Chapter Text
Sharn was woken up by the rocking off her bed and the rustling of her warm, cosy quilts. She bit a gasp and kept her eyes tight shut, pretending to be asleep.
It was no good, as a cold form clambered on top of her and clutched her nightdress, her unbrushed long hair falling over her face.
“What?” she murmured sleepily, pulling the bedding tight over the two of them, and moving her sister to lie beside her. As soon as she was more conscious she knew what it was. She strengthened her mental shields and smoothed Rosa's hair off her face.
“Grown up cuddling is making weird sparkles in my mind Sharn.”
“S'sh. Remember what Nurse Callipsa, Teacher Hoolie, and Coordinator Aris, tell us?” Sharn reached out and touched Rosa's psi points with her fingers, then pulled them away abruptly. Rosa had a huge telepathic ability, had since she was a baby. She had instantly sensed their fathers through the link with her sister and flinched. Darkness and power, pleasure and pain, love and obsession, grown up emotions overwhelmed her and scared her, and she was twice Rosa's age. Things had been peaceful since Papa had left, even if things had been horrible chaotic. You could live on sweets and have no bed time or routines for only so long as a child until you realised you needed a grown up. Sometimes Father wasn't very grown up. He was now though... she strengthened her walls even more and turned them into one way mirrors. Tentatively she touched her sister's psi points again.
“Build up your walls. Close your eyes. Imagine coloured balloons just as they teach you at Kindergarten. Layer them up...”
“They are all black! Black!” Rosa panicked.
“No they are not. They are white, like the snow today, and pink like Rabbit, and blue like your favourite robe...”
“Orange like the sky, pink like the barrier, red and gold like the suns...”
“Red and silver like trees...”
“Purple like the gingerbread icing we ate...”
Rosa's breathing was getting calmer as her father's unwitting psychic projections receded from her mind.
“Now, the front row of the balloons are silver, like mirrors.”
“Okay Sharn,” Rosa breathed out.
“Make them strong, at the front, and now... slowly, move your hands and brush away all the other balloons so I can share a story...”
Rosa nodded into Sharn's shoulder and waved her arms, and then pulled her rabbit close and began to suck its ear, “What's the story...?” she muttered.
“... Once upon a Time, a time of the Time Lords and not before, because they are the Dark Times, but long ago from now, the young Time Lady Poppins left to look after the children of the universe, as they had no telepathy so didn't know how they were loved...”
“Did she visit Jane and Michael?”
“Jane and Michael were unhappy humans, as their parents were concerned with silly things...” Sharn began, trying to remember how Papa told the old Earth stories... all the while, thanks to Rosa's power, she felt her parents at the back at her mind. She was glad they had made up and were back together. Papa had a temper, but never with them, and although he was frightening when he hurt Father, the last few weeks had shown Father was very useless without him. She had heard the whispers about the Doctor, and she hoped it wasn't true, that it wasn't bad blood, that human DNA, she was one quarter her grandmother, after all...