Third Encounter

“Aha!” The Doctor reclaimed in satisfaction as he tugged a part loose and sat back on his heels to examine it. He dabbed at his damp forehead with his shirt sleeve, jumper and coat having been discarded some hours earlier while he ransacked the console room in search of the offending component.

“There we go, Tegan,” he said, jumping to his feet and turning to show her. “A simple faulty--”

The blow came out of nowhere. An open palmed thrust that snapped his chin up and crashed his head back against the wall. The world disappeared into black stars and he slid bonelessly to the floor.

He woke in painful confusion with Tegan's face inches from his own. Groggily he was aware that there was some reason that this was distinctly non-reassuring.

“Tegan?” he started.

His mouth tasted of blood and something tickled his chin. Memory snapped back with a rush of adrenaline. She'd hit him! Tegan had hit him and now she leaned in further still and licked up the blood trickling down his chin.

Stark disbelief held the Doctor motionless as Tegan slid her mouth full onto his. He tried to protest around the kiss but opening his mouth was a mistake, as her insistent, hungry tongue darted inside, thrusting and probing.

Eventually she pulled away and drew back to look at him, a cold, amused look on her face as she waited wordlessly for a reaction.

“Who are you?” the Doctor demanded, trying and failing to sit up as he realised he was restrained wrists and ankles to the bed. “Let Tegan go.”

Tegan's face twisted in a sneer. “How utterly insufferable. What a self-righteous obnoxious mind you have. Here you are, tied up, helpless yourself and you want me to let her go?”

“Yes I do!” The Doctor tugged at the restraints holding him for completeness sake, not really expecting to be lucky enough to find a weakness.

“And I asked you you are.” he added.

“You know who I am,” something hissed with Tegan's voice. “You've already lied to her about me twice, told her she was safe from me...”

“The Mara...” the Doctor breathed, giving up the struggle against the restraints for now.

“The Mara,” mimicked Tegan.

“What have you done with Turlough?”

“Still not concerned about yourself yet?” The Mara dragged Tegan's fingernail slowly down the side of the Doctor's face, closed her hand loosely around his throat.

“Where is he?” the Doctor insisted.

“You truly are tedious. The boy is unconscious, locked in his room.”

“His mind not good enough for you? Getting picky are we?” The Doctor cast around for any distraction, any information he might be able to use.

“His mind is imminently suitable.” Fingernails scraped across the Doctor's throat as the Mara released Tegan's grip there and trailed her hand to the buttons of his shirt. “Full of anger and resentment. But it is... limited. Small.”

The Doctor frowned. “So what does a human mind have that Turlough's doesn't?”

The Mara laughed – Tegan's laugh – and plucked loose the last button. The Doctor's breath hitched as much with sudden realisation as the chill contrast of air on his bare chest.

“It isn't a human mind you're after is it?” he managed, getting his voice back under control. “It's a Timelord one. Mine.” He closed his eyes briefly as Tegan's hands flowed up and down his sides then charged on, speaking quickly, trying to concentrate on that and nothing else.

“So why this performance? I've already asked you to release her. You already know that I'm – what was it? – 'insufferably self righteous' and would put myself in her place. So release her and take me.”

He gasped as fingernails raked him again, catching a nipple and settling there, kneading and twisting. His voice shook as he went on.

“Except you can't! Can you? All that obnoxious foolish care for someone other than yourself is anathema to you isn't it? It's poison. As long as I give myself up out of friendship and loyalty and compassion you can not even bear to touch my mind. Can you!”

He broke off with a stifled cry as Tegan's hand found his other nipple and buried her fingernails in it. He arched his back, gasping noisily through gritted teeth.

“No, Doctor, I can not,” the voice was emotionless, Tegan's face showing only a mild sort of interest as she watched his body's contortions to escape her touch. “Your mind burns. All that noble indignation. But I shall quench that I promise you.”

Tegan lowered her head and bit down on one of the nipples she had been pinching. Biting so hard the Doctor was sure she must draw blood any moment, she flicked her tongue over the painfully stimulated nub. The combined sensation was indescribable and the Doctor was distantly aware he was making a sound somewhere between a squeal and a sob, but couldn't have stopped himself for his life.

There was a moment's relief as Tegan's hand slipped from his other nipple and traced down his body. Relief quickly subsumed by shock as it found the fastening of his trousers and slipped inside to cup him.

“Don't!” he managed. “Let her go!”

Tegan's mouth released him and she raised her head and smiled. The Mara spoke, voice a purr of confident pleasure.

“When you cry out, Doctor, when you scream in pain and humiliation, when you beg on your own behalf for release, then I will have you.” Tegan's hand tightened on his groin again and his breath broke into helpless gasps.

“I will tear your mind into pieces, and sweep away the ruins and fill the space with myself.”

"No," the Doctor choked, but it was an automatic denial, he wasn't certain himself whether he believed it or not, and he soon forget to wonder as all concentration and control was swept away in a frenzy. All was hands and teeth and pain and unwelcome, unprompted pleasure as he lost even the most rudimentary control over his own reactions.

