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rosa_acicularis) wrote2008-11-20 12:43 am
rosa_acicularis) wrote2008-11-20 12:43 am
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Commentary: Do I Twist, Do I Fold - Chapter One
I promised an awful lot of fic commentaries a few months ago, and I've yet to deliver. Here's a very silly one about a not-particularly silly fic.
This is for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amathela and marissa_214, who wanted a commentary on the first chapter of Do I Twist, Do I Fold. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely what they got.
++
This fic and the stories that follow it are the result of two things: a year and a half of academic research in fairy tales and mythology, and leaving Rogue Trader’s Voodoo Child on repeat for longer than is strictly healthy.
Before Do I Twist, Do I Fold, I’d never written anything – fan or original fiction – that could even remotely be described as ‘dark’. But I was reading so much about folktales, about the ways in which they evolved over time and how in different times the same story could act as an escapist fantasy, as a tool of moral instruction, or as a story intended to do nothing more than scare the shit out of you. It was far too easy to watch Who through this lens, to take Bad Wolf as something more than a pair of random words.
Rose is both the lost little girl and the Wolf, the victim and the devourer. This story was designed to explore this dichotomy, to show two kinds of strength and two kinds of weakness. The little girl is brave and stubborn, strong even when she is helpless. The Wolf is unimaginably powerful, and genocide was her first order of business. Rose would never have become the Bad Wolf if she hadn’t been brave and stubborn (and not a little crazy). The Bad Wolf had power no creature is meant to have, but that power was directed by the wishes of the girl she had been.
Sometimes Little Red Riding Hood saves herself. Sometimes she is saved by others, by a strong man with a knife or an ax. And sometimes, in some stories, she is devoured.
++
"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the spider to the fly;
"'Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you may spy.
The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,
And I have many curious things to show you when you are there."
"Oh no, no," said the little fly, "to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."
The Spider and the Fly, Mary Howitt
This poem? This poem rocks. Sometimes all you need for a story to click into place in your mind is the right combination of words, and sometimes those words belong to someone else. Temptation and seduction play a large part in this story, particularly in this first chapter. I love the idea of the Master as the spider – smooth-talking and sinister, so charming that you give in not in spite of the fact that you know better, but because you know better.
You remember. It’s that urge to fall.
++
The jump seat creaks as Rose slides down, curving her back against the worn fabric and reaching with her toes for the edge of the console. Her legs aren’t quite long enough, and she nearly falls to the grated floor.
This is the most exciting thing that has happened all day.
It’s fairly common in fic to suggest that the Doctor’s companions constantly crave a day off. Personally, I think they’re probably bored to tears on any day that doesn’t include explosions and giant alien brains.
With a sigh, she tucks her legs beneath her again and looks down to where the Doctor’s plimsoll-clad feet stick out from under the TARDIS console. His right foot is moving slightly, tapping to a rhythm she cannot hear.
This is entirely unimportant, but it is something of a reference to the Arch Angel Network and the idea that the Doctor might already be unconsciously aware of it.
She returns to her book.
After a few minutes, he breaks the silence, his voice muffled by wires and metal. “Mahna mahna.”
The Muppets. Make everything. Better.
(Also, I wanted the story to begin as lightly as possible. So. Singing.)
“Doo doo, do do do,” she replies without looking up.
This sort of thing is harder to write out than you might think. I’m pretty surejlrpuck needed to point out the correct ‘doo doo’ arrangement on this one.
“Mahna mahna.”
“Doo doo doo do.”
“Mahna mahna.”
“Doo doo, do do do; do do do, do do do, do…seriously, though, how long is this going to take?”
He chuckles, and then she hears the snap of a sparking wire and a yelp. “Bored already?” he asks, the words garbled by what she imagines is the presence of his singed finger in his mouth.
Rose sets the book aside and hops off the jump seat. She crawls beneath the console until a low-hanging cluster of wires forces her to lie on her back and wriggle until she’s lying beside him, the glowing lights of the console’s underbelly in her face. A wire tickles her nose, and she brushes it away.
Aw, TARDIS guts. They so pretty.
“I’m not bored,” she says sulkily.
He glances away from the clump of unidentifiable something he’s struggling with and grins at her. “Yes, you are.”
His smug expression is in shadow but for the green and blue lights that shine around them. He makes a self-satisfied noise and tiny orange bulbs are added to the mix, and in the glow he looks at once unfamiliarly alien and much like he did that night at the carnival in Louisiana when he ate too much candy floss and whined for hours about his poor Time Lord tummy.
Ah, the inevitable tension between the mundane and the exotic, the familiar and the unknowable. Also, fluffy sugar stuff.
*nods wisely*
She must have an unusually contemplative look on her face,
I don’t know about you guys, but whenever I get my contemplative face on, people always ask me if I need to use the bathroom. Why is that, do you think?
because he nudges her with his elbow and asks, “Something bothering you?”
She doesn’t know how to verbalize this strange contradiction she’s lived with in the years she’s lived with him. He is not human, but sometimes he plays the game so well she thinks they both forget. She reaches over his chest and holds a tangle of wire steady for him as he fiddles with the insulation. “Nothing, really. I just…I always meant to ask, but…you’re telepathic?”
He stills. “Ah,” he says, and she knows he’s stalling, buying time to decide which truth to tell her. “Chloe Webber. I thought that might come up.”
“You’d said before, but I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not.”
“It’s not something I do very often. I don’t really…”
His reluctance is palpable in the close space between them, and she sighs. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
He turns his head and gives her a grateful smile. “Maybe later?”
She nods and knows that this is a conversation they will never have unless circumstances force them into it. She’s become accustomed to questions left unanswered.
This story is about Rose and the Wolf, but it is also about the Doctor and the Master, and the similarities between them. Telepathy is introduced here quite deliberately, as is that distance the Doctor maintains between himself and others, the necessary secrecy. Rose trusts the Doctor, and she loves him – but there are things she doesn’t know. Questions he does not and will not answer.
“Pizza!” he says suddenly, and she jumps, startled.
And pizza. This is also a story about pizza.
“Pizza?”
“Pizza,” he repeats with great authority, worming his way out from beneath the console with an ease she envies. She barely avoids knocking her head against a hunk of metal that resembles half a car bumper as she follows him. Once she finally makes it out, he helps her to her feet, his beaming face smudged with dust and grease. “Just what we need for a lazy Sunday afternoon in the TARDIS.” He begins setting coordinates, and she has to jump out of the way as he flies around the controls.
“It’s Sunday?” she asks, bemused.
“Figuratively speaking, Rose.” The TARDIS leaves the vortex with a jolt, and he throws an arm around her waist to keep her upright. When he loses his balance a moment later, she goes tumbling to the floor with him. On top of him.
Hey look! Potential for sexual tension.
“Ooh,” he moans. “Your knee is crushing my spleen.”
And I just killed it.
She rolls off him and laughs. “Your spleen is in your thigh?”
“One of them was,” he answers with a ridiculous grimace.
“You are so full of it.”
