A/N: Sorry for the dela... (hey wait, maybe no one noticed!) ... Sorry for nothing. Absolutely nothing. :D
Chapter 9 – Peppa Pig
"Daddy, hurry up!" Leah demanded, sitting at the TARDIS kitchen table waving her legs back and forth. He looked at her, and she quickly added, "please!" on the end.
"Nearly done," he assured her, cutting up her hot dog into smaller chunks.
"Mummy does it quicker than you," she said.
"You're being a bit rude," the Doctor said, picking up the plates and moving to the table. "Do you want this or not?"
She nodded fervently.
He moved over to the bin, grinning as he held the plate over it. "Are you sure you want it?"
"Daddy!" she wailed.
"Say sorry!" he demanded, turning the plate slightly...
"I'm sorry!" she squeaked, wide-eyed.
He laughed and gave it to her, taking the seat opposite. "Well Mummy's not here at the moment so you've gotta make do with Daddy's mediocre cooking speeds for a while."
"Thank you," she said, shoving a chunk into her mouth, and consequently smearing tomato ketchup all around her mouth.
"Chew!" the Doctor said quickly.
"Sorry."
"It's okay. Well now we've go the place to ourselves we'll have some time to practise your schooling."
"Can we practise..." she began, sending everything she'd chewed flying back out of her mouth.
"Leah, don't talk with your mouth full."
"Sorry," she said, chewing quickly and then swallowing. "Can... Can we practise yours?"
"You mean my language?"
She nodded.
"Okay," he said. "But first you have to take away eleven from twenty-one."
"Okay. Um... is it... Umm..." She looked at him hopefully. He smiled and kept his lips tightly shut. She began counting on her fingers.
"No cheating!" the Doctor insisted. "Come on, I know you can do this."
"Err... one... um... twenty... um... eleven... Ten!"
"Yep! I'm so proud of you," he said happily, leaning forward and ruffling her hair.
She beamed. "Does this mean we do your thing?"
"Yeah, we will."
"Yay!" Leah said happily, before putting another piece of the hot dog into her mouth, smearing even more ketchup over her face in the process. "Daddy..."
"Leah. Mouth."
"Sorry," she said, and swallowed. "Daddy, why rhino people take Mummy? Did... Did she do something bad?"
The Doctor gazed at her for a moment. "No, Leah, it's just been a bit of a mistake. She's fine, so don't worry about anything."
"Okay," she said, eating the last piece of the hot dog. "Please may I get down?"
"Yeah, go and wash your face."
"Okay," she repeated, jumping off of the chair and running out of the kitchen.
After the Doctor cleaned up he found Leah in the sitting room, watching the TV. He took a glance.
"I'm Peppa Pig! This is my little brother, George, this is Mummy Pig, and this is Daddy Pig..."
Peppa Pig. Nickelodeon had a lot to answer for.
He made to leave, but Leah quickly jumped off of the sofa and grabbed his arm.
"Please watch Peppa Pig with me," she said.
Rose normally did this kind of thing with Leah, but this time he had to concede so he nodded and let himself be led to the sofa to watch.
"Mummy Pig is dressed as a fireman!" the narrator said.
"Mummy, why are you dressed like that?" asked a little girl pig to Mummy Pig.
"I'm going to the Mummy's Fire Engine practice!" Mummy Pig declared.
"Daddy what's a Fire Engine?" Leah asked.
"Um, big vehicle, flashing lights," he said vaguely.
"Daddy!" Leah wailed.
"Okay, it's a large emergency vehicle used for the fire service, which is a public or private organisation that provides fire protection for a certain jurisdiction, which typically is a municipality, county, or fire protection district."
Leah stared at him.
"It's a big red vehicle that puts out fires," he quickly amended.
"Okay," she said.
"Mummy, can we see the fire engine?" Peppa Pig asked.
"Yes!" Mummy Pig replied.
"Oh goody!"
"Well that's not hazardous at all," the Doctor muttered sarcastically.
