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x_losficAuthor:
x_los Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Eight/Simm!Master, Eight/Jacobi!Master
Chapter: part I of 8/12,
Summary: In the third year of the Master’s reign, he perfects Laz Labs technology. The Doctor as a box of chocolates.
Part Summary: In which the Toclafane gets back with the Kinda box, Jacobi!Master watches unusual reality programming, and the Eighth Doctor has no luck with his health. Again.
Betas:
innocentsmith pointed out things that made me change 50% of it, and it is way less sucky now.Special Thanks: People who mentioned wanting the next chapter, because I was soooo ready to consign this to the big bin of Unmanageable Projects I Have Wandered Off From. Thanks for the interest!
Previous/ Index
Pictures of the Floating World
Part I
A trigger phrase, the Master thought, passing the newly arrived box between his hands and pacing the room as he thought over the problem of how to awaken the Doctor—but no, it wouldn’t be that. His Toclafane courier, once it had reported to him and been freed of the atmosphere-containment harness that the Master had provided it with to safely retrieve the object, had bobbed off on some other work. It neither expected nor received its Master’s thanks for traveling across the galaxy and rushing back, completing the incredible journey in the space of mere weeks.
From all appearances the object the Doctor had wanted so desperately was just a plain little box, wooden and uninteresting. A tiny spot of blood, the Master noticed suddenly, decorated the surface. Several actually.
Frowning he licked his thumb and scrubbed them off. He’d have to wash it properly. The Doctor did get so skittish if he caught sight of a bit of unaccounted-for hemoglobin, and the Master had plans for their reunion that didn’t involve listening to the other Time Lord’s fretful whinging. His Toclafane must have omitted some of the difficulties of attaining the box in his report, if someone had shed blood to keep it on the planet.
Whatever this was, it was precious. Perhaps some ritual object? The Toclafane he’d debriefed had said the technology level of the people he’d retrieved it from was low. The Doctor’s TARDIS had been unwilling to give the Master any information on the planet. It had no galactic records that he could find in this time frame. His Toclafane had reported the inhabitants’ mute refusal to divulge anything about the thing in their keeping. Had they even made it themselves?
There was no way in hell he was opening it without a very good idea of what he was getting into. He could run it through a series of tests, detect its fields and energies, but the Master had no idea if the Doctor could hold out until his wariness was soothed.
The Doctor wouldn’t stake his life on the Master blindly opening a box that might well be designed to kill everyone near, would he? Much as he’d like to dismiss the notion, it wouldn’t be entirely out of character for the Doctor, who threw his regenerations away on his pets at the slightest provocation, to decide it was better that the last Time Lords die together. The Doctor might rather complete his genocide than doom the universe to an unfettered Master. But he couldn’t think the Master would be willing to risk that.
The Master wasn’t Pandora, and he wasn’t an idiot. Ergo there must be some other, related stimulus that would bring him around. But if not a triggering phrase, which could be anything and seemed too vague to be correct, then what?
There was nothing more frustrating than having the proper tool and not knowing how to use it. As a cancer in the Master's mind, it was equaled only by the rage he felt at possessing an incredibly powerful tool that was completely useless at what he actually needed it to do. The screwdriver pushed the Doctor into other regenerative forms by cribbing his Matrix biodata and re-invoking it from the Doctor’s existing biological structure. That meant the switch could circumnavigate any injuries the Doctor sustained, as his Matrix pattern could not altered or corrupted. The problem was the Doctor’s body was starved for energy, and the process couldn’t access reserves that didn’t exist. He couldn’t be restored to rosy health with a costume change.
The Master had gotten the Doctor’s vacant body to accept nourishment in the past weeks, but he still looked underfed and wan. His fast had lasted too long for his body to recover easily, and the coma had slowed his body’s natural healing processes almost to a standstill.
Striding into the room where he’d left the Doctor, the Master indulged his compulsion and checked the prone man’s mental activity. From the Doctor’s mind came the very slightest of stirrings. Just from being in the same room as the box? The Master brought it closer and the activity increased. When he held the box almost to the Doctor’s skin the other Time Lord’s thoughts moved like cicada nymphs, burrowing frantically towards the air after their hibernation. He snatched the box away. He’d waited too long for this meeting to be anything less than remarkable.
Touching it. The Doctor had to touch it. He’d always liked the eighth Doctor’s hands—the suggestion of musicality in the long, tapering fingers, the pale strength of them. He imagined them stroking the wood, palming the box, curling around his own flesh. The contrast of colors and textures was exquisite as that of the elements of a sacrament—the hands of a priest on velvet cloth and rough-hewn altar.
That one, then, he decided with a sharp nod. The Doctor was well fed enough now to sustain a form change without any great risk. And he could give him some better clothes, something chosen more for style than practicality for a medical patient.
