Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He's been waiting around the corner for all of ten minutes, a cooling cup of tea in one hand and a stack of files in the other. He has it all planned out, the whole charade. He knows how to get an in, it's laughably easy. His dear old friend is so trusting.

"Yes, Nardole, I'm- oh, no, no, it'll be fine. She's not going to- a blowtorch? Tell her that's enough of that, she'll listen. No, really, she will."

There. The Scottish magician. Not your best look, Doctor, but… not the worst, either.

"Give her to me then- well, yes, you'll have to open the Vault to give her the phone-"

Now. Round the corner.

"Careful!"

He makes sure to exclaim, to meet his eyes, to look startled, in that split second before the collision.

"What-"

Contact. Beautiful.

The files spill out onto the floor, the tea all over them. They're ruined, now. What beautiful destruction.

He bites off a curse. O isn't one to curse normally, he's decided, the little lamb; but he's startled enough now to get half into one.

"Oh! Oh dear, I'm so sorry about that, let me help you... it's not very important really extremely secret paperwork, is it?"

A sheepish glance up through his eyelashes. This regeneration has a lovely coy look, and he makes sure to use it.

"Ah, well, actually…"

He bites his lip, casts his eyes down again. Putting it on a bit thick, but he was always slow, was dear Thete, he needs to oversell just a little.

"What am I saying, you're in the corridors of the secret service, of course it is. Dreadfully sorry, really. If you get into trouble for it, tell your bosses it's the Doctor's fault. Lots of things are, they're used to it, no hard feelings…?"

Babbling. Uncertain. Groping for his dropped phone without properly looking. Is he to your liking, then, Doctor? O, sweet little human O with the shy smile, the wide-eyed looks - a bit of beard, I know you always liked my beards - he presses all your buttons, doesn't he.

"Ah, they were just copies, anyway." A bright grin, an offered hand. "O. Alien threat assessment specialist - I'd clock you in at a 4, by the way, after the merciless elimination of my tea."

The Doctor's eyes light up, oh so predictably. The man's a sucker for snark and feistiness.

"Doctor, the Doctor." He shakes the hand, ending the call with the other. Ah, the Master remembers how furious the funny little robot man was about that. Good times. "Allow me to buy you another to reduce my rating?"

This time, the grin is perfectly genuine.

"I'd love that," the Master says, and delights in the Doctor's ignorance even as the springtrap closes around him.

He charms the Doctor effortlessly, bright young O with his eyes sparkling as he talks of his dreams of the universe, and by the time the MI6 canteen closes, he's walking away with the Doctor's number in his phone and victory singing in his heart.

(The ensuing rumour that O has gotten himself a "sugar daddy" is… an unfortunate side effect.

At least Carol from reception has stopped flirting with him. Silver lining to everything.)

It's revenge, plain and simple.

He's been planning this ever since he collapsed on the floor of his TARDIS, the thousand faces of the Timeless Child and Tecteun's terrible smile burned into his retinas, the drums pounding in his skull and his hearts.

Revenge.

His friend, his dearest friend, has revealed themselves to be nothing but a lie, the mask of a terrible, impossible being.

So let the Doctor taste some of their own medicine.

They deserve it.

(Humans, the Master gathers, call what he's planning "catfishing". Droll creatures, with their droll words. Sometimes, only sometimes, he very nearly understands what the Doctor sees in them.)

Doctor: "Hey! It's the Doctor. Scottish bloke. Remember?"

Only too well.

Me: "How could I forget?"

And so it begins. He's been wondering how long to wait before texting first, but of course the Doctor took that decision out of his hands.

Doctor: "I don't know. Memory's a funny thing. When you get to be my age, you don't assume people remember anything. I certainly don't."
Me: “But you remembered me.”
A little on the flirty side, but he knows full well that the Doctor will either be entirely oblivious to it, or charmed by the boldness. Either way, it won’t hurt his chances.
Doctor: “Of course! You’re special.”

Oh Doctor, you have no idea how special, he thinks, swallowing around two hearts beating in his throat.

Doctor: “Most other people block me two messages in. ;)”

The Master squints at the screen. Pulls up the translation matrix he prepared in advance, studies it intently for a moment, before pulling up the keyboard again.

Me: “LOL”

Satisfied, he closes the messaging app. O mustn’t seem too eager to chat away the workday with his newest acquaintance, after all.

He’s slow about it, in the first few weeks, months. Careful. Methodical, almost, in the way he makes himself interesting, dropping hints at O’s fictional life, play-acting as a boring inconsequential little human. It’s a masterful - hah! - performance, worthy of the Theatre at the End of the Universe, or perhaps even the Gallifreyan Globe.

And it’s entirely unnecessary.

The Doctor is so eager to make a new ‘friend’, he never questions. Never even attempts to dig deeper. Glosses over any inconsistency of his own accord.

The Master could laugh, he really could.

