Chapter Text
Whoever thinks being shrunk into a tooth and then reacquiring your usual size is anything but agony—they are very welcome to try it themselves. The Master whimpers, not quite lucid enough yet to be embarrassed about the pathetic sound he makes. With it, comes a vague awareness that his vocal cords are, in fact, working, and it can only mean one thing: he does have a body again. Which is both good news and bad news. The latter because everything fucking hurts, hurts, hurts. It feels just as bad as when he’d accidentally tested his Tissue Compression Eliminator on himself.
“Are you all right?” a voice comes from somewhere close, as familiar as the hopeful stupidity of the question.
The Master would have snapped because no, he obviously isn’t all right, but there’s a giddy thought muffling his irritation: He found you, he came for you. To be honest, he hadn’t expected that. Had stopped himself from hoping.
“Doctor,” he croaks out.
He blinks, tries to focus, his vision blurry. The face he knows all too well comes into view … and he has to blink again because—what? The Doctor looks much older than during the clash with Rassilon when the Master has last seen him. How much time might have passed?
“Can you move?” the Doctor asks urgently.
That’s a valid question, better than the previous one. He isn’t sure. It’s as if his muscles, tendons, and even bones have been stretched on a rack. He tries to rise up and fails at both accomplishing this feat and suppressing a groan. Stubbornly, he makes another attempt and finds that he’s lying on the floor in the Doctor’s arms, just like that time when he’d got shot on the Valiant. With the exception that he’s naked. He doesn’t have the strength to be mortified about it either, or even to make a joke of it.
“It’d be easier to get us out of here if you could,” the Doctor says almost apologetically.
“Where are we?”
“UNIT headquarters. At first, I thought it would be better to carry you out…uh…the way you were, compressed, so to speak, but they’ve got a lot of empty labs here, and necessary equipment. A cylinder with Numismaton gas and other stuff… So it seemed like a good idea to do the reversal here. Anyhow, now we need to sneak out, and it might be a bit of a problem. I mean—your face. I mean—even the erased year aside, you still got yourself quite famous down here, assassinating the US president. Hard to forget such a Prime Minister.”
“Stop yapping,” the Master orders. Maybe it comes out more like a plea. He’s dizzy and still not quite in control of his body; too many words—they barely sink in. But ‘UNIT headquarters’ sounds bad enough. Not that the Master is going to complain about being resurrected as such, but couldn’t the Doctor find a suitable lab anywhere else?
It’ll be his damn luck if he goes from the Citadel prison right into another one on Earth. By the way, how come he’s back on Earth? But thinking about it requires too much effort. The Master chooses to concentrate on more pressing matters, like getting up.
When he manages that, the Doctor assists him, somewhat clumsily, in putting on a loose hoodie and joggers. It’s utterly humiliating, but the Master grits his teeth and accepts it. He’s still too off-balance to cope on his own. The aesthetic sucks, but at least he won’t need to stagger through the corridors of UNIT stark naked. Although it would make a nice distraction if they met any guards. This particular body is quite a sight, he’d liked it. And despite his pain and disorientation, as far as he can tell, it seems to have been knitted back together the way it should be, not the way it had been, the last time he remembers.
“Couldn’t kill the bastard,” he mutters as the Doctor tries to help him into somewhat worn out sneakers, probably the Doctor’s own, kneeling at his feet. It’s a good look on him, kneeling; always has been.
The Doctor looks up, unaware of the Master’s reminiscing—lewd, but unfortunately harmless for now. “Who? The Toymaker?”
“Rassilon. Well, technically, I did kill him, but the old toad regenerated.”
At least it had been a satisfyingly painful death.
But the consequences… they’d been much less satisfying. When he’d blasted Rassilon back to Gallifrey and followed him, consumed by anger, he hadn’t really thought what might happen to him next. He’d been almost dead anyway—no need to worry about the future. Held down on the flagstone floor of the High Council’s chamber, weakened by his outburst to the point of not caring, he’d felt almost gleeful, faintly so: what can you possibly do to me?
As it had turned out—a lot.
“Yeah, I saw his new looks,” the Doctor nods, finally having overpowered the sneakers. “Hardly any changes in his charming personality, though.”
A strange expression passes over his face so briefly that the Master barely catches it. Bitterness? Sorrow? But it’s gone in a moment—and the Doctor stands up with a put-on smile. “Ready to go?”
As the Doctor leads him—or more like half-drags him—through clinically lit corridors, he keeps chatting: “Quite a large building, see? Lots of rooms. Lots of half-finished experiments. I’m pretty sure they even have a time window somewhere on the top floors… But I’m currently more interested in the basement.”
And all the while, the Master keeps thinking: the Doctor confronting Rassilon again—that’s because of me, surely. He wishes he saw this showdown, it must have been spectacular.
He also wishes he’s had more faith after the Doctor’s plea to travel the stars with him, like they’d planned so long ago. “It would be my honour,” he’d said. “You could be beautiful,” he’d said. He’d looked like the Master already was.
There had been other words later, rancorous and vitriolic: “He won’t even remember of your existence, he only comes for his precious humans when they are in trouble, never for you. Maybe it counts as a compliment? He’s sure you’ll be able to fend for yourself. But will you?” The other one had made him believe this—it had sounded so bitterly logical, but he’d been wrong, wrong, and here’s the proof.
They don’t use the front exit of course. There’s always an unmarked technical door somewhere, even in a gold security establishment, masked by garbage bins. They go around an ugly construction fence—and there’s a taxi right beside it, in a tiny, shaded lane wedged between the City skyscrapers. Waiting for them, it looks like.
The Doctor loads the Master into the backseat, and the driver turns to him. “Are you all right, mate?”
The switch from Gallifreyan to local is too abrupt for the Master’s addled mind, so he doesn’t find a suitably ironic retort at once—for the second time today.
The Doctor plops into the backseat from the other side, saving him from having to answer at all.
“Allons-y,” he declares, and the cab starts off. “Sorry for the delay, Shaun. Took us longer than I expected.”
“Is this your new pet?” the Master inquires—scathingly enough, he hopes, to compensate for his earlier loss of words.
“What?” The Doctor sounds genuinely confused. “Oh, you wanted to say—a new companion? No. No, I don’t do that anymore… well, someone else does but… Anyway, that’s… um… that’s Shaun, he’s my brother-in-law, sort of. Donna’s husband. Remember Donna? She knocked you down in Chiswick—several of you. It’s actually very nice of Shaun to help us. He isn’t obliged to, you know. You might ask: why not simply use the TARDIS. In and out—easy. But as much as the UNIT lot might like me, I’m fairly certain they must have installed some kind of detectors against alien tech materializing within their building. While a regular, inconspicuous London cab—”
“You’re blabbering again,” the Master grumbles. Too much sound. And very little of it makes sense.
“Yeah, sorry, just leftover nerves. Won’t it be more comfortable if you lean onto me? Like this?”
It’s almost bearable indeed, to be half-held. Insomuch that it doesn’t register right away that the Doctor. Is. Petting. His. Hair!
He should pull away, preferably with a caustic remark, but feels no strength to do so.
Just for a moment, he tells himself. And then maybe a moment more.
Chapter Text
He wakes up with a jolt—and the first thing he sees is a blurry patch of sunlight on floral wallpaper. There are faint sounds of birds chirping and leaves rustling; they come from an open window, as it turns out. Otherwise, everything is quiet.
He’s still not used to the absence of drumming in his head. So far, he’s had little opportunity to fully acknowledge that it’s gone. It’s hard to focus when you’re trying your best not to scream most of the time.
Disgruntled, he shoves the memory to the back of his mind. He should think about the present instead. First of all, where is he?
He must have passed out during their taxi ride, or at least fallen half-delirious because he doesn’t quite remember how he’d got to lie in a rather comfy bed. (Fully clothed, he notices, except for the sneakers.) He has a very vague recollection of a crunchy gravel road and a white-washed house and a garden around it.
The Master tries to sit up—and immediately a vicious cramp seizes his thigh. He forces himself not to drop back, waits it through, and makes an even more ambitious attempt to stand up. The wooden floor is cool against his bare feet. It’s good to feel something that doesn’t hurt, for a change.
His muscles are still weak, twitchy, and sore. They’ll be acting up for a while, that’s for sure. But he’s alive and not even flickering anymore, the last bit thanks to his fellow Gallifreyans. Not that they’ve been charitable, oh no, just pragmatic. Why execute a wannabe killer at once? If he’d been inventive enough to bring Gallifrey back from the time lock, then undoubtedly, he could do it again somehow, given the right incentive. So he’d been cured first. Doused with artron energy, fixed. With some unexpected consequences after what had followed, but still, he’s almost normal now, isn’t he?
The Master finds himself drumming at the footboard of the bed he’s leaning on, jerks his hand away from it, and nearly stumbles, having lost his equilibrium.
Yeah. Almost.
He catches his reflection in a wardrobe mirror. He’s appallingly unkempt: the ends of his hair are still bleached and he’s got stubble turning into a beard, but this can be remedied. Eventually. It’s strange that he looks younger than the Doctor. Not as much younger than on the Valiant, though.
He probably should feel something, thinking of the Valiant, now that he’s free of the drums and not mad anymore (or is he?). Something like remorse, discomfort. But he doesn’t. It’s just a fact, what had happened. He’d always been able to leave facts behind, or else how would he have survived? What’s done is done, and it’s honest at least, not some hypocritical oh-I’m-cured-and-I’m-pure-goodness-now bullshit.
He trudges out of the room, down the corridor. It still feels like his body is somewhat disconnected from his brain and might betray him any moment, so he drags a hand along the wall in case he’ll need to steady himself. It’s coarse to the touch, slightly grained, reminding him of sand and pebbles. No wallpaper here, just very light, sunny yellow paint.
He’s fine until the smell of something burning hits him, and then, for a moment, he’s very much not, nauseous and barely holding on his feet. He has to restrain himself from checking if his skin isn’t charred underneath his clothes. He’s undamaged, good as new (isn’t he?), but his mind refuses to catch up, it seems.
Still a bit insane then. Diseased, as Rassilon had called him.
