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January 1st, 2020
The New Year’s celebrations in Venice had been beautiful. By human standards.
The Master steered clear of St. Marco’s Square and all its kissing couples—the apes' displays of affection never got less revolting—and walked to La Riva Degli Schiavoni to watch the fireworks. Then, to the Teatro La Fenice, to see the opera. Nothing like some good drama and flair to get him in good spirits. Now, he’s heading back home just as the night begins to brighten.
He stops at the door of the old apartment building where he's been living. The three-storey house dates back to the 18th century, and it’s comfortable enough to make the Master respect the long-dead builders who put it together. A lot of places in Venice are like that, if he’s willing to give credit to humans. Venice is one of those Earth cities he has honestly grown to enjoy.
He looks behind himself, spots the sun just beginning to rise over the grey-green waters of the canals, and breathes out a contented sigh.
After seventy seven years, one would think he had had enough of seeing the dawn of a new year, but it’s always so satisfying seeing humans proclaiming their hope for a better future, resolutions of personal improvement, promises of peace and justice for the year, and so on… all coming crashing down before April. Truly, the joke never gets old.
And each New Year ‘s Day also meant one less to wait. That’s why this one had been his favourite. It was the last.
Five days from now, he’ll be in London, and he’ll meet her, and everything, everything, will change. The Master can almost be satisfied.
He finally turns around and unlocks the door as quietly as he can, trying to tiptoe through the first-floor corridor and get to his flat upstairs, but a few muffled sounds behind the door tell him Signora Rossi, his landlady, is up.
She opens the door just as he passes in front of it, all tired smiles and dreamy eyes over cheeks marked with the laughter lines of a well-lived life.
“Had fun, caro mio?” she asks, joyfully, but in a low voice, not breaking the quiet of the early morning.
“Yes, a lot. It was lovely.”
“Ah, I miss my days of partying ‘til the sunrise,” she says, a sparkle in her sea-green eyes. “My friends and I would stay out all night long, dancing for hours under the stars, and come home with the most wonderful stories to tell.”
“Well, I can't tell you much about partying and dancing,” the Master says, with his most charming smile, “but I'd be glad to share some stories. If you'll suffer having me over for breakfast, that is.”
“Oh, you better be here for breakfast! I’ll make enough food to feed the entire crowd at St. Marco’s square.”
The Master laughs. She’s probably not exaggerating. The woman does cook as if she has a whole battalion to feed.
--
Despite going to sleep only when the sun was already rising, the Master wakes relatively early in the morning. He opens his window to the first cold and grey morning of the new year.
After amusing Signora Rossi with a few tales of the fun and awkward things he'd seen the night before, he steps outside to learn that an unexpected turn of the tide has caused acqua alta . Most of the city's squares are under a few inches of water, which has ruined the day of several tourists who would now lose hours of their limited time to enjoy the city.
The Master laughs as he walks by a particularly angry German woman. His day keeps getting better and better. He splashes through the streets drinking in the sad expressions and frustrated sighs, whistling a merry tune.
It’s late afternoon when the Master gets home, carried back by Giuseppe, a Gondolier in his late sixties who spends the entire ride bad-mouthing the tourists in his thick Venetian dialect. The Master tips the man generously, pleased by the delightful talk.
He drops a bag of bussolá—buttered biscuits from Burano he's grown to love—at Signora Rossi’s door and goes to his flat.
He’d got himself an exquisite Carnival mask. He won’t be here in time for Carnival, of course, but it is beautiful regardless. And it’s always clever to have a different disguise on hand.
He leaves the mask next to his Australian kangaroo-leather bag and Mongolian studded belt. Just a few of the items he’s collected over the years and across the world. On the top of the pile he lays his TCE, the one artefact he never lets out of his sight.
Downstairs, he can hear Signora Rossi coming home, singing loudly.
It’s not any song he knows and he can't quite make out the words. It doesn’t sound Italian or even Venetian, but it’s lovely. And, for some reason, it’s breaking his hearts. Making him think of home, and loss, and time.
