Fic: Stitching the Wounds Part 2: Blood Money (2/2)

[blackletter]

Second section. 'Cause I like plot. More than fits in one LJ post, apparently.

Title: Stitching the Wounds Part 2: Blood Money
Summary: The Doctor and the Master travel to Aureas—the wealthiest planet in the galaxy—to find Sabalom Glitz. There the Doctor’s curiosity leads him to uncover a secret that the richest man on Aureas wants to keep silent at any cost.

The rest of the header notes are over on the first section.



It took them ten minutes and twenty three seconds of running through alleys and byways to elude their pursuers. Mel felt like she’d been running much longer, but the Doctor assured her that his objective time sense was quite precise. At last the Doctor released his hold on Mel, who promptly rubbed the shoulder of the arm he’d been pulling. But even if he’d still been a sympathetic fool who cared about his companions’ discomfort, a strained muscle would have been the least of the Doctor’s worries.

The Master was nowhere in sight. He spun about, glancing here and there, hoping the Master would turn the corner any second, but there was nothing. Glitz was also gone, but that was of minimal importance. The plan could be altered to cope with losing Glitz, despite the Master’s insistence that every facet of his carefully contrived plot served a crucial purpose. Losing the Master, however... Only the Master could fix the paradox permanently, and until he did the Doctor’s existence depended on one little piece of hastily constructed technology. His right hand drifted over to his left to twist the paradox ring around his finger.

The Master could take care of himself. He always did. Except in the Doctor’s past, the Master’s future, when he couldn’t, didn’t, and was lost to the Doctor—more than dead. Death implied the possibility of regeneration, or in the Master’s case, stolen bodies and resurrection. But the Master hadn’t just died, he’d been obliterated.

“Doctor?” Mel’s voice seemed distant, decades away.

Whole galaxies of mass compressed into a space the size of a cricket ball transformed into pure energy. The destruction of the micro-universe happened in an instant. An expanding flare engulfed whole systems before a gravitational well—created when the remains of the micro-universe collapsed—sucked back the cosmos-devouring heat. Then the black hole evaporated into elementary particles and it, too, was gone. The death the inferno brought was so swift that the civilizations it destroyed never had time to scream.

The Master was at the epicentre of the destruction. The small spark tucked away in the corner of the Doctor’s mind, that thorny barb that was the Master’s psychic imprint, was ripped away. He clapped his hands to his head and squeezed his eyes shut, as if he could hold in that which had already vanished, a child clutching for a bird that had flown.

“Doctor!” Anne placed a worried hand on his shoulder.

The Doctor opened his eyes to meet her concerned gaze. She frowned at the bleak expression on his face. He shook his head slightly, unable to say what he knew: that the edges of the flare had escaped the event horizon and were still spreading. It was coming too fast and they weren’t far enough away to escape it. Then the TARDIS exploded.

The force of the energy wave hitting them knocked out the gravity, lights, navigation, nearly every system. The Doctor fell hard against the console, rolling over it and spinning into the air, sparks burning his exposed skin. The TARDIS shields were failing, failed. The temperature rose rapidly. Anne screamed as her internal organs started to cook.

Her cries stopped a little before the Doctor’s skin started to shrivel and crack. He curled around himself, still turning in the gravityless air and burning inside and out, as the TARDIS fell through space. Every cell was on fire.

“Doctor, we have to keep moving.”

He didn’t expect to wake. When he woke, he almost wished he hadn’t. He was sprawled across the floor. Either the TARDIS gravity circuits were working again or... He cracked open his eyes. He was lying on the wall, not the floor, which meant that the gravity circuits were still down, but they’d crashed somewhere—some planet or moon—that exerted its own gravity.

His brain felt like it had been scraped with steel wool. The TARDIS moaning pitifully inside his mind wasn’t helping.

“Shut up shut up shut up,” he hissed. His voice was darker than he’d remembered it, and rough with smoke. He coughed.

There was no light by which to see. Even the sparks had died away. The Doctor rubbed the skin of his cheeks. The skin was cool, smooth, not burnt hot and stretched like leather. He trailed his hand up over his forehead to his hair. It was a bit shorter, and straight again.

His head hurt like fingernails on a chalkboard, with his skull as the fingernails scraping up grit and desiccating chalk dust, and the board gouged with ragged lines, and the ears split by the shriek all at once. No functional zero room; no functional anything. It would be ironic if he survived the destruction of a universe only to die from regeneration.

He laughed and didn’t stop laughing until it turned into a thick, hacking cough that only ended when he spat out, not mucus, but a tendril of golden light.

“Doctor!”

Given that the TARDIS was too damaged to help stabilize his mind, the Doctor considered it a testament to his strength of will that he made it through his regeneration trauma with his sanity intact. There were a few moments when it was touch and go. The frenzy he’d descended into when he’d stumbled and fallen onto Anne’s withered corpse, shaking it and scratching at it and tearing off strips of shrivelled flesh, was surely not one of his finer moments.

There was no way to know how long it took for the regeneration to stabilize. The TARDIS was nearly dead and all the chronometers were black. His own time senses were so twisted and warped during the ordeal that he at once thought it might have been two days or two months.

It hardly mattered how long it was. He was stranded. With the sensors down, defensive shield gone, and the air shield weakened, he couldn’t even risk opening the doors, lest the vacuum of a dead world wait on the other side. He and his wounded TARDIS were trapped here until she was healed. If she could heal. It would not be fast. Fifty years, a hundred, the rest of his lifetime; it was difficult to guess how long he’d be waiting in the dark alone with his thoughts.

“Doctor!” Someone was pawing at his sleeve.

“Get away from me!” he snarled, jerking his arm away from Mel’s grasping fingers. “And don’t call me that.”

“The guards are coming back this way. We need to go.” She was staring at him. He wondered what sort of expression he had on his face to put that troubled one on hers. He wrapped up the memories that had risen like a corpse in a lake and buried them back down in the deep, secluded recesses of his mind. He was not powerless, he reminded himself. Not weak. Not a coward. The guards would spot them any second, but the Doctor was confident in his ability to improvise a solution if given just a little more time.

Mel flinched when the Doctor seized her hand, his skin cold against hers. Whatever strange unquiet that had come over him was gone, leaving his normal mien of detached disdain in its place. They ran again, with seeming no end or goal in mind. They turned another corner and another. After the third turn the Doctor began to laugh breathlessly. Mel seriously feared that he was going mad. Madder.

