A/N: It's been a rather long while since I've wandered into the world of fanfiction. I'd like to have a great reason for it and say that Real Life took a baseball bat to me and disallowed any form of creativity at all ... but the truth of it is that I just completely lost my will to write.

I blame two things for that:
One: That I quit smoking. Cold Turkey. Because my son rather indignantly told me that I wouldn't be able to ... Something completely competitive within me roared to life at that point and in my attempt to prove my adorable little Time Lord wrong, I did it... And let me tell you ... it sucks the life right out of you .. what a horrendously disgusting endeavour it is to quit! "Quit smoking and you'll feel so much better for it" ... Bull shit to that... I don't think I've ever felt more physically revolting than I did through that period of time ... Still. It's done now. Still not halfway back to normal, but I'm assured it gets better as time goes on.
Two: I stopped writing for me and took far too many "pressures from critiques" from others and stopped writing what it was that I wanted to write in order to "not offend" or follow someone else's mindset. Never a good idea to change your entire story at someone else's whim. That kills the creative flow ... That isn't to say I don't want to hear from people .. just that I won't be straying too far from my original storyline because one or two people don't like where it's headed... I'll make continuity changes and the such, but my story is my story. Suggest away (and really I do like them), but please don't pressure a change.
That said ... I'm writing a new to get myself back into the writing groove and will go back over the WIP's to put them back on to my original track ... that means a couple of them will get more than a handful of chapters tossed into the bin.
If you're still with me, please bear with it as I manhandle what I've got and wrestle it into something recognizable to my original idea.

For now .. please accept this new offering as just a bit of fun that will get me back into the swing of fanfic writing again

Oh, and I don't own Doctor Who ... none of it ... nothing except a myriad of merchandise I've spent way too much money on over the years...

~~oooOOOooo~~

Dried leaves and twigs crunched and cracked underneath the thick and sturdy soles of his boots as he haphazardly tried to navigate his way through the rough and unfamiliar thicket of an unknown planet. He tried hard to ignore the terrified yips and howls of the tiny young girl stumbling helplessly at his side. He kept his hand clasped tightly around hers as he tugged the two of them toward an unknown destination that he hoped was going to be safe.

Oh, what had happened? What in the name of Rassilon's ghost had happened to end them both up here?

It was supposed to be a routine lecture at the Dimensionally Transcendental Cradles at the shipyard. That's all. Just a lecture on the Block Transfer Equations and the effect of the Transfer on the growth of a Time Capsule. Or, as his professor Salruthaklerthu preferred to call them, "Time Events". Whatever they were called - Time Capsule or Time Event - there weren't supposed to be any in any of the cradles. No, there weren't! As far as they all knew, there weren't any TARDISes-to-be anywhere near mature enough to be considered ready for block transfer back in the Hyper Looms; how was there a stray one in a cradle nursery that had a class full of curious Time Lords and Ladies to be?

…Someone was going to have to answer to that rather spectacular oversight.

There was a hiccup from just slightly behind him, and then a squeal as the tiny little hand tugged roughly and then slid out of his. The slide of her hand was rather swiftly followed by a thump and then a shrill and piercing cry.

"Oh Tia," Gallifrey cooed with gentle urgency as he dropped to his knees in the dirt and tended to his tiny sister. "Don't cry." He curled his arms around her shoulders and pulled her in against his tunic-covered chest. He couldn't hide the pleading in his voice. "Oh, pleasepleaseplease don't cry. There's no need to cry. Not with me, Tia. Not when you're with your big brother."

Tia continued to wail against his chest. "I want Daddy."

Gallifrey slumped just slightly. Usually Tia was all about her big brother and followed him around like a curious little nuk-nuk-sucking shadow who would pop up with a squeal or giggle around her pacifier at the most random times – usually scaring the time out of him before erupting into brilliant laughter at his startled and somewhat un-Time-Lord like squeak of surprise.

