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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
- 3
- 4
- 5
The Master’s humming awakened me. I sat straight up, frightened and amazed I’d actually fallen asleep while lying beside the most dangerous thing in the entire cosmos. The Master was sitting at a little desk with staff paper in front of him, adding notes as he hummed. Composing? I didn’t know he bothered with music. He hadn’t gotten dressed, and sat there in his boxers. The sun hadn’t come up yet, so he worked by candle light.
I got up and scooped his finished papers off the desk. Oh, this was pretty. I hummed it myself, gaining his instant attention.
“It came to me in a dream, so I thought I should put it down before it vanished,” he explained. “My dreams don’t linger long.”
I carefully restacked his work and took the only other chair. “Who is Ailla?” I asked.
The Master’s jaw clenched. “A traitor,” he said. “A filthy, treacherous, lying traitor. That’s all you need to know.”
“Didn’t sound like… she? Was a traitor,” I argued.
“She was. Is. It’s possible she’s still alive, but I’d think not.” The Master finished his notation and put down his quill. His entire body looked tense now, from shoulders to feet. He flexed his hands a few times before starting his one-two-three-four beat on the desk. “At least Lucy had the kindness to wait until my defeat to turn traitor.”
“Another wife?” I didn’t know the Master concerned himself with women so much. I’d been willing to accept this incarnation of him as lusty, but his past regenerations weren’t what I’d call open to relationships. He had a very independent nature, after all, and little patience with others.
“I didn’t marry her, no,” he said, his eyes flashing irritation. “Drop the topic.”
“You know that’s going to be hard, considering it’s insight as to your character,” I pointed out. “I’ve been trying to sort you for centuries.”
Very briefly, the Master smiled. “You still want to dance?” He asked, his tone mysterious.
“Not if it involves weapons, like gypsy knife ceremonies or Klingon war waltzes,” I replied.
“Klingon?” He shot me a confused, interested glance.
“Star Trek,’ I supplied. “I love that show.”
The Master rolled his eyes and gave a little chuckle. “Oh.” He got up and started sifting through his enormous closet.
“Really, tell me who she is,” I wheedled, unashamed of wheedling when it might pay off.
“No, Doctor,” he said firmly, putting clothing over his arm. “Find something to wear. No one here will take you seriously if you don’t dress the part. Scholars are identified by their clothing.”
“I thought you said everyone considers themselves scholars.” I loomed over him to look at the clothes, though. Everything looked a lot like the nightgown svond, but I did see white trousers.
“Exactly. Your outfit suggests you don’t care to learn anything.” The Master pointed to a door at our far left. “Bath,” he ordered more than offered.
“Not leaving your side,” I reminded.
The Master gave a sigh and walked past me with the very pair of trousers I’d looked at, plus his own choices in clothing. “Ogle my bits and I’ll strangle you,” he vowed.
“My respiratory bypass still works,” I informed, strolling along behind him. “Why would I be looking at your bits?”
“I don’t know, maybe because you like to judge yourself by my physical example?” He shot back. “Shut the door behind you quickly. I don’t want cold air when I bathe.”
I did as he said, turning to view a very sumptuous bathroom. The more utilitarian plumbing was separated from a large Jacuzzi type tub by dividing half walls, I supposed because it would add to the ambiance to not stare at a toilet when lounging in hot water. The entire room was white, polished stone. The light of a single candle reflected off a thousand surfaces, making a lot of illumination with little effort. “Nice,” I commented.
“A perk of being emperor. I like a good bathroom.” The Master took a cover off the tub to reveal it already had steaming hot water in it. “This is piped in from a hot spring.” He started stripping with his back to me. “Because I’m a good host, I’ll let you pick from the bottles on that shelf.”
Curious, I turned. There were a lot of bottles. I opened one and smelled something like lemon. “Is this moisturizing oil?”
“The yellow ones are. The blue ones are-.”
“Bubble bath!” I exclaimed, delighted. “Oh, I haven’t had a bubble bath in years!”
Again, the Master sighed. “I should have known better,” he muttered. I heard him getting in the water.
