Episode: The Lost Child
Chapter: The Trouble with Time [4/5]
Summary: Amy and Rory wanted for the TARDIS to get fixed so they could go back home and get married. Torchwood Three wanted to keep Cardiff safe as the Rift stabilized and solve a string of gruesome murders. Jack Harkness wanted to protect his team and talk to the Doctor. The Master wanted for humans to stop poking at things they could never understand. Or the one where old friends and old enemies meet again, new friends and new enemies are made, and something vast stirs in the dark.
Rating: T
When the surge ends and he finally lifts his head to observe their surroundings, Jack realizes the only Time Lord available was not regenerating, but fixing the temporal void… in a sense.
The clotheslines are still gone and some walls are still eroded as if by decades of acid rain, but the rest of the walls…
Jack recognizes the red brick so stained with soot that it looks almost black as marks of the Industrial Revolution, and the cracks and fallen bricks characteristic of Blitz-damaged building under the half of a 1940s patriotic poster, and even the overtly-patterned iridescence of twenty-third century architecture, amongst the patchwork of different eras the walls have been turned into. The lower part of the walls is untouched, though, and Jack realizes it's only where the golden energy struck that time has gone out of synch.
There and under the Master's kneeling form, which is now cracked concrete with some weeds poking out here and there.
Jack can see his team slowly pushing up onto their elbows or sitting up from where they are sprawled on the ground, past the Master's body, shaking in fright or shock as they stare uncomprehendingly at the walls and the Time Lord, none of them sporting anything worse than some scrapes from when they dropped to the ground.
Relief fills Jack so strongly that he loses his breath, but fortunately, his reflexes kick in before he can dissolve into a boneless mass of giggling and nonsensical babbling, quickly turning off the Vortex manipulator's scan to silence its warbling as he gets off the two civilians and cautiously approaches the unmoving Time Lord.
The Master is kneeling in the middle of cracked concrete, back hunched and head bowed, with his arms hanging lifelessly, one hand in his lap and the other on the ground. Both of them have the fingertips wet with an orange-red liquid, but when Jack sees the right one covered in it, that's when he realizes it's blood.
He had never seen the Doctor bleed before, despite all the trouble they got into, not even a nosebleed. Seeing it now, and knowing how sturdy Time Lords are, makes his stomach roil.
More blood stains his blond hair in some spots, most noticeably the temples, and slips from his ears down the sides of his face. Looking at it, Jack finally sees that, despite his stillness, the Master's lips are moving, a trickle of orange-red blood falling down his chin, and Jack finally realizes there's a soft murmur in the air, rhythmic in a way that's too familiar and more than a bit disturbing—
And he finally makes out the words.
Ga-lli-frey-falls. Ga-lli-frey-falls. Ga-lli-frey-falls.
Gallifrey falls.
But why – What happened? Is the Master actually badly injured? There's the right hand, covered in blood, but the spots on his head are quite small – though he was screaming and twisting in pain before the energy wave, just how much damage did that do and how is Jack supposed to deal with it, how can he face the Doctor after this—
"Raggedy Man!" the civilian woman—Amy?—shouts, horrified, as she rushes past Jack's frozen form to drop to her knees by the Master's side, hands hovering by his face as if she's afraid touching him will hurt him. "Raggedy Man?"
The Master doesn't react, still whispering the same two words in that eerie four-time beat, even as Rory moves to Amy's side and they exchange a worried and lost look.
When he kneels down to try to catch a glimpse of the Master's face, Jack sees dark bags under completely unfocused wide-open golden eyes, and some scratches on his temples that bleed thin lines of orange-red and which look suspiciously like nail scratches. Deep nail scratches. And dried tear tracks.
Finally, Amy gathers enough courage to grab the Master's shoulders, but he doesn't react.
"Raggedy Man. Harry. Gallifrey is gone," she whispers, tears filling her eyes while Rory fiddles with a small kit he pulled out of his pocket, analyzing the Time Lord with the same intensity Owen and Martha would, but with far less confidence.