Now isn’t that funny? Despite his madness, the Time Lords had deemed him worth resurrecting to advance their cause in the Time War and worth curing in case he might invent a way to sneak Gallifrey back into the universe again… With a small clause that they should dispose of him afterwards. They’d expected their ‘most infamous child’ to do what they’d been incapable of, a genius enough to succeed where they’d failed, and yet had never considered him to be their equal.
And there’s something even more hilarious! The same Lord President who’d thought himself superior to an abomination like him had readily resorted to the same way of thinking, to the same methods the Master would use to get what he wanted, and the High Council had silently approved of it. For Gallifrey’s sake, of course. Anything goes for Gallifrey’s sake. Which is as good an excuse for violence as any. So maybe the disease is not only of their own making, as Rassilon had put it, but kind of hereditary.
It’s a wonder that the Doctor is different from them all, hypocrites in grand ceremonial robes. Not entirely, perhaps, but to a degree that counts. Maybe he’d been right to flee from Gallifrey as soon as he could. It’s not like the Master feels less bitter about it. He doesn’t. But he gets it better now, this running away thing.
When he finally musters the strength to go further and enters what seems to be a kitchen, the source of burning becomes evident.
“It looks like I ruined another toaster,” the Doctor confides in him dolefully. “You’d think it’s simple technology. What could possibly go wrong? And yet.”
He stands contemplating said device, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up and the upper buttons undone. It’s more of him than the Master has seen in quite a while: the Doctor’s always packed into his suits, scarves, coats, and it’s a damn shame. The Master finds himself staring at the dusting of hair on the Doctor’s arms and has to forcibly redirect his attention to the destroyed toaster instead.
(But he can’t stop thinking if there’s more on his chest and legs, underneath the thin shirt and checkered trousers. He’s just curious, that’s all.)
“I wanted to make banana toasts,” the Doctor says in the same mournful tone. “But we still got bananas. Or do you want something else?”
“Anything more substantial?” the Master suggests.
The Doctor casts a cautious glance at him. “Do you still have…uh…excessive appetite?”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to eat you. Eating your own species is gross. I do have culinary standards. No, seriously, my little condition is gone now. How very nice of the Council to take care of that.”
The Doctor eyes him with some doubt, but chooses not to pry further. “I could cook you full English. I think. It’s not that difficult. Just chemistry: the right ingredients, the right temperature, the right time. And no tech involved. How about you sit outside in the meanwhile? It’s still a bit smoky in here. Besides, I think you might like the view.”
And the Doctor guides him out, onto a tiled porch, pleasantly sun-warmed beneath the Master’s feet.
There’s a lawn and a low hedge—and behind it there are pastures stretching into the distance, up to the gentle hill slopes. It’s not Mount Perdition, nothing the like, and the color of grass is wrong, but still… it evokes certain memories, this view. There’s only one tactile sensation lacking to make them resurface in full—a hand in his.
“Whose house is this?” the Master asks. He refuses to think of reaching out and brushing his fingers against the Doctor’s. He’s not going all soppy just because of a rural landscape.
“It’s mine, actually. I sort of…settled down, I guess? There’s a proper garden on the other side, and a roofed patio, but I thought you might want to lounge here. I got a deck chair out, you can bask in the sun a bit while I’m cooking.”
“There’s only the two of us here?”
“Er… not exactly. There’s also Wilf. Him, you should remember. But he’s staying in the other wing, he won’t bother you.”
The Master huffs. Does he look so unwell that it’s more likely he’ll be the one to be bothered? Maybe it’s true for now.
His other question sounds unrelated, he knows, but he feels like asking: “Do you miss Gallifrey?”
“I thought so, but… it got complicated.”
The Doctor doesn’t elaborate, but the Master can relate anyway. For him, it’s always been like that—complicated.
He’s not sure where Gallifrey even is at the moment. He’d been already locked up when its relocation had happened. In his cell, he’d felt everything shaking and thought: Let it burn, Doctor, let us all burn. Later, he’d been informed in brief that Gallifrey had been, in fact, more or less safely moved to the extreme end of the time continuum, basically hidden at the very end of the universe, give or take a star system. So the offer still stands, he’d been told. He’s welcome to help bring Gallifrey back in its full glory to atone for his attack at the Lord President. To which he’d very vehemently and very unwisely said: No way. You can rot where you’re stuck.
Fine, he’d been told. Let us know when you change your mind.
He should have agreed, pretended to cooperate, like he’s done before, so many times, but he’d still been brimming with fury. He’s a practical person, he is. Has had to be, to compensate for his four-beat lunacy. To evaluate the possibilities, change sides, take control of the situation if not his own brain, and win to everyone’s dismay. But sometimes you can’t go on being rational anymore. Sometimes all you have left is your madness and your spite.
In the end, he’d survived out of spite too. Not right away, though.
He has lots of other questions, regarding Gallifrey and other stuff (for example: why is a random human living in the Doctor’s house and how come the Doctor owns a house in the first place?), but he’s suddenly so exhausted by his short venture that it seems like they can wait, so he lets the Doctor usher him into the advertised deck chair. Another cramp suddenly seizes his lower back as he stretches out, but passes quickly. The Doctor must have noticed him wincing, though, because he hovers unsurely above him, then leans down to briefly put a hand on his shoulder.
“Will you tell me if you need something?”
“Come on, go deal with the food,” the Master dismisses him (and also dismisses a pathetic longing for the touch to last). “I’ll be fine.”
The Doctor turns to go, but lingers in the doorway and says, “Maybe it’s not Gallifrey that I’ve been missing all along.”
He leaves the Master to digest this… together with a very vague but increasingly unpleasant feeling that something is off in the idyllic setting he’s found himself in. It’s very tempting to relax and just take things as they are. But. But. The Doctor cooking by hand instead of using a food replicator in the TARDIS… Is it because he wishes to? It might be the case because the Doctor has always been keen on local dishes, wherever he went. Yet also… it could be because he doesn’t want the Master near his TARDIS, which is nowhere in sight. Is this why the shoes are missing, by the way? So the guest-slash-captive wouldn’t stray away from the house? As if a little discomfort had ever stopped him!
The Master brushes off these thoughts. Tells himself he’s overly paranoid. If the Doctor wanted him contained, he could have just left him trapped. Why resurrect him, bring him here, ask what he needs?
Maybe he keeps looking for something wrong because he’s not used to being cared for. He can’t but suspect there might be a trick.
Chapter Text
It’s irritating when minor, mundane things suddenly turn out to be problematic. Like taking a shower, for instance. And not just because the Master is still unsteady on his feet at times. He knows the water won’t be freezing cold, he knows it won’t be either a maddening trickle over his head or a sudden blast hammering at his neck and shoulders, unless he meddles with the shower settings. He knows. Yet he’s hesitant to step under the spray and it’s so, so vexing.
He pretends not to have any problem with it. He pretends he’s just stalling to cut his hair, or more like to shred it. The scissors he’s sneaked into the bathroom are too blunt. (It’s been a test, in a way: will the Doctor protest against the Master nicking a sharp object—well, more or less sharp? What will he say, what will he do? Test results: the Doctor is just as absent-minded as always, he hasn’t even noticed, it seems.)
As for other results: the new haircut is fairly atrocious. It’s not like he’s inexperienced in self-grooming; he’s had enough practice over the centuries. He’d always tried to keep himself presentable: a well chosen image works in your favor in the initial stages of another hostile takeover. Nobody questions your sanity for a while if you have an impeccable sartorial taste, a perfectly trimmed goatee, and stylish leather gloves. They might call you eccentric at best. This hasn't always been easy of course—for instance, it’s hard to manage looking elegant when you have to bleach your hair in a filthy public toilet on Earth of all places and then roam through dumpsters and landfills in search of food. Now he has much better conditions for self-care, but he’s annoyed and his hands are still shaky, which makes him even more annoyed. So. Yeah. Maybe he should have waited with endeavoring to improve his looks.
It doesn’t help his mood that the Doctor is obviously loitering outside the bathroom door: the Master can feel him. To the Master’s additional dismay, it’s more likely because the Doctor is worried for him than because he secretly hopes to see him in the nude (again). Oh well, the Doctor is going to have a glimpse anyway, even if he doesn’t want to.
The Master throws the door open and jeers, “Why don’t you come in already?”
The Doctor blinks at him, taking in the sight. Of all the things he could say, he chooses to state the obvious, “You cut your hair.”
He sounds…maybe not disappointed, but not pleased either.
Then, before the Master has a chance to retort that it’s his bloody hair and he can bloody cut it whenever and however he likes, he states another obvious thing, “I brought you a robe.”
He’s still clutching it to his chest, a blue fluffy thing, clearly at a loss where to put it. He doesn’t comment on the mess of hair scraps on the floor and in the sink, the hoodie and joggers tossed carelessly over the hamper. Instead, he says, “I can run you a bath if you want.”
The Master is about to retort that he’s well capable of doing it himself if need be, but his body intervenes, very untimely: a sudden spasm in his leg makes him flop on the bath’s ledge. Leastwise, he hasn’t collapsed on the tiles, among his own scattered hair. That would have been peak humiliation.
“Fine,” he allows regally, as if it’s been his intention—to sit down and let the Doctor attend to him.
That’s how he ends up among ridiculous, herbal-scented bubbles.
Actually, maybe the bubbles are not that bad. Safe in their silliness: it’s hard to have any unpleasant associations with them. And maybe it’s also for the best that the Doctor stays after having cleaned the mess the Master has made. He settles on the floor beside the bath and just sits there, not even making an attempt at a conversation, which is a rare achievement for him. The Master finds his silence almost amiable.
They hadn’t cared not to drown him, back on Gallifrey. Or not to kill him any other way. Why bother? He’d just regenerate. Thus no one had been watching him, most of the time. Clever machinery had been switching from one setting to another on its own. Progress at its best, huh.
It had felt demeaning, this lack of personal touch. Disrespectful. He’d rather someone had been there to gloat, maybe even to jab a finger into an unhealed wound. Someone he could insult in return or haughtily ignore. That’s what he would offer if it came to unsophisticated coercion—his presence. He’s of the opinion that someone suffering for you deserves your full attention. But no, normal Time Lords are not like that, they’re civilized, they prefer to keep their hands clean. Without witnessing the process of achieving the result, it’s easier to pretend nothing has happened besides them getting or not getting what they want.
