There, and Back Again - Chapter 6
Jul. 15th, 2020 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schrodingers_time_ladyFandom: Doctor Who
Character(s): Rodageitmososa (OC), Perigraphaltas (OC)
Ships(s): Rodageitmososa/Perigraphaltas
Previous Chapter: Chapter 5
Next Chapter: Chapter 7
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, and up to chapter 8 inclusive, is unbeta'd. Partially because I got overexcited, and partially because I wanted some things (namely one of the chapters in particular) to be a surprise to my delightful beta. So all errors are mine, though I did go over them all to try and make sure there were none! Also, I now know that this story will be 22 chapters long; and was also sneaky and went back to make some slight edits (got two Chapters mixed up) and add some fancy quotes.
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Seventy one years later…
“Are you sure this is okay?”
“You only turn one hundred once, Peri. Raz can handle it.”
Peri - Roda decided - needed to learn to live a little. They had hardly left the Citadel behind before he had started complaining. It was too early - too late for Roda, since she’d been too excited to sleep - too cool, too reckless, too uphill. She had rolled her eyes at every single one of his issues, but none of them had managed to knock the smile off her face as she pulled him along behind her, their fingers interlaced. Being with Peri was easy, uncomplicated. Even though they had little in common it was entirely natural to sit with him for hours; sitting back to back while working on their own projects. Even Rassilon approved of him, which was almost impossible praise. There was no one else she would rather have spent the eve of her hundredth birthday with.
In nearly one hundred Gallifreyan years, Roda had never seen the suns rise. Tonight, she was going to change that. For now, it was a bright and (yes, admittedly) little chilly night, but she relished in the bite of the wind against her bare face as she climbed. She had had to let go of Peri’s hand to clamber over a particularly fiddly pile of rocks, and that was when he’d started to have second (or was it third, fourth or sixth?) thoughts again. Climbing up Mount Perdition - and relatively quickly - wasn’t his idea of a good time, but he had agreed reluctantly enough and she was going to hold him to it, even if she suspected he had agreed just because she’d begged him all week. But that wasn’t the point. He was still here with her, and that was gift enough.
To reach the summit before the suns rose, they had sneaked out as soon as they were expected to be in bed for the night; even if by their age, they needed to sleep less and less and school days had gotten longer and longer. It had been easy enough for Peri - whose parents would never have imagined him capable or even interested in sneaking out - but for Roda it had been an ordeal in and of itself. Part of the thrill, if she was honest with herself. There were always members of the Chancellery Guards stationed at the President’s - Roda's - home, even if there was pretty much no chance in Skaro the rebels would be able to target him. Roda had free movement in theory, but she suspected that in practice they would still go straight to Rassilon if she was climbing out a window in the middle of the night on a regular basis. And even if they didn't post her, she was sure that Rassilon would just somehow know, as though he had some sort of psychic proximity alarm around her which... wasn’t something she would rule out, either. But he had told her over a week ago that he wouldn’t be home that evening, and she couldn’t believe her luck. The plan had evolved from there.
Not that she hadn’t prepared for this kind of excursion for years. When Howard Pyle’s book had fallen into her lap she’d taken it upon herself to find every single mention of Robin Hood that her father’s library had to offer. Rassilon has even encouraged her frequent visits, assuming that she was using the Prydonian Library to study for the Academy and since she had lifted her grades above what he had wanted of her, he hadn’t culled them. When she had run out of books from and about Sol-3, she had turned to books on how to hone the kind of skills her hero had. Marksmanship, sleight of hand, bluffing - to name but a few. Even making sure that she wasn’t seen, which had been plenty help in classes where she wasn’t paying as much attention as she should have been. She wanted to learn techniques from across the universe, and then make her own.
At one point she had come across the line “many men speak of Robin Hood and never shoot his bow” and had taken it to heart. It was one thing to know of him, but she had to understand him.
Being good with her hands had turned out to be a blessing. All of the time working with Rassilon in his workshop and playing around with her own things had lent themselves nicely to becoming her inspiration. One day, it would all pay off; tonight was almost a test run.
“Are we almost there?”
Roda couldn’t help but laugh as she crouched down to give Peri a hand up, grunting with the effort of lifting her chubbier friend.
“What are you, seven?”
“It’s been hours , Roda. You have an exam in the morning.”
