Pendulum (7/?)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: AU!Master/Doctor (10), Jack/Doctor
Warnings: Dark, violence
Summary: A chapter in which no one is particularly happy.
Note: Very sorry for the long wait. I'll try to get the next chapter up sooner, but with a final in my neck I can't make any promises.
The rage was flaring up inside the Master again as he stormed across the room towards the two other men, but this time it was not directed at Jack. At least not for the main part. Poor, annoying, idiot Jack, who now, seeing him coming closer, pulled the Doctor against his body in a protective gesture and moved him like a crippled dancer, so his own body served as a shield between the two Time Lords. It stopped the Master, who for a second was unsure whether to laugh or commit murder. There was, however, some satisfaction in seeing the Doctor get out of Jack’s grip and step away from him, a message that he could handle this alone and didn’t need anyone else speaking for him.
Yet.
“Do tell me, are you actually actively trying to kill yourself?” the Master asked. He took one more step towards him, threateningly, and Harkness stepped between them once again.
“Jack,” the Doctor said sternly, before softening his voice for the next words. “There is no need.”
Jack ignored him; his eyes remained fixed on the Master. “What do you want from him?”
“I want him to stay alive,” the Master snarled.
“He looks alive to me. Better than before, no thanks to you.”
“Oh, right. And you never wondered why that is, did you? ‘Oh, look, he’s miraculously fine again, let’s have cake!’” The Master’s eyes left Jack to fix on the Doctor, standing half hidden from view by Jack’s muscular frame, and there was disgust in his voice when he said, “You are doing this to yourself because of him? I can’t believe it!”
“No.” The Doctor’s face could have been made of stone. “I’m doing it because you force me to.” He sighed, slumped a little. “We’ve been through this before. If you want me fine, stop doing things for the sake of hurting me.”
“I don’t want you fine. I want you alive.”
“Right now,” the Doctor said slowly, “I can’t get much worse, so there is not much room for hurting me without killing. Make up your bloody mind.” He sounded tried, wary. And he was right - the Master knew he had to hold back until the Doctor was better. It was Jack who made it impossible.
The Master couldn’t even tell for sure if it was just his wrongness that flared up his need to fight him in any way possible, or if his immortality and the fact that he’d never really leave the Doctor made it so impossible to control himself while in the freak’s presence. He couldn’t tell, because he refused to think about it. He only knew that as long as Jack was near, the Doctor wouldn’t be safe, since they would always fight each other and the Doctor would always be caught in the crossfire.
“It would help, really, really help if Jack left us,” the Master said calmly, quietly and earnestly. It was a tone he hoped would show the Doctor how serious a request this was - not just a childish declaration of will.
But the Doctor was being childish and stubborn himself. “I’m not going to kick him out, and he’s unlikely to leave on his own. So get your priorities straight.” He swayed and without warning fell to the floor in a boneless heap.
It came so unexpected that Jack, despite only standing two steps away from him, wasn’t fast enough to catch him. The Master, however, had expected it none the less. He’d been waiting for it. The only reason for him to react as late as he did was that he had to make up his mind first and decide if he should bother. When he chose to move it was almost (but only almost, his human body reminded him) faster than was possible for a being bound to the rules of physics. Less than the blink of an eye and the Doctor was in his arms, looking at him in confusion.
“Sorry about that,” he mumbled.
“You will be,” the Master agreed. He pulled his old friend to his feet, supporting almost all of his weight.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked concerned. The Master wanted to protest when he took hold of the Doctor’s other arm and draped it around his shoulder, but kept quiet in the end.
Control. This was all a matter of control. What a joke, if he could control others but not himself.
This was worse than the bloody drums the high council had cursed him with after his resurrection during the war! He didn’t even look at Jack, and yet knowing that he was standing there, pressed against the Doctor, his arms wrapped around his waist as if he had any right to touch him made him drift off into a world where he shoved the human down and smashed his head against the floor again and again. It felt very satisfying.
The Doctor brought him back to reality when he gave a gasping cough and started to tremble violently. They needed to hurry up. The Master remembered his rage that had nothing to do with Jack. The Doctor was right: He needed to get his priorities in order.
As if he hadn’t done that nineteen lifetimes ago.
“Help me get him to the infirmary,” he said to Jack.
-
The Doctor was barely clinging to consciousness when they laid him down onto the bed. Immediately the Master set up the life support unit, causing Jack to frown.
