Author's Notes: This is a rewrite of a Hero's Birth, and considering some of the confusion I've had on Spacebattles, I'll mention, just because the Brigadier hears the sound of the drums doesn't mean he's the Master.
"It all began with dreams."
-Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
It was a warm day in Little Emling.
The Surrey village lay ten miles south of Guildford, the county town of the affluent county. It was quite small, having only a few houses, a post office and of course, a public house.
Less than half a mile away however there was an old Tudor estate, originally built and owned by a wealthy merchant during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. After that it had a variety of different owners before being purchased in 1896 by The Rt Hon. Richard Lethbridge-Stewart, former solider and a Conservative MP. And since then the estate had been owned by the Lethbridge-Stewart family, with the house eventually passing onto the current descendant.
A descendant who was approaching the twilight of his life.
Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart sat on his bench, staring out across the garden. A newspaper lay on his lap, as he took a sip from his glass of whiskey.
For the Brigadier, it was moments like these which made retirement so enjoyable. There were no impending alien invasions or rampant robots to worry about; just relaxing in his beautiful garden, drinking whiskey as he read his newspaper in peace.
"No, my blood and thunder days are long past."
It had been twenty one years since he had told Doris that. Ironically merely a day later, he was fighting against an army of knights from a parallel dimension, led by an insane sorceress who thought it was a good idea to unleash a planet devouring demon upon the world.
And then of course after that, UNIT were kind of enough to regularly pull him out of retirement and assign him to God knows where.
Nonetheless, 'the Brig' felt now what he told Doris all those years ago was true. His days of fighting Autons, Zygons and Daleks were long since over. He was now eighty one years old, and despite being in excellent shape for his age - as Doris often reminded him - it meant he was far too old to have an active role in UNIT, even if he wanted to.
The best he could do is advise, and that is exactly what the latest batch of UNIT recruits used him for. Using his many years of experience to advise UNIT divisions worldwide on how to deal with extraterrestrials and anything else which threatened the existence of the human race.
It was they who would take up the mantle of defending the Earth. But for the Brigadier, such times were over. He would live out the rest of his life in retirement, secluded from the troubles of a hostile universe.
Yet, something felt missing. His life somehow incomplete.
Who am I?
It was a thought which he believed had left him decades ago, in Port Said. Now recently it began to plague him, more frequently than ever.
Who am I?
The answer was seemingly obvious. He was Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart VC KBE, born in Mombasa, Kenya on February 12th 1929. Veteran of the Suez War, former CO of the Scots Guards and the British Contingent of UNIT. He'd fought Yetis, Silurians, Cybermen, Daleks and a host of other intergalactic menaces while at UNIT; assisted by an eccentric Time Lord who had a habit of changing his face.
But his identity felt like nothing more than a charade. At best a partial truth of something far greater, something which he could not put into words. And as of late, in the depths of his mind, he felt like there was something residing; something which had been dormant but was beginning to awaken.
The Sleeper.
The Brigadier felt a chill go up his spine, terror encompassing every fibre of his being.
He shut his eyes, thinking deeply about how these doubts of identity arose.
It had all began with dreams.
They'd begun when he was a child, well after his family returned to England. And to call them strange was an understatement.
He had dreamt of another world. A desert world, its surface of sand dunes, dust basins and mountain rages scorched by the searing hot sun. A world without precipitation, which meant even the slightest ounce of water was valued more greatly than any precious ore. A world inhabited by monsters; gigantic worms big enough to swallow an aircraft carrier.
And then of course were the people whom resided there, in the deep desert. People who he found to be particularly disturbing. They were tanned, clad in robes, and as he recalled from his dreams, they glided across the desert sands.
But what haunted him was their eyes; blue within blue, no trace of white within them. They were completely unnatural.
Who are these people?
By the time the War started the dreams had gone, but when he along with the rest of 3 PARA were dropped in Egypt during the Suez Crisis, they returned in earnest. More nightmarish then ever.
This time his dreams of this desert world were accompanied by an evil chuckle, and then a drumbeat.
A rhythm of four.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
And then there was a hand, an exquisitely shaped hand. A woman's hand.
A hand with a strange hieroglyph upon the palm.
What on earth was it?
The dreams then left him as suddenly as they came, but again they had returned.
The Brigadier couldn't explain it. The rational side of his mind told him these dreams, these thoughts were nothing more than a delusion. A psychoanalyst would tell him they were a neurosis from the unconscious, which had been caused by some forgotten event in childhood.
Of course, he didn't believe in that Freudian rubbish anyway, but nevertheless the rational part of him told him the dreams were merely just dreams.
But another part of his mind told him otherwise; the dreams, the Sleeper, even the doubts of his identity, possessed truth.
Truth that he was far more than what UNIT, the Doctor, Doris and even himself, believed him to be.
Who am I?