Rose held his eyes for a moment, then looked away.
"I know where we won't be disturbed," she said, keeping her voice lowered. She took his hand tentatively, and lead him down the stairs. The main floor of the house, the Doctor discovered, was a maze of rooms and corridors, reminding him of the inside of the TARDIS (only presumably these did not move around to suit his needs). Rose navigated them with ease, eventually leading him into the kitchen.
"Thought you might fancy a cuppa first," she said.
"Tea would be brilliant," the Doctor said. In spite of the fact that his mind was buzzing with questions, he could still appreciate Rose's thoughtfulness. A good cup of tea was just what was needed for a clear head.
They waited in silence for the water to boil, Rose sitting on a chair and the Doctor perched on the edge of the kitchen table. The sharp whistle of the kettle cut through the heavy silence, startling both. Rose leapt up to turn the kettle off and proceeded to make the tea. Even though it had been many years for her since she had made tea for him, she still remembered how he took it- strong, teaspoon of sugar, dash of milk. She handed him his cup and proceeded to fix her own.
The Doctor breathed in the steam that rose from the mug in his hands, savouring the sharp smell. It reminded him of the Tyler flat on the Powell Estate. Jackie still stocked the same type of tea, apparently.
Once finished, Rose tidied up, then tilted her head towards the door. The Doctor followed, and they ended up in a cozy room with large windows, the shades drawn against the night. The walls were lined with shelves packed with movies and a large screen TV dominated one wall. Couches and squashy chairs were scattered around.
Rose sat on one of the couches and drew her feet up under her. The Doctor sat beside her. Once again, silence reigned.
Rose was the first to speak.
"How much did you hear?" she asked.
"I heard him call you 'mum'," the Doctor said, looking in the depths of his mug, "and I heard you tell one of our adventures. And refer to me as 'dad'."
Rose sighed. She put her cup down, and turned to face him, her expression a mix of worry and fear.
"You're Jonathan's dad," she said. Her statement left no room for disagreement. There was no argument in her tone.
The Doctor shook his head emphatically, "Rose, we both know I can't be."
"You are," she said again, in the same tone as before.
"Rose, it's impossible."
"I thought you said you ate impossible for breakfast," she teased gently.
The Doctor frowned. This was not the time for joking. He was getting to the bottom of this matter and not being distracted no matter what.
"Not this kind of impossible. This is biologically impossible. Absolutely, positively, no room for interpretation impossible."
Rose looked up at him with pleading eyes, "You've got to believe me, there's been no one else the whole time I've been here. I've not had a single boyfriend. Not even a one night stand,"
"But neither did we," the Doctor reminded her.
"I know, but it has to be you."
"We never… not even… no matter how much I…. I mean, I don't remember anything like that…. And I would remember that," the Doctor sputtered. She seemed so sure. How could she be so absolutely certain?
"I know, I know." Rose said again, "but I went to the clinic with what I thought was a bit of a flu, and he told me I was having twins."
"Twins?" the Doctor asked, panic rising. Where was the other twin? Why was there not another Tyler running around? What had happened to his other child?
A horrible thought occurred to him. What if Jonathan's twin had died? Had Rose had to deal with the death of a child by herself? Intense sadness filled him at the anguish she must have suffered. He looked down at her, full of grief. He had found and lost a child all in one moment.
Rose must have guessed what he was thinking, because she smiled gently.
"It wasn't twins," she said, "it was just Jonathan. Two heartbeats. That's how I knew you were his father."
"Oh," Of course. If Jonathan was his child, it would make sense that some parts of his biology were Gallifreyan. The Doctor felt the panic subside, but the grief remained. How had this happened? As much as he was in love with Rose, he would never have taken advantage of her like that.
"Rose, we never…"
"I've had a lot of time to think about this," Rose interrupted him, "and there is only a limited space of time where it could have happened. Only about a month before the Battle of Canary Warf."
