There, and Back Again - Chapter 7
Jul. 16th, 2020 12:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schrodingers_time_ladyFandom: Doctor Who
Character(s): Rodageitmososa (OC), Others
Ships(s): Rodageitmososa/Perigraphaltas
Previous Chapter: Chapter 6
Next Chapter: Chapter 8
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: «Text written like this» is intended to denote, in this story, psychic communication.
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Fifty years later…
Wiping sweat from her brow and leaving a smudge of oil in its wake, Rodageitmososa reached for a torque wrench.
She had been underneath the bare bones chassis of her TARDIS for more than three hours now, and she was beginning to feel as though she was nowhere closer to getting her modifications done than she had been when she’d started. Above her the machine hummed and glowed a faint, familiar red that Roda had grown to love in the past few weeks, as if telling her to get a move on. She resisted the urge to give the TARDIS’ underbelly a thump for cheek, and stuck her tongue between her teeth as she began loosening the the next set of six identical nuts for the third time in twenty minutes. Struggling to find enough hands to hold what she needed - she had a couple of bolts in a pocket in her apron, and wasn’t above holding things in her mouth when she needed both hands - she was beginning to see why Rassilon had welcomed her help in his workshop.
If a Time Lord could regenerate with an extra set of arms, she could understand the appeal of trying to.
The TARDIS' dockyard was not as quiet as the nursery it had spent most of it’s life in, but now that its frame had finished growing Roda had been instructed to move it to somewhere it could be worked on properly. Ordinarily, it would have been maintained by the Gallifreys and Time Lords who worked at the yard, but Roda had taken pains to maintain the grades needed to prove she could form a symbiotic bond with and properly perform the necessary upkeep to be trusted to do the work herself. It was an extracurricular you had to earn, and she had passed that one exam with flying colours. Given that the TARDIS had been grown from her father’s, she had wanted to be with it every step of the way; even if Professor Morachardorsor and Rassilon both monitored her work. Roda considered it a point of pride that neither had needed to point out many necessary connections. Neither, of course, would agree with what she was doing right now, but she also intended to hide the evidence when she was done.
Not - all things considered - that she thought she was doing anything wrong in the first place. It was just that the Type-30 Mark III was more than a little outdated but had been pretty much designed to be tailor-built to a Time Lord’s specifications. A graduated Time Lord as opposed to a student, of course, but that was beside the point. Nobody would have stopped her from updating it a little if she was just a century or so older, and since she knew she could do the work she didn’t see much point in waiting to.
(And, apart from anything else, it wasn’t as though Rassilon didn’t spend his spare time doing, uh, Rassilon only knew what with the machinery in his workshop. No doubt his TARDIS was indistinguishable from the way it had begun life as well! Even Roda - who had been watching him build things for more than a century - only had the vaguest idea what he was up to at any given moment, and she couldn’t even begin to be certain what he was planning on using it all for. Either way, it felt hypocritical for him to complain that she wanted to do something clever considering he tinkered himself, and was always nagging on at her about her grades or her curfew or not pushing herself or whatever thing she had done wrong this time.)
The panel she had been removing slipped down with a metallic clunk, and Roda eased it gently to the floor as she gave the TARDIS’ belly a gentle rub.
“Easy… should be the last thing I have to do.”
«Liar,» said the TARDIS, in the back of her mind, and Roda chuckled quietly. Bonding with a TARDIS was easier than communicating with another Time Lord. Perhaps because she had been talking to the coral long before it could talk back.
«Well, I’ll try to make it the last thing,» she replied, sticking the wrench between her teeth and sitting upright so that her head was surrounded by the hanging vines of cables and wires still exposed by the lack of a chameleon circuit.
All she wanted to do, right now, was install the mechanism necessary to program in a Stattenheim remote control. The problem was that while she had been reading about where they were installed on later Type-X TARDISes she wasn't sure how to integrate the module into an older model that hadn't technically been designed to house one. She had spent the whole afternoon taking panels off the underside of the TARDIS under the pretense of 'a routine check-up' to try and find the best place to install the transmitter she had been able to lift from the scrap of the older Academy students. (The remote itself would be a harder thing to get hold of.) But being Rassilon's ward had its benefits and if Robin Hood had taught her anything, it was that if she didn't take a risk every now and again, she wouldn't get anywhere at all.'
