Chapter Text
Visits #14-#34
They settle into a new kind of rhythm, though it shares many similarities with the old one.
The naps, for one thing, are no longer necessary—in fact, the Master confesses that his insomnia issues had more or less resolved after his fifth visit. The Doctor had suspected as much, but is surprised that he actually admitted it. They end up finding other uses for the bed.
He starts sneaking more things in with him, though it’s never anything significant or that she could take back to her cell—those are always intercepted the moment she leaves the room. After the first few times that she steals his shirt so she can wear something other than her prison jumpsuit for a few minutes, he starts dressing in layers. Even something as trivial as wearing a comfortable t-shirt and snacking on jelly babies while beating the Master at chess is enough to make the Doctor feel more like herself.
It’s a bit depressing, knowing how little it takes now: a kiss, a scarf, a stupid joke, a scant ninety minutes of distraction…
Sometimes, she thinks, you don’t get to choose your coping mechanisms. Sometimes “better than nothing” is the best you can do.
Even though she’d rather not make the comparison, it occasionally reminds her of when River was in the Stormcage prison and the Doctor would pick her up for various outings. Most of the years of their marriage took place during that period, and for the first time the Doctor imagines what it was like from River’s perspective: how much agency did she really have back then? Probably quite a bit—River often broke herself out of prison, so she wasn’t relying on the Doctor the same way that she’s relying on the Master now. Still, she wonders: how many arguments had River avoided, just because she was stuck in prison and the Doctor was not? How many complaints had River not voiced, just because the Doctor was her sole visitor? And worse: how many times had River said “I love you,” just because the Doctor was the only one who could hear it?
Missy had almost certainly been more accommodating because she knew she was at a disadvantage while imprisoned in the Vault. How different was River’s experience?
Now that she’s the one in captivity, the Doctor is forced to consider her own complicity in maintaining the imbalance of power in those relationships. Was she ever the person she thought she was?
The Master’s visits are a welcome distraction from those questions: whenever he whispers “Doctor” in her ear, she feels a little more grounded, like she’s forgotten her name and he’s reminding her. In a way, she finally understands that incident in 1834 when he made her kneel and call him “Master”: without her naming him, he isn’t sure who he is.
Years pass in ninety-day increments. The Doctor spends more and more of the days in between thinking about his next visit. She spends more and more time thinking about him. Slowly but surely, he’s becoming the center of her life.
He probably knows that, even though she hasn’t said it outright. He’s probably thrilled by it, and by how much of an advantage he has. He gives her trinkets and scraps of his time and she gives him her entire self because it’s all she has left to give.
Putting it that way makes it sound tragic, but the truth is that she’s happier now than she was during the two decades before the Master started visiting her. She’s happier on that ninetieth day than she is on the other eighty-nine days.
Sometimes, she thinks, happier is all you can hope for. Sometimes happiness will always be just a little bit out of reach.
Of course, when was the last time she was completely happy? That problem started long before she was imprisoned. When was the last time either of them were completely happy? Their similarities are becoming more pronounced, and the boundary between them is a little less defined than it used to be.
She can’t remember which one of them uses the term “domestic” first, but she does remember replying to the Master’s joke about “domestic bliss” with a crack that they’re more feral than domesticated.
It’s not bliss—neither of them would ever call it anything close to that—but it’s relatively pleasant being together, being connected, and being whatever “normal” is for them. Even though she’d obviously prefer to be somewhere other than this prison, there are moments that they’ve shared that almost make it worth the trouble: moments of surprise, of wonder, of discovery, of surprising vulnerability on both their parts…
And above all, it’s comfortable. She isn’t used to being comfortable and is surprised at how much she appreciates it. It’s so comfortable, in fact, that if it was any other person, if it was any other set of circumstances, she might actually consider the possibility of making their legal arrangement a little less in-name-only.
It’s so comfortable that the Doctor can almost bring herself to ignore the reality that’s pressing down on her like a weight:
He’s not searching for a way to help her escape. He hasn’t for ages.
