Oh God, that tug at his shirt might as well be a scythe blade embedded in both his hearts, dragging him down. He remembers it too. That’s the problem, the Master’s memory as as far-ranging as his foresight. He remembers being sought and he remembers the long gentle frightened face of the boy seeking him and he remembers the smell of them together in bed, two innocent children smelling of honey and damp earth and long hours of running in sunshine, holding hands in one of their school beds, because Theta Sigma’s nightmares were dogged and relentless and Koschei felt for once like a source of something wholesome and good.
And every instinct the Master has is telling him to lunge, to punch, to assault, to hurt. Hurt him before he sees he hurt you, hurt him before he sees he hurt you, hurt him before he sees he hurt you.
[ I would rather d i e than beg YOU! } Stupid, stupid words, so unfortunate and true. SHIT!
All the fury festering beneath rushes forward with violence, in a single wordless strangled agonized ROAR, as he strikes the wall over the Doctor’s head. He strikes it so hard that it bloodies his knuckles. He cradles his fist to his chest, and grinds his teeth at the whitewater sound in his ears.
It’s the death throes of resisting every magnetic, gravitational pull of every pore and tissue and muscle and firing synapse and feeling in his being, to just. Sit down. And BE. With his best friend.
So that’s when he sits down, in that space the Doctor provides, and drops his head between his knees.
A long silence ensues.
Then,
“I’m sorry, too,” he surrenders. “For the girl. The girl out there. Your girl, Bill. There’s a thousand and one reasons why you care for her, I know. I took … . considerable time getting to know her, after all.”
He sits upright, and wipes his eyes.
“Did I ever tell you how long I was trapped on Gallifrey, after that day you spared me, and I you?”
He smiles at the Doctor, and it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Seventy years.”
The Doctor sees the sudden violence coming with just enough time to squeeze his eyes shut and tense his whole body in anticipation for a strike that might finish him off.
If that punch was delivered directly to his chest, he wouldn’t have blamed the Master for even a moment. A punch is the least he deserves.
His eyes open slowly at the slight dip of the mattress next to him. He glances over, wary now that the Master might be prone to another outburst of violence, and that this time he may not be so lucky as to avoid it being directed at him.
“I will forgive you. Not yet. I can’t yet. But one day, I will forgive you. As I always do and always will.”
He gives a minimal shake of his head at the question. They haven’t discussed it very much, he and Missy, apart from the occasional comment made. It hasn’t been something she’s wished to bring up, and he hasn’t pushed for information.
“Seventy years,” he repeats, raising his eyebrows. Longer than he spent with River, and roughly the same amount of time he’s spent on Earth with Missy. From living it himself, paying attention to the passing of time, he knows that despite their lifespans, seventy years is not a short time. It doesn’t feel it. He knows how the years can drag.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, because he doesn’t know how else he can respond. What is he to say? He is truly sorry, and though he is curious, he knows better than to ask questions when the Master isn’t necessarily in the best of moods.
He eyes the bloody fist. The sight of it makes the golden energy running so close to the surface burn in sympathy. He resists letting it take him over, because he knows he can heal from this if he’s only given time, but perhaps he can expel some of it — relieve the pressure slightly. Usually it would be dangerous to do so, but if he’s given something to actually focus it on, it might not be so bad.
The Doctor takes the Master’s hand gently in his own and concentrates.
“Let me do this,” he says quietly, waiting just a moment to give the Master chance to pull his hand away. Although he will be insistent on trying to heal him, he won’t do anything the Master actively doesn’t want him to do.
“You miss the point. I don’t want your apology: I want your faith.”
The Master draws so near the Doctor that his breath stirs his friend’s hair, like a thousand hot scarlet birds disturbing the drift of a cumulus cloud. He holds his bloodied hand jealously. It’s as though all he has left is his pain, all he has left to claim as his alone, and he won’t relinquish it just yet. It’s his sole bargaining chip.
“I want you to … to understand that it’s nothing unique to Missy or me that divides us as a person. It’s how we’ve been treated over time. Environment over innateness, and all that. She might’ve thrown Bill in a meat grinder to get at youifshe still had fresh wounds from seventy years of abuse and neglect! And maybe if I’d spent the same!!! Identical!! Amount of time!!”
