A Calendar of Stories

December - "Domesticity"

  On Christmas morning with Martha, Mickey, Donna and Jack, the Doctor has a question he wants to ask and Rose has some new to tell him  

...

It wasn't before this body that he seriously began to consider seeing himself in this form of situation. But then came the Christmas invasion, his regeneration, and a family dinner to celebrate both Christmas and defeating the alien threat. Despite being unsure of who he was, he knew that that had been the best Christmas he had ever been a part of. With his life, it wasn't every day that these things – the most mundane things of all – happened to him.

But then came the Battle of Canary Wharf and he couldn't see himself being able to do anything like that again with anyone else. He'd had offers, but he'd turned them down. Somehow, it didn't feel right sitting at someone else's table with people he barely knew, eating Christmas dinner. Christmas was a time for family and with Gallifrey long gone and the Battle of Canary Wharf still fresh in his mind, he didn't think he would feel a sense of family with anyone again for a long time.

But then the impossible happened. His family came back. Well, two of them anyone. Jackie had decided to stay in the other universe with the little family she had made for herself over there. Despite what people may have thought, he did like Jackie and he did miss her enormously. However, Rose was back and for years that was all the Doctor had ever wanted. He'd just wanted her back.

He had a family once again, and Rose and Mickey, along with other returning friends in Jack and Sarah-Jane as well as new ones such as Martha and Donna, almost made him forget that he had ever been alone. Although his past was always there ready to haunt him, he knew he didn't have to suffer in silence any longer.

Christmas time was once again a time for family.

...

"Doctor, if you don't hurry up, we're going to be late!" Rose called as she stood by the TARDIS doors, a bag of presents in her hands, waiting for the Doctor to turn up. It was Christmas Eve and they had been invited to Martha and Mickey's for Christmas along with Donna and Jack. They hadn't seen much of each other since Martha and Mickey's wedding and, with Donna's boyfriend, Lee, away on business over the Christmas period, it had been a good idea for them all to meet up and spend the festive period together.

"It's a bleeding time machine! I don't know why you always seem to forget that," the Doctor reminded her as he came into the console room.

"Yes, but someone decided to land her first before going off to sort out his hair," Rose gave him a look which she knew the Doctor couldn't come back to. She knew his weaknesses too well now.

"Oh, hush you," he said. "Have you got everything?" He looked at the large bag she was holding with one eyebrow raised.

"Yes," she told him. "This is all the presents we picked up for everyone during our travels."

"And the one you're wearing?" The Doctor asked, noticing for the first time, that there was also a rucksack on her back.

"This is the bag that contains all my overnight stuff," she explained. "Because, unlike someone I know, I don't have the luxury of 'bigger-on-the-inside pockets'. In fact," Rose looked down at the coat she was wearing. "I don't have the luxury of pockets at all."

"Ah, the impracticality of twenty-first century women's clothing. I'll never understand it," the Doctor said bending down slightly and taking the present bag from her hand.

"That makes two of us then."

"Remind me – if I ever become a woman – not to buy any clothing from your time," the Doctor told her.