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In another universe and many years ago…
An hour had passed since the Doctor returned from his latest excursion. Once hour since he had slammed open the door, dragged himself across the entryway to the central controls, thrown down the lever that would hurtle the TARDIS into the free orbit of the vortex, and sunk to the floor. A full hour later and he hadn't moved an inch, still slumped in that very same spot against the brass rails that circled the TARDIS console. One bony knee was clutched tightly to his chest, the other leg spayed uncaringly across the floor. His eyes were scrunched tightly shut, finding some small comfort in the heavy pressure of his eyelids despite the equivalent and utter darkness of the room around him. The chill of the metal floor seemed to leech through his trousers and past his skin, burrowing deep into his belly and bones.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t attribute the tremors that shook his frame to temperature alone. Alone. He’d been so alone. Alone on the ground, burnt and with more than one broken bone, yet surrounded by what was left of those who'd fared so much worse—
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Well, not entirely alone.
Far above his head he heard the rhythmic tap of footsteps leisurely working their way down the spiralling stairs. Precise footsteps. Declarative footsteps; each laid with the magnanimous intent of bestowing the ship’s sole occupant below a grace period in which he might choose to compose himself before the arrival of their bearer.
Too precise. Not flesh, not real like the screams wrenched from the torn lungs of soldiers around him had been mere hours before, as the bombs—
The Doctor understood the noise for the generosity that it was. If his shipmate really wanted to catch him off guard, he was more than equipped to do so. He was nothing, if not a proficient stalker. And it was a gift the Doctor had accepted on more than one previous occasion, allowing them both respite from unnecessary emotional confrontation (something they both preferred to avoid, given their track record).
On this occasion, however, the Doctor chose to remain there hunched on the floor.
The footsteps descended closer and closer before coming to an abrupt stop by his right shin. The Doctor remained motionless with his eyes clenched resolutely shut. A moment of silent consideration was followed by a swift kick to the extended limb, and the Doctor’s responding yelp was accompanied by a flood of light as the overhead beacons were reactivated with a psychic command. “My apologies Doctor, I didn’t see you there. Languishing in the dark...”
The Doctor squinted blearily against the brightness, glaring up at the intruder. Carefully coiffed in one of his customary black suits, the Master cut a strikingly dark silhouette against the blinding light as the Doctor’s eyes struggled painfully to adjust. Predictably, he did not look the least bit sorry for the intrusion, much less for the kick. “You can see in the dark just fine. Trust me, I should know. I’m the one who soldered your optic nerves in the first place.” The Doctor allowed his own eyes to fall back closed, hoping the Master would have the grace to take the hint and leave.
More predictably still, he did not.
Instead, he lifted his foot and placed it lightly on the Doctor’s impacted shin, precisely over the bruise he could feel beginning to form. “Or maybe your mechanical aplomb isn’t all that you claim. I could be falling apart at the seams right now.” He toed lightly over the spot before pressing firmly down, transmitting just enough weight to insist on attention while implying a trademark dose of threat. The clean shine of his loafer seemed mocking in contrast against the singed and blood-stained linen of the Doctors trousers—
The Doctor’s blood?
Had the Doctor’s eyes been open, he might have seen a flash of worry cross the Master’s face as he took in his state on the floor. There was something unnervingly vulnerable in his prone position; his arms were wrapped protectively around his left knee like a child, yet his head tiled back with eyes shut, throat paradoxically bared. Too gaunt, more so even than this regeneration’s usual angular disposition, and too thin by far. “Has anyone ever told you that you’ve become quite the mess in your old age?”
The Doctor remained motionless, refusing to rise to the bait. Nor to react as the pressure on his bruised leg increased in retribution for his quiet.
The Master’s furrow deepened, graduating into a full-fledged frown. So, this was to be more serious than the Doctor’s increasingly common fits of pique. After so many months of cohabitation following his mechanical resurrection, the Master prided himself on his expertise at navigating the many flavours of the Doctor’s emotional outbursts. “Self-pity is your most unflattering look. And yet somehow, it remains one of your most constant character traits. Honestly, I—" the Master broke off sharply, noticing the bloody handprint on the handrail above the Doctor’s head. Further still, there seemed to be drops trailing along the path between the Doctor and the door.
