This is the selfsame face of the Master that brought a nation to its knees, and then a planet, playing a svelte politician, and everyone bought it hook line and sinker. Which just goes to show how deeply moved he is, that Ophelia would christen him her father.
No, her dad.
“Sorry, I’m just … terribly touched. We’ve not known each other all that long and yet you love me? I apologize preemptively, for not always knowing what to DO with something so pure.”
He catches her cheek and pulls her in against him, kissing her forehead.
Send “I’ve got you” to help my muse wash off blood from their body.
The Doctor doesn’t remember coming home. She doesn’t remember Koschei slowly peeling her layers off, grimacing at the stickiness of dried blood coagulating on her skin. She doesn’t remember his expression of remorse, of all consuming guilt.
All she remembers are the screams.
Even now, she’s not entirely sure what happened. Was it her mistake, or his? Which one of them missed it? A hidden trigger on a timer they’d already disarmed. One moment, the captives were there, breathing a sigh of relief and thanking their rescuers, then the next…
She remembers the smell of smoke, of singed flesh and hair. She remembers the sharp pain of debris cutting at her skin.
What she doesn’t remember is her husband helping her into the bath, or the water trickling down her back. She is hardly cognizant even now of him gently sponging her down and whispering soft reassurances.
It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known. You did your best.
But your best wasn’t good enough. They’re all dead because of you. You might as well have set it off yourself.
You should have been in their place.
Hell, you should have died eons ago.
Sometime in the middle of the gentle scrubbing, he relinquishes the iron-reeking sponge to the water and climbs into the bathtub with her. He sinks down in the stained water and claims the filth as his own, because what difference does it make? She is his and he is hers.
He takes her face in his hands and brings together their foreheads. He shuts his eyes, and shuts doors inside his head, expertly occluding telepathic entry, without fear of detection that he is hiding a thing.
The red, the blue, the green, he saw her cut the wires, but a minuscule fraction of a millimeter remained fastened to the green wire. A slight glint in the sun was all that hinted at her error, and then, as he flung himself against her, knocking them both to safety, an instant later, detonation.
But the Master, who took the fall for his best friend, and was branded Death’s Champion, Murderer, Cannibal, Killer, Beast, whose life was carved out of Theta Sigma’s lie before he was ten years old, now lies to the Doctor.
“It was me.”
He takes her face in his hands. He pauses, searching her eyes, fierce in battling her foes, even if she is her own foe. He waits for her to absorb his words.
“I was so excited about making you proud that I got reckless and I missed the last wire I was meant to cut. I made the mistake. Not you. Me.”
He holds her fast, thumbs running across wet cheeks.
“But there’s no shame in it, is there? I did my best. And if it had been your mistake, it’d have been just that: you did your best, and it would have been an accident.”
His eyes are moist; come back to me, come back.
Hearts, come back.
“So we’ve got to forgive ourselves now, yeah? That’s what we’ll do.”
I’ve got you.
Without hope, witness, or reward.
There is a part of her that knows the truth. Even with Koschei’s perfectly crafted telepathic touch (almost too perfect, he was always ever so good at that), she knows that he would rather lie to her and claim the mistake as his own before letting her take the fall.
And moreover, the Doctor knows Koschei knows. Of course he does; the Doctor has never been half as good at hiding that which she wants to keep to herself. But she says nothing to argue his admission. Just this once… she’ll let the lie stand. It’s easier that way, and the both of them know it’s the only way they’ll move on.
Her husband, best friend, love of the ages holds her face and insists on her innocence, but she cannot muster more than an empty stare. She’s trying, for his sake, but the water in their bath is a filthy, muddy red-grey of blood and ash. She can’t stop staring at that color. It’s the color of death.
“Yeah… We did our best,” she echoes, her voice as hollow as her gaze. “It was a mistake. An accident. We’ve got to forgive ourselves… yes… that’s what we’ll do.”
She reaches up and touches his face, her fingertips trembling.
“We didn’t save even one of them, Koschei. They’re all dead… We were supposed to save them, but we failed. How does one go about forgiving that? I’m asking, I’m really asking, because I’ve never quite figured out how…”
“I dunno how.”
“I dunno how, my sweet girl, I dunno. I just know when it’s you, I can. When it’s you, I rage and rampage till I chafe myself raw, for hundreds of years, trying to hate you, and it’s always just! Pointless. I can’t. Because when I see you I see the flaws and the blessings. I see the whole gamut. And the good bits are always bigger and brighter.”
He looks down and he sees the bathwater too, and it hardly fazes him, and he fears that as much as he fears her despairing forever.
Honestly, what the fuck is wrong with him, what’s always been wrong with him, and can he outrun it forever, and make her proud?
“C’mere, let’s get in the shower, okay? No leftover carnage, just. C’mon.”
He takes her upper arms and guides her to her feet; he was always the one better at surviving.
“Let’s go, here, I’ll help you. I don’t have the answers, Thete. I’m not a moral philosopher, I never could be. But I’ll always help you.”
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.”
