Title: Second Chances
Chapter Title: The Child Master
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When the Master regenerates into a young boy, Jack decides to give him a second chance. Seventeen years later, the Master takes the Doctor up on his offer.
Spoilers: through LotTL
Warnings: angst, slash, regeneration, crossover with Torchwood, non-canon with DW season 4 and Torchwood backstory, and this chapter is very long
Additional warning: This chapter, Ebon Hush warned me and I agree, is a little list-y. It is a series of events, and I didn't want to detail every one of them. Think of it as a book of snapshots—this chapter is meant to show you the progression of the Master's life as Griffin Jones.
Pairings: Doctor/Master, past Doctor/Rose and Jack/Ianto (past pairings are essentially springboards for angst)
Disclaimer: Absolute DUH moment—I don't own Doctor Who.
A/N: Behold, I live! Okay, I'm really sorry it took me so long to get this typed and edited and everything (I actually got the edited version in September, but there were a couple scenes that needed major rewrites, and it took me until today to get off my lazy arse and write them). But it's up now. The next chapter is fairly short—but it's done. DONE. And doesn't need editing… I don't think. Americanisms will gladly be fixed if anyone points them out (in this chapter and the next).
Many thanks to my beta, Ebon Hush. All remaining mistakes and issues with this chapter are entirely my fault.
One last thing, and then I promise I'm done—this story is posted on two sites. If I get a total of at least five reviews, preferably nagging me to continue (I'm sorry! My muse has fandom ADD!), I promise to have the next chapter up by next Sunday.
---
I made Martha Jones.
My new sister's name was Mary. She didn't like that I always slipped up and called her Martha. One day, three years after Jack the Immortal Pain-in-the-Arseleft me with them, she got so fed up that she started shouting, in the middle of dinner:
"Fine! I'm Martha! I give up! You never get it right, do you realise that? Never! Not once! So what the hell! I'm Martha-bloody-Jones!"
She got in a lot of trouble for using that kind of language.
It wasn't until then that I realised that my foster sister was the girl who would defeat me as the Master, thus inevitably making me into Griffin Jones. And then I realised that there was no possible way I could keep living with them without killing her. Not the way I was.
---
Before I decided I couldn't be Griffin Jones and the Master, I had never had an imaginary friend, not even when I really was a child. Now I had two.
The first was Koschei. He was me, from a time when I didn't hear the drums, when Theta—later to become the Doctor—was my best friend. Innocent and sane, seven-year-old Koschei was my guide to creating "Griffin".
The second was, of course, the Master, exactly as he'd been during the Year that Wasn't. Whole—no bullet wound; that came later—if more than a little insane, the Master was everything I could no longer afford to be.
Armed with my two companions, and with "my" alien memories and experiences now wiped clean, I began to pretend.
I don't remember much from those first two years. I know that I withdrew and remained, as Jack had thought me, a "child Master", because the first time I smiled at Samantha, as Koschei had smiled at Sed Fir (1), and offered to help her set the table, she nearly dropped the plates she was holding; and when I started helping on the farm, Michael put down his tools and stared for ten minutes solid, completely taken aback.
I've always been good at pretending. Sworn off hypnosis, deprived of my secret weapon, I learned that nothing had changed. I was so good at pretending that Koschei became unnecessary; I was, absolutely and instinctively, Griffin Jones.
I pretended so well that after about a year, I forgot to listen for the drums.
Not long after that, I forgot to hear them.
By the time I noticed, I couldn't have brought them back if I'd wanted to.
---
Without the call to war, the Master faded to the back of our mind. The drums had driven him to insanity, but their removal didn't have the reverse effect. The only thing it did was take his purpose away.
Because the Master was gone, and I had long since stopped listening to Koschei, 'Griffin' was left on his own to find a new purpose in life. I cheated, as I always had. I turned to Martha.
Martha was an extraordinarily bright girl. I knew that from the Year that Wasn't, when she had, albeit with the Doctor's help, outsmarted me. I sought to make that bright mind even brighter.
