As he always has, the Master summons the courage to look directly at the Doctor when the Doctor chooses to reprimand or avoid him.
“I believed that sort of thing for a very long time, but if you hadn’t convinced me otherwise, I would still be festering with rage and bitterness. And pain. And I would not be here to comfort you. I know you think you only want things, and never need them, but … . Doctor. Let me return you the favor.”
He sighs. “You’re making it really hard for me to get out of this one, aren’t you? Fine. We can…discuss. I suppose. You win.”
It’s the thought of the Master not being here that’s gotten to him. The anticipated conversation is one the Doctor isn’t looking forward to, and it will be painful and shameful and embarrassing, and any number of negative emotions that he doesn’t know how to deal with, but it is infinitely preferable to being alone.
“I’m sorry,” he starts, “That I didn’t try to tell you about it on my own. You deserve to know. You’ve been patient and loving to me, especially when I’ve needed it. And you deserve better than me trying to avoid conversations.”
“Good of you to notice.”
The way the Master looks at the Doctor, his black eyes are inscrutable, but on features marked with more lines, more silver hairs, than during their days of volatile youth–when the Doctor was a brown-haired pinstriped zealot and the Master his particularly manic breed of monster–there’s an undeniable gentleness. A willingness to stop and listen, where one did not exist before.
Fear of abandonment can be reciprocal: he is afraid of losing the Doctor, too.
“For once in your life, my love, in all seriousness: don’t begin a sentence with an apology.”
Now his smile is tinged with sadness.
“I’m not so ready to lampoon you as you may believe. I am more than my violence. Go on, Hearts. Just talk.”
The Master opens his arms to Ophelia, emphatically, decisively.
“Come. Sit. Sit right here. Are you open to hypnotist techniques, via touch-telepathy?”
It’s a testimony to what he’s learned in the Doctor’s company that he even offers this question before diving right in to his stepdaughter’s “treatment.”
Ophelia quickly goes to his arms, hugging him as she leans into him gently.
She sits down, looking up at him, her face weary with lack of sleep and worry.
“I’m open to anything at this point, honestly. I just don’t know what to do.”
The Master hums, taking quiet note of Ophelia’s desperation.
“If I may presume, I believe you’re out of synch with your own telepathic nodes, as they connect to your physiology. That’s mumbo-jumbo for, the way you use your telepathy and the way your body’s changing with the pregnancy aren’t lining up. And it’s causing you emotional distress.”
He presses competent, work-callused fingers to each of her temples, closes his eyes, and mentally pictures unlocking a box, and allowing exquisitely beautiful golden tendrils of energy out, and permeating her mind with them, like weaving ribbons into a fraught tapestry.
When he speaks, it’s in a mesmerizing baritone.
“Do as I do … picture your stress as something physical. Make a container. Firmly place it inside. Do it over and over, and think of nothing else save your breathing. In. Out. In. Out.”
The Master sits grandiosely slackened, legs crossed, arms behind his head, lounging defiantly in the personal space of the Doctor’s TARDIS, all a calculated maneuver of appearing independent and invincible.
All a facade, for a mind as permeable as soil to water. He could not stand apart from the only true friend he ever had if he tried.
But he will try, anyway, because the Master tilts at windmills.
“I robbed you of your latest human pet in the most violently cruel way possible, all to foil your plot to convert Missy into some diluted goody-goody version of herself, and you still come back for more? Doctor, I never knew you to be a masochist … persecution complex, maybe. Savior complex, definitely. But this? How d’you know I won’t exact excruciating vengeance upon you, eh?”
The Master opens his arms to Ophelia, emphatically, decisively.
“Come. Sit. Sit right here. Are you open to hypnotist techniques, via touch-telepathy?”
It’s a testimony to what he’s learned in the Doctor’s company that he even offers this question before diving right in to his stepdaughter’s “treatment.”
Koschei picks up the chocolates and grins at the real evidence of his husband’s doting: the note, which declares him unequivocally, unquestionably, needed.
The note, which states that he is a source of something good and healing, rather than something violent and destructive.
That he offers happiness to his beloved.
Secretly, there is nothing else in the world that he needs more, than to be essential to someone.
He stands and tucks the flowers into his shirt pocket, and trots to the kitchen, and then the dining room, and then the deck, where he finds his Sam.
“This gift isn’t complete until you feed me one, or several, of these,” he purrs, leaning across him from behind, placing the chocolates on his chest and kissing his ear.
The Doctor is buried in his work, a pile of cables and wires at his feet. For that reason, he doesn’t even address the Master when he arrives. Not until, that is, he steps in front of him and disrupts his work.
“Somethin’ I can help you with?” he asks a bit stiffly. He hadn’t felt much like sleeping lately. There wasn’t much point when the other side of the bed was so often empty.
“I know you’re cross with me. But I missed you and I wanted to hold you for a while.”
“Well, I’m busy at the moment. You’ll have to wait.” And depending on his mood, he might make the Master wait a long time indeed.
“Convenient of you, missing me now.”
“Oh, dar-ling.”
The Master sighs indulgently, and apologetically, awakening more fully, now, from his slumber.
