In And Through The Body [ Doctor Who | sequel to A Man With Sins ]

EIGHT

Long, long ago, when my people were still alive, way before the time war ever existed, I had known the Master. We were just children in the academy when we first met. He had been a shy kid, he kept to himself, and didn't make a lot of friends. A lot of the other kids thought he was strange, and I never understood why. Kids could be mean though, that was something I've known since I was a kid myself. Like the Master, I was also bullied, picked on, pushed around. We weren't friends when we were younger, but we weren't strangers either, which made everything that was happening that much worse. He'd never seemed violent before, whatever had happened to him when we were children had completely changed him for the worse. 

Currently, the Doctor, Wilfred and I were tied up. The Doctor was gagged, Wilfred was bound to a wooden chair, and I was strapped down to a table that was standing straight up, leaning against a wall. My second heart still wasn't working, and with my hands bound, it was impossible for me to try and restart it by hitting myself in the chest. Sweat covered my brow, my body was burning, my chest was becoming heavier and heavier as time ticked away. I couldn't help but look over at Wilfred with a sad gaze. This innocent man, though somehow connected to all of this, was now a victim. He didn't deserve to be tied up like this, let alone harmed in any way. 

Slowly, my eyes found their way to the Doctor, only to find that his eyes were glued to me. If he could talk against the gag in his mouth, I knew he'd be begging me to tell him what was going on, what was hurting, and I knew he'd ask me how he could help. I'd been shot, and zapped twice in one day, and my body was finally starting to feel the consequences. Even if the Doctor had healed the bullet wounds, the feeling of electricity running through my veins remained very faint. Our plan hadn't gone to plan at all. Instead of stopping the Master, we were prisoners of his once again. "Now then," The Master's voice was loud in my ear as he tightened the ropes that kept my captive. "I've got a planet to run. Is everybody ready?" Turning around to face Naismith, him and billions of others that had been affect by the Master's plan responded.

"Six billion, seven hundred and twenty-seven million, nine hundred and forty-nine thousand three hundred and thirty-eight versions of us are ready and at your command."

"What happened to you? What was so bad that it made you this way?" My voice cut through the air like a razor, causing the Master to turn back and look at me. "You were such a loving man, a caring man back in the days of Gallifrey. Do you not remember those days? Those days we would play together, sneak away and meet up just to stare at the skies? One day you came back different, please," I begged, "What happened to you? You are not this, we have forgiven you once, and you've come back again to terrorize us. Why?" In truth my heart was breaking as I looked at the Master.

There was more to my story with him then the Doctor knew of. Though the Doctor had met the Master long ago just as I had, we shared a different history with this man. At once I had loved him, those days we would sit under the trees and talk all evening were what had won me over all those years ago. The way the Master was looking at me after I spoke was confusing. A part of him seemed to remember those days, but in seconds that innocent look I saw in his eyes vanished. "I have been tortured nearly my whole life by this insistent drumming, it never stops. Even in my death I could still hear the beat of those drums. Where were you, Cara, when I lost my sanity, where were you? With how close we were, I thought you'd never leave my side, but you did. You abandoned me like everyone else." Pain ripped through my chest at his words, not only from the fact that only one of my hearts were working, but because he thought I had willingly abandoned him.

The Doctor was looking at the both of us with confusion written across his face as I took a deep breath. "I didn't leave you behind because I wanted to, I had no choice." My past was about to come to light in this room, a past I never wanted to speak of again. A past that not even the Doctor knew. "My parents, they-" I bit my lip, biting back tears. "One day my parents left and never came back. I was on my own, I had no one. I was so busy trying to keep up with my brother that I had no time to come and find you. I left the academy, I never returned because I couldn't. My brother, he was sick. He was sick like you are now, except it wasn't the sound of drums beating against his skull. He-" The tears were flowing down my cheeks at this point. "When he took his own life, I fled. There was nothing left for me there."