The Master is too comically indignant to come across as truly menacing. He squints at the Doctor as he approaches, lip curling with comedic irritation as his oldest friend attempts with his clownishness to seduce him.
The poke to his sides earns a grunt too deep and loud for his diminutive frame, as though the spirit within can scarcely be contained in this small and boyish body.
“Get off me with your philandering hands! AND YOUR POETRY, you cad! You obnoxious thing, you really do play a risky game, thinking you can probe at the tiger’s cage then compliment its stripes!”
It couldn’t be clearer that, for all his dirty talk and bombast, this particular Master is exceedingly Victorian: from his slang, to his vaguely steampunk-goth attire, to the laws of courtship by which he abides.
“Don’t touch me, you sly heathen, I!”
But once their foreheads touch he’s ceased his pompous thrashing. And he’s smiling like a fool.
“Oh, golly.”
************
Every single protest, every indignant utterance, it only serves to entice the Doctor and make him continue on. It’s an unspoken truth between them that the Doctor, in all his ridiculous palavering, in all of his unstoppable flippancy, is only attempting to goad the reaction he is currently getting and that it will only serve to propel him into even more imaginative narrations.
Dark eyes quaff down the Master’s annoyance and let it billow into the raging inferno of the Doctor’s insufferable boyish glee. Once their foreheads are pressed together and the incensed thrashing ceases, the Doctor’s own smile can rival that of his best friend, his hearts. The expression quickly transforms into that of an-almost-mostly-sincere apology, his voice soft and his accent taking on that of his younger, more Victorian-inclined Eighth self.
“My most sincerest of apologies to my peerless paramour, whose virtues have so strangely taken up my thoughts. I humbly request that you forgive me my transgressions, for I find myself undeniably crushed in your presence, uttering nonsensationals and walking about as filly and foal, and have behaved as though I am a man who worships his creator.”
A hand lifts to cradle the Master’s cheek against his palm, though he remains as he is, with his forehead pressed to that of his love.
“You are my fierce champion, and I but your willing prize.”
Oh, sometimes he does hate him so.
The Master’s eyes snap open, black and bright and fierce, as he listens to every syllable his presumptuous lover declares. Knowing irritation does battle with affectionate delight. He suppresses the urge to slap him, or knee him in the groin, for donning a Victorian poesy: suppresses it only because he knows it will further amuse his idiot.
His idiot.
Oh dear, the very thought tips the scales in favor of joy.
“Bollocks, my ‘virtues,’ you shitbag,” he counters, defiantly crass. “Oh, you do know you’re good, don’t you. You do know I’m wrapped ‘round your pinky.”
He turns his cheek into the Doctor’s hand and nuzzles it, eyes falling closed again.
“I love you, oh, you know how I love you.”
The Doctor can see it, of course- the moment physical violence is thrust aside in favor of not wishing to entertain the Doctor further. Whatever his love had been contemplating, he was sure it would hurt, immensely so, and that idea for some willfully unforeseen reason makes the corner of his mouth twitch for the breath of a moment. One day his beloved will give in to that temptation, and on that day the Doctor will cry out victorious- and of course in pain.
His nostrils flare, his jaw clenches tightly and the inside of his mouth expands behind sealed lips in an attempt not to allow any jovial laughter to escape at the Master’s words, at his vulgarities, at his backward admissions that weren’t-quite-admissions. Hate and love- what a fine toothed line that is, and teasing at that line had always been this fantastical dreamer’s most cherished prerogative… next to, of course, his unending vocabulary.
“Such vulgarity. I dare say it gives me a thrill when you speak that way.”
The nuzzle at his hand causes his thumb to trace the Master’s cheekbone softly, and he lets out a soft hum of agreement and contentment both. The put-on accent is henceforth banished, and he speaks as he always has with this face and this voice.
“Yeah. I do know. Just as you know how I’m wrapped around yours..”
A brief pause as he swallows visibly, pushing past the twinge of fear as he does in rare moments when it becomes less important than the action of properly saying it. Now is one of those moments and though it comes out a bit faster than he’d like, a bit more breathless, it comes out all the same.
“Just as you know how I love you, too.”
Koschei is stripped of all armor at once, perhaps all the more endeared that his Theta speaks with such evident and breathless fear. For it’s known, it’s very much known, how hard it is, the act of speaking those three words.
He finds himself uncommonly shy, in that moment, eyes downcast.
