All translations, explanations, advertisements, and thought processes are at the end of the chapter.

Disclaimer: All shows/ books/ video games/ songs that are mentioned in this chapter are all © to their respective owners, I don't own them.


Through space and time the path unwinds
Leading me straight to you
Unexpected
Under the blessing of the stars
The life poured into us
To meet is so unexpected

-Unexpected by Hyde


No one was supposed to be able to survive this, the Master once heard, falling through the vortex like this, unprotected. Time, the vastness of it all, surrounded him, encompassed him entirely. It burned him, everything burned in this shining, blinding realm. The wind that wasn't wind buffeted him from all sides, tearing through the Master, as if his flesh, muscles, blood, and bones weren't even there.

The sizzling, stinging, raw power of the vortex was not a habitable place for mortals, not like this. Even those stupid space-hoppers called vortex manipulators would be better than this. The Master just wanted it to all end, but at the same time...not. One would've thought that the vortex would be a silent place with the only sound being the not-wind. This turned out to be not the case, the Master and many of the time lords knew this.

There was a reason that they got inspired or ran away when gazing into the vastness of time; it was the sound of the universe. The ripples and waves in time worked much like sound waves, but only detectable to the time-aware species, since it was on a register that wasn't so much heard as felt within a time lord's mind and body. The song of Time was a continuous mental vocalization-much like a higher form of telepathy, since it didn't use anything as crude as actual words or fully structured thoughts.

It drug out emotions and feelings and memories from deep within the subconsciousness effortlessly, bringing one to a higher plane of a mental state. A state of existence one can only achieve after seeing the vastness of the vortex and staring into it. For most of the time lords-the ones who got inspired, usually-didn't fully attain that level.

They stayed in that state for only a brief period of time before the moment passed, only going through the shallower emotions and feelings as well as mere surface memories. Their experience didn't go very far, didn't probe too deep, so they saw only the beauty, only the good side of things, and that was fine. Those time lords still turned out to have the abilities and strength of character that was expected of them, but that was it.

They were nothing truly special.

It was the ones who ran away that experienced something wondrous, something beautiful and terrible all at once. They were the time lords that would turn out to be something, be something brilliant, something great-he better stop right there, he was beginning to sound like one of those sappy romantics or, perish the thought, like the Doctor of all people.

They were the ones who saw the universe in its entirety, the whole of it, the good with the bad. The emotions and thoughts probed farther than ever before and-most likely-farther than they would ever experience again. They could feel their cells-every last one of them-their blood as it flowed against the veins, every one of the air particles that they breathed into their lungs and exhaled. They could feel not just the tilt of the planet beneath their feet, not just the solar system, not just their galaxy, not just that part of the universe, but all of it.

For one brief moment, they could feel its vastness, its growth, its wonder, its glory, and its overwhelming amount of life. It was so big and they were so small, so tiny, so insignificant, nothing. They were nothing in the face of it all. Nothing could stop the universe from just swallowing them whole, consuming them in this vulnerable state and spreading them like dust across the stars, across all of time, never able to leave, and never able to return to the way they once were. This terrible sense of forever and the pain, the love, the joy, the sorrow, the hate, the-everything.

Never ending, never stopping, too much, too little, enough, not enough, more, less, imperfect, perfect, all of it, and none at all, all at the same time, in that one brief moment...

And they ran.

Because that was all they could do.

It was all anyone could do.

It was all the Master did as the drums assaulted him ever since, driving him deeper into the pit that was insanity, driving out the song of vortex, drowning it out. Now it was the music of the universe drowning out the drums. They were leaving him, growing fainter and slower.

Ta-ta-ta-tap.

Ta-ta-ta...tap.

Ta-ta...ta...tap.

Ta...ta...ta...tap.

...Ta...ta...ta...Silence.

And then the world exploded around him, casting the Master out of the vortex. The not-wind whipping about him violently, rejecting him, trying to spit him back out the way he came, no longer wanting him. The original entrance to the portal was shut, sealed completely, and he could not continue on the original path, that way was barred from him like a strainer. So the Master was expelled through a weak point, a small tear in the fabric of the time vortex, to get rid of him, to fix that weak point so the tear would seal itself up. The Master flew out of the crack in the universe, making it first swing wide open before snapping shut with a finality that would never be challenged.

The crack disappeared.

The Master stood there, burnt. Burnt from head to toe, his face devoid of everything but his eye-sockets. His skin was charred with bits of skin flaking off showing more blackened skin underneath some parts revealed seared bones that had been blackened as well. The sickening scent of burned flesh permeated the air as well as the sound of hissing as raindrops landed and evaporated on the scorched skin.

The Master was dying, he could feel it, he knew it.

He took a step forward and then another, groaning in pure agony. He needed to regenerate, but could he? The ritual had gone wrong, but that crazy nervous, excess energy was gone. Life energy no longer crackled and zipped around his body; it was no longer uncontrolled. The Master shook with the effort of standing in the rain, his breathing was labored as each breath of air was a battle to be fought from the pain it caused.

