A Country of Smaller Wars (3/3b)
"A Country of Smaller Wars", 3/3b ( Main page)
Gallifrey, Narvin/Romana
~23,000 words
R (violence, sexual situations, ennui)
Spoilers through the end of season four.
Replication as personal philosophy, or, an ex-spy walks into a bar and says-
*
The buildings around the edge of the dome are older than he remembers them being back home, crowding haphazardly against the barrier. The last bastion of an exiled world. They must have torn these down millennia ago in his city. Concrete, stone, brick. Behind him is the needle spire of the Arcalian skyscraper, ahead of him are the mountains, sweeping dark red against the grey sky. In the foreground is a precariously poised assemblage of wood and plaster. A hanging sign with a painting of a pigbear. The word for it is 'pub', which is short for 'public house', which is one of those phrases dutifully carrying a history no one remembers.
The crowd around him bustling, talking, moving in well-worn patterns. All these little people: what do they do with their lives? And no one recognizes him, there is no bright flash of chapter colors, no ceremony. Servants, factory workers, secretaries. A city beneath the city. He imagines this all existed in some part on most Gallifreys, although he'd never had cause to acknowledge it. He knows it's impossible for a society to run on rarified air alone. He knows the difference between Time Lord and Gallifreyan, although there are no Time Lords here, just politicians and landed gentry and a fully capable police force. Still.
All these people, he thinks, who don't care what he does. Who are only dimly aware of the state's mechanisms, who watch the news instead of standing in the Panopticon, who orbit the High Council distantly at best.
He walks into the public house feeling supremely out of place. They don't recognize his face but they know his robes, nod politely and turn away. He wishes there was a CIA wardrobe he could have raided.
Leela bought this place when there were no slaves left for her to counsel, using the funds Narvin had quietly left in an unmarked account. It's fitting, if a little disappointing. There are no battles to fight, and she turned down both the bodyguard position Romana offered and the Chancellery Guard post he'd vaguely pushed in her general direction. So she pours drinks and wipes counters and cooks food. Creature comforts.
She's sharpening knives in the kitchen, braced against a scarred wooden table. He watches from the doorway, turning a glass around in his hand, listening to the noise of metal on metal. "I imagine you have the keenest blades of any restaurant in the city," he says.
"Dull knives are useless even for vegetables."
"I thought you would change the name," he says. He hoists himself onto a countertop.
She pauses, looks up at him. "The people know this place as Kartro's. It is familiar to them. If I changed it, they might leave."
"Give the people what they want."
"There are men and women who come here every day. I think they spend more time here than at their homes."
"A home away from home."
"Stop speaking in slogans, Narvin."
"Familiarity is a comfort," he says.
"You are an odd little man." She puts the knife down, walks around the table and lifts him roughly off the counter. "I have a message for Romana," she says. She's a few inches taller than he is, even in flat heels, taller and more confident and precise in herself. The wolf beneath her skin. He waits helplessly. She grins.
She slides an arm around him, hand on the small of his back, bends him backwards and kisses him soundly. She tastes like iron and salt. Teeth to tongue. She pulls away and squeezes his face affectionately.
"Give that to her, and tell her she is loved," she says.
"It's a generally accepted fact of Gallifreyan life that one just doesn't do things like that. You can get away with it, savage, I can't. If you want to tell her then tell her yourself."
"They are simple words, and only three of them. I have heard your speeches, they are complicated and go on forever. Surely you can manage this." She knows what he means, but she wants him to correct her. Not I can't but I won't, the difference between what he's capable of and what he's allowed.
"I'll tell her you said hello," he says. She knows what he means.
*
What to say when you meet yourself, how to interact. Different ways to cover the strangeness. False vanity; irritation; effulgent, sarcastic praise. Yourself as you are and as others know you. Things to say to draw attention away from the fact that your first impulse is to kill the man who is your mirror, not so much out of self-preservation but because you just can't stand him. Blinovitch Limitation Effect aside, it's not a good idea to have two of someone in the same room.
Narvin watches the vidcast of Romana's speech. Maybe Leela's watching this too, paused over a half-peeled potato, talking back to the monitor.
She's convincing. She's commanding. She puts strange pauses and emphases into sentences. The crowd applauds. She walks to the right, and to the left, gesturing with the staff. Big, grand motions. The defiant chin jut. The camera angle makes her look bigger than she really is, more impressive, the flatteringly dramatic light of the Panopticon.
He sees himself standing off to the side. He sees - what, exactly? A little man in robes too big for him. An impostor. He suddenly becomes aware of how ridiculous he looks. How his haircut makes his ears stick out. The shifty, darting eyes. How the ceremonial collar accentuates his round, boyish face and receding hairline. Why, again, does Romana deign to sleep with him? He watches himself watching her. He realizes suddenly that everyone else is watching him watching her. Everyone else can see.
He hears himself speak and thinks, Rassilon, do I really sound like that? The absurdity of himself on the screen. That flash of alienation, the distance between himself in his head and himself as he is. Seeing himself as others do. His awkwardness, his various physical inadequacies. He ponders the viability of never taking his clothes off again.
Poor Narvin, he thinks. You finally decided you wanted to be noticed and you don't like what she sees. Get over yourself.
"Get over it," he says to video-Narvin, still undeniably staring at Romana. "All of it. Just-" He clenches his fists, then unclenches them, and calmly turns off the screen.
*
They're building a time machine. He remains fairly certain that it'll explode, that they'll flip the last switch and suddenly see the whole of the universe, the massiveness of time, before they're split apart into dust.
"Leela sends her love," he says, apropos of not much. "She's too proud to come back, but she does miss you."
"Is she doing alright?"
"Best as can be expected. She has an awful little restaurant on the edge of town, it seems to be making her happy." He shrugs. "She's a survivor. She'll be fine."
"I hope so."
There's a pause. He'd like to say it was companionable, but she's too tense and he's too aware of her being tense and the air between them is flat and still and nothing at all like it was before. He pretends something interesting has just happened on the monitor. He waits.
She huffs out a sigh and stands up and there is a moment here, he thinks, a moment where he could say something or do something to stave off whatever is about to happen, if he just knew what it was, if he knew how to do this, any of this.
She's standing and she's leaving. "I think you can take it from here, Narvin. You know I'd like to help, but it's getting harder and harder to find the time. It's the same old story, not enough spans in the day. And with the conference coming up..."
"Of course, Madame President." He gives his best obsequious smile, which admittedly isn't all that great.
"Narvin, don't let's do this again." She looks at him like she wishes she could snap her fingers and fix whatever's making him so damn sensitive. For that matter, he wishes she could too.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," he says. He can't look at her. He swallows hard against the thing in his throat, wills his hands to stop sweating. Wonders what exactly it is that's wrong with him.
"Narvin," she says, then stops. He looks up then, and for a second is convinced she's as lost and bewildered by this as he is. Just a second. Then she turns and strides imperiously through the door, and the whine of the closing mechanism is somehow the most awful thing he's ever heard.
He'll flip the switch and they'll be split apart. Everywhere and nowhere, atoms scattering to the far corners of the universe. He's trying not to wonder what that'll be like.
