I'll just use my other head, shall I?

Mana’s first instinct was that it was a little different with aliens, just natural to be guarded around them, but something about how strongly Tre had felt about them, and this Leela specifically, made her question that.

Was it? She was alien to this universe. Their two Gallifreys seemed near-identical, but that hadn’t been a given. If hers had been unique in more than just its early demise, if it had had an entirely different culture, a different way of life, a different language even, would that have made her inherently dangerous to this Gallifrey? “The latter is definitely better.” She said, after a moment’s thought.

She smiled a little. “Thanks. If it helps, the only plan I have is to beat everyone in my decade and graduate with a triple first.”

“Well, the books talk a lot about moral quandaries, and I don’t know what approach to take to them. If you know someone has a high probability of growing up to be a murderer, or otherwise bad for the universe, but they haven’t done anything wrong yet, and they’re in danger, is the right thing to help them or to let them die?” She hesitated. “Does it change things if you could save someone else instead, who only has the average chance of being terrible?”

Narvin had never thought of herself as the kind of person who Gets Along With Children, but she had to admit that Mana’s earnestness was terribly endearing.  “If you say so, my Lady,” she said, with a smile.

Narvin laughed.  “The Patrexi Academy isn’t quite as cut-throat, but if I know anything of Prydonians, I suspect most of your classmates would call that the worst threat of all.”

Romana raised an eyebrow, unamused. “Braxiatel only approved of my decisions when they fit with his plans and bigger pictures. We did have disagreements, just not in front of you.”

She finished her rescheduling, giving the intergalactic meetings to those she trusted, and the domestic to the less proven. Her secretary would hate her for a while, but that was par for the course.

Romana looked up, finding Narvin on the bench, and followed her sight-line to Leela’s grave. Her mouth went dry, body tensing, and she wavered on the edge of saying something, but what was there to say? Leela was dead, they were grieving, would always be grieving, and what use were words against that?

“I’ve cleared my day.” She said, instead. “You have a plan, I hope?”

Two could play at sarcastic brow-raising.  

“You’d rather I only disagreed with you when I was plotting something, and lied to your face the rest of the time?”

Narvin couldn’t fail to notice that moment of mutual grief.  Under other circumstances, she’d have told herself that it was rude to acknowledge Romana’s feelings, that it would be more generous to let her keep her dignity.  But Leela wouldn’t have thought so, and if they were to survive without her, perhaps they’d need to learn from her. 

Screwing up her courage, Narvin rested her hand atop one of Romana’s.  It wasn’t proper hand-holding, she made no attempt to interlace their fingers--and both of them, naturally, were gloved--but it was something.  We’re still Gallifreyans, Leela.  You’ve seen what happens when you try to change us too much all at once.

Mana blinked. “Foreign agent? That makes it sound like I have some evil masterplan.” She said, amused. “I never thought I’d have to worry about not being Gallifreyan enough.”

She nodded. She didn’t want to get Narvin into trouble either, but she couldn’t help asking when it seemed the only way out of her isolation. “Of course. It’s a big decision.”

Her other dilemma required subtlety- she was sure if she presented the whole thing Narvin would be completely against it, and while it wouldn’t necessarily stop her from doing it anyway, she didn’t need to feel any more guilty about it. “Can I ask you some questions? I’ve been studying philosophy, but it’s not very good at actually giving the answers.”

“Politicians will argue anything if it suits their cause--whether or not they believe it, and whether or not it’s patently absurd, up to and including the notion that an adolescent Time Lady might be considered in the light of a nefarious threat.”  Narvin rubbed her neck.  “I should know, I suppose.  I’ve said not dissimilar things about actual alien young people being sent to the Academy.  Which either means I’m a hypocrite, or that I’m growing as a person.  I don’t know which of those sounds worse.  But if it helps--you are a Gallifreyan to me, my Lady.”

Mana hesitated, thinking through her words. “She’s connected to everyone’s minds through the Matrix, so she said she could convince everyone that I’ve always been a student at the Academy, and they just wouldn’t think about it too hard. I’d have to use a different name and avoid the President, but I can’t imagine she goes there personally a lot.”

“I know it’s bad to mess with people’s minds, but she wouldn’t be doing anything terrible to them. It just sounds like really advanced lying.” Which there certainly wasn’t a shortage of in the Capitol, but she knew that didn’t automatically make it right.

