“Stop feigning disdain and disinterest. You love the universe like it’s your child. Go on, Doctor. Let go.”
The slightest pressure on his hand and the Master knows he’s driven the point home. He inclines his head in the smallest, yet most deferent, salute. He waits for his oldest friend, waits and stands watch for the fixed mark of his every pursuit.
The Doctor stands and wavers around the TARDIS floor like a fawn taking its first steps; the Master supposes that’s apropos.
“I remember,” he confirms, quietly, simply, with a rarest reverence.
His smile is bittersweet; to see this face off is both to mourn and to rejoice. It seems to galvanize his best friend into throes of poesy, self-aimed directives about life and living it.
Hate is always foolish, and love is always wise.
“I would love you even if it were folly,” he whispers, and he knows the Doctor cannot hear, but that’s not the point anyway.
He’ll make sure he knows in the next life to come.
And he’ll begin by aiding his Theta back onto his feet, squeezing his arms, bracing them tight.
Courage, Hearts. I still know your name.
He steps back when the golden light crests, and he knows the moment has arrived.
Then it comes, the clumsy beautiful chaos, and the Master cannot help but raucously laugh.
And when the smoke clears, and the TARDIS complains, jettisoning in a nauseated spin cycle, the Master advances on the Doctor, and squats beside her.
“Oh, you bloody copycat,” he snorts, seizes the console screen and holds it up to her seraphic face.
Confusion. Everything was pure confusion, chaos and a kind of cognitive numbness that left her with the curious feeling of operating her body and mind by remote. It would all sort itself out in time, but the Doctor had this feeling that things had gone very, very differently this time. While trying to work out precisely what, someone nearby turned a monitor so the change could be seen.
Ooooo.
“Oh, brilliant..” she breathed as the neural fog receded a step further. Northern again, was it? Still, there was the slight matter of just who had moved that monitor. She turned and saw a bearded gent whose name escaped her for the moment. Ah, that was it!
“Missy!” she cried happily! “No, wait, ‘ang on. That’s not right either. Tegan! No, wait, wrong again. You’re not a gobby Australian, for a start. no, no, don’t tell me. I’m keen to guess.”
But instead, the dizziness and a slight nausea and she spun backwards into the jump seat again. “Y’know, I really miss when regeneration was a quiet business. Who the bloody ‘ell decided to turn it into a Pink Floyd laser light show? Sorry. Five minutes ago I was a grumpy Scotsman. It’s all a bit confusin’.”
“Happy Birthday, then, bestie.”
He’s staring into her eyes, marveling at the thick dark eyelashes, at the nova-like brightness of golden-hazel irises. There’s an infinity of stars within her, and he doubts for not a second that this is his beloved.
The hammy open-mouthed grin rather gives her away, too.
But for a moment, the reverence is broken, as he softly cackles.
“You’re a dye job. Like I was, that one time, that Christmas. Look! You’re blond with brown roots, hehHAH!”
But she cuts across his declaration with her own exclamation of joy. It tickles him to the core, and he practically stands at attention when she cries “Missy!”
“WHAT! YES! Ehr, not yet. ALMOST!” He’s smacking his chest, over both hearts, with an energy to match her own, to match the Doctor she was several faces ago, though when the Doctor has ever lacked madcap enthusiasm, none can say. It’s intoxicating and it’s contagious, and here he is, leaping up and down.
But when she falls back into the jumpseat, he squats in front of her, hands on her knees.
“Well I suppose I would agree, save for the fact that this is a rather momentous transformation: the Doctor, not giving up after all.”
Icarus 