Before Sunset (13/13)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG
Pairing: AU!Master/Doctor (10)
Summary: After a long wait the Master finally gets the chance to realise his plan. So does Jack. And so does the Doctor.
Note: Note has been misplaced and can now be found at the bottom of the story. Read it.
When he moved something in his back creaked - it was what pulled the Master back to reality and told him that he had spend a long, long while sitting motionless on the edge of the bed. He had no recollection of that time. Shaking his head to clear it and get rid of the feeling of unreality he carefully placed the Doctor’s hand back on the sheet. He didn’t remember taking it.
The Doctor was still unconscious, showed no signs of waking up anytime soon. His life signs were weak and not improving. The Master took a deep, shuddering breath - Jack had been right: They hadn’t saved the Doctor, just removed one immediate threat to his life by inflicting the stress of surgery on his body. He wouldn’t live for another three days.
“If only you finally started fighting,” the Master whispered to the still figure on the bed. Louder he added: “I’ll be damned if Jack’s the last person to ever fuck you.”
The Master had to admit the Doctor going down so fast was partially his fault. If only he had accepted sooner…
No. There was no point wasting time by dwelling in the past. The Master got up, stretched his limbs and left the room. The coffee Jack had left on the table for him had long since gotten cold.
Out in the corridor he wasted another moment feeling helpless and unsure what to do, followed by a few seconds of crippling desperation.
This was not the way to go. He gave himself a mental kick in the backside and made his way to the console room, the need to do something taking over. By the time he got there he was almost running.
Switching on the monitors the Master made a mental list of what to do next. First he’d run another scan to see if that damn spaceship finally had been kind enough to come back for good. Not much hope for that as he had programmed the TARDIS to alert him should it return and stay stable for more than half a minute, but he checked anyway. Just to make sure. After the scan he would…
He stopped right there, because there it was, and had been for a few hours. The Master nearly laughed. The universe making fun of him? It so was!
Okay. The new plan was simple. Travel there by TARDIS, take over the ship, use it to save the Doctor. Shouldn’t take very long. It couldn’t take very long because he didn’t have very long. (But there was still the question why the TARDIS had ignored his order. The Doctor came to his mind, but he couldn’t have known about the ship and the Master’s plans - he would have said something, he always did. Yet the thought left the Master feeling very slightly uncomfortable and nervous.)
As he went to fetch his coat and various screwdrivers the Master cursed his luck. It would have been generous of that machine to return before he had to cripple the Doctor and weaken him for the rest of this regeneration. Still, coming back now was better than not coming back at all. The Doctor would recover soon and his second heart would grow back the next time he regenerated. Which he would be able to. Even if this particular body was lost, the Doctor was not.
The Master didn’t quite understand why this sudden rush of hope and excitement scared him so.
He was impatient to leave, filled with the paranoid suspicion that something would go wrong again if he didn’t act immediately. Still there was something he had to do first.
Back in the infirmary he rummaged through the closets until he found a pair of padded restraints he fastened around the Doctor’s thin, bruised wrists after connecting them to the bed. He knew very well this was probably the most unnecessary thing he’d ever done but after the last time he wanted to make sure the Doctor stayed in bed. With him, you never knew. (He might wake up, find himself alone and go looking for the others, especially if he thought the Master was up to something. He might die the moment he tried to stand but when had that ever stopped him?) He was stupid like that.
The Doctor’s face was pale save for the dark rings around his eyes. His cheeks were hollow and his skin covered in a thin layer of sweat. He didn’t stir when the Master bent down to place a soft kiss on his forehead.
“You’re not going anywhere this time, are you?” he whispered sadly, gently squeezing the Doctor’s fingers one last time. When he left he didn’t look back.
-
As expected it was no problem for the TARDIS to get through the energy shield surrounding the other ship. The Master left the blue box in a long, deserted corridor full of pipes that weren’t dripping but could just as well have been. He made his way through the ship in a hurry, following the readings he got from the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. It led him deeper and deeper into the ship, right to the engines. This was promising, but not exactly useful at the moment.
