About once a week, it would happen: the Doctor would encounter something so bizarre and unreal, he wasn't sure if he was dreaming. In those moments, he'd close his eyes and take the pulse of the universe. He would concentrate and feel himself standing on a planet, hurtling around a star, a part of a spinning galaxy screaming through space. And no matter where he was in the Grand Timeline, he'd feel the universe getting older. The subtle pressures on his skin that only he could feel as stars burned out of existence and new ones flared to life. The hairs prickling on the back of his neck as old lives ended and new ones took their place. He did this now. Something was wrong. He was on a planet flying around a star. But time was still. The universe wasn't getting older after all.
He was standing on a beach lapped by a warm, turquoise sea. He knew it well. He was on Gallifrey in the Cove of Dreams, one of the great achievements of the ancients of Gallifrey and one of the few places in the universe where only Time Lords had ever walked. Every grain of sand on the beach was telepathically linked to those standing on it. Time Lords could reshape the sand into whatever they imagined. Something was wrong, though. The beach was usually dotted with thousands: sculptors, engineers, scientists, using it to test their designs or build their prototypes. But he was alone. The beach was empty. The only thing he could see was a bumble bee buzzing lazily along the shoreline.
SLAP!
A ball of wet sand hit him in the back of the head.
He had been totally unprepared to act as a target, and so the impact knocked him flat. Sitting up while he spit sand, the Doctor rubbed the back of his head. He turned to look behind him, and saw only an old woman. She was most definitely of Gallifrey, but her clothes were not; they more more reminiscent of Earth fashions circa the twenty-fifth-or possibly the late twenty-fourth-century. Her wispy, white hair was pulled back into a chignon, and her mouth was scrunched up into a moue of impatience. He looked down. Yes, her toes were definitely tapping.
Well, that was just rude; what right did she have to be impatient? He was the one who had just gotten beaned in the ol' bean, after all. In fact . . .
"What'd you do that for?" he asked.
The woman gave no reply, merely stared, toe still tapping.
"Come on now, woman. I haven't got all bloody day. What reason could you possibly have had to hit me in the head? I was just standing here, minding me own business and enjoying the view."
Again, no reply was forthcoming. But something about the woman wiggled in the back of the Doctor's mind. He could not shake the feeling that he knew her somehow. Taking advantage of her silence, he walked a few paces closer and studied her face. Yes, something about the eyes, and maybe the curve of her mouth-he would have been able to make a better assessment if her lips weren't pursed like that.
"I have it on good authority that your face can freeze like that," he said. Ah, results. Not only had she stopped frowning, but she seemed to be fighting a laugh.
And there it was. Suddenly, his memories meshed with his vision of the present, and he knew her. "It can't be," he breathed, stretching a hand out only to pull it back before he could cup a cheek that was much more wrinkled and much less rosy than the last time he had seen it-oh, so many centuries ago. Part of him was afraid to make the contact, in case she turned out to be a mirage despite having hurled sand at him.
And then, she spoke, and his universe tilted ever so slightly back toward center.
"Hello, Grandfather."
"Susan." He paused, choosing words with the care of someone who knew he'd only get one chance at something important. "I told you that one day I'd ret-wait, a bumble bee?" He took off at a trot down the beach after the wayward insect, sonic already out for a scan. "Looks like a bumble bee," he mumbled to himself, waving his screwdriver at the increasingly irate bee. "Smells like a bumble bee." The insect buzzed in at him. "Feels like one as well." The doomed insect flew off of the Doctor's arm, obliviously swerving back down the beach. Then the Doctor remembered where he was and who he was with.
"What happened to-" he paused, thinking "-to David?"
Her face lit up. "You remembered his name!"
"Actually, I had no clue what his name was. But David was the most common name in England around the turn of the 25th century. I figured I might as well play the odds. Luckily for me, he was statistically common."
She smiled in spite of herself. "Remember how I always told you that there were times when complete honesty wasn't always the best choice?"
