Work Text:
It was the rhythm of it, Jack thought groggily, that had woken him out of as much of a sound sleep as he ever got. Sleeping in the room under his office, he was used to the noise his team made when they banged around the Hub at the middle of the night; it didn’t wake him any more. Had been used to it, he corrected himself. Didn’t used to wake him up. The noises were past tense now, every one of them. Gwen had always been the one to go home at night. The rest of the team had been more prone to hang around…
But the rhythm. Jack rubbed at his eyes and reached for pants – Ianto (god) had finally managed to drill it into him that pants were mandatory around the Hub – concern creeping up on him as he headed for the door. That was a familiar rhythm somehow. He’d heard that before. Jack focused on that, trying to remember where he’d heard it, consciously putting aside thoughts of Ianto.
He jogged lightly down the stairs, rounded what had been Tosh’s workstation (don’t think about it) and stopped dead at what he saw.
The rhythm turned out to be the familiar beats of hammer meeting nail at regular intervals. Normal enough. Except. Except that the ‘hammer’ in this case barely deserved the name; it was a device from well in the future, even by Jack’s admittedly elastic standards. The regularity came from the fact that it relied on an internal motor instead of the wielder’s strength. The nail in question, again, was not so much a nail as a smart-connector. The items being secured in this manner were two highly complex circuit boards that couldn’t possibly, given the force of the hammer, be as fragile as they looked.
And the lot was being wielded by the man – the Time Lord – who had had top billing in Jack’s nightmares until very, very recently.
“What are you doing?” Jack finally managed to ask, throat dry. His fingers twitched futilely towards the Webley he’d left back in his room, stupid, stupid…
The Master chuckled. It was the same chuckle Jack remembered from the Valiant, echo-perfect, except… except something was missing, something he couldn’t put his finger on. And the Master’s voice was curiously free of malice when he answered Jack. “I’m building you a present.”
Jack couldn’t have stopped himself from tensing up if he’d wanted to, although what he’d do with no gun and no backup he couldn’t have said. “What kind of present? Is it a bomb? Some kind of explosive?” He thought about this for a moment and laughed, then wondered when his laugh had started to sound crazy and the Master’s had started to sound sane. “It wouldn’t make much of a difference. There’s no one here left for you to kill.”
The Master made a tsking noise, for all the world like the nanny Jack’d had when he was eight, which was remarkable considering that that nanny had had four voice boxes and five tongues. “I’m not here to kill anyone.”
“Tell me another one,” Jack said automatically, before his brain caught up and said play along, you idiot. “So why are you here?” he asked hastily, hoping the Master would be sidetracked by the question.
If he was, he didn’t show it. The Time Lord turned back to the half-assembled contraption on Tosh’s desk, reaching for a tool Jack couldn’t identify. It was frustrating not to be able to recognize the components he was using, or be familiar with the design of the device: Jack had grown used to being the expert, stranded in this century, and it didn’t sit well to be confronted by a being who operated on an even wider knowledge and technological base than he did.
When the Master finally spoke – after Jack gritted his teeth through thirty seconds of delicate adjustments and resolved not to break first – it wasn’t to answer Jack’s question. In fact, his next words didn’t seem relevant at all. “What do you know about Time Lord naming customs?” was what he asked.
Jack blinked, and blinked again, and then gave up blinking and decided that if he was going to be awoken in the middle of the night to find that the Master had broken into the Hub and was building him a present this night might as well go whole-hog into the zone of surrealism. “Nothing at all,” he said honestly, reaching over and snagging Owen’s old desk chair. It wasn’t like Owen would be needing it anymore, he told himself, adjusting the dials to accommodate his height and ignoring the sick feeling of abandonment. Focus, Jack. One of the first lessons he’d learned on the Valiant was that the Master loved the sound of his own voice, and Jack’s best chance of figuring out what was really going on here was to play along and keep him talking.
“Well, it must surely have occurred to you that no one names their child “The Doctor” or “The Master,” the Master said almost wryly, changing out the tool that probably wasn’t a wrench for another tool that almost certainly wasn’t (but looked remarkably like) a voltmeter.
“There are planets like that,” Jack said, thinking of a girl he’d known once on Altair IV that had gone by the singularly inapt name ‘the Virginal One’. “But I never really thought about it.”
