A.N.: I have been building up to this fic since Thanks For the Adventure, and in fact I think that there are references to each story since and including then (apart from Amelia's Prayer, but that wasn't really significant to the overall plot of the verse).
Warnings: References to depression, strong religious themes, Doctor self-hating/self-bashing, slash and snogging, spoilers up to The Name of the Doctor
Series summary: The TARDIS doesn't always take the Doctor where he wants to go, but it always takes him where he needs to go; Time Lords hold a secret behind their backs, and they have a duty to follow.
Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who
The Doctor didn't know where he was. He knew he was in the TARDIS, certainly – but when you were inside an infinite ship that existed in a different dimension to the outside world, it was still possible to get lost, especially if you hadn't had enough time to properly explore yet.
Well, that was a lie – he'd had the time; he had just never got round to it.
He had redesigned the TARDIS a few months ago, just after the Angel had taken his two companions. The bright colours and the plastic floor and the round and curvy controls reminded him too much of the two of them, and, now that they were gone, he couldn't bear to have anything that reminded him of them.
So he had changed the desktop, altering every part of the TARDIS until only the most essential features were even remotely like how they had been since he had changed from the sullen, leather-wearing Northerner. Everything was grey now – grey and silver ran through the entire TARDIS, transforming the ship from a warm and friendly place to one that was cold and impersonal. Even the lights in the control room were an ice blue, rather than the cosy oranges and yellows that had filled the room when he had still had them.
But the corridors all looked the same as each other now, with no real distinguishing features to mark them out from all those surrounding them, and of course he could create a mental map of where all of the rooms were now – before they would inevitably start to move around – so that he would know exactly where he was right now rather than merely meandering through a featureless corridor, but he just… hadn't.
The Doctor didn't know where he was – but he didn't care.
River had tried to get him to memorise the new layout of the TARDIS as soon as he had changed the desktop. Of course, she already knew where everything was, because not only was she the child of the TARDIS and so had some kind of connection with the old girl that the Doctor could only dream of even after travelling with her for so long and having her as the only other true constant in his life, but she was partly responsible for the change in the first place-
No. That wasn't fair. It wasn't River's fault, no matter how easy it was to blame her for everything that had happened on that dreadful day. She may have talked Amy into following Rory down the path forged by the Weeping Angel, but, at the end of the day, she had been right, much like she usually was.
The Doctor had been selfish to insist – to plead, to beg – Amy to go back to the TARDIS with him and carry on travelling with him once Rory had been taken. He had reasoned – rather foolishly – at the time that she would be fine, if only given a little time to get over the trauma of losing someone so close to an Angel; after all, he had seen Amy travelling without Rory before and she had shown no outward signs of distress.
Yet he had to remind himself that her calmness during those times was firstly due to pre-wedding jitters and the brain-addling effects of seeing the wonders of the universe for the first time in such a way as most humans would never dare to dream to imagine was possible – at least, not in the early 21st Century, anyhow – and secondly due to Rory having ceased to have ever existed.
In these circumstances – now that the two of them were married, and they were used to the travelling, and they both definitely existed as who they were born as (and definitely not as plastic Romans) – Amy would most certainly not be alright; she might have even ended up hating the Doctor for ever because, like she had said in America, it was always Rory, and it was always going to be Rory.
As for the Roman himself, the Doctor couldn't exactly leave him in the past without Amy. While the times that the Doctor had seen Amy without Rory were relatively uneventful in terms of her mental wellbeing, Rory without Amy was depressing. Rory without Amy questioned his importance in the universe, and that would never do.
So no, he couldn't blame River for Amy and Rory being taken by the Angel. That wasn't fair. After all, she only wanted her parents to be together – and surely that was the most primal wish of any child. Besides, he couldn't exactly blame her now – not when she had found the absolute best way of winning an argument.
Yet even if he couldn't blame her for the desktop change, and even before she had won the argument in the most irritating way possible, he reasoned that he still didn't have to listen to her when she had shown him around the new TARDIS, the knowledge of where everything was already implanted in her head. He could follow her around and look like he was paying attention even though he wasn't, and he was sure that she had at least some idea that that was what was happening, but she never said anything, because that would only make it worse – because she knew what he needed and she gave it to him without question, without a second thought as to how much it would hurt her.
The Doctor was so grateful for his wife, who he had never really treated properly. He had loved her so much, and he had never actually ever told her – at least, not in those words. He should have, so many times, but especially when he had had no other choice but to take her to the Singing Towers of Darillium and then to her little flat in her university the night before she had to go on that expedition – but he hadn't. He had merely taken her to where she wanted to go and then to where she had to go, and then he had retreated further and further into himself and parked the TARDIS that he still didn't know his way around on a cloud in Victorian England, dodging the Paternoster Gang and their continued attempts to bring him back down to Earth.
