Fic: Honeymooners (2/2)
20/1/11 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neveralarchContinued from here
---
When Kalid came to this time, he was still in the same body. A small mercy, given that he was also strapped down to a medical bed.
"Where did you even get this?" He tugged at the restraints on his arms and found them quite immovable.
"I had it made," said the Rani, somewhere behind him. Kalid couldn't manage to turn his head enough to find her. "It's for restraining live subjects."
"I have no intention of being your subject, live or not," said Kalid. He should have known. It had only been a matter of time before the Rani lost interest in him as a person and decided he'd be more entertaining as an experiment.
"Oh, I have no intention of making you a subject, either. Yet. You're useful to me, Kal." The Rani's tongue slid around the unasked for endearment and Kalid flinched. "You're useful to me as you are - a brilliant, plodding engineer and sociologist. But it's your disloyal tendencies which have me worried."
Ah. The CIA.
"I wasn't going to-" Kalid began, and then stopped, realizing that would be a bit too much to believe. He tried again. "I don't know what you saw-"
"Kal, no one's blaming you. I might be tempted myself, if I weren't in a more difficult position. That's why I need to make it impossible for the CIA to use you against me."
Terrifying visions of lobotomization and zombification flitted through Kalid's mind. Some of it must have shown on his face, because the Rani clicked her tongue.
"No, not that. Actually, I'm asking you to marry me."
Kalid's mind actually shut down this time. Perhaps that was her plan.
"What?"
"It's illegal to try and get a bondpartner to testify against his or her spouse," explained the Rani. "An archaic law, but one that is scrupulously followed by the CIA, given a few past incidents."
"I don't want to marry you," said Kalid.
The Rani came into view at last, scowling and holding a thin piece of metal between two fingers.
"Regrettable. Well, plan B is that I drill your head open and implant this control strip." The Rani rummaged in a toolbox and produced a tiny drill. "You'll experience some loss of creativity, but you didn't have much in the first place, so-"
"You're bluffing," said Kalid, uncertainly.
"As you say," replied the Rani. She turned the drill on and brought it to bear just above Kalid's right ear.
"Wait, yes, whatever you say, please turn off the drill," babbled Kalid. The whirring of the drill drowned out his voice in his own head, but the Rani brought it away, so apparently he'd been understandable.
"You accept my proposal?" asked the Rani.
"I'm bleeding, you mad bitch," said Kalid, which was a yes.
---
The ceremony was in a small townhall on a backwater planet. They'd picked it out together, though with more of an eye toward its diplomatic status with Gallifrey than anything else. The important thing was that the marriage would be legal back home. They used their real names and everything, though Kalid grimaced as he gave the clerk yet another name that he no longer recognized as his own. The Rani seemed to have no such qualms.
"Do you take this man to be your lawfully held mating partner," read the official off of a piece of paper, "to bear your clutch of eggs and provide sustenance from his own flesh in times of need?"
"Yes," said the Rani. Kalid felt a bit queasy. He suspected the Rani of having done more research without him – this planet had been her suggestion, come to think of it.
"And do you take this woman to be your lawfully held mating partner, to carry you on the pilgrimage to the holy city and bury you there if need be?"
"Yes," said Kalid.
"You may rub feelers," said the official, and then clicked, confused. "Or mouths, I suppose. Is that what you do?"
"No," said Kalid.
"No," said the Rani.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
"Perhaps we could shake hands," said Kalid.
They did.
---
"I wouldn't expect anything... intimate," said the Rani, later that night. They were having dinner on the TARDIS, both of them being unwilling to risk the local food after all that talk of eating the mate's body.
"Believe me, my dear, you're hardly my type," said Kalid. He had thought about it, of course, especially after the kissing suggestion. But the thought actually made him tense and shaky with what he was sure was palpable dread.
"We'll try for a new planet tomorrow, shall we?" he said, changing the subject. The Rani nodded and that seemed to be an end to the discussion.
---
The new planet was desert and empty sand. Kalid stared around the pit of dunes they had landed in and went back in to the TARDIS.
"It's hot out there," he said to the Rani.
"I don't really care," she said. She poured a chemical into a beaker, stared at it for a moment, and then drank it.
"There’s not anything for you to experiment on," said Kalid. He wanted to move on, to leave.
"I'm working on myself, at the moment," said the Rani. "Go amuse yourself, why don't you?"
Kalid made a face at her back, and went off into one of the storage rooms to find some robes that would shield him from the sun. He went outside and sat down in the shade of the TARDIS, thinking.
It was hotter on this planet than it had ever been on Gallifrey, hotter than in Mumbai. But the shade did something, and Kalid needed time away from the Rani and her experiments. Her reliance on chemicals to make even her own body bend to her whim.
Kalid's own experience with the War Games had shown him that mechanistically inducing altered minds was apt to fail. How different was the Rani's method of control from that of the War Lord's scientists, in kind if not in detail? But she wouldn’t listen to him when he suggested different methods.
There were easier ways to do things. He'd learned in school about the power of the Time Lord to control other minds - they'd never done much with it, but the Doctor, at least, had gained enough knowledge to be able to make others somewhat suggestible with the aid of a prop. Koschei had never really been interested.
Kalid might be. He thought back, trying to recall what he had been taught and shown.
There was some life on the planet. Primitive, and not wholly sentient, but alive. Kalid saw the burrows and the tracks, and, as time wore on and the sun sank, the aliens themselves began to wander out. They were small creatures, somewhat like the Earth's rabbit, but with fine, iridescent scales rather than fur. They crawled close to Kalid as he sat still, perhaps lulled into thinking he was another strange immobile object like the TARDIS.
Kalid waited until the bravest of the aliens was nearly touching him and then reached out a hand to catch at it. It struggled, powerful legs kicking at his arm, claws rasping on his bracelet as the other aliens scattered for their burrows. Kalid ignored the movement and held the alien’s eyes with his own gaze. The alien stilled, not stiff, just not reacting, and let him pick it up fully in both hands. Its scales were smooth and cool to Kalid’s touch. But his control was fleeting, and soon it was squeaking and scrabbling at him again, the hypnotic control gone. Kalid sighed and let the alien go.
