AN: Prequel to That's My Girl—read that one first 'cause this one spoils heavily for that story.

That's Not My Dad

By Alexannah

The Master leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes and took a moment to meditate on his success. His stupid, yet useful, human followers had brought him back to life without a single hitch. Now it was time to plan.

He couldn't do much without the TARDIS, of course. Well, he could, but not the best sort of revenge. Just taking the Doctor's beloved ship away from him would be revenge enough. But how?

One thing he had noticed, since his stint as Professor Yana had ended, was that the Doctor's mind had sealed itself up—most likely since the War. In truth, the Master couldn't blame him; that empty ache in his head would be enough to drive him insane, if he wasn't already. The Doctor's mind was still sealed, so chances were he wouldn't be aware that the Master had returned. The Master, on the other hand, could tell where the Doctor was—roughly—even if he couldn't tell anything further.

But this time, he realised with a jolt, there was something else out there on the Time Lord radar. Something—someone—new. Young. Inexperienced. And half a Vortex away from the Doctor.

"Interesting," the Master murmured, locking in on the new signal. A Time Lady. Very young. With limited control over her own telepathic abilities, so she probably wasn't aware of his return either …

"Where did you come from?" The Master considered the options. There were very few. She could only be the daughter of, either him, or the Doctor. His money was on the latter, since she was far away from both Earth and this century. But if so, why were they separate?

Either way, she could be very useful to him. All he needed was a way of finding her. He was pretty confident on that one. Even Earth had technology for time travel—if you knew where to look. And he knew exactly who to look for.

It was two months to the day since Jenny was born.

Maybe it was the milestone that put her in a bad mood. She'd been in high spirits when she had first flown away from her birthplace, plans abundant in her head. Despite the fact that the Doctor had left her behind—however unintentionally—she couldn't help but feel excited at the thought of all that life, just waiting for her. The universe was her oyster.

It didn't feel so much like that anymore. It turned out, saving planets and civilisations wasn't quite as simple as it sounded. So far Jenny had encountered only one species in jeopardy, and when she had attempted to help, had mistakenly made the situation much worse. It had worked out all right in the end, but her confidence had taken a knocking.

The only thing Jenny seemed able to do quite well was the running. Half the time, though, she had no idea what she was running from, or to. The more time passed, the more she looked back at her first day of life and wondered about the Time Lord from whom she had come.

If she could find the Doctor, maybe he could teach her what she needed to know to be like him. She couldn't help but feel that, on her own, she would never even come close. It was entirely possible that she couldn't reach that standard even with his guidance–he'd made it clear, after all, that she was different. But she admired him more than anyone she'd ever met and wanted more than anything to make him proud of her.

Finding him, though … that was proving very difficult. Wherever she went, she asked if anyone knew the Doctor. So far, she'd only had one positive response—a false alarm, since they had described a blonde bloke with some kind of vegetable pinned to his golfing jumper.

Espionage wasn't the Master's forte, at least not top security government bases, and without the help of the Arkangel Network. But after watching the entrance, he concluded that there was a way in. But only for food. Torchwood had Chinese delivered on a fairly regular basis. One of them would come up to collect it, and took the food into the Hub.

Hmm. So all he had to do was infiltrate the food.

It wasn't hard to find the parts to build a small remote controlled droid that wouldn't set off the alarms. The problem was going to be hiding it in a way that it didn't get eaten. After trying and discarding several options, the Master finally hit the jackpot with a design that folded up so slim, with a lick of paint it could be mistaken for a chopstick.

Bingo.

What was harder was getting the robot chopstick into the delivery. The Master staked out the Chinese they always ordered from for a while to explore his options. He couldn't very well walk in and demand a job—he'd had to be very careful not to be seen, since any glimpse of him sent these stupid humans into a panic. Of course, no-one remembered the grisly details of his reign, but anyone who recognised him as Harold Saxon knew he was a psychopath who'd had the President murdered on live television.

Ah, memories.

The answer came to him in quite an unexpected form.

