Chapter 9 – Family Gathering
The Doctor slid a hand along Romana's thigh and she chuckled and twined fingers around the back of his neck. He rested his head on her chest, listening to her hearts beat, grateful that she was alive.
The room was hers, they hadn't had the patience to make it all the way back to his in time, he thought with a smug grin. However, that meant that it was a little smaller, the bed slightly narrower. Not that he cared; they didn't need a lot of space for the not sleeping that they did in it. Still the steel gray walls were not particularly inspiring, nor were the military issued chairs and desk. He wanted something to take his mind off of his troubles and for once, Romana wasn't enough to distract him.
The visit home kept replaying itself in his mind. Susan had smiled and laughed, but underneath he could sense that there was something wrong. The only thing he had been able to do for her, was to give her back her wedding ring. Slipping away to retrieve it had been risky, but worth it for the look of gratitude in her eyes.
"She used to tell me everything," he sighed out, feeling melancholy.
"She's not a child anymore. She was a wife and a mother. She's a grown woman now, Doctor. All women have their secrets." It was a teasing statement designed to soothe, but he wasn't soothed.
"That's a different kind of secret," he protested. This wasn't something he could take lightly; Susan had always been the person closest to him, his best friend, as well as his granddaughter. He closed his eyes and felt the old familiar guilt and pain. He was hard on best friends. He should stop calling people that. The Master had been his best friend once as well.
"Do you trust her?" Romana asked and he was surprised by the question. Her blonde hair was spread across the pillow, loops of gold that glinted like sunshine in the room's artificial lighting. Her face was grave and she was watching him with a frown.
"Of course!" he assured her.
"Then have a little faith in her, if she's keeping secrets, she must have a very good reason for it. If she could tell you, no doubt she would," Romana pointed out, brown eyes stern on his face. He ran a finger along her lip, smoothing the incipient pout and then kissing her lightly.
"I know that, of course I do, but it doesn't make it any easier," he answered, feeling unsatisfied with the way things stood.
"Nothing is very easy these days," she acknowledged and he sighed out his agreement.
He stroked her cheek, tweaked her nose, just to see her smiling again up at him, and then took his sorrow and regrets out on her. She didn't seem to mind, after all, she had so many of her own to share.
Susan stood with the other graduates and smiled at her grandfather, holding the golden medal above her head in triumph. He grinned back and waved at her from the audience, making his nearest neighbors roll their eyes at his antics.
Great Grandmother sat beside him and on her other side sat Susan's parents. She ignored them completely, pretending she didn't see them. She had noticed them come in and how her father nodded coldly at his own father. Grandfather had had a moment's agony written across his features, but it had swiftly vanished.
Most of the time, Susan simply pretended that she had no parents, it was easier that way. Today was not going to be one of those days.
"Ten years to get four doctorates, Susanatrevalar, it's most impressive," her mother was saying as Susan tried not to squirm beside her.
Her father had a hand clamped on her elbow and together they were propelling her about the room, introducing her to those he felt it was proper for her to talk to. Terelinian, one of the few friends she'd made at the Academy, was steered past, despite Susan's attempts to head in his direction. She shot him an apologetic glance and he smiled sadly at her, understanding all too well how the game was played here.
"Oh Lady Gaistinariatta," her mother cooed to a withered old crone whose elaborate hairdo and bejeweled garments were far better suited to a much younger woman. "This is our daughter Susanatrevalar."
"The one that married an ape?" her ladyship asked with a viperish glare and Susan bristled, while her parents went pale.
"Didn't your last husband leave you for an Opera Singer?" Susan asked with a sweet smile and furious eyes. Her ladyship harrumphed loudly and waddled off in a huff.
"Susanatrevalar!" he mother scolded.
"She called my husband an ape!" Susan protested.
"Well, he was one, so it was quite accurate," her father informed her with a glower and she stepped firmly on his toes, causing him to release her arm. She spun on her heel and marched away from him, heading straight towards people she actually liked.
Her grandfather watched her approach with twinkling eyes.
"I hope you didn't cripple your father permanently," he commented mildly, as Terelinian handed her a glass of some rather fruity wine.
"I am a doctor, Grandfather," she informed him tartly. "I know which bones are important and I was quite careful." She'd made sure not to cripple him, but she hadn't taken much more care than that. "Wasn't I, Terry?" she asked Terelinian, with a wink.
"Well, if your intent was not to cripple, but only to break two toes, then you did it perfectly, Susan," Terry answered with a tiny smile. "I take it from that scene, and from the fact that you've never mentioned them before, that you don't get along with your parents?" he asked her and she shrugged.
