Chapter Text
"I can still hear them, you know."
Playing aimlessly with the ring on his finger, the Master leans back against the railing at the side of the Console Room, wondering if he'll get a reaction this time.
"Hmm?" The Doctor doesn't look up from the console panel he's been using as an executive stress toy for the last half hour – since really, sitting as she is in the middle of the vast and empty ice floes of Alderion Five, the only feature in thousands of miles of stable glacier, the TARDIS hardly has an urgent need for enhanced plasma nebulising in her reticular coils.
It has taken them weeks of cannibalising the Master's TARDIS – reclaimed from the drifting reaches of the Silver Devastation in the year 100 trillion – to fix the damage the Doctor had done to his own in repeated acts of gross vandalism. Just because the Master had taken the old jalopy and turned it into a thing of beauty. The Doctor never did have a good eye for art.
They would've been better off simply moving over to the Master's TARDIS , of course. It was a later model, had a fully functioning chameleon circuit, no damage to its navigation controls, and all sorts of other fun goodies, which the Master had never really had a chance to explore. Not to mention the weaponry. Ooh, big guns and bigger bombs, all so new and experimental that they virtually still had the protective wrap around them from the factory.
That TARDIS had been a gift to him from the desperate High Council. Brand spanking new, they might as well have stuck a big red bow on it and said 'Happy End-of-the world'. The last great Time War raging around them, they'd begged the Master to 'take it'. 'Save us' was what they'd really meant.
But no, the Doctor doesn't like guns and isn't prepared to trust any capsule that has the Master imprinted on its circuits, so it's back to this clapped out box of junk again. At least the Master has managed to persuade him to take a few of the new toys back with them. Not the guns, of course. The man is such a hopeless sap.
Now, thanks more to the Master's skill than the Doctor's tinkering, this ancient TARDIS is just about up to travelling time and space again. After a fashion. And there's certainly nothing wrong with the reticular coils. The Master knows this as he overhauled them himself. No, this is simply a case of anything to avoid looking at the Master, dealing with the problem he represents. Really, it's laughable. Why insist on keeping him alive, on making him into the sad collared pet he's now apparently meant to be, if it's only to ignore him?
"I said," he repeats with exaggerated slowness, "I can still hear them."
The Doctor looks up, that annoying look of wide-eyed concern he seems so fond of in this regeneration forming on his face as he takes off his glasses. "Nothing I've done helped control things at all?"
"Of course not. It's not a mild case of tinnitus, you know. Take two pills and come back next week. Tell me, Doctor, has anyone who's ever consulted you been better off for the experience? Hmm, let me think..." The Master lets a grin grow slowly on his face and doesn't bother finishing his sentence.
"Stop it." But the Doctor's words sound almost fond as he turns back to that oh so fascinating panel, and the Master feels his grin concertina into something uglier.
"Will I get a dog treat if I do?"
The Doctor smiles briefly as he pushes his glasses back up his nose. "Do you want one?"
"Yes, let me out for a run. All good doggies need their exercise."
"Blood'll freeze in your veins the instant you step beyond the exterior field of the TARDIS."
"Oh yes. Because, of course, I didn't know that without you telling me."
"Not gonna let you hurt yourself, Master." The Doctor almost singsongs that one. Gods, but the man is aggravating!
"Funny how hearing my name from your lips has lost its... tingle."
That makes the Doctor look up again, eyebrow raised. "Tingle?"
The Master smiles lazily. "Yes, tingle. Prickle, thrill, groin-tightening tickle, stirring of somatosensory neurons – all gone now. You managed to kill that as well when you fastened this abhorrence around my neck. Aren't you proud?" He draws himself to his feet and strides over to the Doctor. "This thing was never designed for Time Lords, you know. It hurts."
"Oh no, it really doesn't. Not physically at-"
"It hurts!" He slams a hand down on the console and glares at the Doctor, who gives him a wry look in return.
"Ever heard the Earth phrase 'hoist by your own-'"
"Oh, shut up, do." The Master holds his hand up, forbidding another word. "I suppose I should change my name now, anyway. How does 'the Kept Boy' sound?"
The Doctor frowns. "Now you're being silly."
"Am I? How kind of you to let me know. How about ''Courtesan' then?" The Master moves a finger to his mouth, cupping his elbow with his other hand in a pose of deep thought. "No, you're right. That would require you not to be a sexual remedial, after all. Hmm, ' the Indentured Servant'?" He lets his hand drop, rests it casually on the gravity pivot. "I know! It's perfect! From now on I'll be known as 'Rover'. You can attach a dog tag with my name on it to this collar and throw balls for me to catch."
