TURLOUGH'S TALE

Chapter Sixteen

"I think I know the way back to the TARDIS," says the Doctor, after Tegan has made a proper fuss over him and Alexandra has been assured that her tormentor is finally and irrevocably dead. "Tomorrow I'll take some flares and leave a path for you lot to follow. I'll come back for you as soon as I've spotted it."

"Why can't you just come for us in the TARDIS, Doctor?" I know why, but it's a legitimate question – one the Doctor doesn't want to answer.

"I'll explain later." He turns to Alexandra. "You are welcome to come with us when we leave. I'm not sure when that will be. Soon, I feel sure. We can take you anywhere you like."

"This is my home," replies Alexandra. "And I am old, you know. You're way too young to understand." (Oh, if only she knew!) "I will stay where I know how to get along, what is and isn't possible." She reaches over and takes his hand, which apparently is still cold, as he keeps rubbing his hands together in front of the fire. "Thank you for all you've done, Doctor."

"I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything that made a difference, anyway. I didn't even want him dead. I just wanted him to leave you alone." He doesn't mention me at all and I am grateful. Then he stands up, a bit stiffly, and indicates for me to follow him. He murmurs something about checking the sleds. I rise just as stiffly, shrug at Tegan and go out into the snow once more.

"What's up?" I ask.

"I can't go into the TARDIS yet," he says. I nod. "I need to find it, of course, and my being gone on that mission gives you a chance to tell the Black Guardian I am dead." I shudder. "We should have buried Danny, but the urgency of that didn't dawn on me until just now. I am sorry, but you need to go back and do that."

"Now?" I am horrified.

"No, in the morning. You go that way, I go the other. Do it quickly. But do it… incompletely."

"What?"

The Doctor hands me his cricket ball, which I hold uncertainly as he tells me what I must do. Then he sighs, "I'm really tired. I need to sleep." He turns and goes back into the broken house, and I follow him back to the now rather soggy tent. Tegan and Alexandra are busy replacing some of the blankets, both as tent components and our makeshift beds. Tegan spreads out some dry blankets for the Doctor and then for me, and we settle in. The Doctor, despite his fatigue, doesn't lie down right away. Tegan and Alexandra finish up and settle onto their blankets too. We all look at each other, too tired to speak. Then Tegan sits up straight, suddenly quite startled. We all stare at her. "Tegan?"

"Doctor," she says, breathlessly, "I just remembered. Nyssa and I saw Adric's ghost!"

"When? Where?"

"Remember when we flew in the Concorde?"

"How could I forget!"

"Well, when we were trying to find you, Adric's ghost appeared to us. I mean, it wasn't really him, but it sure looked and sounded like him. How's that for a ghost story?"

"Not bad," whispers the Doctor. "I wish I could have seen him."

"Who's Adric?" asks Alexandra.

"A friend of ours who died," Tegan explains. I wonder whether she would describe me as a "friend" if I died. I doubt it. Somehow that makes me sad. In fact, I wonder who would miss me. Maybe the Doctor? How silly. He has the least reason to feel sentimental about me. I wonder for the umpteenth time why he is helping me. "Doctor," Tegan continues, "you never did tell us your ghost story."

"Oh," says the Doctor, somewhat dismissively.

"No, come on, Doctor. It was your idea!"

"All right, all right," he grumbles, sitting up straight, noticing blood on the sleeve of his parka and glumly rubbing snow on it. "Ghost story. Ghost story." He closes his eyes. For a while it appears he has fallen asleep, but then he opens his eyes and grins at us, rather mischievously at that. "All right," he repeats. "Once upon a time…"

"Seriously?" I am disappointed already.

"… something happened that had no choice but to happen. Had it not happened, I would not be telling you this story."

"All right." Tegan unconsciously echoes the Doctor.

"There was in a certain citadel, in a certain time, a Time Lord, old and cranky, with long white hair and a proud demeanor. Beneath the proud demeanor lurked fears so terrible that he himself was unaware of them, but they were not fears for his own safety. A spirit began to appear to him every night as he was preparing for bed, and said to him, 'I know whom you love best of all in the whole universe and she shall be taken from you. She is much stronger than you and I shall learn much from her.' Then she would tell him how many days were left before he would lose his beloved six-year-old granddaughter, Susan.

