It was almost midnight in London, and the snow was finally falling.
Martha was paying a visit to her family, and so the Doctor and the Master took a walk through the empty park opposite the house, leaving two faint sets of footprints on the path as the snowflakes gradually piled up. The sounds of London swirled around them, slightly muted by the trees surrounding the park, which creaked and shifted in the breeze.
"How are they now?" asked the Doctor eventually. "The drums?"
The Master didn't answer immediately. They passed a park bench which was slick with ice, and turned left into a wooded brook.
After a while he let out a low sigh. "Bearable."
"We'll get them out of your head," said the Doctor with quiet conviction. "There's got to be a way."
The Master smiled wryly. "I don't think so. They're as much a part of me as my legs, now."
"Didn't you once have your legs amputated because they were annoying you?"
The Master gave him a sidelong glance. "Not my point."
They passed under a tree and the Doctor shivered as droplets of ice pattered his hair. The Master just pulled up his hood and kept walking.
"So," said the Doctor after a few paces of silence. "You're coming with us, then?"
"Yep." The Master turned to face him, treading backwards through the thickening snow. "Thought it might be fun, playing on your side for once."
"My side. I see. So this is just a game to you?"
The Master tilted his head to the sky and closed his eyes, grinning as snowflakes fell onto his eyelashes. "Everything is, Doctor."
"What about helping people, saving planets?" the Doctor watched his fellow Time Lord carefully. "Doing the right thing?"
The Master opened his eyes and looked back at the Doctor through a haze of snow. "I'll do my best - no promises."
They skirted around a frozen pond, gleaming like a pool of white in the darkness, then emerged from the trees and made a slow circuit of the park, eventually coming to a stop by the padlocked iron gates which faced out onto the street.
The Doctor watched with a half-smile as his companion vaulted up the metal rungs and perched on top like a monkey. The Master looked down at him.
"What?"
The Doctor shook his head. "How will I know when I can trust you, Master?"
"You won't!" the Master laughed and swung backwards, dropping to the ground on the other side. He straightened up and turned to face the Doctor through the gate, the light from a nearby streetlamp throwing prison bars of shadow across both their faces. The Master grinned, flashing white teeth in the dark.
"That's what makes it fun."
They returned to the TARDIS and Martha joined them shortly afterwards, shivering from the cold as the doors swung closed behind her.
"It's freezing out there." Martha stepped up and placed her hands on the console, sighing as the warmth of the TARDIS seeped into her bones.
"How's the family?" asked the Doctor, leaning over to pull the scanner screen around.
Martha yawned as he typed in co-ordinates. "They're fine. Mum's recovering." She paused. "I said I was travelling with you again."
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "How did they take it?"
"They came round eventually." She smirked, watching the Doctor crank a lever around like he was winding up a spring. "You'll have Tish in here next. She wouldn't leave me alone. Wanted to know everything that happened after we left London."
The Master looked up from the pilot's seat, where he was reading a book. "What did you tell her about me?"
Martha shrugged. "I said you fell into a black hole."
The Master laughed and leaned back in the chair. "Okay, so when are you going to tell them the truth?"
Martha paused in mock thought. "Umm, maybe when you stop being evil."
"What if I just keep being evil, and then you'll have to come up with increasingly awkward excuses?"
Martha gave him a withering look and turned to the Doctor.
"So are we off, then? All of time and space, et cetera?"
The Doctor smiled, moving around to press a few switches at seemingly random intervals. "Almost. There's one more thing we need to do."
"Ugh." The Master rolled his eyes, closed the book with a snap and got to his feet. "I'm not going to help tow that spaceship off the moon. Wake me up when we land somewhere interesting!"
He vanished into the corridor without a backwards glance.
Martha looked back at the Doctor, trying to hide her smile. "Where are we going?"
By way of reply, the Doctor yanked down the takeoff lever, making the whole room shudder. They both grabbed onto the console as the TARDIS lurched into flight, wheezing and whirring until it finally settled into a low hum, like the engine of a parked train.
The Doctor grinned at Martha, let go of the console, grabbed something from underneath it and sprinted over to the doors, flinging them wide. Martha cautiously followed him, squinting into the sudden brightness pouring in from outside.
The TARDIS was floating lazily through a galaxy splashed with colour. Stars winked and patches of cloudy dust circled its centre, which looked like a gigantic blue eye staring out into space.
"The Maelstrom," said the Doctor with reverence, his eyes gleaming with reflected light. "Largest galaxy this side of the universe. Over a trillion star systems, and about triple that of developed planets. Lots of information to gobble up."
He held up the Agni sphere in both hands and pressed a button. A small light flickered on and it spoke in a hesitant, robotic voice.
