| Date: 28 December 2007
Characters: Susan Foreman, Kurt Harding Location: outside Link to IJ: thread #21246 |
 Susan had gotten quite used to it here. She actually enjoyed it, really, despite the questions that it filled her head with and the worries that it caused. But those were easy enough to ignore until she had someone there to discuss them with who understood what she was talking about. Which meant she was ignoring them most of the time. Right now, she was settled outside, leaning back against one of the trees that dotted the landscape, a book propped up on her knees as she flipped through the pages, absorbing the information. In fact, unless one watched her very closely, they would have had trouble telling that she was more than just a statue. The only movement that she was making was to turn the page.
Enveloped in her own world, it would have taken quite a bit to get Susan's attention right now. |
 Kurt gazed around him, heart pounding, and shook his head, bemused. One minute it was night-time and he was racing through the back alleys of fifty-first century Cardiff, pursued by ugly pink horned things, the next it was day and he was stumbling across a... field. Dotted with trees. "What the...?" He blinked and rubbed his eyes, but the view didn't change.
He bent over, hands resting hard on his thighs, to catch his breath. He was still bent over when he heard a faint rustle behind him. He spun, drawing his blaster and aiming it at where the sound had come from. |
| Susan had glanced up at the confused exclamation, frowning and closing her book as she shifted around the tree to investigate. The last thing she expected was to find herself face to face with...
"What is that?" Susan asked, extending a hand to poke ever so lightly at the end of the blaster. "Plasma or Electromagnetic coil? Late 51st century, if I'm not mistaken," She said, lifting her gaze slightly before beaming at the familiar face. "Jack, be a dear and put the blaster down." |
| He blinked again.
Several times. Stared at the crazy girl poking at the end of his gun. Finally registered her words, and frowned, bewildered. It was a long, long time since anybody had called him Jack. He gaped. He didn't put the blaster down. |
| "Oh, come now. I'm completely harmless," Susan said, shifting backwards, tucking her legs under her as she sat back down, peering up at him curiously. He looked...different. His face was more etched than it had been before, and it made him look older. Not by much, but still, older.
"You don't have any clue who I am, do you?" Susan asked after a moment, tilting her had to the side. |
| The crazy girl's actions rather than the words finally got through to Kurt. Crazy but harmless. He slowly holstered his gun, and instead flipped open his wrist computer. He must have set it off accidentally. He glanced quickly down at the readings whilst keeping most of his attention on crazy girl, and grimaced when they didn't tell him anything. Flipping it shut again, he took a deep breath, came forward a pace.
"I guess you are," he said eventually, "and no, I don't. Do you always go round poking loaded weapons?" |
| "I do when they're interesting enough to draw my attention," Susan said with a broad grin. "And when I'm pretty sure that the person aiming them isn't going to shoot without a very good reason."
Patting the ground next to her, Susan let her eyes trail over to the computer strapped to Jack's wrist, her grin only widening. "A Vortex Manipulator! I haven't seen one of those in eons. Not that it will do you any good here. But still." |
| Kurt took a good long look around before dropping to the ground beside her and studying her instead. She really was a very pretty girl. But also apparently from 1960s Earth and yet talking about fifty-first century technology as if it was from her past. Plus, she knew him.
His eyebrow lifted lazily. "You appear to have an advantage over me. I'm sure I'd remember meeting someone like you if I actually had yet." |
| "Thing is, you haven't," Susan said, smiling at this Jack. "Despite the fact that you have. One of the other yous, that is. There's more than one here, it seems. How many, that's hard to say."
"Though, to be quite honest, you might, eventually," She said, grinning at Jack. "But trying to explain that might complicate things more than they need be." Shifting, Susan leaned over to take a better look at his Vortext Manipulator, a slight smile on her face, "Very nice. It's an excellent model. Though, I have to say, the one...five versions after this is much better. Doesn't give you that same...thrown through a blender feeling that you get with this one." |
| This was just too much all at once. He wasn't slow. He was just completely thrown. His brows drew together as he tried to make sense of what the fuck was going on.
He held up a hand to halt her. "Whoa, there, slow down a minute. Before we go any further, I think there's some introductions need to be made." He lowered the hand and held it out towards her, along with a dazzling smile. "Cap'n Kurt Harding. And you are?" |
| "Susan," She said, taking the hand with a beaming grin as she shook it, tilting her head at him as she just grinned wider. "Cap'n. I was thinking right, wasn't I? You look older because you are," She said, raising her free hand to poke at his nose. "Right?"
