If it's a trigger warning, chances are it applies to this fic. For this chapter: casual ableism, body horror, torture, genocide, xenophobia, molestation.
Co-written with Shrrgnien, against the better judgement of us both.
In retrospect, the plan had been monumentally stupid. Jack fingered the TARDIS key, avoiding a cameraman and waiting for it all to go to hell—as brilliant as the Doctor was, low-level perception filters weren't exactly foolproof, and despite his assurances that they would be in no danger from the Master (who wouldn't, the Doctor explained, be fooled by the TARDIS keys), Jack had his doubts. The Doctor was oblivious at the best of times, but this might have set a new record. Even on the off-chance the Doctor's insane ex didn't hurt him, there was nothing at all protecting Martha, who had neither personal history or immortality on her side.
It was the kind of oversight Jack wasn't used to seeing the Doctor make, and the thought of what else their resident less-crazy Time Lord might have miscalculated was not an encouraging one. He glanced at Martha. If it came down to it, he decided, he could tackle her from here, cover her with his body. Not exactly the circumstances he would have chosen for that maneuver, but the President was talking and he should probably be paying attention.
"Now we know we are not alone," President Winters was saying, "no longer unique in the universe." Ha, unique! That was a trip. Jack could think of thirty alien species off-hand that looked nearly identical to humans. "And I ask of you now," he continued, "I ask of the human race, to join me in welcoming our new friends." Winters paused for dramatic effect, looking for a moment around the room (his eyes jumping completely over where they stood beneath their perception filters), and then flung his arms wide. "I give you the Toclafane!"
Jack tensed. This was it. He'd seen this a thousand times before—never on this scale, never with Time Lords involved, but the scene itself had played over countless times. Humans who thought they were controlling an alien species, right up until it killed them without a moment's pause; advanced species, playing lower beings like fiddles, manipulating and taking advantage of them before throwing them aside with no thought to the promises they had been made. Whether these Toclafane were the pawns or the players… well, they'd know for certain once the President stopped talking. It was the chessmaster he was worried about.
"...the planet Earth and its associated moon…"
He glanced over at the Doctor. The alien was tense, and stared at the Toclafane with a mixture of horror and sadness. Jack wondered if he'd ever come across them before; in all of his days as a Time Agent, he'd never so much as heard of them, but the Doctor had a thousand years of experience across all of Time and Space, was a myth in his own right. If anyone knew the Toclafane, it would be him.
"Man is stupid," said one of the Toclafane in a childish voice, and Jack couldn't help but agree.
"Master is our friend," said another, and everything sort of went downhill from there.
The Master was ridiculously energetic, like a more unhinged version of the Doctor, and cheerful, but rather than being disarming, it was chilling. He smiled charmingly as the Toclafane killed Winters as barely an afterthought, laughed while he carelessly ordered the guards into position—and of course the guards were his, or at least were Saxon's, of course they were. The hope of a few dozen rounds of bullets to the Master's skull might not be acceptable to the Doctor, but Jack was perfectly open to it. How had he even managed that? Torchwood was slipping.
The Master grinned as the guards ordered everyone to stay still. "Now, then. Peoples of the Earth, please attend carefully!"
The Doctor pulled the perception filter off of his neck. Martha reached out to stop him, but Jack held her back—there was still hope they'd not be noticed, as fragile as that hope was, and trying to stop the Doctor from doing something stupid wasn't very likely to help. She didn't have any protections, as much as the Doctor pretended she did, or forgot she didn't. Jack wasn't sure which was worse.
They watched, holding as still as possible, while the Doctor was pushed onto his knees. True to form, he never stopped shouting.
"We meet at last, Doctor," said the Master, with some disdain on the title that Jack didn't quite understand. The next moment he was cheery again: "Oh, I do love saying that!"
"Stop this! Stop this right now!"
The Master laughed. "As if some low-level perception filter would work on me. It's almost like you wanted to be caught. And, oh, look! The girlie and the freak! Which one's which, though? I'm not sure. Humans are so bland."
Before the Master finished talking, Jack had shoved Martha behind him and charged the dais. There was always a chance, after all, and if there was one thing Jack Harkness was born for, it was creating distractions. The guards were too slow, he noted in a corner of his mind; they weren't used to split-second reactions, they were too accustomed to Saxon's dramatic speeches. Without an order from their Master they were out of practice.
As it turned out, the guards weren't his problem. Saxon—the Master—glanced at him, flourished a small metal contraption in one hand, and Jack had time to muse briefly to himself about getting frequent-dyer miles in the afterlife before a smoldering burn bored into his nerves and his vision flooded with red.
