The Master makes a grievous mistake, one that he can't seem to cope with; he's killed the Doctor. There are whispers, though, around the drum beats in his head, and the Doctor speaks to him still. "Fix things" He says, "Rewrite my destiny." And the Master does the strangest thing—He agrees. Now, the Master finds himself displaced in the past and tasked with becoming the Doctor's… Companion, if only to save him.

Author's note: First person, Master's POV.

WARNINGS: Character death. It'll be okay, though. Also, very dark. And slash is definite, though it's not here yet.

DISCLAIMER: Not mine and it's very sad.

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'Chapter 1'

Red, red, red; everything was so ridiculously vibrant, and bold and so very red. There were spatters on the walls, heavy drips rolling down the stark whiteness, tainting the pureness, and leaving only madness in its wake. It stained the front of his suit, darkening the blue fabric to nearly black as the endless amount of blood pooled beneath the prone body of the only man who ever offered me friendship.

The red mess crept towards me, as slow as molasses, though not half as sweet; a tendril of hate that came to wrap around the toe of my shoe, forever leaving bits of the Doctor in the stitching. The noise of the blade clattering against the ground startled me; I had forgotten that's what I used to do it…

Funny thing, madness… It makes you forget, and once it's inside of you, it makes its home, and you're none the wiser. You go about your life, your thousand years of life, and you never really think 'Hey. I'm bloody bat shit.' You never question every rage twisted face you see that tells you otherwise. You never question it… Until you're staring down at something you…. Well, I won't say I loved him. I cherished him. More than anything…

Sightless chocolate eyes, once so full of warmth, stared into nothingness. His blood was once so full of warmth, too, and now it was cooling, and clotting and leaving only the smell of meat in my nostrils and staining the inside of my memories.

My feet moved without me telling them too—and how did I end up on the ground? I hadn't wanted to be so close… His blood squelched beneath my knees as I quickly learned how absorbent dress slacks were, feeling the sticky chill matt into my leg hairs. I reached my hand out, to touch him… And then the Drums! Those damnable, infuriating and cursed drums! Like an orchestra playing inside of my head, louder, and louder, and louder, until I could barely hear my own breath, my own heartbeat, my own anything. I was completely encompassed by the sound of the drums.

Panic was something that never came so easily to me. Even as a small child, looking into the Tear. When I first found the drums, I took comfort. When the Doctor first abandoned me, I could only laugh, because I knew I would take him back. But not like this.

Panic, too, is a funny thing. It starts quietly, much like the madness, and it creeps up on you. One moment you were absolutely fine, and then the next you realized there were tears on your cheeks. That your hands had balled into the heavy fabric of your friend's blood soaked suit. That you were shaking him, and screaming into a lax face with a desperate prayer that perhaps your tears would wake him as they trickle across a pale face.

"NO! You're not allowed to die! I can't have killed you, I can't! You're too brilliant to die, you have too many things to do!"

I could hear him in my head 'You're the one who did it.'

"I didn't! I only wanted some fun, the same sort of fun I'd been having since I caught you!" I snarled to that cold face and that snarky image in my head. I could see him laugh in my mind, though soundlessly.

'You didn't take very good care of your pets, friend.'

Comfortably, I could say I was now completely insane, and absolutely panicked. It wasn't comfortable, really…more assured. As suddenly as I touched him, I let go, and he fell away from me with a gentle thump, and I was on my feet again before I could think about the blood drying beneath my fingernails.

Talking to a corpse was a little more normal than you would think, especially for the grieving, but having a conversation with a figment? Completely batshit, though I couldn't seem to shake the image in my head, of the dearest Doctor chiding me like a naughty adolescent.

'Now, now, Master. You were always so jealous of me, remember? Poor little Koschei…' And the image clicked his tongue in dismay, 'No reason to kill me.'

"Shut up! You shut your bloody, rotting mouth! I was never jealous!" I bellowed out to the empty halls of the Valiant, over the drumming noise inside my head as I tried to drown out that stupid chuckle of his. Nine faces before this one, and that insufferable chuckle remained.

As I thought about it, I could admit that I was rather jealous of the Doctor, sweet Theta, in our academy days. I had been higher classed than the Doctor, and my marks were always just shy of his. More popular and more handsome…Cleverer than I was in my youth. He was simply better, and I hated him for it. I had been the outcast, despite my very best efforts. I was allowed to trail behind him while the other children whispered 'That's the boy who is insane.' The Doctor, though… He kept me close, tucked under his arm like his personal project.

Now, the Doctor was dead. Hearts punctured and not a flicker of regeneration. I wondered if he saw this coming. He couldn't exactly tell the future (without having been there, anyway) but I wondered if he knew this moment would happen, all of this time. Probably not…

I had watched the life fade from his eyes; watched the question bubble to his lips like the blood that dribbled down his chin. So confused, and hurt, and lost. Why? He had asked a single question as the light left his eyes, and I hated him for it. I always felt like the fool was apologizing when he had no reason to.

I was talking before I realized it. "No…No, no, no…" The words that my mouth formed came out in a voice that was not my own. Strangled and hoarse and filled with such denial that it made my hearts ache to hear such longing for a lie, from my own throat. I could only shake my head as I stepped back, my shoe touching the blade, and making the noise of metal across metal.

'Bet you'll need that.' Again with the Doctor's ghost… I didn't try to argue with the voice inside my head as I quickly knelt to snatch the blade up and shove it into my blazer pocket.

"It wasn't supposed to end like this." I spoke with a voice still crazed and strangled, and I could only imagine what my eyes and my face looked just then. "I just wanted to play, just wanted to force feed you guilt and pain until you begged me to stop… Oh, sweet Doctor, you could have given me everything…"

'I still could.'

