The Crane Wife: Chapter 8 of 8
Apr. 27th, 2010 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_losficTitle: The Crane Wife
Chapter: Eight: Eight
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
x_los
Rating: NC-17
Pairing/Characters: Five/Ainley!Master, Tegan, Nyssa, Brax
Summary: In which the Master makes blow darts, the Doctor makes amends, and Braxiatel makes plans to take a long vacation somewhere relaxing, where no one can find him, and where public displays of affection are severely frowned upon.
Beta:aralias, for half-writing this whole thing
A/N: Remember that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
best_enemies Cliche Challenge forever ago? This was started under its auspices. Slave!fic cliche ahoy!
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Part I, Chapter 6, Part II, Chapter 7, Part I, Chapter 7, Part II, Chapter 8
The Crane Wife
Chapter 8
***
As it happened, the Daleks didn’t execute him immediately, presumably because they hoped to force him to reveal all the Palace’s security information before he died. Linme had cuffed the Master’s hands in front of him under threat of execution, and a full Dalek squadron had escorted the Emperor to one of his own prison cells. Wryly, the Master decided to take their precautions as a true compliment to his reputation for ingenuity.
The Daleks didn’t seem to have killed more than a few security troopers. He’d seen only half a dozen bodies in the uniform of his guard, and no civilian corpses choked the hallways. No doubt the Daleks wanted to capitalize on Hestin’s strong infrastructure and use it as one of their slave-labor planets, and they were preserving his people for the purpose.
Arriving at the cell, the lead Dalek unceremoniously prodded the Master forwards. It used its exterminator—still hot and acrid-smelling from recent use, its threat even more blatant than usual—to jab at the Master’s spine, prodding him forward.
“Gracious as ever,” the Master jeered at the Daleks’ typical recourse to force in a situation where a subtler method of persuasion would have done just as well.
“YOU WILL BE SILENT!”
The Master narrowed his eyes. “I suppose if I am not, you’ll exterminate me? You would already have done so if you had any such intention. You need me.”
“THE DALEKS NEED NO ONE!” The lead Dalek rolled forward threateningly, invading the Master’s space. He maintained his ground.
“Don’t they?” The Master fought the urge to cross his arms—he couldn’t have managed it in the cuffs, and the attempt would have looked ridiculous. “Then you’ve been ordered to spare me, for the moment. Whose instructions are you afraid to disobey? Who are you working for, Dalek?”
The lead Dalek spun and departed, refusing to inadvertently reveal anything further. Silently the other Daleks glided out behind him, and the door shut. The Master was left there in the dark.
The hours passed slowly. At first the Master spent them neatly arranging possible escape scenarios, and when he felt there was little else he could do, no contingency he hadn’t planned for, he left off and settled in for a good brood. There was, after all, nothing better to do, alone in the dark with only his familiar, bitter thoughts for company, for Rassilon knew how long.
The Master was occasionally given to eviscerating honesty with himself. He had no idea how the Daleks had managed to invade, but he suspected that they couldn’t have done so if he had been paying his accustomed attention to his Empire. Whatever chink in his armor they’d exploited could only have existed because his attention had lapsed. If only he hadn’t wasted his energies focusing on his feckless would-be fiancé! If he survived this—and he would survive this—he would start by making the Daleks suffer for their attempt to capitalize on his moment of weakness, then take his Empire firmly in hand, and finish by making the damned Doctor pay for the indignity he’d indirectly caused.
The door slid open, and the Master raised his head. While Linme had cuffed him, he’d managed to slip a bit of the thin wiring he’d been working with into the Master’s pocket—no doubt thinking the Master might be able to use it as a lock pick. Instead the Master had straightened the wire into a sort of dart, taken some poison he kept about his person for emergencies, and dipped the tip of the wire into it. While being escorted to the cell he’d carefully noted the angle at which one would have to throw a very slender projectile to penetrate a Dalek’s neck plating.
The Master squinted—the light from the corridor blinding him—and threw the dart at precisely the angle required.
Daleks kept the vents of their metal exoskeletons open in any breathable atmosphere, shutting them and relying on a limited supply of stored oxygen only in emergencies. Thus the dart slipped the open vent, pierced the vulnerable cranium of the Kaled lifeform within, and killed it almost instantly.
Or it would have done if a Dalek had opened the door. Whatever had done so was significantly more agile, and dodged. The Master blinked in confusion when the figure in the doorway didn’t resolve into anything like a Dalek.
The apparition coughed.“Was that meant for the neck vent? Very clever. I find targeting the eyestalk quite useful, but it does rather limit one’s range.”
“I’m hallucinating,” the Master said automatically.
“Possibly,” he agreed, coming closer—the door sliding shut behind him—and bending down to the bound man’s level, sitting on his haunches and meeting the Master’s gaze. “If you’re seeing a small pink elephant or something of that nature, then yes, I suspect you’ve been in here longer than could be considered relaxing, and could very likely benefit from a cup of tea and a change of scenery. If you think I’m me, however, I’m afraid you’re perfectly in your right mind.”
The Master swallowed. “Doctor.”
“Master,” the Doctor returned, expression tight and voice neutral. He patted his pockets, muttered “damn,” and then “excuse me” when he leaned forward and, inspired by the Master’s dart, snapped a bit of wire from the Master’s coat. While it was too thick for darts, it was perfect for the Doctor’s purposes. His shoulders stiffened awkwardly as he invaded the Master’s space in order to use his impromptu lock pick on the cuffs. The rings of metal encircling the Master’s wrists proved invulnerable. Instead the Doctor concentrated on snapping the connection between the chain linking the cuffs and the cuffs themselves.
“These are the handcuffs the lab makes for the Guard—why did the Daleks bother attaching this flimsy coupling when they lock together without it?”
“Having worn them, you know perfectly well they operate on biodata,” the Master said shortly. “Do you suppose the Daleks would be willing to slip out of their casing and stroke a tentacle across the band?”
Annoyed at the waspish retort, the Doctor worked in silence. After a moment his unbound hands accomplished what the Master’s had been unable to. “There—” he began, but as soon as the right cuff’s link audibly snapped the Master surged forward, hand fisting in the Doctor’s hair. The Doctor made a short, sharp noise of alarm.
“You complete bastard,” the Master hissed, pulling the Doctor’s hair hard and earning a gasp of pain. He tilted his head up and shoved the Doctor’s down, kissing him hungrily, barely noticing the sharp clack of their teeth in his desperation. He bit the Doctor’s lip, vicious, and the Doctor moaned, throwing his arms around the Master like a child seeking comfort, like a drowning man, like an exile separated from his family for decades, reunited with his wife. “You absolute idiot,” the Master whispered fiercely, kissing him again, long and hard, gasping for air and returning to the Doctor’s mouth. “You feckless, miserable betrayer,” he cursed him tenderly, drawing back with a harder look in his eye. “So why did you bother to return?” he spat.
The Doctor flinched at the implication, standing up and taking a step back. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“You deserve a good deal more,” the Master seethed, standing and taking a step forward, and then another, standing so close that the Doctor could feel the breath of his hissed “Well?”
The Doctor pressed back towards the cell wall, swallowing. The Master watched the bob of his throat hungrily. “I,” the Doctor began, squeaking the word, then schooling himself. “The Daleks managed to get past your admittedly excellent defenses. It seems rather too clever for them, doesn’t it?”
“I’d thought something very similar myself.” The Master’s eyes narrowed. “It doesn’t explain why you’ve returned.”
“Well, it’s just not very likely, is it? That they could have come up with anything subtle enough to slip through your security precautions by themselves?”
“The Daleks rarely take on allies,” the Master pointed out, Devil’s Advocate when the Doctor proposed an idea that had occurred to him too.
“True,” the Doctor admitted. “Very true, generally. They don’t get along with anyone well enough to manage collaboration. But I stumbled upon this plot some weeks ago, and I’ve followed it to its fruition. Hampered by your bounty hunters, I should add.
“You’re aware, I trust, of the degree to which the CIA resents your Empire. You’re a Time Lord, and frankly they view your independence, let alone your prosperity, as something of a personal insult. The CIA’s made the—I think frankly ludicrous—decision to assist the Daleks with this raid. In fact it was their idea, and Time Lord technology, wielded by CIA scientists, is largely responsible for the success of the push. I don’t imagine there was any way you could have prepared for such an unexpected affront.
“I wanted to warn you earlier, but they would have undoubtedly intercepted any transmission I might send. So I thought I’d better drop in myself. In playing out their hand, the CIA have exposed themselves. When the spectacular failure of this coup is widely known on Gallifrey, they’ll be disgraced. I think we can safely predict a sweeping administrative overhaul, and a distinct wariness to meddle with your affairs in future.” The Doctor, obviously proud of his plan, grinned boyishly. He seemed to suppose the Master was going to offer him chummy adulations and gratitude, then send him on his merry way. The Master felt like smacking him.
“That’s very public. You're giving up your cherished secret identity to them?” The Master sneered. “Impossible. No doubt you accidentally materialized in the middle of the palace, realized where you were and prepared to bolt, but heard gunfire before you could quite get away. You were then irresistibly compelled to follow the sound of chaos to its source. In your idiotic recklessness alone are you faithful and consistent. I’d believe anything of you before I accepted that you would willingly assume the responsibility you find so distasteful.”
“Oh really?” the Doctor snapped back. “Perhaps you should try believing in more impossible things, because I’ve done it.”
The Master stared at him. Surely the Doctor hadn’t been foolish enough to expose his existence to men so patently demented they’d get in bed with the Daleks to wipe the Hestin Empire off the face of the universe. Not after centuries of avoiding their officious notice and the all-too-demonstrably real threat such attention represented.
“You would have done the same to save anyone,” the Master said at last. “Simply out of your insufferable sense of moral obligation.”
“Yes,” the Doctor agreed, “I would have, if it came to it. But I did it without hesitation to save you, because a cosmos without you in it is extremely unpleasant to contemplate.”
The Doctor looked away, uncomfortable. “Besides, it seemed terribly churlish to leave my fiancé to languish in prison, let alone to allow him to be executed by Daleks.” He coughed. “Bad form all around.” He turned his head back towards the Master, looking up at him through his floppy fringe with a genuine hesitance. “That is—if you’ll still have me.” He looked away again. “It is, perhaps, a bit presumptuous to just— but I thought that since you were making such an effort to find me, it might be all right…”
In the pause after he trailed off, in which the Master said nothing, the Doctor felt the weight of all the empty nights. The days had been quite bearable, and in the company of his companions and the tumult of the worlds they visited he could almost forget.
But the nights had been a different matter. Lying in alone in bed he’d been weighed down, pressed thin with resignation. He’d remembered. A desperate, airless feeling came when he insisted to himself that this was what he wanted. All he wanted. When he told himself that things were as they always had been, that nothing had changed. And still he felt a stale determination to continue on in the deception. After all, what sin was a lie you told yourself? And for the best of reasons?
The Doctor had discovered the Time Lords’ plot against the empire genuinely by accident, but he’d jumped at the pretext to rush to the Master’s aid. He’d been almost relieved, and had managed to convince himself that this was an absolutely necessary humanitarian mission: it was a bit embarrassing to be reminded, via poison dart, that the Master was perfectly capable of extricating himself from his predicament. Even with the Master so obviously furious with him, and potentially about to tell him where he could get off with this ‘fiancé’ business (and apart from the Daleks, of course), it was good to be here. The Doctor felt as though he’d stepped back onto solid ground after months lost at sea. He was happier than he had been in a very long time.
The Master lifted a hand, guiding the Doctor’s chin back with two fingers, tilting it up so that he could properly look at the man he loathed and adored to the point of stupidity and had missed so, so terribly. “As I recall, your opinion on the matter was quite different when last we spoke.”
“It’s—my offer isn’t unqualified. I’m sorry,” and the Doctor did look genuinely pained, “but it can’t be. If you engage in the sort of behavior that compels me to leave, then I will. I’ll have to. And it’s not that—” he swallowed, “Not that I care for you any less than you do me. Believe me, it isn’t. It’s simply what I am.”
“A ‘creature of flight’?” the Master taunted bitterly.
The Doctor shook his head impatiently. “You know it’s more than that. I can’t help needing to do and to care about what I do. It’s everything I am. It’s everything you see in me. You may tell yourself otherwise, when you wish things were easier for us, but you’re much too astute for that to hold for long. If I stayed when you made choices I abhor, I wouldn’t be myself anymore. As it stands I am capable of leaving, capable even of living without you—of choosing never to be quite as fulfilled as I might like to be, and of standing by that choice for the sake of what I believe in. But I’d rather not be forced to.”
The Doctor took a deep breath. “I’ll never love anyone as much as I love you. Not in terms of the quantity or of quality. I never want to feel that I must leave. And if you could swear to me that you’ll do everything in your power to keep me—I would appreciate that. Please.”
The Doctor rattled to a stop, and the Master stared at him, expressionless and silent. After a moment the Doctor licked his lips, unconsciously nervous.
“That,” the Master began slowly, “could be arranged.”
Tentative hope germinated in the Doctor’s eyes, and as the Master began to grin the Doctor grinned back, giddy.
“I can’t let you go,” the Master said, pushed by the Doctor’s honesty to remind him. “To lie and say I could, if you ever wished it, would be easy, and an admirably neat ending. But you must know it would be a lie. I can respect you more than anyone else in existence, but still—and even because of that—I can’t submit peaceably to the loss of you. Though—”
The Master thought of the disturbing snippet he’d heard of the conversation of that bounty hunter, Smatters—thought of how unnerved and furious he’d been by the feeling of association with this disgusting man and his desires.
