Chapter Text
It wasn’t until the Master got back into his TARDIS that he finally had a moment to think about everything that had happened. He had his back pressed up against his doors, hearts racing from both fear and exertion and he was struggling to sort through the conflicting emotions at play within him. He was thrilled, how could he not be, a plan of his that involved the Doctor had finally come into fruition. And that was while surrounded on all sides by all the different versions of the Doctor and all her little friends. He’d won. Decisively. Of course, that didn’t mean much in the face of his victory leading the way for the Doctor embracing her dark side. He’d wanted that for the longest time. He’d wanted the two of them to be friends, to team up when overthrowing the universe. The same way the Doctor had wanted him to turn good and he’d tried. Really, he had. But it had backfired on him in the most spectacular way and so the Master was resolute that the Doctor needed to try things his way if it was ever going to happen. Now it was happening, he’d never factored in the possibility that they wouldn’t do it together.
‘Why would I want to work with a coward like you?’ the amusement she’d garnered at the mere prospect of working alongside him had stung.
He still wasn’t 100% sure if this was the Doctor or if she was, like she’d insisted, someone else entirely. For all he’d held the information of her true origins over her head, he didn’t know everything. Most of the information was lost. Maybe there was an ancient being living inside the Doctor’s head. Stranger things had happened in this universe. The Doctor had always had a darker edge to her, no matter how much she’d tried to protest it. Were those moments all the Doctor? Or could they have been this new version, this other being, shining through.
Just as he’d started to get caught up in the questions swirling about in his mind, he felt a jarring shudder as his ship was thrown suddenly off kilter. The force coming from outside the ship. It took him a few long seconds to realise that it was the force of Gallifrey as it was ripped apart by the death particle. He froze, finding it strange that he’d find grief in this considering almost all the death on its surface had come from him anyway. He probably had no right to grieve anything. But it was where he’d been born. The red grass fields where he’d played. It had been the starting place of he and the Doctor’s entwining history together. It was where he’d hoped to end it. Standing in front of her, nose level with her finger on the trigger of the detonator, glee in his hearts at this being how they went out. It had to be her choice. Now it had been, but it didn’t feel right. Wasn’t the same without her hesitating anger, the frustrated tears just barely starting to gather. Amused contempt wasn’t a look normally suited to the Doctor.
Her blasé destruction of their planet only gave credence to the ‘other being’ being the one in control of the Doctor’s body. He could think of no universe, no reason ever, that the Doctor would so callously press the button like that. She couldn’t even do it when he’d dragged her down as low as she could go. So, to do it now, just to spite him and get a rise out of him, seemed unimaginably cold for a being such as the Doctor.
And if they weren’t the Doctor, it begged the question, who were they?
The Master stepped towards his console, swallowing down the lump in his throat and reached for the monitor to take a look outside using the external scanners. His ship was still in the same place, protected by its shielding. The planet was in pieces. Chunks of rock and dust free floating in the space around him. He felt strangely empty over the fact that his home was gone. The grief was there, simmering away beneath the surface, but he couldn’t feel it. It would hit some time later when the shock wore off, he imagined.
The rage seeped through first. The glimmering hints of resentment over this being a victory taken from him. He wouldn’t have wanted his planet destroyed it if wasn’t proving his point. The Time Lords had been the problem, not the planet itself. His hands clenched around the metal at the edge of his console and he took in a few heavy breaths in through his nose, the noise coming out shaky as his jaw clenched. He pushed the monitor out of the way and rounded the console to begin the take-off procedure. He needed to put together a plan, pick up his contingency of CyberMaster’s that he’d hidden off world just in case of a situation exactly like this. If he was going to face down the Doctor, or whoever this was, he’d need an army, and he’d need to be smart about it.
