oncoming_storms Prompt 40
I
She was only eight years old. Small. Far too small. Her eyes were abnormally wide in her pale face and she was dwarfed by her new robes, tugging constantly at the ill fitting red and orange material as she followed her fellow students deeper into the Citadel.
The Prydonian Chapter of the Academy was buried deep within the glass dome of the city, cutting her off completely from the family outside. From her grandfather, her beloved grandfather. He’d tried to prepare her for this, he really had. He’d promised that, one day, the stars out there - far beyond the burnt orange skies and the twin suns - would belong to both of them.
It had been a nice gesture. She’d appreciated it at the time.
Her parents had been so proud when the Time Lords came to take her away. Only her grandfather had seemed sad to see her go. She’d clutched at his hand through the slit in the window of the transporter capsule, drawing strength from the brief connection between them.
Be brave, my girl. Be brave.
I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go! Grandfather, please! I belong with you ...
“Did you know that the Prydonian Chapter has produced more Presidents than any other?” remarked a dark haired girl as they walked. She had a superior sort of smile, sardonic eyes and a ridiculous long name. Susan had taken an instant dislike to her.
“I don’t want to be President. I’d much rather see the stars.” I’d much rather be with my grandfather.
“Really?” Romanadvoratrelundar raised an eyebrow. “How strange of you.”
II
Children of Gallifrey are taken from their families at the age of eight, to enter into the Academy. Some say that’s where it all began. That’s when she saw eternity.
***
She looked over at the man beside her, and, with an almost tender smile, the older Time Lord inclined his head. As if she needed his permission! Perhaps he mistook her scorn for intense devotion? Such an enormous event, reduced to nothing but pomp and ceremony. Her grandfather had been right about that.
When she stepped forward and gazed into the darkness within that mirrored pool, she found herself wondering what else he’d been right about.
For a moment, there was nothing. She tried, briefly, to decide if it was all just some foolish test. But then it was there. Eternity. It was spread out before her, rippling and changing with every second that passes, but, somehow, still crystal clear. Solid. The past, the present and the future. Hers for the taking!
It was so beautiful and so terrible. She loved it and loathed it in the same instance.
There was a drumbeat, too, beneath the swirls of light and time and power. It pounded and pounded away in her head, and it hurt. Rassilon, it hurt. Her knees buckled, but refused to give way. She refused to surrender.
She stared into the untempered schism and the vortex stared back. A piece splintered away and moved into the mind of a most willing host.
The drums beat on.
***
And then it was over.
She remembered - briefly - damp sand beneath her fingertips, and a ringing in her ears, and then she found herself being half led and half carried back to her new room in the darkest corner of the Academy. The drum was still pounding in her head. On and on. It wouldn’t stop. It would never stop.
As soon as she was alone, the girl sat up, drinking in her new found knowledge of the universe. She drummed her fingers absently on the wooden table beside her ramshackle bed. She smiled.
It had chosen her. The drumming was just the price she had to pay for glory.
III
They came to a slow halt outside the junkyard. And it was a junkyard. There was no house there, yet Barbara and Ian had both checked and double checked the address. Totter’s Lane was where the mysterious Susan Foreman lived.
“She can’t have got here yet,” Barbara murmured, before fixing her gaze on Ian. “I suppose we are doing the right thing?”
She wanted confirmation, and, possibly, a dozen other things that Ian couldn’t offer her at the moment.
“You can’t justify curiosity,” he replied, with startling geniality, and he merely laughed when Barbara interrupted with a desperate pretext regarding Susan’s homework. “That’s just an excuse, really. I’ve seen far worse. The truth is we’re both curious about Susan and we won’t be happy until we know some of the answers.”
It was true, which was probably why the statement infuriated Barbara so much. Ian looked at her in that peculiar way of his, as if he’d squirmed straight under her skin. She wanted to defend herself vehemently, or, at the very least, tell him she’d have gone straight home if she’d ever thought she was being a busy body. The words wouldn’t come, and, in the end, it was Ian who spoke first.
“Do you want to go home?”