So this is the origin of the Timelord race, falling over himself to befriend a clever little ape!? So blind to an obvious ruse, so eager to please, so stupidly trusting?

It’s pathetic.

It’s hilarious.

And it’s all going to plan.

Doctor: “Isn’t it rather late to be online for your current temporal alignment?”

The Master sets aside the soldering iron, and the seven-dimensional relay he has been mending, pondering what excuse to give. To the Doctor, he’s not a Timelord with limited sleep needs and TARDIS maintenance to do - he’s O, with a 9-to-5 analyst job, who should be in bed at this time. How to explain?

Me: “Yes, it probably is…”

He squints at the selection of little yellow faces, and carefully selects a vaguely awkward and embarrassed one. It seems like the kind of expression sweet and shy O would wear, in such a situation.

Me: “Insomnia. I don’t sleep well, most nights. It’s a recurring problem, but with a cup of coffee and a nap or two at my desk, I get by. Don’t tell C. ;)”

There. A permanent excuse, which will explain away any unusual day-night rhythms the Doctor may detect. Simple as that.

Doctor: “Ah. Yes, of course, I understand. I’m hardly a stranger to sleepless nights myself.”

He remembers that. Remembers a silly little boy afraid of the dark, too proud to let others hear him cry. Remembers curling up together in a narrow Academy bed, initiating Contact and sharing a dream.

The memory softens something inside him, and he is typing before he can stop himself.

Me: “It’s worse when you’re alone.”

The Doctor doesn’t respond, isn’t even typing.

Tight bands close around the Master’s chest as he realises the enormous blunder he has just committed. Admitting to loneliness - false loneliness, O’s loneliness, not the Master’s, never his - to the Doctor, who has always been a soft touch when it comes to such things? A mistake, without question. A plaintive call for company that will be sure to bring the Doctor here, HERE, to O’s flat with TARDIS components strewn all over it, and he’ll recognise- he’ll realise-

“The Doctor is calling.”

He set the Doctor’s ringtone to Dear Doctor by The Rolling Stones. It seemed funny, at the time, and had only barely won out against The Beatles’ Doctor Robert.

It’s somewhat annoying now, grating on his frayed nerves.

He picks up.

“Yes, O speaking?”

“I’m rarely good company,” says the Doctor, and the familiarity of that soft Scottish murmur sends a shiver down his spine, 70 years of Vault memories reactivating, “but I thought this would be worth a try.”

“‘This’ being…?”

“Listen,” the Doctor instructs, in that kind, gentle tone he’d always reserved for his pet humans - and sometimes, for Missy, in her weakest, goodest moments - and suddenly the Master craves a teasing challenge instead, a guarded reprimand, anything but this. “Just listen.”

And then, he starts playing on that silly guitar of his, the notes of an old, old, OLD Gallifreyan lullaby floating out of the phone’s speakers.

The Master bites back a dismissive scoff.

But he listens.

(It might be his last opportunity to hear this song from any lips other than his own.

Gallifrey is gone, after all, and all its songs with it.)

When he wakes up the next day, the imprint of a relay on his cheek and with a crick in his back, the Doctor has long since hung up.

The Master wants to scoff and rage, at the Doctor, at himself, at the entire universe.

But O simply sends the Doctor a “thank you” and a heart emoji.

So it goes, day after day, on and on. The noose draws ever tighter around that trusting fool’s neck, and the Master is laughing.

His dear old enemy truly is too easy.

Chapter Text

The Doctor’s personalised message contact goes off after weeks of nothing with a soft “ping!”, and the Master drops everything in an instant.

Doctor: “Heya! It’s the Doctor again! Sorry for the long radio silence - I’ve had an awfully eventful time of late!!!”

He frowns down at his phone.

O: “Doctor! I was terribly worried. Are you well?”

The Doctor usually starts their conversations with “Good Appropriate Temporal Greeting to you, O”, or simply forwarding a meme Bill has sent him. The “Heya” is concerning… not to mention the downright distressing amount of exclamation marks.

Doctor: “Yeah!”

“...yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah…”

“Maybe.”

He wonders how fast he could track the Doctor down. Don some disguise, eviscerate whatever threat the man’s facing. It wouldn’t do if the Doctor runs into trouble before the Master can bring his own devious plan to fruition, would it?

O: “You’re not fooling me. Something’s the matter.”

He’s already halfway up the steps to the console room.

O: “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Doctor: “Just being my friend is enough.”

He halts.

Doctor: “Staying my friend would be appreciated, too.”

O: “...Doctor?”

Doctor: “I know you’ve researched me, O. Which, fair, what with being an alien and all, and your job being the research of aliens. So I’m sure you’re aware that my people sometimes… change.”

...oh.

Doctor: “So, that’s what happened. There was an awful fuss, I lost… lost everyone in my life, who was important to me. I’m still reeling from that, a little.”

OH.

Doctor: “And I changed.”

