Chapter 7 – The Wrong Instincts

Rose grabbed her belly and tried not to yell. Yelling would only alarm her already tense husband. Tense? No, she decided, looking at the way his hair was standing completely on end. Nervous wreck was a much better description.

Susan scanned her and nodded with satisfaction.

"You're dilating nicely, Rose, no complications at all so far," she informed her with a soothing voice and the Doctor jumped up and started pacing back and forth in the delivery room.

"I'm going to kill him," Rose muttered to Susan, who suppressed her grin so quickly that Rose wasn't even sure she'd seen it.

"Grandfather, it's going to be a little while still, could you go get Rose some water from the machine? She'll be thirsty." The Doctor bolted from the room and Rose chuckled before the next contraction hit her.

"He's not going to take long with that," Rose complained and Susan smiled.

"Not to worry, I've told Koschei to keep him busy for at least fifteen minutes," she assured her and Rose shot her a look of gratitude.

"You're a lifesaver, Susan, his life, by the way," she muttered.


The Doctor carried the tiny bundle out to meet the family, his face aglow and his hearts filled to over flowing.

"Everybody, I would like you to meet Jennifer Adelaide Tyler, Jenny, this is your family!" he announced and they all crowded around him, staring at the pink faced bundle in his arms, cooing and laughing, and congratulating him.

"She's beautiful!" Jackie assured him.

"Well, with a mother like Rose, she had to be pretty special, didn't she?" he agreed and grinned down at his baby girl. This time around he'd do a much better job, he promised himself.

"Hey, little sister!" his son chuckled and the Doctor smiled at him. Their relationship was still tentative, there was still so much pain between them, but maybe that could change to, in time.

"Hello, Auntie-in-law," Koschei teased and the Doctor rolled his eyes at his best friend.

"Well, that's what you get for cradle robing, you old goat!" he teased and the blond simply shrugged.

"Look who's talking," he pointed out and the Doctor sighed. He didn't have a leg to stand on in this area and he knew it. "At least Susan was of Gallifreyan legal age of consent." The Doctor winced and Donna elbowed Koschei in the ribs with a glare.

"So, when are you and Susan going to make me a great-grandfather?" he asked and Koschei's face suddenly went opaque, as he shrugged in a far too casual manner.

"We'll get around to it," he answered, but his very lack of an answer alerted the Doctor to the sudden emotional cow patty he'd just inadvertently stepped in.

"Let me hold that precious girl!" Donna insisted and he handed her over to his other best friend, who cuddled the baby with a huge smile on her face. "Oh, you're so lucky, she looks just like Rose," she teased.

"Oi! Watch your mouth, Earth-girl!" he laughed.

"Not likely, Martian boy!" she laughed back.

Looking around at his family and friends, the Doctor was suddenly struck by how full and happy his life was.

He hoped that his other self was happy in the other universe, but he had a feeling that it wasn't likely. It was as if the meta-crises had taken all the joy that should have been the original Doctor's and sucked it away from him. He was grateful for what he had, but a little guilty thinking about that other him.

Please, he prayed, don't let him be alone.


Koschei was curled around Susan, sleepily stroking her back. She turned in his arms, and he could feel her arousal spiking. He smiled, still only half awake and reached out instinctively, just as he had with Lucy, touching the pleasure centers of her brain and stimulating them.

Her shields slamming up and her sudden recoil from him woke him fully and a cold wash of horror slammed into him.

"Susan! I'm so sorry!" he cried and reached a hand towards her.

"Don't touch me!" she shouted and tumbled from the bed, curling into a fetal position on the floor. Fear, anger, and distress, radiated from her and he froze. Fear. Omega. She was afraid of him. Bile rose in his throat.

"Susan, please, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to, I didn't, I swear it was an accident." He was babbling, pleading, the misery nearly overwhelming him. The only one who'd never been afraid of him, the only one who'd seen who he really was and she was lying on the floor, shaking and terrified.

He dragged on his pants and ran from the room.

He truly was a monster and he had to get himself as far away from her as he could.


Rose saw Koschei pulling on his shoes, face pale and eyes wild, and opened her mouth to ask him what was wrong. He looked up at her and his expression was so bleak that she stepped back in surprise.

"Koschei?" He stood there, panting and haggard and then he ran past her, out of the flat, like demons were on his tail. She whipped out her cell phone.

