Metric
by RD.
PG-13, Master/Doctor. AU for Last of the Time Lords. A bit...weird.



Of course he can't take the Master outside the TARDIS, because that would be like setting a starving dog loose on a pack of sheep. Instead, the Doctor keeps him muzzled, suspended in the time vortex, and watches the Master slowly lose his mind.

* * *

In the beginning, they don't see much of each other during the day – or what passes for day here, an arbitrary number of hours before the Doctor decides he should sleep. The Master has carved out his own place in the TARDIS through force of will, where the Doctor cannot go without permission. He's seen it once or twice, a vast chamber, a religious place with tools from all the ages scattered about: Victorian bunsen burners and the insides of a car garage workshop, spears and axes, a Galilaean telescope, a scythe from the crop fields of Neptune, oak barrels, and a wall filled with Oriental swords. But it moves around the TARDIS like a fickle wind, and the Doctor often finds himself knocking on the door of a broom cupboard instead of the Master's room.

Sometimes, though, the Master will venture out of his sanctuary. The Doctor is desperately civil; offers him tea and food, follows him down the corridors reminiscing over-fondly about the Academy in the hope of a reply, sometimes reaching out to touch the Master's back and remind them both he's still there.

The Master doesn't say a word for the first three weeks. He taps out morse code messages on the walls of the ship, digs out the Doctor's old gramophone and hums along to Tchaikovsky, but it's like he's forgotten how to speak. The Doctor wanted him for a companion, but all he's got is a blank stare.

"I know you're trying to make me hate you," the Doctor says, jogging along behind him as the Master paces the wardrobe room. "But it doesn't have to be like this anymore, not now that's it just us. Let's let bygones be?" It sounds pathetic even to his ears, and he winces as he says it. The Master ignores him, picks a familiar cricketer's jumper off a clothes rack and buries his face in it, inhaling. He kneels on the floor like a child with an old blanket, and doesn't move for thirty-seven minutes. Eventually, the Doctor gets bored and leaves him alone.

When he does talk, at last, he doesn't stop. A torrent of words that mean little or nothing gush from his dry lips, as though he's trying another tactic. He pauses only to eat and drink, asks questions and doesn't wait for answers, and when he cannot speak anymore, he looks to the Doctor with pleading eyes to fill the chasm of silence. His hands twitch, shakily.

The Doctor tries to understand, he really does. But he never was much good at accommodating, even with his own people. It's why he left them. He knows he can't do anything about the voices inside the Master's head, so he doesn’t even try. He distracts, as best he can, but the time vortex has a voice that's older and louder than either of theirs.

The Master breaks down, one day, when he can't take it anymore. His eyes are red and his knuckles raw where he's scraped them along the walls of the TARDIS. He can't ignore the noise, nor block it out with sound or pain, so instead he grabs the Doctor's shirt, falls to his knees and whispers over and over in that harried voice, "The drums, Doctor, make them stop." The Doctor strokes his hair and back and tells him the war is over. He nudges the TARDIS outside the vortex, landing on an empty planet, its name and people long since devoured by its angry sun. All that remains is ash and death. The Doctor puts two deckchairs on a cliff, left of where the TARDIS is parked, makes a thermos of tea, and sits with his hand gently rubbing the Master's knee until he's calm again.

"Better?" he asks, after a time.

"No," the Master says bluntly, but his eyes aren't quite a maelstrom anymore. "You should have let me die," he goes on. "It would've been more dignified than this."

"You're not my prisoner," the Doctor tells him, not for the first time.

"No," is the wry reply. "But slavery's slavery, whoever you're bowing to." He taps the side of his head, then stops himself, as that familiar beat starts to emerge. The Master gets up and offers the Doctor his hand, and they waltz together, in that desert of sand and bones, dancing to a rhythm only the Master can hear. He doesn't try to run, but cannot quite step back into the TARDIS of his own free will, and the Doctor has to guide him gently, pushing against the small of his back.

* * *

The TARDIS becomes complacent after so long in the void. Every so often, the lights will flicker and fade to blackness, like a great eye shutting in much-needed slumber. The Doctor sits by the console and pats her gently, rousing her with his voice, until the familiar hum of electricity whirrs back into life. It's a cruel state of insomnia to keep her in, but what else can he do?

