South Side of the Sky
By Skyblaze
Authors note: For Snowgrouse - I know it's a bit pants, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
Also a note and a smile to 'UKtechgirl' (aka 'pontisbright') for giving me the idea in the first place.
---
The soft rustle of velvet should not have seemed so loud. Even in the relative quiet of this console room, punctuated by the continual hum of the TARDIS (not his TARDIS, but the sound was familiar and comforting all the same) and the occasional click-click of Tegan's metal-tipped shoes as she shifted warily, her eyes fixed sharply upon their alleged 'host'. But the noise of velvet over skin echoed in the Doctor's ears, sliding up his spine, into his brain, disrupting his concentration even more than Tegan's overt hostility.
There was another sullen click-click of Tegan's impractical shoes on the solid floor, and the Doctor forced himself to turn away from the hypnotic velvet sound and concentrate on Tegan. She looked worn, tired, dark smudges of exhaustion under her eyes, visible even through the artfully applied make-up she wore. He realised that it must have been somewhere in the region of sixteen hours since she slept, and she had certainly experienced more than her fair share of shocks since then.
"Tegan," He said, his voice a low rumble in the quiet of the room, "You should go and rest. There's a room just down the corridor, fourth door on the right." Presumptuous of him to offer out space that was not his own, but their host only smiled thinly and said nothing.
Tegan just stared at him, "You don't seriously expect me to leave you alone here with this weasel, do you?" She asked indignantly, as if she had just been insulted.
"Actually, that's exactly what I expect you to do," the Doctor replied flatly,
"Are you completely-"
"I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself." The Doctor's words ran completely over and through her, halting whatever she had been about to say. There was a hint of steel in the words, and in the flash of his blue eyes, the cut of which killed whatever she had been about to say.
With a final glare at the velvet-clad figure leaning over the console, Tegan stalked out. The Doctor closed his eyes in relief as the click-clack of her shoes receded down the corridor. All that was left was he rustle of velvet, the hum of the TARDIS, and the seductive buzz of the Master's mind, dark and clinging like exotic cologne, almost a physical weight in the enclosed space of the control room.
The Doctor forced his eyes open, and saw the Master smirking at him; "I was wondering when you'd get around to that, Doctor."
The words were as sultry as his mind. And the Doctor wasn't sure he could fight the temptation. Not now.
The Master looked up, eyes glittering darkly in the strangely subdued light of his TARDIS as he regarded the Doctor, all wrapped up in burgundy wool, hidden and defended like an armoured knight from Medieval Earth.
"I must say, Doctor, she hardly seems like your usual type," the Master prodded, deliberately provocative, face twisted into a coldly amused smirk.
"And what exactly is my usual type, hmm? I'm not sure even I know, any more." The Master's eyes looked over the console to pin him with a cold, wintry stare. The Doctor's usually mobile, animated features were shuttered and bleak.
The Master knew, right then, that there was something terribly wrong somewhere. This wasn't just the worry over the imminent destruction of the universe through the implacable forces of entropy. No, he had already taken that into account. It was difficult -- damn near impossible, in fact -- for a Time Lord to deny the deep sense of responsibility to the Universe, that genetically programmed urge to safeguard space-time, but it could be done, and besides, even the Doctor's great big bleeding hearts could not take such a vast, impersonal event quite so... well, personally.
He looked over the Doctor carefully, looking for signs of injury, stress, trauma or any other weakness. He found nothing obvious save from a kind of bone-deep tiredness, a weariness that seemed to emanate off him in waves, and might have even made him stagger had he not had his tightest of mental shields raised...
Wait.
He caught the Doctor's gaze, pitching his body language as if he was going to make a smart comeback, engage in the urbane, witty banter of old when the Doctor had been the one in velvet. He could almost see the cogs turning in the Doctor's sharp, brilliant (beautiful) mind...
Quick as a lightning strike, the Master sent out mental probe, sharp and scalpel-thin, piercing the Doctor's defences with surgical precision.
A gasp, a flinch, the Doctor's hands gripping the edge of the console, sharp edges digging into palms... and the Master found what he'd expected -- the Doctor's shields, worn, frayed, tattered, appearing to be nothing so much as a poorly-defended castle after a long siege.
