Too Much Television
AN: An... admittedly crackish idea that's been rattling around in my head ever since Martha said that infamous line, and I looked it up. And then one particular picture I found cemented it.
You are allowed not to take this seriously.
...
"And what is he to you?" Martha asked, curious and maybe just a little afraid of the answer. "Like a colleague..." she suggested, as a safe place to start.
"A friend, at first," the Doctor allowed.
"I thought you were gonna say he was your secret brother, or something," she said, half joking and with the slightest amount of relief. After all, one thing she'd learned from her travels with the Doctor was that anything could happen or be revealed to be possible. And aside from that, there was precious little she actually knew about the Time Lord.
She blushed as she noticed him and Jack stare at her.
The Doctor blinked. "You've been watching too much TV."
Martha chuckled half-heartedly, oblivious to the raised eyebrow that Jack gave the Doctor, and the innocent but guarded look the Doctor sent back.
...
It had started with a seed of resentment, as these things were wont to do.
Theta Sigma, as he would later be known, was born first, to a human woman. It was almost unheard of, but nowhere near as unheard of as what happened after that. The woman that the father's family had meant him to marry gave birth to her own son, but instead of keeping the pure Gallifreyan and finding a way of hiding the half-human child out of society's prying eyes, the Lungbarrow patriarch handed over the responsibility for the younger onto one of the newer houses, entrusting them with the boy.
The elder, half human child would grow up into Lungbarrow itself, his mother allowed to stay, the exception to an eons-long rule, while the younger would spend his life in Oakdown, the house of his own mother, gaining a new family, but one that wasn't entirely his.
...
The boys' first meeting was an accident.
Neither family had planned it, and neither had truly known what to expect of it, given their relation. But although most of the adults knew, the children did not, and so they found no reason to dislike each other.
Their friendship grew steadily, full of normal things that friendships were formed on; arguments, fights, experiments, toys, adventures, a certain level of understanding and, of course, an awful lot of running.
For some reason, they didn't quite understand why any of the other children they met weren't like them. Couldn't occasionally finish each others' sentences. Didn't have such similar mannerisms, even if they were from the same area, and sometimes even the same House.
So people merely wrote them off as strange, and said no more about it, not counting the many varied looks that were shared and passed on by any adult who knew.
...
In the Academy, Koschei was the smart one, and Theta Sigma the quick one, and they both got into trouble.
Koschei spent more and more time striking out on his own in his first few years, however, no matter how much his friends both old and new cajoled him for it. His hand would find its way to his head, and his fingers their way to a hard surface, tapping without thinking and flinching when he realised. In time, he learned to live with it. In the meantime, he did as best he could to seem like he fitted in.
It was during this period that of the many children from the many places and Houses on all of Gallifrey that had been sent to the Citadel to become the next generation of Time Lords, one must have overheard, or been told, for they brought with them a rumour.
The rumour that Theta Sigma, hardly the one with the best marks even if he was popular among certain circles, was half human.
For the first time, it was Koschei, the younger, who became angry and spoke out with words and fists in order to protect his friend, unwittingly his brother.
...
It wasn't very much longer after that – relatively speaking – when they discovered the whole truth. The truth that everyone had been trying to keep from them for so long.
They discovered by accident, almost, while trying to search out the one who had started the rumour about Theta Sigma.
A word here, a connection there, circumstantial evidence to say the least, but more than enough pieces to get a gist of what the puzzle would look like when finished.
It completely changed how they saw each other – gone was the friend who was simply 'best friend', and 'playmate' and 'the one whose homework I copy', replaced by something, someone, else. They weren't quite sure how to quantify the change, and so they did what came naturally.
They did their best to pretend that it did not exist. Running, after all, was something they both shared to a greater or lesser degree, even if it wasn't being utilised quite so literally this time around. Besides, who was to know, who would notice, if they were not as fluid with each other as they used to be?
They were, after all, in the middle of growing up. Changes in behaviour were only to be expected.
...
Days later on the Valiant, and the Master spun the Doctor around the boardroom in the wheelchair that he had procured from some unfortunate hospital or facility.
"How does it feel, Doctor? Oh, do tell me, I'm just dying to know. What does it feel like to know that you're not going to get rescued this time?"
No answer. It was starting to become a habit. The Master would monologue on, speak and ramble, show the Doctor exactly what he was doing to his precious Earth, and still the Doctor would not say anything. Nothing, except for a variation on a theme.
