A/N: SORT OUT YOUR BLOODY EMAIL SYSTEM! (Cough) (Ahem) Yeah...
Chapter 29 – Genetically Engineered Parrots
"I swear your kid's part parrot," Mickey said to the Doctor with a disbelieving shake of the head a couple of days later, watching the Doctor as sat on the end of the bed, Rose carefully styling his hair since the Doctor only had one hand to work with. "It's like, everythin' I say he repeats…"
"Okay," the Doctor slowly raised his functioning hand, feigning surrender. "You got me. I'm actually a parrot genetically modified in a lab to look like a human – trained to infiltrate the defences of Solar Systems and imprint on people's speech. Therefore, my offspring has inherited these traits and has made it extremely good at repeating everything that anyone ever says."
"…Really?"
The Doctor sighed. "Alternatively," he carried on. "I could be part of an alien superace from outer space and my child has inherited the genetic ability I have to make sense out of nothing and understand things a lot quicker. Tell me Mickey, did you know they've taken the word 'gullible' out of the dictionary?"
The Doctor left Mickey to mull over this new problem, looking up as Rose took another dollop of hair gel and rubbed it into his hair massagingly.
"You having fun with that gel Rose?" he asked, trying to lighten the mood as best he could without destroying his own emotional barrier he had managed to shield himself with since he woke up. He'd never been to a proper Earth human funeral before. He wondered vaguely what it was like. Was it like a wedding, except everyone wore black and felt depressed?
Whatever it was, it seemed to have Rose on the edge.
"Oh, sorry…" she muttered in a shaky voice, accidentally dropping the tub of gel she had been trying to screw the lid on of in a fluster, murmuring apologies as she quickly bent down to retrieve it.
"Oh Rose…" the Doctor sighed, offering a hand up to her as she looked up from her crouch position. She took it, pulling him up onto his feet too, smoothing down the creases in his charcoal black suit and straightening the equally as black tie.
"Are you sure you wanna go through with this, Doctor?" she asked, running a hand down his now clean-shaven jaw. "I mean, I know a lot has happened and it's fine if you don't feel comfortable with it…I mean…we could always do it another time…"
"I'm fine Rose," he interrupted weakly, putting his hand on her hand that was still resting on his cheek. "Calm down."
"I am calm," she insisted, but the Doctor could see tears welling up in her eyes. "I'm calm…totally calm…"
The Doctor just let her fall forward onto him in a fragile hug – letting her try and control the tears for herself. Sometimes, words of comfort can just be like razor blades.
"You all ready?" Jackie unexpectedly asked from the doorway, and Rose lifted her head from the Doctor, nodding as her hand slipped down into the Doctor's own warm one and squeezed, as if to say, 'we'll be together through this.'
Typically, it was raining.
The five stood in sorrowful silence as the priest spoke softly and gently from a book as they stood in the graveyard, circled around the coffin and huddling into one another for warmth. The Doctor had specifically asked if it could be kept strictly in the small friend circle, namely him, Rose, Mickey, Jackie and Howard, a request to which Jackie had willingly obliged to.
"Eva was a special girl, in the manner that she had only felt the innocence, the innocence of an awesomely young child. She was not able to see the perilous horrors that cloud this world, a feeling which some of us may crave."
The Doctor felt Rose shudder slightly from the cold as she stood next to him, and he slipped off his brown overcoat, proceeding to rest it delicately around her shoulders before he took her close to his chest. She pressed her ear to his ribs as the priest continued to talk, the melody of his two hearts never seeming so beautiful and musical.
"We can only imagine her in our dreams, imagine her thoughts, feelings, emotions. What would she have been like if we had known her a little longer? What would she have wanted? Would she have the intelligence of her father? His charm? Her mother's beauty? Her bravery? We can only guess – but as I can see her now, I know she is all of these."
On those words, Jackie looked over the coffin to the Doctor and Rose, and she let her first tear for this child slip quietly down her cheek. The Doctor and Rose had lost so much. But they had gained a baby boy. Rory Alexis Sigma-Tyler. The child that now lay quiet and sleeping in Jackie's arms. The boy with the golden eyes.
She looked down at the boy, surprised to find he was no longer asleep. His eyes were quite wide, quite awake, and to her ultimate surprise - quite, quite brown.
"We will never know the world of Eva Jela Sigma-Tyler, but I think we can already envision it. Her mother and brother have both come through this ordeal, breathing because of the bravery of one little girl. Eva, as it is known in it's translation – 'Giver of life'."
Mickey Smith wasn't a jealous guy. If anyone had ever had a concrete reason to be jealous, Mickey Smith would get the gold outright. But he wasn't.
He could tell Rose and the Doctor had been made for each other. That somewhere, up there in the heavens, God was playing a little game of Matchmaker – and the Doctor and Rose were 100 percent compatibility.
But, as I said. Mickey Smith wasn't a jealous guy.
Much.
He knew they had to be together. Frankly, he wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in the Universe there was a written prophecy that bound them together for eternity. Would be a bit of a bummer, true, but the last thing he'd be was surprised.