*
The traditional duties of the Chancellor are: overseeing the Chancellery Guard, (symbolically) running the Academy, voting on minutiae, influencing the High Council on behalf of the president, prancing around looking important. The Chancellor's new duties include: advising the president, collating the efforts of various departments, monitoring the threat level.
The Chancellor also now runs a network of spies but that's not, strictly speaking, something he's supposed to do. Romana will never publicly admit that occasionally the best way to avoid brute force is to employ subterfuge. She'll never publicly admit, that's the key. He does what he has to do, and she lets him.
He finds someone he trusts - well, someone whom he could easily destroy, and who is aware of that, which is the same thing - to run his as-yet unnamed, unmentioned agency. Miralestrellek, ex-Chancellery Guard. She has a deadpan way of talking he appreciates. Outspoken, but not needlessly so. He gives her the title of Director.
"Director of what?" she asks.
"The agency."
"What agency?"
"How's this. Your first task as Director is to name it."
"And my other tasks, Chancellor?"
He sighs. "Gather information. Embed operatives in sensitive areas. Intervene when necessary. Be discreet. Send me a daily report, but keep an appropriate distance. I can't be seen to be too involved."
So she goes, and so he has an organization now. Delegation, a spreading around of blame. Other people to make decisions for you. Braxiatel used to manage easily enough. He'll divert funds, give her a store front, a cover story, a seat in the general assembly. He'll acknowledge he can't fight all these battles himself.
But there's a part of him, there will always be a part of him that needs direct control. A hand on the pulses of this city, an intimate understanding of the enemy. Before the action comes the thought, and before the thought comes the emotion, and empathy is something he's yet to master.
He rebuilds the device from memory. This Gallifrey has no Chameleon Arch, or any analogue of it, but he can still listen in, can get closer than he does with his agents' reports. Circuits, lines of code, neat rows of wires. Red to black and blue to green. A small metal case. He tells himself it's a valid addition to state security protocols.
And maybe it's not voluntary now, and maybe he takes suspected terrorists in and forcibly implants the chip before retconning them half out of their minds. So it's a little reckless, and more than a little wrong. He's a spy. He doesn't do right and wrong.
And if there's a small rush of anticipation when he sees that first blinking icon on his personal computer that means it's started, that means he's about to push himself into this again, into someone else's life again, it doesn't mean anything. Similarly, the feeling that could be guilt, or self-condemnation, or something else entirely, that feeling means nothing. A primitive reaction, it'll pass.
Lie to everyone but yourself, Vansell used to say. When you can't tell yourself the truth, something is wrong. Step back and re-evaluate. An agent in denial is no use to anyone. But Vansell got himself killed, and Narvin stopped caring what he said long before he died. Nothing is wrong, even if that word meant anything to him in this context. Which it doesn't.
He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. He is standing by a lake. The water is mirror-flat, the air warm, the sun low in the sky. He is thinking, possibly, of fear.
*
There's a mistake in his daily report. Nothing much - although he should be more careful, should not easily accept that his attention had slipped - but it's always a little thing, isn't it, that finally does a person in. He observes Romana as if from a great distance. Flushed face, clenched jaw. The hard cross of shoulders and spine. The way she grinds the words out as if they're not at all the words she really wants to use.
He does understand, if only obliquely. There are the usual pressures of the presidency, and the constant fear of discovery, and also the constant fear of assassination. There's Leela, who still hasn't visited, and Braxiatel, who even in absentia refuses to be dealt with in any convenient way (and her feelings for him, Narvin knows, are complex). There is the vast, incomprehensible horror of the war, and the guilt at abandoning her home, her people, her responsibilities. And then there's him, of course, being difficult again, dissembling and smirking and arguing again, being disappointingly himself. And maybe that look in her eyes is her remembering for the thousandth time that she doesn't like him much. Or maybe, most likely, she's just tired and lonely. He's incapable of fixing those things for her, but he's all she's got, and maybe that's what this particular fight is hinging on, their relationship like some kind of cosmic practical joke. The idea that this is it. This is it.
So she apologizes for shouting and he apologizes for the error and then they spend half a span reviewing progress reports on the Academy staff with all the professionalism and restraint they can muster. So she buries herself in her work again, and he lets her, because he doesn't know what he'd do if she didn't.
*
He is taking apart and reassembling a rifle. He knows each piece intimately. Power cell, guidance module, stabilizer, trigger. He knows the weight of it, the balance against his shoulder, the ways his body shifts to accommodate it. The correct stance to use, the muscles involved. He stares through the sights so long the crosshairs imprint on his retinas, the ghost of it trailing. The idea of living through this, living as this, himself a component as the safety latch is a component. A part of something greater. He's going to change the world.
*
The man who is trying to kill the president this week is huddled in a ventilation shaft, C2766 rifle slid through the grate. The man who is going to kill the man who is trying to kill the president is crawling up behind, quietly, slowly, sidearm first. Narvin is aware of this happening as he stands, hands clasped in front of him, on the Panopticon floor.
Romana is talking about peace and reconciliation, her vision of a kinder, gentler Gallifrey. The importance of reason. Progress, she's saying, means laying down the sword and picking up the pen. There is a choice to be made between compromise and self-destruction. There is a decision to be made about who we are as a society, who you are as a member of it. Soldier or scholar, servant or lord, dead or alive. She's saying, our potential could be limitless if we could only just stop shooting each other. She's saying, we are better than this.
Somewhere in the gallery, a trigger is pulled.
*
The familiar shape and smell of staser burns. The distinctive way brute energy punches through a ribcage. Director Mira is overseeing the autopsy. He tells the guards he's there to wrap up loose ends on his official report.
She's remarkably calm about this, he notes. She's doing well. He threw up the first time he saw a murder victim up close, though he'd never admit to it, and death still bothers him on a physical level. He keeps his eyes on her and away from the body.
Always had a weak stomach, didn't you, a voice inside him says, and he doesn't bother figuring out who it sounds like.
"If it takes three people to kill someone, who is more responsible? The person who gave the order, the person who organized the action, or the person who did the actual deed?" There's more genuine curiosity in her voice than guilt or anger. He knows precisely the thought process she's working through now. The network of fault and authority, the woman she is now that she's done this. A re-evaluation.
"Don't forget him," he says, nodding to the body on the table. "A victim who gives just cause for his death is not really a victim at all. And we live in a culture that demands we be - pragmatic."
"Of course, Chancellor."
"The president is right to say we need to change to advance as a society. But pacifism doesn't stand a chance against violence. The hearts and minds of the people will not be won overnight. We must remain vigilant, and we must be able to do what she cannot."
He is expecting her to return with necessary evil, or something like it, something to express the dichotomy she now inhabits. Instead, she says, "Someone should tell the president that progress is a type of violence. The sacrifice of the past for the sake of the future."
The phrase time traveller re-registering suddenly in his head. The artron energy now wasted and dormant in him. Time traveler, observer, interventionist, invader. His TARDIS key vibrates in his pocket, or maybe that's just his imagination.
*
He's following himself. He's watching himself through a telescope, he's taking notes. Schedules, routines, known associates. He's taking pictures, recording videos, combing through assembled footage. He's finding weaknesses, vulnerabilities. A frequently-played clip of him talking with the president, there, do you see that, his hand on her elbow, how close they're standing.
