A/N: Taking a slight detour from Journey because I am mad and frustrated and I want a distraction. My special little Time Lord (he's gifted with Aspergers - in other words the living embodiment of Ten. I kid you not. He is Ten to a tee) Anywaaaaay. He has been mercilessly and horrifically bullied for the past two years at school, and the faculty don't seem to be all that interested in dealing with it except to blame the victim. (oh I could write a BOOK on this)
First day at school yesterday, and already he's been thrown to the ground and attacked ... So I'm either going to march into the school and wait for the parents of the little punk with a chainsaw in my hand, or I will do the less illegal thing and get my frustration out here in fic world so I can calmly talk it over with the principal.
This is born of my frustrations as a mum, and how I'd like to think the Doc might deal with it if he found out his ten-year old was being pounded in the school yard
~~oooOOOooo~~
He was lying on his back underneath the grating of his TARDIS when he heard it: the cautious and slow opening creak of the TARDIS doors, the tiny little inhale of unsureness, and the pitter patter of junior size 13 converse shoes.
The Doctor didn't need to draw on his parental telepathic bond to know just which of his children stood at the doorway and rocked lightly on her feet with clear indecision as to whether or not she should approach. That behaviour was linked to only one: his second child, and eldest daughter, Lirreafinduvo.
The shiest one of his three children, Lirreafinduvo – or Lirrea for short – always treaded carefully around anyone. She was especially cautious around the TARDIS. Not that she needed to be, of course. The TARDIS was fiercely protective of his entire brood. She'd much rather see him hurt than any of his precious children.
That was a point rather well proven when she gave his fingers a hard jolt of electricity in warning for him to stop tinkering to see to his little girl.
"Yes, yes, old girl," he muttered with a short and hard blow at his fingers to cool them down. "I heard her."
A sound that could've been a TARDIS equivalent of an exasperated snort rattled down along the central column. He rolled his eyes at it.
"Down here, Sweetheart," he called with a definite chirp in his voice. "Just doing a bit of maintenance on the Time Path Detector." He sighed. "I don't know what your brother did to it, but we had a slight disconnection from the Interstitial Antenna on our last trip. No big deal, mind. We still managed to get back home at a reasonable hour."
A little blonde head popped down through the small opening and gave him a smile. "We returned almost a month later than we were supposed to, dad." She dropped to her knees and then onto her belly to wriggle alongside him. "Grandma was mad because you missed Grandpa's big party and she had to make excuses…" She sighed in a very Jackie manner. "…Again."
The Doctor had to chuckle at that. Lirrea was exceedingly good at her impersonations. With that single word he could immediately picture Jackie's huff and eye roll at her Time Travelling daughter and her Time-Retarded Time Lord showing up late, yet again.
"Oh, but we had a good time, didn't we, Sweetheart?" He said with a laugh. "Playing about on Ziypra's lunar adventure tours? Remember that? You got to ride on a Slodalea and feed the Dradus. Oh, and what about the amazing Yucrorf sundaes? How many did you and I eat?"
"Princess," she corrected softly.
"Pardon me?"
"I'm Princess, not Sweetheart."
"Actually, you're Lirreafinduvo," he corrected softly. "You were named after the beautiful maiden goddess who protects the precious wildflowers and majestic trees of Gallifrey."
"Yes," she said with a soft smile as she wriggled toward him and laid her head on his shoulder and nestled against his side. "I know. But I also like the name Princess. So you can call me that, yeah?"
He curled his arm around his child and did his best to lay his cheek against her hair, which was awkward given that they were both lying in a tiny little cubbyhole underneath the TARDIS console. "That's your choice, then, Lirrea? Princess? You wish to be The Princess?"
She nestled closer against her father's side and nodded her head. "Just Princess is fine thanks. If I put the the in front of it, it sounds awfully pretentious."
"Well, so does Princess," he managed with a shrug. He heard a hurt intake of breath and winced at himself. "Actually, no it doesn't," he spluttered in an attempt to backpedal. "It suits you – my little Princess. I like it! I love it even. Princess Lirrea. Oh does that have a wonderful ring to it."
Her voice was incredibly tiny. "Are you saying that I'm pretentious, then, daddy?"
