Author's Note: I am using the events in End of Time as a template for these next two chapters, with many obvious changes, but the dialogue between Simm, Tennant and Dalton is just too good not to use! Obviously, there are many big differences. It'd be boring if I just followed that story word for word. Besides I hate how that episode ends! These next few chapters may take a few days to post up as I want them to be just right, but never fear they are coming!
Thank you for those that have favorited and commented, it is amazing how good those comments make me feel!
Donna had no idea how much time had passed. She would wake in agony sometimes, her mind filled to bursting with too much knowledge, with memories of her time with the Doctor melding with his own memories of his long, long life. Also the knowledge of his people burned through her very being, the strange unreality of being a Master of all time and space filling her with possibility even as she catalogued every move this so called Master made. He had never told her his name, but she knew him. Knew him no matter the face from the Doctor's own memories and so knew truly what he was capable of.
It was in those moments that she was most aware of the violation that had been forced upon her by the Doctor, the enormity of his actions as he had forced all that she had become behind the veil that had been woven in her mind. She knew why he had done it, she knew that he had not had enough time to even process what had truly happened never mind enough time to figure out how to reverse it, before he had acted. With the swift fury of the Oncoming Storm he had snatched her life away, before he could change his mind and let her burn away before his very eyes.
She raged at him in those moments, she would scream in her mind and she would beg and plead that he not do it. Just as she had that fateful day, had begged him to let her die herself even as her words fell on deaf ears and the world went dark.
But why was she not burning now? It had to have been days. Days since the Master had stolen her away, days of unrelenting agony and days when the world was blessedly numb. The barriers in her mind were weakening though with each day. He poked in her head, sifting through memories and sensations nodding and cackling as he would extract some pertinent piece before slamming the barriers back in place and running back to the consoles to madly tap notes or instructions into the computer.
She watched him through Time Lord eyes, making sure to make note of which consoles he worked on the most and which ones maintained the telepathic link with her. She snorted as he held his head a brief moment, muttering once more about the incessant knocking before going back to his work as if he had never stopped.
"You know he'll find me. You've already figured out a little bit of what happened between us, and that I'm a beacon drawing him here. What I don't understand is why you would do this? I know you, Master. Better yet, I know you as HE knows you. He has done nothing but try to help and save you, nothing but try to show you a better path and all you do is try to destroy him." She spat the last out with as much venom as she could muster as he paused with a look of pure speculation in his eye. She didn't like that look one bit, so immediately went on the attack. "You stupid idiot! Its right there in front of your eyes but you refuse to see it! He had nothing to do with this knocking you keep hearing, and its not only you! The stupid knocking is screaming through the universe, even I can hear it! Now LET ME GO before its too late!"
The Master couldn't help but be impressed with the raving from his captive. Her eyes were gleaming golden so by all account she should have been nearly incoherent with agony as the fire raged within her, yet she was doing just fine and spitting that fire out at him. No wonder the Doctor had been so impressed with this human, perhaps there was more there than he had originally thought.
"All this fire for the man who essentially abandoned you to go mad and eventually die. Hardly the actions of a man who actually cares about his companions, wouldn't you say?" He watched her closely to see if his words hit their mark at all, but other than a slight tightening of her lips she gave away no indication. He growled as he leaned over her, leaping back with an oath as she lunged at him with teeth bared.
"I'll take you out with my bare hands you bugger! You already know he's in my head, so you're not dealing with just any old human here!" She thrashed as the fires roared within her, screaming through her mind as the rage built to maddening heights. As it had on the crucible, her anger unlocked a deeper portion of the Doctor's mind within hers and with her own sheer strength of will, she held off the fires from consuming her completely. She did not know how long this would work but she was determined to give the Doctor as much time as possible to figure it all out.
The Master laughed as he saw the spit and fire within this woman, so much fire within such a fragile body, it truly was amazing she hadn't burned to a crisp already. He knew that that was no small part due to her own strength of mind, but eventually that would be tapped out as the power was continuing to grow within her. He just laughed as he tut tutted at her actions. "The feeble struggling of the damned, please by all means keep struggling! You're only speeding up the inevitable. Soon the entire universe will hear the knocking."