He may have medical training, but he hasn't been around Time Lords long enough to know how to use it on them. Jack can sympathize, it's always hard to deal with an unknown alien race for the first time, though at least he had the advantage of knowing more than just human biology. And no, not only in that way. Time Agency first aid training covered the most wide-spread friendly species of the galaxy, after all.
"How can Gallifrey be gone?"
Amy and Rory startle, and Jack realizes the unnerving mantra has gone silent, which means that rough and cracked voice was the Master's. He's still unresponsive, eyes unfocused, but he's no longer chanting that eerie 'Gallifrey falls'.
Only, if Jack's ears are to be believed, he's either really confused or amnesiac.
Amy hesitates, but her hands squeeze his shoulders reassuringly before she answers.
"There was… There was a war—"
"And the Time Lords?" the Master asks almost before Amy's done, talking over her last words, and Jack frowns softly.
If he's really as catatonic as he looks, that can't be telepathy, right? Maybe it's something to do with time instead… Or maybe he's lost in his own head, reliving an old conversation – or a future one. He's a Time Lord, it wouldn't be the strangest thing.
"They're gone," Amy answers nonetheless, sad and worried, as she leans closer to him, with Rory holding onto her shoulders to anchor her. "Don't you remember? You told me, back in— Don't you remember the Daleks?"
"We're the only two left. There's no one else," the Master whimpers, finally reacting as tears fill his eyes and drop to his lap, with his shoulders shaking visibly— "Regenerate!" he shouts, grief and denial filling his broken voice as his face twists into the deepest loss Jack's ever seen—
And he remembers standing on the flight deck of the Valiant, a small part of him full of vicious satisfaction, while the bigger echoes the pain in the Doctor's voice and forces him to look at the ceiling, away from the last of the Time Lords cradling the body of his best friend in his arms.
"Hey, Raggedy Man, hey! Shush, it's alright, it's—it's not alright, but you'll get better, do you hear me?" Amy soothes as best as she can, though there are tears down her cheeks, as she tries to give the Master a smile. "We'll have you fixed up in no time, and everything will be alright—"
"Rose saved me," the Master whispers, silencing Amy and making Jack's breath hitch. "She… She was there for me after… after I lost everything. And now she's gone, but… But at least she can be happy now."
Rose. How the Hell does the Master know Rose?! He can't know Rose! Rose was lost at Canary Wharf, and the Master didn't return until—
Wait. Eighteen months before the day after the election. That would be around the time of the Battle of Canary Wharf… But Rose was away before that, traveling with the Doctor. It doesn't make sense!
"Ah, no, I'm not— It's me, Amy. Amelia?" she answers, taking a hand off him to wipe the tears on her face—
"Amelia!" the Master calls, horrified, loud enough to make the girl jump away from him and into Rory, but he immediately follows that with a terrifying snarl and wordless shout, shoulders heaving with his heavy breaths – and his face falls, anger replaced by fear. "Let me see, let me – Hey, hey, hush now, I'm here, we'll fix this, just—" he babbles with as calming a smile as someone who is scared out of his wits can manage, before he cuts himself and the smile goes cold and slips off his face.
"Raggedy Man?" Amy calls, softly at first but louder when she reaches for him again, shaking him softly. "Raggedy Man, can you hear me? I'm here, Harry, I'm fine. Please, say something," she begs before turning to Rory. "You have to do something."
"I don't know anything about Time Lords," he answers with a grimace, but shuffles past her to tilt the Master's head up and look into his eyes. "It's like he's not even here, his eyes don't focus, he doesn't react to touch…" he announces as he moves a hand to the Master's neck – and he blinks in surprise before frowning in worry. "His heartbeat's wild, it's like he's fibrillating."
"He has two hearts," Jack and Amy tell him in unison, exchanging a startled look, with Rory looking between the two of them for a moment before turning to Jack.
"You've traveled with the Doctor, what else can you tell me? I've only been around a couple of days, you have to know more about Time Lords than we do," he asks, gesturing between himself and Amy, and Jack frowns as he looks at the Master.
