The Price of Beauty

by T. R. Myers

The first Doctor wasn't always gray, and he wasn't always the Doctor. He was a promising student with a strong sense of morality. He was a restless soul that could not stay home. And his first two enemies met him on his first adventure. One was a former lover, and the other was his best friend, and his hearts were broken.

1. Chapter 1

Title: The Price of Beauty

Series: Doctor Who

Rating: K

Genre: Sci-fi/Adventure/Mystery

Disclaimer: Though it shouldn't be necessary on , I thought I should resume adding disclaimers to my fanfics. I don't own Doctor Who or any associated characters. I am not profiting from them. If those who do wish me to stop, they need only let me know and I will do so immediately.

Summary: Who was the Doctor in his youth? Surely he was not born old. Who was he before his hair was gray? Has his early story anything to do with a rash of mysterious deaths of beautiful, young and not so young women in 1961?

(Author's forward: This story has been churning in my mind for some time. I was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. Like most American cities, we had a public television station known as the Public Broadcasting System. You know, that station that showed the likes of Sesame Street and Mister Roger's Neighborhood. Well, in the evenings and nights, a large portion was dedicated to British programming. So of course, during the summers, I would watch Doctor Who on Sunday nights, which usually started at 10 or 11 pm and ended at 12 or 1 am. New episodes were, to my earliest memory Peter Davison, but the summers were for reruns, so I had started Tom Baker, though his run ended a mere year after my birth. It was when I was eight or nine, I finally got fed up with missing Doctor Who because I had to get to bed for school during fall winter and spring, and I started recording before I went to bed so that I wouldn't miss episodes [it was because of this practice that I was introduced to the wonderful show, Red Dwarf. You see, it came on right after Doctor Who, but that is not the point]. No, immediately after the season, with the failed fashion of Colin Baker, I began taping ended, Channel 9 started its reruns. I had expected to see the previous episodes over again, and so I did, but I didn't expect to see "An Unearthly Child". I had heard that Doctor Who was quite old, but when you're a kid, you don't quite believe these things until you see the black and white and the classic sixties overacting. In total, there were two full William Hartnell stories presented, the one with cavemen, simply presented as "An Unearthly Child" even though the other three episodes had different names, and one in which a supercomputer behaves in a manner reminiscent of HAL 9000. I don't remember the name. It would occur to me later that however the Doctor regenerates, he can't have been born old. I would often write silly stories on my Apple IIC word processing program about where the Doctor came from. Those stories are long gone. Here is a fresh attempt, along with my effort to stay as close to canon as possible. I hope you enjoy. By the way, I know Matt Smith has always wanted to be ginger, but since William Hartnell was one, we'll just assume the eleventh Doctor simply forgot that he has already been a ginger. After all, you can forget quite a bit in 900 years.)

On Earth...

On a television, in someone's home, somewhere in 1961:

"...BBC's Echo Four-Two will continue after a word from our sponsor's."

An elderly woman appears on the screen, particularly wrinkled, the wrinkles deepened by a miserable scowl. A sultry woman's voice comes through the speakers, voicing over the image. "Do you feel useless, unwanted, unloved? When you look in the mirror, does something hideous stare back? Do you feel that you can never be beautiful? You're wrong." The elderly woman's wrinkles seem to melt away and within seconds, a woman in her 20's is shown on the screen. "Experience a miracle. Regenerate your body. Restore your face. Rejuvenate your life. Turn back time with Eden cosmetics." The beautiful woman speaks to the screen. "Thanks to Eden, not only do I look and feel young again, I have the time to enjoy it!"

Gallifrey, the Early Rassilon Era

Excerpt from "The Forbidden History of Pythias and the First Lords of Time."

Author unknown.

"Who the first Enemy was, history does not say, but Rassilon knew. He admitted to knowing the identity of this mysterious Enemy, and that the secret would do the general public no good. One can wonder if it would have done Omega some good to know the dangers he faced when he created the Eye of Harmony. Rassilon saw numerous enemies in those days. He saw enemies in a group of harmless witches that still followed the ways of the Menti Celesti, a rather harmless group of people who were content to hide in the temples of the Pythias. He destroyed them utterly. Who then was his third companion? Rassilon denies the existence of a third but our legends speak a great deal of this Other. If he didn't exist, then why does Rassilon go to such lengths to suppress those old stories that are supposedly nothing more than fanciful tales, with no more substance than the Toclafane?"

Gallifrey, in the House Lungbarrow

The looms churned their genetic material, a great vat bored deep into the crust of Gallifrey. A small, unassuming young Gallifreyan stared blankly into the glowing matter, knowing that somewhere in it, there was a capsule connected to a tether, and that at any moment, it would be brought forth from the life material and another cousin would be born. The young boy, not quite child, not quite man, wondered if this child would look up to him. Probably not. They all called him Snail or Wormhole, their derision palpable. He reminded himself that all they had were this simple nicknames. By tradition, and no small amount of magic, his true name was unpronounceable and could only be spoken by one person, whom the young man may never even meet. For the moment, he was stuck with such derogatory designations, but he would find a name of his own that all may address him as. For the moment, he preferred his Academy designation; Theta Sigma, still naught but a number.

