[ Closed Starter For @masterfulxrhythm – Welcome To The Dark Side Dearie ]
Today was going to be one of those days, he could already tell.
Not only had the TARDIS been decidedly non-communicative for the past four hours, hiding herself away in the farthest recesses of the mainframe, but he’d gotten a rather execrable knot in the pit of his stomach that he just couldn’t seem to shake. Normally during those times he would seek out a room to destroy, to tear apart until the feeling went away. Other times he would venture out of the ship and seek out a less-than-willing participant to bear the brunt of his darkest rage. There were times he even sought out means to harm himself.
This day though the ship had seen fit to hide every doorway in every corridor, leaving him to just the control room and when he’d attempted to simply exit the ship, she’d refused that to him as well. After a few rounds with the mallet to her controls the TARDIS had still refused to cooperate, so whatever it was that had gotten into her, it was clear it wasn’t going away until he chose to listen. He rarely did, and normally she did what he asked without question so this… was rather unprecedented, and he was less than amused by it.
Long, pale fingers tapped anxiously against the edge of the console unit as he stared at the space-time coordinates the ship had projected onto one of the navigational monitors, wanting nothing more than to ignore her suggestions. He didn’t do that anymore, he didn’t help people, he didn’t respond to S.O.S. signals or requests for ‘The Doctor’s’ presence. He wasn’t the Doctor anymore, after all- he was just Theta Sigma. Just a retired Time Lord sick and bloody tired of being the punchline to every Universal joke. Yes, he’d made mistakes but he’d attempted to fix them, to become a better man, a newer man, and it had done n o t h i n g. The ship hummed insistently, adding to the din inside of his mind and causing him to wince.
“Fine… FINE!”
Cursing in Gallifreyan he let out a growling huff and set the coordinates, moving around the console unit as he muttered to himself, sending the ship out of its’ spot in the clouds in Victorian London, through the Vortex, and off to wherever-in-Rassilon’s-name she wanted to go. Once the ship was fully materialized he pushed off from the console and spun in a circle, glaring up at the time rotor before stalking toward the doors, grabbing his jacket in the process.
“There. Are you happy now? Ay? Infernal time machine… I’d scrap you for parts if I weren’t so use to having my own living space! I swear if this is one of those ’Doctor’ bits you keep attempting to force on me, I’m turning you around and detaching your automatic controls.”
He yanked the doors open and stepped out, scanning the area, a scowl on his face.
He loves the finality of bodies hitting hard surfaces.
The Master loves to watch the final impotent exercise in futility, as a foe’s form wriggles and writhes like a worm on a hook and finally falls slack in blissful lifelessness. It’s nearly as grand as watching an enemy’s skin blister as he burns.
He loves these things without pretense, needy and ironically abject as an addict standing in the rain begging strangers for a lighter.
He loves them, and he indulges every whim to a new fix, the longer the epicenter of his life is skewed off course: the longer the Doctor is no more.
It’s rare that he feels that darkness existing palpably outside his own mind. But he feels the rage radiating from above his head, and it is raining on Mondas, raining on the corpses of the government agents that rose against him for his tyranny and died. Raining off the blood on his face and mouth and hands, raining a deluge so forceful that he nearly cannot see the blue box materializing on the muddy slippery hill overlooking the most populated platform of the ship.
The Master’s feet carry him upwards, until he’s waiting outside the TARDIS door for the man who steps out; without having ever seen this long thin face, he knows his oldest friend; the miasma of violent darkness radiating off of the Doctor, however, that is new, and it is intoxicating.
He is impenitently aroused.
“Oh, you … are … . beautiful,” he breathes, snatching out a hand, cupping the Doctor’s jaw harshly, appraising the old friend who has sunken into the quicksand beside him. “A Doctor without hope: you are a black hole. I feel that I am standing inches from death and I would nearly pitch myself over the ledge into oblivion just for the pleasure of the fall.”
My first instinct is to deny this- but I can’t, because it’s true. Some days it’s harder to write the one who runs away, because I know what it’s like to be the one left behind. That’s why, while I use canon backstory without altering it much at all, I also take liberties with headcanons. Some days it’s nearly impossible to write the Doctor because of these things and without those liberties I take, I don’t think I could write the Doctor at all.
