The Master's Game (Doctor Who)

Blinded

The Doctor wasn't in the cell anymore. Instead he was locked away in a quite modern looking and brightly lit library. Not too big, but well enough equipped to keep one busy for a while. And a man like the Doctor had to be. There was nothing more dangerous than a bored Time Lord.

The Master pushed Roka into the room and got out his gun, pointing it at her head. "Do something stupid... well, I guess you know what happens then. And we don't want to stain all those nice books, right?" He smirked and gave her a poke with the muzzle and she moved forwards to the middle part of the library. It was more spacious and a TV stood there in front which the Doctor was sitting, a gamepad in hand and obviously enjoying a videogame.

A giggle escaped Roka when she realized he was playing Skyrim. Even with her blurry sight she could make it out easily. "Give the poor man a PC", she said to the Master. "Looks so much better with Mods."

At the sound of her voice the Doctor turned around and his gaze met that of the other Time Lord, before it wandered down. A few seconds later he recognized Roka and sprang up, rushed towards them and gave her a big hug.

"You don't look good, are you all right?" His voice sounded concerned and Roka tried to keep her head down so he couldn't see her eyes.

"Yeah... I guess I am. Although I was probably dead for a few seconds." Out of the corner of her eye she threw a mean glance at the Master behind her.

"What!?" The Doctor let go of her and rushed towards the Master, completely ignoring the gun that was pointing at him. "What have you done to her?"

"Use my name, Doctor... and I might tell you," he offered cheerily. "I just had some fun with your little pet."

The gun between them was probably the only reason the Doctor didn't dare to do more than staring angrily at the other man.

"I'm fine. Still alive, see?" Roka wiggled her arms around and smiled. She really wasn't eager to see her only friend getting shot.

"She's crazy, Doctor..." The Master nodded towards her. "What did you caught yourself there?" All he got was probably a mean look and after a few seconds he turned around. "The whole room is monitored. Don't try something funny." With that he left the Doctor and Roka alone.

"You're really all right?" The Doctor asked carefully and waved her over to sit down once more. He handed her the gamepad. "Want to try? I love that game. It has dragons!"

Roka giggled and gave him back the gamepad. In her current state it would be impossible to play, but she just said, "Ah, I think I played that one far too much."

It was surprisingly hard to talk, since she wasn't allowed to tell anything and she didn't even dare to hint at stuff. Also the necessity to remind the Doctor of her presence every ten minutes or so didn't help, but she didn't want to waste a single second.

"Well, at least he got you some good games." She looked through the cases and could recognize most of the covers from their color patterns. "You should try Dark Souls."

"I wanted to... but the CD is completely scratched," sighed the Doctor disappointed.

Roka took it out and felt the surface. It had definitely been destroyed on purpose. She burst out into laughter. "Well... that's not a surprise." For a while she just sat next to the Doctor and watched his blurry player character moving around in the snow. "Don't worry." It was so hard to sound confident. "I'll get you out of here."

The Doctor looked over and gave her a wink. "Don't think I'm just sitting around. I'll come up with something good eventually. You know me!"

A smile came to her face and for the first time in days she actually felt a little bit safer, like always when the Doctor was around. Even the most dangerous creatures feared him and there never had been a situation he wouldn't have found a way out of. Everything suddenly seemed surreal and she wished they could just walk away and forget about it all.