Author's note:Nice long chapter this time! Hope you all enjoy it :)

34. Hanging by a thread.

A pale face swam in front of his, red eyes glowing like the opening gates to hell. He stared right back into them, seeing his own death written across their depths, and felt panic seize his hearts. He'd die here – fully and truly, this time – and he would never get to see any of them ever again. The last thing he would ever see would be this empty, stone, cold cell and the laughing faces of his tormentors.

He felt his breath coming in short gasps, his hearts pounding a crazy rhythm in his chest, sweat started beading on his brow. His hands shook convulsively as his survival instincts kicked in. Adrenaline flooded his entire being, screaming at him to do something, to fight back, to not let this be the end.

He couldn't let it end like this.

But the adrenaline had nowhere to go – his body was too broken to even stand unaided, let alone fight for its life, and he simply flopped around like a suffocating fish as he struggled to get to his feet. He knew that it was undignified, that he should die quietly – what satisfaction would they get out of that?

You should die a soldier's death, like the soldier you are, his mental voice taunted. But he wasn't a soldier, was he? He got into trouble, that was true, but it wasn't war, it wasn't…

His breath came faster as every single mistake came flooding back into his mind. People died in front of him all over again, their eyes filled with pain, their lips begging him to save them or, worse, as had been the case during the Time War, begging him to stop. And he couldn't take it anymore, couldn't stand the fact that his life flashing before his eyes amounted to endless torture. A life well spent, indeed.

He felt something wet on his face, and realised that he was crying. No, not just crying, he realised to his horror, he was weeping.

"You seem to have done a good job, Bellatrix," a high voice said, amusement written in every syllable.

At the sound of the voice, the Doctor started retching, the red depths of those terrible eyes becoming big enough to swallow him whole.

"We don't need him anymore," the voice continued. "The other will be here soon enough. Kill him."

And as the Doctor was engulfed by a green light, he thought of the Master as he stood laughing in his mind, his green face forced upon him by the Ood.

oOo

The Doctor woke to find himself thrashing against his sheets and screaming something about the colour green. He forced himself to remain still and regulate his breathing, knowing that panicking would only make the situation worse for him. When he could breathe again without sobbing for air, he glanced warily around the room, expecting to find a curious audience summoned by the screaming, but found instead that he was alone. Even River was gone.

He flopped back onto the bed in relief. So no one had heard – good. His mind tried to replay the dream, tried to determine if it was real or not, but the Doctor brutally shut down that train of thought before it could even really get going.

"Just a dream," he told himself, his voice sounding hoarse. "Not real."

His mind didn't want to believe him, unfortunately, so it took him a good deal longer than normal to calm himself down enough to contemplate what to do next. Tiredness dragged at his eyelids, forcing him back under, and his body was sinking back into the sheets, yet the Doctor knew that, if he did give in to sleep now, he would immediately regret it.

He shook his head both in an effort to clear his mind of the images and to stay awake. As the Master's face swum before his eyes once more, the Doctor sat bolt upright in bed.

"You're getting slow," he muttered to himself, as he groaned and clutched his head, closing his eyes.

Swallowing convulsively, the Doctor forced himself out of bed and made his way over to the door, wobbling like a new-born calf, but walking nevertheless.

The medication must be wearing off. How thoroughly pathetic of you, his mind-voice, which was starting to sound suspiciously like the Dream Lord, taunted him. Needing drugs just to stay awake.

The Doctor arrived, gasping as though he had just run a marathon, in front of the Master's room, and gently opened the door. He stuck his head round the corner and did a quick sweep of the room. No one here, good.

He briefly wondered where River was, but dismissed the thought as he made his way over to the chair by the Master's bedside, and lowered himself into it with a sigh. The other Time Lord didn't even stir.

He was a bit paler than before, the Doctor noticed, and his breathing was shallower. Any hopes of his natural desire to live trumping the laws of nature was rapidly diminishing. The Doctor gently picked up the Master's wrist and felt his pulse; thready, weaker, but there. He put the Master's hand back down.