Time and home and loss and the Doctor . His hands curl around the TCE and he feels the urge to go downstairs and shrink his landlady to make the song stop. He takes a deep breath. It’d be stupid and a waste of the device’s energy. It's five days, it's one goddamn week. He can survive one week . Then it'll be worth it. All these seventy seven years.
The next verse goes like a dagger through his hearts. He throws the TCE aside and it clatters to the floor. The song stops. The Master sighs, rakes his fingers through his hair. At any moment Signora Rossi might come up and ask if he’s okay, and he’d prefer not to have any incriminating item on sight.
It’s almost January 5th. He’ll be fine. Everything will be over soon.
And everything will be okay.
January 2nd
The Master struggles to leave his bed now that there are no more celebrations around the city. Still wrapped in his sheets, he watches as the sun gets higher through his living room window, colouring Venice in gold, pink, and blue.
Once upon a time, he could just get into his TARDIS and skip these obnoxious three days. That was a long, long time ago, now. But the longing to do it, just once, never quite goes away.
He takes a look around his flat. It's a simple place. Just a small, generic space he has never bothered to decorate. Living room and kitchen, bedroom and bathroom behind a door. And the best of it: a large window overlooking a beautiful crisscross of streets and canals. And it is a mess. He should start packing. He mentioned that in passing to Signora Rossi when they were sharing breakfast the day before, and she had insisted on helping him, which he profusely refused, holding back the urge to tell her to piss off. The last thing he needs is an old Venetian lady asking why he has Catcher in the Rye, first edition, signed by Sallinger himself, with the dedication mentioning him by name (a fake name, of course, but, coincidentally, the one he was currently using). Or the stolen Brazilian Jules Rimet Trophy.
He had watched the Brazilian victory in 1970, it was only fair he'd take the trophy from it. Besides, the man he borrowed the trophy from wanted to melt it and it was worth so, so much more intact.
It ‘d be silly to take that back to England now. Maybe he'll ship it to Brazil. Stars knew Brazilians needed good football news after 2014…
His reminiscing is interrupted by an insistent knocking at his door.
“Yes?” he asks, pushing World Cups out of his mind for a moment.
“If you want to eat something, I’m making anguilla,” Signora Rossi asks. She sounds weird, wistful even. Probably worried he hasn't eaten properly.
Eels. He can’t stand the stuff. It reminds him just a bit too much of Daleks out of their cases.
“No, thank you, signora. I had some fritala for breakfast and I won’t eat anything else for a while.”
“Bah! Surviving on street vendor food won’t keep you standing.”
“I promise to eat properly for dinner,” the Master answers, rolling his eyes.
“I’ll hold you on that promise!” she chides, though not without affection.
The Master sighs, less angry than he should be. As much as he hates to admit it, he is no stranger to humans caring for him for no reason. He's been in enough unsavoury situations where he looks just pathetic or vulnerable or lovely enough that someone sees it as their moral obligation to help him. It's not like he hasn't used that to his favour over the decades. Those big sad eyes this body has been blessed with are a valuable tool.
--
Something else the eyes help with, he thinks later that night, is all the flirting. Even the Doctor had fallen for it, when Bow Tie had been instantly smitten with Agent O’s dreamy smile and long, fluttering lashes. Eyebrows and Rainbow Shirt were no more immune to it. The couple from Milan now looking eagerly at him are just the next in a long line of people falling for his charms.
The Master wouldn't be opposed to it, to tell the truth. Yes, as embarrassing as it was, he has indulged in relationships with humans. There had just been so much time to kill, and he had been so, so bored.
It's crazy how time stretches when one has no way of escaping it. No quick runs to the TARDIS to get the good drinks at that decade-long party in Elviria. Or treks to a planet that’s still cooking, to look for new, interesting volcanic eruptions to gaze at. Or flying to wreak some havoc three hundred years ago in one of the funny-looking planets in funny-looking galaxies. Or even to take a look at the Doctor when he was cavorting with all those otters.
