Christmas Crackers
Dec. 24th, 2009 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_losficTitle: Christmas Crackers
Chapter: I of III
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bagheera_san and x_los
Rating: PG
Pairing: Three/Delgado!Master, Brig, Jo, Benton, Yates
Summary: As the holidays approach UNIT finds itself under siege by the Master, whose enthusiasm for Christmas appears to be as sincere as it is sinister.
Beta:aralias, horrible lobster bride and wonderful pinch-hitting beta-beast
A/N: We started this last Christmas and I flaked. Er. It's um, done now? MERRY CHRISTMAS, DAMMIT.
Next: Chapter II
Christmas Crackers
Part I
The day to day operation of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce depended on a surprising variety of minutiae: chemicals and equipment for the labs, uniforms and vehicles obtained via reciprocity agreements with the regular British infantry, weekly crates of PG Tips and lackluster digestive biscuits handed over into the keeping of the taskforce’s grizzled old tea lady. While not exactly listed in the telephone directory, officially, as a subsidiary of the United Nations, UNIT was a public organization. Their various suppliers could, if they happened to misplace UNIT's contact information, call Britain's UN dispatcher and be patched through to HQ, or be given a mailing address with a minimum of fuss.
Thus it was that UNIT received Christmas packages from the determined. In the beginning of December, Petra Williams and Greg Sutton, who'd survived the collapse of the Stahlman's gas project thanks to UNIT and had since become engaged, attached their names and a general invitation to their wedding to boxes of carefully decorated Christmas biscuits. Little silver edible ball bearings ornamented the tiny trees, hanging from strands of white-frosting garland. The Doctor went into childish raptures about these, and with a species of innocent, oblivious selfishness he made off with all the little evergreens. Jo wryly reported back to the tearoom that in the lab the Doctor was performing a detailed scientific investigation of the sprinkles with his mouth. Jo reasoned that it was probably really important, and something was likely to blow up if he were disturbed by an attempt to recapture the tree biscuit plate. They'd just have to make do with the angels and stars. Captain Yates wondered how big a something was likely to blow up. Putting on a ponderous Doctor-voice, Jo hazarded, “Why, all of Wales, old chap!” Yates snorted his tea out of his nose, and after a moment of recovery asked who'd really miss Wales. Jo got earnestly offended on behalf of the Welsh, who everybody was always down on but who were perfectly lovely people, really, she'd been to Swansea to see an aunt in July and had had a super time, everyone had been absolutely charming to her. Yates continued to tease her until Benton poked his head in with an indignant request for a hand with the supply inventory, and a near-simultaneous crash and a loud exclamation from the lab had Jo peremptorily grabbing up the mop from the cleaning lady's cupboard and running in the direction of the noise.
In early December Liz sent clippings of scientific articles she wanted to bring to the Doctor's particular attention, a formal request for permission to publish the enclosed article on the Mars Probe project for the Brigadier to pass onto the boys at Geneva (who would have to vet her work for information they'd rather keep confidential), and, almost incidentally under the papers, a box of fresh custard-filled ponchkes for everyone, with specific instructions that they were not to be eaten until they were warmed to precisely 37 degrees Celsius and dusted with the enclosed package of powdered sugar. As they ate the Doctor reminisced about poor dear Liz, who'd been bullied into going back to Cambridge The Brigadier burned his lip on the oozing egg custard mid dubious eyebrow-raise, which rather spoiled the effect.
Olive Hawthorne of Devil's End sent them a Yule card, very fragrant greenery, and some pamphlets on British Traditional Wicca. Benton was singled out to receive a special loaf of bread, which had apparently been 'baked with natural essences that promoted fertility:' it seemed Olive remembered their dance around the May Pole fondly. She'd knitted the Brigadier a thick, comfortable scarf out of Wiltshire wool, which he would have worn had opening it in the publicity of the tearoom not provoked quite so much mockery from the gallery.
An old woman who’d survived the Silurian uprising in Wenley Moor sent them a dense, moist mince pie, packed tight in a battered red tin. It was specifically directed to Benton, who'd been the one to call her an ambulance, who'd remembered to call and check up on her after the Doctor had dealt with the virus and the Brigadier had bombed the caves and entombed the Silurians. The old woman's husband had died of a heart attack before they'd arrived on the scene. In the face of Benton’s own consciousness of what he had failed to do, her gratitude for what he’d done cut at him. Benton deposited the cake in the tearoom without tasting it, slipping the card into his jacket pocket. It was eaten by the day's end, and Benton, having gotten out of Yates that it had tasted “Sort of cinnamony, lots of nutmeg. And some honey, I think” sent a card back to that lonely farm in Wenley Moor with his thanks, standard holiday good wishes, and appropriate praise along those lines.
Amidst such a regular Christmas traffic the over-sized, elegant, red-papered box addressed specifically to the Doctor aroused no suspicion in the mailroom. He strolled out of his TARDIS on the first day of Advent and started upon seeing it sitting in the middle of his lab table, along with some things he'd asked to be sent up from stores. Rubbing his hands together, he ran an index finger along the shiny gold-satin bow, flipping it up to hunt for a card. Nothing. Well, perhaps the card was inside the package.
He looked up at the sound of the door. Jo waddled in. She’d traded her ubiquitous miniskirts and leggings for a floor-length, comically thick coat that made her attempts at normal movement immensely amusing.
"Morning Jo. Any luck?"
Jo wobbled her head about—but sensing that her gesture meant about as much to him as the cooing noises produced by the Clangers, she threw her hood off properly and shook a no, unbuttoning her coat with clumsy, gloved fingers.
"Still no snow! The coldest, nastiest winter anyone can remember, and not one snowflake! Are you sure there's nothing weird and alien about it? It does seem an awfully unlikely run of bad luck."
The Doctor chuckled. "Sorry Jo, I'm afraid it's just a regular old cold front that doesn’t bear sufficient moisture to induce precipitation. Perfectly natural phenomenon."
"Oh, well, if that's all it is-" Jo smiled, gently sardonic in the face of the Doctor's meteorology.
"Chin up Jo, we've got a present here!" The Doctor drew a jeweler's glass from his left jacket pocket and, taking up the box, shook it critically, as if he seriously thought he might be able to determine the contents by the jostling sound.
“Not a Phelbian squidge,” he murmured to himself, “not enough of a squelch to it.”
Jo finished schucking her outer layers and obediently came around to look at it. "Nice paper! I don't think I've ever seen a present wrapped up quite this carefully. Someone must really like you."
The Doctor grinned at her over the box. " Let's have a look, shall we?"
Jo shrugged. "There's no card. It might not even be for us. The mail room misdirects things so often –the other day Doctor Sullivan came over with your tissue samples to barter for his bottles of penicillin."
"I’ve thought of that, but perhaps the card’s inside—I expect that heightens the surprise. Anyway, it's been delivered here, so perhaps whatever package it came in had the direction.This thing certainly hasn't been subjected to Royal Mail. Security must have opened the original box, those bumblers may well have lost the card." The Doctor picked up an exacto knife from the table and fiddled with it before putting it down again. "I'm always torn—I should try and save this very attractive paper, but a fair amount of the satisfaction of opening a present lies in tearing into it, don't you think?" The Doctor toyed with the corner for an instant, putting the bow aside and demurely lifting the paper up along the taped crease, and then gave in and began ripping the paper gleefully.
Lifting the lid he'd uncovered, he arrived at another box, which was,also wrapped. With a slight frown he unwrapped this too—only to find himself faced with yet another box.
"This is ridiculous," he huffed. "Who could possibly be so maddeningly over-complicated?"
"It's like a Russian doll!" Jo said.
"Ah-ha!" The Doctor, triumphant, stared down at the contents of the final box. A heavy, dark Christmas pudding sat amidst the paper and cardboard carnage.
"Oh," the Doctor looked over at Jo, "it's a Christmas pudding. Well that's rather an anti-clim--AH!" The pudding spat a jet of sticky black treacle up at the Doctor, coating his face. The sticky treacle seemed to seek out his nostrils and mouth even as he clawed at it. "Jo, water, quickly!"
