If he hears her walking up the steps, he gives no sign of it. He just continues to sit on the bench and stare straight ahead at the mountains on the horizon.

“Here you are,” she says, her voice uncharacteristically friendly and lilting, as she sits beside him. She wonders why she said that. He obviously knows he's here. Why is she talking so nonsensically?

“Here I am.” He draws out the words, like he's just realizing that he is, indeed, here. His voice sounds hoarse. Without shifting his gaze away from the mountains, he asks “Is he gone?”

“Yes.” She turns her head away from him so that she is sharing his view of the mountains. They sit in amicable silence for a while. She thinks it feels amicable. It's certainly not uncomfortable.

He breaks the silence. “He wouldn't go with me. I asked him. Did you know that?”

“I did.” She does know that. She knows so much more than that. She's positive that he has no idea exactly how much she does know.

She really shouldn't know as much as she does, she thinks. In fact, she's never understood why she was made privy to any of it at all. It wasn't that she minded knowing, exactly, but it was still odd. Everything they would do to each other, how good it all felt.....why she should know that? Why should she have been told things like His love is too much. It's like a fire that's burning and destroying me and everything else in its path, turning everything into piles of ash that all look the same. It's warped and it's frightening. It scares me. And while it was never mentioned, she's nonetheless always known that, for all it's scariness, that love was somehow better.

He suddenly turns his head and looks at her. “What will you do now?”

She answers immediately. “Get back to my work. I have a few experiments in progress and a number more in mind. I haven't been able to devote as much time as I've wanted to any of them this past little while, what with my other obligations. With those substantially lessened, I can get back to them. What about you?”

His gaze turns back to the mountains. “I suppose I could take a crack at universal domination.” She laughs. He doesn't. She stops laughing. The silence between them is infinitely less amicable than it had been a moment ago.

He's so transparent she can almost hear him yelling his plans to the mountains in the distance. She doesn't bother keeping the disdain out of her voice. “What is it you plan to do? Throw a frightened tantrum so he comes back to hug you and kiss you and calm you down? Launch an evil plot so he comes back to stop you? Try to kill him so he kills you first? Let it go. He's gone.”

“I want him back. Anyway I can get him.” His voice is a solid steel band of resolve, but the thing she hears most in it is the love. And it is scary; the Doctor had that much right. Then she sees the utter bleakness in the his eyes and realizes something the Doctor clearly never did --- his particular brand of love is a fire that will consume its creator before it burns anything else.

“So you're going to attract his attention anyway you can because even negative attention is better than being left here with none of his attention at all? Don't do it. It will only hurt you. He'll hurt you. He hurts everyone he touches. Don't put yourself through it. Not for him.”

Now it's his turn to sound disdainful. “He was right. You've never loved him, have you?”

You have to have things too structured, too controlled. You're too dispassionate. That may be a excellent quality for your work, but it's making you harder and harder to deal with as time passes.

Of course. It made perfect sense, actually. The Doctor told her things about him, so obviously the Doctor told him things about her. She ignores the cramp in her gut and the weight on her chest.

She doesn't want to strike back. She doesn't want to expend her energy on petty retaliation. She doesn't even want to make him feel any worse than he so clearly does, but she can't stop herself from sniping back. “If by love you mean being such an insane stalker that I finally chased him away from Gallifrey, then no. I never have loved him.”

They glare at each other for a moment, then he looks back at the mountains on the horizon.

“Is that what he told you?” His voice sounds so tired and resigned, and she knows it's because of her choice of words. She feels a twinge of the conscience the Doctor insists she doesn't have.

“What do you mean?”

“That he was leaving because I ... because of me? Because of how I am?”

“No.”

“Did he tell you I frighten him?”

“Yes.” She gives him the truth --- just the plain, unadorned, unexaggerated truth. She sees that it hurts him more than any angry, barbed, rancorous lie she could have given him.

“That's why he left me, isn't it? He wasn't saying it just to be spiteful. He may have had other reasons for leaving Gallifrey but he left me because the way that I feel for him frightens him, didn't he?”

She's oddly uncomfortable about telling him the truth again now that she knows he'll find it painful. He deserves the truth, though. She searches for words that are far less brutal than the “yes” she has on the tip of her tongue. “From what he's told me over time, I believe that's an accurate conclusion.”

She's surprised at the quiet, gentle tone of his voice as he asks “Is that why he left you? Because you frighten him?”

Yes, yes, you've said it, my dear, and I've heard it, but that doesn't make it so. Whatever you feel for me...whatever this is between us ...it's too sterile, too barren. Yes, it's stable and safe. And no, it doesn't frighten me. But its entirely lacking in passion. It's not enough. Not for me.

“No. He left me because of something else.”

He smiles ruefully. “He really doesn't know what he wants, does he?”

“Not really. He never has.”

“Strange,” he says in a musing voice.

“What is?”

“That you and I should have such clear ideas about what we want and are willing to work to get it, while he just waits for things to come floating by and plucks out whatever catches his eye in the moment.”

“He's like a child that way. He isn't ready to be responsible for defining what he wants or helping to create it. He just wants it.”

He draws in a breath and stands. He turns and offers her his hand to help her up.

“Well then, Rani. Considering the two of us do have ideas and plans and are willing to work towards them, perhaps we should both move forward with our respective lives. That sounds like the best thing to do now, yes? Or did you have other suggestions?”

She puts her hand in his and rises to her feet. “No. I completely agree with you, Master. I think moving forward with our lives is the very best thing either of us can do.”

If that's possible, she thinks. She doesn't say it out loud.

She wouldn't have minded being exiled if the High Council had let her take all of her equipment with her. She's more than happy to be away from those tiresome, meddling imbeciles who do nothing but sit and watch the universe as it tears itself to pieces on its way to fading into oblivion. They'll be singularly useless if push ever comes to shove and they have to actually do something to avoid mass temporal destruction.

She can't complain too much, though. The High Council, rather incredibly, let her take her TARDIS. It's taking an incredibly long time, but she has the means to gather everything she needs and bring it back to her planet. Her planet. Right. As though she'd have ever lighted on the dung heap voluntarily. At least the natives are friendly. Actually, friendly doesn't begin to the describe it. Downright sycophantic is more like it. All it took was the most minor show of force to make them ridiculously eager to cater to her every whim, to line up to take part in her experiments, to do whatever she thinks to command. The Master would be in heaven if he were here in her place. So would the Doctor, although he'd deny it to the last breath of his last regeneration. Both of those idiots would be beside themselves with joy at the prospect of getting even a lesser life form's undivided attention and undying fealty. The Master, though, would probably sulk over the fact that it was a native kneeling in front of him in reverent worship instead of the Doctor on his knees engaging in an all together less sanctified activity.

She needs equipment and supplies for her work, and she has the means to travel anywhere in time and space to collect them. And so here she is, on Earth, relieving a British Army base's scientific laboratory of a chemical that is highly toxic and soon to be unavailable even on this self-destructive backwater of a planet when she sees....Yes, indeed, it's the Master, sneaking in and peeking out into the hallway from the crack he's left in the door.

“Don't tell me. This is the Doctor's laboratory.” She puts the vials of chemicals in her pocket and crosses her arms over her chest.

The Master shuts the door softly and turns around. “How do you deduce that?” He moves to stand across from her at the Doctor's work table.

“I admittedly do try to have some general idea of where he is so I can make sure he's out of my way, but your behavior is a dead giveaway. You're tiptoeing around like a bungling cretin, which must mean you're still following the Doctor around trying to win him back, my excellent advice to the contrary notwithstanding. How is that working out for you? Meeting with any success?”

“Success? He's actively helping these armed, uniformed simians in their continuing efforts to capture me if not kill me.”

“Wildly successful then. Why is it that you're skulking around his laboratory in his absence? Looking for a good place to hide love notes for him to find?”

The Master's eyes flash darkly, but he smiles pleasantly. He places both hands on the workbench between them and leans slightly forward. “It's wonderful to see you again, too, Rani. Are you here looking for subjects for your unsavory experiments? Unfortunately, you're sure to be disappointed. I haven't seen any rodents around and I doubt very much that the Doctor will volunteer to engage in any activity that will bring him into contact with your cold, sterile scientific pursuits. Nor would he think of allowing you to enlist the aid, willing or unwilling, of his charming if somewhat vacant-headed, Bambi-eyed but unquestionably loyal and emotion-dripping assistant.”

She notices, in a detached way, that the fingers of his right hand are doing a little tap dance on the bench top. She calls up a slow smirk she does not feel. “Are you trying to provoke me, Master?”

“Miss Grant is a delightful child. She's all about feelings. The Doctor would never be able to do without her lingering, worshipful looks. Just as he'd never be able to part with her and miss out on the way she feels sympathy for the downtrodden, her unflagging dedication to doing the right thing and to never, ever hurt or cause pain to...”

“Enough!” For a moment, her vision goes dark, and she feels her blood drain away from her brain. She feels her body sway, and it takes all of her willpower to keep from falling to the floor. When her vision clears, she sees the Master standing in front of her on her side of the workbench, looking at her with mild interest. Her hands are clenched into tight fists. Her fingernails are cutting into her palms so hard that she thinks she's drawing blood. Her entire body is shaking. Her head is pounding. Her jaw is so tightly clenched her teeth hurt and when she tries to unclench it, she can't.

A moment passes before he asks “Are you all right?” She wonders why he bothers to ask. It's not as though he cares what she feels. No, that's not true. He does care how she feels. He wants her to feel miserable, as miserable as he apparently still feels underneath his suave, cultured exterior. She's not sure how she knows this, but she does.

“It's interesting, isn't it,” he continues in response to her silence, “how manifestations of emotion can be given vastly different interpretations by different individuals. Take rage, for instance, or jealousy. A woman, for example, could be experiencing such intense rage or jealousy that her cardiovascular, circulatory and neurological systems are compromised. One person could watch her experience and understand exactly what's happening to her and why, while another person could watch the exact same thing and not realize she's feeling anything at all.” His voice is smooth, but she hears the undercurrent of power he thinks he's just gained echoing in his words.

“The only interpretations that matter to me, about anything, are my own. I have work to do.” She moves toward the door. Her gait is unsteady and she's still shaking. She hopes he doesn't notice, but she can feel that he has.

He steps into her path. “Are you all right? These humans have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of tea. Perhaps you'd like a cup.”

“You're offering me a pilfered cup of tea? Where is all this generosity coming from?”

“I've always been a generous soul. It's just that I occasionally expect something in return. I notice you haven't refused tea.”

“I'm not drinking it here,” she says so quickly and so vehemently that she actually feels embarrassed. She can't remember ever feeling embarrassed before. Not ever. Embarrassment, she decides, feels just as unpleasant as rage and jealousy.

“I'm not inclined to stay here any longer, either. I'm sure we can find someplace more comfortable. Shall we?” He gestures toward the door.

As they leave the Doctor's laboratory, the Master first checking to make sure they are unobserved, she wonders how much tea the Master finds it necessary to drink. She'd truly like to know, but she doesn't ask.

“And I find you in bar, drinking alone. How has that come to pass, I wonder.”

The Master looks up just in time to see the Rani sitting down across from him, placing a bottle of amber-colored liquid and a glass on the table as she does so. “A burning question that could apply equally to you,” The Master says as he lifts his own drink to his lips. “Why is it that you've decided to give free rein to your inner lush? And in my presence, no less. I am lucky.”

”I've learned that a nightcap before bed is a moderately useful weapon in the war against insomnia. It helps in a pinch.”

“You're not sleeping? Are life's bitter disappointments still bother you so much you can't sleep?”

“No, Master, that would be you. Still dressed in black, mourning your losses, I see. How do you keep all that black velvet from showing dust?”

The Master flecks an non-existent bit of lint from his right cuff. “Black is elegantly understated.” He casts a mildly disgusted glance at the Rani's brightly-clad body. “Unlike the red you're developing a habit of wearing.”

“You just get bitchier and bitchier with new regenerated and stolen body, don't you, Master? It must be a useful skill for you to have at your fingertips when you play bitch to our mutual acquaintance and fellow renegade. You are so often relegated to that role, after all.”

“And even that makes you jealous. Take care, Rani, or your rampant envy might spoil your good looks. But, tell me, if it's not grief for lost love, what is it that's keeping you up nights?”

“I've run across a problem with my research. The test subjects' sleep cycles are becoming erratic for some reason and it's starting to skew the results. I've been putting in exceedingly long hours working on a solution. It's thrown off my own sleep patterns and now I'm having trouble falling asleep myself. What about you? What's your excuse for drinking all by yourself in this dark, depressing corner of nowhere.”

“I've been having a touch of insomnia, as well. I, too, find that an occasional drink, among other things, helps me quiet my mind. Hence, my presence here, in your enchanting company.”

“Mmmh. So now we share two banes of our existence, the Doctor and sleeplessness.”

“The latter, perhaps, but not the former. You see, I'm also having a drink to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?”

The Master lifts his glass and takes a drink, then stares into his glass. “Since we last met, I've achieved the one thing I've worked toward for centuries.” He looks up and leans forward conspiratorially. “I've destroyed the Doctor.”

She lifts her own glass in salute and drinks. “Congratulations. I know how much destroying the Doctor means to you. So, what does he look like now? Is he pretty and blond again?”

The Master sits back in his chair. He looks slightly peeved. “I tell you I've destroyed him and you assume that he lived to regenerate. Are you still so besotted by him that you're unable to bear the thought that I've permanently eliminated him once and for all?”

“I'm not the besotted one. And since we're talking about you and the Doctor, no; I can't even begin to imagine you ever permanently eliminating the Doctor. In fact, I know with the highest degree of statistical certainty that you can't permanently eliminate the Doctor. Even if you could figure out how to kill him 'once and for all', you could never in a million years actually bring yourself to actually do it. After all, how would you be able to indulge your schoolgirl crush if you actually did carry out what you've so boringly described as your fondest wish? Taunting the Doctor? Yes. Engaging in the functional equivalent of pulling on his pigtails? Definitely. That's all within your limited capabilities. Killing the Doctor? No. Not even with him on his knees in front of you begging for it. You don't have the stomach for it.”

“And your belief is based on what logic, precisely?”

“On the logic that tells me that you are precisely who you are and he is precisely who he is and that you would therefore much rather spend your time making sweet love to him than eradicating his existence. It's what you've always wanted. I see no evidence that your desires have changed in the least.” She sits back in her chair and finishes the rest of her drink.

“My desires are somewhat more sinister now than they once were. Time and the sound it drums out into the universe bring a little darkness into everyone's outlook, sometimes much more. No, sweet love has no role in the plans I now have for the Doctor.

“Just rough sex, then? The less consensual the better?”

The Master throws back his head and lets out a long, low, laugh. “Oh, my dear Rani. You know me far too well.”

“I know you even better than that. Hearts and flowers will somehow figure into your diabolic plans for the Doctor. You can't help yourself.”

“We shall see.” He finishes his drink. Without bothering to ask the Rani if she's willing to share, he reaches across the table for her bottle and pours himself a drink. “In the meantime, would you like another drink? To help with your insomnia?” He fills her glass without waiting for her response.

“When they're available, I prefer to employ more physically pleasurable means of tiring myself out enough to sleep. As you're here, the means are available.”

“Would those means be rough and non-consensual?”

“Not necessarily. You'd be surprised at the intensely soporific effect that nice, slow foreplay followed by a long, leisurely fuck can have.”