Because why would he? He’s got her right where he wants her: captive, isolated, and entirely dependent on him. And with those three ingredients, it’s only a matter of time before she breaks.
There’s only one way that he’ll help her escape and it’s the very first one he offered her: the tissue compression eliminator. All she’d have to do is accept it—but the version of the Doctor that escapes won’t be the same one who was locked up at the beginning. It will be the version of her that the Master devised: a Doctor willing to buy her freedom with blood.
And oh, he’d be so happy with that. She’d probably be happy too, because all the things that the old Doctor would have been sad about wouldn’t matter anymore, and the pair of them would burn down the cosmos together because there wouldn't be anyone out there who could stop them.
But there are people out there who are waiting for her. She knows that. The knowledge isn’t much, but it’s just enough to keep her tethered to herself.
It’s just enough to give her the resolve to tell the Master, on his thirty-fourth visit, to not come back.
“I’m so close to finding a way!” he protests. “Just a little while longer—”
“I’ve told you everything I know about this prison,” the Doctor points out. ”You have all the information you need. So either you don’t know how or you don’t want to, and I think we both know which one it is.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
A tiny—infinitesimally small—part of her wishes he would tell her that she’s wrong, that for once in his life he’s actually on her side, and when he doesn’t answer she can feel that tiny part of her ache.
“I thought so,” she says with a sigh of disappointment—because she is disappointed, in spite of herself. “Time for you to leave.”
He seems genuinely hurt by her rejection, which is really the only consolation she can take from this whole mess. “So you’d rather rot away in your cell than see me,” he hisses.
“Yes,” the Doctor confirms, looking him squarely in the eye. “I’d rather be alone than used.”
To her surprise, the Master actually flinches at that statement. “That’s not what—” he begins, but cuts himself off when he seems to realise how defensive he sounds. “You’ll regret this,” he insists. “You need me.”
“Maybe,” she admits, “but you’re never going to know whether or not you were right, because this is over.”
For a moment, he looks like he might continue to argue with her about it—that he might even go so far as to press whatever advantage he has left—and although the Doctor isn’t worried about what the Master could do to her, she is worried that any further argument from him, no matter how flimsy, might be enough to weaken her resolve.
And if that happened, then she probably would be lost—they both would, because if he kept coming and she kept letting him without the excuse of a bargain, it would mean that they needed one another more than they needed to protect themselves from one another. It would be so much worse than just the Doctor breaking: they would warp into something unrecognisable, something that wouldn’t so much burn down the universe for their own amusement as devour it because they refused to let anything get between them.
The Doctor was supposed to fight the monsters, not become one.
Fortunately for both of them, the Master seems to realise what the stakes are as well. “I’d say go to hell,” he spits, “but it looks like you’re already there.” He storms out without another word from either of them.
They’re back to their old dynamic—bitter, spiteful, and painful—and he’s leaving her behind to die.
At least it’s familiar, and that’s a consolation as well, the Doctor thinks.
Ninety days later, he doesn’t come back. She stops counting after that.
There isn’t a symbol on the wall this time: the Judoon guards merely arrive at the Doctor’s cell, place a black bag over her head, and take her away. She counts the steps before the transmat beam—one hundred and eighteen—and then it’s another eighty-eight steps to a boat, where she’s pushed down into a seated position by hands that aren’t Judoon hooves, but humanoid fingers. The noise of the oars moving through the water echoes off the distant walls of what sounds like a stone canyon.
Faintly, through the fabric of the bag, she can smell her surroundings.
She’s been here before.
The gravel crunches under her shoes when she steps off the boat and takes the handful of steps up and then down again. It’s so familiar that she knows exactly what she’s going to see when the bag is pulled off of her head.
Of course he’s here, a figure in garish purple amid the robed representatives of the Fatality Index: the rules of this place state that she can only be executed by another Time Lord.
“Is it our anniversary already?” the Doctor remarks. “If I knew in advance, I’d have changed my jumper.”
“Cute,” the Master says drily.
