It was a game we used to play when we were younger. Earth kids played “Cops and Robbers”; Gallifreyan kids played “Time Lords and Daleks.” The Master (then Koschei) and I would always be the Time Lords and our friends, Devishna and Talmen, would always be the Daleks.

“Ex-ter-min-ate! The Mas-ter and the Tai-lor (I was still experimenting with names) will be de-feat-ed!” Talmen ran after us, but we jumped into a dried up river bed.

“Ex-ter-min-ate!” Devishna called from behind us, her arms out like the Dalek’s plunger and gun.

“Oh! They’ve got me, Tailor!” Koschei laughed as he ran into my arms, pretending to die. “They’ve got me!”

“You must regenerate, Master! It’s your only hope!” We laughed at the campness of nine-year old dramatics.

“I can’t, Tailor.”

“Regenerate, Master! Regenerate!”

“You must go on, then,” Koschei held his hand to his forehead as if he were fainting, “Without me.”

That was what I remembered when the Master was shot. He seemed to remember that game as well.

“Always the women.” At any other time, I would’ve smiled at the irony. The Master had married Devishna shortly after graduating the Academy and here he was, dying at the hands of Lucy Cole, his human companion.

“You’re not dying, don’t be stupid, it’s only a bullet, just regenerate.”

“No.” The Master wasn’t pretending to die this time. He was willingly accepting it. He wanted to die.

There was a custom on Gallifrey, for the dying. They called it chengolian, the laying of the hands. The sick’s closest friends and relatives would all gather around him and rest their hands on his body, sharing happy stories about the dying and projecting positive energy into the soul so that when the soul exited the body, it would remain calm and peaceful and not haunt it’s living companions. I tried with the Master, I tried to remember all the good times we had as children, tried to remember our prankster days at the Academy, but looking into his eyes … those old eyes filled with death and destruction and war … I couldn’t do it.

“How about that … I win.”

I thought I was meant to save him, to somehow use his knowledge and mine to build a new Gallifrey and continue our race as the last two Time Lords in existence. We could have built a new Academy, trained new children to manipulate time and space, restart our lives and Koschei and Theta once again. But he wouldn’t let me.

I loved and hated him for that.

It seemed he only hated me.