FIC: Bad Girl (Doctor Who, Saxon/Lucy, PG-13)
Title: Bad Girl
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Saxon/Lucy
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimers: I don't own it. Russell T Davies and the BBC do. Spoilers for "The Sound of Drums".
Author's Notes: This is my first Doctor Who fic, and I am extremely nervous about it because I know it will probably get more readership than half my other fics combined. Many, many thanks to commodoresexual and Kippur for their advice. Anyway, this is my exploration of Lucy's character assuming she is not under mind control (and she better not be).
Summary: Lucy Saxon had always wanted to be bad.
Lucy Saxon had always wanted to be bad.
Growing up, she was anything but. A lot was expected from her. As the daughter of Lord Cole of Tarminster, she was expected to attend the right schools, make the right friends, be seen in the right places wearing the right clothes. As her two elder brothers were complete hellions and she was her parents’ last hope of upholding the family honor, she was expected to make the right choices, do the right things, say the right words. Be a good girl, Lucy. Do as you’re told. Set an example. Don’t disappoint us as your brothers have.
She did all of that. Lucy earned good marks at Rodean School, excelled at netball, and chose a suitable course of study--Italian--at St. Andrews. She never once stepped out of line and never got into trouble the way her brothers did. While society watchers tutted over the Cole brothers’ drinking and partying and womanizing, they had nothing but praise for young Lucy Cole. What a lovely girl, they said. Always so polite, always so charming, always knows her place. Such a testament to her breeding and her position in society.
But young Lucy Cole had a secret.
Deep in her heart, she wanted to be bad, just like her brothers.
She hated her properly demure wardrobe. Her friends and their perfect lives bored her. She found the endless parade of society parties to be tedious in the extreme. She constantly longed to say something appalling, out of the blue, purely for the shock value it would provide her social circle. She dutifully went on dates with the boys her parents suggested she might like, but silently mocked them in her head even as she smiled prettily and agreed with everything they said. She watched her brothers return from night after night of drunken carousing and wished that, just once, they would take her with them.
The only thing that kept her from acting out was her father. Lord Cole doted on his only daughter. He was loving and kind, always willing to set aside time for her, and sympathetic to what dislike of society life she allowed herself to show. In return, she adored him, and it pained her to see the heartache her brothers’ behavior caused him. So, for his sake, she kept her darker impulses tightly reined in. She might chafe under the expectations placed upon her, but she would not cause her father more unhappiness.
There were ways to passively rebel, though. Lucy could easily have earned top marks at school rather than merely good ones, but chose not to. She hid the trashy romance novels she secretly read in a hole in her mattress, but kept the expected classic literature out in the open on her bookcase. She never gave the boys she dated anything more than the customary kiss goodnight, though she always imagined what it might be like to push them behind the hedge and go much, much further. Only when playing netball did she ever feel any degree of freedom, and the thrill of letting her inner devil out made her a force to be reckoned with on the court. Pursuing a professional career in the sport, however, was out of the question. It simply wasn’t done.
Thus, as always, she did what was expected of her. After graduating St. Andrews Lucy went to work as a media liaison for several charities, before making a move into publishing. She did enjoy it to a degree as she’d always appreciated the power of the written word, but inside she always felt caged, and the flame in her spirit burned in vain against the walls she’d built to keep it that way.
***
At first, she thought Harold Saxon was just as boring and dull as everyone else in her life.
She’d been given an assignment by her boss at the publishing house--they had secured the rights to the autobiography of a fast-rising young politician, they expected it to be extremely lucrative, and they wanted her to work with him on it. "You’re a good editor, you come from the same background, you’ll be a good pairing," the man told her. "Just don’t fuck it up. We’ve got a lot of money riding on this. Okay? You’re meeting him for lunch at the Royal Exchange at eleven-thirty."
That left her precious little time to do her homework; even though everyone knew Harold Saxon’s name, Lucy wanted to be more prepared. She contemplated giving her boss the finger as he left her desk, but perfect Lucy Cole would never do such a thing, so she opened her internet browser instead and brought up a search engine.
