Fic: Possibility
Title: Possibility
Author:
bastet_in_april
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3159
Summary: Roots and branches of the Tree of Possibility were actually penetrating the TARDIS’ walls and floor, seeming to grow through them. The leaves rattled, buzzing like a swarm of angry bees. Peri looked at them and startled, seeing glimpses of the Doctor in all of them.
Notes: Written for the Who (re) versebang challenge, for an art prompt by tardiscrash.
Thanks to C. for advice and encouragement
***
The Doctor, Peri, and Erimem stepped out of the cool whiteness of the TARDIS interior, only to be overwhelmed by green.
This planet was one of the greenest places Erimem had ever seen. The narrow bands of alluvial soil along the Nile certainly fostered lush plant growth after the annual floods, but Egypt couldn’t be called forested, by any stretch of the imagination. This planet was densely wooded, to the point that the canopy of leaves nearly blocked out the sky. Buildings were built into and around the trees, and painted various shades of green (according to their function, the Doctor explained). Even the people themselves appeared tinged faintly green.
Peri, despite having been hoping for a nice beach, appeared thrilled, immediately craning her neck to peer up at the enormous trees in interest.
“Ah!” the Doctor appeared cheered by the location, as well. “We’re on Chiaros. Very vegetal." He tapped the celery on his lapel fondly. "Trees are central to the Chiaran culture. The people are dependent on them as their primary source of food, income, building material… The planet is sometimes called the garden planet, but it is more like an enormous forest preserve, really. The Chiarans foster the growth of the trees and make use of them, but allow them to grow as they wish. Trees are highly respected on Chiaros, and to harm one without need is considered a crime.”
Peri laughed. “Wow. I can’t imagine what they’d think of the Christmas tree industry.”
“No, I can't imagine they’d condone cutting down trees for celebrating a holiday,” the Doctor said, “but trees are certainly central to many of their own celebrations, too. According to Chiaran creation myths, the oldest tree on their planet grew out of the origin point of the universe, and all realities are represented in the branching of the Tree’s limbs.”
“Like the trouser legs of time, but a tree instead?” Peri asked.
The Doctor frowned slightly, before shaking his head in amusement. “Well, not exactly how I’d have phrased it, but, yes, essentially.”
“Trouser legs of time?” Erimem asked, bemused.
“It’s a way of explaining alternate realities,” Peri explained. “Picture a pair of jeans.” Erimem did, but couldn’t imagine what they had to do with time. “When you decided to travel with us that became the path reality took. But you could have chosen not to, and that would have been another reality. The choice you made and the choice you didn’t are two realities stemming from that point of choice like two legs of a pair of trousers, existed side but side, separate but connected by that choice.”
“It’s actually rather more complicated than that,” the Doctor interjected, “because there are so many points at which the universe can split into different possibilities, and so many ways the realities can differ. It’s not just a matter of two choices. Even a tree is a bit too simple a metaphor.”
“Does the tree actually exist?” Erimem interjected. “The one from the story, I mean. You said it was the oldest tree on the planet.”
“Oh, yes,” the Doctor said, “the Tree of Possibilities is very real. Would you like to see it?” He grins boyishly at them, and they can’t help but grin in return.
***
“This isn’t right.”
All around them, trees were being pruned and trained to grow into certain shapes and patterns, like overgrown bonsai. The Doctor pulled aside a young man wearing clothing made from what appeared to be woven bark.
“Excuse me, ah-”
“Telus,” the young man supplied helpfully.
“Telus, we were wondering why your people are controlling the growth of the trees. We’re visiting, you see, and we had heard that, on Chiaros, cutting back trees was rather frowned upon.”
“Oh, that used to be true,” Telus nodded agreeably. “But it has been decided by the royal family that we must adopt a policy of controlling our trees, in order to best use them to our world’s advantage. There’s even talk of being able to use the great Tree of Possibility to shape and change the course of our world and its history. That’s what the Master Woodsman claims, anyway.” Telus shrugged.