Lips pressed into a stern line, The Master withdrew his foot and made his way to the console’s central storage, returning swiftly with an emergency medical kit. “Where?” He questioned coldly, all affability rescinded.
The Doctor blinked and sighed, sensing no room for debate. He painstakingly unwound his arms from his knee, allowing it to sink to the floor and unveil a deep laceration spanning his abdomen.
The Master watched as a trickle of fresh blood make its way to join the sizable stain evident at his coattails, the sight of which escalated his mood from stern to incensed. He knelt, fastidiously removing his gloves and scanning the wound without a word. His head was close, close enough that the Doctor found himself studying the precise pattern of grey that dotted his beard, the tight clench of his jaw he studied the scanner, his expression caught somewhere between fury and something deeper.
Injured and despondent as he may be, the Doctor still found it in himself to take a moment to appreciate the genius of his own handiwork. The Master’s mechanical body was nearly indistinguishable from his previous forms, with features designed to be reminiscent of both his final regeneration and his stolen Trakenite physique. Similar to both, yet identical to neither. Not a copy, something new. In his least charitable moments, the Doctor found himself resenting the sheer precision of the body’s movements; an inescapable reminder that his form was mechanical rather than organic. That the Master had had to die in order to be reborn. However, his face was a different story altogether. The Doctor might have etched every pore and follicle, painstakingly welded each individual synthetic muscle fibre, but the choreography of expression behind every glower, grimace, smirk, laugh—that was all authentically the Master. Intrinsic to his person, regardless of his form, and well outside the power of the Doctor’s re-creation. His Kosche—“Ahhh!”
“Do be quiet,” the Master snapped, sharp tone offset by his careful observation as tissue knit itself back together around the regenerator he had shoved none too gently into the laceration. “What was it this time, shrapnel blast? Torture? Perhaps you simply tripped over your own two feet directly onto an upright bayonet?”
The Doctor's mind returned to the trauma of the previous hours, the fire and screaming—his fault, he did this! “I’ll live,” he replied shortly, fumbling to cover himself up as the Master withdrew the regenerator and began a secondary assessment, cataloguing his various other wounds. A hairline fracture in his left humerus, severe femoral bruising, at least two broken fingers— down to the most insignificant of lacerations splitting his upper lip. The Master addressed them almost more quickly than the Doctor could even register their contributions to his overall ache.
Although, he noted, with something morbidly similar to fondness, that the Master made a point to overlook healing the bruise of his own creation on the Doctor’s shin. Of all the childish—
“This time.” The Master straightened up, sparring a disparaging glance for the state of his previously pristine suit trousers that were now seeped with the Doctor’s blood. He refused to meet the Doctor’s eyes as he repacked the medical kit, his movements underpinned by visibly coiled tension. “You’ll live this time, despite your best efforts. My condolences.” The Master turned from the Doctor fully, shoulders tight as he braced himself against the central console. For a moment there was only silence, undercut by the low rolling thrum of the TARDIS travelling passively though the vortex. With a deep breath the Master straightened tall and turned back around to face the Doctor, his hands folded politely behind his back and his features schooled into a mask of detachment. “Have you given any more thought to the topic of a new companion?”
The Doctor froze, his blood running cold. Wincing, he hoisted himself haphazardly upright against the guardrails. The Master stood placidly watched his struggle, making no effort whatsoever to assist him. “We’ve discussed this, and my answer still hasn’t changed. I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t. You certainly could. It has been nearly five months since Miss Cheney departed—"
“—Left, you mean. She left.”
The Master’s lip curled in displeasure. “Don’t be pedantic. Regardless, it has been long enough for you to cast off your mourning shroud and find a replacement. Or were none of those plucky humans you met on your latest jaunt starry-eyed enough to qualify?”
