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There are nights when the Doctor wants to feel human. Not alive, not Time Lord, but human.
She’s walked among them for years, played the part, spoken their languages, stolen their titles, and fallen in love with a fair few. It is easy enough to mimic their patterns when they want to sit with their feelings for a while.
They step out of their routines. They leave their homes. They find a hole-in-wall bar someplace where they expect not to be recognized, and they order a cheap drink. The drink should not taste good. The bitterness across the back of the tongue should match the bitterness in your heart — remind you that the world is real and moving and sometimes things are terrible, but you are still in the game and the game is worth playing.
She needs that right now. She is a step away from wanting the sweet release of oblivion — of flirting so close with death that she doesn’t regenerate. Her life has been upended, her people are gone, her home is not her home, and, perhaps most dangerous of all, some of her friends decided to leave her.
She tries not to take it personally.
That task is impossible, so she is forced to resort to other methods.
Thankfully, it is easy enough to find a place that suits the criterion.
She does not have a home anymore. It has been burned to the ground. She digs deeps into the TARDIS’ archived landing spots, expecting that River would have stolen the ship and taken it to some dreadful somewhere or other when she wasn’t looking. She would expect nothing less.
It takes a couple attempts, but eventually, the TARDIS materializes outside of a bar in a Midwestern American town with dirty windows and a rusted door handle. Ivy wraps around the edges of the pavement and creeps up the brick facing, and a throbbing red neon sign dully announces that the building is open for business. It is completely unwelcoming, and utterly perfect. This will do the job nicely.
She is just another human, searching for a reason to live on a day that ends in ‘y.’
The Doctor steps inside, offering only the most cursory glance to the assembled patronage before taking a seat on a bar stool. It is unlikely that she knows anyone here. She does not really need to look.
The bartender — a grizzled, middle-aged man with wild hair and three gaps between his teeth — asks what she’ll have.
Jokingly, she asks for a puppy, a particle accelerator, and a 2x4.
He does not laugh.
She amends her order and asks for the cheapest beer he has on tap.
It comes in a grimy pint glass, covered in fingerprints, and the foam spills onto the scratched and dented countertop when he slides it to her.
He asks for payment.
She grimaces and digs through her pockets.
She doesn’t have anything.
He threatens to kick her out. He doesn’t have the time or patience for non-paying customers. He gets enough trouble as it is. She should get lost.
She is ready to talk her way out of it — a hundred excuses, explanations, and easy lies perched on the tip of her tongue — but a hand slams onto the bar next to her, bearing a twenty dollar bill and a murmured, “I’ve got it.”
The voice is horribly familiar.
It casts a thrill through her that should be terrifying, but in truth, it is a relief.
She is not alone in this bar, on this night, in this world.
The Master slides into the seat next to her and orders his own drink.
She asks him for a truce.
He does not answer.
They merely sit in silence, shoulder pressing against shoulder, drinking until the night ends and the bar closes.
She doesn’t feel human. She cannot, when an integral part of her history sits beside her, but that no longer matters to her.
It is not what she wanted, but somehow, somewhy, it is enough.
She tries to thank him when they go their separate ways, but he is already gone — out of earshot and out of her life.
...For now.
...But not forever.