NOTE: These snippets were originally going to be parts of a larger, cohesive story outlining the events onboard the Valiant pretty much month-by-month and continuing onwards with a permanently de-aged Doctor. Several years of watching them collect dust, though (the first was written in 2009) and I've finally realised I'll never actually finish the narrative. So I've decided to go ahead and post these snapshots as a collection of little vignettes. Events are in roughly chronological order (the first three chapters follow each other directly) and the last chapter skips forward to what would have been the end had this ever been completed.
Many of these scenes come to a rather abrupt end, so be warned you may have to use your imagination to fill in any gaps. (Alternatively, you could use your word processor! I claim no ownership over any of this so if an idea tickles your fancy please by all means continue it and toss me a link. I would love to read this as a proper story!) Also things get rather dark rather quickly. This is not a fluffy story. Enjoy!
He breathes a low, shaky breath and tries to get used to this. His limbs quiver as he pushes himself to his feet, and meets the mirthful eyes which are now entirely too far above him. Nothing seems the right size—the table seems to tower over him, say nothing of the suddenly huge, looming enormity of the room itself. He stares, wide-eyed, and tries not to quail too obviously. Everything's just so big.
"Ohh, he's positively adorable," Harold Saxon coos, kneeling down before him with the air of one inspecting a newborn puppy. The wife smiles, her eyes tinged with just that little hint of weary insanity.
"Can we keep him?" she asks softly, a mad grin playing across her face.
"Oh most certainly." Saxon—no, the Master—when had he forgotten that? reaches out a hand to pat his head. The touch sends a pulse through his fragmented mind like black lightning; tinges of madness and anger and the harsh, unforgiving beat of drums, pounding, beating so loudly. The flood startles him and he stumbles back with a gasp. Koschei withdraws his hand as if burnt, a vicious scowl on his face. He blinks. Koschei, the Master, Saxon… so many names. He can't remember where one starts or ends or why it ever changed at all.
"Perhaps a bit of a time out first," the Master says, rocking back on his heels and standing up. The face is no longer amused; there's real anger hidden in the depths of madness. Saxon turns to the guards stationed by the door—their discomfort and fear is alarmingly palpable. Their tiny human thoughts tumble through his head like so much water. Something tells him to stop, to shut his senses and withdraw but he honestly can't remember how. "Find the brat a place to cool off," Koschei orders, the humans immediately springing to his command. Less trouble as an old geezer… the thought is not his voice and not his mind and he reels where he stands. The Master whips around, and the thought is cut off with a sudden fury—the emotion kills the notion but the feelings make him dizzy. He grins loopily for a second, amused by his own turn of phrase. This seems to infuriate Koschei. The elder (no, younger?) Time Lord doesn't risk another touch, though. That's good, he thinks, no more drums. The drums made him nauseous.
As the guards clamp iron grips around arms he doesn't remember being quite so small, the Master sends him a purposeful wave of fury. He can't help his expression darkening along with the emotion, though it probably doesn't look half ridiculous on his tiny face. Tiny? When was his face tiny? He sags into the humans' hold and tries very hard not to think what they're thinking. Too many thoughts. Why can't he block them? He blinks slowly at his own body. Very small. His shirt is much too big. The jacket and pants were nice—he wished they hadn't fallen off. They had pinstripes. He liked them. Pinstripes. Thinstripes, winstripes… he grins again, then frowns. The humans are scared and helpless and so he is too.
"Find him some bloody clothes while you're down there!" Saxon calls after them irritably, trying to control the fury he's feeling over that brief loss of mental control. Lucy is afraid. This had been her idea… oh, he'll be so angry. Her vague panic is cut off as the door shuts behind them.
He feels nauseous again.
#-#
Jack does his best to grin haughtily as the guards unchain him. Really all he wants to do is cry with relief—he's been trussed up for days, can't remember when he last felt sensation in his hands. The expression he presents to the ever-present surveillance cameras is a devious smirk. Inside he is screaming.
"What's the occasion, boys?" Jack asks. No answer, as if he'd really been expecting one. He's dragged bodily down a corridor (which is good as he still doesn't trust his legs to do their work) and focuses on irritating his captors as much as possible. The power of annoyance—only thing he has left. It might cause one of them to slip out of that brainwashed, emotionless mask, and that's really all he wants to see at this point. Proof that someone else, at least, is human. "You know most guys would offer to buy me a drink first," he quips. No reaction. He sighs.
