Seven days later, the Master stops.
The Doctor is carried to his cell and left on the floor, bloodied, burned, broken. Weak from blood loss, from hunger and thirst. Unable to stand, even if he had the strength, because the damage is too great. His body's healing processes limp along, barely even as strong as a human's.
To say that everything hurts would be like saying the Blitz was a slight inconvenience. He screamed until he lost his voice, and then screamed silently. The Master only stopped when he was fully satisfied.
"Next time, kill me when you have the chance," he said, spit on him, and left the room.
The Doctor loses consciousness. When he wakes up, Jack is calling his name, horror and fear in his voice.
The Doctor opens one eye; the other is swollen shut. "Jack," he mouths silently.
"Oh, thank god," Jack says. "I thought... I don't know what I thought. I don't even..." He looks back and forth over the Doctor's ruined body. "Can I carry you onto the bed? I don't want to make it worse." He gives a bitter laugh. "I don't think it can even be worse."
The Doctor manages a nod. "Bed," he mouths.
"Okay. Okay." Jack looks for a way to gather the Doctor up without touching an injury, and gives up. "This is gonna hurt. I'm so sorry."
It hurts. The Doctor passes out.
When he wakes up, the broken bones in his limbs have been reset. The blood has been cleaned from his body, and Jack's coat is wrapped around him.
Jack breathes a sigh of relief. "I was worried you might not wake up," he says. "Hold on, I'll just..." He stands, walks out of the Doctor's line of sight, and then comes back his tattered t-shirt in hand, sopping wet. He holds it over the Doctor's lips and squeezes, trickling water into his mouth.
The Doctor accepts it gratefully, weakly laps up every drop. Jack repeats the process two more times.
"That's enough for now. You shouldn't have too much at once."
The Doctor nods. Shivers, teeth chattering. The water was cool. He's been cold for so long, his body doesn't have the strength to be warm anymore. "Need sleep," he mouths.
"You need to sleep?" Jack says. "Okay. If you're cold... Would it help if I held you?"
The Doctor gives a tiny, weak smile, and nods.
Jack returns that with a sad smile and carefully joins him on the bed. All that heat that seemed almost too much before is now the dearest balm, soaking into the Doctor's bones and chasing away the chill. He stops shivering and falls into a healing coma.
When Jack's voice drags him awake, he feels less like the dead, but he's starving. Fortunately, the main reason Jack woke him is because they've been given food. Also, his voice is back, if not quite to normal standards.
"I could eat a horse," he rasps. "If it was cut up in small pieces and tenderized."
Jack shakes his head. "It's all easy stuff, fruit and bread and soft cheese. And look, cups!" He holds up the paper cups they were given like small prizes.
The Doctor gulps his way through several cupfuls before Jack insists he eat. The Doctor feels vaguely like a baby bird the way Jack is caring for him, but he's far too grateful to complain.
"You need to eat, too," he rasps, when he realizes Jack isn't having anything.
"I'll be fine," Jack says. "There's plenty. Besides, I don't look like I was run over by a truck. Several trucks, some of them on fire."
"But you were," the Doctor says, meeting his eyes. Everything the Master did to him, he did to Jack, but worse.
But Jack just shrugs it off. "Didn't stick. He kills me, I bounce right back."
They both know that's a lie, but the Doctor is hardly in a position to argue. He eats as much as he can, drinks more water, and then feels sleepy again.
"I might be out for a few days," he warns. "Just let me sleep."
"Okay," Jack says. He leans in and kisses the Doctor on the forehead, brushes his hair tenderly. "I'll be here when you wake up," he promises.
The next time the Doctor wakes up, he's surprised to find that he's dressed in his suit, and his own coat has joined Jack's in blanketing him. Jack is asleep, pressed against him, snoring softly.
The Doctor allows himself a horrified, full-body, gut-twisting shudder at what the Master did to him, to the both of them, and then lets it go. Collects the fear and pain and breathes it out like so much röntgen radiation.
