Turlough remembered.
Sometimes it wasn't particularly clear, but his past occasionally intruded on his sleeping mind like a small child would sneak into its parent's room to find hidden gifts. On those nights, whether it was in the bleak bedroom that his exile on Earth provided or the pristine cool of the TARDIS, he would sit upright in bed. He would feel the air, either through the open window or recycled, freeze his sweat covered skin. He would take a deep breath, forcing air into his fear contracted lungs, and will his furiously beating heart to calm. Although the images would fade quickly in his alert awake mind, the feelings of fear, desolation, desperation and anger would remain.
At least when he was attending Brendon, he could roll over and let the boredom that invaded his waking hours seep into his mind and numb what tided over from the dream. He would feel relief in that nothing was expected of him, not really, not there on Earth. The mornings would bring a tediously worn schedule that the tediously worn teachers would inflict on him and he would find himself drifting away into his thoughts. He already knew more than the professors at his school so what was the point in trying to succeed in their small world? He wanted to go home.
But that had all changed when he joined the Doctor.
On the TARDIS, he would wake, caked in sweat and in some cases, tears. He would be unable to sleep: the droning hum against he felt in his head, in his body would make it impossible. The hum reminded him that he was in technology' he was a part of it. And where the hum was, inevitably, so was the Doctor. There was no boredom where the Time Lord was concerned. And if it didn't exist, there was no expectation of it numbing his mind either.
There were no schedules, no tediously worn anything (well, if he didn't remind himself that the TARDIS itself was worn); the hours of brain wasting were gone and in their place was a simply complex man who wanted to be his friend, and all of time and space to explore. Here, while watching the Doctor bustle about the console or while engaging him in conversation in the study, the breakfast room, the corridors, or while interfering in the Universe, he found he couldn't forget.
He had left home young, and green; he had been an inexperienced barely-old-enough ensign in his father's corp. He had fought from the time he was old enough to understand what the different kinds of uniforms and colors stood for and was able to manage a gun. He fought because he had been told to. He hadn't understood. Intolerance had been bred into him. He fought for a cause' without truly grasping what that cause' was. He did so for his family, for his father and mother.
And then they had been caught, branded, separated and exiled.
When he had arrived on Earth, he was old enough to understand one thing in his angered mind. Causes were causes; most driven by politics and economics and fear. Morals had no place in the world of causes. Morals were too easily changed to suit purpose. But his bleeding heart knew only one cause that he would follow from there on in: himself, Vislor Turlough.
He had lived his life that way, tossing and turning in his fitful, dreadful sleep for years while on Earth. But when he joined the Doctor, he saw, he understood something completely different. There were greater causes in the Universe. There were causes not driven by politics and fear and economics, but by an unshakable galactic moral code where there was right and wrong, by friendship, and above all by compassion. He came to understand his father and his father's cause and saw it not as the reason they were separated and doomed separately, but as what was morally right.
He watched the Doctor. He learned. He saw that causes could be personally damaging. He too had felt the anger and helplessness as Tegan had run away from them, but the Doctor more so. After all, it had been his cause that drove her away. He saw that even in the face of something personally hurtful, the Doctor still drove on, completely his cause, his work, his life. Causes were a personal drive, a personal commitment one made to one's self. Although you could often slip out of those things expected of you by someone else, you could never and would never be able to slip out of things expected by yourself.
Turlough wanted to go home. But now he wanted to go home because he understood what had sent him away. He had seen it in the Doctor's eyes that morning as the Time Lord leaned over the console and addressed him. Turlough had been under the intense blue-ice stare of his friend and had felt like squirming and yet submitting at the same time. There was something about the Doctor that had always made him want to plead, cry, beg or express joy or pain. The man looked through him and awakened and communed with a part of him that Turlough had long thought dead.
"It's time, you know."
That was all the Doctor had said. He had continued to stare at Turlough until he had turned his eyes to stare elsewhere, anywhere, but at the Time Lord. Ambiguous to the point of pain, but the comment was understood.
"I know."
"It takes a great deal of personal strength, you know, Turlough," the Doctor had continued. "To return to a place that you little understand, to face a past you don't want and accept it as part of yourself. But remember one thing: you do this on your own terms not anyone else's."
He had been startled and had squinted at his friend, not quite understanding how the Time Lord knew so much about him. But there were no further comments, no further exclamations of insight, no further soul searching to do. He knew it was time. He had to go home. He remembered and he accepted, finally.