Fanfic: Doctor Who: The Thirteen Doctors of Christmas 2/3
Title: The Thirteen Doctors Of Christmas 2/3
Author: Unknown Kadath, AKA kadath_or_bust
Rating: All Ages
Word Count: 4,600
Characters: Susan Foreman, Doctors 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10.5 11, 12, and 13, with appearances by Rose and River
Beta: tardis-mole
Part One
Part Two
Author’s Note: I'm continuing to capitalize “grandfather” whenever it's Susan's POV. I know some of it's not grammatically correct but I felt it was right for the character. I'd like to finish the story that way for the sake of internal consistency. And this is being posted as two sections as it's too big for one post.
Also, the flower was stolen from a Marc Platt novel.
9. The Stranger
Susan did not speak of this dream to her Grandfather the next day, or to anyone at school. It was the last day before the break and everyone else was far too excited about Christmas to pay much attention to her mood. Anna asked her, sympathetically, if her Grandfather still didn’t want to celebrate Christmas, and said he was a right old Scrooge and needed to lighten up. But even she was too excited to worry about Susan for long-she was going to visit her cousins, and spent most of her time talking about that.
Back at home, Grandfather was preoccupied with his sensors. He was beginning to get truly frustrated with them, and just a bit anxious. “They can’t have found me,” he muttered to himself. “Or why haven’t they done anything yet? Hm? They wouldn’t track me down to this planet in this time and then fail to find me … or find me and leave me at liberty. No. No, it must be a fault.”
Susan told him she was tired and slipped away to her room early. She half wanted to go to sleep and ask the next Doctor if he was all right now, and what had happened to the one she’d met last night. The other half of her wanted to stay up all night so she wouldn’t have to find out.
What she actually did was to read The Time Machine straight through. It was a short novel, and while she enjoyed it, it wasn’t, on reflection, a comforting story. It was about a man who traveled into the future and found that his civilization had fallen, and his people devolved first into a race of simpletons and a race of savages that preyed on one another, then into near-mindless beasts, and finally disappeared altogether.
“It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane. The ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind.”
In the end he found the planet a lifeless, frozen wasteland, and returned to his own time … only to set out on a second expedition, never to return.
“The Time Traveler’s still out there somewhere, having adventures,” she told herself. “That’s all. It’s not that anything bad’s happened to him. He’s like Grandfather. If he finds something that interests him he’ll forget everything else. He could go on for years-centuries-so long as he kept finding places he liked better than home.”
OOO
It was the sensation of a drop of water falling on her cheek and a gentle brush of lips on her forehead that roused her. She hadn’t even been aware of falling asleep. When she opened her eyes and found herself in her bedroom, just as she’d left it, she thought for an instant that she’d woken up again. But no; her instincts told her this was still a dream.
It was nearly dark, the lights dimmed for the night. At first she thought she was alone, and she was about to get up and go looking for tonight’s visitation. Then she saw the man standing in the shadows by the door.
“Grandfather?” she said, sitting up.
The lights responded to her motion by increasing slightly, and she saw that it wasn’t her Grandfather-not any of them. He was a rough-looking man in a leather jacket, hard-faced, with cropped hair and icy grey eyes, and he was watching her with all the expression of a block of granite.
Susan took in a sharp breath at the sight of the intruder. He looked dangerous, menacing, capable of pretty much anything-that was the immediate impression she had of him, and she could only assume his purpose here was sinister. But he was already turning to go, striding out the door and into the darkness of the hall beyond.
It was only then that she registered the sorrow buried in his eyes, and the faint glimmer of moisture on his cheek, and realized that he’d been crying.
She touched the drop of water on her own cheek. “Grandfather?” she whispered.
And then she was truly awake, struggling upright in bed and sobbing.
On her pillow was a single flower, a tiny Gallifreyan starbell, glowing like a captured spark encased in petals.
10. The Adventurer
The flower had faded by breakfast. They never lasted long, only a day, less when cut, and it was never any use putting them in water. Susan held it while it lasted, smelling the sweet faint fragrance, thinking of home. Not that it had ever truly felt like home. And on close inspection, it was a desert starbell of the sort whose seeds were carried on ships for experimental purposes, not the mountain species she'd grown up with.
It was still the closest she might ever come to going back.
