Chapter Text
The Doctor stared at the console of his TARDIS, the Smiths playing forlornly in the background. Rose wasn't awake yet, and with my track record she might never be, he thought.
She was asleep somewhere in the depths of the TARDIS's unspecified vastness. Through a corridor to the left, behind the closet door, under the stairs, behind the wallpaper, and beneath the floorboards there was probably a winding staircase leading to some crumbling, military-style army barracks with a dozen (or so) stiff beds for the human companions the Doctor circulated through. After all, sleep was for the weak, and the Doctor was nothing if not stubbornly insistent that he wasn't that
The Doctor's brooding was interrupted by the entrance of Rose, and he strung up a smile for her.
"Sleep alright?"
"Yeah, I did, thanks," she smiled sweetly at him. "You alright?"
"I'm always alright," the Doctor smiled wider, attempting to look even happier. The Smiths played disputedly in the background.
So you go and you stand on your own/And you leave on your own/And you go home and you cry and you want to die
Rose pretended that she didn't hear the music, and the Doctor switched it off discreetly.
So," she said. "Should we go somewhere nice or wait until the Tardis flies us into the heart of a universal crisis?"
The Doctor looked up, a grin on his face. The effort looked painful. "Which'd be more convenient do you think?"
BANG!
The Tardis shuddered violently and Rose was thrown to the floor for dramatic effect.
The Doctor grabbed one of the monitors and tried desperately to see what had hit the Tardis, but the monitors were miraculously broken. He waved his sonic screwdriver at them helplessly.
"Nothing can get in through those doors, right?!" Rose shouted, rolling around on the floor.
"NO!" The Doctor shouted over the din of something breaking through the doors.
CRASH!
The Tardis doors were ripped from their hinges, and splintered wood rained like bullets down on them.
The it was over. All was well again. The Tardis stopped shaking and the Doctor got up cautiously. Rose stood and stepped beside him, peering out of the Tardis from behind the Doctor's pinstriped shoulder.
"But...that's Earth," Rose murmured.
"Or so it would seem," the Doctor growled. He knew something she didn't.
The world was perfect. The sky was blue, children laughed, flowers bloomed, Big Ben tolled, adults ate ice cream, dogs and cats lay in the sun, the air smelled like cotton candy, there was no starvation, and everyone was happy.
The Doctor sniffed the air. "Do you notice that?"
Rose shook her head. He grabbed her hand. "Come on!" He shouted.
They dashed through the perfect streets of Cardiff-pretending-to-be-London and hid behind a wall that did not conceal them at all.
"What are we hiding from?"
"I'm not quite sure yet," the Doctor said. He put on his glasses and leaned in close to the pavement. "Do you see that?"
"Evidently not..." Rose grumbled.
The Doctor sniffed the sidewalk and licked it (something which he immediately regretted). He lept to his feet, still trying to get the taste of sidewalk from his mouth, and grabbed the ice cream cone of a passing adult.
"Everything's too normal," the Doctor said, strolling down the sidewalk, arm in arm with Rose, licking his ice cream cone. "See this--" he gestured at the cone manically, "--is strawberry ice cream! Nobody ever gets strawberry ice cream! Nobody likes strawberry ice cream and yet--" the Doctor grabbed yet another ice cream cone from another innocent passerby and licked it to prove his point, "--every single one of these cones is strawberry! There's only one person--"
"Doctor..." Rose started, stopping her stride, and staring at something dead ahead of her.
"--who actually, actually liked strawberry ice cream--"
"...Doctor," Rose said a bit louder.
"--I mean not that I'd think he would, but it was--"
"Doctor!" Rose shouted, yanking his arm.
"--was, oh what is it!" The Doctor looked over at her, annoyed she'd stopped his rant.
Rose raised her arm and pointed a single, trembling finger, at the figure ahead of them on the London (not Cardiff) sidewalk. The Doctor followed her gesture and his features transformed into shock and horror.
"...The Master," he whispered, aghast. "The Master liked strawberry ice cream."
He stepped away from Rose now, towards the Master. It was only his silhouette...but he was standing atop something.
"EVER SINCE WE WERE BOYS, EH?" The Doctor shouted at the figure. "You've always loved it haven't you, Master!"
The voice of the Master spoke smugly as his figure came closer. "Don't you mean...we've always loved it?!"
"wOT?! I've never liked..." The Doctor trailed off as the Master finally rolled into view. He wasn't atop a wall or a building or the shoulders of a henchman...he was riding on the head of...a Dalek?!
"but...hOW?!" The Doctor cried. Rose gasped.
"But Doctor!" She shouted. "That's impossible!"
"I know it's impossible, Rose. It's always impossible! I THOUGHT I KILLED YOU bASTARDS OFF the lAST fORTY times wE CROSSED PATHS!"
