Fic: Firey Death (PG, Rose/Doctor, Master, crackalicious.)
Firey Death. Yes, yes it is ! It's new adventures of the Doctor, the Master, and Rose. Now with added smoke and flames and dire threats. Spoilers for Season Three (if that even counts anymore.) PG for language or something. I don't know: these three always seem to get away from me somehow.
For previous installments, see: Human Women and its sequel, Tea Time.
The New Time Lords sat in judgement. Literally. There was a very nice line of chairs just come in from the newly built IKEA Gallifrey II, called Joodgements, and they'd picked out lovely ones in red and yellow. They matched the wall-hangings and the embroidered robes and the circle of tile on the floor where the accused is supposed to stand.
The New Time Lords sat in judgement. Literally. There was a very nice line of chairs just come in from the newly built IKEA Gallifrey II, called Joodgements, and they'd picked out lovely ones in red and yellow. They matched the wall-hangings and the embroidered robes and the circle of tile on the floor where the accused is supposed to stand. So, to summarize: the Time Lords are in chairs, and the Doctor is standing up, and everything seems to be going right down the toilet.
"You look like twats," Rose says clearly, as she's dragged away to the waiting hall outside the court. "Twats in sensible chai-" she's cut off as the doors swing shut, and several people breathe deep sighs of relief. The Doctor pinches his glasses slightly higher on the bridge of his nose.
"Is this going to take long ?" he asks. "I've promised her the Chicago World's Fair and some hot dogs. She's on the rag," he adds, conversationally, to the recording secretary at his right. "She'd be perfectly willing to kill you all for those hot dogs. I think she's been hanging around with a bad element."
"Doctor," the chief minister coughs. "Let's keep the rag stuff to a minimum."
"Right." He gives them a narrow stare. "So disgusted with human biology, and for what ? Humans are delightful. Such interesting textures. Nice squishy eyeballs. Wiggly toes. Big round- eyeballs." The chief minister sighs, and shifts in his Joodgement.
"You, Doctor, are accused of consorting with a human."
"Five times last week." He rocks backwards slightly on his heels, and flashes a dangerous grin. "Six, if you count- and I do- that thing she does with her-"
"That's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about !" Several voices raise at once, with the urgency of angry birds; for a moment, confusion reigns, and the Doctor stands grinning with his hands in his pockets. The minister raises his palm in an appeal for silence, and they silence. "Alright. You've made your point. It's not that we aren't grateful. We are. It's simply that this isn't our way."
"Oh, definitely."
"And yet ?"
"And yet," he agrees. "It's so wonderful having you back," he adds, sounding truly happy. "I missed your blowhardy punishments. I get to disagree with you and get hauled to trial and everything. Do you think we could do this again sometime ?"
"We're not finished ye-" the minister begins, when a loud crash and a plume of smoke explode the front doors inward. A scuffed and dirty Rose appears in the ruined framework. She poses for a moment, with a hand against her brow.
"It's the Master !" she cries out, rather too theatrically. Several people gasp. The Doctor grimaces at her, and adds some subtle theatre-coach hand gestures; she ignores him. "Oh no, what could his terrible plot be ! Firey death, mayhap !"
The courtroom empties in a matter of panicked seconds, Time Lords crawling all over each other to get to assumed safety; with the exception of the Doctor and the overacting plus one. She's leaning in the doorway, checking her nails. "I was rather good, wasn't I ?" She beams at him, smudgy face and all, and he feels his hearts skip. Maybe. Just a little. He takes her hand.
"You're ready for your close-up," he sighs. "Now let's get him and get the hell out of here."
The Master was naturally having too much fun with the whole scenario. They found him at a pit in the mountain face, dangling a pair of kidnapped Time Lords over the smoking depths below by a rope tied around their veiny little ankles.
"Oh, let them down," Rose says, chewing her fingernail, which persists in splitting. "Their bloomers are showing, and it bothers me."