“Is that really necessary?” He seemed worried enough, but naturally he had no idea how much more worried he should be. “He’s breathing fine on his own.”
“Not for much longer.” Already the Doctor’s breathing was becoming laboured. His face was covered in sweat and the colour of paper. “It’s all right,” the Master told him, cupping his face in his hands. “You can let go. We’ve got you.”
The machine took over when the Doctor stopped breathing completely. Quickly, the Master connected him to the other machines, among them a helpful little thing that would nudge his single heart whenever it considered stopping.
“I don’t get it,” Jack proclaimed what came as no surprise to the Master. “He was getting better. What’s wrong with him now?”
The Time Lord was still wondering if he should grace that with an answer when the human gave him an unexpected demonstration primal intelligence. “He did something to himself, didn’t he? Used strength he doesn’t have.”
“Exactly that.” The Master’s reply came as a sneer, pressed out between clenched teeth. “And just because you had to run off and sulk like a little boy! He’s killing himself for you, and I cannot quite fathom why.”
“Because you force him to!” Jack hissed back. They weren’t as loud as they might have been had the Doctor not been lying between them. As if even as atomic blast could wake him now. “You and your stupid, selfish games! You claim to care for him, but all you do is aiming to hurt him! You never even stop to think of the consequences of your actions!”
“Oh, and you do? What were you thinking, then, running off like that? You could at least have turned off the screen, so he wouldn’t suspect anything. ‘Oh, poor me, come and comfort me!’” The Master threw up his hands in a gesture of exasperation, rolling his eyes. “You had to know he’d come to find you once he figured out what was going on. Dragging himself through the ship, even if it killed him. I admit I was shocked to see that he’d done that, for you of all people, but an ego the size of yours, you can’t possibly have even considered he wouldn’t.”
“Funny you would say that, after you made such an effort to blast my ego into little pieces,” Jack snarled, stepping closer threateningly. The Master didn’t retreat. “And you are hardly one who has a right to complain - your ego couldn’t possibly be any bigger!” He bared his teeth. “I know who you are.”
The Master had suspected it. He didn’t know what to think of it. Was the Doctor out of his mind? Desperate? Did he want to get back at him? Had he been thinking anything at all?
There was a new rush of anger, but the Master didn’t know who it was directed at. He raised his arms, spread them wide. “Go ahead,” he dared. “Kill me, then!”
Jack was standing so close to him, there was no chance to move away when his hand shot out and wrapped around the Master’s throat. The Time Lord gagged - not for shock but because Jack was effectively cutting off his air. His own hands fell to his sides, refusing to pry the offending fingers away. He didn’t struggle, not even when Harkness pulled him close, so close his lips nearly touched the Master’s face.
“You have no idea, not the slightest hint of an idea how much I want to!” he hissed. There was pure hatred and delicious fury in his voice, his face, his eyes, and in the force of his movement, as he pushed the Master away, threw him to the floor.
He stormed away after that, going to steam off his anger, probably. The Master sat on the floor, rubbing his sore throat.
“Actually, I do,” he muttered.
-
He felt like he’d been sitting here for ages. His legs felt heavy and useless, like dead things that hadn’t been moved in a very long time - he considered drawing them close just to see if he still could, but in the end he didn’t bother. There was nowhere to go.
The sun was warmer than he could remember it ever having been. It paralyzed him. Closing his eyes, he leaned back, so his face was in the shadow of the tree he was sitting under. He felt sleepy, and found himself unable to care that the day was wasting away without him. Certainly there was somewhere else he had to be. It wasn’t important enough to think about. He knew he had been here all day but he couldn’t remember coming, nor did he try.
There were footsteps. He squinted in the bright light and saw the silhouette of his best friend. That was strange, because he couldn’t sense him, and because he had the distinct feeling he had no business being here.
You need to come with me, his best friend told him. You’re already far too late.
And you are too early. He looked up into the sun, and the heat rose when the second sun climbed over the distant mountains, far too quickly to be real. It seemed to be burning the air he tried to breathe before he could get it into his lungs and nail his limbs to the earth.
It seems I’m not going anywhere, he sighed.
His best friend sighed as well, resigned. You will have to, he told him. There’s not much time left.
