paixaorpg | One, Two, Three, Four [Active]

Entry tags:

One, Two, Three, Four [Active]

Character(s): The Eleventh Doctor and the Master
Content: The Doctor and the Master run headlong into the inevitable.
Setting: Jogo da Crianca
Time: Evening, Week 33, set directly after this log.
Warnings: Shouldn't the Master be warning enough?

The Doctor hadn't had that much fun in ages, and if he knew anything, it was fun. He laughed a little to himself as he walked his bicycle back in the direction of his TARDIS, which he'd decided to hide in some tiny, insignificant nook of the city; no sense in letting anyone see it who didn't need to. He'd need to pick up Rory, too - it had been something he'd been putting off for awhile. He'd never really liked interacting with his future, for the most part; aside from the obvious problem of potential spoilers and possibly tearing a hole in the universe, he just plain felt uneasy. Sure, there had been exceptions, but the Doctor wasn't quite sure this qualified as one.

Oh, well. Time enough for that later. He doubted picking Rory up this late was in the picture, but tomorrow wasn't exactly out of the question. Shoving the worries he had regarding that from his mind, he whistled a jaunty tune to himself as he turned to cut through the park, a hand coming up to adjust his newly-acquired fez.

There was no question about it: tonight was a good night.

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Even through the click of the bicycle's chain, a small rustle came through the foliage within the park. It was quiet enough around Jogo da Crianca that it would echo, but even the sound seemed wrong. It was as though it shouldn't exist.

A figure dropped from one of the plastic trees nearby The Doctor and planted a stiff landing only a foot away from him. When the figure pulled back into a full stand, the glimmering dagger smile of The Master was already in full bloom. "Found you!" he chanted in a sing-song tone. He brushed off his black hooded sweatshirt and black denim pants. He looked as though he were trying to stealthily prowl, but his blunt entrance spoke otherwise.

"Missed me, Doctor?"

Something wasn't right. Worse than "not right", in fact; it was downright wrong. The Doctor glanced about himself, pausing in his walk. "Who are you?" he wondered aloud, albeit to himself. And then he received his answer, and a small, shameful part of himself he would never admit to having instantly wished he hadn't.

"Master," the Doctor said by way of wary greeting, meeting his old enemy's eyes. The last time he'd seen him - seen him properly - the Master had saved his life. He'd been so beautiful, and seeing the regression now was heartbreaking. "I always seem to," came the reply, half-joking even as the Doctor searched the Master's face for signs of his mood.

The Master looked over this new Doctor face to face and enjoyed what he saw. "Okay, I understand the non-flippy hair, never suited you, but the tweed, the bowtie-what happened to your brow? Something went wrong during transformation. Now, where were we when we last met?" he asked with a wag of the brow. He wondered if this Doctor was close enough to the Tenth Doctor's memories that The Master's most recent events would be still relevant.

"Oi!" replied the Doctor, adjusting his jacket and tie. "Bow-ties are cool. And nothing went wrong, I just look like this. And I've had worse foreheads, you know that." Now, the chin, that was pretty bad, but he was getting used to it. His almost playful indignation ground to a halt at the question. "I dunno," he replied, tone still deceptively light, "where were we?" He needed to know exactly where the Master had left off before he answered that question.

"Rassilon. Gallifrey escaped from the bounds of the Time Lock. You never thanking me. Ring a bell?" he said like potential universe-ending paradoxes were normal happenstance. He began circling The Doctor like a scavenger ready to plunge fangs into fresh flesh. "I'd even go so far as to hear your apology."

The Doctor stared; he'd never thought of that. At the moment the Master had saved him, the Doctor had looked at him with such admiration and wonder - shock, even. But he had never thanked him, too stricken by the moment to say anything. The Doctor hung his head for a moment, his gaze shame-filled and grief hanging heavy in his heart. "I'm sorry," he told the Master, "I'm so sorry. And you're right. You were brilliant. Thank you." He didn't dare hope his thanks or apologies would be accepted, but at least he could say it.

"Maybe I WON'T ACCEPT. How does that feel, Doctor? Having your own words thrown back in your face. Not too great, is it? Difference is: I got that from our fathers and their father and their fathers! Know who you got that from? The Master," he said, pointing to his chest again and again like his points would be made any stronger by the gesture.

"Brilliant is not what I am, Doctor. It's what I do. What I did to your TARDIS all those years ago? That was a bit of the old ingenuity. Now? I can't stop eating, my hair is coming out in bunches, and-"

The Master quickly turned aside, shot a bolt of lightning that pierced and deflected the fez right off The Doctor's head. He immediately felt his entire body convulse as he showed his skeleton to his long-lived adversary.

