Let’s talk about how the Master wants the Doctor to shoot Rassilon as much to have the fact that he was used and duped all his life, when he values his autonomy so much, validated by the Doctor.
Let’s talk about how “you never would, you coward” is a bluff of courageous defiance when really he is terrified and his expression, his eyes, plead for the Doctor to comply. His words command, but his face begs and his face pleads.
Let’s talk about how that little shake of his head in the second to last gif proves that.
This is the closest they ever came to reconciliation without any force involved, and it kills me. It kills me.
They’re back, all safe and sound. The fam are tucked up in their beds after another exhausting adventure and the Doctor is burning through the adrenaline that had carried her through the last trip.
Which is a very bad thing.
She makes it to their bedroom, each step getting more and more difficult, until she stops in the doorway, leaning against the frame to keep herself up.
“Koschei…” is all she gets out before she collapses on the ground.
The Master turns at the sound of his bondmate’s feeble cry. Already his features are feral with protective resolve. He rushes to her side, and scoops her into his arms without contemplation.
“Right, Zero Room.”
He carries her there. The sterilized blankness, the absolute zero of silence, like a bloodless womb, engulfs them both at once, and he must struggle with the cottony sensation inside his mind, the nigh irresistible lull of R E S T, to place her on the table and run the diagnostic equipment.
“Tell me what happened or the first person I see gets the brunt of my wrath.”
The universe is a delicate balance. Everything in it has an
equal and opposite to keep existence from spiraling out of control. It is much
the same for the Doctor and the Master as well. Never in all her lives has she
been so happy, so whole… but that is not to say there aren’t things on the
other end of the scale. The Master’s nightmare puts into sharp relief one of
these.
The Doctor wakes before he does, hazel eyes wide and terrified.
But it is not her terror. It is secondhand, shared through their bonded minds
and made all the more powerful by the skin to skin contact of their ankles
entangled together beneath the bedsheets. She is paralyzed by his nightmare,
paralyzed by the same imagined blade that pins him to the ground in his dream.
She stares blindly at the ceiling, unable to see anything but what he is experiencing.
They say dreams happen in a matter of seconds before waking, a
flash of consciousness as the mind begins to stir, but this is different. This…
It feels real.
Somehow she knows what is coming before it does. Her gut churns
and she tastes bile in her throat. Still, it doesn’t lessen the shock when she
hears her daughter’s voice filtered through the robotic intonation of a Cyberman.
Thank God, she thinks briefly as her husband lurches, drags them
both out of the nightmare and stumbles into the bathroom, all but tripping on
the sheets. She hears him, smells the stench of urine soaking the mattress, but
she still can’t move. Her hearts are pounding, her ears are ringing, and it’s
all she can do not to vomit herself.
The Doctor takes a few steeling breaths and pushes herself up
into a sitting position, her entire body trembling as she gets out of bed and
follows her best friend, her husband, her Koschei, father of her children into
the bathroom where he’s curled around the basin of the toilet. One step, two,
and she lets herself fall to her knees, wrapping her arms around his sweat-soaked,
sobbing form. He stinks of fear and vomit and piss and sweat, but she clings to
him, trembling almost as hard as he is.
“I—” She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it, for once at a
loss as to what she could say to help him.
The Doctor is a creature born of hope, and as such it is one of
her most defining traits. Yet… she struggles to find it now. Her hands shake as
she runs her fingers through his hair, wipes a tissue across his mouth and
tends to him in the little ways she can that don’t require words. Her faith in
him has been unwavering. Her pride in him, in his progress, in his commitment
to do good for goodness sake. Since the day he asked her to help him, never once
has she doubted him.
And perhaps that is her own failing.
The Master doubts. He has always doubted, and she has been
steadfast in the fact that she doesn’t. But… for the briefest of moments, she
is afraid. She is afraid not of him or what he is capable of, but of the fact
that perhaps she should not be so absolute in her conviction. She is afraid of
the idea that maybe, just maybe, she could be wrong about her unending faith in
him.
But even as that seed of doubt is dropped, the Doctor
consciously tries to grind it into nonexistence.