“You didn’t have to say it,” he attempts to reassure, leaning greedily into the petting of his face.
Fingers smooth down nonexistent wrinkles on the Doctor’s shirt.
“Really. As you say, I know. I do.”
The remark of vulgarity earns a positively fanged grin.
“It’s bloody well fun, from time to time, to exact a role reversal, eh?”
Hands reach up to ruffle brown bangs into further disarray, affectionate and just slightly needy, always parched for more of his best friend’s follies, always entirely besotted at the exact same time as he can cut through every illusion and see the little boy he fell in love with eons ago. It’s a marvelous double-think, to be able to believe ardently in the persona, and also know the truth beneath it: to know this mysterious wanderer through and through, and relish him all the more.
“In any case, I’ll never forget hearing you say those words.”
The Master is too comically indignant to come across as truly menacing. He squints at the Doctor as he approaches, lip curling with comedic irritation as his oldest friend attempts with his clownishness to seduce him.
The poke to his sides earns a grunt too deep and loud for his diminutive frame, as though the spirit within can scarcely be contained in this small and boyish body.
“Get off me with your philandering hands! AND YOUR POETRY, you cad! You obnoxious thing, you really do play a risky game, thinking you can probe at the tiger’s cage then compliment its stripes!”
It couldn’t be clearer that, for all his dirty talk and bombast, this particular Master is exceedingly Victorian: from his slang, to his vaguely steampunk-goth attire, to the laws of courtship by which he abides.
“Don’t touch me, you sly heathen, I!”
But once their foreheads touch he’s ceased his pompous thrashing. And he’s smiling like a fool.
“Oh, golly.”
************
Every single protest, every indignant utterance, it only serves to entice the Doctor and make him continue on. It’s an unspoken truth between them that the Doctor, in all his ridiculous palavering, in all of his unstoppable flippancy, is only attempting to goad the reaction he is currently getting and that it will only serve to propel him into even more imaginative narrations.
Dark eyes quaff down the Master’s annoyance and let it billow into the raging inferno of the Doctor’s insufferable boyish glee. Once their foreheads are pressed together and the incensed thrashing ceases, the Doctor’s own smile can rival that of his best friend, his hearts. The expression quickly transforms into that of an-almost-mostly-sincere apology, his voice soft and his accent taking on that of his younger, more Victorian-inclined Eighth self.
“My most sincerest of apologies to my peerless paramour, whose virtues have so strangely taken up my thoughts. I humbly request that you forgive me my transgressions, for I find myself undeniably crushed in your presence, uttering nonsensationals and walking about as filly and foal, and have behaved as though I am a man who worships his creator.”
A hand lifts to cradle the Master’s cheek against his palm, though he remains as he is, with his forehead pressed to that of his love.
“You are my fierce champion, and I but your willing prize.”
Oh, sometimes he does hate him so.
The Master’s eyes snap open, black and bright and fierce, as he listens to every syllable his presumptuous lover declares. Knowing irritation does battle with affectionate delight. He suppresses the urge to slap him, or knee him in the groin, for donning a Victorian poesy: suppresses it only because he knows it will further amuse his idiot.
His idiot.
Oh dear, the very thought tips the scales in favor of joy.
“Bollocks, my ‘virtues,’ you shitbag,” he counters, defiantly crass. “Oh, you do know you’re good, don’t you. You do know I’m wrapped ‘round your pinky.”
He turns his cheek into the Doctor’s hand and nuzzles it, eyes falling closed again.
He’s floundering before he hears those words. They cut like a blade through the thick murky gelatinous ennui and gloom. The Master is older now as he looks up at his perkily dapper boy, his enthusiastic and eccentric dreamer. But his is still the face that first squared off with this face of the Doctor, and he will forever belong to this Doctor, in some deep and inalienable way. And so when that statement truly sinks in, the Master rubs his face against the Doctor’s, feline as ever, and pauses when their temples meet, and closes his eyes and savors Home.
“Doctorrrr.”
The Master drapes himself across his best friend and ersatz archenemy. He bats at his wild roving brown bangs. He emits a plaintive moan. Quietly he compels whatever the Doctor is tinkering with right out of his hands and tosses it aside.
“You’ve ignored me for twenty whole minutes.”
Welcome to life at the side of your Koschei, Theta Sigma.
