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He feels him, the second he steps out of the TARDIS. It’s like a slap to the face, one that has the Doctor stumbling, clutching at the doorframe.
The Master. He’s here.
He’s on Earth.
He’s alive.
The Doctor has to steady himself against the sudden rush, the knowledge and awareness of the Master’s presence that sends his hearts racing.
With shaking hands, he closes the TARDIS door and emerges from the little alley he’d landed in. While floating through the vortex he’d had a specific craving for fish and chips from this one little shop in London that would only be open for a year, but that cooked better chips than literally anyone else in the universe. The date had been picked on a whim, and he’d checked he was in the right when and where before leaving the TARDIS.
23 December, 2009, exactly when he’d intended.
But maybe it wasn’t just a whim. If the Master was here…
He spots nothing overtly amiss as he looks around. Nothing jumps out as wrong, no signs, literal or otherwise, pointing to the Master’s latest scheme. Not a single thing on fire even.
But he’s here, the Doctor can tell.
Closing his eyes, he breathes in and reaches out, searching.
Last time, the Master had used his Archangel Network to hide himself, hide from him, but the fact was, he probably hadn’t needed to. He had managed without, after all, for however long it had taken for him to insert himself into the government and launch his satellites. Because the Master was good, very good, and always had been, but in truth, the Doctor hadn’t been looking.
He couldn’t bear to look.
In those days, weeks, months, years after the War, the Doctor had walled himself off, unable to bear even the thought of reaching out and finding nothing, reaching out only to have no one reaching back. Nothing but the awful silence of screams cut short. A universe inescapably empty of his people, of every other mind like his.
Better, ultimately, not to even try.
There was no point in leaving himself open, in looking, in wanting, because he knew there was no one there. There is every chance that the Doctor could have seen Harold Saxon on television, heard him on the radio, or even passed him in the street, and not thought anything of it. Not allowed himself to even consider. To hope.
Or maybe he would have. A Time Lord will know another Time Lord on sight, and the Doctor knows the Master better than any other.
Now though, the Doctor knows for certain that he is here. He can look, and instead of nothing, instead of emptiness, he’ll find him.
The Doctor breathes in deep, searches for the familiar, the missed scent of the other Time Lord, and above the humanity of the street, he finds it. Just traces, notes in the air around him, but real and there. He can feel the Master too, his mind, his consciousness, the twisting, burning, brightness of him.
He’s close.
The Doctor walks, pulled by sense and instinct through the streets as the sun sets. It’s dark, technically night by the time he reaches some kind of industrial area, warehouses and shipping containers and heaps of piled scrap dotted along the river, cordoned off by chain-linked fences. He circles around the perimeter until he finds a gate, and it’s nothing to sonic open the padlock keeping the gate closed and slip inside.
There’s a curious stillness in the air, an unnatural emptiness, and it could be the hour, or that the whole area appears mostly disused, but the Doctor suspects otherwise, even if he cannot fathom why the Master might be here.
Because he is here, he’s sure of it.
The eerie silence weighs as he moves down the rows, following the pull in his stomach, his head, his hearts. He strains his ears for any sound, eyes catching on flickering shadows as he picks his way through abandoned debris, sticks and glass and rubbish crunching beneath his shoes. Where is he?
Where is he?
He rounds the back of a derelict warehouse and finally spots a figure crouched by a pile of stacked metal sheeting. There’s a distance between them, but he knows immediately, without needing to see his face, that it’s the Master. He’s curled in on himself, hands clutching at hair much lighter than the last time the Doctor saw it.
The Doctor takes a step towards him, away from the shadows cast by the building, and the Master’s head snaps up. He doesn’t turn to look, even as the Doctor freezes, but he cocks his head to the side. The Doctor may be imagining things, but he thinks he sees him shudder.
“There you are.”
The Master’s voice carries clearly across the open air, for all that he’s not shouting. He uncurls, and rises smoothly to his feet, back still turned.
It’s the same voice.
The man who makes people better. How sanctimonious is that?
You must have been like god.
How about that? I win.
“Knew you’d find me eventually. Can never hide, can I? Not for long. Not from you.”
