Chapter 8:
The passage of time in the Vortex was meaningless. A person could spend a lifetime spinning aimlessly, only to reemerge a few moments after having left. The Master knew this fact better than most. He'd once whiled an entire regeneration away sequestered in his Tardis, tinkering, planning, licking his wounds, ignoring the increased proddings of his concerned spaceship as years and decades slipped past him.
It wasn't quite the same, this time around.
He was fresh off his last conquest. Dressed impeccably in a black suit, the only tell of the violence he'd wrought was the blood dried and crusted beneath his fingernails. The Tardis was dark and quiet, the only sound that of her engines; the only light the soft glow of her time rotor. Her Time Lord had shut and locked the door and immediately slipped them into the Vortex without a word. He'd braced his hands on her console, knuckles white, his shoulders hunching, features twisting up into a stubborn expression she was very familiar with. His whole body had seemed to vibrate with that stubbornness before…the tension drained out of him, shoulders slumping, face drooping. The fire had gone out of his eyes, and with a heavy sigh, the Master had run his fingers through hair bleached white by the hostile sun and put her in low power mode, going so far as to switch off the gravity so that he began to float. He curled himself into a ball and let himself drift aimlessly around the console. His mind, when she touched it, was a roiling sea of confusion and loss breaking against the cliffs of the drums. The Tardis curled herself around him as best she could and settled down to wait.
She was very good at waiting.
Giddy with the rush of escape and secure in his own Tardis, the Master had immediately run to the other side of the universe and made himself at home in the Fulsom galaxy, where for ten years he busied himself conquering worlds.
It was easy and exhilarating and exhausting, and it should've been enough to keep his mind fully engaged.
And yet.
Nothing he did worked. No matter how much he killed, how much he conquered, how much he won, he couldn't get them out of his head. They were worse than the drums, which only battered at his sanity. These two battered at his very soul.
Martha and Missy.
If he had known, oh if he had known, he would have killed Martha when he'd had the chance. And there were so many chances during the Year That Never Was. But his curiosity had gotten the better of him. He'd wanted to see what plans the pretty little human had up her sleeve to try and defeat him and rescue her precious Doctor. So, time and time again, he let chances to capture her slip through his fingers. Never had he thought that indulging his curiosity could ever result in this.
Martha and Missy.
He missed her. He missed them. That was unacceptable. He was the Master. The Master! Humans did not affect him. Their life, their death, both meant very little to him. He should have forgotten all about Martha Jones just as soon as he set foot in his own Tardis, his forcible jaunt with domesticity something he'd look back on in a regeneration or two and snort, rolling his eyes at the part of himself that had slobbered all over her and cared so much about a half breed girl. That's what should have happened, so why didn't it? Why did they plague his thoughts even more persistently than the drums? Why couldn't he stop his mind from restlessly searching out the mind of his half human daughter? Even when he slept, the Master found himself reaching out to the girl and entering a shared mindscape, listening as she detailed her day or told him about her mother, letting the child shower him with love and affection and giving his own in return. Why? Why? Did he subconsciously want to find her and guide her, just as he'd done for all her life?
But no, that hadn't been him. It was Sam, Sam - that awful, soft, needy thing that the Doctor's Tardis had dragged from his core. The part of him he tried so hard to kill but in the end could only hide behind walls and fortresses of mental barriers. Not human, but so damned capable of pretending to be. So eager to love and be loved. It had reached out with two hands to grasp the chance the Tardis waved in front of him, never mind the humiliation in store.
The part of him that became Sam had taken one look at Martha through his eyes and agreed to everything the Tardis offered him: a family, a wife, love, normalcy. Eagerly taking on the identity the Tardis supplied, settling down, holding down a job like some mundane thing. So ready to pretend the life he had was real. And with that bitch Martha right there with him egging him on, who could blame him?
Martha. Martha. Martha!
He hated her. He missed her. He loathed her. He loved her so much it hurt. Damn her! Damn Sam! Damn the Doctor for starting it all!
It would help, the Master often found himself thinking, if his memories as Sam were like his memories as Yana. He remembered his entire life as Yana, but the memories were in shades of sepia, the emotions less like something he personally experienced. With Sam, everything was in bright technicolor. Every thought and emotion was Right There, just beneath the surface, to the point where he could hardly distinguish Sam at all. There was almost no degree of separation.
It begged the question, if he could barely tell the difference, was there a difference at all?
Was Sam truly real or just an excuse he used to experience something he would never normally allow himself to admit he wanted?
He couldn't run far enough, conquer enough, or spill enough blood to unthink that question.