[ Closed Starter For @masterfulxrhythm – Welcome To The Dark Side Dearie ]
Today was going to be one of those days, he could already tell.
Not only had the TARDIS been decidedly non-communicative for the past four hours, hiding herself away in the farthest recesses of the mainframe, but he’d gotten a rather execrable knot in the pit of his stomach that he just couldn’t seem to shake. Normally during those times he would seek out a room to destroy, to tear apart until the feeling went away. Other times he would venture out of the ship and seek out a less-than-willing participant to bear the brunt of his darkest rage. There were times he even sought out means to harm himself.
This day though the ship had seen fit to hide every doorway in every corridor, leaving him to just the control room and when he’d attempted to simply exit the ship, she’d refused that to him as well. After a few rounds with the mallet to her controls the TARDIS had still refused to cooperate, so whatever it was that had gotten into her, it was clear it wasn’t going away until he chose to listen. He rarely did, and normally she did what he asked without question so this… was rather unprecedented, and he was less than amused by it.
Long, pale fingers tapped anxiously against the edge of the console unit as he stared at the space-time coordinates the ship had projected onto one of the navigational monitors, wanting nothing more than to ignore her suggestions. He didn’t do that anymore, he didn’t help people, he didn’t respond to S.O.S. signals or requests for ‘The Doctor’s’ presence. He wasn’t the Doctor anymore, after all- he was just Theta Sigma. Just a retired Time Lord sick and bloody tired of being the punchline to every Universal joke. Yes, he’d made mistakes but he’d attempted to fix them, to become a better man, a newer man, and it had done n o t h i n g. The ship hummed insistently, adding to the din inside of his mind and causing him to wince.
“Fine… FINE!”
Cursing in Gallifreyan he let out a growling huff and set the coordinates, moving around the console unit as he muttered to himself, sending the ship out of its’ spot in the clouds in Victorian London, through the Vortex, and off to wherever-in-Rassilon’s-name she wanted to go. Once the ship was fully materialized he pushed off from the console and spun in a circle, glaring up at the time rotor before stalking toward the doors, grabbing his jacket in the process.
“There. Are you happy now? Ay? Infernal time machine… I’d scrap you for parts if I weren’t so use to having my own living space! I swear if this is one of those ’Doctor’ bits you keep attempting to force on me, I’m turning you around and detaching your automatic controls.”
He yanked the doors open and stepped out, scanning the area, a scowl on his face.
He loves the finality of bodies hitting hard surfaces.
The Master loves to watch the final impotent exercise in futility, as a foe’s form wriggles and writhes like a worm on a hook and finally falls slack in blissful lifelessness. It’s nearly as grand as watching an enemy’s skin blister as he burns.
He loves these things without pretense, needy and ironically abject as an addict standing in the rain begging strangers for a lighter.
He loves them, and he indulges every whim to a new fix, the longer the epicenter of his life is skewed off course: the longer the Doctor is no more.
It’s rare that he feels that darkness existing palpably outside his own mind. But he feels the rage radiating from above his head, and it is raining on Mondas, raining on the corpses of the government agents that rose against him for his tyranny and died. Raining off the blood on his face and mouth and hands, raining a deluge so forceful that he nearly cannot see the blue box materializing on the muddy slippery hill overlooking the most populated platform of the ship.
The Master’s feet carry him upwards, until he’s waiting outside the TARDIS door for the man who steps out; without having ever seen this long thin face, he knows his oldest friend; the miasma of violent darkness radiating off of the Doctor, however, that is new, and it is intoxicating.
He is impenitently aroused.
“Oh, you … are … . beautiful,” he breathes, snatching out a hand, cupping the Doctor’s jaw harshly, appraising the old friend who has sunken into the quicksand beside him. “A Doctor without hope: you are a black hole. I feel that I am standing inches from death and I would nearly pitch myself over the ledge into oblivion just for the pleasure of the fall.”
Koschei moans: one long noise of exasperated suffering. He bunts his head into the petting of his hair, having collapsed hours earlier after stubbornly refusing for days upon days to acknowledge his physical ailment.
Now his head rests in his Theta’s lap, and he stares up at him with an increasingly transparent plea for sympathy. The humming mesmerizes him in a few moments’ time, fair hued eyelashes fluttering, flirting with unconsciousness. He reaches for his husband’s hand and brings it against his chest between his hearts.
“Don’t let anyone know … . they’ll get me.”
A slurred but urgent request, a fever-dream of fear that the many enemies he’s accumulated over the centuries will learn of his temporary frailty and take advantage.
He smiles dopily.
“Pity I’m sick, we could ‘play doctor’ in the sexy way otherwise … put that in a rain check, ey? Hmmm, you’re a very pretty thing to look at, Hearts.”
“D’you still loov me? Even like this? All gross and sweaty and snotty?”
It’s with an endearing wistfulness that the Master drops his gaze. A foolish, dreaming smile barely ghosts his lips. It’s obvious: he’s sold.
His fingers trace the silhouette of the phial of blood. The power he’s granted, and he’s so joyfully beguiled that he could never abuse what he’s always connived to possess. Oh, how wonderfully hilarious. He even chuckles, softly, just a few merry breaths of sound.
