A Doctor/Master Fic for annwnrho, which is also a Christmas fic for everyone
Title: Past, Present, Future
Rating: PG-13
Pairings, Characters: Doctor/Master (as always) but also glimpses of Nine, Rose, Jack, Mickey, Blon, some purely fictional creations of my own, and a surprise cameo.
Word Count: 2,447 (aprox.)
Spoilers, Disclaimer: Spoilers for ‘Boom Town’ and ‘The Last of the Time Lords.’ I do not own Doctor Who, the BBC does. I do, however, own the whacky future-storytelling, so don’t steal my Santa!
Warnings: I’ve given up on sounding remotely British. The TARDIS translates American-English when I’m at the helm; we apologize for the inconvenience.
A/N: I took a prompt from
annwnrho and ran very far away with it. Consider this your Christmas-fic from me, guys, I ran out of time. The PD/Heroes crossover and the next installment of the series … before New Years? I tentatively promise? *kicks self* Hope you enjoy, and PLEASE comment if you read!
Dedication: for
annwnrho . Merry Christhanukwanza and belated Solstice to you and all the readers!
Also, if DW isn’t to your liking, here’s the linkies to my infamous, award-winning Holiday Trilogy from last year. My GOD I was good back then … how did I find the time to DO all of that?
http://aunt-zelda.livejournal.com/42295.html
September 2006, Cardiff
“Idiot.” the Master muttered.
The Doctor blinked. “Me? Which one?”
“For once, not you, Doctor. I am referring to the Slitheen woman.” the Master nodded in the direction of Blon, who was being accosted by the Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Captain Jack Harkness, and Mickey Smith down the alley that he and the Tenth Doctor were peering down, at ease with the aid of perception filters. “Her grand-ultimate plan is to fill up the tank on a space-surfboard. There’s nothing remotely special about that. Destruction of the Earth isn’t even an issue for her. There’s so much you can do with a planet in peril …” the Master sighed, staring off into the distance. “Or she might have attempted revenge; go after Harriet Jones or your Vortex-Companion’s family and friends, but no. What a waste.”
He sighed, watching the gang escort Blon back into the building, glancing around nervously as they did so.
“But … it’s your plan, isn’t it? Well, the getting elected and messing with Earth, that is.” the Doctor said as soon as he and the others had gotten out of earshot. “Blimey, I miss being him …” he sighed and took off the perception filter, stuffing it into his pocket. “He was fun, that one. Sometimes the pain was unbearable but … for ever horrible moment there was a dance with Rose, or some joke of Jack’s … or just Mickey being Mickey.”
The Master took off his own perception filter and squinted after the Ninth Doctor. “I almost wish I’d managed to meet you when you were him … would he have kissed me … or killed me?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Probably both. There were some very dark moments when I was him.” he shivered. “We’d best get going. Don’t want to be around tonight when she tries to tear a hole in time and space …”
“Awwww, but mum! I’ve been so good today!” the Master whined, throwing his best puppy-dog eyes in the Doctor’s general direction.
The Doctor sighed. “No, no, no. You’ll only harness the energy to escape or cause a paradox or something … come on.”
The Master sighed. "Be thankful I never went that Slitheen's route and let humanity corrupt me. You never had to revert me back to a child ... think of that ... ugh."
So lost in thought were they that it wasn’t until the blond woman smashed into them that they noticed her at all.
“Oh! I’m sorry …”
“… my apologies!”
“Ouch … oh.”
A woman with very pale skin and long blond hair stared down in dismay at her satchel, which was lying on the ground, its contents spilled over the sidewalk. She looked up at the two Time Lords, blue eyes wide and apologetic. “I am so sorry … wasn’t looking where I was going …” she crouched down and began gathering the books and pencils into her bag, stammering apologies all the while.
“Let me help you with those … it was my fault, really,” the Master knelt down with her and handed her a book, staring at its cover. “Italian, huh? Never could get the hang of that … I’m Harold, by the way. Harold Saxon.” he held out his hand, smiling that politician’s smile of his.
