NOTE: I describe the Valiant's bridge completely incorrectly in this one. I had no copy of the episode at the time and after finally seeing it again I chose not to revise the chapter because frankly the set in the show is garish. This is an AU anyway, so just assume that one of the myriad changes includes the Master following a much classier design aesthetic when building his death ship.
When next he wakes it is to a pounding headache and a very uncomfortable crick in his neck. The Doctor groans and rolls over on whatever soft plush surface is apparently under him. His head hurts too much to open his eyes, he decides. Whatever he's lying on is comfortable enough for now. Very comfortable, in fact. He might even be able to go back to sleep if not for the fact that the Master is busy trying to destroy the Earth, and he has to stop it.
Wait, what?
The last few weeks flood suddenly back to his foggy mind, snapping him back to reality with an unpleasant jolt. He bolts upright, but far too quickly. What had meant to be a spring-into-action sort of move turns into a woozy stagger and a rather ungraceful fall back onto the pillow under him.
"Ow," he mutters rather stupidly.
Nobody seems to notice, however, and he wonders if he's been left alone in a room somewhere. Slowly, carefully, he opens his eyes, expecting bright lights or a platoon of those flying metal death-spheres hovering menacingly overhead.
Instead what he sees is a window. A very large window. And a table. That's a very familiar table, he thinks.
It takes a few seconds to register that he has in fact been left in a room somewhere. The ship's bridge, to be more precise. Beside him are the stairs upon which an unfortunate president met his demise just a few short weeks ago, and stretching away from him is an expensive marble floor and that huge mahogany table, all bathed in soft moonlight filtering in from the viewing window that serves as the ship's bow.
He blinks, confused as to why he would be dumped here, of all places, and then remembers why this isn't so odd. It's the same spot where his little tent had been as an old man. He'd been briefly thrown by the fact that the tent was no longer there. The dog dish is, though. He wrinkles his nose distastefully at it.
Wait, though, if his tent is gone, what is he sitting on? With a start he looks down to find a plush, felt pillow-type bed, with short squishy sides all around him and a lower edge at the front. The soft blue fabric is patterned with… dog bones. And cartoon paws.
He stares for a few seconds before the penny drops. He's sitting on a dog bed. Wonderful. Fantastic.
Still, though, he thinks as he flops down on his back on the surprisingly plush fabric, it's comfortable. Moreso than the thin blanket arrangement he'd previously been stuck with. He glares faintly at the dark ceiling above him and lets his arms flop limply over the sides of his paw-patterned mattress.
Clink!
"Ow!"
Talking to himself is no less stupid the second time around, but he doesn't care to dwell on it. What deserves more attention is the thick metal band he's just managed to smash into his own wrist.
He rolls over onto his stomach and brings his wrist up towards his face for closer inspection. Clamped around his too-small arm is a half-centimetre thick ring of black metal. A soft green light blinks on and off on the face of what is presumably a readout screen. He squints hard at it—his spectacles would be nice to have about now, he thinks irritably—the little LCD display is flicking away in time to his heartsbeat, and displaying a few other assorted life signs in maddeningly small font. What in the seven systems does he need a vitals band for? And why does it have to be so bloody uncomfortable?
Feeling rebellious and not a little irked, he briefly attempts to pull the thing off. It's sized just tight enough to thwart him slipping it off his hand, and though he can spin it all the way around he can't for the life of him find a latch of any sort. In a fit of childishness (which he blames on his current shrunken state—though he's not really sure he wouldn't have done it as an adult in this particular body) he bites it. Hard.
The resultant electrical shock is enough to make him yelp and scramble to his feet in surprise. He shakes his tingling, vaguely painful arm with an expression of mingled shock and disbelief. The tiny light on the device blinks red a few times before switching back to green.
For a few seconds he merely stands there, watching his heartsbeat gradually calm on the little flickering monitor. He tries to quiet his now-juvenile mind and regain some measure of control over his emotions. As an old man it had been so easy! He hadn't had the energy to stand, much less get worked up over a monitoring device. Now, though, he's feeling the effects of being five, (or, at least, being in a five year-old's body.) All this pent-up energy makes him irritable, and the thought of running around throwing a tantrum is sounding like an alarmingly good idea.
No, no, that would be ridiculous. He shakes his head as if to clear it and instead of throwing a fit (which he'd really, really like to do), walks calmly to the foot of the stairs which lead up to the bridge's small control deck.
"Now, you're not really letting me get up there, are you Master?" he mutters to himself, eyeing the staircase critically. He tactfully chooses to ignore the fact that he's speaking to an empty room again.
Well, nothing to do but find out. The Doctor takes a deep breath and dashes up the staircase before he can think about it.
BZZZT!
Alright, he probably could have thought of a better way to test that theory. Upon hitting the halfway point of the stairs he'd been immediately thrown back with an inordinately powerful electric shock from somewhere around his left wrist. Exactly what he'd thought would happen. Though, he reflects as he lies sprawled on the marble floor tiles, a less kamikaze approach might have been more appropriate. Really has to work on controlling this over-energetic, impulsive body.
