A/N: Hello there everyone! Just to let you know, the poll is now closed. The next episode has been decided and work has begun on it. I hope you all enjoy the concluding chapter of Last of the Time Lords!
Kari was struggling to stay conscious. She knew that she had been shot, and that the Master was currently holding her while she lay down in the back of a car. She wanted to push him away, to stop him from touching her, but every time she moved, pain seared through her body. "Kari, you need to stay still." His voice was extremely soft, softer than she had ever heard it before.
"Don't touch me." Kari managed to whisper weakly as she tried to struggle away from him.
"Kari, please, you have to just hold still." The Master pleaded. "The more you move, the worse the pain will be." He was trying to hold her still, trying to calm her while he thought of something. He knew that it was his fault, that he had pushed her to the point where she held a gun at him, and it was his fault that she had been shot.
"I thought you liked to see people suffering and in pain." Kari muttered, before letting out a groan from the pain. Her mind was just filled with so many thoughts now, thoughts about the Doctor, about Martha, and about Jack. All she could think was that she would never see any of them again, that she would never remember the Doctor and all the things that they had done together.
Her words stung him, badly. "I've never wanted to see you suffering or in pain. This… this isn't want I wanted." The Master admitted to her. All he had ever really wanted was to never lose her, but the moment she went off with the Doctor, he had lost her. "You don't understand, Kari, you just don't understand. You made me better, when you were near me, you made things better."
Kari had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. "You're right, I don't understand, Koschei. I don't remember anything, how could I understand?" She asked him, letting out a cry from the pain this time. The tears were rolling out of the corners of her eyes and into the Master's lap.
He noticed them, and lightly brushed them away with the pad of his thumb. The façade he had been wearing in front of the Doctor was now completely gone. All that talk about making Kari his, of making sure that she stays with him forever, it was something he knew was never going to happen. But he couldn't stop himself, because he wanted her, he always had. "I was just a child when we met, so was the Doctor," he began to explain. "But you, you were the same as you are now. Every time we saw you, you looked the same. Neither of us really understood why until a few years later, and that was when things started to change."
Although she was trying to listen, she was finding it hard to focus on anything with the pain still coursing through her. "Really? You want to do this now?" Kari mumbled, clenching her teeth together. "You had plenty of time to do this when you lied to me all those months ago, but instead you want to do it now?" A slight growl came from her throat as she done her best to ignore the burning sensation in her side.
"I need you to understand, Kari, I need you to know the truth." The way he was speaking made Kari think that he was being genuine, and that it was possible that he wasn't one hundred percent evil. "You told us that you were waiting for someone, for someone to take your hand and show you the stars. Both of us wanted to be that someone. We fought for your affection, and the friendship the three of us had began to fall apart. But there was something else, Kari, there was something more that you didn't know."
"Yeah? And what was that?" She asked him, not realising that he had pulled her hands away from her side and had rested his own there, lightly putting pressure on the wound. Kari was trying to focus on anything other than the pain, anything at all.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "The drumming. That constant noise in my head. I never had the chance to tell you, by the time I had worked it out, it was too late. You had left with the Doctor. So I followed you, desperate to tell you, to stay with you even if you had chosen the Doctor." A sigh slipped past his lips as he focused on using his own regeneration energy to heal the damage that he had done. The Master knew that she was in excruciating pain, and that there was no way she was going to be able to do it herself.
But Kari felt it, the light tingling sensation, something that she was sure she had felt before. "What… what are you doing?" She asked him in a bit of a panic, not sure what was going on. She couldn't see his hands, and she was couldn't keep her eyes open any more. The fight with the pain was knocking her out, and she knew it wouldn't be long until she lost consciousness completely.
The Master simple shushed her. "I never meant for you to get hurt. I'm fixing it." He told her quietly. "Now listen. I chased you all across the universe, from one star to another, through all of time and space. I was always there behind you, watching you from afar. Kari, when I was with you, the drumming stopped."
Kari forced her eyes opened and looked up at the man. "What? It… it stopped?" She couldn't believe it, she knew it couldn't be true. There was something more to the drumming in his head, she could feel it, even if she couldn't remember it. "But… how can it stop?" She was so distracted by that revelation that she didn't notice the pain in her side start to subside as the Master's regeneration energy forced the bullet out and healed the wound for her.