"-that. What was that awful thing on your head anyway?"

Of course he didn't accept. The Doctor had expected that, but he had to say it, needed to. The Master deserved that much. "I know," he admitted softly. He always knew. They'd danced around each other from the beginning, just about, from childhood friends to ancient enemies. And it always ended the same way. It was tiring, and he was tired. They both were.

"But you are brilliant. You know you are," came the reply. "And I can help you. You know I can, so let me! We're all we've got. We're all that's left of that old world." And looking at the Master's condition, a secret and shameful part of the Doctor wondered if maybe that wasn't for the best sometimes, not that he'd ever admit it.

A flash of lightning (oh, he should have known that was coming), and the fez was gone. "Oi!" the Doctor complained. "That was a fez. Fezzes are cool."

"What did you do about it? Okay, you sent them back to nothingness. What then? You heard my drums once and looked at me like the wrong that I am," The Master accused, "I tried to understand your love for the earthlings, but I had no choice to make them more likeable. Why'd you take away all of my friends, Doctor? Why did you take away all of my family?"

He grimaced at The Doctor's comforting reassurances. "Spare me," he said as he brushed his fellow Time Lord with a shoulder bump in passing.

Turning back after the remark on fezzes, The Master looked over The Doctor. "Still picking your earth girls, then? Had a nice collection, last I remembered."

The Doctor glared at the Master. Apologize, yes; help him, definitely. But he wouldn't put up with the Master's feeble attempts at justifying what he'd done to the humans. "Don't try to pull that on me," he told him coldly. "You never did that for anyone but yourself." He shook his head. "Besides, Rassilon's the one who undid your little game, not me."

Despite his words, it hurt when the Master brushed past him. "You don't have to do this," he told him. "Please. You know I can help you." He decided to ignore the question about Earth girls, a stab of loneliness throbbing in his hearts.

The Master turned to face another offer of help from The Doctor. Given their incredibly long history, it was plain to see The Master was not willing to change his ways at any point in his near future, dying or not. "Is that you've been saying this whole time? Gosh, maybe I misheard you over the DRUMS IN MY HEAD," he screamed with a sour look, throwing spittle into the air. "You think you can handle the type of chaos my mind perpetually dwells in every single day? Maybe you can tell me what I am, then?"

The Master climbed up a tree with incredible speed and hung off the branch like an athletic stage actor. "I am The Master! Born on Gallifrey as a Time Lord, meant to be the world's foremost explorer of time and space and hugs and good feelings and learning to share!"

He slid down and hid behind the tree, poking his face out with a darkened expression. "BUT, then the Time Lords turned me into a merciless killing machine meant to be the end to the opposition and to the malcontent of the universe. What happened next? RAN."

He quickly stood straight up again and composed a determined stride over to The Doctor. Every stomp of his foot only accented his rant, giving his shaking appearance a more gaunt and frightening angle. "AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE YOUR WHOLE LIFE? RAN. So what makes you the good and me the bad? Who decided that?" He stood and stared into The Doctor's eyes as though to find the answer in peering deeply enough into the Time Lord's soul.

When the Master's rant was finished (and the Doctor had remained silent throughout, knowing it was best to just let the other get it off his chest), the Doctor took the Master's head in his hands. Despite his better judgement, he looked him full in the face, distraught, his pain fully evident on his face. The drums. Always those damned drums. They should have stopped. "I can help you, you know I can," he murmured desperately as tears welled up in his eyes.

The Master spoke the truth. He knew he did. He was one of those who, rather than being inspired or even going mad by staring into the Untempered Schism, ran away. He'd been running his whole life, and he still hadn't stopped. He was useless, bloody useless, and he couldn't even think of a proper argument for the Master. "I tried to help," he protested weakly, knowing it wouldn't help for all the good he'd actually done.

The Master turned uglier as the conversation continued. It wasn't just a habit he carried for most interactions with others. It was The Doctor, the most adversarial figure in the entire universe to The Master, getting more frustrated and saddened by his own capability. It was seeing victory at hand after a millenium of fighting, scrapping, and plotting. The very feeling of seeing The Doctor like this was like a meal that he could never finish fast enough before it would be taken away.

"And you failed. What now?" The Master yelled exasperatingly. His arms rose and then dropped at his sides, a small cloud of dust puffing out from his dirty clothes. He approached The Doctor and looked at his face. "You're The Doctor. But you're not being The Doctor. I look at your pathetic hats and gimmicks and all I see is a theatre curtain. Behind the scenes, there's just a sad little Time Lord looking for a friend. Right?"

