fic - Doctor Who - Requiem for Times Past
Sep. 13th, 2007 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseFandom: Doctor Who
Title: Requiem for Times Past
Characters: The Doctor, Martha, and Susan.
Summary: Some time after the events of “Last of the Time Lords,” the Doctor finds he can no longer avoid thoughts of one of the other ghosts from his past.
Rating and Notes: PG-13 or so. I’ve done my best to stick as close to canon as possible while retaining the idea that sparked this - I’m by no means infallible, though, and there’s a whooole lot to keep track of in this universe, so I apologize if I missed something egregious. Edit: Aww, hell - just call it AU. It's easier, that way...
Disclaimer: All is owned by the mighty BBC, and I intend absolutely no infringement upon their mighty media holdings. I’d really appreciate if they’d make their radio content more easily accessible over the internet, though.
“What’ll you do now? I mean, now we’re safe again?”
“Me?” The Doctor shrugged idly, taking a sideways glance at Martha to see how she was taking all of this. Life and death was nothing unusual to her, especially now she’d passed her exams, but an invasion force using plague vectors as their first line of attack had been a new one even to him, and more disturbing than most of the potential destructions of the Earth that he’d seen. She seemed fine, though - tired, of course, but otherwise in good spirits. Good, that. “Same as always, I suppose. Ride off into the... well, dawn, but you get the idea.”
“That’s you.” Martha grinned at him. “The Lone Ranger.”
“What, with the Tardis cast as Silver and you playing... what, Tonto?” He snorted.
“Why not? You ride into town, save the day, and disappear until the next crisis. I’m just glad I made you take that phone of mine - can’t imagine what we’d have done if I couldn’t have called you.”
“You could solve that, you know - come with me, and then the next time...”
“I could...” She stopped walking, and he stopped as well, turning to look at her. “Yeah, I could. But then who’d help them? All the times you aren’t here, I mean. You can’t always be here, and if there’s nobody to call you when something goes wrong, or nobody who knows a bit to try to stop things...”
“That’s... good.”
“What?”
“No, you’re right. Good thinking. I was just thinking...” He stretched a hand behind his head, scratching at the thick hair. “Have I lost my edge? Got something disgusting caught in my teeth? Does the new body smell or something, because... I used to keep a companion with me for, oh, at least a decade or so, relative time, before they start talking about settling down in their old life, and lately... You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if I had a smell?”
Martha laughed. “Oh, come off it. You’re just jealous we can get by a few months without a crisis that needs you, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” He grinned back at her. “I’m proud of you, Martha.”
He almost expected her to duck her head or blush, but instead she just met his eyes, calm and steady - not a girl in love, not anymore, but a real doctor, with all the maturity and growth that implied. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“You’re very welcome, Doctor Jones.”
They walked for a while through the early morning of a London that, as usual, had no idea how close it had come to being ground zero for the destruction of the human race. The people around them, with few exceptions, continued with their ordinary lives undisturbed. That was the best thanks he could have asked for.
As they neared Martha’s flat and he prepared to say goodbye to her again, the Doctor’s eyes lighted on a familiar sight. Across the way, a young woman walked arm in arm with a gentleman at least three times her age, her hand tucked lightly in the crook of his elbow. As he watched the girl leaned in toward the grey head, listening intently as he said something that didn’t carry over the noise of cars and opening shops around them, and laughed aloud in response. She looked like a flowered vine growing over the rocky crags of his age.
“Doctor?”
The mismatched couple walked closer to them, and the Doctor couldn’t force himself to look away long enough to answer Martha’s concern. The young woman patted the man’s gnarled old hand as they walked, and as they passed the Doctor caught a single word from their conversation, layered with warmth, that spoke to him over the ages:
“Grandfather.”
Susan.
“Are you alright, Doctor?”
“I’m fine, Martha.” The young woman and her escort continued on their path, unconcerned with the world around them. “You know me. I’m always fine.”
“Right.” Martha crossed in front of him, forcing him to look at her instead of the retreating backs of the two strangers. “You know, I’d be a pretty poor doctor if I let a tone like that fool me. You seemed just fine, and then... what happened?”
He shook off the memories, draws up his dignity and meets her eyes with an outright lie. “It’s nothing.”
That was enough of being around humans, for one day. Maybe for the next few centuries. He turned and walked back to the Tardis without another word to the still-confused Martha. He was too lost in his thoughts to wonder at his own rudeness.
* * *
"You look different."
"So do you." Susan eyes him suspiciously, and he thinks there's something of her grandmother in the decisive, cutting way she examines him from his waved shoulder-length hair to the toes of his old-fashioned shoes. "You've regenerated."
"Several times since the last time we saw each other," he admits.
"Mother says you should be more careful."
He shrugs. "How is she?" he asks, casually as he can manage.
Now it's Susan's turn to be evasive. "Okay. She has a new position - they made her head of Archives two years ago. She likes it."
"She would. Dead information, old things that have no life in them anymore."
"Grandfather..."
"No, it's good for her." He shakes his head. It's habit - he hadn't meant to argue, to open old wounds, not today. "She's doing what she loves."
"And so are you."
He nods vaguely. Traveling, meeting new people, going to war with them, a war to end all wars... Susan knows nothing about that, of course. How could she? She hasn't been back to Gallifrey in years, and was never high-ranked or 'useful' for the leading council, so they wouldn't mention a thing to her. Not even a Time Lord, not properly - she's Gallifreyan, of course, but thanks to him she never went through her training at the academy, never took the exams that would have set aside all the details of her mind for examination and evaluation and categorization. He's still proud of that, as much as her mother hates him for it.
"What about you? What are you doing these days? What happened to that man of yours?"
She lowers her eyes. "He died. Of all the stupid things, it was just a disease. All that we lived through with the Daleks, and then... The doctors, they hadn’t recovered enough from the time under Dalek rule to do anything about the plagues that came when people began to recover their freedom, come together again. So many people died, and David..."
"He died, too.”
"I knew he would, eventually." The flat between her brows creased like folding pages in a book. "He's Human. They... they do that, so much sooner than... But I never thought... I didn’t think about how hard it would be. I don’t know why I didn’t, it just..."
"It never stops being hard. It can't. If it does, we start to think of them as something less."
"I know." She squeezes his hand, and for a moment he forgets that he's looking at a woman well into her twenties (maybe even thirties - it's not as though he's kept track of the years), and he's looking once again at a tiny, delicate-looking girl of fifteen, just on the edge of adulthood and still struggling to understand the universe in all its unfairness.
