34. One Foot in the Grave.
His mind was laid bare before her, twisting and turning, held firmly in the grips of its own insanity. Every now and again, disjointed flashes of memory rushed or trundled past; a sliver of colour here, a mere whiff of a smell there. It was easy to tell that, under different circumstances, this mind was, quite simply, extraordinary. The details that he had noticed and were subsequently littered throughout his memories were much more intricate than in the average person's mind. And the knowledge he had… She almost found herself admiring it.
But there was something odd, something not quite balanced. Every now and then she caught smatterings of sounds: echoes of an echo, the sound already faded and confined to the memories of past thoughts, but nevertheless strongly felt in the present mind. The legacy of The Drums was unmistakable.
She moved forwards cautiously, wary of setting off triggers that would lead back to the conscious mind. It would be disastrous for him to wake up now. She carefully trapped memories as they went past, trying to establish if there was any sort of order that she could follow.
The Untempered Schism was monstrous to his young mind: large and overbearing, it seemed to hold an infinite realm of possibilities, and all of them were there, just there, right within his grip. No-one else would ever have this power. No one could even dream of what he, a mere child, was seeing as reality. His eyes widened, stunned by his own imagination, the sound of his own excited hearts pounding in his ears.
And they would never stop. The drums, the drums, the drums, the never ending drums. When they had first started, he had cherished his silent dreams. Not so now. They even followed him there, distorted by his subconscious, gaining a frightening and ethereal quality. They were tenacious, and he grudgingly started to admire them, if only for that.
She let those memories go and moved on to the next, grabbing it with ease and stepping inside.
He was strolling calmly through his father's estates, barefoot on the red grass. He felt more free that way, liberated from the bookish constraints of society. He allowed his mind to wander in time with his feet, which pounded out a rhythm in time with his head. He saw a small figure in the distance and immediately recognised it as his friend. He raised his hand in greeting, but the other boy had turned away, nervous. Not 'scared' – it would never do to call the boy 'scared', he thought with scorn, imagining the protests that such a remark was bound to create. But he was definitely not at ease. He sighed; he should never have told his friend about the drums. After all, everyone had heard the stories of others who had gone mad in the ritual. Even his own father was afraid of him now.
She withdrew carefully, feeling as though she had been spying on a private issue from the Doctor's and the Master's pasts. Though he was burning with curiosity, she forced herself to continue. She soon established that most, if not all, of his thoughts and memories had been at least partially motivated by those drums.
Maybe if I do this, they'll stop. It's what they want…
Those drums, calling for something, calling for success, for an action that the Master had had no hope in understanding. The call to greatness, to restoring the Time Lords. Only there was no way that he could have known that; they, to him, were a call to war, to battle, to success, but for reasons that he could not understand. And he could not control it. So he had tried to control it the only way he could.
He had tried to appease them, as though The Drums had been voices in his head urging him forwards. More than just a symptom of insanity; they were the cause.
She wondered what he had been like before, when he was a child. Though she was only a mental projection of her physical self, she nevertheless felt herself growing cold at the reminder of the underlying contradictions and cruelties of the ancient people who had thought up the ritual. And she was starting to understand why the Doctor had run away, never to return. For a man with such a love of freedom, it must have been suffocating at best.
Suddenly, the mind around her began to shift, and River stopped her poking and prodding, glancing about her warily. Colours flashed and flickered, indicating that the Master was still dreaming, and River relaxed.
Coming towards her, shrouded in mysterious darkness, the figures blurred, was a new memory, one that had not been there before the Master's mind had shifted, and River watched it in suspicion. Not for the first time, she wished that it was possible to use scanners in mind-links. Instead, she watched the memory come closer, closer, unable to even determine if it was as dangerous as it looked. She tried to move out of the way, but found herself held in place. Eventually, she was consumed by it.
oOo
The Doctor watched anxiously as River placed her fingers on the Master's face. The latter's features flinched slightly out of pure instinct, but despite the Doctor's life energy and River's Strengthening Potion, he did not wake.
The Doctor wasn't sure whether he should be relieved or not; after all, the Master was hardly likely to volunteer the information if he was awake. Yet this felt like violating him.
It's to save his life, remember?
And so, with no way of helping besides being ready to intervene should something go wrong, the Doctor leaned back in his chair and watched. He just hoped it wouldn't take too long.
oOo
"Ah, Cornelius."
With those calm words, Dumbledore strode into the Minister of Magic's office. The room in question was in slight disarray, as though a minor fight had occurred within its walls, finished fairly quickly. And, from the way the Minister himself was pacing around, muttering and periodically checking behind the curtains and under his desk, it was entirely possible that an assassin sympathetic to Voldemort's cause (or just plain fed up of Fudge) had decided to make the most of the opportunity that war had afforded them.