He pounds his other fist insistently; redness spreads to his other palm.
“Then I might be the one knocking me out to untie you–oh yeah, you think I don’t know she’s on your side? I know–and weeping with remorse… hell, shit, I wish I had a companion to give you now, to show you I don’t want to always be the one hurting you.”
He has no idea Clara exists, beyond the vague outline described by Rassilon during his torments ( “the Doctor will come to Gallifrey to save that human, but not you!”); he has no idea he’s predicting his own would-be future, when Missy was new.
But he looks down at his hands, and he knows now that they’re both in agony. He knows that he’s becoming more and more disturbingly self-destructive lately.
Almost sheepishly, at last, he offers his hands to the Doctor’s, and to its sunset glow.
She sounds both certain and uncertain at the same time. She’s certain she knows him, but she’s not certain of what she actually wants to say. She’ll later put that down to the dizziness and the headache coming on. She has just regenerated, after all – it’s understandable. Happens almost every time, one way or another.
“Oh! You’re the one.” With that, the Doctor promptly staggers forward and catches herself just before she actually falls over. She’s awake, just about.
His hand extends. His finger, just his index finger, brushes the Doctor’s lips.
The sensation of fresh regeneration energy electrifies. The hairs of his arm stand on end; he may has well have stuck his finger straight in a socket. Yet the jolt is far from unpleasant. It sends, through the charged link from one bondmate to the other, a myriad of images, scents and sounds: their shared memories. At times an inferno, at times a placid sea. Inimitably, them.
“It’s just me, Doctor. You’re correct.”
He braces her by the shoulders; the electricity grows still more intense.
The Master’s mind is capable of conquering tangled knots of physics, metaphysics and technology, and yet when it comes to relationships, at least those not rehearsed and performed for the sake of a scheme, he is a bull in a china shop: all emotion, no nuance. Clumsy, a peculiar mixture of manipulative and childishly ardent. Scared of losing things, so he smashes them, and self-thwarts.
He has no idea what he’s doing.
So he must compress and simplify what the Doctor is saying, and he hovers there over the Doctor’s form as he does so.
His mind reaches a solution in time. The Doctor’s essential message:
{ I chose you because you chose me first. You showed me you care about me, so I chose you. }
Ah. That he can process. And his hearts twinge with the return of that softness.
But the remarks in defense of imprisoning Missy raise a few recurrent hackles.
“Missy wants to be good in Missy’s way. If you’re not looking for that, then you’ll miss her efforts entirely. Your version of good is not absolute. It’s vain, arrogant, and sentimental.”
Chilling, perhaps, to hear Missy’s own words echoed by her previous self.
“But more important to this conversation: I AM Missy. If you had shown me an ounce of the interest you show her, maybe I might be in your little accelerated ethics workshop. Maybe I’d be making you proud. But I was stuck on Gallifrey for YEARS after I saved you. And you never came for me.”
There are tears in his eyes.
The Doctor stares up at him now while he talks, all fidgeting paused. That final point hurts because it’s true. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to get across how truly sorry he is for any pain he has ever caused the Master.
He holds himself together, still and quiet, until he sees the tears in the Master’s eyes. Then he finds that he can’t stop his own from brimming.
His cold hand reaches up and grips the front of the Master’s shirt. He tugs. It’s weak but insistent. He remembers reaching out for Koschei, whether he was there or not, when they were young and restricted. Nightmares have plagued the Doctor always but never more so than as a child. He remembers leaving his bed, or sometimes just looking up to find him already there, reaching out and tugging at his friend’s shirt; forbidden and secret, as all their touches were at that point. Come here, the action said. Come here and stay with me, please. I need you here. I want you to stay.
“I want you to stay,” he says, because their words and their touches aren’t forbidden anymore. He’s allowed to say whatever he wants. No – not just allowed – FREE. He’s free to do that.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Every instinct he has is telling him to look away and hide his face, or even try to leave the room, because there are tears in his eyes and his voice makes that obvious enough. No.Doctor, be STRONG. That’s what the Master has said to him, so that’s what he needs to do. He needs to let him see him the way he’s learned to let Missy see him over these years. But it’s so much easier to develop openness and willingness to share his emotions over seventy years than just a few minutes, here and now.