All he could do was smile softly at her. Kari had always been so innocent in everything, always trying to see the good in everyone, including him. "I don't know. You always knew who I was, and what I would become, but you were still my friend. I didn't want to lose that, I couldn't lose you when you were the only one who ever accepted me, even with the drumming."
"That drumming, it's not you. It's not your fault." Kari told him, her head now starting to throb slightly. "There's something else, something that I can't remember…"
"No. No, no, no, don't try to remember, Kari." The Master said in a bit of a panic. "Please, you can't try to remember, not yet. I know this is my fault, and I am truly sorry, my love, but trying to remember is not a good idea."
"Why? Why don't you want me to remember?" Kari asked him weakly. The throbbing in her head was getting worse, and it was causing her to start feeling sick. "So that you can lie to me some more?"
He let out a sigh, understanding why she didn't trust him. "No more lies, I promise you. I still don't understand why you lost your memories, but because of who you are, when you try to force yourself to remember, something stops you. You can't remember because something is stopping you, it causes the pain in your head. So you can't remember, my love." The Master gently rested a hand on her forehead, hoping that she would stop trying and that the added pain would cease.
"I want the truth, Koschei. You promised me no more lies, so you have to tell me the truth. Why are you doing all of this? Why take over Earth, create a paradox and allow the humans of the future to kill everyone? Just… why?" Kari was trying to find a distraction from everything that she was feeling. She wasn't just in physical pain, she had been hurt emotionally by everything that had happened.
The Master didn't really know how to answer her. At the time of his plan, he was angry, and hurt. He felt betrayed by Kari, finding out that she had jumped before he had even had a chance to speak with her when he stole the TARDIS. He was determined to make the Doctor suffer, and to take Kari away from him forever. There had been so much he wanted to do, and so many reasons why, it was difficult for him to pick just one. "Because I wanted you." That was the reasoning he settled for. "Do you know what it's like for the one person you love to walk off with your best friend? Do you know how that feels?"
"No, I don't. How can I when I don't remember anything? I'm sure that there was a time, or will be a time, but this isn't the answer to it all." Kari told him, squeezing her eyes shut tighter. "When you care about someone, all you want is for them to be happy, with or without you."
"How did I know if you were happy or not? You left with the Doctor and had no plans on coming back. I didn't know if I was ever going to see you again, how could I just sit there and wait to see if you would ever return?" There was so much tenderness in his voice. Kari could tell that he did in fact care, but he had just gone the wrong way about it all. "I couldn't do it, not with the drumming driving me mad. You stopped it, you made a difference. How could I let that go?"
Kari let out a groan as she felt a stab of pain flash across the front of her head. "Because it was the right thing to do. Everything you have done, it's wrong, and you know it's wrong. But there is one thing I can say to you, one thing that the Doctor will say to you…"
Straight away the Master knew what she was going to say, but he didn't want to hear it, for several reasons. "Ah, no." He told her quickly, putting a finger against her lips, stopping her from speaking. "Rest, my love, for the war soon begins. It is too late to stop it now, too much hard work has been put in. I will build a new world, for you."
"But I don't…"
"Shush. Rest. We will be aboard the Valiant by the time you wake. Just sleep." He told her, gently running the back of his fingers across her forehead, helping to lull her to sleep. He wasn't going to stop with his plans now, there was too much at stake. He knew that it was hurting his Kari, and he didn't want to hurt her, but this was all he had left.
He hadn't lied when he told her he had done everything because of her, because he wanted her. It was so much more than that. All the revenge, the hurt he wanted to cause, the pain and suffering he wanted to bring down on the Doctor. He knew that turning Kari against the Doctor would make him suffer the most, and that had been his ultimate goal. He had thought it was going to work, especially when she lost her memories. But he had never expected things to turn out like they had.
Although he had the woman he had always dreamed off laying across his lap, fast asleep, he was not as happy as he thought he would be. And he was starting to realise why he wasn't as happy as he had hoped. "I'll make things better, my beautiful Golden Angel. You'll see. You may not believe it now, but soon you will see how much better things are with me. You'll realise that leaving with the Doctor was a mistake, and you'll want to stay with me." The Master whispered to her, lightly kissing the top of her head.
