Title: Three Stories From the Time War
Summary: "It was quiet on the final morning."
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rated: PG-13
Notes: Allusions to "Doomsday" and ... that whole New Who thing. A dash of Eight/Romana.




Three Stories From the Time War
by LizBee




By the end, all the universes were entangled and the timelines twisted beyond recognition, and the only solution was to destroy it all and hope some kind of order could be restored. You could call it Gallifrey's final gift to the universe, if you were in any position to think by that stage.

It was quiet on the final morning.

Romana found she was holding her breath.


*


It goes like this:

A planet faced annihilation and survived.

The Dalek invasion of the fourth planet in the Oparte system failed due to an unprecedented level of interference by the Time Lords.

In the twenty-first year of her presidency, Romanadvoratrelundar defied tradition and law to share Gallifreyan technology with the inhabitants of Oparte IV. She left Gallifrey to present her gift in person, and remained on Oparte IV long enough to see the Daleks repelled. On her return, she offered her resignation. The High Council rejected it, by a margin of three votes.

In the Sixteenth Winter of the Reign of the Boy-King Kallos, an alien woman arrived in the capital and told the Boy-King's advisors that their world would be destroyed by metal abominations. She carried with her the technology that would repel the invasion. The advisors objected that their ancestors had abandoned high technology generations ago, recognising that the misuse of such tools had almost destroyed them.

The Boy-King – now almost a man of nineteen, an age when boys liked to believe they knew their own minds – met with her in private and made her repeat her story. He demanded to see her vessel, a paradox given form. He listened to her story again.

Then he accepted her gift with thanks, from one ruler to another. And his planet survived.

In some places, primitive corners where civilisation was a distant concept, the alien woman was worshiped as a goddess. Kallos himself forbade this blasphemy, but when his wife bore a girl-child, the infant was named after the alien.


*


It went like this:

Arcadia fell in a morning. It was bright and summery on the north continent, the peace of the morning shattered by weapons and screams and death.

The Doctor was watching from a distance. Romana found him leaning against his TARDIS, not even bothering to conceal himself, although Dalek air patrols were already approaching.

“You can't stay here,” she said.

He turned to look at her, and she saw his face was streaked with tears.

“Come on,” she said, and when he didn't move, she took his hand and led him into his TARDIS. He watched as she transported it into her own and then took them both away.

“I'm not going back to Gallifrey,” he said, watching her. He looked shabby and thin, his hair cropped short and his velvet coat covered in grime. A stark contrast to the serene black perfection of her TARDIS.

She took them to an insignificant planet where the primitive inhabitants and limited natural resources could hold no interest for the Daleks. There was a beach, bathed in the light of two setting suns, and they sat on the sand without speaking. The Doctor took her hand and squeezed it. She put her head on his shoulder and allowed him to trace the fine lines on her palm and wrist.

Eventually he said, “It was a slaughter. Three hundred Daleks against an entire planet.”

“They penetrated the planetary shields in forty-five microspans. We had estimated it would take eighty.” The breeze was becoming cold, and Romana shivered. “That was Gallifreyan technology. It shouldn't have been so easy.”

He was echoing her own thoughts, but it was unpleasant to hear them stated aloud.

"Not long, now," she said.

He said nothing, and his hand tightened around her own.


*


It was like this, once:

When she was young, in her final years at university, Romana worked in the Hall of Archives. It was a good position, if you didn't mind archaic computer systems (Romana didn't) and enjoyed obscure bits of knowledge (Romana did). The Chief Archivist was an old woman, much concerned with her approaching twelfth regeneration, who left Romana alone for days at a stretch.

Romana used the time to read.

She found old legends and fragments of historical records that dated back to the earliest days of Gallifreyan history. But these were rare; little survived that predated Rassilon.

She spent an afternoon reading the few myths that survived from the pre-industrial era. The gods of time and chaos locked in eternal struggle. It was chaos that the early Gallifreyans feared above all things. Romana considered that very little had changed, except that they'd achieved the ability to hold it at bay.


*


Romana held her breath and waited.




end