Generally when we write Forgotten Lives stories, we're told to keep it to the "prehistory" of Doctor Who. In other words, no references that would break the immersion of these being pre-Hartnell publications. But since this is just for me, and given my previous blog post and that it works rather well, I'll break that rule. Just this once.
Happy birthday, Doctor Who.
"When is your birthday, exactly?" Swan asked, completely unprompted.
The Doctor looked up from his book—something in an alphabet Swan didn't recognize—and ran a hand backwards over his short hair, as though clearing locks of his long wig out of his face. It must have been a motion of habit, as the wig in question was currently hanging from a peg on the hat stand near the TARDIS door. "I don't see why it's relevant."
"Curiosity."
"Hmm."
Swan bent her gaze back to her needlepoint. "Mine is the first of February."
The Doctor made another noncommittal sound. Swan couldn't tell whether that meant he'd grabbed the information and filed it away or ignored it completely. She'd only been a passenger on the TARDIS a little while, with her run-in with the Sisterhood of Karn taking place in a nebulous "not long ago," but she was already sensing changes in the Doctor. Well, not changes, she assumed. What she was seeing was likely the status quo, and the Doctor had deemed her familiar enough to witness it.
"It's just," she said again after a long silence, "that's the sort of thing you tell each other, isn't it? When you're friends."
"Is it? I wouldn't know."
He said it so casually. But he glanced at her as he did, as if expecting a riposte. She wasn't sure what that riposte might be. He sighed—was he disappointed?—and closed the book. "Mine is a long-lived race, Swan. Things like birthdays and age stop mattering after a while."
"I see." She remembered something about that. The Citizen, the man who'd taken her hostage assuming she had a connection to the Sisterhood, was apparently of this same long-lived race. The Citizen had been very indignant about it, this alleged longevity, but the Doctor's annoyance appeared to be of a different kind. "Even so," she pushed, "you must know when it is."
The Doctor tutted: an airy, theatrical sound that Swan had learned usually meant a monologue was incoming. "Birthdays. Really. For someone like me? Does a storm mark the anniversary of its birth? Do the planets pause their revolution to celebrate another journey 'round the sun? Did the Once and Future King have a birthday?"
"I expect he did," said Swan.
Another tut.
"Just because we don't know when it was doesn't mean he didn't have one. Everyone is born." Swan said the last with a sort of dramatic intonation she initially felt it deserved, like a great discovery laid out before fellow academics. But it wasn't all that clever, now that it was out in the air.
The Doctor looked at Swan, stunned to a degree that her statement hardly warranted. Then he frowned. Scowled, really. "Yes, well. It's a silly thing to get all worked up about, at any rate. You only get..." He eyed Swan, and for a moment she fully believed he'd done some quick maths in his head. "... a few dozen birthdays." Whatever maths he'd done, he opted not to share them with her. "Get hundreds, thousands, and they'll soon lose their appeal."
He turned on his heel and wandered into the depths of the TARDIS, and it wasn't until she was falling asleep in her room later that night that Swan pieced together what she might have done.
* * *
"You never told me when your birthday was," Swan said a few weeks later. It was a very different mood today. The Doctor was taking her to the theatre, though it was nothing like the theatres she was used to. It was a murder mystery by a writer born after her time, but whom the Doctor assured Swan would be everything for decades to come. As would the play. Now they were walking back toward the underground, the Doctor doffing his hat gallantly to fellow theatregoers who gawked at the two of them. Swan, for her part, had gone looking for an outfit more of the time and place, and found it pleasant to have all eyes on someone but her.
"You," the Doctor shot back with a smile between bows, "never told me why you wanted to know."
"I did."
The Doctor wagged a gloved finger at her. "You gave me an excuse. A decent one, but still not the real reason."
Swan frowned. "And you got cross. But you always get cross."
"Nonsense." The Doctor gestured to his whole person, as if to debunk her statement. "I'm a delight."
She fell silent. "Why were you so excited about this being performance one? You wrote it on my program."
"Ah. Well." The Doctor produced Swan's program from one of his coat pockets. "In years to come, that will matter. This show will run uninterrupted for years and years. Theatregoers of the future will have the performance number stamped on their program. Some will be in the tens of thousands."
"And people don't get bored of it?"
The Doctor shook his head, beaming. "Never. Never ever. I certainly haven't."
"So it won't lose its appeal after hundreds, or even thousands?" Swan asked pointedly.
"Of course n..."
Swan stared up at him. The Doctor stared back.
"... oh, don't look at me as though you've got me cornered with logic. You haven't got me cornered with logic."
"Do you know what I think?" Swan mused.
"I rarely know what you think, Mademoiselle Swan."
"I think you don't know when your birthday is."
The Doctor blanched. For a moment, his eyes flashed with fear that didn't reach the rest of his face. Then he smoothed his expression. "Nonsense."
"I don't think it's that you've had too many. I think it's that you've never had one."
"Listen." The Doctor pulled Swan out of the flow of pedestrian traffic. "I've just given you a lovely and educational evening out, one that most young students would be thanking their teachers for for days on end, and you decide to poke a stick in my bicycle spokes. That's not very upper-class of you." He huffed. "Or maybe it's extremely upper-class of you, I'm not sure."
Swan reached into her pocketbook. "Fine. You want the real reason. Here." She shoved a crumpled bit of fabric into his hand. "I wanted to know when to give this to you, but since you won't tell me... happy early birthday. Or belated. Or whenever."
He opened it up. It was a handkerchief, embroidered clumsily but caringly with rose garlands around the hem.
"Swan... this is..."
"It's dreadful, I know. I told you, I'm only good at reading and-"
The Doctor laid a hand on her head. "Thank you."
She beamed.
"... it is dreadful."
"Shut up."
The Doctor folded the handkerchief carefully and tucked it into a coat sleeve. "Why, though?"
"I... I used to make them for my parents. For their birthdays. And I realized..."
"Ah. Well." Even in his full regalia, wig and hat and gloves and all, the Doctor suddenly looked extremely awkward. "I was aiming more for 'austere tutor' than 'adoptive father,' but we must take what we get, I suppose."
Swan started to speak, but the Doctor cut her off. "Pick me a birthday, then."
"Sorry?"
"Not today," he went on with a wave of his hand. "It's already taken with something rather big."
"Oh." Swan thought. "Then... the 23rd of November."
"Why?"
"It's..." Swan smiled nervously. "The birthday of one of my favorite astronomers. Pierre Charles Le Monnier. He was recognized for his work before he was my age. Seeing all the work he's done since then has always made me think... well. Maybe I can do great things." She paused meaningfully. "And you've done that, too. So."
The Doctor coughed. "Well. I suppose it'll do. Though frankly, two masters of the cosmos on a single day feels a bit overcrowded."
Swan had learned to recognize the Doctor's moods, even if only a little. And she saw the smile he was pushing down, felt the lightness in his step as he walked her back to the entrance to the Underground. He was, if he'd allow himself to be, a bit happy.
