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Susan—
No. Not Susan yet. She has a different name, a proper name, of the House Lungbarrow. It doesn’t fit, in the way that the birth name of a Gallifreyan doesn’t always fit, that strange dissonance that rests heavily on them until they graduate the Academy and choose their real name, their right name, and undoubtedly she’ll find herself with a nickname until then. But that’s not necessarily a concern. Susan-who-is-not-yet-Susan, or [Susan] if you will, will undoubtedly go to the Academy. She is a bright child, and her mother and father are high-born and well-respected. Even disregarding her Grandfather and those peculiarities—well. The family doesn’t really talk about that anymore.
And that’s not the problem.
The problem is that [Susan] has nightmares.
“We must do something about [Susan],” her Mother says one day. “These nightmares shouldn’t be happening.”
“Nonsense,” says her Grandfather, the Doctor-who-is-not-yet-Doctor. “I had nightmares all the time when I was her age.”
There is a pregnant pause from Mother. “[Doctor], they shouldn’t be happening.”
[Doctor] swallows, takes out his pipe and begins to load it (“I wish you wouldn’t do that Father. Such a filthy Shabogan habit.”) He tries his best to ignore the way his words have hung on the air, the way that he has accidentally outed himself as something other, the family embarrassment, once again. Evidently well-balanced, high-born Gallifreyan children do not have nightmares.
(It has been so long since [Doctor] was in the habit of making such mistakes, but something has been wrong lately, like he is too big for his body, like he is just one step out of beat with the rest of the world. Perhaps he is about to regenerate, this body is wearing quite thin. He hopes that is it.)
“We should take her to the physicians,” Father says finally. “They will know what to do.”
“We must be discrete though,” Mother huffs. “The last thing we want is the news to get wind of it. The headlines! ‘President’s Daughter’s Madness.’”
“I daresay they’ll think it’s hereditary,” Father tsks.
Mother laughs.
[Doctor] has disappeared from the room, but he is still within earshot to hear this. He wonders what he did wrong; he thought he was a good father to [Susan]’s mother. But it seems like nothing good can survive in the Citadel. Compassion must be scrubbed out of the air under the domes, like it is just another disease that must be prevented.
This thought does not convince him to quit, and so he finds [Susan] in her room, clutching her stuffed pig-bear that [Doctor] made for her himself. (“Foolish thing.” “You used to like foolish things too, when you were her age. Let the child enjoy herself. Rassillon knows we give children so little time to do so.”)
[Doctor] finds [Susan] quieter than usual. It does not suit her: hers is a face for smiles, a voice for laughter.
“I’ve heard you’ve been having nightmares, child,” [Doctor] says, sitting on the floor next to her. He will pay for this—his knees and hands are already protesting from getting into this position—but [Susan] appreciates the gesture.
“Who told you that?” [Susan] asks, eyes wide, holding her stuffed toy just that bit tighter.
[Doctor] grins and laughs and taps her on the nose with a long finger. “No one needed to. Your grandfather will always be able to tell when something is wrong, and don’t you forget that.”
[Susan] giggles. The world is slowly making more sense. “Yes, grandfather. I have had nightmares. Mother and Father say it’s not right.”
“Shall I tell you a secret?” [Doctor] asks, his tone conspiratorial.
Susan nods.
“There’s nothing wrong with nightmares.”
“But Mother and Father say—“
“Pish-posh. I’m older than them, aren’t I? It’s not their fault they’re young and misinformed. But I’m telling you: nightmares are perfectly normal. They might be scary, but they teach us all manner of different lessons. Fear is a superpower. Fear is imminently useful.”
“What does imminently mean?” [Susan] asks.
[Doctor] frowns. “Never mind. But whenever you feel scared or sad, just remember your grandfather had nightmares. And look at him now!”
[Doctor] makes an expansive gesture, winks at [Susan]. [Susan] lets out another giggle.
All is right in the [Doctor]’s world.
~~
The physicians can find nothing wrong with [Susan]. She is perfectly healthy. She is well-balanced, and her psychological profiles are quite normal.
[Susan] is, however, now Susan. Or at least she wants to be.
Mother cannot help but see this as a poor omen, and is very upset with [Doctor]. “You’ve been filling her head with stories again, stories about that forsaken backwater planet you’re so fond of.”
“I have done no such thing,” [Doctor] bristles.
“Then what is she on about?” Mother yells, “wanting to be called ‘Susan’ of all things. I’ve looked it up. That’s an Earth name.”
[Doctor] is less angry now. He has no good answer to this, and truthfully, it worries him as much as it worries Mother, but, he suspects, for different reasons.
