The Doctor didn’t shift her eyes away from The Master for a second. She was concerned. Very concerned. She had only ever seen the other like this a couple of times in the past.
“Hey. It’s only me.”
With tremulous hesitation, the Master lifts his mournful eyes. He swallows audibly. He musters a grim smile.
“Yes, darling, but the trouble is, remembering a nightmare makes it all the more potent. And this was more than a nightmare. It happened.”
He leans toward her, and it isn’t pleasant. He stinks of sweat and bad breath from sick, sick from nausea, nausea from the pain in his back. Where Missy, dear, wild, beautiful, vicious Missy, left her scar. And Koschei, hunkered into an upright fetal ball, knees drawn to his chest, whispers conspiratorially to his Doctor.
“They stabilized my resurrection, in the Timelock, at a price. They did things to me, they … . rid me of the ability to tell them no, and then they punished me. Rassilon punished me. With intermittent … . sensory overload, and deprivation. With neurochemical substances. With seventy years alone. No one to talk to. The constant fear of the Drums returning, to mock me for being … once again forgettable. With you. With a hundred thousand nuanced scenarios of you bursting in to rescue me. You never came. And I have dreams. And sometimes I feel I might slice my scalp and pull it down over my face and … hide in nothingness, just to make it all stop.”
He draws a shuddering breath.
“You. You make it all stop. It’s only ever been you. That’s what I was afraid to say. The little boy who made me Death’s Dog is the woman who can save me.”
It is one single, insignificant moment in the grand scheme
of the universe. But that moment is enough to crack the very foundations of
what they have built here over these last years.
The Doctor doesn’t recognize it until after she’s done
speaking and he pulls away, staring at her with a horrified and heartsbroken
expression. That look on his face twists her insides worse than even the terror
of his nightmare had. That is the look of someone who has lost something, the
look of darkness taking root, the look of doubt blossoming into something more
than she can handle.
You’re never too much for me, Koschei. Never too loud, never
too enthusiastic, too wild, too… much. Please don’t run away.
But it’s too late. The damage is done, and he recoils from
her, the act itself causing her to flinch from the pain. His words are cuts
made in her very soul, in the part of her that has found her home with him.
Every apology, every muttering of regret. It hurts.
She is as paralyzed as she had been in bed, unable to do
much more than watch as he strips the bed and rushes past her almost without
seeing her, crying and apologizing to her, to himself, to the universe that has
always seen him as lesser. As wrong. Broken. Monstrous. Shameful.
The Doctor wants to get up, climb into the shower fully clothed or not, and wrap him up, to shield him, protect him from his own doubts
and fears… But how can she have any right to do so when it her own doubt that sparked
the blaze of his own imagined inferiority? Though she doesn’t know how long she’s been kneeling on the
tile floor, Theta’s knees are red when she stands on trembling legs. The Master
climbs out of the shower, skin red and steaming from the punishment he
inflicted in an effort to rid himself of whatever filth he sees in himself. His
eyes are wild as he turns on her, and she can’t help but flinch again.
She is not afraid of him, but of his own fear. It frightens her when he is so full of doubt
and uncertainty. It frightens her because one of these days she might not be
able to pull him out of it. But this will NOT be one of those days. It will
not.
She takes a halting step towards him, then nearly throws
herself against him, wrapping herself around him, her nails digging sharply
into the scorched raw skin of his back. The Doctor buries her face in his
chest, hearing his hearts beat, smelling the scent of her favorite soap on his
skin.
“No.”
He’s too far away. His mind, his hearts, even his body is
too separate from hers, too far and too guarded. She feels isolated and cold
and she screams for him, silently, a cry from her very soul that begs him to
come back to her.
I never tire of it. I would die for you. I would live for
you. And I will be here at your side for eternity, no matter what.
“I have never regretted you. NEVER.”
