Sic Semper Tyrannis

Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, I wouldn't be writing this. For more reasons than the usual.

Notes: Sic semper tyrannis is the motto of the state of Virgina, if I recall correctly, and may or may not have been what John Wilkes Booth shouted after the assassination of President Lincoln. (That or "The South is avenged". Depends on who you believe. I'm trusting Booth, seems he'd know.) The usual translation is "Thus ever to tyrants". Notice there isn't a verb, there; it could be "so it ever was to tyrants," "thus it always is with tyrants", "may it always be thus to tyrants"... See how many ways you can apply it to the story-- and to how many characters...

Welcome to the post-colonial world, where the most dangerous power is that of narrative, and the fate most to be feared that of becoming a character in someone else's story. By the time you finish reading this, I hope the last sentence will almost make sense. If not, or for further information, I'd direct you first to Reading Lolita in Tehran.

-

The good part about knowing that you were certainly going to die, Harriet Jones supposed, was that you no longer had any reason to bother much about the repercussions of your actions.

"I'd always wondered," she said, tilting her head at what's-her-name, Saxon's dead-eyed consort. "So he's an insane, megalomaniacal, flamingly queer alien bent on world domination. Exactly how much of that had you guessed before you married him?"

She didn't answer; she probably didn't answer anyone at all, these days, by the look of her. Maybe she deserved it: maybe she didn't. It hardly mattered. It certainly wasn't up to her to sort it out.

He wasn't here, yet; she was rather glad he wasn't here. She was rather afraid that her resolve might fail in the face of his insanity. But if he wasn't here... why was she? Was he trying to scare her, showing her the trappings of his power? To unnerve her with the wait? That hadn't worked when she was an MP, and it sure as hell wasn't going to work now.

When she was an MP. It did feel awfully like that, these days. Except with quite a lot more death and far more pressing issues than her hospitals at stake.

"Harriet Jones," said the man in the wheelchair, and she entirely failed not to jump.

She turned toward the old man, keeping herself under strict control. "Yes?"

"Harriet Jones," the man repeated. "What are you doing here?"

"Quite probably awaiting execution. And you would be?"

"Execution..." he said, ignoring her question. "What have you been doing, Harriet Jones?"

A shiver went up her spine. But it couldn't be; surely it couldn't be. Of course it could be. "Trying to incite a rebellion, of course; it's the only sensible thing to do under the circumstances."

"Hmm. True." A faint smile crossed his face.

She took the gamble; why the hell not? "I'd imagine you're probably doing much the same thing, Doctor."

"Ah, you recognized me."

"It wasn't too hard to do," she lied. "So you're not on his side, then?"

"You thought I might be?"

"I don't know what to think about you, anymore." She folded her arms, because to this day, it hurt. "I thought I did, once."

"What you did was wrong, Harriet Jones. And you know it."

"Do I? Maybe it makes me a bad person." Maybe it did; she looked down at the floor, away from him. "But when it came down to the choice... when I had to put the fate of every single life on my planet on your word alone... I decided that I couldn't just believe that you were right. I couldn't risk so much on what you thought would probably happen. Not when I couldn't get in touch with you. Not when I didn't know anything about who you were. Not when you were acting like a reckless teenager, drunk on his own cleverness, not seeing a thing in the world around him. The responsibility was on my shoulders. So I did what I did, to protect my planet, and maybe it was wrong. But I would do it again."

"You murdered all of those people."

The old, betrayed anger rose in her throat, at such righteousness and hypocrisy mixed with such terrible power. "You murdered their leader. Because he was threatening your life, and you weren't going to trust him not to do it again. What was that you said? Oh, yes: 'No second chances'. But apparently you're the only one who gets the privilege of following that policy."

"'No second chances'? You said that? My, you have changed."

And there he was, sauntering down the stairs; she tried not to let her fear show on her face, but she knew she was failing.

"I could've just had her killed on the ground, I suppose," he said, and it was obvious all of his attention was focused on the Doctor; she was a tool to him, like everything else. "But there was something I wanted to show you-- something I don't think either of you have yet grasped. Of course, in Ms. Jones' case, that's understandable, she's only human, after all... But you, Doctor, have no excuse."

