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.”
“So you and the Doc, ey? How long’s that been going on then?”
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.”
“The tired isn’t something that can be fixed with a seat, mate,” Graham replied with a sad chuckle. But yes, he was tired; he had been ever since Grace had died. God… That made him a widower, didn’t it? That hadn’t occurred to him before.
Still, he took the seat on the bus. It was being offered so nicely that it seemed rude to decline. “Thanks,” Graham said. “I used to drive one of these, you know. Maybe my body’s just used to sitting down on one.”
“ … .”
At length, the Master smiles wistfully. He examines the Sheffield horizon; so ordinary, so unremarkable, this planet full of one-hearted apes. Yet the longer he spends in a kind of ethical rehab alongside his oldest friend, the more she manages to hone his skill at seeing poignant beauty through rubbish.
Iridescence in oil-drained water. The vibrant red of a plastic ribbon tied to a dead sapling in a neglected park. The light on urban gravel, or against the broken windows of old factories.
The network of battle-weary wrinkles on the face of a widower.
He sits beside Graham, allowing the retiree the window seat. Life on Britain’s political fast-track made him exceptionally skilled at earning the trust of the masses. But right now he’s not trying to manipulate. Not in that sort of way, anyway.
The Doctor told him about all her new friends: with breathless awe, and a joy he’s not seen her sport since well before he acquired this face. Since childhood, perhaps. And as she catalogued their various tribulations, the Master made a tacit, silent vow to do his utmost as a source of nourishment to each one. For the first time, with hideously rusty “good guy” skills. But hey, start somewhere.
“I’ve been basically married to the same person since we were eight years old.”
He catches Graham’s eye.
“You met her. Five foot six. Blonde. Talks a mile a minute about forty disparate subjects. Yorkshire accent. Committed to meddling and occasionally helping. Yeah, her. Since she was a little boy … ehr, sorry, that’s an … alien thing. We don’t. Do gender like you lot. Anyroad, if I were, ah. Where you are right now, I doubt I’d be doing so well. Despite my tendency to claim I’m invincible. Cheers. You might just be braver than you think.”
Icarus 