The Master kneels before his first face, and ghosts a thumb along the child’s soft, yet-unmarred cheek.
“Yeah. I’m sorry, Koschei. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you better. When you’re told … to settle …to yield, or change, to make yourself easier to love … don’t fall for it. Don’t fall for it, luv. You’re worth everything, you: no one else involved. All by yourself. You’re important all by yourself. I promise.”
“Welllll, what d’you know, I’ve a feeling I know who’s snatched me oop.”
The Master secures his arms firmly around the Doctor’s. One forgotten, tired misfit with a few too many wrinkles and silver hairs draws the hands of another to his lips and kisses his knuckles.
He turns in his arms, and burrows close against him, with a smile as drunk as his lover’s, nose rummaging into the skin beneath the Doctor’s chin, eyes closing contentedly.
“Psychic ice cream?“ The Master looks transparently gleeful. He begins to serenade the damned ice cream carton, his voice startlingly sonorous and pleasant:
‘WHoaaaa oh oooh ohhhh, for-the-long-est-tiiiime, I haven’t had that for the loooongest time, oh what can IIII doooo, I’m so–”
“–inSPI-red by youuu, I haven’t had you for the looogest tiiime …”
“So. What color is it? Flavor should be dark chocolate lava cake with raspberries. Dark and tart, that’s my thing.”
He stabs the offered spoon right into the psychic dessert.
A merry cackle just broils out the Master’s mouth, a defiant sound of mirth. He reaches back to pinch the Doctor’s trim little sides, and then to tickle them.
“SOMEONE didn’t strategize her attack particularly well!” he roars, spinning to grab and more thoroughly tickle her; somewhere in the ruckus that tickling becomes passionate kissing, on the mouth, the cheeks, and especially, her pale soft swan neck.
“Well thank you, lamb. D’you suppose I can pull this look off? Yes, I rather enjoy the combination of beard, eyeliner and flowers. Renders the whole human ‘gender binary’ slippery. Might give one of you earth apes a conniption, wouldn’t that be droll.”
“Yes well, I suppose it’s a matter of you wanting a passable substitute, or the delicious genuine article that is me.”
Now might not be the most apt time to tell the Doctor that he’s been eating custard creams out of the TARDIS dispenser night and day, and this may be the reason for the slightest plumping of his midsection in past months … .
The Master leaps up from the jumpseat, which he’s been manning while the Doctor performs maintenance on the lower level.
He seizes Ophelia by the hands and spins her round once, then loudly kisses the tops of her knuckles.
“DARLING Button! We’re gonna build two categories of baby supply. One, to stimulate the little pea-pod’s mental faculties, the other, to soothe and comfort them. A mobile with primary colors for the former; a device connected to your heartsbeat imitating the womb for the latter, and so on.”
The endless, monotonous, metallic refrain down the halls of that hellish platform on a ship from Mondas. The last few surviving threads of independence sentience, crying out for compassion, for aid, that never came. The remnants of a human body lost in a suit of vinyl, plastic, steel.
The dream of a few mad fanatics that he took like a political ticket and ran with, refined to a fine science, cultured like a cancer in a petri dish and infected, gorged with grandiosity and self-importance. Cybermen.
A whole hospital full of bits and pieces of the infirm, sent to be healed, fed through a meat grinder of eugenicist experimentation. Children, children, children like his child. Children like HIS child: brains and musculo-skeletal structures retained, sweet little hands and feet and toes and noses and hair in clips and ribbons discarded like waste in a butcher shop.
He didn’t do it, sure. But he allowed it. Even tacitly encouraged it. Just like with the Toclafane: scavenging on their innate proclivity to do wicked and cruel things, in order to ascend to power, and therefore, autonomy, and therefore, safety.
But that was nearly two years ago.
Why is he here now?
It’s dark. the kind of dark that yawns and swallows all form, and bids you, dangerously, sweetly, just sleep. Just sleep. Just surrender …
That’s when Koschei realizes he’s lying on his belly in cold, wet, dewy grass, staring down an empty lift shaft. It might as well be a grave dug straight to hell.
For an army of child-sized Cyberman crawls up the chute, chanting the endless refrain of pain, pain, PAIN.
He’s paralyzed, stabbed through the back by Missy’s blade, straight through the gut, straight through his belly button, and it’s pinioned him into the grass.
The Cybermen draw ever nearer.
The first one to scale the shaft seizes greedily onto his black and red coat.
“Dad-dyyyyy,” the Cyberman who is Zinnia intones, “dad-dyyyy, what. Have you. Doooone?”
The Master lurches awake, soaked in sweat and urine, and can barely stumble to the bathroom in time to vomit.
The endless, monotonous, metallic refrain down the halls of that hellish platform on a ship from Mondas. The last few surviving threads of independence sentience, crying out for compassion, for aid, that never came. The remnants of a human body lost in a suit of vinyl, plastic, steel.
The dream of a few mad fanatics that he took like a political ticket and ran with, refined to a fine science, cultured like a cancer in a petri dish and infected, gorged with grandiosity and self-importance. Cybermen.
A whole hospital full of bits and pieces of the infirm, sent to be healed, fed through a meat grinder of eugenicist experimentation. Children, children, children like his child. Children like HIS child: brains and musculo-skeletal structures retained, sweet little hands and feet and toes and noses and hair in clips and ribbons discarded like waste in a butcher shop.
He didn’t do it, sure. But he allowed it. Even tacitly encouraged it. Just like with the Toclafane: scavenging on their innate proclivity to do wicked and cruel things, in order to ascend to power, and therefore, autonomy, and therefore, safety.
But that was nearly two years ago.
Why is he here now?
It’s dark. the kind of dark that yawns and swallows all form, and bids you, dangerously, sweetly, just sleep. Just sleep. Just surrender …
That’s when Koschei realizes he’s lying on his belly in cold, wet, dewy grass, staring down an empty lift shaft. It might as well be a grave dug straight to hell.
For an army of child-sized Cyberman crawls up the chute, chanting the endless refrain of pain, pain, PAIN.
He’s paralyzed, stabbed through the back by Missy’s blade, straight through the gut, straight through his belly button, and it’s pinioned him into the grass.
The Cybermen draw ever nearer.
The first one to scale the shaft seizes greedily onto his black and red coat.
“Dad-dyyyyy,” the Cyberman who is Zinnia intones, “dad-dyyyy, what. Have you. Doooone?”
The Master lurches awake, soaked in sweat and urine, and can barely stumble to the bathroom in time to vomit.
Icarus 