As he sat in his birdcage - another example of the Master's childish desire to gloat, to torment - the Doctor tried to breathe as slowly as he could; he had needed to anger the Master enough to try to let Martha know he was still alive, knowing the laser screwdriver was isomorphically linked to the Master, but ever since he had originally been aged a few centuries (the Master had known that it would take centuries, not 100 years as he'd publicly claimed when he used Lazarus's technology to age him), the Doctor had felt pains in his body he hadn't felt since his first incarnation, but his body had regenerated naturally, although he still had theories the Dalek Time Destructor during that unholy mess on Kembel had accelerated his body's age, so he'd regenerate soon.
Shortness of breath.
Exhaustion.
His mind, though, was still sharp.
But in his current state…
No Time Lord had ever lived in a single body as he had been forced to live in, and the Master knew it, that was why he'd pushed the boundaries as he had. His body felt so weak and hopeless. A large part of him yearned for regeneration, just to get healthy again. In his current form, his weakened body felt so painful to stand and walk.
He wanted this to end.
All of this, ultimately, was his own fault; ever since he had regenerated into his current body, he had begun this incarnation's time in charge by ousting Harriet Jones from office and planted the seed into Queen Victoria's mind to begin Torchwood when he and Rose had flippantly acted and joked like a pair of stupid kids when people were being torn apart by the werewolf!
All of that resulted in the disaster that was Canary Wharf. The Doctor had made himself check London to see if there was any leftover alien trash, and more than once he found children and parents crying because their loved ones had been killed when the city's population found themselves caught in the middle of the battle.
That was his fault!
No wonder Queen Victoria had banished them, and the consequences of both incidents still haunted Earth, never mind himself.
It was because of his stupidity that Torchwood hadn't listened to his advice when they were tearing the breach open which the Void Ship had come through, and the Cyberman invasion had begun, but the Institute was virtually destroyed when the Cult of Skaro launched its full-scale war on them all with the help of the Genesis Ark.
Harriet could have prevented it; her knowledge of aliens would have improved when she had gotten into office and the Doctor knew she would have been fascinated and intrigued, and she would have wanted UNIT to give her access to their records of his exile in the 70s, but whether or not she could have mitigated the worst of Torchwood's operations, the Doctor hoped she would have done.
But he had deposed her because he had been angry with what she had done and what she'd said. At the time he had felt on top of the world in his new body since the thought of the Time War, while still there, was a little more distant. He had dismissed her when she had said Earth needed to defend itself since they couldn't depend on him to not come and go, in his arrogant belief he was going to be there.
And…
Looking back…
In hindsight….
The Doctor knew she was right, and this was the ultimate proof that the Master's reign on Earth in this hopefully alternative timeline was going to be brief, and was his own fault.
The Doctor looked up when the door opened and his hearts almost stopped when the Master stepped in, still dressed in his black suit with Lucy, who was still in her glamorous red dress, but he knew she wasn't happy anymore. Her bruised and dazed demeanour made that clear enough.
The Doctor felt sorry for her, and he wondered what had set the Master off; previous incarnations were violent, but not to this degree. Usually, they would discard their allies without him needing to physically hurt them.
"Tomorrow, they launch," the Master said conversationally in a more amicable mood, although that was scary; in the past, the Master's amiable attitude had changed with each regeneration, but this incarnation was too insane, too cruel, and he knew if he said or acted the wrong way, the Master would lash out. "We're opening up a rift in the Braccatolian space. They won't see us coming. It's kind of scary," the Master finished with a smug smirk.
The Doctor's breath stilled.
Braccatolian space…
Braccatolian space was a vast expanse of solar systems, linked to each other with wormholes. It was the home of so many empires and a galactic federation that was peaceful, and since the Master's warships had black hole converters which would tear worlds and stars to bits with gravitational force.
"Then stop," he whispered, although he knew he was wasting his time.
The Master hadn't listened to him before, why start now?
