more comment-fic
Here's the next batch of comment-fic:
Title: The Drums Dictates
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word count: 589
Disclaimer: Doctor Who's not mine
Warning: Mass murder and madness, probably. It's probably madness.
Prompt: Any, any, The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head.
The thunder of the drums dictates
the rhythm of the falls, the number of deaths,
the rising of the horns... ahead Woodkid, Iron
For as long as the boy can remember there have been drums pounding away in his head. He didn't even realise, at first, that he was the only one who could hear them.
He has grown to love them, because they are the only thing he has that is all his own. He doesn't even have a name; no one ever bothered giving him one, and he never did hear one that sounded right for him.
He is a slave, this boy. This city has never had a high regard for the rights of outsiders, and he had simply shown up out of nowhere one night. He does not remember anything of what had come before, although sometimes as he lies awake he receives vague impressions of fire and fear and running and lashing out.
Sometimes he can't help but feel that he should be something more. In the privacy of his own head, where the drums beat and beat and beat and beat, he sneers at his masters. Everyone here is so stupid; he is the only one who's not.
None of them have even an inkling of the way his discontent grows by the day. He is quiet and good, and all the while his frustration and anger grow and swell and dance to the beating of the drums in his head.
It is over a decade coming, but eventually he too dances to the beating of the drums.
It isn't an ordinary dance that his drums dictate. No, this is like the impressions he gets when he lies awake at night. There is old fear rising up inside him, angering him. He lashes out and it is beautiful.
He takes up a short sword that he can hide underneath his clothes, and he goes from room to room and house to house. He kills everyone he finds, master and tradesman and slave alike. He varies his methodology with every kill he makes, just to keep things interesting.
Even now, in the feverish state he has fallen to, he realises that he can't kill everyone in one night. That is why he puts poison in all the food he finds. That should take care of those he misses.
He washes himself and makes his way back to his pallet before dawn. For less than an hour he sleeps more soundly than he ever has before.
He is awoken by chaos, fear and panic. They think that they were visited by an entire legion of devils in the night.
No one stops him when he leads a fine grey mare right out of a rich man's stable, nor do they stop him when he rides her all the way out of the city.
Outside the city, he finally gives into the urge to laugh long and hard. If there is a note of hysteria in that laughter, well, the horse will not pass judgment.
He rides far, and reinvents himself as a great warrior in another land. In time he leads armies of his own to bloody wars that nearly drown out the beating of drums in his head.
In fact, he almost forgets that he ever realised that the drums mark him as strange and possibly mad.
Then a blue box appears before him, and out charge a man and a woman.
He has only eyes for the man: a mad genius calling himself "the Doctor".
Just like that night long ago when he assassinated almost an entire city, the sound of drums drowns out all else.
Title: The Abandoned Land
Fandom: Supernatural
Word count: 520
Pairing: Alastair/Dean
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural
Warning: Alastair being Alastair, Hell being Hell, demons being demons
Prompt: Dean/Alastair, knife play
Dean never forgot the time before Hell, the years he lived Above. Less and less he understood that person he had been, but he remembered.
He wasn't a demon quite yet, but he wasn't really human anymore, either. More and more, his very self bled over black. More and more, he enjoyed what he did rather than simply enduring it.
There had been angels here before, he heard, looking for him. He wasn't sure he believed in angels, but if it was true then they were idiots anyway. Hell was especially unkind to anything less than unholy.
As they had found out, if they had ever really been here at all.
As if it could be true. If angels were to pull anyone out of hell, it would not be Dean Winchester, prize student of Hell's Grand Inquisitor. From the moment he had got off that rack and taken up the carving knife, he knew that he had irrevocably sealed his own damnation.
Once, that thought had filled him with helpless rage, like some snarling, gibbering, razor-toothed thing.
It didn't anymore.
If angels came for him now (they would not, could not, surely never had) he would cut off their wings himself, and he would love their screams. It was far, far too late for anything else.