“The night I pressed you to be with me—that was… wrong. But in trying to keep you, I can’t promise never to over-step boundaries that my regard for you might otherwise compel me to observe.”
The Doctor smiled thinly, leaning forward to lay a kiss on the Master’s forehead. “And that is what you are.”
“A peasant stealing your cloak and confining you against your will for the rest of your life?”
The Doctor’s lip quirked, and he took the Master’s hand in his. “Hardly a peasant. You’re too much of a snob. Though as you did steal my TARDIS, you can’t deny accusations of thievery.”
“I suppose you’ve never resorted to extraordinary measures to get what you want?” The Master raised an eyebrow.
“Lying about the location of my TARDIS hardly compares to a bit of youthful scrumping,” the Doctor said primly. He slid from the Master’s finger a still useless Time Ring. The Master watched the Doctor take a deep breath that he didn’t seem to realize he was taking, and push the ring down his own appropriate finger.
“There,” he breathed. “Exchanging rings is a sort of human custom. It means—”
“I know what it means,” the Master said shortly. As if he wouldn’t have done his research.
The Master considered the Doctor’s hand. A Time Ring was a risky trinket to give someone with a proven penchant for escape. And yet what could he really do to keep the Doctor against his will—put sticky tape on all the windows? He preferred the company of a husband to that of a prisoner. The Doctor might run, might always run. But if it came to it, the Master intended always to catch him.
***
The Doctor swung into the room with a mad grin. “Hello everyone!” and, unable to resist, “I’m the Doctor, I’m here to rescue you.”
He was surprised when, instead of relieved cheers, that was met with a group groan.
“Where have you been?” Technician Bea, a frizzy haired woman near the front, groused.
“I had a bet you’d be here an hour ago,” a reedy young physicist with the deeply unfortunate name of Skip Roshobobo whined. “You lost me 20 credits!”
The Doctor felt put-out by the seeming mass desertion of his former co-workers. “Everyone seems to be attaching a monetary value to my presence,” the Doctor shoved his hands behind his back. “It’s very disquieting. Like working for a wage.”
While he couldn’t be seen, the Doctor fiddled with the Time Ring. Like most Time Lord traveling devices, it had a chameleon circuit. The Doctor clicked through the rings’ settings until the device felt smoother under his fingers. When he moved his hands forward to release the lab technicians’ handcuffs, the light from the door caught the simple gold band on his hand.
“Is that what it looks like?” Professor Linme croaked from the back.
“What’s that, Linme?” the Doctor asked with maddening cheer, getting to his knees and setting about breaking the links on everyone’s wrist-cuffs.
“Are you engaged?” Assistant Stassi demanded.
The Doctor glanced down at his hand, doing a theatrical double take. “Oh! I suppose I am!”
“If it’s not to the Master, do you mind leaving us here?” Technician Bea asked tentatively. “I mean thanks all the same, but I think I’d rather be in a secure concrete cell when he finds out.”
“Agreed,” Linme put in wearily.
The Doctor laughed. “As it happens, he already knows.”
“And the building’s still standing,” Professor Linme mused as the Doctor attended to him. “Well then, I suppose congratulations are in order. Are you back, then?”
“You know, I rather think I am.” The Doctor stood. “And Linme—thank you. Now come on, stand up, stretch your legs—the Master’s going to need our help in the control room. We’ve managed to use the Draconian wall shields to clear the Palace’s core—now he’s patching into the Daleks’ own equipment to broadcast the signal I devised to draw the rest of the Dalek fleet in orbit above the planet into the CIA singularity prison I, er, borrowed.
“It’s the most difficult element of the plan, and he’ll need full concentration and every ounce of his system-coding expertise. He mustn’t be distracted or threatened - my companions are seeing to that, but they can only monitor the control room—I need all of you to help me operate the wall shields, so that when he sends the signal we’re not overrun by whatever furious remnants of the Dalek fleet still remain on the ground.”
“Oh, is that all you need.” Technician Bea rolled her eyes, but brushed at her coat in a workmanlike manner that indicated assent.
“It is a good plan,” Skip admitted slowly. “A great plan, really.”
“And it’s good to have you back,” Linme said with real warmth. “Even if you are—and I say this in the kindest sense—a complete arse.”
“It’s good to be back,” the Doctor admitted, “and I’m choosing to ignore that last bit. Now everyone, follow me!”
***
“Of course you’ll have to be polite to Braxiatel for the entire day,” the Doctor pointed out, re-entering the console room of his TARDIS.
The Master trailed after him, rolling his eyes. “On second thought, there’s still more than enough time to elope to the Oodsphere—they’ll sing of the DoctorMaster and all that nonsense if given the slightest provocation. Tourists often find themselves getting married there entirely by accident.”
“Certainly we can dispense with ceremony,” the Doctor reached the console, grinning to himself. “Though Gretna Green is more traditional. You will, of course, explain the whole thing to my mother. Why her invitation got lost in the vortex?”
“I’ve never seen you in such a good mood!” Tegan commented from the couch. Nominally left under Nyssa’s direction, Tegan had actually been sitting here munching the last of the malt loaf sullenly and occasionally making sour comments about the Doctor always leaving her behind whenever anything interesting happened. “It must’ve gone really well, for you not to be sighing.”
The Doctor glared at her over the half-moon spectacles he’d put on to examine some of the smaller readouts in the Control Room. “Oh Tegan, really—”
“And then there’s the part where we say, ‘Doctor, what’s wrong?’”
“Tegan.” The Doctor, aware of the Master’s smirk, flushed slightly.
“And then you say, ‘Hm? Oh nothing, nothing,’ and sulk off to your rooms. You’ve gotten a lot worse recently. And now you’ve cheered right up! Are these Dalek things like Easter Eggs—crack ‘em open and there’s a candy surprise? Only yours was full of Valium?”
“Tegan,” Nyssa reprimanded from the console, next to the Doctor. “You’re only cross because the Doctor wouldn’t take your advice and stay inside the TARDIS, or let you come. Hello, Master.”
“Nyssa,” he greeted with a smile. “Your father was quite well when last we spoke, as was your charming step-mother.”
“The Master!” Tegan blurted. “This is that Master chap who’s been hounding us across the universe!”
“I’m afraid so. Very impolite of you, I might add—I’m not allowed back at Milliiways, you know.” The Doctor shook his head, still adjusting dials, and running around the console, physically scooting Nyssa out of the way and ducking down to get at a panel underneath her.
“I imagine you will be, as my Emperor,” the Master chuckled.
Tegan, listening to this exchange, suddenly spotted the bright gold band on the Doctor’s hand, which was curled up over the rim of the console for support as he worked.
“Doctor!” she gasped.
“Hm?” The Doctor looked over at her, then followed her eye-line to his finger. “Oh yes! That.”
Nyssa looked between them, confused. “It’s just a piece of jewelry. Somewhat out of character, perhaps, but surely not so remarkable?”
“Well,” the Doctor coughed, getting back to work uncoupling his TARDIS from the Hestin Palace’s security net, “your people choose to represent these things differently, Nyssa. Different cultures, different customs.”
The Master casually wrapped his hand around the Doctor’s where he clutched the console, and the Doctor absently brushed his thumb over the Master’s knuckles, not looking up from his work.
“Oh,” Nyssa murmured, surprised.
“ ‘Oh’ indeed,” Tegan snorted. “This man’s hunted us like rats—you don’t mean to tell be it’s because you ran out on him? Not after all that rot about how ‘it’s complicated!’”
“There was rather more to it than that,” the Doctor insisted.
“That is exactly what happened,” the Master informed her smugly
“Well, all I can say is, it’s a good job you dropped Turlough off with his people before we came here.”
“Why—ouch!” The Doctor burned his finger on an exposed circuit. He looked up to the Master and, receiving an entirely satisfactory ‘poor baby’ expression, went back to work. “Why is that, Tegan?”
“He’d have been crushed, is all.”
The Doctor poked his head up, frowning. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Oh come on, Doctor, he was a bloody nong about you, don’t tell me you didn’t know.”
“Nong,” the Doctor repeated, uncomprehending. “Nong?”
“He was infatuated with you,” the Master cut in, shortly.
“Yer, that,” Tegan nodded.
“What? Oh he was not—and I notice you haven’t asked who we’re talking about,” the Doctor pointed out, giving the Master a mildly accusing look.
“Naturally I have no need to ask,” the Master gave a Gallic shrug. “And that’s reminded me, I have certain words to say to Bernice.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. She was actually quite a staunch advocate on your behalf,” the Doctor countered.
“Did she need to be?” the Master raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware that I needed a defender.”
“Well,” the Doctor grinned, “She found me a very receptive audience. I admit I was quite willing to be brought around.”
“Were you?” the Master smirked, leaning on the console. “What particular points did you find most convincing?”
“Oh now that would be telling—”
Tegan began to grasp that the future would be one long meeting of their highly exclusive mutual admiration society. There would be whole days when she’d be lucky to get a word in edgeways. She felt it important to settle certain points before the banter really got going.
“So what’s gonna happen to us if you get hitched?” Tegan asked. “You are getting hitched, right? I suppose if you can travel in time then you can get gay married in space, if it suits you. Not that I have any problem with that!” She waved her hands in hasty response to the Doctor’s glare over his spectacles. “You do what you like, I’m happy for you, really, I am! I mean I vote Labor and everything!”
“Yes, thank you, Tegan,” the Doctor said dryly, standing and leaning back against the console. “And if you and Nyssa wish to return to your respective homes, you are, of course, free to do so. If,” he shoved his hands in his coat pockets, “you want to stay on, however, then you, Nyssa, could do a lot worse then to spend some time working in the labs on Hestin, as a sort of intern under Professor Linme.”
“I think I’d like that,” Nyssa said, “if it’s all right with the Master. Hestin Prime is a beautiful city, and I’m very familiar with the Palace. The laboratory’s among the most prestigious in the galaxy!”
“Justly so,” the Master glanced over her head briefly, “with the Doctor at its head. He’s a formidable scientist.”
Tegan rolled her eyes at the way the Doctor actually looked coy at the praise. “What am I supposed to do, then?” she grumbled. “Pack off back to being an air stewardess?”
“Not if you don’t want to,” the Doctor corrected, firmly. “You’re very young, quite organized, and you have a great deal of energy. You could be very happy in the Civilian Volunteer Corps.”
“The Civilian Volunteer Corps?” the Master repeated with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes, I thought of it while I was away and couldn’t tell you—that happened rather a lot actually, very inconvenient—I’ll tell you all about it later. On the worlds you control that have strong military traditions, you’ve retained their existing mandatory conscription requirements? I think you could benefit from having a civil service option as well, like the Works Progress Administration or the Sherut Leumi on Earth. ” He patted the Master on the shoulder. “But for the moment—” the Doctor spun back around to address Tegan, shoving his hands in his back pockets, “I still intend to travel. I’ll simply split my life between living here and traveling with the Master. The Empire need never even know we were gone, if we’re traveling with each other in temporal synchronicity. Which should be straightforward, we’ll only have to reverse my, er, current modifications and let the TARDIS’s Rassilon Imperature steer us clear of the Empire’s sphere of influence, rather than keeping us within it.”
The Doctor seemed to suddenly realize this plan would mean sweeping changes in his now-fiancé’s life. He glanced at the Master and then back at the girls. “Take your time, Nyssa, Tegan. Think about what you want. I should see how the lab staff are getting on—” he coughed. “Master, why don’t you help me with that? It should only take us a couple of hours to get the clean-up process thoroughly in motion, then the Master and I will return, and we can all talk about it.”
Tegan rolled her eyes even harder at the Doctor’s obviousness, but had tact enough not to call him on it. The Doctor offered the Master his arm and a coaxing look, and then let himself be swept out the TARDIS door and down the hall towards the Master’s private rooms. After a moment’s awkward silence, the Doctor began slowly, choosing his words as carefully now as he’d been careless before.
“That is, of course, if you’d like to travel with me. It’s a lot to ask, I know. But I think you could come to enjoy seeing the whole of time and space in addition to ruling a bit of it. We wouldn’t have to be apart, or to give up our lives. And it’d be wonderful, I think, to have you there with me. More than that—it would be my honor.”
At the doorway to their bedroom, the Master smiled to himself as the Doctor touched the pads of his fingers to the biolock. The unchanged locks yielded at his touch.
“You mean to tell me I would have to trail after you telling you how brilliant you are, risk danger for people I care nothing for, and generally participate in the hobbyist adventuring you squander your talents on?” He began to unbutton his jacket.
“Master, it won’t be as intolerable as all that.” The Doctor grinned cheekily, stopping the Master and taking his hands in his own, so that he could claim to task for himself. “You could try saving a few planets yourself.” He leaned forward and kissed the Master. “I might feel an uncontrollable,” he unbuttoned a few more of the Master’s jacket’s buttons, and trailed kisses across his chin, along the top of his beard, “surge of gratitude.”
“After almost a year of enforced chastity, you had better,” the Master growled, curling his fingers hard around the Doctor’s shoulders.
“Don’t exaggerate,” the Doctor tsked, “you know perfectly well it was five months and fourteen days.” He took the Master’s head in his hands, his fingers twining in and mussing his hair. In his absence the Master had gone back to wearing it the (far less flattering) way he didn’t like it, but his ministrations soon had it set to rights. He smiled at the Master’s stubbornness, and kissed him soundly.
