One: Turlough

Turlough feels foolish and ignored, following the Doctor through the busy fairground. He glances back into the evening crowd, but he's lost track of where Nyssa and Tegan were waiting. They'll be fine anyway, the Doctor had said so, and he was probably right. But Tegan... Tegan had sounded so terrified. She'd said the Doctor could be in danger.

Earlier, in the TARDIS, the Doctor had fought with something inside Tegan's dream. Chaos and evil, he'd said... A demon. Temptation.

The Mara doesn't sound like anything real.

But if he tried to explain the Black Guardian, would that sound real?

He remembers a deep and booming voice in his head. You will absorb my will. You are to be consumed with my purpose.

Turlough shakes his head sharply, trying to stay in the confusing moment. The Black Guardian had overstated his abilities in that particular case, anyway. Turlough had never spent much time actually lost under the force of the Guardian's will. Mostly, he'd just been relentlessly bullied, and occasionally tortured, by an abstract creature of great power but apparently very little imagination.

Hopefully, whatever the Mara actually is, they'll be able to deal with it, too. The Doctor certainly doesn't seem concerned. Let the girls look after themselves. Boy's night out. Turlough can't deny he likes the idea. And anyway - it means he can keep an eye on the Doctor. For... for Tegan.

Turlough strolls with him up to a midway game in the outskirts of the fairground. At first the Doctor looks like he's enjoying himself, like he does any time he's chucking small round objects, but his face gets darker with each throw. In the end, despite winning, the Doctor nearly starts a fight, and when Turlough discourages him, he settles for sabotaging the game tent itself. Turlough is taken rather aback, but the Doctor just seems immediately bored again as the tent gently collapses.

Turlough has never seen the Doctor engage in simple vandalism, and his sense of unease begins to tick up. "What did you do that for?"

"Oh, not as satisfying as I'd hoped," the Doctor complains, voice full of tepid disappointment. But then he bounds again into action. "Come on!"

Turlough, distracted, looking out for anyone who might have noticed them, realizes he's being left behind. "Wait for me!"

"Keep up, Turlough!"

The Doctor complains that the people here are too ignorant and content; they want for nothing. Turlough half-listens. He still has the cuddly toy the Doctor just won at the game. He wonders how to get rid of it. He should have left it back at the tent.

"They need stirring up," the Doctor's saying, his eyes scanning the crowd with a sort of disgusted delight.

"That's a bit subversive, even for you," Turlough comments.

"Oh, not my usual goody-goody self, you mean? Thank goodness for that. What about you, Turlough, what do you want?"

"Me?" What does he want? Turlough isn't ready for the Doctor to ask him a question like that. He's glad enough just to be here with him, anyway. Explicitly invited, no less. "Look, I thought this was our night on the town."

"What was always out of your reach?"

Does he know? Turlough makes the mistake of meeting the Doctor's eyes. He breaks immediately, looking down, away. "I don't know- I suppose I've learned... learned to accept things a bit. You taught me that."

The Doctor laughs cruelly. "Really? So sanctimonious, Turlough- you've been spending too much time around Nyssa."

"Is that what you think."

"Oh- do you want to know what I think?" The Doctor rounds on him and gives him a dark smile.

He does know. "I-"

"I think I know what you want. At least, one thing you want."

"Doctor-"

But the Doctor has been distracted by a costumed carnival barker outside a long tent with an entrance painted with monsters. He's well into his patter as they walk nearer. "Enter the halls of our labyrinth of fear! Nightmarish visions lurk in every corner! Will you ever find your way out?" He targets the Doctor, catches his eye. "Will you ever be the same again?"

The Doctor beams at the entry arch, a brightly painted monstrous snake. "Would you look at that! It's like a providence. Come on, Turlough!"

Three teenagers amble out of the exit adjacent to the entrance, smiling and laughing, making pantomime scares at one another. The Doctor gives them a cold, disgusted look. The barker leans in from the side. "It'll be six tickets, sir."

"Will it. All right, then."

"And for your gentleman friend."

"It's fairground robbery," the Doctor grumbles, tearing the tickets from his roll, and then they duck through the arch, through the curtain. Inside, it's a trailer rather than a tent: the bright fabric a facade; an affectation.

As they walk further, painted board corridors veer off in a few sharp turns until the light is all but gone. "It's so dark," Turlough complains. "How am I supposed to see anything frightening?"

"You'll soon get used to the darkness, Turlough," the Doctor assures him breezily.

As Turlough steps cautiously around the next turning, an electric firecracker flash and crackle goes off like tiny gunshots, and he jumps despite himself.

The Doctor laughs as Turlough grumbles. "Ah, they got you, didn't they Turlough! And it's only the beginning! Too bad it won't get any better, though. You're just frightened of gunfire."

"I'm not- not scared. I just don't like it."

The next corner has the same crackle flash, but it's lost its power to startle. Dim lights illuminate the typical horror dioramas set back from the path. Bones with melting flesh, a pot of eyes bubbling with dry ice, a monster whose head turns mechanically to follow the marks. The smell of a fog machine fills the cool, damp air.

They pass a blind corridor and a roar plays over half-hidden speakers. A man in ragged clothes and a mask like a mauled lion rushes at them out of the misty darkness, pulled up just short of reaching them by a chain on a harness around his chest. There are lights in the mask's eyes. The man reaches out and paws for them while the speakers play angry growls.

Turlough smiles. "He certainly is giving it everything he's got."

The Doctor stands just out of the man's reach, his expression cool. Turlough's smile falters. "What are you doing, Doctor?"

"Ah..." the Doctor sounds disappointed again. "He can't see me. Too bad."

"What? What do you mean?" But the Doctor has moved on.

A few more turns bring them to a larger room, festooned with green plastic ferns and vines and the colorful loops of a huge mache version of the snake from the entrance. As they enter, the lights come up slightly to reveal a woman lying on a mossy hill, well out of reach of the patrons behind a wall of bars. Or rather, half a woman, her waist improbably girdled by the wide mouth of the brightly colored snake. Its eyes sparkle like the lion's.

At first completely still, she stirs as the Doctor and Turlough shuffle through the misty room. She fixes Turlough with red-rimmed eyes. "Help me," she pleads, and slips a little further down into the mouth of the snake.

"Okay, that's creepy," Turlough says, sounding chagrined. "Can we go, Doctor? I don't think I like this."

"Please - help me," the woman moans, an arm raised towards the Doctor.

"But I can't. There's all this in the way," the Doctor replies amiably, leaning carelessly against the bars, meeting her gaze. "I'm afraid you'll just have to die alone, the life crushed out of you in the belly of the snake. What a shame."

The expression falls from the face of the snake girl. With deliberate speed she shimmies and lifts the prop snake off of her, pulls a section of the bars aside and walks out past the two of them. Turlough scowls, watching, bemused, as the Doctor sweeps into the small room to smile at the gaping mouth of the snake. The Doctor picks it up and briefly wears it like a Chinese dragon, grinning back at Turlough out of its mouth.

Turlough manages a patient smirk. "What exactly are you doing?"

"In here, Turlough." The Doctor sets the prop aside, takes Turlough by the hands, pulls him inside and slides the bars closed after them.

"Eh? Sorry, what on Earth is going on?"

"Earth, Turlough, really? When did you become so parochial?"

"Surely you mean provincial?"

"At least you're still impertinent. Or perhaps I mean impudent."

"Oh yes, I forgot those were traits you admired."

"Those aren't your only admirable traits," the Doctor quips, his eyes quite suddenly dark and close.

Turlough flinches back slightly and finds his back coming up against the wall of bars. The Doctor leans with an outstretched arm on one of the bars behind him, leaving him feeling trapped. Unconsciously, he raises the teddy thing between them. "Doctor?"

The Doctor tugs the plush obstacle from his hands and drops it aside. "Tell me I'm wrong," the Doctor rumbles down at Turlough, dark eyes a challenge. "Tell me I'm barking up the wrong Trion."

"Well you're wrong about how to set the mood, at least," Turlough stalls, baffled by where this is apparently going.

"And are you really going to complain?"

And the Doctor kisses him.

In spite of everything, Turlough wasn't expecting it. He wants to resist but only stiffens, unable to retreat, only knowing something really is as wrong as it seems. But the awkward kiss breaks and those eyes look into his again. The Doctor's hand strokes his cheek, the side of his neck, and Turlough can't help the wave of longing that rolls up through him.

The Doctor, triumphant, draws him into a proper kiss. It's hot and careless, casual in a way that frightens and disappoints Turlough. He wants to stop, to find out what's wrong, because the whole evening has already felt like playing along with some strange manic episode and now, now it's - it's going to make him despair, it really is. He pushes the Doctor away, and is relieved that Doctor lets himself be pushed.

The Doctor looks disgusted. "What are you afraid of?"

"I'm not afraid of anything! But it's not... I just don't-"

"Oh, Turlough, 'not like this,' really? You?"

"You're not yourself, Doctor!"

"Haven't we been over this? Fine! Fine, if you don't want to, if you're so worried that I'm not capable of making my own decisions..."

"It's not like that! Please... Look at my point of view, I-"

"If I were you? I'd be sure to jump at a chance like this. Who knows if the inscrutable Doctor will ever find himself in the mood again?"

Turlough's insecurities squirm. "That's not fair!"

"LIFE isn't fair, but it can be fun, let it be fun, Turlough! Enjoy yourself... Take a risk. Get in trouble. Get in trouble with me."

Turlough continues to hesitate. "This isn't your usual sort of trouble, that's all."

"You don't want to take advantage of me, is that it? Think I'm going to regret it in the morning? Or maybe you're afraid I won't respect you once you've shown your true colors as a fuckable little tart?"

"Doctor!" Turlough objects, but those growled words hit him hard. He knows he's blushing, and more.

"I know you've wondered what it would be like. I've caught you looking."

"Caught me?"

"Oh yes, sometimes you're not so cautious, are you? Sometimes you just gaze."

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was so objectionable!"

"Objectionable? You're the one who's objecting! I'm just wondering why you are suddenly so reluctant to try something you've obviously already done in your dreams."

"For one thing I never imagined your seductive style would involve quite so much baiting."

"Ah, so you want me to be dreadfully earnest! I suppose that makes sense. It is what I've led you to expect, isn't it. I really have been so very deeply boring."

This, at least, breaks the ice slightly, and a nervous little laugh escapes from Turlough. "I can honestly say that you have never been boring."

"Come on then! I'd hate to disappoint you. Come gaze into my eyes, come on, Turlough," the Doctor says, a casual command, straightening up, brushing his coat flat, tugging the end of each sleeve, running a hand up through his hair to tidy it, and finishing the whole thing off with a little toss of his head before turning smoldering eyes on his young companion.

Turlough chuckles, his lashes catching the light as his nervous gaze flickers towards the floor. "Doctor."

"I said, look at me." The Doctor's voice is not kind.

Reflexively, Turlough looks back up to meet the Doctor's eyes. He's captured. He knows it. They both do.

"You want me, don't you? Tell me what you want."

"I don't want to tell you. What I want," Turlough says, so softly.

The Doctor closes in again, this time deliberate, measured, with authority. His hands are strong and sure on Turlough's shoulders. His eyes sparkle as he dips closer for a kiss, slip shut at the last moment.

Turlough's heart is pounding. His hands have risen to touch the Doctor, to hold him close. Hands inside the Doctor's coat. Like this. Like this. They kiss. It's soft and hot and careful. His hands move up between them to touch the Doctor's face, to settle onto his neck, a thumb stroking the corner of his jaw. The Doctor rumbles, soft noises that sink into Turlough's soul. The Doctor's hand snakes up to cradle the back of Turlough's head, his kiss deep and slow. Turlough melts into him.

He takes Turlough by the waist and pulls him around, away from the wall of bars, into the plastic jungle. He pushes him down backwards onto the mossy mound where the woman had been. He leans over him, kissing hard, a cool palm pressing against, rubbing, Turlough's hard-on through his clothes. Turlough shouts, shocked and distressed. The Doctor grins, ruining their kiss. He moves to drop little kisses over Turlough's face and neck while he loosens his own trousers and wrestles his pants down just far enough to free himself.

"I'm afraid I must insist. And be specific, or you won't get it, Turlough," the Doctor teases, dark, mischievous.

"I- oh! Well a bed would be nice," Turlough grumbles from his perch on the side of the little artificial hill, trying and failing not to stare at the Doctor's cock, which is ready for him. For anything, apparently.

"That's not what I meant," the Doctor's tone is airy but it's a threat, isn't it? Or a warning.

"Are you really going to make me say it?"

"Am I really going to know if you don't? Do you really want me to guess?"

Turlough finds the idea alarming but also finds his trousers horribly uncomfortable. "Doctor, we're practically in public," he protests, changing the subject.

"Have you never got away with anything in public? Nothing under the table, nothing under the covers at that school of yours?"

"Ugh! Doctor, those were humans!"

