THE GALLIFREY CHRONICLES, THE FALL OF GALLIFREY
A/N This chapter has being rewritten. If you like stories about Romana check out. Not the only one, based on the episode When a good man goes to war and its going be Romana/Doctor.
Beta read by Lady Catkin
Please review.
Disclaimer I don't own anything.
Narvin gently took Romana's hand in his. He could see how pale and withdrawn she was becoming these days.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"I just want my President to myself today," he smiled before he lightly kissed her neck.
"Narvin, I love you," she said, but it was said in a way that sounded forced. She wanted to make him hear what he wanted, just for one day. He wasn't a bad person and she had no right in hurting him.
He was so concerned he wondered if taking her away would do more harm than good.
"Come on, I've somewhere beautiful to take you"
Braxiatel followed the sound of giggling into the lounge area.
And there she was, Romana, so breathtaking beautiful. She was wearing a long flowing dress which fell past her knees and his daughter was on her lap, pointing at invisible things and smiling. Her smile. They sat perched on the long, wide velvet sofa.
The little girl's eyes lit up in that same way as Romana's would .
"Daddy ," she babbled as she reached out her arms to him. He could tell she was going to be a daddy's girl as he scooped her into his arms, before coming to sit next to Romana.
He was content to stay with his new family, but Gallifrey still meant something to them both and one of them at least had to work. He got up from the sofa after a few more moments.
"Say goodbye to Daddy," Romana had whispered, taking the infant's hand in hers. "Bye bye Daddy," the little girl said, jumping up and down. He smiled lovingly at Romana and his little girl in turn. He placed a tender kiss on Romana's lips then planted a kiss on his daughters head.
"I love you both," he said.
"I love you too," she spoke softly, looking into his beautiful dark eyes
Suddenly his eyes opened, meeting the sight of the dark ceiling above his head. He sighed wearily. It was just a dream. If only he thought, he wanted it so much, after being locked away, he had lots of time to think. This was getting old now though. Being away from Romana was killing him anyway more so because he didn't trust the future conglomerated version of himself from hurting Romana.
For so long now she had been his first thought in the morning and last at night. He wanted Romana so badly. He was only going on for her and her child, which he desperately wanted to be his child. It was the only hope he had and that Romana would figure it out and save him.
The door swung open, jolting him from his reverie. There stood his future self.
"Where's Romana?" he asked.
"Must we do this each time we meet? Seriously? You ask me that every time. She's safe, for now at least, but if you don't agree to give me the remainder of your regenerations, I can't see her staying safe for long" he sniffed. "On the other hand, she is quite something isn't she? I can see why you pine away like a lovelorn fool for her. Just imagining what it would be like to have her by my side and me taking her hand in marriage and her naming me as her successor. I would be Lord high president of Gallifrey and there's nothing you can do to stop it."
"I'm disappointed I have to say" began the real Braxiatel, sitting up and eyeing his other self. "I had no idea there was a part of me that was that vain. Power? Domination? How tedious. Is that all you are about? Doesn't it frustrate you at all? Being the personification of a tiny bit of me that I generally took no notice of. Now you are starting to sound like an evil mastermind from the cheap human novel's my mother used to read."
The real Braxiatel rolled his eyes and slowly shook his head when he finished. It wasn't perhaps the right thing to do, goad his other self, especially as that other self had the upper hand. He couldn't resist it though. His other self was flawed, fatally, and he was not going to pass up the opportunity of pointing this out.
"I have a realisation. A vision of how to shape not just Gallifrey, but the entire multiverse. I represent the part of you that could have been great. Instead, you decided to be the lap-dog to a slip of a girl and a curator of some dismal museum and a petty little bureaucrat. Well not me. I have no time for such wasteful behaviour. With your regenerations, I could change everything. You are wasting yours. Exactly like our brother".
The other Braxiatel sneered down at the real one, he didn't just think he was better, he knew he was.
"Now that's not fair. He stumbles clumsily through bodies as though he owns a particularly dangerous time travel capsule. Which in all fairness he does and it's his own fault for stealing a Type Forty from a scrap heap in the first place. But that's beside the point. I can't be compared to him. We're very different, as you know. I have purpose and I do have a plan. What would you know? All you are, is a mish-mash of bits of me, sewn together to make a Valeyard. You have no right to decide if I'm worthy of my thirteen lives or not. You make me sick".
This time it was the actual Braxiatel doing the sneering. It was a dangerous game he was playing, but he knew what he was doing.
"I know you well enough. I have most of your memories; hence it's been so easy to just sidle into your life without anyone noticing. It was a tad difficult at first, separating the you from the me. I even had a short and rather regrettable thing with Romana's tiresome daughter. You know the one. The clingy one. What's her name now? Not that it matters. It's Romana that I've got my eye on now. And last I saw of her, she was very keen on me too".
The real Braxiatel let out a large, heavy sigh.
"You really are stark staring bonkers aren't you? My brother used that phrase once to describe our mother's decision to wear nothing but white for an entire year. I liked that phrase. I never thought I'd end up using it to describe a bit of myself. Listen. Just leave Romana out of this. Okay? She hasn't done anything wrong. I know she doesn't need anyone to look after her, she's too strong and too stubborn to let anyone most of the time. That's just her. But leave her be".
