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stuffandnosense · 6 years ago

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The Boy Who Waited

Plance Mini Bang time! @planceminibang

Fic on AO3! >>

Summary: Plance Pond/11th Doctor era Doctor Who AU.

Lance talked about the Doctor for most of their lives. Stories about the alien woman with snow-white hair and pointed ears and pinks marks on her cheeks. The alien who crashed into the back garden Lance’s mother kept so immaculate, in a spaceship shaped like a blue phone box. When they were kids it was always ‘the Doctor this,’ ‘the Doctor that’...if he was so obsessed with that alien from his imagination, how did he have room to love her too?

Pidge, trapped on a Galra ship, tells her newborn son about his father, and how Lance and the Doctor (Allura) are going to find them.

Rating: T | Words: 6150

Tags: doctor who au, plance au, hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending, Plance are the ponds, Allura is the Doctor

Art by: the wonderful @firstdove15 | ART HERE & HERE

Betas: the equally wonderful @rueitae and @yuzuling!

____________________________

“One varga.”

The door to the sterile white cell closes with a reverberating clang that seems far too final, even though Pidge knows the strange woman will be back in an hour just as she promised.

To take her son away.

Her fingers tremble as she picks at the edges of the blanket wrapped around the baby in her arms. Her son. LANCE’S son. Barely a week old and they want to take him away, to who knows where, and she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t know why she’s here.

One moment she and Lance were laughing. Getting the baby’s room ready. Baby-proofing the rest of the house even though that probably wasn’t strictly necessary yet, it wasn’t like he’d be crawling around for at least several months, but Lance insisted and she wasn’t going to stop him; it was cute…

She fell asleep on the couch after painting. Two months ago. She thinks.

She’s been in this cell since.

“What am I supposed to do in an hour?” she wonders aloud. The last bit comes out in a sob.

Where is Lance? Where is the Doctor? They should have come for her by now. They’re coming. They have to be.

When her son stirs, she holds him close and whispers. “It’s all right...they’ll come...and if we have to search the universe for you, we’ll get you home.”

A tiny yawn is her only answer, and even though her chest aches, Pidge can’t help laughing.

“You remind me of your dad already. I swear, he should have been a cat.” She could have sworn he’d been curled around her on the couch in that final memory, but something must have happened. She woke here alone.

It’s a Galra ship, or outpost. That much she can tell by the view from her reinforced window—looking out over some sort of cargo bay or gathering area, everything out there purple and dark and in stark contrast to her cell. Galra swarm the floor, organizing cargo and running drills, and maybe it's meant to intimidate her. To remind her that she’s surrounded.

Nothing else makes sense. Galra ships don’t have white cells like this, and they don’t work with anyone who isn’t Galra. Usually. But the strange woman who keeps watch over her isn’t Galra. She looks human, except for the black device over one eye.

The one time she answered, of the many times Pidge has demanded to know why she is here, the woman only gave her one clue.

“Blame the woman you call The Doctor.”

***

Lance talked about the Doctor for most of their lives. It started when they were kids. Stories about the alien woman with snow-white hair and pointed ears and pinks marks on her cheeks. The alien who crashed into the back garden Lance’s mother kept so immaculate, in a spaceship shaped like a blue phone box.

There were pictures all over Lance’s childhood room, in his house across the street from the Holts. Crayons, colored pencils, paints when he was older. Sometimes Pidge still wonders if the Doctor is why Lance learned to paint in the first place. So he could do her likeness better justice.

“Why does she matter so much to you?” Pidge asked, more than once. “It was a dream, Lance! A dream you had when we were kids.”

Lance would look at her with those wide blue eyes and insist she was real. Sometimes with paint on his nose, or rubbed across his cheeks because he wasn’t paying attention to what was left on his hands.

She used to wonder if he realized how irresistible that spark in his eyes made him. If he knew how much she wanted to wipe the paint from his nose and kiss it. And somehow that was all before she even realized how much she was really in love with him.

