There, and Back Again - Chapter 1
Jul. 8th, 2020 01:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schrodingers_time_ladyTitle: There, and Back Again - Chapter 1
Fandom: Doctor Who
Character(s): Rodageitmososa (OC), The Castellan
Ships(s): n/a, so far
Next Chapter: Chapter 2
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 is the beginning of a mass rewrite of an existing story. Small edits may occur. It's hard to explain, but I've improved as a writer and this was a labour of love back in the day, so I decided to give it some TLC. This particular story in the series is set during the Rassilon's Era of Gallifrey, and I've only listened to some of Big Finish's audios and read almost none of the novels, so expect a lot of fanon and headcanon.
---
The Castellan stood at the door of her home, his helmet in his hands, and Rodageitmososa felt very, very small.
He was bigger than she’d thought he was. At the big speeches he sometimes made at preschool, or the broadcasts she sometimes saw her father scowling at, he was a lot smaller. One man in a sea of Time Lords. Instead, filling the door frame as well as any boulder, he now seemed immense. Overbearing. Too much. She got the feeling he was trying to look kind (or at least less annoyed), in the way he had taken off his helmet, and his hair was sticking up like static and he was half-crouched down to her level. But at the grand old age of eight, any adult, any fully-fledged Time Lord just felt like a giant. And the Castellan, so her father always said when he thought she wasn’t listening, meant ‘bad news’.
There were other strangers behind him. Roda looked around him, counting the legs. More strangers in Prydonian red and Chancellery gold. That meant that they were from her chapter, and they were Time Lords which meant that she should be able to trust them, but something wasn’t right. They couldn’t possibly have been there to see her, all six legs of them. She was barely not a Tot, had only just looked into the Untempered Schism. Surely they were here to see her father, but he wasn’t here. He was late. And her father was never late.
“Rodageitmososa?” Asked the Castellan, his voice filling the room like cement. She nodded tentatively, one hand on her robes, one hand on the book she’d been reading. “Of the House Meyerodeon?”
She nodded again, not sure what else she could say, and then summoned up all her courage and lifted her head to meet his eyes. They were lost under a bushel of eyebrows, oddly out of place on his pale bald head, and seemed as unsure what to do with her as she was with him.
“This…” She swallowed, and then started again. “This is the Prydonian Library. Fath- Lord Meyerodeon’s Library. He’s not home.”
“Hmm.” The Castellan stepped half around and half over the young Time Lady, the Chancellery Guards flanking him and shutting the door with a gentle thump. “No, he is not.”
Roda’s brow furrowed.
“Why are you here, then?”
The question evidently surprised the older man. Roda heard his guards murmuring behind him as they took removed their helmets, and fanned out to surround her. In the lobby that led on one side to her home and the other to the domed Library, Roda took an unconscious step back. No, she didn’t like this at all, not one bit. It didn’t take a grown up Time Lord to know something was definitely wrong.
It was one of the Guards who moved first. A younger looking woman - although with Time Lords, that didn’t count for much - with cropped red hair and freckles. She knelt down on one knee, reaching out for Roda’s shoulder as she attempted to smile gently. Roda let her touch her, but didn’t let down her guard. The Time Lady squeezed it gently, and then - after a quick glance at her supervisor, who nodded sharply - rested her hand on Roda’s small, cool cheek.
“I’m sorry, Rodageitmososa.”
Roda frowned. “Sorry? For what?” She looked over her shoulder, at the library, as though her father would appear at any second and help her out of this situation. “Father will be - be home soon, he can talk to you then.”
The woman pursed her lips sadly. “There has been… an incident.”
The Castellan interrupted brusquely, as authoritative as ever. “Lord Meyerodeon of the House Meyerodeon was found dead earlier this evening, in the company of Shobogan rebels.” The bottom seemed to drop out of Roda’s stomach, and tears rushed unbidden to blur her vision. No. It has to be a mistake… “It is believed he was murdered by the rebels, though an investigation is yet to be undertaken.”
