(a/n): If you haven't seen any Classic Who, this fic will contain allusions to... well, most Master stories. The only real major spoilers are for the Keeper of Traken and Trial of a Time Lord (and the TVM, of course), with one or two minor ones for Survival. Also, some slight Doctor/Master. Like I said in the summary, TVM AU, so some of this will be fairly faithful and some a wild deviation from the original. I hope you find it an interesting alternative!
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The Master was dying. Again. Only this time, it was different.
A familiar sound, an alien grinding and wailing, rang through the air of the war-ravaged planet. Inside a ramshackle and decaying hut, one of the few still standing for miles around, an old, old man, lying on a worn mattress, smiled at the noise. A faint creaking sound came once the grinding had stopped, and before too long, a figure in a tweed jacket and Panama hat stood in the doorway.
"Doctor! You came!" The man in the bed chuckled weakly, and the man in the doorway shifted slightly.
"How could I not?" he responded quietly in his mild Scottish burr. "When I receive a hypercube from the ashes of some nameless, backwater planet saying the Master is dying, I can't resist sating my curiosity." He stepped into the feeble red light trickling through the crumbling wooden ceiling from the dying sun, and they both looked at each other, neither taking more than a brief glance into the other's eyes before averting their gazes quickly. The Doctor seemed to be so old and tired, the fire once so strong in his eyes dimming. The Master, on the other hand, looked every day of his age physically, almost resembling Tremas as he had been before his possession, the shorter man noted. The dying man forced his gaze up, and the Doctor could see his fading yellow eyes, resembling a cat's with their slit pupils. He tried to ignore the twinge in his chest as the Master spoke.
"After all these years, my dear friend, am I nothing more to you than a curiosity?" he asked in his typical sardonic way, but it was more evident than ever that it was merely bluster.
The Doctor answered simply, "You know what you are to me." He turned away from him, making a show of looking out the doorway at the ruined village. "So, what happened, then? One great interdimensional battle too many?" The Master chuckled again at this.
"Hardly. For once, this had nothing to do with me. I came here because it was the closest place I could find to... to rest." His body was wracked by a fit of coughing, and by the end he was wheezing to recover his breath. "No, Doctor, my body is simply wearing thin."
"No surprises there, you've already lived far beyond how long Trakenites are supposed to," the Doctor commented, still staring across the settlement. "The Cheetah virus will have rrrrravaged your body too. Frankly, I'm amazed it's lasted this long. I've never understood how you do it."
"Do what?" the Master asked.
"Survive. How you've survived everything the universe has thrown at you and still gotten up every time to hold it to ransom." The dying Time Lord smirked.
"Willpower, Doctor, plain and simple. I've never accepted death," he pointed out, a trace of his old arrogance coming through. The Doctor, still facing away, bowed his head, contemplating the man behind him who no longer bore much evidence of that trait so characteristic of him.
"Doesn't look like you have much of a choice this time," he mused solemnly. They were both silent for a minute, the Master looking up at the broken roof and the Doctor studying the landscape.
"Where's the girl who was travelling with you? Ace, wasn't it?" the Master inquired, in an almost casual tone. The Doctor looked back at him, staring directly into his eyes for the first time.
"Gone." The Master's grey eyebrow raised at his bluntness, and at the pained look in his eyes. On any ordinary day, the Doctor knew he would have pushed on this matter, tried to reopen old wounds until he wanted to kill him, but they both knew this was no ordinary day, and he was silently thankful when his old friend dropped the subject.
The shorter man sighed, and knelt beside the bed, embedding his elbows on the mattress and lacing his fingers beneath his chin. It was time to ask the question he'd been avoiding.
"How long do you have?"
His companion winced in response, shifting on the bed. "Not long, I should think. My kidneys failed not long before you arrived. A few minutes, I suppose."
They remained in silence an age longer, a minute longer, a second longer, a century longer. It didn't really matter.
