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The first time the Doctor wandered into the Master’s nightmares, she hadn’t understood what she was seeing. A dream, yes, but- these blurry flashes of faces she didn’t recognise, scenes of some boy’s life in Ireland of all places... Fresh off of a beach in Madagascar, confused enough about her own identity, the Doctor hadn’t had the energy to try and decipher what she’d seen, or why the images seemed to be filling his head with such an anguished, angry terror. The Master was a mysterious man, and she’d just ducked out of his head quietly and gone back to tinkering with a clockwork toaster.
She’d been calling on him for a little while, now. Maybe two weeks after he’d ended up in the Kasaavin’s dimension, the Doctor had thought to reach out, let her telepathic feelers spread across the universe in search of him. And she’d found him.
At first, the Master had not been very happy with her. Understandably, she supposed. She hadn’t been all that happy with him, either. They’d had a lot to talk about, and had promptly decided to ignore all of it and start flirting instead. And doing rather more than flirting, a fact that the Doctor was determinedly doing her best not to think about the morality of. It was nice stress relief, that was it.
All in all, it had been a decent arrangement. A quick mental prod to see if the other was free, and then an hour or two of idle conversation, or bickering, or doing that dubiously moral thing that the Doctor wasn’t thinking about.
After the first accidental nightmare prod, there had been a couple more similar incidents, both from his end. One time she’d felt him nose his way into a thoroughly bizarre dream about a duck planet, and promptly nose back out again. The other time, the Master had caught her mid-nightmare-about-Gallifrey-on-fire.
She hadn’t heard from him for a while after that.
Then they’d met each other in person again, they’d fought again, and she’d run off and left him for dead. Again.
Was it really leaving someone for dead if you were almost absolutely sure they weren’t actually dead?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Either way, that Ireland nightmare she’d seen all that time ago suddenly made a lot more sense.
-
The Doctor had been stuck in prison for all of two boring, boring days before she finally decided to reach out again. She would have done it sooner, but she was almost afraid of what she’d find. If instead of his sharp, familiar presence, she’d find an empty void, no one in it but her own lonely consciousness.
As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. The Master’s mind sung like a canary in a coal mine, practically pulling her in towards it. Relief flooded her, and fear, and anticipation, and nerves, and- okay. Time to just bite the bullet and go in.
Silver.
Shining, swirling silver, coursing around her, ice-cold and metallic and intelligent. Analysing her mental presence, concluding not-an-immediate-threat, and shoving her in deeper.
She’d forgotten about the Cyberium. And now she was oddly offended that it apparently didn’t consider her a threat to it. Something to bring up with the Master, when he acknowledged her- oh.
He was asleep again. Alive but asleep. Maybe this was the best way to approach him, she could just leave a quick note in his subconscious that he’d see when he woke up. Hey, glad to see you’re not dead, accidentally popped round when you were sleeping. Call me back. I want to talk. Perfect. Or...maybe not that last line, although she very badly did want to talk.
“Become death. Become me.”
She froze (metaphorically, at least, since she was just in his head) at those words. Looking around, the Doctor finally took note of her surroundings. Of the grand, red-hued room she found her consciousness in, of the high-collared silver figures on either side of her. She had a perfect spectator’s view of the moment she’d realised just how broken the Master was.
“Come on, come on...” The look in his eyes, completely desperate, a man without any purpose except tearing her down and letting her bring him down with her. The look in her own eyes- had she really looked like that? So conflicted, so tired.
The scene seemed to hang for a moment, and the Doctor glanced to the door. This was the moment that Ko Sharmus had burst in and all her thoughts of helping the Master had been shattered in her surprise. No one came in. The room seemed to flicker, like a glitch in a tape.
“What have you got left anyway? You don’t even know your own life.”
She blinked, gaze flicking back to the scene in the middle of the room. The Master pleading for her to end this, the look on her face back to one of resolute anger, like time had looped back thirty seconds or so.
How long had he been dreaming this? He’d always been such a good telepath, surely he should have been able to snap himself out of the loop.
The smart thing to do would be to leave that note, back out of his head, and not get involved. Really. This was a terrible idea.
Unfortunately, she was the Doctor, and ‘not getting involved’ was something she was criminally bad at. She strode forward, planting herself between the Master and that other version of herself, noting that she seemed to be a few inches taller in his nightmares. Interesting, that- nope. Not the time, not now.
“Hey. Snap out of it.” She bent down to his level, and the Master blinked.
“Doctor. You-“
“I’m in your head. You’re dreaming. Terrible dream, by the looks of it. Thought you’d be better at not having those by now.”
She saw his fingers flex, tension rippling all the way up to the veins of his neck. She stood firm, because she was in his head, and he couldn’t hurt her even if he wanted to. Probably.
“You shouldn’t be here, Doctor. Get out.”
“What, and leave you wallowing in your misery? Don’t be pathetic, Koschei.”
“I’m not-“ The Master cut himself up, and straightened up to his full height, a whole one inch taller than her. Normally, he made good use of that one inch, made the Doctor genuinely feel like she was shorter than him for the first time in centuries. Here, in his dream, it came across more like a weak attempt to bully her.
Unimpressed, she reached out a hand and pressed it against his chest, and took a step forward. Slowly, firmly, pushing him off of the raised platform in the centre of the room. The Cyber-Masters around them were knocked aside as easily as toy soldiers- this was just a dream, after all. Only when they were in the corner of the room, well away from the drama, the creepy looping version of herself, did the Doctor speak again.
“What’s going on? You normally have better control over yourself than this, Master. This isn’t even a good nightmare, it’s a proper boring one. Not even very creative.”
