Pandora's Box

Summary: Harold Saxon travels into the past, corrupting his own timeline and setting his life on its terrible course.

Disclaimers: I own neither Doctor Who nor, unfortunately, John Simm…

A/N: This story takes place during the unseen year in Last of the Time Lords. It happens between Planet of the Daleks and The Green Death, and after The Dark Path and Hidden Talent.

The man walking down the leafy suburban street on this peaceful, sunlit morning shook himself from time to time, as if trying to rearrange his internal organs or rid his mind of particularly unpleasant impressions. He was neatly-made, handsome in a boyish, mischievous way, and dressed in a dark grey suit, a crisp white shirt, and expensive, bespoke shoes. He was clearly not used to sacrificing anything, especially his comfort.

He eyed the parked cars as he walked, but so subtly that even a shrewd observer would have put it down to idle curiosity. The same observer might also have remarked that, for as long as the man remained, no birds sang.

In due course, he found a car that suited his needs. He opened its door, started the engine as deftly as if he had been in possession of the key, and drove it, purring, through the city streets and out into the countryside.

"Like a bee to honey. Always hanging around, always hoping for a fraternal crumb."

The soft words, whispered into an immaculate ear the following morning, made their hearer jump. The speaker had entered the restaurant of The Green Man unobserved, like a sleek, elegant cat, and now settled himself opposite his unwilling companion. The listener, also sleek and immaculate, wore a perfectly-manicured beard disguising a mouth that, with sufficient bitter experience, would become cruel.

"You know of course that you are forbidden to be here." It was coolly spoken, as tea was poured.

Harold Saxon seemed surprised. "You know who I am?"

"Of course."

Saxon waited, apparently expecting more. When it did not come, he spoke. "I'm here to open your eyes."

The Master, in the incarnation most familiar to the third Doctor and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's UNIT, glanced up from his meal. "Such a thing is forbidden." He looked around the room surreptitiously, checking for further unexpected visitors, and leaned forward. "Don't you know what they would do to you – to us – if they found out?"

Saxon laughed: a merry, grating sound. "They can do nothing to me – and they do nothing to you."

"Stop this!" the Master hissed. "There are some rules even I don't break."

"Even you!" Saxon's smile vanished, and he leaned back in his chair, snapping his fingers in cold expectation, never breaking eye contact with his former self. The waitress scurried over with a pot of coffee, although the Master had heard no order, and Saxon watched her lazily, as a scientist might watch an experimental bacterium. The Master shivered. This man made him feel like an amateur, and something in the back of his mind was afraid.

They finished their meal in silence.

In the Master's comfortably-furnished room, they eyed each other warily, like chess players or prize fighters. Saxon spoke first. "So, you recognised me."

"I could hardly fail to recognise you, with that face."

"I thought it was one of my best."

"It's too young for you."

"It wasn't too young for you."

"I was young when I wore it. But you – you are old, in years." He paused, as if considering. "In more than years. It is not a face you should be wearing."

"I don't suppose it will last long."

"No… I don't suppose it will. And who will you blame for that?"

"The Doctor, of course."

"Ah! Of course."

"Aren't you the slightest bit curious about him?"

"Who – the Doctor? Your Doctor? I have my own, thank you. Why would I want yours? I assume he has changed."

"Only in appearance – he's a skinny little runt now. Though he's recently aged rather rapidly." Saxon grinned. "In other ways, not at all."

"Then why should I be interested in a future incarnation? It will only remind me of my own lack."

"Ah, but you have such a future! You are unique! The first to – "

The Master's hand snapped up, and even Saxon was surprised into silence. "I do not need to know. I know that you need to tell me, and I find your childish desire to sully your own timeline particularly pathetic."

"Pathetic? You think I'm – pathetic? I'll show you pathetic!" Saxon was on his feet, and the contrast between the debonair older man and the barely-controlled younger could not have been more stark.

"Dear dear, we are rather touchy, aren't we? Don't lose your temper. I never do."

"Have you ever wondered why? Have you ever wondered where all the urbanity comes from? Where the rage is?"

The Master's eyes narrowed, in spite of himself. He did not wish to give this impostor any satisfaction, but the remark stung him with painful memories. "I have rage enough, I assure you."

"But you never use it! How long have you been here, shadowing that peacock at UNIT – and done nothing to destroy him? You've even saved him, let him keep his power – "

The Master's lip curled. "What power does he have? His Tardis is obsolete, he's still exiled from Gallifrey, whatever they may say, his resources are a human army and a slip of a girl, and he is – as he always was – hobbled by his infernal desire to do good."

"You made a decision to master the universe."

"I have started here, with this world."

"You've lost your anger – Koschei."

Coldness flooded through him like death, a death that might have been welcome had he been a different man. Grief and fury followed, and it took all his powers of stoicism and self-control to remain seated, apparently unaffected by his adversary's words. For he had now recognised him not only as a future incarnation, but as an enemy, and wanted to be rid of him. But he knew his eyes betrayed him. "Not entirely."

"Better! There's still a spark in there somewhere. But that's not why I came."

"I am not remotely interested in why you came. You know you shouldn't be here."

"Remember the Untempered Schism?"

"I – I do. Of course I do." A closed door, an elusive thread. Fear and loathing.

"No you don't. You don't remember it at all. And do you know why? Because – "

"I have told you – I do not wish to know."

