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

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.”

She blinked, not liking the sound of all that in the slightest.  “I think I’m missing some important context.  Is there someone in this universe who you suspect is a threat to others?”

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.

“Not specifically,” she admitted, finding it freeing to do so.  “I don’t know what kind of music you prefer, for one thing.  My own tastes tend to instrumental over vocal, but I could be persuaded otherwise.  I don’t suppose you’ll argue with going off-world?  That would probably be... lower pressure.  The President and the Coordinator skiving off together would likely attract a certain degree of notice if we’re in a position to be recognized.”

“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.”

Narvin raised an eyebrow, even as a little smile wriggled over her lips.  “I don’t pretend that philosophy is my area of expertise, but I can try.”

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?”

Narvin was surprised, though perhaps she shouldn’t have been, by how much she wanted to ask Ingrid about it--not for the pleasure of the Cardinal’s company, but for placing genuine value on her opinion.  How absolutely appalling.

“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.”

Narvin suspected trouble from the moment Tre entered the conversation.  “I’m not in favor, as a rule,” she said, suspicious.  “What does she mean to do?”

“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 know you’re not there, but you’d approve of me pretending you are, anyway. Help me with her, Leela.  Help me take care of her.  I don’t know if I can do it alone.

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

“Marginally,” Narvin said, cautiously optimistic.  “When I’m not too busy being CIA.  And none of them are important meetings, by your standards.  Let someone else, or several someone elses, handle it.  It’d be a good chance to see who may or may not be promising enough to be worth considering as a successor.”

“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.”

Narvin hadn’t thought that far ahead.  “We...”  She bit her lip, uncomfortable with revealing something personal--more so, ridiculously, than she had been while proposing.  “...We could go to a concert,” she said.  “If you’d like that.  I don’t know your precise tastes in that regard, but I... like music.  And a meal afterward, perhaps.  I don’t often eat anything other than rations, and I don’t pretend my palate is very refined, but I would try, and I imagine you might enjoy mocking me about it.”

“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.”

That reply caught her off-guard a bit, however.  “Good,” Narvin said, taking a moment to calibrate.  “...Let’s.  If you decide tomorrow you ought to have regenerated today, you can do it then.  Much easier than taking it back later.”

“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.”

An instant-brief moment of distaste tightened the corners of Narvin’s mouth.  “As you wish,” she said, and bowed slightly.  “Anything else, my Lady?”

“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.”

Narvin turned away.  “I’ve been trying to recommend that we both do,” she said.  “To convince both of us both that maybe, life after Gallifreyan bureaucracy might not be totally empty, that we might at least not have to be alone, that we could figure it out together.  But you’d rather die, apparently.  So.  Fine.”

“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.

Narvin regretted the sound of that.  She’d been used to Vansell, known where she stood and how to use him.  Still, better him than Narvin.  “I’ll tell him,” she said.  “Shall I attend to the guards myself--or would you prefer I simply incapacitate them and deliver them to you?”  Narvin didn’t need to mention that the Supreme Leader might well enjoy the chance to handle the situation for herself.  But she did add, “And take care of the cleanup, after?”

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.)

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.

Narvin blinked against her sudden feeling of loss, irrational when this was hardly something she had even known she wanted, yesterday.  She faked another smile, and stood.  “We both have work to do,” she said.  “Thank you, Madam President.”

@romanaofheartshaven

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.”

She dragged her gaze away from the macabre view at her feet to look at the President.  “Do you think they were telling the truth?” she asked.  “If I know myself, I think mine meant it when he said he wasn’t brought here as a part of some plot--but if it was only a coincidence this time, it might well come from your enemies next time.  We’ll have to put some sort of surveillance in place for incursions from outside the universe, and silence this incident as fully as possible.  Will mindwipes be enough for the guards who found them, do you think, or shall I have them killed?”

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.

“Oh,” Narvin said.  “Weather.  I always forget that aliens leave their skies to their own devices.  I suppose a personal bubble to keep the rain off would be a little too noticeable?”