"They were quite content to let the Tower take me. Anyone who'd turn their child over to become a drooling idiot isn't someone I'll ever get along with," she grumbled and he nodded his understanding.
"Speaking of the devil, here comes my brother," Grandfather muttered and Susan braced herself. Her Great Uncle approached with all the dignity of the Queen, Susan thought with a snicker. He was a pompous old windbag, a Professor of Antiquities and Temporal Engineering, though he used his knowledge of time travel more to gather antiques than for any more practical purpose. He didn't really care about anything less than ten thousand years old, and could care less about people, unless they were mummies.
"Ah, I see you overcame your natural reluctance to show your face in public in order to demonstrate to all of society your complete lack of breeding and manners, how delightful for you." Great Uncle rolled the syllables out like each one was a precious jewel of wit and learning. Susan clenched her teeth on something rude.
"Hello, my beloved elder brother, isn't it wonderful having the family together! It's so pleasant, so charming, so filled with witty banter and light-hearted remarks! It reminds me so much of why I left this planet in the first place," her grandfather retorted, his smile fixed and rather corpse-like.
"Children! Behave!" Great Gran scolded as she appeared behind them both. "Brangle in private, but in public please show some restraint!" Despite the fact that both her sons were well into their eighth century, they fell silent and looked embarrassed by the reprimand. Susan curtsied to her formidable ancestress and tried hard to suppress an impish grin.
"Sorry, Mother," Grandfather murmured.
"Apologies, dear Mater," Great Uncle echoed and they both stood awkwardly for a moment, before turning and heading off in opposite directions.
"Lady Professor," Terry addressed her with a low bow. "Should you ever choose to join the military, you could probably rout the enemy single handed." Great Gran chuckled and eyed him with amusement.
"I see you have a future in politics, Lord Terelinian," she retorted.
"May the Gods prevent!" he prayed fervently. "I mean to have a useful life, My Lady!" he assured her.
Great Gran was dancing with Grandfather; both moving through a stately figure dance and Susan checked to make sure that no one was watching, before she slipped away from the party.
The flowing scholar's robes swished behind her as she escaped from the persistent requests to dance from various young people. She had last danced in David's arms, so many years ago, and the memory was bittersweet, bringing tears that she had no desire to explain. Her usual guard showed up as she left the gathering, following her silently back to her rooms, and she ignored him. It was annoying, but she hadn't the strength left to care anymore.
The high backed collar and robes were heavy and rather annoying. Once she reached her room, she stripped off the ornate ceremonial garb with relief.
"Any messages?" she asked the concierge computer as she changed.
"No messages," came the mechanical reply.
So many years and still no sign that he even recalled her. She was happy about that, of course. Really, she was. She wasn't upset at all that a psychotic mass murderer wasn't returning her calls, because that would just be stupid. Ten years since that kiss, ten long empty years that seemed to stretch so long.
She dropped the golden medal that signified her achievements onto her desk. Graduated with top honors, accepted into an apprenticeship with the top Genetic Engineer on Gallifrey, she had silenced her critics, made fools of everyone who said that a girl raised with lesser life forms was crippled, less than, disadvantaged in every way. She had won respect from her teachers, and would win respect from her colleagues as well.
Even now, her thesis on "Toxicogenomics in predictive toxicology in drug development, as it relates to RNA synthesis in the Archon energy receptors" was causing a flurry of interest amongst the medical research community. Though honestly, she was surprised that no one had thought of it before, it was all so obvious. She suspected that her time on other worlds, seeing how other races approached similar issues, made her mind more open to these sorts of ideas.
She only had to finish her apprenticeship and she could do some real good as a doctor and as a medical researcher. Her life was finally starting to make sense, to go somewhere. It was quite obvious that she was doing fine all by herself, without him.
Really. She was.
She lay herself down on her bed and wept out her loneliness and grief.
Twenty years after that kiss, the Master slammed his fists down on the TARDIS console, nearly in tears of fury. He was denied leave to go back to Gallifrey. Again. All the long years of trying to get to her and he was still no closer. He could go anywhere else, but not there. He wasn't permitted to be on the same planet with her.
He buried his head in his hands and imagined a thousand terrible things he wanted to do to Rassilon and the High Council. He'd rip out their hearts and hold them beating before their screaming faces. Let him just find a way to get that thrice be dammed 'leash' out of his body and he'd burn through them like a vengeful comet!
Never mind. It wasn't important. (It was only everything) He needed to pull himself together. He had work to do. The Cruciform's defenses were complete now and he expected to be sent elsewhere soon, but first he had a problem to deal with.
The Rani was up to her usual games and, if he didn't put a halt to it, she'd alienate their allies with her 'experiments'. He couldn't care less how many fish-headed aliens died, but they needed the bastards to die for them in the war effort, not end up as sushi in her lab.
