Fic - Memories Long Remembered - All Ages

[mountland.livejournal.com]

Title: Memories long Remembered
Author: Mountlandlad
Challenge: Remembrance
Rating: All Ages
Pairing: Jack/Ten (more friendship than slash)
Spoilers: The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances
Summary: A face from Jack and the Doctor's past has for a long time remembered and searched for them - are they ever destined to meet again and if they do will it be the happy reunion?
 

 

I am old now. My hair is no longer brown and platted but grey and short. I no longer run around London hiding in shadows but now walk to the shops pushing my granny trolley every morning. My heart is still the same and my memories untouched. I am the only one who remembers. Maybe some of the other children remember they were young enough to still be alive now, but would they remember a man who once shared a single meal with them, even if they do remember they only met one of them. The doctor and his patients must all be long gone by now. My boy, My son, now a man and a parent himself does not remember, he was to young and not exactly himself most of the time.

 

They said that they were from the future, so I continue to look after all now was the future. I don’t watch the soaps that the ladies at the bingo do; instead I watch the news and documentaries searching for a glimpse. A leather jacket in the background on a news report, a union jack t-shirt disappearing into a crowd on a crowded station in a foreign land.  

 

There is one face that I do not look for, an American with a dashing grin. For you see every summer I used to go on holiday to Wales where I would meet up with a girl whose family looked after Jamie when he was evacuated. After the first bomb I was not going to risk losing him again and he was sent to Wales with the second wave of evacuees who left London when the V2’s came. Her name was Estelle. After the war we became friends. For a long while I listened to her tales of her lovely captain who had gone to war but never returned like so many others. It was many years later when I finally saw a photo that I realised her captain was the same Captain I had been looking for. She had mentioned a son of his, not hers, but I never got to meet him before she died.

 

What is the use of time travel if you still lay in an unmarked grave in the brown and bomb blast white fields of France or underneath the cold grey waves of the channel? It reminds me of how mortal even those who defy the laws of physics are. For I do believe they were time travellers and even though other people may call me mad but I know it was real. Others my age shake their heads at the youngsters of today in their tight jeans and bleached blonde hair but I smile at the memories of a girl long ago who gave me hope. 

 

As I grow older and frailer I begin to lose hope and realise the truth that my memories will always be memories never lived again. I can no longer walk to the shops in winter so cannot look for them as I go about my days, it is too cold and to dangerous for a woman of my age, Jamie says. He tries to make an effort to keep me occupied; taking me for trips with his wife, his children no longer come now they are adults. Today is the 11^th of the 11^th and we have gone to a small ceremony to lay a wreath of poppies for the children who had no leather clad angel to save them with orbs of gold and a cheeky grin, for those like the captain who flew away to never return, for those like Estelle who waited in vain for the sweethearts to come back victorious. It is there that I see them. The girl, Rose, is not with them. The one I recognise is the Captain, still dressed in 1940’s clothes; a long RAF grey coat covering braces, a style that I have not seen for a long while. He is undoubtedly My captain and Estelle’s Lover; at first I feel anger, for leaving my friend to believe that he was dead. But then I remember that he is a time traveller he may be alive now years after Estelle loved and lost him but she could still be in his future, it is strange to see a man and know that he will die 60 years ago in a war long ended. The other man I do not recognise but there is something familiar about him. They are both solemn and quite during the ceremony. It is only afterwards that I recognise him, laughing and joking with the Captain my hearing isn’t as good as it used to be but I am sure that I hear the Captain call him Doctor. It all fits in to place, I would recognise that manic grin any where, this must be The Doctor’s son and has followed his father’s footsteps in becoming a Doctor. He looks nothing like him, smartly dressed in a brown pinstripe suit, messy brown hair, normal sized nose and ears but the look in those eyes is exactly like his fathers. I wonder who his mother is, could it have been Rose? I wonder what her natural hair colour was. I try to remember the specifics of her features but they slip away and for once I can not remember. 

 

As they go to walk past, not even noticing me I hobble in to their sightline and call out to them.

 

“I knew your father”

I see the look of confusion on their faces as they look around them trying to see who I am talking to. I stare straight at them.

“I am sorry, you must be mistaken”, the son speaks up trying to walk around me, his southern accent surprising me, he must have picked it up from his mother.

“No I am not! Your father, he was Northern, he saved my son, Jamie from a bomb that wasn’t a bomb; an ambulance your father said”. This stops them in their tracks. Both stop and look at me properly for the first time.

“Nancy?” The son asks hesitantly his eyes searching my face as though trying to recognise me.

“The girl from the bomb site?” the Captain clarifies.

“Nancy,” The son grins, as though he knows me, “How’s it going, still trying to save the world?”

This throws me completely, how can he have known that, we were alone when The Doctor said that. Before I can reply my Son appears at my side.

“Can I help, mum?” he asks obviously perturbed by the two strange men talking to his mother.

“Jamie, this is the son of the man who saved you when you were a kid, and his friend the American Captain I told you about, do you remember now Jamie?”

“Jamie! Well look at you all grown up, last time I saw you, you where tiny but here you are living your life. Brilliant isn’t it. No more gas masks and all that ‘Are you my mummy’ business, I bet you’re a daddy yourself now. Humans, so simple but so brilliant, fantastic one might say…”

“Doctor”, the American Captain warns, protectively resting his hand against the small of his companion’s back halting his rant.

I am too shocked by the man’s words to stop Jamie pulling me away from this strange mad man who is younger than him but seems to think he knew him when he was a child. I never told him about the time travel and space ships, just about the brave men who saved him from a German bomb. I too am confused, I can believe in time travel but I can’t believe in a person changing faces.

“You should have more respect young man”, I shout over my shoulder brandishing my umbrella like a sword as my son leads me away, “You shouldn’t take credit for what your father did.”

My son embarrassed leads me away out of sight. For the first time I truly feel my age as I slowly walk back to the car. It isn’t possible to change one’s face is it? As we wait for the traffic lights to change, I see the two of them again. The dynamic between them is different to My Doctor and Captain; they seem closer, more … together. I watch them walk down an alley towards a blue box before the lights change and they are lost to my sight forever as the car drives off and they return to being memories.