Whatever happens, he can't allow this one little light to go out.
”Come with me, Susan.”
“I’m busy here, Grandfather. I have a life, now, though it’s not the one I expected. Isn’t that what you always said I should--”
“No arguing. Just... come with me.” He smiles, and makes the smile charming and carefree and everything he doesn’t feel at that moment. “One more trip with your grandfather, for old time’s sake. We can go anywhere you like.”
“Anywhere?”
“Absolutely. Just say the word, and we’re off.” He hates lying to her, but it’s the only way he can be sure to get her in. It took too much time, much too much time to track her down, for him who’s used to having all the time in the cosmos. He can’t waste this one chance on the risk that she might refuse.
“Anywhere I like, huh?”
“Anywhere,” he repeats, grateful, and grabs her hand, tugging her toward the Tardis’s hiding place.
She’s not having it, though - she digs her heels in and eyes him suspiciously. Ah, yes - there are her grandmother’s genetics telling, just when he doesn’t need them. “What’s the occasion?”
“No occasion,” he tells her with exaggerated casualness. “Can’t a man take his favorite granddaughter on a little holiday?”
She crosses her arms, exactly as he expected, and throws in his face the glare of the woman he once married. “You’re lying, Grandfather.”
“Alright,” he admits, raising his hands in defeat. “You’ve got me.” And I’ve got you... “Your mother... she and I have had it off again. She’s going to the council to demand that I be restricted from seeing you, for your own sake - said I’m a bad influence on you, that I’m the one responsible for keeping you out of the academy, corrupting you against the sacred values of our people and all that. I want to go out with you, one last time, before they hand down their judgment.”
“She wouldn’t really do that, would she?”
“This might be the last chance I have to see you,” he tells her, and this, at least, is the truth. The missions the council has sent him on leading up to the coming war leave no doubt in his mind that his usefulness to them lies in one-way missions from which they expect no return. He’s been lucky so far, but sooner or later that luck is bound to catch up with him. The war is getting hotter by the moment, and he wants Susan well out of the way of it. “Please, Susan. I’m getting old. Humor me, this one last time.”
“You’re not old.” But she frowns as she says it, and he knows that the combined truth and lies are getting to her. “Not anymore. This new body--”
“I mean overall, Susan.”
She makes a dismissive gesture. “Nine hundred or so? That’s nothing. The old fish in the council, some of them are upwards of two thousand, from what Mother says.”
“And they haven’t led half as interesting of lives. I’ve been a little... jeopardy-friendly lately. Used up more regenerations than I really should have by this age. That kind of thing takes a toll, eventually...” He trails off, knowing full well she’ll catch onto that hesitation.
“How many? How many times have you regenerated, now?”
“Seven,” he admits.
“But it’s only been--”
“I know, I know. Your mother reminded me of that the last time we spoke. And that’s part of why...”
“Why she doesn’t want me seeing you anymore.” Susan finishes for him, and sighs.
“Exactly.”
“She’s an idiot.”
He frowns and raises an eyebrow at her, stern for once. “She’s your mother. Not to mention my daughter, so I’d thank you to keep a civil tongue. However often your mother and I have fought, I know she has your best interests in mind.”
“So do you. You always have.” Susan takes his hand, now, and squeezes his fingers. His plan has worked perfectly, and now all he can think is how he wishes it didn’t have to happen this way. He wants to do as he promised - leave it all behind them and go traveling again, forget about the council and their war and the Daleks. But that’s not possible. The war will find them wherever they go, once it begins, and just this once he can’t shirk his responsibilities. Susan, though... Susan will live free of the war. Of that much, he will make certain. “You look so different, now,” she says softly. “I like the long hair, and the nose. They make you look dramatic. Like a poet.”
He forces a smile. “Hurry please. It’s time.”
“Since when have you cared about that?” Susan laughs, but she picks up her bag and followed him, anyway. She’s used to indulging his little idiosyncrasies.
She coos over the Tardis when they arrive at its hiding place, stroking its door-frame as he unlocks the door, and he would have teased her for it if she hadn’t picked up the habit from him. The Tardis, for her part, seemed to sing with familiarity and welcome. They’re both so pleased to be together again, he wonders if the Tardis would understand his decision, or if she too would resent him for what he has to do. For a ship, she has innumerable small but demonstrative ways of making her feelings known when necessary, many of them intensely uncomfortable.
“Alright,” he says briskly once they were inside. “Where to? How about the fifty-first century?”
“Too boring,” Susan declares, running her fingers curiously over some of the new components he’s added to the controls since last she visited. “They’re all soft and placid there. I want to go somewhere exciting.”
“Hmm. Perhaps your mother is right about me.” He tries to keep the tone light and teasing. Judging from Susan’s expression, he doesn’t quite manage it. “Alright, then, though - it’s your choice. Where?”
“Well, I’d like to go back to Ravenna,” she offers. “Ooo, or what about that station, what was it? The one with the carousel and the ferris wheel locked into the external gravity section, with a view of all the stars... That was fantastic, that was. But maybe Deloria...”
While she chatters on, he comes up behind her and slips the arch over her head.
“What’s this, then?” Her tone is more curiosity than fear, but he can sense an undercurrent - she’s clever, both in the way he is and in the more practical, jaded way of her mother and grandmother. When she looks up at him, he can see a bit of nervousness in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Susan.” He chokes on the words, but forces them out anyway. “I’m so sorry.”
She screams when he throws the switch. He tries to hold her while the chameleon arch and the Tardis’s computers work their magic, but she shakes him off, thrashing and wailing as though even unconscious she knew the betrayal he’s perpetuated on her. So he just stands by, and watches the best of his hopes, the dearest of all the people he’s known in his long years, and prays that maybe this one chance will be enough.
He carries her when the process is complete into a hospital in the 51st century, on that station she’d mentioned loving, and tells the intake nurse that he found her alone outside, unconscious. The Tardis has created a full history in her memory - she will simply have a mysterious medical accident to handle, and a gap in her memory between that and the last memory implanted in her. She will survive, live a happy life. Earth's colonies in this time are safe, comfortable places where a young person of her cleverness will have unending opportunities.
It won't do her any good to see him, and it will make it harder for him to do what must be done. She's safe. That's all that matters.
The nurse thanks him as he leaves. "You might very well have saved that young woman's life," she tells him with a warm smile.
She has no idea how right she is.