"Laser screwdriver," the Master said cheerfully. "Who'd have sonic?"
The Doctor raised his hand as much as he could, restrained by the guards. The Master gave him a withering look.
"And the good thing is, he's not dead for long!" Martha would never really get used to that; she was already kneeling next to Jack, instinctively checking his vitals even though she knew he was coming back. It never got easier seeing him die like this. "I get to kill him again!"
Not if I can help it, she thought firmly. Could the Master see her? So far she hadn't tried to attack him, not like the other two…
"Master," said the Doctor imploringly—what sort of history did these two have? "Just calm down. Look at what you're doing! Just… stop. If you could see yourself—"
"If I could see myself? This coming from the one who's worn a shimmer for the last few millenia? Do you ever take that thing off?"
Shimmer? She almost turned to the Doctor and demanded an explanation before remembering that she couldn't draw attention to herself. Not even the Master was perfect. There was still a chance.
Anyway, she thought as she finally felt a twitch and the beginnings of a pulse under her hand, she had more important things to worry about. Jack came back to life with a gasp, but it went unnoticed by the others; the humans drawn away by the perception filters, and the Time Lords too busy with a silent conversation; this was the first time she'd ever seen the Doctor defer to anyone, and it was worrying.
"It's that sound in your head, Master. The drums. I can help you. I can make them stop!"
"Oh, how to shut you up?" said the Master, sighing. "Oh! I know! That shimmer of yours, is it the same one you always had? Looks like it, in any case—you're not passing very well for human any more, did you notice? You really ought to get a new one. But you won't, will you? You're so obsessed with the past. Do you think that if you have some anchor to the old days, we'll still be able to go back to that? You're pathetic, Theta. Any chance of getting back that relationship burnt with Gallifrey." He carelessly pointed his screwdriver at the Doctor. "Exactly how many genocides is that now?"
While the Doctor stumbled over a reply (and if you had to think about how many genocides you'd committed, there might be a problem somewhere, Martha thought), the Master's screwdriver flashed again. There was a crackle of static and a burst of sparks—for a moment Martha thought the Master had burned a hole in him, but no, they were just coming from his pocket—and with a ripple like a force field dropping, the Doctor… changed.
He was still recognisably himself, more or less; his facial features remained similar, if somewhat more androgynous. But his skin was pale orange, like his blood was a different colour, and his lips and eyelids were darker, like turned leaves. He had over-long fingers, dark at the tips and fading into flesh-tone; scales over some sort of exoskeleton, Martha realised. The same scales made a mockery of hair, running from the approximation of a hairline and disappearing beneath his collar. They were flanked on either side by orange-red frills, which lay flat against his head. He had no visible external ears, and his eyes… Martha couldn't bring herself to meet them. Bright, inhuman, and unreadable blue-green-grey, six of them, arranged like Lycosidae Arctosa.
"Doctor…" she said weakly. What are you? she wanted to ask. What did he do, how long have you been like this, what are you, why did you pretend, how much was just pretending...?
Were you just pretending you wanted to save us?
It was as if the Doctor had heard the last; his six eyes latched onto her face, and he mouthed 'no' as she tried not to shudder. "They trusted me," he said to the Master tiredly, like they had had this conversation before; it didn't help his case any, and he knew it, cringing at her gaze. "You didn't have to break it."
"Oh!" the Master exclaimed with over-exaggerated remorse. "Did you never tell her about the shimmer? Oh, that's awkward. So terribly sorry. Whoops!" The caricature of an apology vanished into a brilliant smile as he danced over to the nearest camera. "Do excuse me!" he said cheerfully, sticking his face close to the lens like he was making a home movie. "Little bit of personal business. Back in a bit." He tipped the camera carelessly back, hiding the proceedings from the billions of viewers Martha had almost forgotten about until now.
With a slight rush of resentment, barely managing to make itself known through her horror as she stared at the being that had been the Doctor, she realised that he could have done that before stripping off the disguise.
Jack, still sprawled on his back with his head craned back to watch, gave a breathy laugh. "Hey there, Doc," he said cheerfully. "So that's what you Time Lords really look like?" Martha wondered how he could take the transformation from a normal… well, normal-looking… and really quite attractive man into an insect person so calmly. Then again, it was Jack.
