Sorry it's taken so long for me to update!! This chapter is extra long to compensate.

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Martha and Tom ducked into the low ceilinged, dark workroom, full of various broken, useless pieces of electrical equipment. A middle aged woman was leaning over a small, rather battered looking television, hitting it in agitation.

"Professor Docherty?" Tom asked.

"Busy!" Came the flustered reply.

The pair approached.

"They sent word ahead, I'm Tom Milligan," Tom said. "This is Martha Jones."

"She can be the Queen of Sheba for all I care, I'm still busy," Professor Docherty replied.

Martha was a little taken aback. She had been to so many places over the past year, and everywhere she had been met with the greatest respect, delight and admiration. However here was this woman in a little workshop in England who thought that a broken television was more worth her time?

Martha was surprised to find that she did not mind the slightly frosty reception at all. But still, the obsessive tweaking of that ridiculous television was infuriating.

"Televisions don't work any more," Martha commented.

"Oh God I miss countdown," Professor Docherty said. "Never been the same since Dez took over. Both Dez's. What's a plural for Dez, Dezi? Dezee?" Martha and Tom exchanged worried glances. Professor Docherty sighed and continued. "But we've told there's going to be a transmission," she paused to bash the television. "From the man himself. There!"

Martha and Tom gathered around the television, and there, on the small, black and white, fuzzy screen, was the Master.

Martha felt her heart beat quicken. It was him. There, on that screen, the man who she felt as though she had met last night.

She frowned.

It was a dream. Nothing but a dream. She shook herself and concentrated on the screen.

"My people," the Master was saying. "Salutations. On this, the eve of war…" he paused, and grinned at the camera. "Lovely woman. But I know there's all sorts of whispers down there. Stories of a child walking the Earth, giving you hope…" The Master walked across the room to where the Doctor was sitting, old and frail. He couldn't help but feel a smug sense of victory whenever he look at his nemesis in this form. He turned towards the camera and continued. "But I ask you," he said. "How much hope has this man got? Say hello, Gandalf," he chuckled inwardly at his own joke. "Except, he's not that old. He's an alien, with a much greater lifespan than you stunted little apes. What if it showed?" He drew out his laser screwdriver and spoke to the Doctor. "What if I suspend your capacity to regenerate? All nine hundred years of your life." The Doctor looked at him blankly, but the Master continued. "Doctor, what if we could see them?" He set the screwdriver on the setting he had been waiting so long to use, pointed it at the Doctor, and tried not to smile as he screamed. "Older, and older… and older…" the Doctor writhed in agony as his body mutated in the space of seconds, and the Master was loving it. "Down you go, Doctor. Down… down… down his years…"

Martha was petrified, she hated it, hated what this man, this alien was doing, hated how light heartedly he seemed to be taking it, but she couldn't stop watching him, watching the way his face contorted with a sick form of pleasure as he at last lowered his laser screwdriver and there was silence.

"Doctor?" The Master said to the empty pile of clothes on the floor.

Such a long silence it was, too, and perhaps only Martha noticed the flicker of fear cross the Master's face as he bent over the pile of previously occupied clothes. Perhaps she only noticed that hesitation, that slight concern in his posture that reminded Martha of a schoolboy who had gone to far in his taunting games and killed that cat he had been chasing, or that small animal he had been teasing. But the look was soon gone as the pile of clothes moved and a small, shrivelled creature appeared. Martha did not need telling to know that it was the Doctor.

The Master drew himself up slowly, and moved towards the camera, looking right at it, right at her.

"Received and understood, Miss Jones."

And then he was gone.

-

Tom knocked on the door of number eight furtively, announced himself in a whisper to whoever was on the other side, and he and Martha slipped into the crowded house, and Martha beheld a sight that was not unusual to her. She had seen many such things during her travels. Poor people crammed like stock into these small houses, without food or water, but always wanting to hear about the Doctor. Always.

"Did you bring food?" A woman asked Tom.

"Couldn't get any," Tom replied. "And I'm starving."

"All we've got is water."

"It's cheaper than building barracks," Tom told Martha. "Pack them in, one hundred in each house, ferry them off to the ship yards every morning."

"Are you Martha Jones?" A blonde haired youth asked. Martha turned.

"Yeah that's me," she said.

"Can you do it? Can you kill 'im?" the young man asked. "They said you can kill the Master. Can you? Tell us you can do it, please. Tell us you can do it."

"Who is the Master?" Another woman asked from nearby. Soon the room was buzzing with questions.

"Come on, just leave her alone, she's exhausted," Tom told them.

"No, it's all right," Martha replied. "They want me to talk, then I will."

-

There was a knock at the door.

The Master groaned in annoyance from where he had previously been asleep in his bed, and buried his head in his pillow. He never liked to be woken at unnatural times.

"What time do you call this?!" He cried to the visitor.

"Just tell them to go away," Lucy sighed from beside him, and pulled the cover over her head.

"I'm sorry, Sir," came a flustered voice from behind the door, that the Master at once recognised as belonging to one of the messenger boys. "I really am. Terribly sorry, but I've got some important news."

"Can't it wait?" Snapped the Master.

"It's about Martha Jones." The messenger boy stammered.

The Master's eyes shot open, and he sat sharply up in bed.

"Come in."

