A/N: I actually know what's happening now!!! *dances* So chapters should be a bit longer now.
Frantically, Jack whirled to call to the Doctor, but he and Martha were running now, and almost out of sight. He swore and, turning back, swept the scene for any sign of the missing Ace. The fighting had died down, or at least moved on. Gunshots came in sporadic bursts from the distance. Plenty of bodies were left, but Ace was not one of them. Jack grew more and more desperate and was about to run after the Doctor when a hiss came from a hastily-dug trench to his right.
"Hey, idiot! Over here!" He looked in that direction and saw a black-haired head poking out of the trench. "Get over here! Do you want to get shot?" He trotted over to the trench and glanced in. A small, slight woman crouched there, cradling a rifle and scowling at the figure next to her. Jack followed her gaze and an incredibly strong wave of relief washed through him as he recognized Ace's jacket. Instantly, he hopped down into the trench and moved to Ace's side. One glance told him she was unconscious. He shot a look at the woman next to him. She glared back, but he could tell from her expression that she wasn't really angry so much as worried.
"Your friend took a blow to the head," she said. "She got hit with a flying rock from a blast. She should wake up in a minute or two." Jack took a closer look at her. She looked human, though he doubted she actually was. Humans didn't live on Shanoer-myerne, not as far into the future as he'd been anyway. She was small, as he'd seen; probably just over five feet tall. Her ragged clothes marked her as part of the 'civilian' force. Her black hair was cropped short, framing a slender oval face with pretty features. Her eyes were green, and examined him just as closely as he did her.
Neither one of them spoke at first. Then, the small woman broke the silence. "Look, I'd love to stick around, but your friend might need medical attention. Since you guys are obviously not part of the Ma'red army, I need to get her to the med station as soon as possible. You coming?" She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head, waiting.
Jack started. He recognized the name she'd used. The Ma'red were a mercenary race, soldiers for hire. Their planet had been destroyed by the Time War, and they'd taken to the stars in their ships. They now made their living raiding other, non-militaristic planets. Apparently, this one had fought back. He nodded. "Lead the way," he said, gathering Ace carefully in his arms.
He followed the soldier through a network of trenches leading away from the sounds of battle. Eventually, they came to a ladder, which Jack climbed first before turning so the woman could lift Ace up to him. She was stirring now, and lifted a hand to her head slowly. She made a face. "Ow." Jack smiled. She'd probably be ok. He set her on her feet and slipped an arm around her shoulders. Seeing who it was, she almost pulled away, but in the end had no choice but to lean on him.
At the top of a nearby embankment was a long, low tan tent, to which the soldier directed Jack. "Go inside and ask for Fred," she told him, before heading off toward another tent. He nodded and walked with Ace to the tent's entrance. They ducked through the flap and found themselves in the middle of a makeshift hospital ward. Cots were lined up against the walls and nurses, or so Jack assumed they were, bustled around from patient to patient. Jack collared one gently. He motioned to Ace, who was now partially slumped against him. "I was told to ask for Fred," he said. "This one needs help."
The nurse nodded and said, "Wait here." She poked her head out of the far end of the tent and talked to someone. Jack couldn't make her words out. She then started tending to the nearest patient. Jack was about to try to catch her eye when someone came into the tent from outside.
She was tall, and thin, with shoulder-length ginger hair and clear grey eyes. She was fairly tan, and most definitely beautiful. Jack couldn't help himself; he grinned. The woman wasn't looking at him, though. She was staring at Ace, who was looking wearily at the ground, as though she was seeing a ghost. Her face turned stark white, and Jack thought she might collapse. She all but ran to his side. At the sound of her footsteps, Ace looked up to see the approaching woman. Her eyes widened, much as the other's had, and she pushed Jack away to stand on her own. Then, to his utter astonishment, she fell to her knees at the stranger's feet.
The Doctor didn't notice the loss of half of his crew for some minutes. He was focused entirely on running, heading single-mindedly for the buildings he could see in the distance. Martha was having trouble keeping up with him. She glanced over her shoulder to comment to Jack and received a shock when she didn't see him following. She put on a burst of speed to catch the Doctor, tugging on his jacket until he stopped and looked at her questioningly. She rested her hands on her knees, panting.
"Jack…Ace…not behind us…anymore," she gasped. Alarmed, the Doctor whirled around- and saw the truth behind Martha's words. The two of them were alone. He scanned the path they'd taken, hoping to see their two companions taking a break along the way. No luck- they were well and truly gone.
Martha started back along the path, but the Doctor caught her arm and shook his head. "We wouldn't be able to find them," he said. "They could be anywhere by now." Martha looked horrified. "But what if they're-" The Doctor cut her off. "They'll be fine. The best way for us to help them now is by ending this useless war." He looked longingly toward the buildings looming up from the horizon. They were much nearer now. He was torn. A large part of him wanted to go back and tear up every inch of the planet until he found Ace and Jack, and God help the soldiers if either of them was hurt, but the larger part knew this was futile. For better or worse, they'd both been caught up in the conflict. He had to go on now.
