I've been meaning to write a Master/Rani fic for a lifetime! Finally I've gotten the muse and time to do so.
This is part one of a two part story made of two semi-separate oneshots. Part two will be up at a later date and contain spoilers for the 50th and Death In Heaven, though part one contains neither.
Enjoy!
The first sound the Master hears upon waking is that of alarmed whispers. He cracks his eyes open to see that they're in the Panopticon, and that it's full to the brim with panicked and worse-for-the-wear Time Lords.
Time War, he recalls, with much less alarm than he knows he should, but he can still feel his life force depleting with every second and therefore can't bring himself to care much.
It is bizarre and comforting to hear everyone around him speaking Gallifreyan, though. It's been so long, since the Doctor keeps insisting to speak in English.
"Rassilon," someone near him says, "He's dead."
That grabs his attention, and the Master sits up from the floor to see the burnt out body of Rassilon right in front of him. They are all still in the same positions they had held in the mansion on Earth, Rassilon in the middle, his protestors on either side, the Master in front and facing them.
The voice who had spoken first continues to speak, saying, "Thank Omega, he's dead!" Around him, similar murmurs emerge from the crowd.
The Master frowns, thinking the Time Lords must have really lost their minds (as the Doctor had said) if they're glad Rassilon is dead. It isn't until he catches the words 'we can remain as we are' from the din that the truth hits him. The Time Lords hadn't gone insane. They hadn't been planning that ridiculous final sanction. It had all been Rassilon. They'd just been brainwashed or too afraid to protest against their founding father and near deity.
"Madame President," a man says from a few metres away, and he drops onto his knees in front of the protesting Time Lady who had been standing behind Rassilon's right shoulder. Her hands slowly lower from her face to reveal weary brown eyes and cropped dark hair on a face that isn't quite young but certainly isn't old.
Romanadvoratrelundar. She stares at her hands, almost curiously, before looking at the man who had heralded her.
"I thought 'we need our founding father'," she says with a perfectly arched eyebrow and an edge in her tone, "That 'Rassilon is our only chance'."
"No," he says with complete repentance, "It was our greatest and gravest error. You are what we need, my Lady."
The Master has to laugh at that, a quiet barking laugh that lacks his usual energy because he's dying but it's one that gains the attention of everyone in the room nonetheless. "Oh good," he says to the man, "Grovel after rejecting her for the resurrected lunatic, it's pathetic."
Romana's face darkens. "Seize him," she orders, and the Master immediately has his arms gripped as he is yanked to his feet. He feels his life force become visible in one of his flashes and the entire crowd of people in the Panopticon gasp (except for Romana, but then nothing tends to surprise her in the Master's limited experience).
"Is this where I get a thank you for killing old Loony Dad?" The Master asks her, while not actually expecting anything of the sort.
"You're still an infamous murderer with dubious sanity," she replies, narrowing her eyes at him. They're the only thing that give away her young age. Even with the tiredness and trauma of the war that he sees in her, her eyes are still bright. Like she still cares, like she's still got that bit of the Doctor in her somewhere.
He can't be sure if it makes her attractive or repulsive.
She gives the order for him to brought where she directs, and the guards marching him forward follow her down to the cells below the city that are a lot more full than he can recall them being in the past at any given time.
"Since when does a prisoner being locked up require the President's escort?" He asks her, sending her a sideways glare that she ignores.
"You're dying," she says instead of answering his question.
"When aren't I?" He retorts, and if he's not wrong the sound she makes in her throat is one of reluctant amusement.
They walk for several more minutes in silence through the minimalist and sterile corridor before coming to a halt. Romana opens it with a very lengthy combination code that she hides from his view and the door slides open to reveal a cell that he believes to be empty when he first looks into it.
He sees a second later he'd made the error because the occupant of the cell is minute and sitting against the wall with her knees under her chin. Her eyes lift and he realises with the strangest glee exactly who he's about to get thrown in a cell with.
"Lady Disdain!" He laughs. "Should have picked you to make it through this pesky war. As if something as infantile as a Dalek fleet could keep you from surviving to cause trouble for the rest of us."
The Rani scowls at him and Romana. "You're not putting him in here," she says flatly to the President, who smiles at her with mock innocence.
