who: Twelfth Doctor, The Master, Metacrisis Doctor what: The Twelfth Doctor just wants the Metacrisis Doctor and the Master get along. where: The TARDIS (Twelfth Doctor's) when: Today-ish warnings: Time Lords arguing, Metacrisis Doctor's health problems.
Sometimes the Doctor came up with plans that were good, and plans that might make you wonder, What the hell is he thinking of?? This plan rated somewhere closer to the what the hell end of the spectrum; the Doctor had to admit that, himself. Reading the biting exchanges between the Meta-Crisis Doctor and the Master, he decided that there ought to be something done to help reconcile the two. An intervention! Unfortunately, the Doctor didn’t really understand what an intervention was supposed to be like, so his version was to toss the two factions into a locked room and wait as they sorted things out. And hope they didn’t kill one another.
The Zero Room in his TARDIS seemed like the best spot. Once the doors were shut, everything inside was disconnected from the rest of the universe, and had a naturally peaceful atmosphere, which the Doctor hope would help during the mediation. Of course, he couldn’t tell them his plan, or else they’d never agree to come. Instead, he told Handy to come to his TARDIS because he thought he might have a solution to his heart problem. And for the Master, he was told something different.
“TARDIS readings say that you’re having some sort of relapse, are you sure you’re feeling alright?” The Doctor gave the Master a suspicious once over as they walked. “In any case, I want to give you a check up in the Zero Room, better to be safe than sorry.”
The Doctor opened the door to let the Master enter first, but instead of joining, he quickly shut the door behind him, trapping him inside with the already waiting Handy.
The moment he stepped inside and saw Handy, the Master knew something was up. He quickly whirled around, only to have the door slam down and lock. “Doctor!” he yelled, banging angrily with his fist. “Open the door! What the hell do you think you’re playing at?”
“Oi!” the Metacrisis Doctor shouted at the same time. “Get back here, you git!” That last bit was all Donna. Oh well. It suited the situation. “Doctor!”
When no response came, the middle of the three currently present Doctors glared at the walls of the Zero Room, then the ceiling. “You open that door right now,” he demanded of the TARDIS. The only response he received was a gentle but firm shake that shuddered throughout the room. His ship, or his ship’s future self at least, had just told him no.
The Doctor frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. He’d dressed in his blue slacks, a blue button-down shirt, and his well-worn burgundy chucks--with help, he was unhappy to admit. These days, he was terribly tired. But he stayed standing now, instead of sitting on the couch the TARDIS had so helpfully provided. He didn’t trust the Master that far. The Doctor resolved to stay on his feet until he fainted if he had to.
“OPEN UP!” he roared, slamming his fist against the door again. The Master looked around, frowning as he noticed the interior door controls were still disabled. He turned around and glared at Handy, hands balled into fists at his sides. “I don’t know what he thinks this is going to accomplish, but he can’t keep us both locked in here forever. So… still kicking at the moment? I thought you’d died when you went silent on the network.”
“You’re both staying in there until you work out your differences!” the Doctor shouted from outside. He pulled up a folding chair and set it up near the door, and after he sat down, he pulled a bag of crisps from out of his pocket and opened them. “It’s for your own good, the both of you! You’ll thank me for it later!” Munch munch munch, he began snacking on the crisps.
“No we won’t!” the Metacrisis Doctor shouted back. He never took his eyes off of the Master as he did. “You have terrible ideas. Completely bonkers. Age has scrambled your brains!” This was not what he’d signed up for. Frankly, he’d be hesitant to follow his counterpart, not sure what sort of wild solution he’d propose this time to the heart problem. The med center, boring as it was, at least had the benefit of being safe from Time Lord insanity … and wasn’t that a Donna thought.
“You’d know if I were dead,” he told the Master, frowning. It was more of a pout, really.
The Master folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the wall, still glaring at the other occupant of the room. The three piece suit he was wearing was a far cry from the black jeans, work boots, and hoodie he’d been wearing the last time Handy had seen him. Not to mention the blonde highlights had disappeared from his hair. “This is one of the worst ideas you’ve had since I met you,” he shouted over his shoulder at the Time Lord on the other side of the wall. “If he dies in here, it’s your fault… not mine!”
