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1: Ebenezer
"A new dress."
"New shoes."
"A telescope."
"Ooo, did you hear? Terry Evans is getting a kitten!"
"She says. Said that last year and got socks!"
The girls laughed, Susan snickering along with the rest. Until Anna Hart turned to her and asked, "So what are you getting?"
"Oh," said Susan, suddenly a bit flustered. "We don't celebrate Christmas."
The girls stopped walking, the other students streaming around them on their way to the doors. Today was Friday, and there were classes all of next week, but after that the Coal Hill School was letting out for the holidays and most of the students' minds had departed for that destination already, classes or no.
"What, never?" asked Sandy Upton. "No presents at all?"
"You're weird, Susan," said Lacey Keller. Anna gave her a bit of an elbow. Not too hard; the truth was that Susan was weird. She was strange and she had only come to the school a few months before, and though she was likeable enough she had not yet become truly close friends with anyone there.
And never would. Anna was beginning to suspect it, though none of the others were. She didn't think much about it, not consciously, but there was something about Susan—something more to her than a new girl with an eccentric family and a habit of saying odd things in class. Some secret that kept her ever so slightly apart from everyone else.
"Grandfather thinks it's frivolous," explained Susan.
Lacey rolled her eyes. "He's too cheap, you mean."
"Oh, no! Nothing like that," said Susan earnestly. No one had met her grandfather, but it was obvious to anyone who spent any time with Susan that he must be a very odd man—and that Susan was very attached to him. For some reason. There was an audible uppercase when she talked about him, always "my Grandfather" rather than "my grandfather," the way people used to talk about "the War." Something that had traumatized a generation into capitalization. "But it's not our religion, you see."
"So?" scoffed Sandy. "Bobby Brewster's family are atheists and that didn't stop him from getting Lacey under the mistletoe and—"
Lacey hit her on the arm with her History text.
"Ow! All right!" She rubbed her arm and scowled. "Anyway, it's no excuse not to get you one lousy gift. If he's got money to go globetrotting to all those places you've seen …"
Anna elbowed Sandy's other arm and gave her a little shake of the head. They thought Susan's grandfather must have loads of money to have traveled so much, but there was always the possibility that he and Susan had settled down here because he'd, well, run out. True, Susan dressed well enough, but …
"Anyway, you should ask him," finished Sandy.
"All right," said Susan. "I'll give it a try. But he can be ever so stubborn about things."
"At Christmas?" said Anna, shaking her head.
OOO
The girls split up outside the doors, Anna and Lacey heading north, Sandy south, and Susan east. It was dark already at this time of year and bitingly cold tonight, but Susan wasn't afraid of the dark and the cold didn't bother her people as much as it did her friends. She pulled on the gloves her Grandfather had given her, less for comfort than because it was how things were done here, and because they were such a pretty blue color, almost the color the TARDIS had turned when they landed here.
She watched the people and the cars as she walked, the bags and parcels they carried, the ribbons and the wreaths in the shop windows. One shop had a sale on model airplanes, another on a portable radio, another on scarves. Susan looked in all the windows as she passed but only stopped once, at a bakery, and bought herself a mince pie using a little of the spending money her Grandfather had given her. He always said things like that would spoil her dinner, but they never did—and if she ate it as she walked and finished before she got home, he'd never know.
She could see trees through one or two windows of the houses she passed, and more ribbons and bows, and the shiny leaves and berries of holly branches. One house had little stained-glass ornaments hanging in its windows. "Peace," said one. "Joy," said another.
These were the things that Susan loved. Her Grandfather's hearts were in the big things, the history and the great people and the great events. Hers were in the details, the minutia of lives as they were lived in the moment. That was a kind of history, too, her Grandfather would say, but it wasn't history that Susan wanted, not really. It was to live that life for herself, if only for a little while.
Susan shivered a bit as she came to Totter's Lane, and not from the cold. Sometimes she and her Grandfather wanted very different things. Mostly she went where he wanted, and sometimes he let himself be talked into going where she wanted, and sometimes they argued over it. And mostly she liked going where he wanted, but every now and then she thought that one day she might want more for herself than he was willing to sit still for, and then there would be more arguments, and worse, and what would come of them?
There was a faint singing coming from the TARDIS, and Susan gave her chin a swipe with her gloved hand to get rid of any stray crumbs before she went in. Her Grandfather stood at the console, pecking fussily at the controls and peering at the resulting readouts through his half-rimmed glasses. "Ah, there you are, child. I was beginning to wonder where you'd got to."
"I'm not late," said Susan. "Not very, at least. I was looking at the decorations in the shops. And there was a radio at one of them." She rushed out the last bit, not letting herself stop to think twice about it.
"Oh, yes? And don't scoff, child, I'm sure it's quite impressive for the time period." He twisted a knob, frowned at it, twisted it again.
"I wasn't scoffing, Grandfather!" Susan protested. "I was only enjoying the music."
"Hm? Oh." He frowned at her now, shaking his silvered head. "Well, if it's not in our databanks, I'm sure we could get it easily enough. It'll sound much better that way, I'm sure, and you won't have to stand around in the cold worrying an old man."
"Yes, Grandfather." But it's the radio I want … "Anyway, the decorations were so pretty. I was wondering … if we could get a few for the TARDIS?"
But even as she said it his frown deepened further, knotting the lines on his brow together. "You're getting too attached to these people, Susan," he said. "Attending this school of theirs is one thing. Joining this savage religion of theirs …"
"Oh, but it's not just about the religion, Grandfather, it's about presents and being festive and … and … joy, and peace."
"Peace," he snorted. "It's a religion that's one short step away from torture and murder of anyone who disagrees with them."
"But they did step away."
"Hm, hm, perhaps. But they didn't step very far, now, did they?" He flapped his hands at her. "Oh, off with you. Go get yourself your dinner. And then perhaps you can make yourself useful, help an old man with these sensors."
His eyes sparkled at the last, and Susan smiled at him. She loved helping him with the TARDIS. "Yes, Grandfather!"
2: The Clown
Susan and her Grandfather both slept most nights. Susan because she was young and still growing, Grandfather because he was in the latter years of this regeneration. Of course he could go on for many years yet—if he got the proper rest.
They did not speak much of their dreams. What Grandfather dreamed of Susan didn't know, but she herself dreamed of the worlds they visited, places she'd like to go back to, places she'd like to go … and home. Home back before it all went wrong, or at least too wrong, of her parents when they were still alive, of the house and the people and the ceremonies.
Even if they wanted to, they couldn't go back. None of those things were there anymore. None of them ever would be again. Grandfather had traveled to their future, he said, and there was nothing of what Susan missed there. Only emptiness and pale echoes. Even their ceremonies were dry imitations performed by rote.
Tonight she dreamed of the TARDIS. That was her home now, and Grandfather her people and her family.
She walked the halls, humming under her breath along with the thrum of the engines. She had always felt the sound was comforting, like the sound of her mother singing her to sleep, though Grandfather said that was nonsense.
Now there was another sound. It was a faint, reedy piping—more of a tooting, really, laboriously spelling out a simple tune one note at a time, like a child learning to write. And it was coming from the console room.
A strange man was sitting in her Grandfather's chair, playing a recorder. He was dressed a little like her Grandfather but far more shabbily, his checked trousers and black coat both rumpled and rather too large for his short stature. His hair was in a messy bowl cut, rather like "Moe" from The Three Stooges. The lights were turned down for the night, and everything else was so like waking life that if Susan had been human (or the stranger more threatening) she might have thought she was awake and been frightened.
