A/N: Thanks, everyone. Til the next time!

Life in the Oswald house wasn't always easy for everyone. The Doctor drove Clara batty "enhancing" all of their appliances and staying on top of every news source like an obsessive vigilante. "You've seen how the universe works, Clara—we might miss something important."

She would clean up what looked like messes left by the Doctor only to have him shout at her an hour later (when he finally noticed) for destroying a synthesiser or some other rubbish and now he'd have to start from scratch.

They bickered quite a lot, but it never worried Sam or Gemma. Mummy and Daddy always made up in the end, so their arguments were more of a source of inconvenience than childhood trauma.

"Mum, Dad! Can you at least wait until my friends leave?" Sam begged one afternoon. They were having a particularly noisy row in the kitchen while he and his mates were playing video games in his room upstairs.

"Sorry, boys!" Clara called through the ceiling.

"Yeah, sorry!" the Doctor echoed.

They tried to follow along with their normal lives on Earth while still having adventures on the TARDIS, but the two lives didn't always complement each other. There were a good two weeks where the TARDIS would refuse to take them back home. Clara grew frantic every time the Doctor said "now—home!" and they'd end up in some strange time on some foreign planet. All she could think of was never seeing her father again or of her kids dying far from home.

Then, one day when Gemma was seven, she said something that both broke Clara's heart and made everything seem so much simpler.

"I think the TARDIS is our real home. It feels like where we belong."

They would sit in the console room or in the library or in Gemma's room (hers was always the neatest) telling stories about their days travelling before Sam and Gemma were born. The kids loved hearing about their parents going off on adventures, and whenever Clara was asleep, Sam and Gemma would ask their father to tell them stories from the rest of his life. They learned about his other friends, his other loves, his other faces, and they loved him even more every time he sat down and told them of another of his past adventures. Like so many before them, the Doctor was this wonderful, magical man—but he was also their dad.

It was oneafter Clara was asleep that he told them briefly of his many years spent on Trenzalore without her.

"But why did the crack shut? How was it you were able to come back?" Gemma asked, sitting cross-legged on the floor in their living room back on Earth. The fireplace roared behind her.

The Doctor was starting to turn grey, the lines on his face more pronounced as he smiled at his and Clara's grown children. "I don't know. It shouldn't have. I didn't answer the question."

Gemma and Sam exchanged a glance.

"Is that what would have closed it? The question being answered?" Sam asked.

Their father heaved a sigh. "I suppose. I'm just glad it did," he said with finality, grunting as he slowly rose from the sofa. He patted them both on the head before shuffling towards the stairs. "Otherwise I wouldn't be here, and you two wouldn't be riddling me with questions. Goodnight."

It wasn't until after their parents had died that Sam and Gemma understood what had happened that day.

Or rather, what would happen that day.

What must happen.

The Doctor and Clara died within weeks of each other, shortly before her ninetieth birthday. Sam and Gemma were in their late sixties, but they'd aged slowly like their father once had, so they both looked like they were closer to thirty. The slow aging was convenient, since that meant they could be gone from Earth They wanted to travel in the TARDIS and be like their father, to share his legacy and keep it going, but they also wanted to remember their home on Earth, their mother's legacy.

It didn't take them long to find the right space-time coordinates; the trouble was getting past the barrier placed around the planet. They finally realised they could reach the planet before the barrier was set in place, so they travelled back in time to land and then travelled forward to the right time, parking on the edge of the village so as not to interfere with the TARDIS parked in the village centre.

The moment they stepped onto the snow, Gemma started crying. Sam shared a look with her and understood; they were going to see their father again. If they did this properly, however, he wouldn't see them.

They moved quietly into the village, but no one was awake. No one even noticed them.

"I thought they were constantly under attack?" Gemma said softly as they made their way to the clock tower. "Shouldn't someone be on the lookout?"

They moved quietly. Sam sonicked the lock to the door and the went into the tower, their steps soft on the staircase as they ascended to the room where the crack shone brightly like some bizarre piece of art.

"Do you ever wonder if it's wrong that Gallifrey never came back?" Sam asked as he stared at the crack.

Gemma smacked him in the arm. "Don't start. We've got to find a way to shut it or Dad will never come back home. That might not scare you as much, but I haven't been born yet."

They moved along the edges of the crack, tracing its shape with their fingers like they were searching for an off switch.

