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The first thing the Doctor noticed when she woke up was something was different than usual. She tried to turn over to find out what wasn’t as it should be, but she found that she couldn’t move. She looked down and oh, yes of course, that was it, wasn’t it? The Master’s arm was tight around her middle, holding her close to him. She could feel his breath puff against her neck from where he slept, lightly tickling at the hairs there.
Wake up, she sang in her mind, trying to wriggle free.
“Don’t wanna,” came the sleepy reply behind her and she could have sworn his arm moved tighter around her.
“I can’t move,” she replied.
“Then just don’t move,” he grumbled.
“I need to go pee,” she replied, just about resisting the urge to elbow him. Maybe he heard that thought or maybe he just relented because the hold on her loosened and she was able to free herself.
“I promise I’ll be quick,” she whispered, pressing a quick kiss to his forehead.
All she got was a sleepy grumble in response as she tiptoed out of the room. True to her word she was quick, running straight there and walking back just as fast. On her way she stuck her head into her lab and saw the x’gyovx spinning around slowly, almost lazily orbiting each other. They were all humming a soft lilac as she entered and as they spun towards her they started sending bursts of gold across to each other.
“Yeah, I know. You tried to tell me, didn’t you? Turns out I just couldn’t understand what you were trying to tell me, even if it was right in front of my eyes,” she said softly, watching the crystals dance around her.
“You always were a dense idiot,” came a voice from the doorway.
“What did you get out of bed for? I was just coming back.”
“Worried you got lost or something,” he said, walking over and looping his arms around her middle and tucking his chin over her shoulder. He watched the lights with her, the flutters of darker purple that picked up as he’d joined in softening back to shades of lilac again.
“Do you understand them?” she asked, watching a small one dance around the rings on her hand.
“Of course I do, they use psychic links to communicate.”
“What are they saying then?”
“That you’re an idiot who needs to come back to bed.”
She laughed quickly before turning in his arms to press a quick kiss to his lips. “No, really, I want to know.”
“It’s all mushy stuff about love and contentment. I think they’re happy you’ve stopped spilling so much stress into the air.”
She watched one crystal swoop out of formation to circle them both before the rest of them joined it, spinning around them and bathing them in a golden glow. “Anything else?”
“They feel your peace, your joy, how happy you are.” She looked at the golden light dancing against his skin and squeezed her arms around him. “That’s nice,” she said, simply.
“Hmmm,” he hummed non-committedly. “Let’s just go back to bed, the floor’s freezing.”
“Not for me,” she laughed, wiggling her toes in her black socks.
“Yes, because I had to get you socks so your toes wouldn’t literally fall off in the middle of the night. Really for someone who supposedly goes round saving the day all the time you really are useless at taking care of yourself.”
She pouted and looked like she was about to say something but he kissed it away. “Bed,” he said, unwrapping his arms from around her and tugging her by the wrist instead. She let herself be led by him, as he went back along to her bed, climbed in and pulled her against his chest again.
“Did I say thank you?” she asked into the darkness a few minutes later.
“Of course not, your manners really are terrible.”
She sat up suddenly, immediately missing the warmth of his body. “I really am grateful, you know.”
“Of course I know. Just…” he gestured for her to cuddle up in his arms again, and she did so, fingers curling into his shirt as she lowered her head back over his chest. She could feel his hearts beating under her ear, the gentle tempo of them drumming away in the silence of the room. He pressed a lingering kiss against her temple and curled his arm around her tighter.
“Why?” she asked another couple of minutes later.
“You know if you really didn’t want to sleep there are other things we could be doing.”
She didn’t need to see his face to know he was wagging his eyebrows at her. “I just want to understand.”
“Yes, poor, frustrated Doctor sitting there with all her presents not understanding why she could be the recipient of such admiration,” he laughed, but there was no menace in his tone.
“You don’t get to laugh at me when you started this.”
“Love, I had to deal with your sadness, your hatred and your frustration the whole time, as well as my own frustrations. I forgot how infuriatingly dense you could be.”
“Well, I’m sorry that I didn’t think you’d be the kind of person to do this.”
“It was a grand scheme, a puzzle, an over the top gesture that you didn’t have a hope of reciprocating! How in the bloody hell did you not think I was behind this?!”
“Because you’re you.”
“Right and you’re so much better. I basically handed you the roses myself and you just blanked me!”
“You didn’t hand them to me, you left them in a trail for me to find!”
“How is that so different?!”
“Because it is!”
