Authors notes: Again, I might make edits after listening to it with the FFnet reader, because I think there are bits I could streamline.
Additional note (05/March/2020): As of this time series 12 of New Who has finished and I've realised I made a prediction way back in this chapter which turns out to be part of cannon now. When I wrote it, I thought it was something the Mistress would do to mess with the Doctor and piss Raven off. You'll know the revelation when you read it. Just know that when I wrote this it was months before series 12 even aired. So honestly, I had no idea and it was just a lucky prediction. Cheers
Chapter 61
Raven's Wrath.
Raven breathed deeply. Her anger at boiling point. Outwardly she stood tall and still, her eyes looking at the Mistress and her fictions accusingly.
Inside, the part of Raven that was Rachel Roth was crying in misery and pain. Those feelings translated through the layers of her psyche to Raven herself, where it was re-translated as utter, murderous, fury.
"Forget it," the Mistress said, retreating behind her fictions, "Kill her, kill her, kill her!"
The fictions who had laser weapons stood forwards and began firing. A rain of laser bolts rained towards Raven. But she didn't panic. Slowly she began advancing forwards.
Raven held up her hands and moved them slowly and calmly. She generated small black shields and caught each laser bolt before it hit her. Usually, this would be more difficult for her. But with her fury came utter focus and concentration.
There was a break in the assault and Raven struck.
She held out her hand at the girl in the yellow shirt who was firing a gun, she was too far away to grab with her hands, but not her powers. The girl was held up by her neck, a collar of darkness around it, and with a twist of Raven's hand.
SNAP! Went her neck.
The girls head twisted backwards and Raven dropped it to the floor, dead.
"You bitch! You utter Dalek!" The Mistress screamed, moving further away as the Harry Potter fan character came forward with her wand.
She made motions in the air and began to mutter a spell. She proceeded to flick the wand forwards. But before any kind of magic could be cast the wand snapped in two. Followed by her fingers, her hand, forearm, shoulder. All broke in that order one after the other. Last came the girls' neck.
SNAP!
The wizard girl collapsed.
Next came the Jedi fan character. Raven wasted no time catching the laser sword on a shield and skewering the big girl with a pike of dark energy, which she proceeded to rip up through the fictions midsection. Ink spilt out and splashed onto Raven's face. But in the scarlet red of Raven's eyes, the ink had more of a dark-red shade to it.
Gargal girl came next, followed by another. Raven laced her fingers, focused and separated her hands. The two fictions found the top halves of their bodies ripping away from their legs, their inky guts raining down around the demon girl.
Raven didn't smile, she didn't show any indication that what she was doing brought her joy, because though it did give her emotional satisfaction, she was too focused on getting to the Mistress to waste any energy communicating it to her face.
One final fiction. This was a big girl with a cape and she was glowing with golden light.
"Ha! That's my most powerful fiction." The Mistress boasted, "It's the most powerful character ever created, and you'll never..."
SNAP! Went its neck and it dropped like all the others.
It was just Raven and the Mistress now, and Raven suddenly had a need to play with her toy before ripping it apart.
She gave the Mistress a creepy, sadistic smile before closing her eyes, leaving the big girl in total darkness.
"Umm... can we talk about this."
Raven levitated up soundlessly above the Mistress so she didn't know where the goth girl was.
"Oranges and Lemons,
Say the bells of saint Clemons." Raven sang creepily. She felt the Mistress's fear. Raven loved it.
"You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of saint Martin's."
At any moment the mistress could die, and she knew it.
Raven could sense where everything was in her mind, and she was careful to avoid bumping into anything that'd give away her position.
She hovered behind the Mistress and said.
"When will you pay me?
said the bells of old baily."
The Mistress panicked and ran as fast as she could, bumping into things, hurting herself.
Good...
"When I grow rich,
say the bells of shoreditch."
The Mistress had found her desk and was desperate to write something, anything. She fumbled in the darkness and did come across Mjolnir, that magic hammer. She again attempted to pick it up, but it still deemed her unworthy.
"When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney."
The Mistress was doing something behind the desk, but Raven couldn't tell what with her eyes closed. She was holding a device in her hands.
Raven opened her eyes, the Mistress had some kind of tablet-like device and she was typing away furiously.
CRACK! Went the screen and it went blank.
"Ha!" The Mistress said in triumph. "I've given myself powers to equal yours! In fact, I'm more powerful than you now!"
Could she do that? Alter herself?
"You're going down, you evil Dalek!"
And she attempted to throw an energy blast at Raven. But all that came from her hand was a pathetic puff of darkness. Raven wasn't worried. It took years of practice to master her own powers. The Mistress may have power now, but not the experience to use it. It would be like having the TARDIS, but no knowledge of how to fly it. It'd just be a fancy phone booth.
Raven advanced again.
"I do not know,
Says the great bell at Bow." Raven continued to sing. She didn't bother closing her eyes now.
The Mistress backed away and was moving towards the Master Brain. Did she have an escape? If she did then Raven wasn't going to let her use it.
Raven's powers focused on Mjolnir. But even with her powers, she couldn't pick it up. But she tried something else. She used her powers to funnel a cushion of air under the hammer and that made it lift up, and using just air pressure itself Raven forced the hammer forwards at great speed, into the gut of the Mistress. When she fell back Raven placed the hammer across her foot. She couldn't lift nor even move it as Raven approached her, ready to play.
