Send Try + a muse that you want to see me write! (accepting)
“RIGHT! Didn’t anyone notice?”
What the Doctor lacks in eyebrows, he supplements with obnoxiousness and levity. Bowties and posh drawl and foppish hair: all of it, a calculated screen over a putrid darkness like solidified magma, like papel picado over something rotten and reeking of sulfur. He is what remains of the Timelord Victorious, petrified in the state of “lived too long” and “lost too much.”
As often as he seems happy, he is angry.
“No, I say, really, did NO one notice the brilliance with which I just disarmed that bomb? It’s not exactly as if it were a matter of cutting a few red, green and blue wires, now, was it?”
He laughs, and flings up gangly arms.
“Honestly, what IS the point of you lot? You’re lucky that I love you!”
A sadness passes over his gaze, fleeting as a goldfish beneath an iced lake. And then the whimsical merriment returns.
The magnitude of the answer is beyond him to speak, so Koschei only laughs wetly.
“Oh, sweet boy, come here,” she says, pulling him in for a massive hug, even though she’s several inches shorted than him. She hasn’t a clue about his secrets or his past, but she doesn’t care about them either. She’s seen him in the here and now, with her son and her grandchildren, and that tells her all she needs to know about him. “You have such a gentle heart, no matter how beaten up it is.”
Koschei flings his hands over his face just as it completely crumbles; he still manages another laugh thick with withheld tears. He bends at the waist and crushes his face completely into his mother-in-law’s shoulder.
“Hearts, mum, Time Lords have two,” he shakily corrects, despite what he says having absolutely nothing to do with the matter at hand.
He hesitates, shoulders trembling.
“I have never been gentle to anything in my life.”
“Two hearts? That means you are twice as kind,” she says, holding him close and gently rocking him. “You’ve never been gentle to anything? Then who was it who sat with my granddaughter this morning and listened patiently to all her wandering stories? And who was my grandson cuddled up to watching the sunset yesterday? Who came to me when I was at the asylum and lifted me out of my bed and rescued me?”
She pulls back enough to kiss his forehead. “My sweet, sweet boy, you are nothing but gentle.”
Koschei sighs another laugh. He can’t deny that the rhythm of Laura’s rocking soothes him.
“I am MADE gentle by the people who inexplicably orbit me,” he insists, pulling back to hastily wipe his eyes, and kiss her forehead. “I would not have had it in me to lift you from your bed and rescue you had you not been an incandescent beacon of kindness, and what’s more, had your son not loved me, and made me love him, and made me just want him to be happy.”
He shrugs, and tilts his head in contemplation.
“It’s a chemical reaction. Good people catalyze goodness in their lessers.”
The Master, who leaves nothing alone–who is known across the cosmos for his fanatical obsession–has difficulty wrapping his mind around the notion of stopping. Of closing a chapter. Ofwalking away. In that sense, he has always been the Doctor’s perfect opposite.
He cocks his head at Rose, then, utterly perplexed.
“ … you sure?”
He studies the erstwhile Bad Wolf head to toe, then, soft features, girl-next-door attire combined somehow with a darker sophistication, and he can frankly see why the Doctor might have fallen in love with her. The realization strikes him like icewater; the only way to combat it is to make a pact.
So,
“Not even to give her a little heartsburn at the existence of our new friendship?”
And he smiles, diabolically.
“well… ” therein lies the rub because right now? she’s NOT. not the way she used to be, when the doctor’s current life was a ( very intentional)mystery&. the TEMPTATION of making her sweat a little at this interesting new duo wasn’t even an inkling of a thought in her mind. the decision to stay away had been easy before. now it wasn’t.
rose couldn’t help but wonder why exactly that was.
“ ‘s BETTER than her knowin’ i ‘ad to watch the metacrisis she left me with die, isn’t it?”
happy endings… rose had a feeling those were a bit rare in the doctor’s line of work ( ‘just this once, rose, everybody lives’ — had that stayed TRUE, even ‘til now? rose hoped not; the doctor deserved another win like that ), &. as far as she was currently concerned, rose still had one.
then again, maybe it’d be fine. if the doctor was too busy worrying about her newfound friendship with the master then maybe she wouldn’t have to worry about avoiding those hard questions.
or maybe it’d open an even BIGGER can of worms. there was no way of knowing, really.
“ could be worth it, though, ” she muses. “ i bet her reaction would be even BETTER than when i met sarah jane. might not even ask if she’s too busy worrying about what we’ll do now that we’re friends. ”
“He DIED? Oh dear.”