Thete, as he was called, knew that we wasn't without hope. The House Lord Quences knew Thete to be brilliant. The old, hateful fiend had special plans for Thete. Thete cared nothing for it. Political intrigue abound in the Houses of Gallifrey. Likely, it was some plot or other to overthrow the Lord President, oh, what was his name? One could see how much Thete cared for politics. The Great Lord Rassilon cared nothing for the intrigue. Politicians could murder each other to their binary heart's content. Let the lower government punish their political assassins. What would Rassilon care for these loom born who had overthrown and killed most of the true Time Lords?

What concerned Thete was that thanks to an ancient curse, Time Lords could not have children. The looms were the only means of procreation for Time Lords. That meant that the child exiting now was family to all, as all DNA was as one in the looms. Quences' wizened voice called from below. "Snail! Come see your new cousin."

Thete turned to the voice. Quences only used them. Thete knew that he was nothing but a tool for Quences' ends. Reluctantly, he turned and walked down the stairs into the progenitor chamber of the looms. He approached Quences, who gestured to a Time Lady sitting at the back of the room, cradling a sleeping infant in her arms. Her name was Amara, and she had been the matron mother for as long as Thete could remember. She was, perhaps, older even than Quences. Still, she looked young, having only just regenerated. She looked down at Thete with kind eyes, the only one who did. "Theta Sigma, you have yet to name a cousin. All cousins your age and younger have done so twice. You are out of excuses." The admonition wasn't stern, and her eyes twinkled in amusement.

Quences would likely have spoken against allowing Thete to choose a name, but the demands of tradition staid his tongue. So, Thete spoke. As was tradition, the name he chose was in the most ancient tongue of Gallifrey. Though many recited it, few actually knew it. Thete was one who was fluent and he was able to choose a name without the need for research. Quentus certainly could not speak it and his jealousy was palpable.

Amara said, "What a magnificent name. Do you know its meaning?"

Thete said, "The Birth of Joy."

Amara looked up at Quences and said, "You did not tell me this one was versed in the tongue of Ancients."

Quences stammered, "That-well-He did not say!" Composing himself, he spoke more evenly. "The boy has so many hobbies and unusual fascinations, who can keep up?"

Thete chose not to correct the lie, though he could not imagine why Quences was being so dishonest. He could have simply said that telling Amara hadn't occurred to him. Was he hoping that Amara wouldn't realize that Thete had a talent for speaking difficult languages? Then it struck Thetes; when had he learned Ancient Gallifreyan? He could recall no lessons, and realized that he knew it with such unconscious competence that it was as though he was born to it. Now, Thete feared that Quences would use this to ridicule him. The cousins were always using these strange things to point out the strangeness of Theta Sigma.

Again, he dwelled on the strange things he remembered. He remembered being in the looms, waiting to be born. He remembered his parents and growing up on his estate, but it might have been a dream. There was the strange aperture on the lower portion of his abdomen; one of the Ancient ones had called it a belly button. It was that peculiar bit of anatomy that had earned him the nicknames "Snail" and "Wormhole". Thete always knew he was different from other Time Lords. He knew that was why he was a Deca. That alone should have silenced his ridicule, but it never did. "Snail looked into the Eye of Harmony and fled," they said. Yes, he ran. It wasn't the future that terrified him, it was the past. It was because he knew that he was much older than the looms. Yet he looked into the mirror and saw the face of an adolescent youth, nearing manhood, but not quite there yet.

"No one is an infant," Amara always said, "merely reborn."

In the looms, there was knowledge, but it was more than just a collection of fact. It was the understanding of all things, and there was a barrier. Thete remembered it clearly. In that primordial soup, he had lived just as he walked through the halls of Lungbarrow. He remembered that he was much older. He remembered a time before the looms. Did that mean he had lived before? He had a canal in the middle of his stomach, but only womb-born Time Lords had such things, and Lord Rassilon was the last of the womb-born. The wall in the looms...

Behind that wall was truth; secrets of life and death hidden by the Three...Rassilon, Omega, and the Nameless One. There was only one way through that wall, and if Thete took it, he would be forced to start over, and the reasons why would be lost to him.

The Museum

There was only one more testing semester left at the Academy and Quences took his most promising pupils to the Museum of Time. It was a boring place but it did hold one point of interest, the retired Interspacial Temporal Dimensional Relativity Transport Modules. It was Thete's favorite place. It told of adventure. People who operated these devices weren't confined to Gallifrey. Sadly, only a rare few were ever allowed the luxury of such a device. These were the elite. Thete would never be one. Quences was convinced of the opposite, but Thete knew Quences ambitions. That terrible man could never be allowed to become the Castillan.

