The Master applauds Rose–be it her spunk, her wit or her existence that spurs this, one cannot be certain. But he radiates satisfaction.
“You are. You absolutely are Rose Tyler. Oho, oi, you and me, mate, we’re a pair of blondes with brown eyes, and look, the aesthetic’s on par. Lots of glam, heavy eye makeup, I’m living the dream right now. I’m this close to incorporating pink into my wardrobe because of looking at you.”
He offers a hand smugly.
“If you’re as dear to the Doctor as she says, you’ve heard of me. I’m the Master. Congratulations on being you. Because I like you, and I can count the people I like on the fingers of one hand.”
“ ‘s FUNNY. your name never really came up… ”
the master. he’s right, she has heard of him, though despite what he seems to think, it’s NOT because the doctor has ever made mention of him. her colleagues on the other hand… MOST of it was only in passing. sometimes she’d hear the name mentioned whenever someone wanted a doctor story to rival the plethora of her own. none of what she’d heard was particularly GOOD, at least as far as which side of trouble he was on.
it makes sense, she supposes. despite his current, jovial demeanor, she had a sneaking suspicion that something DANGEROUS was lurking there, underneath the surface. just what sort of trouble would she be in for if he didn’t like her?
“ so ‘s tha’ supposed to sound impressive, then? ‘the master’? ‘cause between you &. me, mate, tha’s a bit pretentious, even for a time lord. ” if nothing else, it was definitely the sort of name that gave off EVIL MASTERMIND vibes, so perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to be roasting him for his self-naming choices.
if he really liked her so much, he could put up with it.
still, rudeness was much more up the doctor’s alley than her own. she starts to reach out her hand to take the one offered to try &. temper it out, but something about the way he’d phrased everything makes her pause.
as she says. as SHE says.
“ actually, ‘ang on. she? as in: THE DOCTOR? ” faint memories of the pictures clive had shown her years ago spring to mind. knowing what she knew now about regeneration, there was no doubt that clive had been right in his theory that all of them were the same person. shame she could never tell him that. shame she’d missed them all herself too. she’d quite liked the ones in between… “ so, blonde again, then?yellow braces? or is she the TALL one now? ‘m no’ sayin’ it matters or anythin’, it jus’… puts things into PERSPECTIVE. ”
they were what — three? maybe even four regenerations in since parting? &. the doctor was saying she was dear to her? that was MORE of a confidence boost than the strange shower of compliments the master had given.
“ … ah.”
Rose can’t know that her words are a sharp backhand across the face. Or perhaps she can, and she conceals her schadenfreude considerably well, but that’s the rub: the Master highly doubts she has any notion of how dismissive she’s being. Her compassion is legendary.
No, she can’t know what she’s confirmed. While the Doctor literally crafted the Master like a chisel to marble with a single childhood act of (understandable, so bloody understandable) selfishness, and another single adulthood act of (understandable, so bloody understandable) abandonment … . in the reverse, the Master is just one of many important people in the Doctor’s orbit, relegated to a place of convenience when all other options have grown too angry, disillusioned, or hurt by the Doctor’s actions. The slight owes little to the Doctor having thought himself the last of his kind in Rose’s company. After all, who can justify failing to ever mention an old friend, or a notorious enemy? Even once, over a fire, for nostalgia’s sake?
God, there are moments when the Master can fool himself that the Doctor is as infatuated with him as he is with her.
This is not one of those moments.
So wounded is he by Rose’s casual brush-off that he scarcely registers the intentional insult that follows. He staggers for dignity, scrambling for a riposte, cheeks on fire.
“Well, my dear, that … happens to be the currency of Time Lords: we are affected and vain.”
He smiles thinly.
“It would seem that you could ask her all these things inperson.”
In comes Mum, carrying a tray of soup and tea that she sets down on the edge of the bed before she reaches over and feels Koschei’s forehead. “Someone told me you were feeling under the weather.”
“Aw, hey mum. You didn’t have to … my body’ll burn through it fast enough.”