Jo grabbed the emergency tub from next to the Doctor's workbench and threw its contents onto him. The water seemed to slide under the treacle as though the black gunk were oil, and the Doctor, gasping for breath, heaved the writhing treacle mass off his face and flung it across the room. It smacked against the wall, tried for a minute to scrabble up it, and then slopped into the bin below like a diver doing a back flip.
"Doctor!" Jo shrieked, drawing his attention away from the horrible thing's death throes in the wastebasket, which he'd run across the room to watch. Turning back, the Doctor's eyes widened in horror – the Christmas pudding itself was in the process of shooting out thin, spidery legs made of suet: the fat congealed and glistening. Dried fruits and nuts protruded from its near-spherical mass like ominous icebergs jutting up above the surface of the ocean. The traditional sprig of holly wobbled threateningly as what was clearly some sort of creature gained a footing, stepped out of the box it had come in, and started wobbling towards Jo at high speed.
"Doctor, it has my sweater! This is cashmere, get off!" Jo protested, dodging another treacle projectile. The pudding-beast had caught her sleeve in some sort of maw. As Jo tried to pull away, its acidic sugars dissolved the fabric it had mouthed. This freed the panicked, struggling Jo, who went flying back as the tension was released and stumbled to the ground.
"It can dissolve organic material”, the Doctor marveled. “Stay well away from it, Jo!"
Jo rolled her eyes–as if she'd been planning to cuddle up with the thing and have a chat about boys–but shouted a warning to the Doctor as the Christmas pudding swiveled towards him and crouched down on its suet legs, readying for a pounce. It sprung forward, bounding towards the Doctor at speed. The Doctor grabbed the Bunsen burner off the table, turned it on, chucked it at the pudding with a martial cry, and threw himself out of the way, rolling clear as the pudding exploded into a halo of purple flame. Its suet legs melted out from under it, and the Doctor staggered up and chucked a bottle of ethanol from his workbench at it, to further fuel the blaze. He and Jo crept to the corner, opened the window to let the smoke out into the cold December air, and watched as the Pudding burned down into a sullen, blackened husk.
"Thoroughly coated in brandy," the Doctor observed. "You know, I have a feeling it might well have been delicious." Jo goggled at him. "If it hadn't been alive," he added, somewhat lamely. He coughed. "No use in asking who sent it, is there? Though I suppose he'll have included a card. It'd be unlike him not to want to make absolutely sure I knew who to give the credit to." Striding over to the table, the Doctor upended and shook the smallest box. Sure enough, a small red envelope with a signet 'M' seal in evergreen-colored, pine-scented wax fluttered down onto the table. The Doctor lifted his exacto knife and slicked through the seal with narrowed eyes. The note was in Gallifreyan, written with chipper time-flux ink that shifted between red and green every three microspans.
"My dear Doctor,
Happy Christmas. I trust you'll appreciate my little gift—merely a small token, a harbinger of things to come. I look forward to enjoying a good deal of your company over the holidays. Do try and prepare for it as best you can.
–the Master"
"Why that blustering–" the Doctor, dripping-wet, crumpled the note and shoved it in his pocket. "I'm going back into my TARDIS to have a bath. If the Brigadier comes looking for me about those tissue samples, tell him I've had a very trying morning."
"What do you want me to do about the Black Pudding?" Jo eyed the remains suspiciously.
"Oh, just bin the thing." The Doctor was already throwing open the TARDIS door. "It's dead now, at any rate. That kind of animation depends on there being sufficient organic matter to fixate on. Now that it's burned to a crisp we really needn't worry about it."
"If you say so, Doctor," Jo said, leaving to fetch a biohazard suit from the supply room. She refused to handle that cashmere-annihilator wearing anything less protective—UNIT had already done enough damage to her wardrobe for a lifetime, thank you very much.
***
Three days later the better part of the UNIT brass sat around the hearth of the converted living room where they typically took their tea breaks. They and their office’s Christmas tree were uniformly covered in a fine layer of ash. To this, the Doctor added several pounds of water, which was trapped in the various ruffles of heavy fabric he was wearing. He was frosted with the foam of chemicals from a fire extinguisher and looked like a sad, wet plastic tree decorated with faux snow.
Jo twisted the extinguisher nervously in her hands. "I mean this time, it really looked like you needed the fire extinguisher, when just the water didn't do it."
The Doctor heaved a mighty sigh. "Yes, Jo."
"It's not like last time, where that spatio-whatsit you'd been working on was just supposed to start smoking like a dirty chimney, though I don't see how I was meant to know that at the time, it being my first day and all--"
"No, Jo," the Doctor snapped, "you did perfectly well."
Jo looked a little hurt by his tone, and he tried to give her a smile. He reached over to pat her shoulder before noticing the state of his hands, wincing, and shifting to rub his neck instead.
"I can hardly believe he smuggled a toxic Yule Log in here. Chemical agents in a thin layer under the bark, I expect. "
Benton piped in, seeming a bit dejected. "Well, he didn't, exactly."
The Doctor turned his head sharply. "Didn't what?"
Benton coughed. "Smuggle it, I mean. He just sort of came to the door and dropped it off, suggested it might be nice to burn it on a cold day like this, bring a bit of the Christmas spirit into our HQ. I mean, to be fair, his disguise was really convincing. Looked more like the head of MI6 than the actual bloke himself does. Said he really appreciated all our good work on the Spectre case too, and I thought, well, that's unusually charitable of MI6, but jolly nice of him to recognize us, and I told him so–"
"Benton," the Brigadier groaned, "you're far too gullible for defense work. Perhaps you'd better go and see if security at Harrods needs any additional holiday help. You might guard Santa from enthusiastic tots who want electric trains this year and won't take no for an answer."
"Do you think the Master could be disguisng himself as Santa then, sir?" Benton asked earnestly, eager to make amends for his mistake. The Brigadier bit the inside of his lip in tightly controlled annoyance.
"Now there's a thought," the Doctor was grinning for the first time all afternoon. "I bet that jackanapes would scramble into a gaudy velvet suit in a hearts-beat. He's always had about as much taste as common sense.” The Doctor frowned. “What are you all looking at me like that for? Well?"
The assembled averted their eyes from the Doctor's dark red velvet jacket and matching pants.
"It's festive," the Doctor protested, "And very well-cut!"
The Brigadier coughed. In the background a tiny electric train clacked along its tracks, letting out a chipper 'toot toot!' as it crossed the miniature bridge. The Doctor had rigged it up to follow a labyrinthine pattern around the Christmas tree, wearing an expression of unholy glee as he had fiddled with its remote.
"Christmas is coming--" the Brigadier began.
"The goose is getting fat?" Jo suggested.
"Please put a penny--" Yates chimed in.
"And we had better all be ready for whatever it is the Master has planned for us next,” the Brigadier snapped, interrupting their go at a round, all offended dignity. “Don't you all have something you should be doing right now? Captain Yates, where the devil are those reports? Dismissed!"
"I don't even know what reports he's talking about," Yates complained to Benton in the hall as they all, save for the Brigadier and the Doctor, trooped out of the tearoom.
"It's just something he says sometimes," Benton assured him, "like 'five rounds rapid.’ I don't think he actually cares exactly how many rounds you had to fire, I've never seen him counting the shell casings or anything."
"Permission to change, sir?" the Doctor asked back in the tearoom, with deeply sardonic obedience.
“Granted," the Brigadier agreed, giving the Doctor a glare that suggested he found humor a highly inappropriate response to the situation.
***
And for a few days, nothing.
On a cold Saturday, the Doctor descended into central London to do a spot of holiday shopping. He pressed through the busy, still-cheerful crowds, apologizing politely whenever the heavy edge of his cape jostled someone laden with packages. He liked humans like this, busy and concerned with the minutiae of their celebrations, ignorant of the many threats UNIT had only just managed to save them from.
It started to snow lightly. The Doctor peered for a moment at the flakes as they descended from the white opacity of the sky. In that scant second he managed to smack directly into a fellow pedestrian.
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry." The Doctor dropped into a crouch automatically to help the other man pick up his parcels before they were trampled by the crowd. He glanced up, and there, not two feet away from him, similarly crouched, was the proud architect of the two most recent attempts on his life.
The Master was dressed as if he were going into the City to foreclose something important. He wore an immaculate grey suit, long black overcoat, and shining black leather shoes.
