# Little Luke # **A/N** *I own no one*
Sarah Jane set down a bowl and box of cereal in Luke's empty place at the table, frowning as she wondered what was taking him so long. She shot the kitchen clock a glance, and sighed wearily. It was nearly eight. Usually he was down by half past seven on the dot during the school week, but she supposed she shouldn't be surprised. As Luke delved further into his teenage years, his eagerness to please had dwindled. Sarah Jane had dealt with the odd sock left on the stairs (the other having inexplicably vanished), piles of assorted junk swept under the bed rather than being tidied away...it was stressful, to say the least, and a little sad. She missed his wide-eyed innocence. He wasn't a child anymore, and even looked different, more like a teen. He was taller, and Sarah Jane doubted she would ever forget the time Clyde bullied him into trying hair gel (it had been decided his hair was too 'neat') and Luke had wound up looking like an electrocuted hedgehog. At least that hadn't lasted.
"Luke!" she yelled, standing at the bottom of the stairs. No answer. "It's going on eight!" She waited, but there was still no reply. With another sigh, she headed up the stairs. Sleeping in was unlike him; he could stay up all night and not be tired the next day. Perhaps he was awake, just on his laptop.
Her annoyance growing, she knocked sharply on his door and entered the cave. She stomped accross the room and threw open the curtains, sunlight spilling into the darkness.
"I called you! For goodness sake, you're going to be late for-" Sarah Jane cut off abruptly with a barely stiffled shriek of shock. Because, when she turned to the bed, she hadn't seen the teenage boy that went to bed the night before. Instead, a toddler was blinking up at her with round, curious blue eyes, looking politely bemused.
"Oh..." Sarah Jane was frozen to the spot, at loss for words. The toddler squirmed, tangling itself in its hugely oversized pyjamas...Luke's pyjamas. What's more, now Sarah Jane looked, the toddler did have a resemblance to him. But it couldn't be...
Fighting back panic, she hurried forward and scooped the toddler up, then ran accross the landing to the attic.
"No, no, no, no...Mr Smith I need you!" As the computer appeared, she looked down into the face of the toddler. He smiled, then promply grabbed a fistful of her hair. Cute, she admitted to herself. However, she was definitely not able to deal with this.
"How may I help you, Sarah Jane?" Mr Smith asked cooly, while she struggled to disentangle her hair.
"I think..." The words sounded so ridiculous she almost felt stupid saying them. "I'm not sure, but I think Luke's been turned into a toddler."
There was a very long pause.
"Oh." Mr Smith's voice was surpised and slightly amused.
"Oh? OH?" Sarah Jane's voice rose to a hysterical pitch. "You need to say something more than 'oh'! Do a scan or look up information or something!" At her anger, the toddler wailed, and she shifted him onto her other hip while the computer obliged. When the light of the scanner had vanished, she had no time for patience.
"Well?" she asked shortly.
"According to my analysis Luke came into contact with an alien parasite the reduces age," Mr Smith explained. "The parasites are commonly used in a time of war to disable enemies-that is, lower their age to a point that they are no longer a threat. A stray parasite must have made its way to Earth."
"Can it be reversed?" Sarah Jane asked desperately.
"As far as I am aware, no." At the computer's regretful words, Sarah Jane was stunned into a horrified silence. "He will still grow at a natural speed."
"Fantasic!" Sarah Jane said with hyserical sarcasm. "There must be a way to get him back to normal! I'll find a way. Until then I'll just have to...to do my best."
"Would you like the nearest location of a Mother Care?"
"Shut up, Mr Smith."
Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang. Sarah Jane glanced anxiously at Luke. They were in the living room, and he was sat on the sofa, chewing absent-mindedly on the ear of a teddy bear whilst watching some sort of puppet show. The first thing she had done was remove anything remotely dangerous from the room, then remembered the attic full of alien artifacts upstairs and given up.
The doorbell rang again, impatiently, and she got up to answer it. As she had suspected, when she opened it, it was to see Clyde and Rani on the doorstep wearing, not school clothes, but every day wear.
