DW Fic: A Good Old Normal, Human Life (Part Ten of Thirteen)

[fathomlessspite]

Fandom: DOCTOR WHO
Title: Banished to Eris
Series: A Good Old Normal, Human Life (10/13)
Word Count: (total) 16,990
Rating: PG-13
Summary: What happens after the Doctor leaves Rose and his human counterpart behind on Pete's world?
Pairings: TenII/(Alt)Master (bit of TenII/Rose & Hart/Jones)
Character/s: The (Human) Doctor, Harold Saxon/Master, Rose, Tish Jones, Ianto Jones, John Hart 
A/N: This fic is now COMPLETE! The last chapters will be posted weekly.
Most screen caps from the sonic biro site and the power of google-fu 

Catch Up: Prologue, Welcome to Number Ten Mr Smith, Saxon and Smith, Enter the Judoon, A Good Expositional Explanation, Extreme Pictionary and a bit of Snogging, Not the Slow Path, Observation Station, Mend Your Ways 

Banished to Edris

His ears rang, everything was loud but muffled at the same time and he hurt everywhere.

 

“Doctor!” he distantly heard Rose call , as if through walls and layers of cotton wool.  But where was she?  He moved slightly before he realised he had yet to open his eyes.  The air was dry and gritty and he coughed as he tried to push himself up, only to fall back down again head spinning.

 

“Doctor!” she shouted again, maybe only two cotton wool walled rooms away now.  He groaned; he had never felt less like the Doctor than he did now.  All these months walking the slow path; working, eating, sleeping and with just the one heart beating.  He’d managed it all, but how did humans do this?  How did they bounce back from this sort of pain without a Time Lord’s regenerative powers, or ability to close off certain pain receptors briefly, without that second heart to pump blood to where it’s needed if the other has been winded?

 

He felt a rough hand on his forehead, desperate hands run down his body in quick pats.  “John,” a familiar voice murmured.  The frantic movements paused for a second, one hand moved up to brush through his hair briefly.

 

  

He breathed a sigh of relief.  The Master was here.  They’d be fine; he would be fine.  But as soon as he relaxed into the caress the Master withdrew it and began his frenzied movements again.

 

Just as he began to wonder what the Master was doing he felt Rose drop down beside him.  “Doctor, are you okay?” she asked.  But he barely heard her. 

 

The Master’s movements had slowed; he reached inside the Doctor’s pocket and withdrew the fob watch.  The Doctor heard the audible sigh of relief and the shuffle of fabric and stone and shoes on uneven ground as the Master got up and stepped away.  He had what he wanted and now he was gone and John was left lying on the floor alone.

 

“Doctor?” Rose asked again.  One of her hands gripped his arm, the other brushed over his cheeks.  Wiping away tears he realised, having belatedly recognised the sting of his eyes for what it was.

 

“I’m fine,” he answered, finally successful in opening his eyes he recognised her presence and squinted up at her.  She was beautiful, and she looked at him as if the world might end if he wasn’t fine.  Why was he doing this again?  Abandoning Rose for a man whose attention he could only hope to hold for tiny and sporadic fractions of time.

 

Admittedly for those moments he was the sole focus of that wonderful, insane attention.  And it was the Master.  And even though his heart felt like it was tearing itself apart inside his chest he couldn’t just let him go.

 

“You’re bleeding,” she said and touched her hand to his temple.  It came away sticky and he noted that perhaps that dull throbbing in his head might be attributed to a head injury.

 

The Doctor pushed himself up with some effort.  “I’ll be fine,” he said again to Rose.

 

“You’re head is bleeding, you idiot,” she responded angrily.  He narrowed his eyes at her but didn’t respond, his attention quickly moved to watch the Master run round the room.

 

“Sir,” Ianto said, grateful as the Master pulled him to his feet.

 

“Find a terminal that’s working,” the Master replied shortly.

 

“Yes sir,” he said already headed toward the nearest intact consol, all previous disagreements momentarily forgotten.

 

“Where’s Captain Hart?” Rose asked.  A muffled groan and the shifting of some rubble was her answer.

 

“This one’s working sir,” Ianto told the Master who jumped over stones and debris to Ianto’s side; he gave the computer a once over with the sonic screwdriver before he pushed Ianto out of the way.

 

“Go and help your boyfriend,” he muttered.  Ianto looked mutinous, but headed toward the shifting debris that partially covered Hart.

 

“Come on,” Rose said and held out a hand to him.  The Doctor took it and let her help him to his feet.  His head swam for a second but Rose held on tight and prevented him from falling again.  “You okay?” she asked.

 

“Yeah, yeah, give me a minute,” he replied, eyes still squeezed shut.  At the Masters bark of laughter his eyes snapped open.  “What?” he called, and gingerly made his way through the rubble toward the Master, Rose hot on his heels.

 

“They want the weapons,” the Master said with a snort.  “They don’t care about me; have dismissed you as my bit on the side-”

 

“What?” Rose asked sharply.  “Why?”

 

The Doctor rolled his eyes at himself.  “Genetic transference, why didn’t I think of that?  We could have blamed the readings on you and I having been, you know...” he waved his hand about a bit.  “I used that to trick a Judoon once.  It worked, think it might’ve given Martha the wrong idea though.”

 

Rose and the Master both suddenly frowned at him.  “What?”

 

“Who’s Martha?” the Master asked.

 

“You were with her?” Rose asked.

 

“No, just that one peck, nothing else,” he explained quickly.  There was a pause where they both frowned some more.  “The weapons?” he prompted.

