DW fic: Red Rising
Title: Red Rising
Characters/Pairings: Eleven/Cumberbatch!Master
Spoilers: up to A Good Man Goes To War
Rating: PG-13 (for now)
Warnings: offscreen character death, some classic series knowledge is assumed
Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to Stephen Moffat, Russel T. Davies, and the BBC
Summary: The Master's back with a new body and a deafening silence in his head. The Doctor offers to let him travel with him under close supervision, but their choice of destination proves to mean trouble for the Master's new incarnation.
A/N: In case you didn't know, there's an internet campaign (originating on Tumblr) to get Benedict Cumberbatch to play Eleven's Master. Also, I chose to acknowledge the tragic deaths of Nicholas Courtney and Elisabeth Sladen in the beginning of this story. It doesn't really connect to the plot, but I felt like it deserved to be mentioned.
Ladies and gentlemen and variations thereupon, I present to you your new lord and master:
The Doctor walked slowly around the console, flicking switches that didn’t need to be flicked, turning knobs that didn’t need to be turned. He was lonely again. About a week ago, he had dropped off Amy, Rory, and Melody at their flat. The Ponds, of course, wanted their daughter to be safe and traveling with him was anything but. He would check in on them every once and a while. He’d learned his lesson about leaving companions behind for good. Don’t do it if you don’t have to. Keep in touch. He had in a recent trip to Earth, learned both of Alistair’s death and of Sarah Jane’s. He had been devastated. His first instinct was to flee, but he fought it and attended their funerals. Luke had been nearly inconsolable. He had begged the Doctor to let him come with him. The Doctor had been so tempted to say yes. Luke would make a brilliant companion. But he knew that wasn’t what Sarah had wanted for him. He’d told Luke to finish school and that he would come back when Luke was twenty. If he still wanted to come, he would take him. So, here he was, between companions. He’d never been alone in this incarnation. He found he didn’t wallow in it like in his last, but he still hated it as much as he ever had. Suddenly the TARDIS jolted. “What was that for?” he asked her. Then she went full-on out of control. He smiled as he raced around the console. “Now that’s more like it!” he steadied himself as best he could and patted the consol. “You always know how to cheer me up, old girl.”
His ‘old girl’ careened out of the vortex and into open space, then suddenly stopped, floating.
“Where are we?” The Doctor checked the scanners. Debris was floating outside. He looked at their location. “Kasterburous.” He glared up at the TARDIS. “You brought me here?! I’m in a black mood and you bring me to the ruins of Gallifrey?! Ever heard of kicking a man when he’s down?!”
As if on cue there was a deafening blast outside. The Doctor checked the scanners again. But no, that was impossible. It was as if… “The time lock’s opening!” He started frantically trying to close it again, but then he realized it had stopped on it’s own. It was just a small crack. Small enough to fix with the sonic screwdriver. He walked over to the doors, opened them and aimed the sonic at the crack. He shivered at the eerie similarity to the cracks in the universe. Then, suddenly a body flew out of the crack. The Doctor activated the sonic and closed the time lock just before the body landed on top of him. He sat up and gently lay the body of the man on the ramp. The man he would know anywhere, in any regeneration. He closed the TARDIS doors and cradled the Master in his arms. He was wearing the same filthy clothes he was the last time he saw him, but he had regenerated. A thin pale body with a mop of curly red hair. There was a hole in his jumper covered in blood. A stab wound. Clearly the cause of regeneration. It had probably happened only moments ago. The Doctor touched his face. Suddenly he jerked awake, screaming.
“Shhh, shhh,” The Doctor soothed. “It’s me. I’m here. Calm down, Master. It’s okay.”
The screaming quieted and the Master stared at him for a moment. “Doctor?” he said in a rich soft voice.
“What happened?”
“Doctor, I can’t hear them anymore.”
“What?”
“The drums, the beat, I can’t hear it!” he whimpered. “I can’t hear anything! The silence! It might be worse than the drums! It’s deafening!”
He clung to the Doctor and cried. The Doctor was astonished. He hadn’t done that since they were small children. He soothed him and stroked his hair. When the whimpering died down, the Doctor helped the Master up and lead him to a white room.
“What’s this?” asked the Master. “Is this the zero room?”
“Yes, I’m going to leave you alone in here for a little while.”
“Alone? Why? Why here?”
“Think of it like a sensory depravation tank. You need to be alone with your own thoughts for a while.”
“That’s the last thing I need!”
“Your whole life the sound of those drums have been driving you, obstructing your thoughts. You need to learn how to think without them. Find you’re your true self.”