“It wasn’t a dream!” Lance insisted. “You saw the broken fence and the crushed bushes and stuff the night she crashed.”

“Lance, some drunk probably crashed through the fence…”

But he would smile at her. Every time. And tell her he knew she’d believe him eventually. The first time he kissed her—sort of—was in high school, after one of those arguments. He shrugged as he got up, and the way he looked at her so fondly maybe she should have known something would happen, but she was still surprised when he dropped a kiss on her cheek as he passed.

“It’s okay, I love you anyway. Come on, Mom’s probably done with dinner if you want to stay.”

Maybe that was when she started to figure it out. When they were kids it was always ‘the Doctor this,’ ‘the Doctor that’...if he was so obsessed with that alien from his imagination, how did he have room to love her too?

But he did. And it took Pidge maybe too long to realize he always had.

***

“Katie Holt? That is you, isn’t it?”

Pidge wasn’t sure how she expected the night before her wedding to go, but finding a strange woman in her bedroom was not something she had considered to be in the realm of possibility. Romelle and Nadia had just dropped her home after her admittedly-not-that-wild bachelorette party, and she was not planning anything else other than staring at the ceiling until morning.

It took her somewhat-tipsy mind long enough to process the fact that there was a stranger in her parents’ house that she didn’t immediately realize she should have recognized the face. The cheek marks and white hair. The pointed ears that no human had any business having. The colorful clothing.

“I...yes? Who…? What are you…?”

“Good! Not much time. Need to go now!”

It wasn’t until her hand was grabbed and she was being dragged down the hallway that Pidge realized—

“Wait! Wait a minute, you’re—!”

The box was in their living room. Just standing there, the door creaking open and letting orange-gold light seep out onto the carpet in the dimness of the house at almost midnight. Pidge tried to protest when the woman dragged her inside, but as the door shut behind them, they weren’t cramped in as she expected.

Not cramped at all. The space on the other side of the door was bigger than her parents’ entire house. And she’d seen it all before. In Lance’s drawings. She’d never understood how it could fit inside the blue box exterior before, but…

“So sorry to snatch you on such short notice—our plan was certainly to ease you in a bit better—but it seems Lance has gotten himself into some trouble.”

“That doesn’t...surprise me...wait this is…!” Pidge was spinning on her feet, trying to understand. But there was really only one way. “The inside is in a different dimension!” When she glanced at the woman again—the Doctor, or whatever she was— she was blinking at Pidge with raised eyebrows.

“Yes. Exactly.” She cocked her head. “Hmm, I suppose I can see why Lance likes you.”

The mention of his name snapped Pidge out of it. “Lance! You said he was in trouble? What are you talking about? Oh god, you’re real, this is insane. Where’s Lance! I can’t believe he met an alien before I did. Dad and Matt would be having a fit right now…”

Her mind was doing somersaults, but the Doctor seemed used to that. She was already back to her console, running circles around a control board laid out around some sort of center tower column, and the apparatus above it was already rising and falling, making a groaning noise.

“Nothing entirely unusual for us, some locals who’ve got the wrong idea, but unfortunately they seem to like wood quite a bit. No good for the sonic…” the Doctor was babbling.

“The what?”

The Doctor held up some sort of long thin device shaped almost like a screwdriver, but with a light on the end. When she pressed something it began to whir.

“Is that…? Is that a sonic screwdriver?” Pidge asked, hesitant. It didn’t look as if it could be anything else, but that was ridiculous.

“Yes!” came the excited answer.

“Oh. Uhm...Why does a screwdriver need to be sonic?”

The Doctor looked like she was about to retort, but the—ship?—shuddered as the groaning noise stopped. “We’ll address that later,” she said instead. “Come on!”

Pidge found herself dragged from the box, and out to somewhere entirely different than before. Not her parents’ living room, but a dark stone corridor.

“We moved!”

“Well, yes, that’s what a spaceship does after all,” the Doctor answered.

“Pidge!” The voice was Lance, she would know his voice anywhere, but in the dimness, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust—to find his face between the bars in the window of a heavy wooden door. “What are you doing here! Doctor, what is she doing here! I thought we—!”

