InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Darth Vader is Luke's dad."

The Master (cantyouhearit) wrote in colligo_threads,
@ 2010-11-15 23:38:00

Entry tags:

!@event, !closed, lucy saxon, the master

WHO: AU!Master & Lucy Saxon
WHAT: He's pretty sure he was supposed to have died just then.
WHEN: November 15th; mid-afternoon
WHERE: The Master's flat
RATING: PG
STATUS: In Progress

After being detached from the machinery, he'd expected a swift end. They're already forced him through all his regenerations, left him to rot in a half formed body kept alive only by mechanisms that should never have existed in the first place. The reassurances that Ailla still lived in some universe, that there was a place where things had worked out far better than the one that he'd been trapped in, had been the last, best thought to usher him off. But just as his consciousness had started to fade, it all came searing back to him in a torrent of sensations and a sudden feeling of dislocation that shouldn't have been.

Pulling himself up from the chair -- odd, a chair that wasn't cold and solid and holding him in place -- he outstretched his hands in front of them, a quiet inspection later yielding the information that he was in a body that was fully functional to the best of its abilities: two hearts, a sufficient mind, and, after a quick inspection in the mirror, a fully intact face. It didn't make any sense. There had been no intense agony as there always had been before, no mental confusion, no fog to pull himself through, and no residual after effects that he could still feel. And there was also the added complication of the sudden relocation that had gone along with it.

Looking around the flat, quietly baffled for the moment, Koschei had just stood in place, frowning up into the mirror as a soft sigh passed his lips, "Who are you?"

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cantyouhearit
2010-11-16 08:17 am UTC (link)

His reaction had been hasty. He knew. And he could see that she was a little taken back by it. The version of the Doctor that she knew probably wouldn't do those things, not if he was as different at the version of himself that he seemed to be currently inhabiting. Unconsciously rubbing his face again, he almost missed her backtracking. But as she turned towards the kitchen, he blinked at her back, forcing his mind to catch up with the conversation.

"No," Koschei said quietly, shaking his head, and then tacking on to clarify, "if you think he could help..." He said, trailing off for a moment with a soft sigh. "It would be nice to see that at least one version of him was able to make it through without... Without becoming what he did."

Especially after having insisted that his interference in situations was only to help the civilizations, to fight against the sort of madness that he ended up perpetrating.

"What incarnation is he at this point?" Koschei asked quietly. "Do you know?"

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neverthatbright
2010-11-16 08:32 am UTC (link)

She had just reached the doorway when his words stopped her. Hesitating between the living room and kitchen, Lucy turned back to look at him. Her expression was unreadable, save for her eyes. They were filled with wariness yet clear concern as well. Taking a step back into the room, she swallowed and gave a nod of her head.

Reaching for her PDA, preparing to send a text message to the Doctor, she paused at Koschei's question. Her gaze darted back up to his. "There are two here," she answered softly. "The tenth and the eleventh. The eleventh incarnation is the one I'm going to try to locate." Her attention flickered back down to her PDA before she paused once more, this time of her own accord. There were certain things that she didn't know, when it came to regeneration. If there were limits to the injuries they could regenerate from. If there was any way to stop a regeneration before it began. And, perhaps the most curious of all, just how many regenerations a Time Lord had to go through before reaching the end.

There were reasons she didn't know these things, of course. Harry had only recently begun sharing anything of such a nature with her - and even then the information was sporadic and typically more personal in nature besides - and the Doctor didn't want to risk giving her information she could later use to try and kill Harry. It made sense, from his perspective, but Lucy was still curious and now saw a perfect opportunity to learn things she might not otherwise.

She'd be a fool not to take it.

"How many are there?" she asked, putting her PDA back in her pocket for the time being. "What number is the limit, for regenerations?" And how? Why? What happened if you just continued to kill someone after each regeneration? Was that cheating or was it an effective way to assassinate a Time Lord permanently? She didn't ask any of the other questions, obviously, but they certainly flickered through her mind and refused to be fully ignored.

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cantyouhearit
2010-11-16 08:50 am UTC (link)

"Tenth and eleventh," Koschei echoed, almost in awe as a very small laugh managed to make its way across his lips. It was barely there, a minuet chuckle as the words washed over him. "So, some time then," He said, talking more to himself than he was to Lucy as he tried to wrap his mind around it. It had to have been centuries, at least, more likely millenniums, since the events that he'd experienced, and while charting that in linear time was quite unless, the idea that such a transference had occurred when he had no basis for understanding it made it all that much more bizarre.

The questions took him a bit by surprise as he would have assumed that things like that would have been the first things to cover with a human that you were going to get to know so well. One of the first things, at least, but the curiosity that underlaid the questions made it clear that she really didn't know.

