"He'd kill me, you know. If he found out I was wading in his time stream."
Silence.
"To be fair, I would kill me. And I've turned the other way on many a violation of the laws of time. Braxiatell's ridiculous art project, for example. The Doctor's little discrepancies, of course. Ninety percent of the whole damn war. That, Amelia, was what you would call an abomination."
Her companion remained, still, quiet.
"Those, though... at least there were good intentions behind them. Necessity, even, and desperation if nothing else. This is just... well, it's just selfish, isn't it? I haven't got an excuse. Honestly, I'm ashamed of myself, sometimes. I wonder, would you understand? About myself, and him? And our planet?"
She sighed, closed her eyes, and paused before continuing.
"He's the one who did it, you know. All of this, everything. He's why we're both so alone, the thoughtless ass. I know it was necessary, I really do, and frankly I should be blaming Rassilon, but I can't... I just can't. Can't forgive, can't forget, can't see reason - at least not yet. Maybe it's too fresh a wound, maybe he really is a monster, in some ways. But from your perspective, really, could you ever see him as anything but a hero?"
No response came from out of the dark. Still, the other woman was silent.
And yet, buried somewhere deep in her own mind, she could her her companion's reply.
'No, you idiot,' She said. 'If you're bitter, fine, I'll give you that, but none of that could be true. The Doctor is a hero. He's special.'
"No, I didn't suppose you would," She said, with the smallest hint of laughter. "Humans. Bloody simple humans. You never could. Not now, at least. You don't really know him yet," Romana smiled to herself, a brief pause. "Humans who do know him certainly know him better than to think as much. Oh yes, Amelia, we still love him, but god forbid we let him moralize. Not on his own. He's got less perspective than you, some days."
She turned her head in the dark, to look upon Ms. Pond's sleeping form. The tortured monologues of sleepless nights had never woken her before, and never would, Romana was certain. She raised a cautious hand to stroke through Amelia's brilliant, bright hair. They stayed that way a few minutes, one playing with red locks while the other sleeps on, unaware.
"He doesn't even know I'm alive, much less that I've stolen you like this. I don't even really know how I've done that bit. You need to go home. I do know that. He'll be back for you, soon. I fully expect him to promptly hurt you again, and quite spectacularly, I'll bet, but if I know him I know he'll be back for you. You're just his type."
Romana stopped there, imagining vividly exactly what dear Amelia might say. 'The Doctor wouldn't!' She shouts, reverting into some simple, highly offended child. 'The Doctor is a good person. He doesn't hurt people, not if he can help it.'
"He hurts everyone, Amelia," She snaps. "He can't help it. He doesn't mean to, but still, he does. He leaves everyone behind, and makes them feel like some disgusting lesser creature in comparison, like we're all so unimportant. Not just humans, dear, all of us. He ruins lives and destroys people. He saves planets, thank Rassilon for that, but the Doctor is no saint, my love. I can tell you that."
Oh, and how she fumed. Her hero and childhood friend pulled into the harsh light to face the judgment of reality. 'He wouldn't,' She insists. 'He would never. He's a good person.'
"Amelia." The name was firm, a certain statement with a tone of authority. "He's has killed in his life. He's let people down. My allies... my dearest friend, she knew him better than anyone else I've ever met, she's gone now. It's because of him. Look at yourself, for god's sake! It's been how many years? Not even a telephone call? Dear, the Doctor is a good person, I'll admit, or at least he tries to be, but he's far from perfect."
And with that, Romana had crossed the line into the arena of the purely offensive and the far too personal. Words failed the mental avatar of Amelia, and she swear at her, pouts, rolls over, settles in, and refuses to acknowledge Romana for the rest of the night, rolling far into the next morning.
And as such, for the fact that Amelia was not listening, Romana was exceedingly grateful.
Amelia never seemed too bothered by being called by her full Christian name. Romana knew full well that, in her home era and tiny village, she preferred 'Amy', but 'Amy' was such a crude name. It had no flow or imagery or bloody meaning to it. Amelia was a hero - a Scottish beauty with a battle to fight and a heart full of courage. Amy was a recent secondary school graduate with no career plan and a boyfriend she didn't much care for.