Erimem could see the Doctor rock back slightly on his heels in surprise, as if the name had struck him. Something in the set of his mouth tightened briefly, before relaxing again. His eyebrows went up.
Peri’s eyes darted between the Doctor and Telus, uncertainly. “Doctor, you can’t think it’s- I mean, he’s dead. I thought, that time with Shakespeare, but he must really be dead.” Her voice rose in a note of plaintive uncertainty.
Erimem startled, realizing now who was being referred to. Peri had told her about the Master after the incident with Shakespeare and the princes in the tower.
The Doctor’s voice was serious, but there was something lively in his expression that Peri hadn’t realized had become more rare recently. She knew that the Doctor had been grieved by the Master’s death, but she hadn’t realized that he might miss the other Time Lord. “Where the Master is concerned, I have learned not to discount any possibility.” He turned to face Telus, who looked confused and slightly alarmed by their conversation. “This Master Woodsman fellow, what does he look like?” The Doctor asked. “A bit shorter than me, dark hair, fond of black velvet, dubious facial hair?”
“Well… yes,” Telus responded, taken aback. “How can you know this?”
Never mind that, now,” the Doctor said hastily. “Suffice it to say, he isn’t who he is claiming to be. The Master is a very dangerous man who could do grave harm if given access to your world’s Tree of Possibility.”
The Doctor’s dire seriousness was rapidly alarming Telus. “What can we do?” he asked. “The royal family are all convinced that the Master Woodsman will give Chiaros a means to ascend to greatness. We’d be able to change reality to suit our wishes. Nothing would be beyond our power.”
“Reality isn’t meant to be changed around according to individual desires,” the Doctor said. “The results of that could destroy this universe, and all others.” He frowned. “That risk may not be enough to stop the Master from trying.”
“Then we’ve got to stop him,” Peri spoke up, though she didn’t sound as though she was looking forward to the prospect.
“I’ll bring you to the Tree,” Telus volunteered, swept up in their urgency. “The Master Woodsman will be in the Greenhouse, no doubt.”
“The Greenhouse?”
“The facility he uses to control the Tree’s growth. When he first arrived here, he called it his TARDIS.”
“Take us there,” the Doctor said. “Quickly.”
***
The Tree of Possibility was difficult to look at closely. Erimem realized that if she focused on any cluster of leaves, they stopped looking like leaves at all, instead appearing as brief glimpses of unfamiliar people and places, like tiny windows looking out on other universes. If the myth the Doctor had spoken was to be believed, they might well be exactly that.
The Master’s TARDIS appeared to be coiled closely around the trunk of the massive tree, like a parasitic strangling vine. Just outside its doors stood the Master, looking profoundly smug and wearing the green sash of his acquired Chiaran office. “Doctor,” he greeted, appearing to have been waiting for the man to arrive, as if he were an expected guest.
“Master,” the Doctor returned evenly. His eyes strayed warily to the conjoined Tree and TARDIS. “I’d have thought you’d have enough sense to avoid stressing the junctures between realities. You can’t hope to keep control of it with just a TARDIS. Eventually, all the possible realities that you are suppressing and subverting will spring back, and everything will shatter. You must see that!”
“What I see, Doctor,” the Master retorted, “is the universe finally submitting itself to my will. Every defeat I have suffered will become a victory. Every future I have worked to create can be a reality if I but choose for it to be so. With control of the Tree, I have control of all possible realities. I can shape the course of destiny itself!” He laughed, delighted with his own victory.
“No,” the Doctor interjected forcefully, “you can’t. No one can. Reality does not conform itself to an individual’s will, except to the extent that our own actions can alter the course of our lives and those around us.”
“I can and have, Doctor.” As if in response to the argument, the Tree seemed to shudder, its leaves ruffling as if stirred by a nonexistent wind. The Doctor watched it with unease.
“I can’t let you do this.” The Doctor darted past the Master, towards the Master’s TARDIS. Peri and Erimem startled and rushed to follow, Peri managing to knock the Master over as he hurried to try to stop the Doctor’s progress. Telus ran to follow them into the TARDIS’ dark interior.