Because they were like Adam and Eve; and Mickey Smith was just a snake tempting Rose away.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…" the priest continued, and the Doctor held Rose a little tighter to his chest, resting his cheek on her hair. He just wanted this to end. He didn't want Rose to cry anymore. He wanted her to be able to forget…
He lifted his head and looked around to block out the priest's words, seeing Jackie, who seemed to be looking down at Rory. Mickey was just standing staring at the floor, and Howard was looking at the priests, his hands clutched together infront of him. Like a proper funeral scene.
When the service ended, the Doctor asked for once last moment with Eva before he left the graveyard, for which the others abided to and filed quietly away. Only Rose remained, offering moral support as he knelt down next to the grave in which the coffin had been lowered into.
"You must hate me," the Doctor suddenly said out loud. "A mother shouldn't have to see this. It isn't right."
Rose sniffed away some tears, crouching down next to him and giving him a kiss on the cheek.
"Doctor, we've already been through this. I love you now, and I will love you always. So, like it or not, you're stuck with me." She gently turned his head towards her, smiling as he looked at her with those puppy dog eyes.
"I want us to be able forget it…" the Doctor explained, looking back to the grave. "I want to start again, fresh."
"I will if you will." She smiled, and the Doctor nodded at her, giving a small smile.
"We never come back to this grave. Ever. This is it."
"Agreed." She nodded. "That's a pact." She held out her hand and extended her little finger to him, and he just stared at it, slightly bemused.
"Err…what?"
"Shake it!" she insisted, waving the little finger about madly. He seemed puzzled, but all the same, took her little finger with his entire hand, shaking it. "No, no, no…" She rolled her eyes, taking his right hand and making it into a fist, bringing out his little finger and slipping it into her own, shaking it.
The Doctor just looked closely at the little fingers, before shaking his head in amusement.
"And this is?"
"It's a friendship pact thing. It means we are sworn by the finger shake to the promise."
"Y'know, where I come from, you do this…" The Doctor let go of her finger and snorted back some phlegm, spitting it onto his hand before extending it to Rose. She just stared at him in disgust.
"And this is where I leave…" she laughed, jumping onto her feet and starting brusquely off down the gravel path, leaving the Doctor behind.
"Oi!" he yelled, jogging down the path after her, wiping his hand on the grass as he sped off.
They got back to the waiting party together, hand in hand, giving them a thank you nod. Together the five started walking back to the TARDIS in silence, all just about ready to collapse into bed and fall into an eight year coma.
"Doctor," Jackie started, and he looked up, only to receive Rory in his arms. "Notice anything…different about Rory?"
"He's shut up…" Mickey observed.
"Ricky!" Rory suddenly said on cue, as if he was trying to prove Mickey wrong. Mickey just sighed again and dropped back to Rose who was smiling slightly, taking her hand since the Doctor could no longer do so.
The Doctor watched his son carefully as he opened his eyes and looked up at him, immediately giggling and slipping out a hand to hold the Doctor's thumb.
"Dadda," he said to the Doctor, who was just staring on in confusement.
"His eyes are brown…" the Doctor announced to the waiting Rose, who immediately launched into 'mother hen' mode that all mothers have in some form or another.
"Brown?! Why aren't they gold Doctor?! Is he ill?!" she quickly took Rory into her own arms and began to examine the giggling child over quickly.
"I don't know Rose…" he admitted, tapping his chin thoughtfully in worry. "Maybe it was some sort of excess residual cellular energy…" he reasoned out with himself. "Yeah, that's it. He's fine. No worries."
The Doctor looked over at Jackie, looking for her reaction to the obvious worry that had passed through the parents. She'd only slightly went ka-ka when she'd discovered his given eyes, but the Doctor had not received any type of physical injury for it. Probably because he was in no fit state to be hit.
Although, saying that, most of his injuries were healing nicely now, thanks to the TARDIS. He no longer walked with a limp; his previously broken right arm could now take light weights; he could also withstand a tight hug from Rose and could even write the first ten letters of the alphabet in Gallifreyan.
Most of the bruising and cuts had faded, bar a few nasty bruises still on his weakened ribs which Rose took care to avoid as much as she could. Same with the cuts – none continued to bleed, but there were still a few stitched ones that just needed a little more time.
They could see the TARDIS across the road now, waiting still and quiet in the Powell Estate for her owner to return. The Doctor held his son in his stronger left arm as he took Rose's hand with his right, leaning forward and nuzzling into her neck to grab her attention. She turned and let the Doctor slip his arm around her waist, before she took Rory from his other arm and held him between them whilst she cuddled up to the Doctor.
And then the Doctor felt a rush of wind behind him.
Instantly, he knew the Darkeese were back.
A/N: Chapter 30 - (I'd be lying if I said I'd actually named or fully written it...)
"Mum, what the hell is goin' on?" Rose asked fearfully as the five tumbled into the TARDIS, the door slamming automatically shut behind them.
"I don't know darlin', but when the Doctor tells you to run, you run," her mother reasoned out with her, and Rose nodded, swallowing ever so slightly as she stared at the closed doors barring her from him.