The Master gives her an appraising look and takes a sip of his drink. “You sound as though you speak from vast experience. Time does change everything, it seems. The Rani, all science and work, work, work, capable of sexual abandon. Who'd have thought?”

“Many, actually.”

“Is that so? I'm intrigued.”

“But are you interested?”

“In joining forces with you to work towards a quiet, peaceful night's rest? Yes, such a mutual effort interests me.” He finishes his drink. “Shall we go and where?”

The Rani stands and downs her drink in one shot. “Your TARDIS, I think. You'll be sleeping long and hard when I've finished with you. You'll be glad of already being in your own bed.”

“Considering our mutual goal, I hope you'll fully attend to the long and hard aspect of our joint enterprise before I fall asleep. Are you always this cocky?”

“I'm always this good. It remains to be seen whether you have anything to be cocky about, doesn't it?”

“You present me with a challenge, Rani. I always enjoy challenges because I always meet them. Step this way. My TARDIS awaits.”

The Master stands and leads her out of the bar. They walk in silence, neither of them mentioning the small of flicker hope they each feel that what they are about to do will help them quell, just for a moment, the pain of ancient wounds that will not close.

********************

The preliminaries involve a bit of groping but no kissing. Much better to get down to business immediately and then get on with the sleep. The light stays on, the bed sheets are quickly thrown back, and the Master strips off completely and lies down on the bed. The Rani stands at the foot of the bed and slips off her boots and shirt, noticing as she does so that the Master's right hand is tapping out a rhythm on the mattress as he watches her undress. She takes off the camisole she wears instead of a bra and asks, “Do you mind not indulging in your irritating habits just now? It's a bit distracting.”

“Yes, it is. Now that you've finally gotten your breasts free, perhaps we can employ the slow foreplay you mentioned as a means of quieting this particular distraction.”

“Such greedy impatience. How did...” She stops herself. Curiosity about how the Master has been with other partners, especially ones they've had in common, should not be voiced here and now no matter what the provocation. Even she understands that.

If the Master knew where her question was going, he doesn't acknowledge it. “How did I get to be this way? I'm a Time Lord, Rani. I can control and react to time with infinite patience or, as you put it, greedy impatience. As can you. Perhaps we should focus on keeping pace with each other?”

She takes that as her cue to crawl onto the bed to kneel between his legs. She runs her hands up his calves, then his thighs. She crouches down to get closer to him. As she guides his cock into her mouth with one hand and wraps her other hand around his balls, she thinks about how she's done this or something very like it with a great number of different men, different women, too. She wasn't lying and she wasn't exaggerating about how good she's gotten at this. She has, as she's gotten older, found that she needs release from the stresses of her work, her duties as a ruler, her life, her memories. She discovered a long, long time ago that nearly all of the physical acts associated with sex are great stress-relievers. She's had lots of practice at relieving that stress in herself and in others. She's good at it. She knows she's good at it. She knows she can make it good for the Master.

And she does make it good. So good that, in no time at all, she has him thrusting and thrashing and groaning and running his hands over her shoulders like she's made of silver and he's trying to rub her tarnished body to a brilliant sheen. So good, that, as she feels his balls begin to tighten, he plunges his hands into her hair and starts massaging her head with curiously gentle fingers. So good that she feels good doing it.

Unfortunately, she makes it so good that, as she feels the Master's first throb against her tongue and the first jet of his come at the back of her throat, she hears him softly, lovingly choke out the name “Doctor”. She doesn't feel good anymore.

She tightens her fingers around his testicles and moves her head a little so that she can scrape all along the Master's penis with her left upper and lower canine teeth --- because she knows they are sharper than the canines on the right --- as she continues to pump him in and out of her mouth. She stays right with him when he jumps and tries to pull away from her. Trapped in her mouth, he screams in fear or pain or, she hopes, both as he continues to pulse ejaculate down her throat.

She finds his reaction very satisfying. And she didn't even have to break skin to draw it out of him.

He stops coming, and she stops moving. He immediately pushes himself up the bed and away from her. Rage and fear and the last lingering bit of pain make him sputter and cringe away from her. She comes out of her crouch but continues to kneel at the end of the bed. She licks her lips, swallows one last time, and stares impassively at him when his eyes meet hers.

“You bloody bitch,” he bellows when he finally gets himself under enough control to talk. He rears up at her, anger and vengefulness coupled with something that looks strangely like confusion and hurt etched on his face. “I should kill you where you sit, you sadistic cunt! Did you think I'd enjoy that!? Did you think I'd find it exciting?! Is biting your lovers' cocks off something you do now!? Is that what you'd have liked to do to me?! Is that...”

“I'd have liked you to use my name,” she interrupts. She doesn't retreat from him and she surely doesn't let anything but the anger she's righteously feeling show on her face. She's not roaring like he just was, but from the way his next words never make it out of his mouth, she can tell that he's heard the indignation in her voice all the same. She can tell that he's heard, or thinks he's heard, something else, too, even though she's sure she hasn't let anything else bleed through, because the rage disappears from his eyes and he sits back and looks at her with a strange expression on his face. She'd almost say it looks like regret and apology mixed together with sympathy, but she's not sure that the Master knows how to feel those things. What's more, she doesn't think she can accurately recognize them anymore. She's not sure she ever could.

“I'd best go inspect the damage,” he finally says and moves to get off the bed.

“You needn't. I didn't injure you. Not physically, at any rate. Pity.”

“Take consolation in the fact that the mental injury you inflicted was extremely severe. You may well have scarred me for life. Which, I have no doubt, was your intention. And thank you for your assessment, but I think I'll go check for blood and open gashes myself.”

He stands up and begins walking to the adjacent bathroom. When he hears her get off the bed and start gathering her clothes, he stops in the bathroom doorway and turns around. There's no question what his face shows this time. He's surprised.

“Leaving so soon? I thought we were going to help each with our respective insomnia.”

She can be calm, cool and collected. She can be that much, much better than he can, in fact. “You'll probably have nightmares about castration and be twisting and turning all night long. That doesn't sound too restful to me. For either of us.”

“You'd be surprised. Nightmares, even my own nightmares, can drown out all manner of more unpleasant things, although the nightmares of others do a significantly better job. Make yourself comfortable. I won't be a moment.” He turns, enters the bathroom and shuts the door.

She's not quite sure what to make of what the Master's just said or how he's acting, so she puts on her camisole and sits in the armchair in the corner of the room. She doesn't put on her shirt or her boots, but she's dressed enough to make a quick and moderately dignified exit when he tells her to get out. Which is something she expects he'll do as soon as he gets back from the bathroom. It's what she would do if their positions were reversed and she were the one coming back into the room while he sat here waiting. Telling him to get out would make her feel slightly less hurt and embarrassed and sorry. If she felt any of those things, that is.

His eyes are focused on the bed when he opens the bathroom door. When he sees it empty, his eyes flicker around the room until they land on her sitting in the corner, her shirt in her hands and her boots on the floor in front of her. He stills and looks at her briefly, his face perfectly blank, then crosses the floor and lies down on the right side of the bed. He leaves the bedside light on. She stays in the chair.

He's been laying on his back looking at the ceiling for what seems like hours but hasn't been when he says “This bed is big enough that you shouldn't be disturbed if I become restless.” He stretches out his left arm and rests his splayed left hand palm-down on the empty side of the bed. His eyes never leave the ceiling.

She decides it would be nice to stretch out and rest her muscles, even if she can't sleep, and the bed does look big enough for them both to lie down and not disturb each other. She stands and puts her shirt on the seat of the armchair and pushes her boots underneath it. She leaves the rest of her clothes on. She crosses the floor and sits down on the left side of the bed. As she does so, the Master moves his left hand from the mattress and puts both of his hands under his head. She lies down on her back. After she's settled, the Master takes his hands out from under his head, sits up and turns off the light. In the total darkness, she feels the bed shift slightly as he lies back down, but he was right --- the bed is big enough for them to easily avoid touching each other.

She lies on her back, arms at her sides, and stares through the darkness at the ceiling she can't see but knows is above her. She's thinking about time and how it doesn't heal all wounds when she feels the Master's fingers lightly stroke the back of her right hand. When he rests his hand on hers, she turns her hand so that they hold each other's hands, palm to palm and fingers entwined. After she stares into the darkness for a while longer, she hears the Master's quiet, sleepy voice say “From now on, I will always use your name.”

She stays silent. There is no point in telling him what she's thinking. Nothing useful would be accomplished by telling him that she doubts every word he's just said, doubts even that he realizes he said them to her. Nothing useful would be accomplished by telling him that she thinks what they do to each other every time they see each other hurts both of them more than it helps either of them, that they shouldn't do it anymore, that they should just stop. She thinks all these things, but she doesn't tell him. Instead, she falls asleep holding the Master's hand.

The Master sits at the table in his small quarters looking over what the High Council told them represents “our most detailed information about the layout of the Dalek Emperor's base.” It takes him five seconds to realize that the phrase “detailed information” must have been High Council code for “We have nothing for you.” It only took the Rani two seconds, but that doesn't rankle him. She irritates him in many ways and infuriates him no end in one particular way but, unlike some people he knows, he's never had trouble admitting she's more of a genius than he is. A little more of a genius, anyway.

They'd received their orders for their mission directly from the President of the High Council herself. Romana had hastily convened a session of the High Council members who are still alive and used the occasion to tell them they had been selected to carry out a plan that sounded simple enough when she'd described it. Under the plan the High Council has approved, and which he is certain Romana personally developed, he and the Rani are supposed to infiltrate the Dalek Emperor's base. Once inside, the Rani is supposed to plant and activate the biochemical multi-temporal bomb she's created. The bomb will, after a short delay, explode and release a Dalek-specific toxin that will, in theory at least, eradicate all Daleks at all points in time and space from their genesis forward to the end of the universe. The High Council considers this part of “the Plan”, such as is it, to be brilliant.

Unfortunately, it's the very brilliance of this part of the Plan that brings a small flaw in the entire idea to light. The mass Dalek annihilation the bomb will bring about will end up crossing and perverting so many time lines and creating so many paradoxes that the universe will implode faster than a Dalek can say “exterminate”. So it's a very lucky thing indeed that the Master's been busy building and perfecting the Cruciform. The High Council is sure that the Cruciform will take care of the small flaw in the Plan because the Master has already piloted the specially-armored ship that carries the Cruciform and shares its name in no less than thirty-nine battles against the Daleks and he's beat the Daleks thirty-nine times. Beat? Crushed is a better word. Ruthlessly crushed is better still, even though it's two words. And even better than his having ruthlessly crushed the Daleks is the fact that he successfully used his Cruciform to sustain each of the thirty-nine paradoxes he created with his crushing victories.

He knows Romana doesn't like him. Oh no, she doesn't like him one bit. She doesn't regret for one minute having used her executive power to override the High Council's decision to leave him in the Matrix, though. No, she does not. Nothing succeeds like success, after all, and he's been very successful.

But back to the Plan. He'd noticed a few more things that seemed to him to be potential flaws and felt compelled to point them out to the High Council. The biochemical bomb had been subjected to only the most preliminary of tests and the anticipated “only Daleks die” outcome was, therefore, somewhat theoretical. Actually, the Rani pointed out this particular flaw, but he'd been quick to agree with her assessment that it perhaps should give them pause. Romana explained that the High Council was not troubled by the theoretical aspect of the bomb's effectiveness. After all, the Rani's the most brilliant biochemist the Time Lords have ever produced. The High Council has the utmost confidence in her.

He'd then pointed that that the High Council's faith in his battle skills and his Cruciform, while touching, could be construed as a touch too fervent. He'd explained, quite calmly and thoroughly, that there is a substantial difference between battling Dalek battle cruisers in the depths of space where there's all that lovely room to maneuver and sneaking into a heavy guarded Dalek Emperor's base all on your own, or even sneaking in with the Rani. He'd also calmly and thoroughly explained that there is a substantial difference between thirty-nine paradoxes and countless numbers of them Perhaps, he'd posited, these factors required further consideration. Perhaps the time was not ripe for this particular mission. Romana countered this argument by telling him that he is the best battle fleet commander and temporal engineer the High Council has ever seen. The High Council therefore, she explained, has the utmost confidence in him, too.

The Master wonders when Romana learned how to flatter so easily. He also wonders where the High Council is keeping this font of confidence it keeps dipping into. He could use a shot of it himself. Looking at the Rani, whose sitting across from him at his table looking a bit like she's going to be sick, he thinks she could as well.

Next, he'd pointed out was that the part of “the Plan” calling for only the Rani and himself to participate left them at something of a disadvantage as he normally operated with a larger crew. Romana took the opportunity to remind him that the Cruciform is such an interesting shape and so compact that it and the ship that houses it are small enough to be easily operated and crewed, in a pinch, by its commander and one crew member. He and the Rani would be able to handle everything just fine on their own. He supposes he should be thankful that at least she hadn't mentioned the High Council's utmost confidence again.

He then mentioned that no additional crew members meant that he and the Rani would have to use his TARDIS to get into and out of the Dalek base with no one on the Cruciform providing any cover or back-up. He pointed out that this meant that the Daleks would very probably notice the fact that a TARDIS had materialized in their ship. This, he explained, would most likely make if exceedingly difficult for the Rani and him to carry out the Plan and still be alive at the end of it unless they were provided with some back-up. Romana in turn explained that the High Council considered the part of the Plan where it's to be just the two of them to be a brilliant means of minimizing Time Lord battle losses.

The Plan being so brilliant, the High Council would brook no further argument. There wasn't much to point to any further discussion after that. He'd accepted the President's embrace and formal words of thanks. He was mildly amused at her action, since the bitch hates him so, but he did think it was a touching if pointless gesture. Romana's rather stiff hug wasn't going to resurrect him from the certain death he was facing in the morning, but it was nice to be appreciated all the same. He'd then watched silently while the President of the High Council of Gallifrey took hold of the Rani's hands and kissed her on the mouth. It was a surprisingly intimate gesture of gratitude for a commander-in-chief to bestow on a soldier, to be sure. As he watched the Rani kiss Romana back, be couldn't help but think that the memory of the gesture would have entertainment value for him over the next few hours. But when the President of the High Council of Gallifrey and the Rani of Miasimia Goria moved back from each other, he thought they looked not so much like two women who'd just shared a bit of tongue action as they did two careworn elders of worlds on the verge of collapse.

“You look a bit worse for wear, Rani,” he says as he comes out of his pondering. “Perhaps you should get some sleep. I'll show you to your quarters.”

“I'd just as soon be awake during my last few hours. Besides, I couldn't sleep on this ship. It's...” she winces as she simultaneously searches for and tries to avoid the word “...throbbing.”

“It's the alignment of the paradox engines. Their configuration sets up crisscrossing wave progressions. We've learned the hard way that the waves have a serious impact on the crew. They can do things to you.”

“Do things?” The Rani's voice sounds a little frantic. He can't remember ever hearing her sound frantic before. Impatient, yes. Angry, definitely. Not frantic, though. Never that. “What kind of things?”

“Unsettling things. It's the reason I have to rotate crew members so frequently. They quickly get to a point where they can't function. I even had a portable stasis chamber brought on board after one crewmember spontaneously regenerated all the way through her remaining regeneration cycles. That hasn't happened again, thankfully. Not a pleasant thing to watch. That was an extreme example, though. The most common effect is that emotions are amplified. My theory is that every emotion you've ever felt gets retrieved from every sector of your time line and is focused into the here and now. For instance, every time you've ever felt or ever will ever feel even mild anxiety is pulled into your present...”

