Contrition

The last thing he remembers of his body is that it was coming apart at the seams.

…

What most do not – cannot – understand about death is that it is the moments just before you slip away that are the most difficult. It is the moment when your eyes close and your body stops, but the synapses of the brain still fire. The first time it is merely confusing. The second time you learn to panic and by the third time onward, you are scared. What most do not understand about death is that it is terrifying. Everyone sees it, and everyone is scared by it. But very few understand.

It is not about what is coming. Nothing comes. One walks a tightrope all their life and death is feeling the rope cut. Death is falling, death is screaming, but death is just the anticipation of it. The momentary eternity before you hit the ground, but in death, nothing comes. There should be finality, a crash, but death is simply the moment before you lose control of what you are doing. Falling, screaming, dying. Then you simply are, passively. Simply are dead. The act of being dead is passive.

What is coming is worthless. It is nothing but an act that is done as if unto another. You lose control. The moments before are terrifying, the moments after are empty and hopeless. No memory. No inkling. Just blank emptiness.

And it gets worse. If one were to blink again they would find themselves struggling for breath and balance on a rope again. To see behind would be to understand that there is no tether holding either end of the rope, anymore. Once, you had an origin. Now you walk with an empty space behind where you should have fallen. Where you fell. You walk on rope as if it was thin air and suddenly, nothing makes sense anymore.

So waking up is almost just as bad. Waking up means you see the fragility. Waking up means you understand what you are heading through and for when you die again – whenever and however that may be.

…

His eyes are open and his lungs scream with the rattling, prickling sensation like breathing a sandstorm. His skin tears and burns underneath. His pores prick up into gooseflesh as though trying to pull away from the pain.

There is cold metal of a table beneath him and there is a terrible din in his head. He does not remember moving to convulse against his restraints, but he is pressed against them and he is being held from moving. His back is arched and his ears are ringing.

He does not understand.

There is a blur of white shapes against the light and hands are grabbing him, sharpening the pain. The din hitches and he realizes he has been screaming.

Hands are dragging him down, pushing him down, and through the excruciating burn in his body and the pounding in his head, he can tell they are speaking. There is a needle, somewhere, and anesthetic is shot deep into his blood.

He does not need it. The pain and fear are enough that, as he passes out, he wishes quietly that he is dying, and that he might never wake up again. For the first time in a long time, he is ready to slip into passivity and relinquish mastery of his own fate.

…

Fate, as it would turn out, is ironic in her workings. He woke up quietly, almost painlessly the second time. His consciousness was fleeting and uneasy, but he was aware enough to gather a few details.

There were people, voices, speaking in an ancient and familiar tongue and saying words that he understood but did not comprehend completely. Not yet. Their voices were kind and condescending.

He had been moved to a bed. It had been metal, before. Now the smell of starched sheets overwhelmed his newborn senses.

His head was hazy, as if with post-regeneration sickness. He could think of nothing, no inking of sentience in his last death, that would lend itself to him having regenerated or even managing to live, again.

And, as his eyes slipped close, he realized he had a body. His own body. Where last time, he had inhabited the other, he was this one. There were no controls, nothing secondhand. His body moved as it had before, long before he ever had to invade another’s flesh.

He had forgotten how exhausting it was, to feel.

…

Reflexes?

A little shock of pressure hits under his knee, and his leg gives a gentle jerk.

Good. Dexterity?

Little pinpricks touch the tips of each of his fingers and, in turn, each twitches.

He continues to watch the ceiling, blankly.

Close your eyes? The voice turns toward him.

He obliges, wondering when this will be over.

Good. Open then?

He obliges.

Good. The voice turns away to ask, Vitals?

All clear, supplies another voice.

Good. We can move on from the physical.

There is a long pause, then, as the machines and instruments are rolled away – he can tell by the sound of wheels over linoleum. All the while, even as they resume their places by the bedside, he can hear the comforting quintuple beep from the heart monitor on the wall.

Let us check his awareness.

The voice returns, this time asking against the barriers of his mind.

Awake?, it asks.

He does not let the voice in. The barriers around his mind stay stubbornly up.

