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Unlike most versions of the Master, the man the Doctor saw, frozen like a deer in headlights at the other end of the alley, was relatively easy to carbon date.
Bleached hair. No beard. Ratty hoodie that he'd probably stolen, off a clearance rack if she was being generous, off a corpse if she was being realistic. That damn dog collar for some reason.
He was on his way to taking over the world for the second time in about as many years. Somewhere, maybe on this planet, maybe not yet, her past self was running away from his own death. Somewhere else, the Master-- her Master, with his big puppy dog eyes and his trustworthy face and his stupid WhatsApp messages-- was biding his time until 2019. At St. Luke's, the Doctor was maybe giving a lecture in that lovely accent she sort of missed having. More likely, he was spending his third consecutive day camped out in the university library with only the vaguest idea that he might be missing some important meeting. A few floors down, Missy would be practicing piano, or throwing a tantrum, or explaining to Nardole that she still hated this stupid planet and everything on it but really, hunger strikes were boring and overdone, and if she had to eat disgusting earth food then potstickers weren't exactly the worst thing in the universe, and if he could just be a dear and ask the Doctor to pick up Chinese takeout tonight she'd be on her very best behavior for at least the next forty five minutes. Maybe longer if they were lucky.
It was 2009 in London and the Doctor may as well have been staring down the barrel of a gun.
A very confused gun.
The Master must recognize her, or at the very least recognize the psychic presence of another time lord that coincided with her appearance. But he was staring at her as if she were a particularly difficult math problem, occasionally glancing away as if someone would jump out with a camera crew and tell him he was being pranked. He stared at her for an agonizingly awkward thirty seconds, during which time the Doctor went from being spooked to terrified to remember exactly why she didn’t have nearly the amount of nostalgia for this face as she had for any of the Master’s other faces. Finally, he spoke.
“ You’re the Doctor?”
"Well, I'm not the Rani."
The Master laughed, "You're a girl ?!"
The Master’s voice raised at least an octave in shock. The Doctor waved her hand noncommittally.
"What happened to the," he waved his hand just above his face, indicating where the Doctor’s hair had stuck up a few lifetimes back, "Y’know, the pretty one."
The Doctor wasn't sure if she was flattered or offended or disgusted. She decided to ignore all three possibilities.
"He's still kicking. For you, at least,” The Doctor trailed off, looking around their surroundings while being careful to never fully turn her back on the Master. Empty alleyway, one way in one way out. “I would imagine we’re simply out of sync again."
"Of course you're from my future. I'd remember..." he took a step closer, made a show of looking the Doctor up and down and then most of the way back up again, "Yes, I'm certain I'd remember a lady Doctor."
Psychiatrists field day, she heard her own voice saying years ago. Back then she'd been certain that they could be friends again, or at least something like friends. Now, she couldn't believe she had to look at this stupid, round face of his again. She would still grab lunch with the smooth talking man who bugged the Doctor at UNIT. Had done so recently, in fact. She might still shake hands with the idiot in the velvet suit. The Doctor had certainly done more than shake hands with him in the past. She would spend a day with the woman in the vault in a heartbeat. A night, too. Even Agent O, certainly not all of those messages were an act, certainly her friend, her Missy, was still in there somewhere.
But this man was fresh out of his year that never was. This man had recently become the world's leading expert on torturing Jack Harkness and the Jones family. The Doctor was no longer sure if Missy had meant it when she had apologized for those things, for that year, but at least she'd had the decency to pretend. Harold Saxon wouldn’t even do that.
"Right, well, I'm sure you're very busy," the Doctor pulled her coat closed around herself, "And I wouldn't want to hold you up. I seem to remember you being very certain you would win this time, so I imagine that once I'm out of sight you'll forget you ever saw me,"
"Or, you could erase the memory yourself," the Master suggested. Offered, maybe. She wasn't that stupid. He'd always been the better telepath between them by far. Cracking open his mind enough to erase a memory left her far too open to retaliation. She'd rather take her chances screwing with their timelines.
Back in the seventies, the two of them had a sense of honor around their back and forth, loath as either of them would have been to admit it. They'd been at each other’s throats just as much then as now, but the undercurrent of schoolyard games and timelord decorum was still holding them back, if only just. When she visited the man who'd bugged her at UNIT, not often but not never, he'd always let her erase the memory afterwards. It was fair, he always said, it wasn't right for him to know things ahead of time. In return, she'd play cat and mouse with him like the old days, let him have the pretense of capturing her rather than simply meeting an old friend for tea.
As far as she knew, that sense of honor had died with Missy. Maybe that meant this body had a few dregs of it left.
"Look," the Doctor said, trying her best for tired, "I know you're busy right now. You know I'm not supposed to be here. Let's both turn around, each find another street to go down, and quite literally forget this ever happened."
The Master held up a finger, "First, tell me why you’re here."
"If I need a permit to walk around London I should have a pile of fines and a life sentence by now."
He rolled his eyes, "Why are you," He gestured to her, "Girly-Doctor, here," he gestured to the buildings on either side of them, "London, 2009, on what I'm hoping is about to be a very, very bad day for you."
"Oh, it will be," the Doctor couldn't stop herself from confirming his prediction, "And I hadn’t realized the exact date when I landed the tardis. You know how she is."
"Right, okay, but why?" Oh, there was that coin flip temper of his. At some point in the last sentence or two he’d gone from delighted by the Doctor’s new face to furious with the Doctor’s old games. He was at least pretending to hide it, keeping his voice almost level, but she knew better than anyone else what an angry Master looked like. This body especially was always one wrong word from snapping. She could admit to understanding his near constant frustration, her own bodies could be described as temperamental more often than not, but that didn’t make the flashes of anger behind the Master’s eyes any less tiring.
Still, the Doctor had no interest in calming him down."Why do you care?"
The Master forced a sarcastic smile, "Why don't you settle my curiosity before the thought disappears entirely from my head?"
The Doctor sighed. The actual answer was that the place she'd gone to with Rose Tyler to get chips, the site of what she'd once called their first date, had closed in 2020. Sometime before that, she wasn't sure the exact year, they'd changed their recipes anyway. So, yes, she was here because of the same ill-advised combination of nostalgia and impulsivity that sent her back to UNIT HQ circa the seventies. The same thing that had (would) sent her (him) on that stupid reunion tour that delayed his regeneration so long he hadn't been sure he would regenerate safely until he was already sitting at Amelia Pond's kitchen table with a mouthful of custard.
Every few months or years or decades the Doctor was bound to give in to an impulse or two.
"I wanted chips."
The Master nodded. That nervous energy boiled under his skin. They stared at each other again. A stalemate. It was only fair, the Master's voice from lifetimes ago or weeks ago rang in her head. She was the one who had proposed leaving well enough alone, she should be the first one to turn her back.
