prompts of christmas past
Before posting my newest invitation to give me prompts, I checked whether there were any old prompts waiting to be written, and unearthed a half-finished draft for a prompt given to me by dragonofmemory
Title: All Been Done Before
Pairing: Eight/Jacobi!Master, Ten/Simm!Master, Eleven/original Master
Length: 3278 words
Rating: I was too lazy to write porn
Spoilers: general Eleven era spoilers
Prompt: D/M and a song by the Barenaked Ladies - this is proper songfic, guys, with lyrics and all
I met you before the fall of Rome
And I begged you to let me take you home
You were wrong, I was right
You said goodbye, I said goodnight
It's all been done
It's all been done
It's all been done before
There’s an eye of the storm calm in the Doctor’s gaze, languid and disastrous - deadly the way natural catastrophes are: without choice or intent. “I saw you die. I’m not sure of much but I’m quite sure of that. You fell into the Eye.”
“I survived.” The Master would say it with more pride if it had been on his own terms, and not as a puppet in this war, but survival is survival. He used the Time Lords as much as they intend to use him. They were his tool, and he won’t be theirs.
“Same as always,” the Doctor comments, still calm and still looking at him as one looks a picture of an old acquaintance, a place long swept away by history, an ante-bellum idyll that never really existed.
They’re in the Doctor’s TARDIS, the vast wardrobe room. The Master snuck in - not to visit the Doctor, which is against his orders to stay incognito, but to borrow some clothes because he’s sick to death of cumbersome robes. That decadent, ostentatious splendor is too last regeneration, not him, not the man he intends to be when he finds just the right suit and tie.
Something sleek but practical, he thinks, subtle, timeless. But for some reason, there’s not much to choose from except flouncy shirts and silky waistcoats, all of them terribly period costume, and they’re more or less what the Doctor used to wear. The sight of him, sitting almost daintily on the edge of a chaise longue in a leather coat - a leather coat! - is extremely irritating. “You changed your clothes,” the Master says. “You never do that.”
The Doctor shrugs. That shrug is old and irritating in a much more familiar way. “Times change,” the Doctor says.
The last time they met, the Master promised himself never to try this again, never to falter at the last step and turn around to look behind him, never again to extend his hand, or grasp the hand held out to him, because they’ve done this dance before, they’ve done it a thousand times and the Doctor never changes, but this time, this time the Master almost believes him.
He crosses the distance, grasps the velvet upholstery of the chaise longue, and leans in close. “Then let us be what changes them, Doctor. The Daleks and Gallifrey will destroy each other and the rest of the cosmos before anyone wins this war, but they’d never see us coming. Together, we could end this, we could rule time and space -”
The Doctor smiles and tucks at the collar of the Master’s new silk shirt. “That answer hasn’t changed.”
*
And if I put my fingers here, and if I say
"I love you, dear"
And if I play the same three chords,
Will you just yawn and say
It's all been done
It's all been done
It's all been done before
The Doctor’s hand held out to him open-palmed like a beggar’s mute plea is skeletal, but when he skims the wrinkled skin with his fingers, the mind he feels is rich and warm and wide open - a feast laid out for him in the desert. “Things have changed,” the Doctor whispers. “It doesn’t have to be that way. Remember how many times you asked me to come with you? Now I’m asking you.” He stops for breath, drawing more strength from some place the Master hasn’t yet managed to tear open and steal from him. The fingers curl against the Master’s own, trying to pull him closer. “I won’t stop asking you.”
Perhaps one of these days, the Master will says yes. He’ll turn the Doctor young again, take him by the hand and run away with him - ten steps and a kiss, and then he’ll turn around and laugh in his face: never, I would never, how could you ever think that I’d forgive you.
He grasps the Doctor’s hand, interlacing their fingers, young and firm against pale and old, dips his mind in the hope welling up against him and feels the cold undercurrent of doubt and calculation, of the Doctor holding back that final revelation of his self, that inner sanctum that no one ever quite reaches, the top of the tower where no one is allowed to go, that place where he hides whatever treason he plots.