The Doctor snarled, “It’s not semantics, she left.” Something in him clenched and darkened. He could leave it at this and walk away, give them both some much needed breathing space and room to recover. Let this be one more emotional confrontation left un-had! But something deep within him urged him on. “Let’s reiterate, shall we? She chose to leave. Because she saw something in me growing that she didn’t like, something revolting. She thought I was dangerous. She saw what I had to do to a group of armed rebels who had us cornered, decided she didn’t like what she saw, and left. And I—"
“Chose to do.” The Master interrupted to correct him, encroaching on the Doctor until he was close enough to run a proprietary finger over a spot of blood on his cheek, previously unnoticed by either of them. “What you chose to do to a group of armed rebels, while we’re dwelling on semantics. No one forced your hand.”
The Doctor clenched his jaw and trembled, eyes defiant as he met the Master’s scrutiny. “Fine, what I chose to do then. But don’t you see how that proves my point? Something is wrong with me, and I am through subjecting my friends to whatever happens next. They don’t understand the scale of terror—the sheer horror that this universe contains, and if I have to explain to one more person why I do what needs to be done, while they look at me like some sort of monster—!" He cut himself off, panting and trembling as he fought down the hysteria that threatened to claw its way up his throat before falling suddenly and eerily still. “No,” he continued in a tone that was falsely pleasant, almost conversational. “No one I met today would cut it as a companion, and do you know why? Because when I was done with them, there was no one left alive.”
There was a pause. For a moment it seemed as though the Doctor had said his piece, so it came as a surprise to them both when more words came tumbling out, each with increasing volume and force. “Neither side could come to an arrangement over the planet’s mineral resources and the violence was threatening the entire system—it had to be controlled! So, I killed everyone. And then I irradiated the soil itself to deter any opportunistic splinter groups. That planet will never sustain so much as fungal life ever again. And you know what?!" Bolstered by his own tirade, the Doctor braced himself further against the rails and stood to his full height, refusing to let his eye-contact with the Master waiver. “I don’t regret it! And, I don’t regret what Allison saw me do to those rebels! And, I would do it again—I will do it again! And sometimes I make myself sick by how not sickened I am by my own behaviour! And I won’t take anymore accusations from companions too naïve to comprehend the magnitude of dangers we face! And—and I hope you understand that this is the biggest ‘and’ of all—I certainly won’t take any recriminations from you, of all people!” The Doctor’s voice broke off hoarsely, the last of his exclamations echoing up the rafters of the console room around them. What had started as nearly a whisper had culminated into an impassioned and embittered crescendo.
Again, there was a moment of silence between the pair as the TARDIS whirred lowly in the background. Each stood staring at the other, mulling over what had been said. The Doctor’s chest was heaving with shuddering breaths that punctuated the stillness as he glowered, daring the Master to push the subject further. In contrast, the Master remained motionless in his observation.
Calculating.
Considering.
“I retract my earlier statement. Willful stupidity is your least flattering look, worse than self-pity, even.”
The Doctor was momentarily stunned, blindsighted by the unexpected retort. Then a wave of red fury ripped through him and he swung at the Master with his teeth bared, determined to make him see if he couldn’t be bothered to so much as listen.
But before his blow could land, the Master caught his arm, crushing it in his mechanically strengthened grip. He let the inertia of the Doctor’s punch swing him bodily around until he crashed into the console, all the while maintaining a hold on his wrist which was now painfully twisted behind him. “You think I care that you’ve found your taste for violence?” The Master laughed, unkind and incredulously. “You, of all people!” he mimicked the Doctor’s words in a whiny parody of his own tone. “Oh—but certainly, me. Me, who has not only lived through the consequences of a millennia of your self-righteousness, but died from them as well?” His grip on the Doctor’s wrist tightened until he’d swear he could feel the metacarpals grinding together. “I won’t grant you false reassurance Doctor, if that’s what you’re after. You are changing. I don’t know why, but you are. There’s something cruel inside you, but don’t mistake it for anything that hasn’t been brewing in you since the very beginning. You’ve always been enormously capable of cruelty, Theta.”
