Long Journey Home (7/?)
Title: Long Journey Home
Author: Gail R. Delaney
Series: The Unseen and In Between
Setting: Series 3 and 4 through “Journey’s End”. Each section will indicate which episode the particular scene revolves around either before - during - or after - as reference. This falls during The Year That Never Happened - between The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords
Genre: Reunion/Fix-it Fic
Rating: PG-13 overall
Disclaimer: Not mine. If I owned Doctor Who, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant would be my own private little playmates.
Summary: More than once, the Doctor told Rose something was ‘impossible’, just to later prove himself wrong. She no longer believed in impossible because of him. Then he told her that she could never see him again - that the walls were closed forever. Yeah, well… he also said they couldn’t do something else, and she had to prove one theory wrong to show he was wrong on both.
Author's Note: This is one of those scenes that took on an angle I didn't see coming, but it all made sense. I'm curious about reactions to this one.
During the Year that Never Was
While the Doctor still lived it…
In the small hours of the morning, when the Valiant finally fell silent and only the hum of the engines echoed in the observatory, the Doctor would crawl from his hovel and make his slow way to the window. It broke his hearts to look down on the death and destruction that coated the Earth like an oily, black film. Blackness swirled in the atmosphere, a testament to the burning cities beneath. Cities that had been on fire for weeks. Hundreds of thousands had died at the hand of a mad man.
But, it was looking down on Earth that drove him. Time would pass - painfully slowly - but the day would come when it would end. He knew it as well as he knew his own name.
The Doctor laid his hand on the cold tempered glass, pressing his palm to the smooth surface. His body hurt, every part of it. Having nearly a century of age and time thrust upon him in one flash had been almost enough to cripple him. But, he wouldn’t allow it. To crawl on his hands and knees would be to give in to the madness that had taken over the Master’s mind.
Since his first years at the Academy, the Doctor had seen the madness swirling behind his friend’s eyes. Only then he didn’t see it as madness. Genius perhaps, but not madness. A passion for something no one else could understand.
Friends.
The memories of his Academy life were sometimes a blur, the days of study and tests and discipline all melding one into the next. The only clear and sharp memories he had were of his free hours spent in the company of his mates, the ones who looked past his muddy heritage and the scandal that surrounded his family name to befriend him. They were few, but they were strong.
And among them had been the Master.
Of course, he had a name then, just as the Doctor had. But neither name had been spoken in well over eight hundred and fifty years.
A hydraulic door hissed behind him, and the Doctor shuffled on his feet to turn. The Master paused as he stepped into the pale ambient light, his hands pushed into the pockets of his burgundy silk robe. He smiled, and the sight of it sent a chill down the Doctor’s spine.
“It seems we still think the same, my old friend,” he said as he crossed the room and sank into one of the many leather chairs surrounding the table. “I’ve come in hopes of some intelligent conversation.”
“The time for talking is past.” It was hard to speak, but he forced the words out his dry, rough throat.
“Oh, humor me.”
With pain scraping in every ancient joint, the Doctor shuffled back to the table and sank heavily into the chair facing the Master. He sighed as the pain in his knees subsided now that he didn’t have to bear his own, fragile weight.
“So, tell me everything. Last time we saw each other, we didn’t exactly have time to catch up, what with me attempting to harvest your regenerations and all,” the Master said with a smirk, his fingertips already tapping out the damn rhythm da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum. “How is Mara? The kids? Oh, that’s right… sentimental fool that you are, you married below your status and had to watch your beloved wife die. It’s a shame, really. I always did like Mara.”
“You’re failing if this is a new attempt at torturing me, Master,” the Doctor said with a heavy sigh. “The mention of my family is a sweet memory, not a painful one.”
“Really,” the Master said, dragging the word out as he leaned forward to purposefully close the distance between them and stare into the Doctor’s eyes. “I guess nine centuries have faded them to a dull afterthought.”
“Not at all,” was the only answer he provided.
With a squeak of the chair, the Master flung himself backwards. He stared at the Doctor for a long time in silence, except for the thumping of his fingers on the table. The Doctor just stared back, waiting for him to say or do whatever it was he had come here in the middle of the night to accomplish. The Master did nothing without knowing the consequences would be exactly what he wanted. The Master of his own Destiny.