“And amplified into uncontrollable, mind-numbing, bowel-churning fear? You tell me this now?” There's that frantic note again, but at least it's competing with the annoyance and irritation he normally associates with her voice. She's able to modulate herself at least a little. That's good, because a frantic Rani will be of no use tomorrow.

“When should I have told you?”

“When there might have been time for me to do something about it. I could have formulated a neurotransmitter blocker to mute the effect.”

“Can't you do that now?” He doesn't like how excited he sounds about the prospect that something can mute the Cruciform's effect. He doesn't want her to know that it isn't just emotions that are amplified, or that he's spent every minute he's been on board his creation fighting to ignore the drums. Before the war, he heard them only when he was upset or distressed, which invariably meant he was thinking about or fighting with the Doctor, and he could turn off without too much difficulty. Now, they are his constant companion, accompanying him into each battle, and they're getting louder and more insistent with each passing day. But he can't let her know that. What kind of battle fleet commander would he be if he let his mission-mate and only crewmember know the commander was hearing things that aren't really there?

“Not without access to a full laboratory. Well, at least now I know what's happening to me. Not that it's any comfort.” The Rani stands up and starts circling the small room. She stops in front of his TARDIS where it's parked in the corner. “How were you able to land your TARDIS in here? Didn't it try to avoid materializing inside this...?” She gestures around her to the Cruciform in general.

“It wasn't easy. The TARDIS does feel a sort of ...antipathy toward the Cruciform. I did it, though. I am the best pilot Gallifrey's ever seen, after all.”

“That was 'best battle fleet commander', not 'best pilot'.”

“No matter. I got my TARDIS to where it needs to be. We'll be able to use it to get into and out of the Dalek base.”

“Out of,” she repeats before she lets out a single bark of caustic laughter and focuses her attention back on the Cruciform. “How can you stand this thing? Doesn't it make you nervous at the very least?”

“I've gotten used to it.” The Rani seems to accept his answer, although it's hard to be sure since her eyes keep darting around the room. He's pleased by the thought that he still lies convincingly. He hasn't had much use for that particular skill in this body. “Perhaps I'm more willing to overlook its effects than you. It is my brainchild, after all.”

“The proud father. Overlooking the fact that his precious little darling is a time-twisting abomination that sets every cell in her doting daddy's Time Lord-body to vibrating in an unhealthy and distinctly unpleasant way. How adorable.” Worry replaces her sarcasm. “What's it doing to the drumming sound in your head?”

“I try not to think about it.”

“Are you all right?”

“The cold, clinical Rani, being solicitous of my health? Who'd have thought?”

He sees a look cross her face that he can't quite interpret before it's replaced by one that is unquestionably cold and clinical. “You've seemed none to stable on occasion in the past, Master. I don't want to find out tomorrow that you've been driven to distraction by paradox engine-amplified pounding inside your skull. Our chances of survival are slim enough as it is without your being more insane than usual.”

“We'll both be better if we don't keep thinking about the Cruciform or tomorrow. Let's talk about something else.” He waits for her to say something. She doesn't, though. She just looks at him like she thinks he really has gone mad, then holds her out hand, palm-up, in an “after you” gesture.

Since it's up to him, he figures he might as well satisfy the more prurient aspects of his curiosity. “When did you and Romana become the happy couple? The honeymoon must still be going strong if having all the old gits on the High Council watching you didn't put either of you off snogging in public places. I must say, I'm hurt that I wasn't invited to the wedding.”

She lets out a quick breath, closes her eyes and drops her head, shaking it slightly. She looks up again and opens her eyes. “In case you hadn't noticed, Master, there's a rather large war on. The constant threat of extermination is hanging over everyone and everything. These are very stressful and frightening times. People, even Time Lords, have been known to use sexual intercourse, or rather the body's endocrinological and neurological responses to sexual intercourse, as a stress-reliever and comfort device in times like this.”

He laughs. “You make it sound as romantic as an evening with a bottle of whiskey and a vibrator strapped to a teddy bear. But what am I saying? That shouldn't surprise me. It is you we're talking about, after all.”

The look on the Rani's face tells him that she finds both his choice of words and his delivery jarring. She recovers quickly enough, though, proving that she can keep her wits about her if she tries. That's good. That's very good. “Romance isn't exactly the point when you're trying to forget that statistics dictate that you'll be dead by the day after tomorrow at the latest. And she's actually very sweet in bed.”

“The two ice queens together. Funny, I would never have pegged either of you to be the two halves of a loving couple. Especially not you. Even Romana runs hotter than you.”

“We weren't swept away by grand passion and we didn't pledge undying love. We had sex. We comforted each other.”

“Comforted. You. You comforted someone.”

“I tried.” He tries to make his face go blank and not give away the fact that the idea of her comforting anyone is the most preposterous thing he's heard in a very long while. He is trying to steady her nerves, after all, not antagonize her. But he realizes he's failed at keeping the incredulity off his features when she adds “It's not unheard of.”

“Yes, it is,” counters the Master. There's no reason to hide what he's thinking. She knows it anyway, and he can use it to goad her back into her normal irritating, ruthless and rude way of being. Goading her back to herself will help him get to where he needs to be, too, for that matter. Tomorrow's almost here and they both need to be ready.

He waits for her to say something biting and sarcastic about his obsessive love for the Doctor. That's what she'd ordinarily do right about now. But the Rani says nothing, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is nothing ordinary about right now. When it's clear that she's not going to respond, he asks “Did she comfort you?”

“She'd have comforted me a damn sight more if she'd have sent someone other than me on this mission.”

“Dissension in the ranks?”

“No. I simply would have preferred it if what I've already done for Gallifrey in this war had been deemed sufficient.”

“What did she offer you?”

“What do you mean, 'offer me'?”

“For your agreement to fight in this war. It had to have been more than just a few nights with your faces planted between each other's thighs.”

And yes, she looks perturbed and punctured at his words, and that is not good. He can't have her being so uncharacteristically deflated. She'll get them killed far too soon into their mission. He's glad when she rallies enough to say, “You sound jealous, Master. Upset that she didn't make that offer to you?”

“I was offered more than sufficient incentive for my enlistment. There was no need to sweeten the deal with the offer of sex with yet another of the Doctor's cast-offs.”

“Does that mean you've stopped your nightly episodes of masturbating while clutching his picture to your hearts?” She spits the words at him. He smiles unpleasantly as he watches the anger ride across her face. She's being a right bitch again. Her old self, really. Good. That's what he needs. That's what they both need. But she's not done. She's opening her mouth to spew out more rude, mean-spirited bile. Excellent. He'll have her spoiling for the fight by morning.

“And, oh yes, I heard about your not-so-glorious resurrection and your brand new set of regenerations. Unlike you, Perfect Warrior, I'm neither mercenary nor chaos-loving, and while I may not have much patience for the Time Lords, I don't harbor the hatred of Gallifrey that you do. Gallifrey is, despite the Time Lords' ridiculous propensity to exile anyone with a brain, home. The Time Lords called on me to serve Gallifrey. I answered the call. I don't need any further incentive.”

It's a response that's less vituperative than he'd hoped for, and her voice carries far more fear than he likes. “How admirably patriotic of you, Rani. You're wrong, though. I don't hate Gallifrey.”

“Your past actions suggest you do. You and the Doctor both, since you brought him up. If it wasn't for him and his stubborn refusal to ever do what really needs to be done, you and I wouldn't be going to die tomorrow. I truly hope you enjoy your twelve new regenerations, but I rather think that the Daleks will make sure you won't.” She turns her back to him.

She's not pulling herself together. She's trying, he'll give her that, but she's not succeeding. Her nerves are too frayed, her body's too sensitive to the engines' vibrations. She's not going to be ready tomorrow. Time to change tactics. Soft for hard, smooth for rough, sweet for sour. He softens his tone. “You sound frightened, Rani. A little desperate, even. Are you so very sure we'll fail tomorrow?”

“I'm so very sure we'll end up dead no matter whether we fail tomorrow or not.” She turns back to face him. “It must have occurred to you that Romana's being so quick to send us on an obvious suicide mission means we're supposed to fail. We're being sacrificed. Romana insisted that I give her all of my team's calculations for my bomb's delivery system, not just my biochemical formula. Security precautions, she said, but I know she's authorized other bomb-building projects. We're camouflage for something else, something bigger, something Romana and those morons on the High Council think will actually work. Something they'll give to someone they think of as trustworthy to handle. Do you really think they think of you and me as trustworthy? When a politician like Romana keeps telling you over and over again that she has the utmost faith in you, it can only mean she doesn't trust as far as she can throw you. She's sweet in bed but she's not very strong. She can't throw anything very far.”

He's distracted for a split second by the thought of what the Rani and Romana could have been doing to each other so that physical strength was an issue in their activities. It passes. The rest of the information that the Rani's just now finally decided to share puts a different spin on things. Still, they have a job to do, and they both have to be ready for it. “I think they think we know how to look out for ourselves. And that is something we know how to do. I've almost indestructible. You escaped from the Tetraps. Together, we survived that trip the Doctor sent us on with a hungry Tyrannosaurus Rex in tow, didn't we?”

“Yes, we did. And I wouldn't be surprised to learn that you are I are dying tomorrow because of something to do with him.” The despondency he hears as she speaks rings through louder and clearer than any emotion he's ever heard in her voice in all the years he's known her.

“I've never heard you sound so hopeless, Rani.”

“This war is hopeless. We cannot win. We may ultimately defeat the Daleks, but it will be the end of the Time Lords, too. All of us, even your precious Doctor, we'll all be gone. Maybe even Gallifrey all together. Feel out along the time lines and they just...stop. Surely, you must feel that.” Hopelessness and fear. That's what he hears. It's a bit infectious; he's feeling it himself. Before he can think of something else to say to try to get her back onto an even keel, she asks “Or has that drumming in your head finally completely robbed you of all of your senses?”

He follows her eyes to look down at his hand. It's tapping out the ever-present beat onto the table's surface. He stops the tapping, looks up at her and opens his mouth to say the only thing he can think of that may calm them both. “I saw him. He's here. On Gallifrey.”

She draws in a breath. It's more of a gasp, really. “You're like a dog with a bone. Try not to let your fantasies get in the way of your ability to think tomorrow. I have no desire to hear you calling out the Doctor's name one last time as the Daleks massacre us.”

He chuckles a little, not because he finds her comments amusing, but because he realizes she has always understood him a little more than he could ever make himself remember. He finds it's unexpectedly easy to fill his voice with concern and kindness before he tells her “I have a well-honed instinct for survival, Rani. If the drums haven't destroyed it by now, fantasies won't either. But I really did see him. I'm telling you now only because I thought you might find some comfort in knowing that he's still alive.”

He sees the tension on her face. Not the effect he was going for. Neither is the way she sways on her feet. He stands up, takes her by the arm and helps her to sit down on his bed behind her. When he sits down next to her, shoulder to shoulder, she flinches a little but doesn't shift away.

“Were you with him?” She doesn't give the impression that she really wants to know. She asked, though, so she must. And he has neither reason nor desire to lie.

“Yes.” The drums get louder.

“Was it good?” He hears her, but he doesn't answer because he's too focused on the drums and the fact that her body is shaking. Not good. He has to get both to stop somehow. He's still thinking of what to try next when she asks “Was it as loving as you remember?”

How can he answer that? He doesn't want to share, not that, so he says “It was what it was.”

“Did it help quiet the drums?”

Now he's at a complete loss. He doesn't know what she's getting at with her questions, doesn't understand why she wants to know these things. He only knows he has to get her to stop shaking, to stop being so afraid, to stop feeling whatever else it is she's feeling that's turning her into a trembling husk that will be a liability tomorrow instead of an asset. “The drums come and go of their own accord.”

Her face contracts with what he can see is fear and what he suspects might be sorrow. “I wish that sounded more comforting and reassuring than it does.”

Comfort. She'd talked of comfort earlier. Comfort and sex. He supposes even the Rani would need some comfort at a time and place like this. It's not necessarily what he'd have chosen just now, or ever in light of his rather frightening and therefore thankfully limited experience of sex with the Rani, but it isn't necessarily a bad idea for either of them. He's been through worse things. And even if he hasn't, he needs to do whatever needs to be done.

He kneels in front of her and slowly runs his hand from her shoulder to her elbow while he says, his voice low and entrancing, “I'm sorry my words aren't helping. Take comfort and reassurance from my body instead.” He knows from the way she lets out a shuddering breath and shivers that he's finally hit upon the right thing to say and do.

He slides his hands under her jacket ---- and, it's funny, but he just now notices how she's gone back to black leather ---- and pushes it off her shoulders. He takes off her boots and eases her onto her back. He lies down on his side next to her. He undoes her shirt buttons, leaving her uncovered for his attentions. He stops the slide of his hand against her skin when she puts her hand over his, but starts up again when she strokes the back of his hand and fingers. When his hand slides lower, she helps him undo the zipper on the black leather that's left on her body and, lifting her hips, shimmies out of it.

He lays his head on her shoulder, looks down her body and keeps his eyes on his hand. He concentrates on instilling calm stillness into her body. He doesn't look at her face, doesn't look to see what her reactions are to his touch. He doesn't need to see them; he doesn't care what they are. He only needs to get her quiet and calm and ready for tomorrow. He hears her, though. He hears her breathing get faster and shallower, although she's otherwise so very quiet. He feels her body responding, too. He feels her swell as his fingertips coax engorging blood into her flesh. He feels her getting slick. He feels her jump just a little as he slides two of his fingers inside her and searches. When he finds what he's looking for and starts a slow slide with the knuckles of his thumb outside her body and his fingers inside, he hears her gasp and feels her rock in counterpoint to the movement of his hand. He keeps his hand in motion while he hears her give off a succession of explosive little gasps and sighs, while he feels her body jackknife as far as it can with him half on top of her, while he feels her spasm around his fingers. When she sighs and her muscles stop contracting, he stops.

She's quiet and still. He's in the middle of silently congratulating himself on his achievement, watching his hand trail back up her belly, when he feels something soft and warm languidly brush up against his mind, not trying to get in but just ... well, “nuzzling” is the only word that presents itself at the moment. He strengthens his mental shields, not entirely sure why he's doing it, and raises himself up to look at her to see if there is any explanation in her eyes. He has just enough time to see how dark those eyes are before she lunges up off the bed and moves in to kiss him, taking him completely by surprise. She gets as far as grazing his bottom lip before he pulls away more abruptly, he realizes only after he's done it, than is strictly necessary.

“Can't we kiss?” She looks confused. He can empathize.

“Why?” He'd really like to hear her reason because he doesn't have a clue himself as to why she'd want to kiss. But he can tell that it wasn't the right thing to say because now she looks hurt as well as confused. At least he thinks she does. He searches back through his memories and can think of only one time when she looked, just for a moment, like she might have felt hurt. What she looks like now is much more intense than what she looked like then.

She has, it seems, no rational reason to give him. “It's...I...I want to kiss you.”

“Why would you want to kiss me?”

She seems unhappy and a little embarrassed that she should be having to explain herself on this particular matter at this particular moment. “It seems right. It seems like a loving thing to do right now.”

For some reason he can't fathom, the drums get louder. Before he can remind himself that he's finally gotten her to the point where she's not nearly paralytic with fear and that getting her to that point was the entire reason for even thinking of sex let alone getting her off, he laughs and blurts out “This isn't lovemaking, Rani. This is calming you down so that you're not utterly worthless tomorrow.”

