If you haven't read my other fics, I had the Master double back on the Doctor's timeline (for various reasons) to spend time with 12. So this scene is set before Face the Raven for the Doctor and after The Doctor Falls for the Master. (For more information, see Floor 507.)
Chapter 16
"Did you know?" the Master asked.
It was many years later and they sat together in the TARDIS, the Doctor at his cluttered workbench, the Master staring at a book without reading it.
"Did I know what?" the Doctor asked in his Scottish accent.
"About Rassilon. About the Drums," the Master said quietly.
He had spent years not asking because he dreaded the answer.
But he had to know...
He heard the deliberate sound of the Doctor placing the components down on his work surface. "No," the Doctor said. "Not until after you left."
The Master swallowed and nodded.
He wanted to believe it.
It was probably true.
"I stopped working with the High Council after I found out," the Doctor added in the silence that followed. "If I had known -"
"I know," the Master cut him off.
He didn't need details, didn't need to hear the Doctor's what ifs.
They'd both lived with enough of those after the War.
Really, he'd just needed that one, simple answer. The Doctor had already said everything he needed to hear.
It had been centuries now, but the Master was still trying to piece together a coherent understanding of the War.
The trauma, the fear, the trust, the abuse...
The rationalizations. The lies. The constant merry-go-round of emotions, real and manufactured.
Which parts had been Rassilon's programming?
Which parts had been the Doctor?
Had any of it been him?
He had decided that some of it must have been... But every time he thought about it, he was never quite sure.
And he really didn't like not being sure.
Which was why he had spent so many years trying not to think about it.
As if being a child and fighting a Time War hadn't been confusing enough, trying to discern which parts had been his own choice added a level of complexity he couldn't manage to untangle, try as he might.
But at least he knew now that the Doctor's friendship had been real.
That he did believe.
Someday he would kill Rassilon for making him doubt that.
And this time he'd make sure it stuck.
"Those things he made you do..." the Doctor said uncertainly after several moments.
"What about them?" the Master sighed, regretting opening the door to the Doctor's curiosity by broaching the subject.
The Master heard his friend turn in his chair but didn't look up. "How much of that was you?"
"All of it," the Master said, faking the certainty he never felt. "He'd send me out there but everything beyond that was my choice." He was pretty sure about that... And he'd rather claim too much responsibility than not enough. He didn't like to consider the alternative. "Sorry," he added, knowing this wasn't what the Doctor wanted to hear.
The Doctor's chair creaked as he turned away. He went back to his tinkering. "Just wanted to be sure," he said lightly.
"Yeah," the Master answered with a cynical grimace. "It would be nice to have someone else to blame, wouldn't it?"
The sounds from the Doctor's workbench stopped again. "No," the Doctor said emphatically. "It wouldn't. That would be so much worse."
The Master blinked. That was not the reaction he had expected.
Not the reaction a certain earlier Doctor would have had.
"Suppose so, yeah," the Master agreed with the hint of a smile.
The Master controlled his own fate. He made his own choices, regardless of the consequences. Often in spite of the consequences. Nothing was beyond his reach. All options available to him, the bad decisions and the good ones alike, all his to use or discard as he liked. Others limited themselves out of cowardice or lack of imagination. Defining narrow parameters to fence out the infinite possibilities.
The Master couldn't live like that. His freedom had to be as wide in scope as the entirety of Time and Space itself. Anything less was worthless.
But the rest of the Universe seemed to take issue with this, as if he must submit to the limitations they imposed upon themselves or be punished for living outside of their narrow, artificial guidelines.
As if he offended them just by existing.
They rationalized their fear as logical, as right.
They were always trying to pin his choices on insanity, on outside influence, on some kind of disease. So they could dismiss him. So they didn't have to see the truth... That they were simply too afraid to try to understand him.
That they might like what they found if they ever tried to see his point of view.
That they looked at him and saw a choice they feared to make, even to consider.
Unwilling to acknowledge that maybe they were a little like him, too...
So they preferred to deny that he had ever had a choice.
And sometimes, once in a while, they tried to make that true...
But he wasn't broken. That was neither the beginning nor the end of his story. He wasn't some mistake, a poorly-made toy which had never done quite what it had been meant to do.
They looked at what he was and they didn't understand. So they tried to force him into a mould which was never meant to hold him.
Thinking he would give in. Thinking the mould would win.
Mostly, it didn't.
Many had tried to break him over the years. Most had failed and paid the price.
Rassilon had succeeded.
The President of Gallifrey taken everything, piece by piece, until there was nothing left.
The Master glanced at the Doctor out of the corner of his eyes.
Well... Maybe not nothing.
Though it had certainly looked that way for a while.
It was nice to hear the Doctor say he'd prefer the Master to make his own choices, even if those were choices he could never agree with.
That had been something the Master had wondered about for a while.
Maybe something the Doctor had wondered about, too.
