Minefield

1.

"This is absolutely insane." Will muttered as he studied the readout from the computer screen. "Neil! You've got to see this!"

Neil rushed over to his friend. His feet were sinking fast into the soft planet surface, like he was stepping on a fresh layer of powder snow. He made a mental note to himself that they should take a sample of it back to the lab to examine, although the list of things he had to do was getting seriously long.

"What is it?" He asked. Will handed him the printout.

"See this. These are the gravity measurements during our landing."

Neil stared at the impossible numbers. "This can't be real. The readings must be wrong."

The Doctor peeked over the young scientist's shoulders. "No, they're correct. Nothing wrong with it except that your machine has run out of digits. You should add at least six more zeros to that number."

"But that is madness. With that amount of pressure, the cruiser would have been pressed flat like a pancake. If these numbers were true we wouldn't even have survived."

"It's the planet." The Doctor explained in a matter of fact voice. "The gravity of this relatively small orb is colossal. Heavier than a neutron star, heavier than all the mass in this solar system put together. Heavier even than what's inside a black hole, which I'm afraid, your much-sought after stable black hole actually is." He looked at Neil. "A normal black hole. The type you find in about every backwater galaxy in the universe. I'm really sorry to tell you this."

Neil stared at the Doctor with a flabbergasted look on his face. "What are you trying to tell me? That this black hole isn't stable?"

"Your stable black hole is more common than muck. It's ordinary, because it isn't the black hole that refuses to devour the planet. It's the planet that refuses to be devoured."

"What?" Neil frowned in confusion.

"Oh alright." The Doctor sighed. Sometimes it did frustrate him that his human companions' minds, especially those not of his own choosing, were working in such an agonizing slow pace. He picked up a rock from the ground and took in a deep breath as fuel to kick-start his babbling. "Let's say this is Poveglia. This was once an ordinary planet, just doing its spins and turns in its own solar system of twin suns. Then something happened to it. The planet collapsed into itself, or an asteroid rain of dark matter hit it. It doesn't matter how or why, but what does matter is the result. The planet becomes so heavy that its gravity starts to exceed that of every normal planet or any other celestial body in the sky. It even exceeds that of a black hole that had accidently wandered into the wrong neighbourhood, so to say, where it's captured, imprisoned by Poveglia's gravity. In millions of years and after millions of turns, the planet comes too near to the black hole and gets sucked in." He pulled on one side of the rock with his right hand. "But then, the planet has its own strength, its own massive gravity that counteracts with that of the black hole." He pulled on the other side of the rock with his left hand. "Two equal forces that counteract in opposite directions equals zero. And so the planet becomes stuck inside the black hole."

"Not a stable black hole then." Will huffed, sounding disappointed. "There is nothing special with it?"

"No, not really. The only thing that is extraordinary here is the planet where we are standing on."

"Well, that kinda sucks. I'm not writing my thesis on planetology. So this entire trip is rather useless."

"Wait a minute, Will. Where is your scientific inquisitiveness?" Neil said to his discouraged lab partner. "Don't you see that the Doctor is right? We're standing on an absolutely, extraordinary planet! Sure it's a shame about the stable black hole thing, but look at this!" He pointed at the readouts on the planet's gravity, just when Aurelia came to see what was going on. "Look around you mate!" Neil continued. "We're staying. We've got the whole planet to explore!"

"No, actually you're not."

Neil abruptly put an end to his encouraging speech and looked once again dumb-folded at the Doctor.

"Excuse me?"

"You're not staying."

"What?"

"It's too dangerous. You said so yourself."

"Great. We got everything out of the cabin already." Aurelia moaned. "I'm not dragging all those heavy boxes back in."

"Doctor, this my chance to make something of myself. To re-establish my father's name. You can't take this away from me." He paused to think for a moment. "Actually, why would I listen to you? You can't tell me where to go. It's my ship and my crew!"

"Your crew, and one mister Kadish his ship to be more correct." The Doctor's accusing stare forced Neil to look away. "Anyway, that's not the point."

"Then what is your point? Why can't we stay to collect more data?" Neil moaned. Irritated he grabbed a handful of black dirt and tossed it in the air where it spread like a thin black shroud, carried away in the wind. "What's so bloody dangerous about a planet filled with soft black sand?"

"That's not sand." The Doctor spoke in a flat voice.

"No?" Neil raised his brows.

"It's carbon mixed with metal oxides. It's the residue that remains after bio-matter is burned under intense heat. In other words…it's ash."

"Oh…" Neil and the others stared around. Everywhere they looked, stretching as far as the horizon, the entire planet's landscape of shifting dunes, valleys, and deserts consisted of nothing else.

