Terminus
The Doctor sat quite still as Nyssa completed the story. Peri was unashamedly weeping, sniffling and wiping away the tears with the backs of her hands.
Nyssa held nothing back. She told him everything: Tegan's kidnapping, the Master's murder of various companions (with an apologetic look toward Peri), the way Leela's daughter Noni hid herself on the TARDIS in order to stay with Susan until the Doctor's future self brought the infant back to his first incarnation. The way the Master caused the Doctor's son and Ace to be permanently out of temporal phase with their daughter, so they could never be with her again.
What the Master had done to Tegan, and what he intended for the son he fathered on her.
The Doctor interrupted her only once, to inquire as to the identity of Kyris' mother. When Nyssa replied, "Romana," his only comment was an understanding, "Ah," as he indicated that she should continue.
"When we realized Tegan was missing, that the emergency pages we'd received were both false, we went back to our quarters and found this." Nyssa pulled out a small hand-held message pad from a pocket in her smock. Her voice caught. "He left it in the crib. He also left very precise instructions." The Doctor took the device and pressed the playback button without comment.
The Master's new voice came forth, strong and mocking. "Greetings, Nyssa of Traken." A chuckle. "Oh, I'm sorry; was that in poor taste? Nyssa of Terminus, then. I understand congratulations are in order; I certainly hope your husband treats you better than the Doctor ever did." Nyssa grimaced at that comment, just as she had the first time she heard it, but the Doctor just sat with head bowed, listening intently to the rest of the Master's taunting words.
"Let's get down to business, shall we? I have something you want, and the Doctor has something I want. My TARDIS. Or his; I shan't be fussy about it. I know he's probably given my ship to his cursed offspring, and I want it back. If you want Tegan and our son returned to you, which I am confident you do, then you will notify me upon the Doctor's arrival by activating this code." A string of numbers and letters flashed across the small screen, the only visual the Master offered. "At that time, I will continue this conversation, such as it is, with him. Oh, and one more thing; if he takes too long, let's say longer than a year, shall we? I'll assume there will be no deal and will cut my losses by taking my son with me." A significant pause. " Without his mother."
The message went silent. The Doctor remained very still, head bowed, for almost a full minute. Just as Peri opened her mouth to ask if he was all right, he rose to his feet, solemnly shook Tyrel's hand, patted Nyssa on the head, then left the room, closing the door carefully behind him.
Peri, still sniffling, half-rose to her feet as if to follow, then sank back into her chair, thinking better of the idea. "I knew the Master was evil," she said, wiping her nose with a napkin that Tyrel quietly handed her. "I mean, I knew it, here." She tapped a clenched fist against her stomach twice, to indicate how viscerally she knew it. "I saw some of the things he's done, but this..."
Nyssa reached over wordlessly and took the other woman's hand in her own. She'd had six weeks to try and come to grips with the situation, and it touched her that the Doctor's newest companion felt the pain of it so profoundly. "I know. Even after witnessing what he's capable of, the atrocities he's able to commit with no thought of consequences or care for how it might affect anyone else, it turns out he can still shock us."
Peri wiped her eyes one last time and gave an emphatic nod. "I think this even shocked the Doctor, don't you?" She stared toward the worn paneling on the kitchen door, incongruous next to the polished white roundels of the TARDIS walls. "He never closes that door; heck, I didn't even know what the back of it looked like until now. And we eat in here all the time." She looked lost, and Nyssa squeezed her hand again, sympathetically. The Doctor in need of comfort wasn't completely alien, no matter how tightly he controlled himself at those times. The Doctor so obvious about that need was something else entirely.
And yet she also knew he would reject any such comfort. She knew, with a certainty born not only of experience but also of her limited empathic skills, that he felt responsible for all of this. She could practically feel the "if onlys" filling the room, even after he'd left.
Somewhere In Space
The TARDIS was acting up. Of course, the argument could be made that the TARDIS frequently acted up, but this was different. There was no spatial turbulence, no discernable outside influences to cause it to behave the way it was currently behaving, no signs of psychic interference or electromagnetic radiation or anything else that could disrupt the smooth running of the time machine.
