New Fic: New Gallifrey 2/2
Sep. 4th, 2007 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xantheficThe Master undresses and slips, naked, between the cool, black, satin sheets. Outside, he can hear the sound of the sea crashing on the shore and it comforts him because it helps keep the other sound at bay. The drumming in his head is always worse at night, when there are no other sounds to drown it out. There is only one way to ever get any respite from it, and he knows, wearily, that it is a way he’ll take before the night is through.
The Master lies on his back and gazes at the ceiling. When they left the Academy they had been so bright and full of hope, both of them so sure of the brilliant destiny that awaited them. No wonder they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. They had journeyed the universe together at first, exciting each other with each new discovery, and sealing that excitement in bed each night.
The Master wonders what Jack would have said if he’d told him that he had been the Doctor’s first companion, and every one of them since had been a pale imitation of himself, a reminder to the Doctor of what he had lost, and the reason why he could never fully give himself to any of them. It's been flattering, in a way, watching the Doctor try and recreate a little of what they had together with all the people he's taken on his journeys ever since.
The Master gets up, and splashes cold water from the bowl at his bedside over his face. He feels hot, and the drums are gaining momentum inside his mind. He can feel the sweat beading his brow.
It was easy in the beginning. They had been young, and the universe had been theirs for the taking. He remembers long nights spent making love, bodies moving as one, minds merging, coalescing in a bright spangle of exploding stars. They were never able to fight the attraction between them, their lives one long history of attraction and repulsion, over and over again, the lust between them always searing white hot, always needing to be sated, no matter how long they spent apart. They both felt it, whenever they were near each other. The need, the longing, the calling…
The Master pulls on his black silk robe and walks, wearily, towards the door. The robe swings open a little, the cool air caressing his bare chest as he moves, soundlessly, barefoot, through the TARDIS.
The Doctor is still dressed. Dark blue shirt, brown trousers, but at least he's stopped wearing the ridiculous tie these days. He’s sitting at a desk in the massive room that doubles as his study and bedroom, gazing at something quizzically, brown eyes blinking rapidly behind his black, heavy framed glasses. The Master stands in the doorway and just gazes at him for a little while.
"Damn!" The Doctor picks up the device he's working on, shaking his head.
The Master walks silently across the room, and lays a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. The other Time Lord doesn’t move. He isn't startled or surprised by the Master's presence; he just gazes forlornly at the device in front of him.
“Not working,” he says, hefting the object in his hands.
The Master reaches out and touches the cool metal device. He lets his essence sink into it a little, sensing its purpose. It isn’t Gallifreyan in origin. He suspects the Doctor has picked it up on his travels somewhere. Earth probably. The Doctor is obsessed with Earth. The Master lets his mind find the fault, and then probes it with his fingers, deftly finding the problem. The Doctor is good at this kind of stuff, but he is better. The Doctor is a great improviser, endlessly creative, but the Master has a sounder grasp of actual mechanics.
“There.” A light comes on, and the device gives a little hoot, as if excited to be working again.
“Fantastic!” The Doctor gives a smile that lights up his entire face. “Uh, any idea what it is?”
“I believe it’s a device to make tea,” the Master replies. “You get it ready the night before, prime it, leave it by your bed, and in the morning…” He shrugs and makes a little “voila!” gesture with his hands. “A hot cup of tea awaits you. Although personally I think that's what servants are for.”
“Fantastic!” the Doctor says again. “Humans! They think of all the best things.”
He takes the device and places it beside the massive bed that occupies the centre of the room. The Master surveys the room wearily. If he could only move the bed against the wall, shove the desk over there, put the mass of objects, papers, and general detritus on the overflowing shelves in the corner….
“Stop that!” the Doctor says. “You’re tidying things in your mind again. I can tell.”
“It’s a habit,” the Master agrees.
“Can’t sleep again?” The Doctor surveys him sympathetically.
The Master sweeps some dusty journals off the bed, and sits down with a sigh.
“The drumming is always worse at night,” he murmurs. “My apologies.” He hates apologising for his neediness, but he hates the neediness itself more, and feels that it should be apologised for.