Even as he watched, black smoke and black void bled through him and around him. Maybe he could have become human again, or mostly human, if he had got out when this started, but now there was no chance at all that he would get out as anything other than a demon.
"Dean," rasped a voice. "Dean, Dean, Dean."
He knew that voice. He stood still. He tilted up his head, bearing his neck in a gesture that was complete submission, here.
Alastair.
Alastair chuckled. Dean's teacher, his master, stepped up to him and rested a knife on his collarbone, the tip pricking his throat.
He did not move, he did not even twitch.
Alastair's other hand wandered over Dean's thigh. Still he did not move.
He felt hot breath at his ear, and his master whispered; "You've been a good boy. I have a present for you, later."
Teeth grazed the skin between his neck and shoulder. The knife pressed in.
Dean gasped. He wavered away, and the knife followed without pause nor mercy. It sliced smoothly, cleanly into him, and there was no moving further away. His previous movements had already pressed him right into Alastair.
"Dean-my-boy, have you ever played with an angel?"
Dean's eyes widened. "You know I haven't. Is that my present?"
"A bright whippersnapper named Castiel. He almost got to you, before. He almost took you ri-iight up and away. You should ask him why, when you play."
"Oh, I will."
"Good." Alastair's teeth, such as he had, gleamed bright as he grinned. "You'll find the answer fascinating. Trust me."
The knife pressed deeper. Dean groaned and slumped into Alastair. A hand brushed over his stomach and hips, pausing to pinch sharply here and there.
"Pretty thing. You know you're mine, don't you?"
"Yes, master. I know."
Title: Innocent
Fandom: Harry Potter
Word count: 690
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling
Warning: Dementors and the effects thereof. Thoughts of murder and torture.
Prompt: Sirius Black, Life in/escape from Azkaban
Sirius does not know why he laughed as he stood in a blasted street with a wand in his hand, confused and terrified muggles all around him. Sirius does not know why he kept on laughing as hit wizards and aurors surrounded him. Sirius does not know why he hardly ever stopped laughing until he barely warmed an ever-chilled Azkaban cell.
Little Peter was so clever, in the end. Maybe that was why Sirius laughed. He had never expected cleverness of Peter. That had always been for James and Remus and himself.
It occurs to him that Mother might be proud of him, now. His mouth twists into a disgusted snarl at the thought. He has not wanted Mother's approval since a ragged old hat sat on his head and shouted, "Gryffindor!"
It is what he has told himself since the morning after that first night spent with nausea crawling inside him. He knew that Mother would be disdainful, and even colder than she had ever been before, and he told himself that it does not matter, that he does not care and never did.
That is what he told himself until he believed it with everything he had. He still believes it, because this is one memory that the dementors will not take.
He's numb all over, but he still feels it when the dementors draw close again. "I'm innocent," he rasps past cracked, sluggishly bleeding lips. "I'm innocentinnocentinnocent..."
It's something to focus one, or to obsess over. It's something to keep him sane, or to drive him mad. Maybe it will do both. Stranger things have been done to minds in Azkaban.
He does not know how long he has been here. It might have been months or decades, although he thinks the latter more likely. He has for a long time now. He thinks it's a long time, at least.
It might have been centuries or millennia, although he supposes that is unlikely. Minister Fudge visited recently, didn't he, or was it not so recent?
He thinks he must be losing his mind, even with the dog-self to shield him from the worst of it. It is no wonder that his cousin across the way is such a raving lunatic. Maybe he is too, but with a bit less raving.
Much later, or possibly a little later, Cornelius Fudge visits Azkaban, and Sirius sees a rat on a boy's shoulder in a black and white newspaper photograph. His chest heaves and his eyes are wild; he knows this rat.
He asks for the newspaper - for the crossword, dear sir, and his own words almost make him giggle - and the Minister gives it to him. Finally, he has the motivation to leave Azkaban.
It is not long at all before he slips away into the night, takes off over the vast ocean in a small boat.
He's not sure when he reaches land. All he knows is that he awakens in the care of two men only a little less wild-looking than he. They don't have anything to do with society, they say. He was half-dead when they found him, they say.