“Sorry,” the Master says, and casually turns his grasp into a squeeze until joints pop and ancient bones break like kindling. “Boring. Same old song.” He lifts their hands, to kiss the broken fingers perhaps, but the gesture isn’t obscene enough, not quite as cruel and true as he wants it to be, so he licks instead, licks and sucks in a parody of seduction.
He pats the Doctor’s hollow cheek. “The answer hasn’t changed.”
*
Alone and bored on a thirtieth-century night
Will I see you on The Price Is Right?
Will I cry? Will I smile?
As you run down the aisle?
It's all been done
It's all been done
It's all been done before
The Doctor has actual credentials in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Astronomy and Martial Arts from the finest universities in all of space and time, but when River sees his visitor’s name badge for Luna University, she grins and says, “I like it. What do you teach, Visiting Professor John Smith?” and he answers on a whim, “History.”
“Sexy,” River says, and then remembers something. “You have to meet Professor Shade. Don’t ever tell Candy, but he used to be my favorite when I was a student. Practically begged him to become my thesis supervisor. I would have switched majors to History if he’d said yes. He’s a huge fan.”
“Of your thesis?”
River laughs. “Of you. Same thing though.”
“What?” The Doctor rubs his ear firmly. “Funny, I think I just heard you say that you wrote your thesis about - “
“Top secret,” River teases, and waves her old blue diary at him. “Need to know only.”
Professor Shade evades River’s attempts to introduce them for much of the term, and the Doctor forgets about him whenever she doesn’t speak of him. He’s practicing his skills in that area: each morning at breakfast he forgets that he didn’t sleep like a human, that he doesn’t eat like a human, that the he walked on the moon when it was all white dust, when the ivory tower was still a prison, that he’ll walk there when the marble halls of education have turned into dust again.
“So about your papers,” he tells his students in the final lecture, “just write something fun, and if you can’t, then write in pencil, because that way I can edit it. And that’s what we are, us historians, aren’t we? A bunch of nasty editors.”
A few of them laugh, uncertainly (at least two thirds of them have never heard of pencils), others seem horrified, and the well-dressed gentleman in the last row raises his brows with a look of sardonic amusement. As the students leave he moves against the current until he reaches the lectern.
“Poor fools,” he says without much pity, “was it really necessary to lie to them? They’ll always be the book, and someone else will always be the editor.”
“I’m Cretan,” the Doctor says, putting on his most evasive grin, glib and smooth as a mirror. “Cretan born and raised. Can’t help it.”
“And a connoisseur of paradoxes, no doubt, Professor Smith, John Smith, of Crete.”
“And quite forgetful these days, Professor - “
“Shade,” the man says, and his handshake is solid, and lasts three hearts-beats too long.
“I’ll remember,” the Doctor lies, and Professor Shade doesn’t let go.
“You will,” he promises, “after dinner.”
Dinner is exquisite in an apartment furnished with dark, polished wood and vast bookshelves, and the conversation they have is like a spar with real blades. Shade is brilliant and sharp and achingly familiar, and they forego dessert in favor of a tour of the house.
“Our age is disgustingly fond of the past,” Shade comments as the Doctor strokes the perfect imitation linen bedsheets in the master bedroom, and doesn’t mention the fact that it feels just like real Flemish linen, the way no imitation ever could.
Shade runs a hand down the back of the Doctor’s tweed jacket. “I see you share the same weakness, Doctor Smith.”
“What can I say,” the Doctor shrugs, politely ignoring the fact that Shade just downgraded him to a mere PhD, “we’re historians. The past is cool. Dead things are the new hot stuff.”
“Shut up,” Shade says warmly, and kisses him. The Doctor is used to the way River kisses, sweet sudden ambushes, startling, teasing, guerilla warfare. Shade’s kiss is an occupation, a rule with an iron fist, and only when the Doctor stops pretending to be confused does it devolve into a gentle, friendly beating of a kiss.
The Doctor takes a startled step back, gripped by a sudden fear the like of which he hasn’t felt since he re-wrote the universe from the Big Bang to its Heat Death. It’s a feeling like floating blind and deaf: no limits, no boundaries, no orientation.