The Doctor shifts an inch to the side, leaving the Master at least enough room to sit down. That’s all he asks, just some hint that he’s not in such a hurry to leave as before.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t-” he stops and starts again. “I’m not going to make an excuse because nothing can excuse that. I left you there and I’m sorry. I would do anything to take it back. But I can’t. All I can do is make it up to you. Please let me try.”
Oh God, that tug at his shirt might as well be a scythe blade embedded in both his hearts, dragging him down. He remembers it too. That’s the problem, the Master’s memory as as far-ranging as his foresight. He remembers being sought and he remembers the long gentle frightened face of the boy seeking him and he remembers the smell of them together in bed, two innocent children smelling of honey and damp earth and long hours of running in sunshine, holding hands in one of their school beds, because Theta Sigma’s nightmares were dogged and relentless and Koschei felt for once like a source of something wholesome and good.
And every instinct the Master has is telling him to lunge, to punch, to assault, to hurt. Hurt him before he sees he hurt you, hurt him before he sees he hurt you, hurt him before he sees he hurt you.
[ I would rather d i e than beg YOU! } Stupid, stupid words, so unfortunate and true. SHIT!
All the fury festering beneath rushes forward with violence, in a single wordless strangled agonized ROAR, as he strikes the wall over the Doctor’s head. He strikes it so hard that it bloodies his knuckles. He cradles his fist to his chest, and grinds his teeth at the whitewater sound in his ears.
It’s the death throes of resisting every magnetic, gravitational pull of every pore and tissue and muscle and firing synapse and feeling in his being, to just. Sit down. And BE. With his best friend.
So that’s when he sits down, in that space the Doctor provides, and drops his head between his knees.
A long silence ensues.
Then,
“I’m sorry, too,” he surrenders. “For the girl. The girl out there. Your girl, Bill. There’s a thousand and one reasons why you care for her, I know. I took … . considerable time getting to know her, after all.”
He sits upright, and wipes his eyes.
“Did I ever tell you how long I was trapped on Gallifrey, after that day you spared me, and I you?”
He smiles at the Doctor, and it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Okay, I’m asleep,” Koschei mumbles slyly, grinning palpably against the Doctor’s neck. His chuckle comes from a deep rich smoky place, and thrums against the Doctor’s chest.
He lurches upright, eyes closed, with a foolishly trusting smile that is a once in many millennia rarity, and kisses his way up to the Doctor’s nose, from chin to lips to the final destination. Then he nips the nose tip, wrinkling the bridge of his own nose in delight, and sinks back down.
“It’s the same for me, y’know.”
“You know, I was under the impression that people who are asleep tend not to respond to conversations.”
He smiles against the kisses, his own eyes closed in delight at the attention.
“Or kiss people. But then, you always were extraordinary, weren’t you?”
The Doctor’s arms encircle him, squeezing gently. You are the most precious thing I’ve ever held. His hands move very slowly up and down Koschei’s sides, like he’s trying to memorise him, the shape of him, how it feels to hold him. You’re real, this is real. He hardly even realises he’s doing it.
Koschei’s four limbs encircle his Doctor. It’s not enough to snuggle; he must literally seep into all the nooks and crannies and burrow there, savoring the person who is his every reason for all things.
He knows he’s being admired; knows it from habit, from their childhood. It was always Theta Sigma whose wild insomnia kept him up gawking at his beloved and softly chattering about what colors might exist beyond the eye’s perception, and whether inanimate objects had feelings, while Koschei slipped into deep slumber, the only time and place when he felt anything akin to peace.
So he smiles, just a little bit, enjoying the attention; he can hear whispers from the Doctor’s mind: beautiful.
“Ohooo. Professor. You flirt,” he slurs, and flashes teeth.
He rolls on top of the Doctor then, heavy and boneless, and shoves his face up under his chin, pinioning him.
“Bad dreams,” is all he mumbles, at last, by way of explanation, before dozing back off.
“You,” he begins, accusatory but teasing, “Weren’t supposed to hear that.”
Not like he minds much. He’s far too content to make any kind of complaint.
The Doctor’s arms are loosely wrapped around him at first, while he lets him move and find whichever position he’s decided is best today.