I actually appreciate you being honest about this because I know most people who play the Doctor will deny it which only perpetuates the cycle of my frustration lol. </3
Anyway today is one of those days when writing the one left behind is a little too hard for me.
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?”
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.”
“ … 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.
Oh, the smirk that spreads across his face, at that declaration; the expression of triumph. Oh, this conquest. He takes the hands around his waist, forces them down and slides his fingers into the Doctor’s. He lifts both joined hands to his lips and kisses, with particular fervor, the left.
“I think you belong to me already.”
He turns his head enough that he can look up, and back, at his oldest friend’s face.
“But I will marry you anywhere and anywhen. So let’s go.”
A half-chuckle escapes him, one born of exultant acquiescence to the Master’s words. He knows them to be true as he knows any Universal constant; it’s evident now in every movement he makes, in every word he speaks, every day spent with this man who he already belongs to. Those kisses linger on his skin and cause the static tingle he’s so fond of to permeate his hands and dive deeply into his bones.
“Of course I do. I’ve belonged to you since the day we met, Kos. Doesn’t mean we can’t make it official. Recognized in every star system. Binding. Imagine that- legal documentation that proclaims me to be yours, and you to be mine.”
He confirms and proclaims these things so easily it’s almost as if he’s never had trouble admitting them to begin with. Dark eyes meet those of his oldest friend, his best friend, the person who’s held his hearts in their palms since the moment ‘hello’ had been uttered. A squeeze of the Master’s hands in his own and his grin spreads like fire to kindling. Oh he’s lighter now. Has been since the day he’d been thrust into a deep sleep and woken a better man, having shed much of his regrets in favor of living in the beautiful present.
“Anywhere and anywhen, coming right up.”
He winks, still grinning, and releases one of the Master’s hands before using the other still joined with his to lead him to the control room. The coordinates are already set and all it takes as they near the console unit is a flip of the lever before the ship shudders and hurtles toward its’ destination.
“Now, now. You’re being disagreeable, you know.”
The Master stands on the Doctor’s feet, as he always does when particularly, possessively affectionate. He snaps his teeth at his nose, and nuzzles his face, demanding access to every inch of his essence.
“Monopolizing all the pretty words, so I’ll have none left with which to speak you my vows, heard across those infinite star systems. You cur. You know what a show-off I am.”
He slips off the feet of his beloved long enough to return his arms round his waist, standing behind him, conspiratorial, inhaling deeply of his fugitive scent. He closes his eyes and burrows a cheek against the crook of the Doctor’s neck.
Nowhere, you’ll go nowhere on me again. You’ve got to break this death-grip. I am obstinately attached to you now, my love of loves.
The thought process is silly and infantile, but he can’t help it; it’s so difficult to trust this building euphoria. Even as the TARDIS moves toward the spot the Doctor has chosen, the Master gloms tightly on. His features are blinding, joyous and wicked and crafty.
“Well hold onto your corset, you slut,” Koschei teases, still with that wicked, savory grin, “cause you broke your brain while trying to build us a baby-making machine. Literally.”
He clears his throat and rattles off the particulars.
“A short in the Chameleon Arch. You tried to use components from that to help solidify the creation of the memetic primer–the information transference node, part of the genetic loom–without having to make it entirely from scratch. You bastardized one part of our TARDIS–our time travel device, coom on, tell me you haven’t forgotten that–in order to build another part.”
He pauses and holds out his hands.
“Okay, rewinding. Every Time Lord–that’s what you and I are–has a Chameleon Arch dedicated to recording their biodata, and rewriting it should the Time Lord elect to do so, to the point of being able to change species, with or without changing appearance. You and I have both elected to do this before, to become human. That’ll coom back to you, trust me, in both cases the, ah, consequences, were … vivid.”
From the Doctor, he retrieves a little fobwatch, which happens to be singed along the edges.
“So yeah. You broke your biodata nodule, genius. Trying to extract some of it and put into a loom, so your half of the baby we’d planned to make together was accounted for.”
He pauses, and squats in front of his husband, face just laden with wryness.
“Did you joost call me scary, and then stimulating, implying that this arouses you? Oh jolly good. You’re definitely cooming back from the accident, now.”
He claps him hard on the back.