"Holding hands? I'm so touched."

The Doctor flinched, his eyes flying to the Master's face. Still no movement. Cautiously, shaking, he reached out to try to touch the Master's mind, but could not establish a connection. The man was definitely deeply unconscious. The Doctor looked around the room, brow scrunched in confusion. So who had spoken?

"I did, you idiot."

Again, the Master hadn't moved, but it was definitely his voice. The Doctor frowned harder.

There was a snort inside his head. "Oh, come on. Isn't it obvious?" There was a brief pause. "Really? Alright, I'll explain it. Let me put it this way: you," the voice said slowly, "are insane."

"No."

Yes, his mind countered.

The Doctor swallowed. He hastily started delving through his mind, trying to find where the voice was coming from, and found it in the section of memories that he had put behind a mind-wall. He started doubling up the wall, making it thicker so that he couldn't hear the voice. He knew that he would have to face the memories at some point, that blocking them off was the reason for hearing the voices, that the stress of them would just get worse and one day they would break down the wall, flooding his conscious mind and making them harder to deal with than if he did it on his own terms, but he just couldn't do it. He knew what was in there. And he didn't think he could deal with that right now.

He opened his eyes and looked cautiously at the Master and then around the room. Silence. Thank Rassilon for silence.

You weren't thankful of silence when you were rotting away in that cell.

"Stop it," the Doctor snapped.

He thought about shoving that voice behind a wall too, but quickly realised that he couldn't. The voice wasn't a manifestation of the stress caused by the memories, but his own internal voice. The voice that in humans constantly narrated what was happening, their thoughts, the words they were reading. Only his was taking on a neurotic, nasty edge. He wondered if that was also a human thing, or just a Time Lord one.

Don't be so arrogant.

The Doctor bowed his head and sighed, gathering his strength, trying to resist the urge to cover the top of his head with his hands like he had seen the Master do not long ago. Well, not long ago in the other Time Lord's time stream.

As he had then, all that time ago, the Master needed the Doctor's help, whether he wanted to admit it or not. The Doctor didn't just know how to give it.

Or if you should.

"Shut up."

No, really, his mind continued, forcing cold, hard reason upon him, should you?

Saving a life wasn't a choice. He couldn't just sit here and let the Master die. He just didn't know how to go about saving him. He knew what he had to do – fix his life force – but despite all his promises all that time ago, he had quite simply never come across this problem before, and wasn't sure what a long-term solution would be. He had a short-term one.

Don't give him either.

The Doctor felt a surge of anger at himself. He couldn't just let the Master die, could he? The Drums were gone now, he could be saved, if only he could –

You know he won't.

He was the only other Time Lord still in existence.

A homicidal remnant of a genocidal past. Do you really want that running free around the universe? You could end it all now if you just stood up and walked out the room.

The Doctor stood up, legs shaking. He stared at the Master, his gaze unwavering, his eyes unfocusing as he forgot to blink, seeing the Master through a haze of uncertainty. He battled with himself, waging war between his own emotions and logic. What he knew to be right and what he felt to be right, two different things, were fighting for dominance in his mind.

Finally, one of them won out. His hands shook with uncertainty as he put his choice into action.

oOo

River finally found him in the kitchen, talking with workers at the Ministry of Magic, who were demanding explanations and nervously asking what they should do in the aftermath. Apparently, half of the officials at the Ministry had either suddenly run off to fight or flee, or had suddenly "woken" out of the Imperius Curse. River grimaced. She had known that the situation was dire, but half the Ministry being corrupt was a little worse than she had imagined.

She wondered how, or if, they would filter out those who had been Imperiused from those who were simply acting. This world was going to take years to even begin to rebuild, she knew, and she had to admit that she was shamefully glad that she would not be around to see it. There were enough problems in her own universe to deal with.

She waited for the conversation to draw naturally to a halt before stepping fully into the room. The officials – none of whom were the Minister of Magic, she noticed with scorn – were standing up and preparing to leave, all of them wearing equal expressions of unfathomable stress and grief. Dumbledore had also stood and was walking them to the door of the dining room, his expression grave.