(Well, in his case, their pretense hadn’t worked out well. Leaving him unattended, on the brink of death, after having him pumped up with excessive artron energy, had certainly granted his captors a stunning surprise. Oh, it had been pretty funny, the look on their faces. The Master still relishes the memory of it. He’d had quite a laugh. They both had.)
Now the Doctor keeping him company is a pleasant change. The Master lets his hand dangle over the bath’s rim and accidentally splashes the Doctor with an array of droplets. The Doctor doesn’t complain. In a few moments, his fingertips sweep against the Master’s, lightly, like he’s unsure if his touch is welcome. It’s a nice tingling sensation, their hands meeting, and the Master seeks it again without looking. It’s even nicer when the Doctor’s cheek presses to the backside of his hand. He doesn’t expect the Doctor to let out a sigh suspiciously akin to a sob, though.
“What?” he mutters, too relaxed to open his eyes and move.
“I’m just so glad you’re alive,” the Doctor says, his breath warm against the Master’s skin, just as ticklish as the prickling of energy on the verge of contact. “Here, now. Alive.”
It’s something the Doctor should have said a long, long, long time ago—and then a lot of things might have been different. Maybe resentment and anger wouldn’t have evolved into something worse, something twisted and painful.
The problem is, the Master had always been a maximalist, in an all or nothing, uncompromising kind of way. But before he’d discovered the perks of power imbalance turned in his favor and ‘all or nothing’ had come to be about subjugating whole planets (preferably the Doctor’s beloved Earth), it had been about something else entirely: Shouldn’t best friends tear time and space apart for each other, consequences be damned?
He’d had another name back then, and very Gallifreyan ideas about the Greater Good. It’s bitterly amusing that their first clash with the Doctor had happened because he’d tried to do the right thing, as he’d thought. That time on Darkheart, if he’d managed to activate a device capable of altering timelines without causing paradoxes, he could have reshaped the Universe, imposed order upon it. Control. He’d have been able to configure and manipulate the vortex itself. And after that—no epidemics, no wars, no random violence. No more failures. It’s strange to think he’d used to care about such things. Well, he’d been young. And maybe ambitious to prove he could do it.
As for the Doctor, he’d thought it would be erasing free will. He’d thought the right thing would be to stop his friend, not to help him. But surely, he’d been bound to see—eventually, someday—that prevention was better than cure…
It had ended badly: the system had failed, as if sabotaged, and the Master had got trapped within an emerging black hole as the result, together with his TARDIS. It had taken him ages to get out. Literally. He’d burnt through his regenerations, one by one, just to stretch out a hand that had seemed to weigh as much as a planet and reach the dematerialization switch. He remembers thinking, frantically: the Doctor is right there, he might rush to rescue, the fool, and get stuck here too.
Until he’d realized it could have been no one else but the Doctor who’d messed with the controls. The Doctor had chosen to do what he’d believed to be right—and chosen it over him.
Such an epiphany makes you reevaluate some things, doesn’t it?
Before this, the Master had tried his best to fit in with other Time Lords, make them accept him, despite his…auditory hallucinations. It’d been rather unpleasant when he’d learnt they had sent a spy to keep tabs on him because they’d considered him unstable. Unstable, him. As if he hadn’t been successful in clinging to sanity by his fingernails since he’d been barely a child. As if he hadn’t stormed through the Academy with better grades than the ones who’d had no maddening drumbeat in their heads. What could be more stable than his will?
He could live with that, though. He hadn’t liked the haughty bastards anyway.
But the Doctor? His friend? Betraying him like that?
It had not only made him angry. It had made him realize he was on his own, completely. No one cared whether he lived or died, even the closest person he’d ever had. So why should he care for anyone else? For the universe in general or any of its inhabitants in particular?
When he’d met the Doctor again, he’d already had a reputation of a troublemaker and their mutual acquaintances from Gallifrey had been kind enough to warn the Doctor against him. They’d had rather antagonized encounters afterwards and never spoken of Darkheart. The Doctor had never said: I’m glad I haven’t killed you. But maybe he had been?
Will it make any difference if they talk about it now? Probably not. What matters is that this time the Doctor had chosen him over Gallifrey, over UNIT, over their uneasy past, and had even defeated the Toymaker for his sake, it seems. Isn’t it enough?
So the Master just says, “As you might imagine, I’m rather glad to be alive too. Wouldn’t recommend dying. So pedestrian. I’ll try my best not to, at least in the nearest future.”
The Doctor sighs again and nuzzles against his palm. “I know.”
Before the Master inquires why this sounds so wistful (if anything, it’s him who should be wistful), the Doctor changes the topic, as it often happens when they are too close to discussing something important: “Do you want to shave as well? I could help with that. I just thought a different haircut and a beard might be a bit of a disguise. Also, a beard looks good on you. Don’t think I’ve ever mentioned that.”
The Master perks up at his words. Does it mean the Doctor isn’t hoping to keep him isolated after all? On the other hand…maybe he expects someone will eventually come here. It might be awkward, having a presumably dead Prime Minister making a fry-up in your kitchen (because next time he’ll be the one doing the cooking). Either way, choosing disguises is a more pleasant prospect than thinking of what’s long gone and almost forgotten.
Chapter Text
All in all, the Master finds the odd kind of domesticity they play at surprisingly pleasant, even if the Doctor is endearingly bad at it. The Master loves to indulge in luxury whenever he can because you never know when you won’t be able to enjoy it, but poorly cooked meals and awkward attempts at making him comfortable seem more enticing for some reason. Possibly, it’s more about the effort than the result. The Doctor is clearly unused to caring even about himself, let alone someone else. The Master suspects it’s his companions who usually remind him to eat at regular times or do the laundry—another reason to dislike traveling alone. But now he tries his best to be a good host, all for the Master’s sake.
They’d never had this, domesticity. Although if they’d tried it at some point, perhaps it would have felt just as right. Whenever they don’t seek to thwart each other for a change, they click at once, like nothing wrong had happened between them. Like the Doctor hadn’t been abandoning him again and again: in a fire, on a collapsing planet, with a blasted T-Rex in a careening TARDIS, in other words—too many times to count. Like the Master hadn’t declared on multiple occasions that he intended to destroy the Doctor and the more his adversary struggled to postpone the moment, the greater the ultimate satisfaction. To be honest, postponing had become a habit, so the Master doesn’t know anymore whether he’d been pestering the Doctor all this time in hope for revenge or…not reconciliation, no, but maybe acknowledgement? He’s reluctant to look at his own motives too closely.
Also, he avoids thinking of how all of this is temporary—their unspoken truce, their easy companionship—and not because he doesn’t want it to last or believes it never could. The thing is, the Doctor still has spare regenerations left (this one must be his tenth, if the Master hasn’t lost count), and as for him…he doesn’t know. Most likely not.
Generally, the Master enjoys being exceptional, unmatched, stuff of legend (because when you climb above all others, loneliness doesn’t seem that pathetic). Yet unexpectedly gaining the status of a living myth is nothing but perplexing. There’s no scientific data of how it’s even possible, what’s happened to him. To them. No predictions as to how it might play out in the future. But he can make a guess. This body should have ceased to exist, so eventually it might. From it, subsequent to it, but also—simultaneously with it, there had come to be a new one, healed, fresh…and very, very angry.
“Can you even explain why you’ve got us stuck here? Were you secretly expecting someone to save you? Oh, I wonder who that might be. Someone who called you beautiful and stone cold brilliant, I suppose? But where is he then? No sign of him yet. You might perish here waiting if you like, but I’m definitely not going to, and when I meet the Doctor again, I bet he won’t even ask what happened. He’ll make his own assumptions.”
No, he hadn’t hoped for that…or had he? A mortifying thought, one to be immediately discarded.
If anything, life should have taught him: you are alone. Even if there are the two of you. The other him had turned out to be the most viable of them both, the most sensible: he’d declared he’d cooperate with the Council, as had been expected of him. That, of course, had put a question on why the Council might need the first version of the Master. Unless for experimental reasons: perhaps it might bi-generate again? And if not, no one would be upset too much, including the Master number two.
Either way, it had become obvious he’d die, and soon. He’d thought he was ready for that. But now, left to shiver in his cell, nothing but faulty flesh fighting through post-regeneration sickness, he’d found himself muttering: you’re not getting rid of me that easily, oh no, you won’t. He’d kept thinking of Gallifrey, brought to the very edge of the universe where elemental forces were always lurking, defying both order and chaos… Maybe a crazy gamble would be worth a try…
In the end, it had played out fine, if not thanks to his luck. He does have a life, however long it might happen to last. He’s pretty sure his ‘better half’ is all right too. The wily bastard must have ditched his gullible employers and escaped at his first chance. Let him run around the universe, conquer planets if he wants to. It might soon get boring without someone to stop him, but that’s his problem.
The Master isn’t going to be selfless and tell the Doctor he has a better, possibly interminable alternative to him, and if the Doctor is planning to settle on Earth, he might never stumble over the Master’s duplicate by accident.
The Doctor loves the place he’s chosen, that’s evident. When the Master starts slowly mapping the house, like a wounded animal just brought in from a shelter, the Doctor follows him everywhere with a hopeful look on his face: do you like it here? They have a brief excursion to the garden the Doctor has mentioned. Although most of it seems to be a mess of bushes and untended grass, there are signs of civilization as well: a more or less neat lawn in front of the house, a pergola overgrown with some kind of weird earthly climbing shrub, and a bunch of potted plants, equally unfamiliar.
“Never thought you’d take up gardening,” the Master huffs.
“Um? Oh. No, it’s not me. I feel a bit uncomfortable dictating to plants where and how they should grow. It’s Sylvia, mostly, when she comes here. And Wilf too. He’s trying very hard to get rid of the moles—they spoil the lawn and such, but I sort of gave them a forcefield. They might be pests, but they’re living creatures, it’s not their fault they have their own ideas of how a lawn should look like.”