The sky behind his best friend was blazing, and the ground was blazing too. He stared into the blinding light, and together they watched the wall of fire racing across the dry plains toward them.
-
Waking up from a dream that left him drenched in sweat and trembling, the Doctor had one second to register the darkness surrounding him and the pain in his head before it got crippling.
He was vaguely aware that he was screaming.
-
Three days had gone by before the Master had found the Doctor capable of staying alive on his own. Another two days he had remained unconscious. Once he was better, the Master seemed to lose any interest in him, which suited Jack just fine. He liked sitting by the Doctor’s bedside pretending he had him for himself.
He would have liked it even better had the Doctor been awake and well. A lot better.
He only ever left his friend for short periods of time, always hoping not to run into the Master. The psychopath probably couldn’t imagine how much restraint it had cost Jack not to kill him. He would have broken his neck and plucked out his eyes, and not necessarily in that order. For the Doctor, for the people of Earth in a timeline erased from existence, for all he had done to Jack in that time. For his team. For Martha’s family, but mostly for himself.
The Master deserved to die for so many reasons, and it was only for the Doctor that Jack let him live.
Neither of them was there when the Doctor woke up. Jack was on his way back through the corridors when he heard his voice, gradually getting louder as he got closer to the infirmary, and so he didn’t know how long the Doctor had been screaming.
After rushing the rest of the way as if his life depended on it, Jack found his friend trashing on the bed, his head thrown back, one hand fisted in his hair, the other grabbing blindly for the wall, the head of the bed, anything he could reach. His face was white, his eyes screwed shut, and even though the Doctor had woken up screaming from nightmares far too often since Jack had come here, he knew instinctively that these were screams of pain rather than terror.
The human grabbed his hands, tried to keep him still and then, somehow, the Master was there, injecting something into his arm that was either a narcotic or a very strong painkiller. The kind of medication Jack never dared giving the Doctor for fear of accidentally killing him. He just didn’t know enough about his metabolism. For once he was glad the Master was there.
After what seemed like a year but had probably been about a minute, the Doctor stopped screaming. By then he had gone hoarse, and his quiet whimpers were toneless. He breathed so hard it sounded like sobbing, almost.
Jack was still standing beside him, refusing to make room for the Master. He gently took the Doctor’s face, turned it in his direction. The other’s eyes fluttered open, causing tears to run down his face.
“Doctor,” Jack said, as calmly as possibly. “Can you tell me what’s wrong? Where does it hurt?”
The Doctor didn’t answer. His pupils were moving restlessly, never stopping to focus on Jack.
“Doctor,” Jack said again, a little louder. “Look at me. Can you hear me?” He stroked his friend’s face, at the same time keeping him from turning his head away. “Hey, Doc. Are you okay?”
Blinking again, the Doctor stopped his aimless movements and seemed to get back to reality. His eyes remained unfocused, however, even though he was finally looking his way. “Jack,” he whispered. Looking in Jack’s direction but not at him, as if he wasn’t really there. As if the Doctor didn’t see him.
As if…
“Oh, no.” The words were spoken involuntarily, but sincere and steady, making a statement of what Jack declared the truth. “No,” he said again, and shook his head. The Time Lord’s eyes didn’t follow the movement. “Doctor…”
He was shoved aside roughly as the Master, took his place, immediately placing his hands on the Doctor’s face as if he still could get into his head the way he had been able to as a proper Time Lord. The gesture soon changed as he ran his fingers through the Doctor’s hair, brushing it out of his face. It looked, somehow, clinical rather than tender. Even now the bastard still could act like he didn’t care.
Then the Master shifted his weight and Jack couldn’t see the Doctor’s face anymore. But he saw his hand, as it reached up, feeling for the face of the man leaning over him. Taking a step back, he still refused to believe it.
“You don’t see me,” the Master stated. He sounded like he hadn’t yet made up his mind whether it would be more appropriate to be shocked, or amazed.
“I don’t see anything.” Jack had to strain to make out the Doctor’s cracked voice. “There’s not even darkness. There’s just… nothing.” He took a deep, shaking breath that ended in a whimper. “It’s like my brain refuses to take notice.”
The Master took a deep breath himself, and Jack could derive the truth from it: the Master was just as helpless as he was; he hadn’t seen this coming. He had no idea where this came from or what to do about it.
“You’re still in pain,” Jack heard him murmur.
