A/N: Two chapters for you today! Since they're both quite short and we're almost at the end. Can you believe it?
"Don't do this."
The Doctor spoke quietly from behind the Shadow Architect.
She replied without looking round. "The universe will be a safer place without him."
"Please. You have to let me take him." The Doctor moved around and fixed her with dark eyes. "I can make him better. I can change him."
The Architect met his gaze with a wall of detachment. The Doctor stared into her eyes, and saw nothing. No compassion. No pity. And for a moment it shook him to his core. Here was a creature without mercy.
They were standing together in one of the Shadow Proclamation's deepest and perhaps worst-lit chambers. At the other end was the Master's prison - a large metal hoop suspended off the ground, glowing red and humming with energy. The Architect watched expressionlessly as two Judoon guards lifted the Master bodily up into the hoop.
It immediately glowed brighter, and when the guards stepped away he remained suspended in mid-air, his arms pulled up like a scarecrow.
"What is that thing?" asked the Doctor, squinting into the red light. "How does it work?"
The Architect smiled wryly. "Forgive me for not lending you the tools to free him, Doctor. But I will tell you that it is a newly designed Time Lord prison, programmed to terminate him if he tries to escape."
"Has it got WiFi?" the Master asked loudly, his voice echoing off the shadowy walls. One of the Judoon grunted an affirmation.
The Doctor left the Shadow Architect's side and walked slowly over to the hoop, his hands in his pockets. The Master grinned at him.
"What? I have a lot of television to catch up on."
The Doctor shook his head in perplexity. "Why did you do this? Why did you give yourself up?"
The Master tilted his chin upwards, considering how to answer. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
"You were acting on emotion, not reason."
"I realise that now." the Master's gaze suddenly turned cold. "You didn't stop me."
The Doctor's eyes flickered automatically around the circumference of the hoop, searching for weak spots in its design. "I'm sorry. I should have… thought of another way."
"No, no, this is perfect." The Master was now smiling again, with a bit of his old scathing humour. "Your oldest enemy in chains. The innocents saved. All in a day's work for the Doctor."
The Doctor stared at him, horrified. "You think I want this?"
"It's very convenient for you. I'll be safely locked up here for all eternity, and you and Miss Jones can go travel the stars."
"You were supposed to come with us."
The Master laughed. "Now you're just being ridiculous. You can't trust me. Maybe at a stretch you could trust me before, but now I'm whole again?" he shook his head, gazing at the Doctor. "No. You finally found part of me you could side with, and you had to let it go. I bet that broke your hearts, didn't it?"
The Doctor said nothing. The two Time Lords looked at each other for what felt like an eternity, and then finally the Doctor turned to leave.
"Yes," he said softly.
And then he walked away without looking back, his shadow thrown across the red-lit walls like a ghost.
Martha looked up as the Doctor entered the TARDIS, a weary expression on his face.
"Hiya," she said softly. "I plugged the sphere in under the console, like you said. The blue light's still on, so I think it's alive."
"Great," murmured the Doctor. He slowly removed his coat and laid it over the nearby coral pillar.
"Are you okay?"
The Doctor took a deep breath. "I'm fine. It's just… for a moment back there I thought it was going to work."
"What do you mean?"
The Doctor stepped up to the console and began to circle it, absentmindedly adjusting dials as he went. "You, me, the Master. Travelling." He chuckled. "It sounds insane, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, a bit," admitted Martha. She sat back in the pilot's seat and watched the Doctor set flight co-ordinates. The TARDIS hummed quietly as he continued to work, speaking in a low voice.
"Every time we met, over all these years, I thought… he's going to change his mind this time. Travel with me. Sometimes we'd get so close… and then he would leave. Or escape, or pretend to die, or… actually die." The Doctor half-smiled. "I could never get him to stay. And then, finally it seemed like…" he stopped. His voice was breaking, and he looked almost as if he might cry. "And now he's gone and done this."
Martha tilted her head back and watched the time rotor's gentle motion. "He'd changed. I think he wanted to do something good for once."
"That was just part of him." The Doctor shook his head, moving around to type something on a keyboard. "Now he's full Time Lord again, everything will be back to normal. Give him time, he'll forget it all. Probably escape and try to kill us again in a few years."
"Then we have to go back for him now." Martha sat forward and fixed the Doctor with a stare. "And bring that part of him back before it's too late."
"We can't."
"Why not?"
"Because…" The Doctor stopped typing, his eyes faraway. "Because it's too painful, Martha. Trying over and over again, just to see him betray me every time. And more and more people die. I nearly lost you today."
Martha shook her head. "You can't give up. You never give up on him."
The Doctor looked at her for a long time, and then sighed, returning to the controls.
"Even if I could, I… I don't know how to save him, Martha. They've got him hooked up to this machine. It will kill him if I try to get him out."
"Then we make them let him go."
"They won't. He's surrendered, and that's the end of it." The Doctor pressed a button and the TARDIS whirred into flight. "There's no way back, now. Time we moved on."
Martha held onto the edge of the seat as the TARDIS shook violently, and watched the Doctor grapple with the controls like a monkey, stretching out his foot to whack an inaccessible lever. He flashed a grin at her, but the hollow feeling in her chest had returned and she stared straight through him, barely feeling the shuddering engines as they hurtled through time and space.
Illustration for chapter 33 on DeviantArt: atlantihero-kyoxei/art/Gaol-877695152