He wandered the corridors of the TARDIS and got lost and didn't care – and he prayed, because he needed to know, after he had lost almost everything, that he still had something left.
"Do You like what I've done with the place?" he asked cynically, looking up at the ceiling of the corridor in which he found himself. He walked forward slowly, not knowing where he was going. There was a door up ahead to his left, but he had no idea what was behind it. He wasn't even sure if he was heading towards or further away from the control room – or possibly both.
"I widened the corridors," he informed his addressee. "I can fit my wings in them properly now." As if to prove that point, he flexed them slightly, a humourless smirk playing on his lips as the feathers swished through the air without scraping against the walls on either side of them, despite them being fully extended. "I never liked having to retract them."
He dropped his head back down again, his hair falling in front of his eyes and at the sides of his face as he did so. It felt greasy and disgusting, much like the rest of him did, thanks to his new non-existent hygiene routine. All of his routines were fairly non-existent now, with the exception of the ones that involved eating – they had become entirely ritualistic, designed purely to keep him alive whilst he took no enjoyment from the activity; not that he took enjoyment from many activities these days. He managed to take in enough sustenance to keep his body weight stable, but he only ate when he was hungry – if only because hunger was a discomfort he didn't want to add to his grief.
"It's rather bleak, though," he continued, just to have something to say; just to have something to listen to. It had been so long since he'd heard anything other than the sound of his own voice or the various creaking or wheezings of the TARDIS in its motionless state. The slightly uplifting quality that hearing himself talk had to him in these dark and depressing days was almost enough to make him forget about how much he hated himself – though only almost.
"I suppose it's fitting; the bleakness. Everything is grey. Everything is colourless. Like my new clothes."
His fingers curled around the bottom of his new jacket, lifting it up half-heartedly at the hem before dropping it again.
He'd got new clothes for himself as soon as he'd set up in Victorian England; on the few and rare occasions that he ventured down from his cloud – which was not often, as he liked to try and avoid being accosted by Vastra and her gang, and when the Silurian had a superb sense of smell that could suss him out of a thousand-strong crowd from a hundred miles away, any trip down to the surface put him in some form of danger of at least one of them attempting to engage him in a conversation that he would rather be left out of – he realised that he needed to blend in.
Bright red braces and tweed would definitely make him stand out in this period of history, especially now that he had disabled many of the functions in the TARDIS – figuring that, as he wasn't going anywhere, he wouldn't need many of them – including the ship's Retro Stabilisers that changed the perceptions of those around him to make him appear to them as though he was wearing clothes that they considered to be normal, and he had no desire to draw attention to himself.
His new outfit was dull, with dark colours and simple designs. It was not outlandish in any sense of the word – not for Victorian England, anyway. He had even got rid of the bow tie. Rather ironic, he supposed, that Amy had told him time and time again to get rid of the blasted thing, and it turned out that her dying was the thing that made him do just that.
The Doctor stopped abruptly in the middle of the corridor, his breath hitching as his thoughts turned back to his family – his family whom he had now lost. He tried not to do that: to think about them. Even imagining Amy's bright red hair was too colourful for his mind's eye, now so used to greys and blues, and a painful stinging sensation behind his eyes threatened to send tears searing down his cheeks.
"They're gone," he mumbled, sounding defeated. "They're… gone!" He gasped, raising his head again and looking straight ahead of him, but it was no use; he was still thinking about them, and it hurt. His hearts were hammering against his ribcage as he tried to draw in enough oxygen to make his brain work, to bring his thoughts beyond the two of them stuck in America in the past.
"I'll never see them again," he panted, now beginning to feel lightheaded. "And River's gone to the Library, and we both know what that means…"
His thoughts turned back to when he had been in the Library with River and Donna and Lux's doomed expedition crew; when he had found out that he wasn't the last person in the universe to still have Time Lord wings, even though they were little more than corporeal shadows. At the time, he hadn't known who she was, and he couldn't help but think that that was a better position to be in, because now he knew who she was and he hadn't been ready to lose her…
He sunk to his knees in the corridor, his head drooping again as a single tear fell down his cheek and sobs began to wrack his entire body.
"Why won't You answer me?" he asked, his voice on the edge of becoming a wail. "Please. Just… answer me!"
"I think He already has."
The Doctor froze. His sobs stopped instantly, and the tear that was slowly making its way down his face to his chin was not followed by any more. After all, if he had finally gone mad – if he had finally lost his marbles completely – then he wouldn't need to cry.
The voice had come from behind him – but of course, it hadn't really come from anywhere other than inside his own head; it couldn't have come from anywhere other than inside his own head. It was impossible; it was completely impossible.
He reached up to his face, wiping the tear track off of his face rather violently, but otherwise he didn't move. He wanted to turn around, to turn towards the source of the voice, but at the same time he didn't want to have the illusion shattered – if he was still facing the other way from where that voice had come from, he could pretend that it was real, and oh, how he wanted it to be real.
