fic: children of time (13/14)
Title: Children of Time
Characters: Donna Noble, the Master, the Rani and the Doctor.
Rating: PG
Summary: Following on from Journey's End..
Index Post
Citadel
The Doctor rushes out of the TARDIS into a silent Panoptican. The place is pristine and empty, with neither sight nor sound of the war or the damage that it had wrought on the place. “Is this right?” he asks as the Rani and the Master follow him out. “Does this seem right to you?”
“Gallifrey with no Time Lords? Sounds perfect,” says the Master. “Dibs on being Castellan. I like the hat. Nice bronzey colour.”
The Rani’s brought some sort of scanner with her, something that the Doctor only vaguely recognises as being a piece of junk he tossed into one of the TARDIS’s storage rooms centuries ago. “The planet is stable,” she says, “and that includes its population. It’s hardly extraordinary for the Panoptican to be unoccupied in the evening.”
The Master pouts. “There goes my fun.”
The sound of approaching footsteps causes them all to turn towards the main entrance, and the Doctor holds his breath as the doors open. Out of the corners of his eyes, he notices the Master sidling closer to the open door of the TARDIS.
“Romana!” The Doctor rushes forward as she enters, and scoops her up in his arms, kissing her soundly before letting her go again. He ignores the retching noise from the Master, and beams down at her, his hands on her shoulders, not quite able to let her go as he finds he needs to reassure himself that she is indeed real and alive and standing right in front of him, looking at him with no small degree of bemusement. “Are we alright?” he asks. “Is everything alright? Are you? Are you alright, Romana?”
“Gallifrey is stable, if that’s what you mean, and I’m fine,” she says. “The worst that can be said is you’ve given everyone something of a headache getting used to the new timeline. We all still remember the old one rather too well.” She lets him take her hand, and moves to address all three of them. “There is, however, some bad news.”
“Donna,” says the Doctor suddenly. “She didn’t come back, I couldn’t find her. She wasn’t where she was supposed to be, but there must have been something that she... is she here? Human, red-haired, talks a lot, very clever, exceptionally so you might say, because she is. If she’s not here then-”
“It’s alright, Doctor,” says Romana. “We’re still not entirely sure what happened, but when your new timeline was reintegrated, we found her here, in the Panoptican.”
“She’s alive?”
“Yes, Doctor, and we are giving her the best possible care.”
“What’s happened to her? What - ?”
Romana holds up a hand to halt his questioning. “Right now, we haven’t the time for that. There’s a somewhat more immediate matter to attend to, one the High Council are quite impatient about as it happens,” she says, sounding less than pleased.
The doors open again, and this time a column of Chancellery Guards marches in, surrounding the three renegade Time Lords. The Doctor looks from side to side then at Romana. “What are you doing?” he asks slowly. “Romana?”
“I’m sorry, Doctor, but I don’t have any choice. You’ve effected a massive change in the established timeline. The law is clear and the High Council have insisted. I’ll get it sorted out as quickly as I can, I promise you, but right now, you’re under arrest. All three of you.”
“Well,” says the Master, “isn’t that just typical?” as the Rani folds her arms and eyes the nearest staser gun pointed at her.
The Doctor’s rather less reticent: “I just saved you! All of you! The whole planet!”
“Yes,” agrees the Master, “it was all down to him. We did nothing. So if you’ll just excuse us...” He takes a step back towards the TARDIS and a warning staser bolt goes past his head.
“The cells then, Romana?” says the Doctor.
“You’ll be given quarters until the High Council can be properly convened,” she tells him. “Please, Doctor, a little patience.”
“Wait, what about Donna? Can’t I at least see her before you lock me up for saving you all?”
Romana hesitates, then nods.
-
Donna is alone in the medical bay, watched over by silent machines. She’s pale and still, peaceful, and the Doctor can see that she’s breathing. Really, she looks as though she’s just sleeping, and he could walk over, shake her shoulder and everything would be alright again.
It was still worth it, he thinks and hates himself for the thought.
“She’s alive,” Romana says softly, waving back the guards flanking her. “We don’t know exactly what happened.”
He goes to stand by her side, brushing the hair back off her forehead. She’s warm beneath his fingers, human-warmth. He finds her hand and holds it, looks back at Romana. “Why isn’t she awake?”
