The Doctor was next to his bed, as expected, when he woke up. His brow had been broken open with brute force and his lip was swollen but it seemed to be the last thing on his mind. The Doctor apologized for pushing him too hard, for not paying attention when he complained, for establishing full telepathic connections. He stammered out apologies until finally, without being able to look the Master in the eye, he said he was sorry for leaving Qhoya behind.

It was almost pitiful but it was simply who the Doctor was to carry that kind of guilt with him, even after centuries. The Doctor was still talking, saying that he had wished a thousand times that he had gone back or that he had summoned the courage to face the Master long before then, but the Master wasn't really listening anymore.

"Your face," he muttered, lifting up a hand to reach for the bruised flesh. "You look like such a wreck."

"I'll take an accelerator," the Doctor replied dismissively. "It'll be fine."

"That's not the point."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at him, smiled in the way he did when he was not the least bit amused, and turned his eyes to the other side of the room. "Don't start. Don't even start."

The first time he hit Lucy, he hadn't meant to do it either. He had just been so angry, angrier still because he didn't understand why, and she kept trying to touch him or kiss him—anything to make him feel better. He pushed her away, but she was determined that she could calm him. Finally he just lost control and slapped her hard enough to knock her off her feet.

She cried and he said he was sorry. He really hadn't meant to hit her. But after that it just got easier and easier, until he could fool himself into thinking that she deserved it. He knew that sort of wickedness lived within him still. What if it was slowly beginning to creep out again?

"You should try to go back to sleep," the Doctor said quietly. "I'll let Wilfred know that you woke up so that he'll stop worrying."

"Is he okay?"

"He's fine. You didn't hurt anyone."

"Except you."

"I'm not hurt. I'm fine," the Doctor answered stubbornly. "It's getting late. Once everyone has gone to bed, I'll come back. I'll sleep in here tonight where I can keep an eye on you."

"Your bed is bigger," he replied, thinking with fondness of how wonderfully spacious and comfortable the Doctor's bed was. "And the walls are much better at keeping in sound."

"That's irrelevant. Two sleeping people don't make any sound," the Doctor said with finality. "And I'm not moving you until your leg is healed."

He only became aware of the pain when the Doctor said it. "What's happened to my leg?" he asked with a groan.

"Gunshot," the Doctor answered simply, with a slight edge to his voice.

He groaned again and flopped his head back on his pillow. "I am so tired of getting shot. I've lost my past three bodies in a row from gunshots and it's getting a bit old."

The Doctor frowned at him slightly. "Two."

He frowned back in confusion. "No . . . three."

"No, your last one was shot. The Professor was shot," the Doctor explained, holding up fingers as he listed them. "And the one before that was stabbed. I saw it."

The Doctor didn't know what happened next. He kind of wished he hadn't said anything now because it would surely upset him. Instead of explaining, he simply shook his head and used his hand to gesture putting a gun under his chin.

As expected, the Doctor looked horrified.

"I didn't know how long it would take to bleed out and I was just tired of hurting," he explained, feeling a bit sheepish all of a sudden. "Sorry."

"What are you saying sorry to me for?"

"You didn't need to know that."

The other Time Lord glanced about the room, trying to keep a straight face while looking very uncomfortable. "How many things do you keep from me for the sake of sparing me?"

"A few," he admitted. "And some to spare myself."

"We'll fix that," the Doctor said and leaned forward to plant a gentle kiss on his forehead. "In time. Now get some sleep."

Sleep was good and, for once, easy. He watched the Doctor stand up to leave, blinked, and suddenly he was alone in the dark. How long had passed now? It can't have been that long. The Doctor said he would come back when everyone else had gone to bed and there was no one with him.

His leg ached, and worse he knew that it wasn't healing. The Doctor always had weird rules when it came to using accelerators, even when they were young and even more reckless than they were now. The Doctor wouldn't give him anything until he was well rested and there was no question as to his mental stability. For now, the leg would simply throb away, waking him up every time it so much as twitched.

"Harry?"

He must have drifted off again. He wished there was a clock in his room to let him know how much time was passing him by.

"Who's that?" he mumbled, blinking up at the blurry figure in front of the glaring light coming from the open door.

"Jack."

Wonderful.

"Can I come in?"

"Anything for my number one fan," he grumbled, trying to sit up in the bed and wincing as his leg protested.

He heard a funny rattling sound as Jack came in and closed the door behind him. The light was turned on and when he looked up Jack was holding out a glass to him. "I figured the Doctor wouldn't mind if I helped myself to some of his scotch."

He eyed the glass suspiciously before accepting it. "He doesn't like scotch anyway. He only drinks it when he's too stressed to care what it is."

"But you're a scotch man," Jack pulled up the chair next to his bed, the way the Doctor usually did, and made himself comfortable.

