The Master flashes teeth jubilantly at wife and child. A curious and wonderful sensation borne of this new life is that he finds he is genuinely joyful whenever the people he loves are. Whether he is part of their joy, as he is privileged to be at the moment, or not: if they are happy, his universe is brighter. It’s an odd and magnificent sentiment.
He juts out his bottom lip.
“I am a monster, a positive monster, to have neglected my girls,” he softly wails, and showers both their faces in kisses. “Come, into the snuggle nest, of notorious Time Lords, Ladies, and Tots. And let us have a happy little three-signaled mind-meld. Hm?”
“Hello, my Zinny. My little comet. I shall play you every song that I have ever found beautiful, my lamb. But none shall be so lovely as my daughter, and her mum.”
The Doctor whines petulantly, absolutely playing the dramatic; it’s a leaf she’s taken from her husband’s book, and she plays it to her advantage now.
“Ooh, yes! You’ve got to make it up to us somehow!”
“Bbbbbbpppppth!” Zinnia concurs.
Mum sets baby in her lap and snuggles up closer to dad, nuzzling into his neck, the three of them a perfect little unit, huddled up close and smiling, each and every one of them.
It’s the most wonderful sensation in the universe, to be connected to one another like this, and even the excitable infant goes quiet, her eyes wide and curious as she feels the warm love and happy colors of her parent’s minds around hers.
I love you, Kosch.
Zinnia echoes the sentiment without words, but by raw and innocent emotions.
We love you.
He’s a radiant fool to hear those words, traveling between their minds, so powerful that it’s palpable in the air, and touch-telepathy is no longer wholly needed. Koschei nudges back a red rowboat on still blue waters–the perfect symbolic encapsulation of their bond. She’s the ocean, large, ineffable, filling the horizon of his thoughts and yearnings. He is the boat upon it, thrust about in its currents, but always prepared to hold up, to carry afloat, to buoy, whatever she may need, love, desire.
Upon the rowboat is Zinnia, slightly older, sporting her father’s round nose and her mother’s vivid blond hair, leaning over into the water to splash it, giggling with merriment and zest.
“I love my girls, too,” he croons.
He tucks himself around them both, nuzzling each of their fair heads.
The Doctor howls gleefully and shoves her work goggles up on top of her head, scrambling to her feet and running off in search of her husband. Nevermind that she’s covered in dust and metal shavings and engine grease, the madwoman flings herself at Koschei and kisses all over his face.
“Look, Koschei! I did it!”
She shoves the object into his hands, an odd, circular thing with dangly bits and lights. But the Doctor reaches over and turns it on, and it becomes obvious what it is. It’s a holographic mobile for Zinnia, projecting their favorite constellations and planets in a to-scale model, all while playing a recording of Koschei’s rendition of Clair De Lune.
Koschei catches his wife mid gazelle-leap. He spins her by the hand in an elegant tango, and draws her close to his side.
Grease and shavings litter his shirt, but he hasn’t worn true haute couture since Zinnia was born; today it’s a gray NASA tee and jeans, quel horreur.
He releases her only to be able to step back and examine the multi-media mobile; he strokes his beard, and lofts an eyebrow, as if there were any real question that he’s enchanted by the Doctor’s invention.
The moment the music begins, his hand falls from his beard to his chest, and his other hand over his other heart. He clasps both pectorals, somewhat theatrically.
“Oh, God, darling. That’s, dare I be sentimental …”
He turns to her, blinks rapidly and swallows.
“ … well, there’s no other word, but magical. You’re giving our baby what we dreamt of as boys.”
Koschei drops his entire elaborate circuitboarding project–seventy solid hours of work so far–on the TARDIS floor. It shatters into a million pieces. Agony! His hands claw in his hair.
But there she is, his baby girl, tugging on his trouser leg and weeping about a boo-boo.
And how comically ready is the terror of the cosmos to kneel, how heartsbroken his face, at his daughter’s tears.
“Oh, Zinny. My love, however did you fall? Were you being an adventurer, my music note?”
He guides her to sit on his thigh, while examining her wound. He pulls ointment and a pink unicorn bandaid–now standard contents–from the pocket of his pants and tends to the burn.