“Bad dreams,” he repeats, one hand slowly rubbing his back while the other arm holds him close. “Well,” he murmurs, possibly to himself and possibly to Koschei. He doesn’t know if he’s awake or not. “How can I go anywhere now? Clearly I’m needed here most of all today.”
He enjoys being held so securely, feeling the weight on top of him. There’s absolutely no way he can feel alone like this. Even if the whole universe were to suddenly despise him, it would be okay, because he has this. His Koschei. The love of this one being is worth more to him than the rest of the universe combined.
“I hope you know that.” He’s hardly even speaking, more whispering, and he doesn’t know how much of what he’s saying will actually reach him. It gives him confidence, though. He’s always found it easier to speak from the hearts when there’s less chance he’ll be heard. “I hope you know that I would give up everything if it meant I could still have you. You’re essential to me.”
The Doctor shifts, kissing his head softly. “I love you. And I hope you’re asleep.”
“Okay, I’m asleep,” Koschei mumbles slyly, grinning palpably against the Doctor’s neck. His chuckle comes from a deep rich smoky place, and thrums against the Doctor’s chest.
He lurches upright, eyes closed, with a foolishly trusting smile that is a once in many millennia rarity, and kisses his way up to the Doctor’s nose, from chin to lips to the final destination. Then he nips the nose tip, wrinkling the bridge of his own nose in delight, and sinks back down.
It’s not a bad idea. It’s a very tempting one. He doesn’t have any lectures today, but he does have a big pile of work to get through. Perhaps it could wait. He knows how he’d rather spend his time.
He gazes across at the Master, his own eyes open just enough to see him clearly. He’s beautiful. The Doctor finds himself growing less and less willing to get up out of bed and leave. How can he, when the alternative is to stay here, warm and comfortable, in the presence of someone he loves so much?
“I suppose…” he murmurs, a gentle hand brushing the Master’s cheek. “That wouldn’t be so bad. Are you okay? Any particular reason you don’t want me to go, or are you just too comfortable to allow me to move?”
Koschei’s four limbs encircle his Doctor. It’s not enough to snuggle; he must literally seep into all the nooks and crannies and burrow there, savoring the person who is his every reason for all things.
He knows he’s being admired; knows it from habit, from their childhood. It was always Theta Sigma whose wild insomnia kept him up gawking at his beloved and softly chattering about what colors might exist beyond the eye’s perception, and whether inanimate objects had feelings, while Koschei slipped into deep slumber, the only time and place when he felt anything akin to peace.
So he smiles, just a little bit, enjoying the attention; he can hear whispers from the Doctor’s mind: beautiful.
“Ohooo. Professor. You flirt,” he slurs, and flashes teeth.
He rolls on top of the Doctor then, heavy and boneless, and shoves his face up under his chin, pinioning him.
“Bad dreams,” is all he mumbles, at last, by way of explanation, before dozing back off.
“I know I said you had a stupid round face, but it’s not. Not stupid, I mean. It is round. Good round. It’s good to kiss.”
He pauses, deciding whether to continue and risk revealing too much emotion at once.
“I think you’re brilliant. You make me very happy.” There’s so much more he could say on that subject, but he’ll say it later through the adoring way he gazes at him.
Koschei removes his glasses and sits up out of the Doctor’s lap. He cups his face with practiced gentleness, caressing the barely-encroaching wrinkles of his oldest love’s face. Every crinkle in the Doctor’s skin, he loves individually and well.
“My clever, clever ploy. To get you to prove your own pretty words.”
He kisses him then, with more fortitude, more enthusiasm, deeply. There’s the softest suckling sound as he pulls back to study his face.
“You’re the one I’ll always want.”
A nuzzle.
“Even if you called me Stupid Roundface, and even if I called you Grandad.”
He whirls on his heel, a vortex of agonized reprisal.
“YES, I DO.”
I understand. I understand what it’s like to be left behind, to be forgotten so many times that you are weary, body and soul, and just want it all to end.
Because Y O U put me in that position. Over and over and over and over and over and OVER!
But then mydamned capacity to survive takes hold, and here I remain.
“Doctor, be STRONG.”
Be strong like me.
