There, and Back Again - Chapter 8

[schrodingers_time_lady]

Title: There, and Back Again - Chapter 8
Fandom: Doctor Who
Character(s): Rodageitmososa (OC), Perigraphaltas (OC), Selesion (OC), Rassilon (Pre-Canon)
Ships(s): Rodageitmososa/Perigraphaltas
Previous Chapter: Chapter 7
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: This chapter is the result of an absolute rabbit hole of Tardis Wikia research, thumbing through a physical copy of "How To Be a Time Lord" and cross-referencing my original stories. /o\ It's also where I have to start being clever, so hopefully it doesn't go wrong...

“Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors.”
- George Washington

---

Fifty eight years later…

“Rodageitmososa, of all the stupid, reckless things that you have done this was perhaps the most irresponsible!”

***

She didn’t have to do it. Somewhere, a voice in Roda’s mind tried to tell her that; tried to remind her that she didn’t need to rise to the Scendelesean’s bait. But it was drowned out by the louder voice that had spent two hundred years rising to any bait that began with or included the phrase ‘just like your father’, and where that sort of comment was concerned, she tended to see red.

It had started out a quiet day at the end of a rather quiet week wherein Roda had somehow not managed to incite the ire of any of her Professors and had even managed the impossible feat of finishing her school work before Peri had. (Something she had been mentioning to her boyfriend for about the past three days, with varying degrees of being graced with a response.) It was a nice day, too. Not too hot and not too cold, with just enough of a breeze not to be clammy either, and as a result most of the older students from all Chapters of the Academy had congregated outside the Citadel to study somewhere other than a classroom and make the most of the weather before a chill set in.

 Roda and Peri had been sitting side by side - Roda detangling Peri’s hair from the neglect of his studying bender of the week and him grilling her on Time Lord biology - and minding their own business in their own spot under a tree. With hindsight, perhaps she should have continued to mind her own business; but the commotion in the field had been catching her eye on and off for hours. In a much-needed break, Roda had dragged Peri along to find out what was going on.

 She had never seen a game of Eighth Man Bound before, but she knew the stories well enough to recognize one. In the middle of the ring of students sat a Patrexean, cross-legged, with her eyes closed. Auburn hair was pulled off her face in a tight, no-nonsense bun and her skin was dark and unblemished. Like most Patrexeans, Roda thought wryly, she clearly hadn’t spent much time outside in the grass before. No, they spent more time working with their hands in the Citadel, creating art and answering questions that Roda felt took part of the adventure away from life. What was the point in going exploring if you had torn the universe into minuscule philosophical pieces from your own front door? What was the thrill in that?

 A small unstoppered vial - empty of its contents - sat in the Patrexean’s lap. A drug or a drink of some kind, she knew from context, something to make the game even riskier. Peri made a disapproving noise, shaking his head.

 

“C’mon Roda…” he murmured, his eyes narrowed. “If they’re going to do something stupid, just let them.”

 

“I’ve never seen this before…” Roda argued quietly, more intrigued than she cared to admit. She'd heard stories of course, but seeing it happen in-person was completely different. It was difficult not to want to see what it was like, and if the tales were true.

The ‘initiate’ in the centre of the ring paid them no attention, or perhaps couldn’t. The golden glow around their head was no halo of sunshine, and the air reeked of regenerative energy. The game was more than a little afoot already.

Roda didn’t recognize the Patrexean as someone she had ever shared a class with, but the mystery of the older student’s identity was easily solved by the chanting from the ring of observers. 'Phindrealumon', it sounded like, repeated over and over again until the word would lose meaning to whoever heard it. ‘Semantic satiation’, she had heard Peri call it before, the last time somebody had reportedly played the game. The rumour had it that the Patrexean had beaten the existing record and looked eight faces down their regenerative cycle, but also that had never come back to class, and that they had even forgotten who they were completely. Roda, though inarguably curious, couldn’t think of a fate worse than that.

 

“Don’t be stupid Roda,” Peri grumbled. He rolled his eyes, tugging more insistently on her wrist as he tried to get her to pull away. Roda forced herself to drag her eyes from the spectacle, raising an eyebrow at Peri’s sudden change in mood. “Do you really want to get into trouble if someone catches them at it?”

