Confusion is a poison that kills you slowly if you can't get past it. Uncertainty is a poison that does not kill you, but will weaken your ability to function, because every little detail suddenly becomes important. Add a Time Lord brain to the equation and you get something that's just plainly unbearable.

The Master sat under the tree, next to the dead body of a human woman, all of it frozen in time. His DNA was the only thing that allowed him to be unaffected by the lock. The drums had calmed down enough to dig up the other thing that tormented his very existence.

Whatever the heck was happening with him and the Doctor.

Centuries ago, when they had been young and inexperienced, they had called it love. Not with words, they would have never dared that. But they had known about it, read stories and seen plays about it. Even a society as theirs couldn't get rid of the very concept. And even when every authority on your entire planet makes sure to paint it as primitive and useless and below every kind of dignity, you still can't escape it. Words weren't needed.

But now? With all their history in place and all the accumulated hate in their bloodstreams, they could impossibly still call it the same. It had to be something else.

Maybe something entirely new.

A relationship that had lasted longer than many civilisations couldn't be defined by simple words or concepts.

And now… now the Doctor had heard the drums. Voluntarily. The Master still had a hard time believing it. This was thrilling. But then his head turned to the side and he saw Lumin again, the one person who had not only refused to stay away from him, no matter how much he scared her, but had also gotten the first glimpse of the drums. By accident at first. Later by choice. No one else had ever done that for him, let alone someone of a lesser species.

He felt numb. Not only because of her. How could it be that the drums still got less prominent around her when she wasn't even there anymore? And how could it be that they just had gotten so much worse as the Doctor had come too close?

It was hardly fair.

He had almost seriously hurt the Doctor by pushing the sound into his head with so much force. And not just hurt - that alone would be more than acceptable. This, however, was no fun. The drums had the power to shatter a mind, to push one into a place of darkness that could sometimes be impossible to escape. What if it had been too much? Madness wasn't curable by regeneration.

He was the best example for that.

.

The Master did something he usually avoided like the pest, mainly because it was the exact opposite of being in control.

He hid.

For how long this would last he wasn't quite sure yet. But what he did know was that the new found closeness to the Doctor was more dangerous than he had ever considered. Which was no surprise, given the fact that they had done nothing but chasing and fighting each other ever since their paths had split during their academy years. Something the Master wasn't keen on thinking about right now.

The solution was as simple as it was tricky. If you are a species of extraordinary psychic abilities and there is an artificial madness residing within your head then there is only way to keep others of similar (definitely not equal) skill safe from it.

The Master would put a psychic shield around himself. One that was powerful enough to keep the Doctor from ever slipping deeper than the absolutest surface of his mind. The Master would tell him this was because he valued the mental connection with Lumin too much to let the Doctor get a glimpse, and he would probably believe it, sentimental as the idiot could be.

It was the best solution he could come up with. And so he stayed inside his own study, a room he had found years ago and had always been able to keep secret. The TARDIS, for whatever reason, granted him the private space. She had never revealed it to the Doctor. And now it proved to be a good place to practise setting up the barrier.

And to keep digging through all of the works of Agatha Christie.

Much to his dismay, the Master had found himself utterly intrigued by her stories, although, or maybe precisely because, some of them were nothing more but ridiculous. He knew who the murderer was halfway through the story, but found himself intrigued by all the different ways the protagonist had to manoeuvre through lies and deceptions and red herrings.

It was somewhere during the first quarter of a new book when he got dragged out of the distraction. For a fleeting moment he wasn't sure whether he had imagined the sound, but then it repeated and all of his senses went on full alert.

Steps.

Those clearly were steps, shuffling over wood and carpet. They weren't quick and stopped from time to time as if their owner was looking at the books nearby, eyes wandering over names and titles from all over the universe.

The Master closed his eyes and slowly breathed in. Those weren't the Doctor's steps. The man couldn't walk so calmly and he was heavier anyway. His thoughts wandered to another person, the only one he had ever shown this room, the only one the TARDIS had ever brought here, the one he knew loved books and stories as much as he did. And suddenly there was fear creeping up his neck. Before his inner eye appeared the picture of Lumin, how she curiously picked out tomes, how her hands wandered over pressed spines with care and awe. She would put it back and round the corner soon, her small form peeking out from one of the shelves to take a look at him and then…

The Master shook his head and forced himself to open his eyes again. This wasn't possible, after all. And he was right. About this and about that it wasn't the Doctor either.