They stop in front of one of the faceless glass cells of the lower deck. Jack looks around with a slightly worried glance. He's seen prisoners here—terrified humans herded in and out like toys in boxes, experiment fodder for the maniacal Time Lord upstairs. Tonight, though, the cells are mercifully devoid of screaming civilians. Good, then, he won't have to watch more horrific deaths. Wrenching his thoughts from nightmarish memories sets him wondering at the reason for this sudden change of quarters. He's about to ask when the guard presses a button and the door slides open.
Before he can even throw a decent parting quip he's tossed bodily into the small space. Legs weak from captivity fold underneath him and he's left sprawled on the floor like an idiot. The door slides shut again without even an inkling of recognition for his entertaining display from the guards. The Doctor had mentioned that the Master had always been 'sort of hypnotic.' Understatement of the year, Jack thinks drolly.
Thinking he might want to get up sometime before his next inevitable death, he slowly attempts to hoist himself up on tingling arms. He only succeeds in rolling himself over, but being able to lie flat again is such a mercy that he gives up on anything further and just sighs happily. Bliss in the form of a hard metal floor. Endorphins from a million injured muscle cells flood his system, making him perfectly content to lie still and study the ceiling.
The Master seems to prefer modern-vogue to the old standby of bars and concrete. Tinted, bulletproof glass surrounds him in a roughly six-foot square, towering above like some sort of exceptionally bland skyline. Other than that, he knows a door with a keypad on the other side is probably somewhere near his feet. It's all dully uniform, grey, not much to look at and certainly not very homey.
Still, he's lying down, relatively comfortable, and that's far more than he can say for the last few weeks. A boring and minimalistic cell might as well be a palace at this point.
"Life's good…" he mutters half-seriously to the ceiling. This is a moment to be… well, if not relished, at least appreciated. A brief respite before that bastard Saxon arrives to treat him to some new and exciting death. Probably something new—gas, maybe. He hasn't had that yet. Jack eyes the vents above him and considers the merits of suffocation in a macabre attempt at humour. Better than drowning? What exactly does poison smell like, anyway?
His wandering thoughts are broken by a shuffle in the corner and a low, keening whimper. Startled, he quickly rolls back over to stare wildly at the far walls of his admittedly rather small prison. There. Huddled in the corner is a ball of cloth he somehow hadn't noticed before being shoved in here. It's… blue. And… shaking? With a jolt he realizes what it is. A little kid. Some child, dressed in plain shorts, body curled up in the fabric of a wildly oversized button-down shirt. He's briefly horrified, thinking this poor soul will be killed along with him this night, before recognition his and his eyes widen. Oh, no… no, no, no. He knows that shirt…
As if sensing his realization, the shirt rustles and a small, pale face peeks out from the collar. There's no mistaking the shock of brown hair, freckles standing out on near-white skin, and those wide, frightened doe eyes. Oh god, Doctor…
He's no more than five or six… a harmless child rather than a decrepit old man… and the poor thing's terrified. Jack feels his heart break as the familiar chocolate eyes widen at the sight of him, taking on an edge of panic and fear.
"Doctor?" Jack asks softly, still somehow unwilling to believe that his timeless and noble alien friend has been reduced to a child in the corner of a cell. He hauls himself to his knees and reaches a hand out shakily.
At his movement the boy starts as if shocked and presses himself into the corner, eyes locked on Jack. He starts to shake again. Jack shifts himself on rapidly-strengthening arms to lean toward his friend, thinking to at least draw the too-young Time Lord out of the corner he's so pitifully curled in. The blank fear in the boy's eyes makes Jack nervous. Those eyes aren't those of his friend— something's missing. They're too blank, too naieve. Why on earth has the Master even done this? It's not as if the Doctor had been much of a threat as an old man! And now to force his friend through another painful re-aging… he clenches his teeth in anger, suddenly furious. If Saxon's done any lasting harm to the Doctor, he'll—
As if reacting to Jack's decidedly vicious thoughts, the boy-Doctor gives a frightened yelp and hides his head under his hands. Eyes screwed shut the boy mutters something very quickly to himself in some sort of musical, chiming language. A lilting mantra, over and over… Jack is distracted from his anger long enough to listen carefully, trying to understand, hoping the Doctor might communicate with him. The words are too alien, a completely different language than any he's heard before and he doesn't hold much hope that the words will arrange themselves into something he can decipher. The TARDIS relies on her pilot to complete the translation circuit. He's fairly sure that the Doctor being reduced to the size of a human five year-old tosses a giant wrench in the working of that system.