It was the sort of addition that was usually reserved for military or diplomatic TARDISes, but as soon as Roda had heard of them, she knew having one would come in handy, if only she could get it to work. So many of the stories of Robin Hood warned that a perfect plan could go wrong in a manner of seconds, and if Roda wanted to be able to summon her TARDIS to where she was without having to mess around with a sonic device every time she wanted to pull the trick off, then a SRC was her best bet. With it, she could hide her TARDIS even from herself - she had heard horror stories of other temporal agencies doing whatever they could to get their hands on Time Lord technology - until she was out of danger. It was such a small piece of equipment, too, but it needed to be able to be fed through the console and hooked up to the gyroscopic stabilizers and the relativity differentatior and try as she might, she could not find a way to reach them both without hacking up her TARDIS like a barbarian.
Even the thought of it sent a shiver down her spine that - Roda suspected - was not entirely hers.
She had to use both arms to pull herself up into the chassis of the TARDIS this time, trusting in the dimensional transcendentalism to keep her from being crushed. Honestly, she had expected this to be a simple installation (especially compared to a lot of the things she'd fiddled with in the past!) and she was conscious that there wasn't much time she had left to spend in the dockyard. Peri was expecting her at his dormitory in a little over an hour and she didn't much like to stand him up unless she really had to. Getting down to the tedious work of seeing if all of the necessary cables would connect - a bundle of them wrapped around her upper arm - she let her mind drift to their plans for the evening and willed herself to hurry up.
Peri, surprising nobody at all, had been chosen for fast-tracking through the Academy, and was to receive extra education in science, medicine and biology. It was fairly common for high Arcalian families to go straight from graduation into the field of xenobiology, and Peri would no doubt have a job lined up for him by the time they were two hundred and fifty, if not sooner. But with the privilege came more responsibilities, what seemed like a hundred new things he had to study, and far less time for them to spend doing nothing in particular in the enjoyable solitary company of one another. She would have liked him to be about while she was working - if only for someone with a mouth to talk to - but he couldn’t even find the time for that anymore. It would have left a bitter taste in her mouth, if it wasn’t that she wanted the best for him.
Still, she missed him. There was no chance she was flaking on tonight, not if the Academy might be the last time their paths would ever really cross.
Shaking her head, Roda did her best to focus on the task. It was difficult moving inside the TARDIS, but not impossible. The TARDIS itself had some choice things to say about the indignity of someone seeing it when it was still 'naked' but Roda soothed it as best she could with the touch of one palm. She wasn't a proper pilot, not yet, but even already it felt as though this TARDIS - her TARDIS - was one of her closest friends. Somebody who would one day know her better than anybody else in the universe ever could. With that in mind, she did her best not to do anything insulting while she worked. In this particular section, at least, she could see potential. It was a little bit more open than the others and more central, and with luck it wouldn't be hard to reach the underside of the console from where she was. (How a TARDIS could have an infinite number of layouts at any given time and still need to be so precisely wired, even she wasn't sure.) The module she was installing was tucked into her breast pocket, and she patted it once to make sure it was there before moving deeper in with her eyes on the prize. One thing Professor Morachardorsor had told her to be mindful of - at her 'young' age - was not getting herself lost. The dimensional physics could trip up a fully grown Time Lady who did have experience - which she was not - and so Roda tended to work with one foot anchored to the world outside. All the better to find her route back.
"S'okay..." she mumbled around the wrench, half to the TARDIS and half to herself. "It's just going to feel like getting a shot."
