Work Text:
The Master was not having a very good century.
No, scratch that, the Master was not having a very good life. It was true that the last hundred years or so were something of a low point (the Time War, fleeing the Time War, living as a human while having fled the Time War, then that whole business that shall never be spoken of again Martha Jones), but looking back it was just the lowest of the low in a life that had never really climbed much above the average-water mark. Perhaps it had started out well enough when he was a Time Tot, but then they’d dragged him in front of the Untempered Schism and things had really started going to pot.
He wanted to flop down on something soft with a dramatic sigh. But he couldn’t, because he was in the console room of his TARDIS and the only thing in the console room of his TARDIS right now, aside of course from the console itself, were the floors. He had had a nice overstuffed sofa tucked in a corner for exactly moments like this, but the inhabitants of Axilaurius Minor had burnt it during his most recent takeover attempt. They’d tried their best to burn him along with it. And that, right there, was an excellent example of exactly how bad the Master’s life had gotten: no couch, no planet, and – this was the really galling part – no Doctor. The insufferable man hadn’t even bothered to show up.
“You know, it’s not like I’m asking much,” the Master said pathetically to the console. His TARDIS decided that this had been directed at her and gave him the telepathic equivalent of a pat on the back.
“I only want two things out of life. Two, is that asking so much? Loads of people want more.” The Master snuffled. “Take those humans the Doctor likes so much,” he went on, warming to his theme in the presence of a sympathetic listener. “They want jobs, and houses, and spouses, and some of them want children – that’s four things right there, and I haven’t even gotten started on the shiny electronic gadgets! So really, when you think about it, my needs are very moderate.”
Here he paused for the TARDIS to administer another telepathic pat. She did so, but this was getting a bit much, even for a loyal ship like her, and she felt it might be time to consider an alternative approach.
“All I want is the Doctor and the universe,” the Master sighed. “I really don’t understand why this is so hard.” And he put his head in his hands.
The TARDIS sensed something approaching genuine melancholy out of her beloved Time Lord, and seized her moment. In a twinkling she had several of the console’s screens activated, showing footage from a variety of worlds. She had been keeping tabs on galactic news for quite some time now in the hopes that this opportunity would eventually present itself.
The burble of noise and light drew the Master’s head out of his hands. He looked around at the various screens and shook his head. “I appreciate the thought, my dear, really I do, but I just don’t think I’m up to any world-conquering right now.”
The TARDIS gritted her nonexistent, entirely metaphorical teeth and wished, not for the first time, that she had more ways of communicating with her Time Lord than waves of pointed emotion. She gave him a strong nudge.
“All right, I’ll take a look,” the Master agreed resignedly, moving towards the lights. “Oh, look, it’s Ependis Prime! Goodness, hasn’t it been a while since the Doctor stopped me from enslaving that race?” He smiled a little, cheered by the memory. “And good old Alpha Centauri. The Doctor was helping out with this human colony, you remember, and – ow!” The Master jumped, which was a very natural thing to do when someone (naming no names here, but let’s remember the only other person on board was the sentient ship herself) slipped into your biochemical system and administered a sharp electrical shock. The Master put his hands on his hips and gazed up, looking injured. “What was that for?”
The TARDIS wished, very hard, for the ability to sigh. Then she dimmed the overall lighting in the console room by 25%, and flashed a series of lights on the console, directing the Master to follow.
“Now look, old girl, we’ve been through a lot together, but I’m really not sure a light show – all right, all right, I’m going!” (The TARDIS had thought it prudent to remind the Master that the previous electrical shock had not been a one-time fluke.)
Wearing a mulish expression, the Master followed the lights halfway around the console until he got to the center screen. The TARDIS flashed the lights around the screen itself a few times, for good measure, then started rolling the tape.
This video was something she had spend decades laboriously editing, because a TARDIS, while good at many things (vortex manipulation, high-speed travel, defying the Einsteinian laws of time) was not designed to manipulate audiovisual material. In fact, she’d conceived of Operation: Get A Clue centuries ago, but at the time the Master had never yet taken her to visit anywhere with a really advanced tech base. She’d prototyped the video with stick figures, but there had been a decided lack of emotional oomph. And back then the whole situation hadn’t seemed quite so desperate – the Master had been much more sanguine about eventually achieving his Doctor-and-universe-related goals – so there had just been less of a need.
She’d had a lot of time to kill, though, sitting patiently on a storage rack at the end of the universe, disguised as a bottle of high-vitamin food supplements. First she’d had to wait while the Master was human. Then she’d had to wait while the Master left her at the end of the universe (ooh, they’d had words over that) and made off with the Doctor’s TARDIS (that skank! to think she’d ever loved her!) to gallivant around early-twenty-first-century Earth. When the Master had finally come crawling home, it had taken him a week’s worth of apologies and reassurances about how he’d never looked at the Doctor’s TARDIS seriously, he swore, and would she like to hear about how he’d turned her into a paradox machine? The TARDIS, mollified, had taken him back; but it had been quite a while before she permitted the other TARDIS’ name to be mentioned in her presence.
But since the Master had so inconsiderately left her to wait, she had had plenty of time to complete her vision. And, given that at the end of the universe she had had access to every audiovisual recording ever made, there had been no shortage of material.
Ooo-wee-ooo! the intro music played. The Master’s jaw dropped. The TARDIS looked on, smug.
Not to bore the reader with a play-by-play of the televised action the Master is enjoying, here’s a summary of tonight’s episode: the Master takes over a planet. He’s very proud of himself. The Doctor comes along. Does the Doctor accept the Master’s gracious offer to rule together? Does he confess to still desperately loving the Master, regretting ever having left him, and wanting to spend the rest of their lives together fencing and exchanging witty repartee? He does not. Instead he blows up the Master’s superweapon, dismantles the Master’s government, and drags the Master off in chains. The End.
