Fic: The House I Grew Up In (1/er, 10, maybe)

[carmen_lj]

Title: The House I Grew Up In (Part One)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG
Pairing: Ten/Romana
Summary: The Doctor, Romana, a baby and how this was not a good idea.
A/N: This is the Ten/Romana baby!fic that aquired A Plot. And then went Epic and Rambling. This is the first bit. Set some indeterminate time after Doomsday. Not ashamed about this at all though I probably should be, because, currently, this is being Incredibly Good Fun to write.


The House I Grew Up In

Part One

The Doctor was beginning to feel more than a little self-conscious. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Romana sighed. "I don't like these assumptions you're making."

"But it's traditional."

"For humans!" She took a deep breath, realised she sounded a lot angrier than what she was, and took another, much calmer breath. "I think you're far too used to humans, and you do imitate them rather a lot. It's a bit creepy, to be honest."

"Oh." The Doctor frowned and sat down. "Right. So you don't want to use a Loom, and you don't want to carry the foetus yourself. You're not..." He looked up at her. "You're not suggesting that I carry it?"

She shrugged, feigned indifference. "I don't see why not."

"But I don't have anywhere to put it," he said.

"Well, neither do I. Not really. An artificial womb is a perfectly acceptable and safe means of gestating a foetus."

The Doctor bit his lip, and tried to look as though he was thinking through the absurd suggestion with whatever degree of seriousness she'd like him to give it. "Well," he said, "if we're going to use an artificial one, it doesn't really need to be inside anyone, does it? In fact, it's probably safer that it isn't, given that we're not going to have any qualified medical assistance."

"I have done considerable reading," said Romana, frowning. "I think I'm perfectly well informed on what's involved."

"Yes, well, it's still all very new, isn't it? And books are no substitute for good old-fashioned experience," he said reasonably. "We're the last Time Lords."

"That's not why I want to do this," said Romana sharply.

"Of course not," agreed the Doctor.

"Right."

"Good."

"You're just feeling maternal in your middle-age."

"I am not...!" She stopped, and smiled sweetly. "Doctor, I am less than half your age."

"Relatively, I suppose. But I've constructed a careful system of highly intricate and convincing lies so no-one will ever discover my true age again."

"You're one thousand two hundred and sixty three."

"Romana!" His eyes widened. "That's slander."

She closed her eyes a moment. "Doctor, this is very important to me."

"It's important to me to," he said.

She shook her head. "No, it's not. It's just another thing that you can do. Another adventure for you. This is a child we're talking about. More particularly it is going to be our child. I would very much like it if you could take this, well, seriously."

"But I am," he protested.

"Doctor..."

He stood up, and joined her at the console. She watched him as he set the co-ordinates, but didn't recognise the destination. "What we did," he began, "was a-"

"What I did."

"What we did," he insisted. He flicked a switch, sending the ship into flight. "What we did, we did for something greater than our lives, and our civilisation. We chose to make that sacrifice, Romana, and we can't just unmake it."

"I'm not trying to repopulate the species, Doctor. Don't be ridiculous."

He looked at her, and she looked back, unblinking. "After the...the cataclysm, I did some things that, in retrospect, lacked a little judgement here and there."

Romana folded her arms. "That's hardly unusual for you."

"My point, Romana, is that guilt can be very insidious." He turned to her, touched her arm gently, but she stepped away.

"I don't want us to be the last, Doctor. And it is not guilt." She looked at him. "It's not. It's...I want to know that when we're gone there'll be something else here. Something left of the Time Lords."

"We're a dead species."

"Yes," she agreed. "But I'd rather we were dead later than sooner."

"Is that a good enough reason to create a child?"

She shrugged. "The continuation of one's line does seem to be the usual reason."

"Even if it's ultimately futile?"

"I thought you liked impossible?"

He smiled, and nodded. "Alright, Romana, you win: we are going to have a baby."

