InsaneJournal

Current mood:	anxious
Current music:	Hootie and the Blowfish - I Only Wanna Be With You

The Hardest Part (Is Letting Go) V/V
Title: The Hardest Part (Is Letting Go) V
Author: windout
Genre: Gen (with undertones of het)
Fandoms: Life on Mars/Doctor Who
Characters/Pairings: Surprise ending!
Ratings: PG
Disclaimer: Life on Mars is not mine (but I want a DVD), and I do own the Ninth Doctor on DVD
A/N: This is for rationalunatic because I owed her one. Okay, you know what? This is ridiculous. You are to specify specific prompts next time, savvy? :-P Virtual cookie for every song you guess the lyric from the cut belongs to.




“Harry? Harry, what’s wrong?”

And honestly, Harold had no idea. He couldn’t catch his breath. Honestly, what the hell was that nonsense? He demanded an answer to this bullshit, once he had the oxygen necessary to articulate his thoughts.

“That’s it, Harry, catch your breath,” Lucy was murmuring quietly, rubbing her hand firmly up and down his back.

“What’s wrong with Mr. Saxon?”

Harold Saxon tried to swallow, and found the task a lot harder than it should be. Aspirin? Who would give him aspirin, he’d specifically made mention of the fact that he was never to be given aspirin!

“Sleep apnea. He’s fine, he just wasn’t able to catch his breath, so he woke up,” Lucy was telling the guard firmly, even as she kept up with the comforting massage. “Go back to patrolling, please. I’ll make sure my husband gets the help he needs.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Go, please.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

That was why he’d married her. Harold didn’t suffer fools. Oh, Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. Thank you, you clever woman. When the door closed on the two of them, Harold drew a few last breaths before waving indistinctly at Lucy’s bedside table.

“Harry?”

“Paper,” he croaked. “Paper; paper now, please.”

She handed it to him wordlessly, along with a hotel pen. He wasted no time in scribbling down the name “Sam Tyler,” along with “Gene Hunt,” “Chris Skelton,” and “Jack,” for good measure. None of those names meant a thing to him, but the one that rightly bothered him the most was “Sam Tyler.” He didn’t know any Tylers, so why should he be dreaming about them, let alone dreaming he was one. He was Harold Saxon, soon to be Prime Minister in a few weeks’ time.

“What’s this, Harry?” The pressure on his back had abated now that he was breathing on his own.

“I don’t rightly know,” he admitted quietly. He began listing as many Tylers as he could think of, obscure or not. John Tyler. Liv Tyler. Tom Tyler. Tyler Durden.

“What were you dreaming about, Harry?”

Harold examined the name again. There was something there, he knew it. “Nothing. Just…doing a little thinking is all. You ought to go back to sleep.” He turned to face Lucy with a slow, languid smile. What a glorious little woman. “Wouldn’t want the First Lady of Downing Street to get ill, would we?”

He leaned forward, kissing her gently on the mouth. As he was about to pull away, she placed a hand behind his head and tugged him closer to deepen the kiss.

That was another reason he married her. She had a very talented tongue.

When they finally pulled apart, Lucy brushed a stray strand of blonde away from her face. “Don’t stay up too late.”

“Course not, luv.” Not until I figure out who this bloody Tyler bloke is. “G’night.”

She yawned widely. “Sleep tight.”

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Harold smiled sweetly, nuzzling Lucy a last time before allowing her to roll over and fall back asleep. The saccharine bed time ritual was more joke than anything, but she enjoyed it, and Harold found it amusing enough to keep with it. “Why the hell not?” was more like it.

His tongue poked out the side of his mouth as he concentrated on the scribbled on and abused pad of paper. Sam Tyler. SAM TYLER.

Harold quickly began throwing the letters into different positions and shapes and words until something stuck. Slam Tyre. Males Try.

Masterly.

MASTERly.

Harold clutched at his forehead, kneading the skin with rough, dry knuckles. It hurt, the memories that were expanding and blowing through his memory at an astonishing speed. Images of an orange planet with Dalek squadrons blazing through. Time Lords arming TARDISes. The screams of millions of innocent people and warriors screaming, liquefying his mind. No matter how hard he tried to squeeze his ears shut, the sounds of those dying shouts just drilled through his aching and confused mind. It hurt so much!

And you ran away and left them all to die!

It took a very long time before he could regain some form of consciousness. He had to fight to keep his eyes closed in case he vomited, but he could feel his heart returning to a normal rhythm. Both of his hearts.

The Master opened his eyes slowly, staving off the initial feeling of nausea and breathlessness.

That explains a lot, doesn’t it? The dream, no matter how initially whacky—time travel without a TARDIS?—was beginning to make a lot more sense now that he was in his right mind again. Maya, perhaps a representation of Lucy. Jack, who the Master now recognized as that anomaly from Torchwood. He couldn’t exactly place Cartwright, perhaps the Doctor? The Master smiled at that connection. Yes, Cartwright was clearly the embodiment of the Doctor—a great sissy girl.

Gene Hunt, on the other hand, was something else. Not that Martha girl, or Chantho. Logically… “I always thought I’d make an excellent sheriff.”

There. All psycho analyzed. And he’d better not be forgetting himself again. Of course he was the Master. Harold Saxon was just a silly, useless meat puppet. Really, the only thing in the Master’s way now, was his own weaknesses. Apparently, the effects of the Chameleon Arch were not entirely gone—the Master would just have to work just a little bit harder to stay on top of things. Soon enough, the Doctor would be catching up with him, bent on destroying his work...

I am the Master. I am not Harold Saxon. I am taking over the world. I am a Time Lord, not a human. I am the Master, and they will obey me.

“Better hurry up, Doctor—” before I lose my mind “—before I lose my patience,” he murmured quietly. Well, mental-state aside, Harold Saxon would need sleep. He couldn't afford to look less than perky and accessible in the morning.

That last image of Gallifrey aflame and smoking was firmly pushed out of his mind and buried under assorted emotional baggage. The Master replaced it with a soothing, generic image of the surf rolling on a golden beach before snuggling down beneath the comforter again. No more mix ups. No more confusions. No more distractions.

He rolled away so that he was facing away from Lucy.

No more Harold Saxon. I am the Master. They will obey me.


Fin