To the Waters and the Wild: Chapter 6 (6/11)
Title: To the Waters and the Wild: Chapter 6 <6/11)
Authors: ladychi and
the_tenzo
Beta: spikewriter
Rating: Adult
Characters/Pairings: Ten II/Rose/Ten (yes, all together), and many other characters from the New-Whoniverse (but if we tell you who they are, we'd have to kill you).
Dedication: Written for unfolded73 and
fid_gin for their birthdays
Summary: Rose and her two Doctors try to make the new configuration of Team TARDIS work after Journeys End. Meanwhile, an old foe has other plans for them entirely.
A/N: Updated weekly, on Tuesdays. ladychi and I will alternate whose journal we post at.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5
"Did the Doctor say what, exactly, was wrong with Donna that he had to remove her memories..." Jack ran a hand through his hair and craned his neck to see inside the Noble family's little red brick house a bit better.
"Other than just the metacrisis going wrong? No. It was horrible, though. She was going mad, fast-faster than any of us were able to handle-and she knew it, in the end. But they couldn't stop it; there just wasn't time. I held her hand and she begged him not to-" Rose looked down at her feet, and tried to conceal bringing a hand up to wipe her eye by pretending to brush hair away from her face. She didn't want Jack to see the strain she was under-she'd learned to be strong in that other universe, and lately she seemed to be unlearning it just as quickly.
"The safest place for her right now is the TARDIS, but we can't take her back there without her remembering. It was already a risk enough, just letting her see me. If what the Doctor said is true, about what will happen-"
"What do you mean if what the Doctor said is true? You think he's lying about it?" Rose tried to make her voice sound indignant, but it was half-hearted. She couldn't really blame Jack for having suspicions, but the fact that she'd had them too made her irrationally cross with him.
"No of course not. Just... if there wasn't time, like you said, maybe there wasn't time for him to really think of a way to fix her. And maybe afterwards he just thought it would be for the best to..."
"Run away from her?"
"Yeah." Rose nodded sadly in agreement. "He always thinks people are better off without him. Do you know, he tried to take me and the other Doctor back to the other universe and just leave us there?" She said it matter-of-factly, as if it had not been the most crushing moment of fear, anger and doubt she'd ever experienced. It felt churlish to complain about it-after all, the Doctor had changed his mind quickly (by his standards), and she knew it hadn't been because he didn't love her but because he hated himself. They'd agreed to put it behind them as a mistake made during an emotionally trying time-or maybe not so much agreed as tacitly decided. Not playing favorites took so much of her energy now. Between that and moderating bitter disagreements between the two Doctors, it was growing increasingly impossible to hide from herself (and them) that she remained well aware that one Doctor had come quite close to leaving her, and the other hadn't.
"I'll believe it," Jack said, seeming to sense Rose's discomfort with the topic. "Okay, so now we've got a bit of time. But not much, and we're down two Doctors, so what do we have just on our own?"
"We've got the TARDIS," Rose said hopefully, trying to get her head back in the game.
"Okay, good, the TARDIS. But if there was something immediately available in the TARDIS that would have helped, don't you think the Doctor would have used it?"
"Good point. Well, there's your lot. At our Torchwood we've shelves full of alien bits and bobs that do all kinds of weird, magicky things, yeah?"
Jack's expression was a pained grimace suddenly and she wondered what she'd said wrong. "Rose, you ever read that short story The Monkey's Paw? About the weird, magicky thing that grants wishes, except in the most horrific possible way?"
"Sounds a bit familiar. Didn't ITV make it in to a series?"
Jack indulged in an undisguised eye-roll and continued. "Anyway, it seems like everything at Torchwood is a monkey's paw. It does what you think you want, only in the end that's not what you wanted at all."
"Or maybe your team just keeps cocking it up," Rose huffed, growing impatient. "Whoever was driving that van is not going to stay scared off for long. Look at her in there, Jack. Just watching telly, talking to her mum about her exciting evening, eating crisps. The most important woman in the universe, watching reality TV. It's not right. And I have a feeling her old gramps, much of a firecracker as he is, isn't going to be able to protect her."
"Well, there is one thing..." Jack looked uncertain and Rose was now absolutely sure that any further secret-keeping from any other man in her life would lead to their untimely demise, by her hand.
"Don't you keep things from me, Jack Harkness. Spit it out."
