her headaches have returned. it’s difficult some days to work past them, but she often does by distraction. today her distraction is training. gallifreyans aren’t combative physically by nature, but during the war she had been a general, a general expected to fight hand to hand if needed. now it’s just a coping mechanism, familiar movements that pull her muscles and work her until near exhaustion – sometimes sleep comes, sometimes it does not. arcadia is used to it now, the nightmares, the thumping in her head a double beat that reminds her that despite rassilon being dispatched, his hold on her still lingers.
breathing hard, arcadia stretches her fingers and limbs. her body is sore in a good way, because soreness means she is still alive. she nods once at her sparring partner, dismissing him, before he leaves her to the empty training ground. her left eye twitches with a wince and she drinks greedily from a water bottle. sure, her time could be better spent with sciences and building and being productive, but at least this she doesn’t have to think beyond punch, kick, and dodge.
there may not be a war anymore, but it has left its scars on arcadia oakdown.
How long Koschei Oakdown has been standing watching his daughter combat training, is uncertain. But he’s dressed in robes of soft maroon velvet, under which he wears the habitual sharp-tailored suit of a human male, and he’s got a white towel draped over one arm, a large refilled water bottle and bag of her favorite childhood snacks in another.
“I know what you’re outrunning. Walk with me? I’ll take you where I go when I remember my Drums, and they won’t be silenced.”
Arcadia’s mum drapes the towel over her shoulders, and dries her neck and cheeks with a surprising tenderness.
“They don’t control us, Cadie, not ultimately. No one ever will.”
There’s no more eloquent way of putting it. She’s just excruciatingly kind; she always has been, it’s always been the honey with which she’s entrapped him, since they were boys and he was frightened of his own shadow and intoxicated by the Pied Piper’s charm of a sunkissed blond boy who smelled like windburn and christened him “my friend” before they’d even exchanged names.
No matter how much righteously infuriated armor he dons, here they are, here he is, smitten.
Shit. Fuck.
The Master releases the Doctor. He shakes his head, angrily, swiftly wipes his eyes, and struggles to sit.
“I was stabbed. In the back. Literally. Call it an … identity crisis. You know me, you … . look, I’m the person living who’s known you longest. Call me …”
Suddenly his own moniker feels filthy on his tongue.
“Call me Koschei. And you, you’re.” Not that little boy anymore. Too many of your friends and enemies have passed under the bridge between us like so many rushing rapids. “You’re the Doctor.”
Her worried eyes don’t leave for a second as she
“Koschei,” she breathes, as if it’s a holy word that she can barely stand to utter, she’s so unworthy. “Yes, I remember you.” She reaches out and gently touches his face, remembering their shared childhood memories. It only goes so far, though, stopping before the burning pyre and crisis at the water and only letting her remember the good times before it all went wrong.
“No, I’m not the Doctor, I’m.. I’m….” She lets out another frustrated noise. “It’s gone again! No matter, get over here, Koschei, I’ll be the best damned doctor you’ve ever known!”
She moves her hands to his back and concentrates, sending some of her regeneration energy to him to heal the worst of it.
Oh, for the first about fifteen seconds of that healing act, the Master loses himself to the sublime relief.
Then his mind rings, like the most feverish tinnitus, with the realization that alchemy is a law of the universe and there is after all something called Equivalent Exchange.…
“SSSTOP IT!”
He shoves her back, brutally, but only because he fears for her; he is awful, he is unpracticed and stupid at kindness, he has coarse beast paws for hands and he mauls anything he touches, but he LOVES her and–!
“If you do that then you shave years off your OWN life, and I won’t let you.”
He stumbles to sitting; the agony in his back is significantly dulled, but his hearts thunder deafeningly.
“You are the Doctor, you’re my Doctor, you always were and you always shall be. Because of things like that. Because you do it without even thinking, you fool.”
Icarus 