+++

The Doctor was very good at asking questions; Romana, on the other hand, seemed to have acquired an infuriating ability not to answer them. Her responses varied from, "Shouldn't you be checking on the foetus?" to a long suffering sigh and, "Do we really have to talk about this now?"

That morning he'd found her in the library, searching the Taran history section.

"What're you doing?" he'd asked, and she'd jumped and shot him an accusing look, as though he didn't have every right to be in the library of his own TARDIS and ask her a completely innocuous question about her current activity.

"What're you doing?" she'd demanded. "Are you really so desperate for attention that you have to come looking for me every single hour of the day?"

The Doctor opened his mouth, and then closed it. If she had a point, he certainly wasn't going to concede it out loud. "I have the TARDIS to talk to," he said instead. "She's very understanding."

Romana rolled her eyes, and shoved the book she was holding back on the shelf. The Doctor peered over her shoulder to take a look at it. "It's nothing interesting," she said.

"Then why are you being so evasive?" he asked. "And what's so interesting about Tara?"

"Nothing," she told him. "I just happen to like Tara. Like you happen to like Earth."

"Is that why you were stuck there then?"

"There weren't a lot of options, as I recall, and Tara was close by and civilised enough. It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"Well, you did seem to be enjoying yourself."

"I was making the best of a tragic and somewhat apocalyptic situation," she said, a little defensively. "Besides what were you doing? Gallivanting around the universe, picking up humans and talking far too much, just like you always do."

"Didn't stop you calling for my help."

"Yes, well." She looked away, back to the bookshelves and began to read the titles off, almost hoping he'd just get bored and leave.

There was a very long, very silent pause. "Why didn't you die, Romana?" he asked finally.

She stiffened, suddenly quite afraid of the books.

She walked away, and the Doctor followed. "Romana!"

"Do we really-?" she shouted back.

"Yes!" he interrupted. He caught up with her and blocked her way out of the library. "We do, we really, really do."

"Let me past, Doctor."

"We are having a-"

But she put a finger to his lips, and shook her head slowly. "No. You are not allowed to use the baby as a reason or an excuse for anything about us. Ever."

He took her hand. "You didn't die, and I didn't die, and everyone else did."

"I know," she said, very, very quietly.

"I ran."

"Coward."

"I know." He held her hand in both of his and she wouldn't look at him. "Did you?"

"I was the President," she said fiercely. "How dare you even ask?" She lowered her head, lowered her voice. "I did my duty."

"What happened?" asked the Doctor, as gently as he knew how.

Romana smiled, a sad, lonely smile, and she remembered. "The Presidential TARDIS was a very special sort of ship. I didn't know half of what she could do, and I didn't really care so long as she got me from one place to another without much of a fuss." She tapped the nearest roundel, followed its shape with her fingertips. "After this old thing, even that seemed like a luxury."

He nodded, stayed quiet and waited for her to go on.

"She died, Doctor. But she held herself together long enough to take me to Tara. All those engineering advances, and they only ever used them on one ship. And I didn't know." She looked up at him, her features expressionless, but the Doctor would know better. "I would have insisted; I would have had every single capsule fitted with the same defences. But no, no-one even bothered to tell me. Perhaps they didn't know, perhaps... she was an old ship, very old and very powerful. And I felt her die."

The Doctor said nothing. Instead he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, feeling her two hearts beating and her skin against his own, and it was as cool as his, and it was strange, for a moment, because she was right: he was used to humans. He could hear her breathe and she rested her head against his shoulder. She felt so fragile in his arms, but he knew how untrue that was.

One hand stroked her soft hair and he lifted a strand, examining the colour. "Romana, I think you might be going grey."

She didn't move. "I happen to like this body, Doctor. And I also happen to be very good at not getting myself killed." She sighed. "I just didn't think I'd be quite this good."