"Actually, I am," Romana says casually, "Because he's close to either death or regeneration. I need someone to inform me of the former should it occur, but if the latter does, you're the only one both equipped and deserving of dealing with him."
"You know I'm actually still standing here," the Master tells them, making his annoyance known.
The cells of Gallifrey, in addition to doors, are guarded by force-fields that allow people to enter but not exit. When the Master is unexpectedly shoved through the one in front of him, he feels for a moment like he's just had ice cold goo dumped over his head, but the peculiar sensation disappears immediately once he comes through the other side.
"Try not to kill each other," Romana tells them, almost sounding bored, "Or do, it might save me a lot of trouble." The cell door slides closed, leaving the Master and the Rani alone in the cell.
The Master turns to see the Rani hasn't moved from her spot against the wall, and the sight of her with a heart-shaped face and strawberry blonde curls of hair is enough to tickle him into laughing.
"Did you deliberately make yourself look like a princess from an Earth fairytale?" He asks, and if looks could kill he'd be dead on the floor with thirteen festering holes in his chest. The fairytale look only goes as far as her face because she has the eyes of a territorial snake, but that doesn't mean it isn't one of the most amusing things of all time that the Rani of all people has turned into a long-lashed beauty.
"It was random, I was unconscious and couldn't dictate it," she mutters, looking straight ahead in her attempt to seem uninterested in him, which frankly he doesn't buy.
"It looks good," he says, smirking, "It doesn't suit you, but it looks good."
She just rolls her eyes, and waits several moments before asking, "What are you doing here? In Earth clothing, no less? How did you breach the Time Lock?"
"The council tried to break out of it, and when I nobly stopped them, I got sucked back in here with you lot," the Master replies, not bothering to try and sound less bitter about it than he was, because it is incredibly inconvenient, "I was free! I had an entire planet under my complete control and the Doctor to torment for all of time, and now I'm stuck in a cell with you! I didn't think it was possible for things to get so bad in one day."
"Believe me, I'm no more ecstatic about this arrangement than you," the Rani says scathingly. Her cold grey-blue eyes hold only pure abhorrence for him. For some fucked up reason, it only serves to make the situation seem less dismal to him. After all, there's now the delightful opportunity to annoy her for what could potentially be quite a while. Either that or until he dies.
When he grins at her, he feels his life energy dip. Her entire face drains of colour at the sight of it.
"What the hell did you do to yourself this time?" She demands, scrambling to her feet. He's about to answer when a far more interesting matter presents itself. That she's at least eight inches shorter than him.
"What did you do to yourself?" He has to laugh. "It's like you shrunk in the dryer."
Her scowl and the return of the murderous look she had sent him only a moment earlier tell him that the height is a sore point with her, which of course only serves to make it all the better to make digs at.
"It's a lottery!" She growls. "At least I'm not a glowing blue skeleton!" She puts her hands on her hips and he notes that while her new body might be tiny, it's by no means scrawny and is proportioned very nicely. His eyes unabashedly linger on the curves being outlined by her thin tunic and tight leggings until she clears her throat at him. "Stop looking at me like that."
"Why should I?" He taunts, just to aggravate her.
It's strange, but he's almost missed her. Few people intrigue him, and while the Doctor is usually good for holding his attention, he's so predictable. The Rani, while predictable when it comes to her work perhaps, is always surprising when it comes to her attitude to him. She's as likely to ignore him as she is to kill him or work with him or sleep with him, and just how likely that is, he can never be quite sure.
"Just keep your hands to yourself."
He nods at her like a scolded child and makes sure to look as ingenuine as possible.
"You know, if we're going to be in here for a while together, Rani, you could make a bit more of an effort."
"I'm not holding my breath just yet, I'm still hoping you'll drop dead."
This comes as no surprise. But as he stretches his limbs and does a small self-evaluation, something he had considered might happen seems to be in effect. The Eye of Harmony is healing him. Slowly, and he's going to need to regenerate soon because he's still dying, but he's not dropping like a stone any time soon like he would have on Earth. With that worry out of his head, he can focus on her and the fun he can have before this body has to go.
She must see the smugness in his expression because she sighs. "That's not going to happen, is it?"
