Chapter 4 – Blood and Tears
The Doctor sat, head in hands, and tried to remember a time before the War. Sarah Jane's face rose in his mind and he smiled, though as smiles went, this one was rather tired and sad. She had been crawling through a duct, gotten stuck, and was near to tears. He'd thrown some half-hearted insults at her and she'd gotten so mad at him that she'd dragged herself out of the conduit, just so she could hit him. He laughed softly at the memory, using it as a fortress around his hearts, defending him against the horrors all about him.
Gurneys sped by, wounded soldiers groaning and screaming, the dead piling up along the walls as the overwhelmed hospital fought against the rising tide. Somewhere in one of the surgeries, Romana was being put back together again. She'd been badly injured and he had carried her here over his shoulder, despite his own injuries.
His arm was broken, his head was throbbing, and a few ribs were cracked from the impact of his body hitting the bulkhead during the last attack. The dull ache of his pain was nothing though in comparison to the misery of these others. He dragged himself upright and went to try to assist. It didn't matter if he was injured. He was the Doctor and he had to do something.
The Master listened to the Council as they explained their problem.
"One girl? You can't break one girl?" he laughed aloud, he couldn't help it. "What makes you think you can defeat the Dalek Empire when you can't even conquer one child!" he mocked them, vastly amused.
"She is not just any child, Master, she is the Doctor's granddaughter," Councilor Flavia told him, her voice sad and her face full of shame, and the laughter died abruptly in his throat. He hated the Doctor, but not so much that he'd wish that sort of agony on him. They'd once been best friends, close as brothers, before the drumbeat had marched him away to war and destiny. "She's already burned out the minds of three Seekers," the Councilor added. Her white blonde hair was pulled up in an elaborate arrangement of braids, elegant and refined, but her blue eyes were as bleak as ice.
"Good for her," he snorted. "I won't do your dirty work for you, Rassilon," he continued, snarling at the Lord President. "I refuse. I have no reason to harm a mere child."
He watched Rassilon's face go dark with rage. He knew what was coming, but he didn't care. For all she was his worst enemy's offspring, she was a Time Lady. He didn't maul his own kind for no reason and she'd never done anything to him. Time Lords were a superior species and he had rules.
The agony was worse the second time. Rassilon must have turned it up to a higher level. He was on the floor, screaming, and there was no dignity being left to him at all. When it finally stopped he was panting and wheezing, shaking with reaction and even the pale, horrified faces of the Council gave him no comfort.
"I believe you were telling us about how you were going to go straight to the Tower to assist the Visionaries with that girl?" Rassilon drawled, his eyes devouring the sight of the other man's helplessness. The Master was anti-social and narcissistic, but he wasn't a sadist, he got no pleasure from torturing others, it was just a necessary part of doing business sometimes. He didn't do it for fun. Rassilon looked as though he was enjoying himself.
"Yes. Indeed," he choked out past the bile rising in his throat. Those wretched fools all thought that he was the monster, when they should have been looking at their beloved leader instead. He dragged himself upright and kept his eyes down, so the glittering hatred in them wouldn't be evident.
"Don't forget, dog, I have ahold of your leash and I can strangle you with it," were Rassilon's parting words to him. The Master marched out of the room with as much dignity as he could muster.
The guards dragged her into another room that she barely noticed. There were never less than four guards with her now. They'd learned caution with her. She'd bitten and scratched, kicked and gouged, taking any sort of vengeance that she could on her captors. The guards were skittish around her, keeping her at arm's length. She snapped at one of them and he jumped back, they were afraid of her now and that made her smile.
She still didn't know what she looked like. Two months since her regeneration and they still wouldn't let her near a mirror, in case she found a way to break it and slash herself again. All she knew was that dark brown hair hung around her face and that her body was now whipcord thin beneath the white robe.
Her new hands, so slender and frail seeming, were cuffed before her, though she'd learned to slip out of any and all of the restraints they'd put on her. She'd been taught the basics by dear Harry, so very long ago, and she'd perfected his lessons by now. She'd had plenty of time to practice after all and nothing much else to do. She suspected that her work with the cuffs and manacles was one of the few things keeping her sane these days.
She was thrown to the cold stone floor and the guards fled the room, in more than their usual fear. She raised her head to see a man sitting in a plush velvet chair in front of her. He was good-looking, tall, lean, dressed in a Captain's uniform, hair cropped close for a combat helmet. His eyes were bitter black pools that seemed to suck at her. She knew who he was and she could guess why he was here. She'd seen him once before, though she hadn't realized then who he was. She also hadn't seen him at his best.
Her grandfather had told her many stories of this man, stories from when they'd been children together, from when they'd been at the Academy, the laughter, the camaraderie they'd shared. Grandfather had loved him like a brother, trusted him, and supported him against those who'd been cruel to him.
