Silencing the Drums

IN WHICH WE MEET A TELLER OF TALES, AND THE MASTER COMES CLEAN

Far and away from the TARDIS, the Earth, the Doctor’s new resolve and the Master’s hunger, a planet lay waiting to receive its most esteemed visitors. It was a small world, a pale little planet revolving gently around a white dwarf. It shouldn’t have existed – the star should have burned too cold to support a living planet. Yet there it was, defying all logic, spinning quietly through the cosmos and keeping to itself for the most part.

The entire planet was as colorless as its parent star. Plants fed on a different sort of energy altogether, and the vast empty planes that covered most of this world were seeded with long, fine, white grasses. Deep, dark, impossibly blue oceans dotted the planet like a leopard’s spots, and rivers ran like sumi ink through its forests and fields. Travelers who knew of this planet called it the unblemished diamond, the silver world, the impossible jewel. Its inhabitants called it Gintsuru, which meant ‘silver wanderer’ in their own language.

Upon the highest peak, guarded from snow and high winds by an energy field – indeed, very similar to cities of the long-dead world of Gallifrey – sat the capitol of all Gintsuru, the seat of power and commerce. The city had been built with the purest white quartz, mined from the living heart of the mountains upon which it sat. Tall spires mimicked the snowcap peaks that surrounded them, crossed by a network of roads and bridges that sparked like dew on spider’s silk. Long airship docks stretched out from the city’s center, radiating like the points on a star. On such a small planet in a backwater of a system, there was little intergalactic trade to be had. Such a majestic city could not have been built on the back of one species alone, however - and the one thing that Gintsurians had was something that every other race needed.

The Gintsurians held a power even Time Lords did not: the ability to see the very threads woven into the tapestry that was an individual life. Other races called them the Storytellers, and that suited them just fine.

Once, long ago, the Storytellers and Time Lords had done a brisk business between them in altering the destinies of other worlds. Though both races held a strict policy of non-interference, their unique gifts muddied the waters of fate without any special assistance. Over time each species grew jealous of the other, and eventually they ceased contact. The Storytellers had seen the burning of Gallifrey and looked on as the Time War raged, outside of and beyond it, observing the end of countless stories.

The Storytellers no longer bothered with the Time Lords’ tale. As far as they were concerned, the story had ended, and they ignored lingering plotlines like the Doctor’s. There was one among them, however, who watched the passing of the Doctor’s life with great interest.

He made his home well beyond the capitol city. Among his people he was somewhat of an outcast, deemed eccentric and far too self-centered to work as part of a cohesive community. This did not bother the Kyuubi in the slightest, and he enjoyed his dubious celebrity status among his own people. He shared a deep underground complex of caves with a single human male, and he stole for a living.

On this day he strode the boundary of his holdings with his companion in tow, gazing skyward and lost in thought. As with all of his kind, he seemed perpetually young by human reckoning, no older than twenty-eight. His skin was chalk-white, and his fine, soft hair was the white-blonde of an albino’s. Each member of his species took on some sort of fairy-tale trait, from the limbs and adornments of animals to the trappings of mythical beasts and legends. The Kyuubi was, as his name suggested, very fox-like, with pricked white ears and three soft, black-tipped brush-tails. His wrists, elbows, and ankles were touched with downy fur.

Beside him, his companion was nearly swarthy – tan, tall, with a swimmer’s solid build and a mane of rich chestnut hair, Romney Cooper was the Kyuubi’s ideal opposite. He’d been plucked from his not-quite-ordinary life a decade ago and hadn’t looked back since, never questioning his fate too deeply. Like the Doctor’s companions, he was along for the ride, come fair or foul weather.

“I think we’re going to have a visitor soon,” Kyu said, halting suddenly and turning to face Rom, his pale blue eyes bright with glee. “My old friend – mmm, though I doubt he’d say the same of me. His tale’s grown tangled of late, and he has a plot device that he’s not quite sure what to do with.”

Rom had long since grown used to Kyu’s way of speaking. Though he’d never be able to read the stories himself, he understood enough of what Kyu saw to make sense of it. “This wouldn’t be your mysterious Time Lord, would it?” he asked.

“Perhaps.” Kyu fell gracefully to sit, cross-legged, in the grass, and patted the cool earth beside him. “I never tire of reading him.”

“From what I hear, you never tire of trying to convince him to whisk you away in his mythical blue box,” Rom laughed, dropping to a seat beside him. “Watch out – I might get jealous.”

“Naturally, you’d come along as well.” Kyu plucked a few blades of grass and combed them through his fingers, thoughtful again. “I do wonder, though. It’s always hard to see his story with any clarity, but I sense a particular darkness lingering over this portion of it. Something has come back into the tale that ought not be there.”

