Interventions (7/8)
Title: Interventions
Pairing: Simm!Master/Ten!Doctor, Jack/Ianto
Author: Buttercup
Contact: Buttercupgaud@aol.com
Rating: Let’s say R to be safe, but might be PG-13
Warnings: None really. Mild spoiler for ep1 series 2, now.
Disclaimer: I own none of these characters, they belong to Russel T and the beeb.
Summary: The Doctor wakes up with a headache, which quickly becomes everyone at TW’s too. Doctor Who/Torchwood crossover.
Thanks: Thanks to the wonderful Amy for beta reading this and being so encouraging.
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
Ianto was looking sideways at the Master and trying to pretend he wasn’t. A technique he’d acquired very quickly after joining Torchwood. It paid to know what was going on around you, while also not letting people know you knew. The Master still looked pale, and shaken. He couldn’t really work out what had happened, apart from the fact that the Doctor had obviously attacked him, and done something that had hurt them both. A lot.
He wasn’t exactly sure what to say and so he didn’t say anything, just motioned for the Master to stand next to him on the invisible lift. When the lifted started he stumbled a little, and the Master put his hand out to steady him. As they slowly began to descend he noticed that the Master was shaking a little. This time he turned to look at him. “Are you...?” he let the sentence trail off, not sure what he was asking.
“I’m fine.” The Master waved a trembling hand dismissively.
Ianto nodded. “So, how about our invisible lift? Nifty, no?”
The Master half smiled. “Primitive toy.”
Ianto leaned in conspiratorially. “There’s nothing wrong with a good toy.”
The Master looked a little taken aback for a moment before attempting another smile. “Ianto Jones,” he said, mock shock in his voice, “are you flirting with me?”
Ianto shrugged and pulled back. “The Jack Harkness all purpose pick-me-up, I learned from the best.”
The Master sighed. “What makes you think I’m in need of a pick-me-up?”
They were nearly at the end of the lift’s journey now. “Only that you look like you’ve been about ready to drop dead since you arrived.”
“You do know how to flatter a man,” the Master said, reaching out and squeezing Ianto’s arm.
Ianto nodded. “Like I say, I learned from the best.”
Jack was just leading the Doctor in through the front entrance and Gwen took one look at the expression on Jack’s face and hurried forward. “Jack,” Gwen said, her eyes wide, and obviously anxious, “what’s going on?”
“We need to get ready for the Hub to be attacked.” Jack was already heading towards the weapons locker.
There was a long moment where Gwen, Owen and Tosh just stared at him. Then Owen was running towards the weapon locker himself.
Tosh spun around on her chair to face her computer. “I’ll bring online all of our defences, I’ve been modifying a couple of them. I noticed that some of the tunnels were more open to attack, and I’ve added a few nasty surprises down there.”
Ianto raised his eyebrows. “Were you planning on telling the guy who spends most of his time down there, this? Or were you going to wait until I come back up with an axe embedded in my skull?”
“They’re not on most of the time,” she said. Then grinned. “Besides, there aren’t any axes.”
“Well, I feel much better,” Ianto muttered as he headed off toward the archives. “I’m going to fetch some of the protocols on what to do in the event of a breach of the Hub.”
He was barely out of the main area when Jack had caught up with him. “You okay?” Jack asked, and Ianto noted the way that he was keeping an unusual amount of distance from him. Normally he couldn’t keep Jack out of his personal space. He tried not to let it bother him.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “What the hell happened? What did the Doctor do?”
Jack sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “He… It’s hard to explain.”
Ianto looked at him. “Then try.”
“The Doctor opened up the mental link between himself and the Master and poured himself through it. The Master’s always been able to hear these… drums. They’ve been part of what makes him so…”
“Hyper?” Ianto offered.
“Insane,” Jack finished. “The Doctor used his own mind to stop them.”
“So he was helping him?” Ianto dropped his voice to a whisper, not sure that they should really be talking about this. “Only it didn’t exactly look like that from where I was standing.”
