CHAPTER 25

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Today we're going to have Jenny as our guest narrator in order to celebrate the 25th chapter of her title.

I'm a little nervous about this. Are you sure I can do it?

Of course you can! You fight people like the Dream Lord all of the time, but you're scared of doing a little narration for one chapter? Go on and do it. Everybody's waiting.

What?! You mean they're reading this right now?

That's right. Everything we say is being recorded for public viewing.

Why didn't you tell me? They're going to think I'm an idiot now!

They will not. They like you, or they wouldn't be reading about you. Go ahead and talk to them. They won't bite. Well, I'm not sure about those LINDA people, but the rest of them won't bite I assure you.

Leave the LINDA people alone. I like Elton. Gran doesn't have very fond memories of him, but I thought he was nice. Alright, I guess I'll get started then. In the last chapter, I finally met my long lost brother for the first time in my life; and it turned out that his girlfriend was Mum's old nemesis, Reinette. That ended my attempt at a first date with Patrick very quickly, but I promised him that we would try again later. He was very understanding about the whole thing and said that that was fine. I knew that I was really going to have that make that up to him later.

I went ahead and took my brother, whose name I still didn't know at that point, to see our parents. I didn't tell them that I had found him. I just told them that there was something important that I needed to tell them. I wanted to surprise them. Our family loves springing surprises on each other. I think things like that become more important somehow when you can see all possible futures like Time Lords can. You want to be surprised about something every now and then.

I arranged for them to meet me on Gallifrey about a mile outside of the Capitol. It was far enough away from it that no one could hear Mum's screaming if things went bad once she saw who my brother's girlfriend was. I'm always thinking ahead especially when it comes to covering up Mum's possible future disintegrations.

Jenny, don't tell them that. I don't disintegrate people! Why does everyone keep saying that I do?

Mum? I thought that I was the only one who was narrating today. What are you doing here?

I'm here to make sure that the story about a certain coming incident is told correctly.

I wasn't going to say anything bad about you, Mum. I promise.

I know that. I just wanted to make sure that they heard my side of things too. Keep going, Jen. You're doing a good job.

Thanks! Anyway we met each other at the prearranged time and place, and I got out first in order to keep everything a surprise until the last minute. Mum was looking at me funny when she first saw me; and the first thing that she said was, "Are you expecting a baby?"

If it had been that, I probably would have been telling it to everyone I passed on the street and shouting it to the rooftops. I certainly wouldn't have kept it a secret. I can see now how I might have made Mum think that though with my secretive attitude about the whole thing.

I had no idea what it was. I actually worried that you might be sick or something. Being pregnant seemed to be the most likely explanation.

I didn't know that I was putting you through all of that. Sorry about that! I just wanted you to be surprised.

Oh, I was surprised all right. Especially when I saw who was with him.

Yeah, that was real fun! I'll get to that in a minute. After Mum asked me if I was pregnant, I immediately shook my head; and she seemed to be both relieved and disappointed at the same time.

"I have an even better surprise for you. I found someone who you thought was dead. It appears that he was actually stranded in 18th century Paris all of this time," I said to her with a sly smile.

Mum looked at me in complete bewilderment, and then her eyes started to glow golden; and I knew that she was using the Bad Wolf to find out what I was keeping from her.

"That's cheating!" I complained with a grin.

"I can't believe it!" she shouted after a second.

Mum started crying and laughing at the same time, and Dad must have sensed her joy through their link because he came running out of the TARDIS immediately. "What's happening?" Dad asked.

"He's alive!" Mum cried out in absolute joy.

Dad looked floored by this at first as he knew immediately who she meant; and then he, being Dad, had to ask questions about it instead of just accepting it at face value. "How? I never sensed anyone else still around after the Time War. Did he use a Chameleon Arch too?" Dad asked.

"Why don't you ask me yourself?" my brother said as he came out of my TARDIS.

