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Master's Jester Chapter 2
The Master sat in a chair next to his son's hospital bed. The doctors that he had had taking care of Ianto had all said the same thing. There was something wrong with his mind that wasn't allowing him to wake up. He felt anger at himself, he felt fairly sure that this was his fault. His son had healed him, technically he had done it twice, and Ianto was the one who paid the price. He doubted there was anything on earth that could help him and didn't know of any people, other than his own, with powerful enough telepathy to heal him.
Rage filled him as he stood up and destroyed objects around him, barely controlled enough to ensure he caused no more harm to his son. He'd sent people to Cardiff to check on his daughter and grandchildren only to discover they'd all been killed early on into his reign. He found himself wondering if he was even capable of having a healthy family relationship anymore. The drums had destroyed him and he'd destroyed everything.
The Time Lord paused as he slowly set his chair back upright and sat down in it. He decided to think rationally and focused on Ianto's face. It was hard for him to remember such an old regeneration. He meditated as he set his mind back into his own memories. He'd let himself be very much like a human version of himself when he'd used the Chameleon Arch all those centuries ago. You could change a person completely using it, when he'd been Professor Yana he'd actually modeled himself after one of his brother's older selves. He'd gone to great lengths when setting it up to ensure he wouldn't use it too long. A destroyed Chameleon Arch pretty much killed the true self of the person inside it. That minx had stolen it when she realized that it was distracting him from her. He shook his head as his memory went into the gutter.
A faint smile came across his lips as he remembered becoming a father, of holding Rhiannon and Ianto as babies. The sense of wrong as his mind tried to process the loss of his Chameleon Arch, he'd given himself a set time to open it and it had passed. He'd grown more irritable as time passed, he could remember pushing Ianto way too hard. And his wife had to be hospitalized, driven mad by the Arch. He could remember that part of him, his true self, yelling at her to be returned, to be reunited with himself and all the things he would do. He could remember his son getting the Arch and returning it. Of having the two sets of memories merging as his DNA was essentially rewritten from a dying human into a dying Time Lord who was running out of time to regenerate.
The truth was he'd already realized what he'd have to do to fix things but hadn't wanted to commit to it. He'd finally gotten the things he'd wanted and it had cost him things he'd forgotten that had meant so much more to him. He stared at his son, gently touching his face. He had always been rather impatient.
Jack sat at a space bar, trying to get drunk and failing. He missed Ianto. To have him die in his arms was hard enough, but to have him die again when given a chance to maybe save him at the House of the Dead. The fact that Jack had been willing to risk the destruction of Earth for the unexpected chance to get him back killed him in a way no death ever could. The fact that Ianto's ghost or whatever he'd been hadn't let him, had sacrificed himself so Jack wouldn't have to just showed him that somehow it really had been Ianto.
Jack glanced down as a note was given to him by the barkeep. 'Follow me'
"Doctor?" Jack asked as he rose to see his old friend standing on the other side of the room, before rushing, as best one can in a crowded space bar, to him.
The Doctor smiled at his former companion. "There is a lot I need to tell you Jack. I'm close to regenerating and don't have much time." The Doctor laughed at himself, a Time Lord out of time.
"Doctor?" Jack asked simply as the Doctor guided him to his TARDIS.
"There are things that happened during the year that wasn't that were erased from your memories, of your own consent."
Jack was a little shocked, "What?" Jack would never normally allow his mind to be messed with, it was one of the reasons that he'd left the time agency before he'd met The Doctor.
"You know that The Master enjoyed torturing you by killing people in front of you. One day someone was brought to him that The Master had known in a previous regeneration. This person was his son from a previous time using the Chameleon Arch. He had psychic abilities that healed the cause of The Master's insanity, although he still wasn't a good person, but damaged his son's mind. The only way to fix it was to let me win. The Master knew that turning off the paradox machine would revert the Earth to what it had been before. Where his human descendants were alive and well. But you knew his son and couldn't remember this connection or it would alter how you acted around him."
Jack followed The Doctor deeper into his time ship.
"Tosh!?"
The Doctor let the long separated friends embrace before he continued his explanation. "Those on the ship weren't effected, so if they were on the ship when it was turned off and not when it had been turned on you get two of them. This Tosh is from the year that wasn't, the one you left behind but never returned to. It's also why we had to wait for Martha to get to the ship otherwise she would have just ceased to be."
Tosh looked up at Jack, she'd missed him so much, "I've pretty much been living on the TARDIS since then. I've been responsible for keeping The Master under control… calmer… well something like that. And watching over Ianto."
"Ianto?" Jack whispered.
"Yes Jack," The Doctor said calmly, answering his real question. "Ianto is The Master's son. And this information was erased from your mind, but now that your Ianto has died we can finish this."
"What do you mean?"
It was Tosh who answered him, "We've been keeping my Ianto here, but he's pretty much comatose without a powerful enough psychic to fix him. But we can use your Ianto to fix him. It's some weird Time Lord thing but they can essentially merge the two together so it's our Ianto physically and your Ianto mentally."
"Are you saying we can bring my Ianto back to life?"
Clap Clap Clap
"A brilliant deduction from the freak."
"What are you doing here!? I saw you die!" Jack yelled as The Master rose from where he had been sitting between two Iantos laying in beds in the room he'd been led to.
"We had to fake it for everyone on the Valiant. No one could know I was alive," The Master explained as if to a child.
"Jack," Tosh said gently touching his arm, "let it go. He's been here the whole time helping me take care of our Ianto. It hasn't been easy for us to essentially hide away here whenever The Doctor has a Companion, but we've done all we could to protect him while hoping to find someone who could help."
"Martha has retrieved your Ianto for us," The Doctor interjected as he felt his regeneration approaching. "We need to do this now because I won't be much use for awhile afterwards."
Jack and Tosh stood back, hands clasped as the two Time Lords worked together, for the first time as far as the two knew. It felt like eternity later after a bright light, similar to regeneration flooded the room and there was only one Ianto left on the bed.
Ianto's eyes blinked open as he leaned up weakly in the bed.
End Chapter 2
Reviews inspire me!
I was feeling really inspired so I went ahead and finished this story, I was originally planning this to be 2 chapters instead of just one. It was really a CoE fix it this whole time.
House of the Dead is a Torchwood radio play that occurs right before Jack leaves the planet and ends up at that space bar The Doctor eventually finds him in.