“Your cell is too small for the TARDIS to materialize in, and I couldn’t sonic the door, and we DO seem to be a bit pressed for time!” she answered, hands on hips.

Another voice sighed from near the floor. “I would have had it soon enough.”

Pidge was reeling. The dark-haired man poking at the wiring in what actually seemed to be a rather sophisticated technologically-based locking system—out of place here—was new to her. Not that everything else wasn’t, but at least she’d seen Lance’s drawings and paintings of the woman and the inside of her ship.

“Who are you? I’ve heard about the Doctor; I haven’t heard about you.”

Lance scrubbed a hand over his face. “That’s Keith. I don’t know why he’s here either.”

Keith snorted. “I’d rather the locals didn’t execute you; that’s not a good enough reason?”

Lance looked at the Doctor, pleading. “Do we need him here? Why can’t you just sonic it open.”

“Because it’s wood!” The Doctor and Keith answered at the same time, and Doctor seemed much more surprised by the fact that they’d chorused than he was.

Pidge was still trying to process the ‘execution’ bit. “Excuse me, WHO wants to execute my fiance?”

The Doctor shrugged a bit. “The Doviens. Nice lot, but a little too wary of strangers. Strange fascination with wood and stone dungeons even though they’ve otherwise advanced far beyond that, too, apparently.”

Her heart pounding faster, Pidge reached for the open panel Keith was digging around in, and the tools he was holding. “Give me that!”

He let her have them, and within a few moments, she had the door open. She doesn’t remember much more of that adventure, and it might have something to do with the dashing into the TARDIS quickly after that because they’d been discovered and were being shot at.

With both laser-like weapons and flaming arrows, no less.

So adrenaline has fuzzed much of the memory, but she does remember Lance pulling her into his chest as soon as they were safely inside, and apologizing for getting her into all of this in such a decidedly not-fun way.

Keith stuck around until the TARDIS landed again elsewhere, but not much longer. Before the doors even opened he turned a few dials on some strange watch-like mechanism on a leather strap on his wrist. He smiled at them, but there was something melancholy about it.

“Until next time,” he said.

Then he tapped a button on the wrist device and disappeared with a flash and a bang.

The Doctor took them sightseeing after that, perhaps to apologize, and Pidge never thought she would be so close to space. Leaning out the TARDIS doors, protected by its’ atmosphere in the middle of a nebula, was more than enough to make up for a few moments of panic and confusion.

It didn’t take her long to realize that running was ALWAYS a large part of being around the Doctor, but with Lance it didn’t matter.

“How long have you been doing this?” she asked him that night, nestled against his side in a bedroom in the TARDIS.

“Actually I didn’t see her again until a few months ago. She showed up in our garden again, and well…” Lance motioned around them. To the almost glowing, golden walls and the feeling around them, like the ship was alive. It was, really, she found out. It had a mind of its own.

It was beautiful. Amazing. And with the fresh memory of the nebula Pidge could understand why Lance had gone with the Doctor, but for a moment that night, her heart sunk.

“So...you just left with her…”

Lance blinked at her, but she only saw it from the corner of her eye. She couldn't look him in the face. Not right then. But she felt him wrapping himself around her, kissing her head, her face, everything, until she laughed.

“It’s not like that,” he promised, grinning. “I love YOU, okay? The Doctor is a friend.”

“Your imaginary friend,” Pidge laughed.

“Who also happens to be real, but sure.”

She settled again, relaxing against him. “And who’s that Keith guy?”

Lance snorted. “We have no idea. He just shows up sometimes. He doesn’t have a TARDIS, I don’t think, but he has that wrist thing that lets him time travel and all too. It’s from the future or something. So things get...interesting.”

“‘Interesting?’”

“You’ll see.” He hesitated. “If you want to stay, I mean. You’ll stay, right?”

“Are you kidding? Of course I’m staying.”