It is some time before he finally decides that enough is enough. The point is proven, he's now on a leash, which only makes sense as he now has about fifty times more energy at his disposal as he'd had as a geriatric, and thus a far larger ability to cause all manner of trouble. Whether this trouble should be useful to his plan to save the Earth seems to be a bit of a moot point in his child-dominated thoughts. (The idea of upending all the chairs in the room, for example, and possibly building a tower from them, is sorely tempting. Not useful though. No, no, stop thinking of ways to make a chair-fort! Not helpful!)
His original plan is still valid. There should be enough psychic prowess between he and his TARDIS to shore up the few links he's already woven into the Archangel network, and with a bit of fancy thought-juggling he should still be able to keep his actions a secret from Koschei. Being this small and volatile will make things quite a bit harder, of course, but not impossible. And for Martha's sake, at least, he has to try.
The doctor pushes himself to his feet and makes his way back over to the strangely-comfortable dog bed. Sitting crosslegged on the patterned fabric, he breathes slowly, closes his eyes, and begins to work.
#-#
He's so bored he think he might burst.
Being stuck in a (relatively) small room as a full-grown Time Lord would have left the Doctor's tenth body a restless, fidgety mess. He has something on the order of twenty times more energy, now, and a case of ADHD to rival even the most rambunctious of human children. This, he realizes, is why young Time Lords were always sent off to the Academy so early in life—so their poor parents wouldn't have to deal with them!
He's long since given up on Archangel weaving for the night; aside from the restlessness he's beginning to realize how slow he'll have to take things now. His mental control and attention span wanes after only a few hours in this state, making him sloppy, making him mess up and put threads where they shouldn't be. It's both dangerous to his health and more difficult to keep secret. It's that 'leaking' problem again; he can hear the guards' thoughts, they're probably catching glimpses of his, and he knows the Master is nearby, watching him and listening. His fellow Time Lord would be able to read him like an open book if he tried to push full-speed through weaving into the network, something he can't afford to have happen. Sure, going in blocks of only a few hours at a time means that progress which once would have been accomplished in a week will now take two or more. But it's a necessary sacrifice for secrecy. And besides, it should still be enough. It should still work. It'll have to work.
In a fit of extreme boredom and an intense desire to make trouble he's gone ahead and enacted his chair-tower idea. The stack is no more than six feet tall but he still feels like a giant, balancing precariously on top and looking down on the world so far away through that window. He wishes he had wings. Wishes he could just turn into a bird and fly away from all this. Birds don't have to worry about the fate of billions of people. Birds also don't have to worry about being all alone in the universe save for a madman who was once their friend. Because birds are dumb animals, thinking of nothing but their next meal and how long until it's time to migrate.
These thoughts entertain him for about the space of a minute before he decides he really wouldn't want to be a bird, because they have that nasty habit of being eaten by a lot of things. What else could he be? A human, maybe. Humans can't fly though. He's human-shaped. Maybe he could craft a pair of wings and then he and Martha and maybe even Jack could go flying.
He's just started flapping his arms experimentally—to test air resistance, mind you, most certainly not because he's pretending to be an eagle—when the lights in the whole room flick on simultaneously, startling him. A menacingly familiar aura appearing abruptly from behind at about the same time nearly sends him toppling off his mighty chair-tower with shock. One minute he'd been a bird and the next accosted by both fluorescent lights and a sinister Time Lord.
"Having fun with the very expensive furniture, are we?"
The Doctor glances briefly over his shoulder to see the Master standing there, hands in the pockets of his dark trousers and looking just as casual as can be. It's a ruse, though; he can sense the dark fury behind the calm façade. Something very bad must have happened. Or… nothing's happened at all, maybe. The Doctor is fairly sure Koschei could find cause to be mad over nothing.
The Doctor is unwilling to speak at the moment. He's on top of a tower of, indeed, very expensive chairs, pretending to be a duck. (Or was it eagle?) There's nothing really he can think of to say in this sort of situation. Nothing appropriate, anyway.
They engage in a short staring contest wherein the Doctor finally decides he might want to actually put his arms down, and does, and then decides he might want to sit on the chair-tower instead of stand precariously, and does that too. He only turns himself partway to meet Koschei's eyes, however, wanting to have to option of looking out the large window instead of at his enemy if he so chooses. His bare feet bounce off a chair rung as he watches the Master's face for any sign of what this visit might be about. Explaining the stupid metal bracelet, maybe?
It's a few minutes before Koschei speaks.
"That freak of yours managed to kill two of my guards," he says with just a hint of malice. The Doctor smiles, thinking that Jack must have been really, really mad to do that. Oh, Jack… last he knew the immortal man had been shot by a Toclafane. Funny, though, the Doctor thinks, he can't remember what happened afterwards.
"I'm glad you're happy about that," the Master growls. The Doctor can't really see the point of pretending that he isn't—the loss of life, of course, is sad but since the guards will come back to life after he's reset everything, it's alright. He grins and bounces his feet on the rungs of the chair below him.
