01

Unavoidably Domestic

When the 12th Doctor opened the TARDIS doors after his latest Earth planetfall, the first thing he heard, unbelievably, was a pained outcry, soft but there. It sounded like someone in such intense pain that they could barely breathe...and it was coming from around the left side of his ship. The next thing he heard, though he was already moving in that direction, was what sounded like sobs, human-y ones. Young human-y. Poking his head around the front left corner of his ship, it didn't take long to spot the source of both the crying and the hurt sounds. The sound of ripping cloth had him moving forward and one look at the bloody, hideously swollen right knee of a young girl who was about to try to bind her knee with strips taken from her skirt, had him on his knees next to her, startling her. Bloody hell, he could see exposed bone.

She stared at him, half twisted to look behind her and stared at the TARDIS, then returned her attention to the very real presence of someone she'd only ever thought was a story.

"What happened? No, hold still, I'm just scanning the injury, oh yeah, that's nasty. I'll need to take you into the TARDIS and fix it up in the med-bay...you poor baby." He didn't start rapid-fire questions like he usually would have, not with this girl...she was very young. No where near adulthood...not by a long shot. No, this was a child...and while it was true that most humans seemed like children to him, the truth was most of the ones he'd had with him were at least adults...or near adults...for their species. This youngster was no such thing. She needed him to be an adult just now.

She didn't answer him, already weak and listless from the blood loss...he got her up and into his TARDIS quickly. The old girl moved the med-bay so that it was the first door on the left, just inside the corridor...it was a very nasty injury and the victim was a young child.

"Poor kid. " He sighed, as he sedated her before he dealt with what looked like what was going to be a badly broken knee as well as one that was cut up.

A few moments later and he sighed in frustration. It was broken, having bent the wrong way on the joint wasn't a fun thing to have to repair. It was a tricky thing, this kind of injury and even with his advanced medical knowledge there was little he could do...he needed professionals this time and even so, the child was going to be in a cast from ankle to hip fora very long while. Nor would she be allowed to put any weight at all on it. He listened to the TARDIS collecting the girl's little trailer, listened to her complaints when she discovered the girl's pets...seven cats...and placed the lot, including the trailer, in a suitable garden.

"What the bloody hell is she doing with a travel trailer in this era?" He asked the TARDIS aloud. "Never mind the cats, how is she here?"

He left her sleeping off the sedative with the sides raised on the med-bay's bed, to go try to trace where she'd come from. He found a scarred over crack in the universal wall...too thick to reuse. Apparently, the still nameless little girl was going to be staying with him. "Okay, next stop...hospital since I don't think I can really treat her knee properly, Sexy. Not without leaving her permanently crippled."

It took two days for the girl to waken and by that time the Doctor had them in the vortex for the second time...where he could deal with healing her and the probable physical therapy that would follow. He had actually taken her to a 69th century hospital, the medical doctors there had spent several hours of intense work rebuilding her knee in surgery. The injury had required a skill level that the Doctor was, bluntly put, not qualified to perform.

He checked on her from time to time but it was the TARDIS who alerted him that his young guest...or perhaps 'dependent' was a better word, was waking. Certainly she was much too young for a 'companion' and just as certainly, running anywhere, any time soon was out of the question. She was, according to her surgeon, going to be in that cast for at least six months, linear. The TARDIS had already adjusted to the child's needs, installing lifts all over the place, big ones to accommodate that electric scooter she'd also dug up from somewhere.

He was reading near the girl's bed when she exhaled softly, the way children often did just prior to waking and he put his book down and moved to the bed, watching her face as her eyes fluttered open.

"It's alright, I've already taken you to a hospital, your knee has been repaired, it's healing now and you're in a cast, hip to ankle. Going to be in it for a while too...at least six linear months." He watched as she struggled to make her eyes focus and smiled reassurance as she finally got a good look at him. She gasped a bit, then looked wildly around, her movements startled and disbelieving. The response didn't make any sense, really.

"How do you feel?"

She didn't answer right away. Instead she poked him. "Huh. You're real...or at least, solid. Weird."