Looking up at the ceiling for a moment, he sighed in frustration before looking back at Handy again. “Probably. I’m sure blondie or one of the others would broadcast it on the network.”
“You’d know. Whether they said anything about it or not.” The Doctor looked hard at the Master. He did seem better. The “zappy” problem, as his twelfth self had put it, appeared to be under control. The Master looked well. Still damaged, of course, but physically hale and hearty. Unlike the Metacrisis Doctor, who couldn’t banish the shadows around his eyes no matter how much sleep he managed. And wasn’t that a frustrating requirement of being part human? He knew that they needed their rest, but he was finding himself more tied to it than the average. It was maddening, almost as bad as being locked up.
“Oh really? And what makes you say that?” he challenged. The Master took a good, long look at Handy and frowned slightly. In every way he looked like the Doctor, with the exception of the dark rings around his eyes and sickly complexion. “You look like hell.”
The Doctor shrugged. “Still part Time Lord.” They knew when the other was around. The Master ought to be able to sense him the way they could sense other Time Lords, albeit maybe not as clearly. He sighed and finally gave in to his fatigue by perching on the arm of the very blue couch. “Even a full Time Lord looks terrible when he’s dying. There’s no particular reason a Time Lord-human metacrisis should look any better.”
“You might as well sit down before you fall over. Grandad’s going to keep us locked in here for a while before he gives up.” The Master remained where he was, still leaning against the wall. “You feel weird,” he muttered under his breath. “Not sick to my stomach Jack weird, but still weird.”
“I’m fine right here, thank you.” The glare was becoming redundant, but the Doctor still used it. He didn’t want to be coddled, not even the Master’s sarcastic interpretation of the concept. “And I know perfectly well that I’m off. Not much I can do about it. You didn’t feel particularly ordinary when you arrived.”
“But unlike you, I actually got better!” he snapped back in response. The Master began pacing back and forth, feeling more than a little irritated with both Handy and the Doctor. When the room’s other occupant continued glaring, he rolled his eyes and walked over to sit down on the couch. “Fine. If you’re not going to sit, then I will. Maybe take a nap and see how long he’s willing to sit out there.”
“With that face? Forever.” The Doctor’s glare became a pout. “That face is a face that Donna liked. You’re not going to change his mind, and I’m not either. Not unless I have another heart attack. Or maybe a stroke. Aim for a little variety.”
“Donna… She’s the one who didn’t change. The one he said he left some kind of special protection for. What’s so special about this Donna anyways?” He crossed his arms over his chest as he relaxed on the couch.
The Doctor couldn’t help the hint of a smile. “Everything.” Donna was brilliant, and funny, and brave. She was entirely ordinary, and extraordinary at the same time. She’d set him straight in a way that few could, especially after he’d lost Rose. “She’s also the other half of this metacrisis, so I’m not surprised you couldn’t hurt her. Hardly leave her helpless, now would I?”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt her. Give me a little credit,” he grumbled. “Oh wait, that’s right… you didn’t get to steal those memories from the real Doctor because he’d already ditched you before all of that happened! So you have no idea what even happened back before I got dragged back to Gallifrey!” The Master thumped the back of his head against the couch as he stared up at the ceiling. “It would’ve gotten boring anyways… an entire planet populated by nothing but billions of versions of myself. Probably for the best that he reset the gate.”
“You’re not helping, you know.” The Doctor caught his lip in his teeth for a moment, a bad habit that had come with his tenth regeneration and stayed for the metacrisis. “I don’t see what you’re trying to prove. What you gain from taking over a planet or doing something better than I can. You’ve always been smarter than me. Brilliant, gifted, from a good house. You could have been anything. And now you have the chance to be, but you keep looking for ways to lash out, don’t you?” He shook his head. “I know enough about what you did. And I know that it wasn’t entirely you. But I don’t know that you’ll ever change.”