Once, half way through a newspaper crossword from 1953, the lights go down as usual. The Doctor doesn't need to grope his way through the darkness to find his way, because he knows the place better than he knows himself. He sits with his back against the console and says, "Come on, old girl."

When light beams back into the ship, the Master is standing in front of him, his sleeves rolled up, pointing the tip of a katana at his neck. The sword is in a state of disrepair – hasn't been used for a long time, although it was clearly once prolific – but that just makes it look like it would hurt more. The Master looks steadier than he has in a long time, his arms straight and his face disconcertingly calm. He doesn't look like he could kill. But then, the Doctor never thought he could seduce, or dance, or fathom politics either.

"Just – put it down," the Doctor says quietly.

"You took everything away from me," the Master says, accusing. It sounds almost like an epiphany, like he's just realised that this is it now: just him and the Doctor and the sound of the drums, for all eternity.

"I guess that makes us even," the Doctor replies, warily, shifting up onto his haunches. The tip of the katana digs into his neck. "You know there's no point in killing me."

"It would be terribly satisfying." The Master smiles like a boy and licks the corner of his top lip. They stay at an impasse for a long, long time, listening to the whispers of each other's breath and the throb of the TARDIS engine. The Master curves the sword around, running the flat of it along the Doctor's cheek and jaw, tracing his outline in a way that's oddly sensual. And then he seems to tire of the stalemate, glowers, and thrusts the blade straight into the metal body of the TARDIS, just left of the Doctor's ear.

"Your moral high ground takes the fun out of everything," the Master says dispassionately. He walks away.

The Doctor tends to his ship like a parent whose child has skinned their knee, with gentle hands and gentler kisses.

* * *

The Master, like a tame dog, needs to be given space to breathe. His mind is already cracked and broken, so the Doctor throws intellectual stimulation at him, in the hope it will fix something. He's always needed to help, has the Doctor. He lets the Master loose in his library, doesn't mind when he annotates his century-old books, and tidies up after him, shelving everything alphabetically, by author. He invites the Master to help him fix the TARDIS, when he goes about the ship on his routine check-ups (because she is old and senile, and needs a hand every now and then). Mostly, the Master watches over his shoulder silently until he decides the Doctor is doing it all wrong, then elbows him out of the way and takes over. The Doctor passes him tools as he barks out their names, and smiles. He never suspects any ulterior motives.

They play chess a lot.

It's times like these the Doctor forgets how often the Master has tried to kill him; how much pain he has caused, how many peoples he has destroyed, and how warped his view of the universe is. They feel like old school friends who haven't seen each other for too long, matched wit for wit and sharing old memories.

The Doctor moves a pawn forward, watching the Master watching his hands. "It's not so bad here, is it?"

There is a very long silence. The Master knots his fingers tightly. "Don't presume, Doctor."

"All I meant is, you were the one kicking up a fuss when we started travelling together. But it's all right now, eh? Now that it's just the two of us, no paradoxes or spacio-temporal rifts or laser screwdrivers." That had been confiscated the moment the Master stepped aboard. The Master's knuckles are going very white, and his eyes are very dark, and the Doctor knows he should stop now, but he's on a roll. "I really like having you here, y'know. A bit of company. Doesn't feel so lonely now."

"I'm so glad for you," the Master spits, still not looking up. There is a stillness in the air, a worrying pause, like the inhalation before a scream. And then, the Master snaps. He stands up swiftly, knocking the chess table to the floor with the back of his hand. The ivory pieces slip through the TARDIS' grated floor like raindrops. The Master towers, seeming suddenly very tall, and grabs the Doctor's lapels, pushing their faces too close together. "You think you know so much, Doctor. You think you know me. You think you know fire and death and love. You don't know anything." He taps the side of the Doctor's head in that incessant rhythm, hard enough to hurt and getting steadily harder. "That's what it's like, Doctor. Every second of every hour of every day. And you think it's not so bad."

He kicks the Doctor's chair out from under him with his heel, and pins the Doctor against the wall by his neck. The Master slaps him, achingly hard, and again, and again. The side of the Doctor's face stings something awful, but he doesn't cower, and doesn't raise his arms. The Master fights, and he doesn't fight back. That gets to him most of all, and his eyes get wilder and his punches more cruel, until there are tears in both their eyes and the Master is screaming, "Fight me!"

