Chapter 7
It had been a bad day. One of the worst the Master had seen.
And that was saying a lot in the Time War.
He'd won, though.
Well... Sort of.
He'd lived.
The Master came back into the TARDIS to find the Doctor and his robot dog waiting for him.
The Doctor didn't look angry. This Doctor almost never looked angry.
Somehow the disappointment was so much worse.
"Again?" the Doctor asked. He was patient, always so patient.
The Master looked at him, too tired to smile, too empty to muster any bravado.
He crawled onto the couch and buried his head in his arms to hide the tears.
"Well, move over," the Doctor said from above him.
Instead, the Master defiantly kicked out with his Wellington-clad feet, trying to take up as much space as possible.
So the Doctor just lifted him and sat with his friend lying on his lap.
The Doctor stroked his hair.
It fixed nothing. But it was still comforting.
"Why do you keep doing this?" the Doctor asked without judgment. "I made K-9 so you wouldn't have to go out there alone."
The Master didn't say anything. How could he explain that he felt the need to do these dark things alone? That if anyone knew, if anyone was there to see, it would make it all so much worse?
That the Doctor knowing would be unbearable.
"I don't want to talk about it," the Master muttered.
He wasn't proud of the things he did for Gallifrey. Which was odd, because he was always proud of the things he chose to do.
But the War which he'd expected to be a playground of destruction, the perfect arena in which to test his intellect, an endless series of contests to win... Had instead become one of the most horrifying and shameful things he'd ever experienced.
Well, that is... In the moments when the Doctor wasn't there.
That's when everything seemed to go wrong.
"Why do you do what he says?" the Doctor asked.
The Master shrugged. He always had his reasons, he just could never quite manage to remember what they had been afterwards.
"He's the President," he said, citing the most logical reason which came to mind. "One of us has to stay on his good side."
"He'll keep pushing you until you break, you know," the Doctor said quietly.
"I know," the Master responded.
He did know.
He thought about it every time Rassilon summoned him.
Still, he never said no.
"Can we talk about something else?" the Master asked.
"Sure," the Doctor agreed. And he talked about silly, meaningless things instead so the Master could try to forget what he'd just seen.
What he'd just been a part of.
In the previous timeline, Messaline had been a lush and beautiful planet. Now rewritten as a blasted, craggy, radioactive wasteland.
And no longer inhabited.
The Doctor's voice almost drowned out the screams echoing in the Master's memory.
Messaline is the planet from The Doctor's Daughter; I picked it because the overlap in themes was far too tempting to pass up.