The Master turns, and the Doctor takes in the face of the United Kingdom’s short-lived, former Prime Minister.
No stolen body, no regeneration then, however it was he did it. But there’s something in the air. Something that feels like regeneration energy, swirling around him.
“Master.”
The Doctor watches the Master’s eyes slip shut at the sound of his name, a smile sliding across his face. He takes another step forward as the Master rolls his neck. The smile remains, shifts into something else the Doctor can’t quite name before his eyes snap open, locking onto him as he moves closer.
“I wouldn’t, Doctor,” the Master tuts, bright blue light sparking around his fingers. It crackles, arcing up and around his hands like lightning moments before the Master throws up an arm and the Doctor feels a blast of heat rush past his ear.
Something explodes behind him, but he doesn’t turn and look because the Master is raising his arm again. The Doctor isn’t sure if the first shot missed him purposefully, or by accident, but he jerks to the side quickly enough to avoid another that would have hit him square on the chest.
He waits for another strike, mind racing because he recognises the buzz, the scent of artron energy. The Master has, somehow, weaponised it, which is concerning for many reasons, not the least of which is that he appears to be drawing on his own body’s reserves.
The Doctor finds himself proven right when instead of attacking again, the Master stumbles back, hand reaching out to steady himself against the pile of metal beside him. Half hunched over he grimaces in pain, shooting a wary, evaluating look at where the Doctor stands not twenty meters away. His body shifts, ready, and the Doctor can tell that he’s about to run.
He has no intention of letting him do so.
The Doctor moves first, and before the Master can get more than a few steps, he has crossed the distance between them and seized his arm. The momentum of his sprint carries him forward, and he uses it to push the Master back against the stacked metal. The Master grunts, and aims a kick at his shin, but the Doctor just presses in closer, using his height and the grip he still has on the Master’s arm to hold him in place.
The Master bares his teeth, free hand moving to press against the Doctor’s stomach.
“Don’t,” the Doctor says, tightening his grip on his arm.
“Make me.”
The Doctor feels a burn where the Master’s hand is pressing into him, even through his clothes, but he doesn’t flinch away, squeezes the Master’s arm even harder instead, and brings his other hand up to pin his shoulder.
“Don’t.”
The Master isn’t going to run again, the Doctor’s not going to let him.
They stay like that for a handful of breaths, the Doctor holding the Master in place, grip hard and harsh, while the Master teases him with what is essentially a knife to the belly.
It’s ultimately the Master who relents first, but only with a considering look that sets the Doctor on edge. He relaxes back, slowly walking his hand up the Doctor’s body and over his chest, staring at him all the while.
In return, the Doctor loosens his grip. He doesn’t let go completely, nor does he back away, but he does unclench his fingers, and the way they ache as he does so attest to just how hard he was squeezing. Though he cannot see through fabric, he looks at the Master’s arm and pictures vivid black bruises in the shape of his fingers.
The Master, meanwhile, takes hold of his tie and slips it out from beneath his jacket, winding the length slowly around his hand as he continues to watch him with narrowed, calculating eyes. The Doctor takes the opportunity to watch him back. To look, properly, now that he’s found him.
The Master, who has always so prided himself on performance, on appearance, is filthy. His clothes are ragged, worn, and clearly stolen. His hair’s a mess, rough stubble covering his cheeks and jaw that does little to hide his paleness, the strange gauntness sitting just under the skin. There’s dirt under his nails too. The Master picks at the embroidery of his tie with a dirty thumbnail and that more than anything else strikes the Doctor as wrong.
This is the Master fallen low. This is the Master hiding and scrambling, doing nothing more than trying to survive.
Not even for a second does the Doctor think that means the Master is weak or vulnerable. If anything, a cornered and trapped Master is more dangerous than a scheming or triumphant one. Because while a confident, or rather, overconfident Master is prone to making mistakes, a cornered one is just as likely to lash out, with zero consideration given to who is hurt in the process, even if it’s himself.
But he’d tried to run, not unlike the fleeing of an injured, desperate animal, and so the Doctor is certain that there is nothing bigger going on. No grand sweeping plan of conquest or destruction that he needs to puzzle out and then stop. Which means that for the moment, there’s nothing to foil, no one else to worry about. It’s just the two of them.