The closer he got to the centre of the ship the more people he met - green skinned humanoids mainly, but a few members of other species as well. He didn’t recognize many of them and didn’t care where they came from. They eyed him suspiciously but did nothing to stop him, and the Master, in return, ignored them.
Until he turned to them to ask for the way to the command centre. They only stared at him, uncomprehending, and the Master realised they didn’t understand his words. Of course. The TARDIS wasn’t translating as long as the Doctor was unconscious. And even with his supreme Time Lord mind the Master hadn’t yet had a chance to learn their language as he had never heard them speak. This was going to be difficult.
He was almost relieved when armed guards appeared to take him to their leader.
-
Their leader, it turned out, was a number of corpse-like figures in plastic capsules. The Master snorted.
And had his screwdriver taken away one second later.
“Hey!” he protested, as it had played a rather vital part in his taking-over-the-spaceship plan. “Give that back! It’s harmless, I swear! I come in peace.”
we will not be fooled by a tool such as that again
A voice in his head, or rather, many voices. This was getting better and better. The Master carefully locked away all treacherous thoughts - like how he might use this particular ship to conquer the galaxy once the Doctor didn’t need him anymore - as he slowly walked round the semi-circle of transparent coffins.
“So, you’re the leaders of this lot, then.”
we are
“Just out of interest: what are you doing here?”
we have come to fuel our weapons
“By sucking the life out of people.” The Master nodded. “Very charming.”
he told you?
This way of communication wasn’t very useful when it came to posing questions and the Master needed at moment to realise he’d just heard one. He was about to ask another question in return when the answer came to him in the way these beings had spoken of the sonic screwdriver.
“Oh, no!” he exclaimed. “No! He was here, wasn’t he? The Doctor came here when we left him alone and he did something to your ship. That’s why you disappeared for so long.”
he ran, the voices in his head confirmed.
The Master smiled grimly.
“Yeah,” he said. “He does that.”
And once again the Doctor had sabotaged his plans. Had he known what the Master was up to or simply tried to protect the humans in this area? Not that it mattered - whatever he’d done to the ship, it hadn’t been enough, and this time the Master would have the last word.
you will not run
“I wasn’t planning to.”
your knowledge will serve us - we will become one
“That I wasn’t planning either.”
The aliens in the room that were able to move freely had positioned themselves in front of every exit, blocking them. The nearest guard was poking his weapon in the Master’s back. The Time Lord withstood the urge to roll his eyes.
If you link a number of idiots it doesn’t make them a genius, apparently.
“So, you’re just going to put me into one of those tubes?” he asked.
as soon as one arrives
“It seems there are several here.”
all occupied - can’t be removed from them - would die
This was interesting.
“I see. You’re one, but still not a singe component of you is willing to sacrifice its existence.” He shook his head in mock despair. “That’s why societies don’t work.”
Another reason why things often didn’t work the way they should was that most people tended to be dangerously stupid. Not that the Master was complaining - the fact that they had taken the sonic screwdriver from him but ignored the laser screwdriver was not something he minded.
He took out the two armed men first and then, when all the others moved closer like marionettes on strings he killed them as well. They wouldn’t be useful to him and he didn’t need anyone to stab him in the back while he was preoccupied.
All the time the collective was screaming in his mind.
After the last moving creature had fallen the Master went over to the transparent coffins where the masters of this ship and these people lay, all powerful but immobilized, and pulled up the lid of the nearest one.
“Now,” he said, pointing his screwdriver at the figure inside. “Let’s find out how much you really want to live.”