“No, I couldn’t have! You don’t get it at all, do you? Rassilon set me on this path when I was eight years old! No matter what I might or might not have wanted to be, it doesn’t matter! I was nothing but a screwed up pawn for him to use later on. I was disposable. And with every regeneration, the drumming got louder and louder. Even when I used the chameleon arch to hide when I fled the Time War, the drums were still there.” The Master rubbed a hand over his face and shook his head in frustration. “Maybe I don’t want to change. Maybe I can’t change. I already told the Doctor to just finish me off, but he won’t… too much of a coward to ever do it. And maybe none of this matters anyways because at some point we’re all going back to where and when we were snatched from!”
The Master leaned forward and fixed his gaze on Handy. “You want to know why I do some of the things that I’ve done? Then ask him,” he said, pointing towards the locked door. “He knows. He was there that night when I let him hear the drumming in my head. He’s the one who came in here time and time again to aggravate me by wanting to talk while the Zero room fixed my body. You keep saying that you’re the Doctor. If that’s true, then you should always know exactly what I’m trying to prove.”
“Then be something else now. What does it matter if we won’t stay here? We are here, right now, and we’re not going anywhere, and Rassilon isn’t here. Old and clearly insane out there told me what happened, about the drums. And they’re gone. So why insist on being what Rassilon wanted you to be?!” The Doctor pushed to his feet and began to pace the Zero Room. He’d wanted to save the Master so many times. It never seemed to work. Even without the drums in the equation, the Master was so stubborn about change.
“What do you want me to do? You’ve never let me help, not since we were small. You shut me out first. I can’t open that door again if you won’t let me.”
“Because I don't know how to be anything else!” the Master shouted at him as Handy started pacing. “And I shut you out because you left me behind! I needed my friend and you weren't there! So I did the same… I stole a TARDIS and never looked back. Just another renegade from the Prydonian Chapter!”
“You shut me out before then!” the Doctor shouted right back, pivoting to face the Master. His balance shook for a split second, but he ignored it. “Gallifrey wasn’t any more kind to me than it was to you! You could have come with me instead of tearing off, trying to prove to the universe that you were better than me!”
His heart was racing now, responding to the adrenaline and the stress, and his breath came a little harder. “And you never turned back once, did you? You hurt innocents, you killed them, and you just kept at it, again and again and again, because you refused to let anyone reach you! You forced me to watch you die.” His breath caught, and the Doctor staggered, bracing one hand against the wall. His head swam. He needed to calm down. He wasn’t supposed to be doing this sort of thing.
“Well it looks like you’ll get to find out what that feels like, won’t you?” he remarked, bitterly, leaning his whole body against the side of the Zero Room as he struggled for equilibrium.
“Fine… you're right! As far as I was concerned, they’re all collateral damage and pieces in our big, grand galactic game of screw you! But you're wrong… I did turn back every now and then. I even saved your life a couple of times!”
Before he even had a chance to think about what he was doing, the Master was at his side. He wrapped an arm around Handy’s waist and helped him over to the couch to lie down. And when he paused to collect his thoughts, he realized he’d slipped up and had starting talking to the mistake as if he really was the Doctor.
“Stay put,” he ordered. The Master crossed back over to the door and began pounding on it. “Stop stuffing your face with crisps and get in here.”
“I’m fine,” the Doctor muttered, but he let the Master settle him on the couch, and he stayed there. He didn’t even spare a thought for how easily he’d trusted the other Time Lord just now. The light in the Zero Room hurt his eyes, so he draped an arm over them. An old, soft blanket dropped out of nowhere onto his legs. He patted the floor with his free hand. “Thank you, old girl.” The TARDIS hummed in approval.
“Go on,” he called to the Master. “Tell him I’m really going to do it this time. That ought to get him to unlock the door.”