“Ah. Well. Let me tell you a story, then,” the Master said.
Jack looked at the Master, then the contraption, then the clock. “You’re in the Hub at two in the morning,” he said slowly, “making me a present, and while you’re working, you want to tell me a story.”
“That’s right.”
“All right,” Jack said, leaning back in his chair. “What the hell. I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
The Master smiled at him, and Jack couldn’t understand it at all.
“Once upon a time, there was a little boy,” the Master’s story began.
“I wouldn’t have thought Gallifreyan stories would start with once upon a time,” Jack said idly. “Most cultures have some variation on that phrase, yeah, but I would think the Time Lords wouldn’t be so big on the concept of linear history.”
“They weren’t,” the Master said. “Except in the case of one’s own personal timeline, and that is what this story is about.”
“You’re the little boy.”
“Of course.” The Master waited for Jack to say anything else, then resumed the story, not looking at Jack as he continued working on whatever-the-hell it was. “This little boy was, of course, from Gallifrey, and on Gallifrey there was a very particular tradition. Every child, before they enter the Academy – at about eight years of age, in this case – is taken to a special room and told to look into the heart of the Untempered Schism.”
“God’s teeth,” Jack said faintly. “Are they mad?”
The Master flashed him a conspiratorial grin. “I have often thought so.”
“So you looked into the Untempered Schism.”
“Yes. Now, reactions to this tend to fall into one of three fairly predictable groups. The most common reaction is to run away. Incidentally, this is what the Doctor did.”
“He’s still running,” Jack muttered.
“That’s not a coincidence.”
Jack said nothing.
“The second most common reaction is to see nothing. Or, rather, to see something, but for the child’s mind to block it out. Which is almost exactly the same thing, most of the time.”
“Was this your reaction?”
“No,” the Master said. “I had the third reaction. I saw something – and I remembered what it was.”
“And what was it?”
“Death.”
Jack was silent for a moment, staring at the Master. “What kind of death?”
The Master, to his surprise, laughed outright. It sounded genuine, another surprise. “That’s very good, Jack, most people don’t know to ask that question. For of course there are many different kinds of death. To a Time Lord there are even more. We look at death differently than most races. Regeneration is a part of that. So is the Matrix.”
“What’s the Matrix?”
“It’s the biggest data repository that ever existed. Or it was. When a Time Lord died, their consciousness was stored in the Matrix. You could talk with every Time Lord who ever lived, if you wanted. And any of them could be restored from it, into a new body, under the right circumstances.” The Master slid Jack another sideways look. “It may interest you to know that this is what happened to me, during the War.”
“Are you still really you, at that point?” Jack asked, honestly curious.
“A man is the sum of his memories,” the Master said, sounding as if he were quoting someone, “and a Time Lord even more so.”
“I don’t know,” Jack said. It was hard to stay focused. He was starting to think he must still be asleep, dreaming. None of this was real, this strange past-midnight conversation with the lunatic murderer building what was probably a doomsday device in the room that had so recently become a shrine to Jack’s dead. And he didn’t particularly want to argue philosophy with his ghosts.
“At any rate,” the Master continued regardless, “after I looked into the Untempered Schism, I was formally admitted to the Academy, and I was told to choose a nickname, something to go by during my school years. It’s the first and only time a young Gallifreyan would be encouraged to show any initiative at all.”
“But why a nickname?” Jack asked. “Why not just go by your birth name? You do have one, don’t you?” Although if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing Jack had ever heard, but it must have been really inconvenient for the parents.
“Yes,” the Master said seriously, “but one’s true name is a source of power, and cannot be shared idly. I say cannot, not should not. There are very few circumstances under which a Time Lord is even capable of sharing their true name with someone, and all of them are momentous.”
Jack opened his mouth to start asking questions about this – what kind of power, what kind of moment? He was suddenly curious about this strange aspect of Time Lord culture, and he jumped in surprise when the Master set his current tool down with a loud bang and gave Jack a look that clearly said don’t ask.
The Master had been careful with his tools all night. And, Jack reminded himself guiltily, he was supposed to be handling the madman carefully, however much this strange tête-à-tête had lulled Jack with its sense of unreality. So Jack sat back in his (Owen’s) chair, closed his mouth and nodded slowly, in acknowledgement of the unspoken order.