"Well," the Master qualified after several minutes of silence. "I think all of it." The Doctor paused, listening. "It's... Hard to say. I can't really remember it all," the Master said, barely audible.
He'd hardly even admitted that to himself. Oddly, it was easier saying it to the Doctor.
"Maybe that's for the best," the Doctor said and the Master could hear the frown even before he saw it.
He turned to stare at his friend in disbelief.
The Doctor was about to lose some very important memories. In a couple hundred years, he would refuse to regenerate at all in response to that loss.
Was he really advocating losing parts of yourself?
After all the pain which that had already caused to him and those around him? All the pain it was about to cause?
"I mean..." the Doctor qualified, apparently seeing the Master's disapproval. "Do you remember the good things?"
The Master thought back to cartoons and feeling safe and candy and an obnoxious robot dog. "Yeah," he said, smiling despite himself.
If the Doctor hadn't been lying to him all that time, hadn't been using him as Rassilon had, hadn't even known... If all of that could be taken at face value after all, as the Master had wholeheartedly believed at the time... If all of that had been real... Maybe that was enough.
It was at least a very good start.
"If some of that wasn't you, the bad parts," the Doctor continued, "maybe you don't need to remember that." He turned back to his work. "Sometimes it's better not to know too much."
The Master chuckled to himself. That was a very Doctor attitude.
But maybe he was right about that one.
There were times the Doctor had been used, too. Times he hadn't been himself.
Bad times...
The Master had decided long ago that the less the Doctor knew about that, the better.
Maybe there were things neither of them needed to know.
Satisfied, the Master finally went back to actually reading his book.
"I'm sorry I didn't figure it out," the Doctor said then.
"Not your fault," the Master responded. He meant it. Not everything was the Doctor's fault, as much as he might sometimes like it to be.
Because if it was the Doctor's fault, then the Doctor could fix it.
But not even the Doctor could fix everything.
And that was ok.
Sometimes he put too much on himself.
The Doctor needed help, too.
"I would have stopped him, if I'd known," the Doctor said.
The Master looked over at his friend's earnest gray eyes.
"I know," he smiled quietly.
He would have loved to have seen that...
He'd pictured it so many times over the years. Always different. Because it was the Doctor and there was no telling how the situation might have played out exactly.
But, oh... It would have been good.
"Did he ever..." the Doctor squinted.
"What?" the Master asked.
"I don't know," the Doctor said, running a hand through his hair, "ask you to spy, get information, anything like that?"
The Master laughed. "On you, you mean?"
"Yes, basically," the Doctor shrugged, all awkward angles.
The Master rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Oh, Doctor..." he sighed. "Not everything is about you."
But it was a good question... One the Master didn't have an immediate answer for. He thought back, trying to bring fuzzy memories into focus.
Had Rassilon ever asked for something like that?
"Just, he didn't like me very much," the Doctor added, clearly unwilling to drop the subject, "so, I just wondered."
The Master thought hard. It did sound familiar.
It may have come up once or twice.
It certainly did sound like something Rassilon would have done.
It was absolutely something the Master would have done.
"Well, obviously he didn't," the Master told the Doctor, just to answer the question. "Because the programming wouldn't have allowed me to say no. As I'm sure you're aware."
There was a skeptical pause. "That's very unimaginative of him," the Doctor opined.
The Master shrugged casually. "Probably why he lost," he quipped.
The Doctor turned back to his bench, then back towards the Master, unconvinced. "He must have tried something like that, at least once," he said. His eyes were sharp as he stared at his friend. Analytical, scanning for tiny details. "You might not remember."
The Master thought back to the gaps. He remembered Rassilon's pale green eyes. He remembered choices and pain and victories laced with shame and a loyalty to Gallifrey which hadn't even been his...
And another loyalty which had.
He realized that the Doctor was still watching him, insightful, observant. This Doctor saw everything. It was an annoying trait and sometimes the Master couldn't wait for him to regenerate.
"Why does it matter?" the Master asked, looking away uncomfortably.
"Because you didn't," the Doctor pointed out.
The Master turned back and the Doctor grinned, raising those wild eyebrows.
The Master closed his book with a smile, one finger marking the page he'd been on for nearly an hour. "My job was to win the War," he explained in his most condescendingly patient tone. "You were an asset. Sabotaging that would have made no sense."
"Hmm," the Doctor grumbled with a sly expression.
They both returned to their projects.
But the Doctor had raised a good point. The programming had been to obey Rassilon, to fight for Gallifrey.
Not to protect the Doctor.
And the Doctor was right: Rassilon had never been very fond of him.
Thinking of choices, of dilemmas, of loyalties, the Master could sense a hundred different decisions flitting in the periphery of his memories...
Rassilon, Gallifrey, all of Time and Space... Or the Doctor.
The Time War had presented endless scenarios in which action or inaction could have betrayed the Doctor.
And the Master couldn't place the specific circumstances, not every time, but...
He knew what he had chosen.
