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The Doctor can feel the Master struggling for breath beneath her hands, every pulse and clench of his throat as his eyes bulge. She bears down. Blood drips down her chin and splashes across him as he writhes with base survival instincts while the part of him that horrifies her more grins wider as he suffocates.
She can’t do it. Her grip loosens. He sucks in a breath so fast that it must scrape raw down his throat. His mouth twists as the giddy edge of death and oxygen deprivation fades. He snaps his hips beneath her, knocking her forward so that he can throw her off to the side. Her back hits the dirt with a thud. She braces herself for him to take the upper hand.
He doesn’t move. She can hear him breathing harshly beside her, see the heavy rise and fall of his chest if she lets her eyes slide towards him. She looks up.
Her whole body aches like a bruise. Her arm, especially, radiates pain from when he caught it and yanked it nearly out of its socket. Her own blood coats half of her face, drying warm and sticky on her lips. She’s trying not to think about the sharp pressure in the side of her abdomen or what it might mean for the squishy organs there that are supposed to remain unpunctured by anything to keep her alive.
“You knocked two of my teeth out,” the Master says.
“Good,” she snaps back. He giggles, against his best interest when his lungs are still struggling to fill, and it comes out painful like he’s choking on it.
She wishes he would shut up. If he did, she could close her eyes and lay still in the grass and pretend…
Pretend her friend is laying in the grass beside her, naming stars. But the sky is the wrong color, and the grass isn’t as soft, and the Master is trying to stop laughing so he can breathe.
“Did you really think I always acted like I was special?” she asks as he quiets.
“You did.” He sounds sure of himself, and it’s crueler than him trying to break her neck earlier. It shouldn’t matter, of all the things he’s done, but-
“So we were never friends, then? That’s what you believe.”
“I never said that,” and that’s sharper still, like nothing she says will do anything but give him more excuses to hate her. She supposes, in that respect, they aren’t so different. “We were never equals, and you knew that.”
“Were we friends, Koschei?” she persists.
He’s silent. She watches him breathe. All she can taste is her blood.
“Are we, Doctor?”
No, she should answer. Never again, she wants to answer. You were right, we never were, and that means I’m free, that means I don’t have to care the next time my hands are around your throat, she thinks as she curls her hands into fists.
But she doesn’t answer.
“Call it a draw, today?” she says, exhausted. “You want to try and kill me again tomorrow, fine.” The Master sits up, and she hears him spit something out of his mouth.
“Three teeth,” he mutters.
“If it fell out because you were poking at it, that’s not my fault.” He could very easily attack her. Or she could get him while his back is turned. And they could do this forever. They probably will.
You might, says a new, awful voice she has to deal with these days. He’ll die before you do, if you ever can.
She forces that thought down as deep as it can go. She doesn’t want to consider that world. Not again.
It’s the most selfish thing she can do: want him alive.
She shuts her eyes again, lets the grass brush her cheeks, and listens to his breath shudder in and out of his chest.