Ophelia can’t help but smile as she sees her stepdad busy at his work. She felt a bit bad disturbing him, but he also looked like he needed the break. She notices the slightly relieved look on his face and walks more into his workshop, trying to figure out what exactly he’s working on now.
“Wait, there’s a carnival outside and no ones told me until just now?” She asked, crossing her arms over her chest, mocking offense before laughing a bit. “I would have been gone hours ago and in a food coma by now! The fact that humans deep fry nearly everything is crazy but incredibly delicious.”
She laughs softly as he meets her and leans into his embrace, wrapping her other arm around his waist. “My lips are sealed, of course.” She smiled up at him before leading him off to the front doors.
“What have you got yourself into this time? Am I allowed to help yet?” She asked, her curiosity always getting the better of her.
“Actually, YES! You can help me in a number of technically arduous ways, doing the House of Lungbarrow and all the bastards within it proud, OR you can help me stop being an obsessive prick, and drag me out to the carnival that made your eyes positively sparkle just now.”
Much as he doesn’t want to infantilize his stepdaughter, the Master can’t help but reach out and pinch her little nose. And wink at her.
“I have never had a good autumn cider. Not once. Show me how it’s done.”
The Master glances with his best effort at imperiousness at his beloved buffoon. He rounds on the Doctor as he has the TEMERITY to RUN AWAY from the feisty foreplay he himself instigated!
“Oi, OHO. Cat and mouse time, you little SHIT!”
He draws the nanotech tracker he had been engrossed with, a pinhead-sized bug that hovers after the Doctor and adheres to the skin of his neck. Then the Master spins round, grinning maniacally, and returns to his testing screen. Excellent. The tracker is activated, and the Doctor is now a bright blinking blue dot on the digital grid.
“Gotcha.”
Weaving around the changing halls and doorways of the TARDIS interior he tried to find himself a suitable hiding spot. After figuring he had gone around enough corners and through enough doors he fitted himself into a cabinet, pulling the doors shut with a barely concealed smile.
“I’d like to see you find me now!”
He snickered and settled himself to wait and see.
For about sixty seconds, the Master trots as loudly as he can on the grated floor of the TARDIS, to give the Doctor the impression of pursuit. Then he stops, and resumes studying the monitor.
The blue dot becomes static, in a labeled sector of the time machine.
Koschei detaches the remote nanotech monitor from the mainframe, and saunters smugly out.
He follows the portable GPS, which cheerfully beeps his menacing path, to the destination point, around an admitted labyrinth of twists and turns. He opens the door to the room, and strolls in.
“Pa-THE-tic,” he roars, grinning ear to ear, and FLINGS wide the cabinet door.
He will never, ever, ever tell the Doctor how he achieved this.
The magma in his eyes dims. In its place there’s a soft kindled hearth glow, which belies his truest, innermost feelings. He averts his eyes to the ground, because he knows how predictable his turns in mood are, when the Doctor is the subject of discussion.
“ … she’s my best friend. No one’s ever understood me but her. Sentimental drivel, but every syllable the truth. Yes. I’d do it all again. A thousand times.”
He shifts weight, a tiger on its haunches crammed in a cage by its own affection. And he breathes a laugh, examining Rose again sidelong.
“You’ve a disarming aura. Normally that’d raise my hackles. I hope you recognize the privilege here.”
It’s his aloof, arrogant way of voicing what she’s already thinking.
“But seriously. I’ve read all about you, Rose. Years back, when I did the whole Harold Saxon schtick. ‘Know thine enemy’ and all that. But we’ve no need to be enemies now, do we? She doesn’t forget anyone she leaves behind. She just … thinks they’re better off without her meddling, or that what they have to teach her, or she to teach them, has run its course. And she’s restless. Perpetually kinetic. But she misses you. All of you, I know, I’m up enough nights with her agonizing over it, her psyche just … writhing in pain and guilt … but you were special, believe me. You should come ‘round sometime. Pop in for a drink. Call me for coordinates, if you see something unusual on the telly, and wonder if it’s the Doctor’s doing. I can be a buffer if you get awkward. I’m quite good at ‘blowhard,’ you might imagine.”
He smiles wryly.
“You’re wondering why I’d do this. Share her. Because I love her, Rose. Just like you said.”
And because honestly?
I’ll outlive the lot of you.
“ little bit, yeah. ‘s sweet, though. ”
but was he really trying to HIDE it, though? it wasn’t just evident through the VISIBLE changes in his mood ( though the expressiveness in his eyes&. his body language helped to make it a bit more obvious ). even in the way he talked about the doctor — his bestfriend &. the ONLY one who ever understood him in his own words — it was clear how he felt.
was it sentimental?MAYBE, but ‘drivel’ or not, it was no less endearing.
“disarming, hmm?” huh. rose didn’t really know what to make of that particular… was it a compliment? an observation? he, of course, throws in his own arrogant flairto the comment, but it’s vague enough that she isn’t entirely sure what he’s even commenting ON.
her aura? did that have anything to do with the SUNNY smile that was currently beaming at him? some weird time lord sense for what was left of BAD WOLF in her? the ‘know thine enemy’ schtick he mentioned had her leaning toward the latter, &. that left her with a very uneasy feeling. if he could pick up on it, then that meant the doctor would be able to as well, &. if the doctor ever figured out just how different she really was now…
well THAT was the whole point of staying away now, wasn’t it?
