Wasteland (12/14)
Title: Wasteland (11/14)
Characters: Ten, Martha, Donna
Word Count: 5,929
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine. *sniff*
Spoilers: Up to “Planet of the Ood.” (Sort of.)
Summary: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).
Author’s Notes: Happy New Year! Thanks to everyone on FF dot net for their encouraging reviews and messages, I finished this chapter up ASAP. Sorry, not done for Christmas, but done for the new year! Different kind of chapter, so let me know what you think. No beta and not British, so any concrit would be great. Thanks and enjoy!
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Part Eleven
The Year That Never Was
May
Lucy watches the world burn and smiles.
She shouldn’t, and she knows that. A tenth of the human race is being destroyed down there, after all. People are dying by the thousands.
But all she can do is extend her lips into an overjoyed grin.
Bellow there is nothing but destruction and death. But Lucy knows that’s not what this is. It’s a triumph. Something her husband had been working toward for well over a year. Something she had helped him accomplish.
She, Lucy Cole - the stupid girl who was an embarrassment to her family and a fool to everyone else - had helped to create all of this.
The Toclafane even call her Mother.
And it is all because of Harry. Harry, who had told her she was special when the world wanted to do away with her. Who loved her when everyone else simply used her for her family connections and money. Who wanted her, in spite of everything, and who allowed her to be a part of all of this.
Harry takes the Doctor and backs away from the window, so Lucy walks forward to look properly at what she has helped to make. She steps up as close as she can to the smooth surface, leans her forehead against the glass, and looks down at the fire bellow.
It isn’t what she had thought to do, it’s true. She had assumed her future would be spent tucked in some powerful man’s bedroom, bored and untouched and ignored.
And no, the scene bellow isn’t necessarily pretty. Isn’t something to brag about during her parent’s wine parties, or to boast about at the latest trendy lounge.
But she certainly isn’t bored. And she is most definitely touched. And Harry sees her in a way no one else ever has. He doesn’t see her for what she is, but for everything she could be. When they met, he had seen her as his wife, his lover, his accomplice.
His faithful companion.
She pulls away from the window as Harry appears, a warm presence at her back, a tug at her elbow. A searing kiss on her still-smiling lips.
==
At first, all Joel can feel is terror.
He is on a flying ship, the president of the United States has been shot, and he is half convinced that he just saw a man age a hundred years in thirty seconds while a woman disappeared in a flash of light.
None of these things are normal fare for the twenty-four year-old rookie journalist.
Down bellow, he knows the Earth is on fire. He can almost hear the people dying.
Joel doesn’t let the panic take control for long. His first assignment had been to work with a troop of new recruits through boot camp and their first few months in Afghanistan. After enough bombs go off around you, you learn quickly enough that panicking, terror, hope… All of those emotions will get you killed.
So instead, Joel runs into the nearest supply closet, finds a non-descript, grunt-man uniform, and puts it on. He ditches his pen, paper, mobile and suit as soon as possible, kicking them into a dust bin and hoping that no one discovers them. He suspects that journalists will not be welcome on the Valiant for long.
For the first week, he walks around in a barely-concealed state of fear. He doesn’t know what has happened to his family or friends, doesn’t dare think too heavily on what the mad fellow in charge is up to, and tries to blend in as seamlessly as possible.
It isn’t nearly as difficult as it should be.
The commander of the small troop of military men merely scowls at Joel when he shows up in the barracks without a rifle or proper shoes, and orders him to scrub the mess and bathrooms before supplying him with the finishing touches to his disguise, a bunk to sleep in, and food to eat.
Initially, Joel tries to be inconspicuous, something that takes too much effort and makes him anxious. So the second week, he tries to look at it as another assignment. Like with the recruits, only this time he is undercover. Investigating the inner workings of the fortress that helped a mad man take over the world.
It helps. The thought of having a mission - something to work toward in a very broken world - calms him. He still doesn’t dare try to contact anyone on the earth bellow. He doesn’t even try to talk to people on the ship, too nervous that someone might remember him from the news conference if allowed a good look at him. But he has a reason to be on the ship, even if it is a manufactured one. Emotions are easy to control when Joel had a firm sense of purpose.
Or they are until the third week, anyway.
Then Joel meets Sam.
==
July
It’s past noon when Harry barges into their bedroom, jumping on the bed and jarring her awake.
“Wife! How are you today? Well, I hope? Of course you are!”
As she groggily sits up, Lucy wonders if she can be well today, for Harry’s sake.
“I’ve a surprise for you this morning!”
She stretches and smiles at him. Loves him with a look. “A surprise?”
“Yes!” He leaps off the bed, grabbing her hand and tugging her out as well, pulling her out of their room and into the hallways of the Valiant in her nightie. “I’m going to take you back to Utopia in my Paradox Machine!”
The smile vanishes from Lucy’s face. “No, Harry, I don’t want to.” She digs her heels into the smooth floor, tries to back up and return to the bedroom. “I hate it there. It’s so dark, and cold. And now that all the people are gone it’s worse than ever. Please, don’t take me back.”
She hates it, now, when the Toclafane call her Mother.
He smiles at her in that indulgent, frightening way. The one Lucy has learned to be wary of. “Don’t call me Harry.” He frowns at her. “You know how that irritates me.”
He starts pulling her forward again, but not down the corridor where the Paradox Machine is kept, so Lucy lets herself be guided. She still trusts Harry to lead her anywhere, so long as it isn’t to Utopia.
“And what are you on about? Not liking it! It’s lovely! It’s your future, darling. What the human race becomes! What it has to look forward to! You need to bare witness for the rest of your kind, need to process it properly, for their sake.”
“Why can’t they go and see it for themselves?” she asks, causing him to stop and look back at her. “I don’t like that place. It’s empty.”
“Oh, but that’s what I love best about it! Don’t you see, Lucy?” He brings a gentle hand to caress her face, and she leans into his touch. “That’s what the human race is - what it has always been heading towards. Utter vacancy. That’s why you need to see it! So you can be different, special. So you can embrace what you really are and become better for it!”
“No. I won’t.”
He takes away his hand and frowns again.
“You will.” He turns abruptly, pulling her down the hallway once more, fierce. “I can make you.” He smiles manically at her from over his shoulder. “I can make you want to.”
Lucy shakes her head. “You can’t.”
Not there. She will go anywhere, everywhere, with Harry. She just doesn’t want to go back there.
“But I can, darling! Come, look!” With that they reach a set of doors, and he flings them open to reveal the Valliant’s command deck.
He speeds past the Doctor’s small tent and hauls her up the steps at the front of the room, pointing to the controls waiting there. “This is one of the controlling stations for Archangel. I have dozens scattered about the United Kingdom down bellow. It’s how I got all of your charming countrymen to elect me.” He takes a moment to furrow his brow thoughtfully. “Don’t know why the Earth governments haven’t come up with it sooner.”
Lucy smiles.
“For mass messaging it’s a bit complex, far too much for you to understand. But with enough tweaking and working, I can make the satellites above transmit a subliminal command that you all, like lemmings, follow.” He rolls his eyes. “Rather disappointing, really.” Another shrug. “But for an individual consciousness it’s a great deal simpler. I think even you can understand how it’s done.”
Lucy stops smiling.
“See, all I need is an imprint of your psyche. One signature, one trace, and then I can rearrange the satellites to focus all of their attentions on a single person.” He grins, wraps on arm over her shoulders. “All I need is a strand of hair.” He tugs on her hair, and all Lucy feels is a sharp pain and the weight of his arm leave her. “It doesn’t always work, of course. Some have better mental barriers than others, and time traveling doesn’t help matters.”
Lucy watches as he places the strand of her hair on a particular section of the machine, pays attention to the toggles he touches and how he adjusts them.
He turns to look at her affectionately, and Lucy feels a moment of overwhelming pride.
“But that shouldn’t be a problem with you, dear. And do you know why?”
She smiles at him. “Because I’m special, Harry.”
He frowns at her, stops his movements. “How are you special, dearest?”
And then she realizes what he wants her to say.
“I’m empty.”
“That’s right, darling.” He bends down and kisses her for so long that she gets dizzy for lack of breath. “You are.”
When they return, Archangel’s affects wear off, and harry smiles as Lucy starts to softly cry.
==
September
Four months after the world ends, Joel has been promoted, has a boyfriend, and has gained twenty pounds worth of muscle.
