Author's Note: OK, I'm a grumpy-pants tonight, my computer had a big spasm and completely wiped this chapter, so I had to rewrite the whole thing, and it's massive! SO...if I didn't respond to your review personally, my apologies, because I had to redo my whole hard drive and lost heaps of stuff...hopefully no review e-mails, but I'm not 100% sure :0(
But a huge thanks to babybluepineapple, Aietradaea, XxCoffee-and-CreamxX (what a massive effort, catching up all those reviews, you are a legend), KlinicallyInsaneKoschei, Strange and Sad Angel and Omniac for all your reviews, I had the best time reading them all (made up for all my computer woes)!
To babybluepineapple - This is the chapter with the bit you requested in it - hope you enjoy!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Doggedly, Tejana forced her way through the swirling clouds of mist which seemed to encircle her. She could hear her own breathing, the air rasping painfully in her throat every time she inhaled; she could taste the sticky sweetness of – was that chocolate? - in her mouth; and she could feel warm arms around her, holding her close. Somewhere in the fog, she could hear the sound of raised, angry voices.
Suddenly, the warm arms were gone, leaving her feeling cold and bereft. Shivering in protest, she forced open her heavy eye-lids and tried to focus her blurry vision. To her horror, the first thing she saw was Jack's prone body lying close by, his blue eyes wide open and staring lifelessly into her own.
Then she heard the Master's distinctive voice, "That makes eight hundred and seventeen times I've killed him now...some people just never learn! Now it's your turn, Miss Jones. You know, I really, really should have done this a long time ago!"
And then the Doctor, yelling: "No, Master, stop!"
Struggling to understand what was happening, she realised the Master was on his feet just beside her. Clearly, he had been the one holding her a moment before. Now, she could see he had his laser screwdriver aimed and ready to fire at a cringing Martha Jones. The Doctor was standing in front of Martha, using his body to shield her.
"It was an accident, Master," the Doctor reasoned earnestly, his long brown hair flopping into his eyes, his hand extended towards the other Time Lord, palm outwards in a calming gesture. "Put the screwdriver away."
"You might prefer the company of fools, Doctor, but I don't!" the Master snarled. "Get out of the way!"
"I won't let you do this!"
"Unfortunately, you don't get a say! Now, move, or I'll kill you too!"
Oh gods, somehow she had to stop him! Concentrating hard, she managed to reach out and wrap her hand around his ankle, feeling the rough denim of his jeans under her fingers. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she recognised the strange parallel between her action and his in The Matrix when he had saved her from Rassilon, indelibly searing his mark not only into her flesh but also into her life from that moment onward.
"Koschei!" she gritted out, her voice not much more than a tortured whisper. "No!"
He looked down at her and she could see the wild look of psychopathic derangement in his brown eyes, the savage need for blood.
"She nearly killed you, Ana," he said harshly. "They put some sort of amnesia drug in your coffee. I can't just let that go. She has to die."
"Please," she said desperately, tightening her grip. "I'm asking you...I'm begging you...don't!"
The Master hesitated, his gaze locked with hers. A terrible conflict raged in his face, as his rational side struggled against the seething tumult of the drums. There was a deep, intense pause which seemed to last forever. Then, at last, his hand dropped. The Doctor nodded gratefully, the tension in his body relaxing, while behind him Martha gave a strangled sob of relief.
"Consider yourself lucky, Miss Jones," the Master said tautly. "Trust me, the next time you cross me, you won't be so fortunate."
With that, he pulled away from Tejana's grip and disappeared out the door. Exhausted, she lay back on the floor, all the adrenalin in her veins seeming to drain away now the danger was past. Beside her, Jack sucked in a sudden, huge gasp of air and his eyes flicked open. Amy rushed to him and helped him to sit up.
"Are you all right, Tejana?" the Doctor asked, his forehead creased worriedly.
"Just peachy, thanks," she replied flatly.
"He really would have done it. He was just going to kill me in cold blood!" Martha gabbled hysterically. "Can't you see, Tejana? He's completely insane, totally evil! We did it for your own good. We were trying to save you!"
"Save me!" Tejana spat, levering herself upright. "By putting Ret-Con in my coffee? How dare you? I am the last daughter of Gallifrey. My people were the most ancient and advanced race in the entire Universe. I am nearly six hundred years old. I've seen things, lived through things, that you could never imagine in your wildest dreams. You're a twenty-seven-year-old human who had to suffer through one tiny year of danger and deprivation and somehow you think that gives you the right to decide what memories I'm allowed to keep?"
Martha stared at her in shock, stunned at the enormous anger in the Time Lady's voice. "I...I..." she stuttered.
But Tejana wasn't finished. Her icy gaze fell on Jack, who was rapidly recovering from his latest brush with death. "And you! You who had two years of your own memories stolen by the Time Agency, you who should know how important memories are – you would do that to me?"