Saxon was already waiting for her at a table when she arrived, reading the newspaper and absently tapping out a rhythm on one propped knee. She studied his back for a moment before approaching. Typical black suit, typical expensive wristwatch, typical newspaper folded to the international section. Typical politician, except for one aspect: he had no tabloid secrets, the press loved him, and he was as squeaky clean as they never came.
She would have been happier if he’d had a few skeletons in the closet.
"Mr. Saxon," she said in greeting, heels clicking as she finally strode forward, and he looked up from his paper as she rounded the table to sit down.
"Ah, Miss Lucy Cole!" he replied brightly, expertly snapping the paper shut and setting it aside. "What a pleasure to meet you. May I order you something to drink?"
"Water would be fine." His eyes were on her, sizing her up, and Lucy mentally bristled. Yes, nothing outrageous to see here, move along please, you stuck-up wanker. Then the corner of his mouth twitched slightly, and she had the distinct impression he knew exactly what she was thinking. It was rather unsettling, and she smoothed her skirt over her knees to cover the momentary discomfort.
He pursed his lips at her, gently chiding. "Water? Oh, be daring. You might like it." Lucy wasn’t sure if she had imagined the slight emphasis on ‘like’. The waiter appeared then and Saxon actually shot her a wink as he said, "Two Original Sins, please."
Lucy’s eyebrows rose briefly, but she said nothing. Mentally, however: Aren’t we presumptuous?
"So. Miss Lucy Cole. You’ve been assigned to work with me on my book. What do you think about that?"
"I think it will be a very interesting project," she replied in a neutral voice, though she really thought it would turn out to be quite uninteresting given the brief research she’d done. His reputation was sterling. "I’m looking forward to it."
Saxon was looking at her with sharp, keen eyes, attention focused squarely on her though the fingers of his left hand had resumed their tapping beat. "I’ll do my best not to bore you," he said with a smile, and Lucy was suddenly struck with the absolute certainty that she had not imagined the emphasis in his voice, and he’d ordered those particular cocktails on purpose.
Daring. Original sin.
The hidden flame in her heart flared and fluttered against its confining walls.
So you think you know me, do you?
"You’d better not be boring," she said, making a decision to deviate from the expected polite talk, "or I’ll have to request a different assignment."
The grin that blossomed on his face was like the rays of the sun after a storm, and she found herself basking in the approval it gave. He took one of the drinks the waiter had just arrived with and held it up in a toast. "I think we’re going to have a long and beautiful partnership, Miss Lucy Cole."
***
The partnership swiftly became a courtship.
They had initially arranged to meet twice a week to work on the manuscript for his autobiography. The first two sessions were pedestrian and wholly professional, with none of the vocal insinuations from their lunch meeting, and Lucy began to think she’d imagined them after all. Then, at the end of their third session, he surprised her by asking if she’d like to go to dinner with him. The fire, having burned low for a week and a half, crackled.
"I think I’d rather go clubbing," she replied archly, and something in Saxon’s eyes warmed.
"Name the club," he said, "and I’ll take you."
She hadn’t expected that response at all. "Don’t be silly. If the tabloids caught you at a club--and they would--there would be a scandal."
He was sitting on the edge of her desk, looking down at her; he clucked his tongue and shook his head in disapproval. "We can disguise ourselves, and I know how to evade the cameras. It’s not very hard. Come on, Lucy," and he leaned towards her, lowering his voice as he raised his eyebrows, "haven’t you ever wanted to be... bad?"
Two hours later they were crossing the rope into a singularly trashy dance club.
It was like entering a different world. The music was eardrum-splittingly loud, the bass line jarring the very marrow of her bones, and the lights were an epileptic’s nightmare. Lucy couldn’t fathom how her brothers spent their nights in these places without developing chronic migraines. But Saxon seemed to be positively energized by the atmosphere, and his enthusiasm was infectious--soon she was out on the dance floor, gyrating to the beat in a way that would have struck her parents’ social circle dead.
