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The Master wakes up to a faceful of decadent, fluffy pillow, an armful of mattress that’s still-warm and rapidly-cooling, and a noseful of smell that is comfortingly, unmistakably Doctor-smell. The whole scene should be, for all intents and purposes, downright idyllic; instead he blinks past something that’s either morning bleariness or plain old disbelief, while his stomach drops with slowly-dawning dread.
He means, actually, to throw himself to sitting--wake the hell up and get out of the damn nightmare ASAP. His borrowed American body has other ideas, and a penchant, apparently, for sleeping hard: instead of the intended jolt, the Master lurches up with a long, low sound drawing out his throat. The hand he wants to fling outward to clear the way winds up doing little more than pushing the covers back down to his knees.
Which is, incidentally, how he realizes he definitely fell asleep in a pair of boxers and not a whole lot else.
“What in the absolute hell,” he mumbles.
“Sorry?” chirps a voice from the next room over, and when the Master lifts his gaze again, the Doctor is looking out with half-toweled hair and a single bare shoulder. He blinks becomingly at the Master with heartbreakingly blue eyes and, for a split second, the Master loses all encroaching panic to a veritable riptide of longing.
“Aha! There you are ,” he sing-songs. “Good morning. I’d say you should join me but, well, I’m just wrapping up, I’m afraid. Serves you right, sleeping in, leaving me alone all morning.”
He stares. Dregs of memory, or perhaps dreams, helpfully burble up from behind the last several hours of unconsciousness. “I seem to remember,” the Master ventures, setting his voice into a drawl, “warning you about this. Somewhere around the two a.m. mark, that’s right—when a certain someone was insisting we stay up another hour—”
“—for the sake of good fun,” the Doctor confirms, batting his damnably beautiful eyelashes like an innocent waif.
Humor tickles the Master’s ribs. It’s a strange sensation next to the wrongness of the entire instant. He plasters on a smile: he can feel it take on a crooked edge that’s not wholly the fault of the stolen body. Like it’s muscle memory, to tease. “You’re incorrigible.”
“So you were saying, just around the two a.m. mark.” The Doctor practically wiggles, then, shaking a few droplets of water free from his hair while he smiles at the Master like the very suns couldn’t compare. “I was thinking: eggy bread for breakfast. Would you get it started? Please? Still a bit damp in here, I can’t possibly put clothes on before I’m dry, I’ll feel it all day—and if we wait until I’ve cooked, we’ll both be ravenous and make terrible decisions about what goes on eggy bread—”
“You. You will make terrible decisions about what goes on french toast.”
He says it with the certainty of one who’s seen it before. He has memories of this playing out, before. When did that happen? How?
“French toast,” the Doctor repeats, giggling. “You’re so wonderfully American.”
He ducks out of sight and back into the next room, a single puff of steam exiting in his place before fading into the wide ether. The Master laughs, because it’s the right thing to do, he can feel it in his bones that laughing is the only right thing to do at this moment--it’s just that the moment itself isn’t right. Behind him is the subtle awareness of a headboard and below him is the soft give of mattress, and it is so wonderfully, unspeakably good …
He just. Isn’t quite sure it’s right .
With a single heaved breath and a rough hand through his hair, the Master swings his legs over the side of the bed. Jeans, discarded, too large to be the Doctor’s, sit roughly folded on the seat of a chair, with a jacket and t-shirt thrown over the arm. The Master takes in the scene: those are his. Those are absolutely his. He reaches for the pants and the fabric is familiar; the denim, black, is worn soft in the right places; the button at the top has a shine pressed into it that’s the very shape of his thumb.
Dreams—or maybe memories—helpfully inform him that this is it. This is… right.
Still: the Master can’t quite pull his shirt over his head without the slightest tremble making its way across his palm and into his fingertips. He balls his hands into fists and holds them there for a count of ten to make sure they are no longer shaking by the time he goes to make breakfast.
--
The Doctor is only minutely less beautiful when fully clothed, and only a fraction less heartbreaking when he’s pouring obscene amounts of syrup over his food. The Master watches the french toast settle into its brand new sugary moat, shifts his gaze to the Doctor’s expression of delighted concentration, and feels a peculiar wash of fondness wipe clean the initial inkling of nausea.