Satisfied, the Master picked his latest tool back up and resumed his story.
“Our young hero thought long and hard for a suitable nickname, but nothing good came to mind. So, like all good Time Lords, he went to the library to research one. And while he was there, he met another young Time Lord who had come there for the same purpose, and this other boy had a suggestion.”
“What was it?”
The Master held up a finger, indicating that Jack should be patient. “This other young boy, who would eventually go by the nickname Theta Sigma – ” here the Master paused and waited for some reaction from Jack, who had none to give. “Theta Sigma, then, had become very familiar with Earth fairy tales as a child, and he was able to make a suggestion that the hero of our story found acceptable.”
“Why was he familiar with Earth fairy tales?”
“That’s not my story to tell,” the Master said, “but perhaps, someday, you’ll ask him and he’ll tell you.”
“The Doctor,” Jack said numbly. “He’s the Doctor.”
“Not yet, as far as our story is concerned. But he will be.”
“You knew him that far back?”
“Oh, yes.” The Master looked up from his work, which had visibly progressed, and set his tools down for a minute, giving Jack his full attention. “Do you think obsession is something that happens overnight? It grows slowly, like a cancer. One day everything is normal. The next… a little less so. Eventually, there is nothing but the object of your obsession, and the things you’ll do to possess them.”
“That’s terrible,” Jack said faintly.
“Is it?” the Master asked, sounding honestly curious. “Try another word, then, one better suited to your culture. Love.”
“Obsession and love aren’t the same thing.”
“Oh, yes, they are. Love is merely requited obsession. The only difference is that love takes two – and obsession takes only one.” The Master paused a moment, considering, then said slowly, “And that means I misspoke earlier, you know, when I said ‘obsession’. I should have said ‘love’ right from the start.”
“You’re saying the Doctor loves you.” Jack tried to break through the numbness that had been swallowing him since the 4-5-6 had come to Earth, dredge up a little disbelief or righteous indignation or maybe some outrage. Nothing came, and he thought wearily that it didn’t matter how unbelievable the notion was in the abstract, because somehow Jack believed it. It wasn’t healthy, it wasn’t anything Jack would have called love, but it made a horrifying kind of sense out of everything he’d seen between the last of the Time Lords.
The Master watched every thought flicker across Jack’s face. When Jack focused on him again, he smiled wryly. “I haven’t exactly made it easy for him, you know. But somehow he never quite stopped loving me. Maybe that’s horrible. I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either,” Jack said, and was dimly surprised at the notion that he’d just told the Master the truth, for no other reason than he no longer cared enough to lie.
“Well.” The Master picked up another set of tools and went back to work. Lights were beginning to blink on in certain parts of the device, now, though they didn’t appear to have any pattern yet. That would come later, Jack supposed. He still didn’t know what the device was, but at some point in their conversation Jack had started believing that it wasn’t, actually, a threat. Which probably meant he was a fool; but it wouldn’t be the first time.
And after Grey and Tosh, John and Owen, the 4-5-6 and Ianto, well, frankly, and with all due respect, Jack was straight out of fucks to give.
Finally Jack said, “I think we’ve wandered rather far from the point.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” the Master demurred. “But we’ll return to our story in progress, if you like.”
“You said the Doctor – that Theta gave you a suggestion for what to call yourself.”
“That’s right.”
“What was it?”
“There’s a Russian fairytale,” the Master said, “about a young man who is terrified of death. He learns that he cannot be killed if he hides his soul away, because the body will go on living as long as the soul is alive. So he places his soul inside a needle, which he hides in an egg, which is swallowed by a duck, which is eaten by a hare, which he locks inside a chest. Then he buries this chest on an island that no one has heard of in an ocean no one knows, and believes himself immortal. His name was Koschei. Koschei the Deathless.”
“What happens to him?” Jack asked. “In the fairy tale?”
“He dies,” the Master said. “But Theta didn’t tell me that part until much later.”
“It’s appropriate.”
“In every sense,” the Master agreed.
“But what does this have to do with what you’re building?”
“Patience; we’ll come to it.” The Master made another set of adjustments, and the previously random pattern of lights blinked in order, once each, then seemed to fall into some standby mode. A secondary panel Jack hadn’t even noticed the Master connecting lit up with amber and green lights. “I think the Doctor has told you that something else happened to me when I looked into the Untempered Schism?”