"No, shouldn't think so," he says with a grin, "I'm too generous to abandon you like that. You and I have some catching up to do."
Her eyes narrow, but he can see them survey him with a scientist's curiosity. "Are you still chasing after the Doctor?"
"Not this second," he says drily, and drops to the ground to sit cross legged. "And there's no point in us staying standing in here all day or all week when this floor's just as reasonable."
The Rani hesitates but also sits, though some distance from him. Her legs are out in front of her and bent at the knee so that she can rest her stretched arms on top of them.
"Don't think this means we're bonding like old times," she warns. He doesn't really believe it, even if she might. Despite hating him, he's noticed that he's one of the few people in the universe who can make her feel something, and for her that's significant even if she can't admit it to herself.
"You know, it might be the Doctor's attention that I aim for," he tells her, "But you're much more fun."
Her stony expression doesn't falter. "I'm not fun," she says with the tiniest lift of one of her eyebrows and a hint of scorn, like the word is a disease under a microscope that's boring her.
The Master smirks. "You are - to torment. You spend so long being the stoic scientist that even you start to believe it's all there is to you. I happen to know it's not."
She shakes her head at him, her pale eyes only exasperated instead of irritated because of how tired she seems. "You don't know me nearly as well as you think."
He chuckles at that. "No? Then are you telling me that this doesn't make you nervous?" He lifts himself and leans forward until he's in her personal space, his hands planting themselves on the floor between her feet and her body while his face is close enough to hers that she looks at him like she wants to slice his head off.
"No, it reduces your chances of not being strangled to death," she seethed.
He cocks an eyebrow at that. "Really? Asphyxiation is your first choice? I'd have pegged you for internal bleeding or dissection-"
"Either of those can be arranged."
He slides his body in and his legs under it so that he's entirely within the 'V' her outstretched legs make. "But there are much more interesting ways to pass the time."
"I happen to disagree," she mutters, but if he's not wrong, she sounds a bit short of breath.
"My ways can be repeated."
"So can mine, if you're right about not dying and your regeneration ability holds true."
"Only 11 times," he says in a low tone, letting his right hand rise to touch a curl of her strawberry hair, "Mine could be over and over and over in a thousand different ways."
"I'd rather strangle myself 11 times then."
He doesn't believe her. Once or twice, maybe, if she was feeling particularly stubborn, but he's confident in his ability to dissuade her from that. Self-destruction is his style, not hers, and he's not about to let her go changing her thoroughly enjoyable character on his behalf.
His left hand comes to rest ever so lightly on her hip, daring to touch her. Her eyes dart to the site of contact and she glares at him.
"Don't," she has enough time to say, before his right hand twists in her hair and he pulls her to him. His mouth presses against hers with no gentleness or affection. Just simple desire. The kind that has her kissing him back because sometimes this sort of thing doesn't make a lot of sense and they might hate each other but that doesn't mean they aren't the worst and best kind of breathtaking together.
Some might say that there's a fine line between hate and love. The Master prefers to think of it as a fine line between hate and wanting to ravish each other against a wall. With the Rani, the line often becomes non-existent, though she'd of course deny it if anyone were to ask. Time Lord pride is a ridiculous thing, but where would they be without it?
She yanks her mouth from him after about eight seconds, and punches him square in the jaw. While he curses and clutches the site of impact, she gets to her feet, her eyes alight with that special animosity she reserves just for him and his advances.
"Touch me again and you won't have hands," she snarls. Her shallow breathing and slightly dilated pupils give her away. They've played this game a dozen times and he wonders why she still bothers to pretend she isn't attracted to him. Though, if she didn't, that would spoil his fun, he supposes. Breaking through her pride every single time is half the point.
He gets up, and relishes the significant height distance that only makes their little game all the more enjoyable this time around.
"The Rani, so contemptuous, so condescending," he considers, tilting his head slightly at her and watching her chin jerk upward, "So unaffected. What an intergalactic joke. You're too small and pretty to intimidate anyone, least of all me."
Now he's done it. The Rani's face contorts with enmity and her tiny hands ball into fists.
"I don't need to intimidate you to be able to murder you with my bare hands," she spits.
