“You know, sometimes, I think that’s why they left me behind on that game station. Figured I’d be fine in the end, I’d figure a way out of there one way or another. I mean, sure, he was regenerating, I get that. But then nothing after that? Yeah, I was never gonna need them. Not like I need you.”
He’d be marinating in bitterness, save for the way Jack chose to conclude. As is, Koschei can’t help but exude warm affection. He reaches out to caress Jack’s ever-soft cheek, familiar and gentle.
“Yeah,” is all he says: happy to confirm to whom he belongs.
Jack takes that hand that reaches for him, turning it palm up to kiss it and pulls him close. “Unsure on the ‘saviour’ part, but that deep, existential need? Yeah, that’s got you written all over it. So come here, hubby, and give us kiss.”
“Well I’m sorry, but I DO believe you’ll have to apply for a husbandly snog.”
Koschei pulls coquettishly away from Jack, stands and saunters to the other end of his TARDIS.
“We accept submissions to the slotbox at the front of the vehicle, or, if you prefer an expedited process, you may woo the recipient directly.”
Koschei registers his daughter’s inconsolable sorrows instantly. His teeth tap together like an infuriated little mongoose’s. He snatches up his laser screwdriver from the TARDIS console, and draws Ophelia against him, kissing her hair, and rubbing her back.
“That’s alright, Button.”
“MURDER solves a great many of life’s heartsaches.”
Ophelia clings to him, doing her best not to cry as he comforts her.
“It’s not alright… he’s a stupid boy that I got a stupid crush on and…”
She pulls back, registering what he said and what he was holding.
“Dad, no… no, we can’t murder him! Not just because I was being stupid and fell in love! I can’t have you kill for me!”
“Oh, VERY well.”
He disarms the laser and places it back on the console, but with the grudging grumpiness of a child being foresworn off dessert.
Thankfully, however, this focuses Koschei on Ophelia’s immediate emotional needs.
“My little love, the human swine doesn’t deserve you. Men are really only good for lifting heavy stuff and killing spiders, anyway. They’re rubbish at everything else. It’s not a reflection on your worth. Look, tell me what would make it feel a little better.”
He seizes her face, drags his hands down her cheeks, down her impossibly little neck; how can a storm also be so fragile?
His fingers irrigate little red marks down her shoulders, down her arms, then coil around her waist and return up the terrain of her back (that back, it’s held so many burdens, so many w o r l d s of burden!) and his fingers find their home in her hair, and his fingers dig into her scalp, his nails scratch her scalp, and he takes fists of her hair, and he grinds his teeth and he weeps, because sometimes, g o d , sometimes it’s too much for them to resonate on the same frequency so close together, sometimes it’s too sublime, so joyful that it pitches itself close to desolation, sometimes he could sit on the ground and sob at the notion of her existence. Sometimes.
But Koschei loves his Theta Sigma.
He is a round-faced brown-eyed bearded silver-blond, and he is also a black-haired blue-eyed little boy who failed and urinated in his robes in front of a gaping wound in time and space, but who loved, loved, LOVED the boy who took him from there, and held him high with words and dreams.
“Let me fill you,” he gasps, against her ear, “let me fill you and warm you, let me protect you, let me cease to be except with you … !”
Master: I will NEVER stand with the Doctor! Master: *sees picture of Thirteenth Doctor* Master: Master: Master: Master: Alexa play God is a Woman
Icarus 