"Hello," said Susan. "What are you doing in my dream?" She really couldn't imagine why she would dream of such a person.
The stranger set aside his recorder and bounced to his feet as if made of rubber. His face seemed to be made of rubber, too; it stretched into a beaming grin, full of warmth and mischief, that reminded Susan of Anna's uncle who had come to pick her up from school one day. It made her like the stranger at once, if not (quite) trust him.
"Susan!" he said, spreading his arms wide. "It's so wonderful to see you, my dear!"
"I'm very sorry," said Susan politely. "But I've never met you before, I'm sure of it. Please, how did you get into the TARDIS?"
The stranger's face and arms fell. "Well, of course we've met," he said, giving her a hurt look that was almost comical. She wondered if perhaps he wasn't very bright. There was something very childish about him. "Granted, I've changed a bit since then …"
Something about the word "changed" struck a chord in Susan. Not just changed in the ordinary sense; changed more deeply, changed irrevocably, changed …
Regenerated. This man was a Time Lord. They'd been caught.
Susan would have been very frightened, dream or no dream, except for two things. First, it was impossible to be truly frightened of the funny, friendly little man in front of her. Second, because there really was something very familiar about him.
"Grandfather?"
"Oh, yes!" said the scruffy little man, beaming again.
"Oh no," said Susan. "Oh dear."
"Eh?" said the man (she still couldn't quite bring herself to think of him as her Grandfather), and scowled. His scowl was every bit as impressive as his grin, with his eyebrows coming together like black waves crashing in a stormy sea, and his voice was sharp. "And what do you mean by that, hm?"
He sounded so much like her Grandfather then that she had to believe it, even if she still didn't want to. It wasn't that she didn't like him, it was just that he … wasn't himself.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Only … you're not really like him, are you?"
He sighed. "Well, I suppose, in some ways … perhaps … some would say I'm an improvement, you know!"
Susan was pretty sure her Grandfather wouldn't. This was all too strange for her. She'd never been close to anyone who had regenerated before, but she'd heard things could go very wrong. And …
"Is he going to … is he going to turn into you very soon?" she asked.
"Oh, not for a good long while," said the scruffy man. "In fact, that's why I'm visiting you now. I never had the chance to meet you after I changed. You had stopped traveling with me long before that."
"Stopped … you mean I left you?" Had they had an argument? How bad would it have to be for her to leave him all alone? Grandfather wasn't like her, he didn't make friends quite so easily in the places they visited. He'd keep wandering on through history with no one but fleeting acquaintances, no one of his own kind by his side. "But I wouldn't …"
"Susan," said the scruffy man gently. He held out his hand to her, and his smile was so wise and kind that she took them despite the way the cuffs came down over his knuckles as her Grandfather would never have allowed. His fingers were thicker, stronger and shorter than she was used to. "Now you mustn't worry about me, you know. It was my decision as well. And I unbent enough to start making friends in our travels—oh, yes, even back when I was that crusty, cantankerous, obstreperous old … ah … hem," he put on an expression of not-quite-sincere innocence, "Grandfather of yours."
"Really?" said Susan, not quite believing it.
"Oh yes. And you'll meet some of them before you go, and you'll come to like them very much, so you'll know you're leaving your poor helpless old Grandfather in good hands."
He beamed at her, and then his expression turned a little graver, though he was still smiling. "Besides," he said. "It isn't right that you should spend your whole life, or all your lives, traipsing around looking after me. Don't you see? Sooner or later we all have to find our own paths. And I'm very happy for you. And I really wouldn't be happy if I knew I'd taken you away from what you wanted, just to keep me company."
"I suppose so," said Susan. Now she looked into his eyes, clear blue like sunlight on the sea, and she could see her Grandfather there despite the ill-fitting clothes and the silly hair. "Only I hope it isn't for a long time!"
He leaned forward to kiss her forehead. His lips were warmer than his old self's, but he smelled the same. Sandalwood and mothballed clothes.
OOO
"Good heavens, child, what are you making that noise for?"
Susan lowered the recorder guiltily. "I'm sorry, Grandfather." It was harder than it looked to play it properly. Though not as hard as her Grandfather's future self had made it look.
"Where on earth did you get that?"
"I found it," she said, which was true—it had been on her pillow that morning when she'd woken from the dream, clumsily covered in wrapping paper. How a dream had left gift on her pillow she had no idea, but she took that as proof that it wasn't just a dream. "In the wardrobe room," she added, hoping her Grandfather wouldn't see she was lying, as he usually did on the rare occasions she tried. She was an honest girl by nature, and falsehood didn't come easily to her.
Fortunately her Grandfather seemed more interested in getting his breakfast from the food machine than in the origins of her new toy. "Well you had better put it back there when you're done playing with it, hadn't you?" he said, in a tone that suggested she finish playing sooner rather than later.
"Yes, Grandfather," she said meekly. "Grandfather?"
"Yes?"
"What's it like when people regenerate, Grandfather?"
He looked up, a bit startled. It was quite a serious question for a Time Lord, like a human child's "What happens when we die?" and he seemed to decide it needed a serious answer. He said nothing immediately, but came over to the table and sat down, putting the plate with his food bar in front of him and ignoring it.
"Well," he said slowly, "it's a very great change, yes, a very great change. Sometimes greater than others. Sometimes it can be most unreliable. And yet I think it's not always so great a change as we believe. I have known people to go through it, and when I meet them afterwards, I felt I did not know them at all! That they were entirely different people. And yet when I thought back, I saw that the new people they had become had really been there all along, beneath the surface." He took a thoughtful little bite of his food bar. "So perhaps when we find the change disturbing, it is only because we never really knew a person at all. Not so well as we think we did, at least!"
"Oh," said Susan, turning the recorder over in her hands. Was that scruffy little man really part of her Grandfather right now? The mischievous twinkle in his eyes, yes, and the kindness, she could see that. But that haircut … It wasn't so much the look of the thing, as the idea of her Grandfather voluntarily going around looking like that. And perhaps it was a very small thing, all in all, but it was a reminder that despite all that remained, in some way they were simply not the same man.
"What's brought this on, child?" her Grandfather asked. "You're not thinking I've grown quite that old and feeble, are you?" And the gentle twinkle in his eyes reminded her of the other man.
"Oh, no, Grandfather."
"And you're much too young. Are you feeling ill? Why didn't you say? I'll take you to the med-bay at once. You young people, every sniffle is a death knell." He tsked and reached out to feel her forehead.
"No, Grandfather," Susan giggled. "I had a dream. I met your next regeneration."
"Really? What was I like?"
"Well, you were younger."
"Hmph!" He seemed very amused now. "I should hope so, or what would be the point? What else?"
"Well … you were a bit less … dignified."
"Only to be expected from young people, I'm afraid."
"And you were very sweet."
"Oh, and I'm a cantankerous old man now, I suppose!" He huffed, pretending to be very insulted. "The ingratitude of you young people today. I bring you with me, I show you the stars, and this … this is how you choose to repay me!"
He leaned forward as she laughed, dropping his voice conspiratorially. "I'll tell you this, my dear. If you had known me when I was a young man, you would never have believed I was your Grandfather. It's Time that changes people, Susan, only Time and the choices that we make and the things we see and do. Regeneration does nothing but make the changes happen faster."