When she'd said as much, Amelia had stifled a little giggle and told her she sounded like him. She spent far too much time in the following weeks wondering just how much of herself reminded Amelia of him.
She eventually concluded on the thought that, if nothing else, she certainly wasn't the Doctor and Amelia knew that.
Sometime later, Amelia had asked if 'Romana' was short for anything. She had laughed out loud like a hyena, saying that it was "a lovely name, but I'll stick with Romana, sorry. A bit of a mouthful for me." Romana was glad to keep her own title to the familiar status quo.
Romanadvoratrelundar was the failed president of a lost world, daughter of the looms, student of the Prydonian Academy, subject of Rassilon. Romana was a cynical, eccentric older woman disguised as a cynical, eccentric younger woman with too much intellect for her own good, a fondness for adventures that usually went awry, and an almost overenthusiastic appreciation of the quieter moments in life.
Both women preferred Romana. Romanadvoatrelundar, after all, didn't care much at all for the secretly important things in life.
"Do you suppose that I love you?" Romana had asked, around an hour into their sunny, lazy picnic by the sea. Amelia didn't answer at first, and with each silent moment, Romana came to realize more and more that she should have expected nothing else. It took a while more before she started to suspect the other woman of pretending not to have heard the question, when she had very clearly tensed and shifted her facial expression as soon as Romana had spoken.
It was another several moments of staring into the waves, face contorted in deep though, before Amelia brought herself to speak again.
"What?" She asked, confusion on her brow.
"I said, do I love you?"
"How the hell should I know?" Amelia laughed. "Do you?"
"I like it when you're happy," Romana began. "And when you're sad I want to hold you. I don't want to let you go away, even if it's for the best."
"Yeah," The other woman said, encouraging her friend to share.
"When we're close, I want us to be closer," She continued, cautiously. "I want to hurt anyone who hurts you and I really, truly want you to feel the same way about me. I've never said anything, because I didn't think it was appropriate..." She paused, licked her lips, and took a deep breath before finishing. "But now that I think about it very hard," Romana said, finally. "I realize that I don't really care if it's appropriate or not, because it's far too important to leave alone.
"So my question to you is; Is that love? And if so, what... well, what do you think we should do about it?"
Amelia stared at her trainers quietly for a while. The silence compacted a sort of self-consciousness around them, and made it rather difficult to breathe. Romana covered her eyes with both hands and allowed a little groan to slip out, though it sounded a bit like a whimper.
"You're upset," She presented, trying not to sound too distraught, herself, though that particular ship had certainly sailed. "You're uncomfortable. I'm sorry. If this changes things I can take you home, or - "
"No," Amelia interrupted. "No, I'm not. I'm just..."
"It's awkward?"
"It's surprising," She corrected. "I didn't think you were interested in, uh..."
"Humans?" Romana suggested.
"Girls!" It came out in a giggle that time. Her laugh broke the uncomfortable atmosphere, and a weight lifted from Romana's heavy, unsteady heart.
"Well," She said, smiling a little. "If that's love, I suppose I've felt that way about at least one human woman before, so yes. I suppose I am interested... I really don't know, I'm sorry for... for all of this."
"Romana, how can you not know what love is?"Amelia asked.
She huffed out a breath and shook her head. "My species gave up sexual reproduction millenniums ago. No one really cared about interpersonal relationships by the time I was loomed," Romana explained. Amelia question her about the whole looming business, so she continued. "We have no concept of hetero or homosexual, or of sex, or, really, of love. A mother loves her child, yes, and a Gallifreyan loves their planet, but somewhere along we became a political machine and it's a machine that, at least as far as I have observed, cannot feel."
She was visibly frustrated by the memories of her home world, though Amelia probably couldn't tell if she was missing it or damning it. Romana herself wasn't even certain. She let out a heavy sigh, and suddenly gained an interest in the sands they were sitting on. When she looked up again, Amelia was sitting closer than she had been a moment ago, studying her face and smiling almost sadly.
"I'm no expert, but I think that is love, Romana," She said. "At least as far as I can tell."
Romana kissed her then, and she didn't much care what love was, or who, exactly, in the universe knew it.
It was difficult to tell if Amelia was trying to start up a conversation, or simply deliver a much-needed cup of tea.