***
In the end, Ian backed up the car and drove away. He dropped Barbara off at her house, and said a polite, if slight frosty, goodnight to her on the doorstep. They didn’t wait for Susan to return. They didn’t explore.
Both of them went to sleep that night feeling as if they’d missed something. An opportunity, perhaps. Or a discovery. Maybe even both. Something important, anyway.
Susan herself walked into school the next day with no idea of how close her world had come to changing forever.
IV
“Oh, David, I do love you, I do!” she cried, whirling around and clinging to him fiercely. She knew, distantly, that her grandfather was probably watching them both on the TARDIS screen, but her body shook with desperate tears, and she couldn’t find it in her hearts to care.
And then she pulled away. She wanted to say more. There was so much to say. But she was a Time Lord. She was supposed to be dispassionate. Dispassionate and alone. It didn’t matter now. It couldn’t.
The Doctor, to his credit, didn’t speak when she returned to the ship. He seemed unable to look at her. Barbara stepped forward, though, her lips forming hollow words of meagre comfort, but Susan had already walked past them and out of the console room. She couldn’t have watched the dematerialisation for all the shining stars in the seven systems.
She imagined David’s face as she sank down onto her bed. A real life had slipped through her finger tips and she wasn’t sure how (or even why). Silent tears cut silvery white trails in the grime that coated her cheeks. She could feel the first stirrings of hate in her chest, taking root like a malevolent vine, choking her hard with thorny tendrils. It would grow stronger by the day, and Susan would direct it all at her grandfather.
And after him? Who could tell?
V
Susan Campbell stood on the porch with her hands folded protectively over her stomach. The air was heavy with the scent of lemongrass and sage from her little herb garden, and she could detect, underneath that, faint traces of the fertilisers David used on the fields to the west. He loved making things grow. Farming wasn’t the most exciting of occupations, or, perhaps, even the most noble, but David gave his whole existence over to the pursuit of peace and she couldn’t help but love him for it.
Their house was currently streaked crimson and gold by the most violent of sunsets. A faint breeze stirred Susan’s hair as she stared out at the distant horizon. It was such a small world, the world she now inhabited. From here to London and, occasionally, from London to the coast. That was it. She was firmly rooted in one place now. And, although it was a little disquieting at times, at least it was her place. Her home, and her life, and her tiny little world that smelt of fertiliser and home grown herbs. Just what she’d always dreamed about.
She didn’t drop her gaze when the sun finally dipped below the hills, or even when she heard footsteps on the wooden floor behind her. David wasn’t a Time Lord, but she found she could sense his presence as acutely as she’d ever sensed her grandfather’s.
“You’re not crying are you, Susan?” her husband asked, touching a calloused finger to the half dried tears on her cheek. She hadn’t realised they were there until he did that and smiled widely as he wrapped his arm around her waist. There was such tenderness in his voice. It made her hearts ache.
“Oh, I’m sorry, David,” she laughed, resting her face against his shoulder, “I’m just so happy.”
He kissed her hair, and, reverently, placed his hands over hers. Over their child, which grew in Susan’s womb with as much strength and life as any of the crops in the fields. Half human, half Time Lord, and wholly theirs.
VI
The Doctor slumped to his knees. Ancient. The years that had always shown in his eyes were suddenly reflected in his flesh. Lucy Saxon, watching as Martha Jones flew to his side, wrinkled her nose in distaste. There was no trace of sorrow in her eyes, though. No pity. This might not have been her favourite part of her husband’s scheme, but it was clear she wasn’t going object, either.
“Awwwh!” the Master laughed, “She’s a would be Doctor! Maybe she even loves him. Do you love him, Martha Jones? I wouldn’t bother, if I were you. He doesn’t love like the rest of us do. He leaves everyone behind in the end, you know.”
As he spoke, he looked over at his wife and, obediently, she stepped forward to join him, smoothing down her cream coat with manicured fingers.
“Have you met my wife, Doctor?” the Master asked, “Say hello, darling.”
Lucy Saxon knelt down beside Martha and the Doctor, and placed her lips close to his ear. She smiled like a shark.
“Hello, grandfather.”
Prompt: Life
Word Count: 1685