“Gods, why are you childish?!”
“Why are you so difficult?”
“Here I am trying to do something nice for you and you still end up blaming me just because you’re such an idiot!”
She lifted her head to glare at him, but something in his anger struck her hearts and she moved slightly so she could kiss him. “Are we ever going to be able to have a conversation that doesn’t end with us fighting?” she asked softly, as she lay her head back down on his chest.
“Now, love, where’s the fun in that?”
She laughed softly, distracting herself with playing with the buttons of his shirt again. “Just tell me the truth.”
She felt his exhale puff against her hair before he answered. “Fine. What do you want to know?”
“How did you get the Tardis to cooperate? What was the deal with the xyquingsir? Why did you choose the things you chose? Why was my writing in the other diary? Where did you get the seeds from? What -”
“Love, slow down. I can only answer one at a time.”
She took a breath before starting again. “How did you get her to help you? I thought she hated you.”
“True as that may be, she loves you more. She was willing to help me with my scheme if it meant you’d stop hurting yourself as much.”
“Okay, that bit I get, but when did you decide to include her?”
“Truthfully, I think she decided to include herself and I just had to go on with it. I think she was punishing me for lying to her.”
“For what time? The time you tried to cannibalise her or the time you used her machinery to -”
“Okay, that’s enough. I’m sure she can remember without you reminding her and I’d rather not be jettisoned into space right now. She was mad about O.”
“Out of all that she was most mad about O?”
“Yeah well, I think she liked him. I could feel her energies try to suss it out when I first came on board. I don’t know why she didn’t think to tell you. But I saw in your mind how upset you’d become and I may have made an offhand comment about it under my breath and honestly if your Tardis wasn’t so bloody sentient she would have let the two of us stew by ourselves. But as it is, she adores you.”
“So she decided to help you because you were complaining as O and she thought that was vaguely suspicious but instead of telling me this, she just let you come and go as you please?” she asked a little dubiously and she could almost feel his vicious grin against her skull.
“That’s about it. She’s almost as trusting as you are, dear Doctor.”
“Don’t remind me,” she said darkly, stabbing his chest with her finger.
She felt another placating kiss on her temple and let it go, trying to decide which question was the next important.
“Okay, explain the presents.”
“Well, the general concept of a present is something that you give to a loved one to show how much you care. I believe there’s a rather big cultural holiday on your precious Earth that revolves around the notion of gift giving as a reason to have feasts and not get any work done.”
“Oh, don’t be dense, we both know you know what Christmas is.” His free hand started running up and down the fabric of her t-shirt and continued with her line of questioning. “But why would you choose an Earth song to copy?”
“I know you and you love your precious Earth and all of their maddening traditions. I just didn’t want to have to deal with so many blasted birds and the only way I was going near a piper is to strangle them so I just amended it slightly.”
“Traditions? You do know that’s just a song, right?”
“What?!”
“Master, people on Earth don’t actually give each other chickens and people for Christmas,” she grinned, trying really hard not to laugh as the emotion drained out of his voice.
“Are you telling me, I went to all of this effort, because of a bloody song,” he gritted out.
“Sorry to break it to you, but yes.”
“Are you kidding me?!” he roared and she ducked her head further into his chest to avoid the volume of his scream. “I went to so much effort to make sure you got the right number of gifts in the right order! I had to tail you for ages on Jengan to make sure everything was going according to plan. I spent so much time planning all of this and I could have just kidnapped you and yelled at you for three days straight instead?”
His frustrations, and willingness to kidnap her, shouldn’t make her grin but she found herself giggling into his shirt.
“What’s so funny?”
“You are,” she wheezed out.
“You think all of my precious plans being for nothing is so hilarious,” he asked, his voice taking on that threatening edge that usually coloured it.
“Oh, hush,” she said, shifting to kiss him on the nose. “It wasn’t for nothing now, was it?”
“But still, I… I….”
“Yes, yes, you were robbed of kidnapping me, you had to put work into your grand plan but you are also currently in my bed and I’m so sad anymore, so why are you complaining?”
“I had to tail you on Jengan for hours just to make sure everything was right,” he whined. “I was freezing for days afterwards!”
“Aww, baby,” she cooed, rubbing her socked foot against his bare ones.
“Don’t. I will leave you.”
“No, you won’t,” she retaliated, cuddling into his chest again.
“No wonder the Tardis was so ready to help me, knowing I was going about it all wrong. She probably loved that I was being a prize idiot, bloody thing.”