“But where’re we gonna find a loom, Thete? Gallifrey’s … it’s beyond us.”
Eyes that’ve softened to butterscotch snap up to face his other self, with purest faith that the Doctor will have an answer. Yet the Master finds it intuitively, before his best friend need speak again.
“You really think you and I can BUILD one? From SCRATCH? OHO. Oh, Doctor! Very WELL. Oh, VERY WELL, I ACCEPT THIS CHALLENGE!”
“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my lives, except maybe about wanting to marry you… and, w-ell, loving you.”
He leans in and presses a gentle kiss to the Master’s forehead, his voice absolute and optimistic, as the other Time Lord drops his gaze. Hands remain cupping either side of his beloved’s face, thumbs still trailing over the crests of cheekbones, exploring and memorizing though he’s long since memorized the planes and dips.
The Doctor’s smile is sanguine, tranquil, at peace ever since that blessed night when the Master had pulled him from his nightmares and, as such, had also pulled his head out of his arse. Since that moment he’s been lighter. He’s been trying. More importantly, he’s been Theta Sigma. His mouth opens to respond to the question of Looms, but he needn’t have bothered at all. The Keeper of His Hearts knows, already, the answer to that question and he lets out a jovial chuckle in response instead before speaking.
“We’re brilliant, you and I. Geniuses. Together we can do anything, including building a complex and delicate genetic amalgamation matrix and accompanying memetic primer. We can do this, Kos. And I think I’ve got the fundamental building blocks to start with in one of the storage compartment areas in the ship.”
His right hand slides down then, leaving its’ spot against his beloved’s cheek and trailing fingertips over throat and fabric, all the way down to the Master’s hand, intertwining their fingers together and squeezing confidently. He speaks then, in Gallifreyan, a twist on an ancient saying that now seems more fitting than it ever has before.
“~The life that breathes us is home to all souls. We are children of stars, galaxies learning to walk, eternally at home, within each other.~”
“STOP. I may die of happiness: I who am NEVER satisfied!”
The Master snatches the Doctor’s face in his hands and bites his chin–hard–the way an overly excited affectionate feline might bite its owner in the middle of play. Coursing through his telepathic brain circuitry is a steady rhythmic thrumming that can only be described as psychic purring. It’s only ever audible around the person he’s currently roughhousing.
“Right, right! Joost. Run your ‘building block’ by me, before getting involved in any sort of accident. You tend to be, you know, darling, more of the innovator than the, er, meticulous sort. Let me beta you, right?”
His fussing, somewhere between housewife and fellow mad scientist, is cut off decisively when the Doctor speaks an unbreakable promise in Old High Gallifreyan.
Clasping him by the neck with both hands, the Master grazes his thoughts, bringing from memory and mind the words of this revised vow.
And he joins him in reciting the final phrase:
“–Eternally at home, within each other.”
Koschei hesitates, licking his lip. He sighs, hapless, amused, through his nose. Might as well just be honest, might as well:
“Doctor, I want you to know that I would lose for you. I would forfeit. I would surrender. I have never been happier than you have made me.”
“ … SO? I want another. I want a double-M.D. And maybe a few PhD’s. The sky’s the limit when you’re as smart and evil as I.”
The Master’s petulance is perhaps a welcome transition from the somberness of moments past, and what’s more, it’s a sure sign that he is truly well.
He climbs into the Doctor’s lap, laying on the entitlement thick, along with pretense of daintiness. Unfazed by this role reversal of expected gender norms, Koschei bats his black-lined lashes at his wife. His entire goal, at this juncture, is to ham it up, and make her laugh, and banish the shadows of regret and sorrow altogether.
“ ‘The Doctor and the Master in the TARDIS,’ sounds like a kid’s show I’d watch. Or maybe a sitcom.”
He flashes teeth in an irrepressible grin, with elastic energy that well suits her sunny enthusiasm. He kisses her full on the mouth.
“Now, Doctor: wow me, make me swoon, by swinging a jackhammer at the walls of this room.”
The Doctor rolls her eyes, but those eyes as well as her mouth are still smiling. She likes the petulance, the arrogance, the personality preening- especially since she gets to see beneath it so frequently. Eyebrows lift nearing her hairline as he scales her lap, not that there’s much to be scaled- she’s a fair bit smaller than him now, and boy did that take some getting use to -and already she’s letting out a giggle as her hands find his hips.
She likes having him there, on her lap- always has. To an outsider, he’d be the one in control in such a position but in reality, Theta knew she had the upper hand. All the hands, as it were, just like Koschei had when it came to her hearts.
“An’ don’t I loov it when y’get sentimental. The Great and Powerful Master, watchin’ a sitcom with’is wife. You gonna wear your jimjams an’ everything?”
She waggles her eyebrows, the shadows visibly lifting, the regret dissipating right in front of her other half, her counterpart, her keeper. He’s very good at this, she thinks. Perhaps she’s gotten better at it, too, over the centuries. A quiet ’mmph’ noise escapes against his lips as he kisses her, and she has to draw in a shaky breath to get her bearings back in order.
