fic: children of time (10/14)
Title: Children of Time: Skaro
Characters: Donna Noble, the Rani, the Master and the Doctor.
Rating: PG
Summary: Following on from Journey's End...
Index Post
Skaro
They’re standing around the console, except for the Master, who’s lounging back in the captain’s chair trying to show how much he doesn’t care about any of this by feigning sleep.
“That’s it?” says the Rani. “That’s your plan? Walk across a battlefield, find a supposedly secret entrance that you vaguely recall from five hundred years ago and find Davros? I can’t help but feel that there are some steps missing there.”
“Just allowing some wiggle room for complications,” says the Doctor. “Anyway I’m always at my best when improvising.”
“Well, they’re your lives,” says the Rani with a slight shrug. “Try not to get yourself killed too often before you send the signal.”
“Hang on just a sec,” says Donna, “how come I’m the one staying in the TARDIS?”
“Because I know the way to-”
“So do I!”
The Doctor blinks. “Yes. Right. So you do. But, well... I’ve got two hearts, therefore far greater stamina, which is very useful when you really don’t want to be sitting around on a battlefield.”
Donna frowns. “Just cause I ain’t a skinny streak of skin and bone, mister, doesn’t mean I’m not fit, or are you just suddenly forgetting all those running for our lives incidents where, oh yeah, I didn’t need to stop for a breather every five minutes?”
“Donna,” he says, pleading, “one of us has to stay here.”
“I’m just pointing out that it doesn’t have to be me.”
“It won’t be,” he says, “next time.”
“I can’t help but notice,” drawls the Master, finally deigning to acknowledge the conversation going on around him, “that this plan involves me both co-operating and putting myself at some considerable risk.” His head’s tilted back, eyes closed. It’s a picture of relaxation that fools nobody in the room. “How about I just stay here instead?”
“Because I’m not leaving the two of you alone with Donna and the Rani isn’t any sort of a soldier.”
“Neither am I, Doctor.” He sits up and smiles thinly. “I’m a killer. There’s a difference, whatever your guilt-ridden philosophy might tell you.”
“You’re coming,” says the Doctor, and opens the door.
“Make me,” snaps the Master.
The Doctor opens his mouth, but it’s Donna who speaks first. “Look, sunshine, you can either walk out that door, or I can shove you out. Pick one.”
The Master looks at her and she glares straight back. He shrugs and jumps to his feet, deciding that she sounds more than annoyed enough to carry out her threat and he could do without that assault on his dignity. “Well,” he says, clapping his hands together enthusiastically, “looks like I’ve joined your Scooby gang after all, Doctor.”
-
His enthusiastic facade lasts a scant few minutes before the fury he feels at himself, that freaky hybrid, the Doctor and the stupid, stupid situation he’s put them in pushes its way forward. Skaro, as far as he can see, is one vast desolate wasteland littered with bodies. In the distance, he can hear the rumble of artillery fire. The air stinks of pollutants and rotting flesh; the smoke that impairs their view is thick and yellow, noxious enough to make his throat burn. This is a diseased, barren world and he hates it.
And the Doctor suggesting that he watches where he steps as they may have wandered into a minefield does nothing to help his mood. “So much for your directions,” he mutters.
“I’m doing my best,” the Doctor says mildly, but his tone only incenses the Master further.
“You’re a self-absorbed, egotistical, arrogant bastard,” he snaps, scrambling up a rocky incline, covered with loose rocks, “and you are going to get me killed. Again. Don’t think that if we run into a Kaled patrol that I’m going to do anything other than hand you over to them.”
“You really think they’ll listen?” says the Doctor, just ahead of him. That’s something. A least if there’s a mine out there, it’ll be the Doctor that gets blown to pieces.
“I’m sure I can come up with something. In fact, why wait? I should just hit you on the back of the head with a big rock and make a run for it back to the TARDIS, claim there was some terrible accident, wah, wah poor Doctor, oh sorry he’s dead, let’s go party on Barcelona and get really fucking pissed.”
