It’s an unusually crass declaration from the salty Victorian, but out it spills, with great panache, great enunciative crispness, on the t.
“I KNOW I didn’t say that aloud. I KNOW I didn’t. What’d you do, eavesdrop? We weren’t even touch-telepathing, how’d you DO that? God, is it that earnest a need? Not that I’m ADMITTING to it … !”
Hearing him drop an expletive in such a manner made it abundantly clear that she wasn’t supposed to hear what she had. The babbling attempt to cover it all up made her grin, a laugh spilling from her lips. “Create whatever theory you need of how I heard but just know I did hear it.”
“SHUT UP, you insufferable ray of sunshine! Don’t you give me that shit!”
With massive futility, the Master tries to bristle and fume.
The longer the Doctor beams up at him, with her pointy elfish brows and her button nose and her broad, cheesy grin, the more steam leaves the proverbial kettle of his temper.
“ … it’s not. I didn’t. Consciously plan on asking, it joost. Escaped me, like. Like oxygen.”
The Master is hard at work on deep-space armor fittings that can be donned at the molecular level. It’s legitimate nanotech, but the “large” parts require work using surgical instruments of immense precision.
So when Ophelia comes blithely bumbling into his sanctum sanctorum, he holds up one, free hand, with one index finger, sharply, while speaking in an ill-matched tone of supreme calm,
“Juuuuuuuust a moment, please. And then I’ll decide whether to study, welcome, or murder you.”
The laser tool he’s using bevels the accurate dimensions into the salt-grain sized component, and Koschei sits back from the mirrors, LED strobes, and laser nodule, lifting his goggles as the instruments power down.
He tidies his short-shorn pale hair into order, and focuses his sharp black eyes on his guest.
“ … AHHHH, it’s the prodigal daughter! Welcome to my workshop slash think tank slash laboratory, Miss Ophelia. I’m the Master, but family refers to me as Koschei. Or dad. Dad’d work. I’m your dad’s lifelong best mate, and we’re definitely, you know, involved, so you can think of me as your stepdad. Drink? Cocktail? Wait, bloody hell, are you of age?”
He’s loud, charming, warm and expansive, a touch intimidating, but his claws are fully retracted for this particular person.
Ophelia freezes, seeing the hand held up and stays within the doorway. The idea of her being murdered simply because she walked into the wrong room frightened her a bit, especially considering he was on her father’s ship. She thought he’d be safe here, not threatened for interrupting someone she didn’t even know was there.
Her eyes scan the rest of the room, silently studying everything and trying to make sense of what was in the room. The tools intrigued her and that’s what held her attention to keep her there. That, and the slight fear that this man had just put into her.
The fact that he knows her name confuses her even more before he announces his own. “Koschei? I remember that name, my mum’s mentioned you before.” She replies, stepping tentatively into the workshop now, taking more of it in. “What do you mean, involved?”
She glances over at his project before stepping up to the table, still a bit away so she isn’t interfering, or hopefully upsetting him. “Old enough for it on Earth. Drink sounds lovely thanks. White wine maybe?” She says offhandedly before biting her lip as she thinks for a moment. “What exactly are you working on?”
The Master laughs heartily, rows of flawless teeth flashing; it’s easy to see how this face, in another life, was a politician.
“Everyone’s mentioned me before,” he proclaims. “White wine, sure, how’s a Pinot sound? Nice and dry.”
He strides over to a small steel refrigerator, and pulls a chilled bottle from within. Fetching two glasses, he uncorks and pours with panache. He hands the girl called Ophelia–child of his oldest and dearest friend–her glass.
“To new beginnings: and to answer your first question, your father and I are married. And I’m going to have a word with him for not mentioning that straightaway. As for your other question: what d’you want me to be working on?”
“You’ve got another gray hair? You’ve stolen me another painting? Some crown jewels? A rare love powder for extra pleasure from an intergalactic market? A new grand piano? The kids drew me a picture? Did I get any of them right?”
“Well, I mean, all of that too, butthat’s not what I have to show you this time. Come here,” he says, taking his hand and pulling him into one of the lesser visited rooms of the TARDIS. There’s a large marble sculpture there, one that on first glance seems to be Rodin’s The Kiss, but as Koschei comes closer, he’ll see that it’s been restyled to represent two male figures – complete with theirfaces too.
“I thought about a small little token, but then I thought, ostentatious is much more our style.”
Koschei laughs. He throws his head back and laughs so hard that tears gather in his eyes and spill out the corners. He smacks his thighs and bends at the waist.
