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clocketpatchI really have to give a huge shout out to my betas on this one. Ann_blue and Bewarethespork; you guys are awesome personified.
I don't know why everything has gone bolded. Blame lj.
Chapter 10: In Friendship
I don't know why everything has gone bolded. Blame lj.
This nowhere, and it is shaped like the barrel of a gun.
Like silver-walled infinity fenced with a coil to guide the bullet. Like an endless well with a black cover pulled over the sky. The bottom of the well is a sharp-edged circle, smooth and clear. A series of thin, black pillars rise from the centre of the floor to grope at the endless black that might be a ceiling (or nothing). The pillars have the rough, pocked look of hardened lava. Scattered between the columns are the bodies of three unconscious men.
Benton is the first to wake, perhaps because he is not as time-touched as the others. He stoically takes in his surroundings, noting, with a pang, the absence of Martha. He hopes she is safe, and wonders if he is dead. He cocks his head to the side, trying to remember if he died and what that was like, but that last things he remembers are the road and the jeep and Martha wandering off ahead. His head rather hurts, so he decides, practically, that if he is dead then it’s not much different from life and he had better go check that the Doctor and Mr. Captain Jack are all right hadn’t he?
Just as Benton completes that thought, Captain Jack gives a rather loud moan and starts moving. Benton ignores the ache in his head (it grinds like a tooth ache, and is as dizzy as a concussion.) He ignores the pain and queasiness (because really, it isn’t terribly bad, and he isn’t seeing double or anything concerning like that even if the world is a bit fuzzy.) He creeps to the Captain’s side.
"Welcome back," Benton says, leaning over as Jack as the Captain slowly blinks his eyes open, groaning at the effort.
"Oooh, that'll do your head in," are the captain's first words. He tries to stretch and sit up, but falls back quickly with an 'oooooh, bad idea' expression scrawled across his face and body language. Benton gives the Captain a sympathetic shoulder squeeze.
“Easy does it,” says Benton.
Jack blinks again. He smiles a wide, flashing grin. "You know, if we survive this, I really do have to ask you out for a drink."
Benton smiles back, completely misconstruing the Captain’s flirtations. For Benton, Jack's words bring forward thoughts of UNIT's Friday night binges down at the pub (only for off-duty staff of course, and only when there were no pressing invasions). Nine times out of ten on those excursions Benton (or Yates, or a clueless new recruit who didn't know better) would end up being drunk under the table by the Doctor's hardy constitution, and would finish the evening with embarrassing half-memories of singing show tunes, out of tune, from the counter tops. The other one time out of ten it would be the Doctor who ended up singing, usually Opera music that might have been human or alien for all that anyone could understand it, and those were really the nights to remember — especially that one golden night when the Brigadier let his guard drop and jumped up onto the…
But the Doctor has hardly attended pub night in the past few months, and when he does show he's been a grump and a spoilsport and a dark cloud huffing out the door before the night is half done (like he was when he first joined UNIT). He's been like that since Miss. Grant, married that Welshman, and everyone on staff feels the loss; of Miss Grant as well as the Doctor’s antics.
Back in nowhere, Benton's smile drops along with his train of thoughts. Jack's grin falls also and their little moment of camaraderie is swept aside by the more pressing concerns of here and now. Tend the wounded. Defeat the bad guy. Save the day.
Benton and Jack turn their attentions to the still-prone Doctor. The Time Lord seems to be having a harder time returning to consciousness than either of them. There is a dark smudge over his left temple, which looks like the beginnings of a bruise. Benton doesn't know if the injury resulted from the Doctor bashing his head when they all collapsed, or if someone hit the Doctor at an unknown point during their transit from the road and the UNIT jeep to here.
The Doctor wakes up, finally. There's no big production about it, no moaning or groaning or dazed blinking into the light. The Doctor wakes up and sits up without any apparent trace of pain or dizziness. He prods at his bruise a bit and frowns, but doesn't mention it.
"Are you all right?" Benton asks, offering a steadying arm, which obviously isn't needed. The Doctor brushes it away.
"That was another time distortion, wasn't it?" asks Jack.