The Master takes a few steps closer to the Doctor's mighty chair tower. He glances at the still-flickering light on the Doctor's wristband, smirking.
"I suppose you've already figured out your new… parameters," the Master says cheerfully. He's really quite proud of himself for coming up with the device. It generates its own electrified field in response to sensors embedded in the walls. The Master is able to set what areas his new little pet is allowed to go into using his laser screwdriver to activate and de-activate different doorways. He'd had great fun already this morning, watching the miniaturized Time Lord getting repeatedly zapped as he tested his boundaries.
"You could've made a warning beep, or something," the boy replies, fiddling with the device. "I keep getting shocked when I walk too close to a door." Strangely, the Doctor doesn't sound too upset by this, seeming instead to be in a bit of a cheery haze. The Master, curious, reaches out a bit with his telepathy and finds the boy's mind in a complete jumble. He snorts to himself as he withdraws. That's what the man gets for keeping his thoughts so disorganized—it'll probably take him weeks to get his brains back in some kind of order. Ah, well, he thinks airily, a blithely stupid Doctor is better than a stoically boring Doctor.
"What, and take away all the fun?" the Master grins, "I may just start shifting the boundaries around randomly, let you wear yourself out re-mapping them every day."
The Doctor gives him a rather odd look, and, apparently bored, looks out the window. The Master glares. He's being ignored by a five year-old! Suddenly furious, he lashes out with the first thing that comes to mind to anger the boy.
"I dropped a rather large bomb on America last night. Had it built in Japan. Thought I'd go with a bit of irony, you know?" he waves a hand, pretending to be making conversation rather than trying to get a rise out of the not-child, "I may have mis-judged the new population centres, of course, only managed a death toll of a little over half a million. The Toclafane picked up the rest, though, so it all worked out."
Finishing his admittedly pointless tale, the Master watches the Doctor intently for a reaction. To his great charign, the child yawns.
"I'm tired, Koschei, can we talk tomorrow?" the boy asks, sliding off of his stack of chairs and landing on the marble tiles with a soft thump. "Thank you for the bed, by the way, I like the doggy paw pattern."
This last is said with, as far as the Master can tell, complete honesty. The shrunken Time Lord meanders over to his dog bed and curls up in it with his back to the Master. Slowing brain waves and heartsrate indicate that he's fallen asleep almost immediately.
The Master is baffled. And, he admits to himself, more than a little bit furious.
"Listen here, you little-!" he starts forward, ready to pounce on the boy and shake this Time Lord's muddled brains back into order, when a guard bursts in the door.
"Sir!" the young man starts. The Master whirls on him.
"WHAT!" he yells. His unfortunate slave cowers away from him.
"S-sir y-y-you w-wanted to be informed i-if the G-Germans started another uprising.." the man stutters. The Master glares viciously and wonders if he might be able to make the stupid ape's brains melt if he focuses hard enough. He files that thought away to ponder another day, however.
"And?" he demands impatiently.
"W-well… th-they've started killing some of the Toclafane, s-sir."
The Master snarls. Idiotic humans! Whether from the future or the past, none of them have an ounce of sense in them. He gives his old enemy one last parting glare—which the sleeping boy takes absolutely no notice of—and stalks out of the room. He'll deal with the uprising, violently, and hope that perhaps when he returns the Doctor will have sorted himself out somewhat. The Master isn't about to let his arch nemesis wander blissfully through all this, not when he's specifically catered this whole year to be a living nightmare for the other Time Lord.
He shoots the guard with his laser screwdriver on the way out, disintegrating the man. Whatever unfortunate German's figured out how to breach Toclafane shells is going to wish he'd never been born.
He's gone. The Doctor's brain registers this dimly, and he's quickly roused from his pseudo-sleep. The guard's death sends a lightning-quick pulse of agonized psychic outcry, making the Doctor groan as he wakes up with a sudden, pounding headache. He really needs to get this psychic leaking thing under control. Thank Rassilon that the Master had killed all those people last night, when the Doctor was still out cold, rather than today. He could still feel the echo of losing all those Archangel threads thumping at the inside of his skull.
He sits up carefully and rubs his head. The TARDIS's hastily-implemented plan to keep the Master from seeing his work with the Archangel threads had been brilliant, really. She'd simply withdrawn from his mind, taking most of his more recent memories—specifically, those after he'd been shrunk and she'd started helping him to reorganize the Archangel threads—leaving him quite thoroughly muddled and immune to the Master's probing. He'd retained enough of his capricious personality to become bored and feign tiredness to get rid of his guest, which hadn't, in the long run, been the best of ideas. Thank goodness that human had showed up or he might have found himself on the receiving end of a very irate Time Lord. Note to self, he thinks blandly, react more to announcements of mass death. And don't ignore your captor to look out the window.
This was shaping up to be an immense, tiring, irritating balancing act. He'd known it would be that way from the start, of course, but the knowledge doesn't make the next ten months seem any less daunting. More than ever he wishes he could just grow wings and fly away.