All right. Maybe she should have pulled back just a tad. But there was something utterly amusing about the whole situation. No wonder Grandfather relished in being the only one who had any idea what was going on. It was really a rather nice feeling. |
| "Hey! What is it with you and poking?" But he was grinning a bit as he rubbed his nose. It tickled.
"And yeah. You knew me as Jack Harkness? Or at least, a version of me?" |
| Susan giggled as she dropped her hands, folding them primly in her lap as she nodded with a smile, "That I do. Or at least, I do right now. Hard to say whether I'll remember you when I leave this place," She said, glancing around her. "My dear Captain, you've had the misfortune, or good fortune depending upon who you ask, to have fallen out of time."
Susan shifted, nodding to the Vortex Manipulator on his wrist, "Which is why that isn't giving you any sort of helpful readings. Don't worry. It's not just yours. The TARDIS isn't working, either." |
| Kurt settled himself more comfortably, bending one knee and resting his forearm on it, giving the appearance of relaxing even if he was about as far from relaxed as it was possible to be.
He smiled wryly. "Out of time? As in, somewhere - somewhen - that doesn't exist? And there's another me here too?" Well, it sounded like more fun that being chased by ugly pink horned things, anyway. |
| "Well, clearly this place exists," Susan said with a soft smile. "We're just existing outside of the normal bounds of space and time. And not within the normal bounds of outside of space and time. We don't seem to be effected by reality, either. Or rather, realities. It's all very complicated. And I can't say I can put my finger on what's going on, exactly. This is really just one of those situations that you have to take on faith, it seems." |
| A tiny crease appeared between Kurt's brows. "So we're stuck here?"
He caught up with the last part of her previous statement. "And the Doctor's here too?" |
| "Not stuck, no. There appears to be a way out. It's just rather random," Susan said, peering up at the Captain with reassuring gaze. "I haven't come across it yet, but that might be because I haven't been looking."
The second question caused her to beam and nod, "A couple times over, so I've heard. Not that that's unusual. He's never been able to keep himself together very well." |
| He really did relax a bit at the news that they weren't permanently stuck. He laughed - a warm, genuine laugh at her comment about the Doctor.
He said, curious, "Why haven't you been looking for a way back?" |
| "Because," Susan said, frowning softly to herself. "I'm not really a fan of the idea of being stuck on Earth living linearly for the next...oh, odd 12,000 years or so. This place is much nicer." |
| Kurt's eyebrows quirked ironically. "Try the idea of living forever. And who are you, Susan?" |
| Susan snorted a bit, "If I can't get home, that might be the eventual option," She said, frowning to herself. "That is, unless I just run through my regenerations all on purpose just to burn them up. But that's just wasteful."
Susan leaned back as she studied the Captain. How much older was he? Clearly, armed with 51st century tech, he had to have gotten there. Whether it was linear or not... She'd assume that it was. Easiest way to get that. Slow, but easiest. So, 3,000 years, at least. "The Doctor never talks about his family, does he?" Susan asked. Of course, she already knew the answer to that question. |
| "No." Kurt's smile was wry, before it turned back into a frown as the implications of her remark sank in.
He swallowed and said, a little hoarsely, "You're from Gallifrey? From... back then?" |
| "I'm from Gallifrey, but I'm quite stuck on Earth, at the moment. And what do you mean 'back then'?" Susan asked, a puzzled look crossing her face. "I'm from farther back on the timeline, yes." |
| Oh God. She didn't know.
Kurt closed his eyes briefly, took a gentle breath and let it out again slowly, then opened his eyes again and looked at Susan. His eyes were very blue and his smile was tender. "Just wasn't expecting to ever meet anyone from that far back in the Doctor's past," he said flippantly. "It's a very long time ago, both for me and the Doctor I know." |
| "Eight hundred years or so, I do think was what Grandfather said," Susan said, nodding. "Which is a decent enough chunk of time for a Time Lord. Apparently more than for Grandfather if he can burn up eight of his regenerations in that amount of time."
"But I'm guessing it's been longer for you," Susan said, tilting her head against to get a better look at the Vortex Manipulator. |
| He noted the direction of her gaze and smiled ruefully. "Just a couple thousand years longer, give or take a hundred." He shrugged. "I see him occasionally, you know. He drops by and we exchange news of what's happened in the last century or so for me and the last week or two for him." |
| Now, that was interesting. Grandfather actually keeping up with someone. It was hard enough to get him to stay in one place, much less keep returning to it. "You must be something special to him," Susan said with a ever so slightly bitter smile. "Once he leaves, he hardly ever comes back."
