AN: Yet again I apologise for the delay in updating. Real life interfered. Nothing bad, just school holidays, daughter's birthday and party, booking next years holidays, etc etc all combined to stop me getting the next chapters ready. A New Dawn's update will follow in a few days I hope.

In this AU, I assume that, even without Jack, somehow the Doctor ended up at the end of the universe, and things played out very much the same way. I'm assuming everyone is familiar with the episode Utopia. We pick up the story close to the end of that episode.

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, alerted or favourited!

Chapter 3

Malcassairo Year 300 trillion

The Doctor and Martha pounded down the corridor towards the control room, where Professor Yana and Chantho were with the TARDIS. The Futurekind were running through the corridors after them. They had a couple of minutes lead, that was all.

Looking in the window of the locked control room door, the Doctor was in time to witness Chantho shoot Professor Yana from her position on the floor. He saw the Professor stagger where he stood, just outside the TARDIS. As the sonic screwdriver was failing to open the door, in desperation, the Doctor reversed it and smashed the barrel into the locking mechanism. The door opened and the Doctor and Martha ran inside. Martha stayed back, trying in vain to close and re-lock the door, while the Doctor went after the Professor. He was just too late. The other Time Lord entered the TARDIS, and locked its doors so the Doctor could not follow him. He scrabbled in vain at the lock, but it would not open for him.

The Doctor backed off, as the energy of regeneration became visible through the TARDIS doors. He turned abruptly, as Martha screamed. "Doctor, they're coming, help me!"

The Futurekind were almost upon them, and seeing that Martha couldn't possibly hold the door against them on her own, the Doctor rushed over to help her. As he strained against the door, he heard the TARDIS begin to dematerialise. Screaming, "No!" he was helpless to do anything to stop it. It took four more minutes for the Doctor and Martha to secure the door. By that time the TARDIS was long gone.

"Can you get it back?" Martha cried, in a panic. "How are we going to get out of here without it?"

"No, it could be anywhere in time and space by now," the Doctor replied morosely, as he slumped with his back against the door. "I have no way of recalling it. And no idea how we are going to get out of here," he admitted.

b_b_b_b_b

50 years later (in the Master's time line)

The Master frowned at the TARDIS console. He had been pulled off course by a rift in spacetime, and the TARDIS had landed right next to it. He checked the coordinates. It was Earth, or at least somewhere in orbit over Earth. But this was Earth after some sort of disaster. The civilisation was at a lower level than he would have expected in the year 200,406. Activating the scanner, he checked what was immediately outside the TARDIS.

It was pitch black, so he activated the external lights on the TARDIS. They illuminated part of a large room, leaving the further areas murky. He was on a derelict satellite. There was no power, and no breathable atmosphere. The TARDIS had landed in what appeared to be a control room. It was a mess. Wiring festooned the centre of the room, there were piles of cans and bottles lying around, some of the consoles had been smashed up, and there was dried blood everywhere. As he moved the scanner around, he found the source of the blood. It was a man, laying on a makeshift pallet that had been soaked in it. Next to him lay a tiny mummified body.

Checking for life signs, and finding none, the Master extended the TARDIS's atmospheric shell out to cover the whole room, and walked out of the door. Intrigued, he gazed at the two bodies. The rift that had brought him here was passing right through them. The scene did not make any sense. Why would they be lying there, in a rift? A rift which was following them, as the satellite orbited. Plus, the baby looked as if it had been dead for centuries, whereas the man looked as if he had only just died. Could the rift possibly have preserved the body of one while letting time take its toll on the other? Unlikely; his time sense did not detect any temporal anomaly that would support that. As the Master scanned the bodies in more detail, he got a major shock. Though the man was human, the baby was part Gallifreyan.

At that moment he saw the graffiti, but the TARDIS lights were not bright enough to illuminate the walls of the room properly. He had to walk over towards the wall to read it. It was written in blood, in letters a foot high. He made a circuit of the room, and found that all four walls were covered in the graffiti. The same message was repeated over and over again.