“Don’t give me that zen guru crap! I know who I am! I know exactly who I am!”
“Do you? You told me you didn’t know what you’d be without that sound. Was that wrong? Do you know? Can you even think straight?”
The Master grabbed his hair and pulled at it. Then, distracted for a moment from the madness of his newfound sanity, he ran his fingers through it. “My hair is curly.”
The Doctor smiled. “Yes. Ginger too. I’m very jealous.”
“Blegh. Ginger? I probably look like that prat of yours.”
“Prat?”
“Trillbie, or Toblorone, or whatever.”
“Turlogh? Turlogh was not a p- well, he was a bit, yeah. You don’t look like him though. The only similarities are that you’re ginger, you’re rude, and you're very handsome.”
“Really, Doctor. Coming on to me in this state. You’d be taking advantage.” He smiled.
“I’m not-- Well, anyway. At least you’re acting like yourself again.”
The Master’s smile faded. “I don’t feel like myself.”
“Then find a new self! When I thought I’d lost myself, that’s when I found my true self. I went to see the hermit that lived behind my house--”
“If I have to hear the ‘daisiest daisy’ story again, I will kill you with my bare hands!”
The Doctor laughed. “There’s my Master. Now, I’m going to turn off the gravity. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
The Master watched the Doctor leave. Alone with his thoughts again. But they didn’t feel like HIS thoughts. With the drums he was driven. He had purpose. He had plans. Now he was just thinking, and some of these thoughts didn’t sound much like him. Doubt and fear and philosophy, sneaking in from the back of his mind. Things that must have been drowned out by the drums. He didn’t like it. He floated through the room, trying to suppress these errant thoughts. Trying to train his mind to think straight without the drive of the drums. He told himself it would be easy, and there came one of those strains of doubt. He thought he was lying.
The Doctor returned after three hours, an hour sooner than he originally intended. He was too worried about the Master. He pressed the intercom. “I’m going to turn on the gravity. Brace yourself.”
He flipped the switch and heard a thunk. He entered the room in time to see the Master curling up in the corner. “Are you alright? Did you hit your head?” he reached for the Master, but he slapped his hand away.
“No, I didn’t hit my head! Stop henpecking!” The Master glared at him for a long moment. Slowly, it turned into a gaze. “When did you regenerate?” he asked.
“Just after our last meeting.”
“Nice bowtie,” he said sarcastically.
“Bowties are cool,” he replied, confident as always. “What about you?” he asked gently. “How did you regenerate?”
“It was Susan,” said the Master. “I fought Rassilon back into the time lock. I gave nearly my last burst of energy and he started to regenerate, so I grabbed his staff and stabbed him through the left heart, then the right before he could. Susan screamed. She pulled the rod out of Rassilon, impaled me through the stomach and pushed me back through the crack in the time lock just before it closed. Why was she working for him? Why did she defend him like that, sweet little Susan?”
The Doctor, whose hearts had sunk at the mention of her name, took a moment to answer. He thought back on the sight of her face in Downing Street as he hesitated to shoot Rassilon. “He brainwashed her. I opposed him, so he needed a weapon to use against me. He went back to Earth years after the Daleks had left. Years after I left. He killed her husband, but made her think it was a band of rebels. He convinced her that I left her in that post-apocalyptic world because I didn’t love her. He told her she could help him make Gallifrey great again by serving as a seer in his cabinet. He told her he could help her develop her mental powers. He corrupted her and turned her against me.”
“So you just let her burn with the rest of them?” said the Master with an almost delightful venom in his voice. “Your own granddaughter? Even I’m not that cold.”
“I didn’t LET her burn!” shouted the Doctor. “I tried to get her out,” he continued helplessly. “I did. …But she wouldn’t leave. So I tried to take her by force, but she held a stazer to me. She said that if I didn’t leave immediately then she would shoot….and I looked in her eyes…and I believed her. So I ran. I wasn’t supposed to survive the destruction of Gallifrey. I didn’t want to. …but the TARDIS saved me.”
The Doctor cried. It was the Master’s turn to hold him. But he didn’t. He just watched him suffer…and for once, he didn’t take any pleasure in it.
“Come on,” said the Doctor after he had collected himself. “Let’s get you out of those filthy clothes.”
The Master sifted through the racks of the wardrobe. The Doctor was helping him, trying to save him again. He hated him for it. No matter what he did, how hard he pushed, the Doctor could never hate him. The pitiful sap. Even worse, he would never come round to the Master’s way of thinking. He longed to rule the universe side by side with the Doctor. He was the only one he would ever be willing to share that honor with. He wanted to see the pure and perfect Doctor corrupted. The very idea turned him on. He knew, though, that the Doctor would never turn into the man he wanted him to be. Still, the memory of the Valyard gave him hope.