The colony ship. Sweet little Bill in her sweet little cybersuit. The Doctor, fading, pleading, reaching out with golden-glowing hands.

(No hope. No witness. No reward. Dying on the forest floor, eyes fixed on a starless sky.)

He’d known it would happen, sooner or later. It still comes as a surprise now.

Doctor: “I was lucky to get out alive at all, but I’m quite literally not the man you met, anymore.”

So this is what happened to the Doctor, afterwards. Of course he survived. Of course he found his way out. If Missy had known what the Doctor truly was, she wouldn’t have stood with him - there was never any need for it.

The Doctor doesn’t need the Master’s help. Has never needed it.

What a fool he had been, to die for the man nonetheless.

O: “So, no more Scottish magicians?”

The thought resolutely does NOT fill him with a feeling of loss.

Doctor: “Nope. Want a picture?”

Yes.

YES.

Rassilon, yes.

O: “If you’d like to show me, of course.”

Doctor: >image sent<

...oh.

A pretty new face, young and soft. A smile, almost shy but still broad and toothy - and with the chin-length blonde hair, it’s only all too easy to see little Thete in this newest regeneration.

(The Master has always been exceptionally skilled at recognising his Best Enemy. No matter what face the Doctor wears, one look into those eyes, and he knows, he always knows.

The Doctor, on the other hand, is almost laughably easy to fool. The Master would be offended, if it weren’t so dreadfully convenient for his little disguising stints.)

The outfit is of course dreadful, too much ankle, too much neck - scandalous - and too much rainbow. But what else is new?

Doctor: “So! That’s me!”

The gender. The gender is new.

Doctor: “Bit of a big change, this time. Hope you don’t mind?”

A fellow Timelord would utter some variation of the formal phrase for regeneration acknowledgement, “the change is noted; so is the permanency” and then carry on as before.

The Master has, personally, always been more partial to a teasing quip or two.

O, naive and human O, wouldn’t do either.

O: “Mind? Not at all. You look lovely.”

Doctor: “Aw, hush!”

Would a human… hmm, yes. Probably. They can’t tell, can they? Not like Timelords can.

O: “Are your pronouns still the same, or…?”

Doctor: “Nope! It’s she/her/hers now. That’s how it usually goes with Timelords, though I’ll admit I still forget sometimes. You sure you don’t mind?”

O: “Very sure. Why would I?”

Doctor: “Humans do, sometimes. Mind, that is.”

They do!?

Outrageous.

The Master has never before been so angry on the Doctor’s behalf.

Doctor: “Which is okay! I understand! You don’t regenerate, it’s not easy to wrap your head around somebody changing so much, so quickly. I’m still the Doctor, but I’m not the same Doctor I was when I met you, nor any of the ones before that. And my human friends who are around for this sort of thing… they’re slow to acclimatise, sometimes. Either they don’t recognise the old me in the new me, or they expect me to still be just like the last chap, even when I’m… not.”

Humans! Slow, dimwitted humans! Can’t even wrap their head around regeneration, even though humans themselves are capable of sudden change - so narrow-minded! So idiotic! The Master should kill them all and be done with!

O: “They were idiots then.”

Doctor: “They were my friends!”

O: “Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive, my dear Doctor.”

He’s playing with fire, he knows. Too much of the Master in those words, not enough of O, non-confrontational, pacifist O, the gentle little lamb.

O: “You’re still my friend, Doctor, just as you always were. And I look forward to getting to know the new you, as well.”

Better.

Doctor: “...thanks, O. That means a lot to me. More than you can imagine, perhaps.”

O: “Think nothing of it. Hope you’re having fun with your new self?”

Doctor: “Oh, yeah! I’ve never been a woman before! It’s all very new and exciting.”

The casual lie makes his blood boil. Perhaps the Doctor doesn’t even recognise the falsehood for what it is, the 13-and-then-some regenerations on public record all she remembers - but it is and remains a lie, and the Master hates her for it.

O: “Really? Never?”

He can’t help but push, even if it will do nothing but tighten the noose around her neck by tiny little increments.

Doctor: “Not that I can remember, at least. Memory’s still a bit fuzzy, though, regeneration sickness takes an awful lot out of me.”

He remembers. The fifth one - or not the fifth at all, perhaps - with his soft round face, eyes hazy and unfocused and oh so trusting, stumbling around the little paradise city of Castrovalva. He’d been so pale and sickly and frail, bleeding energy and memories from every pore… there had been times when he’d wondered if this regeneration wouldn’t last the fortnight, too unstable, soon to be replaced again.

Doctor: “I’ve always had it a bit worse than my contemporaries with that. Spot of bad luck, nothing to be done about it.”

Au contraire, my dear Doctor. Regeneration was once as easy as breathing to you, I know. I have seen it.

But then your foster mother dug deep into your flesh and drew the artron energy out of your veins over and over again, leaving scabs and scars in the very essence of you. You suffered, still suffer, so she and hers could live forever.