It also means that time is restrictive. No return trips allowed. Only one chance to see the Venetian fireworks at the 2020 New Year's party. Or the perfect Northern Lights in Lapland in 1949. Every single thing was to be appreciated just that once. Did that make them smaller? Or more special? He knows what he would have answered seventy seven years ago. He's not so sure now.
All that time is running out now. No more time for romantic escapades, no space in his mind for anything other than the Doctor’s approaching demise. No more beauty in these mundane human encounters. He politely declines the couple’s offer and heads back home.
He's got an important trip to prepare for.
January 3rd
Routine is not so bad. He should enjoy it before…
Before.
The Master always wakes up and has a quick chat with Signora Rossi before he leaves to see the museums and churches, make sketches of his favourite buildings—his current disguise is that he’s an architecture student—then find a street vendor or a new, secluded restaurant to enjoy a good meal. He heads back home only much later when, occasionally, Signora Rossi invites him for dinner.
It is a schedule that has suffered very few alterations since he arrived in Venice. The Master has become, he realises, a collector. He collects favourite stores, favourite meals, favourite sights, favourite Gondoliers. Makes Venice—that watery, delightful, exciting city—a little bit his. A little bit home. Since his home was never watery, or delightful, or exciting.
He brings Signora Rossi a pair of Murano glass earrings. He had bought them for himself, but the colours—swirls of golden and amber—remind him uncomfortably of the Doctor’s eyes. A subconscious choice he won’t think too hard on.
“Oh, caro mio, these are lovely! You shouldn’t have.”
“I absolutely should. It’s the least I could do after all the food you’ve given me.”
She laughs heartily and pulls him inside her flat. “Come, we’ll have some tea and you’ll tell me all about your plans for your last days here.”
The Master lets her drag him around. She does make excellent tea. He sits in one of her old armchairs as she goes to the kitchen to fetch them drinks.
Her tea set, she’d told him as soon as he had rented the room, had been a gift from a nephew in England. Right away the Master noticed it must've been worth a fortune. It was easily one century old, decorated with a delicate hand-painted rural scene. The nephew must’ve bought it for pennies from some desperate, decadent old family. Signora Rossi has no idea of its value, given how recklessly she uses it and stacks it precariously on her sink. But they are important to her nonetheless. She always runs her thumb lovingly over the teacups whenever she holds one.
“So,” she says, placing the teapot and two cups on the table in front of him. “From here you’ll be back to England.”
“Yes,” he tells her. “Time to go home.” If there was a home to go to.
“You must miss it. Have you been away long?”
“I suppose so. I’ve spent a long time just wandering around.”
“Alone?” she asks, green eyes sharply focused on him.
The Master drops his eyes to his tea and keeps them there, a bit jarred that she would so plainly ask him such an impertinent question. He fakes a smile.
“Best company in the world.”
“I'm sure,” she says, chuckling. The Master ignores the sadness underlying her laughter. He doesn't need a lonely grandmother's pity.
The conversation doesn’t last much longer after that. The Master indulges her with some tales of his made-up life. Two older sisters, aloof parents, nephews he misses dearly. No, no girlfriends, Signora Rossi. No boyfriends either.
The Master finishes his tea and she insists on going upstairs with him, to leave him some fresh bread and a generous slice of her fig and raisin cake.
“...and to take a look at the flowers by the windowsill, they are much more beautiful from the second floor,” she explains to him when he insists he can carry the food by himself.
He’s managed to pack most of his stuff out of the way, so it’s not too worrying when she barges inside as if she owns the place. Well. He supposes she does own it.
The windowsill is blooming with white and lilac sea lavender and fairy primrose.
Signora Rossi places the tray on the kitchen table, and goes to dote on her flowers. It all takes less than a minute, but the Master is antsy, shifting from one foot to the other. Every second she spends here is one more second for her to notice something odd about him or the place.
