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The Doctor should have been able to recognize it by now, even on another face. He had seen the look when they had been in school together, and he had seen it every time the Master had ever set his eyes on him.
It was a look of pure want. And what the Master wanted, usually the Master got.
The Doctor saw the look, and he recognized it, but he recognized it just that millisecond – maybe even less, after all, Time is always curving, always subjective – too late before the Master reached up and snapped his fingers and the door to the cell slammed shut.
He could have slammed his fingers against the metal wall, but he knew that it wouldn’t have done any good. The Master had always thought things through.
That had been the most terrifying thing about him.
Instead of banging, or screaming, or pleading, the Doctor merely turned around, because he knew that the Master was going to be standing right behind him, with those huge, searching eyes, the ones that always felt like scalpels taking the Doctor apart and then putting him back together again, to simply begin again.
“What is it you want?” the Doctor inquired, crisply.
“What have I always wanted?” the Master replied, and then he began to laugh.
***
The Doctor normally did not sleep, did not need to sleep, was always traveling back and forth in time and finding that sleep was eaten up somewhere in between.
And yet, the Master gave him a bed without any explanation, and told him that he would be back in the morning.
He’d had a smile on his face when he’d said it, and that had shaken the Doctor to his core. What was it that he was so happy about, now? And what did he have planned?
And as soon as the Doctor opened his eyes, there the Master was, staring at him as if he’d been sitting there the entire night. Maybe he had.
“Tell me what you want,” Doctor said again, “You can’t keep me here forever. Well, you can. But why would you want to? Don’t you have some grander plan to achieve?”
“What grander plan could there be?” the Master replied. “Then finding the person I love most in the world and keeping them safe?”
The Doctor hesitated.
“Pardon me - maybe you could come again, just once more?”
“I love you. If you love something… what’s the phrase?”
“Let them go?” the Doctor prompted.
“No,” the Master said and laughed, “That’s not how it goes. If you love someone… you should keep them close. As close as you can be. And since you can travel through time and space… Maybe I won’t get another chance.”
“Seems unlikely,” the Doctor replied, “We always seem to run into each other, like a pair of bad pennies.”
“Maybe,” the Master agreed, “But why take the chance?”
And like that, he vanished again.
***
The Doctor looked for the sonic screwdriver. He had to find a way out of here. When he slipped out, he would find Martha, and he would warn her.
What he would warn her about, he wasn’t entirely sure. Of all the things Martha had told him about her old life – her exams as she learned medicine, her nosy but loving family, and even a weird dog she had had as a child who had loved to run with bowling balls – she’d never mentioned a former paramour who had become, if the Doctor had the terminology correct, a stalker.
He was, however, reminded of a book he had read once, back when he had worn a very different, much older-looking face. It had been about a man in England who won the lottery and decided to kidnap the girl he desired and make her love him.
He couldn’t remember quite how it had ended, but the Doctor was sure that it hadn’t been good. It had been called The Collector; he remembered that much.
Where was that blasted sonic screwdriver?
He looked in his pockets, looked in his shoes even. Had the Master somehow snatched it from him, and if so, when had he done it? He shivered to imagine the Master running his fingers over him while he wasn’t aware.
He began to pace again – if only he had Martha there, or Rose, or Donna, or Ace, or any one of the people he had kept by his side during his travels. His brain had always worked better, been smoother, when he had been able to bounce his ideas and anxiety off of another being. All of them seemed to blur together in his mind, now, a sky full of hearts instead of stars.
What would Martha say now, if he could talk to her? Maybe she would have advice for how he could be resilient in the face of this turn, maybe that was something they had taught her when she had been learning to become a doctor who could work with people, who could understand people.
There was a rap on the metal door, and then the Master re-appeared, grinning ear to ear all over again.
“Hello, lovely,” he sang out, “Now that you’ve had a chance to get used to the place, it’s time to make it our own, isn’t it?”
And the Doctor had never felt so collected, so much like a butterfly on a board.
***
The Master found, or created, a table, a small round one that made them sit closer together than the Doctor wanted.
The Doctor would rather be on the other side of the universe, to be fair.
“What would you like for dinner?” The Master asked. “Or maybe it’s lunch – maybe even breakfast! It can really be anything that we want. We make the rules. It can be anything that we desire.”
“Anything that you desire,” the Doctor retorted, “Because what I desire is not to be here sitting across from you.”
“Oh, come on. Wouldn’t you like some… bangers and mash? Huevos rancheros? Or maybe what you’re hungry for is a little more… complicated?”
The Doctor stared at him, tried to study him, figure out a way to make him tick. There had to be a way to uncouple him, to neutralize him and render him harmless.
But throughout time and space, he’d never been able to figure out a way.
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” the Master purred. “I want to know what you want to eat. I’d like to share it with you… Or just watch you eat it.”
The Doctor blinked.
“Is there a particular reason you want to watch me eat? Something that strokes your ukulele strings when you consider that mental image?”
“I want to know everything about you,” the Master said, leaning in so that his face wasn’t even an inch away from the Doctor’s. Oh, he wanted to push him away, to shove him off into eternity, into that same dark well that his sanity had rushed down that day so long ago. But he stayed stoic, stayed fixed in space (and time, even as much as he hated this time). “Need I remind you that we are the only two of our kind left in the world! There still must be more to uncover!”
“What is it you want?” the Doctor asked again.
“I already told you,” the Master replied, smiling. “I want you. We need to be together.”
“We don’t need to be together,” the Doctor replied, “We were doing just fine when we were separate.”
“But we could do so much together… And in time, you’re going to see.”
And then he was gone, all over again, and the Doctor was banging on the door again.
