Chapter 2 – Bleak Homecoming
Susan was walking through the Gardens of Anfellian 6, admiring the medicinal flora that the Anfells used in their concoctions. She'd spent six months here, studying the pharmacology of this world, while Grandfather responded to a summons from Gallifrey.
She was worried about him, if she was being honest with herself. There were rumblings in the various ports of call they'd visited of late, of great armies moving in the vast depths of space, of political unrest, and of sudden moments of temporal instability.
"Dr. Campbell?" one of the antlered Anfells called out to her, his hide mottled with gold and black, his brown eyes, with the minus sign pupil in them, focused on her, waving one dexterous, three fingered hand.
"Scholar Dashes Over Rivers," she responded and walked towards him. "What can I do for you?" the upright, deer-like native, with his curious leg joints that seemed to go in all directions, stepped forwards and bowed.
"The manuscript that you requested has been found in the library, you may view it now," he told her in the whistling melodious tones of his race. She bowed in return and followed after him, out of the garden and into the bustling streets of Haregefete, the capital city.
They chatted amiably as they walked, discussing the latest medical breakthroughs as well as his own specialty, which was Data Conservation.
She heard the sounds of a TARDIS materializing and turned in surprise. Grandfather had only left a few days ago, surely he wouldn't be back so soon?
"Doctor?" the Scholar asked her as she looked around her.
"I thought I heard Grandfather returning," she answered him and he nodded.
There were shouts of dismay and alarm suddenly and Susan's hearts sped up. She spotted the four men in their red and white uniforms and took to her heels. She had barely gotten even five steps though, when she ran straight into a mountain of a man. She looked up startled into narrowed brown eyes in a rugged face, handsome, but coldly impersonal.
"Lady Susanatrevalar, of the Prydonian Chapter, I am Captain Darginian of the Celestial Intervention Agency," he told her, his hands like steel cuffs clamped on her arms.
"What do you want from me?" she asked, trying in vain to pull herself free.
"The Tower has long awaited you, my Lady," he informed her and she froze in terror, looking up into his eyes with a desperate fear.
"Please, no," she begged and his eyes seemed to soften a bit.
"I am sorry my Lady, but my orders are very clear," he told her and she felt the hypo spray being pressed into her neck with a feeling of despair.
"Lots of soldiers have used that excuse through the ages," she told him, her voice scathing. "It never meant anything when they said it either." She saw the look in his eyes, the sudden regret, and it followed her into darkness.
Darginian looked down at the limp girl in his arms. She was young, less than half his age, little more than a schoolgirl, and the Tower would turn her into a drooling pile of wreckage. She was of the Lady Professor's line, she deserved better than that.
"Captain?" the Castellan's Guards caught up with him and saluted. "You caught her!"
"Of course I did," he replied with disdain. He was the CIA's top Agent, grabbing a little girl off of a street was nothing to him. He'd once broken into a Dalek Command Post and killed their top leadership. The red and white clad guards drew back from him, his cold eyes and sharp tone unnerved them, which was exactly what he'd intended.
"Do you need help with her?" asked another of the guards and he raised a contemptuous eyebrow. He leaned down and hoisted the slender body up in his arms with no effort. She was a tiny little thing, hardly any effort to carry at all.
"No," he replied and they saluted and fled from him, their terror of him disquieting. He used to ignore the dread he inspired. It wasn't that he enjoyed it, he enjoyed nothing. He'd felt nothing for a very long time. It's why he was so good at interrogations. He could go into someone else's mind, rip out what was needed, and feel no unseemly pangs of conscience.
Then he'd gone into the wrong mind and felt the first pity he'd experienced in a very long time. Looking down at Susanatrevalar he felt a moment of compassion. She was a pretty child with a mop of curly black hair. Her eyes had been large, dark, and filled with passionate intelligence. He wondered how much of her fire and spirit would be left when the Tower was done with her.
He ruthlessly suppressed the thought. He was the CIA's top agent. He didn't feel pity for those who defied the government. He retreated into the icy cold of his training and carried the girl to the waiting TARDIS. He'd hand her over just as he was supposed to. He'd do his job and that was it.
"Lots of soldiers have used that excuse through the ages. It never meant anything when they said it either."
Her words followed him though, every step of the way.
