There, and Back Again - Chapter 13
Aug. 1st, 2020 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schrodingers_time_ladyFandom: Doctor Who
Character(s): Rodageitmososa (OC), Perigraphaltas (OC), Bren (OC)
Ships(s): Rodageitmososa/Bren
Previous Chapter: Chapter 12
Next Chapter: Chapter 14
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
- C. S. Lewis
---
Forty years later...
“I am never going to remember any of this!”
Roda flopped dramatically across a stack of paperwork and groaned. Beside her Peri patted her hair tentatively and rescued his stethoscope from the table, sighing deeply. Tilting her head to look at him by dragging it woefully across her homework Roda groaned again and prayed for some disaster to drag her away from her studies. She had been done with quantum physics more than two hundred years ago. Position basis this, eigenstates that… she knew what she would much rather be studying on the tabletop. Peri, however, was determined to get her to memorize equations until she regenerated from boredom.
Peri’s office was comfortable and cool, and even though it always smelled of chemicals Roda found it one of the better places to study. Perhaps it was because Peri always held her accountable and stopped her mind from wandering. Perhaps it was because even though they were no longer dating, it meant that she got to spend time with him. She wasn’t strictly speaking supposed to spend as much time in the Medicae as she did, but he was particularly good at finding excuses to have her around and Roda was both touched and grateful. Today, though, she could have dug her way out of the building with her bare hands if it meant not having to study any longer. There was less than a decade before she was supposed to sit her final exams, graduate the Academy and become a full Time Lady, and she didn’t feel any more prepared now than she had the day she’d looked into the Untempered Schism. She couldn’t understand how anyone was ever supposed to be prepared.
Paying no attention to Roda’s quiet tantrum, Peri continued to stroke her hair and laughed under his breath. He eased the sheet of paper that was sticking to her cheek out of her ‘grip’ and scanned it quickly, immediately understanding what Roda was failing to grasp.
“C’mon,” he tsked, leaning on the edge of the table. Roda opened one eye to watch him, wondering just when he had gotten taller and more slender. He still had that little bit of fat that had always made sleeping against him so comfortable, but he had gotten more in shape since joining the Corps, and she had hardly noticed. (And she wasn’t supposed to keep looking at his butt and wanting to grab it, she tried to remind herself. Not anymore. Although she couldn’t help but want to know if it would be more firm, now.) “We learned this when we were practically tots. Position basis is…?”
“Boring?”
Peri sighed. “Yes, but why is it boring?”
“Position basis is the rule consisting of eigenwhosits-“
“States.”
“And eisenwhatsits-“
“Values, Roda…”
“Of the nondegenerate observable corresponding to the… the… ugh…!”
“Corresponding to measuring position in three-dimensional space,” concluded Peri, kindly. “You almost had it.”
“Did I, though?”
“If you just wrap your head around this everything else about kets and Hilbert space will make perfect sense.”
“See,” drawled Roda, lifting her head and taking back the paper, “I can’t wrap my head around a bunch of long words. That’s the problem.”
“But you can memorize sixteen different theories about the origins of an obscure Sol-3 folk hero?”
“Robin Hood is interesting. This isn’t.”
“But this will make not falling into a black hole trying to work out which of those sixteen theories is correct easier!”
She needed to stretch her legs before she went mad. Roda pushed the chair back so hard that the legs squealed across the floor and rubbed her eyes as she pushed herself to her feet. Little motes of light filled her vision like an oil spill as she blindly slipped her sandals back on and began to pace the room. As she did, she heard Peri returning to his own day to day work, and tried to reassure herself that even though he was far smarter than she was, she’d be there one day too. Not in the Medical Corps of course, but she was good enough. She could and would pass her exams and there’d be a place in the universe for her, too. Perhaps at the TARDIS docks, or some sort of field engineer who got to travel or.. or something.
