Good News, Bad News; Ten, Martha, Susan; G

[scarfman]

Title: Good News, Bad News
Author: scarfman
Characters/Pairing: Ten, Martha, Susan
Rating: G
Setting/Spoilers: early Season 2008 sometime, or between Season 2007 and Season 2008; sequel to my One Day
Disclaimer: This work is derivative of property of the BBC. No profit shall be made and no market of the owner(s) is infringed upon.
Betareader: qtrhorserider
Summary: When Martha first suggested it, the Doctor wasn't ready to find out whether Susan, removed from Gallifrey to Earth, survived the Time War ...
Author's note: I half-promised unearthy_child that there'd be a sequel to One Day in which the Doctor goes back, with alternate endings. This is it. Both endings are meant to stand alone, as if the other didn't exist.

---

"I think I'm ready," said the Doctor.

Martha tried to quash the first thought that came to her mind. "Ready for what?" she asked, with most of her last bite still in her mouth.

Across expanse of the red-checked tablecloth from her, the Doctor sucked a long spaghetti noodle off his fork before answering. "I think we ought to finish our meal, pay our bill, get back in the TARDIS, and go to twenty-second century rural Campbellshire."

Luckily Martha was done swallowing before she went from mixed relief and disappointment to realizing the import of what he'd said. "Are you sure you can handle it? If, you know, it's bad?"

"'Course not," said the Doctor. "I mean, of course I'm not sure, not of course I can't handle it. Certainly my granddaughter was all the remaining family I had the first time I left my planet, both of us thinking we'd never return, and that means a lot, but now that the whole planet never existed any more by my own hand and I absolutely can't go back, what's a granddaughter added into the mix? I mean, proportionately? And I know I'm babbling and I know babbling is my defense mechanism but not this time because what I'm babbling about is the thing I'm feeling defensive about instead of a change of subject which never works with you anyway. Of course the babbling really, really suggests I can't handle it if it does go bad, which makes the whole thing a bad idea. But I have to know," and abruptly he stopped talking and went back to his dinner.

Martha took another forkful, and when she had eaten it she said, "You're not alone, you know."

"I know," said the Doctor, warmly though he didn't look up from his meal. "Thanks."

First, The Bad News

About three miles down the quiet country road beside which the TARDIS had deposited them there was a farmstead; red barn, house with a flower garden next to it.

"Looks nice and prosperous," said the Doctor, looking over the fields of crops as they stumped up to the gate and into the yard. "Been doing right well at world-rebuilding they have."

"How long's it been since you were here?" Martha asked.

"'Bout fifty years since the Daleks were sent packing," said the Doctor, "according to readings. No time at all to ... to some people."

They walked up porch steps to the house's front door. The Doctor stood in front of it as if he expected it to swish open, but it was an old-fashioned hinged wooden door. Martha let him be, and finally he knocked.

After a moment a man about Martha's age in work clothes opened the door. "Hello."

"Hi. Hello," said the Doctor, scratching the back of his neck. "I'm the Doctor and this is my friend Martha Jones and we're looking for S- David Campbell."

"Junior or senior?" asked the young man, grinning and pointing alternately to himself and into the house.

"Ah, that'd be senior," said the Doctor.

"Come on in," said junior. He ushered them to the living room, invited them to sit and, while Martha sat, called up the stairs, "Dad! Company!" When there wasn't any answer he said, "Be right back," and ascended the staircase.

The Doctor disguised the fact that he was pacing by proceeding at low speed and appearing to be fascinated with the room's inanimate contents. "No photographs," he did note. "Or portraits. Top luxury items in a post-Dalek world, those. Wouldn't expect them in a country home like this."

"Didn't stop you looking," said Martha, trying to keep the mood light.

The Doctor acknowledged her attempt with a weak smile. "Wouldn't necessarily have told us anything if there were. She might have survived being unhappened by the Time War only to have died of the flu forty-nine years ago."

Then there were sounds on the stairs. She stood and they both turned that way.