“I suppose I should take some small comfort in the fact that you are still that idealistic, benevolent, altruistic, soft-hearted fool we all knew and loved in Academy. If you weren’t, this wouldn’t be nearly as fun, Doctor.”
The Master used his name - the name he had given him - like a curse, an insult. The irony of it all was that in nine centuries, only one person lived other than himself and the Master who knew the root of his name. The Doctor.
“It was a nickname at first,” he finally answered Rose. “A taunt, really. I wasn’t exactly the favored student at Academy. Everyone knew of my parentage, the Cardinals made no secret of their distaste in my muddied bloodlines, and I wasn’t exactly the model example of stoicism and detachment.”
Looked at him over her shoulder, Rose turned her back to him and slipped her arms free of the shirtsleeves. “Keep talking, Doctor.”
He watched, blood pounding in his ears, as Rose kept her back to him and managed to shimmy free of the small clothes hidden beneath his blue shirt. She had more talents than he’d ever counted on. When she winked at him, he blinked and forced himself to focus.
“Um… right. Ah… nickname. Actually, it started with my friend.” When he said ‘friend’ his voice caught, and Rose looked back at him. His teeth clicked together and he swallowed. “Sorry. I just haven’t thought of him in a very, very long time.” His eyes snapped back to her, and Rose held out her arm, dangling the now removed tank top off her fingertips. She dropped it on the floor before buttoning up the front of the shirt.
“You’re not talking, Doctor.”
He cleared his throat, his eyes on the dropped tank. “I had ideas to change things. Make things better, not just for us, but for everyone. All the species and planets we watched, sometimes just let die. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t do more. Fix things. So, my friend started calling me The Doctor… the Fixer.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t meant to be a… he didn’t mean it like that. But, others started calling me Doctor in ridicule.”
“Why would you use it as a name then?” She turned back around to face him when the shirt was buttoned just enough to cover her breasts while leaving plenty of cleavage.
He shrugged one shoulder, taking a step toward her. “They called me a revolutionary, a rebel, a human-lover. I supposed I was all those things. And I didn’t want to be anything else.”
“You’d be surprised how far from that boy I am,” he answered, leaving the explanation hanging.
“Is it your old age that makes you drift away in your own thoughts? Lost in the horror and terror if it all? Reliving the death of Gallifrey?” the Master sneered, pulling the Doctor from his memories. “Or, are you remembering better times?”
“Better times,” he answered without pause.
“Tell me, Doctor. And I mean this… tell me what has happened to you since you left Gallifrey with that pretty little slip of a granddaughter of yours. Just the juicy bits.”
“Nothing that would interest you.”
The Master huffed and rolled his head. “Which means you spent the last few centuries saving planets that should have been left to die, fixing things that you decided were wrong, and generally thumbing your nose at the entire Time Lord Council.” He smirked and chuckled. “I always loved that about you… the thumbing your nose part, not the pathetic, universe saving stuff.” The Master breathed in through his nose and set his elbow on the table to brace his temple against his fist. At least he stopped the tapping. “We are gods, Doctor. You know that. We have the power to destroy and to save. We hold life in our hands.” He held out his hand, fingers curled in, shaking it to emphasize his words.
“Because we can doesn’t mean we should.”
The Master made a dismissive sound and waved off the Doctor’s words. He collapsed back in the chair again and contemplated the Doctor. He smiled again, but this time it held a touch of remembrance, lacking in the insane twist he’d inherited with this regeneration. “Despite it all, Doctor, I do remember those days at Academy with fondness. I remember when you told me you’d fallen in love, such a foolish notion. She was ‘so beautiful’. The light in your eyes was dazzling. Made we wish for something similar.”
“You were the first person I told…”
“I know, and I always both hated and loved you for that.” Listening to him speak was like running someone’s speech through a voice modulator. One sentence would be sharp and cold, the next distant and sad, like now.
He sucked in a sharp breath, as if shaking off whatever emotion his words brought. “We were the outcasts, you and I. For different reasons, of course… but like draws to like. Well, not always. I was drawn to you for the very reasons that made me an outcast.”
