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When the four knocks come to her TARDIS door, she's pretty sure she knows who it is right away. Subtlety has never been his style; he never could get over the rush of betrayal long enough to use a disguise for very long. Not when he was trapped on Earth, not when he was prime minister, not when she was ‘an android,’ not with O. So she knows who it is right away because he’s never even bothered to knock any other way.
She has hated him and she has loved him. They’ve been the best of enemies and the worst of lovers. He cannot stand not being known.
The rapping comes again. Does he even mean to do it? The pattern, that is, the heartbeat as his calling card. Does he mean to always knock four times or does that just happen after so many years with them pounding away in his head, in his chest? All the years of pain that she used to want to take away from him — she used to want to put his hands on her hearts and tell him that everything would be okay and that she would do anything she could to fix it. She hadn't. She never will. There is nothing tender left of him, just the boiling anger that doesn't know where to go.
She can no longer afford to offer him the gentlest parts of her. Her softness would be self-sacrificial.
Again they come. Harder. More urgent. She wonders how long he’ll keep going out there. If he regrets anything he's done to her, he’ll leave before she breaks. She doubts he will.
They’ve been the dearest of sweethearts and the best of friends. They have meant the universe to one another; they have made promises and broken oaths. She cannot bear what they are now.
It's a heartbeat and it's a cry out for something beyond words. It's his. It's hers. It's the first sound she can remember hearing, even before the laughter. It's the ticking of a clock. It's his rage. It's something he'll never ever tell her.
He hadn’t needed to hurt her like he did. There had to be another way to show her that didn't involve forcing her into the matrix to watch everything she'd been.
And like Hell is she giving him what he wants and dematerializing her TARDIS. She's not going to let him think she cares enough to do it. If he's stalked her here to a tiny distant planet, he'd probably get a kick out of seeing her run away again. With her fam asleep deep within the TARDIS, there’s no harm to letting him stew in the dust and the rocks and wonder if she’s even hearing him at all.
Would he knock his hands bloody? Would he stay there till the drought-plagued planet filled his lungs with dust and he had to regenerate?
Maybe there's an anger that burns in her too, just as manic and as feral. She'd rip him apart like she knows he'd love to.
They’ve hurt and killed and maimed one another. By word, by sword. They’ve been the cruelest of foes and the coldest of rivals. She cannot be brave enough to face what he makes her become.
Bam-bam-bam-bam! Let him rot out there for all that she cares. Being someone's oldest friend means nothing when all you do is hold them down and hurt them. She still feels his hands around her throat, his knife against her back, and everything he’s done to leave her ruined. They are not friends anymore! She will not allow friendship to be defined by him and his actions. Every bit of it is painful and as warm as blood, but love can be sweet instead. She knows because she still remembers Gallifrey, where he held her hands in her dorm room and told her that he would never let them trap her. He let the version of himself who knew how to love die, but she remembers what he used to be.
It has to be over! She's given him all of his chances! She's burned stars for him, begged him to run away with her countless times. An outstretched hand. An olive branch. A request, a vault, a ride in the box, a text a promise two hearts a kiss asecretasongahouseinthewind. And contact.
The door is wide open. Her hands fall away from the handles and she steps back like they’ve burned her. Her ship presses against her mind; she shouldn't have done that. And oh, she knows that from the proud grin on his face and the twinkle in his eye.
A sharp wind howls outside which he doesn’t even bother to brace against. He grins at her and holds up a watch in one hand. “Oh, thank you, dear. I was wondering how long you would take to let me in. Really, I expected it would take longer, but I suppose you've always been weak.”
The Master steps inside and the Doctor’s hackles raise. This is her home and she wants him out now. She shouldn’t have opened the doors. It would have been better to just give in and fly away. He’s so casual about it all, so confident, and it sets her on edge; in lieu of a hat stand, he shrugs his great purple coat off and tosses it onto one of the golden pillars.
She gets another press, as though she can do anything right away. She doesn’t need her sonic to tell that he’s got hidden weapons for days, even without his coat. The Doctor has let Danger into her home.
“Get out,” she orders.
