The Crane Wife: Chapter 6 of 8 (Part II)
Feb. 2nd, 2010 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_losficTitle: The Crane Wife
Chapter: Six (Part II): Eight-->this had to be cut in half and posted separately due to lj length limitations
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
x_los
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Five/Ainley!Master
Summary: In which the Doctor apologizes.
Beta:aralias--I'm posting this under f-lock for the moment because she hasn't quite endured it in full just yet. I'll make it public and cross-post it once it's been edited according to her beta.
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! Also, collar!sex in this one? If that's a turn-off for you?
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Part I
The Crane Wife
Chapter 6, Part II
***
The Master spent the next two black days discovering that hating the Doctor didn’t help. This crystallized absolutely in his mind when opening his bedroom door to a soft knock at a quarter past midnight revealed the man himself.
“Could I come in?” the Doctor asked, voice hushed.
He would have quite liked to slam the door in the Doctor’s face, preferably with a hearty laugh at his expense. By all rights he should have done. He should have ignored him, or punched him in the jaw, done anything but, with tight, suspicious eyes, step aside to allow the Doctor in. But he couldn’t help it. The Master’s advocates and detractors alike agreed that the man was as ruthlessly self-promoting as he was clever, but he was nevertheless, completely against his own best interest, upset by the Doctor’s wretchedly miserable expression. Loathing the Doctor, it seemed, was not quite enough to overcome the effects of adoring him.
“Well?” the Master asked curtly, shutting the door behind him. When he turned around the Doctor—who so rarely initiated physical contact—had lifted a hand to cup the Master’s cheek. He stepped close, and the Master, startled, had to look up at him to meet his gaze, unhappily reminded that the Doctor was a good deal taller than him.
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said, bending down to kiss him chastely, dropping his hand as he pulled back. “I wanted you to know how very sorry I am.”
“For what, precisely?” the Master asked, his eyes narrow. “Your previous display?”
“For everything.” The Doctor flicked his eyes away, uncomfortable. “I couldn’t leave things as they were. I—reacted poorly. No matter what you might’ve done, for my part, I behaved terribly.” He swallowed, turning his face back to the Master’s.
“Thank you. I too,” he cleared his throat in an embarrassed manner, “reacted poorly, as you put it. Now satisfy my curiosity. If we were to go to bed now what might you have to say to me afterwards? I would of course wish to calculate whether anything you might give me could possibly be worth the aftereffects.”
The Doctor winced. “Believe me, I regret saying what I did. There was no cause for me to be quite so—”
Anything the Doctor might say about his own behavior would imply that the Master had been weak enough to be hurt by it, and so the Master cut him off. “How precisely do you intend to repay your debt, Doctor?”
The Doctor grinned at the use of his name, which was nearly an endearment in the Master’s parlance. He took the Master’s hand and led him to the bed, sitting down and encouraging the Master to do the same beside him, kissing him almost in gratitude when he did.
“Sexual favors? How very predictable,” the Master mock-chided.
“Well, if I’m boring you—” the Doctor raised an inquisitive eyebrow, making to rise.
“I said nothing of the kind,” the Master corrected, pulling him back down. Neither did he say that he had missed the Doctor, or that if he had ever been confused as to which he needed more, the Doctor’s body or his affection and esteem, he was now settled on the point. If the Doctor demanded the Master never so much as touch him again, he’d agree in exchange for the Doctor’s assurance that he’d never leave, never remove the Master so entirely from the sphere of his regard. But the Doctor had come to him, and to apologize, no less, for events the Master had been almost ready (at the considerable sacrifice of his pride) to beg the Doctor’s forgiveness for. He must have missed the Master just as badly. The Master’s grin bordered on giddy stupidity, but he took no notice. “This is rather a consummation devoutly to be wished. As it happens, I have something specific in mind.”
The Doctor paused for a moment, surprised and delighted. “Did you read Shakespeare for me? Just because I mentioned him?”
The Master rolled his eyes. ‘Mentioned’ scarcely described the Doctor’s constant stream of references to the literature he’d grown up with. “I do a great many unusual and questionably reasonable things under your influence.”
The Doctor was still grinning widely. “But did you like it? What did you read?”
“Yes, several of the plays, and perhaps we might discuss it after I’m done taking my vengeance on you.” The man’s mayfly attention often needed forcibly dragged back to the subject at hand.
“Ah, yes, right, sorry,” the Doctor shook his head to clear it.
“If I may elaborate, we are going—” the Master paused to select the appropriate words, “to play a game. Consider my request a challenge.”
“Go on.” The Doctor’s interest was piqued.
“You’re an intolerable prattler everywhere but his room,” the Master murmured, leaning forward to drop a kiss on the Doctor’s obligingly raised neck. “You do your damndest to hold your tongue in bed. The reasons of course,” he stroked his hands along the Doctor’s arms, “are obvious. You’ve no intention of letting me enjoy your complete loss of self-possession. I’ve tolerated your evasions to a point, but I want to see that abandon, and you’re going to give me this in payment for your offenses. Start talking—whatever flits into your nubile little mind. I’m sure your conversation will grow ever more interesting as the night progresses.”
“Or?” The Doctor looked both uncomfortable and determined not to loose an inch of ground.
“Simple, my dear Doctor. Or I’ll stop, and you can crawl back to that cot you apparently prefer to my bed.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t I?” The Master raised an eyebrow, bluffing hard when he was desperate for a reconciliation. “I’ve been quite patient with you these last days—I believe I’ve proven that I’m capable of waiting. Unless of course you feel yourself inadequate to the task? I could make allowances for your weakness, I suppose, if you begged prettily enough.”
“Oh you—I’ve won awards for my prattling, I’ll have you know! Very well,” the Doctor huffed, “I accept!”
“Excellent,” the Master chuckled. “I was hoping you would. Begin now.”
The Doctor opened his mouth, “Doubt thou the stars are fire—” before he could finish the quatrain (he could spout Shakespeare all night, if necessary, and would do before he lost), the Master was kissing him, completely throwing him off his flow, the cheating—and lifting his head, breaking the kiss, stroking the Doctor’s arms again as the Doctor stared up at him, dazed.
“Well?” the Master smirked.
“That’s nice,” the Doctor said automatically of the caresses, causing the Master to chuckle at his having managed to stun the Doctor into banality, which in turn caused the Doctor to blush. He squirmed, trying to guide the Master’s hands over to his shirt buttons.
“Impatient, Doctor?”
“Well, yes, actually,” the Doctor murmured, his blush intensifying. “It’s been two days. Which isn’t a long time in the general scope of things, obviously, but—”
The Master laughed at him. “My poor neglected Doctor, how you must have suffered. Ask.”
“What?”
“You’re supposed to be letting me hear you, so ask. Command, beg, if you like, as long as you keep talking.”
“Please,” the Doctor tried, and the Master only raised an eyebrow. “Please, Master, would you unbutton my shirt?” he corrected himself, feeling ridiculous.
