Kindred Spirits [2/2]
‘While there’s life, there’s hope.’
DISCLAIMER & OTHER WARNINGS
‘So tell me about Cicero,’ Rose insisted as they headed towards the main court rooms in the building. ‘Why’s he worth going to see?’
‘Why not?’ the Doctor returned. ‘Self-made man, him, I’m sure you can respect that. Worked his way up the legal ladder to consulship, then the Senate - rare, in those days. About ninety-nine percent of politicians came from blue blood families, and they never let him forget it.’
‘Something else that never changes.’
‘Yep. Though, he was well-shot of that. The patrician class is so interbred these days I’m surprised they aren’t all born with six fingers and a tail. Being a homo novus obviously never hurt him in the long run.’
The closer he and Rose drew to the auditorium, the louder and more comprehensible the speaking became.
‘… case we try today is clearly one of such atrocious nature, with so criminal a culprit, that we’ve come in during the holidays and public games to administer is.’
A dry voice echoed over the buzz of dozens of whispering men and women.
‘A foreigner happening upon us today might be amazed, for clearly they have no appreciation of our law - our courts - our custom. But we know the importance of this case is such that all public business must be interrupted for its proceedings.’
‘He doesn’t sound impressed,’ Rose whispered as they made their way through an archway at the back of the auditorium.
‘Bit of a deadpan snarker, old Cicero,’ the Doctor replied. ‘Had a way with words, he did. Invented the concept of confusing your opponent so much that they stopped arguing with you.’
‘So, he’s, like, your hero, right?’
‘Not really. Bit full of himself - wouldn’t support anything that wasn’t his own idea.’
The interior was a large, circular shaped space filled with rows of benches and stairs that led downward toward a cleared dais. The place was filled with men in togas and women wearing stolae - although the latter possessed the less enviable seats.
As they hadn’t dressed for the time period, the Doctor indicated to Rose that they should stay at the back of the room, out of the line of sight.
‘Just in case,’ he defended when she shot him a wry smile.
Down in the centre, on the dais, one man stood before the assembled crowd, gesticulating artfully as he spoke. He was in his late forties or early fifties, beardless, and seemed to involve his entire body in his arguments.
‘…if only you will listen and form your own opinions! You’ll see that we have all been brought here simply for the insufferable desire and excessive bitter hatred of another party against my client! So it seems to me, the most fitting way to defend young Marcus Caelius is to first address the slander his accusers have used to disgrace him! All to strip and rob him of his good name…!’
And here was the crux of why he hated Rome.
It was here that the well-intentioned but ultimately corrupt profession of law had kicked off for human beings. Where justice became about how well one wielded words instead of protected the innocent.
These people, so praising of logic and rationality and rhetoric; so quick to follow protocol for the sake of appearances instead of common sense. Where every bit of personality and individuality was stamped out of a person in order to conform to the lofty values that no one even really believed in. Where philosophers and statesmen preached about the greatness and goodness of the State, while across what would one day be the empire, innocent people were being brought to heel. All because their ways were considered barbarian and the State obviously knew better.
It was so much like the Time Lords.
A wave of grief hit him at that thought.
Before the Time War, his dislike of civilizations like the Romans stemmed from how familiar he was with their ways. He had spent most of his life chafing under that kind of rule, his own people trying to force him to conform like a squared peg in a round hole. It hadn’t worked and so he had run away.
Now, though, there was no one left to run from, and that hurt more than any real or imagined injuries his people had ever done to him in the past.
Rassilon, how he had hated them! With their rules and ancient protocols and flowery words and their collective inability to tinder an imaginative thought between them!
What he wouldn’t give to have them back.
It had been horrible living there, and it hadn’t truly been his home since he absconded with the TARDIS, but the option to go back had always been there.
‘Were they like this?’
He started and looked down in surprise to see Rose watching him carefully. ‘Hm?’
‘Your people,’ she clarified cautiously, her voice quiet not just so that they wouldn’t interrupt the surrounding proceedings. When he kept his face deliberately blank, she quickly rushed on, ‘Only, the way you’re looking at them - kind of annoyed, like. Exasperated. Kind of how I get with Mum when she does something the hard way just cos she’s used to doing it that way. Like texting.’
He was torn between a myriad of emotions that took a few seconds to sort through, even with his supposed superior self-control.
Pain at the turn the conversation had suddenly taken. Amazement at the perceptiveness of this barely mature primate. Indignation at her comparison of his feelings for his people to something as trite as instant messaging. Amusement at how the Time Lords would react to that comparison. Derision at yet another one of her attempts to get him to talk about his loss
Why did she insist on prying, when she couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to watch your planet explode into nothingness, to be the last of your species? -
Oh. Well, she sort of did.
He’d taken her to watch her planet die, to a time when she was the last biologically genuine human in the universe.
It was completely different yet worryingly the same, and again he wondered if that hadn’t been his intention in bringing her there in the first place. And again, it was the guilt over that which prompted him to break the uncomfortable lull between them.