And she loved it. She had never felt so free, so wild, so uncontrolled in her entire life.
Look at me now, you pretentious twats, she wanted to scream at all the society matrons who had ever praised her for being such a good girl. Look at me! Perfect little Lucy Cole grinding against complete strangers like a horny tart. Perfect little Lucy Cole getting absolutely pissed on cheap beer. Perfect little Lucy Cole, pissed and snogging the man said to be our next Prime Minister. And I LIKE IT. I LIKE BEING BAD.
It was such a small thing, perhaps, sneaking into a club with the Minister for Defence and partying with abandon until the bouncers threw them out. But it was an impossibly large thing for Lucy. And now she had let the fire turn into an inferno, she never wanted to bank it again.
***
The next day, a beautiful vase of red roses was delivered to her desk at work. While her colleagues oohed and aahed and breathlessly asked who they were from, Lucy plucked the little white card from the center of the arrangement and read it away from their prying eyes.
Lovely first date, it said. We should make it a habit.
There was no name, but of course one wasn’t needed.
"Oh, they’re from Harry Saxon, of course," she said to the knot of co-workers gathered around her desk, and silently laughed at the openly shocked and envious looks they gave her.
***
One week later, her boss slapped a copy of the Sun down in the middle of her desk and said, "Didn’t I tell you not to fuck things up?"
Lucy’s stomach abruptly plummeted through the floor--they did catch us, I can’t believe I let him talk me into--but then she saw the headline and its accompanying paparazzi photo, and laughed out loud.
It was a zoom lens shot of her leaving a restaurant arm-in-arm with Harold Saxon two nights previously, when they hadn’t bothered attempting to shake the cameramen that occasionally followed him around, and the screaming headline read: SAXON’S FIRST LADY?
So sad they didn’t follow us more closely last night. The resulting headline would have been gold.
She looked up at her boss, fire sparking on the edge of her tongue, but the man was grinning. He rolled his eyes at her good-naturedly. "I don’t care what’s going on in your knickers, just deliver the manuscript on time." Moving off, he added over his shoulder, "Oh, and remember us when you’re living in Downing Street."
***
Three months after their first lunch at the Royal Exchange, Harold Saxon asked Lucy to marry him. Society congratulated her on a fine catch while frowning behind her back at the fast pace of their relationship, her brothers declared her a total loss, and her father asked very seriously if she was sure of her answer.
"Yes, I am," she replied. "I’ve never been happier in my life."
And it was true. With Harry she felt a completeness she’d never experienced before. He knew she hid a darker side, but he encouraged her to embrace it rather than keep it buried, and never made her feel ashamed for it. He was the spark to her flame, the enabler to her inner troublemaker; she loved the way he brought out her wicked side. When they were together, she felt she could at last be who she really was.
The night before the wedding, they were relaxing before the fire in Harry’s townhouse with glasses of wine when he said thoughtfully, "Lucy, what would you say if I told you I could give you all the stars in the sky?"
She looked over at him, but he was staring into the flames, left hand tapping out the rhythm it so often did. "I’d say you were being very romantic."
His eyes slid over to meet hers, and she saw they exhibited none of the usual playfulness they often held when they were together. "I’m serious, darling."
"I..." How could he be serious about such a question? It was a lovely thought, to be sure, a very romantic notion... but to actually be given every star in the sky? To actually have that ability? What was he playing at? "I... I suppose I wouldn’t know what to do with them all," she said finally, feeling an odd kind of helplessness she didn’t understand.
He put his wine glass down and slid out of his chair, coming to kneel in front of her and taking her own glass from her so he could hold both her hands in his. "You wouldn’t have to do anything with them," he said, eyes dark. "But they would still be out there, all yours, because I would make them yours if you wanted them."
The helplessness was rapidly giving way to a dull fear, deep in the pit of her stomach. "Harry, you’re not making any sense."
Squeezing her hands reassuringly, he said, "It will make sense when you’ve heard what I have to tell you."