"I have been for a while," he answers, his voice quiet and scratchy from seldom and ill use.
"There's something I have to do," he says, and he leaves.
There is something he has to do. Just as surely as he must breathe, just as surely as he must exist, he must kill Peter Pettigrew. It is the only way to keep Harry, James' little son, safe and alive.
He might even enjoy it, killing Peter Pettigrew. He's pretty sure that he'll enjoy it, because right now his heart is pounding and his pulse is jumping with the expectation. There is a roaring in his ears, and maybe it's the waves or cars or maybe it's something else. Maybe it's inside.
Maybe he should make it last, when he kills Peter Pettigrew. He's never used the Cruciatus Curse before, but he thinks he could now.
Maybe he'll think of something better than Cruciatus, before he gets to Peter. There are just so many possibilities...
Title: The Vampire Waltz
Fandom: Dracula
Word count: 570
Pairing: Lucy/Mina
Warning: Femslash, vampires being bloodthirsty fiends
Prompt: any, any, not your usual first date
Their "first date", as people call it nowadays, was kind of... bloody.
Lucy and Mina had been friends since they were children (laughing as they dance in the rain, stripping off their heavy dresses to warm by the fire, huddling under bed covers and whispering their secrets). They were always closer to each other than anyone else, and that did not change when they were both betrothed women.
Of course Mina was the first person Lucy came to after she woke up inside a crypt, with aching, tormenting thirst and no pulse or heartbeat. Of course Mina was the one she wanted at her side for eternity, once it was possible.
Mina did not say a word as Lucy lent over her, like a ghost in her elaborate white death-dress. Mina did not say a word as Lucy drew the blood from her, nor as she was held close and coaxed to suckle from her dead friend's bleeding breast.
Mina never did give verbal acceptance of becoming a fiend, but nor did she make any attempt to prevent it.
Maybe that was their "first date" (surely it didn't come before, when they, surely it didn't), or maybe that was a different beginning, and the "first date" was what came after.
"Dr. Van Helsing knows about me," murmured Lucy, as she knelt beside Mina and held her. "He hung garlic all through my chamber before, it was dreadful." She shuddered, for effect.
"And who is Dr. Van Helsing?" asked Mina.
"A friend of Jack's, or an old mentor. He probably knows about you too, by now." Something flashed in Lucy's eyes as she spoke that last part, something dangerous.
Mina frowned, worried and not quite afraid. "What should we do?"
"I have an idea," said Lucy, and lead Mina by the hand from their crypt, which did not actually have Lucy's name on it (and no crypt had Mina's, yet). No, their crypt bore the name of a century-dead sod who had no use for it anymore.
It was where Lucy had taken Mina, to watch over her as the blood took hold and Mina changed.
That first night together, they hunted the night. They might have hunted small prey to start (little children to come unto us), but ambition and the need to protect burned inferno-like in Lucy, and Mina was newborn and ready to follow her Lucy's lead in anything.
They would settle for nothing less than the one who would hunt them.
Dr. Jack Seward assumed that his mad old mentor had fled into the night for whatever unfathomable reason. He called a search, but never did find him.
He must have stolen Lucy's corpse himself, Jack reasoned, as part of his delusion. That was why she had not been there, and why she had not come walking back to her crypt as he had said she would. Of course there was a more reasonable explanation for all the bloodloss-pale children, those first few nights.
What really happened is this: Lucy slept beside Mina by day and hunted little children by night, as she awaited the transformation's completion. When the time came, the two of them found Dr. Van Helsing, and stalked him, and fed from him, and murdered him, and mutilated his body so that there was no chance he would ever rise.
Maybe what remains of his corpse is still out there in the sea, somewhere.
Title: Back Again
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word count: 411
Pairing: The Master/the Eleventh Doctor (sort of)
Disclaimer: Doctor Who isn't mine
Warning: Uh, not really, believe it or not. Flirtation, I suppose? Off-screen abduction? Imprisonment?
Prompt: Doctor Who, Eleven/Master,
"You've never taken me on a date before."
