A/N: Yay! I finally got the first one shot up (it only took until 3 AM, I'm more tired than the people in the fic). For those who missed it this is set in the same universe as my other fic Sunday Tea, in which the Doctor and Rose stayed together and made a family with their sons Mycroft and Sherlock. In this one, Rose struggles to get her youngest to turn off his mind and get to sleep. Enjoy!

Rose yawned. She was not built for this. It was about three in the morning now, and on a normal night, she would have been in bed hours before.

Rose loved her boys, but being a human with two half- Time Lord children could be difficult at times. The boys didn't sleep or eat as much as she did. Usually the Doctor had her covered; when she needed some human time he would stay up with the boys, sometimes for days at a time. He only really slept a few nights out of the week anyway. Unfortunately, this meant when she was alone with her sons it was hard to adjust to their schedules.

They had decided when Mycroft was only eight that the boys needed a stable place to call home. The TARDIS was wonderful, but it wasn't exactly grounded. The boys never knew where they'd be when they walked through the door, and on nights when they were afraid or nervous about the dark or monsters they sometimes refused to go near the front doors. It was like showing your children that the boogeyman could in fact be in their closet any time it wanted, but it could only get them if they left the TARDIS. It wasn't healthy.

Of course it was a bit difficult for them to maintain both a steady home and a life on the TARDIS. The Doctor had offered to lock the box up for twenty years, to take some time off to be nothing but a family, but no one was happy with that idea. The boys were used to life as time travelers, and the idea of being stuck on one planet all the time bothered them even more than it did their father. They'd decided to have a place and attempt to be there as much as possible. They'd go see something extraordinary, then be back before bedtime. Well, usually. Well, once in a while.

The house itself was a special project, in some ways very old and in others quite new. The Doctor designed it himself, reinforcing it with metals from other worlds that would keep it standing for thousands of years, and then had it built for them in the fifteen hundreds on a huge plot of property they had purchased. No one was allowed on the land, but just to be sure he had put a perception filter on all ten acres. People driving nearby didn't even notice the heavily wooded area next to the road, let alone the little house nestled in the center of it. That house was guaranteed to be untouched and still standing no matter when in time they landed. Once they arrived they would flip the sign held on the front of the door from empty to occupied; that way they never had to worry about bumping into future or past versions of themselves. If it was occupied today, they'd just pop ahead a few weeks until it was empty.

Most of what they really needed was kept on the ship, but they decorated it with enough creature comforts to make it pass for a home. The only rooms with extensive decorating were the boys' rooms. Mycroft was thirteen now, and he had been redecorating recently. He hadn't painted over the trees, though. Mycroft loved the look of a forest, and the whole family had painted a mural of trees in his room.

Sherlock was six, and he was still happy to have his room decorated by his parents. Pirates were his favorite, so everything in his room had a nautical theme. There were no fake props in here, either; all of the decorations were souvenirs from their travels. The old helm hung on his wall had once been on a real pirate ship. The murals of waves were paintings they'd based on pictures from their trips to the time period.

The only thing the two boys' room had in common was the ceiling. The Doctor and Rose had painted them together before the family even moved in. Above each boy's bed was a ceiling full of the universe; thousands of stars in their correct places, planets that were visible from Earth, and some that were just out of sight. As Rose lay there in Sherlock's room at three in the morning the stars seemed to swirl in front of her tired eyes. He insisted on having the light on—he'd read a book in the TARDIS library about weeping angels, and ever since he had been insistent that he needed to have some kind of light around him at all time. She had tried to assure him that the dark was not that scary, but one bout with the Vashta Nerada later both he and Mycroft insisted on nightlights.

Rose understood why the Doctor had to be gone for the week, but it didn't make it easier. Jack needed help with a new program his team had confiscated from a crashed alien ship; usually not something the Doctor was interested in. However, supposedly the new program would make it impossible for any sort of violence to happen in the hub itself, making it a very safe place to store dangerous beings. Jack had offered the Doctor a good chunk of the sizeable budget Torchwood had at their disposal as payment to come help them install it and learn how to use it. It was for a good cause, and the money would help keep the boys' bellies full.

Her eyes closed slowly in the dim light, and for just a second she drifted away.

"That's wrong," Sherlock said suddenly, making her jump.

She rubbed her eyes. "What's wrong, Love?" she turned and looked at the little boy laying in the bed next to her. She was resting back on the bedspread, but Sherlock was nestled under the blankets, his gravity-defying black curls bouncing slightly as he shook his head. He was in his pajamas, he had a glass of water, and he'd been up to use the bathroom four times already. They'd been there for hours.

"That star," Sherlock said, pointing up at the ceiling. It's too far to the left."

"Oh. I bet I painted that one. We could fix it tomorrow."

"No, that's okay. I like it the way it is," he said with a small huff, fidgeting in his blankets.

"Okay, bedtime now."

Sherlock nodded, pushing his face into the pillows. He was quiet for a long minute, and Rose was hopeful that he had finally fallen asleep. He turned his face to her suddenly. "Mummy, I'm bored. I don't think it's a sleeping night."

"You've been awake for four days now, Sherlock. It's definitely a sleeping night. Mycroft is asleep in his room, it's your turn now."

"Will you leave if I fall asleep? I don't want you to go."

"I don't have to," she yawned. "I just want to sleep, I don't care where. I'll stay up until you're asleep though."

"Why? That doesn't make sense. You're sleepier than I am."

"I don't want to leave you alone. You need to get some rest."