“Yes,” she rolled her eyes, “and you’ve had me studying for it so much this week I have Paradox Declension coming out my ears!” Roda sighed, making sure that Peri was steady on his feet and then glancing uphill. It wasn’t Mount Cadon they were hiking up, for Rassilon's sake! The summit wasn’t too far off, and they’d be able to sit and just relax much sooner if he would save his breath for walking. “If I have to talk about the moral deterioration of circular dialetheism one more time, I’ll build a paradox machine myself.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“No,” grinned Roda, “but you wouldn’t go back on your promise to watch the suns rise with me on my birthday either, would you?”
Peri made a noise that must have aimed somewhere between a laugh and a sigh and instead turned into one of his snorts. Which, no matter what he said, were completely adorable but also meant that she was forgiven, for now. The ever-evolving argument about the Academy and how important it was she paid attention could loom another day. Itching to get moving, however, Roda couldn’t help but drum her fingers along her arm as she waited for Peri to catch up to her so they could start moving again. She wanted to get to see the stars before the suns, and though the sky was clear enough here she was sure that the view would be best from the top. Once they were sitting down, Peri would calm down. He was especially good at astronomy and remembering long lists of names. Maybe exploring wasn't his thing, but that would be at least. It wouldn’t take much to get him talking about something he cared about, and though she’d have to be careful that his smile didn’t outshine the suns… well. Having him there was an unskippable step in making this the perfect morning.
“You are incorrigible.”
“Ah,” Roda’s eyes glittered. “But if I was corrigible, you’d have nothing to do.”
“If you were corrigible,” Roda looped one arm through Peri’s and began to half drag and half support him along with her, “I would have a triple Alpha grade.”
Roda smiled to herself. Sometimes she wondered if Peri should have been Rassilon’s ward and not her. He was one of the smartest people she knew, and once they graduated she just knew she’d be able to drop the ‘one of’. Peri took to knowledge in general like she had to Robin Hood; bathing in it, toweling himself off and then dressing in it to dive back in once again. He actually found studying fun , which was a thoroughly alien concept to her. (She wasn’t sure what sort of alien, but it certainly wasn’t the same type she was.) But his passion for learning something, anything, was why Roda had sought him out long after they had stopped having regular classes together.
It was just that, she told herself, watching his nose wrinkle as he hesitantly hopped a small chasm in the rocks. A blush rushed to her face, and she did her best to hide it with a hand. Having him around had nothing to do with his cute face, or his soft voice; not that anybody had asked.
The last forty minutes or so of their trek went by in silence; Peri starting to get out of breath and Roda focusing mostly on finding the easiest path up the mountain. Usually, she just sort of threw herself at the rocks and took obstacles as they came. This time, though, she had to map out a route they could both manage. As they crested the final rise at last and the grass began to level out, Roda soaked in the breeze while Peri sank onto a boulder and put his hands on his thighs for a couple of minutes. From a pack on her back Roda pulled out a heatstone she had built a few years ago and - sitting down so that her back was between Peri’s legs as they dangled off his seat - pressed it into his waiting palms.
“There," she grinned. "Was that so bad?”
“That was even worse than climbing it in our fiftieth year,” Peri panted. Roda let her head rest against his knee.
“Better company this time, though.”
“You’re lucky.” Peri sighed, resigning himself to fate. Which, Roda couldn’t help but muse, is just as well since we’re up here now.
“‘Zat so?”
“Yeah.” Peri’s free hand ghosted unconsciously to Roda’s hair, trailing through curls that came well past the small of her back these days. She closed her eyes with a contented sigh. “I could have been in bed right now, but I think I like you more.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” murmured Roda, head rushing and hearts racing as Peri continued to play with her hair as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “I guess I like you better than bed too.”
“I should think so. Isn't your pillow still your desk?” Peri joked. Roda thumped him half-heartedly.
“Shut up.”
“Oh!” Peri’s hand left her head, and Roda heard a small whine escape her lips. “So you can tease me , but you can’t take it?”
“I didn’t say that,” Roda pouted, patting the ground beside her. “Just shut up and get down here and warm up.” She paused. “And - and tell me about the stars, or something.”
“What do you want to know?”
Slipping to the ground, Peri folded into Roda’s side like a semi-colon, heatstone on his lap. She let her head sit on top of his, their hands almost touching in the grass while she contemplated his question.
She was one hundred years old, now; though it wouldn’t be official until later in the day. Since the Pythia’s final curse and the threat of the extinction of their species, loom dates were accurate down to the second. But regardless, she was all but one hundred years old and she still wasn’t sure what it was she wanted, let alone what she wanted to know either now or in the future. It seemed both as though she had millennia to work it out, and no time at all. An almost encyclopedic knowledge of Robin Hood 101 was all good and well, but she still didn’t know what the Untempered Schism had wanted her to do with it, and it wasn’t a question that Peri could answer. And so instead, she glanced at the stars in search of a constellation she didn’t recognize.
