Author's Note:Well, I think it's safe to say that this story is officially too fun to stop writing. Don't worry, there is an end in sight. The chapters just somehow end up being longer than planned and need to be cut in half... Would you believe me if I said it's the end soon? Hope you enjoy this chapter :p

42. Who let the drums out?

The Master stretched lazily and considered turning the page of the book he was reading. He had reached the end of the last sentence on it, which, he supposed, dictated that he continue. But he was already halfway through it – a book almost as thick as his head – and it had only taken him a day. Ordinarily, he prized his Time Lord reading skills (it made evil plans so much easier and quicker to concoct, after all), but this time it was more of a curse than a blessing. He had the rest of his life to read this, assuming the Doctor never let him out.

Which, of course, he would. The Doctor was just so soft. How much more predictable could you get? But it was a matter of when. How long did he have before the Doctor thought he had 'mellowed', had lost all wish to cause destruction now that the drums were gone? Because that was the only likely time that the Doctor would let him out.

The Master stared at the last word.

He studied its letters.

He rearranged them, for fun, to see how many new words it could form.

Not many, it would appear.

He sighed and let his head thunk back onto the headrest of his comfortable armchair. His hands, still supporting the heavy book, ambivalently marked the page that he had stopped on. He considered throwing the book in the fire and trying to reconstruct it from memory.

He sighed again.

He had never really realised, even when forced to be human in that hellhole at the end of the universe, just how slowly time passed. Even his time sense was beginning to get confused – an embarrassing fact, since he was fairly sure he had not even been locked up for a fortnight.

Was that really how long it took to break him? A fortnight of boredom?

He let his mind drift, floating around in formless colours, revisiting planets he had once tried to control, revisiting Gallifrey, seeing one more time those luscious fields of red grass that the Doctor had snatched from him, had banished forever. Because the Doctor (the good one, his mind thought sardonically) had not merely destroyed their planet, he had destroyed it within a time locked war – neither of them could ever go back there. Ever.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that. On the one hand: no pesky conservative, fusty old Time Lords around to stop him and tell him what not to do. He was completely free. If he had his own TARDIS, his own equipment, he could enjoy dominion over time itself. He could rewrite everything and yet have the original existing alongside it. He could travel to alternate realities. He could, with his long life span, achieve so much. But he had nothing.

On the other hand: nothing to go back to. No family, no estates, none of that power, none of that privilege that he had grown up with. And no access to the people who had ruined him, who had put that damnable drumming in his head.

Because that was the reason for it all, when you really got down to it. He had vague memories of his life before those drums – all precious eight, silent years. He had been a child genius, destined for great things. He had chosen to be friends with the Doctor. Goody goody two shoes Doctor. What did that say about his childhood self?

And then it had all changed. Those drums; at first an irritant, then annoying, very quickly turning to maddening. He would do anything, anything at all, to get away from them. And they were always leading him in a certain direction. He couldn't control the drumming, but everything else could be controlled, everything else could be mastered. He could finally be the Master of something. And if he was, would the drums then stop? Something told him that they would, but he had always thought that it had been a vain hope.

Then Rassilon in all his might had come out of the time lock and he had realised what had happened, the insanity of it all. Those desperate few, those people he and the rest of the planet looked to for guidance, they had sent the signal back in time and ruined a child's life, condemned him to madness in every single one of his regenerations. 13 insane bodies, 1 insane mind struggling through all of them, tortured every second of every day, knowing that it would never stop.

All because the Time Lords had got too full of themselves, had thought they could take on the Daleks and win.

Dum dum dum dum.

He hated them. He wanted to steal their lives from them like they had stolen his. But no, the Doctor had to go and make sure, right down to swallowing the key, that he could never do that.

Dum dum dum dum.

He stared sightlessly into the fire, fingers unknowingly tapping out the familiar rhythm, his page long ago lost.

oOo

He wasn't sure how much time had passed, but it must have been a considerable amount – he had fallen asleep. Time Lords rarely did that; they had no need for it. Though, he had to admit, he had no idea if extreme boredom could mimic the effects of tiredness and convince him to rest. He had never really been that bored.

Something had jerked him awake – of that he was fairly certain.

He looked around, dazed by the unfamiliar effects of deep sleep, and noticed that the book he had been reading was lying at his feet. He regarded it with interest. Could he have thrown a book that heavy that far in his sleep?

A second later, he got his answer. The TARDIS suddenly and without warning lurched drunkenly to the side, and the Master was forced to cling for dear life to the armchair. He rolled his eyes and muttered insults under his breath vaguely aimed at the Doctor and his abominable driving skills. When would the idiot learn that there were other levers and buttons than the ones he thought he knew about? He'd never had this problem, even when he'd had to fight against the Doctor's sonic lock.