* * *
Alone in the Tardis, the Doctor sat on the floor of one of the ship’s many storage rooms, surrounded by the detritus of ten lifetimes of travel in time and space. The clothes were all neatly gathered in the wardrobe, it was true, but the rest... the rest of it the Tardis tended to secret away wherever she found convenient, and reveal to him whenever he needed it. One never knew what might come in handy, particularly now that it was hardly possible to pop by Gallifrey for spare parts whenever he needed them. Right now, though, it wasn’t mechanics that concerned him.
In his hands he held a single shoe.
It was a girl’s shoe - small and rather delicate, and obviously put through far more wear and tear than the manufacturer had ever intended. It was a shoe meant for dancing and playing, running in grassy fields or taking comfortable walks on sunlit lanes, and certainly not for desperate adventures and war-zones. A hole poked straight through the sole where the ball of the foot had worn through the cheap material.
After the war, he had tried so hard not to think of Susan, not to remember what he had done to her and wonder what kind of life she might have had. Not to think about her growing old, withering and dying like any Human. Perhaps even dying young, in some pointless accident, unable to regenerate because she didn’t have anyone to help her through her first time, didn’t even know that it was possible, because she wasn’t even who and what she’d been, anymore. It was obscene, blasphemous to even consider that.
So he had avoided the thought. He’d done his best to accept what had happened and to push it out of his mind completely. But now... now that the Master had survived the war in this same way and then died, now that he’d allowed the thought of Susan to enter his mind and take hold of him...
She’s fine. She has to be fine. She’s living a good life somewhere, probably having children and grandchildren of her own. But there was no way to be certain.
“Doctor?”
Martha’s voice, in the console room.
“In here, Martha. Second door on the right.” At least it was now - the Tardis was good at rearranging her interior as necessary.
Within a moment she appeared in the doorway, her dark eyes full of concern. “I was worried. You seemed...” She pressed her lips together. “I just thought I’d see if you were still here, and when I saw the Tardis... I hope you don’t mind I let myself in.”
“Of course not.” He waved his hand vaguely. “You have a key.”
“Yeah, I know.” She tried a little smile, and when he didn’t respond she hunkered down at his side. “Do you want to talk about it, then?”
“No.”
“Okay.” She sat quietly for a moment. “I could make some tea, or... a sandwich or something?”
“No.”
“I could sneak into the hospital and bring you an overdose of Dalinane to put you out of your misery.”
A bitter smile twisted at his lips. “A few tablets of aspirin would do the job just fine, but no, thank you.”
“Well, at least I know you’re listening and not just refusing everything I offer out of hand.” She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest, watching him closely. After a long moment... “Aspirin, seriously?”
“Deadly to my neural physiology.”
“Huh. Well. I’ll make sure to remember that, in case I ever have to give you first aid.”
“I’d appreciate that. After all this time, it’d be embarrassing to die from misguided application of a basic pain reliever.”
Another several moments passed, Martha scooted a bit closer on the floor. “You know I’m not leaving until I’ve figured out what’s got you like this, right?”
“I’d caught on to that possibility, yes.”
“So, you gonna make it easy on both of us and tell me why you all of a sudden went cold earlier today, and now you’re sitting on the floor in the middle of the world’s biggest rummage sale, holding a broken old shoe?”
It was tempting to throw a fit, fly into a rage and scream and yell and threaten until Martha Jones got tired of trying to play the hero, gave up, and left him. On the other hand, after all she’d been through for him... didn’t she deserve better than that? And wasn’t it better than just sitting on the floor feeling sorry for himself, now that the memories had finally caught up with him at last?
“This shoe,” he said softly, “belonged to my grand-daughter. Her name was Susan...”
* * *
It’s not really Martha’s fault that they’ve ended up here. It’s the Tardis, as usual - making her own decisions and playing with his orders, doing exactly as she pleases whether he likes it or not. After they’d talked for a while, Martha had become convinced that he couldn’t be allowed to travel alone for at least a short while - that he ought to have company, a companion, until he’s gotten past the worst of his memories and worries. Privately, he suspects that she could use a vacation, anyway, but he doesn’t put that to her. She’s right that he doesn’t want to be alone just now, in any case, and could use a distraction.
He’d set the Tardis to go to the twenty-third century - an interesting but largely safe period of time that he hasn’t visited in a good while - but knew immediately on landing that something wasn’t right. The view on the screen was... wrong, even allowing for a different geographical location than his intended site of New Orleans. Sure enough, when he checked the read-out...
“No. No, no, no... You can’t do this to me!”
Stoic silence from his ship.
“Go back! We’re not staying here - I’m not stepping outside that door! Not now, not here!”
Stern refusal. The knowledge - not quite a direct communication, but a certainty that he would be a fool to ignore after all the years that they’ve traveled together - that the Tardis intended with all her frequently impressive will not to budge from this moment in time and space until he’s done exactly as she believed he should. Out there, she told him. You wonder. You worry. Go, now, and see. Then we will be done here-and-now.
“Doctor, what’s wrong?!”
Martha was in a panic, shaking him, and he hadn’t even noticed, so deeply had he been caught in both communication with the Tardis and his own terror at what he’ll find outside her doors.
“This is it, it was here... I left her here. I left her here, and I... Oh, god...”
Go.
“Her... Susan? This is where you left her, where you... but that’s wonderful!”
“It really isn’t, not at all.”
“But why?”
“Because I don’t know... I don’t know how close it is. I don’t know whether I’ll have left her three minutes ago, or thirty years. The Tardis wouldn’t cross her own path, not willingly, so I won’t still be here, but beyond that...”
“But either way, isn’t this exactly what you wanted? You said you missed her, that you were worried about what might have happened to her, and now you’ve got the chance to clear all that up. You can fix it, Doctor!”
Go, now. The Tardis shook, her lights flickering in warning, and a low, warning hum rising from her engines. Go now and see. Wait has been long enough without certainty.
“Blackmailed by my own ship...” What idiot Time Lord had first thought that sentient space ships were a good idea, anyway? Give one a few too many centuries, and she started thinking she knew better than her pilot...
GO!
“Alright, alright! I’m going!” He threw a dour, threatening look at Martha, and grabbed his coat from the rail by the door as he passed. Time to face the music.
Behind him, as though pleased with that metaphor, the Tardis hummed. Just what he needed - a smug spaceship.
“Let’s get this done with,” the Doctor growled at Martha as the opened the door.