-
Just as expected the collective had alerted the other members of its crew and called for more armed men. The Master managed to talk them out of it before they arrived. Instead he ordered for the extra capsule to be brought to the command centre and connected it to the others in a way that certainly had never been considered by the creators of this machine. Now he was on his way back to the TARDIS to get the Doctor. He would put him inside that thing, then have the others suck out the life of the humans in the nearest city. Instead of refilling their weapons, though, the energy would be used to heal the Doctor. He would still need a few days to recover, the Master suspected - not that he’d ever done something like this before. The Master planed to leave him in ‘Bill’s’ care and be gone by the time to Doctor regained consciousness and the ability to be pissed. He would leave him the TARDIS and take this ship instead, let it take him to some place where he could finally have some fun again.
No more playing nurse. Bye-bye, worries!
He hadn’t felt this good in ages.
And then something exploded.
The Master felt the ship shake, was nearly thrown off his feet. Infernal noise reached his ears. He understood at once what was going on, but he needed a few seconds to accept it.
By the time of the second, much closer explosion he was running. Reaching TARDIS he struggled with the lock and closed the door just in time to escape the wall of fire that shot through the corridor. In here he didn’t feel the explosions but he made his way over to the console anyway and set the coordinates for a very short jump, and in an angry gesture wiped away the tears that were running down his face.
He stepped out of the TARDIS just in time to see the shell of the spaceship get torn apart from the inside, scattering bits and pieces over several hundred meters. It was only a matter of time now until countless nosy humans came to investigate in this otherwise deserted area. The Master couldn’t care less.
Jack stood close to the spot they had parked his ship last time, looking down into the valley that had suddenly turned into a crater. Over the noise of the explosion he hadn’t heard the TARDIS arrive and when he turned around he had less than a second for a look of surprise and shock before the Master punched him in the face and broke his nose.
The force-field of the TARDIS was protecting them from the shockwave of the explosion but not from the noise. So the Master couldn’t tell if Jack was saying anything while the Master kicked him again and again as he lay on the ground. He only knew that he, himself, was screaming.
Finally the roar died down and the Master stopped to catch his breath.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he yelled, and it had been a long time since he’d last felt such rage.
Jack pushed himself up to a sitting position, blood running down his face. The Master would have liked to kill him and even the threat to the timeline almost didn’t stop him.
“I did what I had to do,” the time agent said, his voice sounding calm and a little sad.
“You killed him!” The Master pointed into the burning crater. “That thing there could have saved him and you blew it up!”
“That thing there would have killed an entire city,” Jack pointed out, and added: “The Doctor asked me to do it.”
The Master stared at him.
Jack lifted his hand to show him the device he was holding, a small, chaotic thing with blinking lights that seemed to serve no particular purpose.
“He gave this to me,” he explained. “It enabled my vortex manipulator to get me through the force field protecting the ship. I connected a bomb to the engines and set the timer.”
“But it could have saved him!” the Master repeated helplessly.
Jack didn’t look at him.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “He knew that.”
“And so did you.” Taking out his laser screwdriver the Master seriously considered shooting Jack on the spot. Screw the timeline - it would be much better off without this idiotic, treacherous human anyway!
Then Jack said, reasonably: “Killing all those people would have been too high a price to pay for his life,” and the Master nearly laughed.
“I’d like you to repeat those words in a few years,” he sneered.
“Do you really believe the Doctor would want that?” Jack continued, ignoring the words that made no sense to him.
“Who cares what he wants?” The Master turned on his heels and went back to the TARDIS before he could do anything stupid, leaving the human sitting in the dust. Oh, Jack was so going to pay for this! Too bad the Master hadn’t known of it when Jack had been his prisoner during the year he ruled the Earth. He would have found so much more creative ways of killing him!
He closed the doors, locking them. Just him and the Doctor now, and the emergency plan the Master had hoped he wouldn’t have to resort to.
He didn’t check on the Doctor, too angry to face him yet. The TARIDS functioning told him his old friend was still alive and that was all he needed to know.
Instead he went to the room where he had stored his little project. He’d added anti-gravity projectors for easier transportation but even like this it took some effort to jockey it trough the narrow corridors. By the time he reached the infirmary his anger had cooled down but not lessened.