“Not one of your more convincing lies,” says the Doctor, not even bothering to turn round.
“Stop being so calm. We’re walking unprotected and unarmed across a war zone.” The Master gulps, laughs; it sounds like he’s on the edge of hysteria. “Can’t you see how incredibly stupid this is?”
The Doctor looks back at him, raises his eyebrows. “Frightened?”
“Fuck off. I don’t need your sanctimonious pity, Doctor. I need you to see the world as it is rather than what you’d like it to be. Specifically, this world, right now, which is one giant death trap.” He kicks at the ground, sending grit and earth flying. “Stupid piece of dirt,” he mutters. “Who’d want to fight over this mess anyway?”
The next thing he knows a wall of sound slams into his ears and the ground in front of him explodes. Something hits him hard in the side as he hears the staccato stutter of a machine gun and then his face is hitting the ground and he’s muttering obscenities, determined to curse the Doctor with his last breath.
After a few seconds he realises that he’s still alive, not in any real pain, and the thing that hit him was the Doctor, knocking him to the ground. He jabs his elbow back and the Doctor makes a satisfying grunt of pain before he rolls off of him. “Your self-preservation instinct is, as ever, fundamentally flawed,” the Master mutters, sitting up cautiously.
“Lucky for you,” says the Doctor.
It’s a long walk to the bunker entrance, and the Doctor barely looks at the Master most of the way, afraid that he’ll notice the concern in his eyes that since a featureless battlefield looks pretty much the same in every direction, he isn’t completely certain he’s going the right way.
When a familiar cropping of rocks looms up on the horizon, he feels a profound sense of relief. It’s not much farther now.
There’s some cover leading towards the tunnel entrance and the Doctor ducks down as he reaches it, far more cautious than he’s been since he left the TARDIS.
“What’s the problem?” the Master asks, and the Doctor turns back to see the Master standing over him, fully exposed, his arms folded. He grabs the idiot’s hand and yanks him down.
Crouching now, the Master snatches his hand back and fixes him with a glare. “Was it good for you?” he snarls.
“I thought you didn’t want to die,” says the Doctor, returning the look, “but I suppose it’s worth it if it annoys me, right?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. It was only funny once because you looked such a bloody idiot in front of all those humans. There’s no-one here, Doctor. I’m in no danger.”
“No Kaleds or Thals anyway,” says the Doctor, peering over the rocks. “Or mutos.”
“Then who are we worried about meeting?”
“Well, me, obviously. This is very definitely not one of the times when I want to bump into myself.”
-
“Something wrong?” asks Donna, noting the frown that crosses the Rani’s face. She’s standing on the opposite side of the console, browsing through the electronic library.
“Miasimia Goria,” she says crisply, “is not quite the planet it once was. Without my aid, they seem to have taken quite a different path.”
“What?” asks Donna. “Like, they’re free and happy and don’t have to worry about getting plucked from their homes in the middle of the night to be used as test subjects or something?”
The Rani gives her an amused smile. “I believe your people have an expression about stones and glass houses. Under my rule over ninety-eight percent of the population lived long, healthy, productive lives. There was no famine, no poverty, no war, and for six thousand years all the people of your miserable little world have been doing is finding more and more effective ways to kill to another, so now you’re within a hair’s breadth of destroying your planet altogether.”
“Miasma Goria was a world of terrified slaves,” says Donna. “And it never changed, but you’re saying that’s as good as it gets? I don’t think so.”
“You’ve only got the Doctor’s memories to tell you that, and we both know he’s not the most objective of observers.” She moves towards Donna, almost predatory. “How would you like to see mine?”
“Thanks, but no. Having one Time Lord rattling around inside my skull’s more than enough.”
-
“Well, that’s one trip I never want to make again. What kind of a madman thinks giant clams have a chance of being the ultimate form of life?” says the Master, sliding out of the ventilation duct and landing on a gleaming metal floor. He checks both ways: the corridor is clear.