So she did. She turned on her heel and slipped down a different back alley, and she chose to believe that the Master would do the same. Her face with the wild brown hair and the vanity issues would be dealing with the Master today, not her. This version of the Doctor was going to allow herself ten measly minutes to live in the past before going back to ignoring the tidal wave of a million griefs that threatened to drown her every waking moment. This version of the Doctor was going to have some chips.
By the time she'd finished lunch, she could almost forget her run in with the Master. She might have pushed it entirely from her mind by the time she made it back to her tardis. Unfortunately, she didn’t actually make it back to her tardis.
***
"I thought I'd killed you once."
The Doctor wasn't sure why she'd blurted that out. The Master-- the Master with the tailored, not yet velvet suits and tasteful bit of gray around his temples and the almost polite working relationship with the Doctor’s friends-- the Master let her words hang in the air between them for a moment.
She was stark naked, laying on the Master's perfectly made bed, in his perfectly organized tardis, hands folded behind her head and staring up at the ceiling. The Master, in this body at least, was never naked unless absolutely necessary. He was all buttoned back up in his suit, not a hair out of place. He seemed, amusingly, somewhat flustered by the Doctor's nudity. As if he hadn’t been the cause of it maybe an hour prior. He'd been busying himself with something on his work desk, sitting with his back to the Doctor.
"You mustn't tell me my future, dear Doctor. Even you know such things are dangerous."
The Doctor rolled her eyes, "Come on, that's barely even a spoiler! Now, if I'd told you I thought I'd killed you because I watched you burn up in a body that wouldn’t regenerate, or that I'd thought I'd killed you, or at least watched you die, loads of times, if I told you you'd made me believe you died in my arms--"
"Doctor!"
"What's it matter? You'll forget all this anyway."
The faint mechanical sounds stopped, and the Doctor heard the click of a small, not-sonic screwdriver being set down on the wooden desk. The Doctor realized a moment too late that the Master hadn’t yet agreed to lose his memories of this visit.
The Master didn't turn around. He directed his question to the wall in front of him.
"How many times have you visited me? Like this?”
The Doctor sucked in a deep breath, "Oh, only three or four. Five, tops."
Closer to ten. Closer to a dozen by the time she regenerated into the new-old face that would follow this one.
The Master knew her better than to believe her, and knew her better than to ask again. He might not know this face (or know he knew this face) but he knew the Doctor, knew how stubborn they could be. That didn’t tend to change between lives.
"And I suppose you've erased my memory of you each time?"
The Doctor hummed in agreement, suddenly feeling guilt pool deep in her gut.
"I see. I imagine I must have let you each time,” The Master cleared his throat, “Even then, I would prefer not to know my future even for a short time, if you can help it. I am aware that keeping thoughts to yourself is not generally your greatest skill, but I would appreciate the effort."
"Right. Sorry. We'll stick to the seventies."
The Master went back to his tinkering, and the Doctor let the almost silence wash over her again. She was here, in her friend's tardis, with her friend, and she didn't need to ruin it by opening her mouth again. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine she was back at the vault, or the Academy, or that she had made it to one of a million imagined futures that the Doctor and the Master had planned out long before either of them took on those names. She could almost imagine that they had run away together, explored the universe, that adventuring together had been enough for both of them, no controlling, no saving, no interfering.
Of course, that line of thought grew bitter almost as soon as it grew sweet.
The Doctor shook the thought from her head, and slid off the bed to join the Master at his desk. She leaned over him, resting her chin on his head and her arms across his shoulders, to watch him work. She felt him tense for a moment. His Doctor was never so touchy, especially not when nude, and she'd caught the Master entirely off guard. But then she felt him relax into her. Barely enough to notice, still holding on to plausible deniability, but she felt it. He'd had an equal part in imagining those futures where they run away together. Spending time with this version of the Doctor was as much wish fulfillment for him as it was for her.
"What are you working on?" Stupid question. As if she couldn't recognize the TCE from a mile away.
The Master knew she was asking to be polite, "It's damaged."
"Looks like it's been stepped on."
"Ms. Grant" He explained, a sort of fondness in his voice she would probably never hear again about one of her friends. She smiled despite herself.
***
She wasn't sure if she'd really call it waking up. When she became aware of reality again, her wrists were bound to the armrests of an antique wooden dining chair. The Master (blond, beard, dramatic suit. Cured of his drums, not yet trapped on that colony ship) sat across from her. There was a full traditional afternoon tea spread on the table between them.
It struck her, in that moment, that this was either the second or the third time she'd been in this exact position with this exact face of the Master's, entirely depending on one's point of view.
"That's the funny thing about timelines," the Master said, as if reading her mind. Maybe he was. She figured she'd be able to feel that, though, even while barely making her way to consciousness. "The funny thing about timelines is that yours and mine don't really match right now."
"You had to take the time to grow a beard before you noticed that?"
The Master glared at her. He might have more control now that the drums were gone, but that ear-splitting rage still boiled just as bright and hot and loud under his skin. Maybe, probably, that made him more dangerous than he’d been that morning.
"I was busy," the Master spat. He fixed his gaze once again toward the fireplace sitting between them, shifted his tone to serene and controlled and completely and utterly rehearsed, and continued the monologue he'd probably stayed up all night practicing.
"See, for you, I know you're going to see me again. Probably in another body, given your reaction to this face when you first saw me. For you, I'm a relic. But for me? Well, for me, the Lady Doctor is brand new territory.”
The Doctor rolled her eyes.
“You can’t hurt me without risking your timeline. On the other hand--”
"As if you've ever actually been afraid of me hurting you."
“You haven't got the hearts," the Master agreed, sneering, teasing her for every moment of grace she’d shown him.
The Doctor scrunched up her nose, that same well, if you think about it… sort of face that made most of her friends preemptively roll their eyes, "Or maybe I do now. Maybe I'm also far enough in your future that you've finally made me snap. Maybe you've finally done enough unforgivable things that I can't ignore them anymore. Maybe I'm finally tired of our games," the Doctor paused, musing, “Maybe I've already killed you once, and maybe I don't mind the collateral that would come with the pleasure of killing you again. Just a thought."
The Master didn't consider this for a second. "As I was saying, on the other hand, you’ve given me a truly irresistible opportunity. I could actually have my cake and eat it, too. I'd get the satisfaction of knowing I'd finally, finally gotten rid of you, and I'd still have plenty more time to play with my food. There's really no downside. For me. Plenty of downsides for you, of course."
"My death would be set in stone for you," she said, knowing full well she was grasping at straws, "You would have to be careful not to kill me every time we met after this or you would cause a paradox."
