InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Only the pure of heart!"

The Master (cantyouhearit) wrote in colligo_threads,
@ 2011-12-27 23:52:00

Entry tags:

lucy saxon, the master

WHO: The Master & Lucy Saxon
WHAT: Gremlins are attacking, and the Master is about to transfer his TARDIS to help build a safe zone. He wants to make sure Lucy gets there in one piece.
WHEN: December 27th
WHERE: Tony & Pepper's flat
RATING: PG
STATUS: In Progress

After their initial conversation, it hadn't taken the Master long to figure out where Lucy was staying. All he'd had to do was keep his ears and eyes open and occasionally explore the other areas of the housing complex until he managed to narrow down the options. Then, it had only required watching her return and departure to gauge exactly where she headed to and come from. From there, a quick confirmation with the nameplate had given him all of the certainty that he'd needed. He knew where Lucy was, and he'd keep that information safe for whenever it became necessary. It was a good thing that he'd found out early, really, since it had become necessary a lot faster than he ever expected it would.

When Christmas had came and went without so much of a hint of something from their reality dropping in for a surprise, the Master thought that they might get off easy this year. It had taken them so long to recover from the Toclafane that it was possible Asaph had reconsidered leveling the city once more to have them struggle to rebuild it come new year again. Sadly, he'd been wrong, and as the Gremlins had poured into the city, all the Master could think was that Asaph had decided since he was going to attack them with something not so Doctor Who, that he'd save it for the day after.

While they might not be as vicious or as deadly as the Toclafane, at least in the Master's view, they were just as plentiful, and plentiful could quickly translate into deadly in the right circumstances. So when the Rani had suggested setting up a safe zone out of their TARDISes, the Master had done something that he didn't do often. He'd volunteered to help. Of course, helping random strangers was not his cup of tea. It was simply the idea that he could keep those that he had a certain concern for safe that had motivated him.

Turning Lolita's knobs and dials, winding the old girl up despite her protests after being left to sit for so long, he shifted her, calculating a quick jump between his flat and the one that Lucy was staying in, landing her carefully in the living quarters right between the sofa and the fireplace, her look quickly transforming into a nice turn of the century armoire, just before the Master stepped out into the room and cast a quick look about.

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neverthatbright
2011-12-28 05:22 am UTC (link)

Although only a handful of Gremlins had made it into the flat thus far, Lucy was more than prepared for any more that chose to arrive. She had woken up rather early that morning to discover one hiding under her bed and, after flailing about like some sort of teenager in a horror film before finally smashing a lamp over the thing's head and thus rendering it unconscious, had realised rather quickly that beating the creatures with something hard and heavy seemed to do the trick. After that, it was simply a matter of tossing their bodies over the balcony and letting the sun take care of the rest.

She had taken care of nearly half a dozen or so over the course of the day. Each one would appear in various places and, each time, she would smack them senseless then toss their bodies outside before picking up something heavy to hit the next one that showed up. It was crude, it was crass, but it certainly worked and she was quite pleased with herself for her work thus far. In fact, in some ways, she felt positively invigorated at knowing that this was a threat she could tend to all on her own without need of help from anyone whatsoever. It was a heady feeling, one that she wasn't all that used to, and she found herself almost wishing another gremlin would show up soon after disposing of another one, if only to repeat the feeling.

Which is precisely why she was stalking about the flat with a frying pan held tightly in her grasp when the Master appeared.

Had he warned he was coming, she might not have reacted the way she did. Then again, considering all he'd put her through, she may have reacted much the same and simply let the blame fall at the feet of the attacking, green-skinned creatures. Either way, though, it didn't much matter in the end because he didn't warn of his arrival. In fact, Lucy hadn't been aware he'd even known where she was staying, much less that he was going to stop by. So when he appeared, seemingly out of thin air, she didn't even think but rather simply jumped into action.

This time armed with a frying pan, if only because she'd bent the fire poker on the last go-round with an unexpected intruder, the blond drew her weapon of choice back over her shoulder. Then she let go with a full-bodied swing that caused her shoulders to scream in protest as she aimed directly for the Master's face without even seeming to realize what she'd done until it was much, much too late.