She wasn’t good with straight facts. The universe worked, and that was all that mattered to her. And sometimes, it didn’t work in ways that were fair. Why Time Lords were supposed to understand every tiny detail of how it worked was beyond her. But just because the world turned without her noticing every little cog didn’t mean she was an idiot. She could do engineering homework with her eyes closed, had graduated from her TARDIS studies before the rest of her class, and could build the tools that answered the fiddly equations for her. And besides, without professors breathing down her neck there was no real reason she couldn’t consult a book if she was stumped. After all, she was inheriting a Library. The idea that she had to memorize everything she learned seemed… frustrating, really.
“You’re going to do fine,” announced Peri absentmindedly.
He had always been good at sensing her moods, especially when she didn’t talk about them. And, Roda supposed, she was probably burning a path in the floor of his office with her pacing.
She dragged herself out of her self pity and went to see what he was up to. Pulling a pair of goggles back over his eyes, Peri was carefully unstoppering a test tube held in a suspension of liquid nitrogen in one gloved hand, while prepping a pipetter with the other. In a Petri dish off to one side - steaming slightly where it had clearly just been taken from a freezer as well - was some sort of… something. A culture of brownish splotches he was clearly going to add the contents of the test tube to. A part of her wanted to ask him what he was doing… but she suspected that not only would it go over her head, it would also be just as boring as her studying. He’d said something early about testing a vaccine of some sort. Trust him to want to look after all of Gallifrey after years of looking after her.
Instead of asking him, she rested her elbow on his head the same way she had when they were children, laughing as he disgruntledly pulled away and gave her a look. She threw up her hands in mock surrender and sat down in his chair hard enough that it rocked before settling on four legs once again, and sighed. Peri rolled his eyes, and then continued setting his pipetter, squinting to make sure he had the decimal point in the right place.
“So you keep saying,” mumbled Roda, before rubbing her eyes again and summoning some cheer. “So Rassilon keeps saying, too.” Her eyes flashed mischeviously. “Kind of want to run off and screw the exams, though.”
Peri raised an eyebrow at her through his tinted goggles, rolling down the sleeves of his lab coat and buttoning them up. The pipetter sat on the table beside his work, and Roda resisted the urge to poke it out of boredom and distraction.
“You think that’s a good idea?” He glanced at her, holding out his off arm. Roda buttoned up his sleeve like she always had, as though nothing at all was different between them. It wasn’t, really; they just didn’t kiss, anymore. “Thanks.”
“S’fine. And no, I know it’s a terrible idea.” Roda shook her head, laughing quietly. “But it is tempting. Bet I could steal my TARDIS and disappear before anyone even noticed I was gone.”
“I mean,” Peri stuck out his tongue as he focused, returning his attention to the petri dish. “You probably could, but should you?”
Roda threw her arms up in mock despair, and dropped her head onto her folded arms.
“Why did you have to hog all the smarts?”
Peri laughed. Roda’s hearts somersaulted again. She bit the inside of her cheek as she heard him walking about. He’s not mine anymore. Why does he still make me smile so easily? For a moment she closed her eyes, feeling like a teenager again. Hormones this, hormones that. On the one hand, she still had feelings for Peri and on the other, Bren was a very enthusiastic kisser. She couldn’t have both and really, she couldn’t have either of them and yet here she was thinking more about kissing people than she was her schoolwork. Wasn’t she supposed to be past that stage, by now?
When she forced her eyes open again she rolled them, doing her best to hide the fact that she was apparently thinking with something further south than her brain. But before she could say anything Peri cut in with one of his winks, and all thought of getting back to studying fell apart into pieces so small she would have to master quantum physics just to see them.
“Well, you got all the looks.”
“Flirt,” she said, glad that her arms were hiding her blush.
“Guilty as charged. Now.” Roda lifted her head just as Peri dropped her homework in front of her. “Run me through why an eigenstate has to be observable, again.”
“I hate you.”
“I know.”
***
The arrow thudded into a random bush, and Roda swore.