“Did you know she locked me in my wardrobe?” she asked lightly, trying to placate him before his temper soared again, or before he actually said something that would force the Tardis to eject him.
“She did what now?”
“She locked me in the wardrobe for a bit, literally took the doors away so I couldn’t go anywhere. Also led me on a bit of a wild goose chase to get there.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Because she had to make sure I got all your gifts in the right order,” she said. “I wanted to go to the library but the notebooks were there so she locked me in the wardrobe until I found the bow tie. She made me put on those stupid jeans as well.”
“How exactly did she make you put those jeans on?”
“Uh, she sometimes locks me in the kitchen until I have something to eat so I thought she was doing the same thing in the wardrobe so I got changed and then I couldn’t find any of my normal trousers and those jeans were the closest things so I just put them on instead.”
“Hmmm.”
“What’re you humming for?”
“Just remembering how good your legs looked in those jeans, love.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“Just telling the truth, like you asked for,” he sang, rejoicing in the way he could throw her own words back at her.
“Wait, so you were telling me the truth when you said I looked good in them.”
“I’d never lie about something like that, scout’s honour.”
“They’d never let you in the scouts,” she responded, even as her smile grew once more. “That reminds me, what was the deal with Australia?”
“I missed you.”
“You missed me… so, you made me go to Australia… to deal with xyquingsir?”
“Yes.”
“You’re actually insane.”
“Also yes.”
“But you missed me.”
“We established that bit.”
“Why Australia though?”
“Maybe you weren’t the only thing I missed.”
“Oh.”
“Hmm. Don’t get me wrong, my life is way more fun than his, literally all I had to do was pretend to be human and stalk your life and no offence love, but that’s bloody tedious. But, I knew if I wanted to talk to you, I could. And you were happy with him.”
“You’re the same person.”
“That was the general point. What’s yours?”
“My point is,” she ground out, regretting that he always had to be so bloody difficult, “is that if I was happy with him, I could be happy with you too.”
“Oh.”
“Exactly.” She listened to his hearts beating under her head, a constant double beat to match her own. “That still doesn’t explain the xyquingsir though.”
“The xyquingsir?” he snorted. “They were blue and glowing and from space, I thought it was a brilliant calling card.”
“You thought abducting a species and taking it somewhere I didn’t want to go was a brilliant calling card?”
“It worked, didn’t I?”
The noise she made in response could only be categorised as halfway between a growl and a hum. He laughed and pressed more kisses to her head. “Next question, love.”
“Why did you choose the presents?”
Silence swirled around them before he started to speak again. “I remember when you used to wear bow ties a lot. You texted O a lot then too. I missed both of those things. I thought if you had a reminder of those days you’d remember what it was like. The suit was to match. I knew you wouldn’t wear your bad luck suit after last time so I got you a replacement.”
“Little flashy, don’t you think?”
“Nah, I wanted you to show off. No point hiding in the shadows when you could shine brighter than the stars.”
“And the scarf?”
“It was psychically linked to me and had four hearts on it. I could have written ‘Dear Doctor, lots of love, from the Master’ and you still wouldn’t have realised it was from me,” he growled the ending a little bit as he remembered how frustrating the past few weeks had been.
“I just thought the hearts were a repeating pattern on both ends.”
“And you didn’t think about how the scarf smelt different for you than anyone else?”
“I did, but I -”
“Honestly, if I didn’t love you so much I’d strangle you.”
“Wait, so chestnuts... You were the one who bumped into me on Jengan!”
“And now you cotton on.”
“Well that wasn’t very nice of you.”
“Doctor, you were about to have a panic attack in the middle of the street until you got mad at me instead.”
“Oh. Right, well, I suppose maybe that was nice of you then.”
“Thank you. And when you were eating carrot cake or whatever else, I snuck into your Tardis and left the ring box on the console. Then I slipped the pies in your bag on my way back to my own Tardis.”
“And I missed you both times?”
“We have established that you are both incredibly blind and stupid.”
“Yeah, I know, but how did I miss it by that much?”
“Guess you just didn’t want to see me.”
Feeling his mood sour again she moved the fabric of his shirt aside slightly so she could kiss over his hearts. “Yes, but I want to see you now.”
“I also left your socks and x’gyovx as well because I knew you’d need socks immediately because you’d forget to listen to your own warnings and you’d been eyeing the x’gyovx all morning. I was surprised you managed to walk away from it without getting any crystals but you always did have more self control than anyone else. I also thought you might be able to understand them. No, it’s okay it was just a thought. Not everyone can, even those with psychic abilities.”