He took a shuddering breath, slowly turning around. He moved his head first, keeping his body in the same position on the floor. With his gaze still fixed on the ground, he swivelled around, not getting up but staying kneeling. When he was facing in the direction from which the voice had sounded, he took a final, deep breath, and looked up.
He was hallucinating. He had to be hallucinating. That was the only explanation for what he was seeing right now. He supposed that it was only a matter of time; when he forsook all contact with anyone that he might consider a friend of any sort and spent all of his time alone wallowing in his grief in an infinite ship that had corridors which all looked exactly the same and that he didn't know his way around, he supposed that – eventually – he would have to start hallucinating.
They smiled at him, that crooked smile that asked him if he had missed them; like he had always known that there was a chance that they would see each other again, when the truth was completely the opposite.
"How?" the Doctor rasped, deciding to just go with it – even if it was a hallucination, he would rather be having such a delusion than staying stuck inside his own head with his grief and his loneliness.
They chuckled slightly, smirking. They walked toward him, and got down on their knees before him. They were still a few inches shorter than him, but it had been that way since either of them could remember, so neither of them seemed too bothered about it.
"It's a long story," they told him, "and I'm not sure exactly how it happened-"
"You were sucked into the Time Lock," the Doctor said matter-of-factly, disbelieving. "I was there; you shot Rassilon and were sucked into the Time War, the Last Day of the Time War: you are dead."
The Master was still grinning. He raised his arms and held them outstretched.
"But here I am," he gloated, before dropping his arms back down to his sides with a slap.
He looked exactly as he had the last time that the Doctor had seen him, right down to the black hoodie and the jeans. His hair was still bleach blond, and his eyes were still brown, and his wings…
It had been so long since the Doctor had seen proper Time Lord wings. River had had wings, but she was only part-Time Lord and hers were just… not the same. The Master's wings, on the other hand…
They were not the same as they had been when he had first regenerated into his current form in the TARDIS in the year 100,000,000,000,000; they had been a soft grey colour all across the entire limbs. These wings, however, were the only set of Time Lord wings that the Doctor had ever seen that were white. No one had white wings – ever.
They were not pure white, though; they had lines of feathers which were a deep black, resembling forked lightning striking from the Master's spine to their tips: a perversion of purity.
Yet the colours seemed to have a soft quality to them in the grey and blue light of the TARDIS' new desktop; as if, even though they had been created by the resurrection potion that Harold Saxon's disciples had cooked up, they were designed to exist in the corridors of this version of the Doctor's TARDIS. And they were outstretched, just as the Doctor's were, and their tips were almost touching against his own light blue.
"Master…" the Doctor breathed.
The Master chuckled. "I still like it when you use my name," he smirked.
"How are you here?" the Doctor asked clearly, enunciating each syllable.
The Master pursed his lips, looking straight into the Doctor's eyes in a moment of silence. "I don't know," he admitted. "All I know with any real certainty is that I didn't fall into the Time Lock."
"I saw you. There was a bright light, and when it died down, you were gone, and so were the other Time Lords, and so was Gallifrey…" The Doctor trailed off; in his mourning for the human family that he had created for himself in this new, youthful life, he hadn't spent much time thinking about the original family that he had had back on that world with the orange skies and the red grass – the family that he had lost twice now, once by his own hand, and once when their return had had to be prevented.
He shook his head lightly, closing his eyes briefly while he recalibrated his brain before opening them once more. He half-expected to see a blank space before him when his vision was restored – to have definitive confirmation that he was indeed imagining the presence of his best enemy in his TARDIS right now, when it was completely impossible for him to be there – but the Master was still there, and the Doctor had even more evidence that this was, in fact, real.
"No one can escape the Time Lock," he continued. "Well, Dalek Caan did, but he went mad." He paused slightly, his eyes widening as he realised that it was in fact perfectly possible for the Master to have escaped the Time Lock, if he had the right equipment – and he could always have got the right equipment somehow, for he had been resourceful like that, not to mention that he was truly a technological genius…
"But you're already mad," he finished.
The Master smiled. "Not anymore."
The Doctor's brow furrowed as the Master reached out for his head, pressing his first two fingers against the Doctor's temples.
"Listen," he whispered, and the Doctor obediently closed his eyes.
A few moments later, he felt the familiar connection of two Time Lord minds meeting – even though it was not something that he had experienced since he had been in his last body, in the palace of dust that the madman now kneeling before him had created for himself. He sat there patiently, waiting for something to happen, but it never did.
"I don't hear anything," he told the Master truthfully, wondering what it was that the Master had wanted him to listen to.
The mental connection was broken slowly as the Master gently drew back his telepathic field from the Doctor's head. The Master lowered his hands back down to his sides, and the Doctor opened his eyes to see such relieved joy in the Master's face such as he had never seen in his fellow renegade before.