The Doctor fiddled in the console room on nothing in particular. His mind was on the Master. With the signal from Rassilon cut off, there were no more drums in his head. The Doctor knew that that didn’t make him sane, but then, the Doctor wasn’t completely sane himself. Would he change now? There was some hope. With his mind free to think properly, the way he thought might change. Of course, he knew the Master would fight him every step of the way, but he could change. Couldn’t he? Of course the Doctor knew he would never be the man he wanted him to be, but he could be a better man. Still, though; best to keep him under lock and key until then.
“Well?”
The Doctor looked up to see the Master standing at the top of the stairs in a suit.
“Meh,” he lied. The Master looked very dashing.
“What?”
“It’s kind of the same thing you wore last time.”
“No it’s not. This tie is electric blue.” he straightened it. “Besides, I’ve always made much better fashion choices than you.”
The Doctor snorted. “Perpetual black, flash capes, goatees.”
“Magician’s fancy dress, giant scarves, celery”
“Hey, I pulled all of those off!”
“Clown suit.”
“Point taken. So,” he changed the subject, “Where do you want to go?”
The Master was dumbstruck for a moment. “You’re actually letting me go?”
The Doctor laughed. “No, of course not! I’m going to be your chaperone.”
It was the Master’s turn to laugh. “You know I’m not going to cooperate.”
“Oh, Master,” the Doctor wandered over to him. “Master, Master, Master…” he took his hand and slapped a thin cuff on his wrist. “You don’t have much choice.”
The Master looked at the cuff in surprise.
“Unpickable, because it has no lock,” said the Doctor with a smile. “Once it seals itself it’s seamless and unbreakable. It reacts to my sonic screwdriver.” he held it up. “I can always keep track of you and if you wander too far or do something I don’t approve of…” He activated it.
“Aaaah!”
“Three-thousand volts!”
“Why is it always bondage with us?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t like it. Besides, I promise not to abuse my power. So, “ the Doctor went back to the controls. “I ask again. Where do you want to go?”
The Master thought. “Alfaxa,” he said.
“Very well, Alfaxa it is!” the Doctor pulled the leaver and they were off. To see the universe or to rule it had not been agreed upon yet.
Chapter 2
Characters/Pairings: Eleven/Cumberbatch!Master
Spoilers: up to A Good Man Goes To War
Rating: PG-13 (for now)
Warnings: offscreen character death, some classic series knowledge is assumed
Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to Stephen Moffat, Russel T. Davies, and the BBC
Summary: The Master's back with a new body and a deafening silence in his head. The Doctor offers to let him travel with him under close supervision, but their choice of destination proves to mean trouble for the Master's new incarnation.
A/N: In case you didn't know, there's an internet campaign (originating on Tumblr) to get Benedict Cumberbatch to play Eleven's Master. Also, I chose to acknowledge the tragic deaths of Nicholas Courtney and Elisabeth Sladen in the beginning of this story. It doesn't really connect to the plot, but I felt like it deserved to be mentioned.
Ladies and gentlemen and variations thereupon, I present to you your new lord and master:
The Doctor walked slowly around the console, flicking switches that didn’t need to be flicked, turning knobs that didn’t need to be turned. He was lonely again. About a week ago, he had dropped off Amy, Rory, and Melody at their flat. The Ponds, of course, wanted their daughter to be safe and traveling with him was anything but. He would check in on them every once and a while. He’d learned his lesson about leaving companions behind for good. Don’t do it if you don’t have to. Keep in touch. He had in a recent trip to Earth, learned both of Alistair’s death and of Sarah Jane’s. He had been devastated. His first instinct was to flee, but he fought it and attended their funerals. Luke had been nearly inconsolable. He had begged the Doctor to let him come with him. The Doctor had been so tempted to say yes. Luke would make a brilliant companion. But he knew that wasn’t what Sarah had wanted for him. He’d told Luke to finish school and that he would come back when Luke was twenty. If he still wanted to come, he would take him. So, here he was, between companions. He’d never been alone in this incarnation. He found he didn’t wallow in it like in his last, but he still hated it as much as he ever had. Suddenly the TARDIS jolted. “What was that for?” he asked her. Then she went full-on out of control. He smiled as he raced around the console. “Now that’s more like it!” he steadied himself as best he could and patted the consol. “You always know how to cheer me up, old girl.”
His ‘old girl’ careened out of the vortex and into open space, then suddenly stopped, floating.
