AN: Alternative summary, because I really don't know at this point:
Everything changes... Yet everything stays the same.
"Wake up," the Master orders, and the Doctor obeys.
Her head is full of Gallifrey and Tecteun and Ireland and Brendan and the Timeless Child and what did they do to you, Doctor? How many lives have you had?
She takes in a shaky breath, too in shock to bother holding back tears that are not there, as she struggles against the paralysis field, trying to move just one finger—
And the finger moves.
The Doctor blinks, confused at the ease with which that tiny movement happened, and realizes she's no longer staring at the destroyed Panopticon, but at the ceiling of the Matrix chamber instead.
A hand runs through her hair, soothing the growing headache and dispersing the tension that was keeping her body immobile in absence of the paralysis field, and the Doctor sighs and blinks again, trying to focus on the shadow that, according to the legs pillowing her head, should be a person's head—
"I know you're broken, but it's all over now," the Master tells her when their eyes meet, giving her a tremulous small smile, and the Doctor tenses all over again.
"What do you mean?" she asks, not moving from where she's lying on the floor, with her head in his lap, and part of her feels grateful when his hand drops from her hair while the other part mourns its absence.
This is the man who destroyed her home—Tecteun glimpsed the infinite through that gateway. And beneath the monument, she found… a child—the man who killed her family—Now, having seen her adopted child regenerate her body, Tecteun, a scientist and explorer, had a new landscape to explore—and the man who has destroyed her life—There was something here. A lot of stuff, seemingly, but now it all just looks like this. I've tried everything, everything, to decode it, but it's… it's unrecoverable, beyond even my brilliance—
"Shush, Doctor, shush," the Master whispers, his hand once more carding through her hair, and the Doctor's breath hitches, throat tight and hands shaking. "Deep breaths, there you go. The Matrix takes a lot out of you, but I… I did too much damage to be able to access it in any other way. Sorry about that," he explains softly, trying for a smile that, while tight-lipped, is not insincere. "Just give it a minute. You'll feel better then."
She takes in some deep breaths, relaxing against her will every time his fingers run through her hair, but doesn't wait for that minute before opening her mouth again.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Not telling you," he answers with a huge grin, eyes shiny, though the expression vanishes when her eyes tighten with pain. "Still won't smile, huh? You're a tough crowd."
"Master…" she warns, reaching to grab onto the forearm of the hand supporting her shoulder, and the one in her hair stills. "Why are you doing this?" she repeats more firmly this time, tightening her grip on his arm.
Their eyes meet as she dares him to lie, as she begs him to be sincere, and after a second that lasts an eternity, he smiles again, wide and toothy and full of as much cheer as it is pain.
"To break you! Show the Doctor the truth about the Time Lords, about Gallifrey, about herself, and witness the fallout! Why else would I do this? It was always you, Doctor. You may have made me, but I have broken you," he explains as his grin dims and twists into something more sincere yet completely unidentifiable.
The Doctor pushes his arm off herself and straightens, stopping once she's sitting upright once more so she can shake the dizziness from the movement, before she turns around to face the Master.
With him sitting on his knees, the Doctor has to look slightly up at him, despite the fact their regenerations this time around are about the same height. It reminds her disturbingly of 1834, even though the height difference is not as acute… though, just like then, it doesn't last long, as the Master leans forward so they can be at eye level again.
"Feeling better, love?" he asks with a mocking grin, and if not because she's using both her hands to keep herself upright, the Doctor would have felt a rather strong urge to slap him.
"You destroyed Gallifrey," she hisses back at him, unwilling to give him any kind of answer he could use to his advantage or as ammunition of any kind.
"I've destroyed lots of planets. How is this one different?" he asks conversationally, blinking almost innocently, and the Doctor's hearts fall.
"It was ours!"
"It was never ours!" he snarls back at her, moving in even closer so all she can see are his brown eyes, always paler in his rage no matter the regeneration, and she allows him a moment to seethe, to see if he'll say more.
But he doesn't. He just stays there, shoulders shaking with each angry huff, while he looks searchingly into her eyes for who knows what.
"Gallifrey was home," she repeats, softer this time, and when he sneers, bowing his head, she hurries to continue before he can explode at her again. "It may not have been where I came from, I may – I may never know where that is. But it is where I grew up, where we grew up. Gallifrey was where our families lived, where all our memories were. It was home," she explains, almost pleadingly, and sees all the anger drain out of him despite the tense line of his shoulders never relaxing—
"Then why did you leave?"
She pulls back, startled at the question, at the softness and intensity it has been spoken with, but never breaks eye contact, searching for the reason for it, for what he's trying to get from asking that.
But the Master stays infuriatingly closed up, serious and focused but not giving anything away, waiting for her answer.
"Like animals stalking their prey. Sorry, that wasn't helpful," she remembers O saying, back in Australia, back when she'd believed him to be a human spy rather than a renegade Time Lord, and recognizes that, while accurate, that statement is really not helpful.
"What?" she says instead of a proper answer, struggling with her thoughts about him amidst all the chaos of the Timeless Child and Tecteun and the creation of the Time Lords.
"Why did you leave Gallifrey?" he repeats, still calm and as focused as a sharpened blade. "Because, really, after all these years, after how many times anyone has asked, one would think you'd have told someone. But not even little Susan knew," he hums almost casually, and even after all the centuries, the Doctor's hearts beat painfully at that name. "I have a theory, you see. About what that Academy student discovered when he sneaked into the Cloisters, which scared him so much that he eventually ran away. The Hybrid."
"That's your best theory? I'm the Hybrid? I ran away from Gallifrey because I was afraid of myself? That doesn't make any sense," she—he, back then—had told Ashildr at the end of the universe, after extracting Clara at the moment of her death and running away from Gallifrey.