The Doctor scrambled for the door control on the console, quickly forcing the doors shut. “That won’t keep him out for long,” he warned his companions. “We have to disconnect the Master’s TARDIS from the Tree,” the Doctor instructed, examining the console, which looked torn open. Bundles of wires and electronic components had been pulled out from inside it, rearranged and repurposed, mangled in order to force them to a purpose they had never been meant for. Alarmingly, roots and branches of the Tree of Possibility were actually penetrating the TARDIS’ walls and floor, seeming to grow through them. The leaves rattled, buzzing like a swarm of angry bees. Peri looked at them and startled, seeing glimpses of the Doctor in all of them. “Peri, Erimem, Telus, I need you to do whatever you can to force the Tree back out of the TARDIS. I will try to disassemble the TARDIS interface with the Tree without endangering reality in the process. Be careful!” he added, already elbow deep in wires.
Peri could hear muffled shouting from outside the doors as the Master tried to force his way back into his TARDIS. She grabbed a branch and struggled to push it back through the hole it had punched in the TARDIS’ side, but nearly dropped it in shock as the world around her suddenly and briefly dissolved into somewhere and somewhen else.
The Tardis interior was dark and cavernous, and the console was littered with unfamiliar bits and pieces, including what looked like a peculiar cross between an old telephone and a phonogram. Staircases extended in spirals towards the ceiling. A man in dark clothing stood with his back towards Peri. Another, with an angular face and a long green and black coat was speaking with him. Peri knew they were the Doctor and the Master, though not as she knew them. They seemed to be arguing about whether or not to leave someone named Alison behind, but parts of their conversation frankly bewildered her, particularly the reference to the Master being a robot. The argument was clearly one between two people of a very long acquaintance, and there was fond irritation present in both parties for the other.
Peri gasped as the vision of the other reality dissolved, and hastily shoved the branch out of the TARDIS. “I saw…” She struggled to describe it. “It was the Doctor and the Master, but they were both different. Was that another reality?”
The Doctor didn’t turn from his work at the console, but answered. “Most likely, Peri. When you touch the Tree, you are coming into contact with the juncture point between realities. You may catch some glimpse of things within them.”
Erimem had pulled out the knife that she had found in the TARDIS wardrobe and taken to carrying in case of emergency. The Doctor had said that it had belonged to a friend he had traveled with named Jamie. She was hacking at the roots, having realized that pushing them back through the earth would be impossible. Telus flinched, and moved as if to stop her, but she sent him a quelling look that stopped him in his tracks. “Help Peri, would you?” Erimem directed. “We need to get the Tree separated from the TARDIS again.” A root came apart in her hands, bleeding sap onto her fingers, and she found herself holding nothing, and looking around herself at an unfamiliar room.
The familiar blue police box was sitting in a corner, its doors open wide, and a white haired man could be seen on his back under the console, fiddling about with the mechanical components above him. A young woman with blonde hair was leaning against the doorway, holding two mugs of cocoa, one of which she had clearly intended to bring to the Doctor, for that was who the white-haired man must be.
“Oh, come now, Doctor, what could it hurt? You’ve been so bored lately. A visit might cheer you up! It might cheer him up, as well. I should imagine he’s quite bored too, trapped in prison.”
“Honestly, Jo, I’m hardly concerned with whether or not the Master is feeling a bit bored,” the Doctor blustered, “and I’m quite busy adjusting this temporal displacement stabilizer.”
Jo rolled her eyes, confident that the Doctor couldn’t spot it from under the console. “Well, I do wish you would. You always seem much happier after seeing him,” she said, widening her eyes. “Mike thinks so, too.”
The Doctor grumbled something unflattering from under the console.
“I worry about you, you know,” Jo said quietly, “when you get so frustrated with the TARDIS and UNIT and everything. And the Master helps, I think.”
