2012

"Hmm," Ganbri hummed with emphasis. "Hmm. Hmmmm."

The Doctor wasn't sure where he had picked that habit up from but he found it adorable. Whenever he was presented with a puzzle or had to think about something, the toddler would tilt his head from side to side and hmm until he sorted it out. Jack had taught him to scratch his chin while he did it as well.

"Look here," the Doctor offered helpfully, pointing to a group of smaller rings Ganbri had piled off to the side. Ganbri looked at the pile and hmm'ed again. The Doctor waited a little while longer before moving his hand to point out a specific area of the pile but Ganbri quickly grabbed it and pushed it away.

"Alright," the Doctor said quickly, raising his hands in surrender. Ganbri had never liked to be helped too much. He wanted to do things on his own. Even when he was learning to walk he was very eager to pull himself free of his helper's hands and lunge forward on his own.

"You don't think that's a little too advanced for him?" Jack asked from his spot on the couch.

"No," the Doctor answered simply. "Maybe for you . . ."

It was an old thing that he'd dug out of the deepest forgotten closets of the TARDIS—a box full of thin metal rings and lines of different sizes. He had tried to teach Ganbri to write Gallifreyan with a pencil but the muscles in his hands weren't quite to developed enough yet, so he sought an alternative. This way, he could choose the right shapes to use from his little kit and lay them on top of each other.

Gallifrey was gone and, with it, its people and its languages, but the Doctor felt that it was somehow important to keep it alive where he could. Harry insisted that their priorities lie in English, but it was such an easy language to a Time Lord—even a one-year-old. He'd mastered the alphabet in record speed and, though he wasn't yet old enough to even speak the words properly, he could move the magnetic letters on the fridge around to spell a couple of basic words. The Doctor didn't see any harm in at least teaching him to write his name in Gallifreyan.

"Ba," Ganbri chirped happily, holding up a metal ring for his inspection.

"That's right," he said, smiling.

Ganbri put the ring down over top of the other ones. It wasn't quite in the right place but Ganbri noticed before the Doctor could say anything and put it right. He didn't stop to look for praise. He just leaned forward to look at the piles he had organized and began to hum again.

Harry stepped in through the front door, covered in oil and dirt and wiping his hands on a raggedly towel. He glanced at the metal rings on the floor but didn't say anything about them.

"Fixed it," he muttered, bending down to take his boots off.

The Doctor answered with a thank you and ignored the quiet chuckle that escaped Jack. He seemed to find it hilarious that the Doctor had been unable to find the source of the terrible grinding sound his car was making on his own. He had tried, as he usually was able to fix any machine put before him, but in the end he just couldn't figure out what was wrong. He blamed it on the fact that it was old and primitive technology that he wasn't used to. He also blamed it on the car, saying the car knew he didn't like it and so it didn't like him in return.

"Have they started yet?" Harry asked next, pulling off his shirt and carefully bunching it in his hands so it wouldn't drop dirt through the house.

"No," Jack answered lazily, flopping onto his side so that he could lay his legs over the armrest of the couch. "It's all just adverts and following the torch so far."

"Right, I'm jumping in the shower then."

"Toktok!" Ganbri suddenly shouted, twisting his little body right around so that he could hold up a metal ring for Harry's inspection. Harry had gotten himself a job at the university a couple of months before and his sudden disappearances from the house had made their son thirsty for his attention. He wanted to show Harry everything he found or mashed together and, more often than not, preferred to hold his Tokrah's hand whenever they went out.

"Yes, it's very good," Harry answered enthusiastically. "Show me when I get back, okay? I'll only be a minute. Banni will help you until then," he turned to leave the room and called back over his shoulder. "Or maybe Uncle Jack if he cares to get his feet off the sofa!"

"They're over the armrest!" Jack shouted back, then looked at the Doctor as though it was him who had said something. "They're not even touching!"

The Doctor simply shrugged at him. He didn't really care if there were feet on the couch and it was up to Jack to decide whether it was worth a fight with Harry. Jack crossed his arms stubbornly and left his feet where they were.

"He's gonna hit you," the Doctor warned with a smirk.

"He can try."

By the time Harry returned, Ganbri was almost finished constructing his name with only two pieces left. The word didn't sound long but it carried a lot of meaning, and so it was rather more of a bother to write than it would be in English.