She rarely did openly show preference to her mum or dad when in Gallifrey's presence. She'd only do that in the moments when she was very scared, had a boo-boo, was hungry, or wasn't feeling well. Depending on just which one of her parents she asked for, Gallifrey could immediately tell just what was wrong. Calling for their dad, well, that meant she was scared – properly scared.

And if she was scared enough to wail for their dad, then that fear was going to pass along the parental link and both his mum and dad would sense it and then find out that he had messed up…

…And messed up big.

He couldn't let that happen. He was the responsible big brother. He couldn't let this little oops (okay, a BIG oops) disappoint his parents and let them know that he wasn't as responsible as they thought him to be…

…Or let them know that he'd snuck Tia out of the house to take her to the Academy with him for the day…

He quickly rocked his little sister and cooed a gentle shushing sound.

"Don't cry little tafelshew," he urged gently. "We're just having a wee adventure, you and me. That's all. Nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all."

Tia snuffled wetly as she used the collar of his tunic to wipe her nose. She then petted clumsily at her chest in search of the ribbon that pinned her pacifier to her frilly pink t-shirt. "Adventure, Gal?" she asked softly.

He nodded his head eagerly, not bothering to shield the relief from his voice and posture. "That's right, an adventure! You and me. Like Mum and Dad, only you're my little companion, yeah?" He grinned widely down at her. "Gallifrey and Tia: adventurers through all time and space. Taking after the king and queen of misadventure themselves."

Tia rocked backward to settle her diapered backside onto her heels and nodded with determination. She continued to pet at her chest in search of her tethered pacifier. "In TARDIS?"

Gallifrey winced just a little and rubbed at the back of his neck as he took a quick look around them. "The TARDIS. Well-ll-ll." He was still high on his knees in the dirt in front of her, and lowered himself to settle down onto his heels. He huffed out his breath as he took in their surroundings. "No TARDIS, Tafelshrew, but…"

She hiccupped a shocked and suddenly frightened gasp.

Gallifrey rose to his knees once more and raised both hands to urgently placate her with hurried assurances. "But that's not a big deal for a Time Lord and Lady, Tia. No big deal at all." He tapped at his temple with his fingertip. "See. We have these big Gallifreyan brains inside our heads. That makes us clever. Oh, so clever."

Tia blinked rapidly to clear her sight and looked at her big brother with wide eyes. "Clever," she echoed in a voice filled with awe.

"That's right," Gallifrey continued eagerly. "We're both like Dad, you know. Brilliant. Impressive, even. We'll be at home in no time and then I'll sneak you past Innocet and into Daddy's study where you can take a nap on that big cushy bean bag that he got from Trezalork-7. You know the one, right? The one that's all furry and vibrates while making a purring sound when you get it in just the right spot." He paused to consider that a moment. "I hope that doesn't mean that it's sentient. You know with the purring thing. Cause that might be a little ew, yeah? I mean. Imagine if you got too comfortable to want to get up and you had to fart or something…."

Tia started to giggle when Gallifrey punctuated his thoughts by blowing a raspberry around his tongue and through his lips. She clapped her hands gleefully. "Again, Gal. Again!"

"Though if it was, I reckon Dad would've us know, yeah?" he continued quietly with his eyes raised high to the sky above his head. "Be kinda rude if he didn't. Rude to the beanbag, and rude to us. Yeah?" He folded his arms across his chest and sniffed indignantly. "Not gonna sit on that thing anymore, let me tell you. Nope. Lots of nopes on that."

"Gal," Tia whined in such a way to threaten him with an all-out tantrum if he didn't immediately stop, look, and listen. "Again…"

Gallifrey slid his eyes toward his sister. One brow arched itself high into his fringe. "What?"

Tia stuck out her tongue and tried her best to blow a raspberry like Gallifrey had. Her eyes crossed so that she could look down as she tried again and failed to replicate the sound. She let out a short whimper of defeat and looked to her brother with wide and defeated eyes. "Can't…"

"Is this what you're trying to do, Tafelshrew?" Gallifrey dipped his head toward her and repeated the sound whilst he crossed his eyes in a playful pull in his face.

Tia nodded and erupted into excited, brilliant laughter.

