Still feeling slightly underwhelmed by that finale, mainly because I was hoping for more thoschei content (although all the Master's little Academy Era callbacks were excellent *chef's kiss*). It felt like we got a lot of exposition with a side dish of angst, so let's just swap those ratios, shall we? Part 2 of this fic will hopefully come early next week.
(Tw for mentions of suicidal ideation)
He can almost hear her breaking.
Not that there's much else left to make a sound on this broken planet. Funny how just a few regenerations ago, he would have done anything to break the silence, when the never-ending drumbeat always beat the loudest. But now, with nothing more than the faint hum of the paralysis field and the even fainter sound of the Doctor's breathing to keep him company, it's frustrating how desperately he clings to the nigh-inaudible beating of her hearts until they're all he can hear. Anything louder would utterly shatter him.
The Master grips his head in his hands. Even when she's at his mercy, the Doctor always knows how to break him.
For a time, longer than he'd ever care to admit, he's been staring mesmerized at her face. It's a rare opportunity for him to see the Doctor's face at peace, and he finds himself unwittingly tracing soft new lines in her skin, ones to superimpose over countless memories of furrowed brows and clenched teeth.
Of course, he knows that peace is merely an illusion. Inside, her mind is being ravaged by the Matrix; it won't be long until she buckles under the strain. If he leaves her in there, it'll break her. Victory at last. After centuries of her insufferable meddling, some well-earned peace.
"And has it calmed all the rage?"
Well, perhaps peace isn't the right word. Doesn't even remember what true peace feels like, if he's ever felt it at all. But he imagines… he imagines it must feel something like this. Just the two of them together like it used to be. Without her pets, her vain sense of goodness, her contempt for everything he's become.
As if he doesn't hate himself, he thinks, a surge of manic energy pushing him to his feet. The miniaturized Lone Cyberman is a heavy weight in his breast pocket, and even now, so close to victory, the temptation to unleash the Death Particle has wormed into his mind and won't let go. He's suffered enough, he tells himself at times, when his body is weary and his mind is dark. To die here, with her, is far from the worst fate he can imagine.
He starts pacing around the Matrix Chamber, orbiting the Doctor like he's done for so much of his life. He can hear a layer of her subconscious mind crying out for help, and it's such a headrush to know that he is not alone, that they are united in their suffering.
"A little piece of you is in me," he growls inside her mind. "All I am is somehow because of you."
To know that she indirectly gave him life, a life that he hates with every fiber of his being, tears at him from the inside, but not quite as much as the prospect of her, an immortal creature with unlimited regenerations, living far after he is dead and gone. He delighted in taking her on a trip down memory lane as they traversed the bombed-out Citadel, but perhaps there would come a time, a future incarnation of the Doctor many cycles down the line, when she wouldn't remember him at all.
The Master screams to break the silence.
The sound causes the Doctor to stir, craning her neck in a weak struggle against the crackling rings of energy that bind her, and for a moment the Master has the crazed urge to reach through, wrap his hands around her neck, and wring the life from her. To feel the fire of her regeneration energy melt his skin, over and over and over, for as many times as it takes, until the two of them are ash and bone. Mutually assured destruction.
But not yet, he tells himself in a rare moment of restraint. She's getting to the good part; he can tell by the frown that passes like a shadow over her face. She's beautiful, always has been, but fury molds her into something exquisite. Perhaps that's why he can never get enough of hurting her.
But never enough to break her. Not until now.
It hurts, her subconscious cries out in the back of his mind. It hurts, it hurts, make it stop. Please, it hurts so much. Help me, Koschei, please.
His hearts are madly punching at his insides. She's dying, he thinks with every beat. Dying, dying, dying, dying. She's dying, and taking with her the stars from the heavens and the breath from his lungs.
The cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about.
He doesn't know if it's a conscious act or involuntary twitch, but either way, he presses the trigger and watches the paralysis field vanish. The Doctor crumples like a broken doll, and he lunges to catch her before she hits the ground. She is cold and pale but alive, and the Master trembles in relief.
Maybe his life doesn't matter to him, but hers does.
He's just located a mostly in-tact bedroom when she finally stirs in his arms. "What're you doing," she mumbles in a tone the Master assumes is meant to convey annoyance, even as she nestles her head in the crook of his shoulder.
As he carries her inside and lays her down on red silk sheets covered by a layer of orange dust, she looks up at him dazedly, with a childlike trust that breaks his hearts. "Funny way of killing me," she whispers, slurring her words as she fights to keep her eyes open. "Why'd you save me?"
The Master smiles wryly, because he genuinely doesn't know. So instead of giving her an answer, he reaches out and presses two fingers to her temple.
"Sweet dreams, Theta."