He forgot his old leather jacket—the one that followed him from London to Hollywood, from Cape Town to Istanbul to Russia and Morocco and, through many laboured paths, to Venice—on a chair just by the window, and Signora Rossi’s hand lay carelessly over it. It’s not a big deal. This is no fragile relic, nor something too old. If she were to ask, he could easily explain that he bought it at a thrift store. Her thumb moves back and forth over the leather, just how she does with her teacups.
After a minute, as if she had awoken from a dream, she looks back at him. “You seem to be all set. Are you sure you don't need a hand with any last-minute preparations?”
He gives her a stiff smile, wishing nothing more than for this woman to leave his flat. Her presence is suffocating him. All her maternal care, gentle concern, and those curious, piercing green eyes.
“Quite sure, Signora Rossi. Go on, enjoy your day. And don't you worry about me.”
Get out get out get out.
“Oh, dearest. It wouldn’t be a worry at all.”
The Master smiles, attempting to look earnest. She squeezes his arm. “I am going to miss you, you know.”
The Master clears his throat, ignoring the uncomfortable lump her words bring. He doesn't want to be missed. Doesn't want to leave a mark on people. Doesn't want any wretched human to have held any memories of him in these wretched decades. Doesn't want the ripples that come with being there and mattering.
“...I’ll miss you too.”
And yet, he ripples.
January 4th
He gets involved in a bar fight. It is so reckless and so, so delightful.
Why not, he’d thought, as he provoked the drunk student to the point where the young man had raised his fists.
And as said fists came down on him, the Master had laughed. Laughed like someone who was clearly winning, despite being the one getting beaten up. Because he was, at least still so much more than some miserable human and their petty anger. And because it was almost all over. He'd be in London tomorrow, he would find the Doctor.
Then Gallifrey.
And then it would be over. And they would both be free.
The thought of it was intoxicating, as was the blood streaming down his face when the young man's friends dragged him away. One of them even apologised, the little dear.
So now, he's walking back to his flat, later than usual, hoping there will be no concerned landlady around to ask him where he’s been. There’s no way she’ll shrug off his bruised, bloodied face, if she sees it. He does not want to explain it. Or go through the trouble of hypnotising it away.
He enters the building quietly as a cat. There’s no movement in her flat, good.
Not so good is whatever is happening in his flat. The Master knows something is wrong before he even opens the door. It's only ajar, but that's not the problem.
The problem is the very obvious wave of psychic force emanating from the place. Someone's beaming information with a frequency he has never encountered and cannot in any way comprehend. But it’s not too intense, nothing he can’t deal with, he thinks, kicking the door in.
(The only thing he couldn't deal with wouldn’t come after him here, anyway. He’s the one who has to find her, every time)
The scene he encounters is… Well. Odd.
It’s Signora Rossi, sitting on his living room floor. With the very same old-fashioned dress, greying hair wrapped in a low bun and gentle, rosy, smiling cheeks.
But it’s not Signora Rossi. Not what he thought she was, anyway.
All of his things are scattered around the old woman, from his woollen scarf from Paris to his sunhat from Mexico, sunglasses from California and figurines from Soviet Russia. Everything he gathered over the years, all the items that prove, to someone with a keen eye, that he is no ordinary traveller. She touches everything her hands can reach, head thrown back in bliss. Drinking all in.
As he steps inside, she snaps out of it and stares at him. And the Master suddenly realises that there’s nothing human in the shade of green of her eyes. Perhaps there never was.
The creature jumps to her feet and tries to run past him. He grabs her by the shoulders.
“What are you? What are you doing here?”
She’s stronger than any old human lady should be, but not strong enough to escape. The Master pushes her against the wall.
“Who are you? Why are you wearing a human skin?”
“Let go of me!”
“Tell me.”
“Caro mio,” she pleads, tears springing from her eyes. “It’s me, alright? It’s still Signora Rossi. Can’t you just forget what you saw? You’re my friend and if you just forget -”
Is she trying to suggest something to him? The laziest, weakest form of psychic influence that ever was? A Time Tot wouldn’t fall for it. But if that’s how she wants to fight, so be it.
“Stop talking,” he orders, and she does.