“PLEASE tell me I’m actually seeing an exact replica of Rodin’s The Kiss with OUR FACES on the models!”
He pauses, and leaps into Jack’s arms confident that he’ll catch him, smacking his palms on his cheeks for ultimate, undivided focus.
“OR DID YOU GO BACK IN TIME AND CHANGE IT SO WE’RE ON THE ORIGINAL?”
That monosyllabic command stops him dead in his tracks.
Because it’s not a command, really. It’s a plea.
Ahhhh yes. What a thrill. He remembers this.
The indescribable sensation of individual organs hemorrhaging and shutting down, on the floor of the flying fortress he designed and built with his own hands, a far younger, far more reckless version of the soul sitting on this bed begging him not to leave him alone.
And isn’t the choice he made on that day the whole cause for the trajectory of his–?
‘How about that. I win lose. ‘
Ohh, no. Don’t do that. Oh whoa. Dangerous terrain, these thoughts. Entertaining ideas of blame again. Stop that.
Let it be a draw, Koschei. Just this once.
Else why did you hover over his bed these past days, w o r r y i n g that the source of your mad strivings was going to be fully extinguished?
“ … .I did volunteer. I didn’t trust anyone else to keep you safe.”
In fact, let him win. With these words.
He takes a pitcher of water from the bedside table, and pours a glass.
He nudges the Doctor’s shoulder with it.
Now, this he isn’t expecting. Why was it so easy? Why has his demand been taken and accepted so quickly? He’d expected at least another sharp comment meant to hurt him. But he’s certainly not going to argue. He doesn’t move either, at first, just waiting in slightly awkward silence for either the comment to come late, or their less hurtful conversation to resume.
He’s glad it turns out to be the latter.
“Well,” he says, sitting up enough to take the water. “Thank you.” It’s a genuine thanks, though he is biting back an assurance that he no longer requires babysitting. It’s difficult to decide what he actually wants. Part of him wants to insist he can manage just fine alone now, and the other part wants the Master to stay by his bedside for the rest of this life (which he’s not fully convinced is going to be too long, if he’s honest).
He uses his free hand to pull the Master’s coat around himself better.
“Any tips on keeping regeneration at bay until I’ve recovered? I’m fine,” — and his tone is defensive and firm, as though challenging even the unspoken suggestion that he might not be. “But my body seems to think regeneration will be easier than waiting this out and healing. I don’t want to regenerate.”
Not now, and not at all. Not again. He can’t do this again. The tiredness has been making itself evident in his eyes over many years now, and it never quite goes away. Even the humans at the university have expressed concern for him. He brushes it off every time, of course, but he knows they’re right. The weight of the universe resting continuously on his shoulders has perhaps exhausted him to a point he can’t return from.
Still. He doesn’t have to make up his mind yet. He’s not dying today. Not yet. There’s still hope, and for him it currently appears in the shape of his best friend, at the side of his bed. He’s still here, looking after him, and that has to mean something.
Easy? Hardly, that was excruciating. And yet he can’t but feel softly. Softly, for the angry, weary, befuddled old man (old, like he is) fumbling for his dignity. And that is all he’s ever wanted to see from the Doctor, in the end: some semblance of vulnerability, or neediness. Some sort of aching empty spot where Koschei used to be. Rather like the facade of an old house, whose shutters have been ripped off, and the remaining rectangular stains haven’t weathered like the rest of the house. Something fresh and vibrant and yet devoid, beneath, within.
At his core, the Master wants to feel … . mandatory. Necessary. Needed.
By this specific person: or who this specific person was.
Softly, yes. He feels softly. Like he never feels.
How terribly, sentimentally ordinary of him.
“You’re welcome,” the words escape before he’s able to stop himself, because they are the truth.
But when the Doctor lets slip his true condition, up flies a protective emotional exoskeleton around the Master’s hearts. Up like the carapaceof an armadillo, circling itself. His eyes blaze and flash.
“Like hell you’re fine,” he snarls, face viciously animated, even while his voice remains discreetly low. Because this is his, this is HIS to hoard, the Doctor told HIM first how badly off he really is, and no one, not a cyberman named Bill, and not even his own future self, can take that away. “If your body is trying to regenerate that’s the very definition of not fine.”
He leans across the bed, feigning an effort to adjust the curtains and shutters, glances around, and continues, in the Doctor’s ear, so close that his scent of cloves and engine grease is overpowering.
