oOo
Tegan looked up sharply. She'd grown attuned to the Master's TARDIS, to its rhythms and subtle movements. She'd had little other to do than study her environment while locked up, at least for the first subjective month or so. She was certain that Kyris, Doctor's son or no, hadn't been able to untangle the riddle of this particular TARDIS, not so quickly. Which meant, as usual, that it was going somewhere the Master wanted it to. "Just like the rest of us," she muttered to herself darkly.
She'd been dancing to the Master's tune since he "rescued" her from the plane he himself had caused to explode. Since the moment she'd regained consciousness, dazed and disoriented, in that hateful metal cage, not knowing what had happened or where she was, until he walked in...
"I should have known it was you. I'm not even traveling with the Doctor anymore; what d'you want with me?" The best defense was a good offense, she'd heard that somewhere and had taken it to heart from an early age.
"My dear Miss Jovanka. Tegan. Surely your own company is enough of a reason for me to seek you out?" He was mocking her, standing there in his usual black velvet, in his stolen body and his attitude of smug superiority. She restrained a sudden urge to slap him.
"Right. And rabbits can fly."
"On Derizani VII they do." Oh, he was quick with the witticisms today, she'd give him that much. Grudgingly. The only way she'd ever give him anything.
"Swell. I'll file that away under useless crap I'll never need," she'd shot back, running on sheer bravado. "So what am I really doing here?" Surreptitiously she ran her damp palms along the edges of her green wool skirt. She was still wearing her flight jacket, and quickly jammed her hands into her pockets to give them something to do besides twitch nervously.
"Insurance." She blinked, not having expected an honest answer. "I have set certain events in motion, events that I intend to bring me a great deal of profit, but in case something fails to go as planned--"
"Like every other time you've gone up against him?" Now was probably not the best time to shoot her mouth off, but she couldn't resist. He scowled, and she smiled sweetly at him. Score one for the mouth on legs.
"This time will be different. Very different." He seemed to be savoring the words, as well as the uncertainty that appeared on her face. "I've already dealt him some very bad blows, even if he is unaware of them as of yet. Your disappearance plays its own part in the little drama I'm producing, although I don't expect you to appreciate it."
"You blew up my plane," she pointed out with a glare. "You've taken me prisoner and put me in a bloody great metal cage. Appreciation is the last emotion I'm feeling."
He'd smiled, that was all, smiled and left the room, the door clanging shut behind him. The next few months had passed exactly as she'd described for Ace, that ruthless young woman with her own share of tragedy in her life. Tegan had never intended to tell anyone what the Master had done to her, but there was something about Ace, a certain implacability about her that let Tegan know, stubborn as she'd always been, that she'd met her match. Knowing that the Master had separated them from their baby explained the other woman's desperation, but she had the impression that Ace was one to have her way under the best of circumstances.
She'd almost been relieved to tell, Tegan had to admit as she continued aimlessly down the corridors. She knew where she wanted to go; the one kitchen on the TARDIS that worked, even if the food on hand wasn't always recognizable. She hadn't bothered to memorize the way, since the Master's TARDIS was prone to reconfiguring itself it at random. It had taken a while, but she'd learned to ignore this particular tactic, to react stoically no matter how long it took her to reach her destination. In the first week after the Master let her wander on her own, she'd been reduced to near-tears on more than one occasion when the corridor she'd sworn she'd used before brought her instead back to the metal cage. Her former prison.
She discovered she was shaking, and stood for a minute, leaning against the wall and willing herself to stop, breathing deeply with her eyes closed and fists clenched. She wasn't locked up, not the way she had been. She wasn't alone, either, and there was a great deal of comfort in that. And the Master hadn't touched her again. Not once. Instead, he'd ignored her, the few times their paths had accidentally crossed. Even when he caught her trying to work the console, all he'd done was smile and wait for her to realize nothing was going to happen. Not for her. She'd thought about hitting him, about creeping up on him and knocking him unconscious and letting him wake up in that damned metal room, but something told her such efforts would be futile, and so she'd never tried. Now she wished she had; it might not have done her any good, but it might have kept him from destroying Ace and Kyris' lives.
