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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
- 7
- 8
- 9
Dinner was a quiet, practically peaceful affair, tucked away in the Master’s serene quarters. We took tea on his fifth storey veranda, in comfortable, padded chairs, and watched the sun slowly sink behind the heather grey hills. I had very little experience with the ‘slow path’, with linear life, but the Master apparently had significantly more. His ease affected me, and I found I was looking forward to sleep, to awakening to tackle another problem in this interesting little backwater of a planet.
“How often are you going to have to be plucked?” The Master asked as he lit a fragrant cigar.
“Once a month, they said,” I answered, selecting an unknown fruit from the bowl between us.
“You’re actually going to submit yourself to it more than once?” He pressed, his voice soft and disbelieving. “I can explain away your quirks. You don’t have to endure having all your hair ripped out over and over.”
“Nah, I’ll get used to it,” I said. “I don’t want to sabotage your efforts as emperor.” I paused as a thought came to me. “Why this planet, though? Why not one bristling with armaments and advances?”
He cocked an eyebrow and looked at me. “You just answered your own question, Doctor.”
“Right.” He’d picked this planet because it wasn’t a weapon waiting to be pointed at the universe. “What’s the next festival, then?”
“Festival of Fertility,” he answered, consulting a little book he kept with him. “It’s held in the temple we’re having so much trouble diverting water around. My attendance is mandatory. Apparently I’ll be giving the Sun Blessing.”
“When is it?”
“Day after tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve already memorized the blessing.” He put his book away and blew a plume of blue smoke into the evening air. “Coming with?”
“Of course.” I bit into an elongated, star shaped fruit and nearly had a food orgasm. “Oh my God, what is this?” I groaned.
“Vanya,” he said. “Isn’t it good?”
Good didn’t cover it. The fruit was outrageously sweet, tasted of pineapple and vanilla, yet had a faint odor of chocolate. “I’d love to eat vanya jelly on toast,” I said.
“That is easily arranged.” The Master eyed me askance. “You’re dripping it all over your perfectly oiled self.”
I stuck my finger in the juice trail running down my belly and licked it off my finger. The Master laughed a little. “You never change,” he said, and I heard that he felt pleased. “I’m so careful with my comportment, if possible, but you’re very unaffected and natural.”
“I’m not ruler of anything, and I never wished to be, so I’m not out to impress with manners and clothes,” I said after a second of reflection. “However, since it’s just the two of us and nothing’s about to blow up, I’ll just say you are impressive. I’ve always thought so, but I knew you’d just accept the kudos as due your magnificence and go ahead to press a big red button.”
Laughing freely, the Master poured more tea for himself. “Yes, I would have,” he admitted. “But, I have to confess I’m glad there is no big red button, currently, and that the lack of bombs isn’t something I’m necessarily lamenting.”
“Yeah.” It was nice to talk to him when he wasn’t being a dominating twat. “You’re turning out to be very good company, you know.”
“Do tell, my dear?” He asked, giving me a little jolt. He noticed my slight jerk and threw me a grin. “Well, what should I call my consort?” He asked.
“There you go, teasing the man so out of depth with being a consort that there ought to be a category for the complete opposite just for him,” I said. I threw the vanya pit over the side of the railing and dug for another fruit. “I could live in the Non-Consortium. Give advice on how to be the worst husband, ever.”
“Husband, yes, but you make a decent wife,” the Master mused, his tone pitched for more teasing. “Currently you are exceptionally clean, except for that juice trail, and not bad looking. You’ll be running my house, too. All that’s left is to rear my many children.”
I thought of Jenny and winced. So much I could have lived for, and she’d died for me instead.
“What’s wrong?” The Master asked. “Your face crumpled.”
“I got my hand pushed into an MTTE, and out came a daughter,” I told him. “She was brilliant. And, she died saving my life.”
“Ouch,” the Master said quietly, not underplaying it at all. “And, you got your hand stuck in a military tactical tissue extrapolator how?”
“It was an ugly little war that I stepped right into, like I tend to do,” I answered.
The Master fell into silence, and I ruminated over my lost chance with Jenny. I’d had children before, all of them wonderful, but I hadn’t been ready for fatherhood any more than I’d been ready for marriage. In retrospect I felt certain my wife despaired of me long before I proved incompetence to myself.
“At least you meant well,” the Master said. And then, “Don’t look at me like that. You were projecting.”
“I suppose I was.” I met his eyes. “Did you ever intend to have children?”