For a long time, Rauda just stood there, frozen to the spot, unsure what to say. She blinked away tears that continued to fall, racing down her cheeks, and didn’t realize she had let go of her book until it hit the floor with a thud. As she stood there, mind running away from her, from the news, she was faintly aware of the Time Lady pulling her into a motherly embrace, and saying something to her. But the words didn’t make sense, or fell on deaf ears. She shook her head, not resisting the hug but refusing the information. As if denying it would make it untrue. And then a spark of inspiration struck her, and she looked over the Time Lady’s shoulder at the Castellan, her arms still limp at her side.
“He can’t be dead.”
“Rodageitmososa…” The Castellan was stern, almost impatient. He looked at her like she was just a Tot, a weary expression on his face. “I have identified his body my-“
“But he can’t be!” Roda interrupted, shaking her head and sticking loose curls to her wet cheeks. “He can’t be, he wasn’t on his last regeneration.”
The Castellan opened his mouth to say something and then shut it again, his eyes narrowed in confusion. He crouched down in front of Roda, moving his Guard out of the way and gripping her shoulders with a strange look on his face that she almost wanted to flinch away from.
“What did you say?”
“He - he had four lives left. He can’t be dead,” repeated Roda, tears turning angry, “you’re wrong.”
“Young Lady-!”
“No!” She pushed the Castellan, shoving him away from her as she shook her head, looking around. “You made a mistake, you have to go talk to him, this is all a-“
“Rodageitmososa…” The Time Lady reached out for her, trying to take hold of her again but Roda stepped out of her way.
“He’s not dead…” She said quietly, full of resolve. “He’s just late.”
Silence fell across the lobby as the Castellan straightened up to his full height once more, and his Guards crowded around him. Roda hardly paid attention to what they were saying, wanting to leave, to go and find her father. She wasn’t supposed to leave after dark, but this was a misunderstanding, a horrible mistake. He would understand if she just explained that she was scared, that the Castellan had told her he was dead, that she just had to see him. But the Guards were between her and the door, and the Castellan was never wrong. That was what everybody said. The Castellan was never wrong, but he said that her father was… was…
A voice snapped her out of her thoughts, a hand waving in front of her face. The Castellan, looking down at her like she was a naughty child. Roda frowned, and he studied her before repeating his statement.
“If what you say is true,” he said slowly, “then an inquiry will be made. But Lord Meyerodeon is dead. There was no trace of regenerative energy within the body.”
“Sometimes it happens,” said the Time Lady gently. “An injury is too bad, someone cannot get to a Zero Room in time…”
“No...”
“I am sorry,” said the Castellan once again. Empty words, landing on hollow ears. “What is done is done. The Shobogan have been apprehended. There will be justice.”
Roda felt her knees give out from underneath her, but the Castellan continued taking.
“You are to be remanded into the care of the Prydonian Chapter until your graduation from the Academy. The assets of the House of Meyerodeon will be kept in trust until then.”
Her father had been so alive this morning. Up hours before she was, doing her hair, sorting books, gathering supplies for the visit he has been planning to make outside the Citadel. She could still hear his gruff laugh, picture his smile, feel his lips kissing her forehead as he told her not to be late in her first year of classes. She had sulked, and fought him all the way through untangling her hair, and complained about him to Perigraphaltas. And still he hadn’t been mad at her, hadn’t even raised his voice. He couldn’t be dead.
She wasn’t sure if she had said goodbye that morning.
“How - how did he die?”
“An autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow,” was the brisk, cold response. Roda looked at her hands, looked at the discarded book, and paid no attention to the Time Lady’s attempts to comfort her. She wanted to curl up into a ball and close her eyes and wait for her father to find her. To explain that he was still alive. But when she opened her eyes again, he still wasn’t there. “If you wish to view his body, it is being preserved in a Zero Room within the Citadel.”
