Title: Four Walls
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Master/Martha
Word Count: 570
Summary: AU dark ficlet. Vague spoilers for 'The Sound of Drums' & 'The Last of the Time Lords.' Martha in the Master's grasp.
Martha wakes to another day in a string of days, unending, each indistinguishable from the last. She isn't sure if it is day or night, sitting on the floor of this small space, dimly lit and without windows. The chain rattles as she lifts her hand to rub at her eyes. She is thirsty, but the plastic tumbler nearby lies empty and turned onto its side. They give her just enough food and water. Just enough to cling to life and consciousness, but no more. Half starved, there are times when Martha is unsure if she is awake or dreaming.
Leaning against the wall, Martha sighs, her head turning to one side. She doesn't know what's become of her family, the Doctor, or anyone else, trapped as she is in this small room. The only things she knows of them are what he- It's best not to think on it, and yet she does, her mind filling with visions of his smiling face, mocking her, taunting her with things he claimed to have done to her loved ones, acts he promises to visit upon her in due time. She shivers at the memories that bleed into each other. Martha berates herself once more for her carelessness in her travels that led her to this, caught and at the mercy of a person who has none.
The door swings inward, suffusing the room with sudden light as Martha winces, her eyes attempting to adjust. She knows who it is by the silhouette in the doorway. He steps into the room, that ever present smile on his face. Martha watches the Master raise a glass of water to his lips. He sips from it as he gazes at her, and she tries not to reflexively swallow or lick her dry lips, but it takes effort on her part.
"Poor thing," the Master drawls. "You're quite a sight, aren't you, Miss Jones?" as he takes in her disheveled appearance, a sharp contrast to his own. "You look absolutely parched."
He crouches off to one side of her, looming nearby as Martha turns her head away. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the tumbler of water hover near her lips, an offer of a sip that she refuses to take despite her cracked lips and parched throat. Her actions draw a short laugh from him.
"As stubborn as always, aren't we?" the time lord says. He pulls back to swirl a finger around the rim of the glass before dipping it into the liquid within. Martha flinches at the sensation of a moist finger trailing across her dry lips to spread wetness there. She can't prevent herself from lapping at it, earning a smile from her captor and shame from herself.
She watches him set the tumbler nearby within her reach. It's made of plastic, they always are, the time lord not risking the chance of a piece of glass in her hands. Sometimes, Martha thinks it's for fear she'll end this game of his, that one day he'd walk in here and she'd be slumped against the wall, her cooling blood upon the floor. Her death at his hands denied him. Martha tries not to cringe at the feel of his breath suddenly warming her ear, at the words that spill from his lips. At the hand that draws across her cloth-covered thigh and the accompanying sultry laugh.
End