Fuck you Doctor

Burn in Hell

Well, that explained the baby. The human must be from an era when males could bear children. But the question was, how did they come to be here, with such a disparity in their times of death? And why would the Doctor have left his child to die?

The Master then got his second major shock in as many minutes. Time writhed, he felt sick and faint. And the dead man gasped and came back to life.

b_b_b_b_b

With the man now alive, the Master could feel the vortex energy emanating from him. He stepped back reflexively. It was unnatural, what the Time Lords, if they had survived, would have considered an abomination. At least he now understood why the Doctor would have abandoned the man. But even this would not have caused the Doctor to leave the child.

As the man gasped back into life, he inhaled and, at last, found air to breathe. He thrashed around for a few seconds before his body processed the fact that he was not dying this time. Then he opened his eyes and saw the TARDIS and the Master. Hatred and contempt flashed in his eyes. He practically snarled. And, despite his weakness, he struggled to his feet and launched himself at the Master. He got in a few wild punches that connected with the Time Lord's body. Then his hands clamped round the Master's throat, intent on strangling him. But, even in the best physical condition, a human could not defeat a Time Lord in a hand to hand fight.

The Master had been surprised by the ferocity of the human's attack on him, which was the only reason that the man had landed any blows. Once he got over the surprise, he merely peeled the man's hands from his neck and held him away, as he fought and swore and poured out a tirade of hate.

The Master could feel the human's mind through his touch. It was not shielded at all, wide open and projecting. It was a dark, seething, black hole of angush. Bitter hatred, and a burning desire for vengeance, were dominant. Aimed directly at the Doctor. Interesting.

Eventually the man, Jack - the Master had gleaned from his mind, tired, and collapsed to his knees sobbing. He crawled over to the baby and, gently picking her up, stroked the dead face. The contact with the baby seemed to bring him back to something like coherency. "You're too late Doctor. We needed you centuries ago, not now." His tears ran freely. "Why have you come back?" he asked.

"I am not the Doctor," the Master informed him.

"Of course you are," snapped Jack. "That's the Doctor's TARDIS, you're a Time Lord. There aren't any others. You may have regenerated, but you can only be the Doctor." He paused briefly to wipe the tears from his eyes. "So take a hint," he gestured to the graffiti.

The Master was intrigued enough by the situation that he was willing to humour the man, and not merely turn around immediately and abandon him there. "I am a Time Lord, but I stole the Doctor's TARDIS. My name is the Master."

"You can't expect me to believe that," Jack retorted.

"Nevertheless, it is true," the Master insisted. "What happened here? The child is obviously the Doctor's. And how can you be alive?"

"I'm sure you know more than I do," Jack sneered. "You must have done something to make me like this. And only you know why you abandoned us."

Exasperated, the Master put his hand's on either side of the human's head, and opened a door into his own mind. "I am not the Doctor. Look for yourself."

Seeing a chance to hurt the Doctor, Jack stabbed into the Time Lord's mind with as much force as his mind could generate. It had no effect. It was like stabbing cotton wool, there was nothing to push against.

The Master merely held him still and mentally ordered him to look.

Jack eventually did, and, as soon as he did, it was clear that this was not the Doctor. He sagged in the Time Lord's grip. All the fight going out of him, as he understood that this was not his target.

The Master held on to the human, and rifled through his memories. There was no resistance. He had to go back three centuries to arrive at a time where the human's memories were anything other than a morass of pain, anguish and hate, interspersed with dying. Eventually, he found a time before that. The man, Jack, was kissing the Doctor goodbye. He knew that he was going to die, but he was willing to do it, because it was the right thing to do, and because he loved the Doctor.

The Master sneered. Love. He should have known. The Doctor was always into the more sickly sweet, mawkish, emotional stuff than he had been. But he couldn't help the vicarious urge to know what it had been like for the two of them. The presence of a baby left no doubt how close their relationship had been. He went further back through the memories. It didn't take long to find what he was looking for. He got more than he bargained for.

b_b_b_b_b

The Master hadn't expected it, but Jack and the Doctor had made love in the full Gallifreyan way; joining bodies and minds. It had been possible because Jack was from a time when humans had developed limited telepathy. When he delved into those memories, he could feel what both the Doctor and Jack had been feeling. The Master had not felt a Gallifreyan mind so intimately for so long that it was overwhelming. As he traced the memory, the Master became caught up in the Doctor's sensations and desires. And they were focussed on this man.