“It’s a beginning, I suppose,” the Master admitted as he slipped the buttons free and pushed open the shirt. He leant to catch the Doctor’s nipple in his teeth. How does it feel? Go on—no, out loud, he chastised when the Doctor tried to respond in the comfortable shared silence of their minds.
“Sharp,” he gasped as the Master bit harder, rolling his other nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “Hard. I always think you’re going to break me. But sometimes I think I almost wouldn’t mind.”
Do go on. The Doctor was picking this up faster and better than the Master could have hoped - he felt rather proud of him. He was inexperienced, happily, and thus the Master’s to guide through a whole collection of first times, but he was by no means ungifted in these matters. This? He dragged his hand along the waistband of the Doctor’s trousers.
“Like you’re savoring it, or enjoying dragging it out, like you’re,” the Doctor hesitated, “amusing yourself with me.”
Do you mind?
“No,” he muttered, lifting a hand to thread his fingers in the Master’s hair. “No, I don’t think I do. G-good,” he swallowed as the Master cupped his erection through his trousers. “Really—” he cast about randomly for something else to say, seizing on a passing thought, “I love it when you kiss me while you—mmph,” the Master had lunged forward on his suggestion, and when he slipped away he barely caught the Doctor whispering, “Faster.”
“Louder,” the Master countered.
“Go faster.” The Doctor’s cheeks were hot: he didn’t know whether with embarrassment or arousal. “I want you.”
“Do you?” the Master asked as he toyed with the fastening of the Doctor’s trousers, voice husky. “I’m not entirely convinced. What precisely do you want?”
“You,” the Doctor murmured, looking up at him, “I want you inside me.”
“And how does that regrettable lack of fulfillment,” the Master paused to steal a kiss, fingers deftly slipping the fastenings loose, “feel?”
“Like—like being a child waiting for holidays—absolute torture,” the Doctor started and stuttered as cold air and cool fingers brushed against his cock. “As if my whole body’s tense with anticipation. It obsesses me, it’s--you’re all I can think about, all I want. You’re the entirety of the universe, then. You’re all that exists for me. Master.”
“As it should be,” the Master muttered, but his mouth was dry. He hadn’t expected this strategy; that he should be brought to his knees by sweetness rather than filth was entirely unanticipated, entirely like the Doctor. “It’s a wonder I ever condescend to fuck you, when you’re so blessedly focused beforehand.” He hurried the Doctor out of his trousers.
The Doctor squirmed in his hold, hastening the disrobing process along. “But you love it,” he countered. “That’s the best part—well, one of the best parts. The intent look on your face, the almost desperate snap of your hips. The way your mind shudders and settles. Few things as provocative as being desired, but I find being so enjoyed to be even better. The way you look at me, it’s,” he smiled weakly, “over-mastering.”
“Go on,” the Master coaxed, digging in the drawer for lubricant. He was slightly self-conscious about any reference to his infatuation, but taken with how arousing the Doctor found his attention. “Turn around. On your hands and knees.”
The Doctor complied, and in a moment continued without having to be coaxed into it. “It’s always a trial, waiting when I feel so ready, so impatient for you to just—” He gasped as the Master slid a slick finger around the rim of his anus, pressing lightly, flicking his fingertips back around in a neat, exquisite, torturous circumnavigation. “God, Master, just—” he lost the thought in another gasp as the Master’s finger slipped inside him.
“At first it—hurts-” Two more fingers slid in suddenly, pressing, stretching, something possessive in the sure way they played him. “That can’t be denied. But I almost—no I do enjoy the pain.” The Master tapped his thigh and the Doctor automatically spread his legs farther apart for him, biting his lip as when the Master forced the broad head of his cock past the tight ring of muscle, breathing quickly as a series of quick, short thrusts brought the Master fully in. Sweet and eager, rewarding his regular thrusts by yielding himself up to him, clinging to him, all succulent pressure, delicious twitches. The Master smiled ruefully: the Doctor’s body, at least, knew how it felt.
The Doctor dropped his head, mouth open, panting. “Then it feels strange,” his breath strained, his words coming after hard spaces, at sharp angles. “Foreign, invasive and unqualifiable. But a curious sort of tension builds, and it begins to be—perfect. You’re so— You find your rhythm, and the world gets terribly narrow. You seem to know exactly when I need more, I don’t know whether it’s telepathy or serendipity. You’re all I can see, this is all I care about—you could fuck me forever. I wish you would.”
And that terrified him almost more than slavery confined him. The latter could only ever be temporary, could only touch his body, and he’d known misadventure and peril too intimately to be more than quite indignant at his current predicament. But he’d never known an affection that passed into crippling need. He had no idea how to handle anything closer to the hearts than extreme fondness. He couldn’t even think of that fear now – he was too occupied to think of anything but what he was doing. His hips desperately rose to meet the other man’s, his eyes were wide and lost, his mind would focus on nothing but its entwinement with the Master’s.
The Master swallowed, wanting to kiss the Doctor to reward him for the praise, but wanting still more to hear him continue with his left-handed declaration. He’d known the Doctor had been lying when he claimed not to care for him, of course he’d known, but now the Doctor’s every word quelled another of the vicious doubts his decidedly cool reception of the Master’s proposal had aroused.
“That’s—ah—lovely,” the Doctor panted, starring ahead of him at the wall with glazed eyes, the hands he used to support himself shaking, “really—oh—Master.” He folded, dropping down to his elbows, arse high, his back a long, lovely slide of pale skin. The Master ran a hand down it, infinitely satisfied, then dug his fingers into the Doctor’s hips, holding him still as he delivered a series of harder, deeper thrusts.
“Again,” the Master murmured, dazzled by the sheen of the Doctor’s back, the way he rocked into the Master’s thrusts, seemed desperate to impale himself on the Master’s cock, the filthy way he moaned. “Say it again.”
“Master,” Increasingly heated, the Doctor slammed his hips back, vigorous and obliging, as though the Master’s cock were a toy he were fucking himself with.
“Two days and you’re gagging for it. Even if I’d never bought you, you’d still belong to me,” the Master hissed appreciatively, his grin broadening wickedly when the Doctor gasped with a sudden, unexpected rush of arousal at the accusation. “You’re mine,” he pressed, and the Doctor made a noise that was almost a mewl. “Aren’t you? You need this, don’t you? Tell me you need me.” After a moment’s unsatisfactory silence the Master drew almost entirely out and gave him a punishing thrust.
“Ah! Yes,” the Doctor admitted. “Yes,” he repeated a touch sulkily. “Keep going. Please.”
“Earn it, Doctor.”