The Master looked down at his own somewhat disheveled ensemble. Apparently he’d been gnawing at his well-manicured fingernails. From the brief impression he’d gotten of the Doctor’s mind it was in no immediate danger. There was, thankfully, time for the Master to make it look like he hadn’t gone to shambles in the Doctor’s absence.
“I’ve let myself go to hell,” he complained to the Doctor. “Or more accurately, you put me there. Look at my tie! Well, you can’t really, so I’ll summarize-- it’s askew! Have you ever known me to tie a sloppy knot? I ask because you’re the one most typically enjoying them or trying to squirm out of them. No?” He snapped his fingers before the Doctor’s vacant eyes. “Never?” He made a satisfied little noise. “ ’Swhat I thought.”
Focusing his screwdriver, he flicked the settings and carefully eased the Doctor’s body into its eighth life. It arched in a spasm under the beam, the reflexive action of cells objecting to being forced to act against their nature: to die, reconfigure and regenerate rapidly at his whim. If only the Doctor were as simple to control as his component parts.
When the body before him was trim to the point of looking almost spectral, with soft, long waves of reddish brown hair framing a face that looked troubled even in sleep, the Master smiled and repositioned the Doctor’s limbs, flung every which way by the body’s wild jerks. He tucked the Doctor into a neat sitting position and gave the contact point on his forehead a light kiss, relishing the squirming of mental energy he could feel when he leaned in, one hand holding the Kinda’s box.
Soon he’d have the Doctor back, eager and alive and his again.
“There now.” He put his cheek to the Doctor’s and turned his lips to graze along the skin. “Rest up and I’ll take you somewhere nice.”
***
When the Master was resurrected for the Time War he crept back in though the back door he’d left for himself in the Matrix proper and helped himself to data. Among a number of other things he wanted information on all that the Doctor had been up to while he was away.
He remembered how appalled the Doctor had been in his sixth body during his trial upon discovering the Time Lords had been using invasive surveillance and keeping a complete holographic record of all his doings for observation. What had the Doctor thought, that the Time Lords were going to ignore him as thoroughly as he did them? The interfering busybodies had never had such a wealth of material about which to feel removed and superior as enthusiastically disapproving of the Doctor’s actions provided them. Why would they give up such fine grist for their mill?
You could even watch it in live feed despite the time stream disruptions. Credit where it was due, the mechanisms involved were incredibly clever. The Master smirked at how his ancient race had managed to produce such efficient voyeurs. The war had offered them an excuse to extend and perfect their mechanisms of observation still further. The Master never could resist taking advantage of the system.
The Doctor unedited made for rather repetitive viewing. Again and again, the Master watched his best enemy stagger from battles, painted with so much blood, blood that sang out all the things he’d had to do to survive. And the Master couldn’t help understanding that song, any more than he could avoid reading words when he was staring at them.
Without flair or brilliance or eccentricity, the Doctor was simply living through the battles. He made gains; he was even, somewhat to the Master’s surprise (even when the Master had asked the Doctor to join him in the conquest of the universe he hadn’t imagined the other man as actively doing anything martial), quite good at the prosecution of war. But nothing of the Doctor’s soul was in it.
One day the Doctor cut off his chestnut curls—they kept getting matted. Soon after he accepted the uniform everyone was wearing these days: possibly he was tired of getting shot at by his own kind before he was recognized, now that the Daleks were using humanoid replicates for much of their infantry, keeping themselves to the rear to run the massive shipyards. Velvet was impractical for a battlefield, the Master admitted. He himself was dressing simply these days.
After his task force lost the Nestene homeworld to the Dalek horde the Doctor allowed himself a pistol, which was the bare minimum of common sense. Then one of the war material plants burned in the fires of its own triggered forges, and the Doctor slipped absorptive armor under his new uniform, which peaked out at the collars and stretched the material awkwardly. It made the Doctor move stiffly, in abrupt jerks, like a nightmare. Then the capitol flotilla of the Shad fell, and the Doctor carried a high yield rifle. Then Trion was eradicated to the last man, the Doctor having failed to answer an old friend’s urgent call for assistance in time. After that the Doctor strapped what looked to be a perfected Matryoshka Cannon, so deadly and precise that it could take out a battalion or a butterfly, to his ever-thinner right arm whenever he left the TARDIS. Which he did rarely anymore, and never unless the mission required it.
Concessions, the Master thought, bewildered, because the Doctor didn’t make such compromises.
The eighth was such a poor Doctor for the Time War. Maybe the sixth, who was quicker to anger, or the seventh, so prone to machinations, or even the third, with his ability to absorb tragedy and move on, his cunning—maybe any of these would have been better equipped for the horrors that awaited the Doctor. But this Doctor was mild as May, soft as butter, shaky and easily affected.