The device was more than two meters in length and one meter wide. It was a block full of pieces of machinery from a thousand worlds, and on top of it something that looked like a coffin made of glass. He hadn’t had a chance to test it but knew it would work.
He also knew the Doctor wouldn’t like it. He didn’t like it very much himself.
But, well. That idiot had brought this upon himself.
As expected the other Time Lord had not moved during his absence but he woke up when he Master removed the unnecessary restrains from his wrists.
His unfocused gaze fell on the device.
“What is that?” he whispered, needing a few attempts to form the words. The Master considered not telling him, but there already was suspicion in the other’s eyes. So he said:
“The solution to problems you caused. It will put you in suspended animation, freeze you in time, and keep you safe until I’ve found a way to heal you.”
The Doctor’s eyes widened and the suspicion turned to naked fear.
“No,” the croaked out. “No!”
“It’s the only way,” the Master said mercilessly and started to disconnect the machines surrounding the bed.
“Please don’t!” the Doctor pleaded, his eyes filling with tears. “I can’t bear that, please, just let me go. Let me go…” His voice gave out, but he still struggled weakly as the Master pulled him into an upright position, touching him gently and carefully like something incredibly fragile.
“Shh,” he murmured, stroking the other’s hair and keeping him still, his anger ebbing away and turning into something he couldn’t name. “It’s okay. You won’t even notice it, I promise.” But that was a lie and they both knew it. Time Lords noticed. The universe moved on around them, time kept flowing without them being part of it, and on a very subconscious level they sensed it. There would be no conscious memory afterwards, just a feeling of something being very, very wrong. Some had been driven mad by this - no time passed for them between the moment they were put in suspended animation and the moment they rose from it so they wouldn’t consciously know it even happened - except that they were fine one moment and insane the next, the sensation of being out of sync with time and space pushing them over the edge. Not the Doctor, though - he was too strong for that, he’d be able to take it. Still, in the non-existent moment that was about to come the Master would put him through hell.
He was actually sorry for that.
Eventually the Doctor fell still. The Master held him one and a half seconds longer than he had to, feeling a sinlge heart beat frantically in a desperate attempt to keep this weak, failing body alive just a little longer. When the Master carefully placed him into the coffin-like box the Doctor was barely breathing. The Master lifted the other’s limp hand to his mouth and pressed a soft kiss to his knuckles before he closed the lid.
“You are not going to win this game,” he whispered and switched on the machine. Motionless as the Doctor had been there was no obvious effect. Only now the very faint rise and fall of his thin chest had stopped completely and the Doctor looked disconcertingly like a corpse.
There were still traces of tears on his face.
The infirmary was cramped with the device inside and the Master took the time to move it into a small, empty room nearby where he could better tend to it should the need occur. He wasn’t in a hurry anymore - weather he needed a minute or a hundred years didn’t matter. Smiling bitterly to himself he stayed with the Doctor for another minute before he slowly made his way back to the console room. If there was one person he didn’t want to see right now that would be Captain Jack Harkness. If there was one person who could possibly (hopefully/maybe) help him it would be him as well. Life was cruel like that.
Sighing deeply the Master set the coordinates for the twenty-first century.
-end
November 12, 2007
So. As I mentioned before (You wouldn't remember this, but I did.), I had two sequels planed for Communication and this is but the first. The next one (which will hopefully be much shorter) will follow. One day. Eventually.
I had planned to write the sequel to Color of Light first but am not so sure about that now. After all that story as well has the poor Doctor as a wreck, to say it kindly, and I don't know with how much of that people will bear with. Maybe I'll write something completely different first, or a number of one-shots or nothing at all for a while. One day I want to finish both stories but right now I can't tell when that will be.
Come to think of it I could theoretically leave Color of Light as it is now and say it's finished...
Wouldn't work with this story though.