"Headmaster?"

Dumbledore turned to look at her, eyes turning from serious to inquisitive within the space of a few seconds. "Yes?"

"I wondered if I might have a word," River said.

"The Minister is expecting you," one of the officials reminded the older wizard.

Dumbledore's eyes flashed, but he merely looked back to River. "It's about the Master," River explained. "I need to discuss his treatment."

One of the officials bristled. "Surely someone else can help you with that?"

"I am afraid I must go to the Ministry," Dumbledore said with regret. "Someone has to talk the Minister out from under his bed."

River held in an ironic, understanding smile as every single one of the officials bristled, but did nothing to counter his comment. Dumbledore, for his part, didn't look too keen to go to the Ministry and clean up someone else's mess, and River couldn't say she blamed him. If the situation was the same here as the one she remembered, the Minister will have spent months denying Voldemort's return, blindly letting him convert half of his workforce, and not preparing for the massive forces of Death Eaters who had been threatening to attack the population at any moment. If he had been more prepared, he would not be in this situation now. But River knew that, though Dumbledore did not approve of the Minister's attitude, he was not about to let wizarding society flounder to reform itself alone – that could very well be disastrous, especially in Fudge's hands. Right now, Dumbledore was what this society needed.

So she let him go, and instead set to finding Snape, knowing that, with his extensive knowledge of potions, Dark Magic and defensive spells, he was her second best choice for helping the Master. After half an hour of searching through the throngs of people in the house, she finally found him diligently mixing potions in the kitchen.

He didn't even look up as she entered the room. "This had better be important," he snapped.

"I need your expertise," River said, cutting straight to the chase.

Snape looked up briefly at that, but was soon distracted by a cauldron in the corner threatening to over boil. "Can it wait?"

"It's the Master," she replied. "We could save him."

This time, Snape looked up and held her gaze, his face a picture of surprise, though he soon wiped the expression off his face. "From what I learned," he said slowly, "he is the Doctor's enemy."

"They were friends once. I'm sure you can understand that."

Snape's jaw tightened at this reference to Lily Potter, and he turned back to his Potions. "What exactly is wrong with him?"

River reminded herself that she had not had time to explain the Master's condition to Dumbledore and Snape, as she had been too busy trying to keep the Doctor from having a complete breakdown, and at the same time resisting the almighty urge to punch Crouch in the face out of sheer principle. Some people just didn't know when to let something go.

"His life force is split open," she told him. "He's basically bleeding himself dry just to stay alive."

"And you think we can fix it?" Snape asked, doing nothing to keep the scepticism out of his voice.

"I'd like to say that I tried," River said. "I agree that it looks fairly impossible."

Snape snorted. "Only slightly."

"Do you know of anything that might work?"

"It would help to know how his life force was ruptured," Snape pointed out.

"From what the Doctor tells me, the Master was killed and refused to regenerate. The Doctor burned his body – a Time Lord's body, even a dead one, is dangerous – but was unaware that a part of him remained: a ring. Someone, who had read the Legend of Saxon, as they called it, found the ring, and they made potions to bring him back. But the process was interrupted, and he was left in a body suspended between life and death. A body born to die."

Snape nodded slowly. "Which potions?"

River shook her head. "The Doctor doesn't know. He was never actually there; he saw it in a vision given to him by the Ood."

"Then I cannot help you. I need to know the contents of the original potions to make a counter-potion."

River sighed. "I can find out, but it'll be difficult." At Snape's questioning look, she replied; "The knowledge will be either in the Legend of Saxon that the Master left behind, or in the Master's mind."

"Given that the Master is unconscious, perhaps you should look for the books."

"That's too risky, even with time travel," River countered. "The only thing I know about them is what planet they're on and which century they're in and, even if I do find them, I don't want to risk bringing the information back here, given the circumstances."

Snape seemed to think that over for a moment before nodding. "Very well. I will give you some Strengthening potion – it will be enough for him to wake briefly, so that you can question him."