"Hey Rose," Darginian answered on the first ring.

"Dar? Something's happened, get after Koschei before he does something stupid, will you? I'm going to go take care of Susan."

"I'm on it," was his brief answer and Rose went straight to the guest room, hoping she could figure out what to do when she got there. It wasn't as though there were any training manuals for dealing with two Time Lords, both of whom were fragile and damaged, and who had a telepathic link they couldn't break. Regular marriage was hard enough, she sighed, and this was just not fair on either of them.


Dar ran past Geneva without even slowing, his homing beacon on Koschei leading him straight and true.

He knew that he probably should have removed the beacon when he first woke up and Romana and James had brought him back to Gallifrey, but he'd been uncertain at first about whether Koschei was really still dangerous. After that, he'd been worried about other things. Today was a day he'd long seen coming, but he really wished he could have been wrong this time.

He jumped into one of the black sedans from the pool downstairs. And then turned in surprise to see Geneva getting in beside him.

"This isn't official Torchwood business," he told her.

"You're a Gallifreyan about to drive around on Earth and those terrorists are still out there, Dar, you will have back-up, or you will be going nowhere." Her words were clipped and her eyes were hard. He nodded and it occurred to him that she was spectacularly beautiful in that moment. Scraped back bun, round face, brown eyes, nothing special to look at, yet there was a magnificent soul behind those spectacles. He forced that sudden knowledge down deep and closed the lid on it.

She was human. He was a Time Lord. Romana might be willing to go through that, but he wasn't. Nothing could ever happen between Geneva and himself. End of statement.

"Koschei did something stupid. I need to take care of him, make sure he's okay," he explained and plugged his pad into the car's computer, letting the homing device synch with the car's GPS.

"What kind of stupid?" she asked, sounding calm and professional.

"Don't know yet, but there is a lot of history that hasn't really been dealt with and he's really just a huge bundle of triggers walking around trying to pretend he's fine." He took a breath, trying to figure out how to prepare Geneva for what they were dealing with, without betraying his friend's trust.

"He's an abuse victim?" she asked and he turned that thought around in his head before nodding.

"Back in our ancient history the smartest, most powerful of us was Rassilon. He was a genius, smarter than the Doctor and Koschei combined, did things later generations could barely comprehend, let alone replicate. The problem was that he became corrupt. All that brilliance made him arrogant and he started to think he could do anything he wanted to. He found the secret to perpetual life, to continued existence for all of eternity and it made him even worse to deal with. Our ancestors got together and bound him into a tomb. They couldn't kill him, but they could keep him locked up forever, in a place that no one was allowed to go, and keep him from doing any more harm to anyone," he explained and he could feel her eyes on him, listening to everything he said and everything he didn't say.

"Okay, crazy madman in the attic, got it," she told him and he laughed.

"Well, when things were starting to go bad between us and the Daleks, the High Council got scared. They got desperate and desperate people do stupid things. They went and fetched him out of his prison and made him Lord President. Gave him all the power he wanted." His voice was bitter and angry, but he didn't care. Those idiots had doomed them all.

"I take it that centuries of imprisonment hadn't done his sanity any good?" she commented and he shook his head.

"A million years of imprisonment, actually, and no he was bat shit insane to begin with, now he was a megalomaniac with the barest grasp on reality. He decided to go to war with the Daleks, unable to comprehend that Gallifrey wasn't the most powerful civilization in the universe any more. He got them all killed, but before that, he did other things." He took a deep breath. "He took Koschei when he was eight years old and went into his mind, ripped it apart, and rebuilt it. He made the perfect soldier, sociopathic, psychopathic, brilliant, devious, and with no limits or boundaries."

"Good God!" she gasped out and he gripped the steering wheel harder.

"He took a good kid, a genius, a child with so much potential, and twisted him into something dark and terrible. He was trapped inside of that monster for nine hundred years, Geneva. Two hundred year ago he met Susan and, from what I have been able to piece together, she was able to get into his mind and start repairing the damage that had been done to him. But Rassilon separated them and for two hundred years, they've been trying to get back to each other, trying to fix what was done to him." He took a breath and released it. "But they've still barely had time to make a start on it all, they've had maybe a year and a half and most of that time has been spent trying to rebuild Gallifrey."

"So, he's a danger to himself?" she asked and it was so perceptive a question that he wondered why he hadn't told her all this before.

