Work Text:
The Axis is colder even than the bodies of the Time Lords that she’s claimed her own, colder than Romana’s rage or Braxiatel’s lies. Colder, even, than Narvin’s hardest and most cutting of remarks—and some of those, she recalls, were very cold indeed. Comparable at least to the once-Ice Queen of Gallifrey’s Academy, and Braxiatel’s give-nothing-away airs.
Leela is amazed she hasn’t gotten older, sooner, with how much warmth she sunk into that cold world. She wonders, at the start, how much more she will have to sink into this nowhere place before they can settle in a place with sun, again. How many days will she go, without the steady turn of the planet beneath her feet? How many breaths she will have to take, how long she will have to stay, for the air to stop tasting so stale, for a scent besides the odd static of cosmic dust to fill her nose?
Romana tells her that there is little to see here, in the Axis, and Leela trusts. It does not comfort her, though, to know that they reside in an empty crook of nowhere at all, and that there is nearly as little to see as there is ability for her eyes to make it out.
She stares out into darkness—she presumes—seeing darkness, when she makes out the first shuffle of footsteps.
Leela tilts her head towards the sound. “Narvin?”
“—gods and Pytha,” she hears him snap. “Leela. I had no idea you were—well. Be on my way, shall I.”
“You are changed,” Leela says.
It stops him in his tracks, it seems. At least, there is no longer the sound of his robes, his boots, as he makes to flee. Leela strains for a sound, but if he is breathing, he is making a point to do so quietly.
“Sorry?”
She does not flinch, but she hears the cold in his voice. She frowns ferociously (and wonders, again, how much heat she must pour into this sink of a place). “You are changed,” she repeats, “since seeing a Gallifrey so unlike your own. You were a coward when we met, but were learning to be brave—”
“Leela,” he says, again, and this time, she blinks: there are daggers in the ice. He is sharp, and cold, and... cracking? “Leela,” he says, “I will not sit here while you defame my character. Whatever it’s worth, I’ve done my damnedest.”
She lifts her chin, so that he might see her face where she sits better.
“You flee from us,” she murmurs instead. “At every turn, you run, staying only as long as you must before you are gone again. What have you to fear from us, Narvin? We are all that is left. We have only each other. So why do you run?”
Silence goes between them.
“I’m not running, Leela.”
“No?” She does not wait for an answer, but purposefully lifts herself from the seat she’s made for herself, soft things laid upon the floor, and leaves an empty spot at her left. “Then stay, Narvin. Stay, and remain.”
“What are—this is—I don’t have to entertain this—this fanciful notion of yours.”
“No,” she agrees, “you do not. You may run, if you like. Or,” she emphasizes again, “you may stay.”
The silence, again, permeates the room, thicker than the dust and stiller than the staleness. But at last, she hears a sigh, and the familiar rhythm of booted steps. The blankets tug around him as he lowers himself to sitting—he did come back harried, and he hasn’t recovered wholly from whatever tortures they subjected him to—and it is clumsy, but he manages. The sound that he makes is grudging, and huffing, and it would be funny, perhaps, if it were another time.
It’s nearly funny, now.
“Happy?” he asks.
It is harsh and accusing, but softer than he was, to start. For all the place drains her, the warmth does not always go to waste.
Leela sighs.
“Not yet,” she says, half a tease, and half total truth. “But we are looking for a way. Maybe there is a way, yet, to be happy again, and safe within that happiness. Perhaps. I hope.”
He does not say anything in reply. But she feels the shift in the rugs and blankets around her legs. Narvin relaxes, in time, and he does not flee.
Leela breathes in another stale breath, and does not yet go cold.