Her Grandfather was by now so frustrated with his sensors that he didn’t notice anything wrong with her at all. In fact, shortly after they began, he told her to go off and amuse herself and get out from underfoot. Ordinarily she would have gone off a little ways and waited for him to remember he wanted an assistant on hand to pass him tools and listen to him mutter to himself, but today she was just as happy to go off to the library and leave him to it.
She lay awake for a long time before she fell asleep that night. She'd been so afraid for her Grandfather's safety. Then she'd been given proof he'd survived … as a man she barely recognized. What if the next one was a madman, or a monster? If that was his future, she didn't want to see it.
But then there was the tear, and the flower. He'd still been the Grandfather who loved her and looked after her. But … why wouldn't he speak to her?
The thoughts went round and round inside her head. But she was young, and sleep had always come easily to her, and presently she found herself standing in a half-familiar room surrounded by twisting pillars of … coral?
“Hello, Susan,” said a soft voice behind her.
She turned and saw him standing by the latest version of the TARDIS console. This one was very tall and thin and dressed in a pinstriped suit, with a mess of spiky brown hair. His face was young but his eyes were older than she’d ever seen. Ancient. But they were warm and sane, and she ran to him and threw her arms around him.
“Grandfather,” she said.
She held him a bit too tightly for a bit too long, or maybe that was him. “It’s all right, Susan,” he said. “Never mind that idiot in the leather jacket. Everything’s all right. Well, I say all right, I wanted to be ginger this time ‘round and I’m not, but you have to agree that the ears are an improvement. And the nose. Well, I say an improvement, quantum leap forward might be a better way of putting-”
“I’m dead, aren’t I?” she said, stepping back just a little without letting go of him.
The animation drained out of his face. For a moment she could see him trying to decide whether or not to lie (and she knew this one was going to be even worse at it than the others), trying to find any way around it.
“That’s why you’re doing this now,” she said. “Because you can’t go and visit me in your own timeline. I’m not there any more.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Susan.”
“Does it happen soon?” she asked. She knew she shouldn’t, but he shouldn’t be here either, and she was trying to be brave, but …
“I don't know when. Our timelines were out of sync. There was a-well, there was a planet. I didn't find out you were there until it was too late.” He shook his head. “It was too late all along. And I couldn't do anything to stop it.”
He reached up to brush a tear from her cheek, watching her with concern. This one really was very open-she could read every emotion in his face. “I didn't know you were there, not until the end. It was some future regeneration of you. I think you were older than I am.”
She sniffed and gave him a slightly strained smile. “I’m all right, Grandfather,” she said. “None of us can live forever, can we?”
“I didn't mean for you to know,” he said. “I’m sorry, Susan. No one should have to know a thing like that. It was selfish of me to come here. I should have known you’d figure it out.” His mouth quirked into a lopsided smile. “You always were too clever by half.”
“I'm glad you came,” she told him. “I'm glad I met you-all of you. But what about you? I saw your face last night and you frightened me. You were like a stranger.”
“Yeah.” He scratched the back of his neck and pulled at his ear, grimacing. “He was fine underneath all the attitude and leather, really. Well, eventually he was fine. I got off to a bad start in that incarnation … there was … the planet, you see.” He shook his head, his eyes haunted. “Well. I spent a good bit of that life learning to live with … what had happened.”
She met his gaze and held it, looking for any trace of a lie. “Were you alone?” she asked. Because however many friends he made, she couldn’t help thinking she should have been there. And she wasn’t. She never would be again.
He smiled, and it was genuinely happy. “No! I wanted to be, or thought I wanted to be, but it didn’t last long. I had some very good friends who wouldn't let me.”
“Tell me about them,” she demanded. Now it was more important than ever-these were the people she had to trust to look after him when she was gone.
“There was Rose,” he said. Susan could tell from the tenderness in his voice that she must have been very special to him. “And her mother helped, but don’t ever tell anyone I said so. And Mickey-don’t tell anyone that, either. And then there was Jack, he was a very good friend of mine but if he ever comes near you it’ll be my solemn duty as your Grandfather to kill him. I know he’s immortal but that’s not gonna stop me …”
Susan smiled as she listened to him. She’d always wondered what her Grandfather would do without her, but she’d never thought about what would happen to him if she died. But even after that it seemed he’d be all right. A little sad, still, but he had so many other people in his lives, so many things to enjoy, she couldn’t worry about him too much. He was so very alive, young in his hearts despite the weight of years in his eyes.