The Doctor's brain kicked into high gear, reviewing all the places they had been within a month of Canary Warf. There had been that planet that was totally deserted beaches; Earth, 1412 (almost got burned at the stake as witches, the Doctor remembered with a shudder); the one where they ran from the blob alien who was intent on making Rose his next wife; oh, and right before heading back to visit Jackie, Rose had done some shopping on a planet with two suns. The Doctor dimly remembered her wandering through a foreign market while he trailed behind. The memory was strangely blurry, and only vague images floated to the surface of his mind.
Rose was playing with a strand of her hair, looking on the verge of tears.
The Doctor moved closer, and wrapped his arms around her, hating himself. What had he done to her?
"I'm being stupid," she said, leaning against him and putting her head on his shoulder, "It's just that for so long I felt like Darth Vader's mum. You know, Shmei Skywalker? No father, just midichlorians. Don't know what George Lucas was thinking with that one…" she trailed off.
A smile escaped onto the Doctor's lips. "I do. But that's a really long story."
Rose smiled, even as a stray tear trailed down her cheek. She continued as if he had not spoken.
"But you are Jonathan's dad, no matter how impossible that is. And that made me feel better. It made me feel like I still had a piece of you. Other than a key on a ribbon and a mobile full of numbers that don't work any more."
She cried quietly for a moment, and then pulled back, wiping tears off her cheeks.
"Being silly," she muttered again.
The Doctor shook his head. "You're not being silly," he said gently.
"Rose, right before we visited your mum and found out about the Ghost Shifts, what were we doing?"
Rose's brow creased as she thought back.
"I…don't remember. I remember what he did before that, and I remember what we did after, but that's sort of… fuzzy. I think I did some shopping. It had two suns, right? But I don't remember much of what else we did,"
The Doctor nodded. "Neither do I," he said. The cogs in his brain began to turn. They both couldn't remember what they did on that planet, and it was within the timeframe Rose had worked out for Jonathan's birth. here had to be some way to remember. Then, in a flash, it came to him. Of course. Why had he not thought of that before?
"Rose, if you want, I could look inside your mind." He said. He didn't want to invade her privacy, but this was the best way to find something that neither of them could remember.
Rose looked at him, surprised. She had obviously forgotten that he could do that.
"Like a Vulcan mind meld?" she asked.
The Doctor smiled at her second reference to Earth Science Fiction in as many minutes.
"Yes, like a Vulcan mind meld. I can look inside your mind and see what is keeping you from remembering. We can look at the memory. But I'll only do it if you give me permission."
She nodded eagerly, "Do it!"
The Doctor held back, reluctant even when she had given her consent. It was one thing to read Rienette's mind; it was another to read Rose's. This was much more intimate, much more intrusive.
As if anticipating what he was going to say, Rose took his hands, and smiled.
"It's ok, Doctor. I want to find out."
"If there's anything you don't want me to see, just imagine a door closing, and I will know not to go there," the Doctor warned.
Rose smiled warmly. "I have no secrets from you, Doctor." She said.
The Doctor felt a rush of warmth at her words. Rose really was the most amazing woman he had ever met.
Both shifted into comfortable positions, and the Doctor placed his hands on either side of Rose's head. He closed his eyes and concentrated on that memory.
It was almost like they fell into the memory. The Doctor had done this many times before, but to Rose it was a new experience. She looked around her, eyes wide.
"We're in my memory, yeah?" she asked.
The Doctor nodded, "We can see everything that you could see at the time. Which means we've got to follow ourselves around."
Rose waived her hand in front of the face of a humanoid with hair the colour of a ripe tomato. He paid absolutely no attention to her, but instead walked past, his eyes looking straight ahead.
"Can't they see us at all then?" she asked.
"This is a memory. They can't see or hear us or interact with us in any way. Oh look, there we are," the Doctor pointed across the bustling market place to where a younger Rose stood, examining something at a stall. A younger Doctor, dressed in a brown pinstriped suit, leaned against the table, staring into the empty space in front of him. The Doctor couldn't help but smile at his expression of utter boredom.
"Having fun were you?" Rose teased, nodding towards his younger self.
"It's not my fault you shop endlessly," he retorted.
"You're wore the brown pinstripe then," Rose said, almost to herself.
