“Coom’ere, Hearts. The memory loss is temporary. It’s just your Kosch. That’s me. Some of the thoughts you have, the things you feel, they come from me. And mine from you. You’re me because we’re bondmates. Loomed at the same time, in different places, but meant to be in symbiosis. To be soul friends.”
The Master winces, and outstretches a hand. He mirrors the first gesture this person ever made in his direction. He repays her.
“I thought I’d never see you again. But here you are. It can’t be coincidence. Please sit with me. I dunno how long I have, and I need you to be okay.”
The words are uttered by a voice that some distant part of her head tells her is familiar. Tells her is comfort, peace, safety, home.Though her expression remains the mix of devastation and frustration, she listens. Her eyes dart to the hand outstretched to her and after a moment’s hesitation she reaches for it.
Slender fingers brush against the skin of his, traversing the length of his palm before settling in his grasp entirely. Her body follows, moving to sit at his side now. How could she not honor that request.
“You don’t have long and yet..you’re more concerned about me? Do you need a doctor?”
The Master lurches forward and grinds his teeth.
“You are my Doctor. Don’t you see, that’s what you call yourself. Across the whole of the cosmos, that’s the name by which you’re hailed.”
His thumb caresses her knuckles in soothing rhythms.
“Sit with me. And when you’ve calmed your mind, and your hearts, help me. I know you can.”
“Thete, luv. Breathe. She came to me first, scared shitless you’d despise her for leaping into this. I tried to assure her otherwise.”
Here I am, the Master muses wryly, back in the role of the sane pragmatist. It’s like I never left.
“How could she possibly think I’d hate her?! She’s my DAUGHTER for Rassilon’s sake! I can’t say the same for that stupid BOY, though, the one– Koschei, it’s the same delinquent that had her in tears barely a week ago! I might kill him, I haven’t decided yet. Ophelia might get angry, but– ARGHH! Koschei, why the HELL didn’t you tell me!??”
“Oh please don’t start fighting over this because of who I told first. I didn’t want to cause this. I just… I found Koschei first and I’m sorry Dad that you weren’t the first to know, but I… you can’t go and kill him either. Neither of you can. He’s still the father and I might need him… won’t I?”
“Oh don’t pull that horse shit, Mister! I was literally on my way down the hall with medical results we took in the infirmary to surprise you with!”
Koschei bristles like an affronted peacock.
“She told me first because your opinion of her is the center of her universe, particularly right NOW, when she’s fresh from the Lungbarrow Shitshow and striking out on her own! And maybe she told me because I’m not her dad, but I happen to know as well as you what it’s like to be thought of as the family freak. Maybe–!”
Ophelia cuts in, meaning to diffuse tension, but in the process, makes it clear that … well, unlike assumptions and placations made earlier, she told Koschei for no good reason except that he was … just … there.
The cold stone in the pit of his gut–you don’t matter; you are circumstantial–is heavy.
But he reminds himself how childish it is to recenter attention from their frightened kid when she’s in a state of immediate crisis.
“Look, Hearts. I wanna kill him too. For saddling her with a massive lifelong duty. For hurting her at all. But she’s right, in that a child deserves a father, if at all possible, and in that this is her choice, her body, her baby, heridiot piece of shit sexual partner. Er, sorry, Button. Perhaps we … er, you … ought to speak to this boy. And remind him, for a boy he is, what it means to be a father. Sorta like you and I forgot what that meant, in his shoes.”
He watches her, agonized, life draining in the form of thick leaking red that blossoms unseen across the back of his black coat. Agonized, further, by the despair in her voice.
“You’re me,” he supplies, raspy, breathless, the simplest truth he can think to say.
“You? How can I be you?”
The hands that had clutched in her hair slid down, dropping to rest against her legs. The Doctor’s vision is blurred at the edges, her eyes thick with unshed tears.
