“Tremendously true, but to whom do I credit this compliment? Show yourself.”
Smiling almost sheepishly he walks steadily closer and pulls Koschei close for a fond embrace. His eyes close briefly as he just enjoys the familiar feel and scent of the one he loves.
“I miss you too..”
His voice is a soft almost inaudible whisper as the words fall freely.
Koschei chuckles and nips his Theta on the ear.
“Are you smelling me?” he murmurs, needling him as ever, but oh, these days, it’s always with such an affectionate glow.
His own rumbling chuckle was partly an answer in of itself. The nip made him shiver, a quiet enjoyment of the familiar behavior he had missed so dearly.
“Yup. I missed all of you.”
Tucking his face against Koschei’s neck in an over exaggerated response he playfully nips there in retaliation for his ear.
Koschei growls appreciatively. He smacks the Doctor on the chest, and then the arm, and writhes in his arms.
“Stop.”
It’s a command, cheeks aflame, and always the indicator that his affection for his oldest friend is real: the shyness of his boyhood, buried under so many layers of narcissistic tyranny, comes out full force.
“Tremendously true, but to whom do I credit this compliment? Show yourself.”
“Nah..I’ll just stay in the shadows and continue to shower you with compliments.”
“You’re such a shit. Get back here. I miss you.”
His voice is a mixture of petulance and smug satisfaction.
Smiling almost sheepishly he walks steadily closer and pulls Koschei close for a fond embrace. His eyes close briefly as he just enjoys the familiar feel and scent of the one he loves.
“I miss you too..”
His voice is a soft almost inaudible whisper as the words fall freely.
Koschei chuckles and nips his Theta on the ear.
“Are you smelling me?” he murmurs, needling him as ever, but oh, these days, it’s always with such an affectionate glow.
send 💁 for our muses to be stuck in a small space together
They’re a pair of idiots. Idiot old men, too stubborn to cede each other exit from the TARDIS ceiling through the small hole the asteroid made–the asteroid that is the result of the Doctor’s poor driving, mind–so, in trying to crawl out the top simultaneously, they’ve gotten stuck. Arms free, but chest to chest, belly to belly, groin to groin.
The Master’s first impulse is to be furious.
But in mere seconds, the whole foolish situation has him laughing. At first, a delicious scrumptious little chuckle, and then a big bawdy cackle. As the laugh dies down into a hungry growl, he wiggles around, applying suggestive pressure to his lover’s crotch.
He wiggles his eyebrows at the Doctor, leering close,
“I know what you like, you slut,” he teases, and cackles again. “Let’s give the people who rescue us something to talk about …”
He ruffles the Doctor’s hair into helpless disarray.
Here he rests, on his side, in their bed, dazzled by the perfectly centered blow. How can someone as haphazardly, carelessly silly as his oldest friend have such excellent aim when he barely tries?
“And here I am,” he murmurs, numb as though from blood loss, head to toe, “unable to love anyone but you. We are perfectly star-crossed.”
With a single sweep of his arm, and a roar from the gut, the contents of his workbench clash and shatter.
For the first time since Zinnia’s birth, Koschei is the Master, a fury brimming with explosive physical violence. Entirely, irony of ironies, because of the Doctor’s accusations.
“I don’t UNDERSTAND, Thete! Why this antagonism? I give you every minute of every day of my life, if it’s not for you it’s for our baby, I let you coom and go as you please, cavort with any friends you LIKE, go on ‘SAVING’ people, one project after anootha to outrun, to outrun … that black hole in your chest, and I love even THAT part of you! What else am I meant to DO? I, I anonymously donated my own medical inventions to Martha Jones’s hospital; I wired Donna Noble’s husband a raise; I talked to Nyssa in disguise to help her cope over her father; I apologized, cried, to Jo; I got Lucy in counseling; is it Bill? Because we haven’t found Bill yet.”
Frantically, he seizes her by the arms, and shakes her, once.
“ANSWER ME, is it BILL? Is that why you’re angry? Is that why you’re DISAPPOINTED? How am I NOT trying? TELL ME WHAT TO DO!”
I am a tiger, I am an inferno, and I don’t know what to do.
“Yeh. You’re right… I can’t fix what’s been done.”