He feels whole again, if still achingly sore. The swelling has gone down or disappeared, the broken bones healed, the internal damage and burns and... and everything. It's better. He probably shouldn't schedule any marathon torture sessions for at least a week, but if he tears himself out of Jack's embrace he can stand.
Not that he's in any hurry to do that. Maybe if Jack was awake, but as long as he's asleep the Doctor is willing to indulge his trauma and be held, comforted.
As the Master tortured him -- and he thinks of it as torture and not punishment, because no one could be that self-loathing -- he told the Doctor in detail about all the things he's done to Earth. The people he's killed, the cities he's burned. He flooded New Orleans and Amsterdam, just for kicks. He's planning to melt all the glaciers because he was sick of all the whining about global warming. He's building fusion mills and missiles galore, all so he can aim them at the stars.
The Master loves to gloat, and when he gloats he talks too much. The Doctor supposes it's good that he got something positive out of all that... out of all that.
He's not going to think about it. It won't help. The Master wants him to be traumatized, wants him to suffer long after the final round of whippings and electrocution.
The Doctor has been tortured by many people in his long existence. He's been locked up and interrogated and sometimes just brutalized. He was always able to get over it with a minimum of fuss. But even as he denies it, he knows it's going to be a lot harder to get over this. The Master's fury was breathtaking.
He wonders if it's going to happen again, if the Master isn't done with him yet, and he feels scared. Genuinely scared, because there are things worse than dying and the Master has just added 'a week of horrific torture' to that list. Right below destroying Gallifrey and its entire timeline, and above pulling the switch to annihilate humanity in 200,100.
Dying would be easy. The coward's way out. And even if he refuses to kill, even if he needs the Master to live, he's not that sort of coward. The Earth needs him, Martha needs him. She's out there executing a plan she doesn't even understand, believing that he'll save the world against impossible odds. Her faith in him is as breathtaking as the Master's rage.
He wants to believe in himself the way she believes in him. It's just... difficult, right now. With the ghost memory of torture shrouding him, inescapable. Suffocating him, like the Master's hands around his throat, like the rope he used after that, like the piano wire...
The Doctor stumbles out of bed, clumsy after so long asleep, and barely makes it to the toilet in time. There's not really anything to throw up, just acid, bile. He's shaking, shivering. He crawls to the tub and turns on the faucet, washes out his mouth. Rests his forehead against the cool porcelain.
He refuses to feel this way. He refuses. He's stronger than memory, than fear. He has to be.
There's a touch on his shoulder and he yelps. Skitters away and has his back against the wall before his senses clear. His hearts are racing.
"Whoa," Jack says, holding up his hands.
"Sorry," the Doctor mutters. Suppresses his adrenaline, forces endorphins. He feels a rush of relief as his neurochemicals stabilize. "I thought you were asleep."
"No kidding," Jack says.
The Doctor would really like to insist that he's okay, that Jack should go back to sleep, but he can't. At least he doesn't have to explain any of it. Jack saw more than enough the moment he was brought back to their cell. Not that there isn't still enough visible evidence, even after the healing coma.
"You were out for four days," Jack says, joining him on the floor but leaving an obvious space between them. "Was that enough?"
"I wouldn't have woke up if it wasn't," the Doctor replies, and gives himself points for the neat evasion.
"No one's come by, except to bring the food and your clothes. I'm glad you warned me. It was weird enough watching you heal in fast-forward."
"You're one to talk," the Doctor says, trying for humour but ending up with vaguely defensive.
But Jack doesn't seem to notice. "You know, I never asked anyone what it looks like."
"Not much to see," the Doctor replies. "One second you're dead, the next you're fine."
"Huh," Jack says. Peers at him. "You're not scarring."
"Of course not," the Doctor says, affronted. "What's the point of tissue that can't regrow properly?"