 

“Right we just need to hand them over then they’ll wander off back to wherever and we’re home free,” the Master grinned.

 

“We can’t do that, that’s Time Lord technology,” the Doctor protested.

 

“You’ve a point I suppose,” the Master crossed his arms and hmm’d contemplatively.  “And they might come in useful,” he added.

 

“For what?” Rose asked suspiciously.

 

“Oh you know the usual,” the Master gave her a maniacal grin.  Maybe it was the head injury, the situation or his current stupid human emotional torment but the Doctor couldn’t really bring himself to care at the moment, despite the glance Rose aimed at him.

 

“That’s why the Time Lords are coming,” Ianto said from behind them, where he’d pulled a semi-conscious John Hart from the rubble and propped him up against another fairly stable looking pile of rubble.  “They don’t know about him or at least don’t care,” he waved his hand at the Doctor.  “They know about the weapons.”

 

“They know I’m here, on the same planet as a large cache of Time Lord weaponry, which was claimed by someone of Time Lord lineage.” The Master raised his eyebrows at Ianto, “Very good Mr Jones.”

 

“Is this good or bad?” Rose asked.

 

“It’s very good, very very good,” the Master answered.

 

“For me it is,” the Doctor said.

 

“Like I said, it’s good,” the Master smiled at him fleetingly.  “When we escape it means they won’t be hunting us down with any more vigour than they would hunt me usually.”

 

“Because they won’t know about me,” the Doctor agreed.  “But it doesn’t help us right now does it?”

 

The Master shrugged dismissively.  “We’ll just sneak off whilst they fight among themselves.  Piece of cake.”

 

“The Time Lords aren’t even here yet!  The Judoon could destroy the entire planet before they get here!”

 

“Even if the Time Lords were here, who knows how many innocent people would get caught in the crossfire?” Rose interjected.  The Doctor felt a stab of guilt in his stomach, he hadn’t even thought about that.

 

“You’re right; we might not make it to the Tardis before the Judoon’s fingers get itchy on the giant red button.  So...” he span round and tapped his fingers restlessly against his thigh, the other hand was still clenched tight around the fob watch.  “So what if we move the weapons, off the planet, not too far.  We could keep them in the solar system.  Mars maybe?”

 

“Not far enough.  Eris,” the Doctor responded.

 

“The personification of strife and discord?” the Master asked with a raised eyebrow.  “Oh dear,” he tutted.

 

“Eris?” Rose questioned.

 

“Furthest currently known dwarf planet in this solar system,” Ianto told her.

 

“Sounds good, how do we get the weapons there?” Rose asked.

 

“Hart’s wrist strap should do nicely,” the Master said and held his hand out expectantly.  Ianto handed the wrist strap to him.

 

“It can go that far?” the Doctor asked.

 

“If it can’t, I’ll make it.”

 

“Won’t one of us need to go with it?  I doubt there’s a breathable atmosphere on Eris?” Rose asked.

 

“One of us only needs to go if we want this back,” the Master told her, indicating the device he held.

 

“So we can just send it on its own,” Ianto surmised.  He glanced over at Hart.  “Good thing he’s mostly unconscious at the moment.”

 

“Hmm,” the Master nodded as he wrapped the strap round his wrist, he slipped the fob watch carefully into his inside pocket before he pressed a few buttons on the screen in quick succession and disappeared.

 

“What-?” Ianto took a step forward.

 

“He’ll be back,” the Doctor said, leant wearily against a nearby still standing desk.

 

“John, he has the watch.  Why hasn’t he used it?” Ianto asked curiously.

 

“Good question,” he shrugged in response.  “Probably because he realised I was right, he will be easier to find if he uses it now.”  The Doctor laughed to himself.

 

“What?” Rose asked.

 

“My Master, the one in our universe, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought, wouldn’t have listened to reason or me.  He’d have just used it to change back,” he answered.

 

“Why?” Ianto asked.

 

The Doctor closed his eyes for a moment thinking of the Valiant, or the Master dancing, of Lucy’s bruised face, the Tardis, the Toclofane.  And a flash of the Master laughing maniacally, hundreds of him laughing. 

 

  

The Doctor frowned and looked up at Ianto and Rose.  “Because he was mad.”

 

“Madder than this?” Rose asked incredulously.

 

“You can’t begin to imagine...” he trailed off.  “This man, this Master... he’s saner than I am.”

 

He was saved a response to that comment by the reappearance of the man in question with a familiar looking chest at his feet.  He removed the strap from his wrist and laid it down on the top of the chest

 

“What are you doing?” the Doctor asked as the Master pulled out the sonic screwdriver.

 

“Attaching it more securely and making it send out a scrambling signal.  They’ll be able to tell it’s on one of the dwarf planets but not which one,” he told the Doctor and smiled smugly over his shoulder.

 

“Clever,” he commented.  The Master just raised his eyebrows, a reprimand to the Doctor for thinking otherwise.

 

He pressed a few more buttons and the chest dematerialised in front of them.

 

“Now what?”  Ianto asked.

 

“Now we get out of here,” the Master grinned and took off for the thankfully still intact exit; the Doctor darted after him and heard Rose and Ianto at his heels.

 

On their way out they passed a thoroughly bewildered Owen.  “What the bloody hell-?”

 

“There’s a Judoon ship in orbit after some weapons Mr Saxon just sent to one of the dwarf planets.  Get rid of them,” the Doctor heard Ianto shout to him as he ran past.

 

“Get rid of them?!  How the hell am I supposed to do that Ianto?!” Owen shouted as the door closed behind them.

 x-posted to dwfiction and slash_lords 
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