The Doctor moves from prodding his bruise to stroking his chin. His brow furrows, and Benton knows that he is deep in thought.
"Do you hear that?" the Doctor asks, resting the flat of his hand against one of the tall, stone columns. Jack copies the movement, and so does Benton. The rough stone is warm and buzzing.
"It's alive!" Jack exclaims, withdrawing his hand.
"It's the Master's TARDIS," says the Doctor, calmly, "but I'd like to know what he's been doing to it. Poor girl's in agony. He's remodelled, but it's more than that…" He strokes the pillar absently. A spark leaps off the sculpted rock to bite the flesh between his finger and thumb. The Doctor shakes his hand ruefully. "Like Time Lord, like TARDIS," he says, smiling slightly.
"What I want to know is how we ended up here," Benton asks, putting one hand safely in his lap, and the other by his gun, or rather, where his gun should be; He still has the holster, but the weapon has been removed.
"Probably… a freeze snatch?" asks Jack, and Benton notices that the captain's right hand is also creeping towards a non-existent firearm.
The Doctor nods.
"And what is that when it's at home?" asks Benton.
"It's… the Time Agency used them," Jack explains, "for securing prisoners. It speeds up time in one small pocket so that the person holding the control can grab you and whisk you out, taking all the time they want in the pocket, but not taking any more than half a nanosecond in real-time. To someone watching from the sidelines a freeze snatched person is just — poof, there one second, gone the next. It’s smooth and professional but hell on the fuel efficiency. You got to be pretty damn important to get yourself freeze-snatched by the agency.”
"It's appalling," the Doctor elaborates, "Every use rips a tear through the vortex itself and scatters patches of bleeding time across the web. The High Council banned the use of such things millennia back. Granted, that never stopped them from using the technology themselves, the hypocrites."
"Are they involved with it then sir?” asks Benton, “These agency people? Or the Time Lords?”
"No," says the Doctor, "it's the Master, but it doesn't make sense. He wouldn't have the technology, and he should know better… operating such a sloppy mechanism with so many other time disturbances and paradoxes already present…" The Doctor shakes his head. His voice is at a level between an enraged shout and a disbelieving whisper. "It's simply not sane. It like he wants to implode the cosmos, but, completely addled he may be, I cannot see The Master —"
"Yes, well, in all respect. It's not your Master we're talking about, is it?" interrupts Jack. "I mean, people change, and the Master I'm thinking of is more than a few peanuts short of the nuthouse. He isn’t sane, not even slightly."
Following Jack’s words there is a heavy silence.
The Doctor reaches out his hand, as if to stroke the sparking black pillar again, but seems to think better of it and withdraws. "I suppose it was always a foolish thought…" he murmurs.
Benton has an idea what the Doctor is thinking. He’s watched the Doctor and Master sparing and knows that there used to be friendship between the two men. He knows that the Doctor cares for the man after some fashion, and Benton can sympathise to some degree, though, personally, he believes that the Master is always, and will always be, insane and a leopard can't change its spots.
“Not much going to get done with all of us sitting around is there?” says Benton, breaking the gloom.
“Yes, very wise,” says the Doctor. He stands up briskly and paces the circumference of the room before tapping on a glinting section of wall that looks no different from any other. It swings open to reveal a door and a hallway; a way out of nowhere.
"Not a very well built cell," Jack observes.
"We aren't meant to be trapped," the Doctor says grimly, stepping into the chrome-arched passage on the other side of the opening.
Benton tests out his feet and finds that he can stand with minimal swaying. Beside him, Jack also makes his way to an upright position.
"I smell a trap," Jack says as he and Benton follow the Doctor out into the hall. The door slides shut behind them, vanishing into the wall as if it never were there.
***
Martha runs.
She veers off the muddy driveway and into the brushy field, which separates the barn from the main road. Martha is taking the shortest route possible back to the UNIT jeep and safety. Thorns scratch at her ankles, her feet catch in the roots of a scrabby tree growing alone in the scrub, and she is falling, falling, falling, but this grass isn't nice. It isn't soft, or kind, or even particularly green.
