Disclaimer: We own Doctor Who, in this Universe where today is Joshua's birthday and we therefore decided to update in order to celebrate that fact. However, it is raining, wet, and cold here three hundred and sixty-six days a year and OV, who is from Texas, won't stand for it. Jessa's not too sanguine about it either, as she doesn't know what you'd do with that many pine forests.
Chapter 3
Rose watched Joshua silently from the doorway of his Uncle's study. She wasn't prying, she told herself, wasn't trying to invade his thinking. She had just passed by as she meandered over the elegant house, familiarizing herself with it more intently. Doris had encouraged her wanderings, saying rather apologetically that she had to return a few phone calls, as she'd already put them off too long.
On more than one of her stops, she found Joshua letting his gaze wander over the back garden. More than once, he had been glaring quite longingly at his Uncle's liquor cabinet. Mostly, however, he had been staring at a blank page in his sketch book as if it was deliberately keeping something from him.
Rose didn't know why, but she was almost afraid to intrude on his thoughts. She truly hated it when she couldn't suss her own motives for things, but there was so much going on in her head right now, everything from childish fear to the conviction of inadequacy, from utter boredom to a hundred questions about apple-red alien pets and their owners.
She was going to need time to just stand very still and process it all. But now felt too soon for that, or at least the wrong time altogether. She couldn't help or escape the feeling that she should be doing something.
Anything, really, other than staring at a man who seemed to be staring at the world around him, but was really searching the shadows of his mind for a memory he didn't actually want. It had all seemed so simple when this weekend started, but now it had gotten all difficult again, and Rose could hardly bear it, never mind think on it.
Determinedly, she shoved her worry and confusion away. She would be there and act like her normal self, convince everyone that everything was fine, just as soon as Joshua needed her to do that. In the mean time, she needed a distraction.
She wandered away again, down the long, picture decorated hallway, until she came to the music room. She smiled as memories of the last time she and Joshua had been here went rolling over her.
He'd truly opened up to her about his past for the first time in this room. He'd played for her, too, his long fingers dancing with elegance over the pale keys of the mahogany upright against the wall. He had also, on another occasion, promised to teach her to write music, as soon as he had the time.
Smiling to herself, Rose went meandering through the shelves of sheet music. Here was something she could do to distract herself, a way to keep herself busy and improve herself while she was at it. She had learnt very basic sight reading in school and still remembered most of what she had been taught. If she could just concentrate on that, she might be able to teach herself more, and really have something good to show Joshua when he came out of his mood.
Two hours later found her sitting on the piano bench, close to tears. She had found middle C just fine, in the music and on the piano, but she still just couldn't get the rest of it. Rose had no idea what she was doing wrong, but nothing seemed to be making sense.
"I'll never get this," she announced, her face in her hands to try to stop the tears from starting.
"You won't if you believe that, no," replied his familiar, beloved voice from the doorway.
Rose almost smiled. It looked like the situation was starting to improve already. "Joshua," she murmured, already about a hundred times lighter just from the calm, almost normal sound of his voice.
"Tryin' to get a head start?" he asked. His tone was almost cheerful.
Rose realized abruptly that Joshua was going to act as if nothing had happened. Under the circumstances, she thought she'd rather like to do that, too. So she looked up from the keyboard and forced an exaggeration of an annoyed expression onto her face. "Tryin' to even remember what I'm already supposed to know."
Joshua nodded thoughtfully. "So they taught you ta sight-read some, but not exactly how to translate that the other way, right?"
"Right," Rose agreed. She moved over and made room for her lover on the bench she'd been sitting on between bouts of getting up and walking around in frustration. "I'm doing this wrong, aren't I?"
"There's not a wrong way ta learn somethin' like this," Joshua replied with a smile. "S'not like it's a hot stove an' ya can learn the hard way not ta touch it. But some ways're easier."
He folded his lanky frame up onto the other half of the bench, looked down at the piano, and started the lesson.
They'd spent the afternoon in the music room, and time had seemed to pass like a proverb, flying because they had both genuinely enjoyed it. It had started as a lesson, and then Joshua had ended up playing for Rose for awhile, listening to her sing, and just enjoying her company while it lasted.
He couldn't actually imagine what she was still doing here, but she was here. It might be selfish, but he wasn't about to argue when she was still giving him far more than he deserved.