"You think I'd get up and play, huh?" he asked, pulling his little stuffed hedgehog closer to his chest.

"Yep," she said, with a smile. She scooted a little closer and pulled him into a cuddle, petting back his wild hair. Sometimes it was easy for her to forget how young Sherlock really was. He did not speak like a six year old, and she had a nagging suspicion that he had passed her intelligence a year ago. The key was not letting him know that.

"Why do we sleep more than Daddy?" he asked.

"You know why," she said softly, trying to let her voice sound soothing. "Daddy is from a place where people don't sleep very much, and Mummy is from a place where people sleep every night. You fall somewhere in the middle."

He lay still next to her, and if he were any other child she would have thought he was drifting off. She knew better—she could feel the little ridges in his forehead that meant he was deep in thought. She tried to rub them away, but she knew it was just a matter of time before he asked another question.

Finally he sat up, his little nose wrinkled high on his face. She smirked. This little boy was absolutely beautiful, and he would grow to be a beautiful young man. His chubby cheeks had already receded slightly, and his eyes seemed to not be able to decide whether they wanted to be green or blue. She sighed, pushing him back onto the bed gently. "One more question, Sherlock, then you have to sleep."

"Mummy, am I going to die?"

She stared at him. "What, Baby?"

"I'm getting older. Mycroft too. You and Daddy never get older. The logical progression would mean that Mycroft and I are going to die."

She sat up, squeezing Sherlock's arm. "Sherlock, you shouldn't think about things like that. You are not dying, Sweetheart."

"But isn't everybody?" he asked. "Everybody gets old and dies. Even daddy gets older, just really slowly. When you're born, you start to die."

Rose sighed, not exactly sure what to say. She brushed the hair back from his forehead. Sherlock was smart. She realized with a sinking feeling that this was not something he had just thought of tonight. She had to do this carefully, he would detect any lies or condescension. "Sherlock, how old do you think Mummy is?"

He scrunched up his face. "Younger than Daddy. Three hundred, maybe."

She smiled. "Not quite. I'm about fifty."

"That's it?" he asked innocently.

She would have tickled him if she didn't know it would wake him up more than he already was. "That's it. Now I want you to take a minute to think about all of the things I've told you I've done with my life. Think a second about all of the things I've seen, all the people I've met. Everything I've ever done I've done in fifty years."

"That doesn't seem long enough," Sherlock said after a pause.

"That's because time, believe it or not, doesn't really matter that much. It's not how long a life lasts that's important, it's what you do with it. Yes, people do get old. You will get old one day, a very, very long time from now, but when you do you'll have a whole life to look back on, and you'll be happy about that. You've seen more in six years than most people see in their whole lives. You're going to do great things, Sherlock Holmes."

"Why do things have to change, though?" he asked, a bit more quietly. "Why can't things stay the same forever?"

"Things have to end. Otherwise new adventures would never begin. It's not something to be afraid of, it's something to look forward to."

"I shouldn't care about getting old, huh Mummy? 'Cause I'm only six?"

"That's right, Baby."

"Am I a freak, Mummy?"

She shook her head, settling back down and pulling him close to her. She pointed up at the ceiling to the mess of stars over their heads. "You know that star, there? The one that's just a bit different?"

"The one that's wrong?"

"It's not wrong. It's just a little different than the others. I asked if you wanted to paint over it. Do you? Do you want to fix it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I like it. The ceiling would look different if we fixed it.

"Exactly. It's a little bit different, but it's beautiful. That's our family. We're just one family in billions of others, but we're special in a beautiful way. We don't need to be fixed, we're just right."

She felt him smile and some of the tension left his little body. She wondered how long he'd held in this question, but knew he would be too embarrassed to talk about it. Sherlock yawned. "Mummy?"

"Yes, Love?"

"I'm tired. You can sleep in your room. I'll be okay," he muttered, his long eyelashes fluttering a bit.

She chuckled, sliding gently out of the bed. She could tell from the way he slumped across the ship-shaped bed that he was done for the night. She planted a quick kiss on his forehead and then crept silently to the door. As soon as she opened it an old brown dog scurried past her into the room.

She was about to grab him before he woke up Sherlock, but the dog just hopped onto the boy's bed and laid down next to his side. Sherlock's hand came up absently and rested on the animals head, his eyes still closed. "Night, Redbeard," he mumbled.

She closed the door quietly behind her, poking her head in to check on Mycroft for just a moment before she slipped into her own bedroom and settled into the covers of her inviting bed. She heard quiet footsteps down the hall and smiled, recognizing them instantly. Those were not little boy footsteps.

She kept her eyes closed as the door opened and closed, and then she felt the other side of the bed depress as warm arms wrapped around her from behind.

"Missed you," she whispered.

"Missed you," the Doctor whispered, settling into the pillows. "The boys asleep?"

"Only just now," she said. "Could have used you a few minutes ago."

"Sorry," he said, genuine regret in his voice. "Did Sherlock play twenty questions tonight?"

"More like fifty," she laughed softly. "If they knew you were home they'd both be up in a heartbeat."

"That's why I parked on the other side of the property. Didn't want to ruin your progress. I'll check on them later after you fall asleep."

"Won't be long," she murmured as he stroked her hair.

"Goodnight," he whispered into her hair. "Love you."

"Love you, she whispered back, finally giving in to the exhaustion she'd been fighting.

The Doctor did sleep that night; not for very long, but he slept. For one night, everyone in the family slept at the same time. It didn't happen often, but that was okay with them. They were strange, but it was a wonderful strange.