"You," the Doctor hissed. "Tracking me, are you?"
The Master looked genuinely surprised, but quickly managed to tuck that expression away under a smug smile. He propped his arms indolently over his bent knee and balanced the weight of his torso on them. "I was simply making a few purchases, Doctor. Seeing you here is an entirely unexpected pleasure. But I trust from the manner of your greeting that you received my latest gifts? It does warm my hearts to hear my work isn't unappreciated."
"Don't pretend you didn't already know the outcome of both encounters. And what did you do to that Christmas pudding--I say, excuse me!" The Doctor gave the passerby who had nearly stepped on his hand a sharp look, and stood with neat grace, the Master's packages still in his hands.
The Master chuckled. "I admit the recipe was a touch more difficult than I was initially prepared for, but I must say, I was pleased with the result."
"What's your aim, then? It can't be these childish pranks. You've something larger in the works, don't you?" The Doctor took a step forward, his eyes narrow.
The Master plucked his bundles neatly from the other Time Lord's arms. "Oh Doctor, that would be telling. Do you realize--" he paused a moment to sniff the air. "Is that cerub?" His nose wrinkled in confusion.
"Related species, actually. They call it 'cacao.' It lacks cerub’s hallucinogenic properties, but the food they derive from it has a strikingly similar taste."
"How could they possibly be related? We're whole systems away from Gallifrey," the Master scoffed even as he turned his head to the source of the scent and inhaled appreciatively.
"Cross-pollination during the Time Lord's more expansionist phase perhaps,” the Doctor mused. “I've wondered myself."
"Nonsense, Doctor. What's the likelihood of transplanting a cerub seedling by accident? It’s hardly a hardy species. It wouldn't surprise me if you yourself were going to be responsible in the future, given your haphazard traipsing through the time stream."
The Doctor put his hands on his hips. "Look, would you prefer to continue this discussion inside that tea shop you can't stop staring at? I can condemn your malicious scheming just as easily if I’m seated in a booth. The snow is picking up, and we seem to be something of a traffic obstruction."
The Master glanced back from the window he'd been gazing into, gave his nemesis an arch look and strode into the shop. Once inside he glanced around at the heavily garlanded interior, apparently amused, and rubbed his leather-gloved hands against the cold. He looked over his shoulder at the Doctor, who had walked in after him. "Well, Doctor? What does one order?"
"At this time of year, hot cocoa."
The Master took a smallish note out of a billfold that was fat with currency the Doctor didn't want to closely contemplate the probable origins of, and strode to the counter with it in hand. "Find us a booth, would you?"
Rolling his eyes at the Master's casual imperiousness, the Doctor slid down into a seat parallel to the window and looked out into the falling snow. Shoppers continued their long traipses past the bookshops and boutiques, heedless of the weather, ducking into the stores and hustling back out. They all seemed merrily occupied and in good spirits.
There was something charming about staying in a place long enough to see the build-up to a public holiday, the culmination of all that anticipation. The instant gratification of a TARDIS tended to deny one the sense of pace provided by a seasonal calendar. Before embarking on a life of constant movement he’d only ever lived on Gallifrey. Timeless, and lacking a climate, the Time Lords in their domed Citadels were about as far removed from their pastoral origins as it was possible to be, and proud of it. Except during the few very early years he’d lived in the wild mountains outside the Capitol, the Doctor had never known this sense of an annual cycle. Now a thin sheet of snow coated the streets. It reminded the Doctor of the silver snow of his childhood—-of their shared childhood, really—-filo-thin, pierced by spiny blades of red grass.
A saucer bearing a cup connected with the table in front of him with a sharp tap. The Doctor looked at the Master over his cocoa with a faint smile, indicating it with a finger. "How do I know that's not been poisoned?"
The Master took a sip from the Doctor's and then his own cup, raising an eyebrow in challenge.
"And what if there's Iocane powder in both cups, and you've managed to build up an immunity?"
The Master made a dismissive gesture. "You'll just have to be reasonable, Doctor, if all else fails you. Do you have any idea how many times I might have poisoned you this week? This year? The tea you swill, for example, is left overnight on a palate in a London warehouse before a crate is shipped to UNIT’s purser. If I wanted to kill you with something as graceless and impersonal as a toxin, you'd be dead a dozen times over."
Looking him full in the face, the Doctor picked up his mug, drank from it, put it down in the exact centre of the saucer, and said a prim, polite ”Thank you.”
"Now," the Doctor continued, leaning back in his seat, "I believe we were discussing your recent and repeated attempts to kill me."
The Master folded his hands on the table and grinned. "Don't be tiresome, Doctor. You know full well I'm simply warming up."
"To what? Dressed Christmas turkeys that attack in flying V formation? Real-sized ginger-bread houses that shrink once you're inside them, like a sabotaged SIDRAT? Eggnog that gives you a literally head-splitting hangover?"
The Master laughed. "All excellent suggestions, my dear Doctor. Are you sure you shouldn't be at my side? With a mind like that, you seem so naturally inclined to be my partner."
"Any twists and breaks in my logic are only there because I’ve made ill-advised efforts to try and fathom what you think you’re playing at."
"I'm flattered I've had such a profound influence on you." The Master sipped his cocoa. "And I believe I'll leave it to you to try and figure out my plans, this time. After all, someone once told me surprises are half the fun of Christmas." He looked down at his cocoa thoughtfully. "This is quite good, you know."
The Doctor inclined his head in agreement.
The Master glanced out at the window at the sidewalk, which was now so crowded with shoppers as to be almost impassable. "Are you still fond of this holiday, now that you're being forced to experience it in linear time as these primitives do? I notice your UNIT friends have thoroughly coated their base in paraphernalia."
"Primitives? You sound like a CIA lackey. I'll thank you to choose your words more carefully. And they're decorations, Christmas lights, baubles…. Apparently they're usually rather more subdued and professional, but Jo can be quite insistent."
"'Developing species' then," the Master conceded with good grace. "And I might have known that was Miss Grant's doing."
"She wanted to put tinsel around my lab table," the Doctor complained in exactly the same tone he'd have used to say 'the Dalek emperor wanted to steal my TARDIS and use it as his personal boudoir.' The Master laughed at his distress. "There's nothing humorous about it!” the Doctor snapped. “Captain Yates attempting to make his wretched army cocoa in my beakers was bad enough, but this is beyond the pale!"
"Surely you could use your own labs in the TARDIS rather than relying on undoubtedly less well equipped human facilities." The Master waved his spoon with Gallic carelessness, as if encircling the whole scope of human inadequacy with the gesture.
"Well, I need these labs as well," the Doctor persisted, sulkily. "And they're no use to anyone if they're not kept in good working condition."
"You do remember that your TARDIS can make you a king of infinite space, master of a sprawl of labs that could equal the facilities of the Academy itself, don't you?" Amused condescension sifted into fondness in the Master's tone.
"That really isn't the point."
"Naturally. You want to be the master of your own domain. A charmingly possessive, primitive instinct— I suspect you’ve managed to acquire it from your human friends."
"I thought you'd agreed to give up on that word," the Doctor smiled with a dab of self-mockery, recognizing his own pettiness and graciously not pointing out that the Master of all people could hardly mock him for displaying a touch of possessiveness.
"No, not primitive, then. Shall we call it a 'developing instinct'? Would that sufficiently satisfy your tedious insistence on perfect cultural sensitivity?"
"It might." The Doctor picked up his mug, folded his hands over the warm porcelain of it, and leaned forward a touch. "And I hope I'm not perfect. It would leave no room for development, and I intend to develop in many directions."
The Master smirked at him. "Have you met Wilde? That's nearly a rhetorical question. I suppose you must have, at some point or other. Most of the important figures in English literature have probably encountered you by now, trans-temporal fanboy that you are. Perhaps they worship you as a portent of artistic success?"
"No, actually I haven't," the Doctor confessed, rueful. "There was always some distraction, some other pressing destination. 'What's freedom for? To know eternity.'"
"'But who would count eternity in days?' Not an Englishman this time–bravo, Doctor."
"I am aware that there are other countries, you know. Whole other planets."
"Of course you are," the Master said, gently patronizing. "When did you last travel with anyone not from this sceptered isle?"
