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It's not a end. It's a beginning.
The day aboard the Rani's TARDIS begins like any other in the console room. The Rani is imputing data from an experiment into her TARDIS' data banks for future reference. She focuses on it and nothing else, everything is secondary, so it is no surprise the Master strolls in unnoticed and, typical of her manner for this incarnation whose likeness is one of the Doctor's former pets, comes to a stop right behind the renegade scientist with inches between them.
The Master reaches round and touches the Rani's hand.
The Rani flinches at the Master's open flaunting of boundaries. The Master muses aloud how much character her hands have, fingers daring to slide perfectly between the Rani's rough knuckles. The Rani can't help but notice how strangely soft the Master's hand is, nothing how she would expect them to be for someone she finds abrasive at the best of times, but the thought is quickly lost to the feeling of loathing and disgust swelling in size at her core.
Today it bursts violently.
The Rani recoils, shoving the Master away, who stumbles back, almost looses her balance and yet in the end finds her footing with the ease one would expect of a cat.
"Out," She hisses with a soft touch of Russian.
The Master knows full well what the Rani means and for a split-second rejections takes the place of her usually cocksure manner. The Rani does not see this, eyes screwed up tight and refusing to turn away from the consoles to even risk looking at them, hands clenched tight, nails digging into the palms so hard they threaten to draw blood.
Sickness. A want for the Master. Disease. A desire for the Master. Illness.
How dare she!
They are beneath her.
The cocksure manner takes back control and the Master speaks as if the Rani's tone is not deadly serious. "Oh, yeah, sure, I'll get out of your hair and leave you to all this boring-"
The Rani slams a fist down on the console. "Out!" She remembers a feeling of old words from when she was new and freshly loomed, and feels a disgust for the Master and her own body. Disgusting. Degenerate. Filth. Carnal. Feral. Animal.
Against the electric thrum of the TARDIS's doors opening and letting in a crisp winter's chill, the Master takes a step towards the Rani. "Hey, hey, hey, no need to shout, Rani." She knows, she knows, she knows, but still doesn't let it surface.
"OUT!" She yells. She cries. She remembers.
The Master, unusually tender and gentle, touches her on the shoulder. The Rani turns around sharply. The Master feels a sensation strike her squarely in the face. The Rani watches the Master fall to the floor and land with a hard thump.
Red hot tears.
The Master will be back on her feet within minutes, but it is enough time for the Rani to drag them out and slam the doors shut. Her TARDIS is fanatical in its loyalties to her so without need for a command it seals itself shut as if the doors never existed. For now, nothing can leave, nothing can enter.
A minute later, the Master is back on her feet with a heavily bleeding nose she doesn't have any concerns for. The blood drips onto her white jacket and its shade of red is so rich in colour that it is impossible to miss each and every one to stain it.
"Hey! Rani! Come on!" She shouts, knocking on what was a door but is now nothing. "I would've left if you just said please."
The words and a pulsing beat of four knocks make it through for the Rani to hear. They are muffled and disjointed and warped.
"You are….a….disgusting….animal for….for feeling this." The Rani is clawing at her upper arm and, somewhere, deep down, wishes she was nothing. The tears are boiling hot. She remembers a moment, looming shadow of cousins standing over her as she held something (A gift? A gift? A gift? To remember her by?). "Filth. Disgusting. Putrid." It hurts. She wants to be held, she wants to touch those hands, she wants to be loved, but recoils at each one with greater disgust than the last.
Broken.
She is the broken one. None of her other selves experienced this….problem.
They were different in one regard, she thinks, they never allowed anyone to so much as get close to them. Wall after wall after wall, impossibly high, impossibly thick, no way over, no way through, no way under, no way whatsoever. Yet the Master, with that disgusting cocksure grin, those eyes so rich and deep, built a door and walked right on in with a laugh and dance.
—
One day it will hurt less. The Master strokes the Rani's long black hair and tells of the four knocks stuck in her head. “Gallifrey ruined us,” she says with a sad smile that's still cocksure, “but we burned brighter than them. Hm. Hm. Hmmmm. They’re dead. We’re alive."