“Well then, I guess you’re in luck, aren’t you, darling?”
“Extremely lucky, as always,” he says, a mellow smile on his face as he reaches out for Koschei. “Come here, I need you closer.”
“Well who wouldn’t, I mean LOOK at me.”
The Master throws back his head and bawdily laughs, hands on hips, some sort of darkly seasoned Peter Pan, as he saunters over to his husband. All jokes are propped against the door to their intimacy, however, as he curls up in a feline ball against Jack’s side, head on his chest.
A dull patina of melancholy and regret descends over the Master. He catches his own transparent expression of despair. He smiles grayly at Graham.
He knows what the old mortal is thinking. It sears him with shame, and with anger, with the urge to flare you don’t understand, but weariness wins today.
“There are many reasons, but none of them would formulate an excuse you’d accept. We are friends before we are enemies or even lovers. I would adore her, in any face, any gender, any age, and I would follow her over the impossible edge of the ever-expanding universe. I would wish to consume, to demolish, anything between us, for eternity. But occasionally all that ardor gets converted into toxic energy, and we fight. And she certainly gets in her punches.”
His smile grows a little more wan.
“I just realized. You don’t know. You’ve never seen her really lose herself to her temper, have you? Never seen people disregard her sermonizing and her interfering, and seen her,” his teeth grate on edge with the word, “sna-p.”
A hushed laugh escapes. Hushed, or breathless, with a knowing pain.
“Oh, my friend. None of you lot had better leave her when you see it. Or I will be the one to come for you.”
Graham has a ready platitude on his lips when suddenly, the whole demeanour of this other Time Lord changes. It nearly sends a shiver down his spine, and that glint in his eye tells the retired bus driver exactly why this man chose the moniker Master.
“No, can’t say I’ve seen her completely lose it. Gotten close a time or two, I wager, but never ‘snap,’ as you call it. Even when it happens, takes a lot more to scare me off than you might imagine. I might not be as experienced as you and the Doc in all this alien nonsense, but Sheffield on a Saturday night ain’t exactly all sunshine and daisies.”
He can’t promise that the other two will stay, especially if it comes to a point where it’s too dangerous for them to stay – in fact, Graham would be the first one pushing them out the door, in that case – but as for him, he’s been around the block a time or two. He’s seen desperate people lose their temper and their will to live, and he’s had to stand between them and tragedy more than once.
The Master leans in closely as Graham rattles off his truths with surprising aplomb, for a man of such a common trade. Sharp almond eyes narrow to slits. There are volcanoes behind his irises.
The interval passes. Koschei “resets” himself, twisting his head in an almost mechanical circle on his long neck. He shudders, and his feverish features settle into a mask of composure. He nods once, sharply.
“Graham O’Brien, I like you,” he renders his verdict.
For the past twenty minutes, while the Doctor’s been preoccupied flying about the Console Room inputting destination points and monologuing about what intrigues her, the Master has been assembling a holly, ivy, and mistletoe wreath. Every time she flurries past chattering, he’s wordlessly applied another piece of the wreath to her hair, with wry determination.
Ultimately, the entire crown adorns her head, and he smugly lifts a mirror for her perusal.
“Happy Christmas, I now have an excuse endorsed by your beloved humans to kiss you at all hours.”
Needless to say, she enjoys him playing with her air when they pass each other. She’s noted an especial liking to tactile affection in this body. Massages, hugs, cuddles, and kisses— and the ever-so-lovely playing with of her hair.
Once the mirror came to her, she laughed, grinning wildly. “You already had my approval”
Her words are simple but stop him temporarily in his tracks.
“ … yeah, well.”
As usual, words fail him in the sincerest moments, and he’s left scrambling for actions that even convey a pale imitation of what he feels.
He starts by tossing aside the mirror, scooping her up, hoisting her high overhead, and simply staring at her: how a child stares at the star atop a Christmas tree. Yet there’s more seasoned warmth in his eyes, like the flavor of cinnamon roasted nuts or the scent of a fire after hours of trudging in the cold and dark. It’s very much the look of a homecoming.
“I did, did I. Me, with your approval? Since we were teenagers? You sure you’re feeling well?”
Before she can protest he presses his lips to hers, and inhales at the incredible flush of pleasure it grants. The soft pliancy of her mouth, the notion that the Oncoming Storm is allowing her small peahen of an acolyte best friend to manipulate any part of her body, it’s intoxicating. It’s a privilege. It’s a sacred rite.
The kiss lasts until he has to part for a gasp of breath.
“Oh God, Thete. You still taste so good.”
He rests his forehead against hers, while still holding her aloft.
The Master says nothing, and has at least the social acuity to know not to stare. So the mercurial scientific prodigy imitates the quiet, no-nonsense bus driver’s exact stance, and waits.
At length, he smiles, and the bitterness is actually not nearly so pronounced as the grief. So perhaps, despite being an intergalactic criminal genius versus an everyman, they are exactly the same person in this moment.
“You think we’re alike … . because we both have a ‘her’ in our lives whose light is indescribable. Yes? But, hhhhah. Graham, I AM the Solitract, to the Doctor’s Universe. The time will come, if it hasn’t already … when she finally sheds me completely, and I’ll have to tell her, too, ‘I will dream of you out there without me.’”
He does regard Graham, now, with muted suffering.
“Your Grace might not be here in tangible form, but she would never have had to willingly leave you. You’re not corrosive and clinging. You’re good. Take refuge in that.”
He’ll dwell on what the Master has said about Grace at another time, because right now, he’s too focused on what the other man is saying about him and the Doctor. And it’s making him proper upset.