Jack looked uncomfortable. “Try to imagine it, the Doctor opened up the Master’s mind completely, and planted a part of himself in there. There’s now no way that the Master can either close the link or get rid of the Doctor. The drums have stopped but they’ve been replaced with the Doctor.”
“And the Doctor didn’t even ask?” Ianto shifted, feeling suddenly very uncomfortable himself. “He violated the Master’s mind,” he said slowly.
Jack shook his head. “He didn’t have a choice, the drums were dangerous, not just to the Master but to the Doctor too. He had to stop them and that was the only way. He couldn’t wait for the Master to give his permission, even if there was a chance that he’d give it, which he probably wouldn’t.”
Ianto frowned. “So it’s okay just to violate someone’s mind? You know, Jack, it’s not all that different to-”
“Don’t,” Jack said. “The Doctor did what had to be done.”
“And you’re okay with that?” Ianto noticed that they’d both changed posture, they were tense and glaring at each other. “Have you ever done something like that?”
Jack blinked and looked away. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It’s got everything to do with it.” Ianto hissed, trying not to raise his voice and attract attention to them. “You’ve been so edgy since the Master got here, what are you so worried about his telling us?”
“Nothing!” Jack hissed back. “It’s not about me. It’s about him. Why have you been so easily taken in by him?”
Ianto rolled his eyes. “I haven’t! This isn’t about him. This is about the fact that you expect to share everything of me but nothing of you. There’s nothing you don’t know about me. Everything about my past, Lisa, all of it. What do I actually know about you? Nothing, but what someone else has told me. I know that you’re probably nearly 200, I know that you used to be a con-man. I know that you love the Doctor. But you told me none of it.”
Jack was shaking his head and gritting his teeth. “Why does it matter? Who I am now is what matters. If you don’t care about that, then what does any of what I’ve done before matter?”
Ianto tried not to actually shake him. He took a deep breath. “Sometimes I can see you,” he said slowly, “there are moments in the field were I see this… darkness, and I know that some of the things you’ve done must be terrible. But then I’ll see you with Estelle or something I know that you’ve got so much love and I…” Ianto sighed.
Jack pursed his lips. “I don’t have time for this now.”
He began to pull away, but Ianto reached out and grabbed his arm, keeping him in place. “I just want something here.”
“Why don’t you ask the Master?” Jack growled, pulling his arm free. “You seem to believe everything he says, and you two looked pretty close ealier.”
Ianto shook his head. “Fine,” he turned away, “I’ll bring up the protocols.”
He could feel Jack watching him but didn’t turn back.
****
Owen had managed to get out all of the weapons Torchwood had and was laying them out on his desk. Jack frowned. “Think you’ve got enough weapons, Owen?”
“You can never be too careful,” he answered, frowning at an alien weapon.
The Doctor was suddenly standing next to him, reaching out and carefully taking it away from him. “Ah,” he said, “that’s loaded and you’re pointing it at yourself.”
Owen raised his eyebrows. “Huh.” Then he picked up another one.
“And that’s a Cilerian drill.” The Doctor took this away from him too.
The Master sighed. “It’s amazing you haven’t all killed yourselves. And a shame, of course.”
Owen glared at him over his shoulder, picked up another one. “How about this?”
“That?” the Doctor replied, “That’s a gun. But one that would blow a hole in the Hub the size of Cardiff.”
Owen nodded. “So, I’ll just label this one, ‘For Emergency Only’, then, shall I?”
Jack half smiled. “Okay, listen up, we need to find out where van Statten is, and the Doctor is going to go and try to stop him. Meanwhile we’re going to try and keep his soldiers occupied.”
“We’re the distraction?” Owen asked. “I hate being the distraction.”
“But you’re so good at it,” Gwen said, then looked embarrassed and cleared her throat. “Do we have any idea where this van Statten might be?”