The Doctor doesn’t react at first as the Master approaches him. The letter he’d written had been placed strategically in such a way as to hide its’ true nature at first glance but reveal the secrets laying therein upon inspection. He knew the Master would investigate it and once invested would see to it to read it in its’ entirety. The other’s presence here and now was evidence enough already that the letter had been discovered.
His eyes lifted as the Master stepped onto his feet, the act causing his hearts to swell with both familiarity and nostalgia and at once his hands meet the Master’s hips to keep him in place. The words that meet his ears set his flesh on edge, those fingers at the Master’s hips twitching just slightly in anticipation of what might come next. What comes is unexpected. His head bows at the other’s touch and his eyes flutter closed momentarily when forehead touches forehead.
The gesture is a comfort, as is the Master standing on his feet, but the words are what takes him by surprise. He is unsure for a plethora of unnamed seconds whether or not the Master is being serious, sarcastic, or simply testing the waters to see what the Doctor will respond with and thus, he is rendered temporarily speechless. His initial response is, of course, that this is impossible. There are too many risks, the first and not even the most complex being that of a paradox that would serve up a veritable feast for the Reapers. The automatic idealistic response causes his stomach to fill with shame and his insides to squirm.
He doesn’t voice them for this reason.
After a moment’s contemplation he chooses his words slowly, carefully. “I am whole, with you here, my hearts. You complete me, you always have.” The tone is genuine, and he continues. “It’s the centuries between that haunt me. Those ghosts refuse to settle and the more my mind is freed from the chains of the past the more memories there are, the more ghosts there are haunting the shadows. We may not be there physically, but the knowledge that I may never deserve your forgiveness, your love, your company, it-…” He lets out a ragged breath. “I spent so long in the dark, believing you were the one who needed saving, so much energy making you believe that as well, but it was me all along. I was the one who was lost.”
The hands at the Master’s hips squeeze tightly, needing to be anchored to the here and now lest he lose himself in the maelstrom of the past swirling through his mind. The normally bright cerulean is dark and pitched with navy. It has been a bad day. A bad few days, if he’s honest, and perhaps that’s what prompts the words that come next.
“I want to. Damn it all and damn the consequences, I want to go back. I want to go back and take your hand and never let it go. I want to prevent my younger self from ever venturing up that mountainside and instead go to you for comfort as I always should have done. I want to run with you, not from you. I want to risk a paradox so great it could swallow the Universe whole if it means I could prevent the fissure that came between us. If it means I could prevent hurting you and hearts, if you are serious, if that statement was genuine then I beg of you to take my hands and be quick before I change my mind. Take my hands and we’ll say sod the Universe, sod the timelines and together we’ll go back and get it right.”
The Doctor is still giddy and the fact that the Master is so delightfully flustered by his rapid-fire revelations that weren’t strictly revelations at all in combination with the hastened kiss and subsequent prodding to the side of his abdomen, well, that just makes it all the worse- or the better, as it were. The Doctor had lost the debate, but oh how he had just won in turn. The flush ever-present in the Master’s cheeks makes the Doctor feel something akin to vertiginous, soaring ever higher the more the Master fails to speak.
The feigned acrimony combined with legitimate near-perplexity of the Master’s demand causes another small bout of dare he admit, giggles, to escape his lips and all at once he is that dreamer, that boy standing on the mountainside with grass beneath his feet and his hearts right there in front of him. He can’t help himself- it’s always been this way and he finds, just as he always has, that he needs more. More of this, more of the happy, the banter, the moments that are far too few and far too far between.
“A demented- a demented cockatoo! Ha! Oh, oh yes, that settles it, you malevolent little koala bear, I shall never stop. Not now. Not once. Not for a moment, and do you know why? Because. You. Like. It.”
He says the last four words slowly, with a decidedly risqué tone and a waggle of his eyebrows. Unrelenting, the Doctor’s hands both immediately dive to prod the Master’s sides with deft fingers and as he does so he chuckles softly before those hands come to rest once more on the Master’s hips. He’s still smiling affectionately as he speaks again and his voice is soft, genuine, despite the mischief shimmering in his rich chocolate gaze.
“You are, you know. You’re breathtaking. Stunning. Clever. Venturesome. Powerful. Sovereign. Master of my hearts.”
The Doctor leans in and presses another brief kiss to the Master’s lips before pressing their foreheads together once more.
“But you know what else you are? Mine. Just as I’m yours, you are mine.”
“I am NOT! A KOALA BEAR!”
