Trigger warnings for this chapter: abuse, molestation, references to rape.

"Morning, Theta," Tish said cheerfully.

Theta made a little whimpering sound in reply, tucking emself in a corner. Eir frills flared slowly in and out, shivering in a now-familiar pattern that Theta had assured her was a Gallifreyan form of meditation. Being escorted to and from eir dressing room by guards every morning was beginning to take its toll on Theta; by trial and error, the three of them had determined that the best thing Tish and Lucy could do was to act normally until ey was able to calm down. It went against all of her instincts not to hover, but that only ever made things worse.

"Lucy coming today?" asked Tish. Sometimes she couldn't, and those days always felt a little less whole, even more wrong than usual.

"Sorry, she was running late." Lucy breezed past the guards and brought the doors closed behind her with all the casual grace of a queen, and Tish tried not to grin too widely. Six weeks ago it would have set her teeth on edge. But she was getting to understand Lucy's ways; she dealt with a loss of control by acting like she still had it to the point of borderline delusion, where Tish had been raised to deal with the same situations by fighting tooth and nail to regain control in actuality. She was beginning to wonder if maybe not all of Lucy's airs were an act; sometimes she could manage to get on top of a situation simply by acting like she already was. Tish would have to learn that trick.

Besides, sometimes it was nice to see her kind of disdain aimed at the guards. It helped to make them seem like less of an unstoppable force, and more like regular men with stupid helmets and semiautomatic phallic symbols.

"Morning, Lucy."

Lucy smiled at her. She never bothered with things like greetings, not in here. Tish had been offended until she realised that Lucy associated that kind of thing with the kind of false politeness she'd been raised with, and dispensing with them was her way of letting her guard down. Her smiles were sharper now, too, than they had been; less of the pretty upturned lips and glassy looks, with more teeth and eyes that actually looked at you.

She had very straight, very white teeth. Only to be expected with her high-class status and fancy girls' school education, but it still threw Tish off sometimes; she worked for people like that, she never spent her free time with them, they weren't her friends…

Lucy wasn't precisely her friend, but she might have been the closest thing. Closer than Theta, even, who was too alien most of the time to bond with. Eir knowledge of human culture consisted mostly of literature and history, and some of that Tish was quite sure hadn't actually happened. Ey'd asked her the other day if she read the Karkus comic strips in the Hourly Telepress and been taken off-guard when she hadn't had any idea what that was.

"Theta," Lucy said. "If you're ready, you should take a shower. And remember it's laundry day, so bring out any towels you have in there so we can get them washed."

"So Tish can wash them, you mean," said Tish.

Lucy winced, looking much more upset than Tish had intended. She'd meant it as a friendly rib, a teasing play on words—she still used the same phrase with Theta half the time, they'd even used it at home before everything went bad. She hadn't meant to make Lucy feel guilty; it wasn't her fault. Honestly, Tish wouldn't trade places for anything. Dirty laundry and endless amounts of silver polish were much better company than the Master.

While Theta took eir shower, Lucy set about straightening up the room. There was really nothing to be straightened, so this mostly took the form of opening drawers or wardrobes, patting the contents absently, and closing them again. It was a sort of peaceful routine. Safe and nice.

"You know what I miss?" Tish said suddenly.

Lucy hummed. "What?"

"I miss books."

Lucy paused, and gave a wistful sigh. "You're not alone there," she said with a little smile. "I have a few I brought with me from home. Most of my favourites are gone, though. I'd let you borrow the ones I have," she added quickly. "Except I think he'd notice."

Tish thought longingly that it would almost be worth the risk. "I remember Martha always loved Harry Potter," she said with a chuckle. "Went to midnight releases and everything… guess we'll never know how that one ends, will we?"

Lucy looked hesitant. "...Theta's read it," she said. "You could ask em."

Something about that idea seemed terribly sad. "Nah," Tish said with feigned casualness. "I was never really into the wizard stuff. I remember I used to love Nancy Drew, though. I had a whole shelf full of those books."

Lucy lit up. "You did too! They were my guilty pleasure, the early ones especially." At Tish's confused look, she explained, "My parents didn't approve of fantasy. They thought mysteries would just distress me. I had to get all kinds of reviews praising them before my father let me buy them."

Tish wondered, not for the first time, if she'd been the only one of their odd threesome not to have grown up in an abusive home. Lucy's family seemed to have some frankly disturbing ideas of how to raise a child, in any case, and Theta was reticent to say anything about eir life prior to leaving Gallifrey but there were some things it was hard not to pick up on. She had eyes and ears, and Saxon was nothing if not talkative.

Theta came out of the bathroom carrying a small pile of neatly-folded towels.