If she wasn't lying against him, he would've slumped. Instead he let out a sigh and held her more firmly at his side. "What I'm saying," he answered her softly. "Is that you are more precious to me than a Princess, Lirrea. That term is so sorely inadequate for who you really are to me and your mother."
"A Lady," she ventured quietly.
"Even better than that," he cooed with a kiss at her head. "You're a Time Lady of Gallifrey."
She giggled. "A Time Lady of Pete's World," she corrected him. "I was born on Earth."
"Actually," he replied. "You were born onboard the TARDIS which was floating in space overlooking the Lagoon Nebula." He smiled. "Oh, Lirrea, what a spectacular moment that was. You burst into the universe ... well okay … you were pushed into the universe by your magnificent mother, and at that very moment a flare of brilliant gold burst through the scarlet clouds like an arrow through my heart."
She sighed contentedly. "Cupid's arrow."
"Cupid no," he remarked softly. "That is a very different form of love from what your mother and I have for you lot of little terrors." He grinned. "And Cupid. Well. Now let me tell you about Cupid and how his legend managed to go from a slender winged boy to a chubby little winged cherub."
"Daddy?"
His mouth was open and he was all set to launch into a rather detailed explanation of the origins of cupid and his involvement in the legend of the chubby little cherub, but his daughter's tiny voice shoved that little anecdote back down into his throat. He swallowed it further and lifted his hand to stroke at her hair. Her tiny voice meant that something was wrong.
"Is everything okay, Lirrea?"
"Yes."
Her little sniff told him otherwise. "Are you sure about that?"
"Mmmhmm." She inhaled a sigh. "Keep telling me your story."
"I think it's about time that you told me one," he said gently. "Come on. Let's get out of here and have a sit in the galley. TARDIS made some chocolate and banana cookies and I think she just might have a chocolate milkshake waiting for you."
"Mum's making dinner," she answered with defeat in her tone. "If I eat cookies and drink milkshakes then I'll spoil my appetite."
He pressed his finger to his lips in a conspiratorial manner. "She's in the house. We're in the TARDIS." He felt her shake with giggles. "I won't tell her if you don't."
"That's keeping secrets, Daddy," she challenged him with a poke in his side. "We don't keep secrets."
"No," he answered along a slightly serious tone. "We don't." He wriggled free of the cubbyhole and dropped both hands to pull his daughter up after him. She stumbled as the toe of her pink converse got caught in a part of the grating, so the Doctor hauled her little form up into his arms to hold her against his chest. He walked in the direction of the TARDIS galley. "So. With that said. What's on your mind, Princess?"
She stuck out her bottom lip in a most adorable impersonation of her father when he wanted something from her mother, and widened her little eyes as innocently as she could. "Nothing…?"
If he could possibly have melted into a puddle on the grating he would've. He was pretty much unable to deny his little seven year old Princess anything on a good day (or any of his kids for that matter). So when she pulled out all the stops and widened her little hazel/amber eyes at him and pouted that adorable pout, he knew he was completely done for. If his little girl asked him to pull the moon out of the sky and put it in her bedroom as a nightlight, he would.
Absolutely…
The science of it be damned, of course…
He was a Time Lord – or half as it were – so he was rather familiar with Time Lord transdimensional technology. He could make a nightlight casing bigger on the inside to fit the moon into it.
…He absolutely could.
…Now to make up some plans to do just that.
"Daddy?"
He blinked himself free of his thoughts and cleared his throat. His voice was slightly strained and croaked when he answered her. "Yes, Sweetheart?"
"Princess," she corrected. "And. No, I don't want the moon. Thanks."
His eyes shot wide, but he didn't look at her. "How did you…?"
"You were projecting very loudly," she said with a giggle as she held up her hand and stuck her pinkie finger into the air. "Got you wrapped here, yeah?"
"With great power," he warned with mock darkness. "Comes great responsibility. Use it wisely." He dropped her tiny butt onto a stool at a breakfast counter in the galley and hooked his foot around the leg of another to drag it closer. He dropped heavily onto the soft white vinyl seat and leaned an elbow onto the table. With a smile he used a finger to push a banana-chocolate milkshake across the table toward her. "So?"
