Revery of Madness (Doctor Who)

I - Slipping into madness

"What the..." he muttered against her lips, slowly winding himself out of Roka's memories.

Her breath was heavy, adrenalin still rushed through her veins from both, the painful memories and the heated kiss. Like ice and fire, intertwined and keeping her from being consumed by either one. She leaned forward again, pressed her lips against his, wanted to get lost in the feeling and taste of him, wanted to forget what lay behind her. Forgotten were the snowbound ruins of old, the sound of millions of robots rushing to the death of the last remains of a lost kind.

The Master let his fingers hover over her temples, his thumbs caressing her cheeks. Only faintly did she notice something odd about the way he felt through their mental connection, but right now wasn't the time to pay attention to this. Suddenly he was back in her mind, however evading her memories, this time. Or did he? Sometimes a snipped popped to the forefront, revealed the gruesome things she had tried out after she had recovered from that shot.

A faint heartbeat was in her head, steadily pounding, repeating, like a clockwork, neither slowing, nor speeding. She wondered how his hearts could stay so still while her own was thrumming in her chest so wildly. Somehow the kiss tapered off, the initial heat leaving them, but the connection stayed. She wanted more, wanted to completely vanish, instead of remembering. And for some moments she thought he was wanting the same, until she finally realized her mistake.

There was a sudden tug in her mind and the Master tore out a whole bunch of her newly regained memories at once.

A coincidence. She had imagined it from the shock. The shot hadn't actually hit her, that she was certain of. It couldn't be. What she had seen had only been images, born from a delirium of fear. She lay panting on the ground, hiding in the trees and listened to the fight going on nearby. It didn't bother her any longer what would become of this planet. It wasn't her bloody busyness after all.

She had been wandering this stony desert for way too long. Hunger, thirst and exhaustion made her careless, made her overlook the usually so obvious signs of the creatures living in the stones. Before she could react properly, a large thorn was darting out from a hexagonal hole, pierced right through her middle. She didn't even feel the pain as the poison immediately paralyzed her nerves and sent her into unconsciousness. When she woke up again she found herself in a circle of dried blood. So much of it, it made her sick. It couldn't be hers, there was no wound. She had dreamed this all.

Lightning struck a tree nearby, the purple bolt splitting the trunk right in the middle. Roka tried to hide, find a cave or someplace else to get cover. She ran, stayed in constant movement to evade the electricity that sometimes struck so close that she felt her skin crawl. It wasn't the lightning though, but a falling rock. She only saw how it fell, realized she wouldn't be able to evade. The storm was over when she regained her consciousness, the huge stone right next to her. Luck, she thought to herself. Just luck.

There was a fight. Today she was visible. She had forgotten to check when it would happen next and suddenly found herself in front of a lanky figure, clad in thin clothes that made them quick with their thin sword. She sprang out of the way, dodged the next attack and parried with her knives, danced around the figure and almost landed a hit. Quickly she ducked below one strike, bent out of the way of the next. But her opponent was too fast, caught her off guard eventually and shoved her against the stones, a nasty grin on his lips, his sword moving fast, crashing right through her ribcage and piercing her heart. He ripped the weapon out of her chest, wiped it clean in the grass and strode away.

This time she could not blame it on anything. She saw how it happened, how her body dissolved at the wound and put itself back together again. When it was done she lay in the grass, surrounded by her own blood, tears running down her cheeks as she curled herself to a ball and cried for what felt like hours.