Fic: There Was a Master in a Game (10/25)
Title: There Was a Master in a Game
Author: azriona
Characters: The Master mostly. This week’s guest star is Sally Sparrow.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: Everything. The majority takes place after The End of Time, but there are references to events through the end of Season Five.
Betas: runriggers and earlgreytea68
Summary: Gallifrey wasn’t entirely lost when it went back into the Time Lock; it just got stuck. The Master wants out. Isn’t he lucky that the Doctor left him a way?
Chapters One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four ~ Five ~ Six ~ Seven ~ Eight ~ Nine
Chapter Ten: Horizontal O
The Master was Not Happy.
Part of the reason he was Not Happy was because he couldn’t think of a better word for how Not Happy he was other than simply saying he was Not Happy. Not Happy did not adequately describe the depths of his Not Happiness.
Angry. Upset. Annoyed. Displeased. Irascible. Smoldering. Wrathful. Tempestuous. Infuriated.
Oo, that was a good one.
The Master was Infuriated. Clearly, not being the center square was a plot to keep him from figuring out the rest of the card, and therefore, unable to escape the Time Lock. That would have been just like the blithering, do-gooder idiot who’d put him there.
“Technically,” said Romana, still at the table, “you’re the one who jumped into the Time Lock. The Doctor didn’t have anything to do with it.”
The Master hadn’t realized he was speaking aloud. It didn’t seem like any of the other Time Lords, save Romana, had heard him. Of course, Romana was bad enough.
Worse, he knew she was right.
“I don’t think you looked like Astra at all,” he snapped, and was gone.
*
For a moment, Sally Sparrow thought the painting master, who had been nothing but confusing, might do something drastic after having asked his very odd questions about physicians and their conspicuous absence from Randolph’s house. Sally wasn’t sure why he was so insistent on a doctor, or even one specific doctor.
Except then - he was gone. Just like that, Sally blinked, and it was as though the man hadn’t been just standing there at all.
“Right, so,” said the man, and Sally spun around to see him standing behind her. “Just a few questions, then-“
“How did you get there?” Sally interrupted him. “You were standing by the window a moment ago.”
“And now I’m over here. Do try to keep up,” said the man. “Let’s play a word association game. I say a word, and you tell me what you know about it.”
“Who are you?”
“Never mind about that,” said the man. He pulled a roll of paper out from his back pocket, and studied it quickly. “Torchwood.”
“Fires,” said Sally immediately. “You’re not a painter.”
“Well-spotted. Stupid, annoying tin dogs.”
“Science fiction,” replied Sally. “If you’re not here to paint me, why are you here?”
“A very good question. Ray guns.”
Sally stilled. The man looked up from his papers, suddenly interested in her silence.
“Why are you asking me about ray guns?”
“Do you know something about ray guns?” asked the man hopefully.
“Nothing,” said Sally honestly. “But…you’re asking me about ray guns and tin dogs and no-one in 1869 talks about ray guns and tin dogs and you were saying before how I was out of my time and…are you a time traveler?”
The man stuffed his papers back in his pocket. “Well, it’s been lovely chatting with you. Have a good time destroying the country. I’m sure I’ll see you again.”
“Destroying the country?” echoed Sally. “What are you talking about?”
The man looked up. “You honestly don’t know?”
“Know what?” asked Sally blankly.
“Blondes, it’s always blondes, he always had such a thing for dumb blondes,” muttered the man.
“I’m not dumb,” snapped Sally crossly. “And I can hear you just fine.”
“Blondes and gingers,” he muttered, and then looked at her. “I hate Earth history, and I still know this bit. Don’t they teach you anything about your own world?”
Sally’s stare flickered between annoyance, confusion, and a growing anger. The man sighed.
“Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill. The man you’re so keen on marrying.”
“Yes?” Sally prompted him.
“Is Winston Churchill’s father. I assume you’ve heard of him.”
Sally swallowed. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh,” snapped the man. “Marry the man if you like, but two things are going to happen. Either you live happily ever after and the world ends when the Germans win - which yes, is what would happen, and I’m a Time Lord, plus I’m kind of into disaster scenarios, so I should know - or you’re just going to turn toes up in a few years as the universe rights itself so that little Winnie can be born after all.”
Sally sat down, clearly bowled over by this new information. “The world can’t end with the Germans,” she said. “If it did, I wouldn’t have been born in 1985.”
“You can be born in 1985 and die in 1869,” said the man impatiently. “The problem with you humans, you don’t understand time. You think it marches on in a nice little line, all neat and orderly, but it doesn’t. It’s a…a…a great big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-“
“Whimey stuff,” Sally finished with him.
They stared at each other.
“How’d you know that?” asked the man.
“I have no idea,” said Sally, her eyes wide. “I must have read it somewhere.”
