The Master’s face is appropriately gentle at the accusation. Mortified and mollified, he licks his lips, and summons the courage to examine his future self. Out of the corner of his eye, at least. Askance is better than not at all. Right?
“Rumor has it I’m a misogynist. Rumor has it I’m incapable of growth. We all know how untrue rumors can be.”
Something’s dancing in his eyes, nevertheless.
“And anyway, taking example on you? Are you saying you’ve lost your claws, old girl? I sincerely doubt it.”
But the answer is yes. Yes, he saw the way she went. And yes, he wanted to go that way, too.
The Master stops altogether in his advance. This isn’t the first time he’s encountered his future face since their disastrous parting, but it is the closest they have come to physical contact.
“You,” he ventures, mouth dry, words deep but husky with conflicting emotions, “are more disappointed than I, I’m sure. At the time I only wished to stop you from forfeiting yourself to the shared love of our life. I really, really didn’t want to commit suicide.”
He loathes himself in the moment, a sensation with which he’s still unfamiliar, for being the hotter-blooded of the pair. The volcanic magma to the softly lethal snake bite. No finesse, no quiet viper grins, no surgical precision, at least, not anymore: just a thundering lionsinged by the force of his own fury, just Icarus falling from the sun with his melted wings, just a tired old man with gray in his beard and a bad back care of the woman sprawled before him.
“All that aside: It cannot have escaped you that I admire you tremendously.I want you to be happy, Missy. I always did. I want us to be happy.”
How is that for nice?
So Junior joins Sis, offering her the added gift of his deference by taking a seat on a chair lower than hers.
He rests the olive branch in the silence between them.
“consider me touched.” she hums thoughtfully; it’s strange, being in the presence of ones’ self. it’s hindered further by the fact that at any given moment her own mind wants to link with his, as if the strain is far too much to be parted into two minds. it’s difficult to hide anything from one another because they ARE one another – his thoughts are hers, and vice versa. incredibly disarming.
“stop being so disgustingly hard on yourself. if you want to be hard on one of us, do it to the fried chicken regeneration. honestly. what a mess. we’ve come so far. i’m so proud.” she tilts her head, rolling the ache out of her spine with one rotation before her icy gaze levels at him.
“happy is a relative term to you and i.” she adds, quieter. had she been happy before? not exactly, but perhaps she could have been. the doctor had given her hope. she had returned it. it was a step toward happiness, destroyed by her own mutual self destruction. pity. “but i remember being happy. as you. once. though at this point i can’t recall if it’s before or after us meeting here, face to face again. memories get so muddled when we’re together.” her nose wrinkles and she closes her eyes as if to recall. painted lips curl into a smile that’s only half as dangerous.
“i admire you, junior. you’re clever. let’s face it – we’ve been such idiots in the past. granted the doctor has pushed us to such points, but still. i think we’re growing wiser each face – but you.” her eyes snap open to stare at him. “you’ve always been the clever little one. playing the long game. you’ve the patience of a saint, if there are any to bless broken little playthings like us.” the last is said with a hum as she shifts, slides down where she’s perched on a step, onto the floor like a child – and below him.
“lets be friends, you and i.”
“Okay.”
The Master’s riposte for “I’m touched” is simple and bemused. He acknowledges, in the process, that he’s about to receive a doozie of a dressing-down from a more experienced version of himself.
Initially, Missy does not disappoint, and the Master cannot help but suppress a husky chuckle, head bobbing, almost relieved by the familiarity of her brusqueness; it is equally disorienting to him, having the causal nexus of his existence obscured like gauze over a film lens by being so near a future incarnation.
“Of course you’re proud, we’re a violent narcissist.”
He holds up a hand.
“No, I know. I get it. It’s not that kind of proud. It’s the kind of proud you feel after laboring upon a new invention for 72 straight hours, covered in engine grease, watching its well oiled perfection as you first turn it on. Only we’re the invention: this new us.”
He raps the tabletop, a tacit “hear, hear,” to the words that follow.
“The Doctor has always made us do idiotic things. But yes, I concur, this last turn of events was a kind of apex of lunacy. And I think we’ll be here all day if we argue over which of us is the cleverer, more patient, more lethal, or more attractive.”
He bares his teeth back at her, displaying his primitive weaponry just as she does hers, a salute to she whom he will one day become.
“Let’s.”
He draws his laser screwdriver, turns it toward himself, and hands it to her, awaiting the proffering of her dagger.
The Master blinks, reacquainting himself with his dignity, after baring himself to Missy and being returned … what feels like scorn.
He recalibrates his mind quickly. Perhaps she speaks out of embarrassment, which always raises her hackles, and his, and any Master’s.
“I think you mistake me, sis,” he begins, with uncommon courtesy- courtesy he’ll only show versions of himself. “I don’t regret what’s begun to happen to me. To you, us. I’m only telling you that you’re not running mad. That you’re not alone.”
Her haste to defend the Doctor, in particular, stings. Can she forget that long before she was born, long before he was born, the Time Lord that they are agonized with the ghost pains of a severed limb, and that limb is the Doctor?
The very definition of the Master is the struggle between self-service, and love of the Doctor.
“D’you really think my every pore doesn’t scream for him every moment? Remember, I am you. What you feel, I feel. How can you think we’re so different, Missy? It’s only a matter of how each of us expresses it. The feelings themselves remain.”
Missy was, indeed, embarrassed and somewhat ashamed for either crying in front of him and kind of snapping at him. He was just trying to be nice to her after all.
She just wasn’t used to kindness that didn’t turn into betrayal afterwards.
Missy fell silent as she listened carefully to each word he said, slowly looking down as if she was sorry. And she was.
Of course, she didn’t forget about the Doctor and what he did back then. What he did to them. But she forgave him.
She felt different from her past selves because she was the one regeneration that wanted to change and move on. The one that was ready to heal from the pain.
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m just.. nervous about some things. And too prideful to admit anything.” She chuckled at that and crossed her arms over her chest, gripping onto the fabric of her jacket a little bit.
“Oh, LIS-ten: consider it forgotten. After all we did stab and shoot each other, like perfect buffoons.”
The Master twines his pinkies with Missy’s, in a strangely innocent act of camaraderie.
“Anyway, it’s … rather comforting to know that my Apex Self has at least one or two weaknesses. Teeny tiny ones. Negligible.”
Icarus 