"Just before my last regeneration," the Doctor said automatically, thinking of Zoe, who wouldn't know him now even if he explained his altered body.
The Master slipped over the angry wound by not directly acknowledging how difficult he knew this was for the Doctor, or admitting that he profoundly understood just how the long rope the Doctor was twisting at the end of must cut into his flesh. Instead the Master slid, musing, into the explanation that would naturally have followed such an expression of sympathy had he chosen to embarrass the Doctor by voicing it.
"The pursuit of wonder was always something of a religion with you, and you were very devout."
"Oh, come now, you're no better," the Doctor scoffed, dipping his long spoon into the Master's cup to swipe up some of the foam—without quite noticing it, he'd drained his own mug. "Your propensity for vicious, self-aggrandizing scheming aside, I remember you were always capable of appreciating grandeur of a more benign variety." He shoved the spoon into his mouth, licked off the cinnamon-dusted foam, and dropped the utensil back down in his own mug with a clatter
"Well, perhaps I am no better," the Master acknowledged with a slight smile, tucking his chin to his chest. "And yes Doctor, you may have some of mine."
"You owe me far more than cocoa foam," the Doctor reminded him, thinking of horrible ambulatory puddings.
The Master was in the middle of a suggestive 'oh, do I'? when a loud, close 'I told you!' had him looking up in irritation. A triumphant Jo Grant, bundled like an Eskimo, looked ridiculous next to Captain Yates, who just wore a thick jacket over his normal civies. Both UNIT employees were laden with bags. They had clearly decided to pool their energies for a shopping expedition.
"Didn't I say it was them? That's ten quid for the pair."
Yates groaned and fished for his wallet, even as Jo turned to give the Doctor a wide-eyed look. "Doctor, what's going on?"
"It does look a bit odd, Doctor," Yates agreed, handing a ten-pound note to Jo.
"What do you think is going on?" the Doctor snapped. Yates opened his mouth to answer him all too readily, so the Doctor rushed in. "I'm politely asking the Master here to cease his ridiculous attacks, and attempting to extract some information from him. His tendency to gloat about his plans–"
"You have such a charmingly unambiguous way of putting things," the Master said dryly, putting his overcoat back on.
Yates looked between the Master's long, sleek coat and the remnants of the drinks on the table. "As long as we didn't interrupt a zhooshy AC/DC cackle," he muttered.
The Master looked up at him sharply. "I did spent some time at Rossini's circus, Captain," he reminded the younger man curtly.
"Was that some kind of Romani borrowing?" the Doctor asked innocently. "I didn't know your family was at all connected to the circus, Captain Yates. How extraordinary!"
Yates opened his mouth, paused a moment, closed it again and looked away.
"I'll explain later," the Master stood. "'Martyr to a motion not my own,' as it were. Captain, Miss Grant," he acknowledged with them a short nod. Jo returned a hesitant smile. "Au revoir, then, Doctor."
"Not if I can possibly help it," the Doctor rejoined to the Master’s retreating back.
Jo watched the Master swing out of the shop door and onto the street before sliding into the booth opposite the Doctor. Yates joined her.
"Look Doctor," Jo began, “if the Master loves Christmas so much, you could just offer to let him in on the fun."
The Doctor goggled at her. "Jo, you can't possibly be serious. He may have chosen to attack us through rather seasonal means, but that only means he's mad, not brimming over with jolly holiday spirit."
"But he keeps turning up to offer you a half-share in the universe or whatever, and now it's Christmas, and I really think he may be lonely. You did say you were at school together-- maybe he thinks you two could reconnect?"
"That's quite enough of that." The Doctor closed the line of inquiry like a man closing all of his accounts, never to darken the door of that particular bank again.
"Who paid for the cocoa?" Yates asked with faux innocence, and the Doctor glared at him like a man who'd realized he'd forgotten his hat inside said bank and had to immediately turn around to go back in for it.
"Why don't you just invite him to the Christmas party tomorrow night, if he likes, er, the holiday so much? You can tell the Brigadier it was a trade! He doesn't keep sending dangerous prank packages, we let him in on the caroling or whatever he's after, as long as he's not too evil." Jo, innately tidy, stacked the abandoned cups. "No one with the spirit of Christmas in their heart can be all bad, Doctor."
"Hearts," the Doctor corrected her with a severe look, "and yes, he can too. No. No, no, no, no--”
***
"Absolutely not Jo. You don't put sherry in eggnog, it's rum."
"The more the merrier?" Jo held the bottle precariously aloft over the bowl.
"I believe we're already quite merry enough," the Doctor said, letting his gaze wander around the room with disapproval. The Brigadier had taken a strategic position near the buffet table, and had stood there for hours with a glass of eggnog that somehow never seemed to run dry. He was still holding himself stalwartly straight, but responded to anyone who addressed him with a slurred, "Perfectly fine, carry on!" and waved his swagger-stick in so careless a manner that it made the Doctor wince.
Corporal Bell, sitting in an armchair next to the Christmas tree was giggling so hard that her usually tight bun was quickly dissolving into messy but quite attractive strands of blonde hair. The source of her amusement was apparently Benton, who had cornered Yates by the fireplace with the dogged intention of making him sing Christmas carols, a notion which seemed to fascinate and appall Yates in equal measure. Even the tea lady, usually a dour old person without an ounce of humor, began smiling fondly at the two young men when the eggnog finally conquered Yates's sense of dignity and rank and they launched into a butchered version of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. The Doctor grimaced – it couldn't just be his sensitive Time Lord hearing that made it sound like a choir of cats being put in a bath and dogs howling at the moon.
"Carols!" Jo squealed in delight. "Oh, let's join them, Doctor!"
As she said so, she turned around, and the bottle of sherry tipped and the golden liquid started to pour into the bowl with a cheerful gurgle. Shuddering, the Doctor took the bottle away from Jo, but it was too late already. Most of the sherry had ended up in the eggnog. If it had been at all possible to get a Time Lord drunk with alcohol, this would have done the trick.
"Oops?" Jo offered with a lopsided grin and a hiccup.
The Doctor attempted to look tolerant, but humans were a lot less charming when they were drunk out of their wits and you were not. "Listen, Jo, why don't you go join Benton and Yates," he suggested with a forced smile, "and I'll dispose of this. I fear it might be lethal after this latest addition."
"And then you'll come join us," Jo nodded, making it sound like an order, and wobbled off into the general direction of carols and Christmas cheer.
The Doctor gathered the bowl in his arms and quietly slunk out of the common room. By the time he'd come back to the Christmas Party, no one would have the wits left to even notice that the sherry-poisoned drink was gone. He was going to pour the eggnog down a drain somewhere, and then maybe go for a drive in the refreshing night air if it hadn't started raining again.
Over the last couple of days, the weather had teased them with unusual cold and occasional dustings of snow, but tonight the forecasts had predicted rain. Christmas, the Doctor decided while he put away the empty bowl and fetched his cloak, was all about the anticipation. By the time it rolled around, the expectations had become so great that the climax could only be disappointing, and everyone lucky enough to respond to alcohol fled into the warm, tipsy world of drunkenness.
But when the Doctor pushed open the doors and stepped outside, he stopped dead in his tracks. Only hours before the tall trees and neat hedges that surrounded UNIT HQ had been a wall of darkness around the complex. Now each branch was powdered with fresh snow, lighting up the woods. The muddy lawn, the driveway, and even the road that ran past UNIT headquarters beyond the trees were all covered in a thick, white blanket. Snow nestled on the windowsills and the roof of the brick building, and nearly obscured the laboratory wing.
Down by the gate someone had built a pair of tall snowmen, complete with coals for eyes and carrots for noses. Thick, lazy snowflakes were tumbling down from the dark sky, twinkling in the halos cast by the lights at the gate. His breath caught in wonder, the Doctor took another step outside. The snow crunched under his soles. He pulled off his left driving glove and held out his hand, palm up, to catch a thick snowflake and watch the perfect crystal slowly melt to a drop of water.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he caught sight of movement. He glanced up, and his enchanted smile turned into a look of exasperation. "Of course," he muttered. "I should have guessed."
Slowly, in rolling, lumbering motions, the snowmen had begun advancing on UNIT headquarters.