I found unscented bubble bath soap, because I really didn’t like the thought of not being able to find him by smell. Setting it down beside him on the tub rim, I started getting my clothes off. The Master looked into my eyes and didn’t stray from them once until I was in the water, which made me feel strange. But, it was better than being awkward from having my own bits stared at, I supposed. I dumped soap in, gratified that the powerful streams coming up from the bottom instantly churned up lots of bubbles.
We had nice ledges to sit on. I got comfy quick. As the Master stared at me like I might be a zoo exhibit, I sculpted a creamy foam mountain and added a little foam goat. The goat took effort, because bubbles want to stick to you. But, I made that work for me, and got some pretty realistic horns out of sheer determination and patience.
A bar of soap obliterated my masterpiece. “Actually bathing is the point,” my reluctant tub-mate said with deceptive mildness. He slid off his ledge and stood up, proving the bottom center of this tub was more than deep enough to drown in. “Hand me that green bottle behind you, and a scrubber.”
“I’m taking a bath with you,” I murmured absently as I obeyed. I went back to sculpting immediately. “That’s new.”
The Master poured something into the water and all my bubbles went away, dispersed instantly. I smelled high grade alcohol. “Before you start moaning on about my ruining your fun, Picasso, let me remind you that this is about cleanliness, and I can’t get clean while covered in soap scum.” He scrubbed at himself with vigor. “But yes, this is very assuredly a new experience.”
I noticed that he had scars, and he really shouldn’t. People of our race heal very fast. The Master had a white line on his left pectoral and a puckered scar above it where arm meets clavicle. When he turned to get a flannel from the stack on the tub’s edge, I saw a spider web pattern in pinkish white. He’d been shot. And, he hadn’t recovered from it quickly.
He saw me having a look at his old wounds. His dark eyes considered me a moment, and I saw him deliberating on what to say. Finally, he shrugged. “I have no idea,” he admitted. “They happened at a low point in my health, so I’m assuming they’re permanent.”
I did a bobbing sort of wading over to him and got a closer look while he faced away from me. “Big bullet, or big piece of something, Master,” I observed.
“Insurrection on Ghoen, and no, I didn’t cause it. Wrong place, wrong time.” He stood very still, so I saw him shiver when I traced the largest part of the raised, smooth scar. “I’d parked my TARDIS in the wilds, and a war zone grew up around it.” He turned and smacked my hand away. “Quit your morbid fascination.”
“It’s just that you shouldn’t have scars,” I defended weakly. On the Master, a scar was like Sharpie marker on a Michelangelo. Though usually smaller than me, he was always so well made. I realized we were standing much too close in a setting best described as intimate, and that he was staring up at me with intense focus. The effect should have caused me to back-peddle, but instead it froze me.
There wasn’t anyone in this entire cosmos with the Master’s level of concentration, I would swear to that. He could bore a hole through a person with his eyes even when he had no malice intended. Right now his attention was akin to scientific curiosity, like someone staring at the contents of a Petri dish under a microscope. Yet, there was an edge of something, something I wasn’t familiar with, and I felt he was looking at my soul.
A cloud of heavy steam rolled up between us, and I blinked with sudden freedom. Feeling stupid, I got back on my ledge and began cleaning up in earnest. The Master didn’t say a word, but I felt him thinking. I kept my eyes lowered even as he got out and dried himself. When I next took a chance on looking his way, he was standing before a mirror, fully dressed, shaving.
The awkwardness making me slow and clumsy, I got out and put on the trousers he’d brought in for me. “Do I get a shirt?” I asked. Amazingly, these weren’t too short for me.
“Of course you get a shirt,” he murmured, and there wasn’t a shred of displeasure, meanness, or impatience in his tone. “Going around bare-chested with me would imply something you really don’t want to deal with.”
“Oh, like being a concubine?” I asked, almost amused but not quite. “That might put off your harem hopefuls.”
The Master tilted his head as he considered that, eyes glazing over with thought and hand poised with the razor. After a moment he shook his head. “No, bad idea. I’d be expected to prove ownership. Don’t tempt me to backslide into negative behavior and thought.” He finished shaving and splashed his face. “Find a shirt you like.”