It was hard to know what was going on inside the Zero Room, since one of the aspects of the room was to cut off any outside electrical currents, much like a faraday cage. It was supposed to help accelerate healing, but it made it impossible to monitor. The Twelfth Doctor sat cross legged on the floor beside the door, and having just finished his crisps, he wiped the crumbs off on his trousers just as he heard the pounding on the door. That noise could either be a good or a bad thing, and he decided he ought to check.
Rising to his feet, he pressed the pad on the side of the door to make it slide open. “Time out’s over!” he announced. “Have you two learned to behave?” His eyes were drawn to Handy, laying down with a blanket over him - he knew it was a risk to bring Handy here, what with his failing health. “You’re not dying on us again, are you?” he asked, sounding less worried than he ought to be.
“One minute we’re arguing and the next he was nearly collapsing against the wall.” The Master gestured towards the couch and frowned. “He said he’s fine, but I know you both lie. So… do something.”
“I’m not dying right now,” the Metacrisis Doctor complained. “Later, oh yes, but I’m still cross with other me, so I’m staying long enough to yell at him. Quietly. Without stress.” He made air quotes around the last word to show his disdain for his current limitations.
“Good,” the Twelfth Doctor said, striding past the Master to check on the other Doctor, unphased by how upset he was. “Spite is a great motivator, keep it going. Rose will never forgive me if I let you die. What do we have here? Shortness of breath? Dizziness? Heart palpitations? You’re really high maintenance, you know that?”
The Master smirked at 12’s comment and perched himself on the armrest of the couch. “Which other you… big ears?” Looking back up at 12, he grinned as he commented, “He really is high maintenance.”
“That other me,” the Metacrisis Doctor said, pointing at his elder self and not caring that he just about put his eye out. “This was his ludicrous idea. I could have been sitting with Rose, but no, you, Doctor, can’t stop meddling.” He scowled but let his other self check him over. He hated this, being so fragile. He’d like to simply get it over with, one way or another.
“Hey! Watch where you’re waving that thing,” Twelve said, gently swatting Handy’s finger away from his face. He started pulling out medical instruments from the Zero Room to help alleviate Handy’s symptoms. “Meddling has been our M.O. since the beginning, you ought to know that. Teach you to listen to me. Now rest. This may hurt a little. Actually, it won’t… but I just told you not to listen to me, so I’m trying reverse psychology.”
“You’re certainly stubborn enough to be the Doctor,” the Master mumbled to himself as the other two bickered with each other. He clapped his hands together and smiled. “Right! Can I leave now Grandad, or are we still both grounded until you say so?”
“You. Shut it,” the Metacrisis Doctor snapped. “I’m not done yelling at you either.”
Twelve snickered at how Handy spoke to the Master; one of the reasons why he was happy was that if Handy could argue, he must be feeling better, at least a little bit. At least that was his reasoning. “I should’ve brought more snacks,” he said, thoughtfully. “Looks like I stepped in too early.” He lifted his arm and snapped his fingers - the door to the Zero Room automatically shut and locked. “There you are, I’m in here with the both of you. Carry on, don’t mind me.”
“When did you get so rude?” he asked Handy, barely resisting the urge to reach out and smack him upside the head. “Or is that because of Donna?” The Master snapped his fingers and pointed at Twelve. “You… Grandad Doctor… answer a question for me. Is he half human and half clone of the old you? Or something else? He feels weird.”
“First time I regenerated with this face. You’d have noticed if you’d stuck around instead of swanning off to terrorize the Earth after that Yana bit. And don’t think I’m not still mad at you for that.” He flailed his hand in the general direction of the Master. “Donna added a bit more kick. That’s all. And I am not a clone.”
“I’m staying out of this,” Twelve said, raising both his hands in to show that he was going to be hands off this conversation. “I’m just the mediator. Although, if you never noticed I was rude before, then you’re really not paying attention, are you? And don’t call me Grandad. I’m not your grandad.”
“You look like our grandad,” the Master replied with a smirk as he gestured back and forth between himself and Handy. “Kidding! And alright, yes… I noticed you were rude. But he’s even ruder than usual! And you…” He reached down and poked the top of Handy’s head. “Stop holding a grudge. That year never officially happened anyways. History rewound itself. The only actual casualty was the American President and I think I did the world a favor by getting rid of him.”
