(The second part!) (Read the first part if you're confused!)
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The Master wakes up starving.
The Time Lord body did not need food… except when it did. Judging when you were ready to eat was like plotting a course through a particularly thorny asteroid field, sometimes the urge to eat would devour you despite having only eaten a few hours before. Other times- the Master had experienced these times more than he would like to think about- a Time Lord’s body could survive two months on a single slice of bread.
In the vague outline of days since his encounter with cyber death, the Master can count the number of meals he has eaten on his hands- two of them inside the prison. The evidence of it is etched into his bones, into the hollow inside his gut.
He gets up- eyes still shut tight to the chill of the cell- and feels tentatively at the swelling on his ankles. They’re sore to the touch, flakes of them coming off in his fingers. He wonders how long left he has to walk.
The robots arrive soon after he opens his eyes, one stands guard outside his cell and waits for him to emerge.
He limps onto the walkway and stands receptive for the clamps of the machine to restrain him. The rest of him are here too- Missy is creating a soundtrack out of the robot’s metal arm, singing softly the words of an old Earth war song. War is humming along, Nehru is tapping out percussion on the robot’s metal arm much to his counterpart’s annoyance.
Breakfast is a brisk walk away. They sit in roughly the same spots: The Master beside Missy, Hoodie spread out amongst the prisoners and the others eating quietly by themselves.
The Master lets Missy talk and fidget at him whilst he picks at vague grey substance beneath his fork. He’s ravenous.
The plate leaves the table uncleared. The Master waits for a gap in Missy’s rambling to ask again.
“When are you?”
“There I was thinking you were reeeally interested in my stockings! What a thing to ask a lady,” she huffs. “And before you think I didn’t notice, no, I’m not. Telling. You.” She punctuates the sentence by stabbing her fork in the air, dangerously close to his eye. Missy grins. The Master doesn’t.
“Task?”
“I don’t know! Isn’t that quaint. Something I don’t know. I expect it’ll be as yummy as the last one.”
“Yes. Oxygen deprivation was delicious.”
“You thought so too? I guess a girl doesn’t have many secrets after all.”
The breakfast finishes in a hurry. War is halfway through a spoonful when the robots arrive again. Mid pick-up, the grey substance sprays across the table and onto the faces of the disgruntled inmates opposite.
The Master doesn’t struggle as he is carried back to the studio. Moving only to crane his head up to the darkened void of space that shines through the studio tunnel. He is the last to go in, last to catch sight of the faint dots of light gleaming in the midnight black.
Grog whoops and cheers as he is towed through the studio. Whatever cruel sneer had claimed his face the previous day has been replaced with a toothy white smile. Alex sits beside him though the Master notices the small chair he usually sits on has been lowered further to the ground.
“Lovely weather we’re having!” Grog gleams. “I’m sure you boys-“ Missy scowls, “Have been getting some well needed tan time.” The Master looks down at his hand. “I needn’t remind you what you’re playing for. Both freedom and ownership of all the prize items on show. Somebody has to win that gorgeous silk thing, it’s so very vintage.”
A spotlight shines over the back of the room, the prize items sit untouched on their plinths. Though, the Master notes, there’s more missing of his TCE than when he started.
“Our task today involves a rather special guest! Somebody somewhere in this very prison will be watching (Master entertainers- Mastertainers? Gosh, is that a bit cheeky sounding?) as you do everything you can to entertain them. We’ve gone to every length to ensure you’ll have everything you need this time. No tricks and surprises, we pinky-“ Grog lifts up his metal hand and wriggles the smallest finger at them, “-pinky promise.”
The lights in the studio flash and whoosh as Alex types.
“Good luck! I know some of you will need it.” Grog blows an elaborate kiss to Hoodie. The Master cranes his head around, his former self has gone a bright beetroot red.
It’s the last thing he sees before the world falls around him.
The Master wakes breathless and panting for air but to his surprise, there’s plenty of it. Wherever he is is so oxygen rich it would make a fish blush.
Where he’s landed is pleasantly warm, like he’s being cupped in the palm of somebody’s hand (which has happened on occasion, a risk of being the owner of an extremely efficient TCE). The room is an orb, roughly the size of an average TARDIS console room. There are colours flooding the walls and billowing in clouds of blurry ink across their surface.
Despite its size, the Master finds himself with only one place to stand. As before, there’s a small envelope at his feet. He leans down and plucks the wax seal open.
Entertain your guest.
Everything you need is already here.
There’s nothing on the back of the paper. The Master doesn’t imagine there will be much deadly danger involved this time, it would make too bland a viewing for the audience.
“Everything you need is already here.” He repeats aloud.
Hm.
He sniffs. There’s nothing to indicate there’s any threat. No forcefield, certainly nothing alive except him and he knows what he smells like. There is something though, it’s indistinct and bland, more like a sense.
He taps idly on the nerve underneath his ear. If there’s anything strange going on with time, that’s usually where he feels it, but time is running fine. Incredibly on track even.
No, it’s something telepathic.
Contact.
Something oozes into the forefront of his mind, a treacle thick sense of command. The Master pokes it, it doesn’t react.
‘Chair.’ Thinks the Master.
A small oak dining chair appears beside him.
Hat.
A query. The interface is asking for more information.
A pointy hat.
On the seat of the chair, a cartoonish black witch’s hat materialises.
He thinks hard. Knife.
Nothing happens. Fine.
The Master spends a painful few minutes trying to imagine an escape route: trapdoor, fire exit, vault door. Nothing comes of it.
Whoever is watching is waiting for him to do something. He can feel a set of unknown eyes on him, narrowing as he wastes time.
“You must be bored,” he says to the air.
The air doesn’t reply.
The Master decides on a few things: whoever’s watching will only be watching from a single angle, in all likelihood, and whoever it is likely doesn’t have the mind of one of Gallifrey’s most prolific scientists.
Somebody had said to him once that science looked like magic to the untrained mind and luckily, he knows a few magic tricks.
Brandy.
A small, plastic container appears on the chair next to hat. The Master puts on the hat, unscrews the lid of the tub and takes a swig. It’s weak.
Tablecloth. Oh, and a cabinet, wardrobe size.
A black cloth appears draped over the back of the dining chair, then a tall, outrageously pink magician’s cabinet. The name ‘Grog’ has been carved lovingly onto the corner.
I take it back.
The cabinet vanishes.
Marine flare. He thinks.
The system stutters. It’s a harm causing object but he can feel the interface modifying its shape and ferocity. The small cylinder that appears is stunted, with a small symbol on the side: a skull with a pink cross over the top. He gently lifts it from the chair.
“I learnt to do this way, way back. Centuries ago on a planet of apes and primitive war. You wouldn’t like it very much.”
The Master twirls the flare in his hand and turns gradually so that, wherever the camera is, his onlooker will get a good view of what he’s holding.
