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“What an incredible idea. Romana, look at this, they combined pretzels and cheese into a single bite-sized snack.”
“You said you were just getting more Jelly Babies,” Romana sighed, closing the door of the large refrigerator unit at the back of the store and turning to face the older man.
The Doctor was holding up a white and green bag with a large picture of a block of cheese on it, and the grin on his face was so over the top she was frankly relieved there didn’t seem to be anyone else around.
“They don’t seem to have any here. There’s something called Jelly Beans, but they don’t sound very fun.”
Romana sighed, turning back to the large display of soft drinks. “Sure, fine. We need to get going. K9 said that rogue android is two days away from reaching… Philadelphia?”
“Pittsburgh,” the Doctor said, picking up another bag of the snack, and frowning. “No, maybe it was Philadelphia... K9 knows which it is.”
“But you’re the one who told him which one it was.”
“Yes… I did…” the Doctor said, a distant quality to his voice as he turned the bag over in his hand. “They have a pizza flavor too! Romana!”
“Doctor, please just make up your mind!” Romana snapped. “We need to get going.”
“Oh come on, Romana,” he said, holding the bag of pizza-flavored snacks up in front of his face, hiding what was clearly that same, cartoonish grin. “What’s the point of traveling if you don’t take in all the sights?”
By the time they’d gotten to the register, the Doctor had accumulated three bags of Combos, while Romana had opted to just grab a couple of bottles of water. She didn’t know what a Pepsi was, but right now didn’t feel like the best opportunity to gamble with the little spending money they did have; loose change left behind in the pockets of past travelers in the Tardis.
Said machine was also currently stranded in a field somewhere outside of either Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. For now they were stuck with this… thing.
“Isn’t this fun, Romana?” The Doctor grinned, not bothering to open the car door as he plopped down into the backseat of the beat-up convertible. “We’re on the open road, wind in our hair and music playing. And it’s not raining this time either!”
“If you like it so much, why don’t you drive?” Romana said, pointedly opening the passenger seat of the car and sitting down, whipping her head back in an overtly dramatic fashion to glare at him. “K9 could be spending this time tracking down the Tardis’s exact coordinates.”
“I have sufficient resources, mistress,” K9 said, before twirling his antenna and making a whirring noise. A moment later, the car came to life, and began pulling away from the petrol pump.
“No issues refueling?” the Doctor asked, glancing up from underneath his hat. Romana almost wanted it to fly off his head in the wind, but she knew if it did they’d just waste time circling back to go get it.
“Plenty. But it has been completed,” K9 stated.
“Honestly,” Romana muttered, pulling the seat belt over her shoulder as they pulled out onto the road.
She hated to admit it, but the Doctor was right. Despite the tinge of pollutants in the sky above them, being on the open road with fields on either side of them in weather as nice as this… it had a quality to it that was almost nostalgic, even though she’d never experienced anything like it back on Gallifrey.
“For the record,” The Doctor said suddenly, breaking Romana’s train of thought. “I do know how to drive a vehicle such as this. Before I regenerated I was a bit obsessed, really. Even had one of my own, a yellow roadster named Bessie. I hope the boys over at UNIT are taking good care of her.”
Romana didn’t know what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything. Instead it hung in the air for a moment, before it blew away in the breeze surrounding them.
“What? Don’t believe me?” he said, the usual humor returning to his voice.
“No, it’s not that,” Romana said, shaking her head. “It’s just that… I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you sound so… wistful. It caught me off guard.”
“Well, you’re still young,” the Doctor said, pulling his hat down over his eyes as he leaned back again. “One day you’ll regenerate, and you’ll look back on the person you are now - still you, but different - and wonder how much of her is still you. Part of your present, and not just your past.”
“I see…” Romana said, softly enough she wasn’t sure the Doctor would hear. He seemed content enough to let it end there though, and she found herself growing lost in her thoughts once more as she stared at the large, open road in front of her.
She often teased the Doctor for his age, but she’d never really had a concept for what he was like before she’d known him. Sure, she’d been told some information about his time at the Academy, but she realized she didn’t know much about who he was, who he’d been, beyond that.
This shouldn’t have been as shocking a revelation as it was. During their entire pursuit of the Key to Time, he’d proven over and over again that he was more than her preconceived notions of him, but why did the idea that she knew so little of him suddenly weigh on her so heavily?
“Mistress?”
“Yes?” Romana blinked. They were still driving through the same endless stretch of countryside, only now it was like the sky wasn’t as hazy as it had been a moment ago.
“Would you like to listen to the radio, Mistress?” K9 asked.
“Sure, why not?” Romana said. A moment later, the air was filled with the sound of static, followed by the sound of a guitar riff and a passionate voice belting out lyrics that almost seemed incomprehensible.
He was right again, and she couldn’t even be mad at him about it. It was perfect.
“Doctor,” Romana said, gazing up at the sky. “Is this why you ran away? Left Gallifrey?”
The music continued to fill the silence that followed, and when she was finally able to bring herself to look away from the vista before her, she found the Doctor more sprawled out in the back seat than he’d been before, arm slumped over his head and his scarf making a soft whipping sound as its tips were dragged through the air.
The sight of it almost made her laugh.
“Honestly,” she said, hearing the humor in her own voice.
She reached forward and gingerly moved his arm off over his head, letting it fall limply down to the side. His head was tilted down at an uncomfortable-looking angle into his chest, making his face appear squished. Despite this, he looked completely comfortable, his whole body practically melting into the convertible’s interior.
Romana wasn’t sure why she wanted to, but she found herself leaning forward, brushing the loose curls poking out from underneath the Doctor’s hat and away from his eyes. He was an old man, always off on some tangent or exploring some oddity, and nothing about him really suggested that he was ever interested in appearing dignified. Certainly, he looked as much of a mess as he ever had, but she couldn’t help but feel like, maybe, if they’d met under different circumstances…
She leaned in closer, and suddenly felt a slap against her forehead. She glanced up just in time to see the Doctor’s hat fly up into the air and away from the car.
Romana’s exclamation was immediately cut off by the hard, painful sensation of the Doctor immediately sitting up and violently knocking their heads together, flinging her back across her seat.
“Where’d my hat go?” the Doctor shouted, pressing his hands against the bump forming on his head.
“Behind us, Master. Would you like to reverse course?” K9 said in his usual cadence.
“Yes! Fetch!” the Doctor said, removing one hand and waving it in the air. “Romana, are you alright?”
“Yes,” Romana hissed, pressing one of the water bottles up against her forehead, the rest of her face beet red. She decided then that it was a waste of time to think about what might have been in another life.
Though, if she were really honest with herself, staring out with one good eye at the open sky, an earful of arguing between an impossibly aggravating Time Lord and his robot dog... maybe meeting in this one was okay, too.