And so Lucy sat as her fiancé explained that Harold Saxon was all a lie, and he was in fact a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborus, who was known as the Master. He was currently on the third of thirteen lives he would have, and he had come to Earth from the far distant future in a ship that could travel through time and space, stolen from a fellow renegade Time Lord. He had been hiding at the end of the universe as a human from a war his people had fought, but had been unmasked and restored due to the actions of one of the other Time Lord’s companions. The ship, which he called a TARDIS, had taken him to 21st century Earth--several months previous, in fact--and he soon began working on plans to gain control of the entire planet and remake it in his own ideals. In the short term, those plans included making a fast rise through British politics to the position of Prime Minister.
She listened, and the fear pooled into betrayal, and she could scarcely breathe.
When he was finished, he sat back on his heels and said quietly, "What do you think about that, Miss Lucy Cole?"
I think I’ve been played for a fool, that’s what I think, Mister Harold Saxon.
Strangely enough, despite everything he’d just admitted to her, Lucy was distressed only by the notion that he did not actually love her, and that the connection she’d made with him had all been a sham. That none of it had been real.
"You needed a wife to look respectable," she said hollowly. "And that’s what I am to you. Your trophy wife." Your fucking beard, you bastard.
His head tilted slightly. "You’re angry."
"Of course I’m angry!" she cried, jumping to her feet and yanking her hands from his. "You’ve just told me all I am is a cog in your machine!"
Sadness pinched his face, and he swiftly moved to take her face gently in his hands. "Oh, Lucy, Lucy," he murmured. "Never, ever think you’re nothing more than a simple cog."
"Why should I?" she whispered, trembling. "I’m just a silly human, aren’t I?"
"Stop. I won’t have that from you." He lightly held her chin so she couldn’t look away, and it was all Lucy could do not to drown in his eyes despite her anger and hurt. "Yes, you’re a human. That means you’ll never be my equal. But I know you, Lucy Eleanor Cole. I know you better than anyone ever has. I know what you want... you want to break the rules, defy the system, tear down the established order, be the bad girl you never allowed yourself to be... you’re a rebel, Lucy Cole..."
His breath on her skin, and the slow cadence of his voice, were making her shiver.
"You are smart, you are loyal, you are utterly wicked, you are everything I could ever wish for in a companion... a partner... a wife..."
He was pressing against her now, and she could feel both his hearts--both of them, funny how she’d never noticed he had two--hammering in his chest, mirroring her own single heart, and his lips were moving against her ear.
"I want you with me, Lucy," he breathed. "I want you forever. I’ll give you the stars, I’ll give you the sky, I’ll give you everything."
She realized her hands were moving up his chest to the collar of his shirt, and she remembered the long-ago fantasies of pushing those boyfriends behind the hedge. Harry had kissed her on many occasions, and they had done their fair share of drunken snogging (perhaps that was why she had never noticed his twin heartsbeat), but they had shared an unspoken agreement to never move beyond that. In her own mind, Lucy had still been too concerned with what was proper--some facets of one’s upbringing, no matter how hated, were too hard to shake off on a whim. But now she was no longer concerned with proper. She was marrying an alien with plans to conquer, who offered her the stars and had the power to actually give them to her.
Proper and good could go stuff themselves. She was through with being perfect little Lucy Cole. Tomorrow she would be Lucy Saxon. She would stand at Harry’s side and help him bring all his plans to fruition, and it would all be their own private, secret, shared joke until the day they would no longer have to hide their true selves.
"I’ll follow you anywhere, Harry," she whispered, staring back into eyes that promised her the universe itself. "You’ll always have me with you."
"It doesn’t bother you that I’m an evil megalomaniac who intends to take over your planet?"
"No." And she realized, without much surprise, that she meant it. He was everything she’d always wanted. Someone to understand her. Someone to know her. Someone to see her darkness, match her for it, and set it free. All other considerations were unimportant.
"You’re so bad, Miss Lucy Cole," he said against her mouth, a sly smile spreading across his lips as his hands moved beneath her blouse, "and I absolutely love you for it."
