You're not the only one to have killed your own grandchild Jack! I killed mine as well!
The words had been spat at him in anger. Jack didn't even think that he had known that he had said it until it was out of his mouth. He had fled and Jack had followed him. But The Doctor had always been good at hiding. Now was no different. He had a massive ship he could hide from Jack in and Jack could get lost in it quite easily no matter how long he had spent on her or how much she liked him.
He stroked the wall he was currently leaning on. 'Any chance you could help me find him?' he questioned the TARDIS quietly.
The TARDIS hummed beneath his fingers which Jack took as a yes. He set off into the long corridors, searching each door individually. He found many rooms which he thought belonged to other companions.
He ran into the Doctor literally. The Doctor had headed out of one door and Jack, counting the dorrs hadn't noticed him until he knocked into him.
The doctor stared at him for a moment before gesturing towards the door he had just left. 'Go in,' he said, practically whispering.
Jack followed his command and found himself on what appeared to be a planet. He saw a beautiful burnt orange sky with two glittering suns, blood red grass and silver trees. He was rendered speechless by the beauty of it all and didn't notice when the Doctor stood next to him.
'This is Gallifrey' The Doctor said. 'The home planet of the Time Lords'
'Wow.' Jack whispered. 'It's incredible'
'It's all gone now, just rocks and dust, Jack, just like Torchwood Three.' The Doctor told him.
Jack twisted his head sideways to look at him. 'What happened? To Gallifrey, I mean, I now what happened to Torchwood Three'
'Come and sit down, it's a story which I would rather not tell, and at the end when you punch me, I'll already be on the floor instead of standing.' The Doctor motioned again
'I won't punch you' Jack grinned
'You'll want to then.' The Doctor grimaced
'When I was eight years old, I was taken to the Untempered Schism, I looked into it, and I saw all of time and space, and I ran away, I can't remember if it was fear or something else, but I ran, ran for my life. And that was what I was doing when I met Koshei, my best friend. When he looked into the Schism, he went mad, although nobody knew it at the time.' The Doctor turned to look at Jack. 'Can you guess who it is?'
'Umm, I've only met two Time Lords. So if it's not you, then it has to be The Master.' Jack deduced. 'Hang on, you were best friends with that thing? Seriously, how did you survive?
'He was nice to me, unlike the rest of the academy.' The Doctor mused. 'Time Lords have an ability from their parents, so if a Gallifreyian has a Gallifreyian mother and a Time Lord father, then the child would more likely have the Time Lord father's ability. My mother's ability was pryokinesis, and my father's Hydrokinesis or Cryokinesis. In other words, my mother could control fire and my father all sorts of water.' He chuckled bitterly. 'I had to be different, didn't I? It's always me, and that time it wasn't even my fault. My mother fell in love with a human. And she had me. So impossible, it shouldn't even have happened, especially with Pythia's curse. But it did. And everyone hated me for it. And I got both of their abilities.'
Jack started. 'You have both their abilities? Why don't you use them?'
The Doctor sighed and lay back on the grass. 'When I was five strange men came to the door. They were looking for me because my mother had kept my existence secret and they wanted me. She screamed out for me to use the fire, because they had her and she couldn't use it without her hands. And I just felt this anger, they had invaded our home and hurt my mom, and there was something I could do to help her, and there was fire all around us. And everybody was screaming, and there was smoke and I didn't know what to do. I didn't have control over water very well, so it was either drowning or being burned to death.' A single tear rolled down his face. 'I was the only one to get out of that house alive.'
'God! We're all just so crapped up in this life.' Jack murmured.
'It wasn't the first time I killed somebody.' The Doctor said emotionlessly. 'I was part of the Deca, it was a group in the Time Academy, and Koshei and I were bullied, mercilessly and viciously, and one day, the bully followed us into the woods. He held Koshei's head under the water and he couldn't breathe-'
'You have a binary vascular system, he didn't have to breath.' Jack interrupted.
