"So, you're Amelia?"
"Does this mean you're gonna be my big sister?"
Jenny did a double take, "An answer for an answer."
"I'm Amelia Pond."
"And I'm Jenny. I may be your big sister; it all depends of whether we're allowed to take you home or not."
"They get us to make these bracelets. Don't see the point of it, really." She handed the pink bracelet to Jenny, the blue bracelet to the Master, and the orange bracelet... the Doctor visibly paled. The Master quite visibly grinned.
"I wasn't allowed another daddy one."
"I'm the mother again."
"Again?"
"You do have a mothering instinct, Theta; I don't see why you shouldn't get the mummy bracelet."
Jack popped in, "You can take Amelia home today, guys."
"There's a crack in my wall."
Both men squinted at the offending shape, the Doctor finally saying "That wasn't there before."
"We can always get some sealant tomorrow."
"She seemed disturbed by that crack."
"It was just a crack, we'll fill it and she'll get over it."
"Yeah, but still…"
"What was meant by 'again'? The mother 'again'?" they were both startled to find Amelia standing behind them, hands on hips with a pout extremely evident on her face, "I have a right to know, considering you're my new parents."
"You're supposed to be in bed."
"Tell me what you're hiding and I'll be out like a light."
"You surely will, it's all quite boring."
"I can handle boring – Tell me."
The three were seated at the kitchen table, each with a mug of tea or coffee clasped in their hands.
"You know we're aliens, right?"
"Yeah…?"
Yeah well, our species – the Time Lords of the planet Gallifrey – were once at war with an emotionless, murderous species called the Daleks. Eventually both species perished in something we call 'The Time War', and only I was left to protect the universe and the order of all things. But the Daleks kept coming back, in small droves and big fleets, and no doubt they'll keep coming back as they are persistent buggers. But, a while after the war I'd discovered something: my old friend-and-enemy, who was perhaps the only of our kind who understood me and my love of travelling, had been resurrected before the end to be a warrior on the front lines. But he'd seen the death and destruction that this war had brought, and he was terrified by it. So he ran. He would surely be called a deserter of war, but you couldn't really blame him; anyone in their right mind wouldn't want to stay in that hell. I ended the Time War, by sealing it all in a timelock, and of course I had no idea then that my friend had survived. But after a few years, he returned in a different time, with a new face and old age and a human body. He was human because he'd wanted to forget the war, and so sealed his Gallifreyan past in an old keepsake – a fobwatch. When we met up again in that time, he'd never met me and I didn't know him because he was a completely different person. I had no reason to be suspicious, he seemed like an ordinary [if quite intelligent] human being, but when he changed back and I realized it was him I was too late. A little while later when I managed to get back to my own time [as he'd stolen the TARDIS, you see], I found him again, but he was still as crazy as before and kept me locked up in a cage for almost a year, the rest of that year I had spent in a wheelchair. But when everything was fixed and back to how it should have been, he died from a gunshot wound just to spite me. He could have easily regenerated – we've already told you about regeneration – but he wanted to see me suffer, so he decided to die. A few years later, and he was resurrected again, and was more insane than ever. In the end we found out that his insanity, a drum beat in his head, was actually a link the Time Lords had put in his head when we were kids so they could make their way back into the universe if the need ever arose," the Doctor continued, "When they came back, they were all just as crazy as him, if not more, and when I managed to destroy the link and send them all back into the timelock, my friend's head became clear and free for the first time in his life since childhood, and he was able to see all that he'd done with his life, and since his head was now clear he was able to create his own personality, something that he'd never been able to even think about doing when he was under the control of the 'drums'. As he developed, he discovered what he could have been, and I discovered the friend I'd so dearly missed. As things progressed, our relationship became far more than platonic, but we encountered the Daleks again, and they were syphoning energy from a metal planet. We rescued their prisoners and rerouted the setup so that the Daleks themselves were powering the entire planet, and one of the prisoners was a small human boy called Matthew. He was orphaned as his entire family had been killed by aliens, so Jack had been working to get him adopted. Eventually, after we got married, we decided to adopt him, but it didn't work out; on the day we went to collect him, we'd found out that they'd found his godparents, so we weren't allowed to adopt him. I was devastated, my only daughter was in tears and my friend was distraught as we'd all bonded with him. We almost gave up on adoption after that, but… Then we met you and we couldn't be happier."
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