‘Thete’s’ face is absolutely burning, Koschei’s piquant grin and subsequent comment about him being a slut of all things rendering flesh to ash and converting his blood to liquid fire. He can’t be certain, the title Doctor notwithstanding as his memories are still scattered to the winds, but he’s almost positive there isn’t any of that liquid-fire-blood left in the rest of his body. This man- this gorgeous, wonderful man is hishusband and for what feels like the millionth time in so many minutes he’s astounded by this fact.
“I’ve got the feeling it would arouse me whether or not I had my memories…”
He begins with a cheeky sentence, but trails off having finally registered the words that had come from Koschei’s mouth. His own mouth falls open silently, chocolate-umber eyes widening just a fraction. Before he can blink his mind is swimming with information to the extent that he can’t speak for quite some time.
It would be a blessing if he didn’t have need to actually engage in this part of the conversation.
His eyes merely follow Koschei’s hands as he seems to locate a charred pocket watch hidden in the confines of the suit jacket he’s wearing, mouth still open, unable to articulate even the simplest of phrases. The proximity of the other man as he squats in front of him certainly doesn’t help, but the clap on the back seems to jolt him out of his confounded state. Blinking rapidly and inhaling a long, sharp breath he scuttles backward and climbs to his feet. The words come then, whether he bids them to or not, free-flowing and instinctual though not all together intelligent at first.
“W-What? Our- our WHAT? That’s-… We’re… Y-You just said-…”
He clears his throat, shakes his head to rid it of the fog that’s settled inside it, and tries again. He’s in shock, clearly, and that once-burning face is now going pale in the wake of discovery.
“I was- I was attempting to take apart something called a- a Chameleon Arch to get to the biodata nodule, and it’s- it’s a system that’s used to transform us from a Time Lordwhatever-that-is, into another species such as- as a human, and I shorted it out and this-”
He gestures to the room around them vaguely.
“-this is our TARDIS? A… a time machine? I don’t- I… I don’t remember…”
Apparently he’s used up his reserve of intelligent words for the moment and now he’s back to stumbling over them dumbly, backing away from the other man and rubbing a hand against his temple. Swallowing thickly his eyes travel to the pocket watch in the other man’s hands.
“That thing. That watch. If you open it, my memories will come back, won’t they.”
It’s an assumption, not a question, and to his bones he feels he’s made the correct one. His voice is shaking now and he looks properly terrified of the small metal object. In his inability to remember himself, in his inability to recall his wish to avoid vulnerability, in his inability to recall anything of himself and Koschei together, he speaks the absolute truth and doesn’t waver. Doesn’t dramatize. But he does start to tear up, face damp as the words tumble out again.
“I’ve… I’ve done something horrible, haven’t I. In the past, I’ve done terrible things. I can- I can feel them inside. I can’t remember a lick of it but I can feel them, these dark, shameful things in the back of my mind. So many dark, shameful things, so many regrets. I can almost hear them, it’s like- it’s like I’ve got two hearts beating in my ears and I can hear them screaming. Echoes of screaming, whispers almost, if you- if you open that thing what sort of man will I become? Koschei, I’m… I’m terrified of the man I might become.”
He doesn’t know it, but he’s said those exact eight words to Koschei before, when they were adolescents, before it all went wrong. In this his moment of pure, unfiltered horror about himself and the ghost of the scars left behind from his past, he’s never seemed more like himself.
“Oho, darling.”
There you are, my Dreamer, leadened only ever by your own self-doubt.
The Master croons his fond concern, placing the fobwatch aside for the moment, ridding his beloved of the source of his dread. But the source of his crisis remains within. So his steadfast pursuant–his best friend–creeps quietly over to where he cowers.
“I’m gonna tell you something you told me before I was ready to accept it. Here’s hoping you’re more mature, more …gracious, than I was. In fact, I know you are. So here goes.”
He takes the Doctor’s face in his hands, without stepping on his feet in the customary manner, without invading his space.
“I forgive you.”
He pauses, to search frightened dark eyes.
“Sweethearts–yeah, there are two, we both have two… . sometimes it feels like I gave you one of mine and you gave me one of yours … and that’s important, because … who are you? Well, you’re me. And I’m you. We met as children, and we learned … very quickly, that we would never be alone, because while no one else ever fully understood us, we understood each other. So. Yeah. You’ve done terrible things, all on your own. And guess what: so have I. But when we’re together we both somehow seem to just … do better. Loads better. That’s why we’re married. That’s why we decided to make a kid.”
