Notes: Any recognizable dialogue comes from the episode "The Sound of Drums" and the Big Finish audio Master.
Death's Champion
They'd been on the run from the Master's lackeys for a few days now, and Martha, Jack, and the Doctor had finally taken up relative safety in an abandoned warehouse. It was shrouded in shadows, blue light, yet the fire they had going cast their immediate surroundings in a warm orange glow.
The door opened and Martha returned, carrying a bag of food.
"How was it?" Captain Jack Harkness asked.
"I don't think anyone saw me," Martha replied, setting the bag of food down. "Anything new?"
"I've got this tuned to government wavelengths so we can follow what Saxon's doing."
"Yeah, I meant about my family."
The Doctor broke in: "It still says the Jones family taken in for questioning. Tell you what, though. No mention of Leo."
"He's not as daft as he looks. I'm talking about my brother on the run." Martha sat down next to Jack. "How did this happen?"
The former Time Agent helped himself to the food. "Nice chips."
The Doctor took one, too, and nibbled. "Actually, they're not bad."
A moment later, Jack was serious again, staring right at him. "So, Doctor, who is he? How come the ancient society of Time Lords created a psychopath?"
"And what is he to you?" Martha asked. "Like a colleague or...?"
"A friend, at first." Memories swamped over the Doctor: The two of them as young Loomlings playing in the fields of red grass... a bully... the river...
Martha's voice broke into his thoughts: "I thought you were going to say he was your secret brother or something."
The Doctor looked at her sharply. "You've been watching too much TV."
Jack frowned. "But all the legends of Gallifrey made it sound so perfect."
The Doctor leaned back, made a face. "Well, perfect to look at, maybe. And it was. It was beautiful." As he continued, he could see it in his mind's eye: Gallifrey of old. "They used to call it the Shining World of the Seven Systems. And on the Continent of Wild Endeavour, in the Mountains of Solace and Solitude, there stood the Citadel of the Time Lords, the oldest and most mighty race in the universe, looking down on the galaxies below. Sworn never to interfere, only to watch. Children of Gallifrey, taken from their families age of eight to enter the Academy." He lowered his head, looked at his audience. "And some say that's when it all began. When he was a child. That's when the Master saw eternity. As a novice, he was taken for initiation. He stood in front of the Untempered Schism. It's a gap in the fabric of reality through which could be seen the whole of the vortex. You stand there, eight years old, staring at the raw power of time and space, just a child. Some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad." The Doctor let his voice trail off, shuddered. "Brr. I don't know about the Untempered Schism, but I do know where it all started for the Master."
"What about you?" Martha asked.
There was a flippant answer on the tip of the Doctor's tongue, but he bit it back. Instead his dark brown gaze was serious, almost black, as he looked at her and Jack. "I should have been the Master, and he should have been me."
Martha and Jack stared in disbelief. "What," Martha said flatly.
"The Master and I, we used to ditch our classes at the Academy and run through the red fields of grass, lie there on the banks of the River Lethe. There was a bully, Torvic, who saw us as ants and would torment us. He wasn't evil, Torvic, just another Loomling trying to break the rules. He saw us sitting there on the riverbank, jumped on us, pulled one down into the river, grabbed his head and held it under the flowing water. The child struggled vainly as water went up his nose and into his throat. Torvic wasn't going to drown him, he was merely doing what bullies do. Seeking control.
"This is where it all began. Usually, when Torvic tormented them, the other would sit and wait... helpless. But this time, something awoke in the other child: blind fury and anger. Sick with anger, he charged at Torvic, stopping only to pick up a large stone." The Time Lord's voice had dropped to a whisper as the scene played again in his mind's eye, the rock slamming down hard against Torvic's head. "Torvic never stood a chance. The murderer pulled his friend from the water, and they stood there in silence. Watched as the blood flowed from Torvic's shattered skull, watched as the blood flowed into the stream. Watched, unable to comprehend what one of them had done. The other boy, being of sounder mind, realized what punishment they would face."
He could remember telling the same conversation to someone else, in his seventh incarnation, after encountering the Master yet again turned human. Martha's reaction now was the same as his audience's then had been, even as her gaze flickered with horror: "But... but they were only trying to protect themselves!"
The Doctor shook his head, brown eyes somber. "One of them had taken a life. They knew that if they were ever found out, if they were caught, they would never realize their hopes for freedom from a sterile planet. They would never get to see the universe."
Jack had watched, listened in silence. Now he swallowed and asked, "What did they do?"
"They pulled Torvic's body from the river, onto dry land. Covered his body with branches from the trees and together as one they set the funeral pyre alight. They watched together, holding hands, as Torvic's body burned; watched as Torvic's skin bubbled and burned and became smoke. They watched as they sent him back to nature.
"And they were never caught."
The Doctor's eyes lifted, held the gazes of both Jack and Martha. "Tell me, who do you think killed Torvic?"
Martha answered first. "The Master, right? Had to be. You were the one drowning, yeah?"
Jack said nothing, but the look in his eyes said he'd cottoned on to the truth even before the Doctor slowly shook his head.
"No, Martha," the Time Lord said quietly. "I killed Torvic. That same night, Death slipped into my dreams and we made a deal. I could suffer the guilt and torment of having killed another Loomling in cold blood until I was hers forever... or I could give her my best friend and be free. I told her to take him." Firelight flickered over his face, made his appearance look more skeletal than normal. "Like I said, like Death said: I should have been the Master, and he should have been me. I created the Master when I was only a Loomling, and I've been paying for it ever since. All this..." He gestured. "Everything he's done in the past, the blood he's shed, it's all on my hands."
Martha shook her head, mouth open in silent protest. "No, it's not... It's not true. That can't be true."
Before the Doctor could say anything else, Jack's bracelet beeped. The former Time Agent glanced down. "Encrypted channel with files attached. Don't recognize it."
"Patch it through to the laptop." The Doctor was all business again, the moment broken. There would be time, later, to answer any further questions by Martha and Jack about his history with the Master.
Presuming they all made it out of this alive.
Looking into one's own personal future was forbidden, even for the last of the Time Lords.
The Doctor x smashing in people's brains with rocks and/or shovels, OTP.
Also, Looms are canon and I will fight showrunners on this.