Martha clutches at the yellowed locks of vegetation, dry as drought despite the evidence of recent rain in the driveway's mud. She clutches, and tries to pull herself to her feet, but her ankle is twisted and she cries out in anger and frustration. She hates the world right now, and she hates grass, and she hate, hate, hates the Master.
Martha knows it's him, she didn't know it at first, but the knowledge came as soon as he spoke, as soon as he tried to calm her, and she realised that the tempo of his speech followed a familiar beat. Or, perhaps, the realisation came before that, when she had looked at a stranger and, for a moment only, trusted him completely and absolutely. Like she trusts the Doctor only, more… And she, Martha Jones, never trusts anyone implicitly (except for Harold Saxon, and Professor Yana who seemed so good), even the Doctor had to prove his worth when they first met.
Martha hates having her mind controlled.
She waits for his steady footsteps to come up behind her. It isn't him, him. She doesn’t know if it's a future him, or a past him, and she really doesn't care; it's the Master. He's evil. A destroyer of worlds. The destroyer of her world.
She waits.
There it is. She hears it: feet crushing grass, a slow, measured step. A pause.
Martha can feel his shadow on her back. He's going to speak now. She can hear the anticipation of his voice cutting across the warm summer breeze, chilling it. She can still taste the wrongness of the barn against the back of her throat. It sticks like vomit. Above her, the sky is very blue, marred by the footprints of aeroplanes and tiny clouds. The ground feels warmer than it should beneath her fingers.
"You are Martha Jones," he says.
Martha hunkers deeper into the dead grass, as if it can offer shelter, but she is disgusted at herself for this reaction. She doesn't want to die like this; She will not die like this, cowering like a dog. He is not, and never will be her master.
She's cowering under a bridge. The remains of the stream which once flowed there — all thick mud and offal and oil now — squishes around her knees. Limp, blight-spotted rushes provide walls to her crude shelter, and she has bent a few of them under her legs in a futile attempt at making a platform to keep off the muck. She can hear dogs barking in the distance. Mosquitoes feast on her hands and ankles and neck. She shivers — her sweater isn't warm enough for the fall. It is autumn in this country, on this continent, wherever she is… there is frost in the air. The distant dogs fall disturbingly silent and, somewhere, a Toclafane laughs…
Martha forces herself to stop slipping. She refuses to let her memories overwhelm her. She flips herself round to face her enemy, to stare dead into his deep, ruthless eyes: twin ice chips, blazing fires of passion and infinity. A calm, gentlemanly mask surrounds them. She can't help but think of the Doctor; he and him are of the same ilk; Lords of Time, and Martha Jones is sick of being a prop to their epic battles across the stars. She is as good as them. She meets the Master’s stare and refuses to look away or blink.
"I am Martha Jones," she says, strong and proud and damn well indomitable on her hands and knees in the dirt, "I beat you once and I'll beat you again."
"Good," says the Master, surprising her. He extends a hand to help her up. His jaw seems to tighten, like he's clenching his teeth, but he isn't. "Because, Ms. Jones…" He hisses slightly, as if it hurts him to keep his voice so kind and calm.
Martha's heartbeat quickens further behind her façade. The Master gazes at her with pity and contempt, and something else, something…
Martha realises that, with his neat trimmed goatee and square brow, this Master looks more than a little like a cartoon character; a mere caricature of evil; something silly and harmless from a children's television show. Nothing to fear. She lets out a nervous little giggle and misses what he says. Well, not quite misses, but she doesn't believe it.
If he is angered by her indifference, he doesn't let it show. He continues offering his hand.
"Ms. Jones please," he says, still with the voice of a gentleman, "Under recent circumstances, I can comprehend how you might be disinclined to accept my aid; however, I do not think you realise how privileged you are to be receiving it. Had I wanted you dead you would not be enjoying the sunlight currently."
Martha shudders, knowing this to be true, and knowing that this Master may be more dangerous to her than the one she fought and eluded over the paradox year. That Master was dangerous in his insanity and unpredictability. This Master, she feels, is more settled, and more apt to keep his promises — for good or for ill. However, she does not for an instant believe him to be honest or moral and she is sure that, whatever aid he is offering, it comes with strings attached.
