You know, I married you, because it was clear to me you were out to save the world. Whatever it took, you would make that happen, and that I would be proud of you when you did. Everyone in this family knows why you do what you do. But do you know why you do it? Because you are a warrior. Protecting your country. You do it for us. To keep us safe.
He’s reading Antoine de Saint-Exupery, with what ostensibly appears to be detached curiosity. But when he reads the passage aloud, his voice is trembling.
“ ‘You become responsible forever for what you have tamed.’ ”
Oh, Doctor …
The Doctor has been watching, silently, as the Master’s eyes scan the pages of admittedly one of his favorite collections. His frame is leaning against that of the entryway, and his arms are folded across his chest, head tilted in contemplation. It’s only when the Master speaks aloud that his hearts seem to stumble for a moment, and before he can think to stop himself he’s opening his mouth and words are spilling out, voice hushed, shaking as well and seemingly breathless.
“‘You – you alone will have the stars as no one else has them…In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night…You – only you – will have stars that can laugh.’ ”
“Then why wasn’t I enough? Back in our earliest days. Vanity? Darkness? Did I cling too tight? Did I just become another fence? Another … locked door? Tell me why I wasn’t enough then, after you had already tamed me.”
The Doctor’s eyes flicker downward for a fraction of a moment and his stomach churns, twists inside until his hearts feel the ache and weight of it. He swallows thickly and glances back up, back to the questions, the accusations, the ponderings that the Doctor very much deserves to have thrown in his face. He deserves a lot worse, truth be told.
“You-…” His voice is weak and still trembling, and he has to swallow to force the words out. Blimey, he’s rubbish at this and he can both feel and see his own eyes filling with tears, tears full of guilt and shame. Sod it. Sod every last bit of it. The truth will out, and it will out right now. In the form of rambling so fast it rivaled every other situation in which he’d ever spoken.
“You were too good for me. Better than me. You were better than me and I was weak. I was terrified, I was dark and the noise would never stop. The whispering of the dead in the wind and grass and trees and the rolling of the waves against the shoreline, it never stopped! The nightmares of burning worlds and corpses and I was laughing, I enjoyed it and it terrified me! The only time it ever made sense was when we were together but in the moments when I was alone, when I had to suffer beatings by members of my own House, when I had to hear that I was nothing, that I was broken, when I pretended to be asleep and my own father suggested my Looming was a mistake, it nearly ended me! So yes. Yes, I was weak and I went searching for someone who could make the infernal noise stop! I believed I was broken and I believed I needed fixing, and I wanted to be whole again for you because I didn’t want you to see the darkness in my own mind! I didn’t want it to run you off, to leave me alone like I had been for so long because you were the only thing that ever mattered to me!You! I loved you and I didn’t want to be some broken thing that you had to be stuck with! “
“I didn’t want you to think you’d made a mistake, choosing me, choosing to run with me! I didn’t know they would alter my telepathic frequency, I didn’t know they were lying, I thought they could fix me! By the time I realized what was happening it was too late and I was… I was this, this Doctor and I thought I’d been fixed, no longer in pieces but one solid being that was strong enough to stand at your side and be worthy of you and then… then you heard the noises too. I thought… I thought my mind had tainted yours, I thought it was my fault, that the noise wasn’t real for you because I’d been molded, altered, shifted into believing the noise wasn’t real for me. I thought if you would just let me fix you, if you would just let me remove the- the darkness that’d seeped into your own mind from inside of me then we’d be alright, we’d be able to be together, but you refused.”
“You insisted it was real, as I once thought mine was, and I couldn’t bear the pain of seeing you every day knowing that it was my fault, that I was the reason the noise had taken over your mind. I couldn’t bear the thought of destroying the one I loved so completely just by simply loving them, so I ran… I ran, and I ran as far as I could and every time I saw you it was like taking a knife right to my hearts. Again and again and I kept running, and when the War came I looked for you and you were gone. I searched and I searched and you were gone, and I thought you were dead. I thought I was too late to save you, to take back the horrible darkness I’d put into you and by the time I found out the truth, that it wasn’t my fault, that I’d been manipulated and experimented on and- and tortured into this personification of sanctimonious shit, it was too late! I was wearing this face and you- you jumped into the rift and I lost you again and- and-…”
His rant ends because he is breathing too hard to continue speaking, eyes wide and frightened of the words that have spilled forth, cheeks wet with tears. Hands lift to cover his face and he simply weeps, a sound resembling the words ‘I’m sorry’ spilling from behind those hands again and again between panted breaths.
“But I don’t … I don’t mind. I don’t mind that stuff.When the person you cherish catches a sickness, do you … draw away in revulsion or do you cradle them, happy to catch the ailment so long as they have company?”
From the beast of the pair, the one so often reviled as a mere agent of ruination, it’s a startling, starkly selfless thing to say. But the incredulity on his face can brook no interpretation but that he is sincere.
The Master finds himself in the unparalleled predicament of being the knowledgeable healer, whereas the Doctor remains the lost, the frail, the ill. The mad. Still he draws upon a superior propensity to focused, determined steadiness, which has been innate to his faculties since childhood. He catches the Doctor’s hands, and seeks his eyes.
“Shhh….shh, shhh. My beloved gob, how you talk. Shhh see, I need you to breathe with me.”
Perhaps Time Lords possess a respiratory bypass; yet the act of breathing is universally soothing. The Master draws the Doctor against him, chest to chest, inhales, and exhales. And again, with a slow instructional nod. And a third time.
“They bent us both into something other, my love, but I’ll not let them hurt you again. You didn’t taint me the days, the years, we were together; you gave me hope and purpose. Why else would it break me so, when you were gone? Don’t go, stay and let me help you solve it: anything that’s making you suffer. When you suffer, I suffer. When you heal, so do I. I’m learning not to be so stupid, love. I’m learning revenge isn’t all that satisfying. You’re safe here.”
Icarus 