Chapter II
Chapter: I of III
Author:
bagheera_san and x_losRating: PG
Pairing: Three/Delgado!Master, Brig, Jo, Benton, Yates
Summary: As the holidays approach UNIT finds itself under siege by the Master, whose enthusiasm for Christmas appears to be as sincere as it is sinister.
Beta:
aralias, horrible lobster bride and wonderful pinch-hitting beta-beastA/N: We started this last Christmas and I flaked. Er. It's um, done now? MERRY CHRISTMAS, DAMMIT.
Next: Chapter II
Christmas Crackers
Part I
The day to day operation of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce depended on a surprising variety of minutiae: chemicals and equipment for the labs, uniforms and vehicles obtained via reciprocity agreements with the regular British infantry, weekly crates of PG Tips and lackluster digestive biscuits handed over into the keeping of the taskforce’s grizzled old tea lady. While not exactly listed in the telephone directory, officially, as a subsidiary of the United Nations, UNIT was a public organization. Their various suppliers could, if they happened to misplace UNIT's contact information, call Britain's UN dispatcher and be patched through to HQ, or be given a mailing address with a minimum of fuss.
Thus it was that UNIT received Christmas packages from the determined. In the beginning of December, Petra Williams and Greg Sutton, who'd survived the collapse of the Stahlman's gas project thanks to UNIT and had since become engaged, attached their names and a general invitation to their wedding to boxes of carefully decorated Christmas biscuits. Little silver edible ball bearings ornamented the tiny trees, hanging from strands of white-frosting garland. The Doctor went into childish raptures about these, and with a species of innocent, oblivious selfishness he made off with all the little evergreens. Jo wryly reported back to the tearoom that in the lab the Doctor was performing a detailed scientific investigation of the sprinkles with his mouth. Jo reasoned that it was probably really important, and something was likely to blow up if he were disturbed by an attempt to recapture the tree biscuit plate. They'd just have to make do with the angels and stars. Captain Yates wondered how big a something was likely to blow up. Putting on a ponderous Doctor-voice, Jo hazarded, “Why, all of Wales, old chap!” Yates snorted his tea out of his nose, and after a moment of recovery asked who'd really miss Wales. Jo got earnestly offended on behalf of the Welsh, who everybody was always down on but who were perfectly lovely people, really, she'd been to Swansea to see an aunt in July and had had a super time, everyone had been absolutely charming to her. Yates continued to tease her until Benton poked his head in with an indignant request for a hand with the supply inventory, and a near-simultaneous crash and a loud exclamation from the lab had Jo peremptorily grabbing up the mop from the cleaning lady's cupboard and running in the direction of the noise.
In early December Liz sent clippings of scientific articles she wanted to bring to the Doctor's particular attention, a formal request for permission to publish the enclosed article on the Mars Probe project for the Brigadier to pass onto the boys at Geneva (who would have to vet her work for information they'd rather keep confidential), and, almost incidentally under the papers, a box of fresh custard-filled ponchkes for everyone, with specific instructions that they were not to be eaten until they were warmed to precisely 37 degrees Celsius and dusted with the enclosed package of powdered sugar. As they ate the Doctor reminisced about poor dear Liz, who'd been bullied into going back to Cambridge The Brigadier burned his lip on the oozing egg custard mid dubious eyebrow-raise, which rather spoiled the effect.
Olive Hawthorne of Devil's End sent them a Yule card, very fragrant greenery, and some pamphlets on British Traditional Wicca. Benton was singled out to receive a special loaf of bread, which had apparently been 'baked with natural essences that promoted fertility:' it seemed Olive remembered their dance around the May Pole fondly. She'd knitted the Brigadier a thick, comfortable scarf out of Wiltshire wool, which he would have worn had opening it in the publicity of the tearoom not provoked quite so much mockery from the gallery.
An old woman who’d survived the Silurian uprising in Wenley Moor sent them a dense, moist mince pie, packed tight in a battered red tin. It was specifically directed to Benton, who'd been the one to call her an ambulance, who'd remembered to call and check up on her after the Doctor had dealt with the virus and the Brigadier had bombed the caves and entombed the Silurians. The old woman's husband had died of a heart attack before they'd arrived on the scene. In the face of Benton’s own consciousness of what he had failed to do, her gratitude for what he’d done cut at him. Benton deposited the cake in the tearoom without tasting it, slipping the card into his jacket pocket. It was eaten by the day's end, and Benton, having gotten out of Yates that it had tasted “Sort of cinnamony, lots of nutmeg. And some honey, I think” sent a card back to that lonely farm in Wenley Moor with his thanks, standard holiday good wishes, and appropriate praise along those lines.
Amidst such a regular Christmas traffic the over-sized, elegant, red-papered box addressed specifically to the Doctor aroused no suspicion in the mailroom. He strolled out of his TARDIS on the first day of Advent and started upon seeing it sitting in the middle of his lab table, along with some things he'd asked to be sent up from stores. Rubbing his hands together, he ran an index finger along the shiny gold-satin bow, flipping it up to hunt for a card. Nothing. Well, perhaps the card was inside the package.
He looked up at the sound of the door. Jo waddled in. She’d traded her ubiquitous miniskirts and leggings for a floor-length, comically thick coat that made her attempts at normal movement immensely amusing.
"Morning Jo. Any luck?"
Jo wobbled her head about—but sensing that her gesture meant about as much to him as the cooing noises produced by the Clangers, she threw her hood off properly and shook a no, unbuttoning her coat with clumsy, gloved fingers.
"Still no snow! The coldest, nastiest winter anyone can remember, and not one snowflake! Are you sure there's nothing weird and alien about it? It does seem an awfully unlikely run of bad luck."
The Doctor chuckled. "Sorry Jo, I'm afraid it's just a regular old cold front that doesn’t bear sufficient moisture to induce precipitation. Perfectly natural phenomenon."
"Oh, well, if that's all it is-" Jo smiled, gently sardonic in the face of the Doctor's meteorology.
"Chin up Jo, we've got a present here!" The Doctor drew a jeweler's glass from his left jacket pocket and, taking up the box, shook it critically, as if he seriously thought he might be able to determine the contents by the jostling sound.
“Not a Phelbian squidge,” he murmured to himself, “not enough of a squelch to it.”
Jo finished schucking her outer layers and obediently came around to look at it. "Nice paper! I don't think I've ever seen a present wrapped up quite this carefully. Someone must really like you."
The Doctor grinned at her over the box. " Let's have a look, shall we?"
Jo shrugged. "There's no card. It might not even be for us. The mail room misdirects things so often –the other day Doctor Sullivan came over with your tissue samples to barter for his bottles of penicillin."
"I’ve thought of that, but perhaps the card’s inside—I expect that heightens the surprise. Anyway, it's been delivered here, so perhaps whatever package it came in had the direction.This thing certainly hasn't been subjected to Royal Mail. Security must have opened the original box, those bumblers may well have lost the card." The Doctor picked up an exacto knife from the table and fiddled with it before putting it down again. "I'm always torn—I should try and save this very attractive paper, but a fair amount of the satisfaction of opening a present lies in tearing into it, don't you think?" The Doctor toyed with the corner for an instant, putting the bow aside and demurely lifting the paper up along the taped crease, and then gave in and began ripping the paper gleefully.
Lifting the lid he'd uncovered, he arrived at another box, which was,also wrapped. With a slight frown he unwrapped this too—only to find himself faced with yet another box.
"This is ridiculous," he huffed. "Who could possibly be so maddeningly over-complicated?"
"It's like a Russian doll!" Jo said.
"Ah-ha!" The Doctor, triumphant, stared down at the contents of the final box. A heavy, dark Christmas pudding sat amidst the paper and cardboard carnage.
"Oh," the Doctor looked over at Jo, "it's a Christmas pudding. Well that's rather an anti-clim--AH!" The pudding spat a jet of sticky black treacle up at the Doctor, coating his face. The sticky treacle seemed to seek out his nostrils and mouth even as he clawed at it. "Jo, water, quickly!"