"What? Why is that weird? And how did this happen?" He gestured toward her cast.

"Yeah, weird. And when you see the videos I've got on my little computer in that trailer just up there..." She pointed, "You'll agree with me, I think. This isn't exactly where I went to bed last night, no idea where I am or how I got here...and frankly with you here, gotta start wondering when I got yanked to." She made a discontented sound in her throat. "I probably should be hysterical, but I can't quite manage it. I'm just too blasted relieved that you really exist."

"We'll talk about that too, but I've already had my ship retrieve it...and your pets." He was confused because she seemed to think that made sense instead of asking the usual startled questions. So he asked a few more of his own. "How old are you? And you still haven't told me how you got hurt."

"Ten." She hesitated. "Um, you startled me."

"That's a bit young for a human to be on your own, isn't it?" He asked, picking her up quite carefully. "How did we startle...oh, when we landed. Oh dear, well, I've got you fixed up and now I suppose we will see what comes next."

"I think you need to watch most of my videos...and I think the ones you shouldn't see I'll just...give her. Cuz she won't let you do something that stupid."

"You sound like you know who I am. And some of the more important rules of Time as well...which is frankly odd." He mentioned to her as he took her into his arms to move her out of the infirmary. "Move the kitchen bit closer, will you Sexy? I need to feed this child."

"Yeah, I guess I sorta do sound like that, huh?" She looked up into his green-eyed gaze and tried to smile. "You're supposed to be a character on a tv show, not real."

"Am I?" Now, that startled him, he'd met people from other realities before, but nobody had ever told him something like that before. "Oh dear, from an alternate reality, are you? Unfortunately, I know there's been at least three minor fixed points created since you entered my TARDIS, that means you're sorta stuck here. Both in my custody and permanently in this reality, child."

"I don't mind. You're cool." She told him, laying her head on his shoulder as she grasped his frock coat's lapel with her right hand. "But...I've got all the box sets in the trailer, except for a couple of Christmas specials...and I've got those downloaded to the hard drive."

"Do you?" He didn't really like the sound of that.

"So, I knew what I was hearing when she started to materialize...and it startled me. I was too busy trying to figure out when real life went screwy...and there was some sort of hole and my foot went in and my knee bent the wrong way and then after I finally got my foot out of the hole, I fell on that rock."

"Well, I've got you now and if you're not where you were, then at least you're where you should be now."

"Yes, sir, Doctor."

"None of that 'sir' business."

"Kids should call adults by ma'am or sir, shouldn't we?"

"Well, I suppose you do have a point. But, the general respect for age that those forms of address denote is rather pointless with me...everyone is a baby to me, after all." He sighed, entering the kitchen and settling the child on a high stool, her cast on another before he answered. "How about I give you special permission not to use it on me and you just use it for other people instead?" He got a nod from the child. "Now, you've been avoiding this one...what's your name?"

"Ellie."

"Okay, Ellie...Ellie what?"

"Neets."

"Okay, that's better. Ellie Neets. Now, just remember not to 'sir' me...if you want to use a special word just for me, use something else."

She'd called him Papa, or rather, she screamed it: In public, around people he knew...like Jack and Martha. And worse, since she'd been about to overbalance on her crutches and thus fall down a flight of stairs, he had panicked enough to actually answer to it. He'd been shaken up enough to keep answering to it and let her sit on his lap after he'd caught her, soothing her fright at the near fall.

"Papa, Doctor?"

He looked down into the big, tear-filled blue eyes in Ellie's little face and knew he'd lost that one before he'd even gotten started. "Yes, Jack. This is Ellie Neets and I've adopted her." The Doctor sighed inwardly and then explained. "Told her my custody of her was permanent so, I suppose it's natural for a child this age to take the next step and so she has." He smiled a bit. "Don't worry, I've been a dad before." And he smiled a bit indulgently as he felt the child's rake thin arms encircle his waist, under his coat...something neither Jack nor Martha missed.

"Your everyday life just got ever so much more unpredictable. Never know what a child will get into." Martha told him.

*~*TBC*~*