Jack started laughing, a great belly laugh that had Rose concerned they'd be heard and reported as cat burglars by a neighbor. "Fifteen years, Rose. I give you fifteen years before you turn in to an exact copy of your mum."
"Hey!"
"You get back to me in fifteen years, all right? But as I was saying... Well, there's the nanogenes."
Rose took a step back from him and pressed her palm to her forehead. "You mean the little thingies that turn people in to gas-mask-faced zombies? Talk about a monkey's paw!"
"They were just confused, is all. You heard what the Doctor said. Or were you too dazzled by the dashing RAF captain you'd just met?" He winked, infuriatingly.
"Don't let the Doctor know you saved some of those."
"Oh, I didn't. But they're not that unusual to have around in the far future. We had a Chula first aid kit fall through the rift a few months back."
"So we'd just get the nanogenes out and let them fix Donna all up? Wham-bam? Please tell me it's not that easy or I'll never forgive the Doctor-or myself- for not thinking of that."
"It's not that easy," Jack said. "I mean, not that easy if you're under duress and don't have the time to program them properly; that's when you wind up with creepy gas-mask zombies. He may not have even thought about it as a solution, but I must confess it's been an idea I've been playing with these past few weeks."
"Well let's do it then! Do you have them with you or... or do we need to go all the way back to Cardiff? We don't have time for that, Jack."
"I am way, way ahead of you." He pulled out his mobile and flipped it open to reveal a text message:
On my way.
From: Martha Jones
Sent: 14 September 2010, 19:04
"The lovely and talented Dr. Martha Jones. Expert in alien medical technology, UNIT consultant, defender of the Earth, authorized operator of Project Indigo. I told her to meet us back at the TARDIS, so I'll just ask her to stop by Cardiff first." He flashed that maddeningly handsome smile again.
***
"Harry?"
Lucy Saxon stood at the edge of the room and watched the now-familiar figure of her husband pacing back and forth, more than a little worried at the paleness of his countenance and the way sweat seemed to pour out of him.
"They should have reported back by now. They should have her by now. Dammit!" He pounded his fist against a table and then lifted it to his face, biting his knuckles. "Did I not impress upon them a sense of great urgency? Did I not say that they had to bring her back or I'd-"
"That might be part of the reason why they've not come back, love," Lucy said quietly. "You're not Harry Saxon, leader of the not-so-free world any more."
He looked over at her, his eyes narrowed. "Getting brave, aren't we?" He crossed the room and captured her jaw in a deceptively elegant hand. He squeezed her chin until she looked up at him with tears in her eyes. "I just love that about you. You're constantly... surprising me." He smiled, but the light didn't reach his eyes as he released her. "Need I remind you that my key to survival is a half hour late?"
"Harry, you're not going to die any time soon," Lucy said, patiently, stroking his hair. "The doctors said you had time... It won't take long to set up the transfer, and then..."
"Wrong! That's so wrong! Wrong kind of doctor to tell me what the fuck is wrong with this body-this wrong, messed-up body! Everything is wrong!" the Master snapped. "It's wrong, and I'm still enough of a Time Lord that I can feel it. I can feel myself dying. Cell by cell." He squeezed her hand, a cruel light coming to his face. "Here, let me show you."
Pain exploded behind her eyes, but that was nothing new. Not since she'd let this volatile, violent, brilliant, tender, enigmatic man into her life. She'd come to welcome the pain; as foreplay, as a reminder of life when so much around her had been death. She took a deep breath and then she felt it: a tiny pinprick explosion-a cell bursting, mutating into something else, struggling for life, and then spasming as it gave up. A tiny organism, inside of Harry, dead... and then another, and then another. The mutations were so fast the cells couldn't keep up, couldn't stabilize.
Slow down! Lucy shouted at them in her head. You're killing him! Stop it, stop it, stop it!
Harry released her, and took a step back. "Well, then. Now you know." His knees buckled and Lucy rushed forward to catch him. Just before he hit the ground, he chuckled. "You do, don't you?"
"What?"
"Love me."
Tears came to her eyes. Every once in a while she saw a glimpse of the man she'd fallen in love with-and she'd fallen in love with what the world considered to be a monster, but she knew the truth. She alone understood him: her sad little boy, her lonely angel. Her sorrowful god.
"I do," she whispered. "So, very, very much."