She at least deserved an answer.
‘Yes,’ he said shortly. ‘They were very like this.’
He didn’t elaborate.
‘Oh,’ Rose said, because there was really nothing to say to that. She looked out upon the proceedings again, and they were silent again a spell, before she tentatively asked, ‘D’you want to leave, then?’
He tamped down annoyance at the fact he hadn’t managed to hide his discomfort from ruining her trip, he muttered, ‘It’s fine. If I turned and left every time something reminded me of home, I’d never leave the TARDIS, would I? Awful lot of boring, high-handed civilizations in the universe…’
‘You must’ve hated it,’ she declared, and winced. She obviously hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Quickly, she added, ‘Cos you’re so… you, I mean. I… can’t imagine you following rules and… and regulations and talking all pretty without every getting to the point.’
‘Oi! You saying I don’t talk pretty?’ he deflected, his volume earning a glare from one of the many spectators in the last row.
Rose rolled her eyes. ‘Just saying, I can sort of imagine - well, not… not really, I know, but it’s like… my grandmother was a bit like that. My dad’s mum. All stuffy and disapproving all the time, and always on my mum for getting pregnant before she got married and trapping my dad. And she was always with the little, needling comments. About Mum’s cooking, my grades, my friends, Mum’s job - and I didn’t like her all the time. Most of the time, really. But after she died… I still missed her. Little things, like how she smelled like Chanel or the way she ate her eggs at breakfast. Stupid stuff, really, but…’ She shrugged, almost in apology for her mundane memories. ‘But I keep thinking maybe, if I had more time with her, or if I’d been older before she went, we might’ve gotten on better. Had a different relationship with her…’
She trailed off, looking at something in the distance that he couldn’t see. Something appeared to occur to her then because she fixed him with an intense stare and asked, ‘Why can’t you?’
‘Hm?’
‘Why can’t you go back and change it? The War, losing your - why not change it? You’ve got a time ship.’
She bit her lip, like she was gaging his reaction to his words and expected him to finally lash out.
Admittedly, it was an automatic reaction to such a probe, but this was Rose and he intended to make the effort not to do that. It was a simple matter of quietly telling her he didn’t want to talk about it, and she would back off -
‘My planet and my people exist - existed - outside all of time and space,’ he answered before he even realised. He blinked at his candidness and saw it reflected on her face; she hadn’t expected him to answer.
Makes two of us, he decided as he swallowed and kept talking.
‘There’s a universal constant that ensure no one can ever go back into G - into my planet’s past.’ Truthfulness aside, it still felt macabre to speak his planet’s name out loud. ‘And for good reason, too. Imagine, a bunch of people like me only without my sunny good nature deciding to go back into the history of the Time Lords and change things. Rewrite laws that are there for a reason, stop millions of fixed events from coming to pass. It’d be chaos, for the brief period before it all ended. No, Rose, there’s a reason I can’t go back. And even if it were possible, there’s no saying that I might not change things for the worse.’
‘Like this time you might not survive,’ she realised.
‘Yeah…’ he intoned, shying away from the old temptation to seek out just such an outcome, the way he had directly after the War. ‘Like that.’
They went quiet then, both watching as Cicero paced back and forth as he spoke, neither really listening to what he was saying.
‘Why did you come with me?’
The words were out of his mouth before he’d properly considered them and seemed to hang there in reproach.
There was a shift beside him, and although he didn’t look at her, he sensed she was searching his face for some clue as to what he meant. He studiously gazed out at the spectacle happening before them.
‘It’s a bit strange, isn’t it?’ he went on, tone deceptively light. ‘Some madman in a box invites you to hurtle through time and space, on a trip that might get you killed - almost has done, a few times now. And instead of running as far from him as you can, you come with? Bit of a counterintuitive thing to do when you think about it.’
He wasn’t being critical or judgemental - he was honestly curious. In that moment, he couldn’t for the life of him and with all his massive Time Lord brains figure out the reason.
She seemed unsure of herself for a moment.
‘S’ppose I came with you for the same reason you came back for me,’ she offered, like she was just coming to this conclusion herself. ‘You didn’t have to. And I figure you never ask people to travel with you once, let alone twice… but you came back for me.’
There was a question in there somewhere, one she refrained from actively voicing but which he noticed nonetheless.
It was his turn to consider whether he should bother acknowledging that or not. He should just react as usual - should brush it off with a casual explanation of how he didn’t like to travel alone. How over the centuries he occasionally picked people up to fill the void of others left behind.
But when he opened his mouth to do so, he found he couldn’t. The memory of those lost hurt too much, and the effort involved in telling one of his usual stories - meant to amaze and amuse and, above all, distract - was exhausting.
For once he wanted one person in the entire universe to hear something about him that was true.
· ΘΣ ·
Enough time passed that Rose didn’t expect the Doctor to answer, and so when he did, she startled a bit.
