The Master leaves the safety of the TARDIS threshold, and rushes out onto the hostile planet surface. Every sense thrums; he is feral. Nothing and no one will blockade the way to his Bondmate.
He crashes into the Doctor and braces his arms with surprising power, given his comparably smaller stature.
“I’ve got you, Thete, c’mon.”
He hazards a moment to press together their foreheads, and impart what clean, clear, calming energies he can.
You Are Not Alone.
He revels in it, the comfort that briefly distracts his mind. Perhaps it was the dull red grass of this planet or the way two suns could be seen high above the clouds. Though if enough attention was paid, a third could be seen above the pair. Even so. The simple way this planet both was and was not like the home they could never return to had cut him to his core. The renewal of a pain he had long pushed to the back of his mind had trampled any resolve. The bracing arms of his bondmate were all that kept him steady now.
“Why couldn’t I save them Kos?…”
These words, these melancholies they betray, terrify the Master, because they always signify the Doctor teetering over a ledge. And each time it happens, the Master’s rescue mission grows more precarious.
“Because, my darling: look at me. Say it with me: the thing I’ve told you for years, centuries, millennia: you can’t save everyone.”
How hilariously, chillingly ironic that once, he hammered this home to the Doctor by being proof that not everyone wanted to be saved. And now, he’s the one lifting his oldest friend up out of the whitewater rapids of his pain, and guilt, and shame.
He scours the planet that is so like, and unlike, Gallifrey. Like a favorite song in a discordant key. It’s more wrong for being so close. He understands. And he holds his beloved tighter still.
“Come inside with me. Come away. You still have to rest. To do your best next time around, ey?”
Hands grip the Doctor’s tormented young face; his face used to be that young, too. Ah well. He shelters him now with a piercing stare, that draws him into a safe place: within their two minds.
“You could fail them all and I’d still love you. Idiot: You don’t need to be the Doctor in front of me.”
“You have, Hearts. Long ago, and every day since, that you’ve welcomed me home.”
The words sound so polished, so practiced, but they’re on his mind like the constant thrum of the heartsbeat with which his own chest is synchronized.
He turns the parcel over in his hands, with the methodical, scientific precision for which he’s so well known.
“ … . what did you do?” he demands, with a sly grin. “What exactly’s in here?”
Smiling the Doctor reached and opened the lid. Within is black band with soft golden circles in their native tongue of Gallifreyan. Within the center of one circle is a deep red ruby that glints boldly against the dark colors. “This..” His tone is soft as he gazes at the ring in the little box.
Two words are carved into the band in Gallifreyan spelling out; love eternal. A deep blush has colored The Doctor’s cheeks as he awaits the reaction either negative or positive.
It’s only after staring at the writing, running callused thumbs over the simple truth in the concentric inscription, that the Master looks up at the Doctor. The sly satisfaction in moist eyes speaks volumes.
“You just never quit, do you?” he murmurs.
It’s evidence that he’s at last accepted the Doctor’s great turnaround–from running away, to chasing–is an act not of imprisonment, but of love.
Palms smack against ruddy cheeks, and he draws the Doctor’s face close, with a bewildering enthusiasm. He growls loudly.
“ARRRGH, you infuriating beautiful man! Would that I could bottle you like a color and paint a thousand canvases. Just kiss me, damn you.”
It’s always the monosyllabic response to which he resorts, when his beloved speaks words of rare candor, and directness. It robs the Master of breath. But today he is older than the last time this took place, and today he is very weary. He gnaws on the inside of his lip, the dark circles beneath his eyes visible, dogged by drums, a specter he has shaken, save at times of great duress.
He’s seated at the edge of the open TARDIS doors, as the vessel idles in space, legs dangling out into the starry void, holding a thick volume in which but a slice of ancient Gallifreyan history is chronicled.
He’s dog-eared a page on the soured relationship between Rassilon and Omega. And it’s made him introspective. So introspective that he hasn’t slept in a week, an interval that takes its toll even on a Time Lord’s body.
“I’m tired of pretending I ever felt differently,” he adds, at length, turning a wistful smile over his shoulder. “Come sit with me. Make the universe make sense again.”
He who is ordinarily so expansively elegant now fumbles for words.
“I think I …” He bites his lip, and his forehead fiercely wrinkles. He’s trying not to cry. He’s done that a great deal more freely since finding her again, and he’s still learning that this is not a liability. "Yeah, I think I’ve still gotta … forgive some part of me. The kid, or something. That first me. For when he wasn’t enough. For seeing him in everyone I hurt, and wanting to extinguish their light too, to get rid … get rid of the evidence, that I was ever frail, or flawed, I … I guess.”
The Master leaves the safety of the TARDIS threshold, and rushes out onto the hostile planet surface. Every sense thrums; he is feral. Nothing and no one will blockade the way to his Bondmate.
He crashes into the Doctor and braces his arms with surprising power, given his comparably smaller stature.
“I’ve got you, Thete, c’mon.”
He hazards a moment to press together their foreheads, and impart what clean, clear, calming energies he can.
Icarus 