Despite overly enunciating the crucial verb, the Master’s reaction to Rose’s news is remarkably self-contained. This is game-changing information, because it directly impugns the Doctor’s ability to leave her loved ones in a better place than she’s found them.
“Well now, I confess I’m rather indecisive. And that’s not a typical look for me. And I feel terribly cross for it.”
He tsks.
The Doctor has known exultant times since that night that “everybody” survived, and that’s precisely what makes the Master guard her hearts’ welfare with the tenacity of a junkyard dog and its rawhide bone.
“D’you think you could keep a lid on that particular bit of information? Because if it’s too tempting, I might just suggest we waylay a reunion, and … well, muck about just the two of us.”
Koschei registers his daughter’s inconsolable sorrows instantly. His teeth tap together like an infuriated little mongoose’s. He snatches up his laser screwdriver from the TARDIS console, and draws Ophelia against him, kissing her hair, and rubbing her back.
“That’s alright, Button.”
“MURDER solves a great many of life’s heartsaches.”
Ophelia clings to him, doing her best not to cry as he comforts her.
“It’s not alright… he’s a stupid boy that I got a stupid crush on and…”
She pulls back, registering what he said and what he was holding.
“Dad, no… no, we can’t murder him! Not just because I was being stupid and fell in love! I can’t have you kill for me!”
“Oh, VERY well.”
He disarms the laser and places it back on the console, but with the grudging grumpiness of a child being foresworn off dessert.
Thankfully, however, this focuses Koschei on Ophelia’s immediate emotional needs.
“My little love, the human swine doesn’t deserve you. Men are really only good for lifting heavy stuff and killing spiders, anyway. They’re rubbish at everything else. It’s not a reflection on your worth. Look, tell me what would make it feel a little better.”
Koschei registers his daughter’s inconsolable sorrows instantly. His teeth tap together like an infuriated little mongoose’s. He snatches up his laser screwdriver from the TARDIS console, and draws Ophelia against him, kissing her hair, and rubbing her back.
“That’s alright, Button.”
“MURDER solves a great many of life’s heartsaches.”
The Doctor knew very well how to rile Koschei up. After this long, he had become intimately familiar with the particular looks, touches, words that made his husband squirm. That part was easy. What he wasn’t used to was admitting how desperately he needed Koschei.
He continues his work at the console, glancing up at his husband lounging in the jump seat every few seconds, but the longer he stands there, the more his desire grows. The Doctor finally clears his throat. “Koschei…? Think I might get your help with somethin’?
Koschei knows what he’s doing.
Koschei knows EXACTLY what he’s doing.
He’s reclined in the jumpseat–which, on raunchy occasions like this, he’s amusedly coined the “humpseat”–booted legs crossed at the ankle, up on the console, arms crossed behind his head, with a lordly and proprietary gaze at the ceiling.
“Only if you tell me from over there what ‘something’ is,” he leers, ever so smugly.
Send “Mating Season” to catch my muse in a lustful state & needing release.
Koschei has been preoccupied with some new project in his workshop, so the Doctor is left to her own devices. Nevermind that she’s been aching all day, she hasn’t wanted to bother her husband.
So… she retires to their room. It can’t hurt to indulge her desires, so she relaxes, her hand trailing down her body. She can almost, almost pretend it’s him touching her. As her hand slips beneath the covers and between her legs, she exhales a soft, whimpering moan of the sort that Koschei absolutely adores. She’s so caught up that she doesn’t hear the footsteps outside.
Koschei peels off his t-shirt and rubs work-callused palms down his cheeks, scratching the dampness in his trim little beard, dampness that causes the silvery-blond hairs to gleam more on his head, his face, and his chest. He heaves a sigh and sheds his trousers, too, and then his boxer-briefs, padding toward the bedroom and the connected shower.
He hears that whimper, a noise his boisterous wife ordinarily only makes in the throes of their lovemaking. And he stops dead, and licks his lips, as his eyes darken.
He strides in with twice the confidence, but softly, climbs onto the bed and drapes himself across her, slipping his hand inside her trousers.
He says absolutely nothing, but smiles down at her, and presses his naked hips down on top of her, and kisses her with a hungry open mouth.
“Did you really think,” he half-gasps, through another kiss, “that I would have objected to you interrupting anything for this … ?”
“I’ll tell you a secret: the Doctor isn’t interested in you unless you need them. And I don’t mean need them to carry your parcels or give you driving directions. I mean need them in a deep, aching, existential way. I mean you’re looking for a savior. They can’t resist. Not one. Single. Time.”
