The Rani is very aware of death when it comes.
Particularly, she notes, in the form of a deadly energy ray fired from a Dalek war drone. For a moment, the Rani contemplates how she'd even arrived here: the council sending for her (even after she'd almost gotten used to so little of their interference during the course of her exile) like the beggars they are, in order to gain her assistance in the war. She didn't say yes.
In fact, she protested to the three guards who had been sent to fetch her and even had to fight back a little, but she'd been promptly and swiftly beaten into an unconscious state. She was taken back to Gallifrey without a whisper of her consent on the matter.
They'd had a cell waiting just for her, she found out. Not very lavish, but it wasn't a dungeon. There she waited in silence until the council sent for her, wasting her time sulking in the corner and harassing the guard currently at his post by the cells.
The Lady President calls for her, though, and explains the council's desire for the Rani's assistance. Really, it's only a suicide mission, she thinks. When she refuses the offer profusely, the president only gives her a sickly sweet smile.
"Whether you take our assignment or not, I can assure you that you'll find yourself in a similar position no matter what you choose."
In other words, the promise of death. And not necessarily in a quick and timely fashion, either.
So she accepts, because Daleks kill more quickly than Time Lords do, and she'll take the risk if it gets her out of the council's way for once and for all.
They'd already taken most of her regenerations before, when they'd effectively banished her and any who made unauthorized contact with her. What more did they want, the Rani thinks. She is meant to be formally escorted to the main base, and upon arrival, she finds herself flanked by the first few soldiers that their weak resistance can spare. However, the young Time Lords at her side are shot down by the Daleks before the Rani can blink. Her first instinct is a very, very stupid idea, she knows. But what else does she have to lose?
So she runs.
She runs, jumping over the fallen bodies of the guard and sprinting as fast as she can across the flat wasteland, towards the base they've secured. The beam doesn't hit her completely because she ducks underneath the ray, only half of the power hitting her hard in the back.
She crumples and hits the ground hard, dirt and blood filling her mouth, her hearts pounding in her ears so loudly that she barely hears the all-too familiar buzzing of a sonic device.
The Rani knows its owner before he even speaks. Whatever he's saying she can barely make out anyways, swirls of black beginning to darken the edges of her vision, her blood rushing in her ears.
The Doctor has most definitely regenerated, because the Rani doesn't know this form, with the long face and the sad eyes, dirt smeared across his face and his clothing. He's seen hell, and she can see it in his eyes as he leans over her body.
"Ushas?"
And, dying, the Rani laughs, nearly choking, because she hasn't heard that name spoken to her in so many years. The Doctor presses two fingers to the inside of her neck, checking her pulse. It's as he does this that he realizes her left heart has refused to beat, her right heart straining under its new demands.
"You'll live if you get treatment," the Doctor tells her, though she says nothing in response. "But I can't give it to you here."
He scans the battlefield, his eyes narrowed against the dust that blows about. They are alone, at least for now, and he sits her upright, draping a golden locket around her neck.
"But I know somewhere that you'll be safe," he promises. He wraps her shaking fingers around the locket and she realizes that they're almost blue.
"To the Daleks, you are dead. They don't even know you exist. Remember? You were exiled. You're not on record anymore."
Her eyes widen as she realizes the truth of his words, and she clutches the necklace even more desperately than before.
'I can escape.'
'I can live. '
"Live for me, Rani," the Doctor tells her, and kisses her forehead, an affectionate gesture that she has not been given for some time now. "I promise that you'll be alright."
Her locket glows in an array of golden light, and he steps back, leaving her in the mud. She wants to call out to him as he walks away, but can't find the breath to do so as the rush of light surrounds her.
In only a fleeting moment, she is in space, drifting, floating, flying between the stars towards an unknown destination. She falls to Earth, a shooting star across the dark skies over London, and she crash-lands deep inside a thick forest just on the outskirts of the town.
The Rani wonders what death is like, and thinks that this might be it.
The Master wonders how the war has progressed in his absence, and steps from his TARDIS out into the cool night air of London. He knows all about the war, yes, and still considers himself lucky that he slipped away when he did. This doesn't, of course, necessarily mean that he'll live. If the Daleks manage to find him like he knows they will, he'll still wind up another smoldering, skeletal Time Lord corpse to add to the list of the deceased.
The Master idly fingers the heavy watch in his pocket, holding the latch between his fingers—but not undoing the clasp just yet—as he considers this option.
And though erasing his memory isn't the best idea, it's something, after all. It'll buy him some time, at the very least.
He's suddenly pulled from his thoughts when a comet arches across the sky overhead, forming an arc above him. The light fills his vision suddenly when the shooting star comes rocketing down from the sky and lands in a smoldering pile of dirt, dust, and mildly burnt flesh just a few meters from his feet.
The Rani lies before him, very nearly dead.