He glares at her as she pulls him to his feet. “Last time I try chivalry ‘round you, if this is how you repay me.”
“Baby.” She moves to the monitor and has to give it a bit of a smack before the picture appears. She looks out onto a busy city street. “Where are we?”
“New York City, half a block from Big Tony’s Heroes and Pizza.”
I am not from New York, but I had a number of good friends in high school who wer. We occasionally made the drive up for school trips and such, and one buddy of mine would drag me away from the group and take me to her favorite hole in the wall pizza place. It was not called Big Tony’s (I’m not entirely sure it had a name), but it was the inspiration for this setting. Also, I spent a considerable portion of my childhood in various greasy Baltimorean pizza parlors. I knew a lot of guys named Tony.
He stands behind her. “Which is in…” he points to the right side of the screen, “that direction.” He sighs wistfully. “Undoubtedly the best pizza in the universe. Well, except for those few weeks in 1984, of course.”
“Of course.” She watches people hurry by and shakes her head. “I can’t believe no one noticed the TARDIS materialize.”
He leans back against the console, rolling his eyes. “Please. This is Manhattan. Even without the TARDIS’ perception filters, I’d be amazed if anyone so much as gave us a second glace.”
New York is too cool for TARDIS.
(Sorry.)
“I suppose that means we’re not ordering delivery.”
“Not exactly,” he hedges, a look of slight apprehension appearing on his face. “Since I have repairs to finish, I thought…”
She folds her arms over her chest. “You thought?”
“Stop looking at me as if I’ve made you my intergalactic errand girl,” he says defensively. “You were bored. Think of it as an adventure.”
She doesn’t really mind, but has no intention of letting him know that. She sighs exasperatedly, hiding a smile. “All right, I’ll go. What do you want?”
He grins and rubs his hands together in anticipation. “Ooh! Extra large, extra cheese, extra sauce.” He pauses. “And pineapple.”
Pineapple on pizza is a big Northwest thing. I guess it’s fairly common in other places as well; this does not make it any less horrifying to me.
“No.”
“Rose—”
“Will they even have pineapple?”
His smile turns wicked. “Big Tony knows what I like.”
Up next: the Sixth Doctor ruins his diet when he takes on a young pastry artist named Anthony as his next companion!
“That’s…” She laughs, her nose wrinkling. “I’m not going to touch that one.”
“Wise choice.” They simply stand there for a moment, grinning at each other like the idiots they know themselves to be. It’s one of those rare moments when their fabled forever feels like the grates beneath their feet and the glow of time rotor – here and home and impossibly possible.
He is always the first to look away.
“Get a move on, then,” he says, shooing her toward the doors. “The perfect pizza pie waits for no man.” He pauses. “Or woman…human, girl-type thing.” He mimes cracking a whip and affects a broad American accent. “Git along, little doggie.”
“First off—” She points a finger at him. “That thing you just did? Never again. Second,” she holds out her empty hand, “money?”
“Right! Money!” He begins to search through his pockets, pulling out one random, inexplicable object after another. “I know I have some in here somewhere…”
“Probably not in the Russian nesting dolls,” she says dryly.
He winks at her. “Well, we can’t be sure until I check them all, can we?”
She sighs. “Doctor—”
“Aha! Good old American buckaroos.” He waves a handful of dollar bills in her face and then slaps them onto her open palm. “Go crazy. Buy yourself a lemonade.”
I do realize that British lemonade is not American lemonade. I leave it up to the reader to decide which he means.
She counts the money quickly, aware that attention to this sort of detail isn’t exactly his strong point. “Doctor, what year is it?”
He squints into the distance for a moment, as if doing complicated maths in his head. “2007,” he says finally. “August.”
Some fairly complicated ‘maths’ are required to figure out the New Who Earth timeline. I eventually went with 2007 as the year the Master spent chillin' at the Ministry of Defense and running his campaign. I think that works.
“Then I’m probably going to need about ten more dollars.”
“Really?” He frowns, but hands over the rest of the money. “You humans and your inflation.”
“You aliens and your pineapple,” she tosses over her shoulder with a grin as she makes her way to the TARDIS doors, tucking the money into her jeans pocket.
“Oi!” he calls after her. “I’ll have you know that plenty of people enjoy the tangy sweetness of—”
She closes the door behind her, cutting off the rest of his sentence. The humidity of a New York summer hits her like a wall, and she shrugs off her hoodie. She’s been here before with him, but it’s different now that she’s alone and so close to her own time. She grins and, heading to the right, lets herself get lost in the bustle of people around her. She doesn’t go far before she sees a somewhat faded sign for Big Tony’s.
A bell tinkles as she pushes the door open and enters. The place is mostly empty, a few patrons lingering in cracked red booths, a single businessman perched on a stool at the counter. An ancient air conditioner whines overhead, fighting a losing battle against the late afternoon heat. The heavy smell of tomatoes and grease is divine.
A short, wiry man behind the register gives her a sly half-grin. “Hey, kid. What can I get for you?”
It was a little weird, writing an American character for once. I almost gave him extra lines, just to stretch my legs a bit. So to speak.
She bites her lip, unsure of what to get for herself. “One…um…small pizza with mushrooms, please.” The Doctor won’t touch mushrooms (not anymore) so she’s sure to have it all to herself. “And one extra large with extra sauce, extra cheese, and…” She winces. “Pineapple.”
The man laughs. “Oh no, sweetheart. Not you, too.” He tilts his head to indicate the businessman sitting at the far end of the counter, who looks up from his phone call, gives her a brilliant grin, and wiggles his fingers at her in a silly sort of wave.
He is so evil, and I love writing him so much.
But seriously. What a ham.
She smiles and waves back, then turns to the man behind the register. “Sorry, it’s not me. My friend, he…he really likes pineapple.” She leans forward and confides, “I think it’s rubbish on pizza, myself.”
They share a conspiratorial grin as she pays, and he tells her the pies should be ready in twenty minutes. She perches on a stool to wait and feels herself begin to sweat in the close heat.
“I couldn’t help but notice,” says a smooth voice by her ear, “the presence of a fellow countrywoman.” She looks up, startled, to see that the businessman has appeared beside her. He smiles winningly. “May I join you?”
He sits before she can respond, dropping his plate to the counter and setting his mobile beside it, still open. His slice of pizza is untouched but for where she can see he’s picked off the pieces of pineapple.
So, here’s a question: did the Doctor make a note in the TARDIS log about what sort of pizza he’d ordered, or did the Master know the Doctor’s favorite?
Or do they simply have the same taste in pizza toppings?
“I’m only waiting for my pizzas,” she says, not wanting to be unfriendly but unwilling to encourage his attentions.
My mother once told me: “Women think they always have to be nice. We’re afraid to be rude, even when every instinct we have is telling us to kick the bastard in the nuts and run the other way. Your instincts are more important than being nice.”
My mother is a smart woman.
“My friend is expecting me.”
