The lights in the sky are not stars.
In fact, the sky isn’t the sky, either. A chemical reaction is occurring in the Master’s brain, as a result of a head trauma or possibly of a sudden lack of oxygen.
Despite this, the stars in the sky are of great comfort. Theta once said, back before they’d broken all their vows, that they’d see all of them together.
Every star in the universe. Past, present and future, every timeline, every outcome, every tiny beacon of light.
The Master supposes, if suppositions are something his fevered mind is still capable of, that these stars wouldn’t count, seeing as they’re not stars, and they’re not real.
And yet.
“Oi. If you’re done tripping on whatever it is you took and looking at the pretty colors, I’d very much like some help with the not dying.”
Huh.
He bats his eyes, slowly.
Everything is spinning, and an emergency protocol has been activated. The room is being hit with red flashes at intervals of approximately two seconds and a half, and the flashes are paired with highly unpleasant sound aids, supposedly meant to convey the gravity of the situation, unless they’re just there to be annoying.
Also, he’s staring out a window. The stars are… stars.
Bloody hell.
“Doctor,” he manages, “what the hell is going on?”
The Doctor— she’s a petite blonde with a thick accent and a stupid looking coat today, and he’s pretty sure the change is fairly recent, he’d remember a coat like that— shakes a hand in front of his face, and he can’t quite figure out if she’s annoyed or amused at him.
“You’re high as a kite is what’s going on. Can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?”
“I haven’t seen you in at least a decade.”
“No, I didn’t mean a literal minute— blimey, what did you take?”
The flashes are getting more frequent now, it’s not a good sign. Her hair looks pretty when the red light hits it.
“How should I know? I thought I was dead and my brain was hallucinating stars until forty five seconds ago, and it turns out I’m just looking out a window—”
“A window? Darling, that’s a fish tank.”
“What?”
“Right— okay, yeah, don’t worry about it, we’re just going to—"
“What’s a fish tank?”
He doesn’t get an answer, but she does take him by the shoulders and redirects him away from the window-tank-whatever and towards a menacing hallway flashing red at all sorts of unpredictable speeds.
Someone calls out for the Doctor, yells at her about artron energy and mermaids and a bomb made out of pearls, and she yells back something about a beach on Valencia —the planet, not the city— a blue statue and a stolen necklace, and he has quite a hard time following along.
About a minute later, he’s watching her sonic something— her sonic’s acting up, and he’d tell her that she’s got the frequency defaults all wrong and that it’ll never adapt to the timezone if she doesn’t rewrite the scanning protocol, but all he can think about is—
“No, seriously, what’s a fish tank?”
The Doctor fiddles with her screwdriver with one hand and reaches for his shoulder with the other in a universal gesture for don’t wander off, then she starts pressing random buttons on the door’s interface screen, and the Master can tell just how frustrated she’s getting.
“It’s a tank with fish in it. Like where they put the lobsters, in restaurants.”
The humans are still screaming about mermaids. And pearls— oh, pearls! It wasn’t stars, it was pearls—
“You know your sonic doesn’t know what timezone we’re in, right?”
“What?”
“It’s not opening the door because it doesn’t know where we are in time. It’s opening random doors closest to this point in space at random moments in time— also, there were no fish in that tank.”
“Oh, blimey, you’re right. I hate it when you’re right.”
He hopes she doesn’t say blimey on a regular basis now. It’s a terrible word, as far as human slang goes.
“Yeah. So it really shouldn’t be called a fish tank.”
“No, not the tank, the sonic. But I don’t have time to calibrate it now.”
“Yes the tank. Also, just use my laser.”
The Doctor unceremoniously reaches inside his blazer pocket and fishes out his screwdriver, lasers the door, ushers the screaming humans through it, then she grabs him by the hand, and before he knows it, they’re running.
Her palms are clammy, which they haven’t been in a long time, but her grip is just the same as always, all follow me, follow me, follow me—
“Where are we going?”
“Tardis. If we can get to it before this whole planet blows up— or turns into a pearl. I’m not sure what their plan is, really.”
“The mermaids’ plan?”
They’re still running down the hallway. It might have been a hundred and thirty seconds, or possibly forty three minutes. The oldest of the humans is complaining about shortage of breath, and the alarm has started counting down from thirty out loud.
“No, they’re not mermaids, they’re aliens. Actually, they’re both. Well, they’re mostly aliens—”
“I barely remember my name right now, do you mind not confusing me even more?”