"Like Martha said, we were trying to help..." Jack began.
Tejana wasn't interested in listening, the fury was just too extreme. She managed to climb to her feet, knowing she had to get out of the room, before she did something drastic.
"Do me a favour – next time you feel like helping me...don't!"
The Doctor watched Tejana leave, the door slamming behind her as she stalked out of the room.
Martha looked at him pleadingly. "You understand why we did it, don't you, Doctor?"
He looked at her gravely and then shook his head. "Doing something wrong for the right reason doesn't excuse you, Martha, either of you. And believe me, what you did was absolutely wrong." Then he followed his daughter out the door.
The Master had apparently disappeared back inside his TARDIS. Tejana stood on the landing outside Jack's office, leaning on the railing and looking listlessly out over the floor of the Hub. Her delicate features contrasted sharply with her long dark hair, her pale lips still faintly tinged with blue from the aspirin poisoning, her breathing unsteady. The Doctor stood behind her, watching her for a moment, wondering what was going on inside her head after the tense scene in Jack's office.
As always, she knew he was there. Moving to stand beside her, he felt her tension increase, as though she was steeling herself. This confrontation between them had always been going to happen, it had only been a matter of when.
"He hasn't changed, has he?" the Doctor said bluntly.
"If he hadn't changed, Martha would be dead right now," she retorted huskily, giving him a steady, challenging look. "The drums are so bad, worse than ever before. They're destroying him. If we can't find Rassilon soon, I don't know what will happen."
"And when we find Rassilon?" the Doctor asked quietly. "What do you propose to do then?"
She frowned, puzzled at the question. "Kill him, of course. What else?"
"Now that sounds like the Master's companion!" the Doctor exploded. "What else indeed?"
"Rassilon wants to shred the fabric of Time itself – he's going to destroy everyone and everything to bring the Time Lords back!" Tejana retorted angrily. "What do you suggest we do? Nothing, just like you did back on Skaro, when the Time Lords sent you to prevent the genesis of the Daleks? Well, excuse me, but that worked out well for the Universe, didn't it?"
The Doctor stood as though turned to stone, shock written across his features. His daughter had never before reproached him for any of his actions relating to the Time War. In fact, she rarely spoke of the War at all, even to him. He had never realised how resentful she felt about the misguided mercy he had shown to the Daleks on their home planet so long ago. In that instant, it suddenly dawned on him that the War had damaged her too, in ways even he could never understand. The child who had once run away from Gallifrey to follow him so trustingly across the Universe had vanished. In her place there stood a Time Lady with weary, ancient eyes, eyes that had seen too much, eyes that were just like his own. Why had he never seen it before? What else had he missed? The Master's shocking revelation still burned across his soul. The Doctor had always known that he would win no prizes in the fatherhood department, but to have his innumerable shortcomings shown to him so plainly by none other than his old enemy was a bitter pill indeed.
Tejana bit her lip. "I'm sorry. I never meant to say that, Doctor...it just slipped out," she said regretfully, not meeting his stricken eyes. "The Master was right. We should never have come back here. It was a big mistake. All it's done is cause everyone pain."
Shaking her head, she turned away, heading down the stairs.
"You can't trust him, Tejana!" the Doctor tried one last time. "Whatever happened between you in The Matrix, it was a lie. Everything he does is a lie! You've known him all your life, you know that."
"I said it to Martha and I said it to Jack. Now I'll say it to you – it is what it is, Doctor," she replied, glancing back up the stairs towards him. "Now, please, just leave me alone."
The Doctor allowed her to walk away from him, unwillingly remembering the look of determination on the Master's face as he had fought for her life on the floor of Jack's office.
How ironic, thought the stunned Doctor, that of all the people in the Universe, the Master would be the one to best protect my daughter.
The Master was arrogant, ruthless, amoral and completely single-minded. If he decided that it was in his best interests to safeguard Tejana, he would turn entire planets into dust before he let harm come to her. Nothing and no-one would ever come before her. Unlike her father, who had always put everyone and everything before her.
Heartsick, the Doctor watched her vanish into the Master's TARDIS. He didn't know how or when it had happened, but he knew he had lost her.
As Tejana made her way across the floor of the Hub, her eyes brimmed with self-recriminating tears. What had she been thinking? She hadn't meant to say that, had never meant to hurt the Doctor. He had been hurt so much already, it was the last thing that she would ever want to do.
Suddenly, she found herself thinking back to the aftermath of The Year That Never Was, the bitter-sweet memory of the night she and Martha and Jack had watched the Doctor burn the Master's body.
They stood, the three of them, shoulder to shoulder in the dark, silhouetted by the moon on the windy headland, the TARDIS a black, solid shape at their backs. Down below, amidst a circle of flaming torches in the disused quarry, the grieving Doctor laid the carefully-wrapped body of the Master on the ceremonial funeral pyre.
