Out of it

I'd said it.

"I want out of it." Away from him. I was still burning with anger.

"Are you sure?" he looked sick with worry, but it burned my soul to be around him.

He let me go.

I found a dole office, this was Birmingham, and told them I'd been abroad, they hassled me and tried to threaten me, apparently doleys are scum. Like it was us who broke the economy. I begged for a while by the bus station, then I put my thumb out and headed for Bristol, it was November- I could see my breath, but I didn't feel cold- it was not too long after I'd left the planet via Cardiff, and I had friends there. It wasn't that late when I reached Bristol, I blagged a look at a Bristol A-Z in a petrol station and began to walk across the darkening town to Easton. I was doglegging through a broken down shopping district when a cultured voice behind me said,

"What do we have here?" A dark clad bearded man with altogether too piercing eyes had his attention fixed on me, I was running before he snapped, "Bring her to me!" to the shadowed figures either side of him, they were faster than I was and when they caught me it was like being gripped by steel clamps, I could smell dead flesh off them as they frog marched me back to the strange man, who waited with an air of insouciant boredom, he spun about and opened a door, proceeding us into what appeared to be a garage. Then he switched on the light and I got to see the reason for the cold, hard grip and the smell of the two men on either side of me. They were grey, pockmarked and beginning to bloat, eyes sunken into the pale dead flesh of their faces. They looked to be somewhere between hours and days dead. The man in black looked into my eyes and then his mind bored into mine like a drill, I screamed- the Doctor had pried but this was assault, it stopped and he said, "Oh my!" and then he started laughing. He waved a hand to the blank white pillar in the corner of the garage and said, "Take her inside." The dead men dragged me through the narrow door into a a large impossible white space with a hexagonal console in the centre.

Shit!

"Get out." He said to the men, and when they stepped outside the door, he said "Be dead." and it was like their strings were cut, they collapsed to the floor. He looked at me and said "You will be still." And I couldn't move. The door shut and I heard the sound of a TARDIS beginning to operate. So this was a bad Time Lord, I was fucking terrified.

The Doctor's head snapped up, there was a faint flash of pain, he tried to place the mental cry, nothing- far away, or shielded, then very faint: terror.

The menacing figure loomed over me, "So you are the Doctor's latest pet?" He seemed infinitely amused, "What shall I do with you?" Aha- so he's a creep who enjoys terror in others. Although he could do sufficiently weird things to unnerve me, perhaps if I keep feeding him that feeling he'll just keep grandstanding. "What interesting biology you have, the Doctor must have had plans for you!" He definitely detected my anger, it pleased him, could it be that simple to get him to use me as a tool against the Doctor and not kill me? I would have to be very careful about anything this unpleasant man wanted me to do.

"Do you know why the Doctor has had so many pets, my dear?" His voiced oozed like an oilspill onto a pristine beach, "Because he is an inveterate meddler who thinks everyone's lives would be better directed by him." Well that, at least, was true. "But he never...ever...gets it right." The Time Lord finished, staring into my face. "What did he do to you?" I felt the sick feeling of him creeping into my mind again- so I cut to the chase and gave him the betrayal I felt, and he drank it up like wine, "Oh, you hate him, don't you? You weren't good enough for him, so he cast you aside," he said mockingly, "treated you like a thing, just like everybody else." He paced around behind me, his voice sibilant in my ears, "Dropped you like a piece of rubbish- cared not whether you died if he could have no use of you. Would as soon abandon you to torture because you are not a person to him, you are an insect to be experimented on, and Splat! you are swatted if you fail to perform." He laughed again, a rich deep laugh that was making me sicker by the second, I could feel the slimy thoughts trailing through my head, picking out the shitty bits with amusement, I couldn't have said, then, who I hated more- him, or the Doctor. "What did he hope to do with you, I wonder?" The sensation was like having one's head rammed down a drain, "Oh!" He nearly choked with laughter, "You fell in love with him! Tell me, my dear, does a man marry a goldfish?!"

Then with enormous strength, he picked me up by the scruff of my jacket and threw me in a bare room, and left me there.

I couldn't stop shaking, or hearing the laughter- given this being's mental abilities he was probably still beaming it at me- but I couldn't feel the revolting presence of his attention anymore. So I let my surface mind squeal and chatter and focused the centre of my mind like a pin on one point til it was cold and clear and angry. I knew which parts of what he'd said were true, and which were distortions, it didn't matter to me that the Doctor thought I was a goldfish, it mattered to me that this man didn't realise I wanted him dead til it was too late. I built up walls of rage and outrage around my intentions to shield them, then I focused down as finely as I could on my bodily sensations, trying to slow the nerve impulses to my muscles. Wait, I told myself. Wait.

There was a crash like a train hitting a building, the room shuddered, and I could hear the outraged banshee scream of a TARDIS engine in distress, it sounded out of synch, it sounded like there were two engines, hope leapt, I cloaked it with desire for revenge. My quarry was close, I was sure of it. That horrible mind brushed up against mine and hissed "Come, your tormentor is here- the Doctor is here!"

The door opened, and I ran out into a room full of smoke and erratic lights, the engines were still screaming, I could make out two consoles- distorting where they touched in the centre of the space,

"Kate!" Screamed the Doctor, "Where is she, Master?"

The dark Time Lord laughed, "I've got you now, Doctor- you can't disentangle your TARDIS from mine!"

"Get him!" Hissed the spiteful little voice in my head, I ran towards the Doctor, he saw me, reached out a hand to me, and I decked him with a punch to the jaw. He was flung back from the console, I leapt after him, grabbed his jacket and found my hand on that stupid umbrella he hung from his top pocket, blazing with anger and triumph, I turned and smashed the handle end of it down on the engine kill switch of the Master's TARDIS. It and he faded, and were gone, the console room was empty, the engines pulsing normally, I patted the Doctor's concerned face, and sank down to sit on the floor, head cradled on the console, half an umbrella smoked gently in my hand.