Lucy liked her new outfit. It was a blue dress that fell below her knees and wasn't too tight or embarassing. It flattered her figure and when she turned around to look at herself in the mirror, a horrible mess didn't look back. For once.

It still didn't feel quite right. She was like the patched-up tile in the bathroom of the Valiant. About the same shape, but she still had funny creases all over herself. It was better than before, at least she'd had some cement to hold her in place. The Doctor helped her. She felt grateful for it, even if he didn't intend to help. She couldn't tell if he intended to help.

She pulled on a pair of matching flats and left the mirror and the clothes and went to find the Doctor. She'd suggested they go somewhere beautiful next. She had never seen the universe as beautiful before.

"Do you miss him?"

It's not something he's asked before. It's not something they talk about, really. It's like the disease they both have that they keep between themselves. They don't spread the disease of Harry, and they don't talk about it or seek out a cure.

She considers playing stupid. 'Who?' or something like that. But that's not what the Doctor wants. He wants to know and she wants to please him. New place, new situation, but she's still the same Lucy. She still flinches when he draws back too quickly.

It's not something she thinks will ever truly go away. Perhaps that's just a sign of how she is. No, no, that's definitely a sign of how she is. It's got very little to do with him. All he ever did was murder her husband. He was trying to do the right thing.

"Miss Harry?" she asks the question but it's not really directed at the Doctor even though he nods.

It's a loaded question, but she suspects he knows that. Missing Harry. Is it possible to miss someone who's never really gone away? She still has her wedding band, she still wears it most of the time. It feels strange to put that hand in the Doctor's. Still, it's part of who she is. She's Lucy Saxon, Lucy of the House of Oakdown…still, all parts of her that are connected to Harry.

He controlled her. Hurt her. She still has scars on her face and legs from different accidents that left her in various states of disrepair. But he always helped heal her. He always pretended to care.

He made her life structured. She knew the routines. She misses that. She misses knowing that he loved----she missed him saying that he loved her. Even if he did love her (he doesn't), Lucy doubts the Doctor would say he did. While there's comfort in a dishonest word of affection, there's no comfort in dishonest silence.

There was false comfort and false love with Harry. But it felt like enough. Often. In many, many ways, she does miss him.

Harry. She never calls him 'the Master' and the Doctor never calls him 'Harry'. Different terms for the same disease. But she doesn't want to spread it. Not now, not when she's just getting used to being happy.

So, she lies.

"No."

Muse: Lucy Saxon
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 393
Partner: ninewho
Based on RP with ninewho

Males and females have never seemed to fully understand each other. It will probably continue this way, but I think that's part of the magic of it all. -Scott Bairstow

The Doctor.

He's nothing like Harry.

Lucy knows this. It's easier to tell in quiet moments, where his energy is more subdued. Harry was never subdued. He never quieted, even when he lay next to her in bed he would move and move and never stop.

The Doctor doesn't sleep either---she thinks---but sometimes he just stops. Stops moving, stops working, and just thinks. Remembers, maybe. Right now, as the sun rises over the purple grass of Corora 3, he remembers something and smiles.

He doesn't smile like Harry does. His smiles are smaller but take up more of his face. They're the sort of smiles that hit Lucy in her toes when she sees them because they're real. It's how she used to think Harry's smiles made her feel.

The Doctor is so real.

Whatever he's remembering he pushes aside and nods towards the screen, beckoning her to look. She leans a little over his shoulder and looks. It's beautiful, she says. She thanks him for taking her with him, and he shrugs it off. She doesn't owe him. It's a strange feeling.

Maybe he feels like he owes her. Taking away her husband. Her lover. Her tormentor.

She knows Harry's cross-shoulder blazer length is 18.75'', but she doesn't imagine she has enough tape to measure the Doctor's. He holds so much weight on it; he probably has to go to get his leather jacket custom-fit.

The way he holds onto it without complaining, without the slightest whimper, makes her want to take some of his weight. She wants to make it better. But her shoulders are bony. Her shoulders can only just barely support Lucy Saxon. They can't support anything the Doctor has to offer.

She wants to comfort him.

Harry's hand always groped or moved or pinched or slapped, but the Doctor's just sort of sits there, waiting to be held. When she does touch his hand, it only barely moves to hold hers back. A very tiny movement. But it's real. It doesn't feel like she's put him off to hold her hand.

He reaches out a hand to touch the bruise under her eye and she flinches at the touch. He looks hurt. He tries not to, but he cares. So different from Harry, who would try to look like he cared when Lucy could tell he did not.

