Chapter Text
He felt like he had aged many millennia in that godforsaken hospital. Resting the palms of his hands against the railing of the TARDIS he takes it all in, managing to celebrate his victory and sulk over the lost time simultaneously. And the suit. He had this one absolutely darling suit, which he had gotten absolutely smattered with blood and didn’t have the time, energy nor effort to properly clean it. Hindsight, it would have taken probably ten minutes. Ten minutes which–
“I mean, time travel! Actual, real, time travel! Isn’t this– doesn’t this change your entire world view, Harry?”
He looks up, plastering on the same slimy business grin he had practised while back on Gallifrey, the one which gained him access to his new TARDIS (which doesn’t groan anywhere near as much as The Doctors. Within five minutes of being inside he already wants to almost rewire the damn thing) and says, “Sure it does. I mean, I’m speechless…”
The two of them get on with their back and forth as he stares daggers into The Doctor’s nape. A perfectly angled steel blade could oh so, so easily slide into the soft skin there and cause absolute carnage. The fact he hadn’t laid his hands on Him once, not even once, in all the time loops of that stinking fucking hospital makes him cringe a little in recall.
“You know, usually I’d say just one trip, but having just one trip when there’s two of you… well it seems a bit unfair, doesn’t it?”
Then the doctor continues pulling levers. Painfully, they’re the wrong ones. The thing would fly, of course it would, but not how it’s supposed to. He grabs onto the side and his knuckles whiten thanks to how hard his grip is, funnelling all his frustration into it. He couldn’t exactly criticise bad TARDIS treatment, not after what he did to it, but at least know how to treat it right when you’re trying to. Again, he absentmindedly wonders what it would be like to impale The Doctor on a sharp stick. A jagged, rusting–
The TARDIS lands with a thud as they’re all jerked to the left rather forcefully. If these things kept interrupting his thoughts he was going to have a right fit about it.
“Here we are.”
“It worked?” Martha asks, holding her hands behind her back, messing with the cut of her blouse likely without even realising it.
“Of course it worked! What do you take me for, a hack?” He jokes back.
“Where exactly is here?” he, himself, asks. It’s not hard to figure out where you’re going. A TARDIS is made for going to specific places. Then again, what more does he expect from Him?
“I dunno! That’s the fun of it, isn’t it? Showing up somewhere you don’t expect, having a grand old time. Come on.” as He says this he takes hold of Martha's hand, gives it a squeeze then grabs his coat and rushes for the exit.
The Master slinks behind both of them, standing a little on his tiptoes to get a look outside the door.
“You were so much more excited on the moon, Harry. What, did he pull you away from something important? I mean, what can be more important than this?” Martha asks as she turns to face him, stars in her eyes. With a smile, she jokes, “pull you away from a date or something?”
His hand itches to reach into his pocket. Instead, he takes a deep breath, plastering on the same smile from earlier. No rest for the wicked. “No, I think the adrenaline just finally hit me. Humans can’t exactly be on high alert constantly, can they?” he probably should have said ‘we’. No worries.
Martha nods a little before turning back to the door. The Doctor moves aside, so he isn’t blocking the master’s view, as Martha pushes open the door. It's gone from a rather average summer night from 2007 to a coolish midday. As Martha walks out she gasps, audibly, doing a small spin to take in her surroundings.
They’ve seemingly landed in a wide, open green space. A park. Bushes with new growth flowers boarded the green, alongside a row of olive trees on most edges. Next to these were rather well kept white stone pathways, leading to white stone buildings with deep orange roof tiling. The doors and windows were curved at the tops, mini archways into the home. A few men in brown tunics, assumedly slaves, mill about, attempting to remain out of sight from the empty lawn.
“Rome! Ancient Rome… good old ancient Rome,” He says with glee. “Well. Relative to them, of course. Still! Lovely place, isn’t it?”
