A/N: Thank you for taking the time to read my first Doctor Who fic. Please note that much of the dialogue for the first chapter is adapted from the actual episode The End of Time.
The Master glanced at Wilf, and then back to the Doctor, his eyes incredulous. The Doctor knew the Master was quickly running hypotheses in his head, none of them working out. The phone really shouldn't be ringing.
Naturally, there were numerous benign aliens taking up residence on the planet Earth, but one would think any of them would be calling an eighty-one year old man in the middle of an intergalactic crisis. Quite a few of them probably escaped the planet when the humans around them starting turning into maniacal gallifreyans that ate everyone in sight.
"That's a mobile," The Master spat out.
"Yes, that's mine, let me turn it off," Wilf said, in a placating manner that was almost absurd, considering the situation.
"No. No no no. I don't think you understand," The Master said, advancing on Wilf, his finger pointed.
"Everybody on this planet," The Master said when he reached Wilf, gesticulating his hands to emphasize his point, "is me!"
Except, you know, other aliens, the Doctor thought. It's like he's never been on twenty-first century Earth before.
"And I'm not phoning you, so who the hell is that?!"
"It's nobody! I-I'm telling you, it's nothing!" Wilf struggled in his binds while the Master rifled through the old man's pockets. "It's probably one of them ring back calls!" Wilf added desperately.
"Look at this!" The Master suddenly said, holding a world war II service revolver with his thumb and pointer finger. He waved it in front of the Doctor tauntingly.
The Doctor tried not to let his disappointment in Wilf reach his eyes.
"Good man!" The Master said to Wilf, tossing the gun aside.
And he probably meant it too, the Doctor thought.
The Master had Wilf's mobile in his hand and stood up, opening the screen and reading it as he paced. "Donna," the Master read, and the Doctor felt his hearts sink, "Donna. Why do I know that name? Donna, Donna..." the Master said, pacing, pacing.
The Doctor held himself very still, watching the Master's eyes. He could see the other man's mad, genius mind working. A small, very small, part of him hoped that the Master would not recognize Donna's name, but it was a futile hope. The Master could see time, glorious and agonizing in its power, just as well as the Doctor could. And Donna's name was forever fixed in time, a brilliant nexus point where all of creation converged, brighter and more colorful than all the light of all the stars in the universe.
Hard to miss, that Donna Noble.
"Do-onna, Don-n-na," the Master muttered, drawing out the Ns and Os of her name as he processed it, the phone still ringing. Then he looked up, as though looking out. The Doctor tensed as realization flashed across the Master's face.
"Time converges," the Master said softly. And he flipped open the phone.
"Gramps!" Donna's voice, desperate and scared filled the room. "Don't hang up, you've got to help me!" The Doctor heard everything with his superior senses.
The Master smiled serenely, looking between the two other men.
"I ran out! Everyone was changing-!"
The Master waved the phone in his hand, looking at the Doctor, his eyebrows raised and his smile widening.
"Are you there?" Donna's voice called.
"Of course I am!" the Master said into the phone. "And it's certainly lovely to meet you, Donna Noble."
"Oh God, not Gramps too-!"
"Find her! Trace the call!" The Master called.
"Listen you conniving, depraved freak! You give me back my family or there will be hell to pay! I will break every one of your bones when I find you, starting with your fingers and ending with your scrawny little neck-!" Donna shouted into the phone.
"Oh, cheeky!" the Master said delightedly as Donna continued to rant, looking at the Doctor, then Wilf. The Doctor kept his face neutral, even though his hearts were pounding in his chest and his repertory bypass kicked in the second he heard Donna's voice.
"She's on Wessex Lane in Chiswick," the Master's clone, dressed smartly in Naismith's clothes, reported.
"By all means, bring her here!" the Master replied.
"-and your hair is stupid! Who even gets blond tips anymore since the nineteen nineties?!" screamed the voice from the mobile.
The Master frowned at the phone in his hand.
"Run, Donna, run!" Wilf shouted towards the Master.