3. Roadster
She was in a car. An old-style car, bright yellow and with the top folded down, leaving only the windscreen and the wind and the winding muddy road they were bouncing along. At a very high rate of speed, too. If she hadn't been dreaming, she might have been a bit worried about that, especially the way the driver was taking the turns.
Or if the driver had been human. They didn't have the best of reflexes. But as it was, she found the ride rather exciting.
She turned to the driver. He was a little older than last night's visitor, with a mass of curly grey hair and a beak of a nose. He was much taller, too, and better dressed, not to say foppishly, in a cape and velvet jacket and a frilly shirt.
"Grandfather?" she asked.
She wasn't sure what it was about the man. But tonight she'd been half-expecting it, anyway.
He turned to her and smiled. "Hello, Susan. I trust you find this version of me an improvement over that rag-bag who frightened you last night."
"I thought he was sweet," said Susan, although this one seemed sweet enough as well. And he could still be just a conceited as his first incarnation …
"Sweet!" snorted the fop. "People do keep saying that and I can never understand why."
Susan looked him over. He was still younger than her Grandfather, stronger, and his manner had more fine wine and less vinegar. But now that she'd met several of him, the changes were becoming less disconcerting, easier to look past.
"Where are we going?" she asked. They were out in the country, and there was no obvious destination in sight. Only rolling heather and gorse and the occasional copse of shrubby trees.
"Nowhere in particular," he replied. "I found I enjoyed driving in this incarnation. Well, I was grounded for the first few years, unable to use the TARDIS." He grimaced and lowered his voice. "They caught up with me, you see."
"Oh, no." Susan put her hand to her mouth. "Did they?"
"It's quite all right," he reassured her. "They were going to—well, never mind about that. The point is that I convinced them I'd done far more good than harm and they decided to exile me to a place where I could be of use to them—namely, Earth in the 1970s. Quite inordinate number of invasion attempts. And … er, do you recall Koschei?"
"Yes," said Susan, making a face. "Don't tell me they exiled him with you?" She didn't know Grandfather's old school friend well, but she knew they'd had a falling-out her Grandfather wouldn't talk about, and that she didn't much like him.
"Not exactly." The fop cleared his throat. "You see, he's turned renegade himself. Caused me quite a bit of trouble."
"Him? But he was so …"
"I know." He sighed. "But sometimes the worst sticklers for the rules are the worst rule-breakers when they finally let go. And he never was very stable. Started calling himself 'the Master,' you know." He tsked. "He used to tease me over 'the Doctor,' too, the hypocrite." And his lips quirked into a smile.
"And are you still trapped on Earth?" That worried Susan. She knew her Grandfather wouldn't be happy staying in one place very long, not in any incarnation. He might put a brave face on it for her sake, but he'd never like it.
"Oh, no, they gave me back my freedom long ago. Er, best not to tell my younger self. First law of time and all that."
"Yes, Grandfather." It was getting easier to call them that. "Grandfather …"
There were so many questions she wanted to ask him, but the road was covered in mist, and she felt herself drifting away into wakefulness.
4. The Bohemian
"Hello, Susan. Would you like a jelly-baby?"
It was summer, or perhaps a warm, clear day in spring, and she was sitting on a park bench with a very strange man. He was even taller than last night's visitor, and younger, and had a deep, booming voice. In one hand he had a bag of corn, which he was feeding to the ducks, and in the other he had a bag of sweets, which he offered Susan. She took one and chewed slowly, looking him over.
This one had curly hair like the last, but longer and wilder and brown instead of grey, with a battered hat jammed on top. His clothes were far more casual, a mix of reds and browns and russets. A scarf that matched just about everything made several extravagant loops around his neck, with yards left over to sprawl out across the bench.
"It's very good to see you again," he said. His voice was rather slow and leisurely, very unlike her Grandfather, and his eyes and smile were both far too wild. For a moment she remembered what the last Doctor had said about poor Koschei going mad, but there was something inherently good-natured about this man. "Did you like the screwdriver?"
"Screwdriver? Oh, is that what it was, a sonic screwdriver! How very clever. Did you—the other you—invent it?" She'd woken up to find the little device on her pillow, like the recorder. It hadn't taken her much experimentation to discover that it was a sonic tool with several settings, though she hadn't figured out what all of them did yet, and asking her Grandfather was out of the question.
"No, I didn't," said the man, affably. "I had one in my laboratory and hardly used it. Then I started carrying it with me in my pocket, and I found it was really very handy. Now I wouldn't be without it. Watch!"
He pulled out a device similar too, but not quite the same as the one his third self had given her, and pointed it at the bag of corn. There was a whir, and a series of pops that frightened the ducks, and a mouth-watering smell.
He held the bag out to her, grinning more widely than ever. "Popcorn?"
"Thank you." She took a handful, hesitated. "You seem a bit different from the others."
"Oh, I'm different from everybody. How did you mean?"
"Well, I'm not sure," said Susan, searching for the right words. More carefree, perhaps? Although that could be said of the second one. There was something expansive about this one, something harder to pin down, as if he could be many different things and wasn't about to be pinned down by any one of them. "A bit … wilder?"
He laughed. "Oh, yes, that's me! My friend Sarah once suggested I was having a mid-life crisis."
"Oh …" That didn't sound good. "I'm sorry. Did it get better, though?"
"I didn't want it to get better," he said earnestly. "I liked being me. I really am a very wonderful fellow, once you get to know me. I'm much nicer than the others. They're all far too conceited."
"And are you still traveling?" Susan asked. "And you're not alone, are you?"
"Yes I am, and no I'm not," he said. "My friend Sarah came with me for a while, and then there was Leela. And then I traveled with a young Time Lady named Romana—very clever girl. I even had a dog for a while."
Susan had to giggle at the thought of her Grandfather—any of him—with a dog. He seemed very happy with the life he'd made for himself, and she was glad. But there was something he'd said …
"You said you liked being this you," she realized. "Not like. Is something—something wrong?"
He took her hand, calming her. "Not at all, not at all. But you see, all of us appearing to you in your dreams, we're only psychic projections. We always meant to come and visit, and somehow we never quite got round to it, so now my future self is dreaming us all up so we can meet you. Isn't that clever of him?"
It bothered her faintly that this man wasn't alive anymore in his timeline (though in hers, he hadn't yet been born) but she forced a smile. "Yes it was. Grandfather …"
"Yes?"
"I'm glad I met you," she blurted. "All of you. And I like this you, too."
"Why thank you!" he beamed. "How very kind of you to say so!"
As the dream faded, his smile lingered like the Cheshire Cat's.
5. The Cricketer
When she saw the young man strolling through the field, Susan thought that she had missed tonight's dream. Technically it wasn't even "tonight," it was tomorrow morning. It had been Monday, so she'd spent the day at school. (She'd worn the new scarf that she'd found on her pillow, fortunately closer to normal length than the giver's, and her friends had all complimented her on it. That, and the yo-yo that came with it, were her favorite gifts so far.) Then when she'd come home her Grandfather was still fussing with the sensors and wanted her help again. There seemed to be something quite wrong either with them or with local space-time, and he was beginning to get frustrated. He could get very difficult when he was frustrated, and she'd started to think he'd keep her up all night.
And since all the other dreams had come earlier in the night, and since the mild-faced, fair-haired fellow in the cricket outfit looked nothing like any version of her Grandfather that she could imagine (though her imagination had been very much stretched the last few days) she thought that she'd simply have to wait until the next night.
Then the young man saw her and waved her over. "Hullo! Lovely day for a stroll, isn't it?" he said.