As the Aurors who had summoned Dumbledore closed the door behind them, it became clear that the Minister was firing on even less cylinders than normal. Dumbledore cleared his throat politely.
Fudge jumped a foot in the air and span around, pointing his wand at the older wizard, eyes wide and blinking in his white face. Dumbledore noted without great surprise that the wand in question had been snapped in half. Fudge lowered it warily, sighing.
"Dumbledore," he breathed, all pretence at superiority and decisiveness having long ago snapped along with his wand, "thank Merlin."
"To what, exactly, do I owe the pleasure of this summons?"
Fudge stared at him, nonplussed. Dumbledore blinked calmly back, trying not to let his anger and frustration with the man before him show. Now was not the time for more arguments.
"The Death Eaters, Dumbledore!" Fudge replied, some of his pomposity returning in the face of Dumbledore's apparent obtuseness. "The Death Eaters!"
Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. Perhaps he had time for a little debate after all. "I was under the impression," he replied, allowing the anger to re-enter his tone, "that they were all reformed and/or non-existent. You were rather vague on the subject and seemed entirely unable to decide which delusion sounded best."
Fudge's eye began to twitch. "Ok, I was wrong," he hissed, his mouth barely moving. His eyes darted back to the curtains, as though expecting journalists to leap into the room, quills poised.
"Yes, you were. And now there had been an uprising within your own government, which is now even more of a shambles than it was before. School children have fought and died against perhaps the most dangerous dark wizard who has ever lived, because Ministry reinforcements were unprepared."
The Aurors present each took a step backwards warily, as if to go out the door, as Dumbledore's expression became severe, his eyes boring into Fudge from over the top of his normally sparkling half-moon glasses.
"The children should never have had to fight, Cornelius."
Fudge at least had the good grace to look ashamed. "I never thought… could never have imagined…"
"The signs were there," Dumbledore pointed out mercilessly. "You saw them all, you knew what they meant."
"And what would you have done in my place?" Fudge snapped, suddenly, sinking into the chair behind his desk. His hands were shaking as he began to rearrange the fallen ornaments. "The world wasn't ready for him to come back. It would have caused widespread panic, paranoia…" His hands, along with his words, trailed off, and he sat, staring at the wood of his desk, looking utterly lost.
The Aurors exchanged awkward glances as the silence began to stretch.
Finally, Dumbledore spoke. "You know perfectly well what I would have done."
Everyone winced, remembering the advice that Dumbledore had been imploring Fudge to follow for at least the past year. Fudge sighed and wiped a hand over his face, looking drained.
"I'll be replaced for this."
Dumbledore nodded. "I daresay that is likely."
No one contradicted him. Fudge swallowed convulsively, looking sick as he gazed at the minor destruction around him. One Auror went over to the window and drew the curtain shut before his gaze could catch the much larger scale destruction on the street below.
"Perhaps we should move onto the important issues at hand," Dumbledore suggested, moving to sit in the seat opposite Fudge. "Why did you bring me here?"
Fudge seemed to find his next words almost impossible to say, given the circumstances, but after an awkward beat or two of silence, during which everyone in the room watched as his jaw did push-ups, he finally succeeded.
"I need your help."
oOo
The memory was, anticlimactically, of the Master sitting in a library. River looked around curiously, noting the straight bookshelves, the simple technology, the fact that this was the current regeneration of the Master. What was so special about this memory?
She walked closer, peered over the Master's shoulder, and began reading the book that he had opened. Suddenly, the Master snorted in a strange mixture of glee and contempt, and began scribbling in a brand new notebook.
"And he found the key to immortality in a human library," the Master scoffed to himself, as though narrating his life story. "In London."
He started making notes at a phenomenal speed that would impress even the Doctor, who wasn't exactly a slow writer himself. River quickly read over his shoulder, making mental notes to review later.
The text in question was clearly a pioneering text in its field (which, she noted with interest, wasn't 'immortality', as she had half expected), detailing the discovery of chemicals which could revolutionise science as they knew it. The author expanded on the properties of these chemicals – each thought previously impossible by scientists – and postulated ideas for their usage (which, River noted from a futuristic viewpoint, were far from the true potential that could be achieved).
The Master shut the book before she had finished, but that hardly mattered; she had seen enough. The Master put the book back on the shelf of what River now realised to be a university library, and muttered something about how humans were too stupid to see what was right under their noses.
As the memory began to fade, River pondered on why, after what had felt like hours of searching, she had not only found the information she needed, but had been given it.
But as she carefully withdrew from the Master's mind, careful not to jolt him to wakefulness, River felt a short, small wave of relief that wasn't her own. She found herself blinking down at the Master's inert, pale face in astonishment.
Clearly, despite his reluctance to spend the rest of his life with the Doctor, his subconscious and survival instinct had decided that he would rather live.