It suddenly struck him that he was tired and hungry and cold. The dark had crept up on him as he’d thought, and the lingering heat of the sand was almost gone. Kalid stood up, stiffly, and pushed the TARDIS door back open. He went in, stripping off his overrobe and depositing it on the chair set next to the door for that purpose.
"Kal!" The Rani's voice called from within the TARDIS at the sound of the door closing again.
"What?"
"Don't go anywhere," shouted the Rani.
Kalid immediately wanted to bolt for it, but that would probably be unwise. Perhaps more unwise than staying.
When the Rani appeared, she was flushed and sweating, strange for Gallifreyans in general, stranger still for her.
"I need to have sex with you," said the Rani.
"So you can communicate whatever disease it is you've given yourself?" asked Kalid, in alarm. "No."
"It's just a hormone imbalance," said the Rani. "I'll fix it momentarily, once I've regained my concentration." She swayed closer, her face screwed up and tense.
"What? What were you doing?" Kalid backed away until his back hit the closed doors.
"I was trying to raise my energy." The Rani was now plastered up against Kalid in a very un-Rani-like way. He tried to peel her off, but couldn't quite manage it.
"And you raised, what, your libido?"
"It worked on human subjects, but our biochemistry must be more different than I had thought." The Rani plucked at Kalid's shirt. "I require a shared orgasm before I can get back to work. Just to take the edge off."
"I'm really not interested," said Kalid, "in having sex with a deranged biologist who is apt to break me down for parts once we're done. You're the proverbial black widow."
The Rani narrowed her eyes at him.
"I think I have an oversized black coat and a strap-on in the auxiliary lab."
"I don't know what you're insinuating," said Kalid, quickly. "But I don't-"
"I may even have your old cuffs as well," said the Rani.
What Kalid should have done is ask why she had those things. What he should have done was offer to find her a prostitute as soon as possible. He did not, he reminded himself, like the Rani.
Her hips jerked against him demandingly, and Kalid decided he didn’t have to like her.
"I'm going to have my eyes closed the whole time," he warned.
"Visual contact isn't necessary for physical stimulation. If you like,” the Rani said, as if conferring a great favor, “I'll do you face down."
If he was going to be living with a deranged biologist who dismissed his plans and used him only for his technical expertise, he might as well get something out of it.
---
It took the Rani five more hormone imbalances before she finally had her biological chemistry ticking along as she wanted. She offered to work out a regimen for Kalid as well, but he demurred. It wasn't that he hadn't, well, enjoyed his encounters with the Rani. Even his reacquaintance with the medical bed had been less disturbing than he had anticipated, and the Rani could actually be very imaginative about the use of straps.
But Kalid was tired, and sore, and the thought of altering his body chemistry to suit the Rani's plans was frankly terrifying.
The Rani let it go and they jumped from planet to planet. They had no clear idea of where they were going - Kalid's control of the TARDIS was impeccable, but it wasn't as if they actually knew much about the coordinates of the universe outside of Gallifrey. And Gallifrey was the last place on which they wanted to arrive.
On each planet with life, Kalid practiced his hypnotism. He got an Ice Warrior to ignore his presence, convinced a Peladonian to share her meal, and nearly got knocked out by an aptly named Refusian. Not one of his finer moments, and, in retrospect, hypnotizing an invisible alien was probably a step beyond him at the moment. But the art was coming along.
Finally they fetched up on a tertiary planet of the Monan cluster.
"The technology will be amazing," said the Rani. "I can finally get on with some of the experiments that I've had to put off because of lack of equipment."
"I thought our plan was to find a small planet and be inconspicuous," said Kalid. "Not invade a major temporal power."
"We can be inconspicuous," said the Rani.
"They're blue," said Kalid. “We’re not even on the spectrum of possible Monan coloration, never mind the body shape.”
“You worry too much,” said the Rani, and ignored Kalid when he seethed.
Kalid’s annoyance was made worse by the fact that the Rani was, by and large, right. She was able to proceed just as she had in Mumbai - this planet was undergoing rapid economic expansion, drawing in immigration and rendering a pair of off-worlders more or less unremarkable. The Rani found a laboratory that would hire her as a contractor, leaving Kalid to skulk around and practice his hypnotism. The Monans were a strong-willed people, and a challenge, but he thought he was getting the hang of it. He had to, after his first few attempts ended up with him being held by the authorities for being 'generally creepy.'
"I was just sitting across from him on the transit system," he tried to explain to the officer during one of these predicaments.
"Staring at him," said the officer, unimpressed. "We don't approve of foreign males coming here, picking fights with our men." She narrowed her eyes. "Or stealing them off."
"Madam, I intended nothing of the kind."
"Where's your residency permit, that's what I'd like to know," said the officer. She tapped a few queries into her datapad. "Ship docking information, even?"
"Ah." Kalid caught the officer's eyes with his. "You do not need to see my information."
"I-" The officer hesitated. "What?"
"Obviously this was a misunderstanding," said Kalid, smoothly. It was easier when you provided a rationale for what you were doing. "In any case, the man in question is now safe from my so-called intentions. Better to release me and spare yourself the paperwork."
"There is a lot of paperwork," agreed the officer, hazily. She shook herself. "All right, get out of here. Can't have you wasting my time."
Kalid smiled and walked out. If he ever managed to rule a place, offenders would surely not be dismissed simply for lack of willingness to deal with the forms of getting them into the system. But, for now, it was very convenient to have an easy handhold into the minds of the enforcers of the law.
---
"Where have you been?" demanded the Rani, when Kalid was finally back at the TARDIS.
"In jail," he replied. "Momentarily."
"What? And you thought to lecture me about conspicuousness-"
"What's got you in such a foul mood?" Kalid was getting better at reading the Rani, not that it was hard to tell when she was angry. He could tell when she wasn’t angry with him, that was the point.
"Surprise inspection," said the Rani. She ran her fingers through her hair, frowning. "They're wondering where a few components have gotten to. A few staff members."
"And, naturally, they've gotten to your lab."
"Naturally. I've got to step up pace on the work," mumbled the Rani.
"Mind you don't cause another India incident," cautioned Kalid.
---
There was another India incident. The ensuing giant monster rampaged for an hour before the CIA agents arrived and cut the Rani and Kalid off from escape.
