Archive of Our Own ^beta

The cell they throw him in is non-descript: blank, anonymous metal walls, plain metal flooring, vent-free metal ceiling. There are no benches, nowhere to sit or lie but the floor, and there are no openings anywhere, save for the door which seals shut behind the Doctor with a quiet hiss. The room is dimly lit, by a singular gravity globe hovering near the ceiling. All in all, it's an unremarkable holding cell for a space station, and speaks to short-term holds only. They don't intend to keep him long, which could be good, but, considering the type of research these people carry out, is probably bad.

All this, the Doctor processes in the instant he's shoved inside. He staggers, catching his balance and spinning on his heel just in time to catch sight of the door sealing shut. He eyes it, watches the way the seams melt into the wall, barely visible, hears the telltale click of a deadlock seal. Even if he had his sonic, which he doesn't, it'd be a lost cause.

Alright. Seems he's stuck for now. That's fine. He's not in any immediate danger, aside from overwhelming boredom, from this plain, dull, unexceptional cell—

He turns; he stops. He's missed something in his assessment: he's not alone.

Standing in the dimmest corner, hunched over, is someone. It's hard to make them out properly, but they seem to be struggling to keep standing, hands braced against one wall, back pressed against the other. Their clothes, bruise-colored in the dim light, seem torn, maybe stained. Their face is turned down towards the floor, and a tumble of messy dark hair hides them from view. Even at this distance, the Doctor can tell they're shaking.

"Hello?" he asks, quiet, trying not to startle them. When he gets no response, he takes a step forward. "Hi," he says, hands up in as non-threatening a gesture as he can make. "I'm the Doctor. Are you—"

His voice dies in his throat. At the sound of his name, the stranger lifts their head and meets his gaze.

Recognition takes the form of a chokehold, seizing the Doctor and cutting off his breathing. Dark eyes are fixed on his, wide and unsettlingly intense and not any he ever expected to see again. His face is marred with bruises, with dark, dried blood, from a cut at his temple, from his nose — but it is him, no question. His telepathic presence is muted, somehow, stopping the Doctor from sensing him, but the eyes, the eyes — they're enough of a give away.

Slowly, the Master smiles.

It's a deranged thing; blood-stained and uneven, gleeful in the way only the Master knows how.

It snaps the Doctor out of his shock. Underneath, anger swells, fury like he usually forbids himself from feeling — but the Master's always been the exception to his every rule, and so, with a snarl, the Doctor crosses the room and shoves the Master back against the wall, one arm braced across his collarbones.

The Master laughs, cracked and raw, letting his head hit the metal wall with a dull thud, making no effort whatsoever to push back against the shove. "Oh," he says, and that voice, even broken and bleeding, is so familiar that the Doctor pushes a little harder, "he's angry." He tilts his head, his gaze somehow piercing. "What have I done now?"

The question breaks through the blistering fog of anger clouding the Doctor's mind — and he finds it to be genuine. His time sense is screaming, shards of discordant timelines pressing together, pushing splinters into time itself, raw and painful.

This Master is from his past. Before the forced regeneration. Before the Cyber planet. Before—

The Doctor's fists clench reflexively. This Master has no idea what's happened — what will happen, from his perspective. He doesn't know about the lines crossed, about the boundaries broken, about the trust shattered. There's no point in this anger; there'll be no confrontation, no explanations to be had, no revenge to be taken. The timeline won't be able to take it, and even if it could, this version of him would have no answers to give him.

It takes all the Doctor's self control not to scream. It's not fair — he is owed those explanations, has the right to know why, why the Master would throw it all away on a seeming whim, would cross the lines that neither of them had approached for centuries, would destroy any semblance of trust left between them.

But this Master doesn't know.

Frustration rises, and the Doctor bites back a snarl, reaffirming his grip on the Master and shoving him back against the wall for good measure. Again, the Master's head hits the wall; again, he laughs. "Ah," he says, his eyes wide and feverish, his grin unwavering and unhinged, "I'm not the one you want, am I?"

Breathe — breathe. The Doctor's hearts hammer in his ears, and the urge to send the timeline to hell and demand answers anyway is strong enough that he can taste the words, metallic and bitter.

"But when am I ever?" the Master continues, and his features twist into a sneer as he suddenly pushes back against the Doctor's hold, leaning forward until they're nose to nose. "When am I ever good enough for you?"

The words land like a slap, as they're no doubt meant to. The Doctor pushes a little harder against his collarbones, forcing him back against the wall. "Not like you ever tried to be," he pushes out through gritted teeth.

He expects more venom. Instead, the Master falls silent, his expression unreadable. He reaches up with a hand; the Doctor slaps it away. "I tried," he whispers, barely audible. "Not my fault if the game was rigged, my dear."

The Doctor frowns. He sounds genuine — or would, if the Doctor hadn't long since learnt not to trust so much as a sound from his mouth.

Only then does it really register: the blood on his face, the bruises on his skin, the fevered glaze of his eyes, the trembling of his limbs. He's not in his right mind.

The Doctor lets go of him, taking a step back; the Master barely catches himself on the wall. "What's wrong with you?" the Doctor demands.

The Master closes his eyes with a laugh. "Timeless question, isn't it?"