Martha and I were in the same grade at school. With my help, Martha jumped to the top of our class (well, behind me, naturally). I taught her all the classes she would never get to take—Recreational Mathematics, Genetic History, Chaos Theory and other branches of metaphysics… Whatever I could think of, I taught her. And she drank it all in. She was brilliant—not just for a human; she was brilliant.
And then, by accident, I made Martha Jonas a second time.
I accidentally let the name "Doctor" slip during one of our lessons. Martha pounced on it, as I had feared she would.
"Doctor who?" she asked me.
I laughed nervously. "Yes, I suppose. He doesn't really have a name."
"Was he your teacher?"
I seized the out, hoping she'd drop it. "Yes. Yes, he was."
But she didn't drop it. "But what kind of doctor is he? Medical?"
Filled with a terrible feeling I knew what was about to happen, I answered carefully, "If need be."
"That's what I'm going to be, you know," Martha said. "A doctor."
I knew, beyond any doubt, that she had just decided this, and that I had just made Martha Jones, medical student.
---
A week after Griffin Jones turned sixteen, my parents got a call from the adoption agency. After thirteen years, Martha's birth family had come forward. And, assuming they passed the paternity tests, they wanted to take Martha back home—to London.
I never found out how Martha had been separated from her birth family—it was a taboo subject. And my family never learned that after I made Martha Jones a second time, I had spent months searching in secret for her family until, on a school trip to London, I visited them and 'let slip' that I had an adopted (black) sister named Mary, although she went by Martha. (I cheated again, of course, layering my words with hypnosis so I could be sure they would believe me.) Less than a month later, we got the call. I figured it was better to make Martha Jones right one last time than to risk making her wrong later.
---
Koschei and the Master, containing the lion's share of our Time Lord memories as they did, realized the implications of Martha's intelligence long before I did. And by the time Martha was returned to her birth family, they had put into place a plan to test their theory.
The day Martha left, Koschei and the Master took me to the science lab at school. They had several hairs taken from Martha's hairbrush, and they had written a DNA testing program on the computers in the lab—a relatively simple one that would finish within an hour.
Just as predicted, we had our answer after forty-seven minutes.
Martha was human—mostly. She had a full set of hidden Time Lord genes that, even latent as they were, accounted for her astonishing intelligence.
"No wonder she beat us," the Master commented.
"They're latent genes," Koschei protested.
"Not after twenty seconds inside Lazarus' machine, they won't be," I realised. I let out a breath and leaned on the lab table. "She'll have a Time Lord brain, if nothing else."
"And that's a pretty big 'if'," the Master added.
We started to laugh—all three of us. It seemed ridiculous that by pushing her out of our ability to make or break Martha Jones, we had set her up for us to make her one more time.
---
Without Martha, we needed a new purpose in life. We avoided choosing science again—there were too many memories attached. It took us a while, but after a lot of tries, I found my purpose, or what Koschei had (probably more accurately) termed my 'obsession'.
We spent our time before we found our new purpose doing whatever appeared to us, usually schoolwork. With the difference between the knowledge most teachers had at this time and the knowledge we had, we skipped a year before we finally settled down to a single purpose/obsession.
In our final year of secondary school, we had a new history teacher. Eerily, his name really was John Smith, although he was full-blood human (Koschei and the Master checked with a test that would have detected Time Lord genes even if they'd been suppressed by the Chameleon Arch). He connected to me in a way no other teacher ever had.
Our knowledge of history was perfect, but flat. Dr. Smith (another eerie coincidence—he was a doctor, of history anyway) fixed that. He got off on huge tangents that didn't have anything to do with the event except for explaining why the event might have happened. He was a doctor of history and a Doctor of human nature. He worked lessons on philosophy and psychology and theology and physics, once or twice, into our history discussions. Every week, we would come in for the first class of our Monday morning and see a clean blackboard. By the time we left, it was covered in diagrams that would make no sense to anyone who wasn't there at the time (and probably to a lot of people who were).
A few weeks into the school year, I approached Dr. Smith and we started talking.
