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He picks up the white king delicately, tracing the outline of the piece with his fingers, before throwing it against the nearest wall. “Not fair!”
Theta laughs so hard that they fall from their chair, rolling onto their back with a grin and both hands punching the air in victory. They know it’s mean, but Koschei is just so funny when he’s irritable, and they can’t help the giggle that comes out of them. The white king rolls over to where Theta fell, and they pick it up like a golden trophy. “I win! Again!”
Koschei only grumbles and sinks back into his seat. “You’re such a prick, you know that?”
“I think you mean brilliant.”
“No, I absolutely mean prick.”
It is their fourteenth round of chess, Koschei having the advantage with the starting white pieces, and he still hasn’t managed to win a single game. Of course, that was the entire point of playing chess in the first place, Theta winning, but they’re regretting it now. Seeing Koschei upset, however funny, doesn’t help the point they want to make.
“I know you’ll figure it out,” they try to reassure, getting up from the floor to reorganize all the pieces. “It’s easy once you understand what I’m trying to show you.”
“I just– I don’t– I can’t think as fast as you do.” Koschei blurts out, ashamed to admit such a thing.
Theta starts to reorganize the pieces to one of their earlier plays from memory, raising an eyebrow at him. “I thought you were supposed to be smart.”
It’s a completely innocent remark, but they only notice the mistake in their wording when Koschei’s face turns a soft shade of pink. “I am smart, you just got tired of me beating you at Sepulchasm. You had to bring in an alien game I don’t understand to finally win.”
Theta only smiles in response, trying not to show how completely right he is. “I picked this one especially for you, though. I could’ve gotten any Earth board game, but I chose this one for a reason.”
“… Being?”
“Look at the pieces.”
Koschei, in such a desperate need to understand, does what he’s told without a single complaint. He looks down at the game Theta has arranged, studying the board for several minutes with the same attention he gives his studies. They memorize each square and position, leaving no room for error, before looking back up at Theta.
“Do you see it?”
“See what?”
“What I did. What you did.”
It is an internal argument: Wanting to tell him but needing him to figure it out on his own. Koschei’s pulling at their psychic link like a fishing line, and Theta has to do everything in their power to restrain from taking the bait.
“I uh… I attacked you,” Koschei tries, “and I left my king unprotected?”
“But not your queen.”
Koschei looks up, confused.
“Your favorite piece,” they continue, “you hold it above the others. You know you’re supposed to protect the king but you don’t because it holds no value to you. The queen can move anywhere and any place. To you, that is worth fighting for.”
“And you, then?” Koschei asks.
Theta shrugs, looking down at the board. “Well, I know all of that, and I use it to trick you. I know what you value and I place my pieces to make you sacrifice it. I attack your queen, you get scared, and forget to protect your king. Nine points are worth more to you than the fifteen I got with your rooks and pawn. You care about the individual over the collective.”
They both sit in silence for a while.
The symbolism of the game is not lost on Theta. Koschei might not realize it yet, but his instinct to protect the queen comes from protecting Theta. Freedom and Doctor have always gone hand in hand for him and he’s never been shy about admitting it. His passion for Theta burns like twin suns.
Time Lords are supposed to be logical, and yet, there is no logic in protecting your queen if the king will get trapped.
Individual over the collective.
Theta over the universe.
“That’s not what I meant,” they clarify, feeling Koschei’s overwhelming feelings come through their psychic bond. “it’s not about who we are to each other. It’s about who we are in war.” Theta turns the board over so Koschei can have Theta’s moves in front of him. “Look at the board. What am I doing? All of the time, what do I do?”
“You win.”
“How?”
And then it happens. Koschei blinks and he suddenly understands the board in front of him like quantum physics. Stars fold into themselves over and over, birth and explosion and death all at once. The board begins to speak his language.
“You don’t kill, you capture. When I attack, I only go for the pieces I can take. You don’t attack because you’re backing me into a corner.” Koschei explains with a frown, “Are you trying to turn me into a pacifist?”
“No,” Theta lies, “but I’ve got a point, don’t I? The winner isn’t the one with the most kills, it’s the one who captures the king. There is a way to win without violence. I won in four moves, remember? The fifth time? I didn’t have to take a single one of your pieces to win, I only do it when I’ve got no choice.”
