The Master opens his mouth. Considers. Closes it. Opens it again.
“I have been the embodiment of your pain too many times. I don’t know … how I couldn’t have stayed, or seen it.”
That would be a kind of unforgivable that excels any and all of his present litany of crimes. Because it would be hypocrisy. The Doctor is the storm. And he who quarrels with the stormy sky cannot abide hypocrisy.
He’s still in his own nightclothes. He slides closer to his best and oldest friend.
“It’s not as if it’s anything I haven’t seen before, love.”
Many times; the change of faces does not erase all of the most poignant memories. Nothing ever could.
He takes the hand offered him and sits in silence.
“Yeah, the … hair-stroking was real,” he ventures, feebly.
And the blanket covering. And the humming, and the touch-telepathic guided meditation that wrecked Koschei because he is so telepathically permeable and naturally assumes the emotions to which he’s exposed. Especially from the one person he adores.
“You wanna … ah, try resting again? I’ve ways to block bad thoughts for you. If you. Want.”
The Doctor shakes his head. “No. I wouldn’t inflict that on you. You being here is enough.”
He edges closer and closer, knowing in his mind the very specific comfort he needs. He has just dreamed about loss and the enormity of it, and here sits the person he is absolutely terrified to lose. The Doctor knows the Master is more than capable of looking after himself and surviving in spite of everything. That doesn’t do anything to change the instinct he has to protect, to hold close what he has claimed as his own, and keep it safe from the universe. Keep him safe. His failure to do so with every one of his other friends leads to more pain each time he tries to protect someone. Finally, he sits upright properly.
“Not you,” he whispers. “I won’t lose you too.” He strokes the Master’s face, eyes glazed with exhaustion. “Can I hold you? I need to feel that you’re…safe.”
Stupid thought. The safest place for anyone is as far away from the Doctor as they can get. Is he being selfish? He falters, suddenly unsure. Eyes full of questions and self doubt search the Master’s face for any sign that he doesn’t want to be here. His mind races, ahead of itself and still partly stuck in its dream.
“Not need. You don’t have to. You don’t…owe me anything.”
God, he hates being vulnerable. He’s slipped up twice now, first with the crying and now with the admitting he needs something. What he should’ve said is I’d like to hold you. Not need. He doesn’t need anything. The Master doesn’t owe him his company or his closeness, and especially not after staying with him all night. The Doctor looks at the other side of the room, shame plastered all over his face.
But there is nothing the Doctor could have said that would have pleased the Master more, than I have a wish that only you can fulfill.
Koschei beams softly at his best friend. He looks more youthful and innocent than he has for several consecutive faces, and it has nothing to do with the roundness of his bone structure. There is neither pity nor disgust on his face as he makes one smooth motion, t-shirt, sweatpants and all, and situates himself in the Doctor’s lap.
He cups his chin and guides pale eyes up to meet dark. He doesn’t force his Theta to look long; he knows shame so well, it is his intimate friend, his motivation, his cause to chase greatness, like a greyhound chasing a stuffed rabbit.
"Oh, my sweet fool. Nothing makes me happier than this. My hearts are safe with you.”
His lips meet the Doctor’s so slightly that the kiss is nearly ticklish. Then, they press more firmly to his lover’s mouth. He pulls back, and settles himself contentedly beneath his chin, and closes his eyes.
“You are the Doctor, comprised of morning sunlight and babies’ laughter, and yes, despite this, I know that you could knee me in the nuts, drop me hard, and snap my neck if you still had the inclination. It is a fact, and I impenitently confess that i find it desperately sexy.”
“I’m sorry but did you just,essentially, call me sexy?” Somehow despite hearing every single word he said, those were the words that were processing.Any attempt to make herself look serious of course dissipated. “Since when do you ever compliment me? Is this a new thing?”
The Doctor’s bluntness staggers the Master; at the same time, it’s like cold water dousing the head of a fever victim. It’s the reality of the gulf between them: she is accustomed to unadulterated malice, to contrariness for its own merit. Not the poesy of their boyhood days. Not anymore.
“Well I … I thought I’d, ehm. Try something different.”
He hears the lameness of his words. But how the hell can he tell her that Missy left an impression? That, further, had he experienced 70 years of the Doctor’s undivided doting attention, surely he too would’ve come to the same conclusion as his future self? That he has watched this incarnation of his childhood friend from afar, taking responsibility for her faults, offering her companions the benefit of informed consent to the dangers awaiting them? That he loves her as he has only ever loved her very first face?
He knows now, but he certainly didn’t know it all night. The Doctor pushes himself up in bed, just enough that it’s clear he’s decided he’s not going to try and go back to sleep.
The night has been a long one, full of nightmares for him. He doesn’t remember all of them. They were fever-fuelled, panicky and loud. Too loud. With the amount of shouting and probably crying he’s done, he suspects the Master might know more about his nightmares than he himself does at this moment in time.
“Were you stroking my hair? I couldn’t tell if it was real or just in my head.”
Real or not, it definitely helped. He remembers crying, then, about the dream. All about how it’s his fault his friends all die. How he can’t save them, ever, and anybody who travels with him is doomed to suffer. He has these kind of thoughts regularly, but usually they’re in his own voice, which he can ignore for the most part. It becomes a little harder when it’s them. Their faces, their voices, accusing. Hatred for himself projected into the faces of his lost friends, blaming him like he deserves to be blamed.
It occurs to him that this might be the first time this face has cried in front of this Master. He’s cried in front of Missy before. Or… well, cried on Missy might be a more accurate description. But he’s normally quite good at holding himself together. Teary eyes sometimes give Koschei a window to his emotion, but he’s quite sure he’s never actually sobbed. Apparently while stuck halfway between nightmare and reality, he’s not so strong. He can still feel the tears on his face. It can’t be long since he had that dream, then.
