Spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn't watched series 8 episode 11 of Doctor Who: Dark Water! If you have watched it though, I hope you enjoy this fic :)
Two Steps from Hell
He was burning. Falling through time and space and burning. Something went wrong. Something always goes wrong. At first it went as expected, there was blinding white light and the distant echoes of drums as he felt himself being pulled across the Universe, dragged back to Gallifrey and the last day of the time war, where everything would die.
But then suddenly he felt himself lose his grip. He didn't have the strength to make this journey, his body was dying and with it the life energy he was using to take Rassilon and the other Time Lords back to Gallifrey. He felt himself losing strength, then falling uncontrollably through the darkness, down and down and down. Time and space was distorting and changing and falling with him. This was the end. He was going to die falling alone through the blackness, his skin and insides burning as if he was being cremated alive. Not even a breath was left in him so he could scream.
Then suddenly, everything stopped. Everything ended.
The Master opened his eyes. He wondered if he was dead, but then realised he was surely in too much pain to be dead. He felt as if he had fallen thousands of feet onto rock.
He probably had.
But he was alive. Every breath hurt, but it was a breath, a sign that he was living.
Something had changed though. He had regenerated, that was for sure. But something was different, something new. Every time he regenerates his body had changed, but this time it had changed in a rather different way…
Lying face down on the hard, cold rock, the Master pulled himself up into a sitting position, ignoring the screams in his bones as he did so. He looked down at his hands, they were cut and bleeding from the rough surface they had landed on, and they also rather feminine.
He didn't need any more evidence than that. He had never been a woman before, but somehow as soon as he woke up he knew he was no longer a man.
Then the Master began to laugh. She laughed and laughed until the empty world she was lying on rang with her laughter. She pounded the ground, stamped her foot and laughed some more. When there was no breath left in her lungs she laughed even harder.
Because the Master had just realised two things:
It wasn't because she had noticed that she was a woman now, that didn't really matter, what was important was that she was alive. She was so close to being dead but now she was alive. She was lying on the ground in pain, but she was living, breathing and was able to laugh because she was alive.
What was even better though, even better than the feeling that she was alive, what made her laugh even harder, was the realisation that the world was so quiet.
There were no drums. For the first time in so long she could hear silence. The drumming had stopped for good. It was over.
Finally the Master's laughter calmed down enough so she could pull herself up onto her feet. She looked down at her old torn and ragged clothes. She looked at her new body, she reached up a hand and felt a tangle of long hair. The only sound was her chuckling and her fingers pulling through her new hair, nothing else, no drums. It made her laugh again.
But suddenly the silence began pressing down on the Master, and the laughter froze in her throat. She looked around. The world she stood on reminded her oddly of the Earth's moon, but there was no sun or earth nearby. There were a few stars that lit up the darkness and allowed her to see, and further away there was a huge shape shrouded in darkness - a long dead planet - but nothing else.
Suddenly the Master realised how quiet it was, and how alone she felt.
She began walking across the ragged ground, looking for any sign of life, but there was none. The insatiable hunger she had felt in the last days of her old body was gone, but she knew she would start to feel hungry again soon, and thirsty, she was already beginning to feel cold. With every step she took she felt as if she was two steps away from hell: the more she walked, the longer she had been on this planet, and the closer hell came. Yet she never quite reached it, because she kept on walking
In the silence the Master began to feel herself becoming annoyed. She hadn't gone through so much just to die of hunger. Someone like her shouldn't die of something so dull.
But it would be all right, because the Doctor would come back, right? The Master had helped him destroy their enemies, she was the one who had taken Rassilon back to Gallifrey, surely the Doctor owed her a life? He wouldn't abandon her, he would come and find her, the Doctor would save her.
There was no night and day on this planet, but the Master knew that a lot of time was passing and the Doctor had still not come. The more the Master stayed on that planet, the more she realised: the Doctor was not coming to save her. The Doctor had no use for her anymore, so now she was left to die all over again. And again. And again.
As time went on the Master could feel her mind beginning to unravel, she couldn't help it and she couldn't control it, but as every hour on this miserable planet went by the more the Master wanted to slap the Doctor, kiss the Doctor, kill the Doctor, kill his beloved Earth, destroy this hell of a planet, save herself and kill herself. Yet every day none of those things happened, she just became more and more desperately hungry as she kept walking across this godforsaken planet and listening to the silence.
Until something changed.
