Mister Mom [Bendy Time to between shore leaves] [Active/Closed]

[theboywhowaits]

He made sure his daughter was properly settled, smoothing the dark hair around the fine points of her ears before bothering to fuss with his kit.

He was on shift in an hour, and Molly needed her check up and next round of shots before that. He'd timed it, he should have plenty of time to get everything done and get her to her baby sitter before he went on the clock.

It had only been a few months since they'd brought her home and into their lives, three at most, he thought, though it was hard to keep track with battles and attacks and funerals to distract everyone invovled. Two months and this precious baby girl was already the focus of so many of his plans. Even the little ones, the day to day ones that didn't impact much in the grand scheme of things. Even on a space ship in the middle of space fighting against an evil alien threat, they could have a life. Not a normal one, he thought Amy might get bored with a properly normal life, but a good one. A good life with friends and children and the woman he was going to marry just as soon as they could find the moment to make it official.

"We'll go meet up with Sakura, and take care of your check up, and then we'll go see mummy before daddy has to go to work." The words were soft, a cadence he rarely used for anyone but her or Conner. His children, his family.

He kept his daughter pressed against his shoulder, smiling down at the sleeping baby as he headed for the lift.

No, it wasn't such a bad life at all.

Comments

[encourage]

Sakura shifted, looking up at the simulated sky and wondering when it started feeling unremarkable to her. She wasn't certain she could pinpoint that turning point. She wasn't sure she wanted to, even if it may be something she needed to do.

Glancing around, she caught sight of Rory and his daughter and lifted a hand in greeting. Not much of a wave, but fairly standard for Sakura. She was smiling, gladdened by the sight of the bundle in his arms. Life went on. In spite of everything, in war and peace, life went on.

"Hello! How's Molly today?"

[theboywhowaits]

"Sleeping, still. She woke up for a bit when I put her jumper on, but she apparently decided that wasn't quite enough rest. Went back to sleep before I finished changing her nappy. I'm getting used to doing things one handed in the mornings, as Molly is not the biggest fan of waking up earlier than she absolutely must." He smiled, arm easily supporting the tiny bundle, obviously not the least bit upset about it. He preferred walking with her, anyway. The steady rise and fall of her chest was reassuring.

"And your morning?" He enjoyed the younger medic, one of the better friends he'd made on this insane adventure. Between Sakura and the crate of former companions that it seemed like someone had remembered to unpack, he had no lack of good company.

[encourage]

She didn't resist the urge to look at Molly, her face softening. Children were what they fought for -- children that defined the future, the reason there was anything worth protecting to hand off. Without that idea, without the next generation, there was nothing in a future. Saving a day, a planet, a multiverse was nothing with no-one to grow up into it.

"Finished up some paperwork I'd been meaning to see done," she said, shrugging. "Did some early morning training. The city doesn't end up feeling all that cool, but by the river it's a little less muggy without the false sun in the sky. It might just be in my head," she admitted, "But I like to think that much could be a little real."

[theboywhowaits]

"Was it your paperwork, or are you letting someone offload theirs on you again?" He eyed the younger medic for a moment, eyebrow arching in question. Sakura was a good medic, and a good nurse, someone he knew he would have been happy to work with at his own hospital or any of the situations he'd found himself in over the two thousand years he'd spent guarding Amy.

But she had a horrible habit of taking on other people's work.

"I need to set up a routine of my own. My hands are still..." He waved a hand, his calluses were coming back. Slowly. There was a give and take between pushing himself too hard, too fast, and not being able to use his hands for a few days, or just dealing with the occasional blister. "But I imagine it might be, it seems like the flowing water might cool things down a little. It's strange to think that all of this is contained within a ship, even now, after months of living in it."

Molly stirred in her sleep, shifting to suck on her hand. The sound of voices didn't seem to disturb her at all. Rory followed Sakura's gaze, smiling at his daughter. His girls, her and Amy - (and River too, when he let himself think of that)- his beautiful girls.

[encourage]

He knew her a little too well. "Mostly mine," she admitted. "Not that I mind when it's mostly someone else's. Not with the things we need filed, not procrastinated on."

She looked around, then shifted, turning toward the transports. "It's bigger than my continent," she said. "Most of it's still unknown. Not an entirely comfortable idea to live with. There's been so much going on, thinking about figuring this place out seems to fall to the wayside."

Sakura was used to knowing all the parts of the place she lived, if not everything within it. Here there were miles of unexplored city alone, not even touching on the rest of Stacy's bowels.

[theboywhowaits]

"Sakura, you can't let them dump their paperwork on you. You have things you need to do, and beyond that, a social life that you should be enjoying." He sighed, shaking his head. "I know they need to be done, but they need to be doing them. It's more efficient if they do."

He nodded, following her into the transports. "Yeah, mine too. Though the country I come from is on an island. I think we could fit the entire country here and not have a problem with the added space. It's a bit...disconcerting to live somewhere and know nothing about it."

He gave Molly's back a rub. "Bit of a shame there aren't more kids, they always seem to find everything that shouldn't be found first off."

