earlgreytea68 | While She Is Sleeping (1/1)

Title - While She Is Sleeping (1/1)
Author -

earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, OCs
Spoilers - Through the end of S2.
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 - The family tries to fall back into some sort of routine.
Author's Notes - Moving beyond "Chaos Theory." Thanks to the usual entourage:

jlrpuck for the beta;

bouncy_castle79 for the read-through; and Kristin for the idea.

It happens to Brem very, very suddenly: He wants to see his mother. The TARDIS is fairly quiet. Mum is sleeping. Dad is reading, slowly, his hand tangled in his hair. Theenie and Fort are both on the floor, ostensibly playing with dolls. Theenie is pulling one into a new dress, but Fort is just banging one on the floor. Fort hasn’t grasped this whole playing-with-dolls thing yet.

Brem looks around him. He knows he is not supposed to bother Mum when she is sleeping. He doesn’t understand why she has to sleep for so long but if she doesn’t she gets grouchy and snaps at them and then Dad says that he thinks somebody needs a nap and then he gets yelled at and it’s all generally very bad, but he wants to see his mother. And he knows Dad will tell him he can’t if he asks.

Carefully, so as not to attract attention, Brem stands. He stretches, very casually, and then yawns. And then he considers. He just wants to see her. But that’s silly. It’s absurd. He can’t just go to Mum and say that he had to see her. That’s so…No. He grabs his book. He wants to see her, he decides, so that he can show her this diagram of the molecular structure of selenium. Yes.

His father doesn’t even look up as he leaves the library, although Theenie and Fort do, briefly, before deciding their dolls are more interesting.

Clutching his book, he walks down the hallway to the room where Mum’s sleeping. He’s going to be very blasé about this, he decides. Mum, he will say. I wanted to show you the structure of selenium. And, by the way, it’s nice to know that you’re still here. Yes. Exactly.

He tries the doorknob, and finds it locked, and frowns. Locking him out? Why would she lock him out? He tries it again. Surely the TARDIS will open it for him. He drops the book, the better to grab the knob with both hands and jiggle it. This has no effect. He fishes for his sonic screwdriver and tries it just in case, but he is not allowed the unlock-door setting and he has never been more furious with his father for this.

And now he can feel the panic rising inside of him, and he tries to stay calm, there is no reason to panic, except that he can’t get to his mother and why can’t he get to her and there would be no reason to lock the door unless she is no longer behind it and he throws himself at the door, kicking it ineffectively with his feet and shouting for his mother and why won’t she open the door and—

“Brem,” Dad says, catching him and trying to stop him but he flails against him.

“The door is locked!” he cries, and he realizes he is sobbing and he can’t see and he wipes at his eyes and throws himself back at the door, furious.

“Of course it is,” Dad says, as if this is nothing to be alarmed about it, and pulls him away from the door. “Your mum is sleeping. What are you doing?”

“I have to see her,” he protests, struggling, because Dad has his hands clamped around him now in an iron grip.

“Why?”

“I have to tell her the molecular structure of selenium,” he hears himself wail, and it would be nice if he could be more dignified about this but why won’t anyone let him see Mum?

“The…What? Brem, that can wait—”

“It can’t!” he shouts, gasping for air around his sobs. “It can’t! What if she’s not there?”

Dad stills. He feels it. Stillness in his head. “Brem.” He says his name so softly, in that way he has sometimes that invites everyone to pretend that if you just burrowed against him it would all be fine but that isn’t how things work and Brem knows that very well.

“What if she’s not there? Is that why you won’t let me in? Is she not there?”

“Is Mummy gone again?” asks Theenie, and now Fort breaks into sobs at the idea.

“Stop it,” Dad says, sharply. “Mummy’s there. She’s just behind the door. She hasn’t gone anywhere.”

“How do you know?” demands Brem. “She could have fallen! She could have fallen through a rift! A hole we missed! What if she’s disappeared?”

“Brem, she’s here—”

“How do you know?” Brem shouts at him, and then suddenly he is too exhausted to fight anymore. He wants his mother. And he can hear Theenie and Fort sobbing the same thing, complaining that they want Mum, and Brem droops against his father, snuffling into his coat, completely ashamed of himself, and none of this would have happened if he could just see Mum.

“You’re right,” Dad says, abruptly, and Brem lifts his head up, now terrified because he can hear terror in his father’s voice. “I don’t know.” He stands quickly, sonic screwdriver out, and he zaps open the door in one grim, efficient motion.

Brem darts through it as soon as it opens and leaps onto the bed and Mum is there and she stirs as he lands on top of her and he doesn’t waste time in curling against the front of her, which is the prime cuddle spot and if he doesn’t grab it immediately he knows his sisters will. He realizes he’s still sniffling, and wipes tears away with Mum’s T-shirt, and feels the rest of the family settling around them, Fort and Theenie still half-heartedly sobbing.

Mum is stirring, slowly. “What…?” she mumbles, sleepily.

He lifts his head. “I wanted to tell you about selenium,” he says, trying to sound composed, but he ruins it by sniffling and buries his head against her.

She cuddles him, and he is so relieved.

“Why is everyone crying?” she asks, sounding bewildered. “What did you do to them?” he hears her ask Dad.