“Are you joking with me, mate? After all your high ‘n mighty speeches about how you two need each other, about how you’ve spent centuries bein’ on again, off again but you’re not gonna waste this chance, that is what you have to say? That one day, she’s gonna leave and you’re just gonna accept it?” He shakes his head.
“Nah, I don’t buy that. I’ve seen the pair of you, seen how you two are lighter when the other is in the room. And what you two need right now is to have your heads knocked together so you both understand how much you mean to each other. Yeah, the Doc is better than probably any of us deserve, but she’s also just a person. A Time Lord, maybe, but she still needs people, she still needs you. And deep down, you know that too.”
“Hm! Sounds like the acme of hypocrisy when you put it that way.”
Koschei’s torn between itemizing for Graham the list of the Doctor’s deeds which fall far short of “better than probably any of us deserve” … . and agreeing with Graham breathlessly. Either way, he loves her, in a way that transcends any Companion’s understanding, because he knows what it is to live the span of a life that’s unfathomably long and alinear. And because he knows each of her faults as intimately as each of her blessings. And he loves each one, the way you take pieces of fine jewelry out of an armoire and polish them, and hold them up to the light at every conceivable angle.
He stretches his legs out, and uncurls his toes within his boots. He leans back and really acclimates himself to the comfy seat next to the old bus driver.
“ … . you’re right, of course. Regardless of what she deserves. I’m not going anywhere. But back to you, mate.” There’s a roguish glint in his black eyes. Under other circumstances, it’d be a touch too sharp for comfort. Even frightening. But right now, it’s the look of a friend. “Don’t deflect just because I was having an angst-ridden moment. The Solitract showed you a very convincing Grace, I take it. Dangled the carrot, as it were.”
Koschei hoards his Theta close. He shifts to slide his legs around his waist, and his arms around his shoulders. He rubs his back while bunting the side of his face into the crook of the Doctor’s neck.
“You, bumping into me on that hillside on Mount Perdition, when we were little kids: that’s still the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Forever sounds good.”
Home, home, I’m home.
He cuddles tightly with both arms, holding him as close as possible.
“I love you. I know I keep saying it, but I do, I love you so much. You, and this, all of this, makes me so happy. I’ve got you, and you’re mine. This wonderful creature, this masterpiece…loves me. That’s why I’m the luckiest person in all the universe. Because I have you.”
Theta turns his head and kisses Koschei’s cheek.
“You make me excited to live,” he whispers. “And that’s not something I thought I would ever say.”
“That, my beauty, was the plan.”
From the moment he espied fizzling gold at the Doctor’s fingertips, and knew the forces against which his old friend struggled: the plan was to impart some of the Master’s own tenacity to live upon his far more self-destructive counterpart.
Hands callused by millennia of mechanical work feel for the honest wrinkles and weathered spots of the Doctor’s face, as though to memorize it for the millionth time. The Master takes his time fondling the features of his beloved.
“Now you’ve got to repay me by doing it. By living as long as you can. Promise me.”
Lily stood beaming at the man. In her arms was a black box, wrapped in red ribbon with a rather extravagant bow to finish it off.
“Happy Birthday Papa!” she cheered holding it out to him. She knew that they hadn’t know each other that long, But already she adored him just as much as she did her Dad.
He was her Papa and he would be treated as such, So only the best of her work would do. She had spent hours on this design, drafting out 3 different ones before she finally got to this one.
Inside the Box, lay a black wool coat. The finest wool she could find with a lining of silky red on the inside. The edges were accented with red, and so were the buttons. She gave it a high collar, knowing that he suited them.
The coat lay on a bed of red tissue paper, with another layer to cover it. Under the coat was the original drawing design that she would let him keep.
“So… What do you think?” She rocked on her heels, really wanting to know. but forced herself to be patient.
The Master wiggles his fingers at the elegantly wrapped parcel, licks his lips and flings off the lid.
His lips purse into an “O” of exquisite satisfaction, and turn into a hiss of delight, teeth set on edge, as he unfastens the buttons and feels up and down the lush red silk.
“My favorite colors, my favorite design, it’s almost like a Chinese changshan, only so mooch more chicly austere, by GOD, Lily!”
He leaps to his feet, seized by two extreme motivators: being the center of attention, and the vanity of high fashion. He throws off his sweater, which flies to the cottage floor, and canters shirtless into the bathroom.
He exits moments later dressed in his new coat, cutting a sharp figure indeed.
“I can assure you, there’s truth in your supposition. I have been in love with the same two-hearted soul who is equal parts comet and black hole, for thousands of years. I have watched the same Andromeda-spiraling brain forbid weapons while being the worst weapon of all. She killed a planet, with invalids and children and pets and birthdays and anniversaries and favorite tastes and colors and nervous tics and bowel patterns and least favorite songs and a thousand million other uncoiling springs of LIFE. I have seen her rail against death because she foisted the duty of executioner off upon me. But she is also the person who would rescue just as many men, women, and children on a colony ship doomed to perish, and risk her own life in the process, to give them the chance at the strange ecstasy of living, just a bit longer. Playing with her food, yet never ignoring a distress signal, absolute and merciless, and yet rapturously inspiring. She is the most violent and the kindest being I know. How are such paradoxes possible, within one being, without the fabric of space and time collapsing?
“Simple. The storyteller is either one of the ones she strung up to slowly starve; or it’s one of the ones she took by the hand and saved.”
“ABSOLUTELY, old boy! Medium rare filet mignon, with a nice mulled red to toast the season! Let’s see if I can drink you under the table again afterward, with something stronger!”
Icarus 