Not to say the Doctor was stupid, or call him a coward—this was still the Doctor, after all, and even when he’d been regeneration sick and half mad, he was still the most capable person the Master had ever had the dubious pleasure of knowing. It was only that with the old fondness (which curled in the bottom of him, brittle like the yellow leaves of an old book, and yet an old, slow accumulation of feeling, age-swollen like a seabed), the Master wished the War could have happened to any other Doctor. One more able to forgive himself for the necessity of offering up his personality to the war’s dark altar.
The Master stopped watching when he realized he’d rather not see the Doctor quite this way, as a mere soldier, all the thought and elegance stripped from him to show only a steel core of his will to survive. The brutal transformation somehow made the Doctor look so vulnerable that it hurt to stare at him. The Master’s reticence to watch had nothing to do with the fact that he was increasingly afraid he’d actually see the Doctor die if he kept skimming through his records. He told himself so with a sneer, and he curbed his impulse to check up so frequently that eventually he accepted his own rationale.
But he woke up in the middle of one of his rare periods of rest, panting as if he’d been running, and he let himself look for the Doctor, too sleep deprived to check his own impulse, too confused to feel ridiculous for acting on intuition. He watched the Doctor claw his way through what would be remembered as one of the worst battles of the war, watched him fire all the rounds in the gun he was carrying, with eyes so dead they might never have had any feeling in them. The Doctor turned to run when his ammunition had been exhausted, only to get hit in the knee cap with a bit of grapeshot and scream. He dragged himself back to his TARDIS and crawled under his time rotor, shaking and clutching at it for comfort. And still the Master could not go to him, because he wouldn’t be wanted, and to come with no pretext but pity, but concern, wasn’t a luxury he’d had in centuries.
Hair sticky and face suddenly slack from the tension that had immobilized it during the battle, the Doctor began to cry. He still cried like he had when they were children and he’d had one of his nightmares. Even holding a gun he himself must have modified to be more lethal, having just massacred a battalion of his enemies single-handed, his reaction was still so innocent. It was a collapse into wretched grief that didn’t bother with any pretense at dignity—they were the kind of noisy tears that seemed to beg to be noticed and soothed. Koschei had been their audience, once. It was strange to imagine now that anyone had ever found him a comfort.
For a happy child, Theta had been prone to a perplexing amount of nightmares. Koschei had never known why, but the Master had his suspicions. Had the Doctor dreamed of this even then, had the Vortex shown his uncomprehending child’s mind these ash-colored, electricity-and-oil-smelling days?
The Doctor’s gentle mouth collapsing into sobs when the battle was over, when he was safely back in his TARDIS, was like a restoration of faith for the Master. Instead of being frightened by how low war had brought the Doctor he nurtured a swell of pity for him he’d long since thought himself incapable of.
After this is over, he thought, I could find him, all broken and confused, and remind him who he is. I could be kind as he ever remembered me, or I could do something terrible he’d be simply compelled to meddle with, but he’d be himself again. I owe him that at least.
He pushed on, promising himself that encounter when everything was dealt with. In the wake of the war there might be an end to grievances that seemed smaller now, in the face of this. Didn’t their cosmic struggle seem somewhat ridiculous in the face of such a mass extinguishing of life? Couldn’t even their enmity be erased by so much spilt blood? He had the forgiveness of all his past crimes from his own government, and he might yet get forgiveness where it actually mattered to him. He might even offer it in return.
But the Master hadn’t stopped to consider. If change wrote lines into the Doctor’s face, it would take its toll on the Master as well. Arcadia burned anything but terror out of him. And the drums, never very kind to his more fragile dreams, rolled on louder as the war rose to its final, bleak crescendo, until he couldn’t even hear himself hope.
***
The Master worked quickly as the Doctor’s mind swam back into its native environs. Long, detailed stewing (planning, he liked to call it) had decided him on a firmly predetermined course of action. The Master accomplished much in the brief period between the reemergence of a working mind to access and the reemergence of the Doctor’s natural defenses.
The Master cauterized the path behind the Doctor as the other Time Lord struggled back up to consciousness. He knit up the permeable connections between all the versions of the Doctor, turned the fluidity that had allowed him to coalesce and hide into something solid, without any such give. The Master built himself a psychic back door and wedged the Doctor’s shields permanently open around it. The crowning glory of all this was the tie he established between them, which allowed him to listen in on the Doctor’s thoughts. He grinned when he heard the first amorphous echoes of them. His creation was a withered little parody of a true bond between Time Lords. The Doctor would be forced to appreciate the irony of that.
“It’s here,” thought the Doctor. Then came surprise that he could think at all.
With a start like he was being defibrillated, the Doctor’s eyes flung open and he tried to stand, only to find a hand on his chest pressing him down into the chair. The touch was too firm, too possessive—no need to ask whose hand it was, then.