“I am incredibly frustrated with the way you don’t listen to anything I say,” said Kalid, right before they gave themselves up rather than be shot.
"Remember," growled the Rani, as they were dragged off, "they can't make us say anything. Our testimony's off limits."
"I wouldn't have to give testimony if you weren't fundamentally incapable of not creating ravening beasts," said Kalid, but the Rani was out of hearing range and the retort was rather lost on the CIA agent pinning Kalid's arms.
---
Kalid was left in a cell for a few long spans. He spent most of the time cursing the Rani's idiotic fixation on giant animals and his own inability to strike out on his own. After a while the anger and frustration wore him out and he just sat, looking unseeing at the opposite wall. It was uncomfortably like the last time he had been in CIA custody, and Kalid swore to himself not to regenerate while he was here. He couldn't let them make him docile again, even if docile wasn't the same as obedient.
"Conducting your experiments on a temporal power's world may not have been exactly wise," said a voice, the door opening. Kalid looked up to stare at a thin-faced Time Lord he vaguely recognized. The Doctor's older brother, leagues ahead of them at school. They'd met perhaps five times, spoken fewer than a dozen words to each other. He had a pad of paper and an amiable expression.
"I am Ambassador Braxiatel," said the man, smiling. "I've been advised that you no longer respond to the name by which I used to hear you referred to."
"It's Kalid, now," said Kalid. He didn’t smile back. "What can I do for the Ambassador?"
"Well now." Braxiatel pulled up a chair and sat down, fussing with his robes. "What I'd like is for you to give me a complete account of your movements since your escape with," Braxiatel hesitated and glanced down at his pad, "the Rani. A lot of aliases involved in the renegade business, aren't there? Well, I suppose you didn't start the trend. Anyway, we need to go back in and repair the time lines that you two have undoubtedly disrupted."
"We didn't do anything," said Kalid, before he could stop himself.
"I'm sure you thought so," said Braxiatel, soothingly. "But there's a reason why unlicensed time travel is proscribed - so easy to slip up and, oh, experiment on someone who was supposed to be important."
"I won't tell you anything," said Kalid. "I'd be mad to give you evidence for my own prosecution and you're not supposed to ask me to incriminate my," he gritted his teeth, "spouse."
"Technically I cannot ask you to betray your bond-partner to the authorities," agreed Braxiatel. "But, if I may, I will step out of my position as ambassador and into my position as the elder brother of your," Braxiatel paused, "shall we say, best friend?"
Kalid waited for the punch line.
"Kalid, the papers for a divorce would be simplicity itself to file, especially as the two of you were married in a non-Gallifreyan ceremony. And afterward, if you were willing to give the Rani to us, I believe I could extract a pardon for you on the grounds that you were working under duress."
"I-" The Rani would kill him. Somehow.
"I have the papers here." Braxiatel unfolded a thin sheaf of documents from between two pages of his pad.
"Where do I sign?" asked Kalid. The Rani wasn't here, after all. What could she do?
---
It turned out that the Rani could do quite a lot. She had treated Kalid with some kind of immensely sophisticated drug - presumably she had put it in his food since Kalid had refused all offers of her mind-altering chemicals. No sooner had Kalid confessed everything to Braxiatel then he was choking, his throat seizing up as Braxiatel called for help. The next few hours passed in a haze, his regeneration taking a now-familiar toll on his new body. When Kalid came back to himself, he was in a bed, in a comfortable room rather than in a cell.
And he had meant not to regenerate while he was here. He could only hope that they hadn't had time to manipulate the change. He felt angry at the Rani and his situation, which was probably a good sign.
"Hello?" he croaked.
"You're awake." A Gallifreyan guard came over to look at him. "Hn. I'm to tell you that you're in custody of Lord Gilviger of the High Council, awaiting your trial."
"Trial?" Kalid's brain whirred. "I made a deal with Ambassador Braxiatel-"
"I'm not aware of any deal," said the guard. "In any case, Brax hardly has any authority to make a deal with a renegade, especially one who escaped from his last criminal sentence."
Kalid groaned and closed his eyes. Betrayed. He heard the guard walk away, humming tunelessly.
Kalid tried to sit up and managed it, wobbling. He clutched at the stand beside the bed to support himself, and his fingers bounced off something.
The key to his TARDIS.
Kalid stared. He wasn't wearing the clothes he'd been captured in, not anymore. They'd been replaced with the damned CIA prisoner's uniform again. Even his bracelets had been taken, slipped off of thinner wrists. Kalid looked around to check if any of his other possessions were there, but no. Just the key.
Someone wanted him to make a break for it.
It could be a trap, but after dying once and now heading to CIA confinement yet again, Kalid could hardly think of how things could get worse.
"Guard," he said, faintly. "Guard?"
"Yes, what is it now?"
"I think I'm having a bad reaction to my regeneration- ah! My vision's going black-"
"Oh, Rassilon," groaned the guard, and hurried over. He reached out a hand to Kalid and was grabbed, Kalid lunging forward to grasp the contact points at his temple.
"Calm yourself," he said, soothingly, as the guard struggled. "You are under my control. I am Kalid, your master-" no, that sounded wrong, he needed to be more sure of himself- "I am the Master, and you will obey me." The guard hesitated, eyes rolling back, and the Master pressed his advantage. "You will obey me."
A Gallifreyan mind was more difficult than anything he'd ever faced, but the power of his regeneration was coursing through his veins, radiating from his fingertips. The Master laughed, enjoying the rolling sound of it, and the guard stiffened and stopped fighting.
"Good," said the Master. "Now. You will escort me to the TARDIS that I was captured with. It is here?"
"Yes," said the guard, dully. "It is in the docking bay."
"You suspect that there is something dangerous hidden in there. You wish for me to show it to you, so you can destroy it."
"Yes," said the guard.
"Good. Let us go." The Master let go of the guard gingerly, worried that the hypnosis wouldn't hold. There was no outburst, however, and the Master wobbled out of the bed, supported by the guard under the guise of making sure he would be unable to escape.
The corridors and the docking bay were eerily deserted, raising the Master's suspicions. Whoever was easing his way certainly had the authority to make it very easy indeed. The TARDIS door swung open as smoothly as ever, and the Master briefly checked for traps before shutting the guard outside.