Surely that isn't what he meant to say. Surely he'd never be so unthinking as to say that to her face, no matter that it's true. It's the drums. He blames the drums.

Humiliation washes over her features before anger takes over. He's seen her angry before, but not like this. The fury on her face is a sight that would make Alecto cringe. He does cringe away from the rage in her voice as she screams “Why should you be the only one? Why should it only ever be you?” But he doesn't move fast enough to get away from the vise-like grip of her hands as they close around his head. Her fingers push brutally against his temples and she makes contact.

The drums explode, and he thinks and hopes that the sound will repel her from his mind. They don't though, because she cuts right through them and somehow silences them. She moves right to where she wants to go and starts pulling the memory from his mind. He doesn't want to see it, doesn't want to live through it again. He twists and tries to pull his body and mind away from her, but she's stronger than he's ready to contend with. She's on top of him now, holding him down with her body. He shouts at her to stop, but she doesn't. She never stops when she's trying to get something she wants, no matter what she does to anyone else in the process.

He tries to turn it around, tries to use the memory she's extracting as a weapon against her. He has a vague hope that maybe she'll stop to avoid the pain she's going to feel; he has a clear desire to make her feel that pain if she doesn't stop. He flips her over on her back so that he's on top of her, grabs her head with both hands and makes the connection go both ways. “What is it you want to see?” he hisses, his voice sounding like it's being forced through glass shards in his throat. “You want to see how he looked when I made him come? When I made him writhe and scream and left him spent? How I did all that to him? Is that what you want to see?”

“Yes,” she grits out between clenched teeth.

His thoughts scream that he should not do this, that he's on the verge of making a horrible mistake, that he should gather up all his strength and end this now. He ignores those thoughts and jumps in.

Inside each other's minds, they see and hear and feel and remember the same things as their bodies thrash against and stimulate each other. They see the Doctor under them, his head thrown back, auburn curls damp with sweat, mouth slack with desire, placid face looking so, so beautiful. They hear his moans of pleasure. They feel his lips as the Master kisses him and his tongue as it caresses the Master's. They feel his supple body under them, his skin touching them where the backs of his thighs press against the Master's chest and where his ankles rest on the Master's shoulders. They feel the sensation of diving over and over again into his willing body, and the Master's sheer bliss at each plunge.

He can tell that everything she's yanking from his mind is hurting her. But it's not painful enough to make her pull out as he had hoped. Instead, she does something he didn't foresee, something he hadn't even quite realized was possible. She forces her way further along the link even deeper into his mind and taps into the Doctor's experience as the Master had felt it during his shared connection with the Doctor. She's looking down a tunnel of sensation and emotion that she now shares both with him and, through him, the Doctor. She sees with three sets of eyes, hears with three sets of ears, feels with three bodies. Joined with her as he is in their minds, so does he.

It's more than he wants her to see, more than he can let her see. He shoots a pure, sharp, piercing burst of mental energy into her mind to repulse her. She doesn't budge. He tries to pull out of her mind so that he at least doesn't have to feel her feeling but she holds him trapped. There's only one thing left that he can do, and that's beg. And he does beg. He pleads with her to stop, to please stop, to please don't do this. She doesn't stop. She doesn't care.

He's dragged along, feeling what he felt, what the Doctor felt, what she feels now feeling them both. He cries out unintelligibly when he hears himself call the Doctor's name in his mind and spills into him in memory while he orgasms against the Rani's thrusting body; he hears the echo of both voices come back to him through her. They feel the riotous joy and the overwhelming gratitude that flowed though him as he looked down at the Doctor's flushed face. They feel all of his lingering hate and anger and pain reverse itself back into the love he'd once had for the Doctor. And they feel that love flow out of them like floodwaters, strong and swift enough to wash away planets and galaxies as it makes its way to the Doctor. It's so much stronger, so much more than anything the Rani ever felt for the Doctor; he feels the pang of disappointment and the sense of loss that pass through her at the realization.

They feel the Doctor spasm. They feel the Master's hair under the Doctor's grasping fingers as he caresses the Master's head while the Rani pushes even harder at the Master's temples as she climaxes against the Master's thigh. They feel the Doctor's breath catch as no names escape his throat. They feel the tired, pleased satiety that fills the Doctor and the hum that runs through his body as the Master rests in his arms. They feel the Master's skin under their hands as the Doctor's hands gently roam over the Master's back. They feel the Master's skin under their lips as the Doctor bestows a small kiss to his forehead. That's all they feel. There is nothing else to feel.

He can feel she's surprised and sorry, but he's too used up to believe it or care. He knows she must actually be feeling those emotions, foreign though they may be to her, when she says “I didn't know. I didn't realize...” When she can't continuing speaking and starts to cry, he stops trying to convince himself that her contrition is just a way to deflect his rage. He can tell she never cries because she's obviously never learned how to do it gracefully. Her eyes are squeezed shut, her face is screwed up, her body shakes and she sobs and chokes and almost retches on her tears and snot. When she chokes out “I'm sorry,” he hears in her voice and her mind that she's sorry for them both.

Now that she's not prodding and pulling at his memories, he has enough presence of mind to see into her and realize that nothing she's done this night should have been entirely unexpected. Yes, he'd picked up on her fear, but he should have seen there was more, that it's not just death in and of itself that she fears. She'd tried, in her halting and stilted way, to open herself up to him. She'd tried to draw him in, to show him what she wanted, to show him what she wanted to give. But he was too busy --- to busy keeping everything but raw anger on the surface, too busy keeping her pacified just enough to make sure she'd be ready and of use tomorrow --- to notice or care that she's afraid of dying without feeling what it's like to offer love, however tepid and weak and thoroughly unexciting it might be, and have it accepted and cherished for its own sake. She's never felt that, but she knows he did, once upon a time. She didn't get that feeling from him, so she pillaged his mind for a memory of it to rip from him. She looked for a diamond to take with her to greet death but only got the coal he had for a last memory of being with the Doctor. And now she's a wreck, he's none too much better and they're back to where they started because she's going to be useless against the Daleks tomorrow if she doesn't get herself under control right now.

As soon as the last thought crosses his mind, she stops crying. She pulls back from his mind so gently he can barely feel it. The drums start to beat again as she moves away. She reaches back and does something he doesn't understand and can't begin to describe. Whatever it is, it deadens the beat to background noise so quiet he can ignore it if he doesn't focus on it. “It will last a few hours,” she tells him. Then she leaves.

He's still in her mind, though. She hasn't done anything to push him out. She's shielding, but he feels traces of misery, regret, even guilt. He could do all manner of things to exact revenge now. He doesn't, though. Why bother? It won't undo what she did, won't make his mind inviolate again. And he does understand what she wanted. He'd wanted it himself. He'd gone to the Doctor to get it. He'd allowed himself for one wondrous moment to believe he had it again. When fact proved that belief to be a lie, his reality became so much more bitter than it had been.

He can do one small thing for the Rani and himself right now, he thinks. Something that might help a little. He can give them both a memory of what they'd both sought. He looks through his mind and finds a very old but very sweet memory of a time that was loving on both sides, when fear of his love hadn't yet gained the power to drive the Doctor's acceptance of it away. He's a bit surprised to find that she floats on the front edge of the memory, clearing away laboratory equipment and papers filled with calculations and shooing children not quite old enough to go to the Untempered Schism out of the room so that Daddy and “Uncle” can “talk.” It's a good memory, one he thinks she'll like. But when he tries to show it to her, her shields become impenetrable. He thinks to kiss her as an invitation to share the memory but, when he tries, his lips land on her own tightly compressed lips. When he pulls back, she says “I'll be ready. I am ready. Will you tell me where my quarters are?”

“Stay here.” He thinks that she shouldn't be alone before tomorrow's mission, then withdraws from her mind before he has any more thoughts about readiness for tomorrow. He doesn't need to remind her or himself that making sure she's battle-ready is the only thing he was worried about through the entire disastrous ordeal they've just been through. “Sleep here.”

She says nothing, but doesn't try to get up and leave when he stands, undresses, and lies back down. He doubts she'll sleep. He doesn't think he'll sleep, either, but he may at least be able to relax now that she did whatever she did to quiet the drums. He wonders, just before he drifts into a shallow doze, whether they might have both been able to get some real sleep now if he had let her kiss him when she tried.

She comes out of her regeneration screaming. She reaches out with her arms. She finds a body and she clings to it. She reaches out with her mind. She should hear the white noise of other minds. She hears the pounding of drums instead. She can't cling to that.

The Master disentangles himself from her arms and pulls her roughly to a sitting position in the capsule she's laying in, then to her feet. “All better now?” he asks, an antic smile on his face. It's a disturbing smile. It becomes even more disturbing when it broadens widely as she falls to the ground.

She's sick. She is so, so sick. She's never been as sick as this before. She hasn't been as profligate with her regenerations as the Master and the Doctor have, but she's regenerated enough times to know that something isn't right this time. This degree of regeneration sickness means that something far from right has happened during the process.

“Come on. Get up. Can't have you laying about, taking up all that floor space.” The Master yanks her to her feet and throws her into a chair. “That's better, isn't it?”

She has to fight to get her eyes to focus. When she does, she sees that he's regenerated, too. He's bouncing around the console of a TARDIS she doesn't recognize, playing with buttons and pounding his fists on the center column and console top like that's somehow going to make the ship do what he wants it to do. With all that energy oozing off of him, he looks very young. Like a very young boy. And because he looks and acts so much like a very young boy, it's a shock when he runs back over to her where she's sitting and sticks his tongue down her throat.

She chokes and pushes ineffectually at him. She doesn't have enough strength to shift him. He moves back anyway. “What, you don't want to kiss me anymore? Not even to say hello? Or to thank me for saving you from the big, bad Daleks? Why, Rani,” he says, feigned shock in his voice. “I never figured you to be so fickle.” He laughs a sharp little giggling laugh before his face turns to cold, hard stone. “Or so ungrateful.”

She closes her eyes and gathers her energy to ask “What happened?”

The Master rolls his eyes and sighs. “Don't you remember anything? Anything at all?”

The terrible thing is that she does remember. Some of it, anyway. She remembers finding Daleks swarming over the section of the base that was supposed to be almost completely unguarded according to the High Council and therefore selected as the place to plant her bomb. She remembers feeling no triumph when her belief that they were being sacrificed was proven true; she remembers feeling no joy when her suspicion that they were being set up, not just sacrificed, was validated.

She remembers barely making it back to the Master's TARDIS. She remembers pushing the Master out of the way when a Dalek rolled out of the TARDIS to meet them. She remembers grabbing onto its eyestalk and gunstalk and wrenching both halfway out of their sockets before the bastard shot her.

She remembers being the first to discover that it actually is possible to survive being shot by a Dalek. Fucking up two of its three phallic symbols of death before it zaps you is apparently all that's needed.

Except not quite, because she remembers the Master dragging her into his TARDIS and yelling at her to “Just hold on!” She remembers wondering what it was that she was supposed to hold on to. She remembers the Master having a great deal of difficulty getting his TARDIS to land back on the Cruciform. She also remembers wondering why he was trying to go back to his infernal ship and thinking that he probably wanted her to die in the most uncomfortable place he could think of.

She remembers that, when the Master finally forced the rematerialization, there were Daleks on the Cruciform, too. She remembers hearing the Master shout and growl like an animal just before he grabbed some long cylinder that he held in front of himself like a weapon and doing things with it that looked to her dimming eyes like sawing Daleks in half. If the High Council had weapons like that available to give to the Master, why didn't everyone have them? And why weren't the Daleks losing the war yet?

She can't remember anything after that. She thinks that's probably because she was too dead to notice what was going on around her.

He runs back to the console and starts dancing around it again. “Well. I'll tell you then, shall I? I used my very impressive weapon to wipe out no less than three Daleks. I like my weapon. I'm thinking of making a hand-held version.” He lets out a little giggle. “Sounds a bit rude, doesn't it? But, you know, I don't think those Daleks enjoyed themselves at all. And I did try so hard. Well, I enjoyed myself. You know, I never realized that a Dalek could scream so loud. It sounded like it really hurt. Then, after I did that, I was able to get you into the portable stasis chamber they were standing in front of. Do Daleks actually stand? Or do they squat, maybe? Hmm. I've never thought about that. Well, anyway, I got you into the stasis chamber so that you wouldn't regenerate right in the middle of the whole slew of Daleks that were taking over the Cruciform. Ooh, you should have seen it. That Dalek Emperor has style, I'll give him that. Scary son of a bitch, but he has style. Then I got you, stasis chamber and all, into my TARDIS and we ran. Wasn't that nice of me, saving you like that?

“Wasn't I, wasn't I...” She can't bring herself to say it. She feels nauseous.

“Dead?” The Master smiles cheerfully into her face. “Yes! You were! And the most interesting thing about it is that, technically, you've been dead for decades! That's interesting. Isn't that interesting? I bet it messed up your regenerative process something fierce!“ The Master crows with laughter. His cheeriness makes her want to vomit.

She hears a pounding. She realizes she's hearing his drums. They're not in contact but, right this minute, she can hear his drums. What must it be like in his skull? And how mad has it driven him?

“You're not dead now, though, although I must say you look like crap. It's not your new body, exactly. That's quite fetching. You just look ... well, you look like you've got the worst case or regeneration sickness of any Time Lord ever. Well, then, off you get. Get yourself some rest. I've got work to do.” The Master turns back to the console, leaving her to drag herself out of the console room and down the hall.

She wakes up sometime later on the floor in the same hall. She feels better; not great, but better. This new regeneration seems a less robust than any of her earlier ones. She finds her way to a large walk-in closet filled with clothes and full-length mirrors and takes a look at herself.

In all of her previous regenerations, she was in full control of the process and the outcome. She was always pleased with the results. This is the first time that she wasn't sufficiently alert enough to control what was happening. The results are, therefore, random, as random as they would have been for a male Time Lord. She hates randomness. It isn't that she looks bad in this body, exactly; it's just not what she'd have chosen for herself. She's tall. She's fair. She's blond. She's delicately angelic looking. She's wearing a body that will look good wearing pastels and neutral colors. It's not a look she'd have gone for if she could have helped it.

The aesthetic aspect of her new body isn't the worst of it, though. This body feels soft and weak. If she's stuck with a drum-haunted, lunatic Master running around in a TARDIS she suspects is the Doctor's, being soft and weak could lead her to being very dead and gone.

This clinches it. Next time, she's going to have to regenerate into a body that completely fits the name “The Rani”.

She still can't hear anyone but the Master. Well, now that she's a bit better and can concentrate, she can hear the Doctor yelling frantically somewhere, but he's so far away that she can't even approximate where or when he is. But there is still no one else. And there can be only one explanation for that.

She walks into the console room and finds the Master sitting on the floor, an impressive array of tools surrounding him. “What did he do?” She tries to sound hard and demanding. It's not an easy thing to do with such a breathy, fluttery voice.

The Master looks up from his tools, grinning like a maniac. “You should see him. He looks good. Really good.” The Master licks his lips. “If he had found a way to get in here, I think I would have just had to bend him over his console and ram into him right then and there. No foreplay, no nothing. Just take him and...”

“What did he do?”

“You'll have to be more specific, Rani. He's done lots of things, but not as many things as I'm gonna do to him when I get my hands on him.”

“He's done something. This silence is absolute. He's killed them.”

“No. He wouldn't do that.”

