Chapter Text
It lands his piece on a flower, his roll, when all four of the pyramidal dice land with one white point facing upwards. The circle of the playing piece neatly covers the rosette on the board – and it is, as all of the flowers are, one of the bonus tiles. He rolls again; a three. Picking up one more of the disks, he moves a second piece to the board.
The Doctor’s eyes fall down to it, and then return up. He is searching for his opponent’s expression. The face he finds is one the entity has been wearing much: satisfied, smug, that of the cod-German shopkeeper chosen for himself. Under his watching eyes the Doctor takes the dice in his hand and rolls, the pieces clattering noisily against the glass crystal of the table. Two corners of white expose themselves upwards. There is only one move he can make: he moves his piece two moves in, onto the main road of the board. Into the danger of attack.
Upon the next roll the Toymaker gets a two. He considers his moves hardly a moment before picking up one of his available pieces – particularly, the one he had just put on – and moving it too onto the bridge. It is just now behind the Doctor’s.
The Doctor gets a one. He moves his piece a singular square forwards.
Then the Toymaker rolls a three. The Doctor’s hearts catch in hesitation: with that second piece he could steal one of his pieces, and it would be all too easy. Would he? – However, he only moves a third piece to the board, building up a presence on his side of the lane.
The Doctor breathes out a bit of his tension. So he wouldn’t, then. He almost lets himself feel relieved at the alleviation of the more instant threat, but remembers not to think himself too safe: the Toymaker knows the strategy of every game, and Twenty Squares holds no exception. Even humans have had their millenia to practice it, as of their time. But no advanced knowledge is necessary to see that it is a bad roll, by all relative means, when he next rolls his dice and only one white tip pokes up. He feels his hearts catch in disappointment – the game might be lost already – before he realizes the move that is open for him. He clicks his piece to a flower, and gains another free hand at the dice.
He looks up: instead of being critical at his sudden advantage, the Toymaker’s eyes are gleaming, relishing in the challenge.
The Doctor rolls again.
⬫⬪
Five minutes pass. Then five minutes more.
The Toymaker moves three pieces into the lane. The Doctor takes one of them.
Ten minutes go by.
One of his pieces makes it off the board. Another is taken by the Toymaker.
Another ten minutes.
Twenty Squares, the Doctor focuses. One of the oldest games from Earth. You win by ushering all pieces off the board. Would be easy, would the Toymaker not take so many of his by chance or by skill.
Half an hour passes in place of three minutes. And then, the Toymaker wins.
The Doctor’s hearts stop.
At some point he had stopped thinking of the game. What? Had it muddled out that quickly? But he had played, and that is clear. He remembers it. But he does not feel that he has. But there are the Toymaker’s pieces, all taken from the board. So he has won.
And he, on the other hand, is absolutely doomed.
There has to be a way out. But there isn’t, is there? He’s already tried the best of three, and that got him off no better than he is now. Something is bound to happen. With a sinking feeling he lifts his head, stares up.
But all the god does is chuckle quietly beneath his breath and shake his head. “No prices this time, Meine Doktor.” He looks amused.
“Oh,” is all the Doctor can breathe. He brings his hands beneath the table to hide their trembling.
And they return to playing.
The Doctor is off to a better start this time. He rolls a four, and places his piece far into the board. The next two rolls he gets a three, and moves in backup.
The Toymaker takes his dice back into his hands, rolls them between two palms. Ivory clacks with the noise of the bones that they are. Then he rolls them.
By the second time the Toymaker wins, the Doctor feels again the shards of worry in his chest. But they continue.
By the fourth time the Toymaker wins, the Doctor has realized that it’s all too easy to focus on the match.
By the first time the Doctor wins, he knows that losing was not the worst fate. That, instead, would have been to stop playing. What his punishment is, is the game.
It comes to the Doctor’s realization with that, that he’s no longer perceiving the full of the time that slips by. Rather than run linearly, it seems to fold and warp, stretched far too thin. It feels like being numbed.
By the time of their twentieth match – or is it their twenty-first? – the Doctor brings himself to say it. “Are you affecting my mind?”
The Toymaker looks back at him, smiles sweetly. “Yes.”
⬫⬪⬫
He has to get out.
The amount of times they have each won and lost, he has stopped counting. The Doctor could not say how many hours have passed. But they are still playing.
He has not got up once. Not to stretch, not to look around, not to run. But he has not yet gotten stiff, nor has he been forced to flee. Nor has he thought of any way to run that does not bring him straight back here. So that is the thing; he must leave.
Memory of the Toymaker’s threat sends a shudder down his spine: “I’m attempting to seduce you.” He squeezes his eyes shut, tries to blot it out of his mind. Strategy. That’s all he knows, is strategy.
The worst part is, he hasn’t even gotten tired. The Doctor can see perfectly the moves he is making, and watches the Toymaker’s moves, too. Learns his strategy. Plays the game. But concentrating feels impossible, paradoxically impossible, like being spun one too many times and left to balance. He cannot think of anything but the game.
One game lasts from fifteen to twenty minutes, he’d guess. The longest one has been, has perhaps been three-quarters of an hour. And yet they pass so quickly, and slowly too. It’s akin to nausea, trying to adjust to it. But he can still pick up his dice, and rolls. It’s a two. He moves his piece onto the board.
The Toymaker’s voice cuts through the quiet. “It’s two-hundred and forty-eight, by the way.”
The Doctor looks up. “What?” His voice is caught from not having spoken in so long.
