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(wastedlands) Doctor, if that's moving up, then I'm moving out.
Characters: Doctor (Ten), Master (closed)
Rating: PG
Date: Begins a few days after this, and with any luck catches up to the present
Location: Grotto of the Damned
He'd been dreaming of Gallifrey again. Not the last time he'd seen it, half-burning, the Citadel destroyed, all the things he'd told himself he hated smashed and dying. More the idyllic version, for which he was almost sorry.
Almost.
It was the blanket, really. It did smell a bit of horse, it was true, but his show of disgust had been a misdirect. Really, wrapped in the blanket, it smelled more like him than anything. Overpoweringly so, the Doctor's essence imprinted there, encoded by scent. A memory.
While awake he spent the majority of his time trying to pretend the Doctor did not exist-- which was difficult considering he apparently had decided that if the Master would not go to him, he would go to the Master, and to that end had had taken it upon himself to actually, preposterously, "move in." But, as often is the case, when the Master slept his own dreams betrayed him.
And he'd been sleeping an awful lot. Definitely above and beyond the normal requirements for a Time Lord. The Doctor seemed to think it was good for him, "restorative sleep," he called it, but privately the Master figured it was his only chance for escape. And here he was ruining it dreaming about him anyway. And so for a time he was young and hopeful and maybe even maybe a tiny bit enamored, even, and he'd count stars while they lay on their backs together in the fields and he'd plot out in his head all the places they'd find together, find and set right, together. And then he'd wake up and remember, everything flooding back as if it were happening for the first time, just as surely as when he'd woken up from longer, darker intervals, with a small stinging barb in his chest.
A small rumble, hysterical laughter. The man who was not quite the Master yet sat up in the field, as his companion chattered on. The smell of smoke, burning, blood, flesh, commingled in the air, and something bright, almost mistakable for a sunrise, lightened the sky's horizon.
The Citadel was on fire. And in the distance, and in the very back of his mind, above the Doctor's incessant prattle, he could hear the cold, mechanical, eternally angry screams. They were coming.
The Master jolted back into consciousness, his hearts pounding, aching, thinking daleks war hide human gallifrey TARDIS cruciform utopia YOU LEFT ME
And then he felt it, almost a nothing, almost, but...
there.
He hadn't dreamt the rumbling.
The slow deep rumbling rattled up the grotto's walls, spreading across the ceiling in a booming crack. The Doctor, sleeping, unusually inactive; drowned out by his self-imposed captivity and seemingly apathetic captive, rose to his feet, and at once shook off his indolence. He could feel the strength of the vibrations in him, and already cursorily noted its originating direction -- the epicenter?
He ran his hand hard through his hair, feeling a frightening rush of intimidation.
It's an earthquake -- ocean -- volcano -- is this... even an island?
He spun around, facing the Master. A marathon of thoughts running through his head, and none of them remotely applicable.
He's awake. I've got to get him out of here. I've got to get us both out of here.
The majority of the time the Master spent sleeping, the Doctor spent wishing he were awake. It wasn't bad seeing him like that; it was easier for him to pretend something about the Master's life could be peaceful. Even so, for all his patience and understanding; being near to him -- again -- and yet feeling himself moving somewhere, some place off in the distance was...
No, I can't do that. I'll lose him.
The Doctor approached closer, crossing the space between them in increasingly shaky steps, "I don't think it's stopping!"
You know... in case you didn't notice it... not stopping.
He stared down at him. Having broke the bad news calmly, what remained was intense look of confusion -- and a slowly glowing glimmer of fear.
The Master looked up at him, dazed, almost resigned. He'd been on plenty of dying planets, in process of ripping themselves apart
and you're usually the one who put me there, Doctor
and so he'd had his share of this sort... but this was tangibly different. He could almost hear the screaming, but not quite. He just knew it was there. The ghost of its presence, perhaps, as if it were glimpsed as a mirage on the horizon but still yet to come. "Do you feel it?" He smiled a funny sort of smile, as if intoxicated.
The Doctor felt his fear topple over, washing his words over him. Do you feel it? He swallowed, looking away from them.
We've got to go...
He turned back quickly, reaching a hand down to him, "C'mon, we've got to go."
The Master ignored his outstretched hand, just stared at him with that odd smile. "Something's waking up."
The vibrations grew in intensity, slamming the walls around them, casting off pieces of rock that couldn't bear the beating. The Doctor shallowed away from it, lowering his head in protection, still reaching out for him, "Master, please! Please..."
Almost as soon as the words were out of the Doctor's mouth, the shaking began to subside, tapering off drastically to a low tremor, then shuddering to a halt like an old train.