The Master is too comically indignant to come across as truly menacing. He squints at the Doctor as he approaches, lip curling with comedic irritation as his oldest friend attempts with his clownishness to seduce him.
The poke to his sides earns a grunt too deep and loud for his diminutive frame, as though the spirit within can scarcely be contained in this small and boyish body.
“Get off me with your philandering hands! AND YOUR POETRY, you cad! You obnoxious thing, you really do play a risky game, thinking you can probe at the tiger’s cage then compliment its stripes!”
It couldn’t be clearer that, for all his dirty talk and bombast, this particular Master is exceedingly Victorian: from his slang, to his vaguely steampunk-goth attire, to the laws of courtship by which he abides.
“Don’t touch me, you sly heathen, I!”
But once their foreheads touch he’s ceased his pompous thrashing. And he’s smiling like a fool.
Another impossibly gentle ‘whoosh’ of air leaves the Doctor’s lungs as that one simple word, so like the others before yet holding such deeper meaning, is uttered. Before he realizes it he too is transported, to another time, another place where he almost confessed what needed confessing. Where he nearly bared himself and oh, oh how he should have. Fixed point or no, brought together and apart, together and apart like the ebb and flow crashing against the shoreline, oh how he wishes he’d been braver then. He wishes his cowardice and stubbornness hadn’t thwarted his attempts to say more than a pondering of what he would have become without the Master.
He knew, of course, as he knows now. He wouldn’t exist at all. Theta would not be without Koschei. That, too, like themselves, was a Universal constant. He would not have survived the brutality of his adolescent years were it not for the Time Lord in his arms.
That simple ’yeah’ says more than he himself ever has, in all of his utterances in any of his forms. It is beautiful and breathtaking, just like the man who’s said it and the words that follow, the tears that are shed, his hearts clench tightly and he knows. He knows. He knows the things which cannot be confessed because he knows his Koschei so well, and it does not repulse him. Contrary, it never has. His own tears fall more freely, equally as silent and bareft of any dramatic influence. He is simply Theta Sigma, bared now as he wouldn’t allow himself to be then, belonging to the keeper of his hearts the way he was always meant to. His arms draw the Master closer, a silent request that is immediately accepted and carried out. The fear is gone, dust in the billowing winds of centuries wasted.
Too much time has passed for him to waste a moment of it now, nor ever again, and he clings near-too-tightly, not allowing a single breath of distance between them. His mind is open, his skin warm beneath the Master’s touch, countless hours of barriers, armor, defenses all falling away as mental signatures combine and leave a feeling of relief in the wake of combination. Tendrils outstretch, seeking and drawing in and it’s a wonder how he ever manages to go without this mental contact. Aloud, words fail him, his chosen medium rendered to ash in this moment of startling and brilliant clarity.
Inside, his thoughts speak for him and allow the Master, his Koschei, his home, his Universe, to hear and understand and know. Partly a repetition of the other’s own words to him in troubled moments, partly his own sentiments, all wrapped in a diaphanous blanket of pure and unadulterated love. The words within their swirling tendrils are base, simple, the artform gone and leaving behind just the words and meanings as before. Promises anew.
We’re not there anymore. The past is done and the future waits. Together. I’m sorry. For all the hurt, pain, terror, blindness, broken promises, I’m sorry. I understand. What you did, I understand. I know. I accept. I forgive. Forgive me too. Missed you every moment. Never leaving again. I remember. Stay, as I stay, stay with me, Hearts. I belong to you. Will always, have always. I’m yours. My other half. Soul of my soul. My Koschei.
Koschei murmurs a laugh. He remains otherwise resolutely immobile. A long moment passes, in which nothing but their pure minds communes. In this perfect silent bliss, free of the drums and their poisonous associations with death, insufficiency and solitude, he hears every syllable nudged across the ever-closing bridge between them. He hears, and realizes that he could happily never emerge from this place again.
In the silence there is a sound accompanying Theta’s words: the distant high hiss, the lull, of a seatide, peppered by something like glass chimes, in incandescent harmony, like the sound of light on the ocean at sunset. The sound is eternal; it’s their music, together. The sound is neither Koschei nor Theta, but the entropy of both.
Tears continue to fall indiscriminately, like the little boy beneath thousands of years of calcification is leaking through. His hands rest on Theta’s shoulders; he guides him down to kneeling, until they are both on their knees, then gently, without looking once, guides the pair of them down to the TARDIS grates, on their sides, foreheads still connected.