The Doctor snorts softly, and his hand falls upon the Master's, removing it from the control and then keeping hold of it. "No, no, no. Oh no, my friend. We're not not playing that game again. Took blimin' ages to clear up after the last time you tried that."
Well, it'd been worth a try. Though really, it hadn't been a lot of fun last time, thanks to the damn collar.
The Doctor steps closer, suddenly all bright-eyed and bushy enthusiasm. "Ooh, I've got an idea. Let's head for the Roanar galaxy and spend a week or so in the Styrex Nebula dust clouds." He rounds out the last four words like he's exploring their taste in his mouth. "It's beautiful there, ever been? Best to go during the passage of Coroth's Comet when the particles of tronium implode in the debris, releasing little puffs of brilliant light." He gestures with his fingers as if releasing something and makes an appreciative noise, deep in his throat. "Aww, it's better than the London Eye at the turn of the year, and it lasts for months!" He grins cheesily at the Master. "Months!"
The Master stares, bemused, then forms a moue with his lips. "Oh, how sweet. Is this to be our honeymoon then? I'm touched, Doctor. But, tell me, don't you think we should have consummated our union first?"
Stopped mid-flight of ridiculous fancy, the Doctor frowns slightly again. "Well, where do you want to go then?"
Why does his opinion matter when he's the helpless prisoner here? That's what the Master wants to ask, but instead he gives the answer most likely to aggravate. "Earth."
"No." The Doctor drops the Master's hand and turns away, back to the console.
"Why not?" The Master walks around behind the Doctor, trailing a hand over his back. "I began to understand what you see in those primitives during my many months amongst them. It's still a gross perversion, of course, your attraction to their rather smelly company. But since when have I ever refused to give an interesting perversion a fair crack?"
"That's what you call what I saw you do to Lucy, is it? A 'fair crack'?"
Ah, a delicious hint of anger about the Doctor now. Excellent. "Oh, I wouldn't waste your sympathy on her, Doctor. She was a sociopathic bitch long before I had her father killed and took control of her pretty blonde head. Stupid, too, and that's her unforgivable crime. At least your Martha had half a brain cell. Tell me, do you miss her?"
"I always miss them," the Doctor says softly, long fingers stroking the screen control. "Always."
The Master wonders if he's meant to be touched by that revelation. "More fool you then for befriending the short-lived and limited. I've often wondered, is it a insecurity thing? Can you only believe in yourself when surrounded by those vastly your intellectual inferior?"
Meeting the Master's eye, the Doctor shakes his head. "You underestimate them; you always did. Been your downfall more than once. Human beings are... just amazing." He smiles, his eyes getting that faraway awe and wonder look about them again.
Liking neither the look nor the fact he can't honestly deny the 'downfall' accusation, the Master says quickly, "God, it must have given you the hard-on to beat all hard-ons when they all chanted your name. Doctor, Doctor, Dooooooctteeer..." He moves to stand closely behind the other Time Lord, not touching but whispering near his ear. "Doctor, oh Doctor. Save us, Doctor. We believe in you, Doctor. Have our babies, Doctor. Die for us, Doctor." With the nail of one finger, the Master scrapes lines across the Doctor's suit jacket, from shoulder to shoulder, from collar to tail, ending with a little pat of the Doctor's bum. "Messiah complex, anyone?"
The Doctor turns to face him, lifting a hand to cup the Master's face. "I won't let you hurt yourself, and I won't let you hurt me, either."
The Master lifts an eyebrow, steeling himself not to move back from the intimacy before the Doctor does. "Do you really believe you have that power? Well, gosh and golly, I think you do. And after all those tears you rained down on my dying body as well. Of course I can hurt you, you silly man." He grins hugely, looking up at the Doctor from under his brow. "And, of course, I will."
At every opportunity offered, in fact.
The Doctor doesn't react, and a second later, the Master feels the great Messiah's presence faffing about in his mind again. "Oh!" he exclaims exasperatedly, stepping back and bringing up an arm to knock the Doctor's hand away. "Don't you ever stop?"
"Let me help you," the Doctor says stubbornly, stepping after him.
"You can't, not that way." Another step back and a TARDIS roundel outlines itself against his back.
"What way then? Tell me." That's his Doctor, always playing the good straight man, leading them to the inevitable punchline.