Or, so she hoped, at least. The lights of the TARDIS interior dimmed reproachfully, and with a sigh Roda turned on the lamp strapped to her forehead. She liked TARDISes, she had learned in the last months. They were cheeky, but generally welcoming, and no two had the same personality. (She liked this one especially, even though she helped out around the whole dockyard when she wasn't busy.) She could see herself working with them, were she not planning on travelling or helping or trying to be a hero. It was a respectable job, one that Rassilon would probably approve of more than what she was going to do when she was free.
Thinking of her mentor sent a spike of irritation through her as she uncoiled cables and began seeing if they reached up over her head where it looked like they might possibly fit. Something zapped her fingertips in the process and she swore, almost dropping the wrench in her haste to put them in her mouth. “A clumsy mistake, Rodageitmososa,” he would say. “You are capable of better.” But was she really?
Was what she did not good enough for anybody? Rassilon expected - no, demanded perfection and perfection, thought Roda, was boring. If she could be everything he wanted her to be, get that Skaro-damned Triple Alpha grade and fulfil his ever cryptic ‘plans’ for her, then would it be enough? Or would he still assume that she could be better? Would he somehow invent new grades that he expected her to achieve? When she had first met him, living in his home had seemed like a gift many Time Lords would wage war over (not to mention a chance to rebuild her life) and it wasn’t that she was ungrateful for the position it had given her growing up… even Robin Hood had been Robin of Locksley, once upon a time. It had opened doors that other Time Lords didn't have, and gotten her out of problems that might have gotten her classmates in deeper water. But she was changing with every passing decade, and Rassilon couldn’t see that.
“Ha!”
Roda couldn't help but grin, spotting what she had been looking for. There, dangling down right in front of her were a couple of tri-coloured wires with the right kind of connectors for what she needed. With a webbing and some welding - which she could do easily enough another day - the module would stay put in transit if she could just connect it right... there! She stretched as far as she could, standing on tiptoes until she could wrap slim fingers around the cables and pull them down to her height. A quick scan with her sonic, and she knew for certain that she'd finally found the right place. It took her a few minutes - and judicious use of her free foot - to get it all hooked up, but once she did the TARDIS gave a small, psychic hum of approval and Roda beamed.
«Told you,» she smirked, double and triple checking the connectors until she was sure they wouldn't just come undone the second she turned her back. «Just a little prick in the-»
Something tugged on the rope around her foot.
Roda almost lost her precarious footing, spinning around to see the rope - more taut than it had been before - jerking her ankle back the way she had came. Struggling to stay balanced she cursed under her breath, wondering who it was. Had time gotten away from her and Peri had come looking to see where she was? Or was it her Professor - or worse, Rassilon - wondering what she was up to? Perhaps just an engineer who had noticed she was somewhere that she strictly speaking shouldn't be? Preparing three different excuses just in case she ducked and weaved back out the way she had come, ignoring the occasional tug on the rope, hardly noticing that the TARDIS had begun to give off an entirely different sort of interested energy. It almost seemed to purr beneath her hands as she inched back towards the removed panel, dropping down like a pig-bear from a tree and spinning to face whoever was at the end of the rope.
The torque wrench hit the ground with a clatter as she narrowed her eyes.
“...you.”
The robed stranger from all those years ago at the Academy - who had claimed to know her and given her her first book on Robin Hood - put a hand to his hearts. He opened his mouth - no doubt to say something smarmy again - when Roda lurched out from under her TARDIS, grabbed the closest tool from the table and pointed it straight at him where she was sure it would hurt.
He looked unimpressed.
“What the Skaro do you want?”
“Seriously,” he held up his hands, surprised enough to drop his hood once more. His hair was shorter this time, but it was the only thing about him that looked at all neater. “I didn’t remember you being this mouthy!” He looked at her make-shift weapon and then tipped his head to one side, eyes sparkling with a laugh. “Anyway, what are you planning on doing with gravitational pliers?”
“...I could hit you with them.”
The stranger looked her up and down as if to say 'slip like you?'
“...right.”
Roda pouted. “Just answer the question!”
Rolling his eyes the stranger dropped his hands but took a step back; as if to put her at ease more than anything else. Roda didn’t dare look away, but wished she had grabbed something either sharper, or heavier. Gravitational pliers were about as useless as you could get as far as weapons went. Still, she looked over the hilt of the blunt object, taking him in.
