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Bob and Eleanor had a mum back on Earth who probably wanted to hear from her children before the Friday apocalypse. They were both doubtful anything could be done about it—they were, after all, orbiting a star light years from home—but approached the Doctor anyway. He was delighted to tell them calling their mother would not be a problem, and then proceeded to "borrow" Amy's mobile directly from her unsuspecting pocket.
"I've already modified Amy's phone; it's able to call any number from anywhere and any when. Just don't use it to prank call Alexander Graham Bell. He doesn't appreciate it," the Doctor said, handing the phone to Eleanor.
After five rings, a tired voice asked, "Who is this?"
"Mum, it's Eleanor. My mobile broke so I'm using my friend's. How's California?"
"Eleanor! What time is it there? What time is it here?" There was the sound of clothing ruffling as Eleanor's mother searched for her alarm clock. "It's four in the morning here. So that's…noon-ish?"
"Eight hour difference," Eleanor confirmed. "Sorry to wake you up, but we missed you."
"What did Bob do?"
"Nothing! Well, he won't clean his room, but asides from that, he's been well behaved. He really isn't so horrible when you're not around. I think he just loves to put on a show," Eleanor said.
"I do not!" Bob protested. Eleanor swatted him until he backed away.
"Tell me honestly, Eleanor, you called just because you missed me. Nobody's hurt, nothing's broken, the police aren't going to be there when I get home?"
"Yes, Mum, we're fine. I called because I miss you and I love you. Bob, would you stop that? You can talk to her when I'm finished!"
Bob danced in the background until his sister finally handed him the phone. He jammed it against his ear.
"Hi, Mum!"
An ocean and roughly 3,000 miles of continent away, a very tired, very suspicious mother tried to assure herself she would not return to Britain to find her house burned to the ground and her children behind bars. Her son's cheery tone didn't quiet her parental alarms.
"What have you been up to, Bob?"
"Skateboarding, mostly. Geoff tried to build a ramp out of crap from his garage, but it fell apart. He got his dad's power drill, but that didn't help." It rolled off Bob's tongue as a true story, because it was a true story. It just happened to be an old story.
Geoff and power tools… She'd be lucky to have a country to fly home to!
"Don't destroy the neighborhood," Bob's mother said.
"I won't," he promised. Though what the weeping angels would do, he couldn't say.
"And brush your teeth at least once."
"Okay."
"And I love you very much. I'll be home Sunday. Well, Sunday here, Monday there." There was a little chuckle. "It's almost like time travel, isn't it? Bloody time zones."
"Yeah, time travel. Love you, Mum," Bob said, his voice breaking.
"Bob? Are you sure—"
"I'm totally brilliant! Sorry we woke you up. We'll call you later."
With some reluctance, the very tired, very suspicious, very loved mother disconnected and placed her mobile on the little bedside table. She rolled over, tried not to worry about her children, and fell asleep a few minutes later.
On the TARDIS, Bob scrubbed furiously at his eyes while all manner of pitiful little noises escaped him. Eleanor hugged her brother. When he didn't start slapping at her like she was an evil octopus come to strangle him with her tentacles, she knew exactly how frightened he was. There was nothing except the impending end of the universe that could force Bob to endure a hug from his sister.
"It'll be alright, Bob. We'll be there to see Mum on Monday, and she'll never know anything happened. I promise."
As though he knew they needed privacy, the Doctor didn't reappear to sequester Amy's phone until Bob was comforted enough to no longer require the protective sisterly arm around him. Eleanor handed over the mobile, which the Doctor pocketed.
"If you want to talk to her later, I'll steal the phone again," the Doctor said.
"Couldn't you just…ask?" Eleanor wondered.
"I could, but I need to keep my pickpocket abilities sharp. Never know when you might need to nick a guard's keys."
"Yeah, of course."
Like a ninja, the Doctor snuck away to replace Amy's mobile before she ever knew it'd gone missing. Eleanor and Bob were left with nothing to do until dinner. Unless they planned to spend all that time brooding, they needed a distraction. Seeing as how they'd barely explored any of the TARDIS, they decided to see what they could find.
Six hours later, just as the Doctor was beginning to worry Bob and Eleanor had wandered into a pocket dimension or something equally unlikely but not impossible, they appeared in the kitchen dressed in the most bizarre outfits. They had apparently stumbled across the TARDIS' expansive wardrobe, and had exploited it to the fullest.
