The Master has spent the past 68 solid hours trying to single-handedly mend the TARDIS transmission that SOMEONE broke jumping too fast between coordinates.
Presently he thrusts upright on the makeshift cot by the strewn cables and guts of the vessel, startled at the tap to his cheek, fumbling for his laser screwdriver. His eyes focus on the man who has basically been his spouse for the past many millennia.
“Oh, golly,” he grunts, scrubbing hands down his face. “What d’you want, Thete? I’m getting bloody nowhere with this.”
He leans against the control panel bleakly.
“What’s that. A thank-you present. Buttering me oop for doing maintenance on the old girl?”
He falls silent at the explanation, silent and very nearly meek.
I’ve never been so happy.
The Doctor just spoke those words, to him. Oh God. His chest is so tight and sharp, what does that mean? What’s happening?
Koschei opens the box furtively. He sifts through the little bits and pieces of affection made tangible. He reads the paper slips and they grow harder and harder to read through astonished tears. By the time he’s read the title on the lid, he has to hasten to wipe his eyes dry.
It’s enormously corny and sentimental, it’s what he would scoff at as folly at any other moment, but now it has profoundest meaning. Now it’s everything, it’s the key to making meaning from the entropy of the universe.
He stares at that stupid hopeful face and for a moment, a frightened rage seizes him, at how vulnerable they both are, and he moves to throw the thing across the room. Instead he cradles it to his chest like it’s a baby, and weeps harder.
His joy ought to be highly evident.
But if it’s not, only a moment or two passes before he mumbles,
“Thanks.”
The Doctor knows how corny the gift is. He’s actually had it for several weeks now, hidden away in a cupboard, waiting until he finds the courage to present it to the object of his affection. It’s the kind of thing he himself might also scoff at unless the time and atmosphere are exactly right.
There are no words to describe the twisting nervousness and anxiety he feels waiting for the reaction to the gift he’s poured his hearts into. The time is right for him, but if the Master is not ready to accept what he offers? The rejection will hurt him, and not purely in a surface level way.
At first, he worries that the tears in the Master’s eyes are tears of sadness or anger or despair. All are equally possible. He tries not to make assumptions, and sits, waiting. His fears come so close to being confirmed when that frightened rage almost wins.
It’s only now that he realises the weeping is not as he thought. It can’t be; not with the way his gift is being held. The Doctor can’t bring himself to move, captivated by the sight before him. He has done something to move Koschei and now he doesn’t know what to do — should he leave? Give him some space? Should he move closer and try to offer a hug? The Doctor may have improved considerably with Koschei’s help, but he’s utterly useless at knowing what to do in a situation like this, and probably always will be.
He decides to move closer. It’s a risky decision and he’s not confident that he won’t be pushed away. He moves so that he is kneeling beside him and reaches an arm around his shoulders. It’s more of an offer than anything. He’s saying come here, I’ll hold you, I love you, but it’s okay, I won’t push you if you don’t want me near. That’s what he really wants to get across. It’s alright. This is alright.
It’s a lesson he’s always found difficult to learn and accept, that it’s okay to be vulnerable with a few select people. He’s still learning it now.
“You are…very welcome.” He doesn’t need thanking. To know that he’s helped the Master in any way is thanks enough.
“This is good, you know?”
At length the Master looks up from the cherished, cradled box of sweet gestures. It’s so rare that he would be the one imparting wisdom, instructing in good behavior, that he half feels this is a strange and wondrous dream.
Oh, but it’s not, it’s better; it’s healing, beside his best friend.
“This is so very good. You did a very good thing. Oh God.”
He ducks his head, embarrassed and yet overcome, as though the words are involuntary, wrenched from the pit of his gut:
The Master watches the Doctor agonizing, with a familiar sad affection. He ducks his head and scoots slightly closer.
“While you are a berk and more,” he murmurs, strangely soft-spoken for such an avowed tyrant, “you are mine. Even if we are out of synchrony, a harmony that’s a cacophony for only being a few beats off track. You will not believe me, but I would rather be dissonant with you than that your music stop forever.”
He catches the cantankerous old owl’s eyes, and the lines beneath his deepen with a smile that illumines his whole face.
“Stay. As an old Scotsman or a young ginger whatever, or a … .a kumquat. I don’t care. Just stay. So I can keep giving you hell, and you can keep lecturing me for all my shortcomings.”
He takes the hand that glows.
The Doctor could scarcely believe this was his old foe speaking to him. But then, he remembered, Koschei Oakdown had been his very best friend, even when so few of the rest in the Academy would be. He lazily waved toward the scanner. “Oh, there it is. The silly old universe. The more I save it, the more it needs saving. It’s a treadmill.”
He actually gave the proffered hand a gentle squeeze before swaying almost drunkenly to his feet, taking one last stroll around the console room, seeing it with these eyes the one last time. “This used to be your dad’s TARDIS, remember? If.. if Clara’s echo hadn’t pointed me to it that last awful night on Gallifrey, you and I might not be having this conversation and the old girl would be rotting away in some horrid temporal knacker’s yard. Even I didn’t recognize her until I was third me.”
Then he stopped, staring blearily at something no one else could see. “Doctor.. just you wait a moment. Let’s get this right.
I’ve got a few things to say to you. Basic stuff first. Never be cruel, never be cowardly, and never, ever eat pears! Remember, hate is always foolish. and love is always wise. Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind. Oh, and you mustn’t tell anyone your name. No one would understand it, anyway. Except, ah!” He collapsed at the console and only made it to his feet with The Master’s help. “Except children. Children can hear it sometimes. If their hearts are in the right place, and the stars are too, children can hear your name. But nobody else. Nobody else, ever. Laugh hard, run fast, be kind. Doctor, I let you go.”
And so he canted his head backward, arms spread wide as the primeval cataclysm took him, smashing his precious library to ruin and overloading the console with smoke, fire and sparking current.
His last conscious thought as number twelve was “.. oops.”
“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.
Icarus 