Trigger warnings for this chapter: xenophobia, torture, references to rape. Minor warning for unintentional misgendering.
The A406 was in good condition, which meant that it was basically useless for Martha's purposes (unless she wanted to thumb a ride with some of the Master's security and straight to her execution) so she had to take a longer route to get to the Chiswick Resistance Group, down sidestreets off Ascot Avenue and ducking behind unkempt bushes in the fronts of the houses near Uni West London from the rounds made by security and Toclafane.
Gunnersfield Park gave her trouble, having been turned into a base of operations for the military; the huge, open spaces wouldn't have been any help to her anyway, but at least if they hadn't been crawling with the Master's soldiers she'd not have had to go through the forest and the old South Ealing Cemetary in the middle of the night. She might not be easily frightened, but there were more preferable locations, with less spiders and other assorted distasteful things.
That little adventure had put her off by another hour, and she couldn't afford to waste time, not if she wanted to get to CRG before daybreak. Luckily she made good time after that, able to for the most part follow the path of Bollo Ln once she got past Stirling House—that had entailed a mad dash across South Acton Park she had no desire to ever repeat, only managing to not be caught by a small contingent of Toclafane thanks to the TARDIS key—and got to Turnham Green Terrace, full of boarded-up businesses and abandoned cars bearing peeling ATMOS stickers, by no later than 0400. A sign for traffic enforcement cameras at the corner gave her pause, but someone standing under the subdued awning of what proclaimed to be the Chiswick Chiropractic Clinic waved her over quickly.
"Martha Jones?" he asked.
"Number Thirteen sent me," she whispered back. "Are you CRG?"
"We sure are," he said, ushering her through the door into what had once been a reception area. It still was one, of a sort—stacks of paperwork on the countertop, and a woman typing up something at her workstation, swivelling her chair around to pick up the newly-printed papers and add them to the stack.
"That her, then?" the woman asked, pushing brilliant red hair impatiently out of her face.
"Martha Jones, ma'am," said Martha, sketching a quick salute before leaning on a filing cabinet to catch her breath.
"Oy, she salutes!" the woman exclaimed. "Why don't you lot salute?"
"Well I could go outside and try again," the man who'd brought Martha in suggested with a grin. Something about his easy confidence and wide smile reminded Martha of Clyde.
The woman rolled her eyes. "Ignore Mickey," she said, standing and offering a hand. "Donna Noble, coordinator, Chiswick Resistance. You already met that one," she said with a fair amount of exasperation, waving a hand in Mickey's general direction. He flipped her a cheerful V. "And if he doesn't show some respect he can organise the records room again!"
"I just organised it last week!" Mickey protested.
Donna ignored him. "Mum's upstairs sleeping," she said in a tone of voice that suggested she was perfectly happy with the arrangement and would like it to remain that way for as long as possible. "And granddad's… Granddad, where are you?" she called into the back. "It's Martha Jones out here!"
"All right, all right, I'm coming! It's not easy to get around back here, you know? And if you're not careful you'll wake your mother, does the, uh, does she want any tea? I think we've got some left, in the packs…"
Martha couldn't help smiling at the old man. He had the same look about him as the rest of the world; the same look Martha knew she had. Tense and drawn, tired, eyes filled with loss and pain and the sight of too many dead, too many starving children and broken families. But there was hope, there, as well, and a spirit that was far from broken. More beautiful than anything, there was even a sort of resilient cheerfulness, a sort of 'well we'd better make the best of it' positivity as he edged carefully into the room with several precariously-full mugs of black coffee.
There was love in every line of his face, and Martha felt for the first time since the Utopia project like she was home.
"This is my granddad," Donna said, warmly and unnecessarily, as the man bustled into the room and carefully set down his sloshing mugs of coffee. She moved the files off her desk with the air of having had similar mugs spilled on them countless times before.