Dr. Smith noticed that I'd received high marks in my history classes without really trying. In spite of—(or maybe because of—) this, he understood why I immersed myself so deeply in his. As our discussions lengthened and spilled over to my free periods, lunch hour, after school, and eventually the next day, Dr. Smith finally asked if my parents and I would like to come over to his place for dinner to continue the discussion. He'd been a university teacher once, and none of us thought he had ever adjusted to dealing with students who couldn't visit him alone, but the offer was one that all of us appreciated.
"I should warn you," he said when he invited me, "that if you go, you'll meet Mack." At my confused expression, he raised his right hand and tapped the thin gold band he wore on his ring finger.
"Oh," I said. "That's a wedding ring?"
"Promise ring," Dr. Smith corrected. "We're not officially married—yet."
I (obviously, considering my Academy days) had no problem with meeting Mack, so it was arranged (after a brief conversation on the phone with my parents) that we would go to Dr. Smith's house that Friday.
---
As soon as I stepped through the door of Dr. Smith's house, I met Mack.
Mack was tall, at least six and a half feet, and strongly built. He wore a black leather jacket, even inside, and had a beard and moustache. The attitude he projected was one of "don't mess with me, and God help you if you touch my friends". He was like a sane young Master, back when the biggest worry we had was making sure Theta was safe and all right.
"So, you're the boy who's been stealing all of John's attention," he said with a good-humoured grin as we entered, standing from the table where he'd been reading the paper and holding out his hand for me to shake. "Mack Welborn."
"Griffin Jones," I replied, shaking the offered hand.
"And don't guilt him, Mack," Dr. Smith mock-scolded. "As soon as he leaves, you'll be complaining that I'm around too much."
The grin that passed between them was more intimate than any kiss.
We had to drop our eyes. We recognized the dynamic these two had—we knew it all too well from the only real relationship we'd ever had.
Protector and protected.
Healed and healer.
Intimate friends.
For just a moment, Koschei's pain showed on our face. The next second, it vanished to be replaced by the Master's empty, smiling mask; and an instant later I shoved them both away and looked up again, fully Griffin Jones.
The entire exchange had taken so little time that Dr. Smith and Mack had just greeted our parents and the doctor was just turning back to me when I looked up again.
"Want to help me make dinner?" he asked.
"I can't cook," I replied automatically, then started to wonder. I had never cooked before because between the Academy and the Master's ego, there had been neither reason nor initiative to do so. But as Griffin Jones…
"Ever tried before?" Dr. Smith asked, smiling. I wondered if he could read minds, or if he had just heard other people before me say the same thing. I shook my head, smiling a little.
"He never wanted to," Cerys confirmed with a gently mocking grin. "Come on, Griffin," she said, standing. "We'll both help."
"Wonderful. Then come on," Dr. Smith said, leading us into the kitchen.
Half a step onto the tiled floor, I stopped dead as realisation washed over me.
Dr. Smith looked back from the cupboard. "You all right?"
I nodded and went over to help.
It reminded me of the moment at dinner when I'd realised that Mary Jones was Martha Jones. Or maybe it was more like the first time I'd noticed the absence of the drums. We'd been in the kitchen then, too, and our—my—mother had been the one to call us on freezing. "It's quiet," I'd said. "Not if you help me with these dishes, it won't be," she'd replied. "There'll be lots of pots and pans clattering about then."
Now I accepted various ingredients from Dr. Smith and set them on the counter, my newest realisation running around endlessly in my head.
We.
I'd been using the term unconsciously, but I hadn't realised what it meant until now. There were three of us—Koschei, the Master, and Griffin Jones. Three completely independent people living in the same brain and body. Three people who had split without realising, and remained split without realising.
Cooking brought me back to earth. It was relaxing being able to predict exactly what would happen, and at the same time it was a game trying to keep everything going without faltering. I knew before we'd finished making dinner (breaded and seasoned chicken with vegetables on the side) that I'd just found a second obsession.