“God, I missed you every one of them.” The Doctor drew back so he could slide off the Master’s jacket, and when he’d managed it he curled his fingers around the Master’s shirt-sleeved arms, as if reassuring himself of the Master’s solidity. He kissed the Master still harder, his fingers working deft and fast over buttons, pushing the shirt open with gathering haste as the Master stroked his hands down the Doctor’s back, one resting over the small of it, the other drifting down, clutching his arse. One of the buttons popped off, rolling under the bureau. The Doctor pulled back and met the Master’s gaze. His face was flushed, he was breathing harder now. “I missed you so.”
“Did it hurt, my dear?” the Master asked silkily, pushing the Doctor’s jacket off with a calculated carelessness, with an agonizing slowness, with hearts beating frantically at the Doctor’s nearness.
The Doctor nodded, lips tight, his expression eloquently outlining a satisfying misery.
“Good,” the Master answered.
He was surprised when the Doctor frowned and shoved him down to the bed. He scrambled up to sit back against the head board, and gasped when the Doctor gave his neck a long lick, then sucked it hard enough to leave a mark, placed high enough to be partly glimpsed over the edge of his collar. His fingers, meanwhile, fumbled the clasp of the Master’s trousers. He plucked at the fabric feverishly, trying to work it down blindly while busy licking him.
“I’m still wearing the handcuffs,” the Master reminded him as the Doctor finished pulling his shirt off over the obstructions.
“Mm. Yes, I’d noticed,” the Doctor arched an eyebrow. “And very fetching they are, too.” He reached up to stroke the Master’s hair again, snuck his hand down the Master’s back. While distracting him with kisses, the Doctor pressed the priming mechanism on the cuffs, imprinting his biodata. They snapped together sharply, and the Master broke off to look at him.
“Why Doctor,” he murmured, “how very interesting.”
“I certainly think so.” The Doctor leaned back with a positively wicked look. He finished undressing, his trainers banging softly on the floor as he dropped them off without looking where they landed. “I want you,” he breathed.
“So I gathered,” the Master said softly. “You’re not normally so blatant in your desire. Unless, of course, you’ve been educated differently since last we—”
The Doctor laughed, swinging a leg over him and stranding him, bending down so that the breath from his whisper landed on the Master’s lips. “There hasn’t been anyone else.” He shook his head. “Idiot,” he said affectionately. “How could there be? You’re not exactly easy to get over, you know. And as for before, I was never really sure what I wanted then. I thought it was my TARDIS—my freedom. And it is, it certainly is—but it’s not the only thing I need to be happy. I had to go traveling again to see that.” His face and voice were soft with fondness. “If I haven’t said it yet, I do adore you, you know.”
The Master, smirking, gave a pointed glance at the Doctor’s heavy erection, which pressed into his thigh. “Oh, believe me, Doctor, I feel that you do.”
“Ah, another moment murdered,” the Doctor teased. He ran his hand up the Master’s bare chest, up his neck, feathering his fingertips over the Master’s lips. The Master obediently lapped at them with his tongue, and the Doctor shivered when the Master drew two fingers into his mouth and sucked them, staring up at the Doctor in blatant invitation.
“That’s it,” the Doctor murmured, digging through the bedside table with his free hand. In search of lube, he pulled out a pen, which he threw in the general direction of the bathroom, a TCE which went the same way, and a backup copy the Master had made of the Doctor’s former cuffs and collar, in expectation of his recapture. The Doctor pulled drew out these last with a speculative air.
The Master’s eyes widened. The last thing he wanted was for the Doctor to be reminded of past unpleasantness, which might spoil their so far entirely satisfying reunion. He shook the Doctor’s fingers out of his mouth—some groveling might well be in order.
“We’ll throw them out, if you think it advisable. We could reduce them to ashes! Melt them down to make a wedding ring. Anything you choose, my dear.”
“Actually I was thinking we could use them on occasion. Privately, of course. As for the matter of a ring, I seem to remember you having seventy five drachbars in your possession—ah yes!” He discovered the bag in the drawer, held it up, jangled it, and set it back. “Here they are. These should do nicely—enough for a relatively small wagon, or a relatively large ring, I believe you’ll find.” He grinned at the Master. “Appropriate, I think.”
“I’m afraid you lost me at ‘we could use them for sex on occasion,” the Master managed, hard at even the suggestion of the Doctor so willingly demonstrating that he belonged to him, unbelievably aroused by the element of being claimed that was now apparent in his own position.
The Doctor smiled fondly. “I didn’t actually say ‘for sex,’ you know. Admittedly I did heavily imply it—ah ha!” His fumbling finally produced the lubricant, which he unscrewed. He slipped back off the Master and knelt between his legs, running his hands down the Master’s thighs before running an oil-slick finger around and then into him.
The Master squirmed slightly, smirking when he caught the Doctor visibly swallowing. Slowly, with exquisite care, the Doctor slipped another finger in, past the knuckle. He pumped them in and out of the Master so slowly he might well have been unaffected by desire, except that his eyes were black and wide, and his arms trembling visibly, his fingers shuddering softly inside the Master.
“Come now,” the Master coaxed, letting his voice roll and a bit of hypnotic pressure sink into it. “Do you want to fuck me or not?”
At that comment the Doctor pressed a third finger in, fucking the Master a little faster on them now.
“That’s better. Yet still so delicate,” the Master commented, amused, stretching his bound hands, enjoying the way the slight discomfort contrasted with the slick pleasure of the Doctor’s fingers working inside him. “The way you open me up for yourself, as if every time is the first. As though you haven’t had me in this bed a hundred times. So careful.” So selective, he did not say, about the ways in which you’re willing to hurt me. Recriminations could only be worked through in time, only slowly. Both he and the Doctor had given each other everything they could now, and the Master had the greatest faith that they would endure the aftershocks of their initial rift.
The Master slid down the bed obligingly after the Doctor when he pulled away in search of a more convenient position. With a hand on the Master’s shoulder, steadying both the Master and himself, the Doctor guided himself in, giving a low, fluttering ‘oh’ as he found his cock gripped tight by warm flesh. The Master arrayed his mind in an invitingly open configuration, and the Doctor obligingly slipped in, bucking his hips involuntarily when the Master squeezed him, physically and mentally.
“Now that’s not fair,” the Doctor protested, giving a sharp, deep thrust, almost as punishment.
“If you intend to keep doing that whenever I do something that displeases you, being good is going to be much more difficult than I thought.” The Master pushed his bound hands up to the Doctor’s face, indicating that he wanted the use of them. The Doctor made a show of considering the question, then gave the metal a delicate lick. The Master’s wrists sprang free. He dug his nails into the Doctor’s hips, clutching him desperately, as if he might disappear, and with a sharp gasp of pain and surprise the Doctor pushed in again, establishing a rhythm with slow, hard, deep strokes that made the Master’s hands slip down his sides and fist in the bedclothes.
The Master pressed his hips into the Doctor’s, desperate for the remorselessly even fuck to go faster, to bring him off rather than torture him exquisitely, and (he thought as the Doctor shoved him down into his thrusts with the hands gripping his shoulders) seemingly endlessly.
The Doctor was sure and confident in his rhythm, determined to set his pace, and tender—but the Master saw his opening in the way the Doctor bit his lip hard, as he did when he was holding himself back from taking what he wanted too roughly. The Master exploited that fraying control, kneading the Doctor’s mind with the self-gratifying delight of a cat with a ball of string, smirking harder every time he earned a stifled sound.
He worked until the Doctor seemed gorgeously lost above him—intent and adoring and helplessly in thrall to what the Master was giving him. The Master wondered if he looked so overcome in the Doctor’s place, and with that curious impulse he swum deeper into the Doctor’s mind to find flatteringly well-handled memories of himself in the reverse position, as seen from the Doctor’s perspective. He took the remembered sensations of those nights (and, to be honest, those mornings, middays, afternoons and evenings) and pressed them into every free pathway of the Doctor’s neural circuit board, making the Doctor moan (a dizzy little sound) and then almost sob as he felt himself being taken even as he took.
“Fuck,” he whispered, and the Master shivered. His Doctor so rarely used profanity that the loss of control was exquisitely erotic.
The Doctor’s rhythm sped up, got deliciously sloppy. The Master rocked his hips greedily to meet the Doctor’s thrusts, and sucked the Doctor’s mind into his own desperately. The Doctor was so dazed he didn’t seem to seem to register anything but the Master, and the Master loved it, demanded more.
“Faster,” he commended, delighted. “Harder, come on, harder.”
“I’ll hurt you—” the Doctor gasped. “I don’t want to—”
“Hurt me,” the Master clawed his fingers into the Doctor’s back. “Fuck me like you want to own me. Like you do own me. As though I was made for your particular use.”
“God, Master—”
He moaned when the Doctor slammed into him, whispering his name. “Again, say—do that again.”
“Master,” the Doctor said louder, pounding into him even more furiously now. The Master found the familiar, dusty strings of his mind, brushed off the evidence of disuse, and pulled so hard the Doctor gulped. “Master, stop, stop, it’s too—”
The Master did, just long enough to let the Doctor breathe again. After a moment’s pause, he rocked his hips. Then, very slowly indeed, he pulled the cords again, building the pressure at a less frantic level.
“Oh, that’s not stopping, is it,” the Doctor gasped, half laughing.
“Of course it isn’t,” the Master agreed.
“Mm. Can anyone play?” The Doctor fondled the draping folds of the Master’s consciousness, then grasped them and drew them all to himself in one long pull.
“Please,” the Master gasped, “do.”
The Doctor pushed into him, taking over from the Master the task of steadily building them back to his earlier furious pace. In every downbeat, every time he pulled back, he twisted and tugged at the Master’s mind, dragging long fingers through it. The intensity was unabating, the stimulation constant, building ever higher.
The Master’s breath grew shallow. He lost his concentration, letting the Doctor’s mind slip through his fingers without noticing. His mouth hung open, his head dropped back, and he shook under the onslaught. Not normally given to demonstrative verbal appreciation, he choked the Doctor’s name into a long moan.
It took only the slightest push for the Doctor to topple him over the edge, and to catch him on the other side. After a moment’s respite, the Doctor pressed on, fucking him still. The Master couldn’t stifle the whimper that slipped out of his mouth. The aftershocks seemed as though they’d rip him apart. He knew it wasn’t true, but it felt as though he’d die from much more of this.
“Shh,” the Doctor soothed, “I’ve got you.”
After a few more thrusts he spilled in the Master with a low groan. He collapsed on top of him, falling on his arms and then onto the Master’s chest, breathing hard.
“Quite Masterly,” he preened. “If I do say so myself.”
The Master chuckled weakly when he got his breath back.
The Doctor laid his cheek alongside the Master’s. “I’ve needed this.” He considered for a moment. “Needed you.”
“Naturally you did. Tremas said you were a twitching sour-faced wreck, desperately in need of his Master to steady him. He put strong emphasis on how you seemed, in his opinion, to be crying out for a good fuck.”
The Doctor laughed. “I’m certain that’s precisely the language he used, as well.”
“Oh, indeed,” the Master ran his thumb along the Doctor’s spine, accepting the weight of him gratefully. “He could see these were circumstances that called for strong words and strong action.”
“I see,” the Doctor said dryly. “So citing the authority of a venerable old statesman is your best means of angling to get me on my hands and knees, is it? Frankly, I’m not impressed.”
“I’ll show you impressive when I can move again,” the Master grunted.
“Mm. No, I think I rather like you like this.” The Doctor shifted. Pointedly.
The Master looked up at him, alarmed. “My dear Doctor, you can’t be serious.” If the Doctor tried that again any time in the next quarter of an hour, the Master was dismally certain he’d lose consciousness.
The Doctor pouted. Squirmed. “Just a little? I could go quite slowly… I’ve missed you terribly, you see—”
“Fifteen minutes!” the Master pleaded.
“Oh very well,” the Doctor huffed, flicking the Master’s arm with his thumb and forefinger. “Some wanton sex slave you are. You’re lucky I love you, or I wouldn’t put up with it.”
“Mm,” the Master transitioned from embarrassed to smug with the instantaneous ease of a good engine going from zero to sixty in under a second. “I did try and tell you that you did.”
“Yes, yes,” the Doctor rolled his eyes. “You were right. Again. Somewhere they’re engraving the trophy cup even now.”
“Oh, now that,” the Master grinned, “would be an entirely appropriate wedding present.”
***
Epilogue
Smatters and Greig were drinking in reasonably priced locales these days. Having failed to collect the astronomical bounty on the man Smatters referred to as ‘the boy-fiend,’ they’d taken on various smaller jobs in the intervening months. Recently though, business in this part of the galaxy seemed to have dried up entirely. All they’d had this week was the Duchess of Mi-ki’s escaped ultra-panda, but it turned out the thing had only run off because it had gotten knocked up, and wanted to find a den to deliver in.
Smatters had wanted to sell the things on the black market on a planet where importation laws made the critters difficult to get, and thus desirable and expensive, but Greig had been firm on taking them back to the Duchess at no extra charge. She’d been delighted and had sent them off with hampers of sweets from her kitchens in addition to the (small) reward, as a special thanks, but Smatters grumbled they could have bought all the sweets they’d ever need with the takings from selling five wee, trainable ultra-pandas to the bear-baiters of Raxicorophalapatorius.
Greig could have pointed out to him that the Duchess was a fixture of the inter-planetary social season, a cheery eccentric who liked to bring her beloved ultra-panda with her to parties. When she showed up with five unbearably adorable babies as well, and told the assembled rich guests how the heroic Smatters and Greig had rescued their mother within mere days, and had even brought her back these darlings, her listeners would think of the same apparently very reliable, almost respectable firm for their own business. He and Smatters might well go straight, like many a firm before them, and enter a much more safe and lucrative world of private commissions.