In accordance with their game, the Doctor did. He kept talking, albeit less eloquently than before. He let the noises he usually smothered burst out—short with shock, high with pleasure, inarticulate except for the luxuriant way the Master’s name lolled thick in his mouth, the way it emerged at turns long, breathy, pouty, reverent. The Master came shaking, his eyes rolling back. When he could breathe properly again he pulled the Doctor off his knees and back into his lap, the Master still inside him. He let the Doctor’s head roll back against his shoulder as he stroked his cock, pushing him into an orgasm that left him weak and trembling in the Master’s arms. The Doctor breathed heavily, trying to recover himself, and the Master tenderly bit the junction of his neck and shoulder before lowering him to the bed and climbing down after him.
“Thank you,” the Doctor, said quietly after a moment, facing away. “You’ve been—you’ve been so good to me, in this respect. I’ve appreciated that. I don’t want you to think I haven’t.”
The Master, in a post-coital daze, was puzzled by his tone, but not insensible of the compliment. He lazily stroked the Doctor’s side with what energy he could muster. “You’re quite welcome. Always.”
The Doctor turned to face him. He studied the Master as if he were memorizing his face. The Master gave him an inquiring look, and he shook his head as if to say it was nothing. “Once upon a time,” he began with faux-solemnity and the Master recognized the opening from a conversation of theirs the previous week—he’d been amazed that Earth fairy tales could exist in such an imprecise chronology.
“A bedtime story?” the Master chuckled.
The Doctor smiled, half playful, half wistful. “If you like.”
The Master sighed at the Doctor’s eccentricity with fond tolerance. “Proceed then, if you must.”
“Nearly every tribe on earth had this story, or some version of it. A farmer catches sight of woman—if she’s a woman, and not a tennin, or a valkyrie, a sky spirit of some sort—bathing in a lake. He’s captivated by her, for some reason or another. He wants, desperately, to possess her. So desperately that what happens next is almost excusable, in a way, because he can’t help himself.”
“Some reason or other?” the Master teased. “Presumably she’s unearthly, exquisite beyond anything the poor rustic has ever known.”
“Perhaps,” the Doctor said uncomfortably.
“What happens next?” the Master raised an eyebrow, stroking his arm.
The Doctor flinched under the touch, but so slightly the Master himself couldn’t feel it. “The farmer sees a garment hanging from the tree branch—she’s put it there for safe-keeping whilst she bathes. It’s a magical garment, which allows her to transform into a creature more ethereal than the flesh she’s washing. Perhaps it’s a fox skin, and she’s a kitsune with seven red tails, but more often—almost always, in fact—it’s a cloak of feathers. She’s a creature of flight.
“This garment is organic—it’s a part of her body, her birthright, her nature. This is his only opportunity, and he takes it. The woman emerges, and she stands perplexed, wet and shivering, hideously vulnerable in her human skin. ‘Where is my cloak,’ she asks him. ‘What have you done with what’s mine?’
“He doesn’t tell her. She’s grounded there. She can’t fly away, can’t return home. Imagine his rough hands on her new skin, which has hardly seen the light, and has never known touch. He doesn’t want to give her up, and he doesn’t realize the cruelty of what he’s doing. He’s like a child. They’re both innocent, in a way.
“In most of the stories they marry, and she bears his children. One of them has her father’s boldness, and his love. This child says, ‘Mother, why do you cry each night when father is asleep?’ And though she hasn’t spoken of it for years, the mother tells her daughter that she is weeping for her cloak, her skin. For the world she’s lost. The child finds the cloak and brings it to her, because she can’t stand to see her mother cry. And though the woman cries bitterly at leaving her sons and daughters, and even their father, she immediately takes the cloak and disappears forever, returning to wherever she came from. She cares for them, but that’s simply what she is.”
All the time the Doctor spun out his story, the Master remained quiet, unmoving. “How selfish of her,” he murmured in the silence at the end.
“Master,” the Doctor sighed, “how could any vow I might give you mean anything to you, if it wasn’t given freely?”
“If I gave you your liberty you might never return. That is a risk I will not take,” the Master admitted, softly. “Don’t ask it of me.” He would give the Doctor anything else, if the Doctor would let him. If he would have it.
The Doctor sighed, as though he were giving up on something or someone. “Then I won’t.”
The Master blinked, disbelieving. A smile emerged tentatively, then stretched across his face. “You can’t mean it. Surely you haven’t come to your senses?”
“Oh, I mean every word I say,” the Doctor insisted, though, cleverer than Alice, he knew that to say what he meant was a different matter entirely. He smiled too, but there was something tight in it. “If that’s how you feel, well, consider the question closed. I’ll never bring it up again.”
Stunned, bewildered, hardly daring to believe his luck, the Master simply looked at him until the Doctor leaned forward to kiss him soundly.
“Rest,” the Doctor suggested, and though the night was too hot for it they slept entangled.
***
In the morning the Doctor was gone, but where he’d lain was still warm, and so the Master supposed he’d only just scrambled off to work. He smiled indulgently at the Doctor’s preoccupation with his latest intellectual endeavor—surely he might have guessed that the Master would have encouraged him to stay in today.
A quick command to the building’s main computer brought up an image of the lab. There, the Doctor was rattling around a harried Professor Linme, dashing in circles about him as he collected supplies, talking the poor man’s ear off. The Master chuckled when the Doctor, whirling to gesture, almost tripped over himself, then recovered with a smile. Shaking his head, he broke the connection and began to dress. He headed into his offices whistling through a grin, to the infinite relief of his staff, who’d borne the brunt of his considerable irritation over the last days.
He worked briskly through the morning, and was just considering calling the Doctor in for lunch when three distinct security claxons went off simultaneously. He frowned, pushing his chair back from the desk, and strode quickly out of his personal office and into the command center.
“Shut off that intolerable noise. What’s going on?”
A clerk raised her small, worried face from the monitors. “We don’t know sir. It appears to be a wall-breach, registering in three sections at once, but I don’t see how it can be—”
“Logistics do not concern me at the present moment, Miss Abend. From where precisely do the signals arise?”
“All at the far eastern end of the Palace, sir. Hydroponics, a waste chute on the lower level, and,” she avoided his eyes, “the central laboratory, your Excellency.”
The Master’s eyes widened for only a moment, and he said nothing.
“They have excellent security compartments,” the clerk volunteered hesitantly.
“Thank you, Miss Abend, that will be all,” the Master said curtly, cutting his subordinate’s expression of sympathy short. In the event of a crisis the Doctor could be counted on to wander straight into trouble. Granted he was usually quite capable of extricating himself from it, but still—
“My lord,” a major or the guard arrived, short of breath, “communications sent me. They say they’ve lost control of the system, sir.”
“What—” the Master began, but a canned, metallic voice blared from the speaker grill in the ceiling, drowning him out.
“SURRENDER!” the voice demanded. “SURRENDER TO THE DALEKS!”
The Master paled. He was suddenly far more concerned for his own safety, that of his palace, and the Doctor, who might already have fallen victim to what appeared to be an invasion.