He fell silent for a moment, his eyes shifting as he looked at the Doctor - decrepit, weak and old - and one corner of his lips tipped up in a distant smile. The Doctor refused to look away, to brush aside the conversation as of yet. A small part of him hoped that if he could finally get the Master to talk to him, like this, like they once did, he could find the part of him that would end this without lives being lost.
“You were bad enough, my friend,” the Master finally said. “Not only did you - a mighty and exalted Time Lord-to-Be - marry, which was frivolous, unnecessary and barbaric by the mandate of the Time Lord Council, but you married a woman considered your inferior. You couldn’t have been much worse than if you married a human like your father. But I… I-”
“That’s the past,” the Doctor said, doing his best to gently cut off his one-time friend. The memories the Master tried to dredge up was painful for both of them, for different reasons. “Why relive old pains?”
The Master lunged forward from his chair, crouching beside the Doctor with his cheek pressed to the Doctor’s forehead. “Oh, but reliving the past is one of my greatest joys, my dear old friend. I remember it all so well, even now, centuries later. You tried so hard to save me from that pain… but you never realized that your words only made it worse.”
“I did realize. I just didn’t know what to say.”
“Perhaps you did. I remember now. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he mimicked. He sighed, his hand stroking over the Doctor’s thinning hair. “I think it might have been better if you’d reacted like all the others. If you’d looked at me with contempt and disgust. If you’d walked away.” His voice trailed off... distant. “At least you had the good manners to act surprised.”
“I wasn’t. Not really.” The Doctor closed his eyes and forced himself not to move away. “Is that why you’re doing this now? Because I fell in love with Mara?” He paused, not knowing if his words would soothe or enrage. The Master was too volatile to know for sure. “Because all I ever could be was your friend?”
The Master grabbed the back of the chair, and spun it hard, stepping back with his arms wide. The room blurred and the Doctor forced his feeble, aching hands to hang on to the chair arms to keep from tumbling to the floor. The Master flew by four times before the chair slowed and he finally stopped. The Master jerked the chair to face him, leaning down with his hands on the arms.
“You must think highly of yourself to imagine that I do what I do because of you. Because of - what is the phrase humans use? - a broken heart? Or, in our case, I guess it would be two broken hearts.”
“You brought up those days, not me.”
The Master smacked a hard kiss to the Doctor’s forehead before collapsing again in his chair, slouched down low. He twisted the chair back and forth, keeping his gaze on the Doctor. “Tell me something, Doctor. Did you ever feel it again?”
The Doctor blinked slowly, the fatigue of old age and the exhaustion of holding a conversation with a mad man wearing him down. “Feel what…”
“Love,” he said with a gleeful grin, arching his eyebrows. “That rush you told me about that made you forget everything you were, everything you were meant to be, everything you could have become…” The words ‘with me’, hung between them without being spoken. “Did you ever find again a woman worth breaking the rules to be with? A woman as glorious and perfect as your precious Mara?”
The Doctor contemplated his answer. He could attempt to lie, but just as he knew the Master, the Master knew him. They knew the ultimate truth about each other, the forbidden secrets of their true names, and the lengths that each would go for what they wanted. If he tried to lie, the Master would know. He weighed the outcomes, and without the leverage the Master sought, giving him the truth seemed to matter little.
“Yes,” he finally answered, simply.
“Aaaw,” the Master sighed with a tilt of his head. “That is precious. But… not that fiery little tart you showed up with, am I right?”
“No. Not Martha.”
The Master leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “I see it in your eyes, old friend, as cloudy and old as they are. You’ve lost her.”
“Yes.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes.”
He moved his chair closer so their knees touched and he took the Doctor’s hands, his grip too firm. It sent shards of pain up his arms as dry, brittle bone scraped against bone. “Then know this, my dear old friend… were it in my power to bring her back to you, I would. If only to see your face when I took her away again.”
He made the promise without pause, without the slightest waver in his voice. Cold flowed through the Doctor’s veins, chilling his hearts, because he knew the Master - his once closest and dearest friend, his confidant - meant every word.
The crack of gunfire echoed in the observatory, and half a second too late the Doctor lunged forward and caught the Master before he fell.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” he whispered as he lowered his friend to the floor. The smell of singed flesh and blood assaulted his nose, and a dark red stain spread across the man’s chest.