“I am the Master-” he stutters, struggling with his words, finding unexpected resistance-“and you will-”
She’s fighting him. Not as if she’s particularly strong, but as if she’s not alone. As if a hive mind is resisting his influence. But it’s distant, faded. The Master grabs her tighter, intensifies his gaze – “-and you will obey me.”
She finally goes slack, her eyes lose focus. But it’s shoddy work. It won’t last.
“Go to sleep,” he orders. He doesn’t think he’ll manage any command more complex than that. He goes to find some duct tape to tie her up.
Hands tied behind her back on his living room chair, the creature he knew as Signora Rossi opens her eyes slowly, one at a time, then closes them again. He’ll give her three seconds to find her bearings.
“Who are you?” he says, once her time is up.
“Vaffanculo.”
The Master smiles, dangerously, amused by the harsh word on sweet Signora Rossi's voice . “You will give me the answers I want one way or another. But if you just tell me, it’ll be far less unpleasant for you.”
It's a staring match, for a moment. But the old woman gives in as he knew she would, with a tired sigh. “I’m a Sikhra, and I won’t tell you my real name. You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it.”
“Sikhra? Never heard of them.”
“Not many have.”
“What are you doing here? Why come after me?”
She chuckles. “Someone thinks himself more important than he is. I didn’t come after you specifically, caro mio. I live here and you rented my room and you were… more interesting than I anticipated.”
He has no time to answer that, as Rossi continues to talk, her brows knitted.
“I couldn’t figure you out. You’ve been on Earth since the 1940s at least, and came from the future before that. But now you just stop. Why? And how, why, where have you travelled? I dug and dug and couldn’t figure it out. And I…”
She drops her head, squeezes her eyes shut. “I should've let it go. Everyone gets a miracle, once every millennium. I had you and you were leaving. But I couldn’t resist, I just had to feel all your stories. One last time, before you left.”
“Then you got drunk on it and made this mess.”
She laughs, mischievously. It's a funny sight in her old, grandmotherly body. It doesn’t last long – soon she’s serious again. Sad, almost. She looks at him with pleading eyes. “Please,” she asks. “Just tell me.”
“Why would I? Do you think that if you know what I am, all of time and space and relative dimensions will be at your service?”
“Ah…” She smiles, understanding dawning upon her face. “You’re Gallifreyan.”
“No,” he says, instinctively, scowling. “I’m a Time Lord.”
She sneers in disgust. “Apologies, my Lord.”
“Oh, of course. You hate us. Let me guess. We tampered with your history, invaded your star system, absorbed your happy, bountiful past during the Time War, trapped you in our stiff and pathetic rules-”
“The last one. The anchoring of the thread,” she says, spitting as if it's a curse. The Master is somewhat impressed. There aren't many species alive that remember the universe before the anchoring of the thread. “My species was time-dispersive. Do you know what that is?
“I don't,” he admits.
“We could live all times at once, every possibility, billions upon billions of timelines existing everywhere all at once. Do you understand how beautiful that is? Can you imagine?”
He can’t. Not really. But it does sound dazzling. It does sound like something one would miss terribly.
“The Time Lords thought they were fixing the universe,” she continued. “But they bound us all to one time, one form. One story.”
“How unfortunate for you.”
“Ha! Your blasé attitude doesn't fool me. I know species like mine would be the stuff of fairy tales on Gallifrey.”
She is right, of course, but the Master won't let her know that.
“I hate fairy tales,” he lies. “And what does your sad tale of woe have to do with me?”
She sighs, her sadness as old as the Master’s. He almost has sympathy for her. Almost. “We had to become scavengers. Mere collectors. We can feel the story of everything we touch so we travelled through all the galaxies we could, collecting objects that had survived a long time, just so we could…have a taste of that again. It's awful how small time is when you cease to experience it all at once.”
She looks at him like he is something beautiful. “That's why I couldn't resist you. A time traveller. A Time Lord. And all these things,” she says, looking wistfully around her, “All personal items, all important to you in some way. That's the sort of feast I wouldn't get anywhere else.”