He notices that the covers are still over him. Given his tendency to physically struggle against them when dreaming, he wonders how many times they’ve been picked up and laid over him again.
The Doctor sits slowly, reaching out to Koschei. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. It’s so much gentler than the torrent of apologies that spilled from him during his nightmares. Those words were rushed and frantic. Painful. He presses his face against the Master’s shoulder when he’s close enough. “You didn’t have to stay. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you didn’t want to see.” See me, see my pain. Of course he didn’t have to stay. The Doctor can never ask that of anyone. He never will. It’s not fair, no matter how much it helps him to know that he’s not alone. “But thank you for staying anyway.”
The Master opens his mouth. Considers. Closes it. Opens it again.
“I have been the embodiment of your pain too many times. I don’t know … how I couldn’t have stayed, or seen it.”
That would be a kind of unforgivable that excels any and all of his present litany of crimes. Because it would be hypocrisy. The Doctor is the storm. And he who quarrels with the stormy sky cannot abide hypocrisy.
He’s still in his own nightclothes. He slides closer to his best and oldest friend.
“It’s not as if it’s anything I haven’t seen before, love.”
Many times; the change of faces does not erase all of the most poignant memories. Nothing ever could.
He takes the hand offered him and sits in silence.
“Yeah, the … hair-stroking was real,” he ventures, feebly.
And the blanket covering. And the humming, and the touch-telepathic guided meditation that wrecked Koschei because he is so telepathically permeable and naturally assumes the emotions to which he’s exposed. Especially from the one person he adores.
“You wanna … ah, try resting again? I’ve ways to block bad thoughts for you. If you. Want.”
Were he to pluck the most hurtful phrase from a million trillion infinite possible combinations of sounds and syllables, this exact sentence would fit. Would be the sound of the neck snapping. Would be the sound of the glass shattering. The noose tightening. The gun firing.
This sentence would be the weapon.
The Master stares uncomprehending at the Doctor. His legendary capacity to maim is lost.
“ … what?”
He is falling she is leaving she is leaving he knew this day would come he knew it he knew it he knew ithe knew it he… .
I gave up on you a long time ago.
I gave up on a lot of things back then.
I gave up on my family, I gave up on my friends.
I gave up on myself.
When the Doctor left Gallifrey all those centuries ago, they’d had to give up on certain things. It was too painful to carry those burdens with them. But that meant giving up parts of themselves that they never imagined they would ever get back.
So… the fact that she has is infinitely precious.
“When I left. I gave up. I gave up on you, on us… and it’s been my single biggest regret. In all my lives, there’s not one thing I’ve ever regretted as much as making the decision to leave you behind.”
The Doctor steps towards her husband and takes his hands into her own. The gaze with which she stares up at him is impossibly full of love and unending, undying hope.
“You’ve come back and taught me that I should never give up… never lose hope, because that’s when you start to lose parts of yourself that you may never get back.
I was lucky enough to get you back…”
The Master takes great gulps of air. His relief is palpable, an unfurling sensation in his mind, and therefore in the entirety of the room that his mind so easily permeates.
“GOLLY, Thete.”
He all but collapses, making a great hammy show of buckling his knees and smacking his thighs and, slightly breathlessly, laughing.
“Thanks for scaring the PISS out of me. Maybe predicate your dramatic remarks with context next time!”
He captures her cheeks between his palms, squishing them until her elastic little fey face collapses like an accordion, and she is forced to speak with fish-lips. His expression is fiercely adoring.
“Your punishment for this grievous silliness is to recite Hamlet’s Soliloquy while I hold your face like this. I’m waiting.”
He forces this playful indignity on her for but a moment. Then he draws her tight against him with an affectionate growl, and crushes her in a hug. His chin rests neatly on the crown of her head.
“You always speak as if I had a choice. But following you is as natural to me as drawing blood from an enemy, or climbing any summit that challenges me, or breathing.”
“Koschei,” she breathes, instantly overwhelmed by his words. She knows how difficult it is for him to, for lack of a better word, share, how much hoarding is simply his natural instinct and a means of self-preservation. She knows that her adventures with her new friends have caused him no end of insecurity, no matter what he might say.
But the fact that he’s acknowledging them, agreeing with them, and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s placing her happiness over his own, it staggers her.
She wraps her arms around his neck, pressing their foreheads together. “I love you. So much. You deserve that too. Are you happy?”
Are you happy?
What a simple question, yet how unsure the answer.
Some measure of the Master is ashamed of the fact that he cannot proffer a perfectly desirable, positive answer. Some part of him that is deeply his youngest and first self, a boy wracked with scars of perceived insufficiency that will last a lifetime.
He can’t avoid her when she’s so near, so he closes his eyes.
“Trying,” he settles to confess, with a feeble smile. “At the risk of sounding … . corny, I’m with you. That’s enough.”
“My best friend,” she smiles, feeling the truth and pain of that statement. “My other half. Trying is all we can do.” She kisses his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, and finally, his lips, brushing her fingers against the back of his neck.
“But Koschei, you deserve a lot more too. If there’s anything I can do, anything that will make you happier, tell me. I don’t care what it is, how silly or grand it is, I want you to be as happy as possible.”
I deserve the mound of waste I stood on, railing about my imagined import to the universe, that Christmas many years ago.
He doesn’t voice this: as a matter of pride, and to free her from his guilt.
“I don’t know,” he admits, and when he does speak, the despair in his voice is not withheld.
What can I ask of you, really? The things I want and need from you are so unwholesome, so selfish, so cruel. I want and need you to abandon everyone and everything else, wrap yourself around me and become the same being as me. I want and need you to dull the ache of existing, the constant pulsing throbbing hurt, of being. I am so tired of being alive. I am so tired.
Icarus 