In his last life, he realized that he could break the rules of the game, but the truth is, he doesn’t need to break them when he can just as easily rewrite them. There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore, nothing to lose that he can’t replace, no precious moment he can’t repeat, everything’s easy.
And suddenly here’s something else. Shade looks at him calmly, at his fear, and there’s something mocking in his eyes, as if he knows it all too well.
“Too soon, I see,” Shade says. “Run along then. But come to my lecture on Thursday.”
Instead the Doctor leaves. He tries to take River with him, but River tells him to sod off, she’s working, so he goes off on his own. He goes spelunking with Silurians, travels into a black hole and out again, fights some Sontarans, spends a year imprisoned by a mad scientist, travels back in time to take that scientist on an adventure that will keep him sane, terribly sane, for the rest of his life.
But he’s back on the moon on a 51st century Thursday, just in time to watch the students leave Summerfield Lecture Hall with expressions of confusion and distress.
“You’re quick to get to the point,” the Doctor remarks as he comes down the aisle, glancing at the big clock on the wall. “The lecture started five minutes ago.”
“I told them all they need to know,” Shade replies, neatly packing up his things. “History isn’t worth studying, because there’s no such thing as history. I told them to read this, and if they still feel like it afterwards, ask themselves who Big Brother might be.”
He holds up a battered old paperback copy of 1984. “They’ll guess wrong, of course,” Shade says. “If the Prime Mover ever had a name, it’s been erased from the records.”
There’s a hollow second in which the Doctor thinks that Shade must be one of his enemies, one of those faceless fanatics who seem to be so drawn to him lately, another plot of the Silence perhaps - but then he stops and stares and takes in the details: the dapper grey suit, the dark hair, the neatly trimmed beard, the cultured gestures and the deadly energy behind them, the ancient first edition copy of an Earth novel, the knowing, all-too intimate smile.
“But the seeds will fall on fertile ground,” Shade, that living dead man, goes on, “one of them will change her subject from History to Physics, and finally develop a working method of time travel. She’ll go on to found a certain Agency - a well-travelled man like you, dear Professor, has certainly heard of it. That Agency will attempt to map the motions of time, to identify those forces that attempt to change it, and control them.”
“And you?” the Doctor asks. It’s a false hope, or else an echo in time, a paradox, a figment of the Doctor’s imagination. The Doctor is alone, the last of his kind, he accepts that, he has accepted it for a long while now. But it’s hard to deny what he sees when it stands right before him.
Shade chuckles, and turns to leave the lecture hall. “I’ll change my profession. I’m thinking of a career in children’s entertainment.”
The Doctor follows him. “Random,” he says, “I like it.”
Shade cooks, as he did the first time, but neither of them touches the food once it’s done. Instead they feast on anticipation.
“I saw you die,” the Doctor says, crossing his long legs at the ankles. “So unless you’re a literal shade…”
“Much of the universe has forgotten you ever existed,” Shade counters. “You should count yourself lucky you remember me.”
The Doctor smiles, the shy, rare, true smile he has only tried a handful of times in this regeneration. “You’d kill yourself before you’d make me forget.”
Shade cocks his head. “Is that what you were doing? Too afraid to face physical death, so instead you chose to kill your memory? Or were you trying to see how many times you had to kick the universe before it kicked back? Suicide by cosmos - your ego is truly stunning.”
“Suicide?” the Doctor asks, so aghast that he has to repeat himself. “Suicide?! That’s - now that’s completely -”
“Tell me,” Shade says, “when was the last time you felt your existence had meaning? The last time you were truly happy? The last time you weren’t looking for another thrill to keep you moving?”
The Doctor turns away, facing the door that leads to the bedroom. “So,” he says, “those sheets are actual linen, aren’t they?”
For a second, Shade looks exasperated, but he acquiesces. They’ve done this before, but not like this, not for a long time, and for the first time, the Doctor realizes that he hasn’t just pretended to have forgotten much of this dance, he actually has a hard time remembering where to put his hands, his lips, his long, gangly limbs. At one point he giggles helplessly at the way Shade caresses his side, and above him, Shade freezes abruptly.
“Say my name,” he commands.