They were at in bar on a suburban planet in the Hestin Protective Space—outside the Empire, but still broadly considered an Imperial concern. The waitress, who seemed bored but not cheerless, brought Smatters his ridiculously suave Trakenite Daiquiri, which tasted terrible but which he was convinced was so mysterious looking it would one day prompt an inquiry into its nature from a passing attractive creature. She likewise deposited Greig’s practical lager on the table. As she walked away she felt Smatter’s eyes resting on her bum, and she calmly drew her arm back and held the menu she was carrying over it as she walked over to the door.
Smatters, embarrassed to be caught out, muttered ‘probably frigid anyway’ into his daiquiri.
The waitress stood at the door, keeping an eye out for customers and chatting idly to the barman. Looking outside, she started.
“No way!”
“Hm?” the barman looked up. “Lemme guess—boss wearing that terrible hat you told him you’d burn if he brought in again?”
“No, and I’d smack him if he tried,” the waitress responded promptly. “Green skin and a mauve hat? Madness. And if I’m right, you’ll never guess. I think that’s the Emperor of Hestin!” She pointed to a man who’d stepped out of a blue box some moments ago, and was apparently still speaking to someone inside.
Suddenly she was joined at the window by an anxious Smatters. “Which?”
She had better eyesight than he did, and squinted out door’s glass a moment. “Um, the—oh! Both of them!” A second figure had stepped out of the TARDIS, and they were making their way towards the bar’s door.
“Right! Our cue to leave!” Smatters had no wish to encounter the Master again. Even if he had been successful in winning back his paramour, and therefore might have calmed down since their last encounter. Smatters' memory of gloved hands choking the life out of him was too vivid for their meeting to be pleasant from him. He turned around. “Grieg, let’s vamoose!”
But their table was empty—Greig has already left. Only a twenty to cover the bill remained. Smatters cursed, running out the back door after him, muttering about worthless partners who didn’t even have the common courtesy to tell you when they were quitting the establishment.
As the back door banged behind Smatters, the Doctor came in through the front, holding if for his husband and glancing around the room.
“No sign of Brax,” the Doctor announced, a trifle smug. “We must have beaten him here.”
The Master stepped in after him. “I expect he’ll materialize in an hour, hoping to only be kept waiting by you for another forty five minutes or so. Tell me Doctor, how does it feel to be on time for a meeting? You must find the sensation wholly novel.”
The Doctor glared at him and slumped into a booth, arranging his long limbs awkwardly.
Chuckling, the Master sat down on the same side. “I’m joking. Braxiatel knows me to be reasonably punctual. He’ll probably arrive shortly. Don’t pout.”
“I am not—” the Doctor began. He looked up when the door chime rang again, and Tegan entered the bar, spotted them, and walked over.
“Hey Doctor. Why the sour face?”
The Doctor smoldered, and the Master laughed outright.
“What did I say?” Tegan looked between them, bemused.
“Nothing, my dear Miss Jovanka,” the Master grinned at the Doctor. “His highness is simply delighted at the prospect of spending the afternoon hashing out policy agreements with his brother. It should take some considerable time—there are so many procedural guidelines to consider, so many important Time Lords’ opinions to weigh, and a great many arrangements to be made. Perhaps we’ll even find time to touch on trading terms!”
“Don’t ‘his highness’ me, Master, and Tegan, you’re supposed to be in the capitol making the arrangements for your Planetary Services aid trip. You can’t have finished yet.” The Doctor spoke shortly, the phrase ‘trading terms’ having shaken his equanimity considerably.
“I have, actually,” Tegan said serenely, waiving the waitress over and turning back to them. “My counterpart here’s very organized—we’ve been corresponding for weeks now, so there wasn’t that much to go over. I just shook her hand and had a look at the accommodations, then I hitched a shuttle-ride, and here I am!”
“Then why did you come? Ah, lemonade, please—” the Doctor addressed the waitress, who had just arrived, and who was doing a very good job of not looking too star-struck, “and he’ll have an Ood Smear—with one of those curly straws, if you have them, but if not, any two cocktail straws will suffice. And with olive juice, but no olives. He hates olives. Oh, and stirred—not shaken. Thank you so much.”
The Master smiled charmingly when the waitress looked up from her frantic notes, and she blushed, forgiving him for being a spectacularly picky customer.
“I’ll have a Bloody Mary, if you’ve got them,” Tegan said to the waitress, who then departed, and turned back to the Doctor. “I see you’ve met Sally then,” she snickered.
“What?” the Master asked.
“Oh shush,” the Doctor huffed, visibly embarrassed at the extent to which he’d been domesticated. “How have you even seen that? It didn’t come out until 1989.”
“Nyssa and I did an Eighties Films night—I don’t think she got much out of the Brat Pack. Anyway, as if I’d miss an excuse to meet your brother! I told Nyssa I’d be back with details.”
“Fabulous,” the Doctor sighed, rubbing his face with his hands. “Take a picture, why don’t you? It’s only a secret government conference between a renegade empire and the Time Lords of Gallifrey, held in neutral territory. Go right ahead!”
Silently, Tegan took her hand out of the pocket containing her camera.
Behind her, someone cleared his throat. “John.”
The Doctor looked up and glared. “Irving.”
The Master glanced at Tegan. “Would you excuse us, my dear?”
“Sure,” Tegan said, wandering off, but what she meant was ‘I will move to a table with an excellent vantage point and great acoustics, because no way am I missing the rest of a conversation that begins with the Doctor getting called ‘John.’’
Braxiatel took the seat opposite the couple, having somehow already acquired a magenta, mojito-like drink.
“Who’s in charge of the CIA this week?” the Master asked by way of a casual opening remark. “Anyone interesting?”
“To my knowledge no one’s ever referred to Co-Ordinator Narvin as ‘interesting,’” Braxiatel said as the Master and the Doctor’s drinks arrived.
“Narvin? Are we scraping the barrel to that extent?” the Master clucked his tongue disapprovingly.
“I’m afraid so. Both co-ordinator Vansell and Inquisitor Darkel have fallen out of public favor, more due to highly-visible failure of the Hestin Invasion than the idea of the Invasion itself. But, of course, you’re not without a family and a certain influence—House Oakden has been clamoring for Borusa’s resignation.”
The Master raised an eyebrow. “ No doubt they hope to appropriate the current indignation to secure the presidency for one of their own.” He stroked the Doctor’s thigh with his hand under the table, lazily.
Braxiatel dismissed the obvious with a hand wave. “Of course Borusa’s weak, after the Sontaaran fiasco. He’ll fall, but Oakden hasn’t a strong enough contender to take his place.”
The Doctor had been nursing his lemonade and wishing they would stop talking about people he’d never heard of, but here he brightened up. This bit he knew. “Your hour, I suppose?”
Braxiatel smiled thinly into his mojito. “One hopes,” he murmured.
“Ridiculous false modesty,” the Master rolled his eyes. “You know the presidency is yours, otherwise we wouldn’t be making this visit on Imperial time.”
“Imperial time—what an interesting phrase. Two emperors who spend half their lives traveling outside the reach of their Empires' sphere of influence, and manage their Empire the rest of the time—what seems like all the time, to anyone within that Empire. Ingenious. Tell me, how is my scheme working out for you?”
“Excellent, thank you,” the Doctor smiled, not minding the implied insult as he normally would have.
Braxiatel frowned—normally the Doctor was easy to needle and amusing to tease. In this, his hour of triumph, when the Presidency was within reach and he should by all rights have been on top of the universe, it disconcerted Braxiatel that his little brother obviously didn’t envy him a jot. Seeing that the Doctor considered himself somehow above the whole thing cheapened Brax’s victory. There was something almost like indulgence in the Doctor’s expression.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, you seem disgustingly happy,” Braxiatel remarked, narrowing his eyes.
“Well,” the Doctor shrugged, “perhaps I am.” Under the table, the Doctor took the Master’s hand in his, rolling the pad of his thumb over the knuckles.
“Whereas, regardless of whether you mind my saying so, you, Braxiatel, seem on edge,” the Master said with an obscenely pleased grin. “I think your mood would improve a great deal if you simply followed your brother’s example. Brax, thou art sad; get thee a wife! Or a husband. Whichever is nearer to hand.”
Braxiatel rolled his eyes at the way his brother seemed to melt a bit at the Shakespere quote. The Master had always been cheap.
“Sadly Master, you’ve already been ensnared by my brother. Where else am I to find such a happy match?” Braxiatel’s dead-pan tone made the Doctor laugh, but he coughed, recovering himself.
“What about that young woman you brought to our wedding? What was her name? Roma—romama?”
“Oh yes,” the Master pretended to suddenly remember, “Romanadvorewundebar?”
“Romanadvoratrelundar was not my ‘date,’” Braxiatel corrected them hastily.
“Oh, then everything should be just fine!” the Doctor said.
“What?” Braxiatel set his mojito down suddenly.
“Well since both of us have been granted amnesty and the Empire has been officially recognized by Gallifrey now, we thought we might celebrate by opening a University. Really, it’s high time someone other than Gallifrey facilitated technological development in the universe.
“Your Romambo seemed interested in spending some time on Hestin, given that our new institution would, naturally, be free of some of the dogma and restrictions that plague Gallifreyan academic life. Young as she is, with that triple first, we thought we might offer her an associate professorship right off the bat.”
“Provided you don’t mind,” the Master cut in, looking politely unconcerned.
“But if she was only accompanying you as a friend, or a protégé, we’d feel within our rights to formally ask,” the Doctor finished.
Irving Braxiatel, who minded a great deal and had no intention of letting them know it, took a sullen sip of his mojito, momentarily dropping out of the technical conversation that arose from the mention of scientific studies banned on Gallifrey. Brax wished the universe, in all its vastness, had been large enough to contain his brother and the Master’s discrete parallel lives, rather than conspiring to throw them into each others' paths. It could, he thought as he watched the two of them fawn revoltingly over each other, each acting as though the other’s opinion on gravity-well engines was the most brilliant and sexually appealing thing he had ever heard, only end badly.
the end
Chapter: Eight: Eight
Author:
x_losRating: NC-17
Pairing/Characters: Five/Ainley!Master, Tegan, Nyssa, Brax
Summary: In which the Master makes blow darts, the Doctor makes amends, and Braxiatel makes plans to take a long vacation somewhere relaxing, where no one can find him, and where public displays of affection are severely frowned upon.
Beta:
aralias, for half-writing this whole thingA/N: Remember that
best_enemies Cliche Challenge forever ago? This was started under its auspices. Slave!fic cliche ahoy!Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Part I, Chapter 6, Part II, Chapter 7, Part I, Chapter 7, Part II, Chapter 8
The Crane Wife
Chapter 8
***
As it happened, the Daleks didn’t execute him immediately, presumably because they hoped to force him to reveal all the Palace’s security information before he died. Linme had cuffed the Master’s hands in front of him under threat of execution, and a full Dalek squadron had escorted the Emperor to one of his own prison cells. Wryly, the Master decided to take their precautions as a true compliment to his reputation for ingenuity.
The Daleks didn’t seem to have killed more than a few security troopers. He’d seen only half a dozen bodies in the uniform of his guard, and no civilian corpses choked the hallways. No doubt the Daleks wanted to capitalize on Hestin’s strong infrastructure and use it as one of their slave-labor planets, and they were preserving his people for the purpose.
Arriving at the cell, the lead Dalek unceremoniously prodded the Master forwards. It used its exterminator—still hot and acrid-smelling from recent use, its threat even more blatant than usual—to jab at the Master’s spine, prodding him forward.
“Gracious as ever,” the Master jeered at the Daleks’ typical recourse to force in a situation where a subtler method of persuasion would have done just as well.
“YOU WILL BE SILENT!”
The Master narrowed his eyes. “I suppose if I am not, you’ll exterminate me? You would already have done so if you had any such intention. You need me.”
“THE DALEKS NEED NO ONE!” The lead Dalek rolled forward threateningly, invading the Master’s space. He maintained his ground.
“Don’t they?” The Master fought the urge to cross his arms—he couldn’t have managed it in the cuffs, and the attempt would have looked ridiculous. “Then you’ve been ordered to spare me, for the moment. Whose instructions are you afraid to disobey? Who are you working for, Dalek?”
The lead Dalek spun and departed, refusing to inadvertently reveal anything further. Silently the other Daleks glided out behind him, and the door shut. The Master was left there in the dark.
The hours passed slowly. At first the Master spent them neatly arranging possible escape scenarios, and when he felt there was little else he could do, no contingency he hadn’t planned for, he left off and settled in for a good brood. There was, after all, nothing better to do, alone in the dark with only his familiar, bitter thoughts for company, for Rassilon knew how long.
The Master was occasionally given to eviscerating honesty with himself. He had no idea how the Daleks had managed to invade, but he suspected that they couldn’t have done so if he had been paying his accustomed attention to his Empire. Whatever chink in his armor they’d exploited could only have existed because his attention had lapsed. If only he hadn’t wasted his energies focusing on his feckless would-be fiancé! If he survived this—and he would survive this—he would start by making the Daleks suffer for their attempt to capitalize on his moment of weakness, then take his Empire firmly in hand, and finish by making the damned Doctor pay for the indignity he’d indirectly caused.
The door slid open, and the Master raised his head. While Linme had cuffed him, he’d managed to slip a bit of the thin wiring he’d been working with into the Master’s pocket—no doubt thinking the Master might be able to use it as a lock pick. Instead the Master had straightened the wire into a sort of dart, taken some poison he kept about his person for emergencies, and dipped the tip of the wire into it. While being escorted to the cell he’d carefully noted the angle at which one would have to throw a very slender projectile to penetrate a Dalek’s neck plating.