***

“It took us what was probably the equivalent of four or five months just to get back for our own wedding...and then it was right back to the TARDIS. That was our life for a while, and it was...amazing. I could tell you stories for days…”

Pidge bites her lip to hold back a sob, tracing a thumb across her son’s face. Blue-gray eyes that will probably darken someday to look like his father’s blink up at her sleepily.

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this…” she whispers. “I’m not an...over-romantic idiot, or something. I know you’ll never remember this. You’re too young. I guess it just feels wrong not to, and...and I don’t know what else to do.”

He yawns, and it looks almost like he’s smiling at her.

“Yeah...you’re right...be positive. That’s what your dad would say.”

***

“Doctor, you’ve been fiddling with that box since we left the museum, what is it?” Pidge asked.

The Doctor had taken them to what she claimed was the largest museum ever; an entire planet of history and exhibits that she’d thoroughly enjoyed and Lance had tolerated for her sake. But at some point they’d split up, and found themselves sprinting back to the TARDIS in the end to avoid security when the Doctor found them again with some sort of box-like metal contraption stuck under her arm and guards on her heels.

She’d clearly stolen it, but she always had her reasons for these things. She’d connected the device to her console and had it scanning data for hours now.

“Why are you so interested in that thing?” Lance added.

The Doctor pointed to the symbols scratched hastily into one side of it. “Time and space coordinates, but written in Old High Gallifreyan. But this is NOT a Gallifreyan device. I think someone is trying to get my attention. We’ll know if the computer finds anything interesting. If it doesn’t we’ll just pop over there anyway.”

“I guess that answers the question of where to next,” Lance teased.

Pidge chuckled, leaning into her new husband’s shoulder. “You mean the question of what kind of trouble do we want to get into next?”

“Don’t be like that!” Lance countered. “I mean sure, getting almost killed on our honeymoon wasn’t the most ideal thing ever, but it’s not like we find trouble EVERYWHERE.”

“Almost everywhere. More than 50% of everywhere. Probably 75% of everywhere.”

“Be positive.”

Pidge leaned in closer and kissed his cheek. “I’m positive I love it anyway.”

Lance still went red in the cheeks at the strangest of times. Or maybe it was just the lighting in the control room. He practically squeaked as he cleared his throat and tried to answer the Doctor. “A-Anyway—”

She cut him off when a sudden insistent beeping came from her monitor. “Hold on. The computer found something. What…?” Her eyes widened briefly as she read the alert, and she went immediately to smashing switches. The TARDIS groaned as they were whisked through the time vortex.

“What is it?” Lance asked.

“Keith,” she said shortly. “He seems to be the one in trouble at the moment.”

They didn’t have the chance to ask more questions before the TARDIS slowed, presumably exiting the time vortex at another point in space. Wherever they needed to be.

“Expanding atmosphere!” the Doctor cried. One more lever pulled and she darted for the doors, pulling them open on the open space between the TARDIS and another ship. Not a Galra ship or anything Pidge has seen before. A glittering silver monstrosity.

And an open airlock, with a familiar form being pulled through the invisible air corridor extended between the ships, presumably by pushed by what must have been an explosive decompression.

The Doctor clung to the door frame with one arm and held out her other hand to catch Keith’s, to slow him down before they both tumbled backwards onto the TARDIS floor in a tangle of arms and legs.

The Doctor seemed fine, but Keith cried out from the impact, curling in on himself after he rolled off of her. She rolled with him, catching his arm. “Keith? Are you all right?”

“I’ll make it,” he gasped. “Get us out of here.”

Pidge and Lance crowded closer, Lance shutting the doors and Pidge crouching over Keith as the Doctor jumped back to her feet to race back to her console and take them away again.

Keith was shivering. Pidge wasn’t sure if it was the brief flight through space—though he’d been protected by the air corridor—or his clear injures. Cuts and bruises marred his face and arms. She couldn’t see anything else, but he was holding his chest gingerly and didn’t seem in any hurry to get up.