The Doctor sighed heavily, closing his eyes and rubbing them tiredly before looking the Master in the eyes again. "And what about you?" he retorted. "You scream and rant, but all you want is for the drumming to stop, even when you don't know what comes after." He pulled away from the other Time Lord, refusing to hunch, to lower his head. That was the absolute last thing he needed to do right now.

"There's always hope," he continued. "As long as you're alive, there's hope. Maybe there's someone in the city who can help us deal with this." He wasn't about to leave the Master alone, screaming in the dark at the noise in his head.

HOPE

The word infuriated The Master for some reason. Perhaps it was the total lack of faith he inherited at the malicious hand of the Time Lords before him. More than likely, it was that he was forever an outcast from the moment he was placed before the titanic power of the Untempered Schism. Still, when The Doctor touched this nerve, he could not help but lash out.

Slamming his hands on The Doctor's shoulders and wrenching his fingers until the tweed on the other Time Lord's jacket was on the edge of fraying, The Master nearly lifted The Doctor off the ground with cathartic rage. "THIS IS WHAT YOU CALL ALIVE?" he shouted as heis face once again dissipated for a flash and showed a fluorescent skull with eyes bulging in anger, "YOU WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS?"

He shoved The Doctor away from him and began pressing and sliding his hands against each other, now crackling with energy from his own life force. "I can make that happen."

The Doctor didn't flinch when the Master tugged at him, merely looking the other in the face. He was well-used to this form of the Master by now; it had preyed upon his mind as he'd become more and more familiar with the city. He hadn't even expected to run into anybody he recognized in such an unfamiliar place, much less his childhood friend and now enemy - and seeing the Master like this broke his hearts.

So he let the other yell as he wished, and didn't retaliate when he was shoved, stumbling to catch himself. "I can help," he pleaded, "you know I can help you. Please."

The Master began to do what he should have done when approached by The Doctor since the beginning: walk away. Even if this Doctor was more facetious and willing to help than any other version The Master had ever encountered, he knew that this was a no-win situation for him. If he was to truly make the most of his short remaining time, he would have to cut hos losses to come out ahead. He wasn't going to be turning in...at least, not until The Doctor had as well.

"I'm tired of your begging. I'm too hungry," he said upon leaving.

The Doctor closed his eyes, feeling tired, so tired, but knowing he had to keep trying. He ran up to the Master and cut him off, staring him in the face. "Listen to me," he said. "If you're that hungry, we can go to a cafe and talk. But you know as well as I do that you're running out of time." And really, who better to help him with this than another Time Lord?

Besides, the least the Doctor could do was feed him.

The Master looked up at The Doctor's request to feed him. Was his mortal enemy really this serious when it came to the welfare of the man who has tried to kill him across all of time and space? This strange-looking but caring version of The Doctor was off-putting, almost wrong in his own way. Whatever The Doctor had done before this version must have pressed some very wrong buttons. There was no way this could have been happening. At the same time, the mercy the previous Doctor showed him aboard the Valiant and in the headquarters of the Master Race could have continued on in a residual memory of virtue. The Master stepped slowly toward him, eyes that read life and death meeting once again. The Master couldn't even begin to think of what to say in return.

The serene pause stopped and The Master clamped his jaw against The Doctor's shoulder.

They were the last Time Lords in existence. The Doctor's hand had been forced in the Time War; he'd had to do what he'd done. All the people in the universe, the multiverse, and he had known he couldn't put anything before stopping his own people, at any cost. But there was another Time Lord here, there was the Master, and he had to take care of him. He'd meant to from the beginning, but Lucy had shot him and there had been nothing he could have done. And then the Master had been resurrected, and the Doctor had still not been able to save him.

His guilty and haunted thoughts were interrupted by a sharp, burning sensation in his shoulder, and the Doctor gave a shout of pain, struggling. "Not like that!" he managed to choke out.

"Stop whining. I didn't even break the skin," The Master said after drawing away from The Doctor's now tender shoulder. "I would have if you didn't have to be so loud." He looked at The Doctor, inevitably rubbing his shoulder from the psychopathic attack.

"And what happens exactly when I run out of time as you say? I wouldn't mind a new look," he said, sarcastically running a hand through his short platinum hair.

"But you bit me!" replied the Doctor, looking at the Master with a look reminiscent of a hurt puppy. "Blimey, I'm glad you didn't bite down harder. I might have bitten you back." Come to think of it, he still might; that had hurt. "And how would you like it if someone bit you?"

