some say we're falling off the page

[mushroom]

Title: Paper Lanterns
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: mainly Master/Lucy, hints of Master/Doctor.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: What happened to Lucy? Why did she change so much in a year?
A/N: Written for jackluminous in the masterficathon challenge - I’m so sorry this is late! It’s taken me forever to actually decide how to write this and naturally, I fail at keeping to deadlines. It focuses more on Lucy, but she’s all about the Master so that counts, right? And it jumps around time and tenses and is generally a bit odd so um, I hope you like!




She doesn’t remember any of it in a linear perspective – the past is just memories and they come to her jumbled up, and she does not think they were ever meant to be in an order that anyone else could understand. The important parts are bold, bright flashes and the in-between moments are blurred, barely important but it creates a painting of the past and she likes to look at it piece by piece, thinking that maybe if the quiet bits were removed she would have drowned in colour.

For her, it all starts and ends with Harry.

It seems silly and naïve and human but he was her Harry, and she was his faithful companion.


:::


She has held a gun before (childhood with a Lord and a doting brother, they would take her hunting in a joint escape from her mother and teach her the best ways to kill an animal with a single bullet, and she never questioned the need for efficiency), but this feels different, heavier as she presses it into her palm and she refuses to line it up as she knows so well to do, aiming without aim.

There were so many others things, other people on deck but they never saw her and she stepped forward, feeling invisible, only listening to the wretched Doctor’s words – “You’re my responsibility from now on.”

If she couldn’t keep him, neither could he.


:::


She had been ignored for months, what felt like years, decorated in this red dress and rouge nails and expensive hair but no one noticed her anymore. Harry – no, the Master – was too obsessed with this Doctor and oh, he tried to include her, wrapping his arms around her waist as they floated above the wasteland of Japan and kissing the curve of her neck as the Home Counties burned, but now his eyes were always on the future and she stepped out of the way to avoid getting hurt.

She could wander around the ship freely, not needing passes or commands as the guards acknowledged her with a nod and stepped briskly aside. Sometimes she wondered what would happen if she tried to talk to one of them, or if the Master was still possessive enough to remember her in his orders. Sometimes she wondered if he intended to make her feel like a ghost.

It felt like she saw the Freak more than her husband. She went down to his cage and watched from behind the bars (the guard made a move to let her in, but she shook her head every time) and wondered if she could still feel compassion, if this creature (for what else could she call him?) deserved it. Occasionally Harry took her down with him and held her hand as they killed him again and again and again, but those times she found she couldn’t look at him at all and stared at the chains above his head.

When still on the main deck, she stayed at the sides, glancing up whenever the Master spoke and listening to the constant stream of names she didn’t care about – Tanya, Lisa, Sarah, Doctor – but no one mentioned Harry anymore.


:::


Harry made plans – he was always so good at that, pulling together all the little details. He made plans and objects and machines, sometimes little things like the laser screwdriver (he knocked that up in a couple of days, muttering something about sonic as he welded it together), sometimes huge, complicated designs that would take weeks of organisation and months to complete. He talked to her while he worked, explained the intricacies of what he was making, planning, but he didn’t expect her to understand and she just nodded, smiled and kissed the back of his head lightly whenever she left the room. She listened well, though, and she remembered what he said when it was important.

The ring, he said. Keep it safe.


:::


The first time he kills in his rise to power, she is standing beside him and barely flinches. She understands this, that no one can be allowed to get in their way and every death is necessary, purposeful. Harry smiles dazzling at her and kisses her mouth softly after he is done, and thanks her for being the perfect companion. He wipes the blood from his cheek and she helps him out of his stained suit and he fucks her up against the wall with the corpse still in the room, her skirt pushed up around her waist and her eyes locked constantly on his.

Later, back in their home, the man’s pleading face swims nauseatingly in front of her eyes and she desperately seeks out the comfort of Harry’s arms – he wraps her up in soothing words and gentle strokes as she buries her face in his shoulder, concentrating on the cool flush of his skin and the beats of his hearts until her stomach settles and the images fade. She knows there are others but he never asks her to be there, never expects more from her than she can give and she silently thanks him for being the perfect husband.


:::


(They never talked about children. She assumed it was because she would be a bad mother, and he was alien, and they had six billion little spheres to look after already. They weren’t very cuddly, though.)


:::


On their first meeting, Harry had laid her fingers over his palm and pressed his lips to the back of her hand, a glance at her wrist before he straightened up and said “Miss Cole” with a smile that crept across his face like the rising dawn. She had pursed her lips in reply as she tried not to smile, and he had grinned back like he knew it.