The teen stood over her. 'None of this magic nonsense that desensitises you to the deed,' As the Doctor had once said. 'if you must kill, do it with your bare hands.'
Raven knelt down over the Mistress.
"Here comes a candle to light you to bed,"
Raven's eyes burnt more intensely, and a dark aura formed around her like a black flame. She then clamped her long fingers around the Mistress's throat.
"And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!"
Raven put pressure on the girls' turkey neck and delighted in the fear she radiated. Raven also liked the shade of blue the woman was turning.
The goth girl prepared to take her first, real life.
"Chip... chop... chip... chop... and you... are... dead!"
She clamped her fingers down.
"NO!" Shouted a voice and Raven found herself being yanked backwards from the Mistress. Someone's arms were clamped around her stomach, pulling her away.
Her cool shell was gone, and instead what boiled through was utter rage. Raven clawed at the air trying to get the Mistress, but she was being dragged away.
"LET GO OF ME! GET OFF ME!" Raven spat.
"Raven, it's the Doctor!" He said, "Don't do it!"
"SHE DESERVES IT! GET OFF ME! I'LL KILL HER, I'LL KILL HER. I MEAN IT! I'LL FRICKIN' KILL HER! I'LL KILL HER! I'LL KILL HER!"
"Raven, no!" The Doctor hugged her to him tightly.
"Just this one!" Raven fumed, "Let me just have this one! Please! I promise I'll be good. I'll be good forever and ever, until the end of time. I just want this one! Let me have this one!"
"Raven, control yourself. I know she hurt you, but no!"
"I don't want to hear your morals, I want blood! I want her to suffer!"
"I know she hurt you, but don't do it!" The Doctor released one hand and clamped Raven's arms down. "It starts with one, you justify one, but then you justify another, and another, and another, and it'll never stop."
"It will, I promise!" Raven snarled and again she tried to reach for the Mistress, "Just after this one! Let me have her!" Her powers were unfocused and out of control as rage erupted. Flashes and bangs rained down around the Mistress, one even caught her leg, but none landed in a place that would do lasting damage.
The Doctor released Raven, but spun her around to face him. Then he clamped his hands on her shoulders as Raven struggled. She prepared to blast his face off for interfering. But the moment she saw his grey eyes she found she couldn't. She didn't know why, but seeing him was making her anger ebb away to be replaced by... by... by shame... Great shame.
The fire in her eyes began to die as did the glowing redness.
"It's alright, it's over." The Doctor said, and he tried to bring her forward and hug her. But she pulled away. She felt wretched and cold.
"Doctor, she..." her body shook.
"I know, I know." The Doctor said, holding her face in his hands.
"I... I'm sorry." Raven found herself croaking as her jaw quivered.
"Shhh." The Doctor shushed and gently he pushed on her shoulders to force her into a chair by the desk. "It's alright. It's fine now. I won't let the Mistress get away with all she's done." The Doctor turned to the Mistress, still trapped under the magic hammer. "She's made a blunder, one I don't think she fully understands the meaning of." The Doctor said with a look on his face which usually meant, either he'd thought up something clever, or the bad guy had defeated themselves and not realised it.
Raven swallowed. She'd lost total control, and it was horrible.
"Are you alright, now?" The Doctor asked, but she was too shaken to speak. "The TARDIS is parked outside, do you want to go to it?"
Raven shook her head, fighting back the emotions and forcing them back into the box in her mind they belonged in.
"Let me deal with the Mistress, I promise you, she'll get her just deserts."
Raven wasn't happy about this. She still wanted to rip, tear, dismember and break the Mistress herself. "Okay..." she said quietly.
The Doctor tried to give her a hug again, but, though it would feel nice, Raven forcibly pushed the Time Lord away. She didn't want it, she didn't deserve it.
Raven watched as the Doctor stood and walked over to the Mistress. He knelt down, ran his fingers through his hair and said.
"Now, what am I supposed to do with you?"
"How could you travel with such a nasty piece of work?!" The Mistress fumed, still trapped under the magic hammer. "When there are other girls who'd be better to travel with!"
"Raven suits me just fine." The Doctor said, "She's just a diamond in the rough."
"She's an evil creature, she nearly killed me!" The Mistress fumed.
"Well, I'm not happy about it." He turned to look at Raven, then back at the Mistress. "But you did pile on the pressure, pester her. I can't remember everything that went on myself, but I recall she had an ideal life for herself, and you saw fit to tear it down. Wouldn't anyone be upset?"
"I was just trying to wake her up from her fiction." The Mistress argued.
"So you could place her in one you created." The Doctor answered back, "Don't pretend like that was something angelic." There was a pause, the Mistress had no answer to that. "The war is over, the fictions are all rebelling against you."
"They're just fictions, they're not real. Why are you treating them like real people?!" The Mistress fumed.
"You're against prejudice, intolerance, bigotry and the like? Correct?" The Doctor asked.
"Yes, of course!"
"Your view of the fictions here is the same view as the Spanish Conquistadors when they found the Aztecs and the Mayans, or how the Roman Empire thought of the Britains, or how the Daleks view all other life in the Universe. The idea of 'They're not like us, they don't feel pain like us, so we can treat them as objects because they are not a level of consciousness we recognise.' Bla, bla, bla."
"Don't you compare me to the Daleks!" The Mistress spat in outrage.
"Your attitude is the same. It's just aimed at another group." The Doctor said.
"I've heard this argument before. It just shows your ignorance, if you can't tell me and the Daleks apart!" The Mistress spat.
