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It had been roughly half as long as his previous self had been in the Vault. That, for some reason, was the Master’s primary thought as he stood in the midst of the room, listening to people shouting and screaming. It was… an interesting replacement, to say the least. The Master didn’t intend to be stuck in prison for as long as he did stay stuck on Earth. Or longer- it would be absolutely humiliating if 2020 rolled back around and he wasn’t there when the Doctor expected him to be because he was in jail. So he’d mostly laid off of the crimes. Or the ones not necessary to survival, at least. There were… rather a lot of those. Humans made getting even basic resources so difficult. Not that hypnosis was a crime. Technically. He didn’t think.
And okay, maybe a few crimes for fun. A man had needs. And protests, the energy around them, with everyone screaming and shouting, were thrilling.
Not that he was at one currently. Well- he supposed it was a protest of sorts, if one considered the counterculture of a club like this to be a protest against oppressive societal norms.
Maybe that was why the screaming souls around him weren’t being tortured, not even a little. Well- a few seemed to find the sheer volume of the music torturous, but other than that. The volume of the music was hardly his doing, either. Nothing was even on fire. They were screaming because they were having fun, the frantic movement of their bodies some sort of attempted dancing.
Perhaps even more strange than the fact that the humans seemed to enjoy this was the fact that the Master was too.
Well, as much fun as one could have while stuck on this insufferable planet. He still didn’t like it.
But it was… tolerable. It passed muster, to say the least. If it weren’t for the Doctor’s presence, the Master might have even considered it a decent planet. But the other Time Lord’s- no, not time lord- thanks to the other’s constant meddling, the Earth was far from pristine. The Master didn’t much need pristine, not as he’d used to pretend, but Earth truly was intolerable, with everything in it molded to the Doctor’s image.
Just like Gallifrey. Just like him.
He screamed louder, jumped harder, willing the sheer physicality of it to snap him out of his thoughts.
It worked. For approximately half a second, enough time for a pair of frantically rushed heartsbeats. Then, as if summoned, he appeared.
The whole reason the Master was stuck on Earth in the first place. Or at least, a previous incarnation. The Doctor. His hair was long, more Einstein than military, so he was probably at least some way through that regeneration. The Master wondered if little miss Oswald was here, or if this was a gap trip.
Or if, maybe, this was the Doctor sneaking off to avoid him- or, his previous self, at least. Not that he’d need to go so far to do so. She was, after all, locked up.
Worse still, the man (not a man, not really, not in the same way as other people were) had started dancing with him, accent Missy had so gleefully mimicked (and, dare he say, improved upon- or was such a thought sacrilegious, now that he knew the Doctor twas the reason for his existence, in a much more literal way than his childhood self would have considered the words?) shouting a pleased, “O!”
The dancing started entirely context appropriate, but as things so often did with the Doctor, quickly dissolved. The Master began to spin a story as he was spun around, weaving a lie to explain his presence, in case the Doctor realized that this was a handful of years before O even ought to have been born.
Or to prevent him from wondering later, at any rate. That too would be bad. The Master still cared about the sanctity of the timeline- it was fragile now, particularly without anyone looking after it. More tenacious in some ways, more tangled, but less in others. Still. He didn’t want everything destroyed by his hand, at least not yet.
(If he didn’t quite know what he wanted, well, that was his business.)
It took the Doctor dragging him to the bar and getting them each a drink- no ginger in either, the Master noted, so he wouldn’t be able to rely on being drunk to add some fuzziness to the Doctor’s recollection- for him to finally question.
“What are you doing here?” He still seemed positively overjoyed to see him, in a way that made the Master ache as he longed to… something. He didn’t know. He gulped down his drink, giving himself one last moment to make sure the mask was fully in place.
Right. This would only hurt a lot. He gave the Doctor a smile, soft and adoring, and laughed quietly. “You’re just as energetic as ever, Doctor,” he said, tone admiring. “You’ve wiped me out. I, um… I wasn’t expecting to see you here. Not this you, at least.”
He chuckled softly, running his fingers through his hair. “I- well. I’m not fully sure how much I can say, honestly. What I’m supposed to keep secret or not. Suppose I’ll have to just trust you to tell me if I’m doing something wrong, eh? As you’ve probably noticed, this is… a bit before my time.”
The expression on the Doctor’s face made it blatantly clear that he had not, in fact, worked through the maths to determine that O wouldn’t have been born yet. “Oh, O, are you that young?”
The Master was suddenly struck by the revelation that such a statement was true from the Doctor even of his undisguised self, but ignored it, keeping his soft smile on. “Yeah,” he said. “Our lifespans are pretty short compared to yours, you know. But I’m… well.”
He beamed at the Doctor, giving the brightest smile he could. “Your next self- she, they, sorry, I shouldn’t give much away, right? I’m travelling with them. A bit, at least. And-”
The Doctor interrupted him. “I get to be a woman? When I regenerate?”
