The Master’s voice carries a heavily spousal wryness.
“Well it WILL be fine! Just need a little faith, is all!”
“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?”
The Master declares this in the most lordly manner while sauntering toward the Doctor.
“My decidedly UN-ginger spouse, having the gall to feign disinterest in the one she loves.”
He dances his fingers up her white-sleeved arms, then throws his black sweater over her head and draws her near in a Time Lord sandwich, two heads popped out of the neck.
“Now you shall never escape. My most nefarious of schemes has come to fruition. Diabolical laugh. Maniacal cackle. Monologue, monologue, ditto, ditto, et cetera, kiss me.”
The moment the Master beheld the Doctor’s new generation, he entirely bypassed the obvious change of her gender presentation.
Because he was so goddamned smug that for once, just for once, in their manifold reincarnations, he is the taller of the two.
Then it was “Why are you Lesbian Disney Princess crossed with Castiel crossed with a Ghostbuster?” about her choice of apparel.
After that, he had realized what had made her breathlessly gasp, “Oh, brilliant,” cackled, and roared, “OH, you COPYCAT.”
Months later, here they are.
“I enjoy your companions immensely, yes. I enjoy watching you wrangle solutions from their world and its primitive reservoirs of materials. I enjoy that they treat you as a friend and not as a god. It’s a new development, and I must say it suits you far better than the past arrangement ever did. As for your TARDIS.”
He pops his knuckles theatrically, pours a glass of whiskey, nudges one her way, and sips.
“We were once marooned here on this planet for years, you and I both. We got through it. Relax. I’ll hyperfixate on the solution and hunt it down, if you don’t get there first. Remember your own mantra: it’ll be fine.”
“Lots of newness. Must be exciting. Don’t forget me out there, eh?”
He’s careful, strategic, even, to bare his back to her while he speaks.
“I am to keep being living proof of your theory of change.”
“Oh, but it is! It is, but don’t you know this by now, Koschei? There isn’t an adventure or a mystery in existence that could so completely capture my attention that I might forget you.”
She dashes up to him and hugs him from behind, kissing the spot behind his ear and nuzzling into his neck.
“My proof of all things hopeful and new, but simultaneously familiar. I love you, Kookaburra. I’ll be home soon.”
He spins at her kiss, ordinarily reason to shiver into rollicking raunchy activity. But right now he’s too preoccupied with another thought, siphoning off her enthusiasm, the way they always mutually feed.
“Your friends. The ones you told me about. The new ones. D’you think they’d like me? I mean the police girl, she sounds impressively intelligent for an earth ape. Or the lad, Ryan? The one that just lost his … well I mean, maybe if you told him … I’m an exceedingly accomplished person, and sometimes my back, and my leg, they … and you know, I have certain neurological, er. Oddities. That I cope with, too.”
He pauses, fidgeting somewhat transparently, ruffling his hair and the nape of his neck. Self-conscious, for the first time in distant recollection.
“I’m on my best behavior. Except with the old one. Graham Cracker or whatever. Bit like Wilf Mott, that one.”
Brown eyes darken to black, with the thought of how the Doctor and Mott parted ways, and snap to her face.
“While you’re out there: don’t protect others at your own expense. I’ll know. And I won’t talk to you for a week. Not even if you give me The Face.”
A pause.
“Course, you know, if Graham Cracker drives like, the Magical Schoolbus, like Miss Frizzle, I could be arsed to half-tolerate him.”
Be patient with him, he may think that the Magical Schoolbus is real, like he did the Teletubbies.
Icarus 