“You are imperfect but you are mine. And you are safe. This remains a constant--both your imperfection and my companionship–whether you choose to regain your memories or not. And how’s this for a closing argument: I chose to forget for a long time too. Something like … seventy years. I had another name, Yana. And if I hadn’t opened my fobwatch, a lot of terrible things wouldn’t have happened. But. I would have never come back to you, either.”
That slap couldn’t be more comforting; the Master barks a laugh.
“You b a s t a r d, got amnesia and still having the time of your bloody LIFE. That is SO you, Thete.”
The Master bares his teeth again at his husband, letting slip the truncation of the Doctor’s school nickname. He smacks down his palms square on each of the Doctor’s thighs and leans in closer still.
“Floppy, pretty, sentimental dandy, you don’t know how happy it makes me that ninety percent of you is still intact.”
And surprisingly, he returns lewdness with chastity, pecking his beloved on the forehead. He saw the lump in his trousers. He knows. Concealing it is a moot point. Yet he allows his friend his dignity, this once, under extenuating circumstances.
“Right. No more monkey business.”
This time he well and properly disentangles himself, stalking over to the smoking circuitry. He straps on a toolbelt. He pulls a pair of goggles from an overhead cubbyhole and wheels himself under the console. The sound of tightening screws and turning gears is plentiful for several moments.
Then,
“Oh, ZOUNDS. Oh, I got it. Oh golly, I’m clever.”
He wheels out, engine oil on his cheeks and button nose, hair a mess, with an expression of mad enthusiasm.
“Darling! I’ve figured out what happened.”
Thete.
So he does have a proper name after all, and that fact only confirms the rest- he is mostdefinitely a prig who’s given himself a title out of assumption rather than achievement, and he can only hope that he’s lived up to at least half of what the word ‘Doctor’ implies. If he hasn’t, perhaps he’ll stick to Thete from now on, even once his memories are sorted and locked together again like so many pieces of a scattered jigsaw puzzle.
“I’ve got a feeling I’m only having the time of my life because you’re in it, Kosch.”
It’s instinct that tells him to truncate Koschei’s own name, and it feels just as natural as he does so. The words are said with a dual tone, both genuine and flirtatious. Even as he can’t remember who he is, who he was, or the history he has with this beautiful man he can still feel it deep down, just beneath the blurred and laundered surface. This is him. This is them, so very them.
A squeak escapes him and his hips jerk upward as palms slap against thighs through pinstriped fabric and, much to his own embarrassment, the lump in his trousers becomes prominent and well defined. He ignores it because he has no choice, the sound of two heartbeats surging through his ears nearly deafening, blood immediately turning warm and causing his flesh to tingle. Scratch his previous thoughts- he needs his memories back, now, so that when he pounces on this gorgeous man, he knows exactly what he’s doing.
His eyes lighten to chocolate even as his pupils dilate, practically shimmering in the light of the room around them and those eyes flicker to Koschei’s bared teeth, then back up to meet his gaze. His breath comes out trembling and his face, once again, burns a deep crimson. His hands clench against the grating beneath him and his body shivers, startled that this man can cause such an immediate and uncontrollable reaction not only in his mind, but biologically as well.
“Blimey, you’re sort of t e r r i f y i n g… it’s q-quite stimulating.”
He’s just said that. Out loud and everything. Gods, he needs to shut up. He holds his breath to ensure no more words can escape, counting silently in his head. To his relief and, somewhere in a more primal place his disappointment, Koschei kisses his forehead and promptly walks away from him. His held breath leaves in a whoosh of air from his lungs and he scrubs both hands down his face, attempting to regain some semblance of control.
’Thete’, as he now knows himself to be, sits silently and studies the room surrounding him as the sounds of mechanical tinkering fills his ears. By the time Koschei announces that he’s sorted out the problem, Thete’s body is thankfully back under his control and he’s settled down quite a bit- at least until the other man crawls out from beneath what appears to be some sort of control panel, covered in oil and soot with his hair messed about.
Oh no.
He barely manages to avoid asking how either of them manage to get anything done when Koschei is so bloody attractive, but thankfully steers his words to a more constructive and appropriate conversation.
