A/N: The trailer for The Runaway Bride looks bloody AWESOME. You've all gotta see it - tis on the the BBC /doctorwho site on today's advent day. I mean, David Tennant drenched in water, large amounts of explosions and (On Youtube - I LOVE YOU DOBO!) four minutes of a car chase scene. Fantastic.

Sorry, having a Doctor Who Meltdown.

Chapter 21 – They're The Doctor's

"Rightiho…" the Doctor muttered, grabbing a piece of paper and a pen from the side table to take a few notes down, making Rose - who was lying on the examination bed – very nervous indeed.

"Err…what exactly are you doing?" she asked hesitantly, and he smiled reassuringly at her.

"Gotta work out exactly how old it is so I can check it's growing at the normal rate inside a human being."

Rose gulped. "Sounds scary."

"Just a test." He shrugged non-chalantly, pausing for a moment as he stared uncomprehendingly down at the blank piece of paper before him. "Err…" He put the nib of the pen onto the paper, pulling it down and round in a banana-like shape.

"Nice drawing of a womb," Mickey noted, genuinely impressed.

"It's err…meant to be a zero." The Doctor clicked his tongue inside his cheek. "I'll try again…"

Rose peered at his next creation, refusing to giggle at his expense.

"You're good at drawing breasts too…" she duly noted, trying so hard not to laugh as he stared at the paper like it held the most impossible task in the universe. "Let me guess…mean to be a three?"

"A three," he agreed, dropping the pen onto the table to reach up and tug at his hair. "It makes my head hurt…"

Rose faintly recalled the warnings of Dr. Jones from the hospital about not being able to do simple tasks for a while, and smiled at him in pity.

"Look, how about mum writes down the figures for you, and you just be the doctor?" Rose suggested, and he nodded in agreement, pushing the paper towards Jackie standing on the other end of the table.

"Jackie…can you write down exactly what I say please…zero, three, five, one, eight, seven, zero, zero, minus one, minus six, nine, three, three, three, two. Got that?"

Jackie nodded, about to push the paper back to him, but he suddenly started talking again and Jackie quickly put pen to paper.

"Right, underline all of that, now, put eight hundred squared plus seventy nine cubed fresh a couple of lines down – in brackets, divide…yeah…the line underneath…yeah, divided by n squared multiplied by two, also in brackets. Now, square all of that, more brackets, yep…more brackets and a zero, put an equals sign at the start, preceded by another zero."

Jackie's hand was zooming around the paper, printing a very complicated looking sum, which seemed daunting to Rose.

"Err…what does that mean Doctor?" she asked, absolutely terrified.

"Oh, nothing much. I just like making your mother write."

Rose couldn't help but laugh as he quickly grabbed a metal implement that looked slightly like a plunger on a wire from the side, holding it between him and Jackie as a weapon.

"Ahaha…Jackie! This may LOOK like a plunger, but it is infact a death ray constructed by the evil Mr Snippy from the planet Bogus! And I'm warning you, you come anywhere near me with that hand of yours and I'll have to use it on you…"

Jackie didn't seem at all daunted by the death ray, and the Doctor grimaced.

"Come near me and I'll use the death ray on…" he let it hang in the it for a second, before swinging around to Rose and pressing it to her swollen womb. "ROSE! MUAHAHAHA!"

"It that the baby?" Rose suddenly asked in amazement, making Jackie stop dead in her tracks and look up at the thirty-six inch screen hanging from the ceiling.

There they could all see tinges of blue in amongst black, forming, what looked like some kind of alien curled up in a ball. Only just though.

"Looks like a mess," Rose commented, and the Doctor just rolled his eyes.

"Hold on…" The screen image suddenly became colour, and now the baby could clearly be seen in amongst the amniotic fluid. "A boy," he determined. "Let's call him Alexis."

"No," said Rose abruptly, mockingly hitting him with a small smile. "Let's call him…" she pondered for a moment, before her mind flitted back to the boy who had saved the Doctor's life that night in the crash. "Rory."