Koschei doesn’t give a reply. He’s too busy organizing all the pieces back to their starting positions, giving himself the black pieces for the first time in their entire game. His intrigued impression has turned into disappointed understanding.
“Kos, I’m talking about the High Council. You’re going to–”
“I know what this is about. You’re trying to stop me from fighting in the Cyberwar. That won’t happen.”
The High Council has turned Koschei into a soldier, the one burden Theta was determined to bear for him since a river and a rock, and now they’re giving him a battalion to lead in six months. A perfect warrior, they call him, and Koschei can’t seem to get that label out of his head.
He’ll face the Cybermen, weapons and warriors with him, in six months.
Theta can’t lose their best friend.
“It’s what I’m good for,” Koschei continues, “you know it is. This strategy of mercy might work for you on a board, but it will endanger you out there. This is a game of hypotheticals. You only win as long as the opponent plays by your rules.”
“Then how do I keep winning?”
Koschei scoffs. “You won’t let me kill the king.”
Panic rises in their throat, a bad habit, and they’re speaking before they can think. “You don’t have to fight them to win! You could run away with me and we could figure out a smarter way to beat them. All these weapons, all this violence, you don’t have to be part of it. Fight fire with water.”
“The High Council asked me if I would lead a battalion and I said yes. I know what I chose.”
“You can’t leave me alone!”
“I’m not! You decided not to join the army! You could be fighting with me and instead, you’re going to run away like some coward! I’ll fight for you, to keep your home safe, but you wouldn’t dare do that for me, right? We could’ve done this together.”
“You could die. The Cybermen will kill you.”
“This isn’t Torvic anymore, Doctor. You don’t get to chuck a rock at a head and call it a problem solved. This is politics and war and bloodshed, and I was called upon. I am Death’s servant and I will do as I’m told.”
“I killed him so you would never have to. Everything I have ever done was for your benefit. I smashed his brain with a rock, I helped you get over your fear of drowning, I took the blame so you would never get caught. I did that for you, and you’re going to destroy everything I sacrificed!”
“You’re not a martyr!”
“I ruined myself for you!”
Koschei bangs the table to shut them up. It is not by any means loud, it’s not even hard enough to move the pieces around, but it is a warning all the same. A shiver runs down Theta’s spine, freezing their entire body in place.
“Are you done?”
Theta nods.
When Koschei starts their clock again, his smile is empty. It sits on his face as decoration. “Forget about the Cybermen, alright? Let’s play.”
Twenty-eight moves later, Koschei wins his first game.
****
“Your move.”
It takes an eternity to open his eyes and an infinity longer to focus them on the board.
Black and white geometry consumes his vision, a kaleidoscope of the grey scale ever shifting in front of him. A very distant part of himself, a part lost to time, tells him that he doesn’t have to play if he doesn’t want to. The part of him that sits in front of this board feels the chains weighing him down. There is no escape from this.
“Your move,” repeats God, getting impatient.
The Doctor knows this isn’t God, but the name has been repeated to him so many times that he’s tempted to accept it. The distant part of him claims to know the name of this monster, but the Doctor doesn’t know if he wants to relearn it. Day and night, it’s God this and God that and be good for me and if you’re not good for me, there will be consequences.
What God wants right now is to play chess.
The Doctor can’t fight back, not anymore, so he moves the piece that’s closest to him to the right and hopes it’s enough.
“Good,” replies God, and the Doctor can finally let out the sob he was holding in the back of his throat.
The Valiant is so cold. It’s been… Seven months now? Eight? His time sense is broken beyond repair, but the seconds tick on anyway. He thought he’d get used to the chilling air by now, accompanied by its torture, but it still paralyzes him from head to toe.
Maybe it’s the age. A nine-hundred-year-old body isn’t fit to sleep in a dog cage.
“Doctor.”
His name said with such fury… Only one person could’ve uttered it like that. Everything comes back to him. The Doctor snaps out of his delirious state and looks onward at his enemy with the only bravery he has left.
Master.
It is only a half-truth. An enemy, yes, but also a friend. Always a friend. His punches would only be out of the desperate need to feel their skin against each other. All his hatred contains his love. It only exists because it’s not reciprocated.
“Your heart’s not in it,” says the Master, almost bored in his realization. “You’re not even playing right.”
The Doctor doesn’t answer him. The very idea of moving his vocal cords might turn them into dust, and his hunched body doesn’t have much energy left. He can’t move. He can’t run , no matter how much he wants to.
