Cold pain awake hurt
Why
Doctor—
Rose wakes with a gasp, flinching at the ache that flares dully through her head. Icy water drips down her face in rivulets, and she wipes the great fat droplets out of her eyes, gingerly pushing herself up to a sitting position on the couch—
Wait. The couch…?
Confusion mounting with every passing moment, Rose scans the room around her, discerning what little she can in the darkness; it's that castle-place, still, from the looks of it. Stone meets her eyes at every turn, drapes stretching gently from column-to-column, swaying lazily in the night air, and it's quiet in here, oh-so-quiet. The softness beneath her legs must surely be plush cushions and yes, the thing behind her is definitely the back of a couch.
She's in a fancy dress. In a castle. Recovering from a fainting-spell on a fainting-couch. The only way it would be cheesier, she thinks, is if she were chained to a set of train tracks instead.
"Good morning, sweetheart," drawls a voice somewhere out of the darkness, and Rose jumps. "Sleep well?"
Rose glares at the Doctor—no, not the Doctor, the man from before, that terrible man, pretending to be the Doctor, but how did he have all of the Doctor's memories, how did he know so much?—and he steps out of the shadows, holding a goblet in one gloved hand. Water drips down the goblet's sides, splatting loudly onto the floor and the man's shoes, but he doesn't seem to notice. His attention is focused solely on Rose. He watches her, his face blank, impassive, eyes blinking just a little too slowly in the dim light, like a lizard. Like a snake.
The Master, Rose remembers, and she shivers.
"Hullo? Master to Rose," the Master says, waving a hand. "I asked you a question. Do you care to answer?"
"Not really," Rose replies.
The Master chuckles. "Rude, but then you never were a morning person, were you?"
"How do you know that?"
"Oh, I've got my ways." Dipping his gloved fingers into the goblet, the Master draws out a palmful of water and flicks it into Rose's face. She forces herself not to flinch at the icy-cold deluge. "You'll find that out soon enough."
For a half-second, Rose considers making a run for it (or better yet, making a run at him), but she can just see the top of the sonic screwdriver sticking out of his jacket-pocket, and the memory of the pain it caused is still so fresh, so raw. Unthinking, she almost raises her hand to the collar sitting heavy on her neck, until she catches the Master's eyes, watching her patiently, almost gleefully.
Do it, he seems to be saying. Do something stupid. I dare you.
Rose's hand falls to her side and clenches stubbornly in her skirts instead.
"Who are you?" she asks sharply, shaking water out of her eyes. "Not your name," she snaps before he has a chance to reply. "I already know that. I want to know who you really are, and why you're really imprisoned here, and why you pretended to be the Doctor."
The Master cocks his head to one side, inquisitive. "Well, aren't you a curious little kitten?" he laughs.
"You've got two hearts, so you must be a Time Lord too, right?" asks Rose, almost speaking to herself, more than him. "But the Doctor said he was the only one left, after the War. How'd you survive?"
"Careful now, darling," he replies. "You know what they say about cats and curiosity."
"Enough bullshit. Cut to the chase."
Tutting in disapproval, the Master shakes his head. "My my my," he sighs. "What a nasty little mouth you've got on you. Surely you'd never say such a thing in front of your precious Doctor. You must know he doesn't approve of such crude language."
"We could always call him up and find out for sure."
The Master barks out a laugh. "That isn't possible for a variety of reasons, I'm afraid—numero uno being that your Doctor's more than a little bit dead."
Suddenly all the hurt in Rose's body feels very far away. A vision of a gurney and a still hand floods her memory; she fights to keep her face calm and composed as panic surges in her chest, strangling her. A strange buzzing sound fills her ears like a nest of angry-buzzing wasps.
She is very, very cold.
Rose forces herself not to shiver. "I don't believe you," she says calmly.
The Master grins a Jack-o-Lantern's smile. "You should."
"No," Rose replies with a sharp shake of her head. "If he was dead, you'd say he didn't approve. Not he doesn't."
"Well, I never!" says the Master gleefully. "Turns out you've got some cognitive capacity, after all! What a delightful surprise. Though to be fair, the truth was going to come up sooner or later, anyway. Only a matter of time."
"So he is alive," Rose says, relief washing over her.
The Master nods. "For the moment."
