Blast. She wanted to do that, too. Finally wrap her arms around him, finally take him all in, just– have that moment. Have that moment together, the moment that they hadn’t seemed to have had in- WELL. Centuries, at the least.
But the man pulled back, leaving her with little choice but to cockily raise her eyebrows and step forward. SERIOUSLY?
And then those words. They made her PAUSE, lingering AWKWARDLY where she was. Alrighty then, that was not something that she expected—-
With a couple of moments of silence from The Doctor, her attention was diverted anywhere but his gaze – mainly to her shoe, shifting it over the concrete floor. And when it became a little too long a pause, she finally spoke up.
“JUST.. wanted a hug.”
Pouting. She was definitely pouting. Not fair.
The Master stops dead in his tracks. He stares down at the crestfallen little creature who holds within her endlessly spawning galaxies of hope and wonder. This amazing little beastie is his oldest and dearest friend. And all he need do is set aside every ounce of malicious or even merely sporting intent, and indulge her.
That is, yield.
Well.
Koschei of House Oakdown has long prided himself in being the one person that Theta Sigma of House Lungbarrow cannot wheedle into submission! Why, he’s a savage bastard, a killer of thousands, a wrangler and monger of chaos! He’s …
hopelessly smitten.
He sighs, and it’s the sound of centuries of sighs, coalesced into one great sound of preposterous frustration.
And he opens his arms, and penguin-waddles right over to her.
“Oh, do get a shift on. Did you miss the memo? You’re my favorite thing.”
She scrunches her nose as she’s pulled close, a small little yelp at that pinch which makes her press even closer to him. Her fingers dance up the buttons of his shirt before booping his nose.
“You exist. Simple as tha’.”
“ … . Oh dear. I dunno how I can turn that into anything snide or naughty. You’ve won this round, Doctor.”
He snatches her hand and kisses her inner wrist. And then her nose, as well.
She laughs like a braying donkey at having won this round, though she knows damn well that he’s still the reigning champion here.
“Nah, it’s just a way to get you to kiss me more.”
Koschei’s hands trail up and down his Theta’s dainty back. Oh, deceptive. She’s still an unbridled storm. He kisses her tenderly, and then passionately.
“SO, Doctor! What d’you say to this: I confiscate that fez, stash it somewhere in the TARDIS, and one of these days, when you least expect it, appear on your bed, naked, with the fez, and only the fez, covering my nethers?”
This is the Terror of the Cosmos speaking to his oldest and best friend, and he fancies himself clever indeed.
“Mmmmmmmhmhm,” the Master hums at the delectable greeting.
He draws the Doctor near, feasting upon her, his face doting, more wholesome than most might believe him capable. It could not be clearer that he delights in every beauty and blemish that make the Doctor who she is.
“What did I do to deserve that, hmmmm? Tell me so I can do it more.”
He pinches her bum, and rubs her lower back warmly.
She scrunches her nose as she’s pulled close, a small little yelp at that pinch which makes her press even closer to him. Her fingers dance up the buttons of his shirt before booping his nose.
“You exist. Simple as tha’.”
“ … . Oh dear. I dunno how I can turn that into anything snide or naughty. You’ve won this round, Doctor.”
He snatches her hand and kisses her inner wrist. And then her nose, as well.
send “DON’T GO!” and an emoji to see my muse’s reaction to yours: 🌧️ saying it while crying.
The moment his Theta charges into the room openly weeping, the Master spins with an expression of affectionate alarm. Hers is a sanguine disposition. And maybe there are days she suffers deep gray melancholies, and he must wrap his form around hers and shield her as best he can from herself. But great tearful displays are an exceptional rarity.
So it’s with concern and a readiness to slaughter whatever wounded her that he exclaims,
“Hearts, what is it?”
“Darling. C’mere. Breathe with me?”
I’m not going anywhere. Not for our whole lives. Tell me what’s wrong.
OKAY – socontactwas a huge mistake on her part, she would fully admit to that. But in the same breath, she wasn’t just going to let THE MASTER up and go again. No. Despite his future being Missy and the events that went on between them then, it did not mean that she was just going to give up. Not now, not again, not ever again. The problem was, was that this regeneration of the Master was more violent. More prone to fighting back. Which was obvious by the emotion that he blasted her with.
Oh and that? That made her angry. That made her very angry.
Resorting by shoving his hands off her head, she shifted to a much safer – one step away – from The Master, but that did not mean that the fire burning in her eyes was any less intense. She may be a bubbly bundle of joy, this regeneration, but when pushed, she was not going to take it. Which meant, even when he tried to appear intimidating, all she did was stand her ground, not taking her eyes off him for even a moment.
