Trigger warnings for this chapter: xenophobia, rape
When Martha disappeared, the Doctor crumpled again, a soft smile playing at his lips.
"I don't know why you're so happy," said the Master, "She'll be killed by the Toclafane anyway, and if she isn't by some miracle, it doesn't matter. She can't do anything."
The Doctor looked up at him tiredly. "She's not here."
"What are you?"
Francine Jones' voice was cold, and the Doctor's insectlike shoulders tensed with something like dread as he turned slowly to face her.
"What are you?" she asked again, teeth clenched. "What did you do to my daughter?"
"Nothing," the Doctor insisted, low and intense. "I would never—"
"Oh, please," the Master interrupted. "How many have there been."
The Doctor ignored him. "Francine," he said urgently. "Martha's my friend, I never lied to her and I would never hurt her, ever, you have to believe that."
"You didn't tell her the truth," Mrs. Jones snapped. "You didn't tell her you were really… that. What else have you lied to her about? You and him. Are you together? Some alien plot to take over our pathetic race? What are we to you?"
"...friends. That's all. Friends."
"What, just friends? Really, Theta? I thought our relationship meant more to you than that."
The Doctor turned to glare at the Master. "Stop that."
"Remember the first time you killed for me?"
"Stop it. Stop it."
"Oh, what am I saying?" The Master laid an apologetic hand on the Doctor's head, fingers stroking idly in and among his strange frills. "Of course you remember. It's hard to forget something like that."
"You're a monster." Francine was no longer demanding an answer; her voice was low, bitter, and disgusted. "How long have you been working with him?"
The Master grinned darkly. "Oh, we grew up together."
"Yeah, and then he left," Jack snapped loyally.
"Not for six centuries," said the Master, "and he didn't leave because of me."
"He still left you," said Jack with trademark stubbornness. "He chose humanity over you every time!"
"Oh, does he really? I must have missed that. What was it you said to me when you left, Theta?"
"I—I asked him to come with us, actually," said the Doctor apologetically. The Master's grip on his frills had turned from a mocking caress into a firm, controlling grasp, and he placed his free hand almost comfortingly on the Doctor's shoulder.
"Oh, right," he said. "You know, that rings a bell. Doesn't sound quite right though, Thete." He yanked the Doctor's head back sharply, squatting next to him and grabbing his chin, forcing him to look at the Joneses. "Go on, Doctor," he said dangerously. "Tell the nice people what you said to me. How you wanted us to be a family. How I was your best friend and you wanted me by your side. How much you loved me. Tell me, do you still? I've tortured your TARDIS, taken over your favourite planet… Do you still love me?"
"Of course I love you! I just—"
"Oh, good!" the Master cut in, "Because I have a job for you!"
"—have to stop you," the Doctor finished, unheard by their human audience.
The Master ignored him, looking around at his guards impatiently. "Well?" he said. "Clear out the rabble!"
"I still trust him!" Jack yelled defiantly as the guards bundled him down the hall, trying to elbow his captors away. The Joneses made no such declarations, struggling only briefly as they were shoved through a side door and away.
"Such loyalty," the Master said quietly, petting the Doctor's frills again. "Are you even capable of that, Thete? I'll give humans this, they're all so full of passion! Aren't you, darling!"
Lucy Saxon, almost forgotten on the balcony, nodded with a breathless smile.
"Why don't you come down and demonstrate?" he said, humour in his voice that the Doctor didn't understand.
"Demonstrate what?" said the Doctor. "Why have you had everyone leave? What are you planning?"
"I know how much you love humans, so I thought…" He trailed off, grinning widely, like a child showing off a new toy to their friend. "Well. You've practically gone native, so it can't be a new idea to you, can it?"
"What?"
Lucy giggled. "You weren't exaggerating, Harry," she said in a stage whisper.
The Master's smile thinned. "What did I tell you about calling me, Lucy?"
Lucy fussed anxiously, brushing quick hands over his lapels. "Of course. Master," she said with a sweet, nervous smile. "I... I forgot we didn't have to pretend any more. I'm so used to protecting your secrets," she added quickly.
The Master smiled and gave her an affectionate chuck under the chin. "Precious," he said warmly. "Isn't she, Doctor? Fine example of humanity. I hope you like her. I know she likes you."
Lucy looked down, almost shyly. You have the most beautiful eyes, she'd said.
Oh. The Doctor understood then, at least in part, staring at the Master like he'd never seen him before. "Why? What do you get out of this? Don't force her to do this, she's not part of this!"
"He's not forcing me, Doctor," Lucy said, paradoxically gentle. "He's never forced me to do anything." She looked back over her shoulder, gazing at the Master with sparkling adoration. "He wouldn't even touch me without my permission."