He takes several steps forward until she has no choice but to step backwards to keep away from him, which puts her back against the wall and leaves her nowhere to go. The small hands he can imagine tugging on his hair and digging into his back if she'd just stop being stubborn are flexing and her eyes are watching them like she's actually considering using them to grip his throat.
Well. He can't be having any of that, not unless its a bit of foreplay, which with her he can't assume.
The Master reaches out and grabs her wrists before pinning them to the wall either side of her head. She twists and struggles to free herself but her new body just doesn't have the physical strength to back up her extraordinary willpower and the graphic curses and threats falling from her lips.
When she finally goes still, she tries an approach different than abuse. "Let go of me," she hisses, "Things change with regeneration and whatever you think hasn't changed has. So release me. Now."
He pulls a sympathetic face. "You see, I could. But you kissed me back, Rani. I felt it," he breathes, and he drops his head so that when he listens carefully he can hear that double heartbeat pounding right out of her chest. One two three four, one two three four. "And your angry little hearts are betraying you."
The Rani just stares at him when he lifts his head back up, all those angry and passionate emotions colliding in her eyes in a way he could only call beautiful. Her chest rises and falls in the near silence and for a moment he lets his gaze drop to watch it before the more enthralling sight of her eyes pulls his attention back up.
"I do enjoy our little game, Rani," he tells her, smirking, "But I think it's time we were more honest with each other."
In a move with a bit of risk, he releases her left wrist so that he can cup her face, but kisses her before she can think about overly violent ways to use the freed limb.
Her newest body might look sweet on the outside but it still tastes like tart citrus and old spice on his tongue, and it's that taste which really stokes the fire building under his skin. Her free hand has come up to fist in his hoodie and the victory resonates through him in a laugh against her lips.
"Shut up," she mutters, and he lets go of her other wrist so that he can wind his left hand around her back and yank her against him. Her free right hand goes to his hair just as he had imagined it doing a minute before.
Usually their encounters are rushed and full of force, violent or borderline so. Disregarding what it took them to get to this point, this time is different. She's gasping into his mouth and slowly pushing his hoodie up until he releases her enough to be able to discard it and the undershirt onto the floor. When he takes into account the distance between them, he presses his knee up between her thighs and shuts his eyes to revel in the breathy gasp that comes out of her. He opens them again to see her eyes are darkened and her lips swollen from his kisses. It's a good look on her.
"I hate nothing in the universe as much as I hate you," she says, and his lips twitch.
"I know," the Master says softly, leaning in and running his nose along her jawline, "Isn't that what makes us so extraordinary?"
Her hands slide up his bare chest to cup the back of his head and pull him down into another bruising kiss of nipping teeth and battling tongues. He loves it when she finally gets involved, and will allow her to dictate this for a very small while, but he is the Master and not even she gets to take charge of him.
He drops his hand to the waistband of her leggings and lets it slip underneath and find the spot that makes her entire body suddenly shudder against his in the most delicious way. He doesn't plan on giving her any gratification just yet, though, and breaks their kiss so he can retract his hand to roll the leggings down her hips and legs. He kneels in front of her to remove her boots as well. The urge to use their current position to get her screaming for him in seconds is almost impossible to push down, but he's in a selfish mood and getting the point where he needs something a little more direct out of this too.
He does kiss her thigh and hip in turn as he straightens back up. Her hands immediately go to his jeans and have no trouble unpopping the button and pulling them down while he kicks off his shoes and socks.
The Master grasps the bottom of her tunic and is about to pull it up when a slither of reservation passes through her eyes. He pauses and looks at her curiously. "What?" He demands, and when she doesn't answer and tries to look away, he grabs her by the chin so that she is forced to look him in the eye. "What?"
The Rani curses under her breath and removes the tunic herself, revealing a torso covered in long, thick scars that are raised and an angry red even though they look old. They cover her stomach, breasts, shoulders and arms, though when he forcibly turns her around, not her back.
The sight is so bizarre that all he can do is lift an eyebrow, because he for some reason can't find words to form the obvious question needed.
"A front blast," she says, "Advanced Dalek weaponry designed to make wounds that incapacitate and don't heal. I've heard of a few who regenerated and still had them, but I'll have to wait and see, I suppose."
"Do they hurt?" He asks, his voice so low and quiet it's a miracle she even hears him.