 

She shrugged. “It’s not like I’m going to do it,” Roda pointed out, gesturing vaguely at the ring. “I just want to watch.”

 

“Time Lords die if they mess this up, Roda.” The look on Peri’s face crossed from irritation to concern. Hesitation. As though he wasn’t entirely sure whether he believed that she was simply curious or not. "I don't even know if it even works." He put one hand on her cheek, and for a couple of seconds all of time and space failed to exist, and Roda forgot why she was there. Without noticing what she was doing she rested her forehead against his, and with a sigh he pressed a chaste kiss to her lips as she chanting died down behind them. “I thought you wanted to see the universe.”

“It’s fine Peri,” Roda laughed, putting her palm on top of the back of his hand, thumb stroking the skin lightly. “I’m not stupid.”

“Then come sit down with me,” he whispered, pulling away after an eternity of intimacy. “Just ignore them.”

 

A sudden gasp of shock from the ring behind them interrupted Peri just as he had convinced her to give in, and she turned around despite herself, letting go of his hand. From within the ring of heliotrope and yellow robes she watched the initiate hit the ground, hands and knees only just breaking her fall. Roda shouldered her way through the ring of observers, driven by some instinct that she didn’t know she had to make sure that the Patrexean - Phindrealumon? - was alright. With one of her friends hands on the small of her back, she was kneeling in the circle with an ashen expression, the remains of the broken vial that was underneath one hand obviously completely ignored.

 

As though her movements were not her own, Phindrealumon slowly sat down on the grass, while her friend continued to fuss over her, mumbling words that Roda couldn’t hear. It seemed to take her a couple of minutes to realise that her hand was bleeding, and another minute longer to lift it from the ground and begin to pick the pieces of glass out of her palm. Roda stepped forward to help, before Peri grabbed her robes at the elbow and shook his head insistently, while the crowd began to settle into small groups of people muttering amongst themselves.

 

“Hardly got to her second…”

 

“...bet I could do better-”

 

“-least she’s alive.”

 

“See?” hissed Peri; not unconcerned, but clearly unnerved. “If we stick around, we’ll just get-”

“Typical Arcalian. Too afraid of getting into trouble to take a little risk.”

 

Roda scowled, snapping her sleeve out of Peri’s grip and turning to give the newcomer to the game a glare that she was sure would have put even Rassilon on the defensive. She knew that voice anywhere, not to mention the worm attached to it. In fact, the figure in front of them was the epitome of a bully and a terrible example of Time Lord kind. A worm would have been more pleasant to talk with.

 

“What in Omega’s name do you want, Selesion?”

 

The dark-haired, slimy Scendelesean’s lips curled into a sneer that Roda longed to punch off his smug face one of these days. (Again, technically. Although last time they had gotten into a fight, Roda had been the one to walk away with a black eye and Selesion had simply gone sobbing to Professor Borusa about the robes he had torn when Roda had pushed him to the ground. It had been embarrassing, and Roda had gone out of her way to even be in the same corridor as him any longer than she had to ever since. Luckily, she had succeeded, up until now.)

 

Ignoring her, he reached out a spindly finger to prod Peri in the gut, pulling an unimpressed face. Roda moved to bat his hand out of the way, but the broad-shouldered bully jerked it out of her reach just in time to avoid getting thumped.

“Then again…” Selesion winced, mock-apologetically. “I doubt you’d even see your next regenerations throw all of that time tot fat.”

 

Roda clenched her fists so tightly that her arms began to shake. “Leave him alone, Selesion.”

 

Wishing she had taken Peri’s advice when he’d tried to get them to leave the first time, Roda forced herself to uncurl one hand and snatch Peri’s. Out of the corner of his eye Peri gave her a grateful glance, although Roda knew that the attack on his weight wouldn’t have gotten to him the same way it would her. Peri didn’t let things like that bother him, as though there was an impenetrable bubble around him that only let in what he wanted to be affected by. She wished, sometimes, that she could be as calm as he was, but it wasn’t in her. Meditation was a useless endeavour, and the second she let her temper get the better of her, her mental defences fell like a house of playing cards.

 

This time, though, she would take his advice. Phindrealumon was obviously going to be fine given time - she hadn’t gone deep enough to do herself much harm - and Selesion wasn’t worth wasting their energy on. But like all bullies, he wasn’t ready to take ‘no’ for an answer.