He flew to Pazithi Gallifreya. One of Gallifrey’s two moons. The Time Lords had industrialised it for smelting purposes millennia back. It’s high concentration of taranium was mined to be used in temporal technology. It had been used in different iterations of TARDISs, in Time Scoops and a whole host of other Time Lord technology. The Master had commandeered it for his own usage shortly after killing off the rest of his people. He’d been searching for any stragglers, concerned that they may have already started back up mining operations, instead he’d found the perfect place for a secondary conversion chamber in one of the old mines. He landed his ship on the coppery coloured surface of the moon, near the entrance to the mine and made his way down, keeping his eyes peeled the whole time for any blondes in rainbow sweaters.
The walk down into the mines was eerily silent. Not that there should have been any noise, but he was still on edge, a million different plans on how to handle this situation running through his head. He’d kill her dead, but perhaps he should figure out who it was currently taking residence in the Doctor’s head. She was unpredictable like this. The Master knew the Doctor. He knew how she acted, he knew how she would feel about every situation, he knew the Doctor even better than the Doctor knew herself sometimes.
The mines, especially near the opening, were heavily reinforced to prevent cave ins. Also, he knew, housed a myriad of horrible devices and weapons that the Time Lords had had installed during the Time War. Even as Gallifrey had fallen back, calling all Time Lords back to the front to defend the planet itself, they hadn’t wanted the Daleks to get a hold of the mining operations. Luckily for them, their great enemies had been far more interested in ripping the planet apart and murdering all life than adventuring down into a system of tunnels beneath the surface of one of Gallifrey’s moons.
He kept going down until he could step into the still running conversion chambers and inspected over the collection of 50 or so CyberMasters who all stood to attention as he stepped into the room. It gave him a rush of power to have control over these creatures. Not just Cybermen but Time Lords too. He won. In the overall picture. He won. He beat the Cybermen. He beat the Time Lords. He beat the Doctor.
“We’re going on a trip.” He told his Cybermasters, clasping his hands behind his back, “up to the TARDIS.”
50 CyberMasters gave matching salutes in response to his order and then all spun and began marching out the room and up through the cavernous mines. The Master followed behind them, calmly watching them make their way up and it wasn’t until a familiar voice called out from further up in the mines.
“You really didn’t go far did you?” His hearts twinged in fear for a split second before he looked to the army of his CyberMasters and determination wrapped around his hearts like steel and he pointed up the mine shaft towards the blonde further up.
“Kill her!” His CyberMasters all launched into action, all of them moving into a more attack ready formation, their arms raising to point their weapons at her.
There was a moment where the Master genuinely thought he was going to win. That for all the talk from this new ‘not Doctor’, she was nowhere near as effective as the real Doctor and he would wipe out both once and for all in this one moment. His army of immortal CyberMasters advanced on her, growing ever closer and only thing that bothered him, and it was a minor thing really, was that she didn’t look all that worried. She watched the approaching Cybermen with a raised eyebrow and it was right as the one closest to her in front raised its arm so that its gun was pointed at her that it happened.
Four pillars raised in a square between the two of them, covering the Cybermasters and there was a sudden buzzing noise and a burst of blue energy that came forth over them and they went suddenly still. They gave a jarring shudder, and all came to a stop. There were matching groaning noises from each of them. The Not Doctor looked seconds away from just inspecting her nails out of sheer boredom. A following blast of energy, this time more red-tinted, came from the four pillars and his army simply collapsed like marionettes having their strings cut. His whole being seemed to slump in shock and confusion and the Not Doctor merely rolled her eyes with a grin, throwing her arms out wide as she yelled to him.
“Was that it? No offense here, but I was expecting a lot more! All those marvellous plans over the years and this is what you’ve got for me?”
“What did you do?” he asked once she’d trudged through the mud over to him. Stepping over the still bodies of his wasted creations as she came closer. Frankly he was stumped for an explanation as to what had just happened.
“What? You don’t recognise it? I got the idea from a memory involving you. Or, at least, one you. That one seemed a little more pliable.” He took a second to realise what she was talking about but the fleeting memory of his almost execution back when he wore corsets came to mind.