He's the Master, the same psycho who turned the TARDIS into a paradox machine and conquered Earth, who kept Jack in chains for a whole bloody year—
But he's also the Doctor's friend, the only other Time Lord left. And he did save them from the temporal void, even if it was collateral to saving himself.
So, Jack lets out a huff and moves next to Amy and Rory, who shift so he can kneel in front of the Master, though they hover by his side, worried, while the rest of Torchwood get to their feet and observe them in confusion, nervousness and worry. He's pretty sure Owen is itching to help, if the frown on his face is any indication, but just like with Rory, Jack is the only one out of all of them with a reasonable amount of experience when it comes to Time Lords, and so Owen shuffles impatiently and scowls. Gwen and Tosh look worried, while Ianto is carefully analyzing everyone, suspicious and unwilling to trust anyone associated with the Doctor.
"Well, I know that it doesn't matter which species you're from, ear bleeding is bad," Jack says aloud as he presses two fingers to the Master's neck to feel his hearts beat frantically and out of rhythm—
The Master's breath hitches and his eyes focus on Jack, freezing him in the spot.
"Captain. Have you had work done?"
"You can talk!"
"Oh yes, the face! Regeneration."
Jack jerks back before he can think about it, shaking the hand that he'd pressed against the Master's neck almost as if it'd been something gross, and the Time Lord's eyes go vacant again before he tenses with a pained grimace.
"Omega's Holy Hands, they couldn't have fried my kidneys instead, could they? They had to get the heart," he hisses, and, finally unable to stand on the side anymore, Owen grabs his kit and kneels next to Jack.
"Well, I may not know about Time Lord biology, but I know how to restart a heart," he comments almost conversationally, grabbing a stethoscope and putting it on. "Where are they?"
"One of my hearts. Quit panicking, I have two of them," the Master scoffs, but after a quick look to see he's still oblivious to whatever is going on outside of his head, Jack turns to Owen.
"Middle of the chest. The left one is about the same place as a human's, the right one is lower and further into the right side," he explains, shifting aside to make way for Owen as he pulls that familiar-looking leather jacket open—
"Rose. Rose! Look! Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Blimey! The three of us could fit in that thing!"
"… Okay, now I have to get it."
"That's what he said when the Daleks shot him," Amy whispers at Jack's back, but while he makes a note to ask her about what she's talking about, Jack's too taken by the sight of that shirt to focus on it.
"Where did you get that? Where did you get that shirt?!" Jack asks, softly at first but louder after, going as far as to grab the jacket's lapels and push Owen aside, though he refrains from shaking the Master in case what little brains he still has intact get too scrambled to answer.
The Master's eyes focus on Jack again – and he grins. A large and toothy grin full of glee and a hint of mischief that makes his blue eyes light up, accompanied by a bark of laughter that sounds like nothing he'd heard from either Saxon or the Master—
"Fantastic! I know exactly what to do with this one!" he crows happily, and Jack lets go of him as if slapped, feeling cold after all his blood drops to his feet.
"What did you say?" he asks in a whisper, unsure even if he's been heard, as the Master loses focus once more and his unfitting grin turns into something more nostalgic.
"It was a present. Rose and Jack got it as a joke," he answers softly, and Jack jerks to his feet and starts to pace, running a hand through his hair before he falls to his knees again in front of the thrice-damned Time Lord with a deep scowl.
"Stop doing that!" he shouts, pointing at the Master threateningly, but he's back to his catatonic state and doesn't even blink.
"Jack, Jack! What are you doing?!" Owen asks him, startled yet with the slightest hint of worry under the confusion, as he pushes his accusing hand down. "Look, I know that face is disturbing, but you were the first to try to help him. Let's focus on that now, and deal with your issues when there isn't a life at stake. Okay?"
