A/N: I'd be lying if I said other things don't keep getting in the way with this fic; first that whole school writing thing (which left me a bit burned out), then motivating myself to finish my Tenth Doctor portrait for art class (which I've thankfully finished) and to scan/draw/type a million other things, I just couldn't find the time (or any free brain stamina) to get on with this fic. But I've only got my art exam and a few other things to do now, so my time should be a bit more freed up for this, and I've finally sorted out my Christmas list so that won't take any more of my hard-earned typing time.
To those of you who may be worried for Amelia, the Doctor and his babies, don't be; I did promise a Christmas epilogue, and were would that lovely epilogue be without our main characters? But there's sure to be turmoil along the way…
Chapter 37 – Perpetuity
He had blacked out, he knew. What had caused him to topple so from his perch above the mire?
"Oh, my head's banging…" then a voice laughed in front of him, disembodied like from a ghost. "Are you here again? I'm beginning to get tired of this."
To his surprise, she helped him up, "This is no walk in the park for me either; it's just my job."
The Doctor was outraged, "To make my life a living hell?"
River Song moved the hair from her face as she kept holding him up, "You won't make it back in time to have a safe delivery in the TARDIS, but I guess you don't want that."
He laughed drily through the contractions, "Oh yes, I got myself pregnant to a former maniac and adopted a wonderful little girl just so she could be taken away by a group of crazy spectres. Isn't that what I always do? Now I'm stuck on the back-end of planets in a dusty deluge giving birth to three excruciatingly painful babies."
"When did the contractions start?"
He stared at her, thoroughly steamed, "You're a bloody archaeologist!"
"Right now I'm the closest thing to a Doctor you're find, now when did the contractions start?"
"…Maybe a couple of minutes after you last talked to me."
"Doctor, I haven't talked to you in months."
He glared holes at her, "Well, about an hour ago I talked to you! Now bloody estimate the time and help me give birth or I'll do something I might regret."
"Right, just… maybe you should lie down." she pointed to a relatively flat and clean expanse of floor near the crater wall.
"They're coming out of my arse, genius!" the Doctor yelled, looking at her in disbelief.
River seemed taken aback, "No need for language; you'll just have to go down on all fours."
By this point, the Doctor had given up on arguing due to searing pain and willingly placed his knees and elbows on the difficult ground.
"It's official; the Doctor is in."
The Master flipped round to face Donna, "What are you on about now?"
"He's out of the TARDIS, you div! And he knows where he's going, he just dropped down to our level."
"With our babies!"
"He wouldn't just endanger himself and them like that" Jack said, checking the readouts himself much to Donna's chagrin.
"And he's a tricky man; I once caught him trying to see if he could open a wormhole into Villenguard using my hair tongs." Martha reminded them, "There's never any telling what he could do."
"He always tries to be the hero, doesn't he? Sooner or later it'll get him killed." the Master said, radioing Jenny, "Can we call you if your dad turns up? We need him well away from here but he took the TARDIS and now he's making his way to us."
Jenny radioed back in the affirmative, leaving the Master no less paranoid for the Doctor's safety, "Donna?"
"He hasn't moved for a couple of minutes."
"Maybe he's finally stopped to rest."
Donna shook her head, "No, his arrival to ground level was pretty sudden – he may be concussed if he fell, but he moved for a bit afterwards and now he isn't moving an inch."
The Master felt some of his paranoia dissipate, "Then we can call Jenny to take him back to the TARDIS."
One more piece of red fabric was found, and the Master laid their concurrent pieces out of a flat rock, "Amelia's given up her entire cardigan to leave a trail for us. How close in are we?"
"Very." Donna said whilst Jack was once again confirming her analysis, "You wanna move, or do I need to punch your lights out?"
Jack held up his hands in retreat, "It's always good to have a second pair of eyes."
"Well thank you very much, king leer, but I'd rather you weren't breathing down my neck"
"Your loss." Jack said, flashing her one of his trademark jellifying smiles."