He is closed, the voice says, presumably to the others. Open him.

Two minds are suddenly pressing against his. They slip between the cracks created by weakness of lack of practice, and they pry his mind open like a vice. They keep him propped apart and exposed.

Awake?, the voice asks again.

Yes, he answers, in a clipped and overly polite tone of thought.

Where are you?

You tell me.

Where are you?

I do not know. Why am I alive?

You only have to answer my questions, do not waste your energy.

It should be comforting, but immediately he knows not to trust this voice.

It speaks again, Answer my question, with concrete details. Where are you?

…in bed?

What do you see?

The ceiling.

Can you feel?

Yes. And it hurts like a motherfucker. I would appreciate more drugs, if you do not mind.

Name?

The Master.

Name?

The Master.

There is a pause. Then, Name?

He does not answer this time, because he knows what they want and he has no intentions of giving it to them.

There is a pause, and then there is a deeper invasion in his head. He tries to recoil but there is nowhere to recoil to. His nerves squirm against the violation as the voice finds the knowledge it was looking for.

Good, it tells him, So you know.

He gives no reply.

Do you remember where you were?

No, he lies.

He feels a sore pain in his throat as he growls against the second, deeper invasion.

Where were you?, the voice asks, persistently.

Dead.

Before that?

Dead.

Before that.

Dying.

Where?

The TARDIS.

Yours?

My TARDIS is dead, too.

Are you dead?

Answer me. Why. Am I. Alive?

The voice does not answer in his head this time. But he hears it with his ears rather than inside his as it says, His recollection is sufficient, for now. Let him go.

The vice loosens up against his head.

He yanks back on that inkling of foreign personality that remains, pulling the mind attached to the voice back into his headscape. He slams up the barriers and starts to bury the man deep into his memories, deep into the recent sensations of pain, and waking, and then further into the memories of dying, mind tearing asunder under the heart of the TARDIS, and blackness, and blackness.

So you want me to fucking recollect, you bastard?

From outside the barriers of his mind, he can hear the voice mindlessly scream. It takes them fifteen minutes to extract him from the Master’s mind.

…

They put him in the equivalent of a mental straightjacket, for that little stunt. There was no getting out and no opening his mind to sense those around him, unless they loosened up the straps.

He behaved and did not even try to break out of it. Just to spite their efforts.

…

The first day he finds himself capable and without restraints, he takes the five minutes to coordinate himself and sit up in bed.

After that, there really is not that much else to do. It seems that his hearts have gotten so used to pumping blood horizontally that raising his head above his feet produces a debilitating vertigo. He decides not to risk standing in case he falls and has to be picked up – or worse, to crawl. There is not much to look at in the room, either, and no way to probe outside of his own mind with the enforced barriers. He is essentially stuck sitting, staring at the wall.

He is pleased that his body is still strong enough for that, at least. He has been through plenty of possessions by now, and though he was always disappointed by the lack of mental strength as compared with his own body, they were always physically capable.

Maybe now, with his mind and this body, he can reach his potential. Maybe now, he can start to turn things around.

He stares at the wall and with his mind safely sealed, he thinks about the future.

…

It takes about a week for them to get around to it, but they get him into that bed again and they run all the tests their hearts could ever desire. He gets blood taken and joints prodded and skin jabbed with needles to be tested, and he hardly bats an eyelash.

He lets them do what they want. He waits patiently and, finally, they open up the imposed blockade around his head.

The vice comes to pry him open and he lets his walls come right down. There are two minds, now. One for precaution, he supposes, and one whose mental signature he recognizes.

Oh, you, he thinks. He looks the two men above him up and down and decides that the one that just cringed is most likely the one who belongs to the familiar presence in his head. He lets them start fiddling around as they will.

Awake?, the voice asks.

Yes, he replies.

Where are you?

The operation table.

What do you see?

You. And you look right bothered.

Can you feel?

Sure, well enough, considering I have a needle sticking out of my arm pumping any number of numbing drugs to make me cooperate. That needle stings, by the way.

