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“You know; this is the first version of you who would have been willing to simply… erase themselves from people’s memories. Against their wishes too – naughty naughty.”
“Stay out of my thoughts.”
Her voice was sharper, sharper than intended, sharper than she was entirely used to hearing leaving this form. It’d been years since she’d used so many of the skills they’d been taught as children: limiting herself to the humanity she so desperately adored. Humans, for all their flaws, played by very different rules than Time Lords ever did. Fairer rules. No, not fairer. Fairness seemed to be something that needed to be fought for. Humans worked with simpler rules than Time Lords ever did.
She’d run so fast, she’d worked so hard to put distance between them and her, to forget she was anything more than a traveller.
A traveller and now also a refugee, an endangered species on the very brink of being no more than a myth lost in time.
Coward or Killer. Once, those had been her options. She’d been born again and again into loneliness and loss, born to live a life that had centuries since become far too long. Coward or Killer. She’d chosen coward, time and time again, a pacifist in war time trying to still recognise the person she wanted to be. So perhaps she’d pushed away the things that made her more Time Lord than human, perhaps she’d pushed away her own culture in an attempt to not live in the shadow of all those she’d disappointed.
All the people who’d died by her side, willing to put their faith in a being as flawed and damaged as they were. Being tired came with age, and she was so extraordinarily tired.
It was hard: juggling the people she’d lost, the people she’d met, the people she’d been and the constant dread that one-day hope would run out. Running, despite how amazingly brilliant she was at it, took more energy than any one being could constantly produce.
Sleep was meant to be her escape. It was rare she’d sleep willingly, intent on exhausting herself until there was no option but to fall into dreamless nothingness for just a few hours before resuming whatever she’d surely left half finished.
A few hours of darkness, of relief. Each incarnation of her needed it more – needed breaks to simply no longer exist.
Apparently that was a luxury she no longer deserved. Sitting crossed legged on the ash filled dirt, staring only forwards, refusing to give any attention to the man leaning against the rocks behind her. He was always there. In the back of her mind. Waiting, whispering, working on twisting how she saw the world.
It'd been years since the Doctor had communicated psychically with anyone, years since she'd let someone into her mind. Even universes apart, the Master was hard to shake off.
“There’s nothing but your thoughts here. Not my fault you can’t regulate your own mind. Our teachers would have said it’s quite a lack of self-control.”
He was always so mocking, so gleeful, taking utter delight about the fact that when they were here he could see into both her mind and soul. They were always here, stood in the midst of their ruined world, the shattered remains of their old friendship burning along with everything they’d once believed to be truth.
He’d done this. This damage, the damage she couldn’t forget no matter how hard she tried. So many years earlier she’d lost their planet, she’d thought herself the last… But saving them had done zilch but delay what seemed to be an inevitable destiny. Not that she believed in destiny. The concept of such a thing would take away the freedom she fought so hard for, it’d mean even now, even after all her sacrifices she was as trapped as she was before it all.
Could all she had endured have been for nothing at all?
“Tell me, then. Why someone so desperate to be needed, to be loved, would simply erase herself? You’ve only done it before to save your little friend’s life.”
Donna. God, Donna. No, she couldn’t cope with certain thoughts and Donna would always be on the no-no list.
“Shut. Up.”
Twisting herself the Doctor roughly pushed her body up, ignoring the sharp pain in her palms at pressing them too roughly on shards of rock and metal. “Shut up.” She repeated again, pushing herself to her full height and righteous fury making her hearts feel like they would tear her chest apart.
“So sensitive.” Grinning, again, he took his first step forward, ground crunching beneath his shoes. Where they stood – what had it been? Before he’d burnt it down, before war and so much death. Were they standing on what had once been someone’s home? A shop? Now, no matter what it had been, in all likelihood all it was ever going to be again was someone’s grave. “It’s your dream, it’s hardly my fault your mind is still reaching out for contact.”
The burnt orange sky had once been beautiful, slopes of red grass and eternal mountains. For so many years she’d longed to see them again, to return for even a heartbeat or two. Now it was so much more than the sky that had been burnt and the same hot fire danced on her furious tongue.