"Oi, Granddad, we're talking!" the Master said, clearly annoyed.
"Keep away from me you freaks!" Donna shouted, her voice high-pitched and breaking, betraying her fear.
"No use running, Donna Noble!" the Master said. "I'm everywhere!"
"Oh God. Oh God, my head!" Donna sobbed. "It hurts!"
"Why does her head hurt?" the Master asked conversationally, looking at the Doctor and Wilf, his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone as though he didn't want to interrupt her.
"I'm seeing those things again...those creatures!" Donna said. "Why can I see a giant wasp?!" Donna demanded, temper flaring in her voice.
The Master mouthed "Giant wasp?" at the Doctor, shrugging exaggeratingly. The Doctor didn't move.
"Don't think about those things, sweetheart! Just get out of there!" Wilf shouted.
"She can't hear you, Dad, I'm all the way over here," the Master said, rolling his eyes.
"My head keeps getting hotter!" Donna said. She was panting, as though she was in a lot of pain. "And hotter...and-!"
"Interesting," the Master said as Donna continued.
"Doctor," Donna said, somewhere between a scream and a sigh. The Doctor held his breath. He heard something hitting the ground next to Donna.
"W-wha-what did I..." And then nothing. The phone went dead.
The Master twirled the phone in his fingers, contemplating. The Doctor swallowed reflexively, worried for Donna, wondering if it worked.
"That was Time Lord energy," the Master stated. "So now I know why she didn't change. She isn't human anymore, is she?"
It worked.
The Master looked at the Doctor for an explanation, and saw that he was smiling. The Doctor winked. The Master strode over to him.
"Donna?! Donna, are you there?! No! Doctor, she remembered you, the metacrisis-!" Wilf cried as the Master removed the bind on the Doctor's mouth.
"Metacrisis? Really?! Now I've heard of everything!" the Master said, tugging the band free.
"That's better! Hello!" the Doctor said when his mouth was free. "But really," he said, looking the Master in the eye. "Did you think I'd leave my best-friend without a defense mechanism?" He waggled his eyebrows at the Master, feeling smugger than he probably should.
"Doctor? What happened?" Wilf asked.
"She's all right, she's fine, promise," the Doctor said, not taking his eyes of the Master. "She's just asleep."
"Oh good, that makes my job easier," the Master said. "Can another one of the six billion of you find that unconscious freak and bring her to me?" the Master said to the monitors.
"Right away," his clones answered.
"You just leave her alone! Leave her!" Wilf cried, struggling vainly with his binds.
The Doctor's face fell as the Master turned back to him, looking just as smug the Doctor did a moment before.
"A bit ridiculous for a so-called 'defense mechanism', Doctor," the Master said. "Not one of your smarter ideas to leave her unconscious afterwards. How long would it last, anyway? Twenty-first century Earth, there are alien convoys consistently, near constantly in another decade. She was going to remember you and die eventually."
No, this couldn't happen. The Doctor watched the Master, taking a millisecond to process what he could do, what needed to be done to distract him from Donna Noble.
The Doctor thought about how wonderful and beautiful the Master could be if he wasn't so twisted. He was brilliant, a stone-cold genius, maybe even more clever than he was. They could see all of time and space together. The Doctor tried to tell the Master this, trying to distract him from Donna, knowing it wouldn't work. But also because, if he was honest with himself, he truly wanted that. To have his first friend, the first friend of his lives, back.
"Would it stop then?" the Master asked after the Doctor told him they could see the universe. His eyes were distant and serious. "The noise in my head?"
"I can help," the Doctor said softly.
The Master shook his head. "I don't know what I'd be without that noise," he said.
"I know what I'd be without you," the Doctor said.
"You are not alone," said the Face of Boe.
The Master shook himself, wistful and sad. But then he smiled slowly, raising Wilf's mobile up and waggling it in front of the Doctor's face. "But it looks like you and I aren't alone anymore, are we?"
"What does he mean? What noise?" Wilf demanded.
