Author's Note: this story contains talking about menstruation. If that bothers you, please do not read it.
That night, the Doctor was awakened by the sound of Rose and his daughter's hushed conversation. Mia was standing awkwardly next to their bed, and Rose was holding her hand. When he glanced at the clock on the nightstand, it read 2:47 am. He asked blearily, "Is everything alright?"
He felt Rose shift on their bed. She climbed closer to him, kissing his cheek and caressing his sideburns tenderly. The action nearly pulled him back to sleep, and the Doctor yawned loudly. Rose chuckled, and so did Mia, and that sound settled some of the worry that was growing in his stomach.
"Everything's fine, Doctor," Rose reassured, and he breathed out with relief. "It's just some girl gossip," he heard a smile in her voice.
"There's no such thing as girl gossip in this household," he grumbled but it was with little spite. "The gossip in this house is for everyone," he said petulantly and dropped his head on the pillow. Crikey, he was exhausted. It's been more than a decade, yet he still couldn't get used to the quirks of the half-human body. He was always forgetting that not sleeping for three days in a row always ended up with him hibernating for at least eighteen hours.
Being human sucked sometimes.
Yet the Doctor would choose being human over being a Time Lord again if he was offered a choice.
"The gossip is for everyone who's been sleeping alright," Rose noticed, and there was a slight reprimand in her voice. "Ronnie told me that you hadn't been sleeping on the mission at all."
The Doctor grimaced. "Ronnie talks too much."
Rose shook her head, unimpressed. "You - sleep! Mia, let's go." When the Doctor tried to protest, she pushed him back to the pillows. "Sleep first, gossip later," she instructed, then kissed him and whispered into his ear, "Mia's okay, we're okay, you'll go play the best dad in the world in the morning."
The Doctor smiled, already feeling the pull of sleep surrounding him. "Okay."
The next morning, as soon as it was safe to wake Mia up and survive her morning wrath of being woken up too early, the Doctor was gaping at his daughter, his face portraying barely-hidden insult at her words.
They were sitting on Mia's bed, both of them wearing pyjamas as it was 10 am on a Sunday morning, and Mia was looking through the items of the box that her father had brought her ten minutes ago.
He actually jumped into her room like an excited kangaroo, barely waiting for her 'Come in!' before enveloping her into a hug and shouting 'Congratulations!' to her.
The box that her father had given to her was actually a very thoughtful, sweet gift. It was a handmade care package of sorts, and Mia felt an embarrassing rush of feelings come to live in her chest. She bit back her tears, wishing to look cool and tough and very grown up in front of her dad, while she was looking through an arrangement of items in the box. It was obvious that everything was picked out with great care and thoughtfulness. Several packages of pads of all sizes, all in pretty designs, were stacked in rows against three boxes of the smallest tampons tucked into the corner. There were Cadbury chocolate bars, salty pretzels and pickles-flavoured crisps along with a small bag of jelly bellies beneath. Cotton candy-flavoured. Her favourite. There was also a tube of intimate hygiene gel wash, and there was a little box of painkillers safe for her age. Several colourful pamphlets with necessary information were hiding beneath a plastic bag of new funny-patterned panties in her size, and Mia pushed it deeper under the sweets, touched by the thought but mortified by it at the same time.
Her father noticed, of course, and rushed to end her misery.
"Umm, this is your mother's gift, too," he offered, scratching the back of his neck nervously. "I chose the sweets and the pamphlets, she was on period products and underwear duty."
He breathed out a sigh of relief when he noticed Mia's shoulders falling down from her ears, her posture relaxing. "The design, however, was entirely my idea," he announced proudly, pointing at the green-coloured box. Mia's favourite colour.
Mia snorted softly, smiling at the box's many decorations. There was even some confetti thrown inside.
The Doctor shook his head, bewildered. Much like Rose, Mia had been unnecessarily worried about things that were perfectly natural and entirely out of her body's control.
His head snapped when Mia sniffled, murmured something unhappily under her breath and curled around the hot water bottle that he'd brought with him to her bedroom before he gave her the box.
"What was that?" he asked, cocking his head to the side.
"You and mum are very sweet, thank you, honestly, but I just don't get why we're celebrating," his daughter explained, sniffling stubbornly again.
"Mia Tyler! How dare you? You take that back, there is so much to celebrate!"
"Ugh!" Mia groaned and turned her back to her father mulishly. "You're a man, what do you even know about this," she grumbled under her breath, but the Doctor heard it anyway.
He walked around her bed, plopping next to her once more. "You forget that I've got a medical education, young lady," the Doctor spoke with teasing admonishment.
Mia rolled her eyes, unimpressed.
"Yeah, and have you got any credentials? I don't remember seeing anything from this Earth in particular."
The Doctor clicked his tongue. "I ought to leave you without chocolate treats for all that cheek," he mused, taking the ribbon-wrapped chocolates away from the "Care Package".
"NO!" Mia yelled, clutching the sweets as if her life depended on it.
The Doctor let go, unable to cause any grief to his daughter.
He knew that he was doomed. First Rose, then Mia. There was nothing he wouldn't do for them, no whim he wouldn't make come true if they wanted something and it was within his power.
Mia sat on her bed, opening the box of chocolates eagerly. The Doctor watched the ribbons fall to the floor, and just as he opened his mouth to scold Mia for leaving the rubbish unattended, he stopped when he saw her putting three sweets in her mouth at once.
