. We’re getting out of here.” Fortuna pulled two levers forward and the TARDIS whirled into action.

Rose placed the white-point star on the console, where it gleamed in the light from the central rotor and Fortuna danced around it, piloting.

“Do you think it worked?” Matt asked, looking at it.

“Well, something happened,” said Fortuna, “because Dad’s telling me to meet him on Cunodys.” Fortuna tapped her head and wove around her mother to tap a couple more buttons. “Landing,” she announced, and the TARDIS coasted to a halt shortly thereafter. Fortuna walked over to the door and peeked out. “Well,” she said, and stepped fully outside. “It’s definitely Cunodys.”

Rose looked up into the sky. “What happened to Gallifrey?”

“Paradox,” said Fortuna, also looking up. “We sent it back into the time lock.”

“So where are they, then?” asked Matt.

Fortuna didn’t answer. They stood and looked into the empty sky together for a moment. Then she said, sounding frustrated, “They’re in my head, they really are, they have to be somewhere.”

“What’s that?” asked Rose, suddenly, shading her eyes against the glare of the sun on the snow.

A tiny dot was moving toward them in the sky, growing larger and larger and larger, until it took on the shape of an extremely fancy fighter jet. The jet dipped and twisted playfully through the sky, turned in a couple of graceful loops, and then landed beautifully a few yards away from where they stood in a knot staring.

The door opened, and Brem and Athena tumbled out and found themselves caught up in a joyful round of hugs from Rose and Fortuna, all of them talking over each other and making exclamations. Matt waited patiently, until Athena broke away and raced over to him and flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Look,” she beamed at him. “Same teeth.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“You sound disappointed,” she accused, frowning.

“Well. After you left, I got to thinking that maybe, you know, regeneration might not be so bad. You could have gotten bigger breasts or something—”

“Shut up,” she said, and kissed him again.

He sighed against her. “I love you. I love absolutely everything you are. But I’d love everything you might be in the future, too.”

She giggled with delight.

The Doctor, meanwhile, had clambered out of the jet after the Master, brushing the dust off of his suit. Rose and Fortuna were regarding the Master suspiciously.

“Did you fly the jet?” asked Fortuna, finally.

“No, I did,” answered the Doctor, indignantly.

Rose and Fortuna stared at him.

“Yes, I can pilot a fighter ship,” he said, defensively. “Why does everyone find that so difficult to believe?”

Rose grinned then and launched herself at him, leaping onto him and wrapping her legs around his waist as she kissed him. He staggered backward into the snow behind the front of the jet.

Fortuna shook her head fondly and looked at the Master. “So what are you doing here?” she asked.

“What are you doing here?” he retorted.

“I…” Fortuna looked confused. “Well, I don’t know.”

“Hmm,” said the Master, lifting an eyebrow at her.

“He saved Dad’s life,” Brem explained.

The Master gasped. “No, I didn’t! That is a vicious lie!”

Brem looked at him in surprise. “But I saw you do it.”

Whatever the Master was going to say was cut off by Matt saying to Brem, “Let me listen to your hearts.” He waved his stethoscope about.

Brem stared at him. “Are you serious? I’m fine. Matt…”

“Take a deep breath and hold it,” said Matt. “Exhale. Excellent.” He removed his stethoscope. “You are fine.” He smiled then, eyes crinkling. “Good job,” he said, and held out his hand. “Well done.”

Brem shook it, grinning as well. “Thanks. You, too. Actually, I think you were the ones who saved the day. What did you do?”

“We went back in time and stole the white-point star before they could throw it at Cunodys,” said Fortuna.

“You did what?” yelped the Doctor, having emerged from the snow with Rose.

“We went back in time,” Fortuna began again, patiently.

“Do you know what an enormous paradox that is?” he exclaimed.

“Well—”

“Who told you to do that?” demanded the Doctor.

“Matt,” Fortuna admitted.

“And when did Matt become a Time Lord?”

“Well, he isn’t one, but—”

“It worked, didn’t it?” cut in Matt.

“That is not the point,” said the Doctor. “And, anyway, I’d be quiet if I were you, because I haven’t forgotten about the whole no-knickers thing.” The Doctor indicated Athena.

“I thought I was getting a free pass for that one, for my help with Brem.”