Jack shook his head. “Only from where Torchwood is located and from what Tosh was able to dig up.”
The Doctor was pacing and looking tired. If he were being honest, Jack had never seen the Doctor look tired. He’d seen him worried, scared, but never so tired. He was not looking at the Master. In fact he was not looking at him so hard he may as well have been be staring at him.
“I don’t think he’d be too far from his prize pieces,” he said after a moment. “He likes everything where he can see them.”
The Master folded his arms over his chest slowly, narrowing his eyes. Jack didn’t think he would ever despise anyone as much as he did the Master. What the Doctor had done was wrong, there was no way around that. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t necessary. He did what needed to be done to keep everyone as safe as they could be. Jack knew, though, that this meant the Entrenchment was permanent. There was no going back, and their link was now so strong that the death of one was the death of the other. Jack also knew that this wouldn’t stop him from protecting his team, and Earth from the Master any way he could. He knew the Doctor knew this too. He was probably counting on it.
“We should pay him a little house visit,” the Master said.
The Doctor didn’t look at him when he replied. “Yes. It’s the only way. We’ll have to go back to the base and find him. When we’re there I might be able to get into the computers do a scan of the whole place, find van Statten and see what else he’s got hidden there.”
“You have to find a way of putting them out of business altogether this time,” Jack pointed out. “Can’t have such dangerous guns for hire hanging about.”
“Not to mention that they’re giving us a bad name,” Ianto said, appearing out the archives, holding a number of different files. “Are we ready for the final stand?”
Gwen rolled her eyes. “Thanks for that, Ianto,” she said.
Ianto merely shrugged. Jack could see the change in him, he was pulling back from everyone again. Maybe hiding his hurt. Or perhaps he was getting ready to leave. The Master had asked Ianto to come with him. Jack was sure of that. It was just the type of spiteful thing the Master would do. Several possible ways that he could force Ianto not to leave all ran in quick succession through his head. He pushed them away. It wasn’t up to him. If Ianto truly wanted to leave it wasn’t Jack’s place to stop him. The Doctor would be there to protect him the best he could. It wasn’t up to Jack. He swallowed a few times. The thought of the Hub without Ianto was bleak. He blinked and looked away.
“They’re coming,” Tosh said suddenly, breaking his thoughts.
The Doctor looked up at Tosh. “Is there another way out?”
“I’ll show you,” Ianto said.
Jack opened his mouth to stop him, but closed it again. It wasn’t up to him. The Master smiled at Ianto and gestured for him to lead on. The Doctor gave him an unreadable look before following behind him.
“We’ll give you as much time as we can,” Jack said to their retreating forms.
The Doctor looked back at him for a moment. Jack had a sudden rush of emotion for him. Standing there between the Master and Ianto and looking so alone. More alone than ever, and Jack’s heart ached for him. But the Doctor was nodding at him and turning around to leave before Jack had a chance to say anything.
After they’d disappeared, Jack sighed and looked at his team. “Let’s get ready,” he said.
*****
The Doctor was darting about the TARDIS, grinning and spouting a running commentary that wasn’t needed. “Are you going to look at me, during any of this?” the Master asked conversationally.
The Doctor tensed a little, his movements slowed. He looked up, meeting the Master’s eye, although he seemed reluctant. He pursed his lips, ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to find nonchalance before he spoke. “You can go,” he said after a moment, “when this is all over. You can leave, it’s not like I won’t know where you are and what you’re doing.”
The Master raised an eyebrow. “Is that your way of making it up to me, invade my mind and then offer me the illusion of freedom?”
The Doctor looked away. Tried to look stern. “It was the only way.”
“The only way that suited you.” The Master walked a little way toward him before changing his mind.
“That’s not it,” he said. But then he was pulling levers. “Here we go!”