He continued to watch over her for the rest of the drive, and for the short flight to the Valiant. Martha was taken under armed guard, locked in a cell until the Master was ready for her, until he had checked Kari was okay. "It's time to wake up now, my sweet Kari." He said to her, his hand running through her hair as she began to wake from her forced slumber.
She let out a groan. "Where are we?" Kari asked him, feeling a little disorientated as she forced her eyes open.
"We are back aboard the Valiant. Martha Jones will meet her end, and a new universe will be created and we will stand tall as we rule over it." The Master told her proudly. Although he knew she was going to object to it, what he also knew was that she had no other option.
"Please, there is still time to stop this. You don't have to do this, you can stop right now and end all of this. This isn't what I wanted, and it never will be anything that I want." Kari told him, pushing herself up so that she was sitting. It took her a moment, but she quickly realised that she was back in her room, the room she had woken up in with no memories and a man feeding her lies.
The Master just looked at her sadly. "It's too late. The time is upon us." He told her, before taking her hand a literally dragging her from her room and to the flight deck.
When they got there, Kari saw three people standing to one side with armed men surrounding them. She now knew that those people were Martha's family. On the other side stood a man, battered and bruised and cover with dirt, also under armed guard. "Jack…" She whispered, looking at him, wanting to just go over to him and feel his arms around her.
The Master had noticed her gaze lingering on him, and after a quick glance at the Doctor standing in his birdcage, he led her over to Jack. "Do you remember who this is?" He asked Kari, an arm now wrapped tightly around her waist. He was ready to stop her if she decided to run, but he had a feeling that she wouldn't.
"Jack, that's Jack Harkness, my big brother." She mumbled, her eyes so full of sadness as she looked at the man.
Jack looked her over, taking in the rip in her top, which was soaked with partially dried up blood and the circle of visible pink flesh that was still healing. He knew a gunshot wound when he saw one, he had suffered plenty himself in his life. "Kari, you okay?" He asked her with concern. All she could do was nod at him, afraid of what the Master would do if she spoke.
But the Master had already made his mind up. "Stay with him." He said, taking her by surprise as he pushed her into Jack's arms. "You do not go anywhere. You stay with your big brother Jack." In utter shock, Kari just nodded at him, watching him walking away as Jack wrapped his arms around her tightly.
"Geeze, what the hell happened to you, Princess?" Jack asked her, brushing some of her hair out of her face, and trying to check her over for any other injuries.
Kari didn't really know what to say to him, how to tell him everything that had happened since she had last seen the man. It had been three months since she had last seen him, since she had last been on that ship in the air. "You really don't want to know." She mumbled, not caring about the dirt and burying her face into his chest.
As she did, the doors to the flight deck slid open, and Martha Jones walked in, guns accompanying her. The woman looked at her parents, and then over to Kari and Jack, before walking closer towards where the Master was standing on the bridge. "Your teleport device, in case you thought I'd forgotten." He said, holding out his hand and waiting for her to give it to him. She tossed it and he quickly caught it. And now, kneel." Martha done as she was told, but the look on her face showed that she was far from happy. "Dow below, the fleet is ready to launch. Two hundred thousand ships set to burn across the universe. Are we ready?" He called the last part through the communications system.
"The fleet awaits your signal, rejoice!" A voice rang through the flight deck.
"Three minutes to align the black hole converter. Counting down. I never could resist a ticking clock." The Master announced, looking at the clock on the wall, counting down. "My children, are you ready?"
"We will fly and blaze and slice. We will fly and blaze and slice." The spheres chanted from high above the planet where they were waiting, waiting to slaughter the rest of the human race.
There was a huge grin stretched across the Master's face. "At zero, to mark this day, the child Martha Jones, will die. Days of old, Doctor, you had companions who could absorb the time vortex." The Master said, risking a quick glace at Kari. He could see her eyes glistening with tears already, and soon turned his attention back to the Doctor. "This one's useless. Bow your head." His gaze was now back on Martha, as he prepared himself with his laser screwdriver in his hand. "And so it falls to me, as Master of all, to establish from this day, a new order of Time Lords. From this day forward…" He was cut off and distracted when Martha started chuckling. "What… what's so funny?"