No one had even modified the TARDIS to keep it from dematerializing. Instead, the TARDIS was pristine, the Rani's chemicals and experiments intact. There was a set of coordinates already fit into the console. Earth, he could see that much. Part of his hidden ally's agenda, no doubt, but the Master hardly had time to figure out a different destination. A random choice might turn out to be just as bad as this preprogrammed one.
He set the TARDIS off, her hum around him pulling another deep laugh from his throat.
---
"Braxiatel! Ambassador Braxiatel!" Lord Gilviger rounded the corner as fast as his elderly body could take him, just catching a glimpse of the TARDIS as it disappeared.
"Oh dear, your prisoner has escaped," murmured Braxiatel, coming out of the shadows.
"While you stood by," snapped Gilviger. He walked up to the hypnotized guard and grabbed his chin, staring into his eyes in an effort to awaken him.
"You are mistaken," said Braxiatel, complacently. "I was occupied, until recently, with other matters. I arrived only moments before you did."
"I will have words with you, you upstart-"
"The Master," groaned the guard. Gilviger released his chin.
"There, there, son," he said, patting the guard on the shoulder. "It's all right."
"His eyes, I- the Master..."
"Is that what he's calling himself, now?" Braxiatel shook his head. "Well, I think this, shall we say, security failure calls for an investigation at the highest level, don't you?"
"Ambassador Braxiatel," hissed Gilviger.
"I'm afraid I shall be busy warning possible targets of the Master's of his escape," said Braxiatel. "Though I doubt I shall be needed, given that my involvement in this case ended some time ago."
"How do you know where he's going?" Gilviger looked even more suspicious than before.
"Oh, I may have let the location of the Doctor slip during our interview. I hardly thought it important at the time, but, now..." Braxiatel hesitated. "You are aware, of course, in the part that the Doctor played in last bringing the Master into custody."
"I'm aware that you had something to do with the Master's escape from custody," said Gilviger, venomously.
"A harsh accusation. I should like to hear it repeated before the Council," said Braxiatel. "If the Council will still listen to you."
"Why would you do this?" asked Gilviger, sticking out his chin. "You're not a criminal or a renegade yourself, or a man who would blithely give aid to one."
"Hypothetically," said Braxiatel. He glanced at the guard and drew close to Gilviger, a smile playing on his lips. "There are those who are somewhat unsatisfied with your work for the Council, aren't there, my lord? I've mentioned to you that your current inquiry into unsanctioned uses of time travel technology is completely unwarranted."
"You're connected to that as well, are you?" Gilviger drew himself up, out of his habitual slouch. "I'll get you for this, you jumped-up-"
"I'm sure," said Braxiatel, and strode away.
---
The Master stood in front of his mirror, enjoying look of the charcoal Nehru suit he had recovered from the wardrobe, a retro relic of his last stint on Earth. The time he had landed in was only a little earlier than 1985, just enough so that the suit might be fashionable again. It fit well - what had been loose on his last body slightly more fitted on this one.
The Master had a high forehead, an olive complexion, and a passable beard. Acceptable. He also had no Rani, which was the bonus to end all bonuses.
Or, at least, he hoped he had no Rani. Whoever had allowed him to escape may have also-
The Master hurried to the controls. It was the work of a moment to set the TARDIS scanning for other Time Lord presences, a useful relic of its time as a CIA craft. The search turned up another biosignature, and the Master laughed weakly as he realized that it only made sense. Of course. The coordinates had already been input because his abettor had wished to arrange a meet-up with his ex-other half.
She'd kill him. Again.
As an afterthought, the Master hit the button that displayed the full signature of the Time Lord in question.
The Rani had regenerated as a man. Or, no. Hm.
The Master smirked, sudden and glad. It was his other nemesis. The Doctor might be a nuisance, but he was immeasurably less dangerous than the Rani.
Time to make a plan. He'd do things right, this time, with careful research, powerful allies, and absolutely no monsters getting out of control.
The Master rubbed his hands together and started the scanners on a search for nearby alien life.
---
Braxiatel had hoped the Doctor would be gratified that Braxiatel had taken the time to warn him about the Master. Instead he was just being confused, and, in consequence, insulting.
"The Master?" The Doctor tugged on a white curl, considering. "No, don't know anyone of that name. You've spent too much time working for the Council, Brax, it's rotting your brain."
"You may know him by another name," said Braxiatel. "Kalid?"
"No."
"Koschei, then. The War Chief."
"Why didn't you say so," said the Doctor. He looked up at the sky with exasperation. "You can hardly expect me to keep track of all those names."
"No, I suppose not," said Braxiatel, dryly. "He's coming here, under whichever name he chooses. I have the utmost faith in your ability to contain him."
"Oh, you do, do you?" The Doctor made a face, still staring stubbornly up at the sky. "Last I heard, he was off with Ushas, and now you tell me that he is here, alone, obviously dangerous, and ready to threaten Earth. And you have faith in my ability to contain him."
"Distract him, anyway," admitted Braxiatel. "Now, my presence is needed elsewhere." He began to recede back into the vortex, headed to the Council's emergency session. Even if his testimony wasn’t needed to push along Gilviger’s fall, he did want to be there to watch.
"Now you listen here," called the Doctor, after him, "I can see what you're doing! And let me say that I don't appreciate it!"
Braxiatel was gone, and the Doctor turned to consider the door that the Master had left booby-trapped after breaking into the research tower. He needed to get in there somehow, and he was wasting precious time in thought - it had been a long time since he had faced a rival of his own caliber, a very long time indeed.
"No," muttered the Doctor, to himself. "I don't appreciate it at all."
---
When Kalid came to this time, he was still in the same body. A small mercy, given that he was also strapped down to a medical bed.
"Where did you even get this?" He tugged at the restraints on his arms and found them quite immovable.
"I had it made," said the Rani, somewhere behind him. Kalid couldn't manage to turn his head enough to find her. "It's for restraining live subjects."
"I have no intention of being your subject, live or not," said Kalid. He should have known. It had only been a matter of time before the Rani lost interest in him as a person and decided he'd be more entertaining as an experiment.
