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His bad days Goth takes for himself.
These always start out the same: Goth descends from his chambers into the old catacombs where his master took lurking. And there he lies, plastered out on the bed or on the floor, crushed by his pain.
There are tears in his eyes. They stream down his face, pour salt onto his blisters and burns and scars. He is hyperventilating; his hearts beat at thrice the normal speed.
He is always conscious – and he always remembers his lines.
“Kneel,” he creaks. “I am the Master, and you will obey me.”
He is a decayed abomination of a Time Lord, feverous, unable even to stand up, demanding obedience from a Chancellor. But his mind is at the apex of its power; Goth learned it the hard and painful way.
Goth kneels, already aware what is to follow when the Master’s crumbled fingers touch his temples.
Pain. Endless and all-consuming, it floods his mind, paralyses him and takes his voice. He is nothing but a drain for the Master to pour his own agony into, and he screams until the world fades into oblivion.
When he regains his consciousness, his voice is hoarse, and the Master, smiling, strong again, hands him a glass of water.
“Drink,” he says. “The Council needs your voice today.”
Goth drinks. The aftershocks of pain follow him around the Capitol for the rest of the day. Once, during his speech, he nearly seizes; only the remnants of his will stop him. The Chancellors and the Cardinals devour this little glimmer of weakness. In every pair of hearts in the room lurks a desire to stand in his place – the place of the future President.
Not many of them, he thinks, would like to take his place under the Master’s heel.
When he returns to his chambers, a reward awaits him for his labours. Two pills in a glass. Goth knows this picture too well: one is a painkiller, the other grants dreamless sleep.
He swallows both without second thoughts. In the final moment before consciousness leaves him, he almost feels free from control.
His good days the Master keeps to himself.
These are always different. Sometimes the Master’s mind can block out pain completely. Sometimes they celebrate Goth’s victories, obstacles passed on their way to the Presidency.
They need to be more careful. Ten days ago the Master took his voice during a Council meeting, and it was noticed.
Goth knows why he did it. That meeting was devoted to the case of a captured renegade – a hopeless idealist who stole a TARDIS and started technological revolutions on six planets – and Goth wanted to erase her out of time.
Every morning he thanks Rassilon and Omega that the Master could not break him fully. Otherwise he would take not only his voice, but his body and his regenerations.
Most of the Master’s happiness comes from conversations between him and his TARDIS. Goth often finds him in the console room; he sits on the floor, his back pressed into its bare heart, and they talk – two beings, scarred and mutilated, alone in their shared pain.
Sometimes it appears that they think of themselves as of a single entity. Usual of renegades, Goth thinks; they travel alone, and so their TARDISes protect them with devotion meant for six.
They use only High Gallifreyan with its complex system of tenses and pronouns. Three categories exist in their world – the singular we, Master and TARDIS, and the indifferent they, the rest of the cosmos.
The third category has a name of its own. The Doctor. Goth thinks little of this renegade. Long ago he presided over the committee that exiled him to Earth.
Once, as they work on the precognition machine, he boasts about it to the Master.
For a second the world goes still. Then the Master slams into his mind.
It hurts. Even the Master’s bad days don’t hurt this much. This is the hateful blow of a viper stricken at the heart. He dreads it won’t be the last one.
But the Master decides to show mercy. When Goth is torn out of his torture, he feels the hot brand of a slap on his cheek.
“Tissue regenerator,” the Master growls. The cracked dermis on his wrist comes apart, exposing pink flesh. “Fix my hand and your face. And never mention it again.”
Goth complies. He does nothing but comply since the day the Master looked into his eyes and broke his mind on a long flight from Tersurus.
Later, when the new day has begun and the sleeping pills haven’t yet taken effect, Goth curses his own stupidity. Of course, the Master, a renegade, wouldn’t appreciate stories of exiling his kin.
As simple as counting to thirteen. Still he feels he’s missing something.
Tomorrow belongs to them.
Goth smiles for the first time since Tersurus. Tonight the President resigns. Tomorrow a new President rises, and his reign shall span millennia.
With two glasses of ginger infusion he descends into his master’s catacombs for the last time.
“Master,” Goth says and sits down next to him, “let us celebrate.”
“Not now,” he replies. “When I come alive. When I have skin to feel and eyelids to blink. When my senses are as sharp as my mind. When you bear the Matrix Circlet.” Still, he accepts the glass and takes a sip. His lips are still numb from seizures, and drops of infusion drip down his chin. “To the Lords President!”
They toast. The Master half-empties his glass.
“Tonight Gallifrey bows before me!” he exclaims, the ginger essences getting to his head, and laughs. “And those who don’t… will die!”
“Like the Doctor.”
The Master’s cackling dies out.
“Yes.” His voice is quieter than rustling paper, surprised, as if he can’t believe his own words. “Tonight our rivalry ends. Tonight I will see the Doctor die!”
He tries his best to sound happy. But somehow, just for a moment, his hatred rings hollow.