Martha laughed a little bit more, a smile appearing on her face. "A gun."
"What about it?" He had lowered his screwdriver, but still watching her carefully.
"A gun in four parts?" Martha said, not yet ready to explain herself to him fully.
"Yes, and I destroyed it." The Master replied, starting to get a little frustrated.
All Martha could do was smile. "A gun, in four parts, scattered across the world? I mean, come on, did you really believe that?"
Suddenly the Master's face fell, and Kari was holding her breath, apprehensive of what was going to happen next. "What do you mean?"
The Doctor pulled himself up in his cage and looked at the Master. "As if I would ask her to kill."
"Oh well, it doesn't matter." The Master said dismissively. "I've got her exactly where I want her." His laser screwdriver was soon pointing at her once more.
Except Martha hadn't finished yet, and Kari was quickly catching on to what was going on. "But I knew what Professor Docherty would do. The Resistance knew about her son. I told her about the gun, so she'd get me here at the right time." She explained to him.
But the Master really wasn't interested. He could see Kari getting anxious, and that was not what he wanted. "Oh, but you're still going to die."
"Don't you want to know what I was doing, what we were doing, travelling the world?" He looked back over to Kari at those words, wondering exactly how long she had been with Martha Jones for. If she had jumped, she could have gone back to when Martha first left. It would have been easy, considering he had the paradox machine working.
"Tell me."
"We told a story, that's all. No weapons, just words. I did just what the Doctor said. We went across the continents. And everywhere we went, we found the people, and we told them our story." Martha told him, knowing exactly what she was doing. "We told them about the Doctor. And we told them to pass it on, to spread the word so that everyone in the world would know about the Doctor."
The Master scoffed, slightly amused with what he was hearing. "Faith and hope? Is that all?"
"No, because I gave them an instruction, just as the Doctor said." Martha told him, standing up as the clock began to count down of the final minute. "I told them that if everyone thinks of one word, at one specific time…"
"Nothing will happen." He spat at her, is frustration growing more and more. "Is that your weapon? Prayer?"
But Martha just ignored him and carried on speaking as if he had never interrupted her at all. "Right across the world, one word, just one thought, at one moment, but with fifteen satellites." She finished, causing the Master to look at her with a hint of surprise.
"What?"
Jack couldn't help but smile as he held on to Kari tightly. "The Archangel Network." He wanted to ask Kari what had happened, to find out what the Master had done to her, but he knew it wasn't the time.
"A telepathic field binding the whole human race together, with all of them, every single person on Earth thinking the same thing at the same time. And that word, is Doctor." Martha announced, just as the timer hit zero.
The Master's eyes instantly went over to the Doctor in is cage, which was now glowing with a swirl of colours. Even the Doctor was surrounded by the glow as well. "Stop it." The Master ordered, not liking what he was seeing. "No, no, no, no, you don't." Kari watched, as the people on the deck started to close their eyes, and whispered the Doctor's name. Jack was holding her tightly still when he began to whisper his name. "Stop this right now. Stop it!" Even Lucy, the Master's human wife was calling for the Doctor as well.
"I've had a whole year to tune myself into the psychic network and integrate with its matrices." The Doctor said, turning from the deformed state and back into an old and wrinkled man. A breeze began to pick up around the room, all coming from the Doctor.
"I order you to stop!" The Master shouted from the bridge.
Finally Kari knew it was time to join in and she closed her eyes tightly, thinking about the man she dreamed of, of the stories she had heard, and the remembering the stories she had told. "Doctor… "
"The one thing you can't do, is stop them thinking." The Doctor told him, now back to the young man with the great hair in the pin stripe suit. "Tell me the human race is degenerate now, when they can do this."
By now, the Master was absolutely furious. "No!" He shouted, before firing his laser screwdriver at the Doctor. But it didn't touch him, there was a force field still surrounding the Doctor, protecting him that deflected it.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." There was so much sadness in the Doctor's eyes as he spoke to the Master.
