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schrodingers_time_lady) wrote2020-07-11 08:14 pm
There, and Back Again - Chapter 4
Fandom: Doctor Who
Character(s): Rodageitmososa (OC), Perigraphaltas (OC), Borusa, Others
Ships(s): n/a, so far
Previous Chapter: Chapter 3
Next Chapter: Chapter 5
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
"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple."
- Dr Seuss
---
Fourteen years later...
“Roda… Roda…!”
Rodageitmososa murmured grumpily, nuzzling her face into her arm and closing her eyes tighter. She was having a perfectly fine dream. Mount Perdition at sunset, moons rising over the cliffs as the suns set behind them. It was quiet, but for the sound of birds somewhere in the distance and a tafelshrew digging a burrow to spend the night in. The grass was soft beneath her, the cool breeze tracing a friendly path down her face, and in that moment she very much did not want to wake up. Rassilon’s beard, but whoever was trying to shake her awake could give her five more minutes…
“Roda!”
“Sh’up…” she grumbled, batting away an unknown hand, her nose wrinkling.
She opened one eye, expecting to see her sleeping quarters, only to suddenly jerk awake as she remembered where she was. Her head bounced off the back wall of the lecture hall and she grimaced, rubbing her crown and risking a glance across the room from behind a pile of books in the hopes that she hadn’t - couldn’t possibly have - made as much noise as she felt as though she had made.
To her relief, Professor Borusa was still chattering on, utterly oblivious to her most recent failure in a long string of incessant complaints. From time to time he smacked his cane against the projector board, making a point about some topic that Roda had lost the thread of about the same time she’d arrived in class. She had been up far too late the night before, poring over notes on the calibrations she had helped Lord Rassilon make to his latest pet project. He had been doing something with his TARDIS and though she’d hardly kept track of what exactly had been done, she had stayed up almost until the sun was done trying to work it out. Though she’d made it as far as her third class of the day and had hoped to make it to the end of that before their free period, she was instead beginning to pay the price now. The room they were in seemed to have no ventilation whatsoever, and was warm enough to have forty unplanned winks in.
She sighed, letting her chin rest on the table and continuing to poke at the growing bump on her head as she looked to the left and the source of the voice that had woken her up from her ill-timed nap. The bespectacled, perpetually baby-faced visage of Perigraphaltas looked down at her, eyes wide behind the tinted lenses he wore, and Roda tried to put a sheepish grin on her face as she hissed at him.
“How long was I out?”
Perigraphaltas - Peri, to exactly one person who refused to listen to his insistence that they use his full name - wrinkled his nose, wobbling his hand indescriptly.
“Five, ten minutes?” he whispered back, doing his best not to be seen by the Professor either. Roda swore quietly, and he shot her an unimpressed look.
“Just that?”
He snorted discreetly. “You snore when you sleep longer than that.”
“Since when do you watch me sleep?” smirked Roda, nap momentarily forgotten. A blush spread across Peri’s face in response.
“I don’t! I’ve been trying to wake you, but you were muttering about-”
“Perigraphaltas, Rodageitmososa, does my class bore you?”
Both young Time Lord and Lady sat up straight in their chairs, eyes wide in shock, as Professor Borusa began to tape his cane across his open palm. Roda swallowed, readying herself for a lecture but from the look on Peri’s face, she would have thought he was prepared for an execution. He, unlike her, was a model student; an Arcalian of House Kadenwood with an unblemished record and a mop of angelic blond locks that Roda couldn’t help but tease him for. ‘Quantum Physics’ was one of the few classes that the Chapters took together, in a trio of split periods, and if it weren’t for Peri Roda doubted she would have made it as far as she had without retaking her exams a couple dozen times. He had the patience of a saint as well as the hair of one, and had been sharing his notes with Roda for as long as she could remember.
And now, thanks to her, he was about to get into trouble for perhaps the first time in his entire twenty nine years of life.
“No, Lord Borusa!” piped up Peri, colour rushing from his face like it had been bleached. “We were just making sure that I-”
“In that case,” droned their teacher, “I’m sure Rodageitmososa won’t mind reminding me where I was….?”
Roda cursed again, and Peri nudged her in the side as she tried to squint at the board and make an educated guess. Borusa was standing just in the way of the current slide, and sitting at the back of the class she couldn’t quite make out the small print. Detention, then, she thought to herself, bitterly. All for a nap.
“Ah…” she began, as her friend hurriedly slid his notes across the table towards her, hurriedly tapping a hastily scribbled line of what almost seemed like nonsense to her. “Fluc...tations in isotropic energy!” she announced, frowning briefly at the parchment. The ink had smudged. “In relation to octahedral temporlateral spectrometry.”