"No."
"Obviously. Fifty years of bliss. That was my life with David, Grandfather. Fifty years I lived as a human. But then David got sick and died and I lived on. At first people acknowledged my longevity, then they celebrated it. Then they feared it. Why did you leave me with him? With someone I barely knew on a planet I was never suited for?"
"Question: Can you explain when and how complete honesty isn't always the best choice, again?"
"Ok, we'll do that right after we talk about how you asking questions can reveal more information about how you're feeling than you want to."
He gave in. Of all the "Whys?" from all the companions he'd had over his two millennia, she was the first, and probably the most deserving of the answer. She was, after all, the only flesh-and-blood kin-that he knew of-left on this side of the universal divide. He slowly took her hand and walked her down the Cove of Dreams.
"Twentieth Century Earth's most revered religious prophet once gave a sermon called 'A Boy Named Sue'. It was the story of a parent who knew he couldn't be there for his son. So he named him Susan-or Sue-so that he'd either grow tough to survive in the world or die trying. You were born on Gallifrey. By all rights a Time Lord. We're different Susan. We feel the turn of the universe. We walk in eternity. I wanted you to see your place. A short elephant thinks he's tiny until he meets a flea."
"I was nearly burned as a witch, Grandfather. I never belonged there. You could have showed me without leaving me."
"I had grown old, Susan. I'm a great man, but I'm not always even sure if I'm a good one. Even at my greatest, I make mistakes. When I've been less I have laid waste to entire civilizations. I didn't know who I would become. Would I be selfish, evil, vain? I could have destroyed half the galaxy. I didn't want you around when I regenerated into a scoundrel."
The two walked for awhile in silence after that. She didn't make a joke about telling too much truth anymore, which was a bad sign. Finally, they came to the bee. It couldn't fly anymore and lay still for long periods before it got up and crawled along a few more inches.
"Why is this here?" The Doctor all but commanded an answer. The door into his soul that had been cracked open just an inch had closed again. Susan sighed.
"The disappearance of the bees-and this one's presence here-is just one miniscule symptom of a larger catastrophe, Grandfather."
"Catastrophe? That's a rather heavy word. Out of all the words you could have chosen, in all the millions of languages I taught you, you had to choose that one. What is it this time? Daleks in the bathtub? Cybermen on the roof? Oh, I know! Dinosaurs in space-no, wait, I think I've already done that one."
"Grandfather, be serious."
"Oh, we can't have that, now. Nothing good ever came of my being serious about anything. But go on then, tell us the problem."
"Look around you, Grandfather. Where are we?"
"I don't know about you, but I'm dreaming that I'm in the Cove of Dreams on Gallifrey," he answered matter-of-factly.
"Well, I really am in the Cove of Dreams," came the reply with a folding of his granddaughter's arms. "I called forth a simulacrum of you from the sand-that Scottish accent sounds very strange coming from your first body, by the way-and linked to your dreams telepathically in order to give you a message: Gallifrey is in peril."
"Gallifrey is in an alternate dimension, Susan."
"Yes, a pocket dimension attached to the original-a collapsing pocket dimension. The appearance of the bees on Gallifrey and their disappearance from Earth is a sign that the dimensions are leaking into each other, as is the crack you found on Trenzalore."
"Collapsing!" He held his hands to his head, grasping hair that he only just noticed was long and silvery instead of short and grey as he jumped back a couple of paces and then turned around for a full-on back-and-forth repeat.
"Yes, Grandfather. Your calculations for the transfer at the end of the war had one fatal flaw; there was no way to ensure that the alternate dimension would remain stable, but you did not account for any possible instability."
"And so, Gallifrey falls after all."
"No, you must go back."
"Back?"
"To the day you made the transfer. You must complete the calculations, and this time include a subroutine which ensures Gallifrey's return from the collapsing dimension. But you must do it quickly-there isn't much time left."