"Nicolas!" Mum cried out in a tone of both joy and long buried pain that were now both being released in the same moment.

So that was his name! I thought to myself. It was a weird name for a Time Lord. Then again, Mum always loved humans even before she was one. She told me how she had always studied them and their culture extensively at the Academy. She had thought of herself as being more like a human than a Time Lord long before she actually became one.

Nicolas, it was weird to me now thinking of him as that after growing used to the Saint Germain name, looked at Mum oddly for a minute. He was acting like he didn't know her.

"Mother? Is that really you? You seem so different! I guess I am too though," Nicolas said thoughtfully.

"You seem the same to me just more emotional instead of all stuffy and reserved," Mum said with a grin.

"I can't understand why I couldn't find you," Dad said. He was more concerned with trying to figure out how Nicolas came back instead of with welcoming his son back from the dead. It was such a Dad thing to do.

"I'm so glad to see you, Nicolas! Your father is too despite what appearances might be telling you," Mum said. Then she proceeded to slap Dad in the back of the head very, very hard!

"Yes! I am pleased to see you. Of course I am! I'm just a little upset that I didn't find you myself a long time ago. We could have been together all of this time. I just don't understand it," Dad said, still looking puzzled.

"To answer your earlier question, I didn't use the Chameleon Arch. It may be that you didn't find me because I started having these strange seizures that started taking over me from time to time as soon as I crashed my TARDIS in Paris. They would leave me in a horrible state mentally as I suffered under their effects from time to time as they kept attacking me off and on from that day forward," Nicolas said.

"Seizures? You didn't tell me about that. They must have been caused by the attempt of your Vortex powers to emerge even then. That must have been why Dad couldn't find you. Your Vortex powers were keeping him from being able to sense your presence by continually attempting to emerge from your mind," I guessed.

"Vortex powers?" Mum asked with a look of horror on her face.

"He was using them when I first found him. He didn't know how to control them so they were scrambling his brain, and he was projecting illusions of Daleks and Cybermen from his memories that seemed to be almost real. I had to shut off his connection to the Vortex to help him," I told her.

"I'm so sorry. You inherited them from me. It's my fault," Mum said in a guilty tone.

"Now I know it's you. You always blamed yourself for things that were in no way your fault. This isn't your fault either, Mother! If what you were going through was anything like what I went through then no wonder that you grew so distant from us. I'm so sorry that I didn't try to understand you better and help you through it. I was so aloof and distant then and I'm sorry about that," Nicolas said in a tearful state.

"I'm sorry too for not trusting my family with my secret. I should have told all of you, but I was afraid to. I didn't know how anyone would react," Mum said.

The two of them embraced each other for the first time in centuries then, and I smiled at their tearful and joyful reunion. Dad was smiling too with more joy than I had ever seen on his face before. He had finally gotten his son back. I always knew that his loss had pained him deeply. He would never talk about him; and when anyone mentioned him, he would quickly change the subject. It used to make Mum mad even though she knew that he did it because talking about him upset him so much not because he didn't care.

Nicolas had always been the one subject that no one in the family ever talked about or even dared to talk about because it upset Dad so much, and it would usually make Mum start going to pieces. I just learned not to talk about it period. I had no idea who he was or anything about him since no one would tell.

Now though I planned on catching up with him. He was going to be traveling with me if I could help it until I could get to know him because I had plenty of things to talk to him about. I wanted to know what Mum was like before she was Rose and other things about the past on Gallifrey. I had heard plenty of things about those times from others, but I wanted to hear what he had to tell me and to see what his spin would be on things. Besides that, Susan would want to spend some time with her Dad. Who was I to deny her that?

The joyful reunion was soon to be marred by the emergence of Reinette from my TARDIS. She looked at the two of them embracing and smiled at them. She recognized Mum immediately but not Dad because he had regenerated since she last saw him.