The Master grabbed hold of the nearest immovable object to keep from falling. He felt better since he’d rescued the Doctor. The pain had gone and the link had no need to feed from them anymore. After a decent night’s sleep he’d been fine, physically. But the drums were gone. There was just raging silence in their place and that hurt more than they had. And he could feel the Doctor in their place. All that empathy, the love and guilt, the pleasure of life, fear of being alone, was as much a part of him as the drums had been before. The Doctor had done something so unthinkable in Time Lord custom, that the Master had never dreamt that it was a possibility. He should have known, really, that the Doctor wasn’t going to let all that time in the cell pass without thinking of what he’d do afterwards. He should have been paying attention, not focusing on the present, on the stupid apes, instead of what was happening in his own head. Too much time not thinking about it, he supposed. How many times was he going to let the Doctor win before he learnt? He felt sick with it, he’d tried everything to close the link again. To push out the Doctor and all his baggage, but there was nothing to be done now. It was the final stage of an Entrenchment and the most permanent.
Guilt and the fear that the Master was going to leave him alone forever, was all over the Doctor. But, of course, it wasn’t as simple as the Master leaving, because he’d still be there. The Doctor would know every time the Master laughed, or felt pleasure, or fell over. Or killed. He was too remorseful to make him stay now but he wouldn’t really be able to leave. He’d barely been able to look at him since they’d left the Hub. The Master had smiled at Ianto, taken his hand and told him to try not to die while he was away. Ianto had just rolled his eyes and wondered back up to the others. The Master hadn’t failed to notice the stab of hurt that the Doctor felt at this intimate and fairly genuine goodbye. He felt a vindictive stab of pleasure at it.
There was, now, the possibility to use the Doctor’s remorse. He could leave, wreak the type of destruction that only he was capable of and let the guilt slowly overwhelm the Doctor. But no. There was little hope of that. The moment the Doctor realised that he was planning something he’d be swooping down to the rescue.
“Here we are!” the Doctor cried, trying to sound enthusiastic, but missing by several miles.
“Let’s find me some revenge,” the Master replied grimly, heading out of the doors and not bothering to wait for the Doctor.
TBC...
Pairing: Simm!Master/Ten!Doctor, Jack/Ianto
Author: Buttercup
Contact: Buttercupgaud@aol.com
Rating: Let’s say R to be safe, but might be PG-13
Warnings: None really. Mild spoiler for ep1 series 2, now.
Disclaimer: I own none of these characters, they belong to Russel T and the beeb.
Summary: The Doctor wakes up with a headache, which quickly becomes everyone at TW’s too. Doctor Who/Torchwood crossover.
Thanks: Thanks to the wonderful Amy for beta reading this and being so encouraging.
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
Ianto was looking sideways at the Master and trying to pretend he wasn’t. A technique he’d acquired very quickly after joining Torchwood. It paid to know what was going on around you, while also not letting people know you knew. The Master still looked pale, and shaken. He couldn’t really work out what had happened, apart from the fact that the Doctor had obviously attacked him, and done something that had hurt them both. A lot.
He wasn’t exactly sure what to say and so he didn’t say anything, just motioned for the Master to stand next to him on the invisible lift. When the lifted started he stumbled a little, and the Master put his hand out to steady him. As they slowly began to descend he noticed that the Master was shaking a little. This time he turned to look at him. “Are you...?” he let the sentence trail off, not sure what he was asking.
“I’m fine.” The Master waved a trembling hand dismissively.
Ianto nodded. “So, how about our invisible lift? Nifty, no?”
The Master half smiled. “Primitive toy.”
Ianto leaned in conspiratorially. “There’s nothing wrong with a good toy.”
The Master looked a little taken aback for a moment before attempting another smile. “Ianto Jones,” he said, mock shock in his voice, “are you flirting with me?”
Ianto shrugged and pulled back. “The Jack Harkness all purpose pick-me-up, I learned from the best.”
The Master sighed. “What makes you think I’m in need of a pick-me-up?”
They were nearly at the end of the lift’s journey now. “Only that you look like you’ve been about ready to drop dead since you arrived.”