"This isn't a date, this is a kidnapping."
"Still, our first date, for this regeneration at least."
The Doctor did not expect to be hit over the head the moment he stepped out of the TARDIS. Probably, he should have learned to expect anything by now, but he never had quite got the knack of that. No one ever really did, although he came closer than most.
When he blinked awake, his head still throbbing a bit, it was to the sight of a man peering down at him with an odd expression on his face. From what he could see when he rolled his eyeballs, they seemed to be in some sort of medieval cell.
"Um, hello," he said. "I'm the Doctor. Where are we?"
The man sat back and shrugged, grinning. "I've no idea," he said. He didn't really sound bothered by this.
"Oh, a surprise then."
"A surprise indeed." There was a shrewd gleam in the man's eyes. "It's the funniest thing, Doctor, but I started looking for records of you, and what do you suppose I found?"
The Doctor shrugged, smiling just slightly. "Nothing, I suppose. Have we met?"
"Does this feel like a date to you? I think this feels like a date. That or a kidnapping, but there might not be that much difference at the heart of it."
The Doctor looked thoughtful, and maybe a little confused, for a few moments. "I feel like I know you. How do I know you?"
"You don't remember me, Doctor? That's hurtful. I suppose I have a different face now, but so do you, and I recognised you."
The Doctor might have looked uncomfortable then, just a little. "You know, I think I do remember you. We ran, didn't we? What do you mean about changing your face, anyway?"
The man started laughing. "Oh, Doctor," he said, once he had calmed down. "We ran, did we? I bet you say that to all the people you can't remember."
"You haven't answered my question."
The man grinned again, although this time it seemed as much like a bearing of teeth as anything else. The Doctor had been feeling something since he woke up, but it had been too faint to identify. Now, suddenly, it strengthened.
This feeling, it was a Time Lord.
The man, the Time Lord, started tapping on his leg, a four-beat pattern. He was still showing his teeth in that expression that might or might not have been a grin.
"Master?" whispered the Doctor.
"I love it when you use my name."
Title: The Drums Dictates
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word count: 589
Disclaimer: Doctor Who's not mine
Warning: Mass murder and madness, probably. It's probably madness.
Prompt: Any, any, The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head.
The thunder of the drums dictates
the rhythm of the falls, the number of deaths,
the rising of the horns... ahead Woodkid, Iron
For as long as the boy can remember there have been drums pounding away in his head. He didn't even realise, at first, that he was the only one who could hear them.
He has grown to love them, because they are the only thing he has that is all his own. He doesn't even have a name; no one ever bothered giving him one, and he never did hear one that sounded right for him.
He is a slave, this boy. This city has never had a high regard for the rights of outsiders, and he had simply shown up out of nowhere one night. He does not remember anything of what had come before, although sometimes as he lies awake he receives vague impressions of fire and fear and running and lashing out.
Sometimes he can't help but feel that he should be something more. In the privacy of his own head, where the drums beat and beat and beat and beat, he sneers at his masters. Everyone here is so stupid; he is the only one who's not.
None of them have even an inkling of the way his discontent grows by the day. He is quiet and good, and all the while his frustration and anger grow and swell and dance to the beating of the drums in his head.
It is over a decade coming, but eventually he too dances to the beating of the drums.
It isn't an ordinary dance that his drums dictate. No, this is like the impressions he gets when he lies awake at night. There is old fear rising up inside him, angering him. He lashes out and it is beautiful.
He takes up a short sword that he can hide underneath his clothes, and he goes from room to room and house to house. He kills everyone he finds, master and tradesman and slave alike. He varies his methodology with every kill he makes, just to keep things interesting.
Even now, in the feverish state he has fallen to, he realises that he can't kill everyone in one night. That is why he puts poison in all the food he finds. That should take care of those he misses.
He washes himself and makes his way back to his pallet before dawn. For less than an hour he sleeps more soundly than he ever has before.
He is awoken by chaos, fear and panic. They think that they were visited by an entire legion of devils in the night.