"Once the Empire is established, and there's a new Gallifrey in the heavens, maybe then it stops," the Master said, sauntering towards the Doctor until he loomed close to the cage. "The drumming. The never-ending drumbeat. Ever since I was a child. I looked into the vortex. That's when it chose me. The drumming, the call to war. Can't you hear it? Listen, it's there now. Right now. Tell me you can hear it, Doctor. Tell me," he asked, begging.
The Doctor took hold of the bars of the cage, never breaking eye contact with his old friend. "It's only you," he whispered although he wished he could shout; all year he'd put up with this drumming nonsense. And he'd had enough! What would it take before the Master realised nobody else could hear that stupid noise?
The Master's earnest face changed to one of smug relief. "Good."
A Toclafane flew in before the Doctor could even wonder about the Master's complete flip of mood - one moment he was begging, the next he was relieved - and when it entered, a tall spike rose from the ground - the Doctor had never understood what the point of that spike was - and the Toclafane rested on top of it.
"Tomorrow, the war," the sphere spoke, and the Doctor recognised one of the Toclafane leaders, "Tomorrow we rise, never to fall."
The Doctor looked down, sickened and disgusted. He knew humans could be violent, and while he had defended them to the War Chief and Dalek Sec when they'd commented on humanity's violent streak, he knew they were right, but to see it taken to this level, under these circumstances, and the Toclafane's current insane, childlike state was obscene.
"You see? I'm doing it for them," the Master grinned as he walked back to the sphere. "You should be grateful. After all, you love them so very, very much."
The Doctor looked down. How like the Master to say something sick like that? The Master had never cared about humanity, he was only doing this because the Toclafane were perfect soldiers.
The Master walked smugly to a chair and sat down. "Do you want to know how I met the Toclafane, Doctor?" He asked with a grin. "I mean, since you figured out what they were and where they came from, surely you've worked out how I met them, but do you want to hear the story?"
The Doctor didn't reply, he knew the Master would tell him anyway out of spite, so why bother?
"I took Lucy to Utopia," the Master said, glancing at his wife with a smug look. "A Time Lord and his human companion," he added with a smirk as he mocked the Doctor and his own habit of travelling the universe in his TARDIS with companions from Ian and Barbara, Jamie, Sarah Jane, and Martha. "I took her to see the stars. Isn't that right, sweetheart?"
Lucy came to life, and the Doctor wondered if she was partially hypnotised since a lot of her body language was too vacant. "Trillions of years into the future, to the end of the universe." The Master gave Lucy a new order, giving the Doctor further credence for his hypnotism theory, "Tell him what you saw." "Dying," Lucy said simply as her eyes sparkled with tears as she recalled what she saw in the far future. "Everything dying. The whole of creation was falling apart, and I thought, there's no point. No point to anything. Not ever."
The Doctor had often wondered why empires which claimed they would be eternal bothered saying it because it wasn't true. "And it's all your fault," the Master smirked.
The Doctor glared at the Master and Lucy. "The universe was starting to collapse. Of course, it was dying."
"It doesn't have to be that way, Doctor," the Master smirked.
"How? You know as well as I do when the universe begins to end, that's it. There's a finite amount of energy in the universe and you can't do anything about it," the Doctor panted. "And you want to rule the universe when you know how it will end?"
"I can save the universe, Doctor," the Master said, leaning back in his chair. "I've already started…. You should have seen it, Doctor," he went on, his face grim as he recounted what he saw on Utopia. "Furnaces burning. The last of humanity screaming at the dark."
The Doctor narrowed his eyes at the visions of a cold, dark world that replaced the place of the human's last desperate hope as they filled his mind. He had always felt Utopia's outcome with the Toclafane being so convenient for the Master's long-term plans, and every day that belief got stronger.
There was no doubt in her mind that the Master had made dozens of journeys to Utopia in the TARDIS, and he had manipulated the humans there when they'd realised their hopes for survival beyond the end of the universe to turn themselves into Toclafane.
"All that human invention that had sustained them across the aeons," the Master went on with a kind of reverence in his voice, although the Doctor knew it was faked since the Master felt nothing but contempt for humanity. "It all turned inwards. They cannibalised themselves."