Before he knew what he was doing, the Master was kissing Jack passionately, his hands leaving Jack's temples to roam over his body. There was no loss of mind to mind contact, as Jack's shields were completely absent, and that meant that any touch was sufficient to allow the telepathic contact.

Jack, who had been alone and in agony for centuries, responded eagerly to the Master's touch. He knew now that this was not the Doctor. Not the person he hated with every fibre of his being. And that was all that mattered. He had been starved of contact for so long, that he embraced it fully. Neither of the two men were in conscious control of their actions, but both were desperate for physical closeness. They clawed at each other's clothes frantically, shedding them as quickly as they could, before falling onto the pallet. Neither cared about the dried blood that covered it, nor even the filthy state that Jack was in.

The Master entered Jack quickly, and began thrusting into him, still following the memory of the Doctor. But as he moved a new sensation overtook him. Something that was not present in the memory. He could see, and feel, time lines radiating out from them. They seemed to caress him and wind through his body in a way that, even with all his Time Lord senses, he had never felt before. It was mind blowing. He could see with clarity thousands of possibilities of what could be and what could have been. And they were all centred on Jack. There was also an incredible energy passing between them. It felt as if Jack's body was alive with the vortex, and that was pouring into him as they shagged. With a cry the Master came hard, closely followed by Jack. As they lay together, panting, they both gradually regained their senses. Neither could believe what had just happened.

Though stunned by the experience, the Master recovered first. He stood and dragged his clothes back on. He was actually trembling. Then he looked back at Jack, who still lay on the pallet. How could this insane, filthy, human produce such a reaction in him? It was ludicrous. Impossible.

The Master started to walk away, back to the TARDIS. He needed to leave this strange, wrong, man behind. No one should be able to make him lose control like that. When he looked back, he saw that Jack wore an expression of resignation. As the Master watched, Jack turned away and laid his hand gently on the body of the baby. He did not speak.

Having seen Jack's memories, the Master knew that the Doctor had done exactly this. Jack had seen the TARDIS vanish from this very spot, leaving him behind. But what did that matter to him? He wouldn't be influenced by sentiment. He was about to enter the TARDIS, but stopped. Before landing here he had been unutterably bored. And there were too many fascinating mysteries here to be ignored. A rift which followed a satellite, a man, saturated with vortex energy, who could return from the dead, and a Gallifreyan baby, abandoned by her father. How could he just walk away? Plus, if he was honest with himself, he really wanted to repeat the mind blowing sex.

Cursing himself for his uncharacteristic weakness, particularly over a man who was probably even more insane than he was, the Master turned back, held out a hand towards Jack and said "Come."

Jack looked at him blankly for a moment, but then stood up. His 300 year old clothes had not survived the encounter with the Master, so he remained naked. He took one tentative step towards the TARDIS, but then stopped. He looked back at the baby, then at the Master again. "I can't leave her. I promised I wouldn't abandon her."

The Master was astounded that someone, who was in desperate need of rescue, would jeopardise it for a child who had been dead for centuries. But he understood that this was not negotiable. If he did not allow the baby on board, Jack would stay behind. He nodded curtly and Jack scooped the baby up gently and followed the Master to the TARDIS.

AN2: I saw the idea that Jack created the Cardiff rift, while buried for 2000 years, in another story. In that the Doctor and Ianto go back to rescue Jack but the Doctor leaves him there because the rift needed to be created. I would like to acknowledge the author so if anyone can remind me who it was I'd be very grateful. I haven't had any luck finding it with twstoryfinders.

I will be away on holiday for 10 days from next Friday so the next chapter of Lacrimis will probably not be posted until I get back.