Beside her, Peri gave a quiet, relieved sigh. Reading the note over again, Roda vaguely recalled something about dysprosium and xenotime, but she really hoped the Professor wasn’t about to press her for more details. Nothing else of the class had sunk in. But Peri had saved her again. With a look on his face that suggested he had just stepped in faeces, their Professor snorted and returned to his lecture, apparently unable to find fault with her answer or a reason to snap at them again.
Once his back was turned, Roda breathed a sigh of relief, and sank into the hard fiberglass chair she was sat in. She pinched the bridge of her nose and glanced at Peri, who rolled his eyes before licking the tip of his quill and returning to his note-taking.
“Thank you.”
“Just be more careful,” said Peri fondly, the matter closed. “I can’t bail you out forever. Now lemme write.”
Roda patted him on his free hand and tried to do the same. The least she could do to thank him was try to pay attention for the rest of the period. Hopefully Rassilon wouldn’t ask too many questions tonight.
***
The rest of the morning went by in a blur. Roda nodded off again in her next class, but without Peri to wake her up she wound up staying behind to help Professor Mordacintredanis tidy up. Making the lesson after that one meant sprinting across the bridge and the discomfort of her robes sticking to her skin kept her awake until she had a couple of free periods in a row. A little voice at the back of her mind was at least relieved that Peri wasn’t going to see her looking so rough, but she would have appreciated his company by the time she found somewhere to sit and catch her breath.
Graduation couldn’t come fast enough. Once upon a time the Academy had excited her, but the more she was there the less interested she was in being stuck inside listening to old Time Lords and Ladies lecture her. There had to be a better way to learn, something more hands-on. Eventually she knew they would get to visit other planets and learn about the universe and it couldn’t come fast enough. She wanted to be out there, actually doing something instead of just listening. It seemed as though she learned more in an evening watching Rassilon than an entire week of classes.
As soon as she got her symbiotic nuclei and her TARDIS license she planned to put Gallifrey behind her for a couple centuries and go somewhere else in time and space. Not forever, of course. Just long enough to learn something that mattered.
The sun fractured through the domed ceiling of the Academy, painting a kaleidoscope on the marble beneath her feet. Roda snuck her shoes off, hiding them under her robes and looking up at the sky. She was going to keep her eyes opened, she decided - stay awake all through her break - otherwise she wouldn’t get any sleep tonight and would be just as flakey in class tomorrow. But it was easier said than done. It was warm and quiet, with half of the students still in lessons and the rest deeply engrossed in their own social circles or study groups. Roda wasn’t exactly friendless but she wasn’t popular, either, which suited her fine. She had Peri and Kai, and she didn’t need more.
Mind you, resting her head in Peri’s lap for an hour did have its appeals.
“Little Prydoni.” The unfamiliar voice stirred Roda from her thoughts, and she looked up into the eyes of a tall figure in hooded red robes. She frowned, more than a little uncertain. “Can I sit here?”
There was plenty of room on the bench, and Roda couldn’t think of a good reason to say ‘no’. With a hum of resigned acquiescence, she shuffled to one side, using one bare toe to tug her shoes along with her. As the stranger took a seat beside her (no doubt cooking in his heavy robes) she tensed up and began fishing for a good reason to leave. Still, she didn’t recognize them at all. With the hood, it was hard to get a good look at him. There was a messy layer of stubble on his jaw that seemed to be more the result of someone forgetting to shave than it was a style, and she saw bandages wrapped around some of his fingers as he made himself comfortable on the bench. An engineer, maybe? But then, surely he could just go to a Zero Room and deal with that. Not that she was about to press him for details.
While she was thinking, the stranger stretched out and gave a contented sigh, their gaze travelling to the domed, transparent ceiling with what seemed to be a wistful expression. Roda tilted her head to one side, curious, and followed his line of sight. There wasn’t anything in particular overhead. Just the usual red skies of Gallifrey, and a cloud shaped like a flubble.
“I’ve missed this, mon amis,” murmured the newcomer. Roda tugged at her lip, even more baffled. “Two suns. No running.”
“Um…” Roda knew she just looked confused, and almost but not quite apologetically the stranger clarified.
“Gallifrey. Just… sitting here.”
“In the Academy?”
He snorted, a mirthless laugh. “What, with Professor Borusa?” Roda couldn’t help but grin before she could catch herself. “Not likely.”
“You’re Prydonian?”
He shook his head. “No. It’s just me.”
And in one short sentence, her hackles went back up again. It was innocuous enough, but there was something not quite right about the way he said it. Like there were layers she couldn’t quite understand, and yet he was speaking perfect Gallifreyan and his robes were the same colour as hers.
“Just…” she shook her head, unsure and not liking it. “Look, who are you?”