The Master abruptly let him go, allowing the Doctor’s full weight to land painfully against the sharp console controls. Immediately he spun around, mouth open in outrage and multiple scathing retorts prepared.
But the Master held out a hand to stop him. “I care,” he continued, locking eyes with the Doctor once again, “because you’re becoming lazy. Having a human pet around has always kept you careful. Not just because you feel obliged to take the safest route to protect them, but because you’ve always needed observation to be to be kept in line. You might claim to hate their judgements Doctor, but you require a witness. Without one, you become reckless.” It was now the Master’s turn to stand chest-heaving and visibly affected, his mask of indifference cracking to reveal a near-frantic level of desperation. He gesticulated frantically towards the console storage where the medical kit was still peeking out from amongst its shelves. “You do realize that we used to keep that deep in the TARDIS, nigh unused? I once found it stashed in the pantry between a buoy and a Sliurian egg-peeler, covered in dust. It didn’t used to be kept on hand for daily use, because it wasn’t needed! You’re going to die Doctor—and soon, if something doesn't change!”
The Doctor pushed up from the console and started towards him, eyes blazing. “Then I suppose I’ll die then! All the better for the universe, it lives to expand another day!”
CRASH
This time it was the Master who threw the punch. And this time, it landed.
The Doctor crumpled back down onto the flat of the console spitting blood, his recently repaired lip cut open once again from the impact. The Master loomed above him, now positively thunderous. “You idiotic, self-righteous, SELFISH—“ the Master sputtered and stopped, overcome. The Doctor’s anger began to drain from him as he watched the Master shake with the effort of trying to contain the swell of his emotions, that expressive face he had been admiring mere minutes before betraying him all the while. A few breathes later and he was composed once more, apart from his eyes which continued to demand and plead for the Doctor’s understanding in equal measure. “If not for yourself Doctor, the very least you could do is find a way to survive for my sake. After all, you made me.” He gave a humorless and disbelieving chuckle, looking around the room as though he could still hardly stomach the thought. “But robbing me of my right to die wasn’t enough for you, was it? No, you had to install a system override that would forbid me from ever leaving your ship, biometrically sealed to your touch alone. You’ve also disabled my ability to self-harm, although therapists across the cosmos could spend whole lifetimes dissecting why you left me the ability to cause harm to you. So—to be clear, you aren’t just inviting me to watch you die, trapped inside the confines of the TARDIS’s external surveillance field and unable to intervene. You’re condemning me to an eternal prison inside this junk-heap of a ship without allowing me the same courtesy!”
Silence again. By the end of his tirade the Master had retreated, braced against the guardrail directly in the spot where the Doctor himself had previously slumped. The Doctor watched as his throat constricted reflexively, his knuckles white against the rail and his face downturned towards the bloody handprint, glaring as if it was solely responsible for all his woes. No longer angry, the Doctor felt the fatigued weight of the day as it set upon him. Upon them both.
Without a word, he picked himself off the console once again and made his way to the Master, who regarded his approach warily, refusing to meet his eyes. He stopped directly in front of the other Time Lord and gently lifted his head. With one hand, he cupped the Master’s cheek. The other he snaked behind his head, carding through his hair.
Despite himself, the Master found himself reflexively leaning into the hand caressing his face, but before he could relax fully, his brow furrowed in confusion. “What are you—?“ he began, as the Doctor’s passive carding became something of a more decisive search.
“Just a moment longer…there!”
The Master’s eyes widened, physically jolting as a zap of electricity coursed through his neurological circuits. He quickly ran through his own physical function programs, searching for any changes or errors before coming up empty-handed and throwing a questioning glance at the Doctor, who by this point had withdrawn both hands and retreated quietly in observation. “What did you do?”