He brought her to her knees until she was resting her forehead against his. "I don't believe in love."
"I know."
He placed a trembling hand on her breast, and she could see the frustration in his eyes. It was hard for him to be weak, so she wouldn't let him see that she saw it.
His kiss was hard, and fast, a possessive owning-a reminder that even her breath was not her own. She'd given everything over to him.
No wonder he called himself Master.
***
"Get dressed." Lucy tossed the small bundle of clothes across the cell towards the clone (or whatever he was), huddling pathetically under the suit jacket of the full Time Lord.
The Doctor caught the package and sniffed it, making a face. "I hope you've washed these. I don't fancy catching whatever it is he's got. And did you see him sweating? Ugh," he shuddered and rose to hastily dress himself anyway, while the other Doctor fixed her with an unwavering, solemn gaze.
"Oh, Lucy Saxon... why?" said the Doctor in the brown suit, now slowly putting his jacket back on and buttoning the top button.
She hated the tone in his voice; that patronizing, pitying, self-important purr-made doubly maddening by the fact that it was spoken in the same voice her husband now had. Not for much longer, she reminded herself. Once the human woman was brought in, they could harvest enough regeneration energy to give Harry a whole new life, in a new, strong body.
"I didn't say you could talk to me," she retorted coldly. "Either of you."
The Doctor now back in his blue trousers and black t-shirt made a motion as if zipping his lips and throwing away the key. His twin just stood unnervingly, hands in pockets, eyes full of that same insufferable self-righteousness.
"In fact," she continued, "turn around." They both looked at her, blinking dumbly, as if she'd not said anything at all. "I said turn around!" The Doctor in blue flinched a little at the unexpected volume of her voice, but they both came to stand side-by-side along one wall, and began to slowly shuffle and turn away from where Lucy stood in the doorway. "Face the wall. I can't bear the sight of you."
With the Doctors' eyes now off of her, she realized that she'd felt pinned to the spot like a mounted insect under that gaze, and now was free to move again. She approached them with slow paces, her high heels making ominous hollow echoes in the room. Backs to her, they were nothing. Less than nothing.
"When Harry found me again, looking like you, I was sick. Right there on the pavement, retching my guts out just at the sight. I knew that's the body he'd have-of course I did, that was the arrangement. But seeing him walking, talking, alive, with your face and your voice..." She came up close behind the part-human one; so close she could feel the nervous heat and energy coming off of him in waves. Not so poised, this one. Not so cool under pressure. All the failings of the human race that she'd spent so long trying to distance herself from.
"Lucy, I really don't think-"
"Shut up," she snapped, a bit less measured than she'd wanted. "You don't get to talk to me. You get to listen, for once. There's no reason we need either of you even conscious, and Darryl out there in the hall has a strong dislike of skinny white boys."
She reached out and laid a hand in the small of the human Doctor's back, lightly at first but then with increasing pressure. She saw him try to look at her over his shoulder without turning his head, lending his eyes a wild, animal look. She let her hand drift down, to his waist, and over the rise of his arse. He shifted his stance, subtly, but remained turned around and silent.
"And you know the next thing Harry did after he found me in your body? I think you can guess." She side-stepped over to run a hand along the Time Lord's shoulder-blade, and then moved in closer and pressed her body against his, forcefully and not at all delicately. "And I know it's terribly common to kiss and tell, but, well, the comparison is not favorable, I'm afraid."
"He's got you bollocksed-up ten ways to Tuesday, doesn't he?" the Doctor in the brown suit stated, quite matter-of-factly.
"You don't get to-"
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I don't get to talk to you, blah-blah, my pal Darren, or Darryl, or whatever." He turned around in a flash and grabbed her wrists, holding them much tighter than Harry ever managed to in his weakened state. "I am prepared, Lucy Saxon, to forgive a great many things on account of the way the Master has clearly manipulated and tortured you. Ruining what was already, quite frankly, shaping up to be kind of a shit day anyway; making me do something to a friend that will surely have me performing quite a bit of penance in the future; and cold-cocking my counterpart here, and stealing all his clothes-really low, by the way. All of this I am willing to forgive." He increased his grip on Lucy's wrist and she began to clench her teeth in order to hide the pain she was in. "But if your little game here ends in any one of my friends being actually harmed, you'll see just how very lacking in sympathy I can be."