“Lucky man.” The words are casually, effortlessly flirtatious, and she notes the cut of his suit and the rich, subtle scent of his aftershave. Brilliant, she thinks. I’ve landed one with money. Her mother would be overjoyed. All Rose can think of is escape.
She’s about to make her excuses and wander the sidewalks while she waits, heat be damned, when he leans in, his elbow bumping hers where it rests on the counter. “You,” he says, voice low, “look a bit parched. New York summer getting you down?”
He says it in a flat, American accent, like he’s repeating an advert from television or the side of a bus. New York summer getting you down? Call Bargain Bob’s Heating and Cooling. It’s a breeze!
I should really have a job writing small business slogans, don’t you think?
She gives him a tight smile, shifting to put more distance between them.
And she’s still being polite.
“I’m fine.”
The businessman smiles back, and she feels herself relax slightly. She isn’t interested, but he is undeniably attractive, and sometimes it’s nice to be noticed. She meets his eyes and he stares back at her, his grin fading as she is drawn in by his gaze, brown and dark and somehow—
Familiar.
He snaps his head to the side, turning to lean over the counter that separates them from the kitchen. He stands up on the rungs of the stool, one hand nearly landing in his slice of pizza, the other covering his mobile. She hears a faint beep as he accidentally pushes a few buttons.
Temporarily disabling the perception shield the Arch Angel network has placed around them. See? Cell phones = evil.
“Garcon!” he cries, his tone playful. The wiry man who took her order turns to glare at him. “A lemonade for the lady.”
“Sure thing,” the wiry man grumbles. When he reaches over the partition to pass her the sweating Styrofoam cup, the businessman snatches it out of his hand.
So he can slip in the paralytic.
“Ta, Tony,” he says with a wink. “Put it on my tab.”
‘Big’ Tony rolls his eyes and returns to work. Rose smirks and accepts the lemonade when the stranger offers it with a flourish. “He doesn’t seem to like you much,” she says.
“I know! Isn’t it brilliant?” He props his chin up on his hand and watches her drink. The lemonade is delicious, if a bit too sweet for her taste. “I’ve been in here every day this week and nothing in my considerable arsenal of charm will wear him down. And I’ve tried everything – card tricks, pony rides, belly dancing…” He waggles his eyebrows at her. “Hypnosis.”
She giggles. “Hard to believe the belly dancing didn’t do the trick.”
“Well,” he drawls, and suddenly the look in his eyes is one of unambiguous seduction, his expression predatory and appraising. “I don’t like to brag, but I’ve got the hips for it.”
His voice is still light, still teasing, and she thinks she might be imagining the heat in his gaze. His eyes drop to her mouth, and she realises that she’s licking the sugar from her lips. She stops immediately and looks away.
So, at the moment the Master is quite straightforwardly playing the Wolf to Rose’s Little Red. He’s distracting her, charming her, and she’s tempted.
Little Red Riding Hood is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a very popular fairytale with those of the psychoanalytic persuasion. But even without Freud-goggles, this folktale is sorta kinda obviously about sex. Consumption, ruination, destruction – the Wolf devours Little Red, and in some versions of the story it is an explicit warning against promiscuity. I say promiscuity; I mean female sexuality.
To demonstrate, here’s the dramatic conclusion of Charles Perrault’s Le Petit Chaperon rouge:
"Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!"
"All the better to eat you up with."
And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her all up.
Moral: Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.
When the Master tells this story on the Valiant, he is the Wolf. You and I know better.
She doesn’t want to flirt with him. She wants to pick up her pizzas and return to the TARDIS, where she can spend a lazy not-Sunday not-afternoon with the Doctor, tinkering and laughing and leaving greasy fingerprints all over the console. Her heartbeat is too loud in her ears, and she thinks it must be the heat. She takes another long drink of her lemonade.
She can feel him staring at her, and she hates herself a little for the blush that warms her cheeks.
All right, let’s get this over with: the Master is sexy. He just is. Not so much when he’s, you know, decomposing (which happens an awful lot, oddly enough) but when he’s played by Delgado or Simm, he’s pretty hot stuff. (Sorry, Ainley. I love you like life, but I just can’t, okay? Your hotness is purely of the camp variety.)
The Master is sexy, and evil is a bit sexy, and Rose finds herself fascinated. Ensnared.
She feels vulnerable and unsettled, and the unwavering attention that was flattering a moment ago makes the skin at the back of her neck prickle.
THESE ARE YOUR INSTINCTS. LISTEN TO THEM.
His fingers curl around her wrist, cool and smooth against her skin, and he leans into her, his shoulder brushing hers. “I’m lying,” he whispers. “I love to brag.”
Rose pulls her hand away, moving it to her lap. “That’s enough.”
About damn time.
His grin turns harmless and he holds his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “So sorry. I must have misinterpreted.” He looks more delighted than contrite. “Suppose I got a bit carried away, didn’t I? Long way from home, miss the wife, you know how it is.” He chuckles to himself as if he’d made a particularly clever joke.
“It’s all right,” she says, though it isn’t.
Good grief, woman. NO MORE MR. NICE GIRL.
She tries to meet Tony’s gaze over the partition, silently urging him to hurry, but though he’s looking in her direction, he doesn’t seem to notice.
“You’re a long way from home yourself.”
“Just passing through,” she answers automatically, staring at the metal napkin dispenser in front of her and avoiding his eyes.
“You and your friend?” he asks casually, and something cold and hard settles low in her stomach, something her years of travel through time and space have taught her not to ignore.
“What about you?” she says, her voice every bit as nonchalant as his as she slowly, subtly slips her hand into her jeans pocket for her mobile. “Here on business?”
At the emphasis she places on that last word, he hoots and slaps his hand down on the counter. Startled, she turns to find him beaming at her like she’s his prize gourd at a farm fair.
That…is a very silly simile. I don’t know what I was thinking.
“Oh, look at you,” he croons. “I adore you.” Before she can react his fingers wrap around her wrist again, tightening like steel bands. “Oh dear. Is it too soon in our budding relationship for me to say things like that? Am I being forward?”
This story is about an emotional and physical assault with undertones of sexual violence, and the Master plays quite a bit with the conventional language of sex and relationships. Here he juxtaposes the violence of his actions with some rather quaint, old-fashioned sexual terminology.
“Let go of me right now,” she shouts, her voice thundering over the murmur of the other patrons and the hum of the air conditioner. No one so much as flinches. “Tony!” He doesn’t even look up from the dough he’s pounding.
The stranger tuts and shakes his head. “The apathy of the average American. Shocking, isn’t it?”
This is an allusion to the Kitty Genovese case.
She struggles, knocking over her stool in the process, but the grip on her hand is too strong. “What have you done? Why can’t they see me?”
He yanks her to him and she slides across the floor, just barely catching herself on the edge of the counter with her free hand. “Oh, Rose,” he sighs. “I expected better from you. Is that really all you’ve got?” His voice goes high and shrill. “What have you done? What’s your evil plan? Why are you so naughty?” He deflates a little, looking woeful. “I suppose it’s my own fault for getting my hopes up too high. I have been so looking forward to meeting you, the great Rose Tyler.” He savours the sound of her name, rolling the syllables over his tongue, and the intimacy of it makes her cold.