She watches as her husband sinks down onto the floor, crouched in a familiar position of self-defense. She’s seen him before, she’s FELT him before, yet she’s still not prepared for the strength with which his mind exclaims his pain and fear and hurt and guilt. The Doctor flinches as his telepathic scream rends her hearts in two.
Her hand pulls back, not so much out of fear, but out of a desire not to cause him any more pain.
It’s too much, she can tell that with ease, but as she kneels down in front of him, she offers him her hands, palm up, a sign of peace and infinite trust.
“I can’t fix it, can’t take back what I said, but I can go forward.
We can go forward and work together from here. I’m gonna touch you, alright?”
After giving him a moment to process, she slowly, gently wraps her arms around him and cradles him to her chest.
Again, it’s a familiar position, one she took a long, long time ago when the Master was cowering in front of them, and a lanky man in pinstripes held him. But this time, it’s meant to be a greater form of comfort than it ever could have been on the Valiant. The Doctor nuzzles his shoulder and closes her eyes, running her fingers through his salt and pepper hair.
“If you want to get upset, angry, if you want to lash out, that’s okay. It’s a natural thing. But if not… I’ll joost hold you until it all calms down, if that’s alright with you? Take your time, love. No rush. And then when you’re ready, we can talk. I’ll be quiet now.”
Admittedly, that’s the hard part for her. Ever loquacious, the Doctor makes an effort to provide a quiet and calming environment, her mind settling into a calm and cool atmosphere around his. There will be plenty of time to talk later. For now, he just needs her, and that’s what she’ll do.
He emerges the way a flower bends its head toward sunlight. Naturally, indubitably. Slowly but surely. He is greedy and he is jealous, yes, so he can’t help but hoard what he can reach. He can’t help but crawl all the way into her lap, cling to her dear little rainbow shirt and shove his face up beneath her chin, so forcefully that his features are squashed into her skin, hiding evidence of himself, hiding sensation of himself, eager to be within her and to be her.
He cries brokenly; it’s not even her fault. When it is too much, he rages and roars and boils over. Whether it is good or bad. It was but a single argument, and it’s not her fault that he is this destroyed. And he all but suffocates himself, trying to control the sobs, trying to keep her from feeling beholden and guilty, trying to keep her from thinking she can never speak to him crossly when he does something to bother her.
But if he could just unbirth himself, could just unmake himself, could just hide inside her existence, completely eclipsed, that would be fine. The thing he railed and fought against for eternities, it sounds like the best gravemarker he could think of now. No, the best way to LIVE. He doesn’t want to come out. Not anytime soon. He wants to just vanish in her.
‘I’m Doctor Who!’ he remembers watching Missy prance around and declare, on a tiny video monitor on Mondas, for weeks at the ship’s base, and he could almost laugh at how appropriate that wishful thinking is now.
“Don’t be quiet … please,” he finally musters the sense to murmur. “Your talking is home. Your endless talking.”
He paws for one of her wrists, and examines it. He shudders a sigh of relief to see there are no marks.
With a single sweep of his arm, and a roar from the gut, the contents of his workbench clash and shatter.
For the first time since Zinnia’s birth, Koschei is the Master, a fury brimming with explosive physical violence. Entirely, irony of ironies, because of the Doctor’s accusations.
“I don’t UNDERSTAND, Thete! Why this antagonism? I give you every minute of every day of my life, if it’s not for you it’s for our baby, I let you coom and go as you please, cavort with any friends you LIKE, go on ‘SAVING’ people, one project after anootha to outrun, to outrun … that black hole in your chest, and I love even THAT part of you! What else am I meant to DO? I, I anonymously donated my own medical inventions to Martha Jones’s hospital; I wired Donna Noble’s husband a raise; I talked to Nyssa in disguise to help her cope over her father; I apologized, cried, to Jo; I got Lucy in counseling; is it Bill? Because we haven’t found Bill yet.”
Frantically, he seizes her by the arms, and shakes her, once.
“ANSWER ME, is it BILL? Is that why you’re angry? Is that why you’re DISAPPOINTED? How am I NOT trying? TELL ME WHAT TO DO!”
I am a tiger, I am an inferno, and I don’t know what to do.
Koschei is breathless with pain. Horror tightens his features as he immediately drops his hands off his wife.