The Doctor looked at her, puzzled. "What?" he asked.
"You used to wear that brown pinstriped suit all the time before. You're wearing a blue suit now. I'd just noticed. Why did you change it? You always wore the same one."
The Doctor shrugged. He knew the real reason he had changed his signature clothing: it reminded him of Rose. But he didn't tell her that. Instead, he replied, "I changed a lot of things after… after you left."
Rose seemed to understand, because she squeezed his hand reassuringly.
"Finished yet?" the Brown Doctor asked, turning to his Rose
The younger Rose, who wore a Purple top, nodded absently, picking up another curious nick nack from the shelf.
"I told you that you could wait in the TARDIS if you're bored." She replied.
"I'm not letting you go anywhere on your own. You wander," the Brown Doctor said, his long fingers beginning to tap on the table impatiently.
"Then you'll just have to wait for me," Purple Rose put down the object she was examining, and walked to the next table. The Brown Doctor followed.
"And you get into trouble," the Brown Doctor continued, as if Purple Rose has not spoken at all.
Several of the stalls were closing up, and the planet's two suns were beginning to set. The sunset would be spectacular.
The locals milling around the market began to slowly drift towards one end, most chattering happily to each other. The market emptied, and more stalls closed, their proprietors following the crowd eagerly.
The Brown Doctor tugged on his Rose's arm.
"Let's go over there and see what that's all about," he said. He looked at her with
such a lost puppy expression that the older Rose couldn't help but laugh out loud.
"Always was a sucker for that expression," she murmured to the Doctor, who smiled and took her hand.
"I've found this out," he said into her ear, "and manipulated it to the fullest."
"Cheeky," Rose said, hitting his arm lightly.
It was getting darker by the minute, and the two suns were going down in a blaze of glory. The Doctor had seen many such sunsets on many different planets, but they never ceased to delight him. Such beauty was timeless, even for the Lord of Time. A huge, pale moon rose in the sky overhead, tinged with the colours of the setting suns.
"Where in the world is everyone going?" Rose asked from beside him, glancing around at their surroundings.
The Doctor smiled at her very Earth-based expression. Take a human to different planets and different times, and to the end of the universe itself, and they would still ask where in the 'world' they were. It was so very quintessentially human, he thought fondly.
Actually, he was wondering where they were headed himself. The crowd had left the town's cobbled streets behind, and was headed into a wooded area with a winding dirt path in groups of twos and fours.
There was an air of nervous excitement among the crowd that was making the Doctor a little worried. In his experience, this sort of nervous energy usually lead to trouble. But it also piqued his curiosity, and made him want to stay despite his worry.
"Let's keep following, we're bound to find out," he said in response to Rose's question, "after all, we really have already found out. We're seeing ourselves having an adventure. We're actually watching ourselves figure out where these people are going. It's already happened, you know."
Rose shook her head at him, and laughed.
"At least this is one adventure we can't get in trouble in," she said.
"We can't, no. But our past selves defiantly got into some sort of trouble. This'll be a change, won't it? Watching ourselves get into trouble?"
Rose smiled again, but did not answer. The crowd had come into a large clearing surrounded by tall trees that looked slightly forbidding in the light of the huge bonfire that stood blazing in the middle of the space. All around stood medium sized, white canvas tents. They were tall enough to stand up in, with pointed roofs and a flap covering the entrance. A space around the bonfire was clear of everything but people.
The Doctor spotted his younger self, and steered Rose closer so they could observe. The Brown Doctor seemed to be talking to one of the locals, who was wearing fancy robes, and what looked like high heal shoes which made him taller than the others.
"Here you are," this strange person was saying, handing the Brown Doctor an ornately carved cup. All around, people were holding similar cups and drinking.
Purple Rose looked at the cup skeptically.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" she asked, as the Brown Doctor held it up to his nose, "there may be something in it."
He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and buzzed the cup.
"No poisons," he stated, "low alcohol level. Vitamins and minerals, even. Seems safe. Maybe even healthy." He took a sip, "tastes alright. Sweet. Here, have some." He handed the cup to Purple Rose, who cautiously sipped from it.