"He knew and did not know who this spirit was. He remembered her and at the same time didn't remember her. It is possible that she had regenerated since they'd last met. It is possible that she appeared to him as a spirit because she had failed to regenerate and was now dead. He wasn't sure.

"What he was sure of was that this spirit must not take his granddaughter away from him, not only because he would miss her but because some of what he both did and did not remember was what the spirit had repeatedly done to him before she was in spirit form. It didn't bear thinking of. Every time he almost remembered, he shied away from the memory. He knew, though, that whatever it was, whatever had been done to him, Susan must not experience. She must escape. She must be saved."

I have heard the Doctor tell stories before. His face is animated, humorous. He milks every word. His eyebrows go up, his eyes grow large, peer around in mock surprise, seem to laugh all by themselves, and then there are his gestures, quick or fluid. This is not the Doctor I see and hear now. He sits very still, crosslegged as usual, and he speaks as if in a trance. Most of the time he seems unaware of us; he could easily be talking to himself. His tone, I admit, is normal, but for a certain flatness. Perhaps it is just that he is exhausted from the efforts of the day. Perhaps I should not have urged him to tell his tale.

"As the days ticked away, the Time Lord made a decision that would change his life. He took Susan to the Time Lord Livery and stole an old Type 40 TARDIS that he felt no one would miss; the two of them traveled all over the universe and when Susan became eight years old she was not forced to look into the Untempered Schism. Eventually the two of them settled down in a nice, obscure junkyard in London, Susan was enrolled in Coal Hill School instead of that awful Academy…."

The Doctor closes his eyes again and remains silent long enough for Alexandra to feel free to admit, "I don't understand half of what he is saying."

"Half is about what I do understand," I confess.

Tegan adds, "Maybe some day you can explain that half to me."

"And they were happy," the Doctor suddenly says, "at least Susan was. I…." He catches himself, but we all jump. "The Time Lord, who actually thought of himself as jolly, was in fact profoundly unhappy. He even committed a crime: the crime of kidnapping, two innocent teachers who stumbled upon the TARDIS checking up on Susan, apparently more concerned about her welfare than the Time Lord was. This wasn't true but he had become unable to show his affection, perhaps because no affection had been…." He breaks off, opens his eyes and says, to no one, "I don't like this story. I don't want to tell this story."

"You don't have to," says Tegan, her eyes full of concern; I know she will never look at me that way.

"Rest," says Alexandra.

"But what about the ghost?" He looks at me dully. "I mean the spirit." The two women glare at me. I'm used to it. I don't care. I am feeling mean. I hate myself when I get like this and I hate myself doubly now: look what the Doctor has gone through, is going through, all for me. No, not all for me. He doesn't want to die either. It isn't all unselfish. I tell myself that and almost believe it. "Did y… the Time Lord ever see her again?"

He looks so sad and tired I could bite my tongue; I don't deserve to live. I should kill myself. I really should. I don't suppose I need mention again that I am a coward? You know that already. The Doctor's eyes don't change; he has heard me but he is still far away. "He saw her one more time. Susan and her teachers and the Time Lord became a kind of family, something the Time Lord had… anyway, something new, and he became a little less abrasive, especially after losing Susan…."

"She died?" whispers Tegan.

"No, she got married. But then he lost Sara and Katarina, and their deaths saddened him, but still…. Oh," he sighs, "I am not telling it right."

"You're doing fine," Alexandra encourages him, while I think, he loses companions. He may lose me. He isn't as trustworthy as he seems.

"And then the spirit came to him while he was alone, separated from the others and in great danger, and she said 'Let me show you who you are and who you will be,' and she showed him a Time Lord who didn't know who he was or what kind of man he was, or was supposed to be, and…." The Doctor covers his face with one hand and one of his hearts with the other. "'You've won; Susan is free,' the spirit said, 'But you've lost. You've lost yourself.' And then the Time Lord never saw her again." He opens his eyes and holds his arms out, ta-da! – as if he's just told the funniest joke ever.