He'd already saved the Doctor at the cost of his own life, after all. What was anything else in comparison to that?
It was just about consistency, really.
"Thanks for that," the Doctor said out of nowhere.
It seemed that the Doctor had followed that train of thought as expertly as he often did.
This was why neither of them could ever be leader or follower for long: they had too much trouble staying ahead of each other.
The Master scoffed, raising his eyes to the heavens in amusement. "I didn't do anything."
"Thanks for what you didn't do then," the Doctor said, not to be denied his gratitude.
"Anytime, Doctor," the Master smiled.
He absolutely meant it.
He would have fought Rassilon no matter what: it was just his nature. He would have broken, unable to win, the game rigged against him from the start. The pain, the insanity, the nightmares, the Drums... It all would have happened still, set in stone from the moment he was resurrected.
But the fact that Rassilon had tried to use him against the Doctor and continually failed put a new light on the trauma.
Being the wrench in Rassilon's machinations against the Doctor almost made it all worth it, in a way...
Rassilon had tried to make the War about himself. But the Master had redefined what they were fighting for.
He hadn't chosen to be brought back to life, or to work for Rassilon, to be Gallifrey's faithful soldier, even to fight for his own freedom...
But he had chosen for himself what all that was about. What made it all worthwhile. What was really at stake on the grand stage of the Last Great Time War.
Because that's what the Master had really been there for. Not for Gallifrey, not to serve Rassilon's demented agenda, not to save the Universe.
He couldn't care less about any of that.
He'd been there for his friend.
For the Doctor.
However they programmed him, however much they tortured him, whatever they made him do... They couldn't change that.
They'd never even understood it.
So maybe that was the answer to which parts had been him... Because saving the Doctor hadn't been anyone's agenda but his own.
The Doctor jumped up abruptly. "Are you bored?" he said, nearly shouting in the quiet Console room. "I'm bored."
The Master laughed, tossing his neglected book on the glass-topped desk. "Sure, yeah. I could be bored." He crossed his arms, staring at his friend with a crafty smile. "What did you have in mind?"
"Ooh, let's go old school," the Doctor said, quieter now. "I bet we could find a little nest of Daleks out there somewhere."
The Master scoffed in disbelief. "Seriously?"
The Doctor wanted to go hunt down some Daleks to kill? That sounded...
Actually, that sounded delightful.
"Why not?" the Doctor grinned. "I'm feeling nostalgic. And you and I were quite the team, as I recall. Or did you forget that?"
The Master smiled slowly, appreciating the Doctor's roundabout way of asking if those had been some of the good parts. "No... No, I didn't forget that."
The Doctor nodded, satisfied, a vulnerable joy showing in his eyes for just a moment before he hid it again.
And the Master realized that the Doctor might have his own questions about which parts of the Time War had been real...
That would have to be a conversation for another time.
Because the Doctor was all motion and excitement and wanted to go blow up Daleks. And it was a perfect idea.
"Come on," he said conspiratorially to the Master, jerking his head towards the stairs up to the TARDIS's main level. "Let's remind them why they didn't win."
The Doctor shot out of sight and the TARDIS engines started up before the Master even had a chance to stand.
He checked his laser screwdriver was fully charged and deliberately followed the Doctor's haphazard path upstairs. The Doctor was doing his usual frantic dance around the TARDIS Console. The Master took his usual half of the controls without a word. The Doctor smiled at him from the other side before ducking his head again.
The Master knew why the Daleks hadn't won.
It was the same reason Rassilon hadn't won.
One impossible idiot with a screwdriver.
As much as he appreciated the Doctor including him when assigning credit for that, the Master had always known how the War would end.
Rassilon had thought it was about weapons, about assets, about control.
About blood. A forced loyalty to what you'd been born into.
Rassilon had been wrong. He'd never seen his error and probably never would.
But the Master knew.
He'd learned over the centuries that while most of the Universe might play by the rules, there was always one exception.
And that the reality was so much harder to understand than what Rassilon saw. Incomprehensible and unforeseeable, even with all the resources of the Time Lords at your disposal...
Sometimes the entire Universe hung on one man's completely illogical choice.
If Rassilon had been a little smarter, he would have made the choice the Master had: protect the Doctor. At all costs, as if the very fate of Time and Space itself depended on it.
Because it did.
And it was obvious, really, if you knew the Doctor. If you'd seen what he could do.
The Master had learned firsthand.
The simple truth was that no one could win against the Doctor.
The Doctor's side was always the winning side.
Sometimes it was just smarter to fight with him rather than against him.
And also sometimes far more fun...
The Master smiled, anticipating the mess they were about to land in.
It was going to be a bad day to be a Dalek.
The End
Phew...
Thanks so much for reading!
Comments appreciated!
... And a BIG THANK YOU to IncomingAlbatross for supporting me through this. I did NOT have a good time writing this fic and she heard a lot about that. Thank you, sister! :)