"Then I'll kill them." The Master suddenly turned, aiming his screwdriver at Martha and her family that she was now reunited with. Instead of firing his screwdriver, it was wrenched out of his hand by an invisible force. "You can't do this. You can't do it. It's not fair!" He cried, completely lost and totally panicking.
The Doctor continued to look at him, after glancing at Kari quickly. She was watching him, with tears swimming in her eyes as Jack kept a tight hold of her. "And you know what happens now." The Doctor finally said, as the Master began saying no, repeating it over and over. "You wouldn't listen." He said, now floating towards the Master. "Because you know what I'm going to say."
By this point, the Master was crouched on the ground, curled up in a ball, the Doctor hovering over him. "No. No. No. No…" The Master continued to chant to himself. It was unable to accept the fact that the Doctor had fooled him, had been one step ahead of him.
The Doctor kneeled down on the floor, and wrapped his arms around his old best friend. And then the words that the Master had been desperate to avoid reached his ears. "I forgive you."
Suddenly something in Kari's mind clicked, and she seemed to know what was going to happen next. "Jack… the paradox machine…" Straight away his eyes widened. He seemed to get the hint pretty quickly, and charged out of the room, taking some of the guards and ordering Kari to stay there with Martha.
But she ran over to the Doctor, wrapping her arms around him tightly. She didn't care what was going on around her, she didn't care that the spheres were descending, ready to protect the paradox machine that was allowing them to stay there. All Kari cared about in that moment was being with the Doctor. "I'm sorry, Doctor. I am really, really sorry." She muttered, as he held onto her just as tightly.
He buried his face into her hair, which no longer smelt like honey and vanilla but dirt and smoke. "It's okay, Kari. You're okay. Everything is going to be okay." He told her quickly, knowing that she really had nothing to be sorry for. None of what had happened had been her fault, and he didn't blame her for the things that she had done.
The Doctor took a quick look over to the Master, and saw that he was doing something with the vortex manipulator that he had taken away from Martha. He charged over to the Master, Kari still with him, and the three of them disappeared as the Master hit the button.
"Now it ends, Doctor." The Master spat at him, as they appeared at one of the shipyards. "Now it ends." A grumble of thunder rolled above them, as lightning lit the sky.
"We've got control of the Valiant. You can't launch." The Doctor reminded him, hearing the sirens blaring from the shipyard.
The Master simply grinned. "Oh, but I've got this." He said, taking some sort of device off his wrist. "Black hole converter inside every ship. If I can't have this world, Doctor, then neither can you." Only he wasn't looking at the Doctor when he said that, he was looking towards Kari and she knew the true meaning behind it. "We shall stand upon this Earth, as it burns together."
"Weapon after weapon after weapon. All you do is talk and talk and talk. But over all these years and all these disasters, I've always had the greatest secret of them all. I know you. Explode those ships, kill yourself. Kill Kari. That's the one thing you can never do." The Doctor told him, holding his hand out and watching as the Master fixed his eyes upon Kari. She was clutching to the Doctor, clearly scared. "Give me that."
Still looking at Kari, the Master slammed the device down into the Doctor's hand. It was plain to see that he wasn't happy. "So, I guess you hate me now." He said bitterly, his eyes constantly fixed upon Kari.
She shook her head at him a little. "I never hated you in the first place. You've done some terrible things, unforgivable things. You wanted to make people suffer, like you suffered. But you were driven to it, when people shunned you and shut you out." Kari told him, slowly taking small steps towards him. "I know the other side of you, the side that cares, that thinks of others. I hate what you've done, Koschei, but I could never hate you."
Suddenly, Kari was doubled over in absolute agony, clutching hold of her head as tears streamed from her eyes. The Doctor was by her side in a flash, kneeling on the floor, talking to her. "Kari, what is it?"
"My head." She mumbled, letting out a sob. "My head. It hurts." The Doctor and Master watched as a golden glow started to form around her hands, soon spreading to the rest of her. "What… what's going on?" She asked, scared out of her mind. Kari had no idea what was happening to her, she was scared and in so much pain.