“That one,” she declared finally, closing one eye to point at it properly. Peri lifted his head to gaze down the path of her arm, getting more in her lap in the process. “What’s that one called?”
“The stars, or the constellation?”
“Trust you to know too much,” Roda chuckled. Peri snorted and shook his head.
“You can never know too much.” He paused. “The constellation beside Glion Gallifreya?” Roda tilted her head to one side and then made a vague affirmative noise. “That’s Castor and Polydeuces.”
Roda hesitated. “Not a Gallifreyan name?”
“Most scholars prefer the Sol-3 name,” replied Peri, as though it was the most obvious statement. “Sometimes they call it Gemini, too. The Twins.”
"So it's in Mutter's Spiral?"
"Past it." Peri shook his head, and stuck out his tongue. "Pay attention." As Roda pretended to splutter he traced the line of the constellation, settling on the brightest star. “There’s the Messier 35, the Medusa Nebula and the neutron star Geminga...”
Roda was, admittedly, listening to Peri’s voice more than his words. She liked to hear him talk. He was a much more animated teacher than the vast majority of their professors, and seemed to have passion for any topic you could get him started on. Absentmindedly she moved so that their hands were touching and closing her eyes with a small smile as the sky moved on above them unaware.
As his lengthy explanation of each part of the constellation and where it was or high bright it was or whatever interesting fact he knew about it came to a close, Roda shook the comfortable sleepiness from her head and beamed. Little bits of information had stayed in her head, but especially the Medusa Nebula. They’d talked about that in class recently, in Temporal Technology. There was talk that they would get to visit on a field trip, and she hadn’t been overly interested until Peri had painted a much more beautiful image. There was some sort of ‘cascade’ he said, with a broken moon and some weird temporal anomalies. The clouds of coloured gas, Peri had said, were a part of the mythology of half of the neighbouring planets and she couldn’t help a thrill of excitement that one day, she could be there looking at it too, making her own stories.
“We should visit one day.” She reached out, cats-cradling her fingers into Peri’s and turning so that his back rested against her chest, nuzzling into his shoulder. Now that they weren’t moving, perhaps it was a bit cold tonight. “Not just in class. You and me, in my TARDIS.”
“You don’t have a license yet, let alone a TARDIS.” Peri chuckled. “First you have to pass your exams."
“I know, I know,” Roda sighed, not rising to his gentle bait, “but when I do, the stars won’t know what hit them. I’ll hang my TARDIS in the sky, sit on the edge and watch them glow. Dangle my toes in the cascade...” She paused, her hearts beginning to beat like a jackhammer. “Would you come with me, if I left?”
Peri froze, too.
“Leave Gallifrey?”
“Not… forever,” she replied, nervously. “But don’t you want to go somewhere?” Roda looked down at the top of his head and their entanglement of legs, her voice quietening. “See the universe a little? Do something we don’t learn about in class?"
“We learn about everything in class, we’re Time Lords.”
“But there’s learning,” she insisted, “and there’s doing . Doing is different.”
It seemed like the reply took forever, and Roda couldn’t help but gnaw at her lip.
“...I might.” He put his hand on her leg, writing nonsense words of High Gallifreyan while he spoke. “Not forever. But with you.”
They fell into a companionable silence then, punctuated occasionally by a comment about a star that Peri had spotted, or Roda mentioning somewhere on her list of places to visit with him. Cuddled up together the cold stopped being a problem; or perhaps she just no longer noticed it. They were just comfortable in each others’ company as the moons began to slink further into the grass and the suns brought the first hints of orange and dew to the landscape. Beneath them the Citadel twinkled as though Gallifrey was its own pocket universe, and for a moment Roda felt miles away. Away from stress, from classes, from Rassilon’s expectations, from hiding herself. Up here, the world was just her and Peri.
The peace was not to last. As Roda shifted to get a cramp out of her leg, a few stray curls tickled Peri’s nose, leading to a Rube Goldberg of miniature disasters.
First, the Arcalian began sneezing in the middle of a word, doubling over to catch his face in one elbow and knocking Rauda in the stomach with the other. Surprised after sitting still for so long the young Time Lady jerked in surprise, bumping the back of her head on their handy boulder and - in her haste to get away from the stab of pain from the other side - half-tried to stand before remembering that Peri was sitting between her legs. The end result sent them both tumbling into the grass, disrupting something’s nest as Roda managed to catch herself only for Peri to land on top of her and almost drive the air out of her lungs. She hit the ground again with an oomph of surprise as an arc of twin light crept over the horizon, and found herself face to face with an upside down and backwards sunrise heralded by a cacophony of disturbed birds.