Good.

You’ll suffer more ‘ere I’m done with you.

O: “Oh no! Get better soon!”

So that I may tear your hearts apart all over again.

Nothing much changes.

The Doctor’s new regeneration is just a little different, yes, but not to the Master. Not to a Timelord.

He quickly re-learns her typing habits and idiosyncrasies and the names of her new pets - and that is all, really. She’s still the Doctor at hearts, and the Master knows exactly how to push and coax her.

Only a little more. Let her get comfortable first, let her grow attached again.

That will make the reveal all the sweeter.

Doctor: “B4θ.”

O: “Miss. K7ψ?”

Doctor: “Oh! You’ve sunk my Type 53!”

The Master can’t suppress a victorious smirk, drawing a bold red strike onto his superdimensional grid paper. He’s approaching his third win in a row, by now.

O, soft and timid O, would probably let the Doctor win at this point.

The Master has no such intentions.

Doctor: “Blimey, you’re good at this! Humans usually don’t really take to TARDIS-Battleship that well. Too many dimensions to keep track of, I wager.”

He’s not surprised. Human brains are so slow, so simple, so utterly useless. They’d probably be overwhelmed by a little game of Tic-Tac-Time.

Pathetic. How can the Doctor stand it, looking into their dull little eyes and seeing nothing but straw and moths there?

O: “I’m sure it’s just beginner’s luck.”

Doctor: “...you’re humouring me.”

O: “Little bit.”

Doctor: “You know, O, I think you’re one of the most remarkable humans I’ve ever met.”

Yes, Doctor. He’s your dream, isn’t he. Your ideal type. A Timelord’s mind in a human’s body, a genius with just a single, easy heart for you to conquer.

It’s Professor Yana all over again.

O: “Why, thank you, Doctor. I try.”

Oh, do I ever try.

Chapter Text

It’s a sudden, almost random mistake - or perhaps the accumulation of multiple such instances plays a part in it as well.

A heart emoji here, a kiss-and-wink emoji there, a few tender words. The Master played the role of the besotted human well - perhaps too well.

He’s not acting though, when the Doctor asks him about some new colleague he mentioned being flirtatious, and he responds, unthinking:

O: “Why would I be interested in someone like them, when I have you?”

Doctor: "Oh."

Oh!? What the Hell does that mean? Did he miscalculate, how to salvage this... she's typing. Three dots mean she's typing. Your move, Doctor.

Doctor: "Look, O, it's... I'm very flattered, but. It's not that I don't like you, because I do, I like you - really like you - you know that, right?"

Bah. Sentiment. Easily manipulated weakness.

He screenshots the message.

Doctor: "Only… there is. There was. Someone. Who I loved very dearly. Love of my lives, really, and it's… well, the wound's still raw. And I just don't think I'm ready to get back in the game again just yet, you understand?"

...oh.

Well, that's. Unexpected.

He didn't know about that. How did he not know about that?

He was aware of the Doctor and her escapades into that silly hormonal imbalance they call "love" on this forsaken rock, certainly, but…

...a love of her lives.

Who can be THAT important to the Doctor!?

Doctor: "I just wanted to make things clear. And, you know, you're a stellar bloke. And a great friend. I'm so glad you're my friend! Just. Generally not ready for anything else. It's not about you! I'm so sorry, please don't ghost me!"

He's desperate to know. But it wouldn't do to lose sight of his goal at such a crucial point in the game.

Think, O, sweet, unobtrusive O, how would he react, quiet and gracious in his hearts- his heartbreak?

Me: "No, no, I should apologise! I would never want to make you uncomfortable in any way, and I understand completely. Of course."

His fingers hover above the keyboard.

"I'm very glad you're my friend, too."

It feels like the biggest lie he ever told her, and, at the same time, like the only truth.

He would've thought the Doctor might be awkward, for a while at least.

But, judging from the frankly impressive speed with which she rebounds to easy camaraderie and sending him increasingly ridiculous Area 63 memes, he's not the first besotted little humanling she had to let down easy.

...O, he means. O, and his pretence at besottedness, because even if she's not emotionally available, the Doctor does so love to be flattered with obvious interest.

He should be glad, in the end.

What if the Doctor had said yes? Had come to visit, to kiss him and maybe take him to bed because she thinks he's one of her urge-driven apes who needs that sort of thing to feel emotionally satisfied?

He's lucky to have avoided that.

Yes.

Bloody, bloody lucky.

His mind fixates on it.

Not on the Doctor thinking he’s in love with her, Rassilon (the old bastard) forbid. That’s rather what he has been aiming for, with sweet, demure O - she’s always liked the implicit flattery of her little humanlings having hormone-drive emotional reactions to her. Bah.

No, it’s the ‘love of her life’ he fixates on.

He thought, after the Timeless Child, there would be no more great secrets of the Doctor’s he doesn’t know. The last one told Missy a great deal, down in that Vault, and he has seen all the rest for himself.

