Martha found a quiet spot in the corner of the console room, leaned against one of the coral pillars, slid to the floor with a sigh, and called her family.
She spoke to Leo first, who sounded much calmer than he had done earlier, although still rattled. Apparently Francine had been discharged from the hospital and was safely resting at home. The whole family were there, even Martha's dad, whose gruff, factual description of the evening's events told Martha that he was in fact deeply shaken.
When the phone was passed to Tish, Martha heard the creak of a door as her sister moved into another room.
"Martha. What happened? It's all over the news. People in town said they saw a kind of laser weapon firing into the sky. And the tubes had a power surge, nearly killed everyone evacuating from the underground! They're saying it all was some kind of co-ordinated terrorist activity."
Martha sighed, using her free hand to unfasten her ponytail as she talked, which relieved some of the tension in her head. "Of course they are. Listen, Tish, I'm safe. I'm with the Doctor. But it's not over yet."
Tish's voice lowered to a fierce whisper. "I thought you had the Master locked up?"
"We do. It's complicated." Martha ran a hand through her hair to straighten it out, glancing over to the console where the Master was slowly circling the controls, occasionally flicking the odd switch in a nonchalant kind of way, as if hoping to catch the TARDIS off-guard.
"I haven't told them he's alive," said Tish quietly. "I - I don't know how to say it. They're already strung out. I don't want to make it worse."
"I know," said Martha, a lump forming in her throat. "I'll come home when all this is over, and we can sort it out." She wondered how the hell she was going to explain this to her family, if they even survived being part of the Agni network.
"I've got to go," said Tish, sounding tired. "Good luck."
Martha flipped the phone closed and sat for a few moments, staring into empty space.
She felt drained. All she wanted was to go home and crawl back into bed, and let the Doctor and the Master argue and sulk and deliberate over whether or not to kill alien parasites and evil clones.
Instead she got to her feet and returned to the console, where she sank into the empty pilot's seat with a groan of frustration.
"Something the matter, Miss Jones?"
She looked around. The Master was lightly tapping some buttons on the other side of the console, looking at her through the translucent time rotor with raised eyebrows.
"I'm fine."
Martha's tone, in her opinion, clearly indicated she did not want to chat.
It was apparently not obvious enough though, because the Master started to babble at her in a distinctly Doctor-like fashion.
"Really? You don't sound fine, you just made a noise like an angry Judoon. Like that Judoon who knocked down your front door, remember? That one definitely had anger issues. What did the door ever do to deserve that?"
Martha grunted in halfhearted agreement, then remembered that she wasn't supposed to be in the mood for conversation.
The Master grinned distortedly through the warped glass of the time rotor, then ambled around the side of the console and turned a dial. The TARDIS hummed in annoyance and delivered a small electric shock to his hand.
Martha watched as the Master flexed his fingers and grimaced, the resentful knot in her stomach twisting slightly tighter.
After a minute or so of fiddling with the controls and small grunts of frustration that told her the Master's attempts to override the isomorphic settings were proving unsuccessful, he sighed and turned around, leaning against the console and appearing to give up.
"So," he said conversationally, and she had the distinct impression he was casting around for something to amuse himself. "What's the matter, Miss Jones?"
"I told you, nothing."
"You're angry. Is it because of me?"
Martha sighed. She could feel another headache coming on. "Just leave me alone. I'm tired. I don't want to talk to you, Master. This whole bloody situation is your fault."
He shrugged. "Okay."
Several long moments passed in silence as the Master struggled with a flathead screwdriver to prise open a small panel on the console. Martha fiddled with the cuffs of her UNIT jacket, wondering if she could summon the energy to get up and find the Doctor. But she didn't really feel like talking to him, either.
The minutes stretched themselves out, every rhythmic thrum of the TARDIS's engines seeming to take longer to pass. The blueish light from the console spilled over Martha's legs like a reflection from a fish tank, and silhouetted the Master's profile as he chewed his bottom lip in concentration.
It occurred to Martha then how ordinary he looked - apart from his peroxide blond hair and the fact he was now trying to sabotage part of a time machine, he could easily just be a normal guy walking down the street.
Except he was anything but normal. He was a Time Lord, hundreds of years old and carrying the even more ancient and complex pride of Gallifrey on his shoulders, along with the deaths of countless millions.
How did he square away all the awful things he had done, all the people he had killed? Did he lock them in neat little boxes inside his mind and never look at them?
Martha had always assumed that he didn't care, that he was a heartless monster lost to any kind of compassion. And yet, in the past twenty-four hours she had seen him display a level of pain and emotion she had never imagined he possessed.
The Doctor must have always seen that part of him - or perhaps just desperately hoped it was still there, holding onto it like a lifeline throughout all their battles across time and space.
And now the Fission Cloning process seemed to have isolated it. This Master was suddenly more… for lack of a better word, human. Did that mean he had a conscience? And if so, how was that conscience holding up under the weight of his past? Was he feeling sadness, or regret?
He looked up and caught her eye, and that dark, unstable part of his mind glinted through like a fragment of glass.
Martha thought about Melanie Shepherd and the other UNIT soldier, whose name she didn't even know. Blasted into dust. Another drop of blood in the Master's ocean of destruction.