The Doctor had shrugged it off then, and Ashildr had offered a… plausible alternative. One good enough to convince oneself that it was true.
"Clara and I were the Hybrid. Not one person, but two," she whispers back, because what she'd told Ashildr then is still true now.
She doesn't remember what the Sliders had told her – had told him all those centuries ago, when he'd gone into the Cloisters, and whatever glimpse into the past she got every now and then was too brief or chaotic to make sense of. Ashildr was immortal, not a Time Lord. Memory doesn't work the same way for humans than for Time Lords. Or… whatever the Doctor is.
"Oh, Doctor. You were always one to believe in the oddest things, but that? Pfft, who told you that?" the Master laughs, going as far as to drop his head as his shoulders shake in mirth, before looking up with only seriousness in his eyes. "Though you are right about one thing. Come on, Doctor. You must have figured it out by now."
She has. Oh, she has, but she refuses to acknowledge it, hoping that maybe, just maybe, if she doesn't say it out loud, it won't be real.
… Of course, that has never worked for her before.
"Gallifrey. The Time Lords were the Hybrids," she whispers, so quiet that she almost doesn't hear herself, but the way the Master smiles, proud and condescending at the same time, is enough to know he has caught it.
"Yes! You see now? You weren't afraid of yourself; you were afraid of everyone else. A whole planet, a whole civilization of Hybrids, fated to destroy themselves! That is why you ran. Am I wrong? Come on, I dare you to say I'm not," he hisses, grinning widely, as he leans closer once more, and the Doctor shakes her head with a tremulous breath.
"I don't remember," she answers sincerely, meeting his eyes so he can see it's the truth, and with a huff, the Master sits back on his heels once more, disappointed.
"Oh, well. It doesn't make my theory any less true than any other. But wait! I am a Hybrid, who knows he's a Hybrid, and who actually went and destroyed Gallifrey! I guess it is true after all," he laughs giddily, throwing his head back, and the Doctor glares at him with as much heat as she can muster—
"All Matrix prophecies concur that this creature will one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. It will unravel the Web of Time and destroy a billion billion hearts to heal its own," the General had said, before the Doctor got him to extract Clara, and he had mocked him at the time for such a belief.
But now, staring at the Master's wide grin and the destroyed Capitol just outside the window, the Doctor can't help but think all those prophecies might not have been as wrong as—
"It will unravel the Web of Time—"
Yes, sure, both of them have done something or other to mess with time through their history, including but not limited to the mess on Logopolis and their actions in the Time War, but still…
"—and destroy a billion billion hearts to heal its own."
The Doctor's breath catches in her throat.
"Two hearts."
"And both of them yours."
But – But that had been Missy, and Missy had been joking, she – she couldn't have been serious, that kiss was obviously a joke, she hadn't – it wasn't—
"Geo-activated. If you're seeing this, you've been to Gallifrey. When I said someone did that, obviously I meant I did. I had to make them pay for what I discovered," the Master had said, in that recording he'd left her after he'd been marooned in the Kasaavin's dimension.
The question, though, was why?
"They lied to us, the founding fathers of Gallifrey. Everything we were told was a lie. We are not who we think, you or I. The whole existence of our species built on the lie of the Timeless Child."
That's what he had said. And here, now, after discovering the truth herself, the Doctor agrees with him. It hasn't been – It isn't easy. There's no way something this big could ever be.
But it still doesn't answer the question.
"Proud of yourself?"
"Definitely."
"All this death finally made you happy?"
"Ecstatic."
"And has it calmed all the rage?"
And he'd gone serious then, serious and haunted, and looked at her—and turned away.
"I don't think anything will ever do that."
She hadn't been able to look at him anymore, even if staring at the ruins of Gallifrey was painful. Nothing would ever be as heartsbreaking as seeing her best enemy broken to such an extent, lost in his mind—
"You did this to me! All of my life! You made me!" he'd shouted at Rassilon even as he electrocuted him with his life force, far beyond any thoughts of survival or any rational planning, fueled by rage and pain after the revelation that it had been Rassilon himself who'd ordered the maddening drums to be put into the Master's head, knowing what that would mean for him.
But the look in his eyes, after Rassilon told him that, before fear replaced it as the Lord President lifted his gauntlet… that had been what had given the Doctor the strength to get up and aim Wilf's gun at Rassilon.
The Master should never look that broken.
"I keep remembering all the people I've killed. Every day I think of more. Being bad, being bad drowned that out. I didn't even know their names. You didn't tell me about this bit," Missy had whispered, tears streaming down her face, and the Doctor had barely held himself back from kneeling in front of her and taking her hands in his.
It had been her choice, to try and change. No matter how much it hurt him, the Doctor had to let Missy get past that on her own.
Of course, when it mattered, she had decided her life was worth more than actually being good, doing the right thing, but… Well, that was the Doctor's fault too. He should've never expected her to change fully. That she'd done it as much as she did…
If only they'd had more time, maybe the Doctor could've taught her not to kill on a whim, to keep her rage—
Wait. No, that's not right.
This wasn't a whim. This was a fit of rage, but a fit of rage was attacking Rassilon for putting the drums in his head, not destroying the whole of Gallifrey. The Master tends to go big, sure, but when he's mad, he goes for where it hurts the most. He targets that one person and kills them. Something on this scale couldn't have been rage alone, that's not how he operates—
"No, you don't. You never have. Your life has been hidden from you."
"I had to make them pay for what I discovered."
"You did this to me! All of my life! You made me!"
"I wish it wasn't true, but it is."