***
He couldn’t get to the TARDIS, so he tried to time-travel in his mind.
He conjured up all the places and people who he had loved over time, brought them together before his eyes. He had loved the way he felt when the doors would burst open, and he could step out into anywhere, the giddy bursts of unrestrained freedom.
But even those memories were spoiled. Because on Gallifrey, on Anura, on Brus, on Earth, he could still feel the breath of the Master on his neck, could still see him creeping in every shadow.
Maybe the Master was right – maybe they were connected. But that feeling made him wonder if it had all been worth it – what was the point in the Doctor changing his face if he couldn’t change whatever dark rope connected him to his other, rotten half?
***
The Master would leave him alone for maybe hours, maybe days, and then he would appear at the edge of the cage and begin to speak to him as if they were old friends.
Well, not quite friends – much more than that.
“When we get past this hitch,” the Master said on one of the days, “We will travel the world together. I’ll get rid of my old ship – the TARDIS is in much better shape – and we’ll go around and see the universe. Won’t that be lovely? It's so... vast.”
The Doctor didn’t respond. He was trying to stay inside his head – logic must win out, he told himself. How was the Master getting in and out, anyway, if the Doctor himself couldn’t leave? If it was something he could do, then the Doctor could figure out how to do it – and better. He had always managed to get the better of the Master, always managed to get his head that little bit above water to strike out.
He had learned a long time ago that he needed to be better than the Master at every turn, because the Master was not distracted by morality or righteousness but he was distracted, always, by that sound of drumming.
Maybe that was the answer, the Doctor mused, some way to crack the code in the other Time Lord’s ever-drumming brain.
The Doctor’s face curled into what he hoped look like some kind of a smile – that was what he was expecting, wasn’t it? He was expecting the Doctor to open his big blue box and bring the Master inside, take over the galaxy and do… what exactly? It was hard to chip away at the manically smiling face, the eyes that seemed to dance.
Dance until the end of time itself.
“Doctor?” the Master prompted. “You seem to be lost in thought. I don’t judge you for it, I mean… my glory is a lot. I know this.”
The Doctor wanted to snort, wanted to tell the Master that his glory was only the cracks in its own reflection reflecting rainbows of light. He wanted to tell him that really, he felt bad for him, that he realized that it could have been him who had looked instead of the Master (he had always been curious, after all) and then maybe they would be here, just the same, but reversed, with the Doctor’s hand on the latch and the Master trapped inside.
But he knew that none of those words would convince the other Time Lord to release him. Because in the Doctor's words, he would only hear the words he wished to hear.
“I think we should just move right into making plans,” the Master said, and he sounded so chipper that the Doctor wondered, for just a moment, whether maybe he was the one in the wrong. “Where would you like to go to first? Won’t that just put a smile on your face? I know that you love to see new worlds, save new insignificant life – well, just direct us anywhere. We’ll go there, and we’ll find whomever it is, and we’ll just go right ahead and save them. Just like I saved you.”
The Doctor’s eyes (and, he was sure, his mind) opened wide to try and take this in. In his travels, he had heard just about every twisted version of every justification before – from every being who felt that they needed to fight a bloody war to defeat some imaginary enemy, to beings who had captured or killed or fed upon other beings just because they told themselves it was the way that it had always been done.
But the Master was something else entirely – he seemed to not merely twist the truth but disassemble it and place it back together in something unrecognizable.
All existence through cracked glasses.
“I’d like to see…” the Doctor began. Maybe he could find Martha if he chose right, or maybe he could find a place where he knew the lay of the land and could make his escape.
Everything hinged on what words he said next, and hinged on him being able to end the sentence even. He should be able to figure out the Master, now – they should have chased each other around long enough that he could see far enough ahead of him to find a way out.
But he hadn’t seen far enough ahead of him to predict this.
Finally, it hit him that for right now, he saw no way out.
“I’d like to see you,” he said finally, because maybe the only way to stir empathy in his captor was to try to meet him where it was, and to try to talk over that constant drumming in the Master’s head. If he really loved the Doctor or really thought he did, maybe he would listen.
All the Doctor could do right now was hope.
The Master turned his head up and beamed, springing forward in less than a second.
“Well, I’d like to see you, too,” the Master replied, glee in his eyes. “Let’s get to know each other. I always found myself… musically inclined… and…”
Well, the Doctor mused, that made sense. If you must have drumming in your head, you’d might as well apply it to music. If he had done that earlier, maybe he wouldn’t have become the Master but instead become some legendary composure.
Then again, maybe he was both. Someone being completely mad wasn’t mutually exclusive from them being some sort of a genius.
Those were the most terrifying types, after all.
The Master walked over to a little turntable that the Doctor had not noticed him setting up, and he began to fiddle with the needle on the record.
“I always felt that this was so much preferable to any other form of music. When it’s live, isn’t it quite loud? And digital does not have the same feeling… Here, you can let your fingers set on the grooves and listen to the way that the bass… the way that it goes into your hearts and beats along with them. Have you ever thought about that, Doctor? We’ve had a lot of years to think.”
The music began to play, beginning with the strumming of a guitar. The Doctor tried to scan his brain for it and it took him a little while before he hit it. “Terrapin” by Syd Barrett. Susan had enjoyed him.
“Oh baby, my hair’s on end about you…”
The years after the sixties had been a time of settling, of realizing that idealism had evaporated into a mold of the “me decade”, everyone being out for themselves and discovering that they were the only ones they could truly change.
The Master glided, now, over to the Doctor and placed one hand on the Doctor’s hip and took his hand in another.
He began to sway with him, to the music.
The Doctor didn’t know who was leading.
It might take a few lifetimes to figure that out. But if nothing else… they had time.