"Doctor?"
Martha stared at it, her eyes wide with amazement. It had actually worked.
"Hello!" The Doctor grinned at the sphere. "How are we doing?"
"I…" the voice stuttered, and the sphere vibrated slightly. "Where is my forest? I am in darkness."
"No, you're not," said the Doctor softly. "There is sensory information feeding into your new brain from the receptors on your shell. Let it in. Feel it."
He lifted the sphere up, letting the light from the Maelstrom shine on its metal casing. A comet drifted past, its tail blazing like fire, and the Agni glowed gold.
"Can you see that?"
"Yes. It's… beautiful."
"Isn't it just? And it's all yours, Agni. Go on, try reaching for it."
The sphere hummed as if concentration, and then it lifted slowly out the Doctor's hands, twirling like an aimless balloon for a moment before coming to a hover in mid-air.
The Doctor's heart swelled with wonder. This tiny, meaningless, terrible creature which had nearly destroyed them all, was experiencing a new life. He couldn't hold back a smile.
"You saved me," said the voice after a moment.
The Doctor leaned back, his eyes bright.
"Yes, I did. And now you're going to be able to save other people. Get out there, learn, share your experiences. Evolve. Teach. Become the best you can."
The Agni hung in the air, seeming to look at them without eyes. And then it turned and flew, glittering in the light of a trillion stars, towards the Maelstrom.
Martha joined the Doctor at the doors, watching as the sphere left them behind.
"Did we just unleash something horrific upon the universe?" she asked quietly.
The Doctor chuckled. "Possibly. But we've given it a second chance. Whatever it chooses to do next, I think it will remember that."
He turned and leaned back against the doorframe, watching Martha. There was silence as the stars passed by outside, and for a while it felt like they were all alone in the vast and empty universe.
"Thank you," he said at last. The words hung between them, heavy as stones.
Martha nodded and continued to stare out into the Maelstrom. A planet had come into view, turning from amber to blue as clouds chased around its surface. Dozens of tiny satellites circled it, each one a beacon in the dark.
Just beyond it was a cluster of stars which seemed to swirl with endless, motionless movement. The entire galaxy was shifting imperceptibly between all the colours of the rainbow, and occasionally tiny spaceships would zoom past, like ants crossing a road.
"It's so…" Martha gave a breath of laughter. "I don't even know what it is."
"Amazing?" suggested the Doctor.
"Terrifying," said Martha. "To know there's a whole universe out there, and we've only explored one tiny corner of it. I'll never get used to that feeling."
"That feeling is what keeps me going." The Doctor put his hands in his pockets and watched a chunk of asteroid float above them. "Thinking of all the places we haven't been yet."
"Yeah," said Martha with a sigh. She tore her eyes away from the view and smiled at the Doctor. "I can't wait."
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "How long are you going to stay with us?"
Martha shrugged. "I don't know. Not forever. But I need to get out here again, just for a while. Everything on Earth is just too…" she sighed. "I mean, I work for one of the most powerful organisations on the planet, but sometimes I feel like no matter what I do, I still can't make a difference."
The Doctor nodded slowly. "I know." He paused, and then reached out and took Martha by the hand.
She squeezed his fingers tightly. "Thanks."
"You made a difference today," continued the Doctor quietly. "You changed the mind of someone who's over 900 years old."
Martha laughed. "If you told me yesterday I'd be breaking the Master out of prison, I wouldn't have believed you."
"I wasn't just talking about him," said the Doctor. Martha looked up and he gave her a sad smile. "You were right. I'd finally given up on him. That's the thing about Time Lords - we live too long. We get… jaded. Wrapped up in old promises and enmities. We need humans to remind us how to think straight."
Martha gazed at him for a few moments and then stepped forward and pulled him into a hug.
"Well then, you're lucky you've got me."
The Doctor wrapped his arms around Martha and closed his eyes, listening to the low thrum of the TARDIS engines and feeling the universe roll by in a kaleidoscope of colours.
"Yeah. Yeah, we are."
A/N:
We've come to the end!
I hope you all enjoyed Fission, I'd be really glad to hear your thoughts on it, if you'd like to leave a review it would make my birthday even better! :)
(Be sure to head over to my DeviantArt and check out the illustrations too!)
Illustration for chapter 35 on DeviantArt: atlantihero-kyoxei/art/The-Maelstrom-878424099
And no promises yet, but I'm working on some sequels. They would follow the Doctor, Martha and the Master's travels in the TARDIS - and maybe even pick up some threads from this fanfic and expand further on them. They won't be done any time soon because I'd want to make some over-arching plots and make sure I got those right before uploading anything, but if you'd be interested make sure to stick around!
Thank you for reading 3