The Time Lord looked more… tired than the last time they had met. That was the only way that she could describe it. The slight shadow of stubble was almost an all-out beard and there was a nasty bruise forming over the bridge of his nose, which was taped in place. Bags sat abandoned under his eyes, and there were specks of a darker red along the collar of his tunic that she didn’t particularly like the look of. One eyebrow looked... singed. Somehow, he looked simultaneously more dangerous and less like a threat, and she almost lowered the pliers. Almost.
“Where is everyone else?”
She realised for the first time that the dockyard was empty, but for the patter of robies scuttling through the overhead ducts.
“I set off an alarm, mon amis,” said the man, proudly. “Sent the rest of the engineers off to see where the non-existent leak was while you were installing the SRC module.”
Roda froze as two facts settled in at the same time; first, that she was here alone and second, that she had been caught. She wasn’t sure which was more important.
“What SRC module?”
“The one you just - look. I’m not gonna throw you under the bus!” The man laughed again, completely at ease where she was unsure. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m worried because you’re - you’re stalking me!”
At that, the stranger rolled his eyes. “Oh c’mon, it must’ve been more than a hundred years since the last time we spoke. More, for me.” Roda opened her mouth to clarify - did he really just say he’d crossed Gallifrey’s timeline, or had she misunderstood him? - but he kept on talking. “S’hardly a blip on the radar.”
“So I’m supposed to believe you just keep turning up when I’m on my own by accident?”
“Well, I didn’t say that,” he replied, shamelessly. “But it’s not stalking.”
“Right.”
He pointed a finger at her. “Look - keep that paranoid streak. It’ll come in handy. But right now I’m just here to stop you blowing up your ship.”
Before Roda could stop him the man stepped past and around her, lifting the wrench up from off the floor and then turning towards the tool table. Roda started to yell at him, until he swept his arm across the surface, knocking everything that he apparently didn’t need flying to the ground. She blinked, flabbergasted - she was going to have to clean that all up before she could go anywhere! - as he began pulling the table up against the side of the TARDIS. Roda expected it to put up its rudimentary shields as he approached, climbing on top of the table to reach the opening to the console. Instead, it only purred again. If anything, it purred louder.
Muddy boots making a complete mess of the counter, the stranger snapped his fingers for Roda’s attention and pointed at her apron.
“Toss me a couple bolts?”
“...what?”
“Bolts. Long spiral-y things, made of metal. Good with nuts. Bad for your teeth.”
Too confused to do anything but comply, Roda wordlessly handed him the nuts and bolts left in her apron, watching as he pulled something out of his robes. She couldn’t get a good look at it, but it looked to be long and pronged, and as she craned her neck she could smell the artron energy it was giving off already.
“Is that a Stattenheim remote control?!”
The stranger tossed it down to her, and Roda scrambled to grab it out of the air. Then he took out a second little piece of tech, this one circular with a small socket in the back.
“And this is the other half of the module.” At Roda’s clueless expression, he added: “That you need to install on the console unless you want to blow up the first time you use the SRC?”
“I…” Roda faltered, twirling the remote between her fingers and looking at her feet. She hadn’t known there were two pieces of the module; only the one she’d found in the scrap. Suddenly, the fact that something that valuable had been thrown out made a lot more sense. If someone like her had tried to be clever and only installed half of the equipment… she paled, and without even looking at her the Time Lord laughed. The sound echoed from within the incomplete console room.
“The word you’re looking for is ‘thank you’.”
Still confused and still a little unnerved, Roda frowned. She looked at the remote in her hand. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I’d rather you not blow this girl up before she gets to see the world.”
“Have you been watching me?”
There was a long pause. “What do you want to hear?” Roda was silent. “Mm. I thought so.”
