The Master cranes back his long slender neck and smirks over one shoulder at the Doctor.
“Not really. No one embodies the term ‘warm fuzzies’ quite so aptly as you, ‘Oncoming Storm,’” he gently goads. “And now what? Have you caught me at last, Doctor?”
Koschei chuckles, a rumbling deep in his diaphragm that’s far smugger than his usual bawdy cackle.
“Well o-kay, I’m flexible,” he drawls, and in one powerful motion, he lifts her off her feet and piggybacks her about as he conducts his desired tasks.
“Would you like a soda while you’re oop there, dear?”
The Doctor yelps in surprise as she is so suddenly lifted up but automatically wraps her arms around his chest to prevent possibly falling.
“Flexible andstrong, I see.” She chuckles as she lays her head down comfortably, “Sure, but mind telling me where you’ve decided to take me, Koschei?”
The Master pauses in his stroll; he tries to suppress a smile at the weight of the Doctor’s head on top of his own. He draws a deep sustaining breath, and then in a jolly yet factual baritone, reports,
“Well first I was going to perform system maintenance on the control panel, and then I was going to plot a way to kill all wasps, while sparing honeybees, on your darling earth; and then, that nauseatingly good deed done, I was going to go shopping to add some new couture to my wardrobe; and then I was going to maybe run a smear campaign against various tyrants through some random sentient-inhabited planet’s history and become the apex predator there for the lulz, as the kids say; and then I was going to probably, I dunno, get a bath bomb and soak in the tub, and if I had energy after that, eat some baby seals … . please tell me you’ve detected the point at which I started lying in order to shock and tease you.”
The Master cranes back his long slender neck and smirks over one shoulder at the Doctor.
“Not really. No one embodies the term ‘warm fuzzies’ quite so aptly as you, ‘Oncoming Storm,’” he gently goads. “And now what? Have you caught me at last, Doctor?”
The Doctor chuckles at his reaction. Her surprise may have failed but that wasn’t stopping her.
“It seems I have most definitely caught you, Master.” She says with a smirk as she pulls herself closer, refusing to release her hold, “Unfortunately for you, I have no intention of letting you go, you got that? You’re all mine. Besides, you look like you need some Doctor, eh?”
Koschei chuckles, a rumbling deep in his diaphragm that’s far smugger than his usual bawdy cackle.
“Well o-kay, I’m flexible,” he drawls, and in one powerful motion, he lifts her off her feet and piggybacks her about as he conducts his desired tasks.
“Would you like a soda while you’re oop there, dear?”
“ … . . how the HELL did you build a guitar out of other guitars? Are they like, when you make a portrait of someone out of jelly beans, and the littler guitars are the jelly beans, and the portrait is the big guitar, or d’you mean you put a bunch of guitar bits together? Inquiring minds want to know.”
The Master A) is utterly unsurprised by the Doctor’s i) sunglasses, ii) lifelong lack of fashion sense, and iii) equally lifelong attention-deficient enthusiasm spliced with hyper-fixation, B) not moving an inch from where he lies, and C) genuinely curious about the guitar thing.
The Master cranes back his long slender neck and smirks over one shoulder at the Doctor.
“Not really. No one embodies the term ‘warm fuzzies’ quite so aptly as you, ‘Oncoming Storm,’” he gently goads. “And now what? Have you caught me at last, Doctor?”
“HehHAH! I sincerely doubt that Walt Disney ever encountered an aggressive devourer of inorganic matter, love.”
But the Master doesn’t argue with the usual resilient determination: not so long as his beloved scratches her fingers through the follicles of his scalp and renders him a critically tamed beast.
“I think you’re Stitch and I’m that little girl … . me wandering the slopes of Mt. Perdition, wishing for a friend, and then there you were, maniacal and suns-kissed.”
The Master flings himself in the Doctor’s path. He cups her face in one hand, and peers ferociously into her frightened hazel eyes. It’s an expression of helplessness she sports, and for the twelve previous faces she wore, he would have skinned himself for the chance to witness that exact face.
Not anymore. Not a Doctor who is full of hope and self-accountability and compassion. Not his boyhood best friend reborn.
Icarus 