Laura is one of a handful of people, exempting even Jack in Koschei’s present state of snarly, grouchy illness, that the patient in question would still treat with such gentleness. Butterscotch eyes soften at the sight of someone once emaciated, lost in her own horrified sorrow, now fleshed out, rosy cheeked and engaged in the act of nurturing.
“Okay, I. Suppose. That I could use a little help,” he reluctantly concedes.
He pulls one of Zinnia’s blankets, left behind in this particular workshop, off the bench and dons it as a kind of talisman of protection from his own ailment. He drags himself, and the blanket, to the laboratory door. He sits on the floor and coughs violently into the back of his hand.
Koschei moans: one long noise of exasperated suffering. He bunts his head into the petting of his hair, having collapsed hours earlier after stubbornly refusing for days upon days to acknowledge his physical ailment.
Now his head rests in his Theta’s lap, and he stares up at him with an increasingly transparent plea for sympathy. The humming mesmerizes him in a few moments’ time, fair hued eyelashes fluttering, flirting with unconsciousness. He reaches for his husband’s hand and brings it against his chest between his hearts.
“Don’t let anyone know … . they’ll get me.”
A slurred but urgent request, a fever-dream of fear that the many enemies he’s accumulated over the centuries will learn of his temporary frailty and take advantage.
He smiles dopily.
“Pity I’m sick, we could ‘play doctor’ in the sexy way otherwise … put that in a rain check, ey? Hmmm, you’re a very pretty thing to look at, Hearts.”
“D’you still loov me? Even like this? All gross and sweaty and snotty?”
Despite the abysmal afternoon, consisting of a violent run-in with a long-ago enemy, Koschei’s found it in himself to give Sammy her bedtime story (usually largely narrated by the demanding and intrepid girl, but her father loves to indulge her).
He’s already dozing with her, bundled together under a thousand quilts and blankets, when Jack joins them.
The Master needn’t even open his eyes to find his husband’s arm and latch it with his own, effectively trapping him in the blanket nest.
It has been a rough day for all of them, one way or another, and it’s not only Jack that slips into bed, it’s Victor as well. He’s been snuggling with his papa the whole night, doing the best impression of his father that he can (that is, making like a koala and burrowing into Jack’s chest). He isn’t going to let a little thing like bedtime end his clinging.
As they climb into bed, there’s a bit of shuffling and Vicky lets go to instead curl up with his sister. Which is just fine with Jack, who throws that spare arm around all three of his darlings.
“Hey, beautiful” he says, quietly, peeking over the blond and brunette heads to look at his husband. “How are you doing?”
“Well, I can hardly complain now that my entire person is covered in loved ones, now can I?” Koschei murmurs, kissing the wrist that encircles him, alongside their almost absurdly beautiful children.
He sneaks a sly look at his husband, and cranes his long slender neck to deposit a kiss on Jack’s lips.
“You lot put things in perspective for me. Give me something to stay well for. So odd, really. The more I have to lose, the stronger I feel.”
It’s with an endearing wistfulness that the Master drops his gaze. A foolish, dreaming smile barely ghosts his lips. It’s obvious: he’s sold.
His fingers trace the silhouette of the phial of blood. The power he’s granted, and he’s so joyfully beguiled that he could never abuse what he’s always connived to possess. Oh, how wonderfully hilarious. He even chuckles, softly, just a few merry breaths of sound.
“But where’re we gonna find a loom, Thete? Gallifrey’s … it’s beyond us.”
Eyes that’ve softened to butterscotch snap up to face his other self, with purest faith that the Doctor will have an answer. Yet the Master finds it intuitively, before his best friend need speak again.
“You really think you and I can BUILD one? From SCRATCH? OHO. Oh, Doctor! Very WELL. Oh, VERY WELL, I ACCEPT THIS CHALLENGE!”
“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my lives, except maybe about wanting to marry you… and, w-ell, loving you.”
He leans in and presses a gentle kiss to the Master’s forehead, his voice absolute and optimistic, as the other Time Lord drops his gaze. Hands remain cupping either side of his beloved’s face, thumbs still trailing over the crests of cheekbones, exploring and memorizing though he’s long since memorized the planes and dips.