“Drums,” Jack said quietly. “Only they weren’t really drums, they were a signal…”
“Yes.”
“The Doctor also said they were gone now.” Jack watched the Master carefully. “He seemed to think that the drums were the source of all of your problems, and that as soon as they were gone you’d…” Jack waved a hand expressively. “Change, suddenly.”
“Into what?” the Master asked curiously.
The funny thing was, until tonight – until the Master had started telling him stories about himself – Jack wouldn’t have been able to answer that question. Now he said, “Into what the Doctor wants you to be.”
“The Doctor loves change,” the Master mused. “For the better, for the worse – he believes all change is always for the better, though – he believes in change for its own sake. Some cultures call him the Lonely God, but they’re naming him after the effect, not the cause. He’s the God of Change. You have such gods in your cultures, don’t you? Trickster gods, always rebelling against the existing order, bringing chaos in their wake. Loki. Coyote. Prometheus.”
“You know a lot about Earth culture,” Jack observed.
The Master smiled. “But I just told you,” he said. “I had a friend at the Academy who taught me all about it.”
“So you did.” Jack considered. “So if the Doctor is the God of Change, does that make you the God of Order?”
“Because we’re such polar opposites?” The Master seemed amused. “It’s an interesting notion. Yes, there may be something to that... Not that I respected the establishment on Gallifrey any more than the Doctor did, of course. But say, perhaps, control instead of order. I have always sought control. The more so over outside things, since, with the drums in my head, I had a very difficult time controlling myself.”
“And so now that the drums are gone, what are you?”
“The Doctor would say I am changed.”
“What would you say?”
“That I am become again what I always was, and shaken free of the influence which previously controlled me.”
“How is that not a change? Either way, you’re saying you’re different from the way you were three years ago.”
The Master tapped his fingers against the table. The tapping had no discernible rhythm. “If you were ill, let us say, and bedridden for years – and then you were cured, and went back to your life – well, would you say you were changed? Or would you say that you were back?”
Jack leaned forward again, invested in the argument now. “But what you’re describing is an illness that has lasted almost your entire life. You said a Time Lord was the sum of his memories. If all of your memories are of the man you were with the drums, isn’t that who you are?”
The Master smiled in appreciation. “You understand. Good. Well, that is why I must make new memories. I will not permit the drums to control me, now that I am finally rid of them.”
“And that’s what you’re doing here,” Jack said incredulously. “Making new memories. Chatting with someone you tortured and killed.”
“Actually,” the Master said gently, “as far as that last part goes, I’m apologizing to him.”
“You?” Jack sat up straight, laughing in sheer disbelief. “Apologize? Oh, this I have to hear. Go on, then. Tell me you’re sorry. I can’t wait to hear the words you’ll choose. Or maybe you’ve got one of those dippy greeting cards? Does Hallmark make a ‘sorry I tortured and killed you’ card? You’ll have had to get a pen after that, and write in ‘three hundred times’, I don’t think Hallmark would have thought of that.” Jack passed a hand over his forehead, unsurprised to find it shaking, and let himself lean backwards again. The diatribe, short as it had been, had left him feeling breathless, and the fragile ease of their conversation didn’t seem likely to return.
The Master, incredibly, seemed unaffected by any of this. So at least one thing has changed, at any rate, the quiet voice of reason murmured in the back of Jack’s mind. Otherwise he would just have shot you, then waited for you to come back to life and gone on talking.
“Go on then,” Jack muttered finally. “Say something.”
“Words weren’t exactly what I had in mind,” the Master said, and he patted the device next to him. “I was thinking actions would have a better effect. And I’ve always been more of a man of action.”
“So you’re making me a present.”
“Yes.”
“You meant it when you said that. It’s not a bomb.”
“No, it’s not.”
Jack shook his head slowly. “What is it, then?”
“Almost,” the Master said. “Just a little bit more of the story to tell.”
“I didn’t know if you’d prefer tea or coffee,” Jack said fifteen minutes later, setting a mug down on Tosh’s desk, “but I figured you couldn’t have hung around Britain this long without at least being able to tolerate tea. So.”
“Thank you,” the Master said in apparent sincerity, reaching for the cup without turning around and finding it after only a few absent swipes at mid-air. “It’s more a case of having hung around the Doctor, who’s hung around Britain, but it comes out the same.”