“SHUT UP.”
“You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to do that. I have tried countless amounts of times, I have offered you help, I have stopped you when you’ve gone too far and I have loved you. We have BOTH made mistakes, Master, and I’m TRYING to own up to that. But the past is the past and it does not dictate what the future holds.”
“But here’s the thing, here’s the cherry on top of the cake. You want your reason? I’M NOT HERE TO CHANGE YOU THIS TIME.” And that was the point where she stepped in, closer to The Master, to meet his attempted intimidation level and then some. “I’ve tried for far too long to get you to be like me. I’ve tried so hard to get you to see the universe for how BEAUTIFUL it really is. And while I am certainly NOT giving up on you, I AM hoping to establish some sort of resemblance to our past friendship. You are special to me in EVERY sense of the word. And for you to just ASSUME that I’ll discard you like you don’t mean anything to me is INSULTING, not only to me but to every moment we’ve spent in each other’s company.”
There was a pause – a beat – where she took a breath.
“And don’t you DAREgo in my head again.”
He doesn’t retaliate when she tears free of his touch. But he could swear there’s a mental SNAP at the severing.
The desperation with which the Master had flooded the Doctor’s mind had not, irony of ironies, been an attempt to invade or overcome her. Rather, it was the typical desperate refrain behind his bombast: see me. Hear me. Really, truly understand the boy you once knew.
So her warning, on the heels of overwhelming emotional confession, stings with particular pique: {SHUt UP … don’t you DARE go in my head again.} Like doing so was an attempt to hold her down, strangle her, rape her, and not what it truly was: an spreading of arms, a clumsy and ashamed bearing-of-witness. A “look what I’ve got.” A show of open palms.
The one transgression he cannot forgive in himself:
Surrender.
“No, but … just now. I was trying to share with you. I was trying to share … me.”
“Like that time. that time in the rubbish heap. That Christmas. You heard them. You heard the Drums. The thing that Rassilon did to me that muffled everything else I could hear. That music of the cosmos, that you wanted me, Missy, to hear. Violence was my baptism from the age of eight, but I wanted to share that it’s GONE. At least, the CAUSE is gone! Doctor… .”
He speaks her name like a mystic after a week of fasting, who has gained visions of holiness. At the same time, the timbre of his voice is that, simply, of a child smitten with a favorite playmate.
“Doctor. If the past has no bearing on the future, not even as a lesson, or a legacy … . then does that mean I was right? Does that mean I’m irrelevant?”
Does that mean you’ll cast out the people you claimed you’d carry, in favor of anesthetizing yourself, and making the present and the future easier to face?
Does that mean I’m irrelevant
to you?
“ … ‘I carry your hearts. I carry them in my hearts.’ ”
The Master recites cummings, and falls silent, as close to giving up as he has ever been.
send “DON’T GO!” and an emoji to see my muse’s reaction to yours 🔗 saying it while holding or pinning my muse.
The moment the Doctor seizes the Master’s suit lapels–the instant she slams him against the side of the big, blue, beautiful TARDIS–he retaliates. One sharp motion and he’s released himself, shoving her back. He leers into her space now. He seizes her face in his hands, and SPILLS telepathic energy–pure, unqualifiable, animal emotion– straight from his mind into hers.
When he speaks, he roars:
“Then DO!!!! PROVIDE!!!! A REASON!!!”
The disarmingly soft features of this particular Master contort with fury. That anger is not a visceral discomfort. No, it’s a malignant rage that’s calcified over centuries of abandonment, rejection, alienation and grief. It’s the soul-crushing pressure of why was I not enough? magnified exponentially by relentless, mutual miscommunication. It’s the product of a falling-out between best friends, mangled in translation, to a little boy who pissed his robes at the sound of drums in front of the Untempered Schism, failed his test, and disgraced House Oakdown, and from then on, from then on, always, peered around every corner of life, paranoid to be found out as a Nothing.
No one made him feel more like a Something, and, subsequently, like a Nothing, than the Doctor.
He bridles, in all his five feet, nine inches and under 160 pounds of Time Lord. He tries to make himself look bigger, crueler. He only succeeds in looking some mixture of agitated and terrified.
“How’m I to believe you? That, what, now you’re Hope’s Messenger? That you accept responsibility for the people you snake-charm into traveling with you? That you’ll not discard me like rubbish tomorrow, or else turn me into a project, a thing to fix, a notch in your Savior Complex Belt? EY? C’mon, Hearts. I know you. Novelty will always defeat commitment, when it comes to you.”
Icarus 