“I think,” mutters the Doctor, clambering out with considerably less elegance, “he was considering what could survive the radiation on this planet his first priority.”
“Better extinct than devolving into a bloody huge clam.”
Now that they’re in the Kaled bunker, the Doctor’s memories are much clearer. He follows the corridors towards Davros’s laboratory, concluding that that was the logical place for him to have retreated to, with his earlier self currently still active and participating in events. Even Davros wouldn’t want to risk a meeting between the two.
“They could really do with sticking up a few pictures,” says the Master, bored by one samey looking corridor after another.
“Shh,” says the Doctor. “Someone’s...” He moves suddenly, pushes the Master back before they can round the next corner. His hand lingers a moment longer than it has to, touching his chest and very definitely not memorising in painstaking detail of the feel of his shirt over skin and muscle. The Master smirks as he looks at him because of course he’s noticed.
“Not the best time for it, Doctor,” he murmurs in his ear, his breath cool and close, but at least he has the sense to keep his voice down.
Around the corner, a little further along the corridor, the Doctor hears the rise and fall of familiar voices, and, yes, they’re definitely going the right way to Davros’s laboratory, but they have to wait now and the Doctor doesn’t want to listen, but there’s really nowhere else to go.
“Do I have the right?” he hears himself say, and then listens to Sarah Jane’s impassioned response urging him to complete the Time Lords’ mission and blow-up the incubation chambers, destroy the Daleks, and he closes his eyes, and is hundreds of years in the past, holding two wires in his hands, so very very close and it could all end, here and now, if only he was willing, if only he could...
“They’re gone,” says the Master, tapping him on the shoulder.
The Doctor opens his eyes and peeks round the corner and, sure enough, the corridor’s empty but the wires are still there. Slowly, cautiously, he approaches and looks down at them, sitting at his feet, so small, so simple. So very, very simple.
“Oooh,” says the Master, coming up behind him. “Oh, now this is interesting. Suddenly, Doctor, I’m very glad you brought me along.”
“It’s nothing,” says the Doctor, “we have to go.” But he doesn’t move, doesn’t take his eyes off those wires. One touch would be all that’s needed, one touch and the Dalek race is finished before it even begins.
The Master’s voice is soft in his ear. “Don’t you want to do it, Doctor? Wouldn’t it be so very, very easy?”
“You know what would happen,” says the Doctor, his voice equally soft.
“No I don’t, nor do you. Who knows how the universe will react to such a massive change? You could do it. There’s no-one to stop you, nothing to lose anymore and so much to gain.”
The Doctor shakes his head. “No.”
“You should do it,” insists the Master, moving to face him. “You owe it to yourself, don’t you? To try? For Gallifrey? You killed them, now you can save them.”
The Doctor swallows and looks up, meeting the Master’s dark gaze. “Why are you doing this?”
The Master tilts his head and smiles. “Don’t you want to feel like a god?”
The Doctor shoves him out of the way, yanks out the wires and tosses them into the incubation chamber. He knows his earlier self will be back, he’ll try again, but by then it’ll be too late, the Daleks will be active.
“Move,” he says to the Master, his voice harsh. “That way, come on.”
-
They don’t speak as they approach Davros’s laboratory. The corridors are empty here, but the Doctor can hear the sound of gunfire in the distance. The doomed uprising against Davros’s reign has begun. He forces himself not to hesitate as he approaches the doors of the laboratory. They’re unlocked, and the interior of the lab is still, shadowed, silent. The Doctor looks around, and realises he’s alone: the Master has disappeared.
“Doctor, you are most persistent.” The Doctor turns again to see Davros moving forward out of a dark recess in the room. He stands firm, noting the mechanical hand, watching it warily, aware that he has no defence against the bolts of electricity Davros has taken to shooting from it.
“Davros,” he says, “you can’t stay here. You know you can’t.”