The Master chuckled, the sudden stillness (but not silence, no, if anything the mirage had become clearer, more concrete, more fixed in reality) snapping him back to his old self. "You are such a child."
The Doctor slowly relaxed his steadying brace on the floor, turning his eyes around the cave walls, engrossing himself with the damage. His brisk inspection made it's way back to the Master, and he sat down beside him, smiling calmly.
"A child? Really? And you just -- " he paused, searching for the right words, " -- sat there. Like a log. Like a big... sitting log."
"It seems I have this rather unusual aversion to cracking open my skull because I was too busy running around like a panicked imbecile during an earthquake," the Master informed him, turning away and resettling. "Wouldn't want to give you an excuse to smother me any further with your pathetic attempts at ministration."
He silently, pointedly, banished the fact that he'd likely be drowning in his own phlegm if it weren't for any of that. In the past few days his cough had diminished to a mere trickle of expectorations every handful of hours, and the unpleasant rattling whenever he drew in a breath had gone.
"Oh. Sorry. Right. You're always right. And... slightly verbally abusive," he sighed deeply, resting his head back against the cold stone wall and reaching back, grimaced as he pulled a loose rock out from behind himself.
The Doctor stared out into nothing, feeling the earth moving still, twisting beneath them, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre." He faced the Master, suddenly saddened, before skipping the rock across the slick floor.
It fell to rest in front of them, rumbling softly.
The Master's voice emanated from his hunched, immobile form, slightly muffled by the blanket but still harshly incisive. "Oh, goody. More poetry. What's next? Flowers?"
The Doctor smiled broadly, focusing his attention from the rock, "You want some flowers, Master? Really, all you had to do is ask. I bet I know where I can get you some roses."
He smirked. Things were about to get much, much uglier. Which was a welcome respite. "Oh, I've had more than my fair share of that. Right here, in fact. How is she doing, by the way?"
His smile dissolved, dropping quickly into anger. "Don't talk about her," he narrowed his eyes, his voice sharp, but low. There was nothing else that needed to be said. Rose was a subject wholly off limits to him.
The Doctor watched him a beat, suddenly not so sure he said enough, wanting to make himself very very clear, "Do you understand?"
Cause you and I... we're going to have a problem if you don't.
The Master full-out grinned to himself, although his tone was petulant. "Come on. It's not as if she's dead." And then he mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, "Which must be a welcome change for you."
The Doctor stared at him, unflinching, "I'm serious. You don't talk about her." He lowered his eyes through his wispy comment, leaning over to raise a finger in correction, "Enough." He stayed there for a moment in stony stillness, before lowering his hand slowly to settle back down.
The Doctor should have known by now that "enough" was not a word readily found in the Master's vocabulary. He had found a wound and he was steadily wriggling in.
"Tell you though, she's a real handful, that one. She'll go after anything with two pulses. I can see why you--"
The Doctor's breath quickened deep in his chest, and for a moment he sat there, listening, feeling himself puffing up in anger. It felt like an eternity wrapped up in half a second, and suddenly he was rising to his feet.
"You just don't know when to quit, do you!?" he was screaming, a tide of blood rushing to his cheeks.
The blanket. The blanket. Look at me.
He tore it from him, panting hard.
Look at me now.
The Master toppled backwards a little as the blanket was yanked from around his shoulders. He shot out a hand to stabilize himself, twisting slightly towards the Doctor, and blinked several times, stunned by the impact.
"Oh," as if something had just occurred to him. He looked sidelong at the Doctor, slyly. "Oh. You're the only one of us who... hasn't, aren't you? No wonder this is such a sensitive subject for you."
The Doctor smiled horribly, throwing the blanket to the ground; eyes searching around the room -- unsure what exactly he was supposed to do next.
And suddenly he bent down, grabbing the Master's shirt by the shoulders and pulling him in close, "Finished?"
The Master returned his smile, albeit a much lazier one. He showed no fear; in fact, he almost seemed to relax when the Doctor grabbed him.
"It's too bad; I was hoping we could compare notes."
His fingers wrapped around his shoulders, no longer gripping barely the material of his shirt, but tightening viciously into him.
"What are you talking about!? What are you talking about!?" he leaned his weight into him, pinning the Master's back to the wall.
His hearts were pounding and he no longer tried to temper them.
The Master closed his eyes, his own hearts pounding. The Doctor's grip, and the rocks digging into his back, were beginning to hurt, but he didn't care. He began to laugh, long and quite delightedly, at the Doctor's growing loss of control.
The Doctor forced him harder, cruelly into the wall, their faces nearly touching; clutching him tighter. For a fleeting moment he thought he could snap his bones.