"Doctor," the aged ex-Trakenite began, forcing himself into an upwards position with his back propped up by the wall.
"No, don't waste your strength," the Doctor said hurriedly, rising to try and dissuade him, but the Master waved a hand in dismissal, and the other renegade Time Lord sagged and relented, returning to his previous position with his head rested on his hands, looking up at him.
"Doctor," he repeated, before coughing again. "I want you to take my ashes home. Back to Gallifrey. Back to where we used to play as children. I can't think of anywhere else for me."
"The Time Lords wouldn't be very happy with that," the Doctor murmured. The Master simply chuckled again.
"Have the Time Lords ever been happy with anything you've done, my dear Doctor?" he pointed out, to which he had no answer. The man on the bed slowly slid back to lying down, and something occurred to the Doctor about their positions. He stifled a smile.
"What is it?" his friend asked. He took a moment to respond.
"After all this time, all of our battles across the universe, this is what it takes for me to kneel down before you," he said. The Master stared at him blankly, before they both burst out laughing simultaneously. The Doctor hadn't laughed in a long time, but hearing his arch-nemesis laugh, not a sardonic chuckle or an insane giggle, but a genuine laugh filled with mirth, made the aching in his chest throb all the more until he couldn't pretend it wasn't there anymore. They both quietened down, and he swallowed. Hesitantly, he leant forward and kissed the Master's forehead. Being affectionate had never come to him easy, especially in this incarnation, but it was something he had to do under the circumstances. His old friend sighed and closed his eyes.
"I suppose my time is here, then," he said, reopening them. The Doctor smiled briefly, then looked away.
"Of course. Linear or non-linear, time steamrollers on, crushing all in its path. We can... hinder it, place obstacles in its path, even dodge it, but eventually it will trap us and we'll succumb to the pervasive entropy that takes all in this silly old universe." He was rambling, and they both knew it. His old strange turns of phrase and absent philosophising were more forced than ever.
"It's a shame," sighed the Master, sinking back into the mattress, "that at the end of my life, I am trapped alone with you, and in this tiresome form, too."
"Now, there's no need for any pretences anymore," responded the Doctor, smiling grimly. "We both know there's nobody you'd rather have with you at the end."
The Master laughed again, and in that laugh, the Doctor saw so many different people. The boy he'd befriended and grown up with. The various men and women he'd battled across time and space through their various regenerations, up until the Doctor's own personal favourite, the refined man who'd break into UNIT just to share champagne with him and reminisce. The old, dying, burnt-out shell that he could barely stand to look at, that he'd desperately wanted to kill just to end his suffering. The kindly old Trakenite who'd been a good father and a good friend. And now, the man who, even when his friend beside him stood stunned and horrified at the fate of her father, he was still secretly relieved to see alive, who'd saved him from the High Council despite all of his own machinations and who now lay before him, wasting away. The man who, moreso than anyone else in the universe and even after all this time, he still-
Another fit of coughing wracked the Master, more violent this time, shaking the Doctor out of his thoughts. He instinctively put a hand on his arm as the fit worsened, and they made eye contact one last time, piercing blue eyes into yellow.
Through his pain, the Master smiled a sincere smile.
Then the fit stopped abruptly, and the yellow eyes faded completely. The Master fell silent.
And, for just a few moments, the Doctor allowed himself to cry.
-0-
Time Lords cremated their dead. It was just how they did things, and it had been for millennia. Ordinarily, the process of death was long and drawn-out, with many parts spent on the brink, but with the Master's age and failed Trakenite body, the Doctor knew he didn't have to wait.
In his shirtsleeves, he slowly tore down the Master's hut to build his funeral pyre, working around the body lying there. It took him an hour or two to assemble a satisfactory structure. He carried the body over to it bridal-style, laying it gently on the pyre. For a moment, he looked around, pondering whether someone would see the fire and investigate.