“There are future no-knickers situations that I’m taking into account here,” retorted the Doctor.

“Getting back on-topic,” said Athena, clearing her throat, “is the fact that the paradox worked beautifully and we’re all safe and sound. Which was a better solution than anyone else had been able to come up with. So thank you.” She leaned up and kissed Matt’s cheek.

“You’re very welcome.”

“Alright, it did work,” admitted the Doctor. “And it’s the second time in the span of a few hours you saved my family. So, thanks.” He held out his hand.

Matt shook it. “Does this mean I get a lot of future free passes?”

“Do you think you should press your luck right now?”

“Not particularly.”

“Yeah,” said the Doctor, and turned to Fortuna. “And you, young lady.” He tapped her nose. “Well done, but no more playing with paradoxes, yeah?”

“Yeah. Brem was fooling around with world-ending machines, and I get yelled at for one silly, little paradox,” grumbled Fortuna.

“Don’t worry, Brem’s getting yelled at for fooling around with world-ending machines later.”

“There was no world-ending machine!” protested Brem. “It was low-level sonic resonance!”

“But I didn’t know that, did I?” said the Doctor, knowingly, looking at him.

The fighter ship’s engines roaring to life startled all of them. They jumped and looked at the ship.

The Master stuck his head out of the pilot door and waved cheerfully to the Doctor. “Thanks for the ride,” he called. “See you!” He closed the pilot door, and they watched the ship rise into the sky and take off.

The Doctor sighed. “We should go after him.”

“I don’t understand why he came with you,” said Rose.

The Doctor stuck his hands in his pockets and watched the ship get smaller in the sky. “He saved my life. He saved all our lives. I couldn’t…I owed him this one.”

Rose took one of his hands out of his pocket and squeezed it.

“He’s just going to go out and wreak havoc,” said Brem. “We should really go stop him.”

“Aww, I liked him, in the end,” said Athena. “He was a Gershwin fan.”

The Doctor looked at her in surprise. “The Master? Really? Huh.”

“Can’t you just see him doing jazz hands?” mused Brem.

“Anyway,” the Doctor sighed and looked back at the speck in the sky which was the fighter ship. “I’m sure we’ll meet again. We all have a later to look forward to now. Let’s leave something out there to fill it.” He turned toward the TARDIS and said, “Allons-y.”

***

He took them to New New York, to a restaurant on the top of a building that Matt and Brem seemed to know, and Brem was teaching Matt how to blow smoke circles with the special New Earth cigars, and Matt was abysmal at it, and the Doctor sat at the head of the table and watched his children and thought of Gallifrey.

Rose sat next to him and said, “Songs ending around you. It was their songs. The Time Lords.”

“Yes,” he agreed, briefly.

She paused. “What happened on Gallifrey?”

“Wellllll.” He considered. “I babbled. A lot.”

“Shocking.”

“I was trying to buy time, since I didn’t have a plan. Then Brem showed up, and I really thought he was going to kill all of us, which I think Brem is never going to let me forget. Oh, and then Athena tried to kill herself.”

“What?” said Rose, in surprise.

“Not really, she just…She figured out how to break the signal, and she was going to do it, to save the universe, even though she knew what it would mean for her. That’s how I raised these kids, Rose.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“I say that like it’s a terrifying thing.”

“Well, kids are terrifying.”

“How are you so philosophical about all of this?” he asked, gazing at her in amazement.

“I wasn’t on Gallifrey when it was all ending,” she said, honestly. “Although, I was the one who stole the white-point star.”

“You stole the white-point star?”

“I did. I left a trail of terrified Time Lords and ‘Bad Wolf’s in my wake.”

The Doctor stared at her, a small smile playing around in his lips. “You are the most remarkable creature I have ever known.”

“Awwww, that’s what I tell people about you,” said Rose, and leaned forward, smiling, to kiss him. She pulled back a bit and brushed at his fringe. “You did the right thing,” she whispered, “using the Moment. You did. Never doubt that.”

The Doctor smiled at her, and went to say something else but got distracted by the song. Hoy Me Voy. “What the…” He turned his head, looking at Brem, who had pulled Fortuna away from the table to dance with him. “Brem,” he said.

Brem looked at him innocently. “What?” he said.

The Doctor lifted an eyebrow.