“There.” He pointed to a small building up ahead that was marked with a symbol of four vertical wavy lines. He dragged her to the door and set to breaking the locking code. The door opened and he shuffled her inside just as their pursuers spotted them.

The room they entered was wide but not very deep. A line of metal columns whistling out a pitch so high it was only just within Human hearing range covered the far wall like an alien pipe organ. Once the door slid shut, he reprogrammed the lock. “That should hold them out just long enough.”

“Long enough for what?” Mel asked. “I don’t see how coming in here has done us any good.”

“That, my dear Mel, is because you don’t know that this is a power hub, and that these,” the Doctor swept his arm towards the columns, “are energy transfer conductors. This room is therefore perfectly designed for a trap.”

There was one other door in the room, to the left. He set to work on the lock with a single-minded intensity. Occasionally words flashed by on the interface and Mel was able to piece together what he was doing. “You’re coordinating the locks on the two doors. You plan to lure them in here then trap them inside.” He didn’t answer but she knew she was right.

At last he finished his programming. His hand hovering over the controls, he spoke. “The second this door opens, get outside. I don’t want you in my way. Understood?”

She nodded. He pushed the button and both sets of doors opened. She hurried out and turned to see the Doctor leap back to the centre of the room while the guards poured in through the other door, guns raised.

“Don’t move!” one of the guards barked out. He looked no more than twenty years old, but he had a grim cast to his face and Mel didn’t doubt the he could and would shoot, despite his youth. “Surrender now and we’ll allow you to live.”

The Doctor’s mouth twisted in a vicious smile. “I don’t believe I shall.”

The guards fired. Half a dozen beams of light cut into the energy columns, missing the Doctor by bare inches when he dodged and fled towards the second door. As he rushed towards her, it occurred to Mel that she could push the locking button now, close both doors and seal the Doctor...the Valeyard inside. But the fleeting notion passed and then the Doctor was at her side, slamming his hand on the controls just as the energy columns burst in an explosion of green flames. The smell of ozone and burnt hair just reached her nose before the door sealed it away. The walls shuddered and cracked with the force of the blast.

All the lights in the neighbourhood flickered, dimmed and went out. After a few seconds of darkness, faint, red emergency street lights powered up.

The Doctor chuckled. “There. The problem is solved. The guards will no longer follow us, and, unless I miss my guess, their sensors will be down and their ability to track us severely curtailed.” He brushed imaginary dust from his black lapel with smug satisfaction.

They walked in silence for a while, Mel trailing behind the Doctor. She knew she ought to feel guilty about the people the Doctor had just killed, people who may have had families and loved ones who would now never see them again. But after all the death she’d seen lately she couldn’t find it in her to mourn for six people who would have killed her with hardly a second thought. She wondered if this was what people meant when they talked about desensitization to violence, or if she was just so grief-stricken that she’d stopped being able to process it anymore.

Then the Doctor stopped, turned to her, and spoke. “You were thinking of trapping me in the power hub with the guards.” He did not present it as a question, although Mel didn’t see how he could possibly have known.

She considered lying, but his penetrating gaze discouraged mendacity. Besides, there was nothing he could do to her that really mattered. She might hate him, but she didn’t fear him. Not now. “Yes, I was.”

“You should have,” the Doctor said like a teacher correcting a wayward student. “After the explosion, you could have retrieved the paradox ring and used it to keep your own time fields stabilized, then vanish into the city where the Master wouldn’t find you. The Master’s own sense of self-preservation would guarantee that he’d follow through with the plan to stop my counterpart from destroying my sixth self and thereby mend space-time. The universe would be safe, you would be safe, and I would be dead. A perfect victory for you.”

For all that a few minutes ago she’d thought she hated the Doctor enough to consider locking him in his own trap, she found to her own surprise that just hearing about the Doctor’s hypothetical death made her stomach twist and roll. “I couldn’t.”

The Doctor leaned forward. “Why not?”

Mel frowned, considering the question. “You were protecting me.”

“I was protecting myself,” he said. “The guards made it quite clear that they’d kill me if they had a chance.”

“But when you took my hand, told me to run, you were protecting me.” She didn’t know why she was so insistent, but it felt important.

“I assure you, it was merely because you’re linked to the paradox through me. It’s to my own benefit that I keep you close. Self-preservation, nothing more.”

“Was that really all it was?” She peered into his eyes hoping to see a crack in the ice, anything to let her know that she’d made the right choice in letting this man live, but his expression revealed nothing. No fondness or care or concern. And yet... “During the trial you were furious at the Doctor for putting me in danger.”

“I said what I needed to say to obtain the verdict I desired. I played a part.”

“No. No that wasn’t acting. It was too real.”

“You don’t think I can be an adept liar when I want to be?”

“I don’t doubt it. But maybe you’ve become so good a liar that you don’t even notice when you lie to yourself.”

“Ah, Mel, always the optimist. If believing that I have some innate goodness left in me makes this situation easier for you, then by all means carry on. But be prepared for disappointment.” He sauntered away.

Mel chased after the person who or might or might not still be the Doctor, who allowed innocent people to be bled dry for profit and smiled while setting fatal traps, but whose eyes shone with curiosity at the unknown, and who protected her from harm.

# # #

The Master was not usually one to obey other people’s orders, but he was also too sensible a man to ignore the Doctor’s command to run when the other option was facing down two dozen molecular disruption blasters. He veered left, keeping Glitz between himself and the guards as he darted through the alleyway.

He glanced over his shoulder as he turned a corner, and halted in his flight when only Glitz appeared. He’d thought the Doctor was right behind him. He grabbed Glitz and pushed him into the wall.

“Where is he? Where’s the Doctor?” the Master shouted, digging his fingers into Glitz’s shoulders and shaking the man.

Glitz grabbed the Master’s wrists. “Steady on there, mate.”

“‘Steady on?’” His hands trembled with the urge to shift just a little bit higher and close around Glitz’s neck.

Six guards turned the corner and spotted them. Concern over the Doctor’s fate would have to wait. The guards were closing in on him, but he couldn’t think, couldn’t plan. There was no time. The Doctor was better at slap-dash, hastily constructed ideas. But the Doctor wasn’t here, and for all he knew, the Doctor.... He cut the thought short. If he, with all his intelligence, had never been able to thwart the Doctor, surely these primitives couldn’t kill him?

Still, the tightness in his throat didn’t go away. No plan, no scheme, no escape, he ran. He kept his senses alert for the Doctor, half expecting to find him around this corner. Or this next one.