“Do you think that’s why he left for so long?” The young Gallifreyan asked softly. “That he was waiting to be idolized in stories and hoping I would grow up longing to be like him that he gained some superiority complex and that’s why he finally returned? While I was in need of someone to help me readjust to this life? He couldn’t just return as my father but as someone who was saving a damsel in distress?”
The Master turns round from where he’s been angrily recording his voice entry, and hastily stamps down his whole palm on the delete button.
He shakes his head, rapidly, and holds up both hands.
“No. No, I don’t. I don’t think any of that applies to his children.”
He’s not lying; he truly believes Ophelia is exempt. Perhaps he’s in error, but mortification and shame are loud inside his head, a clangor louder than drums, because he knows the chief reason why the Doctor ran from domestication.
And that reason is the Master.
‘It’s just. Your father’s marriage was. Arranged. His father, he … was not a good person, Ophelia, and that’s … rich, I know, coming from me, but he … your father won’t want you to know this, so please. Be discreet. But your grandfather beat your father, all through his childhood and adolescence. The House of Lungbarrow is … unforgiving, and. Your father and I were. Were. Involved. Romantically. And. Physically. And our relationship was a point of major contention within his family. He was married to silence all the overwhelming pressure. Your mum was a good person, too, a wonderful person, I’m sure, it wasn’t her fault, but he.”
He missed me. And he missed the lure of freedom I symbolized. The nonconformity. I didn’t seduce him back. Quite the contrary, I despised him for leaving me. But, just the same …
“Ophelia, it’s my fault.”
So much is.
Ophelia jumps as he quickly turns around and realizes her mistake of eavesdropping. She glanced down as he explains what’s happened and understands more than he thinks she does.
“I know.” She says quietly, interjecting before he can take the blame. “I know about grandfather and I know about the marriage. It was hard not to overhear some of the fights they had. Despite them thinking I was tucked away in bed, I couldn’t help but try to listen. No one told me outright, but as I got older and I did some of my own investigating, it was easy to see things didn’t quite fit the image I grew up with.”
When he puts the blame on herself she quickly shakes her head and hurries over closer to him, taking his hands tightly in her’s. “No, don’t do this. Don’t, it’s not all your fault. We know two different sides, of course, but you can’t blame yourself for what dad became because we know just how much Gallifrey as a whole impacted all our lives.”
She looks down at their hands, biting her lip a bit. “You don’t know what it was like growing up in the Doctor’s shadow… being the youngest Lungbarrow and having all of my brothers setting up the expectation of how the next generation is suppose to bring back some sort of dignity to the family name and then… here I was.”
Ophelia looks back up at him, meeting his eyes. “It’s hard, but we can’t blame ourselves, can we? We’ve got him back now and we’re happy and… that’s what matters. Not the past.”
“Well look at you. Between us, unquestionably the mature one.”
Koschei is almost accursedly resilient. He recovers from the bout of self-induced shame. Now, however, he’s tasked with parenting an adult with a complicated past: one nearly as complicated as his own childhood.
“ … my younger years were also … encumbered … by filial obligations, by … the expectations of my Great House. We weren’t as highly esteemed as the House of Lungbarrow, and in some ways, it made the stakes higher still.”
He chuckles wistfully, at the irony that the Doctor’s own offspring might know the same burdens as his best friend. As the Doctor himself, when he fled all tethers to home.
“I spent most of my childhood locked in a very tight, constricted little room, learning Gallifreyan science, mathematics, arts and history, the better to prepare for being a ‘prodigy’ at the Academy. The only times I felt free, I’d snuck out to be with your father. Though I did excel scholastically, I didn’t turn out as my family wished.”
He smiles thinly, in commiseration.
“Fairly certain, in fact, that I became the family laughingstock. For my strangely augmented telepathics, for my tendency to crave physical touch, for the noise I always heard. You’re doing better than me, Ophelia, and even if you weren’t, you don’t owe your family your whole selfhood. You can exist apart from them. And you should.”
The Master sits looking at the Doctor, who doesn’t want to be looked at, piercingly, knowing him mercilessly, loving him recklessly; this Master cannot be Missy, the clever cool lioness lying in wait, for he can conceal his claws to be a charming politician, but not when the person with whom he is most infatuated, the person whom he has adored since the day they met, is in the same vicinity. He’s a tuning fork picking up the Doctor’s vibrations, and they are loud, and they are violent, and never more so than when the Doctor is SILENT.
So it’s with a look of knowing, bleak exasperation that the Master smiles, the longer the Doctor faces away and strives to ignore him.