In return, Grandfather had been betrayed, attacked, and nearly killed several times. The Master had gone mad and had become everything that Grandfather most despised. This man, sitting casually swinging his leg, like they were both attending a particularly dull party, was her grandfather's sworn enemy. He'd broken the heart of the person she loved most in the universe and that alone was reason enough to hate him.
She looked away, determined to show the same indifference that he was showing her, and realized there was a window here. It was night, but she could see the stars. Ten months of consecutive time since she'd seen them, though it was more like fifty years of subjective memory, she had ten months of torture and pain imprinted on her body, but so much more was written across her mind. The stars were the most beautiful things she'd ever seen.
"Name?" he asked her in a bored drawl and she glanced up at him through the curtain of her hair.
"Susan," she answered and then turned away again, drinking up the sight of the night sky, and ignoring him, though it was hard. She'd had no one to talk to in so very long and he was liked a caged tiger, sleek and deadly, watching her with a predator's eyes.
"I am the Master; you will refer to me as such," he announced and she laughed aloud. After everything she'd gone through, all she'd suffered, she wasn't going to roll over and give up now. She'd see them all in hell first.
"Not bloody likely," she retorted, still chuckling. He struck at her mind, slapping at her thoughts to punish her, but she held strong against him and looked up, through the curtain of her hair, grinning openly now.
"Is that supposed to impress me?" she asked, taunting him. If he thought such childish attacks would hurt her he was in for a surprise.
He rose from his chair and knelt on the floor in front of her. His eyes were boring into hers, black as the night sky, black as death, and she stared back, defiant and unafraid.
"No, but this is," he answered and grabbed her head between his hands, forcing his way into her mind with contemptuous ease and she was helpless to stop him.
She shrieked in anger and pain, kicking and fighting him, but he clamped her against him with arms and legs like iron bars. She couldn't escape the physical contact that allowed him so much greater access to her mind. She slipped her hands from the cuffs, ignoring the stinging pain of her wrists as she lost skin to the process, and struck out at him. He grabbed her hands and forced her to the floor, pinning her beneath him in an obscene parody of a lover's embrace.
"Don't touch me! Don't you dare touch me!" she screamed, bucking like a mad thing, but now it was his turn to laugh. The sound of it chilled her hearts and brought tears to her eyes. Hatred for him burned brightly in her.
The Master had her underneath him and it was somewhat distracting. It had been too long since he'd had a woman in his bed and she smelled like roses and warmth. He shook off the thought and dived into her mind, pushing past the surprisingly well constructed defenses she'd erected. He could see the evidence of previous battles, places where her mind had been scorched and defiled. It made him angry to see such clumsiness. These idiots couldn't have been more incompetent if they'd tried.
She was not unattractive, he thought idly. She had long brown hair and huge emerald eyes, which stared through you in a curiously feline way. She was far too skinny of course, half-starved and abused as she was, but when she had looked up at him through that silken cascade of hair, eyes defiant and full of fire, something had stirred in him. He really must have been too long without a woman, yes, that was all it was. When this was done, he'd hire himself a couple of girls and take care of that.
Her mental landscape was blasted and war-torn. It reminded him far too much of the War he was fighting elsewhere. Barbed wire ran across the ground, smoke choked him, and the banshee wails of psychic alarms were ringing in his ears.
He shredded the wire, pulling it apart with a simple thought form. He cleared the smoke with a gust of pure will, and silenced the alarms with a brutal strike into her mind. He felt her shudder as he crushed her defenses, though she still fought him, her body twisting in a futile effort to escape him.
He reached into her psyche, rooting around in her fears and phobias. He found a memory of the French Revolution, a tumbrel, herself and another, a stupid ape, being led to execution, the crowd jeering and cheering, demanding blood. Her fear hadn't been for herself, she knew that she could regenerate, but for her friend, the ridiculous braying thing beside her. He felt nothing but contempt for such a foolish child, to care so much for her pets! He pulled the fear out and threw it at her, made her feel the sense of helpless failure once again, twisting it like a blade in her guts, letting her see how powerless she was against him.
She had laid traps everywhere, trying to keep her mind safe from invaders and he had to be cautious to avoid them, but he soon found another memory and dug it out, studying it with interest. It was the image of a man, a human man. He was dark-haired, and eyed, not unlike himself, in fact, with a warrior's heart and courage to spare. He was pulling her down into a lingering kiss, heat erupting in her as his lips moved across hers. It was her first, she'd only just matured, stepping away from her childhood slowly, reluctantly, and this man caught her hearts and pushed her to adulthood in a single stolen moment.
Jealousy erupted in him and he was appalled at his own reaction. How could he envy that stupid lumbering ape? How could he feel cheated and denied? How could he want to have been the one she'd been kissing? He couldn't possibly desire some vapid schoolgirl! Preposterous!