And she was sure she’d be all right, too-she was going to live a very long life before any of this happened, too long to worry about herself now.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” he said. “I do celebrate Christmas. I stopped a giant replica of the Titanic from crashing into Buckingham palace Christmas day-”
“The Titanic?”
“I know!” he said, eyes wide. “Can you believe that? A cruise line actually went and named a ship after the Titanic.”
“That doesn’t sound like Christmas,” she said, half-covering her smile with her hand.
“It was, too! They had killer robot angels and everything!” He frowned abruptly. “Okay, so maybe that wasn’t too Christmas-y. Wait, is that a word? Anyway, the year before that, I saved a bride from a giant spider. And her fiance. I mean, I saved her from the fiance, I didn’t save the fiance from the spider. Actually, he was working with the spider.”
“I think that’s Halloween,” giggled Susan.
“Saving people!” protested her Grandfather. “That’s Christmas. And there was a Christmas Star, too.” He frowned again. “Which killed people. And got shot out of the sky by a tank. Okay, I take your point. But the Christmas before that …”
10.5: The Other Grandfather
Susan practically skipped to the console room the next morning. All the fear and doubt of the last few days was gone, and she’d woken up with a note on her pillow telling her to Look outside. What might be waiting for her outside she had no idea, but she was sure it was something wonderful if it was her gift for today. What would have to be left outside?
Her Grandfather was standing by the console. She was so excited that she almost missed the look on his face. Almost-he stepped into her path and frowned so severely at her that she stopped in her tracks, the smile fading from her lips.
“You’ve gone too far,” he said. “Much too far indeed. I should have expected better of you, Susan. I wouldn’t have believed, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, that you could be so irresponsible.”
“Grandfather?” She was almost too baffled to be hurt by his words-yet.
“You know perfectly well,” he sniffed, affecting disdain and turning away to look at the controls. “The weather controls, child. The atmospheric systems!”
“What?”
“There’s no use playing innocent,” he said, turning back to her and raising his voice. “There’s a fresh coat of snow outside, and these readouts quite clearly indicate it was artificially induced. Now that was very childish of you. It’s sure to attract attention and you should have known it would put us both at risk, but no! You were thinking of yourself, eh, thinking of how you’d like a nice little white Christmas?”
Susan stared at him, feeling tears start in her eyes. The sheer unfairness of it was appalling. “I didn’t!” she said. “I wouldn’t, you know I wouldn’t! And anyway, you know perfectly well the atmospheric exciter isn’t working, I couldn’t have even if I wanted to!”
He smiled coldly. “Oh, I’m sure there’s some explanation as to how you did it. That’s for you to tell me, though, isn’t it?”
“Oh …” She was so angry for a moment she couldn’t think what to say. “Oh, that’s so very like you!” she burst out in the end. “You don’t know something so you blame it on anyone you can, just so you don’t look foolish-and then you look like a bigger fool than ever!”
It was her Grandfather’s turn to start sputtering with rage. “I don’t know what you’re-”
“You’re a horrible, conceited, self-centered old man,” Susan pressed on, the words practically tripping over each other. “I don’t know how you can be so hateful-or how I could dream you’d ever be those other people!”
She snatched her coat from the stand and rushed out the doors, leaving him to protest vainly behind her.
“Susan, come back here this instant! Where are you going? I demand you come back! Come back, I say!”
OOO
She’d meant to put her coat on outside, once she’d gotten away from her Grandfather. But instead of stumbling into a drift of snow and the bite of cold wind, she found herself indoors again, in a room lit by glowing amber panels set into walls of polished ebony. The floor was a stained-glass mosaic of rose and amber Perspex over an underlevel filled with more wood and gleaming machinery.
It was sleek and modern, all angles and shine, and might have looked cold, but the wood and the warm tint of the light gave it a homey feel. So did the Christmas wreaths hung on the walls.
And something else-the sense of welcome she associated with the TARDIS, but younger, newer.
And there was a six-sided ebony console, set with controls of antique ivory and colored lights like jewels. A gold-tinted pillar of glass rose and fell at its heart.
There was a young blond woman standing by it, staring at Susan with wide eyes. For a moment, Susan thought she was another Time Lord-time seemed to swirl around her strangely, and burn within her in a way it never would with a human-but she didn’t feel quite like a Time Lord. Then the woman half-turned to an interior doorway and shouted, “Doctor!”
“What?” came a half-familiar voice.
