A/N: Hello, fellow Whovians! Welcome to my latest piece of fanfickery. It was originally intended to be a oneshot, but the length really (really, really, really) got away from me, so I have divided it into four chapters—one for each beat in the Master's head.
Nota Bene: it is my head-canon that the Master was born female—we know Time Lords get their post-regenerative appearances decided at random, but Time Ladies get to pick the specifics. If that's the case, it makes sense to me that a Time Lady could chose to regenerate into a Time Lord if she felt like it, but a Time Lord would only regenerate into another Time Lord. So, it seems to me that if Missy can be Missy, then she must have started off female. Especially since she referred to it as an "upgrade" that "some can afford," suggesting that it was deliberate on her part.
Without further ado, here's part one. Enjoy!
Chapter 1: Night and Time and Universe
"That noise… the drums, Doctor. Would they stop, then?" The Doctor gazed sadly at his old friend, knowing that the answer was probably "no," but determined to try everything in his power anyway. He was the Doctor—he didn't just go around giving up on people.
"All these years," the Master mused quietly. "I wonder… what would I be without that noise?"
The Doctor's eyes and throat burned as he contemplated his old friend, twisted and damaged and bent into the menacing shape who now stood before him. The Master made eye-contact with him, and for a moment he saw fear and vulnerability and brokenness, and the terrified ghost of his oldest friend looking out the irises of the monster she'd become.
-0-
He remembered that day—the day everything had changed. They had left their families not twelve hours prior, and all the children in the group were just beginning to stabilize after the brief, tearful goodbyes they had been permitted. Koschei had stayed near him, clearly a little concerned, since Theta was—for possibly the first time since he'd learned to speak—silent. He knew that his friend was just excited—she'd never really been close to her family, and she'd always looked forward to the Academy.
He appreciated that she was trying to be sensitive and toning it down, but he'd hoped that somehow her uncrushable enthusiasm would rub off on him and soothe the ache of bidding farewell to his family and the fear of the initiation he was about to endure. But as they all sat in orderly lines, trying futilely not to fidget, he found himself picking up a lot more on the restless fear of the other initiates, rather than the eternal exuberance of his best friend.
As Rassilon blathered on and on about the solemnity of this ceremony, the way it impacted the rest of their nearly immortal lives, and so on and so forth, Theta tried in vain to swallow. His throat was drier than that time Enkiri dared him to eat sand, and his stomach was clenching painfully. Both of his hearts throbbed horribly in his throat, and he was pretty sure he was going to be sick. He couldn't puke now, in front of everyone. He'd go down in history as the most pathetic novitiate in his class. He tried and failed again to swallow.
"Doesn't Rassilon's head look like a lumein seed?" Koschei whispered out the side of her mouth. "All silver and fuzzy and round?"
Theta forced himself to regard it critically. It was a better option than being violently sick all over the marble floor of the foyer. It did look a little like a lumein seed, he decided. On his third attempt, he was able to swallow a little bit.
"Maybe it'll rain, and he'll grow a sprout," he whispered back, pleased at how steady his voice sounded.
"Maybe a giant bird will swoop down and gobble him up by mistake," Koschei suggested with a silent laugh.
"Maybe he has fruit growing from his arms—and that's why his sleeves are so big," Theta added.
"Hush up!" Illori hissed, just in time, as Rassilon approached the front of the line. Clearly he'd commanded them to follow him, because Illori turned and walked after him, and Koschei whispered "here goes nothing!" and followed her in turn.
"Please don't let me throw up," Theta prayed pitifully under his breath, trying to focus on the ridiculous haircut Koschei had given herself, and nothing else in the whole of the universe. She'd gotten tired of having to wash and comb and braid it all the time, so last week she'd hacked it all off. Her scandalized mother had tried her best to even it out, but she still wound up looking a bit like an unkempt mushroom. He trained his eyes on the dark brown mess as he trudged through the sand, willing it to block everything else from his mind.
It didn't work.
When they reached their destination, Rassilon had them wait just behind a ridge—they would each approach the Untempered Schism alone, accompanied by two elders. Although Illori had arrived first, on account of her family name being at the beginning of the Gallifreyan alphabet, Rassilon chose to start taking novitiates by order of their grades in school, so the process appeared almost random. That was both a relief and a source of further terror for Theta, who got excellent marks—he didn't want to go so soon, he wasn't ready, but he did want to get it over with.
"Guess we'll see who scored higher in that last vector calculus exam," Koschei whispered, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow.
"We both know I totally beat you," Theta breathed back out of habit. "You were up all night playing in the west dunes beforehand*."
"I don't need to study!" Koschei protested.
"Maybe, but you do need—"
The first novitiate's agonized scream cut him off.
Suddenly, he couldn't swallow again.