"Exactly," he grinned, and it was a genuine grin – not a crazy grin, or a malicious grin; a grin that spoke of true happiness. Realisation dawned for the Doctor, and he felt his eyebrows lift in surprise.
"The drums. They're gone."
The Master nodded eagerly, still beaming, and the Doctor found that it was contagious – even if smiling after so long spent in depression quickly began to hurt his face.
"What happened to you?" he asked, leaning forward slightly. The familiar tingling beneath his skin returned, a longing to know that he hadn't felt since he had been standing in a graveyard in New York.
The Master took a deep breath. "I shot Rassilon," he began, "and the connection broke, so the Time Lock was closing again. I was being sucked in, but I had no intention of going back to the Time War; I ran away from it for a reason.
"But as I was trying to stop myself from falling into the Time Lock, I stepped on something on the ground. There was a crack in the floor, and my foot fell on it. At first, I thought that it was merely damage caused by your… violent entrance."
The Doctor chuckled lightly at that; he had entered buildings in a number of unorthodox ways over the years and centuries and millennia, but crashing through the glass ceiling of a billionaire's mansion after jumping from a moving (falling) spaceship was certainly one of the more eventful ones. If it hadn't hurt so much with the shards of glass slicing into the skin on his face and hands and tearing the odd hole into his trousers and jumper, he would have found it immensely enjoyable – until the agonising thud at the end, which also left a lot to be desired.
"-but then I started to sense something about the crack," the Master continued. "It was no ordinary crack; it would have been there if the floor wasn't there – even if the whole mansion, if the whole Earth hadn't been there."
The Doctor felt both his hearts quicken in their pace in his chest. He remembered offering scarily similar words to a terrified seven-year-old back when this body had still been cooking, back in Amelia's bedroom – before she had known, before either of them had known, just how her story would end.
He forced his thoughts away from the haunting afterword of the Melody Malone book and listened to the rest of the Master's story.
"Not that I got a lot of time to ponder over the crack, because then… there was nothing."
The Doctor blinked at him. "Nothing?"
"Nothing," the Master repeated. "The next thing I knew, I was lying on the same floor, but the room was completely empty, and had been cleaned up. There was nothing in there, not any of the equipment, nor the Immortality Gate; just the floor and the walls. The crack had disappeared, and a whole Earth year had gone by." He paused licking his lips. "And the drums were gone. So if you can explain that-"
"I can," the Doctor interrupted, his mind racing as the final pieces of the puzzle began to slot into place in his head. The Master truly had never fallen from the Naismith mansion into the Time Lock with all of the other Time Lords and with Gallifrey itself: he'd been erased from time while the Doctor merely thought him dead with all of the others of their kind – his almost unique position as a time traveller allowing him to retain the memory of a man who had never existed in his head – and brought back two years later by the Pandorica.
By the Doctor.
He relayed the entire story of that first true mystery of his current life to the Master, telling him about the cracks, and the crash of the Byzantium, and following the trail that so many had left for him to the early First Century and Stonehenge and the Pandorica.
The Master made a few interjections – about Amy, about Rory, about the Doctor's insistent need to collect 'pets' and to always save the day in the most extravagant way possible – but none of it was spiteful or rude; it was banter, the kind that they had shared together back on Gallifrey all those years and centuries and millennia and so many, many lifetimes ago.
There was a silence that followed the Doctor's tale, broken only by the Doctor's heavy breaths; it had been so long since he'd talked – really talked – especially at such length, and he found that he practically needed to pant in order to replace the oxygen that he had expended while recanting his saga. The Master merely stared at him, emotions flickering rapidly through his eyes as he digested what he had been told.
"So I owe my life to you?" he asked, a slight frown on his face.
"Uh… yes," the Doctor replied. "I flew the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS and it brought you back along with the rest of the universe."
"And what about…" The Master gestured to his head with his hand and let it fall back down to his side. The Doctor considered the disappearance of the drums, and remembered how they could have been eradicated.
"When I was shot by the Dalek in the museum, it ruined my wings." The Doctor saw the Master's eyes flick to his right wing, to see the damage for himself. It reminded the Doctor of when, in his last body, he had told Rose of the damage that those black and red pinions had sustained shortly after regeneration. He steered clear of thoughts of his pink and yellow girl; they were… complicated, to say the least.
"Damaged beyond repair," he continued. "But the light from the Pandorica restored them, and now they're fine." He remembered how relieved he had been when he had woken up in the TARDIS, all dressed and ready to go to Amy and Rory's wedding, and he had realised that the damage that had been done to his wings by the Dalek shot had been reversed.
"And the same thing happened with me?" the Master asked tentatively.
The Doctor nodded. "Same regeneration, factory settings. Even the effects from your botched resurrection were reversed."
The Master chuckled, the corner of his mouth curling upwards. "They're gone."