"What do you want?" she asks.
"My dear Ms. Jones," he says, "It pains me to say it, but I want your help."
Like silver-walled infinity fenced with a coil to guide the bullet. Like an endless well with a black cover pulled over the sky. The bottom of the well is a sharp-edged circle, smooth and clear. A series of thin, black pillars rise from the centre of the floor to grope at the endless black that might be a ceiling (or nothing). The pillars have the rough, pocked look of hardened lava. Scattered between the columns are the bodies of three unconscious men.
Benton is the first to wake, perhaps because he is not as time-touched as the others. He stoically takes in his surroundings, noting, with a pang, the absence of Martha. He hopes she is safe, and wonders if he is dead. He cocks his head to the side, trying to remember if he died and what that was like, but that last things he remembers are the road and the jeep and Martha wandering off ahead. His head rather hurts, so he decides, practically, that if he is dead then it’s not much different from life and he had better go check that the Doctor and Mr. Captain Jack are all right hadn’t he?
Just as Benton completes that thought, Captain Jack gives a rather loud moan and starts moving. Benton ignores the ache in his head (it grinds like a tooth ache, and is as dizzy as a concussion.) He ignores the pain and queasiness (because really, it isn’t terribly bad, and he isn’t seeing double or anything concerning like that even if the world is a bit fuzzy.) He creeps to the Captain’s side.
"Welcome back," Benton says, leaning over as Jack as the Captain slowly blinks his eyes open, groaning at the effort.
"Oooh, that'll do your head in," are the captain's first words. He tries to stretch and sit up, but falls back quickly with an 'oooooh, bad idea' expression scrawled across his face and body language. Benton gives the Captain a sympathetic shoulder squeeze.
“Easy does it,” says Benton.
Jack blinks again. He smiles a wide, flashing grin. "You know, if we survive this, I really do have to ask you out for a drink."
Benton smiles back, completely misconstruing the Captain’s flirtations. For Benton, Jack's words bring forward thoughts of UNIT's Friday night binges down at the pub (only for off-duty staff of course, and only when there were no pressing invasions). Nine times out of ten on those excursions Benton (or Yates, or a clueless new recruit who didn't know better) would end up being drunk under the table by the Doctor's hardy constitution, and would finish the evening with embarrassing half-memories of singing show tunes, out of tune, from the counter tops. The other one time out of ten it would be the Doctor who ended up singing, usually Opera music that might have been human or alien for all that anyone could understand it, and those were really the nights to remember — especially that one golden night when the Brigadier let his guard drop and jumped up onto the…
But the Doctor has hardly attended pub night in the past few months, and when he does show he's been a grump and a spoilsport and a dark cloud huffing out the door before the night is half done (like he was when he first joined UNIT). He's been like that since Miss. Grant, married that Welshman, and everyone on staff feels the loss; of Miss Grant as well as the Doctor’s antics.
Back in nowhere, Benton's smile drops along with his train of thoughts. Jack's grin falls also and their little moment of camaraderie is swept aside by the more pressing concerns of here and now. Tend the wounded. Defeat the bad guy. Save the day.
Benton and Jack turn their attentions to the still-prone Doctor. The Time Lord seems to be having a harder time returning to consciousness than either of them. There is a dark smudge over his left temple, which looks like the beginnings of a bruise. Benton doesn't know if the injury resulted from the Doctor bashing his head when they all collapsed, or if someone hit the Doctor at an unknown point during their transit from the road and the UNIT jeep to here.
The Doctor wakes up, finally. There's no big production about it, no moaning or groaning or dazed blinking into the light. The Doctor wakes up and sits up without any apparent trace of pain or dizziness. He prods at his bruise a bit and frowns, but doesn't mention it.
"Are you all right?" Benton asks, offering a steadying arm, which obviously isn't needed. The Doctor brushes it away.
"That was another time distortion, wasn't it?" asks Jack.
The Doctor moves from prodding his bruise to stroking his chin. His brow furrows, and Benton knows that he is deep in thought.