The TARDIS shook once before they were back in the time vortex, and Pidge wondered if the other ship had fired at them. She reached for Keith on instinct when he shouted again from the shaking.

“How bad is it?” Pidge asked. Something clenched in her chest when he groaned and closed a hand around the one she rested on his shoulder.

Lance crouched beside them. “What happened to you?”

“Long...long story.”

***

“No! No no no no, please!”

She begs, but they take her son anyway. They pry him from her arms and shove her down while the strange woman watches. They give the baby to her and Pidge springs back up, adrenaline coursing, tried to break through the Galra guards twice her height to take her son back, but they keep her away easily.

“You don’t have to do this!”

The woman just levels a cold stare at her. “You have no idea what I have to do.”

The Galra soldiers shove her back again, back to the floor, and it’s enough to give them time to retreat. To shut the door and leave her alone.

Pidge doesn’t bother to get up, curling up against the foot of the bed she gave birth in a week ago. The sterile cell is all but silent, ringing only with the reverberation of the closed door. Until she sobs. There isn’t any reason to hold it back anymore. The baby can’t hear her and neither can her captors.

Crying gives way, eventually, to exhaustion. Too much to move from the floor. Her face is still buried in her knees the next time the door opens. Her hair, grown out since she’s been here, covers even the light from the room, and she has no intention of looking up.

She doesn’t care who it is.

“I’m not hungry, and if you’ve come to gloat, get it over with and leave me alone,” she mumbles.

Pidge holds her breath, waiting in the darkness for the steps to retreat or for the woman to make more of her strange boasts. Instead all she hears is a sharp intake of breath, and a small cry.

A cry she knows.

“Months, and that’s how you say hello?” a voice asks. She knows the voice, too.

Pidge pulls in a gasp of her own, starting upright and pushing up to her feet against the bed. “Lance…!”

She doesn’t know how, but it’s her husband, half-covered in stolen Galra armor over his dark clothes...and carrying their son.

He gives her a watery smile. “Hi…”

He’s barely breathed it out before Pidge stumbles forward, grasping for his arms to hold herself up and pulling his head down for a hungry kiss.

She laughs when the kiss finally ends, resting her face against his cheek. “Aren’t you a little short for a Galra?”

“You’re one to talk,” he chuckles.

A quiet bleat from between them makes her draw back, reaching to stroke the short silky hair on the side of her son’s small head.

“Hey, you!” She kisses the baby’s nose and looks back up at Lance in wonder. “How did you find him?”

He swallows, clinging reverently, protectively to the small form in his arms. “On accident. I’m glad I did; that woman was trying to get him on another ship.”

“How did you find US?”

“The Doctor has her ways, and I have mine.” Lance leans close again, resting his forehead against hers. “We haven’t stopped looking since the day you disappeared.”

“I knew you would, I just didn’t know how long it would take…” Pidge trails off, shivering. Lance is trying to hold the baby and her at once; when he realizes it isn’t working well he guides her the few steps back to the bed, to sit her on the edge of it and make it safer and easier to cradle them both against him.

“They almost took him,” she whispers into his shoulder. “And I don’t even know why.”

“Neither do we.” Lance smiles down at their son, but when he speaks again it comes out choked. “He’s cute.”

“Like his dad,” Pidge teases gently.

Small fingers clasp around one of his, and Lance looks ready to cry even with the grin still tugging at his mouth. “Does he have a name yet?”

“Forrest, after my grandpa...you seemed on board when I made the suggestion a few months ago and I didn't want the poor kid to go without a name.”

“I like it.”

“You can pick his middle name if you want to.”

“After we get out of here,” he sighs.

Pidge winces. “How are we doing that?”

As if on cue, the faint sounds from the cargo bay below the cell grow to a sudden roar of weapons’ fire and shouts. They both twist to look back at the window, but it goes dark. Some sort of emergency programming, maybe.

“The Doctor has friends,” Lance says. “WE have friends.”

“Who’s here?”

“Blades and Olkari, Captain Olia and her crew, and some of the others. We weren't going to let anything happen to you.”