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cantyouhearit
2011-12-28 05:38 am UTC (link)

One glance had confirmed that Lucy was in the room, and while his second had meant to give him time to greet her and explain, he found himself being rather swiftly cut off. By a hunk of metal connecting with his face. Knocked immediately off balance, stumbling backwards and colliding with armoire!Lolita, the Master's vision swam in front of his eyes as he grasped the wooden sides of his TARDIS's new form, his grip proving to be not enough to hold himself upright as he slipped down the front of the armoire and finally plopped down at Lucy's feet, blinking and squinting up at her to try and clear the impact fog from his eyes.

"Not the best greeting I've ever had," The Master said, stumbling over his words as he raised a hand to rub at his face and make sure that, despite the way it was stinging, nothing was broken. "But I've had worse." At least she hadn't shot him this time.

"Think you could," the Master asked, offering a hand up to Lucy to see if she would be willing to help him back to his feet. Of course, if she wasn't, he could manage it on his own soon enough. He just couldn't help but wonder if she'd meant to hit him or not, and being willing to help him up, well, he figured that would surely enough mean that trying to crack his skull like an egg had just been an accident.

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neverthatbright
2011-12-28 05:46 am UTC (link)

For one brief moment, Lucy had been truly torn on what course of action to take. In the split second it had taken her to realise that it was the Master she had hit, rather than a Gremlin, she had gone from feeling horrified to vindicated, to finally settling somewhere on a strange mixture of both. Then she had hesitated, part of her wanting to hit him again, and again, and possibly even again, while another part of her had wanted nothing more than to toss the frying pan to the side and beg him for forgiveness all while checking to make certain she hadn't broken any bones in his face with her attack. Finally, she had settled on somewhere vaguely in the middle. Frying pan held out to her side but not raised for another attack, she had simply watched as he'd recovered from the initial assault then finally held his hand out in a silent inquiry that she help him to his feet.

After a brief second of considering, Lucy placed her own hand in his and tugged him upward. She still held tight to the frying pan, more than ready to smack him again if he decided to do an about-face and grow angry with her for what she'd done. That didn't seem to be the case, of course, but with the Master there truly was no telling how he might behave at any given moment. Therefore, she wasn't about to render her only means of self-defence obsolete by dropping it simply due to a slight mistake on her part.

Once he was on his feet, she finally spoke. Her tone was hesitant, as though she wasn't quite sure what to say.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, first and foremost. That seemed the most important question, overall, although it was quickly followed with a somewhat accusatory sounding, "Why didn't you tell me you were stopping by? I might've killed you!" The 'again' hung in the air, unspoken but nevertheless true, as she at long last clamped her mouth shut and waited for him to respond. All the while, the frying pan remained at her side, more than ready to be used as a means of self-defence once more should it prove necessary.

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cantyouhearit
2011-12-28 06:06 am UTC (link)

"Didn't think about it," The Master said, thankful for the assist upwards and quickly filing away the fact that the assault was likely an accident as yet another encouragement in the long process of winning himself back onto Lucy's good side. It was rather sweet for her to think that she could kill him with a frying pan, really, and while she didn't so concerned so much as annoyed at him just showing up out of the blue to get pummeled, he figured that it was probably another point in his favor that she even so much as thought to voice the fact he could have died as something to be concerned about.

"I thought you might want a lift," He said, offering her a smile that reflected his self-assurance in the fact that she wouldn't even think to turn him down once he'd made the full offer. "The Rani suggested putting together a safe area where the Gremlins won't be able to get in by hooking our TARDISes together with UV lighting, and I thought maybe you'd want a quick run down there so that you don't have to brave the transit once we get everything in place."

Also, he'd invited her to see his TARDIS, and she'd yet to come on her own, so he might as well take the opportunity to show it off as well. He had to wonder if she'd so much as guessed that it was there in the room with them at the moment since one so used to seeing the Doctor's TARDIS usually was surprised by one that properly blended in.

"That is, unless you'd rather fend them off on your own, then I could leave just as easily as I came," Even the Master on his best behavior couldn't help but attempt a wee bit of reverse psychology. Manipulation was one of his greatest weaknesses.

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neverthatbright
2011-12-28 06:35 am UTC (link)

A lift. For a brief moment, Lucy simply stared at him with a blank look that was in no way carefully created but rather quite authentic. Once his words registered, however, and understanding shone in her bright blue eyes, she blinked in only the faintest of surprise before her expression turned carefully blank as she considered his offer. On one hand, a ride in his TARDIS to a location that was safe was quite a welcomed thing. On the other hand, the last time she'd been in a TARDIS with the Master, things had taken a rather surreal turn that had ended with her willingly accepting the futility of life and any action he wanted to take to see it humanity meet a grisly end much sooner than anticipated.