“None of this makes any bit of sense…”
“Coom’ere, Hearts. The memory loss is temporary. It’s just your Kosch. That’s me. Some of the thoughts you have, the things you feel, they come from me. And mine from you. You’re me because we’re bondmates. Loomed at the same time, in different places, but meant to be in symbiosis. To be soul friends.”
The Master winces, and outstretches a hand. He mirrors the first gesture this person ever made in his direction. He repays her.
“I thought I’d never see you again. But here you are. It can’t be coincidence. Please sit with me. I dunno how long I have, and I need you to be okay.”
“No amount of pointless conversation is going to change the fact that I don’t know who I am!”
Her voice was hoarse as she all but screamed the words out of frustration. Her hands moved to grip the sides of her head, fingers pulling at strands of blonde hair.
He watches her, agonized, life draining in the form of thick leaking red that blossoms unseen across the back of his black coat. Agonized, further, by the despair in her voice.
“You’re me,” he supplies, raspy, breathless, the simplest truth he can think to say.
“No, no, wait!” Too late. For real?! “My… but… I have been collecting those for centuries!”
This ends now. The Doctor shoves the Master as far away from the doors as he’s able to, while staying at the console room. “If you want to kiss me, just ask me! Don’t threaten my accessories! Don’t throw my accessories into the time vortex!” The shock on his features slowly turning into you have wounded and offended me greatly and I am far from pleased.
“Now I most certainly do not want to kiss you.”
Which isn’t… entirely honest. But he threw his bowtie collection into the time vortex! The Doctor isn’t going to let that slide.
Most inexplicably, the Master is delighted by the Doctor’s indignation: and even more pleased by the rough handling. He’s like the kid on the playground that climbs to the summit of the monkey bars in order to toss down marbles and spare change at his crush.
“What’s yours is mine,” he declares, a guffaw in his tone. “You should know that by now! I was just giving us a makeover. Or maybe I just don’t want to see you encumbered with clothes at all.”
He lifts his arms overhead, and behind himself. He grins, eyes puckishly narrowed, and squirms luxuriantly.
“Fine, fiiiine, don’t kiss me. Do your worst instead.”
He is positively punch-drunk on the Doctor’s undivided attention.
“Oh, don’t tell me my oldest friend has yet again neglected to introduce me to her various copilots and … . cohorts and … companions and …”
The Master, five feet, nine inches of quixotic will incarnate, saunters around the console and flings up his hands in feigned surrender.
“Well, I’ve rather run out of terms for ‘mate’ beginning with c, so … what might you be again? Her illegitimate child, maybe? Not to put too indelicate a point on it, but you’re what, sixteen years old? Oh, anyroad. If she says you’re oop for the task of traveling with us, fine. I’m the Master. Basically, no one’s known the Doctor longer than me. Call me Koschei. Everyone finds it less abrasive these days.”
He strikes out a hand, and kisses the girl’s knuckles, debonair to a fault.
“And you, kiddo?”
“Kelsey Stark, pleased to meet you, Koschei,” the quiet teenager answered with a small smile replacing her confused look, “I’ve been traveling with The Doctor for a few months now, but then again, that’s just an estimate because I’ve been getting confused with the ‘being home in time for tea’ ideal, since it never really seems to work.”
Feeling the kiss on the back of her fingers, Kelsey’s dimples started to show, “So you two have known each other for hundreds of years? It’s been a bit strange trying to wrap my head around how us humans only survive for like a hundred years and then you and The Doctor came along. But, I’m getting used to it, just like the whole thing with you two being alien- to me, at least. My dad and I have met a lot of different races of alien, so when the Doctor told me she was one herself, I didn’t exactly freak out.”
She seemed at ease, trusting the Doctor implicitly and knowing that if this man was a friend of hers, then it was safe to say that he wouldn’t do harm to her.
The Master smiles, and laughs; though the smile is cultivated from Greek statues of boyish renegade gods, and perfectly suited to a politician, the laugh is rough, unadorned and jovial. It’s a laugh that could get just a bit harsher and be truly menacing, yet at the moment, is more like a warm-kindled fire, and very, very infectious.