Allowing her eyes to shutter closed, Rose takes just the briefest of moments to thank her lucky stars back home, all the ones that haven't disappeared yet. "How do you know so much about him, anyway?" she asks. "How did you know who I was, back at the tournament? Just how much do you know?"
Humming thoughtfully, the Master considers for a moment, fingers tapping idly against the cup in his hands. "Nah," he says, "I'm much more interested in talking about you, pet. Now tell me—" and here he plonks down on the couch next to Rose, ignoring how she shifts as far away from him as she can, "—just what will it take to get you to cooperate?"
"With what?"
"Well, with me, naturally."
Rose eyes him warily. "Why? What do you want?"
"Just a smidge of your help." The Master tilts his goblet this way and that, watching the motion of the water inside, as if it's all terribly fascinating. "Well, that, and a decent cappuccino, but first things first."
"I'm not helping you off this planet."
"Nor could you," the Master replies. "If I haven't figured out a way off, then you certainly can't, though it's cute you thought that was a possibility. No; your assistance will be of a different nature," he continues thoughtfully. "Something more along the lines of bait and switch, lure and hook, catch and release. Without the release."
He shoots a sly smile her way. "Something to do with our mutual friend. Something a lot more personal, if you know what I mean."
Rose shakes her head in confusion, running over his words in her mind. Then it dawns on her.
"You want to use me," she realizes aloud, "to get the Doctor here."
"Bingo!" shouts the Master in delight, clapping his hands together heedless of the water that sloshes from his cup. "Right in one."
Rose stares at him. "You've got to be joking."
"Oh, I very much am not," the Master says pleasantly. "I can't get off this planet, but you know what can? A TARDIS. And guess who's got one of those, along with buckets and buckets of horrendously boring and otherwise useless sentimentalism for a certain blonde and insignificant squalling little beastie?"
"No. No way."
"Yes. Yes way," says the Master. "And in another way, really, I suppose I should be thanking you right now. My other plan was to modify your little hopper, use that to get off this rock and track the Doctor down. But thanks to your oh-so-elegant solution of stamping the thing to smithereens, now, we can jump straight to the end goal. No more wasting time looking for him—we'll bring him straight to us!"
"I'm not gonna help you trap the Doctor," Rose says loudly.
"Oh, come on. You barely know me—certainly not well enough to know all the reasons why you shouldn't help me." The Master pauses, thinking, as he wipes one damp glove on Rose's skirt. "Granted, there are many, but there's no reason for you to be so stubborn about it. So why don't you just cooperate, like a good little girl?"
A harsh laugh. "How about you take this collar off me first?"
"How about you stop wasting my time?"
"Remove the collar or you get nothing."
"Comply or I'll kill you."
"Good luck getting help from my corpse."
The Master's eyes flash and for a second Rose is so, so certain he'll shift, fast as a blink, turning his sonic on her collar again or maybe even ripping it off so he can wrap his hands round her throat, fingers squeeze-squeeze-squeezing the life out of her, but instead he just grins.
That's…unsettling.
"How about," the Master muses, pretending to consider, "you give me what I want, or I kill all of your little friends? Hm? The ones you were helping out in the tournament. How about that?"
Rose doesn't flinch. "They're all gonna die in the tournament anyway."
"Ooh, that's cold!" laughs the Master. "I mean, you're not wrong, but still. Cold."
He taps his chin thoughtfully with the water cup. "I could still kill you, you know. That option is very much still on the table. And what would your Doctor say about that?"
"He'd understand," Rose replies firmly.
"Oh, I don't know about that," says the Master, and if Rose didn't know any better, she'd be tempted to label his tone soft. "But then again, maybe you're right. So damned noble, the both of you. It's such a nuisance, really."
With a sigh, the Master sidles up next to Rose, as if they're just two friends having a casual chat, mates gossiping about the latest celebrity news or office scandal. It's a very strange contrast to the collar sitting heavy and cold on Rose's skin.
"Don't suppose there's still any hope of convincing you I'm the Doctor?" the Master asks cheerfully.
"Don't suppose there is. Didn't work out the first time you tried."
"And I tell you, it's a damn shame, Rose. Just a real damn shame," says the Master, shaking his head. "What a waste of a performance! I had so much more material. Here, look: Now don't you do that," he says, suddenly stern and very south-London, pouting at Rose in mock admonishment. "Don't you do that Very Bad Thing. You've got to listen to me, I'm the Doctor! I'm a poncy self-righteous twat with my head buried so far up my cobweb-filled arse it's been centuries since it last saw the light of day!"
