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The entire landscape is lit with gold. Rolling stretches of soft grass, expanding to meet the horizon. Spotless skies gradient from glowing white to pale blue, disappearing into the other end of the planet. Tall, willowy obelisks curve against the wind, matching the black rivers winding throughout the valleys. It’s not the most stunning or exciting world, but it is calm, and cloudless, and to Clara’s knowledge, safe from any imperative danger.
The Master glances around blankly. Not particularly impressed, but not scornful either. She beckons him away from the TARDIS, which has taken the form of one of the monoliths, except ivory white. Unlike some other ships Clara knows, hers delights in an opportunity to demonstrate its chameleon abilities—with its own flair on the environment.
“I get the feeling you’ve been spending a lot of your days in the dark,” she says, leading him out onto the crest of the hill, “which is why I’ve taken us to a tidally-locked planet. Eternally just after dawn—so enough sun to get your daily dose of Vitamin D, but not so intense you’ll burn.”
The Master scoffs. “I don’t need that,”
Clara raises her eyebrows. “Just for that, you’re probably in desperate need of a supplement.”
“I think I know more about my own biology than you do, thanks.”
“Please, I travelled with the Doctor long enough to know that even Time Lords can stand to take a multi-vitamin every so often.”
Clara sits down on the soft yellow grass, indicating for him to join her. After a moment of hesitation, he takes a seat next to her and crosses his legs.
“Were they the gummies?” He asks, then shakes his head when she nods. “Probably just liked the flavour.”
Unconvinced, she thinks back to all the times she came across the Doctor eating something horrifying. Beyond licking leaves and walls and in one particularly disgusting instance, doorknobs—she’d stumbled in on him snacking on packing peanuts like popcorn and aquarium pebbles like candy. Maybe the Master has a point.
“Fair,” she concedes, “but the sun’ll do you good, so sit. Bask. Talk to me,”
The Master angles towards her. “You have questions,” he states.
When she first met him, on the other planet; with its rain, wind, and guttural howling—everything about him looked ravaged and hollow. Broken, lost, drifting in the storm. She was right to bring him here, because the sun brightens the darkness, colours in some of the grey, and sparks light into his brown eyes, softening the intensity.
It’s a better look than gun-shot and haunted, but she also understands that a few moments outside can’t transform the internal landscape so easily. Nothing is ever so effortless, as much as she wishes it would be. But it’s a start.
“I’m sure you do too,” Clara replies, “so how about you go first?”
“Mm,” he hums, resting his hands back on the grass. “What happened to your little friend? The one that’s responsible for your… current condition.”
“Me?” Clara asks, then hurries on because the name never fails to confuse. “She moved on. Met a girl, fell in love… you know how it goes.”
That barely accounts for any of the emotion, the angst that ensued when Me announced she was leaving. Centuries of companionship and then... abandonment. Insecurities and mistrust boiling up, until the final moments and she was just—gone.
“Do you resent her for it?”
Clara picks at a grass pod, rolling it between her fingers. “I did. For a while… and then I understood. Now, I just miss her.”
“And you never hated her for what she did?” He pauses. “She took everything from you.”
“And she gave me that much more. It was never going to be simple between us, but… even with everything, we made it work. While it lasted,”
“Right. But you’ve had other companions, haven’t you?”
He’s needling her. It’s all fair questions, she supposes, and it’s not so intrusive to bother her, but there’s still something sharp in his probing—beyond curiosity. It’s seeking, targeted, but whatever he asks she’ll provide if it manages to satisfy his search.
“I travelled with other people, yeah.”
“Happy endings?” He knows the answer to that—a lifestyle like hers, like any lonely traveller—all too intimately aware of the consequences.
A long list of names, the scroll of faces come and lost. The best part of being a time traveller is that nobody is ever truly dead.
But the worst part about being a time traveller is that really, it means everyone is always already dead. Bodies scattered across time and space. She saw the grave of the Doctor—has seen so many die and never breathe again. That struck in her the great fear of mortality—that somewhere down the line, the universe and all its life is already over.
That thought suffocated in the back—and sometimes, on bad days, the front—of her mind, that in an alley on Earth her body was already positioned, already lifeless, and she would eventually circle back to it.
And then she landed on Gallifrey and the mark on her neck vanished, and her body was her own once again.
So, “Sometimes,” Clara offers, to dampen the rising cynicism and give credit to hope and loss in their own turn. “If I’m lucky,”
He doesn’t say anything else—no doubtful comment, so she assumes that indicates acceptance.
“Surely you’ve had… friends, or accomplices, in your travels,” Clara ventures cautiously.