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Saxon/Lucy
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimers: I don't own it. Russell T Davies and the BBC do. Spoilers for "The Sound of Drums".
Author's Notes: This is my first Doctor Who fic, and I am extremely nervous about it because I know it will probably get more readership than half my other fics combined. Many, many thanks to commodoresexual and Kippur for their advice. Anyway, this is my exploration of Lucy's character assuming she is not under mind control (and she better not be).
Summary: Lucy Saxon had always wanted to be bad.
Lucy Saxon had always wanted to be bad.
Growing up, she was anything but. A lot was expected from her. As the daughter of Lord Cole of Tarminster, she was expected to attend the right schools, make the right friends, be seen in the right places wearing the right clothes. As her two elder brothers were complete hellions and she was her parents’ last hope of upholding the family honor, she was expected to make the right choices, do the right things, say the right words. Be a good girl, Lucy. Do as you’re told. Set an example. Don’t disappoint us as your brothers have.
She did all of that. Lucy earned good marks at Rodean School, excelled at netball, and chose a suitable course of study--Italian--at St. Andrews. She never once stepped out of line and never got into trouble the way her brothers did. While society watchers tutted over the Cole brothers’ drinking and partying and womanizing, they had nothing but praise for young Lucy Cole. What a lovely girl, they said. Always so polite, always so charming, always knows her place. Such a testament to her breeding and her position in society.
But young Lucy Cole had a secret.
Deep in her heart, she wanted to be bad, just like her brothers.
She hated her properly demure wardrobe. Her friends and their perfect lives bored her. She found the endless parade of society parties to be tedious in the extreme. She constantly longed to say something appalling, out of the blue, purely for the shock value it would provide her social circle. She dutifully went on dates with the boys her parents suggested she might like, but silently mocked them in her head even as she smiled prettily and agreed with everything they said. She watched her brothers return from night after night of drunken carousing and wished that, just once, they would take her with them.
The only thing that kept her from acting out was her father. Lord Cole doted on his only daughter. He was loving and kind, always willing to set aside time for her, and sympathetic to what dislike of society life she allowed herself to show. In return, she adored him, and it pained her to see the heartache her brothers’ behavior caused him. So, for his sake, she kept her darker impulses tightly reined in. She might chafe under the expectations placed upon her, but she would not cause her father more unhappiness.
There were ways to passively rebel, though. Lucy could easily have earned top marks at school rather than merely good ones, but chose not to. She hid the trashy romance novels she secretly read in a hole in her mattress, but kept the expected classic literature out in the open on her bookcase. She never gave the boys she dated anything more than the customary kiss goodnight, though she always imagined what it might be like to push them behind the hedge and go much, much further. Only when playing netball did she ever feel any degree of freedom, and the thrill of letting her inner devil out made her a force to be reckoned with on the court. Pursuing a professional career in the sport, however, was out of the question. It simply wasn’t done.
Thus, as always, she did what was expected of her. After graduating St. Andrews Lucy went to work as a media liaison for several charities, before making a move into publishing. She did enjoy it to a degree as she’d always appreciated the power of the written word, but inside she always felt caged, and the flame in her spirit burned in vain against the walls she’d built to keep it that way.
***
At first, she thought Harold Saxon was just as boring and dull as everyone else in her life.
She’d been given an assignment by her boss at the publishing house--they had secured the rights to the autobiography of a fast-rising young politician, they expected it to be extremely lucrative, and they wanted her to work with him on it. "You’re a good editor, you come from the same background, you’ll be a good pairing," the man told her. "Just don’t fuck it up. We’ve got a lot of money riding on this. Okay? You’re meeting him for lunch at the Royal Exchange at eleven-thirty."
That left her precious little time to do her homework; even though everyone knew Harold Saxon’s name, Lucy wanted to be more prepared. She contemplated giving her boss the finger as he left her desk, but perfect Lucy Cole would never do such a thing, so she opened her internet browser instead and brought up a search engine.