The Doctor, despite his mantra of strangely chiming words, looks close to hyperventilating, and Jack quickly shelves his own worries and designs for revenge on Saxon in favour of figuring out a way to calm the boy down before he passes out. Not knowing whether he'll be recognized, or even understood, Jack nonetheless leans forward on shaky arms –-still not quite recovered blood flow— and attempts to provide some reassurance.
"Hey, Doc, calm down. It's me… it's just Jack." he murmurs softly, managing to sit up properly and move toward the not-child. The Doctor's chant falters for a moment and he opens his eyes to stare frightfully at Jack, huddling further back into the corner than should have been possible. Jack stops, anger washing through him again. In front of him is the last(-ish) of the powerful Time Lords, the Oncoming Storm, savior of the universe… reduced to a frightened child in the corner of a cell! He fights to keep his expression neutral as thoughts of the best way to gut the Master and destroy the paradox machine come to mind. Hang the Doctor's warning to wait it out! The second he has a chance he's going to break out of here, find Saxon, and wring his little Time Lord—
Jack's violent thoughts are cut off as his cellmate screws his eyes shut again and cries out, hands over his ears as if to block out some impossibly loud noise. Without warning the boy keels forward with his head clasped between tiny hands, pained, and Jack instinctively lunges forward to catch him.
The effect is spectacular. No sooner do his fingers brush the skin of the Doctor's small hand than the boy jumps up with a barely-contained scream, wild-eyed and panting, as raw psychic energy of the kind Jack has only ever experienced in his long-past training in as a Time Agent is hurled his way. As he scrambles away from the sudden and unexpected burst of panicked, angry power, the Doctor yells again and backs away.
"Stop stop stop no, you're wrong!" the boy says, both audibly and telepathically as he stumbles backwards. Jack's ears register unintelligible Gallifreyan but instantly, disconcertingly understands the words as they're projected forcibly into his mind, "you're wrong don't touch me I can't block it, I can't block anything!" the Doctor's small face is screwed up in pain as he finally hits the far wall and sinks down it, sobbing.
Jack is caught like a deer in the headlights, frozen where he'd initially backed off. 'You're wrong,' those words again, now with all the meaning the Doctor attributes to them directly beamed into his mind. Wrong, evil, bad, unnatural, terrifying. He feels his heart pounding and a profound sense of hurt. The older, properly-aged Doctor hadn't been lying when he said the fear was instinctual. Ingrained into every temporal being's very existence, even. Obviously the Time Lord had been exercising a fair amount of control over himself as an adult; simply resorting to running, not looking at him, when this was how he'd been feeling inside? Terrified out of his wits?
And just like that, suddenly, it clicks. The tiny cell, the lack of restraints or death threats… with a strangled gasp Jack realizes why he's been brought here— not for some new, exciting demise as he'd originally thought. No, he's a living torture device. His eyes widen in horror. 'I can't block anything…' the shrunken Doctor's own words finally register. Jack quickly stumbles up and does his best to move as far away from the hysterical, miniaturized Time Lord as possible, realizing the root of the boy's frantic state: Jack's mere presence discomforted a fully lucid, telepathically-shielded Doctor. To a wide-open mind it must be agony.
Thankfully the distance seems to calm his cellmate marginally, and the young Doctor settles back into muttering, trying to calm himself or build some sort of mental wall, Jack can't tell.
A few tense, near-silent minutes later and Jack is trying to figure out what he could possibly do to make this situation any less ghastly. He's trapped with a barely-coherent, shrunken version of his oldest friend, and his very presence is causing the boy pain. He tries in vain to push himself a little farther into the wall, face torn even as the Doctor begins to calm. The boy's ragged breaths come more slowly, his face relaxing somewhat until finally his eyes open.
His eyes… Jack stares. They're glowing. Faintly, but unmistakable, a golden light around the irises. The Doctor blinks, shaking his head, and the light is gone as quickly as it appeared, leaving Jack to wonder if he'd imagined it.