Glitz, who had been running alongside him, grabbed his arm and pulled him left. “This way,” he gasped, breathless from exertion. The Master followed Glitz down a narrow street and from there through the front door of a row house. The interior was empty and filled with dust. “We can hide here. It’s been abandoned for ages. Some of my business associates use it as neutral ground for negotiating.”

The Master prowled about the room, his thoughts turning upon themselves, unable to focus. He tightened his hands into fists, but images kept spinning before his mind’s eyes—possibilities, not for escape, but potential fates concerning the Doctor. Always in his head, the Doctor. The Doctor was his to hurt, kill, or save, and the thought of these lower creatures destroying what was his made his lips curl back in a snarl.

He pressed his hands against the frame of a boarded-up window and peering through the slats. The captain was pointing up and down the street, splitting up the patrol for a thorough search of the area. He needed a plan, and soon. He needed to focus, put aside the unknowable and concentrate on the here and now.

As he watched the captain begin to approach with two guards at his side, all the lights in the neighbourhood flickered and went out. The guards tensed like a pack of startled dogs, still and alert. A few seconds later, red emergency lighting glowed from the street lamps. The Master chuckled to himself. Clearly, the Doctor was alive and well. And the Master had an idea.

“Glitz, do you have a weapon?”

Glitz tossed him a puzzled glance. “Of course. My Mark Five Cellular Disintegrator.” He pulled the small, deadly pistol from a hidden pocket inside his shirt. “I never leave home without this little darling.” His tone shifted from fond to dubious. “But I’m not going to go up against six security officers all by my lonesome. I don’t care what you pay. Can’t spend money if you’re dead, I always say.”

“I’d never expect acts of bravery from you, Glitz. Give the disintegrator to me.” The Master held out his gloved hand. “We don’t need to kill all of them, just most of them. In fact, there’s one in particular I’d like to keep very much alive.”

The disintegrator, after painstaking modification by the Master, worked exactly as planned. When the security guards entered the dark room to search the building in which Glitz and the Master were hiding, they were blasted with a wide beam spray from Glitz’s pistol--too dispersed to be fatal, but utterly incapacitating as the victims’ nerve cells jittered and screamed. He picked off two of the guards with his TCE, leaving the captain writhing on the floor for a few more seconds until the disintegrator’s battery, never designed for long bursts, melted.

The Master padded over to the captain and crouched down on his heels, waiting for him to stop spasming and return to coherency. It took longer than expected, but the Master was patient. When the captain had gathered himself together well enough to look up and take stock of his situation, the Master was ready.

“Captain,” the Master said, dipping into the man’s mind. “Melis, isn’t it?”

“Who are you?” the captain asked, fear quivering in his voice.

“I am the Master.” His mouth twisted in a smile. “And you will obey me.”

Captain Melis frowned, but soon the furrows of distress smoothed and his face was serene. “I will,” he said agreeably.

“That’s a handy trick you’ve got there,” Glitz said. “Now that he’s all calm he’ll be right easy to take care of.” Glitz took out a sonic knife and reached for Melis’ throat. But before he could strike, the Master pounced to his side and forced Glitz’s arm down with a vicious grip.

“You fool! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Getting rid of a fellow who wants to kill us,” Glitz said, rather dismayed at the apparent need to state the obvious.

“After all the trouble I went through to catch him alive and place him under my control?” The Master tightened his fingers around Glitz’s thick wrist, squeezing with a preternatural strength until Glitz winced and squirmed.

“If you wouldn’t mind letting me have the use of my hand back…”

“Not until you understand that I am in command here. You are to do nothing unless I order you. Is that clear, Mr. Glitz?” The Master’s voice was quiet and collected. It was the sort of voice Sabalom Glitz was well familiar with, having heard something much like it from the mouths of unrepentant murderers often enough. It was the sort of voice that brooked no discussion and heralded certain violence against anyone who dared disobey.

“I understand perfectly, sir,” Glitz replied. Discretion being the better part of staying alive, and all that.

The Master dropped Glitz’s arm and turned his attention back to Captain Melis, who had watched the whole exchange with blank indifference.

The Master loomed over him. “Now, Captain, let me tell you what you’re going to do.”

Once the captain acquired a pair of security uniforms for Glitz and the Master, they were able to move about freely. It grated that his uniform insignia marked him as a lower rank than the captain, but the names and faces of the higher ranking officers would be known. He consoled himself with the knowledge that although passersby might think him a mere sergeant, he would have the last laugh. With Captain Melis leading the way, they came to the central security operations station without incident.

It was a utilitarian government building, all grey brick and beige carpet. People flitted here and there around the room like bees around a hive. Their uniforms were black, like the guards’, but they all wore the blue patch that marked them as operations personnel instead of security patrol. They saluted Captain Melis when he entered, but paid no attention to Glitz or the Master.

Captain Melis led them to one of the stations where a young man in thick glasses was sorting files on a computer terminal. The captain laid a friendly hand on the man’s arm. “Fetch me a cup of coffee, will you? And one for yourself if you want.”

“Sir?” The boy gave his commanding officer a puzzled look.

“Take your time. Have a breather. We’ll be needing your terminal for a while anyway, so you might as well enjoy the break.”

“Yes, sir!” The lad didn’t need to be told twice. He closed the program he was working on and bounded up from his chair. He paused at the door and turned back to ask, “Oh, do you take cream or sugar, sir?”

“Cream, no sugar,” Captain Melis replied. The boy left.

The Master settled himself into the vacant seat. Glitz hovered over one shoulder, the Captain stood close by the other. A few brushes over the smooth control panel and the security system program revealed itself. “Just as I thought. You have sensors that flag and scan all new arrivals. That will simplify things considerably.”

“Yes,” the Captain confirmed. “But when the Doctor blew the energy lines, he also shut down the sensor grid, the shields, the locks, everything. We have lights, limited communication, and just enough generator power to keep our computers from crashing completely. The privately-owned facilities are better off—they can afford better emergency generators—but the public infrastructure’s old. The energy lines were supposed to have been replaced years ago with a node system that would keep just this sort of thing from happening, but the government’s been broke for years. The city’s whole system is dead.”

“I find that ‘dead’ is not as conclusive a concept as people think.” The Master gave a harsh chuckle and swept his fingers over the computer controls, rerouting and boosting power. “We don’t need much, just enough to hear one double heart-beat amongst the sea of single pulses.”

As soon as the Master finished his adjustments, a single dot of light flashed on the map grid.