"Hello—Grandfather," said Susan. Because as she came closer she saw that the man's face was a bit blander than she'd thought, though he had a very pleasant smile … but he also had a stalk of celery pinned to the lapel of his jacket, and she couldn't think of many people who would wear something like that.
"Oh, you recognize me," he beamed. "How do you always do that?"
"Practice," she said. And, to keep the topic off the celery, "I didn't think you'd like cricket, though. Or is it just the clothes?"
"Oh, no, I live for cricket." A frown creased his smooth forehead. "Why wouldn't I like it?"
"Oh, because it's so human."
"I quite like humans," protested the young man. "Didn't I tell you about Sarah Jane the other day? She was one of my closest friends. Although I suppose I've mellowed quite a bit since your day—back then I didn't have much use for humans, did I?"
"No, Grandfather, not really. I'm glad you like them now, though," she added, though she was a bit unsure about this man. He seemed nicer than her Grandfather, less irascible, and certainly saner than last night's visitation, but … well, perhaps that was why sometimes he seemed like a younger, unfinished version, someone who could be her Grandfather someday and wasn't quite there yet.
But it was good that he could be friends with humans. Sometimes her version didn't seem to get along with much of anyone, and there was a distinct shortage of Time Lords willing to travel. If he didn't mind humans anymore there was much less chance of him being lonely.
It occurred to her that this man seemed more open and agreeable than the others. Maybe she could persuade him to answer a few questions. "He said you were all mental projections of your future self, too. How many of you am I going to meet?"
He sighed. It was a slightly fussy sigh, and sounded incongruously like her Grandfather when he was impatient. "Oh, dear, I do wish I could tell you, Susan. But from my point of view none of that's happened yet. I have no more idea what comes next than you do."
"Oh," she said, disappointed.
"But come along," he said, clapping his hands and smiling again. There was something quietly but stubbornly determined under the mildness of his voice, something that brooked no argument. "It's too nice a day to stand here moping. There's a nice big field over that way and I think I've got my bat around somewhere …"
He led her away, chattering. It wasn't until just before she woke up that it occurred to her that he must know more than he said if he knew he was a mental projection from a future incarnation of himself to begin with, and that if nothing else Time had made her Grandfather better at lying and changing the subject.
OOO
"Grandfather," said Susan after breakfast the next morning, just before she left for school, "what were you like when you were young?"
"Hm? What do you want to know that for?"
"Well …" Susan tossed her new cricket ball from one hand to the other and shrugged. "You said the other day, remember, when we were talking about regeneration, that I wouldn't recognize you when you were younger. And I had another dream last night about a future you. He was very young and he had blond hair, and he was sort of sweet and polite and—not that you aren't, Grandfather!" she added hastily, as he had started to snort and scoff.
"No I'm not!" he cackled, in a fit of honesty. "Aha! Ha! Hoooo! And I never was, dear girl." He leaned forward and waggled a finger at her. "When I was that age I was the worst rapscallion anyone at the Academy had ever met! Oh, yes, I was, I won't deny it, don't ever let me tell you otherwise!"
He was practically sputtering with mirth as he waved her out the door, and she could hear him chortling to himself as she went. "Sweet! Polite, even! What an imagination, hm, what an imagination!"
6. The Joker in the Pack
"Finally!" said a very loud voice, and Susan found herself standing in the console room facing … well, she wasn't quite sure what, but he was rather large and wearing the most ridiculous clothes she'd ever seen outside of a circus and she had a sinking feeling that he was still her Grandfather.
"And what sort of time do you call this? Hm?" He pulled out a lime-green pocket watch and made a show of checking it. "Far past your bedtime, young lady."
"Sorry, Grandfather," she said automatically. True, this one looked absolutely nothing like him, and he was managing a good deal more volume than the older man, but she'd heard that tone often enough that it overrode even the hideously multicolored patchwork coat. "Only you're still working on the sensors, and you wanted my help. You said the distortions could be another time capsule and you wanted to make sure—"
"Well of course it's another time capsule!" shouted her Grandfather. "It's mine, and my incompetent replacement had better check his shielding if he doesn't want to give the game away. But that's no excuse, absolutely no excuse," he shook an angry finger in the air, "for neglecting his duties as your guardian. I would have very harsh words with myself, very harsh indeed, if it wouldn't violate the Laws of Time. The upbringing and education of a young person is a grave responsibility, a very grave one indeed, and …"
Susan looked him over as he steamed ahead through his rant. He wasn't much older than the last one, taller and stockier, hair a shade darker and in a shock of curls. She'd been half-expecting him to continue getting milder and more affable as he went through his lives, but apparently her Grandfather (or Nature, or some other power) had decided he'd gone far enough in that direction and it was time to go the other way, as far as it was possible to go.
She wasn't sure about either extreme. She'd liked last night's version, but he'd been just a bit distant. This one was refreshingly blunt. On the other hand, he looked even madder than the fourth.
"How old are you now?" she wondered out loud.
He sputtered to an indignant halt. Then he gave a tight, forced smile. Then he gave her a mock-stern frown and tapped an admonishing finger on the tip of her nose. "Rude," he pronounced. "Badly brought up. I really must speak to this Grandfather of yours."
"Are you going to answer me?"
"No!" he said. "Now come with me. I've cooked you breakfast. No carrot juice, if you like carrot juice, which frankly I can't imagine but I'm told some people do. I can't abide the stuff myself, won't have it on the ship …"
OOO
He'd cooked her a large, elaborate, and somewhat eccentric breakfast (which included the normal things such as bacon and eggs as well as some oddments like bubblegum milkshakes and banana pancakes with ketchup) and asked her about her school. She found herself telling him about her friends, and about her teachers, and how poor Mr. Chesterton was really quite good and it wasn't his fault he lived in such an unscientific age. She'd never told her Grandfather any of this—he'd never asked, and tended to lose interest and dismiss the subject whenever she brought it up.
She'd thought she wouldn't like this one when she'd first seen him, but she found herself having a very good time, and she was sad when it was over. "And I never met you, either, I suppose," she said.
"Afraid not," he sighed. "By the way, I'm hoping he's been kept out, but if you see a man in black who has a face like curdled milk and calls himself 'Valeyard,' run away."
"Why?" asked Susan. Then she found herself waking up with a ticking sound in her ear.
There was a clock on her pillow this time. When she pulled off the obnoxiously bright wrapping paper, it proved to be in the shape of a cat, with the dial in its belly and its tail forming a pendulum. There were no numbers, only a ring of question marks.
Susan grinned and went to hang it on her wall. Like her grandfather, she found clocks amusing, though she hadn't needed one to tell time since she was a very small girl.
Later, she discovered it meowed to mark the hour.
7. The Shadow
She was walking through a shadowy maze, filled with mist and vague, looming shapes, drawn on by a rhythmic clacking sound. It was frenetic and echoing, and when she came around the corner and saw the small man twitching and contorting, she thought he was having some sort of seizure brought on by the noise.
Then she realized he was playing the spoons.
"Grandfather?" she said.
He started, one spoon flying out into the darkness and the other flipping up to strike him on the forehead, making his eyes cross in comic surprise. Then he gave her a big grin.
"Hello, Susan," he said.
He had a mild, soft voice with a gentle Scottish accent. He really was an unassuming sort of man, small, almost elfin, dressed normally enough except for a pullover knit in mustard yellow with a pattern of tomato-red question marks. That had to be a holdover from his last life. There was a faintly manic edge to his smile that echoed the fourth, and a sweetness that reminded her of the second.