"Right," the Master nodded, and smiled that sarcastic smile that made the Doctor think he should have regenerated with a set of fangs, "Playing with my food."
The Doctor suddenly got the image of the Master, her Master, the one with the puppy dog eyes, popping back along her timeline the way she sometimes popped through his. Despite it all, he would miss her. She was sure of it. Miss torturing her, maybe, miss hurting her, but that was still a kind of missing her. If she disappeared now, how long until he broke down and visited UNIT, or St. Luke's, or even Coal Hill school.
Maybe he already had, from her perspective. Every version of her before this one would have let him take the memory with him, wouldn't have wanted to know their own future. She could think of a few faces who would jump at the opportunity to spend the day with him. Her tenth incarnation, for instance, would have done anything for the time and attention of another Time Lord. Maybe the face before that would, too. Before that, she’s spent lifetimes running into the Master often enough that a visit from his future self wouldn’t even strike the Doctor as odd. Who knew how many missing memories she might have knocking around in there.
One day, hopefully not today but anything was possible, one of them was going to die first. And the other would be left folding their timelines in on each other until something finally snapped.
"Alright, then. Kill me."
The Master scoffed, "Already? Have some patience! At least finish your tea first."
The Doctor stared at him for a moment before making a sort of jazz hands gesture against the arms of her chair. She was still just as bound as she'd been five minutes ago.
"Alright, have it your way," the Master leaned back in his chair, cradling a tea cup to his chest as he did, "But at least let me finish my tea first."
"God, you're annoying, you know that?"
"I've been told."
"No, I mean really, truly annoying. Absolutely awful. Every version of you is annoying, obviously, but this face more than any other by far . If annoying was an Olympic sport you'd have a pile of gold medals by the end of the summer. I'm sure of it."
“I think of it as more of an art than a sport, love.”
The Doctor groaned and threw her head back against the back of the chair. If she was lucky, she thought, she would knock herself out and spare herself the next few minutes of having to look at the Master's stupid face.
She wasn't lucky. The Master sent a sneering kissy face her way. Then he snapped his fingers as if remembering something deeply important.
“Do you remember," the Master asked, pointing at her, "When we played Eighth Man Bound, at the academy?"
"Hard to forget," and hard to remember, of course, as was the nature of the game, "You were too scared to play."
The Master weighed the idea in his head, rolled it back and forth like a marble, "You were too stupid not to play. But, then, that about sums it up, doesn't it?"
The Doctor ground her teeth. The Master let the silence sit for maybe thirty blessed seconds before opening his mouth again.
"I really don't know what you're so upset about. I know you'd rather I killed you than, say, a Dalek. Or a Cyberman. Or," he wrinkled his nose, "Or an Auton! Wouldn't that be terrible?"
Because then someone other than me will kill you and we'll both be disappointed.
"What about Eighth Man Bound?"
"Hm?"
With or without the drums, he was just as insufferable, "Why did you bring it up?"
The Master took a sip of his tea, looking into the middle distance as if gathering his thoughts.
"I was thinking about regeneration, that's all. I never actually did expect to see you as a woman."
How oddly mundane. "You'll be one. Next time around."
The Doctor wasn't sure why she'd said that. Rule number one was never ever tell someone anything about their future, especially not another Time Lord. Then again, rule number two was probably don't let any maniac renegade Time Lords tie you to the furniture, and she'd broken that rule more times than she could count. Only mostly by accident.
The Master raised an eyebrow, holding back a laugh as if the idea was hilarious to him, "Will I really?"
"Why does it matter," the Doctor drummed her fingers against the chair as best she could with the ropes around her wrists, "We're Time Lords, remember? You're being very Human about this."
The Master laid a delicate hand against his collarbone in a pearl-clutching gesture, "Doctor! That's disgusting! If you must, I would prefer ‘old-fashioned.’ Or, frankly, anything but Human."
In theory, Time Lords were supposed to be above such petty things as worrying one way or the other about gender. In practice, Bill had been more right than wrong that night over Chinese takeout. Missy calling herself a Time Lady was unusual, sure, but not entirely unheard of. Time Lords liked to pretend to be more evolved than they actually were. Things changed slowly in a culture with a ruling class that lived as long as Gallifrey’s did.
And it wasn't as if the Doctor was any different. She didn't feel any different in this body than she had in her last baker's dozen. But Yaz and Graham and Ryan had called her "her" and she didn't ever correct them. She told herself that English pronouns were too simple, Time Lord understandings of gender too complex. But there was a Galifreyan equivalent to Time Lady, and, anyway, the Doctor had been speaking English long enough that she could tell when a word didn't fit her. It was just that 'he' wasn't exactly any better, just the devil she knew. And the Doctor had a habit of avoiding introspection whenever possible.
"Maybe you've just spent too much time on Earth," the Doctor suggested, "Gone native."
"Oh, that's mean. Lady Doctor is mean!"
" I’m mean?"
"Very mean. Short-tempered, too, listen to you raising your voice. Cranky, that's the word."
"I'm-- you locked me in a bird cage ! For a year !"
"Oh, and you hold grudges! You're not just a woman now, Doctor, you're a bitch !"
The Doctor pulled at her restraints hard enough to hear the antique wood start to crack. Or, at least, she would have heard the wood crack if it wasn't drowned out by the growling. Low and deep, she was growling from her chest, her teeth bared like an angry dog.
The Master paused, surprised, maybe even spooked, for only a moment. Then, a smile, slow and putrid, spread across his face.
In a single motion, he set down his tea cup and crossed the room, landing behind the Doctor's chair. He caught her jaw with one hand, covering her mouth and pulling her head back against himself so that he could whisper against her ear.
"Careful," he said, purred, "Keep that up, and we'll have to get you a muzzle."
He was an idiot. The way he'd positioned himself was excellent for drama, but it had at least one clear downside. The Doctor angled her neck just slightly and bit down on his thumb. Hard.
The Master reeled back with a yelp, leaving the Doctor to spit the taste of skin out of her mouth. Before she could spit twice, he smacked her across the face.
"Bad dog!"
"You think you're hilarious, don't you," The Doctor tried to twist herself around to look at him, but he stayed just barely out of her line of sight. A shadow in her peripheral vision.
"I do," the Master confirmed. As he spoke, she heard the slide of metal against stone. He'd slipped something up his sleeve from the mantle beside them.
Then she was falling backwards, and then she wasn't.
He had tilted her chair back and was pushing her across the hardwood floor of his strange little drawing room. She readjusted as best she could in her restraints and saw that the back legs of the chair had little wheels drilled into them, like a makeshift dolly.
The Doctor couldn’t stop herself from laughing, "Wait, did you have... Did you have a special hostage chair specially prepared for me, or did you just sort of whip this together while I was unconscious?"