Wilf—the Master does remember him. But Sylvia? Who’s Sylvia? How many people are revolving around the Doctor now? There’s always been someone, a companion or two, but never such a crowd. The Master can’t say he likes that. It’s not jealousy, of course not, but a pang of irritation at knowing that all of them will be demanding the Doctor’s attention sooner or later.
As much as he can understand from the Doctor’s ramblings, there’s also Shaun, the cab driver. And Donna. And Rose, whoever that might be. At the moment, they are nowhere in sight. The Doctor must have warned them he has…a special guest, so to speak. The Master isn’t sure how he’s supposed to behave around them when they eventually show up; he has a feeling they will because the Doctor speaks of them as of an adopted family, although it’s unclear who adopted who. Also, the Master is aching to know how the Doctor might introduce him. My oldest friend? My…what?
For now, he just enjoys the quiet. His fits get less frequent, but he’s still tired almost all the time, so he’s content with mostly lounging on a couch in the living room, with the Doctor always nearby. He discovers a stuffed gonk among the pillows. According to the Doctor, it’s supposed to be a Dalek. Since it seems to be a present from one of his precious humans, the Master stops himself from commenting on what orthodox Daleks would think of turning them into cuddly toys. Actually, if the Doctor’s earthlings are able to see merciless cyborg aliens like that, maybe they won’t be too shocked the Doctor has chosen a scoundrel like him for company.
At times, he’s waiting for the Doctor to start preaching about his villainy: now that I’ve saved you, isn’t it the right time to reflect on your sins and start being good and kind and righteous with me as an example, to show your gratitude? As if goodness is something one can turn on and off, like a tap, and the Doctor’s own version of it isn’t arrogant and one-sided.
(For example, has he ever thought twice of the Toclafane, sent back into the dying universe? Does he even get why they’ve become like this? The Master does. He thinks so. When all you have is darkness and fear and violence, you either come apart or rewrite all of it as fun in your head, to stay…maybe not sane but functional. He’s not that different, especially after the Time War, that’s why they’ve been getting along so well. And given that… If the Doctor is so sure they’re changed irrevocably and can’t be redeemed, why waste his sermons on someone alike? Either the Master is just as damned—an abomination, a crazy murderous child to be thrown out and forgotten, or they could have been saved too, somehow, brought to their Utopia.)
Luckily, the moral lessons the Master always bristles at never come this time. It’s even a bit disconcerting, the lack of them, like there’ll be a catch later on, but the Master tries his best not to be irrationally anxious about it. Maybe the Doctor has changed. He does look changed. Mellower perhaps, like a person who’s been running on fumes for a long while, but now has an opportunity to rest and heal and is finally relaxing into it. The Master wonders if he’s going to look like that too when he stops exhausting himself with doubts and gets used to the Doctor pampering him. He almost begins to.
But his cozy idyll starts crumbling down very soon.
He wakes up with his hearts racing in the small hours of morning. He might have had a nightmare, but he doesn’t recall it. Maybe it’s all because he’s fallen asleep with his arms up, like they’ve been restrained over his head. He must have made a sound, perhaps cried out, which he doesn’t recall either, because the next moment the Doctor rushes into the room, looms over his bed. It looks like he’s been up: he’s already dressed if a bit disheveled. Or maybe he hasn’t been sleeping at all for some reason. The grayish twilight allows to see his face—concerned, distressed.
“What’s wrong? Something hurts?”
“No, ‘t’s nothing—” the Master slurs.
He can’t force himself to order or plead, Stay here anyway, but he wants to. Oh, how much he wants to.
He can only blame it on his stupefied state, what he does next. He reaches out mentally, like they’d used to do so often throughout their Academy years whenever one of them had woken up from a nightmare or the other hadn’t been able to fall asleep, tossing and turning to the beat of four. It’s not even a full mind meld, just a brush of consciousness in search of comfort and warmth from another person. It had felt natural, just like crawling into bed together. Because best friends do that, don’t they? So he does it again now, on an impulse, unthinking…
…and the Doctor rebuffs him.
It feels like a slap against a reaching hand. The Master recoils, confused and embarrassed.
The Doctor looks embarrassed as well, and contrite too.
“Sorry,” he hurries to say. “I’m so sorry. I just—”
“It’s all right,” the Master interrupts him, hoping to sound nonchalant. “Go back to sleep. I’m fine.”
The Doctor hesitates, but a snarl “I said I’m fine!” does help.
The Master can hear him lingering outside the door for a while, but finally his footsteps retreat and die away.
On his own again, the Master tells himself it’s no big deal. It’s his own fault, he shouldn’t have done it. Of course the Doctor would still be wary about any kind of mind contact, on a purely instinctive level. It might take quite a while until he isn’t. It’s best not to rush things.
He catches himself drumming his fingers against the mattress and punches the pillow instead, several times, angry at himself and frustrated, all the more because he’s still longing for that closeness he’d lost the right to at some point. But he’ll get it back, won’t he?
The Doctor’s rejection should have been a warning for him that maybe he’s reading the whole situation wrong. But despite all of his caution, he’s too eager to fall for the hope of his own Utopia, a safe haven in space and time where the Doctor cares for him more than for anything or anyone else.
Chapter Text
They are both a bit of hoarders. You never know when and what might come in handy. The Master had once built a footprint impeller system out of a gluten extract, string and staples, and he’s still rather proud of that. As for the Doctor, he always keeps quite a number of things in his pockets: a yo-yo, a bag of glass marbles, a congealed mass of jelly babies, a clockwork duck. They both have a penchant for junkyards and metal scraps and abandoned things.
One might think the Master represents chaos, wreaking havoc everywhere he goes, while the Doctor tends to restore order. But actually, they both are chaotic, only the Doctor has embraced it while the Master is still struggling to find some wretched semblance of control—over the universe at least if not himself.
So it’s no wonder the basement in the Doctor’s house is full of clutter, most likely left by the previous owners, maybe even generations of them, and there’s no sign the Doctor is going to sort it out. It’s a mess of garden utensils, dusty chests with unclear contents, tangled cords and old electronics. Sometimes the Master has to admit: a little chaos is a wonderful thing. He’s excited to dig into all of it.
He very much hopes to find something useful for his current project. He’s planning to assemble an ultrasonic mole exterrorizer to keep the intrusive little beasts away from the lawn.
Yes, it would have been easier if he could use the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, but he’s reluctant to ask for it because he has a feeling things might get awkward. What if the Doctor wavers to give it to him? Best not to check.
Also—yes, it’s certainly a downgrade from his usual engineering projects, but he has an additional objective in mind. The Doctor has mentioned one of his humans, Wilf, is particularly interested in getting rid of the moles. If the Master does that, maybe it’ll turn the old man in his favor. It’s very likely Gramps might be somewhat prejudiced against him. People tend to be sensitive about someone threatening to kill them, even if just once. It’s so petty of them. They should be more like the Doctor and him. They’ve not only threatened but actively tried to destroy each other—and look at them now, peacefully coexisting.
Anyhow, he has to take the fragile sensibilities of the Doctor’s earthlings into account. It’s a bit unsettling that he should think about it at all, it’s not like he suddenly cares about them. Yet they hold a certain place in Doctor’s life, it would be silly to ignore it. There are signs of their presence all over the house. The Crocs by the front door are Donna’s. Most of the kitchen utensils must have been brought by Shaun or Sylvia; at least someone in here seems to know how to use them properly. Plush toys, apparently, come from Rose in an attempt to make the place more cozy. And maybe it’s good. The Doctor lights up whenever he mentions any of them, and it becomes him, to look happy and cared for. As much as the Master might want all of the Doctor’s attention to himself (and he’s honest enough to acknowledge it now), he has to grudgingly admit: perhaps that’s what makes the Doctor more relaxed around him.
For now, it’s nice to play Hermits United in a secluded house, with no one to bother them, but if the Doctor invites his humans back at some point, so be it. It could even be amusing.
Also, the Master is looking forward to going out together someday. Nothing fancy, not at first. There must be some rural town nearby; they could set out on a short trip. The Doctor has mentioned buying new clothes and it’s very much a necessity. The ones the Doctor has got for him don’t quite fit, like they’re meant for a person of a slightly different complexion—the Doctor has always been rather inattentive when it comes to measurements. So they could start with shopping.
The Master is planning to bleach his hair again, and maybe use an eyeliner: partly for disguise, partly because local gossip matrons are totally going to call him the Doctor’s boytoy, especially if they end up holding hands while roaming between the aisles in a retail store. The Doctor will look like a dissolute retired professor who’s spent most of his life in ascetic vigilance over some ancient manuscripts, but recently discovered the perks of living in sin with a young peroxide punk. This will be delightfully scandalous, even better than during their Academy years.
The Doctor is very likely to be oblivious of any side glances, which might take a good deal of fun out of it, but the Master suspects he’s going to secretly like the part about holding hands. It seems he’s keen for touches, if still a bit unsure whether it’s appropriate and welcome. The Master is thinking of how to encourage him, subtly, without appearing to be overly eager, or it’ll take them too long to get to what they both might be yearning for. When you only have one life, it’s better not to linger.
He gets so caught up in reverie that he only registers the voices that come from outside, through a small basement window, when he stops right underneath it, reaching for a promising piece of trash—an old human-made clock radio, which probably has a piezoelectric speaker he might use. He freezes, intent to listen. This must be Wilf talking to the Doctor, somewhere in the garden. The Master hasn’t crossed paths with the old man yet, the Doctor has successfully kept them away from each other, but he must be aware the Doctor has a guest. Will he mention it?
And of course he does.
“Are you sure it’s safe for you to keep him here?”
The Master scoffs at the word ‘keep’. That’s plain rude. It’s not like he’s a caged animal.
The Doctor’s voice comes hushed, and somewhat uneven. “It’s not for long anyway.”
Are we moving somewhere else? the Master wonders, but then the Doctor adds, “He’s going to leave. I don’t know when, but he’ll run off. Probably will take the TARDIS. I shouldn’t try to stop him; I won’t.”
Before the last phrase catches up with the Master, the old man says something even more baffling: “If the Toymaker hadn’t told you, you wouldn’t even have known this guy was hidden in his tooth. You stumbled over him by accident. Right? So maybe you could just pretend he was never here? And live as before?”