The Doctor sits there, shuddering, and takes it all. It's the least he can do.

When the Master finally stops, sitting back on his knees, he wipes his forehead with his shirt sleeve and does not look in the Doctor's eyes. He gets up, stumbling a little, and retreats, like he always does.

The Doctor spits blood, picks up the empty chessboard and follows the Master down the labyrinth of corridors, to his private place. The Master leaves the door open for him, and they sit on the four-poster bed together in the darkness. The Master peels off the Doctor's shirt, soothes the bruises on his neck with a damp cloth, and says, "I would have won in four moves."

"Oh, I don't doubt it."

Neither of them apologises.

* * *

The Doctor takes him back to Earth, just for a day, to a cold, empty spot in the Scottish highlands, somewhere in the sixteenth century.

"Not everyone loves this place as much as you do," the Master says, pulling his jacket close in the biting wind.

They sit on the grass, half way up a hill, and the Doctor holds the Master's hand tightly all the while, to keep him in check. Whenever his grip loosens, the Master clutches at him again, pushing their palms together to keep out the cold and the frightening things neither of them can see, but both can feel.

"You know I can't let you go," the Doctor says, very seriously, meaning more than one thing.

"I know," the Master replies, and rests his head on the Doctor's shoulder. They stay there until it gets dark, and then they stay a while longer. At sunrise, they walk back to the TARDIS together, still holding hands.

* * *

He doesn't see the Master for about a week, and then one night, the Doctor wakes up to the Master kneeling over him, stark naked, his hand stroking the Doctor's cock. "We should work out our sexual tension," the Master says, matter-of-fact.

"Our what?" the Doctor starts, still waking up, but the Master's already there, already lifting up off the bed and positioning himself and sliding down, so far down onto the Doctor's erect cock. The Doctor breathes in sharply, clutching at air, and, finding the Master's knee, grabbing it with his fingernails. He wonders briefly if he wasn't paying attention when he was being seduced. Then he remembers the Master moaning his name down a phone line, and throwing him glances as he kissed his wife, and revelling in the touch of his skin, even when their roles were reversed. Their whole relationship has been foreplay.

The Master rides him and drips sweat onto his pale skin, and the Doctor puts his hands on the Master's back and pulls their bodies together. It feels like his first time, and like he's being fucked by a whore, and like he's making love to a long-lost soul mate, all at once.

The Doctor doesn't hold out long.

"What was that for?" he breathes afterwards, as the Master licks his face and brow, tasting the salt in his pores.

"An apology," the Master tells him, and kisses his lips very softly.

The next day, he finds they've landed – had been touched down all night, in fact – and when he opens the doors of the TARDIS, there is fire and screaming and a world burning. The Master watches over his shoulder, a huge, crooked grin on his face. He wraps his arms around the Doctor's waist and buries his face in his neck, and murmurs, "Never sleep on duty, dearest."

The Doctor handcuffs him to the wall of the TARDIS, and tells him he'll stay there until he can be trusted again. He sets up a relay sound system, fixed to the outside of the ship, that blares the static noise of the time vortex into the control room. The Master writhes and swears and cries and begs him to stop the drumming, and all the while, the Doctor averts his eyes.

It doesn't take long to wreck him like that. Once the Master has fallen silent, the Doctor lets himself see him again. He's slumped against the wall, a dead sort of look in his eyes, only his fingers moving, weakly tapping out that now-familiar rhythm against the grating. His mouth is slightly open, and his head falling to one side, as though he hasn't the energy to keep it straight.

The Doctor turns off the noise and crouches down in front of his broken pet. He unchains him, cradles the Master's face between his hands and kisses him over and over and over. "Do you promise to be good now?" he whispers, his voice cracking.

"Promise," the Master says, sounding numb.

* * *

The Doctor will always forgive him, no matter what the Master does. But he's got a reputation for hard-fisted government, even when the law is not his to put down. The Master whispers to him, one day: "We aren't so very different, you and I." The Doctor laughs it off at the time, but he never forgets those words. They dance an endless tango, becoming so very human in the process. Fighting and fucking aren't supposed to be their default instincts, but they fall into the pattern of it nonetheless.

The Doctor puts his hand over the Master's whenever he finds him beating imaginary drums in his mind. But he still wonders if, soon, he'll start to hear it too.