“We’re not sure.”
“Don’t you know anything?” he asks, frustrated, his voice hardening. Romana comes to stand by him, looks down at Donna, and her expression is gentle.
“We know that she wasn’t entirely human.”
The Doctor stiffens, tries to sound offhand. “Oh?”
“I don’t think that anyone will be happy about another human-Time Lord metacrisis occurring, but it’s hardly illegal Doctor.”
He looks at her. “You said wasn’t.”
“Yes,” says Romana. “The doctors found her mind in quite a mess. First someone had attempted to shut down the thought processes that involved accessing the areas of her brain directly affected by the metacrisis. Rather a clumsy solution, I might add.”
“Yes, well, there wasn’t a great deal of time.”
“A second attempt to stabilise the crisis was made, which resulted in a series of mutations within the brain.”
The Doctor holds her gaze, his eyes hard. “The Rani. Romana, if she’s responsible for this...”
“She’s not,” she tells him. “The mutation was beginning to break down anyway, but it would have been a gradual process, perhaps even correctable had she not been exposed to the temporal fallout that brought about Gallifrey’s resurrection.”
The Doctor shakes his head. “She wasn’t... she was meant to come back, Romana. She wasn’t meant to be here when it happened.” His eyes are pleading. “Why didn’t she? Why stay here? She would have known what would happen.”
“Don’t you remember? You, the alternative you, was there after all. Donna was found in the Panoptican, microspans after you carried out my last orders, except this time, you didn’t.”
“I...” He frowns, struggling to find the echo of the other timeline, the one that had occurred only within the Gallifreyan system. “I don’t know... it’s too faint.”
“Not a pleasant memory either, I’d imagine.”
“No,” he says, and he can’t keep the accusation from his voice, but Romana is unruffled by his anger.
“I was dying, Doctor,” she says, casually, as though the matter is of no particular importance to either of them, “and I couldn’t trust anyone else, not for that. And it had to be done. You know that.” He looks up, her face open, eyes clear. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
“So am I.” He turns away, paces a moment while Romana is still, watching him. “Where are your doctors anyway? Surely there’s something they can be doing?”
“They were able to stabilise her condition.”
“But what does that mean? What’s wrong with her Romana? Why isn’t she waking up?”
“There was a great deal of damage done to her brain, to her mind, Doctor. It was repaired to the best of our abilities and we can do nothing else. She will either wake, or she won’t, but interfering further with whatever’s left will do her no good.”
The Doctor nods. “Thank you,” he says. “I can stay with her, I take it?”
Romana nods. “The guards will be at the door. There’ll take you to your rooms when you’re ready.”
-
She’s not doing anything and that’s what unnerves him the most. It’s certainly enough of a distraction to stop him dwelling on how exactly he’s going to take this ungrateful planet to pieces again as soon as he gets the chance. Ungrateful sods. If there was one race in the universe that deserved eternal oblivion for being pompous, intransigent morons... and the Doctor had been stupid enough to save them, and he’d been stupid enough to help. He stops pacing, and flops down in the chair next to the Rani, leans over the arm towards her.
“I don’t suppose-”
“No,” says the Rani shortly. “Absolutely not.” She closes her eyes, but he’s much too bored to take the hint.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” he says petulantly.
The Rani smirks. “Of course I do: you were about to propose some sort of preposterous alliance where the objective would taking over the universe and killing the Doctor, order negotiable. No thank you. I’ve had just about all I can take of the pair of you. So, until this is over, I’m just going to stay right here.”
The Master frowns, trying to follow her reasoning, but feeling like he’s missed a step or six somewhere along the line. “Sorry, what? Stay here? In this gilded cage? That’s your brilliant plan?”
“That’s right,” she says.
“You are aware that we’re prisoners, right? That the little ice princess locked us up after we saved her and her whole stupid civilisation? That did register in that sorry excuse of an emotionless computer that you optimistically refer to as your brain?”
Her eyes snap open and she glares at him. He smiles his very best Harry Saxon smile and doesn’t move away. “Perfectly,” she says.
“You’re pathetic,” he sneers, standing up, but she only laughs.
“Oh, please. And do go away if that’s what you’re going to do, I’d appreciate the quiet.”