The Doctor frowned. "Talk about a human sounding name…"

"His name's Rory, end of."

"Alexis Rory Sigma-Tyler?" he proposed quietly. Catching Rose's look of confusement, he merely shrugged, scratching the back of his head. "Old college nickname. Theta Sigma."

"Okay then…" Rose licked her lips devilishly. "Theta." The Doctor glared at her.

"I just want him to be separated from…" he trailed off, not willing to risk a slap from Mrs. Tyler while his body was still trying to heal. "…Just want him to be independent."

Rose smiled to herself, able to read the Doctor's thoughts from the expression on his face.

"Fine. Rory Alexis Sigma-Tyler."

"Alexis Rory Sigma-Tyler."

"Rory, Alexis, Sigma, Tyler," Rose repeated slowly and firmly, folding her arms and pretending to turn up her nose at him.

"Is it wavin'?" Jackie suddenly pointed a finger towards the screen, and she was totally right. In the corner of the screen a little hand could be seen waving for attention. Everyone smiled, including the Doctor, but suddenly his smile faded, and he started to click his tongue again.

"Hold on…"

He moved the 'plunger' across Rose's womb towards the hand, and immediately there was another baby, bright eyed and happy, waving it's hand manically.

"It's a girl…" the Doctor realised, watching with intent. When the girl realised it now had centre stage, it dropped its waving hand and poked the sleeping twin beside it, and pointed at the camera. Suddenly they both started waving, and everyone started laughing again.

"They're definitely yours, Doctor…" Rose grinned at him, and he grinned back, raising a hand and waving it in the air as if to mirror the two babies.

"They're pretty clever aren't they?" Jackie remarked, peering closely at the screen.

"They're the Doctor's," Rose said in explanation, and everyone nodded in agreement.

They all stared at the screen, a smile etched on each of their faces, where now the two babies had started dancing the tango.

"Are they dancin'?" Mickey asked, genuinely surprised as he peered at the screen.

"They're the Doctor's," everyone apart from the man himself answered back in unison, who just shrugged.

"Nothing wrong with dancing."

"Give 'em a banana each and they'll be in heaven," Rose giggled, and the Doctor smiled widely, sitting down onto the bed at her waist with the device still pressed to her womb at the two babies. They provided good entertainment – they seemed to be acting out some sort of script between each other, playing to the camera.

"This is a very good TV…" Mickey suddenly noted, stepping forward to examine the screen. The Doctor nodded, grabbing a remote from the side and holding it up.

"Auto-collapse, fits into the ceiling neatly, plate slides over. Compact space saving. Thirty-six inch flat screen with built in DVD and video. Samsung, none of your Phillip's rubbish."

"Plasma?"

"Naturally."

Rose and Jackie stared at the two men in disbelief, unable to comprehend the possibility that they were talking about makes of television at a time like this.

"Just for medical stuff?" Mickey asked, and the Doctor shrugged.

"Depends. It also gets the football. Look…" He held the remote up to zap the channel, but Jackie's dominating voice soon made him freeze in his actions from true fear.

"I'd put that remote down if I were you Doctor."

He automatically let go of the remote, letting it fall onto the Infirmary floor with a small thud.

"Yeah, sorry…" he muttered guiltily, making his hand holding the device more secure on Rose's womb. But as he looked up at the screen, he noticed the babies were no longer dancing…

"Are they fightin'?" Rose asked, and the Doctor shrugged in reply.

"They're mine…?" he asked mildly, leaning down to her womb and shouting directly into it, "oi! You two! Stop fighting inside your mother!"

On the screen the babies shied away, covering their ears with tiny hands. The Doctor grimaced.

"Sorry," he said hastily, running a hand over the part of Rose's womb not covered in gloopy ultrasound stuff. He leant forward and dared to give Rose a peck on the cheek – after all, she was carrying his twins. She smiled back at him, reaching up her arms to receive a giant hug, which he was all too happy to oblige.

"Congratulations, daddy," she said over his shoulder as he held her tight.

"You too…mummy."