Never regretted loving you, never regretted having faith in
you. Never regretted our lives together, our family, our child. Never regretted any of it. Because you DID save me, Koschei. You saved me from myself, from my
own despair, from hopelessness. You saved me, taught me things about myself I
never knew and loved me anyway.
“I’m so sorry, Koschei.”
We all have our moments of doubt. But I NEED you to know it
changes nothing about us, about how I feel about you, about how much faith I
have in you.
Gods, I hope you believe me.
I hope you know.
I love you.
I’m sorry.
We all have our moments of doubt.
“But I never doubted you.”
Not since you gained this face. Not since you grew so wise and your compassion and hope came thrusting to the fore of all you are. You are my boy again!
Oh, but that’s unfair, it’s unfair, and apart from what she means, and the moment he speaks it he violently shakes his head: like the physical embodiment of her firm “NO.”
It’s the last death knell of his determined, self-punitive resistance, before he greedily gulps down her every word, and greedily clings on to her, naked, skin still radiating the heat from the shower. He feels her scream, even though she does not make it audibly, or even between their minds. He feels it and beyond any self-serving compulsion is the will to keep her safe. So he braces the back of her head and holds her near, and sloppily, unsteadily kisses what he can reach of her face.
Her nails in his back hurt but they ground him, too.
I’m sorry you saw it, Hearts. I’m sorry you saw my fear.
He holds fast to her words: { You DID save me. }
He gathers her face in his hands, as he so often does. He meets her eyes, as he is unafraid to do, because he does know this. He does know.
So he nods at her, quirks his eyebrows, as if to say, “Do you see me saying yes?”, and he nods again. A slight nod, that becomes firm.
I love being your favorite, and you’re mine. I’m sorry I got scared. The things I fear aren’t your fault.
He kisses her forehead, where that troubling little line forms, when she’s upset. He kisses the corners of her eyes, and her tear trails.
I believe you. I do.
Don’t be sad, Goose.
When he finally speaks aloud, it’s hoarse, and very meek:
“Could we … could you. Could you check on Zinny? Please, I’ll. Be okay for a minute. Please, Thete. I know it’s silly. But just make sure she’s alright. I’ll sit right here and wait for you. I’ll be here, I. I promise. I won’t go anywhere.”
Where would he go, physically, plausibly, when her half of their merged TARDIS wouldn’t allow it anyway? Nowhere, but he speaks of his mental and emotional state. He aims–with the pieces of his legendary resolve–to comfort her, that this life is sacred to him.
“I love you, too, my Darling and Star. Please, Doctor … the faith you have in me isn’t a mistake. You couldn’t make me stop loving you if you tried. No act in any universe could stop me loving you.”
The universe is a delicate balance. Everything in it has an
equal and opposite to keep existence from spiraling out of control. It is much
the same for the Doctor and the Master as well. Never in all her lives has she
been so happy, so whole… but that is not to say there aren’t things on the
other end of the scale. The Master’s nightmare puts into sharp relief one of
these.
The Doctor wakes before he does, hazel eyes wide and terrified.
But it is not her terror. It is secondhand, shared through their bonded minds
and made all the more powerful by the skin to skin contact of their ankles
entangled together beneath the bedsheets. She is paralyzed by his nightmare,
paralyzed by the same imagined blade that pins him to the ground in his dream.
She stares blindly at the ceiling, unable to see anything but what he is experiencing.
They say dreams happen in a matter of seconds before waking, a
flash of consciousness as the mind begins to stir, but this is different. This…
It feels real.
Somehow she knows what is coming before it does. Her gut churns
and she tastes bile in her throat. Still, it doesn’t lessen the shock when she
hears her daughter’s voice filtered through the robotic intonation of a Cyberman.
Thank God, she thinks briefly as her husband lurches, drags them
both out of the nightmare and stumbles into the bathroom, all but tripping on
the sheets. She hears him, smells the stench of urine soaking the mattress, but
she still can’t move. Her hearts are pounding, her ears are ringing, and it’s
all she can do not to vomit herself.