"Do you hear that?" the Doctor asks, resting the flat of his hand against one of the tall, stone columns. Jack copies the movement, and so does Benton. The rough stone is warm and buzzing.
"It's alive!" Jack exclaims, withdrawing his hand.
"It's the Master's TARDIS," says the Doctor, calmly, "but I'd like to know what he's been doing to it. Poor girl's in agony. He's remodelled, but it's more than that…" He strokes the pillar absently. A spark leaps off the sculpted rock to bite the flesh between his finger and thumb. The Doctor shakes his hand ruefully. "Like Time Lord, like TARDIS," he says, smiling slightly.
"What I want to know is how we ended up here," Benton asks, putting one hand safely in his lap, and the other by his gun, or rather, where his gun should be; He still has the holster, but the weapon has been removed.
"Probably… a freeze snatch?" asks Jack, and Benton notices that the captain's right hand is also creeping towards a non-existent firearm.
The Doctor nods.
"And what is that when it's at home?" asks Benton.
"It's… the Time Agency used them," Jack explains, "for securing prisoners. It speeds up time in one small pocket so that the person holding the control can grab you and whisk you out, taking all the time they want in the pocket, but not taking any more than half a nanosecond in real-time. To someone watching from the sidelines a freeze snatched person is just — poof, there one second, gone the next. It’s smooth and professional but hell on the fuel efficiency. You got to be pretty damn important to get yourself freeze-snatched by the agency.”
"It's appalling," the Doctor elaborates, "Every use rips a tear through the vortex itself and scatters patches of bleeding time across the web. The High Council banned the use of such things millennia back. Granted, that never stopped them from using the technology themselves, the hypocrites."
"Are they involved with it then sir?” asks Benton, “These agency people? Or the Time Lords?”
"No," says the Doctor, "it's the Master, but it doesn't make sense. He wouldn't have the technology, and he should know better… operating such a sloppy mechanism with so many other time disturbances and paradoxes already present…" The Doctor shakes his head. His voice is at a level between an enraged shout and a disbelieving whisper. "It's simply not sane. It like he wants to implode the cosmos, but, completely addled he may be, I cannot see The Master —"
"Yes, well, in all respect. It's not your Master we're talking about, is it?" interrupts Jack. "I mean, people change, and the Master I'm thinking of is more than a few peanuts short of the nuthouse. He isn’t sane, not even slightly."
Following Jack’s words there is a heavy silence.
The Doctor reaches out his hand, as if to stroke the sparking black pillar again, but seems to think better of it and withdraws. "I suppose it was always a foolish thought…" he murmurs.
Benton has an idea what the Doctor is thinking. He’s watched the Doctor and Master sparing and knows that there used to be friendship between the two men. He knows that the Doctor cares for the man after some fashion, and Benton can sympathise to some degree, though, personally, he believes that the Master is always, and will always be, insane and a leopard can't change its spots.
“Not much going to get done with all of us sitting around is there?” says Benton, breaking the gloom.
“Yes, very wise,” says the Doctor. He stands up briskly and paces the circumference of the room before tapping on a glinting section of wall that looks no different from any other. It swings open to reveal a door and a hallway; a way out of nowhere.
"Not a very well built cell," Jack observes.
"We aren't meant to be trapped," the Doctor says grimly, stepping into the chrome-arched passage on the other side of the opening.
Benton tests out his feet and finds that he can stand with minimal swaying. Beside him, Jack also makes his way to an upright position.
"I smell a trap," Jack says as he and Benton follow the Doctor out into the hall. The door slides shut behind them, vanishing into the wall as if it never were there.
***
Martha runs.
She veers off the muddy driveway and into the brushy field, which separates the barn from the main road. Martha is taking the shortest route possible back to the UNIT jeep and safety. Thorns scratch at her ankles, her feet catch in the roots of a scrabby tree growing alone in the scrub, and she is falling, falling, falling, but this grass isn't nice. It isn't soft, or kind, or even particularly green.
Martha clutches at the yellowed locks of vegetation, dry as drought despite the evidence of recent rain in the driveway's mud. She clutches, and tries to pull herself to her feet, but her ankle is twisted and she cries out in anger and frustration. She hates the world right now, and she hates grass, and she hate, hate, hates the Master.