“I remember it. Jack remembers it. Martha and her family and your wife remember it.” The Doctor dropped his arm so he could see the others. “It’s not a game, Koschei. You don’t get to take it back. You can hope to be forgiven for it, but it doesn’t go away.” He shifted uncomfortably amidst the medical paraphernalia the Twelfth Doctor was using. “And he does not look like our grandfather. More like a Roman merchant, actually.”
“See?” Twelve pointed at Handy while looking at the Master, “I look like a Roman merchant from 79 AD. And Handy is right. You can’t expect everybody to overlook what you did, the pain you inflicted, the cruelty, just because history became reversed. If something like that happened to you, I’d say you’d hold an even greater grudge.”
The Master rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not expecting forgiveness… and stop calling me Koschei!” This time he did smack Handy upside the head as he glared at him. “You don’t have the right to call me that!” He looked over to Twelve, expecting the other Time Lord to back him up on the matter. “He’s not you… right?”
The Metacrisis Doctor winced. He didn’t need mild head trauma on top of his building headache. He shut his eyes again, the TARDIS obligingly dimming the lights, and made a deliberate attempt to draw several deep breaths to ward off the migraine. None of them were as deep as he would like. The headache sauntered further into his skull and sprawled out until he felt as though his entire brain had been beaten about with a cricket bat.
Seeing how the smack affected Handy, the Doctor got upset. “Don’t hit him! He’s sick!” and to further drive his point across, he gave the Master a taste of his own medicine by smacking him upside the head in the same way. “And I’ve written what I think over the network, but I’m not getting into that here. The fact is, Handy remembers what happened as if it did, so it still counts. This is the sort of lack of empathy that makes me worry you’re going to turn around and do something horrible.”
“I barely touched him!” he protested, rubbing the back of his head. “And if I actually wanted him dead, I could’ve already done it.” The Master looked over at Handy, then to Twelve. “I want proof.”
“Shh.” The Metacrisis Doctor’s eyes opened a slit to stare at the Master in disapproval. “Headache.” He closed them again and sank bonelessly into the couch cushions. “You’re both too loud. If you want proof, then look.” He gestured loosely to his own pounding skull. “I imagine you haven’t forgotten how.”
“Of course I haven't forgotten how.” He shifted so he was sitting on the edge of the couch and looked down at Handy. “If your head explodes, this is on you… you offered.” The Master leaned in and placed his hands on either side of Handy’s head, then rested their foreheads together. “Ready,” he murmured, closing his eyes and concentrating.
And the Metacrisis Doctor let him in. Not too far, but enough. The Master would see everything at the surface--the blinding headache, the bone-deep weariness, the regrets and bitterness and almost-buried hope for a real life with Rose. He’d be able to see beyond that to the memories, stretching back through the moment of the metacrisis, to the Valiant, back through the Time War, and all of the occasions the Doctor had had to mourn his friend, back to the Academy and to their childhood together. Every memory had a sense of age to it that was unmistakable to a Time Lord. The Doctor’s timeline stretched back for centuries, and stretched forward into an uncertain future.
The Master’s eyes snapped open in shock and he nearly fell off the couch. Whatever he’d expected to see, that hadn't been it. He took a couple of breaths to calm himself, then repeated the process. This time, he shared with Handy what had happened after his botched resurrection: Lucy’s interference, the Gate, the true purpose of the drums, Rassilon’s plan, and how the Master had saved the Doctor.
The Doctor winced. He’d known about this, but hearing bits of the story was entirely different from living it through the Master’s eyes. It hurt in its own way. He wanted to save everyone the Master harmed, Lucy especially, and the person the Master had been most of all. He could only endure so much of it, already stretched thin. Weakly, he pushed the Master away. “That’s enough.” His heart pounded in his chest, and he rolled onto his side, feeling as though he might be sick. Their own people had done this to them, taken the best of friends and pitted them against each other from the beginning. He was almost glad he’d trapped them inside of the Time Lock and made a ruin of their home.