Already his breathing was rough and wet, and he stared up at the Doctor. He smiled, but it barely touched his lips. “Always the women.”
“I didn’t see her.”
“Dying in your arms. Happy now?”
“You’re not dying, don’t be stupid.” He tried to keep the panic from his voice. For just a little while, he had actually hoped that things could be different. That things could change. He should have known… “It’s only a bullet. Just regenerate.”
“No.”
“One little bullet. Come on.”
“I guess you don’t know me so well.” The Master stared up at him, barely blinking, not looking away. “I refuse.”
The Doctor held him tighter, wanting to curse him for his stupidity. He was offering all he could… life! “Regenerate. Just regenerate! Please. Please! Just regenerate! Come on!”
“And spend the rest of my life imprisoned with you?”
“You’ve got to. Come on!” he begged. Tears burned his eyes, dropping to darken spots on the Master’s red-stained shirt. “It can’t end like this. You and me, all the things we’ve done. Axons. Remember the Axons? And the Daleks?”
The Master only watched him, pain twisting his features. Dear Rasillon, how much more could he be expected to take? How many more could he be expected to lose? He had thought he’d lost them all once… what cruel twist of the universe gave him back one small piece of Gallifrey - gave him back a glimpse of a friend masked behind the twisted soul of a madman - only to yank it away again? “We’re the only two left. I have no one else.”
Still, the Master only listened… refusing to allow his body to heal.
“Regenerate!” the Doctor demanded, unable to hold back the agony.
“How about that,” his old friend said. “I win.”
Win? What was there to win? How could this be the ultimate victory?
His face twisted in pain and he turned into him, hissing through his teeth. For a moment, his eyes softened and he released a breath. “Will it stop, Doctor? The drumming? Will it stop?”
His body tensed and his last breath puffed from his lips before he went limp. The Doctor slumped onto the floor as much as he could while still holding the Master to him. The pain was choking, the loss a bitter bile in his throat as he buried his face against the silent body of his friend.
No!
It was truly over. They were all gone.
And he was alone.
Author: Gail R. Delaney
Series: The Unseen and In Between
Setting: Series 3 and 4 through “Journey’s End”. Each section will indicate which episode the particular scene revolves around either before - during - or after - as reference. This falls during The Year That Never Happened - between The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords
Genre: Reunion/Fix-it Fic
Rating: PG-13 overall
Disclaimer: Not mine. If I owned Doctor Who, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant would be my own private little playmates.
Summary: More than once, the Doctor told Rose something was ‘impossible’, just to later prove himself wrong. She no longer believed in impossible because of him. Then he told her that she could never see him again - that the walls were closed forever. Yeah, well… he also said they couldn’t do something else, and she had to prove one theory wrong to show he was wrong on both.
Author's Note: This is one of those scenes that took on an angle I didn't see coming, but it all made sense. I'm curious about reactions to this one.
During the Year that Never Was
While the Doctor still lived it…
In the small hours of the morning, when the Valiant finally fell silent and only the hum of the engines echoed in the observatory, the Doctor would crawl from his hovel and make his slow way to the window. It broke his hearts to look down on the death and destruction that coated the Earth like an oily, black film. Blackness swirled in the atmosphere, a testament to the burning cities beneath. Cities that had been on fire for weeks. Hundreds of thousands had died at the hand of a mad man.
But, it was looking down on Earth that drove him. Time would pass - painfully slowly - but the day would come when it would end. He knew it as well as he knew his own name.
The Doctor laid his hand on the cold tempered glass, pressing his palm to the smooth surface. His body hurt, every part of it. Having nearly a century of age and time thrust upon him in one flash had been almost enough to cripple him. But, he wouldn’t allow it. To crawl on his hands and knees would be to give in to the madness that had taken over the Master’s mind.
Since his first years at the Academy, the Doctor had seen the madness swirling behind his friend’s eyes. Only then he didn’t see it as madness. Genius perhaps, but not madness. A passion for something no one else could understand.
Friends.