"Oh, I have no intention of making you a subject, either. Yet. You're useful to me, Kal." The Rani's tongue slid around the unasked for endearment and Kalid flinched. "You're useful to me as you are - a brilliant, plodding engineer and sociologist. But it's your disloyal tendencies which have me worried."
Ah. The CIA.
"I wasn't going to-" Kalid began, and then stopped, realizing that would be a bit too much to believe. He tried again. "I don't know what you saw-"
"Kal, no one's blaming you. I might be tempted myself, if I weren't in a more difficult position. That's why I need to make it impossible for the CIA to use you against me."
Terrifying visions of lobotomization and zombification flitted through Kalid's mind. Some of it must have shown on his face, because the Rani clicked her tongue.
"No, not that. Actually, I'm asking you to marry me."
Kalid's mind actually shut down this time. Perhaps that was her plan.
"What?"
"It's illegal to try and get a bondpartner to testify against his or her spouse," explained the Rani. "An archaic law, but one that is scrupulously followed by the CIA, given a few past incidents."
"I don't want to marry you," said Kalid.
The Rani came into view at last, scowling and holding a thin piece of metal between two fingers.
"Regrettable. Well, plan B is that I drill your head open and implant this control strip." The Rani rummaged in a toolbox and produced a tiny drill. "You'll experience some loss of creativity, but you didn't have much in the first place, so-"
"You're bluffing," said Kalid, uncertainly.
"As you say," replied the Rani. She turned the drill on and brought it to bear just above Kalid's right ear.
"Wait, yes, whatever you say, please turn off the drill," babbled Kalid. The whirring of the drill drowned out his voice in his own head, but the Rani brought it away, so apparently he'd been understandable.
"You accept my proposal?" asked the Rani.
"I'm bleeding, you mad bitch," said Kalid, which was a yes.
---
The ceremony was in a small townhall on a backwater planet. They'd picked it out together, though with more of an eye toward its diplomatic status with Gallifrey than anything else. The important thing was that the marriage would be legal back home. They used their real names and everything, though Kalid grimaced as he gave the clerk yet another name that he no longer recognized as his own. The Rani seemed to have no such qualms.
"Do you take this man to be your lawfully held mating partner," read the official off of a piece of paper, "to bear your clutch of eggs and provide sustenance from his own flesh in times of need?"
"Yes," said the Rani. Kalid felt a bit queasy. He suspected the Rani of having done more research without him – this planet had been her suggestion, come to think of it.
"And do you take this woman to be your lawfully held mating partner, to carry you on the pilgrimage to the holy city and bury you there if need be?"
"Yes," said Kalid.
"You may rub feelers," said the official, and then clicked, confused. "Or mouths, I suppose. Is that what you do?"
"No," said Kalid.
"No," said the Rani.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
"Perhaps we could shake hands," said Kalid.
They did.
---
"I wouldn't expect anything... intimate," said the Rani, later that night. They were having dinner on the TARDIS, both of them being unwilling to risk the local food after all that talk of eating the mate's body.
"Believe me, my dear, you're hardly my type," said Kalid. He had thought about it, of course, especially after the kissing suggestion. But the thought actually made him tense and shaky with what he was sure was palpable dread.
"We'll try for a new planet tomorrow, shall we?" he said, changing the subject. The Rani nodded and that seemed to be an end to the discussion.
---
The new planet was desert and empty sand. Kalid stared around the pit of dunes they had landed in and went back in to the TARDIS.
"It's hot out there," he said to the Rani.
"I don't really care," she said. She poured a chemical into a beaker, stared at it for a moment, and then drank it.
"There’s not anything for you to experiment on," said Kalid. He wanted to move on, to leave.
"I'm working on myself, at the moment," said the Rani. "Go amuse yourself, why don't you?"
Kalid made a face at her back, and went off into one of the storage rooms to find some robes that would shield him from the sun. He went outside and sat down in the shade of the TARDIS, thinking.
It was hotter on this planet than it had ever been on Gallifrey, hotter than in Mumbai. But the shade did something, and Kalid needed time away from the Rani and her experiments. Her reliance on chemicals to make even her own body bend to her whim.
Kalid's own experience with the War Games had shown him that mechanistically inducing altered minds was apt to fail. How different was the Rani's method of control from that of the War Lord's scientists, in kind if not in detail? But she wouldn’t listen to him when he suggested different methods.
There were easier ways to do things. He'd learned in school about the power of the Time Lord to control other minds - they'd never done much with it, but the Doctor, at least, had gained enough knowledge to be able to make others somewhat suggestible with the aid of a prop. Koschei had never really been interested.
Kalid might be. He thought back, trying to recall what he had been taught and shown.
There was some life on the planet. Primitive, and not wholly sentient, but alive. Kalid saw the burrows and the tracks, and, as time wore on and the sun sank, the aliens themselves began to wander out. They were small creatures, somewhat like the Earth's rabbit, but with fine, iridescent scales rather than fur. They crawled close to Kalid as he sat still, perhaps lulled into thinking he was another strange immobile object like the TARDIS.
Kalid waited until the bravest of the aliens was nearly touching him and then reached out a hand to catch at it. It struggled, powerful legs kicking at his arm, claws rasping on his bracelet as the other aliens scattered for their burrows. Kalid ignored the movement and held the alien’s eyes with his own gaze. The alien stilled, not stiff, just not reacting, and let him pick it up fully in both hands. Its scales were smooth and cool to Kalid’s touch. But his control was fleeting, and soon it was squeaking and scrabbling at him again, the hypnotic control gone. Kalid sighed and let the alien go.
It suddenly struck him that he was tired and hungry and cold. The dark had crept up on him as he’d thought, and the lingering heat of the sand was almost gone. Kalid stood up, stiffly, and pushed the TARDIS door back open. He went in, stripping off his overrobe and depositing it on the chair set next to the door for that purpose.
"Kal!" The Rani's voice called from within the TARDIS at the sound of the door closing again.
"What?"
"Don't go anywhere," shouted the Rani.
Kalid immediately wanted to bolt for it, but that would probably be unwise. Perhaps more unwise than staying.
When the Rani appeared, she was flushed and sweating, strange for Gallifreyans in general, stranger still for her.
"I need to have sex with you," said the Rani.