He’s not necessarily proud of it, but it’s obvious that the end of the world has worked out well for him.
He’s still a bit confused as to why he got promoted, and how. All he knows is that he is now a corporal, with the benefit of his own room and the promise of his own command, if they can manage to bring up more men from the earth’s surface.
Joel decides it’s best not to question the whys of his burgeoning career, and instead focuses all of his attentions on Sam.
Although he is a bit surprised to realize how much he enjoys having sex with another man, Joel can’t pretend to be shocked at how quickly and easily he accepts this new layer of his sexuality. In any other set of circumstances, he might have happily gone throughout his life without having a relationship like the one he now has with Sam. But now that he does, he knows he is happier here, at the end of the world, than he ever could have been living that other life.
Sam is older, thirty-five, and he’s a sergeant in another division on the Valiant. He doesn’t talk much, but his eyes are deep and sad, and when Joel touches him, it feels like he’s on fire. And although it’s only been a few months, Joel has to admit that they got themselves into a bit of a routine. Sam will get that wandering, depressed look, Joel will console him, and Sam will reciprocate.
It might be odd, but Joel likes Sam’s sadness best. It’s something that Joel won’t allow himself to feel, but that he can ease in his lover. It’s not quite like grieving, but it’s cathartic all the same.
Meanwhile, Joel has been doing his best to keep up with the other men. Taking his ‘mission’ to heart, he decides that to improve his cover he needs to build muscle, brush up on his military knowledge, and learn to fire a gun.
Progress is slow, but he doesn’t mind. He always has been meticulous when it comes to his assignments.
==
November
The first time he hits her, it actually is an accident.
Lucy knows because when it happens he seems shocked, concerned, and even afraid. And for a while she’s almost happy that it happened, because it makes it easier to remember that he loves her.
But after that first time, the alarm and caring go away. Instead they’re replaced by the same glib, agitated humor that he’s started to approach everything with.
She had hoped, though, that he’d never use it with her.
Lucy thought she was special.
After a few weeks, she realizes that’s why he keeps doing it. Because each time, he seems a little less shocked with himself. A little less concerned for her. A little less afraid of what he has done.
Each time he hits her, Lucy feels another bit of Harry slipping away.
Or maybe the Master just likes the way she bruises.
==
December
Around Christmas, Joel is assigned to feed Jack Harkness.
The Master had decided to give the Jones family the holiday off - mostly to mock them rather than due to any sense of charity - and since Joel hadn’t been quick enough to invent some excuse, he’s saddled with the task of dealing with the notoriously difficult man.
He drags Sam up to the isolated deck where Harkness is kept, kisses him fiercely, and then sends him away again, pleased that he has been able to wrap such a strong man around his finger.
Thus satisfied, he begins to feed Harkness.
“He doesn’t love you.”
Joel looks up from the colorless porridge to see his prisoner smirking.
“The man you were with.” Harkness shrugs as eloquently as possible from his suspended position. “He doesn’t. Sorry.”
Joel glares and shoves a spoon of the mush into the man’s mouth. “Did I speak to you?”
Harkness barely takes enough time to swallow. “Nice with the stern, commanding voice. It’ll be more impressive once you have actual power to back up that tone, but it’s a start.”
“I have enough actual power over you.” To prove his point, Joel sets aside the food and stares at the rouge pointedly.
It may be petty, and under different circumstances it might worry Joel how easily he can lord his power over a starving man whose died at least a thousand times over the past seven months.
But Joel’s undercover, so he tries not to let it bother him.
And to be fair, it doesn’t seem to impress Harkness in any event. “Of course you do, for now. But you don’t have any power over him.” He gestures toward the hallway, where Joel’s beaux had just departed. “Sam’s his name, yes? And you’re Joel, right?”
Joel leans forward, ignoring the questions and focusing on his prisoner’s bold words. “What do you mean I have no power over him?”
“Like I said.” Another artful shrug. “He doesn’t love you, and you clearly love him.”
Joel does his best to hide his internal panic with a cocky grin. “Do I?”
The man Joel is pretending to be could never sentimental enough to love anyone else, and certainly not another bloke.
“Oh, yes.” For the first time, his tone isn’t goading or hinting at mockery.
If Joel didn’t know any better, Harkness may actually be trying to have a conversation with him.
“I know the stiff military way of expressing these kinds of things. Have done it myself on plenty of occasions. It’s all in the eyes.” Harkness sends him a genuine smile. “Yours become softer when he’s in the room.”
Joel squares his shoulders and scowls, just to prove how harsh he really is. “People have called me many things, Mr. Harkness, but never soft.”
He laughs. “Well, forgive me for breaking the precedent. But you do gentle, with him around. It’s nice to see. Not everyone in your position, in your century, can do that.”
Joel frowns. “My century?”
“I’m a time traveler, didn’t you know? Well, I was.” A reminiscing look crosses his features. “Been to just about everywhere that ever was. Everywhere that ever will be. It’s a big universe we’re living in, and time is just one tiny aspect of it that I’ve been about.” He focuses his attention back on Joel. “I’m originally from the fifty-first century. Different place. Men are better at being soft, then.”
“Some men they must be.” He tries to inject as much scorn as possible into his tone.
Harkness ignores it. “Oh, the best. Don’t you go thinking that a man can’t be strong and gentle. It’s commanding stuff, when done in the right measure.”
“Yes, because you’ve such an air of command about you now.”
“Wait and see, kiddo. I may be in chains now, but I won’t be forever. And when I get out, you’ll see right quick how easy it is for a man like me to control brutes of this sort with no more than a firearm and true character.” He ponders for a moment. “Could do it now, if not for these blasted chains. They really do nothing to flatter my figure, try though I might.”
“So with no chains and a gun you think you could take control of the station?” Joel asks, not attempting to disguise his disbelief.
“Yes. And I already have a gun. Just no way to get at it, unfortunately.” He sighs in irritation.
Joel blinks at him. “You don’t have a gun on you.”
“Sure I do.”
“We searched you.”
“Not everywhere.” Harkness gives him a scandalous wink.
And then Joel decides that, if circumstances were different, he would get along quite well with Mr. Harkness.
“Me and my people? We always have weapons on us.” He nods at Joel pointedly. “So would you, and everyone else on this station, if it wasn’t run by idiots.”
Joel gives up the play-acting and laughs. “I think I’m starting to see what you mean about that commanding personality.”
He can enjoy himself around Harkness, surely. He’s a prisoner after all, and no more likely to escape his predicament than Joel is. If he can be his true self around Sam, he certainly has nothing to lose by doing the same around this doomed immortal with no hope of salvation.
Harkness grins. “Knew you’d come around, Joel.”
“Not so fast, there. I’m not joining your rebel alliance or anything.”
“Maybe not.” He considers his captor with more seriousness than Joel had intended to evoke from his joking comment. “Like I said, you’re capable of tenderness. That says a great deal about you, in a time like this. Means you might not be quite as changeable as everyone else.” He gives a knowing nod. “It’s because you’re young still. They haven’t wormed their way into the heart of you, yet.”
“Or Sam,” Joel says with a touch of defensiveness.
“No.” He sighs. “Misery has done that for him. I’ve loved that way before, too.” He shakes his head sadly, as if he truly believes what he’s saying. “There’s no joy in him, when he’s with you. There’s only sorrow. Terrible, broken, sad. He’s not sharing his love with you, mate. He’s sharing his anguish.”
Then Jack Harkness looks at Joel with such compassion that he can almost feel the weight of it wrap around his shoulders. “That’s the problem with tenderness. It can be so easily misplaced.”
And in that moment Joel forgets that he’s pretending to be a solider and that his life depends on the charade, that the Earth is slowly being destroyed bellow him, and that he’s talking to an immortal time-traveler from the future.
In that instant, instead Joel allows himself to feel fear for his very human heart.
Unnerved, Joel immediately returns to his mission, his act.
Anything to help him forget how fragile he feels under his flimsy military mask.
“You done?” he asks his prisoner, yanking the porridge away and standing up before Harkness has the opportunity to answer.
“Suppose so,” the prisoner snorts. “Will I see you again?”
Joel shakes his head, already heading for the hallway. “I doubt it. Ms. Jones will be back tomorrow.”
“Shame. So nice, to have a proper chat with someone new.” Another sigh. “Goodbye, Joel. Be careful.”
Joel pauses in his retreat, throws a glance back to Harkness. “You’re wrong.” He locks eyes with the man. “About Sam.”