The Doctor tries, but his tongue is tied. Not too long ago, he broke all of history. And then he did it again. And he rewrote it, remade it, reassembled its shattered little pieces, and he tried his best to forget everything that hurt too much.
He leans forward, rests his forehead against Shade’s. “Say mine,” he says softly.
He joins in, half-way through, in the whispered chorus of their names intertwined, renewing their vows, remembering.
“All those times you refused to rule to cosmos with me,” the Master says later. “You really were right. Look at what a damned mess you made of it.”
“And now you’ll ask again,” the Doctor guesses.
“Naturally,” the Master says with a mad grin. Only when he sobers up again does the Doctor realize he’s joking. “After I saved your life,” the Master says more seriously, “and got rid of those infernal drums, I killed Rassilon, gave myself a new set of regenerations, brought Gallifrey to safety by hiding it away in a place outside time and made myself President for life.”
“You’re on a winning streak. Feels good, doesn’t it? Makes you wonder why you should ever let it stop.” And there’s no reason to stop, not when you’re as powerful as they are. No reason at all.
The Master laughs at him. “If you ever let yourself stop and think for a moment, you’d realize that the only reason you don’t stop is that you’re bored out of your mind. It’s been hardly a decade, and I’ve had my fill of ruling a planet.”
“It’s not just any planet,” the Doctor says, and he means it to be a joke, but he has tears in his eyes. He thought he was done crying over the war, but perhaps he never will be.
“I thought I’d never grow tired of it all,” he whispers. He remembers, now, the last time he felt anything like happiness: with Craig and little Alfie and their home, their little human home on Earth, where he kept thinking about Susan, about the past, about dying soon. “I thought I’d never grow that old.”
“I’ll ask you again,” the Master says, “but something different this time.”
*
Sometimes, when the Doctor goes visiting old friends, he brings their children with him. They have more godmothers and fathers and baby sitters capable of taking care of Time Tots than any child needs, and a few weird uncles and spinster aunts to round out the lot. Only a few people guess who their other parent is - Jo, of course, and Alistair, Nyssa and Tegan and Queen Peri, none of whom are terribly surprised. Neither is Uncle Brax, whose disapproval of the Doctor’s late pursuits is every bit as hypocritical as it always was, and whose irritating presence grounds the Doctor when nothing else can, when he feels too much like a legend, and not like a man: because legends don’t have irritating older brothers.
Sometimes, if his friends have children of their own, like Barbara and Ian, like Rory and Amy and Craig, he brings them gifts: books, animations, games - the finest in entertainment for young minds across time and space.
They publish under aliases, to keep their work from falling into the hands of their own past selves. No one whispers their names in secret prayers or curses. No armies tremble at their mention. No one would ever connect them to the fall of Traken, Logopolis, Skaro. But together, he and the Master have a wealth of tales to tell, many of them cautionary, but even more that are totally wild and irresponsible: tales about monsters and heroes, about secrets and mysteries, science and wonder, about disguises and magic, imaginary friends and noble foes, mischief and responsibility, about righting wrongs and causing trouble and six impossible things before breakfast.
They never call it atonement, this happy task. They don’t do it for redemption. They laugh a lot when they work, more than they argue. Their stories aren’t magic, they don’t save the world and they don’t spread like a gentle disease until their words are imprinted in every mind from the Big Bang to the End of Time.
But one morning over breakfast, as the Master gloats quietly over their sales numbers, the Doctor comes down from his study, yawns, and hands him a draft he just finished.
The Master takes his time reading it, which isn’t easy, given the Doctor’s idiosyncratic mix of Gallifreyan and English, two wholly incompatible languages. Finally the Doctor grows impatient. “Well?” he asks, rocking his chair backwards and forwards.
“I remember this one,” the Master muses.
Sometimes this happens - they’ve always liked their books without ever guessing who wrote them. “Which of you?” the Doctor asks. This one, he thinks, would please the Master’s twelfth, it’s a story about never giving up, about determination and just rewards, about long getting lost and finding surprises.