"Lucy, you can't trust him," the Doctor said in a rush. "He has what he wants now, he doesn't need you anymore except as… as entertainment, he's going to hurt you like he's hurt all those other people!"
"Doctor," the Master said sternly. "I'm hurt. As if my dear Lucy couldn't trust me."
Lucy turned back to the Doctor and smiled as if to say, see? She didn't see the Master's cold smirk when she turned her back.
"Lucy," the Doctor said urgently. "Please, you need to—"
"That's quite enough out of you," the Master interrupted. "It's rude to keep a lady waiting. Come here, darling," he added with a sugary smile—was he batting his eyelashes or did the Doctor just imagine that?—and Lucy blushed prettily and slipped into his lap, kissing him. He hooked an arm securely around her waist, wrinkling his nose playfully, and she giggled again.
She raised a hand to her collar to unbutton her jacket, but the Master swatted it away.
"None of that," he murmured into her neck. His hands ran along her bare legs, pulling up the hem of her dress to the tops of her thighs. "Doctor?" he said, louder. "Do get on with it, I don't want to be here all day. These chairs aren't the most comfortable."
The Doctor looked between Lucy and the Master, but didn't make any move towards them.
"Doctor, I will force your cooperation if need be. That companion of yours, her sister is quite pretty. I'm sure the guards would just love her."
"No!"
The Master spread his hands in a Well then…? gesture before settling them back around Lucy's waist.
The Doctor looked at the Master imploringly. "I don't…"
"What, never? In all that time?"
"…Once. It wasn't enjoyable."
"To be quite frank, Doctor, I don't care if you find it enjoyable." The Master raised his eyebrows: it meant 'flower' in Delphon, but 'come on, then' in human body language.
Oh, he was rambling, wasn't he? Rambling to himself in his head. He shouldn't make a habit of it. The Doctor worried his lower lip between his teeth. "Fine," he said, pitched higher than he intended it. "But only if you promise not to hurt Letitia."
"You're not in a place to bargain with me, Doctor."
He wasn't in a place to argue, either. The Doctor shifted slowly to his knees, shuffling over to kneel in front of Lucy.
"It's all right, Doctor," she whispered encouragingly. She reached out and stroked his frills, and he fought the urge to be sick. He wanted to close his eyes, but the adapted shimmer was gone, and he no longer had real eyelids.
Lucy gasped quietly at the first touch of his tongue, and the Master chuckled into her skin. The Doctor moved on autopilot now; she didn't seem to notice that he wasn't paying attention (and how could she, just a naïve human woman with hardly any advanced telepathic ability to speak of?). His mind was racing, barely registering her contented sighs or the smirks and sniggers of the guards as he tried to plan an escape. The Master's weakness had always been his grandstanding, he was smart but he was arrogant, somewhere he would have made a mistake, somewhere there was something he could exploit to figure his way off this ship…
He wasn't nearly distracted enough that he could ignore the slow, insistent press of another Gallifreyan mind against his own, nor strong enough to block it out.
You could never block me out, Theta, the Master said. You never practiced telepathy on the defensive. Of course, even if you had, you wouldn't be strong enough. Your telepathic centres simply aren't developed enough.
The Doctor had already lost. There was no way to fight the Master out of his head; he'd been right in saying his telepathic centres were underdeveloped, at least compared to the Master's own. But there was still a chance he could lock the Master out of what he hadn't already invaded, fortify the defenses around the core of himself. The Master might have the run of his memories, but he wouldn't be able to touch the Doctor's self-image.
This wasn't new. The Doctor couldn't count how many times they had let their consciousnesses mix together, when they were at the Academy, and even later, when the Doctor had worked with UNIT in the 70s. Or was it the 80s? He wasn't sure. Human count of Time was so inexact as it was. But he'd always had input, always had some semblance of control. After the Time Lords had gone into his mind and stolen his knowledge of how to fly his TARDIS, he had trouble with some parts of mental contact, and the Master had respected that. Even if they both knew the Doctor wouldn't be able to fight him if he had forced it, he had trusted the Master wouldn't.
There was nothing good about this contact. It felt like oil in his mind, leaving a residue where the Master touched. There was no mutual blending, no currents of thought exchanging and colouring one another; the Master's mind was covering and smothering his own, and the more he tried to fight it off, the more the waters churned, the more obvious it became that there had never been a contest. It was wrong, thick and black and filled with hatred and sadistic enjoyment at the way the Doctor thrashed and struggled to break through the thick barrier that was slowly submerging his mind, forcing his defenses further and further back, dredging up precious old memories and fouling them with the contact.