She had fought with every fibre of her being to come back from that dangerous precipice where he'd led her. It had taken all of her self control and then some to rediscover her own sanity as well as a reason to keep going. And although she had her good days and her bad, she was slowly but surely starting to return to the woman she'd been before the Time Lord posing as Harold Saxon had sauntered into her life. So, understandably, she was a bit hesitant to blindly follow him on another journey in a machine capable of moving through both time and space seamlessly. Even if his TARDIS couldn't leave the planet, or the time it was stuck in, she knew that she was taking a great risk simply agreeing to be alone with him in such an environment as that one.

Yet at the same time, she knew she had no real choice. It was only a matter of time before the Gremlins arrived in large enough numbers to overpower her. She needed to do something to get away and his offer was the best she'd been given thus far. So, after a careful moment of consideration, she finally decided to reach as much of a compromise as she could hope to achieve given the situation.

"Promise me," she said, the words all too familiar on her tongue and causing a pang deep within her heart, "promise me that we're only going to where you're to meet with the others." Her look was one filled with caution as she took a hesitant step toward him. The frying pan served as an external backbone of sorts, reminding her that she could still beat him unconscious if he tried anything funny. The thought that she didn't have what it might take to see that unspoken threat through never even crossed her mind. She'd do what she had to do to ensure her own survival. That, if nothing else, was a lesson she'd learned all to well from the man whom she'd once given both her heart and unquestioned loyalty.

"I mean it," she tacked on, her tone a bit more hardened than was normal coming from someone raised the way she'd been raised. Leave it to prison to teach her how to stand up for herself. "No funny business or I'll whack you until you can't see straight, Harry. I swear to it."

The fact that she'd used the nickname she'd adopted for him what felt like so very long ago went unnoticed by her. She was far too busy looking past him, trying to see a time machine that was so well-concealed that it was all but impossible to spot with the naked eye.

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cantyouhearit
2011-12-28 07:11 am UTC (link)

"Where else would I go?" The Master asked, a playful tone in his voice as he offered Lucy his best smile. He could understand her concern considering the places that he'd taken her the last time they'd had access to a TARDIS. Granted, the controls had been fussed so his options had basically been hop her a few months into the future or take her to see the collapse of reality as we know it. The latter had seemed so much more appealing. Humans, scrapping to hold on to the last of what they'd built, fighting against the incoming darkness like cockroaches scurrying to find somewhere to keep dry. It had seemed the perfect picture to show her that made it clear how all of the regular comings and goings of the every day meant so very little.

But right now, his goal wasn't to warp her outlook. If anything, he wanted to spare her so that she could get her mind back together straight in the best way that she could, and if anything, her threatening him like that gave him a little hope that she was already on her way to managing it just fine on her own.

"Besides, the amount of funny business that Lo would let me pull off without her permission is quite limited," He said, grinning as he turned and pulled open the door to the armoire and held a hand out to Lucy. "She's not really in a very good mood with me. I'm lucky that she cooperated this far."

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neverthatbright
2011-12-28 07:27 am UTC (link)

Lucy knew she was quite possibly making the biggest mistake of her entire life by agreeing to go with him. Unlike when she'd agreed to marry him in the first place, when she could at least claim that love had blinded her to some of his more negative aspects, this time she had no such excuse to fall back on if things took a turn for the worse. No, she knew exactly what the Master was capable of doing and yet she was still willingly going along for the ride with nothing but his word to assure her that it wasn't some sort of cleverly contrived trap. Honestly, if she wound up in over her head because of it, she really would have no one to blame but herself and she knew it.

Yet despite all of that, she still found herself taking his hand with only a brief moment of hesitation. Perhaps it was because he had admitted that his own TARDIS wasn't pleased with him. Perhaps it was simply her own inability to believe she truly deserved a fresh start and relative clean slate after all of the things she'd done. Whatever the reason, she followed him into his ship and found, even as the doors shut behind them, that she didn't regret the decision she'd made. In fact, if anything, she was a bit excited and rather looking forward to what was likely to be a very short, and to the point, trip.

"Why is she upset with you?" she asked almost without thinking, gaze flickering about the control room of his ship before she finally turned to look at the Master with a somewhat curious stare. She had her own theories as to just why the ship might not be happy with him, of course, but she wasn't nearly so bold as to think she could ever truly know what a TARDIS might be thinking. She was nothing more than a mere human, not even very bright by her own species' standards, after all.

