“How much do I loov my Kookaburra?” she purrs, biting her bottom lip.
“I loov him more than there are stars in the sky. I loov him more deeply than the deepest ocean. I love him as widely as the expanse of the universe.
I loov him more than two hearts can hold, so we had to pour some of that excess into our perfect baby girl. He’s my life, my best friend, my one and only. There aren’t words strong enough to describe how much I love him.”
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.”
The Doctor is not coordinated by any stretch of the imagination, but when Koschei catches her hand and spins her around, she might as well be the Morticia to his Gomez Addams.
She steps back and watches his reaction, her whole face lighting up like a tree on Christmas morning.
“You really think so? You think she’ll like it? OohoHO! I’m so glad!!”
Setting the mobile down, she leaps into her husband’s waiting arms and hugs him with arms and legs both wrapped around him. The Doctor kisses his face several times in quick succession and crows with laughter.
“Alright! Come up to the nursery with me and help me hang it, won’t you? You’re finally taller than me!!”
Koschei scoffs and flings up his hands.
“Literally what’s NOT to love, you mad beastie?! Look at this stuff, it’s interactive, it’s a compelling morphology, it’s safe–although maybe we should keep the dangly bits out of her reach–perfect for stimulating her cerebral activity!”
At her crack about his height, he lurches in and pinches the faintest muffin top she’s developed since childbirth, one he finds utterly delectable, for it means there’s more of the Doctor for him to grope and caress and desire and adore. And another pinch.
“I’ve always been pragmatically compact, but you, you’re joost a little shrimp now,” he leers, proceeding to tickle her ribs and underarms, and then, to scoop her up against his side, ‘round the waist. He grins, eyes closed, nose in her hair and her neck, savoring her workshop smell, the way the scent of petrol and metal brings back wondrous memories of toiling together on some mad invention or another.
“I’m right with you, here we go! Off to spoil our girl.”
I think this anon is incredibly inappropriate. As a fellow Thirteen mun I can kinda understand where the first was coming from and you were very kind in offering to tag your posts. But like you say, it’s not your job to cater content to your followers. Everyone has a responsibility to build their own environment that makes them happy, not force others to create it for them.
Oh, but how can he be sad when his sun just passed from between the clouds, and carried with her his Blossom Against All Odds?
Right, it sounds absurdly self-indulgently poetic, but who gives a toss?
The Master turns from his work–work with which he’s borrowed his wife’s goggles–sets them up on his head and loudly applauds.
“WIFE! DAUGHTER! Oh, my DEAREST treasures, hehHAH! I was just hoping you’d pass by the workshop. LOOK.”
He leaps to his feet–ever energetic, ever well-matched to this particular Doctor’s face–and brandishes his laser screwdriver.
Only now, it looks distinctly different. The morphology is the same–much as he loves his Goose, her sonic looks to him like a creative vibrator, and well, that’s a touch awkward for the brand–but the light that passes through the end of one of the dual nozzles, which he points at an oblique to her head, is a different color.
“Who’d have sonic? Well, me.”
He flashes the toothiest, most self-satisfied grin.
“That’s right, I’ve added a primary feature to this weapon that’s not a weapon at all. I await your praise and kisses.”
Though he cannot wait to deposit a kiss on his baby girl’s forehead, and therefore, does.
Then he wiggles a finger toward himself, beckoning accolades.
“ … and do you think I never fear I’ll awaken one day to the smell of engine exhaust, and the sight of the TARDIS dematerializing, with you inside, afraid of yourself, me, us, what we are, were, or never will be, abandoning me again? We remain together not because we have no fear of what we could do to destroy each other, but despite that knowledge. Every day, love is a choice, that’s what you told me. Because what we are together is more than our fear of being annihilated by the person who knows us best in all the cosmos. Or am I wrong?”
He stands before his best friend, his husband, his hearts and other half, ashamed. The Doctor knows Koschei’s fear is just as valid as his own, and yet it still hurts to know that he’s the cause of such uncertainty and fear.
“You’re… you’re not wrong.”
It’s not the first time they’ve had this conversation and it’s sure to not be the last. The Doctor feels small and timid as he takes a tentative step closer, pulling Koschei’s hands into his own. He is more Theta Sigma now that he has been in millennia, and he hopes the Master can see that.
“You’re right… Love is a choice, and it’s a choice I make gladly every single day. Despite the past, despite my fears, despite the odds. I won’t make the same mistakes again. I simply won’t.”
He pulls his husband into a tight embrace and buries his face in his neck, kissing the underside of his jaw and letting his mind and hearts fill the other with the depth of that promise.
I choose you. I choose you.
“You had damned well better,” he addresses the Doctor’s vow aloud.
He resolves to stand up against, and beside, his husband.