“Don’t be an idiot.” The Doctor crosses the room and stands in front of him. He lifts the Master’s chin, and gazes into his eyes. “Come here,” the Doctor murmurs.
He bends down and his lips catch the Master’s. It’s so old, so familiar, no matter what bodies they occupy - it always feels like this. This hunger. This white hot intensity. He knows the Doctor feels it too, no matter how much he plays at being nonchalant. The Master reaches up, hungrily, and his hands come to rest on the Doctor’s bottom. It feels firm and ripe beneath his fingers, and he caresses it greedily.
Once, long ago, they used to do this every night, and during one long, hot Gallifreyan summer many hundreds of years ago, they made a child between them. Time Lord children are woven in their essential spirit form by the continued merging of their parents over several months, each parent taking it in turns to keep the newly forming child within themselves, part of their own glowing inner essence, and yet separate, a new, emerging being, in embryonic stage. When complete, the child separates out from its parents, and its first corporeal body forms around it, encasing the bright inner core. The body is the vessel – the true Time Lord essence is what lies inside, shining and radiant.
Their child, their first and only child, had been as bright and beautiful as only their merged beings could produce. They called her Thalia, and at the beginning she had gone everywhere with them. The Doctor, though, fresh from his success at the Medusa Cascade, wasn’t ready to settle down. That's never changed.
Even now, here on the tranquil sands of New Gallifrey, the Master sometimes wonders who is keeping who prisoner.
The Master surrenders to the Doctor’s warm kisses, giving into them as he always does. He sinks back on the bed, and the Doctor straddles him, looking down on him. The Doctor’s warm inner core washes through him like a gentle breeze, caressing and calming him. Slowly, the sound of the drums begins to fade and the Master starts to relax.
He hates this man, who is now, gently, so gently, running long, loving fingers along his jaw. He hates this man who is moving aside his black silk robe, and lowering his head to take a nipple in his mouth. He hates this man who he is opening his legs for, wanting to feel the warm, hard, pounding heat inside him. He hates this man who is kissing him now, tongues melting and melding as their inner cores begin to touch. The feeling of their merging is as electric as ever; hatred or love, it makes no difference to how good it feels.
He hates this man, who he loves so much.
He’s reaching for the Doctor’s clothes now, tearing them off him, needing to feel skin beneath his fingertips and white light blinding his mind. He pushes the Doctor back onto the bed, and reaches for his cock, loving the feel of it, hard and pulsing in his hand, loving the sound the Doctor makes in the back of his throat as he caresses it smoothly, with practised ease.
They roll over and the Doctor is now on top. It doesn’t matter. Either way will do. The Doctor is slicking something cool between the Master’s buttocks, and then he’s sliding in, up to the hilt. He always likes doing it like this, looking down on the Master, kissing him while they make love, eyes connecting as their essences merge. The Master closes his eyes – there’s no reason why the Doctor should always have it his own way.
“Why won’t you look at me when we make love?” the Doctor reproaches, his fingertips firm but oddly gentle on the Master’s hips.
“Because you have enough of me as it is,” the Master replies, through gritted teeth. Why must the Doctor always have all of him, but never give him everything in return?
The Doctor sighs, and kisses the Master again, softly, kindly, on the lips, and much as he'd love to reject him, the Master can't. He opens his mouth and welcomes the Doctor's tongue, tasting the sweetness.
They begin moving in time; tongues, hands, backs, hips, legs…moving, moving, moving as one, becoming part of each other. It's an age-old dance, and they've danced it many times before – too many to count – but each time it feels the same. It satisfies the Master deep in the very core of his being. He has no need of Gallifrey, new or old - the Doctor always was his home.
A powerful crescendo builds deep inside the Master's body, igniting flesh, blood and soul all at the same time. He wraps his legs even tighter around the Doctor’s body, and screams as he reaches his climax. The Doctor is close too, and seconds later he reaches his own orgasm, with a series of beautiful, shuddering little gasps. After nine hundred odd years, and even despite many different bodies, the Master is intimately familiar with that sound. He wishes he didn't like it so much.