“It’s a perception filter, isn’t it? Makes us invisible?” she asks. He reacts as exactly as she’d hoped he would, rolling his eyes in the manner of someone used to suffering fools.
I have often found this to be true: play dumb, and people will say all sorts of things they wouldn’t otherwise.
Sometimes I don’t even have to play at it.
“What is he teaching you? Yes, Rose, the Doctor is a sexy, geeky little Albus Dumbledore who hides his TARDIS beneath a Cloak of Invisibility. Well spotted.”
It had to be done. I couldn’t resist.
He pulls hard on her wrist, wrenching her shoulder. She whimpers pitifully, and notes with satisfaction his expression of disdain. “A perception filter doesn’t make you invisible, you little twit, just unnoticeable. There’s no way it would hold up under the ruckus you’re making. With this, on the other hand,” and there it is, a tiny, unconscious motion of his chin to indicate something behind him – his mobile. “You could scream bloody murder and no one in the city would so much as lift a finger to help you. Which is pretty much exactly what is going to happen, happily enough.”
“The Doctor will save me,” she says breathily, counting on blonde hair and wide eyes to sell it.
When he bursts into laughter she makes her move, lunging for his mobile with her free hand. She’s fast but he’s far faster, his fist slamming into her abdomen, knocking the breath from her lungs. She sags to the floor, gasping, but he drags her upright, and one sharp movement of his elbow sends the mobile flying to the other end of the counter.
He ruffles her hair affectionately. “Aw, good girl. That’s more like it.”
“What are you?” she pants, aching and just barely holding back her panic.
“Well,” he says, grinning widely, “if your dear Doctor is Dumbledore, who do you think that makes me?”
“A snake in the grass?”
Yeah. Voldemort would make the Master cry for his mummy.
Draco Malfoy would make the Master cry for his mummy.
(There may be a fic in there, but I’m certainly not going to be the one to write it.)
“Behold, ladies and gentlemen!” he announces grandly to the oblivious room. “The bird can bring the banter!”
“You do like the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” She tries to sound aloof, unworried, but his bruising grip on her wrist has tightened and she knows there’s no way for her to reach the mobile in her pocket unnoticed.
He smiles again and the hungry, heated look in his eyes returns. “You quite enjoyed it yourself until a moment ago.”
“Well, I have a weakness for pretty boys,” she says dryly. “Ask anyone.”
“That,” he says with a smirk, “explains a lot.” He rubs his hand idly over his jaw. “I have to say, as regenerations go, I’m rather pleased with this one. Bit younger than I usually prefer, but hey – all the cool kids are doing it.”
She gapes at him, for a moment all danger forgotten. “But that’s impossible,” she whispers. “You can’t be.”
“What? Devastatingly handsome?” he asks, but the teasing light has gone out of his eyes. He shoves her against the counter, the edge digging into her back as he leans into her. “What? Can’t be what? A Time Lord?” His face is terrifyingly blank, his eyes huge and dark. “I landed on this dusty little slum of a planet and I couldn’t hear a thing from them, not a single blessed trickle of a thought. It was silence, silence you couldn’t imagine, nothing left but the pounding, the never-ending beat…” He laughs, and she can see the madness in his eyes. “So tell me, little human, where have all the Time Lords gone?”
Aw. Crazy Master and his Crazy Eyes.
She swallows. “They’re dead.”
He grins, his teeth flashing, and she recognizes denial when she sees it. “You’re wrong.”
He doesn’t believe it, and he won’t until he hears it from the Doctor himself.
“He’s the last.”
“You think so?” He grabs her other hand and presses both to his chest. Beneath the fine fabric of his shirt she can feel two hearts beating. The sensation is unbearably familiar, and for a moment she cannot separate the man she fears from the man she loves.
There’s more to this than Good Time Lord vs. Bad Time Lord. It’s not just that they were friends, or that now they’re the only two left. It’s something else, something we haven’t quite touched yet.
The rhythm in their chests, the pulse of their blood is the same, and it overwhelms her. “What do you think of that, my Rose?”
“Who are you?” she breathes, and he smiles at her with something like affection.
“Oh, I’m so very glad you asked.” He slides his cheeks past hers, skin brushing skin, until his lips reach her ear. “I am the Master, and you will obey me.”
++
And then she kicks his ass. The end.
No, but seriously, folks. I had a lot of worries about this fic when I realized that it wasn’t just going to prowl around my head unwritten like so many of the other darker things I’d thought up over the years. I promised myself that I would scrap the story if I thought for a second that it romanticized or fetishized the subtext of sexual violence.
This is not a Master/Rose story. Neither is it a Doctor/Rose story, really – it’s about power, not romance or sex. The Master is an attractive character in a lot of ways, and I think the fact that the Bad Wolf wipes the floor with him makes his attack a little easier to accept and forgive, but that doesn’t make him the dark, misunderstood romantic lead. He’s a slimy, cowardly fart face. I’m just saying.
Rose’s instincts told her the overly friendly businessman was No Good, but it took a push on the subject of ‘her friend’ to make her drop the pretext of politeness. She drank the lemonade, and though there were moments in which his charm repulsed her, she was charmed. This isn’t about assigning blame; I’m certainly not saying that what happened next was in any way her fault. That’s not how these things work. Still, a sort of horrible connection is established between them in this chapter, a connection that is only strengthened as their confrontation continues. They become enemies just as the Doctor and the Master are enemies, and while both characters are devoted to the Doctor in their own way, their conflict is centered on the Vortex – the possible cause of the Master’s torment, and the source of Rose’s true temptation.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This is for
amathela and marissa_214, who wanted a commentary on the first chapter of Do I Twist, Do I Fold. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely what they got. ++
This fic and the stories that follow it are the result of two things: a year and a half of academic research in fairy tales and mythology, and leaving Rogue Trader’s Voodoo Child on repeat for longer than is strictly healthy.
Before Do I Twist, Do I Fold, I’d never written anything – fan or original fiction – that could even remotely be described as ‘dark’. But I was reading so much about folktales, about the ways in which they evolved over time and how in different times the same story could act as an escapist fantasy, as a tool of moral instruction, or as a story intended to do nothing more than scare the shit out of you. It was far too easy to watch Who through this lens, to take Bad Wolf as something more than a pair of random words.
Rose is both the lost little girl and the Wolf, the victim and the devourer. This story was designed to explore this dichotomy, to show two kinds of strength and two kinds of weakness. The little girl is brave and stubborn, strong even when she is helpless. The Wolf is unimaginably powerful, and genocide was her first order of business. Rose would never have become the Bad Wolf if she hadn’t been brave and stubborn (and not a little crazy). The Bad Wolf had power no creature is meant to have, but that power was directed by the wishes of the girl she had been.
Sometimes Little Red Riding Hood saves herself. Sometimes she is saved by others, by a strong man with a knife or an ax. And sometimes, in some stories, she is devoured.