Rating: PG
Pairing: AU!Master/Doctor (10)
Summary: After a long wait the Master finally gets the chance to realise his plan. So does Jack. And so does the Doctor.
Note: Note has been misplaced and can now be found at the bottom of the story. Read it.
When he moved something in his back creaked - it was what pulled the Master back to reality and told him that he had spend a long, long while sitting motionless on the edge of the bed. He had no recollection of that time. Shaking his head to clear it and get rid of the feeling of unreality he carefully placed the Doctor’s hand back on the sheet. He didn’t remember taking it.
The Doctor was still unconscious, showed no signs of waking up anytime soon. His life signs were weak and not improving. The Master took a deep, shuddering breath - Jack had been right: They hadn’t saved the Doctor, just removed one immediate threat to his life by inflicting the stress of surgery on his body. He wouldn’t live for another three days.
“If only you finally started fighting,” the Master whispered to the still figure on the bed. Louder he added: “I’ll be damned if Jack’s the last person to ever fuck you.”
The Master had to admit the Doctor going down so fast was partially his fault. If only he had accepted sooner…
No. There was no point wasting time by dwelling in the past. The Master got up, stretched his limbs and left the room. The coffee Jack had left on the table for him had long since gotten cold.
Out in the corridor he wasted another moment feeling helpless and unsure what to do, followed by a few seconds of crippling desperation.
This was not the way to go. He gave himself a mental kick in the backside and made his way to the console room, the need to do something taking over. By the time he got there he was almost running.
Switching on the monitors the Master made a mental list of what to do next. First he’d run another scan to see if that damn spaceship finally had been kind enough to come back for good. Not much hope for that as he had programmed the TARDIS to alert him should it return and stay stable for more than half a minute, but he checked anyway. Just to make sure. After the scan he would…
He stopped right there, because there it was, and had been for a few hours. The Master nearly laughed. The universe making fun of him? It so was!
Okay. The new plan was simple. Travel there by TARDIS, take over the ship, use it to save the Doctor. Shouldn’t take very long. It couldn’t take very long because he didn’t have very long. (But there was still the question why the TARDIS had ignored his order. The Doctor came to his mind, but he couldn’t have known about the ship and the Master’s plans - he would have said something, he always did. Yet the thought left the Master feeling very slightly uncomfortable and nervous.)
As he went to fetch his coat and various screwdrivers the Master cursed his luck. It would have been generous of that machine to return before he had to cripple the Doctor and weaken him for the rest of this regeneration. Still, coming back now was better than not coming back at all. The Doctor would recover soon and his second heart would grow back the next time he regenerated. Which he would be able to. Even if this particular body was lost, the Doctor was not.
The Master didn’t quite understand why this sudden rush of hope and excitement scared him so.
He was impatient to leave, filled with the paranoid suspicion that something would go wrong again if he didn’t act immediately. Still there was something he had to do first.
Back in the infirmary he rummaged through the closets until he found a pair of padded restraints he fastened around the Doctor’s thin, bruised wrists after connecting them to the bed. He knew very well this was probably the most unnecessary thing he’d ever done but after the last time he wanted to make sure the Doctor stayed in bed. With him, you never knew. (He might wake up, find himself alone and go looking for the others, especially if he thought the Master was up to something. He might die the moment he tried to stand but when had that ever stopped him?) He was stupid like that.
The Doctor’s face was pale save for the dark rings around his eyes. His cheeks were hollow and his skin covered in a thin layer of sweat. He didn’t stir when the Master bent down to place a soft kiss on his forehead.
“You’re not going anywhere this time, are you?” he whispered sadly, gently squeezing the Doctor’s fingers one last time. When he left he didn’t look back.
-
As expected it was no problem for the TARDIS to get through the energy shield surrounding the other ship. The Master left the blue box in a long, deserted corridor full of pipes that weren’t dripping but could just as well have been. He made his way through the ship in a hurry, following the readings he got from the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. It led him deeper and deeper into the ship, right to the engines. This was promising, but not exactly useful at the moment.
