A/N: I am a seasoned Doctor Who fan with 32 years' love under my belt, but even so I'm nowhere near familiar enough with the reams of written material dealing with the Doctor's and the Master's early years to do most of it any justice in this story. I am therefore relying solely on the canon of the TV episodes themselves, and even then, I may either a) slip up, or b) take artistic licence, both of which I hope you'll forgive in the spirit of storytelling.
Thank you for reading. I shall try not to disappoint.
The only sound in the room was the almost ceaseless scratch of a quill pen across a sheet of curling parchment.
The pen was lifted, dipped into a fine silver inkwell and returned to its labours with a neat economy of movement; the writer, meanwhile, had barely averted his focused gaze from the parchment all the while. He traced out another neat circle and began to fill it with letters, his breathing slow and steady. As he worked, a tiny smile began to crease the corner of his mouth as he imagined what his tutors would say if they could see him. Gallifreyan was a pure language, they said. The oldest and purest in the universe. Corrupting it in this way would cause no end of white faces and gasps of horror amongst the Academy faculty.
"What are you doing?"
"Writing, Koschei," said the Doctor, casting the briefest sideways glance at his friend, now slouching in the doorway to their apartment. "I would have thought that much was obvious."
"Don't call me that, please. I respect your title even if I fail to understand it. The least you can do is respect mine." He emerged at last from the shadows of the arched doorway and moved over to the window, standing to one side to keep the brilliant sunlight out of his eyes, staring out over the forest as it shimmered in the light of second sunrise.
"I'm sorry," said the Doctor, setting the quill aside with exaggerated care and turning in his chair to study his friend with slight but perfectly serious curiosity. "Master. You know, I've been meaning to ask you why –" he went on, but his friend raised a hand to quell him.
"Ask all you will," he said, archly. "I don't plan to discuss it. It's not personal, you understand," he added, his imperious expression softening somewhat as he broke into an unfamiliar smile that bore the faintest hint of sufferance. "My parents questioned me as well, after the ceremony. They're not happy."
"It's not their business to ask you about your title, and the Academy will support you in that." The Doctor sighed, pushed the parchment aside and rose from his chair. He joined the other boy at the open window, and the breeze very briefly stirred his fine blond hair across his cheek.
"You asked me," said the Master, a trifle reproachfully.
The Doctor waved an airy hand. "That's different," he said. "For one thing, I'm your friend, not your father. For another, I'm nosy." He stopped and chuckled, but sobered again at once as he saw that the Master was in no mood for levity, no matter how affectionately intended. "Look," he went on, changing tack, "your parents will come to terms with your choices in life, I'm sure of it."
"That's all very easy for you to say," the Master said with a one-sided shrug, and then, as if this gesture of irritation had not served him well enough, he scowled as well. "Your parents are just as unorthodox as you, if not more so. I hear your mother's been arguing with the Castellan over your term of service yet again, and your father can't seem to stay away from that silly little backwater planet, that...what is it called, again?"
"It's called Earth," said the Doctor, evenly, linking his hands behind his back, his peaceful smile broadening a notch.
"Savages," his friend replied bluntly, and then stepped over to the desk and picked up the fruits of the Doctor's work between finger and thumb. "Is this what he brought back for you? Ancient writing technology? Really, my friend, you might as well be chiselling away at a slab of granite." He paused, and then subjected the writing on the parchment to closer scrutiny, his brows knotting in disbelief. "And if the Docent sees this, you'll be in correction for the rest of the term. Adulterating Gallifreyan with human language?"
"Merely an exercise," said the Doctor, taking back his property with one smooth movement and rolling up the parchment between his palms. "I wanted to see if the two could be effectively combined while still maintaining coherent grammar and clause structure. Besides, it's a remarkably pretty language, don't you think? It's called Latin. Father says the humans are developing some quite sophisticated cultures now."
"Sophisticated!" the Master cried, scornfully. "From what I hear, their chief hobby is shooting one another full of arrows. I'm surprised they find the time to write anything once they've cleared away the bodies and washed the blood out of their clothes."
"Well," said the Doctor, a mote of annoyance creeping into his tone, "if you've quite finished exerting your moral superiority over a fledgling species, isn't it about time we were going? Relative Time Theory and Practice in fifteen minutes. Hopefully, this time it won't just be the former," he added, a gleam in his eye. "I'm keen to get my hands on a real TARDIS, aren't you?"
"No, not especially, considering the number of restrictions placed upon their use," said the Master, fetching his mantle from its hook and fastening it around his narrow shoulders. "Has it ever occurred to you just how much power the Time Lords waste merely watching time, when they could be making use of it?"
"Making use?" echoed the Doctor, hiking one eyebrow as he spoke. "You know, sometimes you worry me with your use of language."
The Master didn't offer any response to this comment save for a perfectly serene smile.
The two boys were more than halfway across the Great Circle and approaching the high gates of the TARDIS field before the Master spoke up once more.
"I'm well aware of your concerns, Doctor," he said, without turning his head to address his friend, "but really, you needn't entertain them any further. I may not be content with mere philosophy, but I'm no more dissatisfied with this society than...well, than you are yourself." He laughed, and drew back his hood, allowing the light of the suns to glance across his sallow features.
"I imagine I'd be more than dissatisfied in your position," said the Doctor. He screwed up his eyes against the shining bronze light of noon as he raised his gaze to the gates on the far side of the circle. They were more than two storeys high, each bearing a carving of the Seal of Omega. "Such high expectations. Of course, you'll live up to them."