"Really! You never touched them?"

"Have you ever smelled one?"

"You don't seem to object to Tegan."

"Hang on, are you still trying to seduce me or not?"

"I've already seduced you. Now we're just working on the details."

"I don't feel very seduced."

Something quite dark flashes across the Doctor's face, gone in an instant. More himself, he stands back, eyes skyward, full of fussy annoyance. "Fine, fine. You can't say I didn't try." He begins to put himself away.

"Wait! I didn't say... Here. Let me see that." Turlough gets up off the little hill, reaching out and batting the Doctor's hands away as he sinks down on one knee in front of the Doctor.

Turlough stares at it for one long moment. If this isn't.. if this is really because something is wrong... he won't mind, will he? He looks up, into the Doctor's eyes. "You promise you won't regret it?"

"Oh, Turlough. What are my promises ever worth, really? Take a chance."

That isn't reassuring at all. He knows he really shouldn't. But he does want it. He does want to. He does. What do you call it when you do something you know you'll regret? He's remembering the look the Doctor gave him on a yacht in space, when he exposed a stolen man's mutiny to an Eternal captain. He feels the same way now, his heart sinking, as he takes advantage of whatever is going on with the Doctor.

He tells himself this will be all right. It's... not exactly safe, but close enough, in the circumstances. Even if - if the Doctor is not exactly himself - and he is at least somewhat himself... It's only a blowjob. He can do this, have his fun and have the Doctor's pleasure, in a way that won't be too heavy in the cold light of day. If it's a mistake, so be it. He can live with that. He's already living with so much worse.

Even if this pressure was the last thing he'd ever expected from the Doctor, even if that first kiss had been bluntly terrible; the last one had been perfect. The Doctor's warmth, his body, his gentle mouth, his soft eyes. Nobody.. No one could expect him to resist all of that.

The Doctor's words come back to him. It's about temptation.

But this can't possibly be whatever Tegan was worried about. They were talking about empires, about danger. Not mischief and sexual aggression.

Turlough, one hand on the Doctor's hip, the other wrapping boldly around the base of the Doctor's cock, leans forward and envelops him. The shape on his tongue is smooth, heavy and full, and doesn't taste human at all, thank goodness. That would really have been too much.

The times he's imagined this, it has always been blazingly hot; it's always made him ache. But here and now in this grimy fairground attraction, it's just something he's doing. It's sexier to have his hand on the Doctor's hip, his fingertips under the Doctor's jumper, than to have his cock in his mouth. But it's familiar, at least, and he can relax into the enjoyable routine of sucking off someone he genuinely wants to please. As far as that goes, he's finally taken control of the situation, which is quite a relief. The weird, unsettling tension fades, listening to the Doctor's quiet sounds of appreciation as works up to pressing close enough to make the Doctor slip into his throat. He swallows hard, finally beginning to feel the heat that should be there, that he wants this to have. His own cock throbs, uncomfortably confined, and he undoes his trousers but resists the urge to let it out, to stroke it - he doesn't want to risk anything that might distract the Doctor from this. He doesn't want any more surprises. He'll make the Doctor come, let him do it wherever he wants to, and then things will be normal again, and they can revisit this later when things aren't so very strange.

If only he was properly himself, Turlough would have let him do anything. Anything. Turlough is burning to know what the Doctor wants.

But not like this. Exactly as the Doctor had just taunted him. Not like this.

One of the Doctor's hands settles onto his head, and there are a few companionable little strokes of his fingers through his hair. Turlough sighs gently on the slide back, gives him a playful suck and lick, takes a breath for a deeper dive.

"You're such a tease, Turlough," the Doctor says, and his tone brings back every misgiving Turlough has been trying to put out of his mind. The Time Lord makes a fist in Turlough's hair and forces him hard down onto his cock.

Turlough chokes, struggling to keep control, to take him so deep without rejecting him. The Doctor relents, pulls back, but not enough to let him recover, barely enough for a wretchedly awkward cough, and it's right down his aching throat again. The Doctor takes his head in both hands and fucks his mouth, without grace, mercilessly. He's never - Turlough would never have imagined -

Turlough's hands are on the Doctor's hips, gripping but not resisting, concentrating hard on keeping his body under control, not letting his stomach tighten. Tears of effort slip from the corners of his eyes. He wishes he had enough attention left over to do or feel anything else, anything besides the thick intrusion of the Doctor's cock in his throat, the ache of his jaw, open so wide. He must be blushing, though. He's so incredibly hard.

Without warning, the Doctor rips free of Turlough's mouth and shoves him onto his back.

Turlough takes great gasping breaths, his eyes wide, wild. It's been the day for unexpected behaviour, but fuck. "Doctor! Please - "

"Last chance, Turlough. If you don't tell me what you want," the Doctor says, and Turlough is shocked and yet no longer that surprised when the Doctor's fingers twist in the waist of his Brendon School trousers and shove them down, "You'll find out what I want."

---

Two: The Doctor

The Doctor feels like he's dreaming but knows he isn't.

He'd ventured into Tegan's dream, where the Mara had been lurking for so long, where it had finally salted away enough strength or got bored enough to try asserting itself. There, the Mara had shown itself to him, toyed with him, while he'd tried to loosen its grip on Tegan.

Then he'd woken up - and hadn't realised that he was no longer alone.

Its grip had been tenuous at first. It had hidden from him, only influencing him enough to keep him from reaching the obvious conclusion that he was now its host, to keep its actions out of his awareness. It had eased the way for him to believe that he'd only failed at helping Tegan; that he'd driven the Mara back into hiding within her. And he'd only consciously learned exactly how they came to be here in this time, after -

It had happened while they were in Dr. Kerrem's office. He'd found himself somewhere else, witnessing a vision of the Mara fighting its way into the world. It must have been the crystal in Kerrem's machine, resonating with some other experiment.

And the Mara that he hadn't been able to recognise within himself had loomed and expanded and shoved him under. Like being pulled beneath a wave, in one moment nothing obvious had been out of place and in the next he was underwater, lost and disoriented.

If he ever got out of this, he'd be able to tell Tegan he finally knew how she'd felt under the Mara. It seemed to be riding, or maybe melded with, his Id, out there in the real world; to have hijacked what was properly just a part of him: the part the Mara found easiest to overwrite with its own ambitions. Through him, it could scheme, it could tease. And it could send its foul influence into other minds.

And the longer it spent interacting with his friends, with the people of Manussa, the more hateful it became. Its disdain and disgust with everything it encountered was intolerably vile. Feelings he knew were the Mara's were indistinguishable from his own. He was forced to spend quite a lot of his energy refusing to forget that, while he was stuck here to simmer in the Mara's barely focussed frustration and rage.

And with the things that it found suddenly amusing.

Like Turlough.

He had assumed the Mara would want to instill its influence into Turlough; another agent for its ambitions. Instead, it seemed to be playing with him, getting close enough to strike, and then just... not. Perhaps this was the Mara simply enjoying itself. Turlough had exactly the sort of personality that would be vulnerable to the Mara. Taking him? Uninteresting. Tempting him, on the other hand... He could feel the Mara's amusement at Turlough's unease and confusion, and his worry for the Doctor.

"What about you, Turlough? What do you want?" the Doctor's voice had demanded of his accomplice. It had been another overture to play, and one that Turlough had not risen to. But the Mara leaned harder into the new direction in its game; a direction that made the Doctor's hearts squeeze painfully.

And now, in the dark, in an artificial jungle, something he'd left unaddressed was suddenly being stripped bare in front of him.

He's noticed Turlough, of course, and the boy's ingratiatingly intimate approach to him. He's allowed him to cultivate a habit of small, quiet moments of sharing: smiles, glances, little moments of communication and empathy. He's quietly put a lid on how much he likes the way it feels when Turlough stands next to him, how much he enjoys the boy's eyes on him, the way they flicker down, distracted by his mouth, his hands...

When they'd met it had only been common sense to keep him at arm's length, no matter how intriguing he was - Turlough's obvious misplacement and ulterior motives had to be sorted - but then the boy had given up the sort of prize an Eternal would kill for; given it up instead of giving up the Doctor. Given it up for him. For him.

But the time has never been right, and he isn't in this business to get into relationships anyway. Messy things. Even if his mind keeps wandering back to those ice-blue eyes and what it feels like when Turlough stands so close and smiles at him so slyly. Turlough might want him, but he doesn't need him, and it is safer - so much safer not to.

But safety is the last thing the Mara is interested in. And the Doctor is not safe. Not today.

The Doctor feels like he's dreaming but knows he isn't, as he looms over Turlough, baits him, steals a kiss from him. He wants him. He means to have him.

He would never - act -

He tries to bottle up his feelings, not wanting to let the Mara enjoy them. But it simply doesn't work.

He has worked so hard to never do this, despite how much, how often he's wanted to - so many moments have passed where he's never done this, and now it's happened, it's happening, he's tasting Turlough, their mouths crashing together like they've never not been lovers, and the Doctor will never have been the one to do this. A rage of his own tries to rise unchecked - Turlough was his, to take to protect - and now -

And now Turlough is pushing him away.

Turlough's eyes, longing and hurt, are looking into his, but they're not his, and they're wearing the wrong expression. Turlough resists and the Doctor cheers him on, the boy's own fortitude his best chance at - this - not happening.

Please, Turlough - you know it's not me? Don't you? Please don't let me -

"You're not yourself, Doctor!"

Yes! Turlough!

But the Mara and the part of the Doctor that only wants are master manipulators, and with sinking hearts he knows he will talk Turlough around. The words that come out of his mouth, that he would not dream of saying, make Turlough flush with arousal.

Just look at him. You could eat him alive.

"You want me, don't you?" the Doctor's voice demands. "Tell me what you want."

The Doctor feels like he's dreaming as he draws Turlough into the sort of kiss he has wanted for so long, as Turlough melts into him in exactly the way he hadn't dared to think about. Turlough's arms are around his waist. They share a kiss just like the one he would have wanted to give to Turlough. Turlough is intoxicating. It's so good it is not good, to finally, unabashedly, hold Turlough close, to feel his body against him the way he's been dreaming of doing.

Well then, the thing driving the Doctor decides, it's over, this phase of the game. He'd try anything once, but it's just too easy to get what you want the way you're supposed to. Time to liven things up.

He takes Turlough by the waist and pulls him around, away from the wall of bars, into the plastic jungle. He's very definitely aroused now. So is Turlough. The Doctor is pushing him onto his back. He checks to feel how hard Turlough is and grins. The Doctor pulls his own cock out and revels in the way Turlough's eyes are drawn to it.

This can't be what happens next. The things he's going to do. And it won't be him. Unless it is him.

But despite everything, Turlough resists, and argues, and the Doctor, annoyed, becomes fussy and reticent, hiding his condition and smoothing away the tension. He has just enough time to be filled with exhausted relief, letting his guard down (it has been so heavy), when Turlough, to his delight, goes on the offensive. Of course; it had been a strategy: take the temptation away to see if the boy would chase it.

Turlough is on his knees, his mouth slightly open, admitting quiet little breaths. Turlough's eyes climb from the tip of his cock all the way up to his face, looking into the Doctor's eyes and seeing something that isn't him. "You promise you won't regret it?"

The Mara doesn't even make the Doctor lie. It works anyway. The Doctor is crushed.

The Doctor feels like he's dreaming as he watches his cock disappear into Turlough's mouth. He feels cool, wet lips and a hot muscular tongue, and he feels his hearts skipping with wretched disappointment. And he feels a rush of condescending satisfaction. The Doctor grins and relishes Turlough's failure, and his talented mouth. Ah, it's taken a while to get here, but it's perfect. Well worth the effort, after all. The Mara is so, so pleased.

The Mara flares with cruelty then, at the peak of its strength. The Doctor is filled with hatred of Turlough for his weakness. The boy knows. He knows exactly what he's doing. The Mara has won but Turlough made it so easy. He didn't even have to pretend he isn't who he is. Turlough just wants. He's so deeply selfish. Even after all they've been through together, Turlough doesn't really care about him at all, and the Doctor hates him for it.

It's not - these aren't his feelings.

Aren't they? Wasn't he just begging Turlough not to do this? And he came so close! And then he threw it away, because he'd rather fuck him when he's not in his right mind than simply remain unfucked? Is he really going to keep up his act of stoic non-judgement while Turlough lets the Mara smash them together like dolls?

Turlough clearly does know exactly what he's doing. The Doctor draws a shallow breath and lets it out in a small sound of tortured pleasure as Turlough tugs him tight and gives him a long, full, slow drag of suction, a kiss, a lick. Turlough doesn't deserve to be forgiven for this. The Doctor certainly doesn't deserve forgiveness for allowing this to happen. And it is his fault. It's all his fault. Turlough may have disappointed him but he's disappointed himself so much more. Hatred. Rage. Burn it all down. Burn the both of them to the ground.