“Did you open it?” The Doctor snatched at the wrist in front of him, seeing his own hand in the process and realizing which one of his selves he was—a startling differentiation after the soupy allness of hiding swirled together, jammed in an infinitesimally small corner of his own mindscape. His mind still felt off; it was a little painful, even, but he was groggy and couldn’t pinpoint the cause of his discomfort.
“I think you’re looking for ‘Hello, Master! Thank you ever so much for fetching me a present and saving what’s left of my admittedly rattled mind.’ Though I will accept any groveling apologies or acknowledgement of your own idiocy. You thought you could play dead? Really, Doctor? Your over-arching strategy is ‘be a possum?’”
It felt so good to talk to him instead of at him. Words had meaning; they existed for the first time in months. Oh, and the Doctor was getting annoyed, just look at that sour lower lip wobbling like a Weeble! The Master could snark at him for days running and not get bored.
“Master, please, open the box.”
“ ‘Open the box, Master!’ ” The other Time Lord minced out, high and mocking. “Not so fast, Doctor. Tell me what I’m holding before I expose the both of us to whatever little surprise you’ve got lurking in here.”
The Master demonstratively dragged the box from the Doctor’s sternum, where he’d been holding it to the skin to wake the Doctor, to his chin, where he tapped it playfully. The Doctor’s chest was bare in the gap between the sides of his partly unbuttoned shirt and a velvet jacket quite like the old one he’d worn in this regeneration. He'd not felt in so long that his exhausted form didn't quite know how to process it. The gesture made the Doctor aware of his own body (the Master had always been good at that, in one way or another). He dropped his grip on the Master’s other hand with some embarrassment before noticing something.
“There’s a spot on the rim,” the Doctor accused, glaring at the box under his chin and then up at the Master’s face, which twitched just slightly. The Master had actually washed off the blood himself, but some of it must have sunk into the unpolished wood grain. The Doctor narrowed his eyes, “I didn’t think you’d kill anyone to get it. The Kinda are—or is it ‘were,’ now? —entirely peaceful. You never used to be so sloppy.”
“Be that as it may,” the Master bristled, “I’ve obtained it, and I’d like to know why.” He’d really hoped to avoid this. In some corner of his addled mind he’d thought that when the Doctor woke up it could be like the better parts of his months with his fifth body, and he would have time to recover his equilibrium before starting in on their long, contiguous argument.
“Give it here,” the Doctor pleaded.
“Why?” The Master asked, pleasantly. “There’s no further use for the box, now you’ve woken. Shall I toss it down a ventilation shaft? I’d like to know what I’m chucking, just for curiosity’s sake. I enjoy destroying something so much more when I fully understand it.” The Doctor leveled a weak glare at him, but said nothing revealing. The Master sighed melodramatically.
“I suppose it’s the incinerator with this then. You might have pointed out we don’t have ventilation shafts, you were there when I redesigned the recycling current system. We're out an incinerator as well. But then maybe I built one while you were out, just to chuck your toys in when you’re bad? You wouldn’t know if I had, Van Winkle.”
“Don’t.”
“Or what?” The Master said, egging him on. He got a sick shuddering thrill from hearing the Doctor challenge him after so long a silence. The Doctor was a Time Lord, and his superior musculature hadn’t atrophied to any degree. But he was dredged of his characteristic energy, disoriented, absolutely wrecked, and he was still fighting. God the Master had missed him. “Exactly what are you going to do, Doctor? Lax as you are. My completely reliant little plaything,” the Master taunted, “Tell me what you think you can do to me now.”
“I’ll just duck back in my mind and rot there, shall I? I think I only have a few days left of being mentally recoverable. I could listen to remembered music until all the lights go out. I’d flicker out to my own elegy. Sounds more pleasant all the time!”
“Like hell you will,” the Master laughed with a cruelty that he felt matched that of the Doctor’s suggestion. “Try it!”
The Doctor attempted to sink back in and down, only to be snapped back like a dog at the end of a chain. He took a deep breath and tried to slide fully behind his shields. Again, he could almost seal them before being jerked out to the front of his consciousness. He started to pant with effort and panic.
“What did you do to me?”
“Several things, have fun trying to figure them all out,” the Master grinned, running his knuckles over the Doctor’s temple, almost tenderly, “But you’ll never be capable of a stunt like that again. That’s the match to me, I believe.”
“You tied whichever incarnation of me was currently active to something external, whatever else you did, I can feel it.” And the Doctor could, it stretched and stung with uncomfortable newness like fresh scar tissue.
The Master nodded. “And it rotates—whichever body you’re in is tethered. Isn’t that clever?”
“Tethered to you,” the Doctor realized. “You’re the stronger psychic, and you know it. But you can’t do this! If you’ve cut off the connections to my mindscape like you say, I’ll go mad, people don’t stay sane without that recourse to themselves!”
