Episode: The Master Stitches
Chapter: A Stitch in Time [4/5]
Summary: Torchwood wanted to find a way to fix the problem without anyone killing each other first. Amy and Rory wanted to keep a secret while keeping everyone safe. Jack wanted to get rid of the Master before he was driven insane. Koschei just wanted… He wanted… What was it again? Or the one where things gets fixed but still stay broken… and where things get better yet worse at the same time.
Rating: M
Warning: Graphic death (and no, it isn't just Jack).
The door of 'A Stitch in Time' is locked, but there's no lock on Earth that can resist a sonic screwdriver. Jack looks almost like he swallowed a lemon, despite the seriousness and focus he's trying to hide it under, but the Master doesn't bring attention to it and so he doesn't ask why the Doctor 'allowed' the Master to have a screwdriver.
The shop is empty and dusty, obviously abandoned if the 'Closed' sign on the door and the shutters hadn't been enough indication. The clocks all over the wall, however, still tickle faithfully – and out of synch. The Master may not be healed fully, but he can tell as much.
They move to the back in silence, with Jack reaching for his gun yet stopping himself when the Master snarls silently at him. If they kill Bilis now, there'll be no fixing this mess. Jack seems torn for a moment, but finally, relents, leaving the Webley in its holster as they step into the office.
After a quick glance to make sure it's deserted, Jack turns on the computer and plugs in the drive Sato prepared for them.
"Are you in?" he asks into his earpiece, and the Master stands guard tense—
::We're in,:: Sato confirms through the line, and both the Master and Jack relax, exchanging a look and a nod.
Once they knew what to look for, it was almost laughably easy to pinpoint Bilis' appearances by cross-referencing the tiny disturbances in the Rift his temporal transportation caused with a map of Cardiff. It was just as easy to know which was his base of operations when they found no spike on his antique shop, 'A Stitch in Time', despite both Gwen and Jack having seen him use the temporal displacement there.
So, here they are now, only Jack and the Master, to get Bilis and stop the time lock from breaking. The out of synch clocks in the shop are more than indicative enough of the shop being slightly temporally displaced, just enough not to register with Torchwood's instruments. Whatever is creating the displacement is likely fueled by the Rift itself, which would explain the lack of anomaly in Rift activity.
If it's been always active, it's registered as part of the baseline for the Rift. Camouflaged by simply having been there since the first readings. Clever.
But not enough.
The Master reaches for the walls while Jack listens to whatever Sato is telling them through comm, confident in his partner's ability to take care of that while he finds the origin of the – ah. There.
Once the origin is located, it's easy enough to click the shop's timeline with the rest of Cardiff's via sonic screwdriver. Jack gives him a weird look as he sonics the grandfather clock in the corner of the office, but once the hands stall for just half a second before resuming their movement, his eyes widen in surprise.
::Jack! Something happened, there was a spike—::
"That was me," the Master cuts through Sato's voice, pocketing his sonic once more and looking around. "I synched the shop back with the timeline, and the flow of Rift energy corrected itself. You should be able to detect it now."
"How did you find that? My Vortex manipulator didn't show anything," Jack asks, confused rather than accusing, even as he checks said manipulator to confirm his words.
"Machines don't have instinct, Harkness. It doesn't matter how better 'senses' you can give them, intuition isn't one of them," he answers simply, though he makes sure to toss a grin at the former Time Agent over his shoulder.
Just because they're working together doesn't mean he has to play nice.
::Raggedy Man, play nice!:: Amy chastises through the comm, both her and Rory likely surrounding Sato's station alongside the rest of Torchwood, and the Master grimaces before he can stop himself, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
"You have cameras in here, don't you?" Jack asks with a grin, obviously having noticed his expression, and all members of their 'audience' answer in an almost coordinated 'yes'. "Alright, Tosh, which way now?"
::There's a basement that looks promising.::
::How are clocks promising?:: Harper asks, clearly not to them yet still easily heard.
::Well, whatever the Master did, he did it to a clock. I thought they might be part of whatever Bilis is using to manipulate the Rift…:: she explains, hesitating just for a moment, and the Master rolls his eyes even as Jack smirks.