Turlough seems to be genuinely enjoying this now, and it disgusts him. Does the boy think he'll get away with lighting this fire? Does he think he's going to just put it out with his mouth?

"You're such a tease, Turlough."

Before he knows he's doing it he's made a fist in Turlough's hair and forced him hard down onto his cock. Turlough chokes, straining to keep control of himself, tension popping in every line of his body. The Doctor lets out a soft groan, feeling Turlough struggle with the width and depth of him.

Ah! No! Turlough! I'm sorry - I -

He relents, pulls back, and for a moment he has hope that he's managed to influence his actions despite the Mara's control. But it's not enough to let the boy recover, barely enough for a wretchedly awkward cough, before the Doctor takes his head in both hands and fucks his mouth, without grace, mercilessly.

He can't stand this but he doesn't want to let the Mara enjoy his displeasure. He wants to beg for it to stop, but he doesn't. He won't beg.

Turlough's hands are on his hips, gripping but not resisting, letting it happen. Of course he's letting it happen. He wants it. That's what's wrong with him. And you want it. That's what's wrong with you. That's why you won't beg for it to stop.

The Doctor bristles. He does not want this!

The Doctor definitely wants this.

He tries to calm himself down. He shouldn't rise to this; the Mara will just enjoy it. The Mara doesn't know anything about him.

Maybe I know more about you than you do. Oh look - here's something that somebody told you not to remember. But I can remember it for you. Would you like to see? I'll show you.

Suddenly, blocking out everything else, a vision. It feels like a memory but - this never happened.

Someone he remembers knowing he ought to have known, when he hadn't even known himself. Someone dark who'd done this to him, exactly, exactly this, while he'd reeled, his head full of conflict; desire, fear, betrayal and confusion. Someone who had ripped free of his mouth with a sneer of self control and shoved him onto his back.

You love it when Turlough is like you. Don't you. You're making him more like you right now.

He rips free of Turlough's mouth with a sneer of self control and shoves him onto his back.

The boy is taking great gasping breaths, his eyes wide, wild. "Doctor! Please - "

The Doctor fights down panic. This is - this isn't... There must be some way to get back to the surface of his own mind!

It's not your mind anymore. You're hanging on by a thread. It could snap at any moment. Maybe you shouldn't struggle so much. Maybe you'd have more control if you let yourself enjoy it while I let you do what you want.

"Last chance, Turlough," the Doctor warns, and pulls the boy's pants and trousers down. Turlough cries out but it's strangled, like he's more afraid of making a real fuss than he is of - whatever this is. "If you don't tell me what you want, you'll find out what I want."

What he wants is for this to stop!

What he wants is to see how easily Turlough will fall. To punish him for falling, and finally, maybe, to take him for the Mara. But not until the right moment. What he wants is to feel the satisfaction of contact with this lost boy; to put it in the light for the part of him that pretends he's too good for this. What he wants is to fuck Turlough with the part of himself that wants all these things, while the part that wants to believe he doesn't want all these things is dragged along, kicking and screaming, and most importantly, coming, desperately, into his sweet, broken little crush. Yes... That will be lovely.

---

Three: Turlough

"Last chance, Turlough. If you don't tell me what you want, you'll find out what I want."

Turlough watches the Doctor whip his school trousers off and toss them aside, horrified and impressed. He's too rattled to properly digest the idea of being naked in front of the Doctor. "You're not serious?"

"What do you think?" It's another non-answer, and the Doctor changes his footing, wraps his hands around Turlough's waist and shifts him a bit on the mossy incline, and - oh. That would be his cock, pressed against Turlough's. This is serious, isn't it.

All right. The Doctor is insisting on a little bit more. Turlough twitches and calculates and tries not to throb too much with mad arousal. The Doctor's brows go up, his head tilts, prompting him. It's your move.

Turlough hadn't meant to let anything like this happen. As much as the Doctor is teasing him for it, he genuinely doesn't want to do anything that isn't worth how much he'll regret it. Letting this manic, oversexed Doctor fuck him is definitely on that list. Probably. Definitely.

But what will happen if he tries to run now, if he tries to stop? Will the Doctor even let him?

That's a mad thought. There's no version of the Doctor, manic or not, that wouldn't let him stop.

Except maybe this one.

It's what his instincts are telling him. Shouting at him, really.

Earlier, the snake mystic had made a show of checking him for the 'shadow' that had left Tegan, and then waxed apocalyptic about it, wondering where it might have gone. And that was when Tegan had remembered her dream, had suddenly worried for the Doctor, when Nyssa had sent Turlough off to find him.

Can that really be what all this is? The Mara, having left Tegan for the Doctor? But why are they all so alarmed if all the Mara does is make you act out of character?

What actually is the threat posed by the Mara? All Turlough has to go on are the brief moments he's seen of Tegan acting oddly, and the strange feeling it had given him when he'd seen the image of the snake on her arm, like a tattoo that had been there for years, that had never been there before.

Everything his friends have said about it has been downright mythical. It wouldn't have killed any of them to give him something more solid to go on, would it?

Well. If this is a Mara thing, then he definitely had better not. At the very least, he'd never hear the end of it from Tegan. Turlough tries to struggle awkwardly up onto his elbows, but the Doctor is too close, and doesn't back off. "What I wanted was what I was doing. Let me up, would you?"

"Don't lie, Turlough." The Doctor's hands close on his shoulders, force him solidly back down.

"What?! I'm not - Doctor!"

The Doctor puts one of his hands on the fake mossy ground next to Turlough, lifts the other to stroke the side of his face. The Doctor's expression is intimate, kind, but again, Turlough reads it as a threat. "I mean it."

A tremor runs through him.

Hastily, Turlough gets a grip on himself, closing his eyes, steadying his breath. Okay. Say the Doctor is half drunk under the Mara's influence. It's probably safest to go all out. Maybe he'll even be able to think of a way out of this insane situation.

Maybe he's overthinking it and this really is just the Doctor in a rare mood, bored with holding back.

It's a gamble he'll have to take. Because the only other option is to find out what happens if he keeps trying to shut this down. And if there's one thing that would be worse than letting the Doctor get his end away, it'd be letting the Doctor overpower him and get inside him by force. He can't imagine it, but his friends are all taking the Mara so seriously. Why else would they do that unless it was a threat even to the autonomy of a Time Lord?

In any case, the Doctor has the same demand. Tell him what you want.

Could he lie anyway? Could he ask for something soft, or something impossible? Could he ask for something he'd never dare to ask his benefactor, the tall blond flitting confidently around his console, making him quietly want things he'll never have?

"I don't think... don't think you'll really give me what I want even if I do tell you." He lets his eyes flick up to meet the Doctor's.

The Doctor is cool, in control, Turlough trapped beneath him. "Try me," he says, and waits, watches.

Turlough can't help a quick scan, his eyes tracing the soft shape of the Doctor's mouth, the texture of his skin, the rounded planes of his face, his unfathomable eyes. He can feel the Doctor's hard-on, hot and solid next to his own. His weight on his hips.

Turlough's body gives a subtle twist. Is this a mistake? He really doesn't want to take advantage, and jumping straight to the outrageous would really not be.. Erm.. Cricket.

He swallows hard and commits to a hopeless charge. This is already completely mad anyway. "Your tongue. Your fingers, and your cock. In that order," Turlough demands, and actually tips his chin up with a haughty little jerk of his head.

While the Doctor's eyes pin him in place, Turlough lifts his legs and winds his arms around them, pulling his knees apart and up to his shoulders. He's transfixed by the Doctor's face, a mask of deeply un-Doctor-like emotions. It's.. actually terrifying. He can't keep looking. He can't look away.

The Doctor's gaze breaks first, as he finally does back off, just enough to take in the display. Turlough watches the Doctor rake his eyes down his body, lift a hand to touch his inner thigh, ghostly light. Turlough lets himself shiver, the sensation practically crackling over his skin.

"Is that so. Where do you want them?"

Turlough is pretty sure he's wearing a good scowl. Commanding. This is impossibly hot. He just wishes he was sure this was the Doctor. "You know where."

"It might be very dangerous to defy me, Turlough. Pretend I don't. I want to hear you say it."

God. Okay. Every time Turlough thinks he's already given up, he finds a baser level to stoop to. The Doctor's hand is drifting towards his cock. "Up.." Did he say dangerous? What does that mean?

"Up your greedy little arse? Hmm?" The Doctor taps the head of Turlough's hard-on with his index finger, traces another ghostly line down it.

"God - yes," Turlough says, wretchedly.

"Not good enough." The Doctor's fingers curl around Turlough's balls and squeeze. He gasps. "Say it."

He's not sure how he can be embarrassed now, but he is. "Up my arse," Turlough cries, like pulling nails.

"Your greedy little arse," the Doctor prompts, squeezing harder.

"Up my greedy little arse, Doctor, please - "

"That's so much better," the Doctor says, releasing him. He puts his hands on either side of the arse in question. He crouches, leans closer, lays a wet kiss on twitching, sensitive, delicate skin.

Turlough reaches down, daringly, and pushes the Doctor's hair back, so he can see him better. The Doctor looks up at him with a devious little smile, one that doesn't even look too out of place. Turlough tries to smile back and can't. It comes out like a wince. The Doctor doesn't see it; he's bent back to his work.

Every time the Doctor's tongue swirls across him, soft noises drip from Turlough's lips. It's impossible, the Doctor's mouth on him like this. Turlough begs; he's not sure what for. He asked - he's already asked... Fuck, had he really asked for this?

The Doctor's tongue slips inside Turlough, teasingly, then deeper, pressing his mouth hard against the boy. Turlough's cries get more desperate. He tries not to writhe as the Doctor teases him with his tongue, pushing and relenting. Incredible. Turlough doesn't know how they got to this point. Never, never in a thousand years would he have imagined asking for this. The idea of the Doctor's proper, faux-English mouth doing this; the stiff, always polite tongue, stuffed up inside him and wriggling maddeningly.

"Ah - fuck," Turlough gasps, gripping his own legs tighter. Insane. They've both gone mad, that's all there is to it. If it didn't still smell like a fog machine in here he'd think he was dreaming.

The Doctor looks up at him, just for a moment, and he knows his expression isn't the one he meant to have on. He'd dropped it sometime around the part where the Doctor had stuck his tongue up his arse.

---

Four: The Doctor

"You're not serious!?" Turlough manages to object, as the Doctor goes on to shove Turlough's clothes awkwardly over his shoes.

"What do you think?" he asks darkly, maneuvering them both into a position more suitable for bending Turlough in half. He wants to see him. It's important. Turlough tries to get up; the Doctor pushes him back down, watching the boy's face, whose heart on his sleeve: Turlough has dropped all the way back to his basest instinct. He wants to survive. Safer to surrender than to fight. Very good.

The Doctor wishes Turlough would fight. He's not sure whether it's better that he doesn't. He hates this; hates to see Turlough's eyes on him like this, when the thing he's looking at isn't him.

But it is him. He knows that. He's just in denial.

But it's not all of him! It's certainly not the part of him that deserves to touch Turlough.

Oh - so there's a part of him that does deserve to touch Turlough?

That's not what I meant!

It's going to happen anyway. Let go.

Turlough's eyes flash down, up again. His face hardens into an expression the Doctor recognises as one of his practiced ones. "I don't think... don't think you'll really give me what I want even if I do tell you."

The Doctor smiles. Oh? Is the boy playing at last, now that he's already lost? Now that's wonderfully pathetic. "Try me."

"Your tongue. Your fingers, and your cock. In that order," Turlough demands, and actually tips his chin up with a haughty little jerk of his head.

Oh. He is playing. How delightful.

The Doctor feels like he's dreaming as he watches Turlough lift his own legs, knees to his shoulders, spread wide, everything on display for him.

He's half furious and half impressed by the boy's late entry into the game. Look at him. Of course he was hiding this. Such a needy little fuck. He was right to be ashamed. The Doctor stops to let his eyes drift over everything Turlough is offering. A false expression of composure, wet, twitching, parted lips, his school uniform crumpled up and crushed against him by his pale thighs. Between them, a full, straining hard-on; below that, tight balls and an alluringly pink little areshole; white buttocks, angular in flexion.

He can't...

The Doctor watches one of his hands reach out to drag ticklishly light fingertips down Turlough's thighs. He feels his cock throb. This can't be happening.

"And.. where do you want them?"

He feels Turlough shudder, watches him swallow and twist. "You know where."

But that isn't what he wants to hear. It isn't submission. The Doctor makes him say it. Tortures him into it. Gently, but that's what he does. And praises and rewards him for it.

That's awfully kind of you. Maybe you don't have a monopoly on mercy after all.

The Doctor feels like he's dreaming as his mouth generously tends to Turlough, there, where he's just been strongarmed into admitting out loud that he wants it. Turlough quivers and flexes, giving him sweet little gasps and cries.