By the time they leave the cell, leaving Lance’s stolen Galra armor behind, the ship is safe under the control of their allies. They find the TARDIS and a gathering of faces Pidge recognizes in the hold below, but no Doctor yet. A group of Blades and Olia’s crew are guarding a contingent of defeated Galra soldiers being led down to the brig.

“They don’t like being taken prisoner rather than killed,” Kolivan comments.

Olia snorts. “Tough. They can deal with it. We’re not stooping to their level.”

“Where’s the Doctor?” Lance asks.

“With Ryner,” Olia answers. “Trying to figure out why they did this, I think.”

Pidge sighs. “I hope they find something...two or three months here, and they didn’t tell me anything except that it had something to do with her.”

She can’t blame the Doctor. There are so many out there who hate her for what she does; for helping people. For foiling wrong where she finds it. There’s no way to know what taking her son would have to do with that, but Pidge can’t see how it would be the Doctor’s fault. Not really.

Someone finds an empty crate and blankets. Somewhere to let Forrest sleep while she and Lance perch on another crate beside it, holding his little fingers and watching him while they wait near the TARDIS. It’s nice just to sit. To be quiet and together and safe.

Pidge tries not to think about the fact that Kolivan, in particular, seems uneasy about something. She’s nearly given up trying to ignore it when the cargo bay doors open. The Doctor, Ryner, and a couple of other Olkari returning to the bay.

Lance pops up immediately. “Doctor! Did you find anything?”

“Nothing definitive, I’m afraid. But...something, yes.”

“Like what?”

She doesn’t answer immediately. She swoops over to them, wrapping Pidge in an embrace as the shorter human gets to her feet. “Pidge! There you are! Thank goodness you’re all right. I’m sorry it took so long.”

“I knew you were coming but...what are you talking about? What did you find?”

The Doctor leans down to peer curiously at the sleeping baby. “We ah...well..it seems they took quite a few scans of little Forrest here. It seems his DNA is somehow tied together with something quite a bit like Time Lord DNA.”

Lance gapes. “What?”

“How is that possible?” Pidge questions. She looks from Lance back to the Doctor. “He’s just—we’re his parents. We’re both human.”

The Doctor looks uncomfortable. “Yes of course, but, you see, Ryner seems to think that if he was...well…”

“If he was conceived on the TARDIS,” Ryner offers, “it could be possible. If the TARDIS was in flight, in the time vortex at the time, it could have had an effect on the child.”

“You never told us that was a possible side-effect!” Pidge cries, gathering her son up out of his makeshift bed. Lance reaches out to help, to pull them both to him.

“How was I to know!” the Doctor answers. “The only people traveling by TARDIS before now who might have done THAT aboard one were all Time Lords already!”

“What are you saying?” Lance is asking, urgent. “What does it mean? Is he okay?”

“The scans all seem to indicate that your son is perfectly fine, and perfectly healthy,” Ryner says quickly. “He is simply...more than human.”

The Doctor’s head tilts to the side as she looks at Forrest, clearly fascinated even while she still seems apologetic. “There’s no way to know how it will manifest, but it shouldn’t be anything troublesome. He may simply have a longer lifespan, or he may even be able to regenerate.”

She grins when the baby wakes and gurgles at her. “Hello! Wonderful to meet you...yes, the new tall one is your Dad.” A pause, more gurgling. “No, he wasn’t trying to get milk from the wrong part of Mommy; that’s called kissing. It’s something grown-ups do, and they really should have gotten a room.”

“Doctor!” Lance yelps.

“What are you doing?” Pidge asks. She can feel her face heating up, suddenly sure she’s blushing as much as Lance is.

The Doctor blinks at her. “I speak Baby,” she says, as if it’s the most obvious and usual thing in the world.

“No you don’t…”

“Of course I do; I speak everything.” While Pidge is trying to compute that, the Doctor casts her gaze over to the others. “Kolivan, what is it? You’re still back there looking absolutely consternated about something; what seems to be the problem?”