Amy, Rory, and George, when they sat down for dinner, found they shared the table with a pirate wearing an ill-fitting, strange helmet and a terribly confused cowgirl who believed striped bell bottoms matched spurs. The Doctor glanced at Eleanor and Bob, shrugged, and set down the pot of soup. A man who had worn celery had no right to criticize anyone's fashion sense. Even if that fashion sense had compelled its victim to don a Sontaran battle helmet.
Once dinner was over, but before everyone could disperse, the Doctor slipped a hand into Amy's pocket and snatched her mobile. She never knew she'd been burglarized. While Amy went about her business, the Doctor slid the mobile into Bob's waiting hands.
Bob's second conversation with his mother ended with him openly weeping to his "mummy," a term he hadn't used since he was six years old. Eleanor hastily took the mobile and attributed Bob's sobbing sentimentality to the thousands of miles separating him from the woman who gave birth to him. Bob, moaning like the Ghost of Christmas Past, shambled behind his sister with his head in his hands.
Wednesday did not end on a positive note.
Thursday began with a violent solar flare and the Doctor maneuvering the TARDIS out of the super-heated, radioactive bombardment's path. Unfortunately for everyone who had been sleeping, the sudden shift knocked them all out of bed. Disturbed by the turbulence, the entire TARDIS crew came running to the control room.
"What's happening? Are we under attack?" Amy asked.
"Is there something wrong with the TARDIS?" Rory suspected there was, since the old ship didn't normally rattle everyone out of bed.
"It is aliens?" Bob was the only one excited by the rude awakening.
The Doctor said, "No, no aliens and nothing's wrong with the TARDIS. Pollux decided to wake up grumpy, that's all."
"Who's Pollux again?" Rory asked, scratching his head.
The Doctor strode over to the doors and thrust them open. He pointed out into space, at the massive ball of nuclear energy the TARDIS was orbiting.
"Pollux is that star, and it's experiencing solar flare activity. I don't think the TARDIS would have any problems enduring a direct hit, but she is getting up in years and solar flares are a million degrees. Better safe than charred to a crisp."
"And you couldn't have activated—what were those things River showed you?—the stabilizers? We were enjoying our nice warm beds. And couches, in Bob's case," Amy said.
The Doctor dismissed River's bloody stabilizers with a flippant wave of his hand. Stabilizers were for boring people who didn't like adventure and the occasional white-knuckle joyride. And for timey-wimey ladies whose big hair was full of spoilers.
"Nobody's hurt, and it was time to get up, anyway. I was getting lonely," the Doctor said.
"Since when do you decide when we've slept enough?" Amy asked.
"Since today. Now who wants eggs?"
One breakfast later, Amy and Rory grabbed the Doctor and forced him to wash dishes for a change. While they supervised him to make sure he didn't run away, and he splashed them with dirty sink water, Bob decided he wanted to write his will. He'd never considered who should inherit his stuff in the event of his demise, but decided now was a good time to sort it out.
Bob dragged his sister, who was watching the Doctor flick bits of egg at Rory, out of the kitchen. Eleanor wanted to stay, if only to see how much egg would adhere to Rory's face and clothes, but the look on Bob's face compelled her to follow.
"I've got to write my will, and I need you to be my witness," Bob said.
Eleanor was left speechless. Bob only nodded gravely and began ransacking random rooms for some paper.
He eventually located some paper and a pencil, and got down to the gloomy business of bestowing his earthly belongings on the worthy. Eleanor found a chair and sat down to watch.
"If I give you Reggie, will you take care of him?" Bob asked.
"Reggie, your hamster? He bites me," Eleanor replied.
"Suppose I'll give him to Geoff, then."
"Geoff couldn't take care of a pet rock. I'll take Reggie." Eleanor might not have liked Bob's hamster, but that didn't mean she wanted the nasty little hairball to die of starvation.
His only living possession (as long as the mold in his room wasn't counted) guaranteed a good home, Bob set about dispensing the rest of it. For half an hour, he wrote, erased, considered and reconsidered. Finally satisfied, he handed the page and a half to Eleanor.