“My head,” the Doctor confirmed. “It’s killing me.” And Jack feared that that might just be the truth.
And then the Master surprised him, utterly, by cupping the Doctor’s thin face in his hands and pressing a kiss to his forehead. “You’ll be fine,” he promised, and took hold of the other man’s hand, holding it firmly until gradually, the Doctor’s hectic breathing slowed down, and he faded off to sleep, pulled down by heavy analgesics and the pain they couldn’t quite defeat.
The Master remained by his side for another minute, utterly still, the other’s hand still in both of his, and Jack was overcome by a sudden feeling of déjà-vu, like he had seen this somewhere before, a long time ago.
The impression didn’t linger, but was effectively destroyed when the Master finally turned around and without warning slammed his fist into Jack’s face, sending him down.
-
The Master had assumed that the new negative development concerning the Doctor’s health had been caused by his latest exploit, draining the last reserves of strength he needed to stay alive to go wandering about, and blamed Jack for it. Jack had assumed the same, and blamed the Master. Eventually it turned out that they were both wrong.
“It would have happened anyway,” the Doctor said, sounding strangely flat as he sat on the examination table in the infirmary one day later. He looked a mess: colourless, ruffled, emaciated and tired. “I’m not even sure the process was sped up significantly by what I did. I could feel it building for weeks, not that I had known what it was.” He leaned forward, joining his hands behind his head and hiding his face in his knees like a frightened child. “It’s getting worse.”
“There’s nothing on the scan,” the Master told him, nearly turning the screen to show the Doctor, before he remembered the futility of that. “According to this thing, your brain is perfectly fine.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my brain,” the Doctor said, still curled up. “It’s what you did to me. What I got from Jack. It’s completely incompatible with what I am.”
“How would you know that?”
“I can feel it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah? Give me a better explanation.”
There was no point in not facing him, but the Master turned his head anyway, looked into every corner of the room as if it might offer another answer. It didn’t. It didn’t even offer distraction, as Jack wasn’t here. Even he had accepted that sometimes his presence just wasn’t helping, and that it would be better to leave this to the one who knew about Time Lord biology.
“It was a bad idea from the beginning.”
The Master looked at the Doctor again and found the Doctor looking at him. The illusion worked, if he didn’t look too closely. The large, expressive eyes of this lifetime had fascinated the Master even when he had still been Professor Yana, an aging fool stuck in a collapsing universe. Even now they transcribed everything the Doctor was thinking and feeling into a message for the world to read. Tools to look in, but not out.
If there was no cause for the Doctor’s blindness, then there was no way of curing it. And then he would never look at the Master again. It just wasn’t acceptable.
“This is not the first sense to disappear,” the Doctor told him. He seemed calm, but his eyes gave away another message. “I didn’t even notice. Don’t do that.”
The Master stopped in his noiseless movement around the table during which the Doctor’s sightless gaze had never left him. He shrugged, and crossed the rest of the distance between them in two steps. “What do you mean, not the first?”
The Doctor turned his face away and closed his eyes. He opened them again a second later, shaking his head as if he wanted to shake off a particularly nasty sensation. He wrapped his hands around his own shoulders, hugging himself.
“I can’t feel anything but myself anymore. It drowns out all else.” He shivered. The Master knew what he meant but felt little sympathy. It seemed just fair; in this mortal body he was reduced to the basic set of senses. No telepathy for him, none for the Doctor. Perhaps the Time Lords of old had been right and there really was balance in the universe.
He remembered how hard it had been for him to get used to the silence, though, the numbness where there should have been something else. And other than the Doctor, he had not been battered by the sensations of his own wrongness.
“It’s swallowing me up,” the Doctor whispered, pathetically, more to himself than the Master. He faced the other again when he said, “You got it inside me. Get it out!”
“It’s what keeps you alive!”
“It’s taking me apart.” A nearly skeletal hand wrapped around the Master’s arm. “Please!” A plea, spoken like a command.
“Never.” The Master grabbed the back of the Doctor’s head and pulled him close for a hard kiss. He forced this tongue between the other’s lips, the grip in his hair strong enough to hurt. “Never,” he said again, after pulling back. The very idea was outrageous. The Master was angry again, full of an energy that troubled him and served no purpose. And then the Master surprised himself when he pulled the trembling Doctor into an embrace and promised that he would fix him, somehow.
