best_enemies | **Sneaks out of lurkers' corner using fic as shield**

Err....Hi! *waves* This probably isn't half as good as most of the fic's on here, but....here. (O_O)

**Flees back into corner**

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Title: Of Histories and Parallels
Author: Stalked By Chibi's
Characters: Fourth Doctor, Ainley!Master, Romana
Pairings: Doctor/Master
Warnings: None
Notes: I don't trust my Old!Who voices at all...

Romana glanced up from the book in her lap as the voices raised again, the Doctor announcing apparently to the universe at large that he was perfectly capable of fixing his own TARDIS, and the Master very nearly matching his volume - something she hadn't thought possible, to be honest - and saying that if he was anywhere near capable of fixing her then she wouldn't be a blue box for so long, and to hand over the extrapolator panel before he cracked it over his head.

Of course, had they even let her help she would have been able to separate the two TARDIS's in at most two hours and well before they were connected long enough to begin talking to each other - as they were now, pointedly ignoring their Time Lords - but the other Gallifreyans had simply told her no - the Master, surprisingly, a trace more politely than the Doctor - the five times she'd offered assistance, until she'd finally sighed and sat down to watch the show the two Time Lords were putting on.

Well, for the first six hours. Then she'd wandered away for tea and stepped into the library and then to put her tea cup back, and when she'd entered the console room again it was still in nearly the exact same state of disrepair - three wires had been reconnected, though to the wrong points, and a new panel had been pulled out and thrown across the room apparently. Frowning, she had turned back and pulled three books from the library. This time, the Doctor had somehow managed to get himself strung up on one of the wires, and the Master was looking rather smug.

How they managed to get even this far was astonishing.

Romana selected one of the books randomly and had sat down to read, doing her best to tune out the noise the two were making. The history book on Early Civilised Gallifrey was a better waste of time than watching the Doctor and Master bicker ad nauseum.

She paged through the bits about old Looming ceremonies, the founding of the Citadel, countless passages and notes involving the Founders, Rassilon and Omega. One of them told how the two couldn't decide some detail - most researchers believed it to be how to expand Temporal Grace over the whole planet, which apparently the writer of the book agreed with because the other ideas were barely even glossed over - and one had nearly abandoned the exercise entirely and gone to make his own planet. Another speculated that part of one of the Black Scrolls - which were nearly indecipherable, and the Doctor had once bet that it was all a joke by the "dusty old fools" - was the stenographied account of choosing which of the two would complete the hazardous experiment that had, according to the Doctor, trapped Omega in an antimatter universe.

About three-fifths of the way through the book, the Doctor sat down beside her suddenly, slightly out of breath and eyes sparkling eye curiousity, a smear of grease running the length of his nose. "What are you reading?"

Romana lifted the cover to show him the title, still trying to read but giving up after the fifth time she read a line detailing how ancient TARDIS's were made.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Why would you want to read that?" All at once, he was pulling her to her feet. "Come along, time to go!"

Taking a look around, she was surprised to find the entire room sorted, not one wire out of place and she'd look later to find that some of the system were actually better than before.

The Master had stopped just outside his own TARDIS. "Until next time, Doctor."

"There won't be one." The Doctor replied casually, choosing to brush an imaginary speck of dust from one of the monitors rather than look at him. "Weren't you on your way out?"

Out of the corner of her eye Romana thought, for just a fraction of a second, the Master might have actually smiled at that, but his face was blank when she looked at him. "Very well. Doctor, Romana." He stepped back, into the TARDIS that, for all his complaints about police boxes, was still a great stone pillar a foot away from the wall.

As his TARDIS dematerialised, Romana glanced from him, to the Doctor, and back again. "Doctor?" She had the strangest sense that something had just...happened.

He looked up at her, expression closed. Then he grinned and looked close enough to his normal self, and Romana stamped down on the questions arising from the last twelve hours. "Hm?"

She shook her head. "Nothing."

Though she doubted it was.