| Date: 5 January 2008
Characters: The Master, Professor Yana Location: at the lake Link to IJ: thread #25737 |
 The town was getting a bit much for the Master. A bit... claustrophic. He wanted somewhere with more air, maybe even some water. And there had been a fishing shop, so presumably there was a river or a lake or something nearby. He took a leaf out of Jack's book, climbed to the roof of the hotel and surveyed the lay of the land.
Sure enough, there was a lake, just a couple of miles away. The Master practically danced down the stairs, swung out of the hotel, and started walking. As soon as he'd got out of the town and onto the rustic little lane that should lead him to the lake, the drums began to quiet down and he started to really enjoy his walk. He hadn't really expected to see anyone else this far out, but as he neared the lake someone else came into sight. Someone very familiar. |
 The Professor had been idly thinking about going back to the hotel, but it was nice out here and he was getting used to the quiet in his head, so he wasn't in a hurry. He spotted the newcomer and waved.
"Hello," he said. "I didn't even know this place was out here." |
| The sheer childlike trustfulness of the man made the Master cringe. Someone like Professor Yana ought to be running a mile from him, not waving cheerfully.
He took a deep breath, and walked forward, hands in touser pockets, smiling pleasantly. "I don't think anyone does. I saw it from the hotel roof and thought it might make an agreeable destination for a walk." |
| As the stranger walked closer, a very faint but all-too-familiar rhythm started up in the Professor's head. Much, much quieter than it had been even on his best days, but...there.
"Nice day for it," he said, "Of course, they've all been nice days so far," He shook his head. "I'd love to know what this place is." |
| The Master looked at him with narrowed eyes, fingertips drumming absently against his thigh, wondering just how much of himself was awake inside that obscenely gentle old man.
"I'd love to know more too," he agreed. "Hard to get any peace when you don't know where you are or why you're there." |
| The drums becoming noticeable again could have been a coincidence; the other man tapping out the exact same rhythm...made it seem considerably less so.
He raised his eyes from the man's hand back to his face, and asked, still more curious than wary, "Where were you before you ended up here? Or maybe when is a more relevant question." |
| Damn, would he never learn to control the urge to drum out that rhythm? He was sure Yana had noticed and it really wouldn't take much of that for the old man to draw conclusions. And he wasn't sure he wanted to reveal his identity just yet.
He shrugged in answer to the question. "Earth, 2009. And you?" Not that he needed to ask, but it seemed polite. |
| "Malcassario, uncomfortably close to the end of the universe," he said, with a wry grin. "There seem to be a lot of people here from the twenty-first century." |
| "There do, don't there?" The Master tucked an arm through the Professor's and started strolling towards the lake. It was what he'd come for, after all.
"You seem like a man of learning," he said, leaning in conspiratorially. "What's your theory on what this place is all about?" |
| He laughed. "I'm completely out of theories at this point. What about you? Oh, pardon me, my name's Yana, people call me Professor sometimes." |
| "Harold Saxon." The Master raised an eyebrow. "They only call you Professor sometimes? That's unusual." |
| He shrugged. "Bit of an affectation, really. Hasn't been a university around for centuries." |
| "Ah, yes, end of the universe. I suppose there wouldn't be. You've come a long way, Professor."
They stopped at the edge of the lake, looking out across the water to the trees at the other side. "And you're human? Even from the end of time?" |
| "Human as they come." Well. He's not as sure of that as he was a couple of days ago, but he's trying not to think about that. "And yes, there are humans even at the end of time. Very resilient, humans." |
| "Aren't they just."
The Master studied the Professor again, trying to make up his mind. Should he come out as a Time Lord? Tell Yana he was a Time Lord? Or just keep pretending about both? What did he actually hope to achieve here, anyway, beyond making sure that this man wasn't himself just pretending to be human, and he was pretty sure about that now. He sighed, fingers drumming again. Being this close to Yana was making the drums pound deafeningly in his head. He shook his head angrily, as if it would make the maddening noise just fly out of his ears, and stomped away to the water's edge to gain a little space. |
| The Professor stayed where he was, watching Saxon. "Are you all right?" |
| He swung round angrily. "How do you do it?" he demanded, teeth clenched, clamping down on the sudden urge to grab the old man and shake him instead. "How do you bear the drums and seem so calm about it?" |
| Yana blinked. Well, there didn't seem to be any point in denying it, so...