"No-one will ever know who and what he really was," Martha murmured. "It really will be as if the year never was."
It was true. The cover-up had gone extremely well. The story was put about that the British Prime Minister had gone mad and had assassinated Arthur Winters, the President-Elect of the United States; that the Toclafane had only been a ruse to get the President-Elect on board The Valiant and had never really existed; that Harold Saxon had subsequently killed himself in a fit of insanity. The Archangel Network had been deactivated and now all those who had feverishly supported the Saxon campaign were too embarrassed even to admit that they had voted for a madman. Lucy Saxon had been incarcerated in Broadfell Prison where she awaited a secret, jury-less trial for her part in the terrible Year That Never Was.
"Good to see that the Doctor's burning his body," Jack remarked savagely. "No coming back from that, Time Lord or not!"
Tejana silently winced at his words, watching the Doctor prepare the torch to light the fire. The Doctor had expected her to help with the funeral, in fact he had taken it for granted.
"Tejana and I will take care of it," he had told Jack and Martha. "We are the last of the Time Lords. It's our responsibility and ours alone."
But Tejana couldn't do it. She knew she should be rejoicing at the Master's downfall, like everybody else. And she was pleased, happy, delighted that yet another of his schemes had been foiled by the Doctor. She was glad that he was dead – after all, she had hated and despised him. And yet...and yet...her mind, traitor that it was, kept drifting back to that one, odd moment of attraction between them on board The Valiant, the warm, gentle touch of his hands on hers, the feeling of his double pulse beating in time with her own...
"I'm sorry, Doctor," she had said. "I can't. I just...can't."
"Tejana, you are the last Time Lady of Gallifrey," the Doctor had replied stiffly. "It's your duty to stand witness."
"No," she had replied simply and finally. "Do what you must, Doctor, but I can't."
She had compromised a little, consenting to stand overlooking the pyre with Martha and Jack, but she refused to take part.
"It's not about preventing him from coming back," she told Jack softly. "It's an old Gallifreyan custom. The funeral pyre is a warrior's send off."
Jack did a double take, staring at her incredulously.
Martha was equally astonished. "Are you saying that the Doctor is giving him honour?"
"You're joking!" Jack snapped harshly. "That murdering bastard? If I had my way, I'd have left his body for the dogs!"
Tejana shrugged, not surprised that the humans did not understand. "He was a Time Lord. One of the last. The Doctor has given him his due."
Jack shook his head in disbelief. "You people amaze me. Of all the racial superiority...that guy was an insane, mass-murdering megalomaniac who nearly destroyed the Earth. Yet just because he was one of your glorified people, you and the Doctor still feel the need to give him an honourable funeral! Sometimes I think you're both as mad as he was!"
Tejana turned and looked at him, her expression suddenly stern. In her eyes he saw reflected the ancient arrogance and ancestral pride of the Time Lords, a billion years of history and racial dominance bred into her blood. Jack almost gasped, so other-worldly did she seem in that moment.
"We are who we are, Jack," she answered quietly, as though that was explanation enough.
In the quarry below, the Doctor lit the ceremonial torch and it blazed up in a shower of sparks against the dark. Tejana blinked at the orange flame, suddenly feeling a little dizzy. Jack was right about one thing – the Master wasn't coming back from this. He had always been such a part of the fabric of her life, he and the Doctor forever fighting it out among the constellations, the Doctor always mourning the loss of their early friendship. So many times they had thought him dead, only to have him return, regenerated or resurrected by the Time Lords. Only this time he had not regenerated of his own choice and there were no more Time Lords left to resurrect him. It was over, finished. She and the Doctor really were the last ones left.
The funeral pyre flared up wildly. The Doctor paused for a moment, silently saying his final goodbye, and then he turned his back on the leaping flames and walked away.
Burning, Tejana thought erratically, everything burning...Gallifrey burning, the Time Lords burning, the Master burning, everything burning...
For a moment, she couldn't breathe and she almost stumbled. Jack's strong hand cupped her elbow.
"Easy," he said reassuringly. "It's over, Tejana. Everything's gonna be just fine now."
The Doctor approached slowly, his brown eyes still suspiciously moist, his long brown coat flapping in the breeze.
"We'll...er...let you have a moment alone then," Martha said, pulling an oblivious Jack with her.
"Oh, yeah," he agreed, getting it at last. "We'll just...um...be in the TARDIS."
They disappeared inside the blue box, leaving the two Time Lords facing each other.
"Daughter," the Doctor said formally in Gallifreyan.
"Father," she responded in kind.
Tears shone in Tejana's eyes as she looked at him, seeing the deep grief in his face, her hearts heavy with all-consuming sorrow for everything that had been lost.
