“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.
“Your father is going to MURDER me if he knows you’ve sustained a BROKEN BONE while in my custody, bloody HELL!”
The Master flings his hands up and shoves them into his short unruly hair. He drags Ophelia by the good arm into the TARDIS infirmary and shoves her into a chair. He grabs a sling and bandages from one of the cubbyholes overhead.
“Hold still. This’ll hurt, but I’m fairly handy when it cooms to setting breaks. Set your mind over the bloody rainbow, one two three, GO.”
And he relocates her shoulder with a pop.
“Oi! It’s not like it’s your fault I’m clumsy and fall over nothing!”
Ophelia did her best to keep up with him as he dragged her back into the TARDIS, working on not tripping again to dislocate the other. She winced as she sat in the chair, shifting to put her weight on the other side as she waited.
“Bloody rainbow? Do you really think I’m still that much of a chi-OW!”
The girl cried as he set it back into place, glaring at him. “Rassilon, could you not have been any gentler? Any medication before or something?” She leaned back into the chair a bit, trying not to think of the pain too much.
FIXED! He did it! He bluffed having ANY sort of medical expertise, and he fixed his stepchild’s shoulder! Why, this is the most glorious day in the Master’s life! He could become a bloody paramedic! He could do ANYTHING he set his mind to!
He–!
Oh.
“Oh, golly. Yeah, sorry about that. Anesthesia, right.”
He scurries to draw a syringe full of aspirin-free painkiller, which he injects into Ophelia’s vein.
The Master blinks, reacquainting himself with his dignity, after baring himself to Missy and being returned … what feels like scorn.
He recalibrates his mind quickly. Perhaps she speaks out of embarrassment, which always raises her hackles, and his, and any Master’s.
“I think you mistake me, sis,” he begins, with uncommon courtesy- courtesy he’ll only show versions of himself. “I don’t regret what’s begun to happen to me. To you, us. I’m only telling you that you’re not running mad. That you’re not alone.”
Her haste to defend the Doctor, in particular, stings. Can she forget that long before she was born, long before he was born, the Time Lord that they are agonized with the ghost pains of a severed limb, and that limb is the Doctor?
The very definition of the Master is the struggle between self-service, and love of the Doctor.
“D’you really think my every pore doesn’t scream for him every moment? Remember, I am you. What you feel, I feel. How can you think we’re so different, Missy? It’s only a matter of how each of us expresses it. The feelings themselves remain.”
Missy was, indeed, embarrassed and somewhat ashamed for either crying in front of him and kind of snapping at him. He was just trying to be nice to her after all.
She just wasn’t used to kindness that didn’t turn into betrayal afterwards.
Missy fell silent as she listened carefully to each word he said, slowly looking down as if she was sorry. And she was.
Of course, she didn’t forget about the Doctor and what he did back then. What he did to them. But she forgave him.
She felt different from her past selves because she was the one regeneration that wanted to change and move on. The one that was ready to heal from the pain.
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m just.. nervous about some things. And too prideful to admit anything.” She chuckled at that and crossed her arms over her chest, gripping onto the fabric of her jacket a little bit.
“Oh, LIS-ten: consider it forgotten. After all we did stab and shoot each other, like perfect buffoons.”
The Master twines his pinkies with Missy’s, in a strangely innocent act of camaraderie.
“Anyway, it’s … rather comforting to know that my Apex Self has at least one or two weaknesses. Teeny tiny ones. Negligible.”
Missy quickly straightened up and got a hold of herself. She bit her bottom lip, holding back her tears with difficulty. She was turning her back to the Master. Of course he would make disobligent comments and pick on her if he saw her like that.
“I’m not crying, Junior. Get that thought out of your head will ya? Why even would I be crying anyway huh?” Her voice sounded normal but very faintly shaky. She was too proud to tell him the truth. To tell him that she was crying and especially why.
She remembered the names of the people she killed through her lives. Every single name and how she killed them. Begging for mercy. Screaming for help. Crying of fear. The ones that fought for their lives. The one that accepted their fate with dignity. She remembered them all one by one and it was tearing her apart.
The Master pads around behind Missy, hands folded behind his back, examining her posture, studying the tremor of her voice, knowing her as well as he knows himself, as well as kissing the reflection in the mirror, for they are one mind.