 

“Or what?” The Scendelesean smirked. “You’ll set your daddy on us? Oh, wait…”

 

Throwing the punch felt to Roda like an out of body experience. One moment she had been leading a relieved Peri away and the next her knuckles had connected with Selesion’s nose with a meaty thud. He was by far the bigger Time Lord, but it was obvious that Roda’s punch had caught him by surprise. Selesion staggered back, his hands rushing to his face while Roda shook her hand and grimaced, somewhat off-guard herself. She had moved on instinct, more than anything else; as though he’d stuck a needle in to reset some primal need to defend.

 

It was petty, and her fist was throbbing and she was sure she had landed the punch badly. Surely it wasn't supposed to feel like that. She’d never really learned how to fight, only read about it in books, and her pinky finger felt as though it was on fire. But at least the other guy seemed to be in worse shape than she was. Even though guilt lanced at her for lashing out, she couldn’t help but raise her chin in defiance as Selesion wiped blood from his face and checked to see if his nose was broken. It didn’t look it, but then, she was no doctor. A fact Peri reminded her of by clucking like a mother hen and gently taking her hand, checking from her metacarpal to whatever the bones in her fingers were called with a surgeon's precision.

 

“I’m fine…” she said quietly, cheeks red with embarrassment. Embarrassment that she had lost her temper, embarrassment that she had hurt herself almost as much as she had the bully. Embarrassment that she had upset Peri. She could feel it like a toothache in the back of her mind, his psychic distress evident.

 

«It’s fine.» Peri responded psychically, sensing what Roda actually wanted to say. She could tell he was lying.

 

«It’s not,» Roda grimaced, flexing her hand experimentally. Nothing broken there, either, not so long as it was moving. She caught Peri’s gaze, trying to say without words how she was feeling. That she knew she had messed up - that she was sorry to have upset him, but that she knew she’d fucked up. «You were right, we should have-» 

“I don't know why they gave your kind the symbiote," coughed Selesion, his voice nasally from misshape as he interrupted the moment. Pinching his bloody nose with one hand, he gestured at the wastelands with the other. Roda glared at him, wishing he would just stop talking. Now they were gathering a crowd, as the Patrexean was led away, the game momentarily forgotten. "You should be out there with the other barbarians."

 

"...what?" she frowned, not catching his meaning.

 

"You're not fit to be a Time Lord," Selesion clarified, sniffing painfully. "You're no better than the Shobogans that knived your father when you were just-"

 

Roda grabbed him by the collar, hardly caring that Selesion was taller than her and broader than her and more likely to get off free of charge than her. She had to stand on tiptoes to put her face in Selesion's, and was vaguely aware that if he wanted to he could probably knock her to the ground with just a back-handed swipe, but she realised too late that she had played right into what he wanted. Had stopped retreating.

 

He had come investigating the game of Eighth Man Bound knowing that he would be able to get someone riled up. Presumably, he just hadn't expected that someone to be her. But from the look on his face, it was all six Feast Days and Heartsbeat Day come at once. Even she had enough common sense to know that getting into trouble was eventually going to get her into a position she couldn’t get out of. Selesion - whose father was on the Council, and had his thumb in everyone's honey pots - had led her right into it.

 

“Go on then,” hissed Selesion, smiling. Roda half heard Peri trying to get her to let go of the bully, back off while she had a chance to explain herself to her guardian, but she ignored him. “Prove it. Prove you’re no better than them. Prove you’re not wasting the Lord President’s time being here.” Selesion leaned in closer, whispering something in her ear so that only she could hear it. “Prove you’re not better off dead just like your father.”

 

The closest Patrexean jumped as Roda dropped Selesion’s robes like they were made of fire and turned to face him. He held up a hand, either not sure if he was about to be shouted at next, or about to apologise for rubbernecking. Roda lowered her own and forced herself to grin through bared teeth; a terrible, utterly stupid idea had just come to mind that would wipe that smirk right off Selesion’s face.

 

“I need an Inquiry.” The word for the witnesses to the game they’d just been playing. “Do you have any of whatever she took left?”

She felt Peri’s mind flash with incredulous anger, and sent a wave of apology.