Narvin frowned, considering.  “I can’t like the precedent it sets,” she said, “and if the Lady President ever did find out, she’d be furious about it, I’m sure.  It looks very bad, for the Coordinator of the CIA to approve a fraud perpetrated against our own people on behalf, arguably, of a foreign agent.” 

She sighed.  “But I do like the idea of you being able to go to school,” she conceded.  “To be around people your own age.  Let me think on it a while?”

“I was making a story,” Mana admitted, safe in the knowledge that Narvin hadn’t actually processed the words, “but it’s secret.”  

The honest answer to that was too complicated, since it included it turns out my dead best friend was destined to try to murder me, so she shrugged it off. “I’m fine, I’ve been talking to Tre lots lately- I was hoping you’d come by, actually, because she made an offer. Whether you’ll approve depends on what you think about… mass psychic trickery?”

“Oh,” Narvin said.  As a graduate of the Patrexi Academy, having grown up surrounded by artists of all sorts but without the slightest interest in literature herself, Narvin knew better than to ask a writer what their latest work was about.  “Well, that sounds a very sensible way to fill your hours.”

“You always think I’m wrong. A mutual impulse, admittedly.”

“They’re not important until they get bungled, you know what diplomacy’s like. Well, only because you’ve been hit round the head with it, once or twice.” It was going to take more than a few centuries for Romana to forget about Hossak’s summit, and how long it had taken Narvin to get accused of murder.

She still took out her datapad, beginning to type out a few messages. It felt too much like Leela was glaring at her, or would be glaring at her, if she’d been around in the Matrix to do it, for her to entirely fob Narvin off.

“That’s why you keep me around.  It used to be me to disagree with everything and Brax to do the opposite, of course, but given the way he turned out, I’d think you might acknowledge that my methods are superior.”

“Surely some of your meetings are on domestic matters.  It doesn’t count as diplomacy, or lack thereof, if we’re only offending one another.  And worth some minor inconvenience and smoothing feathers to see which of your underlings don’t bungle it, I’d have thought.”

With Romana occupied--and in a way that implied she intended to go along with Narvin’s plans--Narvin probably ought to have spent the time making plans for the day.  But the moment of peace in this particular location brought other things to the front of her mind.  She sat on the bench (Narvin herself had arranged for a place to sit, not wanting to dirty her robes with every visit) and looked to Leela’s gravestone, such an uncharacteristic and inadequate marker.  She’d have preferred a garden, or a tree, Narvin thought--something alive, something that would be nourished by the body beneath the soil.  That wouldn’t have struck Leela as grim but beautiful.  Narvin would see what she could do, about arranging for a tree.

“I don’t, but you weren’t trusting me.”

Romana stared. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected her to propose to do for fun- Narvin and leisure were two antithetical concepts, rarely mentioned in the same breath, but a music concert and dinner wouldn’t have made it into any of her guesses. Even after centuries, Narvin could still surprise.

“You are a Patrex after all.” Romana observed. “Well, I’m not… opposed to that, but I would be missing a dozen meetings, and I’d been expecting to have a better excuse for it all, with the regenerating.”

“There’s a difference between trusting and agreeing with.  I can trust you and still think you’re wrong.”

“Once, a long time ago.” She shrugged. “She was so young, so sure of the world. I’ve forgotten what it was like to be her.”

Romana laughed. “Is there? What are we without our roles, Narvin, without a planet to hold up? That’s the curse of high office no one warned me about, I thought all I had to fear was assassination.”

She blinked. “Spend the day together? Doing what? I assume work would defeat your point.”

“That’s exactly my point.  Whoever you would be next, she wouldn’t be the same as you.” 

One corner of Narvin’s mouth quirked in amusement.  “Why are you in such a hurry to trust her?  I’ve never known you get on with any of your other selves.”

She sighed softly.  “I don’t know,” she admitted.  “I’m not... the ideal person to be making the argument for a life outside of work.  But I know that I’m tired, Romana, and I think you are too.  And I think you’re strong enough to build something else, after this, if you’ll only be patient enough to try.  I think it will be easier, for both of us, if we’re not trying alone.”

“Oh, not permanently, don’t be so dramatic about it. You’re the one who said I’ve spent too long in this body in the first place!”

“I am not a narcissist.” She bit out. “What I said, I meant in the sense of things going wrong at the worst possible time, not that I’m the only person in the universe equipped to deal with them. And I would happily leave emergencies to someone else, if responsibility for things didn’t ultimately end with me, as per my job description.”