'Time Lords only grow their second heart on their first regeneration. So he was being held under the water, and I didn't know what I was doing, and I just bashed his head in with a rock. I didn't get in trouble though. I thought that I would, but Koshei took the blame and wouldn't let me tell them otherwise. He blocked it in my mind.' At Jack's confused look, he started to explain. 'He went into my mind with his telepathy and locked the memory into a little box in the corner of my mind and none of the other Time Lords could find the memory, so neither of us got into trouble and it was assumed he had run away. Anybody who actually knew us, like Drax and Ushas, said that just like Prydonians, we shouldn't be trusted. The Prydonians have been said to be cunning and that one could not take their eyes off them for a second.' He laughed. 'After the Academy, I got married. Yeah, I know, me, married. Sounds stupid but still. So it turned out that I'm a reincarnation of one of the most powerful Time Lords ever. His name was Omega, and he reincarnated into The Other who reincarnated into me. And I've been married to Patience though out all of them. Well, we had three sons and two daughters. They were all inspired, none of them liked me. They said I was too outlandish and too human to fit into Time Lord culture. Well, they were right. So, my youngest daughter, she got married to this really high up politician. She had two children. And the youngest of them, she was like me, she ran from the Schism, just like me.'
He laughed again, a full out proper laugh. 'When I was 290 something, I stole this TARDIS. I was about to walk into any TARDIS when Susan, my granddaughter, walked up behind me and asked 'Where are we going, Grandfather? And for that minute, in which i took her with me, I didn't think of the consequences. I hated that stuffy life and so did she. It was only once we'd left and officially been labelled as Renegades that I think of the consequences. She was only 100, halfway through her schooling. We travelled to a few different worlds before she brought the subject of her schooling to me. I was . . . hard to talk to back then, a young Time Lord trying to be wise and older, and she was the only one who could talk to me properly. She wanted to learn about humans, and their lifes and what her great grandfather had been like. I couldn't deny her that, so I landed the TARDIS in I.M. Foreman's Junkyard, that's where the TARDIS's form stuck as a Police Box. And she went to school, as Susan Foreman. In 1963. God, that was a boring year, anyway, two of her teachers, Ian and Barbara, followed her home and ventured into the TARDIS. And they were my first companions, however unwilling they might have been.'
Jack eyed him. 'You ... kidnapped them? Because they followed your granddaughter home?
'No, because they have walked into the TARDIS, and in 1963, they weren't even on the decimal system of currency!' What would they have told people about the TARDIS? What if the other Time Lords had heard about it. They killed me once for breaking the non interference laws, they would have stripped my regenerations for letting the secrets of Time go!' The Doctor argued.
'And what happened next?' Jack prompted
The Doctor glared at him slightly before speaking again. 'Well, eventually we encountered the Daleks, who tried to kill us, some other creatures. My memories of them days are rather fuzzy. But soon enough, Susan fell in love with a Dalek resistance fighter named David Campbell in the 22nd century. So I locked her out of the TARDIS and said some speech about her being happy in her life or whatnot.'
It took Jack a few minutes to understand the last line of what the Doctor had said, because he'd said it really fast. 'You left her ... in the 22nd century ... because you wanted her to be happy!'
'Well, she would never have left me voluntarily, because she thought I was dependant on her!' he shouted and carried on quietly. 'And there's more to the story, you know'
'Well, what can be worse than stranding her in the 22nd century?' Jack said sarcastically.
'The Time War. She was called back to Gallifrey, just like I was.' The Doctor stated. 'On the last few days of the Time War, I was stuck in a laboratory with Susan, Ushas, Koshei and Romana. Susan was the only one that wasn't a scientist and she sacrificed herself to give us more time to perfect the bomb needed to destroy both the Time Lords and the Daleks.' He smiled again sadly 'It worked though, her sacrifice and her sons was the only reason we succeeded in our mission. If not Rassilon would have gotten us. Alex, Susan's only child, also sacrificed himself so that we would have more time. We didn't even have a body, because the Presidents have this hand shield thing, it's like a glove, and using that, they can disintegrate anything. That was one of the few reasons that Susan wouldn't have lived anyway. The loss of her husband and only child knocked her over the edge and she went screaming and raging. I can still hear it in my head, because all Time Lord's are telepathic, and Susan was always stronger than me and it overwhelmed my mind blocks.
'So, I killed my granddaughter just as you killed your grandson. It's a funny world out here isn't it Jack!' The Doctor finished.
'Ok, you were right, I really do want to punch you on her behalf.' He stated. 'But I'm not going to, because in the end it sounds like she wanted to die and she were being humane by helping her.'
'I only told you to help you! If you walk that way, you can see where I grew up after my mother died, in the House Of Lungbarrow.' The Doctor pointed to the left.
'Really! I get to see where you grew up? Seriously, you're going to show me!' Jack exclaimed sarcastically.
'I don't have to take you, I can read to you in Gallifreyian if you prefer.' The Doctor joked as they set off towards the silvery red mountain in the distance.
'Is this simulation correct?' Jack asked finally. 'Because orange sky and red grass and silver trees, seriously, come on!'