#zetasigma

Romana sits up, her newly-dark hair tumbling over her naked back in an asymmetric diminuendo, and watches the suns rise through the windows of the Presidential Suite.

She does not miss her last self.  She does, however, think that her last self would have missed herself, if she were Romana, now.  She thinks she wouldn’t be the only one.

Gallifrey is burning.  It is only fitting that Romana, for the first time, no longer does.

She stands, thinks of recovering a dressing gown, and decides that she is unbothered by her own nudity.  She flexes her bare feet, watching her metatarsals move.  Behind her, Braxiatel sits up in bed.

She does not interrupt him.  She speaks before even the first syllable of her name can leave his lips, while it’s coiling itself on his tongue.  “You can go.”

He catches his breath. “I’m sorry?”

She turns back to look at him.  “I am not,” she says.

He blinks, confused and afraid.  “Have I done something…”

“Not the way you mean.”

She turns away from him, begins rummaging in dresser drawers for the clothes to start her day.  She begins to dress, unselfconsciously, neither performing for him as audience nor minding that he watches.

“We’re going to die, General,” she says.  Frank.  Matter of fact.  Unpained.  “I wanted to think about something else for a night.”  Pants on.  Stockings.  Camisole.  “And I would have minded who I hurt, if it were Narvin or Leela.”

His cheeks flush.  She pulls on her trousers–rust-red drab, military yet Prydonian–and straps her staser to her hip before even bothering with shirts.  “But not,” he says, “with me.”

Jacket.  Robes–simpler, now, and easier to shed, but important still, symbolically.  She sits beside her dressing table, absurd affectation from another life, and begins to pull on her boots.

“Nothing is ever erased, Braxiatel,” she says.  “You thought you were the only secret-keeper, the only one who knew what you are?  You once planted a data-bomb in the Matrix to expose an expunged timeline.  The Matrix remembers.  I remember, through it.  But you seem to have forgotten.”

His eyes and chin are hard, now.  “What, then?” he asks her–the man who has had his gleaming genie’s wish, and tasted the ash of that false feast.  “What have I forgotten?”

The Warrior President, now, she strides to the bed, halts beside it, stops to look at him.

“Bernice Summerfield,” she says, “is a friend of mine.”

I’ve not seen it but I’ve been talking on a big finish group I’m in about that. With the new Torchwood release out today (i think!) big finish don’t really like releasing two major big releases in one week as people will prefer to go to one rather than the other but yeah, i agree with you there.

end-of-year book ask

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Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?

Well, I wanted to try and read more contemporary and give it a try. My favourite contemporary I read this year was Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Bowman and the main character was Aro-Ace which is awesome!

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What’s the longest book you read?

I have been enjoying listening to these far, far to much ❤️