“On the contrary, Doctor, this is an ideal time for me. My earlier self will soon be incapacitated and I will be able to take his place, fully prepared to counter any further Dalek treachery. I have the opportunity now to change the course of history, to ensure that the Dalek race will go on.”
“I can’t allow you to do that.”
“You have neither the means nor the will to stop me, Doctor. I can, I will, save the Daleks. They will not go to war with the Time Lords. Consider what that means. The Daleks need not be the only race that is saved today.
“Even if you do manage to change history today, the war will still start all over again, somewhere down the line, and the web of time isn’t likely to do very well under all that temporal stress.”
“Then stay, Doctor. Assist me. With your knowledge, we may be able to find a way to make it possible, to protect the web of time. Think of what could be achieved: both races could be saved, so many lives, so many worlds need not be destroyed if the conflict between our two peoples is averted. Is that not good? Is that not something worth working together for?”
“Davros...” A blast of Dalek fire flies past him and there’s an electronic scream of pain from Davros as it hits him full in the chest.
The Doctor turns from Davros’s smoking body to face the Master, Dalek gun in his hands. His face is blank, and he’s looking at Davros but the Doctor doesn’t think he sees him at all. He fires twice more, turning the corpse into unidentifiable ashes.
He blinks, tosses the gun to one side and grins. “Well,” he says, “that’s that then. Aren’t you going to whistle for your TARDIS?”
“Did you have to?” asks the Doctor faintly.
“Yes,” the Master says, “because you couldn’t.”
-
He’s lying on the floor of the Cloister Room, almost dozing, when he hears the tap of sharp heels on the stone floor. The Doctor sits up, crosses his legs as the Rani approaches, expecting her to demand again that he take her back to Miasimia Goria, against both their better judgements. The planet she knew is gone, and leaving her there knowing she’d only attempt to overthrow the government to install her own dictatorship doesn’t strike him as a good idea.
He resigns himself to another argument, though his thoughts are still half somewhere quite different.
“I know that look,” says the Rani, sitting down on a stone bench opposite him. “And I don’t like it. What absurd idea are you contemplating now?”
The Doctor smiles and stands up. He sticks his hands in his pockets and looks down at his shoes. “I think,” he says slowly, “that I need your help.”
“Again?” she asks, amused.
He steps forward, and there’s eagerness in his voice and something else entirely in his eyes. “Just listen, okay? And if it sounds completely ridiculous or just couldn’t ever work, tell me.”
She folds her arms, leans back against a stone column, regards him with a level gaze. “Alright, go ahead.”
“I thought the whole war had been time-locked, but Dalek Caan managed to make an emergency temporal shift into the first year and was able to get Davros back out, effectively changing an event in the war, and we managed to materialise on Skaro.”
“There’s minimal temporal disruption at this point in the hostilities, I don’t know if you could bring a human back without doing some damage, but we’re all fine.”
“But what would happen if we tried to get in somewhere else, some pivotal point in the war?”
The Rani stares at him for a long moment and her expression is unreadable. “Madness, probably death; you saw what happened to Dalek Caan, and that’s precisely what would be in store for anyone else stupid enough to try it.”
“Davros got out.”
“There’s an argument to be made that he’s already insane.” She smiles thinly. “No problems for the Master then.”
“Rani...”
“Besides, this capsule certainly couldn’t withstand the stresses involved, but then you already know that, so you must have an alternative. You want to know if there’s a way to protect to your mind.”
The Doctor swallows; his throat dry. “Is there?”
She gives a short derisive laugh. “How should I know? Doctor, this is well outside my expertise, outside anyone’s expertise.”
“That wouldn’t have mattered before,” he says quietly.
“We’re not students anymore, Doctor. This isn’t one of the Master’s stupid games and mistakes are not paid for with a detention.”
“But what if we could do it? What if we just considered it, Rani, just that, just made a plan to see how it might be done.”
“Whatever delusions the pair of you have, we are not gods. Do you understand the implications of what you’re proposing? Of the consequences of an error? Are you really willing to risk that to get back one stuffy old planet?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
“Yes.” He pauses. “Help me.”