We’re not there anymore. I understand, too. Just, when you run, take me with you, or run toward me. I trust that you will. I know, I accept. I do forgive you, too. Now you are me, and I am you. What can I do but stay with myself? My other half. Soul of my soul. Life of my life. My every happiness. My Theta. I’ve got you, sweet my love. I’ve got you. You are not alone. I love you. I know you love me.
He opens his eyes, then.
“ … Hi.”
“Crybaby.”
A gentlest tease, as plentiful tears stain his own face.
The Master falters, angrily bright moist eyes refocusing on the Doctor’s features. When he realizes that what he sees is sincerity, his whole face transforms. It’s not a snarl, it’s open. It falters. It trembles.
“ … really?”
The Doctor’s eyes are trained on him, fixated, burning in fact and he is filled with a wondering, an ember of hope flickering deep down and he is scarcely able to breathe. The anger at first makes his stomach twist, ache, and he feels his eyes moisten and a sharpness in his chest that makes him yearn to immediately take it back. Perhaps he was mistaken in asking this, perhaps he had asked wrong. But he waits, speechless, until the Master focuses on him and sees that he isn’t joking. Not at all.
The transformation of the Master’s face causes the agony that had begun to seep into his chest to abate immediately, and he nods dumbly for a moment before finding his voice.
“Y-Yes. Really. If- well, I mean if you wanted to…”
His voice is filled with the insecurities the Master’s initial reaction had set inside of him, so unlike him, so much softer and unsure. His throat starts to close but he clears it and forces the question out again. Vulnerable down to the bones, by choice- how about that.
“I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment you placed your hand in mine, and it would be my honor if you would marry me, Koschei.”
The Master scrubs a hand down his face, brow to mouth, and exhales shakily, as the Doctor struggles to speak. That furtive intensity is all he needs for confirmation that this is no half-witted declaration, no prank, no deceit.
If you wanted to, he says! If you wanted to!!!!! As if being the property of this perfect incandescent comet of a soul isn’t his own secretest yearning!
Theta’s best friend cannot help but snort uproariously and then laugh a watery, incredulous, faint laugh. It dies quickly, though, as he searches the Doctor’s features for a sign of abated struggle. The palavering never ebbs.
“You, shh. Shhhh. Yes, of course. Yes the day we met, yes a thousand years ago, yes twenty minutes ago. Yes now, yes tomorrow, yes always.”
He steps onto his feet, that unending gesture of feline invasion, pushes his face under his chin, inhales and exhales, eyelashes tickling the Doctor’s neck as his eyes squeeze closed in hopeful astonishment.
“D’you really think I’ll ever outgrow the compulsion to follow you? My answer is yes, always.”
There are more words, always more words, hovering, waiting, in queue on his tongue as though his mind can’t stop producing them. Always thoughts, always talking, always feeling the impossible need to fill the silence with something. With anything. Those words tremble on his tongue and falter as his best friend, the keeper of his hearts, tells him to quiet, to settle and immediately he obeys. His mouth snaps shut and the never-ending rigmarole ceases at once. The thoughts do as well. The ripple and vibration of ever-present perpetual motion both within and without calm, as the sea calms on a breathless day, a smooth and glassy surface.
Relaxed. Silent and at peace, blessedly unmoving.
The word yes echoes inside of him though, the only word left, the only word that matters, the only phrases of any importance to him being those dancing from the lips of his Koschei. His focus is unwavering and intense, his entire genetic structure at pause until the answer, again and again is given and received. Then his respiratory bypass disengages with a soft and shuddering ‘whoosh’, his binary vascular system lunges into overdrive and at once his blood is tingling with euphoria. The corner of his mouth ticks upward.
He said yes… He said yes!! He said yes!!!!!!! The stars are colliding, supernovas are billowing, the entirety of the Creation, of the initial point where matter meets matter and bursts forth with the makings of the Universe itself, oh– it holds nothing so brilliant, so breathtaking, as this moment does.
The invasion of the Master’s feet atop his is a welcomed and deeply cherished one, arms lifting to immediately encircle the keeper of his hearts, one hand at the back of a shoulder and the other cradling the back of his head. He’s grateful in that moment for the nestle of the Master’s face beneath his chin as the water in his eyes trails down his cheeks. For a few more long moments he’s silent and when he finally does speak, there is nothing about it that can be mistaken for simple prattling.
