Helpless as Always
@just-kept-running
The Master had two options really. In most timelines, ones that could have been, he left the Doctor to his own devices, let him regenerate into a mess of a creature that didn’t have anything remotely resembling a balancing force in view. In this particular timeline, he delayed it. After all, he was good at picking his time, at deciding when he should and shouldn’t fiddle about in certain time points.
Today he decided that ‘should’ was the approach of the day, and the moment he was off, gone into the mess that was Gallifrey, was he stepping through the doorway on the other side of the room, no longer blond, no longer manic, and the drums ever so much less annoying for having a source in his mind.
It was interesting to see the situation with a little distance and a clear mind, but still, as the Doctor made a beeline toward what could only be called complete idiocy, he did what any self-respecting best friend would do. He intervened.
He liked this particular regeneration, but the man hadn’t been around long, and he wanted to see what other lunacy might come crashing in. That meant making him use his bloody mind instead of charging ahead and giving up in a bout of self-sacrificing futility.
Of course, at this point neither had noticed him yet, so he had time and that made it easy enough to slip across the space and intervene, a smile on his lips, lazy and just a bit predatory. “Now now, you’re about to act without thinking Doctor, we can’t be having that. You do know what that radiation will do to you, don’t you?”