He's watching himself through the crosshairs of a rifle. There's a sudden, blinding flash of pain, and then he isn't watching anything at all.
In the black, someone's saying his name. He forces himself awake, reaches out blindly to turn off the device. His office swims into focus. There's a hand on his shoulder. A hand, and an arm, and.
"Narvin?" Romana asks, and maybe it's just side-effects, but she sounds nearly worried.
"How long have you been here?" His voice crawls out raggedly.
"Long enough." She breathes in deeply. "For a nanospan there, I thought I'd have to call a medic."
"I'm fine."
"You don't look it."
He laughs humorlessly, but says nothing. Peels the electrodes off. Wipes the sweat from his forehead. Swallows. Swallows again. Considers the particular boneless feeling.
She allows the silence for a moment, then breaks it. "What are you doing?"
"It's classified."
"I'm the president. I have the highest possible security clearance. Tell me, Narvin." She takes her hand off his shoulder, steps back, stares at him before sitting in the chair on the other side of the desk. The low-slung, uncomfortable chair he normally uses to intimidate his inferiors. She still manages to look presidential.
He holds his hands out, palms up, as if to gesture: here, a box with all the information in it. "I was spying."
"Narvin."
"Do you remember," he says, then pauses. "Nevermind. I, this," he gestures vaguely to his computer. "In order to keep watch on subversive elements and prevent your assassination, I re-created... That is, I, um-"
"What. Were. You doing?"
"I covertly implanted recording devices into several known terrorists. I was - reviewing the data." Not bad, all things considered. "Would you like to try it?"
She makes a face that he translates as what is wrong with you? but later, behind locked doors and under bedsheets, will mean something else entirely. Like I'm sorry, like you don't need to suffer for me. Like anything at all other than what it actually is.
Now she is clenching her jaw. Now she's doing her best to be cold and removed. "Sometimes I'm reminded of just how little I understand you."
"Only sometimes?"
"Don't be coy. And you obviously don't know me all that well either, if you thought you could get away with this." She folds her arms and tilts back in the chair. Her microscope gaze.
"I know you," he says lowly. His voice still isn't working right. Like slow-motion coughing.
"Don't tell me you've smuggled one of those chips under my skull-"
"No. No. I'd never - I couldn't. But I do know you." He twists his spine experimentally. "Would you like me to elaborate?"
"Not particularly. I doubt it'd be flattering and I'm not in the mood to hear criticism from you."
"And then again," he says, pretending not to have heard her, "sometimes you're absolutely unfathomable."
She snorts. "Aside from Leela, I'm probably the least mysterious person on this planet."
"The things you do to me," he starts, before realizing what it is he's about to say.
She doesn't even have the decency to look confused. She doesn't look like she's feeling anything at all, aside from the angry frustration she always has around him. "This has to stop."
"I know," he says. "All of it." He turns the box over in his hands, over and over. Here, all the answers you want. He sets it down on the desk, then reaches for his staser. He looks at her, he's searching for the right facial expression. Can't find it, of course. Doesn't even really know what he's looking for. He shrugs, then aims at the little grey box, blows it into fragments. The sound echoing, dust settling. "One down."
A wave of fear slips through before she's just angry again. He know he shouldn't be, but he's pleased that he can still get to her, that there's anything left in her to get. "You've lost it," she says, or shouts; she's shouting now. "You're insane. I can't believe I ever-"
He's waiting. She doesn't finish the thought. "I have a meeting," she says, voice wavering slightly. "Good day, Chancellor." She stands up, turns hard on her heels, walks in a straight line to the door, not looking back.
"Always a pleasure, Madame President," he calls after her, but she's already gone.
*
It's a lot of details. His brain is still processing them as what just happened, a localized temporal variation, five seconds that refuse to solidify into an event.
He walks into the room. Call it a tableau. A man in a chair, Chancellery Guard in formal red and whites, restraints pulled tight around his wrists and ankles. Something on his head, electrodes leading to a computer playing iterative personality code. Director Mira, standing a calculated distance away, face blued behind a protective shield, pulling the trigger on a staser. There's the squawk of rushing energy and the crackle of burning fabric and the man biting down hard on the gag in his mouth and his body arcs, one nanospan, two nanospans, then he slumps down.
She's mine, he thinks, slightly hysterically. I did that. He taps hesitantly on the wall.
She pulls the visor up over her face. "Good evening, sir."
"Why did you shoot that man?" he asks. He's aware of a note of panic in his voice. She doesn't seem to notice.
"It's how we make assassins, it stands to reason it would be an appropriate process for spies as well," she says, like it's the most natural thing in the world. They kill them, then, that's what happens.
"Yes, yes of course. Absolutely. Excellent work." He takes a deep breath. "And he'll be reconditioned."
"Yes sir, using a variation of the Bader-Kellis metric. Would you like to check the program yourself?"
He's done this before, he knows that program cold. Percentages, a man's life broken down into percentages. "No, I'm sure it's fine. Carry on."
"Was there something you wanted, sir?"
There was, but for the life of him he can't remember. It'll come to him. It can't have been all that important. "I'm just doing the rounds. Seeing how everything is going. Don't let me keep you."
"Thank you, sir. Until tomorrow, then, sir." She nods deferentially, then sits down at the computer, hands over the keyboard like she's done this before.
So they kill them, but it shouldn't be that big of a revelation, considering they kill everyone else. It's not about violence or bloodlust, just expediency. Matter-of-fact efficiency. He hasn't done his homework, is the problem here. Everything they do, everything they take for granted. This is a foreign country, he can't forget that.
*
There is only one city on Gallifrey. The city is Gallifrey. The land outside, the mountains, the sea, the endless untouched plains, are as ignored here as they were back home. The planet is the thing the city resides on, and the city is the thing that sustains the idea of Gallifrey, all that name embodies, the history, the power, the faith he once had. This is, of course, not his city. It's a near-perfect duplicate, physically speaking, all the buildings and streets he remembers, close enough that he can look up at the skyline and pretend to forget and almost, almost feel like he's where he belongs.
Gallifrey is the citadel and the citadel has fallen. He follows the ghost of it around. The dwindling artron energy he keeps trying to spark back to life, the time machine that won't start, the blood in his veins and in Romana's veins. The thing they tried and failed to find in each other.
She's barely spoken to him in weeks. What he's feeling is betrayal, not of himself or anything so petty as a relationship but of the city, their city, and her promise to it. She's stopped searching. She's making do. She's compromising, which for all her faults is not a weakness he'd ever subscribe to her, giving up, giving in, letting go.
Of all the causes of this drifting sensation, this distance from everything, the one he'll admit to is the fear he'll die in a city he doesn't believe in. That she'll die here. The last part of himself he still recognizes: Romana is his president and this place does not deserve her.
*
Heartshaven sits by the white cliffs that rise harshly over the Petraean Sea. There's a lighthouse, still standing after millennia of disuse, the mirrors at the top reflecting the twin rays of the suns out to ships that no longer come. The water foaming violently below, weeds clinging to the rocks. He's standing on the edge looking down, the wind whipping his robes, that peculiar combination of salt and granite, something decaying, and he's wondering why he's only just now realizing what his home planet smelled like.