The TARDIS lurched and juddered again, briefly righting the Master, before he was thrown across the room and landed, rather fortunately, in a pile of beanbags that seemed to have appeared from nowhere. He lay in the pile, slowly sinking, eyebrows raised. They certainly weren't there before. Was the TARDIS protecting him? That was a novel approach. Last time he had been on the ship, she had been trying to kill him at every opportunity. Even making toast became a lethal activity.

Or perhaps the Doctor had convinced her that it was necessary to keep him safe. He was crazy like that.

Without warning, the juddering and shaking stopped. The TARDIS screeched – either in anger or pain, the Master could not be sure. He simply lay below his cocoon of beanbags, wondering what had been happening and whether he would ever find out. He sincerely hoped that it would not be like this whenever the Doctor went on an adventure. Surely in all his lives he had learned how to fly the thing. But then, the Doctor had always been a bit slow.

Beep.

The Master shot up straight, head appearing from within the mess of beanbags like a jack-in-a-box. He stared at the door to his cell in astonishment.

Well. That was unexpected.

"What," the Master asked in confusion, "are you doing in my prison? Haven't you heard of personal space?"

The Doctor stood in the doorway looking, the Master noted without much surprise, absolutely terrible. His skin was sallow and sunken, he had heavy, dark smudges underneath his eyes – clearly he hadn't caught up on his sleep debt from imprisonment. He looked the Doctor up and down, noting the clothes that seemed baggier than they had a mere two weeks (ish) ago, the loose bowtie, the untucked shirt, the tired posture. The Doctor was leaning against the doorway to the Master's cell, trying valiantly to look as though the wall wasn't the only thing that was holding him upright. But his legs, which were slightly bent and probably shaking, told a different story.

"I need your help."

The Master climbed slowly from the pile of beanbags, absolutely refusing to have this conversation in such a ridiculous position. He walked up to the Doctor, stopping a foot away from him.

"Don't you normally say 'let me help'?"

The Doctor just blinked slowly, gathering a response.

The Master frowned. "How long have I been in here?"

"Two weeks," the Doctor breathed.

So he had almost been right. "That was a short imprisonment, even by your standards."

"Like I said, I need your help."

The Master looked at the door to his cell – the defences were down. He gave a mental shrug and went to walk past the Doctor. And came face to face with a sonic screwdriver.

The Master barked out a laugh. "What are you going to do, assemble a cabinet at me?"

"You can't escape."

"What, because you have a screwdriver?"

"Because the TARDIS won't let you."

Ah, yes, there was that. The Master grimaced. "What do you want?"

The Doctor slowly lowered his screwdriver. "The TARDIS won't fly," he said simply.

The Master rolled his eyes. "Have you tried pressing the buttons in the right order this time? The big red one usually helps. It's even colour-coded for people like you. Or is this regeneration colour blind?" He looked the Doctor up and down. "It would explain a lot."

"Bow ties are cool."

The Master snorted. "So was celery."

Even the Doctor grimaced at that before getting back to the matter at hand. The Master gleefully awarded himself a point. Master: 1. Doctor: 0. "The TARDIS knows what I'm trying to do and is fighting me."

"And you're trying to do what, exactly?"

The Doctor remained quiet.

"You might as well tell me. If you want my help doing whatever it is you're trying to do, I'm going to find out what it is eventually, aren't I?"

"I want to leave Earth."

The Master nodded. "I'd imagine the humans feel the same," he said lightly, ignoring the Doctor's frown. "Why don't you just override the TARDIS? Why do you need me?"

The Master watched with astonishment as the Doctor turned faintly pink and tilted his head towards the floor, muttering into his shoes. This was the Oncoming Storm? He felt vaguely disgusted.

"What?" He asked.

The Doctor reluctantly looked the Master in the eye and he saw, among the profound exhaustion, more than just a hint of embarrassment. "I threw the manual into a supernova."

The Master resisted the very real urge to laugh and tried to aim for disapprovingly superior instead. Judging by the Doctor's expression, he was succeeding. "That's stupid even for you."

"I disagreed with it."

The Master snorted. "Of course you did. You can't fly it, the manual can. You just don't want to admit how inept you are."

The Doctor gritted his teeth. "Either you can help me and get this over and done with, or you can wait in there," he said, viciously pointing at the Master's cell, "until I find a solution."

"Wow, what a threat," the Master mocked. "Really stepped it up a notch, haven't you."

The Doctor drew himself up to his full height and moved away from the door frame, wobbling only slightly. "Aren't you bored yet? How do you fancy another few decades in there?"

The Master sighed. "Fine. I'll help."

The Doctor smirked.

"Oh, shut up," the Master grated.