“Then where are they?”

“I don't know!” The Master shouts. “How should I know?”

She crouches down next to him and grabs him by the front of his waistcoat. “He killed them. Your precious Doctor killed them all. You know it. You know he did. They. Are. All. Dead. All of them. Every last blessed one of them. His own ...”

“No!” The Master roars. He looks like he'd put his hands over his ears and sing “la, la, la, I can't hear you” if she wasn't holding on to his arms now. “No. No. He wouldn't. He wouldn't do that to them. He wouldn't do that to us. He wouldn't leave us all alone, with no one to listen to so that I don't have to listen to the drums. They never...” the Master stops abruptly. “He wouldn't. He couldn't.”

So the Master has spent years, no, decades he said, listening to the drums because there were no Time Lords for him to hear. No wonder he's unremittingly insane. And, once again, it's all thanks to the Doctor.

“And yet he did,” she says as she lets go of the Master and stands up. “Unless you're going to tell me you did it?”

The Master looks up at her, a look of horror on his face. “No,” he says softly. “I would never...”

“Oh, Master, don't add hypocrisy to your list of character flaws. You've almost destroyed Gallifrey before.”

“But not this time. Not this time,” the Master sounds lost before he recovers and continues. “Do you think I would have fought against the Daleks if I wanted to see Gallifrey destroyed? It's not impossible to form an alliance with the Daleks, you know. They'd might have executed me as a war criminal, but I'm sure I could have convinced them to let me fight on their side if I wanted to kill all the Time Lords and destroy home.”

“Well, it wasn't me. So that only leaves your favorite ex-lover.”

“Shut up! How many times do I have to tell you that he wouldn't do that. He wouldn't. He's not like that. He's not like you or me. He's good. He is always good. He has to be.” The Master rubs his temples.

She can't imagine how this could get any worse. The Master's been hearing an ever loudening and never ending drumbeat and now he's lost his ethical north. Not that he ever walked toward it in any of his lives that she knows of, but it was always there in everything the Doctor ever did, giving the Master direction in all of his own actions. And now, just like all the Time Lords that the Rani knows the Doctor killed, it's gone. The Master must be so very lost. She can't imagine how being that lost must feel.

She kneels down beside him. It's time to start making the Master better, even it if takes lying to him. “Master, I'm sure he did whatever it was he did because there was no other choice.”

He looks at her. “Do you hear them? The drums? They never stop.”

“No, Master, I don't. I can help you, though.” She reaches out to put her hands on his temples so she can make contact. She finds herself sprawled on the floor, the Master straddling her.

“Can't keep your hands off of me, huh? Or your mind. So, what is it? Do you find me irresistible or is it a power thing?”

“Master, your sick. I can help. Let me in.”

“You know, he said almost the same thing. Help how, exactly?”

“I can find out what's causing the drums and stop them.”

“Why? They're mine. They play for me. They kept me company when nothing else that did.”

“Master, why did you wait so long to bring me out of stasis?”

“Well, the thing is, I forgot about you.” Looking down at the Rani's shocked face, he adds “Not forgot, exactly. It's just that I made myself human and didn't remember you until after I was restored and had regenerated.”

“Human? Why?”

“Because the Daleks were everywhere. You were in stasis. They weren't going to find you. But me, me they were coming after like a hammer into an anvil. They don't like it when Time Lords they execute don't stay dead. Makes them want to make doubly sure they get the job right the next time.”

“Master, you won't be well until the drums are quiet. Let me in.”

She means it as a command, but there's no authoritative edge to her new voice. The Master looks at her like he's weighing an offer she's made. “No, if you really want to help me, then help me with my plans.” The Master gets off of her and stands up.

She feels a sinking sensation in her stomach as she rises to her feet. “Plans. What plans would those be?”

“Well, the main goal is to....”

“Don't tell me. To get the Doctor to come to you.”

“That's part of it, yes. Right. You're good, you're very good. Want to see if you can guess the rest?”

“Don't do it.”

Oh, but I will. Because there's more to it than just getting the Doctor back. I want it all back. I'm going to rebuild it all.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm going to build a new Time Lord empire.”

“Why the hell would you want to do that? You hated the Time Lords.”

“The old ones, yes. But I'll be in charge this time. It'll be so much more fun and far less stuffy. We'll get to do whatever we want, kill whoever we want. Just think of it. We'll be unstoppable.”

“Not we. You. I want no part of it.”

“It's necessary.”

“It's insane.”

“You'll have access to all the experimental subjects you want once we rule the universe.” She must admit that the Master is very, very good at finding and exploiting weaknesses. She must also admit that she must look interested, because the Master continues. “And just think. No High Council telling you what you can and can't do. You'll be free to do whatever you want. To whatever or whoever you want to do it to.”

This plan, or at least its outcome, has a certain appeal. She might as well learn more. “How do you intend to carry out this plan?”

“First, I have to become Prime Minister of Great Britain.”

“You,” she points a finger into his face, “are insane.” She turns her back to him.

He circles around her to look her in the face again. “I need to be in a position where I can have enough power to get everything I need to bring my subjects here from the future to establish my new empire.”

“And the position of Prime Minister is going to give you that kind of power? Master, you're not just insane. You're hopelessly naïve.”

“No. It'll work. I've got it all planned out. I'm even getting started on converting the Doctor's TARDIS into the paradox machine I'll need to do it. See?” He gestures to the tools on the floor. “Then, when the Doctor gets here, I'll be able to get started on the second stage of my plan. It'll mean the destruction of Earth and all those Earthlings the Doctor loves so much, of course, but oh well. Empire building can be a bitch sometimes.”

“Strange, but your plan to build a new Time Lord empire sounds suspiciously like a plan to get back at the Doctor. You're still just a hopeless little obsessive, aren't you? Wasting your time and energy on trying to get the Doctor to bleed for you so that he can't ignore you. Stop now, before you start. Let me fix whatever's wrong in your head and just stop all of this lunacy now.”

“I think not. I think we'll do things my way this time.”

“Oh, because your way's always worked out so well in the past.” She hunts around in her mind for the most intimidating threat she can find. “If you don't stop now, I'll contact the Doctor. I still can, you know. Very easily. I'll get him here and he'll see you like this. Do you think he'll enjoy seeing what you've degenerated into? A crazed, drum-hearing megalomaniac wannabe emperor?”

The Master looks a little scared, but he doesn't back down. “He already knows about the megalomaniac part.”

“But he doesn't know you're insane. I mean it, Master, I'll get him here now if you don't try to see anything remotely approaching reason. Is that what you want? You know he'll either laugh at how pathetic you've become or shake his head in disgust. Very likely both. Is that how you want him to see you?”

“You wouldn't dare.”

“Try me.”

The Master looks at her with such an icy glare that she actually shivers. “No. I won't try you. And you won't stop me. We neither of us loved the Time Lords, but we never dreamed there would ever be a time that they'd all be gone. All except for you and me and him. You don't want to be alone anymore than I do, and you will be if you call the Doctor here now. He'll lock me up somewhere away from you and forget all about me. And you'll be all alone because he'd never, ever think to come back for you. No. You won't stop me. You won't even try.”

The Master, for all of his madness, has a point. She says nothing.

The Master walks over to the console and turns back to look at her. “You know what I think? I think that a rising young politician needs a wife. We'll have to be careful and make sure that the Doctor doesn't know that there are still two us left, but I think you'll do nicely once that tricky little problem is handled.”

“Do nicely as what?”

“As my wife.” The Master smiles the most charmingly insincere smile she's ever seen. “Do you think we should add a couple of kiddies to our happy family?”

“You are definitely out of your mind, Master. I want no part of 'kiddies' and I am no man's wife.”

“But you're everybody's bitch.”

She's instantly in his personal space and roaring without a thought to how unimposing she looks in this body. “What did you say?!”

She must look imposing enough, because the Master takes a step backwards. “Now, there's no need to get violent. I only meant that you are always more than capable of making anyone's life a living hell.”

“You'd do best to remember that, Master.” She's tired, though. Trying to reason with the Master has tired her out. This body is too fragile. She can threaten the Master with all kinds of things, but she doubts she'll be able to carry through on any threat she levels at him. And really, what's the point anyway? When there is no Gallifrey and only three Time Lords left in the universe, what's the point of arguing with the Master or steering him away from this lunacy? Suddenly, she wants nothing more than to go to sleep.

The Master steps closer to her. “The Doctor knows I'm alive but he doesn't know about you. It'll be safer for us both if it stays that way. I have a suggestion. You're not going to like it, but hear me out, because it's the best way we have of protecting ourselves.”

She moves to sit in the chair. “What is it?”

“Become human.”

She sneers and shakes her head. “Why am I surprised? You're crazy, so why am I so surprised that you'd suggest something crazy?”

“He won't be able to sense your presence. I know. He didn't recognize me at all. It will work. And later, when everything's in motion, I can bring you back.”

She's too tired for any of this. Too tired for all of it. “All right, Master. Let's say I do this. I'll have to make sure that I've got some failsafe mechanism to wake me up because I certainly can't rely on you to remember to do it. Also, I have no doubt that you'll end up getting yourself trapped by the Doctor. I'll have to come out to rescue you when he's about to get the better of you.”

The Master looks surprised. “Well, well, well. The Rani, all impatience and anger and always thinking I'm an idiot, worried about saving me. Who'd have thought?”

“I'm probably just feeling some left over aberrational emotions from your damned paradox engines. If your drums are still as loud as they are, I'm sure I'm still suffering some effects, too.” She looks at his tools on the floor. “And now you're building a new one. I can't become human quickly enough, can I?” She looks at his hands. “What's that ring?”

“Just an old signet ring. I like it. It reminds me of home.”

She stands and walks up to him, hand outstretched. “Give it to me.” She studies it after the Master takes it off and hands it to her. “This will do,” she says as she begins to walk back to the door leading into the TARDIS' interior.

“What are you going to do?”

She stops and turns to face him. “Nothing you'd understand. Certainly not in your current state. And, besides, I've no intention of telling you what I'm planning so that you can blabber it all to the Doctor when you finally lure him to your lair or whatever it is you think you're doing.”

“I'll leave it in your capable hands then, shall I?” The Master smiles at her. It's a closed-mouth smile, with no teeth showing, but he still looks like a cat chewing on a mouse.

“I'll give it back to you after I make some adjustments. It will have to do double duty when your plan comes crashing down around you. I might as well tell you this now as well. After I give it back to you, never take this ring off. Never take it off and keep me close to you. As a human, I won't be much help to you, but keep me close anyway. Don't ever get yourself into a vulnerable position with the Doctor without having me nearby. And, should it come to it, don't regenerate. Do you understand?”

The Master is looking into the middle distance between them, his brow furrowed and his lips pursed. “That sounds rather grim, Rani. Do you really think I'll fail?”

She's thankful that he's thinking at last. “I have to bank on it, Master. Now, do you understand?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” the Master says impatiently. “There's not that much to it, is there? Never take off that ring, keep you close and don't regenerate. Is that it?”

“No. There's one more thing. This body's already not as strong as I'd like it to be. When I'm human, it'll be just another weak human body. It won't have my force of will to power it or protect it. You, in your ridiculous quest for the Doctor's attention, are bound to suffer numerous frustrations. You always do, after all. When the Doctor thwarts you, don't take out those frustrations on this body.”

The Master looks genuinely surprised. “What?”

“Don't work out your frustrations on this body.”

“What do you think I'm going to do you? I wouldn't...”

She holds up a hand to cut him off before he can explain what he wouldn't do and looks him directly in the eye. “She won't be me, that's the point. She won't be able to defend herself, she won't be able to fight back and she won't be able to take it if you use her as a mental or physical punching bag. I know that many would say I've abused you in the past, Master. I can't truthfully say that I fully understand that, but I can accept that the standards of others say I have. I've abused you, but I'm still asking you to please treat this body, when it's human, properly.”

The Master laughs a little before he says “So you're saying...you want me to be gentle with you?” He looks like he expects her to roll her eyes and look away, or maybe wince and shut her eyes, at his romance novel choice of words, but she doesn't. Under her unflinching gaze, he says “I will.”

“I'll be back in an hour. You might as well get the Chameleon Arch ready.”

“Do you need any help,” the Master asks her retreating back. “You still look a bit peaked”

“No. I can manage.” She stops and turns around. “Master, I'm asking you one last time. Let me fix the drums. Your ideas are deranged but at least you've been lucid during almost our entire conversation. If you weren't always hearing that pounding in your head, you'd always be lucid. Wouldn't you prefer to be that way all the time?”

The Master gives long consideration to her request, her question. “It's too late,” he finally says.

She sighs, turns around and walks off to prepare things so she can sleep in the Master's ring.

Inside his mind, he hears a voice say 'You wouldn't be told'. Funny. He's been told that before by a very similar voice.

Then he feels a heavy weight pressing down on his mind. It holds him down, it moves in him, it suffocates him. He tries to push it up, to push it out but it's too heavy. It stays lodged in him. He can't breath, he can't cry out, and then it's gone.

The next thing he's aware of is the burning pain in his gut. He tries to open his eyes and sit up, but his eyelids are crusted shut and he's...strapped down to a table? Naked?

“Don't move. I'm not done yet.”

All right. His ears are working. That's good. He thinks that's good. His nerve endings also appear to be working because he can feel a needle being pushed into his arm and something wet and warm and...ugh...gelatinous being pressed against his stomach. The pain in his gut disappears, only to be replaced by a a dark wave moving through his mind. It weighs nothing, but it spreads over his consciousness like a blanket and covers up everything that is him. It's cold and wet, quite unlike a blanket should be, and every bit as suffocating as the weight he felt before was. He feels himself start to panic. He draws in great hitching breaths but it feels like he's sucking in water. He feels the keening start in his throat but before the scream leaves his mouth, the wave is gone.

He gets his breathing and himself under control and concentrates on separating his upper and lower eyelids from each other. He gets his eyes open, then immediately wishes he hadn't when he's blinded by harsh florescent lights. Squinting, he turns his head to the side and sees black leather.

The black leather turns around, and now he sees that there's also something red mixed in there, too. Dark red and a bit shiny. Silk maybe? Yes, definitely silk. He can tell because it's pressed up against his face as the black leather reaches across him and undoes the straps holding him to the table. Well, what's actually pressed up against his face is a pair of breasts, but they're covered in wine-colored silk. He doesn't particularly mind his face being caught in someone's cleavage, but he does feel less smothered when the silk-covered breasts pull back.

A woman's face moves into his line of vision. She's dark and exotic and she doesn't look at all fragile. The woman's lips move and the words “We're even” come out of her mouth. Before he can ask her what she means, she pulls the IV needle from his arm and says “You can get up now.”

“I see you've gone back to indulging your leather fetish.” He tries to sit up but finds he can't quite do it. “Could use a bit of help here.”

The Rani puts her arm around the Master's back and helps him sit up. “It's much more suited to me than the tasteless couture you had that poor, miserable human wear. Were you trying to get the Doctor to figure out that your wife's body was the human version of my last regeneration?”

“Dressed up in evening wear a lot for him, did you?”

“No, but I was wearing a lot of red the last time he saw me.”

“You're wearing red now.”

“Subdued burgundy, nothing too eye-catching. The overall basic black attracts far less attention than yards and yards of flaming red satin. I like to keep a low profile.”

“By dressing up as Mrs. Peel?”

“Exactly how much time did you waste watching television last year, Master? I thought you only watched that revoltingly mind-numbing children's program as you sucked down scotch.”

