Chapter 28 - Desperate Gamble

Susan looked down at the stranger in confusion, to her recollection, she'd never met her before, but, there was also a nagging sense of something elusive and familiar about her. She exchanged looks with an equally baffled Martha, who set the food down, and then slipped out of the room.

"I'm sorry, Adie, isn't it? Have we met?" she asked, trying to keep her voice calm and really hoping that the whole "Sorry I tried to kill you with an uncontrollable cosmic power" conversation could be skipped. Adie got hold of herself again, wiping her eyes.

"It's possible, that would have been just prior to the divergence, I think. I was…" She looked away. "One of the seers present in the tower during your… tenure. I tried to give you enough of an out to allow you to keep your sanity." Her brows furrowed. "I've spent many years believing that I had failed in that."

Susan drew away from her, flinching despite her best efforts.

"Tenure?" she asked, her voice barely under her control, but shook her head, determined not to lash out at someone who wasn't at fault. "How did you keep your own sanity? I thought all the Seers were mad. All the ones that I dealt with were, anyway." She stared at Adie, who looked away and didn't answer at once.

"There was a time when I was quite, quite mad, I assure you. But one day, I was contacted…" her brow furrowed, uncertain of how to explain. "I had a vision of a woman, in a glowing golden dress, and she spoke to me. She told me that you must survive and that you had to be sane, she said the fate of the universe rested on that. She did something to me; she put me back together again." She frowned thoughtfully and Susan wondered if she was talking about the Arkytior. She never saw her in that way, but there wasn't any other power she could think of that might interfere like that, not to save her anyway.

"From that point on, I actively worked against the Visionary. I did what I could to sabotage their attempts to break you. I lost the ability to see the future. But there was some event that fractured the timeline because I remember learning that you had died." Susan winced at that, she had far too vivid memories of the Tower and, even after all this time, they hurt.

"Six months, or possibly thirty years, depending on how many collapsed timelines you count, after I was brought in, I killed myself and regenerated. I held onto the minds of several Seers when I did it and killed them. Was this divergence before or after that?" she asked, still feeling the savage satisfaction of that.

"After. Did you remain in the Tower very long after the Master came?"

"Yes, I was there for a long time after that, several months at least," she confirmed and it occurred to her that her voice was a bit shaky and she busied herself with setting the food out for Adie.

"In my timeline, I helped smuggle you out of the Tower the very night he came to see you. He had broken you and he was… not pleased." She paused. "Shortly afterwards… you died." She paused. "The Sisters found out my part in the affair and I was… punished." She shook her head and it took a moment for her to find her voice again. "When the Master returned, he was assigned to the Lens project. He had… changed since the Tower. I believe your death was the divergence."

"It most certainly was," Susan sighed out and tried not to think too hard about what must have happened to Koschei when their marriage bond was broken like that.

"When the Master got into my center, I got into his. It created a marriage bond between us. One that went far too deep for us to untangle," she was embarrassed to speak about something so personal to a stranger, but felt as though she somehow owed her an explanation.

"I believe that bond had probably been achieved in my timeline as well. It would certainly explain the changes in him when he returned."

"To have that bond broken..." Susan shook her head, horrified by the thought, the misery of it made her feel near to tears.

"About this one," Adie said awkwardly.

"Koschei," Susan told her. "That's his real name." Adie ducked her head and nodded, but Susan could see that she was deeply uncomfortable with the whole thing. Susan herself wasn't very happy and she was fighting to keep from snapping at Adie. The girl hadn't been one of those who had tortured her, so there was no reason for Susan to feel antipathy towards her. Adie wasn't responsible either for the news she was bringing. Susan though was having a sudden spurt of sympathy towards those who wanted to shoot the messenger.

Adie fought her conflicting emotions. She wondered if she even had a right to ask for help from the people she'd failed so badly.

"Koschei, yes," she corrected and looked up at Susan. "I need to ask you something. Please don't take this wrong, but... is he...?" Her mind stuttered to a sudden stop as she tried to figure out how to ask what she wanted to know.

"He's not the Master anymore, if that's what you're asking," Susan told her with a sharp tone, her eyes were flat and hard and then she winced, giving Adie an apologetic look.

