Note: Written for the Bechel Test Comment Ficathon, for the prompt "Donna Noble and Romana, traveling light"
Art History
Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Don't know what all the fuss is about. You can't even see the bloody thing."
Making that announcement to no one in particular, Donna tried to look over the heads of her fellow tourists before resorting to pulling the Louvre guidebook from her overstuffed bag. There, on its cover: the Mona Lisa.
A woman standing next to Donna said, "The museum is rather more crowded than when I was last here."
Donna seized upon the chance to vent at an English-speaking listener. "I told Shaun we shouldn't come here in the summertime, but he said the kids would want to go to the beach, so here we are." She gestured to the milling crowd as several camera-laden Germans (from the sound of them) wandered in front of her. "Along with everybody else."
The woman was composed and seemed perfectly happy herself to see the Mona Lisa as a postage stamp on the wall over dozens and dozens of heads. Maybe she had a point - after all, if Donna herself really wanted to see that painting, nothing would stopping her from charging her way up there. But she had a whole Louvre to get through before four o'clock.
"When were you here before?" Donna asked her.
"1979. I got a very good look at that painting then. Do you know, she hasn't got any eyebrows?"
Donna looked at the cover of her guidebook again. The woman seemed to be right about that. Then the other thing she said struck Donna. "1979? You must have been really young."
"Yes," she said. "Yes, I was."
Hélène Fourment and Her Children (Peter Paul Rubens)
"The kids in these paintings all look so well-behaved. I can't imagine mine sitting for ... however long you'd have to sit while someone painted this."
Donna and the woman had crossed paths again in front of a Rubens.
"Perhaps if your father is a painter, you get used to it," the woman suggested.
"Hmm. You could be right. Maybe that's what I'll do when they get too mad. Make them sit for paintings. 'Course, I'd have to hire a painter. I could do that."
The woman glanced behind Donna. "Are your children here today?"
"No. It's my day off. I told Shaun I needed holiday from our holiday. He's taking them around to ... dunno, kids' stuff to do in Paris, and I'm getting some culture. Today, I get to travel light." Then Donna compared her heavy bag to the woman who was carrying, well, nothing, and added, "Sort of."
"I understand. Leaving your cares behind - so am I."
"Kids?"
"No."
"Job?"
"In a way. I'm trying out retirement."
Now they were moving on to the next gallery side by side.
"I'm Donna, by the way."
"Romana."
The Coronation of the Emperor Napoleon I (David)
"Foolish ostentation," Romana scoffed, then added with a rueful chuckle, "Of course, I've seen worse pomp than this. I've participated in worse."
"What, you're retiring from being an empress, or something?"
"No, not an empress, not if I could help it. Just politics."
"Lost an election?"
"In a manner of speaking. But at least I have the cold comfort of knowing my successor mucked things up far more than I ever did."
Water-God and Two Nymphs (fragment of a wall painting in Pompeii)
Donna had learned about the fate of Pompeii in school. She had not given much thought to it back then; it was only history, long, long ago history. Why this ache now? Who would think that these silently starting gods, who had been excavated and transported here centuries after their burial, could fill her with such horror and pity? She wanted to shout at the tourists who passed by without marking it, without understanding what these figures had witnessed.
Romana's expression showed that, if anything, she felt the weight of it more than Donna. So Donna didn't shout, but said quietly: "It's so sad. So terribly sad. A whole city, all those people, wiped out..."
"Erased."
"Yeah."
With that understanding between them, there was nothing more to be said. Only to look, and remember.
The Astronomer (Johannes Vermeer)
"You know, this is what I was supposed to be. When I was young, it was what was expected I'd be: a scientist, exploring worlds without ever leaving my study."
"And now you wish that's what you had done?"
"No, I wouldn't say so. I can't change where my lives have taken me, but for a time there, I was both a scientist and an explorer of worlds, and I do mean exploring, not just sitting in a room. It may be time for me to take that up again."
"Time ... Oh bloody hell, I'm meant to meet up with Shaun and the kids at Notre Dame in five minutes!" Donna started fishing for her cell phone. "I have to go now, but I have to tell them I'm going to be late-"
Romana put a hand on the cell phone, preventing Donna from dialing. "I could help you - and even give you a little more time to get there."
Mona Lisas (Leonardo da Vinci)
It was weird, that was all there was to it, that Donna was only mildly shocked when she climbed into what looked like an ornate armoire, innocently standing amid a untrafficked display of 18th-century furniture, only to find a spacious room of really high-tech-looking equipment. (Easy enough for Romana to wander the museum empty-handed, Donna now thought, when this was nearby.)
Seeing something like this was almost like déjà vu. "Is that weird?" she asked.
"It is a bit weird, I suppose," said Romana as she worked incomprehensible switches and levers around a central console, "but not unprecedented."
Donna also felt that déjà vu when she regretfully, but instantly, declined Romana's invitation to come along. "I can't. I'm sorry, I just can't. I've got my family..."
"Of course," Romana said. "But whenever things change - the offer stands open, when you're ready."
However, they decided there was time for just a little side trip, not too far, and Donna could be back to Paris, on the steps of Notre Dame, just in time to meet up with her husband and children.
When the doors opened on their destination, Donna gave in to awe. "This is unbelievable! We're really here!"
"Shh! We don't want to wake the household. Look over here."
Romana left the door to her ship standing open, bathing light on a darkened room cluttered with an artist's tools of trade, and on his work as well.
"There you have it," Romana said as they walked up to a portrait propped up on a table against a wall. "Not a single person to obstruct the view."
Donna leaned in close, and grinned. "No eyebrows."
"Told you."
Something caught the corner of Donna's eye, and she straightened up to take a wider look at the studio. Multiple, identical faces smiled mysteriously at her from wood panels.
"Hang on," Donna said. "Is this some kind of joke? Why the hell are there so many?"
The End