“Yeah, Hearts, but one of these centuries you’ve gotta stop finding new phrases for essentially stuffing your multitude of feelings behind either angst or optimism.”
He’s doing what he does best: refining her madcap ingenious inventions into more streamlined, practical technology, with the fastidiousness she has always lacked. He’s hand-rewiring the plugs connecting to the microwave that she had used as an ad-hoc intergalactic-temporal traveling system, now that they’re back inside the TARDIS, in case there should ever be any future need for it.
“And by the way I STILL think the morphology of your sonic is impractical; does it really fit in your hand for multipurpose emergency situations? Looks so clunky you could DROP it. I mean, I get it, Sheffield steel, it’s an ode to your new friends, blah dee blah, but can’t I joost …tweak it?”
He cringes, cajoling.
That is how they work best together, her with the big picture, him with the refining. Sure, both can do either and have proven so on many occasions, but it’s when they work together that the best is brought out in both.
So while he refines her crude creation, she’s already off making her next gadget out of a toaster, a lamp, and a brass deer statue she found. She’s very much enjoying this new method of creation.
“No, you can’t tooch it, it’s perfect!” she protests, all but stamping her foot as she turns to him.
After a moment, though, she casually asks: “Hypothetically speaking, what would you do to it?”
“Serious question?”
The Master lifts his hands high in apparent surrender; they both know better. His eyebrows loft amusedly.
“Like I said, the morphology. You’ve added every single useful scanning, diagnostic, and unlocking component you’ve ever had, and I wouldn’t dream of tooching that. But all of that’s utterly pointless if the shaft is shaped like some sort of…banana or … . vibrator that while it gives me wonderfully naughty thoughts, it’ll slip right out of your hand mid-crisis … . then that’s not of much use, now is it?”
He saunters over to her side, and produces his laser.
“Simple rod shape. Retractable shaft. Easy. Because when monsters are chasing you, my love, I’d like to think you had a fighting chance of unlocking that crucial door to safe escape.”
A rueful smile.
“Take it from someone with an insider’s perspective on monsters.”
“Coom’ere, Hearts. The memory loss is temporary. It’s just your Kosch. That’s me. Some of the thoughts you have, the things you feel, they come from me. And mine from you. You’re me because we’re bondmates. Loomed at the same time, in different places, but meant to be in symbiosis. To be soul friends.”
The Master winces, and outstretches a hand. He mirrors the first gesture this person ever made in his direction. He repays her.
“I thought I’d never see you again. But here you are. It can’t be coincidence. Please sit with me. I dunno how long I have, and I need you to be okay.”
The words are uttered by a voice that some distant part of her head tells her is familiar. Tells her is comfort, peace, safety, home.Though her expression remains the mix of devastation and frustration, she listens. Her eyes dart to the hand outstretched to her and after a moment’s hesitation she reaches for it.
Slender fingers brush against the skin of his, traversing the length of his palm before settling in his grasp entirely. Her body follows, moving to sit at his side now. How could she not honor that request.
“You don’t have long and yet..you’re more concerned about me? Do you need a doctor?”
The Master lurches forward and grinds his teeth.
“You are my Doctor. Don’t you see, that’s what you call yourself. Across the whole of the cosmos, that’s the name by which you’re hailed.”
His thumb caresses her knuckles in soothing rhythms.
“Sit with me. And when you’ve calmed your mind, and your hearts, help me. I know you can.”
“Thete, luv. Breathe. She came to me first, scared shitless you’d despise her for leaping into this. I tried to assure her otherwise.”
Here I am, the Master muses wryly, back in the role of the sane pragmatist. It’s like I never left.
“How could she possibly think I’d hate her?! She’s my DAUGHTER for Rassilon’s sake! I can’t say the same for that stupid BOY, though, the one– Koschei, it’s the same delinquent that had her in tears barely a week ago! I might kill him, I haven’t decided yet. Ophelia might get angry, but– ARGHH! Koschei, why the HELL didn’t you tell me!??”
“Oh please don’t start fighting over this because of who I told first. I didn’t want to cause this. I just… I found Koschei first and I’m sorry Dad that you weren’t the first to know, but I… you can’t go and kill him either. Neither of you can. He’s still the father and I might need him… won’t I?”
“Oh don’t pull that horse shit, Mister! I was literally on my way down the hall with medical results we took in the infirmary to surprise you with!”
Koschei bristles like an affronted peacock.
“She told me first because your opinion of her is the center of her universe, particularly right NOW, when she’s fresh from the Lungbarrow Shitshow and striking out on her own! And maybe she told me because I’m not her dad, but I happen to know as well as you what it’s like to be thought of as the family freak. Maybe–!”
Ophelia cuts in, meaning to diffuse tension, but in the process, makes it clear that … well, unlike assumptions and placations made earlier, she told Koschei for no good reason except that he was … just … there.
The cold stone in the pit of his gut–you don’t matter; you are circumstantial–is heavy.
But he reminds himself how childish it is to recenter attention from their frightened kid when she’s in a state of immediate crisis.
“Look, Hearts. I wanna kill him too. For saddling her with a massive lifelong duty. For hurting her at all. But she’s right, in that a child deserves a father, if at all possible, and in that this is her choice, her body, her baby, heridiot piece of shit sexual partner. Er, sorry, Button. Perhaps we … er, you … ought to speak to this boy. And remind him, for a boy he is, what it means to be a father. Sorta like you and I forgot what that meant, in his shoes.”
Icarus 