“You do know how to flatter a man,” the Master said, reaching out and squeezing Ianto’s arm.
Ianto nodded. “Like I say, I learned from the best.”
Jack was just leading the Doctor in through the front entrance and Gwen took one look at the expression on Jack’s face and hurried forward. “Jack,” Gwen said, her eyes wide, and obviously anxious, “what’s going on?”
“We need to get ready for the Hub to be attacked.” Jack was already heading towards the weapons locker.
There was a long moment where Gwen, Owen and Tosh just stared at him. Then Owen was running towards the weapon locker himself.
Tosh spun around on her chair to face her computer. “I’ll bring online all of our defences, I’ve been modifying a couple of them. I noticed that some of the tunnels were more open to attack, and I’ve added a few nasty surprises down there.”
Ianto raised his eyebrows. “Were you planning on telling the guy who spends most of his time down there, this? Or were you going to wait until I come back up with an axe embedded in my skull?”
“They’re not on most of the time,” she said. Then grinned. “Besides, there aren’t any axes.”
“Well, I feel much better,” Ianto muttered as he headed off toward the archives. “I’m going to fetch some of the protocols on what to do in the event of a breach of the Hub.”
He was barely out of the main area when Jack had caught up with him. “You okay?” Jack asked, and Ianto noted the way that he was keeping an unusual amount of distance from him. Normally he couldn’t keep Jack out of his personal space. He tried not to let it bother him.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “What the hell happened? What did the Doctor do?”
Jack sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “He… It’s hard to explain.”
Ianto looked at him. “Then try.”
“The Doctor opened up the mental link between himself and the Master and poured himself through it. The Master’s always been able to hear these… drums. They’ve been part of what makes him so…”
“Hyper?” Ianto offered.
“Insane,” Jack finished. “The Doctor used his own mind to stop them.”
“So he was helping him?” Ianto dropped his voice to a whisper, not sure that they should really be talking about this. “Only it didn’t exactly look like that from where I was standing.”
Jack looked uncomfortable. “Try to imagine it, the Doctor opened up the Master’s mind completely, and planted a part of himself in there. There’s now no way that the Master can either close the link or get rid of the Doctor. The drums have stopped but they’ve been replaced with the Doctor.”
“And the Doctor didn’t even ask?” Ianto shifted, feeling suddenly very uncomfortable himself. “He violated the Master’s mind,” he said slowly.
Jack shook his head. “He didn’t have a choice, the drums were dangerous, not just to the Master but to the Doctor too. He had to stop them and that was the only way. He couldn’t wait for the Master to give his permission, even if there was a chance that he’d give it, which he probably wouldn’t.”
Ianto frowned. “So it’s okay just to violate someone’s mind? You know, Jack, it’s not all that different to-”
“Don’t,” Jack said. “The Doctor did what had to be done.”
“And you’re okay with that?” Ianto noticed that they’d both changed posture, they were tense and glaring at each other. “Have you ever done something like that?”
Jack blinked and looked away. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It’s got everything to do with it.” Ianto hissed, trying not to raise his voice and attract attention to them. “You’ve been so edgy since the Master got here, what are you so worried about his telling us?”
“Nothing!” Jack hissed back. “It’s not about me. It’s about him. Why have you been so easily taken in by him?”
Ianto rolled his eyes. “I haven’t! This isn’t about him. This is about the fact that you expect to share everything of me but nothing of you. There’s nothing you don’t know about me. Everything about my past, Lisa, all of it. What do I actually know about you? Nothing, but what someone else has told me. I know that you’re probably nearly 200, I know that you used to be a con-man. I know that you love the Doctor. But you told me none of it.”
Jack was shaking his head and gritting his teeth. “Why does it matter? Who I am now is what matters. If you don’t care about that, then what does any of what I’ve done before matter?”