"Daddy, be quiet," Leah demanded.
"Sorry," he said, watching the rest... very cynically. As it finished he got to his feet, but to his alarm he found Leah was crying quietly.
"Hey what's wrong?" he asked, dropping back down to hold her.
"You don't watch it right," she sobbed. "You don't watch it like Mummy does."
"Well tell me what she does and I'll give it a try," he said, lifting her onto his knee.
"She talks like... umm... through it and she ask me questions after and talks about it."
"Well I can do that," he said. "Which bit did you like the most? I liked the bit with the... umm... pig."
She looked at him like he was the biggest idiot in the world, tears still in her eyes. "I want Mummy," she sobbed.
"Leah..."
"Go away!" she yelled, jumping off of his lap and running out the door. The Doctor stared after her for a moment, considering going after her, but conceded instead to flop on his back onto the sofa, staring at the ceiling.
"Doctor?"
The Doctor looked over to see Jack in the doorway.
"Rifts been going crazy recently, need your input..." He moved forward staring at the Time Lord. "What's wrong with you?"
"I didn't watch Peppa Pig right," the Doctor muttered.
"I think that sentence made sense," Jack said, grabbing the Doctor's arm and pulling him up. "Come on. I need you."
"Well at least someone does," the Doctor murmured without conviction, following Jack out of the TARDIS sitting room, through the empty halls and console room into the Torchwood Hub. He sat the Doctor down at the briefing table where everyone else was, pushing some paper in front of him.
The Doctor looked at it, but didn't really look at it, thumbing through lamely with his chin resting in one hand.
"It's the rift readings from the last few days," Jack said. "If you go to page three..."
Then they all simultaneously noticed the Doctor was showing very little interest.
"What's happened?" Martha asked.
"I didn't watch Peppa Pig right," the Doctor said again, sighing.
"And yet I still don't know what that means," Jack said, frowning. "Is this about Leah?"
"Yeah."
"What happened?"
"We argued."
"Oh," Martha muttered.
"Well I say argued," the Doctor began, staring at the desk. "I don't really think it's classed as an argument when it's roughly eight seconds of me getting yelled at by a two-year-old?"
"Why was she yelling at you?" Gwen asked.
The Doctor sighed, slouching back in the chair still staring at the desk. "Rose does things with her that I don't, just like I do things with Leah that Rose doesn't. But Leah still finds all of them important... And I just can't do what Rose normally does. She wants her Mum, not me, and I can't even go and find her because of my stupid head..."
"So, no rift conversation," Jack muttered.
Martha ignored him. "You know, if you just talk to Leah she'll understand. She's very intelligent, she'll accept she's going to have to make do without some things for a while if you just talk to her."
"Maybe," the Doctor muttered, unconvinced.
Suddenly there was the quiet pad of a child's footsteps, and Leah entered, crying.
"Daddy," she sobbed.
The Doctor sat up, instantly alert. "What's wrong?"
She held up Bundy the teddy bear to him, cradling her carefully. "Bundy broke," she sobbed.
He took the bear, examining the damage. Her neck was slightly ripped and one of her button eyes had fallen out.
"Where's her other eye?" the Doctor asked. Leah held up the button, which he took.
"Please fix her," she sobbed.
He stared at the bear. "I'm sorry, I don't know how to fix her," he said.
"Mummy knows how," Leah said quietly.
Gwen could see this taking a turn for the worse. "Let me have a go," she said, taking the bear. "Have you got a sewing kit?"
The Doctor looked on the verge of despair. "I don't know where it is."
"Use mine," Martha said quickly. "In my desk, top drawer."
Gwen nodded, moving off. Leah took one disparaging look at her father, and then ran off after Gwen.
They ate dinner in generally unbroken silence.
Leah had become very quiet for the rest of the day, not only around him, but around the other's as well. The Doctor knew this was a classic psychological reaction from both him and Leah at being forcedly separated from Rose, and although he had read all the textbooks about it, it definitely hadn't prepared him for reality.
