"Huh, what happened?" Roka asked confused.

"I probably woke you up," the Master pondered. "Hard to say. Remembering the last minute is always almost impossible." Then he shrugged and leaned back, folding his hands behind his head with a yawn and, obviously, leaving it to Roka to move away or stay there.

But it was hard to move at all, now that all those past memories had been dug up again. She felt the weight of them pressing down on her. So all she did was pulling her legs closer and burying her face in her arms, suddenly shaking. All those years she had done her best to forget about all this, to pretend it never happened.

But it had. There was no running away from it anymore.

"It's really a pity," the Master mused from behind. "All you did was killing a few bad guys. Getting rid of them likely helped people... You can't even be properly evil." He then leaned forward and wrapped an arm around her throat, pulling her back at him again. "So stop whining already."

"But... what if I hadn't stopped there?" She stared up and saw the answer in his amused glimmering eyes, and lowered her head again. Her chin dropped on his arm that was still around her throat, but not very firm. It didn't bother her much and for some time she just stared into the flames.

Would she really have become like him? None of her actions would ever have had consequences for herself. This... power... it was scarier than anything she ever experienced before and also after.

"Where there is light a shadow follows," the Master murmured suddenly and his voice was deep. "And in the blackened night we see, where sunlight only blinds the eye." His other arm wrapped around her shoulders. "If you want only stories, then move towards the warming fire, but if what you seek is truth... your way leads further into the darkness ahead."

With a sigh she sunk against him and closed her eyes. "I know... That's the path I took and the name I chose. Roka means crow in old Swedish. The bird that roams the blood stained battlefields. The bird of night and shadows." She felt him chuckle silently and smiled herself.

And then it stopped bothering her altogether. Her past, her future, all she had and could have done. The only thing that mattered was the steady, soothing, doubled heartbeat at her back, the arms around and the bone-numbing weariness inside her. It overtook her consciousness, making her head foggy and her thoughts slow.

"Can I... stay for a while?" she asked sleepily.

He hummed confirming, sounding as tired as she felt. And it was all it took to let her fall into the darkness of her mind again. This time not dreaming at all.

After that incident things changed and also didn't. It was as if there had been an invisible wall between them all the time, and now, all of a sudden, it was just gone. Leaving a weirdly casual and subtle familiarity behind.

It wasn't as if the Master suddenly would be any friendlier to her and a few days prior she would have cursed at him for ignoring her personal space even more than before. Now though it didn't bother her when he used her head as an arm's rest, or when he sat unnecessarily close to her, or when he propped up an arm onto her shoulder, casually chatting about how he had stolen half the population of the planet they were on right now.

It especially didn't bother her, when they had to await the end of a sudden storm in a city filled with neon lights. While people rushed buy under umbrellas they hid under the small roof of a closed down store. Without a warning he had grabbed and pulled her back at him and then wrapped his jacket around them both, until the storm was over. And maybe a little bit longer than that.

Roka also wasn't bothered at all by the fact that they traveled again, despite the calculation still not being finished. But as they had come back from the turtle the Master had stared at the console for a good while, then shaken his head.

"That can wait..." he had mumbled, before throwing an indefinable look at Roka.

At that moment she had been able to take a short glance at the monitor and saw the same repeating hologram of her vanishing particles as the day they had begun this journey. Endless lines of code were running down, numbers blinking and Gallifreyan symbols flashing here and there.

"You're still researching it?" she asked surprised.

"Sure... Have enough data of you to turn you into an android if I want to." He chuckled. "Well... don't have any tech here to transfer your consciousness. And it wouldn't help with the glitch."

"Why... is that still important?"

"No glitch, no paradox. Easy as that." He winked, but then stared back at the monitor, before he shut it off. "But it's no use. There is no way to fix you."

Roka gulped. So he had been trying to find a solution to this all the time, while she was just whining about everything. And it seemed as if he still was, although he refused to tell her what this new calculation was about.

But if there was no fix...