Thete looked down at one of the models. It was scene on a distant, primitive sort of planet called Earth. There were people walking in streets, driving primitive gas combustion devices. On the side of a street was a strange blue box. It said, Police (public call) Box on top. There was a caption that said, "An example of a Time And Relative Dimension In Space unit with chameleon circuit in use. This is a representation of a moment captured from the Time Matrix. Time unknown. Place appears to be London, Earth."

Thete looked up at one of the real Time Transports. It was a bizarre, white cylinder, with roundels diagonally positioned from each other in a pattern covering the device. Thete knew that when these roundels detected another culture surrounding it, they would literally manufacture a synthetic casing to disguise the device. The device called to him. He knew that they were alive and even telepathic. What could he say in response? It had to know that he couldn't possibly simply answer its summons, yet it called, begging to be taken away. Thete looked at its plaque. "Time And Relative Dimension In Space TT Type 40."

A heavy hand fell upon Thete's shoulder. He turned to stare into Quences wizened face. Something was wrong. Quences was looking at Thete in a...kindly fashion. If Thete didn't know better, he would say that Quences looked upon him in a fatherly fashion. "Thete," said Quences, and Thete quickly noted that Quences used his affectionate name instead of calling him Snail or Wormhole, "my dear prodigy, the Council of Time Lords is impressed. The House of Lungbarrow hasn't produced a Time Lord as gifted as you in nearly two thousand years...me, as a matter of fact. You will be simulating a battle against the Cybermen at the Academy next week?"

"Yes," said Thete.

"Listen to your unit commander. Follow all orders. I know you will do well."

"You're not usually so encouraging."

Quences' face darkened for barely a moment. "My reputation hinges on my performance. They need a Castillan and if House Lungbarrow produces a genius, I will have the post. The next step will be Lord President! I am simply reminding you that after the simulation comes the final test. Do well," and he dropped his pretense, his face becoming hideous, "or suffer my wrath, Wormhole."

He left Thete to think on the threat. Thete was no fool. Whatever anyone may have believed, he knew that Quences had made no idle threat. Thete had to make sure that when he challenged Quences, he would have all of the advantages. He would, of course, need a secondary plan. Thete looked back at the TT Type 40, and wondered at the possibilities. "Keep hoping," he said aloud to the Time Device, "and I shall hope for both of us."

The Simulation

Thete hated violence, and these were real Cybermen, but he knew, intellectually that they were being done a service. Their minds were so suppressed, the Cybermen could not even protest what they had been forced to become. Thete was under the command of his best and only friend, another nameless one who had been given a designation. Phi Gamma, the oldest in class, had ordered Thete to take guard duty on the rear perimeter, knowing how he despised violence and Thete watched as the Cybermen broke through the left flank. The simulation range was stark and bland, but the fighting was real enough, the Cybermen using real weapons against the Time Lord's highly destructive energy staves.

"Fools..." intoned one of the Cybermen, for they didn't really speak, but made sounds approximating speech, "you dare...to...yuz...the Cyber...men...for sport?"

Phi shouted, "I ordered you to reinforce the left flank!"

"I did," his lieutenant shouted back, "but when the Cybermen focused their fire there, I thought the risk was too great and ordered the left flank to break."

"Idiot! You should have held. If the Cybermen were focused on the left, we could have brought our units around to pin them. How dare you disobey my orders? I am in command. Here, I am the master! In this chamber, I am your master!"

"Sir, I don't think..."

"You're a disgrace! You're dismissed. I'll replace you with someone I can count on. Theta Sigma! You're my First Lieutenant now!" Theta stepped forward and Phi spoke on. "What are our options now?"

Thete paused only a moment and said, "With the left flank broken, they're coming up a corridor they created. Let them have their corridor, and reinforce the walls with our men."

Phi looked off into the middle distance as he considered. "Surround them. They'll see it coming."

"Of course they will. That was probably their plan. Our alternative is to break and regroup. Any other course of action makes us a shooting gallery. There is one saving grace with my plan."

"And that is?"

"Since they likely planned for it, they, understanding combat logic as well as they do, probably won't expect us to deliberately fall into their trap."

"Actually doing what they want us to do might take them by surprise." Phi looked around at the men surrounding him and said, "You heard him! Reinforce the corridor!"

It actually became a brilliant coup. The Cybermen had underestimated the Time Lord's firepower, and in fact, they had anticipated that the Time Lords would avoid the trap, so when the trap was deliberately sprung, the Cybermen were caught unawares. In the back of his mind, Thete knew that the disgraced lieutenant would not even qualify for the exam. He would fail the Academy, a mundane guardian, a foot soldier. Thete was sick in his hearts knowing that he would deliberately suffer the same fate to prevent Quences from using him as a foot stool.