"We should go somewhere nice," he said. "Somewhere pretty. With trees and water. I mean, we're going to have to spend a lot of time looking after this baby once it's born, aren't we? And we'll have to teach it how to deal with all sorts of things, and pretty places probably aren't one of those things. Because they're quite nice, usually, and people generally sort of enjoy them rather than deal with them, don't they?"

Romana looked up at him, rather resigned. "You're going to suggest Earth, aren't you?"

He grinned. "That's a wonderful idea, Romana. I'd never have thought of it myself."

"I don't suppose you would have."

"I can see why I keep you around, you know. You have all the best ideas."

He took her hand as they walked to the console room, and tried his very best to be reassuring by not touching the TARDIS console quite so much as usual, and making sure that Romana did not, at least, have an outright aversion to the time and place they were going to.

+++

"It's lovely," Romana said, stepping outside dressed in a flowing blue dress, a long white coat and carrying a frilly parasol.

The Doctor screwed up his nose. "It's the wrong year."

"It's a year, and quite probably a very good one too," she told him, taking his arm and leading him very firmly away from the TARDIS. "We should find a cafe, or a beach."

"But you don't like beaches," he said.

"I have come to appreciate the simpler things. I like beaches."

"Oh." He rubbed his nose. "Well, I don't think we're anywhere near the coast." He took a good look around, noting the trees and the leaves and the very limited amount of sky he could see through the branches. "I don't think we're very near anything at all, in fact."

"We're near trees."

"I do like trees," said the Doctor. "But I was expecting a little more civilisation."

"Trees have civilisation," Romana reminded him. "Admittedly, not for another few million years, but one shouldn't underestimate the impact of early influences. We could be encouraging good Tree-mammalian relationships just by being here."

"Is that why we have to keep the foetus in the TARDIS instead of leaving it in a nice, safe hospital for the next six months?"

Romana grinned. "Naturally."

"So we should talk to it then?"

"No," she said firmly.

They kept walking in comfortable, companionable silence. Twigs cracked beneath their feet and they heard small mammals rustling through the undergrowth. Otherwise it was quiet, peaceful. And very nice indeed.

"You talk to the foetus, don't you?" said Romana.

The Doctor started to pay a great deal of attention to exactly where he was putting his feet, trying to avoid the tiny green plants pushing through the undergrowth. "If by talk, you mean-"

"Talk, Doctor. I mean talk."

"Oh. Oh, talk. Well, in that case, I have been known to take the odd midnight stroll towards the nursery and I do tend to speak to the TARDIS, and the nursery is a part of the TARDIS."

Romana sighed. "That's a human thing too, you know. I read about it, and they talk to theirs all the time."

"Be fair," said the Doctor. "I'm sure lots of alien species talk to their unborn children."

"Name three."

"Well, there's the...the...and then...look, Romana, the point is that they do. Not who they are."

"But you don't know them," she said. "All you know about are humans. And I rather think that you're going to end up treating our child as a human."

"Oh...is that such a terrible thing?"

"It's rather strange." She leaned against his shoulder. "What happened before?"

"Hmm?"

"I know you had a family, Doctor."

He didn't look at her, but said, "Abusing your presidential privileges, were you?"

"I did wonder what the Matrix had to say about you."

"All lies, I'd imagine. Very unreliable that Matrix. Did I ever tell you about the time when its evidence was manipulated to make me look like a genocidal-"

"No," she interrupted. "But I did find out about that, and had new security protocols introduced."

"Oh. Good for you then. Hope you overhauled the legal system too. Outdated, old-fashioned bureaucracy obsessed with the letter rather than the spirit-"

"Doctor, are you trying to change the subject?"

"You were going along with it."

"If you don't want to talk about your other children..."

"It was a very long time ago, Romana. Things were different then, and so was I."

"All right, have it your own way," she conceded. "Do you know, we haven't discussed names?"

"We don't even know what sex it's going to be yet."

Romana frowned. "You mean to say you'd reject a perfectly good name on the grounds that it's not suitable for a boy?"