Erimem forced the roots out through one of the holes in the TARDIS, staying focused on cutting away more of the Tree. She tucked what she had seen away to pursue later, however. She couldn’t remember the Doctor mentioning a Jo, but he had spoken of UNIT before, so she thought she might have seen a glimpse of the past, or a past that was relatively similar to this reality’s past, anyway.
The branches and roots were quickly being removed through the efforts of Telus, Peri and Erimem. The Doctor was focused on taking apart something very delicate and complicated with the care with which one might handle a bomb.
The doors shuddered and burst open, admitting the visibly furious Master into the console room, and something in the Doctor’s hand emitted a loud and alarming electronic sound of distress. The whole console room began to shudder, appearing to half dissolve, as if it were ceasing to be real. The console spat angry sparks that grew into dangerous arcs of electricity. The Master rushed forward, regardless.
The room was large and filled with unfamiliar people. A woman in a red dress stared blankly through everything around her. A family was huddled together. A man stained with blood and dirt looked on.
They all seemed removed from the grief of the man huddled around the figure of the dying man on the floor. The Doctor- it was another Doctor, they knew- pleaded with the man to regenerate, to live, to not leave him alone. The Master smiled up at him, triumph in his face and voice as he refused him this, choosing death instead. His eyes rolled up in his head, and the Doctor cried out in grief, cradling him as he rocked the lifeless form.
The electricity caught the startled Master halfway across the room and he shuddered, crumpling to the floor. The last piece of the device the Master had used to interface his TARDIS and the Tree came apart in the Doctor’s hands, and the console went docile and quiet again. All of the leaves vanished from the console room, taking their little glimpses of other realities with them.
The Doctor scrambled to the Master, turning him over onto his back, searching for breath and a pulse. When he found them, he felt his hands tremble with relief. He smoothed his hand across the Master’s brow briefly, fondness, concern, and anger competing in his expression. Concern won. He cleared his throat, realizing that the other three occupants of the room were all watching with various degrees of curiosity and interest. “Peri, Erimem, Telus, the Tree ought to be checked on.” His tone made it clear that this was not a suggestion. “I’ll make sure the Master hasn’t done himself any permanent damage, and that he won’t make another try at controlling the Tree of Possibility. I’ll meet you at the TARDIS as soon as I’m done.”
Peri looked as if she might protest for a moment, but thought better of it, her mouth quirking up in a sly grin. “Whatever you say Doctor. Erimem and I will make ourselves scarce.” She pressed the control to open the doors. “Why don’t you tell us about your planet while we check on the Tree, Telus.” The doors closed behind the three, leaving the Doctor alone with the Master.
***
The Doctor had healed the electricity burns on the Master’s chest and arms and settled the man into bed, despite his grumbling. He had eventually settled in himself, coat and shirt discarded in a chair, body curled around the Master’s, and had begun to drift off while watching the familiar features of the Master in sleep when the other man finally woke again.
“Doctor?” the Master asked, voice rough from sleep. His hands groped weakly, one catching the Doctor’s wrist.
“I’m here,” the Doctor said, laying a hand on the Master. “That was an incredibly foolish thing to do, you know. You could have died. I would have thought you’d be more aware of vulnerable you are, now.” He did not refer to what happened on Sarn explicitly, but it hung unspoken between them.
“I have never been one to allow mere physical limitations to stop me from striving to gain the things that I desire,” the Master stated frankly, his dark eyes full of feeling as he regarded the Doctor. His hands went up to settle over the Doctor’s hearts. “I find myself in a body with only one heart, so I’ll simply have to love you twice as much now.”
The Doctor sighed. His hand settled over the Master’s heart, feeling its reassuring beat under his fingers, and leaned in to kiss him.
***
If the Doctor seemed quiet but quick to smile after they left Chiaros, neither Peri nor Erimem mentioned it. Erimem suspected that Jo had been right, that seeing the Master did cheer the Doctor up. The Doctor had said that the glimpses of other realities they had seen had been focused by the Master’s TARDIS trying to sort out bits of reality that the Master wanted to make use of or change. Every bit of what they had seen had been focused on the Doctor and the Master. Whatever else the future held for the Doctor, Erimem believed that the Master would be in it.
