A/N - I have gone back and re-written the whole story, adding a whole lot more into it. If you got an alert for a new chapter. Stop. Go back to the start and beginning reading again. :) Thank you.
Chapter 17 – Being Human
2006 Main Time Line/2009 Pete's World Time Line
Susan didn't mind the cold, but she did wrap her hands around the hot cocoa mug and huddle deeper into the flannel blanket, more for the coziness of the sensations than for actual warmth.
"You two girls don't want to spend your Friday night with a daft old man like me!" Mr. Mott scolded them. "You should be out having fun."
"This is fun, really," Susan assured him and Donna nodded as well.
"Gramps, we're here because we want to be," she assured him and he smiled, a trifle skeptical, but willing to be won over.
"So, you were telling us about the ascension of Venus," Susan prompted, not because she wanted to know, but because she could listen to Wilfred Mott ramble on for hours in his sweet, kind voice. He reminded her of her grandfather, she thought, and then frowned, her grandfather? Wilfred Mott was nothing like the grandfather that she knew she'd had once. Yet, the feeling persisted.
Donna was sitting on a blanket on the ground and once more Susan was reminded how deeply grateful she was that the other woman had befriended her. It was so nice to have a mate, someone to hang about with. She hadn't had that in a very long time.
She also really loved the stars. She could look through the telescope for hours, staring up at those distant suns, wishing she could visit them.
"Really though, Susie girl, you are far too pretty to be sitting about here with me," he continued and she smiled rather sadly at him. "You should find yourself a nice man."
"I had a nice man, Mr. Mott; I had the best and kindest of men. My David was brave, and good, and loving. He was simply the most wonderful man I've ever known," she answered, though there was something in her mind that hinted that the last words were not entirely true. She had met someone else wonderful once, but she couldn't remember. "I'm just not sure that I'll ever find anyone I'll love like I loved him," she admitted and Donna patted her knee gently in sympathy. "I look at the men around me and all I can think of is that they're not him, they're not the right one…" she trailed off as she tried to find words for something she didn't really comprehend herself.
"Well, I understand that. My wife, Donna's Grandma, was the one and only love of my life. There was never a woman who even came close to her and there never will be," he replied and the elderly blue eyes met brown ones, which only seemed young on the surface, in perfect understanding.
She dropped the blanket and went to look through the telescope. The stars were so beautiful, so wonderful, and so full of promise. She tilted the telescope towards where Mars was hovering right beneath Leo and found herself smiling.
"So Susan, you never said where you were from," Mr. Mott asked her.
"Gallifrey," she answered absently, her mind on the heavens rather than the Earth.
"Gallifrey? Is that somewhere in Ireland?" Donna's brash voice cut through her abstraction and Susan turned to stare at them both in confusion.
"Why did I say that? I was born in London," she corrected and then felt tears welling up in her eyes.
"What's wrong?" Mr. Mott asked her and she shook her head.
"I don't know, it's just that sometimes I feel so alone, so lost, like I'm not even real," she explained helplessly.
"Of course you're real, Susan!" Donna assured her. "I can see you standing right there!"
"I felt that way for years, Susie," Mr. Mott told her, patting her on the shoulder soothingly. "After my wife died and I was left alone to raise Sylvia, I often felt like it wasn't really real. I kept thinking that I'd wake up one day and there she'd be, asleep in the bed beside me, and we'd have a laugh about my bad dream." Susan nodded her understanding.
"Yes, I keep thinking the same thing; that I'll wake up one day and it will have all been a dream." She didn't tell him though that the real fear in her was that this dream was a good one and when she woke up, the reality would be something far, far worse.
2006 Main Time Line
Earth, the early 21st century, of course. He cursed and brought his fists down on the console, fury ripping through him. Damn the Doctor anyway, he just wanted to get to Susan! Well, and to punish all the smirking bastards who'd enslaved him for their stupid war in the first place.
Where was she? Even here, in a time where she ought to be as close to him as his own breath, he could barely hear her mind. He'd thought the faintness of the connection was due to the distance in time, but no, there was something else, something was wrong.
He went to the TARDIS communicator and dialed Gallifrey. Yes, he'd run away, deserted his post, but they'd still take him back again. They'd punish him, torture him, but they'd bring him back and then he could take her from them and go.
There was no response.
That was impossible.
Gallifrey had to answer. They had to.
What had the Doctor said? He'd not been paying attention, which might have been a mistake, but Omega, how the man could babble on for hours!
Wait. He'd said they were the last two left? Inconceivable. Gallifrey was Gallifrey! It had stood for a billion years. Yet, Professor Yana had known nothing of it. He'd heard no legends, no stories, not even a myth….
Grief, rage, desperation, loss, they went through him in waves. He scanned the universe, searching for his home and found nothing but ashes and dust.
It was gone. She was gone. It wasn't possible.
No, she couldn't be gone, she could not be dead! She was there in his head still, faint, barely perceptible, but there. Was that just his imagination? Was he fooling himself? Could he just not accept that he'd failed to get to her, that he'd left her to die? Surely the Doctor had saved her! If no one else, he had to have saved her! They couldn't have both left her behind to die. He couldn't have lost her after all that he'd gone through.
But he had, he'd left her there in the heart of the Time War and run away. He'd saved himself and lost her forever.
It didn't matter. (It mattered more than anything else.) He didn't care. (He was bleeding, dying, falling apart inside.) He was the Master! He needed nothing and no one! (He was Koschei who needed her so badly that his whole body ached with it.) She was dead. (He was dead and nothing mattered anymore.)