“Oh, I intended to have at least six at one point in my life. My own little army, you know.” He gave me a smile that more than bordered on bitter. “And, poor Lucy wanted a rugby team of children, but I screwed that up, didn’t I?” His face changed, becoming beseeching in such a realistic way I was startled. “Harry, you knew when we met I wanted kids.” His face changed again, becoming stony and awful. “Let me see your birth control pills or I’m putting on a condom,” he said, obviously mocking himself. “I don’t have time for children right now, Lucy. Wait until after the election, when we’re settled.”
“Oh my,” I whispered.
“Yeah, not my best negotiations, but I was on a time schedule. You were due to catch up with me. Not much chance of universal domination with Junior in tow.” He threw his head back for a long, rich chuckle that would have set my neck hairs straight up if I’d had any left. I felt the pores where they used to be, though. “I can see it now!” He stood up suddenly and put his arm out like he had his lazer, but the other hand he held downward, his arm crooked as if he had a baby resting there. “Now, Doctor, you will fall for my evil scheme, and all your chances at winning against me are-.” He stopped and jerked his head down at his empty arm. He glanced back at me, his face realistically irritated and embarrassed. “Hold on a moment, Doctor. Harold Saxon the Second needs his nappy changed.”
I thought I might need a nappy change, I was laughing so hard.
“Wait a mo, you’re dry,” he said to his invisible offspring. “You had a bottle three minutes ago.” He shifted his ‘lazer’ to his mouth and brought “Junior” up to be burped. “Hold on, Doctor,” he said to me crossly. “Harold can’t burp himself.” He spoke as if really trying to talk around his weapon, which made me laugh even harder. By the time he sat down again, my stomach hurt from laughing.
But, I still got up for my turn.
I held my arms up and clenched my fists with my face between them, then did my impression of rattling prison bars. “Hurry, Junior,” I said, looking downward. “The Master has me trapped. You have to get the keys!” I scowled and rattled the bars. “What are you doing? Don’t you crawl away from me, young man!”
The Master sagged backward in his chair with laughter.
“Junior, no!” I shouted. “You don’t have enough materials for a sonic disrupter! That’s a particle accelerator! Put that down.” I pointed with one, trembled finger, doing what I thought was a fine imitation of fury. “No, you quit pointing it at me! What have we talked about? No pointing guns at people!”
I bowed to my thrilled audience and got back in my chair, grinning. My tea had gone quite cold, but I didn’t care.
The Master took both our stale teas and threw them out to re-pour. “Kind of tempting to try,” he joked. “Well, not really, but it’s amusing in a way it probably shouldn’t be.” He drained his second cup of tea. “Look out there,” he said, pointing to the reddish sky. “See that very bright yellow star?”
“Almedionsis Five,” I said.
“You’re a disgusting showoff,” he said.
“I can’t help it. I’ve been nearly everywhere, or will be,” I told him.
“Never mind.” The Master pointed again and dragged his finger to the left. “See the pattern? Sort of vaguely people-shaped but joined at the pelvic area?”
“Yeah,” I drawled. “Is this constellation what shows up before their fertility festival?”
“Correct. It’ll be what they consider a perfect distance from the temple.”
I got a pang as I remember the Master doing this with me when we were children. He’d slipped into that role again, educating me on lore, not scientific data. He told me so many legends. My sense of pain grew to nearly an unbearable level as I realized he was the only person left with all that mythos. Without him, so many legends of Gallifrey would vanish. I’d never paid enough attention to be well rounded, and I’d ignored the star legends completely unless he was the one telling them.
“That one over there, just at the rising moon, is their equivalent of the Great Dragon,” the Master continued. “He’s called the Sky Serpent, and chases the Mated Pair because he desires the woman for himself.”
“Allegorical and Freudian at the same time, well done,” I murmured, trying to continue on with casualness when I really couldn’t. My throat was closing off and I felt so sad, but at the same time it felt good to listen to him talk about stars again. To remember when stars could be pretty lights instead of burning balls of gas, destiny instead of something to chart.
“Yes, I know,” he chuckled. “But there, just at that far ridge, do you see a constellation that looks like a man with a sword? That’s Caelbas, the Dragon Slayer. He chases after the Sky Serpent, to prevent him from killing the Mated Pair. But, like the dragon to the couple, he never gets close enough.” The Master eased back and re-lit his cigar; it had expired during our game of self mockery. “That sums the philosophy of this society, Doctor. They think it’s enough to get close and to not win. That’s why a solution will never be as interesting as the problem itself. And, that’s why I chose this planet. It wasn’t just because of their lack of tempting armament.”