Author:
bastet_in_april
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3159
Summary: Roots and branches of the Tree of Possibility were actually penetrating the TARDIS’ walls and floor, seeming to grow through them. The leaves rattled, buzzing like a swarm of angry bees. Peri looked at them and startled, seeing glimpses of the Doctor in all of them.
Notes: Written for the Who (re) versebang challenge, for an art prompt by tardiscrash.
Thanks to C. for advice and encouragement
***
The Doctor, Peri, and Erimem stepped out of the cool whiteness of the TARDIS interior, only to be overwhelmed by green.
This planet was one of the greenest places Erimem had ever seen. The narrow bands of alluvial soil along the Nile certainly fostered lush plant growth after the annual floods, but Egypt couldn’t be called forested, by any stretch of the imagination. This planet was densely wooded, to the point that the canopy of leaves nearly blocked out the sky. Buildings were built into and around the trees, and painted various shades of green (according to their function, the Doctor explained). Even the people themselves appeared tinged faintly green.
Peri, despite having been hoping for a nice beach, appeared thrilled, immediately craning her neck to peer up at the enormous trees in interest.
“Ah!” the Doctor appeared cheered by the location, as well. “We’re on Chiaros. Very vegetal." He tapped the celery on his lapel fondly. "Trees are central to the Chiaran culture. The people are dependent on them as their primary source of food, income, building material… The planet is sometimes called the garden planet, but it is more like an enormous forest preserve, really. The Chiarans foster the growth of the trees and make use of them, but allow them to grow as they wish. Trees are highly respected on Chiaros, and to harm one without need is considered a crime.”
Peri laughed. “Wow. I can’t imagine what they’d think of the Christmas tree industry.”
“No, I can't imagine they’d condone cutting down trees for celebrating a holiday,” the Doctor said, “but trees are certainly central to many of their own celebrations, too. According to Chiaran creation myths, the oldest tree on their planet grew out of the origin point of the universe, and all realities are represented in the branching of the Tree’s limbs.”
“Like the trouser legs of time, but a tree instead?” Peri asked.
The Doctor frowned slightly, before shaking his head in amusement. “Well, not exactly how I’d have phrased it, but, yes, essentially.”
“Trouser legs of time?” Erimem asked, bemused.
“It’s a way of explaining alternate realities,” Peri explained. “Picture a pair of jeans.” Erimem did, but couldn’t imagine what they had to do with time. “When you decided to travel with us that became the path reality took. But you could have chosen not to, and that would have been another reality. The choice you made and the choice you didn’t are two realities stemming from that point of choice like two legs of a pair of trousers, existed side but side, separate but connected by that choice.”
“It’s actually rather more complicated than that,” the Doctor interjected, “because there are so many points at which the universe can split into different possibilities, and so many ways the realities can differ. It’s not just a matter of two choices. Even a tree is a bit too simple a metaphor.”
“Does the tree actually exist?” Erimem interjected. “The one from the story, I mean. You said it was the oldest tree on the planet.”
“Oh, yes,” the Doctor said, “the Tree of Possibilities is very real. Would you like to see it?” He grins boyishly at them, and they can’t help but grin in return.
***
“This isn’t right.”
All around them, trees were being pruned and trained to grow into certain shapes and patterns, like overgrown bonsai. The Doctor pulled aside a young man wearing clothing made from what appeared to be woven bark.
“Excuse me, ah-”
“Telus,” the young man supplied helpfully.
“Telus, we were wondering why your people are controlling the growth of the trees. We’re visiting, you see, and we had heard that, on Chiaros, cutting back trees was rather frowned upon.”
“Oh, that used to be true,” Telus nodded agreeably. “But it has been decided by the royal family that we must adopt a policy of controlling our trees, in order to best use them to our world’s advantage. There’s even talk of being able to use the great Tree of Possibility to shape and change the course of our world and its history. That’s what the Master Woodsman claims, anyway.” Telus shrugged.