“No, kiddo.” He maintains Joel’s stare. “I’m not.”
The compassion threatens to crush him again, so Joel does what no self-respecting soldier ever does.
He runs away.
==
February
One day, he takes her to a room in the Valiant she’s never seen before. It has a floor made of clear plastic and walls made of mirrors.
She doesn’t say it, but the room terrifies her.
“It’s good, isn’t it? Isn’t it good?”
Harry gestures to the torched landscape of the Earth and looks eagerly back at Lucy, all but hopping in place.
“It looks sad.” Because the Earth looks just the way Lucy feels. Burnt. Broken. Though she thinks Harry wouldn’t understand what she meant if she told him that.
He frowns in that comical way he has, the one that used to make her giggle. “Sad? What do you mean sad?” He throws open his arms to the scene beneath them, jostling her in the process but not seeming to notice. “It’s beautiful! Lovely! I could dance! Come on, let’s dance!” He grabs her by the wrist and spins her around, making the picture of the Earth bellow them blur.
“Harry, don’t.”
His grip on her wrist tightens and he abruptly brings them to a stop. “Why, sweet, do you keep calling me Harry?” He’s not yelling, but he’s bringing his face closer and closer to hers, and his eyes look angrier than she’s ever seen them. “That’s not my name, is it?” He gives her wrist a painful twist. “Is it?”
“No.”
“What is my name?”
“The Master.”
“Good girl.” And then he’s smiling again, but in that false way that Lucy has learned to recognize. “Come along. We have a universe to destroy.” He holds her hand and bounces around the room, laughing and grinning at her the entire time, truly looking like the demented Master of an entire world.
But didn’t he see? The important world, the one he had created and shared with her, had already been destroyed. He had burnt and broken it, and now she really was empty.
==
March
One day, Joel is told to go down onto the Earth’s surface and hunt down rebel fighters in Japan.
While he’s down there, he kills a man and comes up with a plan to set Tokyo on fire.
He gets slaps on the back from his comrades and another promotion from his superiors, but when he gets back to the Valiant he gets sick in the nearest bathroom, disgusted with himself.
That night after hours of mind-altering sex, Sam congratulates him on his first kill and the extra stripe on his uniform.
And then Joel doesn’t know what to feel.
==
May
When the universe lives, Lucy knows that he must die, so he won’t break and burn it all over again.
So she shoots the Master and longs for Harry with all of her empty, broken heart.
The Year That Was
July
Joel straightened his tie, took a deep breath, and rang the doorbell of the small cottage.
A middle-aged woman with blond hair and a nice smile answered the door. “Can I help you?”
“Hello. I’m looking for a Sam Worthington? I’m doing a piece on retired military officials and would love to ask him some questions.”
The woman sent him suspicious glance and motioned to shut the door.
“I will, of course, be offering considerable compensation for his time, and media coverage.”
The woman brightened a bit at that, reopening the door and sending him a cautious smile. “Well, he didn’t retire, truth be told. He resigned.” She leaned forward, sending Joel a commiserating grin. “Between you and me? The best decision he’s ever made for this family. Let me get him for you.” She turned around, yelling into the interior of the home. “Sam, honey? There’s someone at the door for you.”
“Tell them to bugger off!”
“It’s the press, Sam!”
A indistinct ‘Bleh!’ sound was the only response.
“He says he might be able to offer us compensation!”
And then Joel saw the man he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about in the months since the world had been reborn.
Sam appeared after running around a corner with a young boy swinging in his arms, wearing a cardboard box with a hole on his head and making ridiculous zooming noises.
Joy was radiating from him, a happiness and ease that Joel had never seen before.
Joel could barely recognize him.
“We’re battling intergalactic space monkeys in here!” Sam informed the woman, as he tossed the boy in the air, making the child giggle. “Nothing’s more important than ridding the universe of this scourge!”
The woman at the door laughed, taking her son from Sam and gesturing toward the door. “I’ll tackle space monkey duty, you answer the young man’s questions.”
Sam sighed in defeat. “Yes, ma’am.” He reluctantly took off his box helmet.
“Good husband.” She leaned forward to give him a peck on the cheek, but Sam turned his head at the last moment, catching her mouth in a passionate, if awkward and child-laden, kiss.
And then Joel knew, even if he didn’t want to admit it, that he never should have come.
Sam walked to the front door, a hint of his smile playing around his lips as he raised his face to greet his guest. “Can I help y-?”
At the look of shock and terror on his former lover’s face, Joel felt something inside him snap.
“Joel.”
There was no warmth in that tone, no joy or glee.
There was only panic.
Joel shuffled his feet a bit. “Hi.”
Sam stepped outside, closing the door to his house behind him, blocking his family from view. “What are you doing here?”
Joel tried to offer a charming smile. “Looking for you.”
Sam stiffened, lowered his voice, stared Joel down. “I love my wife, Joel.”
The younger man almost recoiled from the hostility being sent his way.
He hadn’t known what to expect when he had gathered up the courage to come here after two months of indecision, anxiety and horrible longing. So when he had finally summoned the gumption to track down the man who had been his anchor during Armageddon, Joel had been determined not to have any plans or expectations, and certainly not to have anything as foolish as hopes.
But that all that purposeful non-preparation meant that he hadn’t been ready for rejection, either.
He adjusted his feet awkwardly, forcing himself not to instantly become defensive or apologetic, like he wanted to be.
Then he ordered himself not to be angry, or become cruel, like he had been forced to learn how to do in a in a year that had never happened.
It was terrifying, how often Joel had to remind himself that he wasn’t undercover anymore. That he had never been a solider, that he didn’t need to dull his compassion, that there was no one to hide from and no one to fight.
Because even thought it had only been a few months, Joel hadn’t been able to merge back into the life he had once lived with such satisfaction. He had remade himself to survive in a world gone mad, and now he didn’t know how to go back when it became sane again. How could he exist without the year that had reshaped him in every possible way? How could he forget everything he had done, everything he had accomplished, the power he had wielded? How could he carry the weight of a world that never existed? How could he forget everything that had been erased?
Especially the love.
“Of course you do.” Joel reassured Sam. “And I wouldn’t want to destroy your family, or ask you to leave them.” He looked hopefully at his one-time lover. “I just wanted to let you know that you don’t have to leave me, either.”
Barely giving him enough time to finish, Sam gave an emphatic shake of his head. “No.”
Joel recoiled as if punched in the gut.
“I’m sorry, but I love my wife and son.” He gestured toward Joel. “Us, what we did… that never happened. If the world hadn’t been the way it was, if my family had still been alive…” Sam sighed and gave a small glance back into his home before frowning at Joel. “Do you understand?”
Joel took a backward step away from the house. “Yes.”
And he did understand.
He understood that he could never be soft again.
==
January
They put Lucy in an asylum. They thought she was crazy.
She didn’t know how to tell them that she’d not gone mad, but sane again.
She had killed the man she loved. Used to love. Still loved.
And she had done it all for them.
These stupid, cruel, unforgiving people who had never seen her before she had helped to destroy them and couldn’t see her now. These people who didn’t realize how tiny they were, how doomed they would all become, given enough time.
After witnessing the end of the universe, the end of human life, Lucy knew the truth about this sad race. She knew how meaningless and empty they all would become, in time. Like her.
She had thought, when she pulled the trigger, that she was saving them all. Preventing the Master from coming back, conquering them all again. She had even thought she was saving herself, with the Doctor there in his shiny lights and grand promises.
But she should have known by then that Time Lords lie.
Who was Lucy now? Who could she possibly be, without him? When broken and empty, all a person wants is completion. Lucy wanted her other half, her companion. Harry, the man who had made her happy, had made her special. Because Harry had been a man who could love her, who could show her the universe just by holding her in his arms.
A man who had died long before she had shot him.
She just hadn’t realized that when she killed him, she had also killed who she had been when she was with him. Now, she knew her mistake. Knew the truth of her nature, the truth about everyone. About humans, about Time Lords, about herself, and most of all, about Harry.
But the truth didn’t help anyone, least of all her. She was empty, and she knew that she had killed off the only chance she had at being full again.
And so she let the months go by. Thinking more about how hallow she was. How hopelessly broken. How terribly lonely. It wasn’t life, not really, but it was all she had, and so she kept at it, her hatred for humanity growing as quickly as her regret for killing the only person who had ever made something of her.
