Work Text:
Summer had crept its way into the air with a warmth that was hard not to notice. The earliest blooms of the year had died back, and the vibrant green of summer trees was in full force. Rose’s school break had started a few weeks ago, and she was now home for the next handful of months, something the Doctor struggled to grasp. School hadn’t had so many breaks on Gallifrey, and they certainly never took off months at a time just to loaf around the house and chat on their cell phones. Gallifrey, with its silvery leaves glistening under the dual suns’ dry heat, didn’t entertain things like school breaks or as rudimentary a technology as a human smartphone, for that matter.
He vaguely remembered Rose Tyler talking about her summer adventures and road trips with her mates. Still, it was one thing to theorize about summer break. It was another to have a teenager eating snacks and lying around the TARDIS console, constantly looking for entertainment.
Two days ago, she’d nearly convinced him that it would be totally fine for them to nip off to Space Florida for the day. She’d very nearly convinced him that Donna wouldn't kill them, but he came to his senses before they actually took off.
He half expected that she was still a bit cross with him, but not half as cross as she was with her mother for suggesting a summer job.
“It’d give you something to do,” Donna shrugged. “I know you have your toy shop online, but maybe getting out of the house would do you some good.”
Since then, Rose had looked into a few things, but none of them seemed able to hold her interest for more than an hour. This exasperated Donna, but the Doctor could sympathize– he remembered a time when he’d been unable to sit still or keep his attention on anything for very long either.
Today, the doctor was in his garden, pulling weeds and maintaining the soil. So far, his new sonic barrier seemed to be keeping the slugs at bay, and his cucumbers were just starting to flower.
He glanced at the sun, noting that it was 12:45 and he’d yet to be sighed at by a bored, surly teenager. He frowned. That was unlike her. She slept late when she didn’t have school, but she was usually up by 11 and in the TARDIS by 12:30, looking for something to hold her attention. The pool was decidedly a favourite of hers, and most days she would walk past him in her bathing suit and sunglasses, with her phone and towel in hand, without so much as a ‘Hi’ or ‘good morning’.
By 2 pm, she was usually in the TARDIS kitchen on deck three, which was suspiciously always stocked with her favourites. The Doctor didn’t question it, but he suspected that his ship was just as in love with their guest as he was.
He hadn’t mentioned it, as there was no one left to understand it if he did, but she reminded him of River. Her easy casualness within his ship, the way the TARDIS seemed to speak to her in some language that was beyond him. The way she piled her hair on top of her head and tied it up as she laid by the pool, entirely at home and unbothered by him puttering about in the console room and muttering to himself. Sometimes her presence felt like a life unlived, what it would have meant to be a parent, to have a family on Darillium.
The Doctor glanced at the position of the sun again, making sure he had his angles right and confirmed it was exactly 12:45, and she had yet to emerge from the main house.
The Doctor put down his trowel next to his cucumber patch and wandered through the back doors into the kitchen. Donna and Sean would be at work for several hours, and Sylvia wouldn't be back from her daily visit to her father until at least three. On Thursdays, she brought him home and they would all have dinner together, but today was only Tuesday.
He found Rose easily, sitting on the living room floor in sweats and an oversized T-shirt, fiddling with some jingling plush toy, a baby sprawled out on the floor in front of her.
“Oh,” The Doctor startled. He was used to the lived-in habits of the Temple-Noble household, and everything they did was as predictable to him as clockwork; he could set a watch to their actions, and he regularly used their predictability to calculate the time of day. It was as steady and unchanging as the Earth's rotation around the sun or the placement of the stars in the night sky.
Rose looked up, a smile on her face. “This is Poppy- I’m watching her for the day.”
The Doctor smiled, taking in the child with growing excitement. He hadn’t been around babies in a long while, and he relished the change in their daily routine with the level of enthusiasm that was usually reserved for his adventures, though he supposed this could just as easily be one of his adventures.
“Hello, Poppy,” He greeted the baby happily, coming to sit next to Rose on the floor. “I’m the Doctor.”
The baby laughed happily, gumming her toy and kicking her feet, and the doctor felt something inside him twist with a bone-aching pain he didn’t understand. “What’s that? You want to see my cucumbers?”
Rose snorted, rolling her eyes. “She can’t talk- she didn’t say that.”
“Yes, she did- I speak baby.” He told Rose matter-of-factly, cradling the child in his arms as he stood.
“You do not.” Rose scoffed, getting to her feet to follow after him. “How would she even know you had cucumbers?”
The Doctor shrugged, holding the baby carefully against his chest. “Babies just know these things,” He told her simply, “She looked at me and she just knew I was a gardener.”
The Doctor showed the baby his humble veg patch, and though she looked as disinterested as Rose, he made sure to put on a show for the teen as if he and the baby were in a very deep conversation.
“You know it's funny you mention that, Poppy,” The Doctor said and he tried not to smile at the sound of Rose audibly rolling her eyes, “But you are right, I was having a lot of issues with slugs, but I recently found a solution-”
He launched into a long monologue about his various attempts at slug deterrent, managing to make it sound entertaining enough that the child in his arms was enraptured. His conviction and the wave of his free hand raptured her attention as she listened with her little mouth open and her eyes wide.
“And that, Poppy, is how I banished all slugs and saved the poor defenseless garden veg.” He told her, dipping her in his arms, so she giggled.
“I know!” the Doctor exclaimed, “I am clever, thank you for thinking so, no one around here appreciates me.”