"Shut up."
"Because, I mean, I'm going to make fun of you either way, but I want to make sure I'm making fun of you accurately. Did you have to go to a hardware store for this? Had to ask the shop lady where the little wheels are? And the little screws? 'Yes, I'm working on a plan to kidnap my best friend again,'" she started to imitate his voice. For reasons unknown to her, she was imitating the man in the velvet suit, "'No it hasn't worked the last hundred times, but this time I've really got it! What I've been missing the whole time was a charity shop dining chair and some training wheels, that'll really do the trick--"
The front feet of the chair slammed back to the floor.
"Are you quite finished?"
"No," the Doctor said, "But I can save the rest for later."
He'd wheeled her to an empty space of hardwood floor in the otherwise overcrowded room. With the wood paneling and turn of the century furniture, the Doctor could imagine Missy piloting a tardis like this quite easily. He wouldn't be far off from becoming her, in the grand scheme of things. Maybe she was already starting to shine through.
The Master pulled on the knots that restrained the Doctor's wrist in just the right way to unravel the ropes.
"Up, up," he chirped.
The Doctor crossed her arms, but otherwise didn't move.
The coin flipped. His eyes darkened. "I mean it. Up."
She drummed her fingers against her upper arm. She’d been the Time Lord Victorious, once. She’d destroyed planets and trapped little girls in mirrors and held Davros at gunpoint. She could handle a test of wills with a madman. Especially this madman.
The Master sighed, dramatic as he’d ever been, "Alright, fine. If you must. I am the Ma--"
The Doctor coughed loud enough to drown out his voice, "Alright, alright! I'm standing up!" So much for a test of wills. She dusted off the front of her trousers as she stood. He'd taken her coat, and with it, the sonic and everything else she kept in her coat pockets. But by the feel of it, he hadn't emptied her trouser pockets.
"Terrible catch phrase, by the way," she said. She figured on the off chance he noticed what she'd been checking for, it would be best to distract him from the thought quickly.
"Oh, says Mister ‘Allons-y’!"
"Right, but that's just one word," A good one, she should start saying it again, "Yours is a whole sentence! With two clauses, even. Absolute mouthful. It's no wonder you're so good at hypnotizing people, I'm already half asleep by the time you've introduced yourself!” she looked down, as if she’d forgotten where they were, “Why am I standing, by the way?"
"That's the po--!" the Master cut himself off with a sharp inhale, "Dancing. I wanted to-- we're going to dance. I liked the pretty boy better, by the way."
"And yet, you still insist on bothering me now."
The Master pulled her into the sort of close embrace that brought to mind a freshly-married couple's first dance. Or this very face and Missy, on that rooftop. One hand holding hers, the other wrapped around her back. She rested her free hand on his shoulder out of habit.
A record player, or a convincing copy of one, crackled to life somewhere in the room. Before the Doctor could ask why, exactly, she wasn't going to just make a run for it, she got her answer. The flat of a dagger pressed against her back. Must have been what he'd slid off the mantelpiece.
The blade was just offset from her spine, the tip resting at the space between two of her ribs. She could run, but then he'd bury the knife in her back with the expertise of a surgeon, probably hitting enough vital organs on the way through to at least delay regeneration if not stopping it entirely. So she danced.
After a few notes, she recognized the song.
"Frankie Valli?"
The Master nodded, reserving his voice for humming along to the music.
He was, and she would never admit it out loud, oddly good with music in this body. They'd never been bad at it, the Master. And Missy had been better, picking piano back up after lifetimes without practice, leaving the Doctor with a strange cocktail of grief and betrayal and nostalgia every time she heard Beethoven or Bach these days. But the former prime minister was no slouch. He could dance reasonably well when he tried and, as the Doctor assumed she'd be reminded soon, he could sing.
As the music swelled, the Master spun the Doctor out and pulled her back against him, turned around so that he was once again pressed against her back. The hand of his that she’d been holding was draped against her stomach, holding her close to him. His fingers dug into her side. In his other hand, the knife traced along her collarbone. The Master sang against her ear.
" Oh pretty baby, now that I've found you, stay, and let me love you, baby... "
He'd never been one for subtlety.
He kept singing, and the Doctor could feel his voice reverberating through his body, against hers. He was singing low and breathy, almost absent-minded. The tip of the dagger trailed up along her trachea. She fought the urge to roll her eyes, though she doubted he’d be able to see if she had.
When he reached the point where throat gave way to jaw, he tilted the blade. Using the flat of the dagger, he tipped the Doctor's head back so that she was leaning her head on his shoulder, staring directly at the ceiling.
"I do wish you'd get on with it," it was difficult to talk with the knife holding her jaw in place, but she managed. Very few things in this universe could get the Doctor to shut up, and the Master was certainly not one of them.
"Hm?" there was a delay to his response, as if he'd forgotten she was there.
"If you're going to kill me, I mean. Get on with it. You're boring me to death,” she thought for a moment. Swallowed. Felt the edge of the blade brush against her throat with the movement. “Or not to death, I suppose, which is the problem."
"Careful..." he muttered against her ear, and damned if the hair on her neck didn't raise. She ignored the feeling.
"I'm serious! I can handle tortured. I can handle dead. But bored?! You know I can't stand bored. Either do something interesting or get it over with."
Hell of a gambit. But it worked.
As was often the case for the Doctor, maybe it worked too well.
***
When she'd run into the man with the velvet suit, it had been entirely by accident.
His tardis had materialized about ten feet in front of her, the chameleon circuit disabled so that it was just a silver column in the middle of the woods.
She lost a moment to the shock of seeing any tardis other than hers, half expecting another face that she didn't remember claiming to be her to step through the door. Instead, it had been a face she remembered far, far too well and had never expected to see again.
The Master, the one in velvet, stumbled out, clutching his ribs. When he met her eyes he faltered only long enough for her to realize that he didn't mean to be there, either. Then the look of confusion gave way to another wave of pain.
It was short, silent, work getting him back to her tardis. While they were walking, or more while she was dragging him along, she wondered if he would say a single word to her at all. Maybe he thought it best to stay silent. She was all right with that. The point got across just fine. He was injured, but it was an injury that could heal with some help. This stolen body wouldn’t regenerate. The Doctor had been called on to play nurse.
If she’d been hoping for his silence, however, that hope vanished once he’d collapsed onto the floor of her console room. She'd dug out the first aid kit and injected him with industrial strength pain killers, and he started to speak.
"Do--" he sucked in air, eyes widening, and she figured talking hurt even through the meds, "Do forgive me, dear, "
Just dear. Not dear Doctor. Were the extra syllables too much strain?
