Chapter 21 – The Darkest Holiday
Two Days Before Xmas
Pain was ripping through her mind, something was rousing in her, screaming out and tearing itself from the deepest parts of her, and she fell to her knees and began to throw up.
"Susan!" Wilf called out and knelt beside her.
The Master's mind was moving through her, breaking out and in at the same time. The connection wasn't dead, it had been hiding, buried deep inside of her and now it was free, racing through her soul and then out of her, vanishing to elsewhere and else when.
"Sorry," she murmured, wiping her mouth. "Touch of flu, I think," she lied, her voice shaking and her body drenched with sweat.
"Come on, let's get you into a bed, Susie," he soothed and she went willingly.
She lay there and she felt as though she were in two places at once. She was in the bed, with Wilf and Donna fussing over her and she was also somewhere else.
She was with him, somehow inside of him, the connection between them singing with tension and pain. She reached into him, trying to repair what she could, pulling at the black cords, which were already starting to shred from the pressures put on him.
He was dying, his hearts were stuttering to a stop and she reached out, taking her own time, her own energy, and forcing it into him. She gave him a hundred years of her life and then she fell asleep.
The Day Before Xmas
He was cold and so very hungry. The hunger was an endless ache inside of him. I'm dying, he thought idly. Why aren't I already dead? Lucy's potion should have killed him. He knew that. So why? What had happened?
He tried to remember the moment, tried to go back in his mind. All he could recall was the scent of lavender and a flash of ginger. No, it was ginger hair and chocolate eyes. Could you be rescued by a fantasy? Could a dead girl reach out of your dreams and force your hearts to beat?
He was so hungry. Ravenous. Hands on his face, a touch of warm lips on his mouth, ghostly, but oh so perfect. He had been starving for so long.
Oh Susan, he wept, just look at me, with my drumbeat and my pain. Fallen so far, fallen so low. A shaggy, filthy wreck, a vagabond god fallen from heaven into the depths of hell, lying here in my empire of ashes and blood. Beating a rhythm into the blue sky to call my last friend, my best enemy, my final killer, my ultimate victim, to me.
If I die now, will you be there waiting for me? Do you still hate me? Do you curse me for leaving you to die, to burn with our world? Or, was it a relief that I never came for you? Did you pray for my death, for your freedom from me? What were we to each other? Was it always going to end this way? They were ghosts on different sides of life, him always reaching towards her, while she eluded him forever.
He was in pieces, jagged and bloody, and there was no future for him.
Xmas Day
"Choose your enemy well. We are many and the Master is but one," Rassilon his face still confident, his voice coaxing, called out to the Doctor.
"But he's the President. Kill him and Gallifrey could be yours," the Master shot back, what he wouldn't do to kill Rassilon, to make him bleed for all the centuries of pain he'd suffered.
The Doctor stood at the mid-point between him and the Lord President, pivoted on the spot, slammed the gun fast, from one hand to the other and pointed it again, now aiming at the Master, his chest heaving with the strain of his breathing.
"He's the one to blame, not me!" he cried out at the unfairness of it and the Doctor was staring at him, gun pointed towards his head and suddenly he realized the truth. "Ohh, but the link's inside my head. Kill me, the link gets broken... and they go back." It hurt to realize he'd been used by them so completely. Still, he knew the Doctor, knew how strong their friendship had always been. "You never would," he laughed. "You never would, you coward," he taunted him and then suddenly he understood. The Doctor would always protect the universe, he'd always put it first. He'd killed Susan for exactly this reason. If he could kill her, then the Master was nothing at all to him. "Go on then, do it!" he shouted. Kill Rassilon, kill him, what did it matter anymore. The Doctor would always put them first, always had, even over her life.
The Doctor's finger tightened on the trigger and his face tightened as well, with such conviction...
