“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 Master takes care to lean into the Doctor’s personal space. Calculated gestures of self-invitation: he smells of cinnamon and sharply clean aftershave and, vaguely, from incessant mechanical tinkering, the tang of gasoline. Black-lined maple-brown eyes sweep her features; they are bright; they simmer with yearning. Regardless of the color, they always have. He smiles.
And then he pulls back.
“Oh yes, of course. That’s self-evident. I can’t imagine why I would ever wish to encroach upon your bubble, Doctor. It’s not as if you’re my lifelong North Star, and, currently, a breathtaking adorkable little blonde. That I should very much like to ravish. Right here, right now.”
Koschei resolves to try something new; he spins Jack in his arms. He dips his husband low to the floor, and guides him back upright for a hard passionate kiss.
“Surprise.”
He thinks, naively, that he’s gained the upper hand now (connoisseur of control that he is).
He’s so close to responding to that command with exactly what he’s just been told not to say. He shuts his mouth instead and looks away, trying to form the sentence before he lets it leave his mouth.
This is so stupid. How many times has he sat in silent anguish over these nightmares? And now, when he’s given a judgement-free space to talk about them, the pain they cause recedes into the depths of his mind, hiding. He could tell the Master it doesn’t matter. He could say they aren’t bad enough to warrant this conversation, or lie outright and say he doesn’t remember them.
It would be pointless, though. They’d achieve nothing. No. He needs to be brave and for once in his life, not apologise or feel guilty for admitting his pain.
“The confession dial,” he says finally, forcing himself to make eye contact. “I made myself a little strategy while I was in the castle slash personal torture chamber, and now it’s causing considerable problems for me.”
The Doctor very rarely speaks of this time. No matter how much time passes, heavy footsteps behind him will never again be separate from the idea of being constantly followed by a being that must only touch him in order to kill him.
“If I lured the creature to one end of the castle, then ran to the other, I could earn myself a maximum of eighty-two minutes. That’s how long it took it to catch up to me. So, with that time, I could sleep for one hour. One hour was a safe amount of time. I had to use my sonic sunglasses at first, to wake myself up, but after a certain amount of time it just became natural. Or — well, as natural as being woken up by the sudden terrifying realisation that it might be there outside the door can be. Because that’s what it feels like, when I start to get close to the one hour mark. It’s there, in the corners of my dreams. Always following me. Always so close that if I don’t wake up, it might get me.”
He shrugs, movement slow with the weight of it.
“I know it’s not there. I know that because you’re there, usually. I can touch you, and you’re real, so any thought I have of that creature can’t be real. If it was, I’d be completely alone. I can think about it rationally now, when I’m awake. I couldn’t at first. I had to get up and check that I was in the TARDIS and nobody else was on board. Stupid. I felt stupid.”
He runs both hands through his hair, a tiny distraction from the truth of what he’s saying. Honesty frightens him. He’s got nothing to hide behind here. The Master can see him.
“So, there you go. I physically can’t sleep for longer than one hour at a time. I can wake up very briefly and go back to sleep for another hour, which is why I’ve been able to hide it. It’s not obvious when it’s not a particularly vivid nightmare that wakes me. Sometimes it’s not even a dream, I just wake up, acknowledge that I’m safe, and go back to sleep. But now you know. I’ve told you the truth.”
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.”
A fond smile appeared on her lips and she sat up slightly so that she could kiss his nose properly.
“I mean, you would have to find him first. Ryan sent him far back into the past… not sure when or where… but with some luck he will be eaten by a dinosaur.” she grinned.
The Master, thusly baptized by the rainbows, unicorns, and sunbeams inherent to the Doctor’s nose-kiss, flings back his head. He cackles.
“How droll, I do hope that he was eaten in parts, legs first, and then perhaps his essential bits, and finally his empty head. Oh, it warms my hearts.”
A pause. He steals an almost sheepish look her way.
“I suppose that’s not how I’m meant to react to that news …”
She cant help giggle at his adorable reaction, her eyes lighting up in amusement, before she stands on her tip-toes and kisses his nose.
“Are you always this adorable or am i the only creature in existence who has the pleasure to witness this?” she asked him happily.
“I’ll staunchly deny that I’m ‘adorable,’” and he makes obnoxious air quotes, “in any shape or form, to anyBODY.”
She just continues to grin. “So just me then, thats good to know.”
“Ill tell you a secret, You,” She pokes his nose gently, again; “will always be the only one to know my true self.”
Wether thats a good or bad thing, not even she knows, but The Master… no, Koschei, will always be the ONLY creature in existence, who knows the little boy, the REALTheta Sigma under the name that is ‘The Doctor’.
“ … . is that right. And where did that come from, my darling and star?”
The words come out like ripping off a scab, even though the Master strives with every fiber of his independence-loving, ire-filled soul to appear intimidating.
“After all,” and even less successfully, to look smug and dark, “it’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
“Should I?”
She screws up her face, clearly confused as to not only where this is coming from but why he would say such a thing. “Did I say something? Did she say something? Did I do the thing again where I miss some human social cue and now it’s a thing?”
“Nah, luv. The only thing I think you definitely missed is that you thrive on stimulation and novelty. And … humans provide you with a vulnerability, an innocence, that I can’t provide.”
The words veil unheard anguish. Acting selflessly is against every principle he possesses; he might as well be harpooning himself through the vitals, and it would hurt less, but he masks it well.
“You should enjoy them while they’re still here. I don’t have an expiration date.”
The pair of them are sitting across from each other, yogi style, knees bumped together, when the Doctor brightly declares this.
The Master leans in across the purple couch–the couch he promised he’d procure for the Doctor when she exclaimed how much she wished she owned one–and kisses her. No predication, no warning, he just does so, and enjoys thoroughly the perfect lock of their mouths into place. There’s a pattern to the “randomness” of the stars, and to the “chance” of lives meeting.
“That would be divine, if my best friend joined me.”
The kiss surprises her, even flusters her slightly and she’s just the slightest bit pink when he pulls back. She’s still getting used to this kind of random physical affection somehow, despite how often he showers it upon her. She may never get completely used to it, too many centuries of cultural indoctrination to peel away even for her.
“I think your best friend would be delighted. Shall I give ‘em a call?” she teases.
“I dunno, you think she’ busy saving the world, or … marrying strangers, or maintaining timelines? Should I leave a message after the beep? Don’t want to bother her with little old me.”
This is entirely a tease; he would interrupt her marching with Mahatma Gandhi or dabbing Mother Teresa’s brow if he felt something–usually himself–important enough.
Which is all the clearer when he pulls her into the wardrobe with a well-nigh lecherous grin, and kisses her again, on the long, soft, smooth neck.
“Please tell me you’ll wear a suit … Doctor, make my wildest fantasies a reality.”
It’s highly possible he’s figured out that he has the capacity to fluster her.
Send a what-if scenario for a reaction from my muse.
“That’s … unfathomable.”
He means it in every sense of the word. Every joy and despair, every achievement and failure, are inextricably knotted, like two hands joined and bound by matrimonial cords, to the Doctor. A life bereft of the other half of himself, that’s like staring into a blackness that’s beyond the nonpresence of light: it’s beyond absence, because absence implies that there was once presence.
Icarus 