Except this.

And oh, does the Master HATE not knowing!

He can’t let it go, crouching over the problem the way he would crouch over a dead animal, poking it with a stick to see if it would do anything more interesting. Picking at it like at a scab over a half-healed wound, only ripping it open further.

Who does the Doctor love?

Too many damn people, in truth. How unbecoming of a Timelord, to give away their affections so easily.

He considers all his clues, turning them over in his mind. Someone the Doctor lost - so none of her current humanlings. A love of the Doctor’s lives, plural - so likely not some little mortal companion creature only mainly present in one of them.

There are a few front runners. River Song would be chief among them, if not for the calm with which the Doctor had told Missy about her, at peace with her passing after a single night many earth years long that they spent together. Not to mention the fact that the woman had encouraged him to find any happiness he could, forcing a promise that the Doctor would never refuse someone they cherished for Song’s sake.

But if not River Song…

He has discarded Jamie McCrimmon - a human mayfly, some mad fancy of the Doctor with the unfortunate bowl cut, but not close with any of the other regenerations - and Romanadvoratrelundar, who was at least a Timelord, but one the Doctor always treated more like a sister than a lover. Jack the Immortal might have been a possibility, but he’s hardly lost to the Doctor, is he? The Master could track him down and meet with him in less than five minutes, and so could the Doctor, if she only wished to do so.

The Doctor’s Impossible Girl, maybe. Clara, he remembers. Missy’s present to the Doctor, to protect and torment him both - oh, he used to be fond of Clara, as much as he was capable of fondness for a human, though he might have been a little fonder still of dear Bill. Clara was always there, wasn’t she? Present in all the Doctor’s lives, but lost somehow, nonetheless - Missy brought up her name now and then, and the Doctor hadn’t responded with anything but a pained wince.

And then there’s Bad Wolf, of course. One the Master never met personally, but heard her name in whispers - and once, from the Doctor, too, fond and hushed and almost reverent. A recent development, after the Time Wars, but he’s always got the impression that there’s been a cut in the Doctor’s existence, then, and that she might well consider a love she’d borne since shortly after Gallifrey burnt that first time a ‘love of her lives’.

But then again, what does he know of the logic the Doctor’s mind functions by? She’s always been prone to exaggeration - and even more prone to lies. Her entire existence as The Doctor rather than The Timeless Child is proof enough of that.

Nobody can truly solve this riddle save the Doctor.

So, if he really wants to know, he will have to convince her to tell him.

Doctor: “Nope! Not telling.”

Infuriating Doctor. Playing her hands ever so close to her chest… but what else should he expect, from the Origin of the Timelord Race?

Me: "Come now, dear Doctor! You can't blame me for being curious, can you?"

He needs. To. Know.

Who does the Doctor love? Who!?

Me: "What if I say pretty please?"

If he knew who to start with, he'd blackmail, torture, KILL, for this knowledge.

He still might.

Doctor: "Pleases don't work on me. I'm pleading-immune. Got beg-antibodies, from my wheedling shots."

Me: "What about a strain that has permutated enough to surpass your resistances?"

Go on, Doctor. Look how clever O is being for you. Throw him a bone.

Doctor: “What, like an even prettier please? ;)”

…oh, you want to play it this way? Fine. We’ll play it this way.

He opens an editing programme - one of the primitive human ones, alas, but too advanced effects would give the game away - and writes ‘please’ into the stars. Slides constellations into place, picks each nebula with care, forms the universe the Doctor loves so well into a bait. The glowing, sparkling lure of an anglerfish, ravenous for information.

Here’s the prettiest please you’ll ever see, Doctor! Choke on it, why don’t you.

He sends it.

Doctor: “WOWZA!”

‘Wowza’!? Oh please.

Doctor: “That is a really really REALLY pretty please. Gosh.”

Yes, Doctor. Yes! Take the bait, do.

Doctor: “I’m not sure…”

Uncertainty is an ugly look on you, my dear Doctor.

Time to exploit it further.

Me: “I don’t want to force you into anything, honest!”

He does. He always wants to. Make the Doctor dance on his strings, lead her about like the Pied Piper of Hamel-10.

Me: “It only… it helps, to talk about these things. The people we loved and lost. The awful things in our past we bury inside ourselves. The pain. It helps.” 

Isn’t that what you told Missy over and over, you hypocrite? Tearing conversation out of her throat? This is payback.

Me: “And I want to help you, Doctor.”

Of course she caves after that. She does so love to indulge her sweet helpful apeling pets.

Doctor: “Promise me one thing.”

Me: “Anything.”

But what’s the use of promises? You broke all of ours long ago, dear Doctor.

Doctor: “Don’t tell me I’m a fool. Don’t tell me I’m insane. Don’t list all the reasons for why I should never have… I know. I know all of that. And I don’t want to hear it again, not from you, O. Please don’t.”

