Tag: without reward

itsjustkind:

｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ masterfulxrhythm:

The Master scoffs, a long, drawling snort, while his eyebrows dance acrobatics across his wrinkled forehead.

       “Don’t be pervy, I didn’t undress you. I’ve no notion where Humpty
        Dumpty took your clothes. Those’re better anyway … roomy, very
        blended-in with the locals.  Take it from a politician.”

He speaks, at first, distractedly, however acid his wit.  

And that’s because he felt the Doctor’s hand lingering on his own.

That’s because, for that millisecond of hesitation, his synapses fired associative tangents and his brain chemistry produced emotions and the result was that horrid thing called hope.  For just a moment, a soap-bubble of buoyancy in the pit of his black-tar-infested gut.  And quick on its heels, something worse still: regret.  But that one, the one connected to culpability and accountability, is still dull. The hope is far keener.  If he focuses on anything like regret, he’ll become slippery and stinking with the blood of all the men, women and children he’s sent to become corpses over the millennia.  Including the cybermen only a few dozen platforms below this one.  

No, best not to filter in the regret, or the hope, or anything but the imperious anger.

So he keeps up the pretense, which oddly is not pretense at all, of two old school rivals, of a married couple, bickering over inanities.  He twists his lip at the Doctor’s experimental motions.

       “What’re you doing, silently reciting the Hokey-Pokey?  I can examine
         you if you want.”

He doesn’t await permission; he lifts his black coattails and sits on the bed just behind the propped-up convalescent, feigning that he has not already done this five or six times during the Doctor’s quasi-coma.  He measures his pulse, trailing his fingers past his shoulders, down his arms, testing the reflexes, listening to his lungs with an odd rod-like extension of his laser screwdriver.

He prolongs skin-on-skin touch as long as he can, already greedy, so greedy and hungry, to feel that fleeting sensation of uplift again; an addict.

He licks his lips into the silence, and at last lifts his hands off.

     “ … lucky for you, more robust than any of these humans. I’ll never
     understand what you see in them.  Cybermen weren’t my idea, I only
     profited.  They do that: to each other! And they’re so bloody …”

He looks out the window, scouring for sight of the creature that was once Bill Potts, the girl with eccentricities and quirks, dreams and benign delusions, favorite teas and toothpastes, with whom he spent ten years. Snuffed in a single gunshot, rearranged in a single delivery to a conversion facility.  Lost.

    “ … . breakable.”  

And I fear frailty.  

Frailty means you’re in danger.

Danger means you can die.

Death means

you’ll

be

forgotten.

The Doctor has to force himself to stay still and not lean closer as the Master’s hands move across him for far longer than he thinks is strictly necessary. The simple touch of this being, who he has known as long as he can remember, is so much more than the touch of anyone else. More intense, more meaningful. He shivers under those hands and immediately hates himself for it. He should be angry with him — he is angry. But at the moment, he wants to reach for his hand again and hold it to his chest. Don’t go. He’s used to Missy’s casual touch now, but not that of her former self. He finds he enjoys it just as much, misses it, even if it does make him nervous. He hopes that isn’t too obvious. 

“Not enough layers,” he comments, quick-thinking to form a false reason for his shiver. “I’m cold.” It’s not a complete lie, so it’ll do. “I want my coat. Or yours.”

He wants his coat and his friend back. Oh, and maybe a little extra power to heal. He can’t go dying today. He hasn’t saved Bill yet, and he hasn’t gotten anyone out of here. That has to be his priority, not himself. As always.

He doesn’t wish to discuss the fragility of humans right now, so he won’t. He’s been reminded of it all too frequently throughout his life, and oh, he just wants to rest. He hurts everywhere and he’s so tired of everything. Why can’t he just rest? Because he’s the Doctor.

The Doctor closes his eyes briefly, feeling the rush of regeneration energy under his skin again. It fades, but not quickly enough for his liking. He glances up at the Master to check that he hasn’t noticed. 

“Did you volunteer for looking after me?” He chooses as usual to focus on something else. “Or did everybody else run off before they got stuck with the job? I thought I was the Doctor here.” There will never be a time, whether he’s dying or not, when he won’t take the opportunity to make that joke.

       “I don’t have to disclose that information, you self-important ass.”  

It’s as good as a confirmation; yes, he volunteered, yes, he’s chased off any suspicious or potentially hostile parties with sharp objects; yes, he’s been taking the Doctor’s pulse and feeling his forehead and watching over him and fretting like an old fishwife the entirety of his convalescence.

A sour and petulant look down his nose later, he reluctantly sheds his black and red coat. It smells like cinnamon and engine grease, and some indeterminable clean sharp musk. 

He hands it over, peevishly.

      “You’re too long for it, so I don’t see the point, because you always
       regenerate into a lanky bastard in order to make me feel little
       But here.” 

He’s privately too elated that the Doctor wants anything of his to even closely examine how transparent his old friend’s excuses are.

A pause, then, as the Master watches the Doctor through narrow feline eyes, black as antimatter and bright as polished obsidian.

      “She’s fine.  Bill.  The one you’re fretting over right now.  The
        one I probably know better than you.” 

Ooh, what a dig. He almost regrets it, almost.  But jealousy is such a noxiously potent emotion, and he felt it, the Doctor’s attempt to veer off-course of that painful subject, to run, run, run, as always. And it made him angry.

 Like it always does.