Gallifrey prepared to repeat his actions again if only to hear his sister's thrilled little peals of laughter, but was held silent at the crack of a twig in the near distance. Quickly he shuffled toward his sister and shushed her as he covered her mouth with his hand.

"Shhh, Tia," he hissed when she whimpered and struggled in his grasp. "Keep still."

Her whimper became a wet moan against his hand.

"Tia please," he demanded harshly as he struggled to keep hold of her squirming little frame. "Be quiet. Danger."

That six letter word had the little girl still quickly in his hold. Still though she was, the word gave her a pang of fear and her eyes quickly filled with frightened tears. "D-daddy?"

He felt the tremor in her tiny little body, her quickened breathing, and Gallifrey quickly realized that he was about to lose the battle to keep her quiet. "No, Tia. Please don't get upset. Gal will keep you safe, yeah? Safe like Daddy does." He briefly considered singing his father's Gallifreyan nursery rhyme in an attempt to keep her calm, but he really didn't know all the words of it, yet, and he didn't have the warm timbre in his voice that the Doctor did. He knew it would be for naught if he tried.

One little hiccup became two, and fairly quickly it became a series of little hitched coughs and broken exhales that turned into frightened sobs.

The battle was officially lost. Gallifrey switched from trying to hold her firm and quiet to frantically trying to pop her pacifier in between her lips. With her mouth wide open with a sob and a wail, however, the usually pacifying Nuk Nuk kept falling straight out of her mouth and against her pink onesie top.

"Tia," he demanded with impatient frustration. "Come on. Don't be like this. Do you wanna get us in trouble? Huh? There could be bears or monsters or anything here that want to eat us and you carrying on like a flubble on heat is only gonna bring them here. Is that what you want? Is it?"

Her eyes widened and she wailed yet louder. "Daddy-y-y-y-y."

Her distress was enough that even he felt it through their familial bond. And if he could feel it, then for sure that no matter where in time and space they were, their father was going to feel it back on New-Gallifrey.

…Oh. He was going to be in so much trouble.

A loud crack of a breaking branch and hurried rustling of fallen leaves drawing ever closer to them alerted him to an even greater danger, and yet Gallifrey actually found himself rather swiftly mentally scrolling through a list of pros and cons to alerting his father via Security Protocol Gal-1 versus facing the beast on approach.

He heard a grunt that sounded suspiciously like a growl and the internal battle ceased immediately. He snatched his old cellphone from his pocket, buried his tongue into the very side of his mouth and began furiously tapping at the screen.

"It's okay, Tia," he assured her as gently as he could given that his hearts were racing up into his throat. "M'calling Dad."

Tia wailed at his side and clutched wet little hands against the sleeve of his upper arm to pull herself to her feet.

"Callin' more'n one, actually," he bit out quickly. "You want dad, I'll give you thirteen of him. Thirteen, Tia! How exciting is that? Just please please be quiet."

He winced at the unresponsiveness of his outdated phone and slapped the face of it against his palm. "Come on, you archaic piece of crap. Don't die on me now."

Branches opened up violently in the brush just ahead of them, and a thick, portly body clad in a rainbow of colours burst out through the thicket.

"Who dares threaten the child of a Time Lord?" he bellowed darkly as his broad and multi-coloured shoulders rose and then fell into an aggressive hunch. "Show yourself if you dare. Take on an opponent your own size!"

Gallifrey heard the growl and the aggression much more than he registered any of the words spoken by the intruder. He let up a sharp yip of startled fright and threw his phone off to one side. He instinctively curled himself around his sister and shuffled them both backward across the dirt and up against the thick trunk of a nearby tree.

"B-Back off," he growled out in as threatening a tone as he could muster with a throat full of two furiously heating hearts. He gulped thickly as he looked up into a pair of dirty green eyes that were flared wild and frantic. "M'warning you. I'm a lot tougher than I look."

Half hidden under a curled blonde fringe, the furiousness within them shifted slightly into concern. The concern quickly melted away to confusion. "Gal? Why are you…?"