"Good observation. Learn from her, Ponds! This might not be a useless stop, after all," he answers with a sharp grin, making sure to look up at the camera in the ceiling as he does it, and earning twin indignant 'oi' and a bashful chuckle in response. "Now, which way to this basement?"
"What's the plan? You didn't say anything other than 'just you and me, there, now'," Jack asks as they follow Sato's instructions, leaving the office to go to the back and the stairs located there.
"It's simple, really. You go first, I'll be at your back. Don't turn, no matter what, don't look at me. Once we know the extent of the damage and Bilis gets here, I'll fix it," he answers with a shrug, waiting for Jack to go down as they reach the stairs, but Jack stands in front of him instead, at the other side of the stairs, and glares down at him.
"That's it? I'll fix it? That's all you can say?"
"That and don't look. I really need you to pay attention there, Harkness," the Master hisses, and Jack bristles.
"There is nothing for me to pay attention to! You don't have a plan at all, do you?"
"Of course I do. You go first, I observe, and when I know just how big the hole in the time lock is, I use you to close it," he answers with an eyeroll, once more impressed at the lack of comprehensible capabilities of the human race, despite all previous examples. "How much simpler can I put it?"
"You will use me to fix the time lock?" Jack repeats, startled and disgusted at the same time, and the Master groans.
"Like I said, I need to see how bad it is first! At the very least, I'll need you around to keep the Meanwhile and Neverwere at bay. They fear Fixed Points, and a Fact is the worst kind of Fixed Point there is. That's why they've stayed away from you, despite you being a time traveler. The only thing tastier than those is a Time Lord, but they can't get them under normal circumstances. If it had been my Neverwere, I would've been able to turn it around with just a thought," he huffs, glaring down the stairs, into the darkness, though he immediately perks up when he hears Jack's sharp inhale and the many 'what' through the comm. "Something wrong?"
"If that had been your Neverwere?" Jack repeats, and only then does the Master realize just what he said.
He stares at the former Time Agent for a moment, gauging how much is too much, before settling on the bare minimum. This Jack Harkness will meet the Doctor again, after all. He can't scare him before that, no matter how much he wants to put proper fear of the Time Lords into his immortal bones.
Besides, Amy and Rory are listening too, and… He's just going to drop them back in Leadworth once they have the TARDIS back and that'll be it, but… Somehow, terrifying them doesn't sound as appealing as teasing them.
"Did you think the Time Lords fought a Time War without any weapons of their own?" he asks back as answer, and Jack's surprise turns to grim realization. "The Could've Been King, the Meanwhile and Neverwere, the Horde of Travesties… Those were Time Lord weapons. They might've been passive observers most of the time, custodians of the timeline, but they weren't without their teeth. What, you thought the New Gallifreyan Empire was named just because it sounded better?" he asks with a humorless smirk, unable to resist, and Jack scowls as expected despite the fact the Master can see unease in his eyes.
::Why do you keep saying 'they'?:: Jones asks in the silence, and the Master stiffens before he can stop himself.
"You are diseased, albeit a disease of our own making. No more."
"Get out of the way."
A scream caught in his throat, the Master runs.
Not literally, but he still hurries down the stairs to the basement faster than merited, especially after his insistence that Jack go first.
But he can't tell them. This is 2008. He can't tell them about the Naismiths and Rassilon and the Time War and the Doctor's death. He can't.
And if he can't fight, the Master runs.
"Hey, wait! Wait! Master, dammit, wait!" Jack calls, catching up and turning him sharply with a hand on his arm, uncaring about the fact they both almost lose their balance on the stairs with that movement. "What's wrong with you?" he asks, squinting in the darkness of the stairs, trying to make out his face while keeping his grip tight enough to bruise.
The Master snarls silently, curling his free hand into a fist, but takes a deep breath instead, focusing on the crawling feeling running all over his arm from Jack's touch.
It's 2008, Cardiff, and an idiot is tapping into the Time War's time lock, threatening to unleash Hell on Earth. Literally.
The Master knows how that feels like, reaching for something he can never have again, regardless of the consequences. He paid the price, higher than he could have ever imagined, than he would have ever agreed to. He lost his planet, his people, his family, his best friend. He even lost his self.
