In awe, William stood in silence as he sees his older brother, wearing shabby clothes, a soul patch underneath his lips, dark hair sticking out from underneath his black bowler hat, looked more like a homeless drifter than William ever did with his clothes!
"How?" William balked as he watched his older brother flick ash with the tip of his fingers, flinging it on the grated floors.
Resting the cigarette on his lips, Tom told him, "You ain't the only cat that knows people, what the hell were you thinking?"
Anger in his dark eyes, Tom demanded answers from William, why he stole the TARDIS, why he never told them where he went, everything.
"I had to get it away from him!" William defended himself from his brother, "if I didn't do it, he would've done something terrible and you know he would!"
Grief stricken, their father's capable of anything, even risking a disaster from attempting to change a set point in time, William had no other choice, and if the TARDIS didn't want him operating it, it would've locked him out, key or not key.
Hearing this, sent Tom in a coughing fit, as he tried to mock laugh at William's explanation for leaving them.
"I was going to come back and explain myself, I swear!" William pointed at himself as he swore to his brother that he wanted to come back and explain, willing to take any punishments, but as Tom flicked the spent cigarette away from him, uncaring of the TARDIS, he turned to his brother in disgust.
Pointing at him, Tom hissed, "You left us, I had to take care of dad!"
Gesturing, William took the insults that Tom threw at him, but before he said he'll talk to their father, Tom stopped him with, "He couldn't stand it, anymore. Mum gone. You ran away with the piece of junk. I was the only one there for him!"
In little words with his gravely voice, Tom told his brother that their father committed suicide a few years after William stole the TARDIS from him, unable to move from the grief of losing their mother suddenly, and Tom guessed the guilt of him forcing William to steal the TARDIS.
"Dad's gone?" William felt the air sucked out of his body as he struggled to breath, the news that their father died no more than a year or two after he'd taken the TARDIS.
Nodding as he scratched his neck, Tom stated that he found their father in the chair, a bottle of empty sleeping pills in one hand, a large bottle of half-drunk whisky in the other.
"If you weren't screwing around, maybe you'd known!" Tom laid into his brother for disappearing for years without a word, yet here he was, dressed like a clown, acting like one, and didn't know what happened until Tom told him.
Legs like jello, William paced around the console room as his brother crossed his arms, eyes narrowed on him, and words finally came to his lips, "I… I'm… I'm sorry."
All those times adventuring, never saw home for so long, never got the chance, and in the end, he'd lost his only chance at making amends with his father.
"Ain't been home since the dirt set, couldn't stand being in that house," Tom explained how he ended up leaving it all after burying their father.
Standing in the empty den, lined with photos of them in different points in their lives, the silence, and no longer did Tom want anything to do with it, it only brought sorrow and anger, nothing more.
"I'll make it right!" William tells his brother he planned on making good on his promise of rectifying his sins, but Tom told him, "If you wanted to make it right, you would've stayed!"
The bitterness in his voice, Tom's dark eyes shimmered with tears, as he shouted at his brother, blaming him for causing everything to go wrong.
William took it all, letting his brother air out the anger that compounded since their mother passed away, and when his brother lost steam, he told him, "I know this'll sound outlandish and I deserve my face blackened with every punch, but you have to listen to me, mum didn't die of a heart attack!"
Raising his fine brow, Tom questioned what William said, and William informed him of everything he searched and scoured, before concluding.
"Have you found mum's ring?" William asked if Tom ever found the ring, which Tom responded that he never did, once the ground went cold, he left their family home, left everything where it was. He'd know something happened to the ring, but William told him that the ring went missing after their mum died.
Hearing the accusation that their mother was murdered, Tom leaned forward, asking him, "What kind of tom cats have you been hanging around?"
It's crazy, William knows, but he wouldn't come to this conclusion if he wasn't sure, and he assured Tom that it wasn't their father, lord no, but he can't figure out who could've done it.
"Say if I believed you, why didn't anyone find anything out of the ordinary when they came for mum?" Tom lent a shred of believability to William's theory.
Gesturing, William says that he worked it out, she couldn't have died in her sleep that quickly, he talked to every known cardiologist trying to come up with an explanation, and every one of them agreed that it their mother dying within the time frame the coroners put down couldn't been a heart attack.
"But there was stress on her heart!" Tom pointed out that their mother had signs of stress on her heart, but William countered, saying those were fresh, too fresh for a heart attack in the motions, and he betted his finest jacket that the stress came from whoever killed her.
The coroners who performed the autopsy were only looking for the signs of a heart attack, it never crossed their mind to check for anything suspicious, and William found bruises that barely surfaced on the pictures of his mother's close-up.
"Dad told us, he'd gone to check something, and when he came back to bed, he didn't see anything wrong, until he tried to kiss her goodnight," Tom recalled what their father told them when their mother died.
They'd just got home from their latest adventure, William and Tom elsewhere at that point, they're readying for bed, when something went off in the TARDIS… and when their father came back from checking… he didn't notice anything wrong until he gotten in bed.
"See! I believe the TARDIS was reacting to something and… well… you know how the adventures always took it out of them… so he wouldn't known!" William excitedly said as he expressed his belief that it was at that moment the TARDIS tried to warn their father, but after the adventure and his age taking its toll, he didn't recognize the immediate signs, tired, worn.
Staring him blankly as he reached into his coat pocket, grabbing a cigarette stick, before lighting it with the lighter in his free hand, Tom breathed the cigarette smoke through his mouth, exhaling sharply, smoke pluming from his mouth, before stating, "How would dad not know the warning, if it did warn him, why didn't you find the warning?"
Tom questioned how their father didn't recognize the warning, tired or not, and if the TARDIS did warn him to no avail, why didn't William find the warning within the database.
Lowering his hands, William mustered that he checked every avenue before concluding, the TARDIS didn't have a backup of the warning, much less acknowledge it, and he can't figure out why.
"Then you wouldn't known if it was a warning or not," countered Tom as he held the lit cigarette between his fingers as it silently burnt, much to William's annoyance, asking him not to smoke in the TARDIS.
Snorting, Tom spat at his brother's request, before William narrowed his eyes, asking him once more, not to smoke in the TARDIS.
He may not like the TARDIS for what he perceived the root cause of their parents' death, but William won't tolerate Tom desecrating what little they have of them.
"When have you ever been the sentimental type?" Tom spats as begrudgingly put out his freshly lit cigarette, before tossing it to the ground.
Holding his hands up, William begged him, "I need to find the truth, Tom. I need to know who killed our mum, please. Hate me all you want, I deserve it, but give me this."
Begrudgingly listening to his little brother, Tom mustered, "What if you're wrong?"
What if William wasted little time, he had with their father just to chase the idea that a bogeyman killed their mother?
Gulping the air trapped in his throat, William says, "Then I have my work cutout for me."