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The Master is well aware that he is his own worst enemy. It is a thought which pleases him on a purely theoretical basis: only really good people have enemies and only really exceptional people have enemies as bitter and cunning as the Master. The dedication of such a person to the complete destruction of his life is a backhanded compliment and the Master has never been one to brush off praise he knows he deserves, particularly when it comes from a source he trusts so intrinsically. He appreciates the attention.
The Doctor probably considers himself to be the Master’s greatest enemy, but, frankly, the Master has always considered this idea laughable. The Doctor is currently sprawled - unconscious, mouth open, newly young face hopelessly vulnerable - in the dim light, but he is no more the Master’s greatest enemy when he is awake. He has no killer instinct. He merely stumbles into the Master’s schemes and foils them out of a sense of duty to the cosmos. Most of the time he cannot even bring himself to punish the Master properly, even lets him escape. A real enemy would go to great lengths to upset him for no better reason than malice. A real enemy would foil his schemes not because they ought to be foiled, but because they were his.
It had seemed like a good idea to drug the Doctor at the time. The man has an annoying habit of wandering into trouble even when in full control of his wits and this regeneration seems to have temporarily deprived him of those. It would be upsetting if he got himself killed before properly appreciating the city that has been built for him. So, the Master had allowed Mergrave to mix up a healing cocktail that would have knocked out a small Skarasen. Then, when the Doctor had hesitated, he’d appeared himself — disguised as the kindly old Portreeve — and gently coerced the Doctor into drinking.
At the time, he had seen nothing wrong with this plan. It would keep the Doctor out of any real trouble, provide a suitably innocent tableau for his women when they arrived, and, best of all, with the Doctor thus incapacitated, the Master could sneak in after everyone else was asleep and molest him without the Doctor kicking up a fuss. Just very slight molestation, obviously. Rape has never held much attraction: mental dominance being, in all senses, superior to its physical equivalent, particularly when the other party cannot possibly appreciate their own submission. But he doesn’t often get the opportunity to touch the Doctor properly — or improperly for that matter — so small compromises can, occasionally, be made.
Still dressed as the Portreeve, the Master had spent the evening entertaining pleasant thoughts about running his tongue up the insides of the Doctor’s thighs, tasting the salt of his skin and watching him squirm, and thoughts more pleasant still of mentioning the incident to the Doctor after his recovery when he could properly comprehend the imposition. His body pulsed with anticipation as he pretended to read books he’d called into being with his own mind, then the message from the boy Adric had come through. The coast was clear. The Master changed back into himself, shed the Portreeve’s white robes for a pair of dark trousers, and padded, shirtless, into the Doctor’s room for a spot of uninterrupted molesting.
It didn’t take long for him to find the ‘fuck you’ he’d left for himself in this seemingly brilliant plan.
The Doctor is not just unconscious: he is completely out of it. There is no trace of Doctor-ness left, just a pretty young man who could, to all intents and purposes, be anyone. The Master hasn’t had enough time to properly equate this form with the glorious, brilliant being he’s stalked across the universe for the last eight hundred years, so he can’t even begin to convince himself that interfering with this man's body would satisfy. Conscious, this blonde almost-stranger doesn’t remember his own name; unconscious, he hardly reacts when the Master cards his fingers through pale hair and leans in close to breathe the unfamiliar smell of linseed oil. His brainwaves, which should have gone into overdrive at his Master’s touch, are doubly sluggish thanks to the regeneration sickness and the enormous quantity of drugs now swilling around in his system. There is the brief trace of some sort of recognition and then — nothing.
And, of course, the Master had known this. He’d known the drugs would make the Doctor like this — unresponsive, like a corpse or a human being — and that doing anything to him in this condition would feel like an insult to both of them, but he had still insisted on drugging him. What had he been thinking? Even the baffled, regeneration-addled version of the Doctor would have been molestable, would have trembled at his touch.
The blonde man stirs slightly and rolls onto his side. He murmurs, “I’m looking… for the Doctor.”
“As am I, but he’s not here,” the Master says irritably and stalks from the room.
It is flattering to have a really good enemy, but the downsides are undeniable. Sometimes he wishes he would just go to hell. Still, the Doctor will be better tomorrow and he will still be trapped in Castrovalva. There is always time for a new plan.