'It's been far too long', he thinks, smirking, crossing to her and lifting one arm with his foot, checking to see if there's still life in her yet.
She groans loudly, rolling her head to the side, and he knows she's still living, unfolding her fingers from their tight clutch to pull the necklace away from her throat.
These are a last-minute measure, he remembers, a sort of escape hatch for those on the front lines of the battle. This is a brand new necklace, though, not the old, moderately faulty ones pressed into the hands of their soldiers. He studies the circular Gallifreyan on the back of the locket in the dark, and tries to make out the words in such little light.
She may still have the chance to survive when we won't. Let her live.
-Thete
It's hastily scribbled and messily carved into the back, and the Master has to check the engraving several times before he's sure that he's read it right. He drops the necklace and looks at the Rani as she opens her eyes slowly, closing them again just as quickly. Her hand finds his wrist and grips it like a lifeline as she gasps, searching for the breath that her body can't find.
'He sends her to me to play doctor in his absence!' the Master thinks, scowling, and looks her over. She's in a sorry state, he notes, and she'll die soon if this keeps up.
As gently as he can—not something he's used to, being gentle—he picks her cold, slightly stiff body in his arms and carries her back to his TARDIS, finding the medical bay amongst a mess of corridors and winding hallways. There's just one stiff hospital bed, and he thinks he's never needed this room in his lives, other than a few supplies and maybe a bandage or two every now and again after a particularly nasty encounter.
He lays her somewhat delicately across the stiff bed and she moans at the sharp movement of being put down. He tries working monitors he's never used before, knowing at least a decent amount of first aid and healthcare after posing as humans and surgeons for some time. Especially after using that paramedic's body (something the Doctor was involved in, of course) during that time in San Francisco, he'd retained some knowledge from the fusion, and has kept the knowledge tucked away, unused, for years.
She acts as if the needles don't hurt her, not even flinching, and he hooks her up to several drips (mostly just a few pain killers) and a monitor or two in a short amount of time. She's still struggling to breathe, and he wonders what's wrong. The Rani begins to gasp as she suffocates, her body arching against the pain, so erratically and wildly that he has to hold her down on the bed.
"Stop," she says, as loudly as she can. "Stop!"
'She's just being stubborn', the Master thinks, and ignores her until she successfully manages to grasp his arm, her nails digging into the skin. He almost hits her, but the pained look in her eyes distracts him as she cries out again, louder.
"Left!"
He realizes, sharply, that she's not telling him to sod off, but instead giving him directions. He checks her pulse quickly and glances at one of the monitors, feeling the beat of one strong heart doing double-time for the other.
"This is going to hurt," he tells her plainly, folding his hands together and bringing them down hard on the left of her chest. She cries out in pain when it hits.
"Not yet!"
He brings his fists down a second time. The right one's pumping too quickly, to make up for the one that's stopped, trying to run everything at once, and it burns. She feels like she's overheating, and gasps as the Master brings his hands down a third time. The left heart beats once gently, and then dies again.
"Almost," she chokes, her scream rising an octave when he hits twice as hard as before, the heart starting again.
"There we go," he says as her cry tapers off, her breath still coming in gasps.
"Bastard!" she grunts, pressing a hand to her chest. Both hearts are beating but they're still slightly out of sync with one another, and he fixes up another monitor to check that, sliding her top down off of her shoulders to press the attachments to her chest.
"You even think about fondling me," she warns him as he starts attaching the cords, "and I'll make sure to castrate you before I leave."
And no, he wouldn't put it past her.
Due to the positioning of the hearts, he does, in fact, have to place two of the cords underneath her breasts, and she watches him the entire time with a gaze that could freeze flames solid.
"All done. See, I'm not even looking," he mocks innocence, holding his hands up.
The Rani rolls her eyes and makes no further comment, turning her head to the side to watch the steady drip of the IV fluid.
Drip, one, two, three, drip, one, two, three, drip...
And so on for a minute or so while the Master tries to organize some of the equipment in the unused room. The Rani wiggles on the stiff bed, trying to make herself comfortable without detaching any of the drips or monitor attachments. She lies still for a moment and can feel her hearts beat out of sync, still trying to get back in order. She still feels very hot, and realizes that the back of her neck is damp with sweat, her hair sticking uncomfortably.
"Is it rather hot in here?" she asks, and the Master shakes his head. She looks a bit flushed, he notices, and so he comes to her side, taking off a glove to press a hand to her forehead.
"You're terribly warm. Do you feel hot?"
"Burning," she groans, as he reaches for a thermometer and sticks it in her mouth. As she's laying down, she nearly chokes.
"Watch it!" the Rani hisses, keeping her lips closed around the glass bulb. She stays silent as he takes the instrument from her mouth a moment later, holding it up to the bright lights above to read it.