The Doctor was frozen in place. He knew this woman. She was …
“Lucy … Lucy Cole.” Lucy blushed as she snapped the clasp on her bag, and then took the Master’s hand, eyes locked with his.
They stood up as one, like children playing at being each other’s mirror. The Doctor was still frozen in place, wondering if it was possible for his jaw to fall where Lucy’s books had been lying seconds before.
“Well, um …” Lucy glanced away, still holding the Master’s hand. “I … I should be going …” she sounded as though she were talking to herself, trying to coax herself away.
The Master pressed his lips to her hand. “It was a pleasure, Lucy.”
She gasped, slowly let go of his hand, ducked her head, and hurried away, looking back several times with increasing interest.
As soon as she’d rounded the corner, the Master began to laugh. “Oh, just you wait, Lucy Saxon … a year, at most …”
The Doctor shuddered, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his coat. “I never asked … was it hypnotism or … was she always … like that?”
The Master smiled slowly. “It’s called ‘charisma,’ Doctor, nothing sinister about it … usually.”
They began walking in the direction of the TARDIS again, silent, lost in their own thoughts. The Master would occasionally dart off to the side to window-shop, just to see the look on the Doctor’s face when he realized that the Master was no longer beside him.
Eventually they reached the outskirts of the city. There were fewer people here.
“Christmas!” the Doctor yelped suddenly, grinning from ear to ear.
“No, it’s not Christmas, Doctor,” the Master said in the slow, understanding tone of a teacher addressing a particularly dim student. “Not for another three months.”
The Doctor beamed. “It’s Christmas somewhere, or sometime … you fancy a bit of Yuletide?”
The Master gave him a particularly good death glare. “Not particularly, no. I don’t find ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ remotely enjoyable unless aliens invade and you go all vengeful god on them.” the Master grumbled, crossing his arms. “But as I have no choice in the matter …”
“You do have a choice …” the Doctor threw an arm around the Master’s shoulders and whispered into his ear “Past, present, or future?”
The Master slowed his pace; trying to ignore the way the Doctor was nipping at his ear, and tried to decide. Christmas in the Medieval Ages could be fun: twelve days of feasts and parties that he could loose the Doctor in and sneak off to assassinate the king or speed up the Crusades or something. Christmas present would be dull because the Doctor was keeping him well away from Torchwood and Martha Jones. Christmas future … well, that could be either very predictable or very interesting, but either way he’d have to feign indifference.
With a heavy sigh, he said “Fine … somewhere in Earth’s future. Very far in Earth’s future, if you don’t mind. Wouldn’t want me running into some little Jones grandchildren when I’m in the killing-mood …”
The Doctor hugged him and practically sang “Yes, Master …”
The Master tried not to let it show how much those words coming out of the Doctor’s mouth affected him … but the Doctor was already babbling on about the myriad of Christmas futures awaiting them and didn’t notice (or didn’t mind) the tent in the Master’s pants.
~*~
“This is your idea of Christmas cheer?” the Master hissed. “Crouching in a foxhole with a bunch of lesbians and no radio reception?”
“Sorry!” the Doctor whispered back. “I had no idea that this was a Christmas when the war between the Israeli-Scots and the Argentinean-Antarcticans was still raging …”
“Oh no, I expected something like this from you,” plowing over the Doctor’s exclamation of outrage, he continued “But unless this turns into an orgy of some kind, I’m crawling over to that battlefield and participating in what I believe would be some well-deserved mayhem.” he began tapping the beat of the Drums on the ground.
The Doctor sighed heavily and leaned back against the concrete wall, debating whether or not to start slamming the back of his head against it.
“Got it!” one of the magenta-haired women cried, triumphantly holding up the repaired radio. “Now we can get a signal and find out what’s going on …” she and the other soot-smudged, headscarved women clustered around the radio, twiddling with dials and fussing over wires.
“Hardly an event equatable to Jesus of Nazareth’s birth …” the Master muttered.