"Thank you... I'm sorry, but I have to know, it's important..." she trailed off. "He's not dangerous?" Adie understood and easily forgave Susan, but she still felt as though so much relied on the other woman's answers, that she had no choice but to ask.

"He's not the monster under the bed, Adie, and he's gone through a lot," Susan snapped and frowned, her temper flaring again. "He was bound up in compulsions since he was eight, all right? He was driven mad and he fought free of it."

"I'm not asking from morbid curiosity, Susan, I'm asking because…" She closed her eyes. "Because I am going to need his assistance. Badly," Adie told her. "I just have to know if I can trust him." There was a long moment, as they studied each other and then Susan relaxed a bit, looking Adie in the eye.

"I trust him, with everything I am," Susan told her softly. "He is a good man."

Adie closed her eyes again and thought through it all. The human doctor had said he was gentle and devoted to his wife. Freeya had told her that he was shy, even though Adie hadn't believed it at the time. Susan assured her that he was good and trustworthy and she really wanted to believe that. She needed to believe it, because it would give her a fighting chance.

Balanced against that, were her memories and experiences with the other version. One hundred years of those cold, hate-filled eyes staring at her with such scorn, against the warm gentle sorrow in Susan's face.

Adie took a deep breath. The plain truth was that she didn't have a choice. She needed his help; he was the only one who could stop it. She would have to risk it. Without him it was just... over.

"Please relay my apologies to him: I was wrong," Adie told her.

"I will tell him that. Thank you," Susan answered and nodded.

"Susan…" Adie was looking as if this was going to be an intensely painful subject to broach, "When I… arrived, I was wearing a collar. I am not wearing it now. I gather that it's…. gone?"

"It blew up and took out a storeroom," Susan confirmed.

She exhaled slowly. "I am sorry about that," she winced. "And, thank you for saving my life. But, if the collar is gone, it creates other problems. A lot of other problems, actually."

"Oh ?" Susan asked her.

"Where do I even begin?" she sighed and then nodded abruptly as it came to her. "No, of course, the Point of Divergence. In my timeline, you died, and the Master… didn't." Adie told her and watched Susan's eyes go wide in shock. "It was a close thing, but he was put into cryo. That unit was rigged to the collar. With the collar gone…" She grimaced. "He should be waking up any time now."

/Shay, get here ten minutes ago, / Susan sent and moments later Koschei peeked into the door.

"Hello," he murmured as he came in, eyeing Adie with a touch of wariness, as though he was checking her hands for a spanner, just in case.

Adie bowed deeply to Koschei.

"I beg your forgiveness for my actions," she said, a formal apology in formal Gallifreyan.

"No harm done, except to the storage room. I have a hard head," he assured her, his blue eyes pensive.

"So, can I ask why you tried to bean me with a spanner?" he asked softly.

"Love, um, I meant to have this discussion with you, but the DNA scan for Torchwood sort of took up the time I was intending for that." she said with a wince. This was all going to hit him like a ton of bricks. "When I was in Masha's head she told me she was built by the Master," she murmured and he stared at her, like the bottom was falling out of his world.

Adie watched the man crumbling visibly, his face white with shock and distress.

"No, I would have remembered, I would have. I couldn't have," he protested, his eyes filling with tears of remorse. Adie was startled by the tears, in all the centuries she' known him, she'd never seen the Master cry. She was starting to believe that this one really was different.

"This is an alternate timeline version that we are discussing," Adie explained.

"It doesn't matter," Koschei sighed out. "The timeline should have collapsed and I would have remembered."

"It didn't collapse, he's still alive, a separate person from you. He was in cryo in the Command Centre where I have been stationed. I checked on him yesterday and he looked nothing like you," she explained, and then hesitated.

"Two versions of me? In the same timeline? That's not possible... oh...," he trailed off and dropped his head into his hands. "The damn Temporal Grace Point," he bit out and Adie nodded, while Susan looked baffled. "I had a theory, about how to make a bubble universe, a Temporal Grace Point...it was a way to keep people alive, even if the timeline they survived in collapsed," he explained and Susan blinked at him.

"Yes, the Command Centre was built inside a Temporal Grace Point," Adie confirmed.

"Omega, Masha is my fault after all," he groaned.

"Not this time, this is another person, not you, this is you, if I had died in the Tower, after we bonded," Susan told him and he contracted, his body spasming as the pain of that thought hit him.