No one stops him when he leads a fine grey mare right out of a rich man's stable, nor do they stop him when he rides her all the way out of the city.
Outside the city, he finally gives into the urge to laugh long and hard. If there is a note of hysteria in that laughter, well, the horse will not pass judgment.
He rides far, and reinvents himself as a great warrior in another land. In time he leads armies of his own to bloody wars that nearly drown out the beating of drums in his head.
In fact, he almost forgets that he ever realised that the drums mark him as strange and possibly mad.
Then a blue box appears before him, and out charge a man and a woman.
He has only eyes for the man: a mad genius calling himself "the Doctor".
Just like that night long ago when he assassinated almost an entire city, the sound of drums drowns out all else.
Title: The Abandoned Land
Fandom: Supernatural
Word count: 520
Pairing: Alastair/Dean
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural
Warning: Alastair being Alastair, Hell being Hell, demons being demons
Prompt: Dean/Alastair, knife play
Dean never forgot the time before Hell, the years he lived Above. Less and less he understood that person he had been, but he remembered.
He wasn't a demon quite yet, but he wasn't really human anymore, either. More and more, his very self bled over black. More and more, he enjoyed what he did rather than simply enduring it.
There had been angels here before, he heard, looking for him. He wasn't sure he believed in angels, but if it was true then they were idiots anyway. Hell was especially unkind to anything less than unholy.
As they had found out, if they had ever really been here at all.
As if it could be true. If angels were to pull anyone out of hell, it would not be Dean Winchester, prize student of Hell's Grand Inquisitor. From the moment he had got off that rack and taken up the carving knife, he knew that he had irrevocably sealed his own damnation.
Once, that thought had filled him with helpless rage, like some snarling, gibbering, razor-toothed thing.
It didn't anymore.
If angels came for him now (they would not, could not, surely never had) he would cut off their wings himself, and he would love their screams. It was far, far too late for anything else.
Even as he watched, black smoke and black void bled through him and around him. Maybe he could have become human again, or mostly human, if he had got out when this started, but now there was no chance at all that he would get out as anything other than a demon.
"Dean," rasped a voice. "Dean, Dean, Dean."
He knew that voice. He stood still. He tilted up his head, bearing his neck in a gesture that was complete submission, here.
Alastair.
Alastair chuckled. Dean's teacher, his master, stepped up to him and rested a knife on his collarbone, the tip pricking his throat.
He did not move, he did not even twitch.
Alastair's other hand wandered over Dean's thigh. Still he did not move.
He felt hot breath at his ear, and his master whispered; "You've been a good boy. I have a present for you, later."
Teeth grazed the skin between his neck and shoulder. The knife pressed in.
Dean gasped. He wavered away, and the knife followed without pause nor mercy. It sliced smoothly, cleanly into him, and there was no moving further away. His previous movements had already pressed him right into Alastair.
"Dean-my-boy, have you ever played with an angel?"
Dean's eyes widened. "You know I haven't. Is that my present?"
"A bright whippersnapper named Castiel. He almost got to you, before. He almost took you ri-iight up and away. You should ask him why, when you play."
"Oh, I will."
"Good." Alastair's teeth, such as he had, gleamed bright as he grinned. "You'll find the answer fascinating. Trust me."
The knife pressed deeper. Dean groaned and slumped into Alastair. A hand brushed over his stomach and hips, pausing to pinch sharply here and there.
"Pretty thing. You know you're mine, don't you?"
"Yes, master. I know."
Title: Innocent
Fandom: Harry Potter
Word count: 690
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling
Warning: Dementors and the effects thereof. Thoughts of murder and torture.
Prompt: Sirius Black, Life in/escape from Azkaban
Sirius does not know why he laughed as he stood in a blasted street with a wand in his hand, confused and terrified muggles all around him. Sirius does not know why he kept on laughing as hit wizards and aurors surrounded him. Sirius does not know why he hardly ever stopped laughing until he barely warmed an ever-chilled Azkaban cell.