Then, one day, she received a visitor.
“How are you today, Lucy?”
They had taken her to a plain room and left her there with a table, two chairs and a man. She didn’t know why. They might have told her, but she had long since stopped listening to whatever they said to her.
“Mrs. Saxon?”
She didn’t speak anymore. Didn’t he know? Hadn’t someone informed him that she was empty? That empty people have no voices because they have nothing to say?
The man got up, walked to a corner of the room and disconnected the small camera that had been filming them. He then sat back down and stared at her until she was forced to acknowledge him.
When she looked into his hard eyes, she was reminded of the Master.
“Mrs. Saxon, my name is Joel Anders. I want to bring your husband back.”
==
March
It had taken months for Anders to get access to Lucy Saxon. It was only after publishing a series of articles about the former Prime Minister that his begging for an interview with the woman was heeded, and only then because the hospital thought that they might get some good donors with the press.
It had taken time, but really it had all been quite simple. Everyone, he realized, wanted something, and because of that everyone could be exploited. Most didn’t have the courage to take what they wanted on their own, and so they were looking for any reason to let someone else to do it for them. Anders found he was good at this. All it took was the ability to crush any and everyone in his way.
At first, Mrs. Saxon hadn’t been as helpful as he had hoped. For the first two weeks she didn’t say anything at all, merely staring at him blankly as he told her about his plans to bring the other world back, and with it the Master. He explained that in order to do as he hoped, he needed information about time travel and mind control, information he knew she had and that would get her husband back.
He was about to give up when she finally spoke. “We need Archangel. And we need the Paradox Machine.”
Offices for Archangel satellites were still open throughout the UK, and Mrs. Saxon claimed that these offices contained control decks which could run the subliminal mind control wave links that had allowed her husband to become Prime Minister.
Anders researched the company in the wake of the death of Harold Saxon and the incarceration of his wife for his murder. Apparently, the company was fair game on the open market, although a wealthy Italian diplomat by the name of Rodolfo Rossi had been looking into buying the largest share, and was frequently traveling between Italy and the UK to discuss business with the remaining stock holders.
And so Anders formed a plan. He immediately quit his job at the newspaper and got hired as one of Rossi’s personal security guards, shrugging off his old life as easily as others shrugged off ill-fitting clothes.
Because Anders knew that he wasn’t the same as he had been a year ago. That he wasn’t Joel, the bright journalism student with compassion and aims to better the world. That life no longer fit him. Now, all he wanted, all he needed, was to see the earth burn again. He knew how to navigate that life. Knew how to survive it. In that world, he was without vulnerabilities. In that world, no one could hurt him.
Lucy Saxon proved be a simple but valuable partner in his quest to bring about the end of the times a second time. While he was quickly rising in the ranks in Rossi’s security team, she was getting out of the asylum. She made rapid and impressive progress, forced her lawyers to rush her court case, sold herself as a scared woman trying to protect her country.
Lucy wasn’t bright, and Anders found himself struggling to remain patient with the half-mad woman as he explained what he needed from her. She never seemed to be entirely focused, always seemed to be off in some corner of her limited mind. It was maddening, and Anders would have been rougher with her if he thought she could stand it without descending completely into insanity. Persistence paid off, however, and Lucy, given enough coaxing, was very good at following the directives of others who could help her reach her goals. Freedom, and Harry.
Within four months, Anders had bribed or disposed of everyone within Rossi’s security who wasn’t loyal to him, making him head of the division. Meanwhile, Lucy was out of the asylum and ready to begin her next task in the execution of the plan.
She was going to seduce Rodolfo Rossi.
==
April
Lucy didn’t mind becoming Rodolfo’s lover. She knew it would upset Harry when he came back, but she would just explain that it was all necessary to get him back. That it proved how much she loved him.
It took Lucy a week to make Rodolfo take her to bed, and another week to convince him to buy Archangel stay in England with her.
The satisfied nod Anders sent her after was almost enough to make her feel special again.
She and Anders had gone into one of the Archangel offices soon after, and Lucy had shown him how Harry had made her want to go to Utopia. Anders had been angry when she explained that she didn’t know how to make the effects of the mind control long-term, or to effect people on a massive scale. He was even more furious when he realized that only the weakest of minds could be impacted by the technique Harry had shown her. Those who were drugged, asleep, sick, or broken.
He had yelled, thrown her into a wall, and broken everything in office. They had to stage a robbery at that site, just so Rodolfo wouldn’t become suspicious.
After that discovery, they had gone to another site and tried to see if the machine worked like Lucy said it did. Anders brought a short strand of hair with him for the test.
“Who is it?” Lucy asked, intrigued by the smirk across her partner’s face.
“A man named Sam Worthington.”
“What are you going to make him do?”
“Dream of me.”
Lucy frowned. “Why?”
Anders stared at the controls with something like sadness, and for the first time Lucy thought he might be a little human after all. “Because I want him to know what it feels like.”
She regarded the man nervously. “How will we know if it works?”
Then the smirk was back, and Lucy felt better.
She was done dealing with humanity.
“Oh, I’ll find out.”
==
Anders returned to the small cottage where Sam lived late in the evening, rang the doorbell, and waited.
Slowly the lights of the house flicked on, mutters coming from within as a body ambled up to open the door.
“Yes?”
Anders had to stop his breath from catching when he saw him.
Sam was ruffled. Flustered. His pajama bottoms were conspicuously hidden by a robe, his face was flushed, his breathing rapid.
Yes.
This is what he had wanted.
“Did I interrupt something?”
Sam shook his head in confusion, refocused his gaze. “Joel?”
Anders laughed. “How are you, Sam?” he asked, stepping forward into his lover’s personal space, rubbing thighs against thighs, reaching out a hand and grasping a hard and willing cock through layers of clothing. Sam gasped and shuddered, and Anders leaned in close, whispering in his ear, “Miss me?”
Suddenly there was a sharp pain lacing from his stomach, and Anders was falling down the few steps leading up to the house.
Sam stalked up to Anders, sprawled on the ground, rubbing the spot where he had just been punched.
“Who the hell do you think you are? This is my home! My life!” Sam shook his head in something like disgust. “Look at you.” He gestured down at Anders. “You’re pathetic!”
“At least I’m not living a lie!” Anders spat, jumping to his feet. Ready to fight. “I’m not pretending to be something I’m not, denying who I really am! At least I’ve the courage to do that!”
“The courage?” Sam snorted. “This, you coming here, attacking me. You think that’s courageous?”
Anders glared. “At least I’m not pretending.”
Sam looked at him with compassion. “I’m not going to say what we had didn’t mean something, Joel. Because it did. I needed you like you needed me, and I thought you understood that. I felt bad, when you came here all those months ago. I thought I had hurt you, that you might have-” Sam stopped. Shook his head. Looked Anders with that same, sad expression that the younger man couldn’t decipher. “But I must have been mistaken.”
He walked away, back up to his front door, throwing Anders one last warning look. “Don’t ever come back here again. You’re not welcome.”
Anders spat on the ground, wincing when blood darkened the salvia.
No, he wasn’t welcomed here. Not now.
But he would be.
==
The next day Anders returned to the office at their appointed time, looking angry.
Lucy skirted around him. Observing him, trying to decide if he was too angry to be spoken to. “Did it not work?”
“It did.” He walked up to the controls with purpose, fiddling with knobs, throwing leavers into place.
Lucy decided to take a step closer. “Then what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he denied instantly, focusing his attention on the meaningless task before him.
Lucy looked at her partner and studied him for the first time. Noticed how young he still was. The hurt radiating from him.
She wondered if he might be broken, too.
Anders finally turned to her, staring at Lucy intently. “We need the Paradox Machine and the Doctor to run it, and there’s only one way to be certain he’ll come back.”
Lucy feels something constrict in her chest. “Martha.” The Time Lord’s companion. His other half.
“Yes,” Anders affirmed, adjusting another control. “The Doctor would come back for her.”
But would Harry come back for Lucy? Could she make him? Maybe if she undid the horrible thing she had done? If she changed the world back into his creation, would he still complete her? Would he still make her special?
“So we have to make her call him, to need him,” Anders continued.
Lucy snapped back to the present. “So what are we going to do?”
Anders flicked another knob, smirking. “We’re going to kill her lover.”
That night, Anders stole a hair from a homeless drug addict by a local theater, and watched him murder Tom Milligan as Lucy gave the command from half a city away.