After dinner, Dr. Smith made coffee. I almost turned it down, having always hated coffee, but then I smelled it. Dr. Smith's coffee wasn't bitter, but rich, with just the right amounts of cream and sugar to make you forget you'd ever disliked it.
Our discussion continued until it was dark outside. I was surprised when Mack joined in. He was a psychiatrist, it turned out, and had told Dr. Smith much of what he'd used in class.
I watched my parents much of the time, wondering how they would react to this new me. They looked wonderingly at Dr. Smith, and it didn't take long for them to get comfortable with the three of us having a conversation and start one of their own. The evening ended with my parents inviting Dr. Smith and Mack to have dinner at our house next time.
---
With university fast approaching, I approached my parents about something I'd been considering for years. I wanted to change my name. I was going somewhere new, and I wanted an identity that wasn't tainted by my years as the "child Master" or by my forced beginning at Jack's hand.
My mother's face fell when I asked her. I knew that she viewed the name "Griffin" as the last thing I had from my parents, so I intervened before she could say anything.
"I've never felt like a 'Griffin'," I told her. "And now I'm going to university, to be an adult, I'd like to start with I name I identify with." I watched her face, ready to 'convince' her with hypnotism if the need arose.
But the troubled look on her face cleared up on its own, and she smiled. "It's all right with me—if I can set a couple of conditions."
"What conditions?" I asked warily.
"First, that you keep Griffin, at least as your middle name." When I nodded, she went on: "Second, you need to at least hear my suggestion for my new name."
"Okay," I agreed. "What's your suggestion?"
"Ianto," she replied. "We always said if we had a boy, we would name him Ianto."
"Ianto Griffin Jones," I tried. "I like it."
So I became Ianto Jones.
---
With my obsessions set as history and cooking, the rest of the school year passed without incident, and then the summer passed with many dinners at Dr. Smith's house and with Dr. Smith and Mack eating at our house, and then it was time to enter university.
The day I started university, I met with my academic advisor, Mrs. Silvers, to show her my proposal for a self-designed major in "Humane History".
Her first reaction made the Master roll his eyes in expected exasperation. "'Humane History'?" She sounded like she had no idea how this could be something other than what was already there.
I clarified. "A human approach to history. Not facts and dates, but people and ideas. Not what, but why."
Mrs. Silvers nodded absently, reading over my proposal now. Her eyebrows rose steadily as she realisedjust how intense this major was. I had chosen the basic courses I would take in psychology, philosophy, religion and, of course, history, leaving some space for more classes of each (the number of which I'd already decided). She blinked in surprise when she got to the end and saw what I wanted to take as a minor.
"History and applied mathematics?" she repeated when she'd finished. "That's a rather… odd combination, don't you think?"
"They both interest me," I replied evenly, and it was true. Since Logopolis, numbers had become a quiet fascination for us. And after Dr. Smith proved our knowledge of history 'one-dimensional', I wanted to explore other subjects the same way. The only one we could hope to get anything useful about in this time was math, so that was our chosen minor.
Mrs. Silvers wanted to see how well we did in university before she approved such a difficult major. Halfway through the first semester, to none of our surprises, she sent it on to the committee, who approved it within a week.
---
Four years later, I graduated with full honours. By the end of the day, Torchwood had approached me.
Long before Canary Wharf, Torchwood was getting suspicious of its agents. They wanted me to be, for lack of a better (or more accurate) word, their spy—a fully capable agent, placed inconspicuously to do the things that would keep me out of suspicion and in a position to gain information. I would be the archivist, the errand boy, and when no one was looking, the observer.
They told me freely that they were Torchwood and what they wanted me to do, obviously planning to Retcon me if I turned them down. I was fairly certain that Retcon wouldn't be effective on me, but I was intrigued by the job offer, so I accepted.
I didn't realise until I arrived at Torchwood that I would be working under Jack.
---
If we were going to be working in Torchwood, with people who were trained to find and catch aliens, I had a problem.
I had managed to avoid going to any doctor that Jack hadn't approved all the way through university, but now I needed a way to hide, and I needed it within a week.