He was upon her now, smiling, lifting her chin. "Harriet Jones. You should be Prime Minister right now. Did you know that?"

She swallowed convulsively; he smiled. "Of course you did. Even humans can feel it sometimes, when the timeline goes so terribly off-course. That and human arrogance means you must have known. You should be Prime Minister right now... you should be leading Britain's Golden Age. And you're not... because of him."

And his attention was back on the Doctor, like it had been all along. "I really must thank you, you know. You're the one who made all of this possible." He beamed, stretching out his arms. "All of it, Doctor. I've looked into it; you couldn't have made me a clearer path. You created the power vacuum. You woke me up. You forced that poor boy I'm torturing in the other room into Torchwood; you forced him to chase after you, and brought yourself into my path. And without you, I would have died at the end of the world... alone."

So this was what it came to: all her work, all her suffering, to become a pawn in what honestly looked like some sadistic sort of courtship ritual between two alien men. Bloody Time Lords.

"So I really must thank you," said Saxon, circling the old man in some display of power that was looking more hollow to her by the second. "You are the wind beneath my wings." He smiled.

"You're the master of a gigantic spaceship, not to mention, god help us, an entire planet below," said Harriet. "Are you quite sure there's no possible way you could get yourselves a room?"

And what did you know, their attention was suddenly on her again. "Well, aren't you cheeky," said Saxon, sounding rather surprised. "I thought you liked the cheeky ones. Why did you destroy her again?"

Oh, no. He wasn't going to make this about them again. "I do hate to break in-- this is quite clearly a match made in hell-- but I frankly don't have the time for this nonsense."

Saxon raised an eyebrow. "You do realize I'm going to kill you in five minutes or so?"

"Yes, which is why I'd rather not waste those five minutes listening to you two torturing each other like vicious grown-up siblings. I prefer not to be dismissed as unimportant. It's a human thing, I'm sure."

"Oh, I'm not dismissing you," said Saxon, stepping closer. "I don't take the time to execute most people personally. It's quite an honor."

"It is, actually." Like being such a troublesome German that Hitler came to kill you himself. "Except somehow, I've gotten the impression that you're using me to hurt him."

"Really? How odd. I was just trying to be informative. Don't people want an open government?"

"Generally, I've found people prefer not to be murdered. I suppose it's a question of priorities, isn't it? And given how mine have changed, I feel free to tell you that I will not play these games."

Saxon lost just a little of his "playful" demeanor, which she found a profound relief. "It's a game, is it? The fate of your world?"

"According to you. Just some enormous game of chess, or Risk, or-- whatever game it is, there's no mistaking who you think the players are. And you're wrong. It's not a game. And I will not stand by while you attempt to turn it into one."

"The truth..." he said. "Is a game?"

"Oh, god, what are you on about now?"

"You know it's all true," he said. "Everything I said. Everything I've done... He made it possible."

"Oh, obviously," said Harriet Jones. "You'll find no argument from this quarter. It's possible he's gotten senile, because he was quite clever when I first met him. Gotten rather useless, now, hasn't he?"

The Doctor shot her a look that was old and tired and faintly betrayed, as if she hadn't been all of those things first. Maybe she should leave it there, she thought. Maybe that feeling of a twisting knife in the back would teach him something.

It hadn't taught her much. So she said: "And what does that matter?"

Saxon grinned, uncertainly, as if pausing to gauge the reaction of some invisible audience. Drama queen. "What does that matter?"

"What does that matter?" she said again, putting quite a bit of patience in her voice. "Yes, imbecile he might have been; placed the gun in your hands, but only a fool would be blinded as to who has pulled the trigger."

"...Lights," Saxon said, and the room went dark in the glare of the floodlights. She'd seen this before, in broadcasts from this place; always wondered where it was, and now she knew. Not much blood, the way he murdered, but she had to wonder: who took away the bodies?

"Harriet Jones," came the voice. She couldn't see him through all the lights; it was terrifying, but she'd be damned if she showed it. His damned love for ceremony-- empty, all of it, that was what she had to remember: all of it, empty. "You have been accused of the following crimes: bribery, corruption, possession of illegal weapons, conduction of unauthorized meetings, thievery, sabotage, sedition, and High Treason and Blasphemy. Have you any final words?"