“Where are we?” The Doctor checked the scanners. Debris was floating outside. He looked at their location. “Kasterburous.” He glared up at the TARDIS. “You brought me here?! I’m in a black mood and you bring me to the ruins of Gallifrey?! Ever heard of kicking a man when he’s down?!”
As if on cue there was a deafening blast outside. The Doctor checked the scanners again. But no, that was impossible. It was as if… “The time lock’s opening!” He started frantically trying to close it again, but then he realized it had stopped on it’s own. It was just a small crack. Small enough to fix with the sonic screwdriver. He walked over to the doors, opened them and aimed the sonic at the crack. He shivered at the eerie similarity to the cracks in the universe. Then, suddenly a body flew out of the crack. The Doctor activated the sonic and closed the time lock just before the body landed on top of him. He sat up and gently lay the body of the man on the ramp. The man he would know anywhere, in any regeneration. He closed the TARDIS doors and cradled the Master in his arms. He was wearing the same filthy clothes he was the last time he saw him, but he had regenerated. A thin pale body with a mop of curly red hair. There was a hole in his jumper covered in blood. A stab wound. Clearly the cause of regeneration. It had probably happened only moments ago. The Doctor touched his face. Suddenly he jerked awake, screaming.
“Shhh, shhh,” The Doctor soothed. “It’s me. I’m here. Calm down, Master. It’s okay.”
The screaming quieted and the Master stared at him for a moment. “Doctor?” he said in a rich soft voice.
“What happened?”
“Doctor, I can’t hear them anymore.”
“What?”
“The drums, the beat, I can’t hear it!” he whimpered. “I can’t hear anything! The silence! It might be worse than the drums! It’s deafening!”
He clung to the Doctor and cried. The Doctor was astonished. He hadn’t done that since they were small children. He soothed him and stroked his hair. When the whimpering died down, the Doctor helped the Master up and lead him to a white room.
“What’s this?” asked the Master. “Is this the zero room?”
“Yes, I’m going to leave you alone in here for a little while.”
“Alone? Why? Why here?”
“Think of it like a sensory depravation tank. You need to be alone with your own thoughts for a while.”
“That’s the last thing I need!”
“Your whole life the sound of those drums have been driving you, obstructing your thoughts. You need to learn how to think without them. Find you’re your true self.”
“Don’t give me that zen guru crap! I know who I am! I know exactly who I am!”
“Do you? You told me you didn’t know what you’d be without that sound. Was that wrong? Do you know? Can you even think straight?”
The Master grabbed his hair and pulled at it. Then, distracted for a moment from the madness of his newfound sanity, he ran his fingers through it. “My hair is curly.”
The Doctor smiled. “Yes. Ginger too. I’m very jealous.”
“Blegh. Ginger? I probably look like that prat of yours.”
“Prat?”
“Trillbie, or Toblorone, or whatever.”
“Turlogh? Turlogh was not a p- well, he was a bit, yeah. You don’t look like him though. The only similarities are that you’re ginger, you’re rude, and you're very handsome.”
“Really, Doctor. Coming on to me in this state. You’d be taking advantage.” He smiled.
“I’m not-- Well, anyway. At least you’re acting like yourself again.”
The Master’s smile faded. “I don’t feel like myself.”
“Then find a new self! When I thought I’d lost myself, that’s when I found my true self. I went to see the hermit that lived behind my house--”
“If I have to hear the ‘daisiest daisy’ story again, I will kill you with my bare hands!”
The Doctor laughed. “There’s my Master. Now, I’m going to turn off the gravity. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
The Master watched the Doctor leave. Alone with his thoughts again. But they didn’t feel like HIS thoughts. With the drums he was driven. He had purpose. He had plans. Now he was just thinking, and some of these thoughts didn’t sound much like him. Doubt and fear and philosophy, sneaking in from the back of his mind. Things that must have been drowned out by the drums. He didn’t like it. He floated through the room, trying to suppress these errant thoughts. Trying to train his mind to think straight without the drive of the drums. He told himself it would be easy, and there came one of those strains of doubt. He thought he was lying.
The Doctor returned after three hours, an hour sooner than he originally intended. He was too worried about the Master. He pressed the intercom. “I’m going to turn on the gravity. Brace yourself.”
He flipped the switch and heard a thunk. He entered the room in time to see the Master curling up in the corner. “Are you alright? Did you hit your head?” he reached for the Master, but he slapped his hand away.
“No, I didn’t hit my head! Stop henpecking!” The Master glared at him for a long moment. Slowly, it turned into a gaze. “When did you regenerate?” he asked.
“Just after our last meeting.”
“Nice bowtie,” he said sarcastically.