That, too, is familiar. If he were to tease the Doctor about this very thing, it would be a recognizable jab. There would be banter, probably flirtation. Possibly some ill-advised kissing on the dining room table.
He clears his throat, instead.
“So. We’ve been doing this a while,” he says, desperately trying for casual.
If he misses the mark, then the Doctor doesn’t give him any indication. For all intents and purposes, he seems far more intent on his syrup-worthy bread-boats than on catching the Master in an impromptu interrogation effort. “Drifting, you mean?” he asks, sounding lovely and far less sticky than the Master would have expected. He actually brightens. “Are you keen to land sometime soon, then?”
Of course it’s been a while since they landed. A helpful recollection informs the Master that, yes, the drifting had actually been his request. Or, more to the point, had been a pointed suggestion given only after he’d pinned the Doctor against the console, kissed him silly, and calmly pointed out that they could manage more of the kissing, and cooking, and cuddling shebang if they weren’t, say, constantly chasing after or running from danger on some backwards, stars-forsaken planet in the middle of whatever all-consuming crisis.
That very same recollection carries with it an implication, namely that the Doctor took him up on the offer— which when the Master thinks about it, is an awful lot of concession that the Doctor would never have granted him, in other lives.
The chair is steady behind his spine and the floor is firm beneath his feet. His sense of time is dulled inside this thuggish human shape, but his mind can still sense the subtle white noise whirring of the Vortex, like humidity on the skin. The sensory is there along with the memory. If it’s not right, this is all, at least, real.
The Doctor is still gazing at him with that besotted, hopeful look, and the Master is still steeping in the hearts-deep, jelly-thick contentment of allowance. Still: when he swallows, it’s around a suddenly-dry throat.
“I mean—I meant, this. When I say a while, I mean the whole… traveling thing. Together.”
“Oh.” The Doctor blinks. “Yes,” he agrees, but now he’s looking at the Master in a keen, pleasant, calm way which the Master recognizes—not from other bodies and lives, but recognizes from this face— as a sure sign that the Doctor is in the process of analysis. Gears turning, what secrets lie beneath, find the problem, manufacture the solution, bam, world saved. It would be flattering to be the subject of the Doctor’s undivided attentions like this, and without even a plot to his name… if it weren’t downright frustrating to be held under the metaphorical microscope.
Clever bastard , he thinks, with no little bit of fondness, either.
Well, two can play at that game. The Doctor might be a keen deductor, but the Master is an artful liar. Observe:
He cracks a half-smirk, shrugs a shoulder, and says, “Just thinking about it. Little mercies. Funny old universe.” He turns his eyes to his plate instead, casually intersperses the conversation with a mouthful of french toast, playing it casual, casual, casual. “I think,” he says, waving his fork, “I’d be up for landing sometime soon.”
A look goes between them: the Doctor watching him with a pleasantly casual expression that most would call innocent, and the Master meeting him glance-for-glance with a brow lifted in question.
The Doctor tilts his head, and the Master gives him a little wink without thinking a damn thing about it.
(Whatever life this is, right or no, gods and Pythia, it’s… good.)
At long last the Doctor grabs for his tea, downs the rest of the cooling cup, and says, “Where?”
“Where needs a Doctor’s touch?”
“Everywhere,” the Doctor says, lips wriggling adorably around a smile, “at some point or another.”
“Anywhere, then,” the Master says.
The Doctor beams.
(That’s the second time today he’s grinned at the Master like anything, the second time today the Master’s been responsible in some unfathomable little way for the Doctor’s joy, and the effect of that knowledge is instantaneous and heady: an addictive mix of syrupy-thick contentment and effervescent interest to see what happens next, with a cocktail-orange-twist of joy unadulterated and hope immortal.
The Master, never one to let a good thing pass him by, leans all the way across the table in reaching. The Doctor meets him halfway. Half-standing, waists pressed awkwardly to the table’s edge, they kiss over a set full half-empty plates and sticky forks and tea-ringed little cups. The shape of the Doctor’s smile presses against his lips, and the Master shoves away any last inklings of unreality.
There are some things good enough to lie for.)
--
They wind up on Earth, because of-fucking- course they do. It winds up working out a charm: the Master, even without the TARDIS’ translation matrix, started to pick up bits and bobs of the humans’ many languages during the Doctor’s stint at UNIT, and his own stint of being an American has solidified him with not only working grasp of the English language, but the appropriate accent to boot. Thanks largely to him, they blend in, and thanks largely to the Doctor’s innate sense of altruism, they manage to save the world well before dinnertime, and with plenty of time to feed the ducks at a local pond they passed near the start of the day.
