She flops down on their (BRILLIANT) purple couch after the latest adventure, as has become the new custom. However, she’s not buzzing with excitement this time, she’s curled up in a melancholic ball, waiting for him to come wrap himself around her as he always does.
“Koschei,” she says quietly. “Tell me I did the right thing.”
Other TARDIS passengers have made the Master aware of what transpired with Yasmin’s grandmother in the Punjab of the 1940s. Certainly not Yaz herself, who was melancholy, and then insisted upon a visit to her nan’s which even Koschei, with his dearth of natural empathy, could readily comprehend.
Ever since that moment, he’s been waiting for the Doctor to come to him; going to her would seem too much like gloating, which, for once, is expressly against the Master’s aim.
The instant she joins him, he places aside his book. He glances askance at her. And when at last she talks, he turns and collects her close. His answer is yes, but he cloaks it in a hard truth:
“What is right is rarely if ever what is easy.”
When I resisted your overtures, over and over, for peace between us, I thought it was what was right. And nothing was more excruciating.
The words come out like ripping off a scab, even though the Master strives with every fiber of his independence-loving, ire-filled soul to appear intimidating.
“After all,” and even less successfully, to look smug and dark, “it’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
“What?”
The Doctor turns, her goggles perched on the top of her head. Her expression is filled with confusion and something like hurt that has not entirely processed.
She isn’t sure what brought it up, what brought him to this conclusion, but… whatever it is, her hearts ache at the very thought of it.
“Koschei, I–” She licks her lips and clears her throat as she tries to force her mind to work, to understand what he’s saying and why.
“I love Yaz, ‘course I do. But… don’t you understand? Love… it comes in many forms. It’s… it’s the one thing I believe it, the only thing that I am absolutely certain in.”
There aren’t many certainties in our lives, but what we have… I have certainty in us. Love. In all its forms. Love is a form of hope. And like hope, love abides. In the face of everything. We’ve found love in each other. We believed in it, we fought for it, waited for it…
“Oh, love… Yasmin is wonderful, and I do love her, but to say that I should be with her and give you up is saying I should die of thirst if I’m to breathe air to live.”
She sets her work aside and approaches him, her hands held out, palms up.
“I love you. I belong to you. I don’t want anything but you.”
He doesn’t have the reservoirs of hope, faith, or natural compassion that she has.
Koschei of House Oakdown has only ever known how to loathe or adore, with every ounce of his being, and stay the course until ever last atom he can commit to a cause or person has disintegrated. He only knows how to commit himself fully, how to overpower, how to eclipse.
All that he has going for him is his devotion.
I cannot bring you what a human can. I cannot give you their folly or their innocence. I cannot be good for you, the way they can. I cannot be a novelty to you, a new stimulation. I can only endure, and wait, and love you.
That I can do, with every broken piece of my two hearts.
I belong to you, too.
He takes her hands–little hands, housing such a powerful being. She’s an angel. She’s achild. She’s acomet.
Hope-Bringer. Life-Bearer.
Everything, his everything. His only everything.
She always will be.
“You’re my hero, Hearts.”
And he speaks the one remaining wish of his hearts, the one thing missing from their perfect life, that he knows he will never, ever achieve:
“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.
“I’m fine,” he growls. “Don’t overdo it.”
I love you. Please see me. Please.
“You say that as though you and I are two opposites, forcing her to choose between us — but that’s not…it’s not what I intended. I didn’t mean to make it like that. It’s not what I wanted. I never wanted to fight you. I don’t want to fight you now. You are her. Can’t you be on my side, too?”
He realises the prediction of the future, but knows that even if the Master might not retain his memories, he can’t say anything. Whatever he might think to say probably wouldn’t be of any use anyway; the neural block is still there, and attempting to think about the companion whose face he can’t remember has become really quite painful. There’s a flash of something in his eyes there; grief, or regret, or sorrow. It’s gone the moment he’s able to hide it.
The Doctor takes his hands and closes his eyes. The glow surrounds their joined hands, and his expression settles into one of absolute focus. He must be so careful now, to let out only what is required. One slip and he’ll stumble into regeneration before he’s given his body a chance to heal on its own. He knows he can heal, with time.
His plan works,mostly. It’s successful in that he’s able to mend the physical damage to the Master’s hands, which is his main goal. Healing the Master releases enough of the energy to relieve the pressure, and he no longer feels so restless. The pulsing of the energy under his skin has faded, for now. It’s not as painful to hold back.
The only problem now is that he feels very, very tired.
“I know you don’t want my apology, but I am sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t give you the time you deserve. As for faith… well, I’ll give you what’s left of my time but I can’t promise it’ll be long or what you hoped for. And I need you to answer a question for me first. It doesn’t have to be now. You can give it time.”
His eyes are half-closed already, but he fights to keep them open long enough for this.
“Why did you do it? She deserved so much better from the universe. And from me. She was my student. All she wanted to do was learn, and all I wanted to do was teach her. Help her. Show her the universe. Why did you take that away from her?”
The Master seethes a sigh through his teeth.
“That’s what I just said: I am her, and given the same circumstances as she experienced, I would react the same way as she did. Or at least in a comparable vein.”
They’re in agreement, then. What a strange sensation. Strange enough that he falls inert long enough for the Doctor to successfully mend him.
