Night talk.

The TARDIS was travelling through the time vortex, thankfully now under the Doctor's control. Romana had been scathing at the way the TARDIS now travelled, and had hit what she called the blue stabilisers.

The Doctor had sulked when she told him they were meant to be on at all times. He later developed another reason to sulk, when Romana slapped his hand and told him to never touch the buttons again, or else.

Not wanting to get on the wrong side of Romana's temper, the Doctor relented. Martha and Jack had almost laughed themselves to death at the expression on his face, until Romana turned on them.

Romana hadn't been happy that her old room was gone, but when told she accepted it, understanding perfectly, but the Doctor could see her irritation.

The Doctor was in the kitchen, nursing a massive mug of hot tea with biscuits on the side, going over the recent events in his mind.

Romana was alive, she was actually alive, she was here, she hadn't died with the others. Better than that, she was back in the TARDIS, with him, where she truly belonged.

The possessiveness his mind thought with in terms of Romana astounded the Doctor. Romana was everything that the most Time ladies aspired to be, she was incredibly gifted, highly trained, unflappable, dedicated, professional, the most beautiful specimen of Time lord evolution, she was…wait what ?

The most beautiful specimen of Time lord evolution…..

That's what he thought, wasn't it ?

It was.

The Doctor placed his face in his hands and sighed, he'd always harboured a crush on Romana, the Time lady who'd stolen his hearts.

She was perfect, the way she could control him was unlike anything, even when he'd been married all those centuries before. That one could barely order him to move a millimetre, Romana, on the other hand, one word from her and he'd find himself setting the controls for a planet.

That was the extent of the power she held over him.

The Doctor was still going over his thoughts when Romana walked in, wearing a nightdress and a dressing gown thrown over. The dressing gown didn't hide the shape of Romana's body, the Doctor noted, starting to get dirty thoughts…

Romana's voice broke through his thoughts, " Mind if I join you ?"

The Doctor shook his head, no.

Romana made herself some tea and could feel her fellow Time lord's eyes on her. As she sat down, she noted that he didn't blink, lest she vanished.

" I noticed that, you've regenerated twice since….what happened ?" Romana asked curiously, holding back a wince. She knew regeneration was a poor choice to start a conversation but she was desperate for a conversation of some kind that she automatically latched on to the first thing that came to mind.

The Doctor wasn't surprised by Romana's observation, Time lords had a sort of temporal sense that literally rewound the appearance of another incarnation. She'd known he was in his 10th life from the moment they'd laid eyes on them.

He sighed, " The emperor survived," he didn't clarify because Romana, being the former president would know instantly who he was talking about. Indeed, she did as her eyes widened with horror and rage that such a monster had lived, " He fell through time, crippled, but unfortunately alive. He was stranded in the year 200,100, using Humans to create a new Dalek army."

He took a swig of his tea and paused, gathering his thoughts. After a moment the Time lord carried on.

" My companion at the time, Rose Tyler, was sent home. She came back, ripping the console open and looked into the time vortex itself."

Romana looked aghast at that. " What ?" She hissed.

"Rose did more than that, she exposed the Daleks to it, used the vortex to bring Jack back, " I bring life," she said. Dunno whether or not she cared about the consequences, Jack never asked to be immortal, never asked to keep dying and constantly coming back. Bet she didn't, anyway, I took the power out of her. As you know, the vortex would leave a bit of itself behind and would need a regeneration to burn it all up."

The Doctor stared unblinkingly at Romana, the dim light shadowing his eyes. " My ninth incarnation, gone, because of a Human girl who messed with things she didn't understand. Most Time lords might let her die as a sick form of punishment, but I couldn't."

Romana looked at him sympathetically, " That regeneration must've been nasty."

" It was, normally I can recover in say, a few hours," the Doctor agreed, " I was knocked out for longer. A day, actually. On top of that the Sycorax invaded, on Christmas."

Romana regarded him thoughtfully before asking her next question.

" Tell me about Rose Tyler, considering the way you're referring to her you aren't fond of her."

The Doctor sighed and rubbed his eyes, " She was the first person I met after the war, I'd just regenerated. My brain was still numb with the silence of our people. She just would not get lost and leave well enough alone."

