“Darling, you should know given my brazen narcissism, I genuinely have never inhabited a face I didn’t adore. Tiny svengali me was definitely a highlight against your stuffy ponce, yes.”
“So what d’you want me to do, darling, boil some newt eyes in a cauldron and cackle? Nab us a black cat? A broomstick?”
It should be noted that the Master, though he conducted a crash course in human history and popular culture to pose as a Prime Minister, may be somewhat unfamiliar with this or that idiom.
But he thinks, of course, that he’s being clever.
Whatever she had been talking about, it’s completely forgotten when the Master makes his joke. Such as happens so often, the Doctor’s attention has been grabbed by the promise of a new adventure.
“Oooohhhh that’s a good idea! We must be able to find a planet full of witches! You’d fit right in, with all your black outfits, plus Mount Purrdition! You’re practically there already!”
“ … darling, that was meant as a JOKE.”
He’s not certain whether to be delighted or exasperated.
The Master leans back in his jumpseat, arms crossed overhead, and examines the ceiling as though in post-coital conquest. the space instantly becomes his own, without him doing anything else; he is unquestionably in charge, with that single calculated physical act.
“We were young. The human equivalent of sixteen. It was, for our complete inexperience, alarmingly pleasing, almost dangerously intense, because we had no idea what we were doing, and even holding hands is completely forbidden in Time Lord circles, so you can imagine what an orgasm feels like in a touch-starved society to touch-starved adolescents. Physical affection is relegated to the so-called ‘lesser castes’ of Gallifrey, and ‘inferior’ life forms. But we always found ourselves touching each other physically when we were alone together, so one day alone in the fields of Mount Perdition, we most certainly lost ourselves. We both wept and we didn’t even know why, not at the time. We were rubbish at it and yet it was wonderful.
“As for looming a child with the Doctor, I already have. And if you so much as lay a finger on my daughter, I will devise creative ways to make you scream for death long before I grant it to you.”
This time she’s properly well and done it, but she couldn’t be arsed to care about that in this moment. In this moment where her love’s eyes moisten and his face does just the same, the memory playing out and tugging at both of her hearts as though it were yesterday. Feels like yesterday, in this regeneration. Closest she’s ever gotten to yesterday, in fact, and she feels the colorful warmth of freedom pulsing through her veins.
She’s never been closer to forgiving herself than she is at present. Never been closer to deserving the happily ever after that she’s found with her Koschei in their little-but-not-little TARDIS. Oh and when he reaches out to touch the image she wishes she’d have thought to make it a hard-light hologram. Though perhaps not. Perhaps that would be a bit too much for either of them, and the past is better left where it belongs- in the past, as a memory.
Intangible but present all the same.
Theta can feel the other Time Lord’s wish to pull his younger self close because she feels much the same impulse each time the memory’s been played, which has been a lot in the course of the orb’s making. When his question comes the smile on her face widens, brightens, and the moisture in her own eyes reflects the reassurance that quickly follows.
“Yes. Course it is, love. It’s us then, it’s us now, it’s us always. That’ll always be us. Two idiots in love. Happy, finally, again.”
She pauses, and says the next three words with such reverence and certainty that he can tell there is no fear left inside them. Not an ounce of hesitation to speak of.
The Doctor grins from her place lounging about on the sofa in the media room as she feels the Master’s presence surround her, bright cerulean tingling and coiling outward automatically in response. Melted-toffee eyes follow the feeling and find him standing at the entryway to the room, a hand lifting to motion to her face. In the background, instead of the usual movie, haunting music can be heard.
“Look’it what I found. The brainy specs. Been in the pocket’a that trench all this time, can ya believe it? Thought I lost ‘em centuries back. You were ri’.”
Her hand falls back to her side and her expression melts into one of reflection and devotion, a look he’s seen more times than either of them could hope to count.
“Coom sit with me, Hearts.”
Halfway between cocky and proprietary, the Master lingers in the doorway taking in the sight of the Doctor. He tilts his head, smile spreading, as a web of red accepts the tendrils of blue and swallows them to violet.
“Can you even see in this face, with that prescription?” he points out saucily, with a quiet laugh from his gut.
But he won’t deny for a second that this sight has the power both to bewitch and to arouse him, and to make his chest ache with nostalgia. That face, from so long ago, will forever mean more to him than his own breathing: the first face to properly ask, join me.
And how appropriate it is, now, that she would say, come sit with me.
So he does, as a cat deigns to wander over to its mistress’s side, sauntering, yet the path is a beeline directly to her. He perches beside her long enough to lay flush across her, and plant a savory kiss to her mouth.
“Stop feigning disdain and disinterest. You love the universe like it’s your child. Go on, Doctor. Let go.”
The slightest pressure on his hand and the Master knows he’s driven the point home. He inclines his head in the smallest, yet most deferent, salute. He waits for his oldest friend, waits and stands watch for the fixed mark of his every pursuit.
The Doctor stands and wavers around the TARDIS floor like a fawn taking its first steps; the Master supposes that’s apropos.
“I remember,” he confirms, quietly, simply, with a rarest reverence.
His smile is bittersweet; to see this face off is both to mourn and to rejoice. It seems to galvanize his best friend into throes of poesy, self-aimed directives about life and living it.
Hate is always foolish, and love is always wise.