“It’s mindfulness. That’s literally ninety-nine percent of it. You have to will yourself not to regenerate. You have to recite it like a mantra, and keep your mind from wandering off the subj … look, Doctor, I’m not giving you advice on how I stopped my own regeneration. You may recall that ended with me dying.”
Sturdy digits made callused by ferocious mechanical labor now grace the keys of the grand piano once played by Missy inside the Vault. They rest there, ghosting over notes, until a melancholic, tender melody streams forth. The Master sits there on board the TARDIS and croons, in a competently pleasant, soft second tenor, which startlingly lacks grandstanding of any sort.
“In every heart there is a room A sanctuary safe and strong To heal the wounds from lovers past Until a new one comes along.
“I spoke to you in cautious tones You answered me with no pretense And still I feel I said too much My silence is my self defense.”
He pauses mid song to catch the Doctor’s eye, with contrition and something more remarkable still: meekness.
“And every time I’ve held a rose It seems I only felt the thorns And so it goes, and so it goes And so will you soon I suppose. But if my silence made you leave Then that would be my worst mistake So I will share this room with you And you can have these hearts to break.”
He swallows hard.
“And this is why my eyes are closed It’s just as well for all I’ve seen And so it goes, and so it goes And you’re the only one who knows.”
The music swells.
“So I would choose to be with you That’s if the choice were mine to make But you can make decisions too And you can have this heart to break
“And so it goes, and so it goes And you’re the only one who knows.”
The music had drawn the Doctor in, initially- that gorgeous tinkling sound of keys finally being played once more after laying silent and gathering dust. It was gentle, almost mournful in the way the notes filled the air and drifted through it straight into her ears… into her hearts. The TARDIS had encouraged her to approach the Vault, the sight of which gave her more than a little trepidation. Too long it had been since that dreadful thing had been filled- too long since it hadn’t been a part of the ship itself.
Yet there she found herself, leaning against the metallic framework and staring, enraptured, at the Keeper of her hearts as he began to both play and sing. She remained silent, a swell of devotion wrapped in contentment dissolving into her blood and causing her entire body to grow warm. When he paused and caught her eye she felt that warmth blossom onto her flesh, turning her skin an appropriate color in accordance with the feeling deep inside.
The corner of her mouth tilts up, but it isn’t amusement in her eyes- it’s acceptance. It’s her taking every single word as seriously as he’s singing them, and as the song continues she finds her feet once again moving of their own volition. Before long she’s standing next to the piano alongside him, facing him, never once taking her eyes off of him- barely blinking, as it were. Both hands fold atop the dusty black instrument as the music swells, and moisture springs to her eyes as the song ends and leaves them both in silence that echoes the meaning and sounds even after they’ve gone.
She stands there a moment before slowly joining him on the piano bench, swallowing thickly as her own hands lift to hover fingertips over the keys. It seems only natural to her that she should begin to play, the notes gentle and a little faster than the ones he’d played, but no less haunting. Her eyes gaze down at the keys, at her hands as she begins to sing, voice just as gentle as the notes and wavering softly from the emotion he’s already brought up inside of her.
“I know I wasn’t there When you needed me the most I know I didn’t care And was afraid to get so close Tonight it’s getting hard to fall asleep Cos it’s becomming clear that I broke all into pieces And I cannot reverse it So I’ve got one more thing to say…
“I’m sorry for your pain I’m sorry for your tears For all the little things I didn’t know I’m sorry for the words I didn’t say But what I still do I’m still loving you.”
She takes a breath, her eyes closing and that moisture slipping down her cheeks as she continues.
“I know I let you wait And been away for far too long But now I can relate To everything that I did wrong I stop breathing when I think I’m losing you And there’ll be no excuse So I am on my knees, so listen please Let me hold your hand once again.”
It’s here that she finally looks at him, is finally able to do so, and as she meets his eye he will see the affection, the devotion, just as he always has but now.. now it’s paired with one other raw emotion: repentance.
“I’m sorry for your pain I’m sorry for your tears For all the little things I didn’t know I’m sorry for the words I didn’t say I’m sorry for the lies I’m sorry for the fights For not showing my love a dozen times I’m sorry for the things that I call mine But what I still do I’m still loving you
"I’m sorry for your pain I’m sorry for your tears For all the little things I didn’t know I’m sorry for the words I didn’t say I’m sorry for the lies I’m sorry for the fights For not showing my love a dozen times I’m sorry for the things that I call mine But what I still do I’m still loving you That’s what I will always do…”
He closes the piano lid just as she utters her final line, and shakes his head, and shakes it again, almost so violently that it should do damage to his neck and shoulders. Almost like a child banishing a poltergeist.
