The Doctor gaped at the Master, mouth hanging slightly open. He didn't say a word for a long while, he even forgot to pour himself a cup of tea, the kettle still in his hand.

So, Donna took the opportunity instead. "The way you're sayin' it sounds like a scandal. Can't be that bad to have non artificial kids, right? Isn't it better?"

"Not on Gallifrey," mumbled the Master. "They are very specific about the gene pool and which traits are allowed to be inherited and whatnot."

"Sounds horrible, if you ask me."

"And gene engineering doesn't prevent half of what they hoped it would." He grinned, wickedly. "Look at me."

I snorted into my tea and earned a wink.

Finally, the Doctor broke out of his stupor, shaking his head lightly, setting the kettle down, discarded, forgotten. A small stream of vapour emerged from the opening. "But… How?"

Donna gave him a mocking smirk. "Do we need to explain it in simple terms? Bees and flowers?"

"I know how!" groaned the Doctor and slumped down in another chair, deflated. "Master, have you any idea how unlikely this is?"

The other Time Lord smiled, but it wasn't a pleasant expression. "Believe me, I do."

"Then…"

"Care to explain?" asked Donna. Her eyes practically glowed with curiosity. "An' don't tell me I'm too stupid or an ape or whatever, space boy! I do understand things!"

The Doctor winced at that, but the Master didn't budge. He took a good minute just staring into the air, taking a sip of his tea from time to time.

"Time Lords aren't fertile," I mumbled after a while and after it seemed clear that the Time Lord would not give an answer, willingly. "It's a rumor, but they say that when the ability to regenerate was spread, it also destroyed their ability to reproduce naturally. Blessing and curse at once."

What a fate. To be able to escape death, but to be unable to give new life either.

Somewhere outside an order got shouted. Rain poured down the windows.

"You really did your reading." The Master chuckled.

"On top of that," the Doctor added, "we can literally decide to… well, you know… uh…"

He fell silent, his face flushing to a darker shade of red.

"Oh, please, Doctor." The Master groaned. "Don't start spewing around stuff to boast and then get too embarrassed halfway through. How useless."

"Yeah, I didn't think this through."

"Well, then tell the class." The Master regarded him with a nasty grin that only grew the more the other one squirmed.

"C… can't you?"

"Nope!"

Donna sighed and shared a look with me, but I also had no clue. Well, maybe a suspicion. "They teach you to control your body functions from a young age on," I mused. "Including even stuff like hormone production, so… I guess this also includes sperm?"

The Doctor's face took on an even darker red shade and he visibly sunk together on the chair. Donna watched him, chuckling. The Master only rolled his eyes.

"Seriously, how can you still be so prude?" he teased. We're not a hundred and fifty anymore."

"Tha… that's not… 'm not… not prude," stuttered the Doctor, proving the perfect opposite. He sat up straight again, avoiding eye contact with everyone. "And you didn't explain. You always said you don't feel anything for Lellenama. It was political, was it not? Your father chose her for status. Or did you lie about that too?"

"Marriage for status?" Donna shook her head. "Your planet sounds less and less appealing, y'know that?" She waved her hands about. "All about status and genetics and that stuff! 'S horrible. That's what it is!"

"That's not even the worst part," said the Master. He looked out of the rain streaked window. "Which is reason enough not to recall any of it."

"But… how?" repeated the Doctor, ignoring the plea to be left alone.

"Just leave him be," I grumbled. "Doesn't do any good if you force him to remember painful stuff. And you never tell anything at all, either."

"Mhm, that's a bit of a double standard, isn't it?" said Donna. "But I'm flippin' curious, can't deny it."

The Master got up and glared at us all with a mixture of anger, hatred and defiance. "I just wanted tea, for fuck's sake. Not spill my entire past to you." But then his shoulders slumped and he ran a hand over his face. "Ah, crap. Whatever. But let's go somewhere else at least. This kitchen sucks."

"The library has a nice fireplace," I offered. "Y'all can go there."

His eyes snapped towards me, trying to drill right into the depths of my soul. "You are coming along. I'm not going to endure him alone." He poked a finger in the Doctor's direction, then moved it further. Donna winced subtly when his look hit her. "Fuck it, you too. You're annoyingly helpful sometimes."

"Why, of course I am. Donna to the rescue!"

"Don't…" The Master pinched the bridge of his nose. "Just don't. Or I will severely regret this."

.

So, here they were, sitting in the silence of what would be their home from now on. The Master glared at the woman in front of him, not with anger or hate, just in contemplation.

Lellenama had been chosen for him only after her first regeneration, despite being a perfect match for the family line. There was only one reason they hadn't chosen her sooner. Before, she had been a man.

The Master didn't understand. He really didn't. Their society had abandoned those old structures millennia ago and marriages were of purely functional nature. They were not supposed to love each other, nor to reproduce. They couldn't even. So why did they stick to that 'one male one female' nonsense? It stopped nattering anyway as soon as the marriage was done. If any of them regenerated into another gender now, no one would bat an eye.

The first years passed without notice. They did what they always did, had their jobs, their interests, their friends from before. They lived in the same estate and yet not together. No one had ever demanded of spouses to be close. So they weren't.

Not really.