"So you can communicate whatever disease it is you've given yourself?" asked Kalid, in alarm. "No."
"It's just a hormone imbalance," said the Rani. "I'll fix it momentarily, once I've regained my concentration." She swayed closer, her face screwed up and tense.
"What? What were you doing?" Kalid backed away until his back hit the closed doors.
"I was trying to raise my energy." The Rani was now plastered up against Kalid in a very un-Rani-like way. He tried to peel her off, but couldn't quite manage it.
"And you raised, what, your libido?"
"It worked on human subjects, but our biochemistry must be more different than I had thought." The Rani plucked at Kalid's shirt. "I require a shared orgasm before I can get back to work. Just to take the edge off."
"I'm really not interested," said Kalid, "in having sex with a deranged biologist who is apt to break me down for parts once we're done. You're the proverbial black widow."
The Rani narrowed her eyes at him.
"I think I have an oversized black coat and a strap-on in the auxiliary lab."
"I don't know what you're insinuating," said Kalid, quickly. "But I don't-"
"I may even have your old cuffs as well," said the Rani.
What Kalid should have done is ask why she had those things. What he should have done was offer to find her a prostitute as soon as possible. He did not, he reminded himself, like the Rani.
Her hips jerked against him demandingly, and Kalid decided he didn’t have to like her.
"I'm going to have my eyes closed the whole time," he warned.
"Visual contact isn't necessary for physical stimulation. If you like,” the Rani said, as if conferring a great favor, “I'll do you face down."
If he was going to be living with a deranged biologist who dismissed his plans and used him only for his technical expertise, he might as well get something out of it.
---
It took the Rani five more hormone imbalances before she finally had her biological chemistry ticking along as she wanted. She offered to work out a regimen for Kalid as well, but he demurred. It wasn't that he hadn't, well, enjoyed his encounters with the Rani. Even his reacquaintance with the medical bed had been less disturbing than he had anticipated, and the Rani could actually be very imaginative about the use of straps.
But Kalid was tired, and sore, and the thought of altering his body chemistry to suit the Rani's plans was frankly terrifying.
The Rani let it go and they jumped from planet to planet. They had no clear idea of where they were going - Kalid's control of the TARDIS was impeccable, but it wasn't as if they actually knew much about the coordinates of the universe outside of Gallifrey. And Gallifrey was the last place on which they wanted to arrive.
On each planet with life, Kalid practiced his hypnotism. He got an Ice Warrior to ignore his presence, convinced a Peladonian to share her meal, and nearly got knocked out by an aptly named Refusian. Not one of his finer moments, and, in retrospect, hypnotizing an invisible alien was probably a step beyond him at the moment. But the art was coming along.
Finally they fetched up on a tertiary planet of the Monan cluster.
"The technology will be amazing," said the Rani. "I can finally get on with some of the experiments that I've had to put off because of lack of equipment."
"I thought our plan was to find a small planet and be inconspicuous," said Kalid. "Not invade a major temporal power."
"We can be inconspicuous," said the Rani.
"They're blue," said Kalid. “We’re not even on the spectrum of possible Monan coloration, never mind the body shape.”
“You worry too much,” said the Rani, and ignored Kalid when he seethed.
Kalid’s annoyance was made worse by the fact that the Rani was, by and large, right. She was able to proceed just as she had in Mumbai - this planet was undergoing rapid economic expansion, drawing in immigration and rendering a pair of off-worlders more or less unremarkable. The Rani found a laboratory that would hire her as a contractor, leaving Kalid to skulk around and practice his hypnotism. The Monans were a strong-willed people, and a challenge, but he thought he was getting the hang of it. He had to, after his first few attempts ended up with him being held by the authorities for being 'generally creepy.'
"I was just sitting across from him on the transit system," he tried to explain to the officer during one of these predicaments.
"Staring at him," said the officer, unimpressed. "We don't approve of foreign males coming here, picking fights with our men." She narrowed her eyes. "Or stealing them off."
"Madam, I intended nothing of the kind."
"Where's your residency permit, that's what I'd like to know," said the officer. She tapped a few queries into her datapad. "Ship docking information, even?"
"Ah." Kalid caught the officer's eyes with his. "You do not need to see my information."
"I-" The officer hesitated. "What?"
"Obviously this was a misunderstanding," said Kalid, smoothly. It was easier when you provided a rationale for what you were doing. "In any case, the man in question is now safe from my so-called intentions. Better to release me and spare yourself the paperwork."
"There is a lot of paperwork," agreed the officer, hazily. She shook herself. "All right, get out of here. Can't have you wasting my time."
Kalid smiled and walked out. If he ever managed to rule a place, offenders would surely not be dismissed simply for lack of willingness to deal with the forms of getting them into the system. But, for now, it was very convenient to have an easy handhold into the minds of the enforcers of the law.
---
"Where have you been?" demanded the Rani, when Kalid was finally back at the TARDIS.
"In jail," he replied. "Momentarily."
"What? And you thought to lecture me about conspicuousness-"
"What's got you in such a foul mood?" Kalid was getting better at reading the Rani, not that it was hard to tell when she was angry. He could tell when she wasn’t angry with him, that was the point.
"Surprise inspection," said the Rani. She ran her fingers through her hair, frowning. "They're wondering where a few components have gotten to. A few staff members."
"And, naturally, they've gotten to your lab."
"Naturally. I've got to step up pace on the work," mumbled the Rani.
"Mind you don't cause another India incident," cautioned Kalid.
---
There was another India incident. The ensuing giant monster rampaged for an hour before the CIA agents arrived and cut the Rani and Kalid off from escape.
“I am incredibly frustrated with the way you don’t listen to anything I say,” said Kalid, right before they gave themselves up rather than be shot.
"Remember," growled the Rani, as they were dragged off, "they can't make us say anything. Our testimony's off limits."
"I wouldn't have to give testimony if you weren't fundamentally incapable of not creating ravening beasts," said Kalid, but the Rani was out of hearing range and the retort was rather lost on the CIA agent pinning Kalid's arms.