“But I've only just been invited in. I have the whole place to explore and it would be so disappointing if I only got to see this room. I want to find out if there's really one of Rassilon's black scrolls in your library.”
He starts off toward the door to the labyrinthine corridors. His shiny shoes are loud against the hard floor of the TARDIS and she hates it. She hates everything about him right now because it all screams that he thinks he belongs here when she knows he doesn’t.
She throws a glance toward him and one toward the open front door. Bad. Very bad.
He can not get into the rest of the ship. She can't let him. As quickly as she can, the Doctor snaps her fingers, pressing back against her ship and asking it to work with her just a bit. Every door in the console room slams closed and she's sure she hears locks, which were not there before, slide closed. Good. Good. Locks are good. She’ll have to remember to thank the TARDIS later.
The Master stops, his exit securely blocked and locked. “Nice trick,” he says. “Very showy. I bet that impresses your little friends.”
Feeling a bit safer with him stuck in just one room with her, she steps up to meet him and his daring.
“Jealous you can't do it? It takes a working connection to the symbiotic nuclei, and I'm fairly sure you ripped that circuit out in the eighties.” Actually, she's pretty sure he's ripped it out of every TARDIS he's piloted for more than one trip. And he still claims to be better at flying one than she is.
He just grins. “My TARDIS started liking you too much, so I had to get it fixed.”
“Really? Mine hates you.” It's like she can't help but shove and rise to his bait. The Doctor needs to stay on track. She needs to get him back out the front door before he can do anything to her, her ship, or her fam.
The Master leans against the console, all toothy smirks and confidence. “It'll get used to me.”
She grits her teeth and stands her ground. There's another, more firm push, but she doesn't exactly know how to get him off the console, short of tackling him onto the floor (then she would only have the upper hand for about a minute before he had a gun to her chest). “Get out.”
“I don't want to.” He relaxes back, spreading his arms out over the console and sweeping the fitted cotton sleeves of his shirt over as many delicate switches as he can. It’s so clearly intentional — it’s more effort than it would be with his coat, but everything is a display right now and he’d burn himself to get on her nerves.
“Get out.”
“Get out, what?” asks the Master.
Her nails dig into the palms of her hands, too short to cut little moons in and all together unsatisfyingly. “You don't get a fucking ‘please’ out of me. Get out of my TARDIS now or —”
“Or what, love? You would never stoop so low as to follow through on any half-decent threat. It’s always been one of your shortcomings.” he interupts. Utterly unworried. Utterly at ease in her TARDIS and basking in her anger and frustration.
It would be wrong to do what she's itching to do. Doesn't he get that this isn't a game anymore? Doesn't he get that he went too far when he burned down their — her — planet?
She could hurt him and she wouldn't feel bad. It would be relief. That scares her.
“No threat, Doctor? You've gotten soft! Oh! That's good! That's really good!” He pushes himself off the controls, making sure to hit as many additional levers as he can, and gets in her face. “Did I finally break you down?”
She thrusts her hands into her pockets and white-knuckles her pants through the thick cotton fabric of the coat. “What do you want?”
“Nothing at all,” he whispers, so serious. Then he cracks and laughs again. It’s grating; he finds humor in everything.
“I don't want you here.”
Something passes over his face, something like sadness. “We don't always get what we want.” The Master steps back. “I'm taking control of your TARDIS and you're going to let me.”
He's mad if he thinks she's going to let him. She reaches out after him to grab that stupid plaid vest that makes her blood boil. His fingers brush against the console buttons gently and she's nauseous all of a sudden.
The Doctor stumbles back and catches herself on the hexagon dome. It's hard to catch her breath so she twists her fingers up in the metal, seeking connection and stability. The TARDIS is crying out in her head because she doesn't like this any more than the Doctor does. With no lungs, it feels like a wave of sickness passing over her, anemia and nausea. He's turning dials already while she's fighting twice the disgust.
I'll take care of it. I'm sorry. I know, she soothes, even though she has no time for this. Coordinates set. She needs to get to him with her faculties intact and find a way to pull him away from her console. I'm sorry.
“Don't apologize on my behalf, love,” he calls, not even sparing a glimpse over his shoulder. “You don't get to do that anymore.”