“I can do anything, and it’s time you acknowledged that. You’ll live,” the Master said from between his clenched teeth, “I can’t be blamed for the conditions you force me to accommodate.”
“Let me go.” The Doctor began to panic in earnest, feeling that every which way his mind turned it was snagged by its link to the Master’s, and he couldn’t escape, and he couldn’t think,
The Master paced around his chair in slow circles. “Our minds were much more closely tied than this, once. You didn’t mind then. It wasn’t any burden to you,” he smiled softly, alluding to their youthful near-bonding. Neither of them had spoken of the disastrous failure of their initial relationship in all the centuries since. It would have been like ripping open the skin where an amputated limb had been attached. In spite of their long, absolute silence, the Master pressed on with a perversity that made the pale Doctor blanch white as a bleached bone. “I would have known if it was.”
That had been an easy, mutual, flowing mesh, not anything like this one-sided sensation of being ensnared by a sequence of tiny hooks and barbs. This felt like waking up with bits of wires and primitive medical equipment lodged in his chest, threaded through his arteries, and he couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t think—
“You know what I learned then, Doctor?” the Master stopped pacing, and turned to face the man who seemed to be working himself down into the upholstery of the chair. He leaned in over him, and brought their faces terribly close, “I can’t ever, ever trust you. Not to behave, not a word you say. Better to make sure of you myself. Now you can’t run off navel gazing the next time you get a little squeamish. Stop fussing at it!”
He grabbed the hands the Doctor was attempting to hold to his temples, pinned them above his head. He spoke quietly, lips brushing the Doctor’s own firm-shut ones slightly with every word. “When I say you’ll live I mean it.”
“Refuse to open it,” the Doctor responded, pushing down his fear. He couldn’t deal with it, not right now, and there were larger things at stake. Their lips met when he spoke and it was almost a kiss, “And I’ll test whether even you can remove every sharp edge and ingestible toxin from an entire aircraft carrier.”
The Master stilled entirely. He stepped back and surveyed the Doctor from his full height. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“A padded cell generally has wiring in the door mechanism you can remove to slit your throat as effectively as a KGB agent with piano wire could. Grow your nails out and you can rip through the fabric of your padded walls and choke yourself on the stuffing before another person could get across the length of a ship as big as this. Deliberately unravel your mind, like shredding an old scarf for the yarn, and not even the best psychic could reconstruct your personality. You know I’m inventive. And if you’d like to drug me until I can’t move or think or recognize your hands from the floor, well, you’re welcome to try, but I’d imagine from your efforts to search me out and bring me back you’re rather bored of blow-up dolls.“
“Are you listening properly? I’ll kill—”
“Oh of course you’ll kill,” the Doctor rolled his eyes, “it’s all you remember how to do anymore. And I imagine I’ll cry. But it won’t stop me. I have to try. It’s who I am. If pain could stop me, I’d never have left you, Koschei. If I could do that, then I can do anything. And it’s time you acknowledged that.”
“You assume,” the Master swallowed, “that I’m not thoroughly tired of your ridiculous histrionics. Don’t delude yourself into thinking you have leverage that you don’t. It’ll be awfully messy when your swelling head pops.”
The Doctor smiled. “I’ve always thought you eloquent. I don’t know if I’ve ever said that to you, in all these centuries. You put things so exactly right; I can only paraphrase. A universe without you is non-load-bearing. I drift along, but I don’t really live. I know you. You feel the same.”
“I’m not such a fool as to let everything hinge on your glorious presence!” The Master shouted, red-faced, taking a threatening step closed to his seated opponent.
“Never a fool, but sometimes you don’t think things through. I can acquire new company—I’ve done it even in the wake of the war, but you? ‘Better to let them live in hope,’ wasn’t it? You won’t want to live without meaning.”
“I can live until the stars burn out and after,” the Master hissed, “If I choose to entertain myself with your presence it doesn’t mean I need you. While you gadded about the universe on all your ludicrous errands of mercy, I managed fine for centuries. You’re the one who can’t get on alone.”
“Will you want to outlast the stars?” The Doctor asked quietly. “What for, Master?”
The Master’s eyes narrowed.
“All this pointless waxing philosophic,” he tsked, calming himself with a tremendous effort of will. “I’d thought your sixth body was the one prone to melodrama. You’re blathering. You’re not well enough for whatever it is you intend to do after I open this. You’ll have to wait, and maybe when you’re healed you can go back to posturing.”
He passed a hand through the Doctor’s hair. “They tugged too hard when they brushed.” He pouted, meaning the Toclafane he’d had caring for the Doctor before he got too frustrated with the litany of errors he imagined them to make and just started doing everything himself. “Keeping up with your grooming was a bit beyond the children. In the regeneration I had you in before they pulled a few of the curls right out of your head before I caught on. ‘Course the scalp gets delicate when you’re not eating—I had to up the protein and iron in your nutrient fluid. As soon as your body has the energy you’ll be your old hirsute self again, should I be in the mood for that. On the other hand,” he grinned manically, “I think I enjoy you as you are now.”