Harry walked in with a towel around his waist and a light silk robe slung over his arm. "Alright, show me," he said happily to Ganbri as he moved to stand in front of the couch. The second Ganbri had turned his eyes down at his project, Harry thumped Jack hard on the shoulder with his fist, earning a very satisfying oof! The Time Lord hadn't even glanced at him before he struck out so the Doctor supposed that Jack just didn't see it coming, but he also suspected that sometimes Jack allowed himself to get hit because he kind of enjoyed it. He provoked Harry far too much to not enjoy it.

Jack quickly slung his legs back over the armrest and sat up properly, which then left space for Harry to sit down beside him. He leaned forward in his seat and made wonderful ooh's and ah's as Ganbri proudly showed off his work, making the boy grin gleefully.

"Banni's been teaching you lots while I'm at work, hasn't he?" Harry said with a perfectly happy tone while his eyes glanced at the Doctor with a look of amused annoyance.

"It's just his name," the Doctor felt compelled to answer.

"Yes, it's a hard one to make," Harry answered, speaking to Ganbri again. "Show me the next one then. Where's the next piece?"

They chatted for a few minutes while the Doctor sat cross-legged on the floor and helped Ganbri carefully selected piece after piece for his name. Jack started a silent war with Harry, pinching and slapping each other whenever Ganbri looked away. He was so busy enjoying the company around him that he had completely forgotten that, a long time ago, he had already lived this day.

"My God!" a voice from the TV cried out. "Er, what's going on here?" Eyes turned toward the screen and the Doctor suddenly remembered what had been nagging at the back of his mind ever since Jack suggested that they watch the Olympic ceremonies together.

"Um . . . the crowd has vanished! U-um, they're gone. Everyone is gone!" the announcer continued in a voice of hopeless confusion as the screen revealed a completely deserted stadium. "Thousands of people are just gone, uh . . . um . . . right in front of my eyes!"

"The hell is this?" Jack asked, leaning forward at the TV. "Mass abduction?"

"I'll call Grandfather," Harry said quickly as he began to stand up.

"Leave it," the Doctor answered, stopping both of the other men before they could stand. "It's fine."

"Um, it's impossible," the voice of the announcer continued, stammering helplessly. "Bob, shall we join you in the box?"

The Doctor watched as the screen flickered to another image empty of human life. Jack and Harry were both staring at him as though he had gone utterly mad. He tried to ignore it. It wasn't until he found what he was looking for that he even realized a part of himself was stretching out his telepathic muscles, using the techniques he had refined over the last couple of years to reach out.

"Bob?" whimpered the dismayed announcer. "Not you too, Bob!"

"What do you mean 'it's fine'?" Harry asked with a definite edge to his voice.

"In case you didn't hear the man, Bob's gone, Doctor," Jack added, pointing at the TV as though he thought the Doctor hadn't seen it. "Thousands of people just vanished into thin air. How is that fine?"

"It's already been taken care of," the Doctor answered simply. "They'll come back."

There was a slightly tense moment in which the two continued to stare at them. Jack was half way between sitting and being on his feet, anxiously glancing between the two Time Lords. That annoyed him. Once upon a time, Jack did whatever the Doctor told him to without question. These days it always seemed that Jack always waited for Harry to agree. Harry claimed that Jack did the same thing to both of them, but the Doctor hadn't noticed it.

Harry was looking at him with those piercing eyes of his. He felt his presence pressing gently against his mind and the Doctor hesitated to let him in. Rose was there—just a faint echo, miles and miles away, but she was there. Suddenly he felt vulnerable, like a wounded animal protecting its nest. Something deep inside the shadows of his mind whimpered and let out quiet growls of warning as Harry crept closer.

Eventually, Harry found her. An old memory, living again, Rose was out there saving the world. The Doctor could feel her frustrations with Trish Webber, the empathy she felt for a frightened little girl, and the fear she felt for the Doctor himself. He was a little worried about how Harry might react—he'd always felt jealous of the Doctor's "women", Rose especially. They'd spoken of her before and the Doctor had made it very clear that, though Harry was the only person he wanted to be with, a small part of him would always love Rose. As he offered up the weak connection to his husband, he imagined that this must be how the Ood felt any time they held out their secondary brain to a stranger.

He could feel that Harry was uneasy, but he was kind. He reached through the connection himself, feeling and experiencing Rose, something he had never been able to do before. He never said a word. After a moment, he withdrew and left the Doctor to hold onto the connection alone.

"As he says, then," Harry said quietly to Jack, leaning back in his seat again and bringing a slightly forced smile to his face. "It's already sorted."