The Doctor elbowed him in the side. “Maybe they’re Jewish. Ever heard of the lamp that burned for -”
“That’s it!” the Master stood up, brushing the soot and ash from the long jacket the Doctor had forced him to don upon embarking into the 34th century. “Don’t bother reminding me what each side is fighting for, Doctor, I’ll just head for the one with the most firepower.”
He started for the ladder propped against the side of the sizable trench/refugee hideaway, but was cut off by the arrival of several new people. One handed a small child to the Master, then jumped down the extra rungs himself before taking the toddler back and assisting two young women down onto the ground.
“Rodger!” one of the maroon-haired women yelped, running forward and embracing the man with the toddler.
In the ensuing chaos and cries of “Emmet!” and “Lily!” and “Julia!” the Master gave up his goal of ascending the ladder and skulked back to the Doctor’s side, sitting down once more.
“We can’t fit many more people down here … going to have to start making up cover-stories … is the name ‘Harold Saxon’ likely to get me lynched?”
“Would you care?” the Doctor asked, scanning the crowd - most of whom seemed to know each other - as the refugees began a non-traceable, non-smoke-inducing greenish fire in the center of the trench and began forming a kind of circle around it. The woman who’d fixed the radio twiddled with a dial, heard the crackly voice of a woman saying “Code Blue is in effect: please do not leave your current positions, government officials will be arriving in the morning. Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad.” then turned it off with a sigh.
“Well, guys, we’re stuck here until morning … Rodger, can you get the ladder down?”
The man with the toddler handed the child off to a maroon-haired woman and set about taking the ladder down.
“Damnit …” the Master hissed. “Now any attempt to escape will look suspicious …”
The Doctor shrugged. “We’ll just leave at first light, before any government employees show up … oh! Hello!” he looked up and smiled nervously at another maroon-haired woman, who was holding out a bowl of stew.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to share … we don’t have much, but …” she smiled apologetically, handing the plastic dish to the Doctor. “I’m Keely, by the way, Keely Frost … want to come closer to the fire?”
The Master opened his mouth, probably to tell Keely where she could put the stew, but the Doctor shoved a chunk of something from the stew into his mouth and told the woman “Thank you, that’s very kind.”
She beamed and scurried back to the fireside, patting an empty blanket next to her.
The Master swallowed the stew-bit and gasped “Careful, Doctor, no telling what kind of diseases she’s got under those cute wrappings.”
The Doctor pouted. “Be nice … please?” he ran his fingers up the Master’s leg. “I’ll make it up to you later …”
The Master sighed. “Fine … we can sit by Miss-Wannabe-Companion … but if she kisses you, I reserve the right to murder her.”
The Doctor winced. “Fair enough …” he took a sip of the stew and approached the fire-side, sitting down next to Keely. The Master reluctantly sat between the Doctor and the man with the toddler, taking several gulps of the stew while the Doctor was busy talking with Keely.
“I’m from Scotland, originally, but I don’t belong to the Israeli-Scottish brigade. They’re mental. You associate with any guild or sect?” she asked, eying the Doctor’s non-descript clothing.
The Doctor shook his head. “No, we just … travel. No real roots, not anymore …” his gleeful expression dimmed somewhat. “Our home is gone. Wiped out.”
Keely patted his hand, and soon the whole group was trading stories of disaster and survival. The Master finished off the Doctor’s stew and tried to steal the toddler’s, but couldn’t get around the kid’s defenses.
Eventually a white-haired woman with skin like an old apple began telling stories. They weren’t like stories the Doctor had encountered before: some bits were interactive, and the whole audience would chime in with a chorus or a curse, waving their arms and laughing. Some stories were silly, some were romantic, a few were tragic, and most used characters the Doctor didn’t recognize, like ‘Morgana the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Ernesto Braveheart’ and ‘William Watson, King of Antarctica.’ He’d always feel a sort of jolt when Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Peter Pan, Anansi, or Hamlet showed up, seamlessly battling, falling in love with, or assisting the characters unfamiliar to the Doctor. The Doctor was almost certain he’d seen, out of the corner of his eye, the Master smiling a bit or wiping a way a tear during some of the stories.
