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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
- 8
- 9
- 10
The festival was a complete success, on the point of view of all the participants. After hours of watching a few hundred people have sex, we left. Once in the covered cart, the Master turned to look at me. “I don’t know about you, but if I so much as see a bee lighting on a flower at this point, I’ll pop off.”
I snickered just once and nodded. “Is this a once a year celebration, or do we have to do this again anytime soon?”
“Once a year,” he confirmed. “Let’s eat, bathe, and go to bed. I’m sick of looking at other people’s moving parts.”
“You didn’t even thank me for getting things going,” I said airily. “I knew if you’d just assume control, things would work out.”
The Master shot me a sly but irritated look. “Appealing to my lesser nature is very dangerous.”
“Oh, I know, believe me, I know,” I told him. “But if I hadn’t pushed, we’d still be in that room, staring at moss and trying not to look at each other.”
“Perhaps,” he relented.
**
All that night, the Master’s dreams were violent. He thrashed so much the cats left the bed. I heard him speak Ailla’s name more than a dozen times. He hit his hands on the bedposts over and over, bursting his knuckles, bruising himself, bleeding on the pristine sheets.
I could do nothing but watch. The one time I attempted to help, to touch him, he struck out and hit me in the eye. I knew it would be a shiner come morning.
Finally, with less than an hour to the sunrise, the Master quieted. I slid from bed and washed up in his opulent bathroom, then searched until finding something that would disguise my bruise. After, I put on the liner, and I didn’t think anyone would be able to tell what I covered. By nightfall it would be gone anyway.
As I got dressed I heard the Master give a groan. He sat up on the edge of the bed and looked at the floor with groggy incomprehension. “What time…?”
“Dawn,” I answered even though he’d know what time it was if only he focused. “The loo is free. I’m finished.”
He dragged himself into the bath and was in there long enough to cause me mild concern. I ordered a fruit and bread sort of breakfast and took it out onto the veranda just as he emerged. His hands were bandaged, and he didn’t so much as glance my way once he joined me outside. But, those white-swathed fingers shook with the sugar tongs and rattled the tea cup in the saucer. He gave snarl of impatience as he slopped tea, and flung the crockery over the balustrade in a fit.
I waited for him to sit down, then made his tea exactly how he took it. Silently, I served him a plate of sliced vanya, blueberries and puffed pastry with real whipped cream. He stared at me as I layered the stuff inside the light, sweet shells of delicate bread, but I didn’t let on I saw.
A sliver of the sun broke free of the mountains, illuminating the Master’s drawn, pale face, his bruised arms. He closed his eyes and leaned back with the tea cup cradled to his chest. “No work today,” he said, his voice barely audible.
I sat and made my own breakfast happen, going slowly in both preparation and in eating so he could easily catch up. We had to share a cup now, of course, and I marveled to myself that he used so little sugar. But, it did contrast with the overly sweet fruit and cream, so I made myself adjust easily. I let him remain silent with his own thoughts.
After, I cleaned up the breakfast mess, leaving only the tea service, and went down to the kitchens. Hann greeted me with warm respect, and I felt glad she hadn’t noticed my eye. I’d done well, then.
“The festival was a great success,” she said as I snitched a taste of fresh bread. “No emperor has ever made the moss turn color that fast, either.”
“Your new emperor is a passionate thing,” I replied, trying to keep neutral but failing. “He ever and always inspires high emotion in me.”
“I easily see why,” she murmured, blushing a little. “But why have you come to see me, my Lord Adjudicator?”
“I actually came to see what you have in your spice cabinets,” I told her. “I suffer from terrible nightmares (no lie, there), and am looking for specific herbs. I don’t want to rob the emperor of his sleep, keeping him awake with my night terrors.”
“I understand.” Hann stepped back and showed me where I might start my search with a broad sweep of her arm. “My kitchen is at your disposal,” she added.
I commenced. In less than thirty minutes I’d identified a few herbs that would help the Master, but I really wanted to give him something a bit more powerful. Chamomile, or the close equivalent, was good for an overall remedy, but wouldn’t keep him from thrashing like a fiend at night.