The Doctor never carries money, but he does carry a sonic screwdriver. Between some finagled settings and one particularly firm tap of the Master’s fist, they wind up emptying half of the duck food dispenser over the Doctor’s hands and shoes. The Master finds he doesn’t actually resent holding the Doctor’s ill-gotten gains while the damnable fool sits on the park bench and works his shoes off.
“Not often the TARDIS drops us in this part of the world,” the Doctor says, overly casual, as he taps his upended heel to dislodge any errant pellet passengers.
The Master shoots him as firm a look as one can when both hands are outstretched, cupped, and full of duck food. “You’re plotting.”
“Presumptuous!”
“But right .”
The Doctor, who had been halfway to feigning a hurt expression, seems to think better of it and settles, instead, for a hopefully petulant one. “It’s just,” the Doctor says primly, “that Grace and I have kept up, between things—”
“Oh, god damn it—”
“—and I was thinking ,” the Doctor huffs, “that it might be nice to see her while we’re in the area.”
The Master doesn’t have a hand free to dramatically scrub his face. It’s really too bad: he could use a moment to show the Doctor what a miserable idea this is. “She hates me.”
“You did try to kill her,” the Doctor says, quite reasonably, as he apparently takes some pity on the Master’s cruddy predicament, and reaches back out to take back his duck food bounty.
It’s sweet and charitable and the Master, for better or for worse, can’t quite bring himself to return the sentiment. He snorts. “Oh, please.”
“Oh, please, what ?”
“What does she want, a medal? I’ve tried to kill lots of people. You included.”
“I wasn’t the biggest fan of it, either, come to it,” the Doctor mutters not-at-all subtly under his breath as he throws out a handful of duck feed into the water and attracts a sizeable crowd. There’s something about their incessant, excited quacking that makes the whole argument feel a little more ridiculous. Mundane, sort of--like this isn’t a centuries-old discussion that deserves a mite more dignity than… this. Than flapping, excited waterfowl and and the Doctor’s hands full of stolen feed that the Master was just holding onto for him.
It’s weird, the Master decides. Weird, how casual they’ve gotten.
When did they get this casual?
Better late than never, he figures. The Master heaves a sigh and demonstrably scrubs his face. It’s a mistake: his hands have the distinctly stale-fishy smell of desiccated animal food. The smell goes all up his nose and he knows, with sudden awful certainty, that he’ll be catching whiffs of it for hours now that he’s gone and rubbed it into his skin.
“Go hang out with your human,” he says, hoping that giving in this much will broker him a good bargain.
“But—”
“I swear, I won’t steal your TARDIS, I won’t try to take over any worlds, any countries, any anything,” he tries, a little desperately. “I might take over the shower and see if I can’t scrub off the smell of the planet, and that’s as dastardly as I’ll get. Promise.”
The Doctor gives him a frankly impressive pout.
“ But , I was going to say,” he says, louder and more punctuated and just a little condescending, “I want you to come with.”
“To see your human?”
“Grace, yes—I did say, it would be nice if we saw her. So.”
The Master throws up his hand. “What part of ‘she hates me’ didn’t you hear? You want a nice visit with your companions, that’s great, but I—”
“Are traveling with me , now,” the Doctor says, in a beguiling and soft tone of voice that has the Master’s heart going treacherously soft and has his head ringing with all kinds of alarms. The Doctor sidles up, loops one of his free arms around the Master’s elbow, and there’s nothing in the whole universe more dangerous than this man, and this is a stunning example of the fact. “And I’m not going to claim you—oh, I don’t know—changed, or domesticated, or anything awful like that. But Master. Whole lives, we’ve never managed to make it work. But here we are. I put out my hand: you took it. You could have left: you stayed. I don’t think that’s too little to be hopeless over… do you?”
The Doctor bats his lashes, and the Master feels the proverbial white flag start pulling up his throat.
“You are,” the Master says as he leans down to press his forehead firmly against the Doctor’s, “such a manipulative brat.”
“Just as well,” the Doctor murmurs. He must roll onto his toes for a moment, because the kiss sways him forward, and the Master back an inch or two in turn. “I already rung her is the thing, before we landed, and then back at that little telephone booth while you were being quite dashing with the police officers.”
