White light became yellow, yellow light faded to a pale and then burnt orange; and the drumming raged, always the drumming, always the call to war; the beating of a Timelord's hearts in his ears, forever in his mind. He was hungry, so hungry! He wanted sweet, juicy, salty, meat, and grease; pork, ham, beef, flesh, water, wine; food.
Then everything stopped. The light the hunger; everything but the drums.
A man cried out angrily.
He felt the man push him to the ground and begin to shout, "how dare you?! How dare you, Master, defy me!?"
The Master laid on the ground passively, smiling up at Lord President Rassilon of the Gallifreyan Council.
Ta, ta, ta, tap; the drums slowly began to get louder.
"Lord President, calm yourself," a woman spoke. The Master recognized her and his smile vanished. An ashamed flush, for the first time in hundreds of years, crossed his face when he glanced at him; though it was only for a moment, such sad disappointment stung him with its ice.
The President left in a huff with the rest of the accompanying Council, limping in pain from their failed conquest.
"Until your mood and health improve, I shall take on your duties," the woman said. Two Gallifreyan soldiers stood the Master up before the woman reproached them in her knowing tone.
"Don't touch him. Leave him to me and I will escort him."
The soldiers looked skeptical.
"Don't worry. He wouldn't run now," she assured them, and they left.
The Master could only hold her gaze for a moment before he had to look away, such guilt and shame burning his cheeks and upsetting his stomach as the drums beat harder, thudding in his head; tum, tum, tum, tum.
"Master," the woman started. The Master didn't move, waiting for her to speak.
"...walk with me a while," she said, startling him.
He did as he was told and walked with the Councilwoman like a child who was expecting to be reprimanded for his actions; in other words, he respected her opinion of him.
They walked a distance without a word and at every chance he got, the Master looked out of the windows, through the glass dome of the citadel, to see fields of blood red grass, the panopticon, the academy with its many rooms and teachings, and differently shaped TARDIS' flying boundlessly under the burnt orange sky.
'The council will probably exile me to Mount Perdition...' he thought absently to himself.
The woman stopped walking and looked at the Master, making him fidget a bit in his hoodie. To his surprise she embraced him, petting his whitened hair in a motherly way.
The Master was overwhelmed and sank his weight against her, hiding his face on her shoulder as tears welled up in his eyes.
"You found your way home," she whispered.
"...Mum," was all he could choke out; she was the closest thing he'd had to a Mother in all his life.
Her title was the Ethos and she was the Doctor's mother; the Ethics of the Gallifreyan Council.
The Master's parents had gone exploring, researching as professors of Time in the academy, and had never returned, leaving the Master, their only and five-year-old son, alone in Gallifrey until the Ethos and the Doctor found him. From then on he regarded Ethos and the Doctor as his own blood and they thought the same of him.
"I am proud of you for saving my boy," the Ethos said.
"I'm s-sorry, Mum," The Master stammered, trying his best not to cry.
Tum, tum, tum, tum. Tum, tum tum, tum. The drums wouldn't stop.
"Why?" the Ethos asked.
"For forgetting you," he said. She looked at him and shook her head.
"You're still one of my boys, and I still love you," she said.
They walked a while longer, quietly, nearing his prison with every step; but he didn't mind. If his prison was to be in Gallifrey, he welcomed it.
Ba, ba, ba, bum. Ba, ba, ba, bum. The drums got louder and louder and it made the Master angry. Why wouldn't they stop?
Finally they arrived at the prisons and the Gallifreyan soldiers grabbed hold of the Master's arms.
"Now we part, 'til your trial in eight days time; when the Council will surely have gathered its wits about it. The Logos will arrive to question you tomorrow," The Ethos said, professional once again.
"Wait, what day is it?" The Master asked hurriedly.
"The first day of the week of Saro, of the seventh constant millennia," The Ethos replied. She left, and the Master was thrown into a glass jail, impossible to escape as he well knew; as if he wanted to escape.
"The first of the eight days of silence," the Master muttered under his breath in a hopeless tone. There were only ten more days until Gallifrey was destroyed by the Doctor, but the Council was bound to know that; he wasn't quite sure they did.
So the Master sat and listened to the drums drone on and on and on.
Ba, ba, ba, bum. Ba, ba, ba, bum.
They were infuriating and had only gotten louder, impossible to ignore since he'd arrived home.
His eyes hurt, stinging with every slow blink, and his body ached, for it was the fifth day of his captivity, and he had not yet slept. He muttered incomprehensible words to himself, staring out of his glass jail and out the nearest window at the burnt orange skies that turned a blackened green in the night. The Logos had already been in to question him three days ago, and he, seeing no point in hiding anything, told him every detail of his return; his past, and their future, he thought better told at the trial.
"The drums need to stop," The Master mumbled, quietly crazed over the days. He could see his home, but he couldn't touch it.
"Drums...stop…"
He could see it but he couldn't touch it; 958 years wanting to be home and he couldn't touch it.
