Mind Melds 2/2 Ten!Doctor/Simm!Master

[anomoly-fetish.livejournal.com]

Title: Shattered Windows and The Sound of Drums or Mind Melds 2/2
Rating: PG-13, if you really over-analyze the subtext
Characters/Paring: Tenth Doctor, Doctor/Master
Setting: Mars
Beta: many many kudos to jhumor. Set me straight on some "canon" things.
WARNINGS: spoilery for Waters of Mars, possibly End of Time
Disclaimer: What RTD didn't write for kiddies in WOM.

Originally posted on fanfiction.net
Crossposted to slash_lords, dwfiction, dw_slash

Mostly cause I'd like reviews XD



His soul, the deep part of him that has been broken since a day on The Valiant when the last shread of his past broke away leaving his hearts in shattered glass, is beyond repair. It's burned to ash like his planet and the pyre. Or so he thought.

He hears them dying, screaming for mercy, and he feels, as he always has felt: torn and hating the fact that he can't interfere. Hating himself most of all.

Since when do you care about rules, dear Doctor? You were the one that stole a TARDIS, journeyed across time and space, and interfered.

It's almost as though he's been inside his head. Ever since then. The Master. His voice and the mocking tone, speaking the opposite part of his conscience. It's always been there, simmering, he knows. But he's almost always ignored it.

He'd declare to anyone who asked that the Master's dead. But he lives on inside his mind. The opposing part of his conscious that defies the rules. Is it his own mind that kills him in the end? He wonders, but he'll do almost anything to avoid it.

That niggling, odd part of him that he can't quite comprehend has always been a part of him, but Kosch has been like ... there is no other euphemism... fuel to the fire. Even though the very thought of it makes his hearts stab with pain.

He argues, It's not our place. We can't interfere. We die if we interfere. It's written in the Laws of Rassilion.

He's dead. There's no one to stop you. Not even him. There is no Matrix - no afterlife. Just blank, empty darkness, the end of the universe. The silky voice whispers in his ear. That voice that he aches to hear again - and yet he's afraid to.

If he can change one fixed point, perhaps he can change the one death that matters to him most. Maybe he burned a different body and never knew...

All those times he couldn't - or perhaps it's wouldn't - save them. "Just save someone. It doesn't have to be significant!" Pompeii. He made it happen, trying to save them in the first place. It's always been his fault. I couldn't save you, Donna...He thinks briefly that perhaps she may be the only companion that might have understood. Them. The two warring Time Lords that only fought their wars in the human-public eye.

Alone together they are the embodiment of the Eye of Harmony.

That's when the memories rise, hitting him with their pain. The voices ring in his head. The deathly silence after the war. The emptiness. It's like a long, wailing sound of mourning, long after the voices have been forever quieted. Renewed as the old broken fob watch was opened on Malcassairo - the sound, the beautiful noise of the telepathic link that the Master used for all his ends to torture him.

But even the torture was a blissful blur, as humans would never understand. More than once, the Master had used it against him. Severing, then renewing the connection, raking his mind, mentally wounding him more than physical abuse ever could. Yet the aftershocks, the times that he ached to be held, even in the possessive touch, belonging somewhere...anywhere...

They both always did like to have the upper hand in things.

There's no one left. In a few moments he will be the only survivor of this event. And no one will ever know.

But something monstrous takes hold of him as he realizes something.

He could save them if he wanted to. Even Captain Adelaide Brooke.

If he really wanted to, he could change history. They're always begging him to do it, asking, pleading, but something inside him has always managed to say "no". His morals. The unwritten code he swore to abide by even as he was exiled.

Never interfere, always protect.

But where has that got him? What's he ever gained from abiding by the rules?

Told he'll die. And he won't die on the base. He'll die like he always wanted to - or so he thinks.

He can hear it, he's always denied it, the drumming of the universe. Urging him to do this. This one thing. This one, little, little thing. It's so small, yet so good for him. He'll finally feel that he's done something right.

He's going to finally take control.

He has the power in his hands why not use it?

As he's thrown the ten meteres, something in him snaps.

He is a Timelord. The last of the Timelords. There is no higher power to answer to.

You must have felt like God. He didn't then, but right now, at this moment, at this precise second at 17:30:05 Martian Time, he feels all-knowing, and all-powerful.

And he follows the call. The Time Lord Victorious. The Time Lord Victorious and The Sound of Drums...

For just a brief moment, The Master is alive again. Out there somewhere...and so close. So near his hearts he's almost beating in his chest.

And the Laws of Time will obey me. For once. No one else. Not even him.