 

“I…” The Patrexean blinked, looked at his companions and then nodded. Trust a Patrexean, thought Roda grimly, to do something as reckless as I’m about to do just for the aesthetic and to come prepared. “Yeah. We brought three vials, but after Phindrea I don’t think we should-”

 

Roda held out her hand. “Make no sound,” she stated, quoting the nursery rhyme that accompanied the game.

 

Wordlessly, someone in the crowd handed Roda a vial, and she downed its viscous contents before Peri could stop her and sat down on the grass. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she tried to get comfortable and to ignore the feeling that this was only going to end in tears. A circle began to form around her and she closed her eyes, taking deep breaths in and out.

 

«Roda,» Peri groaned, at the back of her mind. She tried - ineffectively - to put up a wall between them. «You have nothing to prove, please don’t-»

 

«If you don’t want to watch,» she responded, as calmly as she could manage, «then don’t.»

 

A silence opened between them like a chasm; not uncrossable, but the supports of the bridge had seen better days. Her dismissal - thinking only of her own anger and her own pride - made Peri pause. Roda felt him withdraw, shrouding his thoughts from her as he did so, and regret clamped down on her lice a vice. But she could apologise later. Mess up - split her focus now - and all she’d do would prove to Selesion that he was right.

 

Somehow.

 

Someone asked Peri her name, and as her focus returned to her breathing she heard him snap at them next, hoping that they would back down from playing the game with someone unprepared. Without all the participants the game would go nowhere. Then she heard one more pair of feet join the circle even as Peri growled in frustration and turned away. It was Selesion who began the chant.

 

“Rodageitmososa.”

 

The rest of the inquiry picked it up; tentative at first, until curiousity got the better of them. Roda focused only on the voices, listening to almost-strangers say her name over and over and over until it began to warp around the edges.

 

Rodageitmososa became Geitmososaroda and then vague syllables and then an endless stream of High Gallifreyan noises that no longer seemed to form a word. She tried to hold onto the meaning, wracking her brain for what was being said to her, lowering her baseline of psychic barriers the way that they had been taught to seek someone out in their classes at the Academy. Tendrils of thought brushed over strangers and then Selesion and then the swift-retreating signature of Peri, and a spike of sorrow made her lose track of the beat of the word that was being said around her.

 

“Reda… Redga…” she murmured under her breath, frowning as she tried to hold on, to find something to steady herself.

 

But it seemed further away than before. The crowd continued to speak nonsense as Roda felt her extremities begin to tingle. At first it felt like she’d been sitting on her leg for too long, but then the sensation began to grow painful. Still the circle spoke; still she failed to understand the words.

 

“Ro…?”

 

She shook her head, opening her eyes as the pain shot up her arms and legs, gripping her hearts in a vice iron fist. The world swirled around her, the drug taking hold. The grass had replaced the sky, and nothing sounded right, and all she could focus on was what was inside her and the insistent whorp of the vortex. So similar to the Untempered Schism, as her vision turned Lincoln green and she felt her back hit the ground. Probably the ground, anyway.

 

“Who am I…?” she murmured as though drunk, holding onto the floor as though worried it would let her go. Dizziness hit her in a new wave of pain, and in that second she remembered what she was doing. “Eighth man bound, make no sound..." she whispered; repeating the poem as regenerative energy overtook her, found two heartbeats, and faltered in confusion. No danger. "The shroud covers... covers all..."

 

For a second, a stupid lesson from the Academy slammed into her mind, something about the different ways in which a Time Lord could regenerate. This one was certainly a punishment, and she wondered for the first time if she had made a mistake. If it had gone wrong, if this was it. 

«The Long and the Short,» said someone else, from outside of reality it seemed.

 

A lower voice. Feeling as though she was in a state of flux, a rubber band bouncing back and forth between herself and this new stranger, the one-who-had-a-name-once grit her teeth and tried to remember what she was doing, what she was meant to be proving. The golden glow continued to ebb around her on the edge of a regeneration, and she tried to focus on the unfamiliar face floating in front of her. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? To see the future? Her future?

 

It was smaller, the hair straw blond, with a nose that seemed too big for the face that her mind insisted was the right one. There were braids, and darts of red that could have been ribbons or leather or... feathers? The only thing familiar was green clothes - old and worn - like something she had once seen in a book.

 

«...and the Old and the Loud.»

