presidentromanaofgallifrey
Romana smiled. “Fortunately, I don’t have as much faith in the creativity of your imagination.”
She nodded. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, Coordinator.”
Naturally, Romana did something rash the next morning. She slipped out of the Capitol unnoticed- her conscience could handle the Chancellery panicking and chasing their own tails for a while, and walked into the Outlands. She didn’t take a staser- it seemed superfluous considering her goal.
She walked instead of taking the speeder, out of some stubborn and irrational sense that Leela would have appreciated the effort more than an easy short cut.
Eventually, she arrived at Leela’s grave. She’d found it with the recorded coordinates on her datapad, but it was marked by a sapling- she’d thought that she would prefer that to a monument declaring her a war-hero. Speculation was all she’d had to go on, they never had talked about death, not like that.
I do not care what you do with me, said her best mental approximation of Leela, I care that you are being an idiot again.
Romana stood there, hands suddenly quivering with suppressed emotion. She hadn’t let herself grieve, not really, burying and denying her feelings, and finally letting herself think of Leela, of what she’d do and say if she was still there, broke her hearts all over again.
“Leela,” she said, quietly, feeling broken and lost. She was gone in the way only aliens could be, it was supremely illogical to talk like she could hear, but Leela had always believed in forces other than those catalogued, and she’d have forgiven Romana the sentimentality even if she hadn’t. “I should have regenerated a long time ago. I stopped it, every time, for you, you know. Maybe you didn’t. I never did say it.”
She’d had to choose between prioritising the planet and keeping her friends safe, and she’d made the right decision by any moral or mathematical measure. It was selfish, she knew, to wish, even for a second, that she could make it again. Leela would never have asked that of her or even wanted it, she’d never have valued her life as above that of an entire people.
Romana would have hated herself no matter what choice she’d made, but maybe she wouldn’t feel so empty, if she’d taken the other path and abandoned the planet to a problem, that for once, hadn’t been of her own making.
She closed her eyes, about to start the process. It seemed right, to regenerate alone, with only the trees and the memory of a friend for company, better than the clinical feel of the medical wing, but she paused, something catching her attention- the muted presence of someone else, like they were trying to stay undetected.
“If that’s you, Narvin, stop skulking about. If you’re an assassin, don’t bother, I’m doing your job for you.”
It had been 1/10th good surveillance work that led Narvin here, and 9/10ths the inevitability that this is where Romana would go.
Narvin sighed as she slipped out from behind a tree. Gallifrey’s climate wasn’t friendly to forests for the most part; only near the poles did the heat of the suns ease sufficiently to permit this degree of growth. Leela would have liked being laid to rest far from the center of things. Her path had always been her own, not like anyone else’s.
“I thought you might take it that way,” Narvin grumbled. “When I said ‘you should wait until your next regeneration to be President again,’ I didn’t mean ‘regenerate now.’ I meant ‘actually let yourself take a break.’ Bearing in mind that this is me talking, Romana. Not usually the most staunch of advocates for work-life balance.” (Narvin spoke the last phrase in English--Ace had taught it to her. Gallifreyan, predictably, had no equivalent.)