The Master squinted—the light from the corridor blinding him—and threw the dart at precisely the angle required.
Daleks kept the vents of their metal exoskeletons open in any breathable atmosphere, shutting them and relying on a limited supply of stored oxygen only in emergencies. Thus the dart slipped the open vent, pierced the vulnerable cranium of the Kaled lifeform within, and killed it almost instantly.
Or it would have done if a Dalek had opened the door. Whatever had done so was significantly more agile, and dodged. The Master blinked in confusion when the figure in the doorway didn’t resolve into anything like a Dalek.
The apparition coughed.“Was that meant for the neck vent? Very clever. I find targeting the eyestalk quite useful, but it does rather limit one’s range.”
“I’m hallucinating,” the Master said automatically.
“Possibly,” he agreed, coming closer—the door sliding shut behind him—and bending down to the bound man’s level, sitting on his haunches and meeting the Master’s gaze. “If you’re seeing a small pink elephant or something of that nature, then yes, I suspect you’ve been in here longer than could be considered relaxing, and could very likely benefit from a cup of tea and a change of scenery. If you think I’m me, however, I’m afraid you’re perfectly in your right mind.”
The Master swallowed. “Doctor.”
“Master,” the Doctor returned, expression tight and voice neutral. He patted his pockets, muttered “damn,” and then “excuse me” when he leaned forward and, inspired by the Master’s dart, snapped a bit of wire from the Master’s coat. While it was too thick for darts, it was perfect for the Doctor’s purposes. His shoulders stiffened awkwardly as he invaded the Master’s space in order to use his impromptu lock pick on the cuffs. The rings of metal encircling the Master’s wrists proved invulnerable. Instead the Doctor concentrated on snapping the connection between the chain linking the cuffs and the cuffs themselves.
“These are the handcuffs the lab makes for the Guard—why did the Daleks bother attaching this flimsy coupling when they lock together without it?”
“Having worn them, you know perfectly well they operate on biodata,” the Master said shortly. “Do you suppose the Daleks would be willing to slip out of their casing and stroke a tentacle across the band?”
Annoyed at the waspish retort, the Doctor worked in silence. After a moment his unbound hands accomplished what the Master’s had been unable to. “There—” he began, but as soon as the right cuff’s link audibly snapped the Master surged forward, hand fisting in the Doctor’s hair. The Doctor made a short, sharp noise of alarm.
“You complete bastard,” the Master hissed, pulling the Doctor’s hair hard and earning a gasp of pain. He tilted his head up and shoved the Doctor’s down, kissing him hungrily, barely noticing the sharp clack of their teeth in his desperation. He bit the Doctor’s lip, vicious, and the Doctor moaned, throwing his arms around the Master like a child seeking comfort, like a drowning man, like an exile separated from his family for decades, reunited with his wife. “You absolute idiot,” the Master whispered fiercely, kissing him again, long and hard, gasping for air and returning to the Doctor’s mouth. “You feckless, miserable betrayer,” he cursed him tenderly, drawing back with a harder look in his eye. “So why did you bother to return?” he spat.
The Doctor flinched at the implication, standing up and taking a step back. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“You deserve a good deal more,” the Master seethed, standing and taking a step forward, and then another, standing so close that the Doctor could feel the breath of his hissed “Well?”
The Doctor pressed back towards the cell wall, swallowing. The Master watched the bob of his throat hungrily. “I,” the Doctor began, squeaking the word, then schooling himself. “The Daleks managed to get past your admittedly excellent defenses. It seems rather too clever for them, doesn’t it?”
“I’d thought something very similar myself.” The Master’s eyes narrowed. “It doesn’t explain why you’ve returned.”
“Well, it’s just not very likely, is it? That they could have come up with anything subtle enough to slip through your security precautions by themselves?”
“The Daleks rarely take on allies,” the Master pointed out, Devil’s Advocate when the Doctor proposed an idea that had occurred to him too.
“True,” the Doctor admitted. “Very true, generally. They don’t get along with anyone well enough to manage collaboration. But I stumbled upon this plot some weeks ago, and I’ve followed it to its fruition. Hampered by your bounty hunters, I should add.
“You’re aware, I trust, of the degree to which the CIA resents your Empire. You’re a Time Lord, and frankly they view your independence, let alone your prosperity, as something of a personal insult. The CIA’s made the—I think frankly ludicrous—decision to assist the Daleks with this raid. In fact it was their idea, and Time Lord technology, wielded by CIA scientists, is largely responsible for the success of the push. I don’t imagine there was any way you could have prepared for such an unexpected affront.
“I wanted to warn you earlier, but they would have undoubtedly intercepted any transmission I might send. So I thought I’d better drop in myself. In playing out their hand, the CIA have exposed themselves. When the spectacular failure of this coup is widely known on Gallifrey, they’ll be disgraced. I think we can safely predict a sweeping administrative overhaul, and a distinct wariness to meddle with your affairs in future.” The Doctor, obviously proud of his plan, grinned boyishly. He seemed to suppose the Master was going to offer him chummy adulations and gratitude, then send him on his merry way. The Master felt like smacking him.
“That’s very public. You're giving up your cherished secret identity to them?” The Master sneered. “Impossible. No doubt you accidentally materialized in the middle of the palace, realized where you were and prepared to bolt, but heard gunfire before you could quite get away. You were then irresistibly compelled to follow the sound of chaos to its source. In your idiotic recklessness alone are you faithful and consistent. I’d believe anything of you before I accepted that you would willingly assume the responsibility you find so distasteful.”
“Oh really?” the Doctor snapped back. “Perhaps you should try believing in more impossible things, because I’ve done it.”
The Master stared at him. Surely the Doctor hadn’t been foolish enough to expose his existence to men so patently demented they’d get in bed with the Daleks to wipe the Hestin Empire off the face of the universe. Not after centuries of avoiding their officious notice and the all-too-demonstrably real threat such attention represented.
“You would have done the same to save anyone,” the Master said at last. “Simply out of your insufferable sense of moral obligation.”
“Yes,” the Doctor agreed, “I would have, if it came to it. But I did it without hesitation to save you, because a cosmos without you in it is extremely unpleasant to contemplate.”
The Doctor looked away, uncomfortable. “Besides, it seemed terribly churlish to leave my fiancé to languish in prison, let alone to allow him to be executed by Daleks.” He coughed. “Bad form all around.” He turned his head back towards the Master, looking up at him through his floppy fringe with a genuine hesitance. “That is—if you’ll still have me.” He looked away again. “It is, perhaps, a bit presumptuous to just— but I thought that since you were making such an effort to find me, it might be all right…”
In the pause after he trailed off, in which the Master said nothing, the Doctor felt the weight of all the empty nights. The days had been quite bearable, and in the company of his companions and the tumult of the worlds they visited he could almost forget.
But the nights had been a different matter. Lying in alone in bed he’d been weighed down, pressed thin with resignation. He’d remembered. A desperate, airless feeling came when he insisted to himself that this was what he wanted. All he wanted. When he told himself that things were as they always had been, that nothing had changed. And still he felt a stale determination to continue on in the deception. After all, what sin was a lie you told yourself? And for the best of reasons?
The Doctor had discovered the Time Lords’ plot against the empire genuinely by accident, but he’d jumped at the pretext to rush to the Master’s aid. He’d been almost relieved, and had managed to convince himself that this was an absolutely necessary humanitarian mission: it was a bit embarrassing to be reminded, via poison dart, that the Master was perfectly capable of extricating himself from his predicament. Even with the Master so obviously furious with him, and potentially about to tell him where he could get off with this ‘fiancé’ business (and apart from the Daleks, of course), it was good to be here. The Doctor felt as though he’d stepped back onto solid ground after months lost at sea. He was happier than he had been in a very long time.
The Master lifted a hand, guiding the Doctor’s chin back with two fingers, tilting it up so that he could properly look at the man he loathed and adored to the point of stupidity and had missed so, so terribly. “As I recall, your opinion on the matter was quite different when last we spoke.”
“It’s—my offer isn’t unqualified. I’m sorry,” and the Doctor did look genuinely pained, “but it can’t be. If you engage in the sort of behavior that compels me to leave, then I will. I’ll have to. And it’s not that—” he swallowed, “Not that I care for you any less than you do me. Believe me, it isn’t. It’s simply what I am.”
“A ‘creature of flight’?” the Master taunted bitterly.
The Doctor shook his head impatiently. “You know it’s more than that. I can’t help needing to do and to care about what I do. It’s everything I am. It’s everything you see in me. You may tell yourself otherwise, when you wish things were easier for us, but you’re much too astute for that to hold for long. If I stayed when you made choices I abhor, I wouldn’t be myself anymore. As it stands I am capable of leaving, capable even of living without you—of choosing never to be quite as fulfilled as I might like to be, and of standing by that choice for the sake of what I believe in. But I’d rather not be forced to.”
The Doctor took a deep breath. “I’ll never love anyone as much as I love you. Not in terms of the quantity or of quality. I never want to feel that I must leave. And if you could swear to me that you’ll do everything in your power to keep me—I would appreciate that. Please.”
The Doctor rattled to a stop, and the Master stared at him, expressionless and silent. After a moment the Doctor licked his lips, unconsciously nervous.
“That,” the Master began slowly, “could be arranged.”
Tentative hope germinated in the Doctor’s eyes, and as the Master began to grin the Doctor grinned back, giddy.
“I can’t let you go,” the Master said, pushed by the Doctor’s honesty to remind him. “To lie and say I could, if you ever wished it, would be easy, and an admirably neat ending. But you must know it would be a lie. I can respect you more than anyone else in existence, but still—and even because of that—I can’t submit peaceably to the loss of you. Though—”
The Master thought of the disturbing snippet he’d heard of the conversation of that bounty hunter, Smatters—thought of how unnerved and furious he’d been by the feeling of association with this disgusting man and his desires.
“The night I pressed you to be with me—that was… wrong. But in trying to keep you, I can’t promise never to over-step boundaries that my regard for you might otherwise compel me to observe.”
The Doctor smiled thinly, leaning forward to lay a kiss on the Master’s forehead. “And that is what you are.”
“A peasant stealing your cloak and confining you against your will for the rest of your life?”
The Doctor’s lip quirked, and he took the Master’s hand in his. “Hardly a peasant. You’re too much of a snob. Though as you did steal my TARDIS, you can’t deny accusations of thievery.”
“I suppose you’ve never resorted to extraordinary measures to get what you want?” The Master raised an eyebrow.
“Lying about the location of my TARDIS hardly compares to a bit of youthful scrumping,” the Doctor said primly. He slid from the Master’s finger a still useless Time Ring. The Master watched the Doctor take a deep breath that he didn’t seem to realize he was taking, and push the ring down his own appropriate finger.
“There,” he breathed. “Exchanging rings is a sort of human custom. It means—”
“I know what it means,” the Master said shortly. As if he wouldn’t have done his research.
The Master considered the Doctor’s hand. A Time Ring was a risky trinket to give someone with a proven penchant for escape. And yet what could he really do to keep the Doctor against his will—put sticky tape on all the windows? He preferred the company of a husband to that of a prisoner. The Doctor might run, might always run. But if it came to it, the Master intended always to catch him.
***
The Doctor swung into the room with a mad grin. “Hello everyone!” and, unable to resist, “I’m the Doctor, I’m here to rescue you.”
He was surprised when, instead of relieved cheers, that was met with a group groan.
“Where have you been?” Technician Bea, a frizzy haired woman near the front, groused.
“I had a bet you’d be here an hour ago,” a reedy young physicist with the deeply unfortunate name of Skip Roshobobo whined. “You lost me 20 credits!”
The Doctor felt put-out by the seeming mass desertion of his former co-workers. “Everyone seems to be attaching a monetary value to my presence,” the Doctor shoved his hands behind his back. “It’s very disquieting. Like working for a wage.”
While he couldn’t be seen, the Doctor fiddled with the Time Ring. Like most Time Lord traveling devices, it had a chameleon circuit. The Doctor clicked through the rings’ settings until the device felt smoother under his fingers. When he moved his hands forward to release the lab technicians’ handcuffs, the light from the door caught the simple gold band on his hand.
“Is that what it looks like?” Professor Linme croaked from the back.
“What’s that, Linme?” the Doctor asked with maddening cheer, getting to his knees and setting about breaking the links on everyone’s wrist-cuffs.
“Are you engaged?” Assistant Stassi demanded.
The Doctor glanced down at his hand, doing a theatrical double take. “Oh! I suppose I am!”
“If it’s not to the Master, do you mind leaving us here?” Technician Bea asked tentatively. “I mean thanks all the same, but I think I’d rather be in a secure concrete cell when he finds out.”
“Agreed,” Linme put in wearily.
The Doctor laughed. “As it happens, he already knows.”
“And the building’s still standing,” Professor Linme mused as the Doctor attended to him. “Well then, I suppose congratulations are in order. Are you back, then?”
“You know, I rather think I am.” The Doctor stood. “And Linme—thank you. Now come on, stand up, stretch your legs—the Master’s going to need our help in the control room. We’ve managed to use the Draconian wall shields to clear the Palace’s core—now he’s patching into the Daleks’ own equipment to broadcast the signal I devised to draw the rest of the Dalek fleet in orbit above the planet into the CIA singularity prison I, er, borrowed.
“It’s the most difficult element of the plan, and he’ll need full concentration and every ounce of his system-coding expertise. He mustn’t be distracted or threatened - my companions are seeing to that, but they can only monitor the control room—I need all of you to help me operate the wall shields, so that when he sends the signal we’re not overrun by whatever furious remnants of the Dalek fleet still remain on the ground.”