"I am," he agreed, carefully watching Jack take a sip of his own drink and glance casually about the room.

"What's that?" Jack asked, pointing to the metal plate on the wall.

"It's a portrait," he answered impatiently. "What are you doing in here?"

Jack looked him in the eye and smiled pleasantly. "I shot you today."

"And fuck you too, by the way."

"Just name a time and place," Jack chuckled. "I guess I just thought I should come and see that you were still alive. Maybe even apologize."

"Oh god, don't do that," he answered quickly. "Between the Doctor and Wilfred, I never get a moment's peace from apologies. Besides, I've done far worse to you."

"Good. I wasn't keen on the idea myself."

He hated it, but he found himself smiling. "So we're just going to sit here and drink?"

"I don't see why not," Jack answered simply, swirling the contents of his glass absent-mindedly and making the ice clink softly.

"Can I even have alcohol right now? I don't know what the Doctor's given me."

Jack's eyes widened a little, and then a slightly embarrassed grin spread across his face. "I don't know actually."

"Oh well," he muttered, taking a quick sip. "Maybe it'll do us all a favour."

There were a few moments of silence after that, in which they both just enjoyed the flavour of the scotch. It was strangely comfortable.

"So . . ." Jack said finally. "How often does that happen?"

"Hoping to get another shot in?"

"Hoping I don't have to."

He sighed, thinking back on the past few weeks. "In the beginning it was almost every time I woke up, or any time I got hungry. Now it's only every few days, depending on the situation of course."

"He didn't even try to stop you," Jack said quietly. "How has he survived you this long?"

He felt a twitch of annoyance inside him. This foolish little human with his foolish little assumptions, thinking he understands the big picture.

"The events I experience are usually based on memories. And believe it or not, Jack, I have more good memories with the Doctor than bad," he watched the surprise in those insolent blue eyes and was glad to feel he was finally putting Jack in his place. "We grew up together, completely inseparable. We went to school together. He even learned about medicine so that we could work together. I was the first person he thought of travelling with when he first got the TARDIS. I loved him very much from the time I was just a kid and it never went away, even after we became enemies. Whatever you think you know about our relationship, Jack, you're wrong."

Jack stayed quiet, absorbing his words. After a moment he took a sip of his drink and nodded, signalling the Master to continue.

"Most of the time I remember the war. He's told you about the war, hasn't he?"

"He has," Jack answered with another nod. "Or, at least, he's mentioned it."

Of course the Doctor wouldn't have given any detail. "The Doctor can usually calm me down just fine on his own. He's a friendly face in a frightening world, and he calms me down. Wilfred too, sometimes. They talk to me, help me realize which parts of what I'm experiencing is real and which parts are just, you know . . . imaginary. I scare them, yes, but I don't hurt them."

Jack waited again, letting the silence hang in the air before he took a deep breath. "What happened this time?"

"I was just tired," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "I saw all the children and I was so tired that I couldn't remember why there were children everywhere. Then it was like my brain just picked the most likely solution—because I was supposed to be watching Kahlia," he stopped to take a quick drink, wanting desperately to avoid looking Jack in the eye. "She was my first child so the whole fatherhood thing was kind of new to me . . . I wasn't very good at it. But any time it was possible, she would just beg and beg that I come get her and take her out for the day. Kids can make the worst parents into heroes, right?"

Jack nodded a little too knowingly. "Oh yeah."

"Anyway, I never held her hand the way you're supposed to. I'd just tell her not to wander off. Of course, I lost her in a crowd more than once," he thought of the first time he felt that panic, and of how profoundly it surprised him. "I could hear her calling to me. I could actually hear her voice while the Doctor was telling me she was dead, and suddenly my memory just shifted. That had happened once before, see, except it wasn't Kahlia. I could hear my sister dying and the Doctor insisted that she was already dead and there was nothing we could do. And I just felt . . . enraged."

"So he didn't calm you down because he was what was making you angry."

"And he didn't fight back because he still thinks he deserves it," he felt sick to his stomach thinking about the sorry state of the Doctor's face. "See, the first time we had that fight, I'm the one who lost. And I lost badly. Apparently he still feels guilty about it."

"Apparently."

"Don't tell him I told you that."

Jack grinned. "We'll see."

He could tell from the way Jack gazed down into his drink that they were in for another long silence—the type of behaviour he had learned to recognize in the Doctor. "So why are you here, Jack?"

"Here on the ship or here in your room?"

"Both," he answered. "I'm assuming you're here in my room because you want to talk about why you're still here on the ship, even though you've done everything we needed you for. And out of everyone on the ship, you can't possibly have done worse than me so who better to confess to?"