"Please.... Please, Doctor," Turlough begs, and the Doctor doesn't know what to do anymore. Riding along with the Mara and the worst parts of himself, unable to stop this. And Turlough... seems to want it. To want this thing that isn't really him.

It must be exhausting, how you lie to yourself. You are really you. The only one dividing you against yourself is you. Stop fighting.

He can't stop fighting! The Mara is dangerous. It could do anything.

You're dangerous. You could do anything.

He presses his tongue into the boy, probes and fucks him with it. He takes his time, feeding on every twitch the boy gives him, the way his little arsehole softens for him.

The Doctor's hands creep closer to the center of Turlough's arse. He pulls back slightly, glances up at him, meeting those ice blue eyes. Their facade is gone, leaving only anticipation and twitches.

Fingertips wet with saliva drag over Turlough's tight entrance. Slowly, tortuously slowly, he presses a thumb inside, then another, sliding them over and over one another.

Turlough whimpers and then flinches at the sound he clearly didn't intend to make. The Doctor smiles, sliding, fucking, levering them apart, enjoying Turlough's little sounds, before letting his thumbs slip out and replacing them with a few fingers. Deeper, wider, avoiding the bundle of pleasure inside him. Fucking them steadily in and out of him. Adding another, all four, and pressing as deep and wide as Turlough's arse will take without violence. Turlough's stomach twitches like he's resisting the urge to buck. The boy's groan is deep too, for him. And deeply sexy.

Look how much he loves it when you do what he wants you to do to him.

The Doctor is struck dumb for a few beats, his face wearing the sultry, satisfied look of the Mara, working Turlough's arse open, the better to fuck him. He's troubled by the way it makes him feel when he reaches Turlough's limits, ones that would take days rather than minutes to expand. It's a transgressive delight that he knows is, for him, as dangerous as the Mara itself, that he knows would tempt him even without the snake. That he knows, and usually avoids needing to acknowledge, is one of the reasons he... doesn't usually do these things.

Turlough lets him do it. Of course he does. He's just asked for it. He's arching beneath him, trying not to; little restricted movements.

Eventually the Doctor straightens up, pulls his hands away. Turlough's eyes snap open. Intense, hungry. Piercing.

"It isn't really you at all, is it," Turlough says, his voice low and guarded.

The Doctor's hearts flutter painfully. If only he could say that he has no part in this. But now that he's steeped in it, he can see that's not how the Mara works. It's true that this is nothing he'd ever do, but it's not that the Mara forces you to do anything. No, it sifts you, looking for the parts of you that will satisfy its desires.

"Oh, Turlough. Do you think the Mara would waste its time with a creature like you? No, this fascination with Vislor Turlough is all me. Really me, through and through. The Mara has only... let me off my leash."

It's the truth, too. You know it is. Why fight it?

Because it's a lie of omission. And the omission is me!

No. It's just that you're the leash.

Turlough's serious expression doesn't break. "Should I believe that? Would you believe that?" he asks, and the Doctor is bolstered a bit; Turlough is no fool.

"If I were you, you mean? I've already told you. I'd ride this wave until it breaks."

"All right then. You made me ask. That wasn't all I asked for." He wipes his chin, licks thick saliva onto his hand, reaches down to slick the Doctor's cock with it.

The Mara can feel the Doctor's disgust with its words, with Turlough's answer, Turlough's actions. Ah, how disappointed you are. Would you be happier if I let you be more honest with him? Do you think it would make a difference?

The Doctor braces himself for whatever brutal thing the Mara has thought of next.

The Doctor lets the boy's slippery hand linger, but as Turlough tries to get away with genuinely stroking him, his eyes narrow. "That's enough of that," the Time Lord says shortly, pinning Turlough's hand under his own. Turlough gives him a vicious little pout, and he honestly can't tell how real the expression is.

"Your sweet Doctor is still here for the moment," he says contemplatively, leaning close over Turlough again, pushing himself down towards the center of the boy's arse, looking into his eyes. His eyes are wonderful. They look like they might be abjectly terrified. Or in love. Hard to tell. Humans. Or... whatever he is. "He's very upset. He would have wanted courtship; candles and wine, to drown you in his affections... But he wants this, too. To feel all of you, Turlough," the Doctor says, and he knows it's been coming but it can't come to this!

"Wh - what? My Doctor?"

Turlough's voice is soaked in apprehension. The Doctor shushes him, murmurs his name.

He wants to shout but it can't get out. He wants Turlough to fight, to run; knows he can't, he won't. The Doctor can't get out, please, please, he can't.... He can't, he can't, not Turlough, not like this, not with this thing, please...

Hate Tegan for this, it's all her fault. Hate Nyssa, it's all her fault. Hate Turlough. Hate yourself.

The Doctor braces his hard, full cock against Turlough and pushes himself inside. Turlough lets out one terrible cry and then visibly restrains himself. He knows. He knows it's not me. Turlough should scream. The Doctor should scream. He can't. He can't.

Please, please...

Turlough's eyes, for once, don't slide away. They're locked to his, they're slicing him open. His hearts shudder. He's going to die.

Can you see me? I'm so... Turlough...

He sinks slowly into Turlough, his hands on the boy's trembling thighs, his eyes transfixing him. He won't let Turlough look away now. The boy breathes in short little gasps, overwhelmed.

"That's it," he praises, and Turlough's breath hitches. The Doctor rocks his hips and feels the boy's insides give a helpless squeeze.

---

Five: Turlough

The wide pads of the Doctor's thumbs tease Turlough and he forgets again about how exactly his face is arranged. One of them sinks into him, and the other. When they really start to work on him, Turlough forgets his voice as well; he'd meant to moan but what comes out is a needy, high sound that he isn't at all proud of.

The Doctor summarily works up to a currently impossible fraction of his hand and tests his tolerance.

He tries to hold still for it. He's trying not to think given up on thinking about how different this is from anything he'd ever thought, ever imagined this would be like. He writhes with the Doctor's fingers fucking him. With what's coming next.

Eventually the Doctor straightens up, pulls his hands away. Turlough, his eyes half-lidded, watching them go, catches sight of something under the cuff, on the back of the Doctor's wrist. On his skin. Dark, crude, unexpected.

Turlough's eyes snap open. He'd caught barely a glimpse but something had crashed like ice down his spine. It's a bone-deep revulsion. His instincts, which he has been doing his best to discount so far, scream that something is dangerously wrong here.

But what can he do? Now, when it's already far too late?

"It isn't really you at all, is it," Turlough says, knowing it's pointless to ask.

The Doctor looks at him with deep disappointment. "Oh, Turlough. Do you think the Mara would waste its time with a creature like you? No, this fascination with Vislor Turlough is really me, through and through. The Mara has only... let me off my leash."

Ah. Confirmed.

This is trickster talk, obviously, now that Turlough is more candidly looking for it. (And a failed belittling: Turlough has already had several fairly high caliber entities waste their time with him. Interesting.) Nevertheless, the image of a Doctor off his leash is enough to give him another full-body twitch.

Turlough's serious expression doesn't break. "Should I believe that? Would you believe that?"

"If I were you, you mean? I've already told you. I'd ride this wave until it breaks."

"All right then. You made me ask. That wasn't all I asked for." He brings his hand to his mouth, reaches down to slick the Doctor's cock with the thick juices left over from trying to swallow it.

Turlough lingers. As he tries to get away with genuinely stroking him, the Time Lord wraps his hand over Turlough's, stopping him. Turlough gives him a vicious little pout.

"Never fear. Your sweet Doctor is still here for the moment," the Doctor says contemplatively, leaning close over him again. "He's very upset. He would have wanted courtship; candles and wine, to drown you in his affections... But he wants this, too. To feel all of you, Turlough."

"Wh - what? My Doctor?" Turlough struggles to absorb this while the Doctor forces his hand to guide the head of the Doctor's cock, slipping over Turlough's slick skin towards his entrance. This does not sound good at all. What he would have wanted? This... It can't really be possible that this is the Mara, and the Doctor isn't able to exert any control at all, can it?

If that's true, if it's the Mara that wants this, then why? Just as a power play? To humiliate the Doctor? Or is this really for him, a temptation, to get control of him, like it seems to be in control of the Doctor?

Oh. It's in control of the Doctor.

Okay. He was wrong. He was diametrically wrong. He hadn't taken things seriously enough. Even if they were all being abstract about the Mara, he really should have known better than to downplay and try to forget the way he'd seen Tegan act. It had been a warning, clear as the rattle of a snake, and just as stupid to ignore.

"Shhh, Turlough."

He'd been willing to settle for 'not exactly the Doctor' when he was talking himself into this, why had he talked himself into this?...

No, Turlough knows exactly why. He'd let himself misapply his confidence in the Doctor in order to pretend things couldn't really be so bad. Because much as he'd been put off by the way the Doctor had suddenly pursued him, he does want very, very badly to be pursued. And he'd let himself believe that even if the Doctor wasn't exactly himself, he was close enough...

Close enough that the Doctor really did want...

But the Doctor hovering over him now isn't what he'd been thinking of; not the Doctor under some strange influence, his inhibitions lost. No, now that he's bothering to think properly it feels more like he's dealing with something from deep in the darkest thoughts of the Doctor, singled out and pulled to the surface by the Mara, while the rest of him is suppressed.

The rest of him, which apparantly makes up his Doctor. That's unfortunate. And just his luck.

So. The Mara. The idea that it's an evil demon doesn't feel so silly, now that it's actively about to fuck him with someone else's body.

What is he going to do now?

He knows the answer to that one.

Get fucked.

The Doctor's hand is squeezing his around the Doctor's hard-on, using Turlough's hand to brace it against him. Turlough feels as though he might crack in half. The Doctor rocks forward and he feels the Doctor's cock slip through his fingers, slide inside him, just... just like he's wanted. Fuck.

It's been too long; the muscle memory is too weak. He can't let him in without a fight, whether he wants to or not. It's too intense, too granular, and he's not as ready as he wanted to believe he would be, even after all this, even - oh, hell, fuck - The Doctor's hand leaves his, and he has to decide what to do with it, his hand, the last thing between him and the rest of the Doctor's cock.

Turlough is determined, now, to just take it. The Mara is staring into his eyes. The Doctor, his Doctor is in there somewhere, and if he's at all conscious, Turlough doesn't want... Oh, fuck, he doesn't want the Doctor to see this at all, but if the best he can do is minimize it, then that's what he'll do.

But damn these circumstances, genuinely - as the Doctor slips into him, fitfully, between clenched moments, Turlough's hand turning, flat, just a finger on either side of the Doctor, measuring him as he sinks deeper - a cry gets away from him. He hates the sound of it in his own ears.

His eyes bore into the Doctor's, willing himself to reach the man inside, if there's any chance, if there's any way. He's sure the Doctor is losing, has lost; if he wasn't he would never have let this happen. But he's still there. Turlough wants to let him know: he'll survive, they'll survive. The Mara can't, won't hurt them. He desperately wants to call out for the Doctor, but he can't trust his voice, and bites it back.

"That's it," the Doctor praises, and Turlough's breath hitches. The Doctor rocks his hips and Turlough's insides give a helpless squeeze. It feels

so good

It's not fair, it's not. Why can't this just be the Doctor?

---

Six: The Doctor

The Doctor can't bear it. His darker self and the Mara work as one to fuck the boy the Doctor has been working so hard to protect. Turlough flexes to meet him, taking him easily, all things considered. The Doctor can't so much as emote with his own face. He can't - he can't do this.

He withdraws, concentrates, until he can only feel himself in contact with Turlough. He's not aware of his own limbs moving, but he still feels himself slide, so deep, Turlough's body so soft, hot and satisfying. He fills his auditory attention with remembered music, drowning out the slick, pornographic sounds, Turlough's quiet cries, his own intolerable moans. He can't escape his vision, and tries to distance himself from it even as he is forced to watch Turlough take him. He concentrates on the knot of Turlough's tie, considering the topology of it.

He's almost succeeded in detaching himself from the experience entirely when he's overcome with the feeling that it's the wrong thing to do. Isn't he, in effect, trying to leave Turlough alone in this moment? That's the last thing he meant to do.

The Doctor drops his defenses and lets himself

fuck

It's too much, it's his body crashing into Turlough's, bent beneath him, the boy's face pinched and twisted, his bottom lip caught between his teeth and then released to let out a gasp, a soft cry from a wide open mouth. It's his own muscles straining to drive him into Turlough, long, fast thrusts that bring his hips to the boy's arse with a smack, a shove, jostling his slender body against the artificial hill. He feels it all.

The Doctor slows, pushes Turlough's thighs further apart to make room to get closer. Turlough's eyes unclench and look up into his face. He feels himself lean forward and kiss Turlough on his forehead. He watches Turlough's eyes slide shut and feels him tremble.

It feels wonderful.

You could have had this the whole time. Really, I'm doing you a favour.