Saxon was already waiting for her at a table when she arrived, reading the newspaper and absently tapping out a rhythm on one propped knee. She studied his back for a moment before approaching. Typical black suit, typical expensive wristwatch, typical newspaper folded to the international section. Typical politician, except for one aspect: he had no tabloid secrets, the press loved him, and he was as squeaky clean as they never came.
She would have been happier if he’d had a few skeletons in the closet.
"Mr. Saxon," she said in greeting, heels clicking as she finally strode forward, and he looked up from his paper as she rounded the table to sit down.
"Ah, Miss Lucy Cole!" he replied brightly, expertly snapping the paper shut and setting it aside. "What a pleasure to meet you. May I order you something to drink?"
"Water would be fine." His eyes were on her, sizing her up, and Lucy mentally bristled. Yes, nothing outrageous to see here, move along please, you stuck-up wanker. Then the corner of his mouth twitched slightly, and she had the distinct impression he knew exactly what she was thinking. It was rather unsettling, and she smoothed her skirt over her knees to cover the momentary discomfort.
He pursed his lips at her, gently chiding. "Water? Oh, be daring. You might like it." Lucy wasn’t sure if she had imagined the slight emphasis on ‘like’. The waiter appeared then and Saxon actually shot her a wink as he said, "Two Original Sins, please."
Lucy’s eyebrows rose briefly, but she said nothing. Mentally, however: Aren’t we presumptuous?
"So. Miss Lucy Cole. You’ve been assigned to work with me on my book. What do you think about that?"
"I think it will be a very interesting project," she replied in a neutral voice, though she really thought it would turn out to be quite uninteresting given the brief research she’d done. His reputation was sterling. "I’m looking forward to it."
Saxon was looking at her with sharp, keen eyes, attention focused squarely on her though the fingers of his left hand had resumed their tapping beat. "I’ll do my best not to bore you," he said with a smile, and Lucy was suddenly struck with the absolute certainty that she had not imagined the emphasis in his voice, and he’d ordered those particular cocktails on purpose.
Daring. Original sin.
The hidden flame in her heart flared and fluttered against its confining walls.
So you think you know me, do you?
"You’d better not be boring," she said, making a decision to deviate from the expected polite talk, "or I’ll have to request a different assignment."
The grin that blossomed on his face was like the rays of the sun after a storm, and she found herself basking in the approval it gave. He took one of the drinks the waiter had just arrived with and held it up in a toast. "I think we’re going to have a long and beautiful partnership, Miss Lucy Cole."
***
The partnership swiftly became a courtship.
They had initially arranged to meet twice a week to work on the manuscript for his autobiography. The first two sessions were pedestrian and wholly professional, with none of the vocal insinuations from their lunch meeting, and Lucy began to think she’d imagined them after all. Then, at the end of their third session, he surprised her by asking if she’d like to go to dinner with him. The fire, having burned low for a week and a half, crackled.
"I think I’d rather go clubbing," she replied archly, and something in Saxon’s eyes warmed.
"Name the club," he said, "and I’ll take you."
She hadn’t expected that response at all. "Don’t be silly. If the tabloids caught you at a club--and they would--there would be a scandal."
He was sitting on the edge of her desk, looking down at her; he clucked his tongue and shook his head in disapproval. "We can disguise ourselves, and I know how to evade the cameras. It’s not very hard. Come on, Lucy," and he leaned towards her, lowering his voice as he raised his eyebrows, "haven’t you ever wanted to be... bad?"
Two hours later they were crossing the rope into a singularly trashy dance club.
It was like entering a different world. The music was eardrum-splittingly loud, the bass line jarring the very marrow of her bones, and the lights were an epileptic’s nightmare. Lucy couldn’t fathom how her brothers spent their nights in these places without developing chronic migraines. But Saxon seemed to be positively energized by the atmosphere, and his enthusiasm was infectious--soon she was out on the dance floor, gyrating to the beat in a way that would have struck her parents’ social circle dead.
