There, and Back Again - Missing Scene (1)
Sep. 1st, 2020 07:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schrodingers_time_ladyFandom: Doctor Who
Character(s): Rassilon (Pre-Canon)
Ship(s): Rassilon/Omega
Previous Chapter: Chapter 14
Next Chapter: Chapter 15
Synopsis: Growing into a Time Lady is hard enough, but growing up as the Lord President's ward is even harder. Especially when it seems as though all of Gallifrey and strangers alike want to tell you how to live your life and who you're going to become.
Cross-posts: AO3
A/N: This is a missing scene set between chapters 14 and 15 that would not leave my head until I wrote it. It was strange to slip out of Roda's head and into someone else's for a moment, but I hope it proves... enlightening? Interesting?
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He waited, after Rodageitmososa departed, for a long time. And then the Lord President of Gallifrey - tired, angry and out of ideas - turned on his heel and strode deeper into the Panopticon.
The young Time Lady - no longer a Tot, as she was so often wont to remind him - has become the bane of his existence since she had come into his care. So much like her mother… not enough like her father. She was wilful, unpredictable and insolent, and keeping tabs on her was like trying to track a herd of vortisaurs on an irregular migration. No matter how hard he tried to steer her down a certain path, no matter how he condemned or praised her achievements, she was determined to make his plans as difficult to attain as she could possibly - inadvertently - manage. He should have washed his hands of her years ago and commended her to the dormitories of the Academy. Let them deal with her disobedience and her commitment to failing despite every opportunity he had afforded her. And yet he could not, and it infuriated him. She infuriated him. So much like another young Time Lord he had once known so well...
He stood in the centre of his fellow founders, clenching and unclenching his fists. No, he thought ruefully, I should not have choked her. It will not be easy to regain her trust, now.
But the problem was that she had learned, by instinct, both how to push his buttons and when to play by his rules. In a sense, it impressed him; today, however, it had been little more than a humiliation. As though she had planned it from the beginning. He had briefed her on what today’s session was to be about, and what she was expected to say. He had made his stance on the matter abundantly clear, and she should have been prepared for others in the Council to agree with him regardless of her own immature feelings on the matter. She wasn’t stupid. She was far more wily than she gave herself credit for. There were reasons he had wanted to raise her and place her in the position that he had, and if she would only get her head out of the atmosphere then perhaps she could have swallowed her pride and appreciated that. Instead she had struck back today in a way that she never had before, and she had made him lose his temper.
Yes. It was her fault. He had been nothing but generous. Rassilon the Great knew better than Rodageitmososa the Orphan.
Eyes drilled into the back of his head, and Rassilon found himself turning to face the immense statue standing directly behind him. His lips pursed, and his eyes darkened, and he couldn’t help but snap once again; thudding his staff upon the ground as though to intimidate the dead.
“And what would you have me do, Peylix? What would you do better?”
Omega looked down on him with his usual scrutiny. Rassilon scowled. He had never liked how the statue followed him, watched him, towered over him. As if Omega - as if Peylix had ever been greater than him. Today, though, his expression was different. Disdainful, almost. He knew that Omega was dead - or rather, as good as, trapped within the second of the star’s ending that he had tried to harness - and that he had not witnessed his lapse in decorum. But he still sometimes felt his companion’s mind pressing against his own, all fury and judgement and betrayal. He felt it more keenly in this moment and as he glared at the statue he wondered - not for the first time - if his pact with that worm Vandekirian had been the right decision after all.
With a dismissive growl he turned his back on Omega, and paced around the ring as he stroked his chin. He was allowing his mind to wander, and there was no sense in regretting something he had done so many centuries ago. It had been done for the betterment of his career and for the betterment of Gallifrey. He would not be judged by a ghost in a black star anymore than he would be judged by the child. And yet the latter reminded him so much of the former, and he knew it well.
He had first noticed it when she had stumbled into his workshop and assimilated herself into the role of his assistant like it had been made for her. It was not something he had ever anticipated - certainly not with her professors’ reports on her conduct and grades - but he had surprised himself by finding it endearing. Just like another solar engineer I knew so well. And so he had humoured both her interest and his own curiosity and allowed her to work with him. Used it both as the proverbial carrot and stick in raising her. He had tried to convince himself that his only motive was in using it to encourage her to apply herself at the Academy, but it was a well-rehearsed lie. She asked too many questions - just like Peylix - and she experimented - just like Peylix - and she was stubborn - just like Peylix. And when she was not annoying him, he appreciated her company - just like Peylix’s.
