Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or any of its characters, places, plots...Yeah you get the picture. My first ever Master/Rose fic, never thought I'd write one, but actually I really love writing it!
Chapter 18-The Rebellion Begins!
Rose was perched in the Master's lap, looking very pleased with herself, when the screaming alarm pierced through the quiet ship.
"What the hell?" Cried Rose as she jumped from her comfortable seat and ran with her husband to the bridge of the Valiant. They watched as Francine Jones flung his discarded jacket to the Doctor, who with amazing agility (considering his body's state) reached into the inside pocket and plucked out the laser screwdriver, dropping to his knees heavily and aiming the device right at the other Time Lord's chest. In swift response to the threat the Master raised his arms into the air in defeat whilst his wife spun around to look at what was happening, a look of shock and horror on her pretty face.
"Oh I see," the Master muttered.
"I told you. I have one thing to say," the Doctor panted between clenched teeth, he hoped his body could cope with the speed at which his heart was presently thumping.
Then the Doctor felt his mouth drop open like a fish's as the Master leaned his head back and laughed hysterically, dropping his hands to his side as his wife smiled knowingly. The Doctor tried to switch the device on but nothing happened, his face dropped into a frown. What a fool he had been! As if the Master was stupid enough to have not protected his deadly contraption.
"Isomorphic controls," he shouted harshly, snatching his screwdriver from his hands, and slapped the Doctor hard across the face, drawing blood and sending severe pain coursing through the alien's wizened frame, "Which means they only work for me!" Holding up the screwdriver the Master aimed it Francine Jones and fired as he shouted, "Like this! Say sorry!" He ordered ruthlessly.
"Sorry! Sorry!" Francine cried in pain as the burning laser scorched her arm. Her daughter shouted sadly and ran over to hug her mother tightly.
"Didn't you learn anything from the blessed saint Martha?" The Master asked meanly, walking threateningly down the stairs, when he reached the bottom he picked up his carelessly discarded jacket and with the help of his dear wife shrugged it on. There was no reply from the terrified servants, so the Master answered for them, "Siding with the doctor is a very dangerous thing to do! Take them away!" Two guards came in and dragged the Jones's away violently.
The Master knelt down and pulled the Doctor roughly up off the floor into a chair,
"Okay, got you! There you go gramps," he said as he helped the elderly man into a chair, he then hovered on the edge of the table and span the Doctor's chair round unenthusiastically with his foot, meanwhile Rose knelt down at her ex-lover's side. "Oh!" The Master exclaimed, "Do you know, I remember the days when the Doctor, oh that famous, great Doctor," he spat the words out quickly, "Was raging a Time War."
"Battling werewolves and Daleks," Rose added looking at him with a cruel glint in her deep, brown eyes.
"He sealed the rift at the Medusa Cascade single handed!" The other, younger Time Lord puffed out his cheeks and puffed out the air loudly, looking very impressed with raised eyebrows and a sarcastic smirk. Rose turned her head to look at her partner with wide eyes and a false-impressed look,
"Wow," She muttered sarcastically, her lips upturned in a malicious and very unattractive smile.
"I know!" The Master said, meeting his wife's eyes, before he looked down at his enemy again, "And look at him now, stealing screwdrivers, how did he ever come to this?" The Master paused for dramatic effect, pretending to be thinking hard about the answer to his own question, then he clapped his hands together, rocking back and forth as he laughed hard, "Oh yeah...ME!" Rose's harsh and unimpressed glare soon forced him to change his mind very, very quickly, "Us," he readjusted his answer swiftly, and gave his wife an apologetic smile, "I mean us!"
"I just need you to listen," the Doctor panted out difficultly, damn this tired, aged body.
"No!" The Master interrupted rudely, "It's our turn!" He leaned in threateningly close to the Doctor's face, so close that when he spoke the Doctor's face was flecked with spittle, "REVENGE!" He spat angrily, "Best served hot!"
From the floor Rose called up bitterly, "You've limited us, disappointed us, hurt us enough! We deserve it!"
"And this time it's a message for Miss Jones." The Master said calmly as he hopped off the table and headed towards the home video camera that was set up on a wobbly tripod in the corner of the room. Fiddling with a couple of switches as his wife wheeled the Doctor across and positioned him in front of the camera. The Master gave that heart-melting, cheeky grin. The little, red light came on.
"My people salutations, on this the eve of war," he spoke, addressing his people down below, but mainly addressing one Martha Jones, he pulled a face and looked up at his wife lovingly, wrinkling his nose sweetly, "Lovely woman. I know there are all sorts of whispers down there. Stories of a child walking the Earth giving you hope."