"I mean it," Gallifrey threatened again as he kicked his feet in the twigs, leaves and dirt around them in an attempt to press himself harder against the tree behind him. "M'not gonna go easy. You better know that. And you also better know that messin' with me and my sister means that you're messing with my dad." He panted a little and held tighter to Tia, who had begun struggling in earnest as she reached out toward the man and called for her father.

"And you don't wanna mess with my dad," Gallifrey continued in a tone that was strangled from trying to corral his sister. "Cos. Cos my Dad. My dad…."

"Your dad is right here," the man said softly. He smiled a grin of encouragement as he held out his hands in a placating manner and slowly lowered himself into a crouch. "Gallifrey. It's me. The Doctor. Your father."

Gallifrey gulped down his hope and looked the man over with a critical and disbelieving eye. "How do I know it's you and not just some bad guy who wants a piece of my dad?" he questioned in a far more confidently threatening voice as he let his eyes rake over the multi-coloured jacket, yellow and black pinstriped trousers and a blue and white polka-dotted necktie tied into a loose bow.

He had to snort out a chuckle. "Nah. No need. I'd recognize that terrible dress sense anywhere – and I'm not gonna soon forget that horrendous jacket." A grin spread across his cheeks. "Like. Really?"

The Doctor flicked a brow and looked down along the sleeve of his right arm. He tried to shield the indignance from his voice, but failed somewhat. "There is nothing wrong with this jacket, my boy. Why on some planets it's the absolute pinnacle of taste and style."

"Name me one planet, Dad. Just one." He peeped as Tia finally shot out of his protective hold and torpedoed herself into the Doctor's chest with a wail of his name. "And of course, little Tafelshrew there throwing herself at you kind've eliminates any further doubt toward your true identity."

The Doctor let out a small yelp at the brunette comet that collided with his chest, but he smiled as he curled his arms around her tiny body and drew himself to a stand. "Her name is Tafelshrew?"

Gallifrey shrugged as he stumbled forward in his own attempt at standing. "Nah. It's Tialathilialungbarrowmas, or Tia for short." He staggered to his feet and wiped the dust and brush from his trousers. "Dad and me. Well. You and me, we call her Tafelshrew." He grinned as his sister. "Cause she's a sneaky little mouse that is so adorably edible…"

"Ahh," he breathed through an open mouth of recognition. "So this is my eldest girl, then." He gave her a warm and toothy smile. "My precious and sometimes quite precocious Tialathilia. My sweet child, I've heard quite a few tales about you from both your brother and your mum, but this is the first moment I've had to actually meet you. How are you, darling – other than quite edible?"

"You no eat me," Tia slurred in reply around the pacifier that she had finally shoved into her mouth with the power of both hands. She grinned up at her father with crinkled eyes and chubby cheeks. "But now I'm hungry daddy. Dinner time yet?"

He blinked once and opened his eyes wide at his tiny daughter's request. "Well. Yes. I think I can scrummage up something for you and young Gallifrey to eat back at the TARDIS." He looked to his son and then lifted his eyes to the thicket behind the young lad. "Let's just wait for your mother, shall we?"

Gallifrey's eyes flared with guilt. He dropped his head and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Uhm. Mum's not coming."

"Pardon me?"

Gallifrey lifted his head only enough to be able to look guiltily through his brows toward his father. "We might've gotten lost, me and Tia. And not just a little bit lost like we wandered off at the market or anythin' like that. No. More accurate would be saying that we got on a wrong transport of something and are lost somewhere across time and space from…"

"Hold on," the Doctor barked with disbelief. "Are you saying that you are separated by space and time from your mother and I?"

"Well-l-l-l," Gallifrey sang with a forced laugh. "You're here, so we're not quite separated from you …"

"By a few regenerations you are, young man."

Gallifrey nodded his head and rolled his eyes. "That's all semantics, yeah? You can always set a thing on the TARDIS to activate at the right time to tell you and mum where me and Tia ended up. No biggie. Easy peasy, yeah?"