He turned back to his work with a laugh as she screamed behind him, her rage fading away as the exhaustion of fighting the fire overwhelmed her. She turned part of her attention inward even as she continued to watch his every action. She knew her time was running out, she felt it in the pain that was becoming more and more urgent during her hazy moments, she knew that the damage would soon be irreversible.
Her mind was melding more with that other presence that had been revealed, even as she was reeling from all the memories that were surging to the fore. The months spent with the Doctor, the strange things they had seen and done and all the bloody running. From danger and from each other as well, both too afraid to take that first step that might irrevocably change their relationship.
However, for several glorious moments, she had stood on absolute equal footing with him. His Time Lord brilliance tempered by that spark of human ingenuity that he always seemed to need. He had always said she was brilliant, but she had never felt it until the moment when she had looked at him through new eyes and understanding.
The playful exterior, the constant non-sensical chatter and the always glib words belied the very real pain and anguish that she had only glimpsed on occasion. An all-consuming rage that was barely tempered behind that façade, that she saw when those he loved were threatened. She had seen that look too many times in their time together and knew if the fury had ever been truly unleashed it would have been a terrible sight to behold.
It had cracked that night below the Thames, when he had flooded the cavern and drill shaft to kill the Racnoss. It had burned from his body and his eyes as he stood there staring at the Queen as she had screamed in impotent fury. It was that which had frightened her the most and made her run away that first night, her first mistake in a long series of mistakes.
She had always kept him at arms-length because she had been too afraid to change what they had had, too afraid that if she had tried she would have ended up alone again in Chiswick dreaming of going with him to the stars once more.
With that she snorted loudly, the sound causing a stab of pain to lance through her head as the heat began to die away for a time. She had ended up back alone in Chiswick anyways, even though she had been so cautious. Better she had thrown caution to the wind and at least tried, rather than living the half-life she had been consigned to. She had refused to give the Master the pleasure of seeing the pain his words had caused her, because those exact thoughts had flitted through her mind on more than one occasion
It was one of her more lucid moments, when the memories were all jumbled and fading for a moment though they never really faded completely anymore. She knew she was dying, in slow increments now that the walls in her mind had been breached, but for some reason she didn't care. If she was going to die, let her die herself with all her memories of her slightly mad Doctor as she went screaming into the void. He hadn't abandoned her. She knew he hadn't, though it felt like he had at the time.
She reached mental fingers out along that faint path she had sensed the first time the Master had peeled her shields away, that day in the park. The path she had screamed across to touch that glorious mind in one brief moment of agony, before losing touch of everything and collapsing to the ground.
Oh Doctor, where are you, you big git? Even in her mind she used words as armor, her innermost voice once again that sassy voice she had used when she used to tease and call him Spaceman. Doctor, please if you do find me before it is too late, don't play god again. Please don't take this all away from me again. If I am to die, let me die in your arms wholly myself. Don't hurt me anymore and just let me finally be free of all the pain and nightmares one last time before I slip away. Her thoughts paused as the pain started to build to a blinding crescendo once again, she turned spitting eyes to the Master as he approached. Snarling and growling as he pressed a syringe like device against her neck to knock her out.
"Can't have you struggling too much, you're still too important! Besides, I'm not in a playful enough mood to deal with a biting woman."
She snarled her defiance at him even as with one final though she reached back out to the Doctor with a pleading whimper. Please just save me from this madman. Oh yeah, and when you do we are SO going to have words you great big outer space Dumbo! Whimpering softly as the brave facade cracked beneath a tidal wave of agony, she whimpered. Please just don't hurt me again.
The Master stood by the table where Donna was strapped down, eyes gliding over her form as he maintained the disintegrating barriers in Donna's mind. It was getting harder to hold in place, as the sheer power within her was now straining to be free. He was siphoning the energy off as best he could and syphoning it in to the semi-sentient systems around him. It was not as good as a Tardis, and oh what he would have given to get his hands on the Doctor's Tardis which would have made this whole endeavor so much simpler, but it served a purpose. The ship was cobbled together from different points in time and space until it looked nothing more than a floating junkyard, but the core of the ship, its heart was what mattered.