Then Rose stroked the Doctor's creased brow, like a nursemaid dabbing at his forehead.
"But I ask you, how much hope does this man have?" She murmured, staring down at the Doctor with sad, pitiful eyes.
"Say hello Gandalf," the Master said and waved lamely at the camera, prodding the Doctor with one finger, "Except he's not that old, but he's an alien, with a much longer life span than you stunted little apes!" He gave his wife an apologetic look although she knew he was not referring to her. His attention turned back to the Doctor, whom he was now addressing, "What if it showed? What if I suspended your capacity to regenerate? All 900 years of your life Doctor, what if we could see them?"
Plucking out his laser screwdriver the young, handsome Time Lord stared hard at the Doctor, aimed the contraption at the old man and fired...Writhing in agony, with arms and legs flailing wildly the Doctor fell from the wheelchair to the floor, screaming.
"Older and older and older." Rose moved nearer to her husband, she found herself slightly turned on by the obvious pain being inflicted on the man who'd hurt her so.
"Down you go Doctor!" She cried as her husband wrapped a comforting arm about her waist.
"Down, down, down the years."
Soon the torture was over and the couple stepped back to admire their handiwork, but all that met their eyes was a pitiful pile of empty clothes; shoes and all,
"Doctor?" The Master leaned down with interest, his eyes widened when a goblin-like creature with huge saucer-eyes and wrinkled, brownish flesh popped its head out, its neck seemed barely able to hold its disproportional head and its fingers were more like wizened talons. However it was the Doctor none-the-less. Rose gasped and the Master pulled a face which basically said 'holy crap what is that!?" Blinking his eyes in a feeble attempt to get rid of the shock the Master turned back towards the video camera and stared harshly into the lens, "Received and understood Miss Jones?"
Then he switched of the camera, sending screens all over the world into a blizzard of static. The Time Lord looked back down at the ancient looking...thing. He had no clue about what to do with him, it wasn't like The Academy trained you for anything like this! However Rose barked an order out to the guards, she was always calm in strange and unexpected situations; Torchwood had trained her well for that.
"You there, get a bird cage or something for it!" The terrified guard at the door avoided looking at the tiny Doctor and then rushed off to do as he had been told. Rose stared down at the pathetic creature and could not help but burst into a loud fit of hysterics, her spouse gave her a questioning glance to which she merely shrugged and smiled sweetly, "What!? It is quite funny," she chuckled; suddenly she turned serious again and took his hand lovingly, "Do ya think it'll stop her trying anything?"
With purposeful movements the Master steered his wife away from the disturbing thing...atrocity. Yes, he decided, that was a fitting name for it.
"Doubt it," he concluded, "Stupid kid."
He led to a chair and directed her to sit down, before he headed towards the door. Rose scowled, not really wanting to be left alone with the creepy little Doctor-ish thing.
"Darlin'. Where are you going?"
"To sort out the Jones' clan for their funny little escapade earlier." They smiled excitedly at each other, and Rose made a move to go with him, but with a shake of his hand the Master motioned at her to stay.
"No, my love, you stay here and relax," with a smile he walked back towards her and pressed a lingering kiss onto her lips, "Keep an eyes on our little friend." Then once again he paced towards the door and left the room, although he knew she had seen much worse than what he was planning to do, he didn't want Rose to see this, perhaps he was just being over-protective.
Rose and the Doctor were left alone together, for the first time in years. Rose gave him a hard stare, her eyes boring into him meanly,
"No wonderin' off," she scolded as he tottered away from the pile of clothes that he had just been sat in, he looked up at her with his head on one side and his eyes soft,
"Help me Rose. Help me make everything right again. I know you want to help deep down." Rose huffed tiredly,
"Ya still don't get it, do ya Doctor? The girl you knew is gone, you made me this and I'm not gonna loose the man I really love, for you." Staring hard eyed at the little impish creature Rose shook her head stubbornly, as the Doctor tried to beg her to do something right and good,
"Rose..."
"Don't waste your breath." Then silence.
Later that day as night and darkness fell over the Earth the Master and Rose were sat happily on the bridge of the Valiant, the Doctor watched them from the small bird cage in the corner. The insane Time Lord was sat in a chair opposite his wife, his feet, attired only in socks, were propped up in her lap. It was a display of utter domestic bliss.
"Tomorrow they launch," the Master spoke addressing no one in particular, Rose smiled joyfully, he turned to look at the sad, wrinkled face of the Doctor, "We're opening a rift in the Braccatalion Space."