He swings his legs down from the table and sits on the edge. “Watching DVDs of old television series helped pass the time while the pieces of my brilliant plan came together.”

She walks to a bookcase by the door, picks up a dark pile of something soft-looking and comes back to hand it to him. “Which brilliant plan would that be, Master? The one where your strategically-timed gloating gave the Doctor the opportunity to undo, in the space of mere seconds, everything you managed to accomplish in your year-long campaign to gain his attention? Or was it the one where you finally, at long last, succeeded in getting him to wrap his arms around you and hold you tenderly while you buried your head in his crotch and sobbed?”

“Neither. It was the brilliant plan where I escaped from him, thereby enabling me to carry on with my plans for universal conquest. Listening all the while, apparently, to the dulcet tones of your new voice spew bone-bleaching bile from your new body. And it was his chest I was sobbing into, not his crotch. He moved at the last minute.”

“Ah. You mean the brilliant plan that consisted entirely of you relying on me to come up with a brilliant plan to save your worthless ass from the entirely foreseeable consequences of your moronic obsession with the Doctor.” As she speaks, she reaches into the pocket of her leather jacket and fishes out his signet ring. She tosses it to him; he catches it easily.

“Yup,” he says as he slips the ring on his finger. “That's the one. Brilliant, don't you think?” He unfolds the pile of clothing. “A rugby shirt and tracky bottoms?!” He holds them pinched between his thumb and forefinger as though they were just used to clean out a horse's stable. “I'm not a college student. And I don't need to manufacturer any background stories anymore. I've got an image, you know. Where are my clothes?”

“They either burned or the Doctor kept them to remember you by. This,” she gestures to the clothes, “ was all I was able to get my hands on for now. Those are called sweatpants here, by the way, and at least they aren't bright yellow. You can go shopping for something more tailored and elegant later, but put them on for now. My assistant just went to get coffee. I don't want him seeing you running around my lab naked.”

“I'd rather he did. He'd find me more attractive naked than dressed in this. What about shoes?” She bends and reaches under the table he's sitting on, straightens back up and places a pair of flip-flops next to him. He looks at them, then slides off the table and glares at her. “You hate me, don't you? You absolutely hate me,” he says petulantly as he pulls on the sweatpants. When all she does is give a long-suffering sigh, roll her eyes before closing them and shake her head, he asks “Where's here?”

“My lab.”

“And that's where?”

“The Department of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.” At his blank look, she gives him more details. “In Boston. That's a city in the State of Massachusetts. In the United States of America. Oh, and I don't mind you calling me 'Doctor' now if you feel the need. It is my title here, after all.”

“America. That must be why you sound so strange. Great. This is just great. You've resurrected me into a armpit.” At her disgusted, impatient look, he says “Well, all right, maybe it's not quite that bad. But why not London?”

“Because I can actually get on with my work undisturbed here and you, even if you don't regenerate --- which you should really give serious consideration to doing, by the way ---- probably won't be readily recognized as the extremely short-termed and extremely late Prime Minister of Great Britain.”

“Not dressed in these clothes I won't. Wait a minute. Won't they remember that I killed their President?”

“They shouldn't. After you died, the Doctor used the Archangel network to plant a suggestion in the minds of all the humans who'd experienced the time reversal that eradicated their memories of you turning your little silver toys loose on Daniels. What they remember now is that both of you were brutally assassinated by some extremist group wanting freedom from Rassilon knows what. Probably intelligence. Although why everyone found that cover to be so convincing I can't begin understand since no one on this planet actually possesses any intelligence.”

“The Doctor made me the victim of a political assassination? Why would he do that?”

“As I understand it, the Doctor claimed it was to maintain political stability. No doubt the real reason was that he couldn't stand the thought of his favorite species remembering his favorite ex-lover as a homicidal lunatic.”

“Where is the dear Doctor?”

She draws in a deep breath and slowly lets it out, making him think of how humans use deep breathing techniques to control rage and frustration. He can't envision the Rani doing yoga. “Don't you ever learn?” She moves to stand directly in from of him and lifts her head up to look him in the eye. “You're alive. You've got eleven more bodies in front of you. You can start over. Things don't have to be the way they always were. Everything can be different for you now. Let it go. Finally, please, just let him go.”

“To let him go, I'd have to have him first, wouldn't I?”

She doesn't answer. Instead, she walks to her desk across the room. She takes off her leather jacket, hangs it on the back of her chair and sits down at her desk and begins reviewing data on her computer. As he looks at her back, he realizes that the only thing he hears is the sound of her fingers tapping on the keyboard. He pulls on the rugby shirt and walks barefoot across the room to stand behind her.

“Where are they?”

She ignores him.

“What did you do?” She still ignores him. He finds it more than a little annoying. He puts his hands on her arms, runs them up and over her shoulders and brings them to rest wrapped lightly around her neck.

“What did you do?” His voice is low, seductive. “Tell me.”

She stops typing and straightens her spine. “I fixed your drums,” she answers, her voice even, her eyes never leaving her computer screen.

“Would that have involved you forcing yourself into my mind and making me nearly shit myself from sheer terror a few minutes ago?”

“I took care of your problem. What difference does it make how I did it?”

He keeps his voice caressingly low as he tightens his grip around her neck. “That's twice you've forced yourself on me, Rani. Does this make you some sort of serial rapist, I wonder?”

“Like I said, we're even.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Let's think about this, shall we?” Her eyes are still on the computer screen. “I forced myself on you, as you call it, and subjected you to a few seconds of mental discomfort, essentially curing you of the worst of your mental illness in the process. You, on the other hand, spent months kicking the shit out of a body that belonged to me and subjecting that body's frail, human neurological system to stressors that broke her physically and mentally. I told you she wouldn't be me. I told you she wouldn't be able to protect herself. I asked you, no, I begged you to not take out your frustrations on her. You said you wouldn't. I didn't exactly believe you'd be able to keep yourself under control, but I did think you'd at least try.”

He has no comment, sarcastic or otherwise. He simply unwraps his fingers from her throat and drops his hands to rest on her shoulders. She turns her head to look up at him over her shoulder. “Maybe you have a point, Master. Maybe we aren't even. But considering the way I accessed your mind the only other time I ever have, I'm willing to say we are. And you're welcome, by the way.”

He moves away from her to sit on the stool next to her desk. “We may be even, but I wouldn't be expecting my gratitude if I were you. You took something that was mine. You pushed yourself into me to get it. You didn't ask. You just did it.”

“I wanted to do it, I could do it, so I did it. And you came out ahead, so stop your complaining. You don't like it? Rather have your drums back? Go get yourself a nice neurotransmitter imbalance by getting the Doctor to humiliate and abandon you at a developmentally significant period in your life again. Then go amplify that imbalance exponentially. Getting yourself injured again in another epoch-spanning war by spending all your time in a tissue-restructuring abomination of a paradox machine before you reconfigure your molecular structure into one that belongs to a lesser species should do the trick. You'll be dancing to the beat again in no time.”

“Do you know where he is?”

She looks briefly at him before her face contracts in a way that he can tell means she's torn between pitying him and being embarrassed for him. She lets out a single huff of breath before she says, “I always know where he is. I told you a long time ago that I keep track of him so I can stay out of his way.” She waits for his next question. She won't just give it to him. If he wants to know, he'll have to ask.

He's silent for a while. When he speaks again, it's not to ask where the Doctor is.

“Where's this coffee you mentioned?”

“You want...coffee?” He waits for her to add Not the Doctor? She doesn't.

“Yeah, a thermos of it. And give me some money to go shopping. I can't be seen dressed like this where I'm going. I can't be seen dressed like this anywhere. And where's my TARDIS?”

Martha's never been one much for prayer. All the same, as she sits on a bench in the back of the military convoy truck waiting to be transported to The Valiant, she thinks that maybe a short prayer wouldn't come amiss right now. She's seen a lot of suffering and death over the past year. Now that she's unquestionably facing it herself, she'd like to make peace with whoever her Maker is and ask for the strength to face her end bravely. Not that bravery is a necessary element of dying, but she thinks that being brave in the face of death will be a show of defiance that will be decidedly unwelcomed by the Master. It might even make him crazy. Crazier. She'd like that. The problem is that she is very, very scared. Maybe a small prayer would help with that.

It's a shame she's having so much trouble remembering any of the words to any of the prayers she learned when she was little.

And here he is, the target of her thwarted defiance, clambering up over the tailgate and into the truck. He's markedly less graceful than she remembers, probably because of the thermos he's holding in one hand and the two ceramic mugs he's holding in the other.

“Martha Jones.” He bends over and puts the mugs on the floor of the truck, then sits on the bench opposite her. His eyes give her a lascivious once-over before he says “I don't think I've told you, but you look very, very good. Black commando gear suits you.”

He doesn't seem to expect any sort of response to this moderately threatening and very bizarre line of chat, so she looks down at the mugs on the floor and doesn't give one.

“Chilly out here, isn't it? Isn't it strange how, no matter how cold the night is, it always seems to feel coldest just before dawn? Have you ever noticed that, Martha? No? Just me, then? Oh, well. Coffee?” He holds up the thermos. Martha stares at it and doesn't answer. She does, however, wonder if he's been taking nonsense-speech lessons from the Doctor since she left The Valiant. No, she remembers, he prattled on fairly well before she transported down to the Earth's surface with Jack's vortex manipulator.

Undaunted, the Master opens the thermos, reaches down for a mug and fills it with steaming coffee. He holds the mug out to Martha, who just stares at it. “It's not poisoned or anything, I promise you. Here, see?” He drinks from the mug. “No cream or sugar, I'm afraid, but not poisoned. You probably don't want to drink from a mug I just drank from, though. How sanitary is that?” He sets the mug back on the floor, grabs the other mug and fills it before he thrusts it at Martha. She grabs it to avoid being doused with scalding coffee, but she doesn't drink.

The Master picks up his own mug and drinks. “Not bad, really. Survived the trip surprisingly well. Nice and hot. Drink up. After all, you're expecting me to kill you as soon as you get back to The Valiant anyway. What's the difference if I poison you here instead? At least you'll be warm.”

Martha still doesn't drink, but she does keep holding the mug in her hands. It warms her fingers. She brings the mug closer to her face so that the steam rises and warms her nose.

“Well, Martha, what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? What's a nice girl like you doing running with the Doctor, for that matter? You're far too good and far too smart to spend your time traipsing and pining after him.”

Martha looks at him over her cup. She wants to ask what he's going on about, but she doesn't think engaging a crazed megalomaniac who scares her more than anything ever has in personal conversation would be wise. He is, as he says, going to be killing her soon, after all.

“I mean, look at yourself. You've just finished --- well, nearly finished, anyway; we won't say anything about your lack of a successful conclusion --- a year-long mission to save this miserable hunk of rock. You did it all by yourself, too. Well, maybe with a bit of help from the rest of the apes in the Resistance, but certainly without any help from the Doctor. No, he's been sitting on The Valiant this whole year, trying to tell me he forgiiiives me while he plots...”

The Master abruptly stops talking. Martha watches as the look on his face shifts from one of seething hatred of the Doctor to one of interest in her. His benign facial expression doesn't quite hide the supercilious attitude Martha's sure she sees underneath it. Martha decides she needs to stop listening to him, and not because she's not interested in anything a murdering madman has to say. No, it's more because he's starting to sound a little like the voice she's been hearing in her head more and more of late. She looks down into her coffee.

“Have you ever taken stock of exactly what having the Doctor in your life has brought you? Really, just think about it for a minute. You haven't exactly been having fun this last year, have you? And before that, were a few trips in time and space really worth having to put up with his unspoken but oh-so-loud pronouncements that you could never be as good or as important as his precious Rose? You're educated, you're intelligent, you're clever and cunning, you're independent and you're brave beyond words. Why do you think you need the Doctor in your life? What is it you think he can offer you?”

Martha wishes the Master would just shut up. She can't stop listening to him, though. She wonders if what she's feeling right now is what people refer to when they talk about not being able to tear their eyes away from a car wreck. A fatal car wreck.

“Listen to me, Martha. I know the Doctor. I've known him for a very long time. We're enemies now, but we've been other things to each other in the past.” That makes Martha look up. The Master sees the surprise on her face. “He didn't tell you that? No, he wouldn't have, the sanctimonious hypocrite. He wants to save me and forgive me, but he won't ever...Well, no matter. But believe me when I tell you that I know what the Doctor offers to those who are smart enough to really see him and still have the temerity to love him, warts and all. He offers pain. It may be all wrapped up in pretty paper and ribbons, but it's still pain.”

Martha looks down into her mug again. Surely, the Doctor's given her more than pain. She's enjoyed the things he's shown her, except for when it was all destruction and danger and prejudice so thick that she thought it would choke her. She's enjoyed his company, except for when he's shut her out and refused to accept even her friendship. No, she can't listen to this. She can't hear the Master tell her things that she's been trying not to tell herself. “Stop.”

But the Master continues on. “No, no, Martha. Listen to me now. The Doctor...he's like a brilliant sun. He feels so warm you can't help but want to bask in his light. But if you look at him for a fraction of a second too long, and that's so easy to do, you'll go blind. He'll make you lose yourself. He'll make you become something he doesn't understand and can't stand to be around. And that's the best case scenario.” He stops and stares into his own coffee mug as though it's just interrupted him, then purses his lips as though he's deep in thought. “That's not entirely fair to him, though. He doesn't force you to change. It's that you want so much to please him, to make him pleased with you, that you make yourself change. And when you realize you can't please him, that you never will please him, that there will always, always be something else coming along to hold his attention more than you ever could, you make yourself change even more. You make yourself change even though what you change into is something he hates. You change yourself into something you would never have dreamed you'd be capable of becoming just to get his attention back. Just so he doesn't ignore you. Just so he doesn't really leave.”

He straightens up and looks directly at Martha. She looks right back at him, not wanting to hear anymore but feeling like she should really, really take heed of what the Master's telling her. Insane and power-mad he may be but, at this particular moment, he's making more sense than anyone she's ever known.

“It's all the same in the end, though. The Doctor ruins you. If you let him.”

The Master takes another sip of his coffee. He makes a face. “Bleh. It's gone cold. Still decent tasting enough to drink, though.” He drains his mug.

“You have very special qualities, Martha. You have them whether or not the Doctor ever tells you that you have them. You have them whether or not he respects or admires or loves you for them. You're not second best. You're good. Never think otherwise. Never let anyone make you think otherwise.”

The Master stands up. “You know, I feel surprisingly better for our little chat. I'll just be off, then.” He begins to turn toward the truck's tailgate, but he turns back. “If you somehow miraculously escape the death I have in store for you, you should seriously consider leaving the Doctor. Stop your infatuation. Let yourself grow up and move on. Go back and finish your schooling. Pass your exams. Then you'll be the Doctor. That sounds good. Doesn't that sound good?”

Martha watches as the Master picks up the thermos and his mug and climbs over the truck's tailgate onto the bumper. He stops just before he's about to jump down to the ground. “Oh, and if you're not going to drink your coffee, you'd better give it back to me. Don't want to run the risk of causing a caffeine-induced paradox.”

Martha's a bit startled by the resurgence of his babble. Then she realizes that she has no cause to be, because he's still the Master and therefore still completely mad even if he's just unsolicitedly given her some of the best advice she'll probably ever get. Still, best not to poke the sleeping insane tiger with a stick. She reaches down, picks up her mug and drains its contents. Not much point in worrying about poison, after all. Despite the fact that the coffee is now stone cold, it tastes exceptionally good. Not surprising, as it's been more than 365 days since she's had anything remotely resembling a decent cup of coffee. She hands the empty mug to the Master.

