A dull patina of melancholy and regret descends over the Master. He catches his own transparent expression of despair. He smiles grayly at Graham.
He knows what the old mortal is thinking. It sears him with shame, and with anger, with the urge to flare you don’t understand, but weariness wins today.
“There are many reasons, but none of them would formulate an excuse you’d accept. We are friends before we are enemies or even lovers. I would adore her, in any face, any gender, any age, and I would follow her over the impossible edge of the ever-expanding universe. I would wish to consume, to demolish, anything between us, for eternity. But occasionally all that ardor gets converted into toxic energy, and we fight. And she certainly gets in her punches.”
His smile grows a little more wan.
“I just realized. You don’t know. You’ve never seen her really lose herself to her temper, have you? Never seen people disregard her sermonizing and her interfering, and seen her,” his teeth grate on edge with the word, “sna-p.”
A hushed laugh escapes. Hushed, or breathless, with a knowing pain.
“Oh, my friend. None of you lot had better leave her when you see it. Or I will be the one to come for you.”
Graham has a ready platitude on his lips when suddenly, the whole demeanour of this other Time Lord changes. It nearly sends a shiver down his spine, and that glint in his eye tells the retired bus driver exactly why this man chose the moniker Master.
“No, can’t say I’ve seen her completely lose it. Gotten close a time or two, I wager, but never ‘snap,’ as you call it. Even when it happens, takes a lot more to scare me off than you might imagine. I might not be as experienced as you and the Doc in all this alien nonsense, but Sheffield on a Saturday night ain’t exactly all sunshine and daisies.”
He can’t promise that the other two will stay, especially if it comes to a point where it’s too dangerous for them to stay – in fact, Graham would be the first one pushing them out the door, in that case – but as for him, he’s been around the block a time or two. He’s seen desperate people lose their temper and their will to live, and he’s had to stand between them and tragedy more than once.
The Master leans in closely as Graham rattles off his truths with surprising aplomb, for a man of such a common trade. Sharp almond eyes narrow to slits. There are volcanoes behind his irises.
The interval passes. Koschei “resets” himself, twisting his head in an almost mechanical circle on his long neck. He shudders, and his feverish features settle into a mask of composure. He nods once, sharply.
“Graham O’Brien, I like you,” he renders his verdict.
The Master says nothing, and has at least the social acuity to know not to stare. So the mercurial scientific prodigy imitates the quiet, no-nonsense bus driver’s exact stance, and waits.
At length, he smiles, and the bitterness is actually not nearly so pronounced as the grief. So perhaps, despite being an intergalactic criminal genius versus an everyman, they are exactly the same person in this moment.
“You think we’re alike … . because we both have a ‘her’ in our lives whose light is indescribable. Yes? But, hhhhah. Graham, I AM the Solitract, to the Doctor’s Universe. The time will come, if it hasn’t already … when she finally sheds me completely, and I’ll have to tell her, too, ‘I will dream of you out there without me.’”
He does regard Graham, now, with muted suffering.
“Your Grace might not be here in tangible form, but she would never have had to willingly leave you. You’re not corrosive and clinging. You’re good. Take refuge in that.”
He’ll dwell on what the Master has said about Grace at another time, because right now, he’s too focused on what the other man is saying about him and the Doctor. And it’s making him proper upset.
“Are you joking with me, mate? After all your high ‘n mighty speeches about how you two need each other, about how you’ve spent centuries bein’ on again, off again but you’re not gonna waste this chance, that is what you have to say? That one day, she’s gonna leave and you’re just gonna accept it?” He shakes his head.
“Nah, I don’t buy that. I’ve seen the pair of you, seen how you two are lighter when the other is in the room. And what you two need right now is to have your heads knocked together so you both understand how much you mean to each other. Yeah, the Doc is better than probably any of us deserve, but she’s also just a person. A Time Lord, maybe, but she still needs people, she still needs you. And deep down, you know that too.”
“Hm! Sounds like the acme of hypocrisy when you put it that way.”
Koschei’s torn between itemizing for Graham the list of the Doctor’s deeds which fall far short of “better than probably any of us deserve” … . and agreeing with Graham breathlessly. Either way, he loves her, in a way that transcends any Companion’s understanding, because he knows what it is to live the span of a life that’s unfathomably long and alinear. And because he knows each of her faults as intimately as each of her blessings. And he loves each one, the way you take pieces of fine jewelry out of an armoire and polish them, and hold them up to the light at every conceivable angle.
