Chapter Four
"I'm not a bad person, Lucy" the Master told her, staring at the TARDIS controls. He had set them to just hover in the vortex, not in any specific time or plan, just hovering, to the Master it was like being in some sort of void. Some sort of nowhere. "Well no, scratch that, maybe I am. I probably am. It really depends on your definition of bad. I don't feel like a bad person, but I suppose that's not to say I'm not."
He shook his head, clearing that ramble away. He became tapping on the console almost subconsciously, taptaptaptap, taptaptaptap. "I'm definitely insane, you got that one right, little Lucy. I've got this drumming in my head, this four bar drumbeat. It never goes away. Never stopping, never pausing, never, never, never and it hurts. My god, Lucy, it hurts so much" he looked up and locked eyes with her "And I love it" he ran around the TARDIS and slid into the seat beside her, leaning in too close for her liking "I must be insane, right? I must sound like some sort of masochist but the pain is so glorious. The drumming, the constant reminder. Can't you hear it? It's so loud, can't you feel it?"
Once again he began tapping the four beat, this time using her leg at the drum. She tensed as he did so. As he continued all the crazed energy left his voice and he sounded genuinely curious "Why are you scared, Lucy?"
"I just walked into a post-box and left my planet with a guy, no not even a guy, an alien, who is happy to admit he's insane and takes pleasure in seeing a planet blow up" Lucy's voice was a lot stronger than she felt "An alien who calls himself the Master which really should've been enough to stop me coming"
The Master glared at her, the look of anger on his face was so intense that Lucy shrunk away from it "Humans are so closed minded. If something is at all different it's wrong or bad or scary." Lucy tried to interrupt but he didn't give her a chance "The only thing you lot are any good for is killing each other. Maybe I am bad because I see beauty in destruction and wonder in pain. But if that makes me bad what does that say about the poets and artists of your planet? What does that make them?"
Lucy stood up, a few steps away from him, the Master stood up at the same time, not allowing her to talk down at him "Poets write about it, artists paint is they don't take people and force them to watch their planet being destroyed 5 billion years before it happens"
"You're clearly not a poet or artist are you, little Lucy?" the Master's question was clearly rhetorical "I wanted you to see it, because it's so beautiful. The way it happens is just so beautiful, it's just like a poem. There's no other way to explain it, can't you see that? Can't you see the beauty?"
"There's nothing beautiful about the death of my planet"
Just for a moment the Master's eyes seemed to show something that wasn't anger or hatred but something softer, regret? Remorse? Lucy couldn't identify it for sure and it was gone within a moment. "That's who I am, Lucy. I can't help it, I've always been fascinated by death and destruction. I'm like a Goth with no make-up. But it's worse now, it's so much worse now. Death and destruction is all there is, Lucy, there is nothing else. If you give it long enough everything stops being… It just stops being. All across the universe there are an uncountable number of wars. Your own country is at war. Your world fights itself so much it's a complete fluke that it lasted as long as it did."
Lucy made no reply for a moment, she had nothing to say about that. She knew there was a lot of war on the earth, and she didn't doubt that it was the same across the universe but she could never look at it that way. It would never just be death, there was everything before death which was beautiful and amazing. When she eventually spoke she simply said "I want to go home."
"I wish you could hear it, Lucy. Little, lovely Lucy. I wish you could hear the drumming" using the first finger on each hand he tapped along on the side of his head, not stopping the whole time he spoke "I wish you could understand it. It won't go away. It'll never go away. It's there all the time to remind me. To remind me that there is nothing but death and pain and destruction. To remind me that there never will be anything more. To force me to remember what I could never forget. To force me to remember what I did" he suddenly fell silent and looked up at her quickly, meeting her eyes and holding the gaze. He was still tapping on the side of his head, the movement seeming to become quicker and more urgent. "It won't let me forget and I don't want to forget. I don't deserve to forget. I ran away because I hated it, I caused pain and destroyed things because it went against what they believed in. I wanted to get back at them for the way they treated me, for what they did. I wanted to get back at them, that's why I left, that's why I did the things I did." He steadily became less and less angry, there seemed to be a level of desperation in his voice which increased as he continued to speak "Oh Lucy, I had done some dreadful things. But it went too far. It all went too far. I went too far. I never meant to do that. I never thought… I never planned… I never dreamed… Do you understand, Lucy? You must understand. I never meant to but I had no choice. I… It was just one of those things. I had no choice. It had to be done. And I had to do it. Do you understand, Lucy?"
Lucy shook her head, "N-no. Take me home"
"Of course you don't" the bitter anger returned instantly. "Of course you don't, how could you possibly understand? You're just another one of them. You're just a pathetic little human. You could never understand. Your race is too inferior. I could kill you all if I wanted. I'm not afraid to change the past, after all who's going to stop me? I could change your whole history and destroy your planet in 2005 if I wanted. Or I could go back and destroy it before you were even born. I could make it so that you never even existed."
"Take me home" Lucy repeated.
The Master looked her up and down, as though only just noticing the fear she was feeling, the determination she had to stay strong. "You don't need to be scared of me. I may like danger and pain and destruction, but I promise you I'm not a liar. Nothing I've said and nothing I will say in the future" he smiled slightly "or past" before continuing seriously "will be a lie. And I will never do anything to physically hurt you. I'm not a bad person, Lucy, not really."