“Get out of my head when you're not invited,” she bites.
“Then don't think so loud. I love this regeneration, you know. It’s so easy to get into your head, like you don’t even remember how to put up your walls. Did you get tame with Missy?” She hates how excited he is. His schadenfreude slips into his taunts and makes him sound all together like an overexcited schoolboy, but he never gets less dangerous.
He's poking around in her brain with no warning and she can't even feel him because she's so used to him there. She needs him out. Out of her ship and her head and her life. She's done. She's done with him.
The Doctor gets louder and she screams bloody murder in her head until it drowns out all the other thoughts and she's got him stumbling back from the console board, clutching his temples. His eyes go wild. He lunges at her.
Rule one of having an enemy: It's remarkably easy to pull a knife without the other person seeing. Rule number two: You must always expect this.
The only reason he doesn't slice through her stomach is that she’s already rolling out of the way. She doesn’t see him pull the knife but she doesn't care because he's not going to touch her with it. That trick’s far too old to work anymore.
The Doctor's on her feet again in a flash. He's so happy and he's got a threat written across his face. The knife is loose in his hand and he's got his other thumb ever so lightly resting against the very tip.
His voice is low and serious when he speaks and it's fast like he really means this one. “If you do that again, dear, I'll kill your little pets right now. I'm in your head and I don't take kindly to resistance. Now be a good Doctor and stand aside.”
She throws herself at him and hits them both against a column so that his back cracks against the warm golden crystal. Her fingers dig into him as she scrambles and crawls at his arms. Before he can get his wits about him, she manages to get them pressed against the column where he can't get them free.
The Doctor's kneeling, technically, on one knee and one boot, and she's tangled up with him in ways that make her sick. He looks her in the eyes, but she drops her head. All he gets is the unfeeling shower of blond hair that says more than staying firm would.
“Oh, you surprise me, dear Doctor!” She squeezes his hands harder and harder, past where it's painful. The knife — dagger — whatever — drops and goes clattering across the floor. He adjusts under her, but there is no easy way to get comfortable like this. “So you do have some fight left in you. That's good. I worried that knowing what you are might have broken you down too much and you wouldn't even —”
She knees him wherever she can get to. He chokes out a cough or a groan while her breathing finally starts to even out again.
“Shut up,” she demands. “Just shut up now.” She can feel him flexing his wrists in her hands. It's clumsy the way she's holding them, but it's secure and he has to know that too.
“Why did you let me into your TARDIS? Did you miss this?”
The fighting? The endlessly racing hearts, the overworked lungs, and the feeling of falling?
The pillars are not smooth, but they aren't jagged and sharp either. It would take a lot of pressure to scrape his hands on them and for it to hurt the way he deserves. She has the position of power now, one hand on either of his wrists and feet planted against the ground that he's slumped on. She could make him hurt. She could draw blood.
“Oh, come, dear. Don't give me the silent treatment. We both know how much you love to talk.”
This is her anger, the person she promised herself not to be. Most of what she’s thinking is against her rules.
He’s hurt her friends. He’s tortured her allies. He’s done so very much. Anything left of what they were drifted up and away on the smoke that poured out of Gallifrey, their childhood, their home. Can there be kindness and patience where there is none? How do you tolerate the intolerable?
“Say something!” he demands.
“Get off my ship,” she says, because it’s the only thing that keeps her from screaming. There are so many unspoken things that she’s begging him to do with those four words that they leave her empty and bile is all that’s left in her throat.
He just giggles. “How am I supposed to do that when you’ve got me pinned down? Did you think that far ahead?”
“Figure something out.” The Doctor knows that she never really has him trapped, especially not now. He’s only staying there because he wants to push her buttons. She won’t let go of him. Maybe can’t.
He makes it easy for her and cracks his head against hers without holding back. Skull on skull. It’s got to be as painful for him as it is for her, but while she’s hissing out air and reeling back, he’s already slipping away.
He makes for the blade. She curses and grabs his leg.
The Master doesn’t put up much of a fight; he lets her trip him and goes crashing down onto the ground. His hands land by the knife anyways, so he grabs it and twists like a snake lashing out. At the same time, she’s kicking out at him.
