Sugar and Sass
The Doctor had traveled far and wide, across time and space. He was many things to many people: hero, villain, monster, madman, nuisance, unstoppable force of nature. His name was known across the universe as a rallying call, a cry for help, a curse. Most didn’t even know he had a wife, let alone who she was. Melanie Lamonte preferred it that way, to be perfectly honest. One might think she was ashamed of him, but they would be mistaken. After travelling with the Time Lord as his companion for years, Melanie Lamonte seen the best and worst of the universe. She knew well that her husband had made enemies… enemies that wouldn’t hesitate to use loved ones as leverage against him. More than once she’d been held hostage to tie the Doctor’s hands behind his back. But he always found her and brought her home. Truly, she felt less afraid than she did pitying of her captors; the Doctor showed them no mercy.
It had been happenstance that brought them together. They had bumped into one another in the park by her university, neither really paying much attention to where they were going. From the moment he took her hand, everything changed. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but a time travelling alien in a spaceship was definitely not it. The TARDIS was a miracle, an impossibility on more levels than one. Somehow, her owner was even more impressive. Was it his decision to bring her to the moon that made her stay? Maybe it was the mystery of him and his ship that kept her around?
No… it was his kindness. The natives of her Louisiana hometown had already disliked Melanie’s mother, Ellie, since she was a working woman with a child and no husband. But the community completely ostracised Melanie after she became pregnant out of wedlock in high school. Only a handful believed Mel when she explained that she had been raped by her then-boyfriend. After all, her family already had a bad reputation, and her boyfriend was the son of the most powerful family in the area. Why would anyone believe the slut daughter of a slut mother over the son of a prestigious family?
Melanie studied hard to acquire a scholarship to Tulane University, and she was more than happy to move to New Orleans and start over in a new place. She had studied education and kept to herself, not wanting to make waves. She had been in her second year when she met the Doctor that fateful day in Audubon park. It had been the way he treated her that convinced her to travel with him. The Doctor didn’t see her as a whore, a liar, a baby-killer. He saw something else… something that made him ask her to be his companion. She kept waiting for him to change his mind… but he didn’t.
Their love story stretched over the span of six or so years. So much had happened that it was honestly difficult for Melanie to remember it all. She had met all kinds of people travelling with the Doctor. Some of them even joined their strange, wonderful family. But that family hadn’t felt complete without a child to call their own. Unfortunately, Time Lord and human DNA don’t naturally mesh well enough to allow the races to reproduce with one another. After months of trying, it became clear that conceiving a child was impossible beyond an act of god or considerable scientific experimentation.
They knew no gods, but a dear archangel came to their rescue. Celeste Gabrielle Lamonte was named after her godfather who had made her conception a reality. For the second time in her life, Melanie was pregnant, but things couldn’t have been more different. She was married, surrounded by loved ones, and finally comfortable in her own skin. By the time CeCe was born, Mel was on cloud nine. She had always wanted to be a mother, but she had thought she didn’t deserve it, that no-one would love her enough to stay and start a family. With her husband, her child, and an adventurous, impossible life among the stars, Melanie Lamonte was happier than she even thought possible.
Though that didn’t mean her life was perfect by any means.
Being half Time Lord and half human, Celeste had a peculiar growth rate. Physically, she aged at the pace of a human, but her mind raced ahead in development. So at two years old, she was a very curious, very mobile toddler. It seemed like every day Melanie found herself running through the TARDIS, calling out her daughter’s name and praying to God that she didn’t get into anything too dangerous. On the bright side, that had helped her lose some weight she’d been carrying since her pregnancy. Mel tried to focus on that bright side instead of letting her mind wander into terrible ‘what if’s.
Still, the young mother was red-faced and out of breath by the time she made it back to the console room with a very squirmy toddler in her arms. “Why… did she have… to take after you?” Mel gasped out to her husband, her long, brown hair a mess of curls framing her round face.
“I say that you’re brilliant. If you weren’ already my husband, I’d ask you to marry me,” Melanie giggled before nestling herself deeper into his embrace. Oooh, her Doctor could still make her heart flutter. As much as she adored Celeste -- and she was absolutely smitten with her daughter -- she relished the thought of one-on-one time with her husband. One couldn’t really relax entirely when one knew that CeCe was up and ready to take on the universe. It would be nice to be able to turn off Mom Mode and just spend time with her Doctor, just like they had at the start.
“VEE!” Celeste loudly declared her approval of this plan, “Vivivivi!” Visiting her sister was always so much fun. There were so many kids to play with! And they were all special, like her! Older and taller and better at talking maybe, but that wouldn’t slow her down much. If there was ever a problem, she’d just get big sis and talk in her head. Big Sis was special too, of course. Everyone in CeCe’s family was special.
“Oh, it looks like we’re all agreed!” Mel laughed, not that she expected any less. It would do her little girl good to play with other children. She needed to be social! And learn how to talk aloud in more than single words, eventually. “You’ll use your mouth words, right?” Celeste puffed out her cheeks in a pout as if such a request were a betrayal. She just didn’t see the point! Talking inside her head was so much faster!