“There he is,” the Master whispered, staring at the bright pinprick on the vast, dark screen.

Captain Melis wasted no time. He commanded over the security communication line, “All available squads to Red Sector, Subsection Five to apprehend the Time Lord. He is presumed to be armed and is certainly dangerous so keep your weapons powered up.”

“Tell them not to approach until you give the word,” the Master prompted.

“All squads, do not approach the Time Lord until I give word. Repeat: Do not approach until word is given.”

“Good,” the Master smirked. It was almost too easy. Now to institute the final stage of his plan. He opened a line to the public communications port in Red Sector, Subsection Five. “Well Doctor, it’s time to stop running.”

There was a long silence, then, “Is that--” The Doctor began, his voice sharp with confusion.

“It is,” the Master confirmed before the Doctor could say his name. Under normal circumstances, he relished hearing the Doctor say it, but here, surrounded by operations personnel and keen to keep his disguise intact, was not the time or place. “Even now, the loyal and valiant officers who protect this fair city are closing in on your position. You’ve run up quite a list of criminal offenses in your short time here. I suggest you surrender now.”

“Surrender.”

“Yes, surrender. Surrender and allow yourself to be brought to me.” The Master waited, his mouth open in eager anticipation of the Doctor’s words.

“Brought to you where?” The Doctor’s voice was sharp with suspicion.

“Does it matter? You’ll either let the guards escort you to me, or you’ll be shot. The choice is yours. Come to me, or take your chances against an armed squad.”

There was a long pause during which the Master could easily imagine the Doctor’s eyes flashing with anger in that fetching way he had. At last, the Doctor replied. “It’s not a choice and you know it.”

Through the comm, the Master heard Miss Bush’s strident voice cry out, “You can’t!” He ignored her.

“Say it.” The Master wasn’t about to let this opportunity slide. He may never get another chance to hear the Doctor say these words.

“I…surrender.”

The Master could almost see the Doctor’s grimace. He smiled. “Yes?” he prodded, leaning closer to the speaker to better hear the response.

“To you.”

“Very good, Doctor.” He closed the communication line.

Fifteen minutes later, the Doctor and Miss Bush were brought in, handcuffed and at the mercy of the guards. Captain Melis turned to the Master and Glitz. “You two escort the prisoners to their cell.”

The Master hurried to carry out the orders he had pre-arranged with the Captain. He took the Doctor by the arm and roughly pulled him towards the door. It was all he could do not to grin. Glitz took care of Miss Bush with somewhat greater chivalry.

Once they were away, the Doctor hissed, “You treacherous—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the Master curbed the Doctor’s accusations before they could be given full voice. “What could these people possible offer me, my dear Doctor, that could be of greater interest to me than saving my own timeline?”

“It crossed my mind that you might have decided that I was unnecessary for your plans.” He held up his cuffs hands. “That, consummate opportunist that you are, you’d take advantage of the situation.”

The Master scowled. “Of the two of us, I think you’ll find that I’m not the one with a history of going back on his word.”

“Then you’ll release me?” the Doctor asked, raising his hands a few inches higher in emphasis.

“Yes,” the Master said sharply, taking the Doctor’s hands into his own and keying in the combination that Captain Melis had given him. “Not that you deserve it.” In truth, he would have liked to keep the Doctor in restraints a little longer, but gaining the Doctor’s trust was too important right now for such petty, if pleasant, diversions.

The Doctor’s chilly mien melted. “In that case, I must congratulate you on an innovative escape plan. Find our freedom by getting arrested. I don’t believe I’ve ever tried it before.”

“I do enjoy bringing new experiences to your life.”

“Such as strangulation by sentient telephone cord, near death by parasite-induced terror, actual death by falling—”

“Yes, but think of how much duller your travels would have been were I not around.”

“There were plenty of other monsters in the universe to keep me occupied.”

“Monster?” The Master suddenly slammed the Doctor against the wall and pressed close, their faces bare inches apart. “Tell me, Doctor,” he spat out the name, “am I a monster because I intervene in the development of lesser species, or because my intervention has, upon occasion, resulted in death? Either way, you’re hypocrite if you call me a monster.”

The Doctor breathed heavily, shocked by the unexpected violence and lightheaded from the surge of adrenaline. He barely heard the Master’s words but the position they were in was so familiar—the Master hovering close, threatening, while his own mind buzzed with possibilities of escape—that the Doctor had to smile with a curious nostalgia. He rested his palm against the Master’s chest, not pushing him away, just feeling his single, Trakenite heartbeat. “Weren’t we escaping?”

The Master sniffed in scorn at the Doctor’s unsurprising evasion and stepped away. “You are incontrovertibly the most infuriating man I know.”

“Can you save the lovers’ spat for a more convenient time?” Glitz said. “Sometime when we’re far away from this planet, maybe?”

The Doctor gave Glitz a chill, narrowed eyed look. He was increasingly eager to reach the TARDIS. Not only had he experienced quite enough of this world, but he was greatly looking forward to springing their trap and silencing Glitz. Thanks to the Master’s control of the security captain, they met with no patrols and no resistance as they crossed the city back to the wide courtyard where they’d left the TARDISes nestled together.

“Is this your ship?” Glitz asked. “Awfully small, isn’t it? And blue?”

“My ship has been picking up bad habits from the Doctor’s,” the Master said with a resigned twist to his mouth.

“Bad habits?” The Doctor sniffed. “My TARDIS is perfectly genteel.”

“Your TARDIS is one blown circuit away from thinking she’s an actual Police Box.”

Glitz shared a look with Mel that indicated that he thought that they were travelling with a couple of nutters, but couldn’t see what else to do but tolerate them.

The Doctor continued his defence of his truest companion. “She may be a bit...dotty, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Your TARDIS certainly doesn’t seem to mind.”

The Master reached for the door. “My TARDIS—” The instant he touched the handle, the world flashed white.

When the electric zap of the transmat faded and his retina nerves re-activated, the Doctor spun around to assess his new surroundings. What he saw made his teeth grind and his stomach clench.

Glitz summed up the situation with a succinct, “Oh, bugger.”

Steel walls enclosed them on three sides and a buzzing, high energy force shield finished the holding cell.

# # #

Mr. Gilfruct, like most Aurean plutocrats, had a passion for novelty. When one had the money to buy anything, only the priceless held any appeal. As soon as the transmat alert started flashing, he knew he would have to see the prisoners. Then he and he alone would be able to boast to his business rivals over glasses of glittering vinargenta that he had seen a legendary Time Lord. It was a shame the prisoners had to be kept caged; captivity invariably diminished grandeur, and the viewing experience simply wouldn’t be the same. But, alas, it was impractical to allow such dangerous aliens to roam free.

