The road less travelled...

Title: In Dreams – Epilogue
Author: katherine_b
Rating: PG

“In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.” (Janos Arany)

Epilogue

“Daddy!”

The Doctor peers over his glasses at the small figure standing in the doorway of the console room and grins at the sight of his daughter, the ginger hair she inherited from her mother standing up every which way in a manner very reminiscent of his. “What is it, sweetie?”

“I need you to do my hair!”

The Time Lord pulls an uneasy face as he crosses the floor to pick up the child, who clings happily around his neck and presses her cheek against his. “Can’t Mummy do it?” he asks almost pleadingly.

“She’s in the bathroom.” The little girl pulls away and rolls her eyes. “She’ll be ages! And she said we had to be ready when she was or we couldn’t have any cake at Great-grandpa’s party.”

“Ah.” The Doctor nods seriously and carries her into her bedroom. “I see. That is a problem, isn’t it?”

“So will you do it?” Big brown eyes look at up him beseechingly, a pleading expression on her face that melts his hearts. “Please!”

He sighs and gives in. “All right,” he says with a groan, picking up the brush on the bedside table and starting to smooth the long locks. “What am I doing?”

“French braid please!” comes the ready retort, and he groans inwardly.

“You know,” he begins, “your Mummy really is better at that than I am, and I’d tell her it was my fault you weren’t ready.”

“But you promised!” she replies, a hint of a whine in her voice. “Please, Daddy!”

“Oh, all right!” he grumbles as he gathers small lengths of hair in his fingers and sets to work on this ridiculously difficult hairstyle. “But,” he adds, “it’s not my fault if it falls out half an hour after we get there. You’ll just have to sit still like a lady so that it keeps looking neat for the photos Nanna Sylvia will want to take.”

She grins at him out of the corner of her eye. “I’ll sit still as long as you do, Daddy,” she says cheekily.

“Isn’t Sigma ready yet?” another voice demands from the doorway, and the girl turns her head sharply to glare at her brother as Adam saunters into the room. “Typical girl!” he adds mockingly.

“Are you?” she shoots back, even as the Doctor forcibly turns her head back and tries to recapture the strands of hair that had slipped from between his fingers before slowly and painstakingly continuing to plait her hair.

“Yup!” the young man says smugly, giving himself an admiring glance in the long mirror in the corner. “Right down to shining my shoes!”

“Then perhaps,” the Doctor says in an attempt to ease the growing annoyance he can feel emanating from his daughter, “you could go and finish tidying your room, which looked like a disaster area when I saw it earlier.”

Adam’s air of complacency deflates like a popped balloon and his shoulders sink. “I s’pose,” he grumbles under his breath and slouches out of the room.

Sigma giggles as she passes her father the first tie to secure her hair. “You’re like Mummy,” she announces.

“Well, that’s a pretty good thing to be,” he says somewhat distractedly as he tries not to lose his handful of hair. Then, as he realises, with a deep sense of gratitude, that he’s going to manage a halfway respectable braid this time and he won’t have to start all over again like he usually does, he allows himself to think about what she had said and asks, “How am I like Mummy?”

“You know everything,” his daughter replies readily. “Eyes in the back of your head – that’s what Grandma Sylvia says anyway.” Then, as he ties up the long braid with a sigh of relief, Sigma tilts her head up to look at him and he can see the concern in her eyes. “She doesn’t really, does she? I mean, how could she see through all of her hair? Or,” a tone of fear creeps into her voice, “is Mummy like the Silurians with their extra eyes?”

“Definitely not,” the Doctor assures her as he wraps his arms around her in a comforting hug. “Mummy’s a human being, just like Nanna Sylvia and your Great-grandpa. She’s just very, very clever.”

“Okay,” is all Sigma replies, but she turns around and throws her arms around his neck in a big hug that shows she’s been reassured by his words.

He lifts her off the bed and stands up, turning around to find Donna in the doorway, her hand resting on Adam’s shoulder. She smiles and, with Sigma still in his arms, he crosses the room to take her free hand before they head to the console room.