 

A diamond of metal entered her vision as the stranger narrowed her eyes at her, and she closed her eyes and flinched as cold steel came swirling at her face and the image and voice changed again.

 

Darker skin, older eyes, blue… stripes? Markings? Bisecting a face enveloped in red curls that criss-crossed over the shoulder in need of a cut. A… braid? Not dressed like a Time Lord or… or… who was she? She was… she was Ro… jay? No. The Roda? No, that wasn’t right either, that wasn’t - wasn’t her name. Not anymore. Not yet? Frustrated, dizzy, she held onto grass until it tore up in her hands, back arching in agony as another voice cut in. Number four, face number four, identity number -

«And the Young and the-»

 

There was a flash of pink, of brown, of white, the colours cycling. Then, a choking pain as though a rope had fallen around her throat and somebody had pulled. The crowing laughter of an unfamiliar male voice. And then rough, known hands grabbed at her shoulders and tore her away from the ground, away from the vision, away from the-

 

«Dark,» she heard herself saying, and not saying, and saying one day, and saying in the past, and for a moment one final image flashed across her eyes.

 

A taped nose, broken fingers, watching a sea of golden shoulder-pieces against a sea of red and then anger. Anger that threatened to overwhelm her, to eat her alive, to take out everything that was inside and fill her up instead with -

 

«Rodageitmososa!»

 

The vision was gone as soon as it arrived as strong hands jabbed insistently at her temples like knives. Invading her mind, clamping down on the here and the now instead of the could-be or the would-be. A spark of pain cut her free of the rope around her throat and she sat up straight in firm arms, clinging to her own throat and gasping for air as she tried to stand, to get free, to remember where she was, who she was, what she was doing.

"I don't-"

 

«You stupid, foolish child. You will listen, Rodageitmososa,» the voice filled her mind like a de-mat, departiculating the gold and the light and the instability and leaving behind just one fact. One name. Rodageitmososa. Roda. That was her name… wasn’t it? She could feel hard metal against her - yes, her hearts. Rodageitmososa’s hearts. Not a de-mat, but a gauntlet. «For once in your life do as you are told!»

 

A familiar anger rooted her back in the present, the psychic presence almost as regular as her own. As she struggled to catch her breath - struggled to remind her body of the existence of a respiratory bypass system - she could feel Lord Rassilon’s hands supporting her. One of them was bare flesh against her clavicle, but the hand against her back and her hearts was gloved, and as she looked around the clearing into the panicked eyes of the Academy students and even, now, a handful of Professors, the lengths to which she had just catastrophically messed up began to sink in.

 

Heaving in deep lungs of air as sensation returned to her lips, she clung to the President’s arm like a drowning child, equal parts furious and hurt and scared. And then, just as unconsciousness began to sing her relearned name, another more frantic pair of hands settled on her head, down the back of her neck and then around her shoulders as Peri enveloped her in his arms as though the Lord President wasn’t kneeling in front of them, eyes white with rage.

 

Had he fetched Rassilon? Was that why he’d left? She could hardly remember, hardly think.

 

There was no energy left in her. As Roda slumped in Peri’s embrace, exhausted enough to last - it seemed - several regenerations - the last thing she felt was Lord Rassilon’s mind take hold of her own fractured identity and put her to sleep.

Comments

[elisi]

*flails*

I knew what had to happen but it was SO DELIGHTFUL! Seems the wrong word, but *flails some more* And goodness, the Master hanging her and... *hands*

And then Rassilon and the gauntlet? Happy squeaking. This was a roller coaster and I just sort of need time to breathe now.

♥

[schrodingers_time_lady]

but it was SO DELIGHTFUL!
Writing schadenfreude, maybe? The thrill of something coming together? I wanted to hint at a couple regenerations and wanted to go far enough to hint at future events I knew you would get without breaking the record in the wikipedia (eight, apparently).

And goodness, the Master hanging her and...
It'll give her some hints, later on. ;)

And then Rassilon and the gauntlet?
I have some vague theory that it might've been derived from the Hand of Omega? Either way 1. I figured it exists and 2. it's supposed to be able to dissolve matter/etc and find it through time and space? So it seemed relevant to breaking someone out of a temporal-based crisis of identity?

This was a roller coaster and I just sort of need time to breathe now.
It was to write, too!! ♥