Erimem could see the Doctor rock back slightly on his heels in surprise, as if the name had struck him. Something in the set of his mouth tightened briefly, before relaxing again. His eyebrows went up.
Peri’s eyes darted between the Doctor and Telus, uncertainly. “Doctor, you can’t think it’s- I mean, he’s dead. I thought, that time with Shakespeare, but he must really be dead.” Her voice rose in a note of plaintive uncertainty.
Erimem startled, realizing now who was being referred to. Peri had told her about the Master after the incident with Shakespeare and the princes in the tower.
The Doctor’s voice was serious, but there was something lively in his expression that Peri hadn’t realized had become more rare recently. She knew that the Doctor had been grieved by the Master’s death, but she hadn’t realized that he might miss the other Time Lord. “Where the Master is concerned, I have learned not to discount any possibility.” He turned to face Telus, who looked confused and slightly alarmed by their conversation. “This Master Woodsman fellow, what does he look like?” The Doctor asked. “A bit shorter than me, dark hair, fond of black velvet, dubious facial hair?”
“Well… yes,” Telus responded, taken aback. “How can you know this?”
Never mind that, now,” the Doctor said hastily. “Suffice it to say, he isn’t who he is claiming to be. The Master is a very dangerous man who could do grave harm if given access to your world’s Tree of Possibility.”
The Doctor’s dire seriousness was rapidly alarming Telus. “What can we do?” he asked. “The royal family are all convinced that the Master Woodsman will give Chiaros a means to ascend to greatness. We’d be able to change reality to suit our wishes. Nothing would be beyond our power.”
“Reality isn’t meant to be changed around according to individual desires,” the Doctor said. “The results of that could destroy this universe, and all others.” He frowned. “That risk may not be enough to stop the Master from trying.”
“Then we’ve got to stop him,” Peri spoke up, though she didn’t sound as though she was looking forward to the prospect.
“I’ll bring you to the Tree,” Telus volunteered, swept up in their urgency. “The Master Woodsman will be in the Greenhouse, no doubt.”
“The Greenhouse?”
“The facility he uses to control the Tree’s growth. When he first arrived here, he called it his TARDIS.”
“Take us there,” the Doctor said. “Quickly.”
***
The Tree of Possibility was difficult to look at closely. Erimem realized that if she focused on any cluster of leaves, they stopped looking like leaves at all, instead appearing as brief glimpses of unfamiliar people and places, like tiny windows looking out on other universes. If the myth the Doctor had spoken was to be believed, they might well be exactly that.
The Master’s TARDIS appeared to be coiled closely around the trunk of the massive tree, like a parasitic strangling vine. Just outside its doors stood the Master, looking profoundly smug and wearing the green sash of his acquired Chiaran office. “Doctor,” he greeted, appearing to have been waiting for the man to arrive, as if he were an expected guest.
“Master,” the Doctor returned evenly. His eyes strayed warily to the conjoined Tree and TARDIS. “I’d have thought you’d have enough sense to avoid stressing the junctures between realities. You can’t hope to keep control of it with just a TARDIS. Eventually, all the possible realities that you are suppressing and subverting will spring back, and everything will shatter. You must see that!”
“What I see, Doctor,” the Master retorted, “is the universe finally submitting itself to my will. Every defeat I have suffered will become a victory. Every future I have worked to create can be a reality if I but choose for it to be so. With control of the Tree, I have control of all possible realities. I can shape the course of destiny itself!” He laughed, delighted with his own victory.
“No,” the Doctor interjected forcefully, “you can’t. No one can. Reality does not conform itself to an individual’s will, except to the extent that our own actions can alter the course of our lives and those around us.”
“I can and have, Doctor.” As if in response to the argument, the Tree seemed to shudder, its leaves ruffling as if stirred by a nonexistent wind. The Doctor watched it with unease.
“I can’t let you do this.” The Doctor darted past the Master, towards the Master’s TARDIS. Peri and Erimem startled and rushed to follow, Peri managing to knock the Master over as he hurried to try to stop the Doctor’s progress. Telus ran to follow them into the TARDIS’ dark interior.