And it feels more right than it probably should.
“What did you do?” The Master says suddenly, head tilted to the side, his gaze roving over him appraisingly.
“I don’t know what you-”
“No, no, no, no, no, don’t do that.” The Master pulls on his tie, tugging them closer, down so that they’re at eye level. “What did you do, Doctor? I can see it, all around you. The timelines, all fractured and changing and broken.”
The Doctor watches with a slightly disconnected feeling as he realizes what the Master is referring to at almost the same moment he works it out.
“Oh. Oh.” His eyes go wide, the corners of his mouth turning up. “Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? You broke them.” The Master tsks. “Playing around with fixed points in time? Bad boy.”
The Doctor presses forward, crowding the Master and trapping his hand between them, something like a denial on the tip of his tongue, but it doesn’t faze him, and if anything, his smile just widens.
“Give me a second,” the Master says, closing his eyes. “Let me just... ah, there it is. Adelaide Brooke. Bowie Base One.”
His stomach drops at the name, at hearing the Master speak it aloud and sounding so pleased about it.
Adelaide had shot herself, but it hadn’t been enough, hadn’t done what she’d wanted it to do. Saving her from the base, saving the others, had changed things, and no bullet back on Earth was going to change them back. If anything, it just raised more questions. The Doctor had altered the history of not just Earth, but of the universe, and they can both see it, everything that was meant to be, and everything that now will be.
It’s a dizzying feeling, heady almost, to feel time bend, to be able to truly, properly shape it. Even now he can remember how it felt. The control, the thrill, the certainty he felt when he decided to come back. When he decided that he could. And the feeling had lingered, even as he turned away from the house and walked back to the TARDIS, the sound of a gunshot ringing loudly in his ears.
And the Doctor knows that he shouldn’t feel that way, that he should fear it, because that’s what he’s been told all his life, because there are rules, because otherwise he’s just like-
But he saved lives. He gave them another chance to live, to see their families, their homes.
Who’s to say that was wrong? Who’s to say that they had to die, that he shouldn’t have saved them?
“I’m a Time Lord.”
No one. The answer is no one.
“Yes, you are,” the Master says, eyes open and fever bright as he slides an arm around his back, fingers curling into the fabric of his coat. “And it’s your right, isn’t it? Your right as a Time Lord to bend and twist and use time however you please.”
They’re so close. Close enough that beneath the tang of artron energy the Doctor would swear he can smell blood. Human blood.
“And it’s good, isn’t it?”
He shakes his head, instinctively wanting to deny it, rejecting the question and everything behind it, trying to focus on the scent of blood, and what it might mean, but the Master just pulls him closer, and the Doctor has to brace himself, slide his hand from the Master’s arm to his waist so he doesn’t fall into him.
“It feels good, doesn’t it, Doctor? You know it does. To change a timeline, a world, an entire universe. To do all of that with a single act. A single question, even. All that power.”
He says it into the Doctor’s skin, teeth grazing sharp along his jaw, and the Doctor pushes him further into the stacked metal behind him, fingers clenching in a way that has to hurt.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to explain it. I know. Oh, do I know.”
“No. That’s not-” -what it was. “I’m not-” -you.
The Master doesn’t need to hear him finish, just like the Doctor doesn’t need him to reply. He can feel the grin well enough.
It makes him want to push him away, shake him, cover his mouth so he cannot speak. Because it’s almost too much. To hear the Master, to have his hands on him, to touch him, when the last time he’d done so was to cradle his body as he died. As the Master left him alone. Purposefully. Spitefully.
“You abandoned me.” The Doctor doesn’t mean to say it, but it slips out anyway. A mistake, too raw, too honest. An invitation for the Master to twist the knife, push it deeper.
“Oh, I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be left behind. Abandoned.”
The unfairness of the accusation stings, because that’s not what happened, that’s not how it went. Even back then, the first time, all he wanted was-
The Master laughs, and it’s a ragged, mean sound that has the Doctor gritting his teeth as a flash of anger rushes through him.