Above the din of rain, another sound could be heard, a snuffling sound followed by a quiet whine. A dog came into view and paused a foot away from the dying time lord, giving a sniff before letting out another whine. The Master scowled-or tried to, that is, the pain was too great for him to actually do it. The dog let out another whine before turning around in a small anxious circle and letting out a bark. It danced away a few steps, let out a bark, and repeated.

The Master knew many languages, but dog was not one of them-only the Doctor knew all those useless languages-but he could deduce that the idiotic mutt wanted him to follow it. The Master almost wanted to refuse just for the sake of refusing, but self-preservation forced the Master to reject that idea fairly quickly. Gritting his teeth against the pain, the Master followed the dog at a slow, pain-filled pace.

After the first three minutes and forty-nine seconds, the Master had to hand to the dog's persistence. It refused to let him give up, barking at him to keep going, to not stop, not yet. It was many, long, agonizing minutes later before he could just barely make out a voice calling for something through the rain. The dog let out a thunderous bark and the time lord winced at its volume.

The voice paused for a beat and then increased in its fervor. Obviously it was the owner of the dog and the destination that the mutt was fixed on leading the Master to. "I should have suspected something like this from you, mutt. Taking me to your stupid ape, expecting them to be able to help me," the Master scoffed, stopping. The dog let out another whine as it circled around him. "I'm not so desperate that I need to entrust myself to a stupid, blundering ape. Last time I did that, I got shot. I don't fancy doing that again, besides it's not like you could make me do it."

The Master managed it give something like a condescending smirk to the dog, who let out a bark that could've been in protest or warning. "What are you going to do, whine at me?" The injured and irate time lord taunted. The dog snarled out what could've been a threat or a stinging insult, it didn't matter. The Master was grudgingly forced to follow the dog on the off chance it might maim him if he didn't.

In a perfect world, the Master wouldn't be dying and he would have his laser screwdriver which he would use to disintegrate the insolent mutt, but as it was, the world was obviously flawed. The farther the Master followed, the louder the faraway voice got. In the distance, the Master could see a beam of light waving side to side as the human used it to try to see through the rain. The voice soon became clearer to the time lord as he struggled forward.

"K-9! K-9, where are you?! It's time to go home, K-9!" The Master snorted at the not-so-clever name, before that snort turned into a harsh cough. The Master took another step only to fall bonelessly to the ground. The dog started to bark urgently and ran towards the beam of light. "K-9! There you are, I've been look all... What is it, K-9?" K-9 continued to bark frantically before running back to the Master. "W-wait, K-9! Where are you going?" K-9's owner raced after him, completely baffled. K-9 stood next to the fallen time lord sniffing him worriedly before letting out a whimper.

The Master could faintly hear the sound of Wellington boots squishing and splashing on the soggy ground as the human ran towards the dog and him. "Dear Lord in heaven," a feminine voice gasped somewhere of to his right. The female let out a distressed cry at the sight of him and ran to his side when the time lord began to convulse in pain. The Master could sense her hands hover over his body, not touching him, but desperately wanting to help.

"Stay back," the Master managed to ground out to her, wanting no distractions while he tried to summon the energy to regenerate. There was a brief moment where the Master almost didn't succeed, where he almost lost the one battle that counted the most. The darkness had almost consumed him, but he fought with tooth and claw, not willing to die, not yet. Not today. A bright light erupted from all of his pores, encompassing him entirely.

Fire consumed him and burnt him, but differently from the way the time vortex had burned the Master. This one was changing him, healing him, making it so he could live to fight another day. It burned him in a way that was welcome, a way that relieved him, and assured that he would not go back to the cold and empty darkness. The regeneration energy exploded and flared around the Master, but he didn't care, he was triumphant, he was alive, he had won.

Finally, it ended, the energy died down and the light disappeared. The Master lied there, unmoving for that one moment, not wanting to move, not wanting to break the silence that had finally fallen. The blissful quiet silence uninterrupted by the sound of drums. So quiet, the Master could actually hear properly for the first time in centuries. He could hear his own breath and his own hearts. It was glorious.

Then it was broken by a small cry, causing the Master to tense, ready to fight or run, though he doubted that he could get very far. Footsteps stumbled unevenly towards him. "H-how is that possible? You-you just...what?" It was the female, he could hear her quiet, stammering, disbelieving voice. "You just lit up in flames, and yet you're still alive and even in better health than before, that's not possible!" Her voice was high with fright, but she still cautiously approached closer. "How did you-"

"Shut up," the Master growled and the female froze from where she stood, spooked. "Just shut up, you stupid ape. I don't need to listen to your yapping, not when I can finally hear myself think."

"But you're alive, how?" she persisted, vexing the irate time lord.

"It's called regenerating, not that your puny, insignificant, human mind would know what that is," the Master taunted, sitting upright, completely naked as the day he was born. The female bit her lip and resolutely refused to look away.

"But...but that's impossible. That was just a story, a-a dream I had and wrote down one day. It-it can't possibly be real." The Master took a loud and pointed sniff in the woman's direction.

