The Master was falling. Falling and dying.
The two were an appropriate combination, he thought, though the fact that he was in a lift made it somewhat less dramatic.
He was slowly descending and dying.
677… 678…
Over the years he'd thought of a million different scenarios for how his current incarnation would go. It was one of his longest runs, so there had been plenty of time to think about it. A Blaze of Glory was always at the top of the list. To kick it while destroying a planet, or collapsing a star, or bringing down his own corrupt, pretentious civilization always seemed like fantastic options. Send a message. Make a scene. That was him. Less attractive but still perfectly acceptable methods included being assassinated by some dark criminal organization, which for some reason always appealed to him, or murdered by a jealous lover (extremely unlikely, but you never know).
In all that time he never considered the idea that he might be snuffed out by his own hand. But then, one didn't really get to choose these things.
...Unless, of course, one decides to kill oneself.
It was possibly the oddest sort of suicide imaginable. Murdered by his future incarnation. Only he would find himself in that type of situation. It was a special kind of internalized resentment; expert-level self-loathing. Top notch. And to add insult to injury, he'd done it to protect his greatest enemy. Well, no. He hadn't really done it. It was her.
Her.
She did this to him. Took it upon herself to decide his time. Couldn't she remember what he had to go through before even landing on that stupid ship? Why he was stuck there in the first place? She was supposed to be the wise one, the one with more experience and more common sense. But something about him had changed by the time he was her. And whatever it was changed her enough to consider suicide as an option.
And so into the pits of hell he descended, lying on his back and unable to move. No one watching. No one to mourn him. The complete opposite of a Blaze of Glory. He wanted to scream, to shout his final words into the void until someone, anyone could hear him.
He sighed loudly. No one heard.
702... 703...
Pain started to creep up on him. The wound on his back was bleeding and he could feel himself getting weaker. Maybe someone was on the way. Maybe he would be saved. He deserved that much.
But he knew it wouldn't happen. When he had escaped Gallifrey they were glad to see the back of him. This was obvious because no one came looking, no alarms went off. So it was only an escape in the figurative sense, really. In the past they sent whole legions after him, commissioned rogues and assassins and put a price on his head. But now it seemed he was just an old relic, one they wanted nothing more than to bury.
No one would be coming for him this time. He was on his own.
But he deserved better than this! This mundane, ordinary, boring ending. Putting aside the fact that he was a descendent of the oldest and most advanced civilization in the Universe, which should have been good for something, he also saved said civilization from its own idiocy more than once. He was owed.
Oh, they did repay him, in a way. They repaid him by locking him up - though not before they rebooted the psycho-social parts of his brain to rectify a past discretion on their part about which they felt only marginally guilty. It was a charitable act, one that allowed him to experience his torturous imprisonment with a clearer head and keener senses. They were sadistic, his people.
His future self must have known what he went through. Should have remembered it. You don't experience something like that and then forget it completely. No, those types of memories stayed with you forever, buried in your subconscious, returning to haunt you every once in a while as painful reminders that yes, those things actually happened to you.
But she acted like she knew nothing. Chastised him. Judged him. Sided with the enemy. Intractable. That was what she had been at the end - intractable, and a traitor.
Oh but he wanted to rip her apart.
Her.
744... 745...
Hold back the regeneration. That was what he would do: hold it back so that she never existed in the first place. But refusing to regenerate was more or less a death sentence at this point. Even so, he'd rather die than become her. At least this way his death would be on his own terms. That'd show her. Or... maybe it would be more offensive to her if he stayed alive. Besides, not dying was always an attractive option.
He was torn between his will to survive and the desire to one-up himself.
The lift accelerated as it descended toward the bottom of the ship, away from the influence of the black hole that threatened its existence. He tried to sit up and make himself more comfortable, but the pain was excruciating now. She'd hit a nerve. Of course she did. He was always very precise when he wanted to be.
He could feel himself getting dizzy. His hands started to tingle as if they were going numb, the first sign of an impending regeneration. He held them out in front of him and sighed. The last time he regenerated he'd been running on adrenaline, the full force of the chameleon arch having hit him like a freight train. He'd successfully escaped the War, and had suddenly found himself with a TARDIS and a new Doctor to torture. Oh, the world of possibilities that had opened up to him at that moment.