"There is one final trace. Those glitches of Ireland you keep seeing. Those images, they were buried deep in the Matrix. Tecteun put a visual filter over it so that no one who watched it would find it remarkable. I transmitted them into your mind as you tracked the Cybermen. Maybe this is the last gift of a parent. A clue. Or an apology. You can decide."
"Truth and reconciliation time, Doctor. Well, maybe not reconciliation. But time you saw the truth for yourself."
"In a way, this is why I gave her to you in the first place. To make you see. The friend inside the enemy, the enemy inside the friend. Everyone's a bit of both. Everyone's a hybrid. It wasn't me who ran, Doctor. That was always you."
"And the history between us does mean something. It's the rage and pain in my hearts."
"Two hearts."
"And both of them yours."
"All Matrix prophecies concur that this creature will one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. It will unravel the Web of Time and destroy a billion billion hearts to heal its own."
"It was me," the Doctor whispers, her wide eyes searching the Master's, whose may be worried expression at her long silence turns to confusion. "It was me," she repeats, running through all that she's learned about herself today and contrasting it with what she knows of the Master—
Rassilon put the drums in the Master's head, driving him mad, and he retaliated by attacking Rassilon and injuring him so badly that he ended up regenerating who knows how many times. Tecteun found the Timeless Child, and after learning of their ability to regenerate, experimented on them until she managed to figure it out, using them afterwards as a tool for the Time Lords.
"I had to make them pay for what I discovered," the Master had said about destroying Gallifrey, but what he'd discovered—
He'd discovered the Time Lords had used the Timeless Child, the Doctor, to create their society, experimenting on her all of her lives and then taking those lives from her. The Master had never been directly affected by it, other than having a tiny piece of her in him, passed down through the generations after the ability to regenerate was first spliced into the Shobogans' genome.
The Master shouldn't have destroyed Gallifrey. The Doctor should have.
"It wasn't me who ran, Doctor. That was always you."
But the Doctor doesn't kill. The Doctor runs from her problems, always has. Though, eventually, they tend to catch up to her. And when they do… Well, she scares herself sometimes, with the extent she will go to. There's a reason she never told Martha what, exactly, happened with the Family of Blood.
And Gallifrey… The Doctor destroyed Gallifrey once, to save the universe from both the Time War and the Time Lords themselves. She did it, because there was no other choice, but she fixed it, and she's not sure she would be able to do it again. What she does know is that she won't take revenge, not like that. Exiling Rassilon and the High Council for trapping her in her own confession dial was as far as she was willing to go, knowing they're almost at the end of the universe. Actually killing them with her own hands…
"All Matrix prophecies concur that this creature will one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. It will unravel the Web of Time and destroy a billion billion hearts to heal its own."
"Two hearts."
"And both of them yours."
But the Doctor never would. Even knowing she'd be safe—
"The Master is going to kill you."
"Yeah."
"Then kill him first."
—the Doctor never would.
But apparently, the Master would kill for her.
He's leaning close now, those big brown eyes of his searching hers almost frantically, shoulders tense at the new silence she has lapsed into, and one of his hands slowly lifts to her cheek, shakily shifting a lock of hair away from her face.
"Oh, I have broken you so badly… There you go, love. Now you can feel just how much the truth hurts," he whispers almost gently, smiling again but with no mockery, and that's when she finally realizes there were a lot of those smiles in the Matrix, the soft ones that are meant to be nothing but smiles. "It was you, Doctor. It was always you."
"Doctor!"
"Who's—Hey!"
"Get away from her!"
There's a lot of people on the doorway, atop the stairs, and there's a gun pointing at them—
The Master grabs her shoulder as he twists to face the threat, the movement pushing her behind him—
"No!" the Doctor shouts, shoving the arm away and rushing to her feet, hands up, to hide the Master's crouched form behind her, but the world blurs and twists around her—
A hand grabs her arm to keep her from falling while an arm wraps around her waist, pressing her back against a firm and strong chest to stabilize her, tight enough that she can lean on her support but not enough to keep her from falling if her legs fail, or stop her from breaking the hold with a good jerk.
"Doc!"
"Get away from her!"
"Easy there, love," a well-known voice whispers in her ear, making her shiver even as she blinks her eyes to clear the blurriness and identify her fam atop the stairs, alongside some other humans, and is that a gun in Yaz's hands? "I told you to give it a minute."
"That was quite some minutes ago," the Doctor argues, twisting her head a bit despite knowing she won't be able to see the Master's face, though she can easily see her hair flop with his breath as he laughs in her shoulder.
"But you didn't do it then," he mocks, and feeling more confident on her balance and no longer dizzy—well, not that much—the Doctor steps away from him, turning around as soon as his arm and hand slip off her waist and arm, respectively. "Then again, you were always stubborn. And resilient," he adds, immediately grinning widely at the 'inner joke' that makes the Doctor twitch.
The Timeless Child. Tecteun and the Time Lords. The Master destroying Gallifrey—
No, stop, one thing at a time. Cybermen now, identity crisis later.
"What are you planning?" she asks him, trying to ignore the cautious steps of her fam slowly making their way down the stairs.
"Who, me?" the Master asks innocently, hands up in an 'I'm unarmed' sign, before grinning darkly. "Universal conquest, of course. What else? But the question is, Doctor, what are you planning? Hmm? Because, let me give you some ideas… Either you take your pets off of Gallifrey now or I'll turn them into the newest figurines in my collection," he adds, dropping his hands and taking out the TCE in one fluid motion, bouncing it in one hand for a moment before gripping it tightly.
"I won't let you," the Doctor bristles, stepping into his face, but the Master merely arches his eyebrows.
"Then get your disgusting humans off of my planet."
"This is not your planet. It never was, it never will. You've never wanted it!" she protests, ignoring the hissed calls of her name from the fam.
"And how would you know that?" he growls, tensing and glaring back intensely.