He had found a shard from a star of Rassilon, floating in space near where Gallifrey had been destroyed. Most likely from one of the last of the Time Lord's Tardis' before the end, and it had floated dormant amongst the flotsam that marked the passing of his world into the void. He had come back to that graveyard many times over the years since the war had ended in the blink of an eye, he had wondered what constantly drew him back even as he ran from the constant knocking in his soul. Driven by a mad compulsion to return to the constellation of Kasteborous, and return back to his home system where the empty orbit of Gallifrey mocked him. It was interesting though that she could hear the knocking, it meant that the barriers of the timelock were melting away. His plan was indeed working, as he drew off the brilliance in her mind and he was able to finish the work with that last little spark that had been missing from all his calculations.
He still couldn't remember much of his regeneration. He remembered that he had refused to regenerate when the Doctor had begged him to, he remembered the final feeling of death's cold embrace. It had been glorious to see the anguish in the Doctor's eyes. One last breath with which to spit his rage at his ancient enemy. Now though, he was stuck in a strange half-life, that spark that had been his was the dimmest he had ever felt it in any of his incarnations. He continually wondered if the delayed regeneration had something to do with that and yet he also wondered if he was in the afterlife, trying madly to plot his way back in to the land of the living. But he knew that the Doctor would not have joined him in the afterlife and he definitely wouldn't have been able to find this brilliant Achilles heel.
He had always hated the Doctor, for reasons even he could no longer fully remember, but the sight of Gallifrey's empty orbit had been what drove him to vow to inflict as much agony on him as possible before ripping what lives he had left apart.
The Shard he had found had pulsed with life when he had neared it, alerted to the presence of a Time Lord calling to him to bring it back to life and help it grow once more in to all that it was meant to be. That shard was now the heart of this ship, the quasi-Tardis that had grown from seemingly useless junk until he had everything he needed save for the Doctor himself.
The Telepathic Circuit had been the hardest to find, but that was what he used as he siphoned the energy from Donna Noble's mind into the heart of the machine. He was unable to truly touch all the knowledge and memories in Donna's mind, too much was still locked against him but he was able to grasp enough to final make the final connections in his calculations, make the leaps that he had been missing to put the final pieces in place and complete the Trans Dimensional Catalyzer.
It was not unlike the Dimension Canon that Pete's world had built to bridge the void and return to this universe, but this was infinitely more complex and operated on an order that the human mind could not even conceive. And now, he had returned to the graveyard for the first test run.
His mind reaching out to snatch the barriers away from Donna's mind once more, she came awake screaming as she looked over to him. Her eyes glowing with that golden fire that was present more and more as he continued.
He smiled at her, that cold, calculating smile that he had had no matter his face and gestured like some mad showman to the panels behind him. He always loved a good show, and even now he couldn't resist a little grandstanding.
"Thank you for all the help you have given me these last few days, I thought you should be awake to see the product of your handiwork first hand when we take it for a spin!"
Her mind frighteningly open in that moment as she took in the mad scrolls of numbers running across the screen, and for the first time saw the pulse of Time Lord power moving through the panels and screens. There was no way, all the Tardis' had been destroyed or consigned to the planet when it had been destroyed. She/he had made sure that had happened. However, there it was, pulsing beneath the console in its time dilated holding sphere. The searing light of a Star of Rassilon, pulsing madly away giving the Master the power he needed to finish his preparations.
"Oi, Buster! You really need to work on your bedside manner. What do you think to accomplish with this? The Time Lords will not let you share in their power, they're no longer like that. The Time Lords will destroy this universe and every universe. Even you can't be that mad!" She panted as that knowledge came pouring from deep within, and she shuddered as she reached back through that bond between her and the Doctor. Unable to keep the agony from her thoughts, she fought to show him what she was seeing and the true nature of the threat now that she knew what it was. "You stupid fool, he will stop you. A thousand times a thousand he has stopped you before, and he will do so again!"