“My lord?” Hann appeared beside me, smiling a cautious smile. “Perhaps you should speak to the palace physician? He has many herbs and even more knowledge.”
“Good idea. Where could I find him?”
“Oh, he has the lower levels,” Hann answered. “Just go to the main entrance hall and take the left door to the staircase and follow it to the bottom.” She turned, swept up a loaf of hot bread wrapped in a towel and pressed it into my hands. “Give him this,” she said, winking. “He’s ever so much more biddable if you give him a bribe.”
I followed her directions and made my way down a dark, cobweb-ridden set of stairs. Down, down, down… I started feeling as if I might be in a bad horror movie. But, I hit the bottom at last and stood confronted by a large door made of thick slabs of wood. I knocked politely and waited. A panel slid open, and I looked into a pair of gunmetal grey eyes framed by thick white lashes and eyebrows. “What?” The owner of those eyes asked.
I held up the loaf of bread. “Hann sends this,” I said.
“Hann is feeding me?” The panel slid shut and the door creaked open to reveal a very, very old man in a black svond. “What does she want, then?” He asked.
“She only asked I bring the bread to you when I mentioned I wanted to consult you on nightmare remedies,” I said, fudging it a little.
“Nightmares?” The man bade me enter with an impatient gesture. “Come in, come in, young man.” He snatched the bread and carried it over to a nearby table laden with wine bottles and waxed wedges of cheese. “Nightmares are mind phantoms, and there’s not much one can do about them except resolve the issues that cause them,” he said sensibly.
I looked around this vast, dimly illuminated room, seeing bottle after dusty bottle, sacks hanging from the ceiling, bunches of drying plants, and at least half a dozen fires with cauldrons hanging over them. This was a busy man in front of me.
“I can’t resolve the issues, because the person that caused them is dead,” I said, making an educated guess. My God, he had intricate and specialized equipment in here, and even with my experience I couldn’t identify anything. “The nightmares don’t bother all the time, just enough to make sleep a fearful thing.”
“Ah,” the old man said, cutting a slice of bread and wrapping it around a thick hunk of dark cheese. “Then, you need a sleep aid as well as some good, honest meditation.” He stuffed the food in his mouth to get his hands free, then started walking at a very good pace around a single table. He had at least thirty workspaces here, and all of them apparently in use. “You’re the new emperor’s justiciar,” he added. “Pretty, though, aren’t you? Would have fancied you myself when my cock was young enough to comply with my varied lusts.”
“Um, thanks,” I replied.
The old man chuckled and began taking things from various bottles and measuring into a very large mortar. “You can’t be modest, not with the new emperor,” he chided. “I’d have a go at him myself. What a voice.” He took up a pestle and began grinding with enthusiasm. “Nice to have a pretty slice on the throne for a change. The old emperor was a cold, soggy thing without a bit of blood. Never did have an heir, you know.”
“Do tell?” I pitched my voice for interest just this side of casual, as bait.
“Yes, I tell you, young justiciar, that we were all thankful to get a new ruler. The new emperor is a welcome change. Not only does he instigate learning, better thinking, and hygiene, he’s open minded; the old emperor’s idea of progressive change was feeding the palace staff out of better bowls.”
“Why put up with him so long, then?” I asked, moving closer so I could see better.
“Ah, he was a hostile old coot, convinced everyone was out to kill him,” the physician answered dismissively. “It would have happened, eventually. But, your lover came in like a god, asked him to step down, and history was made.” The man added a bit of reddish, finely ground powder to his work and began a downright aggressive macerating of the result, the cords in his old arms standing out as his muscles flexed. “I thank the Sun that he came, and I’m not the only one.”
“Really?” I picked up a jar and took the lid off for a good smell. It wasn’t an entirely familiar odor, but I caught the telltale tang of opiates. “Everyone I’ve met seems a bit lukewarm.”