***
The guns the Master issued his security squadrons were of his own design, and capable, via a randomized electric pulse, of frying a Dalek’s central nervous system, entirely immobilizing it on the spot. Once he’d flicked back the safety, the caged electricity made it vibrate in the Master’s grip, numbing his hand even through his gloves. He’d chosen prudence over bravery in light of the severity of the threat, and walked escorted by a full battalion, in the middle of the group in case the Daleks suddenly rounded any corners.
The Master had assumed the Daleks would still be licking their wounds after their last Movellan debacle, which he estimated had eliminated a third of their fleet. That meddlesome species’ preoccupation with the Movellan wars was one of the factors that had led him to found his empire in this relatively calm temporal period. He was surprised that they’d bothered to attack in numbers small enough to have slipped through his space-lanes and planetary security nets without detection.
He could only remember having named the species once in the Doctor’s presence. The Doctor had registered no special recognition, had made no comment. It was possible, given the vastness of the universe, that his wanderings had never brought him in contact with them. The Doctor might not realize the severity of the threat they represented, might get himself killed attempting to talk his way around them. He might not know that the Daleks were well aware of how to kill a Time Lord permanently. Losing the Doctor’s current regeneration, of which the Master was very fond, would be undoubtedly painful, but losing the Doctor altogether hardly bore thinking about.
“Sir—bodies,” a private called back to him from the front. “It’s the East-wing’s security division, sir. Looks like they were intercepted trying to reach this section’s cache point to pick up their anti-Daleks. Not a mark on ‘em, but they’re all—” the private broke off. “They’re still warm, sir.”
“Then we’re close,” the Master said shortly, considering the corridors the intruders might’ve gone down from here, the vulnerable points in this section. To attack this particular section of the palace, and in such small numbers…Perhaps this wasn’t an invasion, but rather a reconnaissance mission to steal his superior technology, to copy his research databases. In which case, they would have headed straight for the Doctor. “They’re slow-moving,” the Master said, craning his neck to peer down an adjacent corridor. “They can’t have gone far. Proceed towards the main laboratory.”
Static cackled over the speaker systems, and screeching chatter erupted at irregular bursts—the Daleks transmission signals were leaking into the system they’d hacked, causing interference with the delicate communications equipment. Snatches of threats and instructions taunted him with their near-intelligibility, frustratingly present but signifying nothing.
Troops rushed into the laboratory ahead of him, swept the area and shouted back the all-clear. The Master crossed the threshold and looked for himself. Everything appeared well-ordered. There was no sign of anything unusual, let alone a hostile force.
The hairs on the back of his neck were raised, the Master could almost taste that something was wrong. Perhaps he’d misjudged what the Daleks had been after, or—perhaps he’d only thought what he’d been deliberately led to believe.
A nasty, sharp little thought sparked like a flint in the back of his brain. No.
The major of the security division over-rode the door release protecting the scientists. Professor Linme came sputtering out first, blinking, lighting on the Master and rushing over to him.
“We heard the sirens and sealed the shelter before they could reach here. I tried to stop the Doctor from going, but you know what he’s—”
The Master whirled, striding out of the room, away from them all, walking quickly back to the heap of bodies on the floor. Some of his security staff trailed after him, clueless as to what he was doing, but loyal. He hardly noticed them. Reaching the bodies, the Master knelt down, pressed his fingers to the man’s neck, and waited. There, so sluggish and soft as to be nearly undetectable, was a living man’s pulse.
The Master breathed deeply, scenting the air. Now that he was searching for it, he could detect a slight acridity, which he might’ve attributed to Dalek energy weapons if it weren’t noticeably stronger just here, drifting down from the ceiling vent directly above him. The corridor was near enough to this floor’s cache to make it seem as if the guards might’ve been headed there in response to an emergency, but every day the East-wing division came through it—perhaps an hour ago—whilst making its rounds. The corridor was so infrequently used by the household that no one would accidentally stumble upon a heap of bodies and alert any other security personnel ahead of schedule.
No system was so cleverly devised that it couldn’t be hacked into by a clever enough man. Such a man could avoid being seen entirely, if he traveled through secret passages that had been revealed to him in a thoughtless moment of passion and fury. Sound could be pre-recorded, sampled from news reports, from the humming background noise of signals crossing the universe. Fast-acting, temporary nerve toxin could be found or crafted. Plans could be made by the determined, by the achingly bright. Feathered cloaks, balled up in cabinets, secreted away in old dresser doors, could slip out, pooling at your feet. Your eyes would widen, but you wouldn’t see anything but those feathers, anything but flight.
The Master rose to his feet with graceless haste, and, with a snarl, began to run back towards his rooms, trailed at a little distance by his bemused guard. He ripped open the door, crashing into the room, running through it. A black lacquer box lay splayed open on their bed, its contents scattered messily as though they had been dumped out. In it, he had kept all his keys, sealed by a mathematical logarithm puzzle even a genius couldn’t parse and break without having the puzzle’s rules explained to him beforehand. And even then it would have taken time—all the time it would have taken the Master to come tearing across the length of the palace to the Doctor’s defense would only just suffice, if the puzzle were new to him. The Master would have to care for him enough to unthinkingly pelt across the palace at the hint of a threat to his safety, but then that was as predictable as the guards’ daily rotation.
The Master noted this in an instant, and then he was throwing open the always-locked doors of the wardrobe that was his TARDIS, only just in time to hear the last, fading echoes of a dematerialization.
He sank to his knees, white and open mouthed. A guard scuttled in after him, breathless. “Sir—what—”
“Leave,” the Master whispered. Frightened by his unflappable Emperor’s tone, the first guard to reach him did so, shutting the bedroom doors behind him and warning off the other pursuers.
The Master pressed at his memories of last night—I mean everything I say, an almost hypnotic suggestion to rest. Surely he’d have wanted to ask the Doctor why he’d suddenly decided to be reasonable? He hadn’t even questioned it. Spilling out with the recollection came the barely-noticeable pain of well-stitched sutures. While he’d been inside the Doctor, the Doctor had been inside him. While he’d been thinking of nothing but the moment and their reconciliation, the Doctor had been delicately picking at his brain with all the skill the Master had taught him (you’re all I can think about), clearing his tracks as he moved—the location of his TARDIS, how to operate the puzzle box, a tweak to the Master’s suggestibility, and rest, my dear. When he’d said ‘I wish you could fuck me forever,’ he’d meant ‘this is the last time you’ll ever touch me’. ‘I’ll never ask to leave you again’ had been goodbye.
The Master would make sure that vicious little bastard rued the day he’d run from him if it was the last thing he ever did.
***
The Doctor leaned back against his console, hands jammed in his pockets, head down. He stared at the tip of his right plimsole, mind blank. “Home, sweet home,” he said in a listless tone. “Good to see you again, old girl,” he murmured with a touch with more feeling, giving her console casing a fond pat. With a long, outward sigh he straightened up, took off his lab coat and threw it carelessly in the direction of the coat rack. Trailing his fingertips along the console and the walls, he headed deeper into his TARDIS.