Preserved. As though he was a specimen, not a Time Lord. She didn’t think she could stand to see him like that, so devoid of life. She didn’t even want to think about it. Tears still flowing freely she made fists and tried to wipe her eyes dry, and mumbled into the sleeve of her robes.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“As you have no living relatives remaining in the Citadel, you are to become the ward of your Head of Chapter.” Roda swallowed, only half listening to the answer. Head of Chapter… ward… Meyerodeon is dead… “I will give you time to collect what belongings you need immediately. After that you will be accompanied to the Prydonian Academy where you will spend the night.”
“I need my father.”
The Castellan studied Roda for a minute, their eyes meeting, before replacing his hat on his head and turning away. The silent Guard followed swiftly after and with a gentle smile, the Time Lady gestured awkwardly at the door to her living quarters as the Castellan shut the door behind them.
“Do you need help?”
Roda took a second to answer, tears giving way to numbness. She shook her head.
“I don’t need anything.”
The woman pursed her lips sadly. “Perhaps clothes? A doll?” She bent and picked up the dusty book. “Something to read?”
Silently, Roda took the book from the woman’s slender fingers and clasped it to her chest. It was one of her father’s favourites. It smelled of paper and time, ink and him. It was an old book, from Sol-3; an original print that he had been particularly proud to find a copy of. The hills on the illustrated cover were green and mountainous, the sky blue and cream, nothing at all like Gallifrey. It was a world Roda had always longed to run away to, ever since her father had first taught her to read the words on the cover: There, and Back Again. Since then, she had read it so many times that the initials of the author had almost rubbed away, and the pages were dogged and folded from the attentions of father and daughter alike. It wasn’t taken out of the Library often, and it wouldn’t be missed by anyone but her father. Now, it wouldn’t be missed by anyone.
Her precious cargo held against her breaking hearts, Roda allowed herself to be led by the Chancellery Guards with an empty expression on her face, certain that with her father gone, she would never truly return home again.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Character(s): Rodageitmososa (OC), The Castellan
Ships(s): n/a, so far
Next Chapter: Chapter 2
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 is the beginning of a mass rewrite of an existing story. Small edits may occur. It's hard to explain, but I've improved as a writer and this was a labour of love back in the day, so I decided to give it some TLC. This particular story in the series is set during the Rassilon's Era of Gallifrey, and I've only listened to some of Big Finish's audios and read almost none of the novels, so expect a lot of fanon and headcanon.
"My father commanded respect.
When they died they left no instructions,
Just a legacy to protect."
- "Wait For It", Hamilton: An American Musical
---
The Castellan stood at the door of her home, his helmet in his hands, and Rodageitmososa felt very, very small.
He was bigger than she’d thought he was. At the big speeches he sometimes made at preschool, or the broadcasts she sometimes saw her father scowling at, he was a lot smaller. One man in a sea of Time Lords. Instead, filling the door frame as well as any boulder, he now seemed immense. Overbearing. Too much. She got the feeling he was trying to look kind (or at least less annoyed), in the way he had taken off his helmet, and his hair was sticking up like static and he was half-crouched down to her level. But at the grand old age of eight, any adult, any fully-fledged Time Lord just felt like a giant. And the Castellan, so her father always said when he thought she wasn’t listening, meant ‘bad news’.
There were other strangers behind him. Roda looked around him, counting the legs. More strangers in Prydonian red and Chancellery gold. That meant that they were from her chapter, and they were Time Lords which meant that she should be able to trust them, but something wasn’t right. They couldn’t possibly have been there to see her, all six legs of them. She was barely not a Tot, had only just looked into the Untempered Schism. Surely they were here to see her father, but he wasn’t here. He was late. And her father was never late.
“Rodageitmososa?” Asked the Castellan, his voice filling the room like cement. She nodded tentatively, one hand on her robes, one hand on the book she’d been reading. “Of the House Meyerodeon?”
