A/N: Let it be known throughout the universe that Hobbit-eyes is currently applying for Headteacher at the School for Evil Geniuses. She must be praised! Oh, and thanks. For, y'know, being evil and genius and all.I know I really should write eerything myself, but her stuff is just TOO GOOD to ignore. And she knows I love her. So it's all good. mwah Love you!


Mickey was amazed that Rose was still conscious, let alone upright. After that revelation, he'd half-expected her to collapse from the shock, but no – Rose stayed cool, calm and collected, not wanting to lose face. She had a reputation to uphold, and she was determined not to let her dignity fall away. Nevertheless, there was a considerably long silence in the room after the Master had dropped his bombshell, a silence during which Rose had merely stared unblinkingly at the Master, who gazed unflinchingly back.

He can't be dead. He can't be. He's lying.

As Rose tried to process the information, her brain coming up with obstacles at every hurdle, the Master seized his opportunity and stood up for the first time in his interrogation – a slow, languid movement that made him look like a newly-crowned monarch, rising from his throne to go and greet the commoners. From his full, rather impressive height (Rose had forgotten how tall he was) he looked down at her with narrowed eyes.

"Now," he said quietly. "Enough about the Doctor and I. I want to know about you." He leaned in closer to Rose and lowered his voice. "Who are you? How do you know about the Doctor and the Time Lords?" His voice dripped with a sugary sweetness that was supposed to entice Rose, but she instead was reminded of a lingering toothache caused by too much sugar. She did not trust this man at all, and she did not believe a word he said.

"What do you mean, he's dead?" she blurted out, unable to stop herself. The Master straightened up.

"I mean, he's dead," he said simply, smiling. Rose flinched – there was a vindictive pleasure in this smile, a morbid humour that he knew would unsettle her. "Dead. You know, dead?"

"Dead?" she repeated dumbly.

"Clearly, you are not as intelligent as you first appeared," he said in clipped tones. "Do you need me to spell it out? Dead. Adjective. Meaning 'not alive'. Deceased. Departed. Perished. Passed away. Extinct. In the words of the immortal Monty Python lads, he is no more. He has ceased to be. He has expired and gone –"

"Yeah, I know what dead means," she snapped, stopping him mid-flow. The Master seemed rather perturbed by that. "I'm just saying … he can't be dead. Cause he's a Time Lord. They have this thing … regenerating … he can do that when he dies."

"Normally, this is the case," the Master said, narrowing his eyes dangerously. This girl knew far more than she was supposed to. He would have to tread carefully. "There are, however, certain occasions when a Time Lord can be killed outright. One of these instances is when a Time Lord is hit by a Dalek energy beam."

Rose's face fell. After all that travelling, all that danger, all those times he faced down the Daleks … it would have to be a Dalek that had killed him in this world, wouldn't it?

"He … he was killed by a Dalek?"

"Oh, no," the Master said dismissively. "The Doctor was far too careful to do that."

"Then what –"

"The Dalek energy beam killed me, my dear," he said. "The Doctor was supposed to transport my remains back to Gallifrey, when I decided I … wasn't quite through with life." He smiled that reptilian smile again and Rose clenched her fists.

"So … that Daleks didn't kill him?" she clarified. "They killed you?"

"Correct."

"So if the Daleks didn't kill him …"

"No, the Daleks didn't kill him." The Master slowly sat back down, never breaking eye contact with Rose. His vindictive smile grew wider. "I did."

For the first time since she'd set eyes on this … this impostor, this traitor to the Doctor … for the first time, Rose felt her legs buckle beneath her. Holding onto the table for support, she edged over to the empty chair next to Mickey's and sat down abruptly. The Master watched as the colour drained from her face, leaving her skin an ashen grey colour that made her look tired and wan. Rose stared at the table for a few moments, thoughts of the Doctor running through her head.

"This is who I am, right here, right now, all right? All that counts is here and now, and this is me!"

Memories of her adventures with him all clamoured for her attention, jostling in her mind to push themselves to the fore.

"Your wish is my command. But be careful what you wish for."

For so long, she had held on to the tiny spark of hope that there was another Doctor in this universe. For so long, she had waited for the crucial phrases from Torchwood – 'two hearts'. 'blue police box'. 'alone'.

"I'm a Time Lord. I'm the last of the Time Lords. I'm left travelling on my own 'cause there's no-one else."
"There's me."

Now her hope had finally been extinguished. With no way of reaching her Doctor back in her universe, and the Doctor in this world dead, Rose had nothing.

Mickey put a comforting arm around her shoulders, and she didn't even think of shrugging him off. He drew her in close for a hug, and Rose found she did not mind the close physical contact. It did exactly what it was supposed to – comforted her. She was glad of it. It helped her not to think about what the Master had just said.

"He's dead, my dear … the Daleks didn't kill him. I did."