He tears the knife across her leg and then sinks it in.
She watches a large black stain bloom around the torn fabric of her trousers. It weighs the scraps on the edge down and sticks them to her now-wet leg. She feels it like a memory — the pain is fuzzy at the edges after the initial feeling of a scratch like no other. Adrenaline pushes it all down.
They make eye contact for just a moment. It’s intense and his eyes have never looked so big and brown.
He twists the knife and all of that pain floods in. Her hand wraps around his and together they wrench the knife out with no care to preserve whatever’s in the area around.
This time, he won’t drop it, so she pulls it free with her other hand. It’s a small thing, so the only place to find purchase that doesn’t have hands over it yet is the blade. Hardly thinking, the Doctor takes the chance and grabs it by the blade. She just barely manages not to slice her palm open too. He holds fast, but she’s running on pain and anger and more than a little fear, so she pulls it loose and stows the still-bloody knife in her pocket.
They’re both bloody and unfortunately it’s all hers.
The Master laughs and rolls onto his back, glutted on the fleshy, violent rush.
The Doctor pulls herself to sit against the console and drags her knee up to her chest, turning the leg over to see the jagged cut.
“That’s a lot of blood, dear. Your head isn’t getting light, is it?” He’s not even looking at her, but rather he just stares at the place where the glowing columns all reach in together, huge luminous claws stretching to meet and grab them both. “What an undignified way to regenerate. Passed out from a cut and then killed on the floor of your own TARDIS. It’s pedestrian.”
She ignores him. There are more important things than pointing out that he would never kill her in her sleep and risk losing the satisfaction of seeing her face. Because she knows that if she passes out, she’ll just wake up in a harder situation to escape. He’s still playing.
The fabric of her trousers isn’t really ideal — part of the leg is already soaked through with blood and it isn’t the right material — but it’s all she has. She uses the knife to saw the cuff off and spiral it up until one leg’s only covering down to her knee. Tying your own bandage is never fun or easy, but she swears that her hands are shaking and making it so much worse than usual.
When it’s done, because she gets it done even if she’s covered in blood and shivering, she pulls herself up and makes herself stand on both legs (with much support from the console) to lock herself out of as many controls as she can. It will take her hours to bring every system back online and she has the codes in her head. The Master? If her TARDIS keeps fighting him as much as it has been, it’ll take him days at best, maybe even months.
It’s an emergency contingency plan that she hates, lacking tact and usually use. It’s the hammer solution. The crudest option where she orders the ship to manually sever its own wires because of a threat.
The Doctor slams her fists against the console. She leaves a trail of blood on the board as she teters back and away and lands against the floor of her ship.
“Why can’t you ever leave me alone?” she asks. “I was getting better! I was healing.”
The Master sniffs. “You were hiding, love. Did they even know what you were before they met me? You told them that you weren’t human, but did your little pets actually know what it means to be a Time Lord? Did they know that that was what you were?”
She won’t countenance him with an answer.
He pulls himself to his feet and rounds the console to where she was.
“I know that they didn’t really know about regeneration. Sure, you’d mentioned it, but you never explained it, did you. The mysterious Doctor and her odd remarks.”
The Doctor forces herself up to look him in the eye. She refuses him that as well — having her on her knees while he postures around about his power. If he’ll refuse to look her in the eyes, it won’t stop her from staring deep into his.
“Do they know that you're older than some stars? And what about our language? Is that all just art to them? Did you explain why you never went home even before you saw my work? Do they even know that you have two hearts?" He thrusts a finger into her chest. She tenses on command. "Have you let anybody get close enough to feel them?"
She can’t tear herself away from his eyes now. His harsh and cruel and so, so sad eyes. The same eyes he’s always had. "What happened to you? You were on the right track! You were... You were getting better. We were friends." The Doctor does not spare the energy to speak with anything but anger. The words she whispered to his memory before Gallifrey, back when she wondered if he was truly lost… They cut now, or she hopes they do.
"That's how it always goes. We're always friends. You always run."
"I didn't run," she says
"Always. You run from me, from the truth. From yourself."
