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.”
He kisses both her round little cheeks.
“I love you. I’m sorry you caught a nasty.”
Koschei clicks his tongue, nods and pulls out a digital tablet. He types on it lightning-fast, inputting a memo.
“I’ll be fixing the railing, making it sturdier, easier to grip, straight away.”
He studies Zinnia’s features as she explains her harrowing experience. His lower lip juts, and he pets her hair, and pats her back in even gentle rhythms, every ounce attentive and sympathetic, unrecognizable to his many foes.
“My sweet brave love, you must still be careful. Mum is an adventurer, you know, so if she says you shouldn’t do something, that means it is really quite dangerous. Next time, if she’s busy, coom and get me, yeah? I can lift you up so you can grab the thing that’s out of reach.”
As Zinny stands, her father flashes his Cheshire grin, all warmth and ebullience.
“You’re welcome, loov. Say please and I’m yours.”
Zinnia nods decisively and mirrors her father’s grin.
“Please!! Pleeeeeeeeease!?” The child rocks on her toes, already at this young age a Master at knowing how to convince her daddy to do anything. “And let’s go get mummy so she can it too! It’s better when you both do the voices!!”
She grabs Koschei’s hand and jumps up and down at the prospect of her favorite sort of storytime.
“Mummy said the three of us will get to go on an adventure tomorrow, do you know where we’re going? She won’t tell me… says it’s a surprise.”
Swinging her father’s hand, the little girl drags him through the TARDIS as confidently as her mother does on a daily basis.
“Whoah HOOOOOH, an adventure, a new adventure, and you think mummy’s told ME? I’m MOST chuffed but I’m also afraid that mummy likes to wow and surprise me, as well, sometimes. She hasn’t shared a drop of her plan with daddy.”
The scourge of the cosmos, the invincible intergalactic monster, bends at the waist to allow his daughter to drag him to their destination point, without so much as a peep of disapproval.
In truth, his hearts are fit to burst with contentment and purpose.
He would pick Zinnia up but he’s learned early on that their child has both her parents’ stubbornness and sense of independent wanderlust.
So they walk this way, the Master hunkered over and beaming at his child like a ridiculous doting fool (which he fully is), until they reach the Console Room and the mummy in question.
“Oi, Goose. Our gosling says you’re scheming an adventure for tomorrow, but far more importantly, you’re to do half the voices in the storybook I read her. Presently.”
“For God’s sake. Sweethearts. Do you know … ? You don’t. You could have anyone. Anyone, anything. In the whole universe. You could. No, you really could. Step back and really consider that. I will be yours regardless. I will be here regardless.”
“You’re not LISTENING. D’you really think I’m that oblivious? That I can’t see things for how they are? I could have anyone. ANYONE could have anyone– so could you! But that doesn’t change the fact that ANYONE isn’t YOU.”
Her scowl only deepened. “I don’t want anyone else. All I want is you. You are my first choice, my ONLY choice. Don’t you get that? Don’t you understand? There’s no one in the universe I’d trade you for. You’re IT.”
“Thete, I AM listening, I … it’s … you don’t …!”
Koschei’s face drops between his knees, red and plentiful with veins, to contain his frustration: frustration with anything but her.
“You are … radiant. You’re incandescent. And it’s …! It’s not true that everyone or anyone could have anyone, you’re… wrong, it …it requires … !”
His hunger to believe everything she says does deadly battle with his half-hearted attempts to assert stale, convoluted Time Lord logic: so strange a battle, given what an iconoclast and rebel he is against the whole of their childhood society.
“There are people who DESERVE … love more than OTHERS, and … !”
His head shoots up, an expression of dismay and defeat on his face. He clamors to hold her hands.
“I don’t think I believe any of that anymore, I just dunno what to say when you … .! You … do that.”
‘Do that’: show me a love as unconditional and passionate as that which I’ve always felt for you.
“I’m listening, I promise, I. Okay. I’m it. You already know you’re it. So. Huzzah.”
“Sorry, that’s a stupid word, innit? I just love Victorian words.”
The Doctor trembles with… with frustration, and passion, and a desire to get through to him, to make him understand how FUNDAMENTAL he was to her entire existence.
She grabs his face, is perhaps a little rough with him as she pulls his gaze back up to hers. She won’t abide him hiding from her, not now, not about this.
“I’m wrong? It requires nothing, Koschei! Nothing more than love that two people share, a need to have the other in their lives. You call me radiant and incandescent, but you are exhilarating, INTOXICATING.”
