Author's Notes: Not "Torchwood" compliant. Kit and Madhukar are mine; all else belongs to the BBC. Pronunciation note: "Mediary" is pronounced MEE-dee-AIR-ee.
"So are you, Doctor."
Just four words, yet Rose could tell they hurt. The Doctor looked like he'd just been on the receiving end of a Jackie Tyler slap, stung and stunned at the same time.
She wanted to give one of those slaps to the Master, to wipe that smug look off his lying face. He'd twisted the truth just enough to plant a seed of doubt in Madhukar, and to awaken the self-doubt that so often lurked beneath the Doctor's bravado.
She knew his doubts only too well, his worry that he could never live up to Romana's expectations for rebuilding the Time Lords. Since their reunion, he'd become so much better at sharing his feelings, and he no longer held back from telling her his fears. I don't know what Romana was thinking when she left this to me, he'd told her once, after a planned "field trip" got cocked up and ended with all of them running for their lives yet again. The look in his eyes when he'd said those words…it was there now. She'd kissed it away then, but she couldn't do that this time. Not with the Master watching.
And worse, the Master had poured salt on the never-healing wound that was Gallifrey. It infuriated her, but she tried not to let it show. She didn't want the Master using those emotions against her or the Doctor.
She glanced over at the others. Jack's jaw was tightly clenched. He also knew just how deeply the Master had managed to cut the Doctor. Kit's hands were fisted so hard that her nails probably could have drawn blood.
And Madhukar…Madhukar looked completely lost. The Master tutted at him. "I know you're confused." He slid one arm around Madhukar's shoulders. "Let's take a walk, shall we? I'd like to pay my respects to the Doctor's other lady."
Rose's gaze flicked over to the Doctor again. She saw fury flash in his eyes at the thought of the Master setting foot in his TARDIS. She looked back at the Master, who appeared even more pleased with himself as he went on, "And while we visit the TARDIS, you can tell me just what you've been learning from my old friend." He started to walk Madhukar back out of the room, then stopped in front of his so-far silent sentinels. "What's the status of the project upstairs?"
"Eighty-eight point four five percent completion," the Cyberman responded.
"Hmm. Not as far as I was hoping. Go help them. We need to speed things up," the Master said. The Cyberman turned and stomped up the stairs, as the Master shifted his attention back to his captives. "Do make yourselves comfortable, and please enjoy the champagne. I'm quite sure you could use a drink now, Doctor," he said with a sly smile. "Oh, and don't touch the computers. You don't want to upset the Dalek." Another chuckle, and he escorted Madhukar out.
With the Master gone, Rose let out her frustration, hurling her cup of champagne against the wall. Jack slammed a fist down on the table, and Kit let out a half-sigh, half-growl. The Doctor was the only one remaining under tight control. Rose went to him and laid a hand on his shoulder, feeling the tautness under his jacket. "You know he's wrong," she said softly.
"He got enough of it right," the Doctor said bitterly. He sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face. "Out of all my people, it had to be him who survived the Time War."
"The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum," Kit observed dryly, sitting in one of the chairs around the table.
"He knows his tactics," Jack added, perching on the table next to her. "First, divide and conquer. Then, know your enemy. He sure knew how to press all the right buttons for you, Doctor. What buttons do we press for him?"
"He's a sociopath, Jack. He wants three things. To rule the universe, to take my TARDIS and to kill me," the Doctor answered, holding up a finger for each point. He considered his hand a moment, and went on, "No, make that four things. He wants to take over my body, too. And get all my remaining regenerations. So make it five…six…seven things he wants, if you count each regeneration separately." He stood with seven fingers held up in front of him. Rose took his hands to give them a reassuring squeeze, which he returned.
"And now he's on his way to collect one part of his wish list, with Madhukar's help," Jack said.
"Wouldn't the TARDIS just chuck him out?" Rose asked, still holding onto the Doctor's hands.
He shook his head. "I don't know, Rose. He got aboard her before, when I regenerated for the seventh time. I've never figured out why she allowed it then."
Rose thought a moment. "The TARDIS did go off-kilter when you regenerated this last time. Maybe it happened then too?"
"Possibly. Probably," the Doctor corrected himself. He released Rose's hands and began to pace, rubbing the back of his neck. "That was one of my worst regenerations; even worse than the one you saw. I almost didn't survive that time. With our link disrupted, she was vulnerable. Just like she is now."
"Even if the Master does get aboard the TARDIS," Kit said, "he's not going to get far. The Music and the Web of Time are still completely distorted. She's not going anywhere unless he restores them. And if he does," she leaned back in her chair and began to swivel it slightly from side to side, grinning wolfishly, "he'll have me to deal with. With a whole mediary at my disposal."
Jack caught her chair to stop it. "Careful, Angel," he warned, inclining his head toward the Dalek. "Little pepperpots have big auditory sensors."
"And normally they have very loud voices," Rose added, looking over at it. "This one still isn't making a sound. It's creepy."
"It's under orders," the Doctor said. "Someone told it to remain silent. But I'm still having trouble believing a Dalek would take an order from the Master. They'd trust him even less than they'd trust me."
"You said they'd exterminated him?" Rose asked.