The Master doubts. He has always doubted, and she has been
steadfast in the fact that she doesn’t. Now, perhaps more than ever, he needs
her to continue that belief, that strength. She knows his fears as intimately
as her own, and knows what it would do to him if he felt that she imagined for
even a millisecond that he could be capable of that, of harming even a hair on
their baby girl’s head.
She takes that seed, now pulverized into a ghost of itself and
locks it away in a box in her mind, and then locks that box in a chest, hides
that chest in a locked room, and seals that room in a vault. Only then does she
speak, dabbing the sweat from his brow and rubbing his back.
“It was a nightmare, love. Just a horrible, terrible nightmare.
I’m here. Zinnia is safe and sound in the other room. You are safe. You are
loved. You are home.
It’s going to be all right, I swear to you.”
But it happens. The doubt she feels in her own faith. It happens. She cuts it off like the head of a snake and she shoves it in her dark corner and puts a deadbolt lock on it, but it already happened, and he already saw it. He saw it. It’s like when you’re a child watching a magic show and the magician’s hand slips and you see the trick coin, just a flash, a flicker, of it, and the illusion bursts into a thousand tiny shards, and you watch, you stare blankly, and a chain reaction of lost belief, in that particular charlatan, then in magic, then in Santa Claus, then in God, then in Heaven, sets off like a hundred thousand little explosions of broken glass in your mind, and your world has fallen apart, because of one flicker of one trick coin. It only takes a millisecond to lose your whole world.
Koschei doesn’t realize the pure betrayal on his face. Doesn’t realize he’s lifted his face from the toilet bowl and he’s staring with horror and fear and loss into his Theta’s eyes. He’s clambering to seize onto the magician’s crafty hands, to hear the “it’s going to be alright,” to feel her pride and her joy in his efforts, to know that she trusts he would never harm their child, and not see the trick coin of her self-doubt. But, fuck, fuck, it’s there. For one fleeting instant, the Doctor wondered if she was right to place her faith in the Master.
Suddenly he is so keenly aware of his own stink, of the entire lifelong litany of his crimes and mistakes, of embarrassing foolish awkward mistakes he made, wrong answers he blurted out in class at the Prydonian nearly a thousand years ago; putting Zinnia’s–oh Christ, Zinnia’s–first diaper on backwards; talking too much and too loudly; dancing badly; failing his initiation before the Untempered Schism; all the times the Doctor foiled his stupid convoluted schemes and made him look like a coward and an imbecile.
Every way in which he has ever fallen short now litigates itself against him.
FIX IT!!!!!!
The self-inflicted command ricochets like bullets inside his skull.
“I’m sorry.”
The words aren’t a Shakespearean tragedy; they’re terrifyingly robotic and banal. He cannot even place to which shortcoming, flaw, or sin he refers. Maybe all of them. Who cares? Who even cares.
He stands, flushes the toilet, rushes out to the bed and grinds his teeth while stripping it of all the evidence of his mess. He lashes off the covers and drags them all toward the trash chute, and stuffs them in. He doesn’t even realize he’s crying; he’s wild, lost, desperate to conceal the evidence of his own treasonous brain.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
He storms past her and strips naked, and steps into the shower and runs the water scalding. He scrubs himself head to toe with excessive soap. He’s a ridiculous sudsy mess in the shower, cleaning, cleaning.
He steps out and seizes a towel and wraps it around his frame like armor, and it’s only then that he turns to her, and demands, desperately,
“Don’t you EVER get TIRED of it? DON’T YOU GET TIRED OF ME?! I wanna be more than the person you save! I wanna SAVE YOU TOO!
“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.”
“Yes, well, have fun with that, darling. Meanwhile I’ll be situating myself at a suitable distance to laugh at the ensuing debacle.”
The Doctor puffed out his cheeks in childish annoyance. How dare he. Theta of course, pouts.
“It works most of the time!” He protested. “As if you could come up with something better.”
He knew far too well that he could come up with something better, and childishly hopped that he wouldn’t even try.
“I can’t tell if that’s an invitation to be schooled by someone who has long been your logistical superior, but either way, I’m calling your bluff. Move, bitch.”
