“You know what, get your own act. ‘Selfish bastard’ is taken by me, and I’m way better at it. You get occasional attacks of morals.”
The Master is thrummingly aware of how much danger he’s in, to taunt the angry beast of his lifetime best friend when the Doctor is already past consolation. But he can’t stop; the truth is simple. The one thing more important to him than survival is being that impossibly stubborn “barnacle.”
He summons his lion courage and strides to a nearest bookshelf, pulls a title off and hands it to the Doctor.
Yes, you can.
But so can I.
“Happy reading, darling.”
He draws in a deep, slow breath as the rage trickles into his bloodstream and causes his flesh to tingle and his red cells to bubble. He mustn’t scream. He mustn’t scream. His jaw clenches tightly to avoid the howl of utter indignance that he feels twisting his throat muscles closed and causing his belly to writhe inside. He can’t deny the occasional bout of guilty ‘we shouldn’t do that, it’s wrong’’s, but right now that didn’t seem to be a concern of his.
“Oh but we can share, dearhearts. You be the ’selfish bastard’ and I’ll have a go at ’avaricious mercenary’, what do you say? Something new and different for me? Caring less about others and more about myself, hm?”
It was meant as a joke, but his teeth are still clenched and his tone is rough with annoyance, no longer wintry but now burning with the occasional spark, like a fuse on its’ way to its’ explosive prize. The moment the book is thrust toward him, the moment the Master seems so irritatingly unaffected by his mood, he knows the fuse has met its’ mark. The Doctor yanks the book from his grip and tosses it idly off to the side without once taking his eyes off the Master.
For three entire seconds, nothing happens but a stare and the steady rise and fall of his chest. Then a sound emits from him, certainly not humanoid by any standard, a growling, hopeless cry of rage as he grips up the Master’s shirt collar and shoves him against the nearest bookcase. It rattles from the force and a few books knock through the other side and clatter to the floor.
“WHY?! Why are you here?!? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!? I said I’m fine, I said it! Why, why- WHY won’t you believe me?! Why must you always PUSH and PULL and PRY things out of me?! Must you always be here watching, waiting, hunting, learning, knowing things?! You know so much then tell me, TELL ME HOW TO SLEEP! Tell me, tell me how to sleep with the whispers and the noise and the nightmares, I BEG OF YOU, clever Master of Knowledge, TELL ME!”
Flung against a bookshelf, surrounded by the shower of falling titles, heartsrate thundering, the Master doesn’t once yield. Butterscotch eyes darken to mahogany and at last to black, as pupils swallow irises.
Quite contrary to what the Doctor knows of this face, Koschei is still Koschei: solid, sturdy, unwavering from a fixed course, no matter how tumultuous the seas through which he steers, like the arrow of a compass. He rises to not one ounce of the bait flung with such cavalier spite. He knows that while such malice is part and parcel of his old friend, it is rarely genuine when turned outward.
He waits, then, patiently, for the Doctor’s frothing tirade to end.
And then he breaks the Doctor’s grasp, only to encircle him in his arms. He braces the back of his head and holds him fast. The embrace does not smother, but it secures.
He waits a long silent interval. At last, he addresses each question in order.
“I love you. I want to hold your hand, always, in every way that holding a hand connotes. I won’t believe you because I know you better than I know myself. I see you bleeding. I hear you bleeding. I could see it and hear it on the other side of the universe. I’m not the master of anything, not really, but I will find ways to bend the laws of time and space if it will make your bleeding stop. I would be the Doctor’s doctor if he’ll let me. He is my all. You want to sleep, Thete?”
He presses his palm to the center of the Doctor’s forehead, and infuses every ounce of telepathic power he has into the touch.
Icarus 