“Believe me, it wasn’t exactly on my list of weekend plans.”
Always the ferocity, always the bravado. Ever keeping the love of his life at arm’s length because to surrender to the Doctor’s vantage point is to surrender what autonomy he has bled and hidden and rotted and suppressed and slaughtered for.
But the Master, self-proclaimed lord over death–little more than a child screaming ‘LOOK AT ME’ in order to combat the terrifying insignificance of living–finds it difficult to maintain his dignity when his oldest friend hovers over him, once again, holding him in his arms, once again, pleading for him to live, once again. The culprit, this time, is not his wife’s bullet, but a gash down his left arm with a blade laced in poison.
“This is some sort of shitty joke,” he rasps, and laughs a husky tired version of his big brave angry cackle. “Maybe this time you wanna give me true love’s kiss, as our exciting follow-up to the whole business on the Valiant.”
He holds up a trembling hand, covered in blood.
“I’m joking. Just. Whistling in the dark. Fairly sure I can beat this, if you can ah, find me some … . salt … hm, appears my cognition’s getting impaired now …”
His vision blurs, but the strangest expression of delirious affection crosses his features.
“Hoh, you know … you’re really so beautiful. Even in this weird young face … I do love chasing you, Doctor.” He swallows back his own spit, which seems to be accumulating in the corners of his mouth at a rapid rate. “Really do love it more than anything. No. No, I love something else more than anything. Give you a hint: it’s you. Did I say that aloud? Oh, Doctor, yo-you’re … the picket fence … and the wind blowing, too … you’re all.”
If this is it, I guess at least I found my harbor, before the end.
“Mmmmguess you could kiss me ‘f you wanted …”
That pure desperation had crept back into his tone because once again he was faced with his worst nightmare. Of course he begged, begged to not go through this hell for the second time. That mantra in his head of, not again, not again, not again; is deafening. The situation was so painfully similar to last time but instead of a human’s bullet it’s something much more. Instead of a refusal to regenerate it’s a struggle to live.
The familiar joking nature of the Master is a partial comfort to the Doctor’s panic. “If this was someone’s idea of a joke it’s not funny. Not ever.” His lips twitched in an effort to smile but it just wouldn’t stick. No instead a creaky laugh escapes, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. “I’ll kiss you all you like if you pull through this.”
The word salt had struck a chord, throwing him back through the memories of his own detox. The highly unpleasant sensation he had endured after consuming cyanide. Scoffing he shook his head and smirked. “Salt is too salty. I need to get you into the TARDIS. I have everything there. I promise you’ll be safe, not a prisoner, not trapped.” The desperate pleading tone had returned. He didn’t want to make the Master think he’d trap him but he couldn’t do much without the supplies inside his TARDIS.
Staring at the wound he pressed his lips in a thin line. There was one other thing he could do. While the Master rambled a series of delirious affection, the Doctor was focusing. Moving one hand he hovered it over the wound, his skin gleaming with a soft gold hue. Regeneration energy, he could heal him, he could fix this.
Drawing in a ragged breath the Doctor let his dark eyes fix upon the Master’s face. “Don’t be cross with me for this..” Leaning his head down he pressed a lingering kiss upon his lips. His hand settled on the wound, sending soft gold light across the Master’s skin. He only hoped it would work, that it would be enough. Losing the Master simply wasn’t an option. He couldn’t, wouldn’t fail him again.
“L-listen. I don’t want to go before you know, it was such a good ride, such a good life. You an’ me, all we did. I wanted more but don’t I always.”
Blood drizzles down the Master’s right nostril; saliva down the corners of his mouth. Speaking becomes impossible. His body convulses at erratic intervals.
That is when the Doctor kisses him, spit and blood, poison and all, and the Master’s eyes, still grimaced in agony, peer open.
His face is still a mask of pain-wrinkles, but he’s watching the face upon which he’s fixated with equal parts hatred and adoration, watching it as one watches an unexpected beauty, an unexpected rapture of meteor showers under a crystal clear night sky. It’s that sudden and beautiful. And as it so often does, the affection and the nostalgia and the admiration and the raw adoration all eclipse the contempt and the rage.
And, exactly according to the Doctor’s plan, the Master falls perfectly still, in unwitting compliance.
The regeneration energy–robbing the Doctor of unknown years of his life–has seeped into Koschei’s pores before he can protest.
The fury is back, boosted perhaps by the fact that he is again in robust health. He sits up, a mess of sweat and blood and wrinkled suit, so rapidly that he looks like a vampire emerging from its coffin at midnight. Under other circumstances, it would be hilarious.
“How COULD you! You think I want YOU to die? Who’m I gonna hound to the brink of hell if YOU’RE gone?”
Who’m I gonna love?
No. Don’t utter any ‘ last words ‘ yet.
The convulsions caused ripples of panic to claw through him, digging deep into his flesh. His plan had to work, he couldn’t go through the pain of seeing him die again. Couldn’t handle another burial. Couldn’t face life utterly alone, with not a soul to understand all that he was so entirely as the Master does.
The regeneration energy leaving felt wrong, he fought the instinct to pull back. Tears slid down the Doctor’s face falling to the space between them, he didn’t care enough to brush them away.
When the Master sat up he felt like the air had been pulled from his lungs. The anger barely registering due to the sheer relief he felt in the moment. Safe. Safe. Safe. Safe. His mind thrumming with the knowledge the Master was well and truly alive.
A shaky smile dawned upon his lips, dark eyes a bit duller.
Sagging forward he leans into the Master, burying his face against the
crook of his neck. His arms curling around the other time lord, holding
him.
//Me: *when my friends, fully knowing my devotion to this muse, tell me that Simm Master was not their favorite or was even their least favorite Master* I love you, but what did you hope to gain from this? :’)
Icarus 