"So when we expectin' the babies?" Jackie interrupted the silence that followed, and the Doctor pulled back from the hug to do a quick scan with another 'alienic' device.

"What's that?" Rose asked, looking at the device observantly. "Looks like a sandwich toaster."

He shrugged mildly, giving it a sharp hit to jolt it along. "Probably is. BBC props…" he muttered, and everyone looked at him in confusement.

"Ay?"

"Nothing, never mind," he dismissed, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "Gallifreyian pregnancies last a week. And you're what…at five days?"

She nodded in affirmation, unconsciously running a hand over her stomach while the Doctor carried on.

"You're due in two days then. But even if they're born now they'll be able to survive, after a few weeks of care from the TARDIS. And we've got twins, which is good."

"How's that good? Twins equals more pain Doctor," Rose reminded him, and he raised an eyebrow.

"Ever heard of the Emperor Penguin Rose?"

Rose stared at him. "What?"

"Emperor Penguins. Live in the Antarctic. Antarctica! I should take you there someday…nice views, kinda chilly for a bikini there though. I went there once. Met a man named Roger. Tried some whale blubber…kinda weird tasting, but I suppose it's all they got out there…"

"Get to the point Doctor."

He smiled apologetically looking a little disappointed, but carried on nonetheless, "well the Emperor Penguin always lays two eggs. The second one's there incase the main one isn't healthy – so if the main one is damaged in any way, the second one's there as backup. Sort of like a spare tyre in the back of a car. But if it is fine, then they discard of the second egg, regardless of whether it's healthy or not. The Timelords did the same thing."

"But we're not gonna discard one of 'em are we? Are we?" Jackie demanded, and the Doctor nodded hastily while Rose giggled.

"So what I'm saying is Rose, you have the ability to deal with Timelord chromosomes, which is good. The birth'll be much smoother. I was only born as a single baby - my mum had a bit of a hard time, and I only just survived."

Rose grinned subtly at the thought of a baby Doctor shoving things in his mouth and chewing on them, eating marmalade out of the jar, getting covered in chocolate and mud - comparing him to now. Wasn't that much different, to be honest.

"Are these gonna be like weird alien babies with superhuman powers?" Jackie asked, and the Doctor shrugged.

"They'll only have part Timelord genes, and won't get two hearts till their first regeneration…if they can regenerate. Can't really tell until they grow up."

"Still alien then…" Jackie muttered, and the Doctor rolled his eyes, slightly annoyed. "So they're not gonna be slime dripping six headed monsters?"

The Doctor looked just about ready to blow a fuse as he scrunched the empty plastic cup up in one hand subliminally. "No," he said in a firm voice, refusing to make eye contact with her, before continuing in an abrupt voice, "you're lucky Gallifrey isn't around. If they got a whiff of this, they'd kill me and send me on exile for my last few bodies, probably kill Rose, and the baby…well…the baby…" he trailed off, and Rose saw real sadness in his eyes. "Let's not go into that."

There was another brief pause, before Jackie spoke again, and the Doctor went overboard.

"Six arms?"

"DO I LOOK LIKE I HAVE SIX ARMS?" he bellowed angrily, waving two arms about in the air infront of her to demonstrate the point. Then stopped.

Rose felt her stomach churn with the pain of a contraction, and at the same time the Doctor suddenly doubled over, clutching at his head in pain. He staggered sideways as he lost all support, hitting the table on the side as he tried to control the pain, falling to his knees.

Rose struggled up the best she could while carrying two huge nearly fully-grown twins in the midst of a contraction, and knelt next to his side in a panic before he collapsed into her arms in a dead faint.

Chapter 22 – The Quest For The Rubber Duck

"Rose, incase you 'aven't noticed, he's an alien…"

"Congratulations mum! You finally realised!"

"I'm just a bit worried…"

"About what mum? About what?" Rose demanded, bolting onto her feet and leaning over the bed, closer to her mother. "He's protected me for my entire life with him and given me everything I've ever needed and more, what could you POSSIBLY be worried about?"