And she loved it. She had never felt so free, so wild, so uncontrolled in her entire life.
Look at me now, you pretentious twats, she wanted to scream at all the society matrons who had ever praised her for being such a good girl. Look at me! Perfect little Lucy Cole grinding against complete strangers like a horny tart. Perfect little Lucy Cole getting absolutely pissed on cheap beer. Perfect little Lucy Cole, pissed and snogging the man said to be our next Prime Minister. And I LIKE IT. I LIKE BEING BAD.
It was such a small thing, perhaps, sneaking into a club with the Minister for Defence and partying with abandon until the bouncers threw them out. But it was an impossibly large thing for Lucy. And now she had let the fire turn into an inferno, she never wanted to bank it again.
***
The next day, a beautiful vase of red roses was delivered to her desk at work. While her colleagues oohed and aahed and breathlessly asked who they were from, Lucy plucked the little white card from the center of the arrangement and read it away from their prying eyes.
Lovely first date, it said. We should make it a habit.
There was no name, but of course one wasn’t needed.
"Oh, they’re from Harry Saxon, of course," she said to the knot of co-workers gathered around her desk, and silently laughed at the openly shocked and envious looks they gave her.
***
One week later, her boss slapped a copy of the Sun down in the middle of her desk and said, "Didn’t I tell you not to fuck things up?"
Lucy’s stomach abruptly plummeted through the floor--they did catch us, I can’t believe I let him talk me into--but then she saw the headline and its accompanying paparazzi photo, and laughed out loud.
It was a zoom lens shot of her leaving a restaurant arm-in-arm with Harold Saxon two nights previously, when they hadn’t bothered attempting to shake the cameramen that occasionally followed him around, and the screaming headline read: SAXON’S FIRST LADY?
So sad they didn’t follow us more closely last night. The resulting headline would have been gold.
She looked up at her boss, fire sparking on the edge of her tongue, but the man was grinning. He rolled his eyes at her good-naturedly. "I don’t care what’s going on in your knickers, just deliver the manuscript on time." Moving off, he added over his shoulder, "Oh, and remember us when you’re living in Downing Street."
***
Three months after their first lunch at the Royal Exchange, Harold Saxon asked Lucy to marry him. Society congratulated her on a fine catch while frowning behind her back at the fast pace of their relationship, her brothers declared her a total loss, and her father asked very seriously if she was sure of her answer.
"Yes, I am," she replied. "I’ve never been happier in my life."
And it was true. With Harry she felt a completeness she’d never experienced before. He knew she hid a darker side, but he encouraged her to embrace it rather than keep it buried, and never made her feel ashamed for it. He was the spark to her flame, the enabler to her inner troublemaker; she loved the way he brought out her wicked side. When they were together, she felt she could at last be who she really was.
The night before the wedding, they were relaxing before the fire in Harry’s townhouse with glasses of wine when he said thoughtfully, "Lucy, what would you say if I told you I could give you all the stars in the sky?"
She looked over at him, but he was staring into the flames, left hand tapping out the rhythm it so often did. "I’d say you were being very romantic."
His eyes slid over to meet hers, and she saw they exhibited none of the usual playfulness they often held when they were together. "I’m serious, darling."
"I..." How could he be serious about such a question? It was a lovely thought, to be sure, a very romantic notion... but to actually be given every star in the sky? To actually have that ability? What was he playing at? "I... I suppose I wouldn’t know what to do with them all," she said finally, feeling an odd kind of helplessness she didn’t understand.
He put his wine glass down and slid out of his chair, coming to kneel in front of her and taking her own glass from her so he could hold both her hands in his. "You wouldn’t have to do anything with them," he said, eyes dark. "But they would still be out there, all yours, because I would make them yours if you wanted them."
The helplessness was rapidly giving way to a dull fear, deep in the pit of her stomach. "Harry, you’re not making any sense."
Squeezing her hands reassuringly, he said, "It will make sense when you’ve heard what I have to tell you."