The Doctor looks into his eyes, notices the way they search hers much like she does his, with a desperation that is most certainly not characteristic of the Master, and relaxes her stance into something more open and less threatening, though she doesn't move away from him.
"Because it's not important enough. You burnt it because it wasn't important enough, because there was something else, out there, that mattered more than Gallifrey ever did," she whispers, trying to see something past the stiffness of his shoulders, the tightness of his jaw and the sudden barrier keeping any emotion away from his expressive big brown eyes. "Because I'm going to defeat the Lone Cyberman, I'm going to stop him and all his Cyberwarriors here, on Gallifrey, before they can do any more harm, and then I'll take my fam and leave, and never come back again."
"Which Time Lady?"
"The one you abandoned, Doctor. The one you left for dead. Didn't you ever think I'd find my way back?"
"And I won't abandon you this time. I'm not leaving you behind ever again."
The Master is still, very still, eyes empty, jaw clenched tightly, but his breathing is erratic despite how much he tries to keep it steady, loud in the silence after her words, though the Doctor fancies she can almost hear his heartsbeat from this distance.
"Get your pets off of my planet," he whispers back, blinking fast before stepping past her, not even bumping his shoulder into hers. "If you want to live, get out of my way," he orders the fam and the other humans, deadly serious, and the Doctor feels her hearts break even as she closes her eyes tightly to try to suppress the feeling, bowing her head—
A gun whirls as it charges, loud in the absence of footsteps, and the Doctor tenses.
"No way, Mister. What have you done to the Doctor? Talk!"
"Or what? You'll sh-shoot me?" the Master mocks before huffing out a laugh, and the Doctor turns around as fast as she can to see there is a gun in Yaz's hands, and that, despite the reluctance in both Ryan and Graham's eyes, she doesn't hesitate to practically shove it into the Master's chest, using the height advantage provided by the steps to tower over him.
"Put that thing down!" the Doctor orders, quickly stepping to the Master's side to yank him behind her, taking his place as the one with the gun pointing at her chest.
Yaz quickly jerks the gun up, pointing away from any of them, startled at the Doctor's reaction, while Ryan and Graham exchange a look.
"You shouldn't be here, none of you! Humans are not allowed on Gallifrey. And I told you to stay at the other side of the Boundary!" she tells them, directing that last point to Ryan and, behind him, Ko Sharmus and Ethan.
"No, you didn't! You just said you'd be back, but you never returned," Ryan protests, and the Doctor gives him a really? look.
"It was implied!"
"Can't control your pets, Doctor?" the Master huffs, tugging his arm free from the Doctor's grip, much to her surprise, since she hadn't realized she was still hanging onto him. "No matter. I'll fix that in a moment," he adds, taking out his TCE, and so the Doctor rounds on him this time.
"No, you won't! Would you stop threatening my friends? And don't call them pets!"
"Would you prefer I just kill them without warning?" he asks innocently, waving the TCE around in a way that makes her tense fearfully, almost seeing one of those atop the stairs dying just to prove a point.
"Master, please!"
"Ooh, now that is something else! Say that again, it gives me the shivers," he grins, mocking and cocky, but at least his grip on the TCE has slacked and he has lowered the terrifying weapon. "Come on, Doctor. Just a bit more begging. I might be convinced to let your friends live if you do. Maybe. No promises," he adds, once more putting on the innocent look that reminds her so much of O, before he grins.
Happy grin, mad grin, a grin that is as much the Master as it is Koschei, and the Doctor ignores her fam's insults once more, as she allows herself a moment to review all of those memories from her childhood – the one she can remember, that is.
The Master's grin thins and grows smaller, eyes looking into hers searchingly once more as his brow furrows just the tiniest bit into what can either be the beginnings of a scowl or a hint of well-hidden worry.
"Master. Please come with me."
"What?" he asks, almost emotionless, too stunned for anything else, and the Doctor gives him a small smile.
"Come with me. Please," she repeats, but this time, the Master actually steps away from her, looking her all over searchingly and deep into her eyes.
"What are you planning?" he hisses, closing the distance between them again, and this time, the Doctor is the one to huff.
"I'm planning on finding the Lone Cyberman and stopping him and all the others. And then, I'll bring the fam back to their home. I don't know how I'm going to do any of that, I'll figure it out as I go. Probably. But that's that. That's my plan. Oh, and I want you there, with me. You brought the Cybermen to Gallifrey, you can help with the cleanup," she explains with a shrug, unbothered by the way the Master is staring at her as if she's lost her mind.
It's not a new look, after all.
"That's not a plan."
"It's the beginning of one. We all got to start somewhere, don't we?"
"You're going to blow yourself up trying to stop the Cybermen. Again. How is that a plan?" he hisses back, gesturing with his hands, and the Doctor grimaces at the multiple exclamations of surprise at her back from their human audience.
"That is not part of the plan. Come on, you know me! I'll figure something out, I always do."
"Yeah, well, figure this out. Grab your pets and get off of my planet. Last chance. Don't waste my kindness," the Master growls, straightening with a final look in his dark eyes, and this time, when he walks to the stairs, the fam and the humans at the top part to let him leave.
And the Doctor's smile falls off her face, her brains ringing in alarm almost louder than any cloister bells.
"What just happened?" one of the young men atop the stairs asks, as confused as the others, while the fam crowd the Doctor, worried and asking too many questions at once.
"I'm going to be dead in a few hours, so before I go, let's have this out, you and me, once and for all," he growls at the Master and Missy, before turning away with a huff, trying to get his breath back and put his thoughts together, all at once. "Winning? Is that what you think it's about? I'm not trying to win. I'm not doing this because I want to beat someone, or because I hate someone, or because – because I want to blame someone. It's not because it's fun and God knows it's not because it's easy. It's not even because it works, because it hardly ever does. I do what I do, because it's right! Because it's decent! And above all, it's kind. It's just that," he tells them, putting all his fear, his frustrations, in his words.