"Years ago," the Doctor answered. "I don't understand how he managed to cheat his way out of that, nor how he managed to escape after passing through the old Eye of Harmony. But that's not what really troubles me. What I really don't understand is how he's managed to set up shop here, in an angel's training ground." He started walking around the table. The Dalek's eyestalk tracked his every step, but the creature still made no sound. The Doctor continued, "We're missing a piece of the puzzle here. Something that would tie it all together. The Master couldn't possibly have manipulated reality on his own to build all this." Keeping one eye on the Dalek, he wandered over to a lateral file cabinet lined with framed photos. He picked up a black ball sitting amongst the pictures. "Especially not with this kind of detail. Could he have just stumbled into this? Kit?" He tossed the ball to her.
She caught it and turned it in her hand, studying it. "Reply hazy, ask again later. Figures." She showed the ball to Jack and then tossed it to Rose, who could now see it was a Magic Eight Ball toy. Kit went on, "I don't know, Doctor. Without the Music, I can't see any more than you can. You'd get better answers out of that Eight Ball. But his just falling into a place that he could use like this would be one hell of a coincidence."
"I thought you said there was no such thing as coincidence?" Rose asked, remembering what Kit had said the very first time they'd met.
"Yeah. But then, I also used to think nothing could disrupt the Music," the other woman replied. "All bets are off, Rose."
"Even if it was a coincidence, why would any of your people copy this?" Jack wanted to know.
Kit shrugged. "This is a training ground. The best way to teach anything is to use something the student is interested in. Somebody was interested in radio telescopes. From the detail, I'd say it was somebody very skilled. Powerful," she said, looking around. "If I could hear the Music, if I could see I'd know where this came from. But without it…I don't know. I do know I'm not this good yet."
"I don't see how Madhukar could believe anything the Master told him, and then just take him to the TARDIS," Rose said. "After all the time he's been with us, how could this happen?"
"Ah, now that's one thing I think I do understand," the Doctor told her, leaning against the file cabinet. "Just before all this started, he was telling me he was troubled about the Laws of Time and the way I don't seem to follow them. We'd barely started talking about it when the discord started. I think losing the Music put him out of sorts, scrambled his brain a bit and left him susceptible. And the Master has a particular talent for persuasion. He's very good at getting into people's heads."
A sudden thought struck Rose. "Like you got into Kit's earlier?" she asked with a significantly raised eyebrow.
"Aha!" Kit said with a smile, swiveling her chair a quarter-turn toward Rose. "I like where you're going with this."
"We still have the pepperpot and the tin man to deal with, and no weapons," Jack reminded them quietly.
The Doctor nodded. "Probably tin men," he said, pushing off from the cabinet and circling around the table again to stand before Jack and Kit. "The Master did tell that Cyberman to go help 'them' with a project."
"Whatever that meant," Jack said darkly.
"Right," the Doctor said. "But, still, it is a good idea, Rose."
"So," Jack said, "we know we're dealing with a sociopathic renegade Time Lord, who's figured out a way to send some kind of signal to mess up the Vortex. We know he's hooked up with at least one Dalek and an undetermined number of Cybermen. We know his goals are the Doctor's death and universal domination. That should put him at odds with both the Daleks and the Cybermen. But instead, they seem to be following his orders."
"Talk about an Axis of Evil," Rose murmured.
"I was thinking Legion of Doom," Kit quipped. She looked a little sheepish as the others looked at her. "Sorry. Couldn't resist."
One side of the Doctor's mouth quirked up in a smile. "Don't apologize. If you couldn't make a joke in the face of danger, I'd know we were in real trouble. Now, tell me a little more about mediaries."
Kit considered for a moment, as if she was searching for the right words. "Well…they're places of matter and energy," she answered slowly. "Each Singer uses the power of the Music to sing the matter into whatever form he or she wants."
"Like maybe a baseball stadium?" Jack asked with a slight smile of his own. She blushed.
"Or an amusement park?" the Doctor added, his smile becoming whole-hearted now.
"Or a movie theater," Kit admitted with a laugh. "Yes. You two know me too well."
"Not nearly as well as I'd like," Jack said in a suggestive voice, leaning down closer to her.
Now it was Rose's turn to smile. If Jack couldn't flirt in the face of danger, then I'd know we were in real trouble. It might just be whistling in the dark, but it was still comforting.
The Doctor asked, "Is there any way you can do anything here without the Music?"
Kit sighed and shook her head. "No. We're a choir. Like Jack said before, I need to hear the others to tune to them. Even when I closed the walls around Pete's World, I was still in harmony with the others. I can't control realities on my own. It'd be like one soprano trying to re-create the whole of Handel's Messiah."
"Now, that's not exactly the truth, is it?" asked a voice behind them.
Rose's blood ran cold. I know that voice, she thought, moving closer to the Doctor as they turned to face the speaker, who was walking down the stairs. "You're dead," she said. "I killed you."
The face of Toby Zed grinned back at her, but the voice was one that had haunted her nightmares for months. The voice that had predicted her death in battle.
The voice of the Beast.
"You thought you sent me to Hell," he corrected as he reached the bottom of the stairs. "Right back to my own domain. Foolish child. You thought you'd won the battle. But I will win the war."