The Master woke up in darkness. He pushed himself up into a half-sitting position, the only sound being the rustling of the plastic bag underneath him. The Master looked around with his mouth partially open. An alleyway, he determined. A human alleyway.
Grabbing the dumpster beside him, the Master got up unsteadily. He tried taking an experimental step forward, only to end up lurching for the side of the dumpster. Luckily he had grabbed the side of the dumpster before he could faceplant into it.
The Master turned himself around and leaned with his back to the plastic container. He looked up at the night sky and found that he was staring up at a bright array of twinkling stars.
He made a face. This was definitely earth.
A sharp pain in his side caused the Time Lord to gasp aloud. Looking down he saw that the right side of his hoodie had been shredded and underneath the rags he could see wet red running down his skin.
He touched his side gingerly, and then drew his hand back to inspect it. The hand was covered in warm oozing blood as he had expected it would. Still, he was surprised that he had not noticed the wound before. And what could have caused such a deep cut?
A white-point star. The Master blinked and shook his head, looking confused. But how…? Suddenly the images started coming back to him, one by one in startling clarity.
Rassilon. The Lord President had swung his scepter at the Master's head, but the Master was too quick to be caught by that blow. Instead, Rassilon had cut the Master's side right open.
The Master gasped as he felt the blazing heat of the diamond cut into his soft flesh, almost all the way down to bone. He visibly winced at the vivid memory, wondering why he was feeling the pain only now. His eyes narrowed at the dumpster across from him. Hadn't the dumpster been clearer before? He blinked a couple of times, trying to restore the fuzzy plastic bin to the clarity of 20/20 vision.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground blinking grit out of his eyes. His side flared with pain, and the Master's vision went red.
I'm dying, the Master thought simply. His regeneration energy felt drained, perhaps even depleted, and the Master knew that there was no way that he could regenerate. All thanks to Lucy, his ability to regenerate had fizzled out of the split that the Potion of Death had rent in him.
Even then, he did not feel alarmed. The silence that had surrounded him since waking up was so nice and still, and the Master found himself closing his eyes and smiling.
The drums! The Master opened his eyes in shock. The drums were gone!
The Master unwittingly let out a whimper as his side burned bright again. The pain was so intense, but it was nothing compared to the drumbeat that he used to hear.
Relaxing his tense shoulders, the Master closed his eyes again. He was so very tired now, and the dark that was calling to him was so quiet and peaceful….
A soft pounding against the ground broke the Master out of his trance. Inwardly grumbling at the interruption, the Time Lord opened his eyes. He was surprised to see a pair of white converse shoes in front of him. He managed to tilt his head back to see the face that belonged to the shoes.
The Master tried to say the man's name but only managed a pitiful croak. He tried again.
"Doctor?" he managed gruffly.
The Doctor bent down and rolled the Master onto his back so that he could see the cut in the Master's side.
"What are you doing?" the Master asked hoarsely.
"Giving you a second chance," came the clipped reply as he applied pressure to the Master's deep wound.
The Master blinked. It sounded as if the Doctor had been crying, which was unusual. He bit back a cry of pain as the Doctor cleaned up some of the blood from off the Master's side and then brought out a white gauze bandage to wrap it with.
"Let me die, you fool," the Master hissed back. "I can't regenerate, even if I wanted to."
"I know," the Doctor said, his voice gentler this time. "But you can still live on. You don't need the ability to regenerate to be a Time Lord."
The Master pulled a look of disgust. "But then I'd grow old and die."
The Doctor stopped what he was doing and looked the Master straight in the eye. "Sometimes that would be the best life of all," he said quietly. The Master saw a deep sadness and foreboding in his foe's eyes, and he wondered what could have possibly happened to make him sad like that.
Perhaps that old fool who locked himself in the radiation-shielding booth died, the Master thought scornfully. I'll never understand his love for humans.
The Doctor abruptly broke his connection with the Master and focused back on wrapping the bandage around the other Time Lord's damaged body. The Master inwardly seethed but he was too weak to battle off the Doctor.
Suddenly a question burned in the Master's mind and he glanced at the Doctor suspiciously.
"How did I get here?" he asked with a voice filled with undisguised scorn.
"You fell," the Doctor explained, his voice careful, hesitant. "There was a bright light in the sky; you fell out of it like a shooting star."
"How?"
The Doctor lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. "I would guess that the Time War rejected you since you weren't supposed to be there. You were lucky."
"Was I?" the Master shot back.
The Doctor ignored his question and tightened the bandage, causing the Master to wince in discomfort.
"That should do it," the Doctor announced quietly as he inspected the area of the wound again. "You'll live." He sounded almost as if he was relieved.
The Master snorted. "Thanks," he said dryly, his sarcasm plainly evident to the Doctor. "I didn't need your help." He would've gotten up and stormed off if he could, but as he could not move, he settled for glaring off into the distance.
The Doctor was silent for a long moment, and eventually the Master glanced back up at his face.
"Goodbye, Master," the Doctor said sincerely, in an almost sorrowful-sounding way.
"You make it sound like we're never going to meet again," the Master scoffed.
The Doctor only gave him a small sad smile before he walked off into the night, the blackness covering him up until the Master could no longer see his shadow in the oblivion.
For a second, a brief second, the Master felt a fluttering emptiness inside him as he suddenly knew.
He would never see the Doctor again.