When the TARDIS materialized and the Doctor stepped out with a young woman next to him, Tegan could feel the Valeyard's anger. He was supposed to come alone, they were all supposed to come alone, not bring companions and tag-alongs until after Tegan had already infected whichever Doctor it happened to be. Yes, it was a bonus if he could have Tegan infect the insipid American as well, but after. After she'd gotten to the moron with the worst taste in clothes of anyone in the universe.
Tegan smiled, inwardly to taunt the invader in her mind, and outwardly to greet her visitors. \\Guess you don't get to have everything your way after all. Too sodding bad.\\
\\Do your job\\, the voice inside her mind snarled. She would have shivered at the intense anger he directed at her if she could, if she'd had any kind of control over her actions at all. Instead, all she did was turn her smile from the Doctor to his companion. "Hullo, you must be Peri, yes?" She reached out her hand and the other young woman took it automatically, grimacing as the expected burst of energy flared between them and the voice inside Tegan's head confirmed that Peri had been infected. "Sorry about that, there's awful static some days, I think I've set the temp so it's a bit too dry in here. Perhaps the Doctor could fidget it for me."
"Hey, no problem," Peri chirped, her American accent sounding slightly exotic to Tegan's ears. She was staring around in unabashed curiosity. "Wow, this place is great!" She turned sympathetic eyes back to meet Tegan's. "It must have made things a little easier for you."
"A little," Tegan conceded, then offered the tour the other woman so obviously wanted but was too polite to request. It took her mind off her predicament, dealing with pleasantries, showing off the pool and stables and the beach fronting the pseudo-ocean and other amenities, including the garage full of antique racing cars and the hangar with her pair of Cessna single-engine planes.
Peri oohed and aahed over everything while the Doctor trailed behind them, dour and uncommunicative throughout the tour. When they finally made their way back to the house, Tegan realized he wasn't just sulking or brooding, but actually seemed worried. Worried about her intentions, she guessed, as well he should be. He'd arrived as requested, but had made sure to bring along Peri as a sort of human shield, to prevent any chance of intimacy from developing.
Or so he planned. Tegan seethed inwardly as the Valeyard prodded her to make the invitation he'd instructed her in earlier. "Please tell me you'll stay for dinner," she found herself urging when the Doctor mumbled something about heading back to the TARDIS.
Peri was pleased by the invitation and didn't hesitate to accept it. "I'm not bad at putting together a salad," she offered, and Tegan put her to work in the kitchen while she and the Doctor busied themselves setting the table in the small dining room. "Tegan," he said in a low voice when Peri headed out to Tegan's small kitchen garden in order to gather the fresh veg she'd need, "what are you up to?"
She flashed him a teasing smile. "Why do I have to be up to something? Don't take this the wrong way, Doc, but it's nice, having someone around that isn't you, and no headache to pay for it." She stretched luxuriously, noting the quick intake of breath as the thin material of her black tank top revealed every curve of her chest. So he wasn't as impervious as he'd like her to think. "I'm in the mood to celebrate, and you're here, you came when I asked you to, so what's the big deal? Afraid I'll shock your little friend by doing something inappropriate?"
That last bit was pure Tegan, no prompting by the Valeyard needed for that jibe. She would never admit it, but she was jealous of this version of the Doctor's new traveling companion, and seeing that she was a buxom brunette from Tegan's own time period didn't help. No wonder "her" Doctor had never described the girl in any detail; at least Ace was still a child in many ways. No threat to her relationship with the Doctor.
"That's exactly what I'm afraid of," the Doctor said stiffly, and Tegan's teasing smile curled into something dark and seductive as she leaned closer, allowing him a good look down her cleavage. She'd deliberately left off wearing a bra, knowing he was coming today.
"Well, maybe you should have come alone," she breathed, and before he could react, she snaked one arm around his neck and pulled him down for a heated kiss, tongue teasing his lips, fingers toying with the curls on the nape of his neck, her other hand sliding sensuously up his chest and curling into his collar, pulling him even closer.
He returned the kiss for a split second before reason apparently kicked in, causing him to break away from her hold. They stood staring at each other, Tegan's smile triumphant, her eyes promising that this was far from over, his wary and hostile but kindled from somewhere deep inside by a fire she knew she'd aroused.
"Tegan, whatever plans you might have for after dinner, you can put them right out of your mind," he growled. "I've no intention of sleeping with you again. Ever. This is just me coming to say good-bye."