The words that follow pierce him through with a deep existential sorrow that he knows will never mend. Not so long as he lives. The Doctor, dying, even to live again: even when he was the one to fling this intergalactic legend from a high precipice, to force regeneration, there was that gaping maw of self-annihilation involved in seeing his best friend destroyed. Now is one such moment: like watching a monument crumble, or a star collapse.
It makes him willing to answer the crucial question immediately.
“Because I wanted there to be one case, just one, in all the universe, where you couldn’t save someone. And what better person than me? What better revenge for being left behind, than to leave you right back?”
His smile is filled with bitterness and rue.
“I wanted to be past saving, and I got what I wished for, now, didn’t I? So I guess it makes sense. Missy lobbing me on the back of the head. I guess I am self-destructive after all. Anything to end you. And it’s only recently become … . apparent to me, how mad that is. How …”
Stupid.
“It won’t bring you peace to know this, but I didn’t think of her. Of Bill. I judged it all … worth the loss that anyone in between us would suffer. I don’t value the lives of others the way that you do, Doctor. Perhaps you’ll be motivated to live a little longer if I express interest in learning.”
He places the same hand the Doctor healed on the forehead of his perennial savior.
“Don’t be daft, you old potato,” the Master sasses straight back. “You just stand there in those sexy glasses and look pretty. I’ll do the hard work.”
He draws his laser and nudges the Doctor, hip to hip, then swings around and fires his laser off directly into the nasty, large alien insect’s head.
“Here’s hoping we don’t disturb the hive overhead. And don’t get huffy about me killing the worker drones. Long as we don’t get the queen their kind’ll live to sting another day.”
Boy, boy, my boy. Mine. My boy in the red grasses. The red grasses of Gallifrey, Gallifrey on my mind incessantly today. Is that because of you ?
The Master’s features devolve from a moment of exquisite, soft recollection, to one of unabashed hatred. But it’s not just hatred. It’s anguish.
He snatches the sonic from the Doctor’s hand, and flings it to the ground, and stamps on it.
“And WITH what? Your NON-weapons? Your alleged hope? I had hope once. I had hope for US. What happened to our PACT, Doctor? Did my ambition disgust you? Were you scared by the way I tried to violently protect you? You could have told me. I might’ve compromised. I might’ve done a great many things differently, had you not LEFT.”
And made me feel certain of my dispensability.
Doctor. Help me.
He retreats a pace, feeling more raw and violated and conflicted and alone than he has felt since that Christmas when unsteady resurrection energies flowed through his starved body.
Save me.
He rakes his fingers through his own hair.
Would you still love me if I killed thousands more?
“I’m not going to smile, so you can stop looking at me like that. With those eyes. I know you’re doing them.”
He’s determinedly not looking at the Master’s beautiful round face, at the eyes he know have the ability to see right through him. Having fixed himself firmly in a sulk because his project, a second hybrid guitar, isn’t going well, the Doctor is sat crossly in the middle of their bed. His frustration has already faded almost to its usual level again, and now he’s mostly just sulking for show. The second he looks at the Master, his facade will break. He can’t allow that.
Naturally this means that the Master must “do them,” that is, fix his impish sparkling dark eyes all the more determinedly on his oldest and best friend’s face.
Naturally this means he must insinuate himself like a warm soft Slinky between the failed guitar and the Doctor, and stretch out his neck, and squash his nose into that of his beloved.
Naturally this means he must diabolically chuckle while smooshing the Doctor’s face between his hands.
There’s no need to argue anymore I gave all I could, but it left me so sore And the thing that makes me mad Is the one thing that I had
I knew, I knew I’d lose you
You’ll always be special to me Special to me, to me
And I remember all the things we once shared Watching T.V. movies on the living room armchair But they say it will work out fine Was it all a waste of time?
Cause I knew, I knew I’d lose you
You’ll always be special to me Special to me, to me
Will I forget in time, ah You said I was on your mind? There’s no need to argue No need to argue anymore There’s no need to argue anymore
As he always has, the Master summons the courage to look directly at the Doctor when the Doctor chooses to reprimand or avoid him.
“I believed that sort of thing for a very long time, but if you hadn’t convinced me otherwise, I would still be festering with rage and bitterness. And pain. And I would not be here to comfort you. I know you think you only want things, and never need them, but … . Doctor. Let me return you the favor.”
He sighs. “You’re making it really hard for me to get out of this one, aren’t you? Fine. We can…discuss. I suppose. You win.”
It’s the thought of the Master not being here that’s gotten to him. The anticipated conversation is one the Doctor isn’t looking forward to, and it will be painful and shameful and embarrassing, and any number of negative emotions that he doesn’t know how to deal with, but it is infinitely preferable to being alone.
“I’m sorry,” he starts, “That I didn’t try to tell you about it on my own. You deserve to know. You’ve been patient and loving to me, especially when I’ve needed it. And you deserve better than me trying to avoid conversations.”
“Good of you to notice.”
The way the Master looks at the Doctor, his black eyes are inscrutable, but on features marked with more lines, more silver hairs, than during their days of volatile youth–when the Doctor was a brown-haired pinstriped zealot and the Master his particularly manic breed of monster–there’s an undeniable gentleness. A willingness to stop and listen, where one did not exist before.
Fear of abandonment can be reciprocal: he is afraid of losing the Doctor, too.
“For once in your life, my love, in all seriousness: don’t begin a sentence with an apology.”
Now his smile is tinged with sadness.
“I’m not so ready to lampoon you as you may believe. I am more than my violence. Go on, Hearts. Just talk.”
Icarus 