“Master,” the Doctor said slowly, trying to catch the eyes that kept skittering away from his own, “I need you to tell me you’ll open it.”
“And if I don’t?” The Master said.
“Don’t be like this, please don’t do this to me.”
“Be like this?” The Master asked with a merry sneer. “But this is who I am. And your pain can’t stop me either. Now we’ve something in common. Isn’t that good? All the self-help books do say effective couples agree on the fundamentals.”
“Either open that box or make what farewells you want. I’ll give you—you deserve the opportunity to say what you’d like to me, but after that I’m going to have to,” the Doctor swallowed the words, gave the Master something that was almost an apology, “I can’t do this, not even for you. I can’t.”
There was a pause. The Master wouldn’t look at his face.
“Sugar water. Soon we can start you on thin milk. Whole milk within a day or two—and then we’re at biscuits.” The Master swallowed. “I think we’ve some pink wafers around here somewhere. If not, maybe in one of the warehouses. You like pink wafers in this body, right? I never really hung about you enough in this form to gather your comparative thoughts on biscuits.”
“Master,” the Doctor said, “Don’t do this, at least say something to me. Please. I don’t want to leave things so—I’m not afraid to die, you know that? But not—” his voice broke, “Not like this.”
“I’ll,” the Master stared out the window. He tried not to let his voice carry even a hint of tone, trying to dampen it like a man would try to smother his lover with a pillow in the night, “ I’ll open the box when you’re better. Give it a few—give it a month, and I’ll open the box.”
“Open it now,” the Doctor insisted, eyes widening, because he’d almost given up, “What’s wrong with opening it—”
“GodDAMMIT, Theta, what do you want from me?” the Master shouted, “I’ll open it, I just want a little time. Can you understand how much you cost me? What are you even going to do like this, hm? So weak you can’t stand, god, I hate seeing you like this, and you think, ‘well, there’s an inch, where’s my mile?’ Fucking think for once, would you?”
He clenched of his hands, which had been shaking in bursts. Their convulsions beat out a rhythm in the air, soundless, touching nothing. He wrestled back a little composure. “When you’re better, I’ll do it. That’ll have to be good enough, that’s what you’re getting.”
“In a month. Promise me.” The Doctor asked softly.
“Oh don’t you dare demand promises. You broke faith with me long ago. We’ll have no contracts, you and I. I said I’d do it. What’s thirty more days of complicity—you’ll find out in a month if I care to keep my word, and that’s that.”
“Thank you,” the Doctor caught the Master’s clenched fist and wove his own fingers in, “Thank you.” He brought the knuckles to his mouth and kissed them all, quick and tender, “I know you don’t believe me, you never believe me anymore, but I l—”
The Master snatched his hand back, smoothed his coat down. “Don’t say it. Just don’t say it right now. I don’t want to hear another word from you. For once do us both a favor and do as I tell you.”
The Master stepped behind the other man. “Some reunion. Tell me, are you compelled to spoil everything, or do you just ruin my life by force of habit?” The Doctor opened his mouth, but the Master interrupted him. “I told you, shut up. Let’s get you to a proper bed, you shouldn’t be so agitated when you’re convalescent.” With a sort of spent purposefulness, he wheeled the Doctor’s chair out of the breakfast room and back to their bedroom, helping him up and onto the bed without a word, mouth tight.
The Doctor fell asleep rather quickly—the Master had been right, he’d exhausted himself. When his breathing shifted, indicating that the Doctor was deeply under, the Master laid down on the bed. Slowly, he gave into his compulsion to wrap himself around the taller man, tucking his head into the auburn curls covering the crook of where the Doctor’s neck met his shoulder.
Wrapping his arm around the Doctor’s coat, he pressed insistently back with a palm, flat against the taller man’s stomach. The Doctor, still asleep, with the ancient muscle memory, shifted back into him. Regeneration taught each new body its old secrets. Just like the scope of one’s knowledge flooded into a new mind, new tissue carried strengths and pains it had never physically known. It was like receiving insistent sensory input from a phantom limb.
The Master’s adjustment made them one undivided form on the bed. He could feel the Doctor’s mind pulsing into the next REM stage, so much more active than it had been during his long sleep. The Master closed his eyes and breathed the clean smell of his hair, his skin.
The things I do for you, he thought, wanting to laugh but unequal to the task, and unwilling to hear the sound.
Next/ Index
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Date: 2008-04-06 01:18 pm (UTC)I have a feeling it's going to be a long 30 days.
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Date: 2008-04-06 03:03 pm (UTC)Oh them. *eyeroll* You're probably right. I'll edit the next bit and get to to you today.
