A/N: Sorry, this chapter took a while because I started Senior High School and I got a bit overwhelmed by my studies... and the fact that my headmaster (who looks a lot like Professor Yana) has a pocket watch! This chapter, based on the episode "The Unquiet Dead" was also very hard to write and somehow Charles Dickens disappeared from the story and only makes small appearances, unlike in the real episode where he's a main character... Okay, I really shouldn't do too much talking. Just read the chapter and if you want to, give me some feedback~
Chapter 3: Victorian Ghosts
~In which Rose gets to meet a famous author and aliens that possess dead people~
~DW~
"Stupid, stupid ship!" The Master kicked at the TARDIS console furiously as the ship shook violently and Rose was knocked to the floor. She quickly got back on her feet and grabbed hold of the console before it shook again.
"You're not a very good driver, are you?" She grinned at him. He just looked back at her with a scowl, looking very insulted.
"It's not my fault! It's this ship! It's far too old to work properly!" He kicked the console again, which only caused the TARDIS to shake even worse, almost throwing the Master off his feet. "I wish I had my own TARDIS and not this stupid old thing! It won't... take... me... back... to... your... time!" With every word he said, he pressed a new button on the TARDIS, completely outraged.
"Where are we going then? Can't you get me back home?" Rose asked, beginning to feel a bit worried now where she only had felt amusement before.
"Apparently not." the Master said as he pulled another lever, causing a small explosion on the console. "But don't worry, Miss Tyler. I'll get you there eventually."
"Why can't you just take this TARDIS to repair, if it's so faulty?" Rose wondered. "I mean, even you Time Lords, if that's what you're called, must have someplace to go to?"
"No, Miss Tyler! I can't take it for repair! There's nowhere to go!" the Master snarled and pressed a few more buttons, causing a great tremor again. "Now, will you please be quiet and let me pilot this ship in peace?" It wasn't even a real question, it was more of an order, so Rose decided to ignore him.
"You're in a bad mood! Why not just take a break? Land somewhere, we'll go out for some fresh air, and then you can try again." she suggested gently.
"Fine." the Master muttered and pressed a button. The shaking stopped, indicating that the TARDIS had landed.
"Where are we?" Rose asked. "Earth?"
"According to the TARDIS we are in Cardiff in the year of 1869."
"Cardiff? You could land anywhere in time and space and you land in Cardiff?!" Rose blurted out, feeling a bit disappointed. If she wasn't going to get home now, she'd wished to see some more exciting place at least! But then she remembered what had happened on Platform One and decided that it might be better to be more careful about the destination. "Oh, nevermind." she then told the Master. "Do you have any more suiting clothes here? I shouldn't go out looking like this..."
"There's a wardrobe somewhere in there." The Master absentmindedly pointed in a seemingly random direction while he examined the TARDIS console. "If the TARDIS likes you, she might help you get there."
"Sure." Rose sighed and went off in search for the wardrobe. And here she had hoped that he would actually be polite enough to show her the way.
~DW~
Ten minutes and forty-two seconds later, Miss Tyler returned, now wearing a black dress more suited for the Victorian era. The Master couldn't help but wonder how she'd found her way so quickly.
"What do you think?" she asked and made a small twirl. The Master nodded.
"You look fine, Miss Tyler. Shall we?" He opened the TARDIS doors and stepped out into the snowy street. She followed him, her eyes darting curiously over the scenery.
"Do you know what date it is?" she asked as they walked down the street.
"According to the TARDIS, it's December 24th, I think." the Master said, not really that concerned about the information. He wasn't good with Earth dates, but there was an annoying, nagging feeling at the back of his mind that there was something he had forgotten... Miss Tyler's eyes widened.
"Oh my god, it's Christmas Eve! Why didn't you tell me?" the human blurted out excitedly. The Master frowned. Of course. Now he remembered. Christmas... That human holiday of joy and festivities. He could recall celebrating it while posing as Professor Yana, but the memories were faint.
"I'm not exactly interested in Earth holidays, Miss Tyler." he replied coolly. She observed him casually.
"I told you, you can just call me Rose. I'm just nineteen, you know. There's no need for you to be overly polite." she explained. The Master ignored her as they kept walking. He had no intention of using her first name, as he had no intention to get further acquainted with her. He would just find out why the TARDIS had landed here and not somewhere else, and then take the young woman home to her own time. At least that was what he kept telling himself. He hoped this plan would work out too...