“You were wondering. We’ve played two-hundred and forty-eight rounds.” He picks up a piece between his thumb and forefinger, lightly places it to the board. “You’ve won fifty-three times.”
“Ah,” the Doctor says. He closes his eyes.
They play another round.
He says it after that, when the Toymaker re-organizes his pieces. It was his victory. Still, his voice comes out weak. “Can I challenge you for something?”
It’s still silent as the Toymaker looks up, surprisingly quickly, as if taken aback. A moment passes, and then he giggles. “Mais non, Doctor, we have not been playing for a price.”
Bitter cold stings through the Doctor’s hearts, though he knew it was hopeless to begin with. He lets his line of sight fall back to the board.
Though he's not done speaking. “But tell mich. Vhat is it that meine Doktor vould want?”
A tremble runs through him, and the Doctor closes his eyes and struggles to focus, before expelling a breath. He opens his eyes again. “I’d like to sleep.” He focuses his gaze on the Toymaker, trying to express his acceptance of defeat with his expression. I’m not trying to fight you. “I know you have been keeping me awake. But I would like to sleep. Would you let me?”
The Toymaker regards him almost curiously. The expression he wears changes not a bit, but he does let his head tilt the slightest degree to the side. The Doctor keeps his own before it. He can feel his every thought being looked at, picked apart and observed.
And then he speaks. “Sleep, then. You don’t need to win it.”
He thanks the Toymaker quietly and stands. The words mean little to him.
The dark still encompasses them both, but when he turns, there is a bed on the opposite side of the room. It is plain, plain as a bed can be, with a metal frame and cotton-looking blanket, but in comparison to the void it appears facetiously bright, the only spot of light, of anything amongst an endless nothing. His footsteps make no sound as he walks towards it. The pillow and sheets alike are striped blue and grey like an old prison uniform.
Then all in a sudden rush a gasp is forced out of him, when a wave of exhaustion collides to his mind. He’s overpowered in a moment, vision greying out, a stiff pain flooding his limbs. Oh, god. When he comes to he's hunched over, lightheaded. It’s with barely a step more he finds his hand on the sheet, and collapses onto it. Whatever the Toymaker had been doing to keep him up, it has now left him. It’s a Herculean effort to barely even move his body, and his vision nearly fades out before finds himself at lying fully on the mattress. A shudder wreaks through him as he lets his eyes fall shut.
Yet the indulgence of rest does not come. His eyes flicker behind heavy eyelids though he tries to scrunch them closed still, and to him back comes the horror of his situation. He’s gone; he knows it. How did he even get here? He feels hopeless, in this dragon’s den of a place – if it even is a place at all. The Toymaker didn’t live in the universe, did he? No, he was from somewhere outside of it. The Toyroom, reality-bending as it is, would be there too.
Outside of the universe.
The Doctor feels that he might cry.
No. He cannot even open his eyes but he sets his jaw. He will not give in.
The Toymaker is a god, he knows that, and a powerful one for the matter. All that restricts him are the rules of games – a matter that he might control even. The Toyroom is…. Something, he knows that too. Something impenetrable, something wearing thin at some places, but all together something. Something under the Toymaker’s control. And the void, from the way the Toymaker flinches at it, is something he knows he does not want to know.
This is no place to spend an eternity. But he will not be here forever.
The idea flickers in his mind just as he is on the verge of unconsciousness. He tucks it low, beneath a thought, and knows that he must remember it. Then he allows his thoughts to get pulled down out from beneath him, and resigns himself to sleep.
⬫⬪⬫⬪
The Toymaker watches. He always does. And soon, as he sees, it’s under his gaze that the Doctor’s body untenses when he slips into the unconscious state, and he is almost giddy as he lets his eyes shift across the Doctor’s face, his hair, his hands, his face again, for just a minute more, and then turns gleefully back to the table. He finally has the Doctor under his thumb. Finally, finally, finally!
He has achieved everything. Absolutely everything. Returning was the trickiest part, but the loophole was fairly clear: he never claimed his price from the card game, so there he was. A bit of a waste to let it just cancel out another, but who could complain? He is here now, with the Doctor, his captive Doctor, and he has achieved everything. And it is perfect.
Well. One thing. The only snag is with the pacing. Crawling back up into the universe, getting out, finding the Doctor, challenging him and winning, dragging him back with him, those all have happened in quick succession. Like dominoes! Quick and efficient, each leading to the other. The last of them that he wanted, however, did not go so much as fast. Having the Doctor at his side, that was one thing, but having the Doctor as his – it was, well, still in the works. But! Do not go away yet, no – he had set the terms. The Doctor will be his within just one eternity’s time. How it causes him to tremble, in a metaphysical sense. (He doesn’t actually; the body he puppets is under his complete and omnipotent control. But if he didn’t, he is certain that he would out of sheer excitement, exhilaration.) The Doctor will be his, and he just has to wait.
He has no lack of patience. Not at all, no. Only in a tiny, insignificant twinge, does it still vex him. Because it is so much better than just that. The Doctor is here. Here, with him. And he cannot escape, cannot run in any way that is meaningful. Yes, yes – but even with the Doctor like this, every bit under his control, he feels unfulfilled, in a way. The game’s not over, that’s all. Not fully won. He can’t move on to the next piece, the next spiel, until he wins.
Games are all he has, after all. All that he can call his own. But now, with the Doctor, he can play so many more, have so many more, so many games to pass the time. It is just this game of patience that will run above them all – and one of many more.
And oh, he will wait.
He has been practicing patience for all his eternities. He would wait for that last domino to fall. And the Doctor would be his.