"Is this what you think is left from the inhabitants…" Neil asked tentatively.

The Doctor only nodded, his face grim when he turned around with his hands inside his pockets, strolling away from Neil and the others.

"Wait." Neil ran after him. "I still don't want to go back. Not without getting an idea what the hell happened here first."

The Doctor halted and stared at the young scientist with a frown on face.

"Tell me Doctor. Why did you come here?"

"What does that have to do with what you want to find out about the planet?"

"Because there is a link. I know there is. You knew that we could land here and you knew about the breathable atmosphere, and the black san…the ash. Do I need to go on? You came here because you were looking for something Doctor. Tell me, what is it? What are you looking for?"

The Doctor looked away and stared at the two red giants that blazed across the sky. The crimson rays of the twin suns set the dunes ablaze in a dark orange glow. There, cradled between two hillsides lay a lake of pure light. The Timelord suddenly picked up a faint vibration. He took out the white point star and found it singing, emitting a soft, high-pitched tone that carried for miles over the desolate landscape. It was replied with a similar tone, like an echo, but one that was amplified in volume by hundred times or more. The resonation came the dazzling lake that shimmered in the distance.

"Doctor?" Neil tried.

Without saying a word, the Doctor ran up the dunes in the direction of the lake, holding the diamond in his hand like a guiding compass.

"There he goes, off again." Sighed Aurelia, who had finally caught up with Neil. "Well, good riddance. Shall I get Will to drag everything back in so we can get the heck off this scary planet?"

Neil just shook his head, and ran after the Doctor.

2.

He was locked up in the tower yet again. His tutors seemed to lack imagination when it came to punishing him. The grim room with the barred window near the ceiling, the damp walls and cold stone floor, and the pest-ridden mattress in the corner were more than familiar to him, having spent at least one tenth of his time at the Academy in here. The door was double-locked, but he knew that there were ways to get out easily. A bended piece of metal that could be retrieved from the mattress springs was enough to turn the lock. Otherwise, he could always remove the grid from the ventilation shaft and escape by crawling into the pipes. But he didn't want to get out. Not tonight. His mind was too occupied, his hearts were weighed down too heavily with troubles.

As always, it was the quietness of the night that broke him. He couldn't stand the sight of this familiar place, and why, he asked himself, did he keep playing his part in this travesty of sorry memories? His mind was wandering, he wasn't too proud to admit it at last, but he was still capable of short moments of lucidity. If he could still remember that this wasn't the present, why did he keep moving on with these events? Surely, there was no benefit in that.

Lowering his head, he buried his face behind his hands. Now that his world was covered in darkness, he felt somewhat safe. If only the drums would return to him. He was convinced he could sleep soundly again if they did.

He heard a gentle tapping coming from behind the locked door.

1-2-3-4. He counted, and again. 1-2-3-4. 1-2-3-4.

He sprung up from the mattress and crouched next to the door, pressing his ear on the wooden panel. 1-2-3-4. 1-2-3-4.

"Master?" A whisper came from the other side. It was the young Doctor.

There was disappointment in his voice when he answered. "Yes, I'm still here."

There were two faint clicks as the locks turned followed by a slight squeak from the hinges. The door opened and the Doctor peeked his head around the corner.

"Ello there!" He said, with a silly little grin. "Thought you would like a bit of company." He strolled in, carrying a linen bag that he handed over to his friend. "Pfff, This place still looks mightily depressing." The Doctor commented, noticing the mouse droppings on the floor and the damp patches in the ceiling. "They really know how to encourage you to break of here, don't they?"

Despite his troubles, the Master smiled. "What is this?" He asked, as he inspected the content of the bag. There was a large piece of bread, a bit of cheese, and slices of ham in there, together with a bottle of gooseberry cider.

"Your diner, my lord Master." The Doctor said, and parked himself cross-legged on the mattress. "Well actually, it's my diner, but I figured you would be hungry since you were also forced to skip lunch, as you had other obligations." The Doctor teased, raising his brows.

"You shouldn't have bothered." The Master muttered grumpily between mouthfuls. He was actually starving and was stuffing himself with the cheese and bread. "Really…I can take care of myself."

"I know." The Doctor nodded, taking pleasure in the fact that the Master was enjoying the food. "And I'm sure you can."

The Master gazed at his friend who still carried a nasty bruise on his cheek under his left eye. "How's your face?" He asked not without a sense of guilt.

The Doctor shrugged. "It will heal."

"Why didn't you go to the medical-unit?"

"Nah, you still got your bruises. Bloodbrothers, that's what we are! Besides, they probably gonna make me take a Tetanus shot when I go there. You know how I feel about needles."

