The Master showed her the hollow planet Hiek Mejar. Almost a third of its surface had been blown away and the hole reached down right to its core at some points. And all the way down cities were built into the walls and a rather exotic, mostly aerial wildlife had evolved. Some animals looked like giant flying stingrays, covered in fur, others like dinosaurs, but with strange glowing tentacles. They didn't travel all the way down. Just to a black market inside the petrified shell of a gigantic egg, where the Master got a tiny chip from a shabby looking inhabitant with six furry arms and a face like a mantis. He also let Roka steal some valuable trinkets from other merchants, which they later just flung into the abyss one by one. Just for the fun of it.

Another time they spent nearly three weeks on a planet called Ghiburo, where the Master charmed himself into the political ranks of a small country, just to get the codes to a bunker filled with collected alien tech. Roka didn't ask why, when he revealed his rather complex plan to her. She knew only two things: Never would she be able come up with something elaborate like that, and it was a lot of fun to dissect his plans to find small gaps and possible exploitable holes in them. In the end she saved them two whole months. She also managed to twist some lethal parts of those plans in a way that made killing a few people a lot more ineffective than keeping them alive. Earning herself many mean looks and annoyed grunts that she only commented with wicket grins. The Master might have been a genius and all, but he thought way too complicated and chaotic oftentimes.

After that they visited the obsidian desert of Kh'ra. A planet that used to be covered in sand, but the sun had gotten so hot that it had melted it all into black glass, forming alien pillars and shapes all around. Without the TARDIS they would have just burned in the heat. The underground was honeycombed with tunnels that's walls were engraved with alien and ancient symbols and pictures. Roka ran her fingers over it, fascinated by the thought that something had lived here once. A small pile of red shimmering crystals was what the Master took with him, before he threw a side-glance at Roka and went exploring the tunnels with her for some hours, telling her of the civilization that once used to live in them.

-------------

Right now though she sat in the research room again, watching the Master build a small device. He had wanted a second set of data from the Sirhanotchi chamber, only to find something peculiar.

"Uhm... it's gone." He looked perplex at the scan that showed none of the floating matter from the first. "Your glitch... fixed itself."

Roka sat on the chair next to him and after a short moment of shock she sighed. "No, it didn't. Ever since I entered the TARDIS there are sometimes... like windows in time where the glitch seems to have no effect. Usually lasts for a day, sometimes two. But then it gets back to 'normal'."

"Hm... could be related to your frozen time stream." He compared the new scan with the first one.

"Those were also the times I went out with the Doctor," she reminisced and couldn't keep herself from comparing those memories.

They weren't chasing after adventures as the Doctor always did. They also weren't constantly hanging around earth. In fact, not for a single second. And when the Doctor always looked out for crowds of people, the Master actually avoided them for the most part. It was very different to travel with him, but she didn't regret it. Right now she saw a side of him that was totally unexpected to her. All Roka knew so far about him had been the Doctor's stories, and slowly she started to realize that those formed a very incomplete picture. All those places they visited and all the stories the Master told her about them... at one, or probably many, points in his life he must have discovered them all. It also got obvious that he had spent more than just a few hours at some of those. Sometimes even years, what proved once more that he had a lot more patience than the Doctor.

"Aha!" He frantically typed something and got out another hologram. "Now it makes sense! The effect of the glitch would have gotten worse over time. One day you would have just vanished because your matter wouldn't be able to stabilize any longer."

"Great," she murmured with an eye-roll.

"That's the problem, see? The paradox would usually have not much effect on reality. But since the Doctor had to drag you along... Hmm... Well, not to change anymore. I could build a device though that tells you when the loop returns to stable. That way you always know when you're visible."

By now Roka had already learned that he never could resist building challenging tech. And now she watched as he put a small metal lid onto the device that almost looked like a pocket watch. A perfectly round and flat cylinder. She liked watching him work, watch his hands move with an amazing precision, putting all the tiny wires and gears and screws to their place.

As soon as the device was sealed the air around distorted and bent until the cylinder was gone.

"What the...?"

"That must have looked weird to you." The Master chuckled. "Transdimensional engineering. The device is inside this now." A very small blood red and faceted stone sat on his finger, made from the crystals they had gotten from the desert planet. Roka couldn't see what he did next, but a minute later he handed the stone to her, only now it was sitting inside a delicate metal cage.

"That's... an ear stud." She took it and turned it in her hand, slightly amused. "Seriously?"

"Uhm..." Now the Master looked unsure. "It's way more convenient that way." His eyebrows raised. "I'm quite sure I've seen humans wear stuff like that."

A giggle escaped her and she poked out her tongue. "I guess I can accept some jewelry from you."

Reading his confused look made it only funnier. It was obvious that he was completely lost here and annoyance started to spread on his face, when she refused to elaborate further.