The idea of Ancient Rome always felt a little like stepping on his own toes. He had heard about Julius Caesar during his stint in 2007 as prime minister, and well… it definitely felt like something he’d do. Minus the whole being stabbed to death, but then again, when he got bored he often felt the need to go out with a bang. He hadn’t done it yet, as far as he was aware, so it felt a little like looking into his own future. It made the hairs on his neck stand on end… but then again, Caesar could simply be a human with enough ambition to come off as a Time Lord in disguise, at least through the Histories. Men like him were the only humans he truly liked, just because they had it in them to do something ballsy and do it right.
“Wow… you know, doctor, I wasn’t expecting this… what, are we in what ends up as modern day Italy? Wait… we’re not anywhere dangerous, are we?” Martha asks, voice raising and falling along with her emotions. Her face plays all of them like a theatre. At least she can be fun, in her own way.
“I think it’s probably best for us to change,” he murmurs, “considering, you know, the whole harsh class system and all. Also considering their, uh, distaste for people who aren’t… visibly Roman.” The Doctor frowns and opens his mouth to disagree, yet Martha manages a word in edgeways first.
“He has a point. What, do you have some big old walk in wardrobe for times like this?” she asks, and once again looks like a small child in a sweet store. Her smile is so wide that it affects how she talks, just slightly, and her eyes crumple upwards.
“You know what? Sure, why not. Adds to the fun of it all.”
After five minutes, they’ve managed to locate the doctor’s rather large wardrobe. Its small in comparison to his own, of course, but he had expected it to be a thing of the past… this regeneration didn’t exactly dress extravagantly. Or differently, in that matter. That damn suit was one he had seen so much– then again, he did keep the man like you’d keep a dog. Maybe a moot point.
Martha’s looking through the clothing rather quickly, stopping anytime she sees anything white. Each time is brief, though, as she continues looking through rather quickly afterwards. The Doctor rests his back against the doorway and watches, while the master scans the clothing before sighing.
“TARDIS, give us outfits which fit the current time period outside,” he orders before knocking the wall of the room twice, as if that’ll make something happen.
The Doctor frowns at this and rushes over, cooing at the wall and giving it a gentle rub, “ah-ah, don’t listen to him, girl.” He then gives him a look, before stretching a little and walking back out into the hallway. “Come on, you two! Give her a minute to get her bearings.”
The second he could, he was taking himself far, far away from here and decimating a mid size civilisation.
After two minutes of awkwardly standing around in the corridors, making small talk with Martha and side-eyeing The Doctor, who was watching them as if they were something both fantastic yet terrifying, the door slowly slides open to allow them inside. The Doctor walks in first, Martha behind Him, and when the master follows the door bashes into his shoulder, causing him to shout out in pain and kick the door in a fit of frustration. Only, the door isn’t there when he goes to kick it, leading to him almost tripping himself over. Martha rushes over to him when she hears this and He just chuckles.
“I think it’s only fair,” He says, before turning to the newly filled wardrobe.
“Doctor!” Martha huffs, very quickly looking the master over. He frowns a little at being treated like an injured chick. Though the treatment is stopped rather quickly, and they both wander over to one of the many racks.
“So… what, can I pick out any of these?”
“Sure, go ahead!” The Doctor says with a grin. Saxon purely stands there, blinking twice.
“It’s Rome. You should pick based on material quality, considering the class system, and probably be aware of the fact you’re a woman,” he then pauses, looking her over, momentarily forgetting which way around the idea of gender was; did the colony ship have a more open mind towards the scale of it all, or was it 2007?, “...right? Well, they’ll consider you a woman,” he says quickly, to conceal what he’s said if it’s a mistake, “so you should probably dress accordingly.”
Martha gives him a slight look about the question and looks down at herself, brushing off her t-shirt just a tad. Well, he had evidently gotten the time periods messed up. It's not his fault; Time Lords didn’t exactly have as harsh a binary as humans. Another ridiculous thing they hold themselves to.