"Will I?" asked the Master, although he sounded amused. Without waiting for an answer, he raised his hand and knocked lightly on the gate, producing a hollow peal far out of proportion to his gentle rapping on the metal. In response, a smaller gate opened in the flawless silver surface, swinging inward on noiseless hinges. The Master stepped through, lifting the hem of his robes, and the Doctor followed.
The TARDIS field lay just outside the dome, and covered an area almost double that of the Citadel itself. Now that they were out in the open, the boys immediately felt the attention of the wild winds of spring, rather than just the tame breezes of the Citadel. The Doctor caught at the edges of his cloak and pulled them around himself; as soon as he had done so, however, the winds rose even further, as if determined to rip the garment from him. He stopped to sweep his hair back and cast his eyes over the sight that lay before them.
There were more than six hundred TARDISes on the field, arranged in perfect concentric circles with the teaching stage at their very centre. Most of them, he knew, already had pilots of their own, but there were a few reserved for training purposes. Idle now, they were all in their default form, and the Doctor thought to himself that they looked terribly bored.
He stopped to examine that thought because it interested him greatly, but remembering his father's tales of flights across the universe, through the breadth of space and the length of time, he couldn't see what was so outlandish about the observation. These were not just machines, he knew, and the seamless melding of the organic and the mechanical stemmed from technologies developed by Omega himself, and refined to such a point that it had scarcely been necessary to tamper with them since.
The Master set his head against the rising wind and continued down the gentle sandy slope, then stopped some way along the central aisle as it became clear that he was no longer in company. He turned over his shoulder to see the Doctor standing by the nearest TARDIS, tugging off one red velvet glove before laying his bare palm on the machine's flank, petting and soothing it.
"It must get lonely out here," the Doctor murmured. "Cold, too, I shouldn't wonder. I'm sorry."
"Have you quite finished?" asked the Master, after watching this performance for a few seconds. "Talking to a TARDIS now? I'm sure you get stranger each day."
The Doctor gave the soft, cool surface one last friendly pat and then turned away, drawing his glove back on and straightening the fabric across the back of his hand with minuscule attention to detail, well aware that this display would cause a further spike of irritation in the other boy; but then, what were best friends for? Only when the glove was fitted to his satisfaction did he look up into a distinctly chilly blue stare.
"If we're late, we'll be punished," said the Master, his voice cool and liquid in spite of his growing annoyance. The Doctor opened his mouth briefly, thought better of further provocation and merely shrugged lazily before sauntering down the path once more.
"Who cares if we're late?" he asked. "'I've never known Borusa lose his temper at anyone for anything. Even Maxil," he added, with a light snort, "and that boy's one of the most hapless students in the history of this Academy."
The Master turned a surprised expression on his friend, one black eyebrow curled.
"You didn't know?" he asked. "Borusa regenerated two days ago. I haven't the faintest idea what frame of mind he's likely to be in now."
"He did? He didn't. Did he?" the Doctor exclaimed, in some shock. "I didn't know he was dying."
"Regenerated of his own free will, or so I'm told," said the Master, lowering his voice to a hiss as they reached the edge of the low stage and mounted the pink-veined marble steps to the wide circular dais, approaching a gaggle of waiting students and their instructor, Borusa himself, now clearly not the man he once was. In place of the dumpy, slightly absent-minded little man with a shock of silver hair, the newly-regenerated Borusa towered over the two late arrivals in a swirl of elaborately trimmed black silk robes and matching cap, his arms folded and his cadaverous features set in lines of solid stone. He fixed each of the boys in turn with a stare that cut lines of cold fire across any embryonic hope of cheek or defiance, and waited until he was sure he had their full attention before speaking.
"You're late," he said.
"Forgive us, my Lord," said the Master, quickly. "We were –"
"You are sorely mistaken, boy," said Borusa, "if you believe I am in any way interested in your jabbering or fevered attempts at excuses. You are studying to be Time Lords, and if you are late in attending my class one more time – either of you – then I shall see to it that you're dismissed as unfit and removed from this Academy forthwith. Time Lords are never late. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"
"Yes, my Lord, very clear," said the Doctor, shuffling his foot awkwardly and averting his gaze. In the brief silence that followed, he fancied he heard a very quiet laugh from the gathering of students on the far side of the dais, but if Borusa also heard this, he elected to ignore it for the time being, and merely subjected the pair to a further moment of silent condemnation before continuing.
"Had I my way I would separate the two of you to minimise your potential for disruption," he said, severely, "but for now I have no option, since I have already assigned my teams. Still, you can surely make very little mischief in that," he said, extending an arm and indicating a tired, battered old Type 40 skulking in the low sand dunes that had formed at the windward side of the stage.
The Master turned first, and as his gaze landed on the sad and sorry thing, he balked.
"That belongs in a museum!" he protested, instinctively. Borusa's brows dropped at once, and his pale lips thinned so much they were in danger of vanishing entirely.
"Are you proposing to argue with me, boy?" he asked, the warning only thinly veiled by the question itself. The Master hung his head.
"No, my Lord," he muttered, then jabbed a surreptitious elbow into the Doctor's ribs. "Come on, then."
The Doctor, meanwhile, had suffered no such disappointment at their assigned machine. True, it stood amongst a rank of smart Type 70s like a wart, but in his mind's eye, it was shining like the brightest of beacons. He walked alongside the Master and down the steps at a steady, dignified pace, all the while battling the urge to run ahead like a child and throw himself through the doors with a whoop of intemperate glee. Sixty years of study, and theory, and – late at night, when the Citadel was fast asleep – gazing out of their apartment window at the dark and distant field with a longing sigh in his chest had finally come to fruition.
He was going to fly a TARDIS!