And yet, that is his winning card. His lack of any emotion makes him powerful over the Master. The Master wants a reaction, and the Doctor is too broken to give him one.
The Master frowns. That explains the headache, then, the Master is roaming inside his mind. Their psychic link has never broken, but it’s been pulled to its ruins. The threads are all scratched and bleeding, the Master declaring the Doctor’s thoughts his property.
“Motivation? Is that what you need? I can give you motivation, Doctor.”
In the blink of an eye, the board in front of them has disappeared, and the Master is rolling the Doctor away in his wheelchair. He takes the Doctor to the window of The Valiant, the one that oversees London like a microscope looking at a bug.
The Master snaps his fingers, and there’s a chessboard.
He snaps his fingers again, and he recognizes the pieces as people. Martha’s mom is the queen, Jack is the king, and the rest of the pieces conform of UNIT guards and the rest of Martha’s family. Across from them, there’s an army of Masters dressed up to look like the pieces they represent. All of them have his face except for his queen, which is one Lucy Saxon, screaming for mercy.
“Motivated?” The Master asks innocently.
Unfortunately, the Doctor is. Adrenaline powers up his ancient body in seconds, and he’s gripping the Master’s hand with the force of a million men. “Let them go. This is between you and me. Put me down there. I’ll fight you if that’s what you want. Teeth and all.”
The Master is almost convinced by the idea until he shakes his head no. “Your heart wouldn’t be in it.”
“Trust me, after this, you don’t have my mercy.”
“You’d miss me for a couple of years if you were being kind,” the Master answers, “but them, you’d miss them for lifetimes. You would never forgive yourself. And if you ever did, if you dared let yourself think that you were an innocent party in all of this, your dear Captain Jack would never let you forget it.”
Francine squirms in place. She tries to run, anywhere, but her mobility is restricted on her square. She screams at her family to run. None of them can. The Master’s guards look equally frightened. Despite the guns in their hands, they don’t attempt to shoot at the other side, instead screaming at each other for help.
The only person who doesn’t scream is Jack. He looks up at the Doctor with the hope they’ve all lost and smiles. Even after all this, he still trusts him.
He just has to move his friends around like puzzle pieces, making sure they don’t die while making sure he wins.
“Capture, not kill,” mocks the Master, “show me how it’s done, dear.”
The Doctor bites the inside of his cheek. “Fine, I’ll play.”
The Master laughs. He gets to go first.
****
“I resign,” the Master whispers, dangerous words tumbling out like a waterfall. It is the first time any of them have given up in a game.
Except it’s not a game. The Master is dying. Gallifrey is disintegrating before their very eyes as the Doctor damns it back to hell, and the Master is going to go with them.
“Don’t do this!” the Doctor begs.
The Master smiles, only for a second before Rassilon’s scream reaches his ears. “I have no pieces left. I resign. You’ve played well.”
“I can’t lose you again, please, please, not again!”
Gallifrey disappears with a blast. The king falls.
The Doctor breaks all over again.
****
There is a fair amount of skill required to play a classic piece on a piano without fail.
It takes even more skill to fail intentionally.
When the Doctor hears Vivaldi’s Symphony in G mayor with every fourth note being a quarter off, apart from being incredibly irritated, he’s a little impressed.
“How long have you been working on that?” He asks her casually. As with all things concerning him, it comes out unnaturally. This old body is not fit for small talk, less to dance around a subject, and his poor attempt at it makes Missy laugh.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I would.”
“A couple of years, now. I remember you like Vivaldi.”
“So you’ve been spending a couple of years ruining him for me?”
She smiles. It is still the most beautiful thing he’s seen, no matter how much it scares him. “Don’t flatter yourself, my dear.”
He lays down on the lid, letting the tune take him by the hand and crunch his fingers every fourth note. It’s become a habit in their 60 years in the Vault. Out of all the places the Doctor could sit, he prefers the front-row view to the show, and he thinks it’s the closest thing to domestic life they’ll ever get.
He hums along to Missy’s playing with his eyes closed, trying to picture nothing but darkness instead of the raging fire he sees when he blinks.
“When was the last time we played chess?” Missy asks.