"Doctor," the other Doctor said sotto voce next to him. "Doctor, you're hurting her."
The Doctor in the brown suit let go of Lucy's hands and pushed her from him. She stumbled back, rubbing her wrists and giving them both a dark, menacing stare. She wasn't about to beg forgiveness from this man-either of him.
"You ruined him," Lucy hissed. "You ruined my Harry."
"Oh, Lucy," the Doctor in blue said. "He was ruined long before this body."
"I fixed him," she whispered, "and then you destroyed him. Just like you always do. He's told me everything about you. Does Rose know?"
"What?" The man in brown's eyebrows raised. "I haven't seen Rose in years-alternate dimension, long gone now, you know how it goes."
"Liar!" Lucy spat it, and then laughed. "We know all about the three of you and the way she lets you touch her, both of you at once, and your perverted little life. Harry says you both stink of her."
"I think you'll find that you know nothing," the Doctor said, shaking his head at his counterpart when he opened his mouth, "nothing at all of Rose or the way we choose to live our life. And she does have a choice, Lucy. She could say no."
"No, she couldn't." Lucy shook her head. "Time Lords-you don't understand what it is to fall in love with you; like a deep black pit with no bottom or top. You're so large, so... all-consuming. It's the way you take our hands and whisper to run. The way you slowly, ever so slowly, let us see all of you, in one tiny slice at a time. Tell me, Doctor, did she tell you what it was like to live without you? Does she talk about it at all?"
The Doctor in brown stood stoically, and the man in blue shook his head mutely.
"Ten minutes, I was without my Harry. It was like I couldn't breathe, couldn't think. How long did you let her suffer?"
"That's not his name," the Doctor in blue said, ignoring her other question. "He's letting you love an illusion."
"You're all illusions. All of you." Lucy waved a hand. "If I ever see Rose, I'll ask her. I'm sure she'll agree with me. The pain you cause, the pleasure you give-well, maybe not you specifically since this body's a bit rubbish at it, really-it's all worth it. To love a Time Lord."
"Lucy..."
"Shut up," she hissed at the man in blue. "You don't have long to live anyway. You took my Harry away from me and you'll give him back. Do you understand me? You'll give him back."
She whirled on a heel and left the room.
Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11
Authors: ladychi and
the_tenzo
Beta: spikewriter
Rating: Adult
Characters/Pairings: Ten II/Rose/Ten (yes, all together), and many other characters from the New-Whoniverse (but if we tell you who they are, we'd have to kill you).
Dedication: Written for unfolded73 and
fid_gin for their birthdays
Summary: Rose and her two Doctors try to make the new configuration of Team TARDIS work after Journeys End. Meanwhile, an old foe has other plans for them entirely.
A/N: Updated weekly, on Tuesdays. ladychi and I will alternate whose journal we post at.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5
"Did the Doctor say what, exactly, was wrong with Donna that he had to remove her memories..." Jack ran a hand through his hair and craned his neck to see inside the Noble family's little red brick house a bit better.
"Other than just the metacrisis going wrong? No. It was horrible, though. She was going mad, fast-faster than any of us were able to handle-and she knew it, in the end. But they couldn't stop it; there just wasn't time. I held her hand and she begged him not to-" Rose looked down at her feet, and tried to conceal bringing a hand up to wipe her eye by pretending to brush hair away from her face. She didn't want Jack to see the strain she was under-she'd learned to be strong in that other universe, and lately she seemed to be unlearning it just as quickly.
"The safest place for her right now is the TARDIS, but we can't take her back there without her remembering. It was already a risk enough, just letting her see me. If what the Doctor said is true, about what will happen-"
"What do you mean if what the Doctor said is true? You think he's lying about it?" Rose tried to make her voice sound indignant, but it was half-hearted. She couldn't really blame Jack for having suspicions, but the fact that she'd had them too made her irrationally cross with him.
"No of course not. Just... if there wasn't time, like you said, maybe there wasn't time for him to really think of a way to fix her. And maybe afterwards he just thought it would be for the best to..."
"Run away from her?"
