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Lapidary	By : Savaialian Category: 1 through F > Doctor Who Views: 1563 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Doctor Who fandom, nor to I make money from writing about it. I use their creations with due respect.

Chapter List
- 1-Lapidary
- 2-TWO
- 3-THREE
- 4-FOUR
- 5-FIVE
- 6-SIX
- 7-SEVEN
- 8-EIGHT
- 9-NINE
- 10-TEN
- 11-ELEVEN
- 12-TWELVE
- 13-THIRTEEN
- 14-FOURTEEN
- 15-FIFTEEN
- 16-SIXTEEN
- 17-SEVENTEEN
- 18-EIGHTEEN
- 19-NINETEEN
- 20-TWENTY
- 21-TWENTY-ONE
- 22-TWENTY-TWO
- 23-TWENTY-THREE
- 24-TWENTY-FOUR
- 25-EPILOGUE
- 10
- 11
- 12
The Master and I again went our separate ways for a week. I found I was enjoying myself here on Seldatia. It felt different to stick around and watch things progress. Sort of instant-gratificationy; I’d often pop back and forth to places I’d tried to change for the better, but never really saw the incremental progress.
One night, while tidying up after a long, long day at the aqueduct site, I discovered I’d tanned very deeply, even under the eyeliner. Since I didn’t look in a mirror that often, I’d not noticed until I was very dark. Come to think of it, the Master was dark, too. Our pallor had evaporated while standing under an alien sun. Looking at my arms, I saw I was still hairless. Maybe I hadn’t had enough time to grow it back?
A note on the Master’s bed told me he wouldn’t be back until well after dark. I looked at his splendid penmanship, feeling a little twinge of fondness. Ever the artist, my Master. He did nothing without flair. Earth people had a saying that God is in the details, but I suspected the Devil was, too.
I’d moved my TARDIS into his quarters despite the Master’s bitter complaints. I thought he might just be sour over having his lovely TARDIS stolen by his android copy. Really, I should be worried over that, but I wasn’t. Some strange, indefinable sense told me that the Master’s counterpart wasn’t wrecking havoc. Still, moving my own TARDIS here was an extra measure against having it stolen, too. I didn’t want stranded here no matter how much I was growing accustomed to the linear life.
I had energy left, so I went inside my beloved time machine just to be with her. As always, she gave me a welcome feeling. I left the door open because no one but the Master would come into his bedroom at this time of night, and took a small task of cleaning Vortex patina off the relays of the Mean Free Path Tracker.
“Not the same when I see you in here wearing a svond,” the Master’s voice said some unknown time later.
“Yeah, but I’m getting used to having my bits hanging free and decided not to ruin that,” I joked, looking up as he sauntered in.
He saw what I was doing and gave a little smile. “I don’t give you enough to do?”
“Well…” I didn’t know what I should say to that.
“Homesick?” He asked, leaning on the frame. “You’ve spent centuries in this ridiculous blue box.”
“I suppose I needed to touch base with her,” I admitted. God, he was a charismatic, engaging thing. The longer I spent time with him, the more I remembered I’d once found it horrible to part with him for even a day. “I wasn’t leaving, I promise.”
“Oh, I know,” he assured, folding his arms over his chest. “I haven’t frightened you enough yet.” He took one step into the TARDIS, a deliberate one, and stood there as if daring my time machine to zap him.
She didn’t.
“I don’t always run when I’m frightened,” I protested, offended and feeling irritability setting in.
He lifted his eyebrows. “I didn’t say that, did I?”
I started to feel like I was missing something. Frequently, I did, at least with him. He could trick me and trick me and trick me.
The Master looked around a moment before backing out. “Bathing,” he announced. “Kindly do the same before you get into bed; you’re covered in filth.” As he walked away from the TARDIS I heard him add, “Could get that way in a perfectly clean room.”
I found my hearts were hammering, and that I wanted to follow him. Quite on purpose, I went back to work.
**
After a decent night’s sleep, I traveled toward the aqueduct feeling a bit optimistic. Work seemed to be progressing well, and I still wasn’t bursting at the seams to leave. The guards were accustomed to my unseemly habit of walking by now, and didn’t cluster as tightly around me as they once did. I thought that was progress until a sharp pain in my head knocked me into blackness.