He shrugs, impotently. He feels wrong, that stretched out, out-of-sync feeling again. A Time Lord who is mystified by time. Were he a younger man he would run and run, sneak outside the domes and into the Outlands, drink with the Outlanders and Shabogans until he was both numb and aware of the world with a peculiar clarity. Among those who only had one brief life or those who had forsaken the whole order that [Doctor] was trying to find his way into, his problems and uncertainties seemed so far away.
But he is not a young man anymore. So, instead, he merely huffs off petulantly to sulk.
It is a unique privilege of the old that they can behave as poorly as the young, and even though [Doctor] is not nearly as old as many around him, his body is old enough that he can avail himself of this privilege.
~~
[Doctor] figures out what is wrong with Susan long before the others. It is not because he is smarter than the physicians or more observant than the psychologists. It is merely because he listens, listens to children as though they are adults.
“Tell me again why you’re looking after me and I can’t be with mother and father?” Susan asks one day, assembling and disassembling complex wooden puzzles.
[Doctor] evades at first. “Don’t you like spending time with your old grandfather? Or are you too big for him?”
“Oh, no. I love spending time with you. You’re funny and you call me Susan like you ought to. I just—get lonely sometimes. I know it’s not proper—“
“Nonsense. It’s alright to be lonely sometimes.”
Susan smiles. “Don’t you think mother and father must get lonely for me, then?”
“I suppose they do,” [Doctor] agrees. He, himself, is very lonely for a family it feels like he no longer has: children who are faintly embarrassed of him, a wife who has died a permanent death, and a friend…well. That’s too complicated to think about for now.
“Then why don’t they spend more time with me?”
“Your mother is quite busy,” [Doctor] explains. “She must campaign very hard so that she can remain President.”
“That’s silly,” Susan sighs. “She’s going to win.”
“Nothing’s certain in the universe,” the Doctor hums, picking up one of the puzzles to distract himself with.
“Yes it is. 164 to 36,” Susan argues.
The Doctor pauses. “Hmm?”
“The Cardinals. 164 will vote for her.”
The Doctor drops the puzzle, a sick swoop of nausea hitting his stomach. There’s a frightening certainty to Susan’s voice, and the tone reminds him of things he has been told before. Of mystics and prophecies and—no.
Off-world, off-Gallifrey, the universe is subject to the rules of time. Any good Time Lord can pluck a fixed point from the streams in time, more parlor trick than prediction. Any good Time Lord can manipulate or nudge time just that little bit.
But Gallifrey is not off-world. It is not subject to the normal rules of time, locked off as it is by Rassillon and his great discoveries. Set apart. Set above.
The only beings that can predict the future on Gallifrey are playing around with the Matrix in a way they shouldn’t be, or—
Or—
“Susan, my dear child,” [Doctor] begins with a swallow, trying not to shake. He mustn’t betray his fear to Susan. It would only scare her. “Do you remember the nightmares you were having?”
Susan bites her lip. “I—sometimes I still have them. Grandfather, I’m sorry for lying! Please don’t be mad.”
“No, no, no,” [Doctor] reassures. “I’m not mad. Sometimes, well sometimes we have to be less than truthful, don’t we? Sometimes the truth is too dangerous, the truth might hurt us.”
Susan nods, wide-eyed.
“But the nightmares,” [Doctor] restates. “Do they sometimes—do they sometimes involve events that happen later? Things that seem imaginary, things that seem that are stories, but then later become true?”
“Yes,” Susan says, her voice barely a whisper.
The Doctor bends towards her, grabs her by her shoulders, shaking her. He can’t contain his panic, not now. “Susan. Promise me—promise me that you won’t tell anyone else about this. That you won’t tell anyone any of the stories you see in your dreams, or any other thing you might know that might happen. Keep the nightmares secret. Just as you’ve been doing. Promise me. Promise me!”
Susan quails, tears in her eyes. He is shouting at her, gripping her shoulders so tightly that he’ll doubtless leave bruises. “Please, grandfather. You’re hurting me!”
“I’m sorry, child,” [Doctor] says, letting her go and pulling her towards him in a desperate hug. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. But you must promise me.”
“I promise,” Susan says, crying in earnest now, head furiously nodding up and down against [Doctor]’s chest. “I promise.”
Her mother wins. 164 to 36.
~~
Susan is only a child, and there are secrets too big for a child alone to keep.
~~
Mere months before she is to have gone to the Academy, others finally discover just what is so special about Susan.
There is something sick in the idea of having a party about someone who isn’t even invited to it. Doctor-who-is-becoming-more-the-Doctor-every-day is not surprised that the Gallifreyan elite can stoop so low.