Mr. Gilfruct brushed one finger over the digital interface surface of his desk and the computer controls faded, replaced by an illusion of golden-grained wood. He rose, abandoning his profit reports and management memos. When he entered the antechamber, Miss Lilla rose from her chair, wobbling a little on her high heels.

“Mr. Gilfruct,” she squeaked anxiously. If Mr. Gilfruct was leaving the office unscheduled—there were no board meetings listed on the planner, no business lunches, no ribbon cutting ceremonies—then she supposed she must have done something wrong, failed to anticipate all his needs and provide for them. She attempted to salvage the situation, and possibly her job. “May I assist you with something?”

He looked at her as if he’d only noticed her existence when she spoke. “Call the medical unit and tell them to send a haemoreceiver to the confinement unit on Lower Level Three.” He paused, cocked his head, considering. “Come with me and bring the holovid recorder.”

She snatched the recorder from one of her desk drawers and toddled after Mr. Gilfruct, cursing the “sexy secretary” shoes her sister had encouraged her to buy.

The corporate headquarters of Gilfruct Enterprises had nothing but the best in equipment and design. While most of the city had lost power, in this building there had been barely a flicker before the massive generators kicked in and the lift ride now to the lower levels was swift and silent. His security personnel stood to attention as Mr. Gilfruct entered the holding area. He motioned for Miss Lilla to turn on the holovid and follow him as he approached the cell.

There were four aliens, all aureanoid. “Which one of you is the Time Lord?” Mr. Gilfruct asked. To his eyes they were all just as disappointingly ordinary in person as they were in the security holoimage. Just three men and a woman.

There was a long silence as the prisoners shared wary glances. “And who, exactly, are you ,and why should we answer your questions?” the svelte man with a dark beard—identified in the security report with just the title “Master”—asked.

Upon closer examination, the Master at least had a forceful presence, as if his soul couldn’t quite be contained by his body and overflowed the room. Perhaps he was the Time Lord. “I am Mr. Gilfruct of Gilfruct Enterprises, the person who owns this building, this cell, these guards, this city. So it would be better for you if you cooperated with me.”

The Master said nothing, merely crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall with a smugly stubborn set to his mouth.

“If that’s way it has to be,” Mr. Gilfruct said. He motioned sharply and the guards stepped forward. “I’ll order them to start shooting and see who regenerates. That should answer my question.”

“Wait!” the man known as the Doctor spoke. He stood and stalked forward until he was only inches from the force shield that separated them. “You wanted a Time Lord.” His lips twitched in an almost smile. “Here I am.”

Mr. Gilfruct peered at the man. The experience was anti-climatic to say the least. There was no glowing golden light, no aura of wisdom or majesty, no mysteries of the cosmos shining from his face. Nothing but a weary, middle-aged man in a dismal black suit.

Mr. Gilfruct sneered. “Mightiest civilization in the universe indeed,” he muttered to himself. He waved at Miss Lilla to turn off the holovid. There was nothing worth recording here.

The Time Lord quirked an eyebrow. “So dreadfully sorry I fail to live up to your expectations.”

Mr. Gilfruct shook off his disappointment. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I can, with all sincerity, promise that my product comes from a genuine Time Lord. I pride myself in honesty in advertising.”

“Product?” the Doctor asked warily.

Mr. Gilfruct ignored the implied question and turned to the Master. “And I’m guessing that you’re the Trakenite, then,” Gilfruct said. “The clothes,” his hand waved in a gesture encompassing the Master’s form, “resemble those depicted on a Trakenite crystal triptych that I have in my collection. It’s centuries old. Was one of the last ever made, before the destruction of Traken. No one much cared about Trakenite art until it became impossible to get more of it. Funny, isn’t it, how the annihilation of the species made their art all the more precious?”

“Only this body is Traken,” the Master replied with a scowl. “My mind is pure Time Lord.”

“Your body is all I want. You and your friend there,” Mr. Gilfruct nodded towards the Doctor, “are about to become precious commodities.

“There are stories, folk tales, that Trakenite blood had restorative properties. Something about them absorbing the power of the Source of the Universe, or some nonsense like that. I don’t believe a word of it myself but there are plenty of gullible people who would pay a small fortune to get their hands on some.” He looked to the Time Lord. “And hundreds of governments across the galaxy would barter away their souls to get their hands on Time Lord DNA to turn over to their scientists. You’ll be dismembered for samples.”

As if on cue, the medical technicians entered, rolling in a medical bed between them with a haemoreceiver balanced on top. Mr. Gilfruct smiled sympathetically at them. “You have about two minutes to say good bye while the techs set up the equipment.”

Glitz spoke out, “What about us? There’s not much of a black market for Humans. I’d know if there was.” He held up his finger as if an idea just occurred to him. “How about you give us a dash of retcon; we’d be more than happy to go away and forget all about this.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Glitz,” Mr. Gilfruct said. And he really was. But business was business and compassion and profit just didn’t mix. “You and Miss Bush are dangling threads. Dangling threads are sloppy, and I hate untidiness.”

Mel’s heart raced and her mouth was dry. “Doctor?” She looked to him, but his attention was fixed on Mr. Gilfruct.

Blood-tinted images spun in the Doctor’s mind. His muscles trembled with the desire to act. Like Atropos severing the thread of fate, he could end Gilfruct’s life without a hiccup in the time stream to mark his passing. The universe would be a better place for it.

“Ah, there it is,” Mr. Gilfruct breathed in delight. “That’s more like what I expected from a Time Lord.”

“You wanted to see a legend?” the Doctor asked, voice tight and shaking with poorly suppressed fury. “You wanted to see an entity of cosmic power? The Destroyer of Worlds?”

Mr. Gilfruct craned his head forward in fascination. There was still no golden glowing light or aura of wisdom and majesty, but there was power in the Doctor’s aspect, the dark look of a creature who could feel stars dying. “I wanted to have something that no one else could,” Mr. Gilfruct said.

“You want too much,” the Doctor said grimly.

One of the medical techs shuffled to Mr Gilfruct’s side, casting nervous glances at the Doctor. “The equipment’s ready, sir. We can start any time.”

