shifted_logs | The Sixth Match

Entry tags:

The Sixth Match

Characters: Narvin, Braxiatel, Spectators
Location: The Coliseum.
Time: Two days after the last fights.
Summary: The sixth of the death matches.
Warnings: Character death warning.

There were no Twins to disturb him this time. Weber was alone in his box. The revolver was hidden somewhere in his coat, and he was shuffling a deck of cards that he had taken from the golden case now open on the seat beside him. The last match done, Weber set his cards down and walked up to the hourglass. He had between his fingers one card, XIII: The Traitor.

“No one knows how to open an old wound like an old enemy. And our next two combatants are old. Please welcome Coordinator Narvin and Chancellor—sorry, Irving Braxiatel. May he with the bitterest of hearts win.”

As the sand began its sinking, Weber returned to his place and slipped the Traitor back into the deck.

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With a preciseness only a Time Lord could pull off, Narvin stepped into the arena not a moment earlier than necessary. There was tenseness in his step, in the set of his shoulders, and he spared a brief, dark look at the Emperor’s box. He was dressed in the CIA’s field clothing; at his side, a standard-issue staser, and nothing else.

His letter was tucked safely away in a pocket. He’d avoided the Plane after he had received it, instead choosing to fight his President’s civil war. In the quiet moments between detonations, Narvin considered his options, and the nature of this battle. Death was commonplace, for a Time Lord. But the Plane didn’t hold the promise of regeneration.

He hadn’t bothered arming himself with anything more than the staser -- Narvin wasn’t a fool, and he knew that what little weaponry he had could easily be surpassed by Braxiatel’s own. Although using Braxiatel’s own donated Martian weaponry had some small appeal, they were needed for the war. A staser would be enough; one way or another, this barbaric little spectacle would be ended, and Narvin rather though he suspected how.

The universe, it seemed, was inclined to make him pay for his mistakes.

Narvin stepped into the centre of the arena and laced his hands behind his back, not bothering to hide his irritation with the entire event. He ignored the stands -- they weren’t important, after all -- and watched his opponent’s approach.

“Braxiatel.”

Braxiatel stepped into the arena as he might step into the Summerhouse: confident, calm, and in control. He had dressed, too, for the Summerhouse, for a quiet evening drink looking down over the Trianon Lake, listening to the winds carry music up from the Gardens of Whispers.

"Narvin. Ill-met by starlight, I see."

His smile was as genial and distant as his body language. They were clear warning signs. In respect of his opponent, Braxiatel ceased speaking English and took up again their birth language: the language of their childhood, their education, and their endless disagreements. "What a primitive concept this all is. But I think I'll take my example from two members of the younger races who fought here earlier in this week. Discretion is the better part of kindness."

Braxiatel threw a small metal globe into the air, a device too small to carry all the technology inside it. But then, his people did enjoy that sort of trick. The device hovered in the air against gravity, awaiting his instruction. "Shields." Two walls of temporal displacement wrapped around the arena, just beneath the barrier that sealed them in. The walls were a mere attometre apart, the outer wall displacing them a second forwards in time, the inner wall displacing them a second backwards. The net result was simple: they were exactly when they were supposed to be, but that single displaced attometre blocked out all the light and noise from the outside.

And conversely, no noise or light from within the arena could get out. As far as they were concerned, Braxiatel and Narvin were completely alone.

Without the light of the Plane, they were in darkness. Braxiatel had prepared for that. He threw a handful more globes into the air where, suspended, they illuminated the arena in a soft light.

"Darkness and silence. I don't know what else a spy could want." Now that he had no one but Narvin to lie for, Braxiatel had abandoned his smile. The last two days of faking emotion had exhausted him. Here behind his shields, he let his cold dispassion show itself. It would not look alien to one of his own kind.

This was the Braxiatel that Narvin knew, the one he had fought and argued and plotted against. Not the art collector feigning alien emotion, but the cold politician. The Icicle. Narvin gave him a thin smile as he observed his enemy, still and watchful.

Narvin didn't falter when Braxiatel's shields partitioned them away in the darkness, didn't flinch when light flickered into being. Always the showman, Braxiatel, however much he denied it. Narvin could refrain from rolling his eyes, but couldn't keep the sardonic tone from his voice. "Protecting your associates from the barbarity of this sport, Braxiatel? How very thoughtful of you."

