Author's Notes: I do not own Doctor Who, the Doctor, Donna, Rose or Peppa Pig. Thank you for the reads and reviews, follows and favorites. Anyway, let me know what you think of this one if you want and happy reading!
It had been days since the marathon and since John had pulled the fob watch out of the eaves storage. He laid awake staring at it as Donna read in bed next to him.
"Sweetheart, what's wrong?," asked Donna.
"Nothing," said John, turning the old fob watch over and over in his hands.
Donna scooted closer on the bed. "It doesn't seem like nothing. You've been staring at that watch for days."
"I know this watch is broken, but I don't remember how it was broken."
"Maybe it got broken in your accident."
"That too. I know I was in an accident, but I don't remember it. I know I went to school, but I don't remember it."
Donna rubbed his shoulder. "Jack didn't mean anything by that, sweetheart. He's just going through a rough patch."
"I know, it's just..." he turned to face her. "Sometimes I feel as if I'm not real."
"You're not real?"
"I know, I feel like a fraud."
"What is this? Some midlife crisis thing? Please don't buy a Porsche."
"No, I love my life. I do. You, the kids, I adore it, I just feel like maybe I don't belong. Like I'm the outsider."
"How could you be an outsider? You're my husband. You're their dad."
"I don't know."
Donna leaned over and kissed him. "I love you. That's real."
"Do you remember those nightmares I used to have?"
"Oh, God, yes, the terrible ones. Are you having them again?"
"I've been thinking about them. People dying, monsters, things..."
"They were just nightmares, sweetheart."
Donna tried to reassure him as she always had, but John couldn't shake the thought of the nightmares. What if they weren't? What if the nightmares were real? That man in his dreams, the one who did all those terrible things, what if that's who he really was?
John walked around in a haze the next few days. He had the feeling that something terrible was about to happen, like a piano was about to fall on his head or something.
The watch. He couldn't let go of the watch.
He went back up to the eaves storage where he had dug the damn thing out. There he also found the journal where he had written and drawn about his nightmares, with monsters, faraway planet and a man called...
The Doctor. In his dreams, the man was called the Doctor. He had forgotten all about it. He was so busy with Donna and the children and life. Who had time to think about a nightmare from ages ago?
Why had the girl called him Doctor? Harriet Jones had said the same thing on telly, then not long after Jack had come to get him. He never had said what he wanted.
Why was the girl in the book? How could the girl be in the book? He had made it ages ago and she couldn't be more than nineteen.
He held the watch. It kept giving him flashes from the nightmares and words he didn't understand.
It was madness. Complete and utter madness. He wasn't some man called the Doctor, whatever that was meant to be.
Then why did he want to open that watch? Why did it sound as if it was speaking to him, like the ocean inside a seashell?
Why did he sound different when he held it? Every time he answered a question for the children, he had a better answer, knowledge he couldn't remember getting.
So, he took a last bite of pear and opened the fob watch.
The Doctor's first reaction was to gag on the pear and tear past Zoe in the hallway as he rushed to the loo.
"Daddy?," she asked.
"Pears! I hate pears!"
The Doctor rushed to the sink, turned on the faucet and rinsed out his mouth. He then took a ridiculously huge gulp of Aquafresh and spit it out.
"Daddy, are you okay?"
Zoe was standing in the doorway looking with concern at the man she thought was her father.
"Oh, no," said the Doctor. "Oh, no. What have I done?"
She came and took his hand. "What's wrong, Daddy?"
"Um," he tried to search his mind for what John Smith would say, "Daddy's not feeling well." Why did humans lie to their children so much? Of course, in this instance he wasn't quite willing to tell Zoe that he was actually an alien and their life up to this point had been a lie.
"Is your tummy upset?," she asked.
She wasn't a lie, though. Everything about her was so genuine, so pure, so human.
"No, Zoe, my tummy's fine."
"You said you hate pears."
"I do."
"You always eat pears."
That bloody John Smith. Eating pears. Hadn't he left some instructions somewhere? He was certain that was on the list. Wait, he was John Smith. John Smith was him. This was getting impossible to straighten out.
"Well, now I hate pears."