"I know. It was just so bad." Jack stares at his wrist, his neck. At places where acid ate down to the flesh. Now it's just pink skin, tender and new. In two weeks there'll be no visible trace of the damage that was done.
"Time Lords don't scar," the Doctor says, and leaves it at that.
In a way it was easier when he was unconscious. Now that he's awake, he itches. His healing bones itch, his healing skin itches, even his insides somehow manage to join in the torment. It wouldn't be so bad if there was the remotest distraction to put his mind to, but unless he wants to take dozens of baths or ruin his recovered voice shouting at the Master's cameras, all there is is Jack. And Jack doesn't seem equipped to deal with a fidgety, jumpy, itchy, bored Time Lord. He goes so far as to offer more sex, in that way of his that isn't quite blatant but nowhere near subtle. But the Doctor refuses, can't bear the thought of intimacy when no matter how much he heals, no matter how much he tweaks his neurochemistry and rationalizes his emotions, he still feels like he's in pieces.
They're sleeping in shifts, more to give each other a modicum of space than out of any attempt at being on guard. The Doctor's sleeping like a human, long stretches at a time. He'd be a lot better off if he'd just go back into a coma, but he can't bring himself to do it. He can't go into that deep a sleep when he doesn't know what he'll wake up to.
Days of nothing but healing and itching and boredom, his only distraction the trauma he can't seem to shake off. It'd drive anyone mad. Oh, there's the threads, but by now he could do those in his sleep. Does, in fact, because he needs to make up for the lost time. At least he knows how much time they have.
He decides to take a break from the tedium eating away at his sanity by telling Jack what he learned from the Master's gloating.
"A year?" Jack says, shocked.
"Well, eleven months," the Doctor corrects. Eleven months until the Master's missiles are expected to be ready to fire, and after that he won't need the Earth or its humans any longer.
"We have to do something now," Jack insists. "We have to stop him."
"I know," the Doctor says, turning towards the bars so he doesn't have to look Jack in the eye.
Jack comes up behind him, leans in close to mutter in his hear. "I checked your clothes when they gave them back. Your pockets were empty."
The Doctor sighs. "It's no good," he says, in a normal voice. "The knife's gone."
Jack scowls. "Damn it. When did he take it?"
"He didn't," the Doctor says. "I gave it back to him."
Jack gapes at him. "You what?"
The Doctor turns to him. "I told you before. I'm not here to kill him. I'm here to save him."
"That was before he took over the world!"
"I'll stop him," the Doctor insists. "I will. I promise, Jack. But not the Torchwood way."
"Forget Torchwood," Jack says. "This is survival. This is Earth."
"It's murder."
"It's war," Jack retorts. "People die. Monsters die."
"Not him," the Doctor says, arms crossed in defiance.
"I can't believe I'm hearing this." Jack walks away, walks back. "How many has he killed? Five hundred million? A billion?"
"If you count accidents, he once destroyed a quarter of the entire universe," the Doctor says, lightly.
Jack is speechless. "And you think you can save him?" he says, incredulous.
"I have to try."
"Why?" Jack cries. "What possible reason could you have that could justify letting him live? Just handing over the only weapon we had to stop him?"
"Because he's the only one of them I didn't kill," the Doctor says, tersely.
That takes the wind from Jack's sails, even though he doesn't look any happier. "I thought the Daleks killed your people."
"No," the Doctor says. "I did. I had to. So don't talk to me about sacrifice. Don't talk to me about war and death. Don't you dare presume you have the right to do that." He's breathing fast, air hissing through his clenched teeth. "I'm going to save him, and the Earth, and all the humans he's killed. And you are not going to hurt him."
Jack visibly backs down. Put in his place, which is good because no matter how long lived he is in human terms, he's a child. He doesn't even realize how much he doesn't understand, thinks he's seen it all, thinks he knows more than his elders, just like any child. There's so much he'll never even be neurologically capable of understanding.
No one is, not anymore. Except the Master, the only one left. He's the only one who understands, and that's why the Doctor will do anything not to lose him again.