The Blade leader raises an eyebrow at her, but he answers. “This was too easy,” he says. His attention is focused out the open space doors, through the transparent forcefield separating the bay from space. “Far too easy.”

“You sound like a bad film.”

Olia crosses her arms and shrugs. “He’s right, though. It’s weird.”

Pidge swallows. “Does it matter?” Her eyes shift back to her son in her arms just in time to realize that, somehow, he’s sparkling.

She doesn’t have a chance to understand what that means before her arms are empty.

“Lance!” she screams, but there’s nothing he can do. What could he do? “Doctor!”

The others are moving, Lance shouting wordlessly, the Doctor shocked, Kolivan and Olia and Ryner barking into their comms looking for answers.

Outside the space doors, the sudden flash of a cloaked ship disappearing into hyperspace.

“The child was transported. They must have tagged him,” Kolivan is saying.

“The Galra aren’t supposed to have that kind of technology!” Olia cries. “You don’t even have that kind of technology!”

“We don’t know who they were working with. The technology does exist,” Ryner answers.

“Where is he!” Pidge shouts. She doesn’t know at who, really. “Where did they go!”

“We cannot track them through a hyperspace jump,” Kolivan says, apologetic.

“Then we’ll figure out how!” the Doctor snaps.

“Of course we will find them—”

“I mean now!”

“Doctor.” Ryner, sharp but firm. “This is not his fault. Or the fault of anyone here.”

Pidge tunes out their arguments when she realizes that it isn’t going to be fixed now. They aren’t going to get their son back. Not right now.

Adrenaline seeps away and the raised voices fade. She thinks there are tears on her cheeks, but she isn’t sure. A quiet sob above her head, and she knows Lance is crying. He comes with her when she lets herself sink to the floor.

“I’m...I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…” The Doctor’s voice.

But Pidge closes her eyes and shuts that out, too.

***

“You haven’t told us anything about what happened, and you’re leaving?” the Doctor questioned.

Keith, cleaned up and treated and wearing fresh clothes borrowed from the stockpiles of various clothing in the TARDIS, slid off the edge of one of the beds in the infirmary.

“You get in enough trouble on your own,” he laughed, bringing an arm up to type coordinates into the device on his wrist. He couldn’t quite hide the wince when he did. “But thank you...for the rescue. And the replacement interface panel for this thing.”

“Your injuries are still healing,” Pidge protested.

The Doctor crossed her arms and fixed him with a stare. “And I would like to know how you know Old High Gallifreyan.”

He smiled a little, but it was that strange smile, the melancholy one. The one that made Pidge wonder if he was really all right at all. “Don’t worry, you’ll know someday,” he told them.

“You’re always running off,” Pidge said quietly.

The answer was even softer, and he wouldn’t quite look at her. “Only when I have to.”

What was that supposed to mean?

“Even at our wedding,” Lance was saying. He paused. “WHY were you at our wedding?”

Keith smiled again before he was gone. “You’ll figure that one out soon enough too.”

***

A flash and a familiar sparking and banging cut the silence in the bay. Pidge knows who she’ll see when she looks up, but she doesn’t bother to at first. The doctor is already storming toward the source of the sound, her voice already raised.

“You! How many times have I - have WE been there when you needed us? Where were you!”

A calm voice answers. “I couldn’t be here for this. I couldn’t have done anything.”

“Why not!”

Lance is already looking across the bay at them when Pidge manages to pick her head up from his chest. The Doctor, and Keith. Keith still calm even as she rages at him.

“I couldn’t be here because I can’t break the rules any more than you can.”

“Which rules…?”

“Of time, Doctor. I shouldn’t have to tell you that; they’re the only ones you care about, and even then only when it suits you.”

“I—”

A small smile. “Don’t worry, I love it about you. Usually. When it’s not getting you into trouble.”

She huffs back. “Who ARE you? Really.”

“Why does this matter?” Pidge questions, climbing tiredly to her feet. Lance follows her up, quiet. “Why does ANY of this matter? My son is—!”

