A/N: Two out of three! There'll be one more chapter after this.

Chapter 2

For a moment they just stood staring each other down. The Doctor pushed at his mental barriers and when she met no resistance, she opened the floodgates on him.

Every bad thought, every depressive spiral she had had over the last few weeks was weaponised and used to bombard his mind, every dizzy sensation from lack of sleep, every hunger pang from her lack of appetite, everything deployed with a furious refrain of: You did this. You did this. You hurt me. You won.

His expression stayed neutral, so she changed tack, sending him every happy, carefree memory she could muster. How much lighter she felt those first few months, new again.

How much of a gut punch it had been, seeing him again.

A slight change in his expression. She was getting to him.

Good.

She crossed the space towards him and feinted a blow and he went to guard but at he last second she switched sides and struck at the vulnerable nerve cluster in his shoulder. He cried out and doubled up and she followed through, knocking him off his feet to the floor, keeping him down with her own body weight.

He didn't try to throw her off, she didn't pin him down. Instead the Doctor put her hands to his temples, focusing her energy towards his mind.

"Show me," she demanded. "Show me what you know."

He lay there on his back, staring up at her. "Go on then, love," he said softly. "Take a look."

She searched his face for deception, found none. She shut her eyes and reached out.

A flash of the Timeless Child appeared before her, but then it was gone. The Doctor chased it into the dark, but different images and sounds assaulted her.

Drums. The pounding of drums, the deafening beating of a familiar heart.

The madness came next, his irrepressible urge to hurt everyone, even her, especially her, even when he didn't get much enjoyment out of it.

The grief he felt that so mirrored hers. The question of whether she felt the same the first time around.

She chased harder, the answer pulling away from her into a fog of his memories. The Master sat up suddenly, but he didn't try to push her off. He pressed their foreheads together, hands coming up to hold her face...creeping up to her temple.

She had a chance to pull back, didn't take it.

The Master pushed back, looking into her memories with such ferocity she was halted in her search of his mind. The images that flashed before her were from her other self, the one he hadn't seen.

Then he started looking at the year with her fam, maybe checking the claim that she was happier without him. She let him look.

Then something changed. The two of them ceased looking at the same time, the contact becoming a mind meld of abstract thought and feeling.

Grief rose up from the murky gloom and she didn't know if it was hers or his, but he was there with her, feeling it too. His fingers just brushed into her hair as it crashed over them both. The tears she'd been fighting to keep down welled up in her eyes. She didn't let them fall, but he knew anyway. He was stroking at her temples with his thumb, saying something she couldn't quite catch.

After the grief, the deep soul aching tiredness. She knew this one came from her.

All the anger, grief and hatred... he pulled it from her, taking it all in, accepting all of it without disgust or revulsion. She gasped at the feeling of the weight lifting, at how much easier it was to breathe for the first time in weeks.

"I can take it," he said. "Put it on me, if you want to run."

She shook her head, feeling an unspoken snare in his words. Anything to have her attention. Anything to be needed.

Her nails dug into his hair.

"What if I erased it?" she whispered. "Your memories. Then we would both be..."

He didn't even flinch at the awful words. He just reached up, covering her hands with his and sliding them down, down to put her hands to his neck. She would have blushed at the intimacy, if it wasn't for what she new he would say next.

"Death would be kinder," he said, "Love."

She let her hands drop, leaning into their mental link. "Sorry... I'm so sorry..."

Through the link she felt it: he was sorry too.

He would just never say so.

His hands dropped from her temples and she felt the shift in his thoughts as he very gently touched one hand to the side of her neck, her collarbone.

Now she was blushing.

His other hand raised her chin, and he gently pressed their lips together.

Then he pulled away, the link severing and all her grief and anger dropping back onto her like a lead weight.

She grabbed at the console to anchor herself, one hand pressed to her chest. The Master shimmied out from under her, looking down at her with a neutral expression.

"I can't give you what you want, Doctor," he said. "But you might be wiser to think about what you need."

"W-what?"

"Your little pets. I can feel it clearly, how you won't let them help you..." His mouth turned down sourly. "You want to get through what's coming without wanting to burn everything to the ground? You'll need them. Unless," he said, smiling wickedly, "You like ending up here in the dark... with me."

She stood, straightening her clothes and hair. "I'd like you to leave now," she said softly.

He smiled. "Fine. I'll be seeing you again, soon enough." He rubbed his jaw as he headed to the TARDIS door. "And your right hook... you've still got it in you."

She turned her back on him, waiting for the tell tale crackle of whatever teleporter he was using.

But then he reached out to her mind again, sending one last thought:

I know you were bored without me.

She tried to slam the connection shut, but he held out one last second.

He said: I know I was bored without you.

Then a crackle of electricity and she span around just in time to see him vanish.