[encourage]

"What social life?" She meant it as a joke, smiling as she posed the hypothetical question. "Thre's no real restaurant to go out to with friends, which is pretty much all we did as far as socializing back home." It had an edge of back when to it, a double-edged nostalgia heavy with it's own accepted sadness.

"We should look into fixing that," she said, mind wandering to Marco -- then back again. Celena may be as willing to utilize her natural flying for to act as reconnaissance, and was far less troubling to deal with. "Between the group of us here, mapping locations should be as close to safe, necessary work as we get."

His last statement prompted her into laughing, for a brief time. "Kids did get everywhere when we had the problem with that clock. They just stuck around where they felt safer, that's all. Had everyone affected stayed that age... things might have been different. I don't know. When do you think adults stop looking to find strange new places in the things around them?"

[theboywhowaits]

"Well yes, but you should have the chance to have one if you want one." He forgot how young Sakura was sometimes, it never really came up as an issue. "Aren't you chatting with a bloke?" He laughed, glancing down at Molly ruefully. The extent of his social life seemed to be talking to people while he treated them and taking care of his daughter and running around in the utter mind blowing insanity of missions. It wasn't like he could give proper advice on taking time for yourself.

"Restaurants? Weren't there any...I don't know...arcades? Cinemas?" It was strange how mundane the thought of worlds unlike his own had become, but he was still curious enough to ask. Sakura was a friend, and he was curious about her home.

"True. It seems like it might take the council to get some of the outwardly interested curious about the internal workings, though. The running theme seems to be...save whatever planet needs it and ignore the place we live, so long as the Warden doesn't bother us too much."

He smiled, offering a faint shrug in response. "Somewhere between sandboxes and dates, I think. Bout the time you start noticing girls-or guys- and stop thinking about adventures and fantasies and exploring everything because there might be something to be found. All of the kids effected by the clock were scared, though. Little ones that didn't know what was going on. Give them a few more weeks to let the shock wear off and you wouldn't have been able to keep them out of trouble. Think of Conner and how into everything he was even in the time he had."

He wished he had longer with his son that age, wished there had been more moments, even as worn down as he had felt by the time the clock was destroyed.

[encourage]

"Chatting...?" She realized as soon as she'd spoken what Rory had been asking after, fighting off a bit of a blush as she sighed. Oh, the frustration. "I'm not sure how much 'chatting' actually happens."

Yet the interest in her home -- a place she'd sought for a long time to say next to nothing on -- was a welcome distraction compared to certain other topics. "No, if there were gambling dens. The only video feeds we had were strictly for monitoring or communicating with foreign heads of state. We had libraries, and parks. I still don't feel like you should need more than that, if movies and the rest are interesting in their own right."

She loved some of it, was driven to compete in the games, at least, but it was still a far too sedentary occupation with no gained knowledge by the end.

"The council's here because people put it in place. If it's what we need to motivate people, then maybe we need to talk with the council itself."

There was little more than a nod and half smile when it came to the rest of what he had to say. She agreed, if she was glad it had never come down to permanently dealing with a permanent increase in children on the ship. It wouldn't help where they were headed. Not right now.

She eyed the transports, still not sure she liked this form of movement. It was convenient, she could give them -- the engineers of this ship -- that much, at least.

[theboywhowaits]

"That doesn't sound promising." He gave her a concerned glance, but didn't press. He wasn't one for gossip and if she didn't want to talk about it, pressing her would only make it worse. Fifteen was an odd, rocky time for romantic entanglements. Even without different worlds and different backgrounds and an alien bug invasion to mess with things.

"Really?" He had lived a life without telly, watched thme come into being and alter through the years. It was the sort of position he had a strange feeling many scientists would love to occupy. "It seems like cultures without a central focus on visual technology seem to work together better. But I imagine it's difficult, with a lot of people here not having that sort of frame of reference. At least in my time, telly and such are common, basic things and everyone owns one." He smiled faintly. "Sometimes I agree with you. I like some of the older telly programs, though. They're...simpler. Less focus on explosions, more focus on entertaining."

It must have been interesting, for her world. To have that sort of technology available and not allow it to become inter-meshed with day to day life. The Doctor would have been utterly and completely charmed by it, wouldn't he?

"I think that's possible. I mean, we could assign teams to sweep the city. Judging by what we found the last time someone went poking about, it's probably not a good idea to go alone. Maybe three to a team, fighter, medic, science type? It'd be something good for training members of departments to work together." He eyed the transport, securing Molly against his chest. "Like the underground from hell." It was bad when the thought of traveling by TARDIS seemed like a better idea than traveling by transport on Stacy.

[encourage]

"It's fine." She smiled, backing up her own statement. It wasn't fine, and she hadn't even thought of it as something that was there until it'd been brought up.

She'd mull over that more in her spare time.

Sakura nodded along, listening to what he said and not commenting much on who seemed to better work together. Maybe they did. She wasn't really part of that, had to learn much of what people took for granted -- even other species took for granted. The war they fought here relied on technology and potentials that hadn't existed in such simple, plentiful means back home.

"We have Security, yes? They can work as the fighter. Captain Leon issued that command after the reaver creatures, so it'd follow to have people who report directly to him on any kind of exploration into the unknown parts of the ship."

She eyed the transport, the closed her eyes briefly. "One of the seven hells, at least."