intergalacticstarlight:

[ Closed Starter For @masterfulxrhythm – Welcome To The Dark Side Dearie ]

Today was going to be one of those days, he could already tell.

Not only had the TARDIS been decidedly non-communicative for the past four hours, hiding herself away in the farthest recesses of the mainframe, but he’d gotten a rather execrable knot in the pit of his stomach that he just couldn’t seem to shake. Normally during those times he would seek out a room to destroy, to tear apart until the feeling went away. Other times he would venture out of the ship and seek out a less-than-willing participant to bear the brunt of his darkest rage. There were times he even sought out means to harm himself.

This day though the ship had seen fit to hide every doorway in every corridor, leaving him to just the control room and when he’d attempted to simply exit the ship, she’d refused that to him as well. After a few rounds with the mallet to her controls the TARDIS had still refused to cooperate, so whatever it was that had gotten into her, it was clear it wasn’t going away until he chose to listen. He rarely did, and normally she did what he asked without question so this… was rather unprecedented, and he was less than amused by it.

Long, pale fingers tapped anxiously against the edge of the console unit as he stared at the space-time coordinates the ship had projected onto one of the navigational monitors, wanting nothing more than to ignore her suggestions. He didn’t do that anymore, he didn’t help people, he didn’t respond to S.O.S. signals or requests for ‘The Doctor’s’ presence. He wasn’t the Doctor anymore, after all- he was just Theta Sigma. Just a retired Time Lord sick and bloody tired of being the punchline to every Universal joke. Yes, he’d made mistakes but he’d attempted to fix them, to become a better man, a newer man, and it had done n o t h i n g. The ship hummed insistently, adding to the din inside of his mind and causing him to wince.

“Fine… FINE!”

Cursing in Gallifreyan he let out a growling huff and set the coordinates, moving around the console unit as he muttered to himself, sending the ship out of its’ spot in the clouds in Victorian London, through the Vortex, and off to wherever-in-Rassilon’s-name she wanted to go. Once the ship was fully materialized he pushed off from the console and spun in a circle, glaring up at the time rotor before stalking toward the doors, grabbing his jacket in the process.

“There. Are you happy now? Ay? Infernal time machine… I’d scrap you for parts if I weren’t so use to having my own living space! I swear if this is one of those ’Doctor’ bits you keep attempting to force on me, I’m turning you around and detaching your automatic controls.”

He yanked the doors open and stepped out, scanning the area, a scowl on his face.

He loves the finality of bodies hitting hard surfaces.

The Master loves to watch the final impotent exercise in futility, as a foe’s form wriggles and writhes like a worm on a hook and finally falls slack in blissful lifelessness.  It’s nearly as grand as watching an enemy’s skin blister as he burns.  

He loves these things without pretense, needy and ironically abject as an addict standing in the rain begging strangers for a lighter.

He loves them, and he indulges every whim to a new fix, the longer the epicenter of his life is skewed off course: the longer the Doctor is no more. 

It’s rare that he feels that darkness existing palpably outside his own mind. But he feels the rage radiating from above his head, and it is raining on Mondas, raining on the corpses of the government agents that rose against him for his tyranny and died.  Raining off the blood on his face and mouth and hands, raining a deluge so forceful that he nearly cannot see the blue box materializing on the muddy slippery hill overlooking the most populated platform of the ship.  

The Master’s feet carry him upwards, until he’s waiting outside the TARDIS door for the man who steps out; without having ever seen this long thin face, he knows his oldest friend; the miasma of violent darkness radiating off of the Doctor, however, that is new, and it is intoxicating. 

He is impenitently aroused.  

     “Oh, you … are … . beautiful,” he breathes, snatching out a hand, cupping the Doctor’s jaw harshly, appraising the old friend who has sunken into the quicksand beside him.  “A Doctor without hope: you are a black hole. I feel that I am standing inches from death and I would nearly pitch myself over the ledge into oblivion just for the pleasure of the fall.”