Who is the Master, Koschei, supposed to be? He was manipulated all his life to be Rassilon's last resort, never caring about how that would destroy the Master and the universe in the process. Never bothering to consider that he was using his own people like pawns because, after all, that's what Rassilon always did, isn't it? Only, it wasn't until the Time Lords found themselves at the end of Rassilon's manipulations that they found issue with it. After all, hadn't he been hailed as the first Time Lord, the father of modern Gallifreyan society, the single greatest figure of Gallifreyan history?
Even the Master and the Doctor had believed so, until Rassilon had stared down at them, gauntlet charged, and ordered them to kill one another so he could destroy the survivor and all of creation while he was at it.
The comm crackles, the voices of those in the Hub coming in broken chunks, and there's no light in the stairs other than that coming from the storage room, behind Jack. No cameras, no audio, only Jack and the Master and the guilt—
"Never meet your heroes. They shoot you in the heart," he whispers before he can doublethink himself, and, in the darkness, the Master's sharper eyes catch Jack's startled expression and his confusion turning to worry.
"Are you sure you're alright? You're not drifting on me again, are you?"
"Don't be stupid," he scoffs, anchoring himself in his self-recrimination at that moment of weakness, ripping his arm out of Jack's grip. "Come on, we have a job to do."
Jack doesn't answer, but when the Master continues their descent, he follows.
There's a door blocking the entrance to the basement, but it takes just a kick to break the lock and have it bounce off the wall. The basement is expectedly clean, unlike the shop, with its light on and, as Sato mentioned before, full of clocks of all shapes and sizes, some sitting on a table while others stand on the crates piled against the wall.
::There you are! Can you hear me?:: Sato calls through comm, the line clearing now that they're past the stairs and whatever was in the walls that interfered with the signal.
Jack answers, asking questions of his own about any new readings or who knows what, but the Master's attention is elsewhere.
"Can you sense it?" he asks, voice soft and shoulders tense, and all voices immediately cut as Jack quickly turns to him.
"Sense what?" he asks carefully, observing the cautious way the Master tilts his head at the wall before he starts to make a circuit of the room, trying to pinpoint from where, exactly, is the wrongness coming from.
"Coming out of the walls. Can you feel it?" he asks again, sparing Jack a look as he runs a hand over one of the walls, because it almost feels like there's more than one Neverwere, more than one Meanwhile, carefully approaching.
"Alright, no, stop that. You're really freaking me out," Jack scoffs, both unnerved and angry, and the Master can't help his large humorless grin as he once more turns to him.
"Funny little human brains. How do you get around in those things?"
Seriously, between their lack of self-preservation and instincts, it's a miracle the species manages to survive as much as it can. Maybe it's because of their reproduction rates.
"Stop that!" Jack snarls, uneasiness giving way to ire—
The Master rushes away from the wall half a second before a humanoid creature appears where he'd last stood, startling Jack out of his blind rage and into a more focused anger.
"Bilis," he hisses, aiming his Webley at the old human with gray hair and dark eyes—
"Jack, don't you dare!" the Master shouts as soon as he sees the gun, and, more out of surprise than actual obeisance, Jack lifts the Webley so that it's pointing at the ceiling instead, turning to the Master with a befuddled expression that, strangely enough, reminds him of a lost child. "Let me fix this. I can fix this, just let me. Trust me," he whispers, softer this time, soothing, making sure to keep his expression open, so Jack can see that he means it.
The Master wants the Neverwere around no more than Jack does, he's terrified of them, but he knows how to take care of this situation. He only needs—
"A story, that's all. No weapons, just words. One word, at one specific time," he adds, still focused only on Jack's eyes, seeing his dawning realization and the shift from dread to hesitation, and realizes he needs something more. "Remember the Bad Wolf?" he asks, and Jack sucks in a startled breath so suddenly that he almost chokes on it. "You and me, Jack. It has to be both of us."
"And who might you be?" Bilis asks, interrupting, but the Master lifts his hand, palm up, to silence him, never looking away from Jack.
He doesn't like him, he makes his skin crawl, his flirting is annoying… But he has experience, he's a good soldier, he's loyal. And, yes, sure, he's a Fact. But right now, with the Neverwere and Meanwhile closing in and Bilis Manger already here, what he needs is not the presence of a Fact, but Jack Harkness' trust.