He folds his arms, the smile supercilious now as he begins to understand. “You think she’ll forgive you.”
“Go away.”
“You do. Ha! You think she’ll rescind your exile. That’s it, isn’t it?” The Rani just stares at him, her expression blank. “Oh,” he says, “poor Rani got a bit homesick, did she? Did the big bad universe scare the ickle Rani and make her cry?”
She sighs, her fingers drumming the arm of the chair and for an instant he’s fixated on the beat. He looks away, hoping she hasn’t noticed. “You know, I think your infantile attempts at goading really do get more embarrassing with each regeneration.”
“They’ll never accept you back,” he says, sounding rather more certain than he feels.
She smiles thinly. “I’ve had a look into the other timeline, and do you know I think they will.”
“With your unsteady grasp of ethics?”
“Well,” she says, “I only want access to the facilities. It’s not as though they’re using them for anything worthwhile, and it’s not as though I’m going to tell them everything I’ll be doing down there either.”
“Fine,” says the Master, kicking at a chair leg, “but I’m leaving.”
-
“Romana, how much longer is this going to take?”
He’s managed to convince the guards to take him to see the President rather than to wherever they’re holding the Rani and the Master and she’s not sent him away again, which he takes as a good sign.
“Patience,” she mutters, not looking up from her desk. She reading some report or other, useless probably, and he certainly doesn’t see why it’s more important than dealing with his far more pressing problem. “These things take time, especially when our current priority must be to assess the impact Gallifrey’s reappearance has had on causality.”
“Yes, but how much time? And I can’t believe that even Gallifreyan law is so absurd that the very people who saved the planet from annihilation are now under arrest for saving the planet.”
She looks up, and he tries to look around the weariness in her face. “You know the reasoning, and your actions fall within the remit of those criminal laws. We can’t make exceptions, even for ourselves.”
“Romana.”
“Yes, yes, but I will have a Presidential decree written up to provide one anyway in this particular instance just as soon as-” She’s interrupted by an incoming signal to her desk comms. “Yes, what now?”
“Madam President, there’s a ship entering into orbit just outside the transduction barrier.”
“What sort of ship?”
“Unable to identify, they are demanding access planet-side.”
Romana closes her eyes for a long moment. “Technology level?”
“Civilisation class seven. They will be unable to breach the barrier.”
“Well that’s something, at least” she mutters then raises an eyebrow at the Doctor, who’s waving at her from the other side of the desk. “What?” she asks, muting the comms.
“Who do they represent?” he says.
“What difference does that make?”
“Well, quite a lot, I’d imagine. It’s a new universe, Romana, and it wouldn’t hurt Gallifrey to acknowledge its existence. And anyway, I think I might know who they are.”
“Of course you do,” says Romana with a sigh, unmuting her comms. “Who’s demanding access?”
“I’m sorry, Madame President?”
“Under whose authority do they want to come down to the planet? Who’re they representing?” she says irritably.
“Shadow Proclamation,” mouths the Doctor as the voice from her comms says, “The Shadow Proclamation, Madame.”
“Uh, traffic control,” says the Doctor, and Romana rolls her eyes, makes a gesture with her hands that’s either very rude or encouragement for him to go in. The Doctor opts to take it for the latter. “Say you want to speak to Architect Edani A-7 Tal,” he says, “might want to drop my name in there too, as a sort of hello, how are you doing kind of thing, as I’m pretty sure I just saved their ship a few hours ago.”
“Madame President?”
“Do as he says,” says Romana. “I’ll meet the Proclamation’s representative in the Arcalian Gallery in forty microspans.” She ends the communication.
“Well,” says the Doctor, “seems like you’ve a lot of work to do. I suppose you’d better get one of your guards to escort me to my cell.”
She looks at him, almost entirely hiding the suspicion at his change in attitude from her expression. “It’s not a cell, Doctor, it’s a guest suite.”
“Yes, well, six of one and half a dozen of the other, isn’t it?”
-
It was just a little violence and, the Doctor felt, quite excusable under the circumstances. He pulls the unconscious guard into an empty room and, checking the coast was clear in the corridor, makes his way as quickly and as casually as he can back to the Panoptican.
Typical, he muses as he finds the TARDIS sitting just as it is was, even the door’s still ajar but then efficiency was never a strong suite of the Chancellery Guard.
