Cautionary Tale
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Doctor Who
Copyright: BBC
"You're not the first, you know ... Lucy Saxon."
Lucy jumped at the sound of the Doctor's slow, cracked voice across the room. She hadn't heard him speak in weeks, which was part of why she'd entered his room in the first place; Harry was absorbed in what he called a committee meeting with some engineers and weapons designers, and she had seized her chance at a rare moment of privacy. The last thing she wanted was for her husband's prisoner to address her like a sentient being. It was so much simpler to think of him as part of the furniture.
"Not the first what?" she replied tersely.
"First woman to love the Master." The Doctor's brown eyes, still uncannily bright in his wrinkled, yellowed face, were staring right at her as he leaned back into his wheelchair. She looked away.
"That doesn't surprise me," she said, with a forced casual smile.
"Chan … tho."
She turned her back on him; was he speaking gibberish now?
"Her name … was Chantho," he continued. "The last before you. His assistant. Last of her kind, just like him and me … species called Malmooth. Had the custom of … bracketing every sentence with her name. Starting with 'chan' … ending with 'tho'. Humanoid insect. Turquoise exoskeleton. Lovely voice."
"Is there a point to this?" asked Lucy, mildly revolted by the idea of any woman, let alone an insect with an exoskeleton, coming near Harry. "I'm the only Mrs. Saxon around at present, aren't I?"
Unless …
"She followed him … for seventeen years," the Doctor rasped. "And how d'you think he repaid her? Hm?"
A chill crept up her Armani-clad back. She was beginning to guess where this was going.
"Stop talking," she said through gritted teeth. "I don't want to hear it."
"When Professor Yana opened the watch … and remembered being the Master … he opened the gates to let the Futurekind attack. Chantho tried to stop him … and he murdered her. How about that?"
"Stop. It."
Run, she thought. Get away. But her feet were glued to the floor. Old, broken, defeated as he was, the Doctor's voice and eyes still posessed a power she could not resist. She had to hear the ending of the story.
"Her last act … was to shoot him. The man she loved. Not for revenge, but … to protect everyone else. All that courage, wasted. How was she to know … that Time Lords regenerate?"
A dry rustle of a laugh shook the Doctor's body in his wheelchair.
"What happened to her body, I wonder? … Did your darling Harry tell you what the Toclafane are made of?"
Lucy stumbled out of the room and along the corridor. She felt actively sick. Harry had told her about the Toclafane, grinning smugly and expecting to be praised. They were the heads and brains of all the people from the end of the universe, who had boarded Professor Yana's shuttle in hopes of reaching Utopia. Including, perhaps, a brave and loving woman named Chantho whose only crime was to stand against the Master.
Changeable even now, the Doctor's voice faded into honest concern as it followed her down the hall.
"Take care, Lucy Saxon. Seriously … take care."