"Forgive you for getting stabbed? It's not exactly a surprise." Miracle it didn’t happen more often, really.
"For intruding. I wasn't expecting--"
"This face, right,” She muttered more than spoke. Most of her attention was directed towards digging through the first aid kit she’d pulled from the floorboards. “Yes, I've regenerated. Lots of times since you last saw me. Don't get used to it, we're out of sync right now. I'll be a cricketer again next time we meet.”
She peeled the blood soaked black velvet away from the wound and the Master hissed at the sting. She almost regretted removing his coat. The still spreading blood stain looked far worse on his white undershirt.
"Patchwork coat," the Master said on the exhale, and the Doctor had to take a moment to remember what they had been talking about.
The Doctor winced, "Ah, then I’m sorry to disappoint."
The Master let out a soft laugh that quickly became a wince, “No need. I’ve found I’m rather fond of this new face of yours.”
“I seem to remember that being an uncommon opinion,” She wondered, vaguely, if she could get away with being as brash in this body as she had in that one. Or in her last body, for that matter. It wasn’t as though anyone loved her more conceited or prickly phases, but at least as a man (sort of man, man shaped alien, man looking thing) she could blather more or less uninterrupted and get through the day in a sour mood without everyone and their mother telling her to smile a bit more.
“Perhaps. But you were so… passive before. The cricketer, as you said. I much prefer the Doctor with more bite. It’s no fun, otherwise.”
Oh, he was delirious.
“Were you hoping to find him? This is going to hurt, by the way.”
“I appreciate the-- OW!”
“Well, I told you!” She had started cleaning the wound. Thank god for Rory's meticulously organized first aid kits and his habit of setting them around like little land mines. “Keep talking, it’ll distract you.”
“I suppose I was expecting him, yes,” He wasn’t quite as immaculately put together as he had been at UNIT, but the sheen of sweat and the failed effort at holding back pain seemed out of place on this man’s face. It felt wrong to see this version of the Master so vulnerable.
The Doctor chewed on that. The Master’s tardis must have found her. If he was expecting her sixth face, then he must have been looking for the Doctor, specifically, on purpose, not just any old fool who could work a needle and thread. “You were coming to me for help?”
“Nowhere else to go.”
Would she have helped the Master back then? Probably. Certainly. Or maybe the Master’s tardis knew this version of her would have a soft spot left over for this version of him, after his misdeeds had gathered dust in her memory rather than being fresh wounds.
“Bit sad,” she said, instead of anything comforting or useful.
The Master fell silent. Despite her advice, he wouldn’t speak again until well after the Doctor finished his stitches. She could guess why. She had done her best to numb the area, but she was still only working with the first aid kits Rory had made out of stolen goods. The stitches hurt. The Master was trying not to cry out. That, or his feelings had been hurt by her assessment. That wouldn’t make any sense, though, it wasn’t as if the Master didn’t already know his situation was sort of pathetic.
She worked with the strange sort of disconnect from herself granted by only the most bizarre situations. She kept expecting, every time she pulled the needle through his skin, to feel the alien buzz of someone else’s regeneration energy at work. Every time, she reminded herself that this stolen body wouldn’t regenerate even if the wound was deep enough. Gosh, would the disinfectant and the stitches even do anything? What did the Doctor know about Trakenite first aid? Stop the bleeding, stop infection, resolve once again to go to medical school for real this time. What else could she do?
She found she wasn’t much for conversation either. When he was as patched up as he was going to get, the Doctor sat beside the Master in silence. Probably best, she told herself, to keep an eye on him for a little while.
When the Doctor leaned back on her haunches, the Master spoke. "Is not the traditional place for a recovering Time Lord to rest a zero room?"
"Don't have one."
"Of course you have a zero room, they're standard issue."
" ‘Got rid of it."
The Master tried to prop himself up to look at her, but he didn’t seem to have the strength. She was not spared his incredulous look from the floor, though. "You what?"
"You were there!"
"That was ages ago even for me! Simply tell your tardis to make a new one."
The Doctor looked towards her control panel, as if the Master’s comment might have offended the tardis, "I don't really tell her to do much of anything. She does what she wants."
"I see. The med bay, then?"
The Doctor sighed, "Do you have a problem with my console room?"
"Well, it's not exactly hygienic.”
“I’ll sterilize again.”
“No!” The Master squeaked, and the Doctor did her best to hide her laugh, “No, no that won’t be necessary. I’ll risk the infection, I think.”
Rory’s organizational system had been well and truly ruined by the Doctor digging through the first aid kit, but she did her best to put everything back where she found it. The only other bit of mess to deal with was…
“Your coat.”
“Yes?”
“Well, it’s sort of…” She held up the garment where the Master could see it and stuck her hand through the gaping hole torn in the fabric. She wiggled her fingers for emphasis.
“Ah, yes,” the Master closed his eyes, turned away from her, “I suppose I’ll have to get that mended.”
“I’ll fix it,” the Doctor said before she could stop herself.
“Oh, no, I’ve already asked so much from you today. I can’t ask that.”
The Doctor thought about pointing out that imposing on her hospitality was pretty close to the bottom of the lists of things she could possibly be upset with him about, but decided against it. Instead, she said, “It’s nothing. It’s the same stitch, actually. Sometimes.”
“... Is it?”
It had been Martha, head full of medical textbooks, studying for exams on the console room floor, quickly developing a knack for combat medicine, who had taught the Doctor the bulk of her first aid knowledge. Rory, steady, dependable Rory, the nurse and the model’s husband, had been the one to teach her that the same stitch used to invisibly mend tears in clothing could close up wounds in flesh with minimal scaring. The seamstress called it a ladder stitch, the surgeon called it a running suture.
(Harry might have taught the Doctor a thing or two, but if he had then she’d forgotten by the time Martha had started giving her lessons. She doubted he had, and thought that was for the best. When they had known each other, The Doctor would have taken instruction from Harry Sullivan about as well as one takes a hug from a porcupine.)
While she stitched (she did a far better job on the coat than on him) the Master dozed. For all he'd complained about the floor, he was sound asleep rather quickly. She supposed that blood loss and a double dose of alien painkillers would have that effect. He was breathing just fine and mumbling in his sleep every once in a while, so she figured it was okay to let him rest.
Besides, he looked almost sweet.
The Doctor thought, briefly, about sticking around until he woke up. Sticking around, even, until he fully healed. Maybe it was nostalgia. Maybe it was the possibility of a visit with her old friend without any pretense between them. It wasn't as though he could even pretend to have some scheme for her to thwart. He'd have to admit to actually enjoying her presence. Stew in the fact that he'd come to her for help. Maybe, just maybe, he did look sort of cute, in a pathetic kind of way, and her overactive protective instinct was kicking in. That was usually the source of her problems, anyway.