Characters: Ten, Martha, Donna
Word Count: 5,929
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine. *sniff*
Spoilers: Up to “Planet of the Ood.” (Sort of.)
Summary: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).
Author’s Notes: Happy New Year! Thanks to everyone on FF dot net for their encouraging reviews and messages, I finished this chapter up ASAP. Sorry, not done for Christmas, but done for the new year! Different kind of chapter, so let me know what you think. No beta and not British, so any concrit would be great. Thanks and enjoy!
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Part Eleven
The Year That Never Was
May
Lucy watches the world burn and smiles.
She shouldn’t, and she knows that. A tenth of the human race is being destroyed down there, after all. People are dying by the thousands.
But all she can do is extend her lips into an overjoyed grin.
Bellow there is nothing but destruction and death. But Lucy knows that’s not what this is. It’s a triumph. Something her husband had been working toward for well over a year. Something she had helped him accomplish.
She, Lucy Cole - the stupid girl who was an embarrassment to her family and a fool to everyone else - had helped to create all of this.
The Toclafane even call her Mother.
And it is all because of Harry. Harry, who had told her she was special when the world wanted to do away with her. Who loved her when everyone else simply used her for her family connections and money. Who wanted her, in spite of everything, and who allowed her to be a part of all of this.
Harry takes the Doctor and backs away from the window, so Lucy walks forward to look properly at what she has helped to make. She steps up as close as she can to the smooth surface, leans her forehead against the glass, and looks down at the fire bellow.
It isn’t what she had thought to do, it’s true. She had assumed her future would be spent tucked in some powerful man’s bedroom, bored and untouched and ignored.
And no, the scene bellow isn’t necessarily pretty. Isn’t something to brag about during her parent’s wine parties, or to boast about at the latest trendy lounge.
But she certainly isn’t bored. And she is most definitely touched. And Harry sees her in a way no one else ever has. He doesn’t see her for what she is, but for everything she could be. When they met, he had seen her as his wife, his lover, his accomplice.
His faithful companion.
She pulls away from the window as Harry appears, a warm presence at her back, a tug at her elbow. A searing kiss on her still-smiling lips.
==
At first, all Joel can feel is terror.
He is on a flying ship, the president of the United States has been shot, and he is half convinced that he just saw a man age a hundred years in thirty seconds while a woman disappeared in a flash of light.
None of these things are normal fare for the twenty-four year-old rookie journalist.
Down bellow, he knows the Earth is on fire. He can almost hear the people dying.
Joel doesn’t let the panic take control for long. His first assignment had been to work with a troop of new recruits through boot camp and their first few months in Afghanistan. After enough bombs go off around you, you learn quickly enough that panicking, terror, hope… All of those emotions will get you killed.
So instead, Joel runs into the nearest supply closet, finds a non-descript, grunt-man uniform, and puts it on. He ditches his pen, paper, mobile and suit as soon as possible, kicking them into a dust bin and hoping that no one discovers them. He suspects that journalists will not be welcome on the Valiant for long.
For the first week, he walks around in a barely-concealed state of fear. He doesn’t know what has happened to his family or friends, doesn’t dare think too heavily on what the mad fellow in charge is up to, and tries to blend in as seamlessly as possible.
It isn’t nearly as difficult as it should be.
The commander of the small troop of military men merely scowls at Joel when he shows up in the barracks without a rifle or proper shoes, and orders him to scrub the mess and bathrooms before supplying him with the finishing touches to his disguise, a bunk to sleep in, and food to eat.
Initially, Joel tries to be inconspicuous, something that takes too much effort and makes him anxious. So the second week, he tries to look at it as another assignment. Like with the recruits, only this time he is undercover. Investigating the inner workings of the fortress that helped a mad man take over the world.
It helps. The thought of having a mission - something to work toward in a very broken world - calms him. He still doesn’t dare try to contact anyone on the earth bellow. He doesn’t even try to talk to people on the ship, too nervous that someone might remember him from the news conference if allowed a good look at him. But he has a reason to be on the ship, even if it is a manufactured one. Emotions are easy to control when Joel had a firm sense of purpose.
Or they are until the third week, anyway.
Then Joel meets Sam.
==
July
It’s past noon when Harry barges into their bedroom, jumping on the bed and jarring her awake.
“Wife! How are you today? Well, I hope? Of course you are!”
As she groggily sits up, Lucy wonders if she can be well today, for Harry’s sake.
“I’ve a surprise for you this morning!”
She stretches and smiles at him. Loves him with a look. “A surprise?”
“Yes!” He leaps off the bed, grabbing her hand and tugging her out as well, pulling her out of their room and into the hallways of the Valiant in her nightie. “I’m going to take you back to Utopia in my Paradox Machine!”
The smile vanishes from Lucy’s face. “No, Harry, I don’t want to.” She digs her heels into the smooth floor, tries to back up and return to the bedroom. “I hate it there. It’s so dark, and cold. And now that all the people are gone it’s worse than ever. Please, don’t take me back.”
She hates it, now, when the Toclafane call her Mother.
He smiles at her in that indulgent, frightening way. The one Lucy has learned to be wary of. “Don’t call me Harry.” He frowns at her. “You know how that irritates me.”
He starts pulling her forward again, but not down the corridor where the Paradox Machine is kept, so Lucy lets herself be guided. She still trusts Harry to lead her anywhere, so long as it isn’t to Utopia.
“And what are you on about? Not liking it! It’s lovely! It’s your future, darling. What the human race becomes! What it has to look forward to! You need to bare witness for the rest of your kind, need to process it properly, for their sake.”
“Why can’t they go and see it for themselves?” she asks, causing him to stop and look back at her. “I don’t like that place. It’s empty.”
“Oh, but that’s what I love best about it! Don’t you see, Lucy?” He brings a gentle hand to caress her face, and she leans into his touch. “That’s what the human race is - what it has always been heading towards. Utter vacancy. That’s why you need to see it! So you can be different, special. So you can embrace what you really are and become better for it!”
“No. I won’t.”
He takes away his hand and frowns again.
“You will.” He turns abruptly, pulling her down the hallway once more, fierce. “I can make you.” He smiles manically at her from over his shoulder. “I can make you want to.”
Lucy shakes her head. “You can’t.”
Not there. She will go anywhere, everywhere, with Harry. She just doesn’t want to go back there.
“But I can, darling! Come, look!” With that they reach a set of doors, and he flings them open to reveal the Valliant’s command deck.
He speeds past the Doctor’s small tent and hauls her up the steps at the front of the room, pointing to the controls waiting there. “This is one of the controlling stations for Archangel. I have dozens scattered about the United Kingdom down bellow. It’s how I got all of your charming countrymen to elect me.” He takes a moment to furrow his brow thoughtfully. “Don’t know why the Earth governments haven’t come up with it sooner.”
Lucy smiles.
“For mass messaging it’s a bit complex, far too much for you to understand. But with enough tweaking and working, I can make the satellites above transmit a subliminal command that you all, like lemmings, follow.” He rolls his eyes. “Rather disappointing, really.” Another shrug. “But for an individual consciousness it’s a great deal simpler. I think even you can understand how it’s done.”
Lucy stops smiling.
“See, all I need is an imprint of your psyche. One signature, one trace, and then I can rearrange the satellites to focus all of their attentions on a single person.” He grins, wraps on arm over her shoulders. “All I need is a strand of hair.” He tugs on her hair, and all Lucy feels is a sharp pain and the weight of his arm leave her. “It doesn’t always work, of course. Some have better mental barriers than others, and time traveling doesn’t help matters.”
Lucy watches as he places the strand of her hair on a particular section of the machine, pays attention to the toggles he touches and how he adjusts them.
He turns to look at her affectionately, and Lucy feels a moment of overwhelming pride.
“But that shouldn’t be a problem with you, dear. And do you know why?”
She smiles at him. “Because I’m special, Harry.”
He frowns at her, stops his movements. “How are you special, dearest?”
And then she realizes what he wants her to say.
“I’m empty.”
“That’s right, darling.” He bends down and kisses her for so long that she gets dizzy for lack of breath. “You are.”
When they return, Archangel’s affects wear off, and harry smiles as Lucy starts to softly cry.
==
September
Four months after the world ends, Joel has been promoted, has a boyfriend, and has gained twenty pounds worth of muscle.
He’s not necessarily proud of it, but it’s obvious that the end of the world has worked out well for him.