The grin grew even more manic if that was possible, as he threw the largest lever on the console. "Oh Donna Noble, I am hoping that he does!" And with that, the ship shuddered and a transdimensional temporal beam tore from its hull and smashed against the next planet in the Gallifreyan system. Though the planet had always been uninhabited, it did harbor life in its most basic form and in a split instant that life was suddenly destroyed as the beam of pure temporal particles ripped it from this universe and scattered its atoms across all possible universes.
With that destruction, the walls of time cracked once more and the ship lurched as a planet suddenly started to shimmer into existence. "Gallifrey Returns!" He screamed even as he leapt about the console, coaxing the slow melting of the world back into this reality.
He reached out to Donna once more and siphoned even more energy off her burning mind, before slamming the barriers back in place. However not before she managed to scream out, Doctor! Its Gallifrey! Her thoughts stuttered to a mad halt as the room was suddenly filled with a blinding white radiance, the knocking was overwhelming as it filled her senses. She was dimly aware of five luminous shapes in the distant recesses of the light, almost as if they were walking closer to them through the light. Doctor, hurry. Hurry please! The pain was finally too much for her and she succumbed to the inky darkness once more.
The Tardis bounced through the vortex, materializing in multiple times and places almost like a hound on the scent before dematerializing once more and screaming across the void to the next point.
The Doctor could only hang on for dear life as the ship definitely was running this one alone, only brushing against him now and again for confirmation before leaping to the next point. He did what he could to aid, analyzing the traces he had found, using all the temporal circuits to scan for Time Lord Signatures anywhere in this reality, though the readings were mute and uncertain.
He would feel the occasional touches on his mind from far away, he knew when she was burning and he would hear her screams and pleas and sobs that he not hurt her again. The guilt was overwhelming and at times would consume him as he would listen to her rage against him, all that fire and anger a fitting mirror to his own. Then it would melt away again behind the walls and he would be left floundering as he chased after her through time and space. In brief snatches and touches, he was able to get faint perceptions of direction from her thoughts. It wasn't enough to zero in completely, but it was enough that he knew he was getting closer with each jump.
He thought he was starting to form a plan to save her, though how she had not already burned to a crisp at the hands of the Master was any guess, but obviously he had had enough time to figure out a way to temper that fire for the time that he needed it. He couldn't send her back to her life on earth now, not when he was filled to the brim with the sounds of her sorrow and pain and rage. Her pleas cutting deeper than any knife ever could as finally the full enormity of his actions nearly crushed him beneath their weight.
He honestly didn't know what to say to her when he finally did see her again. He didn't even know if he would be able to save her in time before the final barriers melted away and she burned before his very eyes. In the end though he knew he didn't care though, he couldn't violate her like that again. He couldn't play god with her and her life just as he hadn't been able to play god with Adelaide during those fateful last hours on Mars.
The touch of her mind on his mind though had calmed the rage somewhat within him, she was hauling him back from the precipice just as she always had, even though she was screaming at him and sometimes calling him the most rude names as well. A faint smile would touch his lips when Spaceman or the word Git would echo through his mind, it was then he could tell that she understood why he had done what he did, even if he hadn't when he had done it. His rage was a living thing within him. The rage he felt whenever one he loved was threatened, but this threat was far beyond any his companions had been forced to endure in the past. He felt solely responsible for the agony she was suffering, especially since he had left her back on earth with no protection whatsoever.
He had been such a fool to think that other beings of power would not sense the untapped raw power lurking beneath her unassuming surface. He had left her completely exposed for any of his enemies to find, and the worst of them all had zeroed right in on her.
Scrubbing his hands over his face and blowing out a frustrated breath, he looked up at the time rotor as it pulsed with its gentle green glow wondering where and when it would all be over and he could finally stop running and just rest.
The cloister bell tolled over his head just as the Tardis was thrown violently to the side and the Doctor was sent tumbling across the floor to slam into the console. Crying out as the back of his skull connected sharply with the panel, he saw white spots flare across his vision as sparks exploded from several panels, and the ship shuddered and bucked beneath him.