Then, he lays the cylinder down on the seat of the chair and, with a showman’s flick, uncaps the end. The flare screeches as red sparks burst from the end. The Master lays the black tablecloth on top. The flare hisses as the sparks catch on the cloth, singing holes in the cloth and creating black scorches along their edges.
The Master waits for a few seconds.
“The flare is lit.”
He waits for an imagined ‘yes’. Slowly, with a cautious hand, he pinches the bottom end of the flare through the tablecloth and holds it up an arm’s length away from his face.
“Watch carefully.”
With a flourish, he pulls off the tablecloth and pulls the flare, spark end into his mouth.
There’s nothing but red light for a few seconds. No pain. The flare is still burning, he can feel it tickling the sides of his mouth like a feather across his gums.
There had been a certain sense of pride performing in front of gobsmacked humans. Fire is primitive and he is a collection of flesh and bones.
That’s the trick: the brandy is flammable and very much so. The tablecloth is too. In fact, the flare is the least flammable object amongst the trick’s elements. He wouldn’t be able to explain to a human how it worked but really, it’s a matter of cancelling out. Flammable times flammable doesn’t equal safe but the equation of it does.
Anyway.
He can feel the heat hitting the back of his throat, if anything it’s making it easier to breathe.
He’ll have to wait for it to burn out. The flare is burning longer than he’d anticipated.
It’s hot.
His palms are hot too. Clammy, sticky.
The Master remembers the first flare- he hadn’t known how to do the trick back then. There had been bright light and some screaming, almost certainly his own. The bright red light had given way to seething pain and-
-he’d choked on it. The sparks had flown to the back of his throat and the stream of smoke into his nostrils-
-and the sounds from his throat had died in the heat of the flames-
-and suddenly it’s too hot and everything is too hot and there’s an ocean of sweat colliding on his skin-
It’s too hot inside his head and his thoughts are cutting into the sides of his brain-
The feel of knots running through his fingers. Tangled hair and a damp room. Somebody is just outside the door, they’ve left him with hair-ties and a sharp shard of silver. Funny. He can already taste metal in his mouth.
The Master’s mouth snaps open, gasping and the flare topples to the floor. It’s burnt out, completely extinguished, perhaps has been for a few minutes.
He collects himself- lets his arms fall awkwardly, uselessly, to his sides- and breathes.
The room is the same. His judge is still watching.
“What else do you want.”
The air doesn’t answer.
The Master doesn’t feel a thing. “Alright.”
He plants his foot on the middle of the chair and shoves it as hard as he can into the curved wall of the room. It falls apart remarkably easy, the legs splitting off and sliding back towards him again.
“Nardole would be so proud.”
Wrecking the Vault won’t shorten your time here you know.
There’s silence.
The onlooker is bored with him. He gets the impression that magic probably won’t do the person watching any favours. If they had liked any of it, he would be back in the studio.
There are many things he can do inside the room. He could try and do lots more things too, though everything he puts his mind to seems to hurt eventually.
He’s musical, that’s one thing. The Master has retained his skills as a pianist, even improved them somewhat with the whole ‘being stuck in the 21st century’, though Missy will likely be thinking the same thing. He doesn’t want to copy, or risk being disqualified.
Guitar. Thinks the Master.
The interface takes a while but after a few seconds of calculation he looks down to see an acoustic guitar.
He picks it up and strokes two fingers along the smooth wooden body, cradling its head gently in his hand like a baby.
He strums an A chord, then a minor, before reaching to G. The rhythm palpitates: on off, on off, like it’s skipping. It’s Nick Drake. ‘River Man’. He’d learned to play it in a bar in Alsace back when his fingers hadn’t been so worn and when his fingernails were long and unbitten.
The Master stops playing.
Plectrum.
He picks up a plastic purple triangle from the chair and begins the song again.
The Master doesn’t sing. He hasn’t since leaving the vault behind, except war songs. Humans have a tendency to sing in the face of brutal death. That, he can appreciate. Instead, the lyrics float into his head. He imagines an invisible voice singing them.
The song passes too slowly, he’s got the tempo wrong and the chords hang in the air for too long.
The last line sounds in his head. He strums the final chord softly.
As the sound chokes out, the Master’s vision darkens and he feels himself slide to the floor.
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“Wowee! Some very different ideas of entertainment there.” The lights of the studio are bright behind his eyelids and the Master can hear the distant sound of an audience returning. He opens his eyes and searches for Grog and Alex before letting his gaze drift into the middle distance. “Now, as your task master it is my duty to assign points, but this time I am passing over that sacred honour to our watcher.” Grog swishes his hand towards the back wall of the studio. “They took quite a while on this one, so it was a little dull watching you all lie there sedated.”
The audience ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ as a screen lights up at the back of the stage, on it is a graphic of their faces. There’s another icon there with a ‘?’ on, the Master supposes it represents their anonymous judge.
“In no particular order: War, your idea of a grape cultivation class was very old chic. Unfortunately, our guest got very bored indeed so I must award you two points! I added one on for class.”
War hums appreciatively. The Master notes the purple stains coating his fingertips. His face on the screen moves to the furthest right corner.
“Hoodie, I’m convinced you have a career in clownery. What was the song you tried to sing? Alex?” Grog pokes his assistant in his stubby metal neck. Trembling little Alex holds up his tablet for Grog to see. “Does Your Mother Know by- A- B- B- A.” Grog pronounces each of the letters individually. “Followed by…” Alex holds up the tablet again. “Popular from Wick Ed. Whoever Wick Ed is was enough to convince our judge. Three points.”
“Missy. A little simplistic but apparently playing nursery rhymes on a piano does it for somebody. Four points.”
Missy smiles her award-winning full toothed grin and bows as much as she can in the restraints.
“Nehru. Dull. Uninspiring. I never thought an audience would yawn in my studio unless I told them to. Your little demonstration of-“ Grog looks down at some smudged writing on his hand, “A Nixine-Diodine thermoreaction really got our guest going. Five points.”
The Master’s gaze is filled suddenly with bright pink and purple as Grog’s chair stretches to meet his eyeline.
“Toyboy. A clear and certainly given one point.”
His breath stutters. A single point?
“Our guest declined to comment. Sooo bored. So so bored. Maybe try something you’re good at next time- oo! Try stabbing yourself in the back!”
Grog claps his hands together and cackles. The audience shriek and caterwaul. The noise is so overwhelming that it distorts in his ears.
Then Grog’s talking again and Alex is typing like nothing has happened. His other selves haven’t said a thing and the screen is moving and the lights are flashing again-
The Master swears.
A gasp ripples through the audience.
Grog’s eyebrows drop. He turns his face away from the camera and every trace of ‘stage-happy’ vanishes. Any colour that had been in the Master’s cheeks before drains.
“We’re having a few technical issues our end!” Grog’s brassy tone echoes from the robot though his mouth doesn’t move an inch. “We’ll be back with you after a short break.”