“Okay, maybe I messed with the timelines the tiniest bit to get this played. But come on. For a good cause, right?”

Rose laughed and said, “Dance with me, Doctor.”

So he did.

***

“Home,” said Matt, stepping out of the TARDIS and glancing at the blood stain on his hardwood floor. So much had happened, it felt like it had been years since he’d been cuddling with Athena on the couch, but their cups of tea were still sitting on the coffee table, cold and barely touched.

Athena stepped out next to him and took his hand and said, “Yes.”

Brem stepped out and looked at the blood stain.

“Don’t look at it,” Matt told him.

Brem cleared his throat. “Sorry. I made a mess, didn’t I?”

“Eh.” Matt shrugged. “In the end it was your sister’s fault, wasn’t it? Her and all her tentacled boyfriends.”

“Ah, Matt, would you have me any other way?” asked Athena, playfully, winking at him.

“We should clean it,” remarked Brem.

“What does it matter?” said Athena. “You should leave it.”

“Leave the blood on the floor?”

“Well, it’s not like you’ll be spending much time here.”

“I won’t?” said Matt.

“Oh.” Athena looked at him. “Will you?”

“I’m going to hide in my TARDIS,” decided Brem, and disappeared into it.

Athena and Matt looked at each other. “I thought…you know…”

“Yes. No. I know, I…”

Rose, oblivious to the conversation she was interrupting, stepped out of the TARDIS and looked at the blood stain and said, “That has to be cleaned immediately. Where do you keep your cleaning supplies, Matt?”

Matt looked at Athena for a moment, then turned to lead Rose into his kitchen, Athena trailing behind him.

They were, all three of them, on their hands and knees scrubbing at the blood stain when Brem emerged from his TARDIS. He paused and then carefully stepped around them, re-entering his parents’ TARDIS, where his father and Fortuna were tinkering together on the console.

“You forced her through a paradox, Fortuna,” his father was saying in exasperation, “of course the jilxci lever’s sticking.”

“One has nothing to do with the other,” Fortuna pointed out, reasonably. She rolled her eyes at Brem.

“The jilxci lever sticks because you don’t keep it properly oiled,” said Brem, leaning against the console and watching his father, who lifted his head and briefly glared at him.

“What’s everyone doing?” Fortuna asked, pulling up her argyle socks.

“They’re, er, cleaning the, er, blood.” Brem scratched the back of his neck. “I really didn’t want to…”

“Yeah,” said Fortuna, and then glanced at her father. “But I think I’ll help them.”

Brem watched her leave, and then watched his father tug at the stuck jilxci lever.

“Why’d you think I’d use the Moment?” he asked.

His father shook his head at the lever, not looking at him. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters,” said Brem. “The fact that, even for a second, you would think that I would…”

The Doctor sighed and let go of the lever to tangle his hands in his hair. Then he walked over to the captain’s chair and looked at the gently pulsing central column of his TARDIS. “It was what you said. ‘Brem Tyler is his father’s son.’” He looked at Brem then. “Your father would have used the Moment.”

“My father had the Moment,” Brem pointed out. “You didn’t use it.”

“Not this time.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. When I used that line. I meant I…I meant I would do anything to protect the people I love, that’s what I meant. Do you really think, when we think of you, that we think of Gallifrey? Really? It never even crossed my mind you would take it that way. We think of love, when we think of you. And the amazing thing is: That’s what they think of when they think of you, too. The Time Lords. Athena told me, that to them your greatest weakness was how much you love. And I know you think that about yourself, too. You told me that, once, that you let yourself have all of us even though you knew it was a bad idea. I know you think we make you vulnerable, and maybe we do. Maybe there will always be somebody out there who will try to make you choose between the universe and one of us. But the truth is, Dad, we don’t make you vulnerable, and we never have. We make you stronger. Tell me you would have gotten off of Gallifrey this time, intact, without us. Because you and I both know you wouldn’t have. It took every single one of us to get out of there alive, Matt included. And I don’t tell you this to be…I mean I don’t mean to be…I just meant to say that…I would never.” Brem said it with flat finality. “Do you hear me? I would never. And I need you to know that.”

The Doctor stared at him for a long moment. “Where did you come from?” he asked, finally.

Brem smiled. “It’s like Theenie says. Sometimes you are very, very, very lucky.”

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