“It’s a good day.” It was like he wasn’t even listening, and she wrinkled her nose in frustration. “I missed the view.”
“So you travel, then?”
Perhaps he was here for a conference, or something. Or to give a lecture? It wasn’t as though the Academy grounds were off limits to other Gallifreyans, but it wasn’t exactly a public park either. He looked Time Lord, anyway, spoke Gallifreyan. Certainly didn’t look like a Shobogan, not in robes like that, even old ones. She had no reason to be scared of him or think she was in any sort of danger, but some instinct she didn’t know she had was telling her to get up and move. That something about him wasn’t on the level. Like she couldn’t quite see him, not really.
He lowered his hood for just a second to run a hand through messy brown hair, and Roda caught sight of a braided leather bracelet around his wrist. Noticing her checking it out, he put his hand over the bracelet and let go of the hood, which settled gently on the back of his neck, forgotten.
“I used to,” he chuckled, tucking the leather into the sleeve of the robes. “Bit too busy these days, but I couldn’t resist a trip home.”
“So you are Prydonian.”
“Didn’t say that!” He laughed harder this time, evidently more amused. “You really do ask as many questions as I remembered.”
“Do- do I know you?” Roda stood up, slipping on one of her shoes as she did so. “Who are you?”
“Oh!”
The man jumped to his feet, slipping the hood up at the same time. He reached into a pocket inside of his robes, and Roda stepped back in alarm, wondering if she should… what? Call for help? Scream? Defend herself? But as she looked over her shoulder, wondering how she had only just now realized exactly how quiet this part of the Academy had now become, plans failed her. She snapped her head back around, a biting question on her lips only for the man to thrust a book towards her with a wry grin.
“Almost forgot.”
Roda stared at his hands as though the book was a bomb about to explode.
“...what?”
“Borrowed this. From the Library.” He gave a shameless shrug. “Yes, yes, I know it’s shut right now mon amis but well,” he rubbed his neck, “I know where Meyerodeon kept the spare key.”
“Do I know you?” Roda asked again, paling at the mention of her father. Who is this weirdo?! “How do you know me?”
“I’ve known you since you were born, Rodageitmososa.”
“I-“
“I knew your father,” he added hurriedly, as though as an afterthought. “You can trust me.”
“Can I?” Roda shook her head, snatching back the proffered book. Whoever the Skaro he was, she didn’t want him to have her father’s books. She took a second to skim through the book, looking for a psychic fingerprint, something to prove it came from the Library, and her frown only deepened when she found what she was looking for. “I don’t have a clue who in Rassilon’s name you are.”
The stranger pulled a face, and then turned on his heel, readying to walk away. Roda took a wary step back, running her fingertips over the book and then turning it over. Howard Pyle. Not an author she recognized, but the name certainly wasn’t Time Lord.
“Do me a favour?” She looked up as the man spoke again, his hand on his other wrist and his back to her.
“Why should I?”
“Because if you don’t, your keeper will lose his fucking mind.”
“...Rassilon?” He wasn’t her - her keeper! He was her guardian, mentor, roof over her head. But keeper? It wasn’t a prison.
The stranger snorted. “Old Raz,” Roda spluttered in response, “doesn’t exactly like me. Better not tell him we spoke.”
“And how can you trust I won’t?”
The stranger turned around to face her one more time, and winked.
“Because I’ve known you all your life.” He smiled. “And so have you.” And before Roda could open her mouth - before she had any idea what to even say - the stranger disappeared in a compression of white light.
no subject
I like Peri, and realised that I missed 'existence' which should be 'insistence'. :) But generally a lovely set-up and glad that Peri managed to help Roda to avoid getting in trouble. :)
Still, she didn’t recognize them all. With the hood, it was hard to get a good look at him. There was a messy layer of stubble on his jaw that seemed to be more the result of someone forgetting to shave than it was a style, and she saw bandages wrapped around some of his fingers as he made himself comfortable on the bench.
EVERYTHING about this is delicious and delightful. I can't even quote much, because I'd quote the whole thing. Just... HE IS THERE AND TALKING TO HER AND WHY AND I LIVE FOR STUFF LIKE THIS and I'm basically just flailing.
Which is not terribly indepth feedback, but SO EXCITING, brain not functioning.
no subject
I like him too! He's getting a big shake-up in his character now to, uh, HAVE character? :P
realised that I missed 'existence' which should be 'insistence'.
No biggie but could you poke me about that in an email, because I'm running out the door and am likely to forget it XD You are very good to me.
glad that Peri managed to help Roda to avoid getting in trouble. :)
I want to make sure this story has good bits too?
Just... HE IS THERE AND TALKING TO HER AND WHY AND I LIVE FOR STUFF LIKE THIS and I'm basically just flailing.
I knew you'd work it out immediately ;)