The Doctor's Son

7 - World War Three

It was late and Dorian was getting tired when Jack next rang, but the news had Dorian wide awake and on the edge of his seat; the emergency protocol software had triggered an alert that Torchwood picked up. Someone had reported that the Doctor was on Earth. He was being taken to Downing Street immediately.

Resisting the urge to just grab his jacket and find a way into Number 10 himself, damning the consequences of converging timelines, Dorian barely blinked as he waited to see his father on the TV arriving at Downing Street.

Ronan was yawning every few minutes but refusing to go to bed until he saw Dorian's dad. Neither of them expected what they saw.

'Someone else has just arrived at 10 Downing Street.' BBC News announced. 'We don't know who he is but we are told he's an alien expert.' The camera cut from the reporter to an image of a white man with short hair and big ears, dressed in black trousers and a black leather jacket. He was accompanied by a young blonde girl.

'Oh my god! Ronan!'

'It's that man! The one that warned us about Henriks!'

'He walked into me when I was out with Martha!'

'That's the Doctor? That's your father?'

Dorian was already on the phone. 'Jack? Is that him?' The look on Dorian's face told Ronan that the man was indeed the legendary Doctor. 'And the girl? That's the one that's missing isn't she? Rose Tyler. I've met her before!'

Dorian hung up. His face was very white, memories flooded in quick succession through his mind, those two faces appearing often. Ronan waited for him to say something.

'I was so close all this time.' Ronan wasn't sure what to say. 'I've seen him about five times before, that girl too! How have I not remembered that before? I was so close. I've seen him so many times; I've got to be able to meet him soon!'

The desolation in his voice and the longing in his eyes were obvious. It tore Ronan up to see his usually bubbly and optimistic best friend, who had literally taken a bullet for him and then laughed about it afterwards, so detached and alien. He had no idea how to help.

'You couldn't have known,' He finally managed lamely. 'Besides, you couldn't have done anything about it yet anyway. You told me that. If you met him and told him who you were before he even met your mother then you might just rip a hole in the Universe.'

Dorian looked up and met his eyes. 'Right now Ronan, I wouldn't care if I ripped this world in half. I've waited two hundred and forty years to meet my father, ever since my mother died. And I have met him, several times in fact. But he hasn't met me. The only things I really know about him are what she wrote in a letter to me and what I can see in my nightmares and these half-memories that I get. None of his companions that I've met can even say anything to him about me for the same reason.

'I've walked this Earth for so long, seen two centuries pass. Waiting. And he doesn't even know I exist. The one image I have of him is the portrait my mother painted of him, and Jack reckons that's a later regeneration. So I'm still waiting. He's just across the Thames, for pity's sake! Is it that much to ask to just meet my own father? To tell him who I am? For most people it's just a matter of finding where they live and knocking on a door, where the worst that can happen is the father doesn't want to know them. For me I could kill every single creature in the Universe, just for telling him too early!

'I just want him to know who I am, Ronan. I just want him to know me.'

Dorian got up suddenly and went into his room, slamming the door behind him.

When Ronan popped in to give him his favourite banana flavoured milkshake in an attempt to cheer him up, he found Dorian staring at the portrait that usually lived under his bed: a portrait of a tall, thin, messy brown haired man with a wide smile and a gleam in his eye; a portrait of his father, painted by his mother.