That was when the screaming started. People dashed out of a building nearby, one the Master quickly identified as a theatre.
"That's wonderful." the Master groaned. "I knew it. I just knew it. Of course she had a reason to land here, of course she wants me to solve whatever is going on now..." He stopped talking when he noticed that Miss Tyler wasn't standing beside him anymore. She was running forwards, towards the theatre. "Oh no, Miss Tyler, don't you da...!" The Master was quickly interrupted as he was pushed to the ground by a frightened human.
"I apologize sincerely!" the vaguely familiar bearded man quickly blurted out and pulled the Master to his feet.
"What happened?" the Master asked quickly, glaring at the human, hoping that his hypnotic powers would aid him more this time.
"The people were all just listening to my storytelling, when the walking corpse of an old woman showed up! A ghost! It frightened everyone!" the man explained, sounding utterly horrified.
"A ghost?" the Master asked, feeling more and more annoyed. Yet another extra-terrestrial being about to ruin his day... The Master glared at the man for a moment, realizing why he looked so familiar, and cast a few glances around, looking for his human company. When he didn't spot her, he just sighed. "Tell me more about it, Mister Dickens."
~DW~
Rose dashed into the theatre, determined to find out what had happened. The dress slowed her down quite a bit, and she stumbled several times. When she cast a look behind her while she was running down the corridor leading inside, she realized that the Master wasn't behind her. She sighed and swung around to continue, but jumped back in shock.
An old woman, probably over eighty years, was walking down the corridor. The problem was just that she didn't look alive. Rose thought that the way she walked looked like the way zombies walked in those horror movies Mickey sometimes made her watch. Her eyes were wide open and empty, and her mouth hung open, emitting some kind of blue gas-like substance. Rose began backing away slowly as the old woman came closer. This was definitely not natural. She wondered where the Master had disappeared off to. But right then, a voice shouted:
"Sir! I've found her, sir!" Rose cast a glance behind the old woman approaching her and saw another woman, maybe about her age, running towards them. She was dressed in a way that made Rose guess she was a servant of some kind. Another person rounded the corner. This time it was an older man, breathing heavily from running.
"Hurry, Gwyneth!" he shouted. Rose was just about to ask what the hell was going on here, when the old lady's mouth suddenly opened wide, and something that looked like blue gas flew out of it, for a moment taking the shape of an humanoid being, then flying towards a gas lamp and disappearing. The old lady dropped to the ground, clearly as dead as she had looked all along.
"Excuse me, Miss, but this poor lady has been taken with the brain fever!" the servant girl babbled as she ran up to the old lady's body. "We'll have to get her to the infirmary!" She and the man picked up the old lady's body and dashed off with it before Rose really had a chance to say a word. Rose took a deep breath, trying to get over her confusion, and then observed the lamp which the gas-like creature had vanished into. An alien that could possess corpses? She'd have to find the Master and ask him about it, right now. She turned on her heel and hurried back towards the entrance.
When she came back outside, she found the Master deep in discussion with a seemingly random human. The Time Lord had an expression on his face which for once wasn't anything negative, but he actually looked genuinely interested.
"I must say, I'm not usually into this pl... I mean this area's literature, but I actually enjoyed A Christmas Carol quite a lot, I must say. You're quite a clever human being, Mister Dickens, and coming from me, that is some enormous praise."
"Why, thank you, Professor Yana, was it?" the other man replied. "I'm honored to have heard that."
"Oi! I think we have a problem!" Rose poked at the Master's shoulder. "Gas aliens, have you ever heard of..." The Master interrupted her by clearing his throat in a way that clearly told her to keep her mouth shut for a second.
"I'm very sorry, Mister Dickens. This is my acquaintance, Miss Rose Tyler." he introduced Rose to the man who... wait, what was his name?! "Miss Tyler, this is Mister Charles Dickens." Charles Dickens?! Really?! Rose couldn't help but stare in awe at the man before her.
"The Charles Dickens?!" she blurted out before she could help herself. "Y'know, the writer?!" The man before her nodded, seeming a bit confused.
"That's me, Miss Tyler."
