The Doctor has been in something between an exhausted stupor and a truly medical coma for over a day.
And the Master has not left his side once; even Missy has been more inclined to wander, to acquaint herself with the local children who recognize her younger self through refugees from another platform of the ship. Refugees who heard what he permitted to happen through conversion centers, even to children, before he hid as Razor. Refugees who whispered to parents, who gasped and pointed, and drew their children close. Yes, gawk away, asylum-seekers, the Master is no stranger to infamy: It claimed him young. Young, unaware, innocent. Like one of those kids.
But that’s a story, true as it may be, that no one will believe. No one but the gray-haired man over whom the Master stands watch.
Nardole initially tried to shoo away the menacing figure in black and red; the Master chased him out with various sharp and flammable objects, to the tune of Missy’s cackling, until at last he yielded.
Since then, he’s been seated on an infernally stiff farmhouse chair, keeping watch. Playing solitaire. Counting the aberrations in the ceiling woodwork. Tidying his eyeliner. Internally screaming.
As the Doctor awakens, the Master straightens in his seat, summoning his mask of callous malice.
“ ‘Auch, it’s me,’” he parrots, with utmost impudence, and a little more of a lascivious undertone than is strictly necessary, bobbing his head mockingly back and forth.
“Look here, Grumpy, while Lady, Eggy and Techy were out brainstorming, I was preserving your injured arse for my own future chance to kill. Don’t tempt me to satisfy myself prematurely.”
He offers a patient hand to aid the Doctor in sitting up.
The Doctor rolls his eyes. He takes the hand offered to him and forces himself into a more upright position, holding on just a moment longer than necessary.
“Where are we, then?” He finally manages to tear his gaze away from the Master to look around. “I don’t remember being brought here. How long have I been unconscious?” He remembers the rooftop. That memory ends when the Cyberman gets him. Nothing since then, so that must be when he passed out.
That primitive Cyberman alone couldn’t have the ability to kill a Time Lord. Nearly, but not quite. So why is it that he still feels the stirring of regeneration energy within him? Not close to the surface, and not urgent, but it’s definitely there. He can only hope it will fade as he heals. He glances at the Master again. Should he mention it to him? No, it’s probably nothing.
He stretches his legs, assessing the damage silently. No bone injuries, and he can wiggle his toes, so he’ll be able to walk soon. Same with his arms; he stretches them and wiggles his fingers. Everything just aches horribly, which is only to be expected.
Next he takes a good look at the Master. He’s wearing eyeliner. The Doctor wonders if he did it himself, or if Missy did it. He notices that the Master’s colour scheme is very similar to his own, which reminds him — “Where are my shoes? And my own clothes?” It wouldn’t surprise him if Nardole has taken them in hope that it will prevent him from trying to get up and run around.
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.
“Mm?” He doesn’t process the words at first, far too busy listening to the Master’s heartbeats. The Doctor can count on one hand the number of things which can convince him to move from his current position. He’s draped half on top of him, head on his chest so he can hear the beating of the hearts he has such a strong connection to. It must be the most comfortable he’s ever been.
“I know. Nothing is the same with other people. I love other people, but they’re not you.” That’s as much as he can think to say for a minute or so, while he has time to consider it more. “You’re…the best. My favourite living thing. I’ll always love you.” He smiles up at him like an adoring fool. “Look at what you do to me.” He’s referring to the way he’s shamelessly drawing comfort just from being so close to the Master. “Nobody else can do this.”
“Then I trust I’m allowed to say things nobody else is. Such as: you’re adorable when you get this way. Utterly precious. A sentimental twat.”
The Master’s in a lordly pose, reclined on his back on their bed, twirling and untwirling cloudy gray curls in his fingers, occasionally smoothing down the sheep’s wool of his oldest friend’s hair.
His first feeling upon waking is physical pain. His head hurts and the memories from before sleeping aren’t quite accessible yet. In reality, this is the third time he has woken up, but the first couple of times he was only conscious for a few seconds at most — not long enough to think.
The Doctor doesn’t open his eyes straight away. He’s expecting it to be too bright. Instead, he shifts and tries to work out where he is. He has no shoes, and he’s wearing mostly different clothes, so somebody put him here. Nardole? Missy?Possibly. He doesn’t remember any of it. It’ll come back to him.
He finally opens his eyes, only to flinch in surprise at the sight of a face. It’s the Master, leaning over him. The Doctor goes to sit up a bit, re-establish his control, but finds himself groaning in pain instead. He sighs, giving up for now. “It’s you. What do you want? Come to kill me? Have you been watching me sleep?”
The Doctor has been in something between an exhausted stupor and a truly medical coma for over a day.
And the Master has not left his side once; even Missy has been more inclined to wander, to acquaint herself with the local children who recognize her younger self through refugees from another platform of the ship. Refugees who heard what he permitted to happen through conversion centers, even to children, before he hid as Razor. Refugees who whispered to parents, who gasped and pointed, and drew their children close. Yes, gawk away, asylum-seekers, the Master is no stranger to infamy: It claimed him young. Young, unaware, innocent. Like one of those kids.
But that’s a story, true as it may be, that no one will believe. No one but the gray-haired man over whom the Master stands watch.
Nardole initially tried to shoo away the menacing figure in black and red; the Master chased him out with various sharp and flammable objects, to the tune of Missy’s cackling, until at last he yielded.
Since then, he’s been seated on an infernally stiff farmhouse chair, keeping watch. Playing solitaire. Counting the aberrations in the ceiling woodwork. Tidying his eyeliner. Internally screaming.
As the Doctor awakens, the Master straightens in his seat, summoning his mask of callous malice.
“ ‘Auch, it’s me,’” he parrots, with utmost impudence, and a little more of a lascivious undertone than is strictly necessary, bobbing his head mockingly back and forth.
“Look here, Grumpy, while Lady, Eggy and Techy were out brainstorming, I was preserving your injured arse for my own future chance to kill. Don’t tempt me to satisfy myself prematurely.”
He offers a patient hand to aid the Doctor in sitting up.
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.
Icarus 