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On the day when all ended and all began, at a little white balcony atop the highest spire of the Citadel, sat the Lord President of Gallifrey. Before him, on a glass table, lay the Seal and an order to lift the clause of non-interference – one still unsigned.
The Master, clad in black flowing robes, entered the balcony with a sense of grandeur that rarely came upon this damaged thirteenth incarnation. He looked around to take in every speck of the moment: the streams of time bubbling with change; the sky orange like the Prydonian ceremonial robes; the two suns a heavy lazy scarlet, sinking beneath the horizon; the temporal presence of his Lord President – the Doctor – shining brighter than anything he ever dared to look at.
Tonight, they would make history.
The Doctor’s eyes, too, lit up when he saw the Master standing in the doorway – lit up with the pure, unadulterated joy that illuminated this face much more often than all his predecessors’ combined. A joy worth burning for.
He rose from his chair. Even now, at the apex of his power, he stayed true to his usual garb: Earthly shirt and trousers, a coat of rich brown velvet, a ridiculously long striped scarf hanging off his shoulders. “Here at last!” he called. “I was beginning to worry.”
The last words had none of his usual laughing tone, and the Master loved to hear it.
Once, on a tiny planet with a hissing name they both hated, the Doctor had gotten his revenge, a cruel comeuppance over a meaningless conflict, that had taken the Master's last regeneration and his health. Since then, he had treasured every proof that the Doctor cared for him – regretted that reckless way in which he had thrown the Master to the death.
And ever since their reconciliation, the Doctor was generous for gestures of care.
“Who would dare harm me?” the Master responded, coming up to the Doctor and leaning on the balcony railing. “You have already demonstrated the cost of angering you when you tore Ex-Castellan Kelner to shreds. I have to admit, it was an imaginative death.”
The Doctor shrugged it off. “Don’t mention it. Remember when they showed us these out-of-sync bubbles of time during seminars at the Academy? I always wanted to know what happens if somebody sticks his head into one of these…”
“So you have known.” The Master laid his drained, thin fingers upon the Doctor’s hand. It was warm and full of life against the cold cast iron of the railing. “I assume Cardinal Borusa, too—”
“Of course not!” The Doctor laughed. “Alive and free to wander around the Capitol. Don’t you think I won’t use the experience of an inside man?”
“I have learned from Goth while I waited for your arrival in the catacombs of the Panopticon. Is this not enough?”
“He ran the Citadel for a year,” the Doctor said. “While you watched from beneath the Citadel, getting your knowledge from a brainwashed Chancellor. We’ve learned from him once, why not do it again?”
The memory of the Master’s time in hiding evoked, once again, the memory of their last fight – a pettiest quarrel, like two lifelong friends fighting to death over someone who strikes the fancy of them both. They had both wanted Tersurus for themselves, and nothing could stop any one of them when they wanted something.
Therefore, they had fought, and upon victory the Master allowed himself a moment of weakness – to ask the Doctor to reign together like they were always meant to; the Doctor, bitter because of a particularly pathetic loss, had laughed instead and killed him a slow death.
It wasn’t until he had framed the Doctor for the assassination of the President that the Doctor learned this death could have been final.
What had come next made up for every second of his pain. A dark room in the depths of the Capitol, the first room the Doctor had found to get him away from the eyes of the guards – the Doctor on his knees, desperate, devastated – you didn’t say it was your last – I’ll raze that planet to the ground for what it did to you – do you still want to…?
And the Master said yes. Two years and one very successful conquest later, they had learned there still was unrest on Gallifrey.
“We wanted our home to be different when we were young,” the Doctor persuaded him that night. “Now we can make it as we please. Give way to free minds like us. Shake off the decay that we escaped. All we have to do is come back and take it.”
And so three weeks ago the President-Elect – or, rather speaking, the only surviving candidate of the last Presidential election – had landed on Gallifrey and taken what was rightfully his.
When he snapped out of his memories, one of the Doctor’s hands rested on his waist and the other caressed his damaged cheek; the striped scarf – a cunning, sometimes sentient beast – made a snug spiral around the Master’s shoulders, drawing him closer to the Doctor.
“I wouldn’t trade you for Gallifrey reformed,” the Doctor whispered. “Your death was a lesson, and we both learned it. But we need his political mind. And we’ll get it, even if it means I have to break one of Rassilon’s relics for every word he’ll say to me.”
“And afterwards we’ll kill him?”
“We will not—Listen, why do you want to kill him so much?” The Doctor grinned. “It would be a waste! Just think: if he tutored us, surely he must be at least a little interesting to play with…?”
“You’re willing to disregard an obstacle in our way for a challenge?”
“Master!” the Doctor cried. From his lips it was a word of endearment. “You know – I’m willing to disregard anything for a challenge. And if you still fancy me after all these years, then so do you.”
“Quit lying,” the Master replied and brushed his fingers through the Doctor’s soft curls – almost reddish, he thought, in the orange light of the sky. “He is alive because he said your invasion was a nine-out-of-ten affair, and flattery always went right to your hearts.”
The Doctor laughed, leaned down and pressed a kiss to the Master’s lips.
“Did it?” he said. “Good heavens, I haven’t noticed. Well then…” He reached into the Master’s pocket, drew out the TCE and spoke in that endearing low half-tone he always used to draw attention to himself. “Flatter me to the twin suns and back if you want to live.”