The older Rose winced.
"Rule number one of space travel: never drink something from an alien planet, no matter what the resident sonic screwdriver tells you," she said.
"That's not rule number one. Rule number one is never wander off. Rule number two is never drink alien alcohol," the older Doctor replied, "besides, the sonic screwdriver says it's hardly alcoholic at all." He peered over his younger self's shoulder to read the screen of the sonic screwdriver.
The older Rose shrugged. "I just really hope Jonathan wasn't conceived because we were both drunk. Otherwise you owe me big time."
"I hope so too. I would never forgive myself for taking advantage of you like that." The Doctor said seriously, squeezing her hand again.
The alien with the high rises on his shoes was still talking to their younger selves.
"I hope you enjoy it tonight. I assume the celebration of the moon is why you came..?" he said.
"Oh yeah. Sure." The Brown Doctor said, "Love the moon. Nice moon you have on this planet."
"Excellent," said the alien, "Drink your drink, enjoy the dance. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me. My name is Drazel. We weren't expecting you, but I think we can accommodate one more couple. We always set up a few extra just in case."
The Brown Doctor nodded absently, and took another drink of his cup. He looked around for Purple Rose, and spotted her a few feet away, closer to the fire. With a sigh and a shake of his head, he approached her, handing the cup back to her.
"Here, you drink the rest. Little bit too sweet for me," he said.
Purple Rose tipped the glass back, and drank the remaining liquid. Her eyes returned to the fire, where couples seemed to be dancing to the high, sweet music of an instrument that sounded a little like a violin and a guitar combined. She swayed gently to its beat.
"Care to dance?" the Brown Doctor asked, grinning at her.
"Wasn't sure if this regeneration could dance. I knew the other one could, but this whole tall and gangly thing you have going on, I thought maybe you would be a bit clumsy." She said.
"I'll take that as a challenge," the Brown Doctor replied, taking her hands and leading her into the couples.
The older Rose watched from a distance as her younger self began to dance with a younger Doctor. She grinned, and turned to her own Doctor.
"You're pretty good in this regeneration," she said.
"I was pretty good in the old one too!" the Doctor said indignantly, "I just needed to get warmed up,"
"Sure, sure. I wonder how long it's going to take for something to happen," Rose hugged herself, and bounced on the balls of her feet. It was getting colder, and she was only dressed in a tank top and her pajama bottoms.
"How come I'm cold?" she asked suddenly, "this is a memory."
The Doctor shrugged off his blue suit jacket, and placed it over her shoulders. He had taken off his overcoat when he had first arrived at the mansion.
"It may be a memory, but you were cold then. It stands to reason that you'd be cold now."
"Can you feel anything?" she asked.
The Doctor shook his head. "Not my memory," He explained.
"Will I feel whatever she's feeling?" Rose asked, jerking her thumb towards her younger self, whom the Doctor in the memory was spinning around.
"Just heat and cold I think," the Doctor said, putting his arm around her shoulders to help warm her up. It looked like it had been a cool night, although he himself could feel nothing.
"Hey, look at that!" Rose exclaimed, watching several of the couples leave the dance by the fire. They were still laughing, their arms around each other, as each entered a white tent, the flaps closing behind them.
As the Doctor and Rose watched, more and more couples began to leave. They watched as they themselves began to head towards a white tent, laughing and holding hands.
"Uh oh. I don't like the look of that," The Doctor said, his face darkening. He sincerely hoped Rose was right, and their younger selves weren't intoxicated and about to do something stupid, but it was beginning to look that way.
Rose looked troubled as well as their younger selves entered a tent. She hesitated at the opening flap.
"Maybe we shouldn't follow them in," she said. "I think we can guess what happens in there." She was starting to look a little flushed, and she took off his jacket, handing it back to him.
"You warm?" he asked, although he already knew the answer.
"Very. Which means…. she is too," Rose's already flushed cheeks turned an even deeper shade of red.
"Rose, I… I'm sorry. For what he is doing. For what I did." The Doctor was mortified. He had got Rose drunk, and then got her pregnant. It was all his fault for telling her the drink was safe.
