The Master shakes his head. Fingers dance down the Doctor’s delicate back, sliding into the pockets of bright blue pants, to draw her flush against him. He’s smiling easily, lazily.
“Everything’s splendid. I’m proud of you’s all.”
He tucks her defiant slice of blond hair behind each ear, and he tidies her earring chain, and weathered little lines of affectionate amusement crease the skin beneath his eyes. It’s hard to feel his age around her.
“You stepped in. And nudged history. And then stepped out of the spotlight. No longer sanctimonious, imperious, cruel in kindness. Just a facilitator. A traveler tinkering with things for the better. You are more the boy I met and adored than you have been in many, many lifetimes.”
“I love you madly. Let that warm you. Always.”
“I just got it right today,” she murmurs. “That’s all.”
The Doctor tucks her face against his neck. While she knows she’s done the right thing, and she’s tried her absolute hardest, that doesn’t mean she felt good doing it. To sit there and let it happen, to be witness to the arrest of someone she thinks is truly wonderful and be unable to step in and do anything about it because of what it means for the future and for humanity… She gives a minimal shake of her head.
“Come and lie with me? It’s been a long day. Need a rest.”
She steps back and gives him a smile. A tired, slightly saddened smile, but a smile nonetheless.
He studies her features a long while. There’s vigilance–long-established–and compassion–fresh and new–in his own.
“Yeah, maybe. But that’s still something.”
He knows enough about human history: he had to, in order to prey upon their divisive weaknesses in office. He read, and he studied, and he examined, and he became an expert at weaponizing micro-aggressions that he didn’t even believe in to his advantage ( “it’s girlie and the freak!” “Just stand there and look pretty.” “Got any old bras I can use?” “Is the future gonna be all girl?” ).
He knows how humans gouge out each other’s spirits with words (”Your kind.” “we don’t serve negroes or Mexicans.” “No blacks allowed.”) and once, he used these tools expertly himself, all the while laughing at the pathetic, xenophobic nature of humanity, all the while using their own vernacular to wound and control them.
He knows why the Doctor is weary, and this time he is standing on the right side of why.
So when she hides in him, he envelops her.
“You allowed Rosa to bear the burden that was hers to bear. And make the mark that was hers to make. Sometimes … erasing evidence of the bad things, making everything all better with a loud speech or a magical snap of you fingers … it isn’t what’s needed. It isn’t what galvanizes lasting, systemic change. The evidence needs to be visible. We need to be … uncomfortable. We need to bear witness, sometimes. And then thank these people for what they did with … I dunno. Action in our own lives.”
Rubbing her back, drawing “I love you” repeatedly in Circular Gallifreyan, he pauses, to chuckle.
“I almost sounded like a decent person just now, didn’t I? Crikey.”
He lifts her into his arms like a child, and carries her to bed. Perhaps he’s talking rubbish, but she wants to be held, and that he can do.
She eludes him anyway, fair hair tossing with her dash, and she’s sun skipping across water on a clear March morning, just as warm and just as terrifyingly intangible. That’s what he’s afraid of, but what can he do? Hoard her? What good will that do?
So he gives chase, and tries not to let it seem desperate, with his limp flaring up today, and his face that he knows is older than hers now, a brash male-presenting hasbeen. Seems such a short time ago he was Peter Pan, confidently cruel, clean-shaven and pleasantly sharp like a costly aftershave. But life happens, and despite the Doctor’s irrepressible outlook, life inevitably diminishes some people.
Still, catch him dead admitting a drop of this to her. When she’s this happy. When she’s this free.
He struggles out of his coat, taking advantage of her lack of coordination, and tosses it at her, grazing her retreated back.
“HA!” he pants. “It’s touch-tag! I GOT ya! I WIN!”
As the coat touches her, she stops due to some unwritten rule. Sure, she could just keep running, claim that isn’t part of the game, but then, the whole point is for him to catch her.
So she whirls on her heels, instead running towards him with just as much speed and force as she had been running away from him. Just as she reaches him, she hurls herself up and into him, sending them both careening to the ground where she lands on top of him.
“Guess you get that kiss now.”
Koschei knows the collision’s coming the moment his Theta whirls round. He’s already raucously laughing, flinging wide his arms.
They go down hard, and he grunts, hit on the bad part of his back, but he’s absorbed all visible evidence of pain almost before impact is complete.
His expressiveness is, after all, a form of self-indulgence. All Masters are crafty beings.
Irony that he uses that skill now to conceal what might cause her undue guilt.
The Doctor stands on her tiptoes and hugs him tightly, shifting her arms ever so slightly until they find the perfect position. She smiles into his shoulder, where she’s at the perfect height to press her face in without even needing to lean down. One arm stays wound firmly around him, but the other moves every now and then, as her soft hand strokes his back. She might not know the reason for his request, but based on the chance that he might be in need of comfort, she tries to soothe anyway.
“Everything okay? Y’don’t need a reason to ask for a hug, but you might have one.” She reaches her hand up to the back of his head, touching his hair gently. There are so many ways she can think to try and comfort him if that’s what he needs, but finds herself struggling to pick one without knowing what it is he’s looking for.
The Master shakes his head. Fingers dance down the Doctor’s delicate back, sliding into the pockets of bright blue pants, to draw her flush against him. He’s smiling easily, lazily.
“Everything’s splendid. I’m proud of you’s all.”
He tucks her defiant slice of blond hair behind each ear, and he tidies her earring chain, and weathered little lines of affectionate amusement crease the skin beneath his eyes. It’s hard to feel his age around her.
“You stepped in. And nudged history. And then stepped out of the spotlight. No longer sanctimonious, imperious, cruel in kindness. Just a facilitator. A traveler tinkering with things for the better. You are more the boy I met and adored than you have been in many, many lifetimes.”
This is how she finds him, a soft but somewhat familiar noise slipping from faintly parted lips. The sound itself concerning, but it the emotions she can feel emanating from him in tandem with the sound is what makes her hearts clench. The expression on his face is one she’s seen before in moments when he questions his place in the universe and (less frequently these days) in her life.
The Doctor slips into the room and walks up behind him, knowing that even if he doesn’t hear or see her, he will feel her presence.
Long arms slip around his shoulders and she kisses the top of his head before settling her cheek there with a contented sigh. Yet through the contact she is even more intimately aware of the discomfort and uncertainty he bears.
“Kookaburra,” she whispers in their minds, he telepathic tone full of adoration and affection to span eons.
“My boy in the red grasses. My best friend. Father of my child. Soulmate. Bondmate. Husband. It’s okay. You’re allowed to feel this way. But I’m here and I’ve got you and I love you. I’m just here to remind you when you forget, or when your own mind tries to tell you different.”
“I’m here to remind you that you are the best thing in my lives, the only thing I care about. My first choice, always, my Koschei. I will never leave you behind again, I will always be by your side. No, it’s okay… You don’t have to say anything. Just let me hold you. It’ll be alright.”
Icarus 