The Master considers that.
“Did you just call my hypnotism dashing ?”
“Well—it got me a moment to reach out,” the Doctor admits sheepishly, “and you are rather handsome when you’re being devious.”
(This much, at least, tracks: the Doctor was always good at changing the rules at the last second. Proverbial rug ripped out from under your feet or whatever. He changes the shape of the universe around him. The Master has spent veritable lifetimes trying to take it over, just so he could watch the Doctor turn the worlds on his whim.
Whatever this is they have, now, instead, it’s… suspiciously, worryingly better .)
“We are back in the TARDIS by midnight,” he decides.
“Ah,” the Doctor nods, sagely, “to avoid turning into pumpkins, of course.”
“So that I have time, before you konk out, to kiss the shit out of you. And maybe remind you that you called me dashing.”
The Doctor beams at him and the Master is forced into the reality of the instant: he’s here, as the Doctor rolls up onto his toes again, both hands going around his neck in a kiss, spilling the remainder of the duck food down over his shoulders and scattering it about their feet.
(He remembers it all—everything the doctor mentioned. The offered hand, the taking of it. The choice to stay. Grace, too—he remembers her. Remembers the jealous jab about grammar in the back of a god-damned ambulance, all the way to waking up and she was long gone, with the Doctor in attendance to his breaking shape. He remembers it, necessarily. Because that’s… how it all went.)
--
In fifteen minutes Grace shows up, and it’s exactly as awkward as the Master assumed it would be, but the Doctor has a way of talking fast until people follow along. As these things go, it’s not the worst second-time-meeting the Master’s ever had with one of the Doctor’s companions. He’ll even concede she’s got a good head on her. She’s no Jo Grant, but then, who is these days?
It goes by awkwardly with the Master putting on his best speak-rarely-and-mildly airs, and all goes well as it can.
(Grace doesn’t seem to want to engage him in overmuch conversation, either, so... the drifting is a little too easy: and in drifting he thinks of the other ways it could have gone—that New Year’s Eve, and that instant hanging above the Eye of Harmony. It could have turned out… badly, he thinks. Badly for him, especially.
For better or worse, that option seems at least as real as the ones that hover around him, the ones shaped like chattering ducks and pleasant green parks and the Doctor sharing a laugh with his might-have-been companion.)
“Hey.”
The Master turns to Grace. She’s glowering at him some, but that’s not unexpected. The Doctor’s fast pace has finally taken him off somewhere to a brief distraction, and left them to the instant the Master has been impatiently waiting to get over with.
“Is for horses,” he says, because neural pathways are a bitch and while you could conceivably take the Master out of the American, they're apparently way past the point of the opposite thing.
She lifts a brow. He lifts one in reply.
“See you’re not falling apart anymore.”
“Zed rooms and neutrino fields. Helps keep some of the more unfortunate side effects at bay.”
“Not ending the world, again?”
“No,” the Master says, surprised a little to hear himself sounding serious. “I’ve got, uh. Bigger things to do, these days. Doctor, and traveling. Keeping him out of too much trouble, usually unsuccessfully, the like.”
She hums. An awkward silence goes between them.
“I’m not about to forgive you,” she says, conversationally, “but if you mean that, about keeping the Doctor out of too much trouble? I’ll think twice about hating you so much.”
“You flatter me,” he drawls.
Around that time, the Doctor swings back, having realized his mistake—or perhaps having contrived the instant altogether. The Master does have to admit that it went better than expected. Better… than he could ever have imagined it going, actually.
(He can imagine worlds where this never happened. Worlds where no forgiveness, no mercy, no grace is given. Universes where people died, and stayed dead. It’s… not comfortable. Against the backdrop of Grace’s laughter and the Doctor’s excitement—it sets badly.
The ill-ease sticks with him enough that the Doctor has to kiss him, first, at midnight when the TARDIS doors close.)
--
He sleeps like shit.