Jack feels a flash of pride under the annoyance, listening to Owen's words, but finally, sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
"Right. You're right, let's focus on the bloody alien first—"
"Nurse Boy, whatever your name is. Close your eyes, close Amy's eyes, and don't look, no matter what you hear. Don't even turn until I touch you, and don't let Amy face this either, eyes closed or not. Do you understand?" the Master interrupts, deadly serious and intense despite the complete lack of focus in his eyes, and both Jack and Owen startle and exchange a confused frown.
"The Hell is he talking about now?"
"No," Rory whispers, more of an exhale than a word, but Jack turns anyway to see him tense and pale. "No, wait, don't do that!"
"Five seconds."
"Stop, stop!" Rory shouts as he lurches towards the Master, practically crashing onto Jack and Owen so he can grab the Time Lord's shoulder, and Jack grimaces at the way the Master's knee digs into his hip as he ends up supporting most of Rory's weight. "Rule 6! Rule 6!"
The Master stiffens, and, when nothing else happens, Rory finally relaxes and drops to his knees, getting off the frozen Torchwood operatives.
"What was that?" Owen asks, bewildered, as he looks from the relieved civilian to the catatonic Time Lord and finally to Jack, who can only shrug in answer.
"Rory, you know what Rule 6 is for!" Amy hisses, worried but also startled, and the man grimaces with a shudder.
"The last time I heard that was just before he captured Prisoner Zero," he tells her, and, with a soft 'oh', she slumps to her knees with eyes wide and face white. "Yeah, that's what I thought."
"How do you know about those?" the Master whispers, attracting their attention, and, this time, Jack frowns as he considers what's been going on.
The Master is practically catatonic, talking nonsense and rarely focusing on the present – but apparently, some of that nonsense is from past experiences. Which means that maybe the whole 'focusing on the present' is more literal with him than the expression it's supposed to be.
"I told him. After that thing with River, I thought… I thought it would be better if Rory knew about that Rule too," Amy answers, partly ashamed but mostly worried, and Jack turns to the Master, attentive, to see what he'll answer to that, if anything.
If the damage from the temporal void was so big that he's locked inside his head, he'll probably fall silent. But as far as they've seen, he seems to react to them, to outside stimuli, so maybe he isn't that badly hurt or he's not hurt in that way. Maybe, with his nature as a Time Lord…
"Shut up. I said shut up," he hisses angrily, and Amy startles and frowns, hurt and defeated— "You wanted to follow the ship? We followed the ship," he adds, not dropping the expression, and recognition fills Amy's eyes.
"Remind him of something else," Jack tells her, reaching for her hand despite the fact he's too far away to grab it. "Do it! We need to get him to focus on us!"
"Now get out," the Master adds, continuing his tirade as Amy hesitates. "I'm not—"
"You like River now!" Amy exclaims, cutting the Master, and he stills in answer. "You like River now. You're not a grumpy old alien anymore," she adds, softer, with a hopeful smile growing on her face, and, as one, they all turn to look at the Master, expectantly.
Not a second later, the Master snarls, eyes still unfocused, and Jack feels his stomach fall.
"Oi! Shut up!" the Master barks, and Jack can't help his disappointed sigh, because that doesn't sound like the answer to the cue provided. "She just helped save this colony, and possibly the whole of the universe. Either you give her a minute to say goodbye, or I will go back to the past to make sure your parents never met. That's the only warning you're going to get," he threatens with a dark frown, but Jack can only stare at him in growing disbelief.
When he turns to Amy, it's to see her smile broadly and give him a nod, confirming that, yes, that was the right answer to Amy's comment about this River person, as well as the surreal fact that the Master actually likes someone enough to threaten people.
Owen looks as confused as Rory, but Gwen and Tosh exchange a hesitant smile while Ianto blinks with that blank face of his that he puts on when he's trying really hard to hide his feelings. Judging by the slight crease of his eyebrows, he's most likely disturbed, probably by the comment about going back on someone's timeline to ensure they are never born.
"Wrong person there, Honey," the Master adds into the silence, smirking, and Amy lets out a bark of laughter before she can stop herself, which makes Rory's confused expression turn to a tired one.
