(no subject)

[outflewtheweb]

Title: Like Fire Needs Air
Word Count: 1630Rating: PG
Pairing: Doctor/Master (my OTP for DW)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Author's Notes: Present tense, semi-character sketch.
Summary: They were alive, for those few moments, they were alive and the Doctor took that from him.
Beta: masterofmidgets  - thank you very much, as always.

            The Master will never forgive him, not in this life or any other.

            “You took it from me! Don’t you understand? Until you told me, they were all there. Every Time Lord I had never seen die, never heard died, they were still in my mind and they were alive. I could have gone and seen them, I could’ve watched them pass in a crowd, seen them on a thousand different planets in a thousand different times. They were there, and then you told me they were dead and it was silent,” The Master paces in front of him, shouts, gestures, his eyes wide and afraid and so desolate, and the Doctor for the moment wishes that there were nothing to bar him reaching out to comfort his Master, not this cage, not the Master’s endless anger.

            So he meets the Master’s eyes squarely.

            “I know.” And he falls silent, because there is more to be said and it will be said, but the Master is boiling with his anger and his hurt, and cannot stop questioning just now, looking for anything more satisfactory than the truth.

            “You took our suns from me and our moons from me, you stole our skies and our people. My life. You made them go away forever, so that when they and I pass on a street, they cannot see me and I cannot see them because now they are dead and I know it. I went to a place in time that I knew a Time Lord, an acquaintance, had been in, and he was not there. The perfect paradox, isn’t it? For those who travel through time. It’s only true if you hear of it.”

            The Doctor thinks back to the Master, first regenerated, talking so fast and so hard, blotting out the Doctor’s words, and of himself shouting them quickly and loudly, irretrievable, destructive. Neither one of them is really paying any attention to the other, both trying to drown each other out like they’re little kids competing for an adult’s attention, to get their side of the story out first. Every time he remembers that, he has a hard time keeping back his laughter. The Master doesn’t like it when he laughs, which in itself is rather funny.

            “It’s why we never mentioned death, remember? Because then someone could see that other person on their travels and bring back the news. They were never dead, so long as we never found out they had died. Immortality, and always, always the chance of seeing someone lost long ago on a little planet in the middle of nowhere.” The Master, who had in fact thrown himself to the ends of the universe to escape his own people and their wars and their rules – he could’ve returned.

            It’s hard, hearing it, and he cannot feel guilty, which makes him feel guilty, but not for that. Never for that. That’s why the Master cannot forgive him, and, ironically, why he cannot forgive the Master.

            “Yes. I knew. I knew and I told you anyway,” the Doctor replied calmly, then hissed “and I’m not sorry. I’ll never be sorry. It was wrong, and I know it was wrong, but I am not alone anymore and because somewhere in the universe you will exist, knowing what I know, I’ll never want to have done anything other than what I did.” He is not made of ice, or fire, or anything so impersonal. He is not a lonely angel – angels have no feelings, and a lonely one is simply alone. He is the last of his kind, bar this one mad remnant, and he is unable to regret this one selfish act. This one, unforgivable, infinitely selfish act.

            He regrets that the Master will never forgive him – and he regrets knowing that the Master has already, in some ways, forgiven him, because this is a sign that the Doctor too is a little dark and a little mad, a little closer to the maelstrom. It breaks his perfection, this perfection the Master has always seen and the Doctor has always tried so hard to be for him. The Master needs someone to be perfect, as he himself is in his own way perfect, needs that backwards image of himself, and yet still desperately wants the Doctor to be imperfect, closer, not so far away. He regrets that he cannot really be that perfection, anymore than the Master can really be that darkness he himself needs to see, because if the darkness isn’t somewhere else, the it’s in him.

            That’s one thing he’s learned, in this long year. The darkness is in him. He had always managed to convince himself, before, that it was outside, circumstance, not him please not him. But it always has been, and he has accepted it.

            The Master has not accepted his seed of light, the inverse of the Doctor’s seed of darkness. He probably hasn’t had time, the Doctor thinks charitably, what with the whole conquering the world business, and stifles a laugh. But he will. Someday, he’ll be in a place where there’s nothing to do but think and no one to talk to but himself and he’ll come to terms with it.

            Of course, there’s always the drums. It’s quite possible the Master never will have that endless pressing silence, because he always has the drums. Now the Doctor is a little envious – that silence was so very hard to bear. His heart aches, because the Master will never hear that silence. He wishes he could hold back the drumming, or take it for a little while, so that the Master can have some quiet. He doesn’t need the sound, not anymore, because he knows the silence now and it doesn’t lie in wait for him with memories of his past, his Companions so beautiful and transient, his Master who stands pleading before him.

            “Why? Why did you?” The Master asks again, like the answer will change.

            The Doctor never once lets his eyes leave the Master’s face. He has never lied to the Master; this is, perhaps, the root of the problem. The Master knows how to deal with lies, with liars, with dishonesty in general. He seems to have become rather fond of it. The Doctor never gives him safety or illusions, just the truth, which the Master seems to regard as a sort of unappealingly utilitarian item, never beautiful, and never precisely what you need.

            “I told you - because I was lonely! Because I was afraid…. because I needed someone in the universe who understood, and there was no one there. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry that I’ve made you hurt so badly. I am not sorry that I did that to you because I need you. I need you, in the same pain as I am in. I’ll always need you and I’ll never be sorry for what I have done. I’m not an angel, and you won’t forgive me because you’re certainly no saint.” This is true, too, although perhaps his misery and remorse at seeing the Master’s desolation borders on remorse for his action, and he knows that the Master has forgiven him a little because with this action, he truly did bridge the gap between them.

            The Master, who understands selfishness and would probably have never told the Doctor of Gallifrey’s burning (well, if he’d thought of it, he might’ve, but that small and desperate cruelty would never have occurred to him), sneers and walks off, shouting for whiskey, anything.

            Some time later, perhaps an hour, perhaps days – the Doctor, who, even in his older and crankier forms had never been one for sitting still, has become very good at it; he’ll check how long it’s been later, but right now it just doesn’t seem very important – the Master careens into the room and stops, more or less, in front of the cage.

            “Someone, eh?” the Master sneers, and the Doctor is surprised to see a slight vulnerability in his stance, “Any old Time Lord, first one you ran across, your partner in misery, someone for you to need. Lucky me.”

            “No.” The Doctor says, considering. He’s a little surprised himself. “If it were any other Time Lord, I don’t think I’d have told them.” This is a new phase in the conversation, and he’s curious to see where it would go.

            “Ah. You hate me that much.” The Master says, and the Doctor catches the beginnings of a flinch, quickly stifled and stuffed away into the endless, restless movements of the Master’s hands.

            “No.” And he leaves it at that. The Master scoffs, whirls away in a small tornado of broken objects and trash and chaos.

            He’s never hated the Master – never hated anyone, really, because they are who they are. He’s hated their deeds, certainly, but never them. And most especially not the Master, who looks at him with eyes so precisely opposite his own that they might as well be the same.

            It is perhaps no surprise when the Master refuses to regenerate, given this endless conversation. It is also no surprise when he turns up, same as always (well, with a different face, but Time Lords change those like socks), because for all that the Master brings death, he is full of life, bursting with it, and the idea of him leaving it in any permanent way is just laughable. And the Master needs him, now, for the same reason he needed the Master, and so they circle each other, the Master hating him, him hating what the Master does (but never the Master – he is who he is, and the Doctor has always admired his unequivocal sense of self), and needing each other like fire needs air.