I don’t think I ever showed you guys this shirt that @honourablebravery got me for my birthday. LOL.
I should add that I derive mild trolling amusement from wearing this out in a Republican stronghold, and getting confused and disturbed looks from old white men who have never seen Doctor Who and clearly think I’m endorsing some unknown Socialist radical LOLOL.
I wore it to the dollar store last night and a guy, no joke, wearing a Make America Great Again hat AND shirt, looked at me most gravely and said, as though at a funeral, “Don’t forget to set back your clock,” lmfao. Woebetide him, for having to do the Bigger Thing by this upstart ungrateful anarchist millennial.
“ … hey. Hey, you’re the best person I’ve ever met, too.”
Granted, there’s the scrambling of jealous insecurity fueling his words, but also, far purer, the desire to reassure the Doctor that someone who’s known her longer than a handful of days agrees with Yasmin Khan’s evaluation.
“I know coming from me that’ll sound like a joke, given what I’ve put you through in the past. But I was … directionlessly angry. And frankly, that anger, it wasn’t wrong. But how I carried it. How I used it. That was.”
A shift of weight, a shuddering, dogged sigh.
“What I mean to say is you deserve happiness. You deserve … you know. To be admired. And treasured.”
God knows I did, do. God knows the sight of you puts me in secret raptures. God knows I’m infatuated and always will be.
“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.”
Softly he pressed a kiss to the Master’s temple, keeping his loving embrace. Closing his eyes he allowed a gentle brush against the telepathic connection they shared. There was no probing just gentle reassurance. The silence didn’t bother the Doctor he merely stayed there offering his love and comfort to the one he so dearly cared for.
The Master shoves his face into the Doctor’s neck, inhaling aftershave and windburn and all things mysterious and fugitive. Home, home.
“Don’t forget me, don’t doubt me, please, please, please, I’m here, I’m still here,” he all but chants through his teeth, clinging, making his fists full of shirt tremble.
“I am constantly surprised by the longing for you that never quiets. You are here and you are in my hearts, always. My thoughts often stray to you even when I don’t mean them to. Wondering how you are, what you’re doing, if you’d welcome my endless company. Endless because pulling myself from you is a pain I tire of enduring.”
The Doctor speaks softly, hands gingerly trailing up and down the man’s back. Having him so close is always lovely, it makes his hearts soar. Warm, fierce, beautiful, mine.
The longer the Doctor holds him, the more the Master stills; the quieter he grows, save for that tell-tale gentle thrum deep in the diaphragm of his psyche, just like the purring of a cat with its favorite human. His eyes fall closed and he says nothing, instead savoring the silent nearness of his beloved.
“Yes, well, have fun with that, darling. Meanwhile I’ll be situating myself at a suitable distance to laugh at the ensuing debacle.”
The Doctor puffed out his cheeks in childish annoyance. How dare he. Theta of course, pouts.
“It works most of the time!” He protested. “As if you could come up with something better.”
He knew far too well that he could come up with something better, and childishly hopped that he wouldn’t even try.
“I can’t tell if that’s an invitation to be schooled by someone who has long been your logistical superior, but either way, I’m calling your bluff. Move, bitch.”
Says the asshole who made the entire planet himself and then didn’t notice when one of his armed guards was several inches too tall.
Softly he pressed a kiss to the Master’s temple, keeping his loving embrace. Closing his eyes he allowed a gentle brush against the telepathic connection they shared. There was no probing just gentle reassurance. The silence didn’t bother the Doctor he merely stayed there offering his love and comfort to the one he so dearly cared for.
The Master shoves his face into the Doctor’s neck, inhaling aftershave and windburn and all things mysterious and fugitive. Home, home.
“Don’t forget me, don’t doubt me, please, please, please, I’m here, I’m still here,” he all but chants through his teeth, clinging, making his fists full of shirt tremble.
I don’t think I ever showed you guys this shirt that @honourablebravery got me for my birthday. LOL.
I should add that I derive mild trolling amusement from wearing this out in a Republican stronghold, and getting confused and disturbed looks from old white men who have never seen Doctor Who and clearly think I’m endorsing some unknown Socialist radical LOLOL.
I wore it to the dollar store last night and a guy, no joke, wearing a Make America Great Again hat AND shirt, looked at me most gravely and said, as though at a funeral, “Don’t forget to set back your clock,” lmfao. Woebetide him, for having to do the Bigger Thing by this upstart ungrateful anarchist millennial.
Mind control? Surprisingly, too easy: not enough of a challenge. No, it’s not enough for people to be obeisant; they have to want to obey him. They have to worship him because they truly desire it.
“I would make it so others would see me only as I wished them to.”
There. He could construct a desirable persona; a worthy persona; a self that had unequivocally earned the right to attention and love. A way to finally placate a terrible, insatiable hunger for validation. And then others would choose to be his.
Icarus 