Author's notes: I still don't own the rights to any of this… if I had the money to change that, then who knows, but until then. :) Just another little fic to get some of these random ideas out of my head.
Doctor Who: Friendly Visit
The Doctor continued his clockwise circuit around the console, every few seconds he would stop to fiddle with one instrument or another, a microscopic adjustment to the holographic crystal coordinate imager, a twist of a knob there, a switch here, a tiny adjustment to the location of the monitor screen to make it easier to read, an twist to the horizontal control just to adjust something else. None of the adjustments had any real impact on the TARDIS and its current course, as usual he was leaving the final destination up to the TARDIS itself; all the adjustments did was to take his mind off of… other things.
He could reflect on the old times with Rassilon and Omega, but that would lead to memories of the Exile… He could remember Susan, his closest relative, spiritually speaking, but that always lead to the memory of his abandoning her… even though he still felt it had been the correct decision. In the end he found he was afraid to learn of her final fate. The same of Ian, Barbara and the rest, he valued the memories of their time with him, but one by one their time with him had come to an end. Few realized the pain their departure caused him. He didn't seek them out for fear that if he knew their final fates it would rule out any possibility of meeting them again. Of course in the case of Adric and a few others their was no escaping the knowledge of their fates. The hardest part was knowing how time travel and its guiding laws effected things. Depending on when he was all or many of them had yet to be born, or they were all already dead. The Time War had only made things worse, he had been responsible for so much and seen so much more… he didn't think he would ever come to terms with it all, and he was afraid of what would happen to him if he did… not the least of which was the loss of the planet Gallifrey and all of its people.
The grinding sound of the time rotor shifted pitch ever so slightly, as it did when the TARDIS was about to land. The Doctor hoped it was someplace interesting, he was willing to do about anything to stave off the memories that came with being locked away with his thoughts. One thing about Rose and all of his other companions, despite the limited amount of time they spent with him, they did help to keep his mind off things he would rather forget.
Outside… the Doctor didn't even bother to check the name of the world, it didn't seem to offer anything of interest at all. If this was the TARDIS's idea for getting him to deal with something, it was not appreciated. It wasn't even a rolling desert, just barren rock, flatness everywhere.
The Doctor circled the TARDIS just to make sure nothing was on the other side, and there was not. But there was something new in front of the TARDIS door. He was prepared to swear it was his old control room hat rack.
The Doctor wasn't sure what was going on, but he hoped his assumption was correct, otherwise his next action would look very stupid.
The Doctor burst into the TARDIS control room his coat blowing wide, there was a wild look in his eyes, his nostrils flaring. "All right! Come out, I don't want to have to look for you!"
A figure moved from behind a one of the support arches that encircled the control room. It was an impressive way to reveal oneself; the Doctor hadn't thought the arches were wide enough for anyone to effectively hide behind.
"Greetings, Doctor," the man said, "It has been a while, hasn't it?" He kept his hand raised, holding a small rod like weapon leveled at the Doctor.
The anger left the Doctors face, replaced by surprise and amazement. A hundred thousand different emotions went through his mind in a flash, fear, hatred, amazement, disbelief, relief.
The Doctor said "The Master," then heedless of the weapon leveled at him, embraced the darkly dressed man in a hug.
The Masters eyes went wide with shock. The embrace made him feel extremely uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that he didn't realize the embrace had immobilized his weapon arm. It was more of an emotional uncomfortable than a physical one… he tried to turn his grimace into a smile. "I didn't think we were such good friends."
The Doctor blinked away a wave of tears that threatened to escape his eyes. "It has been such a long time. Such a long time since I have seen another Time Lord, I don't even care that its you."
The Doctor disengaged from his hug, keeping a friendly arm firmly wrapped around the Master's shoulders, guiding the Master to pace around the control room with him, at the same time it kept the Master's weapon arm immobile.
"But don't get me wrong," the Doctor continued, a hard edge coming into his voice. "I don't know why you're here, But I'm sure I wont like it, so stop now. This is the only warning I'm going to give you."
"My, Doctor, you have changed… You simply must tell me what happened to give you such a hard edge. Nothing I ever did seemed to phase you. What did you do to your control room?"
"The Rani and I were on Trading Spaces," The Doctor held his head back slightly, studying the Master in more detail. It was not the body the Master had when he faced him at the dawn of year 2000ad; it was an older body that he had once known as Tremas. "Your meeting me out of sequence," the Doctor said, stunned. "As evil as you are, you've never been one to blatantly break the Laws of Time."
"That is true, Doctor, that is why the Time Lords have put you on trial, while ignoring me. Actually the Time Lords are why I am here."
"And I suppose you have proof of that, a council seal maybe?"
"Are you kidding?" The Master answered glibly, "They wont trust me with another one of those, given that your third self never returned the last one. You will just have to take my presence and the fact that I have not killed you as proof of my good intentions."
The look on the Doctors face showed he was far from trusting.
"Ok then, what do you want?"
"The Time Lords have been studying your Time Traces, and yours have simply disappeared. They have sent me to help you, and find a way to avoid your fate."
Letting go, the Doctor laughed turning in place, "Oh, I cannot imagine what they must have offered to get you to agree to this."
The Master's eyes narrowed, his survival instinct cueing in to the fact that the Doctor obviously knew much more about the situation than usual.
"They wont give you anything, they didn't send you to check on MY time trace, they send you to find out what happened to THEIRS!" the Doctor shouted at him, then suddenly became somber. "I wish I could tell you, but if they avoided it, who knows how much longer it would go on. How many more deaths? No. I wont help you, or them… Go back to your own time stream, don't go back to them, and try to avoid vacationing on Skaro."
The Doctor could see the thousand different scenarios and plans flicker across the Masters face, and the thought that Skaro had something to do with whatever cataclysm happens/happened. The part of the Doctor that saw all possibilities in time and space wondered if this planted the seed that led to the Master's trial.
Still contemplating the possibilities that could lead to the eradication of the Time Lords, and the other hints he could pick up from the Doctor's surface thoughts; the Master didn't notice how he had gotten outside the TARDIS. There was nothing he could do but return to his own TARDIS and his own life… however long it would be. He would do as he always did and take steps to extend that life for as long as it took.