“Shut up!” She takes a swing at him. Her knuckles connect hard with his cheekbone. The followthrough sends him back a step and he grabs his face. It’s going to be a nasty bruise very soon.
He kicks her in the knees. Her legs give out again under her and she’s too slow to catch herself before she’s kneeling with her strained arms holding her up.
The Master joins her. He crouches in front of her on the toes of his loud boots.
She swears and bears her teeth. “Don’t ever try to talk to me about hiding. You don’t know me anymore!”
“On the contrary, love. I think I know you better than anybody else ever will,” he says, genuine. He believes it.
Oh, of course he believes it! It’s all because he believes it and he believes it because of it all! He toys with her, says he knows her, chases her across the universe and time because he believes that they’re still friends. He’s seen her past that was hidden from her and he watched it all because they are, have been, and always will be friends.
The theatrics, the pet names, everything he reserves for her means that too. He burned a planet just for her.
She’s actually going to kill him this time.
She’s actually going to kill him and she’s made a little bit excited or nervous by how certain she is of that one fact.
“We aren’t friends,” she tells him. “That ended with Gallifrey.”
He frowns. It’s almost sadness, if she thought he could understand that anymore. “I know.”
She wants to cry. Does he? Does he really?
The Master reaches toward her face. She catches his wrist, holds it fast in place despite the fact that she’s still shaking. Uses it to hold herself steady.
That look on his face, though. She’s seen it countless times. It’s sincerity, longing, and something else that she’s never been able to place for as incredibly long as she’s known him. It’s a look he only ever seems to let her see.
She releases his hand.
The Master smiles and tucks the blond hair hanging in front of her face back behind her ear.
Something in her breaks again.
She twists her hands up in his vest and push-throws him away toward the ground. She crawls over to him and digs the knife out of her pocket.
She can feel him taking in deep breaths. The knife rises and falls on his throat like a boat on the ocean and she’s tempted to sink it into his windpipe. Propped up on her forearm and knees, laying next to him, it would be so easy to end it there and be done with him and his sick games. He’s not even struggling against her.
It’s a sick parody of their childhood. How many nights at the academy had she laid next to him and listened to his breathing filling the quiet room? They’d both been so small — had drawn the short sticks quite literally for their first lives — and so they hadn’t even had to lie close together to fit in the bed. But they had, because nothing had meant more to them than one another.
They’d fall asleep together with his hands on her hearts and hers by his neck and waist because they’d grown so used to company that it was easier to sneak into the same dorm than it was to try to sleep alone.
He rolls onto his side like he’s going to whisper a secret to her in the confidentiality of the night. His breath ghosts across her face. She keeps the blade against him as he moves.
“Do it,” he dares.
“I want to.”
“Do it. Slit my throat right now. Neither of us know if I’ll regenerate or not.” He sniffs again. “Come on, Doctor. Take the gamble.”
She really tries to press it into him. The feeling of cutting through — of the tense muscle that makes up his neck splitting open as the tip of her knife cuts in — is so vivid, so graphic in her mind. She closes her eyes, then squeezes them tight and focuses on that feeling and how easy it would be. There would be blood. He would gasp for air. Then, she would finally be alone.
She feels phantom movement too, but she checks and the blade remains poised. There’s no damage except for a small cut, barely the size of a papercut and barely deep enough to even get one little bead of blood.
She’s burning up inside and she can’t even do this.
He sighs and kicks her away.
The Doctor rolls inelegantly and lands on her back. Her hearts pound at her chest. The Master walks over to her; she can track his movement by the sound of his footsteps on her TARDIS floor. There is danger again.
He crouches. “You should have killed me when you had the chance.”
She may be on the ground and hurting something awful, but she didn’t let go of the knife. She slashes wildly at him, not bothering to watch where she hits. The first few swings miss him entirely, but then she hears the sound of fabric cutting and the telltale resistance that skin gives against a knife. He howls and moves back.
She manages to sit up before he comes back.
Disappointingly, she didn’t hit anything vital — it’s a sweeping cut on his hip that’s bleeding quite a bit, but won’t kill him. It won’t really even be that hard to heal. She does, at least, take some satisfaction that it’s got to be painful to move with that.
