Chapter Text
Joy and William had been bemused, more than anything, when Tegan and Nyssa had almost fallen through the kitchen door. They had heard the gunfire and destruction from the yard but followed their orders and kept themselves and Neeka safely away from the danger. When Donna had appeared and briefly explained that the aliens had gone and that they would soon be following, the eleven-year-old had broken free from her grandmother’s embrace and sprinted outside to find her mothers.
She was back almost instantly, informing them that Nyssa had asked for water. Before she could return, however, the two women had appeared and explained that they were going away for a while. All three faces had watched them in bemusement – a petulant pout slowly crossing Neeka’s features until she realised that she was being allowed to accompany them.
“It’s been truly lovely meeting you.” Nyssa had told Joy and William politely, holding out her hand in their direction. “I hope that we can be friends when we return.”
Joy swatted her hand away and pulled her into a tight embrace. “We’re more than friends; we’re family.”
“You’re our granddaughter’s mother and our daughter’s partner.” William continued gruffly. “If that’s not family, I don’t know what is.”
“Partner?” Tegan’s eyes went wide and she looked between her parents in surprise. “I…”
Joy rolled her eyes. “Don’t be dense, Tegan. It’s obvious you’re in love with her. If you’re happy, we’re happy.”
“You have our blessing – not that you need it – both of you.” Her father continued with a firm nod. “Now, off you go and be wonderful. We’ll look after Adric and the house and the business, don’t worry about anything.”
“Thank you…” Tegan whispered, hugging her parents tightly. “We’ll be back in time for Neeka’s birthday and Christmas.”
Their approval and blessing were something she hadn’t known, hadn’t imagined, she needed. She had an inkling that her mother was aware of why none of the dates she’d set her up on had gone well, but she hadn’t thought that it would be explicitly acknowledged or mentioned. Tegan had just assumed that she and Nyssa would live out their lives together without it being brought up or questioned. The fact that her parents were happy for them and accepted their relationship meant more to her than she had ever thought it would.
“Alright?” Nyssa murmured, squeezing Tegan’s hand as they picked their way through the debris littering the yard, following their overexcited daughter towards the TARDIS.
“Happy.” Tegan said simply, unable to elaborate much further.
“Good.”
“My head is killing me, though.”
Nyssa chuckled, leaning into her side and pressing a quick kiss to her cheek. “You should have a lie down once we’re on the TARDIS.” Seeing the expression on Tegan’s face, she laughed and kissed her again. “You know exactly what I meant, Ms Jovanka.”
“Sadly, I do.” She agreed, letting out a soft sigh. “And even more sadly I know you’re right.”
The Doctor beamed as his former companions stepped through the doors and approached the console. Tegan wrinkled her nose, looking around critically. Before she could open her mouth and start criticising, he distracted her by announcing that he’d asked the TARDIS to retrieve their old bedroom from storage and replace it in its original spot. Then he explained that Donna had taken Neeka to claim a bedroom of her own, before giving her a whistlestop tour of the facilities.
“I’ll leave you to settle in. I need to look into how that Kassarian Battle Unit managed to get themselves here…”
Leaving him muttering to himself, squinting at the scanner screen through the glasses perched on the end of his nose, Nyssa led Tegan along the corridors. As the Doctor had said, a familiar door led off and into the bedroom they had shared when they had travelled with the Doctor so many years ago.
“What did the Doctor mean the TARDIS got our room out of storage?” Tegan asked, dropping heavily onto her side of the bed and laying her arm over her eyes.
“I assume when you left he had it put away for safekeeping.”
“I guessed that… but didn’t he find it when they picked you up?”
Nyssa shrugged, fussing around with the shawl that still lay over the back of the wicker chair in the corner. She felt the material between her fingers and smiled at the memories associated with it. “I didn’t want to sleep in here without you.”
Tegan propped herself up on her elbows and stared at the other woman. “Really?”
“It wouldn’t have felt… I would have missed you too much.” Nyssa admitted. “Would you want to sleep in here without me?”
“I did.” The Australian pointed out bluntly. “You didn’t leave me much choice.” When Nyssa looked away, Tegan winced and hauled herself off the mattress. She caught the other woman’s elbow and pulled her round, gently. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry, Nyss. I don’t want to drag all that up.”
“If you’re still angry with me for–”
“I’m not. Not really. I never was.” Tegan assured her. “I just… I missed you so much. I cried myself to sleep on that bed almost every night. Then I had to get up and deal with the Doctor and Turlough every morning.”
