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The Doctor wandered out of his room into the mid day air. He'd been itching to go out and solve some mystery or fight some monster but Donna had expressly forbidden it. For the time being, at least.
Instead he'd kept busy tinkering on some old mechanical piece he'd meant to finish a few hundred years back. He'd found that he'd lost track of time, something he didn't know he could still do. Several hours later, he remembered why he'd abandoned it. Despite his best efforts the device simply refused to function the way he knew it should. After spending the whole morning holed up in his room, he decided that he should at least go out and get a change of scenery. Maybe some food while he was at it.
He wandered into the sitting room only to find Shaun settled on the sofa with and old book in hand. He looked up and smiled when he saw the Doctor. He set the book aside and gestured with his head to the nearest seat.
"Care to join me?" He asked with an easy smile. The Doctor took the seat nearest to him with a sigh.
"Trouble with a bit of tinkering?" Shaun asked.
The Doctor sighed again, more heavily this time. "I just can't seem to get the throughput manifold in alignment."
Shaun nodded sagely. "I'd offer to help but I'm rubbish at machines. Besides, I reckon it'll be a bit beyond anything I've ever seen. Though, I suppose you must like machines a bit, yeah?"
The Doctor raised an eyebrow at the question. "I like science. I like working with my hands. Never know when a gadget might come in handy. Why?"
Shaun laughed lightly and ran a thumb over the cover of his book. "I suppose I just want to get to know you. I've never had a brother-in-law, or sibling-in-law before. That's what we decided on, yeah? You're a bit too close to just be a family friend, but I don't know you as well as I'd like. I figured, since we're a bit new at this, I thought Id take the first step."
"Oh, I've had a brother-in-law before. Been one too," the Doctor muttered.
"Really?" Shaun sat up a little straighter. "What's he like?"
The Doctor wasn't sure why he answered. Maybe it was the steady tone of voice or maybe it was the present tense sentence that made it seem like they were all still alive. Either way he found himself saying, "We never got along very well. We didn't hate eachother, but he thought I was a bad influence on his sister. He thought I'd fill her head with ideas of running away and causing mischief."
The Doctor looked up at the ceiling and smiled despite himself. "Still, he couldn't cause to much of a fuss at the time. I was a Timelord from an important family and even though our marriage was partly political I loved her. I really did. He knew that. He also loved that we made him an uncle."
"He used to make my daughter laugh. Not like I could though. She loved my stories the best." Something bitter and ugly clawed it's way up his throat and he had to stop talking lest he poison the memory by letting it out.
"Course she did," Shaun agreed lightly, just on the side of too casual and gentle to not know what the Doctor was saying. "You're her dad. That's part of our job, us dads. We get to make them laugh. Nothing more beautiful than that."
"No," the Doctor whispered. "There was nothing more beautiful."
"See my little girl, my Rose," Shaun continued, "I think she's the most perfect girl in the world. Course there's not much else I could think, being her dad. You though, you're from a different world so I reckon there's room for us each to have the most perfect girl on our worlds. You know my Rose. Would you be alright letting me get to know your girl?"
The Doctor swallowed down that ugly thing that felt too much like grief. "I haven't talked- I haven't talked about her, about any of them, in a long time."
Shaun nodded. "That's alright. I won't press. If it was Rose. Well. It's not though." He sighed. "My mom used to say, 'Share your lost. That way they live in more memories than one.' That's just me though. If keeping them close is what's best for you then I won't question it."
The Doctor closed his eyes. He allowed the memories of fire and blood to scream through his mind for a moment before pushing it away. Instead he turned to a different moment. "I had other children but this one, she had this silly little toy from some planet, can't remember which now. It was something my dad picked up for her. It was hideous. It really was, but she loved it. She broke it once. Cried herself to sleep over it. I stayed up all night trying to put it back together for her. It never looked quite right but she said she liked it better that way. She was always so bright and kind like that."
Once the words were out, he couldn't seem to stop them even as the grief clawed at his chest from within. "I remember when she had her own daughter. It was a terrible night. Even on Gallifrey... well, long time ago now anyway. My daughter, I remember she was adamant from the moment she found out about the pregnancy that the little girl be named... well it's not an exact translation, mind you, but we had a flower on Gallifrey. We had this flower. Her daughter, my granddaughter, was named after it. You might call it a rose."
Shaun turned away sharply and took a deep breath. "It's a good name."
"Yeah." The Doctor agreed. "It is."
Shaun reached up and wiped at the bridge of his nose just under his eye before turning back to the Doctor. "Did she like it? Your granddaughter? Did she like her name more than Rose liked her old one?"
"Nah," the Doctor said with a wet laugh. "She changed it the moment we set foot on Earth. Susan. She wanted Susan. Such a human name. Took after my side of the family like that."
"Oh yeah?"
"Oh, yeah." The Doctor decided to stop fighting. He allowed the tears to finally fall even as he smiled at the memory. "My dad, he loved the human name Ulysses. Absolutely loved it. None of the houses would call him that, but us kids, we always would. I remember he tried to convince my mom to give us all human names. He failed of course."
"Of course," Shaun said as he curled up on the sofa to listen.
"My brother, though. He took our dad's human name for him, the one from all our games. Irving. He went by Irving. Can you believe it?"
"That's terrible," Shaun surpressed a laugh behind his hand.
"Irving McCarthy. That's what he went by on Earth. I told him it wouldn't go over as cool as he thought."
Shaun laughed. "Gotta give it too him. It's a bit more creative than John Smith."
"Hey!" The Doctor said pointing at him. "I happen to think it's classic."
"I'm sure you do."
The Doctor flopped back into the sofa. "I didn't know I could still talk about them. Thank you."
"Anytime," Shaun told him earnestly. "Anytime, Doctor."
"You know," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "I think I'll take you up on that."