Jack stares back into the eyes of the man who tortured him for a year, who hunted his friends, who destroyed his world, who broke the Doctor's hearts… And lets out a soft sigh with what looks almost like a nostalgic smile but that the Master's sure it isn't, because there's no way Jack would ever look at him like that.
"I was so much better off as a coward," he whispers and, before the Master can do more than frown in confusion, he turns to Bilis and steps towards him – and leaves the Master at his back, out of sight. "See you in Hell," he calls, obviously to the Master despite being focused on Bilis now.
Trust. Well, who would've thought he'd actually get it?
Still, this is not the time to look a gift horse in the mouth. The Neverwere and Meanwhile are crowding them, not yet in the room but tentatively teasing the Fact's presence, seeing if they can actually get to the injured Time Lord and the man who seems to be half stitched to the Rift, from what the Master can feel. He doesn't know how that came to happen, but it would explain Bilis' ability to just step from time to time without any kind of technology… as long as he's in Cardiff.
Good thing the Master knows how to fix that.
"Captain Jack Harkness. Do you intend to waylay my master's return once more?" Bilis asks, deciding to focus on Jack now that their exchange is over, and the Master can't help but scowl.
What is it with people claiming his own name undeservingly ever since he ditched it? First the Daleks with the 'master race', now this idiot for his 'before time' Daemon-like beast. Seriously, it's insulting.
"I intend to get rid of him, and you, once and for all, Bilis. Abaddon will never return," Jack answers back, all knightly and righteous and the Master feels like gagging, but holds himself back.
Time to get to work, unless he wants the tentative Neverwere and Meanwhile to barge in at the worst possible moment.
"Unless you give up now," he says once Jack's done, startling him, but fortunately, he obeys and doesn't look back at the Master. "You have one chance to surrender, Bilis Manger. Cease messing with the Rift now, leave Cardiff, and we'll let you go on with your life. But this is your only chance. Refuse it or try something else down the line, and I won't be so merciful."
"Will you?" Bilis asks, completely unimpressed, while the Master takes out his screwdriver and fiddles with the settings. "Why, you will have to excuse me, but I believe we have yet to be introduced. You seem to know who I am, but I do not know who you are. Or why I should be inclined to listen to your demands."
"It's not a demand, Bilis, it's a chance. Take it or leave it. But regardless of what you decide, I will shut this operation down. Your attempts to bring Abaddon back threaten to unleash worse monsters than you could even imagine. If you step back, I will fix the rip in the timeline and you will live. If you don't, I will fix the rip in the timeline and you… Well, I guess you could call it 'living' too," he answers, grinning mockingly, but Bilis is still as unbothered as before.
"If that is so, then I will kindly refuse. The Great Devourer will return to feast on the souls of humanity, as is his due. And this time, Captain Jack, you shall not interfere," Bilis answers, gesturing with a hand towards the clocks on the table—
And the Master sonics them at the same exact moment, resulting in a single tick and nothing more.
"What did you do?" Bilis asks, wide-eyed and finally looking at the Master like he's actually there instead of just a stain on the wall.
But the Master is no longer smiling, calmly pocketing his sonic and straightening his jacket – and spreading his recovering time feelers out.
"I accept your declaration as a binding agreement. Your refusal to cease in your activities is your agreement to be judged for them," he starts with practiced apathy and detachment, to Bilis' obvious confusion. "Bilis Manger. Your attempts to disturb the Web of Time have threatened the release of Meanwhile and Neverwere upon the timeline. Each life unraveled, thread snapped and rip in the web have been noted and assessed. You shall be held accountable for every single one of them, and be responsible for their reparation," he adds, tilting his head up so he can stare down at the pitiful creature now staring at him with growing dread and trembling hands. "Moreover, you shall be judged for previous offences, including but not limited to, manipulation of the psychic energy of war victims and the aid in the escape of the creature known as Abaddon from its timeless prison. What have you to say in your defense?"
"You can't be…" Bilis whispers, taking a shaking step back with wide eyes, completely ignorant of the Meanwhile and Neverwere now clustering just behind the wall at his back, sensing the buildup in the room. "Time Lords are extinct; you can't be one."
The Master looks at him, at the trembling and terrified human practically begging for a miracle, and doesn't even bother with a smirk.