It was quite by chance that we found an answer to this problem.
We were in London visiting Martha, and Martha and I had gone to the video store to find entertainment for that night. (I had long since decided that my knowledge of accurate history and science made watching most human films intolerable, but Martha had dragged me along without listening to me.) The store was a tiny little place, run by a young couple (2). Martha was looking at a sci-fi film about aliens, asking the girl about it, and the boy had gone to the back, when I noticed it. My hearts stopped for a moment as I realized what it was.
A TARDIS key. One of these humans had a TARDIS key, and—by lucky happenstance—had left it on the counter. I could sense the power it had, the perception filter that would last longer than the key itself. It was the answer to my problem—it would keep me hidden forever, and combined with our hypnotic ability, it would even fool Torchwood's doctors—even the Doctor. It was perfect.
---
That night, after dinner and before the movie, Martha asked to talk to me in private.
"You know," she told me, "there's something you forgot to tell me about all that stuff you taught me."
"What's that?" I asked.
"You shouldn't know any of it."
My eyes widened as she continued.
"Science hasn't advanced as far as your knowledge! I used that on a test, and—"
"Wait." My mouth was dry. Our right hand, at the Master's decision, locked the door behind us. "You showed this to your professor?"
"Yeah." Martha nodded matter-of-factly. "He thought it was brilliant, too! He's going to start working on it with me—me, a third-year, working on a research project with a Ph.D.!"
"Who else have you told?" I asked, my voice rising.
Martha faltered. "Nobody," she answered.
I nodded slowly. "I'm sorry about this, Martha," I said. The Master looked at Martha, eyes cold, and stepped toward her, raising one hand.
"Griffin?" Martha asked, scared now. "Griffin, what are you doing?"
The Master shook his head almost regretfully. "I am the Master, and you will do as I say," he said, pouring all his hypnotic ability into the words. We couldn't afford anything to slip by this.
Martha's eyes glazed over. "You are the Master," she repeated.
"Tell me the name of this professor," the Master ordered. Martha did, voice empty. "Now, forget everything I taught you. Everything that I shouldn't know—everything that you shouldn't know—forget it."
Martha's eyes fluttered closed.
"Forget what you told your professor," he told her. "Forget every time you ever used the knowledge I gave you. Forget even the name, 'The Doctor'."
Martha's eyes were shuttling back and forth under her eyelids, fighting the orders. But her mind was still human, too weak to withstand a centuries-old Time Lord mind.
I stopped watching. I didn't want to see this fight. I didn't want to see the end result of my obsession, my attempt to do something with my early years. I knew when it was over, because the Master gave up control, pushing me forward.
Martha was looking at me dazedly. "What just happened?" she asked.
"We were just going to see a movie," I told her, opening the door. "Remember?" Martha nodded, looking a little confused. "Let's go, then." Martha followed us back out.
---
I started at Torchwood 3 with everyone thinking someone else had hired me. As long as I stayed quiet and out of the way, as I'd been instructed, no one would question my presence. Of course, with my particular abilities, no one would question it even if they found me going through their files.
I met Suzie and Robert (Tosh's predecessor) without a problem. Owen put a twinge of something foreign and painful in my hearts, but I put it down to anxiety over his ability to, if he had a strong enough mind, expose me as an alien enemy. It wasn't until I was introduced to Jack that I had a real problem.
When I looked at the good captain, a tidal wave of unfamiliar, gut-wrenching emotions washed over me. I couldn't identify them, but I knew one thing: I couldn't stay in Torchwood. It hurt. It literally, physically hurt.
So at the end of the day, I left Torchwood and went back home—not to the apartment I'd rented, but to my real home.
---
My parents were surprised to see me, but they accepted my explanation that I needed a break from work (without even a hypnotic suggestion). So with their blessing, I stayed with them for six months.
Torchwood 1 was annoyed, but I didn't care about them. And when someone came looking for me (which was about once a week), I went out to the barn and switched between the different outbuildings until they left.
