Work Text:
Kate’s boots crunch against the dew-speckled frosted grass as she follows the winding trodden path through the cemetery. Her breath forms misty clouds in the air that spiral upwards and evaporate into the lavender-mauve sky. In a nearby tree, a pigeon’s velvet call accompanies the fading dawn chorus, her solitary living companion in the forest of headstones. She lifts her chin, inhaling the scent of bonfire and cold that characterises autumn like nothing else, and she thinks about how much her dad would love this setting.
The headstone sits in the nook of an old oak tree. She’d fallen in love with this spot the moment she set eyes on it; the tree, for her, symbolised her dad’s prowess and strength, the way he would always stand tall in the face of danger and give her shelter and comfort when she needed him to. Backdropped by a shimmering river and hills that burst into colour during the spring and summer, it was the place she knew she could lay him down to rest.
Huddled in her trenchcoat, she lowers her bag of gardening tools and begins to—as she always does—tend to the grave. First, she trims the grass and brushes away the leaves and mud into the nearby shrubbery. Then she replaces the wilted flowers with a bunch of gladioli, orchids and Gerbera daisies, all carefully grown in her own garden for the sole purpose of giving his grave some colour and love in the approaching winter months. She ties an olive-green ribbon around each flower, knotting it in the special way he showed her when she was seven or eight, her fingers deftly working with the ease of breathing or blinking.
Also in her bag is a flask of freshly-made coffee and a crystalline bottle of liquor, his favourite. Raising the bottle in a silent toast, she uncorks it and tips a few drops into the grass, before adding a splash to her coffee.
“You’re definitely going to need this when I tell you what I’ve been up to,” she jokes, her voice sounding strange in the quiet of the graveyard. “You know, if the Doctor hadn’t been there, I would be standing next to you in whatever second life comes after this one. I wouldn’t have even had a funeral, Dad. It was all so fast. I died. The whole universe died.”
She sips her coffee, relishing in the warmth of the liquid compared to the bitter chill of the autumnal morning. “The God of Death… who would’ve thought it? You thought Omega was bad enough… there are actual gods. Only last year, this crazed one called the Toymaker was filling the headquarters with rose petals - yes, I’m still going to keep those headquarters,” she adds, imagining his furrowed brows and his gruff voice complaining about how open UNIT is nowadays. “I spent too much money on them, and for once, I’d like a UNIT building to last more than a few years. It’s worked out for the most part. I know it’s not really to your taste, but I think you’d still like it. If you were around.”
Her shoulders slump. Tears are already welling up in her eyes. “If you were around…” she repeats. “Oh, if you were still around! You would’ve called the Doctor out on going back on his word with Colonel Chidozie, on telling us to try and contain the God of Death himself. I know you always had faith in a bullet, but you would’ve realised long before I did that this was a force that couldn’t be stopped by a gun. You would’ve told him to come back immediately. I trusted that he would - that he would get there in time.”
She gulps down some more coffee, but it does little to stop the sobs rising in her throat. “Did you ever get angry at him, Dad? Because I do. So many times. It’s pathetic, really, and probably selfish of me to think he would care enough to save me above anyone else, but… but there are times when I’ve had to clean up messes long after he’s skipped off in his TARDIS, when I’ve come close to dying because of his foes, when we’ve gone head to head because sometimes he just doesn’t get it. Everything I do, I do for UNIT, for the safety of this planet, for - for you, Dad, and I—he—God, sometimes I wish he’d just look at me and see how tired I am and one day, one day own up to the fact that he promised you that he would look after me and for the most part, he’s done a very shitty job of it!”
She snorts a wet laugh into her coffee. “Listen to me. I sound like a petulant teenager. And the stupid thing is, despite everything, I still adore him and I would throw down my life for him. What sort of dichotomy is that?! One second, I want to punch him, the next, I’m hanging onto every word he says and seeing him as—as a father figure, I suppose. Someone who can somewhat fit into the gaping hole you left when you died.”
A twig snaps behind her. She yelps, coffee splashing out of her flask and onto her hand.
