Work Text:
Ruby burst into the TARDIS and turned back at the end of the ramp to watch her Mum enter for the first time. She was impatient to actually go find her mother, but it was only fair to give Mum the chance to marvel at the paradoxical size of the room contained within the TARDIS.
And to give the TARDIS a chance to enjoy it, as well—Ruby had long had a sneaking suspicion that the sentient box loved the ‘bigger on the inside’ moment as much as the Doctor seemed to.
“What...how...” Mum stammered, and Ruby grinned. “I know you told me it’s bigger on the inside, but seeing it...”
“It’s dimensionally transcendental,” Ruby and the Doctor chorused, and all three of them had to laugh.
“Alright! A quick trip home, and then we can find Louise,” the Doctor said cheerfully. He turned to hit a bunch of buttons at the console.
Ruby couldn’t help a quick glance at her mum, who looked worried.
The Doctor saw it too. “Don’t worry—it’s alright, there shouldn’t be any more...dangers. Not for a while.”
Mum’s expression didn’t change.
He looked a bit silly, shoving his hands in the tiny pockets of his little leather jacket. “The TARDIS usually does her best to give me a break after a big showdown like this...although it’s been a bit more hectic recently. That time with the Titanic was a bit—”
Mum interrupted. “It’s not that. If I thought that was going to happen I would get those UNIT people to take me home. No, I’m thinking of Ruby’s mum.”
“My other mum?” Ruby asked, and Mum’s answering smile wobbled.
“I always said if I ever met her I was going to tell off your mum,” she said, cupping Ruby’s cheek. “I just never understood why she’d give you up.” Mum sighed heavily, and Ruby could see her eyes misting. “But fifteen?—you seem so young to me, and you’re nineteen…she was so young.”
Ruby hugged her Mum tightly. “It’s alright—she doesn’t know that you felt that way, and I won’t tell her. Promise.” She’d been a little worried, she supposed, about her two mums getting on—that worry felt a bit silly now. “And you didn’t know she had a good reason.”
“Well, no, I didn’t. But I’m always saying there’s no shame in our house and there I was, all those years, shaming Louise for keeping her baby—my—our baby safe!” Mum paused, reflecting. “She even named you.” The ambient hum of the TARDIS deepened slightly.
“The solution to that isn’t to shame yourself, though,” Ruby said.
On releasing her from the hug, Mum only looked half-mollified. “I still could have given her the benefit of the doubt...”
“You can’t help what you were feeling all those years.” Her mum smiled at her own familiar words.
“I just hope—for your sake, Ruby—that she’s not been beating herself up this whole time.” Mum mused. “You’ve wanted this for so long...I want you both to be happy to see each other!”
“Oh, I’m not really worried,” Ruby said. “Families usually seem thrilled to be reunited, no matter how they got separated. Sometimes they tell me they’re worried about it, but it almost always seems to work out.”
The Doctor’s smile held something behind its brightness, but Ruby decided to save that for later.
“What do you mean ‘usually’?” Mum looked at Ruby quizzically. “Do you have a secret life as a social worker or something?”
Ruby felt taken aback. She hadn’t thought about it in exactly those terms. “Well…I suppose I do, sort of,” she let out a laugh—this day was so much stranger than she’d expected. “I’ve been thinking of it as more of a superhero kind of thing!”
The Doctor smiled and finally chimed in. “Nurses, social workers, superheroes—what’s the difference?” He circled the console, pushing buttons and flipping switches as he continued. “We started to focus on reuniting families in our travels—because—”
She broke in. “After we found the Doctor’s daughter!” She noticed that his smile changed somehow, but Ruby couldn’t attend to that—not before Mum understood.
“You’ve got a daughter? That’s wonderful! Where is she?” Mum asked eagerly, looking toward the back of the console room as though his daughter was going to come in with a planned entrance.
“Oh, she isn’t here. She was lost for a long time, and then we dropped her off with the other—well, with the other side of her family.”
“Oh!” Mum said. The TARDIS groaned faintly.
“She lives with Rose, actually—Rose Noble, who you met earlier,” Ruby added—explaining regeneration was perhaps a bit of a stretch for today.
“Ah, well, that’s lovely…” Mum still looked confused. “But what does that have to do with you being an outer space social worker?”
Ruby was interrupted by the sudden swaying of the TARDIS as the Doctor pulled the lever to fly Mum home. She did her best to explain just the same.