Tegan's teeth marked his jaw, shoulder, arms, sides, her hands found every sensitive spot until he was gasping and babbling.

He wondered at the Mara's silence, wondered that his confused pleadings weren't enough to satisfy it, wondered how much worse it thought it could possibly make it.

Somewhere in the confusion he found his trousers yanked clear to his ankles and there was a still, quiet moment while he was simply too exhausted to struggle or scream further.

"Still more interested in my body than my mind?" he gasped out. "Haven't I done enough screaming for you yet?"

Tegan's hand circled his half hard shaft, coaxing it back to full stimulation, bringing a flush of humiliation to his cheeks, reddening them along with the already scarlet scratches the covered his skin.

"Plenty," the Mara purred, "But you still answer back, still resist, still think somewhere in the back of your mind that you'll find a way to stop this without giving in."

Tegan's face twisted into a parody of a smile and her free hand slid between his legs, and insinuated a finger between his buttocks.

He gasped, tossed his head back and forth, but didn't bother to protest.

"You see..." the Mara murmured. "Still too stubborn. You scream and beg when it hurts, but won't lower yourself to plead before then. I want your concious submission, not desperate babbling pleas while you're half out of you mind."

"I thought me out of my mind was exactly what you wanted."

The Doctor cursed himself for a fool, but could no more have held back the defiance than he could have held back the scream that followed as fingers thrust roughly, unprepared, into him.

The Mara spoke again.

"There is something I have gained from this human mind."

"Oh?" The Doctor voice was breathy, shrill, taut. "And what's that?"

"Imagination..."

Tegan's fingers curled in him, and he thought the sensation of nails scraping inside him would drive him to madness. Frantic for distraction and furious at the casual way this creature dismissed Tegan's consciousness as its plaything he snapped.

"Not Tegan's, this isn't Tegan's mind."

Another smile was his answer. Tegan's hand moved lazily up and down his shaft, her thumb trailed back and forth over the head and his breath broke into ragged gasps.

"Oh I have her mind," the Mara went on, "But the body is hers, the lusts, the sensations, the desire."

"Liar!"

Tegans's hand cupped his balls, applied pressure just enough to draw out another shuddering cry of protest.

"Part of her wonders what this would have been like as willing partners."

The Doctor shook his head, unable to form a coherent denial.

"And part of her prefers it this way. Part of her hates you and craves your suffering for everything you put her through."

"I-- I never--"

Tegan dipped her head and took him in her mouth, drowning all protests in pure feeling. She smiled around him, pulled away so slightly and delivered a sharp nip which made him scream outright in shock.

"It's your fault her aunt is dead," the Mara said. "The Master would never have been there if not for you."

Tegan's hand worked him again restoring, the erection the cruel bite had ended.

"That's true isn't it?"

The Doctor gasped, shook his head, but answered, "Yes."

Tegan straddled him, raised her skirt and took his shaft in her hands as the Mara continued to speak.

"You took her away from everything she knew, a life she loved, to dangers and pain on the other side of the universe, stranded her with your own incompetence..."

The Doctor renewed his struggles against the restraints he already knew were too strong to give, pressed his hips into the bed, shrinking from the contact.

"I... Yes."

"Made her watch as her whole world was threatened, as her friend died to save it."

Tegan lowered herself onto him and began to rock back and forth, her fingernails again straying to his chest.

"You killed him twice over in fact, failed to act and then refused to."

The Doctor's breath sobbed in his throat, his answer barely audible.

"I couldn't.. I... Yes. Yes!"

"Left another friend to die on a diseased, decaying space station. Didn't even try to persuade her to leave."

The Doctor moaned, threw his head back, welcomed the pain of those twisting, pinching fingers that gave him an excuse not to answer. He screamed instead.

Tegan paused in her rhythm, released her grip on his nipples and stroked his sides gently instead.

"Answer me, Doctor."

"No," he mumbled, "No, I did try. I did."

"And you failed,"

Fingernails raked down his chest again.

"Yes!"

Tegan ground herself against him and convulsed in shuddering orgasm. She climbed off him, looking down with a contempt he could hardly stand to see on her face, and jerked him to his own unwelcome release.

"Please..." he mumbled, too wrung out to manage more.

"Shall we go on?" asked the Mara. "I can see so much more here to discuss and so much more time available to find the limits of this body's endurance."

"No. Please. Stop."

"Is that what you want?" The Mara bent low over him, Tegan's face almost touching his, her tongue moving over her lips.

"Beg me."

"Please!" Breathy, urgent. "Please. What more do you want from me. Please! Let me go, please."

He'd managed to lift his head in anger for a moment but now it flopped back. "You wanted my mind... take it... Do whatever you want -- do I look like I can stop you?"

The Mara smiled.

"No."

Tegan's hands touched his face and then her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped to the floor as the world went black again.

Waking was stranger this time. The Doctor woke, already on his knees. Confused, on a rocky, desolate plain, but unbound, and mercifully fully dressed again.

He stood, and looked around.

"Where are you?" he called. "Come out. Why hide? Haven't you got what you wanted?"