Hope for the Master was leaking into me steadily, and I dearly wanted it to not go up in flames. I found a loose fitting shirt made of the same material as my trousers, also in white, and threaded into it just as he entered his bedroom. The Master had arms nearly as long as mine, so the shirt wasn’t too badly off. I tucked the cuffs back to make it look deliberate.
“Take a sword,” my host instructed as he strapped one on with efficient expertise. “We’re going through the outskirts of the rural farmlands today, and the law doesn’t reach very far into that area yet.”
I looked at him in his nearly form-fitting, unrelieved black clothing, with that weapon, and concluded any normal person would think twice about attacking him. It wasn’t that he had a particularly intimidating appearance, either. No, he could look very approachable and friendly when he wanted. It was that his aura projected deadly earnest. His quiet menace was the sort that gave no quarter.
Without commenting I took a sword, too. I hated it. I hated that people everywhere felt the need to skewer, shoot, or strangle each other for respect.
“A sword is only an ornament until it’s used,” the Master said softly, jarring me out of my momentary funk. He came over to me, standing at my side and looking into the mirror at our reflections. After a second he gave a wry grin. “Well, thank God,” he announced. “Now our audience can tell the good guy from the bad guy.”
**
I’d talked to millions of different races in my day, convinced many recalcitrant personalities to listen to me, persuaded multitudes, but after seven hours of arguing with stubborn Seldatians over the merits of water flowing downhill to water plants, I threw in the towel. In a huff, I got the remote for my TARDIS, something I’d only recently invented, and called her to me. “Fine,” I shouted at the throng, grabbing the Master and dragging him inside my machine. I shut the doors and started riffling through my nearest closet for a dry erase board and the appropriate set of markers. “I’m not even violent, and I want to kill them,” I seethed. “How can you stand it?”
“I’ll probably go straight to my private exercise rooms and wear myself out on equipment,” the Master admitted. “What are you looking for, and how did you get your TARDIS to come here?”
“Remote,” I answered, going out of order. “I’m looking for a board to draw on. I can’t make myself understood. Their language employs as much odd, stilted body language as it does ideograms and polyphonic holes!” I found the large board and dragged it out. “See if you can hunt up the growth accelerator in the botany lab, will you?”
“Wander this machine without you?” The Master crossed his arms and didn’t move. “She’ll electrocute me. I can feel her grudge.”
“Okay.” I led him down eight corridors to the botany lab and began sifting through the supplies cupboard with a vengeance while he hung back and watched. “If these Seldatians are this stubborn over everything,” I said, “how did you become their emperor? The old one stepping down probably helped, but really, they argue over every little thing!” I threw objects left and right. I had a mission. I was going to validate step farming to these people.
“I proved to them I was a superior scholar,” the Master informed matter-of-factly. “I let them quiz me. Not only did I pass all their little tests, I posed a few to them that they’re still puzzling out.”
I snorted. The humor of that presented clearly. “Oh, well done,” I praised.
“Thank you.” The Master came closer to me. “If you don’t hurry, we’ll lose our audience.”
“Found it!” I crowed, tugging out the accelerator gun. It only worked on vegetation, so I surrendered it to him easily. “We can go.”
We retraced our steps. At the main doors, the Master paused and took another look at the main control room. “You haven’t redecorated, but she feels different somehow,” he said.
“Yeah…” I slowly shut the doors and looked down at him. “To me, she’s felt different since you made her sick.” I couldn’t help the reproach in my voice.
The Master turned his head toward the ground a long moment before giving an infinitesimal shrug. “What can I say?” He asked.
“An apology would be nice,” I answered, “but, only if you meant it.”
The Master lifted his head and met my eyes. I felt pinned by twin orbs of luminously intelligent hazel. “It’s hard to apologize for something that you don’t feel responsible for,” he said. “Knowing oneself accountable is different from feeling it.”
Oddly moved by his words, I tore my gaze from his and stared at the blue wood of my beloved TARDIS. “How much do you feel you have to answer for?” I asked, barely hearing my own question.
“Too much to list and nothing at all,” he replied, and he preceded me back to the farmers.
I waited until I felt able to focus upon the issue of farming instead of upon the issue of him. It took quite awhile.
- 3
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- 5
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Lapidary