The Doctor took another swig, " At first I thought she was good, but after our first trip," he shook his head, " Rose asked me about where I was from, it didn't occur to her that it was a painful subject."

Romana winced. She knew from experience that when the Doctor's hearts were closed off and someone poking around would find a different side of the Time lord. Normally, the Doctor was as gentle as a kitten, get him angry and you had a force that could shatter space time and burn worlds.

" I told her the basics, how I thought I was the last, I didn't tell her about Rassilon and what he was about to do. Rose wouldn't understand, she wasn't capable of learning temporal mechanics, even when she saw the effects with her own eyes."

Romana frowned, " What do you mean ?"

The Doctor winced this time, he knew she wouldn't like this. Romana took the laws of time very seriously, but then again so did he.

Back home, at the academy, people ostracised him for not being a proper Time lord, but when he left he found those same time lords trying to change the timelines.

" I took her back to the point where her father died." The Doctor said slowly, trying to stop his friend from going berserk.

" I did it twice, the second time she pushed him out of the way, in full view of our past selves."

The Doctor waited.

" What ?" Romana said slowly, quietly.

" She was moping about it for a while, if I didn't take her then I'd have all sorts of things moaned at me. If I'd have know what was about to happen I wouldn't have taken her. Besides, I was curious, about Rose's childhood. I wanted to catch a glimpse of a living being, not some photograph."

The Doctor sighed, " You can guess what happened, can't you ?"

" Yes I can. Reapers."

" After it was over, after her dad sacrificed himself, I made sure or tried to that Rose wouldn't play stupid games like that again. Luckily, she didn't play games with time. She was so obsessed with me at the time that she more or less did anything I told her to do."

The Doctor took a swig from his now cold tea and went to get some more.

He talked as he did, " I thought she'd finished with her moronic stunts, but the saving of her dead parent is different from ripping my TARDIS apart. She brought in a genius, or who thought he was a genius, he tried changing history as well. You'd have thought she would notice what I did to him, leaving him home with a chip in his brain. On top of that, she's made Jack into something he doesn't wanna be. I've met hundreds of people who've wanted immortality; Borusa, the Master, Queen Xanxia of Zanak - you remember her ? Monarch, even though he had some mad notion that he'd become god, but anyway, immortality isn't what its cracked up to be."

The Doctor looked seriously at Romana, " I'll get back to you about that in a bit. Right now I need to tell you what state the universe is in now the war is over and the Time lords are gone."

He folded his hands together and rested his chin on them, looking over at Romana with an emotion or feeling the Time lady couldn't identify. If she hazard a guess, she'd say that he was hiding what he was thinking.

" The destruction of Gallifrey, the Eye of Harmony included, plus the maintenance of the vortex, has suffered. The shockwave swept through the vortex, making travel to Gallifrey virtually impossible. Oh, you can still see the sight of rocks and dust where our planet used to be, but we can't travel in time. The vortex is literally shattered around the solar system the nearby parsecs, and I do mean shattered. Its like thin ice which is cracked in numerous places, one misstep and you fall into cold water."

" Travel in the vortex is now hazardous like I told you earlier," Romana nodded, understanding where he was going with this.

" There are times the TARDIS can use its normal vortex drive, but I've had to modify it and the interstitial antennae to find out where and when the vortex is damaged. It's more volatile that ever, its like the first Time scaphe travels. The vortex almost tore the ship to shreds before the technique to control and calm the vortex was invented."

Romana assimilated the information, seeing the sense. The Vortex was like a sea, but on the sea the waves during a storm would batter a ship and probably sink it.

It was under that sea that everything was calm, when the Time lords were around they controlled the vortex, limiting its damage whilst letting it continue naturally.

The Time lords had known that the vortex was a maelstrom and no matter what they did they couldn't play around with it and stop it naturally.

The Doctor watched and waited to carry on, " The eye of harmony is gone, and with it the web of time itself. Now I don't think I need to remind you that the web helped us to maintain the normal flow of time, giving us the power to control time with the help of the eye."

Romana was listening with mounting horror, the web of time was a meta structure created by Rassilon and the other, anchored in place by the eye of harmony and literally giving the Time lords the power necessary to control creation. If that was gone…..