Right now, she was distracting Uncle Alistair from asking questions about France by getting him to tell her the story of the time he'd ended up nearly taken off planet by some alien tourists who turned out to be museum curators. Joshua had missed this one, and couldn't help laughing at the idea of his Uncle trying to talk a gang of Tryderians out of making him the star exhibit in one of their "living history" museums.
"Thankfully, I'd picked up a negotiating trick or two from this one and buried them in red-tape," the Brigadier concluded.
"Oh no," Joshua chuckled, "you're never pinnin' that on me. I refuse ta do paperwork."
"No, but you have been known to confuse bureaucrats to the very blazes in your time, Joshua," the Brigadier asserted happily. "I borrowed a leaf out of your book, and followed it up with their having to secure permission from my wife."
"Which I would have cheerfully given," Aunt Doris teased. Uncle Alistair shot her a wounded look and she smiled her agelessly beautiful smile at him. "Well, if and only if they had you home every day by tea time."
They all laughed at this, if for no other reason than the gooey smile the Brigadier gave his wife. Joshua wondered if he looked that silly when Rose said or did something particularly fetching and then decided he probably did, only more so. She squeezed his hand over the table top, giving him that smile she seemed to reserve just for him and he decided it didn't matter how ridiculous he looked as long as he kept getting that smile.
"Seems you're quite the teacher, Joshua," Aunt Doris mentioned.
Joshua knew a perfect opening when he heard one. He wondered if Rose had put his aunt up to it, but it didn't seem like she had, from the excited smile she now shot him. He nodded very faintly and she grinned back. "Well, I'd like to be," he began, letting his voice take on a more serious tone. "I've been thinking."
"The last time you were thinking, you blew up a hospital," his uncle pointed out, but not with any malice. Rather, there was a sparkling warmth in his eyes. He nodded. "Go on, son."
"Well, it's what you did when you retired the first time, isn't it?" The Brigadier looked a bit uncomfortable, this time, and Joshua abruptly remembered that his uncle had ended up having a bit of a break-down around that time, one that had resulted in a period of very frightening memory loss, among other things. "Well, I mean teaching," he emphasized.
"I did," the Brigadier agreed. "But schools were a bit different then. It was a boy's military school, and I was a military officer who happened to be very good at maths."
"Beats my maths teacher any day," Rose commented. "He couldn't work a pocket calculator."
The Brigadier smiled kindly at her. "This was before your time, I think. Maybe when you were very young. But, Joshua, I don't know how you'd get the credentials. I know your doctorates are yours and legitimate, but there's a lot of your record, even your academic record, that's sealed Top Secret."
Joshua nodded. "I know. I was... sorta hopin' you could help with that, actually." He shrugged. "It's just... I thought they could do with somethin' more at one of these poorer London schools. Too many students, not enough teachers, even the good ones get too bogged down to help some times, or they can find one, but can't find all the kids the system's passed over. I'd just like ta have a chance to see if I can't help someone. Teach 'em to think with their own minds, an' teach 'em that bein' clever'll get 'em a lot further in life than..."
"Than listening to what every one else tells them they're s'posed to do," Rose finished for him, squeezing his hand. He saw pain in her eyes, and abruptly realized why she was supporting this so much. She saw herself in these kids, thinking from a young age that she was doomed to grow up and become her mother because there was absolutely nothing else out there for a girl like her.
The Brigadier considered the two of them. "All right, Joshua. If you promise me - and I mean it this time - if you see anything that's probably UNIT's jurisdiction, you let me know before you have to blow up a building."
Joshua nodded gratefully. "I will, Uncle Alistair, I promise."
His Uncle reached over the table and shook his hand. "Then I'll do whatever I can to see to it that you're a legitimate teacher before term starts."
Doris leaned against Alistair's side, watching the happy couple arguing playfully over how to plant a tree. Rose didn't actually know the first thing about gardens, as she'd confessed to Doris over a bowl of cornflakes this morning, but she wasn't willing to let Joshua think he knew everything no matter what. She'd gone out to join him after waking quite late that morning. Doris suspected that Joshua was only up so early because he didn't sleep.
"Who was Romana?" she asked Alistair quietly.
"One of the Time Lords," Alistair confessed. "I've no idea what to tell him about her. I can only assume she died in the War. The Doctor said he was the only one left."
"Is he remembering, do you think?"