"What did I do?" he gasped out and Adie felt a spurt of pity for him. He looked so lost and sad, holding Susan's hand tightly, as though she might vanish.

"You... he... put that collar on me, believing that I'd flee from him, were he ever killed. Removing the collar triggers the revival process. I figured that out and kept it on to keep him asleep." She grimaced, her fingers going to her newly bare neck. "But it's gone now, so he will be awakening." Koschei looked at her and nodded slowly.

"Bugger," he murmured. "That's probably not a good thing."

The Master opened his eyes to a black-and-white world.

A series of hexagons met his vision. Memory nudged him and he realized that this was the resuscitation chamber. Had he died then, he wondered. There was a minute part of him that dimly knew he really ought to care about that, but he didn't. It required energy for him to dredge up that much emotion, energy he simply didn't have anymore.

Like probing a wound to see if it still hurt, he reached out to that empty place in his chest, the place she had briefly filled up, once, long ago. He frowned, because it didn't seem quite as bad today as it usually did. There was something wrong about that, it ought to hurt, it ought to be agonizing. He deserved that, deserved the pain of it. Why wasn't it there? But then he shook his head. Nearly one hundred years of cryo, far longer than he had ever expected, had undoubtedly dulled his mind. It would get bad again, he knew that. In fact, he welcomed it. That pain was his penance for all his manifold failures.

He looked to the side, and there, waiting for him, was the small black box. He took it in his hands, bracing himself for a moment, and then opened it.

It was amazing, after so long, how a bit of color still clung to the Phial. He took it in his hands, his eyes resting for a moment on the sheen of the glass, on the lock of hair curled up within it, still gleaming in soft chocolate even after all this time, the only wisp of color remaining in a monochrome existence. He remembered the emerald green eyes, so nearly feline, and the way they had looked into the deepest parts of him. He remembered the moment of her death when the memory of Miranda had rushed into him. His mind had opened up and displayed all the promises she'd made to him and he'd made to her. Promises that he'd turned into lies.

He hung it around his neck, feeling its weight against his chest. It only weighed a few ounces, but it felt like heavy chains being draped around him. Chains, he was quite certain, that he would wear every day for the remainder of his existence.

For a moment, he wrestled with the temptation to close his eyes and go back to sleep, to let himself fall back into oblivion. Sometimes, on rare occasions, he would dream of her. He hadn't dreamed of her in an extremely long time now. Perhaps he would never do so again. The thought made his hearts twist; but deep inside of them, he knew he deserved no less.

He was used to hearing drums, at these times, driving him forwards, forcing his hands and body into action. But today there were no drums, and the silence was nearly deafening. The drums were missing.

He lay there for a long moment, wrestling with this development, trying to figure out who he was and what it meant now. Finally, he pushed open the chamber door and stumbled out, staggering to the mirror.

The face was familiar, so he must have come close to dying, without actually regenerating. The long, saturnine features, the piercing dark eyes, the curls of black hair, it was all the same, but the man looking at him in the mirror had haunted, broken eyes; the Master didn't want to look at them for too long. He looked so young physically, but felt so terribly old.

He shaved hurriedly, avoiding his own gaze as much as he could. He took a shower, doing what was needed without any pleasure in it.

When he pushed into the wardrobe, he stopped and stared around. Someone had been in here, digging through the clothes. He felt a sense of violation. Running to the box on the top shelf, he pulled it down and relaxed. It was still sealed. Her things remained undisturbed and he wondered again why only the things that she had touched remained vibrant, when all else was drained of light. For a moment he just stared at it, and then replaced it in its spot.

He dressed mechanically, hands shaking, and went to determine the current status of the world.

Susan looked at her husband, saw the pain and misery running through him, and then she felt an echo of it, only far darker and deeper. The nascent marriage bond snapped into place and she gasped.

"He's awake," she told them and looked at Koschei's widening eyes. "And he's not aware of us. Yet."

Koschei looked back at her and they both felt suddenly threatened and scared. There was another him out there and she could feel him. Looking down at her hearts, a second marriage bond, far fainter and weaker, but still obviously there, stretched out and away from her. She looked up at Koschei in sudden concern, a thousand questions and worries racing through her mind.

What was she supposed to do about this?