It took six more meetings before she permitted him to call her Lucy, and that day he pressed her open palms against his chest and told her of the universe.


:::


Harry wins the election like they both knew he would, and they emerge with smiles and pride and well-practised speeches. It’s hard to act surprised about the inevitable and so instead she holds her head up high, watching Harry entrance a nation with such delightful ease and feeling the thrill that skittered down her spine.

She doesn’t like crowds. She is comfortable with just right of the centre of attention, and together they are above them all and for the first time she wants to be seen (she wants the world to know that he is hers), here, with the most brilliant man in the universe. They patiently wait, little rush before the world will realise how shining he is and their smiles gleam.

Harry brings out something in her that she does not know how to describe. Sometimes she calls it madness, and sometimes she calls it life, and sometimes she thinks it had been there all along.


:::


She joined the publishing house in a half-hearted attempt to gain independence; a small side step from her family of titles and money that she knew she could slide back into the moment things went wrong. She had plans, oh yes, but for now she wanted a taste of an almost uncertain life and a degree in Italian was doubtfully going to get her far.

Harry laid out her future for her and pinpointed the moment where she couldn’t say no.


:::


Their wedding was a grand affair – only the best for a Lord’s daughter and the government’s most sparkling new star, and Harry had merely encouraged them all. She had been dizzy with excitement, fussed over by her mother and bridesmaids and photographers that mistook her flushed face and almost manic smile for nerves. She rested her hand against the finger-point bruises on her hips and knew that this was all for him, for what he could achieve.

(Harry had crept into her room at three minutes past midnight, shivering with a childish glee as he pulled off her knickers with his teeth and made love to the bride before the wedding, pretending to close his eyes every time she told him, giggling, that he shouldn’t see her. He made her laugh and writhe and come, taking obvious joy in this violation of tradition. In the power she gave him.)

Mine, was her main thought of the day, and it carried her through the needless ceremony and speeches and endless guests she neither knew nor cared about. She longed for the lie of the white dress to ripped off, lasting barely to the car before Harry was tearing through the petticoats and she hissed with joy as her released her from the beaded bodice, leaving angry red lines across her back and down her thighs that he soothed with his lips and his tongue, tracing patterns of circles and shapes with his fingers as he buried his head between her legs and teased her until she screamed.


:::


She wakes up feeling sick most days, but she has so much practice that looking normal comes naturally, the rolling of her stomach just a vague annoyance that occasionally has her digging her fingernails into her palms to stop a flicker of anything else crossing her expression. She stays blank and quiet so that if she ever does slip, just for a moment, no one is looking at her anyway. The Valiant is smooth and loud and she relishes in the disturbance it creates, the background beat to her quiet helplessness.

She wakes up in a lonely bed most days, but she has enough experience to know not to call out for Harry.


:::


(the first time they had sex it had been all her work, all her planning leading him determinedly up to her bedroom and straddling him on the bed. she chose something loud and thrashing on the stereo, and all previous quiet pretences of the evening were lost to the heavy beat of the drums, in turn drowned out by the solid natural rhythm that coursed through harry as he fought back with hands and lips and teeth, rolling them over and over until he pinned her hands to the pillow and bit down on her shoulder. she wiggled free with a scream and dragged her french-manicured nails down his back as he grinned against her chest and sucked hard at her breasts, leaving a puckered bruise next to the nipple.

he makes her feel fragile and beautiful and powerful, and when he holds her she feels like she is walking through fire without getting burned.)


:::


The Doctor was a promise of something different, a relic from another world she knew she would never see. He intrigued her because Harry did, but she didn’t like what she saw when she looked into his eyes and he ignored her, obviously registered her as ‘mostly harmless’ and filed it away in that undoubtedly brilliant mind (Harry told her things, and she listened), moving swiftly on to better things. Her Harry.

She could understand that. She resented and hated and envied him but of course, she understood how nothing else mattered when Harry was in the room. She watched him with almost pitying eyes, knowing his gaze was following the Master without having to look and oh, she knew what he wanted. She could imagine it so well and when the images became too bright she would surprise Harry with a slow, open-mouthed kiss and take pride in knowing she could still, however momentarily, distract him.


:::


Martha Jones comes back to save the world and she stays at the side, watching without apparent emotion as everything he had worked so hard for, everything she had supported him through, begins to unravel at the seams. She realises it is over before he does, wonders if maybe she understood better than she had ever known, and clutches onto the railings a little harder.

She chants his name along with the rest of the human race with the hope that he will give her back her Harry, and leave them alone.

(It’s silly and naïve and human, and deep down she knows.)

-fin-