He drew his voice back out, barely enough breath left to speak, "What? What? What's funny?! You think it's funny!? Is it -- is it -- is it!?"
The Master hissed a little at the pain, still sporting his curiously relieved smile. "Oh, Doctor," he breathed. "I knew you had it in you."
The Doctor breathed sharply against his words, dizzying himself in panic; he searched for a way back through blinding anger.
You're doing it. It's you.
He slid his fingers down the Master's arms, reaffirming his grip, "Stop it! Stop it!"
He grinned, all teeth. "Funny. That's what she said. Well. Half the time, anyway."
He was going too far, and keenly aware of it. But he wasn't about to back off now, surrender one inch of ground. He met the Doctor's eyes almost serenely.
Well, you wanted a monster.
He turned away, casting his eyes to the ground, but the misdirection wasn't enough, so he closed his eyes tight and breathed in deep one last time.
One last time, before reaching past the Master's neck and dragging his fingers through his hair, twisting it in his hand and pounding his head against the wall just once.
He stared at him through clenched teeth, finding himself kneeling down, pressing into the Master's legs.
His voice dry, spilling over with hatred, "Did you hurt her?"
Something white-hot mushroomed behind the Master's eyes as his head connected with the wall, and he inadvertently gasped, sucking in one hissing breath after another.
He sneered. "That's delving into personal business, Doctor. Though I can't expect I've done much more damage than you."
"I hate you. I really..." his voice tensed, unable to continue. Instead he found himself letting go; collapsing down off him. His eyes felt wet, and he choked the tears back down his throat.
The Master scuttled away from him, slightly nauseated by the tears. He should have felt some measure of victory-- wasn't this precisely what he'd wanted?-- but instead. Empty, empty, empty. Empty except for the screaming. The burning.
The ground rumbled slightly, a warning.
The rock the Doctor had laid down in front of them rocked back, pitching lightly only to founder again in its own private catastrophe.
The Doctor ran his hands over of his face, glimpsing out between his fingers to watch its prognostic performance.
He regarded hazily, that to his side the Master had moved away from him and it struck him suddenly that he didn't feel like being so close to him right now. He steadied himself to his feet, crushing the rock under his wake as he moved across the narrow cavern.
They didn't talk much, or really at all, over the next few days. The Master found it odd, and a little unsettling when compared to the Doctor's cheerful, inane babbling. Not that he missed the miserable, useless attempts at conversation, no. But the achingly palpable silence, punctuated by the periodic quakes, was an alarming contrast, and far from bearable under the circumstances. They should have been arguing what the quakes might mean, whether they should go somewhere else. What was coming. What he knew was coming.
Instead, the Doctor had begun spending several hours away at a time; usually his presence did not go far, and the Master suspected he was sitting directly above the grotto, moping, debating whether his oldest enemy had really defiled his perfect little companion. Sometimes he must have gone further, coming back with unasked for food or supplies and dumping the small bundles at the Master's feet wordlessly. The Master no longer even felt his eyes on him while he was feigning sleep, or just as often actually asleep.
Now when he dreamed of Gallifrey it was always burning.
He needed something to fill the silence up. He'd finally retrieved the book from the sack the Doctor had brought the first time. It was some sort of cheap pulp fiction crime thriller, and he'd already read it nine times, but it took his mind off things, in theory. The Master paged it open again, tried to shut out the sheer void of the Doctor's presence.
And that's when the screaming started for real.
The Doctor shot to his feet -- the gritty sediments he'd been tracing his finger along for what seemed like hours carelessly brushed aside. He dug a hand into his pocket retrieving his network device, while simultaneously nudging on his glasses. He studied it hurriedly, a feeling of frenzied chaos moving in beneath him. Something pulling apart, rocking slowly.
He was clearing his voice to speak, when a tiny crack in the ceiling split apart, veining down the wall behind him.
The Master dropped the book and clamped his hands to his ears, knowing it was futile even as he did it. Queen Alice's frantic screeching, the Cat's maniacal laughter, reverberated throughout the cave, throughout everything, throughout him, and he was going to get lost in it, cracks running through--
A flowerpot crashed mere inches from him and he stared at it, momentarily distracted, before the ground heaved again, throwing him on his side.
The ground shook down and above them, squeezing the walls tightly together under the strain of enormous pressure. The Doctor stuffed his glasses, and the PDA in his pocket in an effort to keep something together.
"Hold on! Cover your head! Just cover your head, I'm coming!" he stumbled his way towards the Master, his screaming lost over the sound of everything falling apart.
He was only just barely aware of the Doctor's orders, or his frantic staggering. He scrambled toward the center of the cave and curled up into a ball as feeble protection against the rocks, and telephones and... bananas and whatever else rained down on him. He might have been laughing, or sobbing, or screaming-- it was hard to tell which. He didn't even know which.