The crowd murmur as they are marched away. A support team of robots he’s never seen before scatter between the stage and the audience and switch the camera lights to a soft red.
He’s allowed the privilege of eating though Grog’s eyes are cold as he is marched off stage. The Master’s interest in the prison food amounts to a small forkful. Missy doesn’t sit beside him but decides instead to stroll around the room dropping sarcastic complements on unsuspecting inmates.
The Master stares at the wall.
“It won’t answer you back, you know.”
It’s the voice of an old man, too calculating to have joined him by chance. He is a rare visitor in this body’s mind with little to say. Though, the War Master is never quiet, he is simply doing better things.
“You’ve kept hush,” the Master says.
“There’s a war on.” War smiles. “I’m resting.”
“There’s always a shitting war on.” A tut, “How did I stand it?”
“It looks like you’re standing one right now. Whatever it is, I find the company of music helps immensely.”
“I’m not the musical type.” He lies.
“Nonsense. You play, your hands are poised for it. Look!”
The Master’s eyes flick to his hands. His fingers are crooked and waiting, grasped around a second invisible hand. They fall open as he looks, relaxing to fit the curve of his thighs.
“Just habit.”
“I’m sure.”
They listen to the chatter of the room, on the carrying voice of Hoodie and Missy’s lonely melody. War doesn’t fill the silence.
The Master taps his foot, it echoes despite the raucous.
“I miss them too, in my own special way.” War hums.
“I don’t miss them,” he says, trying his best not to sound like a child. “Grief is for children.”
“Grief is for people who die, dear.”
The Master digs his nails into his palms. The psychoanalysis is see-through but it doesn’t mean it isn’t getting to him.
“I can see I’m interrupting some brooding.” His other self chuckles.
“Go and look pensive. You’re incredibly good at it,” the Master hisses.
“Keep on keeping on or whatever they say. Or don’t.”
“Thank you for your blessing.”
He doesn’t hear himself slink away. It must be near impossible to be silent in prison pumps.
The Master doesn’t sleep that night. Instead, he blinks and time passes. He thinks about the feeling of the flare and the sharp white heat of it. Funny, his mouth feels fine but his hearts are on fire.
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SATELLITE FIVE:
A new programme comes to the Satellite, a galaxy wide smash hit with your favourite star studded host, Grog Dievies!
On his latest series, Grog takes genocide to the studio and puts the men (and woman!) who probably killed your close or distant family (or even you in the future!) on the small screen. Don't worry *that* one isn't here, they're all hot for your viewing pleasure. Hot and being degraded through enforced exercise and grovelling. Yummy!
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Create a portrait of your partner. You have two hours. Not everything is stone dead.
The Master stares himself dead in the eyes. Not even ten minutes ago he and Missy had been sat over breakfast, her crowing over his picky eating. Now, he’s in a box with no way out, a chair, an easel, a light and a monster.
Hoodie’s eyes are bloodshot like a caged dog’s. There’s a feral, unchained look etched deep into pupils.
The Master hasn’t found out yet if murder is permissible here but there’s no doubt that the man in front of him would slaughter indiscriminately… if it weren’t for six feet of grey carved stone frozen onto the ground behind him.
“Move.”
“There’s a wall.”
“To the chair, idiot,” his other self spits and, with an anger the Master can’t believe is reserved for art supplies, says- “I’m using pastel.”
He shuffles slowly around the walls of the room until he can clearly see the body of the Weeping Angel, hands clasped over crying eyes in a mockery of civility. Then, very carefully, the Master grabs the chair, slides it beneath him and sits down.
“Go. I’m watching it.” He says calmly.
His younger self moves quickly and with calculated ease, grabbing a box of oil pastels from a small pile of miscellaneous art supplies in the corner and positioning each colour along the bottom of the easel.
Hoodie picks up an orange pastel first and begins an angry scribble across the canvas, it’s clearly an abstract piece. After a few seconds of scrawl, he picks up a red and then a purple and dashes lines of colour over the top.
“I’m going to blink,” says the Master after a while. “Look.”
His eyelids twitch shut, a small tear runs down his cheek at the exposure. Hoodie doesn’t mention it. The angel hasn’t moved.
“Thanks,” the Master says, voice just bordering on courtesy.
“I thought you were past being a girl. I didn’t realise it stuck through regeneration,” Hoodie hisses. What? The Master feels a hot spark of temper rising in his chest. “Ugh. Stay still!”
One of the pastels drops to the floor. The other Master swears loudly.
“You think you’re being superior but you’re acting like a kid. Leave women alone, for-“ He just about manages to stop himself from saying ‘Rassilon’. “-God’s sake.”
There’s a few moments of tense silence.
“Okay so you’re not a pushover.”
“I’m you. Just older and prettier and now I don’t eat people.”
“I’m pretty.” Hoodie snarls. The Master sees him slick his hand through blonde-grey hair. “What does all this old age get us then, Grandma?”
“Some really weird therapy, a few more snogs.”
“Snogs? Who from?” says the other Master a little bit too quickly.
“No one who’s snogged who they want to gets excited about snogging,” says the Master smugly.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hoodie press the pastel down even harder.
The two of them sit like that for a while, the Master tapping the legs of the easel with his foot a few seconds before each blink.
After a while, Hoodie speaks up. “You know our whole plot to make the Earth exact copies of us?”
“I do remember. Why did you do that again?”
The thinly veiled insult doesn’t seem to register. Hoodie’s face is half concentration, half frown. “That’s what I was thinking. Why clones? I loved them, obviously, but-“
“We could have got the Doctor’s attention way easier?”
Hoodie’s brow furrows. “Yeah.” He almost leaves it there. “Like a big bomb or something. Or that ginger girl of his. Or just leaving it at that vision with the Ood we did.”
“Blinking,” says the Master. His other self pauses for a second, eyes laid obediently at the creature’s feet.
“How do you get blonde dye out?”
The Master can’t stop the snort that escapes his mouth.
“You fucking idiot. You’re going grey.”
“What? Shut up!” Hoodie stamps his foot. His nostrils are flaring in that way they do, the Master’s noticed how often it tends to happen when the Doctor calls them short or ‘round faced’.
“I’m not old.”
“You are. You’ve been in that thing- body- for ages. Actually no, let me count.” The Master thinks, holds up a hand within his peripheral vision and counts. “No, I’m still older than you. You just age worse. Stress, probably.”
“Keep still or I’ll give you wrinkles.”
The Master smiles smugly. “What wrinkles?”
“Ugh.” Hoodie grunts.
“Stop bullying me and I’ll teach you how to make prison dye.” His other self’s ears prick up though the Master is sure he’s trying to act as uncouth as possible. “There, easy isn’t it?”
“No.”
“There’s spray bleach under the kitchen taps- don’t drink it. Dilute one part bleach, one part water. Leave it half an hour.”