“I don’t think I can. It’s hard, to be aware I’m the one responsible—”
“Oh Doctor,” the old man coos. “You seemed to be so happy before he appeared.”
“I’ve never been so happy in my life, but—”
The Doctor’s voice breaks again, on a soft half-sob.
Wilf mutters something soothingly in response, but it’s barely audible.
The Master slowly backs off from the window, careful not to make any noise. Finds his way up the stairs. He’s physically reeling, like he’s been hit with something blunt on the head—not hard enough to knock him out completely, but very close to it. It’s almost as bad as when the Doctor had betrayed him for the first time and abandoned him in a black hole.
As if to finish him off, his body chooses this moment to throw another fit. The Master makes it up to the living room and only then sinks to the floor beside the couch, tucks his knees up to his chest, tries to breathe through the spasm. The stuffed Dalek stares at him with its unblinking eye.
There’s no such thing as being overly paranoid, he should have remembered that. Now everything clicks into place. The Doctor’s reluctance for mind contact. The hidden TARDIS. Ill-fitting clothes.
The Doctor hasn’t been looking for him. Hasn’t defeated Rassilon for him. Maybe even hasn’t gambled with the Toymaker for him. No, he’s just taken up an unwanted burden out of the goodness of his hearts. Accidentally. In a rush. He’s had a peaceful, happy life, he’s finally settled down, but he must have felt…what? Responsibility for his ex-friend? A sense of obligation? Not even pity because he probably has no idea what’s happened on Gallifrey, and has never cared to find out.
Now he doesn’t know what to do about you. A nuisance, that’s what you are to him. How very awkward. He’ll be glad when you finally run off, he won’t try to stop you, he said so himself. And then he can have his perfect life back.
The Master can almost hear the other him mocking his incredible stupidity.
He’s got so cozy believing the Doctor cares for him. He’s been fooled into fake comfort too easily. And look at him now, the master of all matter, inventing a mole scarer, of all things, to please one of the Doctor’s humans.
He bites on the knuckles of his clenched fist to muffle a hardly dignified little sound, something between a whine and a hysterical laugh.
Why all the fussing around him then? Saying, I’m so glad you’re alive? Is it because the Doctor wants to make sure his unwanted patient won’t hatch any evil plans while recovering?
So what is he to the Doctor? Not even another one of his pets. Just a mangled stray the Doctor has picked up on his way and can’t let out unsupervised because he isn’t sure the mutt won’t bite anyone. But as soon as it flees, this won’t be his problem anymore.
Or no, no, it’s even worse. Considering how he’s such a disturbance to the Doctor’s happy new life, maybe he’s more like a mole on a perfect lawn, a roadkill that’s been brought to the garden, got resuscitated, and stayed. A pest, surely, an unexpected inconvenience, but still a living being. It’ll be a relief to dispose of it, but it’s too cruel to use poison. Oh, how very kind of you, Doctor.
What hurts even more is that it’s the Master’s own fault he’s chosen to interpret things to his liking. Maybe he’s always been doing that. Maybe when he’d said he didn’t know what he’d be without his four-beat noise and the Doctor had echoed, “I wonder what I’d be without you”… what he’d really meant was, I don’t know how to get rid of you, just like you can’t get rid of that noise of yours?
Why not say it outright, Doctor? It’d be honest at least. But you never would, you coward.
This shouldn’t be as rattling as it feels. It’s best to take all of it as another fact he’ll leave behind soon. All that matters is that he’s still alive and getting better. The Doctor is just a temporary means to an end.
He loathes the idea of owing anything to the Doctor, he refuses to be grateful. He won’t accept charity. Never. Never. Never. He’ll figure out how to pay for his keep. There must be a way to make them even. The Doctor seems to still like him physically, it’s obvious. And why wouldn’t he? The Master knows he’s a catch. Well, at least when he’s not suffering through various levels of disfigurement, unable to heal. Fine then. The Doctor can have a quick thank-you shag—and then the Master will be off indeed, as soon as he gets well enough and finds the TARDIS. No strings attached, not anymore. It’s always a torture to pull them out, again and again.
Chapter Text
When the Doctor comes back from the garden, the Master pretends to be napping on the couch. He’s not sure his face won’t betray him and sleep is the best disguise he can think of for now.
He can hear the Doctor lingering beside him. Only this morning, he would have found it cute that the Doctor is watching him like this. Now it only makes him itch with discomfort. What is the Doctor thinking? When will I be free of him again?
No need to worry, Doctor. As you said yourself, it’s not for long, this temporary bother.
It’s always better to leave first. That’s what the Doctor has initially done, and what the Master has tried to repay him for ever since. It only seems to have worked that one time on the Valiant—and he wants that giddy feeling back, satisfaction at finally getting his revenge, even if in such a twisted way. So what if the Doctor had been crying just because he’d thought he’d be the only Time Lord again, with no one to share his past with? It still counts.
Now the Master can pretend to run off because he wants to, not because he clearly overstayed his welcome. It’s not winning, but at least it’s an illusion of not losing.
It’s a deplorable weakness that he’d rather feign hibernation for the rest of the day (and maybe even longer, much longer), and he dislikes being weak, so eventually he forces himself to get up and trudge to the kitchen where some suspicious clinking has been going on for a while.
He must give credit to the Doctor: his smile looks genuine. Moreover, it looks the same as centuries ago, although the face is different. It’s as if he’s about to call the Master by his dead name, long forgotten: “Koschei!” The Master doesn’t know what he’ll do then. It might involve broken dishes.
“I made iced tea. Possibly,” the Doctor says instead. His grin falters a little—and then it’s back again, just as bright, like he’s successfully chased off an unwanted thought. “Want some?”
The Master should have paid attention to these little mood swings; they’ve been there right from the start—an inconsistency he’s chosen to ignore. Something gloomy is always lurking under the Doctor’s cheerful veneer, and now the Master knows the reason for it. The Doctor is miserable because of him, but of course he’ll try his best not to let it show, the idiot.
The iced tea tastes overly sweet, just like fake hospitality.
The Doctor looks expectant as the Master samples it. “Not too awful, or is it?”
The Master waits for hatred to come, to burn away the gnawing ache in his chest—it has always helped him to go on living, no matter what. Facing the Doctor should have ignited it, but there’s only helpless, hopeless admission of facts, nothing more. Yes, it makes him want to smash something into shards and then maybe cut himself to see how the Doctor will react, but he imagines it without any real heat, in a detached, disconnected way, almost with morbid curiosity. Maybe he’s still too weak, maybe that’s the case. In the same disconnected way he discards the idea as unpractical.
He carefully puts the emptied (and undamaged) glass back onto the table.
“It’s horrible, but why waste it.”
Why waste it indeed, the Doctor’s attention. If he pretends to be oblivious, the Doctor will continue to look after him. It’ll be nice to exploit him for a while. He’ll make the Doctor spend time with him. He’ll demand favors. He’ll complain if something isn’t to his liking. The Doctor might have his body if he wants to, but he won’t guess it’s just a repayment for help, he’ll be the one fooled. It’s the Master who’ll be in control—until he decides to leave. In the meanwhile, he’ll allow himself to enjoy some comfort. If the Doctor is willing to suffer the Master’s presence out of his misled sense of duty, why should the Master argue? He’ll take whatever he can have, like he always does.
The only problem is not to get lost in playing this game for too long, and take off as soon as he’s ready. It’s not like the Doctor will gladly hand him over to the High Council (won’t he?) or UNIT (won’t he?), no matter how much he’s annoyed; at least he’s not planning to do so at the moment… But what if his renowned moral values prevail at some point and he decides that the proper thing to do would be placing the Master under someone else’s protection? Maybe he’ll do that reluctantly, but still, it’s a possibility the Master can’t ignore. The Doctor will promise to get him some kind of amnesty of course; he’s done that before. He might even believe it’s possible, he might even believe it’s for the Master’s own good, so he would mend his ways.
As for UNIT and Earth prisons, they’ll want the Master’s technical assistance again, no doubt. Does the Doctor remember the shock collar they’ve eventually placed on him, to ensure his cooperation, when he’s happened to end up in their custody? Probably not. It’s such an inconvenient little detail to keep in mind, it spoils the perfect story of a villain being converted.
As for the Gallifreyan lot… The Master almost wishes he could watch the Doctor talk of amnesty and redemption to them. At least Rassilon would finally die then. Of laughter.
“Are you unwell?” the Doctor’s voice breaks through his musings.
The Master hasn’t noticed he’s been leaning onto the kitchen counter, supporting himself with both hands, almost clutching at it.
“…Is there anything I can do?”
He nearly lets out a bitter chuckle at the Doctor’s phrasing.
Anything? Really? Can you erase this morning from my memory?
It’s hard both not to flinch and not to lean into the touch when the Doctor rubs a hand between his shoulder blades, gently, tentatively.
“You’ll be fine, I promise, but don’t rush it, will you? Don’t overexert yourself. There’s no need to wander about if you’re still dizzy, you can call me if you need something. I know you must be awfully bored, but it’s better to rest for now. I could read to you, or you could watch telly. Yeah?”
The TV in the living room doesn’t have any news channels. The Master wonders if that setting is because of him, so he wouldn’t be tempted to meddle with human politics again, or maybe it’s for the Doctor’s sake. It’s easier to live in peace when you shut yourself away from the troubles of the outside world, with nothing in sight but rolling fields and green hills. The Doctor has mentioned something about Donna telling him off for always rushing somewhere, wearing himself out, and never stopping, so perhaps this secluded place is a rehab of sorts.
The Doctor might have planned to leave him with a fluffy quilt and a remote, but the Master tugs at his checkered trouser leg. There’s enough room for two on the couch. If he’s making the Doctor unhappy anyway, he should get the most out of it. Also, intimacy is good for seduction…although he’d rather wait with active seducing, just a tad. As much as he wants to get over with the whole repayment thing, he suspects it’ll be difficult to return to closeness that has no urge to it afterwards, and that’s what he’d prefer right now, for selfish reasons.
The Doctor wavers. “You want me to stay? You sure? Won’t I bother you?”