River took the potion, thanked him, and made her way back upstairs. She had no intention of actually asking the Master – she knew that he was not likely to tell her the secret to what had brought him back from what should have been a very final death. She certainly wouldn't, if it was her, and especially not to her enemy's companion. Or wife. Whatever he thought she was.

River frowned; the Master's door was open, and she had left it shut. It was possible that someone had gone in to try to give him medicine, but Madame Pomfrey knew not to come into this room, given that there was nothing she could do, and she couldn't think of anyone else who would even know that he was here. That left the Doctor, who was supposed to be resting.

River sighed, wishing that Snape had given her a sedative instead, and stepped into the room. She very nearly dropped the potion at the sight that greeted her.

The Doctor was stood over the Master's bed, his hands on each of the Master's shoulders. The two Time Lords were engulfed in a bright golden glow, and River could see that the Master's body was slowly absorbing it. And the Doctor's body was giving it.

Swearing, River hurriedly put the potion down and ran to the Doctor's side, jerking him roughly away from the other Time Lord, not even stopping to think about whether or not this would have any adverse effect on either of them. The Master's body twitched once, twice, and then fell still with a sigh. The Doctor, thrown by the force of River's shove, landed heavily in the chair by the bed, the breath audibly escaping his lungs as he was winded by the fall.

River was bearing down on the Doctor in an instant. "What were you thinking?" She shouted incredulously. "You can't go giving your life away, Doctor, you don't have enou-"

"Why not?" The Doctor countered, gasping from the fall as he struggled to push himself more upright in his chair. All that he achieved was a very slouched upright pose, his head hanging off his neck as though he was too tired to keep it up anymore. "It's the only way to save him."

"It isn't, and you know it. Doctor, you can't just give up your life force for him! His body is split open – you'd bleed yourself dry trying to save him and he'd still be dying!"

"It'd buy him time," the Doctor countered.

"And kill you in the process," she snapped. "You know that the amount of energy he uses just to stay alive is colossal – more than you can give."

"I have enough left," the Doctor muttered.

"And how much time would it have bought him? A day?"

"You can do lots in a day."

River very nearly growled. "How much did you give him before I stopped you?"

The Doctor remained silent, his head still bowed.

"Doctor."

"100 years."

River nearly choked. "100 years? You just threw a hundred years of your life away, and for what? You can't keep doing this!"

The Doctor didn't even bother trying to defend himself, just sat there, looking at the floor. Realising that she wouldn't get through to him and that time was of the essence, River turned her back on him and began examining the Master.

It was immediately apparent that, though the Doctor's life force had helped some, it was not nearly enough. The Master, though still pale, was not as deathly white as before. His breathing was somewhat stronger, and his pulse was now stable. But it wouldn't stay like that for long.

River retrieved the potion from the table where she had hurriedly set it down, and held open the Master's mouth.

"What are you doing?" The Doctor asked, looking between River and the Master with confusion.

"I'm giving him a Strengthening Potion."

"I thought you said nothing could help," came the dull reply.

"He can."

The Doctor's eyes widened. "Who, the Master? You can't wake him up, River, not when he's like this, it'll burn the energy faster!"

"He's the only one who knows what was in that potion that brought him back. Brought him partially back," she amended, looking at the unmoving body.

"You have the Dimension Canon," the Doctor pointed out desperately. "You could go back to our universe, find the information they used to bring him back, and bring it back here and give it to him. If you wake him up he won't tell you anything, and it'll just use up the time he has left!"

"You want me to go back to our universe, find a super-dangerous text on how to resurrect a Time Lord and bring it back to a universe where there are still mad Death Eaters roaming around trying to work out how to resurrect the most evil wizard who ever lived?"

There was a brief pause.

"You're not waking him up," the Doctor said with a note of finality in his tone.

"This potion won't be enough to do that," River said, "not with the state he's in."

"Then… what are you doing?"

"It'll strengthen him enough for his mind to be more accessible. I'm going to get the information from the source itself."