The Doctor takes a few steeling breaths and pushes herself up
into a sitting position, her entire body trembling as she gets out of bed and
follows her best friend, her husband, her Koschei, father of her children into
the bathroom where he’s curled around the basin of the toilet. One step, two,
and she lets herself fall to her knees, wrapping her arms around his sweat-soaked,
sobbing form. He stinks of fear and vomit and piss and sweat, but she clings to
him, trembling almost as hard as he is.
“I—” She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it, for once at a
loss as to what she could say to help him.
The Doctor is a creature born of hope, and as such it is one of
her most defining traits. Yet… she struggles to find it now. Her hands shake as
she runs her fingers through his hair, wipes a tissue across his mouth and
tends to him in the little ways she can that don’t require words. Her faith in
him has been unwavering. Her pride in him, in his progress, in his commitment
to do good for goodness sake. Since the day he asked her to help him, never once
has she doubted him.
And perhaps that is her own failing.
The Master doubts. He has always doubted, and she has been
steadfast in the fact that she doesn’t. But… for the briefest of moments, she
is afraid. She is afraid not of him or what he is capable of, but of the fact
that perhaps she should not be so absolute in her conviction. She is afraid of
the idea that maybe, just maybe, she could be wrong about her unending faith in
him.
But even as that seed of doubt is dropped, the Doctor
consciously tries to grind it into nonexistence.
The Master doubts. He has always doubted, and she has been
steadfast in the fact that she doesn’t. Now, perhaps more than ever, he needs
her to continue that belief, that strength. She knows his fears as intimately
as her own, and knows what it would do to him if he felt that she imagined for
even a millisecond that he could be capable of that, of harming even a hair on
their baby girl’s head.
She takes that seed, now pulverized into a ghost of itself and
locks it away in a box in her mind, and then locks that box in a chest, hides
that chest in a locked room, and seals that room in a vault. Only then does she
speak, dabbing the sweat from his brow and rubbing his back.
“It was a nightmare, love. Just a horrible, terrible nightmare.
I’m here. Zinnia is safe and sound in the other room. You are safe. You are
loved. You are home.
It’s going to be all right, I swear to you.”
But it happens. The doubt she feels in her own faith. It happens. She cuts it off like the head of a snake and she shoves it in her dark corner and puts a deadbolt lock on it, but it already happened, and he already saw it. He saw it. It’s like when you’re a child watching a magic show and the magician’s hand slips and you see the trick coin, just a flash, a flicker, of it, and the illusion bursts into a thousand tiny shards, and you watch, you stare blankly, and a chain reaction of lost belief, in that particular charlatan, then in magic, then in Santa Claus, then in God, then in Heaven, sets off like a hundred thousand little explosions of broken glass in your mind, and your world has fallen apart, because of one flicker of one trick coin. It only takes a millisecond to lose your whole world.
Koschei doesn’t realize the pure betrayal on his face. Doesn’t realize he’s lifted his face from the toilet bowl and he’s staring with horror and fear and loss into his Theta’s eyes. He’s clambering to seize onto the magician’s crafty hands, to hear the “it’s going to be alright,” to feel her pride and her joy in his efforts, to know that she trusts he would never harm their child, and not see the trick coin of her self-doubt. But, fuck, fuck, it’s there. For one fleeting instant, the Doctor wondered if she was right to place her faith in the Master.
Suddenly he is so keenly aware of his own stink, of the entire lifelong litany of his crimes and mistakes, of embarrassing foolish awkward mistakes he made, wrong answers he blurted out in class at the Prydonian nearly a thousand years ago; putting Zinnia’s–oh Christ, Zinnia’s–first diaper on backwards; talking too much and too loudly; dancing badly; failing his initiation before the Untempered Schism; all the times the Doctor foiled his stupid convoluted schemes and made him look like a coward and an imbecile.
Every way in which he has ever fallen short now litigates itself against him.
FIX IT!!!!!!