The isolation was a particularly Gallifreyan touch; they'd based their entire civilization around the concept, and it was to be mirrored here. Two immortals separated from the younger races. Old times and old wounds. It was a conflict not for aliens to understand.

"We generally prefer an exit as well, but I doubt even you could provide one of those."

"I would have done were it a possibility." It was, despite everything, the truth. Braxiatel would have ended the whole thing without hesitation if that option had been open to them. But the ruthlessly rational didn't waste time regretting impossibilities. One of them would die today, and Braxiatel would not be that one.

Some trappings of alien decorum still held him; Braxiatel tugged off his jacket, unwilling to fight in it. The movement revealed his choice of weapons: a Dalek gun. He folded his jacket over his arm, calm and precise, and spoke. "If you put down your staser, Narvin, I'll put away this rather appalling piece of work. I'd rather not use it."

Fair and honourable combat. No alien spectators to watch them, and no chance of their President seeing the fight. It was the best Braxiatel could offer Narvin here. The rules had once been that they kept their secrets and never cheated against each other. Braxiatel had quickly realized that the rules had changed on them, but for this, he could bring back the old laws.

Narvin narrowed his eyes, deliberately unmoving. "You're not considering unarmed combat, are you? That is primitive even for you, Braxiatel." The Gallifreyan words were edged with familiar insult -- base, barbaric, lesser. They suggested customs alien to Gallifrey, and therefore lower. Xenophobia ran deeper than thoughts, into their very language.

Of course, Narvin was under no illusions about the outcome of this fight. He was outmatched, whether armed or not. And Braxiatel was far too dangerous to kill. Narvin couldn't risk that creature escaping.

The twist of a smile that crossed Braxiatel's face wasn't the warm and distant expression he had cultivated for his alien friends. This was hardly the first time he'd heard the Coordinator use such language. They would never agree on the relative merit of alien cultures and ideas. "Well, we could do armed combat, but then you'd lose terribly quickly. I thought you'd appreciate a chance at victory."

It didn't occur to Braxiatel that Narvin wouldn't fight to win. Narvin had never offered it before, so Braxiatel hadn't calculated for a surrender.

Edited 2010-07-11 07:27 (UTC)

"If I was interested in fighting to win, Braxiatel, do you think I would have brought merely a staser?" The look of ill-concealed contempt that Narvin threw Brax was usually reserved for particularly obtuse junior officials, and he crossed his arms with a scowl.

"I'm not a fool, Braxiatel. As you said, it's your living thoughts that act as a prison. You're a threat to Gallifrey while alive, and an even worse one dead."

The fact that this was probably not the best line of conversation to touch on was lost on Narvin.

Edited 2010-07-11 07:50 (UTC)

Braxiatel's wince of pain covered his surprise at Narvin's declaration. He thought briefly of offering Narvin a clean execution, then decided to save that for later. In his neatly compartmentalized way, he tucked away the suggestion of that merciful death so that another part of him could speak. "Frightened of her getting too near you, Narvin? It would be quite a war effort on your part to fight her on both physical and mental fronts."

Braxiatel wasn't concerned for the time they had left. He had measured the speed of the hourglass before stepping in and would know well enough when it had to end.

"Unlike some, I don't have the luxury of even a zero room, let alone a private asteroid far from Gallifrey," snapped Narvin. "She is a reality in this war, not some fairytale monster to be boxed up in your mind."

"'A fairytale monster?'" Braxiatel's laughter was laced in his agony. Narvin always did know exactly the wrong thing to say. Braxiatel reigned in his pain, partitioned it like his mercy, locked it up to be dealt with another time. And he used words, the only weapon a Gallifreyan needed.

"Did you know, Narvin, after you had me exiled, I spent a few years as a professor. Head of Theatrology. A simple, peaceful position. No politics more complicated than academia, no responsibility more than a few thousand students. But it did remind me of something I'd forgotten after I stopped tutoring at the Academy: I like to teach. And I think you've yet to learn the gravity of fairytale monsters."