“One session?”
“Platinum blonde.” The Master winks. “Now you’re gonna ask how I know and to that I’d say-“
“Yada yada yada, not interested. I’m finished. Get up.” Hoodie announces.
The Master sighs and inches slowly out of his chair, letting the angel occupy the corner of his eyesight as he goes. His other self is careful to keep another set of eyes fixed to its torso as he slowly backs out from behind the easel and offers up a pile of cluttered art supplies.
The Master chooses oil. It’s slick. It’s dark. It suits him. He can paint over the top and better still, it will take longer to dry. If they’re waiting for the portraits to be dry before waking them back up in the studio, Grog will have an agonising wait.
“You have a very stiff chin,” mutters the Master.
“Thanks,” Hoodie hisses.
He starts off with a thin black brush, sketching the contours of his own face in short, rough lines. Hoodie’s features are in the process of mellowing out, a far cry from his post-regeneration sharp angles and clipped hair.
Hoodie kicks the legs of his easel, hard. The frame nearly topples over and the Master has to steady it with both arms. By the time the Master gets his eyes on the angel, it has inched forwards a step, eyes just peeking over the top of gently lowered weeping hands.
“Idiot.” His other self seethes. “It’s going to kill us!”
“Kick my easel again and I’ll tell Missy not to talk to you.”
Hoodie is gentler after that. The Master has to paint fast though, the expression on his subject’s face morphs by the minute. At first a pained scowl, then what looks like vague contemplation before a tired, grating frown.
He’s up into rich browns now. The way he had learnt to paint in the vault had been by copying the covers of books the Doctor had tossed their way. They often peeled off the layers of paper to see which colour hid behind which. Though Hoodie’s skin is as pale as milk, something he doesn’t miss thank you very much, there’s undertones to it.
“You’re using the wrong colour.”
“I’m really not.”
“Try blue. No. Red. I’m definitely red.”
The Master doesn’t respond. He changes the tube of paint out for a lighter pinkish yellow he can mix with the base coat. He flattens the brush and paints a broad streak for his subject’s sharp nose. It’s dull.
Maybe he’s right.
Hoodie taps lightly on the corner of the easel again. In the few seconds the Master has his eyes on the angel, he picks up a tube of paint at random with his spare hand.
He turns back to the canvas again. The colour in his hand is a burnt, bloody red.
Hoodie smirks.
The Master picks up a spatula and dips one end into the messy maw of the paint tube. After a few moments of stubborn consideration, he dashes it onto the half-formed face of the painting. It splatters across it, like spray patterns of human blood.
His other self’s dark face looks lighter. It suits him.
“Where were you taken from? You smelt like smokes.”
“Old habits,” Hoodie mutters. “Big pub.”
“It wasn’t the one near Skaro was it?”
“Oh Gods.” Hoodie swears. “I’m never going back there again.”
“The Daleks do kill the vibe, don’t they?”
“Extermination does that, yeah.” His other self pauses. “You?”
The paintbrush stutters on the canvas for a second before gliding again. “Nowhere interesting. Insanely mundane for an extraction, really.” The Master recaps the tube and reaches for the white. As he paints it on, the ragged edges of the red turn to a rosy pink “Smoking kills, don’t you know?”
“Mmmm.” The other Master hums.
Hoodie’s face relaxes. The look on his face mellows, though his eyes are still wide open. The Master thinks that maybe, just for one second, he could have made it better.
It doesn’t last long.
A few things happen at once. The Master’s hand slips over the side of the canvas, the paint overextending and squirting down the flayed sides of the material. A sliver of the red from earlier is splayed across the dip of his wrist, blurred and drawn out like blood.
He drops the tube, it clatters as it hits the ground. The Master yelps.
Hoodie jerks. The calm lines of his smile crack into thick rage.
“Shut up!”
“It’s- it’s- I-“ he stutters. Hoodie has his eyes on the angel but they’re shaking like they have a current going through them.
The Master brushes his hand against the paint on his wrist, it spreads in a line and onto his fingers. It’s watery and the consistency just thin enough to drip-
“Shut UP!” screams Hoodie.
“I’m not talking,” he whispers. The Master’s eyes drift to the angel, then back to the paint on his wrist, then the angel… Hoodie is rising from his seat and across the room in a second, he registers the hand coming towards his face before it hits.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
His other self hits him again and then again in quick succession, it’s hard and it makes his cheek sting but the Master keeps his face lolled towards the angel.
“Doctor…“ he whispers.
“Fuck him!” Hoodie spits.
“Doctor…!”
“You haven’t got a fu-“
The Master’s vision goes black.
He can smell popcorn as goes under. Buttery, sweet, blonde. It’s like he’s back in a human cinema, taking pick ‘n’ mix out of children’s bags.
The paralysis lasts longer this time. The studio crew must be collecting the portraits from their rooms. He hopes the oil rubs off on them.
“Ladies and ladies! It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. I bet you’ve all missed me!” Crows Grog. His robotic voice is brassier than ever and the audience are roaring with laughter. “What a round!” shouts Grog. Then, more quietly to his assistant, “What a round.”
“What a round?” Echoes Alex.
“Silver fox, Mother Gothel! What a meeting of minds. Our audience really underestimated you Missy but your skill with a quill is undeniable!” Next to him, Missy mutters something under her breath. Both her and War look practically sedate, chests rising and falling slowly and a calm, understanding expression on each face. “I must show your competitors your attempts. Here.”
Grog gestures an arm towards a large projection on the inner wall of the studio. The Master cranes his head to look. Ouch- the side of his face still stings from the blows.
On either side of the screen are beautiful sketch portraits of both Missy and War. They’re both almost full body, the canvas cutting off partway down their lower halves. Each of them is dressed radically different than their orange jumpsuits. Missy is in a sharp ladies jacket and riding trousers that he recognises well. It’s from her days before corsets. More freeing. War is in a vineyard owner’s outfit with a wide straw hat.
“Exceptionally pretty. Really! Truly! In fact so pretty I’m willing to give you both four points!”
The two of them smile. Knowingly.
“Nehru. We’ve spent a wonderful two hours together, wouldn’t you agree?” The Master can feel the look of hatred on his younger self’s face. “Since there is an-“ Grog counts on his fingers. “-odd number of contestants. You and I had a splendid time in our little room! And since my eyes aren’t actually real eyes, you did everything yourself bless you!”
Alex presses a comically red button on the side of the chair.
“What an incredible feat of strength! I really did appreciate the winking, you know. Let’s take a look at the portraits.”
A printer appears on stage next to Grog and Alex, after a long few seconds of clanking and whirring it spits out a photo of Nehru, fully colourised and scowling. On the large screen a corresponding picture of Grog appears. It has been done with sophisticated artists charcoal, though it is clear his younger self hadn’t been looking at his subject at all. Grog’s head is a wobbly though well shaded pink sphere. There are eyes and a nose floating outside the confines of the head and lips even further down on the robot’s torso.