“This must be so exciting for you,” a no-name Cardinal blathers at [Doctor]. “What a great honor. She’s the first prophet found in what? Five-thousand years?”
“First in the domes, at least,” the Doctor sniffs. He’s met Shabogans and Outlanders and…others, the exiled and the decried, that could do things that seemed impossible.
“I think what [Doctor] means,” [Doctor]’s daughter says, a swish of robes appearing from nowhere to police any of the wilder excesses of her wayward father, “is that it would be unwise to put [Susan] on too much of a pedestal. To hold her to such high expectations. Well, she’s just a child after all. A very gifted child, but still.”
“Oh, erm,” the no-name Cardinal begins, “Yes, of course.”
“Her name’s Susan,” the Doctor says loudly, loud enough so the whole party can hear. “If it comes from one of her prophecies that you cherish so dearly, why do you refuse to address her as such, hm?”
“[Doctor],” his daughter begins, anger on her features, anger that reminds him so of his own, “Father. Please.”
The Doctor gives her a half-bow, walks off. “My Lady President.”
She smiles at that, not recognizing it for the insult the Doctor intended.
~~
Here is what is the gossip the Doctor, [Doctor], hears, the voices that follow him around everywhere:
“Quite rare, isn’t it? Quite remarkable. And they can’t trace it at all. Patrilineal side is mostly scientists. Highly respectable, but boring. And matrilineal side, politicians the lot. Well. Not the lot. There is him. With his rumored peculiarities. But I rather think he’d be the source of defects and not gifts.”
“I wish she was in my house. Such an honor. Lungbarrow will be a reigning family for the next million or so years, I suspect.”
“A life of service. How noble!”
“Shame she won’t get to go to the Academy. But then that lot go through a different sort of training, don’t they? And they’re awfully sensitive. Prefer to be alone.”
And then, there are the words more haunting:
“I mean it is an honor of course, but—well. That lot tend to be a bit queer.”
“I find the child unsettling, to be honest.”
“They say the last one went mad, the last prophet. That’s why there’s not many of them. They don’t live long enough to reproduce, do they? If the high council was smart, they’d start a breeding program.”
“They say there’s a bit of the prophets that’s already in the Matrix. Half-dead the moment they first draw breath.”
~~
It’s not nearly as uncommon for Outlander children to have nightmares, which is, perhaps, why no one thought anything of it when [Doctor] was small. Outlander children haven’t had anything remotely unpleasant or unsettling scrubbed from their genetic material, so a crying little boy means nothing on the farms outside the domes.
And [Doctor] has always been a poor telepath, failing most of his classes in that discipline, or barely scraping by. How pathetic he looked next to [Master], who was the best in their year at such things and likely responsible for any passing grade [Doctor] managed to scrounge.
Prophets, Susan too, are usually exceptionally telepathic (even [Master] was rumored to have seen things when they looked into the Untempered Schism—Schism-touched they called them). So no one would think, no one would ever think that [Doctor]…
The easy explanation is, and always has been, that [Doctor] is just broken.
But [Doctor]—
The Doctor has seen things. The Doctor has had nightmares, has always had nightmares. And the Doctor has known things, and K’anpo—
And the Sliders—
And in the Cloisters—
~~
Half-dead the moment they first draw breath.
~~
Susan has a power that even the Doctor can’t comprehend. Nothing like what meagre talents he has been unwittingly hiding all his life.
But he did this, he’s so certain he did this, the family embarrassment who has managed to fail in such a spectacular way as to both bring great honor to his House and poison his granddaughter all at once.
And if [Master] was Schism-touched, then both Susan and he must be Matrix-touched.
~~
There is something vaguely horrifying about the Academy, or at least [Doctor] always thought so. The great Curriculum of Rassillon takes children and pushes them to their limits, but the idea that such genetically perfected, emotionally repressed beings as modern-Gallifreyans are, the idea that they are ever really children is almost farcical, or at least that is what the Academy-indoctrinated adults would say.
Every Time Tot in the Academy knows this is a lie. Every fool with any capacity for self-reflection knows that this is a lie.
And so the Academy is an institutional horror perpetrated upon children to create the next generation of the nearest thing the universe has to Gods (or Kings, or Lords, but divine right all gets so fuzzy).
But the Doctor, and indeed all Time Lords and Ladies, have a frame of reference for the Academy. It is a burden shared, and a burden shared is better than a burden undertaken alone.
The Doctor has no frame of reference for how a prophet is trained. And Susan, the little girl who detested being lonely, is now quite alone.
All he knows is that his granddaughter, 12-years-old now, has become a wan shadow of her former self, tears constantly in her eyes, with a bevy of people celebrating, encouraging, instigating her nightmares.