The Master giggled maliciously. "Don't forget, Doctor, we are one and the same. Anything you can do, I can UN-DO!"
The Doctor stared, dumbstruck, as a horde of cybermen stepped behind the Master. "But...how?" He asked.
"I thought you'd never ask, Doctor. I merely rerouted the vertical cortex horizontally to the solar plexus of rectangular dysfunction and calculated the level of radioactive peroxide that'd flood the envisioned philosophical depths of the space-time continuum and then reversed it a thousand times!" The Master grinned like a child who has been given a cookie and hummed 'Anything you can do I can do better.'
"Why have you done this!" The Doctor cried.
The Master's face contorted. Didn't the Doctor know?! "THE DRUMS, DOCTOR. OH, GOD THE DRUMS THE NEVERENDING DRUMS!" He clutched his head in agony and fell off the Dalek dramatically.
Despite the fact the Master was insane, the Doctor could not forget their time on Gallifrey...wandering the red grass and running beyond the mountains by the great citadel of the Time Lords. Here was the kingdom of Gods. Here was where time reigned, the greatest city in the universe, the masterful race--
"DOCTOR!" Rose's shriek cut through his memories and he was jolted back to the present, just in time to dodge a Dalek's whisk-laser.
"Look out, Rose Tyler! ALLONS-Y!" The Doctor cried and he grabbed Rose's hand, both of them booking it down Cardiff's London-esque sidewalk, past the adults eating strawberry ice cream, and down some steps.
The Doctor pulled her behind some crates and watched half a dozen cybermen rush by.
"What about the Daleks?!" Rose worried.
"Don't worry, we'll hear them screaming eXtERmINAte a mile off," the Doctor reassured.
Rose laughed at his impression. The Doctor laughed as she laughed, laughing at the insanity of the day, laughing that the Daleks were back, laughing that the Master liked strawberry ice cream, laughing at the fact that they'd nearly been killed, laughing at the fact that security-breached Tardis was still a major plot hole, laughing at the fact that Earth was always endangered, and laughing because their laughter was contagious (i mean have you ever seen them laugh it's hard not to).
Miles off, the Master's head shot up from the ground where he'd been laying. His expression was deadly. "They're laughing," he snarled.
The Doctor seemed to sense the Master's change of mood and he stopped laughing. "We need to find out what he's up to," he said, suddenly down to business.
"Or down to?" Rose suggested, pointing to a manhole cover that was directly below them. The cover read: The Master's Master Plan -- MAINTENANCE ONLY
The Doctor grinned excitedly. "Oh Rose, I could kiss you!"
Rose smirked. "Let's get to safety first."
"Are you sure?" The Doctor held her gaze for a moment before slapping on his glasses. "wELL, you're probably right."
The sonic deftly unscrewed the manhole's screws, but Rose and the Doctor were still screwed themselves.
The hole was dark and seemingly endless. An empty black pit of nothing. Either that was the Master's plan, or it was just really dark down there. The Doctor squinted into the abyss.
"There's no way down," Rose murmured.
"There's always a way down." The Doctor looked up at her, somewhere between manic and giddy. "And I'm gonna find it! ALLONS-Y!"
"DOCTOR!" Rose shouted at him as he threw himself down the hole.
There was silence. No sound came from the hole, no screams, no sounds of bodies hitting the floor. Rose waiting in tentative silence.
"Doctor?" She said his name hesitantly, scared to jinx the possibility he might've survived.
EXTERMINATEEXTERMINATEMAXIMUMEXTERMINATION!
Rose gasped and whirled around. The Daleks could be miles off, shrieking at some poor civilian, or just inches from her. The appearance of a whisk made it clear which option fate had provided.
The Dalek rolled to a stop at the entrance of their crate hiding place.
"FOOLISH HUMAN THINKS SHE CAN HIDE BEHIND MILK CRATES" The Dalek shrieked.
Rose stood her ground and swallowed her fear. The manhole was right behind her. She could throw herself down if she needed to. She'd rather die from the Doctor's poor judgment, than the whisk-served laser-death of a pepper-pot alien.
"My name is Rose Tyler and I'm not afraid of you!" She said, bravely.
"THAT IS INCREDIBLY FOOLISH" The Dalek retorted. "YOU ARE NOT A DALEK, THEREFORE INSIGNIFICANT"
"Then why don't you kill me!" Rose cried. "I made a mark on one of your predecessors, Dalek! I touched him and left an imprint!"
"WE ARE MADE OF METAL. YOUR IMPRINT WOULD'VE WASHED AWAY WITH THE NEXT RAINFALL"
Rose cursed the rain. But suddenly she felt something grab her ankle. As she screamed, she was pulled down into the manhole and landed with a thump right next to the Doctor, who grinned at her.
"Run," he said.
They ran.
*cues running music*