"And you can turn that face of yours off n'all; your bright teeth are an eyesore."
"He uses whitener!" was yelled somewhere ahead of them as Jack sought to replace his shattered reputation.
"Look, Donna, can't we just be friends?"
"I bet you say that to all the girls – and whoever else you think you can get, knowing you." Donna said, not being taken in for a fool.
"This is purely professional; I don't think Amelia would like it if Auntie Donna and Uncle Jack kept on like this."
"Don't you dare push her into our arguments! For all we know she could be dead!" Donna hissed, giving Jack a quick roundhouse before catching up with the rest of their group.
"My breasts feel like lead weights, I can't feel anything beyond my lower back except my body being torn apart, and I just happened to be holding myself up doggy-style while an archaeologist feels around in my bum. Anything else, pseudo-midwife?"
"Just shut up, you're nearly at 10 centimetres." River said, removing her hand from the Doctor's insides, "Now when I say push, you give it whatever you've got."
"So, did you also train as a midwife?" the Doctor asked, actually interested by how calm she was and trying to make conversation to distract himself.
"No, just call it intuition – now PUSH!"
The Doctor certainly felt like they were coming when he nearly collapsed from the pressure, feeling as though his arms were like wire as he clung to the floor.
"Doctor, you've going to have to unclench down there if you ever want them to come out."
"I'm in bloody labour, woman, give a pregnant Time Lord a break!" the Doctor shouted back hoarsely, though doing as she said.
"Okay, I think I see…" she paused, looking intently and then popping back up to ask, "Which way out is considered normal for a Gallifreyan baby?"
"The right way out!" the Doctor yelled, beginning to question the competence of his stand-in midwife.
"There's what looks like a head and… I think I see ears!" she exclaimed, quite high-pitched in his ear, "That's a good sign, right?"
"If you could see the entire body I'd be very grateful!"
"I see shoulders… you're lucky, they're fast about this. And legs… this one won't wait!"
"Thank god!" the Doctor muttered, feeling something leave at last – Gallifreyan births were notoriously fast compared to humans'.
He couldn't see the baby behind him, not even think of it as the other two tried to make their way into the universe. He heard crying, thankful that at least his first born was alive.
"It's a… you've got a baby boy!"
He didn't have time to be overjoyed, not with everything on his mind as he began pushing out yet another of his and the Master's offspring, "They've all got their dad's big head!"
If he had the sense to look behind him, he would have seen River standing with his baby and crying real tears, "You're doing great, just a dozen more pushes!"
Everything the Doctor felt was different, and so, so painful, but he knew a miracle was taking place between his very body and the world.
Another baby crying after what felt like hours of nothing but discomfort, pushing and trying to control his breathing, "Another boy!" was River's joyful yell in his direction.
My bum'll be sore in the morning, he briefly thought. The Master wouldn't want to go anywhere near him for months…
"It's no good stopping now! This one's coming whether you want it to or not." River Song shouted, reminding the Doctor of the task at hand.
He couldn't check how long they'd been there, just waiting for his third child to declare itself born, and although his two boys had happily calmed down in River's arms, there seemed to be no hope for a third baby.
He dared to look look behind himself. There was such a sense of wonderment on the woman's face; like she'd never seen a perfectly healthy baby being born before…
And then the moment ended.
"She's not breathing." River whispered, shaking her head, "No, she never was." she contemplated handing her to her mother, but thought better of it.
"Let me see." the Doctor said, shifting to face her – he couldn't feel anything downstairs anyway.
It her arms were two amazing little boys… and a girl that had clearly not survived.
"We must be able to do something… anything!"
"If the lungs don't start taking in air as soon as the baby comes into contact with it, there's very little hope of resuscitation…"
"I don't care." the Doctor snapped, speaking with a gruff tone, "She's my…"
His disappointment was fleeting, his anger even moreso.
"She's your baby girl." River finished for him, holding the baby forward clumsily for him to see, "Would you like to hold her?"
There was silence as the Doctor begrudgingly took hold of his dead daughter, noting the extremely low body temperature.