The Doctor tried to smile, but it felt a little harder than normal. Part of him was happy to feel Rose's presence again, but it had its bitterness too. He wished he could go find her now, just so he could thank her and let her know that she didn't have to worry about him so much—he was okay now.

The announcer on the TV continued with his panicked dialogue and they all sat in silence until the phone rang. Harry got up to answer it and his voice sounded perfectly cheerful as he explained to Donna that everything was fine. But the Doctor could see his eyes, and there was some shadow in them.

"Ba," Ganbri chirped, temporarily abandoning his project. His son had always been intuitive and, even at such a young age, was able to tell when someone could benefit from a hug. The Doctor found a true smile creeping across his face as the toddler climbed onto him, standing on his thighs to wrap tiny arms around his neck.

"That's my boy," the Doctor said happily, giving him a good squeeze.

Be glad, he thought. It turned it out best for all of us in the end.

And so he sent happy thoughts to Rose, wondering if she would even receive them through the pathetically weak connection he had managed to create. She was so very far away and so very frightened that he doubted she would manage to feel any of it, but he tried just the same.

Harry finished on the phone quickly, slipped his light robe on to better cover himself, and returned to the couch. "So where are you then?" he asked, making a conscious effort to reach his hand out and gently touch the Doctor's back.

"I'm actually in a drawing. Crayon and paper, that's all I am," the Doctor answered with a scratch of his head. "It's a long story."

"So what is it then?" Jack asked next. "Scientists? Slavers?"

"Just a pair of frightened children, that's all."

He didn't really feel like telling the story.

Harry watched him quietly for a moment through the corner of his eye and then suddenly sat up straight. "Right," he said loudly, clapping his hands together once to catch Ganbri's attention. "If you're going to learn this, you had better learn it properly. Come on then." With some careful adjusting of his robe, Harry slid onto the floor with them. He made a show of it, helping Ganbri finish spelling out his own name. He told Ganbri he was clever and that he would be writing books in no time, and Ganbri squealed happily. The boy was excited about it now and wanted to keep going, so Harry decided to teach him how to write 'Tokrah'.

"Just look at this!" a voice cried out from the TV. "Utterly incredible scenes at the Olympic Stadium. 80000 athletes and spectators that disappeared—they've come back!"

Jack cheered and Ganbri copied him, throwing his hands in the air without knowing what he was celebrating. The Doctor smiled, feeling a small swell of pride inside, knowing that Rose had saved thousands that day all by herself.

Harry glanced at him with a bit of a smirk. "Are you going to be on the telly?" he asked quietly.

"Of course," he answered with a grin. "Any second."

Harry took hold of Ganbri by the waist and turned him towards the screen. "Look," he said, pointing. "Banni's going to be on telly. Keep watching."

Ganbri, young as he was, was clever enough to understand. His brown grew wide and round, staring expectantly at the screen. The torchbearer collapsed, the flame rolling from his hand onto the street. The announcer narrated in dismay but Ganbri visibly tensed and quivered in excitement, knowing that the trouble could only mean one thing . . .

The Doctor thought it was a bit odd to watch himself appear on TV, but Ganbri squealed again and clapped his hands in delight. "Ba!" he shouted happily, pointing his finger at the screen.

"No way," Jack chuckled with a shake of his head.

Harry was quiet, but smiling. He peered at the Doctor, eyes peeking at him over the dark tufts of their son's hair—that piercing stare that made him feel so exposed. Harry knew. Even without telepathy he knew that the Doctor was thinking of Rose. He knew this was her victory more than it was the Doctor's. He knew that the Doctor was proud of her for it, even now.

"Look at your daddy," Harry said, suddenly turning his eyes back down to Ganbri. "He saved the day, didn't he? Your Banni's a hero, you lucky boy."

He felt a presence prowling around the outskirts of his mind—territorial, defensive. Harry could still sense the connection with Rose but chose not to touch it, instead turning away from it disdainfully and pretending it didn't exist.

That was okay, he decided. That would be their middle ground. He could keep his memories and the love he felt for Rose in his head—he could think of her and remember her and even miss her. But she had no place in their lives. Those memories were not meant to be shared and her stories were not meant to be told. She had no place with Harry or Ganbri, like so many that had come and gone before her.

"Well done, Lahrre," Harry said quietly. "The Earth owes you another debt."

Rose's presence was fading, swallowed up in the senses of his past self, so he let it go. "Yes," he found himself saying without hesitation. "Well, I am brilliant."