Yet, surprisingly, when they walk out of the TARDIS, Martha is in the same type of clothing as all the other women (of a higher class); something a little longer than a toga. Both her and the doctor are in pure white, meanwhile the master’s outfit is dyed darker, a kind of grey, with a purple stripe going alongside one of the edges.
It was the only Toga with a purple stripe on it which fit. Seemingly, the TARDIS recognised him when The Doctor didn’t, and despised him already. Good. She should be uncomfortable with him around, he sulks.
A sign of mourning, assumedly, considering how human fashion changes yet still has some ever present norms (of course, these norms often depended on location, though what other reason would she put him in this? If it was anything offensive, it would likely harm the other two. A small way to remind him that someone knows. She had always been petty).
Pieces of fir litter the streets as they wander through them, and while they come across a few strolling citizens, many places seem oddly deserted.
“Ahh, Megalesia!” The Doctor states with a grin, as He begins to walk in a certain direction, as if He knew exactly where He was – the master doubted it very much. He leans down to pick up one of the fir cuttings, spinning it between two fingers as He inhales its smell. “Ancient Rome had a lot of different holidays, this being one of the longest. If we’re towards the end of the celebrations, then there’s probably a precession right around the corner, with lions and everything!” then He frowns, licking his finger and holding it up in the air, “and probably a gladiator match. Hopefully I’ve got the time period wrong, gladiators weren’t exactly around for that long in the grand scheme of things – you know, they started off as a funeral thing? Caesar was the one to make their appearance more widespread – but, uh… we can just miss that. Can’t exactly end them, flow of time and all, but I don’t want to partake…” by the end of his monologue He’s mumbling to himself as he walks in a direction, Martha and the master following suit. She’s smiling to herself as she looks around, taking in The Doctor's words with awe.
“A precession? Like, those things you see at a carnival, just minus all the floats?”
“Well, something like that. It’s mostly for the upper classes, the patricians, but, you know human nature. It’s legal for everyone bar slaves to watch, so as many people as can do. As long as you don’t rub elbows with the rich and powerful who’ll probably crucify you for it.” His voice grows a little darker at the end, quieter, his hold on the fir tightens a little – before He bounces back, rocking on his heels.
The master laughs when The Doctor mentions crucifixion, having to cover it up with a cough. “Soo… we’re in Ancient Rome, and the special games are off the table. Kind of ruins the point–” he ignores the slight glare he receives from Him– “do we at least get to see the precession?”
“Sure! I don’t see how that hurts anyone.”
“Wait, wait,” she grabs both of the men before her, slowing them from the fast paced movement The Doctor had inspired to a standstill, “shouldn’t we, I don’t know, be careful? Not step on any butterflies, or something like that? I mean, what if Harry and I end up accidentally changing the future, causing us not to be born?” Her voice is tighter strung than usual, slightly higher. The Doctor smiles and continues walking with them both. Her random stopping seems to startle a man in a dirty, brownish tunic to their left, who disappears as quickly as he can into a nearby alleyway. Since The Doctor keeps moving so fast, all He really notices is movement in the peripheral; the two ‘humans’ are the only two to really exactly take note. Well, assumedly; Martha’s eyes linger for a few seconds before they move on.
“Nahh, you’ll be fine. Unless you plan on going around and murdering a good few people, I doubt anything will happen. You aren’t planning on a murder spree, are you?” He jokes.
Saxon slings an arm around Martha’s shoulders, grinning as he leans forward, “don’t worry, Doctor, we won’t get up to too much trouble,” then he pulls her forward, continuing to walk, “come on! Two adventures, you said? Might as well make the most of them.” He walks with a swagger, beginning to properly get into the swing of things. Humans were so good at innovative murder, one of the few things he could appreciate about the race – along with its cruelty, even if he did have to agree with Him that they’re mostly a kindly race (something he despises) – and he’d be allowed to see a game today, somehow.