"You shouldn't know these things, ape-and I know you're an ape, because you smell like one-so stop acting like you know what you're talking about," the Master narrowed his eyes, daring the woman to disobey him. She blinked, startled and unsure what the Master meant by the word "ape" and how she smelled like one. She resisted the urge to sniff herself to see if she really did smell like a monkey.

"Um, look, it's-" the woman started, gently.

"What did I just say?" The Master asked in a dangerously voice, causing the female to raise her arms in a gesture of peace.

"Not to talk about things that I have, apparently, no business knowing. I was just going to offer you the choice to spend the night at my house since it's raining, cold, and...and you don't have any...any clothes." Her eyes started to unconsciously slide downwards, before she visible caught herself and locked them back onto the Master's face.

"Oh, how generous of you," the time lord's voice oozed sarcasm and dark humor, "I should wonder if there were any alternative motives in that decision."

The female frowned, not understanding the innuendo that the blonde in front of her was implying, "No, there aren't, I'm completely sincere. You were burnt to a crisp from what must've lightning and forced to...to..." she waved impatiently, "Whatever that was on my property. I-I suppose you're my responsibility now, especial since you don't look too good. As a doctor, I would recommend that you have a good lie down and-"

The Master sputtered indignantly, feeling ill for his recent regeneration and terribly offended at the idea of him being the responsibility of an ape-or anyone's responsibility, really-to baby over, quickly rose to his feet, "Listen to me, you wench, I'm not some child that you can-" The Master gagged abruptly, interrupting himself mid-sentence. He let out a sick-sounding choking noise before doubling over. The gagging sounds continued until he finally managed to cough out a cloud of orange atron energy.

The woman in front of him had eyes as big as saucers as she watched the cloud float away into the sky. The Master swayed as he stood up straight once again, his skin a white pallor. He shakingly put a hand on the female's shoulder for support in a way that was meant to be threatening, but only proved to show that the Master was weaker than he had been letting on and that she had been right in saying that he was sick. He was trembling with the effort to stay upright.

"You will take me to you house and I will stay there until after my regeneration is fully complete," the Master ordered gruffly, his voice sounding breathless as he tried to stay awake.

"A hospital would-" she started to protest.

The Master's head snapped upward, "No, I can't go there, I'm obviously not human, what do you think that they will do to me once they find out about that not-so-little fact about me, you stupid ape?" The hand tightened painfully, the time lord's strength temporarily returning. "I will be staying at your place of residence, do you hear me?"

"Fine! You just better hope that I still have my medical supplies from when I used to work at the hospital, you-" the female snapped before paling when the Master slumped forward, "Hey, I'm sorry, that was uncalled for. My house is just a few minutes walk away, come on, mister. Let's go, K-9." She went under the Master's arm until it was wrapped around her shoulders and she was mostly supporting his weight.

The Master groaned as a headache started to develop and black spots danced in his vision. His headache started to grow more and more severe in intensity as time went on. The Master needed to go into a healing coma after that particularly violent regeneration. He obviously still wasn't done yet. But for now, he needed to stay awake just a bit longer, the Master didn't fancy passing out in the rain butt-naked or just passing out in the rain in general.

The moment the Master heard the jingle of keys as the female who he forced to play host opened the door, the time lord decided that this was far enough. Just before his eyes closed for the final time, the Master caught a glimpse of familiar, worried, brown-eyes looking right back at him.


To Be Continued...


Explanations:

*So, the Master still has the same body as he previous regeneration. There is a perfectly logical explanation, but as there is a perfectly logical explanation why the Master didn't continue to get dragged to Gallifrey via time vortex the moment the drums disappear. Both of them should be explained within the next chapter.

*K-9 in this dimension is an actual dog. A very smart, alien dog. This is about as far as I can spoil, more will be revealed within a few chapters' time.

Advertisement:

TITLE: Falling into Wonderland

Author: PenSmith433

ID: 5932706

SUMMARY: I am a sister, I am traveler through time and I am finding a path amongst the stars. I was lost, and so alone but I am learning things that no one could have ever thought possible. I started off so confused, but a Doctor showed me the universe. And I pray that it will never end.

OPINION: I love it. I seriously, completely loved it and its sequel too. I like how even the original lines in the original script in 'Doctor Who' and slight different and aren't written down word for word.

Thought Process:

Thank you for the reviews, TheScandalInBelgraviaand Superdani4ever. They made me want to update when I should be catching up on sleep. Scandal, your opinion is noted, and you're right, if I do change everyone's gender (and I'm starting to think on just limiting it to the companions) their background story and personality will be different.

For now, I'm personally just playing around with the idea of Ross (Rose), Martin (Martha), and Daniel (Donna), and just leaving it at that. We'll see.

As it is, please vote on my profile so I know where to take this story to maximize your enjoyment.

On the plus side, a good friend of mine named Alicia did cover art for this story. On either Monday or Tuesday, I'll put it up. You can see more of Alicia's work on Deviantart. Her pen name is Uber-neko.

Happy Friday,

FFA, the Fan Fictional Authoress

Date Submitted: Friday, September 13, 2013.