The Master stood up and launched into a story about growing up on Gallifrey. As he talked, the Doctor thought about when he looked into the untempered schism as a young boy of eight, and how it hurt, and how he ran. He ran from what he saw there. He ran because he could see his own destiny there, marking him, the destroyer of worlds, the man that would bring down his own planet in the last great time war. Back then, he didn't understand what he was seeing, not completely. He was too young.
But he was afraid so he ran.
"Listen to it. Listen," the Master said, his eyes boring into the Doctor's.
"Let's find it. You and me. Just leave Donna alone," the Doctor pleaded.
But the Master was already wrapped up in another rant. He was going to find it himself. He had six billion versions of himself on that planet and he was going to amplify that signal and find the source.
"We've got her, sir," came the Master's voice from the monitor.
"No!" the Doctor shouted, straining against his binds to no avail. All pretense gone, he glared at the Master in fury. "What could you possibly want with her-?!"
The Master slapped him in the face. The Doctor yelped in surprise and gritted his teeth.
"Easy, Doctor, you have something I want, now I have something you want," the Master said. He leaned in close. "Where is your TARDIS, Doctor?"
"Let me go and I'll take you to her," the Doctor said.
"Doctor-!" Wilf cried.
"Hmmm, I don't know if I can trust you, Doctor," the Master said, making a show of hemming and hawing.
"Please, Master, please. I will do whatever you want, I promise you. Just let Donna go. Let her go," the Doctor said, not breaking the Master's gaze, holding it with all the power he could muster in his mind. Willing the Master to see that he was telling the absolute truth.
The Doctor was surprised by the curiosity that played across the Master's features before the other man broke the stare. "I think I need to get a better look at my bargaining chip before I make this deal," the Master said, carelessly throwing the mobile into Wilf's lap.
"Don't! Don't!" the Doctor shouted as the Master left the room.
The headaches started the week after her accident. At first, they were mild and a nuisance. But soon she had developed her very first migraine. And then they never stopped, they cycled through, in and out of her life like one train wreck after another.
The pain ebbed into her body like waves, as though an entire ocean was trying to fit inside her. She could almost sense the migraines before they came, tiny pinpricks behind her eyes, on her shoulders, up and down her neck. Every light and sound would cause those pinpricks to flare until it filled her head and it felt as though her whole body was being taken over by the pain.
Every nerve in her body was sensitive to the point that anything touching her skin was painful. Donna would lie in bed naked, hunched over the edge as she wretched into a rubbish bin. All the light blocked off, a pillow over her ear to muffle the sound, her body sweaty and exhausted from the heat of the pain, dehydration, and lack of sleep.
"Bloody hell, it feels like I'm dying," Donna whispered. And then she shuddered. Even the sound of her own voice was painful.
Sylvia was treating her like she was a suspiciously fragile, which irritated Donna even more. Wilf was also anxious, though he was less prone to treating her like a breakable child, for which Donna was grateful. Neither of them were very supportive of Donna when she decided to look for a specialist for her migraines. Sylvia was so pessimistic that Donna had to leave the kitchen before she started a real fight.
It seemed to make her Granddad even sadder. "I hate to see you spend the money when...when-"
"When what, Gramps?"
Wilf opened his mouth again and then closed it. "Nothing, sweetheart," he said after a while.
Donna tried every kind of migraine medicine she could, even though some were very expensive and it was a struggle to get through the public health system sometimes. At first the different triptans seemed to work, but their effectiveness didn't last. Donna would be back again, agitated and angry with her pain, and it befuddled the doctors. There was nothing else wrong - no tumors, no weird brain fungus, nothing.
After an inconclusive MRI, her doctors finally suggested therapy. Donna hated therapy. Her therapist, a woman in her early thirties that wore ridiculously short skirts for a doctor, tried to get Donna to work through her "triggers" in order to prevent the migraines.
"You're not listening to me!" Donna finally yelled at her. "It's not work, it's not stress, it's not lack of sleep or lack of some random vitamin X you keep prattling on about! I don't bloody need a vacation or something stupid, I just get headaches and I don't. Know. Why!"