“Well, after we got Jenny home with her family, I was feeling—well—” She nearly fell forward and caught herself on the nearest railing. “I was feeling a bit sad...not that you aren’t enough, mind, I love you so much, Mum—” The TARDIS jerked roughly, and this time Ruby found herself falling forward into her mother’s arms.
“But I just wished that I could have both of you with me!” Ruby said firmly. Mum squeezed her so tightly.
“You wanted both of your mums,” Mum finished, releasing her. Ruby could see her deep understanding in her eyes.
“Yeah,” Ruby said with a small smile. She hugged her mum tightly again.
“So,” the Doctor said, “I thought—well, I couldn’t take her to meet her mother directly—you saw earlier with all the dust—except, for Ruby it was snow—it was too dangerous. And then I thought, let's do what we can!”
Ruby linked her arm through her mum’s as the Doctor came to stand in front of them.
He continued, “We made it our mission to reunite as many parents and children as possible, ‘cos Ruby deserved it just as much as Jenny did—and every child does, really.” He looked joyful and solemn and fierce all at once. “Every child deserves it. Every lonely kid.”
Mum looked touched. Pride swelled in Ruby’s chest.
“And I even thought of an acronym—we’re an official team!” She boasted. “The, er—Transmission, Acquisition, and Recovery of Displaced Individuals Squad,” Ruby recited, though she had to concentrate—it had never really rolled off the tongue. “T.A.R.D.I.S.!”
Mum rolled her eyes, but the impact was gentled by her pleased and proud expression.
“And we even check up on them later! You should see the photos they send!” Ruby suddenly felt a little bashful. “I, er, got the idea from our fridge. We send out emails to make sure they’re okay, just like you do.”
Mum moved straight toward the Doctor, who winced like he was about to be struck—only to relax when Mum wrapped him tightly in her arms. Ruby had to grin before joining them.
“You know, we’ve been home for a few minutes now,” the Doctor wheezed.
“Oh! Of course, Mum’s waiting!” Mum exclaimed, and released the Doctor. She hurried down the ramp and out the door before he caught his breath properly. Ruby grinned widely at him and followed her.
Ruby needed to see with her own eyes that everything had been restored to normal—that after all that mess, her grandmother and Mrs. Flood had come through alright. She peeked into her grandmother’s room briefly. Mrs. Flood was regaling Mum with all the minutiae of how her mum had been while she was away. Ruby had to roll her eyes at that, briefly catching her grandmother’s eye.
‘Run for it,’ Gran mouthed, and Ruby ironically saluted. She ducked back around the corner to the TARDIS as quietly as she could—but not quietly enough for Mum.
“Send me every single one of those photos! I’ll add them to the fridge!” Mum called out.
“Yes, Mum!” Ruby called, and she reentered the TARDIS.
The door clicked shut and Ruby collapsed back against it.
The Doctor was still standing by the console. “You okay?” he asked, and Ruby could only look at him.
He reached out to flip the lever Ruby knew would send them flying through the time vortex...only to hesitate. “Are you not feeling ready? We don’t have to go right away...”
“I...” For a moment Ruby tried to communicate her feelings through her hands, since her tongue was failing her. She walked a bit further into the TARDIS. “No, I want to see her. I just...I don’t know what I’m going to say to her.” She swallowed hard. “My...my mum.” A sympathetic burble echoed through the control room.
The Doctor turned to regard her gravely. “That’s perfectly natural, it’s a big step...going to see her.” He slowly smiled. “I’m so happy for you. Who would’ve thought we’d be taking to you see your real, actual, biological mother today?”
Ruby was nearly beaming now—her nervousness almost entirely converted to excitement. “I know! It doesn’t feel real, it really doesn’t.”
The Doctor grinned, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “Ruby, it is so real.” She came closer and took his arm as he reached out to the lever again with the other. “Ruby Sunday, you waited for so many years—but no more!”
The Doctor pulled the lever and the TARDIS rumbled through the vortex at last.
Ruby held on tightly to him with one hand as she grabbed the console with the other. She let out a surprised laugh as something new occurred to her. The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her.
“Sorry, I just thought—I suppose this is a mark of true professionalism. The team at T.A.R.D.I.S. is even reuniting themselves with their families. So much for work-life balance!” She laughed again, harder this time, until the Doctor’s reaction registered properly.
