Title: Hollow
Rating: PGish
Spoilers: Hints at LotL and EoT
Summary: The Doctor feels empty. Set during his 12th regeneration.
Pairing: Implied Doctor/Master
Warnings: Some dark thoughts, terrible amounts of angst.
Disclaimer: Not mine, unfortunately. BBC owns them.
Word count: 359, completed
Author's Note: Sort of inspired by re-reading some of Versaphile's fics. Unbeta-ed, written in approximately half an hour while taking a break from a Big Bang entry. First completed DW fic, never mind Doctor/Master. Hope you enjoy? Reviews are love.
Hollow
{All his bravado, raging and laughing at the Universe, it was just a mask, because without it everyone would see that he was hollow. Hollow and empty, a space where a man, bright and brave and clever, once existed against a backdrop of millions of minds. All gone now, even the man, leaving a vacuum that would never be filled in its wake.}
Sometimes, the Doctor thinks he can feel his telepathic ganglions withering and dying. Twice, the Master has returned, twice they had flared into life once more, but it has been so much longer now, centuries, and he imagines them shrivelled and dead inside his head, useless for anything but transmitting the constant static that has accompanied him for all but two brief, wonderful moments since he ended the Time War. There is a hole in his head and in his hearts that nothing - not even his guilt - can fill. He yearns for something, anyone, that would take it away, but nothing exists that could. Not anymore. And it's his fault. This is his punishment, and sometimes he thinks maybe it is a good thing that it can't be filled, that he can't be filled, because he deserves this. He shouldn't be allowed relief. He shouldn't be allowed to feel whole again. It is his penance.
Sometimes, the Doctor looks forward to dying. To truly dying, finally. He's on his twelfth body now, only one more to go, and then he can find peace. Sometimes he tries to imagine what that might feel like, but the ability has long since deserted him, just like his ability to remember what it felt like to be whole. To not be alone.
And always, always, a tiny, hidden part of him hopes and prays and believes that he will be with the Master again. That in death the echo of his mind will swirl out into the Universe and find the remnants of the Master's own dancing among the stars. And then, finally, finally, they would be joined once more, merged until they become one, never alone again, dancing through the Universe for eternity.
Sometimes, he allows himself that hope.