He shudders and it seems exorcized, the mood, the memories.
“Oh, enough,” he sighs, turns and seizes her against him. “We’re both so stupid, Doctor.”
The fingers of one hand dig into her scalp, the others into the back of her little rainbow shirt, pulling it tight, clutching a fist full of thick soft bleached hair, evidence that she is real and she is present, evidence that centuries of fruitless struggle, cycling a highway ramp with no exits, have ended.
“I love you. Say you love me. It’s that simple and that complex.”
He smiles at the ceiling.
“Aren’t you proud of me? See, I learn. I even learn fast. You know what I think you should do? What we should do?”
He peels himself off her with great effort, and rests his palms on her youthful, elfin face.
“Let’s demolish this room. Don’t ask the TARDIS to do it. Do it manually. Let’s do a … a cleanse, hm?”
A pause, as his eyes rove the room.
“Except I wanna keep the piano. I like the piano. And. I want a kangaroo. And a license to be a brain surgeon. And … maybe some Jelly Babies.”
The Master flings open his TARDIS door, laser screwdriver blazing at the ready, only to find the foyer occupied by a young woman who seems entirely unfazed that there is a sleek black monolith standing in the middle of a cow pasture in Scotland.
He licks his lips, drops his weapon and cocks his head.
“Right, so I’m gonna take a wild guess and say you’re acquainted both with time travel and Time Lords, owing to the fact that you’re treating my TARDIS like a common petrol station at which to check your Google Maps directions.”
His voice is, for his small framed form, unexpectedly deep and charismatic, every consonant enunciated with the flawlessness of a West-End London Shakespearean. It’s clear he’s donned airs, and yet there’s something oddly charming about his affectation.
“There’s a grand total of TWO of us in this vicinity of the universe. So since you’ve already met the Doctor, process of elimination dictates you already know my name.”
Layla blinks, cocking her head in the opposite direction as she looks at the Time Lord, her brow furrowing in thought. “Ah. Actually, interesting thing, that…”
‘Really, Irving?’ she thinks to herself. Yep. Definitely going to murder the insufferable bastard in his sleep for this one. “Right. Introductions. I’m Layla Ja–Braxiatel. Sorry, arranged marriage. Still getting used to the name change. Anyway. My adoring, loving husband,” she manages through a sharp grin and gritted teeth, “Seems to have taken off without me, and I’m not even quite sure… when…”
She sighs, running a hand through her hair as she waves the other uncertainly. “When are you in your timeline? Because honestly, this is all a bit frustrating. I’m not sure if I’ve met the Doctor yet here, honestly, though I do know of him, at length, as Irving is quite fond of bringing up his brother in almost every argument we have.”
With a weary sigh, she offers the Master a wry smirk as she looks up at him. “How you lot deal with this all the time is beyond me. But I think I might be… before your now?”
Not that she doesn’t know of things that she shouldn’t, again thanks to Irving, but she’s also been warned against saying a word about such, especiallyto any other Time Lords she may encounter. Admitting to knowing of the Time War before it even happens? That’s just asking for trouble, and not the fun kind the Trickster actually enjoys.
“HOLD on a moment!”
In the middle of the young god’s expositive blather, the Master realizes he’s heard a terribly familiar name. Amused disdain illumines his features.
“Did you say you know Irving Braxiatel?”
He pauses, and blinks, and then his eyebrows fly up and his face ignites in a manic grin.
“Did you say you MARRIED Irving Braxiatel? Oho. HA!!! Pour one out for your sanity, young lady! What cruel twist of fate led you to such an arrangement? Fond of bringing up his brother, oh I BET. The pedantic, affected, prancing wart! Oh, DO come in, and let us hate him together, I am his brother’s co-conspirator in all things Gallifreyan counter- culture, you see. I’m the ‘corrupting influence,’ the ‘degenerate’ from the’ social-climbing House of Oakdown’! Oh, dear GOD, this is delicious! Oh, isn’t being hated positively EROTIC?”
He ushers her inside his TARDIS, lit from floor to ceiling in a muted red, as though the gears and levers and digital monitors are all parts of animal organs and he the symbiotic organism dwelling within it.
“What’ll it take to persuade you to commit spousal homicide? Oh, that’ll be a gift the Doctor can’t sneeze at. I may be joking, and I may not be, depending on your moral fabric.”
