I absolutely love Countess Scarlioni in 'City of Death' and am quite gutted that she died. I'm also gutted that I have seen absolutely no fic about her at all. This was written to try and stop my nerves over the exam results arriving tomorrow getting the better of me (which looks v likely at this moment).
I don't own these characters. "Borrowed without permission but with every intention of bringing it back!"
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He seems to be praising her for her discretion and charm, yet she has the feeling she's being mocked. Though, why would he mock her at all? She came from a traditional English family and those two characteristics were the norm in families of her status. Thy helped to avoid scandal.
Yet as this curious Doctor speaks, she has the strangest feeling that he can see past her outwardly elegant, calm and self confident exterior and through to where the scared and nervous young woman she once was still lurks. She doesn't like the feeling at all, and she finds herself clutching the copy of Hamlet tighter than she needs to.
He makes her feel silly, and naïve and...., well, young. As in the sense of 'I'm out of my depth but I'll pretend everything is fine', like she often felt in her first few weeks after she left home. Young and inexperienced. She hasn't felt like that for many years.
As soon as he goes, his warnings about her husband still ringing in her ears, she hurries to the bookcase and takes out a hollowed out volume where the plans for the breaking into the Louvre were hidden. Among them is an Egyptian papyrus scroll and one of its figures has, instead of a normal human head, a green, heavily tentacled head, with one huge and staring eye. It is decidedly alien and it makes her gasp in pure horror.
Somehow, in a flash, she just knows that this is what her husband is. Yet what it is or where it's from, or what she has been living so intimately with (that last thought making her feel mildly nauseous) all these years, she has absolutely no idea.
No matter, she thinks, opening another hollowed out book and calling for Herman to bring Carlos out of his den in the basement. The beautiful bracelet that will eventually be her downfall rests prettily on her slim wrist, as she makes a vow to herself.
When he walks through that door, she whispers to herself, steeling her nerves and gripping a gun with trembling but exceptionally well manicured hands, I will be ready.
She had had a reminder of what being her younger, inexperienced-in-life self felt like. For that reason, and that woman she used to be, she wants answers.
Discretion and charm have to be abandoned occasionally.