The Master stares at him blankly. Missy doesn't meet his eyes.
"Just kind. If I run away today, good people will die. If I stand and fight, some of them might live. Maybe not many, maybe not for long. Hey, you know, maybe there's no point in any of this at all, but it's the best I can do, so I'm going to do it. And I will stand here doing it till it kills me. You're going to die too, some day," he adds, pointing at them both, first at the Master and then at Missy, but neither changes their attitude. "How will that be? Have you thought about it? What would you die for?" he asks, and finally sees some progress when the Master looks down. "Who I am is where I stand. Where I stand…" he trails off, closing his eyes and tightly pressing his lips as he remembers Christmas and pain all over and a gun in his hands and get out of the way— "Is where I fall," he finishes, and feels Missy's eyes on him for the first time before he takes a step closer to them and lowers his voice. "Stand with me. These people are terrified. Maybe we can help, a little. Why not, just at the end, just be kind?"
"—make sure some are close enough to the core," Ko Sharmus is saying when the Doctor tunes back in, barely hearing them over the pounding of her hearts in her ears, and finally realizes Yaz has her hands on her arms, holding onto her as if the Doctor would collapse at any moment.
And then, she sees the bombs in their hands.
"You're going to blow up the Cybercarrier," she whispers, quickly catching up despite the buzzing in her ears, because it doesn't make sense—
"The death of everything is within me."
"What does that mean?" she asks them, shrugging Yaz's hands and worried questions in favor of quelling the growing fear buzzing angrily in her chest. "That thing the half-converted Cyberman said, the death of everything is within me. What does that mean?!"
The humans exchange disturbed looks, before the woman opens her mouth.
"There is a myth around him."
"The Death Particle," the tall one adds, grim, before the woman picks the story up.
"The legend is, he, it, whatever, has a particle in a tiny chamber inside its chest. It will take out all organic life on a planet."
"That's grim," Ryan comments, disturbed, while the Doctor's brains whir with ideas.
"Or it's a solution. A timer on an explosive to activate the Particle. Clear evacuation plan—"
"Don't waste my kindness."
And her breath catches in her throat with a gasp, Yaz's hands immediately back on her as her fam calls her name in worry.
"No. No, he can't—"
"You're going to blow yourself up trying to stop the Cybermen. Again. How is that a plan?"
"He can't," she whispers, looking up—
Oh, right. The fam and their new friends. She forgot all about them, and now they're freaking out over her zoning out. Oops.
… Double oops. Humans on Gallifrey. Humans on a planet with the same Cyberman who could destroy all organic life with the particle in his chest – and the Master has a TCE.
She wants to run to him, to make sure she's simply misunderstanding the situation, that her brains are too confused by everything to make proper sense of what he probably meant as mockery, but…
If she loses her companions again, to Cybermen, she'll never forgive herself.
"Right, time to put a better plan in action," she says out loud, before grinning at the humans and guiding them to the TARDIS bay.
There are a lot of them here, snoozing calmly as they wait for orders that will never come now. She quickly pushes that thought away as she awakens one of them with just a touch, her doors opening a second later.
"There's no way we can fit there," the tall human mutters, but Ko Sharmus pushes him inside after the fam without a second thought.
The Doctor comes in last and immediately starts programming the TARDIS, setting the coordinates for Earth and barely two hours after they left, as well as the Chameleon setting for 'long-term infiltration'. She synchs it with her screwdriver with just a quick whir, grinning all the while, as she babbles about how they can use the TARDIS to go anywhere and everywhere in both time and space, and how they can finally finish things this way now.
The humans smile, once they get over their shock and wariness, some more enthusiastically than others. The Doctor rushes outside, telling them that she needs to unlatch the moorings from the main console.
Half a second before the door locks in their faces is when Yaz realizes what is going on and turns around—
"Doc—"
—but the Doctor has already deadlocked the TARDIS and activated the auto-pilot with her screwdriver.
The TARDIS vanishes right in front of her eyes, taking her fam and the other humans to safety, and leaving her behind on Gallifrey.
If her suspicions are wrong, there's no telling what is going to happen. And with a whole Cybercarrier full of Cyberwarriors, the Death Particle, and the Master, she doesn't want to chance it.
And if she's right…
She shakes the thought away and presses her hands against her temples as her mind reaches out—
The Cybercarrier's hold, rows upon rows of stasis chambers for the Cyberwarriors—
"Got you," she whispers.
And runs.
She has to make it. She has to, because if she's right—
"Don't waste my kindness."
She might have bent time a little, playing on the fluidity of time on Gallifrey thanks to the presence of the Untempered Schism, but she does it. She makes it.
The Master stands in the middle of the Cybercarrier's hold – and right in front of him, head jerking so his singular organic eye bores into hers, stands the half-converted Cyberman.
"Doctor," the Lone Cyberman snarls, and the Master immediately turns around to give her a brief look of shock before he lets his shoulders slump with a groan.
"Ugh, just ignore her. She loves to crash parties."
"Please!" the Doctor shouts, taking quick steps to cross the distance – and the Master rounds on her TCE first, deadly serious, stopping her in her tracks. "Please. This is all I've ever wanted."
And she extends her hand, much like her previous face had done, not that long ago, when the Cybermen had threatened them with complete obliteration much like they are doing once again.
The Master's eyes stay dark, his breathing even.
"Really?" he whispers, too soft to be a threat, to even to be mockery.
The Doctor swallows, getting her breath back after the mad dash – and smiles.
"Really."