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cantyouhearit
2011-12-28 07:44 am UTC (link)

The Master felt a small thrill at her taking his hand. Even if it was a tiny thing, her agreeing to go with him was something that the Master couldn't help but assume was a stepping stone on repairing their lost relationship, and that gave him a certain hope that he wouldn't have been able to achieve anywhere or with anyone else. As they stepped into his TARDIS, the door closing behind them as he stepped over to the console and swiped his hand briefly over it, holding up his fingers that were streaked with dust, the Master offered Lucy a sheepish smile.

"You can imagine that she's not exactly thrilled with being left to sit for weeks, months on end with me only popping in every once and awhile to make sure all systems are in running order. She's a restless traveler stuck in a place where there's so little to travel to," The Master said, even if there were the outlands to explore, he hadn't been like the Doctor in a very long time. Pointless exploration, especially by himself, didn't really interest him the way that it used to.

"I haven't been giving my girl the attention that she deserves, and she wants to make it clear to me that she knows it," He said, twisting another set of knobs and dials and frowning at the noise of protest that issues from the console. "Very clear. Yes, yes, Lo. We know. I'll do better next time," He said, flipping another set of switches and exhaling with relief as the center console lit up and they started moving. "Thankfully, she's always been brilliant enough to know when we do need to get moving, all the same."

Brushing his hand over the console again to rid it of some more of the caked on dust, the Master spared a brief glance around the TARDIS interior, slightly darker and older in fashion than the Doctor's TARDIS had been, and glanced briefly back at Lucy with a curious gaze in his eyes, "So. What do you think?" Not that he figured much of a judgment could be made based on the console room alone.

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neverthatbright
2011-12-30 07:50 pm UTC (link)

A Time Lord and his TARDIS. Once upon a time, what felt like very long ago, he had tried to explain to her the bond that existed between the two. Granted the explanation had been made far more giddily and as a means of trying to get her to realise just how very much he'd hurt the Doctor by stealing his, but the general concept was the same. Lucy still didn't quite understand it but, then again, when it came to things concerning the Master that was typically the case.

Still. Even if she didn't true grasp just how close the two could be, even if he'd never even tried to explain it in the first place, it was quite obvious to her how much his TARDIS meant to him. And while a small part of her really did wish that he could ever be as fond of her as he was of his ship, she was hardly going to let her own mild jealousy cause her to say something deliberately hurtful.

So after taking a moment to truly look around, she met his gaze with a small smile. "I think she's lovely," she said. "And you really should take better care of her." There was likely some sort of symbolism to be found there. A clever parallel of how he'd treated her as his wife compared to how he treated his beloved TARDIS. However, Lucy was hardly the sort to attempt such a connection intentionally. Besides, even if she was, she was much too absently worried once the ship started to move that she was about to find herself in some carefully laid trap of the Master's and that they weren't going somewhere safe at all.

Not wanting to dwell on such things, Lucy lightly grasped the railing to keep herself upright and cast a glance back to the Master. "Are you certain the creatures haven't found their way on board?" she questioned with just a touch of anxiety. Gremlins were notorious for messing with mechanical things. She really did not want to be inside a TARDIS, of all things, if they'd managed to get inside and poked about.

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cantyouhearit
2011-12-30 08:47 pm UTC (link)

"Not yet," The Master said, knowing all too well that it was probably arrogant for him to think that his TARDIS was impenetrable to Gremlin invasions. But he'd made sure to sweep it before leaving his flat, make sure that the only life sign inside had been his own before leaving. Even if he couldn't assure that they weren't going to crash and burn in the middle of the vortex, he managed the best he could. "She's usually pretty good about keeping out anything that I don't want in here," He said, patting the console with a certain affection as the course was stabilized. It wouldn't take long for them to get there, not never like the last trip that they'd taken together, but he figured he could step away for at least a moment.

"Would you like to take a closer look around?" The Master asked, nodding towards the door to the deeper rooms in the TARDIS. He didn't want her to go by herself since he was sure she'd get lost if she did. But he wouldn't mind showing her around some of the closer areas as Lolita managed to align herself and land. "I'm sure we have time to nip back and check out the library and the study."

Those were the closest to the console room, of course. Well, the closest rooms that weren't rather disturbing or for things that he'd rather Lucy not have to deal with knowing he did in this state.

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