[Doctor] doesn’t know what to do. And even the Doctor doesn’t quite know what to do.
It’s wrong, he knows it’s wrong, but how can he fix it?
He’s too old to sneak out of the domes like he used to, too old to run for it. Instead he takes his walking stick and sets off purposefully, head held high, strolling past the shouting guards, and out through the checkpoint and beyond. He’s learnt a long time ago that if you act like you own a place, no one will stop you, as much as they might protest.
He missed this. Missed the air outside the domes, the air that feels real in a way that the plasticky smelling recycled air in the domes just cannot. He missed the feeling of walking through tall grass that hasn’t been touched by a gardener, that hasn’t been cultivated to be aesthetically pleasing by an over-worked, neurotic Cerulean.
The grass outside the domes is beautiful in a way that the mere decorative can never be.
He walks a long time, mostly because he cannot really run anymore, so it takes longer for him to feel like he’s escaped, transient though such an escape may be, but also because he needs to, to clear his thoughts, to just exist in a space that is organic and not a hyper-constructed farce of a locale, where people and buildings alike are scrupulously designed and shapeless.
He thinks about trying to find some Outlanders or Shabogans to talk with, but he knows that all the Outlanders who were his friends must be dead by now, and the Shabogans would only detest him. He has become everything they hate.
Instead, he finds a hill with a lovely view of the nearest mountains, an even lovelier sunset slowly playing out against the tableau, and then he stops and he thinks.
He has no one to talk to about this problem. Anyone who would understand it is outside of his reach. His wife is dead, and [Master] has run away, probably to enact whatever the Schism and the Fates have for him.
He remembers that [Master] and him had promised that they would go away together. He remembers plans. He remembers the Cloisters again—the dual reasons he had to go down there, the rumor of a maintenance shaft and the—the Sliders—they—
He makes a conscious effort to forget, or at least put that thought out of his mind.
[Master] had spoken to him shortly before they had left. It had been a long time since the two had talked, and [Doctor] remembers being puzzled. [Master] spoke in riddles, which wasn’t unusual, but [Doctor] was too out of practice with the ways of [Master] and found to his despair that he could no longer translate the words of his oldest friend, of his oldest—no. He has a family now, and any hedonistic dalliances he might’ve engaged in should be far from his mind.
But there’s a keen ache in his hearts when he thinks of that last meeting, realizing what [Master] must have meant by it. An invitation. A peace offering.
How long ago was that now? 50 years ago? 60?
If [Master] came back to him this moment, made the same offer, then the Doctor would take it. He would not even hesitate. There is nothing left for him anymore, and perhaps there never was, perhaps he was only deluding himself by trying so hard to fit in on this world that seems to despise him and everything he stands for. But he did so love his wife, and he had thought his children would be different. But they aren’t, or perhaps they are too good at fitting in on this world, in a way he never was and never can be because of his wrongness. And now, the only thing that made this planet worthwhile, his only granddaughter, the only thing keeping him on this planet, is being slowly driven mad by the endless machinations of Time Lord society, and—
[Doctor] takes in a harsh breath. The Doctor lets it out.
If there is only one thing keeping him on this planet and this planet is choking the life out of that one, precious thing, then why does he stay here?
The Doctor watches the sunset, then makes his way slowly back to the domes. By the time he returns he is exhausted and cold.
“Promise me you will stop all this foolish behavior. I thought you were dead!” his daughter says.
“Hmm, I thought I was dead too,” the Doctor replies enigmatically with a smile that belies the years this body has seen. “But I think there might yet be life in me.”
He makes no promises that night.
~~
There was never anywhere in Gallifrey that could keep [Doctor] out. There is nowhere, still, in Gallifrey that can keep the Doctor out.
The whole family, of course, gets scheduled visits with Susan. But if the Doctor wants to see his granddaughter now then he will do as he pleases, thank you very much, and he has decided it is visitation time.
It just happens to be a coincidence that it’s quite late at night that he’s visiting Susan. And if he’s creeping about in the stealthiest manner he can manage, well, that’s just a peculiar coincidence as well.
The compound Susan lives in is a quiet spot, far away from the Academy, but right in the heart of the Panopticon. Something strange tugs at the Doctor’s hearts that Susan should be so close to her mother every day, and yet so far apart.
The Chancellery guards patrolling about prove to be as oblivious as they are pompous, the security systems prove to be child’s play to bypass, and soon the Doctor finds himself outside the door to Susan’s quarters.
It is just after 0100 hours, but the Doctor senses that Susan is awake, senses, furthermore, that Susan prefers to avoid sleep as much as possible.