Ianto tried not to actually shake him. He took a deep breath. “Sometimes I can see you,” he said slowly, “there are moments in the field were I see this… darkness, and I know that some of the things you’ve done must be terrible. But then I’ll see you with Estelle or something I know that you’ve got so much love and I…” Ianto sighed.
Jack pursed his lips. “I don’t have time for this now.”
He began to pull away, but Ianto reached out and grabbed his arm, keeping him in place. “I just want something here.”
“Why don’t you ask the Master?” Jack growled, pulling his arm free. “You seem to believe everything he says, and you two looked pretty close ealier.”
Ianto shook his head. “Fine,” he turned away, “I’ll bring up the protocols.”
He could feel Jack watching him but didn’t turn back.
****
Owen had managed to get out all of the weapons Torchwood had and was laying them out on his desk. Jack frowned. “Think you’ve got enough weapons, Owen?”
“You can never be too careful,” he answered, frowning at an alien weapon.
The Doctor was suddenly standing next to him, reaching out and carefully taking it away from him. “Ah,” he said, “that’s loaded and you’re pointing it at yourself.”
Owen raised his eyebrows. “Huh.” Then he picked up another one.
“And that’s a Cilerian drill.” The Doctor took this away from him too.
The Master sighed. “It’s amazing you haven’t all killed yourselves. And a shame, of course.”
Owen glared at him over his shoulder, picked up another one. “How about this?”
“That?” the Doctor replied, “That’s a gun. But one that would blow a hole in the Hub the size of Cardiff.”
Owen nodded. “So, I’ll just label this one, ‘For Emergency Only’, then, shall I?”
Jack half smiled. “Okay, listen up, we need to find out where van Statten is, and the Doctor is going to go and try to stop him. Meanwhile we’re going to try and keep his soldiers occupied.”
“We’re the distraction?” Owen asked. “I hate being the distraction.”
“But you’re so good at it,” Gwen said, then looked embarrassed and cleared her throat. “Do we have any idea where this van Statten might be?”
Jack shook his head. “Only from where Torchwood is located and from what Tosh was able to dig up.”
The Doctor was pacing and looking tired. If he were being honest, Jack had never seen the Doctor look tired. He’d seen him worried, scared, but never so tired. He was not looking at the Master. In fact he was not looking at him so hard he may as well have been be staring at him.
“I don’t think he’d be too far from his prize pieces,” he said after a moment. “He likes everything where he can see them.”
The Master folded his arms over his chest slowly, narrowing his eyes. Jack didn’t think he would ever despise anyone as much as he did the Master. What the Doctor had done was wrong, there was no way around that. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t necessary. He did what needed to be done to keep everyone as safe as they could be. Jack knew, though, that this meant the Entrenchment was permanent. There was no going back, and their link was now so strong that the death of one was the death of the other. Jack also knew that this wouldn’t stop him from protecting his team, and Earth from the Master any way he could. He knew the Doctor knew this too. He was probably counting on it.
“We should pay him a little house visit,” the Master said.
The Doctor didn’t look at him when he replied. “Yes. It’s the only way. We’ll have to go back to the base and find him. When we’re there I might be able to get into the computers do a scan of the whole place, find van Statten and see what else he’s got hidden there.”
“You have to find a way of putting them out of business altogether this time,” Jack pointed out. “Can’t have such dangerous guns for hire hanging about.”
“Not to mention that they’re giving us a bad name,” Ianto said, appearing out the archives, holding a number of different files. “Are we ready for the final stand?”
Gwen rolled her eyes. “Thanks for that, Ianto,” she said.
Ianto merely shrugged. Jack could see the change in him, he was pulling back from everyone again. Maybe hiding his hurt. Or perhaps he was getting ready to leave. The Master had asked Ianto to come with him. Jack was sure of that. It was just the type of spiteful thing the Master would do. Several possible ways that he could force Ianto not to leave all ran in quick succession through his head. He pushed them away. It wasn’t up to him. If Ianto truly wanted to leave it wasn’t Jack’s place to stop him. The Doctor would be there to protect him the best he could. It wasn’t up to Jack. He swallowed a few times. The thought of the Hub without Ianto was bleak. He blinked and looked away.