He rushes inside to the console, then almost immediately stops and looks up. From the other side of the console, he receives an abashed smile.
“Oh,” says the Master. “Hello, Doctor. Making your escape?”
“Making yours?” asks the Doctor.
The Master shrugs nonchalantly, steps away from the controls, hands half-raised. “Didn’t see any harm in taking the opportunity when offered. You’re not going to hold it against me are you?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time you’d stolen my ship,” mutters the Doctor, programming in co-ordinates. He’s going to have to make a very short, very neat little jump, and be quick about it. The alarms for an unauthorised materialisation are bound to go off, but he isn’t entirely sure what the authorities are in a position to do about it. One thing for them to run around making a lot of fuss and being very annoyed at him, quite another if they are able to remotely put a temporal lock on the TARDIS.
“Doctor!” calls a voice from outside. The Doctor pauses, hand over the dematerialisation controls.
He looks to the Master who sighs, “Well, be a good little Doctor,” he says, “you heard your whistle, off you run.”
“Don’t touch anything,” says the Doctor, removing the fluid links from the console, just incase. “And shut up if you’d don’t want her to know you’re in here.”
The Master eyes widen. “Oh, Doctor, keeping secrets already. That’s no way to have a healthy relationship. Best to confess our affair now, before-”
The Doctor ignores him and pops outside, pulling the door to behind him and greeting Romana with the most innocent of smiles. “Hello,” he says brightly, “I thought you had a lot of very important Presidential work to be getting on with.”
“I do, Doctor, but, as ever, you insist on causing trouble. And the very fact that you acknowledge I might have things to do that don’t involve you does tend to cause suspicion.”
He looks hurt. “It does?” he says.
She smiles, not unkindly. “You do tend to be somewhat, ah, self-involved.”
“Well, maybe, I suppose, on the odd occasion.”
“And disruptive.”
“Disruptive! Little old me? Nah. In fact, I’ll be out of your hair in about three minutes, though if any alarms do happen to go off, you might be better off ignoring them. Probably just some sort of past echo of a Type 40 illegally materialising in the medical bay. Nothing to worry about.”
Romana nods. “I’ll be sure to mention that to my guards.” Her voice softens: “Must you go?”
“It’s not the arrest, if that’s what you’re worried about, really it’s not. I mean, with all the time I spent... I could cope with a few hours, even a few days of incarceration, and it’s Gallifrey and I haven’t forgotten what it’s like, not entirely anyway. I mean I know the bureaucracy’s ridiculous and everyone’s a stickler for the letter of law and procedure, traditions, forms, blah, blah blah. But it really doesn’t matter. This is about Donna. If you can’t do anything for her here, then she should be at home and with her family. Not here, on a world so cold and alien to her.”
“So you’re leaving.”
“I’ll be back soon.”
She stares at him, anger flecking her eyes. “Don’t lie to me, Doctor, not now.”
“I’m not.”
“Promise me,” she whispers.
“I promise. I will, really I will, but I have to take her home.” He raises a hand in farewell. “I’m coming back, Romana.”
Inside he closes the door and breathes a sigh of relief. The Master’s sitting on the captain’s chair, grinning and looking even more pleased with himself than usual. “Doctor, bit of a change of plans, I’m afraid. Try not to cry too much, but the marriage is off.”
“What’re you talking about?” he asks, returning the fluid links to their proper place.
“Well, it occurred to me that this is one TARDIS and there are two of us, so there are probably going to be one or two domestic disputes popping up sooner or later. Like who’s responsible for the driving and why you aren’t making me my coffee fast enough. Whether we save the silly civilisation on the edge of destruction or give them a helpful shove into the pit then sit back and enjoy the explosion. See? It’s just not going to work out.” He taps the vortex manipulator on his wrist. “So, instead of rushing headlong into all that, I thought, since you just told our darling Lady President not to worry about the alarms, that I’d just pop over to the TARDIS bays and pick myself out a brand spanking new Type 90.” He gives the Doctor a little wave. “See you round.”
“Now wait just a...” But the Master’s already gone. For a long second the Doctor stares into the empty space where he sat.
“Priorities, Doctor,” he mutters to himself, and transmaterialises that TARDIS to the medical bay and goes to find Donna.