"I don't want to know," he deadpans, and Jack can't help his snort, especially at Ianto's eyeroll, though Owen's curiosity and the way Gwen looks at the Master as if he's adorable quickly turn his amusement into a grimace.
"But I thought you liked me as your knight in shining armor," the Master pouts, apparently still rolling with whatever memory Amy triggered, and, this time, Amy is not the only one to chuckle.
Jack sighs and gets to his feet, having seen enough to know the Master is not trapped in his own head. He still has no idea how to fix him and learn what the Hell he did to fix a temporal void, though, so he directs his team to start packing with a couple gestures. This memory seems to be safe, so Jack would rather keep the Master stuck in it for as long as possible, and that means silence. Fortunately, his team doesn't need words to get his command, and so Ianto, Tosh and Gwen start to put their instruments back while Owen turns his attention to bandaging the Master's right hand and Jack analyzes the walls.
Looks like he'll have to get Andy to cordon this place fully. There's no way this amalgam of eras can be explained, no matter the excuse.
"Ugh, please, tell me you didn't!" the Master exclaims, grimacing in disgust but with eyes still unfocused and not moving an inch, so Jack only spares him a look before deciding to help his team— "Not Jack Harkness!"
"Excuse me? What's wrong with Jack Harkness?" Jack retorts before he can think about it, turning to glare at the kneeling Master, ignoring the way his team barely contain their laughter at his offense, while Amy blushes and Rory doesn't even bother looking confused anymore, rubbing his face. "Have you seen this body?" he adds, this time consciously, to make his team roll their eyes—Gwen and Tosh, though Tosh also blushes—or comment about his ego—Owen—or ogle him discreetly with a grin—Ianto.
"Great. Now there's two of them," Rory groans, burying his face in his hands, and Amy's bright grin fades a bit as she rolls her eyes and bumps her shoulder into her companion's.
"Rory! Seriously? Kissing is all in good fun, but anything else? That's just disgusting. Besides, humans don't have the necessary bits for that," the Master comments with a large grin that somehow manages to look like a grimace at the same time, and all activity in the alley ceases as Rory jerks his head up and everyone turns to stare at him in surprise.
"It was him! He was messing with me!" he shrieks, so red that he's practically glowing, and Amy's surprise turns to annoyance as she glares at the Master.
"Do you seriously want me to explain about Gallifreyan sex?"
"No!" Amy and Rory shout in unison, red-faced and horrified, as if the Master was actually capable of—
Right, what is some mental scarring when compared to conquering a whole planet?
"Alright you, stop terrifying the children before their mommies send us their psychiatrist's bills," Jack chuckles, taking pity on the innocent minds of the two civilians.
Though, come to think of it, he's probably doing his team a favor too. That comment about humans not having the necessary bits for that doesn't bode well for any humans in the next millennium, approximately.
"Can you sense it?" the Master asks, voice soft and shoulders tense, and Jack's grin falls as he realizes he triggered another potentially damaging memory.
However, when he turns to Amy, he sees she's as confused as he is.
"Sense what?" Gwen asks, done with the instruments, while Owen and Tosh finish bagging the body.
"Coming out of the walls. Can you feel it?" the Master answers, and Jack can feel the hair on the back of his neck stand on edge as the dejà vú washes over him.
"Stop that," he growls, and Gwen's curiosity turns to wariness as they all look at Jack as if he's a stranger.
And how come it is his fault that the Master is being so creepy? He is the alien psychopath!
He's about to say as much, but when he looks down at the Master to point it out, he's frozen by the sight of that large ear-to-ear grin that doesn't belong in Saxon's face, though this time with no humor in it.
"Funny little human brains. How do you get around in those things?"
Jack sees red.
"I said stop it! Stop it!" he hears himself shout, livid, hands tightly clenching the jacket's lapels even as he shakes the boneless alien hanging from his grip, having pulled the Master up into his face from his kneeling position sometime before his brain tuned back in. "Stop quoting him!" he adds, conscious enough this time to recognize the voices telling him to be careful and put the Master down, as well as Rory and Owen hovering at the edge of his vision.