"School's cancelled, the pipes broke!" Clyde informed her gleefully. Rani rolled her eyes.
"Is Luke around?" she asked. Sarah Jane didn't know what to tell them.
"Um...yes, sort of," she said hesitantly. Rani and Clyde looked confused.
"How can he be 'sort of around'?" Clyde asked suspiciously, alread fearing the worst. Rani squinted at Sarah Jane.
"Are you OK?" she asked, concerned. "You look kind of weird."
"I'm fine," Sarah Jane said, and stepped back to let them inside. "Just got through, he's...he's in the living room."
She followed them into the room, and took in their reactions. Clyde looked puzzled at the sight of the toddler on the sofa, whereas Rani let out a squeal.
"Awww!" she cooed, her face lighting up. Then it dawned on her. "Oh my God!" She whirled to face Sarah Jane, her silence confirming her suspicions. "Oh...oh my God!"
"What?" Clyde asked thickly. "Where's Luke?" The two stared at him, waiting for the penny to drop. "OH MY GOD!"
"There it is."
"I found him like that this morning," Sarah Jane said nervously. Clyde was still as a statue, looking a mix of disbelieving and horrified.
"He's a toddler!" he managed to splutter. Rani hit him, and went over to Luke, cooing.
"I think he's adorable!" she said, lifting him up. He laughed and she tickled him playfully. "Aw, he's so cute!"
"That's my best friend!" Clyde seemed to be struggling to get his head around it. "He's, like, TWO! My best friend is two! Well, he was always...you know what I mean! He small now and everything! I can't have a best friend who goes to daycare! How did this happen?!"
"An alien parasite, according to Mr Smith," Sarah Jane said, more worry gripping her tightly as the reality of the situation sunk in deeper. "He doesn't know how to fix it. I'll need to buy things..." She wasn't sure why she was burdening the two fifteen year olds with her problems, but she needed support from anywhere she could get it.
"My Auntie has a kid, she came over the other day and accidently left her suitcase. We're driving over to take it back to today, but I could grab a few clothes. Her son's..." Rani faltered, putting Luke on the floor as he squirmed to be put down. They all watched him crawl accross the rug. "Her son is...is about Luke's age. Sarah Jane, this is mad."
"I know," she replied , running a hand through her hair, stress clear on her face.
"My mum kept a bunch of my stuff from when I was kid," Clyde offered, then frowned as a thought hit him. "D'you think he's still super smart?"
"I don't know." The thought had never really occured to Sarah Jane. "He hasn't even spoken so far."
"It might be shock?" Rani suggested. "Who knows how this stuff works?"
Later, Sarah Jane grabbed her coat and car keys, and announced she was off out.
"Could you two babysit?" she asked, poking her into the front room where Clyde and Rani were entertaining Luke. They had tried playing peek-a-boo, but he hadn't been fooled and simply threw a building block at Clyde.
"Sure, Sarah Jane," Rani said, smiling angelically while Clyde covered his face against the assualt of multicoloured building blocks.
"Where are you going?" Clyde asked after the last was thrown. "Working on a story?"
"I wish. No, first I'm going to the bookshop, then lots of...shops where you buy toddler things," Sarah Jane said vaguely, realising she had no idea where she was going. "I'll be back in a few hours." She gave Luke a quick kiss and a cuddle, before heading to the front door.
"Wait!" Rani shouted after her retreating back. "What if there's an alien invasion or something?"
"Tell them come back later!" Sarah Jane called back unhelpfully. Rani got up and watched her leave from the door, waving as she got into her car and drove away. When she returned to the living room, it was to find Clyde setting up-
"Xbox? Clyde, no!" Rani said, scandalized as she snatched the controller from his hands. "You'll traumatise Luke with all of those silly shooting games!"
"He has the high score on one of them! He might still be able to play, you never know!"