“Thanks. Goodbye, Martha Jones.” The Master jumps down from the truck and walks away, swinging the thermos and cups almost jauntily as he strolls along. Martha watches him, hating him as much as she's ever hated him but wondering if he realizes exactly what it is he's just given her, until he rounds the corner and disappears from sight.

She goes back to thinking of the prayers she learned when she was little; she finds that she remembers the words to them all.

The Rani is trying to work, but the Master keeps making pointed comments from his seat across from her. She's been moderately successful so far at ignoring the his annoying presence, but it finally gets to the point where she can't tune him out anymore. She gets up, circles around her desk and sits down on it in front of him. “You want to contact him.” There's no point in making it sound like a question.

“Well...Would it be so wrong to let him know he's not alone? That I'm still around, hatching plots to destroy him? That would make him happy, don't you think?”

“He could have figured out that you're still around for himself by now if he wasn't so busy playing the anime-eyed martyr. You haven't been blocking him. I haven't been blocking him for you, for that matter, so he could have felt you by now if he was trying. And you. Haven't you learned that you'll never destroy him? I've told you before, you just can't bring yourself to do it.”

“I couldn't destroy him right this minute, no. It takes time to put together a brilliant evil plan that works.”

“Which must mean that every destructive plan you've ever hatched for the Doctor was dreamed up and planned out in the time it took for you to have a quick pee. One too short to write your name in the snow with the stream.”

“At least I give him some thought now and then.”

“Meaning what? I don't?”

“Exactly. He has a point, you know. There aren't many of us around.”

“Yes, and whose fault is that?”

“All the same, we shouldn't leave him all alone. He'll snap.”

“Why do you care what happens to him? Hasn't he made your life miserable enough? Why do you want to waste more of your time and what little sanity you have left trying to kill him?”

“I have nothing but time, and you yourself took care of the drums. Mostly, anyway. And I just said I'm not looking to kill him.”

“Sooth his lonely soul, then. Why do this? Are you thinking he'll tell you he loves you?”

The Master is stunned. “That hadn't even crossed my mind.”

“Are you hoping he will?”

“God, no. I can't think of anything more frightening.”

“Why frightening?”

The Master considers how to how answer. “It's so far past time for anything like that from him that it couldn't be real. Something like love doesn't survive in a vacuum, and it doesn't rise from the ashes like a phoenix when it's been burned to a crisp. No. There's nothing like love in him anymore, not for me. If he ever tells me that anything he might feel for me is love, it'll be a sure sign that all is wrong with the cosmos. Or that I'm in deadly peril. Both, probably.”

“Then why go after him? Why do it to yourself?”

“Why do you care what I do to myself?”

“Because I'm the one who had to kill you to save you from him, remember?”

The Rani sounds a bit irritated, but she always sounds irritated when he disagrees with her. As a result, he doesn't think anything of her irritation now. “I thought you rather enjoyed that.”

“If you go after him again, he'll corner you again. And I'll have to kill you again because if he corners you again he'll trap you for good this time. You'll be trapped unless I kill you and I'm not doing it. Not again.” Her voice has been getting progressively louder until she crescendos with “What is it with you? Why can't you understand that I can't do it?”

A yelling Rani is something the Master's familiar with, but not a babbling and yelling Rani. Especially not one who's babbling and yelling about anything related to his welfare. He stares at her silently, eyebrows raised, wondering what brought on her outburst.

The Rani stares at him, looking like she can neither believe that she actually spoke her piece out loud nor stand that he's looking at her with such a puzzled expression. She takes a few breaths, looks him directly in the eye and calmly says “I can't.”

The Master studies her a while longer, the look on his face shifting to one of contemplation, before he speaks. “Well. The Rani, all emotionally sterile and barren, caring about what happens to me. Who'd have thought?”

A mere second goes by, but it's time enough time for him to see her eyes get shiny before she blinks and answers “No one. No one at all.” She turns her back to him and leans against her desk with one hand while she busies herself straightening already-tidy papers and pencils with the other.

Staring at her back, his mind calls up the memory of standing in a wet forest and looking on while the Doctor called her barren and malignant. He's never been sure --- he'd been fixated, as always, on the Doctor at the time --- but he thinks her eyes shone then, too, just before she came back at the Doctor with a rationally-based counter-attack. But that was centuries ago. Words that provoked a counter-attack then have the power to do something else entirely now. It comes to him that he's hit upon quite probably the only words in any language that could make her turn away.

He stands and steps up close behind her. When he wraps his arms around her waist, she stiffens. He rests his forehead against the crown of her head anyway. “He was wrong, you know. He could never tell what seems from what is, that's all.” He feels her body relax a bit as she lays her arms over his and holds him to her for a few seconds. Then she moves to turn in the circle of his arms, and he lets them fall away from her.

“You should redirect all this tender affection toward yourself, Master,” she tells him as she walks back to the other side of the desk and sits. “There's no reason to keep punishing yourself with the Doctor.”

“Punishing myself?”

“He always hurts you. Even when he doesn't mean to, he still hurts you every time. And you seek it out.”

“Do I? Well, then, maybe it's what I deserve. I don't know. But I do know that the Doctor isn't you and he isn't me. He can't take being alone. It's one thing to be a renegade rejecting your own people, it's another thing entirely to have no people to reject. No number of pet companions will ever be able to make him forget that he has no one. He's suffering. For all that he's hurt me and will again, I don't want to see him suffer like that.”

“Which means, I take it, that you'd rather cause his suffering.”

“Well,” the Master smiles slyly, “making him suffer is always an amusing way to pass the time.” His expression grows serious. “But his suffering now, it will kill him. He won't know how to cope. He'll get more and more frantic and self-destructive and he'll eventually run out of luck. I know you see that. He completely fell apart in front of his precious humans when I died. That's something he'd have never done before the war. And it wasn't for love of me. It was because he was alone.”

“I know.” She's quiet for a moment, clearly thinking about something. She stops her musing and looks up at him. “Linking with someone across the kind of distance we're talking about isn't like making direct contact, but there's still no telling what may happen to you. His mind may be a disorganized mess but it's very powerful. He could reverse the link, send signals that will force an overload of your synapses and trap you. Your mind would be stuck with him, while your body here becomes a blithering idiot. Since that isn't so very different from the status quo, I might not notice immediately. But I will eventually and the only thing I'll be able to do to save you from that will be to...” She swallows. “ I meant what I said. I won't kill you again.”

“Then come with me.”

“What?”

“You're the biochemist with all the neurotransmitter expertise. You'll know if my brain starts going haywire. Come with me. Better yet, take me there. Protect me from the Doctor's powerful mind. Don't let him hurt me to begin with. Then you won't have to kill me.”

She hesitates. “I could do that. It takes an enormous amount of physic energy and a completely relaxed state to link without direct contact across physical and temporal distance because it has to be done in his dreamscape, but I can do it.” She looks uncomfortable. “It would require that you and I make mutual contact first. Full mutual contact.”

“Okay,” the Master readily agrees.

“Including physical contact.”

“Okay.” The Master's uncertain where the Rani's going with this coy hesitation.

“That hasn't gone so well before.”

The Master looks at her blankly. “Before?”

“We've only ever interacted on a sexual level twice, Master. I know you remember them both.” she says in a scornful tone. “'Reverse dental surgery' and 'mind-rape' and 'sex in Hell' are some of the lovely descriptive phrases I heard come out of your mouth when you've mentioned them.” A pensive look crosses her face. She drops the haughtiness. “Which are pretty accurate descriptions, now that I think about it.”

“Didn't I tell you? I forgive you.” The Master smirks before he looks vaguely ill. “God, I sound like the Doctor now.”

“Not a good sign,” she commiserates. “You really want to do this?”

“It needs to be done. He'll die if we don't, and a universe without the Doctor doesn't bear thinking about. That sounds familiar. I think I've said something like that before.”

“He'll die eventually, anyway. He's only got, what, three regenerations left? Two?”

“Then he should know that we'll be there to build the funeral pyre for him.”

“Appealing to my sense of tradition isn't going to convince me that this is a good idea. But all right. We'll do it. I'll find a spot along his time line when he could use our company. When we can make him feel safe. We'll connect with him then.”

**********

The Rani explains, in great detail replete with numerous references to specific Time Lord brain synapses and neurotransmitters, why they must achieve deep physical and mental relaxation before she establishes the connection with the Doctor in his dreamscape. The short version is that the two of them need to be really relaxed or they'll all three of them die. That's all the Master would have needed to hear to be ready to get absolutely boneless. The Rani goes on to explain, in just as much scientific detail, that the deepest relaxation and, as a result, the strongest connection possible are achieved through the use of sex. Judging from the look on her face, she clearly thinks it's going to be an agonizing experience for both of them.

To himself, the Master admits he's thinking twice about all of this. To the Rani, he says “Let's do it.”

But it, the Master thinks, actually turns out to be a pleasant experience. There's no overflowing love, but there's no heartache, no impending death, no angst. For all of the Doctor's youthful complaining, the Rani seems to have learned how to move just right somewhere along the line because the angle she's found and the rhythm she sets up is perfect for them both. When he sits up to wrap his arms around her and kiss her, his tongue diving into her mouth as deeply as he's diving into her elsewhere, she kisses him back. When she comes, she moans in a way he finds rather sexy. Soon afterward, when he says her name just as he starts to come himself, she smiles down at him in a way he finds sexier still.

When they're done, breathing easier and surrounded by warmth, she asks him if he's ready. When he answers yes, she takes him by the mind and reaches out.

**********

The Doctor's mind is floating in the dark when his dream self feels a cocooning warmth wrap around him. Someone is thinking of him. Someone is reaching out to touch him. Someone is caring for him, he's sure of it. He's floating, he's warm, he's cared for and, most of all, he's not alone. Which is, the Doctor knows, utterly impossible, but the knowledge doesn't stop him from reaching back.

He's surprised to find himself sitting across a coffee table from Harold and Lucy Saxon. The Doctor sees that there's tea and a plate of teacakes on the table. Which doesn't, he thinks, explain why there's a definite air of post-coital ease in the room.

“Don't look so baffled, Doctor. Sex is relaxing, at least when you're not involved. I distinctly remember trying to explain to you eons ago that establishing and maintaining contact in a dreamscape is very much like entering the Matrix. Both require complete relaxation of the body as well as the mind,” the Rani tells him. “Which, I understand, you completely forgot on at least one occasion.”

The Master smiles broadly. “Almost had you that time, didn't I, Doctor? I would have if it hadn't been for that bungler Goth. Although it's not like I could have done anything with you, what with my own body rotting to pieces and all.”

“Am I dead?” The Doctor can't think of any other explanation for seeing two ghosts.

“No, you're not dead,” the Rani says in an indulgent tone, like he's a five-year-old bawling his eyes out over a skinned knee. “You're probably close to it, but you're not dead yet.”

“We've come to keep you company while things get sorted for you.” The Master picks up the plate of goodies and holds it out to the Doctor. “Teacake?”

The Doctor shakes his head. “No, thank you,” He's not dead, but he's sitting here in his dreamscape talking to two dead Time Lords. One of whom is offering him sweet, buttered buns. “Could I have a cup of tea, though?”

“Of course. Master, where are your manners?” The Rani pours out the Doctor's tea. “Still four sugars?”

“Yeah,” the Doctor says after the Rani's already done spooning in the fourth heaping teaspoonful into his cup. “Where are we?”

“Your dreamscape,” the Master says. He sounds concerned. “Did you not get that? Have you been knocked on the head or something? Should you have a look, Rani?”

The Master's concern sounds real enough. Which, the Doctor thinks, must mean he has been knocked on the head. Maybe he's concussed. “Yeah. Probably. Knocked on the head, I mean.” He looks around. “This is my dreamscape?”

“This is where you've chosen to meet us,” the Rani answers. “Surprisingly unimaginative of you.”

“I don't know. I like it. It's familiar,” the Master says.

The Doctor's word finding skills finally kick in, although they continue to stutter along a little. Still, he's able to ask the question he wants to ask. “Are you...alive?”

“Yes,” the Master says, but it's the Rani who says “Next question?”

The Doctor finds the fact that the Master and the Rani finishing each other's sentences disconcertingly odd. “Why do you look like that?”

“Again, it's your choice, Doctor,” the Rani explains. “You've apparently decided to see both of us as you last saw us, even though you didn't know you were seeing me at the time.” As she speaks, the Doctor sees the air around her shimmer. For a split second, he sees the outline of a body that's darker and stronger than Lucy's, one that can wear black leather or red satin and not look bruised. He looks to the Master. The same shimmering happens, and the Master's appearance waivers slightly but doesn't change. Noticing the Doctor staring, the Master looks directly at him, smiles impishly and waves.

The Doctor needs answers. “What's happening? Why am I here?”

The Rani gives him a look filled with more patience than he's ever seen her convey. “You're in trouble. I can't tell exactly what trouble or how you got into it, but it seems like your body's alive, if not exactly well.”

“I have to get back.”

“And you will. In the meantime, the Master and I are here to do what we can to help your mind pass the time as comfortably as possible.”

The Doctor looks at the Master. “Comfortably? You're here to make my mind comfortable? Where are you? Can't you come to me?”

The Master looks at him sadly. “Would you really want either of us with you?”

“Yes.” The Doctor can't believe the Master can even think to ask such a question. “Of course I want you with me.” He looks at the Rani. “I want you both with me.”

“We are with you, Doctor.” The Rani still sounds patient, but she doesn't quite look it anymore.

“No, I mean with me. Out there. Wherever I am.”

“That's not possible, Doctor,” the Rani pronounces, her voice ringing with finality.

“Why not? Are you all right? Tell me where you are. I'll come to you. I'll help you.”

“Help us? Help us what? Look after yourself, Doctor,” the Master says irritably. “You're the one in trouble.”

“But I have to be with you. I told you, Master. You're my responsibility.”

The Rani laughs. “Forgive me if I don't think of you as the most responsible of individuals. After all, you did a terrible job babysitting your own granddaughter.”

“What?! I didn't do a terrible job.”

“Oh, no? I suppose you think it was perfectly acceptable, locking her out of the TARDIS and abandoning her to her fate because you wanted to teach her how to be a woman.”

“A woman?” The Master asks.

The Doctor can't hide the fact that he's flustered. “What...How...How did you know about that?”

“Did you think I'd never find out? I may have been a better scientist than I was a parent but that doesn't mean that none of my progeny ever communicated with me.

“It wasn't...I did it for her own good.” Susan's been dead for centuries, but the Doctor feels an overwhelming need to explain his actions. He can't quite find the words to do it, though. “I was just...I was...”

The Master interrupts, squinting his eyes at the Doctor and furrowing his brow as he speaks. “You tried to teach Susan...how to be a woman?” He's clearly having difficulty coming to grips with this revelation.

The Rani shifts in her chair to speak to the Master. “Didn't I ever tell you what he did? Just because Susan thought some young human looked... what is it the children say...oh yes, 'hot', this one,” the Rani points at the Doctor, “decided she had to settle down with him. He was such a prude in those days, I understand. Probably because you weren't around to give him a good seeing to now and then.”