Not that she didn't know he didn't come back for her. But she had a feeling. When someone says it's been so long since they've seen you, you just have to assume. |
| "Believe me, I was more than a little surprised myself, the first time," he said gently. He hadn't missed the bitterness. He reached out his hand and placed it on hers, warm and sympathetic, and smoothly changed the subject.
"What's Gallifrey like? I've always wondered." |
| Susan smiled a bit as the hand settled over her own, a wistful expression crossing her face at the thought of Gallifrey. Oh, how she missed it.
"It was beautiful. A lot like Earth, really. Valleys, forests, mountains, tundra, rivers, lakes. It was mostly deserts, though. Burnt red deserts with orange sand and various mountain peaks scattered through out. Our home was half way up Lung Mountain. The view was spectacular, overlooking the Cadonflood river valley." |
| "It sounds amazing," he said, eyes on her wistful face. "You must miss it terribly." His thumb rubbed gently at the side of her hand. He wished he could take her back there, but it didn't even exist anymore. In fact, she might not even exist anymore in his reality.
"How long have you been stuck on Earth?" |
| "Just a year at the moment," Susan said before nodding slowly. "I do miss it. But Grandfather didn't say anything about having come back for me so I'm guessing that I never saw it again. Since he was the only Time Lord that knew that I was on Earth. Well, at least, I think he was. His friends might have known that he'd taken me with him. So I suppose one of them might have come got me eventually. They all know how flighty he is." |
| "Oh, Susan." Kurt's hand gripped hers tightly, his heart aching for her. If he'd thought being abandoned on a space station thousands of years in his future was bad, how much worse was it when you were abandoned on an alien planet with no chance of getting home?
He grinned, trying to make light of it. "Want me to punch him for you, when I see him?" |
| Susan smiled softly as she wrapped her other hand around his, looking up at him, "I can do it if I really feel the need to," She said with a laugh. "But I do appreciate the offer."
Looking up at the Captain, Susan couldn't help but smile, "Three thousand years, and your personality hasn't changed all that much. That's a good thing. Means you know exactly who you are." |
| Kurt laughed, really laughed, at the idea of Susan punching the Doctor. "I believe you would, at that!" he declared.
He listened to her second remark with interest. "What point was the other me from? Jack? Before I found the Doctor again?" |
| Susan nodded with a smirk as she leaned against him slightly, "If he gives me a reason, definitely. I'm not the same little girl that he left behind, sorry to say."
Susan nodded again with a very soft smile, "Yeah. At least, it seemed the way. You didn't know what had happened to you," She said, slipping her hand free from his and settled her hand over his chest. "But it's not hard to tell just what is trapped in there. Well, not for us. Gallifreyans are taught to sense the Time Vortex at a young age." |
| She was certainly one for touching, was Susan. Kurt wondered what Jack had made of that, after so long spent amongst 20th century humans who avoided physical contact as much as possible. Must have felt much stranger to him than to Kurt, who was finally back in the century he'd grown up in and used to... well, let's just say, a lot of physical contact.
He smiled, aware of his heart speeding up just a little beneath her hand. "Does that felt weird, feeling just one heartbeat instead of two?" he asked, as little amused, and making no effort to remove her hand, or even cover it with his own. |
| Susan smiled wistfully, shaking her head, "I've spent far more time around humans than I have around my own kind. You do get used to feeling one heartbeat after awhile. Even if I still have no idea how humans can cope with just one heart," She said, looking up at the Captain with a grin. |
| "Oh, we get by," he said lazily, leaning back a bit. "After all, our hearts don't have to last as long as yours. Well - usually." He grinned.
"Met any other people with two hearts around here?" He was wondering if there were any other survivors from before the destruction of Gallifrey, or if Susan was the only one. |
| Susan nodded happily at the second question, "Oh, yes! It was so very nice meeting someone other than Grandfather from home. It has been far, far too long since I've had the opportunity to talk to another one of my people. A very sweet man called Harry. Apparently, he'd been stranded on Earth, too." |
| Kurt froze. "Harry?" he repeated softly, through lips that had suddenly gone numb. It couldn't be.