"I still can't believe that those shit-heads did this to you."

"I still can't believe what you did to Redgrave." The Doctor said, staring at his friend.

The Master gazed back at him, then shook his head and laughed bitterly. "I can't stand it that you're still defending that bastard. He let those dogs of him trash you! I was trying to get him off your back."

"I had already stopped them. He was lying defenceless on the floor and still you hurt him on purpose."

"Tell me, is there ever another reason to hurt anyone, but to do it on purpose?" The Master ranted, getting upset with his friend. The way the Doctor looked at things. He really didn't understand. "And what are you condemning me for? Redgrave is a vicious bastard. He's the bad guy here, not me!"

"Redgrave is not a bad person. He's just an idiot. You don't need to behave like an blimey idiot around him as well."

The Master suddenly flung the remaining pieces of bread against the wall where it shattered in crumbs.

"Why are you always doing this?" The Doctor asked.

"Do what?"

"Get angry, and stop thinking."

"I was thinking."

"No you didn't. If you did you would have known that what you did was wrong."

"All right, you know what I was thinking? I was thinking how to get that smug smile off his face, preferably with something blunt and heavy, and anvil would be nice." The Master answered in a sarcastic tone.

"So you tortured Redgrave, only because you wanted to take revenge. Just because he made some stupid remark." The Doctor said reproachfully.

"I really don't see the wrong in that." The Master tried to laugh, but he can't.

The Doctor's voice softened when he saw how his friend clutched his head between his hands. "Master, you are better than this. I know you are."

The Master only shook his head, and kept his face down in the shadow.

"What is it?" The Doctor asked with concern. He wrapped his arm around his friend's shoulders like he always used to do. "Is it your head? Is it hurting again?"

"Yeah…no…not really."

"Do you hear those sounds again, those drums?"

"I wish." The Master blurted. "Oh how I wish I could hear them."

"You're not making any sense. I thought you said they hurt?"

"Master of the migraines." He joked bitterly. "No, I can't hear them anymore. They're gone. Actually, they've been gone for so very long now that I sometimes find it difficult to remember how they were."

"Well, that's good isn't? I mean they didn't really do you any good."

"You still don't get it, do you?" The Master took in a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling. "After all these years…. I just can't imagine myself without them. I'm just…I'm afraid that I will forget who I am."

"You're the Master." The Doctor answered after a short silence.

"You're the most clever, most brilliant person I know, and the most wonderful friend I ever had. Now you don't need those awful drums to remind you of that."

"Is that so." The Master gazed back at the Doctor, moved by his gentle words.

The Doctor nodded solemnly. Seeing him like this hurt his hearts. Ever since the day that the Master came back from the initiation ceremony and was given his chosen name by the elders, he was changed for the worse. What ever he had seen in the raw heart of the time vortex that day, whatever he had heard, it haunted him, twisting and forming the young Master like a sapling in the open field exposed to a vicious wind. In the beginning, it had seemed that the Master knew what was going on. He had tried to hide it. The Doctor remembered a ten year old boy who was always putting up a brave face and smiled quite a lot, although it was no more than a mask that he wore to hide the darkness and the fear inside. No, there was nothing wrong with me, Theta. Maybe I sometimes wake up screaming in the middle of night, but I know that those nightmares aren't real. They can't be. Besides, if I'm afraid, who's there to protect you when the real monsters come?

Time had passed since then, and with that many carefree and joyous summers spend together at the Oakdown estates, but also countless of disasters, ugly things that his friend shouldn't have done, not with a brilliant mind like his.

Now the Master could no longer hide, his mask had worn thin, with cracks appearing from where behind the darkness lured. The Doctor feared that soon one day, he would remove that old and worn mask from the Master's face, and find that his childhood friend had vanished, only to be replaced by the monster that had followed him out of the schism. And yet, he told himself, yet there was still time. There were moments of lucidity in him, rare like diamonds but equally brilliant, in which he looked into the Master's eyes and could see that his friend was still in there, waiting for him to get rid of the monster.

The Master thought he didn't understand, but he did. He really did.

"Master." He said, his voice gentle. "You asked me what I want to do after graduation. I thought long and hard about it. But I think I finally know. And I would like to show you."

3.

The transmission room was left dark and cold, and felt strangely large with the crowd of students and tutors absent. The Doctor placed his hand on the central crystal and let his heartbeats be carried into its core. Soon the monolith returned the Timelord's heartbeats with faint vibrations, a tender echo mimicking his hearts' rhythm.

