Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far, you guys are wonderful! :D

The good news is that uni isn't too hectic yet, so the fanfic goes on! Writing dad!Twelve is one of my new favourite things, I've discovered. And Twelve and Clara's cute/funny banter. Just all of it, actually.

For anyone missing her, Missy will be back in a chapter or two, but it is important for the sake of the story and the characters (Charlie's in particular) that she is absent right now. There will be similar absences from Twelve and Clara a bit later on.


"Clara, she says she doesn't want pink."

"But she'd look so cute!" Clara held up the polka dotted dress so that the Doctor and Charlie could see it clearly. "Come on, Charlie, why don't you give it a go?"

Charlie, from her father's arms, frowned at the offending garment. "It's yuck."

"Please? For me?"

The child shook her head stubbornly and clutched the Doctor's jacket a little tighter. "Want purple. And blue."

"Okay, Charlie girl, lets have a look at the purple," he said amiably, while quietly thinking that Missy had already managed to at least partially influence her colour preferences. All he could do was hope that his two year old didn't want to be dressed in black.

Once Clara had returned the dress to its place, she joined them and they managed to pick out a nice selection of shirts and leggings, which seemed to be Charlie's preference, but a few dresses made their way in too.

"I never thought I'd see you shopping for little kid's clothes," Clara said, grinning at him.

"The universe is a surprising place, Clara." He let one of his fingers absently play with one of Charlie's curls. "You should have seen the baby shopping for this one. Missy in a baby shop, and the shopgirl was someone who knew my last two bodies. Good thing she didn't recognise me, she'd have gone running back to someone who I would much rather didn't know about this particular development."

"What, being daddy Doctor cramps your style?"

He snorted. "Hardly. You should know by now, Clara, it's not the child I'm ashamed of."

"What's ashamed?" Charlie asked, with a cute frown that had Clara internally melting.

"It's when your daddy does something stupid and is embarrassed about it later," the human told the Time Tot. The trio then made their way to the counter, where an older woman energetically chatted to them as she scanned all the items.

"You three are so sweet," she said, making them lift their eyebrows, "It's so nice to see grandfathers getting involved with things like this."

Clara coughed awkwardly while the Doctor began spluttering with outrage.

"Grandfather! This child isn't hers, my daughter could never come from a line that was so…" He eyed Clara with a deep level of criticism before finally settling for, "Vertically challenged."

"Oi!"

"She's the hired help," he said with the same annoyed conviction as he nodded to Clara, who bristled.

"Yeah, except you're not actually paying me, so cut the insults, okay?"

The shop lady, meanwhile, looked incredibly embarrassed. "I'm terribly sorry, sir, I shouldn't have assumed."

"You lot always do things you shouldn't do, it's barely worth apologising for," he replied, no doubt meaning humans as opposed to shopworkers. They paid and left in awkward silence before Clara made sure to give him an earful the moment they were out of the shop.


"Has she ever played with other children before?"

Clara's question gave the Doctor pause. Their plan of going to the park with Charlie had seemed so simple and faultless when first brought up, but now he had doubts. It was very unlikely that Missy would have deemed other children, from anywhere in the universe, fit to play with her child, and had likely kept Charlie in isolation. But of course, they had no way of knowing that for sure.

"Why don't you ask her?" He eventually replied. They were approaching the enclosed playground in the center of the park, and Charlie was walking on her own between them but was holding Clara's hand.

So, they stopped, and Clara crouched so that she was on Charlie's level. "Charlie, have you played with other kids before?"

Charlie shook her head dumbly.

"Well, the important thing to remember is that if you're nice to them, they should be nice to you. And then you can have fun together."

"Okay," Charlie said, glancing up at her father, who nodded to convey that he supported Clara's advice.

The three of them entered the playground area. "Now, we'll stay close, but you go have fun, alright?"

Charlie took a few steps towards the playground, turned and gave them a thoughtful look, then waved and set off at a little run towards a small slide.

"You're very good at this," the Doctor remarked as they watched the toddler closely in case she was in need of help, "I wasn't sure if you would be. With, you know, the tiny small ones."

"I'm just good," she said smugly.

"It's probably because you are a tiny small one, just in disguise as someone older."

He got a whack for that.

"You're actually not bad at this either," Clara offered a moment later, "I'm not going to lie, I had my doubts. You as a dad. Responsibility and all that."

"I like to remain full of surprises," he said, smirking. "Though to be fair, this was also something I didn't see coming."

"Do I need to give you the Talk? Since you apparently were so surprised by how this happened?"

He glared at her and the expression of self amusement that was all over her round face. "Gallifreyan fertility is so low that it's practically in the negatives, Clara. Charlie is so statistically improbable that frankly she's nothing short of a miracle."

Clara raised her eyebrows at him. "Miracle? That's not a word I really hear from you."

"Is it so surprising that if I chose to use it, I would apply it to my daughter?"

"...no, actually. I suppose not."

About five minutes later, the air was filled with the shrill sound of a young child's crying. They, along with other concerned guardians in the area, rushed to see what had transpired and who was upset.

A boy with curly red hair was on the ground, bawling his eyes out, while Charlie stood on the platform that was next to him, just watching him and not saying a word.

"What happened?" The Doctor asked the woman who was crouched by the crying ginger boy.

"She pushed him!"

"I'm sorry?" Clara blinked and looked at Charlie. "Charlie, is that true? Did you push him off?" The platform was only a bit over a foot off the ground, so the boy couldn't be injured in any proper way, but that didn't make it any less surprising.

"Yes," the toddler said.

The four other adults present, including the mother of the wronged boy, turned to look at the Doctor and Clara, who became very sheepish under their gazes. The latter was quick to lift Charlie from the platform and into her arms, while the former stared at his daughter and frowned deeply.