“You couldn’t have,” said the man. “It’s not written anywhere.”
Sally rubbed her head. “This is weird.”
“You’re telling me,” said the man. “Are you sure you don’t know the Doctor?”
Sally looked up. “You said, ‘you humans’.”
“Pathetic lot,” grumbled the man, sliding down on the sofa and propping his feet up on the nearby table.
“You’re not human,” said Sally calmly.
“What’s that got to do with it?” asked the man sourly.
“Is that it? You’re stuck here on Earth, same as I’m stuck in Victorian England?”
“I’m not stuck on Earth. You’re stuck on Earth. I’m stuck in a Time Lock, and this happens to be Earth. Which is utterly useless to me because I can’t leave until I figure out the card.” The man finished his grumbly tirade by tossing his sheath of papers onto the table, where they instantly curled back into a roll.
Sally reached out and spread them flat in her lap.
“Oh, please, do look at them,” groaned the man. “I’d so dearly love to have your input.”
“My name,” she said coolly, “is Sally. Not ‘first blonde chit’.”
“Congratulations.”
“You’re saying I’m part of your Time Lock?” asked Sally. “And this is the key to getting out? But - it’s a bingo card.”
“Yes, ta, I knew that,” snapped the Master. “Don’t you think I realize that I’ve been lurching from story to story trying to find my blasted way out of this bloody thing?”
“Clever,” mused Sally. “I mean, if you want to turn a bingo card into a trap. There’s no square that intersects with every other square. No matter where you entered the trap, you’d never be able to fill in every blank. And I assume without every blank filled-“
“I’m stuck,” said the Master glumly.
“Very clever.”
“Yes, you can stop complimenting him now,” snapped the Master. “Bloody know-it-all Doctor.”
“Not Doctor Johnson down the street.”
The Master didn’t dignify that with a response.
Sally studied the card again. “Haven’t gotten very far, have you?”
“And it’s wrong,” groaned the man, sliding further down the sofa. “Because I’m not the center square. You know who is? Linda.”
“That would be the second blonde chit?” asked Sally sweetly.
“She’s got five stories, and she doesn’t even know it,” said the Master. “All the power at her fingertips, and she’s wasting it by disabling ray guns and filling out applications and fixing chameleon circuits, apparently.”
“And you would do differently?”
“I would get out.”
“Exactly why you aren’t in the center square,” said Sally reasonably. “If you were, you’d have too much information at your disposal, and then you’d be sure to get out. Much better to make you one of these side squares, where you can’t do much damage.”
The man sat up so suddenly, Sally half wondered if he’d hit a spring. “Say that again?”
“Only that if it were me, and I was putting you in a trap, it’d make more sense to put you in the side, here - you’d have only two options, and you wouldn’t really learn anything about the rest of the chart.”
The Master grabbed the papers back from Sally so quickly, he nearly ripped them. “I have four stories. I know I have four stories.”
“Rather compassionate of the Doctor, wasn’t that?” asked Sally. “That’s giving you a bit of a chance, putting you in a corner.”
“I’ll have to thank him when I see him next,” said the Master. “Right before I punch his nose.”
Sally frowned. “Maybe I shouldn’t help you get out of the Time Lock.”
“You have no idea,” agreed the Master, before doing a double take. “Wait, what?”
“Help you,” said Sally. “On one condition.”
“I don’t do conditions,” said the Master quickly, before adding, “What is it?”
“Get me home,” said Sally firmly.
“And leave lover-boy behind?” asked the Master scathingly, before biting his tongue in order not to add anything at all.
“I don’t want to end the world,” said Sally. “And I hate the underwear.”
The Master would have answered - although he wasn’t sure what, exactly, since he didn’t do conditions and didn’t care if Sally ended the world or not and really didn’t care about her feelings on 19th century underwear in comparison to just about anything else there could be. He would have answered, except the door opened, and in walked a picture-postcard of Victorian England, complete with handlebar moustache and…..
“Bow tie?” asked the Master.
“Bow ties are quite the fashion, young man,” said Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill.
“No, not really,” said the Master. He turned to Sally. “Him? Really? Him?”
Sally inhaled sharply.
“I’ll agree just because no one deserves that fate,” said the Master.
“He made me the center of his universe,” said Sally carefully. “And then he got to know me.”
The Master grinned at her, and in a blink of an eye…
“Good heavens,” said Randolph. “Where did the man go?”
“I expect he’ll return,” said Sally.
“What was he carrying on about?”
“Oh,” said Sally. “Artistic things. I wouldn’t worry about them.”
*
The Master stared at the Time Lords, looking just enough triumphant. “I,” he announced, “have an ally.”
“I have an overcoat,” said one of the Time Lords.
“I have a cushion.”
“I have a monkey.”
“I have a bingo,” said Romana triumphantly, and there were congratulations all around.
