He was BORED.He had been piloting the TARDIS wherever she would take him. He didn’t do anything on the planets he visited, not really. He just walked around them and observed life going on while he thought up music for his guitar.
He wasn’t mourning, or at least he didn’t think he was. He was just, tired of the universe. he was tired of the hypocrisy and the lies and slander. He was tired of the violence and war. He just wanted to r e s t.
Alas, the universe called. He was currently situated in his TARDIS when she let out a warning hum before she took off without his ministrations. He stumbled on his feet and ran to the console room to find the door already open.
WHO could have done this?
Who indeed, who or what.
A red-meat-eating, volcano-roaring, blood-spilling career assassin; a beast with hearts too large and too charred; a child scared of the dark that is being forgotten and dying, lashing out perennially; a lover ousted by the other half of his own soul.
An arrogant dick, who calls himself “Master.”
Clad in head to toe black and red, the colors of death and its price, he’s leaning against a crashed space shuttle that’s still smoking.
While eating Jelly Babies. Popping them, one at a time, cavalierly, into his mouth.
“Hey bitch,” he merrily cries, and aims a black-nailed middle finger at his incredulous oldest friend. “Remember me?”
A pause, glancing back at the collateral.
“Oh, relax. It wasn’t inhabited. I was just trying to catch your attention.”
It works, obviously. His resting frown is gone almost as soon as the words are said. People don’t generally tell him that, and he’s quite sure the Master doesn’t mean it. He’s amused anyway, whether it’s a genuine compliment or not.
“I’m not saying that I cried at the Lion King, I’m just saying that I’m never watching it again.”
The Doctor takes the popcorn from the coffee table, evidently deciding it’s his now. He doesn’t really care what they watch, honestly, despite the fuss he’s making. He’d much rather watch the Master watching the film instead. To silently show affection in a way he hopes isn’t too obvious, he leans against his shoulder. He won’t be moved to putting an arm around his shoulders. He’s seen people try to do that to others and sometimes it makes them look as nervous as he feels when he wants to initiate physical contact. No — he’ll just sit patiently and wait.
“What about one of those science films that are completely inaccurate?”
Patience has never been a strength of his. He lays his head on the Master’s shoulder.
The Master’s whole body shakes with his laughter; he’s not trying to hide it, grinning toothily at his best friend.
“You sobbed like a schoolchild at Mufasa’s death–oh WHAT, do you think that when I was crash-coursing myself on the history of the planet in order to pose as a prime minister, I didn’t spend a few hours on Disney? ‘You’re WEL-coooom!’”
And, thusly quoting “Moana,” he selects Jurassic Park from the direct-watch menu.
“How about this one, a Tyrannosaur eats a solicitor while he’s sitting on a toilet, it’s ever so funny.”
He rests his cheek on top of the Doctor’s head, cozily.
Children of Gallifrey, taken from their families at the age of eight, to enter the Academy. Some say that’s where it all began. When he was a child. That’s when the Master saw eternity. As a novice, he was taken for initiation. He stood in front of the Untempered Schism — it’s a gap in the fabric of reality, through which could be seen the whole of the Vortex. You stand there. Eight years old. Staring at the raw power of time and space. Just a child. Some would be inspired. Some would run away. And some would go mad.
That monosyllabic command stops him dead in his tracks.
Because it’s not a command, really. It’s a plea.
Ahhhh yes. What a thrill. He remembers this.
The indescribable sensation of individual organs hemorrhaging and shutting down, on the floor of the flying fortress he designed and built with his own hands, a far younger, far more reckless version of the soul sitting on this bed begging him not to leave him alone.
And isn’t the choice he made on that day the whole cause for the trajectory of his–?
‘How about that. I win lose. ‘
Ohh, no. Don’t do that. Oh whoa. Dangerous terrain, these thoughts. Entertaining ideas of blame again. Stop that.
Let it be a draw, Koschei. Just this once.
Else why did you hover over his bed these past days, w o r r y i n g that the source of your mad strivings was going to be fully extinguished?
“ … .I did volunteer. I didn’t trust anyone else to keep you safe.”
In fact, let him win. With these words.
He takes a pitcher of water from the bedside table, and pours a glass.
He nudges the Doctor’s shoulder with it.
Now, this he isn’t expecting. Why was it so easy? Why has his demand been taken and accepted so quickly? He’d expected at least another sharp comment meant to hurt him. But he’s certainly not going to argue. He doesn’t move either, at first, just waiting in slightly awkward silence for either the comment to come late, or their less hurtful conversation to resume.