For a moment she just stared at the suns, forgetting that she should probably be shielding her eyes, unaware of where her knee had landed or Peri’s hearts beating in tandem with hers. And then - as the suns peeked over the Citadel at last, fracturing into a kaleidoscope of reds and oranges and yellows that warmed the planet - she forgot all about what she had planned to do at that exact moment as Peri dipped his head and pressed his lips against hers.
Time stopped, she was sure, in that demi-second between wonder and bliss. She was happy to be trapped there forever. Peri’s thumb brushed her shoulder and Roda found herself straining to meet his kiss with one of her own. They were both clumsy, and the kiss was all teeth and tongue and mess as Peri rolled onto his side and took Roda with him. She let one hand slide up his back, making an utter disaster of his already stained dark green robes and briefly came up for air before desire drove her to seek him once again. Her face was flushed, she was sure of it, and there was grass in her hair but she held his against hers and couldn’t dream of letting go. Suns illuminating them the two Time Lords continued trying to get closer to one another until finally they drew apart in a monkey’s fist of arms and legs.
Roda stared at Peri, a giddy look on her face, feeling as though she was drunk. His eyes held hers and she knew that she wanted to do that again and again and she didn’t give a damn if she missed every single exam she would ever have. Peri reached out, plucking a stick from somewhere in her hair and then rested his forehead against hers with an electric hum of calm.
“...was that your first kiss?” whispered Roda, terrified to ruin the moment.
Peri’s reply was equally small, and a little out of breath. “Was it yours?”
Roda groped blindly for one of his hands, still quiet. “It was.”
“It was.” Peri gripped her hand back. “You don’t mind-?”
“Of course not,” Roda blushed. “Why would I-?”
“I mean, I didn’t ask if-“
“I’ve wanted to do that for-“
“-and I hope it was okay!”
“It was amazing .”
They talked over each other and then laughed, stealing a quick kiss between breaths and watching the sky turn from dark red to orange. Roda held Peri’s head near hers with his curls tangled in her fingers, and Peri’s arms wrapped around the small of her back in turn as she moved so that she leaned over him with the sunrise in the background. And then just as undignified as before they explored unknown territories far more thrilling than the Medusa Nebula or any faraway constellations until after years within a moment, Peri sank into the grass and gave Roda a lidded, happy look that melted away her insides. She braced her arms to look down at him, about to ask another question when he suddenly looked about to sneeze again and landed on a yawn. Disappointment already at war with fondness, Roda rocked back onto her heels and offered him her hand to pull him up.
“...nice happy birthday to me,” she joked, suddenly worried that she’d done something wrong, or that it had been an accident or - or a thousand insecurities. Sitting up, Peri pressed a quick kiss to her cheek before drawing back to look her over, and put her hearts at ease.
“Does that mean you don’t want your actual gift?”
At first thrown by the question Roda couldn’t help but giggle, punching him in the arm. Peri rubbed his shoulder, narrowing his eyes in mock betrayal.
“You’re such a git, Perigraphaltas.”
“Maybe,” he stuck out his tongue, red-faced. “But where would you be without me?”
“Not lying in the grass!” Roda laughed. Peri choked on his response.
“You-?!” He struggled to catch his breath, he was laughing so hard. “Rodageitmososa, you don’t need anybody’s help to roll around on a nice mountain!”
“I’m insulted.”
“Oh come off it,” Peri snorted. “You were talking about putting your bare feet in the Medusa Cascade.”
“I’m a hundred now.”
“Almost.”
“I can do what I like.” Roda kissed him on the nose. “Besides, if it weren’t for me you’d be in bed right now instead of…” She trailed off and waved an arm. “All this.”
“There is that…” Peri hummed, smiling. “Still, I’m not sure it was scientific enough for me.” Roda blinked, confused. “I think we should do it a couple more times, just to see if we can replicate the results."
"Nerd.”
“Wild child.”
By the time the two young Time Lords headed down the mountain together hand in hand, they would both be late for their first class. Roda couldn’t find it in herself to care. She had grass in her hair, dirt on her knees and flushed cheeks, but she didn’t care about that either. All that mattered was that on the dawn of her hundredth birthday, she had watched Gallifrey’s suns rise from the top of Mount Perdition, and she had kissed Perigraphaltas.
Finally.