"Wow! It's an honour, Mister Dickens! I've read many of your books!" In school for some assignments because she didn't have a choice, that was. Not that Rose had disliked his books; in fact she had liked them quite a lot. She was about to attempt to shake his hand, but then realized that she didn't know if she, as a woman, had the right to do that in this century. Now she really wished she'd paid more attention in History class... "Oh, and just call me Rose." She didn't want another person who kept calling her Miss Tyler in that ridiculously posh tone.
"All right. Hello, Rose." Dickens said and held out his hand for Rose to shake. She took it and shook his hand politely, just feeling a bit stupid over the inner monologue she'd had moments before. The Master must've been reading her mind again, because he had a self-satisfied smirk on his face which quickly turned back into a polite smile once Dickens looked back at him.
"So what have you been up to?" the Master asked suspiciously.
"Oh, I found an alien made of gas who possessed a dead person, if you're interested." Rose said, attempting to sound nonchalant, trying to mimic the Master's attitude over everything extra-terrestrial they had run into during their travelling together. However, this time, the Master's eyes widened in shock and recognition.
"But that can't be!" he whispered, his horror and bewilderment reflecting through his eyes. He snapped at Rose: "What happened to the corpse?! I have to examine it! Now!"
"There was an old man and a servant girl. They took it!" Rose explained quickly. She gazed around the street, suddenly spotting a hearse driving past, recognizing the people in it. "That must be them!" The Master's eyes narrowed.
"We have to follow them." he hissed, spotting a nearby horse-drawn carriage. "Come along, Miss Tyler. Let's catch some Victorian ghosts." He took her hand and ran towards the carriage. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Mister Dickens!" He pushed Rose into the carriage, surprising the driver (who seemed to have been dozing off) quite a lot.
"Hey! That's my carriage!" Dickens yelled, sounding very surprised as he spurted after them.
"Excuse me, but I need this." the Master said and pushed driver down from his place. The poor driver gave a frightened yelp as he landed in the snow below, but before Rose could ask him if he was all right, the carriage went off with full speed. The Master really was a violent driver, not only when it came to the TARDIS.
~DW~
The Master loved feeling the wind in his face in this incarnation. It made him feel free. He had noticed this fact sometime during the Time War. The Time War... The Master's thoughts drifted back to the horrors he and the Doctor had experienced. What was happening now wasn't exactly making it better. He then found himself wishing he hadn't thought of that, because his mind seemed to focus too much on one certain detail of his train of thoughts...
The Master hadn't really thought about the Doctor that much since the return of his true identity. He hadn't found himself able to. The Doctor. That foolish, foolish man. He remembered that sad smile, those blue eyes... and he found that it hurt. More than anything. It was so painful. The Master wondered how he could ever have wanted to kill the Doctor, though in his hearts he knew why. He'd never really wanted to kill the Doctor. He'd wanted to impress, to be respected, to humiliate, to hurt just a little but never too much.
But now the Doctor... he was... he... The Master's hands tightened around the reins as the horse dragging the carriage galloped on, the idea of following the hearse in front of them imprinted into its mind by the Master's telepathy. He couldn't think about it. He just couldn't accept it. He couldn't believe that the Doctor was... dead. There. He'd said it. (Or rather, thought it.) Dead. He was dead. Dead. Gone forever. He wasn't going to regenerate, like he had back at Logopolis. He was never coming back, never going to thwart the Master's plans again, never going to show up with his TARDIS disguised as a stupid blue box, because the Master owned that TARDIS now.
The Doctor. How ridiculous it was, really, that the one thing that really mattered in the Master's world except for his own life and safety was his arch-nemesis. And how horrible it was that the Master had never realized that before it was too late. He was now forced to admit something he had never wanted to admit before.
The Master missed the Doctor, and the realization broke his hearts.
~DW~
Rose had a feeling very similar to sea-sickness once the carriage finally stopped. She climbed out of the carriage dizzily and almost stumbled over a pile of snow. When she cast a look around the area, she found that they were outside a chapel of some sort, the hearse they had followed positioned right beside them. She found the Master on the driver's place, apparently lost in thought. He seemed so strange, out of character; he looked like a sad old man who had lost everything.
"You okay?" Rose asked carefully. The Master blinked, and the sorrow vanished, only to be replaced with the usual coldness.
