#ofgallifrey

Tre hadn’t planned for this.

In retrospect, it was inconceivable that she had failed to ask herself what would happen after Romana’s death.  She hadn’t anticipated the Matrix deciding that two Romanas constituted a paradox--after all, it was used to archiving conflicting data from a multitude of varying Gallifreys.  But Tre had never been an Axis alternate, never been corporeal at all.  She was, as she well knew, a thing unto herself, and while the Matrix had coped with brief visits from Romana while the latter was alive, its allergy to two Romanas in the same space soon grew chronic once the situation became permanent.

If she had imagined this, Tre supposed she would have taken it for granted that the Matrix itself, if it was obliged to choose sides, would choose hers.  It was Tre’s home, her parent, her friend.  What‘s Romana to it or it to Romana, Tre might have said, that it should weep for her?

Naive to the last, Tre thought, always imagining that someone, sometime, somewhere, must like you better than her.  How were you ever going to die, if not from false hope?

Tre hadn’t gone quietly.  She’d tried.  She’d fought.  Romana might think that her precedence was obvious, that she was the real one of the pair of them, but Tre was disinclined to agree.  Perhaps it was actually Tre’s sentimental bond to the Matrix that undid her, in the end, because where Tre tried to persuade, Romana did not hesitate to command.  And now, in this brief moment of paralysis while the Matrix spun its wheels, Tre had just time enough to recognize the cruel reality of her situation--to look her own non-existence in the eye, see the triumph in Romana’s face, and spare one more last thought.

I’m glad Sartia isn’t here--she’d have got caught up in all of this, too.  At least it’s only me.  At least I had one bond of my own.  Just one, but that’s enough.

And then the stasis crept into her fictional bones, unraveling Tre back to mere strands of digits, and she couldn’t think anything more.

Narvin should have walked straight on into the president’s office. But instead he paused, and looked at Wynter.

When Tre first learned of the human Testimony scheme, it wouldn’t be accurate to say that her hearts skipped a beat.  It was more that she forgot, temporarily, to pretend that she had hearts, and that they should move.

Leela.  A Leela who was a copy of the real one--all of her memories, all of her selfhood, with only biology (or lack thereof) to set her apart.  Unreal enough that Romana and Narvin and their fleshly biases would ignore her as only an echo, but herself in every way that mattered.  Tre understood something about that.

Still, Tre liked to think that she’d have managed to keep her hands off, if Leela were happy in her afterlife.  Tre would have offered the Matrix, perhaps, but would never have presumed.  But Leela wasn’t happy, wasn’t adjusting, wasn’t settling in well, and after tens of thousands of years of self-control, Tre could only resist so much.

 “You’re a Gallifreyan,” Tre had said, hands outstretched through her Matrix door, hardly able to stop herself from dragging Leela bodily inside.  “By choice and by sacrifice, which are more important than birth.  Of course you don’t belong there.  This is where you’re meant to be, Leela.  Please.  We could be so happy.”

That last phrase had felt like an undignified plea, unplanned, but it was what made Leela stop her pacing.  She had looked at Tre, and made her decision, and taken Tre’s hands.

That was months ago, and oh, Tre had been so patient since then.  She’d remembered Leela’s difficulties with regeneration, her preference for the Romana she’d known, had gently coaxed instead of presuming that the bond Tre felt was shared.  She had started small, spending quiet time together, walking in the woods or eating meals together.  She’d let Leela suggest activities, had gone running and swimming and hunting together, had shivered inside when Leela touched her but never pressed for more.  She’d tried--and oh, it was so difficult--to be gentle, and undemanding, and give Leela all of the space she could possibly want.

She’d reminded herself that her hearts couldn’t shatter any more than they could skip, when Leela asked to see Andred.

Technically, Matrix shades were housed in a very different part of the Matrix than their partition.  Tre had visited them occasionally, but she wasn’t a shade, a distinction that mattered only to herself, and the hollowness of them depressed her.  Even as Testimony, Leela wasn’t like that.  She was more alive even in death than anyone Tre had ever known.

Still.  Tre had given her permission.  She’d had her little cry in a private corner of her partition, and had been clean and scrubbed and civil again by the time Leela came back to see.

That was a week ago, and Leela had been back to see Andred every day since.  Tre reminded herself, on a moment to moment basis, that heartache was superior to the piercing loneliness she’d had before--but she didn’t object to the distraction, when an intruder appeared in the Matrix.  Especially not when the identity of that intruder was so intriguing.

Time Lord minds interfacing directly with the Matrix, often illicitly, happened more frequently than anyone but Tre would suspect.  She had long since learnt not to pay much notice to overbold students, theoretically furtive CIA Agents or the more legitimate (if sometimes uncomfortably familiar) intrusion of Presidential minds.    

Actual visitors, however--Time Lords treating the Matrix as physical space, and using their belief to make its halls sufficiently material for them to inhabit temporarily--that was a far rarer phenomenon.  Official Matrix doors were few in number and closely monitored, and to actually create a new one was no mean feat of both engineering prowess and psychic ability.  Few Time Lords were sufficiently skilled either in one or the other, never mind both.  (Tre herself could have done it, of course--any Romana could--but they weren’t just anybody.)

Tre was immediately on alert, then, when she sensed the newcomer, and doubly so when she realized her visitor’s identity.  Her eyes flashed as she realized the pleasurable power of her position.  This was going to be fun.

Tre took particular care over her own appearance and that of her parlor, dressing herself in a smart suit and impeccable heels and modeling her ‘rooms’ after the Braxiatel Collection, a locale where leaving visitors overawed was always a top priority.  Then she twisted the Matrix around the intruder, leading her to Tre’s door.  In a last, suitably dramatic touch, Tre swung the door open without touch, standing and clasping her arms behind her back, her skirt swaying slightly and her smile artificially bright.

Most times, alternate Gallifreys failed to hold Tre’s attention for long, but this one was something of an oddity.  The fact that such a disproportionate percentage of the population seemed to favor feminine form did not interest her unduly, but the visitors did.  This Gallifrey had become a one-stop-shop for the stories of many Gallifreys--like the homeworld of the Romana currently attempting valiantly to stave off boredom in the personal library of Cardinal Ingrid Braxiatel.

Tre didn’t generally prefer to reach out to her own alternates.  Not often.  But this child was much younger than the Romana who had created Tre.  The bad feelings that tended to surface with older Romanas ought by rights to be kept under control.  And anyway, with her world destroyed, living now in an isolation only a little less than Tre’s own, this Romana needed a friend.

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