"I don't hear them any more," he said carefully. "Not much, anyway. The Doctor got rid of them for me." |
| He didn't hear them any more?
What? The Master's face crumpled into incredulous confusion. "The Doctor got... How?" And more importantly, "When? Here?" |
| "Yes, here. I'm still getting used to it. The Doctor," he waved vaguely, "I don't even know how to explain. He's telepathic, evidently. He just...went in there and walled them off somehow." |
| Even in the midst of his bewilderment, a tiny part of the Master was wondering why the Professor wasn't wondering how he knew about the drums, and who the hell he was. But most of his attention was on what the man was saying.
The number of times the Doctor had offered to try - hell, the pretty blond one had offered just the other day! - but every time he'd refused. And yet... "He really did it?" he asked weakly. "You don't hear them anymore?" |
| "He did, and no, I don't. Well, I can hear them a little right now. They're still quieter than they've been in my life."
He was feeling his way along here, trying to figure things out. He was practically used to bizarre conversations by now; he suspected that this came of knowing the Doctor. |
| The Master couldn't stop staring. The drums, just gone. He couldn't imagine it. He'd never tried.
To be perfectly honest, he'd always been just a tiny bit proud of his drums. They'd made him different, made him unpredictable, given him an excuse for doing and saying things other people wouldn't have got away with. He took a step forward and whispered, in a sort of sick fascination, "What's it like?" |
| The Professor grinned wryly, shook his head a little. "Made me feel like I wanted to climb the walls, at first. It's good now, though. Good to be able to think straight."
It's not the drums he misses. |
| "Thinking straight would be nice."
It had came out, wistful and frustrated, before he'd consciously thought it. He bit his lip, and then shrugged. "Doesn't it feel strange, though? Don't you feel like... something's missing? Something more than just the noise?" |
| "It's worth it," he said, and he almost sounded convinced of that. Almost. |
| The Master wasn't convinced. There wasn't, after all, anybody who knew Professor Yana better.
"Really?" he asked, and he was very close now, staring into the Professor's eyes, searching, searching for some hint, some sign that he was still in there. "Really worth it?" |
| The Professor met his eyes steadily for a moment, then stepped back a bit and crossed his arms, without taking his eyes off of the Master. There was just a hint of arrogance in his eyes and in his grin this time, and he said, "Tell me why we have the same drums in our heads, Harold Saxon." |
| Oh, that was a bit more like it! He looked good with that arrogance shining through the mild demeanour of the old professor.
The Master grinned, not nastily, but definitely wickedly. He leaned in and murmured in Yana's ear, "You work it out, Professor." |
| "All right," he said, and the gleam in his eye was a match for the Master's grin.
"You're a Time Lord, and your consciousness was in my mind. Care to clue me in on how that happened?" He was enjoying this. |
| "Oh, very good, Professor - well done!" The Master applauded him mock-solemnly.
"Let's just say, I used to look a lot like you." Let's see what he makes of that. |
| He was you before you turned into you. That's what the Doctor had said. He'd been too annoyed to try and make sense of it at the time.
"Time Lords can become human." It wasn't quite a question, and suddenly this conversation was not nearly as amusing as it had been. |
| Oooh, he was good.
"Yep." He raised an eyebrow, eyes still very bright on Yana's face. "Did the Doctor tell you that or did you work it out for yourself?" |
| "Little of both." He wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying. |
| "Do you know who I am?"
It came out as an intense, almost violent whisper. He was leaning forward, fists clenched, drums driving him toward confrontation. |
| Oh, that brought the arrogance back. His head snapped up and he met the Master's eyes.
"I know it doesn't matter," he said, "Because you're gone." |
| He stepped back as if he'd been slapped.