(He’s out of time. He has to be. None of this makes sense: there’s no universe out there that’d be this kind, no way in the seven systems that a path would lead here. He knows himself well enough to know that bitterness is not so easily tucked aside. He shouldn’t have grabbed the Doctor’s offered hand, or, more to the point, he couldn’t have. He hated the Doctor too much leading up to those instants, surely—was too desperate, certainly—wouldn’t have been able to let go of this gods-forsaken stupid fucking task of taking the universe in his hands like an offering that’d win him the only goddamned prize he ever actually wanted…)
Sometime in the night the Doctor nuzzles in against his arm and smashes his nose flat. The pose is both completely unflattering and heart-rendingly endearing. It feels like being punched square in the chest. He’s either breathless or on the verge of hyperventilating.
There’s never been a universe this kind.
(But minds do funny things under stress. He’s died before, he knows what the last desperate firing of your neurons is like--it isn’t out of the question. A mind stretched thin by an event horizon—that’d more than cause enough to stretch out time, and memory, and possibility, until the fragile threads of your personality started to conjure up whatever desperate imagining would keep you sane as you’re torn to shreds.)
The Doctor rolls over and the Master, like muscle memory, rolls over with him until he’s tucked tight against the Doctor’s spine, arm around his waist, palm flat on his chest and wedged comfortably between his dual-heartsbeat.
He cannot, for the life of him, sleep.
--
He must, at some point, drift off, though it might as well have been for a microspan given how not-rested he feels. It’s just that the Doctor is wiggling in the circle of his arms, kissing his chin, and he’s sure as hell awake now when he wasn’t five seconds ago.
“Get up,” the Doctor sing-songs, “your arm’s heavy and I’m getting a cramp.”
The Master obligingly lifts his arm. Instead of stretching, the Doctor tilts his head.
“Something wrong?” he asks.
“Didn’t sleep great,” the Master mumbles, bringing his hand to his face to scrub some wakefulness back into it, but the Doctor stops him before he can get there and tugs down his wrist. The intensity of his gaze sets something roiling under the Master’s skin.
“No,” the Doctor breathes. “I mean, the way you’re looking at me. Is something wrong?”
“I,” the Master says, and stops.
(What the hell can he say? He glances down at the Doctor’s hands wrapped around his. Kind universe. Figures you’d have to fall into a black hole to find it. He flexes his palm: the Doctor’s hands sure as hell feel real, but that’s basic Descartes for you. Nothing to ensure but your own self existing in a reality—the rest a trick fed in by demons, or memory. Senses mixed up like heartache, when emotional pain confuses the brain and interprets it as a nebulous pain in its most confusing set of organs. He glances up to the Doctor’s unspeakably beautiful eyes and wonders if there’s a soft way to say, I’m sorry we only have this, here .)
“Oh,” the Doctor says like that’s a reply.
The Master could cry, or maybe strangle him about now (the latter at least, he did... didn’t he? Didn’t he try?) if not for the look of realization and concern that’s drawn the Doctor’s brows together. It looks familiar on this face, but there’s no way he can know it. If this is a lie, he wouldn’t have known the Doctor long enough to see this particular expression play out, before he…
If he...
“Master,” the Doctor murmurs. “Master,” he repeats, sliding one of his hands up to his cheek. “You’ve woken badly, again?”
The Master closes his eyes. Memory, and remembering—and besides, it’s easier this way, if he isn’t looking dead in the eye of the man he loves. “We’ve been here before,” he murmurs.
“With you,” the Doctor supplies, “debating whether or not you’re really here with me. Right?”
The Master doesn’t reply. The Doctor huffs... and actually pulls his hand away, and brings his fingers back in a firm tap-tap against the Master’s cheek.
“Well,” the Doctor says, “stop it.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said, stop it,” the Doctor insists, lips tucking into a prim and affronted little line. “I’m getting up and starting breakfast. You’re going to join me and talk. No, you don’t get to argue. And I’ll warn you, I don’t want to be dismissive, but I am going to be quite firm: so, you wash up, and join me when you’re ready to hear some sense.”
He kisses the Master squarely on the mouth—and that, too, is pointed and prim—and then promptly wriggles his way out of bed and makes for the door, muttering to himself as he drags on some clothes and, apparently, starts rehearsing whatever tirade the Master is in for.
The Master watches him go with no little sense of wonderment… and the first tickling edges of doubt, this time going the other way.
--
It takes the Master a half a span to get up the gumption (fine, courage) to get the hell out there. When he does, he’s met with a set table, plates of toast and a little pot of jam alongside, and the Doctor sitting with his arms crossed. He’s wearing the serious kind of expression that he usually reserves for end-of-world instants and villains of the worst kind. It’s a look he’s seen directed at him , on different past faces of the Doctor’s.