I gave up on fighting hope for his sake. His sincerity couldn’t be faked, not in a million years even with all his talent at trickery and disguise. He’d weakened me with a return to childhood, warm simplicity, and followed through with exposing something to me he didn’t have to share. I leaned up and braced my forehead in my hand, closing my eyes against a gigantic wave of nostalgia, fondness, and that forbidden goodness the Master could inspire, that quality he had that made him charismatic and something to please instead of a source for terror.
He could be so beautiful.
And, he seemed to be trying.
“All right there, Doctor?’ He asked innocently.
I got up and took the two steps to his chair, looking down upon his mild, curious concern and the way the last bit of red in the sky made his hair burn with lighter highlights. He didn’t exactly shrink away as I leaned down toward him, but he grew very still, barely seeming to even breathe.
He accepted my arms going around him, and let me grip, let me give the hug from start to finish, then sat there looking up at me as I retreated. Surprised. Cautious, but not rejecting.
“Good night,” I said, and I left him sitting there in the falling light. Tonight I’d be going to bed with him because it made me feel good to know he was close, not because I thought he was up to something.
**
The entirety of the next day I spent at the ground breaking site for the aqueduct, going over the details of the main structure, then reviewing the men who would build it. The Master, caught up in reviewing step farming, was also quite busy. We went to bed so tired and frustrated that we barely grunted three words at each other.
The next morning we parted ways again, for the same reasons, meeting back up in the afternoon to eat something and get ready for the Fertility Festival. I took a short shower while the Master made use of his tub, and we met again in his bedroom wearing towels. “I assume there’s a special nightgown we both need to wear this evening?” I asked.
“Sigglis commissioned the proper svonds, and Maya made them this morning,” the Master said, handing me a long, very gauzy white svond. It had three layers of equal thickness and length, but I knew that standing in front of a light source might prove an embarrassment.
“I know,” the Master said, catching my stare. He held his up, which was identical except for a thin red stripe going down one side. “The whole thing is about fertility. They used to make their emperor and his wife or husband or what-have-you, go naked. Apparently the previous emperor’s physique wrecked ‘the mood’, or something.” He cast an eye over me. “If I were you, I’d skip the body oil tonight. You don’t want this thing sticking to you.”
“Excellent point,” I praised, then slipped the thing over my head and dropped the towel. “Well, I will say this; it’s air conditioned. Might want to keep away from open flames while you’re up there giving your little speech. One little thread on a candle flame and you could be naked in three seconds.”
The Master grinned and winked at me. “And the tradition would be reinstated.”
I smiled as I put on my shoes. The women that had given me the clay bath and ripped every last precious hair from my body, had stolen my shoes. I’d just gotten them back this morning. “My red shoes will match your red stripe,” I pointed out as he slithered into his svond.
“You are the very height of fashion,” he assured me, totally not meaning it. He leaned over and flicked my earring, which despite the precious ointment, was now slightly infected. I’d snuck over to the Master’s TARDIS and gone through his medical supplies to remedy that, and the medicine hadn’t really kicked in yet.
“Ow!” I complained. For revenge I reached out and pinched, getting his left nipple perfectly.
He left it at that, so I did, too. I wandered back to the bathroom to brush my teeth for the fifth time. I didn’t know why I felt nervous. I’d just stand beside him as he gave his religious pep talk. I didn’t have to do anything but look pretty. I went at my teeth lightly, thinking bleeding gums wouldn’t allow me to look at all pretty. I ran a hand through my hair, reapplied the eyeliner, and made certain the medicine had stuck to my lobe through the Master’s petty little flick.
I had to move over at the mirror when the Master came in to shave his face a second time. He felt nervous, too. “You’ll do fine,” I assured. “If you start to lose the crowd, hypnotize them.” It was a horrible little dig and I felt sorry for saying it the moment it left me.
The Master rolled his eyes. “Maybe I’ll just let you talk,” he replied. “You could keep an audience captive by merit of preposterous manner.”
Oh, right back at me.
Order restored to my universe, I took up a cuticle stick and got the lines around my eyes perfectly delineated. “I wish you’d been my roommate in school,” I told him.
“You had a real prize,” the Master muttered. “What was that guy’s name?”
“Chlorrisulfandrinel,” I reminded.
“That’s right. I called him Chloral-Sulfate,” the Master blurted. “But what makes you think I’d have made a better roommate? You saw what I did to mine. He was a nervous wreck.”