Her head snapped up and she glared fiercely at the Master, who visibly recoiled. Mickey thought he saw a flicker of fear cross his face, but he must have been mistaken – the bored, disdainful look was back, although his eyes betrayed the discomfort he felt at the situation. He didn't like what he saw in Rose's eyes.

"How?" Rose demanded, her voice shaking with emotion. "And why?"

He raised an eyebrow again. "I'm getting bored," he announced. "And a bit peckish, actually. You don't have any bananas, do you? Bananas are good."

"She asked you a question," said Mickey dangerously.

"Two, actually," pointed out the Master smugly. Mickey scowled at him.

"Whatever. You don't seem to understand what's going on here. You think you've got ultimate power and superiority over us, because you've got your TARDIS. Even the Doctor got smug sometimes too. But your TARDIS isn't here now. We've got it. In this room, Rose is in charge. So you answer her."

The Master looked sideways at Mickey. His eyes then slid back to Rose, as though he'd just worked something out. "You were one of his companions, weren't you?" he said slowly. When Rose didn't answer, he went on almost under his breath. "But… that's impossible. Well," he said, a smile slowly returning, "He always did like impossible …"

"Look," said Rose, suddenly getting to her feet, "I've had about enough of this. You've got two choices – either you tell me what happened to the Doctor, or I cause you a lot of pain. Make me wait long enough, and it'll be both."

"You really think you could?" he said. He chuckled sardonically and swept a supercilious glance over Rose. "You?"

"Yeah," said Rose quietly. "Me." The Master's smile dropped immediately. "You're right," she continued. "I was a companion. And I met the Emperor of the Daleks. And I killed him, and his army. You were taken out by one measly little Dalek – what do you think I'M going to do to you?"

"My dear," began the Master, trying his best to sound as bored as possible under the circumstances despite the growing anxiety he felt about Rose, "exposition can be so tedious –"

"Just tell me," she snapped, quelling the Master with a ferocious gaze. He noted, with some trepidation, that despite the wild and wretched emotion in her voice, her hands were quite steady. Clearly she was used to such situations. She might be of use to him after all.

"Very well," he said wearily, leaning backwards in a show of arrogant nonchalance. "The Doctor and I, you may or may not be aware, were good friends, once upon a time. We went to school together. Unfortunately, he had somewhat unorthodox ideas on Time Lord behaviour … and as such, he absconded from Gallifrey without so much as a by-your-leave, piloting a stolen TARDIS throughout the universe. Every so often, our paths would cross. He would see my ingenious plans for order and control as 'twisted and evil'," (here the Master chose to use air quotes – an incongruous gesture even by his standards – and rolled his eyes again, spelling out to Rose and Mickey that he clearly thought his plans were anything but twisted and evil) "and he would often succeed in thwarting my attempts to out-live every other Time Lord in existence. I had conceived ways of prolonging life by inventing more regenerations, and other such ideas. He was a fool to stop me." His face twisted into a resentful scowl. "Still, I admired him for what he had done. He was a genius himself, albeit a very unfocussed one. However, there came the inevitable point when I could live no longer. In my thirteenth life, I was tried by the High Court of Skaro and sentenced to death.

"As my last request, I asked the Doctor if he would transport my remains back to Gallifrey. Foolish and misguided man that he was, he agreed to my request." The Master grinned widely, the cat who'd got the cream. "My liquidised remains had enough survival instinct remaining to create a little sabotage. I inhabited his TARDIS and forced it to crash-land on Earth. San Francisco, to be precise. December 30th, 1999. An unfortunate accident saw the Doctor regenerate into his eighth body – his own fault for not being prepared, I suppose. Still, it provided me with ample opportunity to seek out a new body. I possessed the body of a paramedic named Bruce, and with this body I was able to track down the Doctor and use his own ship against him.

"Every TARDIS in existence was powered by the Eye of Harmony, a kind of miniature black hole which drew its power from Gallifrey. The Eye, like the TARDIS, is semi-sentient. The Doctor's half human body meant the Eye could only be opened by a human. I lured some young unsuspecting innocents into the Eye's chamber and politely forced them to open the Eye for me. Using the Eye, I was able to transfer from Bruce's body into the Doctor's. Bruce's feeble human body collapsed and died, and I was reborn in the Doctor's body, made flesh once more. He died when I entered his body. What you see now is no longer the Doctor, although it certainly used to be."

Rose blinked, sat down slowlyand exhaled heavily. She rubbed her eyes tiredly and stared harshly back at the Master.

"And why?"

"Why? My dear, I would have thought that was obvious," chuckled the Master sadistically. "I didn't want to die. Simple as that. I wanted to make sure I was in a body that I could be prepared in. After all, the universe was rippling by this point. The beginnings of the Time War could be felt everywhere. The reverberations were widespread."

"You saw the Time War?" Rose said incredulously.

"Saw it?" the Master said slowly. The vindictive, unctuous smile crept slowly back onto his face. "My dear, dear Rose," he said, savouring the words. "I started it."

...TBC...