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"I was a dad once."
The Doctor's head jerked up, a little frown crinkling his brow as he searched Rose's face with questioning eyes, "What?"
"That's what you said." She reminded him, "I was a dad once."
"Oh." He cleared his throat awkwardly. In the excitement of the day he'd almost forgotten that he'd said that and to be perfectly honest, he was kind of hoping she had as well. Evidently she had not and the look on her face made it clear she had no intention of doing so. “Yeah. I had a big family once.”
“But not anymore.”
It wasn’t a question, she already knew what the answer was, it was a prompt. An unspoken request for him to keep talking despite his usual habit of shutting himself off. He hesitated for a moment, “They’ve all been gone for a very long time.”
“Because of The War?” She guessed tentatively.
“Long before that.” He admitted, shuffling uncomfortably, “Before I even left Gallifrey.”
“What happened?”
Her voice was soft. Coaxing. She was trying not to push too hard, he realized, trying to not make him talk about anything he wasn’t ready to talk about yet, but it wasn’t fair to her to keep bringing things up and then deciding he didn’t want to talk about it after all. Setting aside the probably not broken Tardis component that he had been fixing, he leaned back against the railing, crossing his arms and took a moment to compose his thoughts before admitting, “I failed to protect them… from my own choices.”
Leaning against the console, she mirrored his pose, a small, curious frown creasing her brow, “What do you mean?”
“You may have noticed that I don’t have a very high regard for rules.” He pointed out, managing to bring a small smile to her lips before continuing, “Well, that is far from a new trait and it used to get me into trouble on Gallifrey fairly often. Well, me and… and my wife.”
He paused, gauging her reaction to that new tidbit of information. She bit her lip, frowning a little deeper, but motioned for him to continue.
“There was a law on Gallifrey about having children. Specifically about how you were allowed to do it.” He explained, nervousness speeding up his words, “You see, a long, long time ago my people were… well, erm, cursed. Or so people believed, I’m not sure about all that myself, but whatever the reason, the majority of the population of Gallifrey seemed to quite suddenly become sterile, so to combat this problem, my people invented these things called Looms. Machines used to, well, to create new children.”
“Hang on,” Rose interrupted, raising an eyebrow at him, “Are you saying that you came out of a machine?”
“Um, yes, that is what I’m saying.” He rubbed the back of his neck nervously, “Presumably my parents gave their genetic material to a loom and I was created from that.”
“That’s weird.” She informed him, though there was a teasing tone to her voice.
“Yeah?” He smirked back, “More weird or less weird than my hand.”
“Hm,” She thought about it for a second before settling on, “Different weird.”
“Okay, marking that down,” He joked, “Looms are different weird.”
“And there were some weird laws about how you’re allowed to use them.” She guessed.
“No, well, yes, Time Lords had weird laws about practically everything.” He admitted, “But more importantly there was a law dictating that you had to use them, because most of the population was sterile, but there were still some people who could still reproduce-”
“The fun way?” Rose suggested, cheekily.
“The traditional way.” He corrected, trying to hide an amused smile, “Now, The Time Lords? They were pretty big on control and womb-born children, as we called them, they were a pretty big variable. So to make everyone use the Looms, The High Council made pregnancy illegal.”
“That’s horrible.” Rose frowned, seeming to recoil from the very idea, then a look of realization crossed her face, “Oh my god, you and your wife had an illegal baby.”
“Rose…” The Doctor laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his neck again, “My wife and I had thirteen illegal babies.”
Her eyes nearly bulged out of her head, “Thirteen?”
“Yeah…”
“That is a big family.” She frowned, “How did you get away with that?”
“We lived outside the capitol where there were less prying eyes.” He shrugged, “And we were very good at hiding it. And even though people had their suspicions, once a child comes into the world, it can be rather difficult to prove how it happened.”
“And is that normal on Gallifrey? Families that big?”
“No, well, it’s normal to have lots of what we call cousins, people Loomed around the same time as you who belong to the same house, but most family units would have one or two children.” He explained, “I came from a rather large family myself. I had four siblings.”
“So what did you have so many for?” She wondered.
“Because we wanted them.” He admitted with a shrug, “Because they made us happy.”
“Well, your wife must’ve been a bloody superhero.”
That got a real laugh from him, “Yeah, she kind of was.”
Rose hesitated for a moment, like she wasn’t sure she should ask what was on her mind, then seemed to make up her mind, “What was she like?”
He paused, trying to decide what to tell her before deciding that this was one of those moments when the truth was likely the best option. “Her name was Patience. She used to joke that that’s what she needed to put up with the likes of me.” Rose laughed, which he took as a sign of encouragement to continue, “Rose, you would have loved her. She was smart and kind and funny and warm- not a lot of Time Lords can be described as warm, you know. And she had this smile… made it feel like the suns shined just for you. She worked as a teacher at the academy, obviously she loved kids…” He faltered, “She was never quite the same after…”
Rose’s look of fascination faded into concern as she seemed to remember just a fraction of a second after him that there was a reason why he had started telling her all this in the first place. “Doctor, if it’s painful, you don’t have to-”
He shook his head to stop her, “You deserve the truth.” He took a deep breath, dragging his hands down his face before continuing, “When my eldest son got married, he and his wife decided that, like Patience and I, they wanted to have children the old fashioned way. But they were less good at hiding it and obviously someone found out because the day my granddaughter was born, guards came to the house to kill her. In order to save her, Patience took the baby and hid. I was taken away and questioned, but at that time I honestly didn’t know where they had gone so eventually I was released. I remember thinking at the time that it was strange that we hadn’t been punished for our disobedience, but I was wrong. We had been. By the time I returned home, all of my children were... gone.”
When he finally had the courage to look at Rose, she had her hand clamped over her mouth, her eyes shining with the same tears that he refused to let fall from his own eyes, “Doctor, I’m… I’m sorry.”
Pushing off from the raining, he crossed to Rose, wrapping her tightly in his arms, “I talk about Gallifrey very fondly in hindsight, Rose, but my people weren’t always good.”
“Is that why you left?” She wondered, her words muffled by the way her face was pressed against his shoulder.
“It was a factor but, no, I stayed for quite some time after that.” He admitted, “Patience came back. We raised our granddaughter together. And then one day, when she was about eighty-five, equivalent to a human of approximately fifteen years old, we stole this Tardis and ran away.”
“What about your wife?” She sniffled.
“She stayed behind.” He sighed, “But I did see her again. One last time. During my fifth regeneration. I’ll tell you about it sometime, but for tonight… I think that’s quite enough sad stories.”