When I woke I was tied to a wooden pole in the middle of a dense forest, people arguing all around me. Bleary, my head positively in agony, I tried to focus and get my bearings. The people around me were dressed in much the same way as other Seldatians, but with an obvious difference. They were all barefoot.
“You should not have taken the emperor’s mate!” A man shouted, pointing toward me but speaking to a very large man with a bushy black beard. “You have seen what the emperor can do! At the Harvest Festival he choked a man with his mind!”
“A trick,” the large man claimed diffidently. “But, he cannot coax a trick when Suri is watching.”
“It wasn’t a deceit!” The first man threw his hands into the air. “Laijan wasn’t duplicitous. I tell you, Suri, the new emperor is not like the old one; he has special, fire-based powers.” He pointed at me again. “You’ve condemned us all by taking his beloved!” The man grabbed up a blanket from the ground and slung it over his shoulder. “I cannot stay here and take the blame for what you’ve done.”
Suri took a stone from the ground as his adversary turned his back, and before I could give a warning, smashed the man’s head in. “There are no traitors here,” he proclaimed as his opponent fell lifeless.
The other people stepped far away as Suri began to pace before them. “When we tell the emperor we have his consort, and demand that he leave our women at home where they belong, he will retract his new laws and elections,” he proclaimed. “He will comply, or we will kill his Second.”
“But, Suri, we have had the emperor’s consort two days now,” another man said. “No hiding place is entirely secure. Eventually he will think to look in the Forbidden Lands.”
“We are safe here,” Suri claimed. “The emperor obeys the natural laws, and no one may hunt in the Forbidden Lands.”
The pain in my head swelled the moment I tested my bonds, and I sank back into unconsciousness.
**
Agony became something that never left me. Every time my accelerated healing kicked in, Suri or one of his men treated me to a beating. I counted thirty of them, eventually. They especially seemed to favor breaking my fingers. They broke one for every day that the Master didn’t reply to their demands. Thumbs aren’t technically fingers, but they hurt the worst when broken.
There was one woman in this group of thugs, and at night she’d steal out to try and relieve my pain. I kept very still and quiet when she tended to me, fearing if I made a noise she’d be discovered and beaten, or even killed. These men had no qualms about killing each other.
They wouldn’t let me tend to my more animal needs in private, and the smells soon began to sicken me. Humiliation couldn’t even come into play now. I was only thankful they hadn’t resorted to targeting my most tender areas. But, they didn’t feed me, either, and even my remarkable biology couldn’t power itself on nothing but water. If not for that kind woman, I wouldn’t even get the water.
All ten digits broken and the back of both hands, I decided the Master either couldn’t find me, or wouldn’t. It might be a political disadvantage to give into my kidnapper’s demands. This wasn’t the worst situation I’d ever been in, of course, but it ranked with the most painful. Using a Chameleon Arch didn’t hurt like this. If only they’d kill me I could regenerate and get free, which might be what the Master had in mind, but they didn’t harm me that much. Almost, but not quite.
Story of my life, that; almost, but not quite.
**
The Master came with a group of guards, and stood very still with his eyes upon me while his men rounded up the Suri dissidents. Once everyone stood in a circle, the Master singled out the lone female and gestured for the guards to bring her to his side. She was very, very afraid, and stood like a statue, staring straight ahead. I wondered if she had a husband or lover in the group, and if his death would hurt her. For, the Master reeked of death now. Everyone present sensed it. Even Suri was subdued.
The Master came to me and freed me himself. I collapsed, but he caught me. “If only you’d screamed,” he whispered in my ear as he helped me stand upright. “We would have heard you.”
I exposed my throat to show him I couldn’t. I was swollen from being beaten, and couldn’t talk the last two days. But, I was glad, so glad he hadn’t abandoned me out of political needs.
The Master’s eyes took in the ruin of me slowly. Very carefully, he picked up my hands and looked at my twisted, badly healing fingers, at the bones poking through the flesh of the backs. “Your beautiful hands, Doctor,” he murmured, his voice regretful. “I thought they suited you better than any you’d owned.” He led me over to a litter and helped me get on it, and the two men at each end were very cautious about keeping it stable.
“Take them to the dungeons,” the Master said, walking up to the front of the group. “Back to the palace.”
I drifted in and out of consciousness, aware I was being carried but not entirely in the here and now. The men carrying me were doing a very good job of not jostling. When good, warming sunlight hit my face I sighed in relief. The forest had been so dark and cold.