The Doctor smiled, but it didn’t come close to reaching his eyes. “You were right. I was selfish. Selfish in so many ways. When I put that biometric lock on you, I did it to keep you with me, here in the TARDIS—even moreso than I did it to protect the universe. And I’m sorry for that, that was wrong. But it would be unspeakably hypocritical of me to lock you here for the safety of the universe if I’m out there damaging it too, and I won’t condemn you to remain trapped here for my mistakes.” He swallowed, his eyes suddenly stinging and tired—so very, very tired. “So,” he continued wearily, tilting his head and gesturing toward the door, “you’re free to go as you wish.”
With that the Doctor turned and busied himself with the TARDIS controls, directing her towards the nearest populated planet without political upheaval. Something vibrant, with enough distraction in amongst its inhabitants that anyone, even a renegade Time Lord, could slip unnoticed into the crowd.
Meanwhile, the Master remained frozen in place where the Doctor had left him. Only the jolt of their landing seemed to break his shock. He opened his mouth as if to speak but then immediately shut it, wordless. He appeared too stunned to move, too many thoughts coursing through his head at once to allow any single one to be spoken aloud. Finally, in one fluid motion he collected himself, casting an indecipherable glance at the Doctor as he walked past him and towards the door. The Doctor watched as he opened it. As he slowly and tentatively took one step outside, waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop and toeing the ground as one would whilst testing the temperature of fresh snow. When no systems failure befell him, the Master hopped out and shut the door behind him without so much as a backwards glance.
The Doctor didn’t fall to pieces as soon as the door clicked shut. He hovered numbly over the controls, eyes glued to the door and waiting. Waiting.
A minute passed.
Then another.
Gone. The Master was gone!
Only then did the Doctor let himself fall limply against the guardrail once again. The enormity of what had occurred hit him in waves and the roar of blood pounding in his ears was deafening. The Doctor heard the quick catch and fall of his own shallow breathing as if detached, a distant third-party to his own distress. Alone. Utterly alone because the Master had gone—he was too far gone for even the Master to stay—he had allowed him to leave and the Master had done just that.
The tears that had been threatening to fall for hours tracked their way down his face, smearing the blood that had been left to fall freely from his re-torn lip.
He had left him—left HIM! And now there was no one! No companions, no Master, just himself alone. He would surely die like this, the Doctor would burn and take the universe with him for having failed him so thoroughly, and no one would be there to stop him—
“I found a café.”
The sound of the TARDIS door opening had not been enough to shake the Doctor from his stupor. Nor, apparently, the sound of a throat being pointedly cleared twice. But at the sound of his voice the Doctor’s eyes shot up, dumbfounded and with tear tracks still wet on his cheeks.
The Master stood there with his hands folded elegantly behind him, silhouetted once again by the ambient light trailing in from the door. His expression twisted as he took in the state of the Doctor and he stepped forward cautiously. “…I found a café.” He repeated, his tone falling somewhat cautious. “Granted, I only took brief glance at their menu, but I’d wager they do a decent espresso.”
“What?” Neither reiterating his findings, nor his expansion on their menu options, had done anything to alleviate the Doctor’s bafflement at the non-sequitur.
The Master continued to stroll forwards towards him as he spoke. “Your ship has more rooms than I have been able to count in over a year of incarceration, and I’m an excellent counter. I’ve come across no less than thirteen kitchens—some with leftovers so heinous that truly, this whole ship should be discarded as a biohazard. And in all that time, do you know what I discovered?” The Master leapt up onto the central platform and stood toe-to-toe with the Doctor who continued to stare mutely, his mouth agape. “Not a single room on this blasted ship contains a decent cup of coffee. Not one. Honestly, what are the odds?”
“What are you doing?” The Doctor whispered, having regained his words but not his full comprehension. He couldn’t hope, couldn’t allow himself to hope—not until the Master said—
“I am telling you,” the Master urged imperiously, pushy in his interjection, “that we are going to get coffee. Now that I have my freedom, I want to put these taste buds you’ve programmed me with to good use. I could also be persuaded towards a torte.”