The Master thought back to the ‘mysterious apparating man’, to their texts, to various bits of slippage he’d never had as Missy. “Er… You mostly just say that you don’t understand why humans are so into gender in the first place. You do look like a woman, though? Wait, should I ask? I’ve been using she, but maybe you go by something else, like they, or he, or-”
“I’m sure I go by she. I’ve wanted to be a woman for a while, I’m sure that didn’t suddenly change,” the Doctor reassured him. The Master glanced at the Doctor’s hand as the other took a drink, eyeing the painted nails. Hm.
He mirrored the motion, finishing off the few sips left of his own, mirroring to make the Doctor more comfortable. And to hide any intrigue on his expression at that tidbit.
The Doctor took that opportunity to ask another question, though he seemed almost… hesitant, somehow. “O. You and my future self- is it just the two of you? Or does anyone else travel with you?”
The Master wondered what the Doctor was getting at. Unfortunately, he didn’t think he could just ask, not as O. And he couldn’t risk hypnosis- particularly if there was any risk his past self might notice it and get jealous, since he thought that was almost definitely Vault hair length.
He smiled apologetically. “I… really don’t think I should be telling you that, Doctor. Sorry. I can ask mine if th- if she thinks that you should be, but… or I can take you to meet her?”
The Doctor looked around, though the Master really didn’t know what he could be looking for. Whatever it was, his face fell. “She’s not in here, is she? It doesn’t feel like there are any other Time Lords in here.”
O was very grateful for his foresight in cloaking his signature ever since the sixties as an extra Doctor precaution. Not O. The Master. What was he doing?
He didn’t let his brief internal conflict show, however, instead smiling rather fawnishly at the Doctor. “No, she’s not, said that there was something she wanted to do real quick, but I could always text her! Or she’ll come back soon enough, once the show is over.” He reached into his pocket, as if to procure a non-existent phone.
“No! No, that's alright, thank you, O,” the Doctor said. Manners. Huh. “Best not to meet your future self, if it can be helped. I’ll probably leave soon, avoid any chance of running into her. I just… I was curious. But it’s probably better to not ask you too many questions.”
He nodded resolutely. It would have been a good act, against any human. But the Master could tell, something had devastated him. So now he was running away. But from what?
Or… did he know that? Maybe he was fooling himself. After all, he really didn’t know the Doctor well at all. He hadn’t even realized that they were a different species, after all, during their childhood. Which apparently hadn’t been as shared as a young Koschei had thought.
Maybe he ought to just st- And the Doctor was saying his goodbyes and leaving without giving the Master the chance to say anything. That was just rude, frankly. The Doctor had come in, spoiled his mood, and then left.
Well, that was pretty typical of the Doctor, really. The Master supposed he shouldn’t have expected anything less.
Still, it hurt.
The Doctor discarded people, though. The Master knew that. Maybe it was an impact from the way she’d been so obviously abandoned as a child.
Or maybe not. How would he know? He didn’t understand her.
The Master stalked out of the club, thinking about a different sort of screaming. Less than a day later, the place was ash. Just like Gallifrey. Just like all his conceptions of the Doctor.
The thing about ash was that it could, used properly, make good fertilizer. It had been some bodies for the Master since the vineyards and any ability or desire to garden. Eventually, however, that fact was brought to the forefront of his consciousness by, of course, the Doctor.
Namely a conversation had telepathically, while she was languishing in Judoon prison. He… hadn’t really known how he felt, about her reaching out to him. Maybe he did matter to her. Or maybe she was just bored. He’d been unable to decide.
But she’d said, entirely unexpectedly, “I sort of wanted to burn down that place myself. After we talked.”
She hadn’t specified where, but it had been known to him nonetheless, by virtue of telepathy. He could tell she’d gone back to it this body, both before and after meeting him as O.
“Why?"
“When I was talking to you, I asked if anyone else was with us. After you lied to me about us travelling together. You remember that?”
The Master couldn’t quite repress the twist of jealousy he’d felt in, at that, the sense of still not being enough for her even as a precious human, of-
The stream of emotions that she was inevitably feeling too thankfully interrupted him. “You seemed so confused about why I was asking. Brilliant acting, really.”
This time it was confusion that was evident. He was too drunk for this, he really shouldn’t have answered her contact. But it was too late now.
“Oh, you were actually confused? …Huh. I thought who I was asking about would’ve been obvious.”
Then the Doctor would have felt a spike of annoyance- though that time it was obvious that it had been rather intentionally transmitted, the Master was sure.
“Well just. It was you. That was why I was so upset there weren’t any Time Lords in there. I was convinced I’d failed. Somehow. Whether it was just you refusing or something happening to you. Convinced myself later that maybe it was just that you were with me in a different building, or just in the TARDIS or disguised or… Something. I dunno.”
Oh.
From that particular nugget they spoke more, slowly unravelling their misunderstandings over the course of the Doctor’s imprisonment. Until, eventually, the Master gave in, and rescued her himself- or at least, made an attempt to. In a very Doctor-like move, his rescue attempt nearly foiled her escape attempt before they both only just made it out.
After that there was the obvious solution to the problem wherein the Doctor wanted to travel with him while the Master couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that she still considered him equal.
And so the two of them tried, yet again, to kill the animosity that had grown between them over the centuries.