She frowned. It hadn’t occurred to her that Narvin might interpret her obsession with reforming the planet as some sort of personal rejection. “I didn’t mean it like that. For the record, I would rather spend a day with you than spend it recovering from regeneration sickness.”

“It’s always permanent.  You’ve regenerated before, you know that.  It may be death with continuity, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still death.”

Narvin wasn’t sure she’d have been so adamant about that if she wasn’t standing where she was standing, looking where she was looking.  Leela’s very human ideas of death had percolated in her mind to a degree that Narvin hadn’t acknowledged, before.

“And I didn’t say anything like that.  I said you’d been President for too long.  There is a distinction, Romana.  There is more to you than those robes.”

Now, that statement triggered an icy glare. “— — They have fifty spans.  FIFTY to produce something worth my while.  If the results I want are not there, if I cannot SEE the progress in their work, Narvin… make it crystal clear to them that if they OR their loved ones should ever WISH to see the light of day again… well, I leave YOU to fill in the blanks.”

Romana made certain to hold the Chancellor’s gaze, dark eyes narrowed as if she could follow the other’s train of thought… of course, she couldn’t READ MINDS.  That would be absurd.  However, she knew exactly how the other’s brain worked. “No, no.  I’ll see to the portal myself… kind of you to offer, though…” she paused a moment before raising a hand to brush the slender backs of her fingers over Narvin’s cheek, they trail to her chin, thumb and index cupping it; primly cut nails digging into flesh, “… you wouldn’t be thinking of leaving me, would you Narvin? I’d hate to wake up one morning and find you gone,” the words are whispered, and she’s suddenly aware of how close she’d drawn to the other, “any freedom you’d experience would be very short lived, I’d image.  Hardly seems worth the trouble.”

She exhaled a soft, cleansing, breath.

“Deliver them,” she stepped back now, releasing Narvin’s chin from her iron grasp, “I want Vansell to witness what will happen should he fail me again.”

“Impatience won’t gain you anything here, Supreme Leader,” Narvin said.  She’d never been a sycophant and wouldn’t gain anything now by pretending.  If Romana had wanted that in a Chancellor, she’d have had Braxiatel, or someone similarly spineless.  “I’ll push them to their peak efficiency, and you can be sure I’ll see to it their attempts are thoroughly documented to prove it, but the laws of science aren’t susceptible to intimidation.”

Narvin raised a cool eyebrow in response to the touch, though she could deny that, inwardly, she was afraid.  It didn’t matter, being afraid; what mattered was whether you showed it.  “I don’t deny I was being self-serving,” she said.  “I imagined my training and position would make me the less likely of the pair of us to be killed or taken hostage in an off-universe mission.  I’m too closely linked to your administration to survive long if you should fall.  But if you want to take the risk yourself, I can’t stop you, of course.”

Romana sighed, turning to face her frustratingly observant Coordinator. “And I thought you might finally stop complaining at me for a while, but I suppose that would require a greater miracle.”

“I can’t just take a break, you know what it’s like, there’s never a good time. The minute I leave something urgent will require my attention, and anyway, the last time I took a holiday I ended up with a dead Castellan. I simply don’t have the time for promotions right now.”

She raised an eyebrow at the terran phrase. “Are you recommending I take up a hobby?” 

“I am what I am,” Narvin said.  “And so are you.  Somehow, I don’t think the fault’s on me for complaining that you’re literally planning to kill yourself.”

She scrubbed the heels of her hands over her eyes.  “Don’t do it here,” she snapped.  “If your narcissism is really so malignant that you believe the planet can’t cope without you--never mind that it did for billions of years before you, and will have to someday after you, whether you like it or not--if you’re that convinced that you are the pillar Gallifrey stands on, fine.  Do this idiotic thing.  But don’t drag Leela into it.  Don’t pretend that she would approve.”

COLD FURY rolled through her as she stared at her sightless, LIFELESS double.  Oh, this was rather disappointing.  She had been hoping for a touch MORE.  It was rare indeed that she ever allowed herself the… pleasure of engaging in such activities.  A President must occasionally get her hands dirty, shouldn’t she?  Her counterpart had been no fun all, completely tight lipped in the face of interrogation, of course.  The Chancellor’s on the other hand, was a mite more talkative once he’d gotten going — a Narvin with a MORAL compass? The Universe was filled with wonders, was it not? “Perhaps,” Romana waved a nonchalant hand, “see that it’s done.  I hardly want beings popping on and off this planet without my say so.  I also want more information on this Axis they were prattling on about in end… and this Leela they were keen to get back to.  Find her, use the mind probe, extract every last exquisite detail you can and then kill her.”