The Doctor’s smile is sanguine, tranquil, at peace ever since that blessed night when the Master had pulled him from his nightmares and, as such, had also pulled his head out of his arse. Since that moment he’s been lighter. He’s been trying. More importantly, he’s been Theta Sigma. His mouth opens to respond to the question of Looms, but he needn’t have bothered at all. The Keeper of His Hearts knows, already, the answer to that question and he lets out a jovial chuckle in response instead before speaking.
“We’re brilliant, you and I. Geniuses. Together we can do anything, including building a complex and delicate genetic amalgamation matrix and accompanying memetic primer. We can do this, Kos. And I think I’ve got the fundamental building blocks to start with in one of the storage compartment areas in the ship.”
His right hand slides down then, leaving its’ spot against his beloved’s cheek and trailing fingertips over throat and fabric, all the way down to the Master’s hand, intertwining their fingers together and squeezing confidently. He speaks then, in Gallifreyan, a twist on an ancient saying that now seems more fitting than it ever has before.
“~The life that breathes us is home to all souls. We are children of stars, galaxies learning to walk, eternally at home, within each other.~”
“STOP. I may die of happiness: I who am NEVER satisfied!”
The Master snatches the Doctor’s face in his hands and bites his chin–hard–the way an overly excited affectionate feline might bite its owner in the middle of play. Coursing through his telepathic brain circuitry is a steady rhythmic thrumming that can only be described as psychic purring. It’s only ever audible around the person he’s currently roughhousing.
“Right, right! Joost. Run your ‘building block’ by me, before getting involved in any sort of accident. You tend to be, you know, darling, more of the innovator than the, er, meticulous sort. Let me beta you, right?”
His fussing, somewhere between housewife and fellow mad scientist, is cut off decisively when the Doctor speaks an unbreakable promise in Old High Gallifreyan.
Clasping him by the neck with both hands, the Master grazes his thoughts, bringing from memory and mind the words of this revised vow.
And he joins him in reciting the final phrase:
“–Eternally at home, within each other.”
Koschei hesitates, licking his lip. He sighs, hapless, amused, through his nose. Might as well just be honest, might as well:
“Doctor, I want you to know that I would lose for you. I would forfeit. I would surrender. I have never been happier than you have made me.”
“Are you her? DO tell me you are. Oh, it’d be delicious that I stumbled across the Doctor’s most super-powered contraband Companion.”
There’s something undeniably charismatic about the Master’s voice, something terribly charming about his comportment and his convivially intrigued face.
“am i ‘her’?” well this is NEW. not the whole ‘bein’ recognized by total strangers’ bit — she got MORE than enough of that working with unit. being referred to as the doctor’s ‘most super-powered contraband companion’ on the other hand… that one set off a few ALARM BELLS, though the charisma &. charm that exuded from the man certainly did its part to try &.offset that.
what sort of person referred to a companion as contraband anyway?
“ gonna have to be a bit more specific than THAT, mate. ”
“HehHAHHHH!”
The Master applauds Rose–be it her spunk, her wit or her existence that spurs this, one cannot be certain. But he radiates satisfaction.
“You are. You absolutely are Rose Tyler. Oho, oi, you and me, mate, we’re a pair of blondes with brown eyes, and look, the aesthetic’s on par. Lots of glam, heavy eye makeup, I’m living the dream right now. I’m this close to incorporating pink into my wardrobe because of looking at you.”
He offers a hand smugly.
“If you’re as dear to the Doctor as she says, you’ve heard of me. I’m the Master. Congratulations on being you. Because I like you, and I can count the people I like on the fingers of one hand.”
“ … SO? I want another. I want a double-M.D. And maybe a few PhD’s. The sky’s the limit when you’re as smart and evil as I.”
The Master’s petulance is perhaps a welcome transition from the somberness of moments past, and what’s more, it’s a sure sign that he is truly well.
He climbs into the Doctor’s lap, laying on the entitlement thick, along with pretense of daintiness. Unfazed by this role reversal of expected gender norms, Koschei bats his black-lined lashes at his wife. His entire goal, at this juncture, is to ham it up, and make her laugh, and banish the shadows of regret and sorrow altogether.