“Excellent.” He signalled for the guards to approach, then turned to his prisoners. “I do apologize for the crudity, but this is simpler than trying to transport the lot of you secretly to a hospital. Fewer opportunities for escape as well. Guards, fetch...” Mr. Gilfruct’s finger wavered between the Doctor and the Master, deciding which to process first. “That one.” He pointed at the Master.

Four guards trained their blasters on the prisoners while two entered the cell, seized the Master’s arms and dragged him out.

“Doctor!” the Master cried out. “You can’t let them do this to me!”

The Master struggled and writhed in the guards’ grasp until he was pushed down onto the medical table and strapped into place. One tech pushed up the Master’s sleeves and placed the haemoabsorption cuffs over the veins in each arm while the other pressed buttons on the haemoreceiver.

Twisting the paradox ring around his finger, the Doctor watched as the Master’s blood filled the twisting tube and dripped into a large vat. Slow exsanguination was not a pleasant way to die. And die he would, trapped in a Trakenite body incapable of regeneration. The Master would end here, now, not in a Dalek execution, or shot by a woman in red, or burned away by the energy of a collapsing micro-universe. One more paradox straining the seams of reality.

Mel’s voice whispered from the Doctor’s side. “What are we going to do?”

Could he change the outcome of the trial without the Master’s help, defeat his other self?

“Doctor!” the Master cried out again, his face pale and beads of sweat glistening on his brow. His breath was quick and shallow.

He thought of six more lives, six stolen regenerations stretching out before him with yet another failure pressing on his hearts. This new death would be burned into his mind with all the others, with images of fire and blood and light all blended together in a ghastly soup. If he once more sat by and watched while the Master died, he feared there’d be nothing left of him but that black loathing that had spread like spilt ink through the core of his self. Already he could feel it slithering into his mind, choking his throat and greying his vision. In a few moments, he’d be a pitiful, mad shell unless he did something. So he did the only thing he could do, what he always did. He gathered all up all the hate and fury and disgust and fashioned it into a weapon against his enemies.

His uncertainty was gone.

“We’re going to break out of this cell,” the Doctor replied with a thin facade of calm over a raging storm. He removed his paradox ring, his gaze focused on the Master’s face—dark beard and white, bloodless skin—to prevent panic from setting in as he felt the cracks of time cutting into his brain. Off his finger, the ring was no longer bound to his biodata, and although the bubble itself was still active the paradox was pressing closer. If he did this, if he destroyed the ring, his chances of survival would be slim. If he did nothing, however, his death and the death of the Master besides was certain. There was really no choice.

The Master, watching the Doctor’s actions through half-lidded eyes, opened his mouth to speak but was too weak, drifting in and out of consciousness.

“I know what I’m doing,” the Doctor muttered, even though he knew the Master couldn’t hear him. He herded Mel and Glitz to the back of the cell, as far away from the force shield as the walls allowed. He tossed the ring back and forth between his hands, calculating the proper arc.

“What are you doing?” Mel asked.

“The ring produces a tremendous amount of energy, all channelled into maintaining the paradox bubble. If I can hit the shield with it at just the right spot, the resulting energy collision should detonate the ring and short circuit the shield,” he murmured quietly enough that the guards couldn’t hear over the hum of the machines. He cocked his head. “If I miss, it might blow a hole in the universe.”

“What?” Mel squeaked.

Glitz spoke up. “I’m all for escaping, but I don’t think I like the sound of this plan.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” the Doctor said, then drew his arm back and hurled the ring at the force shield.

The energy collision was as spectacular as he’d hoped. The four guards who were standing near the cell were caught up in the whiplash and screamed as their bodily fluids boiled within seconds. The massive discharge prickled every cell in the Doctor’s body, but he and his companions were just far enough away to escape the deadly effects.

Space-time slowly started to bend and buckle around him. He had to act quickly before it folded inward. The blast had stunned the medical techs into frozen, animal fear. Deer in headlights, as the humans used to say. They didn’t put up a fight when he shoved them away and reversed the direction of the blood flow. He watched the haemoreceiver slowly empty and the Master’s colour return.

Mel had claimed a blaster from one of the dead guards, much to the Doctor’s surprise. She aimed it squarely at Gilfruct, who was still blinking away temporary blindness from the flash of the force shield. The two remaining guards, seeing themselves outnumbered, ran for the door. Mr. Gilfruct screamed threats at them as they fled, but to no avail.

“Loyal help is so hard to purchase,” the Doctor mocked. He’d unfastened the restraints and helped the Master to his feet, steadying him with a hand on his back when he swayed. Once he was sure the Master could stand on his own, he stalked to where Mr. Gilfruct stood. Mr. Gilfruct’s posture was that of a man uncowed, a man who thought he was still in charge, so very different from the pretty girl behind him who was hunched over as though she could make herself invisible if only she could take up less physical space.

“Mr. Gilfruct of Gilfruct Enterprises,” the Doctor sneered. He paced back and forth in front of the businessman, feigning a calm he didn’t feel, pretending he had all the time in the universe when in fact time itself was closing in on him. “You are guilty of arrogance, callousness, and rampant greed. You create poverty among your fellow citizens and then you prey on their misfortune. You perpetuate a system that is exploitative and corrupt. A just universe would have seen you condemned years ago. On the whole, the universe isn’t just. Across galaxies, innocents are condemned, women and men are raped, children are tortured, the good suffer and the wicked prosper. However,” he took Mel’s blaster. She let him take it without a hint of protest. “In this instance, I believe I’ll give justice a little help.”

The Doctor raised the blaster, although movement was becoming more difficult, more dangerous every second. He took aim, but his vision blurred. Time and sight collided as the impending approach of the twisted paradox made his senses bleed together.

The Doctor swayed. His shot missed Gilfruct and before he could get off another the blaster dropped from his trembling hand. The press of space-time forced a small gasp from him, and he curled in on himself as he felt his personal timeline stretch so thin and fragile that one wrong move could cause it to snap.

Mr. Gilfruct smiled and drew a sonic pistol. “So much for Time Lords.” He aimed it squarely at the Doctor’s head.

“Doctor!” Mel cried out. She flinched and closed her eyes when the high pitched scream of a weapon’s energy discharge pierced the air. But instead of the sharp and quick noise of a blaster, this was a continuous hum. She opened her eyes to see the Doctor still alive, if not entirely well, and Gilfruct slowly shrinking—his cells collapsing and organs suffocating.

“Typical, Doctor, typical,” the Master said. “You can’t even carry out your own executions properly.”