“Oh, is that all you need.” Technician Bea rolled her eyes, but brushed at her coat in a workmanlike manner that indicated assent.
“It is a good plan,” Skip admitted slowly. “A great plan, really.”
“And it’s good to have you back,” Linme said with real warmth. “Even if you are—and I say this in the kindest sense—a complete arse.”
“It’s good to be back,” the Doctor admitted, “and I’m choosing to ignore that last bit. Now everyone, follow me!”
***
“Of course you’ll have to be polite to Braxiatel for the entire day,” the Doctor pointed out, re-entering the console room of his TARDIS.
The Master trailed after him, rolling his eyes. “On second thought, there’s still more than enough time to elope to the Oodsphere—they’ll sing of the DoctorMaster and all that nonsense if given the slightest provocation. Tourists often find themselves getting married there entirely by accident.”
“Certainly we can dispense with ceremony,” the Doctor reached the console, grinning to himself. “Though Gretna Green is more traditional. You will, of course, explain the whole thing to my mother. Why her invitation got lost in the vortex?”
“I’ve never seen you in such a good mood!” Tegan commented from the couch. Nominally left under Nyssa’s direction, Tegan had actually been sitting here munching the last of the malt loaf sullenly and occasionally making sour comments about the Doctor always leaving her behind whenever anything interesting happened. “It must’ve gone really well, for you not to be sighing.”
The Doctor glared at her over the half-moon spectacles he’d put on to examine some of the smaller readouts in the Control Room. “Oh Tegan, really—”
“And then there’s the part where we say, ‘Doctor, what’s wrong?’”
“Tegan.” The Doctor, aware of the Master’s smirk, flushed slightly.
“And then you say, ‘Hm? Oh nothing, nothing,’ and sulk off to your rooms. You’ve gotten a lot worse recently. And now you’ve cheered right up! Are these Dalek things like Easter Eggs—crack ‘em open and there’s a candy surprise? Only yours was full of Valium?”
“Tegan,” Nyssa reprimanded from the console, next to the Doctor. “You’re only cross because the Doctor wouldn’t take your advice and stay inside the TARDIS, or let you come. Hello, Master.”
“Nyssa,” he greeted with a smile. “Your father was quite well when last we spoke, as was your charming step-mother.”
“The Master!” Tegan blurted. “This is that Master chap who’s been hounding us across the universe!”
“I’m afraid so. Very impolite of you, I might add—I’m not allowed back at Milliiways, you know.” The Doctor shook his head, still adjusting dials, and running around the console, physically scooting Nyssa out of the way and ducking down to get at a panel underneath her.
“I imagine you will be, as my Emperor,” the Master chuckled.
Tegan, listening to this exchange, suddenly spotted the bright gold band on the Doctor’s hand, which was curled up over the rim of the console for support as he worked.
“Doctor!” she gasped.
“Hm?” The Doctor looked over at her, then followed her eye-line to his finger. “Oh yes! That.”
Nyssa looked between them, confused. “It’s just a piece of jewelry. Somewhat out of character, perhaps, but surely not so remarkable?”
“Well,” the Doctor coughed, getting back to work uncoupling his TARDIS from the Hestin Palace’s security net, “your people choose to represent these things differently, Nyssa. Different cultures, different customs.”
The Master casually wrapped his hand around the Doctor’s where he clutched the console, and the Doctor absently brushed his thumb over the Master’s knuckles, not looking up from his work.
“Oh,” Nyssa murmured, surprised.
“ ‘Oh’ indeed,” Tegan snorted. “This man’s hunted us like rats—you don’t mean to tell be it’s because you ran out on him? Not after all that rot about how ‘it’s complicated!’”
“There was rather more to it than that,” the Doctor insisted.
“That is exactly what happened,” the Master informed her smugly
“Well, all I can say is, it’s a good job you dropped Turlough off with his people before we came here.”
“Why—ouch!” The Doctor burned his finger on an exposed circuit. He looked up to the Master and, receiving an entirely satisfactory ‘poor baby’ expression, went back to work. “Why is that, Tegan?”
“He’d have been crushed, is all.”
The Doctor poked his head up, frowning. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Oh come on, Doctor, he was a bloody nong about you, don’t tell me you didn’t know.”
“Nong,” the Doctor repeated, uncomprehending. “Nong?”
“He was infatuated with you,” the Master cut in, shortly.
“Yer, that,” Tegan nodded.
“What? Oh he was not—and I notice you haven’t asked who we’re talking about,” the Doctor pointed out, giving the Master a mildly accusing look.
“Naturally I have no need to ask,” the Master gave a Gallic shrug. “And that’s reminded me, I have certain words to say to Bernice.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. She was actually quite a staunch advocate on your behalf,” the Doctor countered.
“Did she need to be?” the Master raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware that I needed a defender.”
“Well,” the Doctor grinned, “She found me a very receptive audience. I admit I was quite willing to be brought around.”
“Were you?” the Master smirked, leaning on the console. “What particular points did you find most convincing?”
“Oh now that would be telling—”
Tegan began to grasp that the future would be one long meeting of their highly exclusive mutual admiration society. There would be whole days when she’d be lucky to get a word in edgeways. She felt it important to settle certain points before the banter really got going.
“So what’s gonna happen to us if you get hitched?” Tegan asked. “You are getting hitched, right? I suppose if you can travel in time then you can get gay married in space, if it suits you. Not that I have any problem with that!” She waved her hands in hasty response to the Doctor’s glare over his spectacles. “You do what you like, I’m happy for you, really, I am! I mean I vote Labor and everything!”
“Yes, thank you, Tegan,” the Doctor said dryly, standing and leaning back against the console. “And if you and Nyssa wish to return to your respective homes, you are, of course, free to do so. If,” he shoved his hands in his coat pockets, “you want to stay on, however, then you, Nyssa, could do a lot worse then to spend some time working in the labs on Hestin, as a sort of intern under Professor Linme.”
“I think I’d like that,” Nyssa said, “if it’s all right with the Master. Hestin Prime is a beautiful city, and I’m very familiar with the Palace. The laboratory’s among the most prestigious in the galaxy!”
“Justly so,” the Master glanced over her head briefly, “with the Doctor at its head. He’s a formidable scientist.”
Tegan rolled her eyes at the way the Doctor actually looked coy at the praise. “What am I supposed to do, then?” she grumbled. “Pack off back to being an air stewardess?”
“Not if you don’t want to,” the Doctor corrected, firmly. “You’re very young, quite organized, and you have a great deal of energy. You could be very happy in the Civilian Volunteer Corps.”
“The Civilian Volunteer Corps?” the Master repeated with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes, I thought of it while I was away and couldn’t tell you—that happened rather a lot actually, very inconvenient—I’ll tell you all about it later. On the worlds you control that have strong military traditions, you’ve retained their existing mandatory conscription requirements? I think you could benefit from having a civil service option as well, like the Works Progress Administration or the Sherut Leumi on Earth. ” He patted the Master on the shoulder. “But for the moment—” the Doctor spun back around to address Tegan, shoving his hands in his back pockets, “I still intend to travel. I’ll simply split my life between living here and traveling with the Master. The Empire need never even know we were gone, if we’re traveling with each other in temporal synchronicity. Which should be straightforward, we’ll only have to reverse my, er, current modifications and let the TARDIS’s Rassilon Imperature steer us clear of the Empire’s sphere of influence, rather than keeping us within it.”
The Doctor seemed to suddenly realize this plan would mean sweeping changes in his now-fiancé’s life. He glanced at the Master and then back at the girls. “Take your time, Nyssa, Tegan. Think about what you want. I should see how the lab staff are getting on—” he coughed. “Master, why don’t you help me with that? It should only take us a couple of hours to get the clean-up process thoroughly in motion, then the Master and I will return, and we can all talk about it.”
Tegan rolled her eyes even harder at the Doctor’s obviousness, but had tact enough not to call him on it. The Doctor offered the Master his arm and a coaxing look, and then let himself be swept out the TARDIS door and down the hall towards the Master’s private rooms. After a moment’s awkward silence, the Doctor began slowly, choosing his words as carefully now as he’d been careless before.
“That is, of course, if you’d like to travel with me. It’s a lot to ask, I know. But I think you could come to enjoy seeing the whole of time and space in addition to ruling a bit of it. We wouldn’t have to be apart, or to give up our lives. And it’d be wonderful, I think, to have you there with me. More than that—it would be my honor.”
At the doorway to their bedroom, the Master smiled to himself as the Doctor touched the pads of his fingers to the biolock. The unchanged locks yielded at his touch.
“You mean to tell me I would have to trail after you telling you how brilliant you are, risk danger for people I care nothing for, and generally participate in the hobbyist adventuring you squander your talents on?” He began to unbutton his jacket.
“Master, it won’t be as intolerable as all that.” The Doctor grinned cheekily, stopping the Master and taking his hands in his own, so that he could claim to task for himself. “You could try saving a few planets yourself.” He leaned forward and kissed the Master. “I might feel an uncontrollable,” he unbuttoned a few more of the Master’s jacket’s buttons, and trailed kisses across his chin, along the top of his beard, “surge of gratitude.”
“After almost a year of enforced chastity, you had better,” the Master growled, curling his fingers hard around the Doctor’s shoulders.
“Don’t exaggerate,” the Doctor tsked, “you know perfectly well it was five months and fourteen days.” He took the Master’s head in his hands, his fingers twining in and mussing his hair. In his absence the Master had gone back to wearing it the (far less flattering) way he didn’t like it, but his ministrations soon had it set to rights. He smiled at the Master’s stubbornness, and kissed him soundly.
“God, I missed you every one of them.” The Doctor drew back so he could slide off the Master’s jacket, and when he’d managed it he curled his fingers around the Master’s shirt-sleeved arms, as if reassuring himself of the Master’s solidity. He kissed the Master still harder, his fingers working deft and fast over buttons, pushing the shirt open with gathering haste as the Master stroked his hands down the Doctor’s back, one resting over the small of it, the other drifting down, clutching his arse. One of the buttons popped off, rolling under the bureau. The Doctor pulled back and met the Master’s gaze. His face was flushed, he was breathing harder now. “I missed you so.”
“Did it hurt, my dear?” the Master asked silkily, pushing the Doctor’s jacket off with a calculated carelessness, with an agonizing slowness, with hearts beating frantically at the Doctor’s nearness.
The Doctor nodded, lips tight, his expression eloquently outlining a satisfying misery.
“Good,” the Master answered.
He was surprised when the Doctor frowned and shoved him down to the bed. He scrambled up to sit back against the head board, and gasped when the Doctor gave his neck a long lick, then sucked it hard enough to leave a mark, placed high enough to be partly glimpsed over the edge of his collar. His fingers, meanwhile, fumbled the clasp of the Master’s trousers. He plucked at the fabric feverishly, trying to work it down blindly while busy licking him.
“I’m still wearing the handcuffs,” the Master reminded him as the Doctor finished pulling his shirt off over the obstructions.
“Mm. Yes, I’d noticed,” the Doctor arched an eyebrow. “And very fetching they are, too.” He reached up to stroke the Master’s hair again, snuck his hand down the Master’s back. While distracting him with kisses, the Doctor pressed the priming mechanism on the cuffs, imprinting his biodata. They snapped together sharply, and the Master broke off to look at him.
“Why Doctor,” he murmured, “how very interesting.”
“I certainly think so.” The Doctor leaned back with a positively wicked look. He finished undressing, his trainers banging softly on the floor as he dropped them off without looking where they landed. “I want you,” he breathed.
“So I gathered,” the Master said softly. “You’re not normally so blatant in your desire. Unless, of course, you’ve been educated differently since last we—”
The Doctor laughed, swinging a leg over him and stranding him, bending down so that the breath from his whisper landed on the Master’s lips. “There hasn’t been anyone else.” He shook his head. “Idiot,” he said affectionately. “How could there be? You’re not exactly easy to get over, you know. And as for before, I was never really sure what I wanted then. I thought it was my TARDIS—my freedom. And it is, it certainly is—but it’s not the only thing I need to be happy. I had to go traveling again to see that.” His face and voice were soft with fondness. “If I haven’t said it yet, I do adore you, you know.”
The Master, smirking, gave a pointed glance at the Doctor’s heavy erection, which pressed into his thigh. “Oh, believe me, Doctor, I feel that you do.”
“Ah, another moment murdered,” the Doctor teased. He ran his hand up the Master’s bare chest, up his neck, feathering his fingertips over the Master’s lips. The Master obediently lapped at them with his tongue, and the Doctor shivered when the Master drew two fingers into his mouth and sucked them, staring up at the Doctor in blatant invitation.
“That’s it,” the Doctor murmured, digging through the bedside table with his free hand. In search of lube, he pulled out a pen, which he threw in the general direction of the bathroom, a TCE which went the same way, and a backup copy the Master had made of the Doctor’s former cuffs and collar, in expectation of his recapture. The Doctor pulled drew out these last with a speculative air.
The Master’s eyes widened. The last thing he wanted was for the Doctor to be reminded of past unpleasantness, which might spoil their so far entirely satisfying reunion. He shook the Doctor’s fingers out of his mouth—some groveling might well be in order.
“We’ll throw them out, if you think it advisable. We could reduce them to ashes! Melt them down to make a wedding ring. Anything you choose, my dear.”
“Actually I was thinking we could use them on occasion. Privately, of course. As for the matter of a ring, I seem to remember you having seventy five drachbars in your possession—ah yes!” He discovered the bag in the drawer, held it up, jangled it, and set it back. “Here they are. These should do nicely—enough for a relatively small wagon, or a relatively large ring, I believe you’ll find.” He grinned at the Master. “Appropriate, I think.”
