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... )
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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It's just pain.
Until it isn't.
[A boy, eight years old, led into the den of the only monster a refined Time Lord mind would admit to: a Schism in time, space, and natural law, breaking his grasping mind and remaking him in Its image, filling him with Drums as though the beating of his own hearts swelled to fill the Schism's roiling emptiness. And as then, so it seems now; his mind twists back on itself, incompatible shards digging into fraying strands of thought, the monster weaving itself into his consciousness to follow wherever he might go...
Only this time that pressure is compulsions born of technology, conditioning, intrusion. This time that pressure is the Doctor, pushing his way into (Koschei) the Master's mind, and he swore -- he swore he'd never again allow this to happen.
This time he has the power not to let it.]
Full use and initiative of the Master's powers are still out of reach, but he has been given authority to protect the Trust's interests. Whether those interests are himself or the secrets evident in the conditioning of his mind doesn't much matter. He can act.
The Doctor only has one of his hands. The other is free and he forces it between them, reaching up to the Doctor's face, bridging his temples with thumb and ring finger and shoving his way into the Doctor's mind with as much grace as a rampaging Racnoss, attacking anything and everything that crosses his path.
:: (don't) STOP. ::
Funny how, even in his own mind, he sounds so much younger.
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Stop it. I'm trying to help you, let me help, you need to STOP-
He can't hold on, not while he's trying to keep his own mind from being torn apart. The one thing the Doctor was always best at was breaking and running, and that's what he does now, pulling out of the Master's mind, shoving the Master hard as he can out of his own - but as he does, he also shoves with it every memory of the Master he can pull together in an instant.
Holding him as he died, after bringing his empire down around his ears. The year on the Valiant, and his awakening at the end of the universe. So many battles fought against and beside each other. The two of them, centuries ago, as children on Gallifrey, in red grass under orange skies.
And then he breaks away, releasing the Master's wrist, breaking psychic contact and stumbling backwards, gasping. For a moment, he thinks he hears a drumbeat, ringing in his ears, so loud it drowns out everything else. A second or two passes, and it quiets, resolves to nothing more than his own heartbeat, pounding too fast and too hard.
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"...No." It's quiet, almost disbelieving. To have come so close to being himself - properly himself - again, then to have that taken from him...
"No." His breath's coming faster, hissing between his teeth, lending a strained desperation to his words. Give it back, he wants to say, or maybe it's Make them pay, but neither is something he's allowed; not at the collar, not at the conditioning, not at the Trust.
But as for the person just in front of him....
His hands twist in the air, clutch at nothing. And that's exactly what he's left with, isn't it?
"Give it back," he says, fixing on the Doctor as the Doctor gasps for air. He steps forward. "I had it. I had it, Doctor, it was mine, it was me-"
His hearts are pounding, his chest tight, and when he goes to draw breath again, he finds that he can't.
This body's fragile, after all. The clock's been ticking since he split off, and all the strain he's just put himself under only made it tick faster.
He's not aware that he's stumbled, that he's falling, until his knees hit concrete, and the jolt of impact is enough to force the last gasp of air out of his lungs. Even the oxygen from the systems which should take over - Respiratory bypass, allows the collar - is barely sustenance, and he brings a hand to his throat, choking on the too-thin air.
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The Doctor lunges without pausing to think, moving to grab him - he doesn't manage before he falls to his knees, but he catches him a moment after, hands on his shoulders, seeking out the Master's eyes again.
"What happened? What is it?" His eyes flicker to the collar, but it's at least not physically choking him. Still, at this point he thinks it can't hurt to get rid of the bloody thing, and if he does it while the Master's distracted...
He grimaces and reaches up, searching for a clasp, any way to pull it off. It may be programmed to make certain the Master keeps it on, but to him, it's just a little bit of metal.
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And that is the final indignity. It hurts,, being without it. One collar free isn't enough to pry the restraints from his mind, not when the body with a partially unfettered brain is the one currently recovering from hypoxia and constantly dying.
The breath he finally managed to take in is crushed from his lungs, and any willpower left him narrows to the single pursuit of getting the collar back. Gasping an hissing, he struggles to make a hand close on it again, take it back, Give it back-
Panic and hatred are equally present in his eyes when he happens to look back on the Doctor again; hatred for taking the collar from him, for not taking it sooner, for not saving him from the Trust, from his failing body, from himself. He hates the Doctor for a thousand different indignities, none of which he has enough power to change.
And most of all, he hates that it's come to this, throwing himself on the mercy of his oldest enemy, for the bare chance of freedom - an enemy who only thinks to uncollar him while he's suffocating.
This farce has gone far enough. From this point, the Doctor will likely do more good on his own than by dragging the Master through his bungling early attempts, and the healthy body back at the Trust's hotel turns to his keeper and informs her in clipped tones that she might want to recall their emissary before the Doctor manages to get his hands on any more Trust secrets or technology.
On the street, mid-scrabble, the Master's unlucky body feels the first tug of a conjuration and freezes, fixing the Doctor with a penetrating glare.
"Idiot," he says.
And then he vanishes, swallowed back through the air, and the collar vanishes with him.
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There are people staring at him, either for the shouting or because they noticed a person vanishing into thin air, and he doesn't much care either way. He shoots them - or possibly the world in general - a frustrated glare and turns away to stalk off into the snow.
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