She nodded again, not sure what else she could say, and then summoned up all her courage and lifted her head to meet his eyes. They were lost under a bushel of eyebrows, oddly out of place on his pale bald head, and seemed as unsure what to do with her as she was with him.
“This…” She swallowed, and then started again. “This is the Prydonian Library. Fath- Lord Meyerodeon’s Library. He’s not home.”
“Hmm.” The Castellan stepped half around and half over the young Time Lady, the Chancellery Guards flanking him and shutting the door with a gentle thump. “No, he is not.”
Roda’s brow furrowed.
“Why are you here, then?”
The question evidently surprised the older man. Roda heard his guards murmuring behind him as they took removed their helmets, and fanned out to surround her. In the lobby that led on one side to her home and the other to the domed Library, Roda took an unconscious step back. No, she didn’t like this at all, not one bit. It didn’t take a grown up Time Lord to know something was definitely wrong.
It was one of the Guards who moved first. A younger looking woman - although with Time Lords, that didn’t count for much - with cropped red hair and freckles. She knelt down on one knee, reaching out for Roda’s shoulder as she attempted to smile gently. Roda let her touch her, but didn’t let down her guard. The Time Lady squeezed it gently, and then - after a quick glance at her supervisor, who nodded sharply - rested her hand on Roda’s small, cool cheek.
“I’m sorry, Rodageitmososa.”
Roda frowned. “Sorry? For what?” She looked over her shoulder, at the library, as though her father would appear at any second and help her out of this situation. “Father will be - be home soon, he can talk to you then.”
The woman pursed her lips sadly. “There has been… an incident.”
The Castellan interrupted brusquely, as authoritative as ever. “Lord Meyerodeon of the House Meyerodeon was found dead earlier this evening, in the company of Shobogan rebels.” The bottom seemed to drop out of Roda’s stomach, and tears rushed unbidden to blur her vision. No. It has to be a mistake… “It is believed he was murdered by the rebels, though an investigation is yet to be undertaken.”
For a long time, Rauda just stood there, frozen to the spot, unsure what to say. She blinked away tears that continued to fall, racing down her cheeks, and didn’t realize she had let go of her book until it hit the floor with a thud. As she stood there, mind running away from her, from the news, she was faintly aware of the Time Lady pulling her into a motherly embrace, and saying something to her. But the words didn’t make sense, or fell on deaf ears. She shook her head, not resisting the hug but refusing the information. As if denying it would make it untrue. And then a spark of inspiration struck her, and she looked over the Time Lady’s shoulder at the Castellan, her arms still limp at her side.
“He can’t be dead.”
“Rodageitmososa…” The Castellan was stern, almost impatient. He looked at her like she was just a Tot, a weary expression on his face. “I have identified his body my-“
“But he can’t be!” Roda interrupted, shaking her head and sticking loose curls to her wet cheeks. “He can’t be, he wasn’t on his last regeneration.”
The Castellan opened his mouth to say something and then shut it again, his eyes narrowed in confusion. He crouched down in front of Roda, moving his Guard out of the way and gripping her shoulders with a strange look on his face that she almost wanted to flinch away from.
“What did you say?”
“He - he had four lives left. He can’t be dead,” repeated Roda, tears turning angry, “you’re wrong.”
“Young Lady-!”
“No!” She pushed the Castellan, shoving him away from her as she shook her head, looking around. “You made a mistake, you have to go talk to him, this is all a-“
“Rodageitmososa…” The Time Lady reached out for her, trying to take hold of her again but Roda stepped out of her way.
“He’s not dead…” She said quietly, full of resolve. “He’s just late.”
