Send an accusation and the muse can only answer with “guilty” or “not guilty.”
There’s not a moment’s hesitation.
“Guilty.”
The Master twines his fingers with the Doctor’s, giving her the gift of his gentleness and his quiet, two things that are breathtakingly rare commodities coming from the Whole Screaming World On Fire.
Send an accusation and the muse can only answer with “guilty” or “not guilty.”
He likes the clinical terminology for this extremely commonplace crime. He’s fairly certain he does it as often as he bathes in luxurious scented bath salts, which is to say, daily.
Send an accusation and the muse can only answer with “guilty” or “not guilty.”
The Master’s legendary hubris falters. Momentarily.
The accusation may refer to any number of people, but is likely to refer to Bill Potts. She was his coup de grace of long-cons, a decade-long sting on the Doctor’s desire to be the salvation of all.
And he is far less proud of that, in retrospect, than one might expect. Long, painful conversations with the twelfth and thirteenth faces of the Doctor have resulted in something perilously akin to shame.
Because really, despite his nasty cracks at her “boring” personality, Koschei liked Bill. She was smart, easygoing, and far from petty in the way that humans ordinarily are. He did, after all, learn all the mundanities of her personhood, in those ten years: her favorite toothbrush color and gum flavor. The music she’d play while working out. What gave her insomnia. The name of the first girl she kissed.
Which makes the whole betrayal ten times as horrifying. He knows that. He knows.
Send an accusation and the muse can only answer with “guilty” or “not guilty.”
“Well, guilty, of course. You wouldn’t have ‘asked’ had you not already known.”
The Master licks his lips and looks away, realizing that in this particular case even he isn’t tasteless enough to laugh.
Moreover using Lucy Cole as a pawn and prop in the perfect disguise of a respectable human politician was a massive miscalculation on his part, akin to his underestimation of Martha Jones. Not only did she kill him once for courting and then discarding her; she also botched his resurrection, and was directly responsible for his dependence upon the Council and Court of Rassilon, inside the Timelock, to “cure” him (far from it, they only attached strings to him that he later had to painfully sever).
Lucy has always reminded good old “Harry” far too much of Ailla.
But once again, the subsequent company of the Doctor has given him cause to reach out to Lucy and her surviving family, anonymously, with donations of fiscal aid, and access to mental health rehabilitation services.
He is not about to admit this “weakness” of compassion to a stranger, however.
“Okay, I’m not saying we pretend to be American, or proceed to believe that colonist brutally murdered natives, but what I am saying is that I would be partial to a very large meal where afterwards I take a nap on the couch.”
“Prerequisites: turkey is involved, and afterward I get to ‘nap’ with you.”
Send an accusation and the muse can only answer with “guilty” or “not guilty.”
“Well, guilty, of course. You wouldn’t have ‘asked’ had you not already known.”
The Master licks his lips and looks away, realizing that in this particular case even he isn’t tasteless enough to laugh.
Moreover using Lucy Cole as a pawn and prop in the perfect disguise of a respectable human politician was a massive miscalculation on his part, akin to his underestimation of Martha Jones. Not only did she kill him once for courting and then discarding her; she also botched his resurrection, and was directly responsible for his dependence upon the Council and Court of Rassilon, inside the Timelock, to “cure” him (far from it, they only attached strings to him that he later had to painfully sever).
Lucy has always reminded good old “Harry” far too much of Ailla.
But once again, the subsequent company of the Doctor has given him cause to reach out to Lucy and her surviving family, anonymously, with donations of fiscal aid, and access to mental health rehabilitation services.
He is not about to admit this “weakness” of compassion to a stranger, however.
Send an accusation and the muse can only answer with “guilty” or “not guilty.”
The Master’s legendary hubris falters. Momentarily.
The accusation may refer to any number of people, but is likely to refer to Bill Potts. She was his coup de grace of long-cons, a decade-long sting on the Doctor’s desire to be the salvation of all.
And he is far less proud of that, in retrospect, than one might expect. Long, painful conversations with the twelfth and thirteenth faces of the Doctor have resulted in something perilously akin to shame.
Because really, despite his nasty cracks at her “boring” personality, Koschei liked Bill. She was smart, easygoing, and far from petty in the way that humans ordinarily are. He did, after all, learn all the mundanities of her personhood, in those ten years: her favorite toothbrush color and gum flavor. The music she’d play while working out. What gave her insomnia. The name of the first girl she kissed.
Which makes the whole betrayal ten times as horrifying. He knows that. He knows.
Icarus 