The medical technicians, like the guards, had run. The only Aurean in the room left alive was the girl who had entered with Gilfruct. She cowered in a corner holding a holovid recorder to her chest. The Master pointed the TCE at her.

Before he could fire, Mel grabbed his arm, spoiling his shot. “No!” she shouted. “Don’t kill her!”

The Master shook her off. “How dare you command me,” he snarled. He raised his weapon again.

“Let the girl be,” Doctor hissed, wincing as the sound vibrations dispersed into the time steam. “Killing her’s not worth the whinging you’d have to endure.”

The Master was clever. The raise of his eyebrow showed that he’d noticed the Doctor’s use of the second person singular “you” instead of the inclusive “we.” He tucked his TCE away and let the girl run. She wasn’t important; the Doctor was.

“Doctor, you fool,” the Master said. There was no heat to the insult, only exasperation touched with regret.

The Doctor flashed him a bitter smile, then slowly folded himself to the ground. The currents of time were pressing against him and around him. His time-flow sense burned. It was like being trapped in the centre of time all over again, waiting for the end of reality. He crouched on the floor, arms over his head. It wouldn’t do any good, the Doctor knew it wouldn’t. Flesh and bone couldn’t hold the driving current of space-time at bay more than it could keep the Niagara River from falling.

He flinched when the Master knelt by his side. Every action around him, every movement of air sent out ripples of cause and effect that were painfully distorted by the encroaching paradox.

The Doctor whispered, trying not to stir the air any more than he had to. “You have to get out. You have to escape. If you don’t my other self will once again win the trial. He will go forth and commit the paradoxes that drive you to find me, whereupon I will come here and die again. I’ll be caught in a loop, dying over and over until the stress on the overlapping timelines, frayed with each reiteration, fractures all of reality.” His hands fluttered about the Master’s face, afraid to touch lest that one motion snap him out of existence. “If I must die, I’d rather it be just the once.”

The Master said nothing. Did nothing. The Doctor waited for him to go and also dreaded it. But the Master didn’t leave. Instead, he took the Doctor’s hand. The Doctor tried to draw away.

“The paradox—”

“Hush,” the Master said.

He slipped a ring—his own paradox ring—on the Doctor’s finger. The Doctor couldn’t understand why. It wasn’t at all like the Master to take such great risks with his life with so little benefit. “The paradox bubble created by the ring is all that prevents you from being erased from the timeline.”

“You have a talent for stating the obvious.” The Master’s non-answer to the Doctor’s unstated question made the Doctor purse his lips in frustration. “But unlike you, I should be safe enough provided I remain within the bubble, even if my biodata isn’t tied directly to the ring. I am not the centre of the paradox. Space-time isn’t turned against me.”

“Still, to put yourself at risk, to bind yourself and make yourself vulnerable to another person...it seems an uncharacteristic action for man whose twin goals have always been immortality and power,” the Doctor tried again to coax out an explanation.

“It is, isn’t it?” The Master still held the Doctor’s hand. At last, he chuckled. “Consider it a mystery. I hope it keeps you occupied for a while.”

A slow smile spread across the Doctor’s face, mirroring the Master’s smirk. Then he wrapped his fingers around the Master’s hand and with an exhortation of “To the TARDIS!” he led the Master away.

# # #

The guards who had fled had been just loyal enough to raise an alarm. It made their escape a little more frenetic than the Master preferred. When the Master’s plans fell into shambles (as they so often did when the Doctor was around) he preferred to slink away while no one was watching. Undignified mad dashing through corridors was more the Doctor’s style.

The Master and Glitz were still dressed in the black uniforms of the security personnel, which caused the guards they encountered to hesitate just long enough for the Master to eliminate them. Between the Doctor’s earlier vandalism of the energy conductors and the Master’s adjustments to the sensors, the security grid was unable to trace them. With Mr. Gilfruct and Captain Melis both out of commission, the chain of command was more like a tangled cord. Guards ran hither and thither without plan or purpose and were, for the most part, easy to evade.

When they came in sight of the TARDIS, Glitz rushed forward, eager to get to safety. Before he could touch the door, however, the Master shouted out, “Wait.” Glitz paused with one arm outstretched. “The transmat may still be active. The Doctor and I went to a lot of trouble to collect you and you will not thwart us now with your stupidity.”

“Now just a minute...” Glitz began. The Master shoved him roughly out of the way and scanned the TARDIS exterior, searching for the transmat activator. Once he found it and got to work dismantling it, the Doctor wandered off towards the nearby computer terminal. He considered calling him back, trying to prevent him from straying far, but he bit his lip to curb the impulse. He doubted it would do any good, and furthermore he didn’t want the Doctor to know how hyper-aware of his movements the Master was.

Whatever the Doctor was doing, it didn’t take him long. He was back at the Master’s side after only a few minutes. Working together, they quickly deactivated the trap. Once they were all inside the TARDIS, the Master flipped the controls to initiate dematerialization. As far as he was concerned, they couldn’t leave here soon enough.

The Doctor, unfortunately, had other plans. “Take us into orbit, eight hundred thousand kilometers above the surface,” he said.

“What for?” the Master asked. “We got what we came for.”

“Just do it!”

“No.”

The Doctor shoved the Master away from the console and took control of the TARDIS. “During our escape, I sent all the controls to the planetary defence system to the TARDIS computer. I’m about to consign the entire planet to oblivion, but I need to be within transmitting range to do it.”

The Master quirked a startled eyebrow at the Doctor’s vengeful passion and said nothing.

“You can’t,” Mel screamed. “You’ll kill all those innocent people!”

“Innocent?” The Doctor turned to her. His voice was a harsh, whispered rasp. “They’re not innocent, not one of them. They were all complicit, all accomplices to cannibalism and greed. Guilty, every last one of them, and they deserve what they get.” The Doctor was breathing heavily as if from exertion and his eyes were wide and burning with frenzy.

“We’re in orbit now,” the Master said, watching the Doctor with interest. The Doctor leapt around the console and typed in the commands.

“No!” Mel threw herself at the Doctor, grabbing his arm and pulling it away from the controls with all her slight strength. The Master could admire her tenacity, if not her intelligence. The Doctor easily threw her off him; she fell heavily to the floor. A few seconds later the transmission was sent. Two point six zettajoules of destructive energy turned upon Aureas.

The Doctor swept over to the view screen to bear witness as his sentence was carried out. The planet glowed red, like a ball of molten glass. Then it exploded into dust and fragments of rock blasted outward with a force that would send pieces beyond this solar system.