He grinned naughtily, and Martha gave a preemptive sigh. Here we go. Yes, this was definitely Jack. "You know," he drawled, "I really like the shade of those lips, Doctor. I bet they'd look great wrapped around my—"
The Master nodded to the guards, who shot him down again before he could finish. Blood splattered on her arms, but she didn't notice it, watching in muted horror as the Master pulled something out of his suit jacket. She recognised the technology from Manhattan; the guns the Dalek Humans had carried. Was it native to Gallifrey, she wondered? The Doctor was certainly familiar enough with it. She was so helplessly out of her depth here.
"Our… mutual friends at Torchwood One had this beautiful thing in their archives," said the Master. "I thought you would appreciate it." He pointed the weapon at the Doctor's chest, raising an eyebrow which presumably didn't actually exist. "Don't worry, it won't do permanent damage. Or, well, much of it."
The Doctor screamed, and kept screaming far past the point a human would have had to breathe. The sound was almost like bad radio reception, static overlaid on pained shrieks. It was loud and shrill, and the Doctor thrashed, held fast by seemingly-unaffected guards.
Eventually the Master took his finger off the trigger, and the Doctor finally stopped screaming. The guards dropped him like dead weight, and he collapsed to the floor, breathing heavily.
The… creature… the Doctor, she forced herself to think, he was still the Doctor, he was just different, almost reminiscent of the sweet-natured Chantho she'd met before everything went to hell except orange… lay shuddering and twitching on the floor for what felt like forever. The Master closed his eyes and smiled, basking in the sound of the Doctor's pained wheezing. Martha stared at the Doctor in shock. Everything in her screamed to run to him, to help him somehow—check him for shock, for injuries or head trauma sustained in the fall, to do something—but a deeper instinct even than a doctor's urge to heal held her rooted in place.
Don't trust it, it whispered treacherously. It's strange, it's alien, it's dangerous. It doesn't count. Protect yourself instead.
The silence was eventually broken by the last voice Martha expected to hear.
"You have the most beautiful eyes," said Lucy Saxon softly. The creature that was the Doctor looked up at her slowly, and the inhuman, lidless eyes looked almost hopeful, almost grateful; the vulnerability in them struck a chord somewhere that shook Martha out of her trance. Stomping down firmly on the animal instinct that told her to recoil from the alien, she slipped carefully away from Jack's side to kneel next to the Doctor. She still couldn't look him in the eyes, but she managed to take his hand in what she hoped was a comforting manner.
His hands felt just like they always did, corpse-cold and fine-boned, and so long as she didn't look at his long, scaled fingers, she could pretend there was a colour-cast, or that she was just imagining the orange tone of his skin.
He was still shaking badly and making quiet, pained gasps, but he held on tightly to her hand. "Martha," he whispered hoarsely, pulling at her arm. "The Archangel Network."
"I know, Doctor," she said reassuringly, placing a hand on his forehead. She wasn't certain how to check for a concussion without being able to look at pupil dilation, or for that matter pupils at all, but he seemed to have forgotten what led them here. "It's how he got everyone to vote for—"
"No," he panted. "Archangel, it's—it's a telepathic network, it works both ways, picks up on what the whole planet is thinking, if they're thinking about fear that's what it spreads, but give them hope—"
Somewhere in the background the Master was grandstanding again. Martha wasn't listening to him. The Doctor's voice hadn't changed, not really, and if she closed her eyes she didn't see the alien, she just saw him.
"You have to give them hope, Martha, the perception filter will hide you—get them to believe that they're protected and they can make it real. He's not immortal. You have to give them hope, tell them—one year from today, tell them I'm going to save them all, make them believe it."
Bit of a tall order, there, Doctor, she thought. Five minutes ago it would have seemed the most natural thing in the world—of course the Doctor would save them, of course he would, and it would have been the simplest thing in the world to convince others of. But now… how would she even start? They'd seen him for what he was, some big orange bug from outer space, and she couldn't even begin to answer her own questions…
"Big orange bug?" said the Doctor, amusement overshadowed by a coughing fit. He was definitely answering to her thoughts, then. That was… well. She only hoped he wasn't usually paying attention to them. "Martha Jones, I'm not an insect. Closer to a reptile than anything else on this planet, really."
He was the Doctor. Whatever else he was, he was still the Doctor, and she had to trust him now. She had no other choice.
She had to try.
"Ah, Martha Jones!" said the Master, noticing her as if for the first time. "Hello again! I do hope you don't think I've forgotten about you! In fact, to make you feel at home, I've brought you something of a gift—I hope you don't mind. We've flown them in all the way from prison!" He gestured ornately like a circus ringmaster as the door opened. Her parents and sister were marched in, flanked by two more of the Master's guards.
"Mum!" Martha called, disentangling herself from the Doctor as gently as she could.