"What the hell are we doing here?" The Master asked as he observed how the Doctor was running around like a dachshund on drugs, activating the navigation system and setting up the requested coordinates.

"Take a seat. Should be ready in a jiffy." His friend replied with a broad smile while he kept working on the program. "Just have to make sure that they don't notice the energy drain once this is activated. I don't want you to get into trouble for a second time today. Even if technically, I actually should be blamed for this, I don't think headmaster Redgrave would bother to ask."

"My-my. The Doctor is becoming rebellious." The Master teased. "Who would have thought? So what's next, you're gonna challenge my personal record for getting send to the tower?"

"Nope, absolutely not. You're the king of getting grounded. I give you that honour to keep." The Doctor typed in the final sequence of information and pulled the lever. The bioprint pad in front of the Master's seat switched on and the core of the transmitter crystal lit up with a bright red hue while it began to sing. The white point star imbedded in the bioprint picked up the vibration from the crystal and answered with a similar pitch.

"Ha! Perfect! Ready to go?"

The Doctor hopped in the seat next to the Master.

"Where are we going?" The Master asked with a frown.

The Doctor beamed back a smile at him. "Oh you'll see. It's the best place in the entire universe."

4.

They materialized in the middle of a field, somewhere in the south of Belgium. It was night-time and the stars were out in a cold black sky. The field was torn open, mud and trenches everywhere you looked, with miles of wires dividing the ever-shifting frontlines. The Master was freezing. It must be the middle of winter, for most of the mud was caked with a layer of ice, and the barbed wires were covered in white frost. He wrapped his arms around his chest and wanted to head for the edge of the open field.

"Stop! Don't! Don't move!" The Doctor whispered rather urgently.

The Master turned to him with a puzzled look. "What?"

"My mistake. Not entirely correct coordinates. Right time, right place, but I should have been more precise with the zeros behind the dot. We're standing in the middle of no man's land." The Doctor waved his hands madly as he tried to explain. "It's because of a war between two tribes on this planet. They called it the great war. The war to end all wars, but later it was known as world war one, because that "to end all wars" bit didn't really come true. Anyway, they shot this archduke, which wasn't really why they had this war, but it was a kind of trigger for further disaster…"

The Master looked bored and irritated. "Doctor…"

The Doctor paused as he realized. "Ah. Sorry. I'm babbling again, am I?"

The Master nodded.

"Sorry, sorry, I will get to the point. Where was I? Ah, we're not supposed to move because we're standing in a minefield. One wrong step and we're done for. So. Just. Don't move."

"We're in a minefield?"

"Yup."

"In the middle of the night, in the cold, in full view of the trigger-happy soldiers. And we're not suppose to go anywhere?"

"That kinda sums it up." The Doctor grinned dorkishly.

"Great." The Master sighed and rolled his eyes. "Uhm, can you please take me back and lock me up in the tower again? I had this great thing going on with squashing bedbugs with my thumb and watching the mould grow over the ceiling. I would really like to go and finish that if you don't mind."

"I thought we both agreed on that I won't babble and you won't rant?" The Doctor nagged.

"I wasn't ranting. That was sarcasm."

"Actually, this is what I wanted to show you."

"What? A mud-field teeming with landmines?"

"No, I meant this planet. You don't know it, not like I do, but I can tell you that it is the most extra-ordinary place in the entire universe."

"It's Earth." He sighed, rolling his eyes again. "You brought me to Earth."

The Doctor frowned, baffled as he was by the Master's correct guess. "How did you know that?" He said with an air of disappointment.

"Ha! That's easy enough! You always go there. You're obsessed with it. It's like this tiny insignificant blue speck of a planet in this backwater solar system has this gigantic gravity pull on you, because you keep orbiting around it like a demented satellite. You just can't have enough of it."

"But…I only came here three times before, including this one time with you." The Doctor said, perplexed.

"Well it's not going to stay like that, is it?" The Master scoffed. "Back in the tower, you told me you knew what you wanted to do after we left the Academy." He pointed around at the deserted fields. "Let me guess, you're going to leave Gallifrey, and come here to this place, this Earth." He spat out the word like he tasted something foul.

"Master-" The Doctor tried.

"I'm not blaming you. Running away is a lot better than what your mom has in mind. Time-watching is a waste of time, they say, and sure as boring as hell. Still, I would have liked it if you had joined me in my apprenticeship in the House of Lords." He gazed back at his friend. His face showed a contradictive mix of anguish, anger and disappointment. The Doctor remained silent, and looked away over the fields.

"Come on then." The Master finally said in a miserable voice. "You didn't drag me here all the way from home to show me your future residence. What is it?"

