Disclaimer: The Director is beginning to wish I'd never got hold of these characters...but sadly, I still don't own them. (Whee - self-referential in-jokes FTW! ;P )
Many thanks to everyone who reviewed that first chapter - Brownbug, Nitroglycerin, MayFairy, Son of Whitebeard and Theta'sWorstNightmare.
Bit of a short update, sorry - been kind of busy - just didn't want this fic to start gathering dust. Hope you like it, anyway. :) Next one'll be longer, promise!
She hit the ground hard, stumbling and only just managing to regain her balance by throwing out one arm and catching herself against a wall. Her head was spinning, and it took her longer than it should have done to realize why she still felt so disorientated even after the dizziness had passed: her temporal senses were entirely deadened to the outside world. Of course – the Matrix existed outside relative time – the equivalent, for a Time Lord, of stepping into a soundproof room in the middle of a busy city and slamming the door.
Raising her head and brushing her hair back from her face, she looked around, taking in her surroundings – not that there was much to see, she quickly decided. She appeared to have found herself in – or rather, the mental world of the Matrix had been formed into – a straight, narrow alleyway, stretching on further than she could make out in both directions. Beneath her feet, worn, grey cobblestones formed a rough path, and as she moved, the hem of her robe stirred up a fine layer of dust which settled again in the still air. The walls on either side, towering high overhead to where she could make out a strip of grey sky, were equally drab and grey. Built of uniform concrete bricks that felt strangely cold to the touch, they were almost featureless apart from scattered windows at irregular intervals and varying heights – all boarded up securely from within, she could already tell.
"What a dreary place," she said aloud, as much to break the heavy silence as because she thought anyone might be listening. In her mind's eye, she could still see him – the man she had once called a friend – not in any regeneration she had met before, but him without a doubt. The Doctor. She shivered at the memory – that look of raw, unadulterated hatred, twisting his face into something frightening… Something had happened to the Doctor to make him apparently despise her so; the blow still ached, like a bruise to her hearts, but she resolved that she would find out what and why.
Romana was clever, she knew that. Intellectually, she had often been on a par with the Doctor during her travels with him, and the years between had granted her experience and wisdom beyond her age. As such, if their confrontation had to be in the Matrix, she saw no reason why it should be on his terms alone. They would meet on mutual ground, as the equals they were.
"I deny this reality." Closing her eyes and lifting her voice, she called out, hearing her words echo slightly down the alleyway and then be swallowed by the silence. A dreamscape – that was all it was – a projection, the semblance of scenery forged by the Doctor's own mental energy from the electrical impulses that comprised the Matrix. "I deny this reality. I deny this-"
"Don't be absurd, girl."
Her hearts nearly skipped a beat at the voice that spoke from over her shoulder, and she mentally chided herself even as she spun around – she should have expected something to happen, after all. On the wall behind her were spread a series of flyers, haphazardly slapped onto the wall at careless angles, some overlapping at the corners, some with a corner hanging loose as if they had been posted there in a great hurry. Each showed a face – different faces, but the same man, the Doctor one and all – full-colour photographs whose eyes swivelled to meet Romana's the instant her gaze fell on them. "WANTED," the flyers read above each face – bold, black ink on a sepia-stained background in the style of the Old West. "CRIMES INNUMERABLE."
"You'll only make a fool of yourself." The speaker would have appeared to human eyes to be the oldest of the faces, but Romana could tell that he was, in fact, the youngest, even if he was frowning at her with the disdain of an ancient Academy professor addressing a Time Tot in their first century. "You can't possibly hope to fight the Valeyard."
"Valeyard?" Romana echoed. "A lawyer – a prosecutor?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes." Another of the faces on the flyers answered her in a reedy voice laced with a trace of a Scottish accent. "A doctor of law, you might even say."
"But he's…you're the Doctor." She shook her head. "I know you."
"Well…I'm afraid, Romana, that I may not be quite the hero you think I am," said another face – an early regeneration again with stern eyes fixed on her from beneath the fringe of a pudding-bowl haircut. "Perhaps I never was. Anyway, it doesn't matter now – I'm not the Doctor any more."
"Then what have you become, 'Valeyard'?" she addressed them in a cold voice.
"The Time Lord Victorious," yet another face replied, a dangerous glint entering his dark eyes. "I lived too long, saw too much…"
"Romana!" a familiar voice called. Little higher than her knees, a flyer was hanging loose by one edge off the wall, but she could make out half a face – the face of her Doctor, the one she had travelled with – and one blue eye staring pleadingly at her. "Romana, you have to get out of here." Immediately, the other Doctors raised their voices as if to drown him out, shouting angrily down at him.
"You listen to me now!" "I don't need you – I know who I am!" "Go away!"
Without warning, a gust of wind came barrelling down the alleyway as if from nowhere. It tugged at Romana's hair and robes, pulling her Doctor's flyer almost free and leaving it clinging by a single corner.
"Run while you still can, Romana!" he called desperately over the furious voices, before his flyer was torn off and fluttered down the alleyway. The gale blew harder, ripping other flyers free from the wall to pursue the first, swirling like autumn leaves and still shouting over the howling of the wind. When it died down and Romana turned back to the wall, only the Doctor with the dark eyes remained, watching with a satisfied smile.
"Oh, I am good…"