"Stop second guessing yourself, Tegan Jovanka," she scolded herself. That way led madness. Second guessing and wishful thinking wouldn't change anything that had happened. She still couldn't control the TARDIS, she still hadn't been able to keep him from violating her...
She pushed away from the wall and began walking, faster and faster, as if she could outpace her thoughts. Her memories. The ones that crept up on her unawares, just like he had, appearing out of nowhere on the first night she'd actually managed to fall asleep without nightmares.
It was dark, and as she struggled toward consciousness she sensed a presence in that darkness. Where was she? She remembered. The bed, so warm and comfortable, the only thing in the room not made of metal, but tonight it felt like a trap, luring her back to sleep when something had woken her up, some sense of something wrong.
She started to sit up, letting out a startled scream as she suddenly felt hands shoving her back down. His hands. Gloved, ungentle, pressing into her shoulders but not bothering to cover her mouth. In space, no one could hear her scream. And so she stopped, perversely determined not to let him hear her, either.
She hadn't been completely honest with Ace, hadn't told her everything that happened. The things she hadn't wanted to remember, had willfully suppressed. Until now. She stopped walking, unaware that she now stood, frozen, unable to move as the memories flooded over her, ghastly and intense, as if it were happening all over again...
"My dear Tegan, do feel free to express yourself. I apologize for startling you." His hold eased, but she remained prone, staring up at where his face should be. It was completely black in the room, no light at all. It was an all-or-nothing kind of jail, this metal box; either it was almost too bright for comfort or it was pitch black.
She refused to ask what he wanted, assuming he had come to tell her something, or perhaps to drag her out to the Console Room, to parade her before the view screen, showing off his prisoner and attempting to threaten the Doctor into doing his bidding.
He did neither of those things. Instead, he suddenly leaned down and kissed her.
Too late she realized her mistake; she should have immediately come to her feet when he first made his presence known. Panicked, she turned her head away, shoving at him and scrambling from beneath the covers, or trying to. Her legs became tangled in the sheets; cursing, she tried to yank them free only to feel the weight of the Master's body fully on hers. Forcing her back down.
"Why are you doing this?" The words came, unbidden, gasped out as she tried with all her might to shove him off her and onto the floor, as her legs thrashed and arms strained against his dead weight. To no avail.
"Insurance," was all he said.
She still didn't know what he'd meant by that, nearly two months later. Insurance. Insuring her cooperation? Her fear of him? Her understanding that he would do anything in his quest for revenge against the Doctor? She'd never asked, not that night nor any other, and so the only thing he'd ensured was her continued lack of understanding. And perhaps that was enough for him.
But that hadn't been his last words to her. And it was the words that followed, the words burned into her consciousness, that she wanted most to forget. And knew she never would.
"I may not be the Time Lord you've yearned for, but I'm the only one who will ever have you. Even if he wanted you the way you wanted him, he would never act on that desire. He would never dream of forging a romantic relationship with someone whose life is as brief , as ephemeral as that of a mere human."
Hurtful, hateful, those words. But ringing with truth to her ears, then and now. Hadn't she seen the truth of them with her own eyes, when she was introduced to the Doctor's son? Kyris, living proof that only another Gallifreyan, a Time Lady, could catch the Doctor's attention in that particular way. Unbidden, a sob escaped her throat.
"You ached for him, I could see it in your eyes every time we met." He was poised to enter her, had knocked her nearly unconscious when her struggles ceased to amuse him. Yet he felt compelled to pause, to draw things out as he lectured her, as he taunted her about her feelings for the Doctor. "You wish it was him, don't you, that he was the one who found you attractive and who acted on that attraction. But here we are, you and I. Now I have something the Doctor never will." With those final, taunting words, he plunged downward, and a scream was forced out of her in spite of her intentions to the contrary.