The Master ignored them all.
Chapter Eleven
Author: azriona
Characters: The Master mostly. This week’s guest star is Sally Sparrow.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: Everything. The majority takes place after The End of Time, but there are references to events through the end of Season Five.
Betas: runriggers and earlgreytea68
Summary: Gallifrey wasn’t entirely lost when it went back into the Time Lock; it just got stuck. The Master wants out. Isn’t he lucky that the Doctor left him a way?
Chapters One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four ~ Five ~ Six ~ Seven ~ Eight ~ Nine
Chapter Ten: Horizontal O
The Master was Not Happy.
Part of the reason he was Not Happy was because he couldn’t think of a better word for how Not Happy he was other than simply saying he was Not Happy. Not Happy did not adequately describe the depths of his Not Happiness.
Angry. Upset. Annoyed. Displeased. Irascible. Smoldering. Wrathful. Tempestuous. Infuriated.
Oo, that was a good one.
The Master was Infuriated. Clearly, not being the center square was a plot to keep him from figuring out the rest of the card, and therefore, unable to escape the Time Lock. That would have been just like the blithering, do-gooder idiot who’d put him there.
“Technically,” said Romana, still at the table, “you’re the one who jumped into the Time Lock. The Doctor didn’t have anything to do with it.”
The Master hadn’t realized he was speaking aloud. It didn’t seem like any of the other Time Lords, save Romana, had heard him. Of course, Romana was bad enough.
Worse, he knew she was right.
“I don’t think you looked like Astra at all,” he snapped, and was gone.
*
For a moment, Sally Sparrow thought the painting master, who had been nothing but confusing, might do something drastic after having asked his very odd questions about physicians and their conspicuous absence from Randolph’s house. Sally wasn’t sure why he was so insistent on a doctor, or even one specific doctor.
Except then - he was gone. Just like that, Sally blinked, and it was as though the man hadn’t been just standing there at all.
“Right, so,” said the man, and Sally spun around to see him standing behind her. “Just a few questions, then-“
“How did you get there?” Sally interrupted him. “You were standing by the window a moment ago.”
“And now I’m over here. Do try to keep up,” said the man. “Let’s play a word association game. I say a word, and you tell me what you know about it.”
“Who are you?”
“Never mind about that,” said the man. He pulled a roll of paper out from his back pocket, and studied it quickly. “Torchwood.”
“Fires,” said Sally immediately. “You’re not a painter.”
“Well-spotted. Stupid, annoying tin dogs.”
“Science fiction,” replied Sally. “If you’re not here to paint me, why are you here?”
“A very good question. Ray guns.”
Sally stilled. The man looked up from his papers, suddenly interested in her silence.
“Why are you asking me about ray guns?”
“Do you know something about ray guns?” asked the man hopefully.
“Nothing,” said Sally honestly. “But…you’re asking me about ray guns and tin dogs and no-one in 1869 talks about ray guns and tin dogs and you were saying before how I was out of my time and…are you a time traveler?”
The man stuffed his papers back in his pocket. “Well, it’s been lovely chatting with you. Have a good time destroying the country. I’m sure I’ll see you again.”
“Destroying the country?” echoed Sally. “What are you talking about?”
The man looked up. “You honestly don’t know?”
“Know what?” asked Sally blankly.
“Blondes, it’s always blondes, he always had such a thing for dumb blondes,” muttered the man.
“I’m not dumb,” snapped Sally crossly. “And I can hear you just fine.”
“Blondes and gingers,” he muttered, and then looked at her. “I hate Earth history, and I still know this bit. Don’t they teach you anything about your own world?”
Sally’s stare flickered between annoyance, confusion, and a growing anger. The man sighed.
“Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill. The man you’re so keen on marrying.”
“Yes?” Sally prompted him.
“Is Winston Churchill’s father. I assume you’ve heard of him.”
Sally swallowed. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh,” snapped the man. “Marry the man if you like, but two things are going to happen. Either you live happily ever after and the world ends when the Germans win - which yes, is what would happen, and I’m a Time Lord, plus I’m kind of into disaster scenarios, so I should know - or you’re just going to turn toes up in a few years as the universe rights itself so that little Winnie can be born after all.”
Sally sat down, clearly bowled over by this new information. “The world can’t end with the Germans,” she said. “If it did, I wouldn’t have been born in 1985.”
“You can be born in 1985 and die in 1869,” said the man impatiently. “The problem with you humans, you don’t understand time. You think it marches on in a nice little line, all neat and orderly, but it doesn’t. It’s a…a…a great big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-“
“Whimey stuff,” Sally finished with him.
They stared at each other.
“How’d you know that?” asked the man.
“I have no idea,” said Sally, her eyes wide. “I must have read it somewhere.”
“You couldn’t have,” said the man. “It’s not written anywhere.”