Chapter: Six (Part II): Eight-->this had to be cut in half and posted separately due to lj length limitations
Author:
x_losRating: NC-17
Pairing: Five/Ainley!Master
Summary: In which the Doctor apologizes.
Beta:
aralias--I'm posting this under f-lock for the moment because she hasn't quite endured it in full just yet. I'll make it public and cross-post it once it's been edited according to her beta.A/N: Remember that
best_enemies Cliche Challenge forever ago? This was started under its auspices. Slave!fic cliche ahoy! Also, collar!sex in this one? If that's a turn-off for you?Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Part I
The Crane Wife
Chapter 6, Part II
***
The Master spent the next two black days discovering that hating the Doctor didn’t help. This crystallized absolutely in his mind when opening his bedroom door to a soft knock at a quarter past midnight revealed the man himself.
“Could I come in?” the Doctor asked, voice hushed.
He would have quite liked to slam the door in the Doctor’s face, preferably with a hearty laugh at his expense. By all rights he should have done. He should have ignored him, or punched him in the jaw, done anything but, with tight, suspicious eyes, step aside to allow the Doctor in. But he couldn’t help it. The Master’s advocates and detractors alike agreed that the man was as ruthlessly self-promoting as he was clever, but he was nevertheless, completely against his own best interest, upset by the Doctor’s wretchedly miserable expression. Loathing the Doctor, it seemed, was not quite enough to overcome the effects of adoring him.
“Well?” the Master asked curtly, shutting the door behind him. When he turned around the Doctor—who so rarely initiated physical contact—had lifted a hand to cup the Master’s cheek. He stepped close, and the Master, startled, had to look up at him to meet his gaze, unhappily reminded that the Doctor was a good deal taller than him.
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said, bending down to kiss him chastely, dropping his hand as he pulled back. “I wanted you to know how very sorry I am.”
“For what, precisely?” the Master asked, his eyes narrow. “Your previous display?”
“For everything.” The Doctor flicked his eyes away, uncomfortable. “I couldn’t leave things as they were. I—reacted poorly. No matter what you might’ve done, for my part, I behaved terribly.” He swallowed, turning his face back to the Master’s.
“Thank you. I too,” he cleared his throat in an embarrassed manner, “reacted poorly, as you put it. Now satisfy my curiosity. If we were to go to bed now what might you have to say to me afterwards? I would of course wish to calculate whether anything you might give me could possibly be worth the aftereffects.”
The Doctor winced. “Believe me, I regret saying what I did. There was no cause for me to be quite so—”
Anything the Doctor might say about his own behavior would imply that the Master had been weak enough to be hurt by it, and so the Master cut him off. “How precisely do you intend to repay your debt, Doctor?”
The Doctor grinned at the use of his name, which was nearly an endearment in the Master’s parlance. He took the Master’s hand and led him to the bed, sitting down and encouraging the Master to do the same beside him, kissing him almost in gratitude when he did.
“Sexual favors? How very predictable,” the Master mock-chided.
“Well, if I’m boring you—” the Doctor raised an inquisitive eyebrow, making to rise.
“I said nothing of the kind,” the Master corrected, pulling him back down. Neither did he say that he had missed the Doctor, or that if he had ever been confused as to which he needed more, the Doctor’s body or his affection and esteem, he was now settled on the point. If the Doctor demanded the Master never so much as touch him again, he’d agree in exchange for the Doctor’s assurance that he’d never leave, never remove the Master so entirely from the sphere of his regard. But the Doctor had come to him, and to apologize, no less, for events the Master had been almost ready (at the considerable sacrifice of his pride) to beg the Doctor’s forgiveness for. He must have missed the Master just as badly. The Master’s grin bordered on giddy stupidity, but he took no notice. “This is rather a consummation devoutly to be wished. As it happens, I have something specific in mind.”
The Doctor paused for a moment, surprised and delighted. “Did you read Shakespeare for me? Just because I mentioned him?”
The Master rolled his eyes. ‘Mentioned’ scarcely described the Doctor’s constant stream of references to the literature he’d grown up with. “I do a great many unusual and questionably reasonable things under your influence.”
The Doctor was still grinning widely. “But did you like it? What did you read?”
“Yes, several of the plays, and perhaps we might discuss it after I’m done taking my vengeance on you.” The man’s mayfly attention often needed forcibly dragged back to the subject at hand.
“Ah, yes, right, sorry,” the Doctor shook his head to clear it.
“If I may elaborate, we are going—” the Master paused to select the appropriate words, “to play a game. Consider my request a challenge.”
“Go on.” The Doctor’s interest was piqued.
“You’re an intolerable prattler everywhere but his room,” the Master murmured, leaning forward to drop a kiss on the Doctor’s obligingly raised neck. “You do your damndest to hold your tongue in bed. The reasons of course,” he stroked his hands along the Doctor’s arms, “are obvious. You’ve no intention of letting me enjoy your complete loss of self-possession. I’ve tolerated your evasions to a point, but I want to see that abandon, and you’re going to give me this in payment for your offenses. Start talking—whatever flits into your nubile little mind. I’m sure your conversation will grow ever more interesting as the night progresses.”
“Or?” The Doctor looked both uncomfortable and determined not to loose an inch of ground.
“Simple, my dear Doctor. Or I’ll stop, and you can crawl back to that cot you apparently prefer to my bed.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t I?” The Master raised an eyebrow, bluffing hard when he was desperate for a reconciliation. “I’ve been quite patient with you these last days—I believe I’ve proven that I’m capable of waiting. Unless of course you feel yourself inadequate to the task? I could make allowances for your weakness, I suppose, if you begged prettily enough.”
“Oh you—I’ve won awards for my prattling, I’ll have you know! Very well,” the Doctor huffed, “I accept!”
“Excellent,” the Master chuckled. “I was hoping you would. Begin now.”
The Doctor opened his mouth, “Doubt thou the stars are fire—” before he could finish the quatrain (he could spout Shakespeare all night, if necessary, and would do before he lost), the Master was kissing him, completely throwing him off his flow, the cheating—and lifting his head, breaking the kiss, stroking the Doctor’s arms again as the Doctor stared up at him, dazed.
“Well?” the Master smirked.
“That’s nice,” the Doctor said automatically of the caresses, causing the Master to chuckle at his having managed to stun the Doctor into banality, which in turn caused the Doctor to blush. He squirmed, trying to guide the Master’s hands over to his shirt buttons.
“Impatient, Doctor?”
“Well, yes, actually,” the Doctor murmured, his blush intensifying. “It’s been two days. Which isn’t a long time in the general scope of things, obviously, but—”
The Master laughed at him. “My poor neglected Doctor, how you must have suffered. Ask.”
“What?”
“You’re supposed to be letting me hear you, so ask. Command, beg, if you like, as long as you keep talking.”
“Please,” the Doctor tried, and the Master only raised an eyebrow. “Please, Master, would you unbutton my shirt?” he corrected himself, feeling ridiculous.
