The next logical step in Romana and the Doctor's relationship. I own nothing of Doctor Who.

" Will you marry me?"

The Doctor was lying in bed, his arms propped up and supporting his head, thinking about the depressing day he'd had, made worse by the Corsair. While he loved the thought of his old friend back, he understood his anger. The guilt over the destruction of Gallifrey hit him hard, but it was only the rebuilding of the Time lords that kept him going. They would never be as far reaching as they'd been in the past, but at least they would be there for the future. He was watching his beautiful Romana getting dressed for bed. Romana stopped combing her hair, looking at his reflection in the mirror. He looked melancholy.

" You're thinking about what the Corsair said, aren't you?" She asked. If there was one thing you learnt about the Doctor it was that he wore his hearts on his wrists and it was incredibly easy to get under his skin.

The Doctor sighed, realising he wasn't going to hide anything from this woman. He wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

" Yeah," He whispered, his voice a broken heartened whisper. " He's right though." He carried on. " I should've gotten my hands on a race back. Instead I just destroyed our planet."

Romana stopped brushing her hair and marched over to the Doctor, and grabbed his head. " You listen to me," she hissed. " I survived the destruction of our people, so did self righteous cowards like the Priest, and he didn't bother recovering a race bank. Hardly any one stopped to recover any of them. People like the Rani plan ahead. You were trying to stop a full scale universal war."

The Doctor shook her hands off, " No Romana, the Corsair had a point."

" He pointed out you'd been beating yourself since you stopped the Daleks. What would he know? The Corsair was one of the renegades that told me about what Rassilon was planning but not what he was doing. He must've had hundreds of opportunities to get his hands on a bank, but he didn't. Only the Rani was the one to plan ahead, the Corsair didn't." Romana pointed out.

The Doctor frowned, " Are you saying that the Corsair could've taken a race bank, that if he was so bothered about the destruction of Gallifrey he'd have done something about it?"

Romana didn't want to admit it, but she knew she had no choice. She walked round to her side of the bed and got under the covers, kissing the Doctor on the lips gently. " What could he have done? You of all people know how hopeless it was by then. The Corsair's many things, but a fighter isn't one of them."

" But-"

" No buts. The end of Gallifrey wasn't your fault. Besides," Romana added, " we aren't the only ones left. The Rani herself has created strains of different Time Lord races, and their thriving. It might take centuries but we'll be able to rebuild our society. We've got the building blocks we didn't have when it was just you."

The Doctor agreed with her there. When he'd been convinced he was the only Time Lord in the universe, he had only himself and the TARDIS, and the artifacts and the records of his people, not enough to rebuild a civilisation as old as the universe itself. When he'd found Romana, the Master and other Time Lords, the essence of his people had survived. The Master, the Rani, Susan, the Priest and others all had their own TARDISes meaning he and his ship were no longer unique. Romana's face, hardened by the thought of the Corsair, softened, " Doctor, there was nothing you could've done. The Corsair was usually on the frontline of the war, but the fact is even if you'd thought of getting a race bank you would never have been able to get your hands on one. Rassilon made sure of that." The thought of Rassilon made both of them frown. " Doctor, Rassilon was a hero, a symbol. Not a soldier. He didn't lead from the front, and he ignored everyone. The Time lords became lazy in the war, he just sat back and let people die. Me, I stayed on the front, and that didn't make Rassilon happy. He was a monster, he didn't care about anything but his plan. The Corsair couldn't have stopped him, so he's blaming you."

The Doctor didn't look convinced.

Romana sighed, " Doctor, no one, not even you could've stopped the Daleks in the long run. You fought them over countless centuries, but you'd never fought the whole species before. It wasn't your fault. I don't blame you."

It wasn't your fault, those words echoed through his mind even when Romana had gone to sleep.


A few hours later, Romana was asleep but the Doctor wasn't, even though he had Romana cuddled up to him he couldn't sleep. No matter what Romana and his granddaughter said, he had to crack a smile at the thought of Susan smacking the Corsair for his lack of compassion, no matter how undeserving he, the Doctor was, he simply couldn't get over what his old friend had said.