"Let me go." The Master steps forward again, right into the Doctor's personal space, ignoring his own annoyance at the way this body has to look up a little to meet the Doctor's gaze. "Let me go, or let me go outside."
Is that fear he sees contracting the Doctor's irises? "You wouldn't do that. You wouldn't just walk out there, just like you couldn't detonate those black hole converters."
"Think you know me so well, don't you?" The Master pushes hard at the Doctor's chest, sending him tripping backwards. "Well, you don't! Because anything, anything, is better than staying here a moment longer in this... slave collar!" He spits the words out, tugging at the hated silver torque. "It's worse than anything!"
Leaning back against the consoles, the Doctor raises his hands to rub at his face, fingers slipping under his glasses. "You'll adjust," he says, somewhat muffled by his hands.
"I will not."
"You've no choice."
"And I'm meant to be the evil dictator here?"
Rassilon, he could throttle the Doctor for that look of saintly suffering now directed his way. He would throttle him if he thought for a moment he'd be allowed to get his hands even a little close to the Doctor's scrawny neck before a single thought from the Doctor disabled him, removing the Master's control of his own body. From the moment the Doctor had discovered the collar in the Master's small box of personal possessions aboard his war-TARDIS, the Master had known he was in trouble. This must be how the beloved pets of humans feel when forced to wear those cone-shaped collars 'for their own good'. Torture is never for the recipient's 'good'. At least the Master has always been honest enough to admit that.
"I hate you with a purity of emotion that's almost edifying," he remarks, attempting to sound casual about it.
"I know," the Doctor says, heaving a lugubrious sigh. "I do know."
"And you, of course, forgive me that as well."
"Yeah. Pretty much."
It's the look of apparently genuine sympathy that the Master hates most of all. He snorts and turns away, beginning to wander around the console room as the Doctor watches, fingers dancing over controls and fittings, tapping out that inescapable beat. He starts to chant softly to the Doctor. "Forgive us, for thy mercy's sake, our multitude of sins forgive. And for thy own possession take and bid us to thy glory live..."
"Oh, do shut up!" Exasperation isn't quite as good as that flicker of anger earlier, but the Doctor does look a little magnificent, all righteous glare and hands on console as he leans forward.
The Master hides a small smile. "Let's go to Earth, Doctor. I miss the old place. I know! Let's visit your muscular freak. I owe him a great big... kiss."
"You owe him a lot more than that."
"No, you do." The anger he wants to see in the Doctor's eyes now fills the Master instead. "I never asked for his excess of life to be force-fed into me. It was an invasion, and when I get away from you, which you know I will eventually, he's top of my list for some quite delicious revenge."
"Jack can look after himself," the Doctor says, but the Master doesn't miss the flicker of concern passing over the far too angular features.
He chuckles and says with almost truthful relish, "Ah, so much you can do to a man who can never die. I wonder... D'you think if I cut off his head he'd grow a new body? I never tried that one on board the Valiant." He shapes a 'so-so' movement with his spread hand. "Or would he just live on as a helpless head, needing to be carried everywhere? Oh, wouldn't that be funny, Doctor? Imagine it! I could cart him around under my arm, introducing him to people and offering them great head at bargain prices..."
"Stop it. Now." Ah, the stern headmasterly voice. The Master likes this one, even though he does it so much better himself. "This silly game's unworthy of you," the Doctor continues.
The Master shrugs. "Helps keep the deadly tedium at bay for whole minutes at a time." He watches the Doctor program the flight console with some co-ordinates and set the rotor turning over. "She was beautiful as a paradox machine," he says wistfully, remembering. "Glorious, really. All red and throbbing like an open wound..."
"She was an abomination." A shiver seems to run through the Doctor's body as he takes off his glasses, slipping them into a jacket pocket.
"And you forgave me that too!" The Master chuckles gleefully. "Is there anything I could do that you wouldn't be able to dredge up some scraps of forgiveness for from somewhere?" He strides around the console, back to the Doctor's side. "Tell me. I simply must know."
The Doctor shakes his head, apparently refusing to answer, and the Master grins lopsidedly.
"I know why, you see," he whispers, getting closer still. "I know why you can forgive me all my oh so terrible sins." There's still no response from the Doctor, who's fiddling unnecessarily with the linear axis control, so the Master continues. "You can forgive me anything because you know that, whatever I've done, whatever appalling, incomprehensible atrocity I've committed, your own crimes are still... so... much... worse."
