He puts down the bit of circuitry over which they’ve been arguing, voices and gestures absurdly escalating, when the Doctor’s infamous gob produces those words.
The Master’s smile is soft and betrays how susceptible he is to this particular verbal weapon.
Hands now freed, he traverses the small space between them, rises up on the Doctor’s feet—his usual proprietary body language–and kisses him firmly.
Ruffling his old friend’s hair, he croons,
“Say that again.”
The moment the Master puts down the very object they’ve been bickering over, the Doctor’s shoulders relax and the anger he felt steadily rising begins to recede. He didn’t know why they were arguing in the first place- perhaps because the Doctor is as stubborn as a mule and refuses to admit that his beloved might just know a bit more about the circuitry of their ship than he himself does, or perhaps just because he felt like arguing that day which… does happen from time to time- but he’s glad that for the moment it seems to be over.
For the moment.
The words he spoke aren’t meant to diffuse the situation, aren’t meant to be spoken aloud in the first place, but they do and they are and he’s thankful for it. His hands withdraw from his trouser pockets the moment the Master is within reach, placing them against his beloved’s hips as his feet are perched upon. A soft sound releases as they kiss, the rest of the tension automatically melting away in the wake of the firmness of his love’s lips against his own.
When the kiss ends and his hair is ruffled, the Doctor half grins and there’s no hiding the gentle glimmer of surprise in the chocolate irises. His voice is low, much different to how it had been moments ago and it’s clear the Master’s own response has disarmed him- just as susceptible to his beloved as his beloved is to him.
“You… You mean everything to me. Everything. There is no person, nor object, nor adventure more important to me than you.”
He wants to say more, wants to keep speaking and allow his perpetual motion to carry over into his gob as per usual, but instead, as he finishes his original thought, he mirrors the Master’s previous action and kisses him firmly. A much better option than rambling, to be sure, especially considering his proclivity for the dramatic and his wish for the argument-over-nothing-important to be over.
I think the thing that makes you feel things about this face is the context paired with the expression, and the pretense of a very intimate moment (he leans down, asks him to “whisper in his ear” with that hand gesture in one of the above gifs).
He gazes into the eyes of his vulnerable, weakened equal and counterpart for a long, meaningful moment, before lofting his eyebrows, and the message there is “I know you already know who they are, I know you already suspect that they’re the self-cannibalized human race, and I don’t need to tell you,” and that weird sort of RESPECT for the Doctor’s intellect combined with the FACETIOUS “CONCERN” for the Doctor’s “hearts breaking” makes it a particularly potent form of cruelty. And the apex of arch-nemesis and former flame interaction: you respect but also loathe your arch-nemesis.
Pair with that, the Master is usingand therefore mocking the Doctor’s own most prized trait,COMPASSION, masquerading as someone showing “consideration” for the Doctor’s feelings, to deliver the awful killing blow to his hearts.
And what’s that killing blow? “The species with whom you replaced me after running away from our friendship and betraying my long-ago trust in you? They’re more evil than I, the disappointment you ran from, could ever be. They took advantage of each other’s weaknesses You DEFINE YOURSELF BY HOW YOU CAN SAVE OTHERS. WELL YOU CAN’T SAVE THEM. THIS IS THEIR INEVITABLE FUTURE.”
It’s the execution of his line “human race: greatest monsters of them all.”
Another impossibly gentle ‘whoosh’ of air leaves the Doctor’s lungs as that one simple word, so like the others before yet holding such deeper meaning, is uttered. Before he realizes it he too is transported, to another time, another place where he almost confessed what needed confessing. Where he nearly bared himself and oh, oh how he should have. Fixed point or no, brought together and apart, together and apart like the ebb and flow crashing against the shoreline, oh how he wishes he’d been braver then. He wishes his cowardice and stubbornness hadn’t thwarted his attempts to say more than a pondering of what he would have become without the Master.
He knew, of course, as he knows now. He wouldn’t exist at all. Theta would not be without Koschei. That, too, like themselves, was a Universal constant. He would not have survived the brutality of his adolescent years were it not for the Time Lord in his arms.
That simple ’yeah’ says more than he himself ever has, in all of his utterances in any of his forms. It is beautiful and breathtaking, just like the man who’s said it and the words that follow, the tears that are shed, his hearts clench tightly and he knows. He knows. He knows the things which cannot be confessed because he knows his Koschei so well, and it does not repulse him. Contrary, it never has. His own tears fall more freely, equally as silent and bareft of any dramatic influence. He is simply Theta Sigma, bared now as he wouldn’t allow himself to be then, belonging to the keeper of his hearts the way he was always meant to. His arms draw the Master closer, a silent request that is immediately accepted and carried out. The fear is gone, dust in the billowing winds of centuries wasted.
Too much time has passed for him to waste a moment of it now, nor ever again, and he clings near-too-tightly, not allowing a single breath of distance between them. His mind is open, his skin warm beneath the Master’s touch, countless hours of barriers, armor, defenses all falling away as mental signatures combine and leave a feeling of relief in the wake of combination. Tendrils outstretch, seeking and drawing in and it’s a wonder how he ever manages to go without this mental contact. Aloud, words fail him, his chosen medium rendered to ash in this moment of startling and brilliant clarity.