As usual when she made her own decisions, the Tardis’s landing had been unnervingly accurate. They barely walked two sectors from the storage closet where she’d stowed herself before the Doctor pulled Martha out of the line of traffic to watch a woman who worked behind a stall along the edge of the thoroughfare. Her dark hair had grown out somewhat and been pulled back from her face, but...
"That's her," he whispered softly. "That's Susan."
"You can tell?"
He shook his head. "It's like it was with the Master - her Time Lord nature is bound under the human seeming, so I can't feel her. But I know her face."
"I thought you said it might’ve been years, though. Since you saw her, I mean. How can you be sure it’s really your grand-daughter and not just someone who looks like her?"
He smiled sadly. "You've never had a child, Martha Jones. I held Susan's mother in the palms of my two hands the day she was born, watched her grow up, and I did the same thing with Susan herself the day she was born. I raised her for nearly half of her life. I'd recognize her anywhere."
"Well, go on, then!" Martha gave him a little shove on the shoulder. "Go talk to her!"
"I can't." He sat back on his heels. "She doesn't know me."
"She would if she..."
He shook his head. "The chameleon arch over-wrote her old life, remember? All her memories, everything she was, are tucked away, hidden safe inside a little pocket-watch somewhere, a family heirloom she'll never open."
"But if she did, or if you did--"
"Then I would have to tell her everything, wouldn't I? Tell her that everyone she knew, everyone she loved - her mother, her father, our whole world is dead and gone? That I pushed the button and sentenced them all to death, and oh, by the way, I erased her memory and refused her the chance to see them all one last time even though I knew it was a possible outcome of the whole thing? No. I won't do that to her. I can't."
“Then why...?”
He laughed, a hard, cold sound that felt sharp in his throat. “Ask the Tardis. She’s the one who brought us here, not me.”
“Maybe... maybe she wanted you to go to her. To say hello, and goodbye. Not for her, but for you.”
“I already said goodbye. I’ve said more goodbyes to her than I can possibly swallow in all my lives.”
“Then maybe you need the hello. Just to see how she is. To reassure yourself, so you know for certain.”
For a moment, he couldn’t react. He thought it over, turned it in his head several times, and, yes, it did sound like something the Tardis might come up with. It had a certain simple logic to it that he couldn’t deny. “And when did you get to be so smart, Martha Jones?”
Martha smiled. “Well, this daft bloke sent me wandering the world for a year that never happened, and... I just sort of picked up a few things, here and there.”
“Ah. Would this be the same daft bloke who got you stuck playing the part of a serving girl at a boys’ school in nineteen-ten, and working as a shopgirl in nineteen-sixty?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Remind me to talk to him about that, sometime.”
“You’re putting off going up to her, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Is it working?”
Martha gave him a long, measuring look, arms crossed over her chest. She reminded him oddly of the Tardis at that moment - implacable, and absolutely determined that she knew what was best for him.
“Right. I suppose I owe you this one, then.”
“You owe it to yourself, Doctor. You’ll always wonder, if you don’t go talk to her. I can see why the Tardis did what she did.”
They were tag-teaming him, and he knew it, but there was little he could do to argue at this point. He nodded, and slowly walked forward. The woman - Susan! his hearts both sang - didn’t even notice him until he stood directly in front of her.
“Can I help you?”
Brown eyes - her mother’s and grandmother’s, exactly like theirs in every way - met his with frank, polite curiosity. She didn’t recognize him. Of course she didn’t. “I just... I’m new here, is all. To the station. I’m... traveling, with my friend there, and we’ve never been aboard here before. Do you live here, then?”
Susan smiled. “I do. Moved here when I was eighteen, looking for a bit of adventure. Not quite the exciting life I had in mind, coming from planet-side, but it’s nice. Where’d you and your friend come from?”
“Oh, here and there. All over, really.”
“No home?”
“None except my ship.”
“That’s too bad.” She brushed a stray bit of hair out of her eyes, straightening the tray of jewelry in front of her. “I always thought it’d be nice to go on holiday on a ship, but I wouldn’t want to live in one. Staying in one place, watching the universe go by... that’s the life for me, I think.”
Yes... yes, it is. You always did say that... “So you like it here?”
“Sure, it’s a fantastic place. See all the people, all these different species coming and going... you should stay a while, see what you think of it. Loads of people settle down here all the time.”
“Oh... we’ve got places to be. Busy life, you know.”
She nodded vaguely, then tilted her head with a slightly concerned look. “Are you alright? I’m sorry, but you seem...”
“No, no - I’m alright. You just... remind me of someone. Someone I knew a long time ago.”
Susan laughed softly. “You’re the second person to say that to me this week, you know.”
“Oh?”
“Mhmm. ‘Course, the other one took me out to tea to work it out, see if we’d met before, and he ended up admitting it’d all been an excuse to ask me out.” Susan grinned, impish as ever. “Somehow doubt you’re up to that, with your young lady over there, am I right?”
“No, definitely not chatting you up for a date. This other bloke, though, the one who made it up to talk to you - you like him?”
“You’re not shy, are you?” She waggled her finger at him. “Well, for your information, yes. I do like him, I think. Haven’t known him long enough to be sure of it yet, but... I think there’s potential. Why are you asking me all these questions, anyway?”
“I told you, you remind me of someone. Someone I haven’t seen in a long time, and she... the last time I saw her, she was headed off to a whole new life, just like you did when you came here.” He forced a smile. “Guess I figure if you’ve done well off it, maybe she did too.”
“Well, I hope she did.”
“I do, too.” He took a deep breath. “Well.... I won’t take any more of your time. Just promise me one thing, will you - what was your name?”
“Suzanne. Suzanne Ford. Sorry, and your name was...?”
“John Smith.” He shook the hand she offered, squeezing it a little and rather wishing that he was old enough again to not seem so suspicious chattering at a pretty young woman. “Have a wonderful life, Suzanne. Please, just... promise me that. With your shy tea-drinking bloke if he makes you happy, or... whatever else. Take that vacation to someplace distant and beautiful. Just... enjoy it. Alright?”
“Alright...”
“Sorry. Just... yes. Have to go, gotta... Take care.”
He hurried away, back to the Tardis as quickly as he could. He almost managed to get the door closed before he collapsed to his knees in tears. He heard Martha run in behind him, felt her kneel next to him and wrap her arms around him, but it was the voice in his mind that caught his greatest attention.
And now it is done. You know she is here, she is well and alive. She goes on, the Tardis whispered. She will have that life you regret not being able to have. The one adventure. You did well, my Doctor.