“Yours were always better than mine.”
“Well we know that.”
“Then the pins?” she nudged when he didn't continue.
“The planets from your favourite solar system.”
“You do know that they declared Pluto isn’t a planet anymore?”
“Yes, well, humans are complete idiots.”
“And the roses?”
“It’s not that I was running out of ideas, but I was on Axcher IV getting your rings and the gold roses there were stunning. But I knew they’d be too much so I went to your precious Earth and got them there.”
“And then you took them all the way to Tiac to give them to me.”
“Yes,” he ground out.
“It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone the great Master is actually a secret romantic,” she teased back with a wide grin.
“Secret? I didn’t go through all of this bloody effort for nothing. I even talked to that whole woman about the symbolic meaning of different shades of roses. I think she was under the impression I’d cheated on you or something for how badly I wanted to get it right.”
“Wait, the roses meant something?”
“Of course they did. What, did you think I threw in a white rose to make up the numbers after they ran out of red roses or something?”
“Something like that,” she mumbled.
“Idiot,” he muttered. “My daft idiot. Of course there was another meaning in it. Thought you’d at least attempt to figure it out, you’re usually so much better with riddles than this. I’m almost disappointed in you.”
“What does it mean then?” she humphed.
“Humility. Having a low opinion of one’s importance.”
“Surrounded by love?”
“Yes, surrounded by love.”
She pressed another pair of kisses over his hearts. “Why did you dance with me? You made me drop my bouquet.”
“I told you that at the time, I did it because I wanted to. You looked so good, in the suit I’d picked out, the bow tie I’d gifted you, the pins I’d searched half a galaxy to get perfect, the rings I haggled to get. I knew what I was doing when I got you all of it, but it was something else entirely seeing you in front of me, covered in all those things I’d given you.”
“Just a little possessive are we?” she asked.
“You better believe it,” he growled, leaning round to nip at her ear.
“Thank you for making sure I got my bouquet back.”
“I didn’t go to all that effort and chit chat with that woman for an hour for you to just leave it in some random clearing in Tiac. I had to endure chit chat for those, chit chat, Doctor,” he said in a strangled voice.
She leaned over and patted his hand. She had all intention of moving it back to his chest but he was faster than her and caught her fingers in his own, stroking the back of her hand with the pad of his thumb in time to the movement of his other hand on her back.
“What about the books? Why was my writing in one of them?”
“I only wrote in one. If your handwriting somehow ended up in one of them I think you’ve got your future self to yell at, not me.” He let out a deep sigh before continuing. “I think I knew you weren’t going to figure it out so I had to just tell you. But I didn’t want you to know it was me too early or you wouldn’t have accepted anymore presents and I needed you to be loved. I needed you to remember that you are loved, by so many people, but you need to love yourself. It’s the only one that actually matters.”
“After you, you mean?”
“No, Doctor, you need to love yourself more than you need to be loved by anyone else. Even me.”
“Is that why you made me the jammy dodgers,” she asked in a small voice.
He hesitated before answering. “Yes. I needed you to remember that I had loved you once and that you had let yourself be loved by me once. It was the only way you weren’t going to immediately try and kill me once you knew it was me.”
“Give me a little more credit than that.”
“I know how your mind works.”
She didn’t respond to that and he held her as silence fell over them like a thick blanket once more.
“I am sorry.”
“Sorry?” she asked, not sure she’d heard that correctly for how quietly he’d said it.
“You heard me. I never meant to cause you more harm, not this time. I just wanted you to remember that you’re always worthy of love.”
Flashes of their childhood adoration flashed through her mind, burning in a red haze and her thoughts soured. She sat up quickly, untangled herself from him, stood up again and walked away from the bed. “Is that why you gave me those fruit seeds?” she spat back. “Made biscuits from my favourite childhood snack and made me remember all those days we just ran away together? Is that your idea of not causing me harm? You took that away from me again.”
“Doctor -”
“No, I don’t want to hear it. How could I be so blind? Of course you’d give me all these pretty things, all these shiny trinkets so I would let you in again but still you keep hurting me. You made me relive so much pain, you made me go back when I’m not ready, you… you were tricking me this whole time!”
“Doctor, just let me -”
“No, I don’t want to hear. You went and you burned them all again, took it all away from me again just as I accepted that I hadn’t lost Gallifrey. You took home and destroyed it. Then came back here and thought you could make it better with presents and kisses but you can’t.”