Oh, he’d put on his widest grin, and even managed a chuckle, but by now Ruby could recognise when he was putting on a false face—and an ancient sadness lingered behind his merry mask, just like it had in 1813.
Reuniting families...suddenly her lighthearted reference to their official-unofficial mission was reframed in her mind’s eye. The Doctor’s family...oh, dear.
The Doctor’s loaded history with ‘family’ had been clear from the day they met, when he confessed that he, too, had been adopted—and then they'd run into Jenny. That joyful reunion had come with its own portion of sadness, as this Doctor had only had a few minutes with her.
And now his regret over his estranged granddaughter Susan had come up several times, mostly in this latest crisis, reopening an ancient wound. The spectre of unexpectedly reuniting with her had filled him with anxiety Ruby could spot from across the room...
The TARDIS shook Ruby back into the moment, and the Doctor took her hand properly as it landed. “We’re here. If you’re not sure, we don’t have to...”
Ruby yanked him bodily toward the door.
The Doctor was babbling something or other about her mum, but Ruby barely registered his words at all.
They leaned back against the TARDIS, side by side. The moment they’d exited—the moment Ruby caught her first glimpse of her mother’s face in real life, casually sipping a coffee—the breath had whooshed out of her again, leaving her wordless.
“...She’s got a flat...”
Ruby really wasn’t taking in his words, too busy trying to work up the nerve to speak to her mum. Louise.
It was decidedly odd to have a name for her.
“...a fella named Mike...”
And her concern about the Doctor’s feelings about family was still surging below all her emotions about her Mum.
They had immediately dropped Jenny off with the Doctor’s other self—there'd been no discussion first. He hadn’t even told Jenny he was the same man, let alone Ruby. She knew that the Doctor genuinely believed that Jenny belonged with the father whose face was familiar to her...but now it occurred to Ruby that it might not have been so simple for him.
“...She goes to Spain in three weeks...”
He may have left Jenny with another version of him—but it still meant this version of him lost his daughter. Did he think his adventuring life was too unstable for her? Ruby wasn’t even sure she had the right to an opinion on that—it really felt like overstepping an invisible boundary—but he seemed to be denying himself the chance to know and raise his daughter. This self, anyway—god, regeneration was confusing.
Ruby could still picture the desperate hug Jenny had been pulled into—his older-looking counterpart had looked on the edge of tears even as he grinned as wide as her Doctor ever had. A reunion that was that needed could never be wrong...but it was becoming clear to her that her Doctor was also denying himself that relief.
Did he think it was too late?
“...days to come and find you, and she never has.”
Yes. He did, didn’t he?
She blinked hard. “But I found her.”
“With a time machine. Is that fair?”
Ruby said nothing. Perhaps it wasn’t fair. But she’d been waiting for this moment her entire life—and she wouldn’t let this opportunity slip through her fingers.
She couldn’t.
“Louise Miller made her choices and...I think we should leave that alone.”
Ruby pushed away from the TARDIS and entered the café with conviction.
Ruby’s phone beeped again. She desperately wanted to let it be and focus on reassuring the Doctor, she didn’t want him to have to wait too long for her, but she had to check, what if it was important—
She caught her breath at once. “Oh, my god. They think they’ve found him. My dad. William.” Ruby laughed from pure surprise. “They think—because it turns out his mum and dad still live at the same address, but she never told him. My mum, my real mum—” She sighed—maybe distinguishing between her two mums would feel more natural someday. “So...she never told Will about me, so he doesn’t even know I exist.”
The Doctor said nothing. He just continued to look at her with those ancient, understanding eyes.
“So we’ve gotta go and..” Ruby broke off. She tried to hold in the tears she knew were coming, and failed. “I’m sorry,” she breathed.
The Doctor shook his head. “Don’t be sorry,” he said feelingly, and he came over to hug her. Ruby squeezed him close. “Don’t be sorry at all. Your life is out there now.”
She nodded silently against the chill of his leather jacket—it was almost like armour, she realised.
“I’ve shown you monsters and planets and legends...”
Ruby sighed as he released her, sliding his hands down her arms to keep hold of her elbows.
“...Honey, your adventure is just beginning.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “Are...are you going to keep working on our mission?”
For the first time in this conversation the Doctor looked surprised by what she said.
“Of course,” he said, as if it was obvious.