Title: Requiem for Times Past
Characters: The Doctor, Martha, and Susan.
Summary: Some time after the events of “Last of the Time Lords,” the Doctor finds he can no longer avoid thoughts of one of the other ghosts from his past.
Rating and Notes: PG-13 or so. I’ve done my best to stick as close to canon as possible while retaining the idea that sparked this - I’m by no means infallible, though, and there’s a whooole lot to keep track of in this universe, so I apologize if I missed something egregious. Edit: Aww, hell - just call it AU. It's easier, that way...
Disclaimer: All is owned by the mighty BBC, and I intend absolutely no infringement upon their mighty media holdings. I’d really appreciate if they’d make their radio content more easily accessible over the internet, though.
“What’ll you do now? I mean, now we’re safe again?”
“Me?” The Doctor shrugged idly, taking a sideways glance at Martha to see how she was taking all of this. Life and death was nothing unusual to her, especially now she’d passed her exams, but an invasion force using plague vectors as their first line of attack had been a new one even to him, and more disturbing than most of the potential destructions of the Earth that he’d seen. She seemed fine, though - tired, of course, but otherwise in good spirits. Good, that. “Same as always, I suppose. Ride off into the... well, dawn, but you get the idea.”
“That’s you.” Martha grinned at him. “The Lone Ranger.”
“What, with the Tardis cast as Silver and you playing... what, Tonto?” He snorted.
“Why not? You ride into town, save the day, and disappear until the next crisis. I’m just glad I made you take that phone of mine - can’t imagine what we’d have done if I couldn’t have called you.”
“You could solve that, you know - come with me, and then the next time...”
“I could...” She stopped walking, and he stopped as well, turning to look at her. “Yeah, I could. But then who’d help them? All the times you aren’t here, I mean. You can’t always be here, and if there’s nobody to call you when something goes wrong, or nobody who knows a bit to try to stop things...”
“That’s... good.”
“What?”
“No, you’re right. Good thinking. I was just thinking...” He stretched a hand behind his head, scratching at the thick hair. “Have I lost my edge? Got something disgusting caught in my teeth? Does the new body smell or something, because... I used to keep a companion with me for, oh, at least a decade or so, relative time, before they start talking about settling down in their old life, and lately... You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if I had a smell?”
Martha laughed. “Oh, come off it. You’re just jealous we can get by a few months without a crisis that needs you, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” He grinned back at her. “I’m proud of you, Martha.”
He almost expected her to duck her head or blush, but instead she just met his eyes, calm and steady - not a girl in love, not anymore, but a real doctor, with all the maturity and growth that implied. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“You’re very welcome, Doctor Jones.”
They walked for a while through the early morning of a London that, as usual, had no idea how close it had come to being ground zero for the destruction of the human race. The people around them, with few exceptions, continued with their ordinary lives undisturbed. That was the best thanks he could have asked for.
As they neared Martha’s flat and he prepared to say goodbye to her again, the Doctor’s eyes lighted on a familiar sight. Across the way, a young woman walked arm in arm with a gentleman at least three times her age, her hand tucked lightly in the crook of his elbow. As he watched the girl leaned in toward the grey head, listening intently as he said something that didn’t carry over the noise of cars and opening shops around them, and laughed aloud in response. She looked like a flowered vine growing over the rocky crags of his age.
“Doctor?”
The mismatched couple walked closer to them, and the Doctor couldn’t force himself to look away long enough to answer Martha’s concern. The young woman patted the man’s gnarled old hand as they walked, and as they passed the Doctor caught a single word from their conversation, layered with warmth, that spoke to him over the ages:
“Grandfather.”
Susan.
“Are you alright, Doctor?”
“I’m fine, Martha.” The young woman and her escort continued on their path, unconcerned with the world around them. “You know me. I’m always fine.”
“Right.” Martha crossed in front of him, forcing him to look at her instead of the retreating backs of the two strangers. “You know, I’d be a pretty poor doctor if I let a tone like that fool me. You seemed just fine, and then... what happened?”
He shook off the memories, draws up his dignity and meets her eyes with an outright lie. “It’s nothing.”
That was enough of being around humans, for one day. Maybe for the next few centuries. He turned and walked back to the Tardis without another word to the still-confused Martha. He was too lost in his thoughts to wonder at his own rudeness.
* * *
"You look different."
"So do you." Susan eyes him suspiciously, and he thinks there's something of her grandmother in the decisive, cutting way she examines him from his waved shoulder-length hair to the toes of his old-fashioned shoes. "You've regenerated."
"Several times since the last time we saw each other," he admits.
"Mother says you should be more careful."
He shrugs. "How is she?" he asks, casually as he can manage.
Now it's Susan's turn to be evasive. "Okay. She has a new position - they made her head of Archives two years ago. She likes it."
"She would. Dead information, old things that have no life in them anymore."
"Grandfather..."
"No, it's good for her." He shakes his head. It's habit - he hadn't meant to argue, to open old wounds, not today. "She's doing what she loves."
"And so are you."
He nods vaguely. Traveling, meeting new people, going to war with them, a war to end all wars... Susan knows nothing about that, of course. How could she? She hasn't been back to Gallifrey in years, and was never high-ranked or 'useful' for the leading council, so they wouldn't mention a thing to her. Not even a Time Lord, not properly - she's Gallifreyan, of course, but thanks to him she never went through her training at the academy, never took the exams that would have set aside all the details of her mind for examination and evaluation and categorization. He's still proud of that, as much as her mother hates him for it.
"What about you? What are you doing these days? What happened to that man of yours?"
She lowers her eyes. "He died. Of all the stupid things, it was just a disease. All that we lived through with the Daleks, and then... The doctors, they hadn’t recovered enough from the time under Dalek rule to do anything about the plagues that came when people began to recover their freedom, come together again. So many people died, and David..."
"He died, too.”
"I knew he would, eventually." The flat between her brows creased like folding pages in a book. "He's Human. They... they do that, so much sooner than... But I never thought... I didn’t think about how hard it would be. I don’t know why I didn’t, it just..."
"It never stops being hard. It can't. If it does, we start to think of them as something less."
"I know." She squeezes his hand, and for a moment he forgets that he's looking at a woman well into her twenties (maybe even thirties - it's not as though he's kept track of the years), and he's looking once again at a tiny, delicate-looking girl of fifteen, just on the edge of adulthood and still struggling to understand the universe in all its unfairness.