Her therapist opted to stop working with her.
"Stupid bint," Donna muttered after her final therapy session.
Her friends were uncomfortable with the changes in Donna's health. Nerys would go between bragging about how she never got sick, not even the sniffles, to trying to one-up Donna's sickness, saying how Donna couldn't possibly be more tired than her because Nerys had such a terribly exhausting day at work and her children were just driving her mad. Her whole attitude weighed on Donna's nerves to the point that Donna stopped calling her. Nerys was definitely one of her "triggers".
And she started avoiding every stupid romantic movie, television show, song, or novel in existence because they suddenly made her hopelessly sad and she'd sob until her head was pounding. She used to think wallowing like that was ridiculous, so she only did it in private. Lance must have really broken her heart, if only she could remember it.
It was during another hopeless migraine cycle that Donna met Shaun Temple. She was working at a new office when she had to leave early. Again. Her new bosses were getting exasperated, but Donna couldn't help it, no matter how much she wanted to. The nice sandwich delivery man offered her a ride home.
Donna loved Shaun. He was a hopeless romantic, a dreamer. He was so idealistic, sweet, and great looking. And he was eager to settle down. Just what a woman her age should be looking for.
She couldn't help but feel, somewhere in the back of her mind, that she was just going through the motions with Shaun. Because that was what people expected of her.
"Like you could do better," Sylvia said. "You should snatch him up now or you'll never get another chance."
"Mum, I don't know if I...well, if I'm giving all I got. I feel blocked off somehow. If that's true, then I'm not being fair to Shaun-"
"Stop it, Donna. Your head is all full of nonsense. There's no such thing as fairy tales where princes come to sweep you off your feet. Marry that poor man before you find yourself old, gray, and alone."
Donna told herself she wasn't marrying Shaun because her mother scared her into it. She was doing it because she really did love him, and could probably love him more with every passing year they were together. There were worse people to grow old with than kind, decent men like Shaun.
The only person Donna thought suspected she was just making do Wilf.
"I just hate to see you do something because you feel like it's expected of you sweetheart-" Wilf said.
"That's not it at all, Gramps, I do love Shaun. Really I do, he's sweet. And wonderful," Donna said.
"But are you happy?"
"Of course I am." She thought she was telling the truth, she honestly did, but couldn't shake the false feeling she got in the back of her throat when she said those words. So what if what she was doing happened to be what was expected of her? Maybe this was how her life was supposed to work out. The cookie-cutter lifestyle of husband, home, and babies, just what every other human being on Earth strived for.
Donna sighed, once again feeling like there was something missing in her life - like she once had more answers but she couldn't remember the questions. She thought they might have something to do with the two year gap in her memory, but everyone had said those two years were just more of the same, aside from her father's death, which had devastated her. But as she tried to prod at that gap, at those missing questions, the ache in the back of her neck started again and she immediately stopped thinking about it.
She looked up to see her Grandfather gazing at her so intently and sadly. Like he was studying her for...something. When he saw her looking at him, he gave her a wan smile.
"I suppose...that is what's really important."
"I think so," Donna said. "I mean...it's not like anything is missing. I have everything I've ever wanted. Everything."
The TARDIS hummed; an aching, low, deep sound. A grieving sound.
The Doctor held the woman in his arms tightly to his body. He was shaking so much that he had to lower them to their knees. She continued to sleep as he stroked her back and ran his fingers through her vibrant hair.
"Oh Donna, my Donna," he whispered. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Shock, grief, and devastating loneliness were consuming him and the only comfort he had was her warmth in his arms, and even that would be fleeting.
He would never forget the tone and caliber of her voice as she pleaded with him. The last thing she would ever say to him with her eyes holding all their history behind them. They seemed so much bluer, bright and desperate. Catastrophically beautiful.
All he wanted was for her to live. It meant going into her mind and locking all her memories of him. He felt her sorrow as he pulled away each one. But also, he saw himself the way she had been seeing him.