"Or a girl."

"Well, so long as you're discriminating equally."

"I do try to keep-"

"Shh," hissed Romana, grabbing his arm, and pulling him down by the nearest tree. "Look, d'you see that? Over there." She pointed ahead of them, a little to the left.

"It's probably some poor bird caught in the bush," the Doctor told her, making to stand up, but Romana held him back with her parasol.

"No, no, it was a...I don't know...it looked like a Berati."

"Berati? On Earth?"

She shot him a look. "You are sure that this is Earth?"

"Yes. Pretty sure. Fairly...look, I know Earth. This is Earth."

"Then it really, really shouldn't be here. Not in this century."

"You're sure that's what it was?"

"Pretty sure," she said.

"It's just that your eyes are quite old."

"Doctor, I know a Berati when I see one. And that was a Berati." She reached into his coat pocket.

"Heh," the Doctor protested. "What're you doing?"

"It's empty."

"Yes."

Romana frowned. "You used to be so much better about pockets. What's the point in having them if they're empty?"

"Well...I...they're somewhere to put my hands. To keep them warm. And stop them touching things."

"We need something to knock it out with."

"Your parasol?"

"I don't think they have heads, Doctor. They are plants, after all. Just because they happen to walk about and eat...look, you sure you've got nothing useful?"

He checked his other pocket and pulled out a can of hairspray. "Don't ask," he muttered as he passed it to her.

She read the side of the bottle and gave him a sideways glance. "Got anything else in there?"

"Chewing gum? All minty fresh. We could go back to the TARDIS, cook something up."

"It's quite good at camouflaging itself."

"Scanner?"

"Doctor, I love your ship very much, but she does tend to have one or two, ah, idiosyncrasies. And given that if that thing gets to a populated area it's going to start feeding and then growing and then feeding an awful lot more, it's possibly not the best plan to lose it."

"Right. Right. How about you stay here, keep an eye on it, follow it if it moves, and I go back to the TARDIS to cook something up?"

Romana nodded. "Better. And do try not to get lost."

+++

Her own pockets were far nicer, though not exactly helpful. She had, however, managed to find a pencil and a sketch pad with at least three pieces of blank paper left. The rest were filled with her handwriting: equations, snippets of stories and the occasional frustrated scrawl.

"Next time," she murmured, "I think I'd quite like to have an artist's hands."

She settled herself against the gnarled trunk, neatly arranging her skirt beneath her, and kept one eye on the Berati, the other on a decorative little green weed, peeking out of the twigs and mulch of the forest floor. She began to sketch.

It was relaxing, in an odd sort of a way. She was clearly lacking in talent, but producing even a vague likeness required concentration and careful thought. She preferred writing as an artistic endeavour, but since that was what she used to do to unwind from her presidential duties, she hadn't been able to bring herself to string two sentences together since she'd crashed on Tara.

"That's terrible," someone whispered in her ear.

Romana swatted at the noise with her free hand.

"Ow!" protested the Doctor.

"You shouldn't be so rude."

He sniffed. "That is merely one fascinating characteristic of this regeneration, and anyway, I wasn't being rude: you can't draw."

Romana stuffed the sketchbook and pencil back in her coat pocket. "Did you get what we needed?"

"Of course. Enough ammonium hydroxide to knock out ten Berati."

"Well, let's hope there's just the one. I don't fancy taking on a whole nest in these clothes - this dress is starting to grow on me." She held out her hand. "Let me see."

"Romana, I'm quite capable of making a simple solution." Even so, he gave her the little silver spray bottle, and waited as she unscrewed the cap and took a sniff.

"Oh, well done," she said, screwing up her nose at the smell.

"Thank you. It's a triumph of chemistry."

"If you say so. You did make up more than one, didn't you?"

"Naturally." He dropped onto the ground next to her. "Now, what's our plan of attack?"

Romana considered. "Sneak up and surprise it?"