Perhaps she was getting used to these visitations. It was becoming easier to see the similarities in these men without being distracted by the differences. Or perhaps it was the depth of age in his eyes. For the first time, despite his younger face, she found it easy to believe that this man was older than her Grandfather.
"Shall we go somewhere a bit more cheerful?" he asked, pulling a hat from a nearby statue and plopping it on his head. He lifted an umbrella that had hung from his pocket by its question-mark handle, and smacked his raised foot with it, spinning himself around on his other heel like a weather-cock to finish by pointing down a darkened passage with the umbrella. "This way, I think." He beckoned to her with a theatrical flick of his hand, and she set off after him.
The passage opened out into a sunny park, much to Susan's surprise, and the two of them walked together, the Doctor using his umbrella much the same way that her Grandfather had held his walking-stick. "Are you quite all right, Grandfather?" she asked. He was strangely quiet, with a thoughtful shadow behind his eyes.
"Oh, yes," he assured her. "But I sometimes wonder …"
"Yes?"
"If I did the right thing bringing you with me. Perhaps you would have been happier staying behind."
"Oh, no, Grandfather!" she said earnestly. He always thought he knew best for her, and sometimes he did, but in this case Susan was absolutely sure of herself. "I would have hated it. I love traveling with you. I wouldn't miss it for anything."
"Yes, you say that now," he mused. "But can any of us say what would have happened? Suppose you had never known what it was like to travel. Suppose you had stayed behind, tucked safely away on Gallifrey. You might have decided in time that you liked that, as well."
"No, I wouldn't," said Susan, stubbornly. "I didn't like it there. I never would have liked it."
"Then perhaps you would have traveled on your own. Or with someone else. Or found a way to change the world you lived in to something more your liking."
"I'm still glad I came with you," she said. "Who knows what would have happened if I'd stayed behind? Even if it could have been better I'm sure it wouldn't, not really."
He sighed. "Perhaps. There are things to come that may change your mind."
"What's to come, Grandfather?" She'd wondered about the reasons for these visits before, and it had worried her, but this was the first time she'd started to feel afraid. "Tell me!"
"Even if I wanted to, I don't know enough to be useful," he said. He fixed her with a stern look. "But I suggest that when you part company with me …"
"Yes?"
"Travel for a long, long time. I suspect that things back home may be … unhealthy."
A shadow, like the gloom of the maze, passed over them, chilling her briefly. But when she looked up, she could see nothing that cast it, and found herself standing in the bright sunlight again.
"Enough of this," said her Grandfather abruptly. "Come along. Let me buy you an ice cream, and you can tell me more about your adventures at that delightful school of yours."
"I want to hear about you," she said. "You seem so unhappy, and I don't want to see you end up that way."
He sighed. "Oh, Susan," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm not unhappy. Yes, I've had unhappy days, and sorrows, and times when I forget all the good I've seen. But most of the time my life is very good." He smiled suddenly, turning impish. "Did my fourth incarnation tell you how I became Lord President of all Gallifrey?" And he rolled his R's with great relish.
"No he didn't, because it never happened," said Susan, unable to stop herself from smiling back.
"It most certainly did happen, and it would go very nicely with a black raspberry swirl. This way." He set off, Susan hurrying to stay by his side. "It was all completely accidental …"
"On your part or theirs?"
"Oh, both, of course …"
8. The Free Spirit
She found him drinking tea and reading a novel in an ornately carved chair, a youngish man with a cascade of chestnut curls and a bottle-green velvet coat. There was faint opera music playing on something that looked like an antique gramophone but sounded like a state-of-the-art sound system.
Any impression of restrained, refined leisure flew out the window the instant he saw her, however. "Susan!" he cried, practically throwing the cup and book aside as he bounced up out of his chair as if spring-loaded. He bounded over to her and spun her around, laughing, before sweeping her into a tight hug.
"Grandfather!" she laughed. This one, in the brief look she'd gotten while he was standing still, seemed to have gotten younger again. Not so much in his face but in his eyes.
"Let me look at you," he said, pulling away to arm's length. "Hmm. I hope that old schemer you met last night didn't depress you too badly. I must apologize for him. I always seem to be apologizing for myself, whenever more than one of me are involved in something, I've just realized that. What does that say about me, I wonder?"
He didn't seem to mean the last question seriously—in fact, he seemed quite unconcerned about having to apologize for anything. "It's all right," she said. "Thank you for the ice cream last night. And the umbrella, I needed it this morning." The umbrella had been hanging from her headboard when she woke. And filled with jelly babies. "Grandfather?"
"Hm?" He had the most innocent eyes of any Doctor she'd met yet, except perhaps the fifth.
"I really am happy with you. And even if something does go wrong in the future, I wouldn't change a thing."
"Quite right," he said approvingly. "It's no use brooding over things that are said and done, wondering if they could have gone differently …"
He trailed off, and for just a moment his eyes looked very old indeed.
"And I don't want you to feel responsible, either," she said. "It was my choice to come, you know."
"Susan!" he cried. "Susan Susan Susan. Of course it was. You know, my last self held himself responsible for everything, tried to manage everyone, and I don't think it ever did him or anyone else any good in the end. Always getting tangled up in my own plots, fretting over everything that happened … it was time for a change. From now on, I'm taking life as it comes."
She smiled. "I'm glad." Then she noticed something oddly familiar over his shoulder, a six-sided console with a glass column rising and falling in its center. And yet it and the room were so very different—baroque, ornate, gothic, filled with dark corners and rich colors, cobwebs and candlelight. "Grandfather, what is this place?"
"It's the TARDIS!" he exclaimed, throwing his arms wide. "I'm turning over a new leaf. Redecorating! What do you think?"
"I think it's marvelous!" she said. "I suppose it's too soon to ask Grandfather to do this? Back in my time, I mean."
"Afraid so."
"Oh, that's a pity." She strolled around the chair, running a finger over the spines of the books on the shelf behind it, looking at the book lying on its cushion. The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells. "It's wonderful."
"I meant it to be different, this time," he said, and she looked up sharply at the tone of his voice. There was a deep, weary regret in his eyes, visible only for a moment. "I meant for so many things to be different."
"Grandfather—"
"No, don't mind me," he said with a quick smile. "Have you read this? I met the author once, you know. I was in my sixth incarnation and he mistook me for a devil. Can't say I blame him—you've met my sixth."
"Grandfather," she started to say, about to demand an answer from him. But then she smelled the smoke, and saw the orange flicker of flame in the corner behind him. "Grandfather, look out!"
He saw the smoke and leapt forward to take her by the shoulders, eyes grim. "Susan, I'm sorry. I thought we'd have more time. But you have to wake up right now."
"But what about you?" she demanded, gripping him back. The flames had spread with amazing speed, encircling them and now closing in, the smoke thickening until she began to choke.
"I'll be fine," he snapped, the fear in his voice belying his words. "This is only a memory—there's nothing you can do to change this." He gave her a little shake. "Wake up. NOW!"
OOO
Susan sat bolt upright in bed, gasping and coughing. She didn't know what had happened or would happen, only that her Grandfather was in some terrible, unimaginable danger. She had to go to him—
Her hand fell on the cover of a book on her pillow. It was a copy of The Time Machine. Not the same copy, she felt instinctively; though this looked the same, she was quite certain nothing in that room had survived the inferno. Perhaps not even her Grandfather.
