There, and Back Again - Chapter 17
Sep. 1st, 2020 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schrodingers_time_ladyFandom: Doctor Who
Character(s): Rodageitmososa (OC), Bren (OC), Sax (OC), Odell (OC)
Previous Chapter: Chapter 16
Next Chapter: Coming Soon
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
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Consciousness returned to Rodageitmososa with a whimper, not a bang.
She ached, all over, in a way that she hadn’t believed it was possible to ache before, and in places that she hadn’t known muscles existed. As she lay on her back in an unknown room on an unknown bed in an unknown location she tried to take stock of exactly why she was aching in unfamiliar places, and her mind came up blank. Instead she lay very, very still and contemplated the merits of banging her head off something very hard until she wasn’t conscious again, and dealing with whatever the problem was at some later, much more distant time and place.
There was, at least for now, an empty place in her memory. It was as if someone had unrolled a film reel, and neatly clipped anything that would make sense of her position. It would come back to her, she was sure, and probably not gently. For now she just wanted to keep her eyes closed, and try not to think. But the universe, of course, had other ideas.
She could hear people shuffling about her, going about their business; or at least, some sort of business. Two, three, four pairs of feet milling about, but trying to be quiet about it. In the distance, people were cheering and she could hear some kind of animal having some kind of a tantrum about whatever it was being told to do. But it was the nearby voices that had her attention. Although she hadn’t exactly been sure what to think about wherever she was, hearing Odell and Sax talking in hurried whispers was more than a little bit of a surprise. They hadn’t noticed that she was awake yet, and so she tried to listen to them talk.
“Don’t like it,” declared Sax, in his usual gruff, matter of fact voice. Roda bit her cheek to keep from snorting. His hearts were in the right place, but there was very little that he did like, and she had long suspected that the list began and ended with ‘his wife’. “What if they find out she’s here?”
Odell sighed. As Roda peeked at them with one half-open eye she saw her stroke her husband’s cheek with the back of her hand, leaning in to peck him lightly on the lips.
“They won’t. He said so.”
“And you trust them ?”
“Well…” Odell pursed her lips. “They brought Meyer’s daughter here stinking of regenerative energy.” She paused, and Roda rummaged through her thoughts for a stray memory. ‘They’? ‘Regenerative energy’? Maybe she ached more than she realised. “Dunno if I trust them but he saved her life.”
Despite herself - despite doing her best to look still asleep - Roda frowned. Something was coming back to her, like the condensation on a window steadily dissipating to reveal more of the landscape. Now that she has been awake long enough, memory was reasserting itself and with it came anxiety, anger and… fear. She remembered what had happened, and had some idea of where she was. The shobogan camp, surely. But who could have thought to bring her here , and why? When?
She sat up ramrod straight when her recollection reached her TARDIS, and instantly regretted it. A blanket slipped off her torso, puddling in her lap, and she had no thought at all for modesty as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and tried to stand. Odell was at her side in a second, a hand on her chest with a concerned expression on her face, but Roda weakly pushed her away. She blinked - letting her eyes adjust to the light - and licked her lips, and panted as she put her hands on her thighs.
“My - my TARDIS,” she began, more worried than she cared to admit by what the answer was going to be. “Is it-?”
“S’fine,” snapped Sax. “Parked behind the tents, scaring all the children.”
Odell was more gentle, picking strands of curly hair from Roda’s sweat-soaked forehead. “The one that brought you here, he said to tell you he patched it up.” She pursed her lips, shrugged, and then added: “and that he tweaked a few things.”
Momentarily shaken from her nerves Roda stared at Odell in horror, mouth agape. She tried to stand, decided she was too dizzy and slumped back to the bed, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand. It, too, ached, but she ignored it in favour of a very important question mingled with the relief.
“Who did what to my TARDIS?!”
“Roda,” Odell tweaked her nose, scowling. “You keep that rump on that bed until I tell you you’re good at ready to get up. Your ship is fine.”
“I- but-“ How dare someone ‘tweak’ a few things on her ship?! She stared in disbelief. “He can’t - I don’t want anyone-“
“He saved your life,” said Odell, her tone firm. “I think you can repay that kindness by trusting him not to blow up your TARDIS.”
Roda opened her mouth to argue again, and then decided against it. She pinched the bridge of her nose instead, running over the events that had led her here in her mind. It was all still a bit of a blur. There had been the flight, and then the impacts and everything had gone wrong. Destabilized. She stroked her throat, surprised that while it was tender, nothing seemed to be damaged. All that smoke she had inhaled… hydrogen and helium from the nebula, mixed in with whatever had been leaking from the ship. No wonder it had burned. She was lucky she hadn’t suffered an embolism; or perhaps she had, and that was why she had passed out. Investigating her forehead she couldn’t feel a cut from whatever she had banged it off, and breathing came easily enough. Time Lords healed fast… but not this fast. Not without a Zero Room, or some help.