"Theta," Koschei hissed. He realized belatedly that he'd been standing frozen for several seconds. "Thete! That's you!" Rassilon had called his name a few seconds ago, he gathered from the expressions on the other novitiates' faces.
He was going to be sick, he just knew it. He felt Koschei's hand on his shoulder blade, applying only slight pressure, trying to encourage him forwards. His knees nearly buckled, but he managed somehow to walk-albeit at a slow, timid pace-from the group, up the hill, and then down into the little valley where the two elders waited on either side of the massive opening of the Untempered Schism.
He kept his eyes on his feet as he crept forwards, knowing that as soon as he made eye-contact with it, the Vortex would pour uncontrollably into his head, and it would begin. He knew he was right on top of the thing when he saw the hems of the elders' robes on either side of him, out of his peripheral vision. He closed his eyes, and made one more attempt to swallow.
'At least Koschei will laugh with me if I'm the first ever novice Time Lord to vomit into time itself…' he thought hopelessly.
Then he raised his head, took a deep breath, and flicked his eyes open.
The effect was instantaneous. More than instantaneous-it was like the vortex had begun to work on him before he'd even opened his eyes; not unlikely, since it was, after all, time itself. Uncountable sensations overwhelmed him, and he heard himself screaming, but was disconnected from that tiny sound in a billion, billion worlds of sound and light and color and moving shapes.
No one had been exaggerating about how much this hurt. His nerves were trying to shut down and go into shock already, but the Schism was swallowing him up, taking over, not letting him block it out. It was like trying to drink the ocean while the ocean was being dumped over his head. He was going to die. His head was going to explode, his hearts were going to bleed out onto the sand, and he was going to die right there and then. And it had only been one second. His scream hadn't even risen to its natural full pitch.
The children of Gallifrey had always been told to focus-try and find meaning within the vortex, try and pick out specifics, voices, faces, star alignments, anything they could later use to divine truth. But the sensory overload was simply too much; Theta couldn't imagine he'd ever be able to pick out one voice among the infinity of universal speech.
That was, until he did hear one voice.
Not from the Schism in front of him-no, this wasn't an echo through time, jumbling with the others in one great cacophony of pain. This was from behind him, a shout from the other side of the hill.
This voice belonged to his friend.
His very best friend in the world.
"COME ON, THETA SIGMA! SHOW THAT TIME WHO'S BOSS!"
Four seconds passed as he heard the entirety of Koschei's shout. In that time, he clamped his mouth shut and took a deep, shuddering breath through his nose. The pain was still there, but somehow he could bear it better, perhaps because he'd had something in his timezone to contrast it. And with the strengthened endurance came extraordinary clarity.
He could still see the vastness of the universe, but suddenly it was so beautiful that he began to cry. Every song ever sung, every life every lived, every hero ever took a stand, every child brought squalling into the world, every sound, every color, every taste, every scent, and every star, and every planet, and everyone and everything that ever was.
A single teardrop rolled down his face and fell to the sand, and he heard it, heard the impact, heard the sand grains shift, heard the echo of that one drop resonate down to the planet's core and back up again.
And it was magnificent.
He blinked away the next round of tears, and with his connection severed for even that split-second, he found that his moment of supernatural focus was gone. He wanted to close his eyes, but he wanted that feeling back again-he wanted to keep on beholding the universe, but he couldn't bear the Untempered Schism for one more millisecond. So, regret burning through him in tandem with joy and inspiration and the lingering pain of sensory overload, he turned and bolted, dashing away from the vortex.
But really, he wasn't leaving it behind, he realized as his hearts hammered and his lungs wheezed and his legs pumped, propelling him to the summit of another hill which he crested and then slid down the other side, already headed for the next one. No, he was going to see it again-bit by bit, moment by moment, song by song and hero by hero and star by star and planet by planet.
Because he was a Time Lord.
He was going to fly a TARDIS someday, travel all throughout time and space, always moving, always running, next stop: everything.
A/N: So, for the record, I have the best parents EVER. My mum was at the store and asked me if I needed anything for when she came to visit me this weekend, and there were a bunch of things I needed that I hadn't had time to pick up, so I gave her a list, ending—in true Who style—with "twelve jammy dodgers and a fez."
So, today, my folks show up, and my mom starts unpacking the things she bought for me—lightbulbs, food, a DVD for school, and then she hands me this bag and says, "I couldn't find any jammy dodgers."
Sure enough, she went out and got me a big red fez. So now I need to perfect my Matt Smith impression so that when people at school on Monday ask me what I have on my head, I can say correctly, "It's a fez. I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool."
Until next time, folks!
Hey, if some'a y'all would do me a favor—drop me a review and tell me how you're pronouncing "Koschei" when you read it in fanfics? I came up with two possibilities and my mum came up with a third; I can't figure it out. '-_-