Rose looked up at him, and smiled, wrapping her arms around his waist.
"Don't be sorry. I loved you then like I love you now, and you know what? Jonathan is the best thing that ever happened to me- besides you. If it wasn't for him, I think I would have given up a long time ago. He was a little piece of you that I got to hold close to me. This…. whatever this was, I'm sure the me in there doesn't feel taken advantage of."
The Doctor hugged her back with all his strength. He still felt angry with himself, and nothing Rose could say would ease that, but what she said made sense. She was the most amazing woman in the whole universe to forgive him.
The scenery around them began to fade slowly, everything became blurry until it all turned black. Then, in an instant, it changed to blinding brightness.
The Doctor threw one hand up against the sudden light, the other still firmly around Rose, sheltering her from whatever was coming now. He adjusted to the brightness faster than Rose did, so he was able to see around them sooner. They were in the same spot as before, only now it was morning.
"What happened?" Rose asked, from the folds of his shirt where she had buried her face against the sudden light.
"You fell asleep. I think you've just woken up now."
They heard a commotion in the tent next to them.
An exclamation, a curse, a flurry of activity, and the Doctor's younger self emerged, the buttons on his dress shirt only buttoned half way up. Following him was Purple Rose, who was hastily buckling up her belt as she went. Both looked upset.
"I think we're about to find out what happened last night," the Doctor said. Rose nodded, squinting as she pulled away from him. They followed the other two as they marched over to the dying embers of the fire, where Drazel was poking the ashes. He was dressed in more ordinary robes today, and seemed to have taken off his high shoes.
"Good morning, my friends. I trust last night was fruitful?" he greeted them cheerfully, unaware of the Brown Doctor's stormy demeanor.
"What did you do to us?" the Brown Doctor demanded harshly.
"Do to you?" Drazel asked, confused.
"We drink your drink, dance around, and wake up the next morning in bed together. How did that happen?" Purple Rose asked, her pretty features twisted in anger.
"I do not understand. Was that not what you wanted when you came to the fertility festival?"
"Fertility festival?!" Purple Rose screeched, horror written across her face.
"Of course," Drazel said, still confused, "I thought that was why you came to our fair planet."
"What was in that drink?" the Brown Doctor demanded.
"A love draught. To loosen inhibitions and create feelings of affection in couples."
"Let me see some of that!" the Brown Doctor said, scowling. Drazel produced a vial from inside his robes, and handed it over.
The Brown Doctor fiddled with the controls of the sonic screwdriver before once more examining the drink.
"Chemicals to alter the brain chemistry of the drinker so they feel love for one another, chemicals to release serotonin, chemicals to… inhibit memory recall? What did you drug us with?"
"You mistake me," Drozel said, looking upset and apologetic, "My people are telepaths," when he saw the Doctor's raised eyebrow, he shook his head, "You may well be skeptical. We keep it firmly under control. It is very rude to pry into another's mind. It is our gift, but it is also our curse. It makes intimacy very… complicated. Being as intimate as procreation is, it is very difficult not to get tangled up in the emotions and thoughts of the other person. It makes long term relationships very hard. So, centuries ago, my ancestors thought of a way that we could procreate without getting caught up telepathically with another person. Every year, on the festival of the moon, those people wishing to procreate gather in certain assigned spots. They pick another of the opposite gender, and drink. The drink enhances their feelings of love for the other person. They procreate. In the morning, the inhibitors in the drink stop them from remembering the feelings and thoughts of the other person, as well as the night in general. It happens almost as soon as they wake up. I cannot think why it didn't happen with you."
"Slightly different physiology. So we accidentally drank a love potion?" the older Doctor asked, although Drazel could not hear him.
"Love potion? That's a bit Harry Potter, isn't it?" Rose muttered beside him.
"Did you like book 7?" the Doctor asked.
"I cried. A lot," Rose replied, before they both turned back to their younger selves.