++
"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the spider to the fly;
"'Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you may spy.
The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,
And I have many curious things to show you when you are there."
"Oh no, no," said the little fly, "to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."
The Spider and the Fly, Mary Howitt
This poem? This poem rocks. Sometimes all you need for a story to click into place in your mind is the right combination of words, and sometimes those words belong to someone else. Temptation and seduction play a large part in this story, particularly in this first chapter. I love the idea of the Master as the spider – smooth-talking and sinister, so charming that you give in not in spite of the fact that you know better, but because you know better.
You remember. It’s that urge to fall.
++
The jump seat creaks as Rose slides down, curving her back against the worn fabric and reaching with her toes for the edge of the console. Her legs aren’t quite long enough, and she nearly falls to the grated floor.
This is the most exciting thing that has happened all day.
It’s fairly common in fic to suggest that the Doctor’s companions constantly crave a day off. Personally, I think they’re probably bored to tears on any day that doesn’t include explosions and giant alien brains.
With a sigh, she tucks her legs beneath her again and looks down to where the Doctor’s plimsoll-clad feet stick out from under the TARDIS console. His right foot is moving slightly, tapping to a rhythm she cannot hear.
This is entirely unimportant, but it is something of a reference to the Arch Angel Network and the idea that the Doctor might already be unconsciously aware of it.
She returns to her book.
After a few minutes, he breaks the silence, his voice muffled by wires and metal. “Mahna mahna.”
The Muppets. Make everything. Better.
(Also, I wanted the story to begin as lightly as possible. So. Singing.)
“Doo doo, do do do,” she replies without looking up.
This sort of thing is harder to write out than you might think. I’m pretty sure
jlrpuck needed to point out the correct ‘doo doo’ arrangement on this one.“Mahna mahna.”
“Doo doo doo do.”
“Mahna mahna.”
“Doo doo, do do do; do do do, do do do, do…seriously, though, how long is this going to take?”
He chuckles, and then she hears the snap of a sparking wire and a yelp. “Bored already?” he asks, the words garbled by what she imagines is the presence of his singed finger in his mouth.
Rose sets the book aside and hops off the jump seat. She crawls beneath the console until a low-hanging cluster of wires forces her to lie on her back and wriggle until she’s lying beside him, the glowing lights of the console’s underbelly in her face. A wire tickles her nose, and she brushes it away.
Aw, TARDIS guts. They so pretty.
“I’m not bored,” she says sulkily.
He glances away from the clump of unidentifiable something he’s struggling with and grins at her. “Yes, you are.”
His smug expression is in shadow but for the green and blue lights that shine around them. He makes a self-satisfied noise and tiny orange bulbs are added to the mix, and in the glow he looks at once unfamiliarly alien and much like he did that night at the carnival in Louisiana when he ate too much candy floss and whined for hours about his poor Time Lord tummy.
Ah, the inevitable tension between the mundane and the exotic, the familiar and the unknowable. Also, fluffy sugar stuff.
*nods wisely*
She must have an unusually contemplative look on her face,
I don’t know about you guys, but whenever I get my contemplative face on, people always ask me if I need to use the bathroom. Why is that, do you think?
because he nudges her with his elbow and asks, “Something bothering you?”
She doesn’t know how to verbalize this strange contradiction she’s lived with in the years she’s lived with him. He is not human, but sometimes he plays the game so well she thinks they both forget. She reaches over his chest and holds a tangle of wire steady for him as he fiddles with the insulation. “Nothing, really. I just…I always meant to ask, but…you’re telepathic?”
He stills. “Ah,” he says, and she knows he’s stalling, buying time to decide which truth to tell her. “Chloe Webber. I thought that might come up.”
“You’d said before, but I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not.”
“It’s not something I do very often. I don’t really…”
His reluctance is palpable in the close space between them, and she sighs. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
He turns his head and gives her a grateful smile. “Maybe later?”
She nods and knows that this is a conversation they will never have unless circumstances force them into it. She’s become accustomed to questions left unanswered.
This story is about Rose and the Wolf, but it is also about the Doctor and the Master, and the similarities between them. Telepathy is introduced here quite deliberately, as is that distance the Doctor maintains between himself and others, the necessary secrecy. Rose trusts the Doctor, and she loves him – but there are things she doesn’t know. Questions he does not and will not answer.
“Pizza!” he says suddenly, and she jumps, startled.
And pizza. This is also a story about pizza.
“Pizza?”
“Pizza,” he repeats with great authority, worming his way out from beneath the console with an ease she envies. She barely avoids knocking her head against a hunk of metal that resembles half a car bumper as she follows him. Once she finally makes it out, he helps her to her feet, his beaming face smudged with dust and grease. “Just what we need for a lazy Sunday afternoon in the TARDIS.” He begins setting coordinates, and she has to jump out of the way as he flies around the controls.
“It’s Sunday?” she asks, bemused.
“Figuratively speaking, Rose.” The TARDIS leaves the vortex with a jolt, and he throws an arm around her waist to keep her upright. When he loses his balance a moment later, she goes tumbling to the floor with him. On top of him.
Hey look! Potential for sexual tension.
“Ooh,” he moans. “Your knee is crushing my spleen.”
And I just killed it.
She rolls off him and laughs. “Your spleen is in your thigh?”
“One of them was,” he answers with a ridiculous grimace.
“You are so full of it.”
He glares at her as she pulls him to his feet. “Last time I try chivalry ‘round you, if this is how you repay me.”
“Baby.” She moves to the monitor and has to give it a bit of a smack before the picture appears. She looks out onto a busy city street. “Where are we?”
“New York City, half a block from Big Tony’s Heroes and Pizza.”
I am not from New York, but I had a number of good friends in high school who wer. We occasionally made the drive up for school trips and such, and one buddy of mine would drag me away from the group and take me to her favorite hole in the wall pizza place. It was not called Big Tony’s (I’m not entirely sure it had a name), but it was the inspiration for this setting. Also, I spent a considerable portion of my childhood in various greasy Baltimorean pizza parlors. I knew a lot of guys named Tony.
He stands behind her. “Which is in…” he points to the right side of the screen, “that direction.” He sighs wistfully. “Undoubtedly the best pizza in the universe. Well, except for those few weeks in 1984, of course.”
“Of course.” She watches people hurry by and shakes her head. “I can’t believe no one noticed the TARDIS materialize.”
He leans back against the console, rolling his eyes. “Please. This is Manhattan. Even without the TARDIS’ perception filters, I’d be amazed if anyone so much as gave us a second glace.”
New York is too cool for TARDIS.
(Sorry.)
“I suppose that means we’re not ordering delivery.”
“Not exactly,” he hedges, a look of slight apprehension appearing on his face. “Since I have repairs to finish, I thought…”
She folds her arms over her chest. “You thought?”
“Stop looking at me as if I’ve made you my intergalactic errand girl,” he says defensively. “You were bored. Think of it as an adventure.”
She doesn’t really mind, but has no intention of letting him know that. She sighs exasperatedly, hiding a smile. “All right, I’ll go. What do you want?”