‘That’s not your choice to make.’
It’s in that moment that the Master realizes there is no honor, no privilege, in being the Doctor’s confidante. He was just HERE, when the Doctor was tired and discouraged enough to be candid. Just in the right place at the right time. Any show of steadfastness or loyalty or kindness rewarded with scoffing, yet again, with rebukes and cold shoulders. There is nothing special about him at all.
It was just a fluke.
“So you’ve told me that you plan to kill yourself, you’ve entrusted ME with that, and nobody else, and I’m the one who’ll have to watch it happen, because it’s ‘your choice to make.’”
He pauses, to gasp a laugh, and slowly shake his head.
“You’ve put me in that position, Doctor. Nobody but you.”
He leans in very close, lips a wounded sneer.
“I didn’t realize you were auditioning for MY part.”
{ You selfish prick. }
He stands, withdraws his jacket violently from the Doctor’s grasp. He dons it with brusque efficiency.
“Do excuse me.”
“NO.”
His hand shoots out to grab at the jacket. It’s partly an instinct to try and keep hold of something when it’s snatched from him, but he’s also saying no, you’re not excused.
It hurts, but he holds tight. Don’t go.
“I’m sorry I’ve burdened you with my trust. I thought you’d understand.”
He could rant and lecture for hours, but he doesn’t. For one, he hasn’t said he’s made his mind up. And he doesn’t intend to actually go out and cause his own death, he just wants the choice not to prevent it, should this body succumb to its injuries. Humans have that choice, sometimes. If they’re old and have lived a long time and don’t want to continue living. Why shouldn’t he have that option too? A life he is forced into continuing will hardly be worth living at all. If he hasn’t chosen to carry on, what will be the point?
The Doctor stares up at him, a plea for him to just understand forming in his mind – but he stays silent. Words get him into trouble. He’s in enough of that as it is. Besides, if he starts trying to explain why it is that he doesn’t feel able to continue, he might reveal too much emotion at once, accidentally. Every inch of his soul feels battered and bruised to match his physical body, aching and bleeding under his clothes.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t say I’d made my mind up, though. I just need time. I told you because I thought you’d want to know. I’ll keep my mouth shut next time.”
He lets go of the Master’s coat. Doctor, Doctor — let it go. Time enough. He can’t win them all, especially if they don’t want to be won.
He sinks back into the bed and turns away once more, closing his eyes. At a distance he’d give the impression of an attempt to sleep, but the way his fists clench around the sheets, the expression on his face with his eyes shut a bit too tightly to look calm — no. He’s not trying to sleep. He’s trying to forget.
He wants to forget the rushing of emotions going on in his mind, forget the pain spreading through his whole body, and forget the horrible argument he’s just had with the person he wants to just hold him. Isn’t that what anyone wants when they’re hurting — to be held by the person they love most in the universe? He could find Missy, but he doesn’t have the strength to leave his bed. All he has are his own thoughts and the face of the Master currently beside him — and he’s not even sure he has him anymore.
He whirls on his heel, a vortex of agonized reprisal.
“YES, I DO.”
I understand. I understand what it’s like to be left behind, to be forgotten so many times that you are weary, body and soul, and just want it all to end.
Because Y O U put me in that position. Over and over and over and over and over and OVER!
But then mydamned capacity to survive takes hold, and here I remain.
“Doctor, be STRONG.”
Be strong like me.
“I don’t want you to ‘keep your mouth shut.’ I want to know WHY. Why is it me? You couldn’t have looked more repulsed when you saw me if you’d tried. ‘Eugh, there’s the dirty beast that saved my life from Rassilon! Hope I don’t catch anything from it!’ You didn’t even know what I’d done to your human yet! How’m I supposed to believe you spoke to me out of TRUST, then? I’m not the one you groomed to perfection in your little Vault of Rehab, now, AM I? So just tell me why. Did you tell me because I was just in the room when you felt like talking? Or are you punishing me, because I took Missy away from you?”
He stalks right back to the Doctor’s side; it’s his blessing and his curse, that he will never ever escape the gravitational pull of his other self. He kneels, and cocks his head, and narrows his eyes.
“Because this? This feels like punishment. Or is it really so unfathomable to you that your death would… .?”
He grinds his teeth, and rolls his head on his neck, in one wide self-soothing animal circle.
“ …would r u i n me?”
A pause as the weight of the confession absorbs.
And then the Master removes his coat a second time and hands it to the Doctor. This time he is the one who cannot look.
I would stay with you while it happened. Either way. I would stay with you.
Icarus 