"Wilfred Mott, at your service," the man said. His voice was kind but intense, and he gripped her hand tightly in both of his as he shook it. "We've heard all the stories, we have, my girl Donna's been tracking you as best she could, see… only she's been reversing the latitude and longitude, in case we're ever raided, it's happened before but we managed to get everyone out. Bannerman Road warned us just in time, God bless them."
Martha hid a wide smile. Good on you, Sarah Jane.
"But here, you don't want to listen to an old man!" Wilfred exclaimed, turning about and seeming to look for something in the scattered piles and randomly-placed filing cabinets. "Donna, where have you put the key this time? Good lord, I can't find anything in this mess…"
"It's right there, Wilf," Mickey called from his position near the door. There was a desk that was only half-covered in boxes of papers, and he seemed to have claimed it as his roost. It was a good place, allowed a decent view of the street with almost no exposure. Martha felt her interest pique. She wondered if Mickey was ex-military.
Wilfred finally located the key, which was large and brass and hanging prominently on a peg on the wall. "You want to see the others, right?" he said, bustling over to a bookcase in the wall. "That just goes to the records room," he said carelessly, waving a hand at the door leading upstairs.
"Records of what?" asked Martha.
"Everything!" Donna replied with a smug grin. "Troop movements, medical convoys, safe houses, refugee caravans, food supply trains on both sides, Resistance camps… Been tracking your movements too, based on hearsay."
Martha was understandably horrified. "And you lot keep all that," she said slowly, "Typed out, in one house? And you don't think that's dangerous?"
"Would be," said Donna carelessly. "If any of it was true."
"We're planting false information," Mickey explained. "Donna's brilliant at making it look official. Sometimes we intercept their messengers and give them false numbers so they don't realise we've been stealing their food. We've set up some fake safe houses all around the country. The Master raids them, finds all these detailed maps and descriptions and instructions for things that don't exist. They've wasted months trying to find the entrance to a massive underground bunker in Scotland that isn't there."
Martha found herself grinning. "That's brilliant!"
Donna gave a little half-shrug that practically screamed I know. "Best temp in Chiswick," she informed Martha, pointing helpfully at herself.
"Good morning, peoples of Earth!"
"Oh, not again," Mickey groaned as they all turned toward the ancient television set in the corner.
"...and welcome to Day 179 of our glorious march toward conquest!"
"Is it him again? What's happened this time?"
Martha jumped; the tight-faced woman had emerged from a bookcase right behind her without making a sound.
"We don't know, mum," Donna said. "Listen."
"I don't want to listen," her mother said tersely. "Turn it off, Donna, why do you watch these things?"
The others shushed her.
A close-up of the Master's smiling face, as always. "Bright and early! Isn't the sunrise just beautiful? I love Earth sunrises. So much prettier than Gallifrey's." He winked. "Of course they'd be, now, regardless. Wouldn't they, Theta?"
The camera zoomed out to show more of the dais, and specifically the person sitting beside him on the floor. "Yes, Master," the Doctor murmured, not looking up from the floor. His voice seemed different beyond the brokenness.
Wilf sighed. "Poor thing."
"Anyway!" the Master continued brightly. "We've got a special show for you today, subjects! My wife and dear, darling Theta have been looking so very forward to it, and I'm sure you'll all appreciate it as well."
The Doctor looked up at the Master, just for a moment, before turning his gaze back to the floor.
"Well?" said the Master. "Aren't you going to explain why, Theta?"
Martha could barely make out the Doctor's reply, a quiet, emphatic "There are children watching."
"Aaah. Well, how about I put it in words they can understand, if you can't manage it. You see," he said, directed back to the camera and his viewers, his voice pitched up like he was trying to engage an infant, "some of the guards have been very mean. They hurt Theta." He looked back to the Doctor, his voice retaining the childish cadence. "Are they bad men, Theta?"
"Yes."
"Do they deserve to be hurt?" the Master continued.
Martha smiled a bit, waiting for the inevitable blistering speech.
"…Yes," the Doctor said reluctantly, so quietly Martha wasn't sure if he'd actually said it or just mouthed it.
"Good Theta," the Master said, like he was praising a pet for having done a new trick. "Now, last one: are you better than them?"
