I did say soon. Next chapter, here she is! Lol, I'm so sorry it's so grim right now, I swear I'll throw in some fluff at some point when it makes sense! Please enjoy and give it a review if you liked it! :)
A half a mile south and thirty miles above at ground level, the Doctor felt a flare of rage swell in his mind as the icy wind of winter tore at his frame.
"Susan," he muttered to himself without looking up.
"What's that?"
"Susan, I… felt her. In my mind. You couldn't understand. Human perceptions of the mind, and all..." He trailed off, his brow furrowing as he attempted to hone in on the approximate location of the flare. His head throbbed with the renewed use of a sense he had stifled for so very long.
"What, because I'm stupid?"
The Doctor stopped in his tracks, turning around with fire in his eyes as his mind broke concentration on the location of Susan's. Silence flooded his senses again, and his breath caught in his throat as he lashed out.
"Compared to me, a bit, yes!" The other man recoiled slightly, clenching his jaw as the Doctor spoke with the malice of a wounded animal. "Look, I'm trying to find my granddaughter in the ruins of London, and if I have to stop to have a chat to explain the intricacies of telepathic communication, she might well end up dead. So I suggest you shut up and let me find her before I lose her again."
The Time Lord stalked away, fuming. David stood for a moment, speechless, before he ran after the other man.
"Well, maybe I am stupid, compared to you," David gritted out as he trailed the Doctor, who did not turn around at his grandson-in-law's words. "Maybe I can't understand some bloody Time Lord trick, but I do know my wife. And I know she ain't stupid. She wouldn't just run out in the open without a plan. She'd go somewhere she felt safe. Not that you'd know where that is. You left her here and never came back."
The Doctor stopped walking again, stopping near a red telephone booth. His hand clenched into a tight fist, every muscle in his body tense with irritation at the human.
"And I'm assuming you do know," he bit back frostily. David sucked in a shaky breath, already regretting his conflict with the Time Lord.
"There's this place, that she worked at," he said slowly. "They deal with alien encounters. Really old organization. Goes back to Queen Victoria, I've heard."
The Doctor nearly groaned. If UNIT was still kicking, they were the last thing he needed to deal with. For all he knew, the ghost of Alistair Gordon-Lethbridge Stewart was waiting to judge him through every regeneration. More realistically rather, he thought after a moment, they would fawn over him and salute and treat him like a great commander. Which was a spectacle he didn't think he could handle. Not today. Not for a very long time.
"Lovely," he muttered. "Well, let's head over to UNIT HQ, then. Where is it, nowadays?"
David blinked in confusion. "...UNIT? It was dissolved a hundred years ago, funding thing. We learned that in the history books. No, I'm talking about Torchwood. I've never been able to find it. Very secretive, that bunch."
The Doctor paused, inhaling slowly. So, the old quasi-military force had finally kicked the bucket. Even they had lay down their arms, voluntarily or not.
Well, about time, his Third self echoed in his ears. And surely quite time for you, too.
The Time Lord forced those echoes away. Not the Time nor the place. If there would ever be any Time or any place he would want to face what his past selves would think of him now.
Torchwood. He focused his mind on that next bit of information. The word felt familiar, but he couldn't place why. Something… uniquely temporal. Like he hadn't yet encountered it, but he would encounter it, and he would encounter it deeply. Painfully.
David opened his mouth to snap the Doctor out of his reverie, when boots began crunching in the snow behind them. The human sucked in a sharp breath. The Doctor felt his hair stand on end.
"What. Is. Your. Purpose."
The eerie tone came from something humanoid, but it was terrifyingly flat; it was something strikingly dead and nonhuman. The two men turned around to see two people in human form, a woman and a man. Their clothes were a patchwork of grey, blue, and black military uniforms that appeared to have been looted from several different places, particularly indicative due to the bloodstains spattering the shirt of the man and the tattered right leg of the pants of the woman. The Doctor wondered acidly how many tears had been shed over those clothes.
"We're just passing through. Picking up groceries from sector three."
"Present. Your. Papers."
David dug his hands in his pockets, feeling the emptiness there as though the absence of his documents might change. His face morphed through regret, terror, and grief in a matter of seconds, for he knew what would happen next. The Doctor reached into his coat pocket and presented the psychic paper, barely stopping his hands from trembling.
"See?" His voice was gruff and his throat was dry. "We have clearance to pass."
"These. Are. Not. Your. Papers." Their voice warped together robotically, and the Doctor felt his spine stiffen. Their minds were too stiff; they were not alive enough to register the psychic paper. "You. Are. Sentenced. To. Death. For. Insubordination."
Their right hands extended out, and the flesh peeled and folded back as their guns extended. A circle of skin on their forehead all but melted away as the eyestalk extended, and the Doctor felt as though his might be sick. He could smell the memory of flesh burning from the rays of Dalek guns. Their murderous cries echoed in his ears, just as the two Roboheads stated in that same flat, dead tone:
"Ex. Ter. Min. Ate."
The Doctor barely felt David shove him to the ground, his knees hitting the frosty earth with a force. His brain only registered the two blue gun rays scrape above their heads. The heat made him retch as they fired again, and again, missed by hairs.
The ground shuddered next to them and two gunshots rang out, and the Doctor (but no, that was not him, he, who did not deserve that fateful title that died on Karn) was frozen in place as the world transformed around him into a hot, bitter Gallifrey, a Gallifrey on fire, a Gallifrey of death and destruction and doomsday-
-and then, a presence in his mind. A good warmth. The fire fled to the recesses of his mind, and there was emptiness and he almost screamed, and there was a numbness and a quiet.
"Come on. We need to get inside. They'll be sending more soon."
He opened his eyes to see his granddaughter, her eyes bluer than ever against the hell of his mind.