- tbc
February 8, 2009
Pairing: AU!Master/Doctor (10), Jack/Doctor
Warnings: Dark, violence
Summary: A chapter in which no one is particularly happy.
Note: Very sorry for the long wait. I'll try to get the next chapter up sooner, but with a final in my neck I can't make any promises.
The rage was flaring up inside the Master again as he stormed across the room towards the two other men, but this time it was not directed at Jack. At least not for the main part. Poor, annoying, idiot Jack, who now, seeing him coming closer, pulled the Doctor against his body in a protective gesture and moved him like a crippled dancer, so his own body served as a shield between the two Time Lords. It stopped the Master, who for a second was unsure whether to laugh or commit murder. There was, however, some satisfaction in seeing the Doctor get out of Jack’s grip and step away from him, a message that he could handle this alone and didn’t need anyone else speaking for him.
Yet.
“Do tell me, are you actually actively trying to kill yourself?” the Master asked. He took one more step towards him, threateningly, and Harkness stepped between them once again.
“Jack,” the Doctor said sternly, before softening his voice for the next words. “There is no need.”
Jack ignored him; his eyes remained fixed on the Master. “What do you want from him?”
“I want him to stay alive,” the Master snarled.
“He looks alive to me. Better than before, no thanks to you.”
“Oh, right. And you never wondered why that is, did you? ‘Oh, look, he’s miraculously fine again, let’s have cake!’” The Master’s eyes left Jack to fix on the Doctor, standing half hidden from view by Jack’s muscular frame, and there was disgust in his voice when he said, “You are doing this to yourself because of him? I can’t believe it!”
“No.” The Doctor’s face could have been made of stone. “I’m doing it because you force me to.” He sighed, slumped a little. “We’ve been through this before. If you want me fine, stop doing things for the sake of hurting me.”
“I don’t want you fine. I want you alive.”
“Right now,” the Doctor said slowly, “I can’t get much worse, so there is not much room for hurting me without killing. Make up your bloody mind.” He sounded tried, wary. And he was right - the Master knew he had to hold back until the Doctor was better. It was Jack who made it impossible.
The Master couldn’t even tell for sure if it was just his wrongness that flared up his need to fight him in any way possible, or if his immortality and the fact that he’d never really leave the Doctor made it so impossible to control himself while in the freak’s presence. He couldn’t tell, because he refused to think about it. He only knew that as long as Jack was near, the Doctor wouldn’t be safe, since they would always fight each other and the Doctor would always be caught in the crossfire.
“It would help, really, really help if Jack left us,” the Master said calmly, quietly and earnestly. It was a tone he hoped would show the Doctor how serious a request this was - not just a childish declaration of will.
But the Doctor was being childish and stubborn himself. “I’m not going to kick him out, and he’s unlikely to leave on his own. So get your priorities straight.” He swayed and without warning fell to the floor in a boneless heap.
It came so unexpected that Jack, despite only standing two steps away from him, wasn’t fast enough to catch him. The Master, however, had expected it none the less. He’d been waiting for it. The only reason for him to react as late as he did was that he had to make up his mind first and decide if he should bother. When he chose to move it was almost (but only almost, his human body reminded him) faster than was possible for a being bound to the rules of physics. Less than the blink of an eye and the Doctor was in his arms, looking at him in confusion.
“Sorry about that,” he mumbled.
“You will be,” the Master agreed. He pulled his old friend to his feet, supporting almost all of his weight.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked concerned. The Master wanted to protest when he took hold of the Doctor’s other arm and draped it around his shoulder, but kept quiet in the end.
Control. This was all a matter of control. What a joke, if he could control others but not himself.
This was worse than the bloody drums the high council had cursed him with after his resurrection during the war! He didn’t even look at Jack, and yet knowing that he was standing there, pressed against the Doctor, his arms wrapped around his waist as if he had any right to touch him made him drift off into a world where he shoved the human down and smashed his head against the floor again and again. It felt very satisfying.
The Doctor brought him back to reality when he gave a gasping cough and started to tremble violently. They needed to hurry up. The Master remembered his rage that had nothing to do with Jack. The Doctor was right: He needed to get his priorities in order.
As if he hadn’t done that nineteen lifetimes ago.
“Help me get him to the infirmary,” he said to Jack.
-
The Doctor was barely clinging to consciousness when they laid him down onto the bed. Immediately the Master set up the life support unit, causing Jack to frown.