The Master tugs again, insistently, and the Doctor complies, settles beside him. If only he could always be so easily persuaded.
They watch cartoons for a while, pressed warmly side to side. Gradually, the Master starts leaning onto the Doctor more and more, for experimental reasons, settling comfortably until his head is resting on the Doctor’s shoulder. The Doctor doesn’t argue.
No matter how lulling this is, the Master is aware he should start planning things, little by little. First of all, he’ll need to know the whereabouts of the Doctor’s TARDIS.
“You said you wanted to travel the stars with me,” he murmurs. “Will we still do it?”
The Doctor pauses only slightly before saying, “We will, definitely. I was…I will be very excited about it, I want you to know that.”
It’s such a convincing lie.
“But it’s not so bad in here too, isn’t it?” the Doctor adds, and it sounds almost pleadingly. “When you get better, we could go on a hike. Remember the time you got involved with that dodgy cult in an old abbey, the Children of Light? You used to ride a bicycle then. Still up to it? We could get ourselves a pair of bikes, explore the neighborhood.”
Even if it’s just play-pretending, it’s still nice to make silly plans like that. And the more it hurts, to remember he should keep seeing the situation objectively (which is: no, you’re not a prisoner, not formally, but you’ll get out only under the Doctor’s supervision, and not in his precious TARDIS).
It’s hard to un-imagine what has already come into being: his made-up future life with the Doctor. It’s been too colorful, too detailed in his mind to fade away in an instant. Back rubs in the evenings. Little squabbles about whether they should have asked for some prawn crackers with their takeaway order. Falling into a lazy snooze on a summer afternoon, huddled together in a deck chair, which is barely comfortable for the two of them unless they are practically wrapped around each other.
It’s something they’ve never done before, living an ordinary life, and they probably wouldn’t be good at it. So why the now evident impossibility of it feels like a tremendous loss?
The Master must admit: he’s been almost…happy. But it looks like he and the Doctor can’t be happy simultaneously, at the same place and the same time. He can’t fathom why he’s ever thought otherwise.
Chapter Text
It’s one thing, pretending to be asleep in the Doctor’s presence—and totally another to actually fall asleep. What’s even more humiliating is that his first reaction when he starts to stir is to press deeper into the comforting warmth. Theta…
It takes him a few moments to realize the TV is still on and the Doctor is stoically enduring being nuzzled at.
They’ve always been very…physical with each other in their youth. Very tactile. It wasn’t groping, nothing like that, just casual touches—an arm slung over the other’s shoulder, playful wrestling, fingers entwined, if only for a moment. They’ve had all of this in abundance, maybe to compensate for the coldness and formality in their stuffy families.
When had it stopped? Long before the Doctor had run off. Probably after the Master’s first murder. It doesn’t matter it’s been self-defense against a long-time bully, doesn’t matter they’ve been children back then, doesn’t matter he only has a very vague memory of how one moment he’s been thrashing underwater, unable to wriggle out from Torvic’s grip, and the next… there’s air in his lungs again and Theta is sobbing beside him on the riverbank, gripping at his hands—and they are stained with blood.
He’d tried to remain calm and rational on the verge of panic. Theta had kept saying they should call for help, tell someone… but what kind of help could they get? The rumors about that-boy-who’s-not-right-in-the-head had been circling in the Academy for quite a while. It’d been so stupid, asking other students if they also had some kind of side effects after the Untempered Schism ceremony. Not only unproductive but compromising, deeming him insane. With cold certainty, he’d realized what would happen now. Given that he’s known for being nearly mental because of his auditory hallucinations, as they call it, surely, everyone will consider it to be the most reasonable course of action just to lock him up in an asylum, as a danger to others, self-defense or not. They’ll pump him up with some sedating stuff, they’ll prohibit Theta from visiting—and he’ll go mad for real then. All alone.
So he’d said they should burn the body. And Theta had helped him with that.
At first, he’d thought it would bring them together even more—a shared secret, however dreadful. Something only for the two of them, with no one else involved. But perhaps it’d been too scary and off-putting for Theta, how calculative he’d been, how practical. How he’d regarded the corpse as mere evidence that might ruin his life instead of thinking how it’d been a person just a moment ago.
Maybe that’s when Death had claimed him as hers, figuratively speaking. He hadn’t understood it at once, but Theta must have. That’s what had pushed him further and further away, out of reach.
The Master had recognized his errors since then, if not immediately—not until Darkheart at least. The rules are simple. Never talk of your weaknesses to anyone. Never wait until you’re pushed underwater, strike first. Never have accomplices if you can avoid it, only subordinates—it doesn’t matter what they think of you as long as they do as you say (or better yet, rely on technical devices that only have their intended function, not morals).
And never regret surviving, even if it hurts.
Ending up alone and hardly sane—the prospect he’d dreaded so much—had turned out to be…survivable too, just like many other things. So in the end, he’s fine, isn’t he? They’re both not the boys who wanted to explore the universe together, not anymore, and it’s just another fact along with many others. He doesn’t know why it still feels like a phantom ache sometimes, the change of plans they’ve never discussed. Funnily enough, it only gets stronger, the closer they get.
The Master sighs into the Doctor’s neck, and then nips at it, just because he can right now and because it might stop him from thinking, from stewing in his grievances. The Doctor makes a funny choked sound, but doesn’t back off, so the Master adds a scrape of teeth.
A switch to physical sensations is both welcome…and risky, he must remember that. The Master would rather keep things completely impersonal, but it’ll be difficult. Tactile interaction, so simple for some other species, isn’t merely about mutual pleasure for his own race, as it isn’t about reproduction. It’s about knowing each other in a way so intensely intimate that it might be damn overwhelming. A Time Lord is able to guess what century it is on a particular planet simply by smelling the air, or to determine blood type by taste. A bodily contact with another being whose senses are equally acute…it can be both exhilarating and dangerous even without a telepathic connection involved, as it always is with being known.
So. Yeah. ‘Just sex’ doesn’t always work for Time Lords. But if he takes initiative, maybe he’ll be able to stay in control and prevent the Doctor from sensing what he shouldn’t—a pathetic yearning, mixed with boyish resentment: I offered you a half share in the universe, not just once, and you never wanted it. But what else could I offer, bigger than that, if me alone wasn’t enough?
It’s good the Doctor is unlikely to initiate mind melding; it would have been too embarrassing.
The Master’s own senses are clearly a bit off, not entirely reliable after what he’s been through: the Doctor’s body gives him confusing vibes. It’s as if this particular regeneration of his is almost brand new, which it can’t be, but at the same time he’s much older than he should be: it feels like there’s a weight of a billion years on his shoulders, which is utterly impossible and ridiculous. Nah, it must be a glitch in the Master’s perception.
He undoes the top buttons of the Doctor’s shirt and sneaks a hand inside while still laving at the Doctor’s neck. Yesss, chest hair, just like he’d expected. Nice.
“You really want this?” the Doctor asks, in a somewhat unsteady voice. “It’s all right if you just want company, or cuddling, whatever. It’s not because you think I—”
It’s basically an insult—to suggest the Master might rather need something like this (and also unsettling how close it is to the truth), so the Master snaps, “Shut up.”
And bites at the Doctor’s earlobe. He’s the seducer, the deceiver, the victor, not the Doctor’s charity project, and that’s his way to prove it. It’s elating when the Doctor finally gives in, melts against him, palpably relaxing. The only problem is that there’s too much clothes, but that can be remedied.
“We should probably take it slow,” the Doctor murmurs, still too coherent for the Master’s liking. “You haven’t completely recovered yet. You play tough, of course you do, but I can feel how bad it was, being compressed. Broken ribs, torn muscles.” He runs a hand up and down the Master’s back, very lightly, very gently, as if making sure the flesh he touches isn’t mangled anymore. “I can’t understand. Why in the world did you make a deal with the Toymaker? I thought… no, never mind. Surely, you realized the risk, didn’t you? Were you in such a rush to run away from Gallifrey that it seemed worth it?”
If something could totally spoil the mood, it’s this.
“Actually, yes, I was in a rush.” The Master wriggles out from the Doctor’s hold, sits up straight. “And the deal turned out fine in the end, didn’t it, so I’ll be the judge of whether it was worth taking. Also: it’s not arousing, you know, talking of mutilation. Not in the slightest. Not if it’s my body we’re discussing. But since we started this topic anyway, I suppose it might be of interest to you that being shrunk, no matter how unpleasant, doesn’t normally result in broken bones. Make another guess. What? No ideas? All right, I’ll give you a hint: a muscle retention field does that splendidly. I’m pretty sure you remember where it was invented.”
“Gallifrey,” the Doctor says slowly.
“Spot on. Such an ugly, bulky thing, its generator. I should make a portable version someday. It’d be nice if you could carry it wherever you wanted—maybe hidden in a walking stick or an umbrella? Oh, stop staring at me like that. What did you think would happen after I blasted Rassilon back to our home planet? They’d just cure me and kick me out?”
The TV is still chirping something in the background, emphasizing the Doctor’s silence.
So it’s true then, what the other him had been preaching all along. The Doctor had made his own assumptions and never cared to check. It’s not like he’d left the Master in danger on purpose, knowing full well he’d be tortured and killed. Oh no, he’s too kind-hearted for that. He’d just never stopped to think of you at all.
“I thought Gallifrey was gone. You were gone,” the Doctor finally says. “I didn’t know I saved it. Sounds crazy, but I really, really didn’t. And when I learned about it, I couldn’t find where it was hidden—”
The Master lets out a growl. “Oh please, I don’t need your excuses, there’s nothing to explain. You had your own life, I get it. It’s just that sometimes I still expect you to at least ask before you come to any conclusions.” He reaches out for the remote to turn the TV off. “No hard feelings, but I think I’m not in the mood for making out anymore.”
“What happened there? Will you tell me?”
“Should I give you a list of tortures in consequential or alphabetical order? Or do you want a sneak peek into my memories? Oh, I forgot, you don’t do mind melding.”