And then he had demanded her life. Although, when she thought about it more thoroughly, it probably wasn't about that. Not her life was of value, but the moment her timeline would reset. And he was in control of that moment now, practically enabling him to play with all of time and space to his liking. And if something went wrong... he only had to kill her. She was a living reset button, whilst he would retain the memories of his tests.

Roka also had the suspicion that he was planning something big. Their travels were different now. At first it had felt like one big sightseeing tour, even though each visit seemed to have a secondary purpose. But now they exclusively visited places where the Master had hidden all sorts of things over his life span. Stashes, filled with tech, minerals, plants, documents and other things. Everywhere they went he took a small tablet with him, noting down the containments of each stash.

There also always was at least one story about how he had obtained those things. Some of them hilariously funny, others intriguing, others brutal and cruel. Some could have filled entire novels, whilst some were barely more than a few sentences.

Once he had been emperor of a whole galaxy, until he got bored of all the bootlickers and especially the whole administrative workload. One night he simply slipped into his TARDIS and ran away, never to return. The galaxy itself, at least on paper, was still in his possession though.

Another time he had formed an alliance with a group of mercenaries and they had been fulfilling contracts in the Zenphirion nebulae. But working with men like these always ended the same way. The group split eventually and one night there were silent steps and slit throats. And if it weren't for the fact that the Master barely needed sleep he probably wouldn't have survived it either. Instead he was the only one left when the sun rose above the abandoned camp.

He had been fighting in as equally many wars as he had started himself. Mostly not as a soldier though. If the species reacted to his mind control, he acted as a spy, otherwise as inventor, giving the side he chose at random an unfair benefit.

Roka found a pattern to those stories, and with that probably the second reason the Master wanted to remember her. The thought came surprisingly and like a flash, when they were visiting the overgrown ruins of a long forlorn and crumbling city. The buildings must have been majestic once, but now most were knocked over as if by playful giants, leaning at each other. The reverberating, low moaning of metal filled the air, only broken by the sound of heavy concrete debris crashing down from unimaginable heights. The whole place was beautiful in its own way, but wore a feeling of utter loneliness. It was so thick Roka had to clench her stomach.

And then she understood as she watched the Master, glaring at the scenery, lost in his own thoughts. He was fitting into this environment as if he were part of it.

Betrayed, used, left behind and forgotten. By seemingly everyone he ever crossed paths with. And surprisingly often not even due to his own doings. By the few snippets Roka had gathered it had also been the same with the few companions he had ever accepted... trusted.

Knowing about all of this and seeing him standing in that scene, Roka suddenly knew that he must be the loneliest man in the universe. Although he probably would never admit or even recognize it, pushing the mere existence of this thought as far away from himself as possible.

Roka on the other hand was using him too in some way, but not in a bad one. And she refused to treat him like the evil man or the monster or whatever he tried to be. She simply was there, not judging and not trying to change anything.

If only she could stay. But if there really was no way to fix her... she would vanish. And by taking her life he would at least keep the memory of a time where he hadn't been alone, hadn't been treated badly. A silent and subtle companionship in his world of lonely madness.

And loneliness was a thing she understood all too well. So Roka decided to at least be a worthy memory, carried through time and space. If the Master stayed as stubborn as he was maybe to the end of all existence. The last living thing left to watch, accompanied by the fading memory of a girl that never was.

Like a ghost.

As they stepped out of the TARDIS this morning Roka found herself facing the gigantic wrack of a crashed freighter. The debris was strewn all over a field of blue grass and were so big, that the two travelers were mere ants in comparison. Sudden excitement flooded Roka at the thought of exploring the wrack for hours.

"Wait a second," the Master held her back, knowing all too well that she was about to just blindly run off. He gave her a small wrist watch that had a navigation system and a map of the ship implemented. "Just in case we get separated. And looking at you that will happen more soon than late." He chuckled. "Stay away from section 3004. That part is completely unstable. But I guess the rest should be relatively safe."

"Aye, aye," she saluted mockingly and grinned. "No dangerous actions. I know the drill."