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Date: 2008-04-06 01:43 pm (UTC)(Hi, I don't think I've introduced myself, but
The thing I've loved about this series is how tough the Doctor is, despite everything he's put through, and this chapter brought that to the fore beautifully. Waiting on tenterhooks for the next part...
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Date: 2008-04-06 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-06 02:49 pm (UTC)I must say that in the early chapters, the dynamic between them was painful to read. You wrote it so well, but it bothered me - the Master with the actual psychological/emotional upper hand seemed so wrong, but with ever chapter it's become more clear that in the end, it's the Doctor who shackles himself to the Master because he can't let go.
I loved the little look at Time War Eight, too.
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Date: 2008-04-06 03:38 pm (UTC)Complete Bitch: it's not just for Five anymore!
the Master with the actual psychological/emotional upper hand seemed so wrong, but with ever chapter it's become more clear that in the end, it's the Doctor who shackles himself to the Master because he can't let go.
I'm not naturally one of those people who feels like the characters just run around inside their heads doing stuff. I'm pretty solidly in the camp of 'I have plotted this THING and it does nothing I don't tell it to.' But it's funny how much their relationship has written itself. The original ending for this was so thoroughly different. It's kind of like the sting of things it was possible for the Doctor's character to do kept veering off to this MUCH more complicated psychological/emotional place.
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Date: 2008-04-06 03:15 pm (UTC)unlike spoiled for choice, which i am so grateful to have back. i love your view of the time war, which is horrific. do we hear more of it later?
i can't rememer what else i said, but hopefully i willw hen the other parts appear (soon).
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Date: 2008-04-06 03:41 pm (UTC)Thanks! And God yes, this is another of those parallel narrative stream chapters where it's like 50% Time War Angst and 50% Eight and Simm Angst and Smex. It's like I wrote military scifi somewhere in here, wtf?
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Date: 2008-04-07 12:36 pm (UTC)i had something else to say here but it's gone. maybe i'll come back later.
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Date: 2008-04-06 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-06 03:54 pm (UTC)In short: This was sooooo soooo bad before
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Date: 2008-04-06 04:07 pm (UTC)Tense issues and doubled phrases I am v. good at finding.
BTW, how are you feeling this morning?
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Date: 2008-04-06 04:10 pm (UTC)Hah. Well, actually. Wtf, why did someone let me on the internet last night...
Tense issues and doubled phrases I am v. good at finding.
GREAT! Also welcome to my purple prose: it wants you to thin it down. Desperately.
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Date: 2008-04-06 03:42 pm (UTC)In other words, lovely angst, and I'll be following further updates.
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Date: 2008-04-06 04:03 pm (UTC)Oh, you know me, I'm thoroughly fluffy. It's just taking a LONG time to get me there in this. Which feels kind of realistic for them...
I like that Eight Chapters in one of them FINALLY mentions the Inciting Incident-- that's how long it takes them, even when they can "they just face off each other for long enough without anyone else getting in the way," as you say.
But thanks, and I'm glad you like and read it!
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Date: 2008-04-06 05:00 pm (UTC)Please, continue :)
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Date: 2008-04-06 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 04:47 pm (UTC)Love the Doctor bent but not broken (get your mind out of the gutter damnit!) still trying to save the Master and the universe in tow. There is a desperation to their relationship that always struck me, most particularly from the Master's side. The Doctor could live without him, not willingly perhaps but he could. The Master could not.
Oh and Eight is so wonderfully vulnerable. Like a lost puppy. And pretty.
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Date: 2008-04-07 05:15 pm (UTC)The Doctor could live without him, not willingly perhaps but he could.
I always wonder about the degree to which the Doctor understands that/is willing to use it against him in the classic series. B/c that's kind of a manipulative bastard thing to do.
Oh and Eight is so wonderfully vulnerable. Like a lost puppy. And pretty.
Eee! I know! I kind of love him.
Thanks for reading!
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Date: 2008-04-07 05:30 pm (UTC)Edited to add: "Then Trion was eradicated to the last man, the Doctor having failed to answer an old friend’s urgent call for assistance in time."
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! :D
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Date: 2008-04-07 05:41 pm (UTC)Watching Classic Who: A Bajilion Hours.
Writing an extended slash epic: Several More Hours.
Killing Turlough in one line and seeing if anyone notices: Priceless.
Thanks, glad you're reading! Oh Chapter Eight, why you be so long?
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Date: 2008-04-07 08:38 pm (UTC)And then spent about five seconds imagining the emotional trauma contained in that one line. It's almost zen.
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Date: 2008-04-07 09:40 pm (UTC)It's a lot like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DKtSQe-kMw
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Date: 2008-04-07 08:31 pm (UTC)Poor Master. He's so torn. It's funny that through all the rest of this, the torture and psychological warfare, here they are in a lover's quarrel.