"Look, for the last time, I'm not the Doctor," the Master said, rolling his eyes as the Nycafein tightened his restraints. "Just because you can detect Time Lords … look, I promise, I'm not trying to stop you. I'm the Master, and I want to help you."

"Time Lord, help us?" The nearest Nycafein stared at him. The Master tried to hide his annoyance. They really were a slow race. How they ever managed to create such beautifully realistic humanoid androids was a mystery.

"Yes. I want to help you. I can't stand this planet; I'd be quite happy to see you lot take over. I once ruled this rock for a year; I could give you some pointers." He turned greedy eyes on the androids.

"Help, yes. Time Lord help us."

Oh, spare me, the Master thought.

It took only a few days' negotiations, followed by tricking the idiots into their own spacecraft and setting off the self-destruct sequence, for the Master to get his hands on the androids. The Nycafein had built masses. It didn't take him long to figure out how to program them, and finally, he had his weapon.

The Master listened into the restaurant's orders, and when the next one was phoned in from Torchwood, he sent the android in. He listened gleefully as the delivery boy was knocked out, and the replacement took his place. "All set, sir," the android said into the tiny microphone.

"Good … android. Now, to victory!"

The successful infiltration of Torchwood didn't take long. Granted, the Master's jubilation was quickly overtaken by the disgust at his view down Jack Harkness' gob, but all the humans passed out within minutes of leaving the table. Time to make the grab.

"Activate," he whispered.

The camera shuddered as his robot chopstick unfolded its spindly legs and wobbled off after the Captain. It took some navigation—quality of movement had been compromised by the size and shape—but the Master had to restrain a gleeful laugh as he found him zonked out on a sofa with his arm dangling on the floor.

The drug slipped into the food had done its magic. Harkness didn't stir in the least bit as the robot worked free the strap of his Vortex Manipulator and slipped it off his wrist. It fell to the floor with a thunk, but he didn't even twitch.

The Master couldn't resist a soft chuckle at the thought of the look on the man's face when he woke up and found the Vortex Manipulator gone. He didn't laugh properly though, not till the robot had shut down the security system and made its way back to the surface triumphant. Then he took the technology, and for several minutes, just laughed and laughed.

Once he'd fixed the Vortex Manipulator, finding his quarry was a piece of cake.

The Master scanned her from a distance. Interesting. She was definitely not his—she was pure-blooded Time Lady. Well, if diploid splitting counted as pure. That meant she had to be the Doctor's, since the Master had definitely not engaged in any sort of experimental breeding.

Since she was so young, her telepathic barriers so undeveloped, the Master was able to tap into her mind with ease. Her name was Jenny. She didn't appear to have a surname. She had been a biological accident in the middle of a war on Messanine between human and Hath. Her father, the Doctor, had not reacted too warmly to having a progenated soldier for a daughter, although he had promised she could come travelling the universe with him—shortly before she got shot. She had woken up to find he had left without her, thinking she was dead, and she had stolen a shuttle and been looking for him ever since. She was two months old. Although she knew he was a Time Lord—the last one, save for her—she seemed to have only the faintest idea what that entailed.

This suited the Master perfectly, and as he tailed her just out of sight, he formed a plan.

"Jenny!"

It was quite startling to be called by her name—it wasn't a very common occurrence. When Jenny turned around, she was even more taken aback to see a stranger racing towards her. Something about him felt vaguely … familiar … but she couldn't put her finger on it.

"Do I know you?"

"Know me?" The stranger skidded to a halt, staring at her in astonishment. "Of course you—Oh. Of course. I'm sorry, I forgot you wouldn't recognise me."

Jenny frowned, taking in his appearance. "Who are you?"

"Jenny, it's me. I know this is going to be a bit of a shock, but—it's me. The Doctor. Your father."

"Wh-what?" she gasped. "You can't—you're not Dad, you don't look anything like him!"

"I know, I know. Oh, this is complicated." The man ran a hand through his hair—sort of like her dad did, come to think of it. "Look. It's a Time Lord thing; called regeneration. It means, if we're about to die, the body can repair itself, but … this is the catch." He gestured at his face. "Every cell gets rewritten. But it's still me, Jenny."