“Just like it’d be foolish to, say, confess that time spent in the Doctor’s company might’ve … unscrewed a few valves in my avowed hatred for all life, and my bad memories. Might’ve softened my resolve a bit. Might’ve made me just the smallest bit reluctant to maim.”
He rounds the front of her, with a steadfast stare.
“Might’ve made me start reconsidering what I’ve done, and to whom. Gotten me reacquainted with the idea of shame.”
He offers her a handkerchief, red, engraved with a simple black “M.”
“You’re not the only one. I promise. I just. Put on a show in front of him. Out of pride.”
Missy didn’t move an inch as the Master walked behind her. Every single word he said was true and felt like daggers in her hearts.
But for the last thing he said? She didn’t believe half of it. She didn’t look up at him until he handed her the handkerchief, but she didn’t take it.
“Of course you would put on a show. Of course out of pride. But I don’t believe that you could feel the same way.” She snickered softly but it sounded pitiful. “Do understand this though, Master.”
“Yes, it would be foolish to say that, dear.” She simply repliered as she stared at him, her icy blue eyes piercing through his.
“Nd do you know why? Simple. Because it would have happened anyway. The shame will creep up until you snap because you won’t be able to take it anymore.” Missy remained calm, doing a good work at not crying in front of him.
“It would be foolish to blame it on the time spent with the Doctor. Because he is actually trying to help and he is succeeding. Whether you like it or not.”
The Master blinks, reacquainting himself with his dignity, after baring himself to Missy and being returned … what feels like scorn.
He recalibrates his mind quickly. Perhaps she speaks out of embarrassment, which always raises her hackles, and his, and any Master’s.
“I think you mistake me, sis,” he begins, with uncommon courtesy- courtesy he’ll only show versions of himself. “I don’t regret what’s begun to happen to me. To you, us. I’m only telling you that you’re not running mad. That you’re not alone.”
Her haste to defend the Doctor, in particular, stings. Can she forget that long before she was born, long before he was born, the Time Lord that they are agonized with the ghost pains of a severed limb, and that limb is the Doctor?
The very definition of the Master is the struggle between self-service, and love of the Doctor.
“D’you really think my every pore doesn’t scream for him every moment? Remember, I am you. What you feel, I feel. How can you think we’re so different, Missy? It’s only a matter of how each of us expresses it. The feelings themselves remain.”
“Your father is going to MURDER me if he knows you’ve sustained a BROKEN BONE while in my custody, bloody HELL!”
The Master flings his hands up and shoves them into his short unruly hair. He drags Ophelia by the good arm into the TARDIS infirmary and shoves her into a chair. He grabs a sling and bandages from one of the cubbyholes overhead.
“Hold still. This’ll hurt, but I’m fairly handy when it cooms to setting breaks. Set your mind over the bloody rainbow, one two three, GO.”
Missy quickly straightened up and got a hold of herself. She bit her bottom lip, holding back her tears with difficulty. She was turning her back to the Master. Of course he would make disobligent comments and pick on her if he saw her like that.
“I’m not crying, Junior. Get that thought out of your head will ya? Why even would I be crying anyway huh?” Her voice sounded normal but very faintly shaky. She was too proud to tell him the truth. To tell him that she was crying and especially why.
She remembered the names of the people she killed through her lives. Every single name and how she killed them. Begging for mercy. Screaming for help. Crying of fear. The ones that fought for their lives. The one that accepted their fate with dignity. She remembered them all one by one and it was tearing her apart.
The Master pads around behind Missy, hands folded behind his back, examining her posture, studying the tremor of her voice, knowing her as well as he knows himself, as well as kissing the reflection in the mirror, for they are one mind.
“Just like it’d be foolish to, say, confess that time spent in the Doctor’s company might’ve … unscrewed a few valves in my avowed hatred for all life, and my bad memories. Might’ve softened my resolve a bit. Might’ve made me just the smallest bit reluctant to maim.”
He rounds the front of her, with a steadfast stare.
“Might’ve made me start reconsidering what I’ve done, and to whom. Gotten me reacquainted with the idea of shame.”
He offers her a handkerchief, red, engraved with a simple black “M.”
“You’re not the only one. I promise. I just. Put on a show in front of him. Out of pride.”
“Quel surprise,” the Master drawls, from where he pointedly remains reclined, on the couch, in the intergalactic port’s cafe, where they mutually agreed to meet. “You, abandoning anything remotely resembling emotional ties. Didn’t see that one coming.”
