What If… the Doctor Had Died in the Time War and the Master Had Lived?

The Time War was a bloody thing.

It was an endless, bloody thing until whatever soul that was left in the Master died, and then the war was ended very quickly.

After he'd been resurrected, despite the necessity FOR that resurrection by Rassilon himself, his role had been very limited indeed.  The Doctor saw more action than he did, but the action that the Master DID see was always the worst, the bloodiest, the most ruthless battles, always out on the frontline, the perfect warrior with more cunning than whole Dalek fleets.  The Doctor had the good sense to scramble out of these.  He did not run away, the courage in him wouldn't allow it, he knew his duty, to the universe if not to Gallifrey, and he WOULD fight to the death to save it if it came to that, but the worst of it… he wasn't there.  And the Master was always grateful for that because if the Doctor had seen the sights he had, if the DOCTOR had fought the bloody fights he had… the man's conscience would crumble and die within him and there'd be nothing left of the man.

But, the Doctor could not altogether escape fighting.  He was there at the fall of Arcadia.  The Master had been restrained from that battle and it tore him up inside that he wasn't there with him then… Arcadia was a tragedy and perhaps if they'd fought together… but he'd been left at home like the useless housewife, wringing his hands on the dishtowel and filled with more bitterness than anyone could ever comprehend.

And through all this they endured.  Separate… but they endured and were alive and pulled strength from the knowledge that somewhere in the universe their other half still lived too and, for once, they were fighting on the same side.

And then it all ended.  When he found out, because no one TOLD him, no one saw fit to contact him, there was no special ministration paid him for this news, in fact, if he had not been stalking the announcements like a hungry wolf he might NEVER have known, but… one battle proved too much and the Doctor's name was found on the lists of the dead.

After that the Master snapped.  Suddenly everything became very clear to him and the small hindrance in him, the toiling, eternal battle within him snapped and fell like lead in water.  No everything was very clear now.  He was cold, crisp, efficient, and whatever fire that had governed him for his entire life, that sparked in his eyes and all but consumed him in his raging temper, was burnt and dead and gone.  And he was terrifying to behold.  A dead man that walked in the clothes of a god.

He had been threatening before.  He had borne the very bearing of a god.  But whatever little conscience he'd had then had evaporated in the fierce, sudden lightning heat of his grief.  Gone was the mercy, the mirth, the… purpose in him.  He was a living war machine, but he was not living, he existed, and that was all.

And in the new clarity of his mind, without the muddle of emotions, of the deep flame within him that flared and burned for something lost to him now, he ended the war.  He went to the Time Lord council simply, without his accustomed arrogance or flare and very calmly, politely, laid down his carefully calculated plan for the end of the Daleks.  And it was cruel… it was genocide… but it assured the end of the war and the safety of the universe and the preservation of the Web of Time.  With no alternatives but the continuing struggle they were already committed to, the Time Lords gave him everything he needed.  And not once did the Master divert for his own purposes.  He did not try to flee. He did not corrupt.  He did everything he said he would.

And then when all was his, when at last his terrible deed was achieved and the whole of Gallifrey lay at his feet, as he had always craved hadn't he? As they worshipped and thanked him… he slaughtered them too.  But slaughtered is too graphic a term.  What he had done was installed a black hole converter in the heart of Gallifrey, in secret, with all the resources of Gallifrey open to him, and once the Daleks had been exterminated, once everything was set and right and at peace… almost out of pure petulance, the Master executed the corrupt race that no longer held any importance to him, for having let die the only beautiful creature in this universe, the only worthy thing their backwards society had produced, and the writhing flame of his life force.

When all was finished, when he was truly alone, he did not ask him himself if the Doctor would have approved.  He did not set to mourning and wail and scream at the heavens for the injustice of it all, for stealing away the only thing that had made his life worthwhile.  No, he did not.  And yet he thought of the Doctor every second, every breath, every beat of his hearts beat his name, imprinting his likeness onto his mind forever.  And he quietly slipped from this part of the universe into the void where the TARDIS' go to grieve for their lost masters and sing out their long, sad songs of mourning unto the end of time.