Characters: Donna Noble, the Rani, the Master and the Doctor.
Rating: PG
Summary: Following on from Journey's End...
Index Post
Skaro
They’re standing around the console, except for the Master, who’s lounging back in the captain’s chair trying to show how much he doesn’t care about any of this by feigning sleep.
“That’s it?” says the Rani. “That’s your plan? Walk across a battlefield, find a supposedly secret entrance that you vaguely recall from five hundred years ago and find Davros? I can’t help but feel that there are some steps missing there.”
“Just allowing some wiggle room for complications,” says the Doctor. “Anyway I’m always at my best when improvising.”
“Well, they’re your lives,” says the Rani with a slight shrug. “Try not to get yourself killed too often before you send the signal.”
“Hang on just a sec,” says Donna, “how come I’m the one staying in the TARDIS?”
“Because I know the way to-”
“So do I!”
The Doctor blinks. “Yes. Right. So you do. But, well... I’ve got two hearts, therefore far greater stamina, which is very useful when you really don’t want to be sitting around on a battlefield.”
Donna frowns. “Just cause I ain’t a skinny streak of skin and bone, mister, doesn’t mean I’m not fit, or are you just suddenly forgetting all those running for our lives incidents where, oh yeah, I didn’t need to stop for a breather every five minutes?”
“Donna,” he says, pleading, “one of us has to stay here.”
“I’m just pointing out that it doesn’t have to be me.”
“It won’t be,” he says, “next time.”
“I can’t help but notice,” drawls the Master, finally deigning to acknowledge the conversation going on around him, “that this plan involves me both co-operating and putting myself at some considerable risk.” His head’s tilted back, eyes closed. It’s a picture of relaxation that fools nobody in the room. “How about I just stay here instead?”
“Because I’m not leaving the two of you alone with Donna and the Rani isn’t any sort of a soldier.”
“Neither am I, Doctor.” He sits up and smiles thinly. “I’m a killer. There’s a difference, whatever your guilt-ridden philosophy might tell you.”
“You’re coming,” says the Doctor, and opens the door.
“Make me,” snaps the Master.
The Doctor opens his mouth, but it’s Donna who speaks first. “Look, sunshine, you can either walk out that door, or I can shove you out. Pick one.”
The Master looks at her and she glares straight back. He shrugs and jumps to his feet, deciding that she sounds more than annoyed enough to carry out her threat and he could do without that assault on his dignity. “Well,” he says, clapping his hands together enthusiastically, “looks like I’ve joined your Scooby gang after all, Doctor.”
-
His enthusiastic facade lasts a scant few minutes before the fury he feels at himself, that freaky hybrid, the Doctor and the stupid, stupid situation he’s put them in pushes its way forward. Skaro, as far as he can see, is one vast desolate wasteland littered with bodies. In the distance, he can hear the rumble of artillery fire. The air stinks of pollutants and rotting flesh; the smoke that impairs their view is thick and yellow, noxious enough to make his throat burn. This is a diseased, barren world and he hates it.
And the Doctor suggesting that he watches where he steps as they may have wandered into a minefield does nothing to help his mood. “So much for your directions,” he mutters.
“I’m doing my best,” the Doctor says mildly, but his tone only incenses the Master further.
“You’re a self-absorbed, egotistical, arrogant bastard,” he snaps, scrambling up a rocky incline, covered with loose rocks, “and you are going to get me killed. Again. Don’t think that if we run into a Kaled patrol that I’m going to do anything other than hand you over to them.”
“You really think they’ll listen?” says the Doctor, just ahead of him. That’s something. A least if there’s a mine out there, it’ll be the Doctor that gets blown to pieces.
“I’m sure I can come up with something. In fact, why wait? I should just hit you on the back of the head with a big rock and make a run for it back to the TARDIS, claim there was some terrible accident, wah, wah poor Doctor, oh sorry he’s dead, let’s go party on Barcelona and get really fucking pissed.”
