Work Text:
It began as an accident.
“What’s this?” The Doctor said, to no one.
Not her fault, not really. She was alone in the TARDIS.
Or, perhaps, alone except for the TARDIS.
Regardless of framing, she was zipping around the control console, blonde bangs falling into her field of vision, blue coat flaring behind her with each motion, babbling to herself.
“No, no no no, but it can't...” Spinning over to a monitor, her eyebrows rose to meet her hairline. “It is. Oh.” Leaning back, she clapped her hands, then snapped her fingers. “Of course! Whatever else, they must have found a way to repair it.” Running a hand through her blonde locks, the Doctor stepped closer once more to see the readings. “The Web of Time.”
Perhaps the grandest creation of Rassilon, the tapestry of all the times that were and could be, weaving together alternate histories in ways easily managed by the central Time Lord authority while keeping history’s central continuity fixed.
An abominable thing, forged by a vile hand, torn to shreds in the Time War.
But it was back, or at least, some of it was.
And for whatever reason, the Doctor realized with a start, while she’d been looking into this discovery, her TARDIS was drifting down the web, slipping from the center to a new strand.
No, not new, it was... old. Older than the Time War. At least as old as the Doctor herself.
The Doctor smiled. Oh, time. How impossible, how ineffable. Perhaps these other realities, these disparate reflections, had been out here this whole time, waiting to be rewoven into the whole. Perhaps they'd stopped existing, but now that they were returned, had existed all along.
“What are you doing, love...?” Running her hand down the metal of the console, the Doctor pondered stopping this before it started, pulling out of this temporal-dimensional descent to abort the landing.
With that telltale materialization sound, the Doctor stayed her hand. If her ship, her lovely beautiful wonderful ship, wanted her here, then the Doctor wouldn't gainsay her.
Emerging out of the door, the Doctor found herself nearly stumbling down a sharp incline... a hill.
A steep hill.
A steep paved hill, with blaring cars and rows of buildings and the smell of the sea on the sir.
“San Fran!” She exclaimed, then winced. “Can't be as bad as last time, can it?”
No, it truly couldn't.
With that decided, the Doctor locked up her TARDIS and started to explore.
Within half an hour, she was lying flat on her back, resting on a wooden park tabletop, a half-eaten sourdough loaf in her hand. “So... this is Earth, 2027, no noticeable discrepancies from what I’d expect of the city that killed me.” She took another bite.
“Granny?” called out a voice, a young person’s voice, with just a hint of distress. The voice was both foreign to the core and bone-chillingly familiar. “Granny, you better not have left me again!”
Rising up to look around, the Doctor quickly caught sight of the frazzled speaker, and it was good that she didn't have any bread in her mouth, because otherwise she may have started choking.
Not twenty feet away was someone in the prime of their youth, wearing what even in this city would be an eye-catching outfit. Braless, they had on only a baggy sleeveless top and a pair of cargo shirts, no shoes or socks, and enough bangles and wristbands on their arms to use as inventory to open an accessory shop.
Their black hair was shaved on one side and around the back, giving the unkempt and frazzled remains an asymmetrical oddness. Tall, lanky, but with a hint of muscle in their legs that suggested an awful lot of running, this person suddenly met the Doctor’s eyes and beamed. “Granny! There you are!”
The Doctor didn't know what to say as the person approached, getting close enough she could count the freckles dusting their cheeks and neck.
Close enough for their mind to brush against the Doctor’s, as if expecting hers to already be open to psychic contact.
The touch of the mind was so painfully nostalgic, it put tears in the corners of the Doctor’s eyes even as those of her grandchild widened in surprise. “Oh! Not my Granny. She must have popped off so you could come by.”
“Susan?” the Doctor asked, voice a whisper on the wind.
Her grandchild almost winced, but nodded regardless. “Yeah, though with this regeneration I’ve been going by ‘Fore’. Y’know, like the golfing thing? But also, Foreman, that name you—”
It was hard for them to keep talking when suddenly the Doctor had them in a vicegrip of a hug, as though if she squeezed Fore long enough, she could get back all the years she’d lost with them.
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor whispered, more to the idea of her own Susan than the Fore she was holding onto.
Perhaps it was the hazy psychic connection, or perhaps Fore just knew her that well. Either way, they didn't need explaining. “It's okay, Granny. I’m okay,” she said. “Guessing... your me isn't?”
The Doctor didn't want to think about her pompous speech as she’d left her dearest grandchild behind on a war-torn Earth, or the vitriol in Susan’s eyes after what had happened with Alex, or the moment the news came to her of Susan's passing in the Time War.
She did anyway, damn her big brain.
“You never left?” she asked.
Pulling out of the embrace, Fore nodded excitedly. “You tried to ditch me, way back when, but I didn't let you. Some regenerations have been better than others, but things could be worse, y’know?” Oh, how the Doctor knew. “Want to hear about the ones you missed?”
Sitting down at the park table beside Fore, the Doctor nodded.
“Let’s see... oh! So, back with Jamie and Victoria and the Cybermen, I got captured, and when they couldn't convert me, they tried to kill me. Didn't take, obvs, but it was a big change. The first time is always so weird, or at least, that's what you told me, which is funny because you’d just done your first not that long ago.” Fore grinned. “Anyway! Second me, went by ‘Suzy’, really laid back? I think? It's kind of a haze. But Susanne, oh, now that was with UNIT, you worked there too right? So...”
The Doctor listened, on and on, eager to learn what she could from this grandchild of hers before she had to go back to her own universe.
Going forward, she’d do what upkeep she had to, in order to keep the Web stable.
After all, how else would she visit family?