He’s still a bit confused as to why he got promoted, and how. All he knows is that he is now a corporal, with the benefit of his own room and the promise of his own command, if they can manage to bring up more men from the earth’s surface.
Joel decides it’s best not to question the whys of his burgeoning career, and instead focuses all of his attentions on Sam.
Although he is a bit surprised to realize how much he enjoys having sex with another man, Joel can’t pretend to be shocked at how quickly and easily he accepts this new layer of his sexuality. In any other set of circumstances, he might have happily gone throughout his life without having a relationship like the one he now has with Sam. But now that he does, he knows he is happier here, at the end of the world, than he ever could have been living that other life.
Sam is older, thirty-five, and he’s a sergeant in another division on the Valiant. He doesn’t talk much, but his eyes are deep and sad, and when Joel touches him, it feels like he’s on fire. And although it’s only been a few months, Joel has to admit that they got themselves into a bit of a routine. Sam will get that wandering, depressed look, Joel will console him, and Sam will reciprocate.
It might be odd, but Joel likes Sam’s sadness best. It’s something that Joel won’t allow himself to feel, but that he can ease in his lover. It’s not quite like grieving, but it’s cathartic all the same.
Meanwhile, Joel has been doing his best to keep up with the other men. Taking his ‘mission’ to heart, he decides that to improve his cover he needs to build muscle, brush up on his military knowledge, and learn to fire a gun.
Progress is slow, but he doesn’t mind. He always has been meticulous when it comes to his assignments.
==
November
The first time he hits her, it actually is an accident.
Lucy knows because when it happens he seems shocked, concerned, and even afraid. And for a while she’s almost happy that it happened, because it makes it easier to remember that he loves her.
But after that first time, the alarm and caring go away. Instead they’re replaced by the same glib, agitated humor that he’s started to approach everything with.
She had hoped, though, that he’d never use it with her.
Lucy thought she was special.
After a few weeks, she realizes that’s why he keeps doing it. Because each time, he seems a little less shocked with himself. A little less concerned for her. A little less afraid of what he has done.
Each time he hits her, Lucy feels another bit of Harry slipping away.
Or maybe the Master just likes the way she bruises.
==
December
Around Christmas, Joel is assigned to feed Jack Harkness.
The Master had decided to give the Jones family the holiday off - mostly to mock them rather than due to any sense of charity - and since Joel hadn’t been quick enough to invent some excuse, he’s saddled with the task of dealing with the notoriously difficult man.
He drags Sam up to the isolated deck where Harkness is kept, kisses him fiercely, and then sends him away again, pleased that he has been able to wrap such a strong man around his finger.
Thus satisfied, he begins to feed Harkness.
“He doesn’t love you.”
Joel looks up from the colorless porridge to see his prisoner smirking.
“The man you were with.” Harkness shrugs as eloquently as possible from his suspended position. “He doesn’t. Sorry.”
Joel glares and shoves a spoon of the mush into the man’s mouth. “Did I speak to you?”
Harkness barely takes enough time to swallow. “Nice with the stern, commanding voice. It’ll be more impressive once you have actual power to back up that tone, but it’s a start.”
“I have enough actual power over you.” To prove his point, Joel sets aside the food and stares at the rouge pointedly.
It may be petty, and under different circumstances it might worry Joel how easily he can lord his power over a starving man whose died at least a thousand times over the past seven months.
But Joel’s undercover, so he tries not to let it bother him.
And to be fair, it doesn’t seem to impress Harkness in any event. “Of course you do, for now. But you don’t have any power over him.” He gestures toward the hallway, where Joel’s beaux had just departed. “Sam’s his name, yes? And you’re Joel, right?”
Joel leans forward, ignoring the questions and focusing on his prisoner’s bold words. “What do you mean I have no power over him?”
“Like I said.” Another artful shrug. “He doesn’t love you, and you clearly love him.”
Joel does his best to hide his internal panic with a cocky grin. “Do I?”
The man Joel is pretending to be could never sentimental enough to love anyone else, and certainly not another bloke.
“Oh, yes.” For the first time, his tone isn’t goading or hinting at mockery.
If Joel didn’t know any better, Harkness may actually be trying to have a conversation with him.
“I know the stiff military way of expressing these kinds of things. Have done it myself on plenty of occasions. It’s all in the eyes.” Harkness sends him a genuine smile. “Yours become softer when he’s in the room.”
Joel squares his shoulders and scowls, just to prove how harsh he really is. “People have called me many things, Mr. Harkness, but never soft.”
He laughs. “Well, forgive me for breaking the precedent. But you do gentle, with him around. It’s nice to see. Not everyone in your position, in your century, can do that.”
Joel frowns. “My century?”
“I’m a time traveler, didn’t you know? Well, I was.” A reminiscing look crosses his features. “Been to just about everywhere that ever was. Everywhere that ever will be. It’s a big universe we’re living in, and time is just one tiny aspect of it that I’ve been about.” He focuses his attention back on Joel. “I’m originally from the fifty-first century. Different place. Men are better at being soft, then.”
“Some men they must be.” He tries to inject as much scorn as possible into his tone.
Harkness ignores it. “Oh, the best. Don’t you go thinking that a man can’t be strong and gentle. It’s commanding stuff, when done in the right measure.”
“Yes, because you’ve such an air of command about you now.”
“Wait and see, kiddo. I may be in chains now, but I won’t be forever. And when I get out, you’ll see right quick how easy it is for a man like me to control brutes of this sort with no more than a firearm and true character.” He ponders for a moment. “Could do it now, if not for these blasted chains. They really do nothing to flatter my figure, try though I might.”
“So with no chains and a gun you think you could take control of the station?” Joel asks, not attempting to disguise his disbelief.
“Yes. And I already have a gun. Just no way to get at it, unfortunately.” He sighs in irritation.
Joel blinks at him. “You don’t have a gun on you.”
“Sure I do.”
“We searched you.”
“Not everywhere.” Harkness gives him a scandalous wink.
And then Joel decides that, if circumstances were different, he would get along quite well with Mr. Harkness.
“Me and my people? We always have weapons on us.” He nods at Joel pointedly. “So would you, and everyone else on this station, if it wasn’t run by idiots.”
Joel gives up the play-acting and laughs. “I think I’m starting to see what you mean about that commanding personality.”
He can enjoy himself around Harkness, surely. He’s a prisoner after all, and no more likely to escape his predicament than Joel is. If he can be his true self around Sam, he certainly has nothing to lose by doing the same around this doomed immortal with no hope of salvation.
Harkness grins. “Knew you’d come around, Joel.”
“Not so fast, there. I’m not joining your rebel alliance or anything.”
“Maybe not.” He considers his captor with more seriousness than Joel had intended to evoke from his joking comment. “Like I said, you’re capable of tenderness. That says a great deal about you, in a time like this. Means you might not be quite as changeable as everyone else.” He gives a knowing nod. “It’s because you’re young still. They haven’t wormed their way into the heart of you, yet.”
“Or Sam,” Joel says with a touch of defensiveness.
“No.” He sighs. “Misery has done that for him. I’ve loved that way before, too.” He shakes his head sadly, as if he truly believes what he’s saying. “There’s no joy in him, when he’s with you. There’s only sorrow. Terrible, broken, sad. He’s not sharing his love with you, mate. He’s sharing his anguish.”
Then Jack Harkness looks at Joel with such compassion that he can almost feel the weight of it wrap around his shoulders. “That’s the problem with tenderness. It can be so easily misplaced.”
And in that moment Joel forgets that he’s pretending to be a solider and that his life depends on the charade, that the Earth is slowly being destroyed bellow him, and that he’s talking to an immortal time-traveler from the future.
In that instant, instead Joel allows himself to feel fear for his very human heart.
Unnerved, Joel immediately returns to his mission, his act.
Anything to help him forget how fragile he feels under his flimsy military mask.
“You done?” he asks his prisoner, yanking the porridge away and standing up before Harkness has the opportunity to answer.
“Suppose so,” the prisoner snorts. “Will I see you again?”
Joel shakes his head, already heading for the hallway. “I doubt it. Ms. Jones will be back tomorrow.”
“Shame. So nice, to have a proper chat with someone new.” Another sigh. “Goodbye, Joel. Be careful.”
Joel pauses in his retreat, throws a glance back to Harkness. “You’re wrong.” He locks eyes with the man. “About Sam.”