Pausing to gather his breath, he gingerly touched the cut on the back of his head wincing as it came away bloodied. As he pulled himself up, he could almost feel the agony radiating from the ship beneath his hands as she struggled madly to right herself. His hands flew over controls, his mind touching the Tardis and helping her sort the jumble of perceptions she had now even as she managed to stabilize herself.
The blast wave had ricocheted through the universe even as he had heard Donna's scream within his head and images exploded behind his eyes. His hands stopped dead on the controls as the enormity of what he was seeing finally penetrated the haze in his mind. His knees buckled beneath the onslaught of her agony, and the never ending fire that threatened to consume her at any moment.
Panting as he hung on to the console for dear life, he was left floundering for a moment as the pain seemed to be all encompassing. He was left wide eyed with wonder that she not only fought through it, she was rising above it and harnessing it to communicate with him. The most important woman in the universe, in ALL universes and he had been a fool to think that the universe was done with her.
He felt a surge of strength come back through the bond, she had found a way to harness her own fire and send it back to him. His own essence filling him till he felt every nerve ending buzzing, his twin hearts beating a strong cadence in preparation for the battle that loomed.
"After all this time, Master you're still bone dead stupid! You'd think you would learn." He said as he threw the lever to pull the Tardis out of the vortex and into a seemingly empty patch of space before he began the furious calculations to return to the scene of his greatest sorrow.
His long fingers flew across the controls, the burning sensation in his mind momentarily quiet as the ripples of fractures in space and time echoed to him. Somehow the Master had found a way to break the timelock of the Time Lords. He had found a way to bring them back, and with them all the horrors that had come with the Time war.
Screaming in frustration and rage as he felt the inevitable decision looming over him again, his hands once more flying over the controls of the Tardis as he knew he couldn't let all he had done be undone. It had always been more than just the death of his people and the destruction of the Daleks. It would mean the return of such horrors as the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare King and all other manners of foul beings that had been destroyed in that never ending rampage. Once again, it fell on him to stop it.
His face set in grim lines as the Tardis shuddered back into the vortex. His mind filled with the sounds of Donna's screams, and the screams of the dying as he had sent them all in to the Void. Once again, he would assume the mantle of Destroyer and watch all that he had once loved be destroyed. The deaths of billions would once more drench him in their blood.
His thoughts crystallized with blinding focus, he knew his purpose now. He knew what he faced and he knew what was at stake. It was time for him to get to Kasterborous before it was too late, the Doctor had been given a rare and beautiful glimpse into what was facing him as Donna had shown him what awaited, for once he would not be running in blind. His brilliant, brilliant Donna Noble. Oh what a fool he had been!
Reaching out to her across the void, the sense of impossible distance between them fading as the Tardis raced home.
The cloister bell sounded once more as the ship reappeared in his home system, a place he hadn't returned to in far too many years to count. Already she was shuddering beneath his feet, the ripples were sending the Tardis consciousness tumbling as she tried to latch on to the proper time stream and hold it in place for her Doctor. She convulsed in the materialization, bouncing from reality to reality before finally settling in the proper one.
The Doctor patted her lovingly all too aware of her shuddering beneath his touch, before dashing to the door and throwing it open. The oxygen envelope as always, instantly formed around the door as he looked out in horror of the sight before him. In what had been an empty orbit before, a planet was shimmering into existence almost as if it were melting and being formed from the stardust right before his very eyes. The process was very slow and he knew that there was still more work to be done before the Time Lords could reemerge in to this universe, but if he didn't stop it now, there would quickly be a point of no return and all of existence would feel the repercussions of what happened in this far flung corner of the Cosmos.
He let his eyes search the debris field that was being pulled towards the sudden gravitational field in fits and starts as it wasn't fully present enough to reassert the control of gravity. He looked through the madly tumbling debris of the last battle of the last Great Time war, searching for that one spot that was the center of the disaster. He didn't have to search far, the ship was barely a flying heap of junk but it held the power of Gallifrey in its depths and it was the source.
Slamming the door closed, his face set in grim determination as he once more was the Oncoming Storm, he punched in the last few buttons and with a glint in his eye, he shouted "Allons-y!" and threw the final lever.
The Tardis faded away, slipping through the vortex towards its destiny.