Summary: Donna knew that there was something missing inside her. It was like there was a hole in her heart where someone as close as family (if not closer) was meant to be. She'd always been an only child, but Donna felt like she'd lost a brother... or maybe just herself.

Notes: AU for The End of Time.

The original version of this was handed off to me by a friend who had the basic plot and the first section but couldn't get any further than that. Obviously I didn't do much better, but its still a fun plot idea.

Chasing Ghosts

At first, Donna thought she'd missed out again. Everyone was talking about Daleks swarming everywhere and how the planet itself had been moved. The whole of the world had thought the end had come and all of London was upset they couldn't excuse it as being the yearly Christmas oddity.

Except, at night, Donna would dream of things – snatches of conversation, brief glimpses of impossible creatures – that made her wake up with a heavy sense of loneliness weighing on her mind and a hollow feeling in her chest where her heart was. The first few weeks she'd awoken to the feeling of tears running down her cheeks and staining her pillows, but the crying had long since ended.

Going back to temp work after having been away – her mother said she'd been sick, but Donna's memories were a little fuzzy on the subject – made Donna feel like she'd settled into somebody else's life. She didn't feel like she was too good to be a temp, no matter what her mother thought, she just... felt like she was supposed to be somewhere else doing something more. There had to be more to life than temping.

The worried looks from Sylvia and Wilf grew worse and worse, but Donna didn't know how to reassure them. She wasn't even certain what was wrong. Though, Donna did know that something was wrong. There had to be something wrong to make her feel this way.

Donna knew that there was something missing inside her. It was like there was a hole in her heart where someone as close as family (if not closer) was meant to be. She'd always been an only child, but Donna felt like she'd lost a brother... or maybe just herself.

So when her mum encouraged her to go traveling – which should have felt out of character for Sylvia, yet somehow didn't – Donna jumped on the chance. She stuck to the British Isles and had fun touring Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Though in Cardiff, Donna saw SUVs with the logo 'TORCHWOOD' on them and a handsome man in a WWII vintage coat. He didn't see Donna, but he'd seemed familiar to her. She didn't stay, too afraid that she was simply imagining the familiarity with the handsome stranger to meet him and risk the feeling being nothing more than a need to expand her horizons or something equally inane.

When she finally got back to London, Donna wasn't ready to return to Chiswick and her temping job. Instead, she played tourist; she visited Big Ben, the Palace, and various museums... and met him.

The thing about Lucy was that she'd always had really crappy aim. The Master had no idea how she'd managed to pull off shooting him in the heart (it probably helped that he had two), but fortunately her bit of luck with the gun had not carried over into her ability to throw.

Despite being mere meters from where the Master had been reforming, Lucy had chucked the vial full of the 'potions of death' only to watch it rebound off the side of the 'cauldron' and shatter on the floor. It was her only vial full of the 'potions of death.' The Master's laughter after that point had become more about mocking her than about his most recent triumph over death. (Or the stupidity of the cult that had willingly sacrificed themselves to bring him back. Honestly, they ought to have valued their own lives more than that, but if they were simply going to waste all that perfectly good energy then it should go to a good cause. The Master had no idea what Lucy was so upset over. He was practically recycling.)

When he'd finally been able to step down onto the ground – fully corporeal and one-hundred percent Time Lord once more – the Master had completely ignored his nakedness in front of his two enemies: Lucy and her lackey. The lackey was easily hypnotized (and more than a little too interested in the Master's dangly bits for the Master to feel comfortable reading her thoughts), but Lucy wasn't. That was part of why the Master had chosen her to be his companion, after all. She was smarter than most people gave her credit for and hypnotism didn't work on her. Of course, being the daughter of Lord Cole and thus having lots of money and connections had been helpful to the Master as well, but that was more of a bonus than anything else.

Lucy was defiant and angry, but no match for the Master. Being shot through the heart hurt, after all, and it tended to leave the recipient of the bullet with a grudge for the shooter. In this case, the Master wanted Lucy to know what if felt like to have her heart pierced with a bullet. So her lackey, who had been hypnotized into being his lackey, shot Lucy on command. Then the lackey shot herself as well.

As the only living being in the room, the Master had been very pleased by the turn of events. He was alive with all his regenerations intact, the Doctor was nowhere in sight, and revenge was every bit as sweet against Lucy as it had been against Chantho.