Martha knows it's him, she didn't know it at first, but the knowledge came as soon as he spoke, as soon as he tried to calm her, and she realised that the tempo of his speech followed a familiar beat. Or, perhaps, the realisation came before that, when she had looked at a stranger and, for a moment only, trusted him completely and absolutely. Like she trusts the Doctor only, more… And she, Martha Jones, never trusts anyone implicitly (except for Harold Saxon, and Professor Yana who seemed so good), even the Doctor had to prove his worth when they first met.
Martha hates having her mind controlled.
She waits for his steady footsteps to come up behind her. It isn't him, him. She doesn’t know if it's a future him, or a past him, and she really doesn't care; it's the Master. He's evil. A destroyer of worlds. The destroyer of her world.
She waits.
There it is. She hears it: feet crushing grass, a slow, measured step. A pause.
Martha can feel his shadow on her back. He's going to speak now. She can hear the anticipation of his voice cutting across the warm summer breeze, chilling it. She can still taste the wrongness of the barn against the back of her throat. It sticks like vomit. Above her, the sky is very blue, marred by the footprints of aeroplanes and tiny clouds. The ground feels warmer than it should beneath her fingers.
"You are Martha Jones," he says.
Martha hunkers deeper into the dead grass, as if it can offer shelter, but she is disgusted at herself for this reaction. She doesn't want to die like this; She will not die like this, cowering like a dog. He is not, and never will be her master.
She's cowering under a bridge. The remains of the stream which once flowed there — all thick mud and offal and oil now — squishes around her knees. Limp, blight-spotted rushes provide walls to her crude shelter, and she has bent a few of them under her legs in a futile attempt at making a platform to keep off the muck. She can hear dogs barking in the distance. Mosquitoes feast on her hands and ankles and neck. She shivers — her sweater isn't warm enough for the fall. It is autumn in this country, on this continent, wherever she is… there is frost in the air. The distant dogs fall disturbingly silent and, somewhere, a Toclafane laughs…
Martha forces herself to stop slipping. She refuses to let her memories overwhelm her. She flips herself round to face her enemy, to stare dead into his deep, ruthless eyes: twin ice chips, blazing fires of passion and infinity. A calm, gentlemanly mask surrounds them. She can't help but think of the Doctor; he and him are of the same ilk; Lords of Time, and Martha Jones is sick of being a prop to their epic battles across the stars. She is as good as them. She meets the Master’s stare and refuses to look away or blink.
"I am Martha Jones," she says, strong and proud and damn well indomitable on her hands and knees in the dirt, "I beat you once and I'll beat you again."
"Good," says the Master, surprising her. He extends a hand to help her up. His jaw seems to tighten, like he's clenching his teeth, but he isn't. "Because, Ms. Jones…" He hisses slightly, as if it hurts him to keep his voice so kind and calm.
Martha's heartbeat quickens further behind her façade. The Master gazes at her with pity and contempt, and something else, something…
Martha realises that, with his neat trimmed goatee and square brow, this Master looks more than a little like a cartoon character; a mere caricature of evil; something silly and harmless from a children's television show. Nothing to fear. She lets out a nervous little giggle and misses what he says. Well, not quite misses, but she doesn't believe it.
If he is angered by her indifference, he doesn't let it show. He continues offering his hand.
"Ms. Jones please," he says, still with the voice of a gentleman, "Under recent circumstances, I can comprehend how you might be disinclined to accept my aid; however, I do not think you realise how privileged you are to be receiving it. Had I wanted you dead you would not be enjoying the sunlight currently."
Martha shudders, knowing this to be true, and knowing that this Master may be more dangerous to her than the one she fought and eluded over the paradox year. That Master was dangerous in his insanity and unpredictability. This Master, she feels, is more settled, and more apt to keep his promises — for good or for ill. However, she does not for an instant believe him to be honest or moral and she is sure that, whatever aid he is offering, it comes with strings attached.
"What do you want?" she asks.
"My dear Ms. Jones," he says, "It pains me to say it, but I want your help."
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