"Drums-"
"Master," the Ethos' voice startled him. He turned his head slowly from the window and only after blinking a few times was he able to focus on the Councilwoman.
A very weary and bitter smile crept across his face.
"Ethos," he started, pushing his hood off his head.
"Have come to take the drums away?" he asked, the drums almost too loud for him to hear her reply.
"You have visitors," she said, ignoring his question.
Visitors? Who would see him now? He hadn't had many friends in Gallifrey, at least none like the Doctor; none of them had ever tried to understand him and the drums that plagued him even then.
"I don't want see them," the Master said dismissively.
"You will see them, Master. It would be beneficial to you," the Ethos said in a stern, motherly tone.
"Who, then?" he asked. She didn't answer, and instead bowed in respectful farewell before two figures walked up to the glass of his prison.
For a moment he did not recognize the figure, for his eyesight was still blurred, but when his vision cleared, his hearts seemed to stop and the drums no longer remained prominent in his mind.
He almost drowned in her bright and piercing lavender eyes, her dark hair, and that lithe figure; a flicker of confusion and also hope danced in her eyes, reflecting off the lessening apathy in the Master's eyes.
He knew the woman, but he did not know the little gray-eyed boy that clung to her hand with his own grubby one.
"Master," the woman began, her voice pure and rich; he couldn't handle her sight and her voice.
The Master looked down, trembling, and set his hand on the glass in Gallifreyan apology, and he was overcome with shame and grief.
Uncharacteristically, he looked away, tears falling from his eyes and sorrow wrenching at his hearts.
"Calm," he choked on title. His love for this woman and his longing for his home had pushed him over the edge of mental and emotional agony.
He could see his home and now the woman who stood before him, his wife, but he could not touch them. The human wife, Lucy Saxon, was nothing, never had been, and could never compare with the Calm's beauty and intelligence and altogether loveliness.
"Look at me, Master," the Calm said.
"I...can't," he said. "I am too ashamed...in your future...I-I couldn't…" he couldn't bring himself to say what he was imagining and remembering: the bloodiest day of the Great Time War when his wife was killed before he could get to her.
"Look at your son, then," she pleaded.
'Your son.' Those two words echoed in his nearly silent mind.
Quickly he turned his head and looked at the boy.
"Mum? Is that my Papa?" the little boy's voice chimed in curiosity. His son. He never knew he'd had a son. He'd been away so much in his past.
"Yes, Prince," the Calm said, looking down at the child with a loving smile.
"Is my Papa a bad man?" the Prince asked. The Master was overwhelmed and the tears would not stop falling from his eyes.
'Yes,' The Master thought, but a resounding, yet quiet "no" left the Calm's lips.
"He is a good man," she continued.
"Then why is he in prison?" the Prince questioned.
"I will tell you when you're older," the Calm said. "Now, the Ethos will take you to the Academy," she said, nudging the child gently and watching fondly as he left with the Councilwoman. Before the Prince left, he turned and shouted "goodbye, Papa! Get out of prison soon!" over his shoulder, grinning heartily. The Master forced himself to smile back and watched his son leave.
He still couldn't look at his wife.
The cold space of glass where his trembling hand was placed suddenly grew warm and he looked to see that he Calm had accepted his apology by resting her delicate hand directly over the space his was.
"I forgive you, love, for anything you might have done in the future." She smiled. The Master wept bitterly, trying to compose himself in front of his wife, but failing. He set his forehead on the glass as well as his other hand, looking down.
"Calm...I-"
"I love you, Master, and that's that," she said decisively.
"I love you too," he breathed, looking up, her gaze calming him; the drums were almost silent within him.
"You're off travelling, at present," she started with a little giggle. "I'd imagine you'd be very shocked to see yourself in prison now."
"Yeah," he answered, at a loss for any other words. He was smiling now, a genuine smile; grinning through his heated tears.
"If you have the chance, my love," suddenly began to whisper. The guards began to move towards her. "Come and visit me and your boy," she finished with a playful smile. The Master nodded, glaring at the guards who now stood directly behind his wife.
"Today is Prince's first day at the Academy," she added before the guards said "time to leave."
"If I am allowed, I shall come to see you again," she said as she was escorted towards the door. The Master wished for all the worlds that he could step through that bloody glass and go home with the Calm, to take her away and hide her and the boy from the battle that was fast approaching.
'First day at the Academy...' he repeated, watching his wife leave sorrowfully.
Then panic rose within him.
"On the ninth day, the Academy fell and all those within it," he recited Gallifreyan history to himself.
"Calm, take Prince out of the Academy!" The Master shouted in warning.
"Why?" the Calm called, turning to look at him before she was pushed out through the doors.
Those of Gallifrey would not let him warn her, the bastards. The Master was furious.
Then the drums returned, blasting, jumping in volume, for he had quite forgotten them when in conversation with his love.
Da, da, da, dum! Da, da, da, dum!
The Master clutched his head and fell to his knees.
"Make them stop!" he shouted.
"Shut up!" he screamed.
They didn't stop.