One night, or perhaps it was day, the Master woke from a fitful sleep on the cold, hard ground, to the sound of an explosion. The air was ripped apart by noise and the darkness was filled with a ball of fire that quickly died away as quickly as it had appeared. The Master sat bolt upright with ringing in her ears and panic in her chest. But perhaps it was mixed with relief. Finally something on this boring planet was happening, maybe even the Doctor had crash landed there. He had found her at last.
The Master pulled her thin, dying self to her feet and ran as first as she could to the smoke that was turning the black sky grey. She ran to the burning flames of a spaceship and only hesitated when she realised it was not a TARDIS.
She couldn't deny the feeling of heavy disappointment in her heart, but what mattered was that there was a spaceship. It had been almost cut in half by the impact on this unforgiving earth, but it was still a spaceship. Small green and blue lights were still flickering amongst the flames that licked the sides of the ship, but they were slowly dying.
The smell of burning flesh filled the air.
Silently, the Master sat down and watched the ship burn. It was the most exciting thing she had seen in such a long time, it was almost hypnotising. When the fire finally died out she stood and went over to the ship. It was a decent make, no Time Lord technology of course, but enough. It was only large enough to hold about four crew members, but size was not important. Where there was a ship there was escape, and where there were people there was food to feed them.
As she approached the gaping hole in the middle of the ship the Master heard a voice. A small, pitiful voice, but a living voice nonetheless.
"Please, help me…" the voice begged.
The Master looked down at the badly burnt and bleeding crewmember lying just before her, probably the last one alive. He wasn't going to last much longer, but perhaps he could still be saved. The Master would finally have the company she had begged for during the endless nights on this planet. She had the chance to help someone for a change.
The Master gave the dying man one last look before she stepped over him and walked into what remained of his ship. After all, it wasn't good to have too much change at once.
After hours of scavenging it was found that most of the supplies had been destroyed in the crash and the ship was damaged beyond repair, but there was some food and water left and shelter from the cold. The Master spent the rest of her time on this planet there, amongst the smoking ashes, eating the rest of the supplies and thinking about how the Doctor had still not come to save her. She looked around at the dead bodies and thought about how the dead always outnumber the living. She thought about how useful it would be if those rotting corpses were at her beck and call.
The food ran out the day before the rescue came. The Master knew it was not for her, it was for the pitiful dead souls on the spaceship. Their friends had probably heard their cry for help just before the ship crashed and had been searching for them ever since.
She heard the thud as a spaceship landed on the ground not far from where she sat. She stuck her head out the gaping hole in the side of her new home to see a man and a woman in white spacesuits run over to her. They were not human or Time Lord but were of the same shape and form. The Master didn't care what they were though, what was important was that they had a spaceship and knew how to fly it.
She waited patiently for them to reach her, through his transparent visor the man looked at the Master with a look nothing short of terror.
"How are you alive?" He asked in barely more than a whisper, as he looked from the shipwreck to the Master and back again.
"Who are you?" asked the woman beside him. "How did you get there?"
The Master smiled. But the woman had asked a good question. She couldn't keep calling herself the Master now could she, so who was she?
"My name is the Mistress," she said to the woman, smiling, her voice light and soft and kind, but with an undertone of darkness. "But you can call me Missy." She looked back at the man now, and her voice became more commanding. "I know I was not the one you were looking for, I never am, but your crew are dead and I am in need of a rescue, and a change of clothes," she added, looking down at her ragged outfit. It didn't suit her new self, she would be glad of a change of clothes. "So, what are you waiting for?"
The two rescuers were shocked into silence for a few moments, but eventually agreed to take Missy off this planet. Even if it was a mysterious stranger, it was better rescuing her than no one at all. Perhaps if they knew who she was they would have thought differently. Missy's smile broadened.
"I'm so glad to leave," she said conversationally. "It was getting rather boring here. By the way, have you ever heard of a planet called Earth? It's important that I find my way there, I have some unfinished business to attend to," she explained.
The drums may have stopped, but there was still work to be done. Someone else needed to have their own experience of Hell.
After watching the first part of the season finale of Doctor Who I couldn't resist but write a little something for the return of the Master. Ever since he left I had been waiting and hoping for his return, so I was thrilled that Missy turned out to be the Mistress!
This one shot was just my theory of how she had regenerated and became who she was etc. Please let me know what you think of it :) and tell me what you think of the Master's regeneration, the episode and what you think really happened to Missy, would love to hear fellow Whovian's views!
The title of this one shot was inspired by the music company "Two Steps from Hell" who I was listening to as I wrote this. They do brilliant soundtrack music for films, TV shows and video games, they are definitely worth having a listen to if you're into that sort of thing :)
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this one shot and that you enjoyed the finale of Doctor Who too. Please review :)