"Twelve," Koschei said. "Regenerations, that is. Thirteen incarnations with the original life. Granted, there are special circumstances where that can either be truncated or extended, but there aren't many that need more than the original twelve nor are there many that warrant such an extreme punishment as getting terminated early. Nobody's told you any of this yet?"

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neverthatbright
2010-11-16 12:51 pm UTC (link)

Twelve regenerations. Counting the original life, thirteen in total. Lucy wasn't sure if the Doctor's Eleventh incarnation counted as the eleventh regeneration or eleventh in total and found that she hoped it was the latter rather than the former. The thought of him only having one more left didn't sit well with her. Of course, she also had no idea what number Harry was on either. She assumed the one he was in now wasn't his last, particularly as she had very vague memories of hearing the Doctor all but begging him to regenerate after she'd shot him. At the time she hadn't particularly cared and had blocked most of the conversations taking place around her out, simply for her own sanity's sake. Now, though, she wished she'd paid a bit closer attention.

She shook her head at his question. "No..." she answered, her gaze falling briefly to the floor before she forced herself to look at him. "Harry doesn't like to talk about it." She gave a faint shrug of her shoulders as if to say 'so that's that'. Which, to Lucy's mind, it was. She might at times hate her husband but his word was, as far as she was concerned, law. And although she understood that this version wasn't the same as the man she knew and both feared and loved equally, Lucy found some small part of her passing that same fear-induced respect to him. Just in case.

With the slightest touch of hesitation, she added quietly, sincerely, "If you'd rather not talk about it either, I'll make sure not to ask anything else."

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cantyouhearit
2010-11-16 09:27 pm UTC (link)

"No, no," Koschei said. He'd never had any issue with discussing facts of his life. If every Time Lord kept mum about what they could do, they would be a bunch of old fuddy-duddies secluded in a glass dome on their home planet. Oh, wait. "I don't mind. No reason that you shouldn't know, if you're close to my other self." Koschei said, pausing for a moment as he looked over at her with a quietly questioning gaze. "Especially if it is the one that I met," He said. He'd recognized the distance, the heaviness about him, and the reluctance that had come with discussing how things had gone in his reality.

It was good to hear that he'd found someone to rely on that wasn't as suspicious of him as those others that he'd been working with.

"He definitely seemed as though he could use the support."

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neverthatbright
2010-11-16 10:07 pm UTC (link)

The first dredges of guilt began churning away in Lucy's gut at his statement. She hadn't lied - she was close with his other self - but she also knew he wasn't thinking of it along the same lines as she'd meant. Which was intentional on her part, really, and that was most likely the source of her guilt. Regardless of why she felt that way, though, the fact was that Lucy felt bad for deliberately misleading him into giving her information.

She decided, as he met her gaze with a quiet, contemplative look, that she was going to explain a bit better. If he still wanted to offer information then, that was fine. Brilliant, in fact. But he at least deserved to know that, while she was one of Harry's most loyal supporters in most everything he did, she also was the one who had shot him and could very easily do so again.

However before she could say anything, Koschei spoke again. His final statement, one that Lucy agreed with wholeheartedly, was enough to make her eyes mist over. A bitter-sweet snort of laughter escaped her lips before she could stop herself. "Perhaps someone should alert him to that fact," she said, realizing a second too late that she'd actually spoken the sentiment out loud. Instantly her mouth clamped shut, a wary expression settling upon her features. It was easier, she'd found over the past few years, to shut down in anticipation of punishment for speaking out of turn than to waste her time apologizing to deaf ears. Although she did still whisper an apology, only after reminding herself that this wasn't her Harry.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, swallowing hard as she forced herself to meet his gaze again. "I... haven't been completely honest with you. Harry and I are close. We're married, in fact. However our relationship isn't exactly..." Healthy. Positive. In any way good for either of them, truth be told.

"Typical."

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cantyouhearit
2010-11-17 03:02 am UTC (link)

The soft snort of laughter provoked a wry smile as he stepped forward, noticing the sudden shift in her attitude and settling his hands lightly on her shoulders in an attempt to reassure her that it was fine. However the other him acted -- and considering some of the comments that the man had made towards Koschei's failed existence was likely the exact opposite of how he would -- or reacted towards things like that which prompted the woman's complete shutdown, he was hardly going to do the same.

"Oh, I'm sure he knows it," Koschei said. "Whether he fully admits it to himself is another matter entirely," He paused, taking in the matter for a moment before sighing softly. "And if it has been as long as I think it has been, matters of experience can only have tainted things further."

There were a lot of assumptions that Koschei was willing to make as to the mental state of his duplicate, some that stemmed from the brief conversations that they'd had before and even more from the extra information that he was gleaming now that his mind was clear and this fullness of this situation was being presented to him, and one of them was that if he'd went to the trouble of truly wedding himself to someone, he'd known that he needed the constant support.