The Twelfth Doctor watched the exchange, arms folded across his chest, imagining the memories that were being shared. He didn’t need to see them, since he’d experienced them already, and he made no indication that he would share his own memories with either of them… what would be the point? “Are you two satisfied?” he asked, his voice low with a hint of impatience. He wondered what it was going to take to get these two on the same playing level.
“Don’t you dare throw up on me… Thete.” The Master stood up and moved away from the edge of the couch, trying to avoid looking at either of them.
“Wasn’t planning on it.” A smile tugged at the corners of the Doctor’s mouth. “Koschei.” He cradled his forehead in the crook of his arm and groaned. “Could do with some tea.” And maybe a real bed, he thought, and Rose. The TARDIS supplied a tub of cool water and a washcloth in an unsubtle hint to the full Time Lords.
“Get your own tea. I’m not your nursemaid.” The Master looked over at the tub when it appeared and he made a face. “Seriously? You can make that appear but not a simple cup of tea? And no… I’m not giving him a sponge bath either.” He turned to look at Twelve and pointed directly at him. “Right. Door… now.”
The Doctor sighed and figured that this was the best he could hope for, and to keep them cloistered together would probably leave them worse off. He snapped his fingers at the door and it opened on its own. “You’re welcome,” he sarcastically told the Master, then spoke to Handy, “I’ll bring you tea. And you know, you can levitate laying down in here? Infinitely more comfortable than any bed, real or fake.” His eyes lifted to the ceiling, as by mental command, the lights dimmed for Handy’s comfort. “Rest, and then I’ll make sure you get back to the sick bay… or your TARDIS… wherever you want to go.”
“I like the furniture,” the Metacrisis Doctor mumbled into his arm. “Bit too human at the moment to float without it going to my head.” He’d tried earlier, in his own Zero Room. “Ought to go back to the med bay, I suppose. More convenient if something happens. Won’t frighten Rose so badly if we’re already there.”
The Master disappeared as soon as the door was unlocked, leaving the other two alone in the room. He paced back and forth in the hallway for several minutes, frowning as he mentally processed what had just happened. Stomping back into the room, he stood in the doorway and asked with a sigh, “How do you take it?”
The younger of the two Doctors replied automatically, “Two sugars.” He wondered idly if Time Lord-human metacrises could take aspirin. It seemed to work rather well for human headaches, and human hearts, but there was that trouble with it being poisonous to Time Lords.
This was a bit of a nice surprise. Twelve waited for the Master to leave before making a Not Bad expression, then glanced at over at Handy. “I think you made an impression. At least I’m impressed. He doesn’t even get me tea.”
“I’m dying, and he felt it. Along with all the times we’ve missed him, wanted to help him, to save him … I didn’t hold back much on that account. There’s only so much time for me, even if you can fix a dodgy heart stuck in the wrong body. Bit like trying to run a Ferrari off an engine for a Volkswagen Beetle. Pity we can’t just replace it with a custom job.” He raised his eyebrows at his elder self in a knowing expression they’d both seen countless times in a mirror. “He’s every bit as wounded as we are. I don’t trust him to be good, but I have to believe that he can be better.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to say all long,” came Twelve’s thoughtful response. “Now if we can only convince the others.” Mainly Jack and Martha. He then looked Handy over. “I promised you I’d find a way to help. All you have to do is stay alive.”
“And if you do die, then make sure I’m not around to be blamed for it. Actually, never mind since they’ll probably blame me anyways,” the Master commented as he walked back into the room. He handed one mug over to Handy, then a second mug to Twelve. “Yours… seven sugars and milk. I’m going out. Don’t wait up for me, kids.”
“If he does die, which he won’t do! then don’t write anything on the Network gloating about it,” The Twelfth Doctor countered. He accepted the mug, looked at the cup, then looked at the Master. “How do you know how I take my tea?”
“I pay attention,” he replied before leaving the room.