It is a question meant to challenge him. Of course, they both know the last time they played chess was when the Master forced the Doctor to use his friends as pieces in the Valiant. Francine’s face still haunts him. Masters dressed up as knights and rooks killing Jack over and over…
“Can’t remember,” he answers, “want to give it another shot?”
Missy stops playing. “Yes! I’ve been bored for the last decade, finally!”
It is the most sophisticated game they’ve had in their lives. Their years in the Academy, despite how they loved each other, never held the respect the two hold for each other now. They resign more often, now they’ve allowed that vulnerability around each other. They don’t knock over pieces or laugh when they win, they simply shake hands and reorganize the board.
Sometimes the Doctor holds Missy’s hand for longer than he should. Sometimes she lets him.
“Sacrificing knights?” Missy asks, breaking their peaceful silence.
“It works, doesn’t it?” The Doctor answers, trying to ignore her as he examines the board.
She keeps looking at him with this smile he can’t quite place. Finally, he sets his knight on the board, sacrificing it so that in two moves he’ll acquire her bishop.
“I’m not saying it doesn’t,” Missy clarifies, “I just think it says a lot about you. You’re finally showing your cards, Doctor.”
“Really? What am I showing?”
“You value pawns more than everything else. You protect those like your lifeline and you only sacrifice them when you have no other moves. It’s always about the little guy with you.”
He bites his tongue. “Maybe.”
Missy smiles. “Sometimes I wonder, if I were a human, would you pick me?”
“In every lifetime and regeneration.”
“Choose me, maybe, but you can’t save me. We’re on opposite ends of the board. There is no helping the opponent.”
Missy takes the knight. She’s letting him win. For his sake or her own, he can’t really tell.
The Doctor sighs. He picks up his king in his wrinkled hand, examining it, before placing it down on the center of the board gently. “Not this time. I’m not giving up on you. We’ll end up on the same side.”
“Capture, not kill,” says Missy. “That’s what you’ve done to me. That’s what the vault is. I will always be the losing party.”
He doesn’t reply.
****
“Do we ever win?” asks the Master, almost frightened of the answer.
“Sometimes, my dear,” Missy tells him, inserting the blade into his back with the smoothness of honey, “but you’re missing the bigger picture.”
The Master grunts trying to resist the pain. “And that is?”
“We don’t have to win. We could join him, victory together than alone. Isn’t that what you wanted when we were oh so young?”
“Never.”
“Sooner than you think.”
“Never.”
When you play chess with yourself, there is no winner. The Master blasts her with his sonic with the last of his strength, bringing her down to his level, bleeding on the floor.
King and queen fall together.
****
The Doctor sticks her tongue out, tinkering with her sonic as she reviews the footage. “But it doesn’t make any sense, how did they get Yaz? How did they get me?”
It’s 3 AM in the outback, and while all her companions are sleeping on the couch and the spare bedrooms, the Doctor is still buzzing with energy trying to figure out what the Kasaavin could be planning and what Daniel Barton has to do with it. She’s been reviewing all of the outback’s security footage from the attack and trying to gather notes.
“Do you think we could watch that back again, O?” She asks.
No response.
“… O?”
She turns to her side to see the MI6 agent with his head against the table, softly snoring against the Doctor’s sleeve. It appears she’s been talking to herself for at least twenty minutes and O must’ve fallen asleep at some point in her observations.
“O? Hullo?”
She reaches out to nudge his arm, and he immediately jerks awake in his seat.
“Who is it!” His eyes dart across the room to find whatever threat got into his outback, hands crunched up into fists in front of him, until they land on her.
And, ah, he reveals so much in that simple glance.
His eyes soften, a cat recognizing its owner, and his sleepy state drags an unashamed grin out of him. It is a grin he would never let her see if it weren’t 3 AM, and she takes the opportunity to soak in as many of his features as he can.
His expression is unapologetic. This smile is pure instinct , and as much as it should scare her that he likes her so much, she’s only more intrigued. O’s hair is pointing in five different directions at the top of his head, and yet it still manages to cover half of his doe-brown eyes exactly the way she likes.
“Oh, Doctor,” He whispers, careful to break their silence.
“You fell asleep.”
And just like that, he’s gone. That soft, adoring O disappears as he straightens up as quickly as he can, knocking some pens off the desk, and begins to flatten his hair in a panic. “Sorry, that’s so embarrassing, my first actual mission with the Doctor and I’m falling asleep–”
“Hey, hey, it’s alright! I’m falling asleep too.” The Doctor reassures him, putting her hand above his shaking one and locking their fingers together before she can think better of it. “Breathe, alright? What helps you calm down?”