He stretches his legs out, and uncurls his toes within his boots. He leans back and really acclimates himself to the comfy seat next to the old bus driver.
“ … . you’re right, of course. Regardless of what she deserves. I’m not going anywhere. But back to you, mate.” There’s a roguish glint in his black eyes. Under other circumstances, it’d be a touch too sharp for comfort. Even frightening. But right now, it’s the look of a friend. “Don’t deflect just because I was having an angst-ridden moment. The Solitract showed you a very convincing Grace, I take it. Dangled the carrot, as it were.”
//He’s not “faltering” you disgusting dentist’s nightmare he’s being the better man.
After the adventure with… the thing, Graham needs to decompress. It affected them all, this one, but no one more than him. And rather than find the Doc or Ryan or Yasmin, he seeks probably the least likely person: the Master.
He doesn’t say anything right away, doesn’t even know what to say, he just sits down next to him, silently looking at his hands.
The Master says nothing, and has at least the social acuity to know not to stare. So the mercurial scientific prodigy imitates the quiet, no-nonsense bus driver’s exact stance, and waits.
At length, he smiles, and the bitterness is actually not nearly so pronounced as the grief. So perhaps, despite being an intergalactic criminal genius versus an everyman, they are exactly the same person in this moment.
“You think we’re alike … . because we both have a ‘her’ in our lives whose light is indescribable. Yes? But, hhhhah. Graham, I AM the Solitract, to the Doctor’s Universe. The time will come, if it hasn’t already … when she finally sheds me completely, and I’ll have to tell her, too, ‘I will dream of you out there without me.’”
He does regard Graham, now, with muted suffering.
“Your Grace might not be here in tangible form, but she would never have had to willingly leave you. You’re not corrosive and clinging. You’re good. Take refuge in that.”
The Master rolls out from under the Console, where he’s been performing long hours of system maintenance. His arms are smeared in engine grease up to the elbow, and he wears an apron over his black jumper and trousers. He sits up, pleased that one of the Doctor’s new collectible humans has decided to do more than squint and gawk at him.
“On again, off again, but usually on and hiding it, for the better part of our lives. We were eight. Eight, when we met. Both boys, then. Then I was a girl, and the Doctor was a boy. Then, both boys, I think … ? I dunno, the Doctor might’ve been a girl once or twice when I wasn’t ‘round. Now here we are, boy, girl. I’m due to be a girl again next. We’ll see. Fingers crossed.”
He stands and luxuriously stretches, with a satisfied grunt at work well done. He lopes to the custard dispenser, dispatches one, and a second one, which he hands to Graham. He takes a fierce bite.
“Mm. Mm-HMM. Anyhow, we’ve been … all sorts of different people, far beyond the vicissitudes of gender. Somehow we remain as compatible as magnetic poles. Even though she left me, and I held a grudge for centuries, and we wasted … . appalling amounts of time fighting.”
“Seriously, that long?” he says, taking the biscuit and eating it. He doesn’t say it, but he kinda wants to knock their heads together for, as Koschei put it, wasting all that time. He can’t even imagine knowing someone for centuries, let alone spending most of it arguing.
He just knows that even centuries with Grace wouldn’t have been enough.
“Well, at least you figured it out in the end. Think it’ll stick this time?”
A dull patina of melancholy and regret descends over the Master. He catches his own transparent expression of despair. He smiles grayly at Graham.
He knows what the old mortal is thinking. It sears him with shame, and with anger, with the urge to flare you don’t understand, but weariness wins today.
“There are many reasons, but none of them would formulate an excuse you’d accept. We are friends before we are enemies or even lovers. I would adore her, in any face, any gender, any age, and I would follow her over the impossible edge of the ever-expanding universe. I would wish to consume, to demolish, anything between us, for eternity. But occasionally all that ardor gets converted into toxic energy, and we fight. And she certainly gets in her punches.”
His smile grows a little more wan.
“I just realized. You don’t know. You’ve never seen her really lose herself to her temper, have you? Never seen people disregard her sermonizing and her interfering, and seen her,” his teeth grate on edge with the word, “sna-p.”
A hushed laugh escapes. Hushed, or breathless, with a knowing pain.
“Oh, my friend. None of you lot had better leave her when you see it. Or I will be the one to come for you.”
he’s being the better man. 
Icarus 