Characters: Donna Noble, the Master, the Rani and the Doctor.
Rating: PG
Summary: Following on from Journey's End..
Index Post
Citadel
The Doctor rushes out of the TARDIS into a silent Panoptican. The place is pristine and empty, with neither sight nor sound of the war or the damage that it had wrought on the place. “Is this right?” he asks as the Rani and the Master follow him out. “Does this seem right to you?”
“Gallifrey with no Time Lords? Sounds perfect,” says the Master. “Dibs on being Castellan. I like the hat. Nice bronzey colour.”
The Rani’s brought some sort of scanner with her, something that the Doctor only vaguely recognises as being a piece of junk he tossed into one of the TARDIS’s storage rooms centuries ago. “The planet is stable,” she says, “and that includes its population. It’s hardly extraordinary for the Panoptican to be unoccupied in the evening.”
The Master pouts. “There goes my fun.”
The sound of approaching footsteps causes them all to turn towards the main entrance, and the Doctor holds his breath as the doors open. Out of the corners of his eyes, he notices the Master sidling closer to the open door of the TARDIS.
“Romana!” The Doctor rushes forward as she enters, and scoops her up in his arms, kissing her soundly before letting her go again. He ignores the retching noise from the Master, and beams down at her, his hands on her shoulders, not quite able to let her go as he finds he needs to reassure himself that she is indeed real and alive and standing right in front of him, looking at him with no small degree of bemusement. “Are we alright?” he asks. “Is everything alright? Are you? Are you alright, Romana?”
“Gallifrey is stable, if that’s what you mean, and I’m fine,” she says. “The worst that can be said is you’ve given everyone something of a headache getting used to the new timeline. We all still remember the old one rather too well.” She lets him take her hand, and moves to address all three of them. “There is, however, some bad news.”
“Donna,” says the Doctor suddenly. “She didn’t come back, I couldn’t find her. She wasn’t where she was supposed to be, but there must have been something that she... is she here? Human, red-haired, talks a lot, very clever, exceptionally so you might say, because she is. If she’s not here then-”
“It’s alright, Doctor,” says Romana. “We’re still not entirely sure what happened, but when your new timeline was reintegrated, we found her here, in the Panoptican.”
“She’s alive?”
“Yes, Doctor, and we are giving her the best possible care.”
“What’s happened to her? What - ?”
Romana holds up a hand to halt his questioning. “Right now, we haven’t the time for that. There’s a somewhat more immediate matter to attend to, one the High Council are quite impatient about as it happens,” she says, sounding less than pleased.
The doors open again, and this time a column of Chancellery Guards marches in, surrounding the three renegade Time Lords. The Doctor looks from side to side then at Romana. “What are you doing?” he asks slowly. “Romana?”
“I’m sorry, Doctor, but I don’t have any choice. You’ve effected a massive change in the established timeline. The law is clear and the High Council have insisted. I’ll get it sorted out as quickly as I can, I promise you, but right now, you’re under arrest. All three of you.”
“Well,” says the Master, “isn’t that just typical?” as the Rani folds her arms and eyes the nearest staser gun pointed at her.
The Doctor’s rather less reticent: “I just saved you! All of you! The whole planet!”
“Yes,” agrees the Master, “it was all down to him. We did nothing. So if you’ll just excuse us...” He takes a step back towards the TARDIS and a warning staser bolt goes past his head.
“The cells then, Romana?” says the Doctor.
“You’ll be given quarters until the High Council can be properly convened,” she tells him. “Please, Doctor, a little patience.”
“Wait, what about Donna? Can’t I at least see her before you lock me up for saving you all?”
Romana hesitates, then nods.
-
Donna is alone in the medical bay, watched over by silent machines. She’s pale and still, peaceful, and the Doctor can see that she’s breathing. Really, she looks as though she’s just sleeping, and he could walk over, shake her shoulder and everything would be alright again.
It was still worth it, he thinks and hates himself for the thought.
“She’s alive,” Romana says softly, waving back the guards flanking her. “We don’t know exactly what happened.”
He goes to stand by her side, brushing the hair back off her forehead. She’s warm beneath his fingers, human-warmth. He finds her hand and holds it, looks back at Romana. “Why isn’t she awake?”