She hadn't been able to stop him, but she'd done her damndest, fury at his words giving her a strength she'd never expected. But it still wasn't enough, not enough to stop him. He had scratches on his cheek the next time she saw him, and probably a few bruises as well. She'd been left with a black eye, with a swollen lip and broken fingernails, with numerous cuts and contusions, with abdominal pain and bleeding that left her unable to walk for most of a day. And a spot on her forehead that burned, at least in her mind, a spot where he had kissed her as gently as her mother ever had at bedtime when she was a child.
The door remained open after he left, taunting her with the light from the corridor, but she'd been unable to move. The bed was the only thing anchoring her to reality, and she clutched the coverlet tightly until the pain finally ebbed, long after the lights in the room had come on, signaling the beginning of the TARDIS-mandated "day."
Until Ace and Kyris arrived, she hadn't returned to that room voluntarily. She sank to her knees, shuddering violently, clutching her arms around herself and keening her sorrow, finally giving in to the flood of tears. The tears that she'd held inside for too long.
oOo
"So what happened?" Kyris was sitting on the edge of the bed, and he reached up to Ace, who took his hand and reluctantly joined him, glancing around as she did.
They'd found a room, possibly the one Ace had been held in during her previous tenure as the Master's prisoner, but it didn't make her uncomfortable, the thought of inhabiting the same room, so she didn't mention its familiarity to Kyris. It was enough that it was different from the room he'd been held in, the bed larger, the bathroom off a small corridor lined with shelves and closet space instead of opening directly into the main room. There was a small sofa and table along the far wall, even a shelf of books along the foot of the bed. None of the titles Ace had glanced at were familiar, and she suspected them of being from worlds other than Earth.
The truth was, she didn't want to answer Kyris' question. What had happened to Tegan, what the Master had done, was horrific, and the way Ace had found out didn't exactly show her in her best light. But she knew, despite her discomfort, that he needed to know. Everything. "The Master's done more than just keep her here..." She paused, uncertain how to continue, and Kyris jumped in.
"Torture, eh?" His voice turned grim. "Perhaps I'd better have a look at her. She looks a bit undernourished and tired, but I didn't get the chance to touch her to get a handle on her condition..."
"He raped her." She blurted it out, unable to keep it to herself any longer. Unable to hide the horror she felt, the outrage that the Master was capable of so vile an act. Murder, yes, that she'd seen on too many occasions, but rape seemed...beneath him. Undignified. It unsettled her, she admitted, to discover that she didn't know him as well as she'd believed. And to underestimate an enemy was dangerous. Unforgivably so.
Kyris went very still. When he spoke, his voice was taut with restrained fury, and Ace saw that his hands were shaking. She reached over and held them in her own. They were cold. So are mine. "I hope my father kills that son of a bitch." He didn't ask the question she thought he would: Why? She hadn't asked either, but suspected if she had Tegan would have been unable to answer any more than she could. The Master's rationales remained murky under the best of circumstances. Control, she supposed, or punishment. Or both. Ace had always been taught that rape was about power, not sex, and that was definitely what the Master was all about. Power.
"So do I. So do a lot of people," Ace replied. She drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. It did nothing to calm her, but it did help to have something to focus on. Deep breaths. In, out.
Kyris squeezed her hand, knowing instinctively where her thoughts had landed. "We have to believe Patience is safe," he began.
"Don't call her that!" Furious, Ace jumped to her feet. So much for breathing. "We can't call her that any more, don't you see?" Kyris stared. Ace was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks, hiccupping between each word. "She's not our Patience any more. She's Susan now. This is it, this is how we lose her! We're here, and the Doctor's going to take her to his first self." Her voice caught roughly, and she finished in a despairing whisper: "We're never going to see her again."
Kyris put a tentative arm around her shoulders; when she didn't immediately push him away, he pulled her closer, nestling her head against his chest. "At least we know she's safe," he whispered. "She's Susan, so we know she's safe. Even if we don't raise her, the Master doesn't get her, either." Gradually Ace's sobs stopped, and she looked back up at him. Red-rimmed eyes, flushed cheeks still wet with tears, a shiny glimmer around her nostrils, and Kyris realized with an ache in his hearts that she was still the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. "She's safe," he repeated. "Susan is safe."
Neither of them would ever refer to her as "Patience" again.