He went there. And the psychic onslaught of the Doctor's old type-40 nearly knocked him unconscious from the powerful wail of her loss.  His TARDIS cloaked him, but barely, as the sympathy between TARDIS', in particular their TARDIS', was too strong for her not to immediately seek out that old blue police box and wrap her too in her psychic arms and let her pour her sadness into her.  But still his TARDIS would not let him touch her, as he had come to do.  It would be betrayal to the Doctor's memory to let any other Time Lord near her after losing her bonded owner, but the Master sang her own song of mourning back at her with such fervor and dedication that she understood why he had come.  That she knew his pain matched her own, though he may not show it.  Inside there was nothing but a black raging mess of hate at EVERYTHING in the universe, he was ripped apart, held together only by the stitches of his own stubbornness, his own refusal to meet any end that he himself had not chosen.  His fire had turned inward burning from the inside out until it had charred every speck of emotion out of him and burnt out.  His mind was a carefully concealed raging storm, furiously beating against itself, desperately screaming, "IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME!"

She could understand all this, and trembled slightly because he was mad, grief had torn the last shred of sanity from his weakened grasp and there was only the shell left.  So he walked into her and pulled the Doctor's biodata from her system.  He pulled up copied Matrix screens and used the laboratories of both TARDIS's until he had made a perfect genetic replica of the man he loved.

Not a resurrection, there was nothing left, not even ashes, but the Master was a cold, calculating genius and he didn't NEED a trace.  He created him out of chemicals and memories and his fierce determination that he WOULD live again if he had to sacrifice his own lives for it.  

"What have you done?" was the first thing he said when he came alive.

Not: thank you. Not: oh Master, I'm so happy to see you again. Not: is this heaven?  No. Because he had made the Doctor perfectly he had said the exact, practical, morally correct thing he would have said if he hadn't been dead but instead found out the Master had 'accidentally' taped over his seasons of 'Lost'.

"I shouldn't be here. I was dead!" the Doctor tried to fight him, tried to get away, but his new body was weak still.

"Do you want to go back to being dead?" the Master hissed coldly, staring into his big blue eyes and pinning him back against the stasis bed where he'd made him, from bits and pieces and spare amino acids, and yes, no small amount of love, terrible, poisonous, vicious as it was.

The Doctor paused for a moment and understood that what the Master had done had not been a selfish act of anger, but instead the pitiable desperation of a man ready to admit he had nothing else to live for, prepared to grovel for his reason to exist.  

The Doctor hesitated and the moment was an eternity of what their life could be together, how they might spend it in joy and happiness or in strife and hate, but the constant was they were alive, they both were.  In a thousand worlds in a hundred years, the Master died, but he always came back to him, and the Doctor waited... because he knew.  He knew it like that was the only sure constant in the universe, beyond time and physics and Rassilon, the Master had to come back. To him. For him. Because of him.

The Doctor mulled over his choice.  He could beg for more time, he was so weak this would hardly be a fair or well-thought-through decision, but the decision wouldn't be any less his to make if he waited five seconds or five millennia.  In fact, because he'd hesitated, he'd already made it.  There was no moral victory, no 'right' answer, it was two lives versus no life at all, the last Time Lords left in existence, extinguished forever, his own personal genocide, but that was barely a factor in this decision.  He never really thought it would ever come to this, he'd hoped it wouldn't... but the Master had taken matters into his own hands and now the time had come.  

The Doctor sighed.

"Put me back in to sleep some more," he mumbled, already leaning back on the bed.

The Master's lips twitched and his features recognized an expression it hadn't felt in years: a smile.  He began to lower the lid of the stasis chamber when softly the Doctor's new-old hands snaked out around him and pulled him close, planting a kiss softly on his cheek.  He paused, as if to say something, then thought better of it and let go.  

The Master walked away.

Life continued.