“We’re not sure.”
“Don’t you know anything?” he asks, frustrated, his voice hardening. Romana comes to stand by him, looks down at Donna, and her expression is gentle.
“We know that she wasn’t entirely human.”
The Doctor stiffens, tries to sound offhand. “Oh?”
“I don’t think that anyone will be happy about another human-Time Lord metacrisis occurring, but it’s hardly illegal Doctor.”
He looks at her. “You said wasn’t.”
“Yes,” says Romana. “The doctors found her mind in quite a mess. First someone had attempted to shut down the thought processes that involved accessing the areas of her brain directly affected by the metacrisis. Rather a clumsy solution, I might add.”
“Yes, well, there wasn’t a great deal of time.”
“A second attempt to stabilise the crisis was made, which resulted in a series of mutations within the brain.”
The Doctor holds her gaze, his eyes hard. “The Rani. Romana, if she’s responsible for this...”
“She’s not,” she tells him. “The mutation was beginning to break down anyway, but it would have been a gradual process, perhaps even correctable had she not been exposed to the temporal fallout that brought about Gallifrey’s resurrection.”
The Doctor shakes his head. “She wasn’t... she was meant to come back, Romana. She wasn’t meant to be here when it happened.” His eyes are pleading. “Why didn’t she? Why stay here? She would have known what would happen.”
“Don’t you remember? You, the alternative you, was there after all. Donna was found in the Panoptican, microspans after you carried out my last orders, except this time, you didn’t.”
“I...” He frowns, struggling to find the echo of the other timeline, the one that had occurred only within the Gallifreyan system. “I don’t know... it’s too faint.”
“Not a pleasant memory either, I’d imagine.”
“No,” he says, and he can’t keep the accusation from his voice, but Romana is unruffled by his anger.
“I was dying, Doctor,” she says, casually, as though the matter is of no particular importance to either of them, “and I couldn’t trust anyone else, not for that. And it had to be done. You know that.” He looks up, her face open, eyes clear. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
“So am I.” He turns away, paces a moment while Romana is still, watching him. “Where are your doctors anyway? Surely there’s something they can be doing?”
“They were able to stabilise her condition.”
“But what does that mean? What’s wrong with her Romana? Why isn’t she waking up?”
“There was a great deal of damage done to her brain, to her mind, Doctor. It was repaired to the best of our abilities and we can do nothing else. She will either wake, or she won’t, but interfering further with whatever’s left will do her no good.”
The Doctor nods. “Thank you,” he says. “I can stay with her, I take it?”
Romana nods. “The guards will be at the door. There’ll take you to your rooms when you’re ready.”
-
She’s not doing anything and that’s what unnerves him the most. It’s certainly enough of a distraction to stop him dwelling on how exactly he’s going to take this ungrateful planet to pieces again as soon as he gets the chance. Ungrateful sods. If there was one race in the universe that deserved eternal oblivion for being pompous, intransigent morons... and the Doctor had been stupid enough to save them, and he’d been stupid enough to help. He stops pacing, and flops down in the chair next to the Rani, leans over the arm towards her.
“I don’t suppose-”
“No,” says the Rani shortly. “Absolutely not.” She closes her eyes, but he’s much too bored to take the hint.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” he says petulantly.
The Rani smirks. “Of course I do: you were about to propose some sort of preposterous alliance where the objective would taking over the universe and killing the Doctor, order negotiable. No thank you. I’ve had just about all I can take of the pair of you. So, until this is over, I’m just going to stay right here.”
The Master frowns, trying to follow her reasoning, but feeling like he’s missed a step or six somewhere along the line. “Sorry, what? Stay here? In this gilded cage? That’s your brilliant plan?”
“That’s right,” she says.
“You are aware that we’re prisoners, right? That the little ice princess locked us up after we saved her and her whole stupid civilisation? That did register in that sorry excuse of an emotionless computer that you optimistically refer to as your brain?”
Her eyes snap open and she glares at him. He smiles his very best Harry Saxon smile and doesn’t move away. “Perfectly,” she says.
“You’re pathetic,” he sneers, standing up, but she only laughs.
“Oh, please. And do go away if that’s what you’re going to do, I’d appreciate the quiet.”
