A/N: Thank you so much for the wonderful reviews! That really made my day, seeing those. 3
Rhivanna – Aww, thank you, both for the praise and the welcome – that really means a lot to me. ^^ And yay, first reviewer! :D
Aietradaea – Thank you! Yep, it's Dalek Caan popping by after rescuing Davros, killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. Thanks for pointing out the capitalization of Dalek, too – I've fixed that in the newer fics now. ^^
Renart – Thanks! There's definitely a dearth of Master-centric fics set in Season 5 or onward, though there are a few excellent ones around. :)
LeonaWriter – I'm glad you like it! :3 Also, thank you – your asking about the fanfic my drawing was based on is what finally persuaded me to make an account here and actually start posting some of these. ^^
This is the first part of one of those slightly longer stories I mentioned - it's set in some unspecified time post-Season 5.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all related content and characters belong to the BBC; no infringement is intended.
The TARDIS barreled through the vortex, bouncing and tumbling in its usual erratic manner like a marble being shaken in a tube. Inside the ship, its two human occupants clung desperately to the guard rails surrounding the console platform to avoid being thrown off of it, occasionally shooting glances at the alien who was piloting the time machine and wishing that River had stuck around a bit longer to give him some flying lessons. "Doctor?" Amy called over to him during one of the brief periods between bone-jarring jolts, and the Time Lord looked up from the console with a broad grin and shining eyes. "Where exactly are we going? You seem in a bit of a rush." There was a crash as something in one of the TARDIS's innumerable rooms fell over, and Amy grit her teeth and held on as a new round of shaking started up.
Once the TARDIS settled out into another calm spell, the Doctor leaned over without taking his hands from the controls and yelled over the thunder of the engines "I picked up a distress signal from Elco Theta Four, a moon on the edge of the Ralicon system. Thing is, the signal was sent on the same communications frequency the TARDIS uses – someone's been trying to call a Time Lord."
"Maybe it's just a coincidence," Rory suggested, clutching one of the chairs as he tried not to fall down the stairs. "I mean, there are only so many frequencies, right?"
The Doctor held up a finger, his eyes already back on the console. "True, but I don't believe in coincidences. Travel around in time and space long enough and just about everything starts to look planned. This is someone who knows about TARDISes and how to contact one, which really narrows down the field."
"So who do you think it is? River again?" Amy asked, her eyebrows raised.
The Doctor grinned at her, his brown hair flopping down over his eyes and making him look even younger than usual. "No idea," he said cheerfully. "But I can't wait to find out." As he spoke, he pulled back on a lever under the console and slammed his open palm down on the return key of the old-fashioned typewriter that was wired into the TARDIS controls. The ship shuddered and filled with the familiar whirring of its engines as they slowed and the TARDIS materialized at its destination. Amy and Rory picked themselves up off the floor, Rory brushing dust off his rumpled jacket, and the Doctor dashed by them on his way to the doors.
"Oi!" Amy said loudly, making the Time Lord stop in his tracks and twist around gracefully at the waist to look back at her. "You're not running off and seeing a new alien world before we do." The Doctor bounced impatiently on the balls of his feet as Rory and Amy caught up with him, and then the three hurried to the TARDIS doors together, the Doctor flinging them open once he reached them. The two humans leaned out to see the surface of the moon they had landed on, and Amy made a small sound of disappointment. "It looks like… a moon," she complained, gesturing at the barren grey landscape before them. "It's a moonscape. What's the point of going to a moon if it's just going to look like any other boring old moon?"
The Doctor sidled around his complaining companion, puffs of dust rising around his shoes and swirling away in the light breeze as he stepped out on to the surface, and peered around curiously. "Hmm, that's rather odd. I'd have thought it was a bit small to have its own atmosphere, but it seems – ah! That would be where our signal was coming from," he said, pointing up at what looked like a decrepit radio tower. The metal on the tower's base was pitted and corroded, a few sheets of its siding peeling off and hanging loosely by a few bolts, but there was still a small flickering green light visible at the top of it. "There must have been a settlement here at some point, probably a terraforming colony." He gazed at the desolate bare rocks surrounding them. "Long gone now, by the looks of it."
"Maybe the people who sent the distress signal have already gone," Amy said, but the Doctor shook his head distractedly, still looking around.
"No, there's something here. The signal is recent, far more so than the tower," he said. The Time Lord waved a hand toward the tower aerial, which had a rough scaffold built around its base supporting it and strips of fabric holding metal splints to the antenna. "Look, you can see where someone's patched it up, trying to repair it. I imagine the antenna must have fallen off at some point and broken. That cloth wouldn't hold up for more than a few years in this environment, so the fix must be fairly new. It's clever work though – they knew what they were doing, even if the materials weren't ideal."