Jack smirked. "Alright," he said, taking a quick sip of his drink. "See if you can beat this . . . I have a daughter too, on Earth. A few months ago I took her son, my grandson, and used him as a sacrifice to fight an alien invader that threatened the entire planet's population. I locked his mother out of the room, looked him in the eye, and flipped the switch. Then I stood there and just watched while he roasted from the inside out. How's that for your father of the year award, eh?"

He could see from the look in Jack's eyes that his light-hearted tone and another sip of scotch was all he could do to keep himself together when he recalled the story. "That's pretty terrible."

"Thanks," Jack laughed a little, though there was half a sob hidden behind. "Alright, your turn. Tell me I'm not the worst father in the universe. Please, I'm dying to hear anything that makes me seem even slightly better."

He didn't know why he told Jack anything. Jack already knew too much about the things he'd done and considering that Jack was impossible to kill, that made him very uncomfortable. The last thing he wanted was to give a true immortal further reason to hate him. Maybe it was because he hoped it would gain some of Jack's trust, or maybe it was because the alcohol was interacting with whatever drugs the Doctor had given him. He didn't really know why, but he looked right into those unhappy eyes and decided he would tell the story.

"When the war came, my people brought me back from the dead to fight for them. When Kahlia found out, she begged to fight beside me and I let her because I knew she was loyal. If there was anyone I could trust to do their hardest to keep me alive, it was that mad little girl," he almost smiled when he remembered it. "She was all grown up, smart, and so fierce. For the first three years of the war we fought together and I think it was the first time I actually felt a connection to her as my daughter. She was so like me."

Jack nodded his head slowly. "She died fighting with you?"

He shook his head and took a sip from his glass to wash out the bad taste in his mouth. "We had an enemy in the war. She came from nowhere, with an army already prepared, acting separately from the Daleks and against us. She took Time Lords prisoner and tortured them through every regeneration they had left, then broadcast the images to my people to inspire fear and fill their heads with nightmares. But she had an informer. Someone was telling her about our movements so that she could capture our kind when they were alone or with little defense," he took another drink, to calm his hearts as they sped up, reliving the memory again. "Time travel is a very tricky and dangerous thing . . . we picked up a signal travelling from Gallifrey to our enemy's ship and thought we had finally found our informer. Kahlia and I went to deal with them but when we arrived and saw . . . it was her mother. Worse still, I could see that she was younger than I'd ever seen her. She had a device that could act like a calling card through time, summoning her from the past when needed to come to the time of the war and gather information. Then she could just jump back to safety when the job was done."

He remembered the shock of seeing her there, huddled over her equipment to send off information. Her eyes widened when she saw him, even though she was too young to know him yet, and while he stood and stared she picked up her communicator and whispered breathlessly: "He's here."

"I was . . . the war had already changed me, even though I'd seen nothing compared to what was to come. I was quick to anger, quick to kill, and forgiveness was not an option. I had felt something for her once and now I found out she was a traitor before I had even met her."

He saw Jack's eyes widen with sudden understanding and remembered Kahlia's eyes changing exactly the same way. He remembered feeling her hands grab desperately at his arm, trying to stop him. And while Kahlia begged, that woman just stood and stared at him with all the strength and defiance he had once found so captivating.

"We both knew that she was too young for Kahlia to have been born yet. If I killed her, Kahlia wouldn't just die . . . she would never have existed," he paused to remember the tears in Kahlia's eyes, the complete disbelief and shock on her face as he raised his gun. "I shot her anyway."

He waited for Jack to say something, but they just stared at each other. Part of him wanted to say that he realized what a terrible mistake he had made and that when Berran came along he had changed. He wanted to step up for his son and be the father he couldn't be for Kahlia. But the other part of him told him that, in the end, that didn't change anything and there was no point trying to pretend that it did.

"To fatherhood," he said, raising his glass and then quickly finishing its contents.

Jack raised his glass in turn and finished his own drink, but didn't say anything.

"I haven't even told the Doctor that story," he said quietly, letting his head fall back against the wall behind him. "And now the knowledge of my crimes will live forever, with the man who can never die."

"I won't tell," Jack promised.

"Tell whoever you want," he snapped back, feeling suddenly angry at the tone of pity he heard in Jack's voice. "It wouldn't surprise anyone anyway."

A long, tense silence passed in which he dwelled upon the memories in misery and Jack stared at him in a way that pierced through him. He was too transparent now—too easy to see with that much emotion on the surface and he didn't want Jack to witness it.

"Thanks for the drink," he muttered, pushing his empty glass into Jack's hands. "You got what you want, now let me get some sleep."

"Right," Jack stood up, lingered a moment as though he had something to say, and then silently walked towards the door.

"And Jack," he said just before the other men stepped through the doorway. "Next time, aim for my head. And don't stop."

"You got it," Jack answered and then closed the door behind him.