So naturally Ace blamed the Master.
"It's him, I'm telling you," she insisted to the back of Kyris' head. He was currently leaning down, opening the panel for the third, or was it the fourth, time that morning. "He's still in here, doing something."
"The TARDIS sent him to a new body," Kyris' muffled reply came back, followed by a soft grunt as the panel finally allowed itself to be wrenched free. The cursed machine did seem to fight them at every turn, although nowhere nearly as much as it had when the Master's essence was floating around, maliciously causing deliberate problems.
"Some part of him isn't," Ace retorted stubbornly. "I'll bet he had a back up program in place. Just in case something like this happened, if someone else tried to use his TARDIS." She glared around the console room. "Bloody bastard."
Kyris stood back up, sonic screwdriver in one hand, some other tool Ace didn't recognize in the other. "Look, Ace, I'm telling you, the Master isn't still here in any form, except for the normal imprinting he did when he took this TARDIS for his own. That's why it keeps acting up, not because of deliberate booby-traps. It just has to get used to a new Time Lord being in charge, and it'll settle down." He glared at the console. "It had better," he muttered threateningly.
It had been about six subjective months since they'd gone off in search of the Master. Both were still determined to force him to undo whatever he'd done to them, to keep them out of temporal phase with their daughter, Susan, but each privately suspected it was a futile effort. But it beat sitting around doing nothing, it gave them a purpose and a goal, and it allowed them to spend more time together to explore whatever else they might have in common besides their hatred for the Master and desire to hold their daughter in their arms once again.
Ace sighed. Loudly. Which, Kyris knew, signaled temporary capitulation. He dropped the tools he was holding and walked over to her. She was pacing near the door to the interior of the TARDIS. "Look, it isn't going to help if all you're doing is standing around watching me tinker," he said, taking her gently into his arms. She resisted lightly, then gave in and allowed him to kiss her. She'd shut down emotionally for a time, and it had taken them over three months to be able to return to a physical relationship, to be able to talk to each other without it escalating into an argument that always ended with one of them not speaking to the other for days at a time.
"So what else am I supposed to do?" Ace grumbled.
"Get back to reconfiguring the TARDIS the way you want it to look," Kyris replied promptly. He brushed a swath of black hair out of his eyes. Blue eyes, which, as Ace frequently found time to comment, were the most fab pair she'd ever seen. It was the only way she'd ever managed to make him blush.
Ace rubber her own hair absently. She'd cut it, chopped the brown tresses short not long after she and Kyris had taken off in pursuit of the Master. It changed her looks, sharpened her features and hardened her eyes, although Kyris knew a large part of that was subjective; he himself saw a more brittle reflection in the mirror when he got up every morning after a night of not-sleeping. He kept to a diurnal schedule now that Ace had returned to their shared bedroom, afraid to change it in case she saw it as rejection and took herself away from him once again.
"The stupid machine keeps fighting me," she pointed out, but he knew when he'd won and kissed the tip of her nose without comment. "But," she finally allowed, "I suppose I can get back to making it do something it doesn't want to." Her expression lightened considerably as she said that, a fleeting grin touching her lips. Kyris knew she was being too heavy handed in her attempts at reconfiguration, at implementing the programming he'd patiently taught her, but let it go. She was taking her frustration out on the TARDIS, which reacted in turn by being even more intransigent, but it did give her something to do. Eventually she would figure it out, or else simply browbeat the machine into doing what she wanted. He was unwilling to lay odds as to who had the stronger will, especially with the Master completely out of the equation.
"Fine, I'll be in auxiliary control if you need me," were Ace's last words on the subject as Kyris returned his attention to the console. "I'll be back for lunch, which I know you won't remember."
"See you later," he replied absently, his mind fully absorbed now by the intricacies of the machinery showing in the console base. He dropped to his knees, picked up the sonic screwdriver his father had built him, and got back to work.