Susan's Tale, Part 1

It was the fever that did it. The fever, and a careless remark from David.

This was just a year or so after the defeat of the main Dalek force in England, and we'd all been working hard to bring some order back to a devastated land. We were in regular communication with other parts of the world - restoring civilisation required a global effort - but there was so much to be done here that most of our time was spent concentrating on our immediate needs. I'd studied Earth's ecology but didn't have a feel for it like the people who'd grown up here, so it didn't make sense for me to help with food production. Instead, I concentrated on areas where my background could make a real difference: getting the infrastructure up and running again. Power generation, communications, sanitation. I remembered talking to Barbara about the Great Fire of London, and how the destruction allowed so many new things to be done that had been impossible before. This was another opportunity to put things back together in a better way!

It had taken a while to persuade people to listen to a young woman, even one who had been so involved with the defeat of the Daleks. Once they did, though, things took off in a big way. I wasn't an expert, but I was able to provide a perspective they couldn't simply because of where I came from. Sometimes I wondered what Grandfather would say. Wasn't this interfering in history? And then I'd remember how much we all did to give humanity a future, and I'd laugh at myself.

My thoughts and feelings were like that at the time, switching from one state to another a hundred, a thousand times a day. David and I were very much in love, with a fire and warmth that gave everything a kind of fuzzy glow, a deep-down, unshakable happiness that made me feel very secure. I would often think about Grandfather, though, and wish he were here with me as well. We'd been travelling together for such a long time! I was only a girl when we... when we set out. And then there was the devastation all around, the suffering and misery. What kind of a world was this to live in? You'd look into one face and see hope, then pain in the next, then determination. Nothing was stable. Except for what I had with David.

I think that time was harder on him than the war had been. Poor David, all he really wanted was to settle down on a farm somewhere and raise crops. First it had been Tyler and some of the others in the resistance, pushing him forward as a figurehead, a symbol of the revolution, someone who could give people hope again. It worked, too; partly because of his youth and vigour and partly because of his personality. He was the right man for the job. He knew it, and his sense of duty kept him from running for the hills. After a while he could have given it up, once the recovery effort began in earnest. But he didn't.

He stayed for me.

Oh, I'd have gone with him if he asked me, settled down on a farm somewhere; of course I would. But by then I was involved in all sorts of projects, and he could see that I was in my element. Was it selfish of me to let him do that? Perhaps, but it was probably more a case of my mind being too focused on our goals for the world rather than our own lives. I can see now that he made sure the subject never came up in conversation.

He was very clear about one thing, though: he wanted children. Which was a problem, because we weren't even of the same species, and I didn't consider Earth in that time a suitable place to raise them anyway.

I'd been avoiding the question for months when, quite suddenly, I found myself laid up in bed, almost delirious with fever. It wouldn't have surprised me if David had caught something, because his role kept him circulating around various groups and there was a lot of disease in London at the time. Nothing to do with the Daleks' bioengineered plagues, though many of the surviving humans worried that it was some kind of doomsday weapon left behind to punish us; no, this was simply due to a lack of clean water. But my body should have been immune to Earthborn viruses and bacteria.

However it happened, I lost a whole day to those tiny invaders. Faces flitted in and out of focus, some real, some long gone: I remember seeing Dyoni, and wondering when she'd left Skaro; Ping-Cho was there, and so was a female metaxi. The evening David came rushing in - he'd obviously just heard about me - and that's when he said it.

"Hang on in there, Susan, you're going to be fine! The Doctor's on the way."

My eyes opened wide and I stared at him in incomprehension. "Grandfather?" I mumbled, but before I even spoke he'd realised his mistake. He reached across the bed and wrapped his arms around me.

"Sorry love, that was stupid of me. I was talking about Doctor Renwick, from the camp, you know? I - I didn't mean..."

I shushed him with a finger and a smile, and we held each other while my heart broke all over again. It's strange how illness can magnify emotions, so much like the change from child to woman; and my mind drifted back again to that turbulent time, travelling with Ian, Barbara - and Grandfather...