And there’s that word again, quickly becoming the most hated word in existence: deserve.
His wife lets go of his face and takes his hands, her grip too tight, her expression too intense, burning with a need to make him SEE to make him UNDERSTAND.
“I love you, you mad, idiotic bastard,”
she breaths out a sob and throws her arms around him.
“I love you and I always will. You will always be my firstchoice. You are everything and more than I imagined I might ever have. It’s not a matter of deserving. It’s simply a matter of what IS. And you and I? We’re it. Okay? Okay?”
“Whoa darling, why’re you crying, whoa, it’s–”
A pregnant pause.
“OI, oh, OH, HEY, WHOA, I’M ‘IDIOTIC’?”
The transition from woebegotten weepy spouse to incensed cat is hilarious. But the effect is a Master who’s too feisty to self-doubt.
“What, what, are we joost gonna conveniently ignore the ten or twenty stupid things you’ve done in the last several hours? You MAD COW? You … moldy slice of bread?! Ex-CUSE me for showing soom HUMILITY, bloody ‘ell! I joost want ye to KNOW you’re the APPLE of me BLOODY EYE.”
When she flings herself upon him he’s already angrily, adoringly crushing her lips in a kiss.
“OKAY!” he roars. “CRIKEY, OKAY, you demented goose!”
“For God’s sake. Sweethearts. Do you know … ? You don’t. You could have anyone. Anyone, anything. In the whole universe. You could. No, you really could. Step back and really consider that. I will be yours regardless. I will be here regardless.”
“You’re not LISTENING. D’you really think I’m that oblivious? That I can’t see things for how they are? I could have anyone. ANYONE could have anyone– so could you! But that doesn’t change the fact that ANYONE isn’t YOU.”
Her scowl only deepened. “I don’t want anyone else. All I want is you. You are my first choice, my ONLY choice. Don’t you get that? Don’t you understand? There’s no one in the universe I’d trade you for. You’re IT.”
“Thete, I AM listening, I … it’s … you don’t …!”
Koschei’s face drops between his knees, red and plentiful with veins, to contain his frustration: frustration with anything but her.
“You are … radiant. You’re incandescent. And it’s …! It’s not true that everyone or anyone could have anyone, you’re… wrong, it …it requires … !”
His hunger to believe everything she says does deadly battle with his half-hearted attempts to assert stale, convoluted Time Lord logic: so strange a battle, given what an iconoclast and rebel he is against the whole of their childhood society.
“There are people who DESERVE … love more than OTHERS, and … !”
His head shoots up, an expression of dismay and defeat on his face. He clamors to hold her hands.
“I don’t think I believe any of that anymore, I just dunno what to say when you … .! You … do that.”
‘Do that’: show me a love as unconditional and passionate as that which I’ve always felt for you.
“I’m listening, I promise, I. Okay. I’m it. You already know you’re it. So. Huzzah.”
“Sorry, that’s a stupid word, innit? I just love Victorian words.”
“For God’s sake. Sweethearts. Do you know … ? You don’t. You could have anyone. Anyone, anything. In the whole universe. You could. No, you really could. Step back and really consider that. I will be yours regardless. I will be here regardless.”
The smile that crosses his face at this ongoing barrage is terrifying, but really, it’s just glee from the pit of the gut outward at her absurd wild woman laugh. At her very being.
He doesn’t turn just yet. He expends impressive time utilizing that legendary endurance–that patience–while continuing to tighten bolts and run calibrations on a little digital device wired to the TARDIS mainframe.
Then he begins to count.
“One … two … Euler’s Number … three … Pi … . 4.6692 … The Golden Ratio … ”
He drops his tools, turns abruptly and barrels outside the door with tickle fingers wiggling.
“THIRTEEEEEEEEEEEEN!” he bawls, snatching her up by the waist and spinning her. “HEHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!”
Much as he may proclaim otherwise, the Master never conceals the religious ecstasies with which he greets the Doctor at her most dangerous.
It’s his guilty pleasure, borne of a long-ago little boy’s awe at the black hole at his best friend’s center. A destructive beauty that earns a healthy respect. A thing that chokes, consumes, decimates.
Decimate. Nice word, that. Always has been.
So when she’s there, at his side, and he’s cuffed and chained and bloody, deprived of food and water for over 72 hours, he looks at her like a would-be saint visited by his god.
“Doctor,” he gasps, in a rapture of near-delirium.
Icarus 