trans_9 | An Unexploded Shell Inside a Cell [Open]

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An Unexploded Shell Inside a Cell [Open]

She thought her life would be different by now, but she's a prisoner again. Voluntary, she guesses, which makes it a little bit different than the first time. At least she can blink on her own this time. Not that she's using her body to do much good.

Ironically, she almost always looked better when she was a more total prisoner. Without her makeup and hair clips and changes of clothes to arrange herself into some approximation of health, without even a mirror to confirm her suspicions, she looks a wreck. Dark circles line her reddened eyes; her hair is unbrushed and falls in tangled clumps over her face; chapped, bloodied lips and fingernails bitten down to the flesh speak to her uneasy transition back into captivity.

Eva's given up all attempts to look 'okay'. She ripped a man's face open with her bare fingers. She's been a long road away from 'okay' for a while now, but she spent too long mistaking her anger and stubbornness for strength and resilience to recognize it. She's wised up now.

She really wants a drink right now. Instead she has some books - selected poems by Pablo Neruda and an anthology of poetry by women poets in the Andes - and a pillow and blanket. She's curled up on the cot with the former book in her hand, but drifting in and out of sleep. Her breath comes lazy and heavy as she alternately reads, dreams, and watches the door to the brig with heavy-lidded eyes, looking for nothing.

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"He deserved it. And I turned myself in," she says, purposefully not answering if she feels sorry or not.

The look on the Master's face tells her more about his personality than the entirety of the last two conversations she's had with him. In a way, she's satisfied that the quiet, paranoid part of her can feel validated.

Sounds like a no to the Master. His deadpan expression breaks into a small smile. "Justice is served, then?"

If he could communicate even more clearly his disdain for the way most humans practice justice, he'd be smashing a pair of scales onto the ground.

"There is no justice in the grand scheme of things. I'd expect a man of your sensibilities to know that."

Her whole life was stolen and the majority of the perpetrators were not only not punished, but rewarded with the bodies they sought. She's trapped in a broken body that limps and aches, a fragmented mind that races and diverts, while they walk more free than she ever will be again. She and her son will live in hell the rest of her life, and the Yeerks get what they wanted.

Justice? It's hardly in her vocabulary. There exists only guilt and penance.

"That depends on your definition, I'm afraid." Sure, humans with their pesky morality hang-ups may wait and wait for some divine intervention to balance their pathetic existences, but the Master doesn't have that problem.

He is the divine intervention.

"But in that case, why turn yourself in at all?"

"Because it was a difficult thing to do, and I like challenges." She pushes her matted, tangled hair out of her face and stands up, cracking her back. "And now I can tell myself I've done it."

There were other reasons, of course, but she does feel as if she proved something to herself. She is more than fear of a cage, maybe.

The Master remembers well his time in the UNIT prison. He didn't consider it all that difficult, really, but then he had the governor of that particular one eating out of his palm before the end of the first week. The hardest thing had been fooling the Doctor. Which, as difficult things went... wasn't. Not in the slightest.

Still, he couldn't imagine going willingly. He grimaces in displeasure as her vertebrae shift audibly. Despite Eva's bravado, it's still apparent the girl's a mess. For a moment he remembers Lucy, and almost smiles.

"One of those life experiences, then, to tick off your list? I'd think there would be more exciting challenges."

"It was either jail or skydiving," she says with a snort. She walks up to the bars and drapes herself into them, arms hanging loosely out, nose poking through a space. "Now, are you going to get out some food pellets for the petting zoo or am I going to have to put up with you staring for nothing?"

"You're not going to ask me to let you out?" The Master arches his eyebrows in surprise. "I'd think you've learned your lesson by now after all. Next time," and he reached for Eva's hand to study it idly, "You should be more discreet."

She lets him touch her hand, though her eyes narrow. She pictures what it would be like to jam her thumb into his eye, but that wouldn't do for getting time off for good behavior, would it?

"I don't like to depend on the kindness of relative strangers," she says in a prim little voice.

The Master never was one to notice when a woman was considering turning on him. He chuckles, rubbing his thumb along her wrist and oblivious to the signals. Or simply not caring.

"Who said it had anything to do with kindness?"

"In that case, I don't like to depend on the ulterior motives of strangers." She still doesn't remove her hand, although her teeth click audibly. "What do you want, Mr. Smith?"

"Just thought I'd drop in for a visit," he says blithely. "Figured you could use the company." Really though, he's just curious. Something about Eva intrigues him, more than it should. There's something fundamentally damaged about her, as if she could be pushed past the tipping point with a little extra work. And she'd probably hold up a bit better than Lucy.

"Funny, I don't remember putting out wanted ads for condescension and superiority." She rips at her fingernail with her teeth until it bleeds. "You're full of it, you know."

"Am I?" The Master grips her hand a bit tighter, keeping the pleasant smile fixed in place. "Well. Somehow I doubt I'm the only one around here."

He nods at the fingernail. "You might want to put a plaster on that."

"I wear my superiority well. It suits me," she sniffs. It's an odd assertion given her current disheveled state.

She bites it harder and then waves her bloody finger in his face. "I don't have to follow your advice."

If she thinks he's going to blanch from that little blood, well. She must not know him at all. The corner of the Master's mouth quirks up a little more.

"Woman's prerogative, I suppose. But you're right. It does suit you." He looks Eva up and down in a frank manner, emphasizing the obvious joke.

She laughs at that, but it's an ugly little chuckle. "You know, I might have been thought of as a lovely wife and mother, but you rip one face off..."

She shrugs. "It's a life sentence for your reputation, I suppose."

"Depends on the company," the Master replies smoothly. "I certainly forgive you your sins." Mock piety is his specialty, after all.

"Somehow I get the impression that you aren't without sin enough to forgive them," she says with a rueful little smile.

"Does that bother you?" he asks, still gripping her hand. "Who among us can truly say he's unsullied enough for that task?" He's thinking of the Doctor, of course. The Doctor, and his supercilious desire to absolve himself by forgiving the Master.

"You have a point." She extracts her hand, trying to make it look more like a dainty motion than a product of discomfort. "I'm sure there are some innocent children types who can renounce judgment, though."

The look of annoyance that flits across his face when Eva pulls away is intense but brief; soon enough he's all smiles and calm again as he stands and regards her through the bars.

"Not as innocent as you might think." The Toclafane, after all, were little more than children. His children, sent back to certain oblivion by a reversal of time.

"Some of them. Don't you know children are mostly just little adults? It's not that they're incapable of sin, they just haven't had enough time to cultivate a rap sheet."

"Or perhaps it's just that adults are big children?" he offers, grinning. After all, to the Master all humans are children, compared to a Time Lord.

"That's one way to look at it." She quirks a brow at the way he's grinning. "And I suppose you don't think you are?"

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heee, love that mental image

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