"Okay," said Zoe. She wrapped her arms around his legs and squeezed.
"What are you doing?"
"I thought you needed a hug."
He did.
"I do. Thank you."
"Zoe! Supper!," he heard Donna call.
"Run along to your mother," said the Doctor. "I'll be fine."
"I love you, Daddy."
"I love you, too, Zoe," he said. How had that just slipped out? Time Lords never threw around such sentiments. Even with his own children.
She reminded him of them as she scampered away. He sat on the bed. He had to think this through. What had happened?
He had survived the Time War. The last of his kind. He had survived that last day with Rose and walked away. So what else could he do? He did what he always did: he went off to see the universe.
Then he encountered the Aubertide. He had no choice except to hide himself as a human. What the hell had happened after that? He remembered arriving at Sarah Jane's house, thinking he was her brother. She and the Brig had put in so much work. Jack as well.
Jack. He had named his son after a beloved cousin who was in fact a sexually crazed immortal, former Time Agent Boe Kind from the 51st century.
Actually, he had named his twins after two former companions.
Were they even his? This was John Smith's life and he was gone, but he wasn't. He was still somewhere inside. How had things gotten so out of hand? He was only supposed to hide for three months not have a whole life! What was he going to do about his life? Just walk downstairs and announce that he was an alien?
Donna was going to kill him.
"John!," he heard Donna calling. "John!"
She came in the bedroom. "Zoe said you weren't feeling well." She put her hand on his forehead. "Well, no fever. You're freezing. Are you alright?"
"I..." He covered his mouth with his hand. He didn't want to speak, didn't want to give anything away. What if Donna knew it? What would happen?
Did he even love her now that he wasn't human? Oh, he could have lived forever like that. He had everything, a wife, beautiful children. Now he'd just be an alien again. He wouldn't belong, he wasn't like them anymore.
"Sweetheart..." said Donna. She sat down on the bed next to him and motioned at the empty fob watch in his hand. "Is it the watch? Did Jamie break it? If I told him once, I told him a thousand times to stay out of the eaves storage."
"No, it's fine."
"Were you thinking about your dad?," asked Donna.
"No," he said. Then that all came back. Gallifrey burning, the war, the Daleks, losing everyone. It was overwhelming...
Donna sat on the bed next to him and rubbed his back. "It's okay. You've got us."
The Doctor shook his head. "I don't."
"What are you talking about?," asked Donna. She kissed him on the cheek. "Of course you have."
She was still rubbing his back. It felt so good. It had been so long since anyone had touched him like that. As the Doctor. It was different from what he had felt as John Smith. It was just waves of Donna coming off her and it was wonderful. So warm and full of love, for her children, for him.
No. It was really for John Smith. But there was no John Smith. John Smith was somewhere in him. She was looking at him, though.
The Doctor felt something.
He wanted her.
"I want you," he said breathless.
"What?," asked Donna. "Right now?"
"Yes." He grabbed the back of her head and brought her lips to his. Oh, that still felt good. Better maybe.
"John, let me breathe!," she protested, pushing him off.
Right. Respiratory bypass. He would need to keep that in check.
"The kids are eating supper."
He turned. "Then they're busy."
She was still slack jawed. "What is making you so randy all of a sudden?"
"Call it a new outlook," he said, working her top over her head.
"Your hands are freezing," she said.
Oh. Right. The hands. The everything, actually.
Donna smiled. "Well, don't stop," she said.
"Right," he said, kissing her on the lips, then moving down. "Not stopping. Never stopping."
"Well, you better stop soon, I only left enough fish fingers down there for one serving and you know how Jack is."
"I just need you, Donna."
"Mummy! Jack took my fish fingers!," Zoe shouted.
Donna smiled at the Doctor. "We have to go down there or she'll starve to death."
"Right," said the Doctor.
"Once we get them to bed, I'm all yours."
The Doctor followed Donna downstairs to a sight that he had seen thousands of times before through the eyes of John Smith. The children were sitting around the table. Jamie was tossing peas at Charlotte. Jack was gleefully eating Zoe's fish fingers. It was different now, though, it seemed like so much more than it had.