In all these months, I only had one really close call. I was running from the barn to the tractor shed when a beam of torchlight and a shout of "Ianto Jones!" stopped me.
Owen approached from the direction of the house, one hand holding his torch, the other on his gun.
A voice came through Owen's earpiece, female and curious. "Owen? Did you find him?"
Owen raised a hand to his earpiece. I was afraid—yes, afraid; I could identify that feeling, unfamiliar though it was…
And then I was gone, swept away by the Master, who for the first time in years had a purpose, making him the strongest of us.
"Stop," he ordered Owen, raising a hand and focusing his (our?) hypnotic ability on the doctor. Owen froze.
"Tell them you made a mistake," the Master commanded. "I'm not here. Tell them."
"Owen?" the female voice repeated. "Owen, are you there?"
Owen touched his raised hand to his earpiece. "I'm here," he said. "I was wrong—sorry. It wasn't him; just some kid, probably playing a badly timed prank." He lowered his hand.
The Master nodded. "Good. Now return to your comrades. Tell them nothing of this meeting. And by tomorrow, you will have forgotten it yourself."
Owen turned, looking dazed, and walked away. The Master watched him for a long moment before sighing aloud and fading back to the black emptiness at the back of our mind.
As soon as control returned to me, that feeling of gut-wrenching guilt washed over me—
Guilt.
A split second after I realised it, I realised that I'd realised it. Guilt. I was feeling guilt over the Master's actions.
This realisation gave us two possible options for fixing the problem.
The first was that I could vanish and let the Master take over again. But since the Master was back to being silent, that was out of the question.
The second option, which it seemed I would have to take, was to push the Master away and completely become Ianto Jones, someone who did not identify with the Master and didn't have to feel guilty over his actions.
---
Finally, after six months, the separation was complete. I returned to work, guiltless if a little apologetic for running off, and began my four-year stay at Torchwood.
The first change was when Robert was killed in action and Tosh was brought in. She was brought in on Jack's recommendation, so Torchwood 1's instructions for me were to keep a close eye on her. I was unsurprised by this; I had early on realised that Jack was the reason they were so suspicious, so especially until Tosh passed whatever test I was supposed to put her through, her being Jack's newest recruit made her the most suspect of all.
As time passed, the list of things I wasn't telling Torchwood One got longer and longer. I didn't tell them when Suzie started taking tech home, even the glove; or when Owen and Tosh started imitating her; or the near-mutiny that brewed every time Jack put people ahead of a person. I didn't tell them that Owen switched out a man's medicines to kill him (behind Jack's back) when Retcon had no effect on him. I didn't tell them when Tosh shut down the power for an entire city for a week so she could isolate a relatively unimportant device. I didn't tell them that Gwen beat Retcon to join Torchwood. I didn't tell them that Suzie shot Jack in the head and Jack survived. I didn't tell them that Gwen freed an alien succubus. I couldn't risk any of them getting fired—that would change time. And if time changed, I might never become Griffin Jones, who would never become Ianto Jones, which was enough to give even a Time Lord a headache.
I was especially careful not to tell them when Jack and I started sleeping together.
With the Master barred from my conscious mind, and my secrets protected by the TARDIS key, I had no reason to stop what was developing between me and Jack—until the Master invaded my dreams that night.
Waking up after a heated discussion with "myself", I looked over at Jack and was assaulted, for the first time in years, by a wave of guilt.
If you knew what you'd just slept with, I thought, fingering the key Jack hadn't noticed, and already drifting off, you'd hate yourself—and me.
By the time I woke up, the Master would be gone again. But the scene would repeat a few more times before Harold Saxon entered the world and my life became a frantic attempt to avoid running into—or being sensed by—myself.
---
I was, unsurprisingly, unaffected by Archangel, and on Election Day, as a pointless gesture, I voted against myself. And then it was time for the Year that Wasn't to replay as the Year that Was.
---
The day the Master's victory was announced, he sent Torchwood (including me) on a wild goose chase to the Himalayas. By the time we returned, there would be traps laid for every member of Torchwood—again including me.