"Uh, Doctor?" Rory said uncertainly. "Are those buildings over there, d'you think?" The other two turned to see where he was pointing, and sure enough there was a group of small rounded domes just visible through the dusty grey haze. Gaping holes were visible in some of the roofs, and there was a fair bit of rubble surrounding the bases where other buildings had collapsed, but a few still looked mostly intact. The Doctor gave each of his companions a significant look, and the three set off briskly for the outpost without another word.
There was no door on the largest of the domes that was still standing, and when Amy and Rory poked their heads in through the empty doorway they saw that the back wall was gone, nothing but twisted metal and chunks of concrete left to show that there had even been a wall there. Through the opening they could see another building, its side torn down by the collapse of the larger dome's wall. While the Doctor carried on to a different dome, the couple picked their way through the mess inside the main one, Rory keeping an anxious eye on the ceiling. It looked like this had once been a gathering area, with a sunken section in the middle holding the broken remnants of chairs in it, their padding long since torn off and scattered over the floor. There was no sign that anything living had been there in a very long time.
The smaller dome beyond the fallen wall was in better repair than the first, having escaped the brunt of the collapsing walls, and the air inside it wasn't nearly as dusty as it had been outside or in the other dome. The couple carefully climbed through the bent pieces of scrap metal from the demolished framework, Rory holding Amy's hand to support her over a precarious bit of concrete, until with a final jump they were both clear of the rubble and able to look around the dome properly. It had a wide counter running along the edge of the room, along with several other freestanding ones arranged in a series of semicircles in the middle, and there were tarnished metal stools bolted to the floor along their lengths. "It's a cafeteria," Rory said after a moment, gazing around with some surprise and flashbacks to university. "Even in the future, they still have cafeterias."
"Wonder if the food will still be rubbish," Amy mused. Her eyes were caught by a brief flash of light to one side of the room, and she nudged Rory with her elbow as she headed toward the source of it: a bank of machines that covered the wall above one counter. Most were missing their front panels, exposing the bare wires and circuitry underneath, and twisted bundles of wires were hanging dejectedly out of a few that looked like they'd been mauled by something, but some were still in one piece. "Lookit these," she said. "It looks like a couple are still working. Well, this one is, anyway." On the front of one intact machine toward the bottom of the group, a single red light was blinking slowly, and Amy moved a finger toward the buttons at its base curiously.
"Don't push anything!" Rory said, grabbing her hand and eying the machine like it might explode. "You don't know what that might do if you push the wrong thing."
"It's a cafeteria, stupid; they probably didn't put the controls to a nuclear bomb or anything in here," she replied, rolling her eyes at him. Nevertheless, she dropped her hand with a huff and turned away from the machine to look around some more. She leant over one of the counters and gave a start, quickly waving over her shoulder and hissing "Psst! Rory! Look at this." Between two of the curved counters there was a tangled mess of torn fabric and stuffing from the chairs in the other dome, all shoved into a rough pile like a rat's nest with a tattered blanket lying crumpled to one side. Next to it was a large assortment of wires, bolts, circuit boards and bits of glass and plastic, a few rocks and pieces of concrete of various sizes and shapes, a pair of computer screens and a collection of makeshift tools fashioned from small metal scraps that had been twisted and hammered into shape.
Rory came alongside her and raised his eyebrows as he followed her gaze. "Looks like someone's been busy," he commented.
"D'you think they fixed that machine to make it work, the same way they did with the tower? They must have," Amy said, not giving him time to answer. "I do wonder where our mystery repairman is hiding though."
"Right here." The unfamiliar rough voice behind them made both Rory and Amy jump and yell with startled surprise, and they spun around to face the newcomer, Rory stumbling over his feet a little and clutching at Amy. The man behind them seemed human enough, though he was painfully thin and covered in grime, a mix of what looked like engine grease and dust. Slightly built and a couple inches shorter than Amy, he didn't make for an imposing figure, though there was something indefinably sinister about him despite his scruffy appearance. His dirty blond hair had been untidily hacked short and was sticking up in all directions, a few grungy black streaks showing where he had run his hands over it at some point in a failed attempt to smooth it, and he clearly hadn't shaved for a while. The remnants of what looked like a black sweatshirt hung in shreds over what was left of his red shirt, and he wore scuffed-up work boots under his torn jeans. Thready bits of cloth were wrapped around his hands as well, and Amy could see several patches where blood had seeped through the grubby makeshift bandages from deep gashes across his fingers and palms. Overall, he looked a mess.