After almost two weeks alone with Jack, the Doctor is almost glad when they come for him. He walks out of the cell and feels far more relief than trepidation, which is the opposite of what he would have expected but he doesn't care.
Despite the tension between them since the Doctor's admissions, Jack watches him go with undisguised worry.
The Doctor is escorted to the Master's suite. Inside there's no guards, no Toclafane. Perversely, it seems his failed attempt at killing the Master has earned him trust. Or maybe the Master liked his little speech to Jack. It wasn't that he forgot that their every word was being listened to. He just didn't see the point in hiding his intentions when the Master already had a very effective demonstration.
There's no Master, either, or Lucy. The Doctor wanders from room to room, poking through cupboards and drawers and generally being nosy. He doesn't expect to find anything, but the change of environment has woken his slumbering curiosity. He raises an eyebrow at the sex toys and lingerie, but doesn't dwell over them.
An hour later he's settled into the kitchen with the biscuits and eaten all the best chocolate ones in a minor act of spite. If he can't intimidate the Master, at least he can irritate him. If anything, that's the role he's been most comfortable with over the thousand-plus years they've known each other, circling around each other like irregular satellites and only occasionally getting each other killed.
Besides, he was hungry. Still is, since it's been a couple of days since he was given anything to eat. He spends the next hour gradually eating all the second-best biscuits, then the remaining half a container of caramel ice cream, then feels a bit ill from all the sugar and makes himself toast with lots of marmalade, using his fingers to spread it, especially after licking them.
Satisfied, he plops himself down on the antique sofa, shoes on, and takes a nap, just to show that he's perfectly comfortable falling asleep in his erstwhile-torturer's sitting room.
When he wakes up, the Master is lounging in the chair next to him.
"I thought you'd polish off the scotch while you were at it," the Master says, mildly.
"I didn't feel like being drugged," the Doctor replies, deliberately casually. He's not going to give the Master the satisfaction of making him jumpy.
The Master just shakes his head. "Where did you get that idea? I'm hardly going to ruin two hundred year old scotch just to drug you."
"Yes, you would."
"Oh, all right, I would," the Master relents. "But I didn't. Frankly I'm offended. Drugs are such a shortcut."
"And hypnosis isn't?"
"Hypnosis is useful for making people shut up and listen," the Master says. "Shame you're so resistant. It'd do you a world of good."
"Sounds like a shortcut to me."
"Only because you're being deliberately obtuse. I don't need to drug you. You're far too easy to manipulate just the way you are. It's hardly even a challenge."
The Doctor rolls his eyes. "So now what? More sadistic torture because the CIA hijacked me to do their dirty work and I refused?"
The Master's eyes narrow. "Excuses, excuses. Do you never take responsibility for anything?"
"I have for you," the Doctor replies.
The Master snorts. "Your delusions are endlessly entertaining. No, I thought since you'd finished whimpering in the corner, you might like some company."
"I had company."
"Pets are hardly company," the Master replies. "I mean someone who can actually hold a conversation without rubbing himself on your leg."
The Doctor is torn between amusement and indignance on Jack's behalf. "No piano wire behind your back, then?"
"I'd never hide my piano wire from you, Doctor," the Master says, with an almost fond smirk. "Oh, I was rather angry with you."
"Is that what you call it?" the Doctor says, incredulous.
"I needed to get some things out of my system," the Master says. "Overall I'd say it was a success. I'm sure we can move past it. Unless there's another Time Lord you're determined to save from himself?"
"I can hardly trust you," the Doctor protests.
"Thank god for that. How boring would that be? If it makes you more comfortable, I can practice my flaying technique while we chat. We really didn't get enough of that in."
"No, thanks," the Doctor says, feeling suddenly lightheaded even though he's lying down.
"Very well." The Master looks satisfied, the way he did when the Doctor hung battered and broken before him, the Doctor's blood on his hands and his knives and his lips. But there's no painted smile now, just his own shark's grin.