But a ghost couldn't have left me a book, she thought, clutching it tight. A memory couldn't do that, and he said he was a memory.
She sat up all night, rocking herself gently and clinging to the book like a lifeline, repeating those words in her mind.
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 toLook 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.
11: The Child
She didn't go back inside. Now that she was back, she remembered the argument she'd had with her Grandfather. And she wanted time to think. So she pulled her coat tight around her, tucked the little toy zeppelin safely into a pocket, and slipped out of the junkyard to make her way down the street, weaving through a throng of last-minute shoppers.
It was so strange to think of Grandfather living a human life, so finite and fleeting. She wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it. And yet he'd still been so very much himself underneath everything.
And Rose, and the baby. It wasn't quite like a Gallifreyan family, and yet it made Susan think of her own home, when she was very small. Before it all went wrong. It was what a family was supposed to be like. Being surrounded by people who loved you. Belonging someplace, having a place to call … home.
Susan. Baby Susan. It softened the knowledge of her death, to know that the story wouldn't be over when she left it, that there would be some girl named Susan who carried on. Perhaps that was the meaning of a family; being a part of something larger than oneself.
"Susan?"
She jumped a bit when the woman spoke to her out of the crowd. It was someone she'd never seen before, a smiling woman with masses of blonde curls. She looked friendly enough, but there was something a bit out of place about her. Susan had never seen her before. "Hello?" she replied.
"I'm River, sweetie. River Song." She held out her hand and Susan shook it automatically. River had a firm, confident grip. And a coat in entirely the wrong style for the time period, Susan realized. "Your Grandfather sent me to look for you. He's very sorry."
"You know my Grandfather?" Susan was surprised, although perhaps she shouldn't be after the day she'd been having.
"Not yet," laughed River. She had a nice laugh, and Susan decided she liked her. "A long time from now. But he remembers being worried about you."
The surprise trip between universes had thrown off Susan's time-sense, but by the light she thought as much time must have passed in both places. She'd have been gone for hours.
"I suppose I should go back," admitted Susan. "Which one of my Grandfather do you know?"
"Oh, I've known a lot of them," River evaded.
"I'm not sure which one is visiting me," said Susan. The metacrisis Doctor with his human life (and lifespan?) had made her think of the reasons for those visits. She couldn't bring herself to ask him, but perhaps River could tell her. "It's his last, isn't it? He doesn't have any regenerations left, and he wants to say goodbye."
She knew it would happen someday. But seeing it happen … that was another story.
"Oh, sweetie," sighed River. She put an arm around Susan's shoulders as they walked through the Tenth Doctor's artificial snow. "I can't tell you. I'm sorry. You know, sometimes I could just strangle that man. He gets a prophecy, or a footnote in a history text, or a giant radioactive space wombat, and he turns into such a drama queen—goes around saying goodbye to everyone he's ever met. I think it's a phase he's going through."
"But which one sent you?" Susan persisted.
"The Sixteenth," said River. Then she winked and slipped away down a side street. Susan spent the rest of the walk back to Totter's Lane trying to figure out if she'd been joking.
She was glad she'd met River and Rose. It made her feel that her Grandfather really would be all right some day if she left him. Not that she expected to see any of him settled down on Earth with a normal human family, but if he could go around making friends with people like that, there would be someone to look after him, someone who would stop him from being too lonely.
"Susan! Susan, there you are!"
Her Grandfather hurried up to her, putting on a stern face and trying to pretend that he hadn't been worried about her. And that he wasn't out in the snow looking for her. "And where have you been?"
"I was out walking," she said, not quite ready to forgive him yet.
He fidgeted slightly and looked at her sidelong. "Yes, well, I've been looking over the equipment in the TARDIS. It's quite out of order. I'm not sure the sensors are working correctly, either—very strange readings the last few days, very strange indeed, most unreliable. It's entirely possible this snow is natural. Probable, even. Yes, I should say—"
"I'm glad it did snow," said Susan, relenting. Besides, she really was glad it had snowed, and she wanted his future self to remember. If it hadn't been for the snow she'd have stayed in the TARDIS all day and never met River, or the other Grandfather, or Rose and baby Susan. "It's very pretty."
"Well, I suppose it is, child," said her Grandfather, trying not to look too relieved. "But let's get inside out of it now, shall we? It's getting chilly."
OOO
She dreamed of the snow that night. In the dream it lay in even thicker drifts, uninterrupted by buildings and streets, unmarked by any footprints except her own.
Susan looked around at the great white expanse of it. There didn't seem to be anyone here, so she indulged in something she'd heard about—she lay down on it and began to wave her arms and legs to make a snow angel.
"Eep!" she giggled, as the snow started to work its way down her collar. She sat up out of the angel, and found someone offering her a hand up.
"Having fun, dear?" asked a kindly voice.
This Grandfather had ancient eyes set in a face younger than any Susan had seen so far, with floppy hair and a chin that looked like it might have been intended for someone else entirely. But however young his body was, he dressed like the oldest, stuffiest teachers at Coal Hill—the tweed and the braces and the bow tie. With one exception …
"Hello, Grandfather," laughed Susan. "What are you wearing?"
He smiled and fingered the bow tie.
"No, on your head!"
He smiled wider and puffed out his chest proudly. "It's a fez. I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool."
"Really?" asked Susan, torn between horror and mirth.
He deflated suddenly, and looked so exaggeratedly forlorn that Susan had to keep fighting laughter. "No. Not really. I try, but no one will let me. Amy stole it. And then River—River shot it. Who shoots hats? Nobody …"
"I met River," said Susan.
"What?" he said, distracted.
"I met River. And before that I met a metacrisis of you, and his family. I never met a metacrisis before. And they—"
"What! No, no, no, no, that can't be right!" He started to pace up and down, wearing a trench in the snow, pulling at his hair and almost dislodging the fez. "Gaaah!"
"But I got back all right, and everything's fine, and he thinks it was just the TARDISes parked too closely together," she went on.
Eventually he calmed down. "I suppose, since I don't remember the planet exploding, it must be all right," he conceded. But he made her tell him everything that had happened, twice. "I haven't really kept in touch with them, you know. Well, obviously, different universe and all."
"They seemed very happy," said Susan.
"Let's build a snowman," he said. "I always wanted to build a snowman with you. I was just too busy being a stuffy grown-up back then."
The snowman turned out wildly lopsided, with a crooked smile of coal ("Ha-ha! There goes your gift—joking, joking!) and out-flung arms of gnarled branches. This Doctor really did seem to have given up on being an adult. He had all the energy of a puppy and as little coordination, with a funny walk and extravagant waves of his arms. But when he put his fez on the snowman's head, he placed it carefully, making fussy little adjustments like an old man and peering at it with his eyes nearly crossed.
"I thought you liked your fez too much," said Susan. "Why're you giving it to the snowman?"
"Because snowmen are cool, too," said her Grandfather. "And for safekeeping."
"Safekeeping?"
"Yeah. Coz I'm about to do this!"
He whipped around and hurled a snowball, striking her on the shoulder. Susan shrieked as the snow splashed onto her face. "Oooh, no, you're not getting away with that!" And she scooped up an icy handful and returned fire, laughing.
"Ah! No! Help!" For all he'd started the fight, he really wasn't much good at it, and before long Susan had knocked him into a snowdrift.
She woke up just as she was about to shove a handful of snow down the back of his shirt, which she thought was deliberate, not to mention unfair, but probably understandable. There was a fez perched on the pillow beside her.
