ooooOoooo

"Got it!"

The Doctor looked up from his computer screen. "You did not!" He sounded offended.

Romana danced--yes, danced--over to him, waving a print-out. "Yes I did!" She thrust the paper at him triumphantly. "Here! Read it and cry!"

"It's 'read 'em and weep,'" the Doctor corrected absently, his attention fully absorbed by the pages of equations Romana had so smugly handed him. His lips moved along with his finger as he followed the complicated, yet elegant, mathematical notations to their inevitable conclusion. He looked up, thunderstruck. "You did it!"

"You needn't seem so surprised." Some of the elation had abandoned Romana's voice and face.

"Surprised? I'm astounded!" The Doctor, his nose still buried in the print-outs, missed the look of disappointment on Romana's face. All he heard was the brittleness in her voice as she asked him why.

He looked up, pausing with a frown as he caught a glimpse of Romana's crestfallen face. Before she changed to a more neutral expression, of course. "Not in your abilities, Romana," he hastened to assure her. "This problem has eluded some of the greatest mathematical minds in this section of the galaxy for centuries!"

The smug grin returned to Romana's face. "Well, then, it's a good thing I'm not from this section of the galaxy, isn't it." She plucked the papers out of his hands, smoothing them gently as she laid them on the table, looking back with a frown as a thought struck her. "If you thought it was unsolvable, they why challenge me to solve it?"

The Doctor shrugged, glancing down at the equations once again. "Because you never know until you try?" He peeked up at her from under his floppy hat.

Romana yanked at the ends of his scarf, hauling on them until he stood up and followed her out of the room. "You're incorrigible," she said over her shoulder as she continued to lead him to the TARDIS kitchen. The one with the excellent wine selection. "We are going to drink a toast," she announced, letting go of the scarf and pointing to the wine cooler. "You pick." She sat down on the small divan that faced the counter.

"Very well." The Doctor busied himself with glasses and finding the corkscrew, the good one that always managed to lose itself in the falderal of what he'd labeled the "odds and ends" drawer. "Aha!" He held it up. "Found it. Now. What are you in the mood for?"

"Something celebratory. Champagne, perhaps?" She was smiling, and the Doctor's hearts skipped a beat each at the sight of her lounging on the divan, her blouse open at the throat, sleeves rolled up, no jacket in sight. She must have left it in the laboratory they'd been doing their research in. The Doctor glanced down at himself, surprised to note that his coat was gone as well, in spite of the fact that he retained his hat and scarf. He carefully removed them and laid them on one of the stools facing the counter, then turned to search for the champagne. The good stuff; this really was worth celebrating.

"Celebratory champagne for the lady, and some for the chap who came in a poor second in the mathematics competition," he announced, bringing two bottles and two slender flutes over. He placed them on the low table in front of the divan with a flourish. "As my lady requested." He joined her on the divan, then picked up the first bottle and opened it. They laughed as the cork shot across the room and bounced off the far wall. The Doctor poured them each a generous measure and raised his glass for a toast. "What was it we were celebrating, again?"

Romana fisted him lightly in the ribs before raising her own glass. "To my not inconsiderable genius," she said.

"I'll drink to that," the Doctor replied, clinking his glass against hers. They sipped the champagne, Romana sputtering a little as the bubbles went up her nose. The Doctor laughed as she shook her head and sneezed.

"I don't know why that always happens to me," she complained happily. "You're the one with the nose any champagne bubble would aspire to inhabit."

He frowned in pretend annoyance. "What's wrong with my nose? It's a perfectly good nose, if I do say so myself."

Romana leaned forward and kissed the appendage in question. "It's a lovely nose," she agreed with a girlish giggle. She finished her champagne and held up her flute. "More, please."

The Doctor gave them both refills, then leaned back and stretched lightly. Romana took his pose for an invitation, and plopped her head against his shoulder as she snuggled up close to his side, her feet tucked up beside her. "That was exhilarating," she said after downing her second glass and holding it up in a silent request for more.

The Doctor was matching her, drink for drink; they finished the first bottle before they knew it, sitting in amiable companionship on the divan, going over the finer points of her equations. At least, they did until the second bottle was opened and a third of the way gone. At that point, the Doctor realized he wasn't able to concentrate quite as well on Romana's words, so he focused on the sound of her voice and watching her lips as she spoke.