It seemed as though she was never going to get the hang of this. She had read every book on archery that she had been able to get her hands on and watched a hundred, a thousand videos and yet her makeshift target was still as unblemished as the day she had made it. She was tired, and her arms ached, and a little voice at the back of her mind was telling her that if her hero were to see her now, he was sure to laugh. It wasn’t that her aim was poor, or even that she hadn’t practiced her technique over and over until she could draw back the string without much effort. It was just that she was apparently very, very bad at archery.
Odell, of course, had given her some begrudging pointers. The shobogan had just told her to keep at it; but also that she was probably wasting her time, because why did a Time Lord need to know archery? Roda hadn’t had a good answer to that; at least not one that wouldn’t make Odell worry.
As the in loco parent of half of the shobogans, it seemed Odell had adopted Roda after that period hiding in the Library, and fussed over her whenever she visited. In fact, she fussed over everyone, so far as Roda could tell. Tillie called her ‘smothering’ and Bren - who was not her child, but might as well have been - tolerated the attention out of kindness but always messed up his hair as soon as Odell was out of sight. They were both fun to be about - Roda brought supplies to the edge of their camp, whenever she could - but she didn’t really feel as though she could ask either of them for tips either. Besides, she’d gotten this far learning on her own, had she not? She could keep on teaching herself until she either gave up, or stumbled into being good at it. It seemed more than a little colonialist to ask the shobogans to do her a favour and teach her properly, after everything the Time Lords had done to them.
The problem, Roda told herself, dragging her thoughts away from other people’s drama, was that this was no time for honing a hobby anyway. She could barely sneak out of the Citadel anymore, be it for target practice or to visit her friends. Not because anyone was watching her more closely, but because she already had too much on her plate. Studying for exams, tinkering with her TARDIS, Rassilon’s strange apparent obsession with keeping her up to date on Gallifreyan politics… and when she did finally have an hour or two to herself, she found herself first of all wanting to spend it with Peri and - when she remembered that wasn’t an option anymore - wanting to spend it asleep.
She was sleeping more than the average Time Lady her age needed to, she was sure, but with sleep came the blessing of not having to think about anything. Even dreams could be kept at bay with a little telepathic finessing that worked seventy percent of the time. The other thirty percent of nights were a blur of turning up at the Academy without her robes on, losing herself in a forest she didn’t recognize or saying something colossally stupid and alienating the few people she could call her friend. And sometimes, just before she woke up, she would see the robed stranger and wake up feeling like she had done something very wrong and didn’t yet know what. But at least that nonsense went away in the morning, which was more than could be said for everything else.
Still, terrible though she apparently was at archery and little though she had time to improve, she couldn’t help but enjoy it. There was something exhilarating about both doing something no one else knew about, and practicing how to hit a target. (Something, she supposed, that was not ‘becoming’ of a Time Lord. It was very… feral.) Perhaps it was just her childhood obsession - a desire to meet Robin Hood and make a good first impression - or perhaps it was just the joy of disobedience. The thrill of getting to do something she chose, and not something she had to do.
Swinging the large bow over her shoulder, she stalked off in search of her missing arrows. At least three were in the bush, but Rassilon only knew where the rest of them had gone. As she searched she found herself humming pleasantly, and let her thoughts drift - so much so that when someone grabbed her by the shoulder, she hadn’t heard them creeping up on her.
Roda reacted with a speed she didn’t know she was capable of. One second she was bent over looking for an arrow, wrapping her hand around what could be a shaft and the next she had thrown back her elbow with as much force as she could muster. She shouted as she did so - not even stopping to consider that it might be someone she knew - and felt the hand on her shoulder lose its grip. Someone staggered away from her with a pained ‘ooft’ and Roda spun on her heel, giving them a hard shove in the chest and sending them pinwheeling to the ground. As the figure on the ground coughed and grimaced, Roda picked up one of the arrows she had dropped by the bush and aimed it at their face only to freeze as recognition dawned on her. The arrow slipped from her hand, and the whirlwind reaction of the past few seconds dawned on her as her not-attacker stared up at her in obvious astonishment.