“He seemed to have loosen up a little bit later on.” The Master looks to the Doctor for confirmation. “Although you did often seem tense, especially when I'd pull out my TCE. So, Doctor. Was all that gadding about for no apparent purpose other than to parade your buxom girl companions and young lovely boy companions in front of me just an act? Should I have offered you my very capable assistance?”

The Doctor has two Time Lords sitting in front of him. They aren't dead, but instead of coming to him, instead of letting him go to them, they're sitting in his dreamscape trading catty comments about his sex drive. He can't take any more of this. He needs them. He needs to be not alone. “Tell me where you are! Please!”

“Shh, Doctor, shh,” the Rani soothes. He feels a wave of comfort flow toward him from the Master, but it doesn't feel like a wave, not really. He isn't submerged by it and it doesn't smother him like a wave would. It feels as though the Master is holding him close, letting him feel his hearts beat in his chest. It feels so good to feel another Time Lord, to feel the Master, after so long. But it's detached. There is no connection, not really. He needs more.

“Rani,” the Doctor says, not bothering to hide the desperation in his voice. “If we can't be in the same place physically, make mental contact with me. Mutual contact. You've done it before, even without my physical presence. I remember. I remember you used to do it after I left. You'd...” He trails off, remembering not just her mental skills and powers and how she would hold them linked together across the distance he'd created, but also how he ignored each request she sent to his mind that he please come home until she finally stopped trying to make any kind of contact with him at all. “I know you can do it. You always were a genius and the best of us all at using your mind. You were...”

“Flattery will get you nowhere with me, Doctor,” she deflects, her voice showing the beginnings of annoyance.

“Might work on me, though,” the Master pitches in.

“Either of you,” the Doctor says pleadingly. “Both of you, I don't care. Just...please.”

The Rani is back to looking patient. She even looks kind. “I don't think that's a good idea. Just sit. Relax. Have more tea. We'll have a nice little visit, and then you can go back to yourself.”

“But you can do it. I know you can.”

“Yes, I know I can do it, too. I don't need you to tell me I can. It'll use up all our energy reserves and cut this encounter short, but I can do it. That's not why I'm not going to, though. I'm not going to because it's a bad idea.”

“Please. Make contact with me. Just do this for me, Rani. Just this once.”

The Rani laughs. “For old times' sake? No, Doctor. I don't think you'd actually enjoy it. I'm malignant by your way of reckoning, and I think you were probably quite right when you said I am.”

“I never said that.”

“Actually, you did, Doctor,” the Master interjects. When the Doctor looks at him, shocked, the Master adds, “I was there. You called her barren as well as malignant.” The Doctor looks at him with a pained expression and the Rani turns an arch look on him. He shrugs and says, “Just trying to be helpful.”

“I may have said it, but I didn't mean it. I was just...”

“You were just busy obsessing over your little human friend with the impressive breasts and trying to show us you preferred her to either of us. Yes, I remember.” There is not an ounce of malignancy in the Rani's voice. She's sounds as though she's only sharing a remembrance of an amusing anecdote with an old friend, but the Doctor still feels like she's torn one of his hearts out.

The Master's face shows he's walking down memory lane, too. “Miss Grant had better thighs, but Ms. Brown did have impressive breasts, didn't she?”

“Yes, she did, Master, but that's not my point. My point is that I am not the best candidate to make mutual mental contact with the Doctor, no matter how much he might want it now. Or need it. You, however, are.”

The Master is shocked into a mouth-gaping silence. The Doctor is just about to ask why he's so shocked when the Master squeaks out “Me?”

“Yes, Master, you.” The Rani turns her attention to the Doctor. “You need passion, Doctor. You always have, even in your most staid regenerations. Passion is what you want to touch right now. What passion I have is still directed to my work. The Master, though, he has the passion you want.”

The Master's got himself under control now, and he looks a bit miffed. “Are you setting me up on a date?”

The Rani continues to look at the Doctor as she responds to the Master. “I was suggesting an alliance, Master, but you call it whatever makes you feel happiest. Whether it's love or hate he feels for you, Doctor, it's always passionate.”

“I remember,” the Doctor says. And he really does. The thought of making mutual contact with the Master now, of touching that passion, nearly brings tears to his eyes.

“Rani,” the Master says softly as he touches the Rani's hand, “I'm not sure about this.”

“You were the one who was worried about him enough to insist we come looking for him like this,” the Rani reasons with him.

“Yes, but this is safe, this I can handle. Mutual contact? I don't know. I don't think so.”

“You were right, Master. Look at him. He won't be able to survive the solitude, not without real connection. I can tell. He needs it.” The Rani lowers her voice to a whisper, but the Doctor can still hear. “It'll be safe. I'll be here. He won't hurt you.”

The Doctor's doesn't fully understands what he's hearing, but he thinks he can offer the Master some reassurance anyway. “Master? I'm not as good as the Rani is at this kind of thing. My mind's not strong enough to cause you pain.”

The Master laughs bitterly. “Oh, you say that, but you don't know your own strength.” He turns to look at the Rani. “Rani? Will it be all right?”

“Yes. It will be. I promise.”

The look that passes between them makes the Doctor wonder. “What's going on with you?”

The Rani turns her attention to the Doctor. “What do you mean?”

“What's going on between you two?”

The Rani bristles. “And that's your business how?”

“It's not,” the Doctor says as appeasingly as he can manage. “I was just wondering. You seem so...at ease with each other.”

“All an act,” the Master announces. “Still, if I had to put a name to it, I'd call us...” He looks to the Rani as he finishes his sentence “...friendly enemies?” At the exact same time, the Rani says “Inimical friends?”

“You're finishing each other's sentences. That means something. Doesn't that mean something?” The Doctor hates the little flecks of panic he hears stealing into his voice.

“It means that the Master and I are friends, Doctor. Which shouldn't be all that surprising to you. It's retro, maybe, but not surprising. Now.” She stands and moves to the end of the coffee table before she holds out her hand to him. “Come here.”

The Doctor moves to stand next to her and takes her hand, trying not to crush it in his own. It's warmer than he expects. Thinking about it, he's not sure why he expected it to be colder than it is. It was always warm whenever she touched him when they were young. He hears her ask “All right?” He's not sure he can speak, so he keeps his eyes fixed on her hand in his and nods.

She hold her other hand out to the Master. “Come on. It's all right.”

The Master comes to stand at her other side and takes her hand. He looks uneasy, the Doctor realizes, just before the Rani says “Come closer to him, Doctor. Touch him so I can facilitate the link.”

The Doctor steps closer to the Master and reaches out a hand to stroke his cheek. The Master flinches, but stands his ground. The Doctor doesn't understand why the Master looks so scared. The Master would never be afraid of him. Hate him, yes, but not be afraid of him. He can't really think I'll hurt him now. The Doctor moves closer as the Rani moves back. The Master looks like he's ready to bolt, then his features take on a determined look and stands stock still.

The whole situation is, the Doctor realizes, a bit of a shock for all involved. Maybe the Master's simply isn't thinking clearly, maybe the tension is too much for him to be this close to the Doctor, even in a dream, and not worry on some level. He tries to assuage the Master by telling him “Don't worry. I wouldn't hurt you,” but when he takes the Master's head in his hands, he sees that neither his words nor his touch have brought the Master any peace at all. Instead, he looks wary. And there is no missing the doubt he feels at the Doctor's words.

It isn't entirely surprising that the Master doesn't trust him, but the Doctor nevertheless feels a tightness in his throat at the realization. The distractions of adventures and companions aside, he's been so very alone since the Master died. He hasn't allowed himself to think of what might have been had the Master not kept himself from regenerating, but the Master's here now and he can't help but think of what can be. He can save the Master. He can be with the Master. He can want the Master. He can give his love to the Master, just like the Master always used to want. He can love the Master until the Master forgets how to hate him or be afraid of him. He can love the Master until the Master remembers how to love him back. And while he's loving the Master, he won't be alone. Neither of them will, because they'll have each other, even before the Master's love comes back. They'll have the Rani, too. She's here right now, isn't she, watching, making sure that everything goes right. She'll stay with them. She cares for them in her way, the Doctor can see that now. She'll watch over them. She'll make sure they don't hurt each other. She'll make sure they are safe.

The Doctor, still cradling the Master's head in his hands but not yet trying to make contact, continues to say soothing words in a low, earnest tone. “It's all right. I won't hurt you. We're safe now.” The Master gives the Doctor a small, tentative smile, closes his eyes and rests his hands on the Doctor's forearms. The Doctor hearts soar. In his mind, he thinks He smiled at me, he's not backing away, he's touching me, oh god, he's touching me. Out loud, he says “I've missed you.” When the Master lightly runs his hands along the Doctor's forearms, the Doctor can't stop himself from leaning forward and gently pressing a kiss to the Master's lips. The Master doesn't try to pull away, but he doesn't reciprocate either. Reassurance, the Doctor thinks. That's what I need to give him. More reassurance that I'm not going to hurt him. The Doctor pulls back from the kiss, rests his forehead against the Master's as he strokes the Master's hair and tells him, “I love you.”

The Doctor's reassuring declaration has the effect of making the Master rear back. His hands scrabble at the Doctor's hands, which tighten their hold on the Master's head, and try to wrench them away from his head. The Doctor's “No, no, it's all right. Shh, it's all right,” only makes the Master start trying to twist away from the Doctor's tightening grip and start to hyperventilate. It's not until the Rani, suddenly standing next to and slightly behind the Doctor, slides her hand over the Master's where it grips and scratches at the Doctor's hand that the Master stops struggling. The Doctor hears the Rani's whisper pass though him as she communicates with the Master through the link she and the Master share Don't worry. He doesn't want to hurt you. The Master's hearts slow down and his hitching breath evens out. He swallows and looks, eyes wide and glistening, at the Rani. The Doctor is so very, very glad that the Rani is here to help him be understood, but he still has to make a supreme effort to squash down the hot blast of jealousy he feels at the obvious fact that she is the cause of the relief he sees creeping into the Master's eyes.

They stand like that for a moment, the Master, his head still in the Doctor's hands, looking at the Rani as she stands beside the Doctor, the Rani and the Doctor both looking at the Master. When the Rani takes her hand off the Master's hand and steps back, the Master looks back at the Doctor. He's regained his composure, but his eyes are dark and pained. “Even assuming it's true,” he starts, his voice so low that the Doctor has to strain to hear, “even assuming you won't hurt me and that you do, after all this time, love me, it doesn't fix things. I understand you think it should make everything better but it doesn't. We still have our past, and it can't be reversed, not ever. I still want to hurt you, Doctor.”

He wants to shake the Master and yell No! That's a lie. You still love me. I could feel it in the way you touched me just now, before I kissed you, but he can see from the look in the Master's eye that he's being completely honest for the first time in centuries, maybe for the first time ever. And the Master hasn't denied loving him, for all his brutal honesty. The Doctor knows he owes it to the Master to give that honesty back. “Well done, then. You just did.”

The Master closes his eyes blissfully as though he's listening to the most beautiful symphony ever written. “I'm glad. Thank you,” he says. He opens his eyes to look into the Doctor's own and adds “And I'm sorry.” He turns his head to briefly kiss the Doctor's palm, then moves his hands forward to lightly stroke the Doctor's forearms again. It's the Doctor's turn to close his eyes as he allows himself to feel the strokes, knowing that the thanks and apology he feels in them are real.

The Master drops his hands from the Doctor's arms and says “Maybe we should start off with going for coffee first. Less invasive and emotionally traumatic.” He smiles a tight little smile at the Doctor as if to say No worries. No harm done. It'll all go better next time. The Doctor knows he should be grateful that the Master's making the effort to put forth a brave face, that he's promising a next time. He actually is grateful, but he wishes that the Master looked less nervous. He moves his own hands from the Master's head to the Master's shoulders and smiles back a little as he says “Coffee sounds good. Or one of those espresso drinks with the chocolate and the orangey flavors and the little chocolate sprinkles on top. Or is it cinnamon they sprinkle on it? Yeah, that sounds great.” The Doctor is pleased when the Master gives a single bark of laughter at his babble, but he wishes that the Master didn't look so much more comfortable after the Doctor takes his hands off his shoulders.

“Next time,” the Rani says. “You're already talking about next time. The two of you are hopelessly romantic. I hope you don't expect me to always run interference for you. I can't spend all my time watching you two perform your own personal adaptation of 'Wuthering Heights'. I do have work to do.”

The Doctor can't stop himself from asking “What work would that be, Rani?”

“Nothing I want you to know about, Doctor, although it's gratifying to know that you're interested. But enough of your transparent attempts to deflect the conversation from the topic at hand. Even if I wanted to be, I won't always be able to be here with the two of you. You have to promise me that you won't hurt the Master.”

“I won't hurt him. I promise,” the Doctor answers solemnly before the inequity of the Rani's concern hits him. “What about me? The Master's only ever tried to kill me, and you're not going to say anything to him about not hurting me?”

The Rani looks up at the ceiling, sighs, then looks back at the Doctor. “Don't whine. It doesn't suit you. First of all, I distinctly remember a time when the Master did many things to you that in no way, shape or form resembled trying to kill you. Things you very much enjoyed, if even half of what you used to tell me is to be believed. Second, have you never noticed that every plan to kill you that the Master has ever launched has failed spectacularly? I've told him again and again, he can't bring himself to kill you. He cares for you too much. Which is why you, on the other hand, can destroy him with a thoughtless word. When you finally make mutual contact, you'll be the one in the position to crush him with a stray thought. You know, like thinking about Rose's smile, whoever she is, while you orgasm. Something like that.”

The Master had been enjoying the interchange, but now felt the need to speak up. “Okay, standing right here. I don't need that much protection and I'd rather not have that kind of imagery created for me, thank you.”

“I won't hurt him,” the Doctor promises again to the Rani. To the Master, he promises “And I won't think about...about what she said,” as he points to the Rani. “Or anything like it.”

“You can't even repeat it, Doctor. I'm not all that worried that you'll actually do it.” The Master smiles at him. It's a bright, genuine smile. Seeing it directed at him makes the Doctor so happy he smiles back.

The Rani, eyes burning with more passion than the Doctor has ever seen in her, looks at the Doctor and says “Make very sure of that.” She then turns her eyes on the Master and says “Because I meant what I said. I won't save you next time. You may find it hard to believe, but I really can't.”

Once again, the Doctor sees something pass between the Rani and the Master. It's not friendship, not exactly. He's not sure that it's anything more but it's not just friendship. He isn't able to name it, but it makes his gut twist a little with envy. Time to discuss the next time, before I see anything more. “When will we link again?”

“Soon,” answers the Master too quickly. He grimaces, clearly wishing he could swallow his word and his eagerness back. He looks to the Rani and asks, his voice so blasé that he sounds like he's about to nod off from sheer boredom, “Soon, I think you said?”

The Rani rolls her eyes. “Yes. Soon. The Master will be delighted to see you again, Doctor, as I'm sure you were able to guess before he decided to entertain us with his George Sanders impersonation. Have you ever seen the original Samson and Delilah, Doctor? It's a fabulous movie.”

The Doctor can tell the Rani is trying to bring the visit to a gentle if not entirely natural conclusion, but her small talk doesn't register in his brain. He's too busy thinking about how long it will be before soon arrives. “And you, Rani? Will you be there?”

“Yes. Next time. Yes, I think. After that, we'll see.”

“And will you be delighted to see me?”

The Rani just smiles and takes the Master's hand. The Master clasps the Rani's hand back and says “Soon then, Doctor.”

They disappear.