“Glad to know the shit I've been through in the past decades has all been a succulent steak dinner for you.”
“A Time Lord,” she says, ignoring him. “I should’ve guessed. A Time Lord without his TARDIS, of course you were always so sad. Who stranded you here? The Cybermen? The Sontarans? Or your own wretched kind, as some sort of sick punishment?”
The Master struggles to find his words for a second. Offended, on one hand, that she would think Cybermen or Sontarans would ever be able to leave him stranded. And hurt by the truth. Of course the Time Lords would do that as punishment, as they had once done to the Doctor. And of course she would do it to him.
“See?” she says, reading something in his face. “You hate them as much as me.”
“They’re easy to hate.”
“Oh, how we celebrated when you were all gone! When you and the Daleks finally extinguished one another. Only for us to find out that you had been brought back,” she spits, “To live happily in your pocket universe.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore,” the Master tells her, bitterly. “They’re all gone.”
“Oh. Again?” She's quiet for a while, then snickers. “Poor Time Lord. It must be so quiet in there,” she says, pointing her chin at his head.
It is. Blissfully, achingly quiet. And it has been so for nearly eighty years. There had been hypnotism and synthetic hive minds and even some brushes with low-level psychic species such as hers, but the Master hasn't had a real, proper , psychic connection, since. Well. Since that awful night in Paris when all his plans were wrecked.
He closes his eyes, willing himself not to think about the Doctor right now. He has bigger things to worry about. Such as how he will enact his revenge on this Sikhra.
“Why Venice?” he asks.
“Why not? It's a millennia-old trading empire. History from all over the world. Then tourists from even more distant places. It's perfect.” she looks at him, that curiosity he’s familiar with back in her eyes. “Why Venice for you?”
“I like the canals.”
He does. He likes anywhere that is unlike the dry grasslands of Gallifrey. Which, thinking about it, might also be why the Doctor likes England so much.
He is thinking about the Doctor, as he shouldn’t be, and he hates her and he longs for her and it hurts. He doesn't hate this pathetic old woman. He’ll deal with her, of course. But not in any irreversible way. No death, no torture. He’s tired.
“Leave,” he says, sighing. “Get off this planet.”
“You cannot kick me out!” she says. “You don't have the might of the Time Lords behind you to just push inconveniences out of the way.”
“I’m not pushing you. I am warning you, gently. I am, in fact, being extremely nice about this.”
“You have no right-”
“I am a Time Lord!” he finally shouts, patience abandoning him, “And I have you trapped ! I am the last of the Time Lords!” Maybe if he shouts loud enough, it’ll make sense again. “Do you understand what I could do to you and how no one would be able to stop me? I could make you experience the time of your death, or find the thing that terrifies you the most, and force your mind to live it. Over and over and over again, and I wonder how much that would hurt a time sensitive species.”
The thing that is not Signora Rossi starts to shake. “It’s not fair.”
“Neither is life.”
She swallows, eyes brimming with tears. “Will you untie me or must I jump away in this chair?”
He doesn’t answer, just moves to cut the tape.
“The last of them,” she ponders as he does so. “You hate them so much but it hurts being the last, even still.”
"Yes. In ways you will never understand."
“I did like you, caro mio,” she says, so gently that it breaks his hearts further. “I will miss you.”
The Master looks at the floor. “I won’t warn you a third time.”
Signora Rossi gives him one final glance, then gets up and walks away. She stops by the large window, looks at the dawn rising over the canals.
“Com’è triste Venezia.”
Yes. It is a sad city. It is always sad when one must say goodbye.
January 5th
His remaining hours in Venice pass in quiet monotony. He gets rid of what he won’t need, ships the Jules Rimet to Brazil. And sets his old flat on fire.
The Master stands outside, watching the pretty shapes made by the smoke.
It hurts.
The firefighters are on their way. Venice won’t burn today, if he has anything to do with it. And doesn’t it hurt even more that this is who he is now?
The Master gathers what he'll take back to London with him. Just a small suitcase, really.
He has a meeting, and he would hate to be late for it.