“Remarkable,” the Doctor whispered, staring out at the expanding ring of glowing light that had been the planet Aureas.

“Yes,” the Master concurred, watching the Doctor, whose pale eyes shone with painful wonder.

“How could you?” Mel whimpered.

The Doctor barely heard her, entranced by the burning rings. It looked just a little bit like a micro-universe exploding.

“If we’re finished here, Doctor?” the Master asked.

“Yes,” the Doctor replied absently. Only when the TARDIS groaned and wheezed into the vortex did the Doctor look away from the view screen.

The short-lived contentment that power and righteous anger brought him drained away, leaving him hollow and faded. He yearned for his prosecutor’s robes; they gave him an identity on which his sense of purpose could hang. Button by careful button, he unfastened the black suit jacket and shrugged out of it. The lining was purple—a ridiculous colour. He tossed it on the floor and set to work on removing his tie, his trembling hands slipping on the grey silk.

The Master watched intently. His focus did not go unnoticed.

Glitz cleared his throat loudly, then spoke. “If you’ll just get me the payment you promised, I’ll give you two gentlemen your privacy.” He held out his hand, waiting for money to be dropped into it.

The Master narrowed his eyes, stalked to Glitz, who took a few steps back in trepidation, and, pressing two fingers to Glitz’s forehead, caused him to drop unconscious. “At last,” he said with relief. “I’ve been wanting to do that for hours.”

“I’ll just go find him a room, shall I?” Mel said, keen to get away and avoid a similar fate.

“Don’t bother,” the Master replied. “We’ll be altering his memories and putting him in a stasis transport soon enough.”

“You’re...you’re not going to do that to me, are you?”

It was the Doctor who answered. “Not exactly.”

Mel backed away towards the door. She knew there was no place to run, but she needed at least the possibility of escape, no matter how slight. “What do you mean by that?”

“We will need you to help the other Doctor at the trial,” he said. “But not you. A different you.”

Mel’s nose crinkled in confusion. “What?”

The Doctor sighed. “Never mind. Go to your room and stay out of the way while we deal with Glitz. I promise you won’t be given the same treatment so long as you behave.” He waved her away wearily.

Once Mel left, the Master crouched at Glitz’s side, placed his hands on Glitz’ temples and began rewriting his memories into something more convenient. His experience of their adventures on Aureas was wiped away and replaced with a quieter scene of just the Master and Glitz negotiating in a dim corner of the tavern. Glitz would remember agreeing to speak on the Doctor’s behalf about the events on Ravalox, using the trial as a distraction to get at the matrix. He would remember nothing of Mel or this older, crueller Doctor. When the Master finished, he rose and looked to the Doctor to ask for help hauling Glitz’s heavy bulk into a stasis tube, but the Doctor’s blank-eyed stare at the view screen halted his words.

“Tell me, have I always been a hypocrite?” The Doctor absently unbuttoned the top button of his waistcoat, then equally absently buttoned it again.

“Yes,” the Master answered. “Although you don’t usually admit it.”

“When I put my sixth self on trial, I charged him with genocide. It was the first time he—I wiped out an entire race, but certainly not the last. Not by far,” he added softly.

“After the first two or three the novelty wears off.”

The Doctor was not willing to be distracted from his train of thought. “I also accused him of recklessly endangering his companions, of courting trouble through his combination of arrogance and thrill seeking. In short, there are few vices for which I excoriated him during that trial, which I did not display today.”

The Master lifted his hands in a minimalist shrug. “It’s hardly surprising that you know at least some of your own faults, although I would have added manipulative, unreliable, and capricious to the list.” He tired of the Doctor’s button-in/button-out fiddling and reached out to undo all four buttons, briskly pulling the waistcoat off.

“What would you have done, if it were you?”

“If it were just me, I would have left as soon as I had Glitz and avoided the whole mess.” The Master peered at him. “Are you feeling...remorse?”

“Of course not!” the Doctor replied. “I only did what was just, didn’t I?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

The Doctor forced out a single, harsh laugh. “You’re the last person I would ask for advice on morality. You wouldn’t recognize a good deed if it were standing right in front of you looking like Mother Teresa, wearing white and crowned with a saintly halo.”

“That’s not true. After all, I saved your life.”

The Doctor cocked his head. “And?”

“I saved your life. Completely voluntarily and at no benefit to myself.”

“I’m sure there was an ulterior motive somewhere,” the Doctor replied.

“No ulterior motive. Although it would be polite for you to praise me for my altruism.”

The Doctor’s lip quirked up in a knowing half-smile. He stalked to the Master and, wrapping his arms around the Master’s neck, leaned in to whisper in his ear. “You were magnificent, Master.” He pressed a brief kiss to the right corner of the Master’s lip. “Quick and decisive.” The next kiss was longer and ended with a small lick. The Master held back a whimper. “Brilliant and ingenious.” Cupping the Master’s face in his hands, the Doctor gently pressed their foreheads together, so close that they shared both the air they breathed and the surface thoughts that skittered across their minds. “I owe you my life, my dear Master.” If there was a touch of sarcasm in the tone, it was easy to ignore because the thoughts behind the words—desire and passion and genuine admiration—were anything but derisive.

The Doctor brought their lips together again, softly at first, then with rapidly increasing ferocity when the Master pulled him close and urged his mouth wider. Entwined, they staggered into the console, the Master pressing the Doctor backwards over it. The TARDIS lurched as a few of the vertical stabilizer controls were accidentally pushed. Neither paid the least bit of attention.

Usually, around this point in the proceedings, the Doctor would slip away under some thin pretext. So far the Doctor hadn’t indicated any desire to leave, quite the contrary, but then his retreats often came when the Master least wanted or expected them. He broke the kiss, determined that he wouldn’t be the one left wanting this time. The Doctor keened and clutched at him in a most satisfactory manner.

“Are there repairs to your TARDIS that you absolutely must see to right now?” the Master whispered in the Doctor’s ear.

“What?”

“Or astronavigation charts that need updating?” the Master pressed a wet kiss on the Doctor’s neck. “Or old data files that need sorting?”

The Doctor drew back just far enough to see the Master’s face. He peered at the Master’s expression, running his fingers over the mephistophelian beard. The Master had put his life in the Doctor’s hands the instant he had placed his paradox ring on the Doctor’s finger. Things changed.

“The TARDIS can do without me for a while,” the Doctor said and slid his hand into the Master’s sleek hair to pull him back into the kiss.