The memories of his Academy life were sometimes a blur, the days of study and tests and discipline all melding one into the next. The only clear and sharp memories he had were of his free hours spent in the company of his mates, the ones who looked past his muddy heritage and the scandal that surrounded his family name to befriend him. They were few, but they were strong.
And among them had been the Master.
Of course, he had a name then, just as the Doctor had. But neither name had been spoken in well over eight hundred and fifty years.
A hydraulic door hissed behind him, and the Doctor shuffled on his feet to turn. The Master paused as he stepped into the pale ambient light, his hands pushed into the pockets of his burgundy silk robe. He smiled, and the sight of it sent a chill down the Doctor’s spine.
“It seems we still think the same, my old friend,” he said as he crossed the room and sank into one of the many leather chairs surrounding the table. “I’ve come in hopes of some intelligent conversation.”
“The time for talking is past.” It was hard to speak, but he forced the words out his dry, rough throat.
“Oh, humor me.”
With pain scraping in every ancient joint, the Doctor shuffled back to the table and sank heavily into the chair facing the Master. He sighed as the pain in his knees subsided now that he didn’t have to bear his own, fragile weight.
“So, tell me everything. Last time we saw each other, we didn’t exactly have time to catch up, what with me attempting to harvest your regenerations and all,” the Master said with a smirk, his fingertips already tapping out the damn rhythm da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum. “How is Mara? The kids? Oh, that’s right… sentimental fool that you are, you married below your status and had to watch your beloved wife die. It’s a shame, really. I always did like Mara.”
“You’re failing if this is a new attempt at torturing me, Master,” the Doctor said with a heavy sigh. “The mention of my family is a sweet memory, not a painful one.”
“Really,” the Master said, dragging the word out as he leaned forward to purposefully close the distance between them and stare into the Doctor’s eyes. “I guess nine centuries have faded them to a dull afterthought.”
“Not at all,” was the only answer he provided.
With a squeak of the chair, the Master flung himself backwards. He stared at the Doctor for a long time in silence, except for the thumping of his fingers on the table. The Doctor just stared back, waiting for him to say or do whatever it was he had come here in the middle of the night to accomplish. The Master did nothing without knowing the consequences would be exactly what he wanted. The Master of his own Destiny.
“I suppose I should take some small comfort in the fact that you are still that idealistic, benevolent, altruistic, soft-hearted fool we all knew and loved in Academy. If you weren’t, this wouldn’t be nearly as fun, Doctor.”
The Master used his name - the name he had given him - like a curse, an insult. The irony of it all was that in nine centuries, only one person lived other than himself and the Master who knew the root of his name. The Doctor.
“It was a nickname at first,” he finally answered Rose. “A taunt, really. I wasn’t exactly the favored student at Academy. Everyone knew of my parentage, the Cardinals made no secret of their distaste in my muddied bloodlines, and I wasn’t exactly the model example of stoicism and detachment.”
Looked at him over her shoulder, Rose turned her back to him and slipped her arms free of the shirtsleeves. “Keep talking, Doctor.”
He watched, blood pounding in his ears, as Rose kept her back to him and managed to shimmy free of the small clothes hidden beneath his blue shirt. She had more talents than he’d ever counted on. When she winked at him, he blinked and forced himself to focus.
“Um… right. Ah… nickname. Actually, it started with my friend.” When he said ‘friend’ his voice caught, and Rose looked back at him. His teeth clicked together and he swallowed. “Sorry. I just haven’t thought of him in a very, very long time.” His eyes snapped back to her, and Rose held out her arm, dangling the now removed tank top off her fingertips. She dropped it on the floor before buttoning up the front of the shirt.
“You’re not talking, Doctor.”
He cleared his throat, his eyes on the dropped tank. “I had ideas to change things. Make things better, not just for us, but for everyone. All the species and planets we watched, sometimes just let die. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t do more. Fix things. So, my friend started calling me The Doctor… the Fixer.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t meant to be a… he didn’t mean it like that. But, others started calling me Doctor in ridicule.”
“Why would you use it as a name then?” She turned back around to face him when the shirt was buttoned just enough to cover her breasts while leaving plenty of cleavage.
He shrugged one shoulder, taking a step toward her. “They called me a revolutionary, a rebel, a human-lover. I supposed I was all those things. And I didn’t want to be anything else.”