"Gone?" he said, feeling cold, even though it didn't matter because obviously he was from a different reality because he was still here, wasn't he? "He - the Doctor - did that? He got rid of me, along with the drums?" |
| "He did." Well, that's what he thinks, anyway. |
| "How?" And not just how, but - "How could he? It's me! He can't - he couldn't - he - "
Fuck. He'd really done it. The Doctor had really done it. In that reality, he really had won. |
| "Evidently he could." |
| "I don't believe it. I don't believe he'd do that. Not after - not now he knows I'm here. He was - he agreed - we agreed not to fight each other here."
Though, actually... He thought back, trying to remember. He'd agreed. Now he thought about it, though, he wasn't sure the Doctor had actually agreed to anything. The devious bastard. |
| "You...agreed not to fight here?" He was beginning to understand that there were a lot of things he didn't understand. |
| "Yes, since we were both stuck here and neither of us could get away and we don't actually want to kill each other, not permanently anyway."
The Master paused, and peered at the Professor's bewildered face. He grinned, and this time it was nasty. "Oh, he didn't tell you much about us, did he? Fighting each other, that's what we do. Well, fighting, fucking, whichever happens first. Or frequently both at the same time." |
| Yana rolled his eyes. "All right, you've made your point. Stop acting like a child who's trying to shock the grown-ups." |
| The Master's eyebrows shot up. "Oh yes, and who's the grown-up here, Professor? The confused old man from the end of the universe who's completely out of his depth? You don't even know who you are, do you?" He smiled, coldly. "You wouldn't even exist if it weren't for me. You're just a figment of my imagination." |
| "Don't be ridiculous," he said, but it didn't come out nearly as scornful as he'd intended. |
| Oh, that was better. He was finally starting to get to the old man.
"Oh, it's true," he said cruelly, fingers drumming again in time with the rhythm that hammered through his brain. "I invented you. I made you. That's all you are. A disguise. For me. "Which means," he continued, taking one measured pace closer, "I'm still in there somewhere. I have to be." |
| He took a step backward before he could stop himself. "I don't believe you." But he was feeling pretty shaky all of a sudden. |
| "Well, you'd better start believing, old man," the Master snarled. "The Doctor must have just shut me away somewhere in your head, locked me away where he thought I couldn't get out, but I'm in there."
His eyes gleamed triumphantly. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. "All I have to do, is get out." |
| The Professor crossed his arms, met the Master's eyes. "That's not going to happen." |
| "Oh no? Who's the strong one, here, Professor? Who's the young, healthy, powerful one? Who's the Time Lord?" |
| "A Time Lord who had to go and make himself human. Why is that, I wonder?" |
| But the Master was on a roll and he wasn't going to be stopped that easily. "Never you mind," he growled. "Just be thankful that I did. If I hadn't, you wouldn't even be here."
He paused, drawing himself up, eyes blazing. "And since you are here, let's see what we can do about finding me in there." And he plunged forwards, fingers reaching for Yana's face, and his mind... pushing. In. |
| Yana was caught by surprise, but that didn't keep him from trying to keep the Master out of his mind. He'd fought his instincts to let the Doctor in, but he didn't have to fight them this time. When the Master pushed, he pushed back. |
| Oh, he was a feisty one, Yana was, but the Master was stronger, he was sure. He gritted his teeth and kept pushing, eyes staring into Yana's because there was no way he was closing them, just shoving at the resistance until he felt it waver, just a little. He dived in and battered relentless at that weak point, hammering at it like a sheet of metal, trying to pound it into submission. |
| He was fairly certain that his head was about to split open. He tried to keep up his resistance, but he didn't seem to be able to do that and breathe at the same time. |
| There. There. Just a little bit further, just a little bit harder and... He was in.
The Master paused to regroup, panting, fingers digging into Yana's scalp. The drums had got faster and louder with the fight and it was infuriatingly hard to concentrate. Especially since he needed every ounce of concentration he could muster. |
| He could hear the drums, could feel them, but they weren't as disorienting to him. Because they weren't his. They gave him something to focus on, something to fight against, because he knew they shouldn't be there. |
| Even through the thunder in his head, the Master could feel Yana's focus shifting, away from him specifically and to the drums instead. He grinned tightly. He might not be able to quieten the drums, but he could share them.