It wasn't like Rose was dead, but the empty place at the table said it all. His marriage bond was going haywire with the need to touch her, feel her, kiss her... But although he had convinced himself she was safe for the time being, he knew that she missed them just as much as they missed her. He could feel her heartache, as well as his own.
When he and Leah had both finished the Doctor cleaned up the plates and brought out a packet of biscuits, putting them on the table between him and Leah.
Leah just looked at them, then at him, and then at the table's surface.
"Leah," the Doctor said quickly, reaching out to take her little hand in his own. "Please talk to me."
She looked back up at him slowly. "When will Mummy be back?"
"Soon."
"Okay," she paused, looking down at the table, before looking up again. "Please may I get down and go to bed?"
The Doctor suppressed a sigh, and let go of her hand. "Yeah."
She nodded and dropped off of the kitchen chair, moving to him for a hug and a kiss.
He lifted her up and held her tighter than usual. "Do you want a bedtime story?"
"No, thank you."
"Okay. Make sure you brush your teeth, not your face," he said putting on a grin.
She nodded again, slipping off of his lap. "Night night."
"I'll be in to check on you in twenty minutes, okay?"
"Okay," she said, and left.
"Right, maybe there's a slight rip?" Jack wondered, nervously checking the rift monitor. "That's why there's been an increase of stuff falling through?"
"Maybe," Mickey said, flicking through the screens with the mouse. "Bit dodgy to touch it, though."
"Well, we can't keep going out making up stories to get the stuff that falls through the rift," Jack pointed out. "If we can close it with the rift manipulator, let's close it. We used to do it all the time."
"How?"
"Tosh programmed this application..." Jack said, rummaging through the files. "Just a sec." He clicked on a file and instantly there was a high-pitched whirring sound for all around them, drilling into their ears. Jack quickly closed it. "All right, not that one," he said, and kept looking.
Leah stepped down from the bathroom stool, rubbing her face with the towel. She moved back out of the door to go to bed, when she suddenly heard a strange noise from outside the TARDIS. Intrigued, she followed it through the console room and out the door.
She couldn't see anyone, so she clambered up the steps to the right, emerging into a part of Torchwood she'd never been before. There was a strange machine sat in the centre, so she walked up to it and stared at it intently. It stretched right up towards the ceiling...
"Ah! Got it!" Jack said, double-clicking on the application. Mickey peered with interest at the screen as Jack began to adjust the settings.
"This is either really clever or really dumb," Mickey warned.
"We've used this calibration tens of times before, it'll be fine. Ready?"
"Yep."
Jack clicked 'calibrate'... and instantly the rift manipulator machine exploded. But it wasn't the blast that shocked them... It was the high-pitched scream of a little girl. Then Jack realised...
"Leah!" he yelled, utterly panicked as he ran into the main Hub, and found Leah collapsed onto the floor beside the carnage of the blown up machine. He dropped to his knees beside her, turning her over and holding her in his arms. She was unconscious.
"Leah?" suddenly came another yell as the Doctor practically flew out of the TARDIS doors in a panic, stopping dead when he saw Leah in Jack's arms, completely limp. Suddenly his face turned to thunder and within moments he was by Leah's side.
"Doc, I'm so sorry, I didn't know she was there, I thought she was with you..." Jack gabbled as the Doctor took Leah from Jack, checking her over. There was a bruise coming up on her forehead, some small cuts on her arms.
"It's okay, I'm here now..." the Doctor whispered to his little girl, brushing her hair from her eyes, kissing her forehead. "I'm here, Daddy's here..."
"Doc..." Jack began.
"Get away from her," the Doctor grated, holding Leah tightly in his arms.
"What?" Jack asked, dumbfounded.
"You heard."
Jack paused, still kneeling down next to them, staring at the Doctor. "But..."
"GET AWAY FROM HER!" the Doctor screamed, staring at Jack with his eyes afire.
Jack backed away... and ran.
A/N: Peppa Pig is evil, I tell you. PURE EVIL.