His eyes bulged. That moment, Mia looked so much like her mother when she had period cravings. Rose was ravenous three days before and two days into her monthlies. The Doctor knew to always have a secret stash of sweet and sour treats, even if Rose was going through "healthy" food stages once in a while, refusing to eat sweets and crisps. He knew better than that, he knew to have something on hand for when her PMS arrived with a vengeance and she was left unprepared with only avocado toasts and quail eggs in the fridge as a treat.
Only now, however, instead of his wife, his thirteen year old daughter was sitting on her bed, munching on the chocolates, grumpy and sour about having to deal with menstruation for the next thirty-five or forty years or so.
The Doctor's breath caught.
Mia looked so much like his Rose.
Mia was the product of his and Rose's love, and while there was lots of the Doctor's traits hiding in Mia's personality, he was sometimes struck by how much Rose there was in his daughter. He could see his wife in Mia's words, actions, gestures, the lilt of her words…
He was pulled from his reminiscence by Mia's unhappy murmuring.
"I still don't understand what there is to celebrate. It's blood and cramps and mood swings. And extra money on hygiene," she grouched, rooting around the box for more sweets. The Doctor, having a sweet tooth himself, pulled a face at the amount of sweets his daughter ate in one go. "Why are you so happy about it, I don't understand."
The Doctor jumped at the opportunity to break Mia's sour mood.
"But that's amazing! Mia, you're growing. You're turning into a beautiful young woman," he explained, and he really could see her several years from there on, with her face clear from teenage hormones' break outs, with her cheekbones resembling Rose's when Rose was twenty, tall, pretty, lovely and lively, pulling every adolescent male into her orbit. At that thought, the Doctor cringed and actually shook his head. No. No adolescent males. No males at all until she was thirty, if he could help that.
He continued on, trying to think about the years he still had with Mia as a teenager, the years he could spend cherishing her without her rolling her eyes at his hovering.
Mia was already starting to protest some of the usual rituals they had in her childhood, preferring her friends' company to his and Rose's. Rose was accepting and understanding of the new personality changes in Mia, as Rose herself remembered her wild, crazy teenage years. The Doctor, however, was finding it really, really hard to let go and to accept Mia's growing independence. He tried so hard, but it wasn't easy seeing his little girl growing up and choosing to go out and about on her own without him and Rose.
The Doctor fought an overpowering wave of sadness that came over him when he thought about Mia eventually moving out of their house and moving on with her life.
He continued his reasoning.
"You're growing, and your first period means that you're healthy and fine, and that one day, when you're older, much, much older, and married, and settled," the Doctor listed, "that you'll be able to have a child of your own if you want to. That you, like any other woman out there, are now able to create the miracle of life and continue the never-ending cycle that has been going on and on for millennia."
Mia rolled her eyes yet again, now opening a package of pickles-flavoured crisps, happily crunching on them.
"And like your mum and I, you could give birth to a beautiful baby with somebody you'd love one day, and oh, what a glorious feeling it is to have a baby with someone you l…"
"Woah, woah," Mia raised her hands in the "stop right there" gesture. "TMI, dad. TMI. I don't want to know that about you and mum's sexual escapades," she told him, her lips turning down with disgust.
The Doctor chuckled. "You'll get there eventually. You're laughing at your old man now, but one day, when I'm long gone and you're moved on, you'll remember my words…"
Suddenly, Mia's lower lip wobbled. "Oh dad, don't say that!" She wailed suddenly, throwing her arms around his neck, hugging him close to her. The Doctor could barely hold his own tears upon hearing the trembling in Mia's voice. "You and mum are going to live a long, long while, you hear me? I refuse to let you both go. You're half Time Lord, she's seen the mind of the TARDIS, you both own me at least a hundred more years!" She mumbled hotly into his shoulder.
The Doctor laughed, but it was a wet sound. "Well, then, if you absolutely forbid us dying…"
"I do!"
This time, he chuckled with more humour.
"Well, then, Mia Tyler, upon your head it is. You're stuck with me and mum, and there will be no more tears about it."
He smiled at Mia's red, swollen face, and while he knew that his and Rose's days on that Earth were numbered, he didn't have it in his heart to break Mia's that moment.
"You're stuck with me celebrating your menstruation, and you're stuck with mum reminding you about sexual safety until your dying day."
Mia groaned again for good measure, but there was little exasperation about that sound.
The Doctor and Mia kept sitting in companionable silence, her eating the treats and him looking through the encyclopedias on her bedside table. They were both so engrossed in their tasks that they hadn't noticed Rose entering Mia's bedroom, stumbling sleepily.
"What are you two up to?" she asked, stretching languorously with her hands up in the air. Then, she turned her attention to Mia and asked, "How're you doing, sweetheart?"
Mia sat up, smiled and offered half of the Cadbury bar to Rose. Rose's eyebrows shot up, and she looked like she was about to protest Mia's choice of breakfast but thought better of it and accepted the treat with a smile. The Doctor agreed. Today could be an exception.
"I'm fine, mum. Feeling better after a painkiller and this feast," Mia replied with a sheepish smile.
Rose settled on the bed next to her daughter, hugging her with one arm. The Tyler women started chewing on the chocolate at the same time, and the Doctor got that feeling again.
The feeling that he was powerless against two most important women of his life.
Much to his surprise, he realised that he didn't mind the feeling if it meant that Rose and Mia were in his life.
There were much, much worse things to be powerless about.
He smiled at the sight of them, then frowned and exclaimed, offended:
"Hey! How come I don't get any chocolate?!"
The sound of laughter rang through the Tyler's household, filling the air around them with hope and happiness.