“Not so flattering, I’d say. Definitely not my favourite. Mmm mm.” Grog shakes his head dramatically. “One point.”
“[REDACTED],” mutters Alex and it makes the studio buzz with disapproval.
“Toyboy, Hoodie. Your effort was certainly an entertaining one. You two should run a talk show or- no, Dumb and Dumbest. Toyboy, the oil, I don’t like it- you- too subtle. Two points. Hoodie I love it but,” Grog strokes a finger under his chin, “Five points would seem like favouritism so I’m giving you three for competition’s sake.”
Their portraits appear on the screen. He enjoys the slight nod of approval War gives and the smile he knows will be on Missy’s face looking at his oil technique.
“I’d like to say the scores are close, but I would be lying! That’s all for today’s episode, If you’re wondering how to plug your Grog Dievies needs we also offer a red button service for lazy viewers and those of you who love me a little too much! We’ll see you tomorrow lovelies on [REDACTED]!”
The Master eats that night. Half a tray. Missy is unusually pensive, stirring the grey murk with her spoon in tiny circles. They share a few words over their food, shallow compliments. It’s quiet… for them.
War is smiling as he eats, Nehru sitting in the seat next to him. They’re making conversation about operettas.
Hoodie too seems to have mellowed. His voice is still loud, abrasive and cuts through any conversation the Master is having but for once he seems to be talking to the inmates instead of charming them. The Master pretends not to notice the large blue boot print stained onto his thigh from his younger self’s previous conquest.
“Spit it out,” says the Master. Missy sticks her tongue out, a lump of grey rolls down the tip. “Not literally. Come on, we moved past the eating trash days.”
Missy guffaws, her mouth still full of gruel. It’s horrendously endearing.
“Eaten anyone good lately?”
“Only if they’re really attractive.”
She licks the rest of the grey off the spoon and raises her eyebrows.
“There’s a hole. Between our cells,” Missy whispers. The Master narrows his eyes at her. Spoon? Missy shrugs. “I got bored, used a nail. It’ll make talking easier. Anyway, I’ve got a plan.”
The Master raises his eyebrows, as if he hadn’t been calculating every means of escape possible since they got here. “Yeah?”
“Not here. Talk to the hole tonight.” Missy says before hooting like a toddler. “I only say that on special occasions.”
The robots collect them. The Master feels an arm clamp over his waist, it doesn’t press as hard as the first time. There’s more hollow there than fat now, it’s just the uncomfortable feeling of metal against bone.
He’s dumped back at the door to his cell and shoved inside. The floor doesn’t sway and the walls aren’t closing in around him, it’s just grey and silt, stone cold.
The Master takes a nap. The Master gets up. The Master kicks the base of the wall until angry hissing comes from the other side. Then, the Master drags his hands through his hair, they get stuck. The Master undoes his space buns.
There’s a ‘psst’ from the hole a few minutes later.
“I liked it up, put your buns back in,” says Missy.
“They were giving me a migraine,” he replies, and then after a moment, “You should let yours down.”
“I don’t like it like that, it’s messy.”
“Liar, you think it makes you look too feminine.”
“Oooo!” Missy whoops. “I like feminine. I just don’t like vulnerable.”
“Yeah. I know. You said you had an escape plan?”
“Well, yes and no. Very kind of. Bit of background first: there’s a tunnel, they let the audience through it to the studio and back out each day. It leads to the other side, there’s another wing- minor crimes, petty thievery I think. Anyway, they’re jettisoning the other side of the prison.”
The Master jerks back from the hole.
“What?”
“I know! Well, I don’t really know but it seems like the show’s too big for here now. It’s a big prison, a bloody good audience sure but Satellite Five want it. The big guns. So, they’re bringing the studio to satellite, NPA.” Missy lifts her mouth to the other side. “No Prisons Attached.”
The Master makes shapes with his mouth for a few seconds before settling on something to say.
“We escape- through that tunnel, whatever- and get sucked dry by the vacuum of space. We are in space, yeah? Gravity.”
“Perfect, smells like copper and a little bit-“
“Sexy, yes.” The Master interjects, the word feels disgusting in his mouth.
“Oo say that again!” Missy purrs.
“Missy.”
“Yes. Anyway. The vacuum of space. I am doing all the work here, I’ve noticed. Fancy chipping in?”
The Master wracks his brains. A Time Lord brain would notice a material with space suit capability without even having to try and notice it. So, where had Missy been that he hadn’t been?
“The kitchens. There’s space suits in the kitchens.” The Master says quickly.
“Vats of ‘em. War noticed, pretty sure Teenage Angst did too. There’s tons.”
“So, do the task…?” The Master starts.
“One of us needs to find a way to be disqualified. We need to eff up badly, and I mean badly. Get to the kitchen sharpish and lift those suits.”
“We’re escaping,” says the Master slowly.
“We’re escaping.” Missy sighs. “I haven’t told the others but they’ll work it out eventually and besides-“ Missy’s eye appears on the other end of the tunnel and winks at him. “You’re the prettiest.”
“Okay.”
Missy is quiet. He can hear the tap of her nails against the metal bedframe in her cell. He imagines them chipped and peeling. She hums.
“Funny.”
“What?”
“You don’t imagine leaving,“ she announces. ”It’s just a box but you never think of what’s out there, just the walls. If you imagine past the walls, you’re done for. The sunlight gets you and never gives you back.” She takes a sharp breath in, taps her nail on the wall like she’s reached the crux of an important lesson. “Here I am though. Talking like this prison is the worst.”
“It’s always the ‘kind’ ones that hurt the most.”
“I guess we thought outside the walls.”
The Master smiles. “The Doctor did for us.”
“Oh,” says Missy simply. The Master doesn’t even try to make the joke. “Can I tell you about it? Not everything, obviously, but just… about it.”
“I’m listening.” Says the Master.
“Well, I-“ She stops, starts again. “I guess you know how it ends and I guess that I can guess too, but seeing you… You sit there like your entire body is on the surface but you’re so far beneath the ground. I feel like that some days and, you know the days, when the Doctor is gone and he hasn’t remembered to change the windows so the grey gets in. I sit and play and I sit and play and I sit and play…”
She’s talking and talking and talking. The Master can hear the confusion, the anger, the misery, the hope, swirling together in her voice.
There were the days in the nineties, the horrible days they haven’t talked about to anyone. The Doctor on trips, the Doctor out late, the Doctor eating just on the outside of her prison because the inside was dirty with the scent of her.
She hasn’t met Bill yet but there were others, always, always others and he would be naïve for thinking otherwise. He can see the back of Missy’s head through the end of the tunnel, she’s turned away.
He realises then, Missy doesn’t care if he’s listening.