He’s glad it turns out to be the latter.
“Well,” he says, sitting up enough to take the water. “Thank you.” It’s a genuine thanks, though he is biting back an assurance that he no longer requires babysitting. It’s difficult to decide what he actually wants. Part of him wants to insist he can manage just fine alone now, and the other part wants the Master to stay by his bedside for the rest of this life (which he’s not fully convinced is going to be too long, if he’s honest).
He uses his free hand to pull the Master’s coat around himself better.
“Any tips on keeping regeneration at bay until I’ve recovered? I’m fine,” — and his tone is defensive and firm, as though challenging even the unspoken suggestion that he might not be. “But my body seems to think regeneration will be easier than waiting this out and healing. I don’t want to regenerate.”
Not now, and not at all. Not again. He can’t do this again. The tiredness has been making itself evident in his eyes over many years now, and it never quite goes away. Even the humans at the university have expressed concern for him. He brushes it off every time, of course, but he knows they’re right. The weight of the universe resting continuously on his shoulders has perhaps exhausted him to a point he can’t return from.
Still. He doesn’t have to make up his mind yet. He’s not dying today. Not yet. There’s still hope, and for him it currently appears in the shape of his best friend, at the side of his bed. He’s still here, looking after him, and that has to mean something.
Easy? Hardly, that was excruciating. And yet he can’t but feel softly. Softly, for the angry, weary, befuddled old man (old, like he is) fumbling for his dignity. And that is all he’s ever wanted to see from the Doctor, in the end: some semblance of vulnerability, or neediness. Some sort of aching empty spot where Koschei used to be. Rather like the facade of an old house, whose shutters have been ripped off, and the remaining rectangular stains haven’t weathered like the rest of the house. Something fresh and vibrant and yet devoid, beneath, within.
At his core, the Master wants to feel … . mandatory. Necessary. Needed.
By this specific person: or who this specific person was.
Softly, yes. He feels softly. Like he never feels.
How terribly, sentimentally ordinary of him.
“You’re welcome,” the words escape before he’s able to stop himself, because they are the truth.
But when the Doctor lets slip his true condition, up flies a protective emotional exoskeleton around the Master’s hearts. Up like the carapaceof an armadillo, circling itself. His eyes blaze and flash.
“Like hell you’re fine,” he snarls, face viciously animated, even while his voice remains discreetly low. Because this is his, this is HIS to hoard, the Doctor told HIM first how badly off he really is, and no one, not a cyberman named Bill, and not even his own future self, can take that away. “If your body is trying to regenerate that’s the very definition of not fine.”
He leans across the bed, feigning an effort to adjust the curtains and shutters, glances around, and continues, in the Doctor’s ear, so close that his scent of cloves and engine grease is overpowering.
“It’s mindfulness. That’s literally ninety-nine percent of it. You have to will yourself not to regenerate. You have to recite it like a mantra, and keep your mind from wandering off the subj … look, Doctor, I’m not giving you advice on how I stopped my own regeneration. You may recall that ended with me dying.”
“Only one thing?” He rolls his eyes and sighs dramatically. “Ah, I rather thought I was useful for reaching high shelves for you. I suppose I’ll have to hide more of your things up there, and then you’ll be sure to appreciate my height.”
The Doctor is privately glad he seems to like the hugs, though. It must mean that even though he’s not a natural hugger, his height gives him an advantage when it comes to hugging people to comfort them.
“Your height — or lack thereof — makes you easy to hug, I suppose, little spoon.” He does enjoy calling him that. It shows on his face.
“HAH! Hehahah! Oho! You were worried. I can feel it.”
The Master dances the fingers of both hands up the Doctor’s chest, straight into his unruly cumulonimbus cloud of curls.
“You were worried your hugs didn’t stand up to some nonexistent test of merit! You numpty, try to remember when we were boys, and pounced each other in red fields and rolled down hills of grass in a tangle of limbs. Were we worried for even a moment, that we might not be good pouncers? No, of course not.”
He stands right upon the Doctor’s feet to obtain the height to kiss his chin.
“We were only overflowing with joy and affection, and expressing those things in the comfortable tactility of three dimensions. That’s all such things are, in the end.”
He then bites his hooked nose.
“I even forgive you for that damned nickname, in light of that fact.”
Icarus 