He grabs at her and she does her best to plant the knife firmly in his arm. She misses again, but still slices through some of the skin and flesh on the side.
The Master knocks the knife out of her hands and grips her by the throat.
“You can’t be the Doctor if you kill me,” he hisses.
“I know.”
They hold the stalemate for one… two… He’s not squeezing hard enough to block off her breathing and, seeing him up close, the cuts she gave him are nastier than she thought at first. He’s bleeding more than she is now.
“Who are you if I’m dead?” he demands. “Who are you when I’m gone, Doctor?”
“A better man.”
“Do you really believe that?”
She grabs his arm and digs her fingers into the skin around the cut. She doesn’t need nails to make him hurt right now. He releases her in the agony.
The Doctor pulls herself up and jogs over to the column where his coat is. Her own wound is still slowing her down, but it isn’t enough to stop her completely. She gets one hand around the corner, feels the warm purple fabric in her hands, and then she’s on the ground (again) with him grasping at the tails of her coat.
She squashes her hand into his face to push him away but he just bites the finger closest to his mouth like a wolf.
There’s plenty of things in his pockets and she just hopes that one of them will justify rifling through them while he’s getting to his feet and brushing himself off. A weapon or something. Surely a maniac carries more than one measly knife.
Cold metal. A smooth, round cylinder with one end that flares out and another that blends into polished wood. She gets her hands around it and she knows what it is.
She rolls over and points the flintlock up at him just as he plants a foot down on her stomach and pins her to the floor like a bug on a board.
“Oh, Doctor. You hate me so much, but you still can’t pull the trigger. I see it in your eyes. You’ve been itching to hurt me since I stepped into your TARDIS but you’re still too weak to take revenge. You’ve never been able to do it yourself. Are any of your pets onboard? Maybe you can hand it off to them and they can shoot me.”
“Don’t you dare talk about them.”
He regards her like a poacher assessing game. “No, I guess that wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t break you enough to turn one of them into a soldier. You have to be the one to kill me for it to really sting.”
“Why are you doing any of this?” she asks because maybe this time his answer will be enough.
“For your attention, love, and because I want to see everything you have ever cared about burn.” He digs his foot into her a bit.
For her attention? For hundreds of years, she would have offered it up without a second thought! She would have given him everything she had and taken only his company from him. She may have been the one to run and leave Gallifrey, but he was the one who held them back from being beautiful together.
She had really thought with Missy that she would get her friend back.
The Doctor coughs and swears as he twists his foot. “I offered to hold up my end of the promise! I offered you my hand! Why didn’t you take it?”
“Careful. I might think you actually care about me.”
And fuck. She does. After everything and despite the anger she feels every time she sees him, she does still care about him. She always does through every life. That’s why she keeps trying so hard to get him to see her way.
She’ll never be able to pull the trigger.
At least she has her cruelty left. At least she can still show her teeth. When there is nothing left for her to do but end it all, she will spend the last few moments snarling until she can’t anymore.
“I wish you died on Gallifrey,” she says.
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“You’re not sorry about anything.”
He gets that look again, the one she can’t parse out what emotions it is or where one ends and the next begins. “I did want to take your hand,” he admits. “As Missy. But I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” she breathes.
“You’ll never understand. That’s the tragedy of it.”
“Then make me understand.”
He composes himself into the reckless, angry man that she knows. “Pull the trigger, love.”
“I can’t.”
Her hand is shaking again. The gun is shaking. She hates guns, abhors violence. Yet, she hates him too. She wishes she hated him enough to do it.
“Do it.”
She wishes that she could.
“Stop asking me to!” It’s an order, not a request.
“Do it!” he roars.
And, because she’s feeling cruel and angry and caring, so very cruel, she chokes out, “Koschei, I can’t.”
She cannot be the Doctor if she kills him. She also cannot be the Doctor if she lets a known killer, a maniac who does it for attention and for some broken sense of betrayal, go free because she cares about him.
He wants to be furious, she can tell. Instead he lifts his foot off of her and sits down in front of her. He helps her to sit too.
The Doctor sets the pistol down next to her and she doesn’t even try to keep it out of his reach.