“You pioneered gaslighting on Gallifrey,” I mused. “Never thought of it like that.”
“Always moving his stylus three centimeters left or right, untying his shoes, setting up randomized, hidden devices in the room that periodically beeped just long enough to notice but not long enough or frequently enough to pinpoint their location…” The Master leaned his head over to grin at me in the mirror, white shaving foam stuck to him and all. “I aced my psychology course.”
“Using your own roommate for an experiment,” I chastised, but I couldn’t help remembering the incident as more than mildly amusing. “You drove him mad.”
“The school paid for his reintroduction into productive education; no harm done.” The Master finished, wiped his face, and stepped back. “No more delaying. We have to leave now.”
We left the palace for our conveyance, which I was so thankful to get. I hated riding those lizard-horse things. I’d been using them a lot lately to get back and forth to the aqueduct site. As usual, we had a hundred guards surrounding us. “How’d the voting for education go this morning, since we’re on the topic,” I asked.
“Good. Enough women turned up to swing the vote to their favor. I expect there to be some sulky male retributions, though. For that purpose I ordered a better occupation of the law.”
“You posted more coppers,” I said. “You could just say it like that, you know.”
The Master sniffed disdainfully. “You should be thankful that a return to sanity helped my vocabulary.”
“I’m just thankful of the return to sanity,” I confessed.
“I’d imagine,” he murmured. “Let’s hope my tenuous hold continues to hold.”
We were silent the rest of the way. I followed him inside the enormous temple, which was stone and held representations of the elements. They included Wood and Spirit in with Earth, Wind, Water and Fire, which I found interesting, as it paralleled an Earth society. The Master and I went to the High Dais and waited for the room to fill.
“There’s a door behind us,” I muttered.
“Yes, I know, it has something to do with the ceremony, but no one could give me a clear answer as to its meaning.” The Master glanced at it before looking at me. “Maybe we leave by it.”
He might have said more, but a gong sounded and a group of men wearing identical svonds came into the center of the room. Their arrival keyed the dancers, and once again I found myself slightly woozy from watching their spin and whirl routine. But, they eventually stopped. This time, the Master didn’t pay them. I suspected they weren’t supposed to take money for a religious rite.
“Our emperor will now give the Sun Blessing,” an officiator intoned with a bit of pomposity. On cue, the Master stepped forward and began to recite.
“Sun chases Moon across the sky, but Sun never tires.” His voice commanded attention, and I felt myself sliding into enjoyment at his power with speech. “Moon chases Sun through the heavens, never with his own glow.” The Master paused, his eyes impossibly seeming to see everyone in the room. It was a subtle manipulation, non-harmful, but of infinite usefulness. Everyone would feel as though he spoke to only them. I understood in a second he could have done this as Harold Saxon, but had chosen to be flashy with technology instead. “Yet,” he continued, “underneath them life continues. We toil under each, sowing our seeds. Sun and Moon are beauty and they enable life, but they never look down. Only we look up.”
It had been a short little blessing, but I didn’t underestimate its simple power. Religion that overwhelmed and made grand, sweeping generalities or enforced a lot of rules, eventually failed. This was a philosophical observance made into a homily.
The officiator came forth and bowed to the Master. “My Emperor, you may now take your consort,” he said, pointing to the door behind us. “We await the culmination so that we may also begin.”
The Master and I threw each other a look of dawning suspicion, and I followed him inside. We were met with an immaculate white bed strewn with flower petals. The door shut behind us. I noticed a phosphorescent moss on the walls, and the only light came from a very far away window in the ceiling. There was a small shelf full of oils just beside the bed.
I tried to put my hands in my pockets and discovered gauzy nightgowns had no pockets. “Sooo…” I spoke in our shared language, not entirely trusting we couldn’t be heard.
“They’ll take our word for it,” the Master decreed, responding in kind in Gallifreyan. He got on the bed and relaxed.
I got beside him, staring at the moss. “I don’t believe so,” I said. “I’ve seen this moss before. It reacts to high amounts of oxygen-to-carbon-dioxide exchange, and also to elevated temperatures, turning orange when it’s saturated.”
“You mean, it knows if we’re getting it on,” he said. “And, the ceremony can’t continue until we do the walk of shame.”
“More like the strut of slut,’ I corrected, making him chuckle.