“I would love you even if it were folly,” he whispers, and he knows the Doctor cannot hear, but that’s not the point anyway.
He’ll make sure he knows in the next life to come.
And he’ll begin by aiding his Theta back onto his feet, squeezing his arms, bracing them tight.
Courage, Hearts. I still know your name.
He steps back when the golden light crests, and he knows the moment has arrived.
Then it comes, the clumsy beautiful chaos, and the Master cannot help but raucously laugh.
And when the smoke clears, and the TARDIS complains, jettisoning in a nauseated spin cycle, the Master advances on the Doctor, and squats beside her.
“Oh, you bloody copycat,” he snorts, seizes the console screen and holds it up to her seraphic face.
Confusion. Everything was pure confusion, chaos and a kind of cognitive numbness that left her with the curious feeling of operating her body and mind by remote. It would all sort itself out in time, but the Doctor had this feeling that things had gone very, very differently this time. While trying to work out precisely what, someone nearby turned a monitor so the change could be seen.
Ooooo.
“Oh, brilliant..” she breathed as the neural fog receded a step further. Northern again, was it? Still, there was the slight matter of just who had moved that monitor. She turned and saw a bearded gent whose name escaped her for the moment. Ah, that was it!
“Missy!” she cried happily! “No, wait, ‘ang on. That’s not right either. Tegan! No, wait, wrong again. You’re not a gobby Australian, for a start. no, no, don’t tell me. I’m keen to guess.”
But instead, the dizziness and a slight nausea and she spun backwards into the jump seat again. “Y’know, I really miss when regeneration was a quiet business. Who the bloody ‘ell decided to turn it into a Pink Floyd laser light show? Sorry. Five minutes ago I was a grumpy Scotsman. It’s all a bit confusin’.”
“Happy Birthday, then, bestie.”
He’s staring into her eyes, marveling at the thick dark eyelashes, at the nova-like brightness of golden-hazel irises. There’s an infinity of stars within her, and he doubts for not a second that this is his beloved.
The hammy open-mouthed grin rather gives her away, too.
But for a moment, the reverence is broken, as he softly cackles.
“You’re a dye job. Like I was, that one time, that Christmas. Look! You’re blond with brown roots, hehHAH!”
But she cuts across his declaration with her own exclamation of joy. It tickles him to the core, and he practically stands at attention when she cries “Missy!”
“WHAT! YES! Ehr, not yet. ALMOST!” He’s smacking his chest, over both hearts, with an energy to match her own, to match the Doctor she was several faces ago, though when the Doctor has ever lacked madcap enthusiasm, none can say. It’s intoxicating and it’s contagious, and here he is, leaping up and down.
But when she falls back into the jumpseat, he squats in front of her, hands on her knees.
“Well I suppose I would agree, save for the fact that this is a rather momentous transformation: the Doctor, not giving up after all.”
The Doctor watches him from the doorway, a faint smirk on her lips, but then her expression pulls into one of abject horror and utmost concern.
“Koschei!” she cries as she falls onto her knees at his side, cupping his face in her hands and peppering his boyish cheeks with kisses, her tone and cadence like a dramatic reading of Shakespeare.
“Nobody loovs you?! What tragedy, what absolute HORROR! I am here, my brave soul, my valiant Kookaburra. I’m here! If you allow it, I’ll drown you in a love that could fill a thousand oceans! I’ll love you with every fiber of my being! Just say yes, Koschei! Say yes before you PERISH from LACK of LOVE!”
“How CLOSE a CALL this has been! Why, I nearly felt Death’s cold grasp upon me, until your little hands thawed my cheeks!”
The Master, achieving Vaudeville surely as his wife, seizes the Doctor’s wrists as her fingers clasp his face. He kisses her palms, each one, and hums contentedly.
Her kisses wrinkle his nose, taming his ferocity, flushing his round face.
“YES, then, mine Hearts! A THOUSAND times yes, for each ocean that your love fills!”
It takes every ounce of learned gentleness the Master has not to seize the Doctor by the face, shake him, scream–you KNOW me, I am you, I AM you!--force memories upon him by virtue of their telepathic link.
Instead he squats in front of his fallen friend and presses a hand, very, very gently, to his brow. Through his fingers he infuses a warm settling sensation, a benign version of his lifetimes-long command you will obey me. It’s a sensation of the mind, one like fuzz, like downy feathers.
“You’ve got amnesia. That means you can’t remember. I’m safe. We’re best friends. I’m …”
He swallows back the infamous moniker, and settles for his schoolday title.
“I’m Koschei.”
And then he lies: just a small lie, a lie that disregards an unfortunate and heartsbreaking past.
“I would never hurt you.”
He nods at the smoke rising from the control panel, inwardly, viciously, compartmentalizing his panic and dread with the task at hand.
“But I need to diagnose the mechanical malfunction that hurt you. Stay here, yeah? You know this room, you know me, we travel together, we’re practically married. You call yourself the Doctor. Stay here, darling.”
Koschei’s kneeling at the threshold of the Zero Room, eyes smudged with black liner, hands in his hair, clutching his skull. His eyes are tightly closed, and he’s rocking involuntarily, almost imperceptibly, back and forth.
“Headache … haven’t … haven’t had this sort in quite a . . o h …!”
He ducks his head, upright in the fetal position, clearly having conspired to deal with the matter without alerting the Doctor at all.
Icarus 