"Sorry?" The Doctor turned his gaze back at him and furrowed his brow.

Getting impatient, the Master rubbed in his eyes and tilted his head up to the star-studded sky. "Obviously, you are bound to give me lecture. Perhaps there's something metaphorical that you would like to address, to show me how wrong I was today with that Redgrave brat. Oh Master! Mend your evil ways, or I fear you'll end up like the weeping angels of old, frozen in time and punished for their wickedness for eternity by the righteous Timelord elders." He mocked in a high-pitched voice that was supposed to imitate the Doctor. "Let me show you this battle-scared land, where the humans –"

The Doctor's jaw dropped. "How did you –"

"Yes, humans." The Master continued not without irritation. As if he didn't remember the Doctor's favourite pet-race. "The pesky biped monkeys who inhabit this Earth, who wander around killing each-other in this futile war-" The Master paused in the middle of his rant. "Actually, where are they?" Something was wrong here. He glanced around. "I've seen this place. A while ago I was stranded here in 1914. I remember how that was. Even at night there were sweeping searchlights and mad gunfire going on." He held his breath and listened. "It's so quiet now." He muttered. "Where are the soldiers?" The Master stared at the Doctor with a confused look on his face.

"It's Christmas Eve." The Doctor said in a gentle voice. He put his freezing hands inside the pockets of his coat. "Christmas, by the way, if you don't already know because you seem to know everything, is a special kind of human holiday."

"I know what a human Christmas is." He grunted. Of course he knew. How could he forget? He had been returned into this cursed body right on Christmas Eve.

"Why aren't they fighting?" He asked the Doctor. "War is war, you cannot just stop guarding yourself against the enemies, because you want to go home to the wife and cut the Christmas roast."

"Ah, but don't you see? That's why they are so wonderful! These humans, they are not like us."

"You mean they're not sensible? No of-course not, I always thought they were dim-witted, stunted little apes."

"No! No, they are brilliant. At least they can be if they chose to be. They can also be cruel, and vicious, like in this war. They can be merciless and beastly. With an instinct so keen on survival, these humans are capable of anything, including destroying their own kind. However, if they want to be, they can be kind and caring, and can be capable of such love, and such sacrifice. They're such a contradictive species, so complex. Go around the universe and you hardly find any another race that even remotely comes near."

"How absolutely fascinating." The Master responded with a voice dripping of sarcasm. The Doctor let his shoulders drop in hopelessness. If the Master was still waiting for him to come up with a metaphor, he had certainly missed it. Sometimes he could be so boneheaded stupid.

"Do you know why they are not fighting?" The Doctor stared at the Master in the hope that he would finally understand. "With all this bloodshed, with hundreds of new victims every day and many millions dead already, these soldiers, not the officers, have decided that tonight, for once, they will stop fighting, because it's Christmas Eve, and for both sides, this equals peace. They are tired of the war. They want to go home to see their family again. To be with their loved ones. If they had ever fired a gun, taken a life, and hated their fellow man, it was because they feared for the lives of those who are not here with them in these miserable trenches. In the everyday madness of war, they might have forgotten how similar they are, these soldiers in different uniforms, speaking in different languages, but tonight they are remembered. Tonight it's Christmas Eve, and it's peace on earth, because every boy and man sleeping in these trenches dream of the same thing." The Doctor voice trailed off. From the trenches behind them rose a familiar melody.

"Stille Nacht. Heil'ge Nacht. Alles schlaft, ensam Wacht."

"What are they doing?" The Maser asked, astounded.

"They're singing Christmas carols."

At the other side of no man's land, the same melody suddenly arose from the trenches at the English side.

"Round young virgin Mary and child, holy infant so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace."

And then the most unusual thing happened. The soldiers from the two different sides started to sing together, each still in their own language, but catching the same pace and melody. The two versions of the familiar Christmas carol became one song that drifted over no man's land like a heart-rending hymn. Mist rose up from the cold damp earth, as if with this the ghosts of the fallen where called to rise from their unmarked grave to return home.

The Master closed his eyes and listened to how these two melodies gradually melted into one. Two entities seemingly so different in nature, separated by language and culture, but in their hearts, there was the same message, a same longing for reconciliation and an end to this madness. Although he still did not comprehend the Doctor's infatuation with these humans, he did understand the yearning that these soldiers had for a normal life, and end to the darkness.

"Master."

He opened his eyes again to see the Doctor still standing in there, waiting for him.

"You're right. I didn't just bring you here to show you this planet." He stared at the ground and kicked away a small of rock. He was uncertain how to bring this up to the Master.