“Accomplices,” he muses, “plenty of those. Friends is a stretch.”
“Oh, come on,” she tilts her head, “and don’t say me or the Doctor, that’s easy. At least one,”
The Master sighs. “Recently…” he pauses, contemplating. “There was a lizard.”
“Sentient?”
“A Silurian,” he amends, “Russia, in the seventies. I suppose you could call us friends, up until the end.”
“What happened?”
He grimaces at the memory. “She betrayed me for a mushroom.”
“Oh,” Clara winces, “yikes.”
“Yikes indeed.”
She ponders for a moment. “Why were you in Russia?”
“Why else?” the Master smiles wryly. “The Doctor, of course. Stranded for over seventy years, crawling back to twenty-twenty—the long way ‘round.”
“That seems strikingly cruel,” Clara says, frowning. “How’d that happen?”
His voice is dull when he replies. “Paris. Eiffel Tower. She left me to the Nazis.”
She freezes. “In this body,”
“Mm.”
Uneasy, Clara scans the Master’s face. Regardless of whatever he did… nobody deserves that. Especially given his current appearance. And there’s no way the Doctor didn’t consider it. A pit of disturbance balls in her chest at the implications. She wants to ask, but she holds back. The lifeless look has begun to reappear in his eyes, and she doesn’t want to be responsible for a spiral.
“I’m sorry,” she says. There’s a growing divide forming in her mind between the Doctor she knew—who, to her belief, would never do something so heartless—and the one the Master describes to her now.
His gaze slides away from hers, looking back out to the landscape. “Yes, well. It’s over. Can’t do anything about it.”
“Still,” she says, “that’s awful.”
He shrugs. “I’ve been through worse.”
She doesn’t buy the nonchalance for a second, but it’s clear he doesn’t want to verge any further on the subject. And she doesn’t want to confront the churning emotions in herself, because if she does that, she’ll have to form a decision, take a stance. Easier to let it slide and slip into something less painful.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Clara says.
The Master looks back at her. “I thought you wanted to bask,”
“We can multi-task. C’mon,” and then she stands and holds out her hand.
After a moment of reluctance, he takes it and gets to his feet. When she doesn’t let go of his hand, he glances over her, then sighs. “You really are one for touch,” he comments, but doesn’t pull away.
“Do you mind?”
“...No.” The admission leaves him looking a little self-conscious, as if accepting physical contact might be something embarrassing. He didn’t seem bothered in his last body, considering the lack of respect for personal space—yet that felt more like intentional intrusion rather than any kind of vulnerability. “Do you have a destination or are you planning to meander?”
“No agenda. Getting lost here would be impressive, so a wander can’t do any harm.” So she pulls him along, intertwining her fingers with his. “How ‘bout I tell you some of my adventures... and then you can share yours, if you like.”
“I don’t know,” he says doubtfully, “a fair portion of my travels might disagree with your morals.”
She shrugs. “Whatever you feel like sharing. I’ve lived a millennium since our last confrontation. Things change... but, ah, feel free not to colour in all the gory details.”
“Mm. Alright, Clara. Since you’re so wizened—you tell me your fall from innocence... and I’ll reminisce about past exploits.”
“Sounds lovely,” she says in mild irony, “and after that, we’ll go somewhere exciting. If you’re up for it,”
“Is exciting code for searching for trouble and then inevitably saving everyone around you? Because I’ve been involved with that definition before, and the last time ended with everybody dead.”
“No. Well, mostly no. I won’t get us killed,” she promises, “and if things go wrong, we don’t have to stay.”
“Really?” he looks at her with sharpened interest. “You would walk away from a crisis? That’s not very Doctor of you.”
“I’m not the Doctor,” she says, “and they aren’t here. So don’t worry about it,”
“Oh, I’m not.” He smiles slightly, the beginnings of a smirk. “I’m curious as to what inspired your disillusionment to their special brand of saviour complex.”
Clara peers at him for a moment, noting how the sudden intrigue lights his expression. There’s a defensive urge rising from the back of her throat, still after all these years. None of those wounds disappeared. Scarred over, knitted together, but never completely healed. Not in her. Definitely not in him. And that of anything feels the most ironic of this—stepping around the palpable weight of pain and misery that if shared, could easily overwhelm. And so she has to be careful, bundle that loss and tuck it deep. Swallow the urge, set aside the greatest similarity between her and the Master and focus on the present. She can’t live on that cliff. It’s not sustainable and—she’s not alone anymore.
So she smiles, suppresses the surmounting sadness, and resolves that regardless of what is asked, she’s not going to spill the burden.
“Nothing so simple,” she finally says, “keep close, and I just might tell you.”