After appropriating some halfway decent clothing (not nearly as nice as the tailored suits he'd worn when he'd gone by the alias Harold Saxon) and enough money to purchase something better, the Master headed out into the world. One shopping trip later and he was wearing clothes closer to what he preferred in this incarnation.

That was when he ran into her.

At first, the Master hadn't thought she was anything special. Her hair was a lovely shade of ginger and she was attractive as far as humans went, but she seemed like an average nobody. He'd thought she'd fade into the background, forgotten, as soon as he lost sight of her. The only problem was that she seemed to be going everywhere he was going.

She stopped in the same cafe as him for lunch. She wandered through the same tourist traps as him (the Master only went because the best sunglasses were for sell there and it was surprising how good of a disguise a pair of sunglasses could be). The longer the Master was around her, the more he noticed her. Or, more to the point, the more he noticed the energy coiled within her.

Artron energy buzzed inside her. There was too much present for her to be a mere time traveler, but she wasn't a Time Lord either. The Master could sense that she wasn't suffering from a poorly done chameleon arch imprint. There had to be some other explanation. Unfortunately, the Master doubted he could just walk up and ask her about it.

That much energy would drive a human who was conscious of it insane... or cause their head to explode. Since the woman was clearly alive and not a babbling lunatic, the odds that she could remember what caused the artron energy to build up inside her were practically nonexistent. But the Master's curiosity had latched on to this woman. She was special somehow and he didn't know why.

The Master couldn't just make her remember, either. Sure, he'd get his answers, but what if she was special enough to be worth keeping around? If she remembered and was interesting, but died, then he'd have wasted a chance to use her to one-up the Doctor.

In the end, the Master introduced himself to her as Koschei Masters and spent the rest of the day playing 'tourist' with Donna Noble. He got her phone number, simply by being his usual, charming self – no hypnotism necessary – and passed himself off as being from a small town called Gallifrey and told her that he'd come to London for his ex-wife's funeral, which had been in the morning.

Donna was, of course, very sympathetic over his loss.

"I honestly don't know how I feel about Lucy being dead," the Master admitted after a moment. "I loved her when I married her, but we grew apart and... she kind of went nuts. I tried to help her, but I knew it was over when she picked up a gun and shot at me." He had tried to help Lucy, after all. She couldn't handle all the death and destruction during the year that never was. She'd stopped sleeping well, had violent nightmares when she did manage to sleep, and didn't respond well to the therapists that he'd brought in for her. His methods of cheering her up didn't seem to do anything positive for her after a while and he finally gave up on making her smile again.

Despite popular opinion, the dark rings around Lucy's eyes in those last days of that non-existent year had been present because the only sleep she'd been getting was the drugged kind; the Master might be a bit of a sociopath, a major megalomaniac, and a mass-murderer, but he drew the line at wife-beating. There were some depths to which the Master refused to sink. He probably should have had her committed but, being on the crazy side himself, the Master had still felt connected to her. So he'd kept her around. Then she went and betrayed him by rooting for the enemy and killing him the first chance she had.

Bitch...

"I'm sorry. We've only just met and here I am pouring out my troubles on you," the Master added, looking away in well-faked guilt.

"Sometimes we just need someone who'll listen," Donna responded with a smile. "I don't mind listening. It can't have been easy, watching the person you love go mad."

"This is a depressing conversation now," the Master said, letting his voice hit a pitch that sounded like he was trying to cover up how he really felt by forcing a happy tone. "I've got to check into my hotel, but... would you mind meeting with me for dinner?"

"Really?" Donna blushed.

"Today started off being all about death. You made me smile and enjoy myself, Donna." The Master meant that part, though. The day had begun with a lot of death. Donna was bossy and a bit rude, but she was fun. She had made him smile – genuinely smile – several times during the few hours they'd been together. If anything, his determination to discover the answers to the mystery she presented was stronger than ever.

It was horribly Doctor-ish of him, but the Master wanted to save this woman.

Well, it wasn't like he had to be evil twenty-four/seven, was it? Besides, unless he forced a regeneration (and the Master loathed that idea with both his hearts – regeneration was always a painful, tricky process) he couldn't exactly go about conquering the planet until enough time had passed since Harold Saxon's brief, but infamous, stint as Prime Minister. Too many people would recognize his face if he were to try again now.