The Master blinks and drops the TCE with a simple okay, shrugging carelessly – and rounds of the Lone Cyberman almost faster than the Doctor can follow to shrink him.
The Cyberium escapes with a bright flash of silver. The Death Particle doesn't go off. The Doctor breathes again, not bothering to figure out when she'd stopped.
The Master sighs and kneels in front of the shrunken Cyberman, carefully picking the miniature up.
The Doctor glares at the Cyberium, spasming almost angrily if it was something other than Cyberium, and approaches the Master.
"I thought if he was compressed, the Death Particle would activate and all this would be over. I would've been okay with that. I thought it was a nice little gamble," he whispers, too soft yet not quietly enough, and the Doctor is the one to kneel at his side this time, hearts breaking as she takes his free hand in hers.
The Master sighs again, twirling the figurine in his hand a moment longer, before he looks up at her.
"But no, here we are, all still alive. Well, me, I mean. You would've obviously survived," he snorts, and no matter how much humor he tries to put in his voice, it still sounds hollow to her ears. "I could still do it. The Death Particle is still in him, miniaturized, waiting for its moment for its chamber to be smashed open. Oh, shoot!" he groans, dropping his head back before he turns to her again with an almost sheepish grin. "I should've said, somebody needs to cut you down to size, then zapped him. I was just trigger-happy. I'll use it next time."
Next time.
The Death Particle is still in him.
But no, here we are, all still alive. Well, me, I mean.
I would've been okay with that.
The Doctor buries her face in the Master's shoulder, feels it stiffen in surprise at first, then soften with the muted rumble of laughter echoing in his chest.
"What, too cringey? Of course, it's lost its effect now that I've used it out of context, but don't worry. I'll find something," he grins, she can hear it in his voice, feel it in the shift of his shrug, but most of all, she can feel it disappear when she grabs tightly onto his jacket with her free hand. "Doctor, let's be real. Latching onto me like a limpet won't keep me from killing people. You've tried. Why do you even bother?" he asks with an exasperated huff, but he is still gentle as he pats her hand – and freezes, whole body stiffening, before he carefully shifts so that they can face each other as best as possible with the awkward hold she keeps on him. "Doctor? Are you… are you crying?"
She is, she realizes a moment later, when she shakes her head against his shoulder and feels wetness finally drop down her cheeks. Her breath hitches, mostly at the realization of her own actions, at first – before she remembers his.
"You tried to…" she tries to say, but the words get caught in her throat the moment she attempts to push them out.
The Master lets go of her hands and squirms almost violently, breaking her hold on him – and gentle hands cradle her cheeks and lift her head so he can see her face.
Her tear-stained and flushed face, contorting at the memory of that quick twist followed by a brief spark of the TCE and those words—
I would've been okay with that.
He looks panicked, breathing noisily, his eyes blown wide and pale and he looks so young—
"Let's see them, just you and me. Every single star in the universe. All that ever was, is, and will be. Together."
She throws herself into his arms, hugging him almost too tightly, almost as if he would vanish if she let go—
I would've been okay with that.
—and breaks out into loud sobs the moment he returns the hug with the same intensity, shoulders shaking as he buries his face in her shoulder.
"I've got you. I've got you; I've got you. I've got you."
He repeats that over and over again, sometimes reassuring, sometimes more panicky as he clings tighter, others almost in disbelief or something so intense that it borders either hatred or grief.
She cries and cries, shouts her anger and disbelief and horror and pain and relief and joy and-and everything, she just shouts and cries until there's nothing else left in her, simply holding onto her best enemy—her best friend—like the rest of the universe has just ended.
It hasn't. Of course it hasn't. She just hasn't found her footing yet, after the discovery that everything you thought you knew is a lie, and the very possible and terrifying realization that the only true thing she has left had almost died.
"I've got you. I've got – no, not you, you pest, shoo. Can't you see the adults are busy? Go possess a toaster or something," the Master whispers, reassurance turning into an annoyed hiss as a hand leaves the Doctor's back to swat at something just out of reach, judging by the way they both jerk at the movement.
The Doctor snorts, presses closer to the Master for a second longer, inhaling his scent and committing his heartsbeat to memory, and finally straightens out of the hug, rubbing her eyes clear of any leftover tears.
The Cyberium flutters out of reach, still spasming angrily, before it bobs closer at a different angle, almost like a jellyfish made of mercury.
"Sorry, love. It followed me home, can we keep it?" the Master grins like the annoying fool he is, but the Doctor can't help but chuckle before she focuses back on the situation at hand. "What can I say? Must be our Time Lord magnetism."
"Funny. I told it the same thing when we first met," the Doctor quips right back, and the Master barks a laugh, leaning back on his hands as she looks at the deserted Cybercarrier around them, rows after rows of conversion chambers standing threateningly, waiting to unleash the monsters they hold inside. "What are we going to do with this?"
"Seeing how you don't want a personal army, can I keep it instead?" he asks with a grin that is almost innocent, but which he turns to a dismissing shrug when she sends him a quick glare. "I had to try. We could always send it into a supernova, or something. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
"Very," she answers with a huge grin – and ducks when the Cyberium dives at them once more. "Oi!"
"Alright, you little pest, come here! I've had it with your petty jealousy. I'm the one who beat your last carrier, I'm boss here!" the Master snarls, jumping to his feet to try and TCE the slippery Cyberium to whatever passes for 'death' for a Cyber-intelligence. "Stay. Still!"
The Doctor huffs, takes out her screwdriver, fiddles with a couple of the settings – and catches the Cyberium in a sonic scramble the moment before it can escape the Master's next blast.
… It does nothing.
The Cyberium stays frozen under the Doctor's sonic. The Master looks at the TCE, shakes it a couple times, listens to it, and tries again.