Says the asshole who made the entire planet himself and then didn’t notice when one of his armed guards was several inches too tall.
*le gasp* “Language Koschie… dont- dontswear!”
He gave him such an outraged look before he moved into the room under the console… 2 minuets later panicked shouting was heard, a cat screeching and then he scrambled back up, scratches all over his hands…
“OKAY! that plan didn’t work…. time for plan B…” When he thought of a plan B…. shit… he wasnt going to admit that he didnt have one…
“ … right, okay. Is that like, the ghost of your dad under there? Your dad was sodding awful.”
The Master rubs throbbing temples, then lifts both hands high, palms forward, and smacks them together for his best friend’s ever-frail focus.
“Oi. OI! Look. You have to tell me what the bloody hell it is. I can’t diagnose and act properly until I know exactly what animal you’ve summoned from the jowls of hell.”
“ … hey. Hey, you’re the best person I’ve ever met, too.”
Granted, there’s the scrambling of jealous insecurity fueling his words, but also, far purer, the desire to reassure the Doctor that someone who’s known her longer than a handful of days agrees with Yasmin Khan’s evaluation.
“I know coming from me that’ll sound like a joke, given what I’ve put you through in the past. But I was … directionlessly angry. And frankly, that anger, it wasn’t wrong. But how I carried it. How I used it. That was.”
A shift of weight, a shuddering, dogged sigh.
“What I mean to say is you deserve happiness. You deserve … you know. To be admired. And treasured.”
God knows I did, do. God knows the sight of you puts me in secret raptures. God knows I’m infatuated and always will be.
“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.”
Softly he pressed a kiss to the Master’s temple, keeping his loving embrace. Closing his eyes he allowed a gentle brush against the telepathic connection they shared. There was no probing just gentle reassurance. The silence didn’t bother the Doctor he merely stayed there offering his love and comfort to the one he so dearly cared for.
The Master shoves his face into the Doctor’s neck, inhaling aftershave and windburn and all things mysterious and fugitive. Home, home.
“Don’t forget me, don’t doubt me, please, please, please, I’m here, I’m still here,” he all but chants through his teeth, clinging, making his fists full of shirt tremble.
“I am constantly surprised by the longing for you that never quiets. You are here and you are in my hearts, always. My thoughts often stray to you even when I don’t mean them to. Wondering how you are, what you’re doing, if you’d welcome my endless company. Endless because pulling myself from you is a pain I tire of enduring.”
The Doctor speaks softly, hands gingerly trailing up and down the man’s back. Having him so close is always lovely, it makes his hearts soar. Warm, fierce, beautiful, mine.
The longer the Doctor holds him, the more the Master stills; the quieter he grows, save for that tell-tale gentle thrum deep in the diaphragm of his psyche, just like the purring of a cat with its favorite human. His eyes fall closed and he says nothing, instead savoring the silent nearness of his beloved.
“Yes, well, have fun with that, darling. Meanwhile I’ll be situating myself at a suitable distance to laugh at the ensuing debacle.”
The Doctor puffed out his cheeks in childish annoyance. How dare he. Theta of course, pouts.
“It works most of the time!” He protested. “As if you could come up with something better.”
He knew far too well that he could come up with something better, and childishly hopped that he wouldn’t even try.
“I can’t tell if that’s an invitation to be schooled by someone who has long been your logistical superior, but either way, I’m calling your bluff. Move, bitch.”
Says the asshole who made the entire planet himself and then didn’t notice when one of his armed guards was several inches too tall.
Softly he pressed a kiss to the Master’s temple, keeping his loving embrace. Closing his eyes he allowed a gentle brush against the telepathic connection they shared. There was no probing just gentle reassurance. The silence didn’t bother the Doctor he merely stayed there offering his love and comfort to the one he so dearly cared for.
The Master shoves his face into the Doctor’s neck, inhaling aftershave and windburn and all things mysterious and fugitive. Home, home.
“Don’t forget me, don’t doubt me, please, please, please, I’m here, I’m still here,” he all but chants through his teeth, clinging, making his fists full of shirt tremble.
Icarus 