"Remember that old, derelict Tardis that we've found two years ago outside the Citadel in the Graveyard fields, the one that was decommissioned? You were so disappointed when we discovered that the core was dead. Guess what." The Doctor held in his breath as if to cherish the moment of surprise. Meanwhile, his hearts were going rampant. The Master just stared back at him, his facial expression blank.

"It wasn't busted after all." The Doctor grinned sheepishly. "I found a tiny spark of an energy cell, tucked away in the corner at the base. It took me 10 years of my life to get it going, but it was worth every second." Taking comfort in his habit of rambling, the faraway look reappeared in the Doctor's eyes. "After that it was just easy peasy to get the whole system up and running again, although it took some time for the Tardis to re-adjust itself to me, sensitive as the technology is to a change of Lords, but I think it's starting to warm up to my endearing persona."

"You have a functional Tardis?" The Master finally asked. A sting of green envy touched his hearts. They were not allowed to own a Tardis before their second regeneration. For each young child of Galligrey, a Tardis was grown on the day the boy or girl was born. Starting from a tiny seedpod, it could take more than a hundred years before they were fully matured and could be put to use by the Timelord to which it was physically and telepathically linked. The Master wasn't allowed to see his Tardis before he had at least regenerated once from old age, let alone use it in order to leave Gallifrey. But now the Doctor claimed that he had one that was fully functional, and he blamed himself for his stupidity. They had found the old thing together, but why didn't he think of it himself to go back to the wastelands and try to restore it? That Tardis could have been his.

"As soon as the last day of the Academy is over, I will be leaving." The Doctor continued, seemingly unaware of the Master's jealousy for his ownership of the new Tardis.

"It's not only Earth that I would like to visit. I just want to travel, get around to see the universe, but not the way like we do here at Academy. Not like the other the Timelords with their hands on their backs standing behind their shields of sapphire, while the mandate of non-interference settles down and slowly turn into stone inside their minds. No, I would like to live life as it should be, with all the dangers, and joys and madness that it makes it exciting and unpredictable. I would like to really experience it, just like these humans experience life." His voice softened when his eyes met those of the Master.

"Would you join me?"

The offer took the Master by surprise. "What do you mean?"

"You and me, we could travel together to see the stars."

"You want me to run away from Gallifrey, with you."

The Doctor nodded. "You're my best friend in the whole-wide universe. Now where would I go without you?" The Doctor paused to study the Master's reaction, but it was difficult to deduce from him what he really thought of the idea.

"My father." The Master finally replied. "He would be devastated." A short silence fell between them before he continued with a touch of regret in his voice that betrayed his emotions. "I can't. My duties are here. On Gallifrey."

"Right." The Doctor's hearts suddenly felt numb and cold.

"I'm sorry." The Master muttered.

"No." The Doctor shook his head, realizing what it meant for this friendship that he held so dear. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. But I cannot stay."

They both remained standing in the open fields for a while, listening to the hopeful songs from the battered soldiers in the trenches. Both were wrestling with their own demons. The Doctor was guilt-ridden for having to leave his troubled friend behind, while the Master sank further away in darkness and loneliness.

By the time the Doctor finally ended the transmission, and they were back in the octagonal room, The Master had turned his feeling of loss and sadness into resentment, which sat like a hot pebble inside his stomach and shot poison at his hearts. The Doctor sensed his anger. Trying to calm him, he placed his hand on his shoulder, but the Master brushed it off and turned away. Only an hour before he had literally counted the days to his release from what he regarded as the prison that the Gallifreyian Academy represented, but now that idiot Doctor had spoiled even that for him. Now he actually dreaded the last of their school days together.

"Leave me alone." The Master rubbed in his eyes to avoid having to look at him. "I'll find my way back in the tower without you."

He sat down on the floor with his back against the crystal, resting his arms on his knees as he stared into the distance in silence.

The Doctor was hesitant to leave his friend. He waited, longing for a response, even if it was an outburst of anger, but none came. Finally, after an hour, he left.

The Master stayed in the transmission room till the early morning when the first orange beams of the twin suns burst into the high doomed-shaped windows. He watched with hooded eyes how the field of light travelled over the slate floor. It was only when it reached the tips of his worn shoes that he caught the spark from the tiny object, lying at his feet between the cobwebs and dust-balls. It glittered like the surface of a lake, shattering the incoming sunlight into a million shards that cut tiny slashes into the stone walls of the ancient chamber.

The Master picked it up. It was the damaged white point star that headmaster Redgrave had discarded from his rod. The minute breaks that left it useless and dangerous radiated in fine threads from its heart, making it look like a snowflake captured in the purest of diamonds. With his mind turning in a spiral that could only descend further into darkness, he wrapped his fingers around the flawed star, and let it slide inside his pockets before getting up and brushing the dust from his clothes.