“This deserves a toast, I think,” the Master says, and gets up to fetch glasses. “Although perhaps you should change the name of the land behind the horizon. In Yana’s edition, it was called Utopia.”
Title: All Been Done Before
Pairing: Eight/Jacobi!Master, Ten/Simm!Master, Eleven/original Master
Length: 3278 words
Rating: I was too lazy to write porn
Spoilers: general Eleven era spoilers
Prompt: D/M and a song by the Barenaked Ladies - this is proper songfic, guys, with lyrics and all
I met you before the fall of Rome
And I begged you to let me take you home
You were wrong, I was right
You said goodbye, I said goodnight
It's all been done
It's all been done
It's all been done before
There’s an eye of the storm calm in the Doctor’s gaze, languid and disastrous - deadly the way natural catastrophes are: without choice or intent. “I saw you die. I’m not sure of much but I’m quite sure of that. You fell into the Eye.”
“I survived.” The Master would say it with more pride if it had been on his own terms, and not as a puppet in this war, but survival is survival. He used the Time Lords as much as they intend to use him. They were his tool, and he won’t be theirs.
“Same as always,” the Doctor comments, still calm and still looking at him as one looks a picture of an old acquaintance, a place long swept away by history, an ante-bellum idyll that never really existed.
They’re in the Doctor’s TARDIS, the vast wardrobe room. The Master snuck in - not to visit the Doctor, which is against his orders to stay incognito, but to borrow some clothes because he’s sick to death of cumbersome robes. That decadent, ostentatious splendor is too last regeneration, not him, not the man he intends to be when he finds just the right suit and tie.
Something sleek but practical, he thinks, subtle, timeless. But for some reason, there’s not much to choose from except flouncy shirts and silky waistcoats, all of them terribly period costume, and they’re more or less what the Doctor used to wear. The sight of him, sitting almost daintily on the edge of a chaise longue in a leather coat - a leather coat! - is extremely irritating. “You changed your clothes,” the Master says. “You never do that.”
The Doctor shrugs. That shrug is old and irritating in a much more familiar way. “Times change,” the Doctor says.
The last time they met, the Master promised himself never to try this again, never to falter at the last step and turn around to look behind him, never again to extend his hand, or grasp the hand held out to him, because they’ve done this dance before, they’ve done it a thousand times and the Doctor never changes, but this time, this time the Master almost believes him.
He crosses the distance, grasps the velvet upholstery of the chaise longue, and leans in close. “Then let us be what changes them, Doctor. The Daleks and Gallifrey will destroy each other and the rest of the cosmos before anyone wins this war, but they’d never see us coming. Together, we could end this, we could rule time and space -”
The Doctor smiles and tucks at the collar of the Master’s new silk shirt. “That answer hasn’t changed.”
*
And if I put my fingers here, and if I say
"I love you, dear"
And if I play the same three chords,
Will you just yawn and say
It's all been done
It's all been done
It's all been done before
The Doctor’s hand held out to him open-palmed like a beggar’s mute plea is skeletal, but when he skims the wrinkled skin with his fingers, the mind he feels is rich and warm and wide open - a feast laid out for him in the desert. “Things have changed,” the Doctor whispers. “It doesn’t have to be that way. Remember how many times you asked me to come with you? Now I’m asking you.” He stops for breath, drawing more strength from some place the Master hasn’t yet managed to tear open and steal from him. The fingers curl against the Master’s own, trying to pull him closer. “I won’t stop asking you.”
Perhaps one of these days, the Master will says yes. He’ll turn the Doctor young again, take him by the hand and run away with him - ten steps and a kiss, and then he’ll turn around and laugh in his face: never, I would never, how could you ever think that I’d forgive you.
He grasps the Doctor’s hand, interlacing their fingers, young and firm against pale and old, dips his mind in the hope welling up against him and feels the cold undercurrent of doubt and calculation, of the Doctor holding back that final revelation of his self, that inner sanctum that no one ever quite reaches, the top of the tower where no one is allowed to go, that place where he hides whatever treason he plots.