He gives the man a long look and thinks that something is very different. It occurs to him that he dragged the poor bastard deep into some of his most scarring memories and made him mentally live them out. His brow furrows. Why did they let you back in?

The man ignores him, asks, Name?

You were screaming at the end.

There is a sudden jab in his head and he hisses slightly from the pain. Behind it, though, he can feel an edge of inexplicable anger, and loss, and a hint of something he had not seen before in this personality. Same signature, different tone.

He blinks, feeling impressed with himself. It is strangely gratifying to know that you lived through events that, in memory, would psychologically damage someone enough that they would have to regenerate to shed the effects.

The voice asks, Name?

Were you not taller, last time? He asks as innocently as he can to mask the self-satisfaction.

The man mentally glares. He hears the sarcasm as the voice in his head oozes, Good, I see your short-term memory is perfectly intact.

He physically smirks. So is your attitude.

It is a dare, really. They are cautious probing his mind and he lets them see as much as will satisfy them. He keeps the answers that they want and the things he wants to let them see in plain sight, with the rest tucked safely away. It is a deceptively difficult trick, but one that he is pleased to be able to do after so long.

The presence in his head is nervous, to say the least. He cooperates as if to spite their overly careful planning.

As they put the barriers back up around his head, he realizes that there is only one reason they would use the same man for this job. Several days of their time to psychoanalyze and regenerate him, just to put him back in the same dangerous job that any experienced man could do, could mean only one thing: that he was the only one who could know.

It occurs to the Master that he is ticking away the excruciatingly dull moments his fourteenth life. He realizes as the men seal his mind away that he is alive where no one should be. He is Orpheus, as good as dead and breaking all the rules – because the gods told him to. Because the Time Lords – for whatever reason – decreed to defy their own law.

It was a crime, and it amused him.

…

His body gets slowly stronger. He can stand now, when they are not in the room and pinning him down to examine. He has no clue what they plan to do with him. The most he knows is that they are close, and they are feeding him nutrients and liquids through a needle in his arm.

He gets anxious and he takes to pulling it out of his arm, walking whenever he can, because he and only he has ever decided what he can do.

He is meandering and pointless. He cannot even bring himself to sleep to pass the aching, terrifying boredom.

It is almost a relief when one day he stands and something heavy clamps around his chest. It drags him down to the ground and as his body convulses, as the pain dully throbs in his chest, he thinks that this must be it. Finally, he is dying for good.

The dull throb is cushioned by faraway voices.

And then the pain really strikes.

His throat tears up with the low scream as everything is forced back into focus. He hurts and there is the frantic beeping of a machine. He fights the urge to arch and closes his eyes, letting them roll back into his head. He wills himself to die.

Everything almost slips out of focus before another shock of electricity sends the pain all through him again.

In the back of his head, he can hear the ominous beep of one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four.

…

There is a lady, one of the physicians, whom he can hear in his ears. She tells him that his second heart had stopped. That they saved him.

In reality, he had been dying, and they had made him live.

He decides that day that he hates them.

…

They run more tests. They put needles and liquids and drugs under his skin. And they come up with more ways to keep him alive.

He figures so long as they are keeping it up for him, he has no reason to find will to live, himself.

…

One day they sit him up in a chair, and they take him through a door that he does not remember having been there, before. He sits there with no interest, and no intent.

If he had won it himself, if he had stood and walked out here, it would have been freedom. Now, as they wheel him out and expect him to live on and prosper, it is an extension of a cell. There are details of the home and, technically, the building must have been built to be a home of sorts. But he knows better. The Master is many things, but stupid is not one of them.

He knows full well he is being kept and imprisoned as comfortably as possible, even if he is not sure why.

His gaze falls into the negative space and he stubbornly refuses to exercise his mind or his body when they urge him to do so. The appointments become fewer and fewer, and they leave him to sit on his own more and more often.

Then one day among timeless, countless days, they sit him by a window and when his eyes focus, he sees a face he knows.

In that moment, his world simultaneously stops and starts over.

…

He actually stands up and supports himself with the wall, the chairs, anything, to return to the window where he had seen him. Over the next couple of days he stands by and waits for something to happen, for some sign he did not merely dream a madman’s terrified dream.