Interesting.

Me: “Of course. It’s a promise.”

Doctor: “Alrighty then. The love of my lives is… difficult to describe in words, really. English words, at least. Lovely language, I’m a fan of flibbertigibbet and abibliophobia in particular, but so limited in certain ways…”

He rolls his eyes. That’s so typical, isn’t it? Endless babbling, without actually saying a thing.

Doctor: “But it’ll have to do. So. They were… intelligent. Brilliant. Always brilliant.”

How disgustingly vague. Any Gallifreyan village idiot would seem clever to a human.

Me: “As brilliant as you?”

Doctor: “More. (You flatterer.)”

Not a human then. As fond as the Doctor is of the silly things, there’s still too much Timelord pride in her to compare their sad single-brained existence to what she herself is capable of.

Doctor: “We met in my first life. It was love at first sight on my part, honestly. Someone so radiant, so bright, so beautiful… it’s hard, not to love such a person.”

The mere mention of the Doctor’s ‘first’ life makes him so angry the screen blurs before his eyes. Luckily, she just keeps typing, ignorant to his fury.

Doctor: “I tried, often, to not love them, after everything they did over the years, throughout regenerations, but… love’s not that easy to erase, is it? You understand, don’t you, O? Humans understand love better than most Timelords, I’ve found.”

He doesn’t. He’s never been in love. It’s a ridiculous, pointless emotion. Only the Doctor would be so weak and foolish to ever succumb to it.

His hearts are aching with disgust.

Me: “Of course. I understand completely.”

Doctor: “I never gave up hope, even after countless atrocities. Don’t think I ever could. I want it back, what we had at the Academy. Always and forever.”

...Academy. A fellow Timelord. Not Song, Harkness, Clara, not any bloody companion. Who is it? Which one? He has to know. He has to know.

Doctor: “We tried, for a while. It was going so well, too! But in the end…”

The Rani? Mortimus? Magnus, perhaps? One of their instructors? Or is the answer as simple as it is stupid, and it was that first spouse of hers, what-was-their-name… he’d never cared enough to remember.

It hadn’t mattered to him then, who the Doctor loved.

Why does it matter to him now ?

Doctor: “We were the last two of our kind, and he preferred dying over being with me.”

...what?

Doctor: “I begged her to stand with me, and she still, still walked away.”

WHAT.

Doctor: “Maybe… maybe it’s time for me to accept, no matter how much I love and miss them, and want them back by my side…”

Don’t. Don’t, Doctor. No. Don’t say it, not this. Not this!

Doctor: “The Master is lost to me forever, aren’t they?”

Chapter Text

No.

NO.

It's him. It's him it's him it's him it's....

Doctor: "O?"

He should.... should write... he.... the Doctor, the Doctor who loves him has always loved him still loves him despite it all would take him back misses him....

Doctor: "Are you still there? Not to sound overly needy, but I do appreciate a good reassurance after some heavy emotions…"

How does he spin this? How does he use this? How does he keep his hearts from hammering against the inside of his ribcage so hard he thinks he might faint from it?

Doctor: "Are you alright? O, answer me, please!"

He needs to... his fingers are shaking terribly.

Me: "im fjnee"

Doctor: "...doesn't sound it."

He doesn’t feel it, either.

Me: "sth came up. needto go"

He needs to plan, to scheme, to drink until his metabolism forgets alcohol hardly affects it.

Doctor: "Something came up? Something bad? O, do you need help? I can be there yesterday. Am I already there?"

Always so eager. He can't bear it, can't see her now, or he might do something inadvisable he never meant to do, like kill her or kiss her or both.

Me: "dont com. Fine."

He might cry, too. He might already be crying, it's hard to tell. All so distant.

Doctor: "....O, did I do something wrong?"

Oh Doctor, my dear Doctor. You did everything wrong, and nothing at all.

Me: "no"

He needs a drink.

3 am, earth time (Australia)

Me: "dctor im drunnk"

Doctor: "Yeah, I can tell."

Me: "stll feeeel rubvish"

Doctor: "I hear aspirin helps with that?"

Me: "ye. premantl."

"permntly"

"permasjidghfghc"

"forevr"

Doctor: "What?"

"O?"

"Have you fallen asleep?"

Me: "dorctor"

Doctor: "Ah, there you are! Now go to bed."

Me: "i loev u"

...

Doctor is typing....

Doctor is typing.....

Doctor is typing...

Doctor has stopped typing.

Delete Message "i loev u"?

Message Deleted.

He wakes up in pain. Not all of it is physical.

He dreamt of dying in a forest, frightened and alone, without hope, without witness, without reward. Of kissing and being kissed among the cyberised dead. Of the Doctor reaching out, gentle touches ghosting over the back of the Master’s hands, a warmth in his chest and tears in his eyes. Of dying in the Doctor’s arms, held so tightly, broken pleas and choked sobs whispered into his hair. Of fighting in the wilderness and on narrow walkways and in UNIT prisons, pointing fencing sabres and tissue compressors and firearms at each other. Of a dozen different faces, all smiling at the Master that same damn (loving) way.

