doctor who fic: nor shall sound my echoing song [romana & the doctor, t]
vii.
The day has faded outside Romana’s window, a blazing orange light that will soon flame itself out burning through the cracks between the heavy velvet curtains. Romana turns onto her stomach, watches motes of dust drift lazily through the air; an ache of nostalgia settles in the pit of her stomach, and she shuts her eyes tight against the memories of lazy afternoons wandering through the universe with the Doctor that flicker dizzily in the darkness of her mind. Thoughts like those will do her no good; the world is marching on without her and she’s already late for a meeting of the High Council and he’s never belonged here on Gallifrey and he has new companions to return to anyway, new bright and clever young people to have their eyes opened and their skies cracked apart.
Romana and the Doctor have both left those days behind long ago and cannot walk that path again. All things must pass, she tells herself, but still she sighs and drops her head on her outstretched arm. The Doctor pushes aside her long sleek hair and presses a kiss to her back of her neck, his lips cool against her skin.
“Skip the meeting,” he murmurs.
Romana nods into the sheets, but his weight against her cannot banish the sickening dread of knowing that she’s failed, that she’s done nothing with everything he’s given her. If there was ever a time she could have changed things it’s long passed, and all she can hear is the roaring of her fate rushing up to meet her.
(The Doctor rests his chin on her bare back, and she twists to look at him; his curls fall in his pale eyes as he meets her gaze steadily, and she twines her fingers tight in his like he might still the spinning of her world.)
vi.
He leaves, as he always does.
She’s weary, so weary, and where his visits used to lighten her burden at least a little they can no longer rid of her the bone-deep tiredness that pervades every cell of her body or the buzzing in her head that threatens to drown out the voices of her High Cardinals as they talk at her. She rolls her shoulders, narrows her concentration. They’re scowling at her, but she’s seriously considering throwing things at them, so she wins.
They’re asking her to bring the Master back, they want her to resurrect one of the most monstrous psychopaths their world has ever produced, to draft him as their little soldier. He’ll do our dirty work, they say even as she shakes her head in mute disbelief (doesn’t snap at them, like she once would have, unable find the words to flay the flesh from their bones when it used to come so easily). He’ll do the things you won’t soil your hands with, the things you wouldn’t even ask the Doctor to do on our darkest day.
Romana grips the armrest of her chair tightly, carefully schooling her face into lines of stern confidence. She won’t do it. She won’t.
v.
But you know she does, in the end.
She dies in battle on some frozen backworld. They hadn’t wanted her to go, of course, the concepts of active field work and physical combat utterly foreign to the rows of dusty bureaucrats who are her advisers, and lying alone here on the hard ground with her cheek against the ice she thinks she rather sees the wisdom in that. She stares at the delicate pattern of her blood sprayed across the banked snow and thinks sorrowfully but I liked this body as her vision goes dim and then dark. There is no time to control this regeneration, like before, and before she slides utterly into blackness she sends out a frantic wish to be made hard, hard and capable and strong.
When Romana opens her eyes again she is back in her own rooms, her bed surrounded by dozens of grave-faced politicians in stiff formal robes. She blinks and rubs her eyes, then realises that it’s just the absurdly long new eyelashes that are annoying her.
“Yes,” Romana says, pushing herself up. Her golden curls bounce, and she fingers them a little disgustedly, pulling one ringlet out to full length. Really, she thinks. This is what you came up with?
They all look at each other; someone she doesn’t recognise in the back of the room says hesitantly, “Madam President?”
“Bring him back,” she says. She doesn’t feel tired anymore. Or indecisive. She knows what she has to do now, knows it with a grim sort of satisfaction. “The Master. Offer him a new cycle. Do what you will. But you have to let me bring the Doctor in.”
The universe can’t have one without the other, after all. They don’t look terribly happy at her decision, but Romana throws off the blankets and stands on uncertain new feet, looking with clinical disinterest at the pretty turn of her ankle as her white gown swirls about her legs. “That’s all,” she says, and they leave, blessedly silent for a change.
She remembers the Master telling her about the drumming, once. She shrugs on a robe, settles the collar about her throat. She thinks she knows what he means, now, as the hammering of her beating hearts echoes in her skull.
iv.
She wears this new body like a particularly beautiful suit of armour.
She comes to see the logic of it, in time. If they’re looking at her pretty face, they won’t be trying to tug at the edges of her mind (and in the back of her head she sees herself lying stretched out on a picnic table under a warm yellow sun, the Doctor shuffling a deck of cards with a wide grin, you just keep watching my hands, Romana)-
Things go abruptly from bad to worse. She’s glad she can keep her thoughts behind this unbroken shield, one even he can’t break: she’s afraid of the darkness in her own mind at times like these.
iii.
Fire, everywhere she looks, and she rubs one sooty hand impatiently across her cheek, spitting blood from between her teeth. She’s trapped and she’s furious but not at all frightened, strangely, this is nothing, this is normal to her now, the howling of impending death sounding in her ears. Romana crouches, and waits: she can smell her hair beginning to smoulder, and she wrinkles her nose, a useless gesture that is strangely comforting in its very futility.
“Up we get,” a voice says, and the Doctor seizes her hand and wraps his coat around her and before she knows it they’re through the wall of flames and they’re both alive and his arm is still around her, her face pressed to his neck, his double pulse throbbing against her cheekbone.
“Doctor,” Romana says, pushing herself away, his chest solid beneath her hands. He smiles sunnily; she’s always thought this incarnation of his is more than a bit lovely, if wholly inappropriate, his blue eyes shining despite the ash and blood that coat his face. But she doesn’t have time for this: she has to reset the time-loop, and he will never know this ever happened, anyway. Uselessly, she adds, “Thank you,” and he gives a dishevelled little bow, vest and cravat long since abandoned.
“Good-bye,” he says quite solemnly. “I’m so sorry, you know.”
She cycles time back on itself and wipes the blood from the corner of her mouth, ignoring the hollow ringing of missed chances that reverberates through her bones. Resolution forming in her mind, she makes her way to her TARDIS, leaving the Doctor to fight her battle for her.
ii.
“You sent for me, Madam President?” the Doctor says gravely, and she steels herself to break his hearts.
(i.
It is Paris in the springtime and the Eiffel Tower looms above them in a perfectly clear sky. The Doctor walks along a low wall, idly trailing his fingers along a wrought-iron fence as he natters on about Napoleon and Josephine and the little Austrian tart he took for his second wife; Romana isn’t listening all that closely, but keeps pace with the Doctor on the pavement, wrapping the trailing ends of his scarf about her throat. Maybe this is enough, she thinks, and he stops and smiles down at her and she reaches for his hand and she knows, knows that she could never ask for more.)