5.

In the late afternoon the transmission room became crowded with pupils and tutors alike. Headmaster Redgrave's class prepared themselves for yet another expedition, this time to the quiet forests of Vastha Nerada. It was highly recommended in the briefing and the information brochure that they kept themselves away from the shadows.

Redgrave's pack appeared into the classroom like a group of wounded wolfs. Redgrave himself had healed well, with only a tiny dent in his nose bridge that reminded of yesterday's quarrel with the Master, but his pride had taken a severe punch. As soon as he set eyes on the Master and the Doctor, his eyes flashed with anger. Generally at this age, the brainstem was most of the time short-circuiting with the tongue, sending messages without passing the higher regions of the brain. But Redgrave's tongue had always been a remote organ that was operated separately from any higher planes of consciousness. In other words, the boy didn't know when to shut his stupid gob. He walked straight up to the two friends, who were sitting in the first row closest to the transmission crystal. The Master had put his feet up on the railing. His mood appeared to have calmed down after last night's trip, although he hadn't spoken a single word to the Doctor as yet.

"That's my seat." Redgrave demanded.

The Master shrugged indifferently. "Didn't smell your scent-mark on it. Maybe you pissed on a different chair."

There was a dangerous change in Redgrave's eyes. He shot a short glance over his shoulder to his father, who was still occupied with giving instructions to his pupils. Then he turned around and trashed the Master's right knee with a clenched fist.

"Stop it!" The Doctor yelled, but Ravenius wrapped his arm around his neck and covered his mouth to stop him from alarming anyone.

Redgrave loomed over the Master who kept a straight face despite of the pain.

"You and I have unfinished business to attend to." Redgrave whispered. "After this is over. We'll be waiting for you outside in the Graveyard fields. All three of us." He gestured to Bardson, who lashed out and hit the Master's knee a second time. He winced and gritted his teeth in pain, but his face quickly returned to the watchful coldness that was all that the Doctor saw of him ever since he was released from the tower this morning. Redgrave grinned. "Consider this as a taste of what is going to happen to you and the Nerd. Now get out of my chair."

Fearing that he would once again resolve to violence, the Doctor's hearts froze as the Master slowly rose from his seat with his both hands clenched into tight fists.

"Let him go." He said in a flat voice, devoid of emotions. "You want to trash me for what I did to you, that's fine. But he's got nothing to do with this."

Convinced that he had the upper hand, Redgrave's grin widened as he snapped his fingers to give a signal to Ravenius. His sidekick let go of the Doctor, who immediately sucked in a deep breath of air in relief.

Redgrave moved pass the Master who remained standing in his way like an old tree rooted to the spot. He deliberately bumped his elbow in his adversary's ribs. The impact made the Master reel back. He placed his hand on the bioprint to steady himself, but otherwise remained silent and apparently calm.

Redgrave sat down in the Master's seat and kicked back his feet. "We have a date then." Redgrave said. "Can't wait." His face was adorned with the most malicious grin as he moved his finger over his neck in a slash-throat gesture. The Master kept staring ahead and said nothing.

"Master." The Doctor tried, eager to get him away from Redgrave. "Come. Let's find some other seats." Knowing him better than he knew the backside of his own hands, he had at least expected some resistance, but to his amazement he followed him to the back rows.

"You don't need to go face those idiots." The Doctor looked at his friend worriedly as they sat down in the farthest ring of the transmission circle. "Just, be sensible for once and alarm the headmaster. I know you don't like him, but he's very strict and wouldn't hesitate to punish even his own kid if he ever did wrong…Master?"

No reply, only that cold, far-away look.

"I just don't want you to get into trouble again. And I don't want you to get hurt. I really don't."

A sarcastic smile suddenly split the calm on the Master's face.

"You don't need to worry about me. Last night, alone in the transmission chamber, I finally got the time to think. Like you said. I don't do it often enough. But now with the drums gone, and you..." He finally glanced at him. "You leaving, soon I will have all the silence and all the time in the world, just to think."

Something in the Master's response, the way the words passed his lips without any anger or resentment, without even the slightest touch of emotion, worried the Doctor deeply. He was about to question him further, when headmaster Redgrave moved to the middle of the transmission ring and thumped his rod on the floor three times to demand the attention of his pupils.

"We're ready for transmission. I want everyone to focus their minds and keep themselves out of their peer's transmission fields. We don't want that unfortunate accident with those Silverleaf and Famalarius boys to repeat itself. Now, connect."