“Sorry,” the Master says, and casually turns his grasp into a squeeze until joints pop and ancient bones break like kindling. “Boring. Same old song.” He lifts their hands, to kiss the broken fingers perhaps, but the gesture isn’t obscene enough, not quite as cruel and true as he wants it to be, so he licks instead, licks and sucks in a parody of seduction.
He pats the Doctor’s hollow cheek. “The answer hasn’t changed.”
*
Alone and bored on a thirtieth-century night
Will I see you on The Price Is Right?
Will I cry? Will I smile?
As you run down the aisle?
It's all been done
It's all been done
It's all been done before
The Doctor has actual credentials in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Astronomy and Martial Arts from the finest universities in all of space and time, but when River sees his visitor’s name badge for Luna University, she grins and says, “I like it. What do you teach, Visiting Professor John Smith?” and he answers on a whim, “History.”
“Sexy,” River says, and then remembers something. “You have to meet Professor Shade. Don’t ever tell Candy, but he used to be my favorite when I was a student. Practically begged him to become my thesis supervisor. I would have switched majors to History if he’d said yes. He’s a huge fan.”
“Of your thesis?”
River laughs. “Of you. Same thing though.”
“What?” The Doctor rubs his ear firmly. “Funny, I think I just heard you say that you wrote your thesis about - “
“Top secret,” River teases, and waves her old blue diary at him. “Need to know only.”
Professor Shade evades River’s attempts to introduce them for much of the term, and the Doctor forgets about him whenever she doesn’t speak of him. He’s practicing his skills in that area: each morning at breakfast he forgets that he didn’t sleep like a human, that he doesn’t eat like a human, that the he walked on the moon when it was all white dust, when the ivory tower was still a prison, that he’ll walk there when the marble halls of education have turned into dust again.
“So about your papers,” he tells his students in the final lecture, “just write something fun, and if you can’t, then write in pencil, because that way I can edit it. And that’s what we are, us historians, aren’t we? A bunch of nasty editors.”
A few of them laugh, uncertainly (at least two thirds of them have never heard of pencils), others seem horrified, and the well-dressed gentleman in the last row raises his brows with a look of sardonic amusement. As the students leave he moves against the current until he reaches the lectern.
“Poor fools,” he says without much pity, “was it really necessary to lie to them? They’ll always be the book, and someone else will always be the editor.”
“I’m Cretan,” the Doctor says, putting on his most evasive grin, glib and smooth as a mirror. “Cretan born and raised. Can’t help it.”
“And a connoisseur of paradoxes, no doubt, Professor Smith, John Smith, of Crete.”
“And quite forgetful these days, Professor - “
“Shade,” the man says, and his handshake is solid, and lasts three hearts-beats too long.
“I’ll remember,” the Doctor lies, and Professor Shade doesn’t let go.
“You will,” he promises, “after dinner.”
Dinner is exquisite in an apartment furnished with dark, polished wood and vast bookshelves, and the conversation they have is like a spar with real blades. Shade is brilliant and sharp and achingly familiar, and they forego dessert in favor of a tour of the house.
“Our age is disgustingly fond of the past,” Shade comments as the Doctor strokes the perfect imitation linen bedsheets in the master bedroom, and doesn’t mention the fact that it feels just like real Flemish linen, the way no imitation ever could.
Shade runs a hand down the back of the Doctor’s tweed jacket. “I see you share the same weakness, Doctor Smith.”
“What can I say,” the Doctor shrugs, politely ignoring the fact that Shade just downgraded him to a mere PhD, “we’re historians. The past is cool. Dead things are the new hot stuff.”
“Shut up,” Shade says warmly, and kisses him. The Doctor is used to the way River kisses, sweet sudden ambushes, startling, teasing, guerilla warfare. Shade’s kiss is an occupation, a rule with an iron fist, and only when the Doctor stops pretending to be confused does it devolve into a gentle, friendly beating of a kiss.
The Doctor takes a startled step back, gripped by a sudden fear the like of which he hasn’t felt since he re-wrote the universe from the Big Bang to its Heat Death. It’s a feeling like floating blind and deaf: no limits, no boundaries, no orientation.
In his last life, he realized that he could break the rules of the game, but the truth is, he doesn’t need to break them when he can just as easily rewrite them. There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore, nothing to lose that he can’t replace, no precious moment he can’t repeat, everything’s easy.
