Were he to pluck the most hurtful phrase from a million trillion infinite possible combinations of sounds and syllables, this exact sentence would fit. Would be the sound of the neck snapping. Would be the sound of the glass shattering. The noose tightening. The gun firing.
This sentence would be the weapon.
The Master stares uncomprehending at the Doctor. His legendary capacity to maim is lost.
“ … what?”
He is falling she is leaving she is leaving he knew this day would come he knew it he knew it he knew ithe knew it he… .
I gave up on you a long time ago.
I gave up on a lot of things back then.
I gave up on my family, I gave up on my friends.
I gave up on myself.
When the Doctor left Gallifrey all those centuries ago, they’d had to give up on certain things. It was too painful to carry those burdens with them. But that meant giving up parts of themselves that they never imagined they would ever get back.
So… the fact that she has is infinitely precious.
“When I left. I gave up. I gave up on you, on us… and it’s been my single biggest regret. In all my lives, there’s not one thing I’ve ever regretted as much as making the decision to leave you behind.”
The Doctor steps towards her husband and takes his hands into her own. The gaze with which she stares up at him is impossibly full of love and unending, undying hope.
“You’ve come back and taught me that I should never give up… never lose hope, because that’s when you start to lose parts of yourself that you may never get back.
I was lucky enough to get you back…”
The Master takes great gulps of air. His relief is palpable, an unfurling sensation in his mind, and therefore in the entirety of the room that his mind so easily permeates.
“GOLLY, Thete.”
He all but collapses, making a great hammy show of buckling his knees and smacking his thighs and, slightly breathlessly, laughing.
“Thanks for scaring the PISS out of me. Maybe predicate your dramatic remarks with context next time!”
He captures her cheeks between his palms, squishing them until her elastic little fey face collapses like an accordion, and she is forced to speak with fish-lips. His expression is fiercely adoring.
“Your punishment for this grievous silliness is to recite Hamlet’s Soliloquy while I hold your face like this. I’m waiting.”
He forces this playful indignity on her for but a moment. Then he draws her tight against him with an affectionate growl, and crushes her in a hug. His chin rests neatly on the crown of her head.
“You always speak as if I had a choice. But following you is as natural to me as drawing blood from an enemy, or climbing any summit that challenges me, or breathing.”
//I completely agree that it’s in-character. It can still be disappointing and hurtful to a fan who has nearly died countless times in the ER and has been the victim of life-threatening medical malpractice, also more than once, and whose grandmother also died because of medical malpractice, by people acting selfishly in a moment of unprofessional stress. In other words, myself.
I’m not trying to be snotty, I promise, but this Ask is truly puzzling. It’s almost as if you’re positing that you can’t love a character and also criticize their behavior when it’s problematic.
I’m gonna assume you’re not a follower and are just passing through, and mistook my tags on that last reblog somehow for character hate, and reassure you that this is not the case.
“Koschei,” she breathes, instantly overwhelmed by his words. She knows how difficult it is for him to, for lack of a better word, share, how much hoarding is simply his natural instinct and a means of self-preservation. She knows that her adventures with her new friends have caused him no end of insecurity, no matter what he might say.
But the fact that he’s acknowledging them, agreeing with them, and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s placing her happiness over his own, it staggers her.
She wraps her arms around his neck, pressing their foreheads together. “I love you. So much. You deserve that too. Are you happy?”
Are you happy?
What a simple question, yet how unsure the answer.
Some measure of the Master is ashamed of the fact that he cannot proffer a perfectly desirable, positive answer. Some part of him that is deeply his youngest and first self, a boy wracked with scars of perceived insufficiency that will last a lifetime.
He can’t avoid her when she’s so near, so he closes his eyes.
“Trying,” he settles to confess, with a feeble smile. “At the risk of sounding … . corny, I’m with you. That’s enough.”
“My best friend,” she smiles, feeling the truth and pain of that statement. “My other half. Trying is all we can do.” She kisses his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, and finally, his lips, brushing her fingers against the back of his neck.