He didn't know, he never realized how much she adored him.
Her love was so steady, and deep, pure in its simplicity, yet complex in how it developed in her heart. And precious in how she kept it her secret, because Donna Noble would not be a burden to anybody, and she knew (or she thought she knew) that her feelings would be a burden to him. He told her as much when she started to make herself at home on his TARDIS. Not directly, just that he couldn't do with another companion falling in love with him. So she defensively told him that just wouldn't happen with her, he wasn't her type. Too skinny, too alien, and too weird.
But when that changed, instead of becoming what she thought would be another burden, she was generous with her feelings instead. Keeping secret how she felt, but constantly thinking about him anyway, his well-being, his stability. Keeping him buoyant from the darkness in his soul. Holding him when he needed her. Shouting at him when he needed her help to stay in perspective. Making him smile, making him laugh. Falling into the easy camaraderie that they both needed.
And even though she didn't believe it, she was in all ways his equal. His brilliant Donna Noble, with her compassionate heart and ridiculously intelligent mind, even before this metacirsis took her away from him.
What was he going to do without her?
They didn't have much time. She would start to wake up in one, maybe two hours and he had to have her home by then, surrounded by familiar comforts or the stress might jar her nerves too much.
The Doctor carefully leaned away and Donna's head rolled back. He gently caught it with his left hand, noticing it was wet. Too much crying into her hair. He'd have to make it rain in Chiswick so she wouldn't wake up and wonder about it.
He moved Donna to one of the benches along the wall, pausing to brush her hair away from her face, which somehow ended with him trailing his finger along her cheek. The TARDIS hummed, reminding him they had a task to do.
"I'm not ready," the Doctor whispered, gazing at her face, how her dark eyelashes brushed against her tear-streaked cheeks.
His TARDIS hummed again, insistent.
"No, you're right," he answered, "I'll never be ready."
The Doctor was a rougher than he meant to be as he punched in the coordinates to take Donna home.
When he returned to carry her out, every step felt heartbreaking and heavy, and he was already exhausted when he reached her. He lifted her up into his arms, cradling her to his chest, and he knew he shouldn't, but he pulled her close so he could kiss the corner of eye.
"I would have given you everything if you asked me," he whispered. "I wanted to. But I was afraid. I'm so sorry."
She sighed, turning towards the sound of his voice.
Despite the danger, the Doctor lingered in Donna's mother's house. He had to be sure Sylvia and Wilf understood what Donna had done, and how that couldn't change, she was now the most important fixed point in all of time. He also had to make sure the treatment worked and that she woke up without her memories.
But it was like a knife was twisting in his solar plexus when Donna's blue eyes refused to focus on him. Like John Smith couldn't focus on the fob watch, Donna couldn't focus on the strange man in her living room and her greeting was distracted to the point of rudeness. It was so uncharacteristic of the warm, compassionate, open woman he knew her to be, and that's how the Doctor knew the treatment worked. But there was no way to know how the neurons in her brain would settle, so he couldn't risk staying that stranger in her living room.
The Doctor would never see Donna Noble again.
The only sounds were the buzz of the machinery and the Immortality Gate as Rassilon's White-Point Star prepared to transmit the signal, the drum-drum drum-drum, steady in his mind. In the center of the room, beneath the skylight, was a woman lying on the ground.
The Master thought she looked rather plain. It wasn't like he was expecting a lot of fanfare around the so-called Most Important Woman in the Universe, but lying there, unconscious in the middle of his makeshift control room, she seemed so ordinary. Just like every other human.
"What's so special about you?" the Master murmured, more to himself than anyone else in the room.
The Master kneeled down next to Donna Noble to study her. For all his talk about the Doctor and his fascination with Earth girls, there was a time when the Master would have said he understood that fascination. Humans had a naive curiosity and passionate drive that made them ideal companions in many ways. The Master was suddenly reminded of Lucy. Lucy and her bright hair and cherry lips. Lucy and her eagerness to please and unquelled desire for him. He had only seduced her for her family connections, but when he discovered how easily she let herself be manipulated, how she seemed to enjoy being controlled, he let himself get attached. It was good that he did, or he never would have been resurrected by her kiss.