"Yeah." Rose nodded sadly in agreement. "He always thinks people are better off without him. Do you know, he tried to take me and the other Doctor back to the other universe and just leave us there?" She said it matter-of-factly, as if it had not been the most crushing moment of fear, anger and doubt she'd ever experienced. It felt churlish to complain about it-after all, the Doctor had changed his mind quickly (by his standards), and she knew it hadn't been because he didn't love her but because he hated himself. They'd agreed to put it behind them as a mistake made during an emotionally trying time-or maybe not so much agreed as tacitly decided. Not playing favorites took so much of her energy now. Between that and moderating bitter disagreements between the two Doctors, it was growing increasingly impossible to hide from herself (and them) that she remained well aware that one Doctor had come quite close to leaving her, and the other hadn't.
"I'll believe it," Jack said, seeming to sense Rose's discomfort with the topic. "Okay, so now we've got a bit of time. But not much, and we're down two Doctors, so what do we have just on our own?"
"We've got the TARDIS," Rose said hopefully, trying to get her head back in the game.
"Okay, good, the TARDIS. But if there was something immediately available in the TARDIS that would have helped, don't you think the Doctor would have used it?"
"Good point. Well, there's your lot. At our Torchwood we've shelves full of alien bits and bobs that do all kinds of weird, magicky things, yeah?"
Jack's expression was a pained grimace suddenly and she wondered what she'd said wrong. "Rose, you ever read that short story The Monkey's Paw? About the weird, magicky thing that grants wishes, except in the most horrific possible way?"
"Sounds a bit familiar. Didn't ITV make it in to a series?"
Jack indulged in an undisguised eye-roll and continued. "Anyway, it seems like everything at Torchwood is a monkey's paw. It does what you think you want, only in the end that's not what you wanted at all."
"Or maybe your team just keeps cocking it up," Rose huffed, growing impatient. "Whoever was driving that van is not going to stay scared off for long. Look at her in there, Jack. Just watching telly, talking to her mum about her exciting evening, eating crisps. The most important woman in the universe, watching reality TV. It's not right. And I have a feeling her old gramps, much of a firecracker as he is, isn't going to be able to protect her."
"Well, there is one thing..." Jack looked uncertain and Rose was now absolutely sure that any further secret-keeping from any other man in her life would lead to their untimely demise, by her hand.
"Don't you keep things from me, Jack Harkness. Spit it out."
Jack started laughing, a great belly laugh that had Rose concerned they'd be heard and reported as cat burglars by a neighbor. "Fifteen years, Rose. I give you fifteen years before you turn in to an exact copy of your mum."
"Hey!"
"You get back to me in fifteen years, all right? But as I was saying... Well, there's the nanogenes."
Rose took a step back from him and pressed her palm to her forehead. "You mean the little thingies that turn people in to gas-mask-faced zombies? Talk about a monkey's paw!"
"They were just confused, is all. You heard what the Doctor said. Or were you too dazzled by the dashing RAF captain you'd just met?" He winked, infuriatingly.
"Don't let the Doctor know you saved some of those."
"Oh, I didn't. But they're not that unusual to have around in the far future. We had a Chula first aid kit fall through the rift a few months back."
"So we'd just get the nanogenes out and let them fix Donna all up? Wham-bam? Please tell me it's not that easy or I'll never forgive the Doctor-or myself- for not thinking of that."
"It's not that easy," Jack said. "I mean, not that easy if you're under duress and don't have the time to program them properly; that's when you wind up with creepy gas-mask zombies. He may not have even thought about it as a solution, but I must confess it's been an idea I've been playing with these past few weeks."
"Well let's do it then! Do you have them with you or... or do we need to go all the way back to Cardiff? We don't have time for that, Jack."
"I am way, way ahead of you." He pulled out his mobile and flipped it open to reveal a text message:
On my way.
From: Martha Jones
Sent: 14 September 2010, 19:04
"The lovely and talented Dr. Martha Jones. Expert in alien medical technology, UNIT consultant, defender of the Earth, authorized operator of Project Indigo. I told her to meet us back at the TARDIS, so I'll just ask her to stop by Cardiff first." He flashed that maddeningly handsome smile again.
***
"Harry?"
Lucy Saxon stood at the edge of the room and watched the now-familiar figure of her husband pacing back and forth, more than a little worried at the paleness of his countenance and the way sweat seemed to pour out of him.
"They should have reported back by now. They should have her by now. Dammit!" He pounded his fist against a table and then lifted it to his face, biting his knuckles. "Did I not impress upon them a sense of great urgency? Did I not say that they had to bring her back or I'd-"
"That might be part of the reason why they've not come back, love," Lucy said quietly. "You're not Harry Saxon, leader of the not-so-free world any more."