The tearing sound, the terrible tearing of an earth being slit open wide surged through him. The misery the Master put him in days ago slipped away, and the only thing that mattered now was reaching him, keeping him safe, keeping them both safe.
He braced himself hard with every step, stumbling over widening cracks spilling out across the cave floor. "I'm almost there!" he called out, assuring himself more than anything that could he make it. Debris rained down, pieces of the ceiling and -- who knows what else. The Doctor fell to his knees, feet away from the Master; reaching out his arm around his back and pulling him in close.
The Master reflexively clutched the Doctor's arm; it was ambiguous as to whether he meant to pull the arm away or prevent it being pulled away from him. Beyond that he remained immobile, mind reeling, head and hearts pounding viciously.
Where's your poetry now, you puny apes? This is the real thing. Was it what you expected? Because this is it. We're all going to die.
The Doctor wrapped his arms around him, trying to heave them both up together. Their exit, the iron gate vibrated hard, the lock and chain beating itself against the bars. He focused in on it, squinting through a smokey haze of dust; steadying them towards it.
We're going to make it. We're going to make it... just hold on.
He allowed himself to be pulled to standing, swaying on the uneven ground and leaning heavily into the Doctor. He snaked his arm around the Doctor's shoulders; they were simply in too much danger now, and he was too dazed, to resist help.
Perhaps they would make it to the gate, make it out. But then what?
Another dying world, this one with no escape.
The Doctor pushed the Master down into him, shielding his head best he could. When they reached the gate, he adjusted him enough to be able to reach into his jacket, and take out his screwdriver. There wasn't any time to be messing with keys. He fumbled briefly, tuning the sonic frequency down a level to avoid the gate being blown apart from the blast.
"Almost there. Then up the steps..." he trailed off, raising the device at the lock, just barely about to activate it when a blemish in the ceiling cracked open above them.
The Doctor felt himself letting go, the cold hard ground rising up to meet his cheek. He reached a trembling hand to his head, drawing it back wet with blood. He eyed it alarmed, before his vision refocused on the rock that hit him.
The Master stumbled as the Doctor slipped off him. He stood there for a moment, watching the Doctor on the ground, unable to speak, then knelt beside him slowly, as if trying to decide what to do next.
The Doctor stared up at him, his vision slowly dimming. He shut his eyes tight; hoping to reopen them, vision anew. Instead he slowly drifted away into the darkness.
The Master stared at the Doctor's unconscious face a few seconds longer, then, feeling slightly sick, went through his suit pockets, extracting everything into a small pile. The PDA, his glasses, an apple and a bit of wire, the gate key. The TARDIS key. He clutched the gate key tightly in his hand, transferred everything else but the apple and glasses to his own pockets. Then, on second thought, he took the apple as well.
He scouted around on the floor for the sonic screwdriver, which had skittered a fair distance away from the Doctor when he'd fallen and was now beyond the bars of the gate, past reach. The Master lurched to his feet and over to the gate. The key protested a bit against the lock tumblers, then turned with a triumphant shunk that could barely be heard over the din of clattering rocks and rumbling earth.
He looked back briefly at the Doctor as he pulled the gate open, hesitating. Then the ground shook again, spilling him forward, as if urging him out, and a bowling ball struck the ground pretty much where he'd been, rolling down nonchalantly into the shadows of the cave. He stood, scooped up the screwdriver with trembling fingers, and before he could think twice, stumbled back to the gate and swung it closed, latching it.
He half-walked, half-crawled up the grotto steps and into the evening air, inhaling a dizzyingly familiar combination of sulfur and putrescine that immediately made him double over. The sun was just setting, touching everything ablaze; in the distance, to the North, he could see smoke rising. He began to make his way slowly south and east; he'd need his things from Diagon Alley, for starters, and from there he'd have to work out a more long-term plan.
The Master had gone only a few steps when inhuman howls and shrieks pierced the air in some sort of hellish chorus, and from then on he mostly ran.
The Doctor laid quiet below the ground, while up above the ear-splitting cries of something long since forgotten drowned out the ripping of an earth being torn apart. The collapse of the grotto wasn't gradual, nor was it directed by one single deathly blow; it was more of a slow tugging of an earth that could no longer sustain the hollowed gap beneath it.
The bulk of the grotto was protected. Supported by man-made pillars standing guard -- as if eerily prepared for such unholy chaos. The weaker parts of the cave were collapsed entirely, both entrances, and the area around the fountain. Weak daylight poured through the cracks, and slowly died, as night filtered in.
