Title: The Trouble with Twins
Summary: The Doctor is in for a surprise of significant magnitude when River drops something of his off. The Time Lord must fend for himself as he looks after… two small peculiar creatures.
A/N: Squeee – couldn't resist.
-o-
How was he supposed to entertain two small-?
"How old are you again?" he asked the two children who looked up at him with large eager eyes and small upturned noses that were more freckled than he thought possible. The mere presence of them, the mere existence of them unnerved him and he nervously fiddled with his hands, with the sleeves of his twill jacket and absently flicked and pressed down a on a few buttons on the console – sending them hurtling through space in a zig-zag bounce.
"We are not supposed to tell you" the little girl replied with a smile, her small white teeth seeming almost ominous as they appeared, undisturbed by the rocking of the Tardis.
The boy stared at him with his large disturbingly blue eyes "It's a secret" and his smile became even wider than the girl's – if possible.
Wonderful – they were obviously highly trained in evasion techniques as well.
"Yes, well – then… That is" he rambled anxiously eyeing the two troublemakers and wondering if they would turn into fierce little monsters any moment now, and do whatever little monsters did – crash his Tardis or some other monstrosity
"We are old enough" they said in chorus as they shared a secret smile, the two voices melted together. They turned their heads and gazed at him with their small befreckled human faces, almost as if they expected him to turn into a bug or some other peculiar thing.
"Old enough to do what, exactly?" he asked them partly because curiosity had always been his weakness and partly because he wanted to fill the silence, too anxious and unnerved by their ogling. He needed to fill the silence with talk, or he might go mad.
"To travel and go on adventure," the girl laughed in a merry voice, and to his horror she danced around the console panel, towards him. And he watched, almost like an outsider to his own body as she latched onto his hand with her small chubby hand and fixed him with another gleeful smile. Her small warm hand rested in his, and he couldn't really decide if it disturbed him or not. It felt so warm and small, so peculiar.
The boy on the other hand only grinned from across the console, "You are fun" and he continued to grin – the smile reminding him of a mischievous smirk not really befitting such a small little thing.
"Let's go on adventure" the little girl tugged at his hand and smiled at him imploringly with her big blue eyes and long childish lashes, "Please."
"Well, I-" he started, his head spinning with confusion and he felt quite distraught and before he could continue his sentence, the little boy interrupted him.
"I wanna go to Neverland"
And then the little girl tugged even harder on his arm and said in a loud voice; "Nooo – we'r gonna go to Xanthia"
"Aw that is boring" the boy yelled back, putting his hand on a yellow five-squared button and the Tardis was filled with an assortment of flickering lights, tilting this and that way in frenzy flight.
"No it's not" the girl yelled back defensively, tugging harder and harder on his sleeve.
"Yes is it" the boy taunted.
"No"
"Yes"
"No"
"Yes"
"No"
"Yes"
And they continued this childish banter for quite a while – and he didn't know what to do. Paralysed and absently watching the flickering lights - he had half a mind to throw himself out into space – the other half contemplated tracking down their dratted mother and demanding an explanation. But he was too stumbled or maybe too traumatized to do anything; the mere idea of attempting to move his legs seemed too strenuous and demanding let alone attempting to move his whole body all the way to the door to the outside universe.
"Neverland" the boy said vehemently.
"Xanthia" the girl yelled in a voice just as angry.
Fretfully he fiddled with his sleeves and raked his fingers through his hair again – and contemplated why his day had gone from wonderfully okay and dull to this… this peculiar dreamish absurdum.
The girl tugged on his arm again and he was surprised to find that they had stopped arguing. He looked down and found her eyes fixed on him, curiosity in the depths of the blue gaze as she regarded him with something akin to puzzlement.
"Are you sick?" she asked him.
"Is that why you don't talk? You always talk" the boy asked as well.
And they both looked at him again – their big blue gaze seeming so alien and peculiar to him. It was quite mindboggling, if he thought about it. Big round eyes and slightly worried expressions, afraid he was taken ill with something. Maybe he was – but it was something they were too young to understand – he didn't even comprehend it at all himself.
"No no, sorry – just spaced out – Now where are we off to?" he appeased them only realizing too late that he was merely restarting their little squabble about their destination.
"Neverland" the boy piped simultaneously with the girl's cry of "Xanthia"
Knowing that they would persist with this silly bickering he somehow found his voice and yelled in a cheerful tone; "The Red Moon it is" and he then bounced around the console, pulling levers and pressing down squared- and triangle-buttons, watching the two small children pouting as he set the co-ordinates for the esoteric Moon planet.
-o-
The Red Moon tuned out to be the Blue-but-slightly-Yellow-Moon – a fact that amused the three of them immensely. The boy ran ahead yelling something about 'robotic chandeliers' or maybe it was 'no more dandelions' – he wasn't really sure but the boy was sprinting along the tall yellowish blue grass trying to catch the big golden dragonflies flying around him.