“I’m not reaching out. ‘m not. The things you’ve done, why would I be reaching out to you?” What felt like a millennia before, the Face of Boe had told her she wasn’t alone. Much like a child she’d clung to those words, first with the Master, then with the restoration of Gallifrey. Jack had told her the secret and now they seemed to mock her with as much ease as the last other of their kind. “I’m probably just – just hallucinating you anyway. My mind playing tricks on me whilst I process what you – well the real you – whilst I process what happened.”
His laugh alone was almost cause enough to pause the pacifism long enough to punch the grin right off his face.
He’d briefly been a Nazi after all. Punching a Nazi didn’t seem to truly count in the grand scheme of things.
“Oh Doctor, Doctor. Sweet little Doctor. We both know it’s me here.” Another step forwards, more of the sickening crunch beneath his feet. Rough hand reaching out to grip her jaw yet thumb so gently tracing their forgotten language on her cheek. Just because she instinctively knew what the invisible circles meant didn’t mean she wanted to acknowledge unspoken words on top of the spoken ones.
Dreamt words.
Who could keep track anymore. Reality, thoughts, dreams, they were all a mess of guilt and grief.
“Do you want to hear what I think?”
“Never.”
“Of course you do. Or you would have put that wall back up, you’d expel me from your mind.” Crunch. Crunch. Even in her dreams she couldn’t forget the noise, every detail carved into her. “It’s why you can’t open up, isn’t it? You keep thinking about it. About your pets wanting to know more, about what the cost of telling them would be.”
He should have been dead. Logically, he should have been dead. Yet here he was, skin hard and ancient eyes she knew so well staring into her. Unlike her, he could walk amongst civilisations and not see their beauty, not see their potential. Never growing attached to worlds of what were basically children compared to them. Children who needed guidance, protecting.
Children who simply needed kindness.
“You’re so tired, aren’t you? Tired of the loss. Tired of that weight in your chest. Do you have any memories at all that death hasn’t commandeered?”
Childhood memories, memories of the academy, memories of the friends she’d made along the way. They were still there and the details were the same, but each time she tried to remember them the more twisted special moments got. Remembering a smile or laugh didn’t have the same spark if it was followed by remembering a final breath or farewell.
If she let them in, if she allowed herself to truly feel for Yaz, Graham or Ryan, she was agreeing to go through it all again. If they knew about her then when they had enough, when they left, it would be her and not the life that they would be rejecting. Or worse, if they died, they’d know it was because she was too weak to save them.
No matter what, a Time Lord’s story never had a happy ending.
Good men didn’t need rules and yet she had to have thousands, ample proof she’d never be as good as others wanted to believe.
Perhaps it would hurt less to go back to being The Hermit, to shield her hearts, to hide from the stars in the darkness and finally rest.
No. No.
Surrender wasn’t an option. She believed, needed to believe, that hope would always prevail.
“How long do you think it’ll be until your secrets drive them away?”
“Stop it.” Yanking her head back the Doctor growled out the words, jabbing a slender finger at his shoulder and taking a turn stepping forwards. “You did this. And for some inane power play you won’t even tell me why.”
“Well that would really kill the fun, wouldn’t it love?”
It was hard to remember if the Master had always smiled like this. All teeth, no joy. A mockery of true emotion: eyes never changing, sharp and all seeing. The fun. The game. He said the words and yet it was a corruption of any meaning they had.
“Fun. This isn’t fun. Fun is uno or a day at the beach or swings. Swings are great fun! Good, harmless fun that doesn’t involve a spot of genocide after tea.”
“Or texting cute little memes to secret agents, mm?” He spoke softly, tilting his head in mock sympathy as he halved the remaining millimetres between them. “I mean God, Doctor, it’s pitiful. How you clung to someone because you thought they could accept you any more than you’re capable of accepting yourself. How even now, in dreams of our pulverised home, you can’t cope with being alone.”
The Master was, in all likelihood, the very last being in the universe to actually know the Doctor. To know who she was, what she was running from. It had occurred to her plenty of times, each time sickening her with what it meant. Still, when she moved to step back in hurt indignation, he was all the faster.
Hands shooting out, gripping slender hips and twirling them in the ghost of a dance, easy steps forwards forcing her to step backwards until her back was slammed against the rocks. Bashing the air from her lungs and pinning her with his own weight, revelling in finally being taller than her.
