The Granddaughter and The Clone.
Reunion fraught with Tension.
Susan looked at the man in front of her. He was tall, with thick dark brown hair which was ridiculously spiky. He was more or less in his early forties with brown eyes and a handsome face.
She looked at him in shock, for her senses as a Time lady could see he was a time traveller and half Time lord ? She saw enough to deduce who the man was. He may not be him him but he was him.
The Doctor.
Her grandfather.
" Grandfather ? But, how is it…" Susan started but stumbled at the end of the sentence.
John knew exactly why she'd stumbled. His Time lord half was just visible to another of the Time lord race for Susan to get a crude idea of who he was.
But as he looked at her, soaking up her image he knew she'd regenerated, something which made him feel sad. Susan's first life had been lovely, with her dark hair, near Asiatic features and beautiful eyes.
Why had she regenerated ?
John couldn't bare the silence.
" Susan, is it really you ?"
" Yes."
That one word was enough. Running at each other they embraced, John hoped this was not some cruel dream, played on him by a particularly unpleasant entity, even though he technically was a clone he still had the memories and experiences of a real person.
Susan's thoughts were hardly different, she could see her grandfather had regenerated, but there was something about him, she wasn't likely to forget he only seemed half himself.
" Grandfather, how is it that you are half a Time Lord ?"
John winced, knowing this wasn't going to be pleasant. Breaking away from her, he walked away a small distance, head bowed.
" Long story…" For the next half hour, he poured everything out to Susan. How Davros had planned to destroy reality, how he'd been shot by a Dalek, the abortive regeneration, the meta crisis with Donna Noble. Being left here for destroying Daleks by the primary Doctor.
John had decided to omit the fact he and Susan were the only Time lords left, that the Time lords had gone to war with the Daleks and it was his fault.
There were many things he didn't tell her, but he wanted to give her the basics of who he was, what he was and why he was here.
Susan listened, knowing that what her grandfather was saying was the truth, even though she could tell that he was holding back from her.
The news the Doctor was in his tenth incarnation was horrifying. Time Lords had 13 lives, 12 regenerations before they died completely. The Doctor only had 3 lives left, whilst Susan herself was on her second life.
" Enough about me," he said looking at her curiously, taking in her new appearance. " What about you, why do you have a TARDIS ?"
" Long story, but I'll tell you later." She looked around the grounds, noting the manor. " Is that where you live ?"
" No, the Tylers live here. I - the Doctor - travelled with Rose for a while before a series of accidents made us live here. I live in the city, but the Tylers have invited me for dinner. Why don't you join me ?"
" I'd love to." Susan wasn't letting him out of her sight.
He might not be the Doctor, but he was all she had. Besides, she wanted to let him know what his choices had done to her and how she'd paid the price for them.
Tyler Manor.
Jackie Tyler looked at her new guest, thinking at first she was John's date, only to be confused as he told her that the beautiful girl was in fact his granddaughter.
Jackie knew only enough to know the Doctor had lost everything and everyone to the Daleks. She didn't know to much about the war, only the outcomes.
As they sat at the dinner table, Pete had to ask.
"How did you survive ?"
Susan looked at her duplicate grandfather curiously, wondering why the human had asked her that. " I don't understand the question."
John had hoped to tell Susan about the war and Gallifrey in private, so he glared angrily at Pete. Jackie caught the look and her insides chilled, realising Susan didn't know about the war.
Pete didn't notice the looks and kept on. " That the Time lords are dead."
It was like a bomb had gone off. Susan sat there, her eyes wide and mouth open and closing like a fish. Then she looked at John, her eyes burning with anger.
" Why didn't you tell me ?" She wasn't shouting, but the way John winced was like she had roared the question at him.
" Why did a monkey have to be the one to tell me ? How could you keep this to yourself, I'm not a child, I've been travelling through different realities for a long time, seeing things that would turn Rassilon white with fear. How could you ?"
John looked at her sadly, sent a glare at Pete for bringing this up in the first place. " I wanted to break it to you gently, but I'll give you a summary of the war now."
" The Time lords sent me - the Doctor I mean, to Skaro, at a point before the Daleks were created in the first place. The Time lords gave me 3 options Susan, 1. Avert their creation, 2, affect their genetic development so they would evolve in less aggressive creatures and 3, try and convince the Kaled government about the threat that was growing in their scientific elite, Kaled is basically Dalek in humanoid form."
" Kaled…." Susan rolled the word round her mouth, " That's an anagram of Dalek."
John nodded. " I exhausted 2 and 3, trying to find a peaceful solution. That left option 1. Genocide. I was prepared to wipe them out…."
John spent the next hour explaining the background of the Time war, how it started, the cold war it created between Time lords and Daleks - the destruction of Skaro, or so it was believed. The break out of the war, the Nightmare child and Davros, the Fall of Arcadia, the destruction of some of the more advanced races.
" But that wasn't the end of it. You didn't see that the Time lords changed, they became immoral and dangerous. They caused more deaths than the Daleks, but that wasn't all. They created the Ultimate Sanction - the End of Time."
John took a deep breath, the horror of that moment still enough to overcome him. " They planned to create a rupture, one that would tear the Vortex apart."
" That's insane."
" Yeah, wait till you hear the punch line. The Time lords got it in their heads that they'd ascend to become creatures of pure consciousness alone, free of time and cause and effect."
John looked at her. " I had a choice Susan, one that I would regret forever."
He looked guilty.
" What did you do ?"
She knew technically that it wasn't him, that it was the Doctor, but this was the best she could get.
" I used the moment, a paradox and wired it into the Eye of Harmony. The eye was destroyed, taking everything with it. Gallifrey, the Daleks, the other horrors were sealed behind a time lock. Isolated and quarantined from the rest of the universe."
Susan's eyes filled with tears over the destruction of her homeworld and the loss of the Time lords. But she was delighted by one thing.
Giving the Doctor hell for his decisions.
A/N: What do you think ?