“They’re coming,” Tosh said suddenly, breaking his thoughts.
The Doctor looked up at Tosh. “Is there another way out?”
“I’ll show you,” Ianto said.
Jack opened his mouth to stop him, but closed it again. It wasn’t up to him. The Master smiled at Ianto and gestured for him to lead on. The Doctor gave him an unreadable look before following behind him.
“We’ll give you as much time as we can,” Jack said to their retreating forms.
The Doctor looked back at him for a moment. Jack had a sudden rush of emotion for him. Standing there between the Master and Ianto and looking so alone. More alone than ever, and Jack’s heart ached for him. But the Doctor was nodding at him and turning around to leave before Jack had a chance to say anything.
After they’d disappeared, Jack sighed and looked at his team. “Let’s get ready,” he said.
*****
The Doctor was darting about the TARDIS, grinning and spouting a running commentary that wasn’t needed. “Are you going to look at me, during any of this?” the Master asked conversationally.
The Doctor tensed a little, his movements slowed. He looked up, meeting the Master’s eye, although he seemed reluctant. He pursed his lips, ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to find nonchalance before he spoke. “You can go,” he said after a moment, “when this is all over. You can leave, it’s not like I won’t know where you are and what you’re doing.”
The Master raised an eyebrow. “Is that your way of making it up to me, invade my mind and then offer me the illusion of freedom?”
The Doctor looked away. Tried to look stern. “It was the only way.”
“The only way that suited you.” The Master walked a little way toward him before changing his mind.
“That’s not it,” he said. But then he was pulling levers. “Here we go!”
The Master grabbed hold of the nearest immovable object to keep from falling. He felt better since he’d rescued the Doctor. The pain had gone and the link had no need to feed from them anymore. After a decent night’s sleep he’d been fine, physically. But the drums were gone. There was just raging silence in their place and that hurt more than they had. And he could feel the Doctor in their place. All that empathy, the love and guilt, the pleasure of life, fear of being alone, was as much a part of him as the drums had been before. The Doctor had done something so unthinkable in Time Lord custom, that the Master had never dreamt that it was a possibility. He should have known, really, that the Doctor wasn’t going to let all that time in the cell pass without thinking of what he’d do afterwards. He should have been paying attention, not focusing on the present, on the stupid apes, instead of what was happening in his own head. Too much time not thinking about it, he supposed. How many times was he going to let the Doctor win before he learnt? He felt sick with it, he’d tried everything to close the link again. To push out the Doctor and all his baggage, but there was nothing to be done now. It was the final stage of an Entrenchment and the most permanent.
Guilt and the fear that the Master was going to leave him alone forever, was all over the Doctor. But, of course, it wasn’t as simple as the Master leaving, because he’d still be there. The Doctor would know every time the Master laughed, or felt pleasure, or fell over. Or killed. He was too remorseful to make him stay now but he wouldn’t really be able to leave. He’d barely been able to look at him since they’d left the Hub. The Master had smiled at Ianto, taken his hand and told him to try not to die while he was away. Ianto had just rolled his eyes and wondered back up to the others. The Master hadn’t failed to notice the stab of hurt that the Doctor felt at this intimate and fairly genuine goodbye. He felt a vindictive stab of pleasure at it.
There was, now, the possibility to use the Doctor’s remorse. He could leave, wreak the type of destruction that only he was capable of and let the guilt slowly overwhelm the Doctor. But no. There was little hope of that. The moment the Doctor realised that he was planning something he’d be swooping down to the rescue.
“Here we are!” the Doctor cried, trying to sound enthusiastic, but missing by several miles.
“Let’s find me some revenge,” the Master replied grimly, heading out of the doors and not bothering to wait for the Doctor.
TBC...