He's still staring, distracted, as the Doctor speaks;
"Rasillon, my head…" the boy groans. Jack's worried expression perks up immediately, hope flashing through him. Those short words had been translated —not in some rough, quickly forced projection of meaning through raw telepathy— but properly reformed by the TARDIS. If she's managed to reconnect herself to her pilot then there's hope, he thinks, hope that maybe his friend isn't completely lost to him.
"Doc?" Jack hedges, excited but trying to remain calm, "Hey, you understand me? Do you know where you are?" Such stupid, simple questions… but he has to ask them, has to know.
The Doctor looks up with eyes that at least seem lucid, glares at him rather woozily. "Of course I do," the boy answers. Jack sags a little in relief and grins, immensely grateful to be able to communicate with his friend without causing a panic attack.
"You scared me a bit there," Jack confides, not really sure what to say or ask in this situation and deciding he'll just wing it. He tries for a bit of humour, "man you can hit pretty hard with a psychic blast! Remind me never to challenge you to a game of Geldian Mind-war!" he exclaims, trying to barb the Doctor into informing him just how badly he would lose at any form of telepathic contest with a Time Lord. Come on, Doc, bitch me out like usual…
Sadly the moment seems to have passed as all he gets in response is a rather blank stare. Jack's smile slips a few notches as the Doctor simply looks at him. No notice of the playful jab, or really even of Jack himself.
After a few seconds, though, the Time Lord blinks, screws up his face again and rubs his temples as if trying to ward off a headache. Jack has no idea what to do and so tries to keep himself as still and non-threatening as possible.
" … Jack," the boy starts. Jack nearly faints with relief. The Doctor recognises him! Oh thank god, his friend hasn't been wiped clean by the Master's sadistic aging device. He barely manages to restrain a sudden impulse to run over and hug the boy. Memories of the terrified panic a simple touch had caused keeps him still, though, and he simply allows himself a quiet grin as the Doctor continues speaking;
"I'm not really… I'm… not… hmm…" the Doctor stops and trails off, looking faintly lost. He seems to catch sight of his own small hands and gives them a strange, puzzled look.
Seeing that the Doctor has become distracted, Jack attempts to continue the conversation. No way is he letting his Time Lord lapse into panic-mode again. He smiles and injects a bit of false cheer into his voice, "— you're not in possession of all your marbles?" he supplies not-quite-helpfully, hoping for any expression other than abject terror or blank bewilderment. Irritation, maybe. It's always been easy to irritate the Doctor.
It works— the tiny boy stops inspecting his own hands and gives Jack a disapproving frown, then looks away as if the sight of Jack pains him. Despite this Jack's ecstatic. No screaming, and able to be annoyed by bad jokes. His Doctor is definitely still in there.
"I've more marbles than you," the boy responds suddenly, an irritated look on his face as he studies the wall. Jack laughs, for once skipping any innuendo out of pure relief. The Doctor smiles too, then glances at him and immediately frowns. Jack is just bracing himself for a terrified yell or some other reaction to his Fact-ness when the Doctor abruptly jumps up from his seat on the floor.
"Koschei shrunk me!" he exclaims loudly.
Jack jumps, startled by the sudden movement, and shoves himself further against the wall in case the Doctor decides to go into panic-mode again. The boy's face seems more affronted than terrified, though. Jack casts around for any response to that statement other than complete bafflement.
He quickly gives up. "Uhh… who?"
"Koschei, you silly ape!" the Doctor says, glaring then looking away quickly. That human is… revolting. What in the cosmos could have allowed that thing to exist? The Doctor shakes his head and paces a few times, dimly recalling through a terrible headache that the human is actually somehow his friend, and that said human is probably confused right now because lower beings would know Time Lords by titles, not names.
Wait, titles? He and Koschei didn't have titles yet.
The Doctor stops short, shakes his head violently and lowers himself to the wall once more. The unsettling human's quizzical stare reminds him that he'd been clarifying something and he strives to remember… oh, that's right, they do have titles now, he just has to think…
"Ah, him… the…" the Doctor screws up his face in confusion, pointing upwards vaguely in the direction from which he currently senses his fellow Time Lord. "Ah! The Master," he recalls finally. He frowns, "oh, that's a horrible title."
