AN: that awkward moment when you forget to post and it's the last chapter... well. hopefully y'all aren't too mad. The wait makes it better right?
I know, i know -false. go ahead and read.
"Then I heard your heart beating;
you were in the darkness too.
So I stayed in the darkness with you"
Lucy opened one eye and realized that when she had thought up her room, she had neglected to put a clock in it. "Meh," she said. The arm around her waist was comforting. She rolled over to get a good look at its owner.
"Morning," she mumbled, smiling sleepily. "I think."
"It's about dawn," the Master told her.
Lucy propped her head up on her arm, gazing at him. "You stayed?" So often before she had woken up alone –Time Lords have different circadian rhythms, Lucy, he would tell her –he didn't need the sleep like she did. But this was nice.
"Uh huh," he said.
She kissed him lightly on the lips, enjoying the strange sensation his stubble had on her face. "Good." It wasn't often she got to snuggle with her husband –the first time in two years, actually –and she was taking advantage of it.
Lucy thought she might have just been about to drift off to sleep again, but the Master began talking in a low murmur. "I can still hear the drums," he said. "They're not loud, or insistent, just…there. I suppose she must have fixed that, too."
"Who?" Lucy asked sleepily.
"In the golden light, there was a woman. She said, 'I bring life.' She healed me and softened the drums…"
"I s'ppose we'll have to find her some day 'n thank her," Lucy mumbled, snuggling against his chest.
"You told me you could hear them," the Master whispered.
"Hear what?" Lucy asked, opening one eye.
"The drums. And that's why I never took the cerebral shift off you," he said. "I was afraid you wouldn't be able to hear them anymore."
Lucy opened her other eye. "Oh, you idiot," she said, laughing. "I still can." She placed a hand on his chest. "I can hear your heartbeat. And I'm guessing you can too."
He gave her such a peculiar look that she laughed. "No, really," she said, tapping out the rhythm: one two three four, tri-pa-let one. "See?"
She was unprepared for the long kiss he gave her, but she managed to overcome her surprise and regain her ground in the long run.
Lucy was quickly realizing that if she looked away for one second, things she needed would appear.
Like a toothbrush.
She mumbled a 'thank you' out of the side of her mouth as she brushed her teeth. It never hurt to be polite. The Master, of course, scoffed that she would ever do such a thing to a ship. Lucy figured it had nothing to do with how sentient the TARDIS was; the Master just didn't feel like he should have to be polite to it. To anything, really.
That reminded her of something she wanted to ask him.
Spitting the toothpaste out and washing it down the sink, she asked over her shoulder, "Were you born with the name 'Master'?" Surely not. It was a pretty strange thing to name a child.
He was staring at the wardrobe in frustration. Apparently, the TARDIS had a function that would send down clothes from the wardrobe room to yours if you thought of the right thing. If you wanted a different selection, you just had to shut the doors and open them again.
It had just sent down a bunch of clown costumes.
The Master muttered something about 'old junk flying machine'.
Lucy rather suspected the TARDIS was being cranky because she didn't like him. "Did you hear me?" she asked.
"Yes, and –no."
Correctly interpreting this as 'yes, he had heard her and no, he wasn't born with that name', Lucy asked, "So what's your name?"
The Master looked up from the wardrobe. "Why do you ask?"
Lucy leaned against the doorframe. "Well, as your wife, I'm not going to call you 'The Master' all the time."
"Why not?" he demanded.
She narrowed her eyes.
He rolled his and opened the wardrobe door again. Frilly Elizabethan pantaloons and stiff collars sprang out, and he cursed.
"If you tell me, I'll work the wardrobe for you," Lucy offered.
"You know my name," he said, still not paying complete attention to her.
"I do?"
"When we got married, I told you," he said.
"Oh, that," Lucy said, her eyes widening. It had been a completely beautiful long string of sounds and she wasn't even going to try to recreate it. "I can't actually say that," she pointed out, "though I do like it."