The Master comes down from where he is kneeling and sinks into the prison mattress.
The grey patterned scabs on the ceiling form the shape of continents. Every prison, always grey. He finds Africa in the flaking paint, then SupreLucenia, then he just makes them up.
After a long time Missy stops.
“-but you know, don’t you?”
“Yes,” says the Master and closes his eyes.
---
**: The entity known as Grog Dievies has been terminated. [REQUESTING BACKUP]
**: Troubleshoot unsuccessful.
**:
@: Backup request denied.
@: Resources diverted to containment.
@: Files report Prisoner 'The Doctor' is missing.
---
“You’re relieved.”
“I’m not.”
“You are! I can seeeee you!”
All things considered, and the Master considers a lot of things, this is a good morning. Instead of a mechanical wake up, the Master had awoken to the sound of singing. More specifically, Missy’s, echoing through the tiny tunnel between their cells. The Master had slept in.
He is ‘grog’gy- the pun sounded better in his head- and parts of him are still stinging and aching like they usually do but unmistakably at the foot of the bed, there is an envelope. One that hasn’t been through a studio or a desecrated corpse or the hand of an angel. He grabs it, half expecting it to explode and runs it through his fingers to check for traps. He finds nothing.
The Master breaks the wax seal and the paper falls open. Printed simply- and without the long paragraph of terms the previous envelopes had- is a single sentence.
Have a nice day.
“Have a nice day!” Missy sings. “It’s a lovely day today and whatever you’ve got to do! You’ve got a lovely day to do it in that’s true.”
“They want us to enjoy ourselves?” He turns the paper over again, finding nothing. “That’s the task?”
“Seems it. Might be a bluff.”
“How am I meant to enjoy anything stuck in here?”
“Look up, dumbo.”
He looks. The door on his cell is hanging open. There’s no robot outside waiting for him but there are still fences. In the distance, other inmates are out of their cell, robots scattered amongst them walking around in mechanical silence.
The Master feels his head start to pound again. It’s a familiar feeling, a wake up call he’s got used to over the past few months. In this regeneration, it isn’t like Hoodie’s drums, there’s more rhythm for a start.
He’s hungry, his bones are hungry… but the prison is full of light. Prisoners are cheering and whooping in the aisles. Whether it’s a trap or an honest-to-God holiday, he feels almost optimistic.
Have a nice day.
They don’t get carried down to breakfast. Nehru checks, the door to the canteen is clamped shut. The tunnel to the studio has a shiny metal door in front of it, the sort you would find in an Earth dressing room, but deadlock sealed. The Master doesn’t want to open one of those again.
All five of them check every possible exit. The Master isn’t surprised to discover a haul of half-constructed weapons under Hoodie’s bed. Grog must be watching them through the cameras and scoring them on how smiley their faces look.
To his- to their- credit, they manage to entertain themselves.
Missy starts a nail salon on the top floor, gets them all to whip up makeshift nail polish and gather ‘brushes’ from every inmate with feathers whilst she tries her best at customer service. They’re remarkably good at cooperating, much to the Master’s surprise.
Nehru enjoys having a bright shade of yellow painted on his nails, nobody quite knows why until he starts rambling about Autons. Hoodie picks out a brash red, says it looks like he’s clawed through someone. The Master and Missy do each other’s in shades of purple: dark and light. War doesn’t bother so Missy berates him like a difficult customer. It’s not remotely near what nail polish should be, but an admirable effort considering what they managed to salvage.
They swap stories about the “other ones”. Since they’re all going to forget anyway and they’re not here to be offended. The Master knows what each of them are going to say, Missy’s crush on the Yank, Hoodie’s repulsion at Skeletor, War’s amused ramblings about parallel universes. He can’t do much more than agree and silently thank whoever organised this for keeping them apart.
Then comes mention of the Doctor. It’s telling which ones of them stay quiet. After that, it doesn’t take long for Hoodie to start an argument and for the group to split up.
He stays with Missy. The other three begrudgingly stick together.
They walk. Their area of the prison is one sealed hall. From Missy’s theories about the others, the Master imagines that walking free would be impossible in any other wing. He imagines there are safeguards on exercise, on food, likely an automated prison guard too.
Missy punches him in the arm.
“Eyes front!”
“What are we even trying to do?” He groans.
“We’re having a nice day, silly. I have lots and lots of spare time so I say that we do some ‘creative expression’. Paper mache maybe? Make egg shapes and kick them?”
“You really think they’d give us glue and balloons? Somebody would sniff them and I think we both know who I’m referring to.”
“So little faith.” She shakes her head. “Suggestions? I’m being democratic here.”
“Fingernail pulling?” He says sarcastically. Missy tuts.
“We’ve got to have a nice day, remember?”
“I don’t think anything’s putting a dent in my points, Missy. You have a chance. Go and torture someone. I’ll be fine.”
“Not so fast, bucko. I’m keeping a close eye on you.”
The Master groans. “I want to go to sleep.”
Missy ignores him. “What was Grog saying? About the TCE not being your prized possession? I mean, I know it’s not, it just a silly little rectangle.” She waves her hands.
“I don’t know. Can we go to sleep now?”
“Nice try. We’re staying awake and that’s that. Let’s at least claim a corner. I don’t want any stinky boys getting in.”
They settle for the wall furthest away from the stairs. Missy has to shoo away on of the inmates who skuttles up the wall when she gets close enough to punch. The two of them sit there for a while, swapping stories about costumes and bad prosthetics before Missy finally asks-
“I’ve been dying to ask. Why the hair?”
“What about it?”
“I know we’re a man again now,” Missy says, revolted. “But we usually wear it short because- I don’t know, for man reasons.”
“I just haven’t cut it. It reminds me of you, I suppose.” The Master lies. “And I’m not really a man.”
“I love gender.” Missy flicks a strand of his hair with her finger. “It’s so funny. It confuses the Doctor so much, so naturally I have to be better at it than him. What about you?”
“I suppose I’m quite good at it.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I like eyeliner. I like dresses. I haven’t managed a dress yet, this time round. Not during a plan anyway.”
“Scared?”
“No,” he says quickly. “But you know how the rest of the universe can be. Remember the time we saw the governor of Artiga?”
Missy cackles. “Yes. I remember the screams. Never known someone to actually meow whilst being tortured.”
“I lived on Earth for a while. They aren’t kind, Missy. There’s one category of human that does all the ruling. They don’t like it when you aren’t as pale as them, never mind wearing a dress.”
“You’re such a baby,” she slaps him playfully on his neck. “Gender roles, schmender roles. Wear a dress.”
“Maybe.” He smiles.
“And on that bombshell-“ Missy says sarcastically. “Finished!”
He cranes his neck behind him. His hair has been twisted into a French braid.
“Nice.”
Behind him, Missy finishes the end of the braid with a hair tie. Then, after a second’s pause she takes it back out and claws her fingers through the finished piece. He frowns at her.
