Lock] I wouldn't save you from the path you wander. In desperation dreams any soul can set you free…
There's a refreshing chill to the Chicago air here on North Clark Street, compared to the unrelenting New Delhi warmth. The Master would like to enjoy it.
Unfortunately, he's here on business.
The cold is already biting into his skin more than his Time Lord nerves should allow - his body, his real body, not this Rift-designed degrading clone - ( Read more... )
Unfortunately, he's here on business.
The cold is already biting into his skin more than his Time Lord nerves should allow - his body, his real body, not this Rift-designed degrading clone - ( Read more... )
"And you can have that, Doctor." He takes a step closer, looking directly into the Doctor's eyes. "You can have a very quiet Christmas and a happy New Year. Certain... negotiations..."
There's a rising pressure in the back of his mind which forces him to turn away, grit his teeth, dig his fingernails into the palms of this body-
He turns back soon. A headache isn't the most of his worries. A headache, given the usual pressures inside his mind, is a welcome companion.
"Should I call back at a better time?" he asks, taking another step. "Believe me, Doctor, this-"
And then he stops. Takes a moment to more completely study the Doctor's face, one of many faces he remembers, and...
He reaches up to study a beard line he's never been interested in having. It's infuriating, the yawn of empty space his mind won't fill in, almost as infuriating as the itch that starts up when he's without these goddamned collars - as though he believes in a God to damn them, as though there exists anything in the title outside the honorific, Sri Samaya, following him at every namaste, and the tips of his fingers itch with the desire to end all of this, once and for all.
That's what the Doctor is good for. Ending things.
But how to make him appreciate what he needs to do?
"I've been in New Delhi," he says, looking away again, though this time he feigns calmness well even to his own ears. "An interesting place. You should come visit me sometime. You would enjoy it." He chuckles; it's a little too long and a little too high to be as casual as his words are. "Good food. Lovely views. Plenty of things for you to... fix."
Fix this, he thinks, and his conditioning smothers the words before they can move toward his mouth.
Once more, back to the Doctor, and all this back-and-forth would make him dizzy if he hadn't moved past that on a daily basis. Dizziness, confusion... neither word means much, to a mind like his.
"I really have missed you, Doctor. ...Thete." He tests the word out on his tongue. Thete. Odd how he can't bring up the circumstances of the nickname, the conditions under which it applied. He watches the Doctor's eyes, trying to raise a question in this other man's mind when his own has turned against him. "I have," let this sink in, Trust me, believe me, "missed you."
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He breaks off with a shake of his head, balling his hands into fists in his coat pockets. If he could just get one straight answer, for once... He drifts off, glancing down the street, watching the Master only from the corner of his eye - but his attention snaps quickly back when he says his name. His nickname. His hearts jump and tumble, for just a second, and the Doctor searches his face, not even sure what he's looking for.
He's sincere. That much is hard to miss - he means it, as much as the Master ever does, and that... is almost more worrying than a lie. Sympathy, concern rises for a moment, and is almost smothered. Sympathy doesn't end well for him, not here. Calisto, and Thane... It didn't exactly go well the last time with the Master, either. Whatever it is, the Doctor doesn't owe him anything, and if he just walked away now...
"I missed you too," he says, voice low and soft. He has, too, and he couldn't save him the last time, but maybe now... Even when the Doctor ought to know better, hope always wins out.
He pulls a hand from his pocket to run his fingers through his hair. It's been a long time since New Delhi's even crossed his mind. When he speaks again, his voice is lighter, almost casual. "I had thought about visiting India, a little while ago. Got a bit sidetracked, but now that you mention it... I imagine there are quite a few people there I might like to have a chat with."
And who might try to take him prisoner and declare him an enemy of the Crown or whatever it is they declare him an enemy of these days. It's a common risk of being the Doctor.
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How novel. Nauseating, true (unless that's just another sign of this body breaking down -- one never can tell), but novel all the same.
"Oh, I trust you'd find the conversations to be had there enlightening in the extreme." The emphasis he'd love to place on the word "trust" doesn't make it out, but there's a flicker of his eyes, a hint of tension in his jaw, that makes up for the conditioned smoothness of his tone.
It should, at least, serve as confirmation.