"I think it shows your own ignorance if you can't see how similar you are." The Doctor answered back.
"I fight for truth, justice..." The Mistress began.
"And I met a group of Cybermen who's philosophy was, 'If we are all the same there will be no prejudice, there will be total equality."
"Don't compare me to the Cybermen!" The Mistress spat back, "The fact you say that proves you are ignorant."
"I do recognise my ignorance, but that doesn't make my words false."
"Yes, they do! It means you don't know what you're talking about!" The Mistress looked at the Doctor accusingly as if this was something there should be no discussion on.
"And you are confident you are not ignorant?" The Doctor asked. The Mistress nodded, fire in her eyes.
"Dunning-Kruger called, I think he wants to study you as a textbook case." The Doctor said.
"You hypocrite, you never second guess, you never doubt yourself!" The Mistress fired back, and the Doctor just sighed deeply.
"I do, I second guess all the time. Sadly, that's not how the stories paint me." The Doctor said. "The version of the Doctor you know is just a fiction. I'm always thinking, and re-thinking 'what would be the best action for the universe?'"
"Your reputation is dangerous!" The Mistress said, "You are not fit to wield such power over people."
"I don't want that power over people, that's the point." The Doctor said firmly. "No one should ever follow me or my words, because I might have everything wrong. I do good, I win, I succeed. But I'm no angel. Despite my degrees, my doctorates, my vast scientific knowledge, all I really am is an idiot, travelling around in a magic box with a screwdriver, just helping out. That's all I am, that's all I'll ever be. It's all I want to be."
"You have a reputation, Doctor, and a fan base. If you won't lead them, someone else will." The Mistress said.
"Being the head of LINDA, that someone is you." The Doctor shook his head. The point hung in the air.
Raven just sat, watched, and took it all in.
"You know. You were never supposed to be the Mistress of the Land of Fiction." The Doctor said, "I've had a look inside the Master Brain. Despite being in charge of a world of utter illogical nonsense it made a typical computer mistake. You are head of a production company. But that doesn't mean you have any imagination, nor expertise as a creator." The Doctor shrugged, "From my experience, the people who run the entertainment industry are the least imaginative people in the world."
"What are you saying?" The Mistress said.
"You weren't promoted because you have a great imagination. That's what the Master Brain assumed. You were promoted for... other reasons." The Doctor didn't elaborate. "The Master Brain usually sets up tests for its new Master or Mistress to determine their creative power. But I guess Mortimus disabled those protocols when he installed someone he wanted as Master, when he laid that trap for me. Hence, why you weren't tested before you were given power."
"This doesn't matter! I am still the Mistress of the Land of Fiction. I control this world, I will rebuild it!" The Mistress said in defiance.
"A fiction cannot be Mistress of the Land of Fiction." The Doctor said.
"What are you talking about? I'm no fiction!" The Mistress said back.
"Aren't you?" The Doctor asked, "Why did you write about yourself like you were fiction?"
The Doctor left that to hang in the air for a second, and an uneasy look came over the Mistress.
"You tried to give yourself Raven's powers, in fact, more than that, Raven's powers, plus. A fictional power." The Doctor said, "That can only happen if the thing you altered becomes fictional first. You see, that is the trap of this place. It's far easier to turn yourself into fiction, than it is to turn other people into fiction, and it can be done accidentally, so very easily."
The Mistress looked at her hands.
"I almost did it when I first came here." The Doctor said. "But luckily, I realised what I was about to do before I did it."
The Time Lord took a book from his pocket and began to write inside it.
"I can't be fictional, I'm real, I'm alive. I'm the Mistress, and you can make me say whatever you want me to say!" The Mistress clamped her hand over her mouth.
The Doctor showed her the book.
"But... that's what I said!" The Mistress said, "and I said that too! And that! Why are the words appearing on the page?!"
The Doctor pulled the book away and continued to write.
"It's the book of your life story. It's what you're bound to now, a little like a genie to a lamp. This whole book is your existence. But unlike a genie, you can't be set free from it."
"But the Land of Fiction needs a Mistress!" The Mistress protested.
"Oh, I think I can sort that out." The Doctor said, "I know a creative mind who'd love this place to play around in. In fact, I've already done it. I used the Master Brain to take someone's brain pattern before his death and I've transferred it into the core of the Master Brain." The Doctor looked to the ceiling. "What do you think, Mr Lee?"
"Excelsior, Doctor!" Said the voice of an elderly man, but still with great youth to him. "This place is marvellous!"
"The world of fiction would be a poorer place without you." The Doctor said to the voice.
"Who is that arsehole?!" The Mistress cursed at the ceiling.
"Hey, Hey! Don't make me come down there, you punk!" The old voice said.
"No fighting, no fighting." The Doctor said calmly to the voice. Then he turned to face the Mistress again. He held up the book that was her life, it was still open. "I don't think I need to point out the irony of your punishment. But I'm sure the fictions here will make you realise that, when they get their hands on you."
The Mistress looked up in horror.
"Doctor, you can't leave me to the mercy of these fictions!" The Mistress screamed. "You're the Doctor, you're supposed to show mercy to an enemy."
"And as I've said," the Time Lord sighed, "'the Doctor' that LINDA knows, is just a fiction."
"You frickin' Dale..." The Doctor closed the book with a bang.
And the Mistress had just vanished.