“I don’t want you to ‘keep your mouth shut.’ I want to know WHY. Why is it me? You couldn’t have looked more repulsed when you saw me if you’d tried. ‘Eugh, there’s the dirty beast that saved my life from Rassilon! Hope I don’t catch anything from it!’ You didn’t even know what I’d done to your human yet! How’m I supposed to believe you spoke to me out of TRUST, then? I’m not the one you groomed to perfection in your little Vault of Rehab, now, AM I? So just tell me why. Did you tell me because I was just in the room when you felt like talking? Or are you punishing me, because I took Missy away from you?”
He stalks right back to the Doctor’s side; it’s his blessing and his curse, that he will never ever escape the gravitational pull of his other self. He kneels, and cocks his head, and narrows his eyes.
“Because this? This feels like punishment. Or is it really so unfathomable to you that your death would… .?”
He grinds his teeth, and rolls his head on his neck, in one wide self-soothing animal circle.
“ …would r u i n me?”
A pause as the weight of the confession absorbs.
And then the Master removes his coat a second time and hands it to the Doctor. This time he is the one who cannot look.
I would stay with you while it happened. Either way. I would stay with you.
Surely you know.
Surely.
He doesn’t uncurl from his position for a good few minutes while he collects his thoughts. The ones that make sense, anyway. There’s a fair few that don’t make any sense at all. (I love you, I’m scared, I want you to lie with me, I’m not strong.).
“That look was not repulsion. That was shock. Horror, maybe. But not repulsion. You don’t repulse me, you terrify me. Probably not for the reasons you think, though.”
The Doctor sits up a little bit against his pillow, pauses to take a few ragged breaths because even the slightest movement requires effort from muscles that are begging him to just stay still. He takes the coat and holds it to his chest like it gives him vital life force, lacking the energy to support his own weight and actually put it on.
“I’m not punishing you. Do you really think I’m capable of thinking up a plan to ‘punish you’ in this state? You were in the room, and I did talk to you because you were here — but it wasn’t just luck that you were here, was it? You chose to stay. You told me so. You stayed to look after me. I trusted you, because yes, you were here at the right time, but because you chose to be here. You didn’t have to be. I wouldn’t have told Nardole, had he just been in the room for a few minutes.”
Your death would ruin me. The confession sounds like one torn straight from the hearts, and he struggles to really let himself believe that it’s genuine. If he lets himself believe that, he might open himself up to the possibility of false hope. False hope that he is more loved than he feels. As yours ruined me, he thinks but doesn’t say.
“Unfathomable — perhaps. Less so with Missy, because the time she spent with me in the Vault — well, she could’ve left any time she liked. She and I both knew that. She was there because at hearts, she does want to be a good person and do the right thing.”
He sighs and looks down the bed for something else to focus on. The two of them, who see each other for all they are, and they can’t look at each other. It’s so stupid. He moves his feet, watching the covers lift slightly, and regrets it instantly. He hates not being able to fidget very much for the pain it causes.
“I suppose it seems unfathomable that my death would bother you so much because you seem to detest the idea of your future self reaching this point with me. The two of you did beat me up and then tie me to a wheelchair. What was I supposed to think?”
I want my friend back. But I’m not sure you want me.
"I’m sorry. For everything.“
You chose.
You chose.
The Master’s mind is capable of conquering tangled knots of physics, metaphysics and technology, and yet when it comes to relationships, at least those not rehearsed and performed for the sake of a scheme, he is a bull in a china shop: all emotion, no nuance. Clumsy, a peculiar mixture of manipulative and childishly ardent. Scared of losing things, so he smashes them, and self-thwarts.
He has no idea what he’s doing.
So he must compress and simplify what the Doctor is saying, and he hovers there over the Doctor’s form as he does so.
His mind reaches a solution in time. The Doctor’s essential message:
{ I chose you because you chose me first. You showed me you care about me, so I chose you. }
Ah. That he can process. And his hearts twinge with the return of that softness.
But the remarks in defense of imprisoning Missy raise a few recurrent hackles.
“Missy wants to be good in Missy’s way. If you’re not looking for that, then you’ll miss her efforts entirely. Your version of good is not absolute. It’s vain, arrogant, and sentimental.”
Chilling, perhaps, to hear Missy’s own words echoed by her previous self.