He has even less of an idea where they’re off to, which is evident when Martha and he are gossiping about clothing and the differences and the feel of a toga or a… whatever it is that she was wearing [a Stola]... and The Doctor has to stop them both, standing beside a turning. Martha turns around slightly before he does.
“Unless you just want to wander for a while, which is completely fine! I’ve spent so much time just, well, wandering, we should probably head down this way.”
Time moves differently here. He can feel it in his bones; strangely different to how it did at the edge of the blackhole. His skin doesn’t feel as if, even only slightly, it’s being pulled in a certain direction, begging for him to slough it all off. Which makes walking strange, because the gravity is minutely different. Funny, considering how many different planets he’s been to where it hadn’t knocked him from focusing on his goal.
His current goal was a lot more speculative now, though. Usually, even if the end is ‘destruction’ or ‘dictatorship!’ drawn in red and underlined twice, he has a step by step plan. He couldn’t exactly do that at the minute. Life was usually like a drawn out game of chess, and here he was, completely unsure what would realistically occur next.
It made something inside him trill.
“So, considering most men we’ve passed are all wearing white, or aren’t wearing togas at all,” her face falls a little at the mention of that, in the same way it has as she’s passed every person who is visibly seen as lesser. The saviour of humanity, he’d snark if he could, having to pass by humans in need every few seconds. Then again, what could she do? He wonders, absentmindedly, if it makes her think of her silly human vow. All the people she’s helped in her current year, though, would they exist without society built from horrors like this? Regardless of all the moralising, could she even destroy such a system this far embedded into everything currently occurring with one trip? So much of Rome’s infrastructure was slave built. So much of her modern society claims to be piggybacking off Roman times. Hell, would The Doctor even allow her to intervene in something like this, so soon into knowing her, with his awfully rigid beliefs about the timeline! Fixed events, Master, you can’t go knocking it all down! You’ll cause a parad–
“Harry?”
Shit.
“Sorry. I was in awe of… the infrastructure! Yes, that. What?”
“Why do you have a stripe of purple?” she asks, “as I was saying, women are wearing a lot of different colours, but none that exact shade of… is it even purple?”
“Tyrian!” The Doctor jumps in, “made from mollusks by the Phoenicians. I believe the location is known as Lebanon in your modern day?”
“It’s a symbol of importance and wealth,” he says. Martha laughs. “I don’t want us to get in trouble for accidentally wandering into the wrong place,” he says with a slight frown, “and it looks good on me. For Ra–diation’s,” that was a really, really awful self-catch. He’s amazed He isn’t looking at him strangely, “sake, Martha, it looks good on me.”
“The TARDIS didn’t use mollusks,” He rambles, “but, I mean, it would probably look better a little… redder? There’s a range to Tyrian purple, anyhow.” Saxon has to look down at himself and slightly re-arrange his toga. He isn’t still falling apart at the seams. Gallifrey isn’t here, the drumming is gone, and he… continues on with the conversation. That was all a rather long time ago, now.
They arrived near where the precession should be taking place, walking what would have been a rather wide space and is instead completely filled to the brim with stalls. Wooden vendor tables, ranging in quality, as far as the eye can see, backdropped by seemingly vacated buildings. The Doctor widens his arms in a jazz-handey motion, grinning to the two. Some vendor tables have cloth covering the tops from the weather, in a variance of different colours, some more expensive than the rest. And that’s not even considering the fabrics; some are thin and easily rippable at the edges, while others are thicker, implying either a longer time in the job or purely more success. Some vendor tables have no cloth coverings at all, instead having the spring sun bearing down on them.