He looks at Bilis Manger emotionlessly, unbothered, unmovable.
And answers.
"I am."
Bilis screams, pushing away from them and tripping over the boxes, scratching at them in horror even as he doesn't look away from the Master, trying to drag himself away.
It's so pitiful it isn't even amusing.
Jack is tense in front of him but doesn't look back, while, through the earpiece, he can hear Sato talking about some kind of energy buildup in the shop, alongside the startled questions from the others about what the Hell is going on.
"M-My power! Why can't I leave?! What did you do?! Mercy!" Bilis cries, white as a sheet and sweating in terror, but the Master doesn't react, far above such demeaning displays.
"The trap you sought to imprison Captain Harkness in has now become your prison cell. You are not allowed to leave until judgement has been passed," he explains simply before taking a deep breath, centering himself – and unfolding.
It hurts. Hand, Eye and Crown, it hurts. Bruises stretch with a flash of searing heat, scars rip back open, blood and artron energy dripping from wounds that had barely started to heal, and the Master barely manages to keep his pained gasp at bay before he can focus back on the moment before.
Bilis is caught in his attempt to crawl or melt into the crates, eyes wide and mouth gaping in a silent cry, breath stuck in his throat. Jack still has his back to the Master, but the Time Lord can see the way the hair at the back of his neck is standing on edge, how his shoulders shudder and his hands tighten into white-knuckled fists.
::What the Hell just happened?!::
::Raggedy Man! Are you alright? Raggedy Man!::
::Tosh, what's wrong with the screen? Why is the Master… Why is he flickering?::
Ah, good old human technology, unable to see or to make sense of a being that exists in more than three dimensions. All the better, actually. Bilis is the only creature with the dubious honor of seeing the true form of a Time Lord, and, judging by the line of drool slowly slipping down his chin, he won't see anything else ever again.
But now, judgement.
"Breathe," the Master orders, and Bilis immediately obeys with a tiny gasp, the feeler buried in his brain making that impulse cycle regularly so he doesn't asphyxiate before the Master is done with him. "Bilis Manger. You are on trial for crimes against the Web of Time. What is your defense?" he asks, as is expected, but doesn't wait for an answer that will never come.
Instead, he twists the feeler in Bilis to review his personal timeline, which has the man's body seize and tremble almost violently as his eyes roll into his skull for about two seconds, before he pulls back to simply ensuring the vital functions are still being performed.
Well. That's one messy timeline. Then again, it always is with these types.
Find incredibly powerful creature slash manipulative alien slash strange technology. Fall prey to greed slash empty promises slash words whose meaning is not properly understood. Receive mysterious power slash technology slash control of an army. Mess up. Grow even greedier slash realize the error of their ways slash fall into the other's control. Be discovered. Be judged. And, here it's when it varies, be found guilty or not guilty.
Not guilty have their memory erased about ninety percent of the time, and are put back where they were found or where they belong. The other ten percent happens when the damage is too massive and they don't have a place in the universe anymore, which results in their simply being erased from the timeline.
Guilty are punished in many different ways, depending on the crime. Total erasure from the timeline is one of them, which would be why the Neverwere and Meanwhile fill the room as soon as Bilis slumps against the crate, wide black eyes still staring in vacant horror at the Master.
They don't approach, content to stay close to the walls, the very air darkening and thickening in their presence, all the possibilities in the room distorting in their presence and Jack's, conflicting so much that, had he been any weaker, the Master would've collapsed much like Jack's Vortex manipulator. The poor machine never stood a chance, giving out a mournful beep before going dark. Jack tenses and covers it with a hand, but that's all he does, head tilting just enough that the Master knows he's looking around at the Meanwhile and Neverwere, though he's not sure what, exactly, he's seeing, or if he's seeing anything at all.
Nevertheless, he still reaches for Jack, twining himself with the fact that they came here together, that they are here together and unharmed, turning that fact into a Fact, no matter how much it makes his dimensions shrivel and itch. He is not meant to be shackled this way, neither him nor any other temporal beings, but when the alternative is to have the Meanwhile and Neverwhere displace or unravel him, the Master knows which one he'd rather pick.