The Doctor did a precursory sweep of his own mind, just thoroughly enough to reassure himself that he hadn’t fallen ill, or perhaps insane. He briefly considered whether he may have bled out on the floor earlier after all, and that this was all some peri-mortem delirium. But no, his body was quick to remind him that near-death hallucinations weren’t usually accompanied by throbbing aches and fatigue. Then he reached out psychically and brushed up against the Master’s mental signature. It was him alright, unmistakably and undeniably him.
The Master was truly here, in from of him. Discussing cakes.
The Doctor wiped at his face with a bloodstained sleeve, fighting back his own hysteria. “And then what?” The sheer incredulity of the situation threatened to overtake him, leaving him grinning broadly and abnormally giddy.
The Master allowed himself a small smile in return. He cast a critical eye over the state of the Doctor’s clothing, suppressing a sigh as he remembered the blood marring his own trousers. “First we change. I refuse to re-join civilization with stains, and I refuse to be seen with you while you look like you’ve recently dug yourself from your own grave.”
The Doctor couldn’t contain his laugh at that, every heave of his chest accompanied by throbbing pain from the array of bruises dotting his ribcage. Yet somehow, each peal of mirth felt all the more valuable for it.
“After that, I expect we’ll take a look around. I don’t recognize this planet, but I have a hunch as to how things might unfold. If history proves anything, you’ll run into trouble, and I’ll make it worse. You’ll meddle—inevitably falling in with a band of well-intentioned underdogs, and I’ll devise something incredibly clever to push their conflict to a head. We’ll fight, naturally, but work together where it counts. Then, when all seems lost, you’ll pull a spectacularly stupid stunt that somehow, unbelievably, works to save the day. Entirely due to your sheer dumb luck, and I’ll likely hate you for it. And then, we come back here and fly off before the torches and pitchforks catch us. How does that sound?”
The Doctor leaned in and caught the Master’s mouth in a firm kiss. The Master responded in turn, grabbing at his hair to deepen it into something greedier before breaking away reluctantly, his tone dropping to a more serious register as he met the Doctor’s eyes. “Don’t think for a moment our previous conversation has finished, Doctor. I don’t know where this will lead—doubtlessly nowhere good. However, as the facts stand, you need a witness. But I am by no measure a plucky human companion, ready to coo and flatter at will.”
The Doctor scoffed, equal parts in defense of the role his friends had played over centuries of adventures, and in incredulity that the Master had ever cooed at anything in his lives, willingly or not. “I don’t need an entourage.”
“No, as we’ve said, need a witness. And as of—” the Master paused here, tapping his fingers to his chin theatrically, pretending to consider for a moment “—eight minutes and thirty-eight seconds ago, give or take, I’ve become available to do just that. Nothing more, or less. I won’t stop you from causing damage, Doctor. Far from it, I’ll likely prod the damage along where it suits me. But I can promise you my clear and honest judgement, with no risk that I run to the hills in fear of ‘what you become’.”
He could tell that it was over-inflated self-respect alone that held the Master back from putting the phrase into air-quotes.
“—And of course, you can trust that my superior sense of self-preservation will keep us both safe. Do we have a deal?”
The Doctor tapped his finger to his chin, mockingly pensive and in clear pantomime of the Master’s earlier behaviour. “Hmm. Well, I suppose I do have one more demand.”
The Master rolled his eyes. “Predictably. Whenever do you not.”
The Doctor pointedly ignored his slight, choosing instead to lead them off the central platform and down towards the halls where a change of clothes and a shower awaited them. As expected, the Master followed close behind. He offered him his arm, its wrist still livid with bruises from their earlier skirmish. “I accept. On the single condition that I get to hear you tell me more about all the traits you find so repulsive about me. So far today, I’ve heard that I’m badly-aged, ragged, self-pitying, and stupid. Needless to say, I reckon you can come up with a few more.”
The Master threw back his head in genuine amusement, taking the Doctor’s arm as if they were two gentlemen on a leisurely stroll. As if they were either of gentle or men. As if they were any two beings in the universe other than themselves, anywhere in the universe other than where they were.
“My dear, I thought you’d never ask.”