He steps out of the path of the Doctor’s labors, stands on his tiptoes and pecks the side of his neck. He knows: he knows all the potential ways that timelines can unfurl from any given moment, and he knows that his husband can do the same, and he knows that the Doctor has seen other futures, in which they are not together, and the Master has found an earlier or later Doctor with which to nest. He could, at this moment, tell his Theta that he has seen the same disturbing things transpire, and not always even with other versions of Koschei. But that will not ease the gloom and irritability that have descended on his best and oldest friend.
“Here. Let me bring you the reason why I’ve been away so mooch.”
He pads back out of the Console Room.
He returns less than five minutes later, aided by a TARDIS that wishes to see Her thief in better spirits. What he holds is a very young coral from another TARDIS entirely, and it’s mounted onto a strange chrome-like piece of unmistakably Gallifreyan tech. Any child of the Great Houses would recognize that material: a piece of the Untempered Schism.
“Alright, Oscar the bloody Grouch: yes I’ve seen Sesame Street, you think I’d only watch Teletubbies? Bad for the brand to admit it, but there you go. Now listen here: I’ve been to Gallifrey behind your back, which was exceedingly hard to do when you were always on board with me, and don’t ask how, but I’ve stolen two things: a piece of the place where you married me, and a baby TARDIS to mark our new lives together. Because we’ve got a kid under our wing now, albeit an adult, and she’s having a kid, and well, maybe one of these days you an’ me’ll have a kid too, you never know. Or maybe it’ll have nothing to do with children. But it’s gonna grow oop and maybe it’ll merge with your Old Girl, or maybe it’ll carry a member of our budding family to someplace else entirely. But it’s an investment I’ve made in us. Us as we are now, two children of war who are healing from its scars, you big-earedidiot.”
“I assure you, It’s not what it looks like!” The Doctor said, almost embarrassed, “There is an explaination!
The Doctor was standing her TARDIS, absolutely naked. Well except for a pair of underwear that matched her skin tone.
It’s only with the slim hope of convincing the Doctor that he has acquired a greater understanding of respect for personal boundaries that the Master tears his gaze away from her form.
“How disappointing to hear,” he chortles, while blindly side-stepping toward her and handing her his black overcoat, aromatic of cinnamon and his musky clean aftershave. “Please regale me with the … .” He can’t help a glance at her pantied ass. “ … backstory.”
The Doctor is buried in his work, a pile of cables and wires at his feet. For that reason, he doesn’t even address the Master when he arrives. Not until, that is, he steps in front of him and disrupts his work.
“Somethin’ I can help you with?” he asks a bit stiffly. He hadn’t felt much like sleeping lately. There wasn’t much point when the other side of the bed was so often empty.
“I know you’re cross with me. But I missed you and I wanted to hold you for a while.”
The Master cranes back his long slender neck and smirks over one shoulder at the Doctor.
“Not really. No one embodies the term ‘warm fuzzies’ quite so aptly as you, ‘Oncoming Storm,’” he gently goads. “And now what? Have you caught me at last, Doctor?”
Koschei chuckles, a rumbling deep in his diaphragm that’s far smugger than his usual bawdy cackle.
“Well o-kay, I’m flexible,” he drawls, and in one powerful motion, he lifts her off her feet and piggybacks her about as he conducts his desired tasks.
“Would you like a soda while you’re oop there, dear?”
The Doctor yelps in surprise as she is so suddenly lifted up but automatically wraps her arms around his chest to prevent possibly falling.
“Flexible andstrong, I see.” She chuckles as she lays her head down comfortably, “Sure, but mind telling me where you’ve decided to take me, Koschei?”
The Master pauses in his stroll; he tries to suppress a smile at the weight of the Doctor’s head on top of his own. He draws a deep sustaining breath, and then in a jolly yet factual baritone, reports,
“Well first I was going to perform system maintenance on the control panel, and then I was going to plot a way to kill all wasps, while sparing honeybees, on your darling earth; and then, that nauseatingly good deed done, I was going to go shopping to add some new couture to my wardrobe; and then I was going to maybe run a smear campaign against various tyrants through some random sentient-inhabited planet’s history and become the apex predator there for the lulz, as the kids say; and then I was going to probably, I dunno, get a bath bomb and soak in the tub, and if I had energy after that, eat some baby seals … . please tell me you’ve detected the point at which I started lying in order to shock and tease you.”
The Master cranes back his long slender neck and smirks over one shoulder at the Doctor.
“Not really. No one embodies the term ‘warm fuzzies’ quite so aptly as you, ‘Oncoming Storm,’” he gently goads. “And now what? Have you caught me at last, Doctor?”
The Doctor chuckles at his reaction. Her surprise may have failed but that wasn’t stopping her.
“It seems I have most definitely caught you, Master.” She says with a smirk as she pulls herself closer, refusing to release her hold, “Unfortunately for you, I have no intention of letting you go, you got that? You’re all mine. Besides, you look like you need some Doctor, eh?”
Koschei chuckles, a rumbling deep in his diaphragm that’s far smugger than his usual bawdy cackle.
“Well o-kay, I’m flexible,” he drawls, and in one powerful motion, he lifts her off her feet and piggybacks her about as he conducts his desired tasks.
“Would you like a soda while you’re oop there, dear?”
Icarus 