“No, kiddo.” He maintains Joel’s stare. “I’m not.”
The compassion threatens to crush him again, so Joel does what no self-respecting soldier ever does.
He runs away.
==
February
One day, he takes her to a room in the Valiant she’s never seen before. It has a floor made of clear plastic and walls made of mirrors.
She doesn’t say it, but the room terrifies her.
“It’s good, isn’t it? Isn’t it good?”
Harry gestures to the torched landscape of the Earth and looks eagerly back at Lucy, all but hopping in place.
“It looks sad.” Because the Earth looks just the way Lucy feels. Burnt. Broken. Though she thinks Harry wouldn’t understand what she meant if she told him that.
He frowns in that comical way he has, the one that used to make her giggle. “Sad? What do you mean sad?” He throws open his arms to the scene beneath them, jostling her in the process but not seeming to notice. “It’s beautiful! Lovely! I could dance! Come on, let’s dance!” He grabs her by the wrist and spins her around, making the picture of the Earth bellow them blur.
“Harry, don’t.”
His grip on her wrist tightens and he abruptly brings them to a stop. “Why, sweet, do you keep calling me Harry?” He’s not yelling, but he’s bringing his face closer and closer to hers, and his eyes look angrier than she’s ever seen them. “That’s not my name, is it?” He gives her wrist a painful twist. “Is it?”
“No.”
“What is my name?”
“The Master.”
“Good girl.” And then he’s smiling again, but in that false way that Lucy has learned to recognize. “Come along. We have a universe to destroy.” He holds her hand and bounces around the room, laughing and grinning at her the entire time, truly looking like the demented Master of an entire world.
But didn’t he see? The important world, the one he had created and shared with her, had already been destroyed. He had burnt and broken it, and now she really was empty.
==
March
One day, Joel is told to go down onto the Earth’s surface and hunt down rebel fighters in Japan.
While he’s down there, he kills a man and comes up with a plan to set Tokyo on fire.
He gets slaps on the back from his comrades and another promotion from his superiors, but when he gets back to the Valiant he gets sick in the nearest bathroom, disgusted with himself.
That night after hours of mind-altering sex, Sam congratulates him on his first kill and the extra stripe on his uniform.
And then Joel doesn’t know what to feel.
==
May
When the universe lives, Lucy knows that he must die, so he won’t break and burn it all over again.
So she shoots the Master and longs for Harry with all of her empty, broken heart.
The Year That Was
July
Joel straightened his tie, took a deep breath, and rang the doorbell of the small cottage.
A middle-aged woman with blond hair and a nice smile answered the door. “Can I help you?”
“Hello. I’m looking for a Sam Worthington? I’m doing a piece on retired military officials and would love to ask him some questions.”
The woman sent him suspicious glance and motioned to shut the door.
“I will, of course, be offering considerable compensation for his time, and media coverage.”
The woman brightened a bit at that, reopening the door and sending him a cautious smile. “Well, he didn’t retire, truth be told. He resigned.” She leaned forward, sending Joel a commiserating grin. “Between you and me? The best decision he’s ever made for this family. Let me get him for you.” She turned around, yelling into the interior of the home. “Sam, honey? There’s someone at the door for you.”
“Tell them to bugger off!”
“It’s the press, Sam!”
A indistinct ‘Bleh!’ sound was the only response.
“He says he might be able to offer us compensation!”
And then Joel saw the man he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about in the months since the world had been reborn.
Sam appeared after running around a corner with a young boy swinging in his arms, wearing a cardboard box with a hole on his head and making ridiculous zooming noises.
Joy was radiating from him, a happiness and ease that Joel had never seen before.
Joel could barely recognize him.
“We’re battling intergalactic space monkeys in here!” Sam informed the woman, as he tossed the boy in the air, making the child giggle. “Nothing’s more important than ridding the universe of this scourge!”
The woman at the door laughed, taking her son from Sam and gesturing toward the door. “I’ll tackle space monkey duty, you answer the young man’s questions.”
Sam sighed in defeat. “Yes, ma’am.” He reluctantly took off his box helmet.
“Good husband.” She leaned forward to give him a peck on the cheek, but Sam turned his head at the last moment, catching her mouth in a passionate, if awkward and child-laden, kiss.
And then Joel knew, even if he didn’t want to admit it, that he never should have come.
Sam walked to the front door, a hint of his smile playing around his lips as he raised his face to greet his guest. “Can I help y-?”
At the look of shock and terror on his former lover’s face, Joel felt something inside him snap.
“Joel.”
There was no warmth in that tone, no joy or glee.
There was only panic.
Joel shuffled his feet a bit. “Hi.”
Sam stepped outside, closing the door to his house behind him, blocking his family from view. “What are you doing here?”
Joel tried to offer a charming smile. “Looking for you.”
Sam stiffened, lowered his voice, stared Joel down. “I love my wife, Joel.”
The younger man almost recoiled from the hostility being sent his way.
He hadn’t known what to expect when he had gathered up the courage to come here after two months of indecision, anxiety and horrible longing. So when he had finally summoned the gumption to track down the man who had been his anchor during Armageddon, Joel had been determined not to have any plans or expectations, and certainly not to have anything as foolish as hopes.
But that all that purposeful non-preparation meant that he hadn’t been ready for rejection, either.
He adjusted his feet awkwardly, forcing himself not to instantly become defensive or apologetic, like he wanted to be.
Then he ordered himself not to be angry, or become cruel, like he had been forced to learn how to do in a in a year that had never happened.
It was terrifying, how often Joel had to remind himself that he wasn’t undercover anymore. That he had never been a solider, that he didn’t need to dull his compassion, that there was no one to hide from and no one to fight.
Because even thought it had only been a few months, Joel hadn’t been able to merge back into the life he had once lived with such satisfaction. He had remade himself to survive in a world gone mad, and now he didn’t know how to go back when it became sane again. How could he exist without the year that had reshaped him in every possible way? How could he forget everything he had done, everything he had accomplished, the power he had wielded? How could he carry the weight of a world that never existed? How could he forget everything that had been erased?
Especially the love.
“Of course you do.” Joel reassured Sam. “And I wouldn’t want to destroy your family, or ask you to leave them.” He looked hopefully at his one-time lover. “I just wanted to let you know that you don’t have to leave me, either.”
Barely giving him enough time to finish, Sam gave an emphatic shake of his head. “No.”
Joel recoiled as if punched in the gut.
“I’m sorry, but I love my wife and son.” He gestured toward Joel. “Us, what we did… that never happened. If the world hadn’t been the way it was, if my family had still been alive…” Sam sighed and gave a small glance back into his home before frowning at Joel. “Do you understand?”
Joel took a backward step away from the house. “Yes.”
And he did understand.
He understood that he could never be soft again.
==
January
They put Lucy in an asylum. They thought she was crazy.
She didn’t know how to tell them that she’d not gone mad, but sane again.
She had killed the man she loved. Used to love. Still loved.
And she had done it all for them.
These stupid, cruel, unforgiving people who had never seen her before she had helped to destroy them and couldn’t see her now. These people who didn’t realize how tiny they were, how doomed they would all become, given enough time.
After witnessing the end of the universe, the end of human life, Lucy knew the truth about this sad race. She knew how meaningless and empty they all would become, in time. Like her.
She had thought, when she pulled the trigger, that she was saving them all. Preventing the Master from coming back, conquering them all again. She had even thought she was saving herself, with the Doctor there in his shiny lights and grand promises.
But she should have known by then that Time Lords lie.
Who was Lucy now? Who could she possibly be, without him? When broken and empty, all a person wants is completion. Lucy wanted her other half, her companion. Harry, the man who had made her happy, had made her special. Because Harry had been a man who could love her, who could show her the universe just by holding her in his arms.
A man who had died long before she had shot him.
She just hadn’t realized that when she killed him, she had also killed who she had been when she was with him. Now, she knew her mistake. Knew the truth of her nature, the truth about everyone. About humans, about Time Lords, about herself, and most of all, about Harry.
But the truth didn’t help anyone, least of all her. She was empty, and she knew that she had killed off the only chance she had at being full again.
And so she let the months go by. Thinking more about how hallow she was. How hopelessly broken. How terribly lonely. It wasn’t life, not really, but it was all she had, and so she kept at it, her hatred for humanity growing as quickly as her regret for killing the only person who had ever made something of her.
