“Can I ask you a question?” he says pensively. They always go in peaks and troughs, these two, and though they’d both been fairly steady for a good long while, it could only last for so long before one of them slid down again. This time, it’s Jack, whispering from the couch in Koschei’s workshop underneath the weighted blanket he got him for Christmas last year.
He doesn’t wait for his husband to answer, though he does pause to find his courage again. “If the Doctor showed up tomorrow, apologised and begged forgiveness, promised they’d never leave you again… What would you do?”
The question pierces Koschei through both hearts simultaneously, like a lance entering his chest from the side.
He literally, physically stumbles in the process of carrying toys the twins left scattered on the floor of their seaside cottage to their cedarwood toy bin. The look on his face is probably more betrayed than he’d wish.
“Look, I know I have my moments of insecurity too, but I am begging you not to tell me you think I’d honestly leave you.”
“OI!! Ri’ then, listen oop. You an’ I ‘ave got centuries between oos so don’t try any more funny business or I’ll lamp ya, understood? This’s no time t’be stroppy, m’only tryin’ to ‘elp and I’m all set bein’ shocked, thanks, so pack it in or I’ll toss you into a supernova!”
The Master strolls into the kitchen, where his best friend is speaking in Northern Tongues while threatening to assault a toaster.
Typical Tuesday, really.
He sniffs, holds up a forefinger, and winks at her as though to suggest he has the entire situation well in hand.
Then, this technical genius, this intellectual titan … . bangs hard, three times, on the side of the toaster.
Intimidated, it tremulously surrenders perfect toast.
Somehow, the Master doesn’t miss a beat (hey, he’s always had excellent rhythm) when the Doctor springs this whimsical request. Mid-pouring of tea, he fluidly spins and gestures to her for attention.
“Well darling, you know that an actual living child requires regular maintenance, right? More than, say, a cat, or a spinning delivery bot head, or a cactus, or a Type-40 TARDIS that a certain someone else,” and he tugs on his own suit lapels, “regularly tends do. She’ll need food, and affection, and probably school of some kind, and next thing you know she’ll be dating, and acquiring moral principles, and asking you where babies come from. Can you feed and water a darling human girl with dedication?”
“Well of COURSE, my dear. My bovines are every bit as nefarious as anything else I possess. What. You think I haven’t watched Mulan? You fool. Mushu is an excellent role model. Tiny but capable of breathing fire. Yes, we’re kindred spirits.”
“This is Twirly. He lives with us now. Might need to do something about his upselling protocols.”
“Theta, oh my God.”
@eminenceoftime asked: (here comes the pain train) “Are you truly disappointed with who we become?”
“No,” Koschei breathes, with a look of alarmed incomprehension. “Sis, you’re the most fearsome tigress in the cosmos. I worship you. I was scared you were becoming little more than an accessory to the one person who is our shared great weakness. That’s not the same as disappointment. I was trying to protect our legacy. To keep you from being tamed and diluted. You needn’t lose who you are to do something someone else deems ‘good.’”
The Master’s gaze is steel-trap-sharp. Not a syllable his beloved speaks goes unheard. He witnesses the Doctor’s suffering firsthand.
When he speaks, it’s with matching precision.
“Wake me up. No. Really. When it happens, the hour-mark. Wake me up with you.”
He reaches out, tidies the Doctor’s rumpled white buttonup and his black vest, tidies his hair, with all the doting diligence of a longtime spouse. Which is, all calamity and strife aside, exactly what he has always been.
“Doesn’t have to be a long conversation or anything. Grab onto me. Touch me. Say ‘hi.’ I’ll show you you’re here. Really here. Neither of us is there anymore. Or will ever be again.”
“That’s my vow to you.”
“I can’t do that to you.”
His words are infused with self-blame; a product of his slightly distorted view of himself. It’s as if he’s something to be inflicted upon others. What he means is ‘you don’t need to do that’, but in his head the problem has already been categorised as a burden to anyone he shares it with. Something that’s his own fault.
If he thinks about it reasonably, his view of this is all wrong. The Master is asking him to do this.
The Doctor steps closer, hands raising, then hovering in the air between them, and finally coming to rest on the Master’s shoulders. He shifts his fingers once. Again. He’s thinking.
“I don’t want you to suffer because of me. I don’t want you to lose sleep because of my maladaptive sleep pattern. It’s not fair. You’ve suffered enough.”
He tilts his head forwards, touching their foreheads together, and gazes into his eyes.
“You don’t have to do anything for me. You do enough just by sleeping in the same room as me. You’d really want waking up every single hour, without fail, just so you can make sure I know we’re safe?”
At first the Doctor’s fussy concern pleasantly flusters him, and the Master is very nearly bashful.
But then he chuckles, and it’s rich and genuinely amused, without a touch of the habitual snideness. He reaches down and pinches the Doctor’s sides, even as they’re still touching foreheads, even as his beloved gazes furtively, ashamedly, into his eyes. It’s a tacit reminder that their lives need not be marked by grave ceremony all the time; they know each other way too well for that.
“You really are a silly sausage. I would do anything for you, genius. Willingly. But it seems we’re at an impasse, as you’re wired to do the same for me.”
He kisses first the Doctor’s chin and then his lips.
“You should know I will be there every time you awaken. Again, my vow to you. And you should further know that the shame you’re feeling, that I can practically taste between our minds, is misplaced, my love. Take it from someone who’s always suffered self-imposed claims of invincibility, just to cope with what was done to me by the same bastard that shoved you in that Confession Dial.”
“Well I beg your pardon, madam, but the world will not suffer from the loss of another presumptuous buffoon with the intellectual capacity of a melon baller.”
Icarus 