“Tea is a pretty universal beverage anyway. Almost every culture I visited had some form of it. Coffee’s a lot rarer.” Jack collapsed back into Owen’s chair and sipped at his mug, which also contained tea, despite the lateness of the hour and Jack’s own American-influenced cultural heritage. He still wasn’t able to so much as catch a whiff of coffee without being reminded of Ianto, and it would be a long time before those memories stopped being painful. Jack had loved before – not like this, but enough to be worthy of the name – and one day, he knew, the bitterness would be gone from the memories, leaving only the sweet, fond recollections. But…
“But you don’t want it to stop hurting,” the Master said softly, “because that would mean that a life without him is possible, after all, and that’s a betrayal of inconceivable proportions.”
Jack’s knuckles turned white around the mug. “You son of a bitch,” he said evenly. “Stay out of my mind.”
“You’re a fifty-first-century human; your psychic defenses really should be better,” the Master scolded. At some point, without Jack noticing, he’d paused his work on the device and turned around. Now he faced Jack casually, wiping his hands on a white handkerchief, half-leaning against Owen’s desk and regarding Jack with something that absolutely could not be kindness. “I didn’t have to enter your mind to hear that. You were shouting it loudly enough anyone nearby with the tiniest drop of psychic ability would have been able to hear it. Even in this century, some humans will have evolved enough to have picked up on that.” He tucked the handkerchief in a pocket and reached for his tea, still wearing that damnable look of sympathy. “I could no more avoid hearing it than I can avoid breathing.”
“Maybe you should consider how much you actually need to breathe, then,” Jack retorted. “I hear you Time Lords have something called a respiratory bypass.”
The Master laughed. “A touch! I acknowledge it.” He sipped his tea, never breaking Jack’s gaze. “You won’t believe me when I say I understand that feeling.”
“Not really, no.”
“But you should,” the Master went on. “It’s just about the only thing we have in common, and, in a manner of speaking, it’s the reason I’m here.”
“Are you finally going to tell me about that?” Jack asked wearily.
“I have been, all along. Haven’t you been listening?”
“Pretend I need it to be made clearer,” Jack said.
The Master smiled. “As a child I was afraid of death,” he said. “I devoted my life to devising ways to defeat death. To escape it, or overcome it. I have died, as humans count death, eighteen times. Thirteen of those have been regenerations. As Time Lords count it, therefore, I have died five times.”
“Five times. Well.” Jack shrugged a little and waved at himself ironically. “Keep working at it, son, you’ll catch up to me eventually.”
“One of those times,” the Master continued as if Jack had not spoken, “My consciousness was recovered from the Matrix. The other four times, I overcame death myself.”
“I’ll get you a bouquet – ”
“This machine is the result of everything I’ve learned about returning from the grave.”
– and then, right then, the penny dropped.
Jack froze, mug arrested halfway to his lips, gaze still fixed on the Master. Slowly, feeling as if each centimeter of motion took a century, his eyes shifted left past the Master to fix on the pile of electronics on Tosh’s old desk. The pile that had transformed itself, over the course of the night, from a motley collection of gadgets to something that looked orderly, if not precisely neat. The panel the Master had connected earlier showed solid bands of green lights, one of them blinking patiently, as if waiting for attention.
“What did you say?” he croaked.
“Jack.” The Master looked concerned. “Maybe you should put the tea down,” he suggested gently.
The clank of the mug hitting Owen’s desk was loud in Jack’s ears, but it at least told him that he had had enough motor control left to accommodate that request, even if, apparently, it wasn’t under his conscious direction. The only thing that seemed real right now was the row of lights, the single one flashing. “What did you say?”
“This machine,” and the Master patted it fondly, “is the result of a lifetime of study of how to defeat death. This is my gift to you.”
“What does it do?” Jack whispered.
The look the Master gave Jack said that Jack had a perfectly serviceable brain and therefore knew quite well what the machine did, but was willing to indulge Jack’s obvious desire to hear another sentient speak the words aloud. “It can bring Ianto back.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Jack whispered. Then, in a louder voice, “Why didn’t you tell me at once?”