The Doctor collapses on top of him, smiling. He kisses the Master again, soft little kisses that flutter on his face, and then withdraws, and slides down beside him. He reaches out, and wraps his arms around the Master’s body, and the Master is too tired, and too sated, to push him away.
He lies there, dreamily, staring into space. This is the only time he is ever at peace, the drums finally silent – it’s only ever this way after making love with the Doctor. Maybe during lovemaking he steals enough of the Doctor’s essence to make him sane, for just a little while. He doesn’t know. He just knows that it feels good, and he stretches out, humming to himself, the Doctor’s sweaty arm lying across his belly, the Doctor's mouth warm on the back of his neck, more kisses scattering across the top of his spine, his shoulders, and his hair.
When they’re lying here like this, the Master can almost imagine that they are Theta and Koschei again, wrapped up in each other’s arms before it all went wrong; before Theta left Koschei, and moved on.
Their relationship fell apart when Thalia was still young. The Doctor said it was because he didn’t like what the Master had become, but the Master looked into the Doctor’s eyes and saw that he was scared of love, scared of the intensity between them, scared of losing himself in the Master. The Doctor didn’t understand that love was madness, and you had to surrender to it. He was flawed; a coward. Together they could have ruled the universe – apart they were shadows of what they might have been.
And it had hurt. It hurt more than any pain he'd ever felt, hurt more even than his first death and regeneration. And it went on hurting, decade after lonely decade. It still hurt.
Desperate to punish the Doctor, the Master took their daughter and ran. He and Thalia travelled the universe together, and he taught her everything he knew; he taught her disdain for all the endless, wearisome Time Lord codes and laws, taught her about their own superiority over lesser species, and he taught her the most important lesson of all – to hate her other parent, the Doctor, and everything he stood for.
She was dark, complex and twisted, like him, and chaotic, brilliant and sometimes capable of surprisingly noble acts, like her other parent. He gloried in her. She was beautiful, and she was his.
Eventually she grew up and left him, but they remained close. She wanted to rise up in the sky like a star, and be famous across Gallifrey. He had taught her well.
She was reckless, ruthless, and would stop at nothing to get her way. She broke every law the Time Lords had, and they punished her by sending her falling into a dying sun at Regis Prime, using up every single regeneration in that one long plunge to her death. He heard her final cry across the galaxy, but by then it was too late.
The Doctor found him of course, grief stricken and inconsolable, and, when the Master looked into the Doctor's eyes, all he saw was sympathy and forgiveness. It was more than he could bear. His grief turned to darkness and anger, and he became bitter. He turned the Doctor out before he could say the words of forgiveness that the Master didn't want to hear.
Thalia left behind a child, a daughter, young and alone. The Master went to find her, to take her in and mould her to him as he had moulded her mother, only to find that the Doctor had got there first.
“Susan will be coming with me,” he said, tightly, gripping the small girl’s hand and towing her back towards his TARDIS.
He was welcome to her. She was dull, pedestrian, and ordinary - nothing like her mother.
It had made him laugh though, watching the Doctor turn into a crotchety old man as he took their grand-daughter with him on his journeys. The Doctor didn’t like domestic ties – they slowed him down, made him irascible. Besides, the Master knew all too well that the Doctor, the healer of the great rift of the Medusa Cascade, a Time Lord with a heart big enough to love so many unworthy, lesser species, was incapable of loving just one person.
He wonders whether Jamie, or Sarah Jane, or Rose, or Martha, or handsome Captain Jack ever realised that. Poor stupid fools. The Doctor would always run out on them, dump them, just when they started to get close. That’s what he did. That’s what he *was*. The Master might know himself to be dark, murderous, maybe even evil at his core, but at least he knows how to love; totally, unconditionally, with an all-consuming fervour. And he’s only ever loved two people in his life. One of them is dead, and the other doesn’t understand about love at all. Never has. Never will.
The Master wipes his hand across his eyes and is surprised to find that his fingertips come away wet.
He turns over to find the Doctor staring at him with those big brown eyes, full of sympathy. They could make another child. They won’t though. Their species will die out after they’ve lived their final regenerations. They both know that. Better that than risk making another child together.
