A/N: This is the original story of what has become a collection of vignettes that all take place in the same place, but at different times. You don't need to have read the others to read this one (the others being "The Black Velocities" and "She Ate of Her Heart").
"... they were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common." - "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane
The Doctor can only stare. Beyond the open doors of his TARDIS lays a knot in time and space. Everything lives, dies, reverses in the swirling gloam of the planetoid he's been summoned to. The world before him is crumbling, growing, grey-purple soft and dark.
In another time and place, he had received a message on his psychic paper, coordinates and a smiley face made out of Earth punctuation. ;)
The semicolon was a wink, according to Clara. Then she had politely excused herself from this particular venture with a knowing smile and wouldn't explain, just wished him luck and giggled her way out of the ship.
She wouldn't have been so glib if she had known who had sent the message. He should have known.
"Well? Come on, come on." The Master - Missy, whatever alias she wears now - beckons for him to come to her with both hands. A short distance away, half hidden in the twilight shadows, stands her TARDIS, a grandfather clock in glossy mahogany like the Master's hair. Its luster is only a little dulled by the particles that permeates the air in visible currents and drifts.
When the Doctor finally ventures out she gathers up her skirts and settles in among the mushrooms and moths that make up the entire living population here. The powder of their decay is smeared across the bridge of her nose, the strong line of her jaw. She pats the ground next to her, giving rise to a plume of dust and spores, and without conscious thought the Doctor sits.
She's alive. He knew she had to be. The Master is indestructible, at least in mind if not body, as the whole universe knows.
She catches his arm between her own and leans on his shoulder with a contented sigh.
"You should be dead."
The sigh turned to an irritated huff. "Please, Doctor, at least try to have an original thought once in a while."
"What do you want?"
Even without seeing her, the Doctor can imagine the pursed lips, the knitted brows. The pout. Though her face is new, he knows it. When she had been unconscious on Boat One, he'd watched her. Asleep her features weren't so animated, but still hard and distinct, easy to imagine what she looked like happy, sad, angry. But never resigned until he'd turned her weapon on her. Now, it's hard not to see that expression.
"This is dense even for you, my dear Doctor. I already told you." He feels her shift and turned to meet her gaze. Her head is tilted, her eyes far away, seeing a different day. "I want you."
"Me."
The Master bumps her forehead against his upper arm. The action smeared a moth's desiccated wings across the black of the Doctor's jacket. "Yes, you, silly. I miss being your friend."
"Funny way of showing it."
"We have a funny sort of friendship."
They lapse into silence. The Master curls in closer. The atmosphere oozes thick and dark, tumultuous cloud cover flying by as time spins out. He thinks of the coordinates for Gallifrey, how deeply that one little - as she would say - fibette cut. She knows how to hurt him. He knows how to hurt her, too.
But he won't, not now.
The Doctor brings a hand up to lay it over the Master's. Beneath their clasped hands he can feel the fluttering of moth wings. The Master pulls her hand away, curls it tight, and he hears a noise like paper crumbling.
When she opens her hand again, the moth is nothing but powder. The Master blows it away, shakes off the remnants, and as they watch it reforms and takes flight.
"What is this place?"
"Do you like it?"
The Doctor considers his answer. She's not talking about the physical place, the bugs and fungi and dirty oil air. The time stream, though. It's not normal, but it's not so unnatural as to physically hurt, like the tears in time, compressions, explosions he'd experienced before. Abnormal, but natural. He smiles at the Master, thinking it describes her well, and her own gaze turns wary. They might know each other better than anyone else in all the universe, but the Master can't fathom a Doctor smiling at her. Their relationship had changed too much for that, and the Doctor has to accept that, too.
"I do. You made it?" The wariness falls away as though it had never been, and she nods so enthusiastically a few curls break free from her updo and bounce around her face.
"I just built up a little eddy that was already here," she explains in false modesty, head demurely tilted but eyes and smile shining. The Master gives in to her innate desire for an audience, acknowledgement, and elaborates. "Like putting down pebbles in a creek. Bit of strange matter, bit of chronodyne, here, there. Stick it all together with wax and a wee bit of glamoury, and," the Master sits back and throws her arms wide. "Ta-da!"
"Very scientific."
"Very," the Master agrees, nodding solemnly before she sprawls back against umbrella blooms and soft wings.
He looks down at the Master, with her wide, bright eyes like super-hot stars. "Why?"
"Why do I do anything? Because I could, my dear. For you. And for me."
The Doctor doesn't lay down next to her, though he can tell she wants him to. Instead, he looks upward. The atmosphere is too thick to see the stars beyond this little eddy of the Master's. She controls time in ways he can't imagine, wouldn't dare to think he'd pull off until backed into a corner. She dares and does. Because she can. Her name was well-chosen.
"Did you know," she says when it's obvious he won't join her. "Only we can survive here? Any humans would just age, regress, fade away - very painful, I imagine."
"Anything but us, you mean. Not just humans." He can feel it in the air, because natural doesn't mean safe. Species with time sense and vortex-formed quirks, of which there were far fewer now after the war, would be adversely affected. Unless one was a Time Lord who had a Time Lady to calibrate the world. The Master was very, very clever in her glamoury.
"Any humans," the Master repeats, more forcefully.
"Oh." He would have loved to bring Clara here, or any future companions, not to touch, but just to see. It really is beautiful, in an unnerving sort of way. Like how he'd take them to see supernovas and crystalline galaxies. But this isn't for them. Neutral ground, nothing at stake. Just moths and mushrooms for the last of the Time Lords. The Doctor can't fathom how the Master manages to fluctuate between universe-conquering armies and harmless little time eddies without hurting herself. She has other plans, deadly games, waiting in the wings. But this is one the Doctor doesn't have to stop.
He'll save the coordinates. "Thank you," he tells her again.
The Master smiles.