The Master caught his wrists – Jack hadn’t even noticed that he had lunged forward. Distantly he thought that putting the tea down had been a good idea after all. The Master’s grip was firm but not bruising, and his voice was oddly gentle. “Because if I had, you wouldn’t have been able to sit still, much less listen to me, while I worked. And you needed to do both – because I still had the rest of the work to do, and because you would never have understood why I’ve built this for you if you hadn’t listened.”
“It can bring him back?” Jack demanded.
“Yes.” The Master hesitated. “If you want to use it.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to use it?” Jack stared at the machine hungrily. At that moment he didn’t care what the Master had done or might yet do. His whole being was focused on the thought of having Ianto back.
“Because there’s still one thing more you have to know.” Still holding Jack’s wrists, the Master guided him to sit back in Owen’s chair, watching his face carefully. “The fairy tale figure we were speaking of earlier,” the Master said quietly. “Who was called ‘the Deathless’. He had another name. It was ‘the Immortal’.”
“What does that have to do with – ”
“I was never interested in resurrection as it pertained to mortality. The whole point was, is, to avoid death permanently. Jack, listen to me.” The Master’s grip tightened, and Jack wrenched his gaze away from the machine to look at him obediently. “If you choose to use this machine, the Ianto you bring back won’t be mortal any longer.”
Jack licked dry lips. “He’ll be like me?”
“No, not like you. You are unique, and thank Omega for that.” The Master shook his head, bemused. “Bad Wolf… only the Doctor could travel with a goddess and not even know it.”
“Then what?”
“He won’t age.”
“That’s it?”
The Master held Jack’s gaze firmly. “That’s enough.”
“You’re telling me he won’t die of old age.” Jack shook his head, eyes wandering back to the machine. “That’s what you mean by immortality.”
“In this particular case, yes.”
“You said you had other methods,” Jack remembered suddenly. “Why did you choose this one?”
“It’s the least painful,” the Master said honestly, “and it won’t cause a human permanent harm.”
“Except for the immortality.”
“When I first designed this, I considered that a bonus.”
“And now?”
“What Rose Tyler did to you – would you wish that one someone else?” The Master raised an eyebrow. “Would you wish that on Ianto Jones?”
Jack wrenched his gaze away from the machine, fixing it on his abandoned teacup as a point of stability in a rapidly shifting world. He didn’t want to show how that question discomfited him. He’d thought of it himself, wondered if there was some way he could give some part of his life force to Ianto. Thought about finding Rose and begging her for help. Or the Doctor. Or going back in time and taking Susie’s glove, using it on Ianto… sure, it drained the original user’s life force, but Jack had an apparently infinite amount. But the price that would have had to be paid, the price Ianto would have had to pay, in any scenario Jack could come up with, was astronomical. Jack would have given anything to be free of his own deathless curse.
“No, I didn’t think so.”
If there had been the slightest ounce of smugness, of superiority or gloating, in the Master’s voice just then, Jack thought he would have lost it. But it was just calm, almost soothing, and Jack took a shuddering breath.
“In that case,” the Master continued, “let me tell you the end of the story. And then you can decide whether to use the machine or not.”
The tea had found its way back into Jack’s hands. He sipped from it mechanically every few minutes.
“The Doctor has a habit of lying about his age,” the Master said. His tone was quiet, and he was oddly still.
It was, Jack thought distantly, as if the Master were trying not to spook a scared animal. He wondered if the comparison were appropriate. He wondered if he cared.
“I’m not going to step on his toes by telling you how old he – and I – really are,” the Master continued after a moment. “Suffice it to say, for the moment, that we’re both up to four digits.”
Jack saw the fond twitch of the Master’s mouth when he spoke of the Doctor, not quite suppressed, and thought of the way Ianto had looked at him when handing him coffee. Not any other time, just when handing Jack a cup of coffee. He’d had that same fondness. God, he’d had so much life in him. He’d begged Jack not to forget him. What might that mean in the face of the Master’s offer? If Ianto had known such technology existed, would he have begged Jack to find it and use it?
Or the opposite – would he have begged Jack never to touch it, to leave Ianto wherever mortals go after their final breath?
“By Gallifreyan standards,” the Master continued, “that’s actually not so old. If we were the sort of staid Time Lords who stayed put on Gallifrey and never did anything dangerous, we’d probably be, oh, on our third bodies. Give or take. That’s about a quarter of the way through a regenerative cycle, so, to put it in human terms, we’d be in our thirties.”