Jack gasps, shuddering visibly, and the startled and scared calls through the comm change to calls of his name when he makes to curl into himself as if cold. In his defense, he manages not to, standing straight and as still as possible, as if the Meanwhile and Neverwhere would attack him the moment he so much as twitched.
They won't, of course they won't, but the Master still has to admire his tenacity. They may not look like more than a 'black mist behaving like an oil stain', according to Harper's distressed voice over the sound of hurried clacking of keyboards, but Jack is determined to treat them like the most dangerous predators of the galaxy instead.
He's not wrong.
Which is why the Master tries to ignore Jack and focuses back on Bilis. With the amount of Meanwhile and Neverwere that have already crossed over, they need to end this fast.
And Bilis' 'defense' was not much of a defense at all.
"Bilis Manger. You have been found guilty of crimes against the timeline," the Master announces, spreading his feelers as best as he can and ignoring the way the Neverwere stir at his obvious weakness, like sharks smelling blood. "You manipulated the members of the human organization known as Torchwood to open a spatiotemporal rift in the middle of the human city of Cardiff. You were in possession of the knowledge that the aforementioned Rift imprisoned a creature with the ability to terminate all life in the city and destabilize the timeline. You manipulated Torchwood to release said creature, the being known as Abaddon. That is fact."
Jack stumbles with a gasp, hands flying to wrap around his throat as if he can't get enough air, and the Master stretches despite the pain the gesture brings to nudge him with a gentle psychic reminder that he can, there's oxygen in this room and your throat and lungs are undamaged, you can breathe.
The cries through the comm are indistinct now, focused as he is on his weaving, the judgement, keeping Bilis alive and Jack centered, but he can recognize the despair and fear in the voices and something about how his image is now completely covered in static.
What did they expect from an unfolded Time Lord? Better this way, he's not sure what they would make if his current activities translated into his body fragmenting, or losing limbs only to regrow them somewhere else, or who knows what. How do tridimensional beings register multidimensional ones actually using all of their dimensions?
… Ugh, please, let it not be tentacles.
Focus, a tiny part that sounds like the Doctor's fourth incarnation whispers from some centuries back, and the Master listens to it for once.
"Your manipulation resulted in the opening of the Rift, which caused temporal overlap around the planet, rippling through the timeline. You interfered further until the Rift was fully opened, and Abaddon returned. That is fact," he continues not a second after he fell silent, and, this time, Jack wraps himself further with his coat, as if cold, with a whimper that has the Torchwood team rush frantically and noisily in the Hub, as far as he can hear. "Abaddon walked through Cardiff, absorbing the life of its citizens, unchallenged and uncontested, and you stood at its side, ready to serve. And then, Abaddon attempted to drain Captain Jack Harkness of life, and the life drained destroyed him. That is fact."
Jack falls to his knees with a pained keen, curling into himself, even as the Neverwere ripple like a murder of crows, reaching for them and for freedom and not moving, all at once, while the Meanwhile cluster around Bilis, swirling like frenzied piranhas.
And Bilis gasps and starts shrieking even as his eyes dry in their sockets, humor slipping down his cheeks like tears, and his fingernails and hair rot and drop to the floor to leave necrotic rashes behind, skin growing pale and shallow.
The Master doesn't look away, doesn't even flinch, weaving even more frantically and fervently now than he did before, reaching the critical stage of the judgement but still keeping his focus, his self, anchored in the present so his grip on both Bilis and Jack stays strong and unbreakable.
"Bilis Manger, loyal servant of Abaddon, son of the Great Beast, the Great Devourer. You will forever seek to return your master to its glory. You will forever try to bring Abaddon back to the Web of Time. You will forever fail in your endeavor, for Abaddon cannot ever return. You are a Meanwhile. That is fact."
Jack collapses, shaking almost violently and curling into a fetal position, and, with one last inhuman shriek, what's left of Bilis' flesh melts off his bones, pooling into a dark gooey mass that evaporates into an equally dark mist, wrapping around that shivering and silently screaming skeleton, tightening around it with the melody of snapping bones grinding into dust that distorts the air around it as it joins the mist, coalescing into yet another Meanwhile, immediately surrounded by the frenzied ones from the Time War, which rip into it voraciously—
With a pulse of Time reasserting itself and Jack's gasp as he jerks back to life, the Master collapses.