Jo grabbed the emergency tub from next to the Doctor's workbench and threw its contents onto him. The water seemed to slide under the treacle as though the black gunk were oil, and the Doctor, gasping for breath, heaved the writhing treacle mass off his face and flung it across the room. It smacked against the wall, tried for a minute to scrabble up it, and then slopped into the bin below like a diver doing a back flip.
"Doctor!" Jo shrieked, drawing his attention away from the horrible thing's death throes in the wastebasket, which he'd run across the room to watch. Turning back, the Doctor's eyes widened in horror – the Christmas pudding itself was in the process of shooting out thin, spidery legs made of suet: the fat congealed and glistening. Dried fruits and nuts protruded from its near-spherical mass like ominous icebergs jutting up above the surface of the ocean. The traditional sprig of holly wobbled threateningly as what was clearly some sort of creature gained a footing, stepped out of the box it had come in, and started wobbling towards Jo at high speed.
"Doctor, it has my sweater! This is cashmere, get off!" Jo protested, dodging another treacle projectile. The pudding-beast had caught her sleeve in some sort of maw. As Jo tried to pull away, its acidic sugars dissolved the fabric it had mouthed. This freed the panicked, struggling Jo, who went flying back as the tension was released and stumbled to the ground.
"It can dissolve organic material”, the Doctor marveled. “Stay well away from it, Jo!"
Jo rolled her eyes–as if she'd been planning to cuddle up with the thing and have a chat about boys–but shouted a warning to the Doctor as the Christmas pudding swiveled towards him and crouched down on its suet legs, readying for a pounce. It sprung forward, bounding towards the Doctor at speed. The Doctor grabbed the Bunsen burner off the table, turned it on, chucked it at the pudding with a martial cry, and threw himself out of the way, rolling clear as the pudding exploded into a halo of purple flame. Its suet legs melted out from under it, and the Doctor staggered up and chucked a bottle of ethanol from his workbench at it, to further fuel the blaze. He and Jo crept to the corner, opened the window to let the smoke out into the cold December air, and watched as the Pudding burned down into a sullen, blackened husk.
"Thoroughly coated in brandy," the Doctor observed. "You know, I have a feeling it might well have been delicious." Jo goggled at him. "If it hadn't been alive," he added, somewhat lamely. He coughed. "No use in asking who sent it, is there? Though I suppose he'll have included a card. It'd be unlike him not to want to make absolutely sure I knew who to give the credit to." Striding over to the table, the Doctor upended and shook the smallest box. Sure enough, a small red envelope with a signet 'M' seal in evergreen-colored, pine-scented wax fluttered down onto the table. The Doctor lifted his exacto knife and slicked through the seal with narrowed eyes. The note was in Gallifreyan, written with chipper time-flux ink that shifted between red and green every three microspans.
"My dear Doctor,
Happy Christmas. I trust you'll appreciate my little gift—merely a small token, a harbinger of things to come. I look forward to enjoying a good deal of your company over the holidays. Do try and prepare for it as best you can.
–the Master"
"Why that blustering–" the Doctor, dripping-wet, crumpled the note and shoved it in his pocket. "I'm going back into my TARDIS to have a bath. If the Brigadier comes looking for me about those tissue samples, tell him I've had a very trying morning."
"What do you want me to do about the Black Pudding?" Jo eyed the remains suspiciously.
"Oh, just bin the thing." The Doctor was already throwing open the TARDIS door. "It's dead now, at any rate. That kind of animation depends on there being sufficient organic matter to fixate on. Now that it's burned to a crisp we really needn't worry about it."
"If you say so, Doctor," Jo said, leaving to fetch a biohazard suit from the supply room. She refused to handle that cashmere-annihilator wearing anything less protective—UNIT had already done enough damage to her wardrobe for a lifetime, thank you very much.
***
Three days later the better part of the UNIT brass sat around the hearth of the converted living room where they typically took their tea breaks. They and their office’s Christmas tree were uniformly covered in a fine layer of ash. To this, the Doctor added several pounds of water, which was trapped in the various ruffles of heavy fabric he was wearing. He was frosted with the foam of chemicals from a fire extinguisher and looked like a sad, wet plastic tree decorated with faux snow.
Jo twisted the extinguisher nervously in her hands. "I mean this time, it really looked like you needed the fire extinguisher, when just the water didn't do it."
The Doctor heaved a mighty sigh. "Yes, Jo."
"It's not like last time, where that spatio-whatsit you'd been working on was just supposed to start smoking like a dirty chimney, though I don't see how I was meant to know that at the time, it being my first day and all--"
"No, Jo," the Doctor snapped, "you did perfectly well."
Jo looked a little hurt by his tone, and he tried to give her a smile. He reached over to pat her shoulder before noticing the state of his hands, wincing, and shifting to rub his neck instead.
"I can hardly believe he smuggled a toxic Yule Log in here. Chemical agents in a thin layer under the bark, I expect. "
Benton piped in, seeming a bit dejected. "Well, he didn't, exactly."
The Doctor turned his head sharply. "Didn't what?"
Benton coughed. "Smuggle it, I mean. He just sort of came to the door and dropped it off, suggested it might be nice to burn it on a cold day like this, bring a bit of the Christmas spirit into our HQ. I mean, to be fair, his disguise was really convincing. Looked more like the head of MI6 than the actual bloke himself does. Said he really appreciated all our good work on the Spectre case too, and I thought, well, that's unusually charitable of MI6, but jolly nice of him to recognize us, and I told him so–"
"Benton," the Brigadier groaned, "you're far too gullible for defense work. Perhaps you'd better go and see if security at Harrods needs any additional holiday help. You might guard Santa from enthusiastic tots who want electric trains this year and won't take no for an answer."
"Do you think the Master could be disguisng himself as Santa then, sir?" Benton asked earnestly, eager to make amends for his mistake. The Brigadier bit the inside of his lip in tightly controlled annoyance.
"Now there's a thought," the Doctor was grinning for the first time all afternoon. "I bet that jackanapes would scramble into a gaudy velvet suit in a hearts-beat. He's always had about as much taste as common sense.” The Doctor frowned. “What are you all looking at me like that for? Well?"
The assembled averted their eyes from the Doctor's dark red velvet jacket and matching pants.
"It's festive," the Doctor protested, "And very well-cut!"
The Brigadier coughed. In the background a tiny electric train clacked along its tracks, letting out a chipper 'toot toot!' as it crossed the miniature bridge. The Doctor had rigged it up to follow a labyrinthine pattern around the Christmas tree, wearing an expression of unholy glee as he had fiddled with its remote.
"Christmas is coming--" the Brigadier began.
"The goose is getting fat?" Jo suggested.
"Please put a penny--" Yates chimed in.
"And we had better all be ready for whatever it is the Master has planned for us next,” the Brigadier snapped, interrupting their go at a round, all offended dignity. “Don't you all have something you should be doing right now? Captain Yates, where the devil are those reports? Dismissed!"
"I don't even know what reports he's talking about," Yates complained to Benton in the hall as they all, save for the Brigadier and the Doctor, trooped out of the tearoom.
"It's just something he says sometimes," Benton assured him, "like 'five rounds rapid.’ I don't think he actually cares exactly how many rounds you had to fire, I've never seen him counting the shell casings or anything."
"Permission to change, sir?" the Doctor asked back in the tearoom, with deeply sardonic obedience.
“Granted," the Brigadier agreed, giving the Doctor a glare that suggested he found humor a highly inappropriate response to the situation.
***
And for a few days, nothing.
On a cold Saturday, the Doctor descended into central London to do a spot of holiday shopping. He pressed through the busy, still-cheerful crowds, apologizing politely whenever the heavy edge of his cape jostled someone laden with packages. He liked humans like this, busy and concerned with the minutiae of their celebrations, ignorant of the many threats UNIT had only just managed to save them from.
It started to snow lightly. The Doctor peered for a moment at the flakes as they descended from the white opacity of the sky. In that scant second he managed to smack directly into a fellow pedestrian.
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry." The Doctor dropped into a crouch automatically to help the other man pick up his parcels before they were trampled by the crowd. He glanced up, and there, not two feet away from him, similarly crouched, was the proud architect of the two most recent attempts on his life.
The Master was dressed as if he were going into the City to foreclose something important. He wore an immaculate grey suit, long black overcoat, and shining black leather shoes.