“Twenties,” Jack offered, his first real contribution to the conversation since he’d found out what the Master’s gift would do. “Average lifespan is still around 85 in this time period.”
“Oh?” The Master shrugged. “All right, then, twenties.”
“But you’re not average,” Jack pointed out. “You said you were on – what – your eighteenth body?”
The Master waved his hand. “The point isn’t what body we’re on. The point is expected lifetimes. We both chose adventurous lives, and there is a cost to be paid, with that as with everything else. Under the late and not very much lamented regime, the Doctor and I would be close to the end of our lives. So I’d be giving you a speech about experience and living a full life and riding gracefully into your sunset years. You should be glad to be spared that.”
“Because the old regime is gone.”
“The High Council had the power to award extra regenerations, or take them away. They had the power to grow entirely new bodies, with full regenerative cycles ahead of them, and place a Time Lord consciousness inside them. As they did for me during the War.”
“Good Lord,” Jack said blankly. Then, beginning to grasp where the Master was going with this, repeated, “Good Lord.”
“Or Rassilon, as the case may be. Yes, I’m afraid you’ve got it right. The Doctor and I are the only survivors of our race; for better or worse, we are the High Council. And enough of our technology was rescued between us that, in effect, he and I have unlimited regenerations.”
“If you choose to take them.” Jack wasn’t willing to explicitly mention the scene on the Valiant, where the Master had proved that a Time Lord could die no matter how many regenerations they had. But he was thinking about it. For the first time in a long time, the thought didn’t immediately transport him back to a year of pain and death. It wasn’t exactly that the memory had lost its sting; Jack wasn’t sure that could ever happen. But it was no longer far and away the most awful thing to happen to him. Ianto, shaking apart in his arms and begging Jack with his last breath never to forget him, had demoted the Year That Never Was to second place.
“So now you see why I feel myself qualified to comment on your situation.” The Master set his teacup aside and leaned forward, giving Jack his full attention. “When the Doctor was alone, he didn’t have this option. He was missing several key components, to start with. Even if he’d fabricated replacements, which I wouldn’t bet against, the technology requires at least two to operate. And I’m afraid the obvious solution – getting one of his companions to help – wouldn’t work either. The Time Lords weren’t particularly interested in sharing this technology with other races, as I’m sure you understand, and the interfaces can only be operated by a Time Lord. With my return, that option is now on the table for both of us, and we spent a very great deal of time debating whether we ought to use it.”
“How long is a very great deal of time, to a Time Lord?”
“In this case, about fifty years,” the Master said calmly.
Jack felt like he’d uttered enough exclamations of surprise for the night, but he couldn’t stop himself raising his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t have thought it would take you so long to decide. Weren’t you just telling me about your lifelong quest to escape death?”
“Escaping death isn’t the same thing as choosing effective immortality. Escaping death is living one life at a time. It can always end. It’s the fear of its ending that drives you.”
“Exactly. And this was the opportunity for it never to end.”
The Master shook his head. “I shouldn’t have to explain to you how different never is from not now.”
“No.” Jack stared at the floor and sighed. “No, you don’t.”
“In the end, we did decide to take the option.” The Master met his eyes steadily. “Do you want to know why?”
“Yes,” Jack whispered, eyes sliding upwards to linger on the Master’s gift.
“Consequences,” the Master said simply. “The Time Lords were pompous, obstructionist, and obsessed with nonintervention. You wouldn’t have thought the universe would miss them; the Doctor and I couldn’t wait to get away from them. But for all their bluster and bombast, they performed a necessary function. One that the universe quite literally can’t survive without.”
“The Doctor was always running off to fix some tear in space or stitch up a minor paradox,” Jack remembered; this time, when he said the Doctor, he was thinking of the man he’d first met, with his large ears and his leather jacket and his Northern accent. “In between every trip to Raxacoricofallapatorius or Victorian London, there’d be five repair trips, off somewhere in the universe.”
“I’d like to say that they were only so frequent because of your relative temporal proximity to the event horizon of the Time War,” the Master sighed. He let the pause hang for the moment, then added ruefully, “I’d like to say that.”
That startled a laugh out of Jack. He shook his head at himself, amazed. “So you’re facing up to immortality so you can keep the universe from falling apart?”