The Doctor's frustration and anguish threaten to overwhelm him. No wonder the Mara is so intractable. Everything pleasurable and powerful in the Doctor is aligned with it, and must be rejected. The only feelings that are truly his are crushing, withering, heartwrenching.

No, that's not true. The feelings of protectiveness and care for Turlough are his. The burning outrage at the Mara for stealing this from him is his. And the way he will feel when the Mara is driven out and destroyed, will be-

The deep, throaty roar of the snake rattles through his consciousness and he reels with disorientation.

You're so fucking miserable. Fine, let's make love, then. It's obvious that's what you both want. He can feel the rage the Mara pours into those words, but it's not as though there's anything he can do about it.

The Doctor feels like he's dreaming, moving inside the boy who ran away with him, slow and gentle, holding him close. "Hmm. That's lovely," he purrs to Turlough, who makes a sound that leaves him weak, whose arms wrap tight around his shoulders.

"Please," Turlough begs, and his voice is high and thready.

The Doctor feels himself shiver. Turlough...

Why resist it? There's nothing else he can do, after all. Will it help either of them if he tortures himself over this? Is that any better than trying to shut it out and leaving Turlough to the Mara without him?

It's - because, this - because - it's not -

Don't be ridiculous. Let it be you.

But it isn't!

It really is.

His hips are rolling, his body flexing, feeling Turlough inside and out, hearing his soft breaths. The boy's face isn't hiding anything anymore, he's just looking up at him, his eyes wide and plaintive. The Doctor knows this one. It's what he looks like when he's looking for someone to save him.

Turlough takes a few strange breaths, and the Doctor recognises that too; he's building up to speak. The boy's mouth twists, distraught. "Why can't it be you?"

The Doctor crumbles. The Mara grins inside him, wide as death.

Turlough... It is me.

The Doctor hears it. He's said it out loud. And he can - he's stopped, he's in control, the Mara let him -

No. That was just you. You stopped fighting yourself. I keep telling you.

Wh - what did he sound like? The look Turlough is giving him is heartbreaking. Oh, no - the look he's giving back is just as bad! "Turlough," he tries again, wets his lips, shuts his eyes, gets his expression under control. When he opens them again he's ready, doing his best to show everything he hasn't got time to say. "It seems I can only be here if I... let myself. Shall we make the best of this?"

Turlough nods, his breath shaky, his mouth relaxing. He looks like he's given up completely, and the Doctor knows the boy can't trust him, of course he can't, of course it's torture to ask him to. The Doctor wants to fix this, to fix this, please, please - and he wants to kiss him, properly, as himself, and he knows he's playing right into whatever the Mara has planned but he can't help it. He can't. It's right, he's right - there's nothing else he can do.

When the Doctor dips close, he finds Turlough's mouth soft and submissive and finally, finally, he can choose how to move against it, with it, chaste little kisses, barely open. Turlough lets out the softest possible sigh.

His chest is blooming with emotion, with heat. He can feel himself clamoring to sink into Turlough again. He does, holding him close with his own hands, gently, slowly fucking him with his own hips. Turlough takes him so wonderfully... Ah - With everything he's been through already, he's not going to last long, and if there's any point to this at all it's to do his best for Turlough.

He takes a moment to declutter his mind. Everything drops focus but himself and Turlough. They're wrapped around one another, arching and breathing together, like they should be, and he loves it, loves to be so close to his intriguing little assassin, his crush.

He adds up all the moments he'd decided not to touch, not to hold, not to crush Turlough against him, not to think about what it would feel like to slide inside him, not to picture the way Turlough would look at him, so adorably, bitchily enamoured with him, blushing, sweating, panting for him as he fucked him on the console, up against a corridor wall, in Tegan's room, in any number of places they'd found themselves. He collects these and takes them out on the boy, loving the way he feels, the way he sounds, the way he clutches back at him, his Turlough.

He's close. He can feel a part of him demanding a coarse finish, and the Mara, giddy with anticipation. He doesn't imagine it intends to let him remain in control but they'll just have to see about that.

He insinuates an arm between them. He finds Turlough's cock, slides his fingers around it, like the other part of him had never bothered to do. Turlough's body twitches around him at the contact, and the cry the boy lets out doesn't care who hears it.

"Is it all right if I...?" he murmurs against him.

Turlough practically convulses beneath him. "Yes."

The Doctor puts on the finishing touches: long, rolling strokes that hit the boy just right on the way in and then let the Doctor feel him grip and slip satisfyingly to his full depth; a perfect matching tug at Turlough's straining hard-on, slick skin slipping over itself; last of all a kiss that he pulls back from to watch Turlough's face, his gorgeous eyes -

Turlough tenses, every inch of him, with an abbreviated little cry, and then he yells and his guts grip the Doctor in an involuntary rhythm.

It's more than enough to send the Doctor over. He throws himself into Turlough, emptying all those unspent moments into him, letting the boy see him, like this, and he knows that this was the right choice, knows that whatever else happens, he's the one who shared this with Turlough, while he was himself, full and proper.

He collapses against him, kissing, catching his breath, mumbling the boy's name. Turlough kisses back weakly, one hand stroking the Doctor's soft hair.

I want you with me, Turlough. I want you to know-

No. Ice in his hearts. He isn't saying it. He's already lost control.

"Amazing show, Turlough, absolutely top performance. You're good for something after all. I honestly can't remember the last time I had an arse as good as yours."

Turlough's face resolves into defiance over pain, catching his breath and his wits simultaneously.

The Doctor seethes. It's not as though he'd expected anything different from the Mara, but he'd genuinely thought, now that he was ready, that he was prepared for the Mara's move of shoving him aside, that he'd be able to resist it. But no. He didn't even feel it this time.

"But your paramour is misbehaving. He thought he'd be able to overcome my influence. I think maybe I ought to punish him."

"There's nothing more pathetic than a bully," Turlough snarls back at him, eyes dark and angry.

"Turlough?"

The voice is small. The anger drops from Turlough's face in an instant. The Doctor catches on at once and his rage is fully ignited. Don't you DARE!

"Doctor! Is that you? It's all right, it'll be all right, Doctor,"

"What's..." His eyes wide, he stumbles back, out of and away from Turlough, looking around wildly, down at himself, still hard and slick, back to Turlough, half naked and dripping, just letting his legs down and levering himself to sit up straight on the hill.

Turlough is distraught. "I'm sorry, I - I thought - I couldn't -"

Please! I'll do whatever you want! Just stop!

You're already doing whatever I want. And this is delicious.

"Why was I... Turlough?" The Doctor gives him a devastating look.

The Doctor's so angry it's circled all the way back to calm. What part of him wants to do this?

You really don't know? You never noticed that you've always loved him most for his conflicts?

It's true that the Doctor has always enjoyed watching him to see what he will do. Under pressure - or vacuum - Hoping Turlough will do well, make him proud.

But letting him struggle. He wouldn't be interesting if you leashed him and led him. It wouldn't be interesting if there was no risk that he might fail. You couldn't be proud, without that. Are you so afraid of exploring the other side of that coin? That is Turlough, too, you know. Your Turlough.

And the Doctor has so often been so gentle with him when he's failed. Why not be something else. Why not really show Turlough how he's dissappointed him - just to see how thoroughly the boy would crumble under his disapproval. Just to see how much Turlough needs to feel like the Doctor thinks he is enough. How much he needs him.

"Did you let the Mara in? I was counting on you to resist it! Let me see your arm," he demands, and reaches for it.

Turlough fully panics, wrenching his arm away. "This was your idea! I'm sorry, but I didn't know how to say no to you when you were -"

Ah, he's trying to weasel his way out of judgement. Never his fault, of course not. But it's easy to turn this excuse back on him. "Me? You mean I... " Hesitantly, the Doctor shoves his own sleeve up. It's there of course, the snake, in red and black. His attention shifts from it to the mess on the back of his other hand, pulling it back, spreading his fingers and staring. He takes a little breath of disgust, shuts it down, shakes it away. "Turlough. I'm... so sorry. I must have let the Mara get inside me when I was trying to help Tegan. Why did you let me-"

"Let you? Are you telling me you don't know what happened?"

Still trying to shift the blame! How audacious. I'm beginning to like this boy.

"So this is the one time you couldn't find your way out of a tight corner? There's no one even here! You couldn't have run?"

"I couldn't leave you like this!"

Oh! It was a moral sacrifice! He just had to let himself be ravished. How noble of him! What a comedically weak defense. The boy has left the perfect opening; all that's left is to strike.

"But you could let the Mara do this to us? Turlough, you know I would never have wanted this to happen! You have to know that!"

Turlough is gaping, tears in his eyes. He casts his gaze desperately around the room and settles back on him, angry and hopeless. "I'm sorry, Doctor!"

The Doctor can feel the Mara laugh to itself, inside what ought to be his mind. It's wet, rough and rasping. Impotent inside himself, the Doctor settles into a cold, burning, regretful anger. He's hollow. He's very nearly as hateful as the Mara.

I'm sorry, Turlough.

---

Seven: Turlough

The Time Lord's body grinds into Turlough, pulls back, rocks forward into him again, slowly, with an air of anticipation. A few more strokes like this, and he'll be more properly ready, he'll be able to take it without showing the Doctor anything he doesn't want to show him.

Why does the Mara want the Doctor to fuck him so badly?

Does it matter? He's lost. They've lost. He isn't stronger than the Doctor. They both need rescuing now.

Could Nyssa and Tegan save him from the Doctor, save the Doctor from the Mara? It's possible. Unlikely, but possible. Nyssa is supremely competent, and Tegan has surprised him before. He imagines them at the wall of this little funhouse prison, breaking past the door, hauling the Doctor off of him. It would almost be worth it. He imagines Nyssa, handing him his pants with a workmanlike lack of affect, while Tegan hogties the Doctor like an unruly Merino.

The Doctor's hands are wrapped around his thighs, just under his knees. He's leaning on them, snapping his hips forward, throwing himself fully into Turlough. Turlough gasps, trying... trying so hard...

Maybe he's wasting his time. It's hard enough to cope at all, without worrying what kind of face he's showing to the Doctor, to the Mara. He doesn't know for sure whether his Doctor is even along for this ride; nobody has told him how any of this works, and it's not as though he can trust the Mara. And it's not as though the Doctor needs Turlough to protect him anyway.

That last thought hurts in a way Turlough had not expected at all. Does he want to protect the Doctor that badly? Is he disappointed that the Doctor has failed, this time, to protect him? Or is he just twisted up inside because he wants to do what's right and there isn't, there isn't a right thing to do, not now, not anymore. Not with the Doctor's body crashing into his, the Doctor's voice making low, filthy sounds he would have done anything to hear - anything but this.

Turlough brings his hands up between the Doctor's arms, slides them up his sides, inside his coat again, silly bastard fucking him with his coat on, and Turlough with his school jacket on, with his tie on, like a fumble in a classroom -

His tie, grabbed and twisted, his mouth demanded, his body plundered, by some silly, some human boy -

Well. If this wasn't already ruined by the Mara, by his flighty mind turning to Tegan and Nyssa, by his own damned damaged psyche, now it was ruined by Hippo of all fucking people.

I hate Earth.

Turlough crushes handfuls of the Doctor's jumper in his hands, satisfying, thick, cable-knit, and the Doctor had once explained with the grinning embarrassment of a fanatic that it was the only part of his favorite ensemble that was a genuine piece of cricketing gear, I hate Earth so much

But he loves it. He loves Earth, he loves it so much. He loves it like he'll never love me.

Well. That's a better revelation to have while I'm fucking a demonic precis of the Doctor than the real one, I suppose.

He's lost his excitement, flagged a bit, and realises in a rush that he really ought to work to get it back before the Mara notices. He slips his hands up to the Doctor's shoulders, his neck, to feel skin under his fingers instead, to feel a part of the Doctor that's not tainted by his obsession with Earth.

Turlough has to admit it's nothing like a youthful fumble anyway. The Doctor is fucking him full bore, like what he is, like a Time Lord posessed.

The Doctor slows, pushing Turlough's thighs further apart and leaning closer. Turlough's eyes unclench and look up into the Doctor's face, and again, it looks almost, almost like it ought to, like Turlough had imagined it might look if the two of them ever got so close, if they let their limbs get tangled the way their lives were.

The Doctor leans forward and kisses him on his forehead; Turlough's eyes slide shut and he trembles. It's so close, it's heartbreakingly close, and he wishes, he wishes it was close enough.

It's still the Doctor, isn't it? Even if only a little bit? Just because the Mara is there too, just because some of the Doctor is surpressed, that doesn't mean this isn't the Doctor at all.

"Hmm. That's lovely," The Doctor's voice purrs, and it hits Turlough directly in the guts. He lets out a truly embarrassing noise, puts his arms around the Time Lord and crushes him closer, his fingers digging into the Doctor's coat.

"Please," he begs, and can't bring himself to say the rest.

He feels the Doctor shiver in his arms. Like - like the Doctor might shiver in his arms, if only the bastard understood how he needed him. Please, please...