“I cried myself to sleep every night on Terminus.” Nyssa told her softly. “Then I had to get up and deal with Neeka.”
Tegan touched her cheek lightly. “When are we going to tell her?”
“As soon as possible, but you need to feel better first.” Propelling Tegan back towards the bed, Nyssa peeled back the covers and forced her partner to lie down. She pressed a gentle, lingering kiss to her forehead. “I’ll get you some painkillers, but you need to sleep.”
With a petulant pout, Tegan shook her head. “I don’t want to…”
“Why not?”
“What if I wake up and realise all this was a dream?”
Nyssa shot her a brilliant smile, crossing the room again and leaning down to pull Tegan into a bruising kiss. “You won’t. I’m here. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Now, go to sleep so you will feel better and we can get on with our lives together.”
As good as her word, Nyssa tracked down some painkillers and delivered them to their bedroom. She gently pressed them into Tegan’s hand, encouraging her to swallow them with some water, before watching the other woman sleepily snuggle back down into her cocoon of blankets. Unable to resist, knowing exactly what Tegan had meant about realising this was all a dream, Nyssa pressed a kiss to her forehead and left the room.
The Doctor was still standing at the console where they’d left him. If the scowl on his face was any indication, he still seemed to be struggling with whatever was being displayed on the screen. Nyssa smiled fondly, before clearing her throat to attract his attention.
“Doctor… while Tegan is asleep–”
The Doctor frowned at her, partly confused and partly clearly concerned. “Why is Tegan asleep? I thought you were reuniting?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Donna told me to leave you alone so you could have a private reunion?”
Nyssa blushed and shook her head quickly. “Oh, no. She had a terrible headache, so I found her some of that medication the TARDIS supplies and she’s trying to sleep it off.”
“A headache? Why?”
“Doctor, you did bang her head into a very solid wooden post.”
He had the good sense to look a little contrite at the scolding expression on her face. “It was an accident…”
“I know that, Doctor.”
“So, what can I do for you?”
“I was wondering whether we could make a little detour?” Nyssa requested, a faint pink tinge covering her cheeks. “Neeka mentioned that Tegan had bought me a dress and I thought that perhaps we could go and get it from their house?”
A grin appeared briefly on the Doctor’s face, before he whirled away and started tapping at the console. “Of course we can. You never know, it might come in incredibly handy.”
“Doctor.” Nyssa scolded him again.
He chuckled but said no more. Instead, he motioned towards a lever and asked Nyssa to pull it up, before concentrating on getting them to the right place. Donna and Neeka appeared, laughing, from somewhere deep inside the TARDIS and Nyssa quickly explained her request. Her daughter beamed, moving towards her and leaning against her side. Instinctively, the older brunette ran a hand through her hair before wrapping her arm around Neeka’s shoulders.
“Are we keeping this a surprise for Mum?” Neeka asked as the TARDIS landed in their back yard and the Doctor did his final checks.
“We could do.” Nyssa agreed with a fond smile. “Do you think we should?”
“Definitely. She will die when she sees you in the dress.”
“Oh! That’s not what I want!” Her mother gazed at her in consternation. Nyssa’s frown deepened when Neeka started laughing. “What?”
“It’s an expression, Mother. I mean that she’ll be absolutely thrilled.”
“Well, that’s alright, then.” As Neeka darted towards the doors, following the Doctor outside, Nyssa sighed and glanced at Donna. “I fear it’s going to take me rather a long time to understand what my daughter is talking about.”
Donna shrugged, bumping her with her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it; that’s just parenting.”
Although he led the way into the house once Neeka had unlocked the door, the Doctor confined himself to the living room, seemingly not wanting to intrude on his friend’s space while she wasn’t there. Adric was so overexcited at the sight of Neeka that he spent a good ten minutes barking and running around almost knocking everyone over. By the time they managed to calm him down and introduce him to Nyssa, she was rather wary of the large, boisterous dog.
“He’s not normally so loud.” Neeka assured her mother, fussing the dog’s ears absentmindedly. “He’s a big dummy, really.”
“Just like his namesake, according to Tegan.” Donna chipped in.
The Doctor snorted. “I’m surprised she hasn’t pinned a star for mathematical excellence on his collar.”
“Oh, she did,” the eleven-year-old informed him, completely straight-faced, “but he got stuck in a hedge and it fell off and broke.”