“You - you pack quite a punch with that elbow.” The scruffy-haired figure on the ground wheezed, one arm wrapped around their stomach. Roda watched him for a second and then remembered she should probably be offering him a hand up, but he shook his head and lay back in the dust instead. Cheeks reddening, she crossed her legs and sat down beside him, the missing arrows forgotten. “Here I thought you couldn’t aim for shit.”
“Omega’s beard, Bren, you scared me half to death!”
“S’not a problem. You can just regenerate. My ribs on the other hand…” the shobogan poked his side tentatively. “Did you have to jab me so hard?”
“I didn’t mean to hit you!”
“Well, I’d hate to be on the receiving end of your elbow if you fucking mean to hit someone.” He paused, looking up at the sky and catching his breath. Despite the receding pain on his face, Roda could see the laugh in his eyes and decided she was probably forgiven. She still blushed, though. “What’re you doing out here in our territory, anyway?”
Roda held up an arrow weakly. “Practicing. Ra-” she caught herself just in time, letting herself fall to the ground beside Bren with a thud. “My... guardian’d have half my lives if he knew I was doing this instead of studying.”
“Can he do that?”
“Fuck if I know,” laughed Roda. “I didn’t pay attention in Advanced Symbiotic Genetics.”
“Don’t blame you,” Bren sighed. “Sounds boring.”
The two laid in relative silence for a couple of minutes, but for the sound of Bren occasionally coughing and Roda muttering apologies. Above them clouds began to draw in, shading them from the heat of midday, and Roda squirmed so that she wasn’t lying on her bow. She set it reverently on the ground, and let the tension ease out of her limbs. What a strange turn of events, she mused, looking for patterns in the clouds. Lying in the dust with a shobogan I call a friend.
Skaro, but it was good to have someone she didn’t have to be so reverent about Gallifrey around. Especially Rassilon. She even had to be careful what she said around Peri, who couldn’t help but sneak a lecture on studying into every conversation they seemed to have. It wasn’t that she hadn’t enjoyed studying in his office with him a few days ago… but this was much more relaxing. Bren wasn’t expecting anything and Roda felt her smile growing with relief. It had been a long time since she’d felt able to just be.
Bren finally caught his breath and rolled onto his side, pushing himself up on one elbow. Roda turned her head to the side to look at him, already forming another ‘sorry’ when he put his hand over her mouth.
“Pythia’s sake. I get it, you’re sorry!” Roda pulled a face, resisting the urge to throw in one more apology just to be a git. “Just don’t do it again, alright?”
Roda snorted. “Don’t creep up on people in bushes, then.”
“Yeah. What were you doing?”
“Looking for my arrows?”
Bren paused and then sat up, glancing at the target Roda had lent against a tree. He narrowed his eyes at it and then smirked, laughing.
“You do realize you’re meant to hit the target, right?”
Roda rolled her eyes and sat up as well. “Oh, and I’m sure you could do so much better.”
Bren barked a laugh. “Not with that bow. It’s way too big for you, and I’m shorter.”
At that, Roda paused, feeling like a bit of an idiot and somehow unwilling to admit it. She didn’t want Bren to think less of her.
“Does… size matter?”
The words hit her a moment too late. Roda smacked her palm into her face at the same time as Bren hit the ground once again, positively roaring with laughter. He continued until he was red in the face, trying to choke out a joke about size more than once to no success. At first, Roda crossed her arms over her chest and glared down at him, daring him to continue, until it became clear he wasn’t going to stop any time soon.
Before she could talk herself out of it she rolled over, grabbing him by the lapels of his waistcoat and lifting him off the ground to shut him up with her mouth. Bren gave a surprised squeak, and then his expression warmed as he returned the attention. His hand snaked to the back of Roda’s head, pulling her tighter against him. When she made to pull back - having finally shut him up - he lurched back to the ground and took Roda with him, kissing her again. They were both covered in dust, and Roda’s robes had rolled up. She felt her knees burn as bare skin grazed pebbles and rocks, but didn’t let go of Bren’s shirt as each of them fought for control of the grapple. Her hearts raced as his knee slipped between her legs, and Bren groaned as Roda adjusted her grip to pull his hair, tugging at his lip with her teeth.