And so Lucy sat as her fiancé explained that Harold Saxon was all a lie, and he was in fact a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborus, who was known as the Master. He was currently on the third of thirteen lives he would have, and he had come to Earth from the far distant future in a ship that could travel through time and space, stolen from a fellow renegade Time Lord. He had been hiding at the end of the universe as a human from a war his people had fought, but had been unmasked and restored due to the actions of one of the other Time Lord’s companions. The ship, which he called a TARDIS, had taken him to 21st century Earth--several months previous, in fact--and he soon began working on plans to gain control of the entire planet and remake it in his own ideals. In the short term, those plans included making a fast rise through British politics to the position of Prime Minister.
She listened, and the fear pooled into betrayal, and she could scarcely breathe.
When he was finished, he sat back on his heels and said quietly, "What do you think about that, Miss Lucy Cole?"
I think I’ve been played for a fool, that’s what I think, Mister Harold Saxon.
Strangely enough, despite everything he’d just admitted to her, Lucy was distressed only by the notion that he did not actually love her, and that the connection she’d made with him had all been a sham. That none of it had been real.
"You needed a wife to look respectable," she said hollowly. "And that’s what I am to you. Your trophy wife." Your fucking beard, you bastard.
His head tilted slightly. "You’re angry."
"Of course I’m angry!" she cried, jumping to her feet and yanking her hands from his. "You’ve just told me all I am is a cog in your machine!"
Sadness pinched his face, and he swiftly moved to take her face gently in his hands. "Oh, Lucy, Lucy," he murmured. "Never, ever think you’re nothing more than a simple cog."
"Why should I?" she whispered, trembling. "I’m just a silly human, aren’t I?"
"Stop. I won’t have that from you." He lightly held her chin so she couldn’t look away, and it was all Lucy could do not to drown in his eyes despite her anger and hurt. "Yes, you’re a human. That means you’ll never be my equal. But I know you, Lucy Eleanor Cole. I know you better than anyone ever has. I know what you want... you want to break the rules, defy the system, tear down the established order, be the bad girl you never allowed yourself to be... you’re a rebel, Lucy Cole..."
His breath on her skin, and the slow cadence of his voice, were making her shiver.
"You are smart, you are loyal, you are utterly wicked, you are everything I could ever wish for in a companion... a partner... a wife..."
He was pressing against her now, and she could feel both his hearts--both of them, funny how she’d never noticed he had two--hammering in his chest, mirroring her own single heart, and his lips were moving against her ear.
"I want you with me, Lucy," he breathed. "I want you forever. I’ll give you the stars, I’ll give you the sky, I’ll give you everything."
She realized her hands were moving up his chest to the collar of his shirt, and she remembered the long-ago fantasies of pushing those boyfriends behind the hedge. Harry had kissed her on many occasions, and they had done their fair share of drunken snogging (perhaps that was why she had never noticed his twin heartsbeat), but they had shared an unspoken agreement to never move beyond that. In her own mind, Lucy had still been too concerned with what was proper--some facets of one’s upbringing, no matter how hated, were too hard to shake off on a whim. But now she was no longer concerned with proper. She was marrying an alien with plans to conquer, who offered her the stars and had the power to actually give them to her.
Proper and good could go stuff themselves. She was through with being perfect little Lucy Cole. Tomorrow she would be Lucy Saxon. She would stand at Harry’s side and help him bring all his plans to fruition, and it would all be their own private, secret, shared joke until the day they would no longer have to hide their true selves.
"I’ll follow you anywhere, Harry," she whispered, staring back into eyes that promised her the universe itself. "You’ll always have me with you."
"It doesn’t bother you that I’m an evil megalomaniac who intends to take over your planet?"
"No." And she realized, without much surprise, that she meant it. He was everything she’d always wanted. Someone to understand her. Someone to know her. Someone to see her darkness, match her for it, and set it free. All other considerations were unimportant.
"You’re so bad, Miss Lucy Cole," he said against her mouth, a sly smile spreading across his lips as his hands moved beneath her blouse, "and I absolutely love you for it."