Never Quite Normal
By: Jessa L'Rynn & Olfactory Ventriloquism
This work is a collaborative effort. If it had been just me, this story wouldn't be right at all, so big round of applause for my co-author, Olfactory Ventriloquism. -Jessa
Disclaimer: We don't own Doctor Who. We have abducted him and are trying to get him to sign himself over. We've brought in the comfy chair! and are getting ready to feed him the yummy cake! He will sign, or he will SIT in the comfy chair! Oh... or he'll use the sonic screwdriver to turn it into ribbons and matchsticks... hum. After him! We'll keep you posted.
Please note: This fic carries an M rating for a lot of very good reasons.
Chapter 9:
Collapsed in a chair in Joshua's kitchen and feeling quite a good bit of useless, Rose answered her ringing phone with a gruff, "What, Mum?"
"Where are you, Rose?" Jackie's voice demanded.
"I'm staying with Shireen tonight," she lied, wondering if she was too old to lie to her mother yet.
"Oh good," said Jackie, coldly. "Because Shireen just called to see if you were home. Something about running off."
Yeah, way too old to lie to her mother. "Sorry, Mum," she said softly.
"So where are you then?"
"At Joshua's."
"That drunk from the pub!" Jackie shrieked.
Pot, meet kettle, Rose thought vaguely. "He's been in an accident, Mum. His doctor's here and his uncle's on his way and can we talk about this tomorrow?"
"Fine," Jackie snapped. "But I'm going to talk and you're going to listen."
"Whatever. Night, Mum." She hung up and hung her head.
The tears she had been fighting god knows how long now finally caught up to her, and started to roll heedlessly down her face. She tried to keep them quiet, so as not to disturb Harry or John, who'd arrived just a few minutes ago, but she didn't know whether she was having any luck with that or not until a large hand closed on her shoulder and squeezed.
"I'll make you some tea," John said. "You just stay there."
"Thanks," she managed, and sniffled, and snatched a napkin from a fancy little rack to dab at her eyes. If she'd been more coherent, she might have taken a moment to think about how out of place it was, but then so were Joshua's dishes and she didn't have the energy to care. She just let the worry and tears drain out of her together and then settled back like a wrung dishrag.
John set a nice cuppa in front of her and went rifling through the fridge for cream. When he found it, he offered it to her. She took a sip of the tea, just to test, then added twice as much cream and sugar as she usually had.
Apparently John was used to making the tea really strong for someone.
"How is he?" she asked softly.
"Harry has him resting at the moment. He did want me to ask if you knew about his thumb."
"I saw it, he didn't tell me what he did. Might've been last week, I didn't see him."
"He was in Cardiff on a consult."
"Oh, right." She sighed. "I think this might be my fault."
"It isn't," John said firmly. "Joshua has more things than any of us can imagine going on in his head right now and he doesn't want them there. There's nothing any one can do about it until he wants to do something about it." The older man gave her a small, almost teasing smile. "I was actually going to thank you. I haven't seen him happy in a long time, but he was when he dragged you off across the park."
Rose felt herself blushing.
The Brigadier found the girl curled up in a chair next to Joshua's bed, clutching firmly to his right hand and obviously fighting sleep. Harry was in another chair, obviously dragged in from the kitchen, and he had apparently lost the fight.
The Brigadier shot a small, concerned smile at the girl, then at the figure lying so still in the bed. Then he winked at the girl as she smiled back. "Dr. Sullivan, report," he snapped in a low but commanding tone.
The girl - Miss Tyler - giggled as Harry woke with a start and stared up at the Brigadier with huge, alarmed eyes. "Yes sir. Sorry sir." He straightened to his feet automatically. "I had to sedate him, sir. The usual."
"Didn't want to end up in a cupboard this time," the Brigadier observed dryly.
"He wouldn't rest," the medic replied. "And I'm sure he hadn't slept in days."
The Brigadier nodded and sighed. "No injuries, though?"
"Bruised and banged up. Maybe cracked a rib. And he apparently nicked his thumb at some point and put in a very neat row of stitches himself." Sullivan sighed. "Idiot," he added, very, very quietly. "Sargent Benton was by earlier but he had to work today."
"Excellent work, Lieutenant," said the Brigadier, out of habit. They'd all retired, they all actually had different ranks entirely, but the old habits and the years they all worked together fell so easily from their lips, especially when the Doctor was around. "Are you staying, Miss Tyler?"
"Think so. Sleepy." She stood and yawned. "I can kip on the sofa."
The Brigadier gestured at the Lieutenant and Sullivan, though rolling his eyes, retreated to make it up for her.
"How long have you known him, Miss Tyler?" asked the Brigadier, kindly.
"Three months, almost four now, I guess, sir. Ever since he starting coming down the pub, anyway." She smiled dreamily and patted the hand she still held. "He's a sweetheart, even when he's a bit messed up. Still gonna murder him for this one."
The Brigadier chuckled. "I might have to let you, this time. Did you have a disagreement?"
"I don't know," she said. "Honestly, sir, I don't." Her free hand went up to push her bleached curls out of her face. "We seem to be like that, you know, close one minute, mixed up the next."
