Title: Second Chances
Chapter Title: Master
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When the Master regenerates into a young boy, Jack decides to give him a second chance. Seventeen years later, the Master takes the Doctor up on his offer.
Spoilers: through LotTL
Warnings: ANGST, SLASH, regeneration, crossover with Torchwood, non-canon with "Fragments"
Pairings: Doctor/Master, past Doctor/Rose and Jack/Ianto (past pairings are essentially springboards for angst)
A/N: Hi! Itzika here with another irresponsibly started story! I've been working on this story for weeks so I could get the second chapter done (meaning it's done now!). More on that at the bottom.
Anyway, this chapter is short. The others will be longer, PROMISE.
And speaking of promises, this story is canon with my Doctor/Master oneshot "I Promise", although that isn't really relevant to this chapter. I hesitate to call it a "sequel", however, as really "I Promise" didn't have a clear ending point, so it's hard for another story to pick up where it left off.
…I think that's it for now. On with the fic!
--
Martha and Jack managed to get the Doctor away from the Master's body when, after an hour, it became clear he wouldn't move on his own. Martha sat him down in the next room, just out of earshot of the police questioning her family (Lucy had been arrested). Jack went back into the room.
"I have to burn the body," the Doctor murmured.
"Jack and I will take care of it," Martha promised. She'd never seen him look like this, pale and staring blankly, like he was in shock. She wondered just how close the Doctor and the Master must have been, all that time ago, before the Master snapped. Or was it just the shock of being alone again that was making the Doctor like this?
"I have to do it. He's my responsibility. Everything has to be burned—"
"I said, we'll take care of it." Martha put her hands on his shoulders to stop him from standing up should he try. "You're not going anywhere."
--
Jack walked straight back over to the body and knelt beside it.
There was a bullet hole in the Master's chest, on the left—where a human heart would be. But the Master wasn't human; he was a Time Lord. Which meant two hearts. Which could mean…
Jack placed his hand over the Master's other heart. There was a pulse, rapid and weakening, but still there.
Jack's mouth twisted into a grimace. If it was up to him, he would let the man die for everything he'd done. But after seeing the look on the Doctor's face, he couldn't do nothing. He had to try, at least.
"Come on, old man," he whispered. "You're still alive. You still have a chance. Come on, regenerate. Regenerate, damn you!"
The Master lay still. His pulse was fading fast.
"The Doctor said you were friends once," Jack hissed, trying to keep his voice down. "If you ever cared about him, then regenerate now."
The Master took a faint, shallow breath. "Say my name," he whispered back. "Say it, and I'll regenerate."
Jack's breath caught in his throat. How many times over the Year that Never Was had the Master demanded that of him? And every time, Jack, unafraid of death, had refused, and died, and woken up, and refused again, and died again, in a never-ending cycle that had never been broken in that entire year, not by the Master, and certainly not by Jack…
The Master was smiling now, confident that he had asked what Jack would not give, sure that Jack would not say it, not to save a man he hated.
"Master," Jack said at last. "Please, regenerate."
It sounded like the Master laughed. In the next moment, light blazed from his skin, dissolving his old body so it could build a new one. It was a fierce energy, so much so that Jack staggered back from it, shielding his eyes to avoid being blinded…
When the light faded, a little black-haired boy of about nine years old lay where the Master had been.
--
Jack activated his vortex manipulator, letting it take him where and when it would. He was surprised, when it cleared, to find himself in Wales, year 1990. He hadn't gone far at all.
After making a few stops to get the "boy" clothes, legalise a false identity for him, and set up a system to ensure that no doctor would ever reveal his alien nature, he left the sullen child Master with a family in the countryside. Kanyn and Cerys Jones ran a farm; Kanyn also worked in town so that their ten-year-old adopted daughter Mary would have a university fund when she left school. He told them the boy's name was Griffin (he'd always had a fondness for the name, and seeing how he wasn't having kids anytime soon, didn't mind giving it to the child Master) and that his neighbours, the boy's parents, had recently died, leaving the boy parentless. He couldn't raise a child himself and didn't trust the foster system, but he'd heard that the Joneses were wonderful parents and might be willing to take an orphan in. His promise to help pay for "Griffin's" expenses was only halfway out of his mouth when they agreed.
Jack went from there to the nearest bank, where he set up an account that would wire money to the Jones family every month (about two hundred fifty pounds, varied to account for inflation) using some of his savings from Torchwood. It would run out a little after the Master became "Griffin" and all this began. (Jack stopped that train of thought there so as not to give himself a splitting headache.)
If anyone had asked, Jack would have said that he did all this so that the Doctor wouldn't have to go through the past year all over again. If he admitted it to himself, though, the truth was that he didn't want to subject the Master—only a child in appearance, now—to any more of the Doctor. The Master looked so young, now, that Jack could almost hope that if he was left alone, he might become someone else. Someone as innocent as this new regeneration looked to be.
--
A/N: So? Like it? Hate it?
Expanding on the above—I am, for the first time in my life, REQUESTING A BETA for the next chapter. I'd actually like a couple… if possible… BUT:
Being a grammar freak myself, I've never thought I needed a grammar beta. So, what I need a beta for is:
1. Making sure I haven't royally screwed up British (Welsh) culture/school system (because I am very American…),
2. Telling me where, if anywhere, I've made impossible-to-follow leaps of logic, as is my tendency,
3. Telling me if it sounds like a description and not a story, as is my fear, and
4. Telling me, as a reader, what they like/what's too out-there (this is why I'd like more than one beta).
But I must warn anyone who is interested: this next chapter is LONG, and it leaves a lot of holes for me to fill in later.
Anyway, I'm done rambling. Please review, and tell me if you'd be willing to beta!