"Why did you do that, Charlie?"

"He pulled my hair."

The Doctor lifted an eyebrow at the boy and his mother. "Is that true?" The boy was still drying his eyes, but the mother suddenly looked uncomfortable.

"Well, maybe." She gathered herself up. "But that's still no excuse for pushing him like that."

"Charlie, you should have just asked him to stop," Clara told the little girl, who shook her head.

"I did, and he didn't."

"Is that true?" The diminutive school teacher asked the adults of the group.

The boy's mother, with a flick of her auburn hair, picked up her son and got to her feet. "There is no excuse for pushing another child."

"We're not saying it wasn't wrong of her, but it's not like she pushed him off London Bridge, he's fine and he was never in any danger. This is her first time trying to play with other kids, she's allowed to make mistakes," Clara said. "Now, Charlie, you realise that was wrong, don't you? To have pushed him off?"

Charlie frowned at her. "I was nice. He wasn't, so I wasn't."

Realising her own words had come back to bite her, Clara scrambled for a better excuse. "Now, Charlie, I know what I said, but two wrongs don't make a right, okay? Even if someone is mean to you, being mean back isn't going to help."

"Toddlers don't understand idioms," one of the other mothers said, rolling her eyes.

"Maybe yours don't," Clara retorted without missing a beat, "I'll thank you to not presume they're the most intelligent ones present." She looked back at Charlie. "When we do something wrong to somebody, we say sorry, yeah? Say sorry, and then he'll say sorry for pulling your hair."

Charlie stared at the ginger boy, who eyed her with distrust. "...sorry."

"Sorry," the boy echoed.

"Good, that's sorted, then," the Doctor said, sounding relieved to not have to linger and act so human and domestic. He reached for Charlie and Clara handed her over. "Now, I think you deserve some ice cream for all this, Charlie girl."

"You're going to reward her behaviour?" The offended mother asked, eyeing them with disgust. "Well, I don't know why I should have thought some old codger with a trophy wife was going to have good parenting skills."

"We've told her off for pushing a fellow child off the playground," he replied, "And now we're rewarding her for not putting up with your boy's cruelty."

"It was just hair pulling. Boys will be boys-"

The Doctor glowered at her. "And boys who think it's okay to push around girls will be bigger boys who might think it's okay to push them into things like walls. They learn that being rough is okay, from people like you. Well, it's not. Hair pulling is just the start, because it's not about the hair pulling, it's about the lack of respect behind it. I'll be glad when my daughter knows not to put up with anybody that treats her like something to be toyed with."

All the other parents just blinked, stunned.

"Come on, Clara," he said quietly, giving them all one last look of distaste before hitching Charlie more firmly onto his hip and turning to leave.

Clara was so impressed that it took her a few seconds to register what he had said to her. She hurried to catch up, and it wasn't until they were out of the playground area and heading to the nearby shop that sold ice creams that she finally recalled something that had been said.

"I am not a trophy wife!" She exclaimed, aghast. "That bitch!"

"What?" The Doctor was busy getting bopped on the nose by his daughter, and therefore was not paying much attention to her.

"They thought we were married!" Clara said, thinking about how odd the very idea of it was. "They called me your trophy wife."

"What's a trophy wife?" He asked, blankly. "Aren't trophies supposed to be shiny and for people who win awards? You're not very shiny. Or gold. I've never heard of short brown trophies before."

"Oh, shut up! Trophy wives are young wives for older men, where people assume the men just want them because they're young and pretty and make them look good."

"Sounds like a ridiculous human social concept."

Clara stared at him. "...you mean you don't care that they thought we were married?"

"They're pudding brains, Clara, I don't care about a single electron going around in their skulls, let alone an entire one of their thoughts."

That was when they arrived at the ice cream store, and Clara ordered chocolate while the Doctor opted to share a strawberry one with Charlie. They began to make their way back to the TARDIS with their treats. Clara had to laugh at the sight of her grumpy owl of a best friend trying to share a pink ice cream with his apparently greedy daughter. Every time he tried to pull it towards him to get in a few licks, Charlie yanked it back towards her and took a small bite that got at least some of it on her face.

"You're your mother's daughter, alright," he muttered after a while, having apparently given up and just handed the ice cream over completely, "She was never one for sharing."

That made Clara's smile fade a little. The idea of this child that she already cared for immensely being anything like her psychopathic mother was not a pleasant one. What if even with their influence, she turned out like Missy?

Luckily, the Doctor then asked her a question before she could go too deeply down that road of thought.

"Why do people keep thinking you're her mother?" He seemed genuinely curious.

Clara shrugged. "I'm the right age for it, I guess."

He eyed her more closely. "Are you?"

"Yes!" She said exasperatedly.

If Christmas was anything to go by, it was that he really didn't see her as having any sort of age. And although at times like this it could get annoying, the idea of being truly timeless in someone's eyes was actually rather nice.

Charlie just kept munching on her ice cream as they continued to bicker over Clara's age and appearance, until her mouth was surrounded by melted sticky pink and they had to stop and wipe her clean with the paper napkins they had been given.

Even Time Lord children, it seemed, were not immune to getting their food all over their faces.


I really hope you guys liked this! Next chapter will be another one of the odd but great Whouffaldi co-parenting, and then we're up for a bit of a change in pace when Missy reappears and shakes everything up as she is known to do. (Also I'm already getting a bit of Twissy withdrawal.)

And while this is a humour story done mostly for fun, it WILL contain angst where appropriate, for the sake of being true to the characters. Frankly, it's me, and angst is one of my things, so no one should really be surprised at this point.

Feedback is always really appreciated (that includes constructive criticism)!

Love you all,

-MayFairy :)