“I’m always cute,” she retorts. “You should see me in that jumper.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” he says, “and no: I’m not here to save you.” She can see the sides of his mouth twitch into the hint of a smile. “In fact, I’m the whole reason you’re here.”
She makes an impatient gesture with her hand. "Get to the bragging, I know you love that part.”
“You’ve made some enemies, Doctor. Some very powerful enemies—”
“Which rules you out, then.”
He looks annoyed at her interruption. “Enemies who were extremely disappointed when you were let off with only a life sentence. So disappointed, in fact, that they were willing to make a very generous offer to anyone who could provide enough new evidence to make you eligible for execution.” His smile widens. “And guess who you let freely rummage around in your memories? I found all sorts of things that they could use to build a case against your continued ability to draw breath.”
“I knew all those parking tickets would come back to haunt me eventually.” She can’t help being flippant, but the discovery that he had manipulated her yet again still burns inside of her.
“The descendants of Adelaide Brooke, for example,” the Master explains, “were very upset to learn that the noble Captain was psychologically manipulated into taking her own life.”
The Doctor had been doing her best to not react to his monologuing, but the mention of Adelaide is too painful to avoid. She can’t meet his eyes: not just because the Master had apparently been using her from the very beginning yet again, but because his accusation was, to some degree, correct.
It doesn’t make his betrayal sting any less, of course.
“And all of those missing persons cases: young human women, mostly, who were last seen with the Doctor and never heard from again.” He pulls on his collar in a show of feigned awkwardness. “Not a good look, you know.”
She can feel herself starting to tremble. She wonders what would happen if she were to tackle him off the dais and into the water behind him. Maybe his current regeneration is one of the ones that can’t swim.
“But the thing that really pushed the authorities over the edge,” the Master continues, “was the horrible thing that you did to Gallifrey.” He tsks at her. “Destroying your own people? How could you?”
Now she can meet his eyes: fury is a highly effective remedy for shame. “Excuse me?” she demands. “What I did to Gallifrey?”
“You conspired with a wanted criminal and terrorist—turns out Ko Sharmus was a very naughty boy before he joined the resistance against the Cybermen—to detonate an Eta-class weapon capable of destroying all biological life on an inhabited world. Millions of Time Lords—” He snaps his fingers. “—turned to dust with the press of a button.”
“They were already dead,” the Doctor snarls, “because you killed them! Or did you leave that part out of your report?”
“And how could you possibly prove such a wild accusation?” the Master asks. “Conduct an autopsy? Look for DNA evidence? There’s nothing left, Doctor, thanks to you.” He winks. “And I really do mean that: thanks.”
She lunges at him, but the robed guards hold her back. “I cannot believe you,” she hisses. “I was already in prison—what more do you want?”
“What I always want,” he answers. “To win.”
“And this is winning to you?”
“Oh, absolutely. You know, I’m really looking forward to my impending widowhood.” He glances around at the representatives from the Fatality Index. “Anyone want to get dinner after? I’ve got some mourning to take care of first, but I promise it won’t take long.”
“Well, you always did look nice in black,” the Doctor remarks drily.
“Flattery won’t help you now.”
“Did it ever help me before?”
For some reason, the Master treats it as an actual question—or at least he’s thinking something over. “Tell you what,” he says eventually. “I was planning on waiting till you were dead and slipping this on your corpse, but I suppose this way I’ll get to see your reaction.” He holds up an item between his thumb and forefinger: a gold ring.
The Doctor rolls her eyes. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Come on, put it on,” the Master says, taking her hand. “Let’s have a touching final moment here.”
Much to her irritation (and probably fifteen other emotions that she doesn’t have room to feel, given her impending execution), she can’t quite keep herself from feeling that pull in the center of her chest as he takes her hand and slips the ring on her finger. “This isn’t even a Gallifreyan wedding custom,” she points out.
“What, you don’t want an Earth-themed wedding?” the Master asks, pretending to look shocked. “And here I thought I knew you.”
She feels her jaw tighten. “So did I.”