Even if he'd dressed it up some other way.

Raising a hand to cup her cheek for a moment, the smile that Koschei offered was open, honest, sincere...with any of the edge underneath it that the Master's might have held. "I'm sure he has his reasons," He said after allowing the silence to linger, "however unjustified they might seem. My logic was always sound...even if I was the only one to whom it made any sense."

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neverthatbright
2010-11-17 03:25 am UTC (link)

She tensed when he approached her. She didn't back away, didn't flee, knew better than to do either, but she certainly stiffened a bit. However the hands he placed on her shoulders weren't meant to hurt and the touch was gentle enough that she got the unspoken message. It was baffling, to be sure, but Lucy fully understood in that moment that she really was not dealing with a version of her husband that was anything close to what she was used to. Which was both a relief, as well as heartbreaking, and she honestly wasn't sure which emotion to give into first. If either. For the time being, she ignored her own reaction and instead focused on what he was saying.

It wasn't easy to imagine. She'd been told more than enough times that Harry certainly didn't need her around in any real sense of the word. Yes, the signals were mixed, as now that he truly didn't need her family's connections in order to further his own agenda, he really should have simply cast her aside yet clearly hadn't done so. However mixed signals didn't tell her anything that she dared to guess at and so she simply took his word as law and ignored the rest. Which meant that she really wasn't needed but more there simply because he wished it, for whatever reason, and it was in her best interest to just accept that fact and not question it.

His palm was warm against her cheek and caused longing for such tenderness from the man she loved. Since in Colligo, she'd received it. Harry had actually done very well at not lashing out at her and instead treating her with the same gentleness as he had when they'd first met. But Lucy knew it wouldn't last. Nothing ever truly lasted anyway, and what had been a rather pleasant point in her marriage was no exception. She still longed for it, though, and had to stop herself from leaning a bit into his touch in search of something that this version of the man really couldn't provide.

Her lips parted, a soft breath escaping them. She stared up into his face, her blue eyes alight with curiosity and her forehead creased in concentration. "You don't hear them..." she whispered, scarcely able to believe the thought much less put it into proper words. She did her best, though, wonder slowly replacing the curiosity shining in her eyes as she thought she might have finally figured out the one major difference between this man and the one she'd sworn to love, honour, and obey for life.

"The drums. Do you hear them?" she asked. Part of her was almost afraid of the answer, although she wasn't at all sure why.

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cantyouhearit
2010-11-17 04:00 am UTC (link)

That was a question that he'd never expected to be asked, not outright and direct like that, and as Koschei peered at the woman across from him with something akin to shock, it took a moment for him to really register how to respond. "I do my best to ignore them," Was the most honest answer that he could come up with. They were there. They'd always been there since his initiation, urging him towards a path that he wasn't sure he was comfortable with and from all appearances, was the one that his other self had taken. That explained the high suspicion levels of his companions, at least. "I can't see anything productive that would come from giving over to their demands."

After all, a call to war was unless in a time of peace. Men with that mindset spent all of their time trying to create chaos where it didn't exist and fanning the flames of a brush fire into an inferno where it already did.

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neverthatbright
2010-11-17 04:17 am UTC (link)

Oh. So he did hear them, then. He just seemed to have some way to ignore them that either Harry lacked, or simply hadn't bothered with. Or it was something else entirely, that she wasn't aware of having happened and probably never would be. Really, the possibilities were endless and far to many for her to consider.

But still. It was difficult to accept whether she was willing to dwell on it or not. The knowledge that somewhere, some how, there was a version of her husband who hadn't given into the insanity. A version of him who, while clearly broken in his own way, wasn't nearly as volatile. A version Lucy was willing to bet that also wasn't interested in the death and destruction the way her Harry tended to be.

Both better in some ways, and worse in others, and not at all the man she'd married. As nice as he was, Lucy couldn't help but wish that her version was back. She didn't wish any ill will toward this one but she also knew he wasn't the man she loved. Yet she also knew she couldn't, wouldn't, pull away or spurn him. She'd stay as close as he needed her to be, help him as best she could, because... well, frankly, Lucy wasn't sure what else to do.

"Oh," was all she said out loud in reply to his admission. It was clear from that single word that she didn't understand how it was possible, but she wasn't going to ask. He wouldn't know the answer anyway and, if she ever saw Harry again, she knew he'd never bother to explain. It was simply something she would have to live with, one of many unknowns that she'd been introduced to since meeting the Time Lord.

"Harry doesn't." Or possibly couldn't. Lucy wasn't sure on that one, really. With a slight shake of her head, barely perceivable even if someone was watching her closely, she dispelled the thought and let her mind switch gears.

"Would you like some tea?" she repeated, having asked the question earlier before getting sidetracked. Once more she felt the urge to do something familiar, and tea seemed the best answer.

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