DISCLAIMER: No, I don't own Doctor Who. Yes, I wish I did. No, I don't earn any money from this. Yes, David Tennant is My Doctor.

ALL PRAISE TO THE MIGHTY BBC! ;)

SUMMARY: Starting at Utopia, things change for The Doctor and The Master. But in a good way, I promise! (This is my first fic, so take it easy on me, please!)

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As The Master passes out, The Doctor catches him again before he slumps to the floor, settles him on the grating, and turns to see Jack and Martha behind him, shocked and amazed.

"Right! Let's get out of here!" and begins that manic-Doctor-dance, dematerializing the TARDIS to jump into the vortex and away from the year 100 trillion.

"Doc, what the hell happened here?" Jack is quitely clearly over his shock now, but his anger over the idea that they may have been left at the end of the universe still burns.

Martha steps up too. "He killed Chantho! Who the hell is he?"

The Doctor sighs and rounds the console to his friends to attempt to explain a relationship nine centuries and numerous regenerations old. "He's the Professor Moriarty to my Sherlock Holmes."

Jack snorts, drawing a loud "Oi!" from The Doctor.

"Well he is!" The Doctor sighed at this, leaning against the console, watching his old friend's unconscious body.

"We grew up together on Gallifrey. Children of Gallifrey were taken from their families at the age of eight to enter the Academy. Some say that's where it all began, when he was a child. That's when the Master saw eternity. As a novice, he was taken for initiation. He stood in front of the Untempered Schism. It's a gap in the fabric of reality through which could be seen the whole of the vortex. We stand there, eight years old, staring at the raw power of time and space, just a child. Some would be inspired. Some would run away. And some would go mad."

Martha piped up, "What about you?"

The Doctor scoffed, "Oh, the ones that ran away. I never stopped!"

He stepped over to The Master and crouched to check his pulses. "The Master fled the Time War after he was resurected by the High Council to fight on the front lines." The Doctor look to Jack and Martha. "He would have been one of the best, the fiercest. But it was a massacre."

The Doctor moved to the captain's chair and sighed heavily. "The people of Gallifrey, Time Lord or not, were out-numbered at least thirteen to one."

Jack whistled. "Jeez, Doc."

"Yeah. And then it fell to me to end it." He looked to his friends, the pain and grief showing fresh in his dark eyes. "I made Gallifrey burn." He looked to The Master. "I killed all of my people. Doomed them to a never-ending death, time-locked in a war than will never end. Living, fighting, dying, coming back, then doing it all over again."

The Doctor scrubbed his hands over his face. "So when he ran," he nodded to The Master, "He ended up here. Human at the end of the universe, and ready to give his life so the rest of the people there could live, could make it to Utopia," he muses. "Then we show up." Suddenly, he bounces away and around the console to the monitor.

Martha gestures to The Master, "Wha d'we do now? With him, I mean?"

"I'll need to do some tests, scans to see ... well, just to see." The Doctor walks over to The Master and squats down to him again. "Wonder what he meant by 'His Golden Lady'? ... hmmm... "

"Alright then, up you go!" He grabs The Masters' arm and hauls him up.

"Lemme help, Doc," Jack said and grabs the man's other arm to take him to infirmary.