“You’d be surprised how far from that boy I am,” he answered, leaving the explanation hanging.
“Is it your old age that makes you drift away in your own thoughts? Lost in the horror and terror if it all? Reliving the death of Gallifrey?” the Master sneered, pulling the Doctor from his memories. “Or, are you remembering better times?”
“Better times,” he answered without pause.
“Tell me, Doctor. And I mean this… tell me what has happened to you since you left Gallifrey with that pretty little slip of a granddaughter of yours. Just the juicy bits.”
“Nothing that would interest you.”
The Master huffed and rolled his head. “Which means you spent the last few centuries saving planets that should have been left to die, fixing things that you decided were wrong, and generally thumbing your nose at the entire Time Lord Council.” He smirked and chuckled. “I always loved that about you… the thumbing your nose part, not the pathetic, universe saving stuff.” The Master breathed in through his nose and set his elbow on the table to brace his temple against his fist. At least he stopped the tapping. “We are gods, Doctor. You know that. We have the power to destroy and to save. We hold life in our hands.” He held out his hand, fingers curled in, shaking it to emphasize his words.
“Because we can doesn’t mean we should.”
The Master made a dismissive sound and waved off the Doctor’s words. He collapsed back in the chair again and contemplated the Doctor. He smiled again, but this time it held a touch of remembrance, lacking in the insane twist he’d inherited with this regeneration. “Despite it all, Doctor, I do remember those days at Academy with fondness. I remember when you told me you’d fallen in love, such a foolish notion. She was ‘so beautiful’. The light in your eyes was dazzling. Made we wish for something similar.”
“You were the first person I told…”
“I know, and I always both hated and loved you for that.” Listening to him speak was like running someone’s speech through a voice modulator. One sentence would be sharp and cold, the next distant and sad, like now.
He sucked in a sharp breath, as if shaking off whatever emotion his words brought. “We were the outcasts, you and I. For different reasons, of course… but like draws to like. Well, not always. I was drawn to you for the very reasons that made me an outcast.”
He fell silent for a moment, his eyes shifting as he looked at the Doctor - decrepit, weak and old - and one corner of his lips tipped up in a distant smile. The Doctor refused to look away, to brush aside the conversation as of yet. A small part of him hoped that if he could finally get the Master to talk to him, like this, like they once did, he could find the part of him that would end this without lives being lost.
“You were bad enough, my friend,” the Master finally said. “Not only did you - a mighty and exalted Time Lord-to-Be - marry, which was frivolous, unnecessary and barbaric by the mandate of the Time Lord Council, but you married a woman considered your inferior. You couldn’t have been much worse than if you married a human like your father. But I… I-”
“That’s the past,” the Doctor said, doing his best to gently cut off his one-time friend. The memories the Master tried to dredge up was painful for both of them, for different reasons. “Why relive old pains?”
The Master lunged forward from his chair, crouching beside the Doctor with his cheek pressed to the Doctor’s forehead. “Oh, but reliving the past is one of my greatest joys, my dear old friend. I remember it all so well, even now, centuries later. You tried so hard to save me from that pain… but you never realized that your words only made it worse.”
“I did realize. I just didn’t know what to say.”
“Perhaps you did. I remember now. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he mimicked. He sighed, his hand stroking over the Doctor’s thinning hair. “I think it might have been better if you’d reacted like all the others. If you’d looked at me with contempt and disgust. If you’d walked away.” His voice trailed off... distant. “At least you had the good manners to act surprised.”
“I wasn’t. Not really.” The Doctor closed his eyes and forced himself not to move away. “Is that why you’re doing this now? Because I fell in love with Mara?” He paused, not knowing if his words would soothe or enrage. The Master was too volatile to know for sure. “Because all I ever could be was your friend?”
The Master grabbed the back of the chair, and spun it hard, stepping back with his arms wide. The room blurred and the Doctor forced his feeble, aching hands to hang on to the chair arms to keep from tumbling to the floor. The Master flew by four times before the chair slowed and he finally stopped. The Master jerked the chair to face him, leaning down with his hands on the arms.