After what seemed like many hours, the Storyteller took a sip of something from a canteen, smacked her lips, and cleared her throat. “This is the last story I will be telling tonight, the story of Nicholas Saint, son of Odin, brother of Red Riding Hood Wolf-Slayer, husband of Mariah Magdalene. He is commonly known as the reindeer-drover ‘Claus Santa.’
The Doctor managed to turn his outburst of laughter into a stifled coughing fit. The Master smirked at him and then stared at the Storyteller with an expression of rapt attention.
As the story went on, the Doctor tried to figure out how Santa Claus had gone from Christian Saint to jolly fat man to the hero of a fantasy epic, in which he fought alongside elves to drive away the Jotun from his father’s kingdom, received his older sister’s red cloak when she took a wolf-pelt as a fashion statement, married a descendent of Mary Magdalene, and spent his ‘off-time’ driving purple reindeer across long stretches of wilderness with a band of similar to Robin Hood’s Merry Men.
“Stop thinking so much,” the Master whispered into his ear, startling the Doctor as he tried to follow along Claus’ arc of vampire slaying in the Middle East. “It’s just a story … have fun with it and quit overanalyzing.” chuckling a bit, he snuggled up against the Doctor and shot a gloating smirk at Keely’s back.
Brow furrowed, the Doctor tried to take the Master’s advice, laughing and idly running his hands through the Master’s hair as Claus Santa outwitted the Jotun once again with the help of Loki and a girl named Pearl. As the story drew to a close, the Doctor found his eyelids drooping. The whistle of a projectile whirred faintly in his ears, and the muffled sounds of a distant explosion shook the ground for a few seconds, but the Storyteller kept right on going. When Claus and Mariah settled at the top of the world with a fleet of flying reindeer, the Doctor was already slumped on the ground, half-asleep, under a ragged army blanket, the Master curled up beside him.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~*~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I'll be about today and tomorrow ... but not much. Merry Christmas to all!
Rating: PG-13
Pairings, Characters: Doctor/Master (as always) but also glimpses of Nine, Rose, Jack, Mickey, Blon, some purely fictional creations of my own, and a surprise cameo.
Word Count: 2,447 (aprox.)
Spoilers, Disclaimer: Spoilers for ‘Boom Town’ and ‘The Last of the Time Lords.’ I do not own Doctor Who, the BBC does. I do, however, own the whacky future-storytelling, so don’t steal my Santa!
Warnings: I’ve given up on sounding remotely British. The TARDIS translates American-English when I’m at the helm; we apologize for the inconvenience.
A/N: I took a prompt from
annwnrho and ran very far away with it. Consider this your Christmas-fic from me, guys, I ran out of time. The PD/Heroes crossover and the next installment of the series … before New Years? I tentatively promise? *kicks self* Hope you enjoy, and PLEASE comment if you read!
Dedication: for
annwnrho . Merry Christhanukwanza and belated Solstice to you and all the readers!
Also, if DW isn’t to your liking, here’s the linkies to my infamous, award-winning Holiday Trilogy from last year. My GOD I was good back then … how did I find the time to DO all of that?
http://aunt-zelda.livejournal.com/42295.html
September 2006, Cardiff
“Idiot.” the Master muttered.
The Doctor blinked. “Me? Which one?”
“For once, not you, Doctor. I am referring to the Slitheen woman.” the Master nodded in the direction of Blon, who was being accosted by the Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Captain Jack Harkness, and Mickey Smith down the alley that he and the Tenth Doctor were peering down, at ease with the aid of perception filters. “Her grand-ultimate plan is to fill up the tank on a space-surfboard. There’s nothing remotely special about that. Destruction of the Earth isn’t even an issue for her. There’s so much you can do with a planet in peril …” the Master sighed, staring off into the distance. “Or she might have attempted revenge; go after Harriet Jones or your Vortex-Companion’s family and friends, but no. What a waste.”