The Master doesn’t even bother trying to hide his discomfort as he sits himself down.
“So,” he says.
“—I’m not mad,” the Doctor starts, fast like if he doesn’t start talking now, he might not get a word in. “I want that clear, just now. I think I might’ve come off cross, and it’s not that.”
“But we’ve been here before.”
“Quite.”
“And you’re sick of putting up with it?”
The Doctor frowns. “Your opinion of me can’t possibly be that awful. You’re so sweet when you want to be, Master—are you really going to assume the absolute worst of me, and think I'd be impatient about the fact that you’re feeling miserable?”
Another world, another lifetime, the Master would have had an excellent quip for that one. But the memories he holds, real or not, paint a very different picture. He sighs instead. “Then… what is it? What do you want to say?”
“That I don’t want this for you,” the Doctor says, arms uncrossing. His brows pinch a little, and it somehow softens his look. “It’s not fair for us to be standing here, happy, and to have it feel as substantial as, as ether in our hands. I know. I understand.”
“Oh, come on,” the Master mutters before he can think twice on it.
“I do.” The Doctor hesitates, actually, properly hesitates. “I wake up sometimes, too,” he continues, voice soft, “feeling amazed, and unsure. You’ll admit, it’s boggling to think about. I get to wake up with the inconvenience of your arm being too heavy—instead of… instead of your hand poised against me, in whatever way you’ve dreamt up this time around. My guard’s up only for, for moments of witty repartee, and instants like this. It’s surreal. I grant you that, Master, I understand. It’s surreal for me, too.”
It’s way, way too much: the Master can answer, but he sure as hell can’t look at the Doctor while doing so. His eyes settle, instead, on one particular edge of toast that’s just edging on burnt. “Okay. But… you’re not the one who would’ve gotten strung out on an event horizon.”
“No,” the Doctor replies, voice suddenly flat and cool, “I’m just the one who would’ve gotten subsumed into your own mind as you tore my body from me—just the one whose mind would be flagging under the weight of yours, maybe made placid by various scenarios you might play out for me.”
That does make the Master look at the Doctor. He goes through the memories he has—fabricated or no—and no, no… they’ve never had a conversation quite like this. The hesitates, then dips his chin. It’s the right thing to do: the Doctor softens again, practically lunging with his hands across the table. Their fingers twine.
“But I believe it’s real,” he says, voice caught on a whisper. “I believe there has to be a chance for us to be happy. Maybe there’s other universes where this went differently—where I laid crushed under your mind, or where your head got stretched atom-thin… but I don’t think we’re those people. I don’t think we’re living those lives. I think, maybe, just maybe… if those circumstances exist, then so can this one. Maybe—just maybe, Master—we’re the lucky ones.”
For a moment, the Master can’t think. Practicality or pessimism: which has it been? Old habits, and new chances… one builds expectations, but the other makes possibilities. It’s a lot to ponder.
“Say it again,” the Master says at last.
“Ah? That, maybe we’re—?”
The Master shakes his head. “Say it again,” he emphasizes, “what you said to save me.”
The Doctor’s expression twists around the first hints of a smile. “Take my hand,” he whispers.
The Master, already having done so, lifts up the Doctor’s hands in his, and kisses his fingers once, and again, and again. He does it until the Doctor starts to giggle, and then does it one more time, for good measure.
--
Maybe faith never sits easy. Maybe belief is there to be questioned. Maybe his nights just get to have the occasional stint of crappy sleep, wondering what’s actually real, and whether the universe can possibly be a kind place.
Then again, maybe there’s something to this whole luck thing.
Just in case, the Master takes the piece of toast with the almost-burnt corner, because he knows—from time, and memory—that the Doctor has no fondness for anything above a golden-brown crust. There’s nothing quite like making your own luck.
The Doctor notices, and smiles, and slouches just so he can tap the Master’s foot under the table with his own. It makes him look ridiculous and makes the Master feel like he couldn’t fit anything else good behind his ribs if he tried. He chuckles to see if it’ll make room. It doesn’t. It just makes the Doctor giggle along with him, and fills TARDIS with more music than her own constant humming song.
It’s surreal, he’ll grant the Doctor that. But he thinks, maybe, he could get used to it.