"They're not bloomers." The Doctor gives her an offended look. "They're-"
"Bloomers," the Master finishes. "Big sacred bloomers. Their names are embroidered in the back. Your sing-along with the old crowd over ? Because I'm done here, if the offer for hot dogs still stands."
"It had better," says Rose.
"Why'd you do it ?" the Master asks, peeling an orange. He still hates them, but he's hungry, and at the moment it's the only food in the cupboard that comes with the fun of unwrapping it. "Go home. Make nice. Wear the ceremonial handcuffs and get led about like a puppy."
The Doctor stares at him, confused.
"We went to the trouble of- of practically murdering my TARDIS to bring survivors around, and you wonder why I want to see them ? You wonder why I want to speak my own language again- and not just to you, because you're an ass." He stops and frowns. "That thought got away from me a bit, but it stands."
"You hated them."
"No, I didn't."
"Then that was me. I forget." The Master sits on the counter and tosses orange peels at him; they all miss. "Anyway, neither of us were favorite sons. We did them a favor- the favor. But I fully expected them to forget about that and get right back to the bitching and accusations." He chews, thoughtfully. "Maybe it's in our blood. They've put you on trial before. You remain an optimist. It's stupid of you."
"I suppose."
"You should've been out there, though. The chaos ! Robes are not good for running." His eyes fill with happiness. "They kept tripping in front of me while I shouted dire threats."
"Where did the smoke come in ?"
"Oh, that was all Rose," the Master says proudly; the Doctor puts his face in his hands.
"Rose-" the Doctor begins, rounding the corner with his hands in a knot before him, and his mouth not quite catching up to his thoughts. "Rose, I hope we can have a talk..."
He trails off at the console room. There, in the middle of the grate, the Master and Rose are sitting beside a small contraption made out of what looks like baling wire, matches and C batteries. He's twisting one wire off at the end and she's paying rapt attention.
"-and that's how you make a bomb !" the Master finishes.
"Okay," the Doctor says. They both look up at him with enthusiasm; though Rose has the grace to look slightly guilty. "Okay, that's it." He points to the Master. "I apparently had some scruples but I didn't feed them for a while so they starved to death. For the good of the universe and my relationship I'm going to kill you now."
"Relationship ?" Rose asks, fluttering her lashes.
"You ? Kill me ?" The Master snorts. "You haven't got the upper-body strength for it."
There is a very small fistfight before tea.
"You do know how I feel about you," he says, again, while she rinses the cut on his forehead with a bit of antiseptic. "Ouch !"
"Hold still, you ninny."
"I mean," the Doctor rattles on, shaking one foot up and down impatiently and making the stuff almost run into his eyes, "you do know. I'm sure you know. I must have told you about a hundred times. Right ?"
"No," she says. She dabs it away. "You've never said." He stops jiggling abruptly and turns to stare at her, now definitely getting a wash of it in his eye and whimpering in the process.
"I've never-"
"Nope."
"But you-"
"Oh, I know," she says, rolling her eyes, but in a gentle manner that suggests she's still attracted to his nuttiness. "I do know. Don't worry about that. I just thought maybe your people didn't have a word for it, or something."
The Doctor puts his face in his hands.
"I'm seeing a lot of these," he says, from behind them. "Look, Rose, I-"
"I found a monkey !" the Master yells, sticking his head into the bathroom. "Outside. In a shop. It's a decorative monkey. It's also a primitive energy resonator. Very cleverly disguised." He waves around a golden figure studded with jewels, in the form of an animal with a curled-up tail. Rose frowns and puts her hands on her hips. The Master chews his lip. "Replace shop with temple. And found with stole. There was a horde of angry natives, but I lost them." Rose's frown becomes a scowl. "Actually, I think the TARDIS may be surrounded by sentient bees."
Rose carefully shuts the door in his face. She sighs and sits on the edge of the bathtub. The Doctor looks at her with the kind of mute admiration children save for birthday cake.
"I love you," the Doctor murmurs.
