Ok guys... WARNING: CHARACTER DEATH THIS CHAPTER.
This is all Canon compliant, but... Not everyone made it through this War.
I'm really sorry, I hated writing this and I fully intend to fix it at some point in the future but... You've been warned. :(
Chapter 15
"I have to go," the Master told K-9.
His terror had given him the gift of focus. The eternal drumbeats, the confusion they carried with them... It all faded to the background.
What mattered now was survival.
Nothing else.
He'd been in the middle of something horrifying. Something so bad it dwarfed all the other memories of the Time War.
He had to run.
And he had to do it alone.
Because the Doctor still had to win the War.
No one else could...
Even if the Master could drag his friend away, the War would be as good as over without the Doctor.
He couldn't explain, couldn't wait. If he saw the Doctor, he knew he couldn't go through with it.
He'd stay.
And he'd die.
Pointlessly.
Hopefully, the Doctor would understand one day. After he won the War, after he came to find his friend, once it was safe... They could sort through the aftermath together.
But in the meantime, he had to escape.
And K-9's ability to seek out his biological signal was now a problem.
"Query," K-9 said. "Intended destination requested."
The Master hadn't quite figured out the answer to that question.
There weren't a lot of options which would be even temporarily safe...
One thing at a time.
He shook his head. "I can't tell you. And here's the problem..." He sat down and put a hand on the dog's head. "You can't come with me. And I can't have you tracking me. They could use you to find me."
The Master seldom had an issue being direct when imparting unpleasant news to others. But this time it was surprisingly hard to come right out and say what he meant.
But K-9 filled in the blanks. "Understood," he replied. "Suggest you disable this unit. Permanently."
The Master blinked, surprised. "Really? I thought you'd fight me on that."
K-9 raised his head proudly . "Instructions to follow and protect," he said.
The Master sniffed, touched that his dog was giving him permission to do what he knew he had to. "Thanks, K-9," he said sincerely.
He was finding this far more difficult than he had expected.
"Gratitude noted... Master," K-9 said.
"Aww," the Master said, tearing up. "You called me Master."
"Affirmative," K-9 said. "Designation accepted."
The Master smiled through the tears, petting his dog, remembering all their arguments, all the times they'd spent together.
He'd never realized how attached he'd become to his robot friend.
He hugged the dog around his metal neck.
"I think I'm really going to miss you, K-9," he said quietly.
K-9 considered this, ears rotating back and forth. "Estimation: one hundred percent likelihood," he concluded.
"Yeah," the Master agreed sadly. He got up and stood back, pulling out his TCE. "Good dog, K-9," he said softly.
"Affirmative," K-9 replied confidently.
The Master pointed his weapon and fired, shrinking K-9 down to the size of a toy, destroying his systems beyond even the Doctor's ability to repair.
There was an undeniable finality to it which the voice in his head seemed very upset about somewhere in the background.
It wasn't the only one.
The Master knelt on the floor, tears streaming silently and uncontrollably down his face. He picked up what was left of one of his only true friends in the Universe and set it down carefully on the Console, immediately visible from the outer doors.
It wouldn't do for the Doctor to go looking for their dog. Hope could be so cruel.
He stood there for just a moment. Then he scrubbed the tears away with his jacket sleeve.
Still more to do.
He'd need to access his file, wipe any information Gallifrey had which could help them track him.
And then he'd need a destination. Somewhere he could hide until there wasn't a War for the High Council to send him into anymore.
Until the emergency had passed.
The drums echoed and the loss dragged at his hearts and the voice in his head protested and the sense of a temporal Fixed Point hung over him, huge and threatening as a tidal wave...
But the terror burned through it all. The Master exited the TARDIS, little knowing how unprepared he was for the information he would find there.
How used he had been.
How few choices he had truly been given.
How bad things could still become and how much time it would take to fix.
How much pain could outlive the Time War.
... That's it.
We made it.
One more chapter, but it's a 12 & Simm tag, because we all need to process this.