Gallifreyan Nature: Chapter 11

[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.

 

After the previous days, Martha expected the rest of this particular adventure would go more smoothly, but she should have known better with the Doctor involved.  Nothing ever seemed to go exactly right, up until the end, so she could have been expected to be a little more cautious about hope.  Still, that’s what the dream and Daniel wanted her to do, right?

It was about midmorning when she heard Latimer cry out.  Miss Jones ran down the stairs, expecting an alien invasion any day now.  What she saw was much, much worse. 

Latimer, at the shooting range, had gotten in trouble for something or other.  They were going to beat him, whipping still being the primary method of choice to teach children things when they were supposedly being too thick (this judged by the adults) to learn any other way.  What really had Tim worried, though, was that Daniel, her wonderful, brilliant Daniel, had stepped out in front of Mr. Smith, preventing him from doing his duty as defined by the Headmaster.  Heart in her throat, she stayed at the window, not knowing what else to do.

“You can go ahead and thrash him if you like,” Winters was saying, in that magnificent, stern manner of his, “…but it won’t do any good.”

“What do you mean, boy?  Are you asking for a caning too?”  That was the Headmaster, completely astounded by the audacity of this boy.  His world didn’t work like this-boys behaved, servants did exactly what they were told…

The next word sent a chill through her heart.  “Yes.”

No one was expecting this.  All the boys stared, goggle-eyed, as Daniel stood straight and tall, in his strength towering over all there.  Martha’s heart went out to him.  Even the administrators were at a loss for words, completely unsure of what to do with this unexpected turn of events.  Miss Jones fought the urge to laugh and cry at the same time, keeping her eyes dry.  The Doctor never went at anything from the angle anyone else would have expected him to or would have tried themselves.  He was half mad that way.

Aware that his reasoning had to be made clear for these primitive humans to get it, he began speaking in that lecture manner of his.  “Hurting him won’t change a thing.  He’s stubborn like that.  He’s one of those people no matter how hard you strike him, he won’t learn.  In fact, he’s likely to be less cooperative because he doesn’t trust you.  Now, if you really want to make him stop, if you want him to do what you say, not because he suddenly knows it’s the right thing to do or whatever you people think, but because he’s afraid of what’ll happen if he doesn’t…” he took a deep breath, “Hurt someone he cares about.  Things like this are all about the consequences, and if the consequences are ones that he doesn’t really care about one way or another…it doesn’t have any effect, does it?”

He was smiling, in that angry, dangerous way he did sometimes when he was really, really mad about something.  Martha was glad that he’d never used that face on her, because shortly after, bad things tended to happen to the ones he was enraged at.

The Headmaster spluttered, “How do you know this?”

“Personal experience,” the Doctor answered.  “I’m like that too.”

Martha couldn’t look away.  Mr. Smith’s face was anguished, and it was obvious he didn’t want to beat his own ‘cousin’, but he didn’t really have a choice.  The worst thing was that they didn’t bother to move.  She wouldn’t have followed-she didn’t need to see this.  But they didn’t.  Baines fetched the cane with an ugly smirk on his face, and John didn’t see any other way out of it.  The Headmaster was looking on, with an extremely rattled look on his face-his authority was being challenged, how dare the boy?  And in the end Winters had offered himself up for the torture.  Like a caged rat, he did exactly as he was conditioned to do.

Doctor Jones flinched every time the cane came down, biting her lip in emotional pain.  The poor Doctor-her poor Doctor!  She didn’t know how she could survive this, how she could bear it.  It was some consolation that Mr. Smith’s eyes had long since clouded with tears, which had already begun to fall.  He could probably barely see.  He’d have a tough time living with what he’d done, she knew, and that small, kindred pain was something at least, a connection that she’d thought had disappeared when the Doctor changed himself into a human.

For his part, David never flinched, didn’t cry, didn’t whimper or beg.  The force with which the cane came down shook him every single time, but through it all he remained stoic.  This was the fortitude and courage that made the Doctor a force for good when all else had failed, that made his enemies weep and run at the very mention of his name, that made his foes tremble at his very footstep.  Beware, the wind seemed to whisper, beware the Doctor, beware the Oncoming Storm.  If you’re up to no good, if you mean ill, then beware, because the Last of the Time Lords is coming.

When he was finished, Daniel was sent to Nurse Redfern once again, and when Mr. Smith entered the school, he couldn’t meet his servant’s eyes.  He was probably beating himself up about it, internally.  Emotionally he looked raw, drained.

The rest of the day Martha couldn’t help it.  While usually she was able to summon up a smile and a jaunty word or two, she wasn’t able to today.  After seeing that she wasn’t sure that she possibly could have been remotely cheerful.  Jenny was worried about her, weeping morosely all the time, but she couldn’t help herself.

 

Daniel was very much conscious when the teachers laid him down, not so gently, in Nurse Redfern’s medical room.  He was also in boatloads of pain, his back on fire.  The nurse was concerned, as any touch on the back brought agony screaming over his torso.  His teeth felt like they were permanently locked, since he’d gritted his jaw to avoid screaming.  He was making a point, the very, very hard way.  His back, when she’d turned him over to examine it and tugged his shirt off-an excruciating process, one he hoped not to repeat in the future-was raw and a deep, deep red.  A strangled hiss escaped out of him then, and he shuddered, the cold freezing his back and making it ache even more.

She kept up being anxious, up until the point when she’d managed to wrangle an explanation of why he was this badly hurt out of him, bit by agonizing bit.  At that point, she’d gone cold, thinking he’d gotten what he’d deserved.  Maybe it was the fact that he’d been a touch arrogant when he’d brought this on himself.  Maybe she just didn’t want to think badly of the man she was beginning to fall in love with.  Whatever the case, she didn’t listen as he begged for mercy, from a woman who, even if she hadn’t taken the Hippocratic oath, was at the very least familiar with the principles.

She treated his wounds the very minimum she could, explaining-perhaps a bit smugly, or was that just him being paranoid?-that if she didn’t let it sting a bit, he wouldn’t learn his lesson.  He asked for better treatment; if they didn’t get cleaned out properly, he explained woozily, they might get infected.  “And then…I’d be really in trouble,” he muttered, eyes fluttering as he lost energy.  His best guess was the blood loss-although if he was in danger of giving into the darkness and the pain, he’d lost a whole lot more than he expected.  Would they notice that the blood was a purplish colour, or did it fit in enough that they had absolutely no idea?  What about the double heartbeat-had that given him away already?  Maybe he’d talked without realizing it.  He was feeling a little out of it, and might have been thinking aloud.  His brain felt scrambled, like someone had taken an egg beater and used it on his grey matter...

At the very last moment of consciousness, when the Doctor began drifting into the blackness waiting for him, he thought, comforted, ‘At least I know where another doctor is, a proper one that’ll actually help…’