That’s what is tearing her apart inside: she used to understand him and she doesn’t understand him anymore. Maybe she never did.
And now she’s about to pay for her foolishness with her life.
Underneath the dread, though, is a part of her that’s more offended than anything else, because he couldn’t even settle for killing her outright: he’d had to find a way into the prison and into her mind, and then set her up to be executed as punishment for the atrocity that he committed, with the knowledge that he’d get to pull the lever that would trigger the precisely calibrated technology to end her life permanently.
She decides to tell him directly: “This was a ridiculous amount of effort to go to for something that you could have accomplished with a brick and a good swing.”
“It really was, wasn’t it?” he replies cheerfully. “How about one last kiss, love?”
“I’d rather die,” she snaps. “How convenient that I’ve got the option right here.”
“No need to be impatient: you’ll get your wish granted in a minute.” He’s still holding her hand, and before she can pull away the Master lifts it to his lips.
It’s so much like what he did on his first visit. He doesn’t deserve her longing, but she doesn’t know how to stop that ache.
Might as well ask him about that as well: “The time we spent… together,” the Doctor says bitterly after he releases her hand. “Was that part of the plan too?”
She expected him to flinch. Instead, he’s merely silent.
After what feels like an eternity, one of the representatives from the Fatality Index speaks up. “The prisoner will kneel,” he intones.
She doesn’t take her eyes off the Master as she kneels on the box in the center of the dais.
“The quantum fold chamber is prepared,” the representative continues, indicating the ornate cube rising out of the water.
Her own little Vault, the Doctor observes. She wonders what the Master will do with it—probably chuck it into the nearest black hole. He’s certainly not going to spend the next thousand years watching over her corpse.
“The sentence will be carried out,” the representative announces, then looks at the Master. “Executioner?”
“Oh, I’ve been looking forward to this,” the Master confirms gleefully, taking his place next to the lever. He smiles down at the Doctor. “Last chance to start begging.”
“What, you want to hear me ask you to teach me how to be bad?” she scoffs.
“Come on,” he goads her. “Plead, beg, cry—I might show you mercy. I’m fickle like that, you never know.”
“Thanks, but I’ll take my chances with divine intervention instead.”
There’s a strangely brittle silence. Then he says, almost in a whisper, “Call me by my name.”
The answer is easy: “No.”
“Say it,” he hisses.
“What are you going to do if I don’t? Kill me?” she retorts. It’s the one thing he wants, the one thing he’s going to lose once she’s dead, so it’s the one thing that she has the power to take away from him.
“Fine,” he snarls, taking hold of the lever. “Any last words, Doctor?”
So this is how it ends, she thinks: no heroic sacrifice, nothing to make anyone’s life better or the universe any safer. Just another betrayal at the hands of someone she thought she understood, who is about to condemn her to the same fate she once rescued him from.
There’s no good way to sum that all up in one sentence.
The Doctor runs her thumb over the metal of the ring and can’t help laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. “This isn’t even real gold,” she tells him.
“No,” he confirms as a smile appears on his face, “it isn’t.”
She takes a deep breath as the Master pulls the lever.
And then there is nothing but agony, followed by the loudest silence she’s ever heard.
The Doctor opens her eyes and finds herself in a space that’s vaguely familiar.
It resembles a cabin… in places.
“I see you’ve fixed the place up a little,” she remarks, sitting up on what turns out to be a sofa. “The corners actually look like corners now.”
The Master tosses the ring up into the air and catches it. “Good morning to you too,” he says. “When did you figure it out?”
“You love overcomplicated schemes, but even you wouldn’t go to all that trouble just to have me executed,” she explains. “Plus, the material in the ring was just a little too chilly to be gold.”
“That was always the story they told us as kids,” he confirms. “‘Chronodyne freezes time because it’s—”
“‘—so cold,’” she finishes along with him. “It’s also slightly toxic, so I wouldn’t play around with it if I were you.” The Doctor winces and rubs at her temples. “You could have modified it so that the ring absorbed the full blast, by the way.”
