Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [104]
‘You knew Omega before you knew me,’ the Doctor said.
‘A long time before. A very long time ago.’
‘You were his wife,’ the Doctor murmured.
‘I am two million years old. Do you know what that means?’
One corner of his mouth lifted, the start of a smile. ‘I should wish you happy birthday?’
She stopped, facing him, angry. ‘It means that I was born knowing the future, and that I was a young woman at the time of the Curse. It means that I saw the starbreakers leave for Qqaba, and the Time Lords return. I remember the Darkness.
I’ve lived in palaces and on the streets. I’ve lived amongst two hundred generations of Time Lords. I’ve seen so many of my friends and lovers grow old and die around me. I’ve seen mountain ranges rise and fall. I’ve lived long enough to see even Gallifrey change. If I hadn’t changed in that time, then I wouldn’t have lived my life, I’d have wasted it.’
‘Oceans of water under the bridge,’ the Doctor said thoughtfully. ‘My theory of evolution is that it’s not what you are, it’s what you do with it.’
‘I did what I could,’ she replied.
They had stopped by a small pool.
‘We have some privacy out here,’ she said quietly.
‘Shall we sit down?’ the Doctor offered, taking off his jacket and laying it down on the grass, worried for her immaculate white gown. She knelt, then sat there, stretching out one leg, tucking the other underneath it. She batted herself with her fan. The Doctor knelt behind her, so that she had her back to him, and that his chest almost touched her shoulderblades. He steadied himself, not quite touching her leg. He looked over her and down into the pool. The water was so clear you could see right to the bottom.
‘There should be fish in there,’ the Doctor observed.
And there were a dozen rainbow streaks in the water. The Doctor looked up, delighted. She looked back over her shoulder at him and he grinned back.
He looked at her face, the first time he’d had a proper chance to do so. It was almost too beautiful: oval, framed with golden-blonde hair. She had deep red lips, a perfectly proportioned nose, blue eyes.
She turned back to the water, watching the fish darting from one side of the pool to the other, leaving the Doctor to look at her broad shoulders and thin neck. Her skin was so pale. He reached out, touched an almost alabaster left cheek with his left hand.
‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he told her.
She stroked his wrist. His hand was drawing fingertip circles on the side of her head. She kissed the base of his thumb. She lifted her right arm, bent it back so that her hand could reach the back of his head. She drew a line up his neck to his hair, toyed with his short hair. All the time they were drawing closer together.
‘I didn’t think –’ he began.
Her thoughts. A single point of contact at her temple and they were sharing thoughts and memories. The Doctor closed his eyes. This was her, there was no possible cause to doubt that now. She had lived so much longer than him, lived at his Family home for countless generations. She had tutored his grandfather and his father. She had been there at his birth. She had nursed him, taught him, danced with him, loved him, borne his children.
She had let go of his hand. ‘You were always there.’
‘I knew that I’d find you.’
The Doctor remembered the night that he had been too late, saw it as she had. The Watch marching through the courtyard of their home, rounding up the children and the House guests. The Capitol was burning on the horizon, and even from here it was almost possible to hear the mobs in the Panopticon. Her eyes were full of tears as the Watch searched the bedchambers for her daughter-in‐law, read out the charge that the family had been consorting with aliens.
And she couldn’t say anything as they dragged her away, or they might find out her secret, they’d know that not all the Womb-Born had died, that some had merely been hiding amongst the general population for all these hundreds of centuries.
She shifted herself around until they were knelt facing each other.
Her daisy-chain