She raised a curious eyebrow at his vehemence; where had all this hostility come from? She thought they'd left things on an amicable note when they last parted company, although she had to admit she'd been left with exactly the impression he was giving her now: sex once, sex never again. Maybe, she thought hopefully, he was getting some kind of subconscious vibe from the Valeyard's unwanted presence in her mind.
Or perhaps he was simply showing his regret at what had happened between them. "Why not?" she asked him bluntly. "Why not sleep with me again? One last time before you and Peri go swanning off together on your jolly little adventures."
Once again, that was her own jealousy speaking, nothing to do with her invisible passenger, who seemed content to let her continue in this provocative manner.
The Doctor pounced on her tone. "Tegan, is that what this is about? Are you jealous of Peri? Feeling threatened, perhaps?"
"What about you?" she demanded, sensing the Valeyard's watchful "eye" on her mind as she spoke, her own will continuing to guide her tongue. "Why can't you admit the real reason you don't want to sleep with me again is because you're jealous of him?"
Her angry accusation hung in the air between them for a long moment. Then, as the Doctor drew breath to make a retort, the clatter of the French doors opening warned them of Peri's return. As if they'd rehearsed it, Tegan turned smoothly away from the Doctor and finished laying out the plates while he fumbled for the silver. Oblivious to the tense undertones, Peri returned to the kitchen and hummed happily to herself as she began washing off the tomatoes and carrots and various greens she'd collected.
Dinner was interesting, to put it mildly. The Doctor was moodily quiet, watching Tegan with a wary eye while she in turn completely ignored him, devoting her attention exclusively to Peri. The Valeyard must have approved the strategy; he remained quiescent throughout the meal, not even censoring Tegan's tongue when her TARDIS stories held thinly-veiled barbs designed to discomfit her Time Lord guest. His accusations had stung, as she hoped hers had.
Fortunately, Peri remained oblivious to the tense undercurrents of the conversation, too busy swapping TARDIS adventures with Tegan to pay attention to the way the Doctor was brooding and glowering at his end of the oval dinner table. Who knew; maybe he was like this at all the meals they shared. That thought brought another stab of jealousy to Tegan; this time, the Valeyard ruthlessly tamped it down and kept her busy recalling yet another adventure with the Doctor that led to gales of laughter between the two women.
"Here's to the TARDIS," Peri said at the end of the meal, raising her glass in a spontaneous toast.
"Yeah, here's to the old bucket," Tegan agreed with a laugh—and a wary eye on the Doctor, hoping to see some kind of reaction to her jibe. He simply quirked the corner of his upper lip in an approximation of a smile when he caught her looking at him, raising his own half-full glass—the same glass he'd been nursing the entire meal—in an ironic salute. She made a face at him, then deliberately turned back to Peri, encouraging her to tell another story. "Preferably one that makes the old sourpuss squirm," she added, tossing her head defiantly.
"Oh, there's no end of those," Peri assured her with an impish gleam in her eyes. "But first, maybe—?" She held up her empty glass and wiggled it suggestively.
Tegan stood up with a laugh, the empty bottle in one hand and her own, equally empty glass, in the other. When she passed the Doctor's end of the table, he put a restraining hand on her wrist. "Haven't you had enough?"
Tegan frowned down at him. "Not nearly," she disagreed, tossing her head and turning in appeal to their table-mate. "Right, Peri?"
"Right," Peri agreed, sounding a bit less steady than Tegan but hardly to the point of slurring her words. "We're all grown-ups here, Doc. Even if you're the old man of the party you don't have to act it! It's not like I'm driving. Bring it on, Tegan!"
Tegan ground her teeth as she headed for the wine cooler under the counter near the fridge. "Doc" was her nickname for the Doctor, and she found herself in agreement with the Valeyard's desire to get the stupid cow so drunk she'd eventually pass out. Then all she had to do was work the Doctor's last nerve, and he'd be right where she wanted him.
\\Where the Valeyard wants him,\\ she corrected herself hazily. \\Never forget, this isn't your idea, seducing the Doctor. You're just doing it to infect him because of the Valeyard. No matter how drunk you get, Tegan Elizabeth Jovanka, you can't allow yourself to forget that.\\
It was a sobering thought, but not so sobering as to actually relieve her of any of the alcohol's effects on her mind and body. She raised the new bottle over her head. "Success!" she called merrily, and Peri clapped and hooted her approval as Tegan went back to the table and presented the bottle and opener to the Doctor, all but daring him to turn her down. "Do the honors, will you? And let us silly humans have our fun."