"Why wouldn't I be?" he snarled as he leapt down onto the ground. "Don't ask stupid questions like that." Rose decided that it was better not to protest.
"Okay, what are those gas creatures, then, and why did you react like that when you heard about them?" she asked him as they walked towards the chapel.
"If they are what I think they are, they are a species called the Gelth." he said, not sounding very happy to be speaking of this. "It's a long story, really. There was a war... A huge war. The... Time War." He gritted his teeth as if he was in pain. "The greatest war the Universe has ever seen. Invisible to smaller species like yours, but... devastating to higher species. The Gelth lost their bodies during the Time War, fading away and becoming gas-like entities." Rose pondered about what the Master had said for a moment.
"Higher species? Were your people involved too?" she asked. The Master froze and his eyes widened. Rose turned around to face him. He was shaking and looked very taken back with her question.
"Yes." he finally replied, with such bitterness that Rose was frightened. "But I'm not going to discuss it." He walked up to the chapel's door and knocked in a beat of four. The door opened after half a minute or so, and the servant girl from earlier, Gwyneth, if Rose recalled her name correctly, peeked out.
"I'm sorry, but Mister Sneed can't accept visitors right now." she told them, a nervous undertone in her voice. The Master ignored her, pushed her aside and walked right past her.
"Sorry about him." Rose also leapt inside before Gwyneth had a chance to close the door. "We just got a bit curious about the... walking corpse. You see, my friend, he is, um, a Professor and he's really interested in these things..." She quickly followed the Master through the corridor, and Gwyneth dashed after them.
"Stop! You can't just walk in!" Right then, a gas lamp flared peculiarly. The Master stopped and began examining it.
"Trouble with the gas, I see?" he asked Gwyneth in a light tone.
"If you don't leave, I'll have to tell my master." Gwyneth spluttered, but when the Master kept ignoring her, she spurted off deeper into the house, probably going to look for Mister Sneed.
"So... What have you found?" Rose asked, trying to ignore the fact that the Master had been so rude to Gwyneth. Who was Rose to tell him off anyway, he didn't even listen to her. The Master turned around and observed Rose closely before replying.
"There are some places where there are rifts, weak points in time and space. The reason the Gelth are appearing here in Cardiff is because Cardiff is situated on top of a rift like that." he said. "The dead human body releases gas. Thus, the Gelth can possess corpses. I guess they're on the hunt to find a physical form. They want human corpses, so to say." Rose frowned. That was just... she didn't even have words for it.
"That's so wrong! You should respect the dead!" she pointed out.
"That's just the way you see it." the Master said, raising his eyebrows. "I'd guess the TARDIS took us here to give the Gelth some human corpses to live in, and since we don't want to be trapped here forever, we should do as she wants." Rose wanted to protest, but before she had a chance to, Gwyneth came running back, along with a very annoyed Mister Sneed.
"You have no right to be here! Leave, now!" he shouted at the Master and Rose furiously. The Master gave him a polite smile.
"I apologize, Mister Sneed, but I'm here to fix your gas problem." he explained to Mister Sneed as if it was obvious. "Now, do you have somewhere we can sit down and discuss this? Over a cup of tea, maybe?"
~DW~
"So." the Master leant back in his chair and took a sip of the tea the servant girl had served him. "You've had the problems with these 'ghosts' for how long, now?"
"A few months now." Sneed explained from the chair opposite him. "They always said this house was haunted, but I didn't believe it until the corpses started walking..." The Human sounded worried and uncomfortable with having this discussion. Of course. He still thought they were ghosts, after all. The Master sighed. Humans were so ignorant.
"Those things are not ghosts, Mister Sneed." he stated. "They're part of a race called the Gelth. They come from a planet beyond the Earth." Sneed's eyes widened.
"What are you saying, man?" he spat.
"Mister Sneed, it's true. I know it sounds weird, but it is!" Miss Tyler barged into the conversation. She pointed at the Master. "This man isn't a Human either! He's a Time Lord from another planet!" Before they had the chance to see Sneed's reaction, the servant girl ran into the living room.
"Sir! The corpses are walking again!" she yelled. Sneed groaned.
"Oh no, not again." He got out of his chair. "I guess we'll just have to lock them in again. Wait here with the guests, I'll handle it." He hurried out of the room. The Master was sure he was going to try to reason with the Gelth by asking them if they really came from another planet. The servant girl looked at him and Miss Tyler in worry.
