Title: Someone to Watch Over Me
Author: Gillian Taylor
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Romana II
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Sadly, none of them are mine...but I like playing with them.
Spoilers: Dalek
Summary: He only thinks he's alone in the universe.

A/N: Thanks, as always, to NNWest. This was actually my first piece of Doctor Who fan fiction, but I decided that it needed a little bit of updating before I posted it on Teaspoon. It's different from my usual story in that while the Doctor and Rose are mentioned, they are not the main characters. This began as a bit of a what if scenario and grew from there.

"Someone to Watch Over Me"
by Gillian Taylor

The hallways of the Citadel had seen better days. The crumbling bricks and mortar were testimony to the trials that each piece of stonework had endured since the beginning of their bombardment. Very few places remained just as they always had been – gleaming and pristine with little to show their use besides the soft murmur of voices echoing through the halls. He found that the most troubling. If there was to be a reminder of 'the way things were' why could it not be just within the realms of the Matrix rather than a few steps down the hallway? Ashken, the current Castellan, suppressed a long suffering sigh.

Ever since the War had ostensibly ended, there had been little rest as rebuilding their lives had taken priority. The sorry state of the halls of the Citadel took a far lower priority than the re-establishment of the Looms. Logical it might be, the part of him that adored order found the time till he could focus upon the hallways trying. Pinching the bridge of his nose, the Castellan pushed open the door to the Viewing Room. Indeed, the only enjoyment that he was able to derive was from watching the President and her never ending fascination with what that one was doing outside of their home. "Madam President?" he asked quietly, "Should you not be resting?" It was a never ending argument. He would find her here, amongst the relics of that one, and insist that she sleep off the long hours that she had spent in keeping Gallifrey together. He tended to believe that she preferred ignoring him.

"Ah, Ashken. Look at this," Romana insisted, gesturing towards the viewscreen. The current incarnation of the Doctor was fervently explaining something to his human companion – humans, why was it always humans? he wondered – in larger than life detail.

"At his ears? They are rather large," Ashken replied with a faint smile. The Doctor and he had once shared a rather teasing relationship that had started during their time at the Panopticon. Old habits tended to die hard.

"No," Romana said with a long suffering sigh, "At the girl. Why doesn't he just tell her the truth? That he is the one who sealed himself off from Gallifrey and all that he once stood for? Why doesn't he tell her how he's become darker with each regeneration? Why?" There was old pain there, just beneath the surface. Ashken had long suspected that Romana had once favored the Doctor above all others and this was yet another chalk mark to add to that tally.

"I never could understand the Doctor," Ashken said after a moment's thought, "Why he did things the way he did them never made much sense. That's part of what made him the Doctor, I suppose, and why we're still here on Gallifrey. Don't you think he's suffered enough?"

Ah, the perilous words caused Romana to turn towards him with ire in her gaze, "No," she snapped before deflating visibly, "I don't know, Ashken. He's changed into something that I don't quite recognize anymore. I showed you what happened with the Dalek. That is not the Doctor I remembered, he would never choose to torture anyone – even his worst enemy."

"The Doctor you knew never watched an image of Gallifrey burn," the Castellan pointed out quietly, stepping forward to join the President by the viewscreen, "The Doctor we knew never had to taste death and mortality in such a final way. The Doctor we knew had yet to grow up." He pointed at the viewscreen, tapping the holographic image of the Doctor once, "This Doctor has done all that. He's grown up in ways that you and I cannot imagine. He watched us die – he heard us die – because that is how you wished it to pass."

Romana sighed and for once the powerful figure that held all of Gallifrey in her hands became just a woman – a woman who, admittedly, had once been scorned by the Time Lord on the screen. "I don't know if I am ready to bring him home," she admitted.

"Then let me," Ashken replied, stepping around the President and reaching for the communications device. His hand was stilled by Romana's.

"No," she commanded, "If anyone should bring him home, it should be me. I'm the one that damned him to this life in the first place. Just...not now."

Ashken's expression showed his disappointment, but he did not verbally berate her for her choice. "He should know," he insisted.

"And he will. In time," Romana released his hand and stepped back to the viewscreen, her eyes darkening as she watched the Doctor hold his companion's hand. Perhaps, she mused, Ashken was right. The Doctor she knew had yet to grow up. Perhaps the same could be said for her.

The Castellan quietly withdrew from the room and pressed the palm of his hand against his forehead. Someday she would have to listen to reason. Someday she would have to bring him home. But until that time, she would continue watching him from a distance. The saddest part of the events as they had come to pass was that until Romana herself grew up the Doctor would never know that he truly was not alone.

No, Ashken corrected himself as he remembered the images on the viewscreen, perhaps he already knew that much. He had the girl and in her companionship he could find solace. Until Romana could face the past, the Doctor would never know that she watched over him.

And that was the saddest thought of all.

FIN