The Master chuckled; his strained vocal cords could only make a half-choked croak. This Doctor was unbearable in his self-loving arrogance; a sharp contrast with his last self. That one matched the Master’s twelfth regeneration perfectly: two suave, affable, reserved rivals who waged a gentlemanly war against each other and knew the unspoken rules of polite combat as well as they knew each other’s minds.
His new – must have been the fourth – self was a sharper, crueler thing, mercurial, unrestrained and controlled by nothing but his whims. It was only natural that he was the one to strip the Master to the raw nerves.
When he raged, his rage would leave ashes in its wake; when he loved, his love was an act of worship. The Master has tasted both.
But the gentle pressure of the TCE against his throat was a playful, teasing gesture. The Doctor always loved a little danger to their games. And if he wanted to be flattered at the most important moment of their lives so far, the Master would do so with pleasure.
“Your skills in hypnotism have never been as sharp as now,” the Master said. “You have a mesmerising mind. If I wanted to kill you, I’d have taken your mind and your body. It would be a great loss to leave them unused.”
The Doctor laughed and slipped the TCE back into the Master’s hands. “Master,” he said, “you know I can’t refuse if you want to take me, mind or body. But could you leave it to four and a half minutes later?”
“Why four and a half?”
“Well, obviously, because three and a half minutes later the suns will set. Wouldn’t it please you to see the last ray of light die out as we seal this order and kill the times that bore us?”
“How romantic,” the Master said. “You’re utterly deranged. And already mine, Doctor – every fibre of your being.”
“Same goes for you,” the Doctor agreed. “Why else would you stand me for so long and—Now tell me, what do you think of the title of Presidential Consort?”
The Master wanted to laugh. Sometimes, it seemed as if the Doctor saw no difference between this regeneration and the previous ones; he dragged him along for a run that would leave even a healthy Time Lord out of breath, was surprised when the Master put on a perception filter for a simple visit to Earth – but loved him deeper than ever since their parting centuries ago and made his love with no regard for the Master’s emaciated state.
“A pleasant title,” he said. “Perhaps you’ll wait before making a farce of yet another rite?”
“Why should it be a farce?” the Doctor said. “Of course, if it’s you who wants to wait until your rebirth…”
The Master nodded.
“I checked today before getting up here,” the Doctor went on. “The Loom I ordered to be made for you would be ready in a year. Then I’ll weave you myself, down to the last strand of your genome—Oh!” His voice dropped to a conspiratory whisper once again. “Do you remember how they said half our Looming were born renegades because of a malfunction in the system? I say, we go back, find out what these malfunctions were and inject them into the current batch.”
“New Time Lords for a new time,” the Master replied. “I love it.”
The Doctor grinned a wide, toothy grin. It could mean anything, from a promise of death to an display of pure triumph; now it was an expression of happiness.
“Even if we fail, and someone beats us both,” he said, “we’re about to renounce non-interference. The old customs will never recover from this. Can you imagine? There’ll be renegades, bright and shining, more than there has even been, and Time Lords who have known life outside Gallifrey, fresh blood and fresh thoughts – and an opponent that has bested us both, and what can be more interesting than that?”
“A change on Earth?” the Master suggested. Earth was the Doctor’s pet planet, guarded from external influences with the ferocity of a mother protecting her child, the only place where he strove for non-interference.
The Master had first gotten the Doctor’s attention when he made a mistake of attacking it; twenty hours later, tied up before the Doctor’s calm blue sight while a latex mask hanged from his neck and the Nestene Consciousness choked on its own thoughts in the deepest and darkest room of the TARDIS, he knew his friend was no longer the naïve pacifist that had disowned him for his supposed cruelty – which meant there was a second chance for them.
The Doctor thought deeply for about two seconds. “Hmm. Yes, I love that – but I meant things to do, you see, not things to watch. I have many things to watch. Earth, of course, and that silly experiment with a computer I fixed for those colonists—oh, I must check up on it, I always forget but I wonder what are they up to!—"
“In that case, there’s always me.”
“Yes,” the Doctor said. “I may love you, Master, I may hate you, but I’ll never be tired of you.”
With these words he threw his head back and laughed, and the Master kissed his neck until he was out of breath from all that laughter and smiled wide enough for the grin to split his face in half.
The first of the suns touched the endless plains around the Citadel. Somewhere there, in the dying light, seven centuries ago two boys played in the red grass, yearning for other worlds and each other.
They were long gone; the world that birthed them, too, had overstayed its welcome.
The Doctor’s scarf loosened its grip around the Master’s shoulders. They sat behind the glass table, watching the sunset – the Doctor in a chair, the Master draped on his lap.
“And so it goes,” the Master said. “The greatest change since Rassilon. Would you take the honour of sealing it?”
“If I’m Rassilon,” the Doctor replied, “that makes you Omega, and I don’t feel like tossing you into a black hole. We’ll do it together, just like we took Gallifrey together. Just think: who lowered the transduction barrier? Who locked the High Council up when we needed them out of the way? Who took my jelly babies, the poisonous ones, and—”
“Look!” the Master called. “The last ray of light. Just what you wanted.”
The Doctor, as was usual, flipped between moods in a fraction of a moment. In an instant there was an air of Presidential grace around him, a sharp dignity piercing through the vibrations of his mind, determination in every movement of his hands.
“Stagnation,” the Doctor said, “I banish thee.”
The day when all ended and all began, too, ended. Their fingers intertwined on the handle of the Seal. Together, they pressed it down, and the old Gallifrey was no more.