The self-inflicted command ricochets like bullets inside his skull.
“I’m sorry.”
The words aren’t a Shakespearean tragedy; they’re terrifyingly robotic and banal. He cannot even place to which shortcoming, flaw, or sin he refers. Maybe all of them. Who cares? Who even cares.
He stands, flushes the toilet, rushes out to the bed and grinds his teeth while stripping it of all the evidence of his mess. He lashes off the covers and drags them all toward the trash chute, and stuffs them in. He doesn’t even realize he’s crying; he’s wild, lost, desperate to conceal the evidence of his own treasonous brain.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
He storms past her and strips naked, and steps into the shower and runs the water scalding. He scrubs himself head to toe with excessive soap. He’s a ridiculous sudsy mess in the shower, cleaning, cleaning.
He steps out and seizes a towel and wraps it around his frame like armor, and it’s only then that he turns to her, and demands, desperately,
“Don’t you EVER get TIRED of it? DON’T YOU GET TIRED OF ME?! I wanna be more than the person you save! I wanna SAVE YOU TOO!
Oh God, that tug at his shirt might as well be a scythe blade embedded in both his hearts, dragging him down. He remembers it too. That’s the problem, the Master’s memory as as far-ranging as his foresight. He remembers being sought and he remembers the long gentle frightened face of the boy seeking him and he remembers the smell of them together in bed, two innocent children smelling of honey and damp earth and long hours of running in sunshine, holding hands in one of their school beds, because Theta Sigma’s nightmares were dogged and relentless and Koschei felt for once like a source of something wholesome and good.
And every instinct the Master has is telling him to lunge, to punch, to assault, to hurt. Hurt him before he sees he hurt you, hurt him before he sees he hurt you, hurt him before he sees he hurt you.
[ I would rather d i e than beg YOU! } Stupid, stupid words, so unfortunate and true. SHIT!
All the fury festering beneath rushes forward with violence, in a single wordless strangled agonized ROAR, as he strikes the wall over the Doctor’s head. He strikes it so hard that it bloodies his knuckles. He cradles his fist to his chest, and grinds his teeth at the whitewater sound in his ears.
It’s the death throes of resisting every magnetic, gravitational pull of every pore and tissue and muscle and firing synapse and feeling in his being, to just. Sit down. And BE. With his best friend.
So that’s when he sits down, in that space the Doctor provides, and drops his head between his knees.
A long silence ensues.
Then,
“I’m sorry, too,” he surrenders. “For the girl. The girl out there. Your girl, Bill. There’s a thousand and one reasons why you care for her, I know. I took … . considerable time getting to know her, after all.”
He sits upright, and wipes his eyes.
“Did I ever tell you how long I was trapped on Gallifrey, after that day you spared me, and I you?”
He smiles at the Doctor, and it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Seventy years.”
The Doctor sees the sudden violence coming with just enough time to squeeze his eyes shut and tense his whole body in anticipation for a strike that might finish him off.
If that punch was delivered directly to his chest, he wouldn’t have blamed the Master for even a moment. A punch is the least he deserves.
His eyes open slowly at the slight dip of the mattress next to him. He glances over, wary now that the Master might be prone to another outburst of violence, and that this time he may not be so lucky as to avoid it being directed at him.
“I will forgive you. Not yet. I can’t yet. But one day, I will forgive you. As I always do and always will.”
He gives a minimal shake of his head at the question. They haven’t discussed it very much, he and Missy, apart from the occasional comment made. It hasn’t been something she’s wished to bring up, and he hasn’t pushed for information.
“Seventy years,” he repeats, raising his eyebrows. Longer than he spent with River, and roughly the same amount of time he’s spent on Earth with Missy. From living it himself, paying attention to the passing of time, he knows that despite their lifespans, seventy years is not a short time. It doesn’t feel it. He knows how the years can drag.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, because he doesn’t know how else he can respond. What is he to say? He is truly sorry, and though he is curious, he knows better than to ask questions when the Master isn’t necessarily in the best of moods.