“It’s a beginning, I suppose,” the Master admitted as he slipped the buttons free and pushed open the shirt. He leant to catch the Doctor’s nipple in his teeth. How does it feel? Go on—no, out loud, he chastised when the Doctor tried to respond in the comfortable shared silence of their minds.
“Sharp,” he gasped as the Master bit harder, rolling his other nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “Hard. I always think you’re going to break me. But sometimes I think I almost wouldn’t mind.”
Do go on. The Doctor was picking this up faster and better than the Master could have hoped - he felt rather proud of him. He was inexperienced, happily, and thus the Master’s to guide through a whole collection of first times, but he was by no means ungifted in these matters. This? He dragged his hand along the waistband of the Doctor’s trousers.
“Like you’re savoring it, or enjoying dragging it out, like you’re,” the Doctor hesitated, “amusing yourself with me.”
Do you mind?
“No,” he muttered, lifting a hand to thread his fingers in the Master’s hair. “No, I don’t think I do. G-good,” he swallowed as the Master cupped his erection through his trousers. “Really—” he cast about randomly for something else to say, seizing on a passing thought, “I love it when you kiss me while you—mmph,” the Master had lunged forward on his suggestion, and when he slipped away he barely caught the Doctor whispering, “Faster.”
“Louder,” the Master countered.
“Go faster.” The Doctor’s cheeks were hot: he didn’t know whether with embarrassment or arousal. “I want you.”
“Do you?” the Master asked as he toyed with the fastening of the Doctor’s trousers, voice husky. “I’m not entirely convinced. What precisely do you want?”
“You,” the Doctor murmured, looking up at him, “I want you inside me.”
“And how does that regrettable lack of fulfillment,” the Master paused to steal a kiss, fingers deftly slipping the fastenings loose, “feel?”
“Like—like being a child waiting for holidays—absolute torture,” the Doctor started and stuttered as cold air and cool fingers brushed against his cock. “As if my whole body’s tense with anticipation. It obsesses me, it’s--you’re all I can think about, all I want. You’re the entirety of the universe, then. You’re all that exists for me. Master.”
“As it should be,” the Master muttered, but his mouth was dry. He hadn’t expected this strategy; that he should be brought to his knees by sweetness rather than filth was entirely unanticipated, entirely like the Doctor. “It’s a wonder I ever condescend to fuck you, when you’re so blessedly focused beforehand.” He hurried the Doctor out of his trousers.
The Doctor squirmed in his hold, hastening the disrobing process along. “But you love it,” he countered. “That’s the best part—well, one of the best parts. The intent look on your face, the almost desperate snap of your hips. The way your mind shudders and settles. Few things as provocative as being desired, but I find being so enjoyed to be even better. The way you look at me, it’s,” he smiled weakly, “over-mastering.”
“Go on,” the Master coaxed, digging in the drawer for lubricant. He was slightly self-conscious about any reference to his infatuation, but taken with how arousing the Doctor found his attention. “Turn around. On your hands and knees.”
The Doctor complied, and in a moment continued without having to be coaxed into it. “It’s always a trial, waiting when I feel so ready, so impatient for you to just—” He gasped as the Master slid a slick finger around the rim of his anus, pressing lightly, flicking his fingertips back around in a neat, exquisite, torturous circumnavigation. “God, Master, just—” he lost the thought in another gasp as the Master’s finger slipped inside him.
“At first it—hurts-” Two more fingers slid in suddenly, pressing, stretching, something possessive in the sure way they played him. “That can’t be denied. But I almost—no I do enjoy the pain.” The Master tapped his thigh and the Doctor automatically spread his legs farther apart for him, biting his lip as when the Master forced the broad head of his cock past the tight ring of muscle, breathing quickly as a series of quick, short thrusts brought the Master fully in. Sweet and eager, rewarding his regular thrusts by yielding himself up to him, clinging to him, all succulent pressure, delicious twitches. The Master smiled ruefully: the Doctor’s body, at least, knew how it felt.
The Doctor dropped his head, mouth open, panting. “Then it feels strange,” his breath strained, his words coming after hard spaces, at sharp angles. “Foreign, invasive and unqualifiable. But a curious sort of tension builds, and it begins to be—perfect. You’re so— You find your rhythm, and the world gets terribly narrow. You seem to know exactly when I need more, I don’t know whether it’s telepathy or serendipity. You’re all I can see, this is all I care about—you could fuck me forever. I wish you would.”
And that terrified him almost more than slavery confined him. The latter could only ever be temporary, could only touch his body, and he’d known misadventure and peril too intimately to be more than quite indignant at his current predicament. But he’d never known an affection that passed into crippling need. He had no idea how to handle anything closer to the hearts than extreme fondness. He couldn’t even think of that fear now – he was too occupied to think of anything but what he was doing. His hips desperately rose to meet the other man’s, his eyes were wide and lost, his mind would focus on nothing but its entwinement with the Master’s.
The Master swallowed, wanting to kiss the Doctor to reward him for the praise, but wanting still more to hear him continue with his left-handed declaration. He’d known the Doctor had been lying when he claimed not to care for him, of course he’d known, but now the Doctor’s every word quelled another of the vicious doubts his decidedly cool reception of the Master’s proposal had aroused.
“That’s—ah—lovely,” the Doctor panted, starring ahead of him at the wall with glazed eyes, the hands he used to support himself shaking, “really—oh—Master.” He folded, dropping down to his elbows, arse high, his back a long, lovely slide of pale skin. The Master ran a hand down it, infinitely satisfied, then dug his fingers into the Doctor’s hips, holding him still as he delivered a series of harder, deeper thrusts.
“Again,” the Master murmured, dazzled by the sheen of the Doctor’s back, the way he rocked into the Master’s thrusts, seemed desperate to impale himself on the Master’s cock, the filthy way he moaned. “Say it again.”
“Master,” Increasingly heated, the Doctor slammed his hips back, vigorous and obliging, as though the Master’s cock were a toy he were fucking himself with.
“Two days and you’re gagging for it. Even if I’d never bought you, you’d still belong to me,” the Master hissed appreciatively, his grin broadening wickedly when the Doctor gasped with a sudden, unexpected rush of arousal at the accusation. “You’re mine,” he pressed, and the Doctor made a noise that was almost a mewl. “Aren’t you? You need this, don’t you? Tell me you need me.” After a moment’s unsatisfactory silence the Master drew almost entirely out and gave him a punishing thrust.
“Ah! Yes,” the Doctor admitted. “Yes,” he repeated a touch sulkily. “Keep going. Please.”
“Earn it, Doctor.”