Nothing.
"Bugger."
The Doctor snorts, her hand jerking enough that the Cyberium manages to scramble out of range and rushes into the closest conversion chamber.
The Master and the Doctor exchange a look.
The chamber rattles, opens – and the Cyberman inside turns into a miniature even before it can take another step.
The Cyberium bolts into the next chamber.
The Master groans, dropping his head back.
The Doctor laughs.
"Well, you're the one who wanted to keep it. Now, you've got to take it out for a walk."
"I didn't sign up for this," the Master huffs, shooting at the whole conversion chamber this time. "I thought it would be more of a cat thing!"
"How is that better than dogs? Cats don't listen to anything."
"Neither do your pets."
"Oi! Don't call them—"
And the Cyberium slams into the Doctor.
She feels it slipping into her, far more violently, more fire and barbs, than it did at Villa Diodati, burning in its calculated emotionlessness, seeking the strongest host—
"Doctor!" the Master shouts, the TCE flashing for a second in her sight before he's suddenly there, like after the Matrix, holding her close, a hand on her cheek so their eyes can meet, the other helping her stay on her feet. "There, there. You can do this, Doctor. You're stronger than it could ever be."
She shakes her head, tries to tell him about how much it hurts, how it's slipping in the cracks of her mind that the revelation of the Timeless Child cut into herself, how it's squeezing into the blanks she had never noticed before, grabbing at her scars, at her most terrible defeats, using emotion against her in a way an emotionless artificial intelligence has no right to know how to do.
But she can only gasp, knees failing her and sending them both to the ground, and whatever he sees in her expression makes the Master panic even more.
"No, no, come on, love, come on, Doctor, you can't let it win. It doesn't get to win, not unless it's with me. And you won't let me win anyway, so just kick its butt now, I'll let you skip the preliminaries this time. Come on, Doctor. Come on!"
She shouts, pain and determination warring in her voice, as she grabs at her head as if she could physically tear the Cyberium out, but it's no use, she can only lose and lose and lose—
The child is you. You are the Timeless Child.
"Kill me," she hisses, and for a moment, she thinks the words haven't come out clearly enough, because the Master is staring at her in incomprehension when she squints her eyes open. "Kill me!"
He flinches back, fumbles with himself, grabs the TCE to bring it to her face—
But nothing happens. The TCE stays there, shaking in front of her blurry eyesight, and her gasps seem to echo in her head but maybe they aren't.
"Master… please. I'm not… I'm not going to die. Remember?" she begs, and she blames the tear that slips down her cheek on the blazing agony the Cyberium is unleashing in her head. "Please, kill me…"
"Shut up!" he snarls right in her face, holding the TCE so tightly that she reckons she can hear the casing crack. "You don't get to ask that, not you of all people. You are stronger than some cyber-goo, so get to it already!"
"I'm not!" she shouts back, pained, doubling over with a short cry at the lance of fire that threatens to pierce through her skull. "Oh, it hurts, it hadn't hurt like that before, why does it hurt so much…"
The Master shouts, something that sounds like an obscenity and a plea all at once, somehow, someway, before he jerks her up again and crushes her into a hug that is almost tighter than the grip the Cyberium has on her brains.
"For all your self-proclaimed cleverness, you are an idiot," he whispers in her ear, anger and fear and a bit of her delirium-induced fondness, and she thinks she can feel a smile against her cheek. "Good thing I was always better at this bit."
And then the world vanishes.
It's empty, like the Matrix once they forwarded far enough into the history of the Timeless Child. Just the Doctor, stuck in the middle of the emptiness that hides deep within her memories.
"Always said you were a scatterbrained fool."
And the Master. The Master's consciousness, technically, but the Master still.
"Where are we?"
"Inside your head, love. Where else?" he answers with an eyeroll, gesturing around. "And really, this? This is just pathetic. No, worse, it's actually sad. Wah, wah, it's so empty that I'm going to cry," he mocks, pouting exaggeratedly and wiping away fake tears.
"Well, you know what happened. What did you expect?" she bites back perhaps a bit more snappily than she would've otherwise done, taking into account that he's brought her deep enough inside her own mind to leave the pain behind.
He closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath – and a soft smile appears on the Master's face.
"Pastures of red grass, stretching far across the slopes of Mount Perdition."
The emptiness flickers, blue sky and red grass and childish laughter, and back to nothing.
"What just—"
"Playing hooky in the streets of the Capitol."
Another flicker, tall figures rushing by as the two tots run past merchants, the smell of food filling their lungs with every breath.
"A beach of rocks so pale that they look like snow."
A teenager yelps before it's followed by a loud splash, laughter and curses echoing almost immediately after as a chill breeze runs over the creek.
"Telling stories by a long-dried river," the Doctor whispers this time, and when the environment changes again, to two young tots and the vastness of the Drylands all around, the memory is far clearer than any before.
"Matching wits on a mudball," the Master purrs as he practically stalks to her side, and the Doctor laughs despite herself.
"Don't insult Earth!" she chastises him, even as centuries worth of life rush all around them, filling the emptiness, pushing away the pain and the uncertainty at the realization that—
"Doctor, dearest, don't you know me yet? Anything to annoy you," the Master mocks with a wink, and her smile is so wide that she's pretty sure it should hurt.
She's the Doctor. All of her, every single one of them, however many there are.
And she's not alone.
"I'm done being annoyed. This is my head, and that means there's only supposed to be me in here," she proclaims, standing tall, and the Master smiles widely, triumphantly, excited. "So, out with you! And you, Cyberium, if you can even understand me at all… get. Out!"
And the Cybercarrier rushes back in, or she rushes out of her head, silver flickering all around her as the Cyberium is forced out of her mind with an ease that is almost unexpected.