Thus, saving Donna would give him something to do while he bided his time until a plausible scheme presented itself.

"Give me a call around seven, then," Donna told him.

The Master only just managed to smile instead of smirk.

At six-fifty, the Master called Donna's mobile from a payphone not far from the restaurant he wanted to meet her at.

"Donna Noble," she answered brightly.

"Donna, it's Koschei." He used a tone of voice that made him like he was trying to mask being upset.

"Koschei!" Donna chirped happily, then registering the way he'd sounded. "You okay?"

"There were some problems at the hotel I was booked at," the Master lied. "It's nothing."

"What kind of problems?" Donna demanded.

Additional Plot Points:
* The Master lies to Wilf and Sylvia about how he knows the Doctor - or perhaps he just skillfully misleads with the truth
* The Master thinks a modified Chameleon Arch could save Donna, but Chameleon Arches are tricky tech and he's pretty certain the Doctor's TARDIS is too old to be successfully modded. The Master's TARDIS, however, is a different matter. Unfortunately its currently in UNIT's Black Archive. No one can get into his TARDIS, but he can't simply walk in to UNIT to steal it back.
* The Master heads to Torchwood 3 to steal tech to use to break into UNIT. He narrowly avoids Jack and hypnotizes Gwen, whom he notes isn't particularly bright.
* The Master gets to know Donna and her family as he meets with them on and off between his shenanigans and he comes to find he rather likes them all. It puts him in mind of the close relationship he and the Doctor once shared, which he now realizes he genuinely misses.
* Using the stolen items from Torchwood, The Master successfully infiltrates UNIT and locates the Black Archive holding his TARDIS - there are several Archives across the United Kingdom, one of which he notes holds parts from several destroyed Daleks. However, breaking into the Archive is more difficult than he thought it would be and so he regroups again with the Noble family.
* This is when the Naismith's become aware of the Master - perhaps he's caught on one CCTV too many?
* The Master sets off alarms, alerting UNIT to his return when he finally steals back his TARDIS. He leaves for another planet and another time, taking all the time he needs to fix the Chameleon Arch to work on human biology - removing artron energy and any non-human memory patterns but leaving Donna's personality and her own memories untouched. Time skip from start to finish. Then he heads back to just hours after he left and, with Wilf and Silvia's help, gets Donna into the Arch.
* The Master heads outside of the TARDIS to give the family a minute alone, only to get kidnapped by the Naismiths. They want him to fix his healing device, but he knows immediately its not really what they think it is.
* The Doctor arrives on the heels of the Ood prophecy and runs into Wilf and Donna, who slaps him naturally. They relate to him about the Master's help... but now he's gone missing and he wouldn't just bugger off but leave his TARDIS behind, now would he?
* The Master uses the healing arch to temporarily turn everyone on the planet into him... but the Doctor, Donna, and Wilf are unscathed when they arrive. The Master makes his poor taste Master Race joke, then has the Doctor inspect the controls... which are set to reverse in a few hours.
* The Master tells the Doctor about his plan to bring back Gallifrey, that the drums that have been tormenting him are really from a signal that will let him save their homeworld. He comments on how ironic it is that the most hated son of Gallifrey - the child of Time with the most blood on his hands - will be the one to save their people from extinction. After all those times he nearly destroyed them himself and he'll save them instead, but the Doctor is adamant that bringing back the Time Lords is a bad idea.
* Everything plays out similarly to the episodes, but Donna uses the computers (or maybe a sonic device?) to override the doors to let out the hapless scientist instead of getting herself stuck like Wilf did. The Master also saves the Doctor by stealing Wilf's gun from him and shooting Rassilon in the heart, mocking the man by 'sympathizing' with how much that sort of death hurts.
* The drums are gone; the Master and the Doctor are alive and un-regenerated; and Donna is no longer being unknowingly beaten by the short end of the stick. The Master doesn't know what to do with himself any more. With the drums gone, his taste for conquering seems to have left him too, but he doesn't know how to be anything else anymore. This time, when the Doctor offers to take the Master traveling with him, the Master agrees. Donna, of course, goes with them, and Wilf tags along for 'just one trip.'
* It's never just one trip.