He folds his arms, the smile supercilious now as he begins to understand. “You think she’ll forgive you.”
“Go away.”
“You do. Ha! You think she’ll rescind your exile. That’s it, isn’t it?” The Rani just stares at him, her expression blank. “Oh,” he says, “poor Rani got a bit homesick, did she? Did the big bad universe scare the ickle Rani and make her cry?”
She sighs, her fingers drumming the arm of the chair and for an instant he’s fixated on the beat. He looks away, hoping she hasn’t noticed. “You know, I think your infantile attempts at goading really do get more embarrassing with each regeneration.”
“They’ll never accept you back,” he says, sounding rather more certain than he feels.
She smiles thinly. “I’ve had a look into the other timeline, and do you know I think they will.”
“With your unsteady grasp of ethics?”
“Well,” she says, “I only want access to the facilities. It’s not as though they’re using them for anything worthwhile, and it’s not as though I’m going to tell them everything I’ll be doing down there either.”
“Fine,” says the Master, kicking at a chair leg, “but I’m leaving.”
-
“Romana, how much longer is this going to take?”
He’s managed to convince the guards to take him to see the President rather than to wherever they’re holding the Rani and the Master and she’s not sent him away again, which he takes as a good sign.
“Patience,” she mutters, not looking up from her desk. She reading some report or other, useless probably, and he certainly doesn’t see why it’s more important than dealing with his far more pressing problem. “These things take time, especially when our current priority must be to assess the impact Gallifrey’s reappearance has had on causality.”
“Yes, but how much time? And I can’t believe that even Gallifreyan law is so absurd that the very people who saved the planet from annihilation are now under arrest for saving the planet.”
She looks up, and he tries to look around the weariness in her face. “You know the reasoning, and your actions fall within the remit of those criminal laws. We can’t make exceptions, even for ourselves.”
“Romana.”
“Yes, yes, but I will have a Presidential decree written up to provide one anyway in this particular instance just as soon as-” She’s interrupted by an incoming signal to her desk comms. “Yes, what now?”
“Madam President, there’s a ship entering into orbit just outside the transduction barrier.”
“What sort of ship?”
“Unable to identify, they are demanding access planet-side.”
Romana closes her eyes for a long moment. “Technology level?”
“Civilisation class seven. They will be unable to breach the barrier.”
“Well that’s something, at least” she mutters then raises an eyebrow at the Doctor, who’s waving at her from the other side of the desk. “What?” she asks, muting the comms.
“Who do they represent?” he says.
“What difference does that make?”
“Well, quite a lot, I’d imagine. It’s a new universe, Romana, and it wouldn’t hurt Gallifrey to acknowledge its existence. And anyway, I think I might know who they are.”
“Of course you do,” says Romana with a sigh, unmuting her comms. “Who’s demanding access?”
“I’m sorry, Madame President?”
“Under whose authority do they want to come down to the planet? Who’re they representing?” she says irritably.
“Shadow Proclamation,” mouths the Doctor as the voice from her comms says, “The Shadow Proclamation, Madame.”
“Uh, traffic control,” says the Doctor, and Romana rolls her eyes, makes a gesture with her hands that’s either very rude or encouragement for him to go in. The Doctor opts to take it for the latter. “Say you want to speak to Architect Edani A-7 Tal,” he says, “might want to drop my name in there too, as a sort of hello, how are you doing kind of thing, as I’m pretty sure I just saved their ship a few hours ago.”
“Madame President?”
“Do as he says,” says Romana. “I’ll meet the Proclamation’s representative in the Arcalian Gallery in forty microspans.” She ends the communication.
“Well,” says the Doctor, “seems like you’ve a lot of work to do. I suppose you’d better get one of your guards to escort me to my cell.”
She looks at him, almost entirely hiding the suspicion at his change in attitude from her expression. “It’s not a cell, Doctor, it’s a guest suite.”
“Yes, well, six of one and half a dozen of the other, isn’t it?”
-
It was just a little violence and, the Doctor felt, quite excusable under the circumstances. He pulls the unconscious guard into an empty room and, checking the coast was clear in the corridor, makes his way as quickly and as casually as he can back to the Panoptican.
Typical, he muses as he finds the TARDIS sitting just as it is was, even the door’s still ajar but then efficiency was never a strong suite of the Chancellery Guard.
