It was ironic, really. She’d fought wars, been impeached and ruled worlds that were never similar enough but now they’d given her back the Presidency she didn’t want it anymore.
She’d made so many mistakes that even Leela had lost faith in her and changing other Gallifreys, destroying other Gallifreys, had given her the needed distance from her actions that she’d never had when Pandora had been around. Though Darkel’s machinations were partly responsible, she’d still clung on to power when even the people had tried to wrest it from her. She wasn’t sure she deserved it any more.
(They’d call her naïve for that, she knew, power went to whoever could get it, not who should have it.)
Running away from her responsibilities was a bit juvenile, she had to admit, but it had worked before. Unfortunately the Presidential TARDIS wasn’t used to being given free reign and hadn’t seemed to have taken her anywhere interesting, she certainly hadn’t meant to end up next to a school.
She hung around, looking for anything out of the ordinary but kept a distance from the children; she hadn’t exactly met many loomlings while doing business in the panopticon.
Almost all of them were eager to get home which, if Earth schools were anything like the Academy, Romana could empathise with. Though it was unlikely they studied science for ten hours a day or the general populace would be much better equipped to deal with alien invasions.
Romana flinched as something brushed against her mind. There was no one remotely near her, save for a few definitely human parents, but she could clearly sense something sentient, something old close to her.
As a rule, she was wary of strange psychic presences lest they be ancient amalgamations of ambition back from the dead but she’d never really gotten the hang of resisting curiosity. Besides, if there was a villain to vanquish it would give her an excuse to stay away from Gallifrey a little longer.
She prodded cautiously at the presence.