I was carried directly to the Master’s quarters and into the bathroom. The Master dismissed my litter bearers and once again helped me to stand. “Brace on the sink,” he ordered quietly, and I put my elbows on it because the pain in my hands was so great I couldn’t bear any pressure on them whatsoever. He took the collar of my svond and ripped it. The sound of the delicate, half-rotting fibers giving way and the dirt, blood and other unspeakable things collected in them hitting the air, made me sick. My head pounding, I poised naked over the sink and retched.
The lack of the Master’s invective proved to me that he was so angry over my state that he couldn’t speak of it. I shivered even as I vomited, knowing that soon my captors would die because of what they’d done to me. The Master’s quiet menace projected. I wouldn’t be able to stop him. Nothing would stop him.
“Bath first,” the Master insisted, and he gave me water to rinse out my mouth. “Aside from your hands I can’t even see what needs treated; well, except for the whacking great hole in your head.”
He got me into the water. In a moment I was surrounded in slippery heat, my back resting in his arm and my bottom in his lap. He held me like I meant something to him. I felt a miserly tear trying to escape my left eye, and just let it do as it pleased. Exhaustion and pain disoriented me.
I hadn’t been bathed by someone else since a child. The Master had hands as gentle as my mother’s. It took him ages to clean me with such a light touch. He didn’t use a flannel; I suspected because the abrasion of one would hurt. He was so careful and respectful that I didn’t care when he had to clean areas that were problematic and private. In fact, I was thankful. I hadn’t the dignity of cleanliness in a long time.
“The woman kept you alive, didn’t she?” The Master asked, his tone pitched to show he didn’t expect me to answer. “When we came, I felt her fear for you.”
I managed a tiny nod.
“She was their slave. They used her as men are wont to do.” The Master patiently and tenderly began removing the caked up filth on my face. “I thought you’d like to know I gave charge of her to the palace physician, Matreus. You know, the one who gave you those narcotics you thought you were so sly in giving me.”
I would have groaned, if possible.
The Master chuckled. “Lower your mental shields if you want to talk.”
I did. Wasn’t trying to deceive, I protested.
“I know what you were intending, Doctor,” he assured softly. “You’re such a martyr. You didn’t think I noticed I’d blackened your eye?”
No one else saw, did they?
“Alair told me not to hurt her pretty Doctor,” he answered. “I believe she was the only one besides myself that noticed.” He smoothed some grit out of my left eyebrow, then my right. “You know your fingers have started to heal crooked?”
Yeah. They have to be broken again to mend right.
“Look into my eyes,” he murmured.
I couldn’t disobey that tone. Some distant part of me felt offended he’d take control of me, especially so effortlessly, but most of me only wanted to do what he wished. Those eyes captured me. They’d always drawn me, no matter their color, because his eyes were always his eyes. Forever beautiful. Forever powerful. Mesmerizing, hypnotic, irresistible.
I thought I could see his soul, now, and wondered if that wasn’t just the hallucinatory effects of starvation and torture. But, there it was, radiant around him in layers of ultraviolet, artron gold, and pulsating carmine. Swirling, swirling, hot as the fires that consumed Gallifrey. Our planet lived in him, the best and the worst of it. He was all I’d ever have of Gallifrey now, and I knew I’d rather have him than the whole of our world.
The Master blinked and I woke as if from a trance. I was braced against the interior of the tub now, with a half-inch thick coating of gel ice stabilizing my hands, gel ice that could only have come from my TARDIS. He’d gone into my machine, taken medical supplies, broken my fingers and dipped them in the translucent casts, all without my knowledge. Bile heaved up in my throat at the ease in which he’d managed me.
“Don’t condemn me for saving you from a bit of pain,” he scolded without heat. “You needed your hands stabilized after I broke them over again. At least in the gel ice you can’t feel them mending. Now, hold still; you have thorns embedded in your scalp, and this will take time.” He poured warm water over my head from a pitcher, but gently, with one hand over my eyes so the water wouldn’t run into them.
Your motive was pure enough, I thought, but you shouldn’t take control of me so easily. I’m a Time Lord, too.
“You haven’t spent centuries turning your willpower into a weapon,” he pointed out calmly, and began pulling the thorns from my head. “These were jabbed in here deliberately,” he added, his voice gone quite flat. “And, snapped off at the scalp line.”