The girl walked next to him, her little hand still nestled in his and she was staring at everything with wide eyes and a big round mouth.
"Why is the grass two colours?" she asked him.
"The grass contains a pigment that makes them blue and yellow – just like green grass – only… it's blue and yellow" he told her, paused as he looked at the boy ahead and then yelled franticly to him "Hey, don't eat that grass" but he was too late. The boy looked back with a huge smile, blue and yellow grass sticking from his mouth as he chewed.
"But why are they yellow and blue?"
"Pardon"
"Why aren't the grass green?"
"Because of the moon – it has… erm special properties"
"This is yum," the boy shouted to them chewing on the grass and picking another tuff from the ground and putting it into his mouth. The boy then cleaned his dirty hands on his trousers. He sighed – this was going to be a long day indeed.
"Why is it called the red moon then?" the girl tugged at his sleeve, wanting his attention.
"Um – the moon used to be red," he replied absently as he watched the boy gallivant further ahead, his arms spread out wide as he chased the giant dragonflies, imitating their zig-zagging flight. In the horizon a deep dark forest rose, a bluish shine to the many trees wafting in the wind and their trunks a dark yellowish hue. "Hey dragonfly-boy, wait for us" he shouted to the boy, fearful he would wander into the forest on his own and get lost in the deep vastness – his mother would skin him alive. The boy spun around and laughed at the nick-name but fortunately he stood still and didn't advance further away – the dragon flies circled around his head as they ate the strange grass as well.
The boy winked at them and yelled 'hurry up' with an eager, cocky smile on his face as he stood relatively still and waited for them – the relative part consisted of the boy jumping up and down on the spot, sitting down on the grass and then bolting up again to lunge for a dragonfly in between fistfuls of grass.
"Did the moon go through an adventure?" the girl asked him tugging hard on his arm – apparently he had been paying too much attention to her brother. He looked down at her curiously, not really comprehending what she meant but instead he watched the small red curls bounce around as she shook her head at him, her blue eyes dancing with a childish giggle.
"You are funny" she laughed.
"Pardon?"
"Did the moon change colour because it had just been on an adventure?" she said in a slow voice as if talking to a child, and he thought he heard her sigh. He smiled – these small creatures were quite mysterious… and endearing in their own little miniature way.
"I suppose you could say that. It started out as red, then had an adventure or two, and changed to blue and yellow. Maybe next time it will become… purple," he told her with a smile and managed to make her giggle again. He still kept a lookout for the boy out of the corner of his eyes though, afraid the little thing would disappear the moment he looked away. You never knew what lurked in the depths of the forest – even though The Red Moon was supposed to be a place of peace, things always seemed to turn out wrong and troublesome for him.
The little girl patted his hand, and caught his attention again, her small fingers feeling so peculiar but familiar.
"Mom turns her hair many colours too when she been through an adventure. Like the moon. But not blue – not two colours" the girl explained and he found her quite adorable in that little moment, her big blue eyes regarding him and her little nose turned upwards as she craned her neck to look at him. He squeezed her hand and said, "Let's go tickle your brother"
She agreed with a high-pitched giggle and they ran towards the boy and the dragonflies.
-o-
"And then the guard who was really the wizard jumped onto the cliff. So he didn't fall down into the water. And the beast cried 'I will get you'. Because he wanted the wizard so he could rule the universe but the wizard was too good." the boy told him in an excited voice, his eyes round with animation and his little arms gesticulating left and right.
"And what happened then?" he asked for the umpteenth time having learned early on that was what he was supposed to ask – long ago when the story had started with a space warrior facing off big roaring dragons and an army of fhren robots. Apparently he wasn't supposed to comment on the story or tell one of his own; he was just supposed to listen. If he had known this back at the start of the story he would have given the boy some grass to chew on instead. But unfortunately he was trapped on his own couch in the library of his Tardis, the boy sitting next to him and narrating the never-ending story.
"Then the beast multi-pli-ca-plied because he stole a multi-, a-multi-pli-ca-sion machine from the planet of Matha and he made lots of copies of himself"
"Multiplication machine – are you sure it wasn't a-"
"No it was a multi-plica-sion machine" the boy told him in a serious no-nonsense voice.
"Hey, see what I made," the little girl yelled, sitting in the opposite corner with an army of crayons and paper. She lifted the drawing in the air and he squinted his eyes, trying to make out the picture. It was his Tardis – only it was the wrong colour.
"That's nice" he told her and she beamed, "But why is the Tardis like a rainbow?"
"It's gone through many adventures," she told him and started on a new paper, a large red crayon in her small hand.
The boy yanked on his arm.
"Guess what!" the boy squealed.
"Guess what?" he asked.
"What happens then?" the boy said in an impatient voice.
"Hmm – the beast presses the wrong button and shrinks himself?"
"Noo," the boy giggled, "It's a multi-pli-ca-sion machine."