"No."
"Are you sure? They hurt Lucy too, Theta. You'd never hurt Lucy just because you could, would you?"
"No, Master!" the Doctor said, the first real emotional reaction he'd had, muted but definitely extant.
"Then you are better than them?" the Master said curiously.
The Doctor faltered, clearly disagreeing but for whatever reason unwilling to speak out against the Master.
"I don't trust that creature," Donna's mother said in a harsh stage whisper. "Never have. It's in the Master's pocket, I can tell you that much."
There were any number of things Martha wanted to say to that, but she'd heard similar doubts almost every time she stopped somewhere. She'd gotten good at calming them.
It came as a surprise that this time, she didn't have to.
"He is not!" Mickey snapped from the doorway, interrupting Donna's "Mum!" and Wilfred's sad protest. "He's being tortured or something up there, but he'd never work for the Master!"
Martha turned to him in shock. "You know…?"
"Quiet, quiet now," Wilfred said urgently. Mickey gave Martha a look. We'll talk later. "That terrible man's speaking again, quiet."
They'd apparently missed the Doctor's reply. "Oh, I knew you'd come to see it my way eventually, Theta," the Master smiled. "Now, go on!" he continued, still in that bright, grating tone, waving his hands in a motion which said much of the same.
The Doctor stood carefully, almost daintily, holding up the hem of his robes so as not to step on them. He looked back at the Master, who nodded his approval, before ascending the staircase, still holding the hem of his robes. Beneath them his feet were bare, the same dark, almost brownish shade of orange that his fingers had, which Martha recognised as more of the… She hesitated to call it an exoskeleton, even in her head. She had no idea if it was really an exoskeleton, after all, even if that's what it looked like, or even if it was a part of the Doctor's body. It might be some artificial protective casing, the Gallifreyan version of shoes and gloves.
The camera panned to follow the Doctor's movements as he hesitantly picked a silvery object up from a side table, glancing back at the Master for confirmation that he was doing the right thing. Receiving it, he seemed slightly more confident but still horribly tense, walking towards the centre of the deck.
As he did, the figures there came into view of the camera. Two human men, manacled at wrist and ankle and chained to each other, seemed remarkably unconcerned with their prospects even as two guards stood off to the side, guns at the ready.
"Whenever you're ready, Theta," the Master called from his balcony, glancing idly at his fingernails.
The Doctor looked anything but ready. He was shaking with terror the nearer he got to the guards, and the knife—an old-fashioned straight razor by the look of it, small and sharp and quick—trembled so badly it looked like it might vibrate out of his hand.
Martha had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach where this was heading, and glancing around the room quickly she saw she wasn't the only one. Wilf had a hand over his mouth, and everyone seemed to have similar, gaping expressions. Even Donna's mother looked concerned.
When he'd gotten close enough to the men to reach out to them, he was shaking so badly the knife, reflecting the overheads, looked like nothing so much as a strobe light.
"M-Master," he stammered, and Martha felt something break inside her at the helplessness in his pleading voice.
The Master just looked bored. "Do get on with it, Theta, we don't have all day. These people have work to do, you're throwing them off-schedule. Awfully rude of you."
"I think it's scared of us," taunted one of the bound men. The other, who appeared to be slightly less monumentally stupid, said nothing.
The Doctor whispered something inaudible. The guard laughed.
"What was that, bitch? Couldn't hear you. Did you say you wanted Round Two? 'Cause let me tell you, I don't need my hands to—"
The Doctor—or maybe he really was just Theta now—gave a piercing, inhuman shriek, and there was all of a sudden a lot of blood and the guard screamed and twitched and the razor was yanked out of his face with a squelching sound that Martha would remember forever, however hard she tried to forget it. She thought his throat might have been slit for good measure as he fell, but there was already blood pouring from his face and his temples and she didn't even know how such an elegant-looking little knife hadn't broken with the force of the Doctor-Theta's frenzied stabbing, but by the time the guard's throat was cut he was most definitely dead already.
