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“When you wake up, you'll have a mum and dad, and you won't even remember me. Well, you'll remember me a little. I'll be a story in your head. But that's OK: we're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know, it was the best: a daft old man, who stole a magic box and ran away. Did I ever tell you I stole it? Well, I borrowed it; I was always going to take it back.” – The Doctor to Amelia Pond, The Big Bang
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Once upon a time, there was a lonely old man with a wonderful blue box that could travel through all of time and space.
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Vulcan’s don’t tell bedtime stories.
There are many things that Vulcan’s do not do, Amanda has learned.
Vulcan’s do not complain about the heat, because Vulcan’s have superior control over their regulatory systems. Vulcan’s do not cook from scratch, because replicators are more logical. Vulcan’s don’t hug their children, because heaven forbid a child should know their parent’s love for them.
And certainly not last, but also definitely not least; Vulcan’s don’t tell bedtime stories.
They find them frivolous and useless – the closest they have are educational anecdotes, which are all very pointed and dry and boring.
Needless to say, Amanda is rather sick of the things that Vulcan’s do not do.
But, for all that Amanda will bend, for all that she is perfectly willing to give to have the husband and son she loves, Amanda is not Vulcan. Amanda is human, and a teacher besides, and as such she knows that there are some stories that just need to be told.
Her’s are all about a mad man and his blue box, a boy with brilliant blue eyes, and the girl who got to have adventures with them.
Needless to say, the first time she tells Spock one, a little yarn about the time The Doctor took her and Jim to the Colairus Region to watch a once in a millennium blossoming of vestrials, delicate little flowers that bloom for only a day, her tiny little Vulcan son is terribly confused.
“I do not understand mother,” Spock says, little brow furrowed adorably in thought, “what is the purpose of that tale – what is its moral?”
And Amanda, resisting the urge to ruffle her son’s adorable hair and kiss the frown lines of his little face, thinks about it for a second – really thinks about it – because for all that it’s a treasured memory for her and a made-up tale to her son, she thinks there is a moral there all the same.
There so often was, with The Doctor.
“Sometimes,” she says finally, giving in slightly to her motherly urge and brushing a faint hand over her precious little son’s forehead, “you have to stop, and enjoy something beautiful, because the next moment it might be gone. And sometimes, you should do it with friends, just to make it more beautiful.”
“That,” Spock says, and Amanda can tell he’s still so very baffled, because she can almost see the little wheels grinding over that in his brilliant, logical mind, “does not seem logical.”
“One day,” Amanda says to her brilliant little Vulcan son with his brilliant, logical Vulcan mind, thinking of Jim, who had presented her with a vestrail with all the flourish of the most melodramatic lover, eyes gleaming with mischief all the while the Doctor had spluttered and stammered about “history” and “no”, “I hope it will.”
If she listens hard enough, she can still hear their laughter.
Yes, one day, she hopes it will.
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But this lonely old man didn’t travel alone – no, his wonderful blue box found him brilliant people to travel with him, so that he could share the stars with them, and smile when he was sad.
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And though, perhaps illogically, this telling of a TARDIS tale before bed becomes a tradition, a little secret between mother and son. And, for every story she tells, from the lizard woman from the dawn of time (and her wife), to the dashing space Captain with a terrible curse, to the living ice sculptures of Praxis V, her son asks her the same question.
“And what is the moral of this story mother?”
And so, for each one, Amanda comes up with a moral, and somehow, in some strange way, these bedtime stories become educational in their own special way.
Stories of human origin and Vulcan reasoning; fitting, she supposes, for the little boy they are told to.
And then, one day it occurs to Amanda, as she is recounting the story of Denubus II and the – mostly shirtless – mischief Jim had gotten into there and she looks up to find her son hanging on her every word with a look in his eyes that can only be called besotted, that she might be telling a few too many stories about Jim.
Her son is so adorable in that moment that she can’t really bring herself to care.
“This Jim,” Spock says to his bed-clothes covered knees, trying to sound causally disinterested and failing miserably at it, succeeding in sounding focused instead, which Amanda will be the first person to admit is basically the Vulcan equivalent of ‘love-struck’, “He sounds…fascinating.”
And Amanda, because Amanda is a wonderful, mature, responsible woman does not indulge in her first impulse; to squeal like a small girl at the adorableness of her son and pinch his little cheeks until they glow greener than they already are. Rather Amanda simples brushes a light hand over her son’s glossy hair and feathers the lightest of kisses to his forehead – all that she is allowed to give – and says, as she pulls the covers up to his neck to tuck him in, “He absolutely was. The most fascinating man I’ve ever met, besides your father.”
“And what is the moral of this story, mother?” Spock asks belatedly, little cheeks still moss green as he tries to digest that, and at the site Amanda’s heart is almost too full of love for him.
“It doesn’t matter what we look like on the outside. A good friend, with a good heart,” Amanda settles on, after much debate, thinking about the man with a heart as golden as his hair, “is a treasure beyond all compare.”
“Though a nice exterior doesn’t hurt,” Amanda says as she draws away, tongue in cheek, because no matter how mature and responsible she is, she can’t resist that one.
“Mother!” Spock says, eyebrows raised alarmingly, as scandalized as she has ever seen him, and Amanda’s laughter follows her out of her son’s bedroom and into her husband’s study, where Sarek looks at her like she’s the battiest human he’s ever seen, and yet somehow, with just the heat in his eyes, also the most captivating thing he’s ever seen.
Yes, Sarek is certainly the most…fascinating man she’s ever met.