"Slightly different physiology," the Brown Doctor was saying, mimicking the words his older self had said only two seconds ago, "I thought there was something unusual about this place, heard a bit of a buzzing in my mind, but I thought it was just one of the TARDIS' circuits malfunctioning."
"This is going to change everything, isn't it?" Purple Rose said, turning away from Drazel and to her Doctor, ignoring his rambling about a slight telepathic interference.
"Yes." He said simply, not meeting her eyes.
"Am I to understand this is not what you wanted to happen?" Drazel asked, looking from Purple Rose to the Brown Doctor, then back again.
"This is not what we intended to happen when we came to this planet, no." the Brown Doctor said.
"There is an easy way out of this," the alien said, still looking at them, "You could forget this ever happened."
"Not so easy to forget something like that," the Brown Doctor said, still avoiding his Rose's eyes.
"You cannot mentally block it? Of course not, you do not seem to have our sort of telepathy. And the drugs in the drink do not work either. There is, however, one other option. I could remove it from your mind telepathically."
Both figures in front of him looked up sharply.
"You can do that?" the Brown Doctor asked, a little bit too eagerly. Purple Rose looked crushed, but he was looking at Drazel and didn't see it.
"The memory would not be completely gone. If I was to do that, it would damage your minds. But I can make it so indistinct that you not remember what happened here exactly. It would seem like an ordinary day. Is that satisfactory?"
"Yes, I think so," the Brown Doctor replied. He turned to Purple Rose, who quickly schooled her features, "is that alright with you?" he asked.
"Yeah, sure. I mean, I don't want things to change between us." She said quietly, keeping her face blank.
Watching now, the Doctor could tell that it hadn't been alright at all. He was amazed that he had been so blind to Rose's distress. Watching it now, it made sense. He was practically telling her he wished that whole night had not happened, and that he did not want her. Something he knew for a fact was not true at all. He knew he had loved her then, but he hadn't wanted their relationship to become awkward.
He leaned towards his Rose, and kissed her forehead.
"I loved you then," he said, "I didn't know if you felt the same way. I wanted our adventures to carry on the way they always had."
The older Rose, his Rose, leaned into him, and smiled.
"I know," she said.
Her younger self didn't. Purple Rose looked utterly miserable, until Drazel touched both their foreheads gently.
"Hello then," said the Brown Doctor cheerfully, his entire demeanor changing instantly, "what're we doing here?"
"I was just showing you where we hold our annual midsummer celebrations, Doctor," said Drazel in a polite voice, "but I must continue with my duties. I believe you came from the direction of the market..?"
"Sure did," said Yellow Rose. She tugged on her Doctor's arm, "You didn't even let me buy anything," she complained, as the two walked out of the clearing.
The Doctor pulled them out of the memory. Back on the couch, Rose looked a little disoriented once again.
"Mystery solved," she said, once she had gotten her bearings again.
He nodded, guilt flooding him once again. He had done this to her, and then he had forced her to forget all about it, leaving her to wonder months later how she could possibly be pregnant.
"Hey," Rose said, stroking on of his cheeks gently, "No regrets, remember?"
Her touch was velvety soft and gentle as a butterfly's wings.
The Doctor smiled, kissing her raised hand. "No regrets," he agreed, "Besides, something good came of it. Jonathan came of it. But can you ever forgive me for forcing you to forget it?"
"Always," Rose said, smiling.
"Well, that answers a lot my questions. But I still have one: if you knew about Jonathan when we said goodbye, why didn't you tell me about him?"
A/N: Sorry this is rather late! I went on holiday, and subsequently wrote three whole chapters at once, so the others will not be as late.
So, there is the long-awaited explanation for Jonathan's birth. I hope no one is too disappointed. It actually turned out rather differently than I planned, but I'm pleased with it. I apologize if it got a little confusing with two sets of Doctors and Roses running around, but I do hope you were able to follow along tolerably. I really liked the idea of 'falling into' a memory. Think Pensieve from Harry Potter.
A million thanks to my wonderful boyfriend, who, when I was having a lot of trouble with this chapter, gave me the excellent advice to just go to bed and think about it tomorrow. He said it would all turn out fine, and he was right.