“Just listen-”
“No! I already said I don’t want to hear your excuses this time. You can’t just make snacks for me like you did when we were younger and it somehow makes up for all of the hurt you put me through. You took Gallifrey away again.”
“They hurt you first!” he roared and she finally stopped.
Turning in her rant she finally looked at him, properly looked at him, and the clear anguish on his face was enough to get her to pause. “What?”
He climbed out of her bed and went to stand in front of her, eyes burning and completely focused, even as she tried to flinch away. He held her shoulders tight and looked her right in her eyes, forcing her to look at him as he spoke. “They hurt you and they lied to you, cut you up and experimented on you until they found out how to use you. They treated you like some freak experiment and tore you up over and over again until they knew how to use your secrets on themselves. You weren’t a miracle to them. You were a freak, you weren’t anything and so they cut you up into tiny pieces and scattered you around. Like you were nothing. They build our whole society on a lie. No wonder you wanted to get away from them so badly.” He chuckled darkly before seriousness washed over his face and he continued.
“When I found out, I was mad. So mad that I thought I was going to go insane again. Yes, at first I was mad that they’d lied to me, that they lied to everyone. But then I found out what they’d done to you. Well, dear, I couldn’t stand that. I had to make them pay.”
“You burned Gallifrey for me?” she asked slowly, looking for any hint of a lie in his eyes.
“Love, I tore Gallifrey apart brick by brick for you. Those bastards thought they could rule over everybody, with their bloody heads up their pompous asses. They thought they were above it all, even retribution for their crimes. So I made them pay.”
“You made them pay,” she echoed back.
“If they’re going to be monsters, then a monster has to bring them down. Do you understand?”
“But, I… you… can’t… no…”
“I did, and I would do it again.”
“But all the people… the children…you killed them all, for something they weren’t a part of, something they didn’t know about…. you…. You…”
“It’s okay, love, I know I’m a monster.”
She stared at him dumbfounded, too scared to speak, mind running too fast to calculate. She looked down, unable to look in his eyes anymore but his next words caused her head to snap back up. “But, you’re not.”
“What?”
“No matter what they thought of you when they tore you apart, you’re not the monster. You’re bright and good and beautiful. I destroyed the Council, ripped them limb by limb for a crime they most certainly knew about. And I burned Gallifrey. I let it know the heartbreak they had caused me. I would have burned them all, but I saw you. I saw Gallifrey burning and I saw you, a small, lost boy trying to run away again. I saw us in the tree trading fruit and holding onto each other so we wouldn’t fall out. I saw you and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take that away from you, again. They’d already taken a life from you that you would never know, I couldn’t take your home from you as well.”
“So you didn’t burn Gallifrey?”
“Love, those seeds I gave you, they’re new. They fell last week.”
“Oh,” she sobbed, falling into him as her knees buckled. “So it’s still there, it’s not gone?”
“Well I can’t promise that all of it is, I had to prove my point, after all, but yes, for the most part, Gallifrey is still there.”
She sobbed in his arms and he held her tight pressing kisses into her hair. “I am so sorry, really. I needed them to know the pain they’d caused me. The thought of someone doing that to you, I couldn’t…” his growl tapered out into a broken sigh and he buried his face into her shoulder.
“The Citadel is gone, but Gallifrey isn’t. I couldn’t do that to you but I had to do something,” he nipped at her shoulder, seeking reassurance that she was still there, still with him.
“I’m still here,” she whispered.
“How…”
“I guess that psychic link wasn’t as one sided as you thought it was.”
‘I love you.’
‘Stop burning planets for me.’
‘You know I can’t promise that.’
‘Master…’
‘Fine. I’ll only burn planets for you if it’s for a good reason.’
‘That’s the best I’m going to get, isn’t it?’
‘If you want a promise I won’t break, yes.’
‘Fine. I love you too, my beautiful, broken Master.’
‘Love you more, darling Doctor.’
They held each other until they stopped crying, chests rising and falling calmer than before. “Let’s go back to bed, okay? You can interrogate me another time if you want.”
“Mmm, okay,” she mumbled, letting him lead her back to bed once more.
“Sleep, darling, I’ve got you,” he said, pressing another fierce kiss to her temple and hugging her tight, as if he was daring the universe to try and take her out of his arms again. The Doctor fell asleep like that, loved and protected, as her Tardis drifted deep in the recesses of space.