“But more important to this conversation: I AM Missy. If you had shown me an ounce of the interest you show her, maybe I might be in your little accelerated ethics workshop. Maybe I’d be making you proud. But I was stuck on Gallifrey for YEARS after I saved you. And you never came for me.”
The Master sits looking at the Doctor, who doesn’t want to be looked at, piercingly, knowing him mercilessly, loving him recklessly; this Master cannot be Missy, the clever cool lioness lying in wait, for he can conceal his claws to be a charming politician, but not when the person with whom he is most infatuated, the person whom he has adored since the day they met, is in the same vicinity. He’s a tuning fork picking up the Doctor’s vibrations, and they are loud, and they are violent, and never more so than when the Doctor is SILENT.
So it’s with a look of knowing, bleak exasperation that the Master smiles, the longer the Doctor faces away and strives to ignore him.
‘That’s not your choice to make.’
It’s in that moment that the Master realizes there is no honor, no privilege, in being the Doctor’s confidante. He was just HERE, when the Doctor was tired and discouraged enough to be candid. Just in the right place at the right time. Any show of steadfastness or loyalty or kindness rewarded with scoffing, yet again, with rebukes and cold shoulders. There is nothing special about him at all.
It was just a fluke.
“So you’ve told me that you plan to kill yourself, you’ve entrusted ME with that, and nobody else, and I’m the one who’ll have to watch it happen, because it’s ‘your choice to make.’”
He pauses, to gasp a laugh, and slowly shake his head.
“You’ve put me in that position, Doctor. Nobody but you.”
He leans in very close, lips a wounded sneer.
“I didn’t realize you were auditioning for MY part.”
{ You selfish prick. }
He stands, withdraws his jacket violently from the Doctor’s grasp. He dons it with brusque efficiency.
“Do excuse me.”
“NO.”
His hand shoots out to grab at the jacket. It’s partly an instinct to try and keep hold of something when it’s snatched from him, but he’s also saying no, you’re not excused.
It hurts, but he holds tight. Don’t go.
“I’m sorry I’ve burdened you with my trust. I thought you’d understand.”
He could rant and lecture for hours, but he doesn’t. For one, he hasn’t said he’s made his mind up. And he doesn’t intend to actually go out and cause his own death, he just wants the choice not to prevent it, should this body succumb to its injuries. Humans have that choice, sometimes. If they’re old and have lived a long time and don’t want to continue living. Why shouldn’t he have that option too? A life he is forced into continuing will hardly be worth living at all. If he hasn’t chosen to carry on, what will be the point?
The Doctor stares up at him, a plea for him to just understand forming in his mind – but he stays silent. Words get him into trouble. He’s in enough of that as it is. Besides, if he starts trying to explain why it is that he doesn’t feel able to continue, he might reveal too much emotion at once, accidentally. Every inch of his soul feels battered and bruised to match his physical body, aching and bleeding under his clothes.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t say I’d made my mind up, though. I just need time. I told you because I thought you’d want to know. I’ll keep my mouth shut next time.”
He lets go of the Master’s coat. Doctor, Doctor — let it go. Time enough. He can’t win them all, especially if they don’t want to be won.
He sinks back into the bed and turns away once more, closing his eyes. At a distance he’d give the impression of an attempt to sleep, but the way his fists clench around the sheets, the expression on his face with his eyes shut a bit too tightly to look calm — no. He’s not trying to sleep. He’s trying to forget.
He wants to forget the rushing of emotions going on in his mind, forget the pain spreading through his whole body, and forget the horrible argument he’s just had with the person he wants to just hold him. Isn’t that what anyone wants when they’re hurting — to be held by the person they love most in the universe? He could find Missy, but he doesn’t have the strength to leave his bed. All he has are his own thoughts and the face of the Master currently beside him — and he’s not even sure he has him anymore.
He whirls on his heel, a vortex of agonized reprisal.
“YES, I DO.”
I understand. I understand what it’s like to be left behind, to be forgotten so many times that you are weary, body and soul, and just want it all to end.
Because Y O U put me in that position. Over and over and over and over and over and OVER!
But then mydamned capacity to survive takes hold, and here I remain.
“Doctor, be STRONG.”
Be strong like me.
