Plot: The Master has been hearing the sound of drums since he was a small child, throughout all of his regenerations yet he never mentioned them to anyone. How did each of his incarnations cope?

Warning: This will contain spoilers to the End of Time.

Doctor Who

The Constant Drumming

By TimeLordParadox

(aka Ross Pickering)

The Drumming

1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, the noise! The drumming! The constant drumming! 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4. The constant, never ending drumbeat! He held his head and shut his eyes, it hurts, oh it hurts, dying hadn't hurt as much as this! 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4. It started fading but it never, ever left him it was always there somewhere rattling around in his mind like a desease, a cancer.

He took a bite of meat from the bone in his hands as he sat in the darkness surrounded by nothing but dust and decay in this abandoned factory. He had once been prime minister of this stupid country and for a while he was the ruler of this entire backward world of humans. He looked down at the bone he was eating from, the people of this world were nothing but food to him now, feeding his slowly dying body, starving off the inevitable but he needed a more permanent solution to return.

He had been resurrected from the grave by a group of loyal followers, loyal to the words and the books of Harold Saxon, the old prime minister and what he called himself in his current incarnation. He thought he had calculated everything perfectly for his return should he somehow die before his great plan was finished. He had calculated down to the last detail but one, human fear. Human fear that somehow, somewhere the evil genius of Harold Saxon would return stronger then before, because of this human fear they had managed to calculate how to prevent his resurrection, only they didn't prevent it, here he was! He was alive and they and others around them had died for this error. But it had an effect on him.

He couldn't regenerate, he had tried to, tried to force a regeneration and had gone to almost any lengths to trigger the healing process that would rebuild his body into a fitter one but it wouldn't trigger, he'd tried everything except attempting to commit suicide which he was sure wouldn't work. That was when he noticed these strange abilities he now seemed to posses, he was faster then before, he could leap great distances into the air, he was even able to fire pure energy directly from his finger tips. This meant this body was ripped open, the energy required to regenerate him was still there inside him but it was constantly switched 'on' in an attempt to keep this resurrected body afloat. Every single time he used these 'powers' he used up the regeneration energy keeping him alive which he had to replace or he would die again, which is why he had decided to feed on humans. He took another bite and ripped more meat from the bone he was feasting on.

How had he been reduced to this? Feeding off humans, stupid, fat, inferior humans, he took another bite from the bone. There were loads of them, plenty of humans to feed him to keep him afloat for centuries but eventually they will discover him, what he is doing and would mass against him and even with his powers he wouldn't be able to stop them finishing him off for good. They wouldn't take kind to him eating their kind, but then humans ate chicken which 'they' felt were less intelligent and more inferior to themselves despite being more of them on the planet so what he was doing to humans was no different, and yet they called him a monster.

1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, the noise! Was it even real or just a torment inside his head? No one believed it was real they just assumed he was insane. He placed his hands on his head again and pressed down trying to make it go away. 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4. It was growing stronger; it had never been this strong. When he was in his other forms it had been there, it was subtle at first, but with each body with each regeneration, it seemed to become louder and slowly grew more tangible until now, now it was constantly going on, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4. The only time it ever stopped was when he was dead, but then everything else had stopped and it seemed without the drums he was nothing, oh he had missed them. When they finally came back he knew he was alive again. 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, he didn't want to die again he didn't want to go back to the darkness, the never ending darkness that scared him even more then the drums.

All of this had started on Gallifrey when he was a child, only eight years old. He was taken for initiation into the academy to become a Timelord. He stood in front of the Untempered Schism, a gap in reality through you can see the whole vortex. Then it started, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, subtlety it even went away at times so he could think but it always returned tormenting him, go away! Why won't you go away? 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, stop it! 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, all his life! 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, stop it, stop it! STOP IT! 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4!

Why won't it stop?

Authors Notes: Don't know if anyone else thought of it but that is my explanation for why the master had these strange abilities in the End of Time.

More coming…