Romana stepped gracefully over her doppelganger, “have them executed, too,” she murmured, “Quickly and cleanly, Narvin.  I want a full report on my desk by this evening.  And, if you could be so kind as to have Coordinator Vansell waiting for me in my office — I want to know HOW something like this could have happened right - under - his - nose.”  

“I’m not certain the technology exists at the moment,” Narvin admitted.  Romana would blame Narvin for that, just because Narvin was the one who’d said it, but not saying it risked a worse outbreak of wrath later.  “It may take some time.  But I’ll push the scientists as hard as I can without permanent damage.”

“The mind probe extracted sufficient information to track that portal he mentioned,” Narvin said, nodding.  “I’ll go myself.”  And may not come back, she silently added.  If the universe they came from could’ve produced a Narvin so soft, it must be a better place than here.

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.

Romana blinked, startlement flashing across her face as she considered the possibility Narvin was serious. She’d started the conversation with a confession of manslaughter, a proposal was really the last thing she was currently equipped to deal with.

“The things time can do,” she remarked, trying to laugh the question off rather than answer it. “If the Matrix had predicted this in the first days of my presidency, we’d have both thought the databomb had broken it after all.”

Narvin forced herself into a small, would-be-joking smile.  “Believe me, there are still mornings I wake up sure that my entire life since Antimon’s bomb has been something I dreamed in that coma.”

And yet this much hadn’t changed: Narvin was still the old-fashioned one of the pair of them.  Of course Romana would expect something not at all Gallifreyan from a marriage--Narvin hesitated to use the word ‘passion,’ but that was the gist of it, she supposed.  Narvin understood the desire; heaven knew she’d have asked Leela a long, long time ago, if she’d thought even for a moment that Leela would have her.  But Narvin didn’t demand that life follow that sort of dramatic, romantic trajectory from a partnership, and Romana would. 

Narvin had asked because, even if she was too tired to go on as Coordinator, the prospect of nothing to fill her days was wretched.  She had no interest in a marriage of the most Gallifreyan sort, one purely for prestige between two parties who might hardly ever see one another, but there was a midway between that and Romana’s very humanified ideas of courtship.  Romana was... a friend.  The only one Narvin had left.  And to marry for companionship... for the certainty of someone to share the breakfast table with, someone to ensure that life kept on being full and surprising, that existence after politics was more than just a weary march towards the Matrix... that would be... nice.  Or to have that experience anyway--it wasn’t the title that attracted Narvin, just the hope that she wouldn’t be alone.  But that wouldn’t be something Romana would choose for herself.  Narvin ought to have known that.

There was something profoundly disquieting about staring at one’s own corpse, even if he happened to be wearing the wrong body.

Narvin nudged the body of her dead doppelganger with the toe of her boot, rolling him onto his back.  She didn’t like the look of his face at all.  Beside him lay another body, her bloodied visage much more familiar.  “A pity about yours, Supreme Leader.  She might’ve been useful as a body double--if she could’ve been trusted.”

“Mmm,” she hummed thoughtfully, watching the other from behind her lashes.  Romana had a sneakingly STRONG suspicion of what Narvin’s coping method had been.  She’d known the woman for long enough to knit everything together; the Coordinator lived and breathed her work — always had and always would, she knew.  The other Time Lady was CIA through and through —  defined by the work that she did and was certainly… PROUD of it.  Perhaps, some would see her as the textbook definition of a workaholic — Romana could certainly see it herself, however, when all was said and done: who was she to judge?  If that’s what aided her, hyper focused her to deal with the HORRORS of the war, well, she had naught a word to say.

The TARDIS materialized with a soft thud and Romana patted the time rotor with just a TOUCH of affection.  She smiled at Narvin now, excitement shining behind her eyes.  She placed her top hat back atop her head, nodding toward the double doors.  Her hands clasped neatly at the small of her back, as she stepped around the central panel.  “— I must INSIST that you do the honors.  After you, Coordinator.”

Narvin sighed a little, but it was nice to see excitement in Romana’s face.  There hadn’t been enough of that, lately.

She stepped out of their TARDIS, and was immediately startled by the sensation of water on her face.