As she went to speak again - ask who had rescued her, and confirm a suspicion - she coughed hard. A small cloud of gold dust billowed around her hand, and her hearts almost stopped out of alarm. Eyes wide she held the hand up in front of her face and then grabbed at her arm; turning it over and looking at the colour of her skin before grabbing at her fringe. Sax and Odell looked between one another that might have said ‘she’s gone mad’ as Roda tugged a curl in front of her eyes and then recited a few lines of a poem she’d once known by heart, testing her voice.
“I didn’t regenerate…”
Sax huffed, folding his arms. “Could’a told you that. Still the same curly-haired beanstalk you’ve always been.”
“But there was regenerative energy…” Roda murmured, half to herself.
She looked at her hand again, turning it back and forward as though she was missing something. But it would be impossible to miss that. Which meant that - since the pain and the near crash has been very, terrifyingly real - since she hadn’t been in any fit way to heal herself, somebody else had used up their own life energy to keep her from regenerating or dying. Someone had to be either inconceivably stupid or care very much about your survival to waste something as precious as that on another person. Since that person seemed to have rescued her, fixed her TARDIS and left… it could only have been one other Time Lord.
“He could’ve cut years off his life…” she muttered to herself. Wrapping her arms around her midriff, she suddenly felt exceedingly guilty. It had been a mistake , sure. But then if she hadn’t decided to run away when she was upset and angry, she might not have gotten into an accident in the first place. “And I don’t even know who he is. ” She looked up at Odell, chewing her lip. “Are they still here?”
Odell shook her head. “Him and the boy he was with,” Roda blinked, surprised, “dropped you off, had me take care of you and ran off soon as they were done with your TARDIS. Must’ve had one of their own.” She pulled a face. “Truth be told, the little one mostly sat on a rock and stared at the sky as if he’d never seen the suns before. Big guy knew what he was doing, far as I could tell.”
It was a mystery for later, Roda decided. She didn’t know that the stranger had a companion, or a child. Then again, it wasn’t as though she knew anything about him at all.
“So what were you doing to get yourself into trouble like that, girl?”
When Sax spoke up, Roda turned to glance at him and was caught off guard by the look on his face. Noticing her scrutiny he turned away, sniffing in feigned disdain, but she’d already seen the concern in his eyes. Despite everything, Roda smirked.
“Were you worried about me, Sax?”
“Don’t let it get to your head,” he snorted. “S’just Meyer’d have my head if he knew I let his little tot die.”
Roda made a show of throwing her arms in the air, a small smile on her face, unwilling to let the matter drop.
“I’m three hundred and five!”
“And you still only have two brain cells bouncing about in that head of yours!” snapped Sax, waving his hand dismissively. Roda began to argue again, eyes twinkling, but he shooed her quiet and turned away. “Quit your yapping. It’s not like I care or anything.”
With that, the shobogan disappeared out of the hut they were in, leaving Roda grinning stupidly and Odell struggling to hold in laughter. As the door shut they both surrendered the fight and started to giggle, and even though she had apparently almost died Roda couldn’t stop. Maybe that was why she couldn’t stop.
Eventually they both fell silent, and Odell hopped onto the end of Roda’s bed. She wiped a tear from her eye, and let slip one last chuckle and then looked at Roda with a motherly scrutiny that made her want to squirm away. Roda swallowed.
“Seriously, though. What did you do?”
She hadn’t meant to tell Odell everything, but she was difficult to lie to. Sitting up properly and putting her back to a wall - glad of her still sweat-soaked clothing, that was now dusty and had patches of an uncomfortable dried red on it - she explained what had happened in the Citadel, with no small feeling of guilt. She knew that if she had been angry by what had been talked about, Odell had cause to be furious. She knew, as well, that to talk about the inner dealings of the Council with a shobogan was probably some form of treason for which she could get into plenty of trouble, if anybody found out. But she also couldn’t find it in her to care, both on a personal and an exhausted level. It didn’t feel quite like a secret to keep from a friend.
If Odell was surprised that Roda had kept who her guardian was a secret all these years, she kept it to herself.
Odell didn’t ask many questions, but Roda found herself elaborating anyway. She spoke about her father, and listened to Odell tell stories about the years she had known him and her mother before Roda was even loomed. For the first time in her life she told someone how terrified she was that she had gone mad, looking into the Untempered Schism, and that she was never gone to come to anything at all. Odell stroked her hair and asked about Robin Hood and Roda rattled off every fact she had ever read about him like a woman who had found an ocean in a century of desert. And finally - in a quiet, child-like voice from inside her chest - Roda said what was really breaking her hearts.
“We were supposed to go together ,” she said with a sigh, tracing a name into the blanket on her knees. “I thought I wanted to be alone and free but it was never meant to be like that. ”
Odell, wisely, did not ask who Roda meant, or how she had wanted the trip to the Medusa Cascade to have gone. Roda was grateful, and embarrassed, and ready to crawl back to bed with her tail between her legs. They both fell silent, and she looked around the small room she was sitting in. Odell and Sax weren’t about to throw her out, she knew that for certain, but she couldn’t hide here forever. But she didn’t want to go back to the Citadel yet, either. She couldn’t face Rassilon, or Quences, or even Peri, without all of the anger and resentment and pain boiling over again. If she could just be , for a spell, she knew it would simmer down and she could lock it all away again until it came in handy.