The Doctor nodded, finding that smile rather contagious. He had no idea what it must have been like to have lived an entire life with a constant beat inside your head – let alone a lifetime that was as long as a Time Lord's – nor just how relieving it would be for it to be finally lifted, but he could still share in the Master's joy.
Their mirth died down gradually, replaced with a slightly awkward silence. The Master flicked his wings slightly, almost as though he had suddenly suffered from a nervous twitch, and then – slowly – they were moving.
The Master began retracting his wings so that they sat on his back and the last few feathers weren't as far away from his body. He reached out with them, the tips of the final feathers stretching forwards until they gently touched the Doctor's pinions, and they brushed lightly against his sides. The Master then drew his wings outwards, tracing his own feathers against the Doctor's, as if making sure that they were still fixed, to give himself reassurance of the restorative power of the light of the Pandorica, to know for certain that the drums would never return.
He traced the white against the blue, never once taking his eyes off of the Doctor's face, until they reached the very ends. Neither of them said a thing as he drew them back, creating space between the two sets of wings that hadn't existed the moment before. The Doctor gulped awkwardly, finding that there was suddenly the very strange sensation of cotton wool having been installed inside his skull that was making it very difficult to think straight, and decided to ask the other question that was playing on his mind.
"H-how did you find me?" he asked, ignoring how dry his mouth now felt and how light-headed he was; he was sure that his fingers were gently trembling as he rested his hands on his knees, and his hearts were demanding to be felt as they battered against his ribcage – but he ignored all of it, in favour of satisfying his need to know how exactly it could be possible for the Master, the one responsible for this inexplicable physical reaction, to be there in front of him right now.
"I was sent a message," the Master explained, in slightly more of a monotone than he would normally speak in.
Then, suddenly, the Master blinked, and the atmosphere switched swiftly back to how it had been before any sets of wings had been moved in the slightest. The Master reached into the pocket in the front of his jeans, and retrieved a brown flip case from it. He opened it to reveal a piece of physic paper that called for help in the Doctor's handwriting, and explained exactly where he had parked the TARDIS atop a cloud in Victorian England.
A flash of recognition went through the Doctor's mind at the sight of the object in the Master's hand, and his eyes widened.
"That's my psychic paper," he breathed, pointing at the message.
"What?" the Master asked, looking from the Doctor's shocked and confused face to the psychic paper he was holding up in his hand.
"Where did you get that?" the Doctor asked, reaching into his jacket's inside pocket and pulling out Amy's reading glasses, perching them on his nose and leaning closer to the paper to inspect it.
He was distracted by a snigger.
He looked up to see the Master chuckling at him.
"What?" he asked exasperatedly, slumping slightly as the Master tried to stop laughing.
"Those," the Master pointed at the glasses on the Doctor's face.
The Doctor scowled at him. "These belonged to a… friend of mine," he told the Master, and the seriousness in his voice must have made the Master aware of just how important they were to him, because he held up his free hand in surrender and ceased his mirth.
Giving the Master a single, stern nod of thanks, the Doctor turned back to the psychic paper, inspecting every inch of it. It was, without a doubt, the same psychic paper that he had carried with him for so many years. He ripped the glasses off of his face and returned them to his pocket.
"How did you get this?" he asked, looking up from the psychic paper at the Master.
"I found it in a bin," the Master shrugged, as he closed the flip case with a slap and returned it to the pocket from whence it came, the top of the case just poking out of the top of the pocket. "Somewhere in London."
Excitement began to fizz through the Doctor's veins as he began to realise what had happened.
"Was it near Tintagel Terrace?" he asked eagerly, holding up his hands in front of him, his fingers pointing towards the Master, as he silently begged for the information to be provided quickly.
"Uh… I think so," the Master said slowly, looking confused. "Why?"
"There was a woman," the Doctor explained, talking quickly. "Her name was Jo, she lived at number 64 Tintagel Terrace-"
"And yet you can't remember my birthday," the Master pouted, cocking his head slightly to one side in sarcastic sadness.
The Doctor shot him a quick glare before continuing.
"-and I accidentally left my psychic paper on her kitchen table. She must have thrown it away and you must have found it in her bin – or, at least, in a bin that was close to where hers was." The Doctor looked up at the Master again. "Why were you rummaging through bins anyway?"
"I needed to eat," the Master explained. "I was stuck in London – or, at least, on Earth – in the year 2010 until I could finish this."
The Master rolled up his sleeve, revealing a makeshift Vortex Manipulator strapped to his wrist. It appeared to have been made with whatever he could find on the streets of early 21st Century London (one of the buttons appeared to have been fashioned out of the end of a shoelace).