He splits away from the other two, exploring the stalls with a very minor interest. Hardly anything manages to catch his eye, though he does pocket something small with little interest, until he comes across a small trinket stall. It’s far off from most of the people, squirrelled away in a back corner next to a back alley. The owner of the stall seems disinterested, fanning themselves absent mindedly. Glitz and glamour often grabbed his attention, especially so soon after abandoning a place where his image was constantly embolden in gold. He skims the items as he has every other jewelry stand, until he notices something strange. He almost misses it, even, due to the fact that most of what he’s come across has been so boringly human. Quite a few of the designs are Gallifreyan. He stops in his tracks and does a double take to the seller, before picking up one of the rings and holding it closer. It’s close enough to seem Gallifreyan, yet the words engrained in it are gibberish. When he asks where the stall owner found them, he’s given a very rushed explanation about how they’re made to look like what certain senators have been spotted wearing. He isn’t given any names, the stall seems mostly untouched by visitors, and he hasn’t seen any on anyone else. Someone’s managed to get their hands on Gallifreyan ornaments, covered in a reality filter, and this random seller is apparently smart enough to just recognise shapes past it. Shame, that it won’t catch on… he’d rather enjoy seeing The Doctor’s face as he realises humanity is trying even harder to imitate their greatness. He buys three, purely to have something to scoff at.
Then, he wanders down the alley way, looking over his shoulder before he pulls out his laser screwdriver. He could easily do this without it, he and his new TARDIS have a brilliant relationship, in his humble opinion, but it’s more fun this way. He aims it at the floor, turning it on, then moving the laser up to roughly where the door height would need to be. Then, it materialises. Thanks to his ability to know how a handbrake works, it moves silently, appearing before him as a corinthian style column. He walks inside, closing the door behind him as he rests against it, then takes a deep breath.
Now, he could do whatever the fuck he wanted, and come back to this point as if none of it ever happened.
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Running his hand down the railing as he walks to the centre console he rolls the three rings around in the palm of his hand, before throwing them on a key tray on a small coffee table near the mouth to the entrance of his TARDIS. Alongside the rings is one cleaned, bleached bone and a straw. He spends five minutes, much longer than he was taking a few hours ago, to power her up, enjoying taking his time. She moves quietly, and jumps ahead in time by just a second. It gives him a good enough timeframe to jump backwards, like a save point.
He isn’t exactly sure why this trick didn’t blow himself up. But it didn’t! Probably something to do with the paradox machine, or the fact he’s been to the edge of a blackhole, or the fact that Gallifrey is technically still on its way back here, or… a myriad of things. Or maybe, time isn’t as sensitive as everyone always parrots it to be. Maybe, it fixes itself up. Or, again, the paradox machine. But he’d really prefer to believe that time wasn’t some delicate thread you could destroy by expecting it to conform to your whims.
Then again, if it was that good at patching itself up, he really didn’t need to spend all that time on the paradox machine.
Stepping out of his TARDIS, he walks back through the market, finding The Doctor. He’s alone, Martha being entirely out of sight.
“Harry! Found anything you like? You know, I’m half convinced to buy a few things for the library, but I know I don’t need it, but come on, I mean, you can never have too many books!” He says with a grin, leaning into the master’s space. His voice has a weird twinge to it, something he hadn’t picked up on earlier, something likely unhearable to the human ear. He’s talking to him as if he were an animal, a pet, or maybe a baby. It made him think of their daughter, and the thought is enough to put him on edge, twist his insides in insidious ways. The Doctor did always treat his companions like animals, animals who he could replace so easily when they got hurt, or died. Like a hamster; he remembers Lucy telling him about hamsters. They just exploded sometimes, or ate their young, or died extravagantly and humans learned to live with it. They had a short lifespan, so who cared for a little mistreatment? So many humans don’t even know the proper care of a creature like that, he remembers Lucy saying, so didn’t even know it was entirely their fault for the gory little death. That’s what He was like. It wasn’t even malicious, which in his view made it so, so much worse.
He was hoping to use this ‘reset’ as a way to force The Doctor into the colosseum, see what happens. He wanted to see it himself, regardless, at least once.
All of that disappears, like sand through his fingers.
That can wait. He has all of eternity to go and see a Roman colosseum.