He rushes inside to the console, then almost immediately stops and looks up. From the other side of the console, he receives an abashed smile.
“Oh,” says the Master. “Hello, Doctor. Making your escape?”
“Making yours?” asks the Doctor.
The Master shrugs nonchalantly, steps away from the controls, hands half-raised. “Didn’t see any harm in taking the opportunity when offered. You’re not going to hold it against me are you?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time you’d stolen my ship,” mutters the Doctor, programming in co-ordinates. He’s going to have to make a very short, very neat little jump, and be quick about it. The alarms for an unauthorised materialisation are bound to go off, but he isn’t entirely sure what the authorities are in a position to do about it. One thing for them to run around making a lot of fuss and being very annoyed at him, quite another if they are able to remotely put a temporal lock on the TARDIS.
“Doctor!” calls a voice from outside. The Doctor pauses, hand over the dematerialisation controls.
He looks to the Master who sighs, “Well, be a good little Doctor,” he says, “you heard your whistle, off you run.”
“Don’t touch anything,” says the Doctor, removing the fluid links from the console, just incase. “And shut up if you’d don’t want her to know you’re in here.”
The Master eyes widen. “Oh, Doctor, keeping secrets already. That’s no way to have a healthy relationship. Best to confess our affair now, before-”
The Doctor ignores him and pops outside, pulling the door to behind him and greeting Romana with the most innocent of smiles. “Hello,” he says brightly, “I thought you had a lot of very important Presidential work to be getting on with.”
“I do, Doctor, but, as ever, you insist on causing trouble. And the very fact that you acknowledge I might have things to do that don’t involve you does tend to cause suspicion.”
He looks hurt. “It does?” he says.
She smiles, not unkindly. “You do tend to be somewhat, ah, self-involved.”
“Well, maybe, I suppose, on the odd occasion.”
“And disruptive.”
“Disruptive! Little old me? Nah. In fact, I’ll be out of your hair in about three minutes, though if any alarms do happen to go off, you might be better off ignoring them. Probably just some sort of past echo of a Type 40 illegally materialising in the medical bay. Nothing to worry about.”
Romana nods. “I’ll be sure to mention that to my guards.” Her voice softens: “Must you go?”
“It’s not the arrest, if that’s what you’re worried about, really it’s not. I mean, with all the time I spent... I could cope with a few hours, even a few days of incarceration, and it’s Gallifrey and I haven’t forgotten what it’s like, not entirely anyway. I mean I know the bureaucracy’s ridiculous and everyone’s a stickler for the letter of law and procedure, traditions, forms, blah, blah blah. But it really doesn’t matter. This is about Donna. If you can’t do anything for her here, then she should be at home and with her family. Not here, on a world so cold and alien to her.”
“So you’re leaving.”
“I’ll be back soon.”
She stares at him, anger flecking her eyes. “Don’t lie to me, Doctor, not now.”
“I’m not.”
“Promise me,” she whispers.
“I promise. I will, really I will, but I have to take her home.” He raises a hand in farewell. “I’m coming back, Romana.”
Inside he closes the door and breathes a sigh of relief. The Master’s sitting on the captain’s chair, grinning and looking even more pleased with himself than usual. “Doctor, bit of a change of plans, I’m afraid. Try not to cry too much, but the marriage is off.”
“What’re you talking about?” he asks, returning the fluid links to their proper place.
“Well, it occurred to me that this is one TARDIS and there are two of us, so there are probably going to be one or two domestic disputes popping up sooner or later. Like who’s responsible for the driving and why you aren’t making me my coffee fast enough. Whether we save the silly civilisation on the edge of destruction or give them a helpful shove into the pit then sit back and enjoy the explosion. See? It’s just not going to work out.” He taps the vortex manipulator on his wrist. “So, instead of rushing headlong into all that, I thought, since you just told our darling Lady President not to worry about the alarms, that I’d just pop over to the TARDIS bays and pick myself out a brand spanking new Type 90.” He gives the Doctor a little wave. “See you round.”
“Now wait just a...” But the Master’s already gone. For a long second the Doctor stares into the empty space where he sat.
“Priorities, Doctor,” he mutters to himself, and transmaterialises that TARDIS to the medical bay and goes to find Donna.