"You should really just leave, sir, miss." she whispered.
"I don't think so." The Master made himself more comfortable in the chair and drank more of the tea. An awkward silence occured, during which the two Human girls shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.
"So... Gwyneth, was it? I'm Rose. Do you like working for Mister Sneed?" he heard Miss Tyler ask eventually.
"Oh yes, miss! He's very kind!" the servant girl replied, still nervous. "He took so good care of me when I lost my parents to the flu when I was twelve."
"Oh. I'm sorry to hear about that."
"Thank you, miss. But I'll be with them again, one day, sitting with them in paradise. I shall be so blessed. They're waiting for me. Maybe your dad's up there waiting for you too, miss."
"Maybe. He died years back. Wait, how did you know he was dead?" Now the Master had to turn the chair around to pay more attention to the conversation. He'd heard of this. People who grew up near a rift often gained powers beyond the comprehendable. This girl seemed to have the powers of a medium of some kind. How interesting. For a while, the Master wondered if he could use the girl's power in some sort of attempt to dominate the Universe, but decided to leave that for later.
"Sorry, miss. Ever since I was little, I've had the sight. My mother told me to hide it, but sometimes I just can't." the girl explained. "You're from London. I've seen London in drawings, but never like that. All those people rushing about half naked, for shame. And the noise, and the metal boxes racing past, and the birds in the sky, no, they're metal as well. Metal birds with people in them. People are flying. And you, you've flown so far. Further than anyone. The things you've seen. The darkness, the big bad wolf." She caught Miss Tyler and the Master staring at her. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, miss."
"That's impressive." the Master told her. "Growing up on top of the Cardiff rift... How fascinating." The girl then turned to him.
"And you, sir. You've come from even further away. From across the stars. Red grass, I've never heard the like... Oh, the things you've done, they're horrible! I can see death and destruction. And the never-ending Drums, driving you mad... You're so old, so much older than you look, even. And so, so sad. You've lost everything in the war. You're so alone. The only one that ever mattered... I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean to!" The Master felt his rage rise, but forced himself to take a few breaths. He had to control his temper. He couldn't just kill her, Miss Tyler would be enraged... Hm, since when did her opinion matter?! He caught said girl staring at him, and quickly smiled.
"How impressive. I didn't expect you to be able to see my mind so clearly."
~DW~
Rose quickly decided that she had to ask the Master about Gwyneth's words later. She didn't have the chance to do so now, because Mister Sneed's scream suddenly echoed from deeper inside the house.
"Gwyneth! Come here now!"
"Oh no! What could've happened to Mister Sneed?!" Gwyneth's face twisted with worry, and she spurted off to find Mister Sneed.
"Come on, Master! Let's go!" Rose spun around, expecting the Master to be ready to go, but instead, she found him still sitting in the chair, not making any attempt to move. "Hey! Are you okay?" She approached the Master. He looked up at her, eyes filled with pain. After about half a minute, he seemed to regain control of himself.
"You- You wouldn't understand anyway." he muttered, and the pain just vanished, tucked back under layers of indifference and coldness. "Lets get going." He pulled himself to his feet and followed Gwyneth. Rose ran after him, trying to catch up. (Stupid dress, making it hard to run...) Gwyneth had mentioned a war. Rose wondered if she had meant that Time War business the Master had mentioned earlier. She'd said the Master was lonely. The Master hadn't wanted to talk about his people's involvement in the Time War. Rose was convinced that something horrible had happened to the Time Lords. They searched through several rooms, but they didn't find any traces of Mister Sneed or Gwyneth. Eventually, though, they entered a corridor and found the two Victorian people running towards them from the other side of it.
"Rose!" Gwyneth called out. "We have a little problem!" When Rose looked behind them, she spotted at least ten corpses following them, slowly but surely. After them, humanoid beings made of red gas that appeared to be flaming followed, dozens and dozens of them.
"What have you done?!" the Master shouted furiously. "There can't have been that many of them before!"
