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The Doctor frantically banged on the door of Donna’s flat, hearts racing. “Donna! Donna, are you in there? It’s me, the Doctor! Let me in!”
He stopped banging temporarily and carefully listened for any sign of the ginger in distress. When no sounds whatsoever came from her apartment, he resumed banging and leaned in to yell through the door, “Are you alright? It’s the Doctor! Let me in!”
Suddenly, the door swung open, causing the Doctor to nearly fall inside the flat before he caught himself and stumbled back. Donna grinned out at them – a too-wide, frantic grin, the Master noticed – but frowned as soon as she saw the Master, hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie and glaring daggers at her. “What’s he doing here?”
“You called for help!”
“Yeah, but what’s he doing here?”
“He made me come,” the Master replied gruffly. Donna frowned, then glanced at her watch, and immediately assumed a frantic, rushed posture. She reached out, grabbed both Time Lords by the arms, and dragged them into her flat, trading spots with them and stepping outside the door. “Alright, if there’s anything you need, Dean knows what to do,” she began breathily.
The Doctor cried, “Wait, who’s Dea-“
“And Genevieve is a bit of a handful, but I’m sure you two can handle them!”
After a moment of despairingly looking between the two befuddled Time Lords, she seemed to have a need to boost her confidence in them. “Yeah, of course you can handle them! Look at you! Goin’ around, savin’ planets! Yeah… you’ll be fine.”
Before either of them could protest or ask questions, she was running away from them at a brisk jog. “I’ll only be gone for a night… or two! Shaun’s on a business trip, so have fun!”
When she was out of sight, the Master and the Doctor looked at each other – the Doctor’s expression filled with confusion and the Master’s with angry disbelief. “Don’t tell me she…”
“I think she did!” the Doctor replied indignantly. The Master turned on his heel and peered into the flat. “I didn’t even know she had kids.”
“What? How could you not know? She blathers on about them every time we talk to her!”
“See, I don’t pay attention.”
“That will be your downfall.”
“I know. Where are the little bastards?”
“Oi!” the Doctor cried. He stepped further into the flat and peered around, almost fearfully, as if the children would jump out and maul him at any second now. “I can’t believe she did this,” he muttered. The Master scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Honestly, I can.”
“How d’you mean?”
“It’s so… human.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Abandoning her children with us without giving us proper warning so that she can go and frolic with her mates.”
“She didn’t abandon them, and she probably isn’t doing very much frolicking!”
“I’m sure you like to tell yourself that.”
“I do, thanks!” the Doctor cried. Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and his head jerked around to look at a corridor to their left, where a little boy was peering at them around the corner. “Are you the Doctor and the Master?” he inquired. The Doctor glanced frantically at the Master and then nodded slowly, as if afraid to frighten the boy. “Yes. I’m the Doctor, and this is the Master.”
“I’m Dean.”
“Hello, Dean.”
“You don’t have to talk to me like that. I’m not a baby.”
“I’m sure you’re not-“
“You sound like one, what with all the incoherent whining,” the Master snapped, kicking the door closed. Dean frowned.
“That was rude.”
“And thus is life,” the Master informed him theatrically. He turned to the Doctor and muttered, “You take the bastard, and I’ll have the little terror.”
“You won’t come ten feet near them if you keep acting like this!”
“Genevieve is in her room. To the right – can’t miss it,” Dean said with a shrug before turning around and slipping back into the kitchen. The Master made a beeline for the door that Dean had described, and the Doctor warily followed the boy into the kitchen.
The Master loomed in the doorway, fists hanging down at his side, looking down at the tiny, fat human. She had fiery ginger hair, just like her mother, and big, grey eyes. When the Master opened the door to her room, she looked up for only a moment and then resumed playing with her dolls. “Hello!” she called in a high pitched, squeaky voice. She irritated the Master already. He closed the door behind him and sat on the floor in front of where she was sitting and combing one doll’s misshapen blonde hair.
“How old are you?” the Master wondered instantly.
“Four. I’m turning five soon.”
She spoke strangely, so that her ‘four’ sounded like ‘fo-wah’. It grated on the Master’s nerves. “How old are you?” the little girl inquired, straightening the doll’s dress.
“I forget.”
“You can’t forget your age, silly.”
“You would, too, if you were as old as I am.”