"To my mum, I leave all my money. It's in a tin under my bed. I didn't sell any drugs to make it, so don't worry about that," Eleanor read. She silently wondered how much cash Bob had amassed, and what he'd done to earn it. She guessed it probably involved doing stupid skateboard tricks and eating disgusting things.
"To my sister, I leave Reggie the hamster, my room, and my video games." Eleanor wiped at her eyes and wondered how Bob knew she loved to sneak into his room and karate the hell out of digital ninjas.
"To my best mate Geoff, I leave my comics, my bike, and that rock. You know the one." A rock, a stupid rock that vaguely resembled boobs, made its way into a will?
The remainder of the will was dedicated to distributing his action figures, snack cache, posters, and other crap to roughly half the town. Eleanor dutifully read it all and declared herself a witness, signing her name at the bottom of the will. She knew the will of a twelve year old boy had no legal standing—and it was ridiculous to think it would ever be needed—but if it made Bob feel better, she was happy to inherit his hamster.
Having his affairs in order was a great relief to Bob. He took the signed will, folded it, and slipped it into his shirt pocket.
"I want to go swimming now."
Eleanor considered her brother with raised eyebrows. "Your pool is tiny."
"Yeah, but there's a bigger one around here. Sometimes you can smell the chlorine. Let's find it and go swimming."
"We don't have bathing suits."
"If the wardrobe has pirate costumes, it has to have bathing suits."
Bob's prediction proved correct, and he and Eleanor found the pool by using their noses.
While Bob and Eleanor enjoyed the temperate waters, the other TARDIS passengers amused themselves in different ways. The Ponds' attempt to make the Doctor wash the dishes had backfired; the dishes were still dirty, and now so were the Ponds, the sink, and the Doctor. The sink, dishes and Doctor were likely to stay wet and dirty for some time. As for the Ponds, they'd gone off to shower. Together.
The Doctor, not invited to the party in the shower and nowhere near motivated enough to clean up the mess around the sink, traipsed off to the control center. He wanted to have a long monologue with Sexy, and maybe record a few holographic messages for Amy and Rory, should they survive and the Doctor perish.
"Hello, Sexy. I suppose you know we're all going to risk our necks tomorrow, but whatever happens, you're still the most gorgeous blue box in the universe. In the whole wide, super-huge, awesomely enormous universe. And any and all parallel universes, too. Nowhere, in any universe or any time, is there a more gorgeous TARDIS," the Doctor cooed to the central panel.
Though she couldn't speak, the TARDIS had ways to show she was tickled pink by the Doctor's words. A low, gentle hum filled the room as the TARDIS responded to her flirtatious thief. The Doctor grinned and brushed a hand along the console.
The peaceful hum lulled away the Doctor's worries. He sat down with his back against the console and basked in the good vibrations the TARDIS was sending his way. She knew just how to make the threat of a weeping angel apocalypse (an apocalypse that put even the dreaded zombie apocalypse to shame) seem like a distant, inconsequential blip. The Doctor sighed in contentment and let his troubles go for a while.
As she soothed her precious Doctor, the TARDIS couldn't help but worry about him. She knew what dangers she'd deliver her passengers into in the morning. She had, after all, had her own close encounter with weeping angels. The memory of them surrounding her, rocking and jostling her in an attempt to reach the pair she sheltered, would have made her shiver if she'd been human. Nasty things, those weeping angels, terribly nasty.
"I'm sure we'll be fine, Sexy. They've got me to protect them, after all," the Doctor said, registering a disturbance in the TARDIS' hum.
The TARDIS sincerely hoped so. If she lost her thief, she believed it would kill her; they were like the universe's oldest married couple, and there was no doubt in her vast mind that the death of one partner would swiftly be followed by the death of the other. Even if the Doctor returned to her, the thought of losing her pair of Ponds struck her like an arrow. She'd transported many companions in her day, but there had never been any quite like the pretty one and the orange-y one she currently housed. Of course, there hadn't ever been any like the brother and sister pair that was currently splashing all the water out of her swimming pool, either.
"But just in case I'm wrong, don't let anything with wings in. Especially not if it calls itself Angel Doctor and doesn't like comfy chairs. "
And that was why she loved her beautiful, mad thief.
TBC
After this, we bid auf Wiedersehen to the TARDIS and get back to the main attraction: the weeping angels. Thanks for stickin' around through the slow parts.