"River?"
She looked up, feeling slightly drained but nevertheless pleased with herself, and saw the Doctor staring intently at her.
"It worked," she told him.
"He's getting worse again."
River had the scanner in her hand immediately and pointed it over the other Time Lord's chest. The readings weren't good. The Doctor may have bought him a little more time, but after the excursion in his mind and the stress it had caused his body, this time was rapidly diminishing.
She put the scanner back in her pocket and walked briskly out the room.
"River!"
She could hear the Doctor trying to catch up with her, but did not slow down until she finally made it to her destination. As expected, River found Snape amongst a cluster of boiling and bubbling cauldrons, still preparing potions for Madame Pomfrey.
"I have it."
Snape's head snapped up at the exact same moment that the Doctor entered the room.
"What?"
"I know how to cure the Master."
Snape sighed. "Not 'what?', 'what is it?'"
"Do you have these ingredients?"
She scribbled out a list for him, knowing that he may not be able to remember them all, or even recognise them all. This was a different world, after all, and on top of that, they were in the magical world of this different world. There was no guarantee that what existed in their universe existed here and, if it did, that wizards had heard of it.
Snape stared at the paper for a few moments, before beginning to write the magical names alongside the science ones. His eyebrows rose once he reached the bottom. "That is remarkably similar to the potion that Barty Crouch Junior attempted to use."
The Doctor muttered an exclamation of annoyance. "So we could have cured the Master hours ago?"
Snape shook his head. "It was made for the wrong person, and the wrong species. And it was not quite the right potion for what we are attempting. It will have to be modified."
"Right," the Doctor muttered. "Of course it was."
Snape just rolled his eyes at him and began preparing the ingredients. "I can make the potion," he said, "but we are missing a component."
"What?" the Doctor asked. "Whatever it is, we can find it. He must have been hiding something, River, but we can go back – if you need more time for a mind-link, I can give more life forc-"
"You'll do no such thing!" River snapped. She turned back to Snape. "What's missing?"
"A potion such as this will require a template of the result."
"Such as?"
"I have never made this potion before," Snape began, slowly.
"Wonderful," the Doctor muttered to himself.
"However," Snape drawled, glaring at the Doctor, "I would imagine that a template of a healthy Time Lord should suffice."
He began cutting the ingredients and mixing them together. "In this way, it will give something for the potion to focus on."
"Nanogenes!"
River and Snape turned to stare at the Doctor, who appeared surprised by his own announcement.
The Doctor cleared his throat. "You can use me."
"You're not a healthy Time Lord," River pointed out. "In fact, you're only marginally better off than he is."
The Doctor flapped a hand in her general direction. "That's not important."
"It's very important."
"The Doctor may be correct," Snape interjected. "He is not healthy, but he has a stable life force, the capacity to regenerate…" he looked the Doctor up and down. "The capacity for overall health is there. Giving that to the Master may mean a longer recovery period, but his primary problems would be solved."
River stared between the two, turning this over in her mind. While it was true that the Doctor was in no way himself a perfect template due to his health, his basic biology was.
"We need a sample that isn't affected by your condition," she told him.
"How about something with some nice DNA?" The Doctor suggested.
"Would that not turn the Master into you?"
The Doctor stared at Snape in open-mouthed shock. "Where did you learn about DNA? You're a wizard!"
"Muggle science is not entirely useless."
"Right… good for you. I think. Now, will the Master turn into me?" The Doctor repeated. "Fair question – DNA does make you everything you are, after all. But no. Clearly we won't give him anything that defines me, only the Time Lord Base Code."
Snape looked at him blankly.
"I probably should have mentioned that a Time Lord's DNA is different to a human's," the Doctor said helpfully. "But not to worry, I know what I'm doing."
"And I'll help him when he gets stuck."
Snape smirked. "I'll brew the potion," he said, getting back to work.
The following few hours were among the tensest hours that the Doctor had ever experienced, which was certainly saying something. He spent the first hour pacing in the Master's bedroom, rarely tearing his eyes from the still form in the bed, and would have done so for longer, had River not tried to drag him back to bed. Which of course he refused.
"You're such a child!" River said, thoroughly frustrated, when the Doctor employed a tactic used by children everywhere, no matter what the race, era or situation. He crossed his arms and sat cross-legged on the floor, expression murderously sulky.
"I'm not moving, River. Not when he's dying."
"And you'll be dying too soon if you don't start taking care of yourself!"
The Doctor flapped his hands again. She was really starting to hate it when he did that. "I'm fine."
"You are not fine!"
"I'm fine-r than him."
She gritted her teeth. "You can be so damn stubborn."
"You're one to talk."
"You need to rest," she tried again.