Leaving the moon behind and the grotto in complete darkness.
Rating: PG
Date: Begins a few days after this, and with any luck catches up to the present
Location: Grotto of the Damned
He'd been dreaming of Gallifrey again. Not the last time he'd seen it, half-burning, the Citadel destroyed, all the things he'd told himself he hated smashed and dying. More the idyllic version, for which he was almost sorry.
Almost.
It was the blanket, really. It did smell a bit of horse, it was true, but his show of disgust had been a misdirect. Really, wrapped in the blanket, it smelled more like him than anything. Overpoweringly so, the Doctor's essence imprinted there, encoded by scent. A memory.
While awake he spent the majority of his time trying to pretend the Doctor did not exist-- which was difficult considering he apparently had decided that if the Master would not go to him, he would go to the Master, and to that end had had taken it upon himself to actually, preposterously, "move in." But, as often is the case, when the Master slept his own dreams betrayed him.
And he'd been sleeping an awful lot. Definitely above and beyond the normal requirements for a Time Lord. The Doctor seemed to think it was good for him, "restorative sleep," he called it, but privately the Master figured it was his only chance for escape. And here he was ruining it dreaming about him anyway. And so for a time he was young and hopeful and maybe even maybe a tiny bit enamored, even, and he'd count stars while they lay on their backs together in the fields and he'd plot out in his head all the places they'd find together, find and set right, together. And then he'd wake up and remember, everything flooding back as if it were happening for the first time, just as surely as when he'd woken up from longer, darker intervals, with a small stinging barb in his chest.
A small rumble, hysterical laughter. The man who was not quite the Master yet sat up in the field, as his companion chattered on. The smell of smoke, burning, blood, flesh, commingled in the air, and something bright, almost mistakable for a sunrise, lightened the sky's horizon.
The Citadel was on fire. And in the distance, and in the very back of his mind, above the Doctor's incessant prattle, he could hear the cold, mechanical, eternally angry screams. They were coming.
The Master jolted back into consciousness, his hearts pounding, aching, thinking daleks war hide human gallifrey TARDIS cruciform utopia YOU LEFT ME
And then he felt it, almost a nothing, almost, but...
there.
He hadn't dreamt the rumbling.
The slow deep rumbling rattled up the grotto's walls, spreading across the ceiling in a booming crack. The Doctor, sleeping, unusually inactive; drowned out by his self-imposed captivity and seemingly apathetic captive, rose to his feet, and at once shook off his indolence. He could feel the strength of the vibrations in him, and already cursorily noted its originating direction -- the epicenter?
He ran his hand hard through his hair, feeling a frightening rush of intimidation.
It's an earthquake -- ocean -- volcano -- is this... even an island?
He spun around, facing the Master. A marathon of thoughts running through his head, and none of them remotely applicable.
He's awake. I've got to get him out of here. I've got to get us both out of here.
The majority of the time the Master spent sleeping, the Doctor spent wishing he were awake. It wasn't bad seeing him like that; it was easier for him to pretend something about the Master's life could be peaceful. Even so, for all his patience and understanding; being near to him -- again -- and yet feeling himself moving somewhere, some place off in the distance was...
No, I can't do that. I'll lose him.
The Doctor approached closer, crossing the space between them in increasingly shaky steps, "I don't think it's stopping!"
You know... in case you didn't notice it... not stopping.
He stared down at him. Having broke the bad news calmly, what remained was intense look of confusion -- and a slowly glowing glimmer of fear.
The Master looked up at him, dazed, almost resigned. He'd been on plenty of dying planets, in process of ripping themselves apart
and you're usually the one who put me there, Doctor
and so he'd had his share of this sort... but this was tangibly different. He could almost hear the screaming, but not quite. He just knew it was there. The ghost of its presence, perhaps, as if it were glimpsed as a mirage on the horizon but still yet to come. "Do you feel it?" He smiled a funny sort of smile, as if intoxicated.
The Doctor felt his fear topple over, washing his words over him. Do you feel it? He swallowed, looking away from them.
We've got to go...
He turned back quickly, reaching a hand down to him, "C'mon, we've got to go."
The Master ignored his outstretched hand, just stared at him with that odd smile. "Something's waking up."
The vibrations grew in intensity, slamming the walls around them, casting off pieces of rock that couldn't bear the beating. The Doctor shallowed away from it, lowering his head in protection, still reaching out for him, "Master, please! Please..."
Almost as soon as the words were out of the Doctor's mouth, the shaking began to subside, tapering off drastically to a low tremor, then shuddering to a halt like an old train.
The Master chuckled, the sudden stillness (but not silence, no, if anything the mirage had become clearer, more concrete, more fixed in reality) snapping him back to his old self. "You are such a child."