“Bowties are cool,” he replied, confident as always. “What about you?” he asked gently. “How did you regenerate?”
“It was Susan,” said the Master. “I fought Rassilon back into the time lock. I gave nearly my last burst of energy and he started to regenerate, so I grabbed his staff and stabbed him through the left heart, then the right before he could. Susan screamed. She pulled the rod out of Rassilon, impaled me through the stomach and pushed me back through the crack in the time lock just before it closed. Why was she working for him? Why did she defend him like that, sweet little Susan?”
The Doctor, whose hearts had sunk at the mention of her name, took a moment to answer. He thought back on the sight of her face in Downing Street as he hesitated to shoot Rassilon. “He brainwashed her. I opposed him, so he needed a weapon to use against me. He went back to Earth years after the Daleks had left. Years after I left. He killed her husband, but made her think it was a band of rebels. He convinced her that I left her in that post-apocalyptic world because I didn’t love her. He told her she could help him make Gallifrey great again by serving as a seer in his cabinet. He told her he could help her develop her mental powers. He corrupted her and turned her against me.”
“So you just let her burn with the rest of them?” said the Master with an almost delightful venom in his voice. “Your own granddaughter? Even I’m not that cold.”
“I didn’t LET her burn!” shouted the Doctor. “I tried to get her out,” he continued helplessly. “I did. …But she wouldn’t leave. So I tried to take her by force, but she held a stazer to me. She said that if I didn’t leave immediately then she would shoot….and I looked in her eyes…and I believed her. So I ran. I wasn’t supposed to survive the destruction of Gallifrey. I didn’t want to. …but the TARDIS saved me.”
The Doctor cried. It was the Master’s turn to hold him. But he didn’t. He just watched him suffer…and for once, he didn’t take any pleasure in it.
“Come on,” said the Doctor after he had collected himself. “Let’s get you out of those filthy clothes.”
The Master sifted through the racks of the wardrobe. The Doctor was helping him, trying to save him again. He hated him for it. No matter what he did, how hard he pushed, the Doctor could never hate him. The pitiful sap. Even worse, he would never come round to the Master’s way of thinking. He longed to rule the universe side by side with the Doctor. He was the only one he would ever be willing to share that honor with. He wanted to see the pure and perfect Doctor corrupted. The very idea turned him on. He knew, though, that the Doctor would never turn into the man he wanted him to be. Still, the memory of the Valyard gave him hope.
The Doctor fiddled in the console room on nothing in particular. His mind was on the Master. With the signal from Rassilon cut off, there were no more drums in his head. The Doctor knew that that didn’t make him sane, but then, the Doctor wasn’t completely sane himself. Would he change now? There was some hope. With his mind free to think properly, the way he thought might change. Of course, he knew the Master would fight him every step of the way, but he could change. Couldn’t he? Of course the Doctor knew he would never be the man he wanted him to be, but he could be a better man. Still, though; best to keep him under lock and key until then.
“Well?”
The Doctor looked up to see the Master standing at the top of the stairs in a suit.
“Meh,” he lied. The Master looked very dashing.
“What?”
“It’s kind of the same thing you wore last time.”
“No it’s not. This tie is electric blue.” he straightened it. “Besides, I’ve always made much better fashion choices than you.”
The Doctor snorted. “Perpetual black, flash capes, goatees.”
“Magician’s fancy dress, giant scarves, celery”
“Hey, I pulled all of those off!”
“Clown suit.”
“Point taken. So,” he changed the subject, “Where do you want to go?”
The Master was dumbstruck for a moment. “You’re actually letting me go?”
The Doctor laughed. “No, of course not! I’m going to be your chaperone.”
It was the Master’s turn to laugh. “You know I’m not going to cooperate.”
“Oh, Master,” the Doctor wandered over to him. “Master, Master, Master…” he took his hand and slapped a thin cuff on his wrist. “You don’t have much choice.”
The Master looked at the cuff in surprise.
“Unpickable, because it has no lock,” said the Doctor with a smile. “Once it seals itself it’s seamless and unbreakable. It reacts to my sonic screwdriver.” he held it up. “I can always keep track of you and if you wander too far or do something I don’t approve of…” He activated it.
“Aaaah!”
“Three-thousand volts!”
“Why is it always bondage with us?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t like it. Besides, I promise not to abuse my power. So, “ the Doctor went back to the controls. “I ask again. Where do you want to go?”
The Master thought. “Alfaxa,” he said.
“Very well, Alfaxa it is!” the Doctor pulled the leaver and they were off. To see the universe or to rule it had not been agreed upon yet.
Chapter 2