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She is too young to and too vain, yet, to be anything more than faintly insulted by the invasion. Her arms are crossed in front of her to shield herself from the wind and the broken glass, but her defensive stance falls and she is left staring into a gaze that is infinitely, incredibly blue: hazy, leaking blue, as though there were too much of him for his body to hold. There are centuries worth of age in his eyes, a softly grim set to his lips, a gauntness to his cheeks; he is handsome and imposing and somehow, instantly, she knows that he will never, ever harm her.
"You are him, aren’t you?" she says, and she must be frightened even so, because her pitch is strained and fragile, "You are what I’ve forgotten."
He reaches out his hand to her and in a soft, commanding, dual-toned voice, he speaks:
"It is your wish to leave, Romanadvoratrelundar, is it not? That is what you said."
It is. Apprehensively, with maddened curiosity, she takes his hand, and time pulls them away from her world and into his.
—
She cannot rid herself of the suspicion that she is out of time, and out of place. Her first night is spent brushing quiet tears from her cheeks, for reasons that she cannot fully explain.
She finds her keeper in a long corridor which reveals painting after painting, hallway after hallway, sculptures and manuscripts and canvases alike — a labyrinthine Collection of art and foreign styles, unusual forms, and disturbing themes. With his hands linked behind his back and his head raised proudly, there can be no doubt he has been expecting her.
"Take me back," she murmurs, and then pleads, "please."
"What is said is said," he reminds her.
"But I didn’t mean it—"
"Oh, didn’t you?" he sounds gently amused, more intimate than patronizing, and her skin prickles with nerves.
She hesitates, then thinks to appeal to the softness in the corners of his eyes, where kindness might be, and leniency, if she only appeals to it. “Please take me back,” she says. “Please.”
When he turns to look at her his eyes are the same — confident and blue and intent, harmless to her. “Romana,” he murmurs, bringing up a hand that nearly touches her cheek, before he thinks better of it, and falls away. “Go back to your room. Read your books. Admire your new home — forget what is past.”
He smiles then, a gentle, warm gesture. “I have a present for you,” he says. Comes forward to the place where the corridor opens into yet more hallways. There is a large space on the wall, startling bare with the works surrounding it.
"Yes?" she asks.
"It is a space. Nothing more. But if you look closely…" he leans in over her shoulder and speaks almost tenderly, "You can see your future. Your likeness, there. Beauty and self, immortalized." He pauses for effect. "Do you want it?"
She does not answer.
"Then forget Gallifrey. Forget the Academy."
For a long while, they say nothing.
"I can’t. It isn’t that I do not appreciate what you are trying to do—"
"Romana," he says, almost sadly — as if it were more a plea than a command, and she could almost believe it so, if he did not speak so softly, and so closely to her skin. "Do not deny me."
"I have a future, my studies — a life. I have to go back."
He tilts his head aside, indulgently, and beckons to her. She follows him in silence, unsure whether she ought to be terrified or furious. By now her nerves are frequently on edge, and the insecurity of the whole affair, the strangeness of it all has is fading into a constant, alert hum as if just beyond her skin.
He takes her to an office, to a computer, and he pulls up a map. He shows her the galaxies and points. “It is there,” he whispers, and points to a planet which she knows, and he breath catches.
"It doesn’t seem so far," she says, hopefully.
"It is farther than you think," he assures her.
—
He refuses to tell her outright how to get home, again, and when he becomes too utterly insufferable, she departs his company. He watches her off with a sad smile that makes her wonder after his sanity and intentions.
The gardens outside are expansive. Everything, plants and fountains, waterfalls and rocks have all been sculpted down to elegance and beauty. Nothing is so simple as what it once was, and nothing is without design; no blank, smooth metal walls to guide her steps and even the paths are made from well-fitting stones and shells, mosaics, built. Nothing is without this overwhelming, haunting beauty.
She walks for ages. She walks until she is lost and she runs away when her keeper calls her. It takes her hours until she finds her way out, by herself.
—
When she finally comes to her room, there is a parcel laid out for her, and she opens it to find white, diaphanous layers and smooth silk. At first, she throws it stubbornly to her bed, and bathes. It is only later that she takes it back up and dresses in it, makes herself more beautiful than anyone could imagine, puts up her hair — not immodestly so, but pointedly revealing the sides of her throat — to spite him.
He does not beg her to stay. He does not even ask about her avoiding him, in the gardens. Instead, he greets her, glad in black velvet, a high collar failing to hide the slope of his jaw and the inches beneath, a modest black pin in the folds of white silk cravat, and he asks her to dance.
She does — again, to spite him, because she is beautiful, infinitely beautiful, and she knows it, and he cannot misunderstand it. Because she will not stop looking for a way out. She will get her way. She will always be out of his reach.
That is why she dances with him, to start.
Those blue eyes of his never shy away from hers, and through the natural downturn of his lips, she can see no tension in his skin. He is used to smiling: it must come easily to him, to make him look so gentle, and so enamored.
She realizes suddenly that the reason he can never harm her is because he is — must be — inexplicably and inexorably in love with her, and whatever that may mean, whatever that may entail — it is impossible for her to know, as she has never found herself in so great a predicament as his — she is flattered by it.
—
"I want to go back."
She has gotten braver, and more firm in her demands. The fear of him and his queer nature has abated in the firm — and not unfounded — conviction that she can do as she wants and speak as she likes, and he will never move ill against her.
"I want to go back!" she insists, now, on the verge of stomping her foot to make her point.
His gaze falls beyond her, his look, one of unspeakable sadness; he walks past her almost as if he were to walk through her, entirely.
—
"Stop," he whispers. He reaches out to take her hand, and it is the most earnest, the most intimate touch she has ever seen from him. He begs, "I ask for so little. Love me, fear me, do as I say: and I will be your slave."
"You have no power over me," she realizes at last.
Those blue eyes of his close until no more glow can seep through them. With a single fluid motion, he stands aside, opening the door to his office to reveal the TARDIS controls within.
She takes a deep breath and steps inside. He does not follow, and the doors close behind her.