“I do care,” she admits, “and I hate that. I really hate that because it puts everyone in danger. I don’t want friendship to be whatever we have.”
“I’ve hurt you.”
She nods.
“I knew you’d never forgive me when I showed you that. It was the only way, though. Do you understand that? I had to do it.”
She doesn’t believe that. She also believes it was the only way he saw.
They’re within arms reach of one another. Neither of them moves to touch the other, but they both know implicitly that this is the closest they’ve been without trying to kill one another in a long time.
There are no schemes right now. There is only eye contact, words, and a desire to hurt the other that’s simmering down into something much worse for both of them.
“Who have we become?”
“The same people, just older.”
“Never wiser.”
“No, never wiser.”
Suddenly the blood is less satisfying. The cuts look deeper and uglier. Her leg hurts like hell. There’s a bruise on his cheek and she isn’t a fan of the look. She swears they both did more damage to one another, but she’s glad that they didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
He rolls his eyes. “You say that a lot.”
“Well I am.”
The Master sighs and runs a hand through his hair. He’s been looking anywhere but in her eyes since he put them on even ground because she knows he hates this.
“You still couldn’t shoot me,” he points out.
She waves her hand dismissively. “The gun was tricked to backfire. It’s not like I could have anyways.”
The Master raises an eyebrow. “How did you figure that out?”
“You made such a big show of taking your coat off and you left it loaded and ready to fire. Even you wouldn’t be that tactless with your weapons unless you wanted me to fire it.”
He picks it up and aims it at the ceiling. It fires like a normal gun (something else she’ll have to apologize to the TARDIS for), bullet, flash, horrible bang, and all. Not tricked then. The Doctor doesn’t know what to say.
He left her a loaded gun and begged her to fire it. Which one of them was he trying to hurt?
They stare at one another and consider everything. They lose their sense when they’re together. They make dumb decisions in the other’s name.
“O wasn’t meant to hurt you,” he says at last, breaking the silence.
“What?”
He smiles then because he’s caught her off guard. “O wasn’t originally a scheme. I was going to set myself up with a real job and do some good to impress you. I’d reveal who I was and you’d be so shocked and excited that I had been your texting buddy or pal or whatever you were going to call him. That was the original idea for the plan. Then I learned about everything they had lied about and I…” He meets her eyes and shuts up back to the stubborn, angry Master. “Of course I might be lying about that.”
He’s not.
“Can we be friends again?” she asks. It comes out breathy and rushed because she has to push out the question before she loses her nerve.
“Friends. Is that what we were?”
“I don’t care what word you use. I want you back. I’m tired of hating you. I miss you.”
She hopes he doesn’t need time to think. She hopes he’ll agree before she can remember what a terrible idea that is.
“That never works out, dear.”
“This time it will. Please.”
He reaches out and then schools himself back — he knows she’s been getting less and less willing to touch anyone since she was Scottish and he’s respecting her boundaries which is an absurd line to draw in the sand, but so very, very him. So she throws herself forward and wraps herself around him.
It’s his turn to tense up. Then, slowly, he hugs her back.
“We’re not good for one another.”
She laughs into his shoulder. “I think it would be more irresponsible of me to let you try with somebody else.”
He’s warmer than her and she buries her face against the crook of his neck.
At some point, they’re clutching one another more than they’re cuddling and it isn’t sweet, but it’s theirs.
It’s more complicated than she’ll ever tell anyone. They are the most loving of enemies and they are the most broken of friends. They can be good again.
He doesn’t need to say that he’ll try for them both to know that he will. He’ll try again. No cages or vaults. They’ll try together.
The Master eases her head off of his shoulder and guides it up to rest against his own, forehead against forehead.
“I love you,” he mutters in her head, something he’ll never admit out loud anymore.
She smiles and holds him tighter.
There’s so much more to say, but they’ll leave those things for later and keep the unsaid understandings for now.
There is not tenderness, but there is something like love and something like gentleness can grow from that.
He kisses her chastely on the lips. The years do not melt away. They are the Doctor and they are the Master and there will always be that care. She leans in and returns it.
The TARDIS sounds the cloister bells when they kiss and the Doctor sighs but doesn’t break her hold on her oldest friend. Complainer.