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Title: Belonging
Rating: G
Genre: Family...dare I say fluff?
Word Count: 1,193
Characters: Susan and One
Notes: For those unfamiliar with the classic series, Susan is the Doctor's canonical granddaughter.
Summary: You could say a TARDIS belongs to those who belong in it, and then it's not stealing, really.




Susan waited until the lights were out, before finding her night-vision goggles by feel. She didn’t know if the others were asleep yet, but it didn’t matter. Torn between exhaustion and nightmares, they weren’t a threat to her or anyone else. And as for her, she chose exhaustion, every time.

She reached under the bed and pulled out the worn pile of papers and disassembled hypercubes. The last letter from her parents was for her ninth birthday. That was three months ago. They’d decided to stop indulging her ‘hysterics’.

The fattest stack was from Grandfather. She hugged it to her chest, then started reading it from the first one. He could be a bit patronizing, and it didn’t make her feel better to read that everyone hates the Academy, and no one likes the Untempered Schism, but we all get over it, and the nightmares do stop, or you stop minding them, but just imagining his voice, his gentle arm around her shoulders, made her feel less alone.

Something buzzed against the window, and Susan bolted down to it, past the rows of other beds. She could hear other children stirring, feel their eyes on her back in the dark. With the goggles on, the hypercube at the window was blindingly bright, but Susan didn’t care. She opened the window to the cold, dry air, and grabbed at it greedily. It was from Grandfather. Unlike his usual rambling missives, this was only two words, hastily scrawled in wobbly circles. Come outside.

Susan stared at the letter, her hearts pounding. She started to bolt for the door, but then remembered the letters left out on her bed, and quickly gathered them up and crammed them as hard as she could into the secret compartment she’d engineered under her bed. The key to getting in was wanting to leave, which would stop most adults from finding it, she hoped. She whirled around towards the door again, then remembered the open window. Before she could make it there, another child had gotten up to close it. Susan froze, the other child emanating annoyance at her.

Without explaining herself, Susan simply ran for the door. Maybe the other child wouldn’t tell anyone, wouldn’t care. That was the only way to rebel in this place, really. Just don’t care about anything. Then nothing can get to you.

She was already a bit of an expert at dodging the staff and disarming alarms, though she seemed to run out of breath every time just the same. Soon she’d made it out into the courtyard. From here she could see the last bit of light electric blue on the horizon, as the second sun partially resurfaced after the sunset, only to be pulled under the mountains and the dark. Further up, the sky was burnt umber shading into black. The Dome smeared all the colors slightly, making it look like a painting, and if she looked straight up, she could see stars overlaid with the reflection of the city’s spires.

“Grandfather?” Susan called hesitantly. Did he just want her to look at the night sky? Or was this a trick?

The door opened on a parked hovercar, and what was inside was definitely not what was usually inside hovercars. “Susan, in here,” came her grandfather’s voice.

Susan stepped in and caught her breath. “Oh, Grandfather,” she said. “It’s beautiful! But wherever did you get it?”

Her grandfather smiled knowingly, and chuckled. “Well, my dear child, let’s just say that your old grandfather still has a few tricks up his sleeve, hmm?”

“You didn’t,” Susan said, her eyes growing wide with shock.

“Didn’t what? I’m sorry, child, I didn’t hear you,” he said playfully, fiddling with the controls. One of them came off in his hand, and he looked guilty for a moment, then slyly slipped it in his pocket as if he hoped she hadn’t noticed.

“A TARDIS,” Susan said, “A real TARDIS. And an antique! Oh, Grandfather, where can we go?”
Her grandfather’s answer was full of mirth. “Anywhere.”

“Can we travel for months and months, then return to a few moments after we left, so no one will even know we were gone?” Susan asked.

“Return? Hmph, what about returning?” her grandfather grumbled. “Is that what you want to do, hmm, come back here?”

For the first moment in her life, Susan felt completely free. “No. I don’t ever want to come back to this place.”

His smile returned. “And where would you like to go then, child?”

“Anywhere,” Susan replied, giddy.

“Then that’s exactly where we’ll go!” he chuckled, and with that he threw a lever, and the antique TARDIS sang.

-

Susan slept that night curled up to the heart of the TARDIS, nestled amidst the wires and glowing crystals, under the floor that her grandfather had partially torn up just to get it working. For once the nightmares didn’t come.

-

“I still can’t believe you came,” Susan said, dangling her feet out the TARDIS into space, over a shimmering nebula.

“Of course I came for you,” he said, as though it was a foolish notion that he might fail to give up his station, commit a museum heist, and incur the wrath of the Time Lord High Council because his granddaughter hated the Academy.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Susan said, “but what happened to,” and here she affected a rather spot-on impression of her grandfather’s voice, “You’ll get used to it, child, and it’ll make you stronger in the end?”

The old man smiled—no, it was really more of a grimace. He seemed to be looking at his next words as if trying to figure out the best angle to attack them from. He took a deep breath. “I’ve lived a long time, my dear child, and maybe I’ve forgotten a bit too much. But your grandfather was young once too.”

Susan snickered. “You, Grandfather? Your hair’s been white since before I was born.”

“Now, now, listen, child,” he said, sounding grumpier than he looked.

“I think it was you who listened,” Susan said, grinning. “You really did, didn’t you? Everyone else stopped writing back when I said how unhappy I was. Everyone but you.”

“You always were my favorite grandchild,” he admitted reluctantly.

“I’m your only grandchild,” Susan replied, laughing at their favorite joke. “But the TARDIS…I know they wouldn’t just give you this. Aren’t you going to get in trouble?”

“You could say a TARDIS belongs to those who belong in it, and then it's not stealing, really,” her grandfather said, as conniving as ever, and in the magic of that moment, she completely believed him; they would get away with it, laws and Time Lords be damned, because this TARDIS was theirs, because they had the right to be happy if her grandfather said so.

“I wanted to be…the family to you that I wish I’d had, when I was a boy,” he said.

“I want to be that family to you too,” Susan said, taking his hand and squeezing it. “It’s never too late to see the universe.”

“Quite right, my dear, quite right.”