He only has eyes for the Master, though, what with the red haze of rage that has engulfed him, but the fact that the Time Lord gasps and actually meets Jack's eyes, focused, also helps catch his attention.
"… Captain? Jack?" the Master whispers, and somewhere at the back of his brain, Jack realizes that he never focuses for anyone other than Jack, that while he answers to the cues the others give him, the Master has always stayed detached, even when others touched him, except for Jack.
"Master," Jack hisses back, pondering that thought more seriously as he forces his anger down.
Amy and Rory are time travelers, but Jack is a fixed point, immortal. He is wrong for Time Lords, so maybe it is that wrongness which helps the Master focus? If so, what kind of damage did the temporal void do?
"Is that really you?" the Master asks in a small voice, emotionless but for the tiniest spec of timid hope under the tiredness.
"Who else would I be? Unlike someone, I don't change my face," he scoffs, not as belligerently as before, as he considers the fact that all of this 'nonsensical babbling' can be tied to a Time Lord-exclusive kind of injury, or maybe even to damage to the timeline.
After all, this is a temporal void they're talking about. There are no past records to consult, no list of functional strategies to implement when dealing with one.
They need the Doctor. Maybe quoting him, using sentences Jack knows, is the Master's way of telling Jack that in his injured state.
"Do you really think I would choose a face this recognizable?" the Master scoffs, though he tenses and grimaces as soon as the words get out, and one of his hands twitches as if he would have rubbed his face if he could. "No, that's the past, that's—I can't. I can't focus, I—Stay. Please, please, stay. Everything is changing, moving, time runs and runs and runs and—a-and it's not easy even looking at you, Jack, because you're wrong," the Master begs, meeting his eyes with that last sentence that makes Jack's skin crawl, partly at the memory of the uncomfortable burning sensation from the stet radiation and partly because of the memory itself.
But that's fine. It's fine. Because this time, even though he's quoting the Doctor, Jack knows the Master was there, disguised as Professor Yana, but there nevertheless. And so, there's an explanation for how exact this quote is, even if there isn't for the other ones.
"Aaand he got his charm back, he's fine now," Rory comments with an eyeroll, exasperated but also relieved, while Amy chuckles.
"He likes to insult species, especially when he's stressed," she tells the rest of Torchwood, who are torn between amusement and feeling insulted in Jack's behalf, but Jack himself can only huff as an image of Rose's mischievous grin comes to mind.
It looks like that's a Time Lord trait, instead of a Doctor one.
"You are. I can't help it," the Master continues, eyes tightening in pain as he grimaces, and Jack shifts so that he can lower them both onto their knees instead of keeping the Master up by his jacket, grabbing his shoulders to keep him from faceplanting. "I'm a Time Lord. It's instinct. It's in my guts. You're a fixed point in time and space. You're a Fact. That's never meant to happen."
"I know," Jack answers with a crooked smile, before dropping it in favor of seriousness, meeting the Master's eyes. "Isn't my presence making things worse?"
"No!" he exclaims, strangled, and a hand shoots out to grab Jack's wrist in a vice grip, to everyone's surprise. "Everything's changing but you're not. I can't keep up, I'm lost, adrift. Please, stay."
And Jack looks deep into his eyes for a second longer, ignoring what Gwen and Amy are telling him – and sighs.
"Alright. Hold on, we'll get you fixed up," he tells him before lifting him up bridal style, and the Master slumps against his chest with a cross of a sigh and a sob, eyes falling closed. "You two, where's the TARDIS?"
"You can't—"
"I won't go in! But the only one who can help the Master is the Doctor, and that means we need to get to the TARDIS," Jack explains, not even bothered anymore about the reminders that he can't see the Doctor, just sighing and giving the two hesitant companions a reassuring smile. "We can drive you there, and then you can take him in and get him checked up. The only thing I ask is that you get the Doctor to tell you all he knows about what's going on. All he can tell, of course," he asks, shifting his smile to a crooked grin, and, after exchanging a look, Amy nods.
"Alright. We'll see what we can do."