Why did you let him do that to you? he asks. You could've stood up to him.

I would be dead, she replies.

He doesn't say anything and maybe it's because he's thinking that she's already dead inside. Sometimes she feels like she is. Sometimes she feels like the woman he wants her to be. Lucy of the house of Oakdown. A stronger woman.

She wonders if he wants her to be Rose Tyler. The famous woman who crossed the Earth talking about the Doctor. She wonders if he wants her to be that brave a person. If he wants her to hold the world up with words.

He's not a fool. He probably already knows she's nothing like Rose Tyler.

She hopes he doesn't want her to be Rose Tyler.

She certainly doesn't want him to be Harold Saxon.

Muse: Lucy Saxon
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 566
Verse: ninewho-AU

Following this ficlet.

Her hair was still piled rather precariously on her head, the red dress still hanging awkwardly on her thin frame. She knew what she was doing when she started at the beginning. She knew what Harry---what the Master was offering her. And she took it.

She hated him. The Doctor. For taking away her chance at giving the Master back a bit of what he gave her. Making him hurt. Instead, he just had it all snuffed out. No pain. Part of her understood. Understood why he did it. That part held the Doctor's hand as they watched his body shoot away.

The TARDIS landed on the Cole Estates. She knew it because she could almost feel the disapproval of her parents out the doors. Where was her husband? What had they just seen on the telly? Why was she dressed like that?

Dead. Death. And he told me to.

But those answers weren't the sort her parents were looking to hear.

She wasn't sure what she wanted to hear anymore.

"Are we here?" she let the question come out. It was the sort of thing Harry would want to hear. A prompt for him to talk.

What makes you so special?

He wants me.

You can see it, right? Right there, in the way he looks at me. I'm his companion, I'm his wife. He's the Prime Minister of Great Britian. He's the Master of all things.

Being attached to that makes me special. I'm special. I'm important.

He won't go to the end of the universe without me. He won't travel in time without me. He doesn't want to rule the world without me, that's how special I am.

He loves me.

He loves me.

I'm special. I'm important. Do you think I was even thought of during the decimation? No. I'm to be at his side. I earned that place, right there. Right next to him. He likes the way I talk and think and move and he likes how angry I can be. He loves me. I'm special to him.

The bruises don't matter.

The bruises don't matter.

The bruises don't matter.

Sometimes you have to hurt what's important to you. Sometimes we just don't see eye to eye. When one of mine swells up, then I can see better. But do you think he'd give an ice pack to anyone else out there? Do you think he'd say he liked the bruise splatter on anyone else's face? No. Because I'm special.

Do you think he'd show anyone else the horrors of the universe? Would he hold them in place and make them watch the suffering so they can…so they can be like him?

That's…it's what I want. I'm important. I'm important to him.

Muse: Lucy Saxon
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 261

Isabella's. An excellent tapas restaurant not far from where Lucy had been living. She put on her black dress with the beige trim, pulled up her hair and splashed on a little makeup. For all that she wanted to impress this fellow, she was still a married woman.

A married woman who needed to keep it together when involving herself in this...bit of business. Usually she had Harry to lead her. To make...to lead, and that was enough. Now, to get back to him she had to take control. Make allies.

She arrived a little early and slipped into her seat. She straightened her hair and ordered a glass of wine.

She just had to think what Harry would do. That's what she had to do. She had to be Harry.

She had dreams, once.

Dreams of traveling the world, seeing new places, letting foreign sands from oceans a hundred thousand miles away peek through her toes. She used to dream of lying on an Italian beach, letting the warm breeze whisk her hair up and away. The sun was everywhere in her dreams. It was…

(  It didn't matter what it was, it wasn't going to happen, now. )

Muse: Lucy Saxon
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 885

Dearest Harry,

Doctor Shaw tells me I need to spend more "quality time" working through art and music therapy. I don't think useless thereputical sessions are quality anything, let alone time.

All the same. This is my latest art therapy work. I was given a red crayon and told to interpret "love". I was not allowed to write your name eighty-eight times, as I had by the time they stopped me. I had to draw something. This is our love. Complicated, twisted, but still beautiful.

I do hope the Doctor lets you see this, Harry.

I miss you. I miss seeing the twisted hearts in your eyes rather than simply on a piece of paper.

Yours,

Lucy

Muse: Lucy Saxon
Fandom: Doctor Who

Doctor Shaw tells me that this sort of thing is "good" for me, writing down my feelings and such.

I think it is juvenile.

I will do it because I must.