Dad noticed the presence of someone else and turned to look at Reinette. He gasped with recognition and his gasp got Mum's attention. She looked at Reinette, and now it was her turn to gasp. Then her surprise quickly turned to anger.

Nicolas didn't seem to notice her abrupt change in mood though. He walked over to Reinette and put his arm around her as he said, "Mother and Father, I'd like you to meet Reinette Poisson, otherwise known as Madame de Pompadour. She's my fiancé!"

The look of shock and anger on Mum's face was priceless! I would have laughed if I hadn't been so afraid that she was about to turn Reinette into charcoal at any moment.

There we go. That's where I need to come in and make sure that things are being told correctly. I know that you're being honest when you say that you were afraid that I would do something to Reinette out of anger, but I would never do such a thing. I don't like Reinette at all, that's true. I do having feelings of resentment against her for trying to take the Doctor from me, and I really didn't like her suddenly being there with my son announcing their engagement because of that; but I would never have done anything to her.

I'll just tell them what happened and let the readers see the truth for themselves. Mum saw Nicolas and Reinette together, and she was suddenly filled with rage.

"What are you doing with that woman?" Mum said in a cold, angry tone.

"I love her. She was there for me when I was lost and had no one else to turn to. She's a wonderful person, Mother," Nicolas said defending Reinette.

"I'm sorry that there was bad blood between us in the past, but please don't let it ruin the future. I don't have any ill will towards you, and I hope that you will not harbor any towards me either. I truly love your son, and I would do nothing to hurt him," Reinette said in a heartfelt plea to Mum.

"Rose, don't let the past split you and Nicolas up as soon as we've found him again. Stop this! I love you and you alone. I always have," Dad said.

"Rose?" Nicolas asked me confused.

"That was her name as a human. She's kept it because she preferred being her human self to her old self," I explained.

"That doesn't surprise me somehow. Mother always wanted to be a human it seemed like when I was growing up. She was always talking about how great it must be to be one of them. I thought that she was being silly and emotional back then, but now I understand what she was talking about. I quite liked living among the humans," Nicolas said. Something about the way that he said that reminded me of Dad, and I smiled.

Mum couldn't help but smile too, and the ice started to break. They were establishing an emotional connection together once again. She looked at the way that Nicolas looked at Reinette and knew that she was letting her old jealousy get the best of her. She didn't want to lose Nicolas as soon as she had gotten him back so she decided to do her best to let the past go. I could see the anger go out of her eyes slowly, and I sighed in relief.

See, Mum, I wasn't going to make you look bad. I thought that you did an excellent job at keeping your emotions under control and not letting things be soured by them.

I never doubted that that was the way that you would tell it, Jen. I just wanted to be here to give a few insights into things. That's all. I saw that I was about to ruin this wonderful opportunity that life had given me, and I decided to let my anger go. I was still afraid that Reinette might do something to ruin things in the future, but I just had to hope that she wouldn't. I guess I was just irrationally afraid that she might try to take Nicolas away from me somehow like she had tried to do with the Doctor. I certainly didn't want to do that myself though by losing my temper and going berserk about their relationship.

I'm so glad that you didn't. I'm proud of you for that, Mum. I really am.

Thanks!

"I'm so sorry! I apologize to both of you," Mum said next.

Nicolas and Reinette both smiled at her and accepted her apology. Then Nick, as I decided to start calling him, embraced Mum and Dad for a long time in an emotion filled silence that spoke more than mere words could ever say as they all had a much delayed reunion at long last.

That's all for this chapter according to Time Lord Prime. I guess that being the narrator wasn't so bad. I kind of enjoyed it. Maybe I'll come back again sometime. I'll see you all later.

See you everyone!

Good job, Jen and Rose! Two guess narrators this time. I like that. I may do that again.

Next: I return as narrator next chapter as Jen and Nick start to bond, and Jen tries yet again to go on a first date with Patrick. Will they actually get to have one this time without something going wrong? Stupid question, huh?