“I think I found where that time distortion was comin’ from …” She turned fully back to Susan, and if anything, her eyes went even wider. “Oh my God,” she said, no longer calling to the man in the next room. “You’re her, ain’t ya? You look jus’ like the paintin’ he did …”
The man hurried in. Now Susan could see why he sounded familiar-he was the same version of Grandfather she’d met last night. In a blue suit over a red t-shirt rather than brown over a blue button-down, but …
This wasn’t a dream. She knew that. And this wasn’t her Grandfather’s TARDIS. It didn’t look like the version she’d dreamed of last night and it didn’t feel the same, either. And there had never been other people in the dreams, and now there was this strange woman, and her Grandfather was carrying a baby in his arms.
The baby was perhaps six months old, with her Grandfather’s brown hair sticking up all over the place, and the blonde woman’s wide hazel eyes.
“Susan?” whispered her Grandfather. For once he looked as surprised as she was. No, far more surprised-practically frozen in shock.
The blonde woman obviously thought the same. She hurried forward to take the baby, probably worried the Doctor would drop her. He didn’t even seem to notice.
“What? What? But … how can you be here?” he said, his voice rising almost to a squeak. “How … how is this possible?”
“I don’t know,” she told him. “I was coming out of the TARDIS, and then I was here. And you’re really here, aren’t you? It’s not just a dream, or …” She reached out with her mind. He was making no effort to shield himself, and she could tell he really was a Time Lord, really was her Grandfather, though there was something just a bit off about the feel of him. “You really are him.”
“Susan,” he said again, and he ran to her and wrapped his arms around her like he’d never let her go. “Susan, Susan, oh, I’ve missed you.”
She held him just as tightly. He was trembling, and he felt far too warm, and he didn’t smell right-not bad, but not quite normal. And she could feel his pulse pounding in his chest, and that didn’t feel right, either.
“Grandfather?” she said, pulling away.
He held on more tightly for a moment, then reluctantly let her go. “Yes, Susan,” he sighed. “And no.”
“What do you mean?” she demanded.
“I’m a metacrisis of your Grandfather,” he said. “A regeneration went wrong. There are two of me now. This one …” He gestured to himself resignedly. “This one’s part human.”
She stared at him a moment. Now that she looked, he wasn’t quite exactly like the one she’d met last night. There was a ginger tint to his hair (or was that the light?) and he looked a few years … younger? No, older-there was a bit of grey in his sideburns, and a few more lines around his eyes, and she thought he might have gained a little weight. But there was something in his manner that made him seem younger, at the same time.
She reached out and put a hand to his chest. One heart, just like a human. And he had the higher body temperature, and he even smelled a little like them.
Then she looked up at his face. He had the same eyes, but they looked uncertain, and she realized he was waiting for her to reject him.
“Grandfather,” she said firmly, and she hugged him again.
He shuddered and relaxed in her arms, rocking her gently. “Always, Susan. Always.”
When they finally parted again, he had to wipe tears from his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “’M all right. Human tear ducts.”
“Oi,” said the woman, sounding amused. “Still doesn’t have anything nice to say about us,” she complained to Susan. “I’m Rose, by the way.”
“Rose!” said Susan. “Oh, yes, Grandf-I mean, the other version of Grandfather mentioned you.”
Rose smiled. She had a huge, blinding smile, a little too big for her face and with a pink tip of tongue sticking out from between her teeth, and Susan decided she liked this Rose very much.
“My wife,” said the part-human Doctor proudly. “And this … is Susan.”
At first Susan thought he was introducing her to Rose. Then she realized he meant the baby.
“Oh,” she breathed, stepping toward Rose and looking more closely at the child. She reached out hesitantly, and Rose shifted to give her better access. The baby grabbed at Susan’s hand, dragging her fingers towards her mouth.
“Oi,” chided the Doctor. “You can’t go stickin’ half the world in your mouth, you know. Anyway, it’s rude to go ‘round tastin’ people.”
“Yeah, rude and sticks stuff in her mouth,” said Rose. “Dunno where she gets that from …”
“Rose Noble, I don’t know what you mean,” huffed the Doctor. “But Susan, how can you be here? This is a parallel universe, you know!”
“Yeah,” said Rose. She rolled her eyes and mimicked her husband (or his counterpart), “'An’ the walls are sealed, Rose, they’re sealin’ themselves up forever …'”
“That was him,” said the Doctor irritably. “I never said that.”