“ ‘The Doctor and the Master in the TARDIS,’ sounds like a kid’s show I’d watch. Or maybe a sitcom.”
He flashes teeth in an irrepressible grin, with elastic energy that well suits her sunny enthusiasm. He kisses her full on the mouth.
“Now, Doctor: wow me, make me swoon, by swinging a jackhammer at the walls of this room.”
The Doctor rolls her eyes, but those eyes as well as her mouth are still smiling. She likes the petulance, the arrogance, the personality preening- especially since she gets to see beneath it so frequently. Eyebrows lift nearing her hairline as he scales her lap, not that there’s much to be scaled- she’s a fair bit smaller than him now, and boy did that take some getting use to -and already she’s letting out a giggle as her hands find his hips.
She likes having him there, on her lap- always has. To an outsider, he’d be the one in control in such a position but in reality, Theta knew she had the upper hand. All the hands, as it were, just like Koschei had when it came to her hearts.
“An’ don’t I loov it when y’get sentimental. The Great and Powerful Master, watchin’ a sitcom with’is wife. You gonna wear your jimjams an’ everything?”
She waggles her eyebrows, the shadows visibly lifting, the regret dissipating right in front of her other half, her counterpart, her keeper. He’s very good at this, she thinks. Perhaps she’s gotten better at it, too, over the centuries. A quiet ’mmph’ noise escapes against his lips as he kisses her, and she has to draw in a shaky breath to get her bearings back in order.
“First off, an’ this is important: I always make you swoon, Master. I’m jus’ that good. Second, f’you want me t’get oop an’ start demolishin’ this room, you’re gonna ‘ave ta let me.”
Her smile carries with it the weight of a billion burning suns, capable of melting even the most frozen of tundras. Then she leans up and kisses him full on the mouth just as he’s done moments ago, only she lets it linger, content to stay there a moment though her enthusiasm to tear the room asunder with her bare hands is palpable.
The Master gazes down at his best friend with falsely donned disgust.
“MUST you perennially draw attention to the fact that you’ve domesticated me?”
He takes a declarative stride forward, hands resting on his hips. It’s an attempt to look authoritarian and terrifying; in the past it would have worked, the same gesture he took on the day he commanded the “Toclafane” to kill the American President. Right now it just makes him look like a cute sap.
The horror.
“Yes, yes you do. You’re my one.”
He swoops down upon her, devouring her ears and neck in ticklish nibbly kisses.
“Grrrrreat!”
He kisses her full on the mouth, and throws her over his shoulder.
“Weakness!”
A pause.
“And now that I’ve done this, I really have no idea where I’m taking you. Obviously you need your legs to beat holes in the walls of this hellish room.”
He puts her down again, licks a finger and straightens her lemon icing hair into array.
The kiss the Doctor rewards him with earns a long guttural “mmmm,” and a drunken smile. Then the Master rushes to the piano and taps the first three notes of Beethoven’s Fifth.
A compartment in the wall–likely installed ages past by Missy–slides open. Giddily he dashes to pull out a beautifully crafted jackhammer, with a nozzle constructed to cut diamonds. After that, a chainsaw.
Koschei’s got his back to his husband when Jack so casually speaks these words. His ears, and then his cheeks, go ruddy. It’s one of the very few things someone can say to him that actually causes embarrassment.
“Stop,” he murmurs.
“Never,” Jack grins, sliding up behind him to kiss his cheeks. It’s a pointed compliment, one he knows will always cut through all bluster and ego to bolster his truest hearts, but it’s also a completely true one as well. “I mean it. You’re so patient with them, and attentive, and you never talk down to them or treat them like they’re anything less than their own person. You remind me a lot of my dad.”
“Oho, look. I didn’t raise them to be such pillars of intellectual and ethical rectitude without you.”
Koschei, cheeks kisses, smacks his hands against each side of Jack’s face, demanding his fullest attention.
“You’re hard on yourself, Sam. I know you don’t like talking about that time, and the losses you were forced to incur, when no one else would make the impossible choices, but I’d not be having any children with you if I thought there was any universe in which you’d hurt them.”
Icarus 