Title: Harry
Summary: Third Season from the perspective of Lucy Saxon.
Rating: PG
Word count: 1629
Characters/pairings: Master/Lucy, Ten
Disclaimer: I wish I owned things. But I don't.
Author's notes: I suddenly realized quite recently that I'm completely obsessed with Master/Lucy despite the creepy because they're so sweet. Then I realised that it was probably really naïve of me to think them sweet and that pretty much the only way I could write them as sweet is if I did a story from the perspective of Lucy Saxon. So I did. It's way more serious than the stories I usually write so I'm rather worried as to how it turned out…

It had all gone wrong once the Doctor arrived.

Before him, Harry…had still been Harry. He had always made her smile: from the moment she met him, when he walked into her office and introduced himself as an everyman, no, THE everyman, whose humble beginnings were going to make her firm famous. She had tried to brush him off with the line she used on everyone who made it as far as her, that yes, she was sure his story was fabulous, but… That was when he had looked her straight in the eyes for the first time. Harry had a certain boyish charm to him but a depth in his eyes that had alerted her right away to the fact that there was something special about this man. She'd taken on the task of his autobiography, and had soon seen herself proved right about how wonderful he was—from such lowly beginnings to such great heights…Harold Saxon was a truly great man. A man who gradually seemed, beyond all belief, to gain interest in her as she worked on his life story. It was at that point that she had discovered the gaps in his background, things that didn't quite work. She had wondered but had declined to ask him and instead did her best to fill them in.

One day, he had come in to her office, looking preoccupied.

"Lucy," he'd said thoughtfully. "Loyal, lovely Lucy."

She'd blinked and looked carefully at him. "Yes?"

Walking up to her desk, he'd placed his hands on it and leaned over it and towards her. "Would you like to see something?"

"What?"

"Ah, too quick. Right. Me first. I'm…not exactly Harold Saxon."

This comment had left her unsurprised but she couldn't help but ask: "Then who is he?"

"He's nobody, really. An amalgam of me and bits of others I've picked up. Human things." He'd moved to sit on her desk, pushing the papers out of the way. Lucy had looked up at him while he seemed to ponder a point on the far wall.

"If you're not Harold Saxon," Lucy had said after a while, "then who are you?" Harry had smiled at her.

"Would you like to see?"

Lucy had only needed to look into those endless eyes for a moment before smiling a little timidly in response and saying, "Yes."

Harry, apparently, was an alien being called the Master, another name he had chosen for himself. He had brought her to his impossible spaceship and shown her the end of the Universe and how nothing really mattered after all except for them and then he'd kissed her as everything outside the doors collapsed into nothingness.

It was at that point she knew that she'd never betray Harry, that she would dedicate her life to him, this strange alien because outside of all reason, he seemed to need her. She was his.

Not long after, Harry had proposed to her and shortly after that, they were married, making her 'not-exactly' Lucy Saxon. She'd always been aware of a darkness around Harry, but being his shadow made her so much more aware of what Harry was capable of. It had astonished her a little to realize how little she really minded, although her violent reaction to the project with the orbs meant that Harry had considerately kept her out of the way for his more violent undertakings in the future, although she didn't like to spend that much time away from him. She had found that generally she could almost enjoy most of Harry's undertakings, even found herself catching his enthusiasm. When she didn't, eventually Harry had developed a habit of comforting her that almost made her look forward to the next political advancement.

Harry had told her all of his plans, talked them through with her, using her as the sounding board for his ideas and they were all brilliant. It was this way that she had learned of the greatest opposition to his plans: the Doctor. He was fanatically obsessed with the Doctor, in a way she was occasionally almost envious of. Lucy didn't feel jealousy easily, even though she knew how attractive her husband was and that he tended to flirt a little with the female staff. She knew that he wouldn't leave her. After all, she was the one he'd chosen to show his true self to. However, she had always felt an irrational fear when he spoke about the Doctor. The Doctor was another alien like the Master, a limited thinker who didn't have the imagination that Harry had. He hadn't even any idea of Harry's existence because Harry had been masking something about himself somehow that Lucy didn't understand. She had let this fact reassure her that the Doctor would never find them and nothing would change. She was wrong.

All of a sudden, Harry had begun to talk twice as much about the Doctor. It was just around the time that all of his other plans were falling into place and he had become the Prime Minister. He had had to bring in the Jones family and put out a bounty on the heads of the Doctor and his two associates. At this point, Lucy had hardly even thought about them. She had been too preoccupied with the constant glee Harry was in, which translated to an almost equal happiness for her. She had gone with him to various press conferences and political events and eventually to what he had gleefully termed 'The Fall of the Human Empire'.

"Well, except you, Lucy," he had always added, kissing her affectionately, or caressing her cheek. Together they had sat in the airship and she had waited with him for his traps to close.

Then, the Doctor had arrived, pleading with Harry, and Lucy had watched him age in front of her and the woman with the Doctor escape and had felt nothing but joy at Harry's success.

That had been a year ago.

During that year, something in Harry had changed. He spent more time with his darkness and less time with her. Of course, he would always bring her along but gradually, she really did become his shadow: something hardly noticeable in the background. She was consumed by all the other darkness, which surrounded him. Halfway through the year, her jealousy at the Doctor became solidified. Harry spent so much time with him…more than he had ever spent with her. And this time seemed to change him. He had constant mood swings, going from hyper and full of glee to enraged. When he was angry, it was in a way that Lucy had never seen before. There was so much, he couldn't contain it. It would spill out around the edges and make contact with her. He wasn't Harry anymore; he was the Master, the master of all, striking her, knocking her down. When he remembered, he would apologise to her but these incidents of regret decreased until they no longer existed.

Lucy tried to find someone to blame and the most obvious person was the Doctor. It was when he arrived that Harry had become the Master. But as she followed Harry to his interactions with the Doctor, she came to realize that the Doctor only wanted Harry to stop before it was too late. Lucy discovered that what she wanted and what Harry wanted had suddenly become two separate things. He wanted everything. She just wanted Harry back.

Now, here she is, standing behind Harry as he confronts the Jones woman. As, apparently, everyone around the world chants the Doctor's name, Lucy realises that if anyone can bring her back Harry, it's the alien who is currently shrivelled inside a birdcage. She chants quietly and watches as the Doctor begins to glow and turn back to himself. Lucy feels hope rise in her breast, as the Doctor forgives Harry and she forgives him as well for everything he's done all that year where he wasn't himself.

Harry tries to escape at first, without her, but the Doctor brings him back. Lucy feels sudden goodwill towards him when she abruptly realizes she hasn't thought the situation through entirely. Listening in mild horror, she finally comprehends the fate she has condemned her husband to. He will be little better than a caged animal in the Doctor's spaceship and if she remembers correctly what Harry had said about the age his species lives to, it will be for as close to forever as she knows.

As far as she can see, there is only one option left. Harry had told her about the regeneration abilities of the Doctor and himself and if she kills the Doctor, it will solve nothing. Harry on the other hand…

Fate is cruel to her and it grants her one brief reprieve: the Jones mother almost does her task for her. But in the end, it is left to Lucy to take the gun and shoot the man she loves more than any other, to see a look of shock on his face as he collapses back into the greedy arms of the Doctor. She wants that to be her, holding Harry in the end and she stands in shock as the gun is removed from her hands and Harry refuses to regenerate.

She watches him die and before his body goes completely limp, she hears a chuckling in her head and the whispered words of "Loyal Lucy…"

Letting them lead her away, Lucy actually has to struggle to maintain the poker face she has learned this year on the Valiant. She has to keep herself from smiling because now she knows that her Harry will return. And this time, things will go right.

FIN