He doesn’t need to knock; Susan opens the door and pulls him inside, tugging him into a hug in one swift motion, clutching him tightly.
“Come now, child,” the Doctor says after a long moment, offering mock protestations. “If you insist on holding on to me so tightly, you’ll break my old bones.”
Susan giggles, recognizing his bluster for what it is. “What are you doing here?”
“Why, I wanted to see my only granddaughter. Is that so strange an occurrence?”
“It is when I’m more well-guarded even than mother!” Susan says, but she cannot hide her glee that he is here.
“Ah. Well, a few guards have never stopped me,” the Doctor says with a wave of his hand.
Susan is not fooled by his false bravado. “You’re very brave and very clever, Grandfather. Thank you.”
The Doctor is forced to turn away lest Susan see the tears in his eyes. He uses this as a pretense to look at Susan’s quarters. It is a stark, small, utilitarian room. A small bunk, partially inset into the wall; a desk with a computer console and an uncomfortable looking plastic chair; and another small table upon which sits a meal, cold and untouched. “Why didn’t you eat your dinner, Susan?”
Susan wrinkles her nose. “They’ve drugged it.”
The Doctor picks it up, sniffs it, confirming for himself the chemicals they’ve laced it with. Something to induce REM sleep if he isn’t much mistaken. He is a bit insulted on Susan’s behalf that no one would think that she would be able to smell such a thing. “Not been sleeping well? Do they do this often?”
“I don’t want to sleep,” Susan says. She seems to realize how petulant she sounds and frowns at her own tone. “They want me to sleep, though, so I’ll dream, and they can use the dreams for whatever they want. They hook me up and process my dreams and all sorts of horrid things.”
[Doctor] swallows. He is scared, so very scared that he cannot be the Doctor. Because he can hear it now, from the terminal. The whispers. They draw him in. He presses a finger against a drawer hidden in the wall near the computer, and the drawer whooshes open smoothly, revealing connectors. Telepathic hookups.
The Matrix again. Always the bloody Matrix. They’ve been hooking his granddaughter up to the Matrix, using her as another conduit, another cog, to check and countercheck the prophecies, the calculations.
He’s so distracted he doesn’t even realize Susan’s taken his hand in hers, but when she does, it sets off something in him, a memory, flashes, things he’s dreamt of, things she’s dreamt of, all blurring together. Mutants in tanks, trundling along on their way to perpetrate genocide against every race in the universe. Metal men who have deleted their feelings, both physical and mental, in exchange for being impervious. Earth, the place he’s always been fond of for reasons too complicated. Exile, friends, family of a sort, all found on a soggy little island. [Master]. No. The Master. Death and sadness and warmth and beauty.
Then war. Endless, endless war, caused by him, caused in a chain of events being set up even now, a certainty in the Matrix already, too late. And at the end of it, only him. All alone.
And then, beyond that. Himself as he was, much younger, hair too long, robes too big, in over his head because of a dare and a wild idea, spurred on by a kiss shared between him and [Master], but terrified [now | then | in perpetuity]. In the Cloisters, the whispering, the press of the ghosts, of the Sliders, of the Wraiths, of the things that scream. Of the things that tell him the way out in exchange for weaving him into the web of causality. Of the things that give him a name. Names. Doctor. Warrior. Hybrid. Himself as he will be, much older, hair too long, suit jacket too big, in over his head because of his accursed stubbornness and a wild idea, spurred on by the dream of a kiss shared between him and […], but terrified, always, always just a scared little boy, in the Cloisters, and—
Susan lets go of his hand, pulls away like she was burnt. The visions dissipate in that strange way visions always do, and what a burden that they both know what that’s like.
But some things linger. They always do. For the Doctor it is the fear and one word. Hybrid.
For Susan, it is…
“I saw [you],” Susan says, voice monotone, eyes glazed over, looking at nothing in this room, but at something far off, far away. The pronoun she has chosen is wrong. It is used to denote a Time Lord who has gone through multiple regenerations, but this is [Doctor]’s first body. “I’ve been seeing you. And the hybrid. And they want that, they want all that information. And you haven’t made your decision, but you’ve already made your decision. You [can | will | are | must] get to the maintenance tunnels through ways other than just through the Cloisters. Route 4673.”
“Yes,” the Doctor nods, grabbing Susan’s hand in both of his own, patting it reassuringly, and everything is quiet now. “Tomorrow night. Tomorrow night, we shall go. Just as you say.”
~~
The Doctor finds new ways to run.
~~
Destiny, prophecy, family, justice, goodness.
All those concepts are more complicated than the Time Lords could ever possibly know. The fools.
But then, the Doctor was never a very good Time Lord.