(no subject)
Title: we're going down in flames
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairings: Ten/Master
Genre: Angst
Word Count: 632
Notes: I haz committed insta-fic, which makes me feel ever so slightly less bad about all those WiPs I'm not working on. The insta bit, anyway. Um. For some reason, Torchwood and Doctor Who have been making me itch to fic. It's nice to have inspiration again. Though I WOULD like those WiPs to be finished at some point. Hm. Anyhow, SPOILERS FOR LAST OF THE TIME LORDS.
Summary: Sometimes, the Doctor dreams of might-have-been.
Sometimes, on the rare occasions that he sleeps, the Doctor dreams. Fragments, mostly; nothing so poetic as beautiful harmony, nothing as coherent as a nightmare, just flashes of memory and the ache of loss when he wakes with damp cheeks and the image of Rose’s smile fading away with conscious thought. Endless what if, what if, jumbled thoughts about getting a mortgage a hundred million miles away or living John Smith’s life to the bittersweet end. Watching Gallifrey burn and imagining its survival, showing Martha the swaying fields of red grass and the breathtaking beauty of the citadel.
Endless moments of broken possibility, of futures that were never really his to choose but still continue to haunt him. Lately, his sleeping consciousness forces him to watch the Master die, again and again, hope turning to ash as the Doctor finds himself, once more, the very last of the Time Lords.
In moments of stark raving sanity, he knows, oh how he knows, that the two of them could have come to no better end. The Doctor has forgiven the Master, again and again and again beyond all bounds of reasonability; the Master brought him down, degraded him, tortured and destroyed everything he held dear and would have finally won but for the grace of Martha Jones, and yet still the Doctor forgives.
And yet still, his forgiveness made no difference.
What it boils down to is need, need for each other that is twisted and deformed by guilt and hatred and too much desperation. They need each other; now more than ever, the last two of their kind, and those are words the Doctor repeated like a prayer, like a mantra, you are not alone, but it’s more than that. It’s Theta needing Koschei; it’s Koschei seeking in the warlike drumming of his insanity to bind Theta close with a million unbreakable bonds, a jealous child that would strike out and destroy everything precious until all the two of them are all that’s left. The Doctor and the Master are locked in an eternal paradox, particles that attract and repel all at once in a super-charged limbo, a rock that hovers on the edge of a black hole without falling in, Ouroboros eating its tail.
What it boils down to is this: this is who the Doctor and the Master are, who they were, who they’ve always been, and they cannot change. The Doctor could have tried to lock the Master up on the TARDIS, finally settled down, tried to finally earn his name as the man who heals, and in the end, it would have done nothing at all. In the end the Master, always brilliant in his cruel, obsessive insanity, would have broken free and the whole universe would have paid once more for their endless game, plot, thwart, forgive, reject. Even if the Doctor had succeeded, it would have broken them both: the Doctor doesn’t do domestic, and the Master will never submit.
In the end, part of the Doctor knows that nothing has changed. The Master has cheated death so many times, beyond even the ability of his fellow Time Lords, and it is inconceivable that he should fail this of all times to have a carefully regimented row of intricate backup plans. Though it is hard to remember through the tearing agony of grief, of once more being alone in his own universe, part of the Doctor knows that this too shall pass and eventually the Master will return, once more to their endless status quo.
But in the end, when he wakes with the tears he spilled as he rocked the Master’s body in his dreams soaking his pillow, the only thing that seems real is the feeling of his last chance burning to the ground.