The Confession Dial
Note: Quick note! Not a follow up the Oncoming Storm. The gang don't know about Gallifrey here.
Chapter 1
The fam were just sitting around talking when the Master suddenly teleported into the TARDIS.
All three of them jumped up, flinching away from him. The Master laughed, pocketing his device and taking out something else.
He held it threateningly towards the group, who were trying to back towards the stairs so they could alert the Doctor.
"Ah - ah - ah." He pointed the device at an old Kerblam package and shrunk it. "One false move and you're all dead."
Just then the Doctor moved silently onto the stairs behind him. She took in the whole situation in one glance and before anyone had time to think she stealthily moved behind the Master and tapped him on the shoulder.
He turned and she decked him with all her strength in the face, sending him sprawling to the ground. The companions recovered from the shock of seeing the Doctor hit someone and scrambled to grab the device that had fallen from his hands, but the Doctor just calmly moved over to the console and flipped a few switches.
A blue beam of light surrounded the Master and when he got back up he walked straight into it like he'd crashed into a wall. He growled low in his throat, staring down the Doctor. She watched him right back, a cold look on her face the others had never seen.
"I knew you'd be back," she said.
He tried to sneer, but couldn't stop one hand going to his jaw. "Looking for me, were you?"
She turned back to the console and started flipping switches. "I need to drop you all off," she said. "Sorry. Lots to do."
They all exchanged glances. After the Judoon incident they hoped they'd see an end to her shutting them out, and up until now she seemed to have been doing better.
She caught the looks on their faces. "I know," she said, softening. "But I need to speak to him one to one. Can you trust me with this?"
They exchanged glances again, Graham speaking for the group like usual. "We trust you, Doc. We just don't trust him."
"Yes, Doctor," the Master said. "Don't send the children away. Let them hear."
She ignored him. "Here. Take the com dots. I need backup, I call you. Fair?"
The boys took one each, but Yaz hesitated. "Doctor, I don't like this... he's too dangerous..."
"Have all of you failed to notice she punched me first?" the Master grumbled.
The Doctor ignored him. She focused on the group, feeling the unease in the air. Even though only Yaz had spoken up, they all had that look on their faces that they got a lot lately, like they were holding themselves back from saying something.
Family. She needed to remember they were family, just as much as she fixated on her duty of care. And family didn't make other family worry.
"...An hour," she said. "I promise to contact you in one hour. But right now, I just need a little space to address something. Can you give me that?"
They exchanged glances and the Doctor tried to keep her face neutral. She had caught sight of herself in reflections before, something burning in her eyes no matter how hard she tried to keep it down. And she was so desperate to be alone with the Master, to interrogate him, that her hands were trembling on the console.
They didn't notice. They looked amongst themselves and nodded. Then Graham surprised her by grabbing her in a quick hug. "One hour on the dot, Doc," he said, glancing at the Master with a look she immediately identified, having felt it so often herself: a familial, even parental, protectiveness.
Of her.
She swallowed down a lump in her throat. "I'll see you soon," she said. "I promise."
She flipped the lever.
The Master clicked his tongue. "Such a shame. They could've had an entertaining show."
The Doctor didn't look at him as she turned dials on the sonic and pressed a button. The little device emitted an ear piercing screech at a frequency only Time Lords could hear. She grit her teeth as the sound ripped through her skull, then shut it off and turned to face the Master.
She'd caught him off guard - he had doubled over, hands clapped to his ears. "The hell was that for?"
"I don't want to hear anything from you except answers to my questions," she said. "You talk out of turn, you get the noise. Understand?"
"That noise affects you, too." He smirked. "You would hurt yourself to hurt me, then? Sounds like something I would do."
"You bloody died to spite me. Don't compare us."
But she knew he wasn't listening. His smile was a full, satisfied one. He looked her up and down, very, very slowly, and she felt her skin crawl. "How else are you like me? How far would you go?"
"Tell me about the Timeless Child. Tell me why you did what you did."
He leant back. "I told you. You have to discover that for yourself."
"Made that a little difficult, didn't you? Everyone I cpuld ask is dead!"
The intensity of his gaze increased. He was staring into her eyes like he'd happily do it forever. "How did it feel for you, love?"
Her fingers twitched on the sonic. He grinned a manic grin. "When it was you who destroyed Gallifrey, didn't it feel... good? Didn't it feel so much better to be powerful, to remake the universe how you wanted?"
She set off the frequency again but this time he didn't cover his ears. He smiled, feral, mustered through it.
"No," she said, when the ringing in her ears died down. "I don't feel that. I hated myself."
He clicked his tongue. "It was your best moment. I was so sad when I found out you'd overwritten it."
She turned away. "Let me know when you're ready to talk. I'm not going to stand here and play head games with you."
"What if I'm right?" he said suddenly, and she stopped. "What if you agree with me, that they deserved it?"
She fought to keep her voice steady. "No matter what the Time Lords did, the rest of the planet didn't deserve to die. They were innocent."
He laughed. "Relative term, love. Big words from the one who left first and never came back." He cackled so hard he started to retch and she couldn't help but look back at him, appalled. He sobered up, pressing his head as close to the forcefield as possible. "Ohhh... don't look at me like that, love. Deep down inside, you know when you look in the mirror, it's me that looks back. You need me to remind you where you came from. Especially after you tried so hard to forget this time. Without me, you wouldn't be you."
She pressed the sonic against the forcefield and blasted the noise straight in his ear. The Master cried out, flinched back.
"Ha! Funny joke!" She glared back at him, getting up close to look him in the eye. "I was without you, nearly a whole year. And you know what I was?" The anger boiled over and she knew she was too far gone to stop it now. "Happier. I was so much happier without you."
She went back to the console and started flipping dials. Forget this. She just needed to dump him somewhere he couldn't cause trouble...
"I was so much happier when I didn't have to deal with you and your bullshit." And she turned to retreat into the TARDIS, anywhere to get away from him.
"I know about the Confession dial," he said.
She stopped dead.
"Yes, that's right, my dear Doctor." His voice was deadly serious now, as morose as it has been on the first message. "I know what they did to you...how they locked you up for billions and billions of years. How you didn't give in to them."
A cold chill spread over her skin. She risked looking back, finding him watching her, cold anger in his eyes.
"And how you let them get away with it." He shook his head, tsk'ed at her. "Such an insult to the one who saved all their lives. I wouldn't have stood for it, but I knew you didn't have the stomach to punish them."
"What are you saying...?" she whispered, dread pooling in her stomach.
"The Timeless Child isn't the only reason I destroyed Gallifrey." He saw the horror in her eyes, she saw him feeding on it. "Yes, my love. I also did it...to get revenge, for you. Always for you."
The Doctor staggered back, hand going to her mouth to contain her agony. The carnage, everything she had seen on Gallifrey...
For her.
He had destroyed everything for her.
She was bending double, gasping. And he was watching ever little bit of her agony, she knew it better than she knew anything. She wanted to tell herself he was lying, but she knew that wasn't the case, either.
Then a simple thought came through: no.
No more of this.
She straightened, a primal rage clearing her head. Her hand moved to the console and she regarded him with cold burning eyes.
"There she is..." he whispered, choking up.
She shut off the forcefield, leaving the two them alone in the TARDIS, no barriers left to protect him from her.
"All right, love." He straightened his suit, beckoning her. "Come and get me."