A/N: I love Jackie. In other news, this is another one-shot using a prompt, in this case the prompt was 'Heroes'. You might have noticed a theme to my titleing that is less than clever. This fic takes as canon the fact that the Doctor gave Rose and the alternative Doctor a chunk of TARDIS to grow their own from. I wish they'd left that in!
Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC, and so does Jackie Tyler, but don't tell her that. No copyright infringement or other crimes intended and no money is being made by my sad self.
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It wasn't that his teachers tried to treat him differently to any other child, in fact it was quite the opposite, but it was a fact of life that from his very first days in nursery the heir to the Tyler millions had been treated with a little bit of awe, and rather a lot of favouritism.
Tony had always won in the battles for the best spot in the sand-pit or the first go on the slide, and if he'd never been sent home with a note about his behaviour then it was probably rather more to do with the father's power than the son's angelic disposition.
Stories about the Tylers weren't few and far between either. Tony's mother's mysterious return (and apparent personality transplant) had been officially put down to memory loss and post-traumatic stress disorder, but many of the more vocal conspiracy theorists would tell stories of rituals in the mansion grounds, and Peter Tyler raising his wife from the dead with the help of six black beans and a bottle of red wine.
Lydia Jones had always been one to believe that the conspiracy theorists must have been at the wine themselves, and had made it her business - from the day that Tony Tyler appeared in her class - not to become overwhelmed by the boy's family connections. He was a bright, observant child with great potential who would quickly become spoilt and rebellious after too much preferential treatment, so Lydia had decided to take a step no other teacher had yet dared to make; she had called in the Tyler parents for a meeting.
"It's a wonderful story," she assured them, "they all are, really, and had it been an experiment in creative writing I'd certainly have given him a gold star, but…"
"But?" Mrs. Tyler was a fairly formidable woman, regardless of whether or not she'd been raised from the dead in a Satanic ritual, and Lydia made a concerted effort not to cringe.
"But, the point of these exercises is to teach the children how to write factually. I mean," she laid out several sheets of lined paper covered in Tony's sprawling letters, "this one, for example, is supposed to be about an event that happened to them during the summer holidays. Most of the children wrote about their holidays, or a nice day out, but Tony," here she leant over the desk and half-whispered conspiratorially, "Tony wrote about his sister taking him into space."
"Into space?" asked Mr. Tyler mildly, raising his eyebrows.
"In a spaceship," Lydia added, "a spaceship that was bigger on the inside."
"Intriguing," said Mr. Tyler, but he didn't sound particularly intrigued.
Lydia turned her attentions to Mrs. Tyler, who now sat so still she looked like she could have been carved from marble.
"And this one," she said, jabbing her finger to draw their attention to another sheet of paper, "was supposed to be a description of his family. I'll just read you an excerpt."
She cleared her throat, and was pleased to see that she seemed to have regained Mr. Tyler's attention.
"In my house there is me and my mummy and my daddy and my sister and my doctor and my dog Rosie. My mummy is very funny she shouts sometimes at the doctor and makes him run away. Me and my sister think that that is very funny but the doctor thinks it is not funny at all. My daddy has a job and sometimes he is gone for a long time and I am sad and mummy is sad but the doctor tells me jokes and plays games with me and then I am happy. My sister and the doctor have a house inside our house and it is blue. Sometimes when I am good and mummy and daddy are not looking my sister and the doctor and me go into their house and the house is a spaceship like in cartoons but better. Sometimes my sister and the doctor go away in their spaceship house and I miss them and mummy cries again but then they come back and tell me stories and I am happy."
Lydia looked up to gauge their reactions. Mr. Tyler still looked fairly laid back and unconcerned, but Mrs. Tyler's mouth was now hanging unattractively open and her face was turning a livid shade of red.
"Obviously," Lydia offered, in her best calming tone, "the personal arrangements of your family are none of the school's business, though it would be helpful perhaps if we could be made aware of any serious illnesses for Tony's sake, but you must have noticed the further references to spaceships?"
"Noticed! I'll give him noticed! I'll…" Mrs. Tyler had begun shaking with wrath, and Lydia felt alarmed enough to step in.
"Please, Mrs. Tyler, there's no need to be angry with Tony, an active imagination such as his is to be applauded, but…"
"Tony?" asked Mrs. Tyler, sounding genuinely surprised, "Why would I be angry with Tony?"
"I think, Miss Jones," said Mr. Tyler quietly, laying one hand on his wife's back, "that my wife is just slightly concerned that Tony is having so much difficulty establishing fact from fiction." He glanced at Mrs. Tyler, "Isn't that right dear?"
"Hmmm," answered Mrs. Tyler.
"That's my concern too, sir," Lydia assured him, "I had to call you in after today, you see. Today's exercise was to write about our heroes, we've been learning about heroes and villains you see, and I did make it very clear to Tony before we began that this should be a real person, perhaps a family member or a friend, but when I collected them in… well, you can read it yourself."
She sat silently whilst Mr. and Mrs. Tyler read the work, looking at her hands and trying not look as awkward as she felt.
"Well Miss Jones, thank you for drawing this to our attention," said Mr. Tyler as he put the paper down, "we'll be sure to have words with Tony about what's – ah –" he looked to his wife for inspiration, but she was looking at the piece of paper with an unreadable expression on her face, "appropriate at school. Do you think…" he rubbed his hands on his trouser legs uncomfortably, "do you think we could take this home?"
She let them take it home, of course, because she was loathe to refuse Mr. Peter Tyler anything, and, though she was sorry to see Tony's normally happy shining face looking chastised the next morning, she was pleased to note that he kept his space-related flights of fancy to their creative writing work from then on.
And if that piece of scrawled upon A4 was taped to the wall of a blue spaceship as it travelled to distant galaxies and defied all the laws of physics as it span through the timelines, well, it was better if she never knew.
My hero is called the doctor…by Tony Tyler aged seven and ¼.