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*
Gallifrey burned.
So bright with smoke and the cloaking of flames. Loud enough to stutter all two of the Doctor's hearts.
She sees… she sees now… it is only the gentleness of morning-light reflecting off shimmering silver leaves. The entire mountainous stretch of cadonwood trees burn a vibrant orange, and right into the Doctor's widening eyes. She inhales shakily, expecting ash, and fills herself with cool and sour-fragrant air.
It's nearly midwinter. She can taste the atoms left of sunscald.
High above her, the Citadel's mighty platform-beam and the glass dome. Voices echo off in the distance. Gallifreyans yell and laugh and whisper each other's names, knowing nothing of her pain, existing as she does. The Doctor can feel the soft, willowy grass underneath her naked feet. Golden red as one of their binary suns.
A cluster of flutterwings — Wild Endeavours with their purple, cloud-like appearance and antennas as silvery as the leaves — swoop around her, rustling the Doctor's clothing.
Madrigals were yellowish orange and tiny, with a curious ability to go invisible when threatened. Silverbands were black, not silver. Blue Crystals grew from the crystals in Solitude, and only appeared at twilight. Perdition turned red from drinking blood.
The Doctor glances towards one of the ulanda trees, thick and vert, and notices one of the male-presenting Gallifreyans watching her solemnly beneath the foliage.
He's dark-skinned and handsome even if the Doctor can’t recognise his face in the shadows.
The black Cardin-Nehru jacket is familiar to her. The neatness of the dark, ironed trousers and his leather boots.
"Have you missed me?"
She closes her eyes against the Master's low, soothing tone, no longer fighting him.
"I always miss you," the Doctor confesses, revealing no specific expression, pacing to the left as the Master emerges, pacing to his left. "I miss the you… you used to be…" They circle each other, and the Doctor can feel her facial muscles straining. "Not… the death… not the ruin and chaos…"
He hums, contemplating this. "That doesn't sound right. Who would I be without it?"
"You…"
"Who is that truly to you… who are you?"
A juvenile flutterwing hovers towards the Master. He snatches it up one-handed, making a fist.
Panic floods into her.
"Don't," she says forcefully, shouting in a half-plea. The Doctor halts herself, rushing towards the Master and clutching onto her open, square-buttoned gown of saffron yellow-black. Wide cuffs. A stiff, binding-tight sash against the Doctor's stomach. The ethereal, iridescent scales on her robe burn brightly as Gallifrey. This weighs so heavy. Her past. "Don't… please don't…"
The fingers to Master's dark, leathered glove rasp together.
"Trying to appeal to my better nature? When it failed the last time?" He tuts, giving her a faintly exasperated look. "Oh, my dear Doctor…"
He tightens his fist, much to the Doctor's mounting horror, and then opens it. Instead of a flutterwing's corpse, the Master shows her a brooch. Dark star alloy. She can sense the molten, powerful energy hidden deep, deep inside its very structure.
"So easy to fool…"
The Master stares into her hazel eyes, winking briefly.
Relief washes over her. She staggers, and his hand finds hers.
"Do you remember what you told me… after you gifted me this…?" he asks, pulling the Doctor in. The tips of their noses brush. A hint of aged sherry on the Master's breath gusting hotly across her mouth. "After my little one was brought to me?"
A chord of fondness suddenly reverberates inside her.
The Master's daughter. She saw her once, in her first life as the Doctor, having been the Master's oldest friend despite straying apart — a pale, black-haired fledgling. Newly grown. She was created with both of their genetics, out of an experimental run with a Loom. But, the Master's daughter wasn't her child. Not really. The Doctor did not presume to claim her. And the Doctor knew better than to mention the Master's daughter to the Master as much as the Master knew to not speak of the Doctor's family.
"I told you… that you deserved this," she murmurs, smiling so hard it aches, letting go of his hand. "You deserved to be happy."
His own mouth curls into a toothy, pleasant grin.
The Master nudges the dark star alloy brooch to the Doctor's collar, pinning it onto the Timeless Child's gown.
"You deserve to be happy, Thete."
He then cups the side of the Doctor's face roughly, holding benevolent gazes, the side of the Master's thumb dragging down her cheek. A small, shuddery noise leaves the Doctor. No one has called her that in so long.
"You're not my enemy."
She wants to utter the Master's name — his true name — but fears the illusion stripping away. Leaving her cold and empty. So they run together in the Doctor's dreams, through the Capitol's streets, the Outlands and Arcadia and Plutarch. They run.
Because it's all they burn for.
*