“Did I break your hearts, Doctor?” The hand that had been grasping at his coat slides up, fingers dipping beneath his collar to brush the back of his neck. “I remember the begging and the pleading, but it gets a bit fuzzy at the end. Did you cry? Did you weep over my dead body while your humans watched? Please tell me you did.”
The Doctor, for a brief, shameful moment, thinks about hitting him. The urge is gone in an instant, leaving behind an awful weight in his chest, but the anger stays. Because he had wept. Because he had been ready to walk away from everything. From Martha and Jack and Earth and the universe itself if need be. All for the Master. All for the chance to be near him, with him again.
He would have done it. But the Master had chosen death instead.
And in the silence and solitude of the TARDIS he has sobbed and screamed and raged over it. Gone over and over in his head what he could have done different or better or more or less to make the Master stay. Cursed himself and Lucy and the universe, but most of all him.
“I did,” is all he can say, throat tight and eyes squeezed shut.
You did, is all he can think.
“Good,” the Master breathes, toying with the hair at the nape of his neck, brushing his fingers though the strands and scraping his nails lightly over the sensitive skin.
There’s nowhere for the Doctor to go. They’re as close as they can be, his tie still wrapped around the Master’s hand and his own still pinning the other to the solid metal at his back. He finds he doesn’t want to though. He wants to press even closer, hold the Master there, quiet him, feel him and know that he’s alive. Know that despite the Master’s best efforts, his spitefulness and his vindictiveness, they’re both here.
“Do you remember my father’s land back home?”
The Doctor opens his eyes to see the Master looking past him, his face having shifted into something, not soft, but distant, wistful.
“Pastures of red grass, stretching far across the slopes of Mount Perdition.” The Master smiles, mainly to himself, and it’s a subdued, sad thing. “We used to run across those fields all day, calling up at the sky.”
There’s a mournful longing to the Master’s words that the Doctor isn’t sure he’s ever heard before. Certainly, not before the war. Maybe on those rare nights on board the Valiant, when the Master would come to him in the dark, driven often by the unbearable noise in his head, but slao sometimes by need, compulsion, loneliness. Just the two of them, no taunts, no torture, no begging, no recriminations. Just them.
But even then, the Master had never spoken like this.
“Look at us now.”
The Doctor tries to summon up some level of disgust, outrage at the Master for waxing nostalgic for their childhood, the beauty and innocence of the home that is now lost to them both after everything he has done, the people he has killed. After leaving the Doctor alone.
But he can’t. He finds his anger morphing into an ache of want more akin to grief. Because he does remember. Can picture in vivid detail exactly what the Master is describing. And it hurts.
Maybe because he’s been dreaming of Gallifrey so often of late. Of that burnt orange sky. Of his family, his children and grandchildren. Of friends and enemies and friends turned enemies.
Of one in particular.
He looks down to watch as the Master unspools his tie from around his hand. He then fans his hand out across his chest, and the Doctor imagines that he’s trying to feel both his hearts at once. He has the urge to reach out and do the same, to feel that double beat beneath his fingers, proof not just of life itself, but of a Time Lord life.
The Master opens his mouth to say something, but whatever it was sputters off into choked cry as his body jerks, goes rigid, the same energy he’d used to attack the Doctor with earlier suddenly exploding out of him in bright, flashing waves.
It’s like the flash comes from inside him, under his skin, illuminating his bones, his core, and the Doctor is so horrified by the sight that his grip on the Master slackens, allowing him to shove him away. He stumbles back as the Master collapses to the ground, falling on his hands and knees, his body shaking as it seems to fracture. The Doctor’s frozen, mesmerised by the awful sight of the Master burning from within, energy rolling and pouring off of him.
It stops, eventually, though it feels like it goes on forever, the light disappearing, leaving the Master on the ground, hands clawed into the dirt and body wracked with tremors.
“What happened to you?” the Doctor asks when he manages to find his voice, still rooted to the spot.