He stepped out of the TARDIS, raw and filled with despair, into a park in London. The sun shone down brightly, the birds were singing, and he hated them all. The TARDIS was set to this time and the end of everything. He glared at the happy people all around him and a sudden thought occurred to him.
The Doctor was trapped at the other end of time. Oh, he'd get free, he always did. That man had more luck than any thousand other people. But, until then… He had this entire world all to himself to play with. No other Time Lords existed.
There was no one to stop him anymore. He burst into hysterical laughter and then ducked back into the TARDIS. He had plans to make.
The Trade Minister's dinner party was as dull as every one of the other stupid events he'd attended of late, but it provided him the opportunity to hypnotize half a dozen top officials, all while looking utterly innocent.
He turned to spot his next prey and saw a girl, slender, fragile, with blonde hair and blue eyes. His hearts surged with hope and she turned and glanced at him, but it wasn't her, it wasn't Susan. So close, so very close in face and body, but still not the same girl. He stumbled, grief shredding him again, and the girl ran to his side.
"Are you alright?" she cried, grabbing at him with sweet concern.
"You're very kind," he murmured. "What's your name?" he asked.
"Lucy Cole," she replied and he smiled at her and reached into her mind. If he couldn't have the real thing, he'd make do with a substitute, he'd take little Lucy and then he'd find a way to make them all pay.
"Hello Lucy, I'm Harold Saxon." He replied and pressed her hand to his lips. She trembled and looked up at him with huge guileless eyes and he felt a surge of triumph.
2006 MTL/2009 PWTL
Susan Campbell shut the door behind her with a kick of her foot. She wrestled the groceries into the kitchen and just thinking about making dinner made her sigh. She was so tired of cooking only for herself. She pulled out a frozen dinner and tossed it in the microwave.
She sat in front of the telly and ate her lukewarm food, wondering why none of the men at the office appealed to her. She kept waiting for something, a look in their eyes, a quirk of their lips, and when it wasn't there, she turned away. They were never quite right, but she had no idea what 'quite right' meant.
Well, it didn't matter, tomorrow was Friday and she could go sit with Donna and Mr. Mott, staring up at the stars. She'd eat at their house, Sylvia might be an awful nag and Geoff was an angel to put up with her, but she could certainly cook! It would be pleasant to pretend to be part of a family for a while.
She turned and stared around at her flat. One bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room, it was small, but she kept it clean. There wasn't much in the way of furniture. She never felt as though it were really home, so she'd put little effort into decorating it.
She wandered over to the drawing board in the corner and looked down at her last sketch. A domed city lay nestled between impossibly high mountains and glittering under an orange sky. She dreamed about this place so often, but when she woke, it made no sense to her. Nothing in her life really seemed to make much sense.
She flipped through the other pictures, the gorgeous man with the black hair and goatee and the intense dark eyes, the white haired old man, who also seemed to be so many other people as well, as though her mind could never decide what he looked like. The old woman, with her kind, sad, eyes, and all the others, sketch after sketch, people who felt as familiar to her as her own heartbeat, yet were strangers, mere figments of her dreaming self.
Why couldn't she ever seem to make sense of the scattered fragments of her memories? Why did everything seem so real in her dreams, but so flat and fake in her waking world? With a frustrated sigh, she dragged herself to bed and collapsed into sleep.
"Susan." She opened her eyes and there was a stranger in her bed. But, when he smiled at her, she realized what she'd been looking for all this time. His smile was bitter, a little mocking, his eyes were dark, fathomless, and the look in them was possessive and hungry, and so very familiar.
Not knowing who he was, not knowing why, she opened her arms to him and he fell on her. He was kissing her, but it wasn't something sweet or gentle, he was fierce, aggressive, burning her up with his need, but she didn't care. She let go and returned that kiss, falling into whatever this was without a backward glance.
Somewhere in her mind she was a little shocked, she was never this bold, this forceful with men. Not men, something in her mind told her, just this man. This was the one she needed, the one she'd been looking for, and for so very long.
He collapsed into her arms and she clutched him to her, not wanting to let him get even an inch away from her.
"Oh stars, woman, you're killing me," he moaned and she held him tighter still. "Where the hell were you? I thought you were dead!"
"I don't understand. Who are you?" she whispered and he looked at her in astonishment, those black eyes going wide.
"Susan?" he nearly whispered, hands wandering over her face like a blind man trying to see.
"Yes?" She wondered how he knew her name, when she didn't know his.
"You know me, you must!" he demanded. "You know who I am!"
"I can't remember, I'm sorry," she told him and his face cracked, his eyes suddenly bleak and lost. "But I do know you, I don't know how, but I do," she told him, confused by the conversation, by the conflicting emotions in her chest, the pressure in her head as she tried to remember. But it was undeniable that she felt more connected to this mad stranger in her bed than she ever had to anyone else, he was more real to her than any other aspect of her life.
He pressed a hand to her chest and then looked up into her eyes with an expression that was almost pity.
"Only one heart," he murmured.
"Of course, doesn't everybody?" she asked him with a surprised laugh, and then her alarm went off.
She woke suddenly, alone in her bed, and the pain of it was enough to make her burst into tears. A dream, her mad stranger was just a dream.
The Master woke and stared at the ceiling. He was dreaming of her again. Omega, how fucking pathetic was he? She was dead, but he couldn't admit it deep down, he was even creating scenarios in his subconscious to explain her absence in his mind. The woman in the dream hadn't even looked like her, he sighed. Ginger hair, chocolate eyes, a body that was full and curvy, and a sensual mouth that had done the most incredible things to him.
She was dead. He had to learn to accept it. He'd go take it out on Lucy for a while, wear the edges off. He needed to find a way to get free of the compulsion she had become, but he didn't know how.