“Not one of your more convincing lies,” says the Doctor, not even bothering to turn round.
“Stop being so calm. We’re walking unprotected and unarmed across a war zone.” The Master gulps, laughs; it sounds like he’s on the edge of hysteria. “Can’t you see how incredibly stupid this is?”
The Doctor looks back at him, raises his eyebrows. “Frightened?”
“Fuck off. I don’t need your sanctimonious pity, Doctor. I need you to see the world as it is rather than what you’d like it to be. Specifically, this world, right now, which is one giant death trap.” He kicks at the ground, sending grit and earth flying. “Stupid piece of dirt,” he mutters. “Who’d want to fight over this mess anyway?”
The next thing he knows a wall of sound slams into his ears and the ground in front of him explodes. Something hits him hard in the side as he hears the staccato stutter of a machine gun and then his face is hitting the ground and he’s muttering obscenities, determined to curse the Doctor with his last breath.
After a few seconds he realises that he’s still alive, not in any real pain, and the thing that hit him was the Doctor, knocking him to the ground. He jabs his elbow back and the Doctor makes a satisfying grunt of pain before he rolls off of him. “Your self-preservation instinct is, as ever, fundamentally flawed,” the Master mutters, sitting up cautiously.
“Lucky for you,” says the Doctor.
It’s a long walk to the bunker entrance, and the Doctor barely looks at the Master most of the way, afraid that he’ll notice the concern in his eyes that since a featureless battlefield looks pretty much the same in every direction, he isn’t completely certain he’s going the right way.
When a familiar cropping of rocks looms up on the horizon, he feels a profound sense of relief. It’s not much farther now.
There’s some cover leading towards the tunnel entrance and the Doctor ducks down as he reaches it, far more cautious than he’s been since he left the TARDIS.
“What’s the problem?” the Master asks, and the Doctor turns back to see the Master standing over him, fully exposed, his arms folded. He grabs the idiot’s hand and yanks him down.
Crouching now, the Master snatches his hand back and fixes him with a glare. “Was it good for you?” he snarls.
“I thought you didn’t want to die,” says the Doctor, returning the look, “but I suppose it’s worth it if it annoys me, right?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. It was only funny once because you looked such a bloody idiot in front of all those humans. There’s no-one here, Doctor. I’m in no danger.”
“No Kaleds or Thals anyway,” says the Doctor, peering over the rocks. “Or mutos.”
“Then who are we worried about meeting?”
“Well, me, obviously. This is very definitely not one of the times when I want to bump into myself.”
-
“Something wrong?” asks Donna, noting the frown that crosses the Rani’s face. She’s standing on the opposite side of the console, browsing through the electronic library.
“Miasimia Goria,” she says crisply, “is not quite the planet it once was. Without my aid, they seem to have taken quite a different path.”
“What?” asks Donna. “Like, they’re free and happy and don’t have to worry about getting plucked from their homes in the middle of the night to be used as test subjects or something?”
The Rani gives her an amused smile. “I believe your people have an expression about stones and glass houses. Under my rule over ninety-eight percent of the population lived long, healthy, productive lives. There was no famine, no poverty, no war, and for six thousand years all the people of your miserable little world have been doing is finding more and more effective ways to kill to another, so now you’re within a hair’s breadth of destroying your planet altogether.”
“Miasma Goria was a world of terrified slaves,” says Donna. “And it never changed, but you’re saying that’s as good as it gets? I don’t think so.”
“You’ve only got the Doctor’s memories to tell you that, and we both know he’s not the most objective of observers.” She moves towards Donna, almost predatory. “How would you like to see mine?”
“Thanks, but no. Having one Time Lord rattling around inside my skull’s more than enough.”
-
“Well, that’s one trip I never want to make again. What kind of a madman thinks giant clams have a chance of being the ultimate form of life?” says the Master, sliding out of the ventilation duct and landing on a gleaming metal floor. He checks both ways: the corridor is clear.