“Are you as old as Granddad?”
“Several hundred years older.”
“You don’t look old.”
“Yeah, well, you look like an adipose.”
“Your face is scary.”
“Good. You should be scared.”
She glanced up at him and then reached out a small, fat arm to give him her doll, but he didn’t take it. The only movement he made was his breathing and his eyes, flicking down to the doll and then back up at Genevieve. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
“You’re supposed to play with it!”
“I don’t do ‘play’.”
“Everyone plays. It’s fun!”
She kept insisting that he take the doll, so he rolled his eyes and snatched it from her tiny, round fingers. He noticed how large, grimy, and rough his hands were compared to hers. He observed the doll from different angles and then just held it awkwardly, not sure what to do next. “Her name is Rose.”
The Master’s eyebrow cocked and he looked down at the blonde doll with interest. “Rose? How did you come up with that name?”
“Mummy told me about Rose and the Doctor.”
“Do you have a Doctor?”
“Yeah, he’s over there,” she informed him, pointing to a Doctor-like doll positioned to be sitting at a dining room table.
“Have you got a Martha?”
“Yeah, but she’s sleeping.”
“Dolls don’t sleep; they’re inanimate.”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
She fell silent and reached over to grab the Doctor Doll. The Master had to admit, there was quite a resemblance. “You don’t know what inanimate means, do you?”
“No.”
“That’s because you’re tiny and underdeveloped.”
“What does imaminate mean?”
“It’s ‘inanimate’, and it means not living, or able to move on its own. Obviously.”
“I know how to spell my name.”
“Oh? How’s that, then?”
“G-e-n-e-v-i-e-v-e.”
“I know how to spell Raxacoricofallapatorius.”
“Yeah.”
The Master noticed that the child said ‘yeah’ when she didn’t have anything to say, or when she was beaten. He realized that he was absentmindedly stroking the Rose Doll’s hair and dropped her onto the floor, much to Genevieve’s disgruntlement. “Hey, you can’t do that!”
“But I just did,” he observed snidely. She made a face up at him. “She doesn’t like that!”
“She’s inanimate – she doesn’t have a brain.”
“Stop saying mean things about her! You’re hurting her feelings!”
“I can’t hurt her feelings, because she’s made of plastic.”
“You’re made of plastic!” the child screeched raising one tiny, meaty fist. The Master imagined how easily he could crush her, and sighed with disappointment that the Doctor would probably exile him to an eternity of nothingness in the TARDIS. “You’re annoying.”
“You’re mean!”
“You’re fat.”
“You’re dirty!”
“You’re small and meaningless.”
“I’m telling Mummy!”
“Mummy isn’t here, pea-brain.”
“I’m telling Dean!”
“If you can get that far. You’re just a big marshmallow. Oh, I’m so hungry. I could eat. You. Up.”
He remembered eternal nothingness again and sighed sadly while she began to screech, “Dean! De-an!”
The Master rolled his eyes and got to his feet, scooped her up, and threw her onto his shoulder. “Shut up, would you?”
“Put me down!” she commanded shrilly, tiny fists pounding on his back. He rolled his eyes again and gave her a little jerk. “Quiet!” he roared. She shut up.
Dean huffed and peered into the refrigerator, and the Doctor desperately strived for conversation with the boy. “Lovely inventions, refrigerators, don’t you think? Did you know that the first refrigerator was made in-“
“Don’t care,” Dean droned in boredom, slamming the fridge door shut and striding into the living room, flopping in front of the television. The Doctor leaned on the back of the sofa and grinned. “Oh, yes, the good old telly! Actually, during the Queen’s inauguration – quite a while ago – my friend Rose and I had to fight this alien that lived inside the televisions all across the UK and she was stealing people’s faces!”
“Ok?”
“What do you like to watch?”
“Star Trek.”
“Ah, Star Trek! Actually, a lot of the space travel theories aren’t true. I have hard times watching films about space and time and such, probably because, well, you know…”
“You travel through time and space. Yeah, mum’s told us. She hardly stops going on about you, actually. It’s annoying.”
“Not a Chatty Cathy, then, are you?”
“No.”