"We can't say his name," Sam said. "I know that's the answer to the question, but if they get the right answer, they'll come through. We've got say something that will make it shut."

Someone coughed upstairs. Gemma glanced at the ceiling. "Is that him?" she asked, her voice shaking with emotion.

Sam nodded. "We've got to hurry."

She knelt in front of the crack and placed her hand right where it dipped lowest in the wall, almost like she was speaking to someone directly on the other side. In a way, she was. "Ask the question again," she said.

They both heard it reverberate in their ears and rattle their bones.

Doctor who?

Gemma glanced up at Sam with tears streaming from her eyes. He nodded gravely, even though he felt just as lost and afraid as she did. Returning her attention back to the crack, Gemma licked her lips and then spoke softly.

"The Doctor was my father. My name is Gemma Oswald, and… I miss him."

Sam frowned and shrugged at her, clearly not thinking that was the right thing to say. Gemma bowed her head against the wall.

"He was our father, and he was the best man that ever was. He is the best man that ever was." Her features crumpled. "He always will be."

The crack glowed more brightly, the light filling the room. Sam grabbed Gemma's hand and moved to pull her away, remembering how the cracks could consume people's entire lives to where they'd never existed in the first place, but they both stopped when they felt it.

"You did it…" he muttered in disbelief. "They're letting go."

"Hello?" called a voice from upstairs.

Sam and Gemma exchanged a worried glance before grabbing each other's hand and running downstairs, not as mindful at being quiet as they had been before. When the Doctor finally arrived downstairs, he found nothing but the glowing crack.

"Ah, just you again," he said to the energy seeping through the wall. "Don't you ever shut up?"

Gemma was sobbing by the time they made it downstairs. It worried Sam; she never cried, at least not in front of him.

"Gem…" he said softly, reaching for her.

She leaned against the outside of the clock tower, hugging herself tightly as her shoulders shook with every sob. "Daddy..."

They both gasped when they felt it wash over them. It was almost like all of the air had been sucked into a vacuum and then released back to where it belonged. The crack had shut.

Sam and Gemma looked up when they heard their father's voice echo down to where they stood. "But… how? No… I didn't… Hello?" There was a sound of knocking, his knuckles rapping against the wall. "Hello?"

Sam laughed. Silly old Dad…

"We should go," Gemma said, wiping her eyes. She wasn't crying anymore. "He's going to come downstairs and see us."

"Wait, Gem—look!"

The lights from the ships orbiting the planet's atmosphere began to disappear, looking for all the world like someone was turning off the stars.

"Gemma… we did it."

She shot him a look.

"I did fly the TARDIS here," he argued. She shook her head and laughed softly.

The townspeople poured out of their homes, their heads turning towards the sky in disbelief. Those lights had been there as long as any living member of the community could remember. They pointed and shouted and celebrated, all calling the Doctor's name. Before Sam and Gemma could make a run for it, the door to the clock tower open and there he stood, younger than either remembered him, a look of extreme befuddlement on his face.

"Doctor! The ships are gone!" a little boy cried with excitement as he raced past Sam and Gemma to wrap his arms around the Doctor's leg.

He patted the boy on the head. "I see that. The crack is shut as well."

"Does this mean you're going?"

The Doctor frowned and then looked out at everyone, his gaze flitting past Sam and Gemma as the townspeople stared curiously back at him.

"Yes, I'm afraid it does."

"Sam!" Gemma hissed nervously when he couldn't take it anymore.

He launched forward and wrapped his arms around his father, who nearly stumbled backwards as a result. The Doctor laughed and patted Sam on the back. "There, there—you'll be alright."

"I know I will," he replied with a trembling lip. He pulled back and met his eyes. "And so will you."

The Doctor pursed his lips together, grinning. "Thank you."

Gemma jumped forward for her own hug. She'd started crying again.

"There, there—don't cry," the Doctor said to her, stroking her hair until she pulled away. His smile faded when he saw her face, and when he next spoke, it was like all the air had left his lungs. "You… you look like someone I know."

Gemma smiled brilliantly at this small sign of affection. "I get that a lot," she replied dismissively. "Are you going home now, Doctor?"

Her looked back and forth between her and Sam, then out to the crowd that formed behind them. "Yes," he said. "Time to go home."