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"I travelled across the world," Martha was saying to her audience of eager people. "From the ruins of New York to the fusion mills of China right across the radiation pits of Europe. And everywhere I went I saw people just like you living as slaves. But if Martha Jones became a legend well that's wrong, because my name isn't important. There's someone else. The man who sent me out there, the man who told me to walk the earth. His name is the Doctor," Martha felt her heart flutter against her chest as she said his name. She couldn't help but smile as she reminded herself that she would be seeing him again soon. So soon. It took her a few moments to realise that she still had a captivated audience, and so continued. "He has saved your lives so many times and you never even knew he was there. He never stops, he never stays, he never asks to be thanked. But I've seen him. I know him. I love him," Martha paused. She had thought it so many times, she had known it for so long, but rarely was it said. And when it was said, it was like magic, as though she was releasing a wonderful secret. She smiled. "And I know what he can do-"

At that moment, the door opened.

"It's him! It's him! Oh my God it's him!" The woman who had opened the door for them rushed into the house.

"What do you mean?" Tom asked.

"It's the Master, he's here!" She said.

There was the sound of movement as people stood up and began talking worriedly to each other.

"But he never comes to Earth," the blonde haired youth said. "He never walks upon the ground!"

"Hide her!" the woman ordered, pointing at Martha.

Martha barely had time to think before coats were piled on top of her, and she leant back against the stairway, heart hammering like the wings of some crazed bird upon her chest.

"He walks among us," the young man said. "Our lord and master."

"Martha!" The Master called from outside, flanked by well built, well armed henchmen. "Martha Jo-ones… I can see you!"

Martha didn't know what to do, didn't know what to think. Never in all her life had she been so terrified. She had met witches, Daleks, monsters, aliens, she had done so many things, she had been so brave, but there was something about this man that scared her so much she could hardly breathe. Something about him that made her want to run away, far away, fast.

But she couldn't run. All she could do was stay there, and listen to him calling to her in that ridiculous way, almost as though he was laughing at her.

"Out you come, little girl," he continued. "Come and meet your Master."

The Master looked around the deserted street. Nothing. He wasn't surprised, he hadn't expected her to come out without a fight.

If a fight was what she wanted, a fight was what she would get.

"Anybody? Nobody? No? Nothing?" He changed tact immediately. "Positions," he commanded.

Martha heard the machine guns being cocked simultaneously, she could see Tom pointing his small pistol out of the letterbox. None of them would stand a chance.

"I'll give the order," Martha heard him say. "Unless you surrender. Just ask yourself, what would the Doctor do?"

Martha hated the way he talked to her, referred to her, as though she was a little girl. Just a child. No match for him.

Well she wasn't. She was just a tool, to do as the Doctor said. She was no match for him, and if he decided he wanted her dead, then dead she would be.

It was then that Martha realised that he was absolutely right. She was a little girl, she was a child. Not because she was young, younger than him at least, not because she was naive and human, but because she was lying there shivering under a pile of coats, with one hundred people around her, all waiting for her to help them, all depending on her, all believing in her.

And maybe that was all she needed.

Hurriedly, Martha drew the Tardis key out of her pocket and slipped it around her neck.

Out of sight of the people, she made her way to the door, placed a hand on Tom's, opened the door of number eight and stepped out and away.

And there he was.

And there she was.

She gave him a blank, steely look, before approaching slowly.

He smiled, and clapped his hands.

"Oh, yes!" He cried. "Oh, very well done, good girl! He trained you well.

The Master regarded her for a moment. Even in the dream, he hadn't remembered her being so beautiful, for a human, at least. But he knew that beautiful women were the last people to underestimate. So he reached into his pocket for his laser screwdriver.

"Bag," he said. "Give me the bag.

Martha felt her breath catch in her throat, and began to shiver in the cold. She began to walk towards him.

"No, stay there," he said, stopping her. "Just throw it."

Martha grudgingly removed the rucksack from her shoulders and tossed it towards him submissively.

The Master raised his laser screwdriver, pointed it at the plain, black rucksack, and set it alight.

"And now, good companion, your work is done," the Master said, turning the laser screwdriver to her.

Martha closed her eyes and turned her head away, waiting for the blow.

But it never came.

There was a crash behind her, and Tom dashed out of the doorway of number eight, pistol pointing straight at the Master, yelling.

As if he ever had a chance. In one easy movement, the Master had turned the laser screwdriver on Tom, and killed him.

He collapsed onto the floor of the dirty streets.

And all he got was a smirk and a small laugh from his murderer.

Martha stared at Tom's motionless body, and felt a small lump form in her throat. She wanted to cry, but she couldn't. She couldn't. She had liked Tom so very much for the short time that she had known him, she had more than liked him. And she had, perhaps foolishly, let herself believe that he may have more than liked her as well.

And just like that, he was gone.

And there was this man, standing in front of her, the man she thought she hated more than everything, the man who had enslaved her family and friends, killed Tom, done all of this to the human race, and she felt absolutely nothing towards him. Nothing. Not even hatred. She was numb, and she didn't know why.

The Master looked at her, hardly believing his own weakness. Part of him was screaming: Kill her! Kill her now! But the other part resisted, the other part didn't want to. And he would never admit it, but that scared him. Why couldn't he kill her? Why couldn't he?

Something had to be done quickly. He couldn't appear weak in front of his men. He thought fast.

"But you," he said to her. "When you die, the Doctor should be witness, hmm?" She did nothing but stare at him blankly, he couldn't stand it. He broke the gaze. "Almost dawn, Martha," he said. "And planet Earth marches to war."

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And that should be the end of the episode dialogue for a while now. I'm sure it was getting a little tedious, but I promise that it's over for the moment.

Please review, constructive criticism always welcome!

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