The look on the Doctor’s face is satisfyingly pained, horror-stricken, but the satisfaction is bitter and short-lived. To be honest, the Master would have preferred to leave without having had this conversation. He already regrets going into details in the heat of the moment. So what if the Doctor feels guilty now? How does it change anything, except making the Master a victim in his eyes? It’s a hateful thought. To survive just to be pitied? That’s mortifying.
What’s even more insufferable: there’s a tiny, tiny part in him that wants the Doctor to pull him close after this revelation, to hold him so convulsively tight that it’ll hurt, to promise he’ll tear Gallifrey to pieces. Of course the Doctor will do neither of this, and it makes the wretched, sniveling lump inside of him all the more obnoxious. If only he could burn it out somehow. Maybe incinerating a few planets could help, but most likely not. It never used to.
“So that’s why—” the Doctor starts speaking, but presses the heel of his hand to his mouth, as if to stop himself from saying something he shouldn’t.
The Master sighs irritably.
“Look, if you’re going to have an existential crisis right now, please don’t. We both know how Gallifrey was during the Time War—even worse than before. You just chose to be nostalgic about it because you thought you were the only Time Lord left, am I right? But it doesn’t matter. Gallifrey is safe and sound where it is, and I’m alive and well here, indestructible as always. Everything’s great. So can we stop talking about it?”
“Safe and sound, alive and well,” the Doctor repeats after him, as if in a trance, but then snaps himself out of it. “Yes. Fine. No talking of it anymore, got it. How are you feeling, by the way? We could go somewhere, anywhere you wanted. In the TARDIS. To take your mind off of it. Fancy a trip?”
“When?” the Master asks with some suspicion.
“How about right now?”
There’s something fake about the Doctor’s sudden enthusiasm, but the Master wills himself to ignore it. Perhaps that’s what the Doctor always does—feels the need to run off somewhere whenever something disturbing comes up. Even if the offer is unexpected and seemingly comes out of nowhere, and even if the Master himself is currently more inclined to brood than to go anywhere, so what? It’s a great opportunity to seize the TARDIS, or at least to prepare for the eventual takeover. That’s what he wanted, isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
Chapter Text
It turns out the TARDIS is parked at the farther side of the garden, by the hedge. Not really hidden at all. The Master had expected more difficulties with finding it—he could have easily stumbled upon it simply by accident if he ventured out alone.
The Master had proven himself ruthlessly adept at escape, but it had never been that unchallenging. Is it a trap of some kind? Or had the Doctor thought him so debilitated that he hadn’t deemed it necessary to protect his TARDIS better? The Master can’t decide if he should consider it offensive. He’s weakened, sure, but far from incapacitated.
The Doctor stops by the door, puts a hand on its weathered wooden surface, like he’s placating a skittish animal. “He’s not going to hurt you again.”
The Master huffs behind his back.
The Doctor turns to him, admonishingly. “You want in or not?”
“Fine, fine!” the Master concedes. “I promise most solemnly not to do any upgrades. Good enough?”
And the TARDIS lets them in. Inside, it’s so much different from what the Master remembers that he can’t help a whistle. First off, it’s cleaner. And more spacey. A perfect, immaculate white hemisphere with too many walkways. The roundels are still there but glowing in soft blue pastels.
“What happened to your precious TARDIS that it changed so drastically, huh? It’s completely rebuilt. Was there a fire or what?”
“Uh. Actually, yes, recently. Donna dropped her coffee into the console. But that’s not why—”
“Donna? One of your beloved companions? Set a fire to your TARDIS? And yet it’s me it’s distressed about? Oh, that’s rich. That’s hilarious.”
The Master expects mutual bickering to follow, like in the old days, but the Doctor looks oddly zoned out, standing there by the console and stroking at it absent-mindedly.
“I know you’re upset, but be kind to him, will you?” he murmurs.
Talking to the TARDIS instead of his guest. Just great. But before the Master voices a complaint, the Doctor turns to him after all, back from his strange reverie.
“Could you wait a bit? I forgot something in the house, I’ll be right back.”
The Master throws his hands up in theatrical exasperation. “Of course you did. Oh fine, just be quick.”
It should be vexing indeed, this sudden delay, but maybe it’s for the best he’s given some time before they head off anywhere. When the Doctor vanishes, leaving the door open into the garden and allowing the smell of verdure and damp earth to waft in, it occurs to the Master that he doesn’t really know what destination to suggest. The only one that comes to his mind is probably out of question, and it’s a bad idea anyway. The Doctor might—and probably will—object to checking on the Toclafane at the very end of the universe, and he’ll be right. What’s the point? Just to make sure once again that everything ends, and ends badly?
Should he simply say, “I don’t want to go?” No, that would be counterproductive, it’s better to make the Doctor used to him being in the TARDIS. Oh well, he’ll think of something, he always does.
The Master takes a look around the renewed console room. Traditionally, there’s nowhere to sit down, so he just settles on the floor in the entrance walkway. If the Doctor stumbles across his outstretched legs when he comes back, it’s his own fault. He’s been around humans for so long that he could have borrowed one of their least silly habits, installing seats in flight decks, and invested in a couple of comfy chairs.
It’s annoying that he still feels exhausted after the whole day of doing nothing. His body must be catching up on sleep, just in case he’s deprived of it again.
The Master closes his eyes for a moment, then blinks forcefully, adamant not to drift off. It suddenly comes to him that now would be a great opportunity to run off with the TARDIS, since the Doctor has voluntarily made it accessible to him and left him alone here so carelessly, but the thing is, he hasn’t expected for it to happen so soon. What’s the hurry? He’s got a place to lie low, come to his senses; he can sneak off any other time, now that he knows he’s able to. It’s not like he stays because of the Doctor, well aware he’s not wanted and still willing to prolong his misery. No, that’s solely for logical reasons. Or maybe to prolong the Doctor’s misery. Yes, that’s a good motive too.
Through the open door, a bug buzzes past him, and the Master waves a hand in revulsion. He hates bugs. It’s appalling how many of these little fuckers are eager to make their home in a decaying body; he still remembers it too vividly, no matter how much time has passed.
The TARDIS is unfortunately of no help, it doesn’t seem to mind the presence of alien insects on board, no matter how unsanitary it is. With a sigh, the Master stands up. It takes him some time to ward the intruder off, back into the garden where it belongs. And only when the bug is finally ushered out, after a good deal of undignified chasing and more hand waving, it dawns on him that he could have just squashed it.
A bit discomfiting, this. He’s glad the Doctor hasn’t seen it, or it would have been even more of a cringe, like it had been the Doctor’s favorite act of kindness, not poor reaction on his part.
Settling in the walkway again, the Master jabs a finger in the general direction of the console. “Don’t you dare tell him!”
Of course the TARDIS doesn’t respond.
An accidental act of mercy, to a bug or any other living creature, is nothing but a slip from what he’d normally do. Death has always been strolling by his side, or more like riding on his shoulders. (Does it walk together with the other me now as well, or did it have to choose between us? he wonders, but shakes this thought off as ridiculous.) The thing is, he’s a murderer, had always been that, apparently, even when he hadn’t fully realized it yet, and nothing’s going to change it. This is real, this is him. It’s not something you can forget once you know it. No wonder the Doctor can’t.
Maybe it’s time to tell him, if begrudgingly, that it’s fine.
It’s in clear contradiction with the Master’s general plan—to torment the Doctor with his mere presence, but to be fair, seeing the Doctor’s unease hasn’t been overly gratifying so far. So perhaps it’s better to have a talk and finally say: I understand why you don’t want to be near me. There’s no need to pretend you do. It must be confusing for the Doctor—this combination of physical attraction, sentimental regrets over an old friendship, and strong moral aversion. A source of constant guilt. Will it help or will it be too ironic if the Master declares, “I forgive you?”
Immersed in rumination, he waits and waits, but the Doctor doesn’t return. First, the Master starts getting impatient, then a little worried. Then worried for real. What might be keeping the Doctor for so long?
He stands up, paces to and fro for a while, makes a detour around the console, drums his fingers against it, growing more and more agitated. The Doctor is easily distracted of course, but not that much. Something must have happened, something must be wrong, but what? Had someone unexpectedly paid a visit to him, someone he can’t shake off? Could it be that a UNIT squad showed up after all, untimely as always?
It would have been so much easier if the Doctor had granted him a telepathic connection. They’d warn each other in case of emergency then. Maybe the Master wouldn’t even try to break the Doctor’s trust and misuse it, although he can’t be too sure about his resolve: he never is with the Doctor.
He looks out into the garden, listens intently. No suspicious sounds come from the direction of the house, but maybe it’s too far for any voices to reach him. He slinks outside, approaches the house stealthily, under the cover of trees, and lingers, observing the surroundings. Still nothing alarming. No motion at all. The house is still and silent, so the Master dares to enter.
He finds the Doctor on the couch in the living room, hugging the plush Dalek. Alone.
When he looks up, having heard the Master’s footsteps, the expression on his face strikes the Master as strange.
“You stayed,” he says.
He sounds…surprised.
And only then, only then does it hit the Master, full-force. He thought you’d leave. He wanted you to. He gave you a perfect opportunity, sacrificed his TARDIS just to get rid of you, once and for all, with all of your scheming and seducing. But here you are, crawling back to him instead of doing the rational thing and flying off, so now he’s at a loss: why are you still here?
It’s something he should have known would happen, and yet the Doctor’s constant acts of sympathy, counterfeit or not, must have thrown him off: it’s so unexpected, so unfairly sudden that the scorching pain of it renders the Master speechless for a moment.
Chapter Text
You create misery. You’re the most evil and corrupt person in the universe. A sick and twisted being.
All the words the Doctor had been telling him throughout centuries come back, filling his mind with roar and clatter like the cursed drumbeat. It doesn’t help that they might be true.
“Why now?” the Master asks, and hardly recognizes his own voice, pinched and strained. “What was the last straw? Me trying to corrupt you? Or upsetting you with the truth about your dear Gallifrey? I don’t get it. You’ve been tolerating my presence so heroically—and then you just give up and decide to throw me out, the sooner the better. What could be worse than the things I’ve already done?”
The Doctor has tried to interrupt him all the while he’s been speaking, “It’s not like that—I didn’t—” But now he’s just looking up at the Master with his tragic eyes, as if his unhappiness is somehow an excuse.