“Lucy happened. Sweet, sweet, not so loyal Lucy.” The Master’s head hangs low, and the Doctor watches the rise and fall of his shoulders as he struggles to catch his breath. “Didn’t know she had it in her, although maybe I should have. Wonderfully vicious thing she was. The way she danced along that day. The way she used to beg me to tell her exactly how I was going to conquer her little planet. The way she’d claw her nails down my back until I bled when we-”
“Stop!”
The Master grins up at him, sharp and amused, all trace of softness gone, then slowly pushes himself upright, sitting back on his heels. He wipes his hands on his thighs, but the dark jeans aren’t in much of a better state. The Doctor takes a hesitant step towards him, and the Master’s gaze drags slowly over him, eventually settling on his face.
“You’re dying.”
It’s not a question.
“Seems that way.”
“You’re burning up your own life force.”
It’s the same thing, all over again. The Master allowing himself to die. Whatever empty, fleeting validation he might feel at having ultimately been correct, at having known the Master could never truly kill himself, would always have a way out, a way back, pales in the face of losing him again. At having lost him to begin with.
“I’m so hungry, Doctor.” The Master stares up at him through half-lidded eyes, hands digging claw-like into his thighs. “It hurts, always. Like something eating at me, consuming me from the inside. Never full, never satisfied.”
The Doctor thinks of the blood he smelt on the Master’s breath, the smell of human, and his stomach roils at the implication, the horrific conclusion he can’t help but come to.
More horrific though is the way he can’t help but think it’s not even working.
He’s still dying.
“I can feel it, no matter what I do, no matter how much I take, it’s never enough. I’m ripped open. Leaking and bleeding and spilling everywhere. Not enough, never enough, never ever, ever, ever-”
The Master starts babbling, voice turning frantic as he bends at the waist, curling in on himself. The Doctor drops unthinkingly to his knees, reaching for him, and the Master looks up, taken aback when the Doctor grasps his face in his hands.
“No,” he says, pressing his fingers into the Master’s skin like he could hold him there, hold him together. Like he could dig his fingers in deep enough to make him whole and then keep him that way. “No.”
No.
You will not die.
You will not leave.
You will not tear yourself or them apart.
No.
The Master stares at him with wide eyes, shaking hands rising to wrap loosely around his wrists.
“Let me help you.” The Master sneers, but the Doctor just leans in closer, brings their faces closer together. “I swear, whatever it takes. I promise, Master. I can help you. I want to help you. Let me save you.”
As the Master searches his face the Doctor concentrates on a simple truth, hoping desperately that he can convince the Master of his sincerity, the absence of any ulterior drives, and stave off whatever contrary, destructive thing the Master might do if feeling cornered. Pitied. Hopes the truth is evident in his eyes, across his face, in his thoughts if the Master is bothering to search them too.
Just the truth. The truth that the Doctor wants to help him survive. That above everything else, above sense and logic and even principle, he wants the Master to live, as simple as that.
The hands on his wrists twist, slipping under the cuffs of his coat and jacket, fingers finding his pulse.
“It hurts,” the Master says. “The drums that never stop. Always there, every minute, every second, every beat of my hearts. They never stop.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Listen. They’re right there, calling.” There’s a growing insistence in the Master’s voice, a desperations. “Can’t you hear them?”
“I can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t”
“Listen, Doctor. Please, just listen.”
“I can’t,” the Doctor repeats, keeps repeating even as the Master releases his wrists, raises his fingers to his temples instead, and brings their foreheads together. He’s repeating it even as he watches the Master close his eyes, even as-
Oh.
They’re so loud.
The sound of the drums pound inside his head, filling him as they drown out everything else. He can hear them, feel them, not just in his head, but in his chest, his bones, his blood. Everywhere. They’re everywhere.
And they’re real.
He never thought they were, that they could be. Their entire lives he had assumed they were a creation, a symptom maybe of the Master’s madness. But he was wrong. They’re not. They’re real. And they are all consuming.
He needs them to stop. He needs them to never stop. He needs-
The Doctor sways forward, and the Master breaks contact to catch him.
“What is it?” he asks, kept upright only by the Master’s hands. “What is that sound? What’s inside your head?”
“You can hear it?” He can hear the wariness in the Master’s voice, the carefully controlled hope.