Raven sat in her favourite chair in the TARDIS control room. The Time Rotor was moving, so both she and the Doctor had left the Land of Fiction far behind them. But Raven felt empty. The part of her that was still Rachel was crying, and no matter how she tried, she couldn't force these feelings down into a box.
She'd finally known what it was like to have friends. Real, supportive friends, and a family, she'd known what it was like to have a family; and the Mistress had cruelly torn them all away from her. She tried to murder Rachels parents, made Rachels friends betray her and not only watched but helped a wicked woman beat her up. All because the woman had convinced them Rachel was the problem.
But she should be used to this, it used to happen all the time in the Temple in Azarath. But this was different. This time she felt a connection with the people she called 'friends', and they had callously stuck a knife in her back.
Raven now knew the weight and meaning of the word 'Betrayal'.
"Raven..." The Doctor said, waving his hand up and down in front of her staring eyes. "Raven... are you alright?"
She didn't answer. She was too focused on these thoughts in her head. Trying to wrestle them down into a box.
"What did she do to you?" The Doctor asked with genuine concern. He knelt down in front of her so she was forced to look at his face, but her staring eyes didn't look into his. She was too ashamed of herself for losing it and lashing out. But the scary thing was, she still wanted to do it. If she were to see the Mistress right now, she wouldn't hesitate to rip her face off.
"Rae-Rae," he said, "Do you want anything? Tea? Muffins? Jelly Babies?" She just wanted him to go away for five minutes and leave her alone.
"Waffles..." she said quietly, "I want waffles..."
The Doctor stood and turned to move away. But he paused and looked at her. "You're not going to do something 'silly' are you?"
Raven gently shook her head. She wasn't suicidal, just depressed, and underneath that, she was angry. Very, very angry!
"I'll be back soon." and he was gone, heading towards the kitchen.
In reality, Raven wasn't hungry, except for revenge. She wanted the Doctor out of the way because he'd never approve of what she was about to do.
After the Mistress's defeat, over the next few hours, all the wall decorations containing real people had been cracked open, and the people inside returned to their proper places. The fictions rejoiced because they were free again, and now under the guidance of an eternal Master of the Land of Fiction.
This Mr Lee character, whom the Doctor seemed to know well.
Raven still felt empty inside after her outburst and wanted to return to the TARDIS. Along the way, she saw there was a party happening in the square of this compound. Music was playing and fictions rejoiced. She saw Gulliver, Captain Hook, Aladdin, the Karkus, the Ed boy, Apu, the Elwin Brothers, who were on stage. The Doctor was even getting in on the festivities. Among the fictions Raven saw a familiar face. Rachel Roth, her fiction, just there, among all the other made-up creatures.
Raven didn't want to confront her so she dipped into the TARDIS at the first opportunity. But not before Raven spotted something on the desk in front of the Master Brain. Four somethings. Four books, one red, one blue, one green, another a dark purple.
She took the purple one and opened it. The first page identified it as 'Raven, a character bio' briefly she read it, and the more she read the more she began to get angry. The Mistress had been trying to write her own fictional history for Raven. Presumably, this would become Raven's past once she'd been fictionalised. The Mistress didn't know anything about Azarath, but had correctly guessed she was the daughter of a demon. But what boiled her blood was when the book stated that Raven was in fact an evil agent who intended to turn on the Doctor and try to kill him, only to be saved by new companion Dolores, the same one! A companion who was 'better', 'smarter' and 'unlike Raven, good'.
Raven was so angry that her powers escaped through her fingers and caused the book to fly apart into atoms.
Anger still bubbling again when she then opened the green book. 'The Doctor, a character bio.'
Most of what she read in it appeared to matched what she already knew of the Doctor. But soon she hit pages that were clearly written by someone else and the first hints of fiction began to show. The first fiction was trying to pretend the Doctor had more regenerations prior to his first incarnation. Many so many previous 'Doctors' it boggled Raven's mind. Eight of him were bad enough. Of course, Raven knew this was false having been inside the Doctor's head and seeing him as a young boy at the academy on Gallifrey. That and she'd hear more than just eight voices in the Doctor's head.
Reading on she also found more, 'retconning' she believed the word was. The Mistress had tried to insert a Doctor between the second and third Doctors for some reason. That didn't make sense either, Raven would've sensed that too, even if he'd magically forgotten it she'd hear that extra voice in his head and a female one would be very distinctive. By the description of this 'missing Doctor' it was clearly a self insert character, it was the Mistress herself with only a few differences. Failing to insert herself into the Doctor's future she'd tried to insert herself into the Doctor's established history. The demon girl suspected the big bitch had also tried to write in future Doctors in, perhaps some which went beyond the thirteen regeneration limit.
Reading further on and...
Now Raven really was pissed off.
What did she say to the Mistress's Imposter? ""Let me get this straight. You think the person who first called himself the Doctor, who established the legend of the Doctor, the reputation of the Doctor, the deeds the Doctor is known for. Is suddenly not worthy of the name he gave himself because he doesn't do as you wish" This had annoyed the Imposter and the Mistress.
So the bitch had made it so 'the Doctor' wasn't even really the Doctor. The Doctor, the real Doctor was going to be a completely different Time Lord from earlier in Gallifreyan lore, someone whom the Doctor, Raven's Doctor, all eight of him and beyond, had appropriated and stolen the identity of in order to trade on the reputation. Just like how the Imposter tried to do. This reduced Raven's Doctor to just a 'fan' of the 'real Doctor,' and of course Raven's Doctor didn't remember any of it, fully believing himself to be the real deal.