Always seeming to be the same few words.
"I've only one thing to say to you." And he might then need to breathe, talking was that much more difficult when you felt a few hundred years older than you actually were. Sometimes, he wouldn't be able to continue, having been interrupted. "And you know what that is."
Invariably, the Master would shut him up somehow. And the Doctor would show no reaction. Not unless it was someone else who was being threatened.
This time, however, he didn't say anything. Just looked, a memory in his mind's eye, but not saying a word.
"Well? I asked you a question, Doctor. How does it feel?"
There was a sharp jab into the Doctor's now tender and sensitive side. The laser screwdriver. He sighed, knowing how unlikely it was that the other Time Lord would use it on him, but not willing to take that risk just yet.
"The same as it did the first time," he said, in a voice so low that only the Master could hear him.
The Master's eyes widened, face going slack as if in shock, which it probably was. And then, as quickly as it had happened it was over, and an even colder expression was now on his face as he hit the seemingly old man across the face.
He then straightened up, face stonily neutral, shaking his hand out as he walked away.
"You know, they say older means wiser in some places. But it's never smarter. Or stronger. Tough luck, old man."
...
The shot rang out on the Valiant, a year to the day after the Paradox had begun for those on the floating ship, and no time at all for those on the Earth.
It echoed, and all that the Doctor could think was that this could not be happening, it had missed, it wasn't fatal, even that it had hit someone else, the Master had used that trick before, hadn't he?
But the heavy body in his arms was real, he could feel, smell the blood seeping out of the bullet wound, and his only hope was that the Master would just regenerate. There was nothing else he could do, he wasn't that kind of Doctor. He just... wasn't. And there was no one left who knew how to treat a Time Lord's injuries so quickly.
The Master had to regenerate. He'd always been afraid of dying, hadn't he just proven that on the mountain, overlooking the warheads with the black hole converter? He wouldn't. Wouldn't do that to-
He could. Had. Done.
Left him alone. Again.
There was a moment where he felt numb, not in denial, just numb. Tears slicking down his face and heedless to the presences of those behind him. And then he let out a roar of frustration and grief and hearts wrenching loss.
He'd failed him. Again.
...
He was face to face with himself. Oh, how he remembered those cricket whites and decorative vegetable fondly. And the brainy specs! Couldn't forget the brainy specs.
It took himself long enough to come around to the idea that the man in front of him was, well, him.
He was just thinking of figuring out when exactly his past self was from, the small matter that the Master had reappeared again popping out of his mouth with all the tact of a bulldozer in a Chinese shop.
His fifth self asked if the Master still had that rubbish beard. He replied in the negative, not remembering any moment when any beard had been on the other Time Lord's face. And then, the weird fact.
"...well, a wife."
The two Doctors shared a look, with the precise same thoughts as when he had first seen the Master with Lucy Saxon hanging off of his arm.
Does that make her my sister in law, then?
And then the moment was up, and they tried not to think too hard or too seriously on the matter.
The ironic thing was that, as he had realised before, Lucy did not, in all probability, even know.
...
The Doctor supposed that it had been easy enough to spot, that little bite of the lip as she walked past Martha and Jack. After all, he had been watching Donna as they both helped the others pilot the TARDIS properly and harmoniously, to bring back the Earth into its normal patch of space.
He sidled up next to her, and in the one moment when there weren't quite so many other people around, he whispered in her ear.
"Don't. Whatever you were thinking about saying, just... let it lie."
Donna's frown deepened, and she turned to him.
"But, surely... after all, he was-"
"Yeah," the Doctor said with a slight hitch. He cleared his throat. "Was. Still, no need to tell them that, all right?"
She crossed her arms at him. "What, is that Human 'all right', or is it Time Lord speak 'all right'?" she asked.
The Doctor hesitated, just for a moment. "Ehhh... little bit of both," he said, with a little too much bounce for it to be believable. And then he was off correcting Rose, who'd been turning a lever too far, and Donna let him be.
All the same, she rolled her eyes. "Stupid Spacemen."
...
AN: I was thinking of doing more, but I couldn't see how it would work. I might do a longer thing featuring certain EoT events, though.
While I was writing it, I kept being astounded that I had, somehow, made the mad idea make sense. Somehow.
And after all, 'You've been watching too much TV' isn't a yes or a no. It's no answer at all, really...