kalleah | The Hidden Well, Chapter Thirty-Three

kalleah

Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG
Betas:

ivydoor,

np_complete,

platypus, and

sensiblecat

Previous Chapters

In this chapter: Saying goodbye amidst the celebration.
Author's Notes: The final chapter. Epilogue to follow.

--

Despite the ongoing noise of the celebration around her, Emelia couldn't draw her attention away from where Connor sat in the dirt with Jonah on one knee and Ian on the other. Connor was helping Ian spell out the words on the psychic paper. Her heart thudded loudly in her chest, full to bursting with pride and amazement and love for each of them.

"Care for a seat?" said a voice at her side, and she found the Doctor carrying two of the lightweight chairs from inside the restaurant.

Surprised, she assented, and he settled himself in the chair beside her. "Thank you," she told him. Not for the chair; and the smile playing on his lips told her he knew precisely what she meant. His gaze followed hers to settle on the trio of Trabanes. Ian giggled, and Jonah made his rusty, disused laugh, and the pairing was the sweetest, most musical sound she could imagine.

She tried to cover the torrent of emotion she felt with a sip from her glass, and the Doctor tutted and took it out of her hand. Some of the golden liquid spilled onto her trousers.

"Oi!" she said, snatching back for the glass, but he was quicker than she, and turned it up to pour the contents onto the ground. The wine took a moment to absorb into the dusty soil and made a dark red, muddy puddle. "What the hell was that?" she asked, more confused than angry.

Rose, who had been standing a few paces away, joined them in an instant. "Oi, you two!" She looked worried. "Is everything all right?"

Unrepentant, the Doctor handed the empty glass back over to Emelia with a reassuring smile. "Oh yes, we're fine. Now, no more of that for you, not for a while," he scolded, and she couldn't imagine why suddenly he looked so disapproving. "Honestly. You'd think she'd notice," he complained to Rose. He sighed and regarded Emelia carefully. "You don't have any idea, do you?"

"Of course I don't," she answered. "What –"

"We can have a great metaphysical argument about when exactly life begins," he continued, as if she had not spoken, "but scientifically there's no question that pregnancy begins at implantation."

Emelia felt heat rise in her cheeks and did a quick calculation. He could be right. "How can you tell?"

The expression on his face transformed. The disapproving lines around his lips softened and his eyes widened. It was the exactly same look that he wore when he watched Jonah.

"Timelines and possibilities," he said distantly. "You're positively glowing with them, Emelia. Sparkling. All those possible futures. It's beautiful." He stared at her, but he wasn't seeing her at all, and his pupils contracted and dilated as if he were watching something moving beyond and inside her. All at once, his attention snapped back to the present, and he gave her an incongruously boyish, shy smile. "It's quite noticeable if one knows what to look for, and I do." His mood changed again and he waggled a long finger at her. "No more wine for you."

I'm pregnant? She was staggered.

"Congratulations," Rose said, but it was the buzzing of the sonic screwdriver, aimed at her middle, that interrupted Emelia's momentary reverie. She had it out of his hand in a flash and stood, towering above him. His mouth hung slightly open and he looked from her face to the sonic screwdriver in her hand and back again.

"Stop pointing this thing around without asking!" she thundered, shaking it at him to emphasize each word.

"Emelia –" Rose soothed, shooting the Doctor a reproachful look.

"Oh no, don't 'Emelia' me," she snapped, and immediately regretted it. "He's just told me that I'm pregnant and then he starts to scan me with a – what do you call it? a screwdriver? I don't think so." She held it out for him. When he moved to take it, she pulled it back and fixed him with what she hoped was her sternest look. "Ask first, scan second. Promise?"

"I can tell you if it's healthy, and if it's a girl or a boy," he said mildly, and reached out to take the screwdriver from her hand. This time, she let him.

"All right," she answered in a small voice.

He gave one satisfied nod and the blue light flashed against her midriff again. She could hardly hear the buzz of the instrument for the thudding of her own pulse in her ears.

"So?" she demanded.

"The embryo is almost fully embedded in your endometrium. Everything's quite on schedule."

"And?"

He switched off the sonic screwdriver and smiled smugly. "Oh, you don't want me to ruin all the surprises," he said. "No genetic abnormalities other than some traces of Noxtirran DNA, same as you. Perfectly healthy."

He had something she wanted, and predictably, he managed to be both charming and absolutely infuriating about it. "You're not going to tell me, are you?"

"I think you should at least tell Connor that he's going to be a father again before you find out the gender," he said, tucking the sonic screwdriver away. "He might not want to know yet."

She turned around to look at her husband and sons again. Ian bounced up and down on Connor's knee, and Jonah clutched the psychic paper like a lifeline. Connor, for his measure, winced slightly at each of Ian's enthusiastic movements and was undoubtedly regretting his offer to be a chair for both boys. His eyes met hers and she felt the smile unfold across her face.

Another baby, she thought with wonder. She couldn't wait to tell him.

…

As Emelia walked over to her family, Rose swallowed back her own emotion and took the vacated chair. The Doctor stretched out and knotted his hands behind his head. With his elbows bent and his long legs extended in front of him, he looked impossibly tall and slim.

Until he had looked with such wonder at Emelia, she had never considered the possibility that he might want to have more children. Sometimes, I regret the things I can't give you., he had told her. What was she unable to give him in return?

She reached over and took his hand, seeking comfort in the familiar gesture. His fingers readily threaded through hers and held firmly, but not too tightly.

"Boy or a girl?" she asked finally.

He grinned and rolled his head to one side, regarding her with his most satisfied expression. "You'd tell."