"How did it all go so terribly wrong?" she said, her voice catching painfully in her throat. "How can it be that we are the only ones left?"
The Doctor couldn't answer at first, the anguish was just so overwhelming. "I don't know," he said eventually. "I just don't know."
Then he tried to smile, running his hand sheepishly through his spiky brown hair. "I've always been so proud of you, you know, from the very beginning. When you stood up to the Master on The Valiant, I almost burst with pride. You've grown up so strong and courageous and beautiful."
Tejana felt a shaft of pain lance through her. What wouldn't she had given to have heard those words in her younger days, before the Time War, when he was the centre of her Universe, the reason for everything, the idol at whose feet she had worshipped? But he had never said them.
She turned her face aside. "The child of a woman you didn't love," she responded bitterly. "The responsibility and burden you didn't want."
The Doctor stared at her in shock. "No! No, that's not true. Tejana, I haven't been a good father, I admit it. So many times I haven't been there for you, so many times I left you...but I always, ALWAYS loved you. I know I don't say it enough, but you are, and always have been, my hearts and my soul."
He hugged her close and together they stood, father and daughter, the last of the Time Lords, watching the flames dancing in the night, before slowly turning away and leaving the blazing funeral pyre behind them.
Pausing outside the Master's TARDIS, Tejana smiled sadly. That memory would always be one of her most treasured recollections of her father, his words something she would never forget. They so very rarely had any sort of discussion involving feelings or emotions. It just wasn't something the Doctor did. Funny, looking back on it now, that it had taken the supposed death of the Master to bring them closer together.
"And I will always love you, Doctor," she thought now. "The only problem is..." - she took a deep, shaky breath as she finally admitted it to herself - "I love the Master too."
The Master gripped the console tightly, his knuckles white with tension. The drums inside his head were excruciating, the rhythm of four pounding out in relentless torment, each beat flaying his cringing mind in agonising pain. He wanted so badly to scream, but he knew that if he started he would never, ever stop. Allowing Martha Jones to live had pushed his restraint to its uttermost limit. The insanity was closing in on him, the drums driving him mercilessly. He had never felt this out of control, even in the wasteland on Earth after his botched resurrection. He needed to crush, to destroy, to hurt. He wanted to set the Universe on fire just for the sheer pleasure of watching it burn. Destruction, devastation, desecration...the only things which would satisfy the drums, the only things which could bring him some peace, the only things that had ever given him any surcease from his pain.
Suddenly, he sensed that Tejana had entered the TARDIS behind him. He felt a dangerous blaze of anger, assuming that she had come to read him the riot act over killing her precious Handsome Jack yet again. Then, hard on the heels of his anger, there came a cold wash of fear as he realised he was going to harm her. He wasn't going to be able to hold back, the drums were just too powerful this time. It would be so easy just to backhand her savagely across the room; such a small amount of effort to shatter those slender bones one by one, to keep hitting and kicking until she screamed for mercy...
"Get out, Ana!" he rasped, frantic to get her away from him, needing to know she was safe. "The drums...if you stay, I won't be able to stop myself. I'm going to hurt you!"
She ignored his words and began to climb the stairs towards him instead, her expression unafraid.
"I SAID GO!" he shouted desperately, his self-control hanging by a thread.
But then she was standing in front of him, her dark blue eyes locked anxiously with his tortured brown ones. Hesitantly, she reached for him and he felt her cool hands tenderly cupping his feverish face, her long slim fingers probing his temples. He felt her physically flinch as the savage rhythm of the drums in his mind viciously struck at her.
"Let me help you, Koschei," she begged. "They're killing you."
"You can't," he growled. "No-one can help."
"I can't take them away, but I can help you bear it, if only for a little while," she answered softly. "Please."
All at once, he saw that he had been wrong - she had not been thinking of Jack, or Martha or even the Doctor when she had come in here. The only person in her thoughts had been the Master himself. Right then, no-one else even existed for her, only him. Gently, she pulled his forehead down until it touched hers. He felt the delicate touch of her mind joining with his, the first time she had voluntarily initiated deep psychic contact with him since they had left the ship of the Eternals. Immediately, the agonising sound of the drums faded. They were still audible, but it was as if they were somehow muffled, as if there was a barrier between him and the torturous sound; a calm, warm peace which streamed directly into him from her consciousness. He felt her body tense and knew that, as her serenity flowed into him, his pain flowed back into her. She was absorbing his agony, taking it as her own, sharing the burden along with him, rendering it bearable.
He knew he should pull away, knew that by accepting her help he was showing weakness, leaving himself vulnerable. But in that moment, he didn't care. He held her in his arms, cradling her comforting softness against him.
And, for the first time since he was a child, he allowed someone close enough to take away his pain.