itsjustkind:

｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ masterfulxrhythm:

He whirls on his heel, a vortex of agonized reprisal.

      “YES, I DO.”

I understand. I understand what it’s like to be left behind, to be forgotten so many times that you are weary, body and soul, and just want it all to end.

Because Y O U put me in that position. Over and over and over and over and over and OVER!

But then my damned capacity to survive takes hold, and here I remain.

    “Doctor, be STRONG.”

Be strong like me.

    “I don’t want you to ‘keep your mouth shut.’ I want to know WHY. Why is it me?  You couldn’t have looked more repulsed when you saw me if you’d tried.  ‘Eugh, there’s the dirty beast that saved my life from Rassilon! Hope I don’t catch anything from it!’ You didn’t even know what I’d done to your human yet!  How’m I supposed to believe you spoke to me out of TRUST, then?  I’m not the one you groomed to perfection in your little Vault of Rehab, now, AM I?  So just tell me why. Did you tell me because I was just in the room when you felt like talking?  Or are you punishing me, because I took Missy away from you?”  

He stalks right back to the Doctor’s side; it’s his blessing and his curse, that he will never ever escape the gravitational pull of his other self.  He kneels, and cocks his head, and narrows his eyes.

    “Because this? This feels like punishment.  Or is it really so unfathomable to you that your death would… .?”

He grinds his teeth, and rolls his head on his neck, in one wide self-soothing animal circle.  

    “ …would r u i n me?”  

A pause as the weight of the confession absorbs.

And then the Master removes his coat a second time and hands it to the Doctor.  This time he is the one who cannot look.  

I would stay with you while it happened. Either way. I would stay with you.  

Surely you know.

Surely.

He doesn’t uncurl from his position for a good few minutes while he collects his thoughts. The ones that make sense, anyway. There’s a fair few that don’t make any sense at all. (I love you, I’m scared, I want you to lie with me, I’m not strong.).

   “That look was not repulsion. That was shock. Horror, maybe. But not repulsion. You don’t repulse me, you terrify me. Probably not for the reasons you think, though.”

The Doctor sits up a little bit against his pillow, pauses to take a few ragged breaths because even the slightest movement requires effort from muscles that are begging him to just stay still. He takes the coat and holds it to his chest like it gives him vital life force, lacking the energy to support his own weight and actually put it on.

   “I’m not punishing you. Do you really think I’m capable of thinking up a plan to ‘punish you’ in this state? You were in the room, and I did talk to you because you were here — but it wasn’t just luck that you were here, was it? You chose to stay. You told me so. You stayed to look after me. I trusted you, because yes, you were here at the right time, but because you chose to be here. You didn’t have to be. I wouldn’t have told Nardole, had he just been in the room for a few minutes.”

Your death would ruin me. The confession sounds like one torn straight from the hearts, and he struggles to really let himself believe that it’s genuine. If he lets himself believe that, he might open himself up to the possibility of false hope. False hope that he is more loved than he feels. As yours ruined me, he thinks but doesn’t say.

   “Unfathomable — perhaps. Less so with Missy, because the time she spent with me in the Vault — well, she could’ve left any time she liked. She and I both knew that. She was there because at hearts, she does want to be a good person and do the right thing.” 

He sighs and looks down the bed for something else to focus on. The two of them, who see each other for all they are, and they can’t look at each other. It’s so stupid. He moves his feet, watching the covers lift slightly, and regrets it instantly. He hates not being able to fidget very much for the pain it causes.

   “I suppose it seems unfathomable that my death would bother you so much because you seem to detest the idea of your future self reaching this point with me. The two of you did beat me up and then tie me to a wheelchair. What was I supposed to think?”

I want my friend back. But I’m not sure you want me.

   "I’m sorry. For everything.“

You chose. 

You chose.  

The Master’s mind is capable of conquering tangled knots of physics, metaphysics and technology, and yet when it comes to relationships, at least those not rehearsed and performed for the sake of a scheme, he is a bull in a china shop: all emotion, no nuance. Clumsy, a peculiar mixture of manipulative and childishly ardent.  Scared of losing things, so he smashes them, and self-thwarts. 

 He has no idea what he’s doing.  

So he must compress and simplify what the Doctor is saying, and he hovers there over the Doctor’s form as he does so.  

His mind reaches a solution in time. The Doctor’s essential message: 

{ I chose you because you chose me first.  You showed me you care about me, so I chose you.  }

Ah. That he can process.  And his hearts twinge with the return of that softness.  

But the remarks in defense of imprisoning Missy raise a few recurrent hackles.

    “Missy wants to be good in Missy’s way.  If you’re not looking for that, then you’ll miss her efforts entirely.  Your version of good is not absolute. It’s vain, arrogant, and sentimental.” 

Chilling, perhaps, to hear Missy’s own words echoed by her previous self.  

    “But more important to this conversation:  I AM Missy.  If you had shown me an ounce of the interest you show her, maybe I might be in your little accelerated ethics workshop.  Maybe I’d be making you proud.  But I was stuck on Gallifrey for YEARS after I saved you.  And you never came for me.”  

There are tears in his eyes.