Martha, misunderstanding his look, laid into him. "You don't really want to go back, do you? You're just so convinced that finding the officers will just solve everything! You get so intent on your goal, ending the bloodshed, that you overlook all the blood that is shed in the process!" She couldn't believe that he would just leave their friends in who-knew-what bloody mess just so that he could get to the leaders faster.
He turned to her, the anguish in his face silencing her more effectively than any shouted words could have. "Don't you see?" he asked tiredly. "I wish I could go back for them. When I think of Ace, caught up in some battle…" he trailed off. That didn't bear thinking about. "This is the third time I've failed her. You, of all people, should understand how badly I want to go back for her. But we just don't have the time to find them. It will take less time to talk sense into the leaders. Jack will look after Ace. He cares about her; he won't let anything happen to her. Let's just go, ok? That way we can get back to them sooner." He hated this. He could see further than Martha could as a human. He could see that finding and protecting Jack and Ace would mean giving up the lives of countless more people who would die because he hadn't gone straight to the heart of things. It was his job to see further. That didn't make it a pleasant one.
Martha understood the wisdom in his plan; she just didn't want to admit it. Still, she nodded, and together they continued on to the doors of the plain stone-and-metal command centers. The soldier on guard at the entrance challenged them. The Doctor held up his psychic paper. "Second Lieutenant Smith and Corporal Jones, reporting with news of the battle." He paused for a moment, and then proved unable to resist adding, "Take us to your leader."
The strange woman didn't speak for a long moment, and Jack thought an unfamiliar person collapsing at her feet had something to do with that, but then she said "Ace?", and that theory went out the window. She reached down and, grabbing the tops of Ace's arms, pulled her up to stand in front of her. "Ace McShane? What- how-?" She seemed lost for words. Ace looked equally stunned, and tongue-tied. The two women stared at each other in silence until, without warning, the older woman threw her arms around Ace and held on. Ace returned the embrace, and they just stood there like that for several long moments. Jack, behind them, saw that Ace was crying silently, and somehow that shook him to the core. Eventually, Ace pulled back without releasing the other's hands.
"My Lady President!" she cried. "I can't believe it! When the soldier said to ask for Fred, I never would have guessed…but how did you survive?" She was truly and utterly stunned. When she met the other Time Lord in the prison, Ace had heard the news of the Lady President's decision not to flee to a planet of refuge. Instead, she chose to stay- and die- with her people. As a close friend of the President's- their mutual connection to the Doctor, as well as Ace's unique status among Time Lords, had led them to each other soon after Ace's arrival on Gallifrey- she had been hit especially hard by the news. She'd secretly hoped that at least the President would survive. She was sure that hope had been dashed, but it seemed she was wonderfully wrong. She took in her President's face with shining eyes.
"Please, Ace, I'm not the President anymore. You can't be the President of a nonexistent world. It's just Fred now, though I suppose you're going to insist on calling me Romana," said Romana, rolling her eyes. Her smile was almost as big as Ace's. "But to answer your question, the High Council decided it would be best if I survived the War, heaven knows why, so they shipped me off to this little planet in the hopes that the Daleks would leave it alone. I had no say in the matter."
She frowned, her expression troubled. Ever since the War, she'd been stricken by guilt. Perhaps, if she'd stayed, things would have been different. Perhaps she could have done something…Instead, she was carted off of her planet by her own people, and the War followed her here, as though some higher power was determined to punish her for running, however unwillingly. Even though she could never bring her people back, she made amends as best she could. She hadn't been able to save her own race, so she would do everything in her power to save this one. She applied all her skills as a healer on the battlefield now, to try to make up for all the times she didn't use them on her own planet.
Ace must have read something of her thoughts in her face, because she said quietly, "You feel bad, don't you? You think you should have done more, done something, to help them. You think maybe you could have saved someone, if you'd only tried harder…" Romana looked down. Ace hugged her again, comfortingly. "It's ok," she said. "You couldn't have done anything. No one could. No one could even end it, no one but the Doctor."
Romana, shaking off her mood at the mention of her old mentor, turned once more to her friend. "So now you know my story, but I still don't know yours. I heard you were missing, presumed dead, that you'd been captured?" She saw the shadow that crossed Ace's face, and knew she'd hit on the truth. She almost wished she hadn't, to see the pain in Ace's eyes. Ace nodded. "Yeah," she said, "the Daleks got me. I was locked up for a while, I don't know how long. Years, I guess. Anyway, the-" she broke off, with an anxious glance at Jack, who was patiently watching the reunion. She didn't want to hit Romana with the news of the Doctor's survival so soon after her own. She knew from training back on Gallifrey that too much new news, good or bad, after so long isolated with nothing, could send someone into a kind of shock. So she changed her sentence. "-a friend got me out. I've been traveling with him ever since."