Turlough risks looking him in the eye again and his heart clenches at how much he looks like he should. But he knows he can't trust it, can't trust him, and it's so unfair, and he knows he's fallen for this in the worst possible way, but he can't help it. He just can't. It's the Doctor.

Isn't it?

He can't trust his voice but it doesn't matter. The words boil up out of him. He doesn't even care how needy he'll sound. "Why can't it be you?"

"Turlough..."

It feels like time stops, like the moment after a drop. The Doctor's eyes.

"...It is me."

Oh god. It sounds right. It sounds like rescue. He looks heartbroken. It's him. Turlough feels it. But he'd be stupid to believe it's true. It's too perfect a moment for the Mara to bait him again.

The Doctor meets Turlough's eyes like he's trying to connect, and it doesn't feel like it's felt all night, he doesn't feel captured so much as pitied, which he's not... actually sure is better, but it's in character, and that's what's important.

"It seems I can only be here if I... let myself. Shall we make the best of this?" the Doctor says, like a man picking his heart up off the ground.

Turlough just nods, blinking fast, unconsciously clearing tears before they can form. He has no idea what he looks like. It doesn't matter now.

The Doctor kisses him. His heart lights up, catches fire. It's really him. It's got to be.

He starts up again, and Turlough doesn't remember when he'd stopped. A careful, slow impalement with the side of the Doctor's face pressed against him, with warm breath ghosting past his ear. Turlough has to keep one proverbial foot on the ground. Just in case this isn't... but it's him. It's him. The Mara let him out. Something terrible is undoubtedly coming next, but the Mara let him out. His Doctor.

He gasps, bucks a bit, helplessly, as the Doctor wraps a cool hand around his neglected cock.

The Doctor nuzzles his lips against the side of Turlough's face. "Is it all right if I...?"

Oh, fuck, is he asking - he's asking if he can - "Yes."

The Doctor throws sparks through him, slow, rolling thrusts that graze him just right, that let him feel the slick slide of it, and every time, he can feel himself give and let him in deep, can feel the Doctor's tension coiling tighter, while the Doctor's hand works his desperately hard cock, and it's - Turlough can't help, doesn't even want to help, how much he loves the way this feels, how perfect this would be, if only the Mara weren't here. The Doctor kisses him one more time, pulls back to let Turlough watch him, to watch him come, oh, hell, oh fuck -

Turlough tenses, every inch of him, and with an abbreviated little cry, cupping a hasty hand over the head of his own cock, he comes insanely hard, into his hand, over the Doctor's, and he can't, he won't shut his eyes, because he's got to see -

Turlough's not finished coming when the Doctor goes over, and he'll never forget it, he'll never forget what his silly, sexy fucking Time Lord looks like when he's emptying his balls into him.

At length, the Doctor lets himself slump down to lay over him, breathing hard, trying to kiss him through it. Turlough can barely kiss back, he's too busy smiling, slipping his fingers through the Doctor's hair.

Recovering a bit, the Doctor props himself up on one arm and smiles down at him. "Amazing show, Turlough, absolutely top performance. You're good for something after all. I honestly can't remember the last time I had an arse as good as yours."

Son of a fuck. Well. He'd known, hadn't he, that it was too good to be true. He waits to see this thing's next trick.

"But your paramour is misbehaving. He thought he'd be able to overcome my influence. I think maybe I ought to punish him."

"There's nothing more pathetic than a bully," Turlough snarls back at him, eyes dark and angry.

The Doctor's expression drops like a flipped switch, breaks into disorientation, as if he has just woken up.

"Turlough?"

Oh. Fuck. That sounds like - No. No, that must have really been the Doctor before, with him. This is the trick. But it's not as though he can risk - if this is finally the actual fucking Doctor -

Turlough scrambles to reassure the Doctor, to find room to assess the damage, but the Doctor has already fully recoiled from this, from him, and he looks - Turlough shudders -

It is the Doctor. That had been the Mara. How could he have been so wrong?

Right. How could he have thought he was clever enough not to be fooled by another bastard entity. He should have known - getting fooled by terrible things that lived in your head was practically one of his fucking hallmarks. "I'm sorry, I - I thought - I couldn't -"

"Why was I - Turlough?"

No matter the magnitude of the Doctor's shock, the situation can't be any kind of mystery.

In his old life, Turlough had learned to expect mistakes to be met with judgement, swift and strict. Deflection had become one of his skills; excuses, lies. It had worked, often enough, on anyone he needed it to. On Earth it had worked every time. Then he'd encountered the Black Guardian and found him both overflowing with judgement and utterly disinterested in deflection, and Turlough had learned quickly that there was nothing he could do that would actually spare him some of the most sadistic punishments he'd ever endured.

But the Doctor wasn't like that. Turlough couldn't stop attempting to deflect judgement from him any more than he'd been able to stop trying it with the Black Guardian, but suddenly, the reason it didn't work was

because it didn't need to

And that's why this will be -

But the look on the Doctor's face is devastating, angry, accusing, and what the Time Lord says is, "did you let the Mara in? I was counting on you to resist it!"

Turlough's heart is in his mouth; the bottom of his stomach is in his shoes.

"Let me see your arm," the Doctor demands, and reaches for it.

Turlough fully panics, wrenching his arm away. His heart is racing, thundering. But he's practised enough at excuses to be able to make one now. "This was your idea! I'm sorry, but I didn't know how to say no to you when you were -"

"Me? You mean I... " Some of the anger bleeds away from the Doctor's face. Reluctantly, he turns his attention to his own arm, shoves his own sleeve up.

The mark of the snake. Turlough doesn't want to look at it. He can almost feel its presence, malign and oppressive. He doesn't want to imagine what it feels like for the Doctor, on his skin.

The Doctor pivots instantly to an apology, taking back his accusation, taking responsibility, and Turlough is able to breathe.

But then the Time Lord gives him an imploring look and asks, like he's begging, "why did you let me-"

Turlough's defenses rise properly this time. "Let you? Are you telling me you don't know what happened?"

The Doctor's face is accusatory again. "So this is the one time you couldn't find your way out of a tight corner? You couldn't have run?"

"I couldn't leave you like this!"

"But you could let the Mara do this to us? Turlough, you know I would never have wanted this to happen! You have to know that!"

Of course he knew that - knows that - Of course he does! But what sort of chance did he have against an honest-to-god trickster demon?

It's what he wants to say. But he's put so much effort into convincing himself to let the Mara do this. He knows he has. He can't deny it. Not to the Doctor.

And everything that has happened since the Doctor found him has been the Mara. Only the Mara. Turlough wishes he could sink through the floor and never be seen again. He feels tears spring to his eyes. Pathetic, but, honestly, fine. Fine. He'll cry over this.

"I'm sorry, Doctor!"

---

Eight: The Doctor

"'Sorry,'" the Doctor hears himself say, his voice hard and cold. "Yes. So am I."

His hearts ache for Turlough. Hurt, blamed and shamed for being manipulated. And knowing Turlough, he probably thinks he deserves it.

"I thought - "

"You thought what? That it would just - what - work out? That you didn't really mind if something took me over and used me like this? How... how could I mean so little to you?"

"That's not... what happened. That's not what it was like," Turlough protests.

"Wasn't it?"

The Doctor can't look away as the Mara twists the knife, of course he can't, from the distress on Turlough's face, the tears threatening to spill, the hands that are clenching over and over as the boy tries to master himself in the middle of all this.

You actually feel how he suffers your ire, don't you. Your poor little lost orphan soldier. How pathetic.

The Doctor bristles again. Turlough is anything but pathetic.

You, you foolish Time Lord. Obsessed with this puppy. You let your soul be laid bare so easily, and why? So that you can keep a little creature whose world begins and ends with you? Can you possibly believe that you are anything else to him than a master? Can you really not understand that that is really what you want from him?

But the Doctor has heard all of that before. Heard it for centuries. Heard it from people that wanted to control him, to corral him, to crystallise his life in amber. From one particular person who has always taken his choice of company very badly.

It's no surprise to learn the Mara doesn't understand what a friend is any more than a Time Lord does. If it has even said any of this believing it's true, rather than beliveving it will be hurtful.

Oh, go on and lie to yourself then, if it makes you happy. He's been lying to himself as well. You make a good pair.

"All right," Turlough admits, "I didn't push back hard enough! But I didn't - I wasn't sure until it was too late!"

"You weren't sure? The Mara's performance must have been convincing. Was it what you'd expected?" He fixes Turlough with an intense, judgemental stare. "What was it that you expected?"

Turlough looks down, away, guilty again, and doesn't answer.

"It's just that I'm trying to picture it. You've known me for a good little while, now. Have I been leading you on? Because I thought I'd been clear enough without being blunt. I never wanted to let you mistake my disinterest for a rejection of you in general - I know how humans can be..."

The Doctor, at last, is beginning to get the knack for letting the Mara's efforts roll over him, for setting aside the knowledge of the cruelty it's using to attack him by proxy. He must neither hide nor engage.

Crushed or not, Turlough seems to have got a better handle on himself. He's giving the Doctor quite a hard look, as if he is more offended than hurt by this needling. "No. I didn't understand why you would be acting so strangely - but I couldn't believe the Mara would do those things either. I still don't understand why it would do all that. Why go after me? Why do any of this?" and his mouth goes tight as he fights a burst of emotion.

Oh... Just look at his face. He doesn't understand. Do you, I wonder?

There is no reply, no defiance. Nothing.

"Maybe it wasn't about you, Turlough."

Icy eyes, properly shuttered now, in a tense, hard face, meet his.

The Doctor waits for a response. There isn't one. "Maybe it wanted to use you to hurt me. And you - "

"And are you hurt? Doctor? Did I let it hurt you? Is that what all this was for?"

The Doctor opens his mouth to reply but Turlough steps forward, crowds him, fully aggressive. "If this is you, Doctor, you're acting like that thing would act. Saying what it would say."

"What? Turlough, you're - "

"Because the Doctor knows what it's been like for me when I've been used to get at him. And he's never said anything. He knows he doesn't need to say anything."

The Doctor matches his posture, staring down at him. "I see. Suggesting that you might be responsible for your own actions for once means I'm not myself. But seducing you, out of a clear blue sky, that was just fine."

"I knew it wasn't you! I just - "

"There it is. You knew and you let it happen anyway, oh, marvellous, Turlough."

"No! That's not-"

"It's either that or you can't tell the difference between me and the Mara; which is it, hmm?"

"You're not the Doctor."

"You're wrong."

"He would be on to stopping the Mara from taking control of him again. He wouldn't waste his time like this."

"Just for a moment, imagine you were right, Turlough. Why would you play along through letting it use me to fuck you, Turlough, only to confront it now?"

Turlough might as well have been slapped. His jaw works, mouth open, and nothing comes out. He lets himself collapse to sit back. A long silence stretches out. He's still not looking at him when he says, "what are we going to do?"

Perfect. The strike has landed, and the boy has folded. He'll get no more defiance out of him now. It's almost a pity, but the Doctor isn't so childish that he'll be grumpy about winning. He reaches down, a bright smile out of nowhere, a quick, companionable pat on Turlough's shoulder. "Get your clothes on, Turlough. You're right - we need to find a way to keep the Mara from taking control."

Inside himself, the Doctor waits.

---

Nine: Turlough

Turlough knows his apology is useless, but it still plunges him into ice when the Doctor's response, flat and ruinous, is, "Sorry...? Yes. So am I."

This isn't fair, not at all. "I thought - "

"You thought what? That it would just - what - work out? That you didn't really mind if something took me over and used me like this? How.... how could I mean so little to you?"

A dull, hopeless feeling grips him, sending him closer again to panic. He's very familiar with accusations dressed up as interrogations. But coming from the Doctor? It's like the ground has been pulled out from under him. "That's not... what happened. That's not what it was like!"

"Wasn't it?"

Turlough tries to boil off some of the horrible tension in a way that won't show, making fists, clenching them as hard as he can, concentrating on what it feels like to release the pressure and then to tighten them again, over and over. It does help.

But how exactly had it happened? How could it be so hard to pin it down? He knows he never decided that what this would mean to the Doctor didn't matter. He'd just been so disoriented, overwhelmed, conflicted and cornered - by the Doctor - everything about it had been wrong.

He had understood that if he responded, if he did what he wanted, he'd be taking advantage of the Doctor's strange behaviour.

Temptation.

It hadn't been too late then. Instead, he'd gambled on a moment of indescretion with the Doctor being basically safe, and lost.

"All right, I didn't push back hard enough! But I wasn't sure until it was too late!"

"You weren't sure? The Mara's performance must have been convincing. Was it what you'd expected? What was it that you expected?"

Turlough looks down, away, guilty again. It had been nothing - nothing like he'd expected. That much had been clear the whole time. He doesn't want to think about the ways he'd imagined the Doctor might act if he set his sights on him. They never happened; they don't matter anymore. They never mattered.