When we got back to the Hub, the team's instincts still muddled by Archangel, I locked myself in my little office and opened a door in the wall between me and the Master. I didn't know where the traps were, so it was going to take both of us to get out of this alive.
Drawing on the Master's memories, I entered the system and, following the Master's instructions, stopped the auto-destruct with three seconds to spare. Then I set about getting rid of the backups that the Master had set around the room, almost as a game rather than expecting them to be needed or to do any real damage. I took down the package of poisoned coffee filters and burned them in the trash can using a lighter from Owen's pack. Every mechanical pencil and pen joined them, they having been set to electrocute the person who clicked them next. I typed the Master's password into the computer just in time to prevent a full lockdown and set about clearing the kitchen of every scrap of poisoned food in the Master's (still comprehensive) memory.
It wasn't long before screams started from the other room. I locked myself in the kitchen and covered my ears, but there was no longer anything I could do to shield myself from the cruel indifference radiating from the Master.
---
We stayed at Torchwood 3 for a month after that, going through the archives and deciding what might be useful in this new world. The total amount of useful information in the Torchwood archives was less than my old history book. We kept everything useful in what used to be Owen's backpack, which was lucky, because the Master suddenly 'remembered' one day that a patrol of Toclafane was being instructed at that moment to make sure no one was still alive in the Torchwood bases.
"Why the wait?" I asked even as we threw what little food we had left into our bag.
"The lockdown would have just ended today," the Master answered. "Even the Toclafane couldn't have gotten in here during total lockdown."
I nodded, slinging on our backpack. After making sure we still wore our TARDIS key (and returning the perception filter to normal with a mental plea), we headed for the door and disappeared out into the silent streets.
---
We survived the Year that way—avoiding trouble using the Master's memories, gathering intelligence (and probing more of the Master's memories) for no reason other than to give me something to do. We moved around every time we met more than twelve people so that there would never be a significant number of people who could see through our perception filter.
We didn't count on meeting someone who was practiced at seeing through such filters.
Two weeks before the Year was set to end, Martha Jones came into our latest temporary residence: an abandoned carpenter's shed in Germany. I looked up from my files and choked on air as I recognised my former foster sister.
"Since when does the Master have human patrols?" she whispered, eyes darting around the shed until they slid off me, blinked, and returned to me.
I decided to answer her. "You'd be surprised how many people will follow a homicidal psychopath in exchange for promises of power. Look at his wife, Lucy. Do you really think she was innocent in all this?"
"I'm not sure whether to take that as an insult or a compliment," the Master murmured.
"Sorry, what was that last?" Martha asked.
"I didn't say anything," I replied, perfectly honestly—it had been the Master who had spoken, not me.
"Mm-hmm," Martha said sceptically. "You know what? Whatever. I just need to stay here until the patrols pass. They can see me better than the Toclafane."
We were surprised at that. With the Toclafane being so childlike, and children being so curious, we would have expected the Toclafane to be better at seeing through perception filters. But we were careful not to say anything.
"How long have you been living here?" Martha asked.
"Less than a week."
"And these are your…?" she gestured to the papers spread across the worktable.
"Archives. Records of everything I know has happened since this Year began."
"You say that like it'll stop after a year," Martha commented, watching me.
Crap. I let the Master talk to cover my slip-up. "Well, once those rockets go off, it might as well. The only reason anyone on this planet is still alive is because the Toclafane have, presumably on orders, restrained themselves from destroying our food sources. Once the Master has the rockets, why would he need to keep up those orders?"
"Cynical as you are, I'm guessing you're not part of the Resistance." At our wry, one-sided smile, she nodded, laughing with not a little cynicism of her own. "'Course not. Oh, you could do endless good if you were—but like everyone else, you're too scared."
"How do you know it's not because I'm a spy for the Master?" the Master asked. She was right, of course—we were terrified, but not of dying. We were terrified of getting too close to the Master of this time and blowing up the universe five minutes later.