"Probably not," he muttered to himself. "What's one more thing burning on this planet, anyway?" He retrieved his jacket and hat from where he'd left them, by the bed. Walking slowly back to the body, he rummaged in his pockets, pulling out a lighter, and after a little more searching he retrieved his old paisley handkerchief. He wasn't a particularly sentimental man.
Wrapping his handkerchief around a stick he found on the floor, he lit it, and then, after a brief hesitation, touched it to the pyre. It went up surprisingly quickly, and the Doctor stepped back until he was next to the TARDIS. Standing close by in what had once been some sort of village green, he solemnly watched the body – the Master burn, and was overcome with a sense of finality. Every other time he'd 'died,' there'd been some way out, some room for hope; as the Master had gloated himself, decades ago, the entire universe knew he was indestructible. Even when he'd been crushed on Gallifrey, his body had never been found. Here, there was no denying it. The Doctor continued to watch silently.
The flames eventually died down, by which time the red sky had faded into a deep purple. He withdrew from his pocket an ornate urn he'd found in the TARDIS and moved towards the smouldering pyre. Using fire-retardant gloves, he collected the Master's ashes in the container as best he could, and returned to his ship. Inside, he sat at one of the tables in the new gothic console room and sealed the urn completely shut with glue.
Because, to be totally honest, he still didn't trust the Master, even in death. A part of him whispered that it was all just wishful thinking, he just wanted him alive. He tried to ignore that. He wasn't letting this thing out of his presence, and he slipped it into his pocket. With a heavy heart, he set the coordinates for Gallifrey.
To take his mind off things a little bit, he put on a jazz record; jazz always inspired fond memories of Ace, after all. Setting his hat down on a table, he sat in one of his sumptuous armchairs and began reading.
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He wasn't sure how long he was sat there, staring blankly at the same paragraph of his book, before he registered that the record had stuck. With a sigh, he forced himself up and reset the record, only to realise that something on the console had been bleeping in perfect tandem with the repeating gramophone. Curious, he went over to see what was wrong.
Impact warning: solar storm inbound.
Before the Doctor could react, the console exploded in a shower of sparks, and he stumbled away, almost blinded. A sudden groan, and the TARDIS shifted alarmingly to one side. He grabbed desperately onto one of the metal girders near to him.
"No, no, no..." he growled through his teeth as he saw they were falling backwards through time. With that, he launched himself at the console. He wrestled with the controls, trying to stabilise the ship or at least slow it down, but it was no use. They were definitely crashing. The panels exploded with sparks again, more violently, and the Doctor had to concede defeat. He braced himself for impact, which came quickly and sharply, leaving him sprawled on the floor.
He needed to see where he was. He needed to get his bearings. Grabbing his hat from where it had fallen beside him, he stood, dusting himself down, and hurried over to the doors. In his haste, he didn't even think to check the scanners. Quickly, he slipped through and turned to close them firmly behind him, before taking a look at what was in front of the doors.
He barely had time to register the dingy alley and guns pointed at him before the bullets hit him.
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(a/n): So, apparently, on this entire site there are exactly nine stories tagged with Seven/The Master. And only five are in English! Well, that was an injustice I just had to correct.
In all seriousness, I love Eight, and the movie's an extreme guilty pleasure, but seeing as Seven's my favourite Doctor and every single damn thing leading up to his death could have been averted, I couldn't resist. And whilst I was at it, I tried to rework or cut bits that didn't really make sense. So yes, this is a version in which Seven survives, and the rest of the story changes due to that.
This is... a bit of an experiment for me, and I'm concerned I'm biting off more than I can chew, but eh, what's fanfic for if not fixing the bits of canon you don't like? Another worry is, as always, in characterisation. Obviously, the Doctor and the Master would always be a little out of character in the first scene under the circumstances, and I tried to get them out of character in an in-character way, if that makes sense. All the same, I'm most decidedly not perfect, and criticism is welcomed. Also, any ideas for a less stupid title are welcomed. Hope you enjoy this, and thank you very much for reading. 'Til the next time!