He grins and rubs his hands together in anticipation. “Ooh! Extra large, extra cheese, extra sauce.” He pauses. “And pineapple.”
Pineapple on pizza is a big Northwest thing. I guess it’s fairly common in other places as well; this does not make it any less horrifying to me.
“No.”
“Rose—”
“Will they even have pineapple?”
His smile turns wicked. “Big Tony knows what I like.”
Up next: the Sixth Doctor ruins his diet when he takes on a young pastry artist named Anthony as his next companion!
“That’s…” She laughs, her nose wrinkling. “I’m not going to touch that one.”
“Wise choice.” They simply stand there for a moment, grinning at each other like the idiots they know themselves to be. It’s one of those rare moments when their fabled forever feels like the grates beneath their feet and the glow of time rotor – here and home and impossibly possible.
He is always the first to look away.
“Get a move on, then,” he says, shooing her toward the doors. “The perfect pizza pie waits for no man.” He pauses. “Or woman…human, girl-type thing.” He mimes cracking a whip and affects a broad American accent. “Git along, little doggie.”
“First off—” She points a finger at him. “That thing you just did? Never again. Second,” she holds out her empty hand, “money?”
“Right! Money!” He begins to search through his pockets, pulling out one random, inexplicable object after another. “I know I have some in here somewhere…”
“Probably not in the Russian nesting dolls,” she says dryly.
He winks at her. “Well, we can’t be sure until I check them all, can we?”
She sighs. “Doctor—”
“Aha! Good old American buckaroos.” He waves a handful of dollar bills in her face and then slaps them onto her open palm. “Go crazy. Buy yourself a lemonade.”
I do realize that British lemonade is not American lemonade. I leave it up to the reader to decide which he means.
She counts the money quickly, aware that attention to this sort of detail isn’t exactly his strong point. “Doctor, what year is it?”
He squints into the distance for a moment, as if doing complicated maths in his head. “2007,” he says finally. “August.”
Some fairly complicated ‘maths’ are required to figure out the New Who Earth timeline. I eventually went with 2007 as the year the Master spent chillin' at the Ministry of Defense and running his campaign. I think that works.
“Then I’m probably going to need about ten more dollars.”
“Really?” He frowns, but hands over the rest of the money. “You humans and your inflation.”
“You aliens and your pineapple,” she tosses over her shoulder with a grin as she makes her way to the TARDIS doors, tucking the money into her jeans pocket.
“Oi!” he calls after her. “I’ll have you know that plenty of people enjoy the tangy sweetness of—”
She closes the door behind her, cutting off the rest of his sentence. The humidity of a New York summer hits her like a wall, and she shrugs off her hoodie. She’s been here before with him, but it’s different now that she’s alone and so close to her own time. She grins and, heading to the right, lets herself get lost in the bustle of people around her. She doesn’t go far before she sees a somewhat faded sign for Big Tony’s.
A bell tinkles as she pushes the door open and enters. The place is mostly empty, a few patrons lingering in cracked red booths, a single businessman perched on a stool at the counter. An ancient air conditioner whines overhead, fighting a losing battle against the late afternoon heat. The heavy smell of tomatoes and grease is divine.
A short, wiry man behind the register gives her a sly half-grin. “Hey, kid. What can I get for you?”
It was a little weird, writing an American character for once. I almost gave him extra lines, just to stretch my legs a bit. So to speak.
She bites her lip, unsure of what to get for herself. “One…um…small pizza with mushrooms, please.” The Doctor won’t touch mushrooms (not anymore) so she’s sure to have it all to herself. “And one extra large with extra sauce, extra cheese, and…” She winces. “Pineapple.”
The man laughs. “Oh no, sweetheart. Not you, too.” He tilts his head to indicate the businessman sitting at the far end of the counter, who looks up from his phone call, gives her a brilliant grin, and wiggles his fingers at her in a silly sort of wave.
He is so evil, and I love writing him so much.
But seriously. What a ham.
She smiles and waves back, then turns to the man behind the register. “Sorry, it’s not me. My friend, he…he really likes pineapple.” She leans forward and confides, “I think it’s rubbish on pizza, myself.”
They share a conspiratorial grin as she pays, and he tells her the pies should be ready in twenty minutes. She perches on a stool to wait and feels herself begin to sweat in the close heat.
“I couldn’t help but notice,” says a smooth voice by her ear, “the presence of a fellow countrywoman.” She looks up, startled, to see that the businessman has appeared beside her. He smiles winningly. “May I join you?”
He sits before she can respond, dropping his plate to the counter and setting his mobile beside it, still open. His slice of pizza is untouched but for where she can see he’s picked off the pieces of pineapple.
So, here’s a question: did the Doctor make a note in the TARDIS log about what sort of pizza he’d ordered, or did the Master know the Doctor’s favorite?
Or do they simply have the same taste in pizza toppings?
“I’m only waiting for my pizzas,” she says, not wanting to be unfriendly but unwilling to encourage his attentions.
My mother once told me: “Women think they always have to be nice. We’re afraid to be rude, even when every instinct we have is telling us to kick the bastard in the nuts and run the other way. Your instincts are more important than being nice.”
My mother is a smart woman.
“My friend is expecting me.”
“Lucky man.” The words are casually, effortlessly flirtatious, and she notes the cut of his suit and the rich, subtle scent of his aftershave. Brilliant, she thinks. I’ve landed one with money. Her mother would be overjoyed. All Rose can think of is escape.
She’s about to make her excuses and wander the sidewalks while she waits, heat be damned, when he leans in, his elbow bumping hers where it rests on the counter. “You,” he says, voice low, “look a bit parched. New York summer getting you down?”
He says it in a flat, American accent, like he’s repeating an advert from television or the side of a bus. New York summer getting you down? Call Bargain Bob’s Heating and Cooling. It’s a breeze!
I should really have a job writing small business slogans, don’t you think?
She gives him a tight smile, shifting to put more distance between them.
And she’s still being polite.
“I’m fine.”
The businessman smiles back, and she feels herself relax slightly. She isn’t interested, but he is undeniably attractive, and sometimes it’s nice to be noticed. She meets his eyes and he stares back at her, his grin fading as she is drawn in by his gaze, brown and dark and somehow—
Familiar.
He snaps his head to the side, turning to lean over the counter that separates them from the kitchen. He stands up on the rungs of the stool, one hand nearly landing in his slice of pizza, the other covering his mobile. She hears a faint beep as he accidentally pushes a few buttons.
Temporarily disabling the perception shield the Arch Angel network has placed around them. See? Cell phones = evil.
“Garcon!” he cries, his tone playful. The wiry man who took her order turns to glare at him. “A lemonade for the lady.”
“Sure thing,” the wiry man grumbles. When he reaches over the partition to pass her the sweating Styrofoam cup, the businessman snatches it out of his hand.
So he can slip in the paralytic.
“Ta, Tony,” he says with a wink. “Put it on my tab.”