"That was going to be my next question," the Doctor smiled warmly, wagging his finger at the Vortex Manipulator. It was one thing that the Master had known both that he was in a state of distress such as he was, and where in all of time and space he was currently residing (although 'hiding out' might have been a slightly more accurate term to use to describe his particular situation at this moment in his timeline), but a whole other kettle of fish to consider the actual logistics of him getting to the Doctor in the first place – particularly considering that had returned to the universe on a version of Earth before humans had created any kind of time travel technology, and the Doctor had the last TARDIS in existence.
All in all, it made sense that the Master had managed to make a Vortex Manipulator out of virtually nothing – he was a technological genius, after all.
"Yes, you were always one for asking questions," the Master smirked, and in that moment it became painfully obvious – to the Doctor, at least – that the Master was the single person in the entire universe who had known him for almost his entire life, and had known every single one of his incarnations (except the one with the black wings – but he didn't talk about the one with the black wings). "Now it's my time to ask you one."
"Oh?" the Doctor promoted, straightening himself up to his full kneeling height.
"Why did you need help in the first place?"
The question caught the Doctor off-guard. He certainly hadn't wanted that issue to come up – even though he had been expecting it. He tried to think of a possible way that he could avoid the subject altogether; maybe he could distract the Master in some way so that they never got round to discussing that particular heartache, but even the Doctor knew that it would always come around eventually – after all, if there was one thing that he knew about the Master that carried on throughout all of the Time Lord's incarnations, it was that he would always get what he came for, and in this instance, he had come to find out what was wrong with the Doctor.
Knowing that there was nothing he could do to get away from it now, the Doctor cleared his throat awkwardly and looked away, now finding it very difficult to look the Master in the eye.
"How much did you hear?" he asked quietly. "When you found me, how much… did you hear?"
The atmosphere between them seemed to shift; there was an elephant in the room, but while both of them were aware of its presence, the Doctor was the only one who actually knew what it was. Usually the Master would use moments like this to hurt the Doctor even further, but that was the insane Master – this Master was not insane, and he seemed to understand that the Doctor needed someone to be gentle with him.
"I heard you screaming at God to answer you," the Master answered.
The Doctor risked a glance up at the Master's face, but he kept his face angled to the floor. "What about the bit before that? Did you hear that?"
The Master shook his head, and the Doctor felt a pinch of disappointment. If the Master hadn't heard what he had been saying before, then the Doctor would have to relieve it all over again by talking about it. He gritted his teeth, and told the Master the entire story, from the moment that he, Rory and Amy had been sitting in a New York park, to the moment that he and River had been standing in a New York graveyard with only a Weeping Angel for company.
By the time that he had explained to his best enemy about how the Angels had taken Manhattan, and how they had stolen his two best friends – and, technically, in-laws – away from him, he was completely emotionally drained, but he couldn't stop talking, because he still wasn't finished: he still had to tell the Master about River, about the Library, about Darillium.
By the time that he was nearing the end of his retelling, he thought that he deserved a medal for not shedding any tears.
"My wife, Master; she was my wife, and I… I had to let her go, even though I knew that she was going to die, and I was never going to see her again."
The Master, who had mercifully remained silent throughout the Doctor's monologue of some of the worst moments of his entire impossibly long life, blinked up at the Doctor; and then the corner of his mouth twitched up into a smirk.
"Ah, yes," he said, "Professor River Song. Melody Pond, the Woman Who Killed the Doctor, the Woman Who Knew the Doctor's Name – the love of your eleventh life." The Master reached up to the floppy mess of hair on top of the Doctor's head and carefully brushed some of the locks off of his forehead, tucking it behind his ear, as the Doctor's face fell into a scowl. "Where did all this hair come from? It wasn't like this last time, and that chin! Blimey-"
"Tenth," the Doctor growled through gritted teeth, as the Master's hand froze; his fingers were still tentatively pressed against the Doctor's temple.
"I'm sorry?" he blinked.
"The love of my tenth life," the Doctor corrected him angrily, his fury rising as the Master let out an amused huff of breath.
"Eleventh," he repeated. "You are not defined by your promise-"
The Master then leaned forward, his fingers still pressed against the Doctor's forehead, as he brought his lips to his ear, and whispered one word:
"-Theta."
The Doctor drew in a shuddering breath, his eyes slipping closed as the rage left him in an instant. No one had called him that for so long…
The Master pulled back slowly, not moving his hand from the Doctor's head, though he didn't move back very far, and his breath still ghosted across the Doctor's skin. When the Master did make any kind of significant move, it was only to bring his hand down so that his palm was cupping the Doctor's cheek.
"But that's only one life," he murmured; "One life out of thirteen. And who is the love all of those lives? Every single one?"
The name hung between them, a heavy, palpable presence in the silence that surrounded them. They both knew the answer to that question, but it needed to be said aloud to break the spell cast over both of them. When the Doctor spoke, his voice was barely more than a whisper.
"Koschei."
A wide grin broke out on the Master's face.
"I love it when you use my name."