"You," the Doctor hissed. "Tracking me, are you?"
The Master looked genuinely surprised, but quickly managed to tuck that expression away under a smug smile. He propped his arms indolently over his bent knee and balanced the weight of his torso on them. "I was simply making a few purchases, Doctor. Seeing you here is an entirely unexpected pleasure. But I trust from the manner of your greeting that you received my latest gifts? It does warm my hearts to hear my work isn't unappreciated."
"Don't pretend you didn't already know the outcome of both encounters. And what did you do to that Christmas pudding--I say, excuse me!" The Doctor gave the passerby who had nearly stepped on his hand a sharp look, and stood with neat grace, the Master's packages still in his hands.
The Master chuckled. "I admit the recipe was a touch more difficult than I was initially prepared for, but I must say, I was pleased with the result."
"What's your aim, then? It can't be these childish pranks. You've something larger in the works, don't you?" The Doctor took a step forward, his eyes narrow.
The Master plucked his bundles neatly from the other Time Lord's arms. "Oh Doctor, that would be telling. Do you realize--" he paused a moment to sniff the air. "Is that cerub?" His nose wrinkled in confusion.
"Related species, actually. They call it 'cacao.' It lacks cerub’s hallucinogenic properties, but the food they derive from it has a strikingly similar taste."
"How could they possibly be related? We're whole systems away from Gallifrey," the Master scoffed even as he turned his head to the source of the scent and inhaled appreciatively.
"Cross-pollination during the Time Lord's more expansionist phase perhaps,” the Doctor mused. “I've wondered myself."
"Nonsense, Doctor. What's the likelihood of transplanting a cerub seedling by accident? It’s hardly a hardy species. It wouldn't surprise me if you yourself were going to be responsible in the future, given your haphazard traipsing through the time stream."
The Doctor put his hands on his hips. "Look, would you prefer to continue this discussion inside that tea shop you can't stop staring at? I can condemn your malicious scheming just as easily if I’m seated in a booth. The snow is picking up, and we seem to be something of a traffic obstruction."
The Master glanced back from the window he'd been gazing into, gave his nemesis an arch look and strode into the shop. Once inside he glanced around at the heavily garlanded interior, apparently amused, and rubbed his leather-gloved hands against the cold. He looked over his shoulder at the Doctor, who had walked in after him. "Well, Doctor? What does one order?"
"At this time of year, hot cocoa."
The Master took a smallish note out of a billfold that was fat with currency the Doctor didn't want to closely contemplate the probable origins of, and strode to the counter with it in hand. "Find us a booth, would you?"
Rolling his eyes at the Master's casual imperiousness, the Doctor slid down into a seat parallel to the window and looked out into the falling snow. Shoppers continued their long traipses past the bookshops and boutiques, heedless of the weather, ducking into the stores and hustling back out. They all seemed merrily occupied and in good spirits.
There was something charming about staying in a place long enough to see the build-up to a public holiday, the culmination of all that anticipation. The instant gratification of a TARDIS tended to deny one the sense of pace provided by a seasonal calendar. Before embarking on a life of constant movement he’d only ever lived on Gallifrey. Timeless, and lacking a climate, the Time Lords in their domed Citadels were about as far removed from their pastoral origins as it was possible to be, and proud of it. Except during the few very early years he’d lived in the wild mountains outside the Capitol, the Doctor had never known this sense of an annual cycle. Now a thin sheet of snow coated the streets. It reminded the Doctor of the silver snow of his childhood—-of their shared childhood, really—-filo-thin, pierced by spiny blades of red grass.
A saucer bearing a cup connected with the table in front of him with a sharp tap. The Doctor looked at the Master over his cocoa with a faint smile, indicating it with a finger. "How do I know that's not been poisoned?"
The Master took a sip from the Doctor's and then his own cup, raising an eyebrow in challenge.
"And what if there's Iocane powder in both cups, and you've managed to build up an immunity?"
The Master made a dismissive gesture. "You'll just have to be reasonable, Doctor, if all else fails you. Do you have any idea how many times I might have poisoned you this week? This year? The tea you swill, for example, is left overnight on a palate in a London warehouse before a crate is shipped to UNIT’s purser. If I wanted to kill you with something as graceless and impersonal as a toxin, you'd be dead a dozen times over."
Looking him full in the face, the Doctor picked up his mug, drank from it, put it down in the exact centre of the saucer, and said a prim, polite ”Thank you.”
"Now," the Doctor continued, leaning back in his seat, "I believe we were discussing your recent and repeated attempts to kill me."
The Master folded his hands on the table and grinned. "Don't be tiresome, Doctor. You know full well I'm simply warming up."
"To what? Dressed Christmas turkeys that attack in flying V formation? Real-sized ginger-bread houses that shrink once you're inside them, like a sabotaged SIDRAT? Eggnog that gives you a literally head-splitting hangover?"
The Master laughed. "All excellent suggestions, my dear Doctor. Are you sure you shouldn't be at my side? With a mind like that, you seem so naturally inclined to be my partner."
"Any twists and breaks in my logic are only there because I’ve made ill-advised efforts to try and fathom what you think you’re playing at."
"I'm flattered I've had such a profound influence on you." The Master sipped his cocoa. "And I believe I'll leave it to you to try and figure out my plans, this time. After all, someone once told me surprises are half the fun of Christmas." He looked down at his cocoa thoughtfully. "This is quite good, you know."
The Doctor inclined his head in agreement.
The Master glanced out at the window at the sidewalk, which was now so crowded with shoppers as to be almost impassable. "Are you still fond of this holiday, now that you're being forced to experience it in linear time as these primitives do? I notice your UNIT friends have thoroughly coated their base in paraphernalia."
"Primitives? You sound like a CIA lackey. I'll thank you to choose your words more carefully. And they're decorations, Christmas lights, baubles…. Apparently they're usually rather more subdued and professional, but Jo can be quite insistent."
"'Developing species' then," the Master conceded with good grace. "And I might have known that was Miss Grant's doing."
"She wanted to put tinsel around my lab table," the Doctor complained in exactly the same tone he'd have used to say 'the Dalek emperor wanted to steal my TARDIS and use it as his personal boudoir.' The Master laughed at his distress. "There's nothing humorous about it!” the Doctor snapped. “Captain Yates attempting to make his wretched army cocoa in my beakers was bad enough, but this is beyond the pale!"
"Surely you could use your own labs in the TARDIS rather than relying on undoubtedly less well equipped human facilities." The Master waved his spoon with Gallic carelessness, as if encircling the whole scope of human inadequacy with the gesture.
"Well, I need these labs as well," the Doctor persisted, sulkily. "And they're no use to anyone if they're not kept in good working condition."
"You do remember that your TARDIS can make you a king of infinite space, master of a sprawl of labs that could equal the facilities of the Academy itself, don't you?" Amused condescension sifted into fondness in the Master's tone.
"That really isn't the point."
"Naturally. You want to be the master of your own domain. A charmingly possessive, primitive instinct— I suspect you’ve managed to acquire it from your human friends."
"I thought you'd agreed to give up on that word," the Doctor smiled with a dab of self-mockery, recognizing his own pettiness and graciously not pointing out that the Master of all people could hardly mock him for displaying a touch of possessiveness.
"No, not primitive, then. Shall we call it a 'developing instinct'? Would that sufficiently satisfy your tedious insistence on perfect cultural sensitivity?"
"It might." The Doctor picked up his mug, folded his hands over the warm porcelain of it, and leaned forward a touch. "And I hope I'm not perfect. It would leave no room for development, and I intend to develop in many directions."
The Master smirked at him. "Have you met Wilde? That's nearly a rhetorical question. I suppose you must have, at some point or other. Most of the important figures in English literature have probably encountered you by now, trans-temporal fanboy that you are. Perhaps they worship you as a portent of artistic success?"
"No, actually I haven't," the Doctor confessed, rueful. "There was always some distraction, some other pressing destination. 'What's freedom for? To know eternity.'"
"'But who would count eternity in days?' Not an Englishman this time–bravo, Doctor."
"I am aware that there are other countries, you know. Whole other planets."
"Of course you are," the Master said, gently patronizing. "When did you last travel with anyone not from this sceptered isle?"