Ruby smiled shakily. “I—I just wish—” She broke off. “It’s so important. To me, and them, and—the universe, maybe. I hope.”
The Doctor smiled—a mostly happy smile. “Of course it is. And you’re just as important as they are—you’re one more person reunited with your family.”
Ruby couldn’t hold back a sob, but she kept in most of the tears.
“It’s okay to stop and be with them. That’s the whole point of the mission.” His voice was so soft she could hardly bear it.
“Yeah,” she laughed, “Yeah, I know. It’s the most important thing in the world.” The Doctor squeezed her hands and she squeezed back. “...But that goes for you, too.”
The Doctor looked surprised again, and more confused this time.
“You’re just as important—you can be reunited with your family too.” His mouth popped open, but she rushed to keep speaking before he could find the words. “Your daughter—you know where Jenny is, with that other you. Or Susan, you could—should—find her as well...but you can take the time to be with them.”
The Doctor dropped her hands, but didn’t move away. Ruby was worried she was overstepping, but she just couldn’t let it lie—he was so clearly dwelling on these past mistakes, these people lost to him.
“She—” He cleared his throat and stepped back. “She has a dad. I gave her the dad she should have, the dad she deserves. She’s happy.”
Ruby raised her eyebrows. “She may very well be—she definitely is, who are we kidding? But she knows she has two dads—and one is out there somewhere, not with her.”
“I thought it was easier this way.” His earnest gaze was uncharacteristically open. “I just go on—that’s what I do, what I always do.” He took a shaky breath.
“Like I said before, you don’t have to be like this.” She could see him start to withdraw, to hide behind that mask again, so she drew him into another tight hug. “I was happy with my Mum, remember—but I’m even happier with both of them,” she whispered. He turned his face into her shoulder. “There isn’t a limit on happiness. There isn’t a limit on love...and you’ve got two hearts, anyway.”
He did chuckle at that, and Ruby relaxed slightly. She couldn’t have overstepped too badly if he was still laughing at her jokes.
At last he let go, and they stepped apart again. Ruby studied his face. He found a smile after a moment—a smaller one, but more genuine.
“Maybe I’ll see Jenny. Soon.”
“Good,” Ruby said, giving her best attempt at brisk cheerfulness.
“And maybe I’ll find Susan again one day. But you, Ruby Sunday, I’ll definitely see again—because you changed me.”
“You’d better,” she said, pointing at him threateningly.
The Doctor grinned. “You’ve made my life bigger and better. But for now, Ruby Sunday...goodbye.” He spun around and hit something which warmed up the TARDIS’ engines.
Ruby walked toward those familiar doors—who knew when she’d see him again?—and turned back. “I love you.”
“I know,” he said fondly, not turning around.
“And let me know when you see her!” she called, and he waved a dismissive hand at her over his shoulder.
Ruby rolled her eyes and began her next adventure.
“Letter for you, Ruby,” Mum said, and Ruby barely looked up from her mobile. Trudy was recounting a deliciously scathing encounter with her ex and Ruby couldn’t wait to hear the end of the story.
She tried to tear open the envelope, but it wouldn’t let her.
Ruby frowned. She set down her mobile and tried again, but it still wouldn’t rip.
“What’s wrong?” Mum asked, and Ruby shrugged.
“I dunno—it’s just not...” Her eyes widened. “Oh. It’s an email!”
“It’s a what?” Mum asked dubiously, and Ruby grinned.
“Physical email—watch this!” She found the correct spot and let it scan her fingerprint. Mum’s mouth popped open with surprise as the envelope opened itself.
“Wh—”
“The future still has email, but they went retro for a while,” she explained. Mum shut her mouth slowly.
“Right. Okay.”
Ruby looked down and noticed a photo had slipped from the envelope to the table. Flipping it over, she had to smile on seeing the Doctor—her Doctor—seated on a sofa with the rest of his family.
She recognised the other Doctor and the red-haired lady from when they dropped off Jenny—they sat on either side of him, and another man Ruby didn’t recognise was on the end beside her. The two teenagers, Jenny and Rose, sat cross-legged on the floor in front of them, each of them with a Doctor’s hand on their shoulder.
The Doctor looked happy—at peace. Ruby had never seen him so at ease, or so content.
She didn’t think he’d noticed the bunny ears the red-haired lady held behind him.
“We’ve got another one for the fridge, Mum,” Ruby said, and passed it across the table.