He groaned aloud. Worst mistake of his life, sleeping with that woman. What had he been thinking?
The Doctor took some more readings and started to swear. He punched the new figures into his algorithm and waited for the results, as they began scrolling across the screen he began cursing again.
"Problem?" Romana asked him, looking up from where she seated in a green wing chair in his TARDIS, reading a book and frowning.
"We're running out of Time," he grumbled and she blinked at him.
"I thought we were making good time," she commented and he shook his head angrily.
"No, we're running out of actual Time!" he corrected her. "The collapsing time lines, the way that Time is getting twisted up as first the Daleks and then we go back to change history, again and again. It's pulling time apart!" Romana looked at him with her eyes growing larger and more concerned as he continued. "There is a limit to how often you can yank on the skeins of it, before the whole thing unravels!" he bit out.
"Let me see," she commanded and took the data pad from him, staring at the numbers while she chewed her lip. She breathed out, a sad, exhausted sound and he felt horrible for his earlier snappishness. "Omega's Fall," she whispered and he nodded.
"I am going to work on some possible solutions, but we may have to Time Lock the whole war zone at some point to stop the whole of Time from collapsing." His words and face were bleak as he spoke and Romana shivered.
A Time Lock was a serious thing; it would trap them in with the Daleks, with no escape for either side. It would turn the war into a cage match, where only one combatant could be left standing.
At this point, he wasn't at all sure his people could survive that.
The Master landed his TARDIS back on the Cruciform with a sigh. He always seemed to end up back here.
He'd spent six months rooting out Dalek slaves on Parnassus, a nerve wracking task that somehow also managed to be terribly tedious. The Daleks had discovered a way to use Nanite Swarms to convert the populace and he'd first had to capture and analyze one of the conversions and then reverse engineer the swarms to find a cure.
He'd then engineered his own swarms designed to keep the populace loyal to the Time Lord cause. There were some initial complaints of course, because no one ever wanted to do the things that were actually necessary to achieve victory, but when he carefully explained the alternatives to them, they shut up quickly. Sheep were always so easily led; just give them the right bit of carrot or stick. Wait, or was that donkeys? He could never keep those Earth metaphors straight.
He stalked through the corridors, heading to the engineering deck with his face set in a scowl. He'd just fixed the damn shields seven months ago and here he had to fix them again.
"Captain Master?" a voice addressed him and he turned abruptly to see a very large man in the uniform of a Captain of the CIA. He was nearly two meters tall and built like a Greek God. He had honest brown eyes, a slightly crooked nose and a mop of messy, dirty blond hair. The Master ran his eyes over him and decided that his open honest countenance was probably very effective in his line of work.
"Yes?" he snarled. He really hated the CIA and the whole 'Captain Master' thing was really aggravating. He was just the Master, nothing else was required. No one probably called the Doctor 'Colonel Doctor', it just sounded silly.
"I'm Captain Darginian, of the Celestial Intervention Agency," he introduced himself and the Master was struck by two things. One; the man was being polite, not sneering or looking down at him, and two; he was meeting the Master's eyes unflinchingly.
"You wanted something?" he answered, but his tone wasn't unkind, he was finding himself intrigued.
"I've been assigned by the High Council to spy on you for them," was the decidedly surprising answer. Not that it was surprising that the Council had sent someone to spy on him, they always had someone watching him, and he knew that. No, what was surprising was that his assigned spy had just walked up and identified himself as such.
"How refreshingly honest of you," the Master replied, his lip curling slightly in amusement.
"Look, Master, I don't want to have anything at all to tell those wankers on the High Council, so let's make a deal. You don't say anything I might have to report and I will happily not have anything to report, alright?" the proposal was outré enough that Master found himself laughing. He controlled himself quickly and shook his head in disbelief.
"Since I would never dream of doing anything that you might find necessary to report to the Council, I will agree to that bargain," he responded, surprised by his own feelings of friendliness towards the other man. Nothing had made him laugh in a very long time.
"Great. I'll just follow you around, looking menacing, and you do whatever job you're doing," Darginian informed him and the Master chuckled again.
"I'm sure you do an excellent job of 'looking menacing'," he complimented the agent and then resumed his walk down to Engineering. Behind him, Darginian paced, looking like a hired thug. It was most interesting how he could suddenly look so thick and stupid. It was also a point to consider. Darginian wasn't someone it would be wise to underestimate, especially after his oh so disarming introduction. This was a man both subtle and intelligent.
The Master flicked a look back over his shoulder and felt a smile tugging his lips. It might just be that he'd finally found someone he actually found amusing. How droll.