But now Lucy Saxon was dead because she tried to kill him.
Just as well. He felt he was meant to be alone.
The Master gently moved a small, curly lock of ginger hair off of Donna Noble's cheek and wrapped it slowly around his middle finger until it was taut. Then he pulled one hair at a time, until the whole lock was ripped from her skull.
She frowned in her sleep but did not wake up.
"Interesting," the Master said, rubbing the hair between his fingers.
The Doctor must have put a safety mechanism in the energy burst that would put her in a deep sleep. Perhaps until the neurons that activated the metacrisis disconnected. That would take time, and the Master wasn't a patient man.
With his other hand, he touched Donna Noble's face and connected with her mind.
Well. This explains everything.
Donna Noble's mind was expansive and colorful in a surprisingly glorious way. Not at all like the average human. Far from it. It explained how her human brain managed to maintain a Time Lord consciousness for the better part of a day without burning away her body. Normally it took a good deal of genetic engineering. The Master had taken over human bodies before, but that usually resulted in the native mind burning away, and he had to struggle to maintain the body without destroying it.
If he thought he was stable enough to do so, he would consider taking over this body and mind, with its lovely Time Lord consciousness simmering quietly at its center.
I can see why he likes you, the Master thought, as he started to dig around that simmering core in Donna Noble's mind.
She rushed at him, an enraged, fiery wave.
The Master was pushed all the way back out.
He opened his eyes and looked down at the still sleeping woman.
"You shouldn't be able to do that," he said to her.
"All right, poppet, up you goes," the Master said, jumping to his feet and haling Donna up with him.
Her legs couldn't support her, so the Master gripped her arms to keep her upright, staring right at her face as her eyelids fluttered and opened.
"Wh-what-" she said, voice hoarse.
"You couldn't boot me out before I activated your consciousness," the Master said, smugly. "Though I didn't have enough time to connect all those golden Time Lord neurons festering in your brain. A shame, really. They're connecting on their own one by one anyway. In another ten or twenty years enough of those buggers will be active and those headaches you keep having will literally kill you."
Donna started shaking. "Who-who are y-you-"
"Now, now, Donna Noble," the Master said, rubbing her arms. "There's really nothing to be done-"
"DOCTOR!"
The Master startled at the sound of his own voice. He looked over at a monitor to see the Doctor was being wheeled away by...were those vinvocci? How inconvenient.
"Find him!" he heard his clone say.
The Master looked back at Donna Noble, frowning. She feebly started struggling in his grasp.
"It looks like the Doctor didn't want to bargain for you after all. What a shame. I would have bargained for you," the Master said, walking forwards with Donna. She dragged her feet along his path, struggling to stay upright. "Really, I would have. You have the sort of mind I would gladly consume and control, like Lucy, only better."
One step. Two. Donna's ankles were rolling, slowing his progress, but he didn't want to break eye contact.
"It was an awful way to treat you, wasn't it Donna Noble? The Most Important Woman in all of time, and you're reduced to this. Left to live an ordinary life in extraordinary pain until you die too soon. Who wants to live like that? You? I think you didn't. He was being selfish, wasn't he?"
"I-I don't know what you're talking-" Donna said.
"Of course you do, you just don't remember. Consciously, anyway. The rest of you remembers. How he didn't want you anymore, because he felt guilty. He can be so dramatic sometimes, can't he? But he was too cowardly to let you die the way you wanted."
They were close enough that Donna could hear a mechanical whirring behind her. She struggled more, to no avail. Her arms wouldn't work right. The Master smiled at her. He leaned forward.
"Don't worry," he whispered into her ear, "I found another way you can make yourself useful."
Donna looked up at him as he pulled away, fear and anger in her eyes.
And then she was pushed backwards.
The Master sniffed his makeshift ring of ginger hair as Donna Noble disappeared into the white light of the Immortality Gate.
to be continued...