So I haven't written for years, but finally, finally, an idea crawled into my brain and this was spawned. Huzzah! Because of this, there's the slightest chance that any writing skills I had have gone down the pan, but ah well. Aria is my OC; if you want to read some other stuff I've written with her in, then tootle over to my profile and click the wee linky there.
Also, the stuff about the Gallifreyan language is made-up (because there doesn't seem to be any official stuff about it anyway), but I got it from a translator that some awesome person developed. Search 'gallifreyan translator' and then go to Sherman's Planet. It's neat.
Anyway, onwards!
"I can't find my room."
The Doctor was, as was his custom, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the console room, surrounded by wires and cables and god knows what else. He seemed to spend every waking moment that wasn't devoted to dragging them to strange alien worlds down there under the central column, Aria realised; surely he would have fixed everything by now? In fact, the TARDIS always seemed to run relatively smoothly, which led Aria to come to the conclusion that sometimes her father broke parts of it when he was bored just so he had an excuse to fix something.
At present, it looked like the Doctor had ripped out every single cable housed by the console - they spread across the grille flooring like hundreds of brightly coloured snakes. The Doctor didn't appear to hear her, so she kicked some of them out of the way so she could get closer to him.
"I can't find my room," she repeated, a bit louder. "All the doors look exactly the same. It'll take forever to get the right one."
The Doctor looked up at the sound of her voice. For once, he wasn't covered in grease, and didn't look as if he'd received an electric shock or two. His glasses were a bit lopsided though. "Well we can't have that," he responded, jumping to his feet and almost tripping over because some of the cables had managed to wrap themselves around his ankles without his realising. It took him a few seconds to untangle his feet. Aria was smirking by then, but didn't say anything.
The Doctor decided to pretend that nothing had happened. He instead leant over the console with his eyes fixed on a point on the central rotor, face contorted in concentration. Aria had been on board long enough to realise that her father was mentally conversing with his ship. The Time Lord and the TARDIS seemed to share a link that he shared with no other, not even her mum. Aria often wondered how Rose felt about sharing the Doctor with another female. Usually when he was rubbing part of the ship in a rather intimate manner.
"Okay," he said about thirty seconds later as he turned, smiling at her. "Sorted it."
Aria furrowed her brow. "You haven't done anything," she protested.
The smile morphed into a slightly smug grin. "Oh ye of little faith," her father said, bounding across the room to the door that led to the rest of the ship. "I think you'll like this. Come on." He strode off down the long, carpeted hallway. Aria hurried after him, trying to keep up with the Doctor's long legs.
The Doctor turned down another corridor that branched off the main one, walking down it until he was halfway along, where he stopped outside a random door. "There," he announced, once Aria had managed to catch up. "Take a look. You should be able to find it easily now."
Aria peered around him and looked at the door. The oak had previously been smooth and unmarked save for the natural lines and knots (though Aria suspected they had been anything but natural), but now it was engraved, covered in a random pattern of circles and curves and lines and dots, a matrix of shapes.
"That's... uh... interesting," she commented. Silently she thought it looked like someone had gotten drunk and then attacked her door randomly with a knife, but decided against saying so aloud in case it offended the Doctor. "What exactly is it supposed to be?"
"That's your name," the Doctor said. "You know those funny name plaques you can buy everywhere? It's like that, except it's not written in English, but in Circular Gallifreyan. See..." He reached forward and ran his finger over a small circle situated just beneath a large crescent-like shape, tracing the lines. "You read it counter-clockwise, from the bottom. That's 'A'." He touched the inner curve of the crescent and the three filled-in circles that ran parallel to it at the top. "R."
A medium sized circle floating above the crescent, connected to it by a long line. "I?" Aria guessed. She ducked under his arm, stretched up and pointed at a final circle. "And another 'A'. Right?"
"Correct." The Doctor looked proud that she had grasped it so quickly. "My daughter's name in the ancient language of the Time Lords," he murmured. "Never thought I'd be able to say that again."
"How do I know that's my name and not a rude word or something?" It seemed like something the TARDIS would do. The machine seemed to think she needed to go through some kind of hazing initiation before she could be deemed trustworthy.
The Doctor chuckled. "You don't. You just have to take my word for it."
"Could you teach me it? Like, the rest of it? Your language, I mean."
"Why? You'll never need to use it. The rest of my people are dead."
"Our people," Aria corrected him. "And I know. I just want to learn."
"Perhaps one day, eh?" The Doctor's smile was sad.
Aria knew, from experience, that a vague answer like that generally meant no. Usually she would argue and complain and whine until the other person gave in, but something told her that doing so on this occasion would be painful for the Doctor. Anything related to his people or his planet was an extremely sore subject. "Okay," she said reluctantly. That wasn't going to stop her from trying to find a book about it in the library though.
"What's your real name?" The question flew out of her mouth before she had the chance to stop it.
There was a long pause.
"Does it really matter?" the Doctor hedged. "To you I'll always be 'Doctor' or 'Dad'. Those are the most important names, the only ones you need to use. You'll never need to refer to me by the one I was given at birth, so why do you need to know it?"
It was becoming clear to Aria that the Doctor became extremely evasive at the slightest hint of a personal question. Whilst he had a habit of voraciously drinking up every tidbit of information a person would give him about themselves, he steadfastly refused to give out anything about himself., always deflecting questions with a grin or a change of subject. She wondered why that was. Surely the universe could survive hearing his name spoken aloud?