The closer he got to the centre of the ship the more people he met - green skinned humanoids mainly, but a few members of other species as well. He didn’t recognize many of them and didn’t care where they came from. They eyed him suspiciously but did nothing to stop him, and the Master, in return, ignored them.
Until he turned to them to ask for the way to the command centre. They only stared at him, uncomprehending, and the Master realised they didn’t understand his words. Of course. The TARDIS wasn’t translating as long as the Doctor was unconscious. And even with his supreme Time Lord mind the Master hadn’t yet had a chance to learn their language as he had never heard them speak. This was going to be difficult.
He was almost relieved when armed guards appeared to take him to their leader.
-
Their leader, it turned out, was a number of corpse-like figures in plastic capsules. The Master snorted.
And had his screwdriver taken away one second later.
“Hey!” he protested, as it had played a rather vital part in his taking-over-the-spaceship plan. “Give that back! It’s harmless, I swear! I come in peace.”
we will not be fooled by a tool such as that again
A voice in his head, or rather, many voices. This was getting better and better. The Master carefully locked away all treacherous thoughts - like how he might use this particular ship to conquer the galaxy once the Doctor didn’t need him anymore - as he slowly walked round the semi-circle of transparent coffins.
“So, you’re the leaders of this lot, then.”
we are
“Just out of interest: what are you doing here?”
we have come to fuel our weapons
“By sucking the life out of people.” The Master nodded. “Very charming.”
he told you?
This way of communication wasn’t very useful when it came to posing questions and the Master needed at moment to realise he’d just heard one. He was about to ask another question in return when the answer came to him in the way these beings had spoken of the sonic screwdriver.
“Oh, no!” he exclaimed. “No! He was here, wasn’t he? The Doctor came here when we left him alone and he did something to your ship. That’s why you disappeared for so long.”
he ran, the voices in his head confirmed.
The Master smiled grimly.
“Yeah,” he said. “He does that.”
And once again the Doctor had sabotaged his plans. Had he known what the Master was up to or simply tried to protect the humans in this area? Not that it mattered - whatever he’d done to the ship, it hadn’t been enough, and this time the Master would have the last word.
you will not run
“I wasn’t planning to.”
your knowledge will serve us - we will become one
“That I wasn’t planning either.”
The aliens in the room that were able to move freely had positioned themselves in front of every exit, blocking them. The nearest guard was poking his weapon in the Master’s back. The Time Lord withstood the urge to roll his eyes.
If you link a number of idiots it doesn’t make them a genius, apparently.
“So, you’re just going to put me into one of those tubes?” he asked.
as soon as one arrives
“It seems there are several here.”
all occupied - can’t be removed from them - would die
This was interesting.
“I see. You’re one, but still not a singe component of you is willing to sacrifice its existence.” He shook his head in mock despair. “That’s why societies don’t work.”
Another reason why things often didn’t work the way they should was that most people tended to be dangerously stupid. Not that the Master was complaining - the fact that they had taken the sonic screwdriver from him but ignored the laser screwdriver was not something he minded.
He took out the two armed men first and then, when all the others moved closer like marionettes on strings he killed them as well. They wouldn’t be useful to him and he didn’t need anyone to stab him in the back while he was preoccupied.
All the time the collective was screaming in his mind.
After the last moving creature had fallen the Master went over to the transparent coffins where the masters of this ship and these people lay, all powerful but immobilized, and pulled up the lid of the nearest one.
“Now,” he said, pointing his screwdriver at the figure inside. “Let’s find out how much you really want to live.”