He sighed, watching the gang escort Blon back into the building, glancing around nervously as they did so.
“But … it’s your plan, isn’t it? Well, the getting elected and messing with Earth, that is.” the Doctor said as soon as he and the others had gotten out of earshot. “Blimey, I miss being him …” he sighed and took off the perception filter, stuffing it into his pocket. “He was fun, that one. Sometimes the pain was unbearable but … for ever horrible moment there was a dance with Rose, or some joke of Jack’s … or just Mickey being Mickey.”
The Master took off his own perception filter and squinted after the Ninth Doctor. “I almost wish I’d managed to meet you when you were him … would he have kissed me … or killed me?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Probably both. There were some very dark moments when I was him.” he shivered. “We’d best get going. Don’t want to be around tonight when she tries to tear a hole in time and space …”
“Awwww, but mum! I’ve been so good today!” the Master whined, throwing his best puppy-dog eyes in the Doctor’s general direction.
The Doctor sighed. “No, no, no. You’ll only harness the energy to escape or cause a paradox or something … come on.”
The Master sighed. "Be thankful I never went that Slitheen's route and let humanity corrupt me. You never had to revert me back to a child ... think of that ... ugh."
So lost in thought were they that it wasn’t until the blond woman smashed into them that they noticed her at all.
“Oh! I’m sorry …”
“… my apologies!”
“Ouch … oh.”
A woman with very pale skin and long blond hair stared down in dismay at her satchel, which was lying on the ground, its contents spilled over the sidewalk. She looked up at the two Time Lords, blue eyes wide and apologetic. “I am so sorry … wasn’t looking where I was going …” she crouched down and began gathering the books and pencils into her bag, stammering apologies all the while.
“Let me help you with those … it was my fault, really,” the Master knelt down with her and handed her a book, staring at its cover. “Italian, huh? Never could get the hang of that … I’m Harold, by the way. Harold Saxon.” he held out his hand, smiling that politician’s smile of his.
The Doctor was frozen in place. He knew this woman. She was …
“Lucy … Lucy Cole.” Lucy blushed as she snapped the clasp on her bag, and then took the Master’s hand, eyes locked with his.
They stood up as one, like children playing at being each other’s mirror. The Doctor was still frozen in place, wondering if it was possible for his jaw to fall where Lucy’s books had been lying seconds before.
“Well, um …” Lucy glanced away, still holding the Master’s hand. “I … I should be going …” she sounded as though she were talking to herself, trying to coax herself away.
The Master pressed his lips to her hand. “It was a pleasure, Lucy.”
She gasped, slowly let go of his hand, ducked her head, and hurried away, looking back several times with increasing interest.
As soon as she’d rounded the corner, the Master began to laugh. “Oh, just you wait, Lucy Saxon … a year, at most …”
The Doctor shuddered, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his coat. “I never asked … was it hypnotism or … was she always … like that?”
The Master smiled slowly. “It’s called ‘charisma,’ Doctor, nothing sinister about it … usually.”
They began walking in the direction of the TARDIS again, silent, lost in their own thoughts. The Master would occasionally dart off to the side to window-shop, just to see the look on the Doctor’s face when he realized that the Master was no longer beside him.
Eventually they reached the outskirts of the city. There were fewer people here.
“Christmas!” the Doctor yelped suddenly, grinning from ear to ear.
“No, it’s not Christmas, Doctor,” the Master said in the slow, understanding tone of a teacher addressing a particularly dim student. “Not for another three months.”
The Doctor beamed. “It’s Christmas somewhere, or sometime … you fancy a bit of Yuletide?”
The Master gave him a particularly good death glare. “Not particularly, no. I don’t find ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ remotely enjoyable unless aliens invade and you go all vengeful god on them.” the Master grumbled, crossing his arms. “But as I have no choice in the matter …”
“You do have a choice …” the Doctor threw an arm around the Master’s shoulders and whispered into his ear “Past, present, or future?”
