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Published:
2020-11-05
Completed:
2010-09-08
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5,347
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2/2
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An Adventure in Trust

Summary:

The Master gets pregnant after an encounter with the Doctor. But while rattling through time and space, the only one to pick up the pieces is the Master's companion, Mara. MPreg, MasterOC, mentioned DoctorMaster

 I do not, nor will I ever, own any names affiliated with Doctor Who, Torchwood, or any of the ideas therein. They are the property of the BBC and Russell T. Davies. Mara Jade Harkness, Damon Hart, and Lyra Saxon are my own property.

Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Notes:

Thanks to my great friend and beta reader, The Glorious Cheshire Cat. I call her Kera. She gave me a lot help with this story besides editing it. She helped me with ideas, directions, and helped me plot out what would happen. I owe her a lot. So, Kera, the next time you can to go flying off through and need someone to be your co-pilot, you know where to find me! You're brilliant, and I owe you!

-Sybil Renee Winchester

Chapter Text

The soft choking, whickering sound from the doorway suddenly grounded the Master's wandering mind, and he snarled over his shoulder, "Shut up and close the door! I know what you're thinking." His face faded to a sickly shade of green as he turned back to his TARDIS' toilet and retched again into the basin.

"Why yes, I do think it will rain in Cardiff on the 25th of June in 2613." His companion – one Mara Jade Harkness – leaned on the door frame to the bathroom, her arms crossed and waist-length brown hair braided tightly into a crown around her head. It was frayed slightly where she'd slept in it. Her pretty face was blank, but her gray eyes were concerned. She straightened up, her garnet skirt rippling as she descended to her knees beside him. "It's been nearly a week now. Are you sure you don't want me to check you over?" Her long, slim hand rested on the curve of his shoulder blade as she gently stroked his hair.

He wanted to snap at her. He wanted to throw her against the porcelain of the deep, claw-footed bathtub. He wanted to twist her spindly wrist until it snapped. Instead, he went on instinct and leaned into Mara's touch and sighed heavily. "Fine," he said with a grudging sigh and looked up with a pale face and tired eyes. The bags underneath were dark purple like bruises.

Mara leaned over and kissed his forehead. The whisper of a vague rose scent soothed the anger in his stomach, and his face relaxed very slightly. The soft clicking of her heeled sandals faded into the halls of the TARDIS, and the Master spit away the remains of bile in his throat and flushed the toilet to follow her.

The Master paused and watched her from the doorway to the small medical room his TARDIS had prepared on Mara's request (the old machine had a fondness for the girl). She looked like the perfect blend of Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones, her parents. The 25-year-old possessed willowy yet sleek curves that flaunted her clothes in a way a model would have envied; much like her papa's build without the heavy muscle. As she walked around the small padded table, checking the cabinets for supplies, her heels clicked on the smooth gray linoleum. In the entirety of the time she had been his companion, he had never seen her wear anything but casual skirts and heels, even when running for her life.

Mara turned to him, flashing the lacings that held the front and back panel of her black blouse together. One of her long hands reached for him, the other clamping a clipboard to her chest. She knew him well enough to know he wouldn't take her hand. His pride demanded he do everything under his own power, yet he had let her comfort him while he was weak on the floor of the bathtub. She hadn't been exaggerating; the Master had been ill for nearly a week straight, and it was damn-well time someone took care of him.

Unfortunately, that job – like many others – fell to Mara herself.

The Master, snarling and spitting like an angry cat, crawled up onto the padded platform and lay back, watching the daughter of Torchwood. The motion, however, turned his stomach, and he clenched his jaw to try not to vomit again. Mara's hand rested in a comforting gesture on a warm cheek as she spoke a few Gallifreyan words that rolled liquidly off her tongue.

"It's all right," she said, words she had repeated many times before. The TARDIS has taught her the words in the Master's natural language as a way to extend a metaphoric olive branch.

The Master's jaw unclenched, and he lay quietly on the table while Mara, smoothing a loose stand of brown from her face, set to work removing his AC/DC T-shirt and unbuttoning his jeans to pull down slightly. His face twitched as an uncharacteristic wave of self-consciousness crashed down into his mind, which made no sense since he and his companion had run into each other in some form of undress more times than worth mentioning.

Her hand ghosted down over his cheek again, and she repeated the Gallifreyan words in a voice that wouldn't have carried to anyone but him. Mara removed the plastic cover of a hypodermic needle and gave the inside of one of the Master's elbows a gentle thwack with two chilly fingers. The vein bulged slightly, and again the Master had to swallow the urge to snap her wrist. As it was, he bit his tongue as she pierced the vein and drew a quantity of blood into the chamber. He hissed and seethed but let her tape a bandage onto the wound.

"Master," Mara said quietly, "it's been nearly six weeks since we've been to Cardiff, hasn't it?" She recapped the needle and inserted it into a tray the TARDIS offered her before returning her attention to the Master.

His hand flashed out and wrapped around her thin wrist, the thumb easily overlapping a few of his fingers. He tugged her over to the table and almost pulled her on top of him. As it was, she threw her free arm out and wedged it on the opposite side of his ribs, so she leaned over him on the table. Grabbing her neck, he dragged her down to within three inches of his face.

"Never," he snarled venomously, "mention that day again!"