The human laughs. The Doctor tries to smile along with him but memories keep crowding in and getting all jumbled in his head, making it hard to think. His brain is going haywire, unable to rewrite itself to fit into such a small skull so quickly, and his TARDIS, though she tries, isn't able to provide much help. Most of her power is being drained supporting the paradox raging on the Earth below. He knows all this, and is also painfully aware that he's likely to forget it all in the next moment. His head pounds and he groans as he allows himself to wilt to the side. Ah, yes, this floor is much more comfortable… he could take a nap, probably, if not for that horrible, nauseating Fact across the room there. If the thing would just… leave. Maybe he could drive it away if he tried.
No, wait, can't do that. He rubs his eyes and tries to remember that the Fact is his friend, and he should try to tolerate it. But Rasillon the thing hurts his head…
"Doctor?" the human's face has fallen, and it is with an almighty force of will that the Doctor manages to hold onto a scrap of his adult mind. He's slipping into the mentality of a child and that isn't a pretty place to be for a Time Lord trapped with an immortal and a paradox in close vicinity. Sitting up quickly (the movement makes his head spin nauseatingly) he tries to compose himself. Adult, adult, not child, you're 903 years old, not six…
"I'm sorry, Jack. Having a bit of trouble fitting a mature brain into a child's skull," he says quickly, going for nonchalant even though he's terrified he'll forget what he's just said. His voice sounds high and squeaky and altogether not his own, and he groans as he presses small hands into his eyes. Jack, the human, Fact, whatever, is a beacon of worry and wrongness and it's driving him mad. If only the stupid ape could just shut up for a second.
Thankfully, Jack doesn't respond with a joke. Instead his mind is serious and Theta knows before he hears it what he's going to say. Is there anything I can do to help?
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Yes." Theta—the Doctor—bites out. "Stop thinking so bloody loud."
Jack flashes a bolt of confusion and then sheepishly attempts a few levels of shielding. It's not nearly enough to block out the immortal's brainwaves completely from the Doctor's mind but it does quiet things a little, and the Time Lord breathes a sigh of relief. His head is pounding still, thoughts scattered and fragmented, but at least they're his thoughts now, not Jack's or the guards' or anyone else's. The pain of Jack's Fact-ness has finally become bearable, too, shielded now and reduced to a sort of dull ache. He wonders if this is what Koschei had been going for when he'd tossed him in a cell with a paradox—forced mental shielding.
Speaking of Koschei— the Doctor whips his head around, watching the door. With a million Time Lords to a telepathic field, one could sometimes tell if another was drawing near by concentrating on their aura—with only one other of his kind in the whole universe, he can't help but sense it: the Master is near, heading towards their cell.
"Doc, what-" Jack starts, as the door slides open. The Doctor's eyes are already looking at the spot where Koschei's head appears as the man steps through the door.
"Well look at you!" the Master exclaims as he catches sight of the Doctor. "I knew it! All that little brain needed was an assault on its senses and it just shored itself right up!" He smiles gleefully as he kneels down in front of the Doctor, who glares. Saxon merely grins and reaches out a finger to touch the Doctor on the nose—nothing happens, apparently declaring this a success. "No telepathic leaking to speak of!"
"I wouldn't have been 'leaking' if you hadn't shrunk me!" the Doctor exclaims, memories still a bit jumbled but definitely knowing he's miffed about suddenly being four feet tall. A surge of human anger startles him and he turns his head just in time to see a Jack-shaped blur lunge toward the Master.
"YOU FUC—AAGH!" Jack is shot down almost as soon as he'd gotten up, a Toclafane bobbing in lazily from where it had been standing sentry outside. The Doctor stares as the body falls limply to the floor. Koschei seems completely oblivious, if a little amused, and continues their conversation as if uninterrupted.
"Ooh, all haughty. Much better. I was beginning to get bored with the whole stoic grandpa thing."
The Doctor doesn't respond. The buzzing in his head that had begun to be ignorable—the Fact that was Jack—is suddenly all he can focus on. He stares at his friend's body as blood leaking from the laser wound slowly disappears, shudders at the sudden buildup of Vortex energy that signals Jack's return to the living. As an adult it was always just a bit of a discomforting feeling, a bit of a bombardment as his body redirected the excess energy and fielded it elsewhere. Now, suddenly, he realizes that isn't happening, he's not deflecting. The energy is building up, flowing through Jack and directly to him as he is an open receptacle unable to reject it. It accumulates rapidly as the human is healed, and Theta finds himself screaming as his mind burns. He sees gold.
He dimly hears Koschei yell, then blacks out to a sea of shining energy.