The Doctor strolled back to his quarters, still chuckling from the conversation he'd had with Romana. She was still the chipper, spunky, sarcastic woman he'd known before and he'd enjoyed every minute of their conversation.
He walked into the rooms he'd had since he was a child and looked out the windows at the mountain sloping away from him, silver white snow, dotted with bits of shrub and stunted trees, and down to the red grass plain sweeping away into the distance.
The citadel glinted like a jewel to the far right and he resolutely turned away from the sight of it. The high Tower that rose like an accusing finger from its heart made him uneasy.
"Well Theta," his brother's voice was an unwelcome intrusion. The rooms were supposed to be off limits without invitations, but since when had his obnoxious elder sibling ever respected his privacy? "I see you've dragged yourself home like a whipped dog," he gloated.
"I was summoned, actually. Otherwise I'd be millions of miles away from here right now," he retorted his voice dripping his disdain.
"Oh, of course, you'd be out there shielding your precious little Susan from the big bad Tower." The bitter voice grated on the Doctor's ears and he ground his teeth in an attempt to keep his cool. "Pity that it's far too late." He spun and stared at his brother in shock.
"What are you talking about?"
"They took her on Anfellian 6, little brother. She's gone where she was supposed to be all along. Your efforts were in vain, Theta," he gloated and the Doctor froze inside, horror building inside of him. Without a word he dashed away, pushing past his brother without a word. He ran for the Trans Mat like his life depended on it.
He had to get to Susan.
Susan woke and found herself lying on a cold hard surface, alone, and with waves of nausea still running through her from the sedative. She felt sick, her body ached, and a cold fear was coiling in her gut.
She raised a hand to her cool scalp and found that her hair, once so curly and thick, like loops of black satin, was shaved close against her head. Looking down she saw the simple white robe of a Visionary Acolyte hanging from her thin shoulders. She was barefoot, naked beneath the thin sleeveless robe, and stripped of everything that had belonged to her. She shivered from both the cold of her prison and from the sense of being exposed and vulnerable.
The room was a plain six-sided cell, no doors or windows that she could see. The walls were a matte gray, the ceiling low, giving a feeling of claustrophobia. She thanked the stars that she'd left her wedding ring in the bedside drawer of her hotel room that morning. It would be there for her grandfather to find; he would keep it safe for her.
She sat up. Five hours had passed, her time sense told her. Her pulse was thudding in her ears and she fought the fear back down. She felt the planet spinning beneath her, calculated the axial tilt with a sick feeling. She was back on Gallifrey, the homeworld that she barely recalled.
She'd never been particularly brave, not like Grandfather, Ian, Barbara, or David had been. She'd been the mouse to their lions, hiding behind them all and relying on their strength. There was no one to hide behind now though.
"Oh Grandfather, where are you?" she whispered. "What will you think when you find me gone? Will you ever even know what happened to me?"
Was she going to die here?
If she was, that would be okay, she decided. It was far better to die than to be turned into a creature like Adyra. Her great uncle had taken her to see his youngest daughter when Susan had been five. She was still frightened by the memory of her cousin, slack-jawed and vacant-eyed, screaming out her visions of the future. She'd shuddered and wept and her great uncle had scolded her for cowardice and lack of emotional control. Grandfather had saved her from that and hidden her for two hundred and forty years.
Now they had her, but she was not going to allow them to turn her into a shattered empty husk like Adyra, she'd rather die first.
The first tendrils of thought brushed against her brain and she gasped in terror. Strangers' minds were trying to force their way through her mental defenses. The psychic walls she's built so carefully under Grandfather's tutelage. They were trying to get inside of her.
She slammed mental barricades shut and pushed them away. They came back again harder and stronger, trying to pry her mind open with the strength of their wills.
In a stone room, in a high tower, Susanatrevalar began to scream.
The Doctor strode into his mother's office with wrathful steps. The boots and military jacket he wore only making him angrier. His hair, his wonderful dark curls, had been shorn, the better to wear a shock helmet, his lovely green velvet coat hung untouched in the closet room of his TARDIS. He was now an active duty officer, something he had fought against tooth and nail, and was required to wear a uniform on duty at all times.
