PARENTHOOD

Chapter One Hundred and Eighty Six

The scene shifted and they found themselves outside about one hundred feet from the front of the assembly hall. The scene was frozen and they saw Koschei and the young Doctor hiding behind a cluster of silver leaf trees. Both boys were peeking around the tree trunks watching the assembly hall door. At the door a few Time Lords were running outside. Rain glanced at the fleeing Time Lords before she looked at her husband.

"I see your knack for causing trouble started at an early age, dear," she said.

"Me? I didn't do this, Koschei did!" the Doctor said defensively as he pointed his finger at Koschei. "I had no idea he had that thing under his robes so don't blame me for this."

"How come you didn't tell people that he was the one who had the mouse, Daddy?" Hope said.

"Yeah, how come you ran outside with the guilty party if you're not guilty?" Rain added.

"Because that old adage, children should be seen and not heard was practically gospel on Gallifrey and I would either be ignored by my elders or not believed and gotten in trouble anyway. Not to mention my father wouldn't have believed me and I would have caught hell from him for it. I was a child but I wasn't an idiot. But anyway, let's start this particular section of the memory and you can see what happened afterwards. TARDIS, if you will..."

The memory started and they could hear the angry and startled voices of the Time Lords and Ladies as they filed out the door and began looking around for the guilty party. Koschei began to giggle while the adults started looking around the building for them.

"That's it, gits, try and find us," Koschei whispered.

"Kosch, have you gone soft in the head?" the young Doctor hissed at him. "If they find us, we'll be punished!"

"So why are you out here with me then if you're not the one who did it?"

"See, not the only one who wondered that," Rain said, poking her husband's arm.

"Because you pulled me out here and because no one in a million years would believe I didn't do it," Young Doctor hissed.

"See, there's my answer," the Doctor said, poking his wife's arm.

The two boys ducked down when a couple of Time Lords got close to the trees. Hope walked over to them.

"HEY, THEY'RE OVER HERE!" she yelled at the Time Lords.

"Oi!" the Doctor said while Rain bent over laughing. "Well, that tears it; I'm not taking you somewhere where I might land up in danger and have to hide with you."

Koschei got the young Doctor's attention and jerked his head off to the left. Keeping low, both boys moved silently into the shadows of a couple of bigger trees, went around the back where they couldn't be seen and sat down. The Doctor and his family went around the corner so they could watch them while both boys drew their legs up and kept silent. Then the Doctor involuntarily flinched when he heard his father scream his name.

"MERZET! WHERE ARE YOU!" they heard his father bellow. "SHOW YOURSELF, BOY!"

"He sounds very angry," Hope said, looking at her father.

"Oh, he was, trust me," the Doctor said.

"MERZET, SHOW YOURSELF OR YOU'LL RECEIVE AN EVEN WORSE PUNISHMENT THAN YOU'RE GOING TO GET!" they heard Parius scream.

"Lovely, guilty until proven guilty in your household then?" Rain said to him.

"Pretty much, yeah," the Doctor said grimly.

"You didn't do it, Daddy," Hope said.

"I know, love, but that didn't matter to him. He thought everything was my fault. From the moment, I first drew breath everything was my fault," the Doctor said, patting her shoulder.

"Why?" Hope said, confused.

"Because he rejected me when I was born. I wasn't good enough for him," the Doctor said while Rain put her arm around him.

"But you're the bestest daddy in the whole universe," Hope insisted.

The Doctor smiled tenderly at her and sent love into her mind. They watched while his younger self got up as his father bellowed for him to show himself.

"No! What are you doing, you git?" Koschei said, grabbing the hem of his robe.

"He's not gonna stop searching for us until we're found and if he finds me back here, I get in worse trouble. Just sit here and keep your gob shut."

"No, Merzet!" Koschei said as the young Doctor jerked his robe out of his friend's grasp and hurried out into the clearing.

"I'm here, Father!" the young Doctor said as all heads turned towards him. "I'm here, you can stop searching now!"

"And so begins a long history of sacrificing yourself for the people you love," Rain said to her husband.

The Doctor smiled sadly and nodded. He took them around the trees so they could see his younger self better. Parius made a beeline for his son and just before he reached him, the Doctor suddenly ordered the TARDIS to pause the memory. Parius froze a few feet from his son, rage on his face while his son had tired resignation on his. Both Rain and Hope looked at him and he put his hand on his daughter's shoulder.

"Remember the day we were on the beach and you were upset when that woman spanked her daughter?" the Doctor said to Hope.

Hope nodded and he pointed to his younger self.