“Why?”
“So I can do it again, silly!”
That’s how they spend the afternoon. Missy doing and redoing his hair, letting him see himself through her eyes when she’s finished. He doesn’t get to touch her hair, it hasn’t moved from its high ponytail since the very start of the week. The frizzy strands are frozen into the mad scientist hairdo she had preferred at the end of her life.
By the end, the Master decides he much prefers the first braid. The rest of the styles are too complicated to reach round and do himself. All of Missy’s attempt at chic end up looking more of a mess than he had started with.
“PRISONERS WILL RETURN TO THEIR CELLS.”
“We’re a winning duo. We had the best day. We had the nicest day that those robots have ever seen.” Missy says smugly as a machine stomps towards her.
“See you on the other side of the wall.” The Master winks as the familiar arms of the robot clamp around his waist.
He is carried back to his cell. It’s only a short way and there’s no stairs, plus Missy is being carried alongside him.
Once he’s back, the door to his cell slams shut again and he can hear the other prisoners groaning and writing in protest as they’re locked back up for the night.
Like before, he leaves a good amount of time before clambering into bed. Getting himself as comfy as possible on prison standard sheets when one of the patrol robots comes round to check. He’s just about getting properly warm when Missy hisses from the other side of the wall.
“Psst!”
The Master groans and forces himself upright. Missy’s eye greets him on the other side of the small tunnel. “You’re so incognito.”
“You know you were saying earlier? About dresses? You really should wear one. Find me after this is all over and we’ll go out. Like proper ladies.”
“I will.” He lies.
“We’ll be out tomorrow.” Missy sighs. “I’ve never missed the Doctor’s miserable attempt at coffee more.”
The Master bites back a lump of stinging jealousy. “I’m having the universe’s biggest shower.”
She lets out a mad little laugh. “Anyway! The plan. Remember the plan.”
“Disqualify myself. Get the spacesuits. Got it. Go to sleep, you’re annoying me now.”
“Night night. Toyboy.”
Missy’s face disappears from the hole in the wall and the Master is left staring at the grey wall of her cell. He watches for a few minutes more (out of some sense of duty, he suppose) before flopping down onto the mattress.
The grain in the bedsheets rubs like sandpaper through his jumpsuit. There’s still pain in his head but, for the few minutes it takes for him to slip off, it’s as quiet as a morgue.
---
The Master wakes of his own accord. The prison’s artificial sunlight is close to the real thing: abrasive, burning and annoyingly, cheerfully yellow. It’s beaming intensely into the middle of his room. It’s almost midday then.
He drags himself upright, the room sways. Everything’s blurry again like the day he arrived. It’s like something has made an impression of the colours behind his eyes and transposed them onto the world itself.
He tries blinking the sleep away, hauling himself out of bed, even rapping his knuckles against the concrete walls. It sharpens things for a few seconds before the world drains away into blurred grey again.
An hour or so passes, he can tell from the way the sunlight rises in his cell. There hasn’t been a song today nor a robot. Maybe the task from yesterday has carried over, they hadn’t been given a deadline after all. He spends the extra time tracing grain trails on the walls and pacing to imagined music. Then, as the pacing gets too tiring, he sits static on the bed.
It occurs to the Master that he hasn’t yet tried talking to anybody else, so he presses an eye against the hole in the wall and looks through to the blurred concrete of Missy’s cell.
“Nicole?” He says in a tacky French accent. It’s an Earth pop culture reference, from the advertisements before VHS tapes.
There isn’t an answer.
Hm.
The Master raises the heels of his hands and rubs gently on the top of his eyelids, lowers his telepathic shields a fraction. Maybe it would help to-
He opens his eyes. The door to his cell is hanging off its hinges.
The Master clambers off the bed. Nothing has changed on the inside, nothing stolen, nothing out of place. In the doorway to his cell, however, is the severed arm of a very badly damaged robot.
He inspects the doorway. There’s no obvious traps. Whoever put the robot arm there had destroyed the machine before dumping it. It hadn’t fried upon impact, that much is obvious. He should be clear to come out.
The first step out of his cell echoes. The prison hall is deserted. At first the Master thinks he might be dead- this sort of thing tended to happen after something like that- but then he sees the jumpsuits.
Down below, on the ground floor of the hall is a trail of straggly red. Jumpsuits smother the floor, clumping together like clots in a dot to dot. There’s more as they get closer to the tunnel entrance, some are even half in, half out of the canteen entrance, trapped under it by the deadlock seal door.
There must have been a rush, enough prisoners mobbing the kitchen to get the spacesuits out. ‘Tons of them’, Missy had said. Judging from the door, somebody had noticed. Maybe they had already started the show for the day when it had started. Maybe he had been in it.
He swallows. It’s an uncomfortable thought. Had he been dragged from his cell this morning by the same robot’s arms? Had he exchanged sideways glances with Missy, had his eyes stung by the studio lights? The memory is gone, replaced by the early morning fuzz of half-sleep.
“So.” The Master says aloud. The ‘O’ ricochets off the walls before dampening into a murmur. ‘O,O, o, o, o…’ He tries a few more words out with his mouth. None of them feel right. He contemplates saying ‘Hello’ or even ‘Goodbye’ but he’d only be greeted by the sound of his own voice, mocked by the echo of the walls.
He starts by taking small steps, inching past each neighbouring cell and squinting inside. Some are neat, the bedcovers tucked in at the side and a jumpsuit folded politely on the floor- Missy’s. Others have been broken and trashed, Hoodie’s supply of makeshift weapons have made tiny craters in his wall, the same in Nehru’s. War’s cell is entirely bare, no evidence of a bed or even a bedframe. He looks for tools, maybe a piece of cutlery to arm himself with or even just a wire but the prison has been scoured.
The Master walks carefully down the stairs, stumbling on air as his feet mirror the movement of the robots. Some prisoners have left their jumpsuits halfway down the stairs still filled with loose scales or hair, they must have been desperate.
The bottom floor looks a bit like the surface of a planet. The jumpsuits are forming little mounds of land like islands, grey concrete static at their shores. He steps around them, pausing at each of them to search for bodies. As he walks on, the red builds up and forms a mainland. The Master has to find thin spaces in between to step on as he gets closer to the end of the room.
Ahead is an open door. The tunnel to the studio is wide open. He steps inside, kicking away jumpsuits from the entrance and landing on an invisible floor. It feels slightly nauseating to see the lights of the prison hall stretching inside, the black roof of the rest of the universe stained with artificial light. Not even the robots are here to carry him in anymore, there are no trumpets, no spotlight and no sliding doors. He walks on, reaches the second door. It is swung open like the rest to reveal the empty studio
The Master steps out from the tunnel and onto the stage. Grog’s chair is empty, there is a hole where Alex’s chair should be. None of the studio lights are on but there’s a warm glow coming from somewhere. Funny. He can’t see any lights.