The sea stretching out before him, waves and swells flattening out into horizon. Heartshaven at his back. They'd come here, Romana's ancestors, built a manor house and a small town of servants' quarters, huddled together against the sky and precipice. This of all places. The fear of the familiar danger that comes from inland, and the fear of what lies in the uncharted deep: the manor faces the sea. He's not all that surprised.
The Cape of Good Faith, the northernmost turn of the continent. The island he used, in another life, to process CIA operatives newly in from the cold lies two miles out. Black Rock, the white cliffs, there's a metaphor in there somewhere but he's not the person to find it. He wonders if she ever knew, if she stood here watching for the tell-tale spark of the transmat arcing into the air.
"There's a fence," she says. "Back home, on the real Gallifrey. So no one falls off."
"Or jumps," he says, still leaning into the wind. "Though I suppose one could simply climb the fence. Was there a lighthouse?"
"Pardon?"
"Back home," he says, feeling the weight of the phrase. "Was there a lighthouse?"
"No. Not in my time, anyway." She steps forward, toes on the edge, shoulder just brushing his. "We should get back to the reception. Our absence will be noted."
"I hate parties. I've put in my time, you don't need me there." He turns to face her, trying to catch her gaze. "You go." He takes his collar off, something he's been wanting to do all night, wincing a little as the brocade slides roughly over his skin. He sets it down on the ground, looks at it with suspicion, wonders for the thousandth time what master torturer designed it, and whether he can get their contact information.
"Narvin..." Hesitating, oh, that little shred of regret she likes to air out. She could say I want you there, but she doesn't. Maybe she's thinking it. She reaches out tentatively, puts a hand on the back of his neck, thumb against the soft spot behind his ear. "Well. I'll be going, then."
He nods, and looks away. The tide is coming in; the water, the wind, the rocks, the thing crowding his chest. The faint sound of the guards snapping to attention as Romana reenters her ancestral home.
The thing building up and up inside him, and he doesn't know what to do with it, and so, without really thinking about it, he kicks the collar, hard as he can. It tumbles off the edge undramatically. Doesn't even make a noise when it hits, or a splash, just sinks, sinks down until he can't see it anymore and he is aware, obviously, of what a stupid thing that was to do, and that he'll have to come up with a cover story for why he doesn't have his custom-built, one-of-a-kind official Chancellor's collar, because I kicked it into the sea in a fit of pique will never fly, not with the Council's tailor and certainly not with Romana.
All these big grand gestures, emotional compulsions, but if he's honest he left the rational world behind a long time ago. Call it blending in, acclimatizing. Every action here tends inward.
*
The Crown and Castle closes at two past final bell, Kartro's at three. He's not sure when he started memorizing operating hours. There's a block and a half between them, a pause he spends working up the nerve to do this. He's never argued when people called him a coward. But this, this he needs to do. There are hinge points, remember.
Leela can see through him. Leela has always been able to see through him. Instinct, when did that become a thing he put faith in? And it was easier when the only thing there to find was the fact that he was a bastard. This would be easier if she still hated him. Now she looks at him and she's concerned. He's had enough of everyone's concern.
"Savage," he says, half-heartedly.
"Liar," she replies, with entirely too much warmth. "Come, sit at my best table, I made a soup today I would like you to try."
He doesn't have a chance to decline. Two microspans later he's looking down at his usual drink and a large steaming bowl of whatever-it-is. "Delicious, I'm sure," he mumbles, then pushes it away, picks up the glass and takes a preparatory sip. "Leela, I want you to go see Romana."
She stiffens. This is still a delicate topic. "She has not made any attempt to contact me. She may be the president but she has free will, and can do as she pleases. She does not want to see me."
"Of course she wants to. She just - she can't. She'll never make the first step. She's too proud. It has to be you. Apologize, or don't, it doesn't matter. Just go see her, or you'll spend the rest of your life wondering why she never called."
"Narvin."
"Hmm?" He's stirring the soup, spoon rotating at an average rate of six centimeters per second. All the bits whirling around. Root vegetables, herbs, chunks of an unidentifiable meat.
"What happened?"
He stops stirring. The soup keeps spinning. "Nothing. Nothing happened. Leela, swallow your pride and do this. For her sake, for yours. For mine, if that has any currency with you."
"Last call," she yells abruptly. "Everyone has to leave now. You don't have to go home, but you cannot stay here."
"I commend you on your improved grasp of idioms, but 'last call' means last chance, last - they can all get another drink."
She's got that concentration face on, like she's storing the information away in a mental box labeled Things People Say Without Knowing Why They Say Them. "You can order one more item and then leave. No...'loitering'."
"Same as before," he says. "Twice."
Half a span later, the place is empty save for the two of them. She's sealing bottles and stacking glasses, wiping tables, turning off lights. He's dropping the first drink's garnish into the second. He likes this part, where basic motor skills require so much attention that he doesn't have the time to worry about anything else. There's no details here, like everything's disappearing, like he's slipping out of himself.
"You'll talk to Romana," he says, enunciating carefully.
"I will. And I'll tell her that our mutual friend Narvin is a drunk. I thought spies couldn't lose control?"
"Ah, yes, but I'm not a spy anymore. I'm a politician, and politicians are supposed to drink. How else would we sleep at night?"
"By not doing things that keep you awake," she says. "Go home, Narvin."
He goes, eventually. Or, not home, since that's a thing he can't do anymore, go home, but he follows the streets he almost knows, winds up in a place calling itself his apartment. They tell him he lives here, and the lock always recognizes his fingerprints, even when he just sort of slams his palm against the scanner. He stumbles in and collapses where the bed used to be, not where it actually is, and there's a brief moment where he's afraid he might cry, but he gets up and tries again, manages to land crosswise on the mattress, and falls asleep with his boots still on.
*
There's one piece missing. Otherwise it's finished, the thing that's ostensibly a time machine. He thinks it might work. All it needs to do is find the Axis, just reach one set of coordinates, one epoch. He figures the chances are good, good enough to risk it. Any chance is good enough to risk it.
All that's left is the thing that actually makes it start. The one piece of code he doesn't know how to write. Maybe Romana would know, but he can't ask her, not now. This is something he does on his own.
He spends a quarter of a span staring blankly at the wall, before his hand moves, almost of its own accord, to the lower reaches of his pocket. The TARDIS key. He rubs a thumb over the raised metal, the faint energy buzz of his name below the Warpsmith insignia. Inside is a tiny sliver of circuit paper, the imprimatur. It'll do. He pries the key apart, gently takes the paper out and tapes it in place underneath the console. The machine hums approvingly.
This is a situation where he should leave a note. If you're reading this, then. Then I'm dead, then I'm sorry, then unfortunately you're stuck on this planet forever. He tries, seven times, to write something, but none of it is right, and none of it says what he means, or it says too much, and eventually he just gives up.
He drops the key into an envelope, seals it, writes her name on the front, and leaves it in the middle of the floor outside.
There's a console, and a metal box around it that's just barely tall enough to stand in, and a rotor powered by the very last pieces of Project Rassilon and about two pints of his own blood. There's a monitor and keyboard, but the instructions have been set for weeks. The decision's been made. This is what happens.