After all, it was true that after several hours of trying to repair a fried chronological stabilization circuit (Romana would swear this de-clawed battle TARDIS was worse than the Doctor's old museum piece) she was fairly sure she'd earned one. But any and all psychological benefits were lost forever when; "So, tell me about the other girl you loved. The one before me."
She may have coughed up some of her tea. She wasn't quite sure. "Why?" She asked. She turned her eyes up towards the gap in the the floor grating in which her companion's legs were dangling, head and shoulders leaning forward just enough to watch her right back.
"Because I want to know," Was Amelia's simple reply. "I'm interested."
Romana sighed, leaned back against the time rotor, and said simply "There were three people in total. At least three I can remember."
"And were the other two from your planet? Like a school crush?"
"They were, yes. One was a tutor of mine in school, and I met the other not long after I graduated."
"Boys?" She pried. "Girls? Don't leave me hanging."
"Gender is a social construct, love, you can't just assume that it will be the same between your civilization and mine."
Amelia huffed. "If you're going to be like that, I'll leave."
"Damn you," Romana mumbled. "You know I'm too desperate for the company."
"You know I know," She teased. "So tell me."
She waited patiently for Amelia to adjust her seating position, settling herself on the grating like a child eager for a bedtime story. She cradled her own mug to her lips, and after a quick sip, she nodded, and Romana began.
"The Time Lords were both male. The tutor was an idiotic crush, actually, so it hardly counts, in my books. Our paths crossed again when I entered politics, but I... Well, things had changed. Then, of course, he was nursing an idiotic crush of his own and the matter was never settled before he fell through the vortex, presumed dead.
"I was close with that human woman I mentioned, at the time. I have to admit, though, that it's hard to recount without first giving a long, tedious lesson in Gallifreyan history, politics, and sociology. Suffice to say that we met on Gallifrey, through a mutual friend, tried and failed to save the planet multiple times, and her husband had a hard time staying dead. Which would be fine if he could manage not to die in the first place. In the end, we lost everything. I outlived her, is all. She's gone now."
"That's awful," Amelia said quietly. "Sad. Like, soap opera levels of sadness."
Romana shrugged. She didn't exactly want to talk about it and was certain it didn't need talking about. She simply took a sip of tea, raised her head, and continued. "Just after I finished school, I met up with the other man, and we traveled around for a while. He was a colossal idiot, and intensely charming and usually the fate of the universe was at stake."
Amelia smiled into her mug. "Sounds a bit like the Doctor."
"That's because it was the Doctor," Romana replied, as casually as was physically possible. Her rather blank expression succumbed to a humorous smirk when Amelia did a spit-take, winding up with tea dribbling off her chin, dampening her sweatshirt.
"You're joking," She said. "You have to be. You and the Doctor dated?"
Romana huffed. "We didn't date. We saved things and had adventures and occasionally cuddled or made pathetic eyes at each other."
"For you, that is dating."
"Is not."
"Then what do we do?" Amelia asked. "We have adventures and cuddles and things."
"Yes, but you're not going to steal my dog and swan off to another dimension," Romana deadpanned.
"He stole your dog?" She blurted, indignantly.
The other woman smirked. "I stole his dog, actually. It blew up a few years ago, I haven't gotten around to fixing it, but I still have it." They sat there in silence, for a while - Romana perched precariously on a thin ledge below the console, and Amelia slumped on the floor grating, grinning at her companion like a loon.
When the peace finally had to break, Romana did it with a simple thanks for the pleasant distraction and informing Amelia that she did, in fact, need to finish fixing the ship. It was Amelia, though, that dropped down below deck and crawled through the innards of the TARDIS to meet Romana face-to-face. She wrapped her in an awkward, half-embrace. "I'm glad you picked me," She said, and though she hadn't meant to, she made her lover's heart sink to her stomach.
They shared a bed another night. The first time, they had been stranded in ancient Egypt for a few days while Romana rewired the de-materialization circuit, and unable to acquire more than one room in Memphis for the currency they had on hand. On the night in question, they shared a bed in the TARDIS because, as Romana had been reliably informed by Amelia, that's what couples did.