“She is too like you, old friend.”
It was that stubborn streak that was so similar to his old friend’s that would also be the death of her. And so too late, he had realised that while cultivating her interest in engineering and her respect for him was vital to his plans, he also had to keep her at arm’s length. He was too old and too important to be getting sentimental. But each time he managed to rise above his pathos she would do something so colossally idiotic that it rivaled even Peylix’s nerve and he would lose his temper and forget that Rodageitmososa was not his child.
His son had died long ago, in the war with the Vampires; she was not a replacement, only a new opportunity. Yet he had found himself fearing for her when she had tried to look into the future of her regenerations, and proud of her when she surpassed her contemporaries behind the helm of a TARDIS. If he tried to show it, she let overconfidence get the better of her and if he concealed it, she closed herself to him. The balancing act of what should have been the simple rearing of an orphan Tot turned into a near impossible task.
He had not meant to strike her. He was better than that. But it was Cardinal Luvis and his accursed omega grade all over again. Had Peylix been less pontifical and cocksure, Luvis might not have failed him those millennia ago and pushed his old friend into the depths of ‘madness and pure idiocy’ that the professor had accused him of. Likewise, if Rodageitmososa did not reign in her rebellion and her foolish ideals she, too, would fall from grace and no doubt cross a line he could not even comprehend of her!
With a frustrated sigh, Rassilon sat down on the steps facing Omega’s statue and massaged his temple. Something would have to be done about her behaviour today, and he could think of no way to do so without her turning her back on him for good. Perhaps, he mused, my actions today have simply assured that she already has.
“Three centuries of erudition and refinement,” he complained, as though Omega could hear him. “And I have in my keep a ward who does not respect Gallifrey, rises to the bare minimum of provocation and has no understanding of her own responsibility or potential. Can I even call myself Lord President if I cannot reign in one child?” The statue, of course, was silent. Rassilon huffed with frustration. “Of course, were you here I am certain you would find the situation entirely risible. What advice would you give me, Peylix?” He looked up. “One Tot is not harder to decipher than stellar manipulation, surely.”
But no advice came, and no advice ever would again, thanks to him. Rassilon closed his eyes, and for a moment imagined a Gallifrey where he had acted differently. Where he and Omega ruled side by side. Would it have been easier, or would they just have come to blows as well? They were too similar, Peylix and he. Always had been, except where it mattered. Rassilon stretched his neck - allowing himself this moment of freedom, a lapse in decorum - and pulled a wistful face.
Who had fallen into whose bed first? He no longer remembered. But he could remember the feeling of Peylix beneath him, and the shallow protests he would make even while he was keening for more. He remembered how Rassilon had kissed him, for the first time, when they had spent four straight days fixing an error in their calculations and he had been too tired to think of why he shouldn’t. And he remembered, too - his shoulders slumping as he did so - how they had fought and shouted and drifted apart. How their interests and priorities had ceased to align, and why he had done what he had done for the greater good.
His, or Gallifrey’s? It was a question he asked himself often.
Well. Rassilon pulled old and weary bones to their feet, leaning on his staff and looking at his gauntlet again. There would be time enough for regret later. Regret for lashing out, then and now. Right now, he had to deal with the problem at hand, and that problem was what had happened in the Council meeting today. Both Rodageitmososa’s insubordination and his response. He would have to talk to her, and neither of them were going to like it. Rassilon rolled his eyes, and gave Omega’s statue one last look before he began to walk away. You would be impressed, he thought, in its direction, at her capacity to infuriate and befog me. Would that you could deal with this mess tonight instead of me.
Space. If he gave her space, and spoke to her in the morning, perhaps she would be more contrite and open to listening. It would give him some time to think of what to say, as well.
The long way home, then.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-06 08:39 pm (UTC)My brain is frazzled, but I loved this. I can absolutely understand why you had to write it, and seeing everything through different eyes is something I approve of muchly.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-06 08:54 pm (UTC)Yes! It seemed a little bit of a shame to have my 'own' regeneration of his and not ever get to hear his voice, y'know?
but I loved this.
Thank you! :D
seeing everything through different eyes is something I approve of muchly.
I felt it would be good to show that yes, he's being a manipulative tit, but there's also shades of grey in there?
ETA: On the other hand there's still -
"Hey shouldn't have hit her [...] now she would never trust him." :/