He breathes in, and flips the switch.
Gallifrey, Narvin/Romana
~23,000 words
R (violence, sexual situations, ennui)
Spoilers through the end of season four.
Replication as personal philosophy, or, an ex-spy walks into a bar and says-
*
The buildings around the edge of the dome are older than he remembers them being back home, crowding haphazardly against the barrier. The last bastion of an exiled world. They must have torn these down millennia ago in his city. Concrete, stone, brick. Behind him is the needle spire of the Arcalian skyscraper, ahead of him are the mountains, sweeping dark red against the grey sky. In the foreground is a precariously poised assemblage of wood and plaster. A hanging sign with a painting of a pigbear. The word for it is 'pub', which is short for 'public house', which is one of those phrases dutifully carrying a history no one remembers.
The crowd around him bustling, talking, moving in well-worn patterns. All these little people: what do they do with their lives? And no one recognizes him, there is no bright flash of chapter colors, no ceremony. Servants, factory workers, secretaries. A city beneath the city. He imagines this all existed in some part on most Gallifreys, although he'd never had cause to acknowledge it. He knows it's impossible for a society to run on rarified air alone. He knows the difference between Time Lord and Gallifreyan, although there are no Time Lords here, just politicians and landed gentry and a fully capable police force. Still.
All these people, he thinks, who don't care what he does. Who are only dimly aware of the state's mechanisms, who watch the news instead of standing in the Panopticon, who orbit the High Council distantly at best.
He walks into the public house feeling supremely out of place. They don't recognize his face but they know his robes, nod politely and turn away. He wishes there was a CIA wardrobe he could have raided.
Leela bought this place when there were no slaves left for her to counsel, using the funds Narvin had quietly left in an unmarked account. It's fitting, if a little disappointing. There are no battles to fight, and she turned down both the bodyguard position Romana offered and the Chancellery Guard post he'd vaguely pushed in her general direction. So she pours drinks and wipes counters and cooks food. Creature comforts.
She's sharpening knives in the kitchen, braced against a scarred wooden table. He watches from the doorway, turning a glass around in his hand, listening to the noise of metal on metal. "I imagine you have the keenest blades of any restaurant in the city," he says.
"Dull knives are useless even for vegetables."
"I thought you would change the name," he says. He hoists himself onto a countertop.
She pauses, looks up at him. "The people know this place as Kartro's. It is familiar to them. If I changed it, they might leave."
"Give the people what they want."
"There are men and women who come here every day. I think they spend more time here than at their homes."
"A home away from home."
"Stop speaking in slogans, Narvin."
"Familiarity is a comfort," he says.
"You are an odd little man." She puts the knife down, walks around the table and lifts him roughly off the counter. "I have a message for Romana," she says. She's a few inches taller than he is, even in flat heels, taller and more confident and precise in herself. The wolf beneath her skin. He waits helplessly. She grins.
She slides an arm around him, hand on the small of his back, bends him backwards and kisses him soundly. She tastes like iron and salt. Teeth to tongue. She pulls away and squeezes his face affectionately.
"Give that to her, and tell her she is loved," she says.
"It's a generally accepted fact of Gallifreyan life that one just doesn't do things like that. You can get away with it, savage, I can't. If you want to tell her then tell her yourself."
"They are simple words, and only three of them. I have heard your speeches, they are complicated and go on forever. Surely you can manage this." She knows what he means, but she wants him to correct her. Not I can't but I won't, the difference between what he's capable of and what he's allowed.
"I'll tell her you said hello," he says. She knows what he means.
*
What to say when you meet yourself, how to interact. Different ways to cover the strangeness. False vanity; irritation; effulgent, sarcastic praise. Yourself as you are and as others know you. Things to say to draw attention away from the fact that your first impulse is to kill the man who is your mirror, not so much out of self-preservation but because you just can't stand him. Blinovitch Limitation Effect aside, it's not a good idea to have two of someone in the same room.
Narvin watches the vidcast of Romana's speech. Maybe Leela's watching this too, paused over a half-peeled potato, talking back to the monitor.
She's convincing. She's commanding. She puts strange pauses and emphases into sentences. The crowd applauds. She walks to the right, and to the left, gesturing with the staff. Big, grand motions. The defiant chin jut. The camera angle makes her look bigger than she really is, more impressive, the flatteringly dramatic light of the Panopticon.
He sees himself standing off to the side. He sees - what, exactly? A little man in robes too big for him. An impostor. He suddenly becomes aware of how ridiculous he looks. How his haircut makes his ears stick out. The shifty, darting eyes. How the ceremonial collar accentuates his round, boyish face and receding hairline. Why, again, does Romana deign to sleep with him? He watches himself watching her. He realizes suddenly that everyone else is watching him watching her. Everyone else can see.
He hears himself speak and thinks, Rassilon, do I really sound like that? The absurdity of himself on the screen. That flash of alienation, the distance between himself in his head and himself as he is. Seeing himself as others do. His awkwardness, his various physical inadequacies. He ponders the viability of never taking his clothes off again.
Poor Narvin, he thinks. You finally decided you wanted to be noticed and you don't like what she sees. Get over yourself.
"Get over it," he says to video-Narvin, still undeniably staring at Romana. "All of it. Just-" He clenches his fists, then unclenches them, and calmly turns off the screen.
*
They're building a time machine. He remains fairly certain that it'll explode, that they'll flip the last switch and suddenly see the whole of the universe, the massiveness of time, before they're split apart into dust.
"Leela sends her love," he says, apropos of not much. "She's too proud to come back, but she does miss you."
"Is she doing alright?"
"Best as can be expected. She has an awful little restaurant on the edge of town, it seems to be making her happy." He shrugs. "She's a survivor. She'll be fine."
"I hope so."
There's a pause. He'd like to say it was companionable, but she's too tense and he's too aware of her being tense and the air between them is flat and still and nothing at all like it was before. He pretends something interesting has just happened on the monitor. He waits.
She huffs out a sigh and stands up and there is a moment here, he thinks, a moment where he could say something or do something to stave off whatever is about to happen, if he just knew what it was, if he knew how to do this, any of this.
She's standing and she's leaving. "I think you can take it from here, Narvin. You know I'd like to help, but it's getting harder and harder to find the time. It's the same old story, not enough spans in the day. And with the conference coming up..."
"Of course, Madame President." He gives his best obsequious smile, which admittedly isn't all that great.
"Narvin, don't let's do this again." She looks at him like she wishes she could snap her fingers and fix whatever's making him so damn sensitive. For that matter, he wishes she could too.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," he says. He can't look at her. He swallows hard against the thing in his throat, wills his hands to stop sweating. Wonders what exactly it is that's wrong with him.
"Narvin," she says, then stops. He looks up then, and for a second is convinced she's as lost and bewildered by this as he is. Just a second. Then she turns and strides imperiously through the door, and the whine of the closing mechanism is somehow the most awful thing he's ever heard.
He'll flip the switch and they'll be split apart. Everywhere and nowhere, atoms scattering to the far corners of the universe. He's trying not to wonder what that'll be like.