I started shivering again.
“We found a body in the brush,” the Master informed. “A lone protester to Suri’s actions?”
Yes. Murdered when his back was turned.
The Master’s jaw clenched briefly. “I’ve done my share of it,” he admitted. “For that alone I cannot judge.” With needle-fine tweezers, he dug out the wooden shards and dropped them on the edge of the tub one by one. “In this culture, the dead are put into the ground clean and naked as an offering to Earth,” he told me. “No embalming, no cosmetics, no oils, nothing that would slow down decay. For Suri to throw a man into the weeds for carrion birds and insects, that is a remarkable show of contempt. The people will not be satisfied unless his punishment is similar. It is their custom, and I think it a good one.”
Religious rites aren’t easily maneuvered around, I admitted. I once accidently knocked over a funereal fire on Haldi Five, and had to apologize by gathering lightning fire to relight the pyre.
“Ouch,” the Master said, getting the magnitude of my offense and the measures I had to take to put it right. “Hold still, Doctor; this one is very deep.”
I gasped at the sharp pain, the large thorn sliding out of my flesh. My whole body seized up with the effort to not flinch away. I remembered getting that one, then. It had been shoved in just above my ear with as much finesse as hammer against nail. Suri’s work, actually.
A knock came at the bathroom door. The Master moved his lips out from a grimace to call out, “Enter.”
Matreus came into the bathroom, Alair and the woman from Suri’s camp in tow. The adult woman shielded her eyes, but not before I saw shame in them. She felt very bad about what had been done to me. Alair looked into my eyes and I saw an acceptance beyond her few years. She tugged on the woman’s hand. “Pretty Doctor needs medicine,” she encouraged, holding up the wooden box she carried. “Nice Matreus is teaching us, so pay attention.”
Should they really be seeing all this blood? I asked the Master. Every thorn he removed made a bleeding runnel down my face and shoulders. The bath was absolutely red. I’d even dripped down the sides of the tub and onto the floor.
They intend to study medicine, so I suppose the answer is ‘yes’, the Master answered, keeping the conversation private. But, at the same time he bade Matreus to begin his work. He could carry on two conversations at once, which I found very impressive.
“What is this you have on the Lord Adjudicator’s hands?” Matreus asked as he beckoned his female charges to hover close to him.
“It’s called gel ice,” the Master answered, still patiently ridding me of hateful thorns. “As the injury heals, the translucent padding gets thinner and thinner. When it’s gone, it’s no longer needed. I’d tell you how it’s made, but you don’t have the proper chemicals on this planet to reproduce it. Possibly, the Doctor here can help you whip up an alternative that works in a similar fashion. I’m not the medical man of the two of us.”
Matreus smiled a thin, but genuine little smile. “Yes, as his name is a title, I can follow,” he assured. He perched on the rim of the tub to examine my throat, and made a tsk-tsk noise. “It isn’t as bad as it looks, but his larynx is badly bruised. It might be weeks for a Seldatian to recover well enough to speak, but as your consort is an alien, how could I judge?”
“I’d say two days,” the Master replied. “But whatever you can do to alleviate the pain is welcome.” He’d moved to the other side of my head, seemingly unconcerned with showing his nakedness to anyone in the room. And, with good reason. He was of perfect, if nearly miniature, form.
I’m five feet and nine inches tall, he scolded me mentally. Hardly a dwarf even if not stupidly tall, like you. Aloud, he asked Alair to bring him the rubbing alcohol, which she did with alacrity. He set it down beside my elbow and continued. I chose this height, I’ll have you know. I happen to enjoy getting in and out of tight places with ease.
Oh, that’s you, I agreed. I felt distinctly woozy. Matreus was applying some sort of spirits-based plaster to my neck, and the fumes made everything swim. He frequently had to dam up a blood flow from the Master’s work to get the thick cloth to lay right. Or something. I had no idea at this point. I think I might faint, I added.
“Smelling salts,” the Master barked, and Matreus handed him a vial. The sharpness went up my nose and stabbed my brain. Wheezing, I managed to nudge the Master’s hand away with my elbow. He told Alair to get him a thick towel, and when she did, he covered my face with it and ordered the woman with her to fan air across me. In the next moment I had high grade alcohol going over every crater in my scalp, and I thrashed with enthusiasm and strength I didn’t know I had.
Sodding-fuck-damn!