The shobogan broke the silence first, patting Roda’s knee and stretching before climbing off the edge of the bed. She looked through the open door once, knowingly, and then cleared her throat. Roda sat up straight, half expecting that she was about to be left alone or told off for some part of her admission of idiocy, but instead Odell called out the door.
“Are you going to lurk out there all morning, Bren, or do I have to drag you in by your ear?”
As Bren stuck his head around the door sheepishly, his blush was only rivalled by Roda’s. He gave her a toothy grin from underneath what looked suspiciously like a recently broken nose and an accompanying black eye, and then his gaze flicked over to Odell.
“How’d you know I was here?”
Odell laughed. “Heard someone pacing outside for the last half hour. Had to be either you, or Tillie.”
“Tillie’s with Ellan.” A beat. “Cooking.”
The older shobogan woman paled, and looked at the door again. And then she swore, and ran off, leaving Bren and Roda alone. Roda watched her sandals disappear around the corner and then tilted her head to one side, looking at Bren questioningly.
“What was that about?”
“Last time they two of them cooked anything they set fire to the kitchen,” chuckled Bren. “Odell probably doesn’t want to have to make a new table again.” Roda shook her head in disbelief, and Bren lent on the doorframe. “‘Nuff about them, though. Heard you crashed your TARDIS.”
Roda grimaced; aiming for playful and landing instead on worried. Seeing her expression Bren straightened up, brow furrowing in concern.
“Not on purpose.”
“Well, obviously,” Bren snorted, trying to cheer her up. “You couldn’t hit something on purpose if your life depended on it.”
“Hey!” Roda’s eyes flashed, and she stumbled to her feet, laughing incredulously. “S’not like you could fly any better!”
Bren smirked, satisfied, and using the wall for balance Roda crossed the room to throw her arm over his shoulder. He wrapped his around her side, tucking her insistently close and pressing a kiss to her forehead that said ‘I was worried sick’ more keenly than any words could. Roda smiled - healed, more or less, but still more than a little sore - and gestured at the door.
“Do you know where my TARDIS is?”
Been looked a little sheepish.
“Uh… yes and no.” Roda raised an eyebrow. “It’s in the square. But it keeps hiding on us.”
Roda wanted to be surprised, but she couldn’t quite find the emotion. She opened and shut her mouth, trying to decide if her TARDIS was playing with them, or just nervous. A little bit of both, she decided, especially if the stranger had been the last one to handle her. (Then again, it had always liked him. Roda has been grumpy about that, before, but if he’d just saved her life then… well. She supposed her TARDIS must’ve been a good judge of character.) Would it come out for her, or keep on hiding?
“Sax said something about behind the tents…?” she began, fishing for what she’d overheard when she first woke up. Craning her neck to look Bren in the face, she sighed; realizing, all of a sudden, how amazingly tired she still was.
“S’not there anymore,” shrugged Bren, giving the bed a sideways glance. “Not planning on running out on us, are you?”
“Not… yet,” replied Roda, going for the most honest answer.
She wanted company, and friends who had never to ask of her. But she also still wanted freedom, and though the bruises might have healed she still wanted to put Rassilon behind her until she could make some sense of the cacophony of feelings she had about her childhood. Faintly aware that she couldn’t have both, however, she didn’t much want to think about it right now , and she told Bren as such. He tapped the end of her nose, watching her cross-eyed to look at his finger, and then laughed.
“Good. Cause if Odell salvages dinner, you don’t want to miss it.” He nudged her gently in the ribs. “And you’ve got to move your TARDIS before someone walks into it.”
“You know it won’t be invisible, right?” Roda rolled her eyes. “It’ll be a tree, or a hut that wasn’t there before, or something.”
“Well excuse me,” teased Bren, somehow dragging out the middle word into at least two extra syllables. “Not all of us had your fancy schmancy education, Time Lady.”
“Fancy schmancy educations can go stuff themselves,” retorted Roda, with vigour. Bren laughed even harder, and raised his free hand in surrender.
“Alright. Alright. Come on, if you want to sneak out and find your TARDIS before Odell gets back you’d better hurry up.”
Roda didn’t need telling twice. If Bren didn’t want to talk about feelings - or had at least decided that she didn’t want to - then she was more than happy to follow that lead. She locked her worries and the lingering pain in a little box at the back of her mind, and swallowed the key. Later; she could think about it later, alone, when no one could see what emotions might bleed out. For now, she had a TARDIS to check on and a friend who wanted to make her smile and the promise of a good meal. That was enough to keep everything at bay…
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Date: 2020-09-16 09:17 pm (UTC)Also curious about 'the boy', but will wait.