The Doctor heard a noise coming from the kitchen and whirled around to face the kitchen door and find out who was inside. Tentatively, he stepped toward the door and pushed it open, to reveal the Master, digging in the fridge, a chubby little girl draped over his shoulder like a human-shaped, slightly tan bag of marshmallows. “Master! What the hell are you doing?” the Doctor cried. The Master didn’t look at him and excavated a carton of milk from the fridge. “Making tea.”
“No, I mean with her!”
“Carrying her.”
“Put her down! That’s not the appropriate way to carry a child, Master, and you know it!”
“Oh, look at her,” the Master sneered. The Doctor realized with horror that neither of the Master’s hands were holding onto her; she could topple off his shoulder at any minute! “She’s loving it!” the Master finished. When the Doctor looked at Genevieve, he felt a sinking feeling in his gut at the realization that she was, indeed, ‘loving it’. There was a broad, small-toothed grin the entire time the Master made his tea, right up until he set his mug on the kitchen counter and hefted her off his shoulder, placed her on the ground. She giggled and tottered off, to return moments later carrying two dolls – the Doctor Doll and a doll that looked eerily like the Master himself. He glanced at the doll worriedly, but the two of them caught the Doctor’s attention and he slid into a seat next to the one that Genevieve climbed into – so that she was between the two Time Lords. “This is the Master, and this is the Doctor,” she stated proudly, holding both dolls up so that they could see. The Doctor first reached out and took the Master Doll, examined it for a moment, and then handed it back to her. “You captured his likeness impeccably.”
“Yours looks like a potato,” the Master retorted. Genevieve pouted up at him.
“He looks like the Doctor!”
“Exactly.”
The Doctor huffed in irritation and looked down at her. “I think they’re lovely.”
“They’re in love,” she stated matter-of-factly, catching both of them by surprise. The Master sprayed the sip of tea he had in his mouth out, spluttered the rest back into the mug, and then began coughing uncontrollably while the Doctor burst into a fit of laughter. “In love? Wherever would you get that idea?”
“I made it up.”
“Damn right you did,” the Master wheezed, still choking on his tea. She frowned up at him and held the dolls close to her. “They are!”
“Why, though?” the Doctor demanded.
“Because the Master is bad, and the Doctor is good, and the Doctor can make the Master good!”
“That doesn’t mean they’re in love.”
“Yes, it does.”
“Why?”
“Because they are! I don’t know why they’re in love; they just are!”
“They are not in love,” the Master insisted. Genevieve stuck out her tongue at him, and he retaliated without hesitation. “And, that’s not even how it works,” the psychotic Time Lord said, leaning back and crossing his arms.
“What isn’t?”
“Good and bad. You can’t just make someone good. I’d think the Doctor knows that better than anybody.”
“Yeah,” the Doctor sighed, leaning forward and propping himself up on the table by his elbows. “Trust me, I’ve been trying. Haven’t been able to turn the Master completely good yet.”
“You haven’t been able to turn me good at all!”
“No, there’s been some points.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?”
“Well, you’re fraternizing with small children and playing with dolls.”
“I-How dare you! I did not play with that doll!”
“Yes, you did,” Genevieve tattled. “You played with the Rose one.”
“The Rose one? Really, Master?”
“She gave it to me! I tried to tell her that it’s made out of plastic, and it’s inanimate, but she just kept telling me to stop hurting its feelings!”
“He was playing with her hair!”
“Was not!”
“Was too!”
“Was not!”
“Shut up, the both of you!” they heard Dean’s voice from the doorway. He looked extremely inconvenienced, his mouth downturned in the form of a sharp frown. “I’m trying to watch Star Trek!”
“Sorry,” the Doctor and Genevieve said in unison. The Master just glared daggers at Dean, who glared back before returning to his television. From then on for a few minutes, the three in the kitchen just glared at each other, dead silent.
Finally, Donna was home. About damn time, too. The Master was forced to cook breakfast. How domestic was that? On top of that, the Doctor wasn’t able to get any sleep when he really needed it because the Master was horny all night and for some reason was turned on by having sex when they weren’t supposed to. Therefore, he was busy all night, and he wasn’t able to get a wink of rest in the morning. He had to help the Master make breakfast – and he was sore. He had trouble walking without a limp, and the children noticed – to his horror. “Why are you walking like that?” Genevieve demanded bossily, clutching her Doctor Doll and her Master Doll close to her chest. The Doctor glanced at how uncomfortably close the dolls were and blushed heavily. “N-no reason. Bad night’s sleep, that’s all.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” Dean pointed out as the Master slapped scrambled eggs onto his plate.