“ do you really think you NEED to?” share the doctor… there’d been a time when rose had been equally as willing to do just that. multiple, actually. jack. donna. neither were in quite the same way as she imagines the master was currently suggesting — both of them LOVING the doctor &. knowing ( on some level, probably) that the doctor did ( at some point, at least ) feel the same way. awkward was MORE than just an understatement. rose could only imagine how well revealing a (tentative, for now ) friendship between herself &. the master would go down with the doctor because of it.
…funny. THAT mental image suddenly made taking up his suggestion MUCH more appealing. “ ‘cause you don’t. i dunno about bein’ ‘special’ or anythin’, but ‘ve had a LONG time to get used to livin’ without the doctor. there’s nothin’ to share. whatever life she’s made for ‘erself, ’s good without me. as long as she thinks ‘m in pete’s universe, ‘m the LAST person she has to feel guilty about. ”
“You think it’s better left alone, then?”
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?”
“ … I dunno, but I’m already formulating a murder scheme for the person who spiked it,” the Master counters, catching the Doctor in his arms securely.
He pulls an all-purpose anti-toxin injection from his belt and injects the Doctor in the arm.
“OI! SEAL OFF THE EXITS!” he roars at the nearest guard, who scrambles to comply. “NO one leaves until they’re questioned!”
Doors to the Citadel audience hall slam closed. The Master lies down the Doctor on the floor and crouches over her. He pulls his laser screwdriver and shakes it once, hard, expanding it to a vallidium baton with a detachable floating laser nozzle that can decimate every living creature in the room within seconds.
“I do believe this is the part where one of your earth apes would say, ‘coom at me, scrublords, I’m ripped,’” he jests through his teeth, eyes ablaze. “How you feeling, Thete?”
the room is spinning. the glass in her hand shatters somewhere on the floor to her left, her fingers too numb to keep hold of it. she’s aware of her husband speaking, threatening, and she can only nod blindly because aloud his words are suffocated, as if she’s hearing underwater. thankfully, her mental capacity isn’t so quickly affected by whatever had been in her drink and she is capable of understand well enough. so far.
“oi, that hurts!” she hisses at the injection to her arm, her words only slightly slurred. her movements are even slower though, a delayed reaction well after he’s already injected her. something with her nervous system then, she can deduce. she doesn’t even recognize she’s on the floor until she recognizes the pattern on the ceiling ( which, is still spinning ).
and suddenly – she bursts out giggling. it’s uncontrollable, triggered by his statement, and she can’t stop it. her expression is everything but amused – instead it’s alarm as she tries to clap a hand over her mouth to try and stop the giggling – in her sluggish movements, she nearly hits herself in the face instead.
“oh my goood.” she squeaks out between fits, breathing hard. “i’m fine – it’s fine.” she’s routine; she drinks tea while she presides in the audience chamber; it’s not a secret. it helps her keep calm in the face of idiocy that reigns in the council. she can’t fathom how someone slipped it in there. “honey – i’m fine. i think your thing – the stabby thing – the one in my arm-” she breaks off because her ribs hurt from laughing and it feels as if someone has suddenly dumped ice water in her veins. she inhales sharply at the sensation, fingers digging in to try and find purchase on the marbled floor.
“working. working i think.” she’s vaguely aware the guards have sealed the room. good. her gaze flickers to his weapon, then back to his face. “consider my permission to, as they say, ‘give ‘em hell’.”
He clicks his tongue.
“Mkay. Close your eyes.”
And the Master dislodges the long-range nozzle.
With a gliding motion, like cracking a whip, he sends it searing through the nearest crowd of ten or twelve. They fall, missing limbs, heads, and bisected torsos, to the ground.
“Every last one of you in this room is a double-agent and a traitor, eh?” he snarls. “Someone start talking or I will randomly select just one of you to survive for interrogation.”
The Master knows he should be ashamed that killing still invigorates him.
And he will be, if the Doctor sees, if the Doctor looks at him and catches his unholy smile.
But only then.
And does that mean he hasn’t really become a better person at all?
The Master is uncharacteristically still, sluggish and lethargic; if there is one thing anyone who knows him is sure of, it’s that in joy or in rage, in anxiety or sadness, he moves, with the restlessness of steam-loaded pressurized heat. That he is holding still right now is a testimony to the way that guilt is rotting his innards. He is not healing; he despairs.
When he speaks, head resting on his fingers, slumped in his chair, nothing moves but his mouth.
“There are children, hundreds and thousands of children, who will never grow up, who do not even have whole bodies to bury, as the direct result of executive choices I made. There are people who will never get that work promotion, or take that walk in the woods in autumn, or pet their damned dog, or eat their favorite cereal for breakfast, because of me. There are people who will never kiss their spouses again, and I have the temerity to continue lusting after my best friend, and to try and justify anything I’ve done as a ploy to get that person’s attention. I don’t have the luxury–the right, even–to be kind to myself now.”
“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 …
Icarus 