“Nothing,” Dad answers, sounding exhausted. “You can’t lock that door on us anymore, Rose.”

There is a moment of silence, and then Mum whispers in his ear, just for him, “I’m not going to disappear on you, Brem. I’m never going to leave you again.”

“No offense, Mum,” he says, lifting his head to look up at her. “But you didn’t want to leave me the first time.”

She smoothes his hair, the way she does, and says, “I know. Oh, I know.”

He rests his head back against her. She shifts, and he can feel her making room for Theenie and Fort in her arms, and then she says, “Tell me about selenium, Brem.”

And he does.

From that point on, Rose does not lock the bedroom door when she sleeps. The end result of this is that she seldom sleeps more than a few hours at a time before waking to at least one of her children in bed with her, either burrowing against her and reading a book or tinkering or playing with a doll, depending on who it might be. Once or twice she wakes to the Doctor, laying next to her, head propped on his hand, watching her. When she wakes, he clears his throat and makes up an excuse for him to be there, but she knows he suffers from the same impulse as the kids, the need to just be near her, make sure she is still there. And who is she to complain about that?

Except that she is surviving on naps, snatches of sleep, a few hours here, a few hours there, and after a month or so it begins to wear thin. She longs for six solid hours—just six. She’s not asking for much: not eight, certainly not the luxury of ten. Just six hours, uninterrupted, just so she can sleep.

She tells the Doctor this, and he nods and says, “Well, humans need long stretches of uninterrupted sleep. You need to get into REM—the state, not the musical group. It’s the way your biology is. Silly, that. Gives you such laughably short life spans, and then makes you sleep for half of them. But your biology also gave you those clever little brains that thought up edible ball bearing and Arrested Development. Again, not the musical group, the show. Although the musical group isn’t bad, either. Still.” He grins at her. “You’re amazing.”

She’s not sure if he means her or humans in general, but at any rate he’s missed the point. “That’s great, but, Doctor, when have I had any uninterrupted sleep since I’ve been back?”

“What are you talking about?” he protests. “You sleep all the time!”

“For how long, before being woken up—”

“Oi! We don’t wake you up! You…wake…yourself…up…” He says it the way he always says things that he knows sound daft, with false, quickly failing bluster.

She looks at him. “Six hours,” she says. “Can you just get me six hours? Where you keep the kids occupied? For six hours?”

“Of course,” he says. “Of course.” He looks back to the controls, moving a dial repeatedly, absently, and she watches, and then he turns back, and his brown eyes are very wide and very full and look very much like Brem’s so frequently do these days. “We’ll get better at this,” he promises. “We’ll stop being—I mean, we’ll know you’re—We’ll get better.”

She steps into his arms and speaks into his shoulder. “I know you just want to be near me. And it wouldn’t be so bad if any of you slept ever, at all. But I…I just really need to get some sleep, Doctor.”

So he takes the kids to Thhhhhhhhhhmyr, which is always a big hit with them. They do not want to leave her in the TARDIS. Well, Brem and Athena won’t. They fuss and whine and ask her a million times why she doesn’t come along, and she promises a million times that she will be there when they get back, she absolutely promises. Fortuna does not suffer from any of these misgivings. Fortuna would follow her father anywhere he wanted to take her. Fortuna exists in the cocoon of a world where her mother has always existed, where her father plays the role of the beloved yet missing parent. And Fortuna waves good-bye to her, all bouncy excitement at the visit to this planet of sweets, while the Doctor has to physically drag Brem and Athena away and they watch her the whole time, until they round the corner, and she does not envy him the day he is going to have trying to keep them occupied for six whole hours.

She goes back to her bedroom and cuddles into her bed and sighs in relief. It is so blessedly quiet.

It is so unbearably quiet.

She cannot sleep, at all, not a wink. It is too quiet. It reminds her of Pete’s World, all that quiet, everywhere, all around, the absence of the giggling and the fighting and the babbling, when she had thought she would never see her children ever again and she had lain awake night after night trying to remember, word for word, things they had once said to her. She lays awake now, staring at the ceiling, and realizes that the TARDIS knew this about her. The TARDIS could have soundproofed the room. She’s fairly certain the TARDIS has soundproofed the room on some occasions; at least, she hopes she has. But the room is never soundproofed now. Even when the family is not in the room with her, she can always hear them, dully, distantly, wherever they happen to be. The TARDIS knows she needs that, needs the sound of them, nearby, to sleep, as surely as they need to have their eyes on her while she is sleeping.

Rose gets up and walks out into the control room and wonders how much time has gone by. How long is six hours anyway? She worries at a cuticle, and waits, and when they arrive home, Brem and Athena rush to her immediately, and they are full of stories about their day, and of how she really, really, really should have come with them, but they have brought back her favorite sweets, and she does like them, right? And she assures them that she loves them, and they retreat to the library.

“Did you sleep well?” the Doctor asks her.

And she smiles and shakes her head. “Not really, no.”

The Doctor’s face falls. “But…”

“It’s okay,” she assures him, settling on the couch with Brem and Athena and Fortuna, all of whom keep telling stories. A lot has happened in their six hours away, and she lays down, while they babble at her, and she lets their voices wash over her.

And she sleeps.

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