Unrepentant | DOCTOR WHO [ON HOLD UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE]

twelve | the sound of drums

It wasn't until the Master had closed the door behind himself and locked it that he turned to Annabelle and said to her with a mere tilt of his head, "Hello, Annabelle." When Annabelle only continued to glare at him with an almost murderous look on her face, he simply let out a sigh and started to walk over towards her as he said to her, "Oh, well. We can always work on the greetings a bit more later on."

As he continued to walk over towards her, he said to her, "Because of that, uh, supernatural hearing of yours, I suppose it is safe to say that you heard me kill everyone in my Cabinet not that long ago– just as I'm sure that you heard my short-lived conversation with them." When she only continued to glare at him, he came to a halt a mere couple of inches away from her before he asked her, "Did your mother never teach you just how impolite it is to ignore the words of your superiors?"

The moment that he'd mentioned her mother, Annabelle's veins had come onto display, which got him to let out a chuckle as he asked her, "Are you seriously telling me that– even after everything that I've done to you in our time here– you feel more anger towards the woman that birthed you and not me, the Time Lord that has spent months torturing you with everything that I have at my disposal?"

When she only continued to glare at him, he let out a sigh and then proceeded to reach out one of his hands to take the cloth out of her mouth before hesitating for a moment when he saw that she had gone out of her way to do what she could to move her head away from his hand.

In response to seeing her move her head as far back as she could from his hand, the Master simply stared at her for a couple of seconds and watched the veins on her face quickly disappear before he started to laugh to himself.

And while he continued to laugh to himself, Annabelle could do nothing but watch him with narrowed eyes as she occasionally glanced down at his hands– just to make sure that they would go nowhere near her face and do what they've been doing to her for months now.

For months now, she had been subjected to both physical and psychological torture– and she found that the psychological torture was always far worse than the physical torture that he would inflict upon her.

No matter if he shot her with his laser screwdriver, repeatedly touched her with vervain, injected some more vervain into her system or even physically hurt her in any way that he could– none of that was anything compared to the psychological torture that he would force upon her.

What the Doctor had failed to mention was that– with just a mere touch of a couple of fingers or at least a Time Lord's forehead pressed onto the forehead of another– Time Lords were capable of entering someone's mind and could see their memories or manipulate them in whatever way that they wished.

And unfortunately for Annabelle, the Master had chosen to do the latter after seeing all of the bad memories that she had buried deep within that head of hers– ones that she both did and didn't remember from the life that she had for the past one-thousand and twenty-seven years.

When he wasn't trying to do what he could to manipulate the public into making him their Prime Minister, he was with Annabelle and forcing Annabelle's most terrible memories to come back and hit her at full-force, along with ensuring that it was manipulated just a bit to make those memories of hers that much worse than she could remember them being– if she remembered them at all, that is.

Sometimes, he would even plant a part of himself into her head– just to ensure that those particularly dark memories of hers had no chances of reverting back to their original state.

And despite not being afraid of someone for over a thousand years, Annabelle couldn't help but grow to fear the Master and his hand– due to her knowledge of what that hand on her face could lead to, if he felt bored enough in the lie that he'd built for himself during the months that he'd been holding her hostage.