“R-Right. What- What’ve you found out? Have I broken something? I’ve broken something, haven’t I? See, I knew I shouldn’t have taken on the title of Doctor without earning it first. What’ve I broken?”
“Well hold onto your corset, you slut,” Koschei teases, still with that wicked, savory grin, “cause you broke your brain while trying to build us a baby-making machine. Literally.”
He clears his throat and rattles off the particulars.
“A short in the Chameleon Arch. You tried to use components from that to help solidify the creation of the memetic primer–the information transference node, part of the genetic loom–without having to make it entirely from scratch. You bastardized one part of our TARDIS–our time travel device, coom on, tell me you haven’t forgotten that–in order to build another part.”
He pauses and holds out his hands.
“Okay, rewinding. Every Time Lord–that’s what you and I are–has a Chameleon Arch dedicated to recording their biodata, and rewriting it should the Time Lord elect to do so, to the point of being able to change species, with or without changing appearance. You and I have both elected to do this before, to become human. That’ll coom back to you, trust me, in both cases the, ah, consequences, were … vivid.”
From the Doctor, he retrieves a little fobwatch, which happens to be singed along the edges.
“So yeah. You broke your biodata nodule, genius. Trying to extract some of it and put into a loom, so your half of the baby we’d planned to make together was accounted for.”
He pauses, and squats in front of his husband, face just laden with wryness.
“Did you joost call me scary, and then stimulating, implying that this arouses you? Oh jolly good. You’re definitely cooming back from the accident, now.”
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.”
Echoes of Missy, who is, somewhere, smiling.
Her hands slide away the moment the piano lid closes, harmonious in the way that it all seems to stop at once. Her singing, the fog around them, the last humming tune of the piano strings resonating inside the instrument. It all just stops, still, silent, peaceful. Then he’s shaking his head next to her and she understands, and he shudders and she does as well.
In tandem, it seems, they release what it was that had been holding them moments ago. She can feel it leaving him, leaving herself, like a breath held betwixt them. Like the past, over and done.
She leans into his arms as they surround her, solid and sure, real- an anchor as they’d always been and would always be. Her own arms circle his abdomen, smaller frame settling perfectly against his as she buries her face against his throat. She inhales deeply and her eyes roll shut, letting the scent of home wash over her. He’s her home now. He has been since they’d met, and lost though they both had been they’d finally found their way back.
The closeness, the way he clings to her and she to him, her smaller fists clenching the fabric of his shirt and only a little satisfied in knowing it will leave wrinkles behind, it makes her blood tingle. She doesn’t interrupt him once the entire time he’s speaking, not even as he peels himself from her and her from him- not as he cups her cheeks against his own palms, her hands finding purchase this time in the fabric at the front of his shirt, unwilling to let go.
Instead she waits with a smile on her face and her watery eyes filled with affection. She waits until his eyes wander through corridors of the past, echoes of the future, both at once or none at all. They’d changed their fate together but the memories remained at the epicenter, the causal nexus. Them. Then her hands untangle from his shirt and lift to mirror his position, cupping his face with slender fingers trailing the skin atop his cheekbones. Her left ring finger still holds a crimson band with golden writing, only smaller than it had been, scaled down to fit properly.
“I love you, too. I’ll say it every minute’a every day, f’I ‘ave to, but I love you, husband. Both my ‘earts are yours, forever, jus’ like they always ‘ave been. An’ look’it us now. Together, an’ happy. Married. Properly bloody married, can y’believe it? The Doctor an’ the Master in the TARDIS, as it should be.”
She lets out a soft, watery chuckle and her eyes turn upward.
“Think a cleanse sounds brilliant. Can relocate the piano, tear the rest to bits with our bare hands, f’you like.”
Her eyes eventually came full circle and she looks at him full on once more, chuckling softly again at his list of demands- an echo, just as those corridors had been. Just as the room itself, the Vault, currently was.
“First off y’ve already got a license t’be a brain surgeon, just not on Earth. Second, there’s a stockpile’a Jelly Babies in the galley an’ you’re welcome to ’em any time. Third… I’m not gettin’ you a kangaroo, but I might be persuaded t’get you a… k o a l a b e a r.”
Her grin at those last two words is positively impish.
“ … 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.”
Icarus 