"Yeah, let us have our fun," Peri echoed. "I wanna see how many glasses it'll take to get you drunk, Doc!"
He turned an icy glare on her that did nothing to diminish her wine-infused good cheer. "Time Lords do not get drunk," he said, but took the bottle and opener and deftly pulled the cork free. Tegan refilled her glass and Peri's and they spent a few minutes making up the most ridiculous toasts they could before collapsing into giggles.
The Doctor shook his head and seemed resigned to putting up with their shenanigans, loosening up enough to remove his, in Peri's words, "god awful" coat and consent to a second glass of wine. When they moved to the living room, Tegan proudly showed off her music console, discovering that Peri had a taste for techno dance music. They danced with each other, giggling the entire time, Tegan able to forget for a while where this all was leading.
After two or three club-beat dance songs, something slow came on. With a glint of mischief, Peri tried to get the Doctor to join them; when he refused, she laughingly turned to Tegan and held out her arms. "Be my partner," she said, and this time there was a definite slur to her words. Tegan undulated over to her and the two women clasped hands, deliberately writhing and shimmying in a way designed to drive any watching heterosexual male wild.
When they turned away from each other and danced back to back, sliding up and down against each other provocatively, Tegan looked directly at the Doctor. He was trying to look patient and unaffected, but she saw his tongue dart out and touch his upper lip. It appeared the sense enhancer she'd slipped him was working as the Valeyard had expected it to. Nothing so obvious as an aphrodisiac; if the Doctor felt himself falling into uncontrollable lust, he'd know something was up and speed up his metabolism in order to absorb it before he could succumb. A sense enhancer, on the other hand, was far more subtle. It had been in his wine glass, an invisible coating that Tegan had prepared well in advance of his arrival.
Peri's glass had been coated as well, but with something designed to lower her tolerance for alcohol. The Valeyard remembered enough about the Doctor's past companions to know how seldom he saw them inebriated, certainly not to the level to which this party had advanced. So his sixth self might find Peri's behavior unusual, but not alarmingly so.
And when she passed out a few minutes after her sensuous dance with Tegan, barely managing to stumble onto the sofa first, all the Doctor did was regard her for a long moment through hooded eyes. Abruptly, he stood up. "I'd better get her back to the TARDIS," he said, keeping his back to Tegan.
She walked up behind him and ran her hands over his shoulders. "Don't leave," she whispered. The music changed to soft Rigellian jazz, and she pressed herself closer to him. "The party's just starting."
She felt the tension in his body, practically heard the denial he was about to utter, and could only find it in herself to be mildly disappointed when he turned in her embrace and took her by the arms. "Tegan," he said in a low growl, "I told you before, I have no intention of sleeping with you again."
She ground her hips against his and smiled an unrepentant smile up at him. "Yeah, well, you know what they say about good intentions, Doc." She reached up and jerked his tie free. "Are you going to tell me to go to hell?"
For a long moment she thought he might do just that; then, with unexpected speed, his grip tightened on her arms and he maneuvered her backwards, toward the dining room table. She felt it press into her backside but never stopped smiling, never stopped looking into his eyes. Oh, he was angry with her; she could practically feel it radiating off him. The moment culminated in a brutal kiss. He forced her mouth open, yanking her close and deliberately grinding his hips against hers, mimicking her earlier movements with a savage intensity that thrilled the most primal part of her even as the rational part of her mind was screaming at him not to allow himself to be manipulated like this.
Everything happened so quickly afterwards that Tegan was never sure which one of them started pulling clothes off first. The kiss deepened, became even more demanding as she hitched one leg around his upper thigh, rubbing her heel against his buttocks. They separated only long enough to complete the process of becoming naked, then she was back against the table while the Doctor's hands roamed her body. She reached for him, but he twisted her arms behind her back. "No," he growled, forcing her around and shoving her facedown on the table. She felt his knee between her legs and realized she'd never been so thoroughly aroused in her life.
