Chapter Text
Kate sometimes thinks that she spends more time in her office at UNIT headquarters than she does in her own home. There are other times that she is absolutely sure of it. She wonders what her father would think, were he to see her now. Would he be proud, as the Doctor has so often made sure to tell her he would be? In fact, Kate isn’t so sure. He was an old soldier, her father, in all senses of the word. She has a fear, mostly unvoiced and largely unanalysed that, as proud as he would be of her in some respects, in others he would see her life choices as an abject failure.
That’s just the divorce talking, she tells herself, on her better days. Your second divorce, a devilish little voice adds, on her worse ones. She knows it’s not her fault, or at least, it’s not all her fault. Marriages buckle under far fewer pressures than hers have had to endure. It’s a strong man who can stand beside a wife so professionally greater in stature than they have ever been or will ever be. She tried, she tried hard, but UNIT isn’t a nine-to-five. There are weeks at a time when she cannot get home, bunks instead in one of the duty quarters set aside for senior officers. There are others when she chooses to stay. She can’t clock off when the planet is under threat. She can’t hand off to someone else, not even to a madman in a blue box with a personality that glitters as hard and eternal as starlight. There’s the Doctor, there’s Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, and there’s the world. She’s grateful for the team she has around her now, for the men and women so willing to dedicate their lives to what they do here. She’d never let them down. She’d never take a step back, put her personal life first.
Which is why she really doesn’t have a personal life. Not anymore. She doesn’t regret it, exactly. There are perhaps times, though only occasionally and usually only after a glass of wine, that she will acknowledge that there are few lonelier things than a bottle of wine beside a single wine glass.
It’s why she’s grateful for Mel Bush. Kate had known of her for years, of course – UNIT has always kept tabs on the Doctor’s past travelling companions. In the abstract, she’d imagined Mel as fun – perhaps it was her perpetually youthful and lithe figure, perhaps it was the vibrancy of her red hair. She was gratified to find out that her hunch was right. Mel is fun. Not that they get out much – it’s not as if they go out on the town. But there was one night, after a particularly trying experience that UNIT struggled to contain, that Mel had popped into Kate’s office on her way out of the door. There was a bottle of Malbec on the table, because it was after hours and Kate still had a mile-high pile of reports to go through and it really had been a very trying day.
“Wouldn’t mind one of those, if you’re offering,” Mel had said, waving a finger at the bottle. “Got another glass somewhere?”
Thus began a somewhat sporadic tradition. They alternated who brought the wine, and they became friends over the sharing. Mel made Kate laugh, and she was sorely in need of that. Mel made her look up every now and then, made her see a bigger picture that it was so easy to lose amid the minutiae of what it took to keep this planet safe from foes the general public had no idea even existed. If Kate was her work, then Mel was her window on the world, her reminder that there was more to life beyond this gleaming monolith of glass and steel.
Which is why, looking back, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that it was Mel who saw it first.
The bombshell dropped on Kate on a Monday, at around 11 am. It wasn’t a literal bombshell – that had happened the week before, and she’d still been dealing with the aftermath. Scads of filing, endless analytics. Although to be honest, it might as well have been a repeat performance of the real thing, for all the damage (hidden, she hoped) it wrought. She’d been in her office since 6am, having woken early in her empty flat and seen no reason to tarry there when there was so very much for her to do. She’d barely seen anyone aside from saying a few ‘Good mornings’, had a meeting at midday for which she needed to prepare. When Mel knocked at her door, Kate had looked up, squinting slightly at the change in focus.
“Morning,” Mel said. “thought I’d just check that you were still here. We’ve seen hide nor hair of you this morning. Hope you aren’t battling some unseen monster?”
“Still here,” Kate confirmed, “and battling a monster, but not an unseen one. Trying to get my head around this before I have to go up on comms with Germany, Japan and America. What time is it? Is everyone in yet?”
Mel frowned. “It’s after eleven. Haven’t you taken a break since you got in?”
“I meant to, I just got sucked in. You know how it is. Dammit, I forgot my coffee. Probably cold now.” She looked at the paper cup on her desk ruefully, lid still firmly on. Maybe she could drink it cold? That was a thing, wasn’t it?
Mel regarded the coffee with a quizzical look. Beside it lay a banana, which Kate had also forgotten. Her stomach rumbled as she looked at it.
“How long has that been there?” Mel asked.
“Since Ibrahim’s morning run,” Kate told her. “What a waste.” She turned her attention back to the tablet in her hand. There was a number there she just couldn’t make sense of. “Have you looked at this briefing yet? What do you think of this calculation from Morris? I think I’m missing something.”
There was no answer. Kate looked up to find Mel watching her with narrowed eyes. “What do you mean, Ibrahim’s morning run?”
Kate glanced at the coffee again. “You know, the morning coffee run. He does it every day.”
Mel stared at her. “Colonel Ibrahim does not do a daily morning coffee run.”
“Yes, he does,” Kate insisted. “He does it on his way in. Bless him for it, too, because-“
“Kate,” Mel interrupted. “He doesn’t. At least,” she added after a pause, and with heavy significance, “he doesn’t for anyone else.”
“I-“ Kate began, and then couldn’t work out quite what it was she was going to say, so she turned back to the tablet. There was another moment of silence. Mel was still watching her, Kate could tell without having to look.
“Are you telling me,” Mel said, eventually, “that Colonel Christofer Ibrahim brings you coffee and breakfast every morning?”
“Not every morning,” Kate said, feeling an insane need to defend herself, though from what she wasn’t quite sure. “At least, not the breakfast. And anyway, a banana doesn’t really qualify as breakfast, does it?”
Mel raised her eyebrows. Kate suspected that she was thinking about crossing her arms, too.
“What?”
“He brings you – and only you - coffee and breakfast. Every. Morning.”
“Well,” Kate said, searching for a way out of this thicket, “I am the boss.”
Mel’s eyebrows remained hovering somewhere near her vivacious hairline. “Really. You think that’s the reason, do you?”
“I can’t think of another one. Can you?”
Mel crossed her arms. She was still staring at Kate, but now the blank look in her eyes had been replaced by a knowing gleam. For a horrible second Kate thought she might blush, because she suddenly knew, with an absolute and excruciating clarity, what Mel was trying to imply.
“Oh, don’t be absurd,” she scoffed, her voice rough with incredulity. “He’s young enough to be my son.”
This time the look Mel gave her was strange, as if this reason above all others made no sense to her. “No,” she said, “No, Kate, he really isn’t.”
Kate had seen his records, knew there was almost twenty years between them, could easily have argued the point. She thought, sometimes, that people who had travelled with the Doctor couldn’t help but see time very differently than the average human. But she emphatically did not want to have this conversation. She could not have this conversation, or anything even slightly approaching this conversation, not about someone under her command. “Either way,” she said, shortly, “it’s a ridiculous notion. And we have far more important things to discuss, so can we please just-“ she waved the tablet.
Mel held up both hands. “Okay. Sure. Whatever you say. Just one more question, then I’ll never mention it again.”
Kate sighed, rubbed a hand across her gritty eyes. She wished the coffee was still hot: she could have used it right about then. “What?”
“How long has he been doing it? The coffee and the breakfast thing, I mean?”
Kate stared down at the tablet. She still couldn’t make sense of the number.
[TBC]