And then, at the very end, of running together through the Gallifreyan meadows, not even chasing each other but always keeping pace together, finally stumbling and falling to lie side by side and shaking with laughter, hands intertwined in the red grass between them.

In his sleep, he had loved the Doctor, and she had always, ALWAYS loved him.

What a lovely dream.

But not lovely enough to make him forget the tale of the Timeless Child. To make him forget about the lie the Doctor had been telling him with every breath and every smile, and the terrible truth behind it.

He turns on his phone, reads over the messages again. Wants to laugh. Wants to cry.

Love, Doctor? Love!? Impossible. Utterly impossible.

They are not equals, the two of them. What the Doctor wants, has always wanted, is not the redemption and companionship of their old friend, so that they might stand shoulder to shoulder, side by side. No.

This is a near-immortal origin legend wanting to house-break him like one would a pet. An inferior lifeform so much LESS than her. He’s no better than one of her humanlings, really, from her point of view.

Whatever she feels for him, it isn’t - can’t be - love.

So whatever he feels for her can’t be love, either.

He turns the phone off again and goes to set something on fire. Anything. Anyone, maybe. He just needs some little part of existence to crumble under his fingers, now.

And afterwards, he will figure out how to use this to his advantage, after all.

Showtime.

Me: “Hey Doctor… I’m so sorry for last night. Things got a hint messy, and I went off the deep end for a little bit there. Please forgive me for… whatever happened there, and let’s never speak of it again.”

Doctor: “O! You’re back online! Oh thank god, you had me worried!”

Me: “I would’ve texted you earlier, but I first had to sleep off a beast of a hangover. I’m never drinking anything other than tea, ever again.”

Doctor: “Understandable. And don’t worry, I get it! …well, I don’t get it, really, but I don’t have to. I think. As long as you’re fine now…?”

Me: “I am, Doctor.”

“And for what it’s worth, I’m also genuinely sorry for everything that happened with that person you loved. It sounds like it was very difficult for you, and I wish I’d been in a state to reassure you when you needed it.”

Doctor: “It was very difficult, yeah. But really, O, it’s okay. I’m fine, you’re fine. It’s fine. We’re still good mates!”

Me: “Of course. Thank you for your concern, and your forgiveness, after I made such a right ass of myself.”

Doctor: “Trust me, I’ve done so much worse. Often in front of interplanetary royalty, there’s whole galaxies where I’m aliena non grata. Did I ever tell you about that time I was put on trial during my sixth regeneration?”

Me: “Oh? Did you get away with it?”

Doctor: “You say that as if it’s a certainty I did anything in the first place.”

Me: “Isn’t it? ;)”

Doctor: “Cheeky bugger. Lucky for you, I kind of like that about you.”

Me: “Be still, my beating hearts.”

Doctor: “Heart, you mean?”

Me: “Yes. Sorry, autocorrect.”

Doctor: “Annoying, isn’t it? My phone seems to think I have three companions named Yes, Ran, and Grammar…”

Me: “Don’t you?”

Doctor: “Hush.”

They joke back and forth like this for a while longer.

The Master types with his face set in stone, utterly detached. He’s only playing pretend. Only luring her in.

If the Doctor got it into her foolish head that her hearts belong to him…

He will crush them. Tear them. Rip them apart. Stomp them into dust.

That was his plan all along, wasn’t it.

The Doctor ‘loves’ him; and it has changed nothing at all.

Chapter Text

He listens to the Doctor’s voicemail over and over, waiting, on that chair in front of his carefully-disguised TARDIS. Listens to the way she says “Kisses”, the excitement in her voice.

He can’t WAIT to hear her say his name at last.

When it finally happens, it’s both more and less satisfying than he thought it would be.

It’s delicious, that moment realisation dawns in her eyes. When she understands at last, and the pieces click together in her mind. O, the Spymaster. O, her friend. O, who she trusted, and spilled her hearts to, and cared for so much more than she should.

O, who she thought would be better at sprinting than this.

(The Master, who ran with her through the red fields, laughing and calling for her with a name long since discarded.)

Clever, clever Doctor… but not clever enough for him. Never that.

Revenge is oh so sweet as he watches her stumble, sees the devastation in her eyes, how she can barely bear to look at him. This is what he was working towards all this time, this very moment, years of playing at besotted friendship and learning how to text like a human - all for this.

He shivers, even as his face splits into a wide, delighted grin.

Strange how, in this moment of his greatest triumph, his chest feels so terribly cold and empty still.

The bomb explodes, wind whipping around him, companions screaming, the whole plane screeching and rattling - but his focus is, will always be, on the Doctor, lying where she fell and gaping up at him the way you’d look at the Untempered Schism, awe and horror and fear and fury and shock all glowing in her eyes.

