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Brigadier’s Gambit
The Doctor settles in a shadowed corner of a hotel bar and sulkily nurses a half cider. He longs for the quiet and safety of his TARDIS. The reassurance of her presence.
He will miss her so terribly.
He had adored Liz, hearts and soul, but it was Jo who had made his time trapped on this backwater, third rate, planet seem bearable. Jo with her ready smile and kindness and personality like a ball of warming sunshine. Liz had been…he hesitates to say equal. He respects his human companions, but they aren’t Timelords and never can be, it’s why he enjoys his rekindled rivalry with the Master so much. But Liz had been closer to being his equal. And Alistair is a battle hardened soldier in his own right, perfectly capable of facing Cybermen and Daleks and grievous bodily harm. The Doctor feels a certain protectiveness, a responsibility, of course, but Jo…
Jo is like a daughter to him. A granddaughter. And like Susan she’d left him for some dark haired pretty boy. And it’s not fair! There are so many things he wanted to show her, places he wanted to take her, adventures he’d wanted them to have. And now…
But if she’d rather have Cliff than all that he can offer her: time and space and wonder and adventure and magic…Well. Far be it from him to stand in her way.
He swirls his glass and tries to swallow down hurt and grief. He’s being petulant and he knows it. It’s quite unbecoming. But he has been here for so long, and Jo has been his steady, constant rock through so much of that. Much more so than Alistair who has a home and family of his own. Certainly more so than the revolving carousel of UNIT faces who are murdered so quickly or who transfer away. She had been a nepotism hire, a political sop, but she had been his favourite. Her shining sweetness and specialness and…
Tears prick at the corner of his eyes and he ruthlessly holds them back. He’s a Timelord for Rassilon’s sake.
He will miss her so terribly, though. Without her…He’d defined his life around Jo. Around being who she expected him to be, around winning her ready smile that he’s never had to try for but that he wanted to.
There’s a movement opposite him and the Doctor looks up; startled.
It’s Alistair, sliding into place in the second chair and pushing a new pint across the table. “Are you alright, Doctor?”
The Doctor bristles for a second, half sure it is a veiled dig about his tears from Alistair’s primitive standards of masculinity.
Alistair, fiddling with a bag of peanuts, doesn’t seem to notice the glare. “It’s not like you to leave a party so suddenly. Bit rude.”
The words are reproving. The tone is a warm invitation to talk. The Doctor’s irritation runs out of him like a slow puncture. A tear does spill over and he bats it away. Alistair affects not to notice, taking a drink of his own beer. “I’ll miss her,” the Doctor admits.
It is not quite what he means. He sees the world differently from his human friends. The lack of Jo’s psychic presence is like a gap in the world, a hole where a missing tooth used to be, a starkly cold void. Missing Jo is more akin to homesickness than what Alistair can possibly be experiencing, and it taken him so long after Liz and Zoe and Victoria and Jamie and Susan -
“I know exactly what you mean,” Alistair says, voice roughening. “She had a…a way about her didn’t she. Made that priory seem like home.”
And perhaps, the Doctor thinks, he does understand.
“She’ll write,” he adds.
The Doctor laughs. “No, she won’t. You know what Jo’s like.”
They share a smile like a pair of proud parents who enjoy a child’s shortcomings because it makes them real.
“Too flighty,” Alistair agrees, taking another swallow. “Running off with an environmentalist!” He groans.
“Is there something wrong with wanting to save your planet?” the Doctor demands tetchily.
“Of course not,” the other man blusters. “I’m just not sure he’s good enough for her, that’s all.”
“Jo Grant is perfectly capable of making her own choices, Brigadier,” the Doctor says frostily. “And just because Cliff does not have ‘Property of UNIT’ carved through him like a stick of rock, does not mean that he isn’t a perfectly upstanding young man.”
Alistair mutters a few unintelligible syllables. “But what about his prospects! Come on, Doctor, you must want to know that she’s taken care of?”
“She’s more than capable of looking after herself. She has funds enough for both of them, and besides,” he adds with a smile, “I’ve gifted them a little something as a wedding present. Not all happiness is about money, you know.”
The Brigadier groans, but after a moment acquiesces the point and they finish their drinks in silence.
“Well, Doctor. I’d best turn in. We’ve got the drive back tomorrow. And all that paperwork. Which you’ll have to do yourself now you’ve no assistant.”
“I object, Brigadier, to the insinuation that I would begrudge Jo her happiness in order to have someone to fill in a few forms,” the Doctor sniffs, and ignores the smile Alistair is barely hiding under his moustache.
It’s only much later that he realises that Alistair deliberately forced him to focus on how pleased he is for Jo to put aside his own misery. Which is underhanded sneakiness. And the Doctor does not approve of such. Not unless he is the artist, anyway. He’ll make sure to return the favour when Alistair’s own daughter gets married, the shoe is bound to be on the other foot then!