The Doctor slowly relaxed his steadying brace on the floor, turning his eyes around the cave walls, engrossing himself with the damage. His brisk inspection made it's way back to the Master, and he sat down beside him, smiling calmly.
"A child? Really? And you just -- " he paused, searching for the right words, " -- sat there. Like a log. Like a big... sitting log."
"It seems I have this rather unusual aversion to cracking open my skull because I was too busy running around like a panicked imbecile during an earthquake," the Master informed him, turning away and resettling. "Wouldn't want to give you an excuse to smother me any further with your pathetic attempts at ministration."
He silently, pointedly, banished the fact that he'd likely be drowning in his own phlegm if it weren't for any of that. In the past few days his cough had diminished to a mere trickle of expectorations every handful of hours, and the unpleasant rattling whenever he drew in a breath had gone.
"Oh. Sorry. Right. You're always right. And... slightly verbally abusive," he sighed deeply, resting his head back against the cold stone wall and reaching back, grimaced as he pulled a loose rock out from behind himself.
The Doctor stared out into nothing, feeling the earth moving still, twisting beneath them, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre." He faced the Master, suddenly saddened, before skipping the rock across the slick floor.
It fell to rest in front of them, rumbling softly.
The Master's voice emanated from his hunched, immobile form, slightly muffled by the blanket but still harshly incisive. "Oh, goody. More poetry. What's next? Flowers?"
The Doctor smiled broadly, focusing his attention from the rock, "You want some flowers, Master? Really, all you had to do is ask. I bet I know where I can get you some roses."
He smirked. Things were about to get much, much uglier. Which was a welcome respite. "Oh, I've had more than my fair share of that. Right here, in fact. How is she doing, by the way?"
His smile dissolved, dropping quickly into anger. "Don't talk about her," he narrowed his eyes, his voice sharp, but low. There was nothing else that needed to be said. Rose was a subject wholly off limits to him.
The Doctor watched him a beat, suddenly not so sure he said enough, wanting to make himself very very clear, "Do you understand?"
Cause you and I... we're going to have a problem if you don't.
The Master full-out grinned to himself, although his tone was petulant. "Come on. It's not as if she's dead." And then he mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, "Which must be a welcome change for you."
The Doctor stared at him, unflinching, "I'm serious. You don't talk about her." He lowered his eyes through his wispy comment, leaning over to raise a finger in correction, "Enough." He stayed there for a moment in stony stillness, before lowering his hand slowly to settle back down.
The Doctor should have known by now that "enough" was not a word readily found in the Master's vocabulary. He had found a wound and he was steadily wriggling in.
"Tell you though, she's a real handful, that one. She'll go after anything with two pulses. I can see why you--"
The Doctor's breath quickened deep in his chest, and for a moment he sat there, listening, feeling himself puffing up in anger. It felt like an eternity wrapped up in half a second, and suddenly he was rising to his feet.
"You just don't know when to quit, do you!?" he was screaming, a tide of blood rushing to his cheeks.
The blanket. The blanket. Look at me.
He tore it from him, panting hard.
Look at me now.
The Master toppled backwards a little as the blanket was yanked from around his shoulders. He shot out a hand to stabilize himself, twisting slightly towards the Doctor, and blinked several times, stunned by the impact.
"Oh," as if something had just occurred to him. He looked sidelong at the Doctor, slyly. "Oh. You're the only one of us who... hasn't, aren't you? No wonder this is such a sensitive subject for you."
The Doctor smiled horribly, throwing the blanket to the ground; eyes searching around the room -- unsure what exactly he was supposed to do next.
And suddenly he bent down, grabbing the Master's shirt by the shoulders and pulling him in close, "Finished?"
The Master returned his smile, albeit a much lazier one. He showed no fear; in fact, he almost seemed to relax when the Doctor grabbed him.
"It's too bad; I was hoping we could compare notes."
His fingers wrapped around his shoulders, no longer gripping barely the material of his shirt, but tightening viciously into him.
"What are you talking about!? What are you talking about!?" he leaned his weight into him, pinning the Master's back to the wall.
His hearts were pounding and he no longer tried to temper them.
The Master closed his eyes, his own hearts pounding. The Doctor's grip, and the rocks digging into his back, were beginning to hurt, but he didn't care. He began to laugh, long and quite delightedly, at the Doctor's growing loss of control.
The Doctor forced him harder, cruelly into the wall, their faces nearly touching; clutching him tighter. For a fleeting moment he thought he could snap his bones.
He drew his voice back out, barely enough breath left to speak, "What? What? What's funny?! You think it's funny!? Is it -- is it -- is it!?"