"Maybe something else would be better though," she pondered, still a slight smirk on her lips. "I don't have any holes." Her hands raised towards her ears.

The same moment she finished the sentence she regretted having said it. Especially when she saw him pulling out his laser screwdriver with a big nasty smile as he saw an opportunity to get revenge for having been taunted before.

"That's not a problem."

Roka receded a bit. "No no no no no! You're so not going to pierce my ears!" She pressed her hands against them.

But he just laughed at her and grabbed one of her hands to push them down. "Stop struggling." A mean grin came down to her. "It won't even hurt."

"I don't care!"

The Master grabbed her head with one hand and when she still didn't stop to struggle he took her into a headlock. "Hold still, idiot."

And Roka had no choice but to obey. It didn't hurt at all, but felt really unpleasant when the precision laser burned through her gristle. At least that way the wound got cauterized immediately. Lastly he took the ear stud from her hand and put it in its place.

"There, fits."

He grinned happily and tapped against the stone four times. In Roka's mind appeared a series of numbers. One showed how long she would currently be visible, the other two showed some large numbers. One predicting when it would happen next, the other showing how much time had passed since the last time. A few seconds later everything vanished again.

"It's not very precise yet, but it will gather data each time this happens. Over the years it should become quite accurate." A proud grin sat on his face.

Roka touched the stone. It felt weird, but somehow she even liked it, still giving the Master a very mean look.

"Years..." Mumbling she tapped the stone again.

"Well, it takes a while to calculate the exact time frame."

"That's not..." She looked down to her feet and let her hand sink. "Years..." she mumbled again, suddenly realizing that reality wouldn't simply reset tomorrow. And that she would live for a very... very long time before it happened.

"You realized that you can't run away forever?" The Master laughed.

"I'm not running... away." Roka turned around to him.

He poked her head and came a step closer. "Yes, you do." Way too close, as he loved to do. "And worst of all." His thumb pointed towards his own chest. "You're running away with me of all people." A mean grin sat on his face.

Until now she had refused to see it that way. But he was all too right. She had done the worst possible thing imaginable.

No, the worst thing was that she enjoyed it, a lot.

Roka grinned back. "Then don't stop running."

------------

She learned how it felt to fly on Alpacratori, where the gravity was so low that one could simply swim through the air. Three suns hovered over the planet, one of them blue. And the people were made of cloth. Roka kept the Master from knotting some of them together. But instead they stole one of their hover bikes and won a race against some heavy rain clouds, before crash landing the vehicle into a mountain.

On the thirteenth moon of Fregnar they awaited night and sneaked into the royal palace to smash the giant statue of the Holy Queen. Apparently she was a tyrant and hated by one half of the population. But no one dared to rebel against her. Their action would probably start a civil war between the two fractions. But seeing a broadcast of the angry queen the next day had been totally worth it.

The same day they visited the underwater caves on a nameless planet. They were completely hollowed out by the water and a system of natural pipes went through them. Hitting the pipes with sticks sent waves of sounds through the cave, emitting the strangest music Roka had ever heard. Eerie, but somehow also soothing. Some of the walls were so thin they could look right through them, seeing glowing fish swim by. And once even a giant creature that almost looked like an angler fish from earth. Just twice as big and with a lot more eyes.

--------------

Sometimes Roka had to remind the Master of the fact that she was only human. That had never been necessary with the Doctor. He especially kept forgetting that she needed sleep regularly, but complained astonishingly less about it, and even waited for her, before going to new places. At least that was what he hesitantly admitted after she had realized that he never was outside the TARDIS when she woke up.

They weren't constantly traveling, although Roka never found out what the Master did in the depths of the TARDIS. She was still marked as intruder and could only move partially around. So she spent most of this free time in the library.

This time she found the Master inside it as well, slowly walking past the shelves, running a finger over the book spines. She watched him from a bit afar and only came closer when he suddenly stopped. He would know anyway that she was here, with his unfairly fine senses. Slowly he pulled out a bunch of sketchbooks from behind some thick tomes.

"Where were those hidden?" she asked curiously and stretched a bit to look inside. "I've never seen them at this spot."

"Hidden's the right word." He chuckled and lowered the sketchbook a bit. "Didn't think they would still be here." Slowly he turned some pages, revealing sketches and oftentimes quite detailed drawings of plants and weird life forms, of tech parts, machines and patterns, both natural and artificial, and all sorts of other things. Next to many of the pictures was text, mostly in Gallifreyan writing, but sometimes also in Latin letters. A sharp, but almost elegant handwriting.

Roka glanced over his hands then up to him. "May I?" He handed her one of the books and she flipped through the pages, admiring the drawings. "Wow, they are amazing! All those tiny details!" Who might have made those, she wondered. The Doctor? Or had he brought them with him from Gallifrey? She carefully ran a finger over the picture of a creature that looked like a sleeping dragon, without wings, but with fur, and so well done it was as if she could feel the fur under her fingers. It made her smile. "Beautiful."