She has scars, yes, but none that the Cyberium can use to harm her, because she knows who she is, even if she doesn't know her full past. And any emptiness that it could think to crawl into is not empty as long as she is not alone, because there will be more memories to fill it with.
The Cyberium has no part in her life.
"Got you!"
But apparently, it has a part in the Master's life.
"Master!" the Doctor shouts, shocked, but she's too late.
The Cyberium whirls around for less than a second before it dives at the Master, filling his veins to the point that they bulge, black and poisonous, and he throws his head back with a roar—
And drops to the ground with a huff, panting in exhaustion, slowly returning to normal, and impossibly enough, chuckling in amusement.
"Told you, you little pest. I'm the boss," he purrs contentedly, blinking a couple times before he can focus on the Doctor's startled and worried expression, hovering over him. "Hello there. Were you worried?"
"How?" she asks softly, trying to put her thoughts together, and he simply huffs and pillows his head on his arms.
"I spent almost a thousand years keeping the drums at bay – the last few not very successfully, I'll admit. Did you seriously think the Cyberium had a chance to compete with that?" he answers mockingly, and the Doctor finally lets herself sit back on her legs with a relieved sigh. "So, can I keep the Cybermen now?"
"No."
"Shoot."
"Why didn't you shoot?"
The Master's good-humored grin vanishes at those words. After a moment staring into each other's eyes, he straightens, but the Doctor doesn't move. They are barely a hairbreadth away, and the only thing the Doctor can see are the Master's eyes.
"Because that's not the way I want to win," the Master whispers, his grin out of her immediate sight but still quite clear in his bright eyes. "If you're going to beg me to kill you, it will be because of something I actually did."
"Why didn't you shoot?" the Doctor asks again, keeping her voice steady, firm, and the Master's eyes narrow minutely.
"Because you would have won. And you don't get to win."
"Why. Didn't. You. Shoot," the Doctor enunciates, unbendable, unwilling to play this game again, not this time.
The Master stays silent, his eyes dark and terrifyingly serious.
The Doctor doesn't falter, even though a small part of her whispers that she won't get the truth.
The Doctor and the Master have changed a lot since they first met, but the one thing they have always had in common is their bad habit of running from their problems. The Doctor is just a bit more obvious about it, that's all.
"You're an idiot," the Master whispers, so soft despite their closeness that the Doctor almost doesn't believe she heard the words at all. "You have always been," he adds with a sigh, closing his eyes—
And resting his forehead against hers, softly, almost tentatively, leaving her the chance to pull back if she so wishes.
The Doctor stills, eyes wide, but doesn't take that chance. The Master sighs again, his breath caressing her lips, but doesn't move either, eyes still closed.
The Doctor closes her eyes and pushes softly against the Master's forehead, one of her hands fumbling blindly for a second, before the Master's finds it halfway.
"I was never that special," the Doctor whispers back, though she finds herself smiling as she runs her thumb over his knuckles, soothed by his presence after way too long.
"Of course you were," the Master scoffs, derisive, though he squeezes her hand right back while his free one moves to her cheek to push back her blond locks. "You're just too blind to see it."
The Doctor opens her eyes and meets the Master's.
"Or maybe you're the only one who sees it that way."
The Master doesn't answer for a quite long time. Then, he huffs, closing his eyes again before he finally pulls away.
"Like I said. An idiot."
"Your idiot," the Doctor corrects with a mischievous grin, winking when the Master sends her a Look. "Come on. I need to go get the TARDIS, and make sure the fam got back home safely."
"Have fun, love. You know where to find me when you're done," he chirps back cheerfully, staying on the ground when she stands up, but the Doctor rolls her eyes and pulls. "Hey! Are you trying to pull my arm out of its socket?! Watch it, you brute!"
"I am not leaving you in a Cybercarrier full of Cybermen when you have the Cyberium in your head. I know what you're capable of."
"Aw, you say the nicest things," the Master mocks with an exaggerated eye flutter, but allows himself to be dragged out of the room. "Here, a peace offering. Don't drag me to Earth to deal with your pets. Pretty please?"
The Doctor turns to glare at him, a scowl on her face at his calling her friends 'pets' again—
The Master is holding out the miniaturized half-converted Cyberman.
"What do you say? Strap a temporizer on it, wrap it in a nice bow, and ask Kerblam to deliver it to, oh, I don't know, Skaro? Sounds good, right?"
"Do you seriously want to let the Daleks get anywhere close to this kind of weapon?" the Doctor asks, wide-eyed, and the Master goes blank for a second before he scowls and shudders. "Yes, that's what I thought. I like the temporizer idea, though. How about we take this Death Particle, leave it in the Cybercarrier, and blow it up in an empty region of space?"
"Depends. Can I have popcorn?"
"Oh, can we have candied popcorn? I want some," the Doctor chirps, brightening at the idea, and the Master rolls his eyes but grins right back.
"Alright, we'll have some candied popcorn. The things I do for you, I swear."
And the Doctor sticks her tongue out at him.
AN: So. This was an attempt to try and process everything that is/isn't/is meant to be/insert whichever tense you prefer - in short, The Timeless Children.
Somehow, everything yet nothing changed. I don't even know anymore. This isn't what I started out for, I swear. The idiots hijaked the show (as usual).
To be fair, the whole The Doctor is the Timeless Child is not my cup of tea (I'm still processing, I haven't seen Flux yet). So, I'll hang onto the fact that the Doctor and the Master talked about it a lot but proved nothing here. Who knows. Maybe there's something more in this tilted 'verse. Maybe not. I'll set the bunny free, and hopefully it won't come back. I'm actually quite happy with this staying as a one-shot.