//I love you, Koschei, and I’m sorry that everyone in canon abandoned you when you were your least lovable, and just confirmed to you that you should remain that way.
Whyyyyy did they have to be on opposite sides of the coin? Why couldn’t we have Missy sitting with her past self offering some positive assurances? BREAKS MY HEARTS
I think Michelle did everything she could with this scene, to convey that Missy is very conflicted here, but yes. I agree so hard. Every time I watch this and John backs away with that look of total betrayal and aloneness, I feel ill. Imagine being so unloved that even your own future self rejects you. I always like to think of my flawed past self as someone I would comfort, and say, “It’ll get better.” Not someone I’d injure so they could become me faster. It’s so sad.
Protip, too, on how to make this even more painful: turn up the volume all the way when you watch this scene, and you can hear his little gasp of pain under “and I always will” when she drives in the knife.
It is one single, insignificant moment in the grand scheme
of the universe. But that moment is enough to crack the very foundations of
what they have built here over these last years.
The Doctor doesn’t recognize it until after she’s done
speaking and he pulls away, staring at her with a horrified and heartsbroken
expression. That look on his face twists her insides worse than even the terror
of his nightmare had. That is the look of someone who has lost something, the
look of darkness taking root, the look of doubt blossoming into something more
than she can handle.
You’re never too much for me, Koschei. Never too loud, never
too enthusiastic, too wild, too… much. Please don’t run away.
But it’s too late. The damage is done, and he recoils from
her, the act itself causing her to flinch from the pain. His words are cuts
made in her very soul, in the part of her that has found her home with him.
Every apology, every muttering of regret. It hurts.
She is as paralyzed as she had been in bed, unable to do
much more than watch as he strips the bed and rushes past her almost without
seeing her, crying and apologizing to her, to himself, to the universe that has
always seen him as lesser. As wrong. Broken. Monstrous. Shameful.
The Doctor wants to get up, climb into the shower fully clothed or not, and wrap him up, to shield him, protect him from his own doubts
and fears… But how can she have any right to do so when it her own doubt that sparked
the blaze of his own imagined inferiority? Though she doesn’t know how long she’s been kneeling on the
tile floor, Theta’s knees are red when she stands on trembling legs. The Master
climbs out of the shower, skin red and steaming from the punishment he
inflicted in an effort to rid himself of whatever filth he sees in himself. His
eyes are wild as he turns on her, and she can’t help but flinch again.
She is not afraid of him, but of his own fear. It frightens her when he is so full of doubt
and uncertainty. It frightens her because one of these days she might not be
able to pull him out of it. But this will NOT be one of those days. It will
not.
She takes a halting step towards him, then nearly throws
herself against him, wrapping herself around him, her nails digging sharply
into the scorched raw skin of his back. The Doctor buries her face in his
chest, hearing his hearts beat, smelling the scent of her favorite soap on his
skin.
“No.”
He’s too far away. His mind, his hearts, even his body is
too separate from hers, too far and too guarded. She feels isolated and cold
and she screams for him, silently, a cry from her very soul that begs him to
come back to her.
I never tire of it. I would die for you. I would live for
you. And I will be here at your side for eternity, no matter what.
“I have never regretted you. NEVER.”
Never regretted loving you, never regretted having faith in
you. Never regretted our lives together, our family, our child. Never regretted any of it. Because you DID save me, Koschei. You saved me from myself, from my
own despair, from hopelessness. You saved me, taught me things about myself I
never knew and loved me anyway.
“I’m so sorry, Koschei.”
We all have our moments of doubt. But I NEED you to know it
changes nothing about us, about how I feel about you, about how much faith I
have in you.
Gods, I hope you believe me.
I hope you know.
I love you.
I’m sorry.
We all have our moments of doubt.
“But I never doubted you.”
Not since you gained this face. Not since you grew so wise and your compassion and hope came thrusting to the fore of all you are. You are my boy again!
Oh, but that’s unfair, it’s unfair, and apart from what she means, and the moment he speaks it he violently shakes his head: like the physical embodiment of her firm “NO.”
It’s the last death knell of his determined, self-punitive resistance, before he greedily gulps down her every word, and greedily clings on to her, naked, skin still radiating the heat from the shower. He feels her scream, even though she does not make it audibly, or even between their minds. He feels it and beyond any self-serving compulsion is the will to keep her safe. So he braces the back of her head and holds her near, and sloppily, unsteadily kisses what he can reach of her face.
Her nails in his back hurt but they ground him, too.
I’m sorry you saw it, Hearts. I’m sorry you saw my fear.
He holds fast to her words: { You DID save me. }
He gathers her face in his hands, as he so often does. He meets her eyes, as he is unafraid to do, because he does know this. He does know.
So he nods at her, quirks his eyebrows, as if to say, “Do you see me saying yes?”, and he nods again. A slight nod, that becomes firm.
I love being your favorite, and you’re mine. I’m sorry I got scared. The things I fear aren’t your fault.
He kisses her forehead, where that troubling little line forms, when she’s upset. He kisses the corners of her eyes, and her tear trails.
I believe you. I do.
Don’t be sad, Goose.
When he finally speaks aloud, it’s hoarse, and very meek:
“Could we … could you. Could you check on Zinny? Please, I’ll. Be okay for a minute. Please, Thete. I know it’s silly. But just make sure she’s alright. I’ll sit right here and wait for you. I’ll be here, I. I promise. I won’t go anywhere.”
Where would he go, physically, plausibly, when her half of their merged TARDIS wouldn’t allow it anyway? Nowhere, but he speaks of his mental and emotional state. He aims–with the pieces of his legendary resolve–to comfort her, that this life is sacred to him.
“I love you, too, my Darling and Star. Please, Doctor … the faith you have in me isn’t a mistake. You couldn’t make me stop loving you if you tried. No act in any universe could stop me loving you.”
Icarus 