Again, the considering tilt of his head, the glint of silver. For someone as brilliant as you are, Doctor, you're hopelessly thick sometimes. They're already hoping to fit you for one of these.
Collared and broken, the Doctor does him no good. Not that the warning will stop him -- quite the contrary -- but if he's very lucky, it'll raise enough questions for the Doctor to have an idea of what he's dealing with.
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His expression softens a little and he steps forward to close most of the distance between them, one hand reaching up to whatever it is around the Master's neck. He doesn't touch it, quite, his fingers stopping a few inches away, but it's clear he's itching to do so, tear it apart and work out just what it is, what it does.
"What have they done to you?" It's almost gentle, and he doesn't say it, but a hint of that old pleading tone slips in, the same thing it always comes back to - I can help you, please, just let me... Maybe he really will, this time. Maybe this once...
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"I came through the Rift rather inconveniently injured," he says. "The locals were kind enough to see me taken care of."
Don't you suppose, he thinks, seething, that if I could tell you more, I would have? Idiot.
"I do mean it," he says. "You should come visit. It would be so refreshing to see an old friend."
Yes... Help me.
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He sighs a little, running his fingers through his hair again and glancing to the sky - it's not so much that he's interested in the clouds threatening rain or snow as that he just needs to look away from the Master for a moment, take a breath...
"I'd love to. Thing is, whenever I leave this city, bad things happen to it. Rather not walk away and find great piles of rubble when I come back..."
And it would be very difficult to get all the way to India without Martha or Des or Donna or someone finding out and stopping him. The less they know about this - and the less the Master and the Trust knows about them - the better.
"You're not leaving Chicago tomorrow, are you?" How long do I have to fix this before I have to chase you down? He can handle a deadline. He's very good with ticking clocks.
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But this is good. For his new, revised definition of good. So long as he has the Doctor fighting for him, his odds go up.
He can almost anticipate the Kashtta Trust burning.
"I'm here to make friends," he says. "Depending on how reluctant our friends are to being made... I'd give you at least through the New Year."
Longer, if he plays the good little Trust emissary. Goes above and beyond the call of amenability. Toadying to humans in order to buy the Doctor time to help him is apparently what he's been reduced to.
He takes some small comfort in the idea that, if the Doctor's really been stuck in this city all this time, perhaps the world's reduced him as well.
Of course, if he finds the Doctor insufficient to the task of freeing him, then that small comfort will be a large infuriation.
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"You... can't tell me who these friends of yours might be, can you?" He hasn't gotten very many easy answers so far, but he supposes it's worth asking. "...oh, tell me it doesn't have anything to do with anyone living in the Kashtta Tower right now."
There's no way that won't end with guns and bloodshed. And while the Master might enjoy that, it's not on the Doctor's list of preferred outcomes.
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But perhaps there's a way to do this without betraying the Trust.
He studies the Doctor's face for a moment, with what could be taken for wariness. "...there's a criminal organization headquartered in this city whose branches have infiltrated almost every nation on the globe," he says. "In what I'm sure was a staggering act of imaginative prowess, they christened this organization 'The Organization.' The leader is a man named Adam Monroe; he seems to be a little quieter in this city than you've been."
Meaning: he probably knows about you. The Master will not be surprised if you've not heard of him.
The grit of his teeth is beginning to work its way into a scratch at the back of his throat. Maybe this body will lose it's respiratory function first; always fun, that.
"Torchwood..." His mouth twists on the syllables. "...is of minor interest."
He tries not to wince. Four fingers go up to his temple, and he glances away before the Doctor catches him hiss.
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"The Organization," he repeats slowly. "What sort of a name is that? That doesn't even sound intimidating, that's just..."
Right. Criticizing the imagination of the probably evil organization will not get him anywhere. He eyes the Master, lips pressed tight together. Not knowing exactly what's wrong, not being able to get a straight answer is maddening, and he's starting to consider reaching out to the Master, borrowing just a bit of his psychic ability just so he can look, see for himself...
Probably a bad idea. He sighs and rubs at the back of his neck, weary and annoyed. He'd much rather jump into the middle of whatever this is and work it out that way instead of standing here, asking tedious questions, but maybe this will at least give him an idea of where to start. "After I wrote to you on the journals, I got a message from someone called Kimiko. She said she hoped I might be a friend...?"