What happened next was a bit of a blur. Suddenly, there were lips on his: a soft kiss, but only because of its tentative nature – almost as though the Master was afraid somehow to apply any more pressure, in case the Doctor couldn't handle it.
Determined to prove him wrong, the Doctor reached forward, placing his hands on the Master's hips. Someone gasped, and he wasn't sure who, but it gave the other of them licence to slip their tongue into the gap, and the Doctor wanted to lose himself, but there was someone he couldn't stop thinking about, and it wasn't the person whose lips were on his right now.
"Master," he breathed, forcing his head back and away from the Master's, but he was prevented from continuing when the Master surged forward again, pressing another kiss to his lips. Growing agitated, the Doctor pushed the Master away, though the space that he created between the two of them was barely consequential; their lips were still touching, and the Doctor only had just enough room so that he could speak.
"What is it?" the Master hissed, his voice thick with impatience.
The Doctor paused, taking a deep breath and opening his eyes.
"Did you love Lucy?"
A thick silence filled the air once the question had been asked, and the Master pulled away from the Doctor, a frown forming on his face, as he slowly peeled his eyes open.
"She was human," the Master replied simply, and both of them knew full well that he had not really answered the question. "You love humans, not I."
The Doctor blinked, realising with those five simple words something that he had struggled to understand for longer than he could remember. He had spent such a long time wondering why the Master hated humanity so, even when it seemed as though no member of the human race had ever done anything to upset him personally before – yet now, he was beginning to realise that the Master's true animosity towards his favourite race in the universe was nothing to do with him, per se: it was all to do with the Doctor.
The Doctor gulped, licking his lips nervously– and trying to ignore the rather distracting flick of the Master's eyes down to his lips as he did so. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?" he asked quietly, his voice barely more than a whisper.
A distinct look of discomfort formed on the Master's face, but he nevertheless replied.
"I turned the entire human race into me because I was jealous," he explained, his voice thick with tiredness and defeat.
The Doctor paused, trying to phrase his next sentence in his head.
"I saw the two of you on the screen, when I got back from the future," he mumbled. "I saw the way you looked at her."
The Master clamped his eyes shut tight, as though the memory before that time spent on the Valiant – the Year That Never Was – was capable of causing him pain.
"If I told you I did, would you stop taking about her?" he asked, opening his eyes again.
"Only if it's the truth."
The Master let out a bark of laughter, but soon returned to a sombre silence.
"Yes," he admitted quietly. "I was in love with her. Before the Valiant. Before my plan began to fall into place. I loved a human." He sneered, as though the concept of loving a thing that stole so much of the Doctor's attention from him was one of the most disgusting things of which he could conceive. "Happy now?"
The Doctor smiled, not saying anything; he merely leaned forward and resumed the kiss from where they had left off.
The Master moved his hands, lowering one from the Doctor's cheek and placing it on his shoulder, while the other gripped at the Doctor's waist, before he forced them both to their feet.
The Doctor could sense that he was losing control of the situation, and he wasn't ready for that. He turned the Master sideways and began walking forwards, until the Master's back collided with the wall of the corridor with a satisfying thump. With the former madman trapped between him and the wall while he continued to explore his mouth with his tongue, he loosened his grip on the Master's waist and trailed his hands up to the other Time Lord's chest.
He pressed his palms against his torso with more pressure than was strictly necessary, drawing a pained grunt from the Master that he found he cared nothing about, feeling the familiar four-beat rhythm beneath his hands. It was the very same rhythm that had driven the Master insane, and that had forced the two of them apart all that time ago, but it was one that the Doctor had missed feeling beneath someone else's flesh, because it reminded him that he wasn't alone; that he wasn't the Last.
The Master pulled back from the kiss briefly, his head batting softly against the wall behind him as there was no real room for him to make such manoeuvres, and pushed forward violently, twisting sideways so that the Doctor's back slammed against the wall. Then the – what could only be described now as a – full-on snog was resumed, forceful and passionate and desperate and confusing.
The Doctor reached his wings reached forward, curling them around the Master's body and slipping underneath the black and white feathers of the foreign pinions to the back to which they were attached, forcing the Master ever closer so that their bodies were flush and the Doctor had to reach up to the other Time Lord's shoulders just so that they had room to exist.
It didn't take long for his head to start swimming, feeling as though it was being boiled inside beneath his flushed skin, and his imagination began to run wild. A question formed in his head, a question that he would never ask under any other circumstances, but that his snog-addled brain thought was perfectly reasonable – and also had a chance of being affirmed with a positive answer.
The Doctor pressed into the Master's shoulders, pushing him back so that he could form the words – though he found that he had to take massive gulps of air before he could even conceive the notion of actually speaking out loud, and the Master merely stared up at him with furrowed brows as he tried to work out what possible reason the Doctor could have had to interrupt what they had been doing. It was another few moments before the Doctor could talk properly, but the words still came out in an undignified rush.