---
Kalid was left in a cell for a few long spans. He spent most of the time cursing the Rani's idiotic fixation on giant animals and his own inability to strike out on his own. After a while the anger and frustration wore him out and he just sat, looking unseeing at the opposite wall. It was uncomfortably like the last time he had been in CIA custody, and Kalid swore to himself not to regenerate while he was here. He couldn't let them make him docile again, even if docile wasn't the same as obedient.
"Conducting your experiments on a temporal power's world may not have been exactly wise," said a voice, the door opening. Kalid looked up to stare at a thin-faced Time Lord he vaguely recognized. The Doctor's older brother, leagues ahead of them at school. They'd met perhaps five times, spoken fewer than a dozen words to each other. He had a pad of paper and an amiable expression.
"I am Ambassador Braxiatel," said the man, smiling. "I've been advised that you no longer respond to the name by which I used to hear you referred to."
"It's Kalid, now," said Kalid. He didn’t smile back. "What can I do for the Ambassador?"
"Well now." Braxiatel pulled up a chair and sat down, fussing with his robes. "What I'd like is for you to give me a complete account of your movements since your escape with," Braxiatel hesitated and glanced down at his pad, "the Rani. A lot of aliases involved in the renegade business, aren't there? Well, I suppose you didn't start the trend. Anyway, we need to go back in and repair the time lines that you two have undoubtedly disrupted."
"We didn't do anything," said Kalid, before he could stop himself.
"I'm sure you thought so," said Braxiatel, soothingly. "But there's a reason why unlicensed time travel is proscribed - so easy to slip up and, oh, experiment on someone who was supposed to be important."
"I won't tell you anything," said Kalid. "I'd be mad to give you evidence for my own prosecution and you're not supposed to ask me to incriminate my," he gritted his teeth, "spouse."
"Technically I cannot ask you to betray your bond-partner to the authorities," agreed Braxiatel. "But, if I may, I will step out of my position as ambassador and into my position as the elder brother of your," Braxiatel paused, "shall we say, best friend?"
Kalid waited for the punch line.
"Kalid, the papers for a divorce would be simplicity itself to file, especially as the two of you were married in a non-Gallifreyan ceremony. And afterward, if you were willing to give the Rani to us, I believe I could extract a pardon for you on the grounds that you were working under duress."
"I-" The Rani would kill him. Somehow.
"I have the papers here." Braxiatel unfolded a thin sheaf of documents from between two pages of his pad.
"Where do I sign?" asked Kalid. The Rani wasn't here, after all. What could she do?
---
It turned out that the Rani could do quite a lot. She had treated Kalid with some kind of immensely sophisticated drug - presumably she had put it in his food since Kalid had refused all offers of her mind-altering chemicals. No sooner had Kalid confessed everything to Braxiatel then he was choking, his throat seizing up as Braxiatel called for help. The next few hours passed in a haze, his regeneration taking a now-familiar toll on his new body. When Kalid came back to himself, he was in a bed, in a comfortable room rather than in a cell.
And he had meant not to regenerate while he was here. He could only hope that they hadn't had time to manipulate the change. He felt angry at the Rani and his situation, which was probably a good sign.
"Hello?" he croaked.
"You're awake." A Gallifreyan guard came over to look at him. "Hn. I'm to tell you that you're in custody of Lord Gilviger of the High Council, awaiting your trial."
"Trial?" Kalid's brain whirred. "I made a deal with Ambassador Braxiatel-"
"I'm not aware of any deal," said the guard. "In any case, Brax hardly has any authority to make a deal with a renegade, especially one who escaped from his last criminal sentence."
Kalid groaned and closed his eyes. Betrayed. He heard the guard walk away, humming tunelessly.
Kalid tried to sit up and managed it, wobbling. He clutched at the stand beside the bed to support himself, and his fingers bounced off something.
The key to his TARDIS.
Kalid stared. He wasn't wearing the clothes he'd been captured in, not anymore. They'd been replaced with the damned CIA prisoner's uniform again. Even his bracelets had been taken, slipped off of thinner wrists. Kalid looked around to check if any of his other possessions were there, but no. Just the key.
Someone wanted him to make a break for it.
It could be a trap, but after dying once and now heading to CIA confinement yet again, Kalid could hardly think of how things could get worse.
"Guard," he said, faintly. "Guard?"
"Yes, what is it now?"
"I think I'm having a bad reaction to my regeneration- ah! My vision's going black-"
"Oh, Rassilon," groaned the guard, and hurried over. He reached out a hand to Kalid and was grabbed, Kalid lunging forward to grasp the contact points at his temple.
"Calm yourself," he said, soothingly, as the guard struggled. "You are under my control. I am Kalid, your master-" no, that sounded wrong, he needed to be more sure of himself- "I am the Master, and you will obey me." The guard hesitated, eyes rolling back, and the Master pressed his advantage. "You will obey me."
A Gallifreyan mind was more difficult than anything he'd ever faced, but the power of his regeneration was coursing through his veins, radiating from his fingertips. The Master laughed, enjoying the rolling sound of it, and the guard stiffened and stopped fighting.
"Good," said the Master. "Now. You will escort me to the TARDIS that I was captured with. It is here?"
"Yes," said the guard, dully. "It is in the docking bay."
"You suspect that there is something dangerous hidden in there. You wish for me to show it to you, so you can destroy it."
"Yes," said the guard.
"Good. Let us go." The Master let go of the guard gingerly, worried that the hypnosis wouldn't hold. There was no outburst, however, and the Master wobbled out of the bed, supported by the guard under the guise of making sure he would be unable to escape.
The corridors and the docking bay were eerily deserted, raising the Master's suspicions. Whoever was easing his way certainly had the authority to make it very easy indeed. The TARDIS door swung open as smoothly as ever, and the Master briefly checked for traps before shutting the guard outside.
No one had even modified the TARDIS to keep it from dematerializing. Instead, the TARDIS was pristine, the Rani's chemicals and experiments intact. There was a set of coordinates already fit into the console. Earth, he could see that much. Part of his hidden ally's agenda, no doubt, but the Master hardly had time to figure out a different destination. A random choice might turn out to be just as bad as this preprogrammed one.
He set the TARDIS off, her hum around him pulling another deep laugh from his throat.
---
"Braxiatel! Ambassador Braxiatel!" Lord Gilviger rounded the corner as fast as his elderly body could take him, just catching a glimpse of the TARDIS as it disappeared.
