schrodingers_time_lady | There, and Back Again

Title: There, and Back Again - Chapter 3
Fandom: Doctor Who
Character(s): Rodageitmososa (OC), Rassilon (pre-show)
Ships(s): n/a, so far
Previous Chapter: Chapter 2
Next Chapter: Chapter 4
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: Now beta'd by the wonderful

elisi

"A reputation for a thousand years may depend upon the conduct of a single moment.”
- Ernest Bramah

---

Under Lord Rassilon’s eagle eye, Rodageitmososa threw herself into her studies with renewed vigour.

If she had been determined to make something of herself before, that determination had only multiplied tenfold since leaving her room at the Academy. Without Borusa breathing down her neck for every perceived breach of curfew, without other students whispering about how she had moved into the Academy in the first place, she found it was much easier to enjoy studying. She had a room in Lord Rassilon’s house - in all honesty, she suspected it had once been a workshop that he had converted hastily into sleeping quarters, but that was fine by her - and peace and quiet to do things at her own pace. It was a big room, too; she had even gone so far as to take an - admittedly lengthy - detour home from her classes one afternoon to climb in through the window at the back of the Prydonian Library that she had privately broken into years ago, retrieving some of her favourite books and a few of her father’s old belongings. It wasn’t quite a home, of course. She rarely saw the Lord President except at the occasional meal time, and the nights were almost a little too devoid of noise after seven years living in a bustling Academy, but all the same she liked it. She liked being left to her own devices, and having somewhere to retreat to that wasn’t simply another side of the Academy.

Then again, having to travel the twenty-something miles from one end of the Academy to Lord Rassilon’s side of the Citadel certainly took rather a large chunk out of her day, and meant waking up before Gallifrey’s twin suns were even in the sky. It was a small price to pay.

Things had been tense, at first. Lord Rassilon’s sole heir had been lost in the War with the Vampires, which was a well-known fact, but he had apparently never felt the need to have another child. She had thought to ask him about it, but decided against it in the end; after all, even months in now it still seemed as though this was all a peculiar trick of the light, and their strange arrangement could fall apart at any second. And besides, no doubt losing his son had been as hard for him as losing her father had been for her. But it was also abundantly clear to Roda even in that short time that he had little to no idea how to care for a teenager, and he certainly seemed to go out of his way to avoid asking her any question that wasn’t about her studies. She tried to tell herself that she didn’t need him to be her parent, that she had never asked for somebody to replace her father and never would… but it was still a keen hole in her hearts, one that she locked away and did her best not to think too hard about. There was no point wishing on a shooting star for something that would never happen.

Her lessons, at least, were something that they could talk about. Roda had worked out early on that for all of his duties as the Lord President, Rassilon was an engineer at heart. He had his office and his workshop and a laboratory, all of which she was forbidden from entering, and she felt certain he spent more time there than he did in his sleeping quarters. (Which it had taken her more than a week to work out the whereabouts of, since he never seemed to visit them.) It wasn’t entirely unusual to spot him in the mornings, before he headed out for the Citadel, with a smudge of oil on his cheek. It made him seem more Time Lord than President, and somehow more approachable. She still wasn’t quite at the point where she was ready to make small talk with him, but at least when he brought up the subject of school work, especially anything technical, it loosened her tongue. And true to her word, she had nothing to report that included the phrases ‘punched Professor Borusa’s smug face’ or ‘failed Spacial Cartography 1”; even if the latter had been more than a little bit of a close call.

Roda sighed, doing her best to stretch a crick out of her neck as she arrived at the gates of the President’s quarters. They were relatively close to the central to the Citadel, which shortened the walk home a little; a grand, domed building that was as decorative on the outside as it was pragmatic on the inside. She resisted the urge to kick off her shoes as soon as she reached the scarlet grass, damp from the rainfall of earlier on. There wasn’t much grass outside of the Citadel Gardens, without leaving the walls to visit Mount Perdition. Instead, she stifled a yawn and headed up the path, giving a quick nod to the Chancellery Guard who let her pass as soon as he recognized her.

“Busy day?”

The Guard half-shrugged, clearly more bored than he was irritated by Roda talking to him. “Wet,” he said, noncommittally. “My watch is over soon.”

Trying to be polite, Roda gave him a smile - she had never been overly fond of the Guard, not since the night of her father’s death, but at least they were less robotic than Castellan Temia himself - and slipped through the heavy mahogany front doors of the President’s chambers.