“Something took Martha,” he lies, faux fear in his eyes that solidifies into dewy crocodile tears making his eyes glassy.
The Doctor’s face falls in an instant, Him half throwing the books down as He pulls out his sonic screwdriver. Within his own pocket, he uses his laser to stifle whatever signal He’s trying to pick up.
Weaving through the city, he leads The Doctor this way and that, building up a mental portfolio of all the reasons He deserves this. It was a long time coming, and his rage from being left to die at Gallifrey’s gates, his rage at his near-death, his rage at everything He had ever done from the days they were young up until now bubbled. As this was happening, he could hear His movements gradually yet rather rapidly growing more and more nervous, could almost feel His heartbeats speeding up.
They end up on a hill, likely a semi-usual spot for congregation, considering the crucified remains of a man resting above them. Rather fresh, seemingly they forgot to take him down due to the celebrations. The rot perforates the spring air. He knew Roman’s left bodies even after death, or at least he was mostly sure, but the smell of this thing must mean it was mistakenly left up there. Well, he didn’t care enough to continue considering it. There were a few benches, and an obvious path to where they stood, which looked out across a rather large part of the city. There was a statue of either a god, or an emperor, or both or neither entirely depending on the specific time period, which you could look upon without viewing the corpse if you went at it from the right angle.
The Doctor is almost hopping from one foot to another, repeatedly bashing His sonic against the palm of His hand, looks genuinely scared. Something inside of him stirs at the view.
“She doesn’t seem to be here; look, are you sure they went this way? I mean, it’s rather noisy, all things considered, the celebrations and all. Maybe if we go back to the TARDIS and I can just get this damn thing to work!” He shouts in frustration.
Earlier, at the market, he had stolen himself a knife. Just in case. Back then, he thought it more likely he’d need to use it on a human, maybe switching himself out for a senator if he felt ballsy enough. Yet here he is, a chance to feel His blood on his own hands. Finally, he could know what it’s like to be rid of Him, thanks to his actions. No one else’s. This would be his. He debates, for a few seconds, the idea of revealing himself.
He chooses not to.
This would be it; his recall of The Doctor’s regenerations was fuzzy, a little off, but one or two has to be all he has left now. It has to be.
He walks so that he’s standing face to face with Him, his breath hitting His chin. For a second, He seems a little confused; He stops knocking the sonic against his palm, and opens his mouth to speak. That’s when he grabs the sonic with the hand that was previously on his laser screwdriver, throwing it as far as he can (hoping for it to roll down the nearby hill edge), and twists the dagger right into His navel and rips it upwards.
He shouts in agony, at first, then whimpers, then is left gurgling. His intestines splatter out from His stomach, and blood spurts to cover a space on the master's toga.
“Do I look better in red, Doctor?”
The Doctor claws at the masters shirt as He falls to the floor unceremoniously, His eyes distant as gasps and sputters explode from His throat. He lands on His knees, jostling the master’s toga, blooding His hands and the floor and the master's shoes. The master’s legs are warm, from where His insides splatter and shift against him and the floor.
Then, He regenerates.
It’s entirely silent, aside from the quiet gasps He keeps making as this all occurs. It wasn’t silent, a second ago, the noises of Megalesia having wafted to where they stood only minutes prior. Or maybe it was. Maybe he was imagining it. Maybe it was roaring around him, and the only thing he can concentrate on is the mortality of the Gallifreyan kneeling at his feet, hands still grasping onto the master, eyes watering as He fails to manoeuvre His mouth around whatever pleads He wishes to beg.
He leans down, and places his hands inside The Doctor, moving them about a little to feel the heat. He rubs a circle into one of His hearts, humming softly as he does so. Then, he sits beside Him for a second. Until he grows bored only seconds later, pulling Him to rest against the statue, in a way they can still watch the city and the sun, high in the sky.
He knits Himself back together.
And, as expected, the master kills Him once again. The shock and fear is very much still wildly evident in His features.