“Tell me you weren’t expecting me to clear out. Tell me!” the Master challenges him.
“I knew you’d leave,” the Doctor says feebly, his previous fervor gone—because how could he deny that? “I just didn’t know when. And I thought—maybe not right now, maybe you could spend years here, maybe I could do something to make you want to stay longer. Something… to make you happy. At least for a while. Because I don’t think you ever were, not really, and I made you like that. You might not remember, but anyway… After what you said, I understand why you were… why you will be so angry with me. And Gallifrey. But with me in the first place. Because I never asked and never listened, not like I should have. I understand why you wouldn’t want to stay by my side if you had a choice. So it would have been selfish to deny you this choice, just because I want to keep you. You still have time to try and be happy somewhere else.”
The Master stares at him with a mix of suspicion and incomprehension.
“You’ve always been good at making heartfelt speeches, Doctor, but now you talk utter nonsense. What do you mean—I still have time?”
The Doctor looks away, runs a hand through his wild tangle of hair.
“You were older when I met you. So I want to believe you had—you will have—something good between now and then.”
Oh. It does happen with time travels, little ironic twists like that.
“So what, you know my future? Is it why you didn’t want to let me into your mind?”
The Doctor nods miserably, and that’s a clue enough of what this future will be. Hardly anything nice. Nothing new then.
“You said I’ll be angry with you?”
The Doctor nods again. He’s still holding on to the stupid Dalek toy, like an upset toddler. The Master finds it… oddly endearing, although he really should be angry instead. Probably. He’s been angry for so long that maybe he’s grown too tired of it.
“There was one time when you said you wanted me back, as a friend,” the Doctor says. “Another you. Later you. But you left in the end, and afterwards… it was back to what we usually do. Your devious schemes, my lectures on morals. So it means that now, here—I failed you. And whatever I do, it won’t change the outcome, will it? But still… If you haven’t left today, for any reason at all, could you maybe stay some more? It’s so funny that we are Time Lords, and yet we can’t stop time whenever we want to, isn’t it? Because that’s what I wish for. More time. With you. I can’t change your future. I can’t change my past. I just want to give you the life you never had, even if for a short while. An ordinary happy life. And I know it’s egoistic, to hope you’d have it with me, but… could you, possibly? I’ll be good, I’ll be good for you, promise, I’ll try to. Just teach me how, tell me what you need.”
There’s so much anguish in his eyes when he looks up that the Master should feel like gloating. Should feel elated, like on the Valiant. But all he wants to say is, “Oh you moron.” Then a very reasonable thought comes to his mind. With some delay, admittedly, but that’s due to the Doctor talking too much, distracting him from important details.
“Why are you so sure you met me? In your past? Did I say something about this?”
He makes a vague gesture around the room.
“No, but it’s not like we were sharing memories a lot, so… And it was definitely you. The same face. I’m sorry I called it round, by the way, I was… distressed.”
The Master rubs at the bridge of his nose, considering his next words, because it seems like a nearly impossible task, explaining everything without making the Doctor think he’s gone mad. More than he usually is.
“This is going to sound really weird,” he begins, “but there are sort of two of us now. I died there, on Gallifrey, and things went a bit awry. Bi-generation, they call it. It’s supposed to be a myth, but. Well. Here I am. Not the one and only anymore.”
The Doctor blinks at him, silent for a moment.
“You too?” he finally says.
The Master blinks at him as well, just as idiotically, like his mirror image. “What? You mean—what?”
Isn’t there some twisted logic to it? he ponders after the Doctor’s somewhat muddled explanations. The two of them had always been wounding their fates so tight around each other’s that is it really a wonder something so crazy should happen to them both simultaneously?
They’re sitting side by side on the couch, with the plush Dalek thankfully set aside, and the Master lays his splayed hand to the Doctor’s chest, between his hearts, feeling their rhythm—one, two, three, four.
“A galvanic beam? Really? Right here? That’s surely a new way to die.”
The Doctor huffs. “Can’t recommend, even for novelty. But at least it was quick.”
They stay silent for a while, mulling over that, but the Master doesn’t back off, doesn’t take his hand away.
“You said I was never happy because you made me like that. What did you mean? Darkheart?”
The twin pulses under his palm quicken immediately, in distress.
“Uh. That too, maybe. But before that… You don’t remember, do you? Torvic.”
The Master cringes. “Of course I remember. If you mean you grew distant from me after I killed him—it’s all right, I get it. Your sense of morals and all that.”
“No. No, it’s not what happened. I killed him, not you. I could never let you die, so I just… picked up a stone and… And then I freaked out. I had a dream that night, of Death coming to me and saying she’d claim me as her champion now, unless I made a choice. Who’d live with the guilt and the torment from now on, me or you? Who should she take as hers? And I replied, ‘Take him.’ I said that. I was frightened, and I said that. And since then, we never talked of it. I almost forgot I was the murderer, not you, but I guess it lingered somewhere in my mind, that I had blood on my hands and made you tainted with it. So I ran from it as far as I could. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I betrayed you, didn’t I?”
“You saved me,” the Master says slowly, letting this sink in. “I live because of you.”
The thought of it is strange. Too enormous to grasp straight away. If it’s true, all of the Doctor’s blabbering… and maybe it is, considering how his own memories of that day are so vague… then initially, the Doctor chose him over his morals and his own safety, and it doesn’t matter much what happened next. They were children. Of course Theta was scared. Of course he had nightmares. Of course he tried to forget.
The Doctor is looking at him wretchedly like he’s expecting him to—what? Leave at once? Or throw a punch first?
The Master pats at his chest in awkward reassurance. Because that’s what he finds himself wanting, to make peace. Maybe they could do things differently this time. Without running and chasing, without death threats and other dramatic stuff.
“I’m alive, aren’t I? And you’re alive too. One way or another, it all turned out for the better, I guess. So you know what? I forgive you.” There. He said that. It’s too good a phrase not to have used it. “Now, will you tell me what’s happened to you since we last met? You can leave out the bits where the other me was involved, or it might be awkward.”
The Doctor visibly wavers. “It’ll be a rather long story—”
This, the Master believes—it’s never uncomplicated whenever it concerns the Doctor. So he settles more comfortably to listen.
“It’s fine. We have time.”
And then another detail—belatedly, again—catches up with him. “Wait. You said you called my face round. Why would you call it round? It’s not round!”
The Doctor cradles his face (which isn’t round at all) in both hands and leans in to press his forehead against the Master’s, with a tiny hint of a smile in the corners of his lips and eyes somewhat teary.
“It’s perfect.”
This, of course, is a more satisfactory definition, although the Master suspects he’s being mocked, just a little bit. He also suspects they might need snacks if the Doctor’s story really is a long one.
Chapter Text
He’s not nervous. Definitely not. He has no reasons to be.
And yet. The prospect of finally meeting the Doctor’s adopted family in full is inexplicably daunting.
“Don’t remind Donna you tried to eat her,” the Doctor warns him, not for the first time. “I think she doesn’t remember that. I’d rather she didn’t.”
The Master doesn’t ask what might happen if she does, but he has a feeling that the Doctor is worried not because she might be scared.
“She’s working for UNIT, right?” he muses. “Any chance she’ll give us out to them?”
The Doctor—who’s currently pacing across the living room, somewhat agitatedly, in wait of the Noble-Temple family—just waves a hand at him. “She wouldn’t! But even if they find out about you, we’ll think of something. There are always ways to disappear, Donna could back it up if I ask her to. The 2063 flood in Venice might be a good time to go off-grid. Natural disasters and all that.”
The Master frowns with some doubt. “But you like it here. You like this place. You like these humans of yours. Why would you leave?”
The Doctor suddenly stops and comes to squat beside the Master who’s lounging on the couch in a different, motionless kind of anxiety.
“Because I like you, idiot. Isn’t it a reason enough?”
Before the Master processes the confession (and reacts properly to being called an idiot, although, to be fair, they both seem to be foolish in equal measure, so it’s not that bad), the Doctor jumps up and starts marching back and forth again.
“It’s just a back-up plan so far. No need to go into details yet. Maybe we won’t require it at all. And it’s not like we’ll have to leave Earth for good, we could just settle in a different place. South of France looks promising, actually—”
“By the way, how are you going to introduce me?” the Master interrupts him—this question has been bothering him for quite a while, probably more than any thoughts of UNIT. “Will you call me your ex-nemesis? Your life-long enemy? Your best friend? The thing is, all of your friends are your best friends. The best in the world. You always say something like that about them. So how am I different then? I’m your oldest one—and that’s it?”
“Oh, here they are, I think,” the Doctor says instead of answering, as he peers out of the window, listening to what sounds like a car nearing.
The Master lets out a sigh. It’s as if they timed that to get the Doctor out of an awkward conversation. But he’ll know the answer soon anyway.
Donna is the first one to come to the open front door.
“Oh hello!” the Doctor greets her in an overly cheerful manner, which usually betrays how nervous he is. “You two already met, sort of, but… never mind… let’s do a formal introduction. Master, that’s Donna, my… best friend. Yes. And… Donna, that’s my… Master.”
“Oh, it sounds so wonderfully kinky,” the Master sing-songs, to the Doctor’s evident embarrassment. But the Doctor doesn’t protest when the Master finds his hand and squeezes it a little, both as encouragement and assertion.
Donna seems to regard all of this amusedly.
“Shaun is trying to unload the barbecue grill from the car,” she says. “I’m still unconvinced we absolutely need it, but anyway, he brought it, so. Will you two come to rescue?”
“Sure,” the Doctor says for them both, and they follow her to the gate, their hands still linked. The Master is very much looking forward to how the others are going to react to their theatrics.
Just to tease the Doctor some more, he leans in on the way to whisper ticklishly into his ear, “My Doctor.”
He’s rewarded with a broad, unguarded smile. It’s a good look on the Doctor, smiling like this. Maybe even more so than kneeling. Although the two could be combined, eventually.
Mine. Yours. The Master weighs these words in his head, as they walk through the garden to meet the rest of the family, and finds them acceptable. For better or worse, you’ve got me anyway.
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