"Oh, Theta!" said Tish. "We were just talking about books. What did you read, growing up?"

"Er," said Theta, putting the towels down on a shelf. "The Book of the Old Time? The Triumphs of Rassilon? The Myth of Zagreus?"

Tish remembered belatedly that Theta was an alien, and felt a bit silly. "Those all sound a bit stuffy," she said.

"Some of the more obscure ones are actually a decent source of information, once you learn to read past the propaganda. The Bones of the Dead even mentions Lazuline and Eutenoyar." Judging by eir tone, that was a rare thing.

"I have no idea who those are," said Lucy. Tish was still stuck on what was apparently a history book being called "The Bones of the Dead".

"Well, you know their names, and that's more than half of Prydon can say."

"Arms up," Tish interrupted, and Theta obediently let her pull an under-robe over eir head. "So, orange, orange, or orange?"

"None of these are really orange," Lucy informed her. "This one's more of a burnt sienna…"

"Theta?"

Ey smiled. "Well, maybe a break from orange wouldn't be that bad…"

"It's still orange!" Tish exclaimed. "It's a slightly different shade of orange!"

"Burnt. Sienna." Lucy looked ready to defend the colour to the death.

"It is a bit Arcalian," Theta added. "When I was at the Academy there was a bit of a disagreement over whether one shade was a warm brown or a dark orange and the Patrexes ended up outlawing the dye entirely."

Tish didn't know what that meant, so she tossed the burnt sienna robe unceremoniously over eir head. "Towels," she ordered, and Theta struggled to keep eir carefully-folded stack of towels from falling apart while simultaneously wiggling into a robe. It ended up getting stuck in eir frills, and Theta grumbled and stuck eir tongue out at Tish when she laughed and fixed it for em.

"Lucy," she laughed, "Get the towels, I think this thing's on backwards…"

Lucy sighed, smiling fondly at them. "Oh, Theta." She dodged eir flailing arm to rescue the stack of towels, retreating to a safe distance and hiding a giggle behind her hand. "Theta, how did you manage that?"

"I'm not the one who did it!" Theta argued. "Ask Tish how she managed it!"

Lucy laughed delightedly as Theta and Tish struggled with eir robes, perching on a low table with her ankles crossed delicately. Tish was quite certain that if she'd had a box of popcorn she would have been eating it.

Theta let out a high-pitched shriek as ey tripped on the hem. Tish had enough time for an understated "Oh no—" before Theta toppled over, both of them hopelessly tangled in a ridiculous robe so that Tish was squashed under em.

Lucy almost fell off the table laughing. Tish wormed one arm free of the robe and made a very rude gesture in what she hoped was her general direction. "Theta," she groaned, "exoskeleton. I have soft bits."

"It's not Theta's fault you've got em all tangled up," Lucy chided, but she managed to stop cackling long enough to pick her way over to Tish's side and offer her a hand. Tish took it gratefully, pulled herself halfway onto her feet, got something tangled in a sleeve, and fell backwards again, this time on top of Theta and with Lucy somehow getting dragged along and pinned under her.

"I give up," she groaned. Lucy, flushed and giggling, buried her head in Tish's shoulder as Theta grumbled and thrashed around.

Ey froze as the guards outside knocked harshly on the door. "You lot hurry up in there," one of them called, voice muffled slightly by the thick door. "The Master wants you in five minutes whether the alien's ready or not."

Lucy pulled herself up, quickly helping to untangle Theta and Tish. Working together, they managed to get Theta's robes on in the right direction; Theta emself was very little help, frozen in terror at the sound of the guard's voice and the implied threat. Lucy's whispered assurances that they weren't going to come in and she and Tish wouldn't let them touch em seemed like the only things keeping em from breaking down completely.

One of the guards opened the door just as they were making the finishing touches on eir robes, and Theta clung to Tish as they were hurried down the halls; she'd been dragged along as well, as apparently the Master's orders were to bring everyone who was in Theta's dressing room. She hated being brought to the throne room, although it luckily wasn't a common thing. The last time she'd been summoned there was to mop up Theta's blood.

"Letitia Jones!" the Master called grandly as soon as they entered the room. "And my dear Theta. I trust you've been taking good care of them." She tried not to shudder; a great deal of her time was spent consciously avoiding being noticed by the Master, and the fact that he seemed to have been waiting for her, specifically, was a very bad sign. Lucy reached out and clutched her arm for a moment without even seeming to realise it.

"Oh!" said the Master, seeming honestly surprised. "So that's where you've been off to in the mornings, is it, Lucy? Are you making friends?" He raised an eyebrow; he didn't seem angry, but his gaze jumping between the two of them made her feel ill, and she became suddenly aware of how close they stood, less than a metre apart and Theta shivering between them.