Pointedly, yes, while not looking at his best and oldest friend’s ludicrous foppish bowtie and boy-band hair, and mile-long legs, and strangely attractive eyebrow-less face.
“Thanks for the paltry fifteen minutes pretending you weren’t itching to dump me squarely in your past again.”
Those widened-umber eyes scan the room surrounding him, a vastness he can’t quite place settling deep within his psyche and he doesn’t understand the meaning behind what he sees nor why that strange mechanical vibration seems to be apologizing. That was silly- machines couldn’t apologize because machines weren’t alive. So lost is he in his ponderings of the environment and the void within his head that feels both achingly familiar and steadfastly foreign that he doesn’t notice at first when the other man kneels before him.
He doesn’t notice until the gentle whoosh of air carries the scent of the other to his nostrils and they flare, his head turning instantly and his eyes locking onto the face of the man as a hand reaches out with a light touch to his brow. He can’t explain the flush that rises to his freckle-laden skin at the close proximity of this man, nor can he explain why it feels like there are two hearts fighting for dominance beneath his chest in a desperate attempt to escape the cavity they’re contained in. Before he has time to question his own bodily reactions he feels that soft, gentle warmth spreading through him that seems to relax him.
Perhaps that has to do with the touch as well but in that moment as his mind fills with a soft cotton and his veins pump downy-feathers through his body, he is perfectly incapable of caring where the pleasant sensation comes from- just that it is there and shall remain, always. His eyes become more naturally lidded and a crooked half smile appears on his face, nodding dumbly as the man speaks to him of lost memories, of friendship and safety. Of names.
“We’re friends. I’m safe with you.Koschei...”
He whispers the last part, the name, softly- like a prayer of the devout in the most holy of temples, but it sparks no memories to fill the void in his mind. This makes him feel guilty, and he can’t understand why- so he shoves the guilt aside, not wishing to feel it any longer.
“And I’m the Doctor… that’s not a proper name, though, is it. The Doctor. What sort of a man calls himself a Doctor? Bit pompous if you ask me. I don’t think I’m any sort of Doctor. Certainly don’t feel like a Doctor. Why couldn’t I have a normal name, like yours? Koschei. Your name’s beautiful, I want a name like that.”
Blimey, it seems his mouth is keen to move whether he wants it to or not. Snapping his lips closed promptly he attempts to stem the flow of vocabulary, which seems to make his tongue twitch behind his teeth. No thoughts accompany the semantics- they seem to have a mind of their own. Despite this attempt at silence, his mouth opens again and provides more words against his will. He doesn’t get up though- he stays put, as he’s told, on the floor of the vast and unfamiliar room.
“Diagnosing things- sounds more like you’re the Doctor, not me. Diagnosing mechanical issues, diagnosing me with amnesia, taking care of me here on the floor. If I am the Doctor then I’m a rubbish one and I demand a new name immediately- wait. Hang on. Did you say we’re married? Properly together? Oh that’s- that’s brilliant. How’d I land a bloke like you? You’re gorgeous! Certainly better looking than I must be, I mean- I feel all thin and- and wiry and-”
The words stop immediately, silence falling as he claps a hand over his mouth to prevent any more from flowing out. Clearly, regardless of who he is, he certainly has a gob. That flush on his face turns into a proper burn of embarrassment and he’s positive he’s going to melt into the floor. He shan’t be removing his hand from his mouth again any time soon, at least… that’s the plan.
Of all the Masters, this face is the most openly physically demonstrative, and that’s what compels him to hum fondly at the trust his lost beloved shows him, and to reach out, slowly, to pet his face.
“We’re best friends. You will always be safe with me.”
My love, oh my love, when your memory returns, and it shall, know that I didn’t lie, for all the pain’s squarely, firm as concrete, stored in the inaccessible past. Inaccessible even to time travelers, for we are changed people, no matter where or when your TARDIS takes us.
He laughs a broad cackle when his beloved suggests that he is worthier of the snobby moniker.
“You use the term less to connote a literal physician, luv. More as a bit of sanctimonious twaddle about patching oop the universe. You’re a bit of a prig, but your hearts are truly enormously loving, so after long agonies of feuding, you and I decided to simply be the old married couple that we are… . yes. I said that, yes.”
