Chapter Text
Every day, waking up on that slab of stone that serves as a bed, staring at the same walls, the Doctor tells herself that she’s getting used to it. That she will, of course, find a way out, but that she’s getting used to it in the meantime. That being stuck there doesn’t hurt so much anymore. That there’s no itch under her skin to run, that when she misses the fam, it doesn’t tear her hearts in four anymore. She tells herself that every single day.
It’s never true.
The cell is, at least, a little more comfortable than it used to be. There’s a choice of beds — one on each side — and a tiny little bookcase tucked between the head of the one she’s claimed for herself and the wall. It’s got only a single shelf in the middle, giving her three tiers at most, and she’s managed to fill all of them with battered old paperbacks.
It’s not much, but she’s been there for decades, and it’s the most entertainment she’s had. She hopes she can keep trading little bits of help with whatever may come up for more and more books. Maybe it’ll help keep her sane.
There are days when it really feels like a possible concern.
Other than that, her routine is horribly constant — there’s exercise time, which really only means a quick excursion outside of her cell to walk around a cube smaller than her own cell, but which at least provides her with the chance to see other living beings; and there’s mealtimes. The food is never interesting, but it does the job.
Other than that and the occasional chance to lend a hand with something, be that what it may — and she’s turned down opportunities before, there’s certainly a variety out there — nothing else ever seems to happen.
So when a knock comes at her door, warning her to step to the back of the cell, she figures it’s another job. Good, she could use a new book. Maybe it’ll be something fun, even. She’d once helped to track down a Pting in the ventilation system, which had unfortunately not given her any particularly useful information, but it had been a lot of fun.
She does as she’s told and stands at the back of cell, ready to ask what she can do this time —
And instead, she finds herself blinking in complete and utter confusion.
Because it’s not possible, is it?
It can’t be.
But in comes the Master, pushed inside none-too-gently by a Judoon, and throwing a quip she can’t hear over the hammering of her hearts, but which earns him a none-too-gentle removal of his cuffs, too. He doesn’t complain, so the Doctor assumes he’d expected it.
The door closes —
And suddenly she’s racing for it, slamming into it with force, fists hammering on the metal to try and get the attention of the Judoon outside.
“Hey!” she calls. “You can’t do this! You can’t leave him in here with me! Find somewhere else for him! Oi!”
But no one comes. They’ve heard her, she knows that, but they’re not coming.
She’s stuck in a single room with the Master, and suddenly it feels entirely too small.
She rests her head on the door, pressing her forehead against the cold metal, palms spread over it as if she could just will the metal to warp and tear under them. Nothing happens, of course.
A sigh, and she finally turns around.
The Master is watching her with a curious expression, one she can’t quite read. It changes the moment he notices her watching, though, lips pulling into a grin, eyes shining with something she wants to call a twisted version of joy.
“Glad to see I’ve made such an impression,” he says. “What, you don’t want to bunk with your oldest friend anymore?”
“I’d rather be in here with anyone else,” she spits.
His brows pinch together. “Really, anyone? Davros?”
“Anyone.”
He shrugs at that, then looks around the room as if it were his first time taking it in, eyes lingering on the bed that contains a single, thin blanket. He’s carrying one identical to it — it’s one of the few supplies they’re given. The Doctor has argued on multiple occasions for a pillow as well, at the very least, and it’s been made abundantly clear to her that there will be no pillows of any kind.
The Master makes his way to the other slab of stone, settling his blanket down on it. “I guess this is my bed, then?”
No answer comes, the Doctor simply making her way back over to her bed.
There, hidden between the bed and the bookcase, half-tucked into a small chip on the stone, is a piece of flint. She’s been using it to mark the days on the walls, but now she takes it to trace a line on the floor, roughly across the middle of the room.
“This is your side,” she says, pointing over to the half that contains the Master’s bed, “and this is mine. You stay on yours, and I stay on mine. We don’t talk. And that’s how we get through this. Do you understand?”
“What about the bathroom? The door is on my side,” points out the Master.
The Doctor rolls her eyes. “Access to essential things is fine.”
There’s a long moment of silence, the Master’s eyes lingering on her, and then he nods.
Not a single word, just a nod.
Good. He gets it, then.
The Doctor picks up her book from where she’d left it at the foot of her bed and goes back to reading.
Maybe it’ll be fine. Maybe it’ll be like there’s no one there at all. Maybe for once the Master can understand that the whole universe doesn’t revolve around him, and his actions have consequences, one such consequence being the fact that his simple presence there makes her want to add a few more items to her sentence.
Looking up from her book maybe an hour later, she sees that the Master seems to have managed to tie his blanket into a ball, and the annoying sound she’s been trying to ignore is him throwing it and catching it in a familiar sequence of four.
