| Characters: Spike, The Master
Link to IJ: thread #75440.4615856 |
 Spike strolled into the party a while after it had started, dressed in his customary outfit because that was quite dressed-up enough for him, thanks.
He cast an appreciative eye over the assembled throng. Brushed up well, this lot did. Shouldn't be hard to find someone to enjoy himself with. He went over to the bar and got a bottle of beer, then turned back to decide who to move in on first. |
 At least there was something happening in this... place. Wherever it was, it was making his head ache with... wrong. Yes, that was a good word for this place. Wrong, wrong, wrong. No proper flow of time, here.
The Master had wandered from the alley he'd stepped into instead of the corridor of the cruise ship into the hotel, and spotted the notice. And then found the party, without bothering to change from the clothes he'd been in. After all, if he could take a nice cruise in them, whoever was at the party could deal with them. A bar caught his attention, and he grinned wolfishly, heading for it, humming to himself as he arranged a series of bottles next to a glass, already laying out the drink in his head. It turned out purple and fizzy and tasted rather of apples and scotch. He turned back around, raising an eyebrow at the blond nearby. "Hello there, I don't believe we've met. I'm the Master, and you are?" |
| Spike raised one very, very sarcastic eyebrow back at him. "Knew a bloke who called himself the Master before. Never did have much time for that sort of thing."
He took a swig from his bottle before adding, "Name's Spike. Or William the Bloody, if you prefer." |
| "Interesting names."
The Master leaned against the bar, looking out at the people. He was a bit startled to see a couple of his own face in the crowd, and he grinned with predetory interest when he saw Jack in the jacket he'd had designed for his security forces. This place might be more interesting than he thought. At least, if nothing else, Jack was here. "What did you do to earn them?" he asked casually, keeping an eye on Jack - well, the Jack in a proper jacket, not the one in something obscenely green. What possessed that man to wear something so... tacky? |
| Spike glanced at him, assessing what kind of answer to give. Something about the man (not least the name he'd given) told him he wouldn't be fazed by the truth.
"'Spike' for the fact I used to torture people with railroad spikes. 'William the Bloody' 'cos I'm a vampire." Well, all right, part of the truth. No way he was letting out that it had originally been 'William the Bloody Awful Poet'. "How 'bout you? 'The Master's a bit poncy, isn't it?" |
| The Master smiled, predetory and cold. "Perhaps. But nothing's simpler than the truth, and I am the Master - of my fate, of Torchwood and as soon as I can do so without screwing my own timeline, the Earth. I'll work my way out from there."
After all, what would be the point of merely being the ruler of a bunch of mewling little humans when he could use them to bring the entire galaxy - the universe - under his control? |
| Spike sniggered a bit, because it was all just a bit too old-time villain to be taken seriously. "Yeah, that bloke I used to know had delusions of that sort too." He looked the Master up and down. "Have to say, you're a lot nicer to look at than him, though. Ugly son of a bitch, he was." |
| "Are they delusions when they're real?" The Master searched the gathered people a moment, then pointed out the Jack he'd spotted earlier, in the black-and-grey jacket. "See him? Jack Harkness, former Time Agent, ex-con-man. My loyal lieutenant, and a fixed point in space and time. Ask him, if you don't believe me." |
| "Yeah, I've met him," Spike said casually, taking another swig of beer and gazing across at Jack with frank appreciation. "Didn't mention you, though."
His eyes narrowed, as he noticed that that Jack wasn't the only one there. "Though it may have been a different Jack that I met." Ooh, more than one Jack around. That threw up interesting possibilities! |
| The Master chuckled, sipping his drink. "If you'd run into my Jack, you'd have heard about me already." There was a fierce possessiveness in his voice when he spoke about Jack, a sense of ownership. |
| "Is that so?"
Spike turned sideways to study the Master again, head on one side. "Must be a different one, then. One I met didn't seem like the type to belong to anyone." |
| The Master shrugged. "Jack might dispute the semantics from time to time, but never the dynamic. He is, very firmly, mine."
That the Master wasn't certain what he'd do without Jack - giving Jack as much a hold and control over him as he had over Jack - he wouldn't admit. Not even, particularly, to himself. Not unless he was feeling really rather maudlin, and that wasn't the case at the moment. |
| "Well, good for him. Glad you've got him, then, and aren't looking for a new puppy. 'Cos I don't dance to anybody's tune 'cept my own." |
| "The only blond I tolerate isn't always blond, and at the moment, I think I'd cheerfully force a regeneration on him just to see what I'd get." The Master flicked a dismissive hand at Spike, before sliding a glance over at him, expression bland, adding in a deceptively soft voice, "And Jack isn't my puppy. He's simply mine." |
| "Whatever." Spike really didn't want to know the ins and outs of that particular relationship.
He took another drink of his beer, then cocked his head at the Master, something occurring to him. "All right then, since you obviously know Captain Smartypants so well, d'you know what the deal is with him not being able to die? 'Cos that pretty well freaked me out, first time I met him, and I couldn't get him to tell me how it worked." |
| "He's a fixed point in space and time." The Master smiled fondly. "A universal constant. Created by an idiot little human and the Time Vortex. Feels rather like home, almost. Once I have the TARDIS grown and shaped again, I could even set coordinates off him. It's rather amusing." |
| "Okay, you lost me there." Spike shrugged, ignoring the latter part of that reply that made absolutely no sense whatsoever and focussed on the first part. "Care to explain that fixed point thing in layman's terms?" |
| The Master gave Spike an irritated look, and said in tones that suggested he was speaking to a rather dense child. "Those were 'layman's terms'. A fixed point, a constant, unchanging." He paused, sighing. "Like the speed of light?" |
| "Yeah, but how did it happen?" For Lane's benefit, because he really did want to know if there was some common factor in all the immortality going round, Spike did his best to keep his tone civil. "How did 'an idiot little human' make that happen to him?" |
| "She did something stupid." The Master didn't actually know the particulars, but he could imagine it. He actually didn't know for certain that it was Rose Tyler, but he doubted that the Doctor would do something so monumentally stupid, which left his companion.
He looked over at Spike as he took a sip of his drink. "She used the Time Vortex to bring him back, permanently. Probably killed herself in the process, since no one can hold all that energy and expect to survive it." |
| "What's the Time Vortex?" He'd followed the explanation apart from that. Explained a lot, actually. |
| "Beyond all time and space, with its own physics. It's how one travels in time." The Master shrugged. "It connects every point in time and space from the singularity at the beginning to the cold and dark of the end." |
| Incomplete - last update 22Mar 1524, by chaosincarnate
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