He bumps Rose's shoulder with his and the gesture is so reminiscent of the Doctor that Rose has to fight not to dry-heave. "Not too shabby, eh?"
"Positively Oscar-worthy," Rose replies through gritted teeth.
"Thanks, I thought as much," says the Master, beaming. "Now, back to my earlier question—because I won't let up until I get the answer I want, see, so you might as well comply now, before I get bored with you. And as the people on this fair planet can attest, you won't like me when I'm bored-what'll it be, love? Your life, or your Doctor?"
Rose doesn't reply, just stares stonily ahead.
"Oh, Rose Tyler," the Master says, heaving a disappointed sigh after several long moments tick by in silence. "Rose, Rose, Rose. A rose by any other name—"
"God, can we get on with the killing already?" Rose groans. "Cos honestly, I'd rather die than have yet another idiot feeding me that stupid—"
He aims the sonic at her collar and pain surges through her body with a nasty shock. Spasming backward, Rose's head cracks against the wall behind her with a sickening thwack that echoes through the room while stars explode behind her eyelids. Copper-taste floods her mouth as blood wells up from where she bit the inside of her cheek. Her eyes start to water as the shock fades, before the pain sets back in, but it's a short head start; the pain at the back of her head blossoms through quickly, and hard.
A sound of glass shattering on the tiles and suddenly a set of leatherclad fingers clenches her chin in a steely grip, wrenching her face sideways and forcing her to look the Master in the eyes. Despite herself, Rose gasps at the sudden closeness, the way the Master's pupils dilate until his irises are nothing but a pool of lightless black.
"Surely by now, you've realized that behind this pretty face, I'm a monster," the Master says, his voice chillingly pleasant for all that his smile is a thin-stretched grimace. "And monsters do bad, bad things to little girls."
A chill runs down Rose's spine and brings a violent shudder with it but Rose doesn't reply and she doesn't look away, just glares at him with all the hate she can muster, her mouth clenched tight against the swelling blood. You're not the only monster in this room, she wants to say, but judging by the way he's clenching the sonic, tightening until the leather squeaks against the casing, more and more as her silence stretches on—oh, leaving him hanging in the quiet is so much better.
"I can break you," the Master breathes, chest heaving beneath the confines of his tailored suit. "I can break you, and I will, and it will be so, so very easy. And how do you think your beloved Doctor will react to that, hm? What do you think it will do to him, just how much will it tear him up inside, to see the bloody, mangled, twisted husk of a broken and empty thing that used to be the woman he loves?"
Rose spits in his face.
With a dark chuckle, the Master thumbs at the blood and spittle where it landed on the corner of his mouth, his tongue darting out to taste the traces left behind. "Iron-deficient," he says. "You really should consider a daily supplement, sweetheart."
He pushes off the bed and strides away into the shadows, glass from his dropped goblet crunching beneath his heel. The click of a handle and splinter of light in the semi-darkness let Rose know that he has reached the door. "Oh, don't worry, darling; I shan't be gone too long," he says, pausing long enough to flash Rose a winning smile. "Wouldn't want you to get lonely. Only be warned: the rest of our conversations might not be so pleasant. Next time you don't give me what I want? Somebody dies, and they die nasty."
"My condolences to your widow," Rose shoots back.
Laughing gaily, as if Rose just told the most charming after-dinner joke, the Master leaves, the door clicking quietly shut behind him. Darkness and blessed silence filter back in, and Rose relaxes just the littlest bit, slumping back against the couch, wincing when her head touches the wall behind her. She doesn't feel the telltale warmth of blood matting her hair, but she's definitely bruised back there, probably going to swell, certainly going to hurt for the next few days.
Doesn't matter. She'll be fine; she's had far worse. It won't stop her from trying to escape. And it certainly won't change her mind about protecting the Doctor. It doesn't matter how badly she wants to see him, doesn't matter how much the longing hurts even worse than the pain splitting the back of her skull. She will not do anything to compromise him. She'll die first.
It's what he'd do for her. He'd understand.
He will understand.
Willing her muscles to unwind, Rose lets out a long-trapped sigh, surrendering to the exhaustion that washes over her.
She sleeps.