"They won't see us comin'," Rose finished his sentence for him, showing their deep, unspoken connection, "Kinda scary!" She chuckled with anticipation.
"Then stop!" The Doctor reasoned firmly, but the power-hungry couple were not going to listen to advice given by an impish midget in a cage. Shaking his head arrogantly and looking up at the ceiling absent-mindedly the Master answered surely,
"Once the new empire is established and a new Gallifrey is in the heavens, maybe then it stops," gently moving his own feet from his wife's legs, the handsome man paced towards the Doctor's new 'home', his brows lowered and his breathing slow and deep.
As he spoke his voice quivered slightly, but the Doctor was unable to tell whether it was from excitement and pride or fear and sadness, "The drumming, the never ending drumbeat, ever since I was a child and I looked into the Vortex. That's when it chose me, the call to war." The Master reached the cage and soon found himself joined by his spouse, who immediately picked up his hand and stroked his flesh with her warm, soft digits lovingly. Her eyes were wide and she stepped slowly forward as she peered into the cage and talked slowly,
"Can't you hear it Doctor? Listen it's there right now."
"Tell me, tell us you can hear it Doctor," it was almost like he was begging. The creature scowled harshly from inside his trap and gripped the bars with his feeble, miniscule fists,
"It's only you," he answered with no space for negotiation, his face close to both the Master and Rose's. With a swift flick of his dark, enchanting eyes the Master stared at the floor for a few seconds, before he looked back up at his old friend, a mad grin smeared across his lips,
"Good," he lifted his wife's hand, the one with which she was holding his own, and kissed their conjoined hands with deliberate ceremony, then he gave her a sly wink and concluded, "Our little secret."
A door opened at the other end of the room with a loud hiss of air, a single Toclafane flew in and the couple turned on their heel to watch the shining sphere,
"Tomorrow is war. Tomorrow we rise never to fall," it called in that annoying, sing-song voice that was synonymous with the creatures. The Master waved his arm violently towards the docked sphere,
"Don't you see, I'm doing it for them...I'm doing it for her. You should be grateful. After all you love them, and you apparently loved Rose so very, very much." He turned back to his wife with soft, loving eyes and placed a hand on her waist tenderly, he leaned in a placed a single, lingering kiss at the nape of her neck, when he spoke to the Doctor again he had his head resting on her shoulder, "After we'd had our honeymoon I took Rose to Utopia, isn't that right sweetheart?"
"It was all your fault Doctor," Rose breathed threateningly, "You should have seen it. Furnaces burning. The last of humanity screaming at the dark," her eyes began to fill with tears, even the thought of that place scared the living daylights out of her.
"All that human invention that had sustained them across the aeons turned inward. They cannibalised themselves, regressing into children, but it didn't work. The universe was collapsing around them."
Giving a knowledgeable smirk Rose put her hand around her husband's back, her hand lingering approvingly on his bum, making him smile cheekily,
"And that's when it hit us! Paradox machine!"
"My masterpiece," the Master said proudly, "A living TARDIS, strong enough to hold the paradox in place, allowing past and future to collide in infinite majesty."
"Saving hundreds of lives just as you do," Rose said, a crooked smile set on her face. The Doctor didn't accept there arguments at all, he shook his head disbelievingly,
"But you're changing history. Not just Earths but the entire Universes." The Master leaned in to glare at the Doctor again, two pairs of intense, dark eyes boring into each other, his answer was short,
"I'm a Time Lord, it's my right."
"You've come all this way just to destroy and kill?" Came the scratchy, high voice of the Doctor, his wide eyes looked watery and as if they could read the couple's souls. But it wasn't Rose or her Master who answered, it was the Toclafane.
"We've come back to build a new Empire that will last 100 trillion years!"
"With us as their Masters," the Master uttered, swinging his and his wife's joined hands up into plain view, "Time Lords and human combined. Isn't that what you always dreamt of Doctor?" With a guilty expression the Doctor stared at his bare feet, the action made the pair smile,
"But why do they do it? Why do they kill their ancestors?" He finally asked. He was sure it wasn't just him being stupid; he honestly did not understand why the people, whom he had thought were so hopeful and civilised, were mercilessly killing those whom they descended from in cold blood. The Toclafane replied with a cruel and hearty laugh,
"Because it's fun!"
"Human race, greatest monsters of them all," the Master said darkly, offering his slightly shocked-looking wife an apologetic smile, he would make sure later that she knew he wasn't talking about her.
He put an arm around her body, his hand on the very lowest part of her back and they left together slowly, her head resting on his shoulder, with the Toclafane following close behind with its low, insect-like buzzing sound.
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