"No, not anymore."
The sight is so entrancing that he has to reach out and touch her, and the strange new texture of her body is idiosyncratic under his hand.
"Am I too ugly for you, now, Mr Perfectionist?" She asks sourly, trying to sound like her usual snarky self. He can detect a tiny seed of uncertainty in it. Perhaps not for what he thinks of her, because he knows she doesn't care, but for something else he can't pinpoint.
"The only thing ugly about you is your personality, Rani," he retorts, making her snort in the closest thing to a laugh or a smile he's seen from her all this time. When he focuses again on the body before his eyes and under his hands, his face twists into an expression of awe. "You're a walking work of art."
She frowns, not understanding.
"I'm the Master of pain and torture and destruction," he murmurs, "How could I find this anything but gorgeous?"
With those words, it becomes apparent to them that they are standing in such close proximity completely naked and barely touching. He hooks her thighs around his hips and presses her back against the wall with a slamming force while her arms lock around his neck and crush his lips to hers.
When their bodies finally come together, it's not like coming home, it's something much more unrivalled. The feel of her nails on his scalp and her hot breath against his lips every time he make her gasp, it's like his own special brand of hell that burns him in the way he can't get enough of. She's so small he could probably break her in a second if he decided to and one day he might, but today it's so much better to feel her tiny body shaking against him.
When her mouth isn't covered with his, she lets murmurings of hatred and insults fall from her lips, but they're not so convincing when they break off into moans half of the time.
His rough movements have them both short of breath and getting closer to release. Her face is flushed and her hair no longer resembles that of a princess and he thinks between the scars and the unravelled princess look this might just be his favourite body of hers yet.
The heat is building in him and he's so close but can see she's not, so his hand slips down between them and has her yelling in seconds. They go over the edge one after another with him taking the lead as always (he never has been and never will be a gentleman) and despite how vocal she's been up to this point in the final moments she's completely silent as she lets the pleasure take her. It's intriguing and in the fading thralls of his own dizzying pleasure he watches her face and kisses her before she even has a chance to take a breath.
They sink to the ground slowly and he expects her to jump from his arms any moment. After all, they are two of the most cold-blooded and infamous Time Lords in the universe. Cuddling isn't exactly in their rapport.
Her head is on his shoulder. She's more or less in his lap on the cell floor with her arms still around his neck. His curiosity about her that he doubts will ever leave him as long as they both live means he doesn't try to disturb their position. He wants to see what she's going to do.
"What do you know?" She finally asks, and lifts her head to see his lack of understanding. Her pale eyes hold his dark ones and she speaks again in a voice he can scarcely believe is hers. It's almost timid and it's scared. "Are we going to die?"
That fact that it's Gallifrey's final day had completely slipped his mind due to his self-absorbed thoughts of his depleting life force (even if now he knows he's healing, because by then the Rani had taken up all of his attention). It comes as a cold shock with a surprising lack of impact, though it does make him wonder if their potential and imminent death is the reason she allowed this to happen.
"I don't know," he murmurs truthfully, brushing her mussed hair back from her face and watching her swallow thickly. He presses his forehead against hers. Usually if he were to try this she'd attempt to give him a grievous injury, so he'd given up on it centuries ago. The fact that she allows it now tells him just how terrified and exhausted she is. Not a full connection of course, barely any Time Lords ever allow that, and neither of them are ones for emotional and mental intimacy. But they just allow themselves to brush each other's mind and to coexist in a strange peace that they've never really had before and likely never will again.
They sit there in each other's arms, naked on the stark floor of the cell with Gallifrey crumbling above them, not as mighty renegades of Gallifrey but as two lost and damaged old friends.
And if they do somehow survive, the Master's not even entirely sure that he'll give her shit for it later.
Feedback and constructive criticism is always appreciated! I've never written Simm!Master before, not really, so this was new territory for me, and I'm always worried about my interpretation of the Rani.
Part two WILL feature Simm!Master regenerating and the Rani getting stuck with the new Master. Keep an eye out! It will be called "Let Me Be That I Am". Both titles are derived from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, the lines, "I love nothing in the world so much as you, is not that strange?" and "let me be that I am and seek not to alter me".
Thanks for reading!
-MayFairy :)