trans_9 | 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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"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?"

"Bit old for that," the Master demurs. Exactly how much older he's not about to say. "Though I suppose you could say I'm young at heart."

"You say that in such a self-satisfied way that I imagine you think yourself only 'young at heart' for the best given qualities of 'young'." Eva picks at her lower lip with her fingernails. "Where is all that ego from, anyway?"

"Oh, trust me, it's well-earned." He flashes Eva another charming grin. "What about yourself? I'm guessing you're not so 'young at heart'. And if I didn't know any better, I'd swear you sounded jealous."

She bites into those cuts in her lips. "I'm not jealous of your ego. I have plenty of my own. But it would be nice to not feel as if I had to hide it."

The Master notices the obsessive lip biting and shudders slightly. Humans and their disgusting habits. "Not ego, perhaps. But I'm guessing you haven't felt young in quite some time, have you?"

He purses his lips as if his next thought has just occurred to him. "Could be from all that hiding you're talking about."

She lifts her nose slightly. She's shorter than him, but she doesn't miss the potential barb hidden in his words. "Funny. If I had to guess, I'd presume I'm a good deal younger than you. Maybe even at heart, too."

"Oh?" He steps close to the bars again, eyes fixed on her intently.

"Prove it." There's a quiet confidence in his voice; he already has some idea of what she'll say to that.

"I'm forty-nine." If he was expecting her to say that a lady wouldn't reveal her age, he's mistaken. "You're older than me."

Maybe not by the looks of him, but she's confident in her assessment.

He goes still, his eyes narrowing shrewdly.

"What makes you say that?"

"Observation," she says plainly. "Am I wrong?"

The Master stares at her from between the bars like a hungry cat. He so desperately wants to grab her, take a peek inside her head, see what she really knows and how she knows it.

"And what have you observed?" he says, dragging out each syllable just a little too long.

"The way you speak is befitting of someone who's seen it all. Now, no one who looks your age thinks that, unless they actually have seen much more than the human ken. That sort of egocentrism is usually reserves for octogenerians, teenagers, and those of limited imagination." She matches his stare with one of her own, proud and statuesque, feigning imperturbability. "So yes. You are older than me."

"And which are you?" he asks, not letting on whether she's correct or not. "Limited imagination? Younger than you appear? Or have you seen more than the average human?"

Not that that would take much effort.

She doesn't even respond to him with words. She just rolls her eyes so cartoonishly that for a moment they look as if they're going to disappear into the back of her head.

He sets his mouth in a thin line.

"Well. You certainly act younger than you appear."

"I happen to think I do an excellent job cleaning my room and turning in my homework." She twists her mouth into a pout. "Now are we quite done here? I believe the zoo's hours are up."

"You tell me." The Master crooks a brow. "Are we? Are you ready for me to walk away and leave you to your cage?"

An Unexploded Shell Inside a Cell [Open]

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How the shit did I miss this notif.

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I swear I tagged this. LJ must have ate my tag. EXCUSES EXCUSES.

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