“Only when he needs to be a good one,” the Master added. Dean looked down at the eggs with a frown. “I can’t eat these,” he stated.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I’m allergic.”
“Get over it and eat your damn breakfast.”
The Doctor warned, “Master!”, provoking a roll of the maniac’s eyes.
“What?” he demanded irritably.
“Don’t swear!”
“You weren’t saying that last night when-“
“Shut up!”
The Doctor’s blush deepened considerably, and he twitched, recalling the memory. Just at that moment, they heard the front door open and Donna bustled in, bright and cheery as ever. “Hello, hello! Where’re my little angels!”
“Mummy!” Genevieve shrieked giddily, flinging herself out of her chair and hurriedly waddling out of the kitchen and into the mudroom, where Donna was waiting with outstretched arms. Dean glanced at the Doctor and the Master and then sprinted to his mother, leaving the two Time Lords alone for a minute or two. When Donna and the kids entered, the woman glanced at the mess the Master had made of the kitchen – dishes strewn everywhere, egg yolk splattered on the counter, a strange white substance that Donna assumed was egg nog, and, for some reason, a can of powdered milk on the counter next to the stove, the grainy substance littered around the can and looking like artificial snow. The Master followed her eyes to the powdered milk and shrugged. “I thought it would add flavor.”
“It’s powdered milk.”
“Milk has flavor. I thought the eggs were bland.”
“You don’t cook much, do you?”
“All of this is sort of a first for me, yeah.”
“So, you’re home!” the Doctor interrupted hopefully. “For good! We can go now, can’t we? There’s nothing else you need help with?”
“No, that was about it.”
“Alright,” the Master said with a toothy grin that made Donna’s stomach churn. “We’ll just pop off back to the TARDIS then, shall we?”
The Doctor scratched the back of his neck and nodded, and the Time Lords both hurried toward the door, shoving each other to get their first. Before they could leave, however, they heard Genevieve commanding them to stop, and the patter of little feet tottering over. When they turned around, she was holding up her dolls – the Doctor Doll was held up to the Master, and the Master Doll was held up to the Doctor. They both tentatively accepted the girl’s gifts, and she gave them a meaningful look that neither of them really wanted to decipher. They whirled around, shoved the door open, and stepped outside, hearing Genevieve’s cries of “Mummy, I want them to babysit again!”
“What?” came Donna’s incredulous reply, but that’s all the Time Lord’s heard before they were sprinting down the stairs of the apartment building and bursting outside, hurrying to get into the TARDIS. Once they were inside, the Doctor slammed the doors behind them and breathed heavily, as if they’d just escaped some wicked monster. “That,” the Doctor punctuated, “was a nightmare.”
“Tell me about it. Except while they were asleep, of course. You know, I could go for round – what was it? Oh, I lost count. Silly me; we’ll have to start over,” the Master ended with a murmur, eyes locked onto the Doctor’s lips and drifting towards him lustfully. The Doctor allowed him to place a chaste kiss on his lips before pushing the Master away, who looked as if he was ready to rip someone’s head off at the interruption. The Doctor held up the Master doll, soft and plushy in his grip. “Are we?”
“What?”
“In love. Are we in love?”
“Does it matter if we’re in love or not in love?”
“Yes. Was that a yes or a no?”
The Master tried to steal another kiss, but the Doctor firmly held him back. “Answer me.”
“You tell me.”
After a long, drawn-out pause, the seconds inching past, the Doctor took a deep breath and breathed, “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“I love you.”
Something indecipherable crossed over the Master’s face and he backed away, no longer lusting after the Doctor. His fist clenched around the Doctor Doll and he gave a worryingly professional nod. “Right, then. That makes things difficult.”
“What does? Won’t you say it? I know you feel it, too, Master.”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh, go on! No one except me has to know! It’s just three words, it’s not like you’re making yourself vulnerable.”
“Three words?”
“Yeah, three words. That’s all you need to say. Please, Master! It means so much to me…”
“Fine,” the Master said. His face was stony, his eyes so cold that they sent shivers through the Doctor.
“I hate you.”