"Clyde, he's trying to eat the couch!" Rani tugged Luke away from the arm of the chair, brought him to eye level and pointed at the couch. "Not food. Understand? Not. Food. CLYDE!" The TV screen was suddenly ablaze with spaceships and gunfire. "I said no!"
"It's fine!" Clyde chucked her control with one hand, whilst blasting aliens with the other. "You can play too."
"No! You're being totally irresponsible!"
"I am not-"
"You are! It's too violent, he comes accross aliens in real life, what if he's prejudiced because of these games?"
"Are you actually serious?"
"Yes! Can't you just-" Rani cut off as a space ships exploded into fiery smithereens on the screen. Except Clyde wasn't playing. They turned to look at Luke, who was happily using Rani's controller. "See? HE JUST BLEW UP AN ALIEN!"
"Aliens," Clyde corrected her, watching Luke proudly. "That was a whole ship."
"Right..." Rani stomped over, picked up Luke (ignoring his wail of protest) and, balancing him on her hip, switched off the TV. "We are going to play some normal, child friendly games."
"Rani," Clyde said, as though speaking to someone incredibly stupid. "Luke has been kidnapped, has nearly been eaten, has nearly been killed more than once, has temporarily not existed and seen more than one actual alien explode, usually in his face. And you're worried about a game?"
"That was before!" Rani protested. "He probably doesn't even remember any of that."
"Prove it."
"He can't even speak!"
"So?"
Rani gave up on trying to bring Clyde to reason, and instead dragged him outside into the sunny garden. They tried to play ring around the rosie, but Luke had been distracted by a passing butterfly. So, instead, they ran around 'chasing butterflies' for over an hour. Luke was surprisingly fast for a baby, and more than once they were terrified that they'd lost him. There was one particularly frightening moment in which he nearly crawled through a gap in the fence that would lead to the road, and they only just caught him in time.
"It's like he's looking for trouble," Rani groaned, stopping Luke from trying to eat the grass. "I don't know what that parasite did, but he's definitely not a genius anymore."
"I dunno," Clyde said, watching his now infant best friend stare, transfixed, at a spider's web. "He always had a knack for nearly destroying himself and the world."
"I don't know how this is going to work," Rani said, while Luke, surprisingly gently for a toddler, pulled a ladybird that had been stuck in the web free. "With what Sarah Jane does, and our exams. Oh God, what about his exams? What will I do if dad asks what happened to his best student? He'll go mental! I can't just say 'sorry an alien parasite turned him into a toddler'!"
"I'll have to break the news to Maria," Clyde realised suddenly. "How do you tell someone that? I can't just-LUKE!" Clyde snatched him up furiously. "It. Is. Not. Cool. To. Eat. Dirt."
In response, Luke threw mud in his face. His tolerance levels, along with his size, seemed to have deteriorated.
After some peaceful minutes lying on the grass, watching fluffy clouds float by, Luke was nearly asleep. He wasn't the only one, however, as Clyde and Rani were already exhausted.
"We should feed him and then put him to bed," Clyde mumbled in suggestion, closing his own eyes. "We better get paid for this."
They gathered up their things and went inside, going into the kitchen and searching the cupboards. Clyde perked up considerably, quickly finding the ingredients for spaghetti and shooing them out.
Once it was ready, they sat around the table together. Upon seeing the spaghetti, Luke spoke up.
"Food?" he said uncertainly, and Rani beamed.
"Yes! That is food! I think we're getting somewhere," she said to Clyde happily. Then Luke pointed at the plant on the table.
"Food?" he asked again, and Rani's smile drooped.
"No. No, that's a plant. Not that plants can't be food, some of them are. But that one's not." She only succeeded in confusing him further, and sighed. "At least he can speak."
She changed her mind when she tried repeatedly to put a tea towel over him for fear of a spaghetti explosion, and he pulled it away again and again with series of firm 'No's.
As it turned out, she need not have worried. Luke remained sparkling clean at the end of lunch. The same could not, however, be said for the floor, the table, the window, the walls, and most of the kitchen cupboards. Quite a lot was aimed at Clyde, but he dodged with expert precision.