She felt about as far from a Lady as she had ever felt in her life, but she realized that she felt alive as Bren - despite having been winded not so long ago - suddenly flipped her onto the ground and pressed his mouth to her throat. Tilting her head back she felt him bite and suck, no doubt leaving a bruise and put her hands on his chest half-heartedly.
“Bren…”
“Do you want me to stop?” Roda could feel his voice against her skin, rumbling and low. “Or do you want me to do that again?”
“Bastard.”
“Yeah,” Bren chuckled, and Roda could feel him growing hard against her leg. “But you like it, don’t you?”
Roda’s breath was ragged as she pushed him away, and licked her lips. “Didn’t come out here for you.”
“But you’re tired of the Citadel,” Bren pressed, holding himself up on his arms instead of continuing. Giving her time to gather her thoughts. “Tired of that stuck-up guardian of yours and exams and lords and ladies. Else you wouldn’t be out here shooting a poor, unsuspecting bush.”
He wasn’t wrong. But damn it, why did he have to be so right?
She didn’t feel like continuing to talk. Roda dove up, catching Bren’s bottom lip in her teeth and winking at him in a way that she hoped said ‘come and get it’. Taking the hint, the shobogan sank his teeth into the side of her neck once again, biting until Roda gasped with pain and closed her eyes.
It wasn’t love, this. It wasn’t what she had had with Peri, or anything she had ever had in the Citadel; one night stands as she’d tried to get over her first love. But this was wild, and savage and freedom, and there were no rules. Bren was right; she was tired of everything and ready to run away and never look back. Once upon a time she had thought Peri would come with her. Maybe Bren would, instead. Maybe they could run away together. Or maybe she just needed to lie here on the ground in the middle of the badlands and think with her body instead of her mind for a little bit. Let a friend give her what she needed to take her mind off everything but sensation.
It was probably that. After they were done, she and Bren talked long into the night about nothing in particular. Bren held her and listened, and Roda poured out her frustrations about everything going on at home, and listened to the problems that he was having in turn. That she had to put up with a lecture and a grounding from a furious Rassilon later on did nothing to ruin Roda’s good mood. She pressed her fingers into the bruises on her neck, and made herself a note to put some ointment on them in the morning. But as she fell into bed and slept easier than she had in years, one thought lingered.
It was good to let go. Let go of Peri and appreciate the friendship they still had. Let go of the stress of trying to live up to expectations that she knew she could never meet while still being happy. Let go of fear that she would never graduate and never escape. Just for once, just for this night, nothing could rustle her feathers.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-29 09:57 pm (UTC)It's late and I'm tired, hence the lack of articulation, but it's nice to see her widening her worldview.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-30 02:05 am (UTC)I'm glad you think so, because it was a chapter I was VERY unsure about. But I sort of wanted to show... hmm. That she was a teenager? That she wasn't wise? Or like... she's not OUR Roda yet. She's still growing up and becoming who she is.
I also wanted to show the kind of Roda that could, y'know, get along with Jack and that kind of stuff, re: flirty stuff. And, y'know, it's funny to go "wow, Roda is bad at archery" given you know what comes next.
choices are possible?
Precisely! She's starting to see that things aren't as they seemed, and then she realises she can make choices about that, and then eventually she's going to work out WHY she makes the choices she will?
It's late and I'm tired, hence the lack of articulation, but it's nice to see her widening her worldview.
I'm glad you liked it! [goes off to see what the next chapter is, because there's one in particular I'm excited for your reaction to] This was still the 'filler that isn't' stage.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-30 06:54 am (UTC)That all makes sense, and it works very well. She is exploring and the 'teenage' thing is a perfect allusion. Right down to the sneaking out and trying a new hobby. <3