The Doctor didn't often sleep; it wasn't in his nature. However, today was the exception. Something in the relaxing atmosphere of the planet and the picnic lunch he had consumed combined to make him very drowsy indeed. He closed his eyes and slept.
He found himself in a dimly lit room. In fact, it was almost pitch black. In the far corner crouched a figure: a small child with a shaved head and a scar across its brow.
"Hello, I'm the Doctor. I say, how did you get that awful scar? Did you fall from your bike?" he asked.
The child didn't reply, just stared ahead with wide frightened eyes. He examined the child more closely. It was wearing a shapeless tunic like the children of his own planet. The child was Gallifreyan. He tried reaching out to the child mentally but still nothing. It was as if he wasn't really there.
And there was a voice calling outside the room. "Sulia, Sulia, where are you?" It was a smooth, calm masculine voice.
The child, the girl, hunched closer and tighter into a fetal position.
"Sulia, it's Daddy. I'm going to find you," said the voice.
And the door opened and a light was switched on. The Doctor looked at the man, the Time Lord, standing in the doorway. He was dressed in black velvet. His eyes were blue, and his hair and his beard were both brown. He was strangely familiar, as if the Doctor knew him but couldn't quite place him.
"There you are," said the man, the Time Lord, and he marched over to the girl. "You've been very naughty hiding from us like that. Now come with me." He took her by the arm gently.
She pulled her arm away and glared at him. "NO!" she said. "I don't wanna!"
"Sulia, will I have to take you over my knee?" he asked.
She looked scared and worried. "You wouldn't hurt me, Daddy, you never do."
"But Mummy would. She wouldn't hesitate," he said. "Now come with me."
"NO! I don't want 'nother surgery! They make me hurt all over, in my head, and my mind is all weird," she said. "It hurts really bad!" She clutched at her head and began to rock back and forth.
"Darling, it's for the best. Mummy wants you to be the best little girl you can be, and for that you need surgery," he said.
"NO, NO, NO!" she screamed. "You can't make me!"
"Very well, then." He sighed. "I won't."
"You won't?" she asked.
"No, of course not, darling. If it really hurts you. I'll have a talk with Mummy and we won't do it anymore," he said soothingly.
She looked at him, hope dawning in her eyes. "Really?"
"Yes, of course!" he said. "Now give me a hug. Won't you, darling?"
She nodded.
He opened his arms and she put her own arms around him. There was a flicker of movement as he reached into a pocket and quickly removed a syringe. He plunged it into his daughter's slender arm and she went limp, unconscious. He smiled and gave a soft chuckle. He carried her over his shoulder to an operating room and placed her body on the table.
A woman appeared. She was dressed in teal-colored scrubs, a cap over her hair and a surgical mask over her mouth. "You found her and you brought here, good." she said.
"It is laughably easy to lie to her. Ah, the utter gullibility of the young," he said smoothly.
"Don't gloat. She's just a timetot and you are always too gentle with her anyway," said the woman. "Now get ready. I'm going to need some assistance with this."
"If you insist." He sighed and walked off.
The Doctor found he was hovering over the operating table.
Sulia's body was covered with a white sheet up to her neck. Next her father reappeared, garbed in surgical wear.
"Experiment 27G," said the mother.
The Doctor watched, horrified and disgusted, as Sulia's mother took a rotating blade and sliced open her daughter's skull. Then he became awake of someone watching him. It was Sulia, or rather, the spirit of her.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"I'm the Doctor," he said. "I'd offer you a jelly baby but I don't think you could eat it as a ghost."
"No." She frowned.
"Your father lied to you," said the Doctor.
"Yes," said Sulia. "Daddy keeps doing that. He says only fools tell the truth all the time and only fools believe it all the time."
"Ah, well, he is right there," the Doctor said.
"I don't like it when he does that or when Mummy hurts me. They keep sayin' that they want me to be perfect. But I don't want to be perfect if it hurts so much," she said.
"Do you know your mummy and daddy's names?" asked the Doctor. "Other than Mummy and Daddy, of course."
"Well, Mummy is called the Rani," said the girl. "And Daddy likes being called the Master."
"Oh, Rassilon! If you haven't noticed, Sulia, your parents aren't very nice people. Very bad people indeed. In fact, they are what grownups call psychopaths," the Doctor said.
"Well, Daddy always says goodness is just for the weak. And Mummy says it's for the timid," Sulia said.
"And do you believe them, Sulia?" the Doctor asked earnestly.
"I don't know. All I know is I wish they'd stop hurting me," she said.
"I could help you, Sulia," the Doctor said. "I could make sure they'd never hurt you again."
"Really, you promise?!" she said. "You're not lying, are you?"
"Of course I'm not! This is too important to fib about. As soon as I'm up and about, I'll find you and take you from this. You can go back to Gallifrey or stay on the TARDIS with Sarah Jane and me," the Doctor said.
"I'd like that," said Sulia.
"Right-ho I think I'll be getting up now," said the Doctor. "See you soon--"
"Stop!" a voice called. And the Doctor turned. A woman in a red dress, with long black frizzy hair and a mad look in her eyes, was glaring at him. "You'll forget."
"No, I don't think so," said the Doctor.
Sulia began to cry. "I don't like her. She talks to me in my head and makes it hurt!"
"Shut up, you don't know … you can't know the gifts they are giving you," said the woman.
"… You're a Time Lady, aren't you?" said the Doctor.
And the woman smiled slowly. "I am beyond a mere Time Lady."
"Ah, are you going to tell I shouldn't interfere?" he asked the woman.
The woman nodded. "Yes."
"Because you can bloody well shove it, if you do! I'm not letting an innocent child be tortured by those two sociopaths," said the Doctor.
"GET HER AWAY!" screamed Sulia. "I HATE HER!"
"FORGET, DOCTOR," the woman demanded. "FORGET AND WAKE UP."
Suddenly, jarringly, the Doctor was awake. Sarah Jane was staring at him with a puzzled expression on her face.
"Doctor? Are you alright?" she asked.
"Sarah Jane! We have to get to the TARDIS immediately!…There is…someone…Oh, bugger, I can't remember now…there was a girl and she needed our help. I don't really know why anymore. But she needed it!" the Doctor said.
"Doctor, you were dreaming. You had a nightmare," Sarah Jane said.
"Ah, yes, I suppose I did," the Doctor said. "It mustn't have been important if I can't remember it."