The Master slowed his pace; trying to ignore the way the Doctor was nipping at his ear, and tried to decide. Christmas in the Medieval Ages could be fun: twelve days of feasts and parties that he could loose the Doctor in and sneak off to assassinate the king or speed up the Crusades or something. Christmas present would be dull because the Doctor was keeping him well away from Torchwood and Martha Jones. Christmas future … well, that could be either very predictable or very interesting, but either way he’d have to feign indifference.
With a heavy sigh, he said “Fine … somewhere in Earth’s future. Very far in Earth’s future, if you don’t mind. Wouldn’t want me running into some little Jones grandchildren when I’m in the killing-mood …”
The Doctor hugged him and practically sang “Yes, Master …”
The Master tried not to let it show how much those words coming out of the Doctor’s mouth affected him … but the Doctor was already babbling on about the myriad of Christmas futures awaiting them and didn’t notice (or didn’t mind) the tent in the Master’s pants.
~*~
“This is your idea of Christmas cheer?” the Master hissed. “Crouching in a foxhole with a bunch of lesbians and no radio reception?”
“Sorry!” the Doctor whispered back. “I had no idea that this was a Christmas when the war between the Israeli-Scots and the Argentinean-Antarcticans was still raging …”
“Oh no, I expected something like this from you,” plowing over the Doctor’s exclamation of outrage, he continued “But unless this turns into an orgy of some kind, I’m crawling over to that battlefield and participating in what I believe would be some well-deserved mayhem.” he began tapping the beat of the Drums on the ground.
The Doctor sighed heavily and leaned back against the concrete wall, debating whether or not to start slamming the back of his head against it.
“Got it!” one of the magenta-haired women cried, triumphantly holding up the repaired radio. “Now we can get a signal and find out what’s going on …” she and the other soot-smudged, headscarved women clustered around the radio, twiddling with dials and fussing over wires.
“Hardly an event equatable to Jesus of Nazareth’s birth …” the Master muttered.
The Doctor elbowed him in the side. “Maybe they’re Jewish. Ever heard of the lamp that burned for -”
“That’s it!” the Master stood up, brushing the soot and ash from the long jacket the Doctor had forced him to don upon embarking into the 34th century. “Don’t bother reminding me what each side is fighting for, Doctor, I’ll just head for the one with the most firepower.”
He started for the ladder propped against the side of the sizable trench/refugee hideaway, but was cut off by the arrival of several new people. One handed a small child to the Master, then jumped down the extra rungs himself before taking the toddler back and assisting two young women down onto the ground.
“Rodger!” one of the maroon-haired women yelped, running forward and embracing the man with the toddler.
In the ensuing chaos and cries of “Emmet!” and “Lily!” and “Julia!” the Master gave up his goal of ascending the ladder and skulked back to the Doctor’s side, sitting down once more.
“We can’t fit many more people down here … going to have to start making up cover-stories … is the name ‘Harold Saxon’ likely to get me lynched?”
“Would you care?” the Doctor asked, scanning the crowd - most of whom seemed to know each other - as the refugees began a non-traceable, non-smoke-inducing greenish fire in the center of the trench and began forming a kind of circle around it. The woman who’d fixed the radio twiddled with a dial, heard the crackly voice of a woman saying “Code Blue is in effect: please do not leave your current positions, government officials will be arriving in the morning. Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad.” then turned it off with a sigh.
“Well, guys, we’re stuck here until morning … Rodger, can you get the ladder down?”
The man with the toddler handed the child off to a maroon-haired woman and set about taking the ladder down.
“Damnit …” the Master hissed. “Now any attempt to escape will look suspicious …”
The Doctor shrugged. “We’ll just leave at first light, before any government employees show up … oh! Hello!” he looked up and smiled nervously at another maroon-haired woman, who was holding out a bowl of stew.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to share … we don’t have much, but …” she smiled apologetically, handing the plastic dish to the Doctor. “I’m Keely, by the way, Keely Frost … want to come closer to the fire?”