The Doctor isn't in the mood to play games, much less his. "What did they do to you?"

"Your concern is touching." The words positively drip with sarcasm, but it's undermined by the way he's still very much hiding his mind from the Doctor. Whatever's happened, he's not keen on sharing.

Too damn bad.

Taking advantage of his obvious disorientation, the Doctor strikes: he reaches forward and presses two fingers to the Master's temple, lacing the gesture with a spike of telepathic intent so sharp it breaches through the Master's shields. It's underhanded, against every telepathic code of conduct there is; the worst sort of contact.

The Master snarls and shoves him back, shoring up his mental defenses, but it's too late. Even as he staggers backwards, the Doctor sifts through visions of metal tables, of wires in arms, of syringes, of golden light—

It clicks. "Regeneration," he gasps, feeling sick. "The scientists here… They're after regeneration."

It makes sense; their species' obsession with prolonging life, the lack of any ethical oversight, the way they'd thrown him in that cell with no interest in hearing anything he might have had to say — to them, the Doctor's no better than a lab rat. An experiment to be understood, to be replicated.

His breathing staggers; the images he's unearthed from the Master's mind mix with others, with unremembered memoried uncovered from the Matrix, of a child, strapped to a table—

There are hands on his cheeks. The Doctor looks up to find the Master inches away, his eyes burning with intensity as he stares directly into the Doctor's eyes. His hands shake against the Doctor's face, but his words are clear, ringing with intent as he speaks: "They won't hurt you," he says, low, steady, like an oath, like a promise.

The Doctor swallows, but doesn't move back, doesn't look away.

Slowly, like he doesn't want to scare him, the Master presses his forehead to the Doctor's. "They won't touch you," he says, still in that low, solemn tone, cutting through the Doctor's mounting panic with a steady matter-of-factness that hits as certain, as solid, as impossibly reassuring. "I promise you."

It's a relief, and he hates that it is, that he would believe them, that they would matter in any way. They've grown up; they're no longer two children in a dormitory, a dark-haired boy reassuring his crying, terrified best friend in the middle of the night. Nothing the Master says should touch him, much less reassure him, but the reaction is engraved in his bones, and some of his instinctive fear melts away, even as the more rational part of him dreads to understand what the Master might mean by that.

He clings to that part of him, the part that knows better, the part that knows just how far the Master will push things if given cause — or, sometimes, even, without cause at all. The Doctor swallows hard, and forces himself back, breaking the contact between them. "It's not your promise to make," he says, and he intends for the words to be cutting, but they come out as a whisper, feather-soft and just a little bit sad.

"Of course it is," the Master says, like the Doctor is speaking non-sense, like he's arguing that gravity works the wrong way around. "Whose else?"

Before the Doctor can so much as process the words, the door of the cell slides open with a quiet hiss.

He turns, stepping between the Master and the two Kuran'x standing in the doorway. One is a scientist, as evidenced by his blue lab coat; the other a guard, as evidenced by the baton and handcuffs he's carrying.

The Doctor turns a hard stare on them, but he's roundly ignored. The scientist, checking his notes, nods towards the Master. "That one," he says flatly.

"I don't think so," the Doctor says, hands in fists at his side, anger simmering hot and sharp underneath his skin.

But the Master sidesteps him, staggering as he walks up to the guard of his own volition. "Finally," he comments, straightening up with a sniff. "Don't you know not to keep your experiments waiting? Basic torture etiquette."

"Master—" the Doctor starts, and stops when the Master turns to look at him, presenting his hands behind his back to the guard.

"Don't make a scene, darling," he says lightly, and winks.

The Doctor guesses what he's about to do a fraction of a second before he does it — too late to stop him.

Just as the guard is about to slip the cuffs around his wrist, the Master spins on his heel, almost elegant about it, and brings his fingers to the man's temple.

"Don't—" the Doctor calls, but it's too late. Even with the distance, he can feel the report of the telepathic overload the Master presses into the man's head, and winces at the pain, even as the guard collapses to the floor, blood streaming out of his nose and his ears. Dead, the Doctor knows.

The scientist's eyes go wide, and he looks up at the Master, then down at the dead guard. "How did you—"

"Trade secret, I'm afraid." He smiles, almost sweetly, then repeats the movement, pressing two fingers to the middle of the man's forehead. The scientist collapses the next second with another aftershock of telepathic overload echoing across the space separating him from the Doctor.

This time, however, the Master staggers. His shields have dropped to nothing, and so the Doctor can sense the toll his actions have just taken, the incoherent mess of his thoughts, the pain in his mind. With a muttered curse, he walks up to him and catches him before he can collapse. The physical contact only serves to heighten the echoed pain in the Doctor's head and he winces.

"You didn't have to kill them," he whispers, averting his gaze from the dead men on the floor.

He doesn't expect a response, not with the state of the Master's mind; and so, he's taken by surprise when he feels a hand on his jaw, gently tilting his head to face the Master.

His eyes are bloodshot, wide and hazy, but when he speaks, it's with perfect clarity. "I promised," he says, with all the earnestness of a schoolboy.

The Doctor swallows and looks away. "Let's get out of here," he says, and brings the Master's arm over his shoulders. The Master closes his eyes and nods, sagging against him.

Together, they walk away.