"Oh dear, your prisoner has escaped," murmured Braxiatel, coming out of the shadows.
"While you stood by," snapped Gilviger. He walked up to the hypnotized guard and grabbed his chin, staring into his eyes in an effort to awaken him.
"You are mistaken," said Braxiatel, complacently. "I was occupied, until recently, with other matters. I arrived only moments before you did."
"I will have words with you, you upstart-"
"The Master," groaned the guard. Gilviger released his chin.
"There, there, son," he said, patting the guard on the shoulder. "It's all right."
"His eyes, I- the Master..."
"Is that what he's calling himself, now?" Braxiatel shook his head. "Well, I think this, shall we say, security failure calls for an investigation at the highest level, don't you?"
"Ambassador Braxiatel," hissed Gilviger.
"I'm afraid I shall be busy warning possible targets of the Master's of his escape," said Braxiatel. "Though I doubt I shall be needed, given that my involvement in this case ended some time ago."
"How do you know where he's going?" Gilviger looked even more suspicious than before.
"Oh, I may have let the location of the Doctor slip during our interview. I hardly thought it important at the time, but, now..." Braxiatel hesitated. "You are aware, of course, in the part that the Doctor played in last bringing the Master into custody."
"I'm aware that you had something to do with the Master's escape from custody," said Gilviger, venomously.
"A harsh accusation. I should like to hear it repeated before the Council," said Braxiatel. "If the Council will still listen to you."
"Why would you do this?" asked Gilviger, sticking out his chin. "You're not a criminal or a renegade yourself, or a man who would blithely give aid to one."
"Hypothetically," said Braxiatel. He glanced at the guard and drew close to Gilviger, a smile playing on his lips. "There are those who are somewhat unsatisfied with your work for the Council, aren't there, my lord? I've mentioned to you that your current inquiry into unsanctioned uses of time travel technology is completely unwarranted."
"You're connected to that as well, are you?" Gilviger drew himself up, out of his habitual slouch. "I'll get you for this, you jumped-up-"
"I'm sure," said Braxiatel, and strode away.
---
The Master stood in front of his mirror, enjoying look of the charcoal Nehru suit he had recovered from the wardrobe, a retro relic of his last stint on Earth. The time he had landed in was only a little earlier than 1985, just enough so that the suit might be fashionable again. It fit well - what had been loose on his last body slightly more fitted on this one.
The Master had a high forehead, an olive complexion, and a passable beard. Acceptable. He also had no Rani, which was the bonus to end all bonuses.
Or, at least, he hoped he had no Rani. Whoever had allowed him to escape may have also-
The Master hurried to the controls. It was the work of a moment to set the TARDIS scanning for other Time Lord presences, a useful relic of its time as a CIA craft. The search turned up another biosignature, and the Master laughed weakly as he realized that it only made sense. Of course. The coordinates had already been input because his abettor had wished to arrange a meet-up with his ex-other half.
She'd kill him. Again.
As an afterthought, the Master hit the button that displayed the full signature of the Time Lord in question.
The Rani had regenerated as a man. Or, no. Hm.
The Master smirked, sudden and glad. It was his other nemesis. The Doctor might be a nuisance, but he was immeasurably less dangerous than the Rani.
Time to make a plan. He'd do things right, this time, with careful research, powerful allies, and absolutely no monsters getting out of control.
The Master rubbed his hands together and started the scanners on a search for nearby alien life.
---
Braxiatel had hoped the Doctor would be gratified that Braxiatel had taken the time to warn him about the Master. Instead he was just being confused, and, in consequence, insulting.
"The Master?" The Doctor tugged on a white curl, considering. "No, don't know anyone of that name. You've spent too much time working for the Council, Brax, it's rotting your brain."
"You may know him by another name," said Braxiatel. "Kalid?"
"No."
"Koschei, then. The War Chief."
"Why didn't you say so," said the Doctor. He looked up at the sky with exasperation. "You can hardly expect me to keep track of all those names."
"No, I suppose not," said Braxiatel, dryly. "He's coming here, under whichever name he chooses. I have the utmost faith in your ability to contain him."
"Oh, you do, do you?" The Doctor made a face, still staring stubbornly up at the sky. "Last I heard, he was off with Ushas, and now you tell me that he is here, alone, obviously dangerous, and ready to threaten Earth. And you have faith in my ability to contain him."
"Distract him, anyway," admitted Braxiatel. "Now, my presence is needed elsewhere." He began to recede back into the vortex, headed to the Council's emergency session. Even if his testimony wasn’t needed to push along Gilviger’s fall, he did want to be there to watch.
"Now you listen here," called the Doctor, after him, "I can see what you're doing! And let me say that I don't appreciate it!"
Braxiatel was gone, and the Doctor turned to consider the door that the Master had left booby-trapped after breaking into the research tower. He needed to get in there somehow, and he was wasting precious time in thought - it had been a long time since he had faced a rival of his own caliber, a very long time indeed.
"No," muttered the Doctor, to himself. "I don't appreciate it at all."
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Date: 2011-01-23 07:19 pm (UTC)all in all - excellent. and i would totally read a sequel if such a thing existed.
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Date: 2011-01-24 12:19 am (UTC)Given the (fairly tenuous) connection to The Amazon, the logical sequel to this fic is one where Four and Delgado!Master and the Rani have a threesome in space. With giant monsters. And Jo. I mean, being around, not being part of the threesome. Which... I am actually really tempted to write. Except given the trend in word counts so far, that third fic would be 12k and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to manage that much crack any time soon.
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Date: 2011-01-24 08:34 am (UTC)by which i mean - this is a v good story. and also i love the amazon.
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Date: 2011-01-24 05:46 pm (UTC)Although, why I want to write another fic about Four's desirability when writing this much under Four's baleful gaze (from your icon) was so difficult, I don't know. I like your idea also! Obviously there should just be many fics with the Rani and the Master.
(Also, I appreciated your shoutout in the drabble challenge - thanks!)
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Date: 2011-01-24 07:33 pm (UTC)also, i love the idea of the rani deciding she doesn't love her man all that much in comparison to science. that is very much a great plot twist. maybe you have convinced me after alll...