He smirked, still staring at the wardrobe.
"But I know people didn't call you that. Didn't you have a nickname or something?"
He looked at her. "…Are you sure you can make this wardrobe work?"
"Positive," Lucy assured him.
He looked her up and down and apparently decided that it was worth it. "Koschei."
"Koschei?" Lucy repeated, getting the pronunciation right.
The Master looked at her, surprised.
Lucy nodded, considering it. "It's nice. I like it."
"Now will you get this blasted ship to cooperate?" the Master demanded.
Okay, girl, work with me, Lucy thought. Casual clothes in dark colors, please. Lucy opened the doors.
Blue and black jeans and pants, as well as long-sleeved shirts in black, red, and white hung neatly in the wardrobe. She stood back with a smile. "You're welcome, Koschei."
She nearly missed the glint of amusement in the Master's eyes, but it was there.
Lucy changed her mind. The TARDIS was getting back at the Master for turning her into a paradox machine. That must be it. Lucy had to ask three times where the kitchen was before the time ship made irritable grinding noises and lit the way.
"Good morning!" the Doctor chirped from his place at the large round kitchen table. "Make yourselves at home."
The Master glared at him. "Your bloody ship hates me!"
Lucy hid her smirk as she opened the refrigerator doors.
"And whose fault is that?" the Doctor said in a good-natured tone.
Before the Master could retort, Lucy kicked him in the leg. "Behave," she said, smiling, as she carried the milk carton to the table. "Or you won't be getting any coffee."
"Oh, good job Lucy! Knew it was a good idea to have you on board!" the Doctor said.
The Master and the Doctor settled into bickering back and forth between themselves about TARDISes, time travel, and food in general. Lucy tuned them out as she familiarized herself with the TARDIS kitchen, going through the motions of making coffee.
"Doctor," Lucy asked at a lull in the argument, "Do you actually have a coffee maker, or do I have to do it by hand?"
The Doctor looked perplexed and ran a hand through his spiky hair. "Um… it would be in a cabinet. Somewhere."
"Are the cabinets bigger on the inside, too?" Lucy asked idly, rummaging through them.
"Not that I know of," the Doctor said cheerfully, "but it would help to explain why I can never find anything."
Lucy thought she found it –it was wedged to the back behind a mixer. She moved the mixer out of the way, and a book fell out of the cabinet, onto the floor. Turning it over, Lucy saw that it was a copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis.
"What is a book doing in your kitchen cabinet, Doctor?" Lucy asked, showing him the cover.
"Oh! I went back to the 1950's and got one of the first edition copies," the Doctor said, smiling at the memory. "It's autographed. Wonderful man, Jack –he liked to be called Jack," the Doctor added. "Not Clive Staples. Right after that we went to the planet Plov and got some wonderful recipes. I suppose it got left there on accident," he mused.
"On Plov?" Lucy asked.
"No, in the cabinet," the Doctor said, frowning. "Why would I leave it on Plov?"
"It's the sort of thing you would do," the Master said derisively. That seemed to set them off again.
Lucy flipped through the pages –yes, indeed there was a signature in it. She remembered loving these books when she was young. She encountered what she thought was a bookmark in the middle of the book, and pulled it out, thinking that if it was thick, it would hurt the binding.
It wasn't a bookmark.
It was a strip of photos from a photo booth. The man smiling avidly at the camera was the Doctor, but the woman –
The woman.
"Doctor?" Lucy demanded. The two Time Lords stopped their arguing to stare at her. She turned to them with wide gray eyes and held up the strip of photos. "How do you know Rose Tyler?"
The story will be continued in Part II of A Way through the Worlds.
(Which probably won't be posted for about 2 weeks -still editing. It's going to be a crossover! With Fringe! but if you don't watch Fringe I've done my best to keep it very understandable. So alert me and keep an eye out for it! ;)