The slightly comical bent of the situation faded at the Master's question. "I don't know," he admitted slowly, his voice soft. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"You deserved it, you ponce!" he yelled back, "And you would've bitten back? I don't see you as the kind to bite back, Doctor. Getting bitten plenty!" He looked over to the raggedy man and imagined all sorts of nasty creatures (and maybe a companion or two) digging their teeth into him. The thought of the pain made The Master smile for a brief moment.

"Honestly, Doctor, if you had to fill a book with the things you don't know, you wouldn't have room in your TARDIS. For someone thought to be so brilliant, you're definitely lacking."

Ponce? Oh, that was it. "I am not a ponce!" he protested, giving the Master a good poke in the chest. "And I'll have you know I'm good at biting! It just so happens to be my special skill this time around." With that, he leaned in to bite the Master back. Childish? Possibly, but the Doctor didn't particularly care at the moment. He calmed back down after a bit, panting a little.

"I know!" came the reply, a grin spreading over the Doctor's face. "Don't you get it? That's what makes it so brilliant! I mean, no matter how far I travel or how long I live, I'll never learn everything. Isn't it beautiful?"

The Master looked down at The Doctor trying to bite through his reasonably thick hooded sweatshirt, almost sad from the amount of effort The Doctor was giving just to prove a point. "Done yet?"

"And I thought I was mad," The Master retorted to The Doctor's whimsy, "I think I have better places to be than here, watching you gallop around like a painted puppet."

"Maybe," the Doctor pouted. "I haven't decided yet." He knew he was being terribly immature about the whole thing, but really, the Master had started it. It was almost easy to forget the Master had nearly struck the Doctor with lightning, considering their banter, which was almost friendly on some level.

"We're both mad," he retorted with a scoff. "Varying levels of madness, but there you are. And I resent that remark! Since when have I been painted?"

The Master furrowed his brow downward as though The Doctor's retort had been a great open-ended question. "I wasn't asking about that," he said like a shark smelling blood in the water, "But since we're talking about it, I'm willing to bet that you're really wanting out of here. Are you in a hurry?" He smiled at him. "I really shouldn't go if the entertainment is just starting."

"You're nothing compared to me. Madness, intellect, power. You're just the only one in the universe who has come close," he boasted.

The Doctor shook his head. "No hurry," he responded softly. "I've got all the time in the world." Rory could wait - and besides, if he really did know the Doctor, he was surely used to the Time Lord wandering off and doing all sorts of ridiculous things. That, and the absolute last thing he ever wanted to do was lead the Master anywhere near the TARDIS again, especially after the mess it had created last time. Come to think of it, perhaps he should warn his younger self, barring spoilers, of course; the other had obviously come from a time before he'd run into the Master again.

"Madness, I'll give you. Power? Maybe. But I've beaten you every time we've gone up against one another. Every time but the times we didn't have to." Like the last time, when they had ended up standing together.

"You say that, but you still act like you're on your last leg," The Master pondered aloud. "This is your eleventh, right? Looks like you might be on the end of your cycle."

"And what good is madness and power if you don't use them together? Admit it: you would never return to Earth so many times if you didn't think it was a place teeming with madness," he said, scoffing at The Doctor's retort as though it were insulting, "And the only reason I went there was because it never got crazy enough. Well, except that time I was the Earth."

"I am not on my last leg!" came the retort, the Doctor sounding as though this were a mere, childish spat between rivals despite the obvious danger of the situation. He looked over at the Master, eyes serious despite the relative lightness of his tone. He wanted to help the Master, really wanted to help him, and he was willing to do just about anything in order to get through to him.

"How long have we known each other, Master?" he asked. "When have I not combined madness with whatever power I have?" The Master and the Doctor were more alike than they liked to admit. "And while you were the Earth once, and you still lost."

"Yeah, and I'm not hungry for anything at the moment," he said, eyes rolling, stomach growling.

Now, The Master was beginning to feel insulted. "Lost because of Rassilon, not you. If I'm not mistaken, you were close to losing a lot more than a battle with him. Think of it: 'The Doctor ended by a tin glove.' That'd be a story for the telly for sure," he said with his thin fingers making a square frame.

And once again, there the Doctor had been, being thick and losing track of what he was actually doing. Well, not really, but meeting the Master had definitely provided a bit of a jolt (of the not-good kind) to his brain. Wheeling around, he beckoned for the Master to follow him so they could grab a bite to eat.

"I know," he admitted, quietly but still loud enough for the other to hear. If not for the Master and Rassilon being distracted by one another, he likely would have died at the hands of one or the other - likely Rassilon, to be honest (especially given that he'd known what the Doctor had been forced to do in order to end the Time War).

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One, Two, Three, Four [Active]

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blargle...it'll do for now...I'm sorry :(

No problem!

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