He quirks his lip at his beloved idiot.
“Don’t you dare flirt with me. Even like this! You cad. I love you.”
He turns a console monitor toward the Doctor on his way to studying the proverbial crime scene.
“You’re MY wiry thin blooshin’ maiden.”
He pinches his cheek, hard, and snaps his teeth “threateningly’ at the tip of his nose.
Even as his lover tucks in his chin, the Doctor feels no trepidation, no doubts soaking in to toxify the moment. He knows the Master better than perhaps he knows himself, can read his tells, can go on the journey of discovery with him as the keeper of his hearts sees the ring first. Good. He’s placed the items well, then.
He goes with him to the red fields, when flesh first met flesh, hand first met hand, mind first touched mind. He runs from childhood to adolescence, when the Council was manipulating him to suit their needs and he, hopeless dreamer, was too naive to see it, clinging to a lock of hair in a darkened room after hours with tears in his eyes and a deep fear turning his hearts to stone- their bond hadn’t faded, but it had been used a g a i n s t t h e m. Even further he runs until he’s in orbit around Gallifrey, his home, a place he never belonged, but he is alone and he is desolate, on his knees in front of the open doors of the TARDIS, staring down at the crimson planet where he’s left the only person that’s ever mattered to him, screaming, howling because he thinks he has no choice. Before he knows it they are calling themselves enemies and he is desperate to fix a man who doesn’t need to be fixed, who is p e r f e c t as he is, even through the monstrous acts.
The Doctor has never judged the Master for those acts. Never blamed him. No, rather, the Doctor has blamed himself- but no longer. The pair of them know now that neither of them are to blame but rather the Time Lords. The situation. The time. Their choices were their own but only at the most base and primitive levels. Even through this journey, the Doctor feels no fear in the present, no doubt, not a single drop. He is in love. He always has been in love. He always will be in love and now they’ve shattered the chains that bound them. Now they are free to be in love as they always should have been. The Master has taught the Doctor that there is little to fear about that, aside from losing it- and he will not lose it again.
The words ’put it on me’ are breathed and the Doctor breathes as well, respiratory bypass having engaged without his consent though his hearts remain beating steadily. As steady as his hand is as he reaches out for the ring and slips it on to the Master’s left ring finger to a silent chorus of forever, finally, eternally, yours, mine, yours, mine, everything I want or need, right here.
He knows the Master hasn’t seen the phial yet when he moves to kiss him, and the Doctor’s lips part, unsure whether to let it go or suggest he look twice. Thankfully he doesn’t have to do either, and the goggles tumbling to the grates, the sound of contact uncharacteristically loud in the silence of the room that’s only filled otherwise with their mutually shallow and hitched breathing, lets him know the Master’s realized something else hides within the box. A gentle anxiety begins to weave itself into the Doctor then, but it isn’t negative in nature- even now, unsure as to how the Master will respond to this gesture, he is hopeful. What a strange thing love can do once you accept it and learn that it’s nothing to be afraid of after all.
His knowledge of the other Time Lord comes in handy to quash his own overwhelming emotions as the Master begins to speak and subsequently goes silent. Realization dawns, and the Doctor’s respiratory bypass once again engages, his synaptic system having to temporarily reroute itself in order to avoid the deluge of chemicals that become emotions. What he witnesses is beautiful and his hearts swell, more and more until he feels the legitimate pressure within his chest and thinks it not possible to love another person more than he loves his Koschei in this moment. Gorgeous chaos, enchanting terror, beautiful tears- the reaction the Doctor had been expecting.
A gentle smile warms his face and at once he steps forward to close the distance that’s been placed between them. Hands lift to cup damp cheeks against his palms, thumbs trailing through the saltwater as he both lifts the Master’s chin and lowers his own, seeking out the other’s eyes. The question only makes that gentle smile widen, and his own eyes mist over as he finds himself incorrect– now, he thinks, now he loves him even more than he did moments ago and he knows that love will only grow deeper. Every moment of eternity is theirs now, and every moment will bring them closer. Every moment of their fixed-point infinity will be spent chasing away fears together.
“Of course I do. Koschei, I’ve never wanted anything more than I want you. As my traveling companion, as my best friend, my lover, my partner, my husband… It doesn’t have to be now, or tomorrow, or even anytime soon but-.. I’d love to have a child with you, Kos.”
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!”
Icarus 