Hey you guise I know its been forever since I've updated this story and I'm so sorry that I haven't been updating regularly. My life has been really hectic especially in the last couple months. With my school work, depression, lack of motivation, and very intensive out-patient therapy I haven't found the time or will to get this chapter written and uploaded. Anyway enough of my excuses.
River, Jenny and Ava sat on the only couch in the Pond's living room. Watching the Doctor, pace back and forth in front of them, his face a hard grimace. Both Jenny and Ava recognized the truculent facial expression he wore as one that should not be disturbed. Watching him eagerly they waited for the mask to fade.
Ava was the first to speak, "Daddy?" she whispered. The doctor didn't miss a beat. Seemingly unaware of the child who had called him he continued to pace in front of them. River mused over what might have been going on in his mind. Her parents were just as important to him as they were to her. They shed light on the lonely implacable existence of a time lord. Offering light and hope to the darkness that River could only augment. If her parents were a torch in the night, then River Song was the shadow cast right alongside it.
"Mum", Jenny's voice broke her form her reverie, "River, we have to get him to to say something, Talk to him he'll respond to you." She would have said something more if she had not been interrupted with a loud "Shhh, Thinking," from the Doctor. Jenny decided to waive the matter for the moment, but River did not want to forgo the talk between all four of them. It was inevitable.
"Doctor, Doctor we have to talk about this." He had continued pacing as she talked. "Please.." It was this word that stopped him in his tracts. His head snapped up to meet her eyes. River Song never begged for anything (almost never he amended in his head with an almost invisible smile.)
"Okay", he said slowly his small smile growing, "First things first. You're dead." As he said this he pulled Jenny up into an airtight hug breathing in the scent of her again until she mumbled slightly. " What was that Jenny?" he asked with his arms loosening the tiniest bit.
"Dad. Can't. Breathe." She gasped.
He offered an apology as he quickly let her go. "How are you here alive? You are alive aren't you?" At this he pulled out his sonic screwdriver for a simple cursory exam. "Yes definitely living. Double heartbeat, working respiratory bypass, and not made of flesh. This is wonderful but you still haven't answered my first question. 'How?'"
"Well you haven't given me the chance, but now that you have. I regenerated Weeell", she stretched the word out just as he had in his tenth regeneration," not technically I still have the same body save the bullet hole. Which I can definitely live without."
" How are you? How old are you? When did you find me again?" He said in the excited manner he usually had when something sparked his interest which was often.
"I'm seven years old, took me three years to find you. But we've been traveling around the universe ever since I found you again. That makes four years now, that we've been running, throughout all of time and space just like you said we would. But not always together."
"Like now?"
Jenny didn't respond to the question aloud but she simply shook her head. She knew that foreknowledge was dangerous. It could cause ripples throughout all of time if it was powerful enough. But could she really keep this from her Mum and Dad and not put the entire family in jeopardy at the same time. She was torn in two about the entire decision. She was saved from making the choice for the moment when Ava had a sudden comment.
"We're the same age Jenny." She said a bit too loudly. Her extreme excitement by the newly given information was so profound that the adults in the room coild do nothing but giggle.
"Yeah we are the same age Avie, but you know what?" Ava shook her head causing her dark curls to swing around her face. " I'm older." Ava seemed as if she was about to correct her on the impossibility of the situation when Jenny said, "Time is wibbly wobbly."
"Wibbly wobbly timey wimey." Ava reiterated, she sounded so much like his tenth regeneration. The phrase had become a sort of inside joke between Jenny and Ava when they had found their dad's old videos of himself taken when the TARDIS had been stolen from him.
It Was amazing, the doctor mused, how much they had gotten from his previous regeneration. When he thought back he could definitely see how strong both his physical characteristic traits were back then and how different he was from most of his other forms. The brown eyes, pretty-boy face, AMAZING HAIR, distinct need for companionship and love, and also the weirdest, coolest jargon. Oh how he had hated to see that body go when he regenerated and found that he was no longer the slim, sexy, pretty-boy that he had been on New Earth, the Titanic II, Midnight, or even the Planet of the Ood. AND HE STILL WASN'T GINGER! But this body was good too, had a new everything, even a new set of hands that seemed as if they were made to fit River's. A hand to hold that made living through everything else just a bit more bearable.
He forced his mind back to the present which he had to admit was not a very pleasant place to be. His ponds were missing and he was sure that Jenny, if not both his daughters, was hiding something from him. Something that could only add to the ominous chain of events that had already taken place.
The Doctor moved to stand over Ava, River, and Jenny as they sat eyes glued to him from the couch. His face was neither angry nor the playful mask he usually wore, it was almost calm with a hint of a smile at the corners. Jenny was taken aback by the expression and River took it to be the Doctor's take on fatherly affection, but Ava recognized the look right away, she had seen it a thousand times before. Her father wanted something from them likely information. Ava sighed and glanced toward Jenny with a look of exasperation. Jenny, however, had just grasped the meaning of the expression on their father's face. She stared straight ahead with her teeth biting hard into her lower lip. Worried, Ava noted, she definitely looks worried. Ava felt her own teeth graze her lips now. Although she had nothing to hide maybe her sister did.