“It had to look as real as possible,” he objects, “which meant some screaming before you were frozen in time. After the little trick you pulled during my execution, they wanted to make sure that this one was actually fatal—meaning no pulse or brain activity. Not that you ever had—”
“Sure you want to finish that insult?”
The Master pretends to look disapproving. “That’s an odd way of showing your gratitude, you know. Especially because, now that everyone thinks you’re dead, there’ll be no more Judoon popping up to take you into custody: you’ve got a clean slate to start defiling with various crimes and misdemeanors.” He tosses the ring over his shoulder and grins. “Come on, it was clever, wasn’t it?”
“Well, I’m alive and no longer in prison, so it was at least effective,” she concedes, before an uncomfortable possibility occurs to her. “Or am I just in a different prison now?”
“That’s up to you,” the Master says. He nods at something behind the Doctor, and when she turns to look she initially wonders if she’s hallucinating.
“That’s my TARDIS,” she manages to stammer, partially out of confusion and partially out of the overwhelming rush of emotion she’s experiencing at the sight of her perfect blue box.
“Oh good, you recognised it. I’m sure its feelings would have been hurt if you’d forgotten it after only a measly three or four decades.”
He’s being oddly casual about it and the Doctor is instantly suspicious. “You found my TARDIS.” She stands and examines it for any signs of damage.
“It wasn’t difficult.”
“You’re letting me leave in my TARDIS,” she says.
“Would you rather I didn’t?”
And there it is: behind the Master’s feigned indifference is the question that he really wants her to answer. It’s possible that he’s sabotaged her TARDIS in some way, or that it isn’t really her TARDIS at all, but the Doctor gets the sense that she could leave if she wanted to. He does want her to stay, though—more accurately, he wants her to want to stay.
He’s making a concession—maybe even an apology, though she isn’t sure what he’s apologising for. There are too many options.
Regardless, it doesn’t change her decision: Yaz, Ryan, and Graham probably think that she died on Gallifrey after sending them back to Earth in a spare TARDIS. She can’t bear to think of them grieving her death. “There are people waiting for me.”
The Master replies with a snort of amusement. “You have a TARDIS—right there, as you’ve helpfully pointed out. You could go pick up your pets five seconds after they arrived on Earth if you wanted.”
“And spend a little more time with you before I leave, then?”
There is the tiniest pause before he answers. “If you wanted. We could go see some of the spots we talked about—actually see them, instead of just imagining them. Come on,” he says, so close to pleading that the Doctor almost reaches for his hand in sympathy, “just one trip. Zap a few Daleks, have a snack, call it a night.”
She wants to tell the Master that it’s never “just one trip”: it’s always the first step down a path. One trip would turn into a second trip, and then another and another, and then it would be her new normal: every star, just like they promised when they were young.
And so, for a moment, she’s tempted.
But only for a moment, because he’s intentionally ignoring something and is probably hoping that she’ll be willing to ignore it too. “How long were you going to wait before putting your plan into action?” the Doctor asks. “If I hadn’t forced your hand by telling you not to come back, how many more visits would you have made?”
He doesn’t have an answer for her. Why would he?
But she has an answer of her own: “If holding all the power is the only way you can stand to be around me, then you can’t be around me.” Not the real her, at any rate.
From the look in his eyes, he understands. He doesn’t like it, but he understands. “I screwed it up, then,” he says quietly.
“You ‘screwed it up’ a very long time ago,” she says, but not unkindly. There’s no need to be cruel when she doesn’t have to be. “Before I ever set foot in that prison.” This is probably their last opportunity to speak face to face for at least a little while, so she decides to tell him the rest: “I’ll say this much, though: you didn’t have to rescue me, but you did. And I did enjoy the time we spent together—well, most of it,” she amends. “Could have done without some of those strolls through our most traumatic memories… but on the whole, I’m glad you were there.” She leans in and kisses him. “Thank you.”