"I went down to the morgue, where most of the ghosts had been seen!" Mister Sneed's breath was shallow, and he looked very tired as he ran up beside them. "There, they came to me! They told me they needed Gwyneth's help, her powers, to be saved, because they were dying! So I summoned her, and-"
"Wait a second. Come with me." the Master interrupted him, and the group of four ran off down the corridor, the way he and Rose had taken. Once they'd circled the house for a while, they ran into a room with an iron door, and the Master slammed the door shut, using a strange gadget, which made a strange buzzing sound, at the door.
"What's that?" Gwyneth asked curiously.
"Sonic screwdriver. Locks doors." the Master said and slipped it back into his vest pocket. "So. The Gelth said they needed Gwyneth. What happened once she arrived?"
"I gladly helped! I've seen them in my dreams since I was a child, like angels!" Gwyneth whispered. "But when I did as they told me, stood under the arch, which they called 'a weak point in time and space', they started to come through more and more and took all the corpses. They changed colour, from sweet blue to flaming red, and began attacking us, telling us to sacrifice our lives for them!" Something slammed at the door violently a few times.
"And so, you ran." the Master muttered. "Of course. I should have known. The Gelth aren't here because they're in need of bodies. They're here because they want the Earth. That's why the TARDIS took us here - not to help them, but to stop them."
"Okay." Rose mumbled sarcastically. "Just the exact opposite from what we thought, then." Another alien invasion. Yay. "What are we gonna do now? Got any anti-plastic this time?"
"That only works on Nestenes." the Master stated. "Against the Gelth, we need-" Rose quickly interrupted him.
"Fire! They're made of gas, so we should use fire!" she suggested. "Am I right?" The Master looked surprised.
"Why, yes. There are better, more sophisticated ways of killing a Gelth, but fire is doubtlessly the simplest. Bravo, Miss Tyler. Your simple Earth logic actually works at times. Do you have any matches, Mister Sneed?"
"I do." Mister Sneed said and pulled out a matchbox from his pocket. He held it out to the Master, who took it.
"We need to get down into the morgue, Miss Tyler and I. The Gelth don't know we're here. Mister Sneed, can you and Gwyneth distract the Gelth?" the Master asked swiftly.
"Very well." Mister Sneed looked beyond frightened. "The morgue is down the stairs, take that corridor." He pointed at a pathway to their left.
"Come on." The Master took Rose's hand, and they were off.
~DW~
The morgue was an unpleasant place. The fact that it had been full of corpses a while ago didn't bother the Master. The fact that there was a portal under the arch that lead into the room which was streaming with Gelth was much more bothersome, the way the Master saw it at least. The moment he and Miss Tyler reached the portal, they were surrounded by at least twenty Gelth, their gas-like humanoid bodies shaped like red flames. (It reminded the Master of that unpleasant event at Sarn, and being reminded of that was never good.)
"Humans, sacrifice yourself to the Gelth!" one of the Gelth exclaimed, its child-like voice filled with anticipation. The Master just had to smirk as Miss Tyler moved closer to him, genuinely frightened by the other-worldly creatures.
"I'm not Human." he stated. "Look at me. You know me."
(The reason the Master knew so much about the Gelth people's fate in the Time War was because he'd been involved in their fate. At the beginning of the Time War, when he had just been resurrected, he had been sent by Lady President Romanadvoratrelundar on a mission to slow the Daleks down a bit. On the way, he'd come across the Gelth's planet (he'd forgotten the name) and decided to have some fun by taking over it. He had then lead the Gelth in a direct attack on the Daleks, and in the following battle, the Daleks had used a chemical weapon that caused the Gelth's bodies to fade away. Luckily, the weapon wasn't fully developed, so it didn't work on Time Lords like it was supposed to. The Master had barely escaped the furious Gelth, thanks to a timely rescue performed by the Doct- the one the Master now forbad himself to think of! After that, the Master had closely researched the Gelth, and especially how to kill them.)
The Gelth swirled around them, and one suddenly spoke.
"You are a Time Lord!" it exclaimed. "You are the Master! But how can you still be alive? The Time Lords are extinct!" The Master heard Miss Tyler gasp, but ignored it for now.
"I'm the last Time Lord." he corrected, fury and pain taking control of his temper once again. He then pulled out a match. "And I have the power to destroy you, unless you return back to where you came from!"
"We cannot and will not return! We need the Earth and its people, their bodies, to survive!" the same Gelth which had recognized the Master screamed. "You are the Master! Since when do you care about this planet's fate?"