Inside, his thoughts speak for him and allow the Master, his Koschei, his home, his Universe, to hear and understand and know. Partly a repetition of the other’s own words to him in troubled moments, partly his own sentiments, all wrapped in a diaphanous blanket of pure and unadulterated love. The words within their swirling tendrils are base, simple, the artform gone and leaving behind just the words and meanings as before. Promises anew.
We’re not there anymore. The past is done and the future waits. Together. I’m sorry. For all the hurt, pain, terror, blindness, broken promises, I’m sorry. I understand. What you did, I understand. I know. I accept. I forgive. Forgive me too. Missed you every moment. Never leaving again. I remember. Stay, as I stay, stay with me, Hearts. I belong to you. Will always, have always. I’m yours. My other half. Soul of my soul. My Koschei.
Koschei murmurs a laugh. He remains otherwise resolutely immobile. A long moment passes, in which nothing but their pure minds communes. In this perfect silent bliss, free of the drums and their poisonous associations with death, insufficiency and solitude, he hears every syllable nudged across the ever-closing bridge between them. He hears, and realizes that he could happily never emerge from this place again.
In the silence there is a sound accompanying Theta’s words: the distant high hiss, the lull, of a seatide, peppered by something like glass chimes, in incandescent harmony, like the sound of light on the ocean at sunset. The sound is eternal; it’s their music, together. The sound is neither Koschei nor Theta, but the entropy of both.
Tears continue to fall indiscriminately, like the little boy beneath thousands of years of calcification is leaking through. His hands rest on Theta’s shoulders; he guides him down to kneeling, until they are both on their knees, then gently, without looking once, guides the pair of them down to the TARDIS grates, on their sides, foreheads still connected.
We’re not there anymore. I understand, too. Just, when you run, take me with you, or run toward me. I trust that you will. I know, I accept. I do forgive you, too. Now you are me, and I am you. What can I do but stay with myself? My other half. Soul of my soul. Life of my life. My every happiness. My Theta. I’ve got you, sweet my love. I’ve got you. You are not alone. I love you. I know you love me.
He opens his eyes, then.
“ … Hi.”
“Crybaby.”
A gentlest tease, as plentiful tears stain his own face.
Theta revels in the silence, encases himself in the mental presence of the keeper of his hearts, undiluted and all consuming, a painless and blissful inferno. Home. That’s what it is, what it always has been, stretching on forever in an eternity of breathtakingly vivid sensation. In that moment he knows the beauty of the static unmoving, he knows the peace brought on by homogeneity, he knows himself better than he has in centuries. There is nothing that has been done that cannot be forgiven. There is nothing that could be done that cannot be done together.
His hearts are in perfect sync with Koschei’s now, just as his telepathic signature is, just as those cerulean tendrils dance and swirl within the crimson tides of the other’s until both minds become one single, solitary form, a calming and reassuring violet. Deep, rich, and holding everything Theta is or could be, wants to be, wishes he were. Now he is. He simply is, and the gentle yet ever expanding whisperings of light and time, of love and infinity, of finally coming home again, two halves made whole in the eternal luminescence… it fills his eyes anew with tears that roll down his cheeks so freely he’s sure they will never cease.
So caught up in the phenomenon of symphonic, melodious harmony is he that he doesn’t notice the gentle guidance of thier bodies down onto the grating. Doesn’t notice when his knees touch the metal, eyes still closed, still pouring jovial realization through closed lids down damp cheeks, still connected skin to skin, flesh to flesh, in whatever ways he possibly can be. Doesn’t notice when he is on his side, still clinging near-too-tightly to his hearts which are no longer within himself, but without, there inside of Koschei, where perhaps they always have been. Not perhaps. Have been. Of course they have been.
As Koschei’s words echo back through his synapses- soaking into every part of him, dissolving into his senses until all sight, touch, sound, taste, scent, is all Koschei -their beautiful symphony increases and surrounds him just as his beloved has done. The whisperings he’s always heard, the call of the ocean tides and the billowing winds, the yearning to seek out completion, the sound of his hearts, it’s been here waiting. He is awake, free, he remembers and oh, oh it is glorious. In this moment he knows simultaneously that he has been in purgatory and that he will never, not once, be there again.
You are not alone. Never alone again. I’ve got you, always. I will run with you, forever. My hand in yours. Now you are me, and I am you. We are each other, one being. My hearts, my happiness, myself, are yours. My Koschei. I know you love me, too.
His eyes open in the same exact moment, a mirror image of the keeper of his hearts, just as he always has been and always will be. The moon and the sun, the tide and the shoreline, fire and ice, chaos and order, infinity unbound. Together, finally, again. A watery and soft, near whispering chuckle escapes him. He doesn’t notice their new position because it feels more natural than standing, wrapped up together.
“Hello…”
The corner of his mouth twitches upward just a fraction.
“Takes one to know one. But you’ve forgotten, Hearts, that I’m also a melodramatic Utopian visionary…”
His face transforms into a gentle smile, and another watery chuckle escapes him. His eyes are lighter than they have been since he was a boy, almost glowing in the light of the room, and his voice is no longer carrying the weight of the centuries.
Icarus 