12: The Distinguished Gentleman
The next night, she found herself walking in a well-manicured garden in a dusky summer twilight. The scent of roses filled the air. There was a man walking beside her, a tall slim man in a white suit. His hair was neat and dark, silver at the temples (she knew at a glance that this one's hair would never turn so dull a color as grey) and he carried a stick much like her first Grandfather's, crunching faintly against the gravel as they walked.
"You're very different from the last one," she ventured.
"Yes, I dare say that I am," he said. His voice was smooth and coolly amused, and yet not without affection. His face was a bit more youthful than his silver hair suggested, and he had eyes of a striking pale green, a color caught between ice and new leaves. "I thought perhaps it was time to be an adult. After all, if not now, then when? Do you like my garden, by the way?"
"Yes, very much," said Susan. Then she registered the word he'd used. "Yours? Is it a real place or a dream?"
"Quite real. Part of a property I acquired on New New New Earth, in the year Seven Million."
"Property?" said Susan, trying not to smile at the thought. But a quick look at his impassive face showed he was entirely serious. "Are you … have you stopped traveling?" She couldn't quite imagine him staying still long enough to have a house and a garden and things, let alone bothering with them. The car he'd had during his exile she could understand. But this place?
"Oh, no, I still travel," he assured her, with a dry little chuckle. "I have a staff of liberated robots who maintain all this while I'm away. But it's good to have a place to come back to." His expression darkened slightly, like the fading sky above them. "Someplace that belongs to me, rather than relying on the welcome of others."
"Are there still troubles back home, Grandfather?" asked Susan.
"Home?" he asked, startled. Then his eyes widened, and he gave a small, sharp shake of his head. "This is my home, child. River quite likes it, she tells me."
"Oh, you still know River?" said Susan.
"Oh, yes, for several lives now. I'm not sure this is her favorite incarnation of mine, between you and me," he confided. "She tells me I'm turning stuffy. Or senile. Keeps using the topiary for target practice, says it'll keep me from getting too set in my ways." He made a small tching noise, though he didn't seem terribly bothered. "Perhaps I am getting old. I like to have a place where my family can gather."
"Family?" asked Susan.
He turned to her and smiled, all secrets and mysteries.
"Tell me, Susan," he said. "What did you see, in the Untempered Schism?"
Susan was silent for a moment. She almost stopped walking in her surprise. That was something that was simply Not Talked About, and here was this prim-and-proper incarnation of her Grandfather, asking her so baldly about what was supposed to be the most private of things.
But she realized that he was still waiting patiently for an answer, and Susan cared even less about what was 'proper' than her first Grandfather had.
"I saw Gallifrey," she said after a moment's thought. "Gallifrey with all eternity around us, and our time stretching out in front of us. And all that we were, and all that we could ever be … That's why I came with you, Grandfather."
"Oh?"
"Because …" She toed a loose bit of gravel. "I saw that Gallifrey had already been about as much as it was going to be, and I wanted more."
"I see," he said, nodding thoughtfully.
"What did you see?" she asked on impulse, not expecting an answer.
"You saw Eternity from the shelter of Gallifrey. I didn't see Gallifrey at all," he said. "Only myself, alone, unshielded, unprotected against the backdrop of Eternity. First I ran from it. And then … then I ran towards it. Towards …"
He raised his stick, pointing at the sky. Susan looked up. Night had fallen fully, and there were a million million stars shining like diamonds against the darkness …
She woke up, feeling tears in her eyes at the wonder of it, and a fading homesickness for a place she had left behind, and a place she would never go. On her pillow was a little snow globe, of the sort humans made, and inside it was a replica of the Citadel, perfect in every detail.
OOO
"Grandfather?" asked Susan.
"Hm?" He looked up from the chessboard, listening attentively. He hadn't apologized for what he'd accused her of, and Susan knew better than to expect it, but he obviously realized he was in the wrong. He had stopped pursuing his sensor gremlins with such intensity, though Susan knew how much it must still bother him, and he was going out of his way to do other things with her.
She thought maybe she could take advantage of his mood to ask him a few things he might refuse to talk about otherwise. "Do you ever think of home, Grandfather?"
"Eh? Home? Why, what's brought this on?" he sputtered, suddenly peering at her suspiciously.
"Oh, it's just all the people at school, talking about Christmas. How they're going to visit all their relatives." Susan toyed with a pawn, pretending the subject was of no great importance. "I was just wondering what was happening back home. What everyone was doing. If you ever thought about it."
"I don't see why I should," he sniffed. "I dare say they're getting on perfectly well without us. And don't think we'd be given a warm welcome if we popped back for a visit—unless it was a welcome too hot for our liking."
"Oh, no, Grandfather, I don't want to go back there," said Susan hastily.
"Oh. Well. That's very good, as I can't take you." He looked very relieved, and Susan wondered if he'd thought she would ask to go home because of those things he'd said. Silly Grandfather, how could he think that? "You want to visit these children you've met at school, then? Well, I don't see what harm that could do, if you don't make too great a habit of it. You'll want to see them on Christmas, I suppose."
"No …" said Susan, although normally he discouraged her from getting too close to human students. "It's Christmas. They want to be with their families. You're my family, Grandfather. I want to spend it with you."
"Oh! Oh, I see," chuckled her Grandfather, ruffling her hair. He was obviously pleased by this, though he was trying not to show how moved he was. "Silly girl—don't you spend most of your days with me?"
"Well, yes, Grandfather." Susan smiled at him, thought about asking again to celebrate Christmas with him, and didn't quite dare. She moved her bishop instead. "Check!"
13: The Ginger
If Susan had been human, she wouldn't have been able to sleep at all that night. As it was it took her a great deal of concentration and every breathing technique she knew.
Part of the problem was that she wasn't sure she wanted to fall asleep. She very much wanted to see her next future Grandfather, now that she was used to the changes and had come to look forward to them. But Time Lords only had thirteen lives, River's joke (it had to be a joke) notwithstanding. This would be the last night, and she didn't want it to be over.
When she did sleep, she was disappointed. All she dreamed about were tap-dancing penguins, and she was pretty sure none of them were her Grandfather. Finally, around three in the morning, she woke herself up.
"I was wondering when you'd get tired of the penguins."
He was sitting in the chair by her bed, a very young man (even younger than the Eleventh, and only a few years older than Susan herself) dressed all in black. He had a black velvet coat, black shirt, black jeans, black boots, with a black tie patterned in little silver question marks.
It should have looked sinister, but despite the color his clothes were such a mish-mash of styles that it came off as merely eccentric at worse. And his face was too open and cheerful to look anything less than friendly.
His hair was flaming ginger. His eyes were older than the stars, and as bright as a child's, and he had a smile like the first light of dawn on Christmas morning.
"Grandfather," she said. "You're here, really here."
"I got tired of sleeping so much," he said. "Anyway, you've met everyone else. It was time to meet the real me. The last me."
Susan got up and went over to hug him. "I'm glad I met you," she said, "all of you."
"And I'm glad I came back to see you." He moved away to arm's length, looking her over fondly. "Ah. My Susan."
"Are you in danger, Grandfather?" she asked. "Is that why you've come back now?"
"No!" he said. Then he looked guilty and ran a nervous hand through his hair, which already looked like he styled it by giving himself massive electric shocks. "Well, not really. Well, not really more than usual. Well, there's—"
"Giant radioactive space wombat?"
"You have been talking to River, I see. Well, yes, there's that." He fidgeted. "But I did simply want to see you. And I did promise you I'd come back, one day."