Whatever happens, he can't allow this one little light to go out.
”Come with me, Susan.”
“I’m busy here, Grandfather. I have a life, now, though it’s not the one I expected. Isn’t that what you always said I should--”
“No arguing. Just... come with me.” He smiles, and makes the smile charming and carefree and everything he doesn’t feel at that moment. “One more trip with your grandfather, for old time’s sake. We can go anywhere you like.”
“Anywhere?”
“Absolutely. Just say the word, and we’re off.” He hates lying to her, but it’s the only way he can be sure to get her in. It took too much time, much too much time to track her down, for him who’s used to having all the time in the cosmos. He can’t waste this one chance on the risk that she might refuse.
“Anywhere I like, huh?”
“Anywhere,” he repeats, grateful, and grabs her hand, tugging her toward the Tardis’s hiding place.
She’s not having it, though - she digs her heels in and eyes him suspiciously. Ah, yes - there are her grandmother’s genetics telling, just when he doesn’t need them. “What’s the occasion?”
“No occasion,” he tells her with exaggerated casualness. “Can’t a man take his favorite granddaughter on a little holiday?”
She crosses her arms, exactly as he expected, and throws in his face the glare of the woman he once married. “You’re lying, Grandfather.”
“Alright,” he admits, raising his hands in defeat. “You’ve got me.” And I’ve got you... “Your mother... she and I have had it off again. She’s going to the council to demand that I be restricted from seeing you, for your own sake - said I’m a bad influence on you, that I’m the one responsible for keeping you out of the academy, corrupting you against the sacred values of our people and all that. I want to go out with you, one last time, before they hand down their judgment.”
“She wouldn’t really do that, would she?”
“This might be the last chance I have to see you,” he tells her, and this, at least, is the truth. The missions the council has sent him on leading up to the coming war leave no doubt in his mind that his usefulness to them lies in one-way missions from which they expect no return. He’s been lucky so far, but sooner or later that luck is bound to catch up with him. The war is getting hotter by the moment, and he wants Susan well out of the way of it. “Please, Susan. I’m getting old. Humor me, this one last time.”
“You’re not old.” But she frowns as she says it, and he knows that the combined truth and lies are getting to her. “Not anymore. This new body--”
“I mean overall, Susan.”
She makes a dismissive gesture. “Nine hundred or so? That’s nothing. The old fish in the council, some of them are upwards of two thousand, from what Mother says.”
“And they haven’t led half as interesting of lives. I’ve been a little... jeopardy-friendly lately. Used up more regenerations than I really should have by this age. That kind of thing takes a toll, eventually...” He trails off, knowing full well she’ll catch onto that hesitation.
“How many? How many times have you regenerated, now?”
“Seven,” he admits.
“But it’s only been--”
“I know, I know. Your mother reminded me of that the last time we spoke. And that’s part of why...”
“Why she doesn’t want me seeing you anymore.” Susan finishes for him, and sighs.
“Exactly.”
“She’s an idiot.”
He frowns and raises an eyebrow at her, stern for once. “She’s your mother. Not to mention my daughter, so I’d thank you to keep a civil tongue. However often your mother and I have fought, I know she has your best interests in mind.”
“So do you. You always have.” Susan takes his hand, now, and squeezes his fingers. His plan has worked perfectly, and now all he can think is how he wishes it didn’t have to happen this way. He wants to do as he promised - leave it all behind them and go traveling again, forget about the council and their war and the Daleks. But that’s not possible. The war will find them wherever they go, once it begins, and just this once he can’t shirk his responsibilities. Susan, though... Susan will live free of the war. Of that much, he will make certain. “You look so different, now,” she says softly. “I like the long hair, and the nose. They make you look dramatic. Like a poet.”
He forces a smile. “Hurry please. It’s time.”
“Since when have you cared about that?” Susan laughs, but she picks up her bag and followed him, anyway. She’s used to indulging his little idiosyncrasies.
She coos over the Tardis when they arrive at its hiding place, stroking its door-frame as he unlocks the door, and he would have teased her for it if she hadn’t picked up the habit from him. The Tardis, for her part, seemed to sing with familiarity and welcome. They’re both so pleased to be together again, he wonders if the Tardis would understand his decision, or if she too would resent him for what he has to do. For a ship, she has innumerable small but demonstrative ways of making her feelings known when necessary, many of them intensely uncomfortable.
“Alright,” he says briskly once they were inside. “Where to? How about the fifty-first century?”
“Too boring,” Susan declares, running her fingers curiously over some of the new components he’s added to the controls since last she visited. “They’re all soft and placid there. I want to go somewhere exciting.”
“Hmm. Perhaps your mother is right about me.” He tries to keep the tone light and teasing. Judging from Susan’s expression, he doesn’t quite manage it. “Alright, then, though - it’s your choice. Where?”
“Well, I’d like to go back to Ravenna,” she offers. “Ooo, or what about that station, what was it? The one with the carousel and the ferris wheel locked into the external gravity section, with a view of all the stars... That was fantastic, that was. But maybe Deloria...”
While she chatters on, he comes up behind her and slips the arch over her head.
“What’s this, then?” Her tone is more curiosity than fear, but he can sense an undercurrent - she’s clever, both in the way he is and in the more practical, jaded way of her mother and grandmother. When she looks up at him, he can see a bit of nervousness in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Susan.” He chokes on the words, but forces them out anyway. “I’m so sorry.”
She screams when he throws the switch. He tries to hold her while the chameleon arch and the Tardis’s computers work their magic, but she shakes him off, thrashing and wailing as though even unconscious she knew the betrayal he’s perpetuated on her. So he just stands by, and watches the best of his hopes, the dearest of all the people he’s known in his long years, and prays that maybe this one chance will be enough.
He carries her when the process is complete into a hospital in the 51st century, on that station she’d mentioned loving, and tells the intake nurse that he found her alone outside, unconscious. The Tardis has created a full history in her memory - she will simply have a mysterious medical accident to handle, and a gap in her memory between that and the last memory implanted in her. She will survive, live a happy life. Earth's colonies in this time are safe, comfortable places where a young person of her cleverness will have unending opportunities.
It won't do her any good to see him, and it will make it harder for him to do what must be done. She's safe. That's all that matters.
The nurse thanks him as he leaves. "You might very well have saved that young woman's life," she tells him with a warm smile.
She has no idea how right she is.