And damn him, for making her give one last speech. There were words, surely, somewhere that could bring this all down; incite the world, bring him to his knees, save her life. She couldn't find them; search as hard as she could, she couldn't find them.

So what's the next best thing, then?

"You are going to lose, you know," she said. "This can't last. Because we're not what you say we are, and you're not what you say you are, and your book's too poorly written to be read for long. You can't become a Lord and Master just by giving yourself the title; you can't take away our power just by telling us it never existed. Read your history: we always see through it, in the end."

And oh, the bloody times in between. How many people already dead; how many more who were going to die in spite of her, because of her. But it was out of her hands, now, and there was such a vast relief in that.

She looked toward the brightest light and said, "It's a matter of time."

-

After it didn't happen, and after he was left alone, the Doctor found himself with the strangest urge to talk with her again. He wasn't one to resist strange urges, so he set in a year, trusted the place to take care of itself, and he was off.

He found himself in a very small town, hardly bigger than a village, and small enough that everyone seemed to know her name. 'Course, she had been Prime Minister. It was Monday, said the woman in the grocery, and afternoon, so she'd be still at home-- and she was not going to tell him where that was, the poor lady had enough unwanted visitors already.

Of course, that didn't stand a chance of stopping him. Her phone number wasn't listed, but he found her address anyway; two questions of a dog-walker and he was on his way. It looked to be a nice neighbourhood, he thought, ambling down the sidewalk; quaint little cottages, lush greenery all around. Couldn't always tell by looks, but it had a peaceful air about it troubled suburbs could rarely replicate.

Still, there was something out of place-- two girls, thick sheafs of colored paper under their arms, in a rather involved conversation that stopped suspiciously quickly as he drew near.

"Hullo," he said. "You two look odd. What, out of school at this time of day?"

"We're not in school," said the brunette, which was pretty bold, given her companion was wearing a school uniform. "We're, uh, volunteers. Would you mind--?"

"American! Now, what are you doing so far from home?"

"Scholarship," she said. "Now could you please really--"

"And how exactly did you meet up with a Japanese schoolgirl, eh?" A glint of metal on the Japanese girl's ear caught his eye; it looked like an earring, but he'd seen it before... "And from a century from now, no less! That's a bit unusual, inn'it? Now-- why don't you tell me who you are, how you got here, and what you're doing with Harriet Jones?"

The brunette shot a nervous glance at her companion, who glared up at him clinically. "Yeah, cover's blown," she said. "What'd he say to say?"

"Uh, he said, if you had a damned brain, you wouldn't have to ask where we're from," said the brunette, with a look of intense concentration. "Then he went off on one of those things again, kept using the word 'lackwit', quite funny actually... Ah, yes. And he said to tell you we're fixing your mistake. After that, well, he said it to you, Rumiko, I think it's a message you ought to deliver--"

"Jolly good," said Rumiko, and threw her whole body into a blow to his gut.

"Rumiko, stop doing that, nobody says 'jolly good' anymore-- oh, hell with it--"

"Molly, this is one of those times, when you shut up and run--"

The Doctor staggered up, propping himself up against the wall as best he could, and lurched toward the corner-- but they were already gone, somehow, turned down some other street-- or, who knew? Perhaps a transmat.

It can't be him, he thought, with less conviction than he'd like. I saw him die; I watched him burn--

He wrenched his thoughts away from that topic, straightened up, and continued on his way.

The place was rather unremarkable, he thought; sunny and quaint and all-in-all quite British, rather like the woman herself. He stepped around a gate, through a small courtyard, and had raised a hand to rap on the door when it opened.

And there she was: causally dressed, looking less tired then when he'd seen her last, by a long shot. She almost ran into him before she realized he was there-- and then she just seemed to stare into his eyes, frozen. He couldn't quite tell what thoughts were moving behind those eyes, unusually.

"Hullo!" he said, because she still wasn't moving. Disturbingly close, actually. She hadn't had a crush on him, had she? Technically it seemed unlikely, but most girls did--

"You," she said. "At my house. For no reason. Any explanations handy?"