“That is a very nasty scrape. But I think you will survive, if! I give it the Special Kiss.”
And so he does, the softest little peck on top of the bandaid.
“The Special Kiss works as well as regeneration energy. Now, that scrape will go away. Because the tiny little workers in your skin, called cells, are gonna patch everything back together good as new.”
“Sweethearts, it’s alright. Shh, let us banish these tears as well.”
I think the thing that makes you feel things about this face is the context paired with the expression, and the pretense of a very intimate moment (he leans down, asks him to “whisper in his ear” with that hand gesture in one of the above gifs).
He gazes into the eyes of his vulnerable, weakened equal and counterpart for a long, meaningful moment, before lofting his eyebrows, and the message there is “I know you already know who they are, I know you already suspect that they’re the self-cannibalized human race, and I don’t need to tell you,” and that weird sort of RESPECT for the Doctor’s intellect combined with the FACETIOUS “CONCERN” for the Doctor’s “hearts breaking” makes it a particularly potent form of cruelty. And the apex of arch-nemesis and former flame interaction: you respect but also loathe your arch-nemesis.
Pair with that, the Master is usingand therefore mocking the Doctor’s own most prized trait,COMPASSION, masquerading as someone showing “consideration” for the Doctor’s feelings, to deliver the awful killing blow to his hearts.
And what’s that killing blow? “The species with whom you replaced me after running away from our friendship and betraying my long-ago trust in you? They’re more evil than I, the disappointment you ran from, could ever be. They took advantage of each other’s weaknesses You DEFINE YOURSELF BY HOW YOU CAN SAVE OTHERS. WELL YOU CAN’T SAVE THEM. THIS IS THEIR INEVITABLE FUTURE.”
It’s the execution of his line “human race: greatest monsters of them all.”
asdlkhfakj the glasses, he wants to get tied down but then he uses the glasses against her????? Maybe she’ll fuck him on his work table again just for funsies
All he’s ever had to do is ask, of course. But she knows better than anyone that the game is half the fun.
Koschei looks up from the network diagnostics he’s running on three simultaneous laptops, and ever so artfully slides down his glasses to the bottom of his button nose.
Ugh ugh that was always one of my favorite movies because her name was Sara and it was so magical and beautiful ❤️❤️❤️❤️ I hope you feel better and get to rest and relax dear!
*POINTS AT YOU* SAME I JUST SOBBED OFF MY MASCARA I LOVE THE INDIAN GUY AND I LOVE BECKY AND SARAH AND PART OF MY DOCTORAL DISSERTATION HAD A SECTION ON FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT’S WRITINGGGGGGG.
THE PART WHERE SHE’S DANCING IN THE ATTIC IN THE SNOW DESPITE ALL HER SUFFERING AND THE MUSIC SWELLS JUST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He pinches the bridge of his nose at her ludicrous prancing, trying not to laugh, but the richest cackle eventually escapes him.
Okay, so she totally knew he’d be watching.
She cackles madly and turns on him, looking utterly ridiculous as she runs and leaps into his arms.
“Oooh, kiss me goose! I’m ever so mad for youuuu! You’re the most b-e-a-oooootiful thing I’ve ever seen!”
And then she kisses him, hard enough to smear eyeliner onto his mouth.
“D’you know what I wanna know?” he declares in the middle of all this. “I wanna know why Earth apes …sorry, HUMANS … call TWO different types of fruit ‘grape.’ I mean one is enormous, the other is tiny and makes wine! Why not joost think of another name for the BIG one? ‘Grapefruit.’ Like, what a redundant name!”
He’s stalling on her intentionally, trying to ignore her as she hangs off of him doing a hilariously accurate impression of him. Considering he has eyeliner on his mouth and looks like he just sucked off an inkwell, it’s impressive.
There’s really no way around saying this: when he and the Doctor are telepathically connecting, and conversing. The entire world outside of their conjoined minds ceases to exist. It’s the only time he’s ever provided relief from the violent psychological clutter of his mind. With some Doctor muses, what he hears is extremely peaceful silence; with others, it’s a harmony of their minds that presents as colors and sounds.
Icarus 