Send “I’ve got you” to help my muse wash off blood from their body.
The Doctor doesn’t remember coming home. She doesn’t remember Koschei slowly peeling her layers off, grimacing at the stickiness of dried blood coagulating on her skin. She doesn’t remember his expression of remorse, of all consuming guilt.
All she remembers are the screams.
Even now, she’s not entirely sure what happened. Was it her mistake, or his? Which one of them missed it? A hidden trigger on a timer they’d already disarmed. One moment, the captives were there, breathing a sigh of relief and thanking their rescuers, then the next…
She remembers the smell of smoke, of singed flesh and hair. She remembers the sharp pain of debris cutting at her skin.
What she doesn’t remember is her husband helping her into the bath, or the water trickling down her back. She is hardly cognizant even now of him gently sponging her down and whispering soft reassurances.
It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known. You did your best.
But your best wasn’t good enough. They’re all dead because of you. You might as well have set it off yourself.
You should have been in their place.
Hell, you should have died eons ago.
Sometime in the middle of the gentle scrubbing, he relinquishes the iron-reeking sponge to the water and climbs into the bathtub with her. He sinks down in the stained water and claims the filth as his own, because what difference does it make? She is his and he is hers.
He takes her face in his hands and brings together their foreheads. He shuts his eyes, and shuts doors inside his head, expertly occluding telepathic entry, without fear of detection that he is hiding a thing.
The red, the blue, the green, he saw her cut the wires, but a minuscule fraction of a millimeter remained fastened to the green wire. A slight glint in the sun was all that hinted at her error, and then, as he flung himself against her, knocking them both to safety, an instant later, detonation.
But the Master, who took the fall for his best friend, and was branded Death’s Champion, Murderer, Cannibal, Killer, Beast, whose life was carved out of Theta Sigma’s lie before he was ten years old, now lies to the Doctor.
“It was me.”
He takes her face in his hands. He pauses, searching her eyes, fierce in battling her foes, even if she is her own foe. He waits for her to absorb his words.
“I was so excited about making you proud that I got reckless and I missed the last wire I was meant to cut. I made the mistake. Not you. Me.”
He holds her fast, thumbs running across wet cheeks.
“But there’s no shame in it, is there? I did my best. And if it had been your mistake, it’d have been just that: you did your best, and it would have been an accident.”
His eyes are moist; come back to me, come back.
Hearts, come back.
“So we’ve got to forgive ourselves now, yeah? That’s what we’ll do.”
Icarus 