For the past twenty minutes, while the Doctor’s been preoccupied flying about the Console Room inputting destination points and monologuing about what intrigues her, the Master has been assembling a holly, ivy, and mistletoe wreath. Every time she flurries past chattering, he’s wordlessly applied another piece of the wreath to her hair, with wry determination.
Ultimately, the entire crown adorns her head, and he smugly lifts a mirror for her perusal.
“Happy Christmas, I now have an excuse endorsed by your beloved humans to kiss you at all hours.”
“On the contrary. I’m the me that I forged, from the heat of a funeral pyre, over and over and over and over again, never too discouraged to stand one more time.
It’s always the monosyllabic response to which he resorts, when his beloved speaks words of rare candor, and directness. It robs the Master of breath. But today he is older than the last time this took place, and today he is very weary. He gnaws on the inside of his lip, the dark circles beneath his eyes visible, dogged by drums, a specter he has shaken, save at times of great duress.
He’s seated at the edge of the open TARDIS doors, as the vessel idles in space, legs dangling out into the starry void, holding a thick volume in which but a slice of ancient Gallifreyan history is chronicled.
He’s dog-eared a page on the soured relationship between Rassilon and Omega. And it’s made him introspective. So introspective that he hasn’t slept in a week, an interval that takes its toll even on a Time Lord’s body.
“I’m tired of pretending I ever felt differently,” he adds, at length, turning a wistful smile over his shoulder. “Come sit with me. Make the universe make sense again.”
The Master looks up from his cocktail with a set expression of fond exasperation. His expectations are not disappointed.
“Darling … .”
“No.”
Theta raises a brow at this.
“What?” She is genuinely confused over this. “It’s good…. Norwegian.”
“Love, I’m not arguing about the Scandinavian flavor, but there’ve been dirty human-feet all over it, and what’s more, earth-soil’s got Clostridium spores. D’you want your limbs to lock up and … to puke until you see colors beyond the electromagnetic spectrum? I’ll abstain, thanks.”
He who is ordinarily so expansively elegant now fumbles for words.
“I think I …” He bites his lip, and his forehead fiercely wrinkles. He’s trying not to cry. He’s done that a great deal more freely since finding her again, and he’s still learning that this is not a liability. "Yeah, I think I’ve still gotta … forgive some part of me. The kid, or something. That first me. For when he wasn’t enough. For seeing him in everyone I hurt, and wanting to extinguish their light too, to get rid … get rid of the evidence, that I was ever frail, or flawed, I … I guess.”
Icarus 