Author Note: Originally written for the prompt River Song/The 11th Doctor + The Master, The Master is the good guy, Doctor and River are the biggest threat to the universe on comment_fic at livejournal.
AU in that the Doctor prevented the Master from being shot and took the Master away with him in the TARDIS at the end of season 4. We never did find out why later the TARDIS exploded…
Time Enough
He's handcuffed to the railing in the console room of the Doctor's TARDIS and has been for longer than he care to think about, maddeningly close to the controls but not close enough, unable to lie down and never comfortable when he leans back against the cool metal bars. They're an annoying kind of handcuffs that he's never come across before, that can't be picked, that he can't wriggle out of, and he suspects the damn things have been (insult to injury) sonic-ed.
The Doctor's human pets come and go and the Doctor steers them around him and his attempts at conversation like he's the pet. The only acknowledgement he gets is from the woman, the infamous River Song, who ghosts her fingertips over his handcuffs when she walks by, a small smile crawling quickly across her face. (She never touches his skin and he never knows if he wants her to.)
They come and go, all of them, but they're never gone long enough that he could chew through his wrist. (He's tried, so many times.)
Daleks, Cybermen, the Silence. The Pandorica, Demon's Run, the Fields of Trenzalore. They come and go, words flying between them and over his head, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't hear. Or that he doesn't understand.
He forms his own words. None of them listen. It makes him wonder if there's a perception filter around him, some form of barrier, or if they really are all that ignorant, laughing and cavorting as the TARDIS spins through the vortex without a care in existence.
"The Fields of Trenzalore!" River cries, her hair a crazy halo around her head.
"All the best places," says the Doctor as he flings the door of the TARDIS wide open for her.
Silence falls inside his head as they leave and he's never not heard the drums before. It's a relief and it's bad, very bad, because it always is when he gets what he wants, he knows that even if it never keeps him from wanting.
"Think about it," he says, tipping his head back against a railing, pushing against it with his skull. "The last question."
The TARDIS hums softly and there he sits, her vibrations running through his blood and her conscious a whisper in the air. He thinks that she remembers that he's here, trapped inside as much as she is and how could she forget?
"Think about it," he says again to the room at large. "They're going to destroy the universe."
He wonders if she cares. He doesn't know if he does. Does it matter?
She creeps inside his brain, softer than drums and more persistent, echoes of the Doctor and River and an Idris, and asks him a question, his own last question.
The TARDIS explodes and he's not clear on all of the hows and the whys and the what nexts, but she's smarter than him by far and he's sure that she knows what she's doing. (Not that it matters when he's getting what he wants from this, right?)
She explodes, using the energy that he gives her, all of the energy from his last regenerations, slipping away from him and into her. He's been a part of her for so long, he'll be a part of her for just an explosive moment longer. Then he won't be anything at all.