He swallowed. "Bit shorter than me, pretty nondescript, immaculate black suit and tie?" |
| Susan grinned and nodded happily, "Mhm. You know, he did ask after you. Well, after Captain Jack Harkness. Wanted to know where he could find him," Susan said, tilting her head curiously at the reaction that the Captain had had to the name.
"Is everything all right?" |
| Kurt shuffled round to face her and leaned forward to take both her hands in his. "Susan, does the name The Master mean anything to you?" |
| Susan looked curiously at him, shaking her head slowly. "Is it supposed to?" She asked, a frown crossing her face. "I mean, I can guess. It sounds all too much like a name replacement title like Grandfather's, after all. But it's not one that I've heard before." |
| "I didn't know if you would have been aruond at the same time as him. I got the impression, though, that he'd known the Doctor since they were both very young, on Gallifrey. That they were... very close, in fact."
His thumbs stroked the backs of her hands restlessly as he took a deliberate breath and said, "As for where I know him from: just after I'd found the Doctor again, the Master stole the TARDIS and used it to create hell on earth for an entire year. He's not someone I relish the thought of wandering around here." |
| "Well, most Time Lords don't take titles until they reach a certain age. Grandfather and his friends were still rather young, Time Lord wise, when we left Gallifrey," Susan said, tilting her head to the side thoughtfully.
"But none of them would do anything like that," Susan said, a look of horror crossing her face. |
| There were tight lines of stress around Kurt's mouth as he remembered that year on the Valiant. "It wasn't the first time he'd done something like that either. I don't know the details, because your grandfather is incredibly good at holding onto secrets he doesn't want to share, but the Master is definitely not a savoury character."
He released one of Susan's hands and instead took her chin gently between his thumb and forefinger, to make her look at him, to take him seriously. "So you see 'Harry' again, Susan, you run the other way. Understand?" |
| Susan could understand why her Grandfather wouldn't want to talk about it. She ran through her Grandfather's friends in her mind, trying to figure out how it would have been possible for any of the sweet and brilliant people that she had meet during her childhood to turn into such a... monster.
Looking up at the Captain as her attention was drawn to him, Susan nodded weakly, "I do. But... I don't think he'd do anything to me. Honestly." |
| "You don't know that. He's a charmer, Susan. He charmed Great Britain into voting for him, became Prime Minister and used that to take over the world. So however 'sweet' he seems, you have to remember it's just an act."
He frowned, dark brows knitting together. "I was kinda hoping he was one of your grandfather's friends that you knew back then. You might be able to give me a clue as to what turned him, why he went from being the Doctor's best friend to - well, to what he became." Because despite the worst enemies front the Doctor had tried to maintain in front of Kurt, he'd seen the way the Doctor forgave him everything, seen the way the Doctor had cradled the Master's head as he died. |
| "Well, Grandfather had a few friends that I knew," Susan said softly, tilting her head to the side with a frown. "I met the closer ones when they would visit. I could just...well, tell you about them." |
| "Yeah." He let go of her chin, finally, but the intense look remained. "Maybe see if anything you remember about them ties in with anything that 'Harry' said?" |
| "Well... He didn't act at all like Drax," Susan said, grinning a bit. "A bit too dignified and not at all shifty in an overly overt way. Not that it was a bad kind of shifty, that Drax. He just had the heart of a businessman."
Susan shifted, tucking her legs as she pondered her Grandfather's other friends before finally falling on the most simple conclusion, "Grandfather and his best friend fought quite a bit right before I had to leave for the Academy. They could never agree on things without making a big debate out of it.... Mum said that it was starting to wear on them." |
| "Sounds like a good bet," Kurt agreed, and added, getting momentarily sidetracked by the fascination of hearing about the Doctor's family, "What was she like, your mother?" |
| Susan couldn't help but smile. It had been awhile since she had thought of her mother in any way except for intense longing. But to just remember her, to think about her and contemplate her character, "She was brilliant. She always saw the wonder of the world around her, and she tried to make sure that I saw it to, more than just the academic side of life."
"It was a family trait, I think," Susan said with a laugh. "I was always falling into the habit of getting trapped in the library. She and Grandfather both always went out of their way to pry my nose out of the books." |
| Kurt smiled. "She sounds like a great mother. Always good to recognise there's more to life than just the academic side. I guess she got that from the Doctor! He doesn't strike me as the type for formal learning. Is that why he took you with him when he left?" |
| Susan grinned and nodded, "Thought that practical experience would be much better for me than two hundred years worth of book learning at the Academy," She said with a slight giggle. "Though, I can understand why he'd feel it was a waste of time, having barely passed his own exams and all."