"Thank you for your help, Miss Tyler," he said, deciding to let her off the hook as she swayed where she stood. "I expect you'd better get some sleep, now. Joshua will probably be miserable in the morning, and he'll probably feel better for seeing your charming smile."
She nodded vaguely and looked around. "I don't suppose you know if he's got a t-shirt I can borrow or something?" She plucked at her brightly colored blouse in distress.
The Brigadier pulled the requested item from a drawer and handed it to her without comment. She accepted it the same way, then leaned over and kissed the cheek of the still unconscious Time Lord.
"You may want to get him another blanket, I think he's got cold," she mumbled and, placing his hand carefully on his chest, turned and left.
Lethbridge-Stewart settled into the recliner she had vacated and waited.
When Joshua woke, he felt like a hangover with a hangover. He groaned loudly and Harry appeared, looking down at him and smirking. "Hurts, does it?" he asked. Joshua often wondered what sort of medical school you went to to get a beside manner that involved such gentle evil. Of course, Harry's bedside manner was better with other people, but then other people hadn't locked Harry in a coat cupboard in a fit of brilliant insanity and done a runner.
"What happened?" he asked weakly.
"Interesting. Didn't think the short term memory loss would apply to you. You totaled your car and a light post as well."
"I was driving... I was drunk and I was driving." He buried his face in his hands, fighting tears. "Oh, god, what was I thinking??"
Harry sighed. "Joshua, I don't believe you were."
"I could have killed someone." He looked up at Harry and saw Harry's face go white. "I could have killed someone else," he corrected coldly.
Harry shook his head and stared into those haunted eyes. Those were the almost Doctor's eyes, and that was very nearly the Doctor's fury, raging in them, self-directed. Almost everything the Doctor didn't approve of stopped, and right now, the thing he least approved of was himself. "Joshua, listen to me. It didn't happen and it isn't going to happen."
"It could have happened," he said, his voice dark and his words clipped.
"But it didn't. Think man, would you do that again, knowing what you know now?"
Joshua blinked at him, in surprise. "Of course not," he snapped.
"Then you got off with a hard lesson."
The Brigadier appeared in the doorway and glowered at the pair of them. Then, he opened his mouth and spoke, slowly and carefully, the odd words they had been taught that would bring the Doctor back for a short period.
Joshua flinched and shook and then, he looked up at them and the difference was there. The tears were now pouring unchecked, and the eyes... Harry had honestly woken from nightmares about those eyes before.
"Have you got my sonic screwdriver?" he asked the Brigadier.
The instrument was passed to him quickly. "Well?"
"I have to admit I'm impressed. Hard to impress, me. Also damn hard to inebriate. Last of... anyway, ignominious way to go, no matter how you look at it." He sighed and tugged out the dog tags, then looked up at them, sincerity shining in those damp, haunted eyes. "Thank you, both of you."
"Are you going to do something about all these injuries?" Harry asked.
"No time," he said. "Besides, it's not like I don't deserve these." He tilted his head up and frowned, apparently calculating something, as he adjusted the settings on the screwdriver. "I'll suffer strapped ribs and sore muscles with the rest of them. I've got to get up a temporal and psychic dampening field and since I don't take these off, it's safest. Is Rose all right?"
"She's fine," the Brigadier admitted quietly.
"She's brilliant, isn't she?" the Doctor asked, almost cheerfully, even as he ran that weird, squeaky blue beam over the tags.
Harry knew he and the Brigadier both would have jumped at the chance to ask about the girl last week, but now they needed to know something else. "What happened?"
"That's why I'm setting up the dampener. As Joshua I don't know about this stuff, I couldn't hide it in my memory like everything else, and it's got to be prevented. There are certain circumstances where I can lose control... well, I can't, but like I said, I don't know most of the time. This won't prevent my time sense, just keep my temporal energy close to my body and under control."
"What would happen?" the Brigadier asked.
"What circumstances?" Harry managed.
The Time Lord looked up at him with red tipped ears and answered the Brigadier instead. "Everything from confused impressions like last night to the entirety of South London getting tugged into a side tracked time line," he said, grimly. "I didn't think, it didn't occur to me, but she's..." He made another quick adjustment, then turned the screwdriver on his thumb, pulled the stitches and sealed the cut quickly. "Damn, that was annoying," he said. "How'd you talk the TARDIS out of my piano?"
"Very carefully," the Brigadier said. "Why were you unconscious?"
"Defense mechanism," he admitted, grimly, but didn't seem to plan to say anymore on the subject.
"What do you want us to do about the girl?" the Brigadier ventured.
"Where is she?" he asked.
"Sleeping on the sofa," he said. "She waited up with you half the night."
Despite everything, including the shattered pain in the alien's eyes and the worry in his voice, despite the fact that he still couldn't say "Last of the Time Lords" or hide the horror in his expression and closed body language, the Doctor looked up at them both with a question in his gaze. When they nodded, his eyes actually looked alive for the first time in the eight months since he had fallen out of his TARDIS onto the Brigadier's lawn. His smile came up like morning, wide and honest and so happy that less cynical men would have been brushing back tears.
"Fantastic," he said and then, he was gone.