He sighed. "I put things off, you know—always have. I store things up for rainy days. And I've done it for so long I'm starting to have more things than days. Now, now," he overrode her protests, "I still have a good many days left, I hope. But there's something about being on one's thirteenth life that gives one a different perspective of time. And promises are made to be kept."
They were interrupted by a young ginger woman bursting into the room. "Doctor, that old geezer's woken up and he's on the warpath. I managed to distract him by turning half the knobs in the engine room—"
"Oh, dear, I wish you hadn't done that," said the Doctor, tugging at his hair again. "This is Donna Temple-Noble," he said to Susan.
"Doctor Donna Temple-Noble," said the woman, rolling her eyes.
"I traveled with her gran," finished the Doctor.
"Pleased to meet you," said Susan, shaking Donna's hand. "I'm Susan."
"So you're his … granddaughter," said Donna, looking between Susan and the young man. "It's a job and a half looking after him, isn't it? He got us arrested three times last week."
"I only got us arrested twice!" sputtered the Doctor. "The other time was your fault. Pay no attention, Susan!"
"Well, if you had gotten the decade right, my bikini wouldn't have been public indecency, so … still your fault," Donna shot back, hands on her hips.
He stuck his tongue out at her and turned to his granddaughter. "Susan—"
"I know." She would very much like to get to know Donna, and this version of her Grandfather, but she knew if her first Grandfather was awake they didn't have much time. She hadn't had nearly enough time with any of them. "I love you, Grandfather. I'll never forget any of you."
"My dear Susan." He took her in his arms and kissed her forehead one last time. "I've always been so proud of you. And I always will be. You never did waver in your beliefs, even when I faltered in mine. And you will always be an inspiration to me."
He gave her shoulders a last squeeze and stepped away. "I must go. I've left your last gift in the console room."
"Grandfather will go mad," said Susan, wincing.
"No, I won't." He gave her a crooked smile. "Trust me, I was there."
Susan found herself crying. She knew what had to be, but she couldn't stay strong any more. "Grandfather, I don't want you to go."
"I don't want to go, either," he said, reaching out to touch her face. She saw that he wore the same amethyst ring her Grandfather had brought with him from Gallifrey. "But you must have no regrets, Susan. You'll still have me, your own proper version of me. You'll see me in the morning. Now it's time for you to … sleep."
His fingers found the contact points on her cheek and temple, and the world drifted gently away.
OOO
They ran into the old man on the way out. He was scowling fiercely, a wiry white-maned old lion, and holding a walking stick that he seemed more likely to use as a bludgeon than for support.
Donna started to step in front of her Doctor, but he waved her back. "You know who I am," he told the old man.
"And I can't say I think much of what you've become," sneered his first self. "It was you who made the snow, was it? It's been you all along. And what is the purpose of all this, may I ask? I assume there is some reason for this foolishness."
Donna looked between the two men. Two? Young and old, a pair of black coats and amethyst rings, a matched set of icy blue wrath-of-God glares. The impression was of a man staring himself down in a mirror … which, in a way, he was.
"I only came to steal a few moments," said the last Doctor, in a voice that could have given a glacier pause—and chills. "You'll find they're more precious than you think. Do try to find that out before you run out of them." He fished a small package wrapped in festive paper from his pocket, strode bravely into striking distance of the old man, and handed it over. "That's for Susan. Pretend you bought it for her. Children grow up so very quickly, after all."
And he brushed past the old man, Donna hurrying in his wake, and into a small linen cupboard the first Doctor couldn't remember seeing there before.
"Mind you keep that young hooligan away from the engines!" the old man snapped after him, as the cupboard door vanished with a wheeze and a groan.
1. Grandfather Christmas
Susan could feel the time even before she opened her eyes and saw the cat-clock on the wall. "Oh, no," she groaned, getting up and racing from her room. There wasn't much hope of getting to the console room and collecting her gift before Grandfather saw it (assuming it was something that could be collected) but she had to try.
When she got there, her worst fears were confirmed. There were wreaths and ribbons and holly everywhere. And a Christmas tree in the corner, an actual Christmas tree, and there was her Grandfather, peering at something attached to one of its branches.
On the other hand, visible steam wasn't pouring out of his ears.
He looked up to see her standing in the doorway with her hand over her mouth. "Well don't just stand there, child," he said. He didn't sound upset …
"It wasn't me, Grandfather," she blurted out.
"No, no, of course not. I'm not so dense as all that, you know. Oh, yes, I know what's been going on." He harrumphed, prodding the tree with his stick. "I had worked it out myself, of course. But even if I hadn't this tree has a note. Saying, 'To my dear Susan.' In my handwriting."
"Oh," said Susan weakly.
"Yes, I don't know what I was thinking. Or will be thinking. It seems I've been blaming you for my misdeeds …" He hastily changed the subject. "I'll still want your help cleaning up all this, this—" He snatched a handful of glittering strands from the console.
"Tinsel, Grandfather. Yes, of course, right away."
"Oh, there's no need to rush, no need at all," he said, waving his hand airily. "Tomorrow is soon enough. After we've finished celebrating our holiday."
"Celebrating?" said Susan. She could barely believe it. "You want—you want to celebrate Christmas with me?"
"Yes, well. Hem. We've had this, this ritual vegetable sacrifice delivered to us," he prodded the tree again, "we may as well continue on with the rest of it, eh? Come here, child, I have your gift."
"My gift?" Susan came forward and took the small package from him, unwrapping it at his urging. She squealed with delight and threw her arms around him, startling him. "Oh, a radio! Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!"
"Good gracious!" sputtered her Grandfather, though she could tell he was pleased. "There's no need to be so excited. I give you enough spending money, you could have bought it yourself if you wanted it that badly."
"Oh, but it's not so much about having it, Grandfather," she said. "It's about … it's about getting it on Christmas morning from someone who loves you, and unwrapping it, and being excited because you never quite know what you're getting!" She beamed at him. "I didn't think you were paying attention when I mentioned it. And I didn't want to come right out and say because then it wouldn't be a surprise at all—if you got it for me, I mean, and I didn't think you would …"
"Not paying attention?" said her Grandfather, pretending to be offended. "Me? Nonsense! You think I'm going deaf, is that it? Or maybe getting forgetful in my old age?"
"Oh, no, Grandfather, not at all. Wait here a moment, I have something for you!"
Susan ran back to her room before her Grandfather could ask her any questions. When she came back she had a small package in her hand and the fez on her head.
"What's all this, then?" he wanted to know.
"Why, it's a fez, Grandfather. Fezzes are cool."
"'Cool'? 'Cool'?" he muttered. "What's that wretched school doing to your English? Oh, this is for me?"
"Yes, Grandfather." She'd never expected to be exchanging gifts with him, so she'd had to make do. She'd used one of the bigger pieces of wrapping paper that had come off the clock.
He pulled the paper away and peered at the small device within, fiddling with the buttons and listening to the whine. "A sonic …"
"Screwdriver," said Susan. She held her hands behind her back and crossed as many fingers as she could. "I found it in a store-room when we were cleaning out. I suppose it got left behind by one of the previous pilots."
"Hm, I suppose," he said, fortunately not paying very close attention. "Very clever idea. Yes, this will come in very useful in my laboratory. I shall take it there as soon as we've finished our celebrations. Thank you, my dear. Now! What comes next?"
"Well," said Susan, "I suppose we could start with some hot cocoa. And then …"
End