"Oh right. What happens then?"
"Then the beast made himself a whole race, of himself. And they attacked the planet of the wizard, and then Threesia, that's the wizard's planet, was destroyed. To a thousand, no, to a billion pieces"
"Oh no. Did the wizard strike back?"
"No, because he died"
"Oh… so the story ends" his voice came out a little too eager but the boy didn't notice.
"Noo," the boy laughed as if the idea was a silly one, "The wizard had a son, and he was a half giant, half robot… and half insect."
"Really"
"Yes, and he grew up in a forest all alone with a family of ulu'cripsters, you know those weird crawly things on planet Zau?"
"Oh yeah, planet Zau – what a mysterious place. You've been there?"
The boy gave him a weird look, the same one as when the two small children had thought he was sick; a secretive, appraising look.
"I'm not supposed to tell," the boy told him, paused and then continued once again with his story, excitement in his voice "and then the son grew up with the-"
He only listened with one ear and half a brain though, the rest of him contemplating all this secrecy he was surrounded in. Mystery, mystery.
-o-
8 hours earlier
He came into the console room having spent the last hour trying to get burbi slime out of his hair, a towel wrapped around his neck, his shirt half-buttoned and his bare feet in fluffy pink slippers. He had encountered a whole Burbi swarm and had accidentally insulted them – how he wasn't sure – but it had resulted in him being covered in their offensive hurl of vomit.
And he stopped in surprise when he saw River leaning casually against the console panel, arms crossed and eyes fixing him with an amused expression.
"I thought you would never get out of the shower," she laughed, her eyes trailing up and down his body with a playful grin.
"River!" he yelled in shock, and a little outrage – she always did manage to surprise him. A habitual occurrence he found most disturbing. He paused on the steps, quickly buttoning his shirt with nervous hands and raking them through his hair. For a split second he couldn't remember if he'd put on pants, and it was with a sigh of relief he found himself clothed when he looked down at his legs. That woman didn't need any more ammunition on him than she already had.
He tangled his fingers through his still damp hair and tried to put on an undaunted smile. It worked and to his glee he found he could look at her without blushing – that was until he noticed them.
He nearly choked on the air as his eyes locked unto the two small creatures standing on the other side of the panel, touching their small chubby fingers on his controls and laughing when they tapped something on the control keyboard and something flashed unto the screen.
"What!" his voice came out strangled and high-pitched as he pointed to the two red-haired children immersed in the screen. Two red-haired children that looked up when he shouted and smiled at him – two miniature smiles that sucked all the air from his lungs. The little girl raised her chubby hand and waved at him, flashing her teeth while the boy stuck out his tongue and giggled.
River smiled at the two troublemakers, turned her head and fixed him with another of her secretive glances, observing him with barely-restrained amusement.
"I need to be at G'tripple Alpha Pletura yesterday – I'm in a quite a hurry and I need-" she told him, her voice steady and calm as she pressed a few digits on the vortex manipulator on her wrist.
"W-what!" he interrupted her, feeling himself fall deeper and deeper into a stupor, unable to connect with the world around him, not understanding what was happening.
"I need you to… look after them" she told him in a low voice, stepping closer to him.
"No. No, no no – absolutely not" he protested.
"Doctor," she pronounced the word hard and with a puff of air, "It's a matter of great importance."
"But-but" he stuttered, feeling lost. A feeling that only intensified whenever he glanced a look or two at the two creatures, still engrossed in something at his Tardis console.
"No need to fret, sweetie" River consoled him and lay a hand on his arm, "You got on splendid last time"
"Last time," he squeaked and the twins looked up and fixed him with another measuring look, their heads askew as they regarded him and their mother. He felt faint.
River stepped even closer, leaning into his personal space, gripping his arm.
"Shhh," she nodded in the direction of the children and then gave him a reassuring smile;"It will be just fine"
"Just fine!" he squealed again earning himself further curious gazes from the children and a glare from River.
"Doctor," she hissed below her breath, "will you please relax and just try to breathe."
"But… but – they are – I don't – I – I" he stumbled on the words, his breathing becoming more and more perturbed.
River rolled her eyes, sighed and fixed him with another glare, a cross between wry amusement and exasperation.
"It's your turn – you owe me" she stated in a low quiet voice, looked at her wrist and pressed something on the manipulator.
"No... no, River please," he pleaded but it fell on deaf ears.
"They are all yours," River grinned at him before she turned around and smiled to her two troublemakers, who looked up from whatever mayhem they were subjecting on his Tardis and waved at their mother.
And before he could utter any more protests, she pressed a finger on her wrist and disappeared with a saucy smile and a "Goodbye sweeties"
And he was left alone with the two small things.
-o-
A/N: Whether they are his or not – it's up to you, I guess – though in my mind they… so are… Hehe. And yes, they've travelled with the doctor before, and River's trained them well in the concept of 'spoilers'
/Iso