“I’m sorry, I’m …very sorry …” he gasps, feebly, stepping back, averting his eyes, the picture of submissive shame. The mess of his lab is no longer testimony to his formidable ire, but rather, a mockery, a humiliating witness that he is raw and childish and stupid. Everything about Koschei Oakdown that makes him a bad habit to hide; a disgrace to the name of Lungbarrow; an unfortunate chapter in a life best closed and shelved and abandoned and forgotten.
None of this softens the Doctor, but then that’s one reason why he loves her so much. She is not soft. She is not nice. Not always.
She throttles him with words he never thought he’d hear. This, this, this is why he never fully relaxes, not months, not even years, into their reconciliation. She goes about the verbal beating with dazzlingly systematic, efficient litigation.
“That’s not what I meant… !” he tries, but her volume and ferocity swallow his words. He’s in tears and he hates himself for it. He hates himself, hates himself, his ugly fat baby face, his freak exuberance and enthusiasm and his weird tics and habits and his childish propensity to overwhelmed overstimulation; his idiot bouts of naivety; his egomaniacal overcompensation for being constantly scared shitless; god, can he really be such a disappointment? What is the point of him?
He treats her like a possession. { No! I meant I shouldn’t see you that way, and I was behaving accordingly! } He sees her desire to save and fix the wounded and disenfranchised as a “bad thing.” { No! I meant we’re at philosophical odds, yet I value your point of view, even if I don’t agree! } His efforts to do better are self-important. { No! I … } His efforts to do better are simplistic and childish. { I … } His efforts to do better are lazy. { … I …} He is pompous, tyrannical, and jealous. { … . I am pompous … tyrannical … and jealous.}
Oh Doctor. The POWER you wield.
“I’m not …sure . .. what more you can . . . s … say to hurt me, but. I don’t have what you have, I … don’t have … I don’t have the reference, or the skills, required to be desirable to many people. And … and I don’t say that to excuse my behavior. I DON’T say it to fish for pity or even for forgiveness, but there are simply people in this world, Doctor, in this universe, who are not well equipped to be sources of goodness. Or comfort. We are not built to deserve love. And some of us are cursed with knowing that. Knowing that to our marrow,day in and out, no matter what we do to fightit.”
He smacks a hand over his chest, and swallows audibly.
“But I fight it anyway. I fight what I’m best at: I fight being jealous. I fight being notorious for the one thing I do right.
I fight it for you. ”
{ There are two schools of thought in ethical discourse.
One school posits that those who are born good are superior beings. The other school posits that those who are born wicked, but try very, very hard, to be better, are, instead, superior. I don’t know if I’m superior at, or to, anything, Doctor. But I hope you’ll consider the latter school of thought. I hope you’ll stop looking at me like I repulse you. }
“I’m sorry, I. Please, I need. Excuse me.”
For once it is the Master who runs away.
The Doctor’s anger lashes out like flames licking at an already scorched building. There’s no fuel to her fire, and it dies out very quickly as Koschei backpedals, his expression horrified, tears rolling down his face.
She regrets her propensity to jump to conclusions, to wield those things that would hurt him most as a devastating weapon. She regrets… Ah yes, Doctor, you’re no stranger to regret, are you?
Impulsive, reckless, childish thing that you have always been.
As her husband flees, her hearts, her other half, her BEST FRIEND flees from the sting of the words she’s flung at him, her hearts drop hard into the pit of her stomach.
“Shit–”
The Doctor’s hands come up to her hair, tugging roughly on blonde strands as if she can somehow rip out the last thirty seconds and cast them aside, leaving them where they were before this whole thing started. She drops into a crouch, holding her head in her hands, because she can feel him; she can always feel him, her beloved bondmate, and while that is usually a comfort and a source of joy, she now finds it a reminder of how cruel she can be.
She can feel him.
She can feel his pain that she caused.
She can feel his self-loathing and hatred blossoming into a hideous weed she’d spend so long trying to stamp out.
She can feel his guilt, his heartsbreak, and she knows it’s all her doing.
She pulls once more on her hair and scrubs her hands roughly over her face until her skin is red as her eyes, so very close to the edge of tears.
But then she moves, takes action, because that is one of the very few things she can do now.
“Koschei– Koschei, wait!”
Getting to her feet, she bolts out of the room behind him and follows him to his hiding place. Perhaps it would be better to leave well enough alone, but she can’t leave him like this to fester… she knows him to well, and he will destroy himself from the inside out.