For a while he just sat there and cuddled her in his arms, wishing that everything could be okay and she'd start crying, pooping, anything as a sign of life. He knew it was all hopeless as his arms shook and everything around him faded into darkness.
"You've given birth!"
He looked up for the last time. River was gone and had left his two other babies precariously in his lap. Jenny stood before him – hope at last.
It had been quite some time since the Doctor had moved or Jenny had radioed it – time worked differently in different stretches of crater floor.
There were no more scraps of clothing for miles; surely a sign that they were on the right track.
The Master's radio bleeped and he hurried to de-holster it, "Jenny?"
"Dad's had the babies." came a crackling reply, "He stopped moving because he could only hold up and wait."
The Master had stopped breathing and for a moment feared that his respiratory bypass may kick in, "Are they all alive and well."
He knew there couldn't be a delay on the line when she hesitated to say, "Two boys and a dead girl."
He felt physically sick in an instant and nearly forced the tears to subside, "Put him on the phone."
"I don't think that's wise with his current sta–"
"I said PUT HIM ON!"
He heard a rifling as the radio was handed over, and then heard sobbing as the Doctor murmured, "Our baby girl… she never even got her first breath, it was hopeless…"
"No, my dear Doctor, what's hopeless is YOU."
"I don't–"
"You couldn't stay in the TARDIS like I told you to, you have been expecting everything to go wrong, and you knew full well what you were doing when you jeopardized our babies LIVES."
Everyone overheard them, and Martha finally wrenched the radio out the Master's hand, "He doesn't know what he's saying."
"We all know he would have been thinking it." and the radio buzzed off.
Donna was on top form today as the slapped the Master right in his cheek, "Well done; you just insulted the mother of your children for no good reason."
"Am I the only one who realizes what just happened!" the Master exclaimed, rubbing his cheek
"You don't tell off a man who's just given birth, just because of a baby's death which he had no control over." Donna sternly advised, waving a warning finger in his face.
"Our baby's death." he corrected.
"Still doesn't give you the right to go mouthing off at him."
His anger was boiling down to a simmer, he found, "Martha, think you can go and get him back to the TARDIS?"
"Only if you're willing to apologize to him when this is all over."
The Master looked at the three people before him, "Are all the women ganging up on me today?"
Jack became aloof at this, "Hey, do I look like a woman to you?"
"He hates me." the Doctor said, removing his finger from the disconnect button.
"He doesn't hate you, he's just upset and angry and… looking for someone to blame." Jenny said, sitting down next to him, "But hey, I've got two little brothers." she took one into her arms and looked at the two of them, "And they both look allot like the Master, that's just freaky."
The Doctor could only continue staring at the baby in his arms – a baby girl with a thick tuft of brown hair resembling that of his previous incarnation, "Isn't she beautiful?"
"She's yours, what did you expect?"
The Doctor seemed withdrawn, "I expected her to be alive."
A/N: Wowzers, things are getting… well, pretty grim for our mismatched family, and still no sign of Amelia. And really when I thought the big plot would take place in some sort of Earth-looking graveyard, it's actually taking place on a mudball of an uninhabited planet, in a gigantic crater of all things. I really hate myself for for killing off one of the babies, but it's quite crucial to the plot and she will be alive and well sometime later due to, I dunno, regeneration, or something similar and equally Time Lord-y.
I'm going to be doing some scanning tonight – just thought I'd put this up before I willed myself to do any of that, and I want to warn you that during the next chapter, Jack will be his usual naughty self and Donna will be about ready to kill him. I don't really remember what happens with the Doctor, the Master and their family. Amelia will be found eventually, I'm sure. And then all will be right in the Doctor's little universe… right?
This was started on Monday and finished on Tuesday, but OpenOffice has been glitching all week, so I didn't have much opportunity to put this up. Now I'm going to watch new Simpsons and hopefully crack on with chapter 38 a bit more; I've already got it up to two pages in the thankfully now un-glitchy OpenOffice.