Again, again, again, again, again again again again again again again! He loses count. Fuck, how he loses count. Face after face after face, shifting and changing before him, and he knows this is too much. Too many. Why can’t he just be dead?! How many times has he faced death as a result of Him? If not his own demise, then a demise of some sort, of some part of him. Gallifrey, his return to Gallifrey, his death and renewal because of Him, did he even want to keep going past that point? Yet it wasn’t even his own fucking decision! It never is!
He screams out in frustration, throwing the knife. He doesn’t know where it lands, and he doesn’t care.
Beside him sits The Doctor, breathing hard and shaking like a puppy with hypothermia. His eyes are slightly sunken, and He grabs at his own arms for support. His toga is ripped to pieces, and despite the setting sun, it isn’t cold enough for that to be any reason as to his behaviour.
He looks at Him, and realises something horrific. He laughs out, the noise hard and agonising, pushing at the flesh of his throat, shredding it until it feels dry. He recognises that face. Rasillion, how could he ever forget that face? The young boy who endured the academy with him, who ran through the fields with him, who soothed him after the time vortex, who laughed and cried and celebrated with him. Whose face he could really never forget, considering how many sleepless nights he sat staring at walls, imagining him. The golden hour bathes him in warm light and reminds the master of a specific evening, and it makes him cringe internally, for how much he misses him. He looks golden.
“Do you ever grow tired, Theta?”
The Doctor jerks at this question, eyes wide as he moves to stare at the Master. The Master goes to open his mouth to explain, to rant, to criticise… and all of it washes away in the eyes of the man beside him. The Doctor takes a deep breath, and tries his throat; rather usual syllables for english fall out as a result.
“I thought you were dead,” he says, tiredly, with a thwack of enthusiasm behind his exhaustion. He wonders if a different retort would have fixed everything. He wonders if he had spoken just a millisecond faster or slower, if he’d have given it all up, for the man who was once a boy who sits beside him.
“Mmm.”
The Doctor grabs him by the shoulders, rubbing his hands up and down his biceps, smiling slightly like a madman. That face, grinning back at him, in the same way it always used to do. It makes him think of home, and he feels nausea, he feels… wrecked. His smile dampens before he talks, as his recognition and joy is clouded by the current violence.
“Master, please, we don’t have to do this. We don’t. Please,” he begs.
It’s nice to not be the one chasing, for once.
He can’t bring himself to do anything to him, not while he looks like that. He doesn’t deserve to have that face, not anymore; he grieved him, long ago, for long enough. That version of him is dead, his Theta, Doctor, whatever the fuck he wanted to call himself, didn’t exist anymore. Hadn’t existed for a very, very long time.
He stands, silently, checks his laser screwdriver is still in his pocket, then wanders off. As he does so, he hears him shouting and begging for him not to go. He forces himself not to look back over his own shoulder, even when he hears a slight ‘thud’; assumedly from him trying to get up and failing miserably.
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The sun has entirely set when he returns to his TARDIS. He doesn’t even change out of his deep red toga, soiled with the Doctor’s blood. Instead, he turns the time back a few hours, then steps out, and finds himself at the Gladiator games. It only takes a few minutes, since he can essentially smell the human blood in the air. Maybe even a little more than he’d expect from a sport like this, but who was he to say?
He walks towards where the Consul, or Senator, or Emperor, or Princeps or whoever-the-fuck was sat, mind controlling those around them to see it as ‘usual’. He then drags him down into the bowels of the building, slaughters him, and takes his place. Everyone thinks he’s the same man, and that works perfectly for him. The Gladiators who would be expected to be spared he slaughters, and vice versa, changing it up one or twice. He watches throughout the remainder of the games, before returning to the TARDIS.
He changes into something which he deems close enough to what he was wearing, though the purple is a little redder and the grey a little darker, before taking a moment – who knows how long – to himself, before pushing the door back open, and going along to find the Doctor and Martha once more.