taxonomites | eighteen | location: the tardis | it's never that simple

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eighteen | location: the tardis | it's never that simple | locked to morgana & those in hc clements

after this.

The Doctor leaves Rose sleeping after a while and heads to the console. He promised he wouldn't take them from Taxon until Rose woke up, and he plans to keep that promise. He'll say goodbye to Rose, send her back to her world, and then take everyone else back. Everyone except the Master. He can't give him back to the timeline, he just can't. He needs to convince himself that he's wrong, but that will take time.

But, there's something he needs to do in Taxon, first. Someone he has to give some very sad information to.

He steers the TARDIS towards another room in HC Clements, one with another victim of the Master's resting up. Vaguely, he recognizes that going to visit Morgana while Rose is sleeping won't look very good to Rose, who is already suspecting he's up to more than he actually is, but he can't just run away from this. Not this time.

He parks the TARDIS in the middle of the room and heads towards the door.

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"The only, and last place you will be taking me, and Gwen, is back to Camelot." Morgana does not mention Arthur. She will not discuss him with the Doctor but it hardens her resolve not to flinch while her wrist is being cleaned.

She will not look at the Doctor either, just as she will not think about Arthur. That is too much for her, at the moment.

There is a wave of anger seeping through and her other hand clenches into a fist. She's disconcerted, uncertain whose anger it is.

"I'll be taking you home," he says. "To the real Camelot."

He slips on his spectacles and begins working on her wrist, cleaning the wound and gently rubbing out the dirt and grime. The Master did a number on her, that's for sure. A number she should never have had to endure.

"The TARDIS just needs a quick trip, drop Rose off, first. Then you and everyone else in this city in groups. Everyone can go home." Not everyone. Not Arthur, not Jack or Tosh or Helen. Just the people left.

Her clenched hand twitches, whenever the cleaning hurts, which is frequently. "If you take Rose first, who is to guarantee you will come back for the rest of us?"

Someone else chuckles, enjoying the question.

"You still have my TARDIS key," he says, giving her a small, sad smile. "I have to come back for it."

And her.

Not that he'd admit that.

The smile does not get a response in kind. "That argument holds no weight. I have already told you that I will not be returning it."

"Yeah, well, you have to. When I take you home. It's a piece of alien technology, Morgana. It doesn't belong in your world."

He had assumed, of course, that this was obvious.

what is obvious about technology, to the Doctor is not to Morgana.

Using her skirt, she wipes off the chain as best as she can, and picks it up. Her movement is not as quick as usual, as her shoulder is inflamed from the original attack, but she manages to put it around her neck.

"It is a key and now you cannot take it."

Edited 2010-06-05 06:08 (UTC)

The Doctor sighs. He knows that all he has to do is explain the situation to Tara, and it'll probably go his way. Well, he hopes. Hard to know with Tara, lately.

"Why do you want it?" he asks. "Would've thought you'd be ready to get rid of the things that were mine."

Morgana looks at him again, that examining look she often gives him, while she considers her answer. It surprises her that she's not quick to reply and has to think why she needs to keep it.

Thinking back to how she got it -- by accident, so she thinks, in the woods, and where it was kept for the longest time and realizes her answer is right there.

"It is important Doctor, and you do not always take care of important things, or do not know how." She's reiterating her sentiment from earlier, but much like the Doctor and his analogies that help make everything so clear, her analogy is far more important. "And because you see things in absolutes, even though you do not think you do. I was able to undo the knot in the tie."

Her fist is now unclenched.

He smiles, just a little, at her comment. "You would try to undo it, wouldn't you?"

And she succeeded, because the metaphor wasn't perfect. He can't explain it to her, not completely. He could, maybe, if he linked to her, but he never will. Not ever again. Not after this.

"We'll worry about it later," he says, and for the first time, he actually means that.

"This is going to make me vomit." He hasn't gone away, and he's starting to feel ignored. That doesn't go over very well, though his voice is weak.

While the prediction does not come true, there is another pain in her head, like her mind is hoping to physically expel him. While she hasn't whimpered over the cleaning of her wrist, the pain now brings it about.

"I hope not, this is a new tie," the Doctor says, because he's pretty sure it's the Master talking, and he doesn't deserve the kind of attention he's giving to Morgana right now.

"I can take it away, you know," he says, quietly. "Everything he's done, all the pain that he's caused."

If Morgana could shake her head vehemently, she would. She's afraid of what that might entail, and the Master in her mind is the most painful thing she's ever experienced. She looks at the Doctor with a mixture of fear and suspicion.

Even though the Doctor is still dealing with her wounds, she pulls her wrist away and pushes herself into the back of the couch.

"No! You are not doing that." She's jumped to a fairly reasonable conclusion, but it's done nothing other than induce a sense of panic.

Edited 2010-06-05 06:41 (UTC)

"All right," he says, without hesitation. "I won't."

But if he did, she wouldn't feel this pain. If he just took all of Taxon from her, she wouldn't know about Arthur's death. She wouldn't have to hurt, she wouldn't have to---

But then he'd be just as the Master had said, wouldn't he?

"Best to get everyone home in the morning," he says, quietly. "So we don't have any more disappearances."

"Do not suggest such a thing again," he's eying her like it's a perfectly reasonable solution for a moment, so Morgana does not give him back her arm to finish tending to her wound. It's ridiculous, but avoiding any form of contact, of sitting that fraction of an inch closer, makes her feel safer.

