A/N: I'm not going to lie, this is geeky. It was inspired by the novel Grendel by John Gardner (which was based off of the epic poem Beowulf). Specifically, it was inspired by interactions between Grendel and Grendel's Mother in the second chapter of said book. Hence the title. Grendel's Mother, as a whole, in entirely unlike the Doctor, but they have their similarities and I had to write about it. Also inspired by the book is Toby's intelligence in this - Grendel has an extremely intelligent voice despite being an oafish monster. As such, Toby has an extremely intelligent voice despite being in an asylum for five years (in my mind, he was admitted at age 12, and in the story he is 17/18ish). Characters aren't mine, Sondheim, Christopher Bond, Hugh Wheeler, John Doyle, and the actors are amazing, etc., etc.
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I hardly remember anything outside of these walls. There is a story that is familiar, I know it and it is part of my body, but I do not remember. I just tell, like I have for years. If the story was once a memory, and if the memory was once a reality, it faded like the light from the hall when my cell door closes. I tell a story I do not remember.
She is tired. She comes in and does not look at me. She has not looked at me for years, and I have not talked to her for years. She used to look at me, and I used to talk to her, a long time ago. I would babble about things I might have remembered, and I would bury myself in her lap and feel her body tense. She would sneak looks at me when she thought I couldn't see. I always saw.
But that was years ago, and those moments are starting to fade from memory to knowledge. Now, we are blind and deaf.
She makes me tell the story again. She takes off the straightjacket, and it's cold in the room. I speak, and I hear the words, but I'm still blind and I cannot see what I am doing. Something is wrong, I know. I sense there's a difference between who I am and who the child in the story is, and maybe there didn't used to be. Something has always been wrong, but I do not know what it is and I do not know who I am when I tell the story. I only know that she leaves and she's walking slower and seems shorter. She used to look at me with something, some look, and then hide her face and walk out quickly. Now, there is nothing to hide, nothing but a slow fade, again.
She has gagged me, but she didn't need to. I don't feel the need to litter the silence with unwanted noise. She gagged me and restrained me and left, and I wonder why the bonds are necessary. Other patients that are more violent than I am are allowed to exist without them. I hear them screaming and pounding on the floors. I continue to sit calmly and they see me as a threat.
Not them. Her.
I'm sitting here bound and there are tears on my face that I don't remember crying, and she's gone. I'm alone with the story I know and one thing I remember. Back when this place was alien and the story seemed real, I woke up in her arms. The straightjacket was off, and she was cradling me, humming a tune that escaped her throat awkwardly. I burrowed closer into her breasts, and I felt her hold me tighter. I could smell the warmth of her skin, and her breath fluttering its way into the spiral of my ear. I smiled and turned my head to look at her. Her eyes were focused someplace far away and her lips curled upwards. I had never seen her smile before. I told her I loved her, and she jerked back, realizing I was awake and she looked at me. Her eyes were caught in an uncomfortable junction of fear, sorrow, and self-disgust. The smile was gone, the moment like it had never happened, and I was roughly forced back into the straightjacket, and was left lying haphazardly on the floor. I saw her pour pills from a bottle. My pills, but she didn't give them to me. Too many, and I didn't see her again for weeks.
Since that day, she has not looked at me.