“This technology is precisely calibrated. As you can see, it will stop both hearts, all three brain stems, and deliver a cellular shock wave that will permanently disable regenerative ability.” Rafando of the Executioners had been a man of a singular mindset, as Missy, the Master hadn’t given him or the rest of his little gang of neck choppers much thought. Her attention mostly turning to the Doctor when the eyebrow heavy version had been brought in to pull the plug on her. The machinery they used though was precise, one little nudge in its wiring, and it could be made to malfunction. This time it didn’t malfunction.
He’d implemented an army with the ability to regenerate and she’d simply cancelled it out with tech that was already there. Since she still had access to the Doctor’s memories, he’d have to be careful about what he did. She would know him as well as the Doctor had, and he had no clue who she was if she wasn’t the Doctor. An unknown entity.
“What they did to you, locking you away, I can help you make them pay.” He tried to do what he did best. Manipulating, offering everything and anything he could to get himself out of a situation, “after all you must have done. For them to just lock you away inside your own mind, it’s a wonder you’re so calm. I know I wouldn’t be.” She simply rolled her eyes at his attempt.
“You think that I was some hard done by hero, like the Doctor?” the Not Doctor’s tone was taunting as she smirked at him, “You think they wiped my memory because of something they’d done?” she laughed suddenly, throwing her head back as though that was the most hilarious thing she’d ever heard. The Master’s hearts dropped to his stomach; he’d already put this much together but having it confirmed made him swallow nervously.
“So… why was your mind wiped?”
“Well, they couldn’t kill me. There’s no limit on my ability to regenerate. They couldn’t keep me trapped. No prison could hold me. But then they figured out a way to stop me. Ingenious actually, I will give them that. They simply caught me long enough to erase me, or they thought they had.” She grinned, spreading her arms, “I took a gamble. Hid myself away, asleep in the depths of my mind. Until you came along. I still haven’t thanked you for that, have I?” The Master was silent for a moment, watching her as his mind raced, trying to come up with a question to follow and the face of a woman he’d seen whilst searching through the Doctor’s memories came to the forefront of his mind.
“You said you’re not the Doctor?” She raised an eyebrow at that, head tilting slightly as she looked to him like that was obvious.
“Clearly.”
“Why did you tell her you were?” her eyebrows furrowed for a second, clearly not understanding what he was asking until it clicked, and she just shrugged, figure suddenly a lot less amused looking, more forcefully blank.
“I was, once.” The Master’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion this time, her words not making any sense to him. She didn’t give him much of a chance to mull it over, because in the next second, she’d pulled a blaster of some kind from her pocket and fired it at him. He dodged, throwing himself to the ground before backing away on his hands.
“You still haven’t actually said thank you,” the Master told her quickly, now feeling rather desperate to keep her talking and stop her from advancing any closer.
“Thank you.” She told him, sounding actually rather sincere, “as thanks I would’ve killed you last, but,” she smirked, giving him a half-amused shrug, “it’s hardly my fault you killed every other Time Lord in existence.” She began advancing on him once more and he scrambled back and blurted out the first thing he could think of.
“But I’m not the only one left!” The Not Doctor paused mid stride and lifted an unimpressed eyebrow that told him just how little she believed him, but he just continued his explanation quickly, “check the Doctor’s memories. Back when she was old and grumpy with the eyebrows. The last time she was on Gallifrey before, she kicked out the High Council, dethroned Rassilon and had them all exiled. They’re all still out there.” At the mention of the former Lord President the Not Doctor’s face went eerily blank. Rage flittered near the surface for just a moment, with her clenching fists and twitching eye but she seemed to reign it in quicker than the Master ever would have been able to.
“Seems you’re right.” She took a step back, looking him up and down, “guess I’ll go pay a visit to those council members first. Rip out some throats. You took most of the fun out of destroying Gallifrey by leaving it to be done by the press of a button. Sometimes you want to get your hands dirty.”
“And Rassilon?” he asked as she started walking away from him.
“He’ll get what’s coming. But I want him to know it’s coming first. He and I will have a lot to discuss. He has a lot to answer for.”