Then, one day, she received a visitor.
“How are you today, Lucy?”
They had taken her to a plain room and left her there with a table, two chairs and a man. She didn’t know why. They might have told her, but she had long since stopped listening to whatever they said to her.
“Mrs. Saxon?”
She didn’t speak anymore. Didn’t he know? Hadn’t someone informed him that she was empty? That empty people have no voices because they have nothing to say?
The man got up, walked to a corner of the room and disconnected the small camera that had been filming them. He then sat back down and stared at her until she was forced to acknowledge him.
When she looked into his hard eyes, she was reminded of the Master.
“Mrs. Saxon, my name is Joel Anders. I want to bring your husband back.”
==
March
It had taken months for Anders to get access to Lucy Saxon. It was only after publishing a series of articles about the former Prime Minister that his begging for an interview with the woman was heeded, and only then because the hospital thought that they might get some good donors with the press.
It had taken time, but really it had all been quite simple. Everyone, he realized, wanted something, and because of that everyone could be exploited. Most didn’t have the courage to take what they wanted on their own, and so they were looking for any reason to let someone else to do it for them. Anders found he was good at this. All it took was the ability to crush any and everyone in his way.
At first, Mrs. Saxon hadn’t been as helpful as he had hoped. For the first two weeks she didn’t say anything at all, merely staring at him blankly as he told her about his plans to bring the other world back, and with it the Master. He explained that in order to do as he hoped, he needed information about time travel and mind control, information he knew she had and that would get her husband back.
He was about to give up when she finally spoke. “We need Archangel. And we need the Paradox Machine.”
Offices for Archangel satellites were still open throughout the UK, and Mrs. Saxon claimed that these offices contained control decks which could run the subliminal mind control wave links that had allowed her husband to become Prime Minister.
Anders researched the company in the wake of the death of Harold Saxon and the incarceration of his wife for his murder. Apparently, the company was fair game on the open market, although a wealthy Italian diplomat by the name of Rodolfo Rossi had been looking into buying the largest share, and was frequently traveling between Italy and the UK to discuss business with the remaining stock holders.
And so Anders formed a plan. He immediately quit his job at the newspaper and got hired as one of Rossi’s personal security guards, shrugging off his old life as easily as others shrugged off ill-fitting clothes.
Because Anders knew that he wasn’t the same as he had been a year ago. That he wasn’t Joel, the bright journalism student with compassion and aims to better the world. That life no longer fit him. Now, all he wanted, all he needed, was to see the earth burn again. He knew how to navigate that life. Knew how to survive it. In that world, he was without vulnerabilities. In that world, no one could hurt him.
Lucy Saxon proved be a simple but valuable partner in his quest to bring about the end of the times a second time. While he was quickly rising in the ranks in Rossi’s security team, she was getting out of the asylum. She made rapid and impressive progress, forced her lawyers to rush her court case, sold herself as a scared woman trying to protect her country.
Lucy wasn’t bright, and Anders found himself struggling to remain patient with the half-mad woman as he explained what he needed from her. She never seemed to be entirely focused, always seemed to be off in some corner of her limited mind. It was maddening, and Anders would have been rougher with her if he thought she could stand it without descending completely into insanity. Persistence paid off, however, and Lucy, given enough coaxing, was very good at following the directives of others who could help her reach her goals. Freedom, and Harry.
Within four months, Anders had bribed or disposed of everyone within Rossi’s security who wasn’t loyal to him, making him head of the division. Meanwhile, Lucy was out of the asylum and ready to begin her next task in the execution of the plan.
She was going to seduce Rodolfo Rossi.
==
April
Lucy didn’t mind becoming Rodolfo’s lover. She knew it would upset Harry when he came back, but she would just explain that it was all necessary to get him back. That it proved how much she loved him.
It took Lucy a week to make Rodolfo take her to bed, and another week to convince him to buy Archangel stay in England with her.
The satisfied nod Anders sent her after was almost enough to make her feel special again.
She and Anders had gone into one of the Archangel offices soon after, and Lucy had shown him how Harry had made her want to go to Utopia. Anders had been angry when she explained that she didn’t know how to make the effects of the mind control long-term, or to effect people on a massive scale. He was even more furious when he realized that only the weakest of minds could be impacted by the technique Harry had shown her. Those who were drugged, asleep, sick, or broken.
He had yelled, thrown her into a wall, and broken everything in office. They had to stage a robbery at that site, just so Rodolfo wouldn’t become suspicious.
After that discovery, they had gone to another site and tried to see if the machine worked like Lucy said it did. Anders brought a short strand of hair with him for the test.
“Who is it?” Lucy asked, intrigued by the smirk across her partner’s face.
“A man named Sam Worthington.”
“What are you going to make him do?”
“Dream of me.”
Lucy frowned. “Why?”
Anders stared at the controls with something like sadness, and for the first time Lucy thought he might be a little human after all. “Because I want him to know what it feels like.”
She regarded the man nervously. “How will we know if it works?”
Then the smirk was back, and Lucy felt better.
She was done dealing with humanity.
“Oh, I’ll find out.”
==
Anders returned to the small cottage where Sam lived late in the evening, rang the doorbell, and waited.
Slowly the lights of the house flicked on, mutters coming from within as a body ambled up to open the door.
“Yes?”
Anders had to stop his breath from catching when he saw him.
Sam was ruffled. Flustered. His pajama bottoms were conspicuously hidden by a robe, his face was flushed, his breathing rapid.
Yes.
This is what he had wanted.
“Did I interrupt something?”
Sam shook his head in confusion, refocused his gaze. “Joel?”
Anders laughed. “How are you, Sam?” he asked, stepping forward into his lover’s personal space, rubbing thighs against thighs, reaching out a hand and grasping a hard and willing cock through layers of clothing. Sam gasped and shuddered, and Anders leaned in close, whispering in his ear, “Miss me?”
Suddenly there was a sharp pain lacing from his stomach, and Anders was falling down the few steps leading up to the house.
Sam stalked up to Anders, sprawled on the ground, rubbing the spot where he had just been punched.
“Who the hell do you think you are? This is my home! My life!” Sam shook his head in something like disgust. “Look at you.” He gestured down at Anders. “You’re pathetic!”
“At least I’m not living a lie!” Anders spat, jumping to his feet. Ready to fight. “I’m not pretending to be something I’m not, denying who I really am! At least I’ve the courage to do that!”
“The courage?” Sam snorted. “This, you coming here, attacking me. You think that’s courageous?”
Anders glared. “At least I’m not pretending.”
Sam looked at him with compassion. “I’m not going to say what we had didn’t mean something, Joel. Because it did. I needed you like you needed me, and I thought you understood that. I felt bad, when you came here all those months ago. I thought I had hurt you, that you might have-” Sam stopped. Shook his head. Looked Anders with that same, sad expression that the younger man couldn’t decipher. “But I must have been mistaken.”
He walked away, back up to his front door, throwing Anders one last warning look. “Don’t ever come back here again. You’re not welcome.”
Anders spat on the ground, wincing when blood darkened the salvia.
No, he wasn’t welcomed here. Not now.
But he would be.
==
The next day Anders returned to the office at their appointed time, looking angry.
Lucy skirted around him. Observing him, trying to decide if he was too angry to be spoken to. “Did it not work?”
“It did.” He walked up to the controls with purpose, fiddling with knobs, throwing leavers into place.
Lucy decided to take a step closer. “Then what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he denied instantly, focusing his attention on the meaningless task before him.
Lucy looked at her partner and studied him for the first time. Noticed how young he still was. The hurt radiating from him.
She wondered if he might be broken, too.
Anders finally turned to her, staring at Lucy intently. “We need the Paradox Machine and the Doctor to run it, and there’s only one way to be certain he’ll come back.”
Lucy feels something constrict in her chest. “Martha.” The Time Lord’s companion. His other half.
“Yes,” Anders affirmed, adjusting another control. “The Doctor would come back for her.”
But would Harry come back for Lucy? Could she make him? Maybe if she undid the horrible thing she had done? If she changed the world back into his creation, would he still complete her? Would he still make her special?
“So we have to make her call him, to need him,” Anders continued.
Lucy snapped back to the present. “So what are we going to do?”
Anders flicked another knob, smirking. “We’re going to kill her lover.”
That night, Anders stole a hair from a homeless drug addict by a local theater, and watched him murder Tom Milligan as Lucy gave the command from half a city away.