“First off, an’ this is important: I always make you swoon, Master. I’m jus’ that good. Second, f’you want me t’get oop an’ start demolishin’ this room, you’re gonna ‘ave ta let me.”
Her smile carries with it the weight of a billion burning suns, capable of melting even the most frozen of tundras. Then she leans up and kisses him full on the mouth just as he’s done moments ago, only she lets it linger, content to stay there a moment though her enthusiasm to tear the room asunder with her bare hands is palpable.
The Master gazes down at his best friend with falsely donned disgust.
“MUST you perennially draw attention to the fact that you’ve domesticated me?”
He takes a declarative stride forward, hands resting on his hips. It’s an attempt to look authoritarian and terrifying; in the past it would have worked, the same gesture he took on the day he commanded the “Toclafane” to kill the American President. Right now it just makes him look like a cute sap.
The horror.
“Yes, yes you do. You’re my one.”
He swoops down upon her, devouring her ears and neck in ticklish nibbly kisses.
“Grrrrreat!”
He kisses her full on the mouth, and throws her over his shoulder.
“Weakness!”
A pause.
“And now that I’ve done this, I really have no idea where I’m taking you. Obviously you need your legs to beat holes in the walls of this hellish room.”
He puts her down again, licks a finger and straightens her lemon icing hair into array.
The kiss the Doctor rewards him with earns a long guttural “mmmm,” and a drunken smile. Then the Master rushes to the piano and taps the first three notes of Beethoven’s Fifth.
A compartment in the wall–likely installed ages past by Missy–slides open. Giddily he dashes to pull out a beautifully crafted jackhammer, with a nozzle constructed to cut diamonds. After that, a chainsaw.
Oh, the smirk that spreads across his face, at that declaration; the expression of triumph. Oh, this conquest. He takes the hands around his waist, forces them down and slides his fingers into the Doctor’s. He lifts both joined hands to his lips and kisses, with particular fervor, the left.
“I think you belong to me already.”
He turns his head enough that he can look up, and back, at his oldest friend’s face.
“But I will marry you anywhere and anywhen. So let’s go.”
A half-chuckle escapes him, one born of exultant acquiescence to the Master’s words. He knows them to be true as he knows any Universal constant; it’s evident now in every movement he makes, in every word he speaks, every day spent with this man who he already belongs to. Those kisses linger on his skin and cause the static tingle he’s so fond of to permeate his hands and dive deeply into his bones.
“Of course I do. I’ve belonged to you since the day we met, Kos. Doesn’t mean we can’t make it official. Recognized in every star system. Binding. Imagine that- legal documentation that proclaims me to be yours, and you to be mine.”
He confirms and proclaims these things so easily it’s almost as if he’s never had trouble admitting them to begin with. Dark eyes meet those of his oldest friend, his best friend, the person who’s held his hearts in their palms since the moment ‘hello’ had been uttered. A squeeze of the Master’s hands in his own and his grin spreads like fire to kindling. Oh he’s lighter now. Has been since the day he’d been thrust into a deep sleep and woken a better man, having shed much of his regrets in favor of living in the beautiful present.
“Anywhere and anywhen, coming right up.”
He winks, still grinning, and releases one of the Master’s hands before using the other still joined with his to lead him to the control room. The coordinates are already set and all it takes as they near the console unit is a flip of the lever before the ship shudders and hurtles toward its’ destination.
“Now, now. You’re being disagreeable, you know.”
The Master stands on the Doctor’s feet, as he always does when particularly, possessively affectionate. He snaps his teeth at his nose, and nuzzles his face, demanding access to every inch of his essence.
“Monopolizing all the pretty words, so I’ll have none left with which to speak you my vows, heard across those infinite star systems. You cur. You know what a show-off I am.”
He slips off the feet of his beloved long enough to return his arms round his waist, standing behind him, conspiratorial, inhaling deeply of his fugitive scent. He closes his eyes and burrows a cheek against the crook of the Doctor’s neck.
Nowhere, you’ll go nowhere on me again. You’ve got to break this death-grip. I am obstinately attached to you now, my love of loves.
The thought process is silly and infantile, but he can’t help it; it’s so difficult to trust this building euphoria. Even as the TARDIS moves toward the spot the Doctor has chosen, the Master gloms tightly on. His features are blinding, joyous and wicked and crafty.
“ … I dunno, but I’m already formulating a murder scheme for the person who spiked it,” the Master counters, catching the Doctor in his arms securely.
He pulls an all-purpose anti-toxin injection from his belt and injects the Doctor in the arm.
“OI! SEAL OFF THE EXITS!” he roars at the nearest guard, who scrambles to comply. “NO one leaves until they’re questioned!”
Doors to the Citadel audience hall slam closed. The Master lies down the Doctor on the floor and crouches over her. He pulls his laser screwdriver and shakes it once, hard, expanding it to a vallidium baton with a detachable floating laser nozzle that can decimate every living creature in the room within seconds.
“I do believe this is the part where one of your earth apes would say, ‘coom at me, scrublords, I’m ripped,’” he jests through his teeth, eyes ablaze. “How you feeling, Thete?”
Icarus 