taxonomites | 008: A Good Deed in a Weary World [Location: Around the City]

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008: A Good Deed in a Weary World [Location: Around the City]

It was time.

Drusilla had been waiting patiently – for the right moon and the right moment and, most importantly of all, the right people – and, at long last, it was time.

“Little lamb, little lamb
My birthday is here at last!
Little fish, little fish
Do you think I'll get my wish?
Little lamb, little lamb
I wonder how old I am ..?”

Centuries and centuries. It didn’t matter. She’d made her wish and Miss Edith was already on her way. A hundred birthday gifts – a thousand! – couldn’t mean more to her than that.

The vampire stayed close to the shadows. Not because she needed to, no, but because the darkness was soft and familiar. The sleeping city rippled with anticipation. Something was happening. It had started with the Extras, though they hadn’t – wouldn’t – harm Drusilla. Unlike the rest of the residents, she was moving with purpose and determination, encouraged by the hamsters and aided by the stars. They guided her footsteps, telling her who to seek and how to find them.

The first one would be easy. His name had been on the tip of her tongue since she’d spoken to the hamsters. He was so lonely. The loneliest man in any world. He’d be delighted to see a familiar face, wouldn’t he? Just for a little while? His hearts – two of them, which would make sure a mess if his throat was ever slit – hammered with the need for love and attention.

She didn’t know the others, not really. Just their faces. Just their faces and wishes that called to her across the city.

That was more than enough.

OOC: Open to the ~~unfortunate~~ lucky individuals who are about to benefit from Drusilla’s sudden surge of charitable feeling. There is also a fresh heart in a box on Ruby's desk. Good luck with that?

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He let out a little laugh at that. Yes, careless. That was the Doctor to Romana. Careless and reckless.

The illusion held even as he put his hand to her shoulder as well. He did want her here, right now. A voice of wisdom, his conscience. Someone he longed to see, someone who could, in her own way, offer him the forgiveness he sought so very, very badly.

"We need to get out of here," he said. "But I don't know what to do. I'll end up hurting people if I go on like this but---I can't see another way."

Drusilla wondered, even as the Doctor moved his hand to her shoulder, exactly how Romana felt about him. She'd been proud and haughty at times, yes, but the vampire liked to think that she'd loved the Time Lord just the same. How could you fail to love someone who showed you the universe?

"How long have you been here, Doctor?" she said, soft and soothing, affectionate and concerned. "What's happened?"

Although Drusilla understood, although Drusilla knew, Romana didn't. You could heal a wound you didn't understand.

The Doctor loved Romana. It was in the way he argued with her, in the way he constantly battled wits with her. It was in the way he mourned her loss when she left for E-Space, in the way he mourned her loss at the end of the Time War. If she had told him not to use the Element, if she had told him to stop, he would've. There was the universe, and then there was Romana. She sat outside of it to him, like the Master did.

He couldn't tell her everything, of course. There was so much she had yet to live.

"I've done things," he said. "Terrible things. Some of them since I've arrived here and I thought----well, you know me. Throw out an ultimatum, blow up a few buildings, things get sorted. But not here. Here...people got hurt."

She kept her hand - her hand - on his arm. Drusilla forgot, for a moment, that she wasn't actually Romana. The Doctor's feelings were strong and raw and wondrous. She longed for someone to love her so fervently.

"I do," she agreed, "Which means that I know you were only acting for the good of the people trapped here."

Whether it succeeded or not. Whether people had died or not.

"Don't they get a choice?" he asked, voicing the question many had asked him over the last few months. "If not everyone thinks it's worth it, if they're too afraid...do I put them in danger, too?"

He wasn't sure why he was asking her this. Maybe he needed confirmation that what he was doing was right. Maybe he needed her to tell him to stop.

He tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. It was an intimate gesture, something he hadn't done in long time, not since he had a long scarf and a big smile and they traveled together in the TARDIS.

"To defeat a race powerful enough to abduct me from the Capitol?" Orange skies for the race that walked in eternity. Silver trees that shone like coins. "We don't have a choice."

We. Because she'd have helped, if she'd really arrived in the city.

The Doctor had clever fingers. His touch made her smile. A soft smile. An easy smile. A smile that held everything the Doctor wanted to see.

Of course it was a we. He smiled, because she was absolutely everything he expected from Romana.