For the next ten minutes, it was almost like the early days of living in Rassilon’s quarters. Roda passed the stranger what he asked for, kept an eye on the door in case the engineers returned prematurely, and asked what she was told was far too many questions. The TARDIS seemed happy enough to let the Time Lord tinker about and make adjustments to its console, and although Roda wasn’t so sure about him herself, she did at least trust it. And the stranger seemed to like her, too, chattering away to the machine in High Gallifreyan and practically flirting with it until Roda almost felt as though she should leave and give them some time alone.
He did answer some of the questions, but he seemed more interested in the TARDIS, and evaded the ones that really mattered. He admitted that he had grown up on Gallifrey, but refused to say when. A small slip-up told her he had regenerated at least one - something about appreciating the extra inches - but she had no idea how old he was, what his name was or where he was from. Even the question of how he knew her father was one he refused to answer, saying instead that he missed the Library, and her father’s lullabies. It was when he began to hum one so familiar to Roda that it almost brought her to tears that she let down her guard, and decided that if nothing else, he wasn’t about to kill her.
Finally, he emerged from the TARDIS, his robes stained and sweat-soaked, and patted the TARDIS with a wistful expression on his face. Roda offered him a hand down from the console, but he shook his head and instead gave it a quick lover's stroke and then slipped over the edge like the height meant nothing to him. Sitting on the edge preparing to follow him, Roda cleared her throat.
“You’re really not going to explain anything, are you."
It was no longer a question, and she was beginning to resign herself to the inevitable. The man looked up at her, arms crossed over his chest with a gentle, not unpleasant smirk.
“Why make it easy?”
“Is that why you gave me the book?” She argued. “To make it easy?”
He sighed. “One day you’ll thank me for it. Some days you’ll hate me.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means you’re welcome.” The stranger winked, as Roda gave an exasperated sigh. “I’d say you’ll understand when you’re older, but I think you really would hit me with the pliers.”
“No,” Roda snorted. “I’d throw the wrench at you.”
The Time Lord laughed so hard he had to double over, slapping his thigh and then leaning on the table as he caught his breath. Roda slipped from TARDIS to counter to floor and wondered if perhaps he was mad. At least he was… helpful? He rubbed the bridge of his nose as though laughing had made whatever injury he'd done to it smart again, and shook his head at her.
“Of course you would. Anyway-” A noise from down the corridor caught both their attention. “That’s my cue to get going.”
He began to walk away, rolling up his sleeve. Roda saw the corded bracelet once again, but this time she spotted something she wouldn’t have recognized before, on the other arm. Her jaw dropped.
“Wait!” She headed towards him, breaking into a brisk walk as she reached out to grab his robes, and missed. She had a hundred and one questions, and he couldn't just leave. “I didn’t say thank you!”
“I know.”For the second time in her life, the might-be-a-Time-Agent, unfamiliar-familiar-Time-Lord placed a hand on his vortex manipulator and vanished, without a trace.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-18 12:52 pm (UTC)I'm afraid indepth commentary is... not going to happen, I'm too caught up. But I will try a little.
Firstly I love your way of showcasing 'normal life' on Gallifrey. The sense of place and continuity and the everyday. The culture, the community. (It's what the Seeker wonders about, and what he knows he can never have.) And you are very deft and doing it as show-don't-tell.
Secondly it's TERRIBLY exciting to have future!m!Roda show up and run rings around everything and be a harbinger of... *waves hands* Whatever is happening in the future. It's two plots running simultaneously, except younger!Roda will have to come by it the long way round.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-18 08:02 pm (UTC)Happy to see ANYTHING!
Firstly I love your way of showcasing 'normal life' on Gallifrey. The sense of place and continuity and the everyday. The culture, the community.
I'm glad! I wanted to make it clear that this was normal for Roda; she didn't give up something she hated (or lose it), it was everything.
Secondly it's TERRIBLY exciting to have future!m!Roda show up and run rings around everything
I hadn't originally intended it but he's a shit and I love it.
Whatever is happening in the future.
It WILL all make sense, but not for some time. ;)
It's two plots running simultaneously, except younger!Roda will have to come by it the long way round.
River Songing it! <3