"Well, you've got yourself a fever, alright," the Master tells her, somewhat bitterly. "I'm afraid I wasn't prepared to play nurse, so you'll have to give me a moment."
She laughs. "Take all the time you need, it's not like I want to be waited on hand and food." She tilts her head to the side and closes her eyes, the lights far too bright at the moment, her head still pounding hard. She manages a groan.
"Hush," he snaps, slapping towards her leg. "You're lucky I've even done this much for you."
She grins at first, and then descends into laughter. She doesn't see the icy glance he shoots at her.
"I fail to see what's so amusing."
"Tell me what you want, about how you could have left me to die," she muses. "Tell me that as much as you want, but the truth is that if you really wanted to leave me for dead, you would have."
He turns away, back towards the counter, and doesn't say a word.
The Rani smirks.
"It's so good to see you, too."
There are no more words between them for the longest time, and she regulates her breathing as best she can. He adjusts monitors and checks readings to pass the time.
He pretends that he doesn't care, and she pretends that she doesn't notice.
Eventually, their facades crack within that tiny hospital-esque room, and the stern silence breaks.
"How do you feel?" the Master manages, though he refuses to look at her.
"I'm not dead yet," she sighs. She'll give him credit. For the hour that's passed so far, he's not done too badly of a job. Stinging, blinding pain begins to radiate from her chest outwards, and she grunts as one heart goes dead again.
"Koschei."
No, he hasn't heard that word off of her lips in some time.
"Help me, you idiot," she manages to say, clinging somewhat desperately to the bar that lines one edge of the bed.
This time, she thinks, the forceful compressions that he has to give might leave bruises. The shrieks she emits as he brings his fists down again and again on her chest leave her throat raw, and the tears slip out of the very corners of her eyes, down the sides of her face.
"It won't start, damn it!" he growls through gritted teeth, slamming his fists down again.
She screams so loud that it hurts, leaving marks in her palms where her nails dig into the skin.
"Don't do this," the Master tells her forcefully. "Don't you dare."
"You act like I have a choice," she gasps, breathing heavily as her lungs fight against her. "I'm trying the best I can."
"Try harder," he snaps, slamming down on her heart. "Beat, damn it!"
"Let it go!" the Rani cries, finally, twisting away from him as best she can. "Just forget it—let me regenerate!"
"Do you have any left?"
For a moment, her panicked mind can't even recall whether she does, or if they were taken from her some time ago. She wonders.
"I don't...I don't..."
"And if you did," he says sharply, pulling her away and turning her onto her back again. "I don't think you're even strong enough to survive the regeneration."
She closes her eyes, pants, and feels the dead weight on one side of her chest. The Rani thinks for only a second, and when she looks the Master straight in the eye, what she says makes a fear, a guilt, surface within in his stare.
"Then let me die."
It's a guilt in his eyes that she hasn't seen in what feels like forever.
"No," he argues, holding her firmly down on the bed.
As much as she wants to fight him off, to have it her way, she doesn't have the strength. She can only grip his wrist as tightly as she can in a feeble attempt to hold him away, and shoot an icy glare straight through him.
"Let me die!" she pleads, gasping. "Please! Why do...do you insist on...?"
"Because I know that I can save you!"
Maybe those words really came from his lips, and maybe the Rani just hallucinated the phrase. Either way, as he speaks, she feels her second heart die within her, following the first. The heavy thudding of the fierce compressions the Master continues with are lost to her as consciousness fades from her mind.
"Stay awake," he demands, going so far as to slap her. "I'm not going to lose you! Come on! Ushas!"
She doesn't quite know what he says after that.
She thinks it a complete miracle when she wakes the morning after.
The pain, of course, is twice what it was before—mostly everything sore and strained from the ordeal itself, and several new sensors taped to her hearts. Obviously, she won't be going anywhere anytime soon. The lights are dimmed low so as not to hurt her eyes too badly, and she finds it easier to breathe than before. As an added kindness in the rather cold room, a pair of thick blankets have been draped over her from the waist down.
The Rani groans under her breath as she moves and feels everything hurt. Letting her head roll to the side, a folded note on the table catches her eye. With some struggle, she manages to grasp the paper, and pull it back to open it above her face, where she can read it.
-Consider yourself lucky that you even survived the night. Looks like we've both been surprised.
Gone to attempt to find your own TARDIS—you want your things back, and I don't think either of us would like to see all of that genius in the wrong hands. I've locked the main doors behind me, so don't think to follow.
Try to take it easy, Ushas.
And try not to miss me too much.
-The Master
She scoffs as she crumples the note in her hand, and sighs.
"Pompous idiot."
For now, though, she's relatively alive, and rather safe. The Rani thinks that right now, that's all that she could hope for.
(Note: I am not, of course, 100% sure of everything that happened during the Time War, and how accurate all of it is. This is just a quick shot at something that might easily have occurred during the first portions of it.)