The Doctor brushed some of her hair away from her face. "The paradox is broken, you're remembering." He told her softly, before grabbing the vortex manipulator from the Master and taking them three of them back to the Valiant. "Everyone get down!" He shouted, using his body to shield Kari as they dropped to the floor. "Time is reversing!"
All Kari could do was scream from the pain, causing several sets of eyes to watch her in concern. Martha and her family had no idea of what had just happened to Kari, and only the Doctor seemed to really understand what was going on. "Doctor…" She whimpered, trying to look at him but failing as her hair was blowing across her face in the unnatural breeze that was whipping around them all.
"It's all right, Kari, you're going to be fine. I swear." The Doctor assured her, knowing that all he could do was wait.
A few more moments passed, and the wind dropped, and everything around them stilled. The Doctor quickly got up, taking Kari with him as he went to check the screens to make sure that he had been right. "The paradox is broken. We've reverted back, one year and one day. Two minutes past eight in the morning."
He flipped a switch and a voice rang through the flight deck. "This is UNIT central. What's happened up there? We just saw the President assassinated."
"See? Just after the President was killed, but just before the spheres arrived. Everything back to normal. Planet Earth restored. None of it happened. The rockets, the terror. It never was." The Doctor explained, holding onto Kari tightly as she still whimpered in pain. He knew that there was nothing that he could do, there was nothing anyone could do.
"What about the spheres?" Martha asked, looking worriedly at Kari, causing him to shake his head a little.
"Trapped at the end of the universe." He informed her.
Martha's mother was standing there, a grim look on her face. "But I can remember it." She announced, wishing that she could forget everything that had happened over the past year. She didn't want to remember it, she wished it had never happened.
The Doctor looked over at her and everyone else. "We're at the eye of the storm, the only one who'll ever know." He was still holding onto Kari, waiting for the moment when the pain would stop, when the golden glow would fade. He could see that she was still suffering, and the tears were still rolling down her cheeks.
He didn't have to wait long. "Doctor? What… what happened? I can… I can remember…" Kari told him, sounding rather confused.
All he could do was smile at her as relief washed over him. "The paradox is broken, Kari, that was what was stopping you from remembering anything." She gave him an even more confused look, so he continued to explain. "You're not just linked to the time vortex, you have a special connection to the TARDIS as well. She was turned into the paradox machine, she couldn't protect you, she couldn't help you remember."
"So because the TARDIS had been turned into a paradox, I couldn't remember anything?" The Doctor nodded at her. "But how did I forget in the first place? I don't understand all of that."
"I'll explain later, I promise." The Doctor told her, before kissing the top of her head and holding onto her tightly. He couldn't even begin to describe how much he had missed her, and how worried he had been about her over the past year.
"Whoa, big fella!" Jack called, entering the room and stopping the Master from making a break for it. "You don't want to miss the party. Cuffs." One of the guards quickly gave him some handcuffs, which were then slapped onto the Master's wrists. "So, what do we do with this one?"
"We kill him." Martha's father announced.
"We execute him." Tish said, agreeing with her father wholly.
The Doctor shook his head, keeping his arm wrapped around his Kari. "No, that's not the solution." He told them all, missing the way that Kari's eyes were fixed on one person in the room.
"Oh, I think so. Because all those things, they still happened because of him. I saw them." Martha's mother, Francine, said, now holding a gun that had slid across the floor during the chaos. It was pointing directly at the Master.
"Go on. Do it." The Master dared her, knowing that she couldn't actually do it.
The Doctor and Kari were quick to move down from the bridge and to where Francine was standing. "Francine, you're better than him." The Doctor told her, slowly tugging the gun out of her hand. She let out a sob as Kari hugged her, understanding how she was feeling. She had pointed a gun at the Master, she had felt exactly how Martha's mother was now feeling.
Martha took hold of her mother, while the Doctor and Kari looked towards the Master. "You still haven't answered my question. What happens to me?" He asked, desperately trying not to look at Kari.
"You're our responsibility from now on. The only Time Lords left in existence." The Doctor told him, causing Kari to frown.
Before she could say anything, Jack had jumped in. "Yeah, but you can't trust him."
The Doctor nodded in agreement. "No. The only safe place for him is the TARDIS."
"You mean you're just going to keep me?"