“What,” the Master said, sounding shell-shocked. “WHAT WAS THAT? Did you just make a YouTube video of me failing?!?”
The TARDIS sent him an angry shock. He was missing the point. She flashed up the last frame of the video again – the one that had the Doctor leading the Master away in defeat – and painted a giant red X on the screen. She turned the lights red, too. And flashed them a few times for good measure. Bad, she tried to send to her Time Lord. STOP DOING THAT.
The Master seemed to relax slightly. “Well, I certainly agree that the ‘getting captured’ part of my usual modus operandi needs a little work…”
The TARDIS rolled her eyes. Once this had been a metaphor, but the Doctor’s TARDIS had shown her how to do it for real (before that slatternly bint and her sartorially challenged Time Lord had gone out for milk one day and never come back). Her gyroscopic stabilizers spun in a smooth circle. The ship lurched.
“All right, all right, a lot of work!”
She ignored him, queuing up the second video. Since the Master had needed assistance grasping the nature of the previous film, the TARDIS repeated her atmospheric experiment, turning the lights green and painting a green checkmark visibly on the screen at all times. It took away from the artistic vision slightly, but she was prepared to make that sacrifice if it meant getting her Time Lord to just listen already.
This video opened with a planet burning. The Master, watching, visibly perked up. Then he frowned in confusion as the screen depicted the Master arriving on the planet.
“Hang on, this is backwards,” he said out loud. “You’ve got me showing up after the planetary takeover. I thought we agreed, no more teaming up with other dictators?”
Just watch the fucking movie, the TARDIS muttered, despite the fact that there was no one to hear. On the screen, the Master landed, emerging from his TARDIS and looking around him at the situation. The camera panned in to catch the look of horror on his face. (Well, okay, the TARDIS couldn’t actually find a clip of the Master looking horrified. She’d had to settle for one of him looking nonplussed, which didn’t quite come up to her artistic standards, but she had been getting desperate by then.) Then, to the accompaniment of some catchy music, the on-screen Master ran around defeating the tyrants, restoring the rightful government, and accepting the thanks of a grateful people.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” the Master said blankly. “Are they going to give me rule of the planet as gratitude for saving them? Is that my plan?”
On screen, the people he’d saved were building a statue of the Master.
“That’s nice, I guess,” the Master admitted, “but I don’t see how it’s going to get me – Doctor!” This last was not a statement of desire (though, okay, it kind of was) but an exclamation of surprise, because the Doctor had just appeared on screen. He leapt out of his TARDIS (that two-timing – argh!) and brandished his sonic screwdriver (in a way that probably seemed threatening to the locals, but just seemed silly to the Master’s TARDIS, because she knew perfectly well the most harm it could inflict was blinding someone stupid enough to look directly into the aperture). The Doctor started running about, but discovered everywhere he went that the problems were all solved. Then he went outside, and saw the statue of the Master.
This next bit was the trickiest part – it had taken a month before she’d been happy with the editing here. The Master, standing at the foot of the statue, turned around and saw the Doctor. The Doctor realized that the Master had saved the planet. (This part had been especially hard to convey, and she still thought the final effect of having several thought bubbles appear was somewhat lacking.) Then – she discreetly cranked up the music – the Doctor threw himself into the Master’s arms, kissed him passionately, and declared his undying love. The End.
“What,” the Master said.
The TARDIS waited patiently.
“What,” the Master tried again.
She smiled to herself. Here it came.
“What in the nine bloody hells of Rassilon was that?”
The TARDIS jumped in surprise. That was… not what she was expecting.
“I saved the planet! I saved the planet! I’m not supposed to save the planet! I’m supposed to take it over! To rule it! The Doctor saves planets, not me!”
The TARDIS’ jaw would have dropped, if it could. That was kind of the point, she seethed, focusing her displeasure in a way that he could not possibly mistake.
“Oh, you’re angry now?” The Master waved his arms. “Do you know how, how out of character that would be for me? Saving planets? What about my dream of ruling the galaxy, hmm? What about that?”
I think you can’t have both the galaxy and the Doctor, the TARDIS grumped, and from what you told me, having the galaxy without the Doctor didn’t do much for you after all, so I thought this time we’d try having the Doctor without the bloody galaxy!
“I mean – I’m supposed to be his opposite! His foil! What would he have to do with me if I weren’t his foil, hmm?” The Master dropped his hands back to his sides and slumped against the console. “Let’s face it, he’s already got the universe-saving business cornered.”
Oh, you idiot, the TARDIS seethed. He’s every bit as much of a narcissist as you are! If you do the same things he does – only better and with more style – then he’ll be begging you to run off with him for a change.
These thoughts could not, of course, be transmitted entire to the Master, but the emotions behind them were getting through. The Master visibly revived. “Do you think so?”
The TARDIS flashed her lights in an affirmative.
“You really think that if I – he’s really that devoted to the do-gooder shtick, you think?”
The TARDIS seriously considered opening her main door and letting the Master be sucked out into the Vortex, as punishment for that having only just now realized what any Earth monkey over the age of three knew perfectly well. She restrained herself, but only because the thought of having done all of this work for nothing was too dispiriting to entertain. Sulkily, she flashed her lights yes again.
“Well.” The Master coughed, straightening his tie. “I suppose – I don’t have any other evil plans in the works right now, so I guess, if you really think – I’m owed a little vacation, anyway…”
She helpfully scrolled up the coordinates for Ceti Alpha V, which was having a minor problem with an infestation of genetically-bred supermen trying to take over their peaceful planet.
“Oh, what the hell,” the Master said with a shrug and a smile. “Let’s go.”