It’s with an endearing wistfulness that the Master drops his gaze. A foolish, dreaming smile barely ghosts his lips. It’s obvious: he’s sold.
His fingers trace the silhouette of the phial of blood. The power he’s granted, and he’s so joyfully beguiled that he could never abuse what he’s always connived to possess. Oh, how wonderfully hilarious. He even chuckles, softly, just a few merry breaths of sound.
“But where’re we gonna find a loom, Thete? Gallifrey’s … it’s beyond us.”
Eyes that’ve softened to butterscotch snap up to face his other self, with purest faith that the Doctor will have an answer. Yet the Master finds it intuitively, before his best friend need speak again.
“You really think you and I can BUILD one? From SCRATCH? OHO. Oh, Doctor! Very WELL. Oh, VERY WELL, I ACCEPT THIS CHALLENGE!”
“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my lives, except maybe about wanting to marry you… and, w-ell, loving you.”
He leans in and presses a gentle kiss to the Master’s forehead, his voice absolute and optimistic, as the other Time Lord drops his gaze. Hands remain cupping either side of his beloved’s face, thumbs still trailing over the crests of cheekbones, exploring and memorizing though he’s long since memorized the planes and dips.
The Doctor’s smile is sanguine, tranquil, at peace ever since that blessed night when the Master had pulled him from his nightmares and, as such, had also pulled his head out of his arse. Since that moment he’s been lighter. He’s been trying. More importantly, he’s been Theta Sigma. His mouth opens to respond to the question of Looms, but he needn’t have bothered at all. The Keeper of His Hearts knows, already, the answer to that question and he lets out a jovial chuckle in response instead before speaking.
“We’re brilliant, you and I. Geniuses. Together we can do anything, including building a complex and delicate genetic amalgamation matrix and accompanying memetic primer. We can do this, Kos. And I think I’ve got the fundamental building blocks to start with in one of the storage compartment areas in the ship.”
His right hand slides down then, leaving its’ spot against his beloved’s cheek and trailing fingertips over throat and fabric, all the way down to the Master’s hand, intertwining their fingers together and squeezing confidently. He speaks then, in Gallifreyan, a twist on an ancient saying that now seems more fitting than it ever has before.
“~The life that breathes us is home to all souls. We are children of stars, galaxies learning to walk, eternally at home, within each other.~”
“STOP. I may die of happiness: I who am NEVER satisfied!”
The Master snatches the Doctor’s face in his hands and bites his chin–hard–the way an overly excited affectionate feline might bite its owner in the middle of play. Coursing through his telepathic brain circuitry is a steady rhythmic thrumming that can only be described as psychic purring. It’s only ever audible around the person he’s currently roughhousing.
“Right, right! Joost. Run your ‘building block’ by me, before getting involved in any sort of accident. You tend to be, you know, darling, more of the innovator than the, er, meticulous sort. Let me beta you, right?”
His fussing, somewhere between housewife and fellow mad scientist, is cut off decisively when the Doctor speaks an unbreakable promise in Old High Gallifreyan.
Clasping him by the neck with both hands, the Master grazes his thoughts, bringing from memory and mind the words of this revised vow.
And he joins him in reciting the final phrase:
“–Eternally at home, within each other.”
Koschei hesitates, licking his lip. He sighs, hapless, amused, through his nose. Might as well just be honest, might as well:
“Doctor, I want you to know that I would lose for you. I would forfeit. I would surrender. I have never been happier than you have made me.”
Icarus 