“I’m afraid you lost me at ‘we could use them for sex on occasion,” the Master managed, hard at even the suggestion of the Doctor so willingly demonstrating that he belonged to him, unbelievably aroused by the element of being claimed that was now apparent in his own position.
The Doctor smiled fondly. “I didn’t actually say ‘for sex,’ you know. Admittedly I did heavily imply it—ah ha!” His fumbling finally produced the lubricant, which he unscrewed. He slipped back off the Master and knelt between his legs, running his hands down the Master’s thighs before running an oil-slick finger around and then into him.
The Master squirmed slightly, smirking when he caught the Doctor visibly swallowing. Slowly, with exquisite care, the Doctor slipped another finger in, past the knuckle. He pumped them in and out of the Master so slowly he might well have been unaffected by desire, except that his eyes were black and wide, and his arms trembling visibly, his fingers shuddering softly inside the Master.
“Come now,” the Master coaxed, letting his voice roll and a bit of hypnotic pressure sink into it. “Do you want to fuck me or not?”
At that comment the Doctor pressed a third finger in, fucking the Master a little faster on them now.
“That’s better. Yet still so delicate,” the Master commented, amused, stretching his bound hands, enjoying the way the slight discomfort contrasted with the slick pleasure of the Doctor’s fingers working inside him. “The way you open me up for yourself, as if every time is the first. As though you haven’t had me in this bed a hundred times. So careful.” So selective, he did not say, about the ways in which you’re willing to hurt me. Recriminations could only be worked through in time, only slowly. Both he and the Doctor had given each other everything they could now, and the Master had the greatest faith that they would endure the aftershocks of their initial rift.
The Master slid down the bed obligingly after the Doctor when he pulled away in search of a more convenient position. With a hand on the Master’s shoulder, steadying both the Master and himself, the Doctor guided himself in, giving a low, fluttering ‘oh’ as he found his cock gripped tight by warm flesh. The Master arrayed his mind in an invitingly open configuration, and the Doctor obligingly slipped in, bucking his hips involuntarily when the Master squeezed him, physically and mentally.
“Now that’s not fair,” the Doctor protested, giving a sharp, deep thrust, almost as punishment.
“If you intend to keep doing that whenever I do something that displeases you, being good is going to be much more difficult than I thought.” The Master pushed his bound hands up to the Doctor’s face, indicating that he wanted the use of them. The Doctor made a show of considering the question, then gave the metal a delicate lick. The Master’s wrists sprang free. He dug his nails into the Doctor’s hips, clutching him desperately, as if he might disappear, and with a sharp gasp of pain and surprise the Doctor pushed in again, establishing a rhythm with slow, hard, deep strokes that made the Master’s hands slip down his sides and fist in the bedclothes.
The Master pressed his hips into the Doctor’s, desperate for the remorselessly even fuck to go faster, to bring him off rather than torture him exquisitely, and (he thought as the Doctor shoved him down into his thrusts with the hands gripping his shoulders) seemingly endlessly.
The Doctor was sure and confident in his rhythm, determined to set his pace, and tender—but the Master saw his opening in the way the Doctor bit his lip hard, as he did when he was holding himself back from taking what he wanted too roughly. The Master exploited that fraying control, kneading the Doctor’s mind with the self-gratifying delight of a cat with a ball of string, smirking harder every time he earned a stifled sound.
He worked until the Doctor seemed gorgeously lost above him—intent and adoring and helplessly in thrall to what the Master was giving him. The Master wondered if he looked so overcome in the Doctor’s place, and with that curious impulse he swum deeper into the Doctor’s mind to find flatteringly well-handled memories of himself in the reverse position, as seen from the Doctor’s perspective. He took the remembered sensations of those nights (and, to be honest, those mornings, middays, afternoons and evenings) and pressed them into every free pathway of the Doctor’s neural circuit board, making the Doctor moan (a dizzy little sound) and then almost sob as he felt himself being taken even as he took.
“Fuck,” he whispered, and the Master shivered. His Doctor so rarely used profanity that the loss of control was exquisitely erotic.
The Doctor’s rhythm sped up, got deliciously sloppy. The Master rocked his hips greedily to meet the Doctor’s thrusts, and sucked the Doctor’s mind into his own desperately. The Doctor was so dazed he didn’t seem to seem to register anything but the Master, and the Master loved it, demanded more.
“Faster,” he commended, delighted. “Harder, come on, harder.”
“I’ll hurt you—” the Doctor gasped. “I don’t want to—”
“Hurt me,” the Master clawed his fingers into the Doctor’s back. “Fuck me like you want to own me. Like you do own me. As though I was made for your particular use.”
“God, Master—”
He moaned when the Doctor slammed into him, whispering his name. “Again, say—do that again.”
“Master,” the Doctor said louder, pounding into him even more furiously now. The Master found the familiar, dusty strings of his mind, brushed off the evidence of disuse, and pulled so hard the Doctor gulped. “Master, stop, stop, it’s too—”
The Master did, just long enough to let the Doctor breathe again. After a moment’s pause, he rocked his hips. Then, very slowly indeed, he pulled the cords again, building the pressure at a less frantic level.
“Oh, that’s not stopping, is it,” the Doctor gasped, half laughing.
“Of course it isn’t,” the Master agreed.
“Mm. Can anyone play?” The Doctor fondled the draping folds of the Master’s consciousness, then grasped them and drew them all to himself in one long pull.
“Please,” the Master gasped, “do.”
The Doctor pushed into him, taking over from the Master the task of steadily building them back to his earlier furious pace. In every downbeat, every time he pulled back, he twisted and tugged at the Master’s mind, dragging long fingers through it. The intensity was unabating, the stimulation constant, building ever higher.
The Master’s breath grew shallow. He lost his concentration, letting the Doctor’s mind slip through his fingers without noticing. His mouth hung open, his head dropped back, and he shook under the onslaught. Not normally given to demonstrative verbal appreciation, he choked the Doctor’s name into a long moan.
It took only the slightest push for the Doctor to topple him over the edge, and to catch him on the other side. After a moment’s respite, the Doctor pressed on, fucking him still. The Master couldn’t stifle the whimper that slipped out of his mouth. The aftershocks seemed as though they’d rip him apart. He knew it wasn’t true, but it felt as though he’d die from much more of this.
“Shh,” the Doctor soothed, “I’ve got you.”
After a few more thrusts he spilled in the Master with a low groan. He collapsed on top of him, falling on his arms and then onto the Master’s chest, breathing hard.
“Quite Masterly,” he preened. “If I do say so myself.”
The Master chuckled weakly when he got his breath back.
The Doctor laid his cheek alongside the Master’s. “I’ve needed this.” He considered for a moment. “Needed you.”
“Naturally you did. Tremas said you were a twitching sour-faced wreck, desperately in need of his Master to steady him. He put strong emphasis on how you seemed, in his opinion, to be crying out for a good fuck.”
The Doctor laughed. “I’m certain that’s precisely the language he used, as well.”
“Oh, indeed,” the Master ran his thumb along the Doctor’s spine, accepting the weight of him gratefully. “He could see these were circumstances that called for strong words and strong action.”
“I see,” the Doctor said dryly. “So citing the authority of a venerable old statesman is your best means of angling to get me on my hands and knees, is it? Frankly, I’m not impressed.”
“I’ll show you impressive when I can move again,” the Master grunted.
“Mm. No, I think I rather like you like this.” The Doctor shifted. Pointedly.
The Master looked up at him, alarmed. “My dear Doctor, you can’t be serious.” If the Doctor tried that again any time in the next quarter of an hour, the Master was dismally certain he’d lose consciousness.
The Doctor pouted. Squirmed. “Just a little? I could go quite slowly… I’ve missed you terribly, you see—”
“Fifteen minutes!” the Master pleaded.
“Oh very well,” the Doctor huffed, flicking the Master’s arm with his thumb and forefinger. “Some wanton sex slave you are. You’re lucky I love you, or I wouldn’t put up with it.”
“Mm,” the Master transitioned from embarrassed to smug with the instantaneous ease of a good engine going from zero to sixty in under a second. “I did try and tell you that you did.”
“Yes, yes,” the Doctor rolled his eyes. “You were right. Again. Somewhere they’re engraving the trophy cup even now.”
“Oh, now that,” the Master grinned, “would be an entirely appropriate wedding present.”
***
Epilogue
Smatters and Greig were drinking in reasonably priced locales these days. Having failed to collect the astronomical bounty on the man Smatters referred to as ‘the boy-fiend,’ they’d taken on various smaller jobs in the intervening months. Recently though, business in this part of the galaxy seemed to have dried up entirely. All they’d had this week was the Duchess of Mi-ki’s escaped ultra-panda, but it turned out the thing had only run off because it had gotten knocked up, and wanted to find a den to deliver in.
Smatters had wanted to sell the things on the black market on a planet where importation laws made the critters difficult to get, and thus desirable and expensive, but Greig had been firm on taking them back to the Duchess at no extra charge. She’d been delighted and had sent them off with hampers of sweets from her kitchens in addition to the (small) reward, as a special thanks, but Smatters grumbled they could have bought all the sweets they’d ever need with the takings from selling five wee, trainable ultra-pandas to the bear-baiters of Raxicorophalapatorius.
Greig could have pointed out to him that the Duchess was a fixture of the inter-planetary social season, a cheery eccentric who liked to bring her beloved ultra-panda with her to parties. When she showed up with five unbearably adorable babies as well, and told the assembled rich guests how the heroic Smatters and Greig had rescued their mother within mere days, and had even brought her back these darlings, her listeners would think of the same apparently very reliable, almost respectable firm for their own business. He and Smatters might well go straight, like many a firm before them, and enter a much more safe and lucrative world of private commissions.
They were at in bar on a suburban planet in the Hestin Protective Space—outside the Empire, but still broadly considered an Imperial concern. The waitress, who seemed bored but not cheerless, brought Smatters his ridiculously suave Trakenite Daiquiri, which tasted terrible but which he was convinced was so mysterious looking it would one day prompt an inquiry into its nature from a passing attractive creature. She likewise deposited Greig’s practical lager on the table. As she walked away she felt Smatter’s eyes resting on her bum, and she calmly drew her arm back and held the menu she was carrying over it as she walked over to the door.
Smatters, embarrassed to be caught out, muttered ‘probably frigid anyway’ into his daiquiri.
The waitress stood at the door, keeping an eye out for customers and chatting idly to the barman. Looking outside, she started.
“No way!”
“Hm?” the barman looked up. “Lemme guess—boss wearing that terrible hat you told him you’d burn if he brought in again?”
“No, and I’d smack him if he tried,” the waitress responded promptly. “Green skin and a mauve hat? Madness. And if I’m right, you’ll never guess. I think that’s the Emperor of Hestin!” She pointed to a man who’d stepped out of a blue box some moments ago, and was apparently still speaking to someone inside.
Suddenly she was joined at the window by an anxious Smatters. “Which?”
She had better eyesight than he did, and squinted out door’s glass a moment. “Um, the—oh! Both of them!” A second figure had stepped out of the TARDIS, and they were making their way towards the bar’s door.
“Right! Our cue to leave!” Smatters had no wish to encounter the Master again. Even if he had been successful in winning back his paramour, and therefore might have calmed down since their last encounter. Smatters' memory of gloved hands choking the life out of him was too vivid for their meeting to be pleasant from him. He turned around. “Grieg, let’s vamoose!”
But their table was empty—Greig has already left. Only a twenty to cover the bill remained. Smatters cursed, running out the back door after him, muttering about worthless partners who didn’t even have the common courtesy to tell you when they were quitting the establishment.
As the back door banged behind Smatters, the Doctor came in through the front, holding if for his husband and glancing around the room.
“No sign of Brax,” the Doctor announced, a trifle smug. “We must have beaten him here.”
The Master stepped in after him. “I expect he’ll materialize in an hour, hoping to only be kept waiting by you for another forty five minutes or so. Tell me Doctor, how does it feel to be on time for a meeting? You must find the sensation wholly novel.”
The Doctor glared at him and slumped into a booth, arranging his long limbs awkwardly.
Chuckling, the Master sat down on the same side. “I’m joking. Braxiatel knows me to be reasonably punctual. He’ll probably arrive shortly. Don’t pout.”
“I am not—” the Doctor began. He looked up when the door chime rang again, and Tegan entered the bar, spotted them, and walked over.
“Hey Doctor. Why the sour face?”
The Doctor smoldered, and the Master laughed outright.
“What did I say?” Tegan looked between them, bemused.
“Nothing, my dear Miss Jovanka,” the Master grinned at the Doctor. “His highness is simply delighted at the prospect of spending the afternoon hashing out policy agreements with his brother. It should take some considerable time—there are so many procedural guidelines to consider, so many important Time Lords’ opinions to weigh, and a great many arrangements to be made. Perhaps we’ll even find time to touch on trading terms!”
“Don’t ‘his highness’ me, Master, and Tegan, you’re supposed to be in the capitol making the arrangements for your Planetary Services aid trip. You can’t have finished yet.” The Doctor spoke shortly, the phrase ‘trading terms’ having shaken his equanimity considerably.
“I have, actually,” Tegan said serenely, waiving the waitress over and turning back to them. “My counterpart here’s very organized—we’ve been corresponding for weeks now, so there wasn’t that much to go over. I just shook her hand and had a look at the accommodations, then I hitched a shuttle-ride, and here I am!”