“Is that really necessary?” He seemed worried enough, but naturally he had no idea how much more worried he should be. “He’s breathing fine on his own.”
“Not for much longer.” Already the Doctor’s breathing was becoming laboured. His face was covered in sweat and the colour of paper. “It’s all right,” the Master told him, cupping his face in his hands. “You can let go. We’ve got you.”
The machine took over when the Doctor stopped breathing completely. Quickly, the Master connected him to the other machines, among them a helpful little thing that would nudge his single heart whenever it considered stopping.
“I don’t get it,” Jack proclaimed what came as no surprise to the Master. “He was getting better. What’s wrong with him now?”
The Time Lord was still wondering if he should grace that with an answer when the human gave him an unexpected demonstration primal intelligence. “He did something to himself, didn’t he? Used strength he doesn’t have.”
“Exactly that.” The Master’s reply came as a sneer, pressed out between clenched teeth. “And just because you had to run off and sulk like a little boy! He’s killing himself for you, and I cannot quite fathom why.”
“Because you force him to!” Jack hissed back. They weren’t as loud as they might have been had the Doctor not been lying between them. As if even as atomic blast could wake him now. “You and your stupid, selfish games! You claim to care for him, but all you do is aiming to hurt him! You never even stop to think of the consequences of your actions!”
“Oh, and you do? What were you thinking, then, running off like that? You could at least have turned off the screen, so he wouldn’t suspect anything. ‘Oh, poor me, come and comfort me!’” The Master threw up his hands in a gesture of exasperation, rolling his eyes. “You had to know he’d come to find you once he figured out what was going on. Dragging himself through the ship, even if it killed him. I admit I was shocked to see that he’d done that, for you of all people, but an ego the size of yours, you can’t possibly have even considered he wouldn’t.”
“Funny you would say that, after you made such an effort to blast my ego into little pieces,” Jack snarled, stepping closer threateningly. The Master didn’t retreat. “And you are hardly one who has a right to complain - your ego couldn’t possibly be any bigger!” He bared his teeth. “I know who you are.”
The Master had suspected it. He didn’t know what to think of it. Was the Doctor out of his mind? Desperate? Did he want to get back at him? Had he been thinking anything at all?
There was a new rush of anger, but the Master didn’t know who it was directed at. He raised his arms, spread them wide. “Go ahead,” he dared. “Kill me, then!”
Jack was standing so close to him, there was no chance to move away when his hand shot out and wrapped around the Master’s throat. The Time Lord gagged - not for shock but because Jack was effectively cutting off his air. His own hands fell to his sides, refusing to pry the offending fingers away. He didn’t struggle, not even when Harkness pulled him close, so close his lips nearly touched the Master’s face.
“You have no idea, not the slightest hint of an idea how much I want to!” he hissed. There was pure hatred and delicious fury in his voice, his face, his eyes, and in the force of his movement, as he pushed the Master away, threw him to the floor.
He stormed away after that, going to steam off his anger, probably. The Master sat on the floor, rubbing his sore throat.
“Actually, I do,” he muttered.
-
He felt like he’d been sitting here for ages. His legs felt heavy and useless, like dead things that hadn’t been moved in a very long time - he considered drawing them close just to see if he still could, but in the end he didn’t bother. There was nowhere to go.
The sun was warmer than he could remember it ever having been. It paralyzed him. Closing his eyes, he leaned back, so his face was in the shadow of the tree he was sitting under. He felt sleepy, and found himself unable to care that the day was wasting away without him. Certainly there was somewhere else he had to be. It wasn’t important enough to think about. He knew he had been here all day but he couldn’t remember coming, nor did he try.
There were footsteps. He squinted in the bright light and saw the silhouette of his best friend. That was strange, because he couldn’t sense him, and because he had the distinct feeling he had no business being here.
You need to come with me, his best friend told him. You’re already far too late.
And you are too early. He looked up into the sun, and the heat rose when the second sun climbed over the distant mountains, far too quickly to be real. It seemed to be burning the air he tried to breathe before he could get it into his lungs and nail his limbs to the earth.
It seems I’m not going anywhere, he sighed.
His best friend sighed as well, resigned. You will have to, he told him. There’s not much time left.
The sky behind his best friend was blazing, and the ground was blazing too. He stared into the blinding light, and together they watched the wall of fire racing across the dry plains toward them.