He eyes the bloody fist. The sight of it makes the golden energy running so close to the surface burn in sympathy. He resists letting it take him over, because he knows he can heal from this if he’s only given time, but perhaps he can expel some of it — relieve the pressure slightly. Usually it would be dangerous to do so, but if he’s given something to actually focus it on, it might not be so bad.
The Doctor takes the Master’s hand gently in his own and concentrates.
“Let me do this,” he says quietly, waiting just a moment to give the Master chance to pull his hand away. Although he will be insistent on trying to heal him, he won’t do anything the Master actively doesn’t want him to do.
“You miss the point. I don’t want your apology: I want your faith.”
The Master draws so near the Doctor that his breath stirs his friend’s hair, like a thousand hot scarlet birds disturbing the drift of a cumulus cloud. He holds his bloodied hand jealously. It’s as though all he has left is his pain, all he has left to claim as his alone, and he won’t relinquish it just yet. It’s his sole bargaining chip.
“I want you to … to understand that it’s nothing unique to Missy or me that divides us as a person. It’s how we’ve been treated over time. Environment over innateness, and all that. She might’ve thrown Bill in a meat grinder to get at youifshe still had fresh wounds from seventy years of abuse and neglect! And maybe if I’d spent the same!!! Identical!! Amount of time!!”
He pounds his other fist insistently; redness spreads to his other palm.
“Then I might be the one knocking me out to untie you–oh yeah, you think I don’t know she’s on your side? I know–and weeping with remorse… hell, shit, I wish I had a companion to give you now, to show you I don’t want to always be the one hurting you.”
He has no idea Clara exists, beyond the vague outline described by Rassilon during his torments ( “the Doctor will come to Gallifrey to save that human, but not you!”); he has no idea he’s predicting his own would-be future, when Missy was new.
But he looks down at his hands, and he knows now that they’re both in agony. He knows that he’s becoming more and more disturbingly self-destructive lately.
Almost sheepishly, at last, he offers his hands to the Doctor’s, and to its sunset glow.
“I can’t answer your question, because if the Doctor died, there would not be enough of me left to exact an effective action of any kind. Except to annihilate. Yes. I suppose I would expend my last days taking revenge on the universe for continuing to exist after the Doctor was gone. I would destroy all of matter, all of creation, because she was not there to bear witness to it, and therefore, it no longer had the right. Because it … !”
He ducks his head, grinds his jaw, and gasps something resembling a mangled laugh.
“It failed her. It FAILED her. WE failed her. I would kill the universe and then I would cannibalize myself because nothing deserves to exist if that light is already extinguished.”
The Doctor, who had tried to approach with a softness and understanding, feels the Master’s intensity and insistence that he is still hiding, still running after all this time. A soft growl of frustration rumbles in his chest and his grip tightens on the Master’s upper arms.
He is not gentle, and a fire burns in his eyes, dangerous and white hot. If he wants to be greedy, if he wants every ounce of the Doctor, then so be it.
“Why must I ALWAYS be hiding from you? Why must I be running? When I’m right here and telling you that together, we are unique and magnificent and beautiful!”
The Doctor’s hands came up to the Master’s cheeks and held him close, forehead pressed hard against his best friends. They slip up into his salt and pepper hair and pull on those strands, tugging his head back as he places violent, hungry kisses to his jaw.
“The only thing I am ashamed of is MYSELF! The only thing that embarrases me is the fact that I failed you so horribly for so long! Losing you was the biggest regret of all my lives! I’d die a thousand times in the most horrible ways imagined if only I could go back and keep you by my side throughout it all. Koschei– MY Koschei. I am not running from you, I’m running TO you.”
He pulled back, chest heaving, his expression a mask of guilt and intense pain.
“Please, just see that. See that this is all I want. That I’m TRYING. For you, for us…”
“You’re the only one who can answer THAT question, TOO!” the Master roars.