"Travel with me," the Doctor gasped, a hopeful smile forming on his lips as he continued to pant from the lack of sufficient oxygen that he was experiencing – he was wondering how long it would be before he would need to request the services of his respiratory bypass.
Excitement was buzzing through his veins at the prospect of the Master travelling with him – especially this, sane, version of him; the last time that he had offered such a thing to the man before him, it had been out of necessity: the Master had needed to be with someone, to stop him from destroying the entire universe on a whim one day. This Master, however, needed no such thing; he could travel with the Doctor because he wanted to, rather than because he needed to, and it would give them the chance to return to the friendship that they had shared before they had left Gallifrey and before this ridiculous feud had begun.
They could be friends again – in fact, they could be more than friends.
But the Master didn't look so enthusiastic at the prospect; the smile melted off of the Doctor's face as the Master let out a little huff of breath and replied to the three little words that the Doctor had offered him. "I can't."
The excitement that the Doctor had felt the previous moment evaporated, replaced with an intense disappointment. "Why not?" he sighed, his posture sagging against the wall behind him.
The Master gave him a sad look, and something thundered in his eyes: a piece of information that he had been holding on to for a very long time.
"There's someone else you need to meet," he explained softly. "Someone you will meet so soon. Someone impossible."
The Doctor's brow furrowed; the Master had never been one for prophesying – where had this come from?
"Who?" he asked, impatience rising within him.
The Master smirked, and it became painfully obvious that he had no intention of answering the Doctor's question. The Doctor squeezed the Master's shoulders painfully, his face falling into a scowl.
"Tell me!" he snapped, shaking the Master slightly, like a petulant child.
"I can't," the Master replied, shaking his head lightly. "You have to find out on your own, and it'll be a while, but it'll be worth it, because they'll save you. So many times."
The Doctor took a deep breath to steady himself, unable to believe that there could be something out there waiting for him now that he had lost the three people he had held most dearly to him throughout this entire lifetime. He found himself sceptical, and the Master obviously realised it.
"Please, just trust me," the Master begged, drawing the Doctor off of the wall only to push him back into it with enough force to send a jolt of shock through the Doctor's back.
The Doctor saw the desperation in the Master's eyes: the need to be believed, and the need to be trusted. The Doctor sighed, knowing that whatever it was that the Master knew was important, and that he had to respect that he couldn't know anything more about it right now. He nodded, but he couldn't help but feel a shot of disappointment rush through him.
"So… we only have one night?" he asked quietly, slowly, rubbing his thumb absent-mindedly against the Master's shoulder.
The Master nodded, and the Doctor sighed. There was a moment of sombre realisation, before a cheeky smirk began to play on the Master's lips.
"So let's make it count."
The Doctor grinned, mirroring the Master's expression as the shorter Time Lord leaned up to kiss him once again, this time wasting no time in slipping his tongue between the Doctor's lips. The Doctor reached up to the Master's head, burying his fingers in his bright blond hair as his other hand slipped down the other Time Lord's body to rest on his hip.
Then, all of a sudden, there was a whooshing noise from beside them, and they both turned their heads to investigate its cause, pulling their lips apart with a loud smack: a door had appeared next to them – a door which was the only one out of all of the doors in the entire TARDIS that the Doctor would recognise, now that he had changed the desktop.
"What's that?" the Master asked, turning back to the Doctor as a furious blush began to burn at the taller Time Lord's face.
"Uh…" he murmured, clearing his throat awkwardly. "It's uh…" He gulped nervously. "It's my bedroom."
"Oh," the Master nodded once, before a wide beam broke out on his face. He reached out to the door handle and pushed the door open, bringing his other hand down from the Doctor's shoulder to interlock their fingers together. "Come on, then," he grinned, pulling the Doctor towards the door.
The Doctor chuckled as he was dragged towards the door and the room beyond, but he paused as he stood on the doorstep to his bedroom. He looked up, smiled, and mumbled,
"Thank You."
A.N.2: I hope you like my The End of Time Part 2 fix-it. I worked it out a long time ago, cause I knew that I wanted the Master to survive and make a comeback in Eleven's era, so I hope it went well.
A.N.3: No matter which ending of Parallels and Perpendiculars you consider to be canon within this verse, the Doctor still left his psychic paper on Jo's kitchen table and had to get a new one (even though that's only mentioned in the second ending, it still happened in the first as well).
A.N.4: This is the last fic in what I kind of refer to as 'Phase One'. From now on, the stories will no longer be following the linear progression through the Doctor's timeline as they have been. Next time, I will be looping back on myself to an Eight fic, and then there will be two more stories that follow on chronologically from that story, and then it will probably go a bit weird...
UPDATE 14/09/14: Part fourteen of the Angel!Verse, Wrapped in Feathers, is up now.