“You haven’t closed your mind either.” The observation was sharp, hateful as she defiantly tilted her head back, resting it against the sharp angles. She could be hurt in dreams: she couldn’t die, only seven species she knew of could die in dreams, but she could be hurt. “Guess I’m not the only one desperate, am I?”
Each one of these dreams felt a little more like temporary deaths, brief bursts of surrendering to the urge that had met each of her past selves. The Time Lord Victorious, the smallest hint of all the worst potential inside them.
She didn’t want the Master to win.
She didn’t want to be alone.
How human it was. Reaching into the darkness to try and grasp even the smallest hint of friendship with the monsters hiding out of sight. Forgiveness and need weren’t the same, they would never be the same. The Doctor was old enough to know the Master would never change, there was no fixing all he’d destroyed. She’d had hope, she’d had true and complete hope for Missy, that she’d finally gotten through those barriers and reached the heart she’d been certain was still buried in there.
If Missy couldn’t be reasoned with, if she couldn’t be reached, there was no holding on to that specific hope.
It was a slippery slope to give up on any of her hopes, especially for someone who relied on them so much.
“I’m surprised you didn’t dream up your little Yasmin. We all saw how you looked at her. You know better by now, surely, than trying that poisoned little path again.”
“Don’t. You don’t speak about her; you don’t think about her. And if you ever claw your way back into this universe, you don’t go near her.”
This wasn’t peace and it wasn’t fully war, a middle ground born out of desperate need. Both of them playing at trying to push the other – too scared to let go and face their respective realities, their respective fates alone.
So what were a few little deaths to temporarily stop the loneliness?
This wasn’t real. Two lost minds, finding each other time and time again in this nightmarish corner of her consciousness. It wasn’t real, so it couldn’t possibly count, her nails digging into his arms and his breath hot on her icy skin.
Hatred and exhaustion were a toxic mix even when alone, but adding the bitterness of lost friendship (of lost potential) could only lead to further pain.
And the Master always did adore being the one to help her express her penance to the universe. It was neither the first time nor the last time it’d happen after all, neither of them strangers to the scratch marks left lingering in each other’s minds.
He wasn’t going to tell her the full story, if he did it’d only give her peace. There was an extra layer to the torture, to knowing her dreams were proving how she couldn’t escape the haunting fear what reality may hold no matter what she did. It proved it would keep eating away at her until she’d be unable to do anything else.
No.
Neither of them could have peace and neither of them could hurt the other in here. At least not physically, the Master stepping back and keeping her pressed closely, right hand reaching down to tightly grip her left hand, squeezing the fingers just a little too tight. “Dance with me.”
“What?” Startled confusion lingered in her accent, too startled to do anything but stiffly step along with his easy sway. “There’s no music. Plus I don’t dance. Two left feet. Well, not literally or figuratively really. I prefer to be able to tolerate my dance partners.”
Another laugh, another patronising tut as he forcefully took another step backwards, taking them further into ashes. “There’s plenty of sounds. Or have you never danced to the sound of a good fire before? Really you’re quite lucky, if we were in my dreams there’d be a great deal more screaming to accompany us.”
There was nothing to say to that, no responses left. Instead numbly letting him try to lead her, forehead resting against hers and palm squarely centered on her back. When she would awaken later she would still be drained: too tired to fully keep up her carefully crafted mask and too aware to ever let herself simply drop it.
“You could push me out. Close up your mind. But then, we both know, I’d get bored again.” Pressing a kiss to the side of her head his lips curved against the tender skin, fake gentleness not matching how his fingers caged her against him. “And those deaths, those coming deaths, oh they’d be on you again. On that delicate conscience of yours.”
More death.
She’d never responded well to threats, never reacted well to being pushed into corners with false choices and manipulation. But arguing would take more energy than she had – it’d leave her all the more vulnerable when she woke to another day of smiling adventures.
When he kissed her, bitingly hard and mercilessly, their eternal battle for dominance was well met with the flavour of ashes and dust. The flavour of destruction, of shared loss, of betrayals still to come.
When he kissed her, neither would ever truly admit how the taste was that of coming home.