The Master hissed a little at the pain, still sporting his curiously relieved smile. "Oh, Doctor," he breathed. "I knew you had it in you."
The Doctor breathed sharply against his words, dizzying himself in panic; he searched for a way back through blinding anger.
You're doing it. It's you.
He slid his fingers down the Master's arms, reaffirming his grip, "Stop it! Stop it!"
He grinned, all teeth. "Funny. That's what she said. Well. Half the time, anyway."
He was going too far, and keenly aware of it. But he wasn't about to back off now, surrender one inch of ground. He met the Doctor's eyes almost serenely.
Well, you wanted a monster.
He turned away, casting his eyes to the ground, but the misdirection wasn't enough, so he closed his eyes tight and breathed in deep one last time.
One last time, before reaching past the Master's neck and dragging his fingers through his hair, twisting it in his hand and pounding his head against the wall just once.
He stared at him through clenched teeth, finding himself kneeling down, pressing into the Master's legs.
His voice dry, spilling over with hatred, "Did you hurt her?"
Something white-hot mushroomed behind the Master's eyes as his head connected with the wall, and he inadvertently gasped, sucking in one hissing breath after another.
He sneered. "That's delving into personal business, Doctor. Though I can't expect I've done much more damage than you."
"I hate you. I really..." his voice tensed, unable to continue. Instead he found himself letting go; collapsing down off him. His eyes felt wet, and he choked the tears back down his throat.
The Master scuttled away from him, slightly nauseated by the tears. He should have felt some measure of victory-- wasn't this precisely what he'd wanted?-- but instead. Empty, empty, empty. Empty except for the screaming. The burning.
The ground rumbled slightly, a warning.
The rock the Doctor had laid down in front of them rocked back, pitching lightly only to founder again in its own private catastrophe.
The Doctor ran his hands over of his face, glimpsing out between his fingers to watch its prognostic performance.
He regarded hazily, that to his side the Master had moved away from him and it struck him suddenly that he didn't feel like being so close to him right now. He steadied himself to his feet, crushing the rock under his wake as he moved across the narrow cavern.
They didn't talk much, or really at all, over the next few days. The Master found it odd, and a little unsettling when compared to the Doctor's cheerful, inane babbling. Not that he missed the miserable, useless attempts at conversation, no. But the achingly palpable silence, punctuated by the periodic quakes, was an alarming contrast, and far from bearable under the circumstances. They should have been arguing what the quakes might mean, whether they should go somewhere else. What was coming. What he knew was coming.
Instead, the Doctor had begun spending several hours away at a time; usually his presence did not go far, and the Master suspected he was sitting directly above the grotto, moping, debating whether his oldest enemy had really defiled his perfect little companion. Sometimes he must have gone further, coming back with unasked for food or supplies and dumping the small bundles at the Master's feet wordlessly. The Master no longer even felt his eyes on him while he was feigning sleep, or just as often actually asleep.
Now when he dreamed of Gallifrey it was always burning.
He needed something to fill the silence up. He'd finally retrieved the book from the sack the Doctor had brought the first time. It was some sort of cheap pulp fiction crime thriller, and he'd already read it nine times, but it took his mind off things, in theory. The Master paged it open again, tried to shut out the sheer void of the Doctor's presence.
And that's when the screaming started for real.
The Doctor shot to his feet -- the gritty sediments he'd been tracing his finger along for what seemed like hours carelessly brushed aside. He dug a hand into his pocket retrieving his network device, while simultaneously nudging on his glasses. He studied it hurriedly, a feeling of frenzied chaos moving in beneath him. Something pulling apart, rocking slowly.
He was clearing his voice to speak, when a tiny crack in the ceiling split apart, veining down the wall behind him.
The Master dropped the book and clamped his hands to his ears, knowing it was futile even as he did it. Queen Alice's frantic screeching, the Cat's maniacal laughter, reverberated throughout the cave, throughout everything, throughout him, and he was going to get lost in it, cracks running through--
A flowerpot crashed mere inches from him and he stared at it, momentarily distracted, before the ground heaved again, throwing him on his side.
The ground shook down and above them, squeezing the walls tightly together under the strain of enormous pressure. The Doctor stuffed his glasses, and the PDA in his pocket in an effort to keep something together.
"Hold on! Cover your head! Just cover your head, I'm coming!" he stumbled his way towards the Master, his screaming lost over the sound of everything falling apart.
He was only just barely aware of the Doctor's orders, or his frantic staggering. He scrambled toward the center of the cave and curled up into a ball as feeble protection against the rocks, and telephones and... bananas and whatever else rained down on him. He might have been laughing, or sobbing, or screaming-- it was hard to tell which. He didn't even know which.