"I don't believe you," she whispered, though she desperately wanted to.

He promptly took out a stethoscope. "Listen." He put the ends in her ears, and pressed it to his chest—over one heart, then the other.

"Two hearts," Jenny murmured. "Just like me." Still …

"Just like you. And I need to say—Jenny, I'm so sorry."

"Sorry?"

"For everything. For leaving you, for … for the things I said … calling you an echo …"

The word, one which had resonated unpleasantly in her thoughts recently, hit her like a tonne of bricks. "Oh my—it really is you!"

Her father nodded, smiling, and pulled her into a hug. It felt different to how they'd hugged before. Not bad, but … different.

"Dad. Am I—am I really just an echo?"

Jenny glowed as she heard words she'd longed for her whole life. "You are so much more than that."

Jenny chatted away excitedly as the Master led her to a stolen spaceship, telling him all about her adventures since she and the Doctor had parted. He smiled, nodded and made inanely sentimental comments when it seemed necessary, and the guise was easily kept.

"I've got a surprise for you," he told her as he opened up the ship.

"Is this the TARDIS?"

"Yes. You like it?"

"It's not quite what I expected, but … yeah, I like it," Jenny said, looking around. "You travel in this?"

Hardly. It was pitiful technology. Luckily Jenny didn't have anywhere near the amount of knowledge to realise that the ship would barely get him from that planet to its nearest moon, let alone through time and across the universe. "I do. Here, take a seat."

"What's my surprise?" she said eagerly, leaping into the chair he'd pointed out.

"I have a machine which can help you get a grip on your telepathic abilities." The Master brought a homemade headset down from the ceiling. It was rather masterful work, if he did say so himself. Better even than the robot chopstick.

"That looks … interesting." Jenny sounded less sure of herself. The Master knew he needed to get a move on.

"Hold still." She did while he attached it to her head. "How does that feel?"

"Bit tight."

"It needs to be, I'm afraid, or it might fall off when you move. It can sting a bit to begin with, but don't worry, that won't last long." He flicked switches and a whirring noise started. "It's warming up. Just one last adjustment."

One more switch, and shackles suddenly clamped her wrists and ankles.

Jenny gasped. "Dad? What's going on?"

"Oh, yeah." The Master turned to face her, grinning. "About that. Sorry, I lied."

"Wh-what?"

"It's not going to help your telepathic abilities. Not that you don't need the improvement, since you couldn't tell, I'm not the Doctor."

Jenny went white, and began to struggle violently. "Wh-what do you want?"

"I'm the Master," he continued. "And I want the TARDIS. Your precious daddy is going to give it to me."

"He'll never give you anything," Jenny retorted. The Master had to admit, he liked her spunk.

"Brave words, from the one who's going to make him."

"Never! Let me go!"

"I can't do that. You want to know what that machine really does?" He grinned at her. "It rewrites every cell in your body until you're a completely new species, and your memories are gone forever."

Jenny fought harder. "Stop it!"

"No. You see, precious Jenny, you are my leverage. Congratulations. You've been upgraded from echo, to bait."

"He won't fall for it. He'd never give in to someone like you, no matter who the bait was."

"Well, we'll see, won't we?" The Master paused, an idea striking. "I suppose it's a test to see how much your father loves you." Jenny froze, and he gleefully took in the fear and hurt on her face. "If he gives me the TARDIS, then he values your life over a machine. If not … well, then I guess you really are just an echo to him after all."

The first tear came, but it didn't stop Jenny straining to free herself, or the foul language that came out of her mouth.

"Manners, Jenny. You should be thanking me. You can be free of doubt forever. That, or you won't be able to remember having been unloved. The machine's nearly ready, so I suppose we'll see, won't we? I'm doing you a favour."

"I hate you," Jenny hissed.

"The Doctor doesn't," the Master replied. "Didn't you know? When I got shot, he sobbed all over me. Screamed at me to regenerate." He paused to let that sink in. "Did he do that when you got shot?"

Jenny couldn't have replied if she'd been able to think of a proper retort, because the machine had finished warming up. Her screams echoed through the stolen ship for hours.

The End