"Would not!"

He raised his eyebrows.

"I'm very good at keeping secrets," she said primly.

"Not the fun ones," he pointed out.

"Are we going to tell them about Wilson?" she asked, keeping her voice down.

The amusement on his face dissipated in an instant and his eyes drifted closed. "Do you think we should?"

Not the fun ones. "No," she said, after a moment. "It doesn't do them any good."

His eyes, when they opened, roiled deep and dark with ages of kept secrets and almost-truths and deception. The hand in hers was chill and unmoving. This is what it costs us, she thought. Each time we lie, each time we hide something, it ages us.

"But I know," she said intensely, and squeezed his limp hand in hers. "It's not just you this time. I know, too."

Before she realized he was moving, he had hauled her over into the chair with him. She was slung sideways across his hips, her head cradled into his shoulder, his arms crushing her against him. The little foldable chair from the restaurant shuddered with the movement and the double weight. Rose didn't care; they could collapse into a pile of broken chair and dust in the middle of Arisbe Project with all the world – literally – staring.

He relaxed his smothering grip around her and, with the softest touch, tilted her chin up to face him. The kiss was gentle, lingering at first and then more intimate. When someone whooped and began to applaud, the Doctor separated from her.

"Oi!" he yelled. "Mind your own business!" Her mad grin reflected in his and he leaned in to kiss her again, ignoring the crowd.

…

His good mood restored, the Doctor helped himself to a plateful of sweets. Rose stood next to him and tried not to blush at the ribald teasing prompted by their rather public display of affection. He had never hesitated to hold her hand or squeeze into her personal space, but he had never snogged her senseless in front of a crowd before. At the moment, he seemed blissfully unaware, leaving piles of naked cake behind where he ate the thick icing around it.

"How long have you been married?" asked Meg Pathkind, who was kindly trying to redirect the conversation to more family-friendly territory.

"Oh," said Rose. "We're not – I mean –" The Doctor wasn't going to help. He had put the remaining cake into his mouth in one impossibly large bite. "Not married." She didn't know about the standards of this time or place, whether she had stumbled into an admission of immorality that would scandalise everyone.

Meg stared, and there was a pause in the conversation around them. Rose swallowed. When it came, the reaction was no less shocking than if someone had thrown a stone at her.

They burst out laughing.

"What?" she said, trying to understand the source of everyone's amusement.

Meg shushed everyone and composed herself. "Rose, sweetheart, are you serious?"

"Yeah," she said, looking around. No one looked outraged, or indignant – merely red-faced from laughing. "What's so funny?" She looked at the Doctor. He was still chewing the same piece of cake, like a cow with her cud. He probably intended to keep doing it until the subject had safely changed.

Meg took her by the arm and spoke confidentially. "I know this is all probably very different from where – when – you come from, but here, when we take our partner's name and move in together, that's marriage. We'll have a nice party sometime, but that's usually after the couple has had time to settle in."

"Oh," Rose said. Then: "Oh." She disentangled herself from Meg and went to stand in front of the Doctor. She took his plate and handed it to someone in the crowd. "Could you give us a moment, please?"

The crowd murmured and obligingly shuffled back.

"Swallow that," she told him.

He did.

"Did you know about this?"

"Well," he waffled, tugging on his ear and looking everywhere around her but not quite at her. "I know a lot of things. Some of them are more at the front of my mind than others."

"You're the one who took my name, Doctor Tyler."

His sudden, direct gaze set her off balance. "Yes. I did."

"Did you know –" She stopped. "I thought I'd know if I got married," she said, feeling inexplicably petty. "Don't I have to say yes or something?"

He shifted from one foot to the other and looked at his trainers. "Laws and customs do vary considerably from place to place, of course," he babbled. "You don't even have to leave your own time to see vast differences between –"

"Oh my God," she said. "This isn't our first time, is it?"

…

As the last of the celebration died down around him, Ian Trabane showed no signs of slowing down. Rose watched him bounce and skitter in laps around his mother, who eyed him warily and said something disparaging about the amount of sugar he had ingested.

Connor put his arm around Emelia and laughed. He was a changed man; his worries seemed to have melted away, leaving behind a younger-looking, heartier, happy man. Rose couldn't help but smile back.

The light touch, when it came, was still familiar for all its absence tonight, and Rose relaxed into silent communion with Jonah in a way that she never would have imagined only days before. He held out the leather wallet to her, although he could have spoken to her far more easily in his mind. She crossed the few steps between them and took the psychic paper from him.

It's okay. I know you'll come back.

She found herself utterly unable to frame a reply to such a statement in these new and imprecise words that he wanted to use.

Quiet as a cat, the Doctor had come to join them. "Course we will," he said. He reached out for Rose's free hand and quick as lightning, the circuit between the three of them completed.

She could hear the rumble of everyone's minds outside the bubble she instinctively threw up around her, but it was background noise: a gentle hum. The Doctor's approval tickled at her and despite the flush of pride she felt at that, she clutched on to her self-control.

Jonah was quiet, amidst all the chatter, and she queried him gently. Her hand tingled where she still held the psychic paper and she looked down to find words spelling out across it.

I want to talk this way now.

The connection between them dimmed and she was back in the world, with the Doctor's hand in hers and the clatter of tables being moved back inside the restaurant.

"I'm not just leaving. We have responsibilities here," she said to him.

"Never said we didn't."

"We'll need to come back and make sure Jonah's getting along. He's still learning. We can't leave him on his own."

"Quite right."

"You're not going to tell me if it's a girl or a boy?"

"You'll have to find out next time."