Ey was steadier now that they were in the throne room, the Master's presence having some effect on em she didn't understand. Or, well. She understood enough of it, from Lucy's vague, confused explanations and Theta's rare off-hand remarks. Ey usually wouldn't speak again for the day after saying something about the Master.

Lucy gave the kind of delicately pretty dead-eyed smile that Tish had gotten so used to in her time as Harold Saxon's wife. "You wanted to see me, Master?"

"No, of course not," he answered, skipping down the steps. The guards backed off to flank the door as he approached, and Tish could feel Theta relax as Lucy tensed. "I wanted Theta. Though since you're here…" He grabbed her suddenly, tugging her into him for a rough, deep kiss. "…You might as well stay."

Lucy gave a nervous, birdlike nod, but he wasn't even looking at her anymore. The icy shell and distant, broken look were back; there was none of her quickness and warmth now. She tried to catch Lucy's eye, to make sure she was all right. The woman wouldn't even look at her, and the intensity of her sudden hatred for the Master took Tish by surprise.

"Theta, Theta, Theta…" the Master sighed, looking em up and down. "What were you doing this morning? You're wrinkled," he said distastefully. "You know, I expect better of you. You reflect on me, after all, you can hardly go around looking so utterly Cadonin."

Theta looked at the floor. "I'm sorry, Master," ey murmured. "It won't happen again."

"It'd best not!" said the Master, grinning as if the whole thing had been forgotten; Tish knew better than to believe it. "Now, come here, my dear," he beckoned.

Theta didn't so much as hesitate, letting go of her to rush to the Master's side, looking up at him with gratitude as the Master put an arm around eir waist and ran his hand through eir frills. He led Theta up the steps of the dais and kissed eir temple as ey slipped to the floor beside the throne. Lucy followed silently in their wake, tucking herself into place behind the Master, and Tish wondered awkwardly what exactly she was supposed to do.

"Whenever you're ready, Miss Jones." The Master waved her up lazily, one hand still running through Theta's frills.

All right, then, apparently she was meant to be on the balcony. There was no possible way this was going to end well.

"I have a surprise for you, Theta," the Master cooed as Tish picked her way up the stairs, backing into a corner out of his immediate line of sight. "Is it ready?" he called to a guard in a tone that said clearly the answer had best be yes. At the guard's affirmative, he sat back, looking satisfied. "You've been so good recently, Theta," he praised. "I thought you deserved a treat. Oh," he added as an afterthought, turning back to the guard. "Before we get down to business, that revolt at the Finnish facility. They've tracked the instigators?"

"Yes, sir."

"Have them executed."

The guard saluted again. "Right away, sir."

Theta curled close to emself, looking miserable, but didn't say anything, and calmed somewhat as the Master continued petting eir frills.

"Excellent," he murmured, and Tish didn't think he was talking to the guard anymore. "Well, now that's out of the way. I believe there's a gift waiting for Theta."

A guard pulled someone forward from the back of the large room. Tish gasped.

Martha was worn ragged, and she should have expected that, had done in the back of her mind, but she'd not been prepared for it. She looked like she hadn't slept in days, heavy bags under her eyes. Her exhaustion in no way lessened her emotional spectrum, though, judging by the way she glared at the Master like she might be able to strike him down with her gaze alone.

Tish hadn't heard anything about her sister having been captured. She hadn't really heard anything about Martha at all now for weeks, but that was hardly strange; Theta rarely had information about her, or at least any that ey thought was safe to share, and ey'd said only a few days ago ey hadn't heard anything about her from the Master.

Martha caught her eye, tilting her head in a question: are you alright?

Tish honestly didn't know the answer to that. She nodded minutely.

Martha's eyes cut to Theta, and she looked back to Tish, face lined with concern.

Tish shrugged.

"…Martha?" Theta whispered slowly.

Martha lifted her head boldly. "Doctor." She didn't sound happy to see em.

Theta flinched at the name, or the tone, or both. Ey understood human emotion at such unpredictable degrees it was difficult to tell. Tish had a theory it was to do with how well ey could pick up empathic projections (a phrase she'd never have used a year ago, but which had become commonplace dealing with Theta) from the speaker, because it was so ridiculously varied. Sometimes it was like ey knew exactly what she was thinking, and other times ey didn't seem to know what a smile meant.

"…Well that was a heartwarming reunion." The Master sounded both exasperated and satisfied, if that were even possible. "And here I was thinking you'd be glad to know your friend was right here, all safe and sound. And really, Martha Jones, you've been very ungrateful. Two meals a day and a roof over your head? That's more than you got where Theta sent you. If you'd just behave yourself you could even join your family again. I might even let Theta see you once in a while, if you earned it. Doesn't that sound like a nicer plan than keeping such a pretty face locked away in a dungeon, Theta?"