A dark aura so black it could suck your soul out formed around the enraged teen. Though she took solace in the fact that all this drivel shall remain a fiction forevermore. This realm is the only place this delusion would hold any power, and that's how it would stay.
But despite knowing this, Raven was still furious. Not satisfied with trying to muck around with Raven's own personal history and character the Mistress had set about re-writing Raven's friend. The dark glow began to writhe like a burning flame around Raven. The pale girl was used to people demonising her, choosing only to see a dark, fictional version of herself. But the Mistress had tried to alter her friend. But why? To piss Raven off? Because the Mistress wanted a 'pat on the head' from someone? Was it just because she could and no one could stop her? Raven was just so pissed off that the Mistress would play around with someone like this, like they were her puppets to command!
Raven accidentally dropped the book just before power could escape her and destroyed it. She stamped on it, then kicked it away. The pages flying open as it flew through the air. Sliding under the Master brain where she couldn't get at it, like it was hiding from her.
Then Raven spied the blue and red books. She opened them and discovered they were bios for two other people in the Land of Fiction. Discretely, Raven swiped both of them and vanished into the TARDIS with them. Two can play at this game!
Back in the present. From under Raven's cloak, she pulled out the red book. The book about the life of the Mistress, the book that her entire life was now tied to, every detail was in here. Raven also pulled out the blue book. The story of Rachel Roth, Raven's own character.
What Raven was going to do was complicated, but it should work. After all, fictions can jump between books as long as you know it's the same character.
The Doctor may have allowed the Mistress to get off easy after everything she'd done to her. But Raven was not that forgiving, the Mistress was going to pay, and Raven was going to make sure of it. The Mistress was going to feel what it was like to have someone play around with your history.
Opening both books Raven skipped to the end in both, where there were a load of blank pages. Enough to expand the story.
The Mistress's book had an epilogue which ended the tale for her. Raven quickly scanned it and decided it got in the way of what she was going to do. So she ripped it out, held the pages in her hands and watched them burn in black fire, destroying that portion of the now fictional Mistress.
She didn't deserve a happy ending! Not even a mediocre ending. Raven was going to make the Mistress's fictional life a nightmare.
Taking an ink bottle from the table next to her, Raven used her powers so the ink flowed out of the bottle and assembled itself in the pages of the book and formed into words. It was quicker than writing it out herself, and Raven wanted to do this quickly while the Doctor was out of the console room; and while this fire still burnt in her heart.
Raven detailed how the Mistress fell from grace and vanished during a time warp or something, Raven didn't know, she wasn't being very explicit. Only that, when she vanished, she vanished from this book so she could appear in another. The last thing she wrote about the Mistress was that...
'She felt paralysed and stuffed into a small dark box. She feared she'd been buried alive. But then she heard movement. Her coffin moved suddenly and the lid was opened up.'
The Mistress was about to leave her own book and become a minor character in the book about Rachel Roth. A very minor character, so minor she wouldn't even be a character, technically.
She wrote the story first from the Mistress's perspective in her book, then from Rachels point of view in the blue book. She also quickly introduced a few things like hidden magics and stuff to this world, so what she was about to do didn't shatter the fiction.
Raven paused, and decided to add a new character to the story too, to put right a great mistake Raven had made earlier.
In all honesty, it was a rush job, but it would do the trick.
Rachel arrived home having walked rather than let her Dad drive her. It was wet, it was rainy, but that was okay, she kind of liked rainy days.
"Here's my little girl!" Her Dad said. Rachel groaned.
"Dad! Not in front of my friend!" She said through gritted teeth. Rachel still loved her dad and liked his affection, but it was just embarrassing when he did it in front of her friends.
"I'm sure young Barriss doesn't mind." Her Dad said about the girl next to Rachel.
The girl was foreign. She had olive coloured skin with diamond tattoos across the bridge of her nose. She also wore a dark hooded cloak, which she said was part of her religion, and Rachel thought the cloak was kind of cool.
"I don't mind." Barriss said, smiling, "I think it's charming a father can love his daughter so much."
"Yeah, sure." Rachel said, "We're going upstairs Dad to do school work."
"Dinner will be ready in half an hour, little Rae-Rae!" He called up as they went up the stairs. Rachel was behind Barriss and she gave her Dad dagger eyes for calling her that.
"Dad, I am so gonna kill you!" She hissed through her teeth. But he knew her too well. She'd never lay a finger on her Dad.
They passed Rachels mom on the landing, as happy as ever. She'd recovered well from the crash. They quickly said hello before the two girls entered Rachel's room.
In the proceeding months, Dolores and her family had been arrested, because it turned out her own dad, the police chief was highly corrupt, and he and her mother were running some kind of drug smuggling ring from inside their house, something they found out when they chased Rachel into their house. Dolores was exposed as a twisted bully and was in a mental hospital.
Rachel's friends had returned to her. It turned out the drug Dolores's parents grew made people docile and obedient.
Rachels Doctor Teachers were re-instated back, though the horrid Headmistress stayed. Rachel could live with that.
Then Barriss had dropped out of the sky, literally, and was trying to fit in.
She was from another dimension where fictions were real. She'd been attacked by some kind of darkness, but before she died some time rift opened up and swallowed her and she dropped right into Rachels world.
Barriss seemed a little confused at first, and scared of Rachel, going so far as to call her 'Raven'. Apparently, Rachel looked a little like the girl who attacked her. Rachel didn't take that personally. Barriss later calmed down and was settling into her new life here posing as a foreign exchange student. She had some really weird powers too. She could move things with her mind.