Unlike those who would cower, Mara lifted the arm still clutched in his hand and laid her fingers to his cheek. Jack's slate-gray eyes peered down into his own. "You had sex with the Doctor, didn't you?" she whispered and covered the hand at her neck with her own.

The TARDIS went silent but for the soft ticking of the Time Rotor in the Console Room down the long hall. The Master's eyes filled slowly with shame, and he sat up to rest his forehead in the curve of his companion's shoulder. He rasped two words in Gallifreyan that took the TARDIS a few moments to translate, surprised as it was to hear them.

"Hold me."

It wasn't the first time he had asked her that, but the other times had been in English. Whenever the drums in his head got to be too much, he would spend the night curled up like a child beside her. Come morning, he was back to what passed as normal and pretended that the weakness had never happened. The present situation had nothing to do with the drums.

Mara enfolded him into a warm hug and whispered her mantra "It's all right" to him as he held on. There were no sobs, no shaking of his shoulders, no choked breathing. He just wrapped his arms around her waist and sat there, listening to the single heartbeat in Mara's veins and the drums in his own head. Then the Master realized something.

The drums were quieter.

His hazel eyes widened. The drums never quieted. Never. As Mara started to lean away, his hands jumped up to cup her head, placing her forehead to his. The beats throbbed softly. One, two, three, four. His grip moving to her shoulders, he pushed her back about six inches. The same volume, the same low tap of the drums. He pushed her back again, this time to arm's length. Still the same. The Master frowned, puzzled, and released his companion, who had borne the experimental locomotion without complaint.

The TARDIS beeped in Mara's direction as she slid off the table and carefully laid the Time Lord back on the table. His reverie snapped, and he whipped his head toward the exam terminal. "You're going senile, you old crate! I'm not pregnant!"

Snorting, Mara shook her head and abandoned him in favor of the faithful machine. "Show me what you've got, old girl."

A screen materialized in the wall and began streaming Gallifreyan letters and figures before switching to English. Mara glanced over her shoulder at the brooding Master before brushing at her brown bangs and settling a pair of black-rimmed glasses on her nose. The streaming figures slowed enough for the girl to read them. Her brow creased in thought, then deepened in confusion. The TARDIS had a good basis for claiming the Time Lord was pregnant; several hormone levels were out of whack, some too high and others too low. The pattern was similar– though not identical – to that of a pregnant human woman.

"Two more tests, would you say?" she murmured to the TARDIS as she watched the figures solidify into a graph on the screen. "For now, that's about all I can do."

The TARDIS beeped an affirmative, followed by a series of rapid whistles, warbles, and bleeps of suggestion.

"How do you know so much about human medical tests?"

Bleep.

"Stupid question, sorry." Mara flicked a glance over his shoulder at the Master and said softly, "I hope you're wrong, old girl. I don't think it would be good for him."

A small plastic cup appeared beside Mara's arm, and she laughed at the implication. "You tell him," she said. "He's already threatened me today. It's your turn, honey."

The TARDIS bleeped indignantly.

"Your mother was a coral, so don't you go there." Laughing, Mara handed the Master the cup while the TARDIS bleeped and whistled to the Time Lord.

The Master snarled at the two. "I am not going to piss in a cup!"

"You don't want to think you're pregnant, and you won't piss in a cup to disprove it. Temperamental are the Time Lords." This last was said to the TARDIS as the Master snatched the cup and turned his back.

The screen on which she's seen the graph of the blood analysis flashed again, a question appearing as the TARDIS addressed her: "The tests aren't needed, Mara."

"I know, but the more concrete the proof, the less likely he is to try and deny it. How long have you known, anyway?"

"5 days by the Earth calendar."

"And you're just now saying something?"

"I thought you'd have caught on by now."

Mara sighed heavily. "Yes, I'm human. I'm very aware of it." At a tap on her shoulder, she held out her hand, palm up. The Master set the cup down and, standing so close behind him she could feel his body's lower temperature, zipped his fly.

"Not the first jeans zipper I've heard, Master," she said blithely. The overtly-sexual nature of the movement was not lost on her. After all, she'd inherited her papa's radar for all things innuendo.

The Master lifted his arms as Mara measured some of the urine into a test tube and inserted it into the exam terminal as well, his hands resting on the lip of the table at which she was working. He was pressed up against her, close enough to pin her but with enough space to let her turn around. He reached up and untied the black scarf from her hair, letting it fall away. There were a few things about Mara that suited him; one was the way her long hair slid through his fingers like silk strands or rippled when she moved. When she turned to face him – as she always did – he drew her into his arms and held her head so she could hear the double-time beating of his hearts.

"I'm not pregnant," he said in her ear, and only she would have noticed the hint of warning in his tone. He didn't want to be, and definitely not with the Doctor's child. His stubble scratched at her cheek as he dipped his head to draw her closer. The Time Agent's daughter had seen him in every imaginable mood, and she was probably the only living being he trusted besides his faithful TARDIS.

For a moment, she almost believed him, so sincere was his tone, but then she remembered the past five days of waking up to a concerned TARDIS and a vomiting Master, and she couldn't believe him. Leaving one arm around his waist, she placed the other hand on his stomach. "Master," she whispered, "the TARDIS can sense it. You are, and running these tests is only to make you see it. I'm sorry, but you are having the Doctor's baby."