She shook the thought from her head. It was hard to imagine a worse idea than playing house with the Master.
Besides, if he knew her as the man in the patchwork coat, then the Master was playing with their timelines enough around now. He'd already met the Valeyard, or would meet him very soon, already made the Doctor brutally aware of his own future. She didn't need to give him anything else to work with.
Oh, there’s a thought she hadn’t had to tamp down in a while. Wasn’t she overdue on becoming the Valeyard by now? Was that particular branch of her timeline even still possible? Or had the temporal fallout of the time war washed that future away? She locked those questions in the same box in her brain where she locked thoughts about her childhood friend being sort of cute while he slept, where she locked thoughts about the way Yaz smiled at her when she did something especially clever, or thoughts about the way human flesh smelled when it burned and the way that, when promises break, they sound an awful lot like the sound of a twenty six year old’s skull slamming against a spaceship floor.
It was a very big box with an awful lot of locks and the Doctor had every intention of keeping it that way.
The Doctor tiptoed around the console room, careful not to wake her patient. A few buttons on the console would get her where she needed to be. Hone in on the nearest tardis and materialize next to it. She worried the sound of the tardis starting up would wake the Master, but he slept through it just fine.
Erasing memories should be delicate work, but the Doctor was, unfortunately, fairly well practiced at it by now. She drew the image of herself from the Master's mind with a finger to his temple. He'd know someone had helped him. He might know that someone was the Doctor, and he might fill in the blanks with a face he knew. He'd definitely know he'd been injured, or else he'd be in for a nasty shock as soon as he sat up. But he wouldn't know this Doctor's face until he was ready to.
She laid his mended coat over him like a makeshift blanket and he curled into it. She told herself again that he couldn't stay.
When the Doctor's tardis dematerialized, she left the Master behind, bloodied but bandaged on the forest floor.
***
She was in his damn zero room.
She had hoped to be left alone, given enough time to think through an escape. Shouldn’t be long for her. But he had to go and throw her in the zero room! His zero room which he’d locked from the outside and which operated as a pocket universe within a pocket universe. Boring wasn’t the half of it. She couldn’t have less to work with if she tried.
She paced the floor twice, ran her hand through her hair once, and then plopped to the ground.
Step one. Materials.
She emptied her pockets. Some crumpled bills and coins of various planetary origin. A paper clip. A small stuffed cat on a keyring that Yaz had given her. The cat meowed when you pressed its paw. Her tardis key. A glasses repair kit that she’d found while cleaning out a drawer and she’d forgotten about until this very instant. Did she even know anyone who wore glasses? A mostly empty and long forgotten bag of jelly babies.
Okay.
Earrings. She took her earrings out, added them to the pile. Metal could be useful.
She had shoelaces. She decided to keep her boots on for now, but made a mental note of the many wonderful possibilities of string that were technically at her disposal.
What wasn’t at her disposal was her sonic.
She thought to herself, What would Harry Houdini do?
The time she'd stitched up the Master on her console room floor popped into her head again, but she pushed down the thought. Now was not the time for sympathy or guilt or whatever emotion floated in the wake of that particular memory.
Harry Houdini, she thought, would strip mostly nude and add an extra pair of handcuffs to the whole shebang. That wasn't much help to her, but at least she could admire his moxie.
‘ Is not the traditional place for a recovering Time Lord…’
“Shut up!” she shouted at the memory of the Master inside her head. The way the sound echoed back at her in the more than empty room made her shiver. She hadn't been lying to the Master earlier. Tortured or dead was certainly preferable to bored in her books. Alone with her thoughts was perhaps the Doctor’s least favorite place to be.
Something itched at her brain, though. Why was that thought, of all her memories of the Master, trying so hard to be remembered? What had he been saying? He'd asked why he wasn't in her zero room.
The Doctor slammed the heel of her hand against her forehead and got up to pace again. Of course that was why she'd been stuck on that memory.
He'd asked about her zero room.
The Master, especially back then, never did anything without a plan. A stupid, doomed, massively convoluted plan, perhaps, but a plan nonetheless. She could have trapped him in a zero room just as easily as he had trapped her. And he was paranoid, obsessed with having the upper hand. He wouldn't have suggested a zero room without being absolutely certain he could escape on his own volition.
Or he'd spoken without thinking. Or he was delirious. Or he trusted her.
No. The Master must have had a plan, and if the Master could figure it out then so could the Doctor.
If the key to get out was a tool, it had to have been something on his person. The Master didn't carry a sonic, so there was a way to escape without hers. She doubted the TCE would be of any use to him, so that was out too. As far as she knew, he didn't carry around snacks. Jelly babies were unfortunately not the answer. This time.
What else did the Master carry? A knife, usually. If that was his plan then she was right out of luck. But she didn't figure it was.
Think of the puzzle. Think of Houdini’s water tank. That wasn’t so far off, just add another layer and a tad more breathable air. In a broad sense, a zero room was sort of like an insulated water bottle. There were the interior boundaries of the room itself. That's what she was pacing on, what she could press her palm against. The floor and walls and ceiling just as in any other room. There were the exterior boundaries. For her, that was the Master's tardis. The tardis’ own pocket dimension added extra insulation, so to speak, and a zero room in a tardis was always best. But a zero cabinet, like the one she'd used after regenerating into her fifth face, could still do a passable job without a tardis to hide inside of.
Just as in a water bottle, what really mattered was the space between those two boundaries.
The way a water bottle was insulated with a vacuum, so too was a zero room. Between the Doctor and the rest of the Master's tardis was a pocket of absolutely nothing. Less than nothing. A vacuum of time as well as matter. Razor thin because anything bigger wouldn’t bear the weight of its own nonexistence, but even a few atoms worth of purely dead, empty, unchanging, timeless space was more than enough to cut her off from the rest of reality. The Master wouldn't have been stupid enough to pry his way out with a knife, because doing so would have made the room implode in on him as soon as he broke the seal. And that was assuming there was a knife in the universe made of a metal strong enough to put a dent in a zero room, anyway. If there was, the Master certainly owned it, but if he’d owned it, then the Doctor would have heard about it.
The Master didn't yet make a habit of wearing earrings, though the Doctor privately thought he maybe should have. So the earrings weren't it. He might, honestly, carry around a small stuffed toy, but the Doctor couldn't really think of how that would help either of them in this situation.
That left just her shoelaces or…
Her tardis key.
The Master would have had his own tardis key on him.
A tardis key was still part of a tardis.
Okay, so she might have to pry open the door. She could cross that bridge when she came to it. Her first puzzle was going to be adding another layer to her rapidly growing matryoshka doll of pocket universes. Hell of a lot easier to survive in a water tank if you had a scuba suit on. Or was she in a water bottle?