A few days later, when she is cleaning her son’s room, she finds dozens of holodiscs of men who all seem to share three distinct traits: golden hair, brilliant blue eyes, and shirtlessness.
She smiles for a week straight, so much that Sarek, bless his pointed ears, starts to worry.
Amanda doesn’t tell him why, but she does find…other days to distract him.
Yes, a nice exterior certainly doesn’t hurt.
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And two of these lucky people were Jim and Mandy, who were painfully ordinary in their own minds, but anything but in the Doctor’s. In his mind they were brilliant.
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And then there is the story where Jim, shirt ripped and torn, skin gleaming with sweat, pulled a heavy metal beam off her and The Doctor that had fallen on them in a prison break on some planet. His muscles had rippled with the strain, and his eyes had gleamed in the dark, and Amanda, who’d loved Jim like a brother had felt a little flutter at that look. But well, she figures that was probably a virtue of being alive, because even The Doctor had needed a cold shower after a sight like that.
That one she does not share with Spock.
There might be a moral to that story, but it is certainly not one she can tell to her almost ten year old son.
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And so, these two more than ordinary humans travelled with this mad man in his box, saw stars and planets and things beyond their wildest imaginations.
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And then, because time is so often cruelest by simply passing, there comes the time when Amanda tells her last bedtime story to her son. He is ten, and, by Vulcan’s standards, far too old for even an “educational anecdote” before bed.
Amanda disagrees, but Amanda does not have access to a time-machine, not anymore, and so she can only bend with the flow of time so that she does not break. And so she sits by her son’s bed, and tells her last story. Tells of an Embassy on fire, and a moment that lasted months, and a strange, reserved Vulcan man with something in his eyes that had called to her, had felt like an adventure even greater than any the TARDIS could give her.
“And what is the moral of this story, mother?” Spock asks, and in his eyes – her own and yet not, this one human betrayal to his Vulcan looks that Amanda can never regret - Amanda can see that he too knows this is the end of their little ritual.
“That just because something is finished, doesn’t mean that it should be forgotten,” Amanda says finally, and brushes one more kiss to his forehead, and doesn’t cry until she is in the hall where Sarek finds her and, for all that he the model of a Vulcan, curls her into his body and lets her wet his shoulder with her human tears without complaint or question.
She doesn’t regret her choice – not for a second, but sometimes, it hurts.
The Doctor told her once that anything that is worth it does.
She thinks, perhaps, that might have been the moral of The Doctor’s story.
She agrees, but it still hurts, and so she clings a little tighter to her husband, and does not think of anything but him, and the strong, gentle hand he ghosts over her hair in comfort that is anything but Vulcan.
No, she does not regret this.
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And one day, one day no more special than any other, The Doctor told them that they were brilliant, and they believed it. For this, perhaps even more so than his precious blue-box, was the true magic of The Doctor. He made no one brilliant. That is easy. He did the hard thing; he made them see that it already existed in themselves.
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And so, time passes, and her son leaves to find his own adventure, and although Amanda’s heart hurts at the distance between them, there is a part of her – the part of her that is still waiting for the grinding sound of the TARDIS to reappear – that hopes that he finds exactly what she’d told him about in those stories, all those years ago.
And then?
And then her son returns, just as the world is ending.
The planet itself is quaking with its pain, and Amanda, who has always been a little too clever for her own good, thinks she’s finally figured out that terrible, sad thing that lingered sometimes in The Doctor’s eyes when he looked at her.
And so, as the cliff crumbles beneath her feet, Amanda takes in one final look at her son, tries to memorize everything about him, and tell him with her gaze alone that she loves him and that it will all be alright. Looks at her husband, her own greatest adventure, and hopes that one day he will be able to remember her with love and not pain, and be happy again. Spares one final thought for the boy with the blue eyes and the madman with his box, and the brown-eyed girl that was lucky enough to call them friends.
And then she closes her eyes, and the ground disappears beneath her feet.
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But one day Mandy had to leave, to live out her own best destiny, and so she hugged them goodbye, and they promised they would never forget her, and that she would see them again. And then time passed, and she grew up, fell in love and had a son, but she never saw the man with the blue eyes and the man with the blue box.
And yet, though years passed and she didn’t see them, she never once believed they would break their promise.
Even now, she still believes him.
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She falls.
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What is the moral of this story mother?
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They catch her.
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Sometimes, everybody lives.
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“You’re late,” Amanda says, somewhat inanely, staring at the inside of the TARDIS and its much beloved inhabitants through her tears, towel held forgotten in her hands in favor of the miracle made reality before her.
“I think, actually, we’re right on time,” Jim says, almost the same physically - still as golden and brilliant as ever - as the last time she saw him, but somehow so much older and wiser.
Yes, Amanda thinks, hiding her tears in the crook of his neck, as she peaks over his shoulder and looks at The Doctor, who smiles dazzlingly back at her, yes I suppose you are.
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Sometimes, there are happy endings.
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Later, much later, after all the dust has settled and all the excitement has passed, Amanda will sit with her husband – her Vulcan husband, who won’t let go of her hand for fear that she’ll disappear from before his eyes – and watch her son try, and fail absolutely, not to stare at Jim, whose hair gleams under the New Vulcan sun like gold as he gestures hugely to The Doctor and his wild-haired wife about some adventure or another the Enterprise has survived.
And Amanda, heart full nearly to bursting will squeeze her husband’s hand a little tighter, and smile, because there is a question her son will never ask her again.
He’s figured out the moral of this story all on his own.
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They’re love stories. Not conventional one’s mind you, but love stories all the same.
All stories are, in the end.
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FIN
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