“You must think highly of yourself to imagine that I do what I do because of you. Because of - what is the phrase humans use? - a broken heart? Or, in our case, I guess it would be two broken hearts.”
“You brought up those days, not me.”
The Master smacked a hard kiss to the Doctor’s forehead before collapsing again in his chair, slouched down low. He twisted the chair back and forth, keeping his gaze on the Doctor. “Tell me something, Doctor. Did you ever feel it again?”
The Doctor blinked slowly, the fatigue of old age and the exhaustion of holding a conversation with a mad man wearing him down. “Feel what…”
“Love,” he said with a gleeful grin, arching his eyebrows. “That rush you told me about that made you forget everything you were, everything you were meant to be, everything you could have become…” The words ‘with me’, hung between them without being spoken. “Did you ever find again a woman worth breaking the rules to be with? A woman as glorious and perfect as your precious Mara?”
The Doctor contemplated his answer. He could attempt to lie, but just as he knew the Master, the Master knew him. They knew the ultimate truth about each other, the forbidden secrets of their true names, and the lengths that each would go for what they wanted. If he tried to lie, the Master would know. He weighed the outcomes, and without the leverage the Master sought, giving him the truth seemed to matter little.
“Yes,” he finally answered, simply.
“Aaaw,” the Master sighed with a tilt of his head. “That is precious. But… not that fiery little tart you showed up with, am I right?”
“No. Not Martha.”
The Master leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “I see it in your eyes, old friend, as cloudy and old as they are. You’ve lost her.”
“Yes.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes.”
He moved his chair closer so their knees touched and he took the Doctor’s hands, his grip too firm. It sent shards of pain up his arms as dry, brittle bone scraped against bone. “Then know this, my dear old friend… were it in my power to bring her back to you, I would. If only to see your face when I took her away again.”
He made the promise without pause, without the slightest waver in his voice. Cold flowed through the Doctor’s veins, chilling his hearts, because he knew the Master - his once closest and dearest friend, his confidant - meant every word.
The crack of gunfire echoed in the observatory, and half a second too late the Doctor lunged forward and caught the Master before he fell.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” he whispered as he lowered his friend to the floor. The smell of singed flesh and blood assaulted his nose, and a dark red stain spread across the man’s chest.
Already his breathing was rough and wet, and he stared up at the Doctor. He smiled, but it barely touched his lips. “Always the women.”
“I didn’t see her.”
“Dying in your arms. Happy now?”
“You’re not dying, don’t be stupid.” He tried to keep the panic from his voice. For just a little while, he had actually hoped that things could be different. That things could change. He should have known… “It’s only a bullet. Just regenerate.”
“No.”
“One little bullet. Come on.”
“I guess you don’t know me so well.” The Master stared up at him, barely blinking, not looking away. “I refuse.”
The Doctor held him tighter, wanting to curse him for his stupidity. He was offering all he could… life! “Regenerate. Just regenerate! Please. Please! Just regenerate! Come on!”
“And spend the rest of my life imprisoned with you?”
“You’ve got to. Come on!” he begged. Tears burned his eyes, dropping to darken spots on the Master’s red-stained shirt. “It can’t end like this. You and me, all the things we’ve done. Axons. Remember the Axons? And the Daleks?”
The Master only watched him, pain twisting his features. Dear Rasillon, how much more could he be expected to take? How many more could he be expected to lose? He had thought he’d lost them all once… what cruel twist of the universe gave him back one small piece of Gallifrey - gave him back a glimpse of a friend masked behind the twisted soul of a madman - only to yank it away again? “We’re the only two left. I have no one else.”
Still, the Master only listened… refusing to allow his body to heal.
“Regenerate!” the Doctor demanded, unable to hold back the agony.
“How about that,” his old friend said. “I win.”
Win? What was there to win? How could this be the ultimate victory?
His face twisted in pain and he turned into him, hissing through his teeth. For a moment, his eyes softened and he released a breath. “Will it stop, Doctor? The drumming? Will it stop?”
His body tensed and his last breath puffed from his lips before he went limp. The Doctor slumped onto the floor as much as he could while still holding the Master to him. The pain was choking, the loss a bitter bile in his throat as he buried his face against the silent body of his friend.
No!
It was truly over. They were all gone.
And he was alone.