There is a burst of satisfaction for a job well done, that is in no way hers, and she desperately wants her own mind back.

Between the Doctor's suggestion, and his reference to the disappearances (she will not, she cannot think about that right now, and finally, being forced to feel things that are not her own, makes Morgana angry -- and vicious in her own right. "I doubt it is possible for you to fix what he's done. He was so much stronger than you ever were."

Oh, she can't think about that either, considering what the Master said to Rose, somehow when the Doctor described connecting, it was never quite as --

No, Morgana is not thinking about it. Shutting her eyes, she concentrates, the other voice isn't going to taunt her about it either, if she has her way.

She fails and feels ashamed.

"Home, in the morning," she agrees. That she can think about.

"Right," he says.

Home, in the morning. Back to her own life. Her own, now damaged life. Her life without Arthur. They'll know for sure if he's gone home, now. And Morgana...she'll live. Out there. Away from him, where she's safe. And Rose will go back to her life.

"Well, fortunately for both of us, you're stronger than he is, so you'll be able to fix it all on your own, I imagine."

"You keep saying that. It's pissing me off but don't worry, while you're choosing to runagain, I'll use what time I have left to make sure she's exactly who she's supposed to be. Shouldn't be too difficult." There's a caustic laugh, that sounds almost like a rabid bark.

"Thanks for scaring her. So much easier to talk with you when she's frightened."

"Stop it," he snaps. "Because the moment she goes into the vortex, you won't have any control over her mind."

He doesn't know if that's true, but it sounds good, at least.

"Hilariously, though, you still think you've won," he says. "But you're wrong. Because when she comes out of this, you won't be able to go back in there. She'll learn on her own how to put up blocks and walls."

Not that it will matter, considering the Master will be trapped in the Doctor's TARDIS. The TARDIS. Morgana knows the TARDIS, she saw it in the Doctor's mind.

"Morgana," he offers. "Do you want to see the TARDIS?"

Morgana does not know if the return home would remove the other voice from inside her head, as the other voice is staying stubbornly silent on the subject.

"Doctor, I do not know how to be rid him." She thought she had been doing well, but the latest outburst has made her feel defeated.

It also causes another concern to arise, "What if he does something to the TARDIS?" The implication she does not think she could stop him is clear.

There's also something else buzzing at the back of her mind -- the Master's had a realization, and isn't willing to share.

"Cut him out of your mind. Dead hair, that's all he is. He's just weighing you down."

Oh, there's a thought. Not the TARDIS, not when he's just got her back.

"It's all right," he says. "The real Master's going to be living in her soon. He'd better get used to not doing anything." He adds, "And I trust you, Morgana. You won't let anything happen to her."

"I could not cut you out. You just faded away." On the other hand, Morgana cannot remember actively trying to stop the outbursts of the Doctor, just adapting to them. "But then again --" it was the Doctor who broke her silence in the warehouse in Osten.

"If I could not stop you, I do not think I could stop him." She's frustrated, and angry, mostly with herself. This is not like her. She's never been helpless, yet it's the only way to describe how she is feeling. There's also a niggling feeling that what is happening might be partially her own doing.

Then again, it's not as though the after effect of torture was a common state-dinner discussion topic.

Edited 2010-06-06 16:24 (UTC)

"What do you mean?" he says. "You stopped me well enough. Opened up doors in my mind I thought I'd sealed pretty well-shut. And the Master won't have done that with you, he just thinks you're an ordinary human without your---well, gifts."

She doesn't think of them as such and he knows it. But he's still going to try to appeal to her pride. He has faith in her abilities, even if she doesn't.

"I could get into your head, Doctor, but I could not get out -- and I could not get you out of mine. When the Master," Morgana pauses, as her another pain hits and she takes a slow, steadying breath to get through it, "when he hit Rose, I said something -- you told him to stop."

She may not be realizing it, her silence, everything save the conversation with Drusilla, in that warehouse in Osten, was a result of what she had picked up from the Doctor.

"I thought you were gone," that he had faded away, as before, "but you hadn't. What if the Master -- he was trying to take when --" she can't even finish the thought, when another one, more frightening, hits her.

Frantically, she reaches into her pocket, and finds that her might-be-a-screwdriver is still there. She holds it out to him. "Take it. He'll use it, as a weapon. He'll make me break my promise."

In an almost insane form of agreement, someone else says. "Well, crap. I could've used that."

He hesitates, but reaches out and takes the screwdriver from her. "It can't hurt anyone," he promises. "I did what you asked."

He looks down at the small device that he's made especially for her. Of course, the Master would figure a way through his safeguards on it, wouldn't he? Brilliant old Master. The Doctor would admire him if he didn't hate him so much.

"Don't you think that maybe you called out to help Rose because you care about Rose?" he asks. "Or care that a person was being hurt? You're better than you think you are."

"But I could not stop anything."

The Doctor, incidentally, has managed to discover exactly why she spoke when she did -- neither the Doctor, nor Morgana could tolerate it, but Morgana's convinced herself her silence was cowardice, and thus credits the Doctor alone with speaking.

"The Master, he knew. He knew it was your voice. That is why he figured it out, why he wanted inside my head and I could not stop him. The more I tried, the more it hurt."

There's something else she wants the Doctor to know. "He was trying to take the memories. It felt like he was trying to pull them out of my head. I do not know if he saw what was to become of himself."

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