Fob Watch

“You were supposed to look after him,” the Master whispered. He tried to talk loudly, he tried to sound angry and he tried to control his feelings but the sight in front of his eyes wouldn’t let him. He never knew pain, he never knew heartache and he never knew what it felt like to have your hearts shattered. Of course, he always saw the Doctor suffer all of the above, but to him the only suffering that had ever been was the noise in his head; never before had he let anything else get to him.

“I… I was. I could not see it coming- I never imagined that-,” Mycroft spoke steadily, his fear kept out of his voice, yet, overtaking his mind and cutting his sentences in halves.

The Master said nothing. He expected anger to be taking control of him, he expected to wish the most terrible things upon the man standing behind him; he expected to be himself, but he was not. He could feel tears trying to make their way to his eyes and stopped it just in time, shaking his head. There were days when he could destroy planets in a blink of an eye, turn the whole universe around his finger and make the world shake in fear just by dancing. And now, look at him, heartbroken by death; how pathetic. He hated himself for that, or at least he tried, but he couldn’t feel any hatred in his veins; he could feel nothing but sadness.

“I know,” he sighed. And he did, truly, know that the only one to blame for this was the one laying dead in front of him. It wasn’t Sherlock’s fault, it wasn’t Mycroft’s fault, it wasn’t his own fault and, for once, it wasn’t even the Doctor’s fault - it was Moriarty’s fault.

“I did everything, Mr. Saxon, I did. I sold out my government, my country, my own brother, just to keep him entertained; for you. I thought he’d be pleased, and therefor, you’d be, I thought it’d-”

“You handed him Sherlock?” The Master asked, shocked. When Mycroft first called him, when he was told that Moriarty was dead, the Master didn’t bother asking what happened and why, he simply asked where. He didn’t care about anything else, he assumed it would be suicide, that was the only possibility, he knew no one could ever harm Jim Moriarty, except for Jim himself.

“Yes, sir, it’s all he ever wanted,” Mycroft said confidently. For once, he knew he played well and right.

“Get out of here,” the Master said angrily. It wasn’t all to blame on Moriarty, it wasn’t all of it his fault. “Turn around and leave this place right now.”

“Wh-why?” Mycroft asked confused as he swallowed uneasily; he was terrified of the man in front of him. Dangerous as Moriarty might have been, it was nothing compared to the Master - after all, he was the one to teach Moriarty all that he ever was, he created the monster.

A smile spread across the Master’s face, the same lunatic smile that many had seen in their very last seconds of living.

“Because I promised not to hurt you, and you’d hate it if I broke my promise,” he spoke calmly and rubbed his right hand’s fingers against his right palm. Blue sparks flew out of the Master’s hand, causing Mycroft to take a step back.

Mycroft was about to speak out again, but changed his mind. He wanted to explain his action, make it clear that the unfortunate death was not his fault, to ask whether it was changeable and suggest ways of waking the dead man up and forcing him to regenerate. Instead, he turned around, walked a few steps forward, into a door, down a case of stairs and out of the area. Lucky him.

The Master kneeled down next to Moriarty. For a few seconds he did nothing at all, just stared at him blankly. So many thoughts ran through his mind, more than ever, but none made any sense. What was he supposed to do? There was so much he wanted to say but nobody to speak to, and he certainly wasn’t willing to talk to a dead body; to a lifeless piece of meat.

With steady hands, the Master reached over to the dead body in front of him. For a couple of seconds his hand hanged in the air above Moriarty’s chest, doubting which way to choose. With a broken smile, his hand drifted to the right side of Moriarty’s jacket. Sliding his hand beneath it, the Master shoved his hand inside the inner pocket of the jacket. His hand was met with a cold, metal piece, causing his right heart to skip a beat. For a second, just for one brief second, the Master froze and shut his eyes. Quickly after, he wrapped his fingers around the object tightly and pulled his hand outside of Jim’s pocket, and with the same breathe, the Master stood up and started walking away from the body, towards the TARDIS.

It wasn’t until he had gotten inside the blue box and shut the door tightly behind him that he finally softened his grip. Placing his right arm in front of his body, he unwrapped his fingers from the cold object and looked at it for the first time in years. To any other creature on the planet it would seem like nothing but a silver fob watch with a weird pattern engraved upon it. Of course, to the Master, it didn’t look like that at all. That simple fob watch held inside some of his darkest memories and most terrifying times. To him it was salvation, it was a solution and an escape. And now, it was a faded memory of the one person he ever cared for, a ghost from his past; traces of a consciousness that had left the world, never to return.

But, truly, now it was just a fob watch.