“I think,” mutters the Doctor, clambering out with considerably less elegance, “he was considering what could survive the radiation on this planet his first priority.”
“Better extinct than devolving into a bloody huge clam.”
Now that they’re in the Kaled bunker, the Doctor’s memories are much clearer. He follows the corridors towards Davros’s laboratory, concluding that that was the logical place for him to have retreated to, with his earlier self currently still active and participating in events. Even Davros wouldn’t want to risk a meeting between the two.
“They could really do with sticking up a few pictures,” says the Master, bored by one samey looking corridor after another.
“Shh,” says the Doctor. “Someone’s...” He moves suddenly, pushes the Master back before they can round the next corner. His hand lingers a moment longer than it has to, touching his chest and very definitely not memorising in painstaking detail of the feel of his shirt over skin and muscle. The Master smirks as he looks at him because of course he’s noticed.
“Not the best time for it, Doctor,” he murmurs in his ear, his breath cool and close, but at least he has the sense to keep his voice down.
Around the corner, a little further along the corridor, the Doctor hears the rise and fall of familiar voices, and, yes, they’re definitely going the right way to Davros’s laboratory, but they have to wait now and the Doctor doesn’t want to listen, but there’s really nowhere else to go.
“Do I have the right?” he hears himself say, and then listens to Sarah Jane’s impassioned response urging him to complete the Time Lords’ mission and blow-up the incubation chambers, destroy the Daleks, and he closes his eyes, and is hundreds of years in the past, holding two wires in his hands, so very very close and it could all end, here and now, if only he was willing, if only he could...
“They’re gone,” says the Master, tapping him on the shoulder.
The Doctor opens his eyes and peeks round the corner and, sure enough, the corridor’s empty but the wires are still there. Slowly, cautiously, he approaches and looks down at them, sitting at his feet, so small, so simple. So very, very simple.
“Oooh,” says the Master, coming up behind him. “Oh, now this is interesting. Suddenly, Doctor, I’m very glad you brought me along.”
“It’s nothing,” says the Doctor, “we have to go.” But he doesn’t move, doesn’t take his eyes off those wires. One touch would be all that’s needed, one touch and the Dalek race is finished before it even begins.
The Master’s voice is soft in his ear. “Don’t you want to do it, Doctor? Wouldn’t it be so very, very easy?”
“You know what would happen,” says the Doctor, his voice equally soft.
“No I don’t, nor do you. Who knows how the universe will react to such a massive change? You could do it. There’s no-one to stop you, nothing to lose anymore and so much to gain.”
The Doctor shakes his head. “No.”
“You should do it,” insists the Master, moving to face him. “You owe it to yourself, don’t you? To try? For Gallifrey? You killed them, now you can save them.”
The Doctor swallows and looks up, meeting the Master’s dark gaze. “Why are you doing this?”
The Master tilts his head and smiles. “Don’t you want to feel like a god?”
The Doctor shoves him out of the way, yanks out the wires and tosses them into the incubation chamber. He knows his earlier self will be back, he’ll try again, but by then it’ll be too late, the Daleks will be active.
“Move,” he says to the Master, his voice harsh. “That way, come on.”
-
They don’t speak as they approach Davros’s laboratory. The corridors are empty here, but the Doctor can hear the sound of gunfire in the distance. The doomed uprising against Davros’s reign has begun. He forces himself not to hesitate as he approaches the doors of the laboratory. They’re unlocked, and the interior of the lab is still, shadowed, silent. The Doctor looks around, and realises he’s alone: the Master has disappeared.
“Doctor, you are most persistent.” The Doctor turns again to see Davros moving forward out of a dark recess in the room. He stands firm, noting the mechanical hand, watching it warily, aware that he has no defence against the bolts of electricity Davros has taken to shooting from it.
“Davros,” he says, “you can’t stay here. You know you can’t.”
“On the contrary, Doctor, this is an ideal time for me. My earlier self will soon be incapacitated and I will be able to take his place, fully prepared to counter any further Dalek treachery. I have the opportunity now to change the course of history, to ensure that the Dalek race will go on.”