Silence fell across the lobby as the Castellan straightened up to his full height once more, and his Guards crowded around him. Roda hardly paid attention to what they were saying, wanting to leave, to go and find her father. She wasn’t supposed to leave after dark, but this was a misunderstanding, a horrible mistake. He would understand if she just explained that she was scared, that the Castellan had told her he was dead, that she just had to see him. But the Guards were between her and the door, and the Castellan was never wrong. That was what everybody said. The Castellan was never wrong, but he said that her father was… was…
A voice snapped her out of her thoughts, a hand waving in front of her face. The Castellan, looking down at her like she was a naughty child. Roda frowned, and he studied her before repeating his statement.
“If what you say is true,” he said slowly, “then an inquiry will be made. But Lord Meyerodeon is dead. There was no trace of regenerative energy within the body.”
“Sometimes it happens,” said the Time Lady gently. “An injury is too bad, someone cannot get to a Zero Room in time…”
“No...”
“I am sorry,” said the Castellan once again. Empty words, landing on hollow ears. “What is done is done. The Shobogan have been apprehended. There will be justice.”
Roda felt her knees give out from underneath her, but the Castellan continued taking.
“You are to be remanded into the care of the Prydonian Chapter until your graduation from the Academy. The assets of the House of Meyerodeon will be kept in trust until then.”
Her father had been so alive this morning. Up hours before she was, doing her hair, sorting books, gathering supplies for the visit he has been planning to make outside the Citadel. She could still hear his gruff laugh, picture his smile, feel his lips kissing her forehead as he told her not to be late in her first year of classes. She had sulked, and fought him all the way through untangling her hair, and complained about him to Perigraphaltas. And still he hadn’t been mad at her, hadn’t even raised his voice. He couldn’t be dead.
She wasn’t sure if she had said goodbye that morning.
“How - how did he die?”
“An autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow,” was the brisk, cold response. Roda looked at her hands, looked at the discarded book, and paid no attention to the Time Lady’s attempts to comfort her. She wanted to curl up into a ball and close her eyes and wait for her father to find her. To explain that he was still alive. But when she opened her eyes again, he still wasn’t there. “If you wish to view his body, it is being preserved in a Zero Room within the Citadel.”
Preserved. As though he was a specimen, not a Time Lord. She didn’t think she could stand to see him like that, so devoid of life. She didn’t even want to think about it. Tears still flowing freely she made fists and tried to wipe her eyes dry, and mumbled into the sleeve of her robes.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“As you have no living relatives remaining in the Citadel, you are to become the ward of your Head of Chapter.” Roda swallowed, only half listening to the answer. Head of Chapter… ward… Meyerodeon is dead… “I will give you time to collect what belongings you need immediately. After that you will be accompanied to the Prydonian Academy where you will spend the night.”
“I need my father.”
The Castellan studied Roda for a minute, their eyes meeting, before replacing his hat on his head and turning away. The silent Guard followed swiftly after and with a gentle smile, the Time Lady gestured awkwardly at the door to her living quarters as the Castellan shut the door behind them.
“Do you need help?”
Roda took a second to answer, tears giving way to numbness. She shook her head.
“I don’t need anything.”
The woman pursed her lips sadly. “Perhaps clothes? A doll?” She bent and picked up the dusty book. “Something to read?”
Silently, Roda took the book from the woman’s slender fingers and clasped it to her chest. It was one of her father’s favourites. It smelled of paper and time, ink and him. It was an old book, from Sol-3; an original print that he had been particularly proud to find a copy of. The hills on the illustrated cover were green and mountainous, the sky blue and cream, nothing at all like Gallifrey. It was a world Roda had always longed to run away to, ever since her father had first taught her to read the words on the cover: There, and Back Again. Since then, she had read it so many times that the initials of the author had almost rubbed away, and the pages were dogged and folded from the attentions of father and daughter alike. It wasn’t taken out of the Library often, and it wouldn’t be missed by anyone but her father. Now, it wouldn’t be missed by anyone.
Her precious cargo held against her breaking hearts, Roda allowed herself to be led by the Chancellery Guards with an empty expression on her face, certain that with her father gone, she would never truly return home again.