It’d been one thing to watch the Earth be engulfed by the Sun from space station - well, no one had actually seen it go, they’d been far too busy worrying about their own survival, but the idea of watching its end had been… Bittersweet, at most. After all, everything had a beginning and everything had an end. Endings might be sad, but they were necessary, and from the ashes and debris of the Earth, other celestial bodies would later be born.
But actually being there, walking upon the Earth when it seemed as though it was barely habitable, when the water in the oceans was gone and he could see no sign of anything other sand for miles… Well, it was a whole other story.
The humans, he figured, must have all left by then. The planet was scorching, the temperatures high enough that even with his suit jacket far behind in the TARDIS and his shirt sleeves rolled up, he was sweating profusely. Humans, he thought to himself, would most likely already be all but non-functional under this heat. Time Lords were considerably more resilient, but he wasn’t sure how much longer he and the Master would last.
And that brought his thoughts to his current situation.
A broken TARDIS, no materials to fix said TARDIS, and no one but the Master for company. That last part could be worse, he supposed - if they had any more company, he’d have to worry about making sure that whoever else was with them didn’t even up being served for dinner and refreshments when their food and water ended.
Almost shaking his head, the Doctor forced his thoughts away from that. There was a good chance that they would be stuck on that planet for a considerable amount of time - letting his thoughts roam into that territory probably wasn’t the best idea. They would be at each other’s throats soon enough - they always seemed to end up there.
Just as soon as the silence was broken, the peace would end, and between the two of them, the silence shouldn’t last too long.
It was only a matter of seconds before the Doctor’s prediction was proven right.
“Well maybe it is pointless!” The Doctor snapped, a little too angry over the situation they found themselves in and too tired from the heat to hold his irritation back. “But what do you suggest? That we just sit around the TARDIS and hope that we’ll come up with a solution before the heat or the lack of food and water kills us?”
The oceans on Earth used to be incredibly vast, and the Doctor knew that they would still have quite some ground to cover ahead of them, but if they could make it to what had once been the shore, then he supposed they stood a chance. They might find water, perhaps some shelter from the heat, and there they would have access to more resources, more things that they could use to craft what they needed to fix the TARDIS.
“Over here, all we’ve got is what’s in the TARDIS and sand. Up there - “ The Doctor pointed towards the horizon. “Is our only chance of finding what we need to fix the TARDIS and get out of here.”
the master could not help but roll his eyes as the doctor spoke ---- partially because everything the other said, simply because he said it, was annoying. and partially because the master knew that he was wrong. without the blinding light of optimism shining like the overgrown sun in his eyes, he knew there would be nothing no matter which direction they walked. behind them, in front of them, on either side, there was naught but sand and stone and death. even if by chance they found, say, metal that hadn’t warped under long expose to the heat, what tools did they have to create from it something that would function in the alien technology that was the tardis. reasonably, logically, this was foolish, never mind the emotional side of things.
but then, what else could he have expected? what else could history have possibly taught him other than to not trust the doctor, to avoid being friendly with his once-friend. it was a wheel on which they turned, round and round through time and space. neither able to escape despite the desperate attempts. it had and always would continue, predictably and painfully. the betrayal. the heartbreak. the rage that always followed; that always built up in his like water behind a dam, pressuring a thin wall of cracked cement, threatening to spill over, and lying in wait. that rage, when it broke through, flooded out in extravagant and reckless tsunamis, the likes of which earth had once seen, when oceans had still covered most of its surface. then something, some moment of not-hate would happen. and again the wheel would be racing downhill.
the question of the hour was; where on the wheel were they headed? betrayal, heartbreak, or rage? was he too exhausted for any of it, he had to wonder? too weary to feel his heart breaking over crushing loss ( which was the very fact of him being there, not fighting the doctor ) and too lifeless to be full of hot rage. oh, the cold burn of hatred was there, it always was. yet the fires that were supposed to burn him up, that everyday turned his soul to ash and his heart to charcoal ( black and crumbling ) sputtered under the weight of the situation. it was all wrong, all of it.
the sand shifting in his shoes, worming between his toes and making every step all the more unpleasant, he managed to speed up. walking, feet slipping on the nearly white stuff beneath them, with purpose and with weariness. the contrasting combination giving him the look of some sort of desperate traveler from tales of long forgotten, largely unnecessary lore. there was, in those movements, a jaggedness, and uneven rhythm that worked in syncopation with the drums in his head. everything was horribly off beat.
that same exhaustion that threatened to extinguish his flaming soul had a similar effect on his physical ability as well, it seemed; catching up to the doctor was difficult, and once he had, keeping pace with him, walking side by side and an arm’s length away, made his hearts pound quite rapidly. never mind what ever they ( failed to ) find on the north american continent; it seemed to him that they would need a good deal of luck to make it there at all.
luck which was, at the moment, apparently in short supply.
“ up there is just more sand, and we both know that, doctor, ” the master insisted irritably. up there was the consequence of time moving slowly along, up there was what stars did, what heat did, it destroyed and melted and burned until there was nothing left but dust. the longer they walked, the greater chance there was that they too would be joining the sand at their feet. and as much as the master loathed his once-friend, he’d rather them both survive than both die out there.
“ we’ll walk until we can’t any more, then one at a time, we’ll die out here. that’s just how it is. at least back in the tardis, those deaths will be comfortable. at least there, we know there are materials of some sort. you’re taking away my opportunity to personally kill you, and we both know what a shame that is. ” they needed things that could be fashioned, proper metals and chemicals. not this human junk that, if it hadn’t been eaten by the planet or taken by its former inhabitants, was more than likely going to be useless. what was the doctor even specifically hoping to find?
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