He'd failed at stopping this stupid war, failed at keeping himself out of it, and now he'd failed to protect Susan from Rassilon's stupidity and short-sightedness.
His mother looked up from her desk and met his eyes with a look filled with both sympathy and grief. He pulled himself together, knowing that she wasn't the enemy, but his anger was burning so brightly inside of him. All he felt these days was burning rage and a sick helplessness that ate him up inside.
"They still won't let me see her!" he ground out and she nodded sadly.
"Oh little love, I know. I tried as well, but the Visionaries refused me." She rose and crossed to him, holding open her arms and letting him walk into her embrace. Her face was drawn and weary, her eyes shadowed with grief and the same feeling of powerlessness that haunted him as well.
"What are they doing to her?" he cried, agonized by the thought of what Susan must be going through. He knew full well what the training led to, he'd watched his niece broken down and destroyed so many years ago. Now she was a devastated ruin that could do nothing but prophesize, she could barely feed herself, let alone laugh and smile as she used to. He wouldn't let that happen to Susan, he wouldn't!
"Omega only knows," she answered and her voice was heavy with regret. She'd had little time to grow to know her great-granddaughter, since he'd stolen the child away at so young an age. She hadn't seen her since Susan was a mere eight years old. But that child was their flesh and blood and he knew that it tore at his mother to have failed to protect her, just as it was destroying the Doctor. They had both been horrified by what had happened to his brother's youngest.
"I should have taken her somewhere else, I knew it was getting dangerous," he berated himself.
"Where could you have taken her that they wouldn't eventually track her down?" his mother asked him, stepping back to look up into his eyes. "They dragged Romana back from E-Space, for suns' sake!" He nodded, knowing she was right, but wishing that there was more that he could have done.
"I don't know, really," he answered and scrubbed at his head with a sigh. "I'm to report to barracks tonight, they're shipping me out to the front in the morning," he informed her and she simply nodded. He'd figured that she knew already, but it was only polite to inform her, as Head of the Family. His father's death ten years ago had left her with full responsibility over the whole Gene Line and he didn't envy her. He was quite glad that his brother was next in line, with his nephews and nieces after him, and that he himself was well out of the succession. His brother would enjoy it anyway, he'd always been an insufferable egotist, after all.
He was well aware that, by sending him into battle, the Council was getting him out of the way, making sure he wasn't able to agitate about Susan. The brief notice they'd sent him, telling him that she'd been "Finally found and safely returned to the Visionaries' Tower" had been an insulting bit of propaganda that had only served to enrage him further. They'd all known he'd taken her away to keep her from that miserable hellhole.
"I will do what I can, little love, you know that," his mother assured him and he sighed.
"I don't know that there is much we can do, Mother," he hated admitting that. He hated having no plan, no hope, and no idea in his head on how to save her. "I'm being sent to the Cruciform, I'll try to send word to you."
"Be safe, little love," she told him and he kissed her cheek, before leaving, bitter regrets and cold despair trailing behind him.
Susan screamed and writhed on the cold stone floor. She let her fury and outrage fill her mind, smothering the mind numbing fear that wanted to flood her. Stay angry, she told herself, use it as a wall against them. She was chained down and the cold was seeping into her from the floor, while the manacles cut her wrists and kept her from easing her position.
Somewhere nearby her unseen torturers were attacking her again. They were beating at her thoughts, trying to turn them against her, but she was no child to be broken by their games, and she threw her disgust with them back in their teeth. Her courage had never been great, but she was being tempered by the fires of this silent war, forged into something far stronger than she'd known herself to be. She was never going to let them win.
They'd chained her after she'd bitten one of her guards. She didn't regret it. The bastard had tried to cop a feel of her breast through the thin fabric of her robe. She added her outrage at that to the walls she was building. She was turning her mind into a battlefield, she built bulwarks, laid traps, turned her thoughts into a maze to defend her, to keep them from reaching her center. As long as she could keep them back, she couldn't be broken. It was only if they got into her center that she was vulnerable. She had a plan for that as well; of course, she had a plan now for everything. She smiled, but it was a grim and bitter stretching of her lips.
They'd been trying for four months now and she was still holding out. If she could wear them down, maybe if she could hold out long enough, they'd give up and release her.
It was a forlorn hope, but it was the only one she had.