“I forgive you,” the Doctor says, as he's said so many times before, even though it never makes any difference. His hand slides down the Master’s back and gently comes to rest on his bottom, stroking tenderly. He doesn’t say Thalia’s name but it hangs between them, unspoken, the way it has for hundreds of years.
The Master doesn’t want his forgiveness. He doesn’t give a damn about his forgiveness. He should be *asking* for forgiveness, not doling it out like it’s only his to give.
Somewhere in the distance he can hear the sound of drums, just faintly, starting to play again. His respite from them, which sometimes can last all night after they've made love, has been all too brief on this occasion. The Master wonders what it would be like, right now, to take the Doctor’s neck in his hands, and crush his windpipe beneath his fingers.
The Doctor moves his other hand to gently caress the Master’s face. Little sparks of light shimmer between them in the darkness. The Master shudders.
“Is the drumming back?” the Doctor asks, sympathetically.
“Yes. Louder now than ever,” the Master whispers. The booming in his mind torments him, destroying him from the inside out. The Doctor kisses him softly on the lips and the drumming recedes a little.
“What did you see?” the Master asks, as he has asked a thousand times over the years. “When you were eight years’ old and they made you look into the time vortex – what did you see?”
The Doctor smiles at him, kindly, because he’s answered this question a thousand times as well. “I saw the beginning and end of everything,” he replies. “And everything in between. It was chaos, and it was beautiful.”
“Yes.” The Master nods. He clings to the Doctor’s naked body, his legs wrapped around the Doctor’s thighs. The Doctor wraps his arms more tightly around the Master’s body, warming him, warding off the sound of drums which is growing steadily louder in his mind.
“What about you?” the Doctor asks, as he always asks.
“The same,” the Master lies, as he always lies. “Beginning, end, everything in between. Chaos, beauty. All that stuff.”
The Doctor nods, his brown eyes sad, aware of the lie.
They lie there for a long time, gazing at each other, the Doctor's hand still stroking the Master's naked bottom, languidly, tenderly, lovingly.
After a little while the Doctor’s eyes close, his breathing slows, and he falls asleep.
The Master extricates himself from the other Time Lord’s arms, and gets up. He picks up his abandoned robe, and wraps it around his body, swaying gently to the sound of the drums in his head.
He’s eight years’ old again, staring into the un-tempered schism, looking into the time vortex itself, and there, in the very centre, against a backdrop of time, chaos and madness, is the Doctor, dancing to a tune the Master can’t hear. The Doctor is one with time, and he looks so beautiful there that the Master draws closer, longing to join in that dance, to be with the Doctor. As he gets nearer, he can hear the beat the Doctor is dancing to, just faintly at first, a distant drumbeat, and then it grows louder, and louder, until it bursts into his mind, making it reverberate with sound – a sound that will never completely go away, ever again.
It takes ten Time Lords to pull him back from the very edge of the vortex just as he’s about to throw himself in. And that is how he came to realise, at the age of eight, that at the centre of time, at the very core of his universe, is the Doctor. It’s a destiny he’s alternately embraced and battled ever since.
The Doctor is ephemeral, like time itself. You can love him from afar but he will never love you back. You can never own him, the way you want, or keep him willingly by your side. It would be like pinning down a wave on the sand. The Doctor is elusive, eternally and utterly beyond reach, but always, tantalisingly, just there, that broad grin on his face, that maddening light in his eyes, as teasing and tormenting as the sound of the drums in the Master’s head.
The Master glances back down at the sleeping Time Lord coldly. He could kill him right now. Kill him in his sleep; knock him over the head with that stupid Earth gadget he was so excited about earlier. Or smother him with a pillow. He’d enjoy it. The Doctor would regenerate and forgive him, and then they’d start all over again. It would be so easy.
The Master reaches out one finger, touches it to the side of the Doctor’s sleeping head, and gently strokes. Outside, the moons of New Gallifrey have risen high in the sky, casting their silvery light over the blood red sea.
Maybe tomorrow.
The End