"We made ourselves so pretty," the Toclafane breathed, and the Doctor closed his eyes in disgust at what he imagined the Toclafane had done to themselves.
No, he didn't need to imagine, he already knew.
"Regressing into children," the Master went on, knowing but not caring what kind of reaction the Doctor felt to this news. "But it didn't work. The universe was collapsing around them."
"And then you made contact with them, told them you could help them conquer their own ancestors. That's why you needed the paradox machine you built into my TARDIS," the Doctor ground out.
The Master was right. He had largely worked out what the Toclafane had been born out of and where the TARDIS came into this.
"My masterpiece, Doctor," the Master smirked as he described his triumph, the lynchpin of his plan. "A living TARDIS, strong enough to hold the paradox in place, allowing the past and the future to collide in infinite majesty."
"But you're changing history," the Doctor stood up, breathlessly. "Not just Earth, the entire universe."
The Master glared back at him, but the smirk was still on his face. "I'm a Time Lord. I have that right."
The Doctor was not surprised by the Master's attitude since he had torn open the paradox rift without any care at all.
"But even then, why come all this way just to destroy?"
"We come backwards in time all to build a brand new empire lasting one hundred trillion years," the female Toclafane said, making the Doctor turn to it, and he wondered how long it had been for the Utopians before they hacked each other to bits since their launch from Malcassaro.
"With me as their master," the Master smirked. "Time Lord and humans combined. Haven't you always dreamt of that, Doctor?"
"Not like this, and you know it," the Doctor spat.
The Master's smirk didn't fade. "Perhaps," he agreed amicably. "But they won't have any choice, not under my empire."
"As a race of slaves," the Doctor spat in disgust. "You're tearing history apart, and do you really think your grand New Time Lord empire will truly last that long? You don't care about humanity, you're like a child who wants to destroy everything around him; once your empire is out there, you will wipe out every human in existence, out of pure spite. But that won't be the end of it. You will just massacre whomever you want, over and over again. And then people will try to fight back. There will be assassination attempts, and sabotage; races across the universe will try to fight you, and how long before the Toclafane realise you are just using them to do your dirty work and they get bored? You said they had regressed into children, but children get bored easily. How long, Master?"
The Doctor finished speaking, trying hard to not show how much his rant had taken from his reserves. The other Time Lord just stared at him in amusement.
"My empire will be built to make the universe stronger, Doctor."
"It won't last though, even with your finite number of lives. With every assassination attempt, you'll lose regeneration after regeneration. Stop this now before you do more damage. The universe is hanging by threads since the end of the Time War and the destruction of Gallifrey, and by creating this timeline, you risk bringing the end of the universe down on us," the Doctor pleaded with him to see sense.
But the Master was smirking at him with contempt. "This from the man who deposed Harriet Jones when she said to you that because you came and went, the Earth was at risk?"
The Doctor reeled back in horror.
"You ended the so-called 'Golden Age' right when it began, all because a human politician didn't like your methods. You didn't seem to care about the Laws of Time then, so why should I? You know, it's pointless trying to make me stop, Doctor, so don't try. I will build an empire, and any enemy that tries anything…well," the Master grinned maliciously in anticipation. "They will end up cleaning the hyperdrives of my ships, broken and enslaved as they are taught their place. And as for humanity…they are learning their place now," the Master stood up clearly wanting to leave. "Human race, greatest monsters of them all. Night, then."
With that, the Master and Lucy both left, leaving the Doctor to wallow and think about his biggest mistakes. The Master was right; he'd deposed Harriet because of what she'd said, and instead of looking to the future, he'd changed history and made it possible for the Master to change the future. And now everyone would pay for it.
Author's Note - Inspired by my chats with The Time Lord Oracle, it's annoying that the Tenth Doctor was never confronted with his part in the Master's rise to power, and it was fun mixing the snippets of the scene shared when Martha, Tom and Docherty discovered the truth of the Toclafane with a deeper conversation where the Master gloated about what the Doctor had done.