In accordance with their game, the Doctor did. He kept talking, albeit less eloquently than before. He let the noises he usually smothered burst out—short with shock, high with pleasure, inarticulate except for the luxuriant way the Master’s name lolled thick in his mouth, the way it emerged at turns long, breathy, pouty, reverent. The Master came shaking, his eyes rolling back. When he could breathe properly again he pulled the Doctor off his knees and back into his lap, the Master still inside him. He let the Doctor’s head roll back against his shoulder as he stroked his cock, pushing him into an orgasm that left him weak and trembling in the Master’s arms. The Doctor breathed heavily, trying to recover himself, and the Master tenderly bit the junction of his neck and shoulder before lowering him to the bed and climbing down after him.
“Thank you,” the Doctor, said quietly after a moment, facing away. “You’ve been—you’ve been so good to me, in this respect. I’ve appreciated that. I don’t want you to think I haven’t.”
The Master, in a post-coital daze, was puzzled by his tone, but not insensible of the compliment. He lazily stroked the Doctor’s side with what energy he could muster. “You’re quite welcome. Always.”
The Doctor turned to face him. He studied the Master as if he were memorizing his face. The Master gave him an inquiring look, and he shook his head as if to say it was nothing. “Once upon a time,” he began with faux-solemnity and the Master recognized the opening from a conversation of theirs the previous week—he’d been amazed that Earth fairy tales could exist in such an imprecise chronology.
“A bedtime story?” the Master chuckled.
The Doctor smiled, half playful, half wistful. “If you like.”
The Master sighed at the Doctor’s eccentricity with fond tolerance. “Proceed then, if you must.”
“Nearly every tribe on earth had this story, or some version of it. A farmer catches sight of woman—if she’s a woman, and not a tennin, or a valkyrie, a sky spirit of some sort—bathing in a lake. He’s captivated by her, for some reason or another. He wants, desperately, to possess her. So desperately that what happens next is almost excusable, in a way, because he can’t help himself.”
“Some reason or other?” the Master teased. “Presumably she’s unearthly, exquisite beyond anything the poor rustic has ever known.”
“Perhaps,” the Doctor said uncomfortably.
“What happens next?” the Master raised an eyebrow, stroking his arm.
The Doctor flinched under the touch, but so slightly the Master himself couldn’t feel it. “The farmer sees a garment hanging from the tree branch—she’s put it there for safe-keeping whilst she bathes. It’s a magical garment, which allows her to transform into a creature more ethereal than the flesh she’s washing. Perhaps it’s a fox skin, and she’s a kitsune with seven red tails, but more often—almost always, in fact—it’s a cloak of feathers. She’s a creature of flight.
“This garment is organic—it’s a part of her body, her birthright, her nature. This is his only opportunity, and he takes it. The woman emerges, and she stands perplexed, wet and shivering, hideously vulnerable in her human skin. ‘Where is my cloak,’ she asks him. ‘What have you done with what’s mine?’
“He doesn’t tell her. She’s grounded there. She can’t fly away, can’t return home. Imagine his rough hands on her new skin, which has hardly seen the light, and has never known touch. He doesn’t want to give her up, and he doesn’t realize the cruelty of what he’s doing. He’s like a child. They’re both innocent, in a way.
“In most of the stories they marry, and she bears his children. One of them has her father’s boldness, and his love. This child says, ‘Mother, why do you cry each night when father is asleep?’ And though she hasn’t spoken of it for years, the mother tells her daughter that she is weeping for her cloak, her skin. For the world she’s lost. The child finds the cloak and brings it to her, because she can’t stand to see her mother cry. And though the woman cries bitterly at leaving her sons and daughters, and even their father, she immediately takes the cloak and disappears forever, returning to wherever she came from. She cares for them, but that’s simply what she is.”
All the time the Doctor spun out his story, the Master remained quiet, unmoving. “How selfish of her,” he murmured in the silence at the end.
“Master,” the Doctor sighed, “how could any vow I might give you mean anything to you, if it wasn’t given freely?”
“If I gave you your liberty you might never return. That is a risk I will not take,” the Master admitted, softly. “Don’t ask it of me.” He would give the Doctor anything else, if the Doctor would let him. If he would have it.
The Doctor sighed, as though he were giving up on something or someone. “Then I won’t.”
The Master blinked, disbelieving. A smile emerged tentatively, then stretched across his face. “You can’t mean it. Surely you haven’t come to your senses?”
“Oh, I mean every word I say,” the Doctor insisted, though, cleverer than Alice, he knew that to say what he meant was a different matter entirely. He smiled too, but there was something tight in it. “If that’s how you feel, well, consider the question closed. I’ll never bring it up again.”
Stunned, bewildered, hardly daring to believe his luck, the Master simply looked at him until the Doctor leaned forward to kiss him soundly.
“Rest,” the Doctor suggested, and though the night was too hot for it they slept entangled.
***
In the morning the Doctor was gone, but where he’d lain was still warm, and so the Master supposed he’d only just scrambled off to work. He smiled indulgently at the Doctor’s preoccupation with his latest intellectual endeavor—surely he might have guessed that the Master would have encouraged him to stay in today.
A quick command to the building’s main computer brought up an image of the lab. There, the Doctor was rattling around a harried Professor Linme, dashing in circles about him as he collected supplies, talking the poor man’s ear off. The Master chuckled when the Doctor, whirling to gesture, almost tripped over himself, then recovered with a smile. Shaking his head, he broke the connection and began to dress. He headed into his offices whistling through a grin, to the infinite relief of his staff, who’d borne the brunt of his considerable irritation over the last days.
He worked briskly through the morning, and was just considering calling the Doctor in for lunch when three distinct security claxons went off simultaneously. He frowned, pushing his chair back from the desk, and strode quickly out of his personal office and into the command center.
“Shut off that intolerable noise. What’s going on?”
A clerk raised her small, worried face from the monitors. “We don’t know sir. It appears to be a wall-breach, registering in three sections at once, but I don’t see how it can be—”
“Logistics do not concern me at the present moment, Miss Abend. From where precisely do the signals arise?”
“All at the far eastern end of the Palace, sir. Hydroponics, a waste chute on the lower level, and,” she avoided his eyes, “the central laboratory, your Excellency.”
The Master’s eyes widened for only a moment, and he said nothing.
“They have excellent security compartments,” the clerk volunteered hesitantly.
“Thank you, Miss Abend, that will be all,” the Master said curtly, cutting his subordinate’s expression of sympathy short. In the event of a crisis the Doctor could be counted on to wander straight into trouble. Granted he was usually quite capable of extricating himself from it, but still—
“My lord,” a major or the guard arrived, short of breath, “communications sent me. They say they’ve lost control of the system, sir.”
“What—” the Master began, but a canned, metallic voice blared from the speaker grill in the ceiling, drowning him out.
“SURRENDER!” the voice demanded. “SURRENDER TO THE DALEKS!”
The Master paled. He was suddenly far more concerned for his own safety, that of his palace, and the Doctor, who might already have fallen victim to what appeared to be an invasion.