He looked over at her, his eyes narrowed. "Getting brave, aren't we?" He crossed the room and captured her jaw in a deceptively elegant hand. He squeezed her chin until she looked up at him with tears in her eyes. "I just love that about you. You're constantly... surprising me." He smiled, but the light didn't reach his eyes as he released her. "Need I remind you that my key to survival is a half hour late?"
"Harry, you're not going to die any time soon," Lucy said, patiently, stroking his hair. "The doctors said you had time... It won't take long to set up the transfer, and then..."
"Wrong! That's so wrong! Wrong kind of doctor to tell me what the fuck is wrong with this body-this wrong, messed-up body! Everything is wrong!" the Master snapped. "It's wrong, and I'm still enough of a Time Lord that I can feel it. I can feel myself dying. Cell by cell." He squeezed her hand, a cruel light coming to his face. "Here, let me show you."
Pain exploded behind her eyes, but that was nothing new. Not since she'd let this volatile, violent, brilliant, tender, enigmatic man into her life. She'd come to welcome the pain; as foreplay, as a reminder of life when so much around her had been death. She took a deep breath and then she felt it: a tiny pinprick explosion-a cell bursting, mutating into something else, struggling for life, and then spasming as it gave up. A tiny organism, inside of Harry, dead... and then another, and then another. The mutations were so fast the cells couldn't keep up, couldn't stabilize.
Slow down! Lucy shouted at them in her head. You're killing him! Stop it, stop it, stop it!
Harry released her, and took a step back. "Well, then. Now you know." His knees buckled and Lucy rushed forward to catch him. Just before he hit the ground, he chuckled. "You do, don't you?"
"What?"
"Love me."
Tears came to her eyes. Every once in a while she saw a glimpse of the man she'd fallen in love with-and she'd fallen in love with what the world considered to be a monster, but she knew the truth. She alone understood him: her sad little boy, her lonely angel. Her sorrowful god.
"I do," she whispered. "So, very, very much."
He brought her to her knees until she was resting her forehead against his. "I don't believe in love."
"I know."
He placed a trembling hand on her breast, and she could see the frustration in his eyes. It was hard for him to be weak, so she wouldn't let him see that she saw it.
His kiss was hard, and fast, a possessive owning-a reminder that even her breath was not her own. She'd given everything over to him.
No wonder he called himself Master.
***
"Get dressed." Lucy tossed the small bundle of clothes across the cell towards the clone (or whatever he was), huddling pathetically under the suit jacket of the full Time Lord.
The Doctor caught the package and sniffed it, making a face. "I hope you've washed these. I don't fancy catching whatever it is he's got. And did you see him sweating? Ugh," he shuddered and rose to hastily dress himself anyway, while the other Doctor fixed her with an unwavering, solemn gaze.
"Oh, Lucy Saxon... why?" said the Doctor in the brown suit, now slowly putting his jacket back on and buttoning the top button.
She hated the tone in his voice; that patronizing, pitying, self-important purr-made doubly maddening by the fact that it was spoken in the same voice her husband now had. Not for much longer, she reminded herself. Once the human woman was brought in, they could harvest enough regeneration energy to give Harry a whole new life, in a new, strong body.
"I didn't say you could talk to me," she retorted coldly. "Either of you."
The Doctor now back in his blue trousers and black t-shirt made a motion as if zipping his lips and throwing away the key. His twin just stood unnervingly, hands in pockets, eyes full of that same insufferable self-righteousness.
"In fact," she continued, "turn around." They both looked at her, blinking dumbly, as if she'd not said anything at all. "I said turn around!" The Doctor in blue flinched a little at the unexpected volume of her voice, but they both came to stand side-by-side along one wall, and began to slowly shuffle and turn away from where Lucy stood in the doorway. "Face the wall. I can't bear the sight of you."
With the Doctors' eyes now off of her, she realized that she'd felt pinned to the spot like a mounted insect under that gaze, and now was free to move again. She approached them with slow paces, her high heels making ominous hollow echoes in the room. Backs to her, they were nothing. Less than nothing.