"No." Kari said, getting everyone to look at her. "Isn't this what you want? You wanted to come with us, you chased us across the stars because you wanted to travel with us. Well, now you can. But there are some conditions." Suddenly Kari remembered something, and she quickly spun around to see Lucy holding the gun that Martha's mother had dropped. "Lucy, no!" She shouted, but it was too late, the trigger had been pulled.
The Master dropped to the floor, and the Doctor only just managed to catch him before he hit it. "There you go. I've got you. I've got you." The Doctor said, while Jack dealt with Lucy. It didn't take long for Kari to join the Doctor and the Master.
"Always the women." The Master moaned, realising just how much pan Kari had been in when he had accidently shot her.
"I'm sorry, I wasn't quick enough. I'm sorry." Kari told him, trying to keep herself together. She had never wanted any of that to happen, and if she had remembered sooner, she could have stopped Lucy from pulling the trigger.
The Master just gave her a sad look, before turning his attention to the Doctor who was still holding onto him tightly. "Dying in your arms. Happy now?"
"You're not dying. Don't be stupid." The Doctor told him. "It's only a bullet. Just regenerate."
"No."
"One little bullet. Come on." The Doctor was getting desperate now, and Kari could see that.
The Master shook his head and Kari glared at him a little. "So, it's okay to use regeneration energy to heal a bullet wound on me, but not yourself? Stop being an idiot and just regenerate you stubborn man." She told him in frustration. Even after everything, she still didn't blame him, because she knew it wasn't all his fault.
He chuckled a little at the way she had spoken to him, and the things she had called him. "I guess you don't know me so well. I refuse."
"Regenerate. Just regenerate. Please, please! Just regenerate. Come on!" The Doctor cried, holding onto the Master. Kari was there as well, with both of the Time Lords, trying her best not to completely break down like the Doctor was.
"And spend the rest of my life imprisoned with you?" The Master scoffed at the Doctor. He was acting like spending the rest of time with the Doctor and Kari was the worst thing that could happen, but he wasn't refusing to be stubborn, he was refusing for Kari.
"Hey, I thought you wanted to be stuck with me?" Kari asked him, trying to convince him still.
"You've got to." The Doctor told him. "Come on. It can't end like this. You, me, and Kari, all the things we've done. Axons. Remember the Axons? And the Daleks? We're the only three left. There's no one else. Regenerate!" He was crying now, tears had started to roll down the Doctor's face.
There was a smile on the Master's face. "How about that? I win." He said, before letting out a groan of pain. "I'm sorry, Kari." The dying man added, before looking at the man who was holding onto him. "Will it stop, Doctor? The drumming, will it stop?"
Kari and the Doctor watched as he breathing became a little more ragged, before his eyes closed and the man stilled completely. The Doctor completely lost it, rocking back and forth, cradling the Master's body. Kari held onto the Doctor, her arms wrapped tightly around his waist as she buried her head into his arm, tears streaming down her cheeks as well.
That wasn't how things were supposed to end. She was meant to change things, to stop Lucy from firing that gun, to stop the Master from dying and help him to change. She remembered what he had told her, how just her presence seemed to stop the drumming. That was why she told him to stay with them, to stop the drumming and the madness. But now it was too late, because he was too proud and too stubborn. Instead she was going to stand beside the Doctor, while the Master's body was burnt on a pyre. She had wanted to change so much, to make things so different, but everything had changed when she had lost her memories. Kari was just glad that she had them back now.
A/N: Well, I really do hope that you all enjoyed that concluding part to the episode. I've enjoyed writing in way more than I thought I would, which is totally a good thing.
Now, onto the thanks. I want to say a big thank you and welcome to everyone who has favourited/followed the story. I know I say this every week, but it's true, I love getting those emails that tell me that someone else is enjoying one of my stories. Also, all of you wondering and magnificent people who take the time to leave a review, thank you so much. I really do appreciate the reviews, honestly, I do.
Well, I could ramble on a little more, or I could go and get on with the next chapter. The results have been displayed now that the poll is closed. Still a little disappointed by the turn out for the poll, but never mind, there was a clear winner.
So, until next week, my lovelies!
Pippa.