"That's what makes the world go round," she says, kissing his head and ruffling the hair above his ear with her nose. "That and gravity, you keep saying."
Rose; who feels quiet, compassionate things about small dogs and grannies and children with reading disabilities; who shoplifted only once in her mad youth and cried over it for a week; who has painted a certain psychotic murderer's toenails more than once when he was feeling down; Rose the merciful, the just; Rose makes the Master give it back.
"I am very disappointed in you," he says, when they are upside-down over a different firey pit, being jabbed with sticks by angry purple wasp-men no more than a foot high. "I thought I was getting somewhere with your education." Rose snorts, and gets a stick up her nose for the trouble.
"My- you showed me a bunch of bomb diagrams and spilt tea on them. You babbled on about the rights of the mighty. Was I supposed to pick all that up ?" She coughs, delicately, on the smoke from below. "I hear about a million things a day out of the two of you."
"You were going to be my apprentice," he continues, mournfully. "We were going to be evil together. Eventually."
"Piffle," Rose says.
The Doctor, who has certainly not been eavesdropping and waiting, keeping his comrades in jeopardy for a few extra minutes of cheap ego-bolstering; chooses that moment to leap out of the underbrush with the golden monkey figurine, which he holds hostage with the sonic screwdriver pointed at its monkey face.
"Let them go !" he demands. The wasp-men buzz angrily. "Let them go, or I'll resonate this thing on a frequency so high I'll blow its monkey brains out ! Figuratively !" The release is messy- several people get stung in important places, and there is a dicey moment involving some ropes, the pit, and a suggestion of barbeque sauce. The travellers make it out, barely, rubbing their sore bits.
"Let's never talk about this again," the Master says. "I hate everything tiny. Makes me want to kick over a dollhouse."
"There's one in the TARDIS," Rose suggests. "I think it's-" she ignores the frantic handwaving from her lover, "the Doctor's. It's yours, isn't it, darling ?"
The Master looks at them both.
"It's too easy," he says. "It's almost not worth it."
"Look on the bright side," the Doctor sighs. "She may very well be just a little bit evil."
"And you love it," says Rose.
The three of them definitely do not kick over any tiny dwellings on the way back to the ship.
For previous installments, see: Human Women and its sequel, Tea Time.
The New Time Lords sat in judgement. Literally. There was a very nice line of chairs just come in from the newly built IKEA Gallifrey II, called Joodgements, and they'd picked out lovely ones in red and yellow. They matched the wall-hangings and the embroidered robes and the circle of tile on the floor where the accused is supposed to stand.
The New Time Lords sat in judgement. Literally. There was a very nice line of chairs just come in from the newly built IKEA Gallifrey II, called Joodgements, and they'd picked out lovely ones in red and yellow. They matched the wall-hangings and the embroidered robes and the circle of tile on the floor where the accused is supposed to stand. So, to summarize: the Time Lords are in chairs, and the Doctor is standing up, and everything seems to be going right down the toilet.
"You look like twats," Rose says clearly, as she's dragged away to the waiting hall outside the court. "Twats in sensible chai-" she's cut off as the doors swing shut, and several people breathe deep sighs of relief. The Doctor pinches his glasses slightly higher on the bridge of his nose.
"Is this going to take long ?" he asks. "I've promised her the Chicago World's Fair and some hot dogs. She's on the rag," he adds, conversationally, to the recording secretary at his right. "She'd be perfectly willing to kill you all for those hot dogs. I think she's been hanging around with a bad element."
"Doctor," the chief minister coughs. "Let's keep the rag stuff to a minimum."
"Right." He gives them a narrow stare. "So disgusted with human biology, and for what ? Humans are delightful. Such interesting textures. Nice squishy eyeballs. Wiggly toes. Big round- eyeballs." The chief minister sighs, and shifts in his Joodgement.
"You, Doctor, are accused of consorting with a human."