-
Just as expected the collective had alerted the other members of its crew and called for more armed men. The Master managed to talk them out of it before they arrived. Instead he ordered for the extra capsule to be brought to the command centre and connected it to the others in a way that certainly had never been considered by the creators of this machine. Now he was on his way back to the TARDIS to get the Doctor. He would put him inside that thing, then have the others suck out the life of the humans in the nearest city. Instead of refilling their weapons, though, the energy would be used to heal the Doctor. He would still need a few days to recover, the Master suspected - not that he’d ever done something like this before. The Master planed to leave him in ‘Bill’s’ care and be gone by the time to Doctor regained consciousness and the ability to be pissed. He would leave him the TARDIS and take this ship instead, let it take him to some place where he could finally have some fun again.
No more playing nurse. Bye-bye, worries!
He hadn’t felt this good in ages.
And then something exploded.
The Master felt the ship shake, was nearly thrown off his feet. Infernal noise reached his ears. He understood at once what was going on, but he needed a few seconds to accept it.
By the time of the second, much closer explosion he was running. Reaching TARDIS he struggled with the lock and closed the door just in time to escape the wall of fire that shot through the corridor. In here he didn’t feel the explosions but he made his way over to the console anyway and set the coordinates for a very short jump, and in an angry gesture wiped away the tears that were running down his face.
He stepped out of the TARDIS just in time to see the shell of the spaceship get torn apart from the inside, scattering bits and pieces over several hundred meters. It was only a matter of time now until countless nosy humans came to investigate in this otherwise deserted area. The Master couldn’t care less.
Jack stood close to the spot they had parked his ship last time, looking down into the valley that had suddenly turned into a crater. Over the noise of the explosion he hadn’t heard the TARDIS arrive and when he turned around he had less than a second for a look of surprise and shock before the Master punched him in the face and broke his nose.
The force-field of the TARDIS was protecting them from the shockwave of the explosion but not from the noise. So the Master couldn’t tell if Jack was saying anything while the Master kicked him again and again as he lay on the ground. He only knew that he, himself, was screaming.
Finally the roar died down and the Master stopped to catch his breath.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he yelled, and it had been a long time since he’d last felt such rage.
Jack pushed himself up to a sitting position, blood running down his face. The Master would have liked to kill him and even the threat to the timeline almost didn’t stop him.
“I did what I had to do,” the time agent said, his voice sounding calm and a little sad.
“You killed him!” The Master pointed into the burning crater. “That thing there could have saved him and you blew it up!”
“That thing there would have killed an entire city,” Jack pointed out, and added: “The Doctor asked me to do it.”
The Master stared at him.
Jack lifted his hand to show him the device he was holding, a small, chaotic thing with blinking lights that seemed to serve no particular purpose.
“He gave this to me,” he explained. “It enabled my vortex manipulator to get me through the force field protecting the ship. I connected a bomb to the engines and set the timer.”
“But it could have saved him!” the Master repeated helplessly.
Jack didn’t look at him.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “He knew that.”
“And so did you.” Taking out his laser screwdriver the Master seriously considered shooting Jack on the spot. Screw the timeline - it would be much better off without this idiotic, treacherous human anyway!
Then Jack said, reasonably: “Killing all those people would have been too high a price to pay for his life,” and the Master nearly laughed.
“I’d like you to repeat those words in a few years,” he sneered.
“Do you really believe the Doctor would want that?” Jack continued, ignoring the words that made no sense to him.
“Who cares what he wants?” The Master turned on his heels and went back to the TARDIS before he could do anything stupid, leaving the human sitting in the dust. Oh, Jack was so going to pay for this! Too bad the Master hadn’t known of it when Jack had been his prisoner during the year he ruled the Earth. He would have found so much more creative ways of killing him!
He closed the doors, locking them. Just him and the Doctor now, and the emergency plan the Master had hoped he wouldn’t have to resort to.
He didn’t check on the Doctor, too angry to face him yet. The TARIDS functioning told him his old friend was still alive and that was all he needed to know.
Instead he went to the room where he had stored his little project. He’d added anti-gravity projectors for easier transportation but even like this it took some effort to jockey it trough the narrow corridors. By the time he reached the infirmary his anger had cooled down but not lessened.