The Doctor scrambled for the door control on the console, quickly forcing the doors shut. “That won’t keep him out for long,” he warned his companions. “We have to disconnect the Master’s TARDIS from the Tree,” the Doctor instructed, examining the console, which looked torn open. Bundles of wires and electronic components had been pulled out from inside it, rearranged and repurposed, mangled in order to force them to a purpose they had never been meant for. Alarmingly, roots and branches of the Tree of Possibility were actually penetrating the TARDIS’ walls and floor, seeming to grow through them. The leaves rattled, buzzing like a swarm of angry bees. Peri looked at them and startled, seeing glimpses of the Doctor in all of them. “Peri, Erimem, Telus, I need you to do whatever you can to force the Tree back out of the TARDIS. I will try to disassemble the TARDIS interface with the Tree without endangering reality in the process. Be careful!” he added, already elbow deep in wires.
Peri could hear muffled shouting from outside the doors as the Master tried to force his way back into his TARDIS. She grabbed a branch and struggled to push it back through the hole it had punched in the TARDIS’ side, but nearly dropped it in shock as the world around her suddenly and briefly dissolved into somewhere and somewhen else.
The Tardis interior was dark and cavernous, and the console was littered with unfamiliar bits and pieces, including what looked like a peculiar cross between an old telephone and a phonogram. Staircases extended in spirals towards the ceiling. A man in dark clothing stood with his back towards Peri. Another, with an angular face and a long green and black coat was speaking with him. Peri knew they were the Doctor and the Master, though not as she knew them. They seemed to be arguing about whether or not to leave someone named Alison behind, but parts of their conversation frankly bewildered her, particularly the reference to the Master being a robot. The argument was clearly one between two people of a very long acquaintance, and there was fond irritation present in both parties for the other.
Peri gasped as the vision of the other reality dissolved, and hastily shoved the branch out of the TARDIS. “I saw…” She struggled to describe it. “It was the Doctor and the Master, but they were both different. Was that another reality?”
The Doctor didn’t turn from his work at the console, but answered. “Most likely, Peri. When you touch the Tree, you are coming into contact with the juncture point between realities. You may catch some glimpse of things within them.”
Erimem had pulled out the knife that she had found in the TARDIS wardrobe and taken to carrying in case of emergency. The Doctor had said that it had belonged to a friend he had traveled with named Jamie. She was hacking at the roots, having realized that pushing them back through the earth would be impossible. Telus flinched, and moved as if to stop her, but she sent him a quelling look that stopped him in his tracks. “Help Peri, would you?” Erimem directed. “We need to get the Tree separated from the TARDIS again.” A root came apart in her hands, bleeding sap onto her fingers, and she found herself holding nothing, and looking around herself at an unfamiliar room.
The familiar blue police box was sitting in a corner, its doors open wide, and a white haired man could be seen on his back under the console, fiddling about with the mechanical components above him. A young woman with blonde hair was leaning against the doorway, holding two mugs of cocoa, one of which she had clearly intended to bring to the Doctor, for that was who the white-haired man must be.
“Oh, come now, Doctor, what could it hurt? You’ve been so bored lately. A visit might cheer you up! It might cheer him up, as well. I should imagine he’s quite bored too, trapped in prison.”
“Honestly, Jo, I’m hardly concerned with whether or not the Master is feeling a bit bored,” the Doctor blustered, “and I’m quite busy adjusting this temporal displacement stabilizer.”
Jo rolled her eyes, confident that the Doctor couldn’t spot it from under the console. “Well, I do wish you would. You always seem much happier after seeing him,” she said, widening her eyes. “Mike thinks so, too.”
The Doctor grumbled something unflattering from under the console.
“I worry about you, you know,” Jo said quietly, “when you get so frustrated with the TARDIS and UNIT and everything. And the Master helps, I think.”
Erimem forced the roots out through one of the holes in the TARDIS, staying focused on cutting away more of the Tree. She tucked what she had seen away to pursue later, however. She couldn’t remember the Doctor mentioning a Jo, but he had spoken of UNIT before, so she thought she might have seen a glimpse of the past, or a past that was relatively similar to this reality’s past, anyway.