He really never had been one for formal learning. |
| Kurt's eyes twinkled as he leaned forward again, his chin on his hand. "Barely passed? Really?" he inquired, eyebrows almost disappearing beneath the hair that had flopped forward.
He was going to make the most of this opportunity to learn all the gossip the Doctor would never tell him. |
| "51% on the second try," Susan said with a slight smirk. "And he still failed his TTC pilot exam." |
| "Well, now I have ammunition if I ever need to blackmail him!" Kurt smirked. "Anything else?" |
| "Depends. What do you want to know?" Susan asked, grinning over at the Captain. |
| "Actually, what's a TTC?" |
| "Time Travel Capsule," Susan said with a soft grin. "It's the official name. I just thought it was a bit boring, so I started calling Grandfather's a TARDIS." |
| His eyebrow quirked upwards again. "Oh yeah, that is a boring name for such an amazing ship. She's a beauty, deserves a proper name."
There was a faraway look in his eyes for a moment, then he grinned. "What about your grandmother? What was she like?" |
| "Powerful, stubborn, brilliant, the epitome of a strong woman," Susan said, chuckling a bit to herself. "Oh, you should have heard them row. It was like an Olympic sport, neither one will to give an inch. Compromise was a word that wasn't in either of their vocabularies." |
| "Still isn't in his," Kurt chuckled. "They must have been quite a couple!"
The mention of arguing, though, reminded him of his original line of questioning. "So this best friend of his... He have a name?" Not that he knew what the Master's name had been. But it might strike a chord with some memory or something. |
| "Oh, they were," Susan said with a gentle smile. "Quite the pair."
The Captain's second question provoked a thoughtful expression from Susan as she nodded, "Koschei," Susan said, crossing her legs and folding her hands in her lap. "It's hard to think of him doing something like that, though. I mean, he was always so good, so concerned." |
| "People can change," he said absently. The name was echoing in his mind. Koschei. Koschei. Whispered despairingly by the Doctor in his sleep the first few times he'd visited after the year on the Valiant.
He hadn't known it was a name, then - it was just one word in amongst a muttered host of other words in a language he hadn't understood. He'd figured it had something to do with the Master, but not that it was his name. His mouth was dry. He licked his lips and said hoarsely, "That's him." |
| Susan frowned softly, hanging her head for a long moment as she tried to contemplate such a change in someone that she had considered on the same level as her Grandfather, someone who she thought would make the most of every opportunity that was thrown his way, and do it for the benefit of as many people as possible.
That was always the way he had been. She had thought that it was why he and Grandfather had been such good friends, because they had had the same goals. But still, like he had just said, people change. Sometimes suddenly and without warning. "They were next to inseparable when they were younger. Mum told me that when she was younger, he used to visit everyday and not leave until very late at night sometimes...if he did leave at all." |
| "Actually, I can imagine that. There were definitely some very strong emotions between them, even when I saw them together. It was like... when they were together, it was like no-one else existed for them. The intensity..."
He trailed off, still none the wiser as to why it had all gone wrong. "What did they quarrel about? Any idea?" |
| "Lying," Susan said with a soft frown. "I remember overhearing Grandfather saying he'd gotten into a bad habit of it. But Uncle Koschei was trying to get on the High Council. Lying is a staple part of politics, isn't it?" |
| Kurt snorted before he could help himself. Politics. It always came down to politics.
"Well, nothing new there, then," he said, amused. "Ambition, and deception. That sounds like the Master I knew and loved!" |
| Susan frowned as a reflex, "He was trying to help," She protested without thinking. "He was trying to make Gallifrey better for all of us." |
| "Really? Or did was he just saying that? Maybe what he was really after was power." |
| Susan frowned at the Captain, "I think he really meant it. I mean, he'd never done anything that would make me think he didn't mean it." |
| "Yeah, but - forgive me, Susan, but you were just a child. And you seem to be very ready to believe the best of people. Don't you think that could be the case here? I've seen him act. He's very convincing. Plus he's got that drums thing going for him. He had everybody sort of hypnotised with it." |
| "Drums?" Susan asked vaguely, staring at the Captain for a long moment. "What drums?" |
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