"Oh, but you will know! You'll know because I'm going to tell you, just like I remember being told when I was you. Our timeline was sullied, as you so poetically put it, long before I became this."

"But you sullied it."

"Which came first, do you think – the chicken or the egg? Which face am I wearing? How do you know I'm not that old incarnation – third, isn't it? You always did have trouble with Blinovitch, but time is far more complicated than even we were taught. Old man."

The Master sighed, fear nibbling at the edges of his mind, but still convinced that he could win this exchange. He gazed straight at his visitor. "Listen to me. You will leave now. You will leave and you will not come back. You will forget you have ever been here and you will forget the memories that have brought you here."

Saxon laughed again, and the sound was horrible, though his face was open and pure. "No! Do you know why I can't forget those memories? Because they made me who I am! Because they shaped me." He moved, and was suddenly leaning over the Master's chair, inches from his face. "I am about to set you on the road to greatness. And how pathetic to think that your primitive hypnotism could work on me. Now – you look into my eyes."

"No – no…"

"Yes. The Doctor blocked your memories. I hadn't realised it until I probed his mind – oh, that was fun – and then this meeting came back to me in all its sordid little glory. I lost so much between incarnations… Listen to me! I am going to find the blocks he put in your mind, open the doors again – let the experience flood through you."

"The Doctor – put memory blocks in my mind?" When – how? More importantly, why? Instinctively, the Master knew that the Doctor must have done it for some greater good, but he didn't have time to follow the idea through.

"Oh yes – he blocked your memory of looking into the Schism. He didn't think you were strong enough to take it – he thought he was trying to save you. He has prevented you from becoming who you really are for years! Come – fulfil your potential – become me…"

Trapped in the consciousness of his future incarnation, the Master fought in vain. He sank, screaming, into the depravity of a far more powerful mind as the safeguards so carefully put in place in his youth failed one by one, and the long-trapped memories blossomed. Hanging on with bleeding fingernails to the shreds of humanity gleaned from the Doctor, he managed to salvage something from the wreckage of his mind, but his vow to take control of his universe was twisted and corrupted until it became a seed of insanity.

He almost died under Saxon's subtle onslaught as the madness which had threatened to overwhelm him when a child, and fed too recently by duplicity and betrayal, took new, fresh root. It would be years before it flowered – before the faint, insistent rhythm that he had once heard in that heart of darkness became the shattered pounding of never-ending drums – but he knew it was there. Alone and broken, he was humiliated – ashamed – and after Saxon left he fled the only kindness he knew – the only influence that might have saved him – and the third Doctor never saw him again.

"It wasn't worth it, was it?"

Harold Saxon spun round and stared at the emaciated figure crouching at his feet. "Get out of my head!" he spat.

The Doctor's expressionless eyes watched him balefully. "It doesn't matter what you do, it will never be worth it. I can still save you – there's still time. Let me save you!"

Saxons' nostrils flared. He had gone to a good deal of trouble to meet his other self, literally getting his hands dirty as he tried to undo the limits the Doctor had placed on his Tardis' travelling ability. He had only managed to unravel the complex programming enough to allow travel along his own timeline, but that had been sufficient. He had a memory – a destiny – to fulfil.

Still unsettled by the intricacies of having to make Tardis rematerialise less than a nanosecond after it had left in order to maintain the integrity of the paradox machine, he was jumpy and raw: he had felt his returning molecules scrape across those that were leaving, and the sensation had not been pleasant. And for what? He was tempted to think that the entire journey had been a waste of time, for all that it had freed him from his old friend's chains. The memory of being tortured had been so beautiful, but the Doctor was right: the actuality of inflicting the torture had been banal – without satisfaction. The old Master had deprived him of a long-anticipated thrill, and he felt fury well up within him. Lunging at the helpless creature who had once been his dearest companion – and more – he put his hands around its throat. Still, the eyes stared; still, the voice penetrated the drumbeats, punctuating, counterpointing, but never drowning them.

"I can put the safeguards back. I can make you whole again – I can help you! Please – let me help you… I can take away the drums." The Doctor looked him straight in the eyes. "I took them away before. I can take them away again."

Saxon stared at him. He knew it was true. Hope leapt up, irrational and desperate, grabbing his lapels and shaking him in its bid to get his attention. But he had spent the first half of his life with that defining experience locked away, inaccessible thanks to this man's interference: he would not turn his back on his childhood fear again, but embrace it and make it his own. If there was a price to pay, he would pay it, and so would all who stood in his way.

His hands instinctively closed, but there was no replying anger in those serious, limitless eyes. No anger and no fear: only reproachfulness and pity. Saxon gasped, but regained control and slowly shook his head. It would not do to kill his prisoner, not yet: he was far too entertaining. He would escape from him one day – escape from that pervading, benevolent shadow – but not by killing him. If another, moré deeply-buried impulse inspired his mercy, he was not aware of it.

"Too easy, Doctor. Too cheap. I became whole years ago – it's you who needs me, and you know it. You lose."

He skipped to the door, his feet keeping time with the empty, incessant drumbeat inside his head. This was the way he had chosen, and he would walk it to its end. There was no other, not for him. Once the box was open, nothing could put its contents back inside.

So he ran, desperate to escape what he had worked so hard to find, leaving behind the Doctor and the final gift of hope that still defiantly stood, rejected, in his eyes.