“No. Yes. Sorry. You just think—”
Twenty six, twenty five—
“—about your fish tank, yeah? Oh— oh. You’re brilliant. The fish tank. Absolutely brilliant, a right genius, you’re—“
Twenty fou—
He’s either hallucinating again, or she’s just kissed him. On the mouth.
“No, you’re not hallucinating, I’m just in a good mood. The fish tank. Of course! How did I not see it?”
One of the humans tells her it’s not cool to kiss inebriated blokes. He’s vaguely insulted.
Fourteen, thirteen—
He’s too busy trying to catalogue the sensation of her lips on his before it’s forever gone from his brain, but he vaguely registers her yelling about how the pearls are already out of the main tank.
“That’s all nice and dandy,” he hears the third human say, “but we’ve got about ten seconds before we all blow up.”
“No, not blow up, never blow up. Pearls don’t blow people up, do they? Can I borrow your laser again, darling?”
He gives her the laser, and she thankfully turns the bloody alarm off.
“Right,” she announces, “We can all calm down, nothing is going to explode. This is just a bank robbery.”
“Doctor, this is an aquarium,” says the sensible human, the one who was getting tired running down the hallway.
“Yes, of course. But why an aquarium? Why on Valencia?”
“We got lost. You were trying to take us to Barcelona. The city, not the planet.”
“See, it’s not even a nice aquarium. Well. The one in the city of Valencia is very nice. But this one, it’s just a glorified oyster farm. And then, why is this idiot here?”
The idiot she’s pointing at is, unsurprisingly, him.
“The stoner you just snogged? I don’t know, can you get to the part about how we’re not dying?”
If the Master hadn’t lost track of which human is saying what, and what their names are, he’d remind himself to be annoyed at this last one.
“No, see, that’s the thing, he’s not a stoner. Real disaster, this one, known him all my life. But he’s not really one for drugs, and he only goes places where there’s something to take over.”
The earthlings are starting to see where she’s going with her ramble, but he’s still pretty much in the dark.
“So the alien mermaids are stealing pearls then?” asks the tall one, and the Doctor nods at him.
“Think so. And my guess is the Master here got in the middle of it somehow, so they gave him a nice stun.”
Oh. Wait.
“You know, I think I remember that, actually. I think a weird lady who wasn’t you kissed me today.”
The Doctor makes a face, composes herself, makes a face again. He gets the sense that she’s having a hard time deciding whether to be disgusted or offended, and that she’s going to settle on both.
“She what? And then I kissed you— are you saying I indirectly kissed an alien mermaid, because that’s gross.”
Yeah, both it is.
“Doctor,” interjects one of the humans, “could you maybe have this row with your ex boyfriend later, do you think?”
The Doctor makes a face again, scrunches her nose a bit at the thought, and it’s still a perfect combination of offended and disgusted. And— and something else. She’s got great facial expressions, this time ‘round.
“No, he’s not my ex boyfriend—” she stops, considers it, “Well. In a way. Ex girlfriend, more like. Of course, not yet.”
He’s about to protest that he has no memory of breaking up with her, thankyouverymuch, but they get interrupted by the smallest of the humans, who’s sporting a weird hairdo, and is apparently very hard to distract.
“Okay, so. Mermaid thieves. What do we do about it?”
“Oh, nothing. Fixed point. Well, not quite, but the changeable bits have all gone by already. There’s going to be a shortage of pearls for a couple of centuries in this corner of the galaxy, but seeing as they’re pearls, no one dies of it. Plus, the mermaids kind of deserve them.”
“So do we just… leave?”
“Yeah. Before that, do you guys wanna pop to the gift shop? They might have snow globes.”
He picks that moment to perk up.
“Do you think we could steal the snow globes? Seeing as there’s a robbery going on and all?”
“Sure, darling. You can steal a snow globe.”
Later, in the Tardis, after he’s slept off his mermaid kiss hangover, a thought strikes him.
“You know you’ve basically caused that fixed point, right? When you used your broken sonic on the door, and it opened all over the timeline. That’s how the mermaids got in.”
She takes a sip of her tea, shrugs a little.
“Huh. Whoops.”
Even later, after she’s dropped the humans home for the night:
“What were you even doing on the planet of Valencia, anyway? Did you want to steal the pearls, too?”
“No, I got lost. I figured I’d at least stop by the gift shop.”
“Yeah. Yeah, me too.”