"When Harry found me again, looking like you, I was sick. Right there on the pavement, retching my guts out just at the sight. I knew that's the body he'd have-of course I did, that was the arrangement. But seeing him walking, talking, alive, with your face and your voice..." She came up close behind the part-human one; so close she could feel the nervous heat and energy coming off of him in waves. Not so poised, this one. Not so cool under pressure. All the failings of the human race that she'd spent so long trying to distance herself from.
"Lucy, I really don't think-"
"Shut up," she snapped, a bit less measured than she'd wanted. "You don't get to talk to me. You get to listen, for once. There's no reason we need either of you even conscious, and Darryl out there in the hall has a strong dislike of skinny white boys."
She reached out and laid a hand in the small of the human Doctor's back, lightly at first but then with increasing pressure. She saw him try to look at her over his shoulder without turning his head, lending his eyes a wild, animal look. She let her hand drift down, to his waist, and over the rise of his arse. He shifted his stance, subtly, but remained turned around and silent.
"And you know the next thing Harry did after he found me in your body? I think you can guess." She side-stepped over to run a hand along the Time Lord's shoulder-blade, and then moved in closer and pressed her body against his, forcefully and not at all delicately. "And I know it's terribly common to kiss and tell, but, well, the comparison is not favorable, I'm afraid."
"He's got you bollocksed-up ten ways to Tuesday, doesn't he?" the Doctor in the brown suit stated, quite matter-of-factly.
"You don't get to-"
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I don't get to talk to you, blah-blah, my pal Darren, or Darryl, or whatever." He turned around in a flash and grabbed her wrists, holding them much tighter than Harry ever managed to in his weakened state. "I am prepared, Lucy Saxon, to forgive a great many things on account of the way the Master has clearly manipulated and tortured you. Ruining what was already, quite frankly, shaping up to be kind of a shit day anyway; making me do something to a friend that will surely have me performing quite a bit of penance in the future; and cold-cocking my counterpart here, and stealing all his clothes-really low, by the way. All of this I am willing to forgive." He increased his grip on Lucy's wrist and she began to clench her teeth in order to hide the pain she was in. "But if your little game here ends in any one of my friends being actually harmed, you'll see just how very lacking in sympathy I can be."
"Doctor," the other Doctor said sotto voce next to him. "Doctor, you're hurting her."
The Doctor in the brown suit let go of Lucy's hands and pushed her from him. She stumbled back, rubbing her wrists and giving them both a dark, menacing stare. She wasn't about to beg forgiveness from this man-either of him.
"You ruined him," Lucy hissed. "You ruined my Harry."
"Oh, Lucy," the Doctor in blue said. "He was ruined long before this body."
"I fixed him," she whispered, "and then you destroyed him. Just like you always do. He's told me everything about you. Does Rose know?"
"What?" The man in brown's eyebrows raised. "I haven't seen Rose in years-alternate dimension, long gone now, you know how it goes."
"Liar!" Lucy spat it, and then laughed. "We know all about the three of you and the way she lets you touch her, both of you at once, and your perverted little life. Harry says you both stink of her."
"I think you'll find that you know nothing," the Doctor said, shaking his head at his counterpart when he opened his mouth, "nothing at all of Rose or the way we choose to live our life. And she does have a choice, Lucy. She could say no."
"No, she couldn't." Lucy shook her head. "Time Lords-you don't understand what it is to fall in love with you; like a deep black pit with no bottom or top. You're so large, so... all-consuming. It's the way you take our hands and whisper to run. The way you slowly, ever so slowly, let us see all of you, in one tiny slice at a time. Tell me, Doctor, did she tell you what it was like to live without you? Does she talk about it at all?"
The Doctor in brown stood stoically, and the man in blue shook his head mutely.
"Ten minutes, I was without my Harry. It was like I couldn't breathe, couldn't think. How long did you let her suffer?"
"That's not his name," the Doctor in blue said, ignoring her other question. "He's letting you love an illusion."
"You're all illusions. All of you." Lucy waved a hand. "If I ever see Rose, I'll ask her. I'm sure she'll agree with me. The pain you cause, the pleasure you give-well, maybe not you specifically since this body's a bit rubbish at it, really-it's all worth it. To love a Time Lord."
"Lucy..."
"Shut up," she hissed at the man in blue. "You don't have long to live anyway. You took my Harry away from me and you'll give him back. Do you understand me? You'll give him back."
She whirled on a heel and left the room.
Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11