Work Text:
The Doctor and the Master were young once.
They sprawled across fields of red grass and whispered in each other's ears and stared up at the twin suns of Gallifrey as they swapped places in the sky.
They made jokes.
They twined their fingers through each other's hair.
They made promises that they intended to keep. Promises sealed in youthful impulses and bloodstained rocks and gentle touches stolen in secret.
Unfortunately, however, not even Time Lords possess the ability to remain young forever. As the Doctor and the Master grew older, they began to drift apart. Pain and jealousy ruled their hearts, drawing and quartering them until they were pulled in all directions.
Even when they both went renegade, it was for different reasons.
One of them changed.
The other stayed the same.
Still, they argue about which of them walked which path, rehashing the same discourse a thousand times from dozens of different lips. The debate has followed them for centuries, and the words continue to sting their skin just as harshly as they did the first time they had it.
For a long time, they barely see each other. Their encounters are passing glances in a rearview mirror, barely more than the echoes of that which has already been left behind.
But that does not mean that they have forgiven each other. That does not mean their wounds have healed. That does not wash the blood from their hands or the broken promises from their consciences.
Their pasts, lengthy though they are, are not so easy to forget.
So when the Doctor -- in a body that is still new to him, grey and gangling and possessing an exorbitant amount of eyebrow -- finds himself with his old friend and best enemy in his custody, he hardly knows what to do with himself. He does not know what to say, what to think, how to behave.
Nor, does he expect, does Missy.
They spend centuries on either side of the glass walls that constitute the vault that holds Missy prisoner, staring at each other through the slightly warped plane. Each of them have thousands of years' worth of complaints and declarations perched on the tip of their tongues, but no words left to say them.
So for too long, they say nothing at all.
They merely sit and stare at each other, wondering how it is that they got here, stuck beneath the ground of an English university, full of rage and resentment and grief.
There are four broken hearts beating within their chests, and they lack the tools with which to mend them.
Because fixing things, it seems, is a young person's game, and they left their youth behind them long ago, spread beneath an orange sky.