An expression that might have been the ancient, predatory ancestor of a smile played on Theta's face (there was none of the Doctor there) and he enunciated clearly, sharply: "Round Two."
The second man finally looked worried. He tried to scramble away, and Martha saw the blood drain from his face as he realised he was bound hand and foot to his dead partner. "Hey," he stammered frantically. "Hey, look, I'm sorry, okay—"
"No you're not." Theta said, crouching beside him animalistically. His propriety had been abandoned like a shed skin, the hems of his robes stained with blood. "You should know better than to try lying to a telepath."
Theta's hands weren't shaking as he made careful incisions on the man's neck and arms, and he might not have been a medical doctor but he certainly seemed to know how to avoid arteries, his blade flashing elegantly and red with less blood than there might have been.
"If I cut out your vocal cords, you wouldn't be able to," he said brightly. At the fear in his victim's eyes, he giggled, patting the man on the head placatingly. "Don't worry, I won't. I'd rather hear you scream."
"No," Martha whispered. "Doctor, don't…"
"As entertaining as this is," the Master said, "could you get on with it?"
Theta looked up at that, and nodded. He dug sharp, exoskeletal fingers into a deep cut in the man's arm to hear him scream before taking the blade to his throat, slitting it quickly. Theta held the hem of his robes as he stood, looking strangely composed for someone covered in the blood of the people they'd just killed. The composure didn't last for long as he looked at the two guards standing dispassionately a few metres away, and he made his way back to the Master's side quickly, hands shaking.
"Well, that's all, folks!" said the Master. "Thanks for tuning in!"
"They must have done something," Donna said hoarsely, staring at the now-blank screen. "He wouldn't… not without a reason. He always has a reason."
Her mother was less forgiving. "He had one," she said coldly. "His master told him to."
"Sylvia, that's enough now!" Martha looked at Wilf in shock. There were tears in the old man's eyes, and the order had been harsher than she'd imagined he could ever sound. "You don't see it, you don't use your eyes, any of you, do you? Now I'm not saying what he did was right, but don't…" He looked around at all of them, tearful and confused. "Don't any of you realise what they were? What they did? And that scared little blonde girl too. So now maybe you're right," he said to Sylvia, righteous, heartbroken anger snapping in his eyes. "Maybe he shouldn't have killed those… those horrible men but there are things no one should have to go through. Sometimes a man breaks, that kind of pain." He looked around to find everyone watching him, and suddenly seemed to get self-conscious. He fussed briefly, glancing around and trying to redirect their attention, but having said his piece seemed unable to think of anything else.
"Well said, Wilf," said Mickey unexpectedly. Donna, silent for once, nodded and put a hand on her granddad's shoulder.
Sylvia drew herself up. "Well," she said, "I still think you're all mad. And you especially," she added, pointing at Martha. "Putting your trust in that creature."
"I don't," said Martha. "I put my trust in what he can be."
Theta was still moping.
The Master sighed, running his fingers idly through their limp frills; Theta's frills always drooped something terrible when they were sad. He really should have anticipated this reaction. Most people would be grateful for the opportunity to turn the tables on their former torturers, but Theta still had vestiges of the Doctor hanging about that were horrified at the bloodlust and the vicious rage Theta liked to pretend they didn't feel. Really. It had been hours. The guards had even cleaned all the blood up by now; it had been the guards, rather than the servants, a pointed reminder of what would come of arrogance under his rule.
Anyway, it wasn't as if it had really been about Theta to begin with. He couldn't have his underlings thinking they could touch his pets and get away with it. Giving Theta the opportunity to get over their intense fear of the guards—one aspect of the regeneration-shaping that had gone a little too well, he'd been trying to instill fear but not so much that Theta curled into a whimpering ball of terror whenever they so much as thought about a guard—had just been a perk. Two birds, one stone, as the humans would have put it. Stupid expression. He was going native.