"Five times last week." He rocks backwards slightly on his heels, and flashes a dangerous grin. "Six, if you count- and I do- that thing she does with her-"
"That's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about !" Several voices raise at once, with the urgency of angry birds; for a moment, confusion reigns, and the Doctor stands grinning with his hands in his pockets. The minister raises his palm in an appeal for silence, and they silence. "Alright. You've made your point. It's not that we aren't grateful. We are. It's simply that this isn't our way."
"Oh, definitely."
"And yet ?"
"And yet," he agrees. "It's so wonderful having you back," he adds, sounding truly happy. "I missed your blowhardy punishments. I get to disagree with you and get hauled to trial and everything. Do you think we could do this again sometime ?"
"We're not finished ye-" the minister begins, when a loud crash and a plume of smoke explode the front doors inward. A scuffed and dirty Rose appears in the ruined framework. She poses for a moment, with a hand against her brow.
"It's the Master !" she cries out, rather too theatrically. Several people gasp. The Doctor grimaces at her, and adds some subtle theatre-coach hand gestures; she ignores him. "Oh no, what could his terrible plot be ! Firey death, mayhap !"
The courtroom empties in a matter of panicked seconds, Time Lords crawling all over each other to get to assumed safety; with the exception of the Doctor and the overacting plus one. She's leaning in the doorway, checking her nails. "I was rather good, wasn't I ?" She beams at him, smudgy face and all, and he feels his hearts skip. Maybe. Just a little. He takes her hand.
"You're ready for your close-up," he sighs. "Now let's get him and get the hell out of here."
The Master was naturally having too much fun with the whole scenario. They found him at a pit in the mountain face, dangling a pair of kidnapped Time Lords over the smoking depths below by a rope tied around their veiny little ankles.
"Oh, let them down," Rose says, chewing her fingernail, which persists in splitting. "Their bloomers are showing, and it bothers me."
"They're not bloomers." The Doctor gives her an offended look. "They're-"
"Bloomers," the Master finishes. "Big sacred bloomers. Their names are embroidered in the back. Your sing-along with the old crowd over ? Because I'm done here, if the offer for hot dogs still stands."
"It had better," says Rose.
"Why'd you do it ?" the Master asks, peeling an orange. He still hates them, but he's hungry, and at the moment it's the only food in the cupboard that comes with the fun of unwrapping it. "Go home. Make nice. Wear the ceremonial handcuffs and get led about like a puppy."
The Doctor stares at him, confused.
"We went to the trouble of- of practically murdering my TARDIS to bring survivors around, and you wonder why I want to see them ? You wonder why I want to speak my own language again- and not just to you, because you're an ass." He stops and frowns. "That thought got away from me a bit, but it stands."
"You hated them."
"No, I didn't."
"Then that was me. I forget." The Master sits on the counter and tosses orange peels at him; they all miss. "Anyway, neither of us were favorite sons. We did them a favor- the favor. But I fully expected them to forget about that and get right back to the bitching and accusations." He chews, thoughtfully. "Maybe it's in our blood. They've put you on trial before. You remain an optimist. It's stupid of you."
"I suppose."
"You should've been out there, though. The chaos ! Robes are not good for running." His eyes fill with happiness. "They kept tripping in front of me while I shouted dire threats."
"Where did the smoke come in ?"
"Oh, that was all Rose," the Master says proudly; the Doctor puts his face in his hands.
"Rose-" the Doctor begins, rounding the corner with his hands in a knot before him, and his mouth not quite catching up to his thoughts. "Rose, I hope we can have a talk..."
He trails off at the console room. There, in the middle of the grate, the Master and Rose are sitting beside a small contraption made out of what looks like baling wire, matches and C batteries. He's twisting one wire off at the end and she's paying rapt attention.
"-and that's how you make a bomb !" the Master finishes.
"Okay," the Doctor says. They both look up at him with enthusiasm; though Rose has the grace to look slightly guilty. "Okay, that's it." He points to the Master. "I apparently had some scruples but I didn't feed them for a while so they starved to death. For the good of the universe and my relationship I'm going to kill you now."