"Oi! That's enough!," said Donna. "Jamie, stop throwing your food or you'll go to bed without any! Jack, you cannot take your baby sister's fish fingers!"
"I love fish fingers!"
"I'm hungry," said Zoe.
"That's alright, sweetheart," said Donna walking to the freezer. "Zoe, while I make more fish fingers, would you like a Cadbury Flake Cone or a Peppa Pig Ice Cream Lolly?"
"Peppa Pig!," shouted Zoe.
"That's not fair!," exclaimed Jack.
"Why does she get dessert first?," griped Charlotte.
"Because you two should be looking out for your little sister," said Donna.
"I didn't take them," complained Charlotte.
"No, but you watched him and didn't do anything," said Donna. She handed Zoe the Peppa Pig Ice Cream Lolly. "John?"
The Doctor looked up to see Donna staring at him. "Sorry? What?"
"Would you help me clean up the table?"
"Yeah, yeah."
Donna looked at him. "Distracted by the thought of something?," she asked with a wink.
"Yeah," he said finally cracking a smile at the thought of what Donna thought he was distracted by, "you might say that."
The Doctor went to clean up the peas and the smashed bits of fish on the table, then sat quietly with the family while Donna asked the children about their day. Charlotte was keen on going to some concert Donna thought she was too young for. He might have been asked to chaperone that, he couldn't remember. Jack was struggling to get along with the assistant the school paired him up with to help with his dyslexia. Zoe and Jamie were going with the nursery school on an excursion to Kew Gardens the next day. He had so much he wanted to say about all of that, but he didn't because he knew as soon as he revealed too much knowledge, it would be over. He would be alone again.
He didn't want to be alone again.
On the way to the Gap, Rose stopped by the restaurant she couldn't remember being sacked from.
"Rose!," exclaimed her friend, Kay. "What are you doing here? You don't want Kenneth to see you, trust me."
"Kay, I got sacked, right?"
"Yeah," said Kay, giving Rose a skeptical look.
"Can you tell me why?"
"You called some bloke who was here with his family 'The Doctor' and the wife ran out in a huff."
"The wife?," asked Rose.
"Yeah, you asked me for the phone number she made the reservation under."
"A phone number? Have you still got it?"
"Yeah," said Kay, flipping back through the reservation book. She wrote the number down on a piece of paper and handed it to Rose. "What's this all about, Rose?"
Rose shook her head. "I'm not sure, but I'm going to find out. Thanks."
Rose walked out staring at the slip of paper. "Mrs. Donna Smith," she said aloud. "Well, how many Donna Smiths can there be on Lionel Road?"
That night the Doctor laid next to Donna in a mess of tangled sheets.
John Smith. John Smith's ordinary human life. He found himself oddly jealous of it. After all, he didn't do domestic. Domestic was boring. Was it, though? As far as he could remember and he could remember everything, he had never had a boring day as John Smith, especially not since he had met Donna and become a dad.
What if he told them? What would he tell them? He was an alien? They had no dad? That could wreck them forever. He couldn't leave them unprotected, either. Even though they were human, what if someone made the connection and tried to use them against him? What would happen then?
There it was then. Earth. London. He had to stay here and try not to interfere in any major events or get himself injured so badly he would need to regenerate. He supposed eventually he might have to think of something when Donna noticed he didn't age. Or get ill. Or die.
Donna dying. He squeezed her next to him. He didn't want to think about that. Or the children. He could outlive them as well. What a wretched mess this was. How had the TARDIS managed to do all this?
"The TARDIS!," he shouted.
"What?," Donna asked groggily.
"Nothing," he said quickly. "Go back to sleep."
The TARDIS. Where was the TARDIS? He had to get the TARDIS back. It had been over ten years! The Old Girl was certain to be furious with him, wherever she was, then again it was partially her fault. He had sworn he had left a message before he used the Chameleon Arch. His only option was to ask the ship to take him to one of his former companions and he wasn't surprised she had chosen Sarah Jane. He had also asked the TARDIS to play a message from him, explaining the situation and asking them to open the watch after three months.
UNIT probably had her. Well, that could be sorted. Even if they weren't doing anything with her, they certainly didn't need her. First thing in the morning, he would get her.