“Then why did you come? Ah, lemonade, please—” the Doctor addressed the waitress, who had just arrived, and who was doing a very good job of not looking too star-struck, “and he’ll have an Ood Smear—with one of those curly straws, if you have them, but if not, any two cocktail straws will suffice. And with olive juice, but no olives. He hates olives. Oh, and stirred—not shaken. Thank you so much.”
The Master smiled charmingly when the waitress looked up from her frantic notes, and she blushed, forgiving him for being a spectacularly picky customer.
“I’ll have a Bloody Mary, if you’ve got them,” Tegan said to the waitress, who then departed, and turned back to the Doctor. “I see you’ve met Sally then,” she snickered.
“What?” the Master asked.
“Oh shush,” the Doctor huffed, visibly embarrassed at the extent to which he’d been domesticated. “How have you even seen that? It didn’t come out until 1989.”
“Nyssa and I did an Eighties Films night—I don’t think she got much out of the Brat Pack. Anyway, as if I’d miss an excuse to meet your brother! I told Nyssa I’d be back with details.”
“Fabulous,” the Doctor sighed, rubbing his face with his hands. “Take a picture, why don’t you? It’s only a secret government conference between a renegade empire and the Time Lords of Gallifrey, held in neutral territory. Go right ahead!”
Silently, Tegan took her hand out of the pocket containing her camera.
Behind her, someone cleared his throat. “John.”
The Doctor looked up and glared. “Irving.”
The Master glanced at Tegan. “Would you excuse us, my dear?”
“Sure,” Tegan said, wandering off, but what she meant was ‘I will move to a table with an excellent vantage point and great acoustics, because no way am I missing the rest of a conversation that begins with the Doctor getting called ‘John.’’
Braxiatel took the seat opposite the couple, having somehow already acquired a magenta, mojito-like drink.
“Who’s in charge of the CIA this week?” the Master asked by way of a casual opening remark. “Anyone interesting?”
“To my knowledge no one’s ever referred to Co-Ordinator Narvin as ‘interesting,’” Braxiatel said as the Master and the Doctor’s drinks arrived.
“Narvin? Are we scraping the barrel to that extent?” the Master clucked his tongue disapprovingly.
“I’m afraid so. Both co-ordinator Vansell and Inquisitor Darkel have fallen out of public favor, more due to highly-visible failure of the Hestin Invasion than the idea of the Invasion itself. But, of course, you’re not without a family and a certain influence—House Oakden has been clamoring for Borusa’s resignation.”
The Master raised an eyebrow. “ No doubt they hope to appropriate the current indignation to secure the presidency for one of their own.” He stroked the Doctor’s thigh with his hand under the table, lazily.
Braxiatel dismissed the obvious with a hand wave. “Of course Borusa’s weak, after the Sontaaran fiasco. He’ll fall, but Oakden hasn’t a strong enough contender to take his place.”
The Doctor had been nursing his lemonade and wishing they would stop talking about people he’d never heard of, but here he brightened up. This bit he knew. “Your hour, I suppose?”
Braxiatel smiled thinly into his mojito. “One hopes,” he murmured.
“Ridiculous false modesty,” the Master rolled his eyes. “You know the presidency is yours, otherwise we wouldn’t be making this visit on Imperial time.”
“Imperial time—what an interesting phrase. Two emperors who spend half their lives traveling outside the reach of their Empires' sphere of influence, and manage their Empire the rest of the time—what seems like all the time, to anyone within that Empire. Ingenious. Tell me, how is my scheme working out for you?”
“Excellent, thank you,” the Doctor smiled, not minding the implied insult as he normally would have.
Braxiatel frowned—normally the Doctor was easy to needle and amusing to tease. In this, his hour of triumph, when the Presidency was within reach and he should by all rights have been on top of the universe, it disconcerted Braxiatel that his little brother obviously didn’t envy him a jot. Seeing that the Doctor considered himself somehow above the whole thing cheapened Brax’s victory. There was something almost like indulgence in the Doctor’s expression.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, you seem disgustingly happy,” Braxiatel remarked, narrowing his eyes.
“Well,” the Doctor shrugged, “perhaps I am.” Under the table, the Doctor took the Master’s hand in his, rolling the pad of his thumb over the knuckles.
“Whereas, regardless of whether you mind my saying so, you, Braxiatel, seem on edge,” the Master said with an obscenely pleased grin. “I think your mood would improve a great deal if you simply followed your brother’s example. Brax, thou art sad; get thee a wife! Or a husband. Whichever is nearer to hand.”
Braxiatel rolled his eyes at the way his brother seemed to melt a bit at the Shakespere quote. The Master had always been cheap.
“Sadly Master, you’ve already been ensnared by my brother. Where else am I to find such a happy match?” Braxiatel’s dead-pan tone made the Doctor laugh, but he coughed, recovering himself.
“What about that young woman you brought to our wedding? What was her name? Roma—romama?”
“Oh yes,” the Master pretended to suddenly remember, “Romanadvorewundebar?”
“Romanadvoratrelundar was not my ‘date,’” Braxiatel corrected them hastily.
“Oh, then everything should be just fine!” the Doctor said.
“What?” Braxiatel set his mojito down suddenly.
“Well since both of us have been granted amnesty and the Empire has been officially recognized by Gallifrey now, we thought we might celebrate by opening a University. Really, it’s high time someone other than Gallifrey facilitated technological development in the universe.
“Your Romambo seemed interested in spending some time on Hestin, given that our new institution would, naturally, be free of some of the dogma and restrictions that plague Gallifreyan academic life. Young as she is, with that triple first, we thought we might offer her an associate professorship right off the bat.”
“Provided you don’t mind,” the Master cut in, looking politely unconcerned.
“But if she was only accompanying you as a friend, or a protégé, we’d feel within our rights to formally ask,” the Doctor finished.
Irving Braxiatel, who minded a great deal and had no intention of letting them know it, took a sullen sip of his mojito, momentarily dropping out of the technical conversation that arose from the mention of scientific studies banned on Gallifrey. Brax wished the universe, in all its vastness, had been large enough to contain his brother and the Master’s discrete parallel lives, rather than conspiring to throw them into each others' paths. It could, he thought as he watched the two of them fawn revoltingly over each other, each acting as though the other’s opinion on gravity-well engines was the most brilliant and sexually appealing thing he had ever heard, only end badly.
the end
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 05:08 pm (UTC)Really, truly adored this. Definitely something I will be reading again. And again. And again. :D *bookmarks*
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 07:17 pm (UTC)other things:
1. my favourite bit about this is still the ultra pandas. i don't know why, but they are just so good!
2. master's plan=v cunning.
3. dalek talk is always hilarious, and i love that they are tricked into revealing more plan! v cunning again, well done master, i like it when you do things well.
4. all th stuff about the doctor coming back and thinking, hurrah! now i can come back is much better, and it really feels as if he made the decision rather than just came back because the plot demanded it. also i love the bit with the scientists wanting to stay locked up, i think i've said that before, but i do, i love it muchly. because it's funny and it implies much that is not said about their relationship with him and with the master, and his with the master, and also the doctor not telling anyone he's engaged, but just being a dork about it. all this is excellent.
5. malt loaf is delicious.
6. nyssa loves science! i am very fond of nyssa, since listening to all her good audios.
7. good many page sex scene. particularly the weird bit with the collar, which is weird, but also i like that the master apologises for it again crazily and the doctor implies that he did kind of enjoy having his hand forced before, which makes chapter 6 less bad.
8. i like things that have superfluous amounts of braxiatel in them.
9. i long to hear a sexually appealing thought about gravity wells :P
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 07:58 pm (UTC)The Doctor finally admitting that he loved the Master was just so adorable, and the part with the Time Ring, taking it off the Master's finger and placing it on his own was so touching, and the Doctor's way of showing him that he meant all he'd said. Simply beautiful. :)
The interactions between Tegan and Nyassa were priceless, and Tegan noticing in her way how the two of them were together, that was just so funny. I loved when Five had his hand on the console, and the Master placed his hand over his, and that gorgeous little caress of the Master's knuckles, that was so sensual. Their sensual love making, wow, that was extremely steamy! I loved the parts with their mind play mixed in, that was just so amazing.
The end meeting with Brax was just so priceless, I loved how he called him John. He could see how happy they were together, and that just tore him apart. The fact that they wanted to start their own University and have Romana as one of the Professors was brilliant. :)
I loved the whole entire fic to bits! And I've saved it all to my favorites. Thanks so much for this, it was brilliant. :) I will be reading it from start to finish again. :)
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Date: 2010-04-27 08:08 pm (UTC)Good stuff:
- THE DALEKS NEED NO ONE :D
- Ultra-pandas!
- Brax! Not being Sir not appearing in this story anymore!
- Nyssa and Tegan getting much better endings than they do in canon.
- Declarations of love with lots of conditions. Because fanfic is too often about unconditional love, and this was sweet and right and IC.
- Roma—romama :DD
- Eighties Movie Night. Somehow I love the idea of getting to see all the movies of the decade you live in - including the ones that don't exist yet. It would be so surreal to see pop-culture develop in fast forward.
This chapter is like a big happy grin.
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Date: 2010-04-27 09:19 pm (UTC)2. Your suggestion, behbeh.
3. *sigh* Stupid Dalek talking.
4. I'm glad that /works/,
5. You tried to edit it out twice.
6. Did not know that!
7. Ah, didn't know you thought it worked well. Excellent. And he would hardly have gone along with it if he didn't.
8. I thought he /did/ get to be President, but perhaps he doesn't. :(
9. I am thinking of some well sexy ones. With all due gravity.
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Date: 2010-04-27 09:22 pm (UTC)Thanks so much for liking it so much! :D
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Date: 2010-04-27 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 10:34 pm (UTC)I like that as sort of a Dalek Breakup Statement. DALEKS DID NOT LOVE YOU ANYWAY!! DALEKS ARE CHANGING THE LOCKS!!
You and Katy: both big fans of ultrapandas!
In my mind Nyssa and Tegan are doing a bit of Nyssa/Tegan at this point.
Clearly if this were a fic about the sort of love that didn't need negotiated, we'd have been done chapters ago. :p And who was it who talked about how love without any conditions wasn't love? How it had to be predicated on/bounded by something to have any semantic value? I think it's valid to say Five doesn't not love him, though his affection is quite conditional--it's interesting to explore, anyway? I feel like often fic's in Master!pov, and, outside of emo!Ten times, there's not a lot of focus on the Doctor caring (despite, due to ALSO caring about other things, not really being as free to act on that or feel it as the Master is). It deserves being explored further than this?
The Doctor maybe makes a Lady Gaga joke? And maybe just can't remember her name.
Awwwwh. :3
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 11:15 pm (UTC)i wrote you something very, very self indulgent
Date: 2010-04-27 11:20 pm (UTC)Once upon a timeIn the year 5963.2 Rassilon era there weretwo men: a traveller who dreamed of nothing but travelling, and an Emperor who thought of nothing but ruling.many beings of all descriptions populating the galaxy, of whom two of the most important were an Emperor and a wandering do-gooder. One day the traveller lost his way, and found himself in the court of the Emperor. There was treated like a prince and given all manner of fine things by his generous host, until the time came for him to continue travelling. Then he found the doors of the palace barred to him, and saw it for the golden cage it was. (These events are out of sequence – does that matter?) “Are you not happy here?” the Emperor asked, his voice persuasive (and sensual) and his golden keys tucked securely his belt. “Why not stay with me forever?” But now the traveller saw the bars, and one night while the Emperorsleptwas distracted due to an unfair and, as it turned out, potentially life-threatening ploy he stole the golden TARDIS keys and flew. The vengeful Emperor pursued him across time and space, but the travellerhad vanishedwas a tricky bastard while the Emperor’s spies were largely incompetent fools. The Emperor returned to his kingdom alone, and when invaders came hesurrendered willinglywas taken by surprise, but still thought of a cunning plan that he would have effected had circumstances not presented a better alternative. Caged in his own cell, he waited, and when the traveller returned, the Emperor acknowledged the wrong he had done him. “I was happy here,” the traveller told him, “I will stay and rule with you, if you wish it.” “I was happy with you,” the Emperor replied. “If you wish it, I will travel with you.” (This is not how it was – there were certainly more Daleks). In the court of the Emperor there was much rejoicing, for both men were populardespite their faults. From then on, the doors were always left open, and they both livedhappily ever afterfor a long, but finite period, in which they were often happy. (They’d be a lot happier if there were fewer edits in this. I’d forgotten you were such a pedant). The end.Re: i wrote you something very, very self indulgent
Date: 2010-04-27 11:27 pm (UTC)Re: i wrote you something very, very self indulgent
Date: 2010-04-27 11:39 pm (UTC)Re: i wrote you something very, very self indulgent
Date: 2010-04-27 11:41 pm (UTC)Re: i wrote you something very, very self indulgent
Date: 2010-04-27 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 01:01 am (UTC)And then I read it and I was like :D :D :D by a factor of umpteen million gazillion!
Everything was awesome. The reunion, the reunion sex, the bickering, the sly little last line, Tegan! I loved Tegan. I loved that everyone was so unnerved by the Doctor and the Master getting together. No one can see the best of all possible worlds, even when it's playing footsie right in front of them...
But so yeah, bravo!
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Date: 2010-04-28 02:57 am (UTC)*basks*
Also, the last sentence is brilliant.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 03:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 03:24 am (UTC)Thank you, thank you for giving them such a wonderful happy ending! <3 <3 <3
*fangirls you*
Date: 2010-04-28 04:10 am (UTC)I love that Tegan said "gay married in space." Also AWWWWW a ring. Five is such a girl. The gossipy scientists never cease to amuse me.
Is Brax's name really Irving or did you make that up?
no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 09:07 am (UTC)