-
Waking up from a dream that left him drenched in sweat and trembling, the Doctor had one second to register the darkness surrounding him and the pain in his head before it got crippling.
He was vaguely aware that he was screaming.
-
Three days had gone by before the Master had found the Doctor capable of staying alive on his own. Another two days he had remained unconscious. Once he was better, the Master seemed to lose any interest in him, which suited Jack just fine. He liked sitting by the Doctor’s bedside pretending he had him for himself.
He would have liked it even better had the Doctor been awake and well. A lot better.
He only ever left his friend for short periods of time, always hoping not to run into the Master. The psychopath probably couldn’t imagine how much restraint it had cost Jack not to kill him. He would have broken his neck and plucked out his eyes, and not necessarily in that order. For the Doctor, for the people of Earth in a timeline erased from existence, for all he had done to Jack in that time. For his team. For Martha’s family, but mostly for himself.
The Master deserved to die for so many reasons, and it was only for the Doctor that Jack let him live.
Neither of them was there when the Doctor woke up. Jack was on his way back through the corridors when he heard his voice, gradually getting louder as he got closer to the infirmary, and so he didn’t know how long the Doctor had been screaming.
After rushing the rest of the way as if his life depended on it, Jack found his friend trashing on the bed, his head thrown back, one hand fisted in his hair, the other grabbing blindly for the wall, the head of the bed, anything he could reach. His face was white, his eyes screwed shut, and even though the Doctor had woken up screaming from nightmares far too often since Jack had come here, he knew instinctively that these were screams of pain rather than terror.
The human grabbed his hands, tried to keep him still and then, somehow, the Master was there, injecting something into his arm that was either a narcotic or a very strong painkiller. The kind of medication Jack never dared giving the Doctor for fear of accidentally killing him. He just didn’t know enough about his metabolism. For once he was glad the Master was there.
After what seemed like a year but had probably been about a minute, the Doctor stopped screaming. By then he had gone hoarse, and his quiet whimpers were toneless. He breathed so hard it sounded like sobbing, almost.
Jack was still standing beside him, refusing to make room for the Master. He gently took the Doctor’s face, turned it in his direction. The other’s eyes fluttered open, causing tears to run down his face.
“Doctor,” Jack said, as calmly as possibly. “Can you tell me what’s wrong? Where does it hurt?”
The Doctor didn’t answer. His pupils were moving restlessly, never stopping to focus on Jack.
“Doctor,” Jack said again, a little louder. “Look at me. Can you hear me?” He stroked his friend’s face, at the same time keeping him from turning his head away. “Hey, Doc. Are you okay?”
Blinking again, the Doctor stopped his aimless movements and seemed to get back to reality. His eyes remained unfocused, however, even though he was finally looking his way. “Jack,” he whispered. Looking in Jack’s direction but not at him, as if he wasn’t really there. As if the Doctor didn’t see him.
As if…
“Oh, no.” The words were spoken involuntarily, but sincere and steady, making a statement of what Jack declared the truth. “No,” he said again, and shook his head. The Time Lord’s eyes didn’t follow the movement. “Doctor…”
He was shoved aside roughly as the Master, took his place, immediately placing his hands on the Doctor’s face as if he still could get into his head the way he had been able to as a proper Time Lord. The gesture soon changed as he ran his fingers through the Doctor’s hair, brushing it out of his face. It looked, somehow, clinical rather than tender. Even now the bastard still could act like he didn’t care.
Then the Master shifted his weight and Jack couldn’t see the Doctor’s face anymore. But he saw his hand, as it reached up, feeling for the face of the man leaning over him. Taking a step back, he still refused to believe it.
“You don’t see me,” the Master stated. He sounded like he hadn’t yet made up his mind whether it would be more appropriate to be shocked, or amazed.
“I don’t see anything.” Jack had to strain to make out the Doctor’s cracked voice. “There’s not even darkness. There’s just… nothing.” He took a deep, shaking breath that ended in a whimper. “It’s like my brain refuses to take notice.”
The Master took a deep breath himself, and Jack could derive the truth from it: the Master was just as helpless as he was; he hadn’t seen this coming. He had no idea where this came from or what to do about it.
“You’re still in pain,” Jack heard him murmur.