David Campbell, senior was being assisted down the stairs by his son with ill grace. "... not that old you know! It'll be a sorry pass when a veteran of the occupation can't handle a flight of steps."

"Now, Dad, you know it's only your war wound playing up with the weather."

"Hush, boy!" senior snapped. "We have company - we don't need to be boasting!"

They were at the bottom of the staircase now and junior winked at the Doctor and Martha. "He'd've found a way to mention it himself eventually."

"Oh, go get us some refreshments!" Now that he was down, senior pushed junior off his arm and supported himself with a cane.

"Lemonade?" junior asked, to nods and thanks, and left the room.

"Now what can I do for you?" senior asked, settling into an overstuffed chair.

The Doctor sat on the couch opposite him, next to Martha, hunched toward senior elbows on knees. "David. I'm the Doctor."

"What? The Doctor?" senior snapped. "There's only one Doctor as far as I'm concerned. Great man. Inspired the rebellion in the last days of the occupation! Wouldn't've come out right without him!" He leaned toward the travelers conspiratorally. "He had a time machine you know." Then he frowned at them. "Haven't I told you this before?"

"You've only just met us today," said Martha helpfully.

"What else?" demanded the Doctor.

"Wasn't that enough?" said senior, sitting back again. "Of course," he added without allowing time for a response, "there's what he did for me."

"And what was that?" asked the Doctor, sounding a little dry-mouthed.

"Gave me the love of my life, that's all! My late wife, David's mother. Bit of an age difference, but that's not as important as people make it out. Shakespeare's wife was older than he was, she told me that! My Barbara."

"Lemonade!" Junior returned to the room bearing a tray with four tall glasses. The Doctor took his and slugged the entire glass down in one go.

After that he chatted amiably enough with the Campbells, catching up on the twenty-second century rebuilding of Earth, but Martha made excuses as soon as she was done with her drink and herded him out as quickly as was polite.

He was silent on the walk back to the TARDIS, eyes on the road a meter in front of his feet the entire way. Patience had seen Martha through this so far, so she continued to trust it now.

On their entrance to the TARDIS she closed the doors and leaned back on them as the Doctor tromped to the console, stopped dead in front of it, and didn't move. Martha watched him till she saw his shoulders shaking. Then she walked to him, and wrapped her arms around him from behind as he sobbed, so that if he needed not to have her see him cry she wouldn't.

Then, The Good News

About three miles down the quiet country road beside which the TARDIS had deposited them there was a farmstead; red barn, house with a flower garden next to it. There was a white-haired old woman sitting on a bench swing on the porch. Even before Martha could start to try to make out her features, the Doctor's pace picked up and the woman had risen to jump off the porch - very agile for her apparent age - and run to meet him.

They were still spinning in an embrace - the woman's long, homespun skirts flaring - when Martha caught up with them. Then the Doctor held the old woman at arms' length and grinned, "Let me look at you!"

"Grandfather, I thought you must be dead!" Susan exclaimed. Martha smiled at the incongruity of Susan calling the Doctor "grandfather" when she looked twice the age he looked, old enough to be his grandparent. "I felt - I don't know, it was horrible."

"We're the last two," said the Doctor. "There was a a war with the Daleks. -"

"I knew they'd discovered time travel," Susan said. "About ten years after you left there were a few months when their invasion had succeeded."

"There was a button. And I pushed it." The Doctor's eyes went hollow, like they had on New New York. Susan's met them steadily. Then he grinned. "And I thought I was the only one left!!" He pulled Susan to himself again.

After about thirty seconds Susan waved to Martha. "Hello."

"Hi. I'm Martha."

"Would you like to sit down? I think I would."

"Yes, thanks. Doctor, shall we sit down? Your legs bend, and all."

Once Susan had been extracted from the Doctor and had led them back to the porch, she started telling them all about her life on twenty-second century Earth; reconstruction, her late husband David, their children. "You were right, Grandfather," she said, rocking with Martha in the swing while the Doctor sat on the front railing and drank her in with his eyes and his teeth. "I needed a full life of my own, like you had, before going off in time and space."