‘There was something in your eyes,’ he told her quietly. ‘The look of someone that wants to live their life to the fullest, farthest point possible. Someone who’s slowly suffocating on the inside because of the people all around them.’
Rose’s mouth dropped incrementally at that pronouncement, and the Doctor finally turned to meet her gaze. ‘I haven’t read your mind or anything like that. Promised you I wouldn’t, even if you don’t remember it.’
‘I know,’ she managed, a bit wrong-footed. ‘But how did you…?’
‘Just recognized the look, is all.’
‘Who from?’
‘Me.’
If she was surprised before, she was shocked now. Even after learning the little bits about his people, she couldn’t picture the Doctor ever being anything other than the intrepid explorer.
Rather than dwell on that, though, she considered his evaluation of her. Hadn’t she been considering the very same things about herself not an hour before?
‘You’re right,’ she admitted quietly, feeling both liberated and the slightest bit ungrateful for disclosing that. ‘Think you might be the only person to ever notice. And it’s… it’s not…’ She trailed off, stymied for a second trying to organize her thoughts. ‘It’s not like I had a bad time of it, really. Might’ve been loads worse. I had Mum growing up, and Mickey and my friends. They all love me and I love them to bits. But every time I want to try something different, or do something more, they’re always telling me I can’t. Or shouldn’t.’
The Doctor’s expression softened. ‘S’ppose they’re only looking out for you. Least your people care about you and don’t want you to get hurt.’
‘Might actually make it worse,’ Rose sighed.
‘Cos how else are you supposed to live your life if you’re afraid to fall down and skin your knees?’ the Doctor finished.
‘… yeah.’
They shared a look of understanding.
‘Tell you what, though,’ he said after a spell. ‘I’ve no problem telling you to reach for the stars. No doubt in my mind you’d excel at it.’
The corner of her mouth tugged upward. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. What are friends for?’ He smiled back briefly before making a face. ‘Well, friend. You’re the only one I’ve got right now.’
Her heart ached for him then, and she instinctively corrected him. ‘Best.’
‘Hm?’
‘Best friend.’
He blinked, and then an unexpected and delighted smile lit up his face, like a small boy on Christmas. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘I mean, in less than three days you already understand me better than anyone I’ve ever met - even people I grew up with. So yeah, think that qualifies you for best mate territory.’
It was true, too.
Shireen and Keisha were girlfriends, but she never told them her innermost secrets. Mum was Mum, who she definitely didn’t talk about certain things with, and Mickey -
Oh, Mickey.
For all that he was her boyfriend and knew most of her secrets and thoughts, there were still things she just couldn’t tell him or talk to him about. Because he wouldn’t understand; or worse, he would try to placate her or keep her from changing anything about herself.
With the Doctor, she felt like she could tell him anything and he wouldn’t judge her for it. Might call her out for being stupid about it, but he’d give her a reason. And he would just as easily tell her she was brilliant in the same breath. Like all he saw in her was potential that she hadn’t reached yet.
‘S’ppose you’re mine then,’ the Doctor told her, interrupted her musings. ‘You know more about me than anyone in the universe anymore.’
They beamed at each other and this time it was the Doctor who took her hand in his, wrapping his long fingers around hers almost protectively.
They stood like that for a while, listening as the arguments of the case slowly transitioned into a more spirited defense. Once in a while, when the proceedings seemed to confuse Rose a little, the Doctor would offer a quiet commentary and back-story, but otherwise she enjoyed the whole spectacle.
‘I think he might actually be ruder than you,’ Rose remarked as Cicero called out some woman named Clodia to the amusement of most of the audience.
‘Well, lawyers,’ the Doctor said with a shrug. ‘- no such thing as a moral when you’re one of those,’ the Doctor said with a shrug. ‘Caelius is guilty as sin, but Cicero was known in his day for defending some rather seedy character. It was all about showing off how well he could argue. Can you believe he only ever lost the one case?’
‘Really? Why?’
‘Cos the court was filled with heavily armed, violent looking men aiming for a conviction and staring at the jury with bad intent the entire trial.’
‘Oh - well, that’d do it,’ Rose murmured, attention falling back on the court. ‘Bet a bunch of people here wouldn’t mind him shutting his gob.’
‘More than a few - his enemies hated him so much that he ended up with his head and hands cut off and put on display in the Roman Forum.’
‘Oh, gross.’
‘He was dead before that happened,’ the Doctor assured her. ‘Say one thing for him, if nothing else impresses you - he met his maker in style. The bloke sent to off him showed up, and old Tully’s lying on the couch and reading a scroll. He looks up and says, “oh, there you are”.’
‘Like he’s nagging him for being late?’ Rose exclaimed, incredulous.
‘Exactly! Surprised he didn’t offer the bloke a cuppa before the deed went down!’
They both burst into laughter.
It was no surprise when they were gently encouraged - by sword point - to leave.
· ΔΩ ·
TO BE CONTINUED IN WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS
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