Her key, like any other tardis key, like any other piece of a tardis, operated on a slightly different wavelength of reality than just about anything else. Add a little bit of electricity… Sorry, kitty-- double sorry, actually, because the glasses kit doesn’t have any scissors in it, just some tiny little screwdrivers, so the process of removing the cat's little battery powered voicebox was going to take more ripping and biting that the Doctor would have ultimately preferred. In any case, add a little bit of electricity, coiled around the key, a sort of spacetime electromagnet, and expand the radius of the key’s own disconnect from reality, and now you’ve got yourself a protective bubble. A protective bubble, in fact, that was already on the same wavelength as the Master’s tardis, so when the zero room collapsed, his Tardis would hopefully, maybe, probably pull her out before the implosion turned her into a scattershot of individual atoms.
Right. The zero room would certainly have to collapse. The water tank never actually had to be axed, but the Doctor could admit that even she wasn’t Houdini. She didn’t have a knife, but that probably wasn’t the Master’s plan anyway. She’d just have to pick the lock and the zero room would either clip out of existence in retaliation or (far less likely) open like any other door.
Either way, she wouldn't be bored anymore.
***
This face had only seen Missy once.
After O, she'd slammed down the dematerialization lever before she knew what she was doing. Some stupid impulse that made it to her limbs before her brain. At least she'd waited until she was alone in the tardis.
As she stomped from the control center to the door, she still wasn't sure what she was doing there. Did she want to yell? Fight? Demand an apology?
She got her answer when she threw the door open.
She spent all of a second face to face with Missy, who had stood up from her piano bench maybe a moment before, still only half turned towards the tardis.
Missy said, "Oh! You're not the one with the eyebrows."
The Doctor opened her mouth but said nothing. She fell to her knees. She burst into tears.
Loud, snotty, ugly tears. She couldn't remember the last time she'd cried like this, certainly never in this body. Some part of her was aware that Nardole was probably nearby enough to hear through the vault, that her past self might be as well. Bill...
The voice of reason, quiet as it was, wouldn't do her any good. She couldn't stop if she wanted to.
"Doctor?"
The Doctor looked up at Missy, palms braced on the floor. She might have screamed, might have even screamed something at Missy, but her body was acting on autopilot.
"Doctor, what did I do?"
She sounded sorry.
The Doctor was sure she'd screamed this time.
Missy had sounded sorry, which meant the Doctor hadn't imagined it, hadn't imagined the ways Missy had changed in the vault. She may have been acting-- must have been acting. The Master lies, always, and the Doctor falls for it, almost always, and they kept playing their games. But the Doctor hadn't imagined Missy's guilt.
A sob tore through Doctor's body hard enough to send her into a coughing fit. Missy didn't move to help. She didn't move at all. She stood still and eyed the Doctor as if she were a rabid dog. Equal parts pitiful and dangerous.
"Whatever you're mad at me for," Missy said, "I haven't done yet."
"You’ve done enough," the Doctor hissed between gasps for air.
"Right," Missy smoothed her dress, "Exactly. Pick something I have done and yell at me for that, if you need. There’s plenty to choose from. There might even be something I haven’t confessed to yet, if you’d like a new reason to be angry with me. And you can get it out of your system. Do you remember old Sigmund?"
"Freud?"
"That's the one,"
"Crackpot."
"Well, yes," Missy said, "but he was bang on the money with some things. Displacement, that's one of them."
The Doctor hiccupped. Of all the things to say...
She tried to stand, stumbled back down to her knees. Crying took more energy than she remembered.
Missy stepped forward and held out her hand. Still at a distance, still able and ready to dash away if the Doctor lunged, but close enough now to offer help.
The Doctor, for some reason, took her hand and pulled herself to her feet.
"I shouldn't be here..." the Doctor said, almost numb. The aftermath of a good sob was washing over her. The Doctor who crossed her own timeline and cried on the floor and yelled at her friend had left the building, replaced by the Doctor who was vaguely aware that doing any of that stuff was tremendously stupid, but only had the presence of mind to be slightly dazed about the whole matter. The anger and grief and fear and pain that had brought her to this time and place had been washed out with the tears. She was beginning to feel an unnatural calm and a bone deep fatigue in their place. Her body saying sleep it off, don’t worry about it, you'll feel better in the morning.
"You're telling me. If you find out I've had guests, I won't hear the end of it!" Missy had that wry way of joking that the Doctor couldn’t possibly admit she'd missed.
The Doctor couldn't bring herself to say anything else. Partially because she was still catching her breath-- had she been hyperventilating? But mostly because she wasn't sure what she would say. Maybe Missy was right, maybe she had wanted a fight. But what good would that do? It wasn't Missy she was angry with.
So she turned around, opened the tardis door.
"Wait," Missy said. It was strange to hear her so off kilter.
The Doctor didn't look back, but she did stop in the doorway, one foot in the tardis, one foot out.
"Shouldn't you... I shouldn't have met you, you know that."
The Doctor snorted a dry, bitter laugh. Missy wouldn't let anyone near her head and she knew it, her offer was entirely empty. More than that, the Doctor knew where she was. She could remember setting the coordinates as if she'd watched someone else do it. Tomorrow, Missy would be starting her probationary period play-acting as the Doctor. They'd get stuck on the colony ship almost immediately. Anyway, the Doctor hadn't actually said why she was there. There wasn't anything Missy could do with this visit. Nothing except,
"Live with it." The Doctor's voice was as dry as her laugh had been, "Remember everything you've done. Remember every single time I've forgiven you. Try and guess what you did this time. Goodbye, Missy."
***
The key worked.
By the way the Doctor was launched down the tardis hallway when she was pulled back into reality, she figured the Master's tardis was none too happy about her little trick.
“I'm sorry,” she whispered to the walls as she struggled to her feet, “I had to get out somehow.”
A tardis was difficult to navigate at the best of times. An angry tardis, which this one most certainly was, would be actively working against her. Lovely.
Step one. Find the sonic.
It would be in her coat, wherever that was. She didn't really need the sonic to escape, strictly speaking, but she did feel sort of naked without it. Besides, finding her stuff seemed far easier than step two, which was currently, ‘figure out how to get out of here’ or step three, ‘do whatever you thought of on step two and blow this popsicle stand.’
It was a work in progress, for sure.
The Doctor picked a direction and started to walk.
Unsurprisingly, most hallways she turned down were dead ends and most doors she opened were empty rooms, probably generated moments before just to screw with her. The first interesting room she came across (after her third completely barren kitchen) just so happened to be the Master's bedroom.