And he took one step forward.

And in that moment, he transformed from calm and cold to calm and cruel.

"So listen to me, Narvin. Listen to the sound of my voice."

And that was the hook. If they were both lucky, it would not catch.

Immediately, Narvin knew he had made a grave mistake. He hid his uncertainty behind a sneer, warily eyeing the former Chancellor. "Spare me the details of your adventures in domesticity, Braxiatel. I merely want--"

The rest of his words abruptly died off, and Narvin was left utterly still, listening.

There was an uncanny pressure behind Brax's words, a forceful suggestion. Narvin's own psychic shields were useless -- he hadn't thought Braxiatel would resort to anything like this, and so hadn't prepared to defend himself. He tried to block out his voice, to look away, but found -- to his numb horror -- that he couldn't break eye contact, couldn't stop listening to the low, smooth voice of the man who was going to kill him.

That was it. Narvin had sealed his fate. And because Braxiatel's mind was so carefully partitioned, he could go on talking with absolute certainty, even as he realized this was going to far.

"Narvin." A smile. "You are her host. There's a creature inside your head. She's a monster in the corner of your mind, and you can't think of her, or she will bring you pain. And the pain is an itching, and it is a clawing, and her roots are digging in, and her hands are scratching out—scratching into your thoughts. Trying to reshape your mind. You musn't think of her, but with every bite of pain she is brought more and more to your consciousness, rising up and winning strength as the pain blurs your thoughts, until you almost hear her whisper in your ear. It's the murmur of a voice you would obey, begging for freedom, promising power, assuring you that your home will be safe if you would just listen to her speak. Every echo of her speech has a louder echo, every shadow of her poison has a darker shadow, and it's growing in your head as it hurts you, as the thoughts build on thoughts and the pain builds on pain, as the creature feeds on and rips into your consciousness and threatens control and the pain is all that holds her back but that agony is shredding all your barriers and it hurts as nothing ever did or does or will do except this timeless suffering in your head."

Braxiatel stopped. He did not break his control on Narvin. But in that breath he fought back the ache that was growing with his every word.

He was isolated and he was suffering. And now he was sharing that in the worst possible way.

He whispered:

"And all you can think is that you must not break. And all you can do is scream."

Edited 2010-07-11 09:52 (UTC)

Narvin couldn’t focus. There was a pain in his mind, a scratching, clawing force that made his blood run cold and panic twist in his stomach. He was looking sightlessly past Braxiatel now, as the hypnotic suggestion did its work. Narvin tried, with growing desperation, not to think about the slowly spreading pain in his mind, the whispers of a long-dead ruler who promised him everything while slowly killing him.

He didn’t realise that he was trembling, didn’t realise he’d stumbled back from Braxiatel -- every thought was concentrated on trying to stop thinking of the creature in his mind. But his mental barriers were useless -- Pandora tore them down effortlessly, viciously, delving into his mind and intent on ripping him apart. The scratching was now a bright, sharp agony, pounding in his mind, leaving him reeling, and it was only growing worse. He couldn’t shield against this force, couldn’t neatly box her away, and she knew it. She taunted him, sinking her claws deeper into him while demanding her freedom from this prison. She could make Gallifrey safe, wasn’t that what Narvin had wanted? A safe planet and a safe people under her rule.

His resistance only brought him more pain. He couldn’t recall where he was, at the moment. The when of it escaped him, the whys and hows were lost. His awareness was focused only on the knife-sharp agony in his head, of the pain burning through him. Braxiatel was forgotten, as was the death match. All Narvin wanted was this singular torment to be over.

Braxiatel was right. All Narvin could do was scream.

Narvin was screaming and that woke Braxiatel up.

He remembered mercy and he remembered fighting fair. What was he doing? What was he becoming?

Too quietly: "Stop."

Braxiatel grabbed at his anger and his horror and his fear, and he sealed them away and took a step closer and remembered that he was Irving—Cardinal—Chancellor—Pand—he was Braxiatel and he had to be in control. His thoughts rearranged themselves to forget everything but the problem, that Narvin was in pain and that had to stop. A simple task. He could do that. He could be calm and cold and rational and controlled.