*
The traditional duties of the Chancellor are: overseeing the Chancellery Guard, (symbolically) running the Academy, voting on minutiae, influencing the High Council on behalf of the president, prancing around looking important. The Chancellor's new duties include: advising the president, collating the efforts of various departments, monitoring the threat level.
The Chancellor also now runs a network of spies but that's not, strictly speaking, something he's supposed to do. Romana will never publicly admit that occasionally the best way to avoid brute force is to employ subterfuge. She'll never publicly admit, that's the key. He does what he has to do, and she lets him.
He finds someone he trusts - well, someone whom he could easily destroy, and who is aware of that, which is the same thing - to run his as-yet unnamed, unmentioned agency. Miralestrellek, ex-Chancellery Guard. She has a deadpan way of talking he appreciates. Outspoken, but not needlessly so. He gives her the title of Director.
"Director of what?" she asks.
"The agency."
"What agency?"
"How's this. Your first task as Director is to name it."
"And my other tasks, Chancellor?"
He sighs. "Gather information. Embed operatives in sensitive areas. Intervene when necessary. Be discreet. Send me a daily report, but keep an appropriate distance. I can't be seen to be too involved."
So she goes, and so he has an organization now. Delegation, a spreading around of blame. Other people to make decisions for you. Braxiatel used to manage easily enough. He'll divert funds, give her a store front, a cover story, a seat in the general assembly. He'll acknowledge he can't fight all these battles himself.
But there's a part of him, there will always be a part of him that needs direct control. A hand on the pulses of this city, an intimate understanding of the enemy. Before the action comes the thought, and before the thought comes the emotion, and empathy is something he's yet to master.
He rebuilds the device from memory. This Gallifrey has no Chameleon Arch, or any analogue of it, but he can still listen in, can get closer than he does with his agents' reports. Circuits, lines of code, neat rows of wires. Red to black and blue to green. A small metal case. He tells himself it's a valid addition to state security protocols.
And maybe it's not voluntary now, and maybe he takes suspected terrorists in and forcibly implants the chip before retconning them half out of their minds. So it's a little reckless, and more than a little wrong. He's a spy. He doesn't do right and wrong.
And if there's a small rush of anticipation when he sees that first blinking icon on his personal computer that means it's started, that means he's about to push himself into this again, into someone else's life again, it doesn't mean anything. Similarly, the feeling that could be guilt, or self-condemnation, or something else entirely, that feeling means nothing. A primitive reaction, it'll pass.
Lie to everyone but yourself, Vansell used to say. When you can't tell yourself the truth, something is wrong. Step back and re-evaluate. An agent in denial is no use to anyone. But Vansell got himself killed, and Narvin stopped caring what he said long before he died. Nothing is wrong, even if that word meant anything to him in this context. Which it doesn't.
He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. He is standing by a lake. The water is mirror-flat, the air warm, the sun low in the sky. He is thinking, possibly, of fear.
*
There's a mistake in his daily report. Nothing much - although he should be more careful, should not easily accept that his attention had slipped - but it's always a little thing, isn't it, that finally does a person in. He observes Romana as if from a great distance. Flushed face, clenched jaw. The hard cross of shoulders and spine. The way she grinds the words out as if they're not at all the words she really wants to use.
He does understand, if only obliquely. There are the usual pressures of the presidency, and the constant fear of discovery, and also the constant fear of assassination. There's Leela, who still hasn't visited, and Braxiatel, who even in absentia refuses to be dealt with in any convenient way (and her feelings for him, Narvin knows, are complex). There is the vast, incomprehensible horror of the war, and the guilt at abandoning her home, her people, her responsibilities. And then there's him, of course, being difficult again, dissembling and smirking and arguing again, being disappointingly himself. And maybe that look in her eyes is her remembering for the thousandth time that she doesn't like him much. Or maybe, most likely, she's just tired and lonely. He's incapable of fixing those things for her, but he's all she's got, and maybe that's what this particular fight is hinging on, their relationship like some kind of cosmic practical joke. The idea that this is it. This is it.
So she apologizes for shouting and he apologizes for the error and then they spend half a span reviewing progress reports on the Academy staff with all the professionalism and restraint they can muster. So she buries herself in her work again, and he lets her, because he doesn't know what he'd do if she didn't.
*
He is taking apart and reassembling a rifle. He knows each piece intimately. Power cell, guidance module, stabilizer, trigger. He knows the weight of it, the balance against his shoulder, the ways his body shifts to accommodate it. The correct stance to use, the muscles involved. He stares through the sights so long the crosshairs imprint on his retinas, the ghost of it trailing. The idea of living through this, living as this, himself a component as the safety latch is a component. A part of something greater. He's going to change the world.
*
The man who is trying to kill the president this week is huddled in a ventilation shaft, C2766 rifle slid through the grate. The man who is going to kill the man who is trying to kill the president is crawling up behind, quietly, slowly, sidearm first. Narvin is aware of this happening as he stands, hands clasped in front of him, on the Panopticon floor.
Romana is talking about peace and reconciliation, her vision of a kinder, gentler Gallifrey. The importance of reason. Progress, she's saying, means laying down the sword and picking up the pen. There is a choice to be made between compromise and self-destruction. There is a decision to be made about who we are as a society, who you are as a member of it. Soldier or scholar, servant or lord, dead or alive. She's saying, our potential could be limitless if we could only just stop shooting each other. She's saying, we are better than this.
Somewhere in the gallery, a trigger is pulled.
*
The familiar shape and smell of staser burns. The distinctive way brute energy punches through a ribcage. Director Mira is overseeing the autopsy. He tells the guards he's there to wrap up loose ends on his official report.
She's remarkably calm about this, he notes. She's doing well. He threw up the first time he saw a murder victim up close, though he'd never admit to it, and death still bothers him on a physical level. He keeps his eyes on her and away from the body.
Always had a weak stomach, didn't you, a voice inside him says, and he doesn't bother figuring out who it sounds like.
"If it takes three people to kill someone, who is more responsible? The person who gave the order, the person who organized the action, or the person who did the actual deed?" There's more genuine curiosity in her voice than guilt or anger. He knows precisely the thought process she's working through now. The network of fault and authority, the woman she is now that she's done this. A re-evaluation.
"Don't forget him," he says, nodding to the body on the table. "A victim who gives just cause for his death is not really a victim at all. And we live in a culture that demands we be - pragmatic."
"Of course, Chancellor."
"The president is right to say we need to change to advance as a society. But pacifism doesn't stand a chance against violence. The hearts and minds of the people will not be won overnight. We must remain vigilant, and we must be able to do what she cannot."
He is expecting her to return with necessary evil, or something like it, something to express the dichotomy she now inhabits. Instead, she says, "Someone should tell the president that progress is a type of violence. The sacrifice of the past for the sake of the future."
The phrase time traveller re-registering suddenly in his head. The artron energy now wasted and dormant in him. Time traveler, observer, interventionist, invader. His TARDIS key vibrates in his pocket, or maybe that's just his imagination.
*
He's following himself. He's watching himself through a telescope, he's taking notes. Schedules, routines, known associates. He's taking pictures, recording videos, combing through assembled footage. He's finding weaknesses, vulnerabilities. A frequently-played clip of him talking with the president, there, do you see that, his hand on her elbow, how close they're standing.