But she still didn't sleep.
Once again, she spent the long, dark hours staring down the other woman's face, mumbling quietly about everything that crossed her mind, and laying herself open like a book, to one who would never know they were reading it.
"I didn't pick you," She began, two hours since Amelia appeared to have fallen asleep. "It happened. I didn't pick anybody. That would be selfish."
Romana shut her eyes and drew a breath. "Love chooses for us, doesn't it? Well, of course not, love is an abstract concept with no real sentience, but metaphorically speaking it does, doesn't it? Sometimes we love people we hate, and sometimes we love people we can never be with. We don't choose that, do we?
"There are... attractions. Like magnets between people. My charge it positive, yours is negative. When I met you, that part of you, all those electrons were attracting to my protons, and..." She stopped, trailing off, rolled over, and groaned.
"And this is the least romantic metaphor that has even been put to use, isn't it?" She said.
'Yeah, basically,' Replied her hypothetical Amelia. 'But it's sweet that you try.'
Amelia had been out, when the explosion happened. Thank Rassilon.
Romana was fiddling with the console, rewiring this and that, and commandeering weapons systems to, instead, provide them with hot water. She was lying on her back, far below the control room floor, and must have pulled something too hard, or jabbed some sort of missile, or even scraped the TARDIS' well-guarded heart.
But the last thing that went through her fourth self's mind was, unquestionably, 'Oh, shit.'
When she did, finally, return, Amelia found the door blown askew, and smoke pouring through the crack. She pulled it fully open and, in a panic, dove into the disaster with her shirt collar pulled up over her nose.
"Amelia?" Romana shouted, hearing the coughing and running up above. "Is that you? The smoke isn't getting me down here, Amelia, I'm fine. Just... just go outside until it clears. I'll take care of it."
"Romana?" The young woman cried.
"Yes, I'm fine," She replied. "Outside, please, before you get hurt."
There was silence for a moment. The clattering that followed sounded, almost suspiciously so, like Amelia was climbing down, under the grates, towards her.
"What are you doing?" She called.
"Coming to find you," Was her reply. "You don't sound..."
Amelia Pond had trailed off. A few minutes later, she came into view, scrambling through the smoke-filled underbelly of the ship. She crouched down, to fit beneath the low ceiling, and crawled over to Romana's form, which itself appeared to be quite trapped under some fallen bits of machinery. She stopped a meter or so away, and when Romana looked at her, her face was contorted and confused, eyes wide and searching.
"What... Are you... What happened?" She choked.
"What's wrong, am I..." Amelia stopped the Time Lady by gesturing to her own face. Romana was prompted to bring her hand up, and she felt about the shape of her nose, and her chin, and her eyes. She let her head fall back and sighed. "I thought as much."
There was a long, pregnant pause, before Amelia spoke again.
"Romana?" She asked. "Are you Romana?"
"Yes," She replied. "It's me. I seem to have blown myself up, though. I realized I'd made a mistake, and then there was heat, and then when I came to, I... I wasn't thinking about regeneration. I should have warned you. I'm sorry."
Amelia just pushed the rubble off of her, and helped her up. They climbed back into the control room in silence, and when Romana flicked a few switches and the smoke was sucked out of the room, neither were surprised to find parts of it on fire.
But when the flames were extinguished, and it had been settled that the TARDIS wasn't going anywhere anytime in the foreseeable future, all Romana could do was sit Amelia down with a mug of tea, and see what could be fixed and what couldn't.
"I'm still me, you know," She had explained. "I'm still the same person. I still love you."
"I understand," Amelia replied.
But she didn't.
Abandoning their own craft had been easy enough. They hitched a ride back to Amelia's time and general area with some old bat in a time traveling bus, and managed, by some miracle to return to Leadworth without incident. Amelia was tense around Romana, then. And Rassilon, did that hurt.
When they were safely inside, Romana drugged Amelia, put her to bed, and systematically burned every memory of herself from the young woman's mind. Then she left.
She would wander around Britain for a while, she decided. Play tourist until she found something better to do with herself. Pretend she wasn't aware of anything outside the here and now.
Forget all this and go satisfy her wanderlust, just like she always wants to - always tried to do.
And, so, she did.