taxonomites | 2 [Accidental Visual | Location: Mount Perdition]

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2 [Accidental Visual | Location: Mount Perdition]

[ooc: Backdated to be after this, feel free to ask the Doctor wtf he is doing or poke/laugh at/check on the Master.]

When the tablet flickered on it was obvious that something was amiss. The Doctor and the Master were both in the frame, though the tablet itself seemed to be in the hands of a third, unseen person who hadn’t realised it was active, as there was quite a bit of floor in the shot as well. Both Time Lords were close together, their foreheads touching, and it was apparent that the Doctor had been part of the way through saying something when the tablet was activated.

“—sorry.”

Then the Master screamed like someone in agony, reeling back from the Doctor like he’d been burned, arms flailing wildly as though he was trying to fend off an invisible attack. The building they were in shuddered and whoever was holding the tablet dropped it, throwing the image into a disarray of walls, floor, and ceiling before it stopped, showing the Doctor. He rose slowly, his face an almost cold and distant mask as the Master continued to sob and scream, shouting the word ‘no’ more than once among the other sounds of his distress.

The room shuddered again and the Doctor was moving, picking up the tablet – his hand filling the screen for a moment – and running from the room, leaving the Master behind. Though the screams could still be heard as he raced through the building, the tablet broadcasting a confusing jumble of running feet, half-seen glimpses of ornate furniture and architecture, and the Doctor’s face.

It was difficult to tell, but there was something else strange in the way the building shook, doors banging open and closed like the place was home to a very upset poltergeist , and at least once the Doctor ducked as an unseen object flew across the room towards him.

A shot of a door loomed out of nowhere and there was a bang as he burst through it, yelping in pain as a flying object caught the side of his head. The sound of the Master’s tortured yelling finally stopping as the gloom of the building gave way to too-bright sunlight. The Doctor must have tripped then, as the sky suddenly became red grass, then sky, then grass, over and over as he rolled a distance and finally stopped, the tablet showing his slightly-bruised profile as he lay sprawled on his back staring at the sky and breathing hard.

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"A sword?" That's surprising, he'd definitely have remembered something like that if he'd ever been here before, even if the rest had been altered or something. Injuries like that didn't just vanish, even for a Time Lord.

"Well, I knew we'd both been here before, but that puts a bit of a twist on things, doesn't it?" While he kept his voice light - as much as he could with that revelation at any rate - the dull ache in his body and the sharper pain in his back was a good reminder of how careful he had to be. No use worrying people like Tara again after they'd already seen a particularly bad situation.

"I suppose it's lucky for me we just had a few words this time," he commented, taking another sip of his tea. Lies came easily after centuries of practice. "Worst that happened was a bit of a hasty exit and falling down a hill. But I'm sorry if it scared you, Tara. I didn't even know the tablet was recording."

Softly, she says, "I just don't want you lying to me, Doctor, trying to spare me. Especially not about him." She isn't sure whether she should talk about what the Master did after yet. Whether it would do any good.

"If I can't help you, at least don't try to make it seem less serious than it is." Her look is perhaps surprisingly direct.

Well he knew his face hadn't given anything away, so either Tara knew him better than he'd given her credit for or there was some other reason for her to think he might be lying a little. Or a lot, as the case may be.

Still while Tara knew him - or his previous regeneration - very well, the Doctor barely knew much of anything about her. It was frustrating, like dealing with River but in this case she was someone who knew him in his past except he hadn't known her when it had been, well, his past. Past that never happened from his viewpoint. It made things difficult.

"I'll keep it in mind," he said aloud, taking another sip of his tea and setting the cup back down before gesturing to himself loosely. "But look: no stab wounds, nothing broken or bleeding. Just tired and a bit bruised around the edges, but I'm getting on a bit and I did take a bit of a tumble."

She nods.

"I'm... I'm sorry. It must seem p-presumptuous of me, with you not knowing me at all, I just... I don't want you to get hurt, and I know at least a little bit what he's capable of."

Tara looks down at her tea. Maybe she's out of line, but the Master is right up there with Glory in the list of things that upset and scare here. And only one of the two of them is dead.

"Well I know a bit about what he's capable of as well," the Doctor said with a reassuring smile. "I'll be alright."

It was because of what he knew of the Master that he had to keep trying, really. What the other Time Lord had done for him on Earth... Maybe he really was getting old and sentimental and too forgiving, or he missed his people - what they used to be - too much, but the Doctor wasn't willing to give up on the Master when he had another chance here.

Instead he decided to do a little digging of his own while he had the chance. He'd have to leave shortly to get his injuries looked at, but he could stand it a little longer. He'd suffered through worse.

"Why does he scare you so much, Tara?" he asked carefully. "It sounds like seeing that bit with the sword wouldn't have helped much, but how much do you really know about him? What did I tell you before?"