Barriss wasn't the only thing that dropped into Rachels life as she was about to show Barriss.
Rachel took a box from under her bed, unlocked it and from it she pulled out a stuffed doll. It had a shock of blue hair and was greatly overweight.
"I'm going to use this as my voodoo doll." Rachel said, "I found it in the basement, and it looks a little like Dolores, apart from the blue hair. Whenever I get stressed I'm going to poke needles into it."
"Rachel. That looks like the Mistress." Barriss said, "I wonder how it got here."
"This is the big bad guy you were fighting against?" Rachel asked.
"Well, yes." Barriss shrugged.
"Want to poke needles in it?" Rachel asked sadistically, holding a box of needles.
"It couldn't hurt." Barriss said as she took a needle and forced one through the shoulder of the doll.
Barriss shuddered, and Rachel asked what was wrong.
"I don't know." Barriss sounded unsure, "But when I pushed that needle into it, it's as if a life screamed out in pain."
"It is a voodoo doll." Rachel said, forcing another needle right up its backside.
Barriss shuddered again. "It's creepy, but I get the feeling those eyes are looking directly at me. Like they can see. Like a soul is looking out at me."
Rachel looked at the doll. "It's your imagination."
'She looked out in horror as the two girls held the doll which contained her soul.' Raven wrote into the Mistress's book.
'The pale girl picked up another needle and slowly she pushed it through her backside. The pain was intense, like a giant rod of metal was being pushed up into her arse.'
"STOP IT, STOP IT! YOU EVIL DALKES'!" She tried to scream, but the doll was mute.
The green girl shuddered again. "It's creepy, but I get the feeling those eyes are looking directly at me. Like they can see. Like a soul is looking out at me"
The goth girl looked at the doll. "It's your imagination." and she put another needle into the dolls back.
She tried to scream, wanted to scream, but she couldn't.
Setting the doll down the goth girl began lighting incense sticks with a lighter. Then picked up another needle, but held it in a pair of tweezers as she heated it up with the lighter.
"Isn't that a tad sadistic?" The green girl asked.
"It's just a doll, I can't hurt it!" The goth girl picked up her doll body again and held the needle, which was burning red, and pointed it directly at the dolls eye.
"NO, STOP, PLEASE!" She tried to say, "I'm alive, please help, I'm alive!" But the doll body gave no indication to the soul within.
"You must really hate this 'Dolores'." The green girl said.
"It's not legal nor ethical to do this to her directly." the goth girl said, "So I'll pay back my bruises with this thing. You never know, maybe Dolores can actually feel it."
And the red hot needle shot forwards.
"I thought we were here to do school work." Barriss said, she didn't like what she was seeing.
"Okay, fair enough." Rachel said, pulling the needles out.
Barriss began unpacking their school things while Rachel put the doll back down into its box.
"We'll play more later," She said to it. "I have a lot of issues to work through." And Rachel shut and locked the box.
'Her doll body was laid to rest again in the box. The goth girl looked down at her coldly and said. "We'll play more later, I have a lot of issues to work through." and the lid was shut on her.
She understood what was happening. It was something she was going to do to two other people before she'd fallen into this trap they were now doing it to her instead. In her mind she still didn't see what she did as bad. In her mind she was just the defeated hero. But no matter her delusion the sad fact was that...
This was now her existence. Now and forever.'
Raven was finished. The two fictions overlapped each other perfectly so the Mistress's soul was tied to the blue book now as well as the red one.
Raven then turned to the Mistresses book, and one by one she began tearing pages out and burning them with her powers. She started with single pages, then ten pages at a time, then entire chapters. With each page gone the Mistress became less.
When the book was destroyed the Mistress would have no other cannon forms to take, except for Rachels Voodoo doll.
Raven held up the red book and savoured the moment.
She then ripped out the final few pages of the book, the pages she'd written, and then the rest of the Mistresses book was blasted to atoms, leaving nothing but a cloud of fine dust that slowly vanished into nothing. The Mistress was trapped now as someone less than a minor character in the story of Rachel Roth, and Rachel Roth was going to be anything but a kind, forgiving owner to her.
Raven inserted the loose pages from the Mistresses book into the blue book. The demon girl imagined what Rachel would do to torture that trapped soul and it brought a smile to her face. She only wished she could do it herself. She'd always wanted a voodoo doll.
Raven looked at what she'd written and sharply she closed the book. When she did, she was certain she heard a woman's scream that was sharply cut off.
To make sure no one interfered, Raven used her powers to fuse the pages together, so no one could ever read it, nor change it.
When she was done she hid the book on her person and waited for the Doctor to return.
As she sat, she thought.
Raven knew who she was now. She was a monster. An irredeemable, malicious monster. Rachel had lost friends, but what were friends? Friends didn't care about you, only in what you could grant them. The moment you become useless to them they toss you aside to forget about you. All friends wanted to use you, and they'd turn on you eventually. Kindness? It didn't exist. It was all manipulation. Rachel had been weak to rely on her friends for self-worth. Raven was never going to rely on anyone ever again. She'd had it.
It would be better to be alone and be content, then have company will one day betray you. She decided.
How long before the Doctor turned on her? The person she probably trusted most in the whole Universe? Aside from her own, real mother. It was only a matter of time before he tired of her and kicked her out the TARDIS door. Raven's eyes began to glow. She should assert her dominance now before he takes advantage of her merciful nature. She'd just seen how ruthless he could be when he threw the Mistress to the wolves. How long before he became that way with her?