The Master was about the pull away, when, unexpectedly, the Doctor's eyes sought his, and he felt himself being pulled in. The Doctor was welcoming him? Impossible, surely. But there it was.
A wave of sensation, like freefall, like drowning -- like -- oh. No.
It was cold, cold and bitter like bile. The last of the fires had been banked and the rest was just cooling embers. Everything tasted like ashes.
It was so cold, and so bright -- blindingly bright. And he couldn't seem to stop falling...
He had no memory of crossing the space that divided them. There had been no conscious decision to move, and yet he found himself with his arms around the Doctor, one hand coiled into his brown curls, transfixing his gaze into the Doctor's devastated eyes.
"I saw him," The Doctor said, his voice barely louder than the TARDIS hum, one hand absently stroking The Master's sleeve, "The Watcher."
A legend. Not quite a myth. An omen of death, such as it was among Time Lords. But there was no consensus about whether its appearance was a warning, a prediction or a simple statement.
"Some Time Lords would consider you fortunate," he paused, "I've never seen it."
The Doctor shuddered, and the Master felt a thrill of desire stirring within himself. The taste of mortal fear was... intoxicating. The Doctor's particularly so. The Doctor's fear had always been so complex, labyrinthine, his darkness was hidden by his blinding light; but when it slithered out from the restraints he kept it in, it was darker than the inside of a black hole.
The Master's gloved hand reached out to touch the quick double pulse at the Doctor's throat. It would be so easy to tighten his grip, to squeeze... so easy, so tempting. The Doctor's hot breath sighed past his ear, sending an electric tingle up the Master's spine.
Too easy. There were other ways -- and, oh, the Doctor's hands, long-fingered, touched the planes of the Master's face, conveying need with far more subtlety than any words, the banked fires flaring anew behind the shuttered eyes.
"Better." The Master smiled, and pulled the Doctor down into a hard, bruising kiss.
The Master's hands whispered across velvet, discarding gloves on the polished console room floor, followed by piles of dark wool as the Doctor was slowly stripped of his armour.
The Master's cool hands against equally cool skin -- when exactly had the Doctor forgotten how good that felt?
"Remember this, Theta?" The Master rasped, nipping at the Doctor's throat, pushing him back against the console room wall. Tasting his darkness, his despair, bathing in his light; the only light he would ever have.
"Yes..." The Doctor gasped, head thrown back, hands splayed against the wall, seeking support...but not from the wall, "Koschei..." the Doctor reached out, Give me strength.
The plea echoed from the Doctor's mind into the Master's.
The Doctor had never needed strength to live. That was in the purest nature of what he was - brightly, vibrantly, disgustingly alive. But faced with the bleak, blinding foreknowledge, he allowed himself to give in to the Master, to seek out his touch.
The dark and cold entwined with the bright and warm, each saw through the other's eyes for a single, transcendent instant.
He needed the Master's strength to die.
-----
Smooth, untroubled young features. Soft blond hair like spun silk. Eyes filled with an alluring combination of warm-hearted innocence and world-weariness. Toned, athletic body in the prime of fitness.
The Master switched off the external monitor on his TARDIS and smiled to himself.
It wasn't a particularly pleasant smile; in fact, it was the sort of smile that a snake might present to its victim just before it bites.
Fin.
Other Notes: Dr Who copyright Auntie Beeb, title and lyrical inspiration copyright Yes and Atlantic Records.
Lyrical Inspiration:South Side of the Sky - Yes (Fragile, 1972)
A
river a mountain to be crossed
The sunshine in mountains sometimes
lost
Around the south side so cold that we cried
Were we ever
colder on that day a million miles away
It seemed from all of
eternity
Move
forward was my friends only cry
In deeper to somewhere we could
lie
And rest for the day with cold in the way
Were we ever
colder on that day a million miles away
It seemed from all of
eternity
The
moments seemed lost in all the noise
A snow storm a stimulating
voice
Of warmth of the sky of warmth when you die
Were we ever
warmer on that day a million miles away
We seemed for all of
eternity
The
sunshine in mountains sometimes lost
The river can disregard the
cost
And melt in the sky to warmth when you die
Were we ever
warmer on that day a million miles away
It seemed from all of
eternity