“Delightful. So you’re a human with no shortage of extra-terrestrial contact. Well hopefully, my dear, that means you’re more enlightened than the average earth ape.”
A million potential verbalizations of the Master’s abject shock flurry through his mind like a cognitive blizzard. He grasps the side of his chair, and sits down.
And stands.
And looks around.
And sits again.
“That’s. Highly. Significant! Well done! In the. Womb department! Does your father know? Shall I fetch the, ah, defibrillator now? You know, preemptively?”
Ophelia bit her lip, watching him react. She steps over to him timidly, her hands still tentatively holding onto her stomach.
“He doesn’t… I’m scared to tell him. You’re the first to know, actually. I didn’t know who else to tell and I… I’m scared too.”
The girl took an uneasy breath, taking one of his hands and holding it tightly. Clinging to it as she tried to hide some of her fear. She didn’t know how to be a mother, she was still just a child herself.
“Probably would be best to have that ready yeah. Don’t need both of you in shock when I’m trying not to be.”
“Hoh, wait, hold on. You told me first? And nobody else?”
The Master bridles. His entire diminutive frame seems to expand like that of a little boy who just scored at cricket or football or rugby or some other upper-crust thoroughly English sport.
“Well. Well I must say. That’s quite an honor.”
He leaps over an entire chaotic pile of scrap metal and motherboards, and seizes the TARDIS key, which his husband left lying around in their joint workshop. He wiggles it in front of Ophelia’s gaze.
“Dearest Button. Congratulations. We’re going into the infirmary, which is ordinarily locked, and we’re going to give you a sonogram, and then, we’re going to hand that to your father. Trust me, with a tangible ‘discovery’ on hand, it’ll keep him from fainting dead away.”
He clasps her arms.
“And don’t you worry! How could he be anything but elated?!”
“ … well. That took a fair bit of decoding just now.”
The Master pours himself a brandy, and casually, elegantly sips. He nods at the snifter.
“Help yourself. So. Hypothetically. You’re in a pickle and your insufferable husband is involved. Your husband happens to be the sibling of the woman who is basically my wife. This makes you and me inlaws. My wife would also be exceptionally pleased with me if I took the,” and he effects obnoxious air quotes, “ ‘moral high ground,’ so here I am, considering you family, and also personally benefiting from alleviating your suffering. So, the answer, to ‘will I save Layla’s bacon,’ is unequivocally yes.”
Koschei clasps Jack by the face, a palm on each cheek, and chuckles at his perpetual clean-shavenness.
“Lemme just remind you, I’ve seen our ‘end,’ if end is the right word for it, and I know we are eternal, you and me.”
The word means so much more to his husband, and he knows it, and he applies it to the pressure point with the accuracy of aim that can be either devastating or infinitely comforting. It’s his particular talent.
“I will dance with you forever, Sam McCoy.”
“I thought I was supposed to be romancing you,” he grins. Oh yes, that word means everything to Jack, and the fact that he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is no end to them is the most amazing feeling he can imagine.
His hands rest on Koschei’s hips, pulling them ever closer together. He leans down, pressing their foreheads together, and closes his eyes. “I’ll romance the pants right off you,” he smirks before reaching down and smacking his husband’s backside. “Go get dressed, I have an idea.”
Koschei sniffs, imperious and self-assured.
“The fact that you’re romancing me has very little to do with my own degree of effort, my love,” he scolds. “I get to lavish you with praise and affection because just like me, you’re a vain tart.”
He’s snuggled and then slapped on the ass, and that elicits a pleased purr.
“Well okay, since you do know what I like.”
Despite the arrogant bravado, the look he offers his husband is so softly fond.
Then he flounces out, and returns in one of his finest black suits, with a flare of red in the scarf, perfect for the chill of autumn.
Icarus 