“I’m sorry, Katie,” Keith interrupts, not unkind. “It’ll make sense, I promise; we’re getting there.”

“Getting where!” the Doctor retorts, nearly growling.

Pidge opens her mouth, but Lance speaks first, pulling her tighter against his side. “Wait! Did...how did Keith know Pidge’s name is Katie? He’s not around THAT much, and I don’t think I’ve told him. Have either of you?” He looks down at her, over at the doctor...they’re all looking at each other, none of them saying anything.

“No,” Keith answers for them. “They didn’t.”

The Doctor has gone very still. “What did you mean a moment ago? What of the rules of time and space would have kept you from helping us today?”

Keith meets the Doctor’s eyes. “The most important one, according to you. I can’t very well have interfered with something that was a fixed point in my own timeline.”

She stares at him for a long time, as if that might tell her something. Then she’s looking back at Lance and Pidge, eyebrows up and eyes wide, and Keith is smiling, and Pidge doesn’t understand.

“That’s impossible,” the Doctor says. Pidge can barely hear it from where she Lance are standing.

“That’s not like you say,” Keith chuckles. “I seem to recall a very specific incident where—”

She shushes him quickly. “Keith! Not in front of—” She stops, looking back to the rest of them again with suddenly pink cheeks. “Oh dear.”

The Doctor leans closer to Keith, more quick, whispered dialogue and strange smiles. Pidge presses into Lance, still trying to get warm, something churning in her stomach. There are dots she isn’t connecting yet, maybe only because she’s tired and upset, but she hates the feeling anyway.

“Doctor!” Lance calls. She’s blowing past them now, racing for the TARDIS in all her usual energy, the spring back in her step and the grin back on her face.

“Everything will be all right, Lance!” she answers, turning back to them at the blue doors. “Your son is fine, and he WILL be fine. We will find him; I promise you that now.”

“Where are you going!” Pidge demands. She trusts the Doctor. She does. But…

“Keith!” The Doctor nods to the device on his wrist. “You can get everyone home, yes? Safe and sound?”

He nods, still smiling himself. “I will.”

“Good!” The Doctor claps her hands, hesitating for a moment as she laughs strangely— well, not strange for her, but anyway.

Pidge manages to lock eyes with her, and the Doctor gives her that reassuring smile. The one that’s never steered them wrong before. It shifts to Lance, and Pidge can feel him relax a little beside her.

“Your son will be fine,” she repeats.

The door closes, and with its’ usual wheezing the TARDIS is gone.

“What just happened?” Lance asks, turning back to Keith.

Keith has come closer now, an arm’s length away and looking as if he wishes he were closer. Before that would have seemed strange—he’s only a friend, just someone who also knows the Doctor—but now…

Why isn’t it strange?

“I didn’t always look like this,” Keith says, instead of a straight answer. “I used to look more like my father, I think. But I’ve changed a few times. Regeneration really does a number on family resemblance.”

“Regeneration…?” Pidge murmurs. She knows about it. She knows what Ryner and the Doctor were talking about. She and Lance have only known the Doctor in her current form, but they know about her past lives. Her other faces. Keith knows about them, too. He’s claimed to have met some of the others in his travels through time.

But there aren’t supposed to be any other Time Lords left other than the Doctor. Which...means…

Lance lets her go when she takes a step forward, toward Keith, though he seems reluctant about it. Reluctant and confused.

Pidge is less confused. But she’s waiting for what she thinks she’s realizing to settle. Keith smiles at her gently, patient.

“I wasn’t always called Keith, either,” he says. His eyes are damp now. “I chose it the last time I changed because its’ origin can mean ‘woods,’ or…”

“Forrest,” Pidge breathes. She tries to open her mouth again, but her voice sticks in her throat.

Keith lets out an uneven breath. “Hi...Mom.”

#plance #plance mini bang #flirtyrobot #plance au #doctor who au #voltron legendary defender #doctor who #angst #romance #angst with a happy ending #hurt/comfort #time travel

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