It would be a little hypocritical of her to refuse to answer, under the circumstances. "I know he's a Timelord, like you. That you think you can save him, and that you're willing to die and not regenerate if you think it would do so. Or you were, when you were him."

She's still getting the hang of the regeneration thing.

She looks down in to her tea. She doesn't want to cry, or to lash out at this new Doctor for how much she was hurt by, scared for, frustrated with the last one. He doesn't remember her, and it's not fair of her to act as if he should. This Doctor doesn't owe her an explanation.

What Tara told him was both so much and so little of the truth. It was hard to tell if she simply didn't know much more than that, or if she just wasn't willing to share it yet.

There was a tiny hint of resentment there as well, for not being the man she had known before, as near as he could tell. But that wasn't anything new with people who had known his previous selves and the Doctor could take it all in stride. It wasn't as though he could go back to a previous regeneration even if he'd wanted to, after all.

"And you don't think I'm right, that he could change?" he asked gently.

She shakes her head. "I wouldn't presume to know that. Maybe he can - I hope he can."

She looks up. "What I disagreed with, before, was you willing to get yourself seriously hurt or killed on the premise that it might change him. Especially when so many people care about you. But... but I shouldn't presume. I just - I worry about you. You now, not just the you from then, even if I don't have the right to yet."

"And it's kind of you to worry when we don't really know each other, Tara," the Doctor began, "but it isn't just him."

He took another sip of his tea and continued. "If there's a chance, just one tiny, little chance, that in doing something that could get me hurt or worse I could save someone, save a world, protect those that need it... then what kind of man would I be not to try?"

He sighed. "I know it worries people like you, like Jenny and Martha and Charley and Fitz and everyone else who knows or knew me here, but I won't give up on anyone. Not even him."

Edited 2010-09-18 08:04 (UTC)

That's, in substance, the same thing the last Doctor says, but it's so different in framing of it that something in her shoulders releases.

"Well," she says, "I don't suppose I can argue that." Because with this Doctor, it doesn't seem like it's about winning anymore.

After a moment, she says, "He hurt a lot of us, last time. He figured out how to control the Extras."

"The Extras?" he repeated, shifting his elbows to lean on the table, his fingers wrapping around the cup more and just cradling it while he spoke. "You mean the other people in the city? I'd noticed they seem a bit odd... And he found a way to control them?"

He wondered if hypnotism had been involved, something of a old favourite trick of the Masters, that.

"I think," he said after a significant pause, "that maybe you should tell me as much as you can."

"You may have noticed that some of the people are, as you put it, a bit odd. But it's more than that. I can... well, the last time you were here, you called it seeing 'psychic energy visualizations.'" She gets the idea this will be more helpful to him than "auras."

"They're not people, the way humans and Timelords are. They might have been once, but I don't think so. They're more like very complex machines. Or computer programs. But got control of them using a signal, with a rhythm."

"I bet I can imagine what rhythm as well," he said darkly. "But that is interesting. Computer programs might be the best word for it, from what I've heard of the city already. It would fit anyway."

He stopped to think, breathing in the warm steam from the tea and just enjoying the rich smell of it. It was amazing how much a cup of tea and a (slightly stale but still delicious) muffin could help rejuvenate you after a few days of staying in the House of Oakdown.

"And I suppose it's too much to hope that whoever or whatever is in charge of this city might have changed it so they couldn't be controlled again?"

"No. They don't... they don't tend to interfere in this sort of case, I guess. It was some of the other prisoners who managed to break it." Very softly: "He was using the tablets to broadcast it, somehow."

It was a bad time, and Tara realizes with a start she's never really discussed. Everyone, at the time, knew most of what happened, and then she'd been glitched right after.

"The tablets..." Of course, it was obvious and simple and he should have thought of it sooner. He was getting thick and slow in his old age, not to have realised it before now. But there was the possibility the Master hadn't considered it yet either, since he'd had the Doctor at his mercy for several days and now...

Well he probably wasn't thinking too much about things like that right now anyway.

"And how did they break it then, Tara? What happened, as much as you can tell me? What did he do?"

She looks down, a flicker of pain on her features though she tries to hide it. "I don't - I don't know how they broke it exactly. I wasn't..."

There's no good way not to tell him - someone will have to. It should be Rose, she thinks, but Rose is gone.

"He used the Extras to capture us. Some of us who he... who he knew you cared about. So I wasn't... I wasn't really involved in the breaking it part, very much."

After watching her carefully for a long moment, the Doctor reached out and took one of Tara's hands in his own, folding long fingers around it and rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb.

"It's alright, I know I'm asking a lot of you right now, but you have to understand that I need to know, Tara. I need to know what he did, what he might learn he's done before and how he might use it against people again. I wouldn't ask you to do this for me if there was an easier way, but I need you to tell me. I need you to trust me."