"Think so?" The Master raised an eyebrow, throwing a skeptic glance down.

"Absolutely!" She flipped a few pages further. "Too bad I can't read it."

"Hm, right. Gallifreyan script doesn't get translated by the TARDIS." He trod partially behind Roka to look over her shoulder. "That one is about a planet that is covered in gold." His hand pointed to a bunch of drawings of small delicate flowers and he read, "It was like wading through an ocean of sunlight. And when the wind picked up the seeds got carried away, danced through the air as if they were living stars." He turned to the next page that showed some people that looked half human half plant. Some with weapons similar to swords. There was also a picture of a heart-shaped plant. Only one Gallifreyan symbol was on this page, but the Master continued as if much more were there, "Beneath the plants were bones and metal, old and long melted with the ground. It became apparent that the former inhabitants had been at a devastating war. Not a single person survived, leaving the whole planet littered with corpses. But they had a tradition to implant a tiny seed into the heart of every newborn child. So when their remains decayed over the years those seeds became the golden flowers."

Roka peered up and saw him staring into the distance as if recalling the text from his memory instead from the page. Had he just made this up? But it hadn't sounded like something he would imagine at all.

"Is that a story book?" she asked. "Or are those drawings of real things?"

He looked down again and back to the book, reaching over her shoulder to turn a few pages further. Her heart beat a little bit faster when she realized how close he actually were. Why couldn't he, for once, stay at an appropriate distance? He even leaned slightly against her back to look at the pages, an almost sad smile on his face.

"All real. Every single word of it. But that's probably boring to you."

"Not at all!" Roka protested and her heart made a literal jump when he reached over her shoulder again, making her wish she hadn't said anything. But once more his presence made her feel weirdly safe, and before she could stop herself she even leaned slightly back, without him noticing.

Few moments later he stopped at a page that showed old machinery and weird looking robots. No text at all was there, but he still told her, "There was a living, breathing city at one place. The machinery inside had somehow developed a life of its own and had started to expand the city, deep into the mountains, down into the ground and so far up that it was impossible to ever see the sky." His voice was calm and, now that she paid attention to it, actually very nice to listen to, demanding all of her attention, drawing her in to this ancient place he told of. "All living things were long gone and the only remaining inhabitants were machines that also had evolved, building and augmenting themselves, although it never got really clear if they had reached some level of consciousness or not." At another page he pointed at some of those machines. All kinds of robots, some giant, some tiny, some without eyes or faces, some with weird legs and arm-like extensions. They were crawling up walls, others sitting in corners and niches, their eyes drawn with so much detail, it was as if they were alive, staring right at her, while the Master's voice told of a wanderer that went deep inside those ruins to search for treasures, always observed by cold metal, but never attacked. "There was no way to keep track of time. The lack of sunlight and the artificial lights make it impossible to tell the time of day. But there were... hives of wires, sleeping giants, melted with the walls and... hmm no, I can't really describe it. It's too alien." He chuckled.

Slowly Roka came out of her trance like state. "You're quite the good storyteller," she mumbled. "Too bad it's all made up."

"Why should it?" The Master laughed, moving away from her back and leaving an unpleasant cold there.

"There wasn't a single line of text on those pages." She smirked.

"What do I need text for?" An amused grin sat on his face. He tapped his head, then reached down and his hands encompassed Roka's, closing the book she still held, before lying the other sketchbooks on top of it. "Keep them." And he walked away.

Perplex Roka stared at the stack and went after him. "I can't just keep someone else's stuff! I don't even know... there wasn't even a signature anywhere."

"I allow it. That's enough." His gaze was full of amusement, a roguish glint in his eyes. "Who knows, if you're a nice little human, I might even show you some of those places."

Roka wanted to protest, but a thought slowly seeped into her mind. No, that wasn't possible, was it? She stopped right in her track. "Those are yours!"

The Master turned around and laughed at her puzzled face. "That took you long." He stuck out his tongue and chuckled. "Although nowadays it's gotten way too loud to make something like that." His face suddenly turned sour, but only for a second.

It was impossible to keep herself from glaring at him with wide eyes. How could a guy like him make something so beautiful? And what did he mean by 'too loud'? The drums? There were so many questions burning inside her mind, but she didn't dare to speak them out loud. He probably wouldn't give an answer anyway. Like always when she tried to find out more about his past.

But those drawings were a bit like looking through his eyes. And at least the Latin script got translated by the TARDIS. It were mostly just annotations to certain details. But sometimes also snippets of scenes and descriptions of how some places had smelled or sounded or felt.

And she loved to get lost in those.