Just because he's got the slightly softer heart, doesn't mean he's on your side. Lord's words echoed like a warning inside her head.
He smiled amicably at her and returned to his work, and Martha watched him for a few moments before speaking quietly.
"You're still a killer, aren't you?"
The Master glanced up at her again, surprised. "Sorry?"
Martha directed her eyes at the floor. "I thought maybe… Lord was that part of you. The part that killed people. But he's not, is he? That's just you."
He laughed quietly. "Yes, I'm a killer, Martha. No amount of Fission Cloning will ever change that."
She looked back at him, and saw the man who had made her life into hell.
"How do you live with that?"
He dropped her gaze, frowning slightly, apparently giving the matter some thought.
"I don't know." he said eventually. "I suppose it started with a choice."
"I don't understand."
"Actually, I think you do."
Something on the console beeped loudly in the silence that followed these words.
Martha blinked. "I'm not a killer."
A smile stole onto the Master's face. "Maybe not yet."
"What does that mean?" She glared defiantly at him, but he turned away, absentmindedly flicking a switch on the console to quiet the beeping noise. The TARDIS gave him another shock and he hissed like a cat before speaking again.
"I mean… if you travel with the Doctor for long enough, you eventually become one. I've seen it before. It's pretty much inevitable." The Master waved a hand at the ceiling. "Oh, he flies around in his pretty blue box and talks about honour and kindness, and righting the wrongs of the universe, but he's just setting you up for failure. Because one day you'll be confronted with an impossible choice. And then you'll see yourself become the very thing which you stood against." He paused, his expression softening as he looked back at her. "I think that's already happened to you, hasn't it, Martha?"
Martha felt cold. Unbidden, a memory had floated to the surface of her mind.
Germany. A castle looming above the pitch black trees. Dalek screams in the distance, and a square of plastic and metal biting into the skin of her left hand, for she was holding it so tightly - the Osterhagen Key, primed and ready to wipe out the entire human race as soon as the command was given.
Her command.
She was aware the Master was watching her closely, and raised her head, understanding. "You make the choice, and you become a killer."
He nodded. "Someone needs to make the tough calls. You know we need to destroy that parasite before it kills us. The Doctor's too wrapped up his precious decency to see it. But not you. You think like me."
Martha felt her fists clench.
"No. I am nothing like you. You're a monster. You enslaved my planet. You tortured my family." Martha felt the heat rising in her chest as the words spilled out. She felt like she had tapped back into the quiet, simmering rage which had fuelled her during the Year That Never Was, as she had trudged through slave camps and nuclear wastelands watching her people die and her planet burn by the Master's hand. "You're sick, and- and evil…" She took a rapid breath and looked away. "You know what? You're right. I don't think any amount of Fission Cloning will ever change you."
The Master spoke softly in reply, but it was the deadly softness of drowning.
"You hold me so accountable for my past, but the Doctor's hands are barely cleaner than mine. Or did you forget that he committed genocide on his own people?"
These words hit Martha's heart like a knife, and her anger spiked again.
"He didn't have a bloody choice! You want to talk about making the tough calls? His only option was to destroy the Daleks and the Time Lords, and he's had to live with that decision his whole life. Do you honestly think he wanted to do it?"
The Master moved fast. One second he was leaning against the console, the next he was right in front of her, his lips curling into a scowl.
"Do not," he hissed venomously, "Speak about things that you do not understand. That you couldn't even begin to understand."
His eyes were burning with anger. Martha shrank back into the seat.
"What happened during the Time War is nothing to do with you," he spat. "You're nothing, you understand? You're a stupid, insignificant little ape. You weren't even there when it happened."
"Oh yeah, and neither were you!" Martha shot back. "Because you ran away, didn't you? You were so scared of the Daleks, you ran all the way to the end of the universe to escape them, and you left the Doctor to finish them off alone!"
The Master stiffened. For a moment, he looked as if he might hit her, and Martha was afraid she'd pushed too far. But then he pulled back slightly, a closed expression on his face.
Aware of how uncomfortably close he still was, Martha edged sideways and slid out of the seat, moving slowly over to the console in the uneasy silence.
The Master's eyes did not follow her. He was still staring at some point in the middle distance, his face strangely blank, as if he'd constructed a sort of emotional barricade, sealing off his thoughts.
Martha felt the sudden, completely irrational urge to break the silence and apologise, but didn't let herself. He didn't deserve to feel forgiven.
"Sorry."
The Master did not look around, but spoke to the pilot's seat instead.
Martha wasn't quite sure she had heard him correctly.
"Sorry?" she asked.
"Sorry, yes," he snapped, turning to face her at last. "It's an apology. From me. You might want to write it down or something."
Martha stared at him, lost for words.
"And you're right," he continued, taking a step back and retreating towards the corridor. "The Doctor might well be a killer, but I am… a monster. And a coward. And I am so, so tired of it."
He gave her one last stare with those glass-fragment eyes, then turned and vanished into the TARDIS.
Illustration for chapter 27 over on DeviantArt - atlantihero-kyoxei/art/Killer-in-the-Mirror-875851818