"Narvin." That voice had cut through battlefields, overcome the din and clamour of violence and suffering. It could easily be heard over one man's scream. "Narvin. Listen. And now it stops."

And just like that, it did. The lie, the illusion that was Pandora, the pain all cut suddenly cut out, leaving Narvin coughing and shuddering on his knees. The pain may have been a phantom, an unreality, but it was his mind that had made it real, and the after-effects couldn't be so easily stripped away. He was still trembling.

Awareness came back to him slowly, as did the realisation of what had just happened, what Braxiatel had done to him. When Narvin finally composed himself enough to look at Braxiatel once more, there was something new, something different in his gaze.

He wasn't sure what Braxiatel had become, either.

Braxiatel was calm and controlled. He was not scared. He would not step away, step back from that look.

But for the first time in all their lives, Narvin's opinion mattered to Braxiatel. Braxiatel had misstepped, and now only Narvin had the right to judge him for what he had done.

No, Narvin had no right, he was Irving Braxiatel, he could do whatever he wanted, he knew what was best, what would keep them all safe—no. No. No, he had no rational justification for it. He had been wrong. Narvin had every right.

Narvin knew.

Damn.

An apology was out of the question. In a gesture that was silent, practical, and precise, Braxiatel offered Narvin his hand to help him to his feet.

Narvin took the gesture for what it really was, and, after a moment, accepted, using Braxiatel to steady himself as he got to his feet. He slipped the staser out of his pocket and held it, turning the weapon over in his hands, before offering it to Braxiatel.

"We don't have much time left."

The note of defeat in his words took Narvin by surprise. But the meaning was clear. One of them still had to die here.

Braxiatel took the staser. A Gallifreyan weapon for a Gallifreyan death.

Well, after that demonstration of Gallifreyan cruelty, it was the least he could do.

"Narvin—" He couldn't say it. But he didn't conjure up a smile, either, and that was respect too. "She wouldn't jump hosts. If I died. I think, given the resurrection process here, it wouldn't really matter. It wouldn't put Gallifrey at risk."

Braxiatel forced himself to look Narvin in the eyes. "Your choice."

Edited 2010-07-11 20:15 (UTC)

"I made my choice before I'd even arrived, Braxiatel," Narvin said, meeting his gaze. Rassilon, he sounded tired. But then, maybe they both did. Two old immortals.

Narvin took a step back, arms at his sides, and gave a short nod. "Chancellor."

Two old immortals, cleaning up the blood so the ephemerals wouldn't see their kind bleed.

Braxiatel inclined his head. "Coordinator."

Methodical, practical, and precise. You couldn't ask for a better executioner. Braxiatel lifted the weapon and fired. No hesitation. No signs of regret.

That would have been an insult.

Quick, clean, and compared to events that had just happened, it was as painless as it was going to get.

The staser blast hit Narvin in the chest, between his hearts, neatly stopping both of them. He was dead before his body hit the ground.

Before the body could disappear, Braxiatel knelt by Narvin's side to take the ring from his hand. Narvin would want that back, and there was no guarantee it wouldn't go with the rest of him. Stealing from the dead was hardly a moral qualm for one who funded archaeologists. Braxiatel pocketed the ring and waited for Narvin to become dust. Only then, when no one could hear him, did he dare to apologise.

Braxiatel got to his feet, pulled his jacket back on, and hid the weapons under his clothing. He called his spheres down from the sky above him, stopping the light and breaking the barriers, but he didn't put on a mask of grief or regret. Cold as distance, Braxiatel left the arena, pondering how to find his President to tell her what had happened to her Coordinator.

Caster stood away from the rest of the crowd, watching her Master carefully. She was confident that he would win, especially against Narvin. She knew first hand of how well matched they were as Master and Servant. Caster was ruthless, and her Master would have to be no different.

When he hesitated momentarily, Caster stood from her seat, taking a breath. She nearly shouted to him to remind him of his situation, but refrained. She trusted him. She had to.

But when Narvin fell, she took a breath (or perhaps a sigh) of relief.

"Really, Master..." she murmured, but Caster did not linger. As she turned away, her cape turned with her, and Caster disappeared into the shadows to congratulate him on his sound victory.

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The Sixth Match

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