“It’s not like I want to be dreaming this,” he snapped.
She raised an eyebrow, said nothing. He’d finish his thought if she waited long enough.
“...It’s the Cyberium,” he admitted eventually, turning away from her and starting to prowl around the room like a cornered beast. “It’s got- a hold, on something.” The Master lifted his hands to his head, clenching his fists on either side of it so tightly that his arms shook. “I can’t- tell- where. It feels like...it’s taking over. Slowly. Like it thinks I wouldn’t notice.”
Oh, the Doctor was going to prove that ridiculous lump of quicksilver wrong. Not an immediate threat. She was going to grind it into dust, she was going to throw it into lava, she was- she was stuck in prison. Oh, yeah. Easy to forget about that inside the Master’s head.
Still. Nothing messed with her Koschei and got away with it, no matter how angry he might be at her. No matter how many regrettable things she’d said to him. The Doctor glanced up at the raised platform behind them. She’d stood there and told him that he was lesser than her, that she would always be more than he could ever be.
“...You’ve got a TARDIS, right?” Change the subject, keep her mind off of what she’d said to him. “Could you come find me, when you wake up? I could- help you.”
The Master stopped in his pacing, turned and gave her an odd look. “You’ve got your own TARDIS, Doctor, or did the Cyberium fry your brain on the way in? Not sure your little pets really want to see me again, anyway.”
She closed her eyes, letting her head tip back tiredly. When she opened them again, the Master was staring interestedly at the curve of her neck, right at the point where her pulse beat under the skin.
“I’m in prison,” she said, and that got his attention sharpish. “Judoon boarded my ship and took me away. Don’t even know where I am, the walls just taste of concrete.” Did he know she usually located places by licking things? Probably. He seemed to know most things about her, even if they were things she’d never actually told him.
“I’ll get you out,” he said, a scowl already twisting over his lips. “And then I’ll blow the whole place up, the bastards, how dare they- Doctor, why are you laughing?”
Laughing? Was she- oh. She was, and she hadn’t even really noticed. The Doctor shook her head, letting the mirth fade from her tone before she answered. “Still can’t bear to let anyone beat me except you, can you?”
The Master looked somewhat put out by that. Good. Was it good? He kept flipping between ‘enemy’ and ‘friend’ and ’the only person who understands’ in her head, the switch sometimes happening too fast even for her to keep track of.
“Just- look at the two of us,” she continued. “Sat in your head, in some stupid bad dream. I was just thinking about how I was going to kill the Cyberium for hurting you, and now you’re threatening to blow up an entire prison just for holding me inside of it. And yet, less than a week ago I was telling you that I’m-“ The Doctor stopped there, and bit her lip.
“That you’re so much more than me,” the Master finished. He wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at the Doctor still moving on a loop in the centre of the room.
“I didn’t mean it,” she said quietly.
“Then WHY did you SAY it?” The Master whirled back around to face her, rage tearing across his features, and the Matrix chamber melted away from around them to be replaced with that swirling, boiling silver mass from before. The Doctor struggled to stay afloat amidst it all, feeling like she was choking, drowning, spinning, a tiny fish lost in the merciless currents near shore-
A hand grabbed her wrist, feeling just as warm and solid as though it was real. “Why did you say it?” Suddenly the Master was in her face, his forehead pressed against hers. Dark brown eyes burning into hers with so much intensity that the Doctor had to blink to gather her thoughts.
“Heat of the moment.” A terrible excuse. Do better, Doctor, come on, think. “I- was angry. With you, Koschei, because you’d just put me through another one of your silly plans when we should have just talked. So I said things I didn’t mean.”
“Make it better. Come on.” His tone was firm, but there was a hint of a plea in it. The Doctor wondered whether he meant her comments, or the Cyberium. The former was easier to fix, maybe. Hopefully. Maybe not, actually. Time to try and fix it anyway.
“You’ve never been lesser than me. You’re brilliant. Absolutely brilliant, ridiculously smart, total genius. Would have failed school without you, you know that. You’re the only one who’s ever been a match for me without having to try.” The Doctor didn’t break eye contact once, wasn’t even sure she could. Could the Master hypnotise her from within his own dream? Or was his gaze just that compelling?
For a long moment, he just stared at her, his chest rising and falling heavily. Then he closed his eyes, and she let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. The silver backed away, retreating until it was completely out of sight, leaving them in a vaguely purplish-grey void.
“I’m coming for you,” the Master said. “I’m going to find you. And I am going to blow the prison up behind us. You can’t stop me.” The Doctor was pretty sure that she could. But that was a point to be argued later. “In return, you’re going to get the Cyberium out of my head, because it won’t let me do it myself, and I hate- I hate being controlled by this thing.” His grip on her wrist tightened as he spoke, until she had to pull away. Had these been their physical bodies, she was sure she’d have been left with a bruise.
“I can do that.” She reached up, resting a hand on the side of his face. ”What then? Do we just go our separate ways?”
The Master said nothing. The Doctor hadn’t really been expecting him to. Nothing was ever really certain between the two of them, and it probably never would be. All she could do was take this one step at a time.
“Get out of my head now, Doctor. I’ll find you.”
The Doctor let her mouth twist into something like a smile, but with more worry. “You’ll find me,” she repeated. “And then I’ll save you. Fair trade.” Her tongue darted out across her lips for a second, nervous, and then she leaned up to press a kiss to his forehead. “Sweet dreams, Koschei.”
She ducked out of his dream before he could say anything in response, coming back to herself on the cold floor of her prison cell. The Master was alive. The Master was alive, and he was coming.
Suddenly, prison didn’t seem quite so bleak.