And suddenly here’s something else. Shade looks at him calmly, at his fear, and there’s something mocking in his eyes, as if he knows it all too well.
“Too soon, I see,” Shade says. “Run along then. But come to my lecture on Thursday.”
Instead the Doctor leaves. He tries to take River with him, but River tells him to sod off, she’s working, so he goes off on his own. He goes spelunking with Silurians, travels into a black hole and out again, fights some Sontarans, spends a year imprisoned by a mad scientist, travels back in time to take that scientist on an adventure that will keep him sane, terribly sane, for the rest of his life.
But he’s back on the moon on a 51st century Thursday, just in time to watch the students leave Summerfield Lecture Hall with expressions of confusion and distress.
“You’re quick to get to the point,” the Doctor remarks as he comes down the aisle, glancing at the big clock on the wall. “The lecture started five minutes ago.”
“I told them all they need to know,” Shade replies, neatly packing up his things. “History isn’t worth studying, because there’s no such thing as history. I told them to read this, and if they still feel like it afterwards, ask themselves who Big Brother might be.”
He holds up a battered old paperback copy of 1984. “They’ll guess wrong, of course,” Shade says. “If the Prime Mover ever had a name, it’s been erased from the records.”
There’s a hollow second in which the Doctor thinks that Shade must be one of his enemies, one of those faceless fanatics who seem to be so drawn to him lately, another plot of the Silence perhaps - but then he stops and stares and takes in the details: the dapper grey suit, the dark hair, the neatly trimmed beard, the cultured gestures and the deadly energy behind them, the ancient first edition copy of an Earth novel, the knowing, all-too intimate smile.
“But the seeds will fall on fertile ground,” Shade, that living dead man, goes on, “one of them will change her subject from History to Physics, and finally develop a working method of time travel. She’ll go on to found a certain Agency - a well-travelled man like you, dear Professor, has certainly heard of it. That Agency will attempt to map the motions of time, to identify those forces that attempt to change it, and control them.”
“And you?” the Doctor asks. It’s a false hope, or else an echo in time, a paradox, a figment of the Doctor’s imagination. The Doctor is alone, the last of his kind, he accepts that, he has accepted it for a long while now. But it’s hard to deny what he sees when it stands right before him.
Shade chuckles, and turns to leave the lecture hall. “I’ll change my profession. I’m thinking of a career in children’s entertainment.”
The Doctor follows him. “Random,” he says, “I like it.”
Shade cooks, as he did the first time, but neither of them touches the food once it’s done. Instead they feast on anticipation.
“I saw you die,” the Doctor says, crossing his long legs at the ankles. “So unless you’re a literal shade…”
“Much of the universe has forgotten you ever existed,” Shade counters. “You should count yourself lucky you remember me.”
The Doctor smiles, the shy, rare, true smile he has only tried a handful of times in this regeneration. “You’d kill yourself before you’d make me forget.”
Shade cocks his head. “Is that what you were doing? Too afraid to face physical death, so instead you chose to kill your memory? Or were you trying to see how many times you had to kick the universe before it kicked back? Suicide by cosmos - your ego is truly stunning.”
“Suicide?” the Doctor asks, so aghast that he has to repeat himself. “Suicide?! That’s - now that’s completely -”
“Tell me,” Shade says, “when was the last time you felt your existence had meaning? The last time you were truly happy? The last time you weren’t looking for another thrill to keep you moving?”
The Doctor turns away, facing the door that leads to the bedroom. “So,” he says, “those sheets are actual linen, aren’t they?”
For a second, Shade looks exasperated, but he acquiesces. They’ve done this before, but not like this, not for a long time, and for the first time, the Doctor realizes that he hasn’t just pretended to have forgotten much of this dance, he actually has a hard time remembering where to put his hands, his lips, his long, gangly limbs. At one point he giggles helplessly at the way Shade caresses his side, and above him, Shade freezes abruptly.
“Say my name,” he commands.