"Relationship ?" Rose asks, fluttering her lashes.
"You ? Kill me ?" The Master snorts. "You haven't got the upper-body strength for it."
There is a very small fistfight before tea.
"You do know how I feel about you," he says, again, while she rinses the cut on his forehead with a bit of antiseptic. "Ouch !"
"Hold still, you ninny."
"I mean," the Doctor rattles on, shaking one foot up and down impatiently and making the stuff almost run into his eyes, "you do know. I'm sure you know. I must have told you about a hundred times. Right ?"
"No," she says. She dabs it away. "You've never said." He stops jiggling abruptly and turns to stare at her, now definitely getting a wash of it in his eye and whimpering in the process.
"I've never-"
"Nope."
"But you-"
"Oh, I know," she says, rolling her eyes, but in a gentle manner that suggests she's still attracted to his nuttiness. "I do know. Don't worry about that. I just thought maybe your people didn't have a word for it, or something."
The Doctor puts his face in his hands.
"I'm seeing a lot of these," he says, from behind them. "Look, Rose, I-"
"I found a monkey !" the Master yells, sticking his head into the bathroom. "Outside. In a shop. It's a decorative monkey. It's also a primitive energy resonator. Very cleverly disguised." He waves around a golden figure studded with jewels, in the form of an animal with a curled-up tail. Rose frowns and puts her hands on her hips. The Master chews his lip. "Replace shop with temple. And found with stole. There was a horde of angry natives, but I lost them." Rose's frown becomes a scowl. "Actually, I think the TARDIS may be surrounded by sentient bees."
Rose carefully shuts the door in his face. She sighs and sits on the edge of the bathtub. The Doctor looks at her with the kind of mute admiration children save for birthday cake.
"I love you," the Doctor murmurs.
"That's what makes the world go round," she says, kissing his head and ruffling the hair above his ear with her nose. "That and gravity, you keep saying."
Rose; who feels quiet, compassionate things about small dogs and grannies and children with reading disabilities; who shoplifted only once in her mad youth and cried over it for a week; who has painted a certain psychotic murderer's toenails more than once when he was feeling down; Rose the merciful, the just; Rose makes the Master give it back.
"I am very disappointed in you," he says, when they are upside-down over a different firey pit, being jabbed with sticks by angry purple wasp-men no more than a foot high. "I thought I was getting somewhere with your education." Rose snorts, and gets a stick up her nose for the trouble.
"My- you showed me a bunch of bomb diagrams and spilt tea on them. You babbled on about the rights of the mighty. Was I supposed to pick all that up ?" She coughs, delicately, on the smoke from below. "I hear about a million things a day out of the two of you."
"You were going to be my apprentice," he continues, mournfully. "We were going to be evil together. Eventually."
"Piffle," Rose says.
The Doctor, who has certainly not been eavesdropping and waiting, keeping his comrades in jeopardy for a few extra minutes of cheap ego-bolstering; chooses that moment to leap out of the underbrush with the golden monkey figurine, which he holds hostage with the sonic screwdriver pointed at its monkey face.
"Let them go !" he demands. The wasp-men buzz angrily. "Let them go, or I'll resonate this thing on a frequency so high I'll blow its monkey brains out ! Figuratively !" The release is messy- several people get stung in important places, and there is a dicey moment involving some ropes, the pit, and a suggestion of barbeque sauce. The travellers make it out, barely, rubbing their sore bits.
"Let's never talk about this again," the Master says. "I hate everything tiny. Makes me want to kick over a dollhouse."
"There's one in the TARDIS," Rose suggests. "I think it's-" she ignores the frantic handwaving from her lover, "the Doctor's. It's yours, isn't it, darling ?"
The Master looks at them both.
"It's too easy," he says. "It's almost not worth it."
"Look on the bright side," the Doctor sighs. "She may very well be just a little bit evil."
"And you love it," says Rose.
The three of them definitely do not kick over any tiny dwellings on the way back to the ship.