The Master opened his mouth, probably to tell Keely where she could put the stew, but the Doctor shoved a chunk of something from the stew into his mouth and told the woman “Thank you, that’s very kind.”
She beamed and scurried back to the fireside, patting an empty blanket next to her.
The Master swallowed the stew-bit and gasped “Careful, Doctor, no telling what kind of diseases she’s got under those cute wrappings.”
The Doctor pouted. “Be nice … please?” he ran his fingers up the Master’s leg. “I’ll make it up to you later …”
The Master sighed. “Fine … we can sit by Miss-Wannabe-Companion … but if she kisses you, I reserve the right to murder her.”
The Doctor winced. “Fair enough …” he took a sip of the stew and approached the fire-side, sitting down next to Keely. The Master reluctantly sat between the Doctor and the man with the toddler, taking several gulps of the stew while the Doctor was busy talking with Keely.
“I’m from Scotland, originally, but I don’t belong to the Israeli-Scottish brigade. They’re mental. You associate with any guild or sect?” she asked, eying the Doctor’s non-descript clothing.
The Doctor shook his head. “No, we just … travel. No real roots, not anymore …” his gleeful expression dimmed somewhat. “Our home is gone. Wiped out.”
Keely patted his hand, and soon the whole group was trading stories of disaster and survival. The Master finished off the Doctor’s stew and tried to steal the toddler’s, but couldn’t get around the kid’s defenses.
Eventually a white-haired woman with skin like an old apple began telling stories. They weren’t like stories the Doctor had encountered before: some bits were interactive, and the whole audience would chime in with a chorus or a curse, waving their arms and laughing. Some stories were silly, some were romantic, a few were tragic, and most used characters the Doctor didn’t recognize, like ‘Morgana the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Ernesto Braveheart’ and ‘William Watson, King of Antarctica.’ He’d always feel a sort of jolt when Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Peter Pan, Anansi, or Hamlet showed up, seamlessly battling, falling in love with, or assisting the characters unfamiliar to the Doctor. The Doctor was almost certain he’d seen, out of the corner of his eye, the Master smiling a bit or wiping a way a tear during some of the stories.
After what seemed like many hours, the Storyteller took a sip of something from a canteen, smacked her lips, and cleared her throat. “This is the last story I will be telling tonight, the story of Nicholas Saint, son of Odin, brother of Red Riding Hood Wolf-Slayer, husband of Mariah Magdalene. He is commonly known as the reindeer-drover ‘Claus Santa.’
The Doctor managed to turn his outburst of laughter into a stifled coughing fit. The Master smirked at him and then stared at the Storyteller with an expression of rapt attention.
As the story went on, the Doctor tried to figure out how Santa Claus had gone from Christian Saint to jolly fat man to the hero of a fantasy epic, in which he fought alongside elves to drive away the Jotun from his father’s kingdom, received his older sister’s red cloak when she took a wolf-pelt as a fashion statement, married a descendent of Mary Magdalene, and spent his ‘off-time’ driving purple reindeer across long stretches of wilderness with a band of similar to Robin Hood’s Merry Men.
“Stop thinking so much,” the Master whispered into his ear, startling the Doctor as he tried to follow along Claus’ arc of vampire slaying in the Middle East. “It’s just a story … have fun with it and quit overanalyzing.” chuckling a bit, he snuggled up against the Doctor and shot a gloating smirk at Keely’s back.
Brow furrowed, the Doctor tried to take the Master’s advice, laughing and idly running his hands through the Master’s hair as Claus Santa outwitted the Jotun once again with the help of Loki and a girl named Pearl. As the story drew to a close, the Doctor found his eyelids drooping. The whistle of a projectile whirred faintly in his ears, and the muffled sounds of a distant explosion shook the ground for a few seconds, but the Storyteller kept right on going. When Claus and Mariah settled at the top of the world with a fleet of flying reindeer, the Doctor was already slumped on the ground, half-asleep, under a ragged army blanket, the Master curled up beside him.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx~*~xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I'll be about today and tomorrow ... but not much. Merry Christmas to all!