"Get out!" she shouted, still resisting him tooth and nail. With a feeling of bitter joy, he twisted the memory of her young lover, turning it into something dirty and shameful, throwing it back at her. She cried out in denial, blocking him with her love for that man. Love? She'd loved that monkey, that amoeba? Fury raced through him and he lashed her with it, driving her back, headed for her center, determined to end this contest between them quickly. He'd not wanted to hurt her, but this; it was enough to make him want to rip her apart.
"When we're done here, you will call me by my name, you will call me Master," he ground out, incandescent with a rage he didn't understand. She was still struggling against him, long past the point where every other mind had buckled and submitted and he was torn between fury and a grudging respect for her spirit.
"I'll never use your name, you bastard! I'll never call you that! The rest may bend knee to you, you sick psychopath, but you will never be something that can break me!" She screamed her defiance and howled her rage back at him. She was a fiery tornado of destruction, but he held her in his hands.
He found himself holding her carefully and far more gently than he might have, though again he didn't understand quite why. She was confusing him and it made him even angrier. He reached for more to use against her, but the flame of her was strong, she fought him, turning everything he'd done to her into her own strength again.
She whipped through him, evading his own defenses, and pulled a memory from his mind. It was himself and the Doctor, both of them so young, laughing and whispering to each other from the crook of a huge Silverleaf tree. Gorging themselves on fruit and dribbling it on their school robes. She showed him that younger self, made him feel the love and warmth of brotherhood again and he writhed away from her mental touch with an bitter cry.
"You'll pay for that, girl!" he told her and she laughed and fled from his reaching, slipping into another part of her mental maze.
"Only if you catch me, Koschei," she retorted, using the name she'd plucked from his soul, throwing it back at him, a gauntlet laid down.
Susan was turning his attacks against him, ripping at him with the same savage ferocity he was using against her. He was furious, every trick he threw against her, and she deflected back at him. He grabbed her laughter and turned it to tears and she threw his schemes and failures in his face, shaming him with all that he had never achieved.
She was young, inexperienced, he should have had her mind in tatters already, but she learned from him so quickly, that no sooner had he found an attack, than she was already constructing a defense. He was shocked to discover that she was equally as strong a telepath as he was. The Doctor was close, but had never been his equal in this area, yet this slip of a girl had him on the defensive as often as he was the aggressor.
She danced out of his reach, turning his blade of guilt against him and he was impaled on it as she fled again, glancing back over her shoulder, those green eyes hard with resolve. No wonder she'd been able to fight those morons off for so long, no wonder she'd burned out three Seekers, she was incredible. He found himself grinning and was annoyed with himself. What the hell was wrong with him, anyway? Why couldn't he focus on destroying her?
Susan reached into his memories again, found a moment of vulnerability and twisted it into an arrow of thought. She launched it at him, striking true, and he cried out at the pain of it. She saw a girl from his Academy days, beautiful, proud, a genius, who'd been Grandfather's lover. She'd seduced Koschei. He'd believed her lies of love and forever, only to be betrayed in turn. Friendships pulled apart, hearts broken, all because the woman had wanted to 'experiment' with their emotions.
Susan was appalled by the hurt done to her grandfather, but she also had a moment's pity for the young man the Master had once been, who'd loved too well and too much. She squelched the momentary weakness and sped on. Whatever his past might be, he was here to destroy her and she couldn't let her compassion be her undoing.
That she felt a sudden bitter hatred for the Rani, she put down to what she had done to Grandfather. The alternative was unthinkable.
He followed after Susan, tracking her like a wolf hunting a deer. She was fleet-footed and graceful, moving thorough the landscapes of her mental battlefield like a streaking star, but he was old, canny, and far more experienced than she was. He'd played these games for centuries, brought down kings and slaves alike with the strength of his will. He was wounded, bleeding from her attacks, but he'd injured her as well. She played the game well.
Strange, he thought, how this had become more a game to him than a serious contest. She was very much her grandfather's child, he realized, she had that same intelligence that made him want to test her, to push himself in competition with her. Breaking her would be a crime, destroying something so enthralling was foolish. He'd do it to save himself, but it would be such a waste. It made him angry that he was forced to do such a thing.
She was a not even three hundred years old, mostly untrained, yet she was holding him off and it was exhilarating. In fact, he realized that he was having fun, reveling in the simple enjoyment of a good chase. He had spent so much of his life surrounded by intellects far duller than his that he'd grown bored and restless. This was the first time in a long time that he could simply enjoy a battle of wits. It was a mental chess game and, at the end of it, there would be a girl with beautiful emerald eyes. He grinned, fierce and hungry, and sped off after her with greater speed. He had forgotten that the object was her destruction, and now just wanted to catch her, to win this game.