“I’ve always belonged to you, y’know. This’ll just make it official. I spent so long being afraid of what that meant, of myself, and–.. I’m not afraid anymore. You’ve given me back myself, and you’re here. You’re still here and-…”
A brief pause, and only nine words follow, sincere and filled with so much affection that it causes his voice to waver just a fraction. The palavering has ended, in this moment, in favor of actually saying something that matters. Words with meaning. Words that are spoken, felt, and meant down to the marrow.
Koschei pulls back just enough to examine the face of his Theta as the words of promise cross the distance from the Doctor’s mouth to the Master’s ear. A memory comes unbidden and natural. It fills him with an ancient, unpracticed, and gnawing need, one to reassure.
“ … Yeah.”
The same pause, the same single word of undeniable confirmation, as the day the Doctor wove words interweaving them –(“Wonder what I’d be without you”)– simply, yeah. Yes. Everything you said, I, the Master, happily acquiesce, and agree with. I surrender in faith to you.
Words are the Doctor’s chosen medium. Actions are the Master’s.
So he lets himself weep, for the sweet idiot who’s already weeping to have him. Quiet, undemonstrative tears, so antithetical to the grandstanding manipulator he has been.
“I do know. I was just waiting for you to remember. I’m sorry … I made you wait so long, work so hard, to prove it. I missed you, Thete. Even when I had you old and rotting in a wheelchair, a …birdcage, even when I . .. hhhhah. Did things I still don’t have the courage to confess, in a future you might never see. I missed you, I miss you now, because there are still inches of distance between us. Please help me, Hearts.”
Because you love me, want me, bear me: Draw me nearer.
He leans in again, slides his arms up inside the Doctor’s pinstripes and blue buttonup, beneath the fabric, up his bare shoulder blades, savoring the warmth, savoring the harmonic frequencies inside their two minds as touch-telepathy twines two halves of a whole ever closer. He closes his eyes again, and basks with the simple, devout pleasure of a cat in sunshine.
The Master falters, angrily bright moist eyes refocusing on the Doctor’s features. When he realizes that what he sees is sincerity, his whole face transforms. It’s not a snarl, it’s open. It falters. It trembles.
“ … really?”
The Doctor’s eyes are trained on him, fixated, burning in fact and he is filled with a wondering, an ember of hope flickering deep down and he is scarcely able to breathe. The anger at first makes his stomach twist, ache, and he feels his eyes moisten and a sharpness in his chest that makes him yearn to immediately take it back. Perhaps he was mistaken in asking this, perhaps he had asked wrong. But he waits, speechless, until the Master focuses on him and sees that he isn’t joking. Not at all.
The transformation of the Master’s face causes the agony that had begun to seep into his chest to abate immediately, and he nods dumbly for a moment before finding his voice.
“Y-Yes. Really. If- well, I mean if you wanted to…”
His voice is filled with the insecurities the Master’s initial reaction had set inside of him, so unlike him, so much softer and unsure. His throat starts to close but he clears it and forces the question out again. Vulnerable down to the bones, by choice- how about that.
“I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment you placed your hand in mine, and it would be my honor if you would marry me, Koschei.”
The Master scrubs a hand down his face, brow to mouth, and exhales shakily, as the Doctor struggles to speak. That furtive intensity is all he needs for confirmation that this is no half-witted declaration, no prank, no deceit.
If you wanted to, he says! If you wanted to!!!!! As if being the property of this perfect incandescent comet of a soul isn’t his own secretest yearning!
Theta’s best friend cannot help but snort uproariously and then laugh a watery, incredulous, faint laugh. It dies quickly, though, as he searches the Doctor’s features for a sign of abated struggle. The palavering never ebbs.
“You, shh. Shhhh. Yes, of course. Yes the day we met, yes a thousand years ago, yes twenty minutes ago. Yes now, yes tomorrow, yes always.”
He steps onto his feet, that unending gesture of feline invasion, pushes his face under his chin, inhales and exhales, eyelashes tickling the Doctor’s neck as his eyes squeeze closed in hopeful astonishment.
“D’you really think I’ll ever outgrow the compulsion to follow you? My answer is yes, always.”
The Master falters, angrily bright moist eyes refocusing on the Doctor’s features. When he realizes that what he sees is sincerity, his whole face transforms. It’s not a snarl, it’s open. It falters. It trembles.
Icarus 