Okay if you’re not already following A, you’re seriously missing out folks.
You. YOU. You, my darling friend, know exactly what I’m about to say- but I’m going to say it anyway because it needs saying. Your writing is beautiful, and I am eternally envious of the way you’re able to turn words into poetry. You’re not just a fabulous writer but you’re also a strong, gorgeous person, inside and out, and I count myself lucky to know you, friend.
You inspire me.
You’re the first Master I interacted with on this or any other blog I’ve had in the past. You’re the reason my Ten is who he is, complex and growing, changing, learning, not being such an idiot. You’re the reason my Thirteen even came into being and found her voice in the first place. You’re the reason Thoschei is one of my OTPs now. You just. You’re amazing, okay, and I send you ALL THE HEARTS in return.
I’ll forever bestunned [and grateful] that you think so highly of me and my writing, and that you were willing to write with me in the first place. You give the Master so much depth, so much spirit and emotion and soul. You make him more than what he was on the show, in the audios, in the books and comics/graphic novels. We’re always saying how the Master deserved better… well, YOU give him that. You give the Master the proper beginnings [not endings] he deserves, the redemption he needs, and the life that he should have had all along.
I’m going to shut up now because I could honestly go on for days, but I will say one more thing:
Thank you for sharing your talent, art, and yourself with all of us on Tumblr. You make this place brighter.
The Master falters, angrily bright moist eyes refocusing on the Doctor’s features. When he realizes that what he sees is sincerity, his whole face transforms. It’s not a snarl, it’s open. It falters. It trembles.
“ … really?”
The Doctor’s eyes are trained on him, fixated, burning in fact and he is filled with a wondering, an ember of hope flickering deep down and he is scarcely able to breathe. The anger at first makes his stomach twist, ache, and he feels his eyes moisten and a sharpness in his chest that makes him yearn to immediately take it back. Perhaps he was mistaken in asking this, perhaps he had asked wrong. But he waits, speechless, until the Master focuses on him and sees that he isn’t joking. Not at all.
The transformation of the Master’s face causes the agony that had begun to seep into his chest to abate immediately, and he nods dumbly for a moment before finding his voice.
“Y-Yes. Really. If- well, I mean if you wanted to…”
His voice is filled with the insecurities the Master’s initial reaction had set inside of him, so unlike him, so much softer and unsure. His throat starts to close but he clears it and forces the question out again. Vulnerable down to the bones, by choice- how about that.
“I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment you placed your hand in mine, and it would be my honor if you would marry me, Koschei.”
The Master scrubs a hand down his face, brow to mouth, and exhales shakily, as the Doctor struggles to speak. That furtive intensity is all he needs for confirmation that this is no half-witted declaration, no prank, no deceit.
If you wanted to, he says! If you wanted to!!!!! As if being the property of this perfect incandescent comet of a soul isn’t his own secretest yearning!
Theta’s best friend cannot help but snort uproariously and then laugh a watery, incredulous, faint laugh. It dies quickly, though, as he searches the Doctor’s features for a sign of abated struggle. The palavering never ebbs.
“You, shh. Shhhh. Yes, of course. Yes the day we met, yes a thousand years ago, yes twenty minutes ago. Yes now, yes tomorrow, yes always.”
He steps onto his feet, that unending gesture of feline invasion, pushes his face under his chin, inhales and exhales, eyelashes tickling the Doctor’s neck as his eyes squeeze closed in hopeful astonishment.
“D’you really think I’ll ever outgrow the compulsion to follow you? My answer is yes, always.”
There are more words, always more words, hovering, waiting, in queue on his tongue as though his mind can’t stop producing them. Always thoughts, always talking, always feeling the impossible need to fill the silence with something. With anything. Those words tremble on his tongue and falter as his best friend, the keeper of his hearts, tells him to quiet, to settle and immediately he obeys. His mouth snaps shut and the never-ending rigmarole ceases at once. The thoughts do as well. The ripple and vibration of ever-present perpetual motion both within and without calm, as the sea calms on a breathless day, a smooth and glassy surface.
Relaxed. Silent and at peace, blessedly unmoving.
The word yes echoes inside of him though, the only word left, the only word that matters, the only phrases of any importance to him being those dancing from the lips of his Koschei. His focus is unwavering and intense, his entire genetic structure at pause until the answer, again and again is given and received. Then his respiratory bypass disengages with a soft and shuddering ‘whoosh’, his binary vascular system lunges into overdrive and at once his blood is tingling with euphoria. The corner of his mouth ticks upward.
He said yes… He said yes!! He said yes!!!!!!! The stars are colliding, supernovas are billowing, the entirety of the Creation, of the initial point where matter meets matter and bursts forth with the makings of the Universe itself, oh– it holds nothing so brilliant, so breathtaking, as this moment does.
The invasion of the Master’s feet atop his is a welcomed and deeply cherished one, arms lifting to immediately encircle the keeper of his hearts, one hand at the back of a shoulder and the other cradling the back of his head. He’s grateful in that moment for the nestle of the Master’s face beneath his chin as the water in his eyes trails down his cheeks. For a few more long moments he’s silent and when he finally does speak, there is nothing about it that can be mistaken for simple prattling.
“I’ve always belonged to you, y’know. This’ll just make it official. I spent so long being afraid of what that meant, of myself, and–.. I’m not afraid anymore. You’ve given me back myself, and you’re here. You’re still here and-…”
A brief pause, and only nine words follow, sincere and filled with so much affection that it causes his voice to waver just a fraction. The palavering has ended, in this moment, in favor of actually saying something that matters. Words with meaning. Words that are spoken, felt, and meant down to the marrow.
Koschei pulls back just enough to examine the face of his Theta as the words of promise cross the distance from the Doctor’s mouth to the Master’s ear. A memory comes unbidden and natural. It fills him with an ancient, unpracticed, and gnawing need, one to reassure.
“ … Yeah.”
The same pause, the same single word of undeniable confirmation, as the day the Doctor wove words interweaving them –(“Wonder what I’d be without you”)– simply, yeah. Yes. Everything you said, I, the Master, happily acquiesce, and agree with. I surrender in faith to you.
Words are the Doctor’s chosen medium. Actions are the Master’s.
So he lets himself weep, for the sweet idiot who’s already weeping to have him. Quiet, undemonstrative tears, so antithetical to the grandstanding manipulator he has been.
“I do know. I was just waiting for you to remember. I’m sorry … I made you wait so long, work so hard, to prove it. I missed you, Thete. Even when I had you old and rotting in a wheelchair, a …birdcage, even when I . .. hhhhah. Did things I still don’t have the courage to confess, in a future you might never see. I missed you, I miss you now, because there are still inches of distance between us. Please help me, Hearts.”
Because you love me, want me, bear me: Draw me nearer.
He leans in again, slides his arms up inside the Doctor’s pinstripes and blue buttonup, beneath the fabric, up his bare shoulder blades, savoring the warmth, savoring the harmonic frequencies inside their two minds as touch-telepathy twines two halves of a whole ever closer. He closes his eyes again, and basks with the simple, devout pleasure of a cat in sunshine.
Icarus 