“Koschei, shit, Koschei, Please–”
Her voice cracks as she catches up to him and reaches out to touch his hand. The contact is brief and gentle, enough only to catch his attention, but not enough to assume control over his actions; she won’t stop him if he wants distance from her, but she hopes he’ll turn and listen to her.
“I– I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I– I didn’t mean those things the way they came out. I was just angry and hurt and–”
Excuses, Doctor, you’re ever so good at those.
“No, no, I’m sorry. Those things that I said… were designed to hurt you. I’ve fallen back into old habits too, Koschei, and I am SO sorry.”
I hope you know how impossibly proud of you I am.
I hope you know that you are the single greatest thing that has ever happened to me.
I hope you know that there is not a force in this universe that would tear me from your arms.
“Even if it doesn’t come naturally to you, you are TRYING. That’s the point of it, isn’t it? You keep trying and you haven’t given up… in all this time, you haven’t given up and I need you to know how proud of you I am for that… You’re allowed to get discouraged, to get angry, to be JEALOUS. But even so… you’ve never stopped trying and–”
Her voice broke off and she looked down, ashamed of herself and the cruelty she had rained down upon him without so much as a second thought.
“I’m the one who stopped trying. For a minute, I went back to the way I never want things to be, ever. I hurt you, and I did it on purpose and– I understand if you need time, but I… I love you. I love you very, VERY much, and I am proud of you, proud of who you are and what you’re trying to do. I’ve never been so proud.”
God, is there anything I can do to fix this? Some magical combination of words?
I need to go back. I need to hold you, to comfort you, to tell you it’s okay to me angry and jealous and tell you I’m proud…
Because I am. Proud. Proud of you, my husband, my soulmate. Proud of us.
I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry.
Running is difficult for someone who ordinarily has no concept of relinquishing anything. Giving up anything. Dropping anything. Someone who’d rather bathe a white flag in his own blood than surrender. But here he is, he muses, in the most peculiarly detached way. Here he is, blundering down the hall of their merged TARDIS, clueless as to his own direction.
It’s probably because of the aberrations that are native to his brain, across all his faces, but particularly keen in the present: but Koschei’s peripheral vision is gone. He’s stumbling down a black suffocating tunnel. He reaches out calmly as he’s able, to steady himself against a wall. The TARDIS pities him, and bends the halls for his benefit. He can’t see, but even while this distraught, he recognizes it’s as much tears and psychosomatic symptoms as it is anything truly physiological.
Then it occurs to him, as he hears his wife’s voice somewhere behind him. This is his mind self-defending. The way he forced his too-permeable psyche, year by year, to become an impenetrable fortress. But it’s more than that. A stone wall keeps monsters out, but it also keeps monsters in.
Even now, the Master is protecting the Doctor.
Realization strikes.Koschei sinks to sit on the floor, somewhere in the center of the TARDIS, near Zinnia’s room. Theta Sigma apprehends him then. Her hand brushes his and he could S C R E A M at the sensation, so fucking INTENSE, just a tickle-together of skin cells for half a second, but it’s HER, and so she’s through his stone wall in that instant.
It hits her fully, brain to brain, that soundless scream. ‘A whole screaming world on fire.’ Tens of hundreds of years of Not Enough, and Why Didn’t You, and Nothing Matters, and You Disappoint Me.
Koschei sobs and recoils. He cradles his head in his hands.
“Don’t . . .!” he warns her, lungs airless.
When the Doctor speaks, she speaks at length; it’s her way. And when she’s done speaking aloud, she speaks between their minds. Her words matter, and percolate through ten thousand layers of grief and self-doubt and shame. Slowly. But Koschei is still on the ground cowering, afraid not of the Doctor, but of his own compulsion to cruelly retaliate. He has never looked more like Harold Saxon cowering from a rejuvenated, youthful Doctor on board the Valiant, whimpering of unfairness and of his “children” the Toclafane. But it’s her, her, he’s protecting this time, not himself.
She tells him she loves him, and asks whether there’s a magic fix.
“You said yourself there’s no magical fix,” he croaks.
She tells him she’s sorry.
He wants to tell her to go to hell, just to spare her, but he is selfish, so instead, he bunts his forehead against her leg.
New work, #JodieWhittaker’s #DoctorWho shot for the 95th anniversary issue of #Radio Times. Photography by Ray Burmiston, with art direction and retouching by me.
Icarus 