"It's just that I'm trying to picture it. You've known me for a good little while, now. Have I been leading you on? Because I thought I'd been clear enough without being blunt. I never wanted to let you mistake my disinterest for a rejection of you in general - I know how humans can be..."

Disinterest is devestating, but human is so offensive it jars him out of the word's real impact. And obviously the Doctor has not been leading him on. If only. "No. I didn't understand why you would be acting so strangely - but I couldn't believe the Mara would do those things either. I still don't understand why it would do all that. Why go after me? Why do any of this?" Turlough stops, screwing his face up, swallowing hard, fighting himself down until he's back under control.

"Maybe it wasn't about you, Turlough. Maybe it wanted to use you to hurt me. And you - "

Turlough balks at this. "And are you hurt? Doctor? Did I let it hurt you?"

The Doctor seems momentarily caught off guard, no quick answer ready. Clearly, he wasn't prepared for Turlough to do anything but take it. Turlough's angst shrivels up, replaced by anger at the sudden, certain realization that it's just this thing after all, trying to trick him again. Absolutely not.

Turlough faces him, momentarily fearless. "Because the Doctor knows what it's been like for me when I've been used to get at him. And he's never said anything. He knows he doesn't need to say anything."

But the Doctor uses his height to intimidate him right back, dominating the space between them. "I see. Suggesting that you might be responsible for your own actions for once means I'm not myself. But seducing you, out of a clear blue sky, that was just fine."

"I knew it wasn't you! I just - "

"There it is. You knew and you let it happen anyway, oh, marvellous, Turlough."

God! If it didn't sound so much like the Doctor it would be so easy to dismiss this, but it does, and it stings. "No! That's not-"

"It's either that or you can't tell the difference between me and the Mara; which is it, hmm?"

But despite how well it's imitating the Doctor now, Turlough is sure. "You're not the Doctor."

"Just for a moment, imagine you were right, Turlough. Why would you play along through letting it use us - both of us, for its amusement, only to confront it now?"

The Doctor... the Mara has a point. The path he has been taking all along has been to allow the man before him to do just as he pleases, and to pretend that it's all normal, all fine, all tolerable, not unsettling, not frightening, not monstrous. To keep up the pretense that it's all just a momentary oddity that will pass and leave everything the way it was, when it's over, when it's behind them.

And he's just realised that's why he'd stopped playing along.

It will never be behind them.

It's not the Doctor. At least, not the proper Doctor. But it doesn't matter. Until there's something - anything he can do about it, he'll go back. Back to playing along. With the Mara. Because it still beats the alternative.

He sits and stares into the plastic jungle, at the stupid gigantic colorful snake head still sitting off-kilter amongst the fake ferns. "What are we going to do?"

The Doctor's mood seems instantly lightened by his apparant surrender. "Get your clothes on, Turlough. You're right - we need to find a way to keep the Mara from taking control."

Turlough can't tell if the Mara believes it's still got him convinced that it's really the Doctor or not, and he supposes, once again, that it doesn't really matter. He's finished dressing and nervously done and then undone the button of his jacket when he sees motion in the plastic undergrowth. Snakes. He takes and holds a breath, watching them, watching the Doctor.

The Doctor, who has just slid the barred door aside, turns to smile at Turlough and sees him watching, sees the snakes. "Oh," he says, intrigued, "Spies. Let's give them the slip. Come on, Turlough," and he actually grabs him by the hand and pulls him through like an enthusiastic youngster.

"Spies? Whose spies?" Turlough wants to know, stumbling in the dark, pulled past another giant snake, this one coiled up and swallowing a robotically twitching pair of legs.

"Busybodies," the Doctor replies, "nosy parkers."

He follows the Doctor around a hairpin bend into a short, plastic plant festooned corridor whose walls are interrupted by slowly turning loops of the giant snake. At the end of it, there's a soft wall in the same colors, with something pressing on the other side, something trapped and trying to get out.

"Nosy parkers with spying snakes?" Turlough asks, incredulous. "Do you mean the snakedancers?" Turlough turns to look behind them, trying to see, in the disorienting flashes of turning lights, if the snakes are following them. Something moves in his periphery and he turns to face it, thinking it's the Doctor, just in time to be fully jump-scared by the woman who'd been half-eaten by the snake, skeletal arms reaching for his face, and he screams -

Like an idiot, because it's a mannequin, of course it is, and the Doctor is actually pointing at him and chortling. Turlough begins to wonder exactly how much of an idiot he had been to let himself pretend this was really the Doctor.

But the snakes are in fact still coming. The Doctor drops his some of his humour, catching sight of them. "Come along, quickly," he urges, moving on, ignoring the hanging chimes that brush at their faces and shoulders in the gloom, making oddly watery notes as they pass.

They come to a doorway in the shape of the snake's gaping jaws; on the other side Turlough can see a strangely lit spinning tunnel with a gantry-like walkway through it. He stops, staring into it, feeling strange. It's very viscerally reminding him of the liminal space he'd found himself in while his body had lain in the grass by the side of the road just outside Brendon School.

"This will slow them down a little, I think," the Doctor says, halfway through the structure before noticing Turlough has not followed. He gives him an impatient look which Turlough doesn't even see, takes a half step back towards him to take his hand again and pull him along.

Turlough lets himself be pulled. Inside, vertigo hits him hard, and for a moment he struggles to find his footing. But this is one of the times that something that had been drummed into him is helpful: the small craft spin recovery training that pops into his head is enough to take him out of the moment and let him reorient himself, and then he's out of the tunnel anyway, down grated metal steps, through a curtain, out of the attraction and into the deepening evening.

He stops short to avoid running into the Doctor, who is currently being glared at by the carnival barker and the lion man, whose mask is slung under one arm.

"Is there something I can do for you gentlemen?" the Doctor is saying.

Off to the side, Turlough sees that another of the scare actors they had passed earlier is talking to some kind of security officer while holding the snake-devoured woman comfortingly around the shoulders. The woman is staring into the distance, her face blank, eyes wide. Her eyes snap to meet his and he flinches, though her face doesn't change at all. She's staring right through him. What... what had the Mara done to her?

"What in the hell do you think you're doing, terrorizing my girls in there? Using my place of business like a six-ticket motel? I'm going to have you two arrested," the barker says, prompting the security officer to look up from his conversation and step towards them.

"Ah. I see there's been some kind of misunderstanding," the Doctor stalls, putting on affable and idiotic as usual. "My friend and I were just - " he turns to Turlough as if to introduce him, reaches out to put a hand on his arm -

And he throws Turlough into the security guard and takes off running. The boss and the lion chase him, but even this much of the Doctor is excellent at getting lost in a crowd.

The safety officer is struggling to get his footing and maintain control over Turlough at the same time when he sees the snakes that are spilling out of the haunted house and creeping towards them. He staggers back, holding Turlough in front of him like a shield.

Turlough hears someone approaching and tries to twist around enough to see. Dadda Desaka, the snakeherd mystic who'd waved his old serpent at him earlier, addresses the man behind him.

"You don't need to worry, officer, these ladies & gentlemen will pass you by. They seek the evil in the tall man."

"They what?" Turlough splutters, struggling half-heartedly with the man holding him.

Yoanna, the officer he'd left with Tegan and Nyssa, jogs into his field of view. "It's all right," she tells the other officer, "You can let this one go. He'll be coming with me."

"You'd better be throwing the book at him," the actor comforting the snake woman snaps, though the officer behind Turlough does let him go with a bit of a push towards Yoanna. "God knows what he did to Zara! I can't get her to say a word!"

Tegan and Nyssa are suddenly here too, and they crowd Turlough at once, with Nyssa throwing his arm over her shoulders under the pretext of helping him get steady on his feet. "What happened, Turlough?" she asks urgently. "Where's the Doctor?"

The snake mystic approaches Zara and mutters to her. Turlough looks at them, shakes his head. "The Doctor - or - whatever he is, he did that just by looking at her."

"Whatever he is?" Tegan asks, horrified.

After a few more words from Dadda Desaka, the snake-devoured woman looks as though she comes awake; she blinks, takes in her surroundings and collapses towards her fellow actor in a tight clench.

"Where is he, Turlough," Nyssa insists.

Turlough makes a frustrated gesture towards the fairground crowd in general. "He ran off!"

The snake mystic returns, leaving the woman to her friend's consolation. He addresses Nyssa solemnly. "The Evil is leaving the park by the Moonward Gate."

Tegan looks at Nyssa. "That's where I came in - the Doctor stopped our taxi early. Someplace he said he had some sort of business to do."

"Well, let's see if that's where he's going, then," Yoanna says, and sets off, leading them in that direction.

Turlough is thoughtful - and skeptical, now that the horse is out of the barn. "Tegan - did he seem - was he acting like himself when you two left your consult?"

"Well, yeah," Tegan begins to answer, and falters. "No... he was acting strange when he was.. trying to get me to leave him alone at Sundown Studios. Turlough, what was he-"

"Sundown Studios?" Yoanna asks, stopping to look back at them. "I just shut them down for safety citations. Like today. Right before I came here in fact."

"It is too late, that is how the Evil has entered this world, from the thought of a man carrying the evil the young woman cannot name. It will spill forth from - "

"Desaka. That's enough," hisses Yoanna, continuing towards the gate.

"Yes maam."

"He may have been lying to you, as well, Tegan," Nyssa says, quietly upset. "I really didn't say the things he told you I did."

Turlough is staring at the snake mystic. "Nevermind that for a moment, Nyssa - Do you know what he's talking about, Yoanna? What did you shut down the studio for?"

She hesitates. Dadda catches her eye and gives her a look. "AusGarten's parlor trick. It went wrong, it was supposed to make whatever I thought of. But it started to make a giant rose, and it made me see - the things that got this image of a snake stuck in my head!"

"The Evil," Dadda begins, and Nyssa gently shushes him, while Tegan continues to look increasingly distressed.

Turlough frowns. "They can make things straight out of people's imaginations here?"

Nyssa makes the connection. "Like the Mind's Eye! A crystal with the power to create matter from thought! Dadda, what exactly do you know about this?"

Yoanna is looking at Nyssa with frightened confusion. "But it wasn't real. It just - "

"The Evil is only too real, maams, it becomes, it rides the foolish work of arrogant men into being. You saw it as it came into posession of its latest home."

"Doctor Kerrem's machine used a crystal, Nyssa," Tegan tells her urgently. "Just like the one the Doctor got on Manussa. And after he saw me - the Doctor sent me out to hold the taxi while he... paid." She frowned. "He took so long I went back to check on him..."

"Hold on, wait," Yoanna breaks in, "Dr. Kerrem? He's one of our regular neurology experts. You saw him just before I met you at the park? What is going on here?"

Yoanna's phone chimes and she looks down at it and gasps.

Tegan leans towards her, trying to see. "What is it?"

"My officer forwarded me security images of the suspects," she says, looking haunted. "Your friend Turlough and - the man I saw in the rose..."

"At Sundown Studios?" Nyssa asks.

"In the rose?" Turlough says, baffled.

"That's the Doctor!" says Tegan.

Nyssa looks certain now. "Sympathetic Resonance! These engineered crystals, they act as though they're in contact with one another. When we were here before, the Doctor was able to communicate telepathically via such crystals. With no other equipment, just simple concentration. Dadda Desaka, do you think it's likely that if both machines were active at the same time, the Mara would have been able to access the creative power of the one at Sundown Studios, via the one used in Dr. Kerrem's medical device?"

"The Evil brought itself forth," Dadda says helpfully.

"Yoanna, could you contact Dr. Kerrem? He may be able to help."

"I - well, all right. I suppose it couldn't hurt."

Tegan moves up in the group as they walk, close to Turlough. "All right, Turlough. You've got to tell me what's happened to him. What's it doing to him? I have to know."

Turlough tries not to show his misgivings, but Tegan knows his tells by now and gets visibly upset before he says a word.

"It's really got its hooks in then," she concludes. "This is all because of me."

"It's not," Turlough insists at once. "That's just how it wants you to feel. That's practically all it wanted from me, as far as I could tell. For me to feel wretched. And probably the Doctor, too. If he was even really there."

"If he was there? Oh no..."

"He kept switching it up. Seemed more like himself and then not. I'm not sure, Tegan, I'm sorry," Turlough says, keeping his more final opinion to himself.

Yoanna finishes a call and puts her phone away just as they reach the park gate. "Dr. Kerrem is willing to help. I can have a car bring us to his office right away. I've sent a few officers to Sundown Studios to apprehend the Doctor if he shows up there, and we can talk to him at the station after they process him into custody. It'll be safer."

"I'm not sure your officers will be up to it," Tegan says, and shares a worried look with Turlough.

"They're trained professionals," Yoanna informs her, and waves a police car down, and then a van instead, as Dadda Desaka insists on going as well. Tegan notices that he's got his snake back, and there's a short debate over whether he can bring it, which he wins basically through attrition.