He opened up the portion of his mind where the drums resided - the portion he knew best because he'd spent 900 years trying to control the damn things - and flooded Yana's head with the noise. |
| He couldn't fight that and didn't try. His hands stopped trying to push the Master away and instinctively held on as his knees threatened to give way. He wasn't trying to do much of anything now except breathe, stay on his feet and keep the parts of his mind that were his together. He was managing all three, barely. |
| Vaguely, very vaguely, the Master was aware of the change in the physical world. That Yana wasn't fighting him anymore but clinging to him. That was a minor triumph.
Of course, the problem with bombarding Yana with the drums was that it meant he had to wade through them too, to try and find what was looking for. And it was bloody deafening in there. He was doing little more than flailing around desperately, searching for a trace of himself. |
| It wasn't unusual, in the past, for the Master to bleed through a little when Yana was threatened. Now, even as walled off as that part of him was, the threat was intense enough for Yana to sense him, whether or not the Master invading his mind could. It didn't particularly matter that the threat was coming from another version of him. |
| There. A faint, ever so faint cry from one of the furthest corners of Yana's mind. That was him, he was sure of it. He pushed forwards, slowly, blindly, like wading through treacle, reaching out towards that impression of himself. |
| There wasn't really any planning or strategy to it, but the Professor concentrated as much as he could on slowing the Master down further. |
| He wasn't getting anywhere. He was fighting and struggling and the drums were just getting louder and more overwhelming, unendurable. He was almost crying with pain and frustration. So close, so infuriatingly close... But he couldn't quite reach it. He didn't know if it was the drums, or the Doctor, or Yana himself, but he couldn't quite get there.
The Master howled with fury and basically had a tantrum, stomping and flailing wildly in the middle of Yana's mind. |
| Just when the Professor thought his headache couldn't get any worse--
All he could do was wait out this particular storm and hope he would be able to think of something after it passed. Assuming it passed while he still had a brain left. |
| The Master made one last attempt, fighting with everything he had left to reach the place where he was hidden. He pushed and shoved and yelled and used every ounce of strength he had but it still wasn't enough. And he couldn't take the pounding, roaring, thundering drums any longer. He was lost and disoriented and weakening fast and - he wasn't going to make it. |
| He felt the Master weakening, the force of that intent lessening, and he didn't waste the opportunity. He gathered what resources he had left and put them toward shoving the Master out of his mind. |
| Oh fuck.
The Master felt the shove and found himself falling, falling backwards, out of Yana's mind. He yelled in rage as he found himself thrust back into his own head, and hit out wildly, knocking the Professor away before his own legs gave out and he crumpled weakly to the ground. |
| The Professor stumbled back, lost his balance, and ended up sitting on the ground as well, breathing hard. He was holding his head with one hand and had the other flat on the ground, trying to make everything stop spinning. |
| The Master curled up tight and held his head in his hands, as if to stop it splitting apart. He was moaning. The drums had never been this loud before. He couldn't think, couldn't move, couldn't do anything.
He barely even had the coherence to hope the Professor had the manners not to kick him while he was down. |
| It wasn't so much manners as the complete inability to stand up and kick him properly that kept him from trying it. Seemed like far too much effort at the moment.
He'd gotten as far as if you EVER do that again- in his head, but he was all too aware that he didn't have a damned thing to back that up. |
| It took forever for the cacophony in his skull to quieten enough for the Master just to crack an eye open to see that Yana was on the ground too and apparently in almost as bad a state as him.
Having ascertained that he wasn't in immediate danger of getting kicked, he closed his eye again and groaned softly, rocking himself in time with the drums. |
| "You never let him help you with the drums, did you? Because I can't imagine he didn't offer."
Once he'd ruled out kicking and threats, he was halfway back to curiosity. Part of him was still voting for kicking, but it apparently wasn't the part that operated his body. Because he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. |
| A gentle enquiry about his past was just about the last thing the Master would have expected, if he was thinking clearly enough to expect anything at all.
"Never stopped fucking offering," he growled, not moving. "Never would take no for an answer." |
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