"Of course I was right," said the Doctor. "And I was right when I said I'd come back, too."

"Before what?" said Martha.

But Susan had shut her eyes, and her chin had dropped.

Martha wasn't sure what to call her. "Mrs. Campbell? Susan?" While the Doctor watched with no apparent concern, Martha reached across and felt Susan's wrist. Her pulse was fast, at least by the standard she'd come to expect of the Doctor. She looked a wordless question at the Doctor, but he only waggled his eyebrows at her. When she looked back at Susan, Susan was glowing.

Having seen it in the lab at the end of the universe, Martha recognized the onset of Time Lord regeneration. That wasn't, however, something that had been covered in her classes. She looked at the Doctor for direction, and when he only grinned harder Martha joined him on the railing.

Susan's regeneration was a lot quieter than the Master's had been: instead of the orange glow shooting out of her clothes, it floated cloudlike about her exposed features obscuring the metamorphosis. Then it vanished suddenly, leaving behind in the homespun clothes ... a long-haired brunette young woman who blinked, looked up and smiled. "I'm ready to go."

"Fantastamundo!" cried the Doctor, jumping off the rail, then pulling up short and mouthing the word he'd just invented with an expression like he'd licked a Dalek.

"Welcome aboard!" Martha sat next to Susan again and put her arm around Susan's shoulders, a little tenatively. She didn't know how fragile a newly regenerated Time Lord might be. Not very, if the strength of the hug she got back was any indication. Not so long ago Martha might have been disappointed not to have the Doctor's attention all to herself, but - to her surprise - Jack's time with her had precipitated a two-against-one dynamic between the humans and the Time Lord that had actually done him some good. And certainly Susan was less of a rival for the flavor of affection Martha aspired to than Jack was. And Martha had no doubt that the ties of gender would be stronger than any Time-Lords-against-human dynamic that the Doctor might, in the definitely not nonexistent petty corner of his mind, be anticipating while much these same thought were going through his head -

"I say! Hello!"

All three of them snapped their heads up or around to look across the fields to the crest of the hill across the road. There they saw a stocky, middleaged, fairhaired man in a long coat, waving a floppy hat.

The Doctor blinked at the sight, then turned to Susan. "Well, I guess this wasn't fated to be. Yet."

"Yet," said the new new Susan, standing to give the Doctor a peck. "I'll see you then." Martha was standing now and Susan gave her a quick hug. "Thanks for helping him heal, Doctor Jones," Susan whispered. Then she was dashing across the fields toward the other Doctor.

The Doctor watched her go while Martha watched him. He didn't seem to have much interest in his future self, which may have been mere paradox prevention; but actually Martha put it down to his delight and relief to see Susan.

They walked back to the TARDIS in a companionable silence. Only when they were back inside and aflight did the Doctor to turn Martha grinning. "Did you see me?"

"I did!" Martha laughed.

"Ginger at last!" He raised his hand, and Martha gave him a high five, and all was right with the universe.

The End

Comments

[the-10thdoctor.livejournal.com]

OMGCUTE <3

[phantomreviewer.livejournal.com]

Oh the second one!

I am so happy!

:D

[truthmaker]

Loved it.

I'm so glad you decided to follow up your earlier story.

While I like the second ending (your Martha was just excellent by the way). The first was so much more heartfelt, it almost brought a tear to my eye.

Almost ;-)

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Excellent, both of them.

As well as feeling the Doctor's pain in the first one, I also spared a little sympathy for alternate-Ian. You lose the love of your life to a freedom fighter half her age, and the only person you can talk about it with is the first Doctor...

The second was fantastic. I liked the throwaway "Destiny" ref. Minor nitpick, the Master was in the TARDIS when he regenerated, so Martha didn't actually see anything.

[scarfman]

I think you mean "Day of", not "Destiny". I saw someone else write that story from Susan's point of view recently, though I don't remember who or I'd've mentioned it.

[scarfman]

As for the "didn't actually see anything" thing: I started writing this midway through the season, and it's pretty invalidated by the season finale, so it just goes to show that there's no such thing as canon.