"Yes. If he's done something that hurt Susan, he'll be suicidal. I have to get to him before he figures out a way to kill himself."

"Drive faster," Geneva commanded him and he floored it.


Rose stepped into the bedroom and saw Susan huddled on the floor, naked and shaking.

"Susan?" she whispered, but the girl still flinched and curled up even tighter. "It's Rose, it's me, Tiza Rose, okay?" she was speaking in Gallifreyan she realized, and stepped aside to let Malla move forward a bit in her mind. "Are you harmed?"

"He…it was… he didn't mean to…" she murmured and Rose felt her hearts breaking. Whatever it was had triggered her into a near catatonic state, but she was still defending him, still trying to protect him even so.

"I'm certain that he meant no ill to you," Malla soothed in the gentle liquid syllables of Susan's childhood. "Are you harmed?"

"He never meant to, he forgot himself. He used Ra-hari Aliisema without premission," she whispered and Malla somehow shunted the meaning of the words away from Rose's mind. Incandescent rage was in the Time Lady's heart, but she still spoke to Susan with gentle mildness.

"An accident, unintentional, I know he would not ever harm you from malice," she assured Susan. Rose was wondering what had happened, but also not sure that she wanted to know. Malla wasn't the sort to not answer a question and yet, just then, Rose knew that no answer would be forthcoming.

"Speak to your husband about it, Rose, he'll be able to explain it in ways that can make you understand. Just know that it was a terrible violation of trust, especially to one such as Susanatrevalar who has held her mind against attack for so long," spoke Malla's voice in her mind, and she could see the older woman's sorrow and grief for all that Susan had suffered.

"It wasn't that so much, Malla, really, it wasn't," Susan answered, slowly uncurling from her ball and looking up at Rose with sad eyes. How she knew that it was Malla speaking to her, Rose wasn't sure, but there was something about her eyes, a gleaming golden-tinged look to them that was alarming Malla. "I have no defense against him, but he has none against me, either. When he… did that… my first instinct was to burn him out," the last few words were barely audible and Rose didn't quite grasp the meaning, Malla however did and was suddenly deeply afraid.

"But you did not, you held yourself back!" Malla reminded her, even as her own mind was building defenses around herself and Rose.

"He was upset when he left, but he was fine," Rose interrupted.

"He left?" Susan was scrambling up, looking panicked.

"It's okay, I sent Dar after him, he won't let him do anything stupid," Rose assured her. "Dar's known him for a century, he knows what to do." He promised me that he did anyway; she temporized in her own mind.

"I'm scared." Susan sounded so broken that Rose wanted to reach out and hold the girl, but Malla locked her muscles.

"Don't touch her! Physical contact heightens telepathic exchange, touch her now and she will feel violated!" Malla warned her silently and then released her body back to her control.

"Thank heaven I have you here to keep me from making a muck of things, Malla," she thanked the other and there was a feeling of warmth and affection from her.

"You are an amazing woman, Rose Tyler; your first instinct is always one of compassion and kindness. I am honored to be able to guide you in these small ways."

Rose felt humbled by the words and by the flood of admiration and kindness.

"What can I do, Susan?" she asked and the girl looked up at her, those sad ancient eyes so filled with regret, that it hurt her hearts to see it.

"I don't know yet," she admitted. "I just don't want to hurt him and I don't think I can stand being too near him right now. He was the Master for nine hundred years. Most of his instincts are still the Master's, not Koschei's. It's going to take time for him to get his head straight."

"Are you angry at him?" she asked not sure how to ask what she really wanted to know.

"No, I still love him," Susan answered the real question with a small sad smile. "I forgive him, I do. But, I have my own instincts and until I can get them under control, I'm not safe for him to be around."

"You should go to the Zero Room and meditate, child," Malla suggested and Susan nodded jerkily in response.

Susan dragged on her clothes and headed into her TARDIS, moving slowly and with her hands out, like a blind woman in an unfamiliar room.

"Is there anything else we can do?" Rose asked Malla.

"Not at this time, you need to go feed Jenny and then you need to have a long talk with your husband. He may have better advice, he's known Susan best and longest," was the answer she received and Rose nodded and headed towards her bedroom, where her infant daughter and her husband were both still sleeping.

Malla was right, she needed expert advice and next to Koschei, the Doctor was the one most knowledgeable on the subject.