Secrets Never Known

His mind was always a muddle of stars, plans, and snapping wires. The mess held a familiar ring, a tone of sanity with spice that the Madman’s closest enemy knew from years ago. But that was where it stopped. The trickle of sanity broke through a wall into a black flood of insanity that the enemy—the Doctor—was too terrified to even taste while the Madman lapped it up and swallowed it whole.

The pure mix of dreadful threats and hair pulling flooded past their thin barriers the moment contact was initiated. The sea of madness thrummed with a practically petrifying beat.

One, two, three, four.

The Doctor refused to count, refused to be trapped within the four walls singing eternally in the Madman’s mind. But the words echoed constantly, reminding everyone that touched this mind that it was plagued.

Response was immediate, violent, and ferocious. The Doctor wanted to pull away on instinct, but he managed to hold firm. “We need to talk.” The Doctor’s voice flickered across familiar ears.

Laughter.

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

Screens sputtered to life. The floor hummed louder, shook solidly beneath his feet, and sped his hearts.

“Master,” the voice spoke, halting all of the lazy, controlling movements of the Madman, “you don’t have a choice.”

The storm calmed. The beating notes tangled themselves in a leash. “I haven’t heard that in a long while.”

“You haven’t heard much of anything in a while,” came the reply.

“I’ve heard you,” Master shot back viciously. “Do you think I want your voice in my head?” He lifted his brow like it mattered, hit more switches like it didn’t. “Are you really that thick?”
Pounding metal and drums.

Are you? Are you? Are you?

“I don’t want you telling me how wrong I am—how lost I am—how far I am.” The waves receded in a rush. “Where is she?”

“Who?” Doctor asked simply.

“You know—you always know.”

“Who are you looking for?” he asked again, demanding with a bubbling impatience he’d only ever used on his current conversation partner.

“You’re in my head,” the Madman replied similarly. “Can’t you see?” He pushed wires away and whispered his words expertly. “Can’t you see her?”

“Her name is AnnaBelle,” the colder wind admitted. The Madman’s thunder repeated the syllables, falling heavenly short of the pounding beats in his skull. “I’ve seen her.”

“Where is she?” the Madman demanded with the return of the drums. He scraped his nails over metal and dug deeper and deeper into the surface of his skin, ripped further into the consciousness connecting itself to his own, searching but never getting past the twisting mental traps tailored specifically to his footsteps.

“There are a billion planets spread across a million galaxies, pressed and spread between infinite universes. How do you ever expect to find her?”

“One by one,” he ground out between mashing teeth.

“She’s safe,” Doctor answered his earlier demand. He paused, measured the hidden relief poisoning the corners of the Madman’s mind. “She has parents,” he continued quietly, carefully.

“She has siblings.”

Stop it.

“She has people she knows.”

Stop it, stop it!

“People she loves.”

“All you have to do is tell me where she is,” Master hissed venomously, pushing further into the Doctor’s mind, tearing down walls with painful claws. “You’re not involved. This has nothing to do with you or your precious human race or purity of mind.”

“She doesn’t even know who you are.”

“She’s nothing to you!” the Madman screamed in a sudden rush of fury and frustration.

“And she’s everything to you?” the Doctor matched.

The connection snapped. Doctor fell back to his own mind in a state of fearful shock drawn from the wordless answer, thrown so fully, recklessly, and mercilessly.

The Madman placed himself, fuming, back in his seat. The drums throbbed sharply. He whispered the name again, calling to the space between them that he could see, could physically count. “AnnaBelle.”