“The ‘odds’ are in our favor. Look how many times we’ve openly tried to destroy each other, yet found ourselves drawn back into each other’s orbit. It’s more undeniable than magnetism.”
He cups the Doctor’s jaw indelicately, feeling rough hot skin against his palm, fixing amber eyes hard against blue.
“You look at me. You look at me when I tell you nothing in the universe can move me from where I stand at your side. When I tell you that anything and anyone that wants to hurt you has to get through me.”
The words don’t make sense to her. They don’t seem to form proper sentences, they don’t seem to be able to be used in that order.
It takes her much longer than her impressive mind usually does to comprehend his words. Her husband, her other half, her best friend and hearts and FATHER OF HER CHILD. Her Everything. But when she does comprehend, something within her shatters. It’s infinitely quiet and deafening all at once. It’s a black hole being born where her hearts used to be. It’s all-consuming.
It’s Everything.
Distraction. Weak. Ruin.
Burn. Burn. BURN.
“T-take it all away? I didn’t– I don’t– I thought we… We were good, we were… together… happy… Koschei? Master?”
It couldn’t be. This couldn’t be. It couldn’t all be another scheme, another long game to hurt her. He’d never managed it before, but this time, he would KILL her. This would be the DEATH of the Doctor. But one sentence stuck in her head, and her hazel eyes snapped up, dark as the hole in her hearts.
‘What better win than give everything to someone to just take it all away?’
He wouldn’t have. Not his own flesh and blood. No…
“Where’s Zinnia?
Where is my baby?!”
Her hands are broken and bloody from tearing half the TARDIS to bits in search of any sign of her daughter. The nursery is in shambles, and the console room looks as if a bomb went off. In fairness, a bomb might have caused less damage than a heartsbroken mother in search of her child.
She is frantic and shaking, bile rising in her throat as fear twists her stomach. If there is ONE single MARK on her daughter, the universe will pay the price for the Doctor’s fury!! But that same fury blinds her, deafens her, and when the Master tries to get her attention, his voice does not register. It isn’t until he physically steps in front of her and forces the infant child into her arms that she blinks and looks at him.
She’s right here. We’re right here.
Her grip on Zinnia is immediate and tight, causing the baby to cry in confusion and discomfort. But the Doctor believes it’s the most beautiful sound she has ever heard in all her lives.
Zinnia is safe. Her baby is whole, in her arms, and SAFE.
Before she can even open her mouth to speak, Koschei presses his mind in upon hers, breaking past her feeble resistance and offering the truth.
Distraction. Weak. Ruin.
Burn. Burn. Burn.
‘It wasn’t me’.
BURN. Distraction. Weak.
‘Feel me, Thete.’
BURN. Ruin.
‘You’re EVERYTHING.’
‘Believe me, it’s REAL.’
Somehow, he breaks through the panic and the fear and the rubble of her mind. Her entire reality had been shattered, her whole of existence…but here he is, picking it back up, brick by brick even before the dust has settled.
Unfocused hazel eyes clear and settle on her husband’s face, seeing him for the first time.
“K-Koschei?”
Her voice is piteously quiet as she recognizes the SHAME in his hearts. And he pulls away.
“No–!” He mustn’t.
One hand shoots out and grabs his shirt, tugging him back to her and flinging her arm around his neck. The Doctor isn’t sure when she started crying, but she’s sobbing now, their wailing baby pressed between them, frightened and upset, but it’s all okay. This is real. This is real.
They’re safe.
“Koschei… you’re… you’re here. I couldn’t– I couldn’t believe… Oh, Koschei I was so scared! You were GONE! Zinnia was GONE. I couldn’t FEEL you! I knew it wasn’t real! I knew it couldn’t have been real!!”
Don’t let go. PLEASE, don’t let me go.
She seizes onto him and he can’t imagine a reaction more worthy of joy.
His shame dissolves with her desperate invitation to stay, and he forgets himself entirely to weep in relief. He seizes right back onto her as they collide, desperate to be one being, like always: like always.
He pets her hair, kisses her tear trails and nuzzles her snotty nose with his. And then the father of the most perfect flower of the cosmos gentles, quiets, to pet her soft little tuft of blond hair, too.
“It’s okay, baby,” Koschei murmurs. “We’re okay. Don’t be scared.”
He drops a kiss on the foreheads of his girls.
“Can my darling Hearts and my dearest Flower hang tight while I run some diagnostics to try and firewall our comm system? I’m worried it might be the same ruffians who came after you to induce labor: that maybe somehow there were survivors.”
“If the Doctor is a criminal, then please put me on the most wanted lists of every police station; please ravish the world with posters of me in glaring black and white striped attire; please put me in line for the electric chair, because I shall ever be her co-conspirator, and preserve her ‘cinnamon-roll’ state of being. Thank you and do kindly fuck off.”
Icarus 