“That sounds about right.” The Doctor nodded in amusement.
“Please don’t break anything, Doctor.” Neeka requested, sending him a very Tegan-like look. “Mum will kill you if you do.”
Not waiting for a response and grasping her mother’s hand, Neeka pulled her up the stairs and towards her own bedroom. They spent a long time in there, with Neeka showing Nyssa everything of importance and talking to her about the memories associated with them. Nyssa relished the chance to learn a little more about her daughter. She was truly surprised at all the things that Neeka had seen and done and accomplished, pride bubbling inside her as she thought about the young woman that she was undoubtably going to become. How Tegan could ever have doubted that Neeka was her daughter – whether biologically or not – she would never understand.
Leaving Neeka to pack some things for their, hopefully, short stay on the TARDIS, Nyssa headed along the hallway in search of Tegan’s bedroom. She found herself in the bathroom at first, before opening a door and letting out a long, sharp exhalation of breath. The room was just so wonderfully Tegan that it filled her with an overwhelming feeling of home.
The wall behind the bed was painted a deep blue, almost as close to the colour of the TARDIS as it was possible to find. There was a brightly coloured, multi-patterned throw rumpled up at the bottom of the bed, clearly once neatly folded although not for a while. There was a stack of paperwork on the righthand side of the bed as Nyssa looked at it, and she chuckled fondly as she guessed that Tegan had stuck to the same side since leaving the TARDIS.
The dressing table was muddled and cluttered with make-up and nail varnishes and jewellery and various other lotions and creams. Nyssa absentmindedly picked up the perfume bottle and squirted a little on her wrist, recognising the scent immediately.
In one corner was a wicker chair which looked remarkably like the one that had sat in their bedroom onboard the TARDIS. If Nyssa didn’t know for certain that the original was still on board, she’d almost have thought that Tegan had taken it with her when she’d left. Instead, she realised that she must have deliberately searched for one the same to place in her room. As the one in their shared bedroom had often been until Nyssa had dealt with it, this chair was almost hidden beneath piles of Tegan’s clothes.
“Have you found it yet?” Neeka asked poking her head into the room and furrowing her eyebrows. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m just… looking around.”
Pausing, the eleven-year-old chewed her lip. Then she entered the room properly. “Are you alright, Mother?”
“It’s just…” Nyssa sighed and then smiled softly at her daughter. “It’s just strange to actually see the evidence that you and Tegan had a whole life that didn’t involve me.”
“But… you knew that?”
“I did… but knowing and seeing are two different things, my love. Being confronted with the undeniable evidence that things went on without me is actually rather difficult to process.”
“I suppose so…” Neeka acknowledged with a nod. “But you know that we missed you, right? We really wanted you here with us.”
“I know that and I wanted to be here.”
With a nod, the girl went to the wardrobe and opened it quickly. She riffled through the clothes until she found what she was looking for and pulled out the dress that she and Tegan had bought Nyssa during her first few days on Earth. Neeka looked at it for a moment, suddenly uncertain, before turning and holding it in her mother’s direction.
“I hope you like it… and that it fits.”
Nyssa stared at the dress, reaching out a shaking hand to take it from Neeka. She bit her lip as she gazed at the beautiful garment in wonder. Filled with a slight pang of homesickness as she realised it was the same colour as the outfit she’d been wearing when she left Traken, Nyssa felt the skirt almost reverently. Her eyes lingered on the almost pearlescent flowers dotted about; clusters near the hem and singular blooms trailing intermittently upwards towards the neckline. She rubbed the gauzy material between her thumb and index finger, tears springing to her eyes as she imagined Tegan and Neeka discussing whether to buy it for her.
“It’s beautiful.”
“You really like it?”
“Of course I do, my love.” Nyssa pulled her into a tight, one-armed hug, careful not to rumple her dress. “It’s perfect. So are you, Neeka. I can’t believe how grown up you are. I am so proud of you.”
“I missed you, Mother.”
Carefully laying the dress on the bed, Nyssa pulled Neeka into a proper hug. They’d had a hurried conversation when she’d arrived at the Jovankas farm and were waiting for Tegan to come home, but it hadn’t been the conversation that Nyssa really wanted to have with her daughter. Joy and William had let them have the privacy of the kitchen, while they kept the Doctor and Donna occupied in the living room, but there had been too much going on for them to really talk properly.