No, the one rounding the corner, eventually, was the other human the Doctor kept around these days. Donna Noble. The fierce redhead that was too stubborn to be threatened by the Master. She was careful around him, yes, and mostly annoyed, but she didn't let him push her around like most people do.

One reason to hate her.

As if he needed any more than the fact that she was human.

"You're not supposed to be here, ape. I give you ten seconds to explain yourself, before I use lethal actions."

Donna's head snapped in his direction and her eyes widened. "Oi, whaddya doin' here? I was looking for somethin' to read and it looked like the library. Like, for five seconds and then I thought I got it wrong, but the door was just there and-"

The Master groaned. "Stop! That's enough."

"Oh, don't you 'that's enough' me. You wanted to know and were flippin' threatening me, mate!"

"Right…" He pressed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. She made it so hard to not shoot a laser hole right through her head. Annoying. "Now get lost. I want my peace and quiet."

"Mhm, I noticed. And the Doctor's awfully sulky about it. He doesn't say why, but it's obvious and-"

"Why would the idiot be sulky?"

Okay, wrong move. He shouldn't encourage her to stay a single second longer. The opposite, that was what he needed. But after how they had separated, he was rather curious about how and if the other man was showing… well, anything at all.

It was gnawing way too much on the Master and he hated the fact. He had lived well enough without the Doctor around, he had avoided the mere implication of anything else but antagonism to ever exist between them. And just because they had been drunk and stupid…

"... and then he started babbling about this planet again, what's it called? Can't remember. But he went on about… what's that one? I've never read that title and I know'em all, believe me."

The Master shook his head and tried to focus on the rambling woman. "The what?"

"The book." Donna pointed in his direction, or rather at the pile next to him. "Didn't know-"

"What has this to do with the Doctor sulking? And don't start babbling again. I didn't get a word."

The woman huffed and stemmed her fists into her hips. "He's sulkin'! What else could I tell? Just in a bad mood since we left the ship 's all. Thought is has somethin' to do with you. Always seems to have."

"Great… Nothing useful then." He rolled his eyes.

"Listen, mate. If you wanna know how he's feeling, go and ask. Won't kill you, promise."

That bloody… The Master took a deep breath, trying his best not to spring up and snap her neck. His time in the forest-room had quieted the drums a good deal, but they were still annoyingly loud enough to make him have a short fuse.

"And for the book, I've never seen that title. And it can hardly be a new one. She's been dead since forever, after all. And since when are you into Christie? Human literature not beyond your superior understanding of everything?" The last words were spoken in a mocking singsang, accompanied by a strange swaying of her body and arms. It probably was meant to underline the sarcasm.

"It's the only thing humans are good for," he grumbled, cursing himself for even talking to her. "And I think the book is one of those that stopped being published before your time. You wouldn't find a copy anymore."

"Then why do you…? Oh, yeah, time travel. Wait!" Her eyes went wide and wandered hungrily over the book pile again. "One of them? There are more stories of hers that never made it to my time?"

"Three or four of them. They were printed in low numbers and not as popular as the other ones. Although…" The Master couldn't quite remember which of them had exactly vanished in which time. Humans really lived too shortly, which made it hard to keep track of all their nonsense. In the end he simply shrugged. "Might be a few more actually."

Donna's eyes went wide. An expression of hunger and curiosity. "So, you're sayin' if we get back in time to when they still were published…"

"Mhm… The library does miss a few, indeed."

"Then we should ask the Doctor to get them!"

The Master winced at the mention of the other Time Lord. He couldn't face him yet. "I don't think he's going to talk to me, right now." Why did he even tell her?

"You two…" Donna shook her head. "Always fighting. How about I ask him to get us to certain coordinates and then we two go and get those books ourselves?"

"We? Why in the world would I-"

"Cause you look like you need some distraction."

"And what makes you think I'd want to have you tagging behind me? That'd just be annoying."

"Annoying's distracting too."

The Master groaned. This couldn't be happening, could it? On the other hand… he was reaching the end of his book pile rather quickly and a few new ones wouldn't be so bad at all. And he could just - very accidentally - loose the woman somewhere until he was done and return not only with new reading material, but also with his sanity intact.

"Alright, do your doe-eyes on the idiot and I'll see what we'll find."

.

A/N: I need those two to go an adventure on their own. 👀

She's SO going to call him out on any bullshit and the Master will be hellishly annoyed all the time. What else could I want?