It didn't look so different from the rooms he'd kept in the past, if just slightly messier. His work desk was still in the exact same place in the room as it had been back in the seventies, when she'd watched him fix his TCE.
Of course it wouldn't be the same desk. This was an entirely different tardis. But it could have fooled her.
She stepped into the room, let the door close softly behind her. His bed was even made. For some reason, she couldn't picture this face of the Master’s making his bed every morning the way he always had back then. Old habits must really die hard.
The real surprise was leaning against the foot of the bed.
“Why on earth,” the Doctor muttered to herself, stepping slowly forward, “do you have a cricket bat in your bedroom?”
She picked up the bat. Twirled it. Swung it a time or two for good measure. Definitely a cricket bat. Definitely not the strangest thing she'd found in the Master's possession. Definitely not the least strange, either. She decided to take it with her, at least for now.
She half expected to find a replica of her old scarf hanging in the Master's closet, or maybe a recorder shoved in a drawer somewhere. She didn't. But she also didn't look hard enough to completely deny the possibility that the Master had some sort of Doctor memorabilia collection she didn't want to know about.
She thought she might send her Master a bow tie this Christmas just to see what he did.
Her jacket wasn't here. On to the next room.
After another ten minutes or so of dead ends, the Doctor found the drawing room she'd first woken up in.
The Master had long since left. The tea, still sitting out on the table, was ice cold. Her coat, jackpot ! , was laying crumpled on the floor about a foot away from a perfectly empty hat rack. Now that was just rude.
She pulled her coat back on. The absolute idiot had left her sonic in her pocket, so she had that, too. Step one complete. What was step two again?
Right. Figure out a way out of here. She’d sort of hoped a plan would spontaneously develop without her having to put any work in.
The Doctor rested her new cricket bat across her shoulders. She didn't think she missed cricket, really, but there was a pleasant sort of weight to the bat that she could get used to again. It was nice to carry around, like a little kid who'd found a big stick out in the woods.
The door on the other side of the drawing room spit the Doctor out into a short hallway. It was a straight shot into the Master's console room.
And a straight shot to the Master.
He had his back to her, fiddling with the controls and humming that same Frankie Valli song from before. If he'd heard her approach, he'd given no indication of it. How far away was he? Five meters? Maybe six? She could sprint that, easy, before he had time to react. But then what?
She looked over at the cricket bat still resting across her shoulder.
No, that wasn't like her at all. Then again, neither were a lot of things that she'd done. What's one more stupid mistake?
She pulled up the bat to swing and started running. The Master had heard her coming. When she swung the cricket bat at him he ducked just in time to make her wildly overshoot and throw herself off balance.
He lunged.
She heard her head crack against the floor before she felt it. The Master was on top of her and the room was spinning and something was making the strangest skidding sound across the floor.
She twisted her head back just in time to see the cricket bat slide to a halt against the wall, far out of reach for both of them.
“That's alright,” she muttered, “Bit Shaun of the Dead for me, anyway.”
The Master's hands closed around her throat, forcing her attention back to him.
“What?” he said, following her attention to the cricket bat, “Wait, actually, I’ve changed my mind. I don't care. I see you've gotten out of the zero room. How did you do it? Don't answer that, by the way. You're suffocating.”
She wasn't suffocating, not yet. But she also wasn't going to waste any of the small trickle of oxygen that her respiratory bypass got through on answering his inane questions.
“Was it the old tardis key trick? Tell me it was. Except don't. The suffocating, and all. The tardis key trick would explain the turbulence a little while ago. Lucky guess, there, love. Glad you didn't get blown to smithereens. It would be such a shame if I wasn’t there to watch. And then you, what, went into my room? Dug through my stuff? That's a bit creepy, but I can't say I'm not flattered.”
The Doctor spit, hard as she could. She had damn good aim. The glob of spit landed smack on the bridge of the Master's nose. He went cross eyed for a moment trying to look at it.
His expression darkened.
“First of all, that's disgusting. I just want you to know that.”
The Doctor stuck her tongue out at him. Stupid. Childish. Oddly satisfying.
“Second of all,” the Master shook his head quickly, sending little droplets of spit flying, “Have all the fun you want while you can. Your respiratory bypass is only going to hold out so long, and I have all the time in the world.”
To punctuate this, he lifted her up just barely and slammed her back into the console floor. She saw stars. When her vision faded back in a moment later, the colors weren't fully saturated.
He was right. She couldn't hold off suffocating forever. Especially not with the Master's full body weight on her throat.
Except he really was putting all of his weight on her throat. No other part of him was touching her. She could just barely wedge her knees up to her stomach, prying into the space between herself and the Master, and catapult the Master off of her.
He tried to catch her again as she scrambled to her feet, but she was ready this time. Instead of wrapping his arm around her throat, he caught her jaw. For the second time today, the Doctor bit down hard. This time she tasted blood. He dropped her like a hot pan. She twisted around just enough to pop up behind him and grab a fist full of his short hair. Not exactly the best length for this, but good enough.
His eyes widened almost comically large. He seemed to realize what she was doing a moment before she did it.
“No, wait--!”
She slammed his head against the center console. Before she could think to stop herself, she slammed again. The Master crumpled.
When the Doctor stepped back, shaking, catching her breath, what she felt was guilt. She pushed the feeling down.
She turned her attention to the tardis console.
“Let’s see, babygirl,” the Doctor whispered to the tardis, and brushed a finger over the metal paneling. A burst of electricity shocked her away.
“Okay!” the Doctor shook the pain out of her hand, “Okay, I get it! You don't know me like that. Is it because I hurt your friend? Because, if it makes you feel any better, he's my friend, too,” she nudged the Master with the toe of her boot, “Mostly. Sort of. Definitely. Definitely my friend, too.”
Cradling her shocked hand against her chest, she investigated the control panel. How did the Master even have his controls set up?
“Or is it the zero room?” the Doctor asked the walls around her, “Because I am sorry for that. I really didn't want to hurt you. I don't think I had any other choice. I get it if you don't like me. It's a wonder anyone does like me, really. But if you let me get back to my own tardis, I'll be out of your hair. Or wires. Wouldn't that be nice?”
She tried to touch the control panel again. This time there was no shock.
The Doctor couldn't bring herself to erase the Master's memories this time, despite all the trouble he could cause her. Had caused her. Lately the idea left a more and more bitter taste in her mouth.
She thought about setting his tardis to take him to the colony ship after it dropped her off. That would keep him out of her hair. It would also make her responsible for the things that happened on that ship twice over. She couldn't stomach that either. He'd make it to the colony ship eventually, without her help.
In the end, after she'd set the tardis to take her home, she sent the Master's tardis on autopilot to a quiet, peaceful part of space with no one around for him to bother. What he did after he woke up was his business.