He places a hand on her cheek and returns the kiss. The Doctor keeps an imaginary line fixed in her mind and, once he crosses it—once they both do, really—she withdraws just a little bit. “I won’t forget this,” she tells him. “I won’t pretend that it didn’t happen. I promise.” Too much of their history together had been built on intentional omission: that they were ever friends, that they were ever nemeses, that they had ever cared, that they had ever hurt one another. But if these last few years taught her anything, it was the value of confronting her past. The Time Lords had already taken so much of her life from her—what was the point of depriving herself of any more of it?
She watches the Master struggle to get the words out. “Thank you… for helping with the insomnia… thing.”
The amount of effort it took for him to say that is actually pretty funny. “Might even help you again in the future, if you ask nicely,” she says with a smirk. “I should head out now, though.”
The door to her TARDIS opens practically the moment she touches the handle. “Missed me, old girl?” the Doctor murmurs. “I missed you too.” After closing the door behind her, she takes it all in: the wonderful feeling of home. When she examines the controls they seem a bit sluggish, but she can tell that it’s due more to the TARDIS’s version of drowsiness than any kind of sabotage or damage. “Have a nice nap?” She enters the temporal coordinates for Sheffield in 2020, but something stops her before she can pull the lever to send the TARDIS into the Vortex.
She’s not ready to leave quite yet.
“Just need a minute,” she tells the TARDIS. “I'll be right back, I promise.”
The Doctor opens the door again. “One more thing,” she says, leaning on the doorframe.
The Master’s expression brightens. “Yes?” he asks eagerly.
“I want a divorce.”
He laughs—cackles, more accurately. “Sorry love, but they don’t believe in that sort of thing on Liaitia IV. Nothing to do but run out the clock on those thousand years you promised.”
“Even though I’m legally dead? I thought you were looking forward to that widowhood.”
“In a shocking turn of events, I was lying about that,” he says drily.
“Which part?”
His smile is infuriatingly enigmatic. “Not telling.”
“Guess I’ll have to go meddle in some of their early history myself.”
“Have fun with that: they were very fond of ritual flaying back in those days. Besides,” he adds, “even if you do get that changed, we’ve actually gotten married in at least a dozen other jurisdictions.”
“Seriously?”
The Master pretends to sigh wearily. “You do not want to know what I had to do in order to get our encounter at Jodrell Bank to qualify as wedding vows.”
She answers with a genuine sigh of her own. “I really, really—”
“Love me?”
“—hate you,” she finishes, exasperated.
He laughs again. “You couldn’t hate me if you tried. Remember?”
“Let’s not keep testing that theory, all right?” The Doctor turns to leave again but then swivels back around. “I have a phone, you know.”
“I didn’t think that jumpsuit had pockets.”
“We texted for years, back when you were pretending to be O,” she reminds him. “You know how to contact me on it.”
“And?”
“The next time you want my attention, use that instead of wreaking havoc.” She remembers the little buzz in her hearts whenever she got those WhatsApp notifications. “Give me a reason to miss you.”
“Naughty selfies?” he asks with a wink.
“If that’s what it takes,” she says, trying not to laugh. “I might not come running, but I’ll definitely reply.”
Their eyes meet and she can see whatever snarky reply the Master had prepared fade away. She braces herself for something dangerously genuine to pass between them: one more memory, one more touch, one more confession… one more reason to stay just a little longer.
But he looks away. “You should run along,” the Master says, stretching out on the sofa and closing his eyes. “Been a long day for me. I could do with a nap.” He opens his eyes. “You were right, by the way.”
The Doctor raises an eyebrow. “You never say that I’m right.”
“It was our anniversary today. Pretty good present, wasn’t it?”
“Other than the bit where you recited a litany of my sins and then framed me for your own massacre,” she replies drily. “You’ll have a hell of a time topping it next year.” She takes a deep breath. “Sleep well.”
Just before she closes the door of the TARDIS, she sees the faintest hint of a smile on his face.
Back at the controls, the Doctor gives the console an affectionate pat. “Here we go, then. First day of freedom. Let’s find out what we’ve missed.” She pulls the lever and grins as the TARDIS makes the most wonderful sound she’s ever heard.