The pupils placed their hands flat on the bioprint pad, leaning forward over the small diamond imbedded into the console to let the signal enter their heads.

The headmaster held the tip of his rod that contained the new white point star against the crystal monolith, transporting the vibrations inside the tiny diamond to the heart of the transmitter that immediately started to sing. The sound that was produced was much more powerful than it was last night, when it only had to transport two young renegade Timelords through the timevortex, whereas the current settings were adjusted and put on maximum to transfer an entire class to the far-away galaxy of Nerada Pulstra.

The amount of energy needed to transport something as complex as a conscious living being through time and space was the equivalent of the amount produced in the entire life-time of an average star. When sonic transmission was invented, the discoverer himself, an aging Timelord who had spend too many of his incarnations in the secluded world of his dusty laboratories, had deemed it achievable in theory but unworkable in practice, because the reaction was almost impossible to control. The wavelength and the amplitude of the vibration had to be just right to disrupt the atoms of the subject without destroying the blueprint of the physical shape so that these could be send out into the timevortex. At the assigned point of destination, these particles were then reassembled again, using the memory that was still locked inside these clouds of atoms. One flaw in the process, one corrupt link in the chain of transmitters, even one tiny scratch in the white point star that altered the wavelength for just one hundredth of a fraction would cause disruption in the signal that, once amplified a millionth time by the crystal, would end in disaster.

Redgrave hadn't noticed it, nor had the Doctor, but when the Master bumped into the biopad, he had the damaged diamond in his hand, and with a simple flick of the wrist like a trained magician, he had exchanged the star in the console with the flawed one.

It was the headmaster himself who was the first to be alarmed by the terrified cries that came from the front row. Redgrave was sitting straight up in his seat, his hands, thin and pale, were pressed flat against the biopad system like a pair squashed spiders. The blue light that burst from the white point star penetrated into his mind, but instead of initiating the transmission, it was causing havoc as it separated the atoms inside his every living cell with such violence that it destroyed the memory of the young Timelord's physical form. His mind was burning, and his body was falling apart. The headmaster, horrified by the sight of his suffering child, rushed over to the engines to shut it down. The biopads in front of the other pupils in the room aborted their transmissions immediately. Panic broke out when the others found out what was happening to the headmaster's son.

Meanwhile, the aftershocks that still came from the crystal monolith kept working out its gruesome effects on the paralyzed boy, whose body became translucent in violent flashes of energy outbursts, transforming his horrified, pain-struck face into that of a grinning skeleton. Bardson, who sat next to Redgrave, jumped up from his seat.

"Headmaster! Do something! Make it stop!" the boy yelled as if he was staring at his own nightmares.

Redgrave picked up his rod and slammed it against the crystal. He hit it again and again till his staff split in the middle and he finally realized that his desperate effort to save his son's life was of no avail.

The Doctor witnessed the ongoing catastrophe in shock and horror. The Master relaxed his shoulders and sat back in his seat with his arms crossed over his chest. His expression remained one of ice and stone.

"We have to help him!" The Doctor said, grabbing hold of his sonic screwdriver as he jumped out of his seat, but before he could rush towards the others, the headmaster's son uttered an agonizing scream as blue beams of light erupted from his mouth and eyes, destroying him from the inside. The trillion atoms that composed him finally became so far separated that they could no longer sustain the Timelord's form. With an eruption of blinding light that signified the release of his dying body's last remaining energy, the boy combusted, leaving behind a cloud of microscopic dust.

Screams of horror came from the other pupils. The Doctor saw how the mist of atoms that once was Redgrave junior drifted over the classroom. It was no more but a thin membrane of smoke that vaguely carried the outline of the young Timelord's face, a fracturing skull with frightened eyes and a wide opened mouth that screamed for mercy. As it reached the front of the windows, it quickly was dissolved by the cold currents of air entering from outside.

The headmaster, his mind struck by grief, sank down in front of his boy's seat, and swiped handfuls of dust in the palm of his shaking hand.

Longing to see no more, the Doctor turned to the Master, who still sat quietly in his seat, his eyes observing the sorrow of his teacher and fellow pupils with the indifferent rationality of someone who was studying a colony of bacteria under a microscope.

"This is unbelievable. Awful. Absolutely horrendous." The Doctor muttered, still in shock.

"Yeah, it was quite –" The Master paused to think of the right word. "Unexpected." He said.

The tiniest smile flashed over the Master's face. It was only a small upturn of the lips that came and went within a blink of an eye. Nothing more. Still the Doctor noticed it.

It was exactly in that moment that the gruesome realization of what had happened to Redgrave finally dawned on him.

TBC

As always, please review & comment.