He paused to give her a moment to think about what he said, then asked; "Can you tell me more now? About what happened and what he did to you and the others?"

She nods, squeezing his hand lightly and looking back up. Her eyes are damp, but no tears fall; there's a hard determination behind her expression that belies the pain. She can help him, with this - if it prevents worse from happening again, it's her duty, but even if not, he was her friend. Even if he didn't remember that.

"He tortured us," she says, very quietly. "He'd watched us, so he knew what was worse. Fitz - he knew he was a musician, he smashed his hands. Rose he didn't hurt physically at all - he just made her watch, knowing she couldn't help. Some of us it was physical, all of us he played mind games. And he was working with the vampire, Drusilla. She's... she can't physically harm humans, so a couple of the victims were people she wanted hurt, rather than his enemies."

He smiled at her nod of agreement, a small, sad expression that said in more ways than he could that he understood how difficult this was for her. The table prevented him from easily getting too close to Tara to give her a hug or any similar sign of reassurance, but the Doctor worked around that, lifting her hand, still clasped with his, to press it to his forehead before lowering it back to the table, still wrapped loosely with his own.

He was glad he maintained the contact as more of the story came out.

Everything he heard only raised more questions. Where had he been? Why hadn't he stopped this? How had he managed to fail so many people again? Aside from Drusilla's involvement, it had to be linked to him. It was always linked to him. So where had he been then? Why hadn't he seen it coming and done something?

But those weren't the questions he chose to voice, not right now. He could worry about them once he had all the pieces to this puzzle, or at least a corner and some edges to work from.

"And you?" he asked quietly. "What did he do to you?"

"I..." Her voice caught, then she smoothed it out again as best she could. "After the fight, with the sword, he... he did something to try and keep you alive, but it wasn't - " She breaks off to try and sort it out in her mind. "He saw me do something, after that, to keep you alive, and I think it confused him, whether he wanted me to or didn't want me to."

She cups her mug in her hands, but doesn't drink the tea.

"He wasn't sure what to do with me at first. But once he started... as long as he kept hurting me, he went lighter on the others. So I... I delayed the damage. Kept it from looking as bad as it was, so he'd stay on me longer and leave some of the others alone."

The Doctor let go of her hand to take another sip of his own tea as he listened. The dull ache of his back was starting to build up again, and the tea helped a little with pushing past it and keeping it under control. He'd had the injuries for a little while now, so at least the pain wasn't fresh and raw.

It also meant he could keep his thoughts, the sharp feeling of anger over what had happened to others (and why hadn't he been there?) to himself while he drank and listened.

"So you kept doing that, lessening your own injuries to protect the others..." He wanted to know how that worked, what abilities Tara had that would allow it, but now wasn't really the time.

"I'm sorry, you shouldn't have had to do that. I should have been there instead."

"Doctor... it shouldn't have been anyone," she said, quietly. "It was terrible, for everyone, but that was his point. It was.... it was like Rose, you see? He wanted you to have to see what he did to people you cared about, that's why - "

She broke off. She didn't intend to cry; she had intended to talk about the whole thing calmly and reasonably. But Tara found her cheeks wet regardless, and she had to take a moment to control herself again.

The Doctor's hands reached out to catch Tara's again. "Sorry," he apologised immediately. "I'm sorry, for what happened then and now. And for asking you to talk about it when it... upsets you."

Setting the tea aside for the moment, he leaned in closer to meet Tara's eyes with his own earnest green ones. "I promise you, Tara. I won't let anything like that happen to you or your friends again, alright? But you have to trust me. I do know what I'm doing, I promise." He paused and laughed softly. "I know it mightn't always look that way, but I do."

She looked up at him. "Okay," she said, finally, after a long moment. "You have to understand too... the version of you who was here before, if you don't remember. He was ill, in a way. The TARDIS wasn't here with him, at first, and it made him a little... unstable I think, though he tried to hide it."

Tara's tears had stopped, though her voice was still a bit thready. "It's strange, getting to know you, as you, when you're him in some ways and not at all in others, and you don't remember me even slightly." With a bare smile, she added, "I guess it's like someone who's met you in their past, but your future, in some ways."

"Ah yes, that," the Doctor said, settling back in his chair again. "You mentioned that before." He didn't imagine it would be much of an issue now, though it was strange that it had apparently had that effect before. Still, now there was a TARDIS here, and it was technically his and... not-his, at the same time. It was frustrating and off-putting, so he instead concentrated on the other comment Tara had made.

"Oh, I've had some experience with that before, I'm afraid," he said with a smile. "Woman by the name of River Song. Bit of an odd situation, that."

[Location: Cafe]

aworldenchanted - 2010-10-14 01:57 (UTC) - Expand

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