There was no grand plan this time. No more Doctor. He had a TARDIS and he had his freedom, but he was a ship without an anchor now. Pointless. Alone.
910… 911…
The lift began to slow down as it approached the bottom floor. The regeneration process was already starting to heal him - he could tell because the pain was receding and he was able to stand, albeit with weak legs. It was cruel, in a way, that the regeneration should heal him first. It was like saying, "here, we're going to fix this body you like and then destroy it completely. You're welcome." The healing meant that he was running out of time. He needed to get back to the hospital, where his TARDIS was kept.
Finding the TARDIS would not be not an issue, for he knew his way around this half of the sprawling colony ship better than anyone. Twenty-eight years he'd been stuck there. Twenty-eight years puttering around with its spiritless humans and its archaic technology. It wasn't a particularly long period of time, not for a Time Lord anyway, but it had been unbearably dull. If you could count on humans to be anything, it was dull.
He made it out of the lift and headed slowly toward the hospital. His back was wet with blood, which made it difficult to move and annoyed him to no end. He stumbled pathetically through the streets and up to the hospital entrance, thankful that no one could see him at that particular moment.
What a wonderful adventure it would have been had his future self just gone along with the plan and escaped with him. The Universe would not have stood a chance with the two of them together.
There was a second, as he climbed the steps into the building, when he pondered exactly what it was he was hoping to get out of such a partnership. Did he want her around because she would have made him twice as powerful? Or because he was lonely? Was he really so pathetic that his only chance at companionship was himself?
Ridiculous. It was self-preservation, that was all. He was protecting his future, ensuring their survival - a survival that she saw fit to throw away in some grand attempt to save her soul. Stand with the Doctor? Go along with his suicide mission? What utter nonsense.
The Doctor. For the first time since leaving floor 507 he realized that there was a very good chance the Doctor was dead. Really, truly dead.
He smiled.
The pain came and went in waves now, spreading from his back to his limbs and blurring his vision. He hobbled down the stairs to the basement, fighting the urge to faint. His old office looked exactly the same as when he'd left it, which for him was almost a month ago, but for the office it must have been years. Everything was covered in a fine layer of dust.
It was in this room that he wasted years trying to piece together the components needed to fix the dematerialization circuit, after he'd gotten bored of ruling a dead society and decided to start making Cybermen for the hell of it. And it was here that he'd spent his evenings listening to Bill's incessant babbling on and on and on and on about the stupid Doctor. Not that he disliked her - in fact, she was pleasant company during the wait. But the time he spent in quiet anticipation of her inevitable upgrade made it so much more satisfying when it finally happened.
Ah, the look on the Doctor's face when he realized… He'd never forget that face. Not ever. Not if he could help it.
He smiled again.
The TARDIS was disguised as a closet door. There was no reason to worry that it would be discovered, however. And if it was, there was not a single soul on this ship that would know what to do with it. But he did so love disguises.
He opened the door and the lights switched on in the central control room. There had been no time to establish the standard telepathic link with the ship when he first boarded, mostly because he was in the middle of stealing it and didn't feel like stopping to get to know it over a cuppa. But it had adapted well enough. Still bleeding profusely, he made his way down to the second level to attempt the installation of the new circuit. The sensation in his hands was much worse now and he could barely feel the wires and components that he was assaulting with his poor maintenance skills.
The clock was ticking, and the TARDIS needed to be fully operational if he was going to be able to use it to stop his regeneration. Supposedly it was impossible to stop a regeneration without dying. That was the whole point of the process: you were dying, and this would fix it. But he'd picked up a few tricks since his return to Gallifrey, and it was not like this was his first go 'round. In fact, he wasn't sure what number he was on now. It would probably be prudent to start keeping track of those, he thought.
With the circuit in place the TARDIS whirred to life. As he ascended the stairs to the upper level the control panels came on for the first time in decades. He could sense the ship's excitement.
"I didn't abandon you, I promise," he said, patting the console.
His hand stopped mid-pat. "Oh hell," he muttered, embarrassed to find himself talking lovingly to a machine. It was the most intelligent type of machine in the Universe, but still.