He creeps forward carefully but nothing activates, no alarm sounds. Hm.
He sniffs. The air smells like burnt out batteries, like scorched plastic and electricity, presumably from the trail of metal spread across the stage. He follows it with his eyes. The metal snakes in a circle before dropping off into the audience and winding up the stairs. At the very top of the studio, there is a rectangle.
Now, the Master is observant. Not by meaning to be, not that it doesn’t stop him missing glaring flaws in his plans, but enough that he knows that the rectangle hadn’t been there before. Before, he’d been able to see only the bottom half of the audience, the top half obscured by the glaring studio lights. Now, there is only the glow, the electric crackle of the air and another open door.
He stares at it, the black swimming a little under his gaze. It’s the same disconnect he gets when waiting to go onstage, it must be made of the same material, another tunnel leading to somewhere new entirely.
It’s how the audience had got in and out of the studio each day. Attached to the tunnel must be the other wing Missy was talking about, the cells for the thieves and the petty criminals who watched the show. If he can follow it out, he can escape. Even better, without the help of his other selves.
The Master steps carefully down from the stage. It feels odd, passing the empty rows of seats. Some still have stray hairs on them from where people have been sitting. There can’t have been time for a clean up then. He thinks.
It’s more of a struggle than it should be to reach the top stair. A combination of hunger, dehydration and the all-over aches wracking his body, he supposes. By the time he reaches the top, the black doorway has deepened. Instead of the pitch darkness he had seen from the bottom of the room, the black has split into a vortex of darks and very subtle lights. As he’d suspected, it’s the same as the ceiling of the tunnel leading him into the room.
The Master grips the side of the doorway and takes a long look back at the studio. No Grog, no Alex, no robots. His TCE is gone, his past selves are ahead of him, the tattered clothes he had been transported in are nowhere to be seen.
There is nothing to stay for. He turns and steps into the dark.
He had presumed it was some sort of projection but, seeing the way the floor swirls and blurs together as he steps on it, his mind delights. He is walking on the hardened fabric of the universe.
Up ahead, he can just about see the tunnel curving round slightly. Aside from the too-white lines where the walls of the tunnel meet the floor, there is nothing but empty space. If someone were to cruise by, they would see a man hanging in the air.
He starts off slowly. Transfer tunnels are usually made short to save time and to keep builders from staying out in space for too long so it can’t be more than a short walk away… He believes this for a few minutes before giving up on the idea. It’s decidedly long.
The Master walks and walks and walks. The tunnel is ever so slightly curved, always hiding the end of itself from his view. Every time he thinks he catches sight of a spacesuit, he looks again to see a distant planet twinkling crimson in the dark. Red shift. The humans had used that name for it. The further away a celestial body, the redder it appears. The universe is forever expanding, ergo the furthest bodies are the oldest and the bloodiest red.
He’s about to speed up when he catches sight of something on the floor: a faint white line drawn across the breadth of the tunnel.
The Master stops walking. The tunnel has ended.
At the end there will be a repulsion shield to shock him back into the prison and away from the swirling hall of stars. The ship must’ve detached a few hours before, tiny crumbs of residual energy from the decoupling are still sparking on the surface.
There’s a sound space makes when it is empty. When there are no ships powering across it, no space-stations or comms channels. A hum. A distant deep droning. A human hears it as the sound of wind blowing across a sea. A K’Alvar hears it as a rich half-toned harmony. A Time Lord feels it within themselves. It is within the Master when he goes to sleep, undercutting the mad noise of his mind. A constant, rooted humming.
The hum is nestled deep in his hearts now. As constant as his heartbeats.
There is nothing in the space that surrounds him.
He is the last one left here.
He wonders how long his other selves had to float for before they disappeared out of sight of the tunnel- at what point they had started forgetting each other. Had Missy tried to wake him? Had his other selves pulled her away?
It makes sense. He can distantly remember a few mornings waking in a spacesuit floating in an odd end of some random galaxy, though how many of those times were after a night on the town he can’t remember.
The timeline wouldn’t have corrected until all of them were out of telepathic range, meaning his other selves would’ve left in the knowledge they would become him one day.
Outside, there are so many stars, slowly gliding through the blotches of purple, black and black. Like the Universe is bruised but blooming into flowers.
The Master wants to be pulled into it.
He sinks to the ground and sits cross legged on top of darkness. There’s nothing but the never ending dark of space underneath him. Clouds of dust and stars swirl below, they must be lightyears away. Miles and miles and miles.
There is nothing more to do. He sits. He waits. He looks out, eyes soft in the dark, for something to change.
Eternity passes. The sparks at the end of the tunnel drain away, leaving the hollow threat of the repulsion field stinging in the air between the Master and the universe. He is awake. Something had changed behind him. A few things had since he had sat down, the stars… such as...
It takes him a moment to realise it, but there’s a sound in here with him, the sound of footsteps. They are quite and muted- why he expected them to ricochet, he doesn’t quite know- but they’re getting closer.
The Master doesn’t get up. Besides, how can space echo? The sound is a liar and he can’t make his eyes drift from the darkness.
All at once the footsteps are quiet and close and far away.
Then, the footsteps speak.
“What’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?” They snort. “That’s a joke. You’re probably the exact kind of guy they want here.”
Pause. Footsteps. Another angle.
“You made great telly, y’know? A riot for the afternoon drama slot. Bit of a change from reading myself Lord of the Rings. I was rooting for Nehru though. That marine-flare-in-the-mouth thing? It’s for kids. They wouldn’t let me give zero,” she says.
Pause. A longer one.
“We all got to watch, I tried to set up bets ‘n that. Couldn’t pass anything through the big red beam things.”
Pause. Movement. Closer.
She strokes the back of her hand over the top of his head. The hairs on the back of his neck prick upright and a wash of heat fills his ears.
“It’s tangled. No combs then? You would find a way to weaponise a comb wouldn’t you?”
Breath in. Out. A stunted sigh.
“They televised the last bit too. Prison break-outs must get massive ratings. Bit weird that, showing prison breaks in a prison.”
Yes.
“Anyway. Y’probably don’t care but I got out. Jack got me. Nice that, got a bit bored of grey walls. I missed you on telly though.”
There’s a silence. The universe churns.
“Master, it’s me.” She stops, then slowly. “It’s the Doctor,” says the Doctor.
“You’re cold. You’re really cold.” She crouches beside him and grabs his wrist. “When did you last eat?”
Somebody somewhere whispers. Contact. It echoes around his head, ricocheting and bounding around the empty space.
The grip on his wrist tightens.
“I’ve got to get you back to the TARDIS, Master. Can you hear me? I can’t sense you.”
Contact.
“Answer me. Just say something.”
Contact.
Contact.
“Master.”
“Master.”
“Master!”
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