“I don’t want you to ‘keep your mouth shut.’ I want to know WHY. Why is it me? You couldn’t have looked more repulsed when you saw me if you’d tried. ‘Eugh, there’s the dirty beast that saved my life from Rassilon! Hope I don’t catch anything from it!’ You didn’t even know what I’d done to your human yet! How’m I supposed to believe you spoke to me out of TRUST, then? I’m not the one you groomed to perfection in your little Vault of Rehab, now, AM I? So just tell me why. Did you tell me because I was just in the room when you felt like talking? Or are you punishing me, because I took Missy away from you?”
He stalks right back to the Doctor’s side; it’s his blessing and his curse, that he will never ever escape the gravitational pull of his other self. He kneels, and cocks his head, and narrows his eyes.
“Because this? This feels like punishment. Or is it really so unfathomable to you that your death would… .?”
He grinds his teeth, and rolls his head on his neck, in one wide self-soothing animal circle.
“ …would r u i n me?”
A pause as the weight of the confession absorbs.
And then the Master removes his coat a second time and hands it to the Doctor. This time he is the one who cannot look.
I would stay with you while it happened. Either way. I would stay with you.
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.”
He grinds his teeth.
“I’m rather not keen on you copycatting me.”
He rolls his eyes and puts his water down. ‘Like hell you’re fine’. Yeah, he’s very much aware of that; he just didn’t expect to be called out on it so directly. He supposes he shouldn’t have expected anything else. This is his oldest friend, and he does know him better than anyone else.
“Alright, well, if not-fine is what you want to call it, go ahead. But as far as anyone else is concerned, especially Bill Potts, and including your future self, I’m FINE. One person’s concern is quite enough for me.” And yours is the one I’ve chosen.
The Doctor watches him as he moves closer, but ignores the strange mix of instincts he has to both push him away and pull him closer all at once. The closer someone is, the more easily they can hurt him. Physically and emotionally. He would do well to remember that. But the urge he has to grasp him by the shoulders and hold him right where he is or closer — that’s one he’s not sure how to handle. It comes with the voice that whispers ‘please don’t ever leave me alone, I’m hurting and you’re the only person in this universe who understands’; the same voice he chooses never to speak aloud because it would reveal too much. He’s unable to make a decision between his two instincts, so grips the sheets either side of him instead, and lies still.
“That’s not your choice to make.” He speaks seriously but calmly. His death is, and has always been, something that isn’t finality or closure for him. Because he dies, and he is reborn into a new body, and he must work himself out all over again. Just for once, he wants that concept to mean the same as it does to those without the gift or curse of regeneration. “It has to be my choice. I can’t do this again. Why is it never my turn to rest?”
He doesn’t expect an answer. Doesn’t want one, really. He turns on his side, facing the other way. Hiding, again. Don’t look at me.
The Master sits looking at the Doctor, who doesn’t want to be looked at, piercingly, knowing him mercilessly, loving him recklessly; this Master cannot be Missy, the clever cool lioness lying in wait, for he can conceal his claws to be a charming politician, but not when the person with whom he is most infatuated, the person whom he has adored since the day they met, is in the same vicinity. He’s a tuning fork picking up the Doctor’s vibrations, and they are loud, and they are violent, and never more so than when the Doctor is SILENT.
So it’s with a look of knowing, bleak exasperation that the Master smiles, the longer the Doctor faces away and strives to ignore him.
‘That’s not your choice to make.’
It’s in that moment that the Master realizes there is no honor, no privilege, in being the Doctor’s confidante. He was just HERE, when the Doctor was tired and discouraged enough to be candid. Just in the right place at the right time. Any show of steadfastness or loyalty or kindness rewarded with scoffing, yet again, with rebukes and cold shoulders. There is nothing special about him at all.
It was just a fluke.
“So you’ve told me that you plan to kill yourself, you’ve entrusted ME with that, and nobody else, and I’m the one who’ll have to watch it happen, because it’s ‘your choice to make.’”
He pauses, to gasp a laugh, and slowly shake his head.
“You’ve put me in that position, Doctor. Nobody but you.”
He leans in very close, lips a wounded sneer.
“I didn’t realize you were auditioning for MY part.”
{ You selfish prick. }
He stands, withdraws his jacket violently from the Doctor’s grasp. He dons it with brusque efficiency.
Icarus 