He set course for Gallifrey because it would be the easiest destination for the TARDIS to attempt while pulling away from the black hole. He had no desire to return there, not after what they did to him. He just needed a way to free himself from the force of gravity that trapped him there.
The dematerialization was rough, but successful. At least there was one thing he could say his future self did properly. As soon as the TARDIS was free he collapsed into a chair, exhausted. He watched with relief as the image of the ship on his monitor faded away. Good riddance.
He pictured the Doctor in his head, being descended upon by hundreds of Cybermen, trapped, with nowhere to go. Then he thought of his future self, dying alone in the forest. That image was considerably less pleasing.
Without warning the pain in his back made a triumphant return. In fact, every cell in his body seemed to be exploding with increasing speed and intensity. It felt like fire and ice and electricity and all the other dangerous and painful extremes the universe had to offer, rolling over him all at once. He had to make his way back to the console before it was too late. The three feet between his chair and the center of the room suddenly felt like miles - who the hell designed these things? He could not stand, so he crawled pathetically toward the controls, pulling himself up and hanging on for dear life. Complex calculations were going through his head as he tried to figure out the right time to do it. It had to be precise or he would not be able to stop the transformation. Or worse, he would botch it.
A pressure was building inside of him and he felt like he would explode at any second. There was a joke in there somewhere, he knew, but his mind wasn't clear enough to think of it. The place where he'd been stabbed was burning hot and it pushed all of the anger and rage that he felt towards his future self up to the surface.
Her face appeared in his mind's eye, laughing at him. Mocking him. It wasn't fair. He didn't want to be her. He didn't want it. It wasn't fair.
He had to stay focused. The only power he had over his transformation at that point was telepathic, and if he didn't concentrate he would not be able to channel the energy.
Galaxies exploded in his mind. He could see all of time and space - the infinite majesty of it, the beauty of nothingness. This was the moment, just before the big bang. He grabbed a hold of the console and directed all of the regeneration energy into the TARDIS. Screaming in agony, he pushed his mind to force the change to stop, using the ship as an anchor. He could feel every inch of his body bursting into atoms. The process never got easier no matter how many times he'd done it before.
Then it stopped.
Everything stopped. Except for his heavy breathing, there was total silence. All of the instrument panels were dead. The lights had gone out.
Before he could adjust to the calm, the TARDIS gave a massive lurch, throwing him clear of the console. He hit one of the back walls with a painful thud and stars exploded in front of his eyes. The ship came back to life with a vengeance. At the center of the room the instrument panels were screaming, almost as though they were experiencing the same agony he had just felt seconds earlier.
Head reeling, he made his way back to the center. The coordinates he had entered before his departure were gone, and the navigational readings were not making any sense. They said he was everywhere and nowhere and not going in any specific direction, which was not possible because one, it just wasn't, and two, the TARDIS was jostling around like it was tumbling in a giant cosmic dryer. The ship was definitely moving, but he had no way of controlling its trajectory.
He couldn't even determine whether he had rematerialized or not. He forced the rematerialization override but nothing happened. The velocity regulator had failed on him, and he didn't dare look at the dimension circuits. He worked quickly to redirect the power while fighting off the urge to vomit or pass out or both, his body still shaking from the aborted regeneration attempt. Finally, after several minutes of admittedly poor piloting, he managed to steady the TARDIS long enough for him to be able to stand properly without holding on to something.
The trajectory monitor switched back on and he was able to reestablish his location. But something was off. The coordinates weren't right for this part of the galaxy and there were planets without names showing up on the view screen. He had never seen a TARDIS fail to identify a planet, or at least the associated system. He entered the coordinates to Gallifrey once again but nothing came up.
There was no Gallifrey.
The mapping system said it should be there, and he knew it was there because he'd just been to the damnable place only decades before, but there was nothing. Just empty space. He punched the screen in frustration.
Pain rolled over him again like a tidal wave and he doubled over in agony. His body was still trying to heal itself and it wasn't giving up without a fight. Once again he redirected the excess energy into the TARDIS, and once again it exploded like a bomb, throwing him to the floor.
The last thing he saw before passing out was a message on the view screen confirming a new target trajectory for a planet called Earth.