“That’s because seventy percent of the populace is too busy philosophizing to remember they’re made out of meat,” the man told me in a tone that would have withered the most vibrant and succulent of plant life. “I don’t make that mistake. You can over think things, you know; plenty of people do around here.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” I admitted. Holy Rassilon, this old man had figured out the basic constituents, configuration and cooking of Klah, a narcotic that the people of my world had done their best to make and failed. I made a note to ask him about it later, because I had more to worry about right now, but I really thought he might be an unsung genius.
“Well, the meat is what I treat,” the man said. “I tried to treat the spirit, too, but your average person around here thinks they’ve got the spirit covered, so no open arms there. Our emperor is a good example of what I like to treat, actually; he’s a broken thing that manages to make his separate pieces shine like pressed carbon.”
I turned my head, interested. “You can see he’s broken, but you’ve never approached him for healing?” I asked.
The ancient physician favored me with a long, lingering look of pity. “You would remove the thorn from the paw of a wild beast and then lecture him on briars?” He asked pointedly.
“Yeah, no,” I murmured. “The way of the wild beast is to be hurt and to continue on, yes?”
“Exactly.” My host finished grinding the herbs and began separating the powdery result into exact piles with a very keen knife. “You can’t stop the survival drive in a real predator, and that is what our emperor is; a predator.” He swept most of his work into a bag and put the rest into new, clean mortar. “I’m glad he chose a mate that can support him without being a crippling influence, like a silly female.” He added some blackish, thick stuff to the mortar and began grinding again. In a few moments he had a workable but tough paste, and he rolled it around some thin sticks he’d handily drawn from a nearby jar. “You’re an alien, like him,” he announced casually. “The same species?”
I decided not to prevaricate. “Yes, and we’re the only two left,” I told him.
The old doctor paused in his work to give me a look that somehow managed to encompass all the pain and hope of the universe. “Oh, my lord,” he whispered. “The worst thing isn’t being alone. It’s being the second most lonely.”
I swallowed back that recurrent ache in my throat. “As long as I have him, I’m okay,” I admitted.
“But, you cannot mate, cannot have a family,” he protested, continuing to work but with both eyes upon me.
“We could, actually,” I revealed. “We each had twelve times we could grow old and die only to be reborn in a new body, and there is an equal chance of either one of us becoming female each instance; we are Time Lords.” I felt my head moving for a little, helpless shake and just let it happen. “I’m nearing the end of my cycle. I only have a few lives left. Your new emperor has eleven more lives to use, and each one can last a thousand years if he’s careful.” I smiled at the old man, then, feeling more than a little bitter. “I haven’t been very careful, and neither has he, but our people granted him a new set of regenerative lives just before their extinction.”
The old, seemingly wise doctor nodded just once, his piercing grey eyes a study in perception and compassion. “You are an old man, like me, and he is a newborn,” he said. “Yet, my emperor knows he is old. He is like the soul that remembers his previous life upon being born from a new mother,”
“I guess,” I answered, getting his reincarnation reference easily.
The physician came to me with a bag in his hands. “My Lord Adjudicator,” he said, bowing to me once. “If you have nightmares it is only because you live too long, yet not long enough. If you have pain it is because you understand that every joy is followed by loss.” He pressed his work into my hand, then turned and swept up the sticks he’d rolled. “And, if you have desire, it is because you feel attraction to that which is your opposing force.” He reached up and placed his ancient, withered hand upon my jaw, patting me gently and kindly. “Please, take this old man’s advice and let all that hurts you, all that gives you joy, flood you to your basest cell.”
I gave him a short nod. “I will,” I assured. “If I’m good at anything, I’m good at assimilating everything that is hurtful and joyous.”
**
Armed with medicine and therapeutic incense, I returned to the Master’s quarters, finding him still on the veranda and in a stage just before sleep. I lit a stick of incense and placed it beside his bed, then stuck my head out into the hall to order a guard to get a fresh serving of tea and some lunch.
