Some Bank Holiday Fic!

[jjpor]

Fics x2: Predictability and Four Hearts

Hey, it's Bank Holiday Monday here in the UK, so I'm taking advantage of being off work and at a loose end to write some fic. It's this or fight my way through the crowds at B&Q, so you can see why I picked this option. These are my responses to the other requests in the drabble meme that I posted the other day. Something Doctor/Romana for akashasheiress (although some Ten!angst seems to have crept in there; sorry!) and something with Richard E Grant's Doctor from Scream of the Shalka for clocketpatch. Sorry for the delay, and for the fact that they aren't really drabbles, I've been writing as if I'm getting paid by the word, again! Obviously, I don't own Doctor Who or anything connected to it; if I did, I'd be writing this from my yacht in St Tropez while lighting a cigar with a burning wad of tenners (not really kids; it's a filthy habit...).
 

Four Hearts

 

Dusty albums, cobwebbed journals; covers of cracked and faded leather, stiff yellow pages. He comes here sometimes, on the long sojourns between adventures, to the TARDIS library with its crowded shelves; he seems to be doing so more often, now that he is alone again. Were he more given to self-examination, he thinks, he might be worried about himself. Hang on; wasn’t that self-examination right there?

 

Photographs faded to gentle shades of sepia; two faces, one woman; dark and beautiful, in elaborate finery; blonde and quirky in thrift shop chic. Whatever face she wears, it is still her, still Romana.

 

“I never told you I loved you,” he whispers, to the air.

 

“You didn’t have to. We both knew.” He has come to believe that the answering murmur is in his head; the alternative is even more disturbing.

 

“Only three incarnations left,” he replies. “Then we can be together again.”

 

“Don’t talk such nonsense, Doctor,” she retorts, in just that tone she used to use; he can almost feel her at his elbow, almost smell her; if he turned now, could he touch her? “The universe needs you,” she tells him. “That’s why you had to go on without me.”

 

“It’s so hard,” he sighs. “It’s so hard, being alone.”

 

“You’re never alone,” she says, and he imagines her lips brushing his cheek. Is this what going mad feels like?

 

He turns to her, but she is gone; a whisper between the shelves, a swirl of dust in the lamplight.

* * * 

Predictability

 

“Knight to king’s bishop four,” said the man with the aggressive sideburns as he drained his wineglass. The man in black considered the board:

 

“That’s checkmate for me in four moves,” he sneered. “You’re nothing if not predictable, my dear Doctor. Remember that time on Draconia?”

 

“No,” the other replied, rather rudely. “And neither do you, really; you’re only a robot.”

 

“Don’t you think it’s rather hurtful to keep pointing that out, old fellow?”

 

“Shut up,” the Doctor grumbled, examining the chess pieces. “I’ll point out whatever I want; and we both know what happened the last time I tried not to be predictable.”

 

“Ah, yes.” The man in black sneered again, but it was a sympathetic sneer. “You’ve been thinking about her again?”

 

“When do I think about anything else?” The Doctor shouted at the ceiling: “Won’t you give me another bloody mission?”

 

“You always complain when you get another mission,” his companion pointed out.

 

“At least they stop me from thinking.”

 

“Have some more wine, old chap,” the man in black suggested. “You’re a bore when you’re sober.” The other picked up the half-empty bottle:

 

“You haven’t poisoned it again, have you?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then I believe I shall.”