Gallifreyan Nature: Chapter 10

[nevermoreraven]

Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: Teen
DISCLAIMER: Other people have actually read this one before the internet.  Yes, I know.  It's weird.
Summary: This is a rewrite of the Human Nature/Family of Blood two-parter, because I really liked Latimer.  It's long.  I liked it pretty well at the time, as did the other readers, so let's see how well it held up.  ...so far, so good.  also I actually bothered to tab for once on this one.
It's not finished, but it's fairly close.

 

He wasn’t in the disposition for chatting when Mr. Smith called him over near the school, but he let Arthur go back anyway-although not quickly.  He was feeling in a feisty mood, ready and willing to argue with authority, any authority.  The really galling thing was that he knew he couldn’t.  He couldn’t afford his emotional pain getting in the way, not now.

“Winters!” The pseudo-human’s voice was hearty, welcoming, and friendly.  Daniel didn’t give a stuff about Smith’s attempts to put him at ease.  “You went out of sight for a while.  Where were you?”  The interrogation lacked the force those words might otherwise have had.  John’s heart wasn’t really in the admonition.

“In wars you won’t really be fighting on nice, well-cut lawns.  There’ll be woods and fields, streams and mud, and you’ll be going through them, hearing the yelling of horses and men alike.  You have to keep going, to know how to find the best paths through forests that haven’t any.  It’s not all nice and pretty, well-packaged, neat, and orderly.  There’s the screaming, the blood and the pain, and you just trudge on and hope that, when the next body falls, it’s not your own.  It’s easy to forget about morals in a situation like that, because they’re so far away, not the day-to-day living and necessities that frame your world.  In time, you forget yourself, forget everything you might once have had, and part of you will remain in that place forever.  Your own private torture, a one-way ticket to Hades.”  At that point, Daniel shut up, realizing that he’d spoken too much.  ‘Like that’s new,’ the sarcastic part of himself pointed out.

Mr. Smith stiffened as if Winters had slapped him.  He hadn’t heard all of what the Doctor had stated in the bitter and painful moment, the Time Lord realized.  John hadn’t been able to perceive everything-it wasn’t part of his world, and the perception filter cut out his ability to see and hear such.  It was all background noise to him.  But he’d gotten the gist of what he’d snarled in the fit of rage, probably heard the first sentence or so.  And the thought of it chilled him.  The thought of his boys dying cut through to his very core.

Luckily he didn’t know about the future-the future in which his boys would indeed be fighting and dying on the war torn battlefields of Europe.  Only he and Martha bore that agonizing knowledge-the burden of a Time Lord, he realized.

Daniel managed a bittersweet smile.  “I hate war,” he explained, although that small admonition was rubbish in telling anyone what was going through his mind.  But he couldn’t tell Mr. John Smith about the war that had destroyed his home forever, about the terrible wrath that scared him sometimes, about the wounds inside that hadn’t yet healed.  He stood for other ways, for diplomacy and arguing and about people living to the end of the day, for he’d seen far too much death.  Too much even for his short lifetime.

Mr. Smith sighed.  “Sometimes it’s glorious.  But I don’t know whether it’s worth the pain.”

It surprised Daniel that this very British humanoid would admit to such a thing.  War was fashionable in these days, and John probably thought that something was wrong with him for thinking such thoughts.

Winters just nodded, the same, sad smile on his face.  “It seems we really are related,” he remarked, to which Smith laughed.  The Time Lord in him didn’t see anything really funny, but it was better than the gloom of previous minutes.  Mr. Smith wandered off, whistling.  Just briefly, the Doctor contemplated reminding his other self that he was unconsciously doing a Gallifreyan battle song, but decided against it, the impish grin threatening to take over his facial expression despite himself.

 

Dan wandered over to Tim’s place at the breakfast table and sat down.  Latimer looked up at him and grinned.  “Have a good time on horseback?”

Daniel smiled back at his friend, ignoring the fact that his mouth was full.  “Yup.  Just one thing I was wondering…while I was hanging on and managing not to fall off, I thought I saw some caves out there, in the woods.”  To prove his point, he gestured with a fork off into the distance. 

The other boy nodded.  “There’s a whole cave system out there.  I’ve been banished out there a couple of times, to collect wood and things, and I’ve done a bit of exploring then.  The local ones, though, they say the caves extend much farther-and deeper underground.  Apparently ages ago they were used as shelters, whenever emergency said they needed someplace less open than this place.”  It was his turn to gesture around.

The young Time Lord nodded, eyes becoming distant.  Tim didn’t bother him about what he was thinking about.  He guessed he’d learn about whatever had piqued the strange boy’s curiosity…sooner or later.