"Would you shut up already! I am not listening to a figment of my bloody imagination!" I roared to nothing as I turned on my heel and began to run. Running seemed appropriate, the sound of my steps echoing as the heels of my dress shoes smacked against the metal of the Valiant. His laughter chased me through the halls, all staring from inside my own head.

I ran until the blood thundered through my brain, and the frantic beat of my hearts matched the pulse of the drums in my head. I ran until I found the TARDIS, that damnable blue box. I heard shouts behind me, and I turned quickly, to look over my shoulder.

Guards and guns and Lucy, at the very end of the storage facility, all with wide eyes and fear written across their faces. I must have looked quite the sight, all pale and covered in blood and screaming to myself.

I saw Lucy, standing there, looking so very lost and suddenly I didn't care anymore. "I'm fixing things!" I snarled down the hallway just before I threw my shoulder into the doors of the TARDIS, tumbling inside to land on the grated steps. He looked back, just as the doors snapped shut, the lock turning over on its own.

I bounded up the stairs as fast as my feet could take me, slamming into the cage around the console. My fingers gripped the grating so hard it cut me nearly to the bone, and as the blood dribbled down the metal, I could not muster a thought.

Slowly, my vision began to cloud, like smoking rolling in the way, and I couldn't see. Panic started to fill me, and then I heard that stupid chuckle. I felt…safer while I was lost in my own head, and confronted with the Doctor.

'There's good in you yet. You can fix this.'

"Fix this?! FIX THIS! How am I supposed to fix this! You're dead! I might be a genius, but I'm not a bloody god! I can't fix death!" I wasn't sure if I was screaming out loud, or if it all was happening in my head.

'Won't be hard. Destroy the Paradox.' The Doctor was so calm, and congenial. A stupid smile in place; this I could see even with blind eyes. I heard the footsteps, I heard him walking towards me, and I felt my shoulder grow warm as his hand curled cross it.

I jerked away, gasping as I waved my hands where I thought he was. Still blind, and going slowly more insane. Fantastic.

"If I destroy the Paradox I will be displaced in time! And this will all happen all over again; it's set in stone, Doctor. You can't rewrite your own history. That's insane!" I snapped as I pressed my back tightly against the grate that surrounded the console while I listened very closely to the sick hum of the TARDIS, and the bemused sound of my imagination.

'I'm not the one talking to a dead man, Master.' I swear he smirked at me, that bastard. 'And you're right. I can't rewrite my fate. You can, though… Have faith, old friend! The TARDIS will take you where you need to go when the time comes.'

What the hell was he talking about? True, I could destroy all of my hard work to make this The Year That Never Was, but why would I do that? It wasn't planned, that's for sure… I had wanted the Doctor at my feet while I ruled for billions of years, like a loyal dog. I would have kept a few humans safe for him, and his Handsome Jack, but only for company… The humans would die off, and the Doctor would feel pain.

This was my plan. This had been my plan since my mind had come back to me after all my years hiding as a human. Hundreds of years spent trying to thwart the Doctor, and Rassilon knew how many lost as a human, but here it was. Victory, and it felt wrong.

'If that was your idea of victory, you've got a sad bit of road ahead of you.'

Slowly, the fog began to lift from my eyes and my vision came back to my in jagged pieces that still made me have to rest my head against the grating that my fingers clung to. "Shut up, slug. I got what I wanted; I tricked you! I win."

I could see an image in my mind of the Doctor shaking his head, while he smiled at me like a parent does to a child when they're learning a hard lesson.

'Do what needs to be done. You know this is wrong, and it was not meant to happen this way… Trust me, Master.'

Trust him I did. I wasn't sure why, and I had stopped questioning my sanity a long time ago, so I was only left with this. A whisper in my head and a reassuring phantom hand that lingered along my shoulder and neck, as if he was there now caressing me. I took a quick look over my shoulder, and I saw nothing. The feeling was still there, and it brought me no comfort.

And now, all at once every single thing changed. Every plan I had, and every neatly scribed letter in both of our destinies were being rewritten, and changed.

'And intertwined.'

With all of my strength, I tore at the grating, and the metal scratched and groaned as I threw it to the side, and fishing in my inner breast pocket for my laser screwdriver. Intertwined with the Doctor? The very thought made my entire body ache, though this also could have been the pinprick of shock that danced up my arm as I picked at a few wires, and then tore off a side panel to the console.

"Ugh, don't make me vomit in the TARDIS, Doctor."

Now, I was elbow deep in wires, and I could only scream as I received painful bites of energy as I tore at wires, and broke circuits, only to refuse them where they needed to go. With each bite of pain, the drums became louder, and louder until I was encompassed with the sound of drums and the feeling of fire running up my arm.

My vision began to pulse, in time with the sound of the drums, and a grey fog pushed at the edges of my sight. The pulsing, beating darkness was coming for me; coming to curl across my vision as the madness took me, to make me to unspeakable things. This is how the Doctor had died. To the beat of four and blackened vision.

Just as I fell into the pit, I felt a gentle push at my mind. It was weak, but it was there, and the soothing feeling chased away the darkness and deafened the sound of the drums with her sweet, and sick hum. The TARDIS surrounded my mind in her telepathic bubble, and I was safe from myself, but only for a moment. I felt the drums beating at the edges of my mind, like a hungry wolf pacing back and forth along the fence, slathering at a chance to attack.

There were whispers in my mind, of the TARDIS, and of the Doctor as I balled my hand in that final, thick wire and tire with all my strength. Sparks, and fire, and the sounds of explosions, and I heard the mail from the TARDIS as everything began to lighten. As if the entire world was bleeding white, and my vision was swallowed by that light. I was aware, and awake… And then.

'It'll all be over soon.'

Nothing.

- TBC-