The Master chases, the Doctor runs. That's how it has always been, that's how it will always end.
Deep inside his hearts the Master knows it.
It is one reason why the death of his human gnaws so much on him. With her it was the other way around.
But...
Confusion is a poison that kills you slowly if you can't get past it. Uncertainty is a poison that does not kill you, but will weaken your ability to function, because every little detail suddenly becomes important. Add a Time Lord brain to the equation and you get something that's just plainly unbearable.
The Master sat under the tree, next to the dead body of a human woman, all of it frozen in time. His DNA was the only thing that allowed him to be unaffected by the lock. The drums had calmed down enough to dig up the other thing that tormented his very existence.
Whatever the heck was happening with him and the Doctor.
Centuries ago, when they had been young and inexperienced, they had called it love. Not with words, they would have never dared that. But they had known about it, read stories and seen plays about it. Even a society as theirs couldn't get rid of the very concept. And even when every authority on your entire planet makes sure to paint it as primitive and useless and below every kind of dignity, you still can't escape it. Words weren't needed.
But now? With all their history in place and all the accumulated hate in their bloodstreams, they could impossibly still call it the same. It had to be something else.
Maybe something entirely new.
A relationship that had lasted longer than many civilisations couldn't be defined by simple words or concepts.
And now... now the Doctor had heard the drums. Voluntarily. The Master still had a hard time believing it. This was thrilling. But then his head turned to the side and he saw Lumin again, the one person who had not only refused to stay away from him, no matter how much he scared her, but had also gotten the first glimpse of the drums. By accident at first. Later by choice. No one else had ever done that for him, let alone someone of a lesser species.
He felt numb. Not only because of her. How could it be that the drums still got less prominent around her when she wasn't even there anymore? And how could it be that they just had gotten so much worse as the Doctor had come too close?
It was hardly fair.
He had almost seriously hurt the Doctor by pushing the sound into his head with so much force. And not just hurt - that alone would be more than acceptable. This, however, was no fun. The drums had the power to shatter a mind, to push one into a place of darkness that could sometimes be impossible to escape. What if it had been too much? Madness wasn't curable by regeneration.
He was the best example for that.
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The Master did something he usually avoided like the pest, mainly because it was the exact opposite of being in control.
He hid.
For how long this would last he wasn't quite sure yet. But what he did know was that the new found closeness to the Doctor was more dangerous than he had ever considered. Which was no surprise, given the fact that they had done nothing but chasing and fighting each other ever since their paths had split during their academy years. Something the Master wasn't keen on thinking about right now.