The Master gave a small, bitter chuckle. “Yeah, I can imagine,” he drawled. “But, these are already infected.”
I shivered and shook, then, but not from the vile alcohol or the soft plaster on my neck that smelled so bad. I shivered because the Master’s voice went into my body directly. He’d bent over me from behind to keep me still, and my head rested just under his ribcage and against his tight, muscled abdomen. Hoping I hadn’t actualized that mentally, I threw my mental defenses up. But, God, his arms were wrapped around my chest, and his hand kept the towel firmly pressed to my face. He intended I didn’t get fumes up my nose, and he was succeeding, because he was a lot stronger than me right now. I dared to assume he was anyway; beasts tend to exhibit a lot of physical might.
The towel was taken away and I gulped in a lungful of steaming, blood-scented air, no alcohol fumes. Alair came up to me with a glass of water, which I gratefully let her give me. “Pretty Doctor,” she said, patting the only spot on my arm that didn’t hurt, “I think you’ll be all right if you just rest.”
I spared some energy to smile at the precious little girl, then drank the entire glass in one go.
“Here is an opiate that will give the Lord Adjudicator rest,” Matreus said, handing over a small packet of cunningly folded waxed paper to the Master. “Make him put it under his tongue, or smoke it,” he added, giving him a small pipe made of brassy metal. “He should use it at least a week, even if his healing is phenomenal; I say that because trauma of this type isn’t limited to the body.”
“Understood,” the Master said solemnly, putting the packet on the edge of the dry sink instead of letting the wrap melt on the edge of the blood and water soaked tub. “Matreus, you are to go to the head of finances here and take a thousand ciere for yourself, and another thousand to divide between your charges. Also, request five hundred ciere for a renewal of your supplies. I expect you to be on call for me until my… consort… is fully healed.”
“My emperor is generous,” Matreus said with a bow. He began to leave, but the Master held up his hand to stop him and his entourage.
“What is your name?” He asked the woman who’d kept me alive.
“Raenna,” she answered, keeping her head down.
The Master tilted his head as he tasted that name. “Raenna,” he repeated. “You will make an excellent physician. I will not punish you for being a part of Suri’s dissidents. Attend all that Matreus teaches, and also take the schooling that I offer the people of Seldatia. You will room with your mentor until he deems you fit to act independently, and then you will take residence here in the palace as his attendant physician. Do you understand?”
“My emperor,” Raenna said, falling on the floor before him and keeping her face to the stone. “It will be as you command. And, I thank you.”
The Master waved his hand. “You saved the life of my consort,” he said. “For that you will always have your emperor’s favor. I only ask that you teach Alair all that you are taught.”
“My emperor, I will ensure the child is better educated than even I,” she assured, crawling backward.
Alair came to the Master and stood before him, then, her infinitely young eyes bright with humor and even devotion. She put her small hands on the Master’s face and leaned in. “Pretty emperor,” she said. “I love you for loving the pretty Doctor.” She reached up on tip-toe to kiss the Master’s forehead. “Let him show you magic,” she pleaded. With that, she bowed and backed away the same as her companions. In mere moments the Master and I were alone in his sumptuous bathroom.
The Master heaved a sigh that seemed to encompass all that had happened while reserving emotion for all that had yet to happen. He hooked his arms under my elbows and hauled me out to sit on the edge of the bathtub. “A child’s love,” he said as he gathered a long towel around my waist and knotted it. “I’ve never had that, being a villain.”
I couldn’t answer, not with a damaged larynx and my mental defenses at maximum. Still, I reached over and squeezed his bicep to show my understanding. Even with the gel ice, that gesture hurt.
The Master helped me to his bed and put me in it carefully. His dark eyes regarded me. With grace and sloth, he extinguished our candles, except for one, and covered me. “You’ll take some of the remedy Matreus left right now,” he informed. “Lift up your tongue.”
I did, and he put a small ball of the foulest tasting shite under it. He pinned my lips closed, and, leaning over me, gave a warning. “Leave it,” he said. “If I find you’ve spit it out, there’ll be hell to pay, dear Doctor.”
I let him know I’d obey with a flicker of my eyes. Satisfied, he got under the covers beside me and extinguished the candles. “Good night, Doctor,” he bade for the first time.
I lay there with the horrible drug under my tongue, considering that, until blessed, soft and warm blackness was all I knew.
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Lapidary