Send “We’re married.” for my muse to wake up in a future or alternate reality where our muses are married.
This. This!
This actually wasn’t that surprising, at all. Missy opened her eyes, realized of her situation, groaned and proceeded to sank on her resting spot again. Of course, she was going to establish an economic and legal alliance with herself. Himself. Themselves.
“Since we are Mr. and Mrs. Paradox now, can we get our daughter back?”
The Master sheds his nightshirt and buttons up his charcoal top, with its flawlessly pressed collar, and then he slips into the throbbing red lined black overcoat, tucking up the collar, like donning a mantle of ill will.
He licks his lips and smiles.
“Oh, we’ll get back that which we love, that which we deserve, my darling. All of it. A l l . Of it. But first. Don’t you think it’d be fun if we reminded this universe why it fears us?”
“EWWWWWW,” he declares, nose wrinkled, but face transported with an unholy grin.
“Oi, you gonna help ‘er then?” she says, amused to see him down on the ground like that.
“Noooooo,” he retorts, twisting his neck so he can flash that leer at her. “This is ecology in progress! A food chain’s pecking order vividly displayed for our fortunate gaze! I’ll not interrupt at ALL!”
“How dare you, you tick? You flea sucking on a dungfly. Who do you think I am? A piece of meat for your latest tabloid thrill? BACK OFF.”
It’s with a stage actor’s gut-based projection that the Master thunders these words. After a moment of morbidly curious consideration, however, he drops his laser hand to his side.
“First of all, mention Ailla again, and I will flay you with a dull spoon. She was only the confirmation of suspicions I held already, about my place in the cosmos; all that she did was allow me to realize that I was safer traveling alone. Don’t bore me with the tediousness of recalling her. I became the Master for all intents and purposes when I was a small child and I believed I had murdered a schoolyard bully who was trying to drown my best friend. That was the germ. The seed. The soil had already been tilled to a fertile state by my failure to pass the Test of the Untempered Schism. I stood before it, heard nothing but the Drums that so long plagued me thereafter–furbished by Rassilon himself, ruining my young mind for his own skin’s sake–and wet myself. I was dragged off that mountainside ill with fear, and my looming parents? Oh, if you can even call them parents, and not donors, sponsors. They made it clear that I had also failed to serve my purpose for being born. It was on a bribe to a High Council elder that I was admitted into the Prydonian Academy at all. And oh, the whole of House Oakdown made certain I knew this every day my hearts beat from that moment on. We were already newbloods, you see: we had much to prove, and I had not pulled my weight. So I spent every second of every hour of every day studying, practicing, reciting, learning. Perfecting myself.
“Combine those two early experiences, and I suppose you had the brain-cocktail that made me so very desperate to reject the gnawing futility, the pointlessness, the smallness, of my existence, or anyone else’s. Conflate that with my seeming capacity to harness death from a young age, and I learned that the way that I could become notorious was through infamy: through the resolute conquest of mortality itself.
“I am Master, then, over Death.
But if you’re asking for the moment that I decided to don that moniker, it was not any shallow act of self-promotion within or without the Academy. It was not the day I became a Time Lady for the first time, and married for status, and loomed a daughter; it was not the day, earlier even than that, that the Doctor did the same. It was not the day the Deca disbanded. It was not various temptations, not the Darkheart device. It was the day he left Gallifrey, and didn’t take me with him. Because you see, there’s a flaw in your logic. You want me to hate the Council, the Elders, the whole of Time Lord society, even the whole of Gallifrey, because they gave me the Drums, and targeted me incessantly as a scapegoat for their corruptions, and captured and executed and resurrected and experimented on me. But that’s the very rub: I knew all along they were worthless. I knew all along they were rotten, and stifling, and cruel. I knew it from youngest childhood, thanks to my ‘family.’
“I never loved those people. Never pinned my hopes on them. Never took their hand in a red field of grass, never met them under cover of silver trees to tinker with contraband pieces of TARDIS or with a thing lesser species called ‘physical affection.’ Never spent hours entwined limbs and minds with them, exploring the euphorias of touch telepathy. Never played with them, ran with them, made plans with them, charted stars with them, danced with them, dreamt with them. That was all Him. He was my sole antidote to that desperate scheme to control mortality itself. And when He left, I realized there was no alernative. When He left, I grasped hold of my madness and made it my sole badge of honor.
“That was the day I burned the prints off my fingers and had my birthname expunged from all public records.
Icarus 