Sure enough, there is an afternoon when he holds himself up by the window frame and he sees him there, his hair curled to his shoulders just like he remembers it, and the sun glinting off of it like he had not had the chance to see. He watches intently and puts his hand to glass, tapping out an idle one-two-three-four with a roll of his fingertips.

The first thing he realizes is that the Doctor is playing.

The second thing is that he is playing in a closed courtyard.

The Master remembers having been trapped in the TARDIS, tearing and crushing and coming apart, and suddenly he knows that he must be here by extraction. If he is here, of course, so the Doctor would have to be.

And somehow, he already knows that the Doctor is no freer in this prison than he.

He continues to watch until the Doctor turns, sees him, through the glass and stops. His blue eyes widen and the gentle smile that had been pulling at his lips fell and was replaced with a sullen set of his lips. In an instant, he suddenly looks his age.

The Master stands there with his hand against the glass and his eyes unwavering. He watches the Doctor as he turns and starts around the outside corner of the walls. The Doctor occasionally glances over his shoulder and the Master never once looks away.

He watches until he cannot see anymore.

Contrition : Part

Reflexes?

A little shock of pressure hits under his knee, and his leg gives a gentle jerk.

Good. Dexterity?

Little pinpricks touch the tips of each of his fingers and, in turn, each twitches on its own.

He continues to watch the ceiling, blankly.

Close your eyes? The voice turns toward him.

He obliges, wondering when this will be over.

Good. Open then?

He obliges.

Good. The voice turns away to ask, Vitals?

All clear, supplies another voice.

Good. We can move on from the physical.

There is a long pause, then, as the machines and instruments are rolled away – he can tell by the sound of wheels over linoleum. All the while, even as they resume their places by the bedside, he can hear the comforting quintuple beep from the heart monitor on the wall.

Let us check his awareness.

The voice returns, this time asking against the barriers of his mind.

Awake?, it asks.

He does not let the voice in. The barriers around his mind stay stubbornly up.

He is closed, the voice says, presumably to the others. Open him.

Two minds are suddenly pressing against his. They slip between the cracks created by weakness of lack of practice, and they pry his mind open like a vice. They keep him propped apart and exposed.

Awake?, the voice asks again.

Yes, he answers, in a clipped and overly polite tone of thought.

Where are you?

You tell me.

Where are you?

I do not know. Why am I alive?

You only have to answer my questions, do not waste your energy.

It should be comforting, but immediately he knows not to trust this voice.

It speaks again, Answer my question, with concrete details. Where are you?

…in bed?

What do you see?

The ceiling.

Can you feel?

Yes. And it hurts like a motherfucker. I would appreciate more drugs, if you do not mind.

Name?

The Master.

Name?

The Master.

There is a pause. Then, Name?

He does not answer this time, because he knows what they want and he has no intentions of giving it to them.

There is a pause, and then there is a deeper invasion in his head. He tries to recoil but there is nowhere to recoil to. His nerves squirm against the violation as the voice finds the knowledge it was looking for.

Good, it tells him, So you know.

He gives no reply.

Do you remember where you were?

No, he lies.

He feels a sore pain in his throat as he growls against the second, deeper invasion.

Where were you?, the voice asks, persistently.

Dead.

Before that?

Dead.

Before that.

Dying.

Where?

The TARDIS.

Yours?

My TARDIS is dead, too.

Are you dead?

Answer me. Why. Am I. Alive?

The voice does not answer in his head this time. But he hears it with his ears rather than inside his head, this time, as it says His recollection is sufficient, for now. Let him go.

The vice loosens up against his head.

He yanks back on that inkling of foreign personality that remains, pulling the mind attached to the voice back into his headscape. He slams up the barriers and starts to bury the man deep into his memories, deep into the recent sensations of pain, and waking, and then further into the memories of dying, mind tearing in two under the heart of the TARDIS, and blackness, and blackness.

You want me to fucking recollect, you bastard?

From outside the barriers of his mind, he can hear the voice mindlessly scream. It takes them fifteen minutes to extract him from the Master’s mind.