“Doctor?” The Master asked woozily, animating himself and shuffling to his bedroom. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to take care of you,” I answered. “Come and sit at your desk.”
The Master obediently took a seat where I directed. He slumped a few seconds before rallying. He looked around with drifting focus before settling upon me. “I’m not sure what day it is,” he confessed. “I made up my mind that it wasn’t a work day, and that I wouldn’t be needed, but I get the feeling I didn’t do my math right.”
“No, you did rightly,” I assured, removing his cloth shoes and off-setting myself so he could focus upon me easily. Of all things, for the Master to not believe his own math was more than troublesome. He was absolutely a math genius. “You’re just fine, Master. Someone’s bringing you tea and food, so you just sit and relax.” I made myself talk calmly, thought I wanted to just drop my head back and scream.
He went back to staring at his hands. Slowly, he began unwinding the gauze. I held my breath at the ruin, not saying anything, but my focus drifted toward the bed and his carmine stained sheets. Determined to do something, I got up and stripped them from the bed and carried them out into the hall. “I’ve had a nose bleed,” I said to a passing servant. “Could we get some clean sheets?”
“Oh, yes, my Lord Adjudicator,” the woman said quickly, taking the bundle of expensive linen away.
When I returned, the Master was back on the veranda, which I considered just as well, because his hands would be healed by tomorrow, but I hadn’t wanted the servants to know I lied about the nose bleed. So thinking, I intercepted the tea and food and brought them out to him myself. As I arranged things on the table, three women came and made short work of changing the bed.
Full daylight was just as pretty as morning and evening, here. The Master sniffed the hand rolled incense as he drank his tea, bruised and swollen fingers gripping the hot porcelain at the rim and not the handle. He looked out over the horizon and kept his eyes there as his mouth opened to speak. “She was a Time Lady, and I didn’t even know it,” he said, and my hearts beat faster as I realized he was about to tell me of Ailla.
“You asked me only once, a very long time ago, what made me so cruel,” he continued softly. “I suppose I let her make me cruel, Doctor.”
He didn’t say that she had made him cruel. He wasn’t comfortable putting all the blame on her, I supposed. I sat down and busied myself with tea, knowing that if I talked, he’d quit.
“She was my lover, and very beautiful.” He smiled, but the bitter twist to his lips told me he found no nostalgic pleasure in her memory. “Witty, funny, adventurous, imaginative. She made me feel like I wasn’t alone.”
I put a hand over my left heart and gripped. He could be speaking of Rose. I’d never gone to the physical side of my love for her, but it didn’t matter.
“When she was shot and killed, I went mad with grief,” the Master said, bowing his head. “I had no idea she was Gallifreyan. I made a device to interrupt time, to bring her back, but the end result was the destruction of Teriliptus. Then, Ailla showed back up, alive, and I realized I’d destroyed a planet for nothing. Also, she was an agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency, and had been sent to spy on me. Becoming my lover was just an easy way to get close to me.”
I tasted blood in my mouth and felt I’d bitten my tongue. I remembered this, but I’d come along after the big revelation of betrayal. I’d reprogrammed the Master’s weapon and trapped him in a black hole. The very morning he’d told me that his staff all believed I was his consort, he’d even brought up the black hole, and I hadn’t remembered. I hadn’t remembered trapping the Master in a black hole. It was horrible of me.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. It would never be enough, but I had to say it. Keeping me prisoner on the Valiant must have tasted very sweet to him. Yet, in contrast, what was a year of watching him destroy my beloved Earth when he’d had centuries alone, lives wasted, existing in despair and the furious urge to save himself?
The Master smiled again, this time with less bitterness. He drank a bit of tea and sampled a wedge of the cheesecake dessert we’d been given. “I forgave you,” he said, making my hearts thunder out of rhythm. “You only played the game according to the strictures and stakes I posed. But, I never forgave her. I would never and will never forgive her.”
I felt better and worse at the same time. His forgiveness was important to me even though I’d truly only been acting to stop his violence and death-dealing. Yet, if I’d had to think of Rose as a betrayer, like he did for Ailla, I didn’t know what would have happened to me, to my soul.