The doctor glanced toward the patio to see Rose snort and cross her arms with a shake of her head. The midday sun catching the gold edges of her hair made him feel almost homesick.
It was after the spring starlight festival, his wife had been sitting in a field surrounded by children of all ages as she wove the native moon flowers they had collected into crowns for each of them, the first time he’d tasted the metallic bitter tang of longing for something they would never have.
He was sterile, like all Timelords, but he had lived a thousand imagined scenarios on Darillium. River had softened on that little red planet, had settled with him in a way neither one of them had ever really dared to dream up, and sometime after year fifteen, he’d begun to imagine the impossible.
Rose was such a good example of that intangible impossibility, and sometimes when the light was just right or she rolled her eyes just so, it felt like that dream was suddenly less far from his grasp.
The doctor bounced the baby in his arms, looking at her sweet face, and felt another wave of longing fill his hearts, a grief so large and multifaceted it nearly stole his breath.
“What’s that?” The doctor asked, looking into Poppy’s wide brown eyes, “You want to hear a story? Well, you're in luck cause I’ve got loads of stories…”
The child smiled gummily, and he couldn't help the grin that spread across his face, looking at her sweet, open expression. “Have you ever heard of an adipose?”
He launched into a baby-safe version of his adventures, gesturing widely and dipping her at the exciting bits, chuckling when she shrieked and giggled at his antics.
Rose stayed on the back patio watching him with a rye smile as he and Poppy waltzed around the garden, chattering about Adipose and vegetable-eating slugs and the moon flowers on Darillium that had bioluminescent petals that glowed a pale yellow and pink.
The doctor spent the entirety of his afternoon playing with Poppy and entertaining Rose by proxy, but eventually Poppy’s eye grew heavy and she put her head down on the Doctor's chest.
“It’s time for her nap,” Rose told him, pulling up the schedule Poppy’s mom had sent over on her phone. “I have a travel cot for her in the den.”
The Doctor dutifully carried the sleeping baby into the house and gently laid her in the cot next to Sylvia's armchair.
Rose turned on the baby monitor and hooked the other onto the waist of her sweats before they silently agreed to move to the kitchen, going to the fridge in search of a cold drink.
“Where is Darillium? You’ve never mentioned it before.”
The Doctor drummed his finger on the kitchen island, his mind wandering back to the red sky and dry atmosphere of that planet. The garden he’d built over twenty-four years, and the sheer number of cucumber sandwiches he’d eaten sitting on his porch looking over the slowly darkening sky.
The life he’d built and shoved into the pockets of his mind until he’d finally stopped moving long enough for the aching loss to settle and demand to be felt.
“Haven't I?” He asked, his voice pitching off with feigned indifference, he didn't truly feel. He hadn’t said the name aloud until today.
“No,” Rose said matter-of-factly, “Like never- and you talk all the time.”
The doctor shrugged, “Well, it's just a small red planet- very rocky but the soil is surprisingly rich- spent a bit of time there once.”
Rose narrows her eyes, seemingly not buying his nonchalance “What was so special about it?”
“Good place for a vegetable patch,” The doctor shrugged, turning his attention to the baby monitor. “How long do human babies nap?”
“Like an hour-ish,” Rose waved away his attempt at changing the subject, “Can you take me there; after school?”
Donna had agreed a few weeks ago that after finishing her A levels she could go on a supervised totally safe trip in the TARDIS. Since then Rose had toyed with the idea of a few places from his stories but she had yet to decide anything beyond the fact that she wanted to go somewhere completely different from the UK.
The doctor laughed. As far as he knew, Darrillium was never anything but quiet and idyllic and safe– it was the perfect Donna-approved place but he would never bring himself to return, not alone.
“You’d be bored– honestly, it's just a little village like here– there are some mountains and a few lakes but it's not very exciting. Just a good place to grow cucumbers.”
Rose stared at him for a long time and he could tell she didn’t believe him. His eyes traced over her unimpressed stare to the baby monitor clipped to her waist, and wished he could force out the words. That he could find the strength in him to tell her about his wife and the little family they’d clawed out for themselves- the time they’d clung to for as long as they could.
The words stayed trapped in his throat and she eventually got bored or distracted and moved on. The Doctor let out a breath when she turned away, unsure why the thought of saying River’s name out loud, of letting someone else bear witness to this bone-deep ache of bereavement, was so impossible for him.
At this point he’d been living in full linear retirement for about 8 months, he and Wilf had a few conversations about war and loss that had been hard but ultimately healing. However, he couldn't find it in him to do the same with River and his life on Darillium.
Not yet. A small part of him said, unwilling to let go or move on from something that he could still maybe possibly solve.
He’d tried before, to calculate how to fix her death- had obsessed over it on Darillium and during the years that followed but in the end had come up short. It had been a century and still part of him couldn’t accept the loss, accepting it meant there was no solution and he couldn’t- wouldn’t- ever accept that.
Rose and the doctor watched Poppy and kept her entertained until her mom came to get her around 3. At which point Rose was handed a crisp 40 quid and they went about the rest of their evening as usual.
Sylvia came home at 4:36 from her visit to Wilf and started pulling out ingredients for dinner. Donna and Sean, came home together having carpooled to work, and went about setting down their various work bags and things by the door. Sylvia called out a greeting, they all discussed their days and like clockwork, the droning relaxed monotony of linear human lives carried on around him.
The doctor smiled, comforted by the familiarity as he set the table like he did every night placing the glassware in front of each place setting. Rose followed behind him with the Brita, filling each glass as life carried on at a calm familiar pace.