The TARDIS raced through the time vortex, spinning as it went. Inside, Felix stood perfectly steady, though his stomach was doing flips, and his heart was trying to burst its way out of his body.
It was always this way when he was going to visit Grandpa.

At six years old, Felix has been made to comb his hair and shine his shoes. He is wearing a very uncomfortable shirt and a tie that is too tight around his neck- he has already been shouted at for trying to cry his way out of the day's planned activity. They're going to visit Felix's grandfather.
"He's had a very hard life," Felix's mother explains for what feels like the millionth time, "his father died in the war and my mum's mother didn't want them to marry. She never approved of him and she told him that every day. He had to put up with her all his life, being cruel and dismissive. Always saying the meanest thing she could think of-"

"That's what he does to me!" Felix protests.

"Not another word. If you talk to him like that, you won't eat dinner tonight, understand?" His mother turns back to face the road without waiting for an answer.

Felix sniffs and struggles against the seatbelt, which is digging his stupid tie even further into his neck. He considers opening the door and just jumping out of the car- he doesn't yet know concretely the danger such an action would pose, although his suspicion that such an escape would be a Bad Idea keeps him from following through.

They arrive- Felix's grandfather lives far, though nowhere near far enough for Felix's comfort- and the old man is standing at the doorway, cast mostly in shadow, his face dark and thunderous. Felix tries to hide behind his father, but is dragged into view with a firm hand. His grandfather casts a cold, disdainful glance at his grandson, but his face splits in two with delight when he glances at Felix's older sister, Delilah. "Come here, sweetheart," he says- he throws open his arms and bends slightly at the knees, although he doesn't have nearly enough fleixbility left to properly hug her. He must settle instead for wrapping his shrunken hands around the back of her head.

Felix's father tries to push his son forward to recieve the same treatment but both grandfather and son know that this isn't happening. Felix's grandfather ushers in the family one by one- first Delilah with a gentle pat on the head, then his daughter, Felix's mother, with a quick kiss on the cheek and Felix's father with a firm handshake. Felix himself lurks outside the house, reluctant to enter the domain of insults and slaps on the wrist. Where he is told that he is stupid and clumsy, ungainly and unlovable, where the very apparent differences between himself and Delilah are constantly, minutely dissected. Where he is told off for preferring comic books to cricket, where he is constantly asked to name the kings of England (never the queens) and made to feel stupid when he forgets one. Where he is not allowed to make any noise and is told that really boys like football; where his mother is told, repeatedly, that he should really have joined a team by now and it'll knock some sense into him.

But he must go. He must face this bullish, boorish, hateful old man and his undisguised disgust at his progeny. More than anything in the world, Felix hates visiting his grandfather.

"So, why do you want to see your grandfather so bad?" The Doctor's words jolted Felix out of his reverie.

"I just have some things I wish I'd said to him. And I want to meet him when he's young."

"Okay but you should know, people aren't always who you think they'll be in the past," The Doctor said, noticing a flashing light on the TARDIS console and tapping it until it stopped, "For example, Henry VII turned out to be a beaver in a ruff."

"It's alright, Doctor, my mum used to tell me stories about him as a young man all the time. How he wooed my grandmother with flowers and awkward hand-holding. That's the man I want to see."

"How sweet," The Doctor said.

'So I can beat him senseless.' Felix added in his head.