“Come on, how hard will it be to fool moss?” The Master got up and went to a patch of it. He breathed on it, then held his hand close to it. “Hm. It seems it isn’t fooled by simple heat or carbon dioxide. Are you sure it’s the moss you’re thinking of?”
“Positive. It grows all over the universe.”
We looked at each other for what seemed a very long time.
“He specified you were the pilot,” I pointed out.
The Master put his hands behind his back. “Religious ceremony or not, the idea of having sex with you simply to please other people, isn’t acceptable,” he informed. “In fact, it’s rape.” He gave me a little, self-mocking grimace. “I have never been and will never be a rapist. It’s gauche, unimaginative, and common.”
He wouldn’t consider sex between us as casual, apparently, and I couldn’t help but feel a little flattered. But, this was the Master; he didn’t do anything casually. Usually, even the murders he committed were parts of a plan, or a plot, and not thrill-killing, at least until this regeneration.
I sat on the bed again. “Maybe we could convince the moss with kissing?”
The Master grinned and walked over to me. “Are you so good of a kisser that a lip-lock with you would equate as sex?”
“I doubt anyone is,” I defended. “We have to start with something, though. The emperor can’t leave a fertility rite without looking as if he’s done his part.”
The Master’s gaze dropped to my mouth. “Forgive my hesitance, but even kissing you isn’t a light suggestion, Doctor. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we’re in the very beginning stages of remembering what we were like as friends. And, I was enjoying that.”
My throat started feeling tight and sore again. “Yeah, me too,” I admitted. “But, if we don’t comply with this festival, your standing will probably plummet.”
“Even with the work I’ve done here, Doctor,” the Master replied quietly, “I have more history with you than with the Seldatians.”
We stared at each other, stalemated.
“Pretend I’m someone else,” I suggested. “I won’t let this change our dynamic.”
Smiling, the Master shook his head. “I have a lot of imagination, but nothing so vivid as to turn you into someone else. And, if you think for a second that even a small intimacy wouldn’t alter our dynamic, you’re kidding yourself.”
Frustrated, I sighed and dropped my gaze. “I don’t want all your efforts on this planet to fall into ruin because of me,” I told him. “If I hadn’t come here you’d have been paired with someone you could just…”
“Nail?” He finished for me. “You’re wrong, there. I have a fair amount of sexual reserve. Perhaps not as much as you, but enough to make the prospect of casual sex highly distasteful. Sex is never anything but intimate, at least for me.”
“What do we do, then?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” The Master sat beside me and we both stared at the floor, horribly aware of the waiting crowd outside. I played with my sore ear, my nervousness at a very high level.
“Oh, just kiss me,” I exclaimed after a long moment. “Make it hot enough and the moss will at least turn color. We can self-examine to death afterward.”
The Master gave a low, amused chuckle. “You think a lot of my expertise. Maybe I’m not very good?”
I thought of the many times I’d seen him practically devouring his wife’s mouth, how she’d instantly capitulated to what he wanted. Once he was in a position of power, he felt freer, obviously. I just needed to ‘put him on top’, so to speak. Thinking thusly, I threw myself sideways in front of him, getting my back in his startled arms. It was a precarious position, so I got my lower half firmly on the bed and braced with a hand around the back of his splendid neck. “You’re good at taking command,” I reminded, looking up into his surprised face. “So, take command of me and this situation.”
Slowly, the Master’s eyes changed from shock to a measuring sort of consideration. And, when his focus narrowed upon my face, my lips, my eyes, I got a taste of the most deliciously dangerous awareness. This was like lying in the center of a jaw trap. One little twitch and the steel teeth would snap around me. The air got heavy with anticipation, with the waiting of would-he or wouldn’t-he? My muscles locked into uselessness, and my breathing turned shallow, labored. His body was as hard as rock, and I felt like taffy melting across him.
A small chime sounded, breaking our intense, mutual consideration. As one we looked around and saw the moss all around us was a flaming orange.
The Master grinned helplessly, and lowered his forehead to mine. “Nothing casual about us, Doctor,” he said, chuckling. “Should we be gratified or worried that the smallest gesture toward sex between us is as powerful as Seldatian mating?”
“I don’t know, but at least we’re off the hook,” I told him. Lying in his arms, enclosed, with his forehead against mine was more than intimate. “Well, with this, anyway. I don’t know that we aren’t going to be a bit awkward now.”
We untangled and took a moment to right our clothing, not looking at each other. “I wonder if they expect anything else?” I asked.
“Too bad if they do,” the Master muttered. “My sex life is nothing to parade around.”
**
- 7
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