The Doctor was unimpressed. "Bit simple, isn't it? Bit obvious." He picked up a stick, then another and another and placed them together in a rough diagram. "Now, if this," he said, pointing with yet another stick, "is the Berati, and this is us, and you move round here, whilst I move here, we should be able to surround it and cut off any route of escape."

Romana stared at him. "Surround? Doctor, there are two of us, and there is a very large, very easy to get lost in forest all around us." And with that, she stalked away holding her little silver spray can of ammonium hydroxide in front of her.

"Can you still see it?" hissed the Doctor in her ear, following.

"Oh, yes. It's under the bush. There, you see."

The Doctor did see, and kept his eyes on the dark silhouette as he wound his way round to the other side of the bush. Carefully, he crept up to it.

It moved, and he started spraying wildly. So, apparently, did Romana, and he began to cough. His eyes watered as he backed away, hoping the little dark shape was sufficiently incapacitated. Berati were, after all, a lot more sensitive to that particular solution that Time Lords or even humans.

"Romana!" he called, rubbing his eyes and trying to make out a humanoid shape clad in blue somewhere in the foliage. "Romana, you alright?"

"Absolutely smashing," she called back from the other side of the push. "How's our little friend?"

The Doctor blinked, and tried to ignore the stinging in his eyes. As his vision swam groggily back into focus he found something that was most certainly not native to Earth sitting at his feet and looking far too round, fluffy and harmless to be anything but highly suspicious.

"It's asleep," he said, hearing twigs snap as Romana rounded the bush to join him. "Cute, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," she said, regarding it with an arched eyebrow and a critical eye. "It won't be when it wakes up though, so I suggest we get it back to the TARDIS and back to its home planet as quickly as possible."

The Doctor nodded, and between them they managed to lift the Berati and carry it to the TARDIS. It was a lot heavier than it looked, but since Time Lords were a lot stronger than they looked it wasn't really a problem.

"I wonder how it got here?" mused the Doctor as he fished the key out of his pocket and opened the TARDIS door.

"Maybe someone dumped it? I can't imagine any crew would be too keen to keep it onboard once they found it."

"Must have been a very humanitarian crew," said the Doctor. "Most would just shoot it straight into space."

"I wouldn't have," said Romana very matter-of-factly. "And there you go again, humanitarian."

"Well, well..." The Doctor shuffled into the TARDIS, carefully tilting the Berati before Romana hit it against the door. "Well," he added, sounding as though he'd made a very profound point.

"Should we water it?" asked Romana, as they settled it on the floor.

"I don't think we want to encourage it to wake up. They probably eat Time Lords too."

"Oh." Romana nodded, then took a look at the console. "Where're we heading?"

"Ah, ah, now there's a point. They got spread all through these sectors after humans landed on Perandi VII, but that's hundreds of years away."

"So Perandi VII then?" asked Romana.

"Well, no. They got dumped there by, um, by someone who didn't like them very much."

Romana narrowed her eyes. "You?"

"No!" he exclaimed, eyes wide. "Romana, you wound me."

"Mortally, I hope," she muttered, before looking up and fixing a smile on her face. "Do you have any idea where they're living in this time or not?"

"On the balance," said the Doctor, very carefully and after due consideration, "perhaps not. We could always pop forward a few hundred years and..." he said, tailing off at Romana's glare. "It's just a plant, it'll cope."

"Just?"

"He's not sentient." He gave the Berati an encouraging pat. "You're not sentient, are you, boy? Are you? You wouldn't notice if the nice helpful Time Lords took you back to your own people in ever so slightly the wrong time now, would you?"

"Doctor."

He stood up, managed a vaguely serious expression and accessed the TARDIS databanks on the other side of the console.

"All out-of-date now, of course," said Romana.

"Not so," the Doctor told her. "The Matrix isn't the only repository of all knowledge that was ever created. And if you happen to have the skills, intelligence and charm that I do, then you might be able to access one of them."