***
The guns the Master issued his security squadrons were of his own design, and capable, via a randomized electric pulse, of frying a Dalek’s central nervous system, entirely immobilizing it on the spot. Once he’d flicked back the safety, the caged electricity made it vibrate in the Master’s grip, numbing his hand even through his gloves. He’d chosen prudence over bravery in light of the severity of the threat, and walked escorted by a full battalion, in the middle of the group in case the Daleks suddenly rounded any corners.
The Master had assumed the Daleks would still be licking their wounds after their last Movellan debacle, which he estimated had eliminated a third of their fleet. That meddlesome species’ preoccupation with the Movellan wars was one of the factors that had led him to found his empire in this relatively calm temporal period. He was surprised that they’d bothered to attack in numbers small enough to have slipped through his space-lanes and planetary security nets without detection.
He could only remember having named the species once in the Doctor’s presence. The Doctor had registered no special recognition, had made no comment. It was possible, given the vastness of the universe, that his wanderings had never brought him in contact with them. The Doctor might not realize the severity of the threat they represented, might get himself killed attempting to talk his way around them. He might not know that the Daleks were well aware of how to kill a Time Lord permanently. Losing the Doctor’s current regeneration, of which the Master was very fond, would be undoubtedly painful, but losing the Doctor altogether hardly bore thinking about.
“Sir—bodies,” a private called back to him from the front. “It’s the East-wing’s security division, sir. Looks like they were intercepted trying to reach this section’s cache point to pick up their anti-Daleks. Not a mark on ‘em, but they’re all—” the private broke off. “They’re still warm, sir.”
“Then we’re close,” the Master said shortly, considering the corridors the intruders might’ve gone down from here, the vulnerable points in this section. To attack this particular section of the palace, and in such small numbers…Perhaps this wasn’t an invasion, but rather a reconnaissance mission to steal his superior technology, to copy his research databases. In which case, they would have headed straight for the Doctor. “They’re slow-moving,” the Master said, craning his neck to peer down an adjacent corridor. “They can’t have gone far. Proceed towards the main laboratory.”
Static cackled over the speaker systems, and screeching chatter erupted at irregular bursts—the Daleks transmission signals were leaking into the system they’d hacked, causing interference with the delicate communications equipment. Snatches of threats and instructions taunted him with their near-intelligibility, frustratingly present but signifying nothing.
Troops rushed into the laboratory ahead of him, swept the area and shouted back the all-clear. The Master crossed the threshold and looked for himself. Everything appeared well-ordered. There was no sign of anything unusual, let alone a hostile force.
The hairs on the back of his neck were raised, the Master could almost taste that something was wrong. Perhaps he’d misjudged what the Daleks had been after, or—perhaps he’d only thought what he’d been deliberately led to believe.
A nasty, sharp little thought sparked like a flint in the back of his brain. No.
The major of the security division over-rode the door release protecting the scientists. Professor Linme came sputtering out first, blinking, lighting on the Master and rushing over to him.
“We heard the sirens and sealed the shelter before they could reach here. I tried to stop the Doctor from going, but you know what he’s—”
The Master whirled, striding out of the room, away from them all, walking quickly back to the heap of bodies on the floor. Some of his security staff trailed after him, clueless as to what he was doing, but loyal. He hardly noticed them. Reaching the bodies, the Master knelt down, pressed his fingers to the man’s neck, and waited. There, so sluggish and soft as to be nearly undetectable, was a living man’s pulse.
The Master breathed deeply, scenting the air. Now that he was searching for it, he could detect a slight acridity, which he might’ve attributed to Dalek energy weapons if it weren’t noticeably stronger just here, drifting down from the ceiling vent directly above him. The corridor was near enough to this floor’s cache to make it seem as if the guards might’ve been headed there in response to an emergency, but every day the East-wing division came through it—perhaps an hour ago—whilst making its rounds. The corridor was so infrequently used by the household that no one would accidentally stumble upon a heap of bodies and alert any other security personnel ahead of schedule.
No system was so cleverly devised that it couldn’t be hacked into by a clever enough man. Such a man could avoid being seen entirely, if he traveled through secret passages that had been revealed to him in a thoughtless moment of passion and fury. Sound could be pre-recorded, sampled from news reports, from the humming background noise of signals crossing the universe. Fast-acting, temporary nerve toxin could be found or crafted. Plans could be made by the determined, by the achingly bright. Feathered cloaks, balled up in cabinets, secreted away in old dresser doors, could slip out, pooling at your feet. Your eyes would widen, but you wouldn’t see anything but those feathers, anything but flight.
The Master rose to his feet with graceless haste, and, with a snarl, began to run back towards his rooms, trailed at a little distance by his bemused guard. He ripped open the door, crashing into the room, running through it. A black lacquer box lay splayed open on their bed, its contents scattered messily as though they had been dumped out. In it, he had kept all his keys, sealed by a mathematical logarithm puzzle even a genius couldn’t parse and break without having the puzzle’s rules explained to him beforehand. And even then it would have taken time—all the time it would have taken the Master to come tearing across the length of the palace to the Doctor’s defense would only just suffice, if the puzzle were new to him. The Master would have to care for him enough to unthinkingly pelt across the palace at the hint of a threat to his safety, but then that was as predictable as the guards’ daily rotation.
The Master noted this in an instant, and then he was throwing open the always-locked doors of the wardrobe that was his TARDIS, only just in time to hear the last, fading echoes of a dematerialization.
He sank to his knees, white and open mouthed. A guard scuttled in after him, breathless. “Sir—what—”
“Leave,” the Master whispered. Frightened by his unflappable Emperor’s tone, the first guard to reach him did so, shutting the bedroom doors behind him and warning off the other pursuers.
The Master pressed at his memories of last night—I mean everything I say, an almost hypnotic suggestion to rest. Surely he’d have wanted to ask the Doctor why he’d suddenly decided to be reasonable? He hadn’t even questioned it. Spilling out with the recollection came the barely-noticeable pain of well-stitched sutures. While he’d been inside the Doctor, the Doctor had been inside him. While he’d been thinking of nothing but the moment and their reconciliation, the Doctor had been delicately picking at his brain with all the skill the Master had taught him (you’re all I can think about), clearing his tracks as he moved—the location of his TARDIS, how to operate the puzzle box, a tweak to the Master’s suggestibility, and rest, my dear. When he’d said ‘I wish you could fuck me forever,’ he’d meant ‘this is the last time you’ll ever touch me’. ‘I’ll never ask to leave you again’ had been goodbye.
The Master would make sure that vicious little bastard rued the day he’d run from him if it was the last thing he ever did.
***
The Doctor leaned back against his console, hands jammed in his pockets, head down. He stared at the tip of his right plimsole, mind blank. “Home, sweet home,” he said in a listless tone. “Good to see you again, old girl,” he murmured with a touch with more feeling, giving her console casing a fond pat. With a long, outward sigh he straightened up, took off his lab coat and threw it carelessly in the direction of the coat rack. Trailing his fingertips along the console and the walls, he headed deeper into his TARDIS.