Nyssa knew that it still wasn’t really the time; if nothing else she wasn’t sure how long Tegan would stay asleep and didn’t particularly want her waking up and realising that she was alone on a deserted TARDIS. She wanted that conversation, though. She needed to break the slight awkward, wariness that was still hovering between them. She wanted to make sure her daughter knew just how much she loved her and how much she’d missed her. She wanted Neeka to know that she was the most important part of her entire universe.
“Neeka, I know that–”
“Do I have a father?”
“Sorry?” Nyssa blinked in surprise, not having expected that question.
“Well… I couldn’t really ask Mum because she had even less idea than I did.” Neeka pointed out quietly. There was an almost pained expression on her face, as though she wasn’t sure whether she truly wanted an answer or not. “And I know she always felt a little bit… well, like she might not be needed anymore when you came back. That maybe if I found out I did have another parent and that you and me and my father were a family, that I’d just… I’m not sure… reject her, maybe?”
Nyssa swallowed thickly, her heart breaking as she imagined Tegan spending all those years torturing herself over what might happen when she came back for Neeka. “Darling, I…”
“And… if I do have a father then… well, that’s fine. But Tegan is my Mum and I love her and I don’t want to lose her. I want to stay here, with her.” Neeka continued fiercely. “I don’t think she would… I think it would kill her if she lost me.”
“You don’t have to worry about that.” Nyssa promised, holding her tighter and dropping a kiss onto the top of her head. “We’re going on a quick adventure with the Doctor and Donna and then we’re coming back here, as a family; you, me and Tegan. Nothing is going to change, except that I’ll be here too. If… if that’s alright with you?”
Her daughter looked at her as though she thought she’d lost her mind. “Of course it is! It’s all Mum and I have ever wanted.”
“Well, that’s alright, then.”
“So… do I have a father?”
Nyssa sighed. “I wanted to have this conversation with Tegan here, too.”
“Why?”
“Because what I need to tell you concerns her as well.”
“Oh…” Neeka considered her for a moment and then shrugged. “Alright, I’ll wait. As long as you know that I love you and I love Mum and that’s that.”
An adoring smile covered Nyssa’s face and she was unable to stop herself pulling the girl into her arms again. “I love you so much, Neeka.”
“Do you need some help packing Mum’s clothes?” Neeka asked, pulling back and clearly deciding that their moment was over. “We should take some of her things, shouldn’t we? And you haven’t been shopping yet. I’m sure Mum won’t mind you borrowing some of her clothes.”
“Good idea, my love.”
Nyssa mostly let Neeka take the lead, fascinatedly watching as her daughter gave a running commentary while she plucked various items of clothing out of Tegan’s wardrobe and chest of drawers. She drew the line at rummaging around in her underwear, pulling a face and imperiously motioning for Nyssa to take charge in that area. Forcing herself not to blush at the thought, she quickly did as she was ordered, trying not to think about it too much.
“If we’re taking your dress, do you think we should take something nice for Mum, too?” Neeka asked suddenly, turning and looking questioningly at her mother. “What if you get the chance to go on a date or something?”
“Well, I… yes.” Nyssa nodded quickly. “That sounds like a wonderful idea. What do you think she’d like us to choose?”
Standing in front of the open wardrobe for a while, Neeka scrutinised her mother’s clothes. Nyssa watched, slightly amused, at the attention she was paying to her choice, pulling out various outfits and considering them before ultimately pushing them back into place.
Finally, Neeka pulled out a short, cream coloured dress with a high neckline, lace detailing and long sleeves. Nyssa let out an involuntary gasp. When her daughter turned to look at her in slight concern, her eyebrows furrowed, the woman blushed. She motioned towards the dress as casually as she could.
“That’s lovely.”
Neeka glanced back at it. “Mum’s never worn this one.”
“Oh?”
“Mmm… she said she was going to save it for something special.” The eleven-year-old grinned. “I suppose this is exactly right. Going on a date with you would be the most special occasion.”
“I suppose it would.”
“And you like it, don’t you, Mother?”
“I do.” Nyssa agreed emphatically.
Neeka hunted for something at the end of the row of hanging clothes, finally pulling out a garment bag. Noticing her mother looking at her curiously, she smiled. “Whenever we had to go on trips for Mum’s important business meetings, she used to put her special clothes in these. I think we should put your dresses in one, shouldn’t we?”
“I think you’re right.”