The diamond nestled in the crook of the timelord's fingers. So many years now since he had last been here, but that was the trouble with time travel – everything looked exactly as it was. Glass crunched and chinkled under his boots, specks of blood had barely dried, all beneath the shattered dome high above. Across the room, the dormant, empty booths.
Wilf, don't! Don't!
We will initiate the Final Sanction. The rupture will continue until it rips the Time Vortex apart.
Take me with you… let me ascend into glory.
You are diseased.
Kill me… go on then. Do it.
Get out of the way.
Get out of the way.
The link had been broken. The Doctor had shot the machine cradling the white-point star and sent his homeworld, his people and his nemesis back into the void of non-existence. Such a tiny little thing, this perfect, innocent jewel plucked out of the burnt fragments of metal and circuitry. The link was broken, but it was only now in this moment of reflection that The Doctor realised there were two.
He ran for the TARDIS; set co-ordinates for a place that had for so long been redundant. She materialised in the constellation of Kasterberous and in the utter nothingness that had once been Gallifrey, The Doctor held the diamond. His hearts quickened pace. How could there be hope? It was impossible, and far, far too simple.
"Doctor." The word whispered from the diamond, or perhaps the TARDIS, or maybe the universe. It was his voice. Then more words came, fast and complicated, but The Doctor absorbed them, listened and listened until the opening possibilities brought tears to his eyes. At once, he set about following the instructions, racing around the console to shove levers and wind cranks, adjust settings and stab buttons. He barrelled down the curving steps to the wiring beneath the time rotor and rooted amidst thermal couplings, pulling out plugs and reattaching previously loose ones in a flurry of sparks.
It took a good hour of work. When he was almost done, the casing of the communications panel had been removed and a device constructed in its place that now clutched the white-point star. Having taken extra care not to expose himself to the raw power, The Doctor rigged a pocket of the TARDIS's energy to channel up into the diamond. It began to glow, too bright for him to look at directly. Hastily, he yanked a lever to open the TARDIS doors to space. The push of a button sent a beam of the energy blasting out into the black. For a harrowing few seconds, the universe seemed to roar. Whiteness split through the vacuum. The guided TARDIS light shot through the rupture and in another instant something was ripped through into contemporary time and space, a birth into reality the timelord could hardly believe. Urgency struck him. He shut off the energy beam and activated an oxygen sphere large enough to engulf the naked entity curled up in nothingness. He secured himself to a rope of unused wiring and dove headlong out of the ship.
"I've got you, hold on," he assured the other being, wrapping his arms about their frozen form. He watched the reality tear seal itself over beyond them and then hauled them both back inside the TARDIS. "Stay with me," The Doctor pleaded, leaving his unconscious guest on the floor for the briefest of moments to return with a blanket. He smothered the helpless figure as warmly as possible then crouched over him to press his forehead to the other timelord's.
"Come back. I've got you. Come back. Please." The Doctor poured the words gently into the other man's mind.
The Master awoke with a heaving gasp, eyes bloodshot and rolling. With all caution, The Doctor stepped back, concealing his relief. Still within the shape of the resurrected Harold Saxon, The Master swallowed down a few more lungfuls of air, adjusting to existence, letting his body normalise after the shock. He blinked, taking in the information of his surroundings, cringing at the brightness of the control room until, at last, he looked up at his rescuer.
"Doctor?" he asked, hoarsely. He did not recognise him by his new face, perplexingly young, clad in a shirt, bowtie and jeans with braces cast back to hang loosely behind him. Yet The Master knew him, even without the presence of the time machine. "It worked, then. You did it. You found the link I planted."
"Yes, in time. I had thought it would just be a diamond when I severed the connection, a buried relic of a buried civilization. I died and tried to move on, lived on with a new life. I could not bring myself to return until now. It was almost too much to believe. The white-point star was a key, but you worked out how to attune it to yourself, yourself alone. You left your words with it, the calculations for slipping through a timelock, how to bring out one solitary thing without unleashing everything I banished."
The Master gave an arrogant smirk. "I knew saving your life would make you sentimental enough to help me return."
"That wasn't the reason," The Doctor replied. He turned to the console and plucked at buttons, to no end or goal. It was clear to another timelord that he was operating nothing.
Frowning, The Master clutched the blanket to make certain it was secure and got to his feet. He tilted his head with curiosity, noting the cloud of psychic tension hovering about his age-old enemy. There was grief, of course, but its strength seemed to drown everything that had once been the Oncoming Storm.
"Because you were alone again?" The Master meant to sound derisive, but concern tainted his tone.
"I have no one." The Doctor moved a little further around the console. He looked up at the scanner and pretended to read whatever it displayed.
"What about your humans? They always kept you satisfied."
"There were some, yes. Met them after I regenerated. Did what I always do, but they're gone now. All of them. I had a wife, and now she's gone too. Those who aren't dead themselves have to believe I am dead. Something very powerful was hunting me and it's safer for the universe if it thinks I don't exist." The Doctor pressed a few benign controls and managed to spare a glance to his fellow passenger. "I presume the drums are no longer a problem?"
The Master shook his head. "They're gone."
"And how does that feel?"
"I didn't think I'd know how to live without them. It's funny, I should have known that I didn't always have them, that I am who I am without that incessant rhythm, but I couldn't feel it back then. Rassilon changed history to put them in my mind, but with or without them, I'm still The Master. It was only that last stretch, before it called me to make the connection, that I felt truly different. The drums were never as loud as they were in this body." His eyes narrowed in consideration. "I don't seem to be burning up my own life-force any more either."