“I can’t allow you to do that.”
“You have neither the means nor the will to stop me, Doctor. I can, I will, save the Daleks. They will not go to war with the Time Lords. Consider what that means. The Daleks need not be the only race that is saved today.
“Even if you do manage to change history today, the war will still start all over again, somewhere down the line, and the web of time isn’t likely to do very well under all that temporal stress.”
“Then stay, Doctor. Assist me. With your knowledge, we may be able to find a way to make it possible, to protect the web of time. Think of what could be achieved: both races could be saved, so many lives, so many worlds need not be destroyed if the conflict between our two peoples is averted. Is that not good? Is that not something worth working together for?”
“Davros...” A blast of Dalek fire flies past him and there’s an electronic scream of pain from Davros as it hits him full in the chest.
The Doctor turns from Davros’s smoking body to face the Master, Dalek gun in his hands. His face is blank, and he’s looking at Davros but the Doctor doesn’t think he sees him at all. He fires twice more, turning the corpse into unidentifiable ashes.
He blinks, tosses the gun to one side and grins. “Well,” he says, “that’s that then. Aren’t you going to whistle for your TARDIS?”
“Did you have to?” asks the Doctor faintly.
“Yes,” the Master says, “because you couldn’t.”
-
He’s lying on the floor of the Cloister Room, almost dozing, when he hears the tap of sharp heels on the stone floor. The Doctor sits up, crosses his legs as the Rani approaches, expecting her to demand again that he take her back to Miasimia Goria, against both their better judgements. The planet she knew is gone, and leaving her there knowing she’d only attempt to overthrow the government to install her own dictatorship doesn’t strike him as a good idea.
He resigns himself to another argument, though his thoughts are still half somewhere quite different.
“I know that look,” says the Rani, sitting down on a stone bench opposite him. “And I don’t like it. What absurd idea are you contemplating now?”
The Doctor smiles and stands up. He sticks his hands in his pockets and looks down at his shoes. “I think,” he says slowly, “that I need your help.”
“Again?” she asks, amused.
He steps forward, and there’s eagerness in his voice and something else entirely in his eyes. “Just listen, okay? And if it sounds completely ridiculous or just couldn’t ever work, tell me.”
She folds her arms, leans back against a stone column, regards him with a level gaze. “Alright, go ahead.”
“I thought the whole war had been time-locked, but Dalek Caan managed to make an emergency temporal shift into the first year and was able to get Davros back out, effectively changing an event in the war, and we managed to materialise on Skaro.”
“There’s minimal temporal disruption at this point in the hostilities, I don’t know if you could bring a human back without doing some damage, but we’re all fine.”
“But what would happen if we tried to get in somewhere else, some pivotal point in the war?”
The Rani stares at him for a long moment and her expression is unreadable. “Madness, probably death; you saw what happened to Dalek Caan, and that’s precisely what would be in store for anyone else stupid enough to try it.”
“Davros got out.”
“There’s an argument to be made that he’s already insane.” She smiles thinly. “No problems for the Master then.”
“Rani...”
“Besides, this capsule certainly couldn’t withstand the stresses involved, but then you already know that, so you must have an alternative. You want to know if there’s a way to protect to your mind.”
The Doctor swallows; his throat dry. “Is there?”
She gives a short derisive laugh. “How should I know? Doctor, this is well outside my expertise, outside anyone’s expertise.”
“That wouldn’t have mattered before,” he says quietly.
“We’re not students anymore, Doctor. This isn’t one of the Master’s stupid games and mistakes are not paid for with a detention.”
“But what if we could do it? What if we just considered it, Rani, just that, just made a plan to see how it might be done.”
“Whatever delusions the pair of you have, we are not gods. Do you understand the implications of what you’re proposing? Of the consequences of an error? Are you really willing to risk that to get back one stuffy old planet?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
“Yes.” He pauses. “Help me.”