Little Peter was so clever, in the end. Maybe that was why Sirius laughed. He had never expected cleverness of Peter. That had always been for James and Remus and himself.
It occurs to him that Mother might be proud of him, now. His mouth twists into a disgusted snarl at the thought. He has not wanted Mother's approval since a ragged old hat sat on his head and shouted, "Gryffindor!"
It is what he has told himself since the morning after that first night spent with nausea crawling inside him. He knew that Mother would be disdainful, and even colder than she had ever been before, and he told himself that it does not matter, that he does not care and never did.
That is what he told himself until he believed it with everything he had. He still believes it, because this is one memory that the dementors will not take.
He's numb all over, but he still feels it when the dementors draw close again. "I'm innocent," he rasps past cracked, sluggishly bleeding lips. "I'm innocentinnocentinnocent..."
It's something to focus one, or to obsess over. It's something to keep him sane, or to drive him mad. Maybe it will do both. Stranger things have been done to minds in Azkaban.
He does not know how long he has been here. It might have been months or decades, although he thinks the latter more likely. He has for a long time now. He thinks it's a long time, at least.
It might have been centuries or millennia, although he supposes that is unlikely. Minister Fudge visited recently, didn't he, or was it not so recent?
He thinks he must be losing his mind, even with the dog-self to shield him from the worst of it. It is no wonder that his cousin across the way is such a raving lunatic. Maybe he is too, but with a bit less raving.
Much later, or possibly a little later, Cornelius Fudge visits Azkaban, and Sirius sees a rat on a boy's shoulder in a black and white newspaper photograph. His chest heaves and his eyes are wild; he knows this rat.
He asks for the newspaper - for the crossword, dear sir, and his own words almost make him giggle - and the Minister gives it to him. Finally, he has the motivation to leave Azkaban.
It is not long at all before he slips away into the night, takes off over the vast ocean in a small boat.
He's not sure when he reaches land. All he knows is that he awakens in the care of two men only a little less wild-looking than he. They don't have anything to do with society, they say. He was half-dead when they found him, they say.
"I have been for a while," he answers, his voice quiet and scratchy from seldom and ill use.
"There's something I have to do," he says, and he leaves.
There is something he has to do. Just as surely as he must breathe, just as surely as he must exist, he must kill Peter Pettigrew. It is the only way to keep Harry, James' little son, safe and alive.
He might even enjoy it, killing Peter Pettigrew. He's pretty sure that he'll enjoy it, because right now his heart is pounding and his pulse is jumping with the expectation. There is a roaring in his ears, and maybe it's the waves or cars or maybe it's something else. Maybe it's inside.
Maybe he should make it last, when he kills Peter Pettigrew. He's never used the Cruciatus Curse before, but he thinks he could now.
Maybe he'll think of something better than Cruciatus, before he gets to Peter. There are just so many possibilities...
Title: The Vampire Waltz
Fandom: Dracula
Word count: 570
Pairing: Lucy/Mina
Warning: Femslash, vampires being bloodthirsty fiends
Prompt: any, any, not your usual first date
Their "first date", as people call it nowadays, was kind of... bloody.
Lucy and Mina had been friends since they were children (laughing as they dance in the rain, stripping off their heavy dresses to warm by the fire, huddling under bed covers and whispering their secrets). They were always closer to each other than anyone else, and that did not change when they were both betrothed women.
Of course Mina was the first person Lucy came to after she woke up inside a crypt, with aching, tormenting thirst and no pulse or heartbeat. Of course Mina was the one she wanted at her side for eternity, once it was possible.
Mina did not say a word as Lucy lent over her, like a ghost in her elaborate white death-dress. Mina did not say a word as Lucy drew the blood from her, nor as she was held close and coaxed to suckle from her dead friend's bleeding breast.
Mina never did give verbal acceptance of becoming a fiend, but nor did she make any attempt to prevent it.
Maybe that was their "first date" (surely it didn't come before, when they, surely it didn't), or maybe that was a different beginning, and the "first date" was what came after.