It feels like old days again, she can’t deny that. Just that rhythm…
But she can’t let herself be lured by the memory of their shared past. It’s a past that he’s destroyed, and shared with someone who he just isn’t anymore.
She’s not Theta, and he’s not Koschei. It’s as simple as that.
Her attention goes back to her book.
Throw. Catch.
Throw. Catch.
Throw. Catch.
Throw. Catch.
Finally, it stops, and the Doctor turns her head just in time to see the Master about to step over the line she’d drawn on the floor. She springs to her feet, a hand outstretched to stop him.
“No. No, no, no, line!” She points to the line, then glares at him.
He has a single foot resting squarely over it, and he looks between it and the Doctor. “I was just going to get a book,” he explains.
She shakes her head. “Line.”
“You said —“
“Essentials.”
“I just want a book.”
She shakes her head yet again. “No.”
“Well, can you get me one, then?”
“No.”
He looks at her in a mixture of anger and confusion, frustration clear in every inch of his expression. His fists clench and unclench at his sides, and for a moment she almost expects to be pushed aside, but he only whirls around, heading back to his bed. “Fine,” he hisses.
The Doctor nods to herself over a job well done and returns to her own book.
What had started as an almost nostalgic reminder of their past grows into something far more aggravating by the second day.
The throwing and catching doesn’t stop.
It evolves, instead, into a game to be played all over the Master’s half of the room, to the point where she’s glad there’s nothing breakable in there, because she’s sure he would have managed to break it.
She tries to focus on her book. It shouldn’t take much, really — she’s read it a dozen times already, she knows the story. It should be easy. But the never ending catching and throwing and throwing and catching, two figures coming in and out of her field of vision, is maddeningly distracting.
Finally, finally, the Master misses a throw and the blanket-ball comes flying into her side.
The Master stops short of crossing the line, instead reaching out his hands in a silent request, one she knows so well from all their childhood.
Unlike then, now she shakes her head.
“It’s on my side.”
“It’s my blanket,” he argues.
She shrugs. “Then you should have been more careful with it.”
“You don’t need it.”
“No, but you wouldn’t stop playing with it.”
His jaw sets. “You wouldn’t let me have a book.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to keep driving me crazy with that thing.”
“There’s nothing else to do!” He throws his arms wide, as if to showcase their barebones cell. “You don’t even want to talk. You always want to talk. You haven’t been this quiet since you had that throat infection during our Academy break.”
She rolls her eyes. “Just… sit quietly, will you?”
“Like you could do that.”
“You’re not getting the blanket back.”
He glares at her, long and hard and furious. This is it, she thinks — this is when he snaps, this is when he shoves her back and grabs the blanket, and in three minutes there’ll be Judoon in there breaking them apart while the Master tries to wrap that blanket around her throat.
But he doesn’t.
He just stomps over to his bed, lays down with his back to her, and doesn’t say a word.
When dinner comes that night — or she calls it night, at least, but it could be anything — and she slides his portion over to his side of the room, he doesn’t get up and take it.
She doesn’t let herself remember that he never turns down food until she’s wrapped in her own blanket over the slab of stone she calls a bed.
Lunch, at least, isn’t turned away. He snatches the tray off the floor with far less care than he had before, but he takes it and sits down on his bed to eat. That’s good, that means she doesn’t need to worry.
The Doctor turns her attention to her own lunch and tries to go back to ignoring her cellmate.
It goes well for a while.
He lays staring at the ceiling, easy to forget about, perfectly unobtrusive, and she continues reading her book — from the start, because she doesn’t think the previous day counted at all.
She’d still rather be alone, but it’s workable. She could handle this for a long time if necessary.
She’s maybe halfway through the book when a murmur comes from the other half of the room.
“This is ridiculous,” says the Master, and he’s over the line before the Doctor has a chance to react.
He grabs a book, and she only just manages to snatch it off his hands.
“Line,” she reminds him.
He grits his teeth. “I just want a book,” he repeats.
“Tough.”
“For the — what, are we back at the Academy?”
She ignores him. “They’re my books.”
“Can’t share your toys? They’re the only books.”
“And you can’t have them. Go back to your side of the line.”
He rolls his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous, just —“ he tries to push past her at that, moving to get another book, and she shoves him back, hard, then shoves him again the moment he manages to regain balance. He stumbles back behind the line, and it’s only then that she stops, arms crossing over her chest.
Something flashes in his eyes, staring at her for a moment too long to go unnoticed. He pushes it back, though, and suddenly he’s right in front of her, eyes burning with something that’s not quite anger, but could easily be its cousin. The Doctor doesn’t know what to call it, isn’t sure that she wants to call it anything.
“I. Just. Want. A. Book,” he hisses.
