Title: Dispatches from Abroad (The Past is Another Country Mix)
Characters/Pairings: The Doctor, Susan Foreman (cameos from sundry companions, notably Jamie McCrimmon and Donna Noble)
Rating: PG
Summary: He leaves her letters in the libraries, carves her messages into the cliffs. He goes forward in all their beliefs.
Word Count: 1535
Notes: A remix of Foreign Correspondence by eponymous_rose for who_remix. Many thanks to livii for betaing and her ongoing work on my appalling grammar. Given Jamie's time and place of origin I've always presumed he was a native Gaelic speaker, whether I'm right or wrong the story presumes this too.
The first letter was never meant to be sent. He never intended to write any others to follow it. Perhaps he would never have started the whole ridiculous tradition if he'd never met Jamie.
Victoria has been trying to teach Jamie to read and getting nowhere. Succeeding only in annoying the young Scotsman, her words and phrases fail to correspond correctly with those that Jamie sees upon the page. He finds them in the Library shouting at each other across one of the tables, having moved beyond the matter at hand to the traditional human technique of insulting each other's ancestors. The copy of One Thousand and One Nights that they argue over is fresh from ninth century Persia thus they both see its words in their own native tongues rather than their common one. Part of him is fascinated how such different languages could evolve within such close proximity; the other part of him wishes to bump their heads together for giving free reign to their cultural prejudices. Instead he engineers a distraction in the form of landing them in the middle of an intergalactic crisis and the pair of them are soon bound back together - mainly in thinking he's an idiot, but the Doctor takes his victories where he finds them.
After Victoria has settled in the twentieth century, the Doctor uses reading to distract Jamie from his sadness at her departure. The both have their own vastly different mother tongues but English is their common language so it seems a sensible place to start. Looking for a dictionary one quiet afternoon, while the TARDIS refuels on rift in time and space, the Doctor stumbles upon a pile of Susan's old school books: pages and pages of neat notes on grammar and syntax that are perfect for their purposes. Once Jamie's mastered the basics, letter writing seems a good plan for practicing, so while Jamie battles to explain Daleks and Yeti to his Laird's young daughter Kirsty, the Doctor keeps him company by writing to Susan. Once he starts, however, he realises that there are so many things he wants to tell her about. He still thinks they both need their time apart, both of them need to grow up in their own ways, so visiting is out of the question just yet. A letter or two couldn't hurt though.
It becomes a sort of game, leaving her letters in strange places, postcards from distant planets posted in twenty-second century Amsterdam or Tokyo all out of order. It's not until one day in the late twenty-first century, on a picnic with Jamie and Zoë, teaching them the Gallifreyian alphabet by carving a message into a remote cliff-face that he realises how important this ritual has become to him. How important the pair of them are to him.
He gets into the habit during his third incarnation, when he is bound to one planet, one time zone. He buries them in time capsules, hides them in libraries he knows will survive until her time, later he entrusts them to the Brigadier and UNIT's archives. Mostly they are all rage and frustration; at Gallifrey and their people, at Earth and UNIT, at the stupidity of most of the rest of the universe. Sometimes though, they are an outlet for his rare moments of despair. In those he apologises for leaving her on Earth, promises that as soon as he's free of this infernal exile he'll come back for her. Eventually he learns to love the planet as she had, to understand what he'd known long before she'd realised herself why this was where she belonged.
His fourth and fifth selves write to her sporadically, filling their letters with daring adventures, amusing anecdotes and the tallest tales they can think up. There are Zygons, Daleks, escapes from Martrakshian jail cells and encounters with the Poortvornians of Sillivak III. Fond tales of travelling companions, old friends and older enemies.
His sixth and seventh selves never seem to find the time to write to her, though they have varying success repressing the guilt they feel in regard to this. His sixth self never rants about his trial at the hands of the Celestial Intervention Agency, neither does he confide his concerns about Evelyn's health nor tell amusing anecdotes about Frobisher's time as a PI. His seventh self keeps his own counsel on the truth about Merlin and his plans and pride for young Ace.
His eighth self proves to be an excellent correspondent, managing to keep up correspondences with friends on several different planets and many more time frames. Writes her long epistles, some full of cheer, others full of sorrow. He vents his frustration about the Faction Paradox and Romana's latest incarnation. Makes guilty confessions about Zagerus and Charley. Speaks proudly of the adventures of Fey – as she balances serving both Earth and Gallifrey.
One day he will materialise on a quiet street and find Susan waiting – older but still so very young – his letter in hand. Ready to become the ally he desperately needs, who understands as no one else can why Gallifrey must not fall to the Daleks.
During his ninth incarnation he doesn't write to her at all. For years, perhaps decades, he searches for her instead. Drifting across countless planets he binds the wounds of the Time War as best he can. Always searching. He writes her name in graffiti six feet tall, carves it into cliff faces and monuments with sonic screwdriver or chisel, scratches it into the walls of a thousand jail cells until his nails bleed and tear. Just her name, in the imperative, an unspoken scream against the silence that tells him that he is alone.
He is moved to write her a letter only once but he does not act on it, as though by not putting it down on paper it will become somehow less true. He would let the Reapers have this world if stealing Susan out of her proper time-line would save her. He forgives Rose her transgression and the TARDIS keeps at least a century between them and the late 22nd century.
He loses Jack, Reinette, Mickey, Rose and Donna – for the first time, though he doesn't know it yet - before his tenth self breaks and writes to her. The letter is barely coherent and coloured by his despair. He tells Susan that he knows she won't heed his warning but still begs her to. He's unable to deny her the chance to save herself. Martha is like salt in the wound following so soon afterwards; so much of what he needs and what he fears bound up together. Although he sends no other letters, in the quiet hours while Martha is asleep he writes many, many more. He finds it's a small way to continue pretending that some small part of his home still exists.
After Jenny, with the loss of River and Lee still raw in their hearts, he and Donna talk long into the night of children, those who no longer exist and those who never did. He speaks a little of those old days, renegades, rebels and refugees that they were; he and his granddaughter. It seems so long ago now; the person he was back then seems like a stranger and worse, so does Susan. So he lets Donna read the fragments of their strange correspondence that he's collected over the years. They laugh and cry and call each other names as they read them and Susan feels more real than she has since the day he woke up an unwilling survivor in a silent universe. With Donna asleep on a couch not three feet away he writes one last letter, this one without grief or anger, merely the hope that he might be a bit closer to fine.
The first thing that comes to mind is that their boots match, Dr Martens, battered but resilient like them both. Twenty-second century London seems less foreboding, less dangerous than his memory would have him believe. Their fingers are stained with ink and spray paint from weeks of graffiti and street art, creating a puzzle, a multi-coloured trail of bread-crumbs for a woman who may or may not still exist. The strange swirls of the words on the walls bind them together as surely as their shared genetics and double-heartbeats.
"So, tell me about this niece of mine," comments his companion, smile playful though her tone is serious.
Below them London is celebrating, the 25th anniversary of the defeat of the Daleks, a fixed point in history. Somewhere out in the crowd Susan and David may be looking up at the fireworks, celebrating their victory and their love. He's not quite ready to seek them out, but they'll still be here in the morning and the morning's as long away as it needs to be. For now there is a planet spinning below his boots, Jenny's head on his shoulder and a story in need of telling.
"Once upon a time, there was a child, who wasn't of this Earth, not even slightly…"