The tearing sound, the terrible tearing of an earth being slit open wide surged through him. The misery the Master put him in days ago slipped away, and the only thing that mattered now was reaching him, keeping him safe, keeping them both safe.
He braced himself hard with every step, stumbling over widening cracks spilling out across the cave floor. "I'm almost there!" he called out, assuring himself more than anything that could he make it. Debris rained down, pieces of the ceiling and -- who knows what else. The Doctor fell to his knees, feet away from the Master; reaching out his arm around his back and pulling him in close.
The Master reflexively clutched the Doctor's arm; it was ambiguous as to whether he meant to pull the arm away or prevent it being pulled away from him. Beyond that he remained immobile, mind reeling, head and hearts pounding viciously.
Where's your poetry now, you puny apes? This is the real thing. Was it what you expected? Because this is it. We're all going to die.
The Doctor wrapped his arms around him, trying to heave them both up together. Their exit, the iron gate vibrated hard, the lock and chain beating itself against the bars. He focused in on it, squinting through a smokey haze of dust; steadying them towards it.
We're going to make it. We're going to make it... just hold on.
He allowed himself to be pulled to standing, swaying on the uneven ground and leaning heavily into the Doctor. He snaked his arm around the Doctor's shoulders; they were simply in too much danger now, and he was too dazed, to resist help.
Perhaps they would make it to the gate, make it out. But then what?
Another dying world, this one with no escape.
The Doctor pushed the Master down into him, shielding his head best he could. When they reached the gate, he adjusted him enough to be able to reach into his jacket, and take out his screwdriver. There wasn't any time to be messing with keys. He fumbled briefly, tuning the sonic frequency down a level to avoid the gate being blown apart from the blast.
"Almost there. Then up the steps..." he trailed off, raising the device at the lock, just barely about to activate it when a blemish in the ceiling cracked open above them.
The Doctor felt himself letting go, the cold hard ground rising up to meet his cheek. He reached a trembling hand to his head, drawing it back wet with blood. He eyed it alarmed, before his vision refocused on the rock that hit him.
The Master stumbled as the Doctor slipped off him. He stood there for a moment, watching the Doctor on the ground, unable to speak, then knelt beside him slowly, as if trying to decide what to do next.
The Doctor stared up at him, his vision slowly dimming. He shut his eyes tight; hoping to reopen them, vision anew. Instead he slowly drifted away into the darkness.
The Master stared at the Doctor's unconscious face a few seconds longer, then, feeling slightly sick, went through his suit pockets, extracting everything into a small pile. The PDA, his glasses, an apple and a bit of wire, the gate key. The TARDIS key. He clutched the gate key tightly in his hand, transferred everything else but the apple and glasses to his own pockets. Then, on second thought, he took the apple as well.
He scouted around on the floor for the sonic screwdriver, which had skittered a fair distance away from the Doctor when he'd fallen and was now beyond the bars of the gate, past reach. The Master lurched to his feet and over to the gate. The key protested a bit against the lock tumblers, then turned with a triumphant shunk that could barely be heard over the din of clattering rocks and rumbling earth.
He looked back briefly at the Doctor as he pulled the gate open, hesitating. Then the ground shook again, spilling him forward, as if urging him out, and a bowling ball struck the ground pretty much where he'd been, rolling down nonchalantly into the shadows of the cave. He stood, scooped up the screwdriver with trembling fingers, and before he could think twice, stumbled back to the gate and swung it closed, latching it.
He half-walked, half-crawled up the grotto steps and into the evening air, inhaling a dizzyingly familiar combination of sulfur and putrescine that immediately made him double over. The sun was just setting, touching everything ablaze; in the distance, to the North, he could see smoke rising. He began to make his way slowly south and east; he'd need his things from Diagon Alley, for starters, and from there he'd have to work out a more long-term plan.
The Master had gone only a few steps when inhuman howls and shrieks pierced the air in some sort of hellish chorus, and from then on he mostly ran.
The Doctor laid quiet below the ground, while up above the ear-splitting cries of something long since forgotten drowned out the ripping of an earth being torn apart. The collapse of the grotto wasn't gradual, nor was it directed by one single deathly blow; it was more of a slow tugging of an earth that could no longer sustain the hollowed gap beneath it.
The bulk of the grotto was protected. Supported by man-made pillars standing guard -- as if eerily prepared for such unholy chaos. The weaker parts of the cave were collapsed entirely, both entrances, and the area around the fountain. Weak daylight poured through the cracks, and slowly died, as night filtered in.
Leaving the moon behind and the grotto in complete darkness.