"It is, indeed, a biggie," the Doctor countered sharply. "What level of mischief did your mother and I allow you to get into in order to become separated in this manner?"

"Mum'n Dad had nothing to do with it," Gallifrey snapped in reply. "Dad. I mean You are all holed up in some council meeting about – oh I dunno – something that's probably boring you absolutely senseless, which," he added with an accusing point of his finger into his father's chest. "Which is always far more dangerous than anything I can come up with on a good day, let me tell you."

The Doctor snorted a suppressed laugh, but didn't argue.

Gallifrey continued to speak without really taking a breath. "Course, Mum's worse, you know. And I just know she's up to something nefarious with Auntie Leela and Romana – you bet she is – the three of them are right terrors when they get together."

The Doctor's head dropped backward as he let out a laugh of total and complete agreement. "As I learned for myself when I was in my fifth incarnation."

Gallifrey's face straightened out in surprise and his eyes widened with thrill. "Hold on. Are you suggesting that we had an adventure when you were in your fifth?"

The Doctor grinned. "Indeed we did, my boy. You, your mother, Leela, Romana and Brax pulled me out from quite the sticky situation, but not before you all put me in there in the first place. Now," he continued with a wink and a smile. "Your mother, Leela, Romana and even yourself I can understand. It's in your very nature to be mischevious. But Braxiatel?" He shook his head with a smile. "Not sure if I'd call your influence on him positive or negative…"

"Positive," Gallifrey yipped excitedly. "The Lungbarrow lads are a pure positive force of nature…."

"…Though just how your mother got Braxiatel in a dress and heels, I have no idea."

Oh," Gallifrey yipped excitedly as his feet bounced in the dirt. "Sounds like so much fun! I can't wait. Oh. How long do I have to wait, Dad? How long?"

The Doctor tapped at the side of his nose. "A Time Lord never tells," he answered with a wink. "And besides, my boy. You're here with me now, and I'm sure that adventure waits for us now as it always does."

The bounce became a dance that had Tia giggling and clapping along with Gallifrey's movements. "I am so excited! So much better than boring lectures on Hexadecimal Notations of Block Transfer Mathematics at the Academy. Right, Tafelshrew?"

"There is nothing boring about Block Transfer mathematics, young man," the Doctor countered sternly only a moment before his entire face lit up. "Oh, hold on. You are at the Academy? Oh, my boy! That's wonderful, terrific news."

"Yeah," Gallifrey huffed out. "Terrific until you find out that it was because of an accident at the academy that led to me and Tia getting sent out across time and space and fearing for our lives."

The Doctor looked first at his little girl suckling contentedly at her pacifier against his chest, and then to his young lad that was shuffling the toe of his boot into the dirt. There were plenty of questions that came to mind about the hows and whys of his children being transported throughout time and space - and just how far into both they had traversed – but the more curious one was the one that finally passed through his lips toward his son.

"Just how did your baby sister end up in your class at the academy?"

Gallifrey chuckled sheepishly at that. "Yeah. That's a good question, isn't it? Long story, really…"

A thundering guttural growl rumbled through the trees surrounding them. The Doctor looked toward the source of the sound with wide eyes and a slight shake in his head.

"Unfortunately, your story must wait, my boy," he warned worriedly. "I think we just might be out of time for the telling of tales and spinning of yarns."

Gallifrey gulped as the ground shook at their feet with the rhythmic shudder of an approaching beast. He held his hand out to his father. "I think you might be right."

"I usually am," he called back sharply as he snatched Gallifrey's hand in his and tugged forcefully back in the direction from where he'd come through the thicket. "Now come on. No time to dawdle. To the TARDIS."

"Are you gonna be able to run with squirmy worm there in your arms?"

Massive tree trunks splintered out to either side as a gigantic scaled beast burst into the small clearing. It lowered its massive shoulders down level to the Doctor and roared a thunderous cry through gleaming yellow teeth dripping with slimy silver saliva.

The Doctor gulped and gave a single nod. His hand tightened around his son's. "I think I can manage, my boy. Now. If you don't mind… Run!"