"Hmm, hardly hospitable."

"You got me sacked; such things do irreperable harm to the natural fellowship of man. What are you here to do?"

"Talk!" he said, raising his hands in innocence. "I just wanted to talk with you, that's all. I'm not going to hurt you."

"You say that like it would be without precedent," she said-- and took a step back, opening the door. "I have a few minutes. But only a few."

He walked in; the sitting room was sparsely but nicely furnished, feminine without being overly pink and frilly. He turned his attention to the bookshelf.

"The word you used was 'talk'," she pointed out.

"Well, you're not very patient."

"Oddly enough, I have other, and, dare I say it, even better things to do than watch you snoop through my things. When you said 'talk', did you mean 'promounce judgment', or will there, in fact, be conversation at some point?"

"Right." He put the porcelain cat back on the shelf. "I've been thinking of you."

She ran a hand through hair that was a couple of inches longer. "You do realize you're not my type?"

"About what happened," he clarified, getting testy. Damned sarcastic woman; had she always been like that? "I just thought I should tell you that I might've been a little... hasty."

"Hasty," she said.

"About what I did," he clarified, again. "What you did was wrong, of course, but I shouldn't have acted so drastically, I think, or so soon, and-- oh, what now?"

Her mouth was open; she closed it, shook her head, and started again. "Why was I expecting more?" she asked, and the inflection was that of an honest question.

But obviously it couldn't be. "Oi, I'm trying to apologise here!"

Her mouth dropped open again; she hesitated, gathered her words, and looked back up at him, irritation clear in her eyes. "Well. Thank you for that. Are you going to act differently in the future?"

"Hmm?"

"If you do something wrong, the usual response is to direct effort toward changing any such behaviour in the future."

"I didn't say I did anything wrong, per se, just--"

"Get the hell out of my house."

He had no trouble reading her eyes now, he noticed. "Excuse me?"

"I repeat, Doctor, get the HELL out of my house."

"I'm trying to apologise!"

"For things you did that weren't quite wrong?! I don't need that sort of apology, Doctor! In fact, I don't need anything from you at all! Now, I have things to do and people to meet and you no longer have any right to be in my house! So leave!"

"I thought apologising was an important part of the healing process an' all that!"

"Stop listening to talk shows, then!" She herded him out, slammed the door behind them. "And you know what? The other reason I don't need your apology? You already gave it to me. Months ago. You just haven't done it yet."

"...What?" She couldn't mean what it sounded like she meant, he would never interfere with his own timeline--

"I have places to go. If I ever see you near my house again, I will-- I will-- buy a vicious, vicious dog." She turned on her heel and stormed down the street.

This wasn't what he had wanted. He wasn't wholly sure what he had wanted, but this wasn't it. "Harriet."

She didn't turn, but she stopped, and she waited.

"I truly am sorry," he said. If not for what he had done, what had come of it. But that bit he should probably leave unsaid.

Apparently that wasn't enough; she wasn't moving. Was he imagining the slight relaxation of her shoulders, the slight tremble of her frame?

Probably, because she was still silent. He'd reached the limit of what he could offer, so he began to turn away.

"D'you know what hurt the most?" she said. He turned back around; he couldn't help it. And apparently she wasn't lying about the hurt-- it was there, in her eyes. He hadn't anticipated the hurt. "Not what you did. But how. If you'd told them the truth-- or something vaguely resembling it, at any rate, I understand you couldn't have told them the truth-- I could've understood that. If they'd booted me out because of what I'd done, I could have dealt with that, and gladly. I would've accepted the judgment of my people, if they'd just been judging me for anything remotely similar to what I'd actually done. I represent them; they had that right.

"But you told them a lie. You told them superficial propaganda. 'Don't you think she looks tired'." She spat out the last word with fierce distaste. "You played on ageism and sexism and all of our shallowness, and you did it shamelessly. And in the months afterward-- oh, well, who am I kidding, even now-- what gets to me-- what really, really hurts me-- is not only that it worked, but that you thought it would.

"Do you really think so little of us, Doctor?"

And she turned around, as he stared at her, agape; and walked away from him, like everyone else.

-