He's watching himself through the crosshairs of a rifle. There's a sudden, blinding flash of pain, and then he isn't watching anything at all.
In the black, someone's saying his name. He forces himself awake, reaches out blindly to turn off the device. His office swims into focus. There's a hand on his shoulder. A hand, and an arm, and.
"Narvin?" Romana asks, and maybe it's just side-effects, but she sounds nearly worried.
"How long have you been here?" His voice crawls out raggedly.
"Long enough." She breathes in deeply. "For a nanospan there, I thought I'd have to call a medic."
"I'm fine."
"You don't look it."
He laughs humorlessly, but says nothing. Peels the electrodes off. Wipes the sweat from his forehead. Swallows. Swallows again. Considers the particular boneless feeling.
She allows the silence for a moment, then breaks it. "What are you doing?"
"It's classified."
"I'm the president. I have the highest possible security clearance. Tell me, Narvin." She takes her hand off his shoulder, steps back, stares at him before sitting in the chair on the other side of the desk. The low-slung, uncomfortable chair he normally uses to intimidate his inferiors. She still manages to look presidential.
He holds his hands out, palms up, as if to gesture: here, a box with all the information in it. "I was spying."
"Narvin."
"Do you remember," he says, then pauses. "Nevermind. I, this," he gestures vaguely to his computer. "In order to keep watch on subversive elements and prevent your assassination, I re-created... That is, I, um-"
"What. Were. You doing?"
"I covertly implanted recording devices into several known terrorists. I was - reviewing the data." Not bad, all things considered. "Would you like to try it?"
She makes a face that he translates as what is wrong with you? but later, behind locked doors and under bedsheets, will mean something else entirely. Like I'm sorry, like you don't need to suffer for me. Like anything at all other than what it actually is.
Now she is clenching her jaw. Now she's doing her best to be cold and removed. "Sometimes I'm reminded of just how little I understand you."
"Only sometimes?"
"Don't be coy. And you obviously don't know me all that well either, if you thought you could get away with this." She folds her arms and tilts back in the chair. Her microscope gaze.
"I know you," he says lowly. His voice still isn't working right. Like slow-motion coughing.
"Don't tell me you've smuggled one of those chips under my skull-"
"No. No. I'd never - I couldn't. But I do know you." He twists his spine experimentally. "Would you like me to elaborate?"
"Not particularly. I doubt it'd be flattering and I'm not in the mood to hear criticism from you."
"And then again," he says, pretending not to have heard her, "sometimes you're absolutely unfathomable."
She snorts. "Aside from Leela, I'm probably the least mysterious person on this planet."
"The things you do to me," he starts, before realizing what it is he's about to say.
She doesn't even have the decency to look confused. She doesn't look like she's feeling anything at all, aside from the angry frustration she always has around him. "This has to stop."
"I know," he says. "All of it." He turns the box over in his hands, over and over. Here, all the answers you want. He sets it down on the desk, then reaches for his staser. He looks at her, he's searching for the right facial expression. Can't find it, of course. Doesn't even really know what he's looking for. He shrugs, then aims at the little grey box, blows it into fragments. The sound echoing, dust settling. "One down."
A wave of fear slips through before she's just angry again. He know he shouldn't be, but he's pleased that he can still get to her, that there's anything left in her to get. "You've lost it," she says, or shouts; she's shouting now. "You're insane. I can't believe I ever-"
He's waiting. She doesn't finish the thought. "I have a meeting," she says, voice wavering slightly. "Good day, Chancellor." She stands up, turns hard on her heels, walks in a straight line to the door, not looking back.
"Always a pleasure, Madame President," he calls after her, but she's already gone.
*
It's a lot of details. His brain is still processing them as what just happened, a localized temporal variation, five seconds that refuse to solidify into an event.
He walks into the room. Call it a tableau. A man in a chair, Chancellery Guard in formal red and whites, restraints pulled tight around his wrists and ankles. Something on his head, electrodes leading to a computer playing iterative personality code. Director Mira, standing a calculated distance away, face blued behind a protective shield, pulling the trigger on a staser. There's the squawk of rushing energy and the crackle of burning fabric and the man biting down hard on the gag in his mouth and his body arcs, one nanospan, two nanospans, then he slumps down.
She's mine, he thinks, slightly hysterically. I did that. He taps hesitantly on the wall.
She pulls the visor up over her face. "Good evening, sir."
"Why did you shoot that man?" he asks. He's aware of a note of panic in his voice. She doesn't seem to notice.
"It's how we make assassins, it stands to reason it would be an appropriate process for spies as well," she says, like it's the most natural thing in the world. They kill them, then, that's what happens.
"Yes, yes of course. Absolutely. Excellent work." He takes a deep breath. "And he'll be reconditioned."
"Yes sir, using a variation of the Bader-Kellis metric. Would you like to check the program yourself?"
He's done this before, he knows that program cold. Percentages, a man's life broken down into percentages. "No, I'm sure it's fine. Carry on."
"Was there something you wanted, sir?"
There was, but for the life of him he can't remember. It'll come to him. It can't have been all that important. "I'm just doing the rounds. Seeing how everything is going. Don't let me keep you."
"Thank you, sir. Until tomorrow, then, sir." She nods deferentially, then sits down at the computer, hands over the keyboard like she's done this before.
So they kill them, but it shouldn't be that big of a revelation, considering they kill everyone else. It's not about violence or bloodlust, just expediency. Matter-of-fact efficiency. He hasn't done his homework, is the problem here. Everything they do, everything they take for granted. This is a foreign country, he can't forget that.
*
There is only one city on Gallifrey. The city is Gallifrey. The land outside, the mountains, the sea, the endless untouched plains, are as ignored here as they were back home. The planet is the thing the city resides on, and the city is the thing that sustains the idea of Gallifrey, all that name embodies, the history, the power, the faith he once had. This is, of course, not his city. It's a near-perfect duplicate, physically speaking, all the buildings and streets he remembers, close enough that he can look up at the skyline and pretend to forget and almost, almost feel like he's where he belongs.
Gallifrey is the citadel and the citadel has fallen. He follows the ghost of it around. The dwindling artron energy he keeps trying to spark back to life, the time machine that won't start, the blood in his veins and in Romana's veins. The thing they tried and failed to find in each other.
She's barely spoken to him in weeks. What he's feeling is betrayal, not of himself or anything so petty as a relationship but of the city, their city, and her promise to it. She's stopped searching. She's making do. She's compromising, which for all her faults is not a weakness he'd ever subscribe to her, giving up, giving in, letting go.
Of all the causes of this drifting sensation, this distance from everything, the one he'll admit to is the fear he'll die in a city he doesn't believe in. That she'll die here. The last part of himself he still recognizes: Romana is his president and this place does not deserve her.
*
Heartshaven sits by the white cliffs that rise harshly over the Petraean Sea. There's a lighthouse, still standing after millennia of disuse, the mirrors at the top reflecting the twin rays of the suns out to ships that no longer come. The water foaming violently below, weeds clinging to the rocks. He's standing on the edge looking down, the wind whipping his robes, that peculiar combination of salt and granite, something decaying, and he's wondering why he's only just now realizing what his home planet smelled like.