Romana sniffed. "Inferior substitute."

"But with the added benefit of having contributors who actually went out and explored, Romana, and not just when they were faced with imminent eradication from the time-lines. Ah, here we go, Berati, native - Humanian era circa. 2103 - to the planet...Helios!" He looked up, triumphant.

Romana set the co-ordinates, and the TARDIS dematerialised. She turned to the Doctor. "Do you know," she said, quite casually, "we haven't even thought about the foetus since I spotted the Berati."

The Doctor's face fell. "Oh."

"I imagine," she continued, "that when we actually have the baby, we won't forget about it quite so easily, will we?"

The Doctor stared at her for a few moments, trying to guess what she was thinking, then he said, "I hope not." He glanced at the console, they'd just entered the Vortex. "No, no, of course not. Don't be so silly. I don't forget about people who travel with me, do I? Not even if they're all small and can't scream or run very quickly."

"The baby won't be able to run at all."

"Oh. Oh....well, I'm sure everything will be just fine, Romana." He nodded, reassured and gave her a pat on the shoulder. "It'll be great, you'll see."

Comments

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

Possibly the most inept parents EVER. I suppose when the Doctor first had children he was still on Gallifrey and had servants or something to remind him about his kids. Oh dear.

"Well...I...they're somewhere to put my hands. To keep them warm. And stop them touching things."

You grabby, oral-fixated fetishist, you.

And, oh, they're so Ten and Romana in this. Yaaaaaay! The dialogue is especially smashing.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

He is fixated one, yes. I only write what I see on the telly and he is touchy, omg! Touchy!

::twirls:: I am glad you like, and that the dialogue sounds in-character and such because it is cheering to write indeed, yes.

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, he is, not you. And he's our hero. Special, that, isn't it?

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Very special. Special like Romana.

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

Only Romana knows how to keep her hands to herself. Usually.

[oltha_heri.livejournal.com]

I like this, very in carachter I think.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Ta very much!

[ikindofrock]

Yay Dromana fic!

Love it.

Especially since Romana seems to have a bit of Romana I about her.


He took her hand as they walked to the console room, and tried his very best to be reassuring by not touching the TARDIS console quite so much as usual, and making sure that Romana did not, at least, have an outright aversion to the time and place they were going to.

And awww poor jealous Tardis! Left angsting while the Doctor repopulates.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Yay Dromana fic!

Roctor! :p

[gwynnega]

Awww, this is lovely! I like your explanation of how Romana survived the Time War...

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Hurrah!

(Considering how much I flailed over making something up for Suriving, that is cheering, yes, thank you.)

[pextheunalive.livejournal.com]

I like the beginning of this, I do. :)

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Ra! Ta muchly!

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

There is no way their plan can possibly go wrong, noes.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

It are a Great Plan, dude!

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

Are they calling the baby The?

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Well, it is a traditional Gallifreyan name, yes.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

This is lots of fun! Ten and Romana are lovely together. Possibly a liability, but lovely. :)

[calapine.livejournal.com]

I think I love them too much, yes.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Glad you liking! :D

[medie]

oh *fantastic*! They really are just...

The college I attended, the librarian and his wife were expecting their first baby. There was a betting pool among the students on who would misplace the baby first. Suspect we could get one going on the Doctor & Romana, make quite the fortune.

But yes, vastly entertaining, so *VERY* them and I suspect this is going to go so very off kilter.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Your icon wins! :D

And ta so much. It's all going to go horribly, horribly wrong, and I'm currently wavering over how awful I want to be. Ahem.

[rachael-random.livejournal.com]

very interesting to read 10/Romana, like it

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Ta very much!

[fyrdrakken]

Awesome. Baby!fic is such inherent fluff it needs to go very dark just to buck the trend, and this has such potential to go Very Wrong Indeed.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Thank ye. Aye, the plan is for Badness (and, apparently, very infrequent updates. Ahem.)