‘Big’ Tony rolls his eyes and returns to work. Rose smirks and accepts the lemonade when the stranger offers it with a flourish. “He doesn’t seem to like you much,” she says.
“I know! Isn’t it brilliant?” He props his chin up on his hand and watches her drink. The lemonade is delicious, if a bit too sweet for her taste. “I’ve been in here every day this week and nothing in my considerable arsenal of charm will wear him down. And I’ve tried everything – card tricks, pony rides, belly dancing…” He waggles his eyebrows at her. “Hypnosis.”
She giggles. “Hard to believe the belly dancing didn’t do the trick.”
“Well,” he drawls, and suddenly the look in his eyes is one of unambiguous seduction, his expression predatory and appraising. “I don’t like to brag, but I’ve got the hips for it.”
His voice is still light, still teasing, and she thinks she might be imagining the heat in his gaze. His eyes drop to her mouth, and she realises that she’s licking the sugar from her lips. She stops immediately and looks away.
So, at the moment the Master is quite straightforwardly playing the Wolf to Rose’s Little Red. He’s distracting her, charming her, and she’s tempted.
Little Red Riding Hood is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a very popular fairytale with those of the psychoanalytic persuasion. But even without Freud-goggles, this folktale is sorta kinda obviously about sex. Consumption, ruination, destruction – the Wolf devours Little Red, and in some versions of the story it is an explicit warning against promiscuity. I say promiscuity; I mean female sexuality.
To demonstrate, here’s the dramatic conclusion of Charles Perrault’s Le Petit Chaperon rouge:
"Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!"
"All the better to eat you up with."
And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her all up.
Moral: Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.
When the Master tells this story on the Valiant, he is the Wolf. You and I know better.
She doesn’t want to flirt with him. She wants to pick up her pizzas and return to the TARDIS, where she can spend a lazy not-Sunday not-afternoon with the Doctor, tinkering and laughing and leaving greasy fingerprints all over the console. Her heartbeat is too loud in her ears, and she thinks it must be the heat. She takes another long drink of her lemonade.
She can feel him staring at her, and she hates herself a little for the blush that warms her cheeks.
All right, let’s get this over with: the Master is sexy. He just is. Not so much when he’s, you know, decomposing (which happens an awful lot, oddly enough) but when he’s played by Delgado or Simm, he’s pretty hot stuff. (Sorry, Ainley. I love you like life, but I just can’t, okay? Your hotness is purely of the camp variety.)
The Master is sexy, and evil is a bit sexy, and Rose finds herself fascinated. Ensnared.
She feels vulnerable and unsettled, and the unwavering attention that was flattering a moment ago makes the skin at the back of her neck prickle.
THESE ARE YOUR INSTINCTS. LISTEN TO THEM.
His fingers curl around her wrist, cool and smooth against her skin, and he leans into her, his shoulder brushing hers. “I’m lying,” he whispers. “I love to brag.”
Rose pulls her hand away, moving it to her lap. “That’s enough.”
About damn time.
His grin turns harmless and he holds his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “So sorry. I must have misinterpreted.” He looks more delighted than contrite. “Suppose I got a bit carried away, didn’t I? Long way from home, miss the wife, you know how it is.” He chuckles to himself as if he’d made a particularly clever joke.
“It’s all right,” she says, though it isn’t.
Good grief, woman. NO MORE MR. NICE GIRL.
She tries to meet Tony’s gaze over the partition, silently urging him to hurry, but though he’s looking in her direction, he doesn’t seem to notice.
“You’re a long way from home yourself.”
“Just passing through,” she answers automatically, staring at the metal napkin dispenser in front of her and avoiding his eyes.
“You and your friend?” he asks casually, and something cold and hard settles low in her stomach, something her years of travel through time and space have taught her not to ignore.
“What about you?” she says, her voice every bit as nonchalant as his as she slowly, subtly slips her hand into her jeans pocket for her mobile. “Here on business?”
At the emphasis she places on that last word, he hoots and slaps his hand down on the counter. Startled, she turns to find him beaming at her like she’s his prize gourd at a farm fair.
That…is a very silly simile. I don’t know what I was thinking.
“Oh, look at you,” he croons. “I adore you.” Before she can react his fingers wrap around her wrist again, tightening like steel bands. “Oh dear. Is it too soon in our budding relationship for me to say things like that? Am I being forward?”
This story is about an emotional and physical assault with undertones of sexual violence, and the Master plays quite a bit with the conventional language of sex and relationships. Here he juxtaposes the violence of his actions with some rather quaint, old-fashioned sexual terminology.
“Let go of me right now,” she shouts, her voice thundering over the murmur of the other patrons and the hum of the air conditioner. No one so much as flinches. “Tony!” He doesn’t even look up from the dough he’s pounding.
The stranger tuts and shakes his head. “The apathy of the average American. Shocking, isn’t it?”
This is an allusion to the Kitty Genovese case.
She struggles, knocking over her stool in the process, but the grip on her hand is too strong. “What have you done? Why can’t they see me?”
He yanks her to him and she slides across the floor, just barely catching herself on the edge of the counter with her free hand. “Oh, Rose,” he sighs. “I expected better from you. Is that really all you’ve got?” His voice goes high and shrill. “What have you done? What’s your evil plan? Why are you so naughty?” He deflates a little, looking woeful. “I suppose it’s my own fault for getting my hopes up too high. I have been so looking forward to meeting you, the great Rose Tyler.” He savours the sound of her name, rolling the syllables over his tongue, and the intimacy of it makes her cold.
“It’s a perception filter, isn’t it? Makes us invisible?” she asks. He reacts as exactly as she’d hoped he would, rolling his eyes in the manner of someone used to suffering fools.
I have often found this to be true: play dumb, and people will say all sorts of things they wouldn’t otherwise.
Sometimes I don’t even have to play at it.
“What is he teaching you? Yes, Rose, the Doctor is a sexy, geeky little Albus Dumbledore who hides his TARDIS beneath a Cloak of Invisibility. Well spotted.”
It had to be done. I couldn’t resist.
He pulls hard on her wrist, wrenching her shoulder. She whimpers pitifully, and notes with satisfaction his expression of disdain. “A perception filter doesn’t make you invisible, you little twit, just unnoticeable. There’s no way it would hold up under the ruckus you’re making. With this, on the other hand,” and there it is, a tiny, unconscious motion of his chin to indicate something behind him – his mobile. “You could scream bloody murder and no one in the city would so much as lift a finger to help you. Which is pretty much exactly what is going to happen, happily enough.”
“The Doctor will save me,” she says breathily, counting on blonde hair and wide eyes to sell it.
When he bursts into laughter she makes her move, lunging for his mobile with her free hand. She’s fast but he’s far faster, his fist slamming into her abdomen, knocking the breath from her lungs. She sags to the floor, gasping, but he drags her upright, and one sharp movement of his elbow sends the mobile flying to the other end of the counter.
He ruffles her hair affectionately. “Aw, good girl. That’s more like it.”
“What are you?” she pants, aching and just barely holding back her panic.