It was everything he wanted to see. His hearts hurt, just seeing her smile like this, reliving a moment with a woman he desperately missed but could never, ever see again. And when they left Taxon, she would be gone.

"There's so much I should tell you," he said. "So much you should know---"

But they were spoilers, they were slices in time he should never share.

"Because---what's the point in being Time Lords if we can't fix time?"

No. Not gone. Not while she lived on in his head. She longed to tilt her head up and kiss his eyes and drink in all the tears he wouldn't let himself shed.

"We have plenty of time, Doctor." Time for him to tell her whatever he wanted and unburden himself as best he could. (A Time Lord couldn't run out of time, although Drusilla could. She wouldn't stop unless she had to. She didn't want to anger the hamsters and lose Miss Edith.)

Her expression encouraged him to share. Romana was strong. Romana could carry the burden as well as the Doctor.

"Tell me what do I need to fix it. It's our duty to repair time as well as preserve it."

"It's---"

He struggled with himself. It was only a few words away. All he had to do was tell her about the Element. Tell her how to program it. Or tell her not to allow Rassilon to wake up. Stop the Time Lords before they go too far. Save Gallifrey, save all of them.

"It's a fixed point," he said. "And I've---I've destroyed fixed points before, Romana. The consequences can be worse." Though, he allowed himself to admit, how could anything be worse than what happened?

He just wanted to save her.

She ghosted her hand down his arm and threaded their fingers together. His skin was strangely cool, but, then again, so was hers. She didn't have a soul to warm it.

"You do what you believe is best for the universe," she soothed. She didn't croon as Drusilla would. She was cleverer and calmer. Majestic. Her comfort was a different kind of comfort. "That's all we can do."

How would the real Romana have reacted to a change in a fixed point? Drusilla didn't know because the Doctor couldn't be certain.

"I need more information, Doctor. About Taxon. About the fixed point."

Drusilla understood the concept of a fixed point, more or less. A knot in a string that couldn't be untied.

It was Romana. He didn't feel any fear telling her everything, anything.

"Everyone dies," he breathed. "Everyone, Romana."

No. No, it was Drusilla, but she was very good at keeping secrets. She'd learned how to wrap them up and tuck them away a very long time ago.

"What do you mean?"

A fear she wouldn't allow to take hold. A calm that threatened to shatter. A hand that gripped his a little tighter.

"The Time Lords?"

He leaned forward and pressed his forehead to hers. He was so tired. So very tired of so much, and he wanted her to be Romana. If the illusion was weak enough for it to shatter with a breeze, the Doctor would've clung to it with every fiber of who he was. Romana would hold him up.

"I can't tell you," he said. "I can't have happen to you what happened to Adelaide, Romana."

Romana wouldn't understand, of course, but he had to explain. He had to have her understand, even if she didn't truly get it.

"I'm so sorry."

Poor boy. Poor boy. He was so old. So tired. Although it wouldn't have been accurate to say that Drusilla cared - she couldn't, not really, not without a soul - she was certainly moved by the story. It was a beautiful novel. A perfect portrait. Something to be savoured.

No wonder these Time Lords - even the name was old and tiring! - called to something inside her. They were so close to the stars.

"Adelaide?" she asked, because she had to. She paused, just for a moment, as if trying to decide what to do next. In the end, Drusilla allowed Romana to grip the Doctor's forearms, trying to soothe and anchor him in the same instant. He wouldn't break, not while she was here.

"Do stop apologising for something that hasn't happened to me yet, Doctor. If it is a fixed point, you can't hold yourself responsible for what will happen."

He wanted to laugh at that. Don't hold himself responsible. As if. He was utterly responsible for it. He did it, he killed them. He killed her. Or will kill her, when the time in her universe connects with his. Time was...it was like that. Nothing made sense. Everything made sense.

"It's the same thing, here," he said, trying, desperately, not to think of the end of the Time War and avoid talking about Adelaide's fate. "All these things that happened, all these things that need to happen. And whatever I do, it's going to affect them. It's going to hurt them."

Her hand against his forearm was a comfort. Having her there, holding onto him, grounding him in the way only Romanadvortralundar could, was a comfort. In the centuries between the Time War and now, he didn't just miss her. He longed for her.