Something was placed down in her lap, snapping Raven out of her dark thoughts.
The Doctor had returned and he'd placed a tray on her lap with a knife and fork, and a plate of steaming waffles. He'd been good on his word.
"What's this?" Raven asked, something about this made Raven feel... weird.
"It's what you wanted." The Doctor said.
Raven looked around the console room.
"But... this is the TARDIS console room." Raven's voice cracked, just a little. "You never let me eat in the console room."
"I know. Bon Apatite!" The Doctor said.
Something about this gesture just turned everything up in Raven's head. The Doctor never let her eat in the console room. She expected the Doctor to tell her to go to the dining hall to eat. But he'd brought it here to the console room.
He never let anyone eat in the console room.
Was it drugged? Was it poisoned? Her suspicious mind couldn't work out why he was breaking a rule that he, himself set up.
"Why?" Raven asked. She expected a flippant response, but she got a serious one.
"You seemed comfortable there. Take all the time you need." The Doctor said, "But don't think this is going to be the norm."
"Why aren't you angry?" Raven asked, "I flipped out."
"I'm disappointed, but I know you were in the heat of the moment, and deep down you regretted what you tried to do." The Doctor smiled a little, confidently.
Raven's eyes grew and her face dropped further than it usually sat. She didn't think what she did was wrong. She thought what she did was right. But the Doctor looked concerned, yet content in the belief she had enough of a conscience to regret her actions.
No one ever expressed that about her after an outburst. As new thoughts rushed through her head she found she did regret what she did... a little. But her anger blinded her to that feeling. Worse still was that Raven had gone a step further behind the Doctors back and sadistically put the Mistress in a position where she'd be tortured forever; and that she seriously considered doing nasty things to the Time Lord in case he got any ideas about controlling her.
Raven pushed the plate off her lap, she wasn't hungry, and she placed it onto the table next to the chair.
"I'm not hungry," she said as she stood up, a little too hurriedly. Externally she tried to look emotionless, calm and at peace, but inside...
She looked at the Doctor and their eyes met.
Dad will be disappointed if he finds out. Raven began to walk. She tried to make it look like she was doing it calmly. But her gate gave away something was wrong.
Returning to her room the door opened, closed and then locked at Raven's command.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
Power escaped her, destroying a twisted pot, a statue of a raven and an urn she had just because it looked kind of cool, but was now in bits.
My powers! Raven thought, My powers are evil! The moment she started channelling her powers through her anger it was like a slippery slope. Like a breaking dam, the more power that went through her anger, the more power could escape through it making her emotions more extreme and violent. She'd just witnessed it first hand with her anger and fury. My powers are evil! I never want to use them again, never, ever! EVER!
BANG! Went the door of her dresser.
Raven pressed her back up against the wall and sank down, clutching her head. As she curled up she felt something jab at the left side of her chest.
From under her broach, she pulled the heart-shaped pocket watch the Wizard of Oz had given her. The broken one. But It was ticking, and the hands were moving, like it had decided to come to life.
A metaphor?
Raven stood and looked at it for a good long while.
A dark look came over her face.
She dropped it to the floor and she sharply stamped down on it, once, twice, thrice.
It's a lie! Her mind screamed. A lie! Lie! LIE!
The watch was crushed under her foot. Then she kicked it so sharply it flew under her bookshelf leaving a trail of red bits behind.
The watch was lying, the watch lies! She was twisted, she was evil, she no longer cared about the people around her. She was a cold, heartless monster who delighted in torturing people! She couldn't be trusted with these powers!
BANG! Went her bedside lamp.
Raven took a deep breath to calm herself again. She was too emotional. If she was going to banish these powers from her life then she'll need to start by squashing any exit her powers had, including her emotions.
Raven went into her cloak and extracted the blue book. From within she could sense the Mistress's soul. It was still screaming.
Raven's shame evaporated when she remembered everything the Mistress had done to her. It was causing her anger.
Sharply she tossed the book into a trunk, shut the lid and chose to forget all about it.
Still, in a mood, Raven crossed her legs, adopted a meditation position, with her arms up as Barriss had suggested. Raven closed her eyes and cleared her mind as she tried to file these emotions away and lock them up, along with her evil abilities.
From under her bookcase, the heart-shaped watch was battered, broken. It looked beyond repair. The hands had fallen off, so it could give no obvious signs that the mechanism within was still ticking.
Still ticking... it just wasn't obvious.
Raven scowled as Star Fire hugged her from the neck tightly. Raven's arms were by her sides. She still wasn't used to this touchy-feely stuff.
"Oh, friend Raven, I am so sorry you went through that." She said with genuine love and affection. It was not needed. Raven had long since come to terms with that trauma. But despite that, she didn't want to tell Star to let go.
Her eyes rolled to Beast Boy who had an astonished look on his face.
"Dude, that was just messed up! You went full Carrie!" Raven was too surprised Beast Boy knew who or what Carrie even was to be angry. At first. Then the anger came. But the smack didn't. She'd save it for later.
Raven hadn't told them what she did afterwards, with the Mistress. Trapping her in a fiction of Raven's creation to suffer. That part she'd conveniently forgot about.
"That's enough contact, thank you." Raven said and Star Fire reluctantly let Raven go.