"If pain could stop me, I’d never have left you, Koschei. If I could do that, then I can do anything. And it’s time you acknowledged that."
Oh GAWD. Just forget about everything else, Master, grab the Doctor and run! You know you don't really want the smelly old universe anyway; it doesn't do anything useful, just takes up mantel space and requires extra dusting.
I wonder, though, how this all started, either in your version or canon. I've always wondered what caused their falling-out.
But I love that as much as he obviously loves him (to unhealthy, obsessive levels), the Master is crazy and evil enough to be willing to psychically mutilate the Doctor to have his way. And as good as the Doctor is, he's willing to not only use his own death as leverage in his own plots, but ruthless enough to use it as a weapon against the Master, knowing perfectly well how much it'll hurt him. Because that's who they are.
And it doesn't escape my attention that this is the same Doctor who held himself hostage at gunpoint to get around a cop. Actually, one of the reasons I've really been looking forward to Eight's chapter is because I'm wondering what you think his reaction to being Eight might be. This is, after all, probably the incarnation who ended everything. And I wonder if the Master would use that against him.
The things I do for you, he thought, wanting to laugh but unequal to the task, and unwilling to hear the sound.
So sad! They've really devastated each other, haven't they? And yet they just can't stop trying, no matter how much worse it makes things.
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Date: 2008-04-07 09:37 pm (UTC)Know what's like pulling blood from a stone? Trying to eek out an Eight characterization that satisfies out of the little of him we get to know in the movie.
Just forget about everything else, Master, grab the Doctor and run! You know you don't really want the smelly old universe anyway; it doesn't do anything useful, just takes up mantel space and requires extra dusting.
But will he be content doing that if he thinks he /feels/ more than the Doctor does?! omg, Master just needs to go to a high school girls' slumber party and VENT. *imagines little girls frantically trying to braid his short hair as a gesture of comfort* "He sounds like, way mean!" "*SOB* HE ISSSS!*
I've always wondered what caused their falling-out.
You know how this jumps between Time War and present? I like that structure. The Inciting Incident is in Chapter Nine. Mah foreshadowing, u let me show u it. :p In canon though? Damn, I WISH I knew!
And it doesn't escape my attention that this is the same Doctor who held himself hostage at gunpoint to get around a cop.
5, 8 and 10 all do share this kind of manipulative, self-destructive vulnerability that's a really interesting re-occurring personality trait. Now that I think about it, 2 and 4 have some parallels, and maybe 3 and 9? hm. There's probably something there about situational response if I think about it.
So sad! They've really devastated each other, haven't they? And yet they just can't stop trying, no matter how much worse it makes things.
And yet thinking about it as 'they should never have met/become a couple' seems wholly unfulfilling for me, like it's better to have all this wangst with the option of reaching the sublime than duck out of never having ruined each other?
Anyway, thanks for reading!
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Date: 2008-04-07 10:46 pm (UTC)I always suspected that it might be less of a specific instance and more of a relationship where the rivalry went out of control. Or possibly they were so in lurv!OMG, and then the Master was like, "Since you're the awesomest person ever aside from me, I know you want to conquer the universe with me. I thought we'd start by murdering this guy who says we're not allowed to." Doctor: "HOMG WHY?!?!?!"
5, 8, and 10 do all have that same air, you're right. I'd never thought of that before. And 1, 6, 7, 9, and 10 all have that ruthless streak (and maybe 3, but with him it was more like a constant low-grade panic). It's definitely an intriguing idea. Probably worth looking into.
And yet thinking about it as 'they should never have met/become a couple' seems wholly unfulfilling for me, like it's better to have all this wangst with the option of reaching the sublime than duck out of never having ruined each other?
Absolutely! And obviously they feel the same way. That risk for the sake of the sublime is one of the factors associated with mad creative genius, and maybe it's something that sets them apart from other Time Lords as much as it would with humans.
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Date: 2008-04-08 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 04:22 am (UTC)I kinda feel like the last few months should have changed them, if indeed they're going to dynamically move towards some different state of affairs?
languished with my box of tissue and neti-pot.
Oh no! Do feel better. It's entirely unfair to get a cold just as Spring's starting properly.
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Date: 2008-04-08 04:50 am (UTC)Thank you for your wishes for my nose and head. It's just more of the chronic sinus problems I started getting in my mid-thirties. It'll get better in a day or two or I'll stop noticing. I just need to clear it up enough to concentrate for work, of which I did none today. I did, however, somehow find the energy to set up a fic LJ under evilawyer_fic...original, no? Thanks for the suggestion.
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Date: 2008-04-08 05:02 am (UTC)*wince* Ah, the joys of aging that await me.
I did, however, somehow find the energy to set up a fic LJ
Oh good!