Lirrea used the suction through the straw to hollow out her cheeks and pretend that she was incapable of speech and therefore couldn't answer his attempt at probing out the information he was looking for. Instead, she hummed a happy sound at the chocolatey treat.
The Doctor let a brow arch high over his eye and slid his hand across the table. He took hold of the stem of the milkshake glass between his second and middle fingers and dragged the milkshake away from her. Lirrea was left with big sad eyes and a straw hanging from her cheeks that was dripping milk splots onto the counter.
"Lirreafinduvo," he said on a warning breath. "Are you going to tell me what's on your mind, or are you going to pretend that everything's okay and expect me to buy it?"
"If I don't tell you," she huffed with a slouch in her shoulders. "You're just going to wait till I go to sleep and then go into my head and find out anyway, aren't you?"
"I'm insulted that you'd think I'd do something like that," he said with a frown. "I'd never do that. I trust you kids enough to be upfront with me."
She walked her fingers toward her milkshake in hopes that her father was distracted enough to let her slide it back. "Or you hope one of us would rat the other out, yeah?"
"There is that." The Doctor's eyes dropped to her fingers walking along the table top, and he lifted the milkshake glass to take a long swig of the banana-chocolately goodness from the edge of the glass. He let out a sigh of contentment as he licked off his milk moustache with a single swipe of his tongue. "Oh that's good. So good. Just brilliant."
Lirrea's expression fell and she let her bottom lip quiver in hopes that he'd feel sorry for scarfing down her milkshake that he'd give it back. "Daddy?"
"Nuh-uh," he panted with a toothy grin through an open mouth as he pulled the glass away. "I think I'm developing immunity to cuteness. Yep. Knew it. Knew it was coming. Oh yes, of course. That's right. It comes when your Princess turns seven years, three months, two weeks, six days, eight hours, fifteen minutes and twelve seconds old. And. Oh wait wait. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Oh yes! There it is. Twelve seconds." He breathed out a pair of laughs. "Complete cuteness immunity in effect. No more wrappage of Time Lords around little pinkie fingers belonging to one Lirreafinduvo Sarah-Jane Tyler."
She looked completely mortified by that. "No! That's not fair!"
He gave her an apologetic look and shook his head as he shrugged. "I'm sorry, Lirrea, but that's just the way it goes."
"No! That's not fair."
She frowned and bounced unhappily on her stool with enough of a jump to shift the chair. The Doctor's arm shot forward to try and stabilize both stool and child. "There is hope," he offered quickly. "It's reversible, Lirrea."
She stopped bouncing. "Yeah?"
He nodded in a slightly frantic manner. "Of course. You just have to be honest with Daddy and tell him what's going on."
"And then you'll think I'm still cute?"
"Oh yes," he answered back quickly with a grin. "Absolutely adorable for all of time." He dipped his head to his shoulder. "But if you can't, then, well…"
"It's Markandrenotrubragramru," she spat quickly inside a pant.
The Doctor sat up quickly. "What's wrong with your brother?"
Her eyes filled with tears as she threw a look of pleading toward her father. "I promised him I wouldn't tell you or mummy."
"Oh," he huffed worriedly. "Now you have to tell me, Lirrea."
"But he'll get mad at me," she moaned with her eyes tightly closed and her entire body slouched. "And then he'll hate me." She closed her eyes and shook her head. "I don't want Mark to hate me."
The Doctor touched Lirrea's elbow and tugged lightly to coax her to look at him. "Sweetheart. Look at me." He waited until her eyes lifted to his. "Is Mark in trouble? Did he do something that your mother and I won't approve of and will make us mad?"
Her eyes shot wide and she frantically shook her head. "No, Daddy. It's nothing like that. Nothing!" Her breath panted out of her. "Mark did nothing wrong. Honest." She jumped off the stool and quickly launched at her father's chest. She clutched onto the lapels of his open shirt-jacket and buried her face into the soft crewneck T-shirt underneath. "He was protecting me. He saw that I was being picked on and just wanted to help me out." She whimpered against his chest. "I didn't mean for him to get beaten up."
He clutched his little girl against him and then pulled her onto his lap. He ignored the angry tick in his left eye and rocked gently rocked his weeping daughter in an effort to calm her down. "It's okay, Lirrea. Just tell me what happened."