Maybe it had been too soon, he thought with faint regret. He would have preferred for Theta to not be quite so… raw. The wounds were, possibly, too fresh. It had been over rather quickly, and Theta hadn't gotten the chance to really savour it. Still, the little exercise had accomplished its purpose, and the guards were dead. They'd been crass, disgusting creatures. If the Master hadn't known he would need them someday when his pets inevitably betrayed him, he would have thrown them out an airlock the day he'd taken power. Tasteful sadism was one thing, but he didn't like thugs.
Of course, thugs were useful things to have regardless of his opinion of them. He'd let the third guard live. There was always the chance that he'd need his services again someday, and the knowledge that he was still on the Valiant would keep Lucy in line better than a volt lash. She'd been getting quite worryingly defiant lately.
It was Theta's fault, of course. They had a certain way with human girls, something about them making them seem trustworthy. It was fascinating, really, and if he played his cards right (and there was another human expression. Disgusting) it could work in his favour, who knew? He put his hand on Theta's back, and when they latched onto his leg, snivelling, he hid the flash of irritation and schooled his expression to something comforting.
"Why don't you go wash up, Theta?" he asked lightly. "Get all of that icky human blood off of you."
When Theta looked up at him, their lip was quivering. They nodded uncertainly. "Yes, Master."
"Good Theta," he said with as much warmth as he could fake. He ruffled their frills and finally managed to get away, taking the steps two at a time to distance himself from the sickeningly genuine emotion rolling off Theta in waves. Lucy, too, even. Her telepathy was even weaker than her mind, but as simple as her emotions were they were strong enough to give him a headache.
The two of them latched onto each other as they left. They'd hardly stopped touching each other since Lucy had come back from the sensory deprivation chamber, some misplaced sense of thankfulness linking them. He'd woken in the middle of the night to find Lucy standing at the foot of the bed, trying to comfort Theta, shuddering in the midst of some nightmare. She'd not cared about them at all prior to this whole thing, he was quite sure.
The Master took a moment to check his reflection in an unobtrusive wall mirror. One of the guards had handed him a very interesting memo a short while ago. He could hardly answer it looking less than his best.
The corridors of the Valiant were all sharp corners and hard metal, even in the formal areas with carpeting and drywall; you could feel the metal and the power of the ship. They were echoey and identical and there were no shortcuts anywhere. Normally this might have annoyed him; when he wanted to be somewhere, he expected to be able to get there with reasonable ease. Today, though, there was nothing that didn't make him feel powerful. Let the universe wait on his leisure. He would walk down the full length of every interconnecting corridor in order to reach his destination, and he would do it on his own time, and they could damn well wait for him. He was the Master. He would show up when he felt like it.
The drums thundered in agreement, and he pounded their four-beat pattern out against the walls—not covered in false drywall anymore, he'd left the formal suites and was making his way down the crew corridors. He liked the raw metal bulkheads and utilitarian lighting. They felt strong. Powerful.
A faint presence, red and raw with hatred and pain and desperation, clawed at the back of his mind. He brushed her aside, locked his shields down more fully—that was embarrassing, he was getting out of practice now that Theta had killed everyone—and banged louder against the wall. It wasn't as if a timeship could hear the defiant pounding (one, two, three, four), but it made him laugh.
Still. Fun as it might be, the laughter and drumming wouldn't make the impression he was aiming for on their guest. He stopped his playing (no point in being grown-up if you can't be childish sometimes, even a broken Doctor was right twice a day) to straighten himself out. Sleeves sharp, tie straight, collar even, jacket smooth, twirl your wife, give her a kiss, and there we go.
The guards had been smart enough not to lock the door. He didn't like stopping to fiddle with bolts and keys when he had an impression to make. If four armed guards couldn't handle a restrained prisoner, the prisoner deserved to escape.
He made sure the doors clanged loudly as they opened. His prisoner didn't flinch, which intrigued him greatly, but she jumped, and that was more than enough to satisfy his inner grandstander.
"Good evening," he said cheerfully. "Welcome to the Valiant, Martha Jones. I look forward to extending my hospitality."