Her mother didn't seem to notice one way or the other, and didn't even look at the Doctor's alien form lying prone at her feet. "I'm sorry," she said.
"It's not your fault," Martha said, smiling as well as she could. Inside, she was crumbling. She couldn't leave her family to the Master; she could barely leave the Doctor and Jack as it was, and they could manage without her. She didn't know if her family could.
"The Toclafane!" said the Doctor suddenly, pulling himself up with shaking arms. "What are they? Who are they?"
"Oh, Theta…" said the Master, and there was that name again. The Doctor flinched at it. "It would break your hearts to know. So I guess I may as well tell you, then!" He dragged the Doctor up by an arm, twisting him around so they stood one in front of the other, the Master's hand strong on the Doctor's jaw and pulling his head back and to the side, exposing his neck. He mouthed at the Doctor's neck, from the base of his throat up to his jaw, and the Doctor's frills fanned out. The Master's lips rasped against his skin, whispering something inaudible at what must have been the alien's ear.
Whatever the Master had whispered had the desired effect; he began struggling in the Master's arms. "No! Why would you— What did they do to deserve that?"
The Master smirked, pushing the Doctor away and putting him off-balance, still unsteady from the earlier torture. "They asked me to do it," he said, triumphant.
Jack revived with a gasp, then closed his eyes and lay perfectly still. Martha didn't blame him.
The Master was speaking again. "I only gave them what they wanted, Doctor!" he crowed happily. "I helped them. They were so lost and alone, so I saved them and… how do you put it? Showed them the stars. Don't you approve?" He whirled and grabbed his wife around the waist. "How many, do you think?" he asked, and there was madness behind his fond tone as she giggled and demured. "Six billion!" he exclaimed happily before twisting away and turning back to the Doctor as if the conversation had never been interrupted. "And after I saved them, I promised my new children this." He spread his arms with an expression of rapture, a twisted savior figure. "That we would desecrate and decimate this pathetic planet!" The brief fit of rage switched to an almost curious head-tilt. "Good word, decimate. Do you know what it means, Doctor?"
The Doctor's insect-like eyes widened, and Martha managed to read horror there. "No!" he shouted. "You can't—"
"Kids!" the Master called. "Remove one-tenth of the population!"
Martha stifled a scream as, outside the windows of the Valiant, the Toclafane surged towards the planet's surface. The Master switched on an audio system as the Valiant's radios began crackling desperately, drowning out the frantic transmissions from all over the world. (Valiant, this is… getting slaughtered… Valiant, report, help… god's sake, help us… dying...) and twirled Lucy once before sliding up to the almost-forgotten camera, tilting it back down. "Hello, Earthlings!" he said with a manic grin. "Any of you still watching this and not running about like ants, you seem to have missed an important memo. Basically, er… end of the world." He smiled and gave an exaggerated shrug, as if to say silly old me.
"You're sick," Martha's mother spat from where she was being held between two guards.
The Master turned to her, and his grin turned crueller. "I'm your Master!" he said. "And you will obey me." He spun on his heel and narrowed his eyes at Martha with a deadly look in his eyes. "Won't she, Martha Jones?"
Martha opened her mouth, whether to say just listen to him, Mum or shout her defiance she didn't know. Whatever it was, she never got the chance. In a single, powerful lunge, Jack surged up from the floor and tackled her away from the Doctor. She felt something tighten around her wrist and for a moment had the sickening thought he's a traitor, no, he can't be, it's not fair! before Jack had pushed himself off her again, blocking the Master's view. She looked down to see what he'd done and barely had time to recognise the device before its auto-jump feature lit up.
"No, I can't just—!"
A sickening sense of being pulled apart, a terrifying nothingness as her atoms rushed headlong into the Vortex, a feeling of tumbling head over nonexistent heels, and Hampstead rushed up to meet her.
"...Leave them…"
Dizzy and sick, she pulled herself slowly to her feet. London was burning. Toclafane, whatever they were, poured from a tear in the sky and surged in and around her city. A long line of them stretched overhead, and she tensed to run; but they weren't Time Lords, and she reached up a ran shaking fingers over the reassuringly cool metal of her TARDIS key.
Thank you, she thought. It seemed that even the shattered, cannibalised hulk of that wonderful blue box was still able to protect her. Maybe she hadn't been abandoned so utterly after all. Martha felt a twinge of guilt when she remembered the pain that had radiated from the TARDIS when they'd found it. I'll come back, she promised. Maybe someone would hear. I'll come back. When I'm finished.
The screams from London could be heard even here. Martha Jones steeled herself, turned her back, and walked away.