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His lips stretch in something that vaguely resembles a smile, in the precise way that someone who's been dragged face down through flaming wreckage vaguely resembles a human being. "I'd be happy to arrange a meeting with my escorts, if you're so inclined, Doctor." He could be changing the subject. He isn't.
"At the very least," he says, "they'll appreciate hearing something about you when I return. It would make things easier for all involved." Because if he comes back from this meeting with nothing to show for it, there likely won't be another.
He finds himself wishing the Doctor would just get on with it and look into his mind. Is he still expecting a trap of some sort? The Doctor may not be half the psychic the Master is, but they're both Time Lords, and this could go so much more easily.
Of course, he can't suggest it. Of course, it wouldn't be that simple.
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"Tell them whatever you like. I can't exactly stop you. But if I meet them..." The last time he went to meet someone like this, he ended up knocked out and handcuffed to a wall. If he arranges a meeting, it's going to be in the open, where no one's going to kidnap him without causing a fuss. Maybe the Coffee Shop...
No. Very bad idea, that.
"I'll think about it," he says finally, after a minute. He very much hopes the Master's not going to remark on how much more cautious he's become since he got here. It's not caution, it's... just...
Maybe if he just looked inside the Master's head... If he doesn't touch anything, change anything, how bad could it really go? He pauses for just a second, considering, and then holds out a hand, palm up. "Give me your hand." His own psychic abilities are blocked, but his Rift abilities aren't - and in any case, the Master's a stronger psychic than he ever was.
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The Trust doesn't have nearly as much information in the city's resident Time Lords as the Organization does - yet one more reason why the Master was sent here. Still, unless the Doctor is going to pull him to safety or inspect his manicure...
He always did need contact to do anything substantial.
Still, the hand is a bit odd. One would expect the head.
"I don't bite," he observes. Biting is crude, after all. He offers a hand with a raised eyebrow, giving no acknowledgment to the fact that the pressure is building into a headache. "All the same, I hope you have a good grip."
Because once the collar works out who's examining the mind it's been programmed to watchdog...
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His fingers against the bare skin of the Master's palm and wrist, he can reach out - he doesn't even have to search for the power, because it's old and familiar and right there, and brushing against that ability only reminds him how much he misses his own.
He clenches his jaw, ignoring it, looks up to meet the Master's eyes, takes a half-second to brace himself, and then steps forward into the mind of the Master.
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These are far from the best of times.
The existing damage still jars, of course: broken shards of consciousness spin in a void seething with red nebulae, fragments of identity pulsing to an ever-present drumbeat, in time with the beating of his hearts.
That much is typical.
Not typical are the webs of compulsion crisscrossing the void, blocking word and deed and even, in some cases, thought itself.
There are entire sections of the Master's memories, his sense of self, that are missing, severed from context and sealed away somewhere he can't reach. Others are shrouded by a dense and impenetrable fog, form and presence enough to support cognition without allowing access to the information which does.
He is a Time Lord who's lost half of what it means to be a Time Lord, corralled by psychic imperatives and fenced into his mind by something too cold and artificial to be anything but mechanical.
:: Help me. :: The words fall somewhere between command and plea, and that's when the compulsions kick in.
It hurts. The pain is immediate and overwhelming, flooding every neuron, and he jerks back instinctively, trying to free his hand from the Doctor's.
The Doctor has to stop looking. The Doctor mustn't stop looking.
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But he's not a psychic architect, and if he breaks something in the wrong way, if it all comes crashing down and brings the Master's mind with it, he's not sure he could set that right.
When the pain starts, when the Master tries to pull away, the Doctor tightens his grip on his wrist, lunges forward to wrap his free arm around his body so they're both pressed together, at least hampering any attempt to pull away.
"It's alright," he says softly, possibly more for his own benefit than the Master's. "It's alright, I'm here, I'll help, I swear I will, just..."
Look at me, stay with me, I'm sorry, I really am...
He thinks he might be able to undo most of the damage, strip away the compulsions, tear down the walls, but it will take time. Nothing he can do standing out here on the street, nothing he can do while... While whatever imposed this is fighting him, while anything he does could be undone the moment he steps away.
When he fixes this, he would dearly love to find whoever did this in the first place, and make certain they never do it again.
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