They cross the city in the deepening gloom. In the back of the police van, Nyssa and the snake mystic are deep in conversation, trading scientific jargon and abstract terms. Turlough joins Tegan, sitting quietly at the other end, looking out the back window.

"Tegan?"

She looks haunted, maybe wounded, or maybe just exhausted. But she gives him her attention freely. "It's funny," she says, "how, the darker it gets, the more a city looks like any other city. They all look pretty similar at night, down at street level. Even on a whole other planet."

"I've never really thought about it," he says, instead of telling her the way she's wrong. He hesitates. "Look, Tegan - can I ask you some questions? If you don't mind. I understand if you don't want to talk about it..."

She sighs. "No, it's all right, Turlough. Maybe it'll actually be good to talk a bit. I never could, to the Doctor. Nyssa's always willing to help, but she only wants to use therapy-speak." She gives him a thoughtful look. "And for that matter, maybe you can actually sympathise."

Turlough aims an ironic smile at the floor. "Maybe you're right."

"So. What did you want to know?"

"I'm trying to understand what it is, what it does. I was thinking in terms of an influence but what I just saw seemed more like possession. What was it like for you? I mean.. were you.. there?"

"When it was in control, you mean?"

"I suppose."

"Well... Whenever it wanted to take over it seemed like it was... alongside? Something horrible in there with you where nobody but you is supposed to be. Like a bully who's really got into your head. And you can never feel safe even when it's not there because maybe it is."

Turlough's mouth tightens and he sighs with unhappy recollection. Yes, he can definitely sympathise.

Tegan doesn't notice, caught up in her own story. "It liked to copy my voice to say cruel things, trying to weaken me I suppose. And then it was as though I would... slip, maybe? And then I was doing things... watching myself do things." She frowns, looking for the words. "Have you ever done something in a dream, and it made sense at the time, but when you woke up and remembered the dream, it didn't even feel like it was you in the first place?"

"So.. he'll know, then. The Doctor. Everything that happened."

"If it was the same for him as it was for me. What are you getting at, Turlough?"

"I don't know. I suppose... Well, you know that... when you met me..."

"The Black Guardian. We haven't talked about it much. But he kept getting into your head, giving you orders, right? Like the time I caught you talking to him, and you lied about it, right to my face." She smiles at him. "You said you were singing.. God, you were such a little ratbag."

Turlough gives an embarrassed grimace. "Well. His control was more like blackmail than anything else. At first he promised me things. Later he just punished me for not getting on with it."

"He.. is that.. on Marriner's ship, when we found you laid out in the hall all by yourself-"

Turlough looks down, still ashamed despite himself. "Yes. At that point he'd decided he was sufficiently disgusted with me to throttle me a bit. Out of pure frustration I suppose."

"But you had marks! That wasn't in your head!"

"I honestly don't know if he did that from the outside or not. It seemed like it, but I could never tell whether seeing him meant he was really there."

"Turlough! And I was so awful to you when I thought-"

"No, Tegan, you were right. I wasn't exactly brave about any of it, you know."

"Oh, Turlough..."

"But that's my point, really.. At least it was me. Almost all of the time, it was me. Anything I did, it was my choice to do it. It wasn't like that for you. Or.. for the Doctor."

"Turlough? What did he do?"

"It doesn't matter. I was just hoping maybe he wouldn't.. that I could just pretend the whole evening never happened. Or at least that I wasn't the only one who could have stopped him."

"You couldn't have stopped him, Turlough, believe me," she says, reaching for his hand.

Subtly, Turlough pulls his right hand back so she'll take his left. He squeezes her hand in return, gently. "Thanks."

She looks down at his hands, not quite frowning. "Turlough... you know why that's suspicious, don't you."

He smirks and tugs his right sleeve up, shows her the back of his forearm. "I got my hand in something unpleasant, that's all. There's never a lavatory when you need one."

"Did you happen to see - if the Doctor...?"

Turlough takes a steadying breath. "Yes. The mark was there. I'm sorry."

She slips back into anguish. "This is all my fault."

"Tegan. The Doctor barely told me anything about all this but one thing he did say was that it wasn't your fault. And he said he'd driven it away before. How?"

"The first time, with a circle of mirrors. The Doctor's theory was that if it couldn't escape its refelctions, it would go back to where it came from. And it seemed to work - it vanished."

"It vanished? What vanished?"

"Its true form. The mark - it came alive, left Aris - he was the man that the... that it took over, after me - and grew like mad. And then it - it was just gone."

"But it came back."

Tegan looks down at their hands, and her voice is tight when she says, "yes."

Neither of them had noticed Nyssa falling silent, shifting her attention to them. She moves closer, joins their conversation. "When it returned it was much weaker at first. It brought us here, centuries from now, when it had come and gone, to resurrect itself using the crystal they called the Great Mind's Eye. There was a ceremony meant to commemorate the Mara's defeat, and at its height the Crystal was placed in a position that allowed it to draw strength from the assembled crowd. The Mara had already left Tegan to incarnate as the snake, but it still acted through her, as though she were its avatar. The Doctor interfered, disrupting the process by focusing his own thoughts through another crystal. When he removed the Great Mind's Eye from its place, the snake died, and Tegan and the others were freed."

"Others?"

Tegan nods, blinking hard. "It recruited this young man, Lon, he was sort of a prince."

"It - what - it recruited him?"

Nyssa answers for her. "He took the mark, but maintained much of his own personality. In that way he was able to use his position to arrange things for the Mara's return."

Tegan closes her eyes, takes a breath, stiffens, straightens.

"That's why we were worried that the Doctor might have... passed it to you."

Turlough scowls out the window, watching the lights. "He certainly had the chance. I wonder why he didn't."

"Tegan. What if he's marked Doctor Kerrem?"

"Oh no, Nyssa, don't say that!"

Desaka leans closer to the group of friends. "Do not let fear cloud your resolve, young lady. The evil draws its power from such things. Whenever it comes, we must not turn away before the struggle begins."

"But what will we do if he's been taken over?"

The old mystic narrows his eyes. "I will drive it out."

Turlough makes a frustrated gesture. "How?"

Nyssa answers for him. "The Dadda seems to think that physical combat will be effective."

Tegan and Turlough both express their doubts, and Nyssa nods, raising a hand to placate them. "I tend to agree with you - I suspect the answer may be in the crystal. Perhaps the Doctor had the right idea back in the TARDIS. If only I hadn't wakened him."

"For all we know it would have happened just the same if you hadn't, Nyssa. It seems like the Doctor is always underestimating... that thing."

"Maybe, maybe not," Turlough says, feeling some guilty relief that at least he's not the only one to have underestimated the Mara. "What if it broke his crystal because that's its weakness? To stop anyone trying that again?"

"It would be consistent with what we know," Nyssa says.

"Well - if that's the idea, how can we do it? All I saw was the Doctor going into a trance, and I'm not exactly a past master at meditation."

"I'm not so bad at it, but nothing like the Doctor." Nyssa looks at Dadda Desaka. "You're familiar with the concept of the still point. Would you be able to focus through the crystal to help others reach it?"

Desaka frowns. "The crystal is the gate by which evil enters our world. It is hubris given form."

"Does that mean 'no,' Dadda? The crystal is a tool. It's dangerous, not cursed."

He shakes his head. "Ah, and you seemed so wise."

"Am I unwise simply because we disagree? I've seen Manussa's future, and I know that your people will carry these crystals and use them positively. Without such a crystal, perhaps the Mara would never have come. But it's here now. And the crystal can be used against it. I've seen it."

"Hmm, I know this apologia. The same fire that burns the home, drives away the beasts in the darkness."

"Will you help us, Dadda?"

He smiles at her slyly. "You must be the one who talked the legs off the snake."

---

Ten: The Doctor

The Doctor stands by the cage door of the little jungle, resting a hand on one of the big colorful loops of the snake in the scenery. He watches Turlough dress himself, dark trousers slithering up pale, slim legs, and grins, thinking of the woman whose job it was to pretend to be eaten by the giant snake. Maybe he should have kept her. But it seems the fight has truly gone out of Turlough. He should be servant enough for now, not to mention a ready source of amusement.

Still nothing? I know you haven't surrendered. What would it take to wake you, I wonder? Maybe if I gave myself to the boy? The rest of you would love that. You want to. You almost did, after that first kiss. You had him. He was ready. The moment was ripe. But you thought it would be more fun to let him twist and wriggle on your hook. And you were right.

The Doctor lets it talk. It's played all its cards for the moment, and he's waiting to be dealt some new ones himself.

But there's another reason why you didn't take him. Another thing you won't admit to yourself. That you don't want him on equal footing with you. No, you love the way he looks up to you too much for that. That's why you didn't take him.

Well of course he loves that. He knows that, he's not an idiot. But not so much that he'd ever hold someone down.

Yes. You would. That other boy of yours, for instance. The one in yellow.

The Doctor steadies himself, letting a flush of deep, defensive anger roll over and out of him. Be quiet. Be... still.

You won't win just by being no fun. You're losing ground all the time. You can feel yourself going.

He hauls the barred door aside and turns to invite Turlough. But Turlough is looking at something else, down at floor level, and it's -

Snakes. The Snakeherds, who have not yet created the Snakedance, yet who were already, uncannily waiting for the Mara when it was created. Much good it did them. And they are already on guard, here, a hundred years before its creation on Manussa. They have sent their spies after him. It's time to go.

He pulls Turlough after him through the rest of the haunted trailer, no longer interested in either its diversions or in Turlough, though he does enjoy the way the boy shrieks at such simple tricks as are offered here.

He jogs down the steps towards curtain at the exit and sees that some sort of trouble is already waiting for him. He sees the lion mask, its eyes still lit up, being carried by the young man in the chain harness. The lion actor is in his face at once, wielding an accusing finger. "I know you did something to Zara. It's like she's in a trance. Did you drug her? What's your game?"

The Doctor blinks innocently, evaluating the number of people out here who have eyes on him. Only one appears official, an officer gathering interviews, restraints and a baton on his belt. And his enthralled snake woman is here, too. Behind him, he can hear Turlough stumbling out through the curtain. "Please, I haven't the slightest idea what you mean - "

The man who'd taken his tickets puts himself between the lion and the Doctor. "What in the hell do you think you're doing, terrorizing my girls in there? Using my place of business like a six-ticket motel? I'm having you two arrested."

The officer breaks off from his conversation and approaches them.

"Ah. I see there's been some kind of misunderstanding," the Doctor says, stalling as Turlough approaches. He's just going to have to do without him for the time being. "My friend and I were just - " he turns to Turlough, reaches out as if to put a hand on his arm, and instead, fully grabs it, hauls him around and throws him into the security guard and takes off running.

He can hear people chasing him, but he's already deep in the crowd. He wonders if Turlough will get himself out of his mess, rejoin him or perhaps meet up with his other little friends to plot against him. But it's an idle thought - it's past time to get back to Sundown Studios and make sure the Mara's way will be prepared.

A brisk, watchful walk later, he finds the Sundown Studios building dark and quiet. With careful leverage he breaks the doorjamb of a conveniently builder-grade side door.

He looks to his side and sees no companion. No one is impressed, nor deviously delighted, nor judgmental - nobody is there at all.

Don't sulk. It was the simplest way to move forward. Soon you'll have so many companions you won't know what to do with them all.

Interesting. Now that the Doctor has quieted himself, it seems he is able to perceive the Mara needling the part of him that's in control. Ah - but he mustn't think about it.

Do you think you can control what you think, well enough to conceal things from me? Don't you remember where I am?

He slips down a corridor in the gloom, making his way to the room where he'd seen the equipment earlier. Now that the building is deserted, he'll be able to get a proper idea of its capabilities. But a door opens further down the hall, and it's the idiot boy he'd met here before, the one without dreams. He ducks into another room to avoid him.

In here, animal sounds fill the air. Someone is warehousing whimsical, nonsensical creatures. The Mara recognises them at once - unintentional impulses, unintentionally given form by the crystal. The technology is definitely on the road to the Mara's incarnation. Now he must just make sure it will be capable of birthing it now. He's - it's - tired of waiting, tired of not being.

He takes out the mobile phone he'd taken from Doctor Kerrem and calls him, keeping the heat on, making sure all the Mara's plans are advancing at pace.

"But Doctor, I should let you know. Miss Rayluss, the safety officer, she contacted me about Rick ausGarten. She's coming here to consult with me over whether his activities constitute a public health risk. What should I tell her?"

Ah. She must be the reason the workmen had been packing up the studio. "Tell her whatever makes nanny-state bureaucrats happy. Nothing to worry about."

"Don't move an inch." He recognises the voice from the advertisement that intrigued him in the first place. The man has some sort of nonlethal weapon pointed at him.

"...I'll call you back." The Doctor lowers the phone and beams at the man before him. "Mr. ausGarten, I presume."