The sea stretching out before him, waves and swells flattening out into horizon. Heartshaven at his back. They'd come here, Romana's ancestors, built a manor house and a small town of servants' quarters, huddled together against the sky and precipice. This of all places. The fear of the familiar danger that comes from inland, and the fear of what lies in the uncharted deep: the manor faces the sea. He's not all that surprised.
The Cape of Good Faith, the northernmost turn of the continent. The island he used, in another life, to process CIA operatives newly in from the cold lies two miles out. Black Rock, the white cliffs, there's a metaphor in there somewhere but he's not the person to find it. He wonders if she ever knew, if she stood here watching for the tell-tale spark of the transmat arcing into the air.
"There's a fence," she says. "Back home, on the real Gallifrey. So no one falls off."
"Or jumps," he says, still leaning into the wind. "Though I suppose one could simply climb the fence. Was there a lighthouse?"
"Pardon?"
"Back home," he says, feeling the weight of the phrase. "Was there a lighthouse?"
"No. Not in my time, anyway." She steps forward, toes on the edge, shoulder just brushing his. "We should get back to the reception. Our absence will be noted."
"I hate parties. I've put in my time, you don't need me there." He turns to face her, trying to catch her gaze. "You go." He takes his collar off, something he's been wanting to do all night, wincing a little as the brocade slides roughly over his skin. He sets it down on the ground, looks at it with suspicion, wonders for the thousandth time what master torturer designed it, and whether he can get their contact information.
"Narvin..." Hesitating, oh, that little shred of regret she likes to air out. She could say I want you there, but she doesn't. Maybe she's thinking it. She reaches out tentatively, puts a hand on the back of his neck, thumb against the soft spot behind his ear. "Well. I'll be going, then."
He nods, and looks away. The tide is coming in; the water, the wind, the rocks, the thing crowding his chest. The faint sound of the guards snapping to attention as Romana reenters her ancestral home.
The thing building up and up inside him, and he doesn't know what to do with it, and so, without really thinking about it, he kicks the collar, hard as he can. It tumbles off the edge undramatically. Doesn't even make a noise when it hits, or a splash, just sinks, sinks down until he can't see it anymore and he is aware, obviously, of what a stupid thing that was to do, and that he'll have to come up with a cover story for why he doesn't have his custom-built, one-of-a-kind official Chancellor's collar, because I kicked it into the sea in a fit of pique will never fly, not with the Council's tailor and certainly not with Romana.
All these big grand gestures, emotional compulsions, but if he's honest he left the rational world behind a long time ago. Call it blending in, acclimatizing. Every action here tends inward.
*
The Crown and Castle closes at two past final bell, Kartro's at three. He's not sure when he started memorizing operating hours. There's a block and a half between them, a pause he spends working up the nerve to do this. He's never argued when people called him a coward. But this, this he needs to do. There are hinge points, remember.
Leela can see through him. Leela has always been able to see through him. Instinct, when did that become a thing he put faith in? And it was easier when the only thing there to find was the fact that he was a bastard. This would be easier if she still hated him. Now she looks at him and she's concerned. He's had enough of everyone's concern.
"Savage," he says, half-heartedly.
"Liar," she replies, with entirely too much warmth. "Come, sit at my best table, I made a soup today I would like you to try."
He doesn't have a chance to decline. Two microspans later he's looking down at his usual drink and a large steaming bowl of whatever-it-is. "Delicious, I'm sure," he mumbles, then pushes it away, picks up the glass and takes a preparatory sip. "Leela, I want you to go see Romana."
She stiffens. This is still a delicate topic. "She has not made any attempt to contact me. She may be the president but she has free will, and can do as she pleases. She does not want to see me."
"Of course she wants to. She just - she can't. She'll never make the first step. She's too proud. It has to be you. Apologize, or don't, it doesn't matter. Just go see her, or you'll spend the rest of your life wondering why she never called."
"Narvin."
"Hmm?" He's stirring the soup, spoon rotating at an average rate of six centimeters per second. All the bits whirling around. Root vegetables, herbs, chunks of an unidentifiable meat.
"What happened?"
He stops stirring. The soup keeps spinning. "Nothing. Nothing happened. Leela, swallow your pride and do this. For her sake, for yours. For mine, if that has any currency with you."
"Last call," she yells abruptly. "Everyone has to leave now. You don't have to go home, but you cannot stay here."
"I commend you on your improved grasp of idioms, but 'last call' means last chance, last - they can all get another drink."
She's got that concentration face on, like she's storing the information away in a mental box labeled Things People Say Without Knowing Why They Say Them. "You can order one more item and then leave. No...'loitering'."
"Same as before," he says. "Twice."
Half a span later, the place is empty save for the two of them. She's sealing bottles and stacking glasses, wiping tables, turning off lights. He's dropping the first drink's garnish into the second. He likes this part, where basic motor skills require so much attention that he doesn't have the time to worry about anything else. There's no details here, like everything's disappearing, like he's slipping out of himself.
"You'll talk to Romana," he says, enunciating carefully.
"I will. And I'll tell her that our mutual friend Narvin is a drunk. I thought spies couldn't lose control?"
"Ah, yes, but I'm not a spy anymore. I'm a politician, and politicians are supposed to drink. How else would we sleep at night?"
"By not doing things that keep you awake," she says. "Go home, Narvin."
He goes, eventually. Or, not home, since that's a thing he can't do anymore, go home, but he follows the streets he almost knows, winds up in a place calling itself his apartment. They tell him he lives here, and the lock always recognizes his fingerprints, even when he just sort of slams his palm against the scanner. He stumbles in and collapses where the bed used to be, not where it actually is, and there's a brief moment where he's afraid he might cry, but he gets up and tries again, manages to land crosswise on the mattress, and falls asleep with his boots still on.
*
There's one piece missing. Otherwise it's finished, the thing that's ostensibly a time machine. He thinks it might work. All it needs to do is find the Axis, just reach one set of coordinates, one epoch. He figures the chances are good, good enough to risk it. Any chance is good enough to risk it.
All that's left is the thing that actually makes it start. The one piece of code he doesn't know how to write. Maybe Romana would know, but he can't ask her, not now. This is something he does on his own.
He spends a quarter of a span staring blankly at the wall, before his hand moves, almost of its own accord, to the lower reaches of his pocket. The TARDIS key. He rubs a thumb over the raised metal, the faint energy buzz of his name below the Warpsmith insignia. Inside is a tiny sliver of circuit paper, the imprimatur. It'll do. He pries the key apart, gently takes the paper out and tapes it in place underneath the console. The machine hums approvingly.
This is a situation where he should leave a note. If you're reading this, then. Then I'm dead, then I'm sorry, then unfortunately you're stuck on this planet forever. He tries, seven times, to write something, but none of it is right, and none of it says what he means, or it says too much, and eventually he just gives up.
He drops the key into an envelope, seals it, writes her name on the front, and leaves it in the middle of the floor outside.
There's a console, and a metal box around it that's just barely tall enough to stand in, and a rotor powered by the very last pieces of Project Rassilon and about two pints of his own blood. There's a monitor and keyboard, but the instructions have been set for weeks. The decision's been made. This is what happens.
He breathes in, and flips the switch.