"Just before my last regeneration," the Doctor said automatically, thinking of Zoe, who wouldn't know him now even if he explained his altered body.
The Master slipped over the angry wound by not directly acknowledging how difficult he knew this was for the Doctor, or admitting that he profoundly understood just how the long rope the Doctor was twisting at the end of must cut into his flesh. Instead the Master slid, musing, into the explanation that would naturally have followed such an expression of sympathy had he chosen to embarrass the Doctor by voicing it.
"The pursuit of wonder was always something of a religion with you, and you were very devout."
"Oh, come now, you're no better," the Doctor scoffed, dipping his long spoon into the Master's cup to swipe up some of the foam—without quite noticing it, he'd drained his own mug. "Your propensity for vicious, self-aggrandizing scheming aside, I remember you were always capable of appreciating grandeur of a more benign variety." He shoved the spoon into his mouth, licked off the cinnamon-dusted foam, and dropped the utensil back down in his own mug with a clatter
"Well, perhaps I am no better," the Master acknowledged with a slight smile, tucking his chin to his chest. "And yes Doctor, you may have some of mine."
"You owe me far more than cocoa foam," the Doctor reminded him, thinking of horrible ambulatory puddings.
The Master was in the middle of a suggestive 'oh, do I'? when a loud, close 'I told you!' had him looking up in irritation. A triumphant Jo Grant, bundled like an Eskimo, looked ridiculous next to Captain Yates, who just wore a thick jacket over his normal civies. Both UNIT employees were laden with bags. They had clearly decided to pool their energies for a shopping expedition.
"Didn't I say it was them? That's ten quid for the pair."
Yates groaned and fished for his wallet, even as Jo turned to give the Doctor a wide-eyed look. "Doctor, what's going on?"
"It does look a bit odd, Doctor," Yates agreed, handing a ten-pound note to Jo.
"What do you think is going on?" the Doctor snapped. Yates opened his mouth to answer him all too readily, so the Doctor rushed in. "I'm politely asking the Master here to cease his ridiculous attacks, and attempting to extract some information from him. His tendency to gloat about his plans–"
"You have such a charmingly unambiguous way of putting things," the Master said dryly, putting his overcoat back on.
Yates looked between the Master's long, sleek coat and the remnants of the drinks on the table. "As long as we didn't interrupt a zhooshy AC/DC cackle," he muttered.
The Master looked up at him sharply. "I did spent some time at Rossini's circus, Captain," he reminded the younger man curtly.
"Was that some kind of Romani borrowing?" the Doctor asked innocently. "I didn't know your family was at all connected to the circus, Captain Yates. How extraordinary!"
Yates opened his mouth, paused a moment, closed it again and looked away.
"I'll explain later," the Master stood. "'Martyr to a motion not my own,' as it were. Captain, Miss Grant," he acknowledged with them a short nod. Jo returned a hesitant smile. "Au revoir, then, Doctor."
"Not if I can possibly help it," the Doctor rejoined to the Master’s retreating back.
Jo watched the Master swing out of the shop door and onto the street before sliding into the booth opposite the Doctor. Yates joined her.
"Look Doctor," Jo began, “if the Master loves Christmas so much, you could just offer to let him in on the fun."
The Doctor goggled at her. "Jo, you can't possibly be serious. He may have chosen to attack us through rather seasonal means, but that only means he's mad, not brimming over with jolly holiday spirit."
"But he keeps turning up to offer you a half-share in the universe or whatever, and now it's Christmas, and I really think he may be lonely. You did say you were at school together-- maybe he thinks you two could reconnect?"
"That's quite enough of that." The Doctor closed the line of inquiry like a man closing all of his accounts, never to darken the door of that particular bank again.
"Who paid for the cocoa?" Yates asked with faux innocence, and the Doctor glared at him like a man who'd realized he'd forgotten his hat inside said bank and had to immediately turn around to go back in for it.
"Why don't you just invite him to the Christmas party tomorrow night, if he likes, er, the holiday so much? You can tell the Brigadier it was a trade! He doesn't keep sending dangerous prank packages, we let him in on the caroling or whatever he's after, as long as he's not too evil." Jo, innately tidy, stacked the abandoned cups. "No one with the spirit of Christmas in their heart can be all bad, Doctor."
"Hearts," the Doctor corrected her with a severe look, "and yes, he can too. No. No, no, no, no--”
***
"Absolutely not Jo. You don't put sherry in eggnog, it's rum."
"The more the merrier?" Jo held the bottle precariously aloft over the bowl.
"I believe we're already quite merry enough," the Doctor said, letting his gaze wander around the room with disapproval. The Brigadier had taken a strategic position near the buffet table, and had stood there for hours with a glass of eggnog that somehow never seemed to run dry. He was still holding himself stalwartly straight, but responded to anyone who addressed him with a slurred, "Perfectly fine, carry on!" and waved his swagger-stick in so careless a manner that it made the Doctor wince.
Corporal Bell, sitting in an armchair next to the Christmas tree was giggling so hard that her usually tight bun was quickly dissolving into messy but quite attractive strands of blonde hair. The source of her amusement was apparently Benton, who had cornered Yates by the fireplace with the dogged intention of making him sing Christmas carols, a notion which seemed to fascinate and appall Yates in equal measure. Even the tea lady, usually a dour old person without an ounce of humor, began smiling fondly at the two young men when the eggnog finally conquered Yates's sense of dignity and rank and they launched into a butchered version of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. The Doctor grimaced – it couldn't just be his sensitive Time Lord hearing that made it sound like a choir of cats being put in a bath and dogs howling at the moon.
"Carols!" Jo squealed in delight. "Oh, let's join them, Doctor!"
As she said so, she turned around, and the bottle of sherry tipped and the golden liquid started to pour into the bowl with a cheerful gurgle. Shuddering, the Doctor took the bottle away from Jo, but it was too late already. Most of the sherry had ended up in the eggnog. If it had been at all possible to get a Time Lord drunk with alcohol, this would have done the trick.
"Oops?" Jo offered with a lopsided grin and a hiccup.
The Doctor attempted to look tolerant, but humans were a lot less charming when they were drunk out of their wits and you were not. "Listen, Jo, why don't you go join Benton and Yates," he suggested with a forced smile, "and I'll dispose of this. I fear it might be lethal after this latest addition."
"And then you'll come join us," Jo nodded, making it sound like an order, and wobbled off into the general direction of carols and Christmas cheer.
The Doctor gathered the bowl in his arms and quietly slunk out of the common room. By the time he'd come back to the Christmas Party, no one would have the wits left to even notice that the sherry-poisoned drink was gone. He was going to pour the eggnog down a drain somewhere, and then maybe go for a drive in the refreshing night air if it hadn't started raining again.
Over the last couple of days, the weather had teased them with unusual cold and occasional dustings of snow, but tonight the forecasts had predicted rain. Christmas, the Doctor decided while he put away the empty bowl and fetched his cloak, was all about the anticipation. By the time it rolled around, the expectations had become so great that the climax could only be disappointing, and everyone lucky enough to respond to alcohol fled into the warm, tipsy world of drunkenness.
But when the Doctor pushed open the doors and stepped outside, he stopped dead in his tracks. Only hours before the tall trees and neat hedges that surrounded UNIT HQ had been a wall of darkness around the complex. Now each branch was powdered with fresh snow, lighting up the woods. The muddy lawn, the driveway, and even the road that ran past UNIT headquarters beyond the trees were all covered in a thick, white blanket. Snow nestled on the windowsills and the roof of the brick building, and nearly obscured the laboratory wing.
Down by the gate someone had built a pair of tall snowmen, complete with coals for eyes and carrots for noses. Thick, lazy snowflakes were tumbling down from the dark sky, twinkling in the halos cast by the lights at the gate. His breath caught in wonder, the Doctor took another step outside. The snow crunched under his soles. He pulled off his left driving glove and held out his hand, palm up, to catch a thick snowflake and watch the perfect crystal slowly melt to a drop of water.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he caught sight of movement. He glanced up, and his enchanted smile turned into a look of exasperation. "Of course," he muttered. "I should have guessed."
Slowly, in rolling, lumbering motions, the snowmen had begun advancing on UNIT headquarters.
Chapter II