"Fortunate by-product of your method of retrieval. The energy from the TARDIS that I used to extract you from the timelock must've restored the balance you originally failed to achieve. She repaired you. She's a little more sentient these past couple of centuries, learned a few more tricks, took some time to work out a deeper understanding of her symbiosis with timelords."
"You're finally growing old, Doctor." The Master arched his brow. "Contrary to appearances."
The Doctor forced a smile. He keyed a few commands into the console, finding something real to focus upon. "According to the scanners, you're in more or less perfect health. Residual energy from the TARDIS has been counteracting with the trauma of vacuum exposure, systems functioning as normal. Can't always trust a scanner though. What do you think?"
"You're the doctor," came the sneering reply. "I guess I feel fine. Great, even. Bit breezy. That'll be the no clothes. Soon sort that out once I've had a rifle through your wardrobe, though I think I'll give a bowtie a miss -."
The Master broke off at the sight of what The Doctor had just pulled out of the TARDIS's fabrication panel. He curled his lip in a snarl, eyes wide with fury. There was no time for him to think before the gun fired. Sprawling backward, he found himself blinking dazedly at the TARDIS ceiling. Above him, The Doctor moved into focus, grim-faced. The Master watched him set the stun-pistol down on the console before stepping closer, towering over him.
"Ground rules," The Doctor growled. "You don't interfere ever again with the human race or the natural progression of any species without my prior consent. You do not try to manipulate or hypnotise any living creature. You do not maim or injure, let alone kill, any other life-form that is not a direct threat to your continued existence and you especially do not withhold from regenerating just to spite me."
Despite the rest of his body recovering from paralysis, The Master found he was able to speak. His expression was riddled with scorn but surprise still lingered. "Who are you and what have you done with The Doctor? My Doctor was oh so keen to be forgiving."
The Doctor responded darkly, "Oh, trust me, this is forgiving. All these years, all of the pain you've put me through, what you have done to my friends and the suffering you caused on so many worlds… I have stopped you time and time again but for you it's always been a game. All you have ever strived to do with your wretched life since we left Gallifrey is to foremost survive at any cost and then to do me over. Believe me when I say that this is the last time I will ever bring you back. What you did before you were dragged back into oblivion was abhorrent. The depths to which you sank, would have sunk, in the name of conquest and immortality." He turned his head in disgust. "But," he said, and seemed to grow calm, "I think deep down you were still afraid. There's something we have in common. We'll talk the boots off an army to achieve what we want, but it doesn't make the words we use true."
"You know I'll never be like you, yet every time you try to justify my actions according to your personal laws. You like to find reasons and excuses for me because you don't have the stomach for the things I do to be made out of pure choice. Face it, Doctor, I'm a bad man and I wouldn't have it any other way."
The Doctor met his gaze. The Master made a defiant grin that faded in the wake of the other timelord's countenance. Normally seeing The Doctor upset would have amused him. Anger, sadness, disbelief, even certain levels of despair: all of these he relished drawing out of his rival, but not this time. The Doctor was broken, verging on hollow. He looked at The Master with eyes so forlorn that he might be a split-second from never caring about anything again. He went back to the console and resumed tapping in nonsensical sequences.
Having found feeling in his limbs again, The Master sat up. He watched The Doctor in silence, studying the youthful face, noting that it had begun to take on the texture of soggy paper. His nose had turned pink, the corners of his mouth wavering almost in mimicry of a sad clown. The way the TARDIS-light caught The Doctor's eyes betrayed his instability, restrained tears shining.
For The Master, this was no fun at all. There was no yelling or pleading, no chasing or quipping – even the scolding appeared to be over. Still not caring for his state of undress, he got to his feet and took a few steps forward. He glanced across at the stun-pistol. There had probably only been one charge in it, knowing The Doctor, but he didn't feel the urge even to risk it. Keeping the blanket wrapped around him, he approached his mortal enemy.
"Doctor…"
The timelord with the bowtie stared straight ahead at the scanner, though it was clear he wasn't even registering its contents. "They're all dead," he said, his voice crackling. "Everyone. What sort of thing am I? I killed them all. Everybody's gone. So many people and everyone always dies because of me."
The Master took a step closer, but flinched when The Doctor rounded on him. His left hand flew up and caught The Doctor's right wrist as the younger timelord gave a sudden cry of rage and tried to strike him. He did not block the fall of the other fist, choosing dignity over defence, and grit his teeth where it connected with his arm. Lost for words at The Doctor's behaviour, he simply gripped him at the arms and kept eye contact. As swift as the aggression had come, it was gone again. Tears coursed down The Doctor's face.
"I think I'm going to do something terrible," he uttered, his voice surprisingly low for a man crying. "Something's coming and I may have escaped one too many times to manage it again. I don't know how or when, but I think I'm going to cause the deaths of far more than anything in the Time War combined. I think I'm going to destroy the universe, and I don't know how to stop it." Resistance drained out of him so fully that The Master relaxed his hold. "Help me," he pleaded.
Before The Master had a chance to respond, The Doctor broke down in front of him. His nemesis went limp against his blanket and buried his face into his shoulder. Dumbfounded, The Master gave The Doctor a tentative pat on the back, which soon yielded to an accepting embrace.
"Yeah, okay, Doctor," he murmured. "Okay."
The Master regarded his fellow timelord with a new emotion, closed his eyes and planted a kiss upon his head.