The stranger leant forward abruptly with an intent expression and sniffed the air, and Amy found herself suddenly wishing she didn't have the counter at her back blocking her way. There was something dark and glittering about the man's eyes, like a snake's, and a distinct predatory sharpness to his movement that made her heart pound. "Human, are you?" he asked, tilting his head with a smile. "Good! I like humans. I like them very much."
Somehow Amy got the feeling that he didn't mean 'like' in the sense of enjoying their company. "Ah, yes, we are human," she said uneasily, putting one hand on Rory's shoulder and pushing him slightly toward the end of the counter. "And you would be an alien, yeah?"
The blond man snorted. "You're the aliens. But I'm not human, if that's what you mean." He sneered a bit at the word, seeming to find it distasteful using it in any reference to himself, even a negative one. "Are you here alone?"
"Nope!" Amy quickly said. "Not alone, definitely not alone. We have a friend with us, an alien friend. Who is very powerful and fond of us."
The stranger threw his head back and laughed victoriously, clapping his hands in front of himself like an excited child. "Ah, excellent, excellent! Let's see, who do I know who's very powerful and fond of humans? Must be him. Unfortunately you're probably correct in saying he likes you, so there goes that idea; last thing I need is another sanctimonious lecture from him. Why does he have to be so damn annoying?" His amusement gone as abruptly as it had appeared, he glowered at them for a moment with a hungry gleam in his eyes before huffing peevishly. "All he ever does is criticize, always on my case about every little thing, never a kind word, no matter what I do. Not once. It wouldn't be so hard, would it, just once? I have to have done something good, even just once, right?"
The man was now looking up at Amy with an oddly beseeching expression in his dark hazel eyes, his mood having flipped yet again, and Amy kept edging away, guiding Rory along beside her. "I'm sure you have," she said with a forced smile, feeling behind her with one hand for the corner of the counter and hoping to find something that could function as a weapon if needed. It sounded like this stranger knew the Doctor, but even more it sounded like he was completely unstable and possibly dangerous. A bit of risk was all well and good, but right now all she wanted was for the Doctor to appear and sort things out in that way he always had of turning scary situations into... well, often scarier situations, but when he was there they somehow just seemed like adventures instead.
As if on cue, the Doctor's voice echoed in from the next dome over. "Ponds? Where have they gone off to now – I swear, I leave them alone for one second… Ponds!"
"We're in here!" Amy called over her shoulder, not taking her eyes off of the man, who had tilted his head sharply like a cat at the Doctor's voice and appeared to be listening intently. A scuffling sound and muffled grumbling from the back of the dome let her know that the Doctor was climbing through the pile of rubble between the two buildings. The stranger's focus seemed completely on the approaching Time Lord instead of them now, and Amy took advantage of his distraction to grab Rory's hand and slip around the edge of the counter, pulling her husband after her. Feeling somewhat safer with the bulk of the counter between her and the creepy alien, she turned her head slightly to see the Doctor saunter into the dome.
"Ah, there you both are!" he said happily as he spotted the couple. "Any luck yet with th- uh. Oh." The Doctor's voice trailed off, and he stood silently with the most dumbfounded expression Amy had ever seen on the usually self-possessed Time Lord's face, gaping past them at the blond man.
The stranger was staring back in return, though he didn't look quite as astonished, more surprised and uncertain. He blinked and swallowed slowly before drawing in a deep breath. "Doctor," he said, his voice shaking.
The Doctor very slowly dipped his head in response. "Master," he said quietly. The blond man stepped around the edge of the counter, ignoring Amy and Rory as they shuffled warily away from him, and walked hesitantly toward the Doctor, his eyes fixed on the Time Lord. Amy noted his unsteady gait – the alien kept one hand lightly against the countertops as he moved, sometimes staggering weakly and barely catching himself from falling, and she recalled how very thin he was. Maybe there hadn't been much need to be afraid of him after all, considering he seemed hardly able to walk, but then she remembered his eyes and decided that in this case she would much rather be safe than sorry.
A few feet from the Doctor, the alien addressed as 'Master' stopped, leaning heavily against a nearby counter in an almost predatory hunch as he looked at the Doctor. After a moment of silence, he straightened slightly and growled "You abandoned me. You could have helped me but you let them take me."
The Doctor flinched and grimaced, dropping his gaze briefly to the dusty floor before dragging it back up to meet the other alien's again. "I couldn't stop it," he said, his voice low and pained. "Everything happened too fast, Gallifrey was shaking the place to pieces and I couldn't... I didn't even realize you were caught in the Gate until it had closed and it was too late. If I could have reached you…" He sighed, dropping his head again before shaking it slightly, as if giving up on explanations. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
The Master tilted his head and eyed the Doctor cagily, a slight grin playing over his face, and slowly he started to chuckle, though it didn't sound like he was amused, more like he was forcing something else away with laughter. He twisted his head around sharply, cracking his neck, and jerked his head back up to focus a sharp intense glare on the Doctor. "How ironic, you wishing you could have saved me," he said.