“My head,” the Doctor confirmed. “It’s killing me.” And Jack feared that that might just be the truth.
And then the Master surprised him, utterly, by cupping the Doctor’s thin face in his hands and pressing a kiss to his forehead. “You’ll be fine,” he promised, and took hold of the other man’s hand, holding it firmly until gradually, the Doctor’s hectic breathing slowed down, and he faded off to sleep, pulled down by heavy analgesics and the pain they couldn’t quite defeat.
The Master remained by his side for another minute, utterly still, the other’s hand still in both of his, and Jack was overcome by a sudden feeling of déjà-vu, like he had seen this somewhere before, a long time ago.
The impression didn’t linger, but was effectively destroyed when the Master finally turned around and without warning slammed his fist into Jack’s face, sending him down.
-
The Master had assumed that the new negative development concerning the Doctor’s health had been caused by his latest exploit, draining the last reserves of strength he needed to stay alive to go wandering about, and blamed Jack for it. Jack had assumed the same, and blamed the Master. Eventually it turned out that they were both wrong.
“It would have happened anyway,” the Doctor said, sounding strangely flat as he sat on the examination table in the infirmary one day later. He looked a mess: colourless, ruffled, emaciated and tired. “I’m not even sure the process was sped up significantly by what I did. I could feel it building for weeks, not that I had known what it was.” He leaned forward, joining his hands behind his head and hiding his face in his knees like a frightened child. “It’s getting worse.”
“There’s nothing on the scan,” the Master told him, nearly turning the screen to show the Doctor, before he remembered the futility of that. “According to this thing, your brain is perfectly fine.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my brain,” the Doctor said, still curled up. “It’s what you did to me. What I got from Jack. It’s completely incompatible with what I am.”
“How would you know that?”
“I can feel it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah? Give me a better explanation.”
There was no point in not facing him, but the Master turned his head anyway, looked into every corner of the room as if it might offer another answer. It didn’t. It didn’t even offer distraction, as Jack wasn’t here. Even he had accepted that sometimes his presence just wasn’t helping, and that it would be better to leave this to the one who knew about Time Lord biology.
“It was a bad idea from the beginning.”
The Master looked at the Doctor again and found the Doctor looking at him. The illusion worked, if he didn’t look too closely. The large, expressive eyes of this lifetime had fascinated the Master even when he had still been Professor Yana, an aging fool stuck in a collapsing universe. Even now they transcribed everything the Doctor was thinking and feeling into a message for the world to read. Tools to look in, but not out.
If there was no cause for the Doctor’s blindness, then there was no way of curing it. And then he would never look at the Master again. It just wasn’t acceptable.
“This is not the first sense to disappear,” the Doctor told him. He seemed calm, but his eyes gave away another message. “I didn’t even notice. Don’t do that.”
The Master stopped in his noiseless movement around the table during which the Doctor’s sightless gaze had never left him. He shrugged, and crossed the rest of the distance between them in two steps. “What do you mean, not the first?”
The Doctor turned his face away and closed his eyes. He opened them again a second later, shaking his head as if he wanted to shake off a particularly nasty sensation. He wrapped his hands around his own shoulders, hugging himself.
“I can’t feel anything but myself anymore. It drowns out all else.” He shivered. The Master knew what he meant but felt little sympathy. It seemed just fair; in this mortal body he was reduced to the basic set of senses. No telepathy for him, none for the Doctor. Perhaps the Time Lords of old had been right and there really was balance in the universe.
He remembered how hard it had been for him to get used to the silence, though, the numbness where there should have been something else. And other than the Doctor, he had not been battered by the sensations of his own wrongness.
“It’s swallowing me up,” the Doctor whispered, pathetically, more to himself than the Master. He faced the other again when he said, “You got it inside me. Get it out!”
“It’s what keeps you alive!”
“It’s taking me apart.” A nearly skeletal hand wrapped around the Master’s arm. “Please!” A plea, spoken like a command.
“Never.” The Master grabbed the back of the Doctor’s head and pulled him close for a hard kiss. He forced this tongue between the other’s lips, the grip in his hair strong enough to hurt. “Never,” he said again, after pulling back. The very idea was outrageous. The Master was angry again, full of an energy that troubled him and served no purpose. And then the Master surprised himself when he pulled the trembling Doctor into an embrace and promised that he would fix him, somehow.
- tbc
February 8, 2009