“Sorry, I am so sorry,” says a very familiar voice. “I didn’t want to interrupt, I was waiting for the right moment, and—”
“Doctor,” Kate sighs, rubbing her forehead. Then realisation hits her like a speeding truck. “You heard all of that?”
He comes into her line of vision, his orange leather trenchcoat glinting in the rising sun. “Do you want me to have heard it?”
“No!”
“Then I heard nothing.” He smiles, and she tries to read his eyes, but either she’s too tired to understand or he’s hiding his emotions very well. “May I join you?”
Kate considers, then nods. He sits next to her and salutes the gravestone. “Hello, old friend. I thought you were long overdue a visit. Please do not be mad at me for interrupting your daughter. I can deal with one Lethbridge-Stewart being cross with me, but two? I fear my demise would come about very abruptly.”
She smiles faintly. “I can vouch for him, Dad. It was simply a coincidence that we showed up at the same time. No harm done.”
Silently, the Doctor offers an arm out to her. She shuffles into him, leaning her head on his shoulder, and he presses his cheek into her hair.
“I miss him,” she murmurs. “So very much. Especially now. I… it’s not all bad,” she says, addressing both the Doctor and her dad. “I did get—I did get something good out of the whole Sutekh ordeal.”
Her fingers slip under the sleeve of her coat, tugging at the cuff of a too-big black jumper that smells of cologne and gunpowder and roast potatoes.
“But I think I’m just very tired at the moment.” She closes her eyes, listening to the birdsong, the distant rush of the river, the Doctor’s breathing. “And I always miss you more when I’m tired. Because sometimes I simply don’t know how you did it.”
Whether this is addressed to the Doctor, her dad, or both, she doesn’t know.
The Doctor squeezes her, respectfully silent. She wants to say more, yet the tears are flowing thick and fast now, and so she lets herself cry. She cries for all the time she could’ve had with her dad, all the lost moments, all the questions she should’ve asked him, all the joyful and miserable and angry and scary and loving memories. She cries because she is scared of what the future holds next, scared that she can’t turn to him anymore and ask him to shield her like the big old oak that stands guard over his grave. She cries, and she cries, and she cries, until her eyes are puffy and her cheeks are flushed and her throat is so sore that she can barely muster a sound, let alone a string of words. When she glances up at the Doctor, shaking her head, he nods in understanding.
“Your daughter,” he says to her dad, one hand on his hearts, “is the most brilliant, courageous, kind-hearted person I have ever met. She is the living embodiment of your legacy and she carries it with an honour and strength that I couldn’t begin to imagine having myself. Not only is she a tribute to you, Brigadier, she is a tribute to her own character, even if she does not remember it from time to time. UNIT is safe in her hands, and she is safe with—”
He hesitates, forming the words on his lips.
“You can say it,” Kate croaks out, dabbing at her eyes. “You didn’t hear anything, remember? And at the end of the day, it’s true.”
“Is it?”
“It’s true enough.”
He sighs. “I’m… I’m sorry, Kate.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you forgive me?”
“In time.”
“I will do better.” He lifts his hand in a salute, gaze locked on the Brigadier’s headstone. “I swear to you on both my hearts, Alistair, that I will do better.”
From his breast pocket, he withdraws a single blue hyacinth and tucks it amongst the orchids and daisies and gladioli. Kate finds a spare ribbon and, fingers trembling, knots it around the crimson flower.
“It represents sincerity and constancy,” he explains in a whisper. “I—I was always going to make that promise to him, after Sutekh. But now you can bear witness too, Kate.”
As the sun rises further, the Doctor stands and walks a little distance away so she can say goodbye to her dad in solitude. She leans forward so her forehead rests against the gravestone and imagines his big, weathered arms in his favourite olive-green ribbed-knit jumper enfolding her like a flower encloses a bee. For a moment, she allows herself to forget the dew soaking through her trousers, the taste of coffee and liquor in her mouth, the responsibilities and duties of the day ahead.
For a moment, she is safe in his arms, and all is well.