Alistair paused thoughtfully, sipping at a glass of lemonade and frowning. "I don't know. I wouldn't think so, because the Doctor said he didn't want to remember. Usually, he makes certain of that sort of thing when it's in his power to do so." Alistair sat his glass down on the table and turned to look directly into Doris's eyes. "But I can't know if he meant to keep everything out. Harry's suggested before that the memories resurface when he's capable of handling them again."
"Yet it upsets him so much it seems unlikely that he's capable of handling it," Doris suggested. She smiled in vague humor as Joshua picked Rose up and spun her around, putting her down only when she shouted laughingly that she surrendered.
"Exactly," Alistair admitted. "And as much as it pains me to admit it, I have no way of knowing whether Harry's right or not. The Doctor only told me so much about what he was doing, at least only so much that I understood."
"They both seem to be doing better now," Doris said, amused, as Rose stuffed a handful of newly turned earth down the back of Joshua's jumper.
"And I'm starting to worry about that as well," Alistair admitted, tilting his head toward the laughing couple. "He told us to keep it a secret. But he never anticipated something like this, I'm sure."
"All the same, he's had opportunities to ask you to do something about this," Doris said. "I'm not saying I like lying to Rose - and sometimes I feel as if that's what I'm doing, even when I go out of my way not to do - but I do want to respect the Doctor's wishes."
"Yes, but he's a complete idiot where human emotions are concerned," Alistair complained gloomily.
"True," said Doris. "But I expect the Time Lord version is even more terrified of how he feels for her than the human version."
"Well, I suppose so," Alastair agreed, pondering this while his finger ran idly over the condensation on the outside of his glass. "The human version at least believes he has something to offer her. The Time Lord has always preferred to avoid entanglements for precisely that reason."
"I don't know," Doris said. "Joshua confided in me that he can't escape the feeling that whatever happens, he'll lose her. At the time, I wrote it off as the nervousness of a man newly in love. Now, especially with other things we've seen, I can't help wondering if some of the Doctor isn't... I don't know... bleeding through."
"Whatever happens," her husband said ruefully, "that child out there playing in the dirt is also a centuries old alien with an unhealthy habit of finding trouble where ever he goes."
Joshua was currently tickling Rose while she shrieked and giggled and threatened him with hiding his popcorn, which for some reason appeared to be a serious threat. Doris shook her head. "I know. But we must give him time. Perhaps he will give you clues as to what is really going on in his head."
"I'm not sure he knows," Alistair claimed, then finished his lemonade. "I can't believe I'm worried about this. Not just for her sake, but for his. The very few clues he has given me seem to indicate that Joshua's emotions are shared by the Doctor, at least where the girl is concerned. But if that's true, he could easily have his hearts broken over her."
"And he's had more than enough." Doris shook her head. "I don't know. Rose already knew he wasn't normal. Give them time. I think they're both going to surprise us."
"I love surprises." Alistair's sarcasm was blunt and dry enough for a desert.
Doris snickered. "Hope Harry and John do, too," she said cheerfully. "Since Joshua's forbidden you to tell them, I think Rose has something in mind."
Alistair just shook his head and Doris laughed at him. "All right," she said, softly, "since you detest surprises so much, I won't surprise you by suggesting we go upstairs."
He blinked. "I've changed my mind," he decided. "Surprises all around, please."
"Your aunt and uncle have disappeared," Rose observed as they finally finished planting the last of the fruit trees.
Joshua looked around and realized they'd left empty glasses and half a pitcher of now-quite-watery lemonade sitting on a small table on the patio. His eyes widened. "Yeah. Don't want to think about that," he said.
Rose giggled. "You poor innocent thing," she teased. There was a soft suggestive purr in her tone.
Joshua bit the inside of his cheek and shook his head. "We should get cleaned up," he said, trying for a business-like tone and managing it, he thought, quite well.
"We could go together," Rose murmured.
"Um." Joshua shook his head. "Nah, you know, no time. Need to get cleaned up an' get our things together. Have ta head back to London after lunch, ya know."
Rose frowned, but then nodded. "Right. I guess if we get home early enough, I can get the laundry done and stuff."
"You don't have ta do that," he answered gently.
"No, I know," Rose said. "Just... we've got a busy week ahead. And, I was wondering, how're you gonna break the news to John and Harry that you're going back into the working world?"
Joshua just shrugged. Rose smirked, and Joshua knew that whatever she came up with, it was definitely going to be mischief for him.