His face lit up suddenly, as though he'd had a brilliant idea. She still wasn't sure whether she loved it when he did that, or if she wanted to slap him. Any second now, she would find out what her reaction was going to be.
"I can rest here."
River wordlessly deposited him in a chair and went to fetch him some broth. She wasn't entirely sure who had won.
Predictably, the Doctor barely managed to eat any of the broth she had made him take from her, but given his current state and the situation, it was actually better than she had hoped for. At least he was sitting down now, at least, rather than pacing like a caged animal. And it also made him a much easier target for her needles.
"OW!"
"Sorry Sweetie," she said, grinning angelically as he stared at the needle in her hand.
The hours ticked by, both of them watching the Master, though River was also watching the Doctor in case he did something stupid, like give away his life force again. Thankfully, he didn't. But as the Master got weaker and weaker, and his breaths got slower and slower, River realised that the Doctor's sacrifice was the only thing that stood between the Master and death. She just hoped that the potion would be finished in time for it to have been worthwhile.
But his breaths just got slower and slower.
"The potion," the Doctor said.
"Professor Snape will bring it up when it's done," she replied gently.
"How long?"
"I don't know."
The Doctor hated not knowing; she could see it in his eyes, in the way he squirmed in his seat. More time passed. River noticed the Doctor was pinching himself in the arm to stay awake.
"Go to sleep."
"No."
"I'll tell you if anything happens."
"No."
But several minutes later, the pinching and quiet gasps of pain stopped. He had fallen asleep, upright in the chair, head cradled in his chest. River quietly scanned him, looked at the readings, and sighed.
Half an hour later, one of the Master's hearts stopped beating.
oOo
He was standing on the red grass of his friend's estate, staring at the hill where he knew the house to be. It was majestic; a feat of Time Lord engineering, and a testament to his friend's family's wealth. He had gone there many times, had always been welcome. In some ways, it was his second home.
But not today.
He had heard the rumours, of course, passed through their families, long before his friend had told him. And he suspected that his friend knew that he had run away, though he had only ever told his parents. But this was different. This was dangerous. Any Time Lord who had ever had such a reaction to the Untempered Schism as his friend had had… well, they were never the same again.
When his friend had told him, they had both felt something change. Yet neither knew what. And he, for his part, had stared into his friend's eyes as though he could see it, see his madness.
But he wasn't mad. These were only superstitions. Just because he saw something unexpected and heard drums didn't mean he would go mad. And just because he ran didn't mean that he always would be, either. They were just stories, stereotypes. There had to be exceptions, there always were.
He saw a figure coming towards him, suddenly, and he realised it was his friend. And he did something that he had never thought himself capable of; he turned away. And closed his eyes almost immediately, regret washing over him. Turn back, turn back…
But it was too late. When he turned around, at last, a nervous smile plastered on his lips, his friend was nowhere to be seen.
The Doctor blinked his eyes open blearily, flinching away from the hands that were shaking him. The room slowly came into focus, and he saw the grown-up man that the boy had become, lying in the bed. And it wasn't right: the Master was so strong, so invincible, yet here he was, a pale shadow of himself, breathing as though any breath could be his last.
The hands stopped shaking him and the Doctor looked up to see River staring down at him.
"How is he?"
River pushed out a breath. "One heart has stopped, and the other is getting weaker," she said quietly. "But the potion is ready."
The Doctor was on his feet before he even knew what was happening. Now that River was no longer blocking his field of vision, he could see that Snape had entered the room and was pouring a serving of the potion into a cup.
"Wait," the Doctor said, his voice husky with sleep. "You need the template."
"We have it already," Snape replied.
The Doctor turned to glare at River accusingly. "You should have woken me!"
"I tried."
"I am going to give him the potion now," Snape said pointedly. "If that is convenient." When the other two fell silent, he nodded. "Good. I will need someone to hold his head steady and help him to swallow."
"I'll do it," the Doctor said.
He carefully lowered himself onto the mattress and drew the Master's head into his lap. If it hadn't been for Snape standing over them with the potion and River watching, he could almost have believed he was on the Valiant, holding desperately onto the Master as he died from a single, simple bullet. One chunk of metal – was that really all it had been?
Snape began carefully pouring the potion down the Master's mouth, and the Doctor began helping him swallow, his fingers shaking as he massaged the throat. The Master's skin was cool to the touch.
The cup was gone. Several moments passed. The Doctor looked at River questioningly. River checked her scanner, and shook her head.
"No improvement."
"Again," the Doctor ordered.
And so they tried, over and over, until on the fifth attempt, the Doctor felt something move beneath his fingertips. The Master coughed.
"Life signs are getting stronger but still not fixed. Try giving him more."
By the seventh cup, the Master's hearts were both beating normally, and he was breathing strongly. By the eighth, his colour started returning.
And on the ninth, he opened his eyes.