Seeing her glance at Jack, Romana assumed he was the 'friend' of whom Ace spoke. She greeted him warmly. "It's wonderful to meet you," she said. "May I ask your name?" She was in full 'Presidential' mode now, stately and polite, and in response, Jack turned on the charm. Lifting her hand to his lips, he bowed deeply and said, "Captain Jack Harkness, at your service now and always, Milady." Surreptitiously, he tipped a wink to Ace, who was trying not to laugh at his theatrics. Romana seemed pleasantly surprised. Her gaze flicked from Jack to Ace and back. Jack cold see the wheels turning, and he knew Ace wouldn't like the conclusion the former President was going to draw.
Sure enough, Romana asked, "So, are you and Ace…together?" Immediately, Ace paled a bit. Not for the first time, Jack wondered what had happened to her, to make her so against the idea of being 'together' with someone. Not wanting to make Ace answer, he responded smoothly, "Alas, no. Ace is simply a wonderful traveling companion, and the best of friends." Well, that last was a bit of a stretch- Ace wouldn't let him close enough to become 'best of' anything- but as long as she didn't protest, the explanation would hold.
Deciding that Jack deserved at least to know whom he was talking to, Ace cut in. "Jack, this is the…apparently former Lady President of the Time Lords, Romanadvoratrelundar." She grinned. "The Doctor named her Romana. She prefers Fred." Jack raised an eyebrow questioningly, so she continued. "They used to travel together. He told her that her name was too long, so she could be either Romana or Fred. She chose Fred, so he called her Romana. I got it from him." She glanced at Romana to make sure this wasn't too much information. Romana simply nodded. "Well, I started calling her that when I was at the Academy, and it just…stuck. I mean, everyone used her full name to her face, of course, but behind her back she became Romana."
Memories came flooding back to her. She'd had many friends at the Academy, native Gallifreyans who were curious about the off-worlder and not into the whole 'shun the non-Gallifreyan' thing. As a group, they'd taken it upon themselves to make sure everyone knew how much the Lady President loved being called Romana. They'd gotten in trouble rather often for one prank or another. All the teachers blamed it on her, saying that the Doctor must have been a 'terrible influence' on such a 'primitive, impressionable mind'. She'd never minded, though, except for the 'primitive' part. At the time, she'd thought the Doctor would have been proud. Now, she knew he was- she'd told him a few weeks before. He thought it was great.
She missed her friends. They'd been gone for years now, but it didn't feel like it to her. She hadn't aged during her time in the Daleks' prison, and there had been no way to measure the passing of time within the cell. For her, it may as well have been just under a year since the War ended, instead of the many years she knew had passed. Inwardly, she shrugged. She was too happy at the moment to dwell on such things. Instead, she stood back and watched Jack flirt with Romana. For some reason, he didn't seem as into it as he normally was. She wondered if he'd found someone whom he liked enough to back off from everyone else. She hoped so- whether she could bring herself to trust him or not, he was a nice guy.
The Doctor and Martha followed the soldier closely through the narrow halls of the command center. The walls were a nondescript concrete-like material, unadorned with paper, wires, doors, anything. The soldier they were trailing obviously knew his way through the maze-like corridors; he didn't pause or slow as he led them along. After what seemed like an eternity, they reached a simple wooden door with a small brass plate on it that read "Commander Brindle". The soldier turned uneasily to the Doctor. "This is the place, Sir. The Commander's inside." He snapped a quick salute, which the Doctor returned gravely, then executed a quick about-face and marched off the way they'd come.
The Doctor winked at Martha. "Did you hear that?" he asked excitedly. "He called me 'Sir'!" Martha rolled her eyes at him but didn't say anything. Rearranging his expression into one of solemnity, the Doctor knocked once on the door before pushing it open and stepping inside. Instantly, he snapped to attention, motioning Martha to do the same. She copied his movements.
"Commander Brindle, Sir! News from the front!" Eyes front, he looked nervously at the tall, broad-shouldered man who was now standing behind the heavy wooden desk, his gun trained on the two of them. "You ain't my people," he growled. "You'd best start talkin', if'n ye don't want your brains splattered all over this office." He cocked the gun menacingly. Martha gulped. They were in trouble now.
I am SO SORRY!!!!! It's been FOREVER since I posted!!!! If any of you are still bothering to read this, I am ON MY KNEES begging for your forgiveness!!! My life has gotten crazy lately with school, fencing, girl scouts, two churches, three choirs, and two youth groups. I swear I haven't forgotten this story; I just have no time to write or post what I've written…however, I will try to make posts a little closer together from here on in.
-The(apologetic)BlindMage