It was quiet inside, quieter than usual. Remembering a telling off that she’d gotten earlier in the week for leaving her bag at the door, Roda shrugged it back onto her shoulder and rearranged the small pile of textbooks in her arms before making a beeline for her quarters through the circular system of rooms that made up the single story complex. Hers were somewhere in the middle, as best as she could tell, with a window that looked onto a small courtyard she’d yet to actually find a door to. When she reached it, nudging the door open with one foot, she gratefully dropped her bag and books in one corner before sinking into the small bed with a contented groan. In that second, she felt as though she could have stayed in that position for hours. Today’s lessons had had her walking back and forth the entire Academy complex all day, and she could scarcely feel the soles of her feet, let alone focus on anything that she’d learned. It would come back to her later, she was sure; after a nap, maybe. Absently, she wondered if she would see Rassilon today or if he’d be engrossed in meetings or work, and then closed her eyes just to rest them for a second only to be roused by a loud and unexpected bang!

She sat up as though electrocuted, swearing quietly as she tried to figure out which way the sound had come from. Was something wrong? Maybe it was just outside, but her window was shut firmly and in fact, she wasn’t entirely sure it opened at all. The first bang was followed up by a second, quieter one and then a gentle electrical sizzling, and Roda only realised that she was on her feet and moving when she reached the corridor and started to follow the noise. Whether it was out of curiosity or anxiety, she wasn’t sure, but she kept moving, one hand tracing the ancient Gallifreyan script on the cool corridor walls. Her way was lit by little flashes of light, and the sound of someone muttering angrily to themselves that Roda couldn’t quite recognize, but she kept on walking, if anything picking up the pace a little. She soon found herself standing in front of one of the forbidden rooms, the door wide open for the first time since she had moved into Lord Rassilon’s house.

A pair of legs stuck out from under machinery that she didn’t recognize, red robes bunched unceremoniously around the knees. Roda didn’t quite stop herself from laughing before she could think about who she was laughing at, and the pair of legs jerked in surprise followed by a meaty thud that could only be someone’s head colliding with the underside of the contraption they were working on. Before she could back away or feign ignorance, she heard the Lord President clearing his throat irritably. It echoed and bounced under the metal, and Roda froze in place, certain she was about to get a lecture. Instead, he only stuck out one hand palm up, and spoke commandingly.

“Pass me the laser screwdriver.”

As though crossing the threshold of the room would hurt her Roda tiptoed forward, looking around the room until her eyes settled on a steel table with well-maintained tools scattered across it. It took a few seconds longer for her to find the right one, and she picked it up delicately before crouching in front of the President and placing it in his waiting hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said, watching him return to his work with a grunt of thanks. “I didn’t mean to intrude, Ras - Lord Rassilon, I just heard the-”

“Quiet.”

Roda put a hand over her mouth, nodding at his legs, wondering if she was supposed to leave or remain. The President made the decision for her, holding out the laser screwdriver covered in oil and requesting another tool from the table. She knew what most of them were and could guess at the rest with only one correction. They went back and forth like that for long enough that Roda began to lose track of time, utterly forgetting herself in the task of grabbing and passing and sometimes holding this, that or the next thing. From time to time Rassilon would interrupt her thoughts with a question, or an explanation of what a tool she took some time to find looked like or did, and she did her best to commit them to memory, knowing that it would be a long time until she was working with this kind of technology in the Academy and yet utterly fascinated with it. She tried not to ask too many questions but couldn’t help herself, her earlier nerves all but forgotten. She thought of the coral she would be growing no doubt until her graduation, the things she could do to a TARDIS of her very own, and made up her mind to pay more attention in her engineering classes going forward.

By the time the Lord President emerged from the underside of his creation, Roda still had no idea what it was, but considering she’d been taught years ago that he had been the first person to create a TARDIS, the fact that a fifteen year old Time Lady had no idea what the first Time Lord of them all was working on wasn’t much of a surprise. She wanted to ask, but decided not to push her luck, especially when Rassilon loomed over her and wiped his hands on a well-used rag hanging on the back of a chair. He ignored her as he cleaned the oil from his hands, little black new moons remaining under his fingernails, and then took a long draught from a mug that had sat on the table all the time he was working. He only spared her a glance when he finally rested the mug gently on the table and dropped the rag beside it, suddenly reminding Roda of where she was after what must have been hours of work. She shuffled her feet, waiting to be shouted at or lectured or something, but the reprimand never came.

“I was unaware that you had returned from your classes,” was all that he said at last, breaking the ice between them as though it meant nothing to him. She supposed it probably did. Roda chewed her bottom lip, looking for the right response to make; somehow ‘this is when I’m always home from my classes’ seemed like a bit of a cheeky thing to say. “I did not intend to be at work when you arrived, but - ahem - time ran away from me.”