A part of him wanted to admit to himself that he couldn't have gotten to a race bank even if he'd wanted to. The race banks had been frowned upon by Rassilon and his yes men. Romana was right about Rassilon not leading from the frontline, when the waste of space had been resurrected after the disaster with the Master, people had thought ' oh the war will be ending soon,' how wrong they were. The war was prolonged by 12 years. 12 years of destruction on both sides, with the Time lords becoming more and more unstable, fulfilling their dangerous potential, the same potential they'd shown over the centuries, only instead of rising above it they just fell even lower than they'd ever done in the past. The Doctor closed his eyes in agony as he went over the memories of that last day. Everything had been so chaotic, people had been dying and trying to escape from the Dalek attack on Gallifrey, he'd had dozens of times in his past over his ten incarnations where life had thrown him into the most terrifying events, but the Time War beat them all because it involved his entire species. His Eighth incarnation, oh how idealistic he'd been then, but now, two lives past he'd changed in a universe more unfriendly, but with there being Time Lords survivors, the future wasn't as bleak as it had been before. There had been times when the Doctor had travelled before he met Romana and the Master when he'd had nightmares and overwhelming depressions, no not depressions, that was the wrong word to describe it, but there was no other adjective to describe the urge he'd had to throw himself into a supernova or blow up the TARDIS. The nightmares he'd had had been more horrific, dreams of Susan and Romana, the two most precious Time Ladies he'd known - his ex wife didn't count, she'd been a dragon and he'd have cut off his right arm just to get away from the woman the first time around - and their eyes were dark, their skin pasty like as they called him a murderer, that he'd killed them, only for him to wake up and sob himself to death. The discovery he hadn't killed either of them had been a balm to his soul. Romana was right, he'd met the Daleks over dozens of separate encounters, but he'd never encountered the whole species. The Daleks had attacked Gallifrey in one massive wave, ten million ships, millions of Daleks...against a bunch of ' ancient, dusty senators,' as Brother Lassar, the Krillitane who called himself Mr Finch had so aptly described his race, and the sad fact was he was right. The Time lords had been ancient, dusty, arrogant, but Finch hadn't realised how potentially vicious and cold blooded the Time Lords had been. The Krillitanes were a vicious warlike species, but even they'd never tried to destroy the universe before, that business with the Skasis paradigm didn't count unless you thought about the Krillitanes rewriting the cosmos to be exactly like that of the Krillitanes. It depended on your point of view, but the Daleks had forced Rassilon - at least that was how the Doctor liked to think about it, he couldn't really accept one of the greatest Time Lords in history would automatically give up after fighting monstrosities like the Great Vampires, although the Doctor had a nasty and sneaking suspicion Rassilon had stolen the credit from other Time Lords, like he'd done with Omega.

The thought of Omega made the Doctor go cold. Had Rassilon sabotaged Omega's launch and detonation of the Star? After seeing the levels of megalomania in Rassilon, the Doctor wouldn't put it past him.

Was the Corsair right though? Was he right that instead of simply stowing a dozen race banks onboard his TARDIS he would've made some effort in rebuilding his own people without moping around the universe? When the Doctor had heard the Corsair had spoken to Jack, he couldn't believe it. The last time Jack and the Doctor had met hadn't been very pleasant, but the Doctor couldn't and would not believe the former Time agent had been that petty. Jack was one of his best friends, and you could always depend on Jack to help you with any kind of problem, and Jack's work at Torchwood was exceptional, much more better than the monstrosity run by that mad bitch Yvonne Hartman. At least Jack knew better than to meddle with the dimensional barriers.

The Doctor put Jack out of his mind, and brought up everything about the Corsair to the front of his mind. The Corsair was a buccaneer, and not a fighter, he played pranks. That story of the Dalek scouting group Clarkor Nine where the Daleks found their suction pads stuck into a Skarosian parody sprang to mind, stand up fighting wasn't his style. He preferred hit and run attacks with a plan behind them.

The Doctor closed his eyes, pushing the thoughts of the Corsair into the back of his mind, and brought up images of Romana to help him sleep.


" You want to travel again, don't you?" Romana asked over a breakfast of cereal and fruits. The Doctor's spoon circled around in his bowl, he knew he should be more positive about his body language, but he knew better than to hide things from this woman. She knew him better than he knew himself.

The Doctor didn't even deny it, " Yes. I want us both to go. Travel around before coming back."

" You know we can't do that. I've got to help the others." Romana protested, feeble as she sounded. She'd often wanted to talk to the Doctor into leaving New Gallifrey. She'd been holding back for stupid reasons.

The Doctor saw right through her, " You wanna leave to, don't you?"

" I've given it thought." Romana whispered. The Doctor grinned.

" When do you wanna leave?" He asked.

" Whenever your ready." She replied and tucked into her food.

The Doctor smiled as he watched her eat, then he got up and walked around to her part of the table. Romana looked up bewildered. " What is it? What's wrong?"

The Doctor didn't answer verbally, instead he answered by pulling from his pocket a very old necklace with a jewel on it. Romana's breath caught in her throat when she saw what it was. It was a betrothal necklace, the Time Lord equivalent of a Human engagement ring. Romana looked at it closely, and her time sense told her it was over 17,000 years old.

The Doctor was getting worried about her silence and started babbling, " I understand if you don't want to. I just thought umf," He was saying before he was cut off by Romana's lips pressing on his. When they both came up for air, she asked with her eyes twinkling full blast, " Does that answer your question? Of course I'll marry you, you dolt." She said, a grin matching his on her face.

A/N The wedding in the next chapter. I wanted it in one big chapter. Please review.