~*~

A world of time and space away, the Doctor was having a struggle with the logistics of privacy and leashes. He’d gotten the lead attached without any trouble, but he would need to either stand in the shower stall with the Master while he washed or let him go, and neither option seemed particularly promising.

“Come now, Doctor, either strip down and get in here with me or let the leash go,” the Master said, tugging impatiently on his collar. He was standing half-under the shower spray, but could go no further. “These awful old 40’s models have been known to run out of hot water rather quickly.”

“You might run,” the Doctor said rather lamely, trying to avert his gaze and keep an eye on his prisoner at the same time. It wasn’t working very well. “And I just washed up. Can’t you just… spin around a bit? Rinse one side at a time?”

The Master grabbed the end of the lead and pulled, hard, dragging the Doctor into the room a further few inches. “Just let go of the damned thing. Where am I going to go? Out the air vent?”

The Doctor finally relinquished his hold and backed out of the small bathroom. “I’ll be standing right out here.”

“I’m sure you will,” the Master said, rolling his eyes and snapping the shower door shut.

The heat and steam felt better than he would’ve liked to admit. Imprisoned in the filthiest cell, having nothing but an empty corner for a lavatory and a stale, piss-scented blanket for warmth, he’d come out the other end of his captivity filthier than he could remember being in his life. The brief, ill-fated stint he’d had in the library Jacuzzi had drawn away some of the stench, but he hadn’t had time to properly scrub himself clean. Now fresh, hot water poured down over him, pulsing like little needles on his skin, bullying away the dirt and filth. He scoured himself with his own nails first, and thought about his imprisonment, and the muck, and the stink, and the drums grew louder.

I must be clean, I must-

Louder they came, over the sound of water on tile, over the omnipresent hum of the TARDIS’s controls, over his own increasingly labored breath.

In these moments he could not think. He could not see. He could not hear, save for the four beats, endless and overpowering. He could taste nothing but the iron tang of blood in his mouth, and his whole being longed to bury teeth and fingers in living flesh. Each time, these things were constant – each time, something was new. The drums drove him to claw the dirt from his body, reminding him of the stink and rot and pain and shame of his Gallifreyan cell.

They can smell me, can’t let them smell me, can’t let them-

He hissed in pain as his fingernails carved out a crescent of skin from his forearm and snapped out of the madness just as quickly as he’d entered it. His pale eyes locked on the bright spatters of blood on the floor, and he retched.

Sometimes the madness left him stronger, full of rage, ignorant of pain and fear. Sometimes, as now, it left him emptied out, weak, sick. The sliver wound on his arm stung, and the pounds of raw animal flesh working their way through his guts made him suddenly nauseous. He braced himself against the far wall and tilted his head back against the cool tiles, closing his eyes and focusing on the white noise of water to dull the throbbing drums.

Eventually his hearts slowed, his stomach ceased churning, his knees stopped shaking. He pulled himself upright, despising his weakness, and thrust his head beneath the shower spray again, losing himself in the heat and thunderous noise. Quite deliberately, he pulled his thoughts away from his imprisonment and towards his current situation. As he lathered his filthy hair, he allowed himself to linger on this new Doctor, processing for the first time all the particulars of his latest regeneration. It was a fine body, to be sure, and the Master had detected a bit of resistance in him. There had been no weeping, no gratitude to see him, only anger and the careful concealment of emotion. This was not what he’d been expecting.

This was a Doctor who, if pushed, might very well push back. He’d need to be careful in getting what he wanted. First, the drumming – this time, he’d accept help. Now there was an added danger to it, for if Rassilon had used his head as a conduit once, what was to stop him doing it again?

While he was at it, he reasoned, why should he not have a bit of fun at the Doctor’s expense as well? He couldn’t remember the last time they’d shared such close quarters for an extended period of time, and beyond the tricks and teasing he loved so much, the Master knew that the Doctor wanted him. He always did. It would be an endless entertainment to try and crack him, to draw out that wrathful god that lurked beneath his skin. It was always the Doctor’s way to resist him at first, to play coy, and the longer he kept it up, the better it was when he finally broke.

The Master lingered quite a while in the shower. There was a lot of him to clean, skinny though he was, and perhaps his contemplation of his captor kept him occupied a little longer, as well. Whatever the reason, when he finally emerged, towel-clad, sweet-smelling, his damp hair tousled and sticking out at odd angles, he seemed distinctly more at ease.

“You’ll want this back,” he said, handing the lead’s end to a nonplussed Doctor. “Never know what a naughty fellow like me will get up to, if you don’t keep an eye on him.”