The device was more than two meters in length and one meter wide. It was a block full of pieces of machinery from a thousand worlds, and on top of it something that looked like a coffin made of glass. He hadn’t had a chance to test it but knew it would work.
He also knew the Doctor wouldn’t like it. He didn’t like it very much himself.
But, well. That idiot had brought this upon himself.
As expected the other Time Lord had not moved during his absence but he woke up when he Master removed the unnecessary restrains from his wrists.
His unfocused gaze fell on the device.
“What is that?” he whispered, needing a few attempts to form the words. The Master considered not telling him, but there already was suspicion in the other’s eyes. So he said:
“The solution to problems you caused. It will put you in suspended animation, freeze you in time, and keep you safe until I’ve found a way to heal you.”
The Doctor’s eyes widened and the suspicion turned to naked fear.
“No,” the croaked out. “No!”
“It’s the only way,” the Master said mercilessly and started to disconnect the machines surrounding the bed.
“Please don’t!” the Doctor pleaded, his eyes filling with tears. “I can’t bear that, please, just let me go. Let me go…” His voice gave out, but he still struggled weakly as the Master pulled him into an upright position, touching him gently and carefully like something incredibly fragile.
“Shh,” he murmured, stroking the other’s hair and keeping him still, his anger ebbing away and turning into something he couldn’t name. “It’s okay. You won’t even notice it, I promise.” But that was a lie and they both knew it. Time Lords noticed. The universe moved on around them, time kept flowing without them being part of it, and on a very subconscious level they sensed it. There would be no conscious memory afterwards, just a feeling of something being very, very wrong. Some had been driven mad by this - no time passed for them between the moment they were put in suspended animation and the moment they rose from it so they wouldn’t consciously know it even happened - except that they were fine one moment and insane the next, the sensation of being out of sync with time and space pushing them over the edge. Not the Doctor, though - he was too strong for that, he’d be able to take it. Still, in the non-existent moment that was about to come the Master would put him through hell.
He was actually sorry for that.
Eventually the Doctor fell still. The Master held him one and a half seconds longer than he had to, feeling a sinlge heart beat frantically in a desperate attempt to keep this weak, failing body alive just a little longer. When the Master carefully placed him into the coffin-like box the Doctor was barely breathing. The Master lifted the other’s limp hand to his mouth and pressed a soft kiss to his knuckles before he closed the lid.
“You are not going to win this game,” he whispered and switched on the machine. Motionless as the Doctor had been there was no obvious effect. Only now the very faint rise and fall of his thin chest had stopped completely and the Doctor looked disconcertingly like a corpse.
There were still traces of tears on his face.
The infirmary was cramped with the device inside and the Master took the time to move it into a small, empty room nearby where he could better tend to it should the need occur. He wasn’t in a hurry anymore - weather he needed a minute or a hundred years didn’t matter. Smiling bitterly to himself he stayed with the Doctor for another minute before he slowly made his way back to the console room. If there was one person he didn’t want to see right now that would be Captain Jack Harkness. If there was one person who could possibly (hopefully/maybe) help him it would be him as well. Life was cruel like that.
Sighing deeply the Master set the coordinates for the twenty-first century.
-end
November 12, 2007
So. As I mentioned before (You wouldn't remember this, but I did.), I had two sequels planed for Communication and this is but the first. The next one (which will hopefully be much shorter) will follow. One day. Eventually.
I had planned to write the sequel to Color of Light first but am not so sure about that now. After all that story as well has the poor Doctor as a wreck, to say it kindly, and I don't know with how much of that people will bear with. Maybe I'll write something completely different first, or a number of one-shots or nothing at all for a while. One day I want to finish both stories but right now I can't tell when that will be.
Come to think of it I could theoretically leave Color of Light as it is now and say it's finished...
Wouldn't work with this story though.