The Doctor had watched the horror form on his friends' face and confirmed them, " Yeah, time is no longer fixed and is more in flux, events that should take place at one time takes place about 3 or even a hundred years later or in the past, added to that, oh you're gonna love this," he added sarcastically, " There are more time travellers in the universe now than there ever were when our people were around. Some of 'em are like the Time agents, careless, stupid, uncaring and immoral about what they do. Ever since the war ended, I've been cleaning up the various messes and putting their time machines out of commission, stranding them in the times they tried to change."

The Doctor paused for a moment and stared at Romana silently for a moment.

Romana was rerunning her conversation with the Doctor through her mind and came up with something.

" What did you mean about immortality ?"

The Doctor winced.

Romana could see this was not going to be good.

" When I stole the Moment from the Tower of Rassilon, I had to wait 4 hours for a force field to drop and let me gain access to it. It was in a room with a library full of scrolls of knowledge Rassilon had left behind, stupid place to leave them, but anyway," the Doctor got back on course on the conversation.

" Whilst I was waiting, I needed something constructive to do, so I read a few and kept a few. All of them in fact. I found his earlier research, if the war wasn't going on it would've been the archaeological find of an aeon. I found something disturbing."

Romana asked impatiently, " What ?"

" You and I, being the last of the Time lords, are virtually immortal, and I don't mean just the 12 regenerations Time lords are limited to." The Doctor decided to get to the point and get at the crux of the matter quickly.

Romana sat there, eyes wide and mouth open.

The Doctor gave her a grim smile, " You might wanna close your mouth, there may be flies."

Romana shut her mouth, " How…how can we be immortal ?"

" Do you remember your time at the academy, when you had your bio data altered ?"

At her nod the Doctor continued, " They were giving you the foothold necessary to become a Time lady, the Rassilon imprimature. The symbiotic nuclei that enables us, not only the knowledge and ability to travel in time and control and understand a TARDIS, but also regenerate."

" The scroll I mentioned contained information that Rassilon had managed to make the nuclei allow the Time lord regeneration, allowing for a longer lifespan. But there was a problem, from Rassilon's point of view."

" What was that ?" Romana asked curiously, she had no love for Rassilon, especially after what he was planning to do.

" Politics," the Doctor said simply. " Rassilon was afraid that multiple regenerations would give his political enemies leg room and give them a chance, hundreds of chances, to overthrow him."

Romana looked disgusted, " Everything's politics with him, isn't it ?"

" Yeah, the eye of harmony was set up to act as a block. Rassilon chose 12 -12 regenerations, 13 lives. As soon as the bio data was altered, the eye would add the block automatically."

Romana's curiosity was fully peaked at this point, " So, the eye acted as a form of barrier ?"

" Yes," The Doctor's answer was simple.

" Then, Traken, Borusa, the game of Rassilon…it was all for nothing." Romana whispered, thinking of the lives lost because of Rassilon and his greed.

The Doctor was just as distraught as she was. Maybe more so, Romana had only heard of those events, he'd actually witnessed them. He'd watched as the Master, decayed and burnt out, try to destroy Gallifrey, later on stealing the body of an intelligent man that was the father of one of his companions. The Doctor still regretted not being able to help Nyssa's father, Tremas had deserved better. The Master had later stolen and killed a paramedic, then tried to steal the Doctor's remaining regenerations.

Borusa, probably the greatest of all Time lord presidents, had gone mad with power and wanted to rule Gallifrey forever, so he'd time knapped all of the Doctor's previous lives and even some of his enemies. The aftermath had shown Borusa being turned into a statue, forced to live aware, but unable to move or speak.

Romana finally had to ask, " Are you sure ?"

" Yes," the Doctor said as patiently as possible, " I took some of my cells and regenerated them. My cell structure is in it's tenth configuration, so I regenerated it at least 4 times. Romana, they were stable. I did it again, another 4 times, again, perfect stability. Another 4 times, then another 4 after that."

The Doctor's voice was grim, " We're virtually immortal and the best and only way I can think of inducing death is to remove the Imprimature from our bodies, the scrolls detail how and I tested it. One day, in the future, when the pair of us feel like it…"

Romana nodded, resigned to her fate.

Immortality wasn't a subject Time lords liked because whilst they tolerated long lived species they still believed that everything had its time and everything ended.

One day, even the Time lords would have to accept that.