The atmosphere felt almost unbearably tense now. She was finding it difficult to look into his face; something about the look in his eyes frightened her slightly. But she stubbornly refused to look away. Aria Tyler did not allow herself to be intimidated. "There's no need to get your intergalactic knickers in a twist," she huffed, folding her arms across her chest defensively. "I was only curious. I doubt your parents actually named you 'Doctor'. Usually when parents say they're gonna name their kid after the person who delivered it, they usually go with the actual name, not the title."
"If that had been the case then they'd have called me The Midwife."
"Very funny."
"I try," the Doctor said, amicable once again.
"I will find out what your name is, you know."
Her father's eyes twinkled with amusement. "You really are very inquisitive, aren't you? The pursuit of knowledge is a noble one, but sometimes, Aria, there are some things you don't need to know. My name is one of them."
And with that you spun on his heel and walked off, back to the control room.
"Aria," the Doctor said.
Rose looked up from her novel, glancing at the Doctor in puzzlement as he clambered onto the bed beside her, still fully clothed in his suit. "Have you hit your head?" she questioned, closing the book and resting it on her swollen stomach. She looked concerned. "I'm Rose. Aria's the dark-haired one who doesn't like you."
"Aria," the Doctor repeated, almost as if he was testing the name, dragging out every syllable in that slightly endearing way he had. "Ah. Ree. Ah." He said it one last time, rolling the 'r' in a very exaggerated fashion, before smiling at Rose.
Rose just looked at him, eyebrows raised. "For a second there I was starting to think you'd forgotten our own daughter's name," she quipped, picking her book up again. "I'm glad you haven't."
The Doctor grinned and rolled over onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow. He looked up at her. "Why did you name her that?" he asked. "Don't get me wrong, it's a lovely name, but it is a bit... out there, you know. Not as odd as Romanadvoratrelundar or Apple, I have to admit, but still. You don't meet many Arias. Unless they've been written by a composer of course. An aria is song composed for a solo singer, did you know that? It means 'air' in Italian, and 'lion' in Hebrew. A surprisingly appropriate name, when you think about it," His grin took on a self-satisfied quality.
"Where did all this come from?" Rose said, looking at him curiously. Even after all this time, the Doctor's odd moods and tangents had a tendency to befuddle her.
The Doctor gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I just hadn't given it much thought before. Strange really, since I find names and titles to be very interesting. They have a lot of power behind them. Ask Shakespeare if you don't believe me."
"What?"
"Oh, Martha can tell you about that particular adventure," the Doctor waved a hand, the one not holding his head up, dismissively.
"You've kind of already said why, I suppose," Rose started, frowned. "Remember the last place we went to? Just before Canary Wharf?"
"No," the Doctor smiled sheepishly. "You'll have to remind me."
"Memory going in your old age, is it?" Rose looked at him fondly and gave his hair a brief ruffle. "I'll give you a hint. You said you were gonna take us to finally see Ian Drury and the Blockheads, but we ended up in Vienna in 1786..."
"When we met Mozart!" the Doctor said loudly and gleefully, finally remembering. "I remember that now! He was composing the Marriage of Figaro and we sort of crashed into one of the walls of his apartment. He was surprisingly calm about that, actually, but then I suppose when you're one of history's most famous composers you don't need to worry about the cost of rebuilding something that's been demolished by a flying police box." He grinned. "Actually, Old Amadeus took a bit of a shine to you, if I remember correctly, after you complimented his piano playing. And his wig. The same thing happened to Martha, you know, but that was with Shakespeare. What is it with my companions attracting the attentions of famous historical figures, eh? Maybe if we go back to Tudor England we might be able to persuade old Henry to ask for Aria's hand in marriage."
Rose rolled her eyes and glared at him, unable to see the funny side of his comment. "No, Doctor, We are not marrying our daughter off. To anyone. And especially not to any tyrannical monarchs. Can I continue?"
"Yes," the Time Lord said, meekly. He wasn't fool enough to aggravate a pregnant woman any further.
"Well I wanted to give her a name I could remember you by, but I couldn't think of anything that worked. I didn't want to name her after anyone who died at Canary Wharf, for obvious reasons. I didn't want that hanging over her or me. How terrible would that have been? But I remembered how our little visit to Mozart just before that was the last time we were truly happy and not scared, or fleeing from monsters. It was also when I found out I was pregnant, so using a name we'd heard then was perfect. But I was drawing a blank until I remembered how we were there when Mozart was composing something for his opera. We were the first people to hear it played, he said. And then I remembered how he explained how it was called an aria and everything, and then something clicked. It just seemed like a perfect, pretty name." Rose shrugged and grinned self-consciously. "That sounds kind of sappy when I think about it."
"No." The Doctor leaned in, and kissed her. "It's perfect," he said, echoing her earlier comment.
"You think?"
The Doctor ghosted a hand over Rose's belly, nodding. "Absolutely. In fact, I think we should get some kind of naming theme going," he suggested. "Name all our kids after musical terms."
"All our kids?" Rose was amused. "How many do you think I'm willing to have?"
"We'll keep having them until we run out of words of course." The Doctor spoke as if this was the obvious answer.
"Concerto Tyler does have a certain ring to it," Rose admitted. "Not sure about Tenor Tyler though. That's too alliterative."
"How about Castrato Tyler?"
"You have got to be bloody joking."
"Castrato Tyler it is, then," the Doctor laughed.
"I'll give you 'Castrato Tyler' in a minute if you don't shut up."