For the first time since she had met him, Rassilon chuckled, presumably at his own joke. Roda stared at him in quiet horror, trying to wrap her head around the idea that he could laugh. It didn’t seem to suit his stern countenance, or the figure he was in public. Rubbing the back of her neck, she settled on aiming for another apology.

“I won’t interrupt you again,” she promised, glancing behind her, ready to be gone. “It’s just - the bang,” she waved her hand awkwardly, “it caught my attention, and I couldn’t help myself.”

“I left the door open,” replied the Lord President, apparently more at rest in his workshop than he was anywhere else. Roda swore she almost saw him slouching. “I am to blame.”

Again, his attitude surprised her. Roda had seen Rassilon on the Council, heard all about the wars he had fought in the Dark Ages of Gallifrey. It had never occurred to her that he might - aside from a diplomat and a warrior and a scientist - be a man who had hobbies, let alone a man who was willing to be patient with a Time Tot who, by all other accounts, never did what she was told.

“But-”

“These tools, however.” He gestured at the table where Roda had dutifully returned every item to its haphazard spot. “I do not believe you would have used most of them at the Academy, yet?”

Roda shrugged unconsciously. “I… I read. I like machines.”

The President gave another grunt, this time an appreciative one, and Roda couldn’t help but begin to smile slightly. “As do I, though you are no doubt aware of that.”

“They taught us that you created the first TARDIS in our first year.” Roda paused, her smile faltering. “My father taught me before that, though. About you and Omega and Vandekirian.” At the President’s surprised expression, she added: “He had a book. By…” She wracked her brain for the last time she’d picked it up. In fact, she had a funny feeling it might be in her quarters, although unread for several years. “Lord Eritus? Ertikus?”

“Ah. Ertikus.” The President’s mouth set into a line. “A not wholly accurate book, like the majority of his work, but he is one of few scholars who are... complementary of my old partner.” He straightened up to his full height. “Of course, history is written by the winners.” Rassilon cleared his throat, and then stroked his chin. “Regardless, your help was appreciated, even if you were once again breaking conventions.” Roda had the good grace to look sheepish. “If you wish, you may help me in the future, so long as it does not impact your studies.”

She couldn’t believe her ears. “I - thank you! I would - I mean, I will! I won’t. Let them slack, I mean.”

“You will be required to take notes,” he continued, raising an eyebrow at her stammering. “This work is not for fun.”

“I understand.”

“And I must have your assurance that you will not share details of what I am working on.”

At his closing statement, Rassilon’s voice became lower, darker. Roda found herself looking at her dirty palms instead of his face, remembering that she had just been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing. It was just her luck that she’d been useful enough to be allowed to stay and help, as opposed to banished to her room or worse, out of the house entirely. She felt constantly on thin ice, aware that one wrong move could be all it took to convince the President that she truly was the menace Borusa thought she was, and wasn’t worth his efforts.

Even still, she couldn’t bite down a surge of pride. She was helping the Rassilon in his personal workshop, even if it was just small and unimportant jobs that he didn’t have enough hands for. He was trusting her with the responsibility, or at least felt reasonably sure that she wasn’t going to get them both blown up just by being there. Even looking away, she began to smile again, excitement mounting. They were to learn about sonic and laser devices in either the next semester or the one after it, and after today she was even more interested in learning how they worked and perhaps even building something, herself. Maybe Rassilon would let her use some of his tools, if she proved that she was reliable. Maybe he could even help her, if he wasn’t too busy.

She was going to have to take notes as soon as she got back to her room. She didn’t want to forget any of this day, in case he had a change of heart tomorrow and decided her aid would not be required after all.

Roda shook her head, chasing away those thoughts. Don’t be ridiculous, Rodageitmososa, she chastised herself. Helping him out is one thing, expecting him to help you is another altogether. And yet the little voice wouldn’t be entirely silenced, and even if she managed to stop grinning like an idiot, the light was still in her eyes. Realising that she had just been spoken to - Lord Rassilon, she found, had a habit of wording queries as statements of truth - she looked up again, licking her lips as she looked for words.

“Of course. I won’t let you down.”

“See that you do not.” Rassilon gestured at the door with a jerk of his head, and Roda hurried to follow the dismissal. “And Rodageitmososa?”

“Mmhm?”

She paused, looking over her shoulder.

“Do not interrupt me at work without my permission again.”