The Doctor slams his palm against the transtemporal stabiliser, and the TARDIS jolts violently as it takes off for Doctor-knows-where. The Master is thrown back against the railings at the side, jarring his back painfully, but he's still laughing. Oh yes, he's laughing.
"Bullseye!" he cries through his giggles, sliding about on the floor as the TARDIS continues to jerk about in the Vortex. "Straight for the hearts! Oh, our great martyr doesn't like that, does he? What's it called when someone commits genocide on his own kind, anyway? There must be a word or a phrase. Come on, come on, it's on the tip of my tongue. Oh, I know!" He pulls himself to his feet at the console edge and grins over at all that sexy fury distorting the Doctor's face. "It's 'complete and utter bastard', isn't it? Yes, that's the one."
The TARDIS arrives... somewhere, and there's silence bar the drumming in the Master's head. So loud it's got, but calming again now the point's been scored, the vulnerable ankle pierced. The Doctor's face is rigid, teeth obviously gritted, holding back so many things the Master thinks he'd love to hear. Or maybe he wouldn't. Hard to tell, sometimes.
The Doctor hits the door control, and they open to show what are presumably the Styrex Nebula dust clouds. Colours blaze and fade in an ocean of glittering fragments. The Master hasn't been here before; why would he have? This is a mere vanity of creation, pointless prettiness in an accident of circumstance. Even the elements here aren't worth the effort of extraction.
The Doctor thinks otherwise, judging by the way he walks to the open doors and stares out, releasing a little sigh. Cosmic fireworks, how typical of the man.
The Master walks over and puts his hand on the Doctor's back. "One little push. That's all it would take right now," he remarks, but all he does is stroke softly over the material of the Doctor's jacket. It feels horribly like saying sorry, but he doesn't stop.
"You can no more kill me than I can kill you," the Doctor says peaceably. Stepping to the side of him, the Master can see the sparkling colours flashing in the Doctor's dark eyes, and he thinks that, just briefly, he can understand the appeal of this useless place.
"Maybe I'll be able to do it one day," he says, equally gently. "If you keep me on your leash long enough."
"Maybe," the Doctor agrees, turning to take the Master in his arms.
Humphing softly, the Master lets himself be held, knowing it's as much a way to stop him throwing himself out of the TARDIS as it is a sign of the Doctor's affection. Not that he'd actually been intending to jump. He's not that desperate yet, not quite.
He still remembers the Eye of Harmony.
With a sense of irony, he rests his head on the Doctor's shoulder and closes his eyes against the Doctor's pet panorama. He can still see the brief blazes of colour through his eyelids. They're like the Doctor's bloody humans, aren't they? They flare then die, over in a moment, but remembered on your retina for far longer.
"Need you to live." The Doctor's words are said so quietly that the Master almost misses them against the background of the drums, his thoughts, and the beating of four hearts.
"So I can redeem you?" the Master asks, and it isn't really a jeer.
The Doctor's chest moves as he snorts. "Something like that."
Suddenly the Doctor's a whirl of activity. He pulls away from the Master, holding him by the shoulders. "Let's have a picnic! We can land on that asteroid. That one, over there!" He waves one hand wildly out of the open doors. "Extend the TARDIS's defensive shield. Have ourselves an outdoor feast amongst the imploding particles. What d'you say?"
The Master smiles, and for one reason or another, he hasn't the will to dampen this latest harebrained idiocy of his captor. It'll get him out of the TARDIS for a while anyway. He nods wry acquiescence.
"Excellent!" Grabbing the Master's hand, the Doctor pulls him back over to the console where the Master suddenly finds himself the recipient of a blink-and-miss-it kiss as the TARDIS doors close... which is a first for them. Then he's being dragged down into the bowels of the TARDIS, presumably towards the kitchen, and he finds himself laughing. The Doctor's laughing too, and just for a moment, it's like they're boys again, skiving off class together to play in the mottled shadows of the silver forests.
They'd been inseparable until their eighth year. Even after they started at the Academy, their friendship persevered... for a while.
He's been told his problems started with the Untempered Schism. He'd dispute the word 'problems', but otherwise wouldn't argue. It's quite possible, he realises with a sudden clarity, that the Doctor was every bit as affected by his glimpse of the untamed Vortex as the Master himself had been. Maybe it's just that insanity comes in many different sparkling colours against that black backdrop of infinity, flaring then dying, flaring then dying. That's a cheering thought.
The beat of their running feet on the metal floors of the TARDIS forms a familiar rhythm, and the Master discovers that, just perhaps, for the moment, he likes not being alone.