Susan or Arkytior (When had she changed her name, why couldn't he remember, when had she chosen humanity for him?) and her sweet dark eyes, the unbridled love she could radiate when she flung her arms around him, the almost alien joy she took in those signs of open affection, the tentative happiness he had slowly learned to show her in return, her innocence and simple wisdom and the knowledge that Gallifrey had not broken her, that she at least would be free of them, that he had finally done something right—
The Master laughed cruelly in his head, and that small, golden island of every one of his granddaughter's smiles and laughs and joyous hugs was callously dragged through the muck as he forced other, more numerous memories to the surface. Oh, you saved her, Theta? he said mockingly. Really? She was happy with you, you did something good, you should be proud of it?
Arkytior's terror and confusion as their ancient, stolen TARDIS phased with difficulty into the Vortex, the long interminable years in which she watched him sadly from across rooms as he brushed her off with polite words and not-so-polite words, as his coldness began to seep into her. Susan then, wistful and alone, sitting by herself in a ship empty except for one young Time Lord too worried about his own problems to bother raising the child he'd stolen. Susan, slowly beginning to crack as she tried time and again to form a connection, any connection, to hold onto, crying silently into the universe for anyone to hold her and talk to her softly and let her be a child. Susan's frantic, tearstained pleading for two members of a lesser species—You let her fall so far, Theta, the Master sneered, she would rather have had the company of humans than you—her voice breaking as she sobbed desperately for him to listen to her, just one time, for him to hear her. Every time he had turned on her furiously for daring to be a child.
I learnt, the Doctor thought frantically, I made mistakes but I got better and she was happy…
Until you left her in the remains of Earth, living among people who would have killed her if they knew what she was. Until you killed her son. Until you killed her.
No, no, no, she was. She was happy, she was in love, she was safe… Locking her out of the TARDIS was the best thing I could have done. She'd never have been as happy as she could be with an old miser like me.
The Master's consciousness flooded with unexpected rage at his words, and his attack intensified, ripping through images and emotions with a single-minded ferocity, scattering memories to and fro so that it was impossible to separate the good from the bad, pride and joy from guilt and despair. Sarah Jane, glancing back over her shoulder, just once; a moment of horrified realisation before a freighter became a fireball, Jamie (and Zoe, dear, sweet, fiery, brilliant Zoe, but it was the highlander that was seared onto his hearts forever), Katarina's dying scream; Sara, unnaturally aged, Romana, young and golden and not yet broken by the Citadel, the whole universe rolled out before her in an instant and snatched away forever just as quickly. Cass, crying out for help and choosing to die when she saw the form it took, Charley's goodbye and Lucie's death, and Alex and Sam and Anji and Izzy and Fitz. Ace, crumpled and broken and it was his fault entirely, he'd been a father one last time and he'd failed again; Ruath, with sharp, glinting teeth; Innocet's echoing voice: "I hate you". Rose Tyler, weeping on a beach in Norway. The Keltans and Gallifrey and I should have destroyed you when I had the chance.
Silent, malicious laughter echoed in his head, sending ripples of pain through the stifling blackness. You never could, the Master sneered. All those chances and you never could. And you call yourself a doctor? Healing the universe, causing no harm, acting for the greater good? You can't fix anything, you can't even lessen the pain while you wait for them to die. You could have ended this all millennia ago but you were too weak. Well, guess what, Theta? That's your precious Earth down there. It's going to burn, humanity is going to die, and I'm going to make it happen. And you're going to stand by my side and watch.
He couldn't concentrate long enough to even think of an answer, let alone put it into words. The Master's mind was too powerful, forcing his barriers closer and closer to the core he was so desperately defending. He was holding it back with less force of will now than sheer screaming panic but a scream can't last forever; he couldn't breathe and the Master had thrown his mind in a confusing whirl of oily darkness, he couldn't grasp at anything outside his mental barrier to hold onto it, he was trying to claw his way back to the surface but there was nothing to claw at and there were drums in his head, deafening and sick as they pressed against his mind and he couldn't breathe and—
It's your fault, said something, and the Doctor didn't know if the source was the Master or himself or the drums—and they were so loud, no wonder the Master had gone mad. He felt like he was going to. Was that his fault? A deal with Death to save Koschei, destroying him instead? He could believe it easily enough, drowning in oil and guilt and the long-buried memories the Master's assault had dredged up. The drums (if they were even real, if he wasn't just hearing his own heartsbeat, unnaturally fast with terror) beat beneath it all, unforgiving and cruel and it was all his fault, wasn't it? Everything.
His mental shields crumbled into despair, Lucy gave a high-pitched keen and arched above him, and the choking blackness flooded the last fragile corner of Theta's mind in a thundering rush of triumph.