"Dr. Van Helsing knows about me," murmured Lucy, as she knelt beside Mina and held her. "He hung garlic all through my chamber before, it was dreadful." She shuddered, for effect.
"And who is Dr. Van Helsing?" asked Mina.
"A friend of Jack's, or an old mentor. He probably knows about you too, by now." Something flashed in Lucy's eyes as she spoke that last part, something dangerous.
Mina frowned, worried and not quite afraid. "What should we do?"
"I have an idea," said Lucy, and lead Mina by the hand from their crypt, which did not actually have Lucy's name on it (and no crypt had Mina's, yet). No, their crypt bore the name of a century-dead sod who had no use for it anymore.
It was where Lucy had taken Mina, to watch over her as the blood took hold and Mina changed.
That first night together, they hunted the night. They might have hunted small prey to start (little children to come unto us), but ambition and the need to protect burned inferno-like in Lucy, and Mina was newborn and ready to follow her Lucy's lead in anything.
They would settle for nothing less than the one who would hunt them.
Dr. Jack Seward assumed that his mad old mentor had fled into the night for whatever unfathomable reason. He called a search, but never did find him.
He must have stolen Lucy's corpse himself, Jack reasoned, as part of his delusion. That was why she had not been there, and why she had not come walking back to her crypt as he had said she would. Of course there was a more reasonable explanation for all the bloodloss-pale children, those first few nights.
What really happened is this: Lucy slept beside Mina by day and hunted little children by night, as she awaited the transformation's completion. When the time came, the two of them found Dr. Van Helsing, and stalked him, and fed from him, and murdered him, and mutilated his body so that there was no chance he would ever rise.
Maybe what remains of his corpse is still out there in the sea, somewhere.
Title: Back Again
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word count: 411
Pairing: The Master/the Eleventh Doctor (sort of)
Disclaimer: Doctor Who isn't mine
Warning: Uh, not really, believe it or not. Flirtation, I suppose? Off-screen abduction? Imprisonment?
Prompt: Doctor Who, Eleven/Master,
"You've never taken me on a date before."
"This isn't a date, this is a kidnapping."
"Still, our first date, for this regeneration at least."
The Doctor did not expect to be hit over the head the moment he stepped out of the TARDIS. Probably, he should have learned to expect anything by now, but he never had quite got the knack of that. No one ever really did, although he came closer than most.
When he blinked awake, his head still throbbing a bit, it was to the sight of a man peering down at him with an odd expression on his face. From what he could see when he rolled his eyeballs, they seemed to be in some sort of medieval cell.
"Um, hello," he said. "I'm the Doctor. Where are we?"
The man sat back and shrugged, grinning. "I've no idea," he said. He didn't really sound bothered by this.
"Oh, a surprise then."
"A surprise indeed." There was a shrewd gleam in the man's eyes. "It's the funniest thing, Doctor, but I started looking for records of you, and what do you suppose I found?"
The Doctor shrugged, smiling just slightly. "Nothing, I suppose. Have we met?"
"Does this feel like a date to you? I think this feels like a date. That or a kidnapping, but there might not be that much difference at the heart of it."
The Doctor looked thoughtful, and maybe a little confused, for a few moments. "I feel like I know you. How do I know you?"
"You don't remember me, Doctor? That's hurtful. I suppose I have a different face now, but so do you, and I recognised you."
The Doctor might have looked uncomfortable then, just a little. "You know, I think I do remember you. We ran, didn't we? What do you mean about changing your face, anyway?"
The man started laughing. "Oh, Doctor," he said, once he had calmed down. "We ran, did we? I bet you say that to all the people you can't remember."
"You haven't answered my question."
The man grinned again, although this time it seemed as much like a bearing of teeth as anything else. The Doctor had been feeling something since he woke up, but it had been too faint to identify. Now, suddenly, it strengthened.
This feeling, it was a Time Lord.
The man, the Time Lord, started tapping on his leg, a four-beat pattern. He was still showing his teeth in that expression that might or might not have been a grin.
"Master?" whispered the Doctor.
"I love it when you use my name."