He wondered how Susan was getting on, though he – of all people – should know how idiotic the thought was. Susan wasn’t ‘getting on’ now at all; she would be ‘getting on’ in about three and a half billion years’ time. But still the Doctor found himself thinking: a day has passed, two days, she will be with David, they will be planning a wedding in some half-ruined church, choosing a place to live—
and then—
“How will you tell him, my dear?”
I can’t bear your children, David, my people and yours are not cross-fertile—
Maybe they would adopt a child, one of the many orphans of the terrible war; or more than one child. He imagined Susan, happy in the middle of her huge family, teaching her children Earth-things, half-forgetting her own inheritance. And David growing older…
Would she try to disguise it? Dye her hair, perhaps? Put something on her skin to make it dry and wrinkled? How long would it be before she had to admit the truth?
I won’t grow old, David, not for hundreds of years. My people are— different. But I’ll put flowers on your grave, David, flowers on your grave…
The Doctor swiped the air with his stick, felt it slash into a jetheru bush he hadn’t even seen. Petals scattered onto the granite paving; some eight-fingered thing native to the world of the mereon-builders chittered and scurried away, invisible under the leaves.
Yes, thought the Doctor, surveying the rows of flowers through misted eyes, maybe the Sou(ou)shi way was for the best; a few seconds of terror, and then the end. Better than all this stitching and patching and mending of history, the good intentions that go astray, the misery that can never be prevented, the child deprived of her inheritance by an old man’s whim of rebellion and curiosity.
Venusian Lullaby (Paul Leonard). (via literarydimensions)