They entered the freighter through a big crack in its hull and made their way past several meters of cables and armor until they reached the blackness of the inside. A click resounded next to her and then a blue light illuminated the debris around. The Master handed her a flashlight and they headed towards the cargo area. It would take him probably at least a day to note down everything he needed, so there would be more than enough time to explore.

"Damn, this place is creepy." Roka chuckled and shone her flashlight into the shadowy corners. "Why has it crashed?"

"No idea. Go and find the captains log if you want to know. If the sector is still intact it should be somewhere around the front area."

Roka had no idea how much time she spent exactly exploring. Time was such a weird thing when there was fun involved. And, as spooky as the interior was, with all the creaking and moaning of the wrack, she wasn't really afraid of the shadows. Her detector showed no signs of life or any other electromagnetic fields. She had build it months ago in the hopes of maybe finding something paranormal somewhere. The universe was big and full of possibilities after all. Even though the Master had only laughed at that, telling her that he had never encountered anything like that so far. But having grown up with horror movies and creepy pastas she couldn't keep herself from at least trying.

Every now and then her communicator beeped and she confirmed her wellbeing and transmitted her current coordinates. It was a routine they had developed and was also useful in case she found something interesting that was too big for her to take along.

Her exploring found a rather abrupt ending some hours later when she found the freighter had been broken in half, making the crack impossible to traverse from the inside. So she turned around and took a different route back, past a stash with giant working robots that could have been directly out of some anime. She transmitted the location of those and continued to some living quarters. The wreck had made the impression of being quite old, so she hoped the only remains of its crew were long decayed to skeletons. Finding fresh or still rotting corpses in a place of complete darkness was always... unpleasant. And as much as she tried to convince herself it was only her imagination, she couldn't help but feeling observed and sometimes even followed, when she found such.

Shaking her head Roka moved past the cabins. Some skeletons were lying in an area that could have once been a kitchen of some sorts. They looked humanoid, but probably used to have tails. Their uniforms had no pockets and their quarters also didn't contain anything interesting, so she continued her way back, now realizing though that the Master hadn't contacted her, even though it was about time. Meaning he either had gotten himself into trouble (unlikely in here), or he was too occupied with cataloguing (very likely), or...

She hurried the rest of the way. It wasn't far anymore and when she reached the crack through which they had entered she found the Master, silently sitting on the floor, his flashlight pointing away from him. It wasn't as bad as on the turtle, but the noise in his head also didn't seem to be very pleasant right now as he had his head buried under his arms. He heard her coming and looked up. Roka immediately saw the light twitch in his eyes and hurried towards him.

"It's alright," he murmured and pulled himself up on a crate.

"Doesn't look much like it." She leaned next to him at the same crate and dropped her head at his side. "Care to finally tell me what's that all about?"

To her surprise he really did. Maybe only to distract him from the noise. He told her of the initiation, how they were taken away at a young age to stare into the untempered schism, leaving some with a new fire, some with fear and some... some couldn't bare it and simply went mad.

"It was barely there at first... like a ringing in your ears you don't know if it's actually there or not," he told. "But it got louder, subtly, slowly. Just annoying and nothing else. And then..." he stopped, contemplating for a while.

Roka had the suspicion that something must have occurred. Maybe a first outburst like the one she had witnessed on the turtle. Whatever it was, he didn't tell her about it.

"When I left Gallifrey it was... back then I thought it couldn't get any worse." He let out a humorless laugh. "I tried to stop it, tried to find something or someone who could. No use. Only thing that helps is to drown it out. Make enough noise on my own. The Time War was great distraction. But... I couldn't stay there. Even living as a human for a while was better than that." He snorted snidely. "It actually helped a little. As if a part of it was locked away inside that Fob Watch. But when it came back... it was so, so much worse than ever before."

"So you went ahead and enslaved my planet," Roka remembered sarcastically.

The Master chuckled meanly and rested an arm on her head.

"Wasn't my fault. If that idiot of Doctor hadn't trapped me there I would have just ran off. But since I was there anyway... can't let a chance slip to see him suffer a little." He chuckled again at the memory.