The Doctor tries, but his tongue is tied. Not too long ago, he broke all of history. And then he did it again. And he rewrote it, remade it, reassembled its shattered little pieces, and he tried his best to forget everything that hurt too much.
He leans forward, rests his forehead against Shade’s. “Say mine,” he says softly.
He joins in, half-way through, in the whispered chorus of their names intertwined, renewing their vows, remembering.
“All those times you refused to rule to cosmos with me,” the Master says later. “You really were right. Look at what a damned mess you made of it.”
“And now you’ll ask again,” the Doctor guesses.
“Naturally,” the Master says with a mad grin. Only when he sobers up again does the Doctor realize he’s joking. “After I saved your life,” the Master says more seriously, “and got rid of those infernal drums, I killed Rassilon, gave myself a new set of regenerations, brought Gallifrey to safety by hiding it away in a place outside time and made myself President for life.”
“You’re on a winning streak. Feels good, doesn’t it? Makes you wonder why you should ever let it stop.” And there’s no reason to stop, not when you’re as powerful as they are. No reason at all.
The Master laughs at him. “If you ever let yourself stop and think for a moment, you’d realize that the only reason you don’t stop is that you’re bored out of your mind. It’s been hardly a decade, and I’ve had my fill of ruling a planet.”
“It’s not just any planet,” the Doctor says, and he means it to be a joke, but he has tears in his eyes. He thought he was done crying over the war, but perhaps he never will be.
“I thought I’d never grow tired of it all,” he whispers. He remembers, now, the last time he felt anything like happiness: with Craig and little Alfie and their home, their little human home on Earth, where he kept thinking about Susan, about the past, about dying soon. “I thought I’d never grow that old.”
“I’ll ask you again,” the Master says, “but something different this time.”
*
Sometimes, when the Doctor goes visiting old friends, he brings their children with him. They have more godmothers and fathers and baby sitters capable of taking care of Time Tots than any child needs, and a few weird uncles and spinster aunts to round out the lot. Only a few people guess who their other parent is - Jo, of course, and Alistair, Nyssa and Tegan and Queen Peri, none of whom are terribly surprised. Neither is Uncle Brax, whose disapproval of the Doctor’s late pursuits is every bit as hypocritical as it always was, and whose irritating presence grounds the Doctor when nothing else can, when he feels too much like a legend, and not like a man: because legends don’t have irritating older brothers.
Sometimes, if his friends have children of their own, like Barbara and Ian, like Rory and Amy and Craig, he brings them gifts: books, animations, games - the finest in entertainment for young minds across time and space.
They publish under aliases, to keep their work from falling into the hands of their own past selves. No one whispers their names in secret prayers or curses. No armies tremble at their mention. No one would ever connect them to the fall of Traken, Logopolis, Skaro. But together, he and the Master have a wealth of tales to tell, many of them cautionary, but even more that are totally wild and irresponsible: tales about monsters and heroes, about secrets and mysteries, science and wonder, about disguises and magic, imaginary friends and noble foes, mischief and responsibility, about righting wrongs and causing trouble and six impossible things before breakfast.
They never call it atonement, this happy task. They don’t do it for redemption. They laugh a lot when they work, more than they argue. Their stories aren’t magic, they don’t save the world and they don’t spread like a gentle disease until their words are imprinted in every mind from the Big Bang to the End of Time.
But one morning over breakfast, as the Master gloats quietly over their sales numbers, the Doctor comes down from his study, yawns, and hands him a draft he just finished.
The Master takes his time reading it, which isn’t easy, given the Doctor’s idiosyncratic mix of Gallifreyan and English, two wholly incompatible languages. Finally the Doctor grows impatient. “Well?” he asks, rocking his chair backwards and forwards.
“I remember this one,” the Master muses.
Sometimes this happens - they’ve always liked their books without ever guessing who wrote them. “Which of you?” the Doctor asks. This one, he thinks, would please the Master’s twelfth, it’s a story about never giving up, about determination and just rewards, about long getting lost and finding surprises.
“This deserves a toast, I think,” the Master says, and gets up to fetch glasses. “Although perhaps you should change the name of the land behind the horizon. In Yana’s edition, it was called Utopia.”