He leans down.

Neither of them look away.

“Everything you thought you knew,” he snarls at her over the screams and the wind, over the drumbeat always and forever in his head, and does NOT think about pressing a kiss to those shock-slackened lips, “IS A LIE!”

You are a lie, just as O was. Whatever feelings I ever had for you are a lie, and so are yours for me. Anything we ever were and are and will be is built upon lies and deceit, and I can’t do this anymore. I can’t.

Everything will change. It must. It’s time for the truth.

He watches the heartsbreak bleed over her face, and has never felt colder and more alone in all his many, many lives.

And it’s not over yet, not by far. Maybe it never truly will be, between the Doctor and the Master.

But his time as O is over. Their strange texting relationship is.

The next time he has an opportunity to check his phone, he is hardly surprised to see that the Doctor has blocked this number. He doesn’t blame her for it. It’s only fair.

Such is the price he must pay for his lies; just as the Doctor must, in due time, pay hers.

She stands above him, his beautiful Doctor, fingers tight around the explosive and the death particle.

Fitting, that it would end here. Gallifrey is where they'd met, where they'd run across the fields together, where they made promises to each other and broke them one by one.

Gallifrey is where he'd fallen in love with the grin of a boy who'd promised him the stars, and Gallifrey is where he'd learnt that this boy and his smile were a lie, had always been a lie.

Gallifrey, that beautiful hellhole of a planet he's razed to the ground in mindless fury, grieving for the death of his childhood love and hating the Other, that creature that now stands in her place and watches him with her eyes and is yet so much more than he could ever aspire to be.

"Do it," he urges her - not her not her not her - on, chokes on a please.

The power of the Cyberlords. If she lets him, he could bring the galaxy to his knees.

He doesn't want her to let him. He wants her to stop him, to press the damn button and seal all their fate, rip them into death and end it all.

She started it, her and damned Tecteun, the Timeless Child and her heartsless mother.

It's only fitting if she ends it, too.

"Was it the truth," she asks, soft and sad.

"I told you-" he begins. Can't she ever listen!?

"Not that." Not what you showed me in the matrix, not me.

And he understands what she's asking.

Was it the truth, between the two of them?

The friendly rivalry at the Academy, those semi-innocent little experiments just to see what all the sexual reproduction nonsense was about. The night they spent on the grass plains, looking out at the universe and making grand and ever grander plans.

And then, later, their games on earth and other planets, offers to rule the universe together, the occasional moment of cooperation when it felt very near like there was nobody but the two of them in all of existence…

"I want my friend back" and "I don't know what I'd be without you".

The text messages. A scrambled, deleted confession.

Was it the truth? Was all of that the truth?

It is. Of course it is. He's meant every word, every action, even when he hardly knew it himself. No, his honesty shouldn't be in doubt.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" He asks; tired, suddenly, of the eternal, pointless fighting.

The Doctor watches him.

Now, Doctor. End it now.

Finally, she lowers the explosive…

...and holds out her hand.

They're not equals, not friends, not 'best enemies'. They never have been.

She's a Titan, an Old God, something grand and impossible that has always been and will always be, and he's a slowly-decaying wretch created in her image, champion of nothing but entropy and death, the two things that will never touch her.

And yet she's holding out her hand to him, and watches him with her soft, hopeful eyes like nothing changed. Like she's still the same.

Like she still loves him.

The Doctor is holding out her hand, and it's all he's ever wanted.

"Run with me," she pleads, as if he could ever keep up; but suddenly, he's desperate to at least try.

It's her, or death, after all.

And the Master has seen the afterlife. It's cold, most of all. Lonely, and empty, and miserable, but most of all cold.

His hand in the Doctor's, however, is warm; and he has no intentions of ever letting go again.

From: The Doctor

Sent: 28:47 PM, Judoon time

"Hey fam!

Okay, good news first: I'm not dead. I don't think so, at least, and I do believe I'd know, so that's nice. Isn't it?

Also, the Master and I made up. I think we're giving it another try, and please don't make that face I know you're all making. He let me destroy all the Cybermen-Timelords - Cyberlords? Time-men? - for a start, that was very sweet of him, even though I think he never wanted to use them in the first place; so I'm pretty sure his intentions are as good as they'll get this time.

The bad news: we're currently in a Judoon prison cell, and this is more or less my one phone call. No, I don't know why, and also it's not my fault, it's the Master's! I think.

Don't worry though! Once the Master has stopped cursing, we'll figure out a way to escape. He's very good at that, escaping, did I ever tell you about the time when...

...maybe later. When I see you again. Because I will.

Love you, fam. See you soon!

P.S. The Master sends his love.

Well, not love. He's objecting very loudly to that word. But he wouldn't have ensured your fighting chances if he wasn't just a little fond of you, so he can gripe all he want.

I'm writing love. "