“I think you might have to, eventually,” I murmured. “Holding onto that only brings sickness.”
“I can’t, Doctor,” he whispered back. “She gleaned all the secrets of my hearts, held me, learned my every weakness and desire, then utterly crushed me. It was deliberate, calculated soul-murder.” He picked up his three tined fork and cut a bigger bite of the cheesecake, looking like he forced himself to eat something. “And, she taught me that our own people posed the worst criminals of the universe. I should have remembered that when the president came down to Earth. He rammed the lesson home again.” The Master slammed his fork down on the table suddenly, rattling the china with the one-two-three-four rhythm of madness over and over until a cup fell onto the floor and shattered.
I bit my lip in fear for him as he dropped everything and balled up in his seat, his wrists shielding his head. “Weakness,” he hissed. “I disgust myself, but you just sit there and think me the better man for having weak hearts!”
“I’ve never seen you stronger,” I argued, keeping my tone level. “Admitting weakness takes more courage than hiding from it. Besides, of all the words I could use to describe you, ‘weak’ isn’t one of them, and never has been.”
“You’re only being kind,” the Master replied swiftly. “You’re benevolent at your core, Doctor.”
“It’s nice you think so,” I said. “Whether that’s true or not, what’s wrong with allowing me to be kind to you? You’ve never let me, and I’d like to know why.”
The Master straightened to glare at me. “Allowing your kindness has always been dangerous for me. Kindness is an obligation.”
“Not for me it isn’t,” I countered. “And, it isn’t as if you aren’t capable of being kind in return. I know better.”
“Oh, yes, I have a secret ability to nurture others, nestled between my hearts, just waiting to use it.” He gave a disgusted shake of his head and reached for his tea, tossing the cold brew over the side of the veranda to pour more. “My altruism always has a purpose, Doctor.”
“It usually looks that way,” I admitted, “but only you know that for certain.”
“God,” he muttered. “You’re dripping your goodness all over me.”
“I’d bathe you in it if you’d let me.” I tried the cheesecake and found it first rate. “You need someone to be good to you, Master, and not because of that horrible Mata Hari that gives you nightmares.”
“Why, then?” He asked abruptly.
“Because you’re tired and you need to heal,” I answered. “You know that. You came here to Seldatia for a lot of reasons, but that was one of them.” I paused to consider that, and admitted ruefully that I’d stayed here for much the same reason. I couldn’t pass up the chance to watch the Master, not under any circumstances, but especially when the possibility of redemption presented. “I’m tired, too,” I told him, watching his eyes swing my way. “As you pursued wanton destruction at the behest of the drums, I’ve run from my drums with complete abandon. Never staying in one spot with one person long enough to self examine to any great length.”
The Master was silent for a few seconds before giving a short, dry laugh. “Christ. I can’t believe you admitted that.” He finished his tea and curled back up in his chair, but in a way that suggested seeking warmth, not from inward collapse. “But, if you stayed here to get some rest, you’ll probably fail to get it; look who your current companion is.”
I went into the bedroom and got one of the many blankets stacked at the end of his enormous bed, came back out and draped it over him before sitting down again. “I’ll take the stress you engender,” I assured. “In searching the entire universe for worthy company I’ve discovered there are a lot of people capable of helping me, setting me straight, even of saving my life. But, there’s only one of you.”
“Yeah, you killed the rest of them,” he muttered, getting a dig in at me while ignoring what I was trying to say to him. “And, good job, by the way.”
“You know what that cost me,” I replied.
“Oh, yeah, I do,” he assured lightly. “I hated them, but I feel their absence, too. The worst part is they aren’t really dead and gone, just removed. Like a cluster of cancerous cells kept alive in a Petri dish, frozen in some remote laboratory of the Almighty.”
I grimaced as the painful humor of that analogy made my stomach churn. “Sometimes you’re quite disgusting,” I complained.
**
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Lapidary