"I always wish I could have saved you," the Doctor replied with a slight rueful smile. "It does make it rather difficult when a person refuses to let you help them though."
The Master raised his eyebrows and blinked at him. "So… you're saying it's my fault?" he asked slowly, dangerously. For a few seconds he and the Doctor stood frozen in place, their bodies tense and eyes locked, not even breathing, as if each was waiting for something from the other before either could move. The memory of the Weeping Angels flashed into Amy's mind, the creatures that could only move when no one was looking at them, trapped forever as stone if they ever met each other's gaze, and she found herself silently willing the Doctor to move, to dispel the illusion and prove he wasn't stone.
As it was, the Master moved first, breaking the tableau as he lunged forward and slapped the Doctor sharply across the face. The younger man winced and stumbled back a step, raising one hand to his cheek, but made no move to avoid the blow or retaliate. Amy and Rory both started forward angrily, planning to grab the Master and hold him back from their friend, but an urgent gesture from the Doctor stayed them, his meaning perfectly clear: Keep back; don't go near him. Reluctantly, the two traded helpless glances and remained where they were, Rory resting his hands on Amy's shoulders ready to restrain her if needed, Amy glaring with frustrated wrath at the blond alien.
The Master staggered and almost fell from the force of his own strike, barely catching himself by grasping the counter with one hand and collapsing against it, resting the side of his chest on its edge as he glared up at the Doctor with his teeth bared in a vicious snarl. "How many years?" he screamed, his rough voice breaking. "For how many years did I try to tell you, try to make you understand, and all you did was call me mad! 'Just your madness', you said, 'nothing there', you said, and never once did you bother to actually listen! I asked you for help, so many times I begged you to listen to me, and always you turned me away just like everyone else. You refused me, Doctor." The blond man abruptly straightened up and grinned maniacally at the Time Lord, his voice turning sing-song. "You said you'd always be there for me, that you'd always stand by me, and just look what happened," he said mockingly, spreading his arms.
The Doctor stood still, his head lowered and his cheek bright red where the Master had struck him, and he shifted uncomfortably as the other alien spoke. The look on his face was another one Amy had rarely seen on him, could only remember seeing after Rory had been killed and erased from time, a mix of shame, grief and regret. "I'm sorry, Master," he said again. "What else can I say?"
The Master gazed at him with a slightly furrowed brow and gave a cheerless huff of bitter amusement. "The Doctor out of words," he said. "Is the apocalypse here? All you do is talk and talk, and you never listen. I had to almost kill you before you'd listen to a word I said. Why wouldn't you listen? Why?" All the rage and strength seemed to drain out of him and he slumped in desolation, sliding down to sit on the floor with his back against the counter, and dropped his head into his arms, his fingers tangling in his tousled hair.
A sound vaguely like a choked sob emitted from the alien, and the Doctor stepped forward cautiously. When there was no response to his increased proximity, the Time Lord crouched down on the floor beside the blond man and silently wrapped his arms around him, drawing him as tightly to his chest as he could and rocking him gently. "It's all right," the Doctor said softly, stroking the Master's shoulder lightly with the tips of his long fingers. "Everything will be all right."
At his words, the Master wrenched himself away from the Doctor's embrace and leant against the counter again, chuckling with an edge of hysteria to his laugh. "Oh, you don't even know how far things are from all right," he managed to say, resting his head back and still sniggering uncontrollably. "Lost one thing just to gain another – or lose it, I suppose. No more drumming but still mad as ever; Rassilon made sure of that." He snickered again, looking rather self-satisfied as he added "Our dear Lord President wasn't particularly happy with me. He could hardly have me go to my death in peace after that, now, could he, not after I brought him to his knees before all of Gallifrey. Heh, twice. Shame no one else saw the second time – it was a good one. I even impressed myself there."
"Well, you always were known for your humble nature," the Doctor said solemnly, though with a teasing quirk to an eyebrow.
The Master gave him an amused glance and a slight lopsided grin. "Yeah," he drawled, wagging his head wryly. "That's me. Most modest person in the universe, I am." He hummed softly, some of the tension visibly leaving his shoulders, and the two aliens sat in almost companionable silence, the Doctor still crouched at the Master's side.
A/N: Apologies for the abrupt ending – the chapter was getting massively long and needed to be broken into two parts, and this was the best break point near the halfway mark. The next chapter will pick up right where this one leaves off.