“Well,” he says, grinning widely, “if your dear Doctor is Dumbledore, who do you think that makes me?”
“A snake in the grass?”
Yeah. Voldemort would make the Master cry for his mummy.
Draco Malfoy would make the Master cry for his mummy.
(There may be a fic in there, but I’m certainly not going to be the one to write it.)
“Behold, ladies and gentlemen!” he announces grandly to the oblivious room. “The bird can bring the banter!”
“You do like the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” She tries to sound aloof, unworried, but his bruising grip on her wrist has tightened and she knows there’s no way for her to reach the mobile in her pocket unnoticed.
He smiles again and the hungry, heated look in his eyes returns. “You quite enjoyed it yourself until a moment ago.”
“Well, I have a weakness for pretty boys,” she says dryly. “Ask anyone.”
“That,” he says with a smirk, “explains a lot.” He rubs his hand idly over his jaw. “I have to say, as regenerations go, I’m rather pleased with this one. Bit younger than I usually prefer, but hey – all the cool kids are doing it.”
She gapes at him, for a moment all danger forgotten. “But that’s impossible,” she whispers. “You can’t be.”
“What? Devastatingly handsome?” he asks, but the teasing light has gone out of his eyes. He shoves her against the counter, the edge digging into her back as he leans into her. “What? Can’t be what? A Time Lord?” His face is terrifyingly blank, his eyes huge and dark. “I landed on this dusty little slum of a planet and I couldn’t hear a thing from them, not a single blessed trickle of a thought. It was silence, silence you couldn’t imagine, nothing left but the pounding, the never-ending beat…” He laughs, and she can see the madness in his eyes. “So tell me, little human, where have all the Time Lords gone?”
Aw. Crazy Master and his Crazy Eyes.
She swallows. “They’re dead.”
He grins, his teeth flashing, and she recognizes denial when she sees it. “You’re wrong.”
He doesn’t believe it, and he won’t until he hears it from the Doctor himself.
“He’s the last.”
“You think so?” He grabs her other hand and presses both to his chest. Beneath the fine fabric of his shirt she can feel two hearts beating. The sensation is unbearably familiar, and for a moment she cannot separate the man she fears from the man she loves.
There’s more to this than Good Time Lord vs. Bad Time Lord. It’s not just that they were friends, or that now they’re the only two left. It’s something else, something we haven’t quite touched yet.
The rhythm in their chests, the pulse of their blood is the same, and it overwhelms her. “What do you think of that, my Rose?”
“Who are you?” she breathes, and he smiles at her with something like affection.
“Oh, I’m so very glad you asked.” He slides his cheeks past hers, skin brushing skin, until his lips reach her ear. “I am the Master, and you will obey me.”
++
And then she kicks his ass. The end.
No, but seriously, folks. I had a lot of worries about this fic when I realized that it wasn’t just going to prowl around my head unwritten like so many of the other darker things I’d thought up over the years. I promised myself that I would scrap the story if I thought for a second that it romanticized or fetishized the subtext of sexual violence.
This is not a Master/Rose story. Neither is it a Doctor/Rose story, really – it’s about power, not romance or sex. The Master is an attractive character in a lot of ways, and I think the fact that the Bad Wolf wipes the floor with him makes his attack a little easier to accept and forgive, but that doesn’t make him the dark, misunderstood romantic lead. He’s a slimy, cowardly fart face. I’m just saying.
Rose’s instincts told her the overly friendly businessman was No Good, but it took a push on the subject of ‘her friend’ to make her drop the pretext of politeness. She drank the lemonade, and though there were moments in which his charm repulsed her, she was charmed. This isn’t about assigning blame; I’m certainly not saying that what happened next was in any way her fault. That’s not how these things work. Still, a sort of horrible connection is established between them in this chapter, a connection that is only strengthened as their confrontation continues. They become enemies just as the Doctor and the Master are enemies, and while both characters are devoted to the Doctor in their own way, their conflict is centered on the Vortex – the possible cause of the Master’s torment, and the source of Rose’s true temptation.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
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Trying like crazy to place the Muppet song at the start, and failing,
I also think Simm as the Master is just so much hotness and brilliance. I will now await the next part.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YevYBsShxNs
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The Muppets. Make everything. Better.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH THAT REFERENCE HAS BEEN **BUGGING** ME. THANK YOU.
On another note, I am now in the process of teaching my new kitten about fairy tales. We watched Beauty and the Beast together last night. He was just entertained by the Mahna Mahna song, so I think next might be the Muppets.
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This is not a Master/Rose story. Neither is it a Doctor/Rose story, really – it’s about power, not romance or sex.
OK, you've just identified something I seriously love about your writing. Fanfic so often reads as wish-fulfillment, or 'wouldn't it be hot if', and yes, it gives authors and readers a chance to explore their fantasies in relatively risk-free ways, but it can get sketchy in a heartbeat, especially when it's well written and convincing. I love the way your writing addresses this language. I also love the way your characters have confusing and sketchy moments, (confused-Rose here, corridor-Doctor in "Goodnight") and you just let them speak for themselves.
... I probably shouldn't have tried to tackle this subject with 'Mahna Mahna' stuck in my head. O.o
There’s more to this than Good Time Lord vs. Bad Time Lord. It’s not just that they were friends, or that now they’re the only two left. It’s something else, something we haven’t quite touched yet.
!! *wants MOAR*
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And I think it's the fact that you went out of your way to be realistic about the subject (not romanticizing it in any way) that is the exact reason it is so brilliant. Dark stuff, as it should be.
And delightfully silly commentary to make up for a crappy day, to boot:)
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Thanks!
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Thanks for the commentary! It was entertaining and insightful. The last few sentences of the commentary are terrifically intriguing. I hope "Of Monsters" is coming along!
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Have I mentioned I love this fic, and your commentaries are awesome?
It's also such a relief to see the Master characterized as suave and charming and hot, yes, but also a creepy powerhungry bastard. Because he's just not a good person, with or without the boogying to Scissor Sisters or sexual tension with Ten.
Also:
Also, I spent a considerable portion of my childhood in various greasy Baltimorean pizza parlors.
I must hear more about this, for I am in Baltimore right now and the closest I've come to greasy pizza parlors is Campusfood.com.
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I love your use of Mahna Mahna - I didn't know that song until last year, but it became a running thing between my exboyfriend and I, and I can so picture Rose and Ten doing that and it makes me really happy.
I was really wary when I went into this, because I am sometimes not so good with dark-with-associations-of-sexual-assault but I really felt like you handled this quite well: it's disturbing and uncomfortable and he is a bastard, and yet while she is a victim she is utterly not a victim. In her own, messed up, way.
I was so transfixed by the way that they made her, the lost little girl, into the Big Bad Wolf, and all the implications of that, and honestly this series of yours is the first I have seen really deal with it and I adore it to pieces.
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Now, I'm so glad you had a chance to do a commentary on it. Now, I'll definitely have to keep an eye on your lj to see what other work of yours I've been a fan on, but never realised who it was who wrote it. :D