He spread his arms. "Didn't quite work though did it? Here we are, in my mind. But I'm still here it would seem. So, show yourself!"

There was a ripple in the air and the serpent appeared, rearing up to tower over the Doctor who looked up at it and put his hands in his pockets.

"Where is this place?" it hissed.

"Don't you know?" the Doctor asked, keeping his tone aggravatingly light. "You read Tegan's mind easily enough or so you'd have me believe. Having a spot of trouble with mine are you?"

He turned and gestured at the wasteland. On the horizon smoke spilled blackly into the grey sky.

"This is Skaro. I destroyed a species here. Or led them to destroy each other which amounts to the same."

The scene flickered, became a brightly lit, technology-filled room. Bodies littered the floor and it stank.

"And another here. This is the seabase on Earth which the Silurians attacked. I poisoned the very last of their kind here. And it didn't even save the people they were attacking. And I didn't even much like the people they were attacking in the first place."

Another flicker. A dark room, tall figures in formal robes circled it.

"This is Gallifrey, my own world, where my own people took my companions from me and cast me out."

He turned back to the serpent.

"You told me Turough's mind was too small for you, but you've overreached yourself well and truly now. You think you can drive me to despair over the fate of one human, one more set of miserable failures after everything I've done?"

His voice was shaking now.

"You're a fool."

The serpent reared higher, towered over him, bared its fangs.

"But you do despair, Doctor, you are angry and resentful and the fury boils in you at your failure."

"Yes," the Doctor admitted. "Sometimes. But you're still missing something. Don't you want to know what?"

A furious hissing was his only reply but he went on regardless.

"You're missing the 'why'."

"Why?"

"Yes. Why does it hurt?"

"A stupid question. Failure always hurts."

"But the ones you've chosen for me, the ones you knew would distress me the most -- they hurt because of all those things you can't stand. Because I care, because I would give myself up to prevent them, and because sometimes even that isn't enough and because even then I choose to live with the failure instead of give in, because of hope."

The Doctor stepped closer to the serpent.

"So you see, you haven't driven those things from me. You've reminded me of them. Brought them all to the surface. And then you've joined me in here with them."

The Mara reared back as the Doctor stepped forward once again, flames swept up from nowhere and engulfed it. Spread to encompass the whole mindscape and the Doctor stood in the middle of it, watching.

The Mara screamed at him through the flames.

“She'll leave you, Doctor. She'll run. She's thinking about it even now. You bring death and despair wherever you go and she'll run from it!”

The Doctor closed his eyes.

Opened them again to the ceiling of the TARDIS.

He twisted his head to the side to see Tegan still limp on the floor.

"Tegan!" His voice has hoarse here as if hadn't been in his minds eye. He was sore and exhausted in body and spirit. Everything hurt and he was avoiding thinking about the prospect of explanations.

"Tegan."

She stirred weakly, eyes fluttering open then closed again.

Abruptly the door burst open and Turlough ploughed in. He staggered to a halt, face falling slackly into shocked horror as his eyes lit on the Doctor.

"Don't gawp, Turlough," the Doctor managed with an attempt at a normal tone, even as a corner of his mind cringed in dismay at being discovered in this state. "Help me. And Tegan. She doesn't... She shouldn't have to see this."

"Who did this?" Turlough asked, voice quiet as he undid the restraints from the Doctor's chafed wrists and ankles.

The Doctor fumbled for his shirt and trousers and didn't answer.

Turlough put out a hand.

"Those injuries need treating..."

"In a minute." The Doctor ignored the discomfort of fabric pulling over the welts and bruises, far more concerned with covering them before Tegan woke up. “Help me get her up on the bed.”

Turlough lifted Tegan but the moment her body touched the bed she sat bolt upright screaming.

The Doctor darted forward. “Shush now. Shhh. It's alright. It's gone, it's alright.”

He kept up the litany until the scream died to a hiccuping sob.

“Alright!” Tegan's eyes paused on his face, flicked to the rest of his body, making him truly grateful he'd managed to get dressed before she woke. “Look at you!”

“Rather not at the moment, if it's all the same.” The Doctor smiled tiredly, trying for lightness and falling flat.

Tegan buried her face in her hands and spoke in a muffled tone.

“I want to say 'I'm sorry, it wasn't me, I didn't mean it'.” She shivered and her voice dropped to a trembling, horrified whisper. “But I did. At the time I did. I felt...”

The Doctor pulled her hands from her face.

“It's alright,” he said.

Tegan met his eyes.

“You always say that!” she snapped. “And it's not!”

No,” the Doctor allowed. “It isn't. But it will be.” Her squeezed her arm in vague comfort. A ridiculously trivial gesture after what they're both been through but the best he could come up with.

“We'll make it alright. Tegan, because the alternative is curling up and giving in and letting the likes of the Mara grow in the darkness we create for ourselves.”

Tegan sniffed. “Polly-bloody-anna you are.”

The Doctor smiled. “I try.”

And in the spirit of hopefulness, he never asked her whether the Mara's last words to him were true.

---END---