"Why does he keep throwing stuff at me?" he whined, taking refuge under the table. Rani smirked at him while toddler Luke chuckled in a somewhat evil way.
"Maybe as a toddler some buried emotions surfaced from before," she suggested. "Some feelings that he repressed and can, as an infant, finally show."
"He was my best mate, why-STOP THROWING PASTA AT ME!" Clyde scrambled out from under the table, beneath which pasta was being flung in his direction. He swiftly took away the plate, and dumped it in the sink. Looking around the sauce splattered kitchen, he scowled. "The spaghetti's everywhere. I'm never having kids. Ever."
"At least it's not on you," Rani pointed out, lifting Luke up from his seat (he had been perched on a mountain of cushions), "and it isn't alien goo."
Clyde had to agree that spaghetti on the floor was better than alien gunk on himself.
When Sarah Jane returned in the evening, much later than she had expected, it was to find the three of them crashed out on the floor of the living room, surrounded by pillows and sofa cushions. The TV was tuned to a children's show that babbled in the background. Clyde appeared to actually be asleep, but Rani was keeping her eye on Luke as a responsible babysitter should. When Luke caught sight of Sarah Jane, his eyes lit up and he stood, toddling towards her.
"Mum!" he said by way of greeting. Sarah Jane nearly dropped her shopping.
"He speaks now?" she asked, dumping her bags and bending down to pick him up as he reached out. "Since when?"
"Since a few hours ago," Rani said, sitting up from where she had been sprawled on the floor, yawning. "He said food. We were trying to teach him what was food and what wasn't...like grass, or dirt, or the couch..."
"Mum, alien went boom!" Luke told Sarah Jane joyfully in a barely understandable gabble. She frowned.
"Alien? What alien?"" she asked, panicked. "Boom?"
"Oh, no, he's talking about a game Clyde was playing," Rani explained quickly. "It had aliens in it. I told him not to play it in front of Luke. Didn't I, Clyde?" She nudged his sleeping form firmly, and he rolled over, covering his eyes and groaning.
"Geddoff, I'm knackered," he mumbled. Sarah Jane looked sympathetic.
"I'm sorry if he was a lot of trouble," she said, but Rani waved a hand airily.
"He was fine, really. We're mostly tired from cleaning the kitchen," she said, and explained further under Sarah Jane's questioning look. "There was a, er, mild spaghetti incident. But it was fine! Right, Clyde? Clyde!" Rani smacked Clyde on the arm.
"Mmf," he grunted in agreement.
"Thanks so much," Sarah Jane said, setting Luke down on the sofa and taking some notes of her bag. "You didn't have to do this. Here." She handed them each forty pounds, which roused Clyde from his hibernation.
"Sweet!"
"We can't take this," Rani said, immediately handing the money back. "Seriously, I didn't help out for the money." She looked at Clyde pointedly, who sighed.
"Yeah, I can't take this," he said, giving it back to Sarah Jane. He paused, then looked sort of sadly at Luke. "I kind of miss him. I mean, I know it's him, but it's not. There has to be a way to get him back." Sarah Jane didn't say anything, and he smiled bracingly. "Oh, well. We'll be here for you."
"No matter what," Rani added.
After the two of them left, it was just Sarah Jane and Luke. She spent the rest of the evening sorting out what she'd bought, putting new clothes in drawers, and putting toys in his room. After settling Luke down in his room, Sarah Jane sat and read the new book she had bought about childcare.
By nine, she was exhausted. Luke had woken, and she had never realised until now how dangerous cords on blinds, stairs and the contents of sink cabinets could be. Eventually, she put him to bed for the final time, lying next to him. She wondered if he remembered her at all, or if he was still getting to know her. It was all such a crazy mess.
She placed pillows around him-tomorrow the new child's bed she ordered would be delivered. She'd been a mother for a while now, but somehow it was as though the slate had been wiped clean, and she wondered what the days ahead held.