"The reason I don't do what that woman did to you is because my father did much the same to me and far worse. I paused it because he's about to get physical with me and be abusive. I wanted to show you this so you could understand why I don't believe in corporal punishment and by extension, why Alan doesn't either. It's not pretty, Hope, which is why I'm giving you the choice of not looking at it and if you don't want to see it, I'll pick a happier memory. Choice is yours."

Hope thought for a moment. She looked at the rage on Parius's face and shivered, recalling the same rage on the mother's face at the beach, except Parius's rage dwarfed the mother's. She looked at her father and saw how defeated her look and a chill ran through her but after thinking about it...

"I wanna see, Daddy. I wanna see what happens," she said to her father.

"You sure?"

Hope nodded and the Doctor and Rain took her hands.

"I want you to see this and see how not to be a good parent," the Doctor said to Hope. "If you ever have children of your own one day I want you to keep what you see here in mind so you don't do the same as my father did, yeah?"

Hope nodded and the Doctor asked the TARDIS to resume the memory. As soon as it started, Parius lunged at the young Doctor and seized him by his robe.

"You just can't do anything right, can you?" he snarled as he got down in his face. "I ask you to do something simple like sit through my speech and you can't even do that! You embarrassed me!"

Rain gritted her teeth when Parius grabbed his robe with his other hand and began to shake him roughly. She looked back at the trees and noticed that Koschei's head was just peeking out from between two of the trees while he watched.

"Some friend, dear," Rain said to her husband.

The Doctor glanced back at Koschei.

"Yeah, well, at the time I was glad it was me and not him taking the abuse but yes, Kosch always tried to save his skin first. Nothing ever changes," he said, turning his head back around.

Parius let go and shoved his son's back as he ordered him to head for home. Rain grimaced, thinking what happened the moment her husband got inside their house. She could tell from the way Parius glowered at his son's back that it was going to get uglier and she said a silent prayer of thanks that she never got to meet the abusive prick in person. She glanced back at Koschei and noticed he had ducked out of sight as they passed by the trees.

Coward, she thought disdainfully as they walked past the trees. I'm betting your sorry ass never had a better friend than the Doctor and you purposely get him in trouble and let him take the fall for this. I'm glad Amato's Koschei is nothing like your cowardly self.

"I'm glad I don't know this papaw, Daddy, I don't like him," Hope said as they watched them walk away.

"Well, I'm glad you never met him. Not only would he have been against my marriage to your mother because she came from Earth but he would have transferred that dislike of her to you and my other children and he would have been mean to you and everyone else. I wasn't sorry to leave him behind when I was old enough to get off the planet."

"How come he doesn't like you?" Hope asked him.

The Doctor took off his jacket and tie, handed them to Rain and pulled his shirt up so he could show her his navel.

"See this?" the Doctor said to Hope as he pointed to it.

"Yeah, it's your belly button. I got one too," Hope said.

"I know you do. That's because you were born naturally and when people are born from a mummy's womb they have this because this is where the umbilical cord was. I was born in a machine called a loom that made me artificially and people born from the loom don't have navels since they're supplied with everything they need from the machine and not a mummy. When I was born, I had this even though there's no reason why I should. No one had ever seen a baby with a navel on Gallifrey before so I was considered a freak of nature and my father was embarrassed that he loomed a baby that was imperfect. He wanted to get rid of me but your Mamaw, bless her hearts, overruled him because she wanted me. He allowed her to keep me but he hated me for the rest of my life."

"Do you think that's why you gravitated towards Earthlings?" Rain said. "Because you had the navel and had something in common with them?"

"Perhaps, but I just admired Earthlings. Maybe it's because my father hated them and that led me to rebel against him in a way by making friends with the species he loathed but I also admire Earthling's ingenuity and imagination and their capacity for goodness, all the things my father overlooked. But the shared navel might have figured into it."

"Can we find out why you have a belly button?" Hope asked.

"Um...I suppose we could investigate but I don't know how since Gallifrey is gone and no one really made an in-depth study of my navel since my father forbid it."

"Maybe it's a sign you were meant to be humanity's protector," Rain said.

The Doctor considered that and nodded.

"Perhaps. Perhaps it's because I'm just an odd, crazy maniac with a belly button," he said. "But we'll save the mystery of my navel for another time. For now, we can go to my house and see what happens next or if you want to see something else, Hope, we can see a happier memory."

"No, I wanna see what happened next. I want to be with you, Daddy, when Papaw hurts you."

The Doctor smiled fondly at that and asked the TARDIS to bring up the next memory.

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