He hadn't realized he was leaning in until he felt her hand on his chest. "Doctor? Are you all right?" She sounded concerned, and he pulled himself back hurriedly.

"Yes, I'm fine." He peered at the champagne bottle. "It's been a long time, my tolerance must have gone down a hair."

"Yours and mine," Romana admitted with a grin. She tilted her head to look up at him, then snaked her arm behind his neck and pulled his head back down, closer to hers. "Permission granted."

He kissed her, meaning to keep it friendly, but apparently that wasn't what she had in mind as she put her other arm around his neck and pulled him even closer. He ended up half on top of her, but disentangled himself from the embrace when they came up for air. "Romana." She looked at him, smiling in a way that stole whatever he was about to say as well as his breath.

Obviously she read his hesitation correctly. "Doctor. I'm not that drunk. I know what I'm doing." The smile deepened as she reached up and deliberately unbuttoned her blouse. "And I know what I want to be doing. Permission granted…for everything." This time, when she pulled him down, he didn't resist.

ooooOoooo

"You've done it again." Ace sounded frustrated.

The Doctor looked at her over the top of his refilled coffee cup. "Done what?"

"Don't play the innocent with me!" Ace's exasperation was only half-mocking as she waggled a finger at him. "You plied her with mathematics and champagne, you kissed her...and then what?"

The Doctor shook his head. Once. Firmly. "You know my feelings about that, Ace. I'm willing to share certain information with you, but no more." He sipped the coffee. "We became a great deal closer after that evening. Things were going along swimmingly."

"So why did she leave you, then, if things were going so well?" Ace braced herself. This was the part she liked the least about these little Q&A sessions, but it was also the part she realized, in some part of her mind, that the Doctor needed most to tell.

"Because, quite frankly, she outgrew the relationship." That had been a particularly painful realization for him to come to. "That champagne-impelled evening was nearly the pinnacle of what we shared. Oh, there were adventures and near-misses and lots of fun avoiding answering some of K-9's rather impertinent questions as to our whereabouts late at 'night,' but we never seemed to gain momentum in our personal lives." He thought he'd found his match, someone to travel with who was not only his intellectual equal, but also someone who he wouldn't have to watch grow old and die, or abandon before they did so. But Romana'd had different ideas, different needs.

"That's even sadder than when Tegan left you," Ace murmured, real sympathy in her voice and eyes.

The Doctor shrugged. "We were comfortable together, but I'd taught her never to settle for just 'comfortable.' She needed to challenge herself, and essentially stranding herself in E-Space was the way she chose to do it. It had nothing to do with me." His voice had gone wistful again. Ace wished he wouldn't do that; it made her sorry she ever started these conversations. "When she opted to stay and help Biroc to free his people, I knew nothing I could say would make her change her mind. So I didn't bother."

"You let her go, just like that. Just like you let Tegan go."

The Doctor nodded. "I did. As with Tegan, I knew it was over, but this time it was because Romana had found a cause that would not only challenge her intellectually, but also, I dare say, spiritually. She'd found something she believed passionately in. A single cause." The wistful smile returned. "She told me once that I was stretching myself too thin, putting my nose in too many people's business. I told her it was because I kept finding short-term problems to solve."

"Doctor, I won't do this again. If you don't want me to." Ace had gone serious, her guilt finally outweighing her curiosity. "I won't ask about anyone else if it's too painful."

The Doctor briefly covered her hand where it rested on the table, squeezing it gently before letting it go. "Ace, I have a confession to make. These conversations have done an old man a great deal of good. It's better to get things out than to let them fester, and I believe that's what I've been doing. Burying the good with the bad. No, you go ahead asking." He picked up their plates and cups and put them in the sink. "Mind you, I don't promise to answer each and every time, but it's all right for you to keep asking."

Ace sighed with relief. "Good. Because it probably would have killed me, Professor, especially now that I know this much." A speculative gleam lit her eyes. "So about Peri..."

"Another time, Ace," the Doctor replied firmly as he ran hot water over the dishes. "Another time."

The End