Sally rubbed her head. “This is weird.”
“You’re telling me,” said the man. “Are you sure you don’t know the Doctor?”
Sally looked up. “You said, ‘you humans’.”
“Pathetic lot,” grumbled the man, sliding down on the sofa and propping his feet up on the nearby table.
“You’re not human,” said Sally calmly.
“What’s that got to do with it?” asked the man sourly.
“Is that it? You’re stuck here on Earth, same as I’m stuck in Victorian England?”
“I’m not stuck on Earth. You’re stuck on Earth. I’m stuck in a Time Lock, and this happens to be Earth. Which is utterly useless to me because I can’t leave until I figure out the card.” The man finished his grumbly tirade by tossing his sheath of papers onto the table, where they instantly curled back into a roll.
Sally reached out and spread them flat in her lap.
“Oh, please, do look at them,” groaned the man. “I’d so dearly love to have your input.”
“My name,” she said coolly, “is Sally. Not ‘first blonde chit’.”
“Congratulations.”
“You’re saying I’m part of your Time Lock?” asked Sally. “And this is the key to getting out? But - it’s a bingo card.”
“Yes, ta, I knew that,” snapped the Master. “Don’t you think I realize that I’ve been lurching from story to story trying to find my blasted way out of this bloody thing?”
“Clever,” mused Sally. “I mean, if you want to turn a bingo card into a trap. There’s no square that intersects with every other square. No matter where you entered the trap, you’d never be able to fill in every blank. And I assume without every blank filled-“
“I’m stuck,” said the Master glumly.
“Very clever.”
“Yes, you can stop complimenting him now,” snapped the Master. “Bloody know-it-all Doctor.”
“Not Doctor Johnson down the street.”
The Master didn’t dignify that with a response.
Sally studied the card again. “Haven’t gotten very far, have you?”
“And it’s wrong,” groaned the man, sliding further down the sofa. “Because I’m not the center square. You know who is? Linda.”
“That would be the second blonde chit?” asked Sally sweetly.
“She’s got five stories, and she doesn’t even know it,” said the Master. “All the power at her fingertips, and she’s wasting it by disabling ray guns and filling out applications and fixing chameleon circuits, apparently.”
“And you would do differently?”
“I would get out.”
“Exactly why you aren’t in the center square,” said Sally reasonably. “If you were, you’d have too much information at your disposal, and then you’d be sure to get out. Much better to make you one of these side squares, where you can’t do much damage.”
The man sat up so suddenly, Sally half wondered if he’d hit a spring. “Say that again?”
“Only that if it were me, and I was putting you in a trap, it’d make more sense to put you in the side, here - you’d have only two options, and you wouldn’t really learn anything about the rest of the chart.”
The Master grabbed the papers back from Sally so quickly, he nearly ripped them. “I have four stories. I know I have four stories.”
“Rather compassionate of the Doctor, wasn’t that?” asked Sally. “That’s giving you a bit of a chance, putting you in a corner.”
“I’ll have to thank him when I see him next,” said the Master. “Right before I punch his nose.”
Sally frowned. “Maybe I shouldn’t help you get out of the Time Lock.”
“You have no idea,” agreed the Master, before doing a double take. “Wait, what?”
“Help you,” said Sally. “On one condition.”
“I don’t do conditions,” said the Master quickly, before adding, “What is it?”
“Get me home,” said Sally firmly.
“And leave lover-boy behind?” asked the Master scathingly, before biting his tongue in order not to add anything at all.
“I don’t want to end the world,” said Sally. “And I hate the underwear.”
The Master would have answered - although he wasn’t sure what, exactly, since he didn’t do conditions and didn’t care if Sally ended the world or not and really didn’t care about her feelings on 19th century underwear in comparison to just about anything else there could be. He would have answered, except the door opened, and in walked a picture-postcard of Victorian England, complete with handlebar moustache and…..
“Bow tie?” asked the Master.
“Bow ties are quite the fashion, young man,” said Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill.
“No, not really,” said the Master. He turned to Sally. “Him? Really? Him?”
Sally inhaled sharply.
“I’ll agree just because no one deserves that fate,” said the Master.
“He made me the center of his universe,” said Sally carefully. “And then he got to know me.”
The Master grinned at her, and in a blink of an eye…
“Good heavens,” said Randolph. “Where did the man go?”
“I expect he’ll return,” said Sally.
“What was he carrying on about?”
“Oh,” said Sally. “Artistic things. I wouldn’t worry about them.”
*
The Master stared at the Time Lords, looking just enough triumphant. “I,” he announced, “have an ally.”
“I have an overcoat,” said one of the Time Lords.
“I have a cushion.”
“I have a monkey.”
“I have a bingo,” said Romana triumphantly, and there were congratulations all around.
The Master ignored them all.
Chapter Eleven