* * *
Alone in the Tardis, the Doctor sat on the floor of one of the ship’s many storage rooms, surrounded by the detritus of ten lifetimes of travel in time and space. The clothes were all neatly gathered in the wardrobe, it was true, but the rest... the rest of it the Tardis tended to secret away wherever she found convenient, and reveal to him whenever he needed it. One never knew what might come in handy, particularly now that it was hardly possible to pop by Gallifrey for spare parts whenever he needed them. Right now, though, it wasn’t mechanics that concerned him.
In his hands he held a single shoe.
It was a girl’s shoe - small and rather delicate, and obviously put through far more wear and tear than the manufacturer had ever intended. It was a shoe meant for dancing and playing, running in grassy fields or taking comfortable walks on sunlit lanes, and certainly not for desperate adventures and war-zones. A hole poked straight through the sole where the ball of the foot had worn through the cheap material.
After the war, he had tried so hard not to think of Susan, not to remember what he had done to her and wonder what kind of life she might have had. Not to think about her growing old, withering and dying like any Human. Perhaps even dying young, in some pointless accident, unable to regenerate because she didn’t have anyone to help her through her first time, didn’t even know that it was possible, because she wasn’t even who and what she’d been, anymore. It was obscene, blasphemous to even consider that.
So he had avoided the thought. He’d done his best to accept what had happened and to push it out of his mind completely. But now... now that the Master had survived the war in this same way and then died, now that he’d allowed the thought of Susan to enter his mind and take hold of him...
She’s fine. She has to be fine. She’s living a good life somewhere, probably having children and grandchildren of her own. But there was no way to be certain.
“Doctor?”
Martha’s voice, in the console room.
“In here, Martha. Second door on the right.” At least it was now - the Tardis was good at rearranging her interior as necessary.
Within a moment she appeared in the doorway, her dark eyes full of concern. “I was worried. You seemed...” She pressed her lips together. “I just thought I’d see if you were still here, and when I saw the Tardis... I hope you don’t mind I let myself in.”
“Of course not.” He waved his hand vaguely. “You have a key.”
“Yeah, I know.” She tried a little smile, and when he didn’t respond she hunkered down at his side. “Do you want to talk about it, then?”
“No.”
“Okay.” She sat quietly for a moment. “I could make some tea, or... a sandwich or something?”
“No.”
“I could sneak into the hospital and bring you an overdose of Dalinane to put you out of your misery.”
A bitter smile twisted at his lips. “A few tablets of aspirin would do the job just fine, but no, thank you.”
“Well, at least I know you’re listening and not just refusing everything I offer out of hand.” She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest, watching him closely. After a long moment... “Aspirin, seriously?”
“Deadly to my neural physiology.”
“Huh. Well. I’ll make sure to remember that, in case I ever have to give you first aid.”
“I’d appreciate that. After all this time, it’d be embarrassing to die from misguided application of a basic pain reliever.”
Another several moments passed, Martha scooted a bit closer on the floor. “You know I’m not leaving until I’ve figured out what’s got you like this, right?”
“I’d caught on to that possibility, yes.”
“So, you gonna make it easy on both of us and tell me why you all of a sudden went cold earlier today, and now you’re sitting on the floor in the middle of the world’s biggest rummage sale, holding a broken old shoe?”
It was tempting to throw a fit, fly into a rage and scream and yell and threaten until Martha Jones got tired of trying to play the hero, gave up, and left him. On the other hand, after all she’d been through for him... didn’t she deserve better than that? And wasn’t it better than just sitting on the floor feeling sorry for himself, now that the memories had finally caught up with him at last?
“This shoe,” he said softly, “belonged to my grand-daughter. Her name was Susan...”
* * *
It’s not really Martha’s fault that they’ve ended up here. It’s the Tardis, as usual - making her own decisions and playing with his orders, doing exactly as she pleases whether he likes it or not. After they’d talked for a while, Martha had become convinced that he couldn’t be allowed to travel alone for at least a short while - that he ought to have company, a companion, until he’s gotten past the worst of his memories and worries. Privately, he suspects that she could use a vacation, anyway, but he doesn’t put that to her. She’s right that he doesn’t want to be alone just now, in any case, and could use a distraction.
He’d set the Tardis to go to the twenty-third century - an interesting but largely safe period of time that he hasn’t visited in a good while - but knew immediately on landing that something wasn’t right. The view on the screen was... wrong, even allowing for a different geographical location than his intended site of New Orleans. Sure enough, when he checked the read-out...
“No. No, no, no... You can’t do this to me!”
Stoic silence from his ship.
“Go back! We’re not staying here - I’m not stepping outside that door! Not now, not here!”
Stern refusal. The knowledge - not quite a direct communication, but a certainty that he would be a fool to ignore after all the years that they’ve traveled together - that the Tardis intended with all her frequently impressive will not to budge from this moment in time and space until he’s done exactly as she believed he should. Out there, she told him. You wonder. You worry. Go, now, and see. Then we will be done here-and-now.
“Doctor, what’s wrong?!”
Martha was in a panic, shaking him, and he hadn’t even noticed, so deeply had he been caught in both communication with the Tardis and his own terror at what he’ll find outside her doors.
“This is it, it was here... I left her here. I left her here, and I... Oh, god...”
Go.
“Her... Susan? This is where you left her, where you... but that’s wonderful!”
“It really isn’t, not at all.”
“But why?”
“Because I don’t know... I don’t know how close it is. I don’t know whether I’ll have left her three minutes ago, or thirty years. The Tardis wouldn’t cross her own path, not willingly, so I won’t still be here, but beyond that...”
“But either way, isn’t this exactly what you wanted? You said you missed her, that you were worried about what might have happened to her, and now you’ve got the chance to clear all that up. You can fix it, Doctor!”
Go, now. The Tardis shook, her lights flickering in warning, and a low, warning hum rising from her engines. Go now and see. Wait has been long enough without certainty.
“Blackmailed by my own ship...” What idiot Time Lord had first thought that sentient space ships were a good idea, anyway? Give one a few too many centuries, and she started thinking she knew better than her pilot...
GO!
“Alright, alright! I’m going!” He threw a dour, threatening look at Martha, and grabbed his coat from the rail by the door as he passed. Time to face the music.
Behind him, as though pleased with that metaphor, the Tardis hummed. Just what he needed - a smug spaceship.
“Let’s get this done with,” the Doctor growled at Martha as the opened the door.