The real Braxiatel had hoped that the latter part of his diatribe had hit a chord, but clearly it had not.
His other self looked to be considering something, before turning on his heel and leaving the room, the heavy metal door sealing shut directly behind him.
"Let me think about it", he heard his other self say from behind the door in a mocking tone.
"I would love to stay and chat but I've lots to do, you know how it is."
Romana sat looking out from the half-way point of one of the most beautiful mountains she had ever come across. It was a beautiful snow covered mountain with pretty stones at the bottom and they could see for miles.
"Thank you for bringing me here," she said, gently taking Narvin's hand in hers, glancing at him and then back at the view. She rested her head against his shoulder as his arm slid around her.
He could've stayed on that mountain all day with Romana and lose himself forever in her beauty, especially now as she was heavily pregnant and radiant with it. Being in her presence really put things into perspective for him. He knew what he wanted when he was with her and he realised what mattered the most in his life.
The Doctor and the other Romana stepped out of the TARDIS, onto the uneven surface of the most beautiful planet Romana had ever seen.
"Earth?" Romana asked?
"Apparently not," the Doctor said looking away her. "You must have put the wrong coordinators in."
"I can assure you I did not!"
"Well you did. So there is no use denying it!"
Romana rolled her eyes. "Just say where we are."
The sky was a deep sapphire colour; twin moons sparkled and shone as above them as if they were diamonds. The stars in the night sky glittered and exploded in a million colours like an endless time loop and the city was hidden by a blue crystal dome. It reminded the Doctor so much of Gallifrey.
Inside the city the streets were paved with gold and further in there were many rivers with beautiful, sparkling clear water.
"Oh" said the Doctor when he realised where they were and how very bad it was.
"Doctor," Romana glanced at him, he looked rather pale.
"What's wrong, where are we?" she queried.
"It was Bellona, the planet of the Guardians. Emmaline is from here."
"Was?"
"It's gone now, gone forever."
"But we are here?"
"Before it was destroyed."
"How did it happen?"
"A time war, we survived but they didn't. We kept going back and forth in time to win. It was a war between the Daleks and the Time Lords. Our side had minimal losses."
Romana pondered his words for a moment. "We should warn them, get them away before it happens."
"No. You know the rules of time as well as I do. This is a fixed point in history. What happens here must always happen."
"Why must it? Surely Time Lords should use their powers for good."
"Sometimes I can save someone, change small things perhaps, but this is an established event."
"Then I will." she announced. She was headstrong and determined, a challenge to even him, but he knew deep down there was so much more to her than someone who would run blindly into a situation without knowing all the facts.
The Doctor grabbed her arm. "No, you have no idea what you are messing with, you have no experience of other worlds. And yet..."
"Doctor, what?"
"There are cracks appearing on this planet right now even. It's been destroyed and no longer exists."
"So?" Romana asked.
"It's what I think is going to happen on one particular day there is going to be a very big bang so big that every moment in history, past present and future will crack, but yet this planet is already cracking."
"Why is it so quiet, where is everyone?"
"A good question. There's nobody here almost like the cracks have erased everyone."
"What about Emmaline? Wouldn't she just cease to exist if everyone no longer exists?"
"I don't know. Emmaline is complicated. I would go as far as to say that she could be considered a complicated space time event. She fell through a time fissure and she should be dead, yet she survived. That's got to be more than luck."
"Unless," Romana started to say.
"Unless what?" asked the Doctor
"Unless someone or something has been interfering in her time line, changing her own past, her own history because I remember back on Gallifrey she did not remember who Rassilon was or the abuse at his hands. His name triggered something in her almost like someone did not want her to remember. So if that's one instant it happened what if someone is deliberating messing with her memories and her life? Causing the time lines to twist and bend around her to suit someone else's agenda".
She kept thinking about Braxiatel, he had been so keen for her to go with the Doctor, far too keen for her to leave Gallifrey. She tried to think why would he? She was nothing to him; just a version of the woman he loved and she knew it. She saw it in his eyes. One thing she did know was Braxiatel was a brilliant actor; his life was shrouded in greed and deceit.
She squeezed her eyes shut as she remembered if she had seen him before. Why didn't she remember? It was back on her own Gallifrey. Maybe she was grasping at straws, but she was sure he was not Braxiatel, that the one now on Gallifrey and the one that had turned up on her own world were not the same - a future version of him perhaps even a Valeyard.
She thought Valeyard's were just a story. Always the scariest threat she heard as a little girl. Go to bed or the Valeyard will come and get you. That story was almost as scary as the prospect of Zagreus living inside your head and eating you whilst you were sleeping. There was something very wrong about Gallifreyan children's stories she decided.
"Romana? Did I ever tell you that you are brilliant?" The Doctor distracted her train of thought.
"Me? Brilliant? I've never really given it much thought to be honest," she smiled at him before the memory played over and over in her head.
The memory was hazy at best, but she saw his eyes. They were dark and there was something so unquestionably evil about them. As though the light reflecting from their surface was from Hell. For the first time ever, she had been scared. She remembered his arm was gripping hers as she attempted to get away from him, but she could not remember what had caused her fear or what happened before. He had pushed her. She remembered falling into it, as she thrashed and struggled. She remembered the Doctor appearing and then Braxiatel pretending to try to save her. Then all she could remember was the shrill sound of her and the Doctors panicked cries.
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