The Doctor sits up, look at him with undisguised curiosity. "After all that, what? You want me to keep you company?"
"Is that so hard to believe?"
"Yes," the Doctor says, without a trace of doubt. "You don't torture someone for seven days straight and then invite them round for tea!"
"By whose standards?" the Master replies, pointedly. "Human or Time Lord?"
"It's hardly that simple," the Doctor protests. "And by anyone's standards."
The Master gives him an even look, stands and walks over to the drinks tray. Pours two glasses and brings them over, hands one to the Doctor, who takes it despite his reservations.
"If I wanted you out of my life, I've had a few thousand opportunities to kill you. Is the fact that you're sitting here and not a bloody pile of rotting flesh enough to get through your impressively thick skull?" The Master takes a sip, relishing the flavour.
"Amazingly enough, no," the Doctor replies, and firmly ignores the twinge of hope. He knows the Master better than to believe this is anything but another trick. Another game to amuse himself, and the Doctor doesn't want to play. He puts down the glass, his scotch untouched. Stands up. "I'd like to go back to my cell, now."
The Master shrugs. "Your choice," he says. "We'll try this again tomorrow."
The Doctor turns away and walks out to meet the guards.
Jack is, of course, immediately relieved and concerned. He looks the Doctor up and down like he's checking for injuries, which of course he is. Not that there's anything to find.
"I'm all right," the Doctor says, waving him off. "Really, he didn't do anything."
"Maybe nothing physical," Jack says, his anger at the Master barely contained.
"I barely spent five minutes with him," the Doctor says. He thinks of how he did spend the time in the suite. "I don't suppose they fed you while I was there?"
Jack shakes his head. Now that the Doctor looks, he can see the drawn look of starvation on Jack's face. He's becoming uncomfortably familiar with it.
"I didn't think to bring back any food," the Doctor says, chagrined. "I'm sorry."
"Doesn't matter," Jack says. His tone is casual but there's a tension running underneath. Not surprising, really. The Doctor wonders which of them is holding up better under the strain. Not that either of them is inclined to talk about it.
The Doctor looks at their cell. It feels so much more cramped after the hours of the Master's extensive, airy suite. The thin mattress on the platform bed, the naked bath and toilet. Their view is of bars and then the military grey steel of the far wall. Grim would be too kind a description. It's hard to believe they've spent over a month in and out of this room, even harder to imagine spending another eleven months in the same way. A year has never felt so long to him before, and it's barely begun.
He wonders if he made a mistake. If his headlong rush into defeat on the Valiant is only being compounded by a plan with too many variables, too poor odds of success. Even if Martha evades capture, even if she finds enough allies to travel the globe, she's a vulnerable, fragile human. She could get sick, could die in any number of ways. Without her, no amount of Archangel threads will be enough, because there simply won't be enough minds synchronized at the crucial moment. And Jack doesn't even have the hope of knowing there's a plan because he chose to stay by the Doctor's side and suffer with him.
He thinks he resents Jack for that. He never asked Jack to sacrifice himself. Well, except the once. And the time before that. But those were different circumstances and he was a different man. He was asking Jack to save the world, not him. Maybe to Jack, there's no difference between the two. Another person whose faith he doesn't deserve. Like Rose coming back to the Gamestation, believing in him when he'd already given up on himself. Like the way she came back to his side at Canary Wharf, only to almost die in the worst way imaginable, the endless death of the Void. He couldn't save her except to send her away, couldn't stop the Daleks from turning Australasia into a radioactive crater.
Somewhere down below, Martha is convincing thousands of humans to believe in him. Will the cost of that be worse than the Master's tyranny? Will Earth be a second Gallifrey, defeat snatched from the jaws of victory?
No, he won't let that happen. The Earth is too precious, the Master too important. He won't fail either of them. Even if the height of the risk makes him dizzy, he'll follow through, no matter what.