The Master spread his hands. “Someone’s got to,” he said with a note of finality in his voice. “The Doctor and I are all that’s left. Say what you want about us, think what you want – we’re renegades, destroyers of worlds, unstable and untrustworthy – it’s all true, but we’re still Time Lords. We’ll always be Time Lords, even if there’s no more Gallifrey and no more Time Lord Empire. You can’t escape your heritage.”
“I suppose not.” Jack sighed. The lateness of the hour must be catching up with him; he didn’t feel horrified at the thought of a Master who was effectively immortal, the way he really should have. He just felt tired. “So, what? I should bring Ianto back because he has some grand destiny?”
“If the Doctor were here, he would say that every human life has value, and that existence is a grand destiny all to itself.”
“And what would you say?” Jack asked pointedly. “Since you are here.”
“That of all the hells ever dreamed up by all the races that ever were,” he said quietly, “the worst of them is to be alone. As you are, now. And wherever Ianto is – if he is, indeed, anywhere, which I do not pretend to say – he is just as alone as you are, because you are not there.”
Jack swallowed, and felt something hot and wet prick at the back of his eyes.
“It’s your decision,” the Master went on. “I can’t tell you what the right answer is. You’re the only one who can guess what Ianto would have wanted, and you’re certainly the best arbiter of your own desires. I can tell you you don’t have to decide right away. The power supply will last decades, and you can always call one of us to come replace it after that. So you can take your time.”
Jack nodded mutely. He thought, distantly, that he should say something – some acknowledgement, at least, to show he’d understood – but he couldn’t quite come up with anything. The silence stretched.
Quietly, almost out of hearing, a familiar vworp vworp sounded. A moment later, not quietly at all, Jack’s Doctor Detector went off with a whoop.
The Master jumped at the noise, twisting round in his seat and frowning. A moment later the noise cut itself off abruptly. When the Master turned back, he was holding his laser screwdriver in one hand, and a curl of smoke was visible in the background. The remains of Jack’s Doctor Detector.
“Sorry about that,” the Master said apologetically. “I wasn’t expecting the noise. I can fix it for you, if you like…?”
Jack thought about it for a moment. “No,” he said slowly. “Thanks all the same, but… I don’t think I’ll need it, anymore. Of course he’s always welcome to drop by,” he added hastily. “And… well, I’d like to say you are too, but…”
“I quite understand.” The Master tucked his screwdriver away and rose to his feet. Automatically Jack did as well. “If you ever do need to get in contact with me – for example, if you have questions about the device – you know how to reach me.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“All right then.” The Master nodded. “Operation is just like that vortex manipulator of yours – these dials, and then the switch – ”
“Yes, yes.”
“Right.” They stood there almost awkwardly for a moment; then the Master shook his head. “Right. Well, that’s my ride. So I’ll be going. Best of luck, Jack, whatever you choose.”
“Thank you,” Jack said, and then had the biggest surprise of the night when he offered the Master his hand.
The Master stared at it in no little shock. “Ah,” he said finally, and shook it quickly. “Well.”
“Watch the Doctor’s back,” Jack said.
“I will.” And then, thankfully, the Master turned and walked quickly up the stairs, back towards the tourist office.
Jack stood there, watching him go. A thought struck him, and he called out: “Do you already know what I’m going to choose?”
The Master turned back around just before disappearing back through the doorway to the tourist’s office. “No.”
“Why not?”
“An immortal has an enormous effect on time. Much more so than a time traveller, because they not only can be anywhere and anywhen, but over the course of an infinite life, they usually are. The universe will reshape itself drastically around the choice you’re going to make. And…” The Master visibly hesitated. “And,” he said finally, “no one, not even the universe, can see past a choice they don’t understand.” He turned again and left, almost at a run.
Jack stared at the space where he’d been for a moment. Then, slowly, almost fearfully, he turned around and crossed the room, back to Tosh’s old workstation, to the twin paths of his potential futures. Gently he rested one hand against the machine’s casing. It was cool to his touch, and smooth. This close, he could hear a very faint humming noise. It seemed to sing to him, but gently, like a mother with her child. Patiently.
“Everything changes,” he said aloud, listening to the sound of his own voice echoing through the empty Hub. “Whether you want it to or not.”
The Master’s gift waited, beckoning sweetly to him, and the future.