The branches and roots were quickly being removed through the efforts of Telus, Peri and Erimem. The Doctor was focused on taking apart something very delicate and complicated with the care with which one might handle a bomb.
The doors shuddered and burst open, admitting the visibly furious Master into the console room, and something in the Doctor’s hand emitted a loud and alarming electronic sound of distress. The whole console room began to shudder, appearing to half dissolve, as if it were ceasing to be real. The console spat angry sparks that grew into dangerous arcs of electricity. The Master rushed forward, regardless.
The room was large and filled with unfamiliar people. A woman in a red dress stared blankly through everything around her. A family was huddled together. A man stained with blood and dirt looked on.
They all seemed removed from the grief of the man huddled around the figure of the dying man on the floor. The Doctor- it was another Doctor, they knew- pleaded with the man to regenerate, to live, to not leave him alone. The Master smiled up at him, triumph in his face and voice as he refused him this, choosing death instead. His eyes rolled up in his head, and the Doctor cried out in grief, cradling him as he rocked the lifeless form.
The electricity caught the startled Master halfway across the room and he shuddered, crumpling to the floor. The last piece of the device the Master had used to interface his TARDIS and the Tree came apart in the Doctor’s hands, and the console went docile and quiet again. All of the leaves vanished from the console room, taking their little glimpses of other realities with them.
The Doctor scrambled to the Master, turning him over onto his back, searching for breath and a pulse. When he found them, he felt his hands tremble with relief. He smoothed his hand across the Master’s brow briefly, fondness, concern, and anger competing in his expression. Concern won. He cleared his throat, realizing that the other three occupants of the room were all watching with various degrees of curiosity and interest. “Peri, Erimem, Telus, the Tree ought to be checked on.” His tone made it clear that this was not a suggestion. “I’ll make sure the Master hasn’t done himself any permanent damage, and that he won’t make another try at controlling the Tree of Possibility. I’ll meet you at the TARDIS as soon as I’m done.”
Peri looked as if she might protest for a moment, but thought better of it, her mouth quirking up in a sly grin. “Whatever you say Doctor. Erimem and I will make ourselves scarce.” She pressed the control to open the doors. “Why don’t you tell us about your planet while we check on the Tree, Telus.” The doors closed behind the three, leaving the Doctor alone with the Master.
***
The Doctor had healed the electricity burns on the Master’s chest and arms and settled the man into bed, despite his grumbling. He had eventually settled in himself, coat and shirt discarded in a chair, body curled around the Master’s, and had begun to drift off while watching the familiar features of the Master in sleep when the other man finally woke again.
“Doctor?” the Master asked, voice rough from sleep. His hands groped weakly, one catching the Doctor’s wrist.
“I’m here,” the Doctor said, laying a hand on the Master. “That was an incredibly foolish thing to do, you know. You could have died. I would have thought you’d be more aware of vulnerable you are, now.” He did not refer to what happened on Sarn explicitly, but it hung unspoken between them.
“I have never been one to allow mere physical limitations to stop me from striving to gain the things that I desire,” the Master stated frankly, his dark eyes full of feeling as he regarded the Doctor. His hands went up to settle over the Doctor’s hearts. “I find myself in a body with only one heart, so I’ll simply have to love you twice as much now.”
The Doctor sighed. His hand settled over the Master’s heart, feeling its reassuring beat under his fingers, and leaned in to kiss him.
***
If the Doctor seemed quiet but quick to smile after they left Chiaros, neither Peri nor Erimem mentioned it. Erimem suspected that Jo had been right, that seeing the Master did cheer the Doctor up. The Doctor had said that the glimpses of other realities they had seen had been focused by the Master’s TARDIS trying to sort out bits of reality that the Master wanted to make use of or change. Every bit of what they had seen had been focused on the Doctor and the Master. Whatever else the future held for the Doctor, Erimem believed that the Master would be in it.