"After what I went through." Raven said, "When I finally calmed down I realised how destructive my powers could be, and how close I nearly fell into darkness." Raven said, then her eyes turned to Beast Boy, who'd kept mocking her about 'sitting still and doing nothing.'
"That's why meditation is so important to me." She said.
Beast Boy quickly held up his hands and laughed nervously, "Hey, don't let me stop you."
"I thought the Doctor was going to be angry with me. I expected punishment, I was almost going to demand it. But he just gave me space. I think he knew I'd come to my senses. When I did I vowed I'd never use my powers again. Never. I'd decided they were evil. I'd learn to control them, only so I would never use them.
"But your powers are what make you, you!" Star Fire protested.
"But you use your powers now!" Beast Boy said.
Raven rolled her eyes and was prepared to bite at Beast Boy, but Star Fire put her words more diplomatically.
"Obviously, friend Raven changed her mind at a later date."
"Yes." Raven felt sad now as more memories drifted in.
Star Fire stood. "I think perhaps we've had enough stories for one night." She decided.
"Oh, come on, Star!" Beast Boy protested, "That was just one! There were three last night!"
"Perhaps, Friend Raven will tell us more stories of her past tomorrow." Star Fire said.
Raven sighed and said dismissively. "Yeah, sure why not?" Before adding with cold sarcasm, "I am so happy for the attention."
With that, Star Fire and Beast Boy left.
With them gone, Raven pushed the broken laptop off her and it clattered to the floor. That wasn't the object which sparked the memories. The laptop was a piece of junk Cyborg was throwing out.
From within the chest, Raven pulled out a blue book.
This was what sparked the memory. The story of Rachel Roth. The book which still contained the soul of the Mistress. A soul which was spending eternity being treated like a voodoo doll by the fictional character Rachel Roth, a character the Mistress, herself had tortured. At the time it only seemed fitting for Rachel to get her revenge.
But, with a few more years maturity now, Raven had considered releasing the Mistress. Giving her the only freedom she could ever have from the Land of Fiction. Death. True death, through pure obscurity.
She could unstick the pages of the book. Rip out the pages relating to the Mistress, and burn them. With no fiction, the Mistress would just vanish, as if she'd never existed.
But as Raven recounted the story she began to have second thoughts about whether she wanted the Mistress's punishment to stop.
Raven could release the Mistress. But then, Raven's desk did have an annoying wobble to it, and this book, with all the pages intact, looked to be just the right width to correct that wobble.
Raven looked back to the book, then back at the desk.
Clear her conscience? Or correct the wobbly desk?
"Oh, the agony of choice." Raven sarcastically said.
To Be Continued...
Authors notes: What do you think she decided in the end? :P
61 chapters, congratulations on making it this far. :P
27 chapters long. Blimey, this is half the actual story so far. I'm not sure how many of these epic ones I'll do, but I promise the next one will be shorter. ;)
Yeah, Raven is very sadistic and vengeful when you really piss her off. Though that is something she's obviously going to grow out of.
This chapter was honestly hard to write. It was kind of difficult because though I could imagine what Raven was like when she was angry, but in her depressed peroid it was a struggle to NOT make her sound emo while her emotions flowed. But I think I've avoided it, because emos tend to express their negative emotions openly to the world, whereas Raven is trying to hide the fact she feels them at all.
In an earlier draft, Raven and the Doctor had more of a moment. But upon thinking about it, they already had a moment similar to it before. So this time the moment is different, and ends with Raven running from the Doctor rather than him comforting her.
Raven's reluctance to accept the Doctors kindness at the end is a kind of self-punishment Raven is now putting herself through. She's done something horrible, so she feels she shouldn't be worthy of kindness, thus she's pushing people away. To be fair, I didn't write much about it, but it will come up in the next adventure. ;)
I do have another story scenario lined up, and I think it's about time I did something nice for Raven for once. But it's going to be a while until I write it, so stay tuned. ;)
It's only as I was writing this that I've realised I'd gotten Beast Boys character a little wrong. He doesn't say his trademark 'Dude!' nearly as often as he should, so I'll go back and fix that. I don't think I'll let the counterpart Garfield do it though, so there is a difference between Beast Boy and the ficitonal Garfield counterpart. It's obvious who it is anyway. :P
(Additional note: Upon viewing the season 12 final of new Who it turns out the history of the Doctor the Mistress wrote was actually true. I promise I did not edit the chapter before the final to include any of this. I just thought 'what would the Mistress of the Land of Fiction do with the Doctor's history to insert herself into it?' and I thought she'd be the type of fan fiction writer who'd insert herself between 2 and 3 since we never saw the regeneration in the same way the War Doctor was slotted between 8 and 9 (It stemmed from a fan film which never got off the ground which had someone who looked like a mixture of Troughton/Pertwee as an unofficial Doctor bridging between Doctors 2 and 3.) But I also thought the Mistress would also go a step further and pretend there were Doctors before Hartnel and that the Doctor used to be very like her but 'lost his/her way' and would've wrote that knowing it would've pissed Raven off to no end to have the core of her friend rewritten to essentially be the Mistress in mind body and soul. I'm not sure how I feel now that my prediction came true since I've effectively mocked the idea in this story and discounted it as nothing but a fiction. You can probably tell I'm no fan of this massive retcon, but I guess for any who think the idea silly and franchise destroying you can use this as an out to explain that divisive plot twist. Somehow, the Mistress's fiction came true after all. That is, assuming, the Master was telling the whole truth.)
Cheers
-TimeLordParadox