"Well, it didn't last very long," Roka retorted and pulled her head out.

"Of course not. It was never designed to last forever." He straightened and got out his tablet to continue with the cataloguing. The drums seemed to have gotten quieter again.

"Then why...?"

"Och, you should have seen his devastated face." He grinned widely. "And the people from the end of the universe were doomed anyway. Didn't change much. And... it's fun to play with that pitiful species of yours." He stuck out his tongue at her. "So easy to manipulate."

Roka nudged her elbow into his side, but only earned herself a loud laugh.

"Somehow it's a real shame. I liked my Toclafanes," he reminisced, typing in more data, while wandering around the cargo.

"How long would it have lasted without Martha's interference?"

"Mhmm... hard to say. A paradox machine can't stand forever. It eats up the TARDIS' power after a while. Maybe one or two centuries." He turned around and watched her picking up some random gadget. When she felt his gaze she looked up and met an odd smile. "That's the problem with paradoxes," he mumbled, almost more to himself as he turned away. "You can play with them, trick them, cheat them, break them... but they are never fully yours."

Somehow those words made her feel uneasy. And also made her remember that her time was limited.

"But if those drums continue to get louder..." she wondered, not ending the thought because she had no idea where this would or even could end.

With a deep sigh he scratched his neck and sat on one of the smaller crates, only looking up when Roka trod towards him. A grim smile played around his lips, when he looked up at her.

"Same as with you, I guess. One day I will just vanish. One day..." He looked back down to his feet. "...I won't return. And then there will be nothing left. The end of the Master." He laughed out emotionless. "Just a hull filled with utter insanity."

Roka gulped. "Is there no way to stop it?"

Again he looked up, his look confused as he saw her worried face, then amused. "I'm really the last person you should waste any worries on." He stood up and leaned down a bit towards her with a nasty grin. "I will enjoy it. Will go on a fantastic rampage. I'll burn down everything and everyone around me, leaving nothing behind but ashes and tears." The grin faded slowly and he shrugged. "Until then I keep my mind busy. The only thing that helps more or less."

"What's... the big plan then?" she eventually asked. Some part of her was curious about it, another just no longer wanted to think about his words. It was not fair.

He slipped behind her and held up his tablet so both of them could look at it. Roka leaned back at him and watched the screen as he moved through various lists of text and numbers, maps of galaxies and probably coordinates of all the locations they had been at.

"They say, if you control the underground of a city, you own it." With a finger swipe he brought up a network of star systems. "I bet that's also true for the universe. Although... to my knowledge there isn't an organized universe-wide 'underground'. Only small groups that all fight each other... and not even an intertimed black market, can you imagine?"

"Sounds like you plan to build exactly that." Her eyes were still fixed on the tablet. "Intertimed? You mean reachable from every time?"

"Yup. Will be a bit hard to maintain... but with the TARDIS it shouldn't be that much of a problem."

"And what's with all of this?" Her head nodded towards the cargo. "Is that stuff valuable?"

"Ohhh, you have no idea." He chuckled and showed her a price list and several conversions to different currencies. Roka knew only a few of them, but those numbers were breathtaking. "Depending on time and location this is more worth than entire solar systems. You just need the right broker."

"You?"

"Sure. I know the trading routes, the pirate hideouts, even how to contact all those silly little wannabe underground groups. It's just a start, but when the network is setup, all the tech is build and the right people know how to get to the right place..."

Roka laughed. "In a few years you can literally buy the whole universe."

"Exactly. Might not be the loudest and most explosive way... but it's still a hell of a task."

"But... this will all vanish too as soon as my timeline resets," she mumbled.

"That won't be an issue."

That could only mean he would trigger the reset before he started to go through with the actual plan. And they wouldn't need forever to catalogue his stashes. "Guess I'm running out of time then," she said, trying to let it sound jokingly. "How long do I have left?"

"Let's see..." Another move of his hand brought up a screen with lots of Gallifreyan writing on it. Roka had never bothered with learning to read it. Some of the symbols were constantly changing.

"One hour, twelve minutes and... thirty-two seconds."