“It’s always ‘him’ when he’s wrong, you mean.”
“No I don’t. It was after we were two separate people, it was him, not me.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t hear ya arguin’ with him, did I?” Rose caught Susan’s eye and smirked.
Susan giggled. She had a hard time imagining her Grandfather married to a human (if that was really what Rose was), but it was suddenly a lot easier, the way these two behaved.
“And in her timeline, they haven't been sealed yet.”
“Doesn't count, you were still wrong.”
“So anyway,” said the Doctor, “you shouldn’t be here unless something’s very, very wrong.”
“I don’t know, Grandfather. I thought you did it. See, there’s a future incarnation of you …”
The part-human Doctor listened intently as she explained what was going on. He stood with one arm around Rose’s shoulders and one hand shoved in his pocket, and while Susan could imagine the Time Lord version of this incarnation doing something similar, she thought there was something more casual in this man’s posture. His body language was looser and somehow lighter than it had been.
It wasn't that he looked younger, she decided. He looked older than his Time Lord counterpart. It was that he acted younger.
“He’s got to have parked his TARDIS near yours, maybe even inside it to mask himself from your sensors,” he muttered. “Dangerous, that.” He added something that Susan couldn’t make out. It sounded like, “Stupid Martian.”
“Maybe enough to set up a resonance with this TARDIS,” said Rose. They looked at each other.
“Susan,” said her Grandfather, “I don’t think he meant to send you here at all. You’ll have to go back soon. If we can figure out how.”
“Can’t I stay for just a little bit?” she pleaded.
“Wellll …” Rose gave him a stern look and he scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “Well, you have to stay until we find a way back. But then we can’t wait any more.”
They spent the next half hour poring over readouts, laughing and joking as the Doctor and Rose told her about their lives. “Are you part Time Lord, too?” Susan asked her.
“No,” said Rose, smiling. “I’m human. Well, mostly. There was a sort of accident with the TARDIS-”
“More of an ‘on purpose',” interjected the Doctor.
“Shut up. Anyway, picked up a few tricks, but I’m still the same underneath.”
The pair smiled at each other again, and Susan felt something in her relax. It was one thing to hear that her Grandfather was fine, and that he had other people with him, but it was another to meet some of those people and see him happy with them. Even if this wasn’t quite the same man as her Grandfather would become, they were enough alike that she knew the Time Lord version could be happy as well.
Susan kept watching the baby in fascination. The little girl was quiet, though her parents had to be careful with her-she kept wanting to grab at the controls. Rose, sensing the older Susan’s interest, let her hold the baby for a while. The child was too warm, and she had an odd milky human smell, but there was a sparkle of more-than-human intelligence in her eyes and Susan could feel the faint telepathic flutter of her mind.
“This is useless,” said her Grandfather at length, running a frustrated hand through his hair and glaring at the console. “It’ll take days to figure this out. C’mon, Rose, let’s take a break. We can introduce Susan to your mother!”
“What, an’ scare her back into her universe?” quipped Rose, before relenting. “All right. But just for a bit. She can’t stay here, you know.”
“I know,” said the Doctor. He looked absolutely heartbroken for a moment. This version seemed happier and more open than his Time Lord counterpart, but he seemed more fragile, as well. Just like a human. Susan half wanted to tell him she’d stay, but she really didn’t belong here, and despite their argument she needed to go back home to her first Grandfather. “Here, let me get you something, then we’ll go over to the house for a quick visit. We’re parked right outside.”
He darted into the interior of his young TARDIS and came bounding out a moment later with a small toy zeppelin in his hand. “There wasn’t a Hindenburg in this universe,” he explained, “and these are more popular than airplanes. I made this myself for our Susan, but the propellers come off an’ Rose won’t let me give it to her-”
“Yeah, small parts an’ a girl who sticks everythin’ in her mouth, what could go wrong?” said Rose, rolling her eyes.
“Thank you,” said Susan, taking the toy and kissing him on the cheek. She hugged him again. “Shall we go to the house, then?” she added, seeing his eyes start to tear up again and not wanting to embarrass him.
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s do that.” He blinked rapidly and smiled, ushering her to the door. “You’ll love Jackie,” (she noticed him quickly cross his fingers) “and Pete, and little Tony. They’re-”
What they were, Susan never learned. She stumbled as they stepped out the door, and found herself standing alone, in the snow, outside the familiar blue shape of the TARDIS.
On to Part Three!