Some evenings they sat together by the fireplace, reading or watching the red grass outside. Lela had proven to be quite the well versed conversationalist, after she had used her years at the academy to study mostly the philosophy of their people and that of other races as well. The Master had to admit that he enjoyed those evenings quite a lot, some days even looking forward to them. And after yet another few years, he couldn't imagine a life without those anymore.

Something he later regretted never telling her.

There was one evening in particular where they discussed the reproduction customs of ghelchas and gzantits, the life cycles and life spans of helinders and cabrastas and how they affected their architecture, when Lela suddenly fell quiet.

"What's on your mind?" the Master inquired. It didn't happen often that she hesitated to voice anything. A trait he secretly admired about her. It made discussions all the more exciting. In her he not only had a partner, but often also a rival in opinion and thought. Something the Master found rather enticing.

"I… just had a thought. A realization, actually. It's nothing important."

"It must be, if you squirm that much." He chuckled and wondered where that faint blush on her cheeks came from. Had she ever worn one like that? It suited the dark caramel tone of her skin, vanishing under the strands of red hair that grew down to her ears like a perfect frame of sunset.

"Since I regenerated… Well… I never quite… indulged in the possibilities of this body." And when the Master only raised a questioning brow, she coughed, looking away with a sly smile. "I never had sex as a woman."

"Oh."

He didn't know what else to say. This really wasn't a topic Time Lords were supposed to even think about. And his own experiences… well, they were limited to those days, long ago, in the fields of red grass and in the dorm, fooling around with the Doctor where no one would find and reprimand them.

"Did you ever…?" Lela asked carefully. She knew too well how much of a taboo this was. Their walls protected them from prying ears and with every other topic she delved deep into territory that the council might punish them for. But not now.

Now it was personal.

The Master nodded, but didn't say anything, didn't explain, didn't tell. And then it dawned on him why she would so much as mention the topic. Sure, they were married, but this wasn't part of it. It also wasn't overtly forbidden. It was just that no one actually did it, right?

Maybe it was his own curiosity, maybe it was the streak of rebelliousness that led him to the decision, but he ended up agreeing and not regretting it at all. Aside from the physical, he also got to know a more playful side of the woman that lived with him. She could be funny and a little childish. She loved to be a tease and try out things she only knew from books.

So they explored. And the exploration crept over to many other parts of their life. On free days they started to cook recipes from all around the galaxy, sometimes enjoying them, sometimes having a hard time keeping a single bite in. They planted a wellyng tree in their garden, knowing that no one had ever managed to have one thrive on their planet. She even helped the Master to play the odd prank on the Doctor.

"Aaaaw," made Donna, interrupting. "It actually sounds as if you were happy. Hard to believe, though. I bet you're telling only half of it."

"Shut up, matchstick. Of course it wasn't all flowers and sunshine."

Sometimes they fought, sometimes they avoided each other, once they didn't speak for an entire year. But in the end it somehow… worked.

Until one day Lela called him to come home early from a trip. She refused to elaborate and immediately, the Master was alarmed, because she never did that. Despite everything, they still mostly lived their own lives and neither of them would have called their relationship close.

Whatever the Master had anticipated, whatever horrible scenario his head might have painted on the way home, nothing in the universe could have prepared him for what he would hear her say in a voice so low and shy that the words barely reached his ears.

"I'm pregnant."

The words should make sense. They formed a coherent sentence. But to the Master they sounded like gibberish, a combination of letters that were never meant to be spoken in the same breath.

"That's impossible," he therefore just said.

"Just extraordinarily unlikely." Lela smiled. A shy expression, almost fearful, but not quite.

She led him to the study to show him different scans of her body, hormone levels and… a picture. A small black and white picture of a tiny bean inside a black space.

The Master stood there, frozen. For how long he didn't know. For once in his life the sense of time slipped from him so completely that he felt sick. He knew what they had to do, but speaking the words felt as if he had to tear them out of his throat, choking on his own breath.

"We need to get rid of it."

Lela nodded, one hand above the place where her womb lay. Their eyes met and hers were as uncertain as his. They knew the rules, they knew…

"Can… can we think this through?" she murmured.

"The council would never allow it."

But Lela smiled. "I'm not sure they would dare to deny a request to an Oakdown."

They most certainly would. The Master had more insight into their doings as she had. He knew how obsessed they were with purity and all that nonsense. The rules, the traditions. The things they said should and shouldn't be.

"Oakdown?" Donna's voice disrupted the Master again. "Is that your name?"

He sighed, leaning back in the arm chair. "The name of my house, yes. A family name, if you want."

"D'you have one too?" She looked at the Doctor.

"Of course I do! But it's not important anymore. The houses are all gone."

"What's your house name, then?" she pushed.

"I said it's no-"

"Lungbarrow." The Master gave him an evil grin. "Don't mope, Doctor. If my secrets get spilled here, a few of yours won't hurt."

The other man clearly saw it differently, sulking with folded arms in his chair.

They waited with their decision. A day passed, then another, then a week. Both of them couldn't name what made them stall.

The Master had never lost a single thought on children. Sure, since his father had been declared dead and had been uploaded to the matrix, it was clear they were expected to get themselves a loom at some point. But this… this was different. And most importantly, it was too much a risk. For both of them. For the entire house.

There was no way he would allow this child to be born.