\\That's because I don't need a sense enhancer to influence you, my dear,\\ the Valeyard whispered into her mind with a nasty chuckle. \\All I have to do…is this.\\
Tegan nearly shrieked aloud at the sudden explosion of arousal she experienced as the Valeyard's voice in her mind fell silent. It overwhelmed her; any sense of the Valeyard vanished in that cascade of sensation. For the first time since he'd released her from his TARDIS, she could control her own words and actions. For the first time in an eon, she was free. She could do anything she liked.
And, as he'd no doubt anticipated, all she could think about was getting the Doctor to get on with things.
"What are you waiting for?" she heard herself say in her best taunting voice. "Come on, show me what you've got!" She writhed in his hold, not really trying to break free—no, not wanting to break free. Wanting him to do whatever it was he had planned for her, desperate for the feel of him inside her.
With another growl he bent over, one hand slamming down on the table by her shoulder, the other still gripping her hands at the small of her back. She felt his teeth on her ear, not a gentle nibble but a nip of pure passion, and moaned in response.
"Is this what you wanted, Tegan? Really? Is this all you wanted from me?" he asked, his voice low, very nearly a growl. "Just another shag?"
"Yes," she moaned. "God, yes, it's what I need from you…"
"But not the love you want from him, is that right? I'm not him, I'm good enough to screw, but not good enough to love?"
He was furious with her, she realized. Furious and aroused and God knew what else. Instead of shaming her, all that knowledge did was arouse her even further. "You're the same person, inside," she gasped out as another surge of desire coursed over her. She didn't like it rough, she wasn't this person…but tonight, she was. And it wasn't all due to the Valeyard, he was very deliberately staying out of it now. Leaving her to her own devices. "What do you want from me? What do you want me to say?"
"What do I want from you?" he snarled, releasing her and jerking her back to her feet. "I want you to stop this insane plan. Contact him, tell him to take back the call he sent out to the others. We're not your playthings, Tegan, and not all of us will be tempted by what you have to offer."
She smiled and licked her lips, tossing her head defiantly as she scoffed: "You're a fine one to talk." Before he could respond to that taunt, her voice turned serious as she added: "I don't want you for playthings. I just want the memories to take with me when I go back into exile."
That confused him; his expression faltered, the tight lines of his face relaxing just the slightest as he considered her words. She took that moment of hesitation to twist out of his hold and back away from him. "Yes, exile. Because that's what life on Earth is going to be for me, for the rest of my life. Oh, not like this." She waved an arm to indicate her surroundings, tossing her head in dismissal as she did so. "Not exile at the ends of the universe. I'll be with friends and family and everyone else on Earth, with no one in my head, and after being with you and your other selves, probably no one in my bed, either. But I can't travel with you, any of you, especially not him."
She felt tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. "I love him too much, so much it scares me. Yeah, you're safer, because you're different." She lowered her voice, barely speaking above a whisper as she confessed: "You're different, but you're still him. And he's the one I'll always want to be with, and can't."
She didn't know if he understood, and realized she didn't care. She knew what she meant, and that was enough.
Without a word he took her in his arms and kissed her, a gentler kiss than any he'd given her so far this evening, but she nipped at his lower lip and raked her nails down his back, not wanting tenderness. Not from him. He hissed in pain, eyes once again flaring with anger as he gave her what she so obviously wanted from him.
Tegan closed her eyes. She knew, Valeyard or no Valeyard, that she'd never be able to do as this version of the Doctor wanted her to, never be able to ask his fifth self to rescind her request to his other selves. What she'd told him just now had been the truth, a truth she hadn't wanted to admit but a truth nonetheless. She needed these memories to cling to in the certain darkness her life would become once the Valeyard's plan to create himself was fully realized. Even this encounter, violent and angry as it was, would help to armor herself against the approaching darkness.
When she tried to explain that to him, it was too late. The Valeyard was back, clamping her lips shut on a plea for the Doctor to find some way to save her. And once again the mechanical voice in her head was speaking: "False memories implanted. Phase I for Subject: Doctor Six complete. Awaiting implementation of Phase I for remaining Doctors."
And once again, she was left weeping inside.
oOo
She dragged herself up to her bedroom, not bothering to try and wake Peri to say good-bye, knowing full well that as soon as he re-clothed himself, the Doctor would hoist the other woman into his arms and return her to her room on the TARDIS. Then they would leave her behind, and she was as certain as she'd ever been about anything that she'd never see this version of the Doctor again.
Unless, of course, the Valeyard wanted her to.