“ … SO? I want another. I want a double-M.D. And maybe a few PhD’s. The sky’s the limit when you’re as smart and evil as I.”
The Master’s petulance is perhaps a welcome transition from the somberness of moments past, and what’s more, it’s a sure sign that he is truly well.
He climbs into the Doctor’s lap, laying on the entitlement thick, along with pretense of daintiness. Unfazed by this role reversal of expected gender norms, Koschei bats his black-lined lashes at his wife. His entire goal, at this juncture, is to ham it up, and make her laugh, and banish the shadows of regret and sorrow altogether.
“ ‘The Doctor and the Master in the TARDIS,’ sounds like a kid’s show I’d watch. Or maybe a sitcom.”
He flashes teeth in an irrepressible grin, with elastic energy that well suits her sunny enthusiasm. He kisses her full on the mouth.
“Now, Doctor: wow me, make me swoon, by swinging a jackhammer at the walls of this room.”
The Doctor rolls her eyes, but those eyes as well as her mouth are still smiling. She likes the petulance, the arrogance, the personality preening- especially since she gets to see beneath it so frequently. Eyebrows lift nearing her hairline as he scales her lap, not that there’s much to be scaled- she’s a fair bit smaller than him now, and boy did that take some getting use to -and already she’s letting out a giggle as her hands find his hips.
She likes having him there, on her lap- always has. To an outsider, he’d be the one in control in such a position but in reality, Theta knew she had the upper hand. All the hands, as it were, just like Koschei had when it came to her hearts.
“An’ don’t I loov it when y’get sentimental. The Great and Powerful Master, watchin’ a sitcom with’is wife. You gonna wear your jimjams an’ everything?”
She waggles her eyebrows, the shadows visibly lifting, the regret dissipating right in front of her other half, her counterpart, her keeper. He’s very good at this, she thinks. Perhaps she’s gotten better at it, too, over the centuries. A quiet ’mmph’ noise escapes against his lips as he kisses her, and she has to draw in a shaky breath to get her bearings back in order.
“First off, an’ this is important: I always make you swoon, Master. I’m jus’ that good. Second, f’you want me t’get oop an’ start demolishin’ this room, you’re gonna ‘ave ta let me.”
Her smile carries with it the weight of a billion burning suns, capable of melting even the most frozen of tundras. Then she leans up and kisses him full on the mouth just as he’s done moments ago, only she lets it linger, content to stay there a moment though her enthusiasm to tear the room asunder with her bare hands is palpable.
The Master gazes down at his best friend with falsely donned disgust.
“MUST you perennially draw attention to the fact that you’ve domesticated me?”
He takes a declarative stride forward, hands resting on his hips. It’s an attempt to look authoritarian and terrifying; in the past it would have worked, the same gesture he took on the day he commanded the “Toclafane” to kill the American President. Right now it just makes him look like a cute sap.
The horror.
“Yes, yes you do. You’re my one.”
He swoops down upon her, devouring her ears and neck in ticklish nibbly kisses.
“Grrrrreat!”
He kisses her full on the mouth, and throws her over his shoulder.
“Weakness!”
A pause.
“And now that I’ve done this, I really have no idea where I’m taking you. Obviously you need your legs to beat holes in the walls of this hellish room.”
He puts her down again, licks a finger and straightens her lemon icing hair into array.
The kiss the Doctor rewards him with earns a long guttural “mmmm,” and a drunken smile. Then the Master rushes to the piano and taps the first three notes of Beethoven’s Fifth.
A compartment in the wall–likely installed ages past by Missy–slides open. Giddily he dashes to pull out a beautifully crafted jackhammer, with a nozzle constructed to cut diamonds. After that, a chainsaw.
Icarus 