“But Koschei, you deserve a lot more too. If there’s anything I can do, anything that will make you happier, tell me. I don’t care what it is, how silly or grand it is, I want you to be as happy as possible.”
I deserve the mound of waste I stood on, railing about my imagined import to the universe, that Christmas many years ago.
He doesn’t voice this: as a matter of pride, and to free her from his guilt.
“I don’t know,” he admits, and when he does speak, the despair in his voice is not withheld.
What can I ask of you, really? The things I want and need from you are so unwholesome, so selfish, so cruel. I want and need you to abandon everyone and everything else, wrap yourself around me and become the same being as me. I want and need you to dull the ache of existing, the constant pulsing throbbing hurt, of being. I am so tired of being alive. I am so tired.
‘I am not being hostile!’ ‘Yes, you are! You’re being hostile and selfish. There are patients on board who need to get to Resus One as a matter of urgency. My job is to keep all of you safe. You’re stopping me from doing that.’
Calling the Master a mistake and a disease is really something else seeing how much training Rassilon and his schooling gave to the Master like calling the Master a mistake (even one of their making) is like a pyrochemist being honestly surprised when an explosive blaze happens when they introduce fire to a bit of magnesium in the middle of a space full of hydrogen. Like cool story, because I’m more than positive y’all knew what you were doing and what would happen.
//Dooooo not get me started on how TRUE THIS IS. He was grouchy, he was NOT AT ALL FUN (and his zany childish glee in spreading evil was central to his characterization during the RTD era), he was bitter and tired and way too preoccupied with being a raging misogynist for its own sake (it was pretty obvious to me that his nastiness to Chan-Tho, Martha and Lucy was all part of the Master’s LIFELONG predilection for hitting individual victims where it hurts most, but in Series Ten, his bitchy remarks about “empathy” and “old bras” and “is the future going to be all girl” screamed of contrivance, and I say that as a massive feminist: compare that to the way feminism is handled in Series Eleven and you see the wrong and the right way of addressing systemic misogyny in our society BUUUUT anyway).
All you gotta do is look through my meta tag, ohhhh my God. I was so overjoyed that he was coming back, but since then have largely regretted that they ever squandered the actor’s talents and time that way. It all felt like a convoluted plot device for making Gomez’s Missy seem more redeemable, when she already proved all on her own that she was wonderful. They didn’t need to take a giant shit on him and render him the Id to her Superego for her implicit value as a character to be obvious!
None of his development in End of Time was addressed, except the brief moment when, inexplicably, Twelve was very bitter and nasty about him being “on his way to Gallifrey” (while saving your life, dingus, and don’t get me started on how that was ooc of Twelve, too, given the time and love he dedicated to Missy). To such an obvious extent that I have had to write up an entire backstory explanation for what was basically a retcon between End of Time and World Enough and Time just to justify continuing to write him. 8′( Lordy.
Moffat apologists (and Ilovebig chunks of Moffat’s era, like, for instance, Missy’s whole existence, so I am not hating on him here) tend to stan his era so vehemently that anything I’ve said about this problem in the writing has been received with amazing vitriol, and the easy solution to the retcon seems to be demonizing Simm Master as “the worst” and “most inferior” of all the character’s incarnations, when less than three years ago he was warmly received by the majority of the fandom. It has been really difficult to even keep this blog running after Series Ten because of the hate the character receives (and I sometimes directly receive just for minding my own business in my own happy corner of the fandom writing him).
So just. Yes? Yes hardcore lol. Thank you for saying this. It means a lot coming from a Doctor mun.
//If I could, I’d like to gently draw people’s attention to the fact that I did say that the hospital setting of the most recent episode is a traumatic trigger for me, so the Doctor’s behavior at the outset of the episode was particularly upsetting to me on a personal level. I promise there’s no need to defend Thirteen to me. No one is a bigger fan. I’m just being gently honest about my reaction as a fan of the show and as a writer. It’s okay to not like everything about the things you enjoy. Thanks for considering. ❤
Icarus 