As usual when she made her own decisions, the Tardis’s landing had been unnervingly accurate. They barely walked two sectors from the storage closet where she’d stowed herself before the Doctor pulled Martha out of the line of traffic to watch a woman who worked behind a stall along the edge of the thoroughfare. Her dark hair had grown out somewhat and been pulled back from her face, but...
"That's her," he whispered softly. "That's Susan."
"You can tell?"
He shook his head. "It's like it was with the Master - her Time Lord nature is bound under the human seeming, so I can't feel her. But I know her face."
"I thought you said it might’ve been years, though. Since you saw her, I mean. How can you be sure it’s really your grand-daughter and not just someone who looks like her?"
He smiled sadly. "You've never had a child, Martha Jones. I held Susan's mother in the palms of my two hands the day she was born, watched her grow up, and I did the same thing with Susan herself the day she was born. I raised her for nearly half of her life. I'd recognize her anywhere."
"Well, go on, then!" Martha gave him a little shove on the shoulder. "Go talk to her!"
"I can't." He sat back on his heels. "She doesn't know me."
"She would if she..."
He shook his head. "The chameleon arch over-wrote her old life, remember? All her memories, everything she was, are tucked away, hidden safe inside a little pocket-watch somewhere, a family heirloom she'll never open."
"But if she did, or if you did--"
"Then I would have to tell her everything, wouldn't I? Tell her that everyone she knew, everyone she loved - her mother, her father, our whole world is dead and gone? That I pushed the button and sentenced them all to death, and oh, by the way, I erased her memory and refused her the chance to see them all one last time even though I knew it was a possible outcome of the whole thing? No. I won't do that to her. I can't."
“Then why...?”
He laughed, a hard, cold sound that felt sharp in his throat. “Ask the Tardis. She’s the one who brought us here, not me.”
“Maybe... maybe she wanted you to go to her. To say hello, and goodbye. Not for her, but for you.”
“I already said goodbye. I’ve said more goodbyes to her than I can possibly swallow in all my lives.”
“Then maybe you need the hello. Just to see how she is. To reassure yourself, so you know for certain.”
For a moment, he couldn’t react. He thought it over, turned it in his head several times, and, yes, it did sound like something the Tardis might come up with. It had a certain simple logic to it that he couldn’t deny. “And when did you get to be so smart, Martha Jones?”
Martha smiled. “Well, this daft bloke sent me wandering the world for a year that never happened, and... I just sort of picked up a few things, here and there.”
“Ah. Would this be the same daft bloke who got you stuck playing the part of a serving girl at a boys’ school in nineteen-ten, and working as a shopgirl in nineteen-sixty?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Remind me to talk to him about that, sometime.”
“You’re putting off going up to her, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Is it working?”
Martha gave him a long, measuring look, arms crossed over her chest. She reminded him oddly of the Tardis at that moment - implacable, and absolutely determined that she knew what was best for him.
“Right. I suppose I owe you this one, then.”
“You owe it to yourself, Doctor. You’ll always wonder, if you don’t go talk to her. I can see why the Tardis did what she did.”
They were tag-teaming him, and he knew it, but there was little he could do to argue at this point. He nodded, and slowly walked forward. The woman - Susan! his hearts both sang - didn’t even notice him until he stood directly in front of her.
“Can I help you?”
Brown eyes - her mother’s and grandmother’s, exactly like theirs in every way - met his with frank, polite curiosity. She didn’t recognize him. Of course she didn’t. “I just... I’m new here, is all. To the station. I’m... traveling, with my friend there, and we’ve never been aboard here before. Do you live here, then?”
Susan smiled. “I do. Moved here when I was eighteen, looking for a bit of adventure. Not quite the exciting life I had in mind, coming from planet-side, but it’s nice. Where’d you and your friend come from?”
“Oh, here and there. All over, really.”
“No home?”
“None except my ship.”
“That’s too bad.” She brushed a stray bit of hair out of her eyes, straightening the tray of jewelry in front of her. “I always thought it’d be nice to go on holiday on a ship, but I wouldn’t want to live in one. Staying in one place, watching the universe go by... that’s the life for me, I think.”
Yes... yes, it is. You always did say that... “So you like it here?”
“Sure, it’s a fantastic place. See all the people, all these different species coming and going... you should stay a while, see what you think of it. Loads of people settle down here all the time.”
“Oh... we’ve got places to be. Busy life, you know.”
She nodded vaguely, then tilted her head with a slightly concerned look. “Are you alright? I’m sorry, but you seem...”
“No, no - I’m alright. You just... remind me of someone. Someone I knew a long time ago.”
Susan laughed softly. “You’re the second person to say that to me this week, you know.”
“Oh?”
“Mhmm. ‘Course, the other one took me out to tea to work it out, see if we’d met before, and he ended up admitting it’d all been an excuse to ask me out.” Susan grinned, impish as ever. “Somehow doubt you’re up to that, with your young lady over there, am I right?”
“No, definitely not chatting you up for a date. This other bloke, though, the one who made it up to talk to you - you like him?”
“You’re not shy, are you?” She waggled her finger at him. “Well, for your information, yes. I do like him, I think. Haven’t known him long enough to be sure of it yet, but... I think there’s potential. Why are you asking me all these questions, anyway?”
“I told you, you remind me of someone. Someone I haven’t seen in a long time, and she... the last time I saw her, she was headed off to a whole new life, just like you did when you came here.” He forced a smile. “Guess I figure if you’ve done well off it, maybe she did too.”
“Well, I hope she did.”
“I do, too.” He took a deep breath. “Well.... I won’t take any more of your time. Just promise me one thing, will you - what was your name?”
“Suzanne. Suzanne Ford. Sorry, and your name was...?”
“John Smith.” He shook the hand she offered, squeezing it a little and rather wishing that he was old enough again to not seem so suspicious chattering at a pretty young woman. “Have a wonderful life, Suzanne. Please, just... promise me that. With your shy tea-drinking bloke if he makes you happy, or... whatever else. Take that vacation to someplace distant and beautiful. Just... enjoy it. Alright?”
“Alright...”
“Sorry. Just... yes. Have to go, gotta... Take care.”
He hurried away, back to the Tardis as quickly as he could. He almost managed to get the door closed before he collapsed to his knees in tears. He heard Martha run in behind him, felt her kneel next to him and wrap her arms around him, but it was the voice in his mind that caught his greatest attention.
And now it is done. You know she is here, she is well and alive. She goes on, the Tardis whispered. She will have that life you regret not being able to have. The one adventure. You did well, my Doctor.