She could feel the rhythmic hammering of his pulse. Pulses. He'd taste of chaos and fire and forever, but she wasn't allowed to drink a drop. Because Romana wouldn't and because Romama didn't have a chip in her head.

"Whatever you do ..." she said, pouring his longing from her lips. Her trust. "... will be the right thing."

"But what is the right thing?" he asked, desperately. She trusted him, she trusted him utterly and he couldn't understand why. He didn't trust himself, he didn't trust the things he did, even when he knew they were the only choices left.

He didn't know. he didn't know what to do here. So many options and none of them were good. He wanted another option. He wanted another choice. Of course, he always wanted another choice.

"Send them home," Romana said, and, because Drusilla wanted return to her own world a great deal, she allowed a little bit of herself to creep into the words. Not the phrasing or inflection, no, just the fervent need that made it seem all the more real. "The people who are trapped here need to be returned to their own world."

She trusted him because he needed that trust and that affection. He needed it like breathing and dreaming. Did Time Lords dream? Drusilla couldn't be sure. The thoughts in his head were too tangled to tell.

If sacrifices needed to be made, then so be it.

It was enough. It was like being given permission. It was like finally having the weight of guilt lifted off of him. He had to do what was necessary. Romana would always tell him to do what was necessary.

He gave her a small smile. It was tight and tired, the way he felt. But she was there. His Romana.

"I missed you," he said.

The truth would break his hearts. Drusilla, who would soon be reunited with Miss Edith, didn't particularly care. Romana would have cared. Romana was better person than wicked little Drusilla could ever be.

A little longer, then. For Gallifrey's dead champion and the man who should have known better than to love her.

"And I suppose I've missed you as well," she replied, with a slight smile, "Although it hasn't been that long since I last saw you."

"Yeah?" he asked, trying to pin her along his timeline. "Chronos, then? Me with the not-quite-ginger hair. Working on being ginger, never quite getting there. One day, though, Romana. One day."

He touched her long, blonde hair. Intimacy wasn't something the two of them often shared, but he longed for it, now. Longed to make up for all the times he didn't allow himself to feel anything for her.

But---wasn't her hair short, before? When he traveled with her to Chronos? No, no, he must've been remembering wrong. His desire for her to be Romana trumped the truth that was just below his fingertips.

She didn't shy away from the touch, no matter how rare or inappropriate it was. The Doctor didn't want that. If anything, he wanted her to lean in, which she did. Just a little. Just enough.

Chronos. Time. He was asking a question that Drusilla didn't know the answer to.

"And what, precisely, is so important about having ginger hair?" she asked, covering uncertainty with amusement. "I like this regeneration. It makes you look rather young. Except for your eyes, of course."

Such eyes. Such old eyes.

"I read a lot," he explained, flippantly. It was an old joke from an old time. He was always older than he said he was, and only Romana knew his exact age. She could always tell. He didn't know how she always knew, but she did.

She leaned into his touch and he closed his eyes, relishing this reunion, just for another moment. How close had they been for so long? How close and yet so very far away?

And she would be here, now. In Taxon. And he would have to fight through his longing for her as well as his longing for his other friends, before he finally got everyone free.

"But not the TARDIS manual."

Another old joke. They were all old. The only jokes worth telling and worth hearing.

Drusilla, who didn't like that sort of fight, could feel his longing. It was as powerful as his loneliness, but sweet instead of bitter. It shimmered in the air. She watched him close his eyes and touched his cheek, feeling it dancing on her tongue. So sad, so old.

He could have had the universe.

"It'll be all right, Doctor."

He smiled, despite himself. "Nah, I threw that into a black hole. It disagreed with me." It was the third he'd lost in such a manner. Frequent Otherstide gifts that were never used and rarely opened.

She touched his cheek, and he could feel Romana's hand there. Cool, Gallifreyan skin and slim, slender fingers that had programmed the TARDIS and rewritten universes. Part of his mind acknowledged that this was wrong, that there were reasons he never touched or held Romana like this. They needed to protect themselves, they needed to protect what they had between them.

"It's always all right," he murmured, though he couldn't believe the lie anymore.

Maybe he was stronger, now. Maybe he could hold her now because he could hold himself up, because he knew how to survive such losses. Or maybe he was simply weaker. Whatever the reason, he leaned into her touch.

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