The Doctor nods, and the Master grabs at his face, pulling his head up so that they’re looking at each other. It almost hurts, to see the awe, the relief on the Master’s face.
“You can hear it?” The Master laughs. “It’s real. It’s real.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He’s sorry for not believing him, for allowing him to suffer for all this time. He’s sorry for not knowing.
“But you understand now? You do, don’t you? You can hear it, so you know. You know now.”
The Doctor does. He understands. Not just how such an incessant, deafening noise might drive one to insanity, but how it might sound like a calling. How the beat might fill you beyond capacity, and drive to you to move. To act, to build, to destroy, to burn.
“Yes, I do,” he whispers, and the Master looks at him with such astonishment, such wonder at hearing him say it out loud.
Maybe because he never expected the Doctor to admit it, or maybe because he too has spent his life doubting, at least a little, and so to have someone else confirm the existence of the noise in his head, to have them share it. The Doctor can only imagine the relief.
It’s not gentle, when the Master kisses him. Not that he would have expected gentle, if he’d thought to expect anything at all. Fingers pull at his hair, dig into the back of his neck as the Master slams their mouths together. His tongue runs along his lips, and the Doctor opens his mouth to let him in. He’s not sure what to call the noise he makes – a moan, a sigh, a whimper – but it doesn’t matter, because it’s swallowed up immediately.
His hands find their way to the Master’s waist, and he doesn’t realise he’s pushing until he feels an arguing tug at his hair, accompanied by teeth sinking into his lower lip. His lip stings, throbs, and he’s sure he must be bleeding but he doesn’t taste it because the Master gets there first, lapping at the blood.
The pain doesn’t stop him though, because he’s pushing down, not away, easing the Master back, urging his legs to straighten so he can lay them both down on the dusty ground. He hovers over him, knees either side of his thighs, body bent as he buries his face in the Master’s neck.
The Doctor brushes aside the stink of blood and dirt and humanity and instead breathes in the scent of red grass and cadonwood and schlenk blossoms. He breathes in weanskrike and tristort carried down by the sharp mountain winds. He breathes in home, and the Master, and remembers light glinting off silver leaves, the sheets of his bed at the Academy, the taste of magenta fruit, the Master’s lips on his when they were so much younger.
It’s different now, but still exactly the same.
The Master tilts his head back as the Doctor drags his tongue up the column of his neck, clawing at whatever he can reach. If the Doctor hadn’t been fully dressed, he’s sure he’d have scratches. He still might.
His own hands slide under the Master’s clothes, seeking out bare skin, fingers gripping, pressing hard when he finds it, and in the background, in his head and in his chest and beneath his hands, he hears the beat. One, two, three, four. One two, three, four.
The Master is home. Not Rassilon and the Council and the War, not the politicians and instructors and all their rules, not the stagnation and the antipathy and all the things he ran away from, but the things he hadn’t want to leave behind. The things he missed. The things he still misses.
The Doctor cannot bare to let go. Not now. Not again.
He doesn’t know what he’d be without the Master.
The Master sighs his name, laughs at his soft, pleasured gasp when he pulls his hair, in encouragement this time. The Doctor runs his nose up the Master’s neck, along his jaw, behind his ear, inhaling deeply, filling his lungs near bursting. He then follows the same trail with his lips, brushing over the Master’s skin, the rough scratch of stubble.
The Doctor feels the Master’s arms wrap around him, feels him arch up, no doubt in preparation for flipping them, rolling them over so that he can be the one to push the other back into the dirt. He doesn’t let him. Drops his own weight down further instead, pinning the Master with his body.
“No,” he asserts, mouth pressed to the Master’s temple.
He listens to him huff, raising his head when the arms around him tighten, holding him in place just as much.
“Make me,” the Master says, eyes clear and open and fierce, but not daring. More inviting, and what the Doctor hears unspoken is make me stay.
Not keep me, not lock me up, things neither of them wants, things neither of them could ever truly stomach.
Make me stay.
Stay.
What the Doctor wants, what he’s always wanted, what he can admit to wanting only to himself when there’s no one else he needs to pretend for, justify himself to.
He wants the Master to stay. He wants to make the Master stay.