Lock] I wouldn't save you from the path you wander. In desperation dreams any soul can set you free…
There's a refreshing chill to the Chicago air here on North Clark Street, compared to the unrelenting New Delhi warmth. The Master would like to enjoy it.
Unfortunately, he's here on business.
The cold is already biting into his skin more than his Time Lord nerves should allow - his body, his real body, not this Rift-designed degrading clone - ( Read more... )
Unfortunately, he's here on business.
The cold is already biting into his skin more than his Time Lord nerves should allow - his body, his real body, not this Rift-designed degrading clone - ( Read more... )
So much for that.
His shoulders are hunched inside his trenchcoat as he makes his way down the street - it's not the cold that's bothering him, but one could easily mistake it for that. It's not difficult to pick out the Master as he draws near, and he almost grimaces, seeing him. It's exactly the regeneration he thought, and that's not reassuring in the least.
You should be DEAD-
His steps slow a little as he gets closer, expression solemn and guarded. If the Master was expecting a warm welcome... well, he's clearly deluded, but he's also going to be sorely disappointed.
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"The Organization," he repeats slowly. "What sort of a name is that? That doesn't even sound intimidating, that's just..."
Right. Criticizing the imagination of the probably evil organization will not get him anywhere. He eyes the Master, lips pressed tight together. Not knowing exactly what's wrong, not being able to get a straight answer is maddening, and he's starting to consider reaching out to the Master, borrowing just a bit of his psychic ability just so he can look, see for himself ( ... )
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His lips stretch in something that vaguely resembles a smile, in the precise way that someone who's been dragged face down through flaming wreckage vaguely resembles a human being. "I'd be happy to arrange a meeting with my escorts, if you're so inclined, Doctor." He could be changing the subject. He isn't.
"At the very least," he says, "they'll appreciate hearing something about you when I return. It would make things easier for all involved." Because if he comes back from this meeting with nothing to show for it, there likely won't be another.
He finds himself wishing the Doctor would just get on with it and look into his mind. Is he still expecting a trap of some sort? The Doctor may not be half the psychic the Master is, but they're both Time Lords, and this could go so much more easily ( ... )
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"Tell them whatever you like. I can't exactly stop you. But if I meet them..." The last time he went to meet someone like this, he ended up knocked out and handcuffed to a wall. If he arranges a meeting, it's going to be in the open, where no one's going to kidnap him without causing a fuss. Maybe the Coffee Shop...
No. Very bad idea, that.
"I'll think about it," he says finally, after a minute. He very much hopes the Master's not going to remark on how much more cautious he's become since he got here. It's not caution, it's... just...
Maybe if he just looked inside the Master's head... If he doesn't touch anything, change anything, how bad could it really go? He pauses for just a second, considering, and then holds out a hand, palm up. "Give me your hand." His own psychic abilities are blocked, but his Rift abilities aren't - and in any case, the Master's a stronger ( ... )
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The Trust doesn't have nearly as much information in the city's resident Time Lords as the Organization does - yet one more reason why the Master was sent here. Still, unless the Doctor is going to pull him to safety or inspect his manicure...
He always did need contact to do anything substantial.
Still, the hand is a bit odd. One would expect the head.
"I don't bite," he observes. Biting is crude, after all. He offers a hand with a raised eyebrow, giving no acknowledgment to the fact that the pressure is building into a headache. "All the same, I hope you have a good grip."
Because once the collar works out who's examining the mind it's been programmed to watchdog...
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His fingers against the bare skin of the Master's palm and wrist, he can reach out - he doesn't even have to search for the power, because it's old and familiar and right there, and brushing against that ability only reminds him how much he misses his own.
He clenches his jaw, ignoring it, looks up to meet the Master's eyes, takes a half-second to brace himself, and then steps forward into the mind of the Master.
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These are far from the best of times.
The existing damage still jars, of course: broken shards of consciousness spin in a void seething with red nebulae, fragments of identity pulsing to an ever-present drumbeat, in time with the beating of his hearts.
That much is typical.
Not typical are the webs of compulsion crisscrossing the void, blocking word and deed and even, in some cases, thought itself.
There are entire sections of the Master's memories, his sense of self, that are missing, severed from context and sealed away somewhere he can't reach. Others are shrouded by a dense and impenetrable fog, form and presence enough to support cognition without allowing access to the information which does.
He is a Time Lord who's lost half of what it means to be a Time Lord, corralled by psychic imperatives and fenced into his mind by something too cold and artificial to be anything but mechanical.
:: Help me. :: The words fall somewhere between command ( ... )
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It's just pain.
Until it isn't.
[A boy, eight years old, led into the den of the only monster a refined Time Lord mind would admit to: a Schism in time, space, and natural law, breaking his grasping mind and remaking him in Its image, filling him with Drums as though the beating of his own hearts swelled to fill the Schism's roiling emptiness. And as then, so it seems now; his mind twists back on itself, incompatible shards digging into fraying strands of thought, the monster weaving itself into his consciousness to follow wherever he might go ( ... )
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Stop it. I'm trying to help you, let me help, you need to STOP-He can't hold on, not while he's trying to keep his own mind from being torn apart. The one thing the Doctor was always best at was breaking and running, and that's what he does now, pulling out of the Master's mind, shoving the Master hard as he can out of his own - but as he does, he also shoves with it every memory of the Master he can pull together in an instant ( ... )
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"...No." It's quiet, almost disbelieving. To have come so close to being himself - properly himself - again, then to have that taken from him...
"No." His breath's coming faster, hissing between his teeth, lending a strained desperation to his words. Give it back, he wants to say, or maybe it's Make them pay, but neither is something he's allowed; not at the collar, not at the conditioning, not at the Trust.
But as for the person just in front of him....
His hands twist in the air, clutch at nothing. And that's exactly what he's left with, isn't it?
"Give it back," he says, fixing on the Doctor as the Doctor gasps for air. He steps forward. "I had it. I had it, Doctor, it was mine, it was meHis hearts are ( ... )
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The Doctor lunges without pausing to think, moving to grab him - he doesn't manage before he falls to his knees, but he catches him a moment after, hands on his shoulders, seeking out the Master's eyes again.
"What happened? What is it?" His eyes flicker to the collar, but it's at least not physically choking him. Still, at this point he thinks it can't hurt to get rid of the bloody thing, and if he does it while the Master's distracted...
He grimaces and reaches up, searching for a clasp, any way to pull it off. It may be programmed to make certain the Master keeps it on, but to him, it's just a little bit of metal.
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And that is the final indignity. It hurts,, being without it. One collar free isn't enough to pry the restraints from his mind, not when the body with a partially unfettered brain is the one currently recovering from hypoxia and constantly dying.
The breath he finally managed to take in is crushed from his lungs, and any willpower left him narrows to the single pursuit of getting the collar back. Gasping an hissing, he struggles to make a hand close on it again, take it back, Give it backPanic and hatred are equally present in his eyes when he happens to look back on the Doctor again; hatred for taking the collar from him, for not taking it sooner, for not saving him from the Trust, from his failing body, from himself. He hates the Doctor for a thousand different indignities, none of which he has enough power to change ( ... )
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There are people staring at him, either for the shouting or because they noticed a person vanishing into thin air, and he doesn't much care either way. He shoots them - or possibly the world in general - a frustrated glare and turns away to stalk off into the snow.
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