Theta looked stricken, almost ill. "Don't hurt her, Master," ey whimpered, clinging to his leg so hard eir knuckles would have been white if it weren't for the exoskeleton. "Please don't, please. You can hurt me instead if you want to—"

"Theta!" the Master exclaimed, sounding deeply wounded. "Why in the world would I want to hurt her? I want to help her. She's been very stubborn about telling me where her little Resistance pockets are. Very brave. I thought about throwing her out an airlock," he said casually, "but I know how much she means to you, and you know I hate to hurt you unless you make me. So I'm willing to forget that whole thing in exchange for her obedience. Do tell her to make the right choice, Theta."

Theta seemed frozen.

"Theta," the Master prompted. Eir frills had started fanning and folding again, rapidly this time; if the slow pulsing was a Gallifreyan meditation technique, Tish could only assume this was their equivalent to hyperventilating. The Master sighed. "I thought this might happen. Tish, darling," he said in what could almost be called a drawl. "Talk to your sister."

There were so many things she needed to say. She'd been living in terror of losing her sister for the better part of a year, she'd missed her so much, she was so incredibly proud of her, but how did you say something like that…?

Tish swallowed.

"…Hey, Martha."

"Hey Tish. How's mum and dad?"

"Alive."

Marth gave a wry smile. "Well, that's something. See them often?"

"Every night," said Tish weakly.

"Tell them hi from me, will you?"

The Master cleared his throat. "Letitia…"

Tish squared her shoulders. "You can do it if you like," she said, because if there was one truth of Martha's existence it was that. "But you don't have to."

The Master sighed deeply. "Tish," he said. "Oh, Tish. You don't have to lie to her. Go on, tell her she could enjoy it here. I know you have."

"You could enjoy it if you were a white guy," Tish said flippantly. "Although the company leaves something to be desired."

She expected the Master to be angry, or else do that thing he did where he pretended you'd hurt his feelings. What she wasn't expecting was the darkly amused chuckle that sent chills up her spine. "Really?" he said. "Well, I have to say, you've caught me by surprise there. I didn't know you swung that way."

"What?" she said, a sick feeling in her stomach.

"Not that I disagree with you," he added conversationally. "There's quite a lot to desire."

Oh, no. No. No. God, no.

"Lucy?" said the Master. "Be a dear and come over here, won't you?" Tish stared at him openly, half relieved he hadn't been referring to himself, half shocked he'd do what it looked like he was going to. Or maybe not shocked, she corrected, thinking back to the first time she saw Theta after ey'd been killed. Less shocking, then, than horrifying.

She didn't even know for sure if she liked Lucy like that, never mind the other way around, and even in a completely different situation, even if they were together this would still be…

Lucy stepped forward uncertainly. "Master?" she said, her face blank.

"You two have gotten rather close, haven't you?"

"Well…" Lucy started, and she didn't seem to know where she'd been going with the sentence. Tish couldn't blame her, her mouth was dry and her heart was racing.

"How would you describe yourselves?" asked the Master, inspecting his fingernails. "Acquaintances? Friends? Lovers?" he added curiously. "No, couldn't be that, Lucy never smells of human sex." He said it with a sneer, like it was somehow lesser than him, and if Tish could have formed words she'd have screamed at him for that; she knew what he'd done to Lucy.

"Tish, what…?" Martha's eyes were as sharp as ever, flicking between the two of them, and Tish wished she couldn't see the betrayal starting to form in them.

"It's not like that," she said desperately, and she wasn't even sure what that was, because she had been noticing things about Lucy that went beyond simple observation but it wasn't… "She's not who you think she is, Martha, she's changed…!"

The Master laughed. "You seem to have gotten Lucy and Theta confused, Letitia."

She rolled her eyes. "Lucy's not evil," she continued. "Neither is Theta, for that matter. Weird, yeah, but not evil. She tries to help, when she can."

"I'm moved," said the Master. "Deeply moved. Your sister really seems to care about her, doesn't she?" he called down to Martha.

She could see the anger in every inch of Martha's bearing, but she replied evenly, "Reckon that's her business."

"Now that's cold," the Master rebuked. "You ought to be happy that your sister's fitting in so well here." He looked at Tish and Lucy, standing awkwardly on opposite ends of the dais. "I think a practical demonstration is in order. Tish," he said, "Do show your sister how much you enjoy your place here. Unless you've given up on her, of course." He examined his nails again. "I could always throw her back in the cells, but truth be told I'm getting a bit bored with her. If she's not going to make herself useful I really don't see any reason to keep her around." He smiled pleasantly. "I would try my best to convince her."