"Since when?! I'll tell you! Since the Doctor died!" the Master screamed back. "Since he died and left me on this damned planet! I guess he's made it my mission now!" The Doctor's last words echoed in his head.
"Farewell, Master! Live! For me!"
"Master, what are you-" Miss Tyler began, but the Master lit the match up and chucked it at the portal. The Gelth all screamed and approached the burning portal in an attempt to put the fire out, but instead, they caught fire too. More and more Gelth heard the screams of the already burning ones and came to their aid, only to catch fire also.
"Run!" the Master screamed, and the frightened Human obeyed him without question, spurting off up the stairs.
Just as they came into the corridor above the stairs, Sneed and Gwyneth came running towards them.
"The ghosts just disappeared sudde-" Sneed began, but his voice was drowned in the sound of the enormous explosion just behind them. The Master walked back to the stairs leading to the morgue, only to find them collapsed and on fire.
"Oh no! I'll get water!" Gwyneth shouted and ran off. Sneed and Miss Tyler both hurried after her. The Master just stood there, watching the fire burn. At least the Gelth wouldn't be able to go after the Doctor's precious Earth now. The three Humans soon returned with buckets of water, and began putting the fire out until nothing but ashes remained.
~DW~
It was quite sad to say goodbye to Mister Sneed and Gwyneth, at least according to Rose. If she had met them under different circumstances, she was sure they could have been good friends, her and Gwyneth. They'd barely even had a chance to talk! If she just had lived in Rose's time... As the Master and she walked back to the TARDIS in silence, the Master still looking quite angry, Rose decided to ask about what she had been wondering about since the Gelth had been defeated.
"Are you really the la-" she began, but was interrupted by a loud yell.
"Hey! You! What did you do to my carriage?" Charles Dickens came running towards them, closely followed by the carriage's very confused original driver.
"It's standing just outside the Chapel of Rest." the Master said grumpily and pointed in the direction behind them. Dickens just sighed and began his walk to get the carriage back. Just then, a sudden and perfect idea hit Rose.
"Mister Dickens, can I have your autograph?" she asked. Dickens looked quite surprised.
"Really, miss? I see. If you really want to..." He didn't sound that thrilled, but Rose still noticed his smug expression when he wrote his name on a parchment and handed it to her.
"Thank you, sir! Merry Christmas!" she shouted after him as the to-be world-famous author ran off in search for the carriage. The Master cleared his throat.
"If you're finished with being silly, Miss Tyler, I suggest we get back to the TARDIS now. Maybe she'll finally let me take you home." He began walking, and Rose just followed him. When they eventually reached the TARDIS, the Master was quick to attempt to open the doors, and looked very self-confident when they actually opened.
"Wait." Rose interrupted him as he was about to step inside. "Are you really the last Time Lord?" The Master turned back to face her, and for a while Rose thought he was going to scream at her, but instead, the Time Lord just took a deep breath, and said:
"Yes, Miss Tyler. I am."
"So that's why you have the Doctor's old TARDIS. Because the Doctor is dead." Rose mumbled, half to herself. "How stupid of me. Of course you can't take it for repair when there are no Time Lords left..."
"My planet burned." the Master suddenly exclaimed. "Gallifrey burned. And there was nothing I could do to stop it... The Doctor..." His hand clutched the TARDIS door's handle painfully. "He died, and he took the planet with him. I-" The Master drew a shaky breath, almost as if he was on the verge of crying. "I'm alone." He looked so lost and confused for a second, that Rose just had to do something.
"Sorry." she said and wrapped her arms around the Master, giving him a tight hug. The Time Lord flinched, clearly uncomfortable with be touched so intimately, but he slowly relaxed and let Rose keep hugging him for a while.
"It's beginning to snow." the Master eventually said in an unusually soft voice. Rose looked up, and saw that the Master was right. Huge snowflakes were falling from the night sky, landing in their hair. "We should go inside." He let Rose step into the TARDIS, before stepping inside by himself. "Oh, and Miss Tyler?"
"Yeah?" Rose turned around to look at him, only to find the Master wearing that same mask of coldness again, but he looked a bit embarrassed.
"Let's not mention this ever again." he stated. Rose just smiled at him.
"Merry Christmas to you too."
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. If I did, more famous historical people would make appearances (bigger than Charles Dickens in this chapter at least).