“You can’t have it,” she reiterates.
He runs a hand through his hair, fingers twisting to grab a hold of some locks, his grip tight enough that it looks painful. The Doctor ignores the feeling in her stomach at that, instead favoring the satisfaction she can’t help but feel at the thought that it must hurt.
“What’s gotten into you?” he asks, frustration clear in his voice. “What’s with the possessiveness?”
“Can’t you take a guess?”
“No!” cries the Master. “This is completely ridiculous! You're not making any sense, do you realize that?”
His fingers release his hair, but there’s a look in his eyes still, lost and somewhere in the vicinity of desperate.
Once upon a time, some part of her vaguely knows, she would have taken pity on him then. She would have wanted to soothe that pain however little she could. Now she grabs onto it and lets it carry her through the answer.
“You destroyed Gallifrey!” she bursts out, anger flashing in her eyes, teeth bared.
There’s the smallest moment of silence, something complicated crossing the Master’s eyes, but she doesn’t even bother trying to understand it. Why should she? He’s not her friend anymore, he’s not Koschei anymore. He hasn’t been for a long time, and she was an idiot to think she could ever bring him back, that she could ever have what they’d had in the years before they became renegades.
The fact that he breaks into laughter only solidifies her resolve. They are not the same. They will never be the same again.
“Right,” he says as he manages to calm his fit of laughter. “And that means that I can’t have a book, does it?”
“Yes. I’m not sharing them with you.”
“Even though you’ve got… what, twenty of them? And I have none. Nothing to do at all.” He raises an eyebrow at her.
The Doctor nods. “Yes.”
“You want me to sit here and stare at the ceiling for the next… however long it takes for us to find our way out?”
Another nod. “Yes.”
Anger crosses his eyes, brows almost twitching into a frown, nostrils flaring, but it’s gone just as quickly as it almost arrives, replaced by a cold indifference. Instead of arguing, he simply turns around and marches right back over to his bed, flopping down on the cold slab of stone with a dull thump.
He must, the Doctor thinks to herself for a moment, have expected there to be a mattress. He must have forgotten they were never provided with so much as a pillow.
She doesn’t say anything, though, simply turns around and heads back to her own cold slab of stone, and to her books. He’ll keep trying to get to them, she’s sure, and she’ll keep fighting him. Maybe it’ll at least offer her some entertainment, add some variety to her dull routine. The Master has always been good at that, at injecting chaos into her life.
It’s fine, though, because he won’t win.
He never does.
There’s never any sun in their cell, so the Doctor wakes every day simply to the shrill sound of the wake-up call. She’s not sure why they have that considering the fact that she could easily go back to sleep once her hearts settle down and her irritation at being woken ebbs away, but still, it’s generally the start of her morning.
She groans in annoyance as she pulls the blanket over her head, willing her hearts to slow, and then, as she usually does, she pushes the blanket down and begins to sit —
Only for her hearts to stop completely.
All around her, there are pages scattered over the floor, its stone hardly even visible under the covering of paper. And her bookshelf, she finds as she frantically looks behind her, is completely empty. Not a single book remains.
They’re all around her, scattered into a mess that will take weeks to sort through, and she’ll never be able to redo the bindings with the materials available to her. They’ll be simply a pile of pages to be read two-by-two. It’s not the end of the world, the Doctor tells herself. She can still read them, the pages are still intact, but… those books had been one of the few good things she’d had in this cell. To lose them, to find them so theatrically scattered to greet her in the morning, it hurts.
And of course, there’s a pair of eyes staring at her from across the room, eager for her reaction.
She glares at him, and then suddenly she’s on her feet, ignoring the boots in favor of crossing over to the Master barefoot, stepping over pages and telling herself that it’s fine, her bare feet won’t ruin them like her boots might.
A hand shoves the Master so he’s laying flat on the bed, and her other arm moves to pin him down by the neck, putting just enough pressure on his windpipe to be uncomfortable.
“Are you happy with yourself?” she growls.
“Ecstatic,” he hisses back at her.
“Do you have any idea how hard it was to get those books?”
He pushes his head further up, adding to the pressure on his windpipe. “Why should I care?” he rasps. “You can just sit and stare at the ceiling, can’t you? That’s more than enough for you to do for the next however long we’re stuck here for.”
She presses down, forcing his head against the bed, letting him gasp for a moment — he’s not engaging his respiratory bypass, and she’s sure it’s on purpose — before she releases him completely. “You’ve never met anything you couldn’t ruin, have you?”
The laugh that leaves his lips edges on broken, but she ignores that in favor of focusing on the sharpness of his smile, the way he bares his teeth. “No.”
“Stay out of my way,” she snarls, and turns around to begin gathering the pages littering the floor.
He doesn’t offer to help, and she never asks him.