DOCTOR WHO:
VALUED
WRITTEN BY ZARIUS
(Contains Spoilers For "Rosa")
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I do not condone the actions of Krasco by any means.
Cheap and nasty.
That was the best way to describe him.
Krasco desired far too much drama in Montgomery that day, he'd even sent James Blake out to Mill Creek, when all he needed have done was change the schedules at night so that the passengers wouldn't have filled the bus to capacity.
He didn't think these things through. His type never did.
So why was The Doctor thinking so much about him?
Something had come over her the first time she met him, where he had to failed to impress her.
They were perched above two large barrels, face to face, and she told him point blank she wasn't armed.
She thought to herself gee, that's a bit of a blunder, one shot from that weapon will scatter me to the farthest time winds'
But she was most adamant about her distaste for guns, so she forgave herself for that slip up, she would forever pick the designation of coward any day even in the face of an uncertain fate.
Krasco was quick on his feet and even asked her if her admission would make him not shoot her, she responded with "ideally".
'Idiot', she thought
He had chased them out of the building earlier intent on dispersing them, and here she was giving him an indication she could actually trust him.
She had made a point of telling him she didn't like the look of his weapon, a time displacement gun, and he thanked her for the comment as if it were a compliment, which put the Doctor back on the defensive and insisting nothing of the sort was meant.
She noted that it took a lot of power to disperse people through time.
Double dose of idiocy she thought, as she had now just given him a compliment.
She again tried to give the confrontation more of an edge to it, before he could properly respond, and revealed that she had swiped his weapon's main battery, and pointed out that he had artron energy scattered throughout the period of 1955.
Krasko wondered if she were the Artron Police.
The Doctor didn't let on, but she appreciated this, she loved it when she had that aura of authentic authority on her person.
He even asked about the blue box she had arrived in earlier, catching on quick that it was a TARDIS, and even telling her it was worth a lot. She followed that up by detailing things about it to him, personal things, with a little bit of self-deprecation about its pilot, herself.
Triple idiocy
She had to retort quickly, so she pointed to his vortex manipulator and described it in much the same way she was describing him now.
Cheap and nasty travel for a cheap and nasty traveller.
She asked him what he wanted with Rosa Parks, and he had the gall to feign ignorance on the situation, which brought about another comment on his character from The Doctor.
She made it clear to he was annoying her, but she delivered the assessment not in a stern and commanding manner that would give credibility to her presence of authority, but almost like he'd let her down on a first date. She'd had a few of those with River, so she was used to days like these, as well as behaviour like this.
He said the feeling was mutual, sounding almost as unfulfilled as she was.
They had wrapped up their conversation with both a threat and a statement. He would kill them if he saw them again; she said not to threaten her.
The standoff complete, the Doctor took her leave. Krasco had assumed he'd won and told her to hurry along, which compelled The Doctor to probe him with her sonic screwdriver, which confused him.
She had several different reasons for doing this, one of which would play a part in defining their second encounter in this time period, that reason was to detect a neural restrictor in his body that prevented him from outright harming anyone, which is why he had a disperser, as he would not be allowed to properly kill anyone with a more lethal weapon.
However, the other reason she wouldn't share with her gang of friends or Krasco was that she was scanning him in a vain attempt to find just how much testosterone he had and if it was playing any part in messing with her womanly equilibrium. She could never tell with River.
River came to mind once again when she encountered Krasco later in the day, recognising the prisoner identification number on his wrist as belonging to the Stormcage prison facility, the same that had housed her deceased wife for the assassination of the eleventh incarnation, or so the universe thought.
She wondered if had acquired the cheap and nasty manipulator from her during her years spent there, or if he'd acquired it from other means.
Perhaps Missy? Was she still alive? Was she out there in the wilderness?
Those questions weren't for Krasco though, and The Doctor was most curious about his agenda, and where he came from.
He said if he told her, it would colour her view of him.
What did he mean by that?
She already knew he was a threat to her friends that he'd been held up in a prison reserved for the most hardened of criminals, she barely had a favourable view of him to begin with.
After he had told his story, of how he massacred two thousand people, and The Doctor told him of one of those reasons she had scanned him, bringing up the neural blocker in his brain, she decided to test just how valued she was in his eyes, and see if he was being truthful or sarcastic.
She took the vortex manipulator off his wrist and stomped on it, shattering it into pieces.
He grabbed her by the throat vengefully, and in doing so, he showed no one was above him and his personal mission.
The Doctor did not flinch as his grip attempted to tighten, she had complete faith the neural block would kick in, and it eventually did.
The level of testosterone he was pouring out with his physical action was enough to satisfy her own curiosities from earlier, and she got quite a bit of a tingle from the experience. It was a sensation not felt since the days and nights with River.
As Krasco limped to the floor, she looked at him with less inquisitiveness than before, but still felt like he could serve whatever fresh needs her current incarnation required, provided he was of course a bit nicer to her from then on out.
It's a pity Ryan had later scattered him across time and space with the very disperser Krasco had been welding.
She hadn't had a pet in the TARDIS for a long time.
A pet she could domesticate, tame, redeem.
She wasn't sure if he valued her, but she would like very much to regard him with value.
She remembered the inhibitor in his head, and imagined the kind of man he'd be without it.
Ah well, she thought, resigned to the impossibilities, it was a nice thought while it lasted
She would value it.