"Honestly?" Martha laughed. "I don't. I just go by trial and error. Most of the time, my guesses are correct."
"That's not right," I whispered. "She's supposed to know."
"What was that?" Martha asked.
I took over, sorting through our 'archives', looking for something in particular. "You're right, you know," I told her as I searched. "I am scared." Finding what I was looking for, I picked it up and walked over to her, holding it out. "Just scared enough that I'm not letting the fighters in this walk away unarmed."
"What's this?" she asked as she accepted it.
"A list. Names, locations, and alliances for every scientist and leader still influential. It might be useful." Might be, yeah right—she needed this information to succeed like she was supposed to.
Martha nodded absently, andthen grew very still. "I think the patrols are gone," she said after a moment, and left without a backwards glance.
---
Two weeks later, I heard the expected chorus of "Doctor! Doctor!" out in the street. I could feel the Master's remembered fear flood through the little holes I'd drilled into the wall between us this past year. I tried to plug the holes as best I could, but the wall was broken. There was an unwilling connection between us.
As the yelling increased, and I stayed silent so the Doctor wouldn't sense my mind, I could feel the world shuddering around me. The sun started to slip backwards in the sky, going faster and faster until I blinked in the carpenter's shed in Germany—
And opened my eyes in the van on the way back to Torchwood.
My hands tightened around the wheel so I wouldn't lose control of the van. I'd forgotten that when time rewound, I'd be driving on the highway.
"Bloody hell," Owen was hissing from the passenger seat, watching the news. "How the hell did he manage this?"
I remembered the inaudibly loud death Owen had suffered, that I had witnessed part of on CCTV, locked in with freed Weevils and a jammed gun when he went into the cell block, and flinched.
"He must've been planning this for a long time," Tosh commented, typing frantically on her laptop.
And Tosh, electrocuted by a sabotaged computer. My knuckles were white around the steering wheel.
BANG. There was Lucy's shot, coming from the TV.
"Oh, my God," Gwen murmured, watching the tiny screen. "She shot him. His wife shot him."
And poor, innocent Gwen—Gwen who had died, not from any sabotaged equipment, but from an attack from Myfanwy, who had been driven to rage by a high-pitched pulse emitted by a collar the Master's recruits had attached.
There it was again, that overwhelming feeling of guilt that I had dodged for so long.
"Why should we care?" Owen snapped. "Good for her, as far as I'm concerned. Did you see what the man planned to do? What he did do?"
They hated me. Of course they would, but knowing it, hearing it—it hurt.
"I wouldn't mind if anyone else had done it," Gwen chipped in. "But what right's she got to turn on him? She married him, for God' sake!"
"But why did he do it?" Tosh asked. "We'll never get to know that, now. And look—that man's so hurt—"
The Doctor. That was right. If I could get the Doctor to sense me, he'd come get me. My fingers itched to take the TARDIS key off right then, but the others would notice. I had to wait.
And maybe it wouldn't work anyway. He hadn't sensed me before, even when I hadn't had the TARDIS key. Maybe something had gone wrong with my regeneration. Maybe—
I shook myself mentally, focused on the road, and kept driving. Ninety minutes to Torchwood.
---
When we'd reached Torchwood, the others went inside to regear for the actual problem at hand. I stayed outside, in the so-called Information Centre, fiddling with the TARDIS key that hung around my neck.
The Doctor could leave soon. He might already have left, though I doubted it—based on my recollections, he stayed at least an hour after I was shot, and he didn't look like he'd be fit to fly anytime soon when he left the room.
Still, it couldn't hurt to move quickly. The Doctor had always recovered quickly from our little encounters. And if he didn't find me soon, I'd need a backup plan.
I grasped the TARDIS key and lifted it over my head. "Find me," I whispered.
---
(1) Koschei's mother's name is a mutation of the Greek letters Zed and Phi. If she has a canon name, I don't know it. If you do, feel free to correct me.
(2) This is the store in "Blink". I took some liberty with the timeline, but this one is actually four years better than it was at first.