Exasperation turns swiftly to fury as the Doctor seizes him bodily, and both aggravates and satisfies his yearning. There it is, that tornado of dangerous, beautiful passion, there it is: his groin hardens and throbs because this is the god at whose altar he worships, this is HIS Doctor, ALL sides of him, completely succumbing to his possession. This is the god, and yet, in the SAME BREATH, his sweet, ordinary, dreaming boy, whom he would protect with his BARE TEETH.
The pain of that grasp on his arms only arouses him further; he gasps at the kisses, the bites, that mark his skin, tears spilling from flushed cheeks, catches the Doctor’s mouth hard and suckles on it until there are marks.
He tackles him and throws his weight on top of him, forces his arms apart and kisses him harder, watering the Doctor’s face with the moisture from his eyes.
“BUT I AM NOT ASHAMED OF YOU. You are, to ME, the most beautiful fucked up thing that was ever loomed! You don’t NEED to refine yourself into something more perfect, you only need STAY. Not only in body, but in mind, in hearts. Just LOOK AT ME, look at me, I am WANTON with love of you! This ‘trying’: it need only be DAILY, CONSISTENT PRESENCE. You are my perfect, wounded boy. I would die, I would kill, and I would most certainly live, for the boy who is already right here beside me.”
His body presses against the Master’s and discovers he’s hard, of all things, and that both infuriates and arouses him even more. They kiss, and it’s hard and bruising; the Doctor knows he’ll bear the marks for days.
“YOU’RE the one who keeps insisting I’m running! YOU’RE the one who says I’m keeping something back!!”
The Doctor bellows, pushing Koschei hard back against the sofa.
“Am I not ENOUGH as I am? I’m giving you my ALL, Koschei, I am HERE, and it’s still not ENOUGH!!”
“WHEN WILL I BE ENOUGH!?”
The Doctor is thrown backwards almost hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and in that moment, the Master pins him, kisses him, and as his tears fall on to the Doctor’s face, they mix with his own.
But he breaks his wrists free of the Master’s grasp and grabs him by the hair again, pressing their bodies together and grinding up against him so he can feel that Theta, too, is hard and aching with desperate need. His nails draw sharply down the Master’s back, and then he falls slack, staring up at his frenzied, ardent lover. The could continue this wild, animalistic game, but to what end?
“You say all you need is me, by your side, consistent and present and here… I’m not trying to… sterilize myself for you, condense myself into a more palatable version. I’m trying to forgive myself, to forgive you, so we might have a future together. I’m trying to learn how to love again… I’ve been here, ever since you and I found each other, mind and body and soul, and you still say I’m hiding something. I don’t know what else to do, Koschei. I’ve confessed my darkest sins, let you help me bear the weight of my own guilt… and you still say I’m running.
All I want in this damned universe is you.
I’m not gonna run away again, I’m not gonna let anything tear you out of my arms. Don’t you believe that?”
Don’t you believe in me?
“I love you. Koschei, I love you so much.”
Whatever was ignited is snuffed instantly.
“You ARE enough for me. I just TOLD you that. You were enough for me BEFORE you tried to forgive yourself. I believe you are enough, and I’ve said so repeatedly. You’re punishing me for your own insecurity. It’s easier to wallow. Believe me, I know.”
The Master struggles out from under the Doctor. He stands, smooths his clothes, smooths his hair, smooths his emotions.
“I’m sorry … . that I believed you were trying to present only your best self to me. Trust is difficult. I didn’t mean to be …”
Tiresome. Exasperating. Needy.
“ … high-maintenance.”
Why can’t you shut up and lie in wait, and scheme coldly, and hide your hearts, the way he could, when he mobilized the Autons? The way she could, when she played House in the Vault?
Why are you the worst, most pathetic version of yourself you’ve ever been? A loud-mouthed, vulnerable child?
Euthanize yourself and do your loved one a favor, why don’t you.
“I think it would be best for us both if I got some air.”
Icarus 