A/N: Written as character studies for the relationship between Rose and her son in the epic-fic-I-never-wrote. Don't stand on their own too well, but I'm hoping that by posting them I might be inspired to write the epic fic in some form or other. Takes place in the same TARDIS-owning universe as all of my one-shots.
In fact, all my Doctor Who fics are outakes in some form or another from the same story. These particular ones just advance it past the expected point.
Disclaimer: Not mine, absolutely belongs to the BBC. This is true of the whole story.
All That Ever Could Be
Sometimes the screaming goes on for so long she forgets. She's no longer sure if it's him who's wailing - for reasons she's sure she'll never understand - or if her own sobs for salvation are the only ones echoing around the brightly painted room. She feels the glass eyes of the stuffed creatures watching her - accusing her - as she fusses, and flaps, and tries to stop the tears streaming down her cheeks; but the vicious little voice that tells her that she's hopeless, useless and pointless, is her own. Her fear is that one day it will be his. Her fear is that it already is.
Most of the time, during what passes for the day in this paradoxical life she leads, he is smiling and laughing and she laughs right along with him. They go to brand new worlds, discover ancient civilisations, sometimes they just pop round to visit an old friend for tea, but whatever they are doing they're happy; content with what the multi-verse has gifted them, and safe in the knowledge that they are loved beyond all things.
The nights are different.
In the nights he is screaming and nothing, nothing, that she does can comfort him.
She makes him worse, she thinks, with her presence; whenever she approaches his tiny face is screwed up in horror; his little body arching away from her shaking hands. It makes her feel like such a failure and the stubborn part of her – that part that led her here (there) in the first, and second, place – refuses to admit defeat.
She sits by his cot - racking her brains for anything that might comfort him; anything except admitting how useless she really is at this - and for a moment he is silent. They watch each other warily, both faces red and shiny with tears, both sets of eyes blood-shot and exhausted; their hitching breaths the only sound. He reaches one hand out, and she does the same - still as awed as ever by his fingernails - and they sit, barely touching, his eyes round in terror and hers still heavy with tears.
He's frightened, she's always known that, but it's only now she realises what of. What it is that scares her miracle boy so deeply when the very multiverse bows and bends to his existance. It's not her presence that terrifies him so, but her absence.
And her mortal heart breaks.