"Don't," he pleaded, he saw the anguish in his old friend's eyes. He didn't want to die; he just wanted the damn noise to stop. Pivot, switch, the Doctor spun round again and now the gun was pointed at the Lord President "Exactly! He's the link, it's him, it's not just me, kill him!" Then we can be done with this, maybe I can finally tell you all the things I never could before, Maybe I can tell you about Susan, about what she meant to me. I've been such a coward. I couldn't tell you before. A whole year I had and I couldn't make myself say the words.
"The final act of your life is murder, but which one of us?" Rassilon sneered at him and then the Master saw her, the Lady Professor, standing behind the President, she lowered her hands, looked up. The Doctor's eyes went to her and they stared at each other, with that unspoken communion that the Master had envied so much as a boy. Mother and son, always so close, always willing to let him into their home, their hearts, and he'd never known how jealous he'd been till now.
She looked so sad, but determined, staring at the Doctor. But then, her eyes flickered just a fraction to the right, she looked behind the Doctor, at the Master, and his hearts sank. She would sacrifice him as well, the woman who'd been so kind to the child he'd once been. Her kindness had just been a façade, like all the others.
The Doctor pivoted round, one last time, switched the gun to his other hand, now aiming it right at the Master. Terror jolted through him, the Master knew he was about to die.
"Get out of the way," the Doctor commanded him, but his voice was gentle, and it took the Master a moment before he understood, hope flaring in him along with a sudden joy. He fell to the side getting out of the way, so that the Doctor could fire on the Diamond.
The explosion knocked them to their knees, but the Master was jubilant. The Doctor could have killed him, should have, but didn't. For the first time ever, he'd put his friend first, he'd protected him, even when it could have meant the end of time. They hadn't been willing to sacrifice him, after all. He looked at the Lady Professor and she met his eyes.
"She never hated you," her mental voice was faint in his mind, but he heard it nonetheless. "Susan protected you to the end." He closed his eyes a moment, basking in that knowledge.
"The link is broken! Back into the Time War, Rassilon! Back into Hell!" the Doctor shouted and the Master cocked his head in amusement. He still hasn't really learned to rant properly, he thought to himself.
Rassilon stood against the howling winds that were sucking Gallifrey back, while the Visionary's voice screamed and babbled. That bitch could die and the Master would dance and sing, after all she'd done to Susan. The Lord President lifted up his gauntlet and pointed it at the Doctor, who just stood there, not moving.
"You'll die with me, Doctor," Rassilon shouted, still the vindictive twit he'd always been.
"I know," the Doctor replied and it annoyed the hell out of him. This is not how you do things! You kicked the bastards till they bled and then you kicked them some more!
"Get out of the way," he instructed the Doctor and gathered his life's energy in his hands. He threw years of his existence at Rassilon. Decades, centuries, burning up his lifespan to kill the man who'd destroyed that life. "You did this to me! All of my life! You made me!" He screamed at them, at the people who'd broken him, filled his head with madness, given him Susan, and then withheld her from him. He'd kill them all.
He felt arms around him; the brush of hair on his cheek, a ghost was wrapped around his heart, giving him what he needed.
Susan.
"Koschei, I'm here," she whispered in his ear and he felt her strength, her anger, her hatred of the man who stood, mocking and taunting them, and she joined it to him. It didn't matter anymore what they were to each other, it only mattered that they defeat this monster that had turned them into monsters as well.
He threw himself at his true worst enemy and he was sucked forward, ready and willing to fall back into hell, if only he could kill this one man, and save the Doctor. Maybe, just maybe, he'd be going back to Susan as well. Maybe she was there and he could die with her, as he was meant to.
He fell onto a hard stone floor and looked up.
There was silence in his mind; there was nothing, but the empty echoing hollow in his soul. The drumbeat was gone, the constant sound that had maddened him, driven him, defined him, was gone and he was alone. Completely.
He fell to the ground and beat at it. The unfairness of it all was too much. He wasn't dead, he wasn't with her, and he hadn't been able to strangle Rassilon with his bare hands.
He sat there for long moments and then raised his head to see the suns rising and realized that for the first time since he was eight years old, he could think clearly.
He looked into his own soul and screamed in horror at what he saw there.
He was a monster.