She’s unsure whether it’s the right thing to do because O stares at his hand like a deer in headlights. It’s only then that she remembers that he’s been hidden away in the outback without physical contact for several years.
His fingers tremble, but he holds her hand back all the same.
“Come on, what helps you calm down? We can do something else. Let’s take a break. What do you do in your free time?”
O bites his tongue before looking up at her. “Do you play chess?” O asks her, timid, “I wasn’t very good at it when I learned in school, but the placement and moves of the pieces helped me think. I have a board somewhere if you’d…”
She freezes.
Memories of Missy cycle through her mind like a carousel. It is all hidden smiles and wrong notes on a piano. It is not exactly a pain that courses through her but a longing. A terrible need for her friend back consumes her, even if Missy betrayed her.
Would it be a betrayal to play chess with someone else? For their sacred game to become tainted by someone else’s strategy?
“Doctor?”
“Hmm?”
“Chess?”
In the short time she drifted into her mind, he stood up and picked up the chessboard he referred to from a shelf. He shakes it a bit, rattling the pieces inside, before sitting down again.
“Uh, yeah. Chess is fine.”
It isn’t fine. It’s everything but fine as Vivaldi’s symphony rings in her ears, but she lets him set up the board anyway. Her voice is stuck in her throat, and even if she wanted him to stop, she wouldn’t have the guts to explain why.
This is the only thing O has ever asked from her. Between text messages and MI6 and crashing at his place without invitation, he remains kind. She owes him a game.
“Yeah,” she reassures, smiling at him. “Chess is great.”
It gets worse when he even plays like Missy. The same quiet attacks that she doesn’t notice until it’s too late. Swift misdirection catches her off guard and symmetrical patterns trap her in a corner. It would be impressive if she didn't suddenly realize she was losing horribly.
“Have you… ever actually played chess before, Doctor?” O asks, smiling at his small joke.
“I uh,” she coughs, “used to have this friend. We played a lot. She was good, like you, but not this good. How’d you even do that?”
“Well, I–”
“No, I mean, I know how you did it, but how did I miss it?”
O’s smile widens, showing his teeth now, and he looks up at the Doctor with an expression of pure calm she didn’t know he was capable of. “Underestimated me, did you?”
She feels her face redden as he catches her, making him erupt with laughter. It’s through this that she notices he has dimples, and her face reddens more for an entirely different reason.
“Maybe, yeah.”
“It’s alright, you always have,” he knocks down his king with a flick and begins to reorganize the pieces. “Come on, I’ll let you win the next one.”
They spend the entire night playing games back and forth, sharing the same edge of competition she used to have with Koschei all those years ago. It is the best of both worlds, holding Missy’s respect and Koschei’s sense of fun.
“I like playing with you,” she tells him once they’re two hours in, playing chess like excited kids playing video games. They’ve wagered candy over who wins every round.
“More than your friend?” he asks.
“Well, she didn’t let me win as much as you do!”
When they both laugh, trying to hush each other as Graham shifts on O’s couch, she believes she could live in this moment forever.
She holds his hand and means every unspoken word to him.
No one has understood me like you in a long time.
****
When she falls asleep on the board out of pure exhaustion, O pulls a blanket over her. For old-time’s sake.
****
Koschei had been all anger and no strategy. He attacked what he shouldn’t and left blind spots that only hurt him further. The Master was ill-prepared, all strategy but no pieces to back him up. He only had himself to give over when it came to the endgame. Missy had been ignorant. A fine player, yes, but restricted. She didn’t know what was hidden in the Matrix.
Not him. He’s going to win.
His queen is The Silver Lady, his king is Daniel Barton, and his pawns are the Kasaavin. He’s dragged all her pets together, putting Yaz in immediate danger and leaving the Doctor with no other choice but to come running to him. He has them rounding them up in his own TARDIS, where he’ll eventually trap them in a flying time bomb.
No. Way. Out.
He finally learned what she’s been trying to teach him. Capture, not kill.
“Fancy a trip in the box?” the Doctor asks him, grinning from ear to ear.
The Master smiles. Checkmate.
“I would. I really, really, would.”