"Within Reach" -- Doctor/Master
Title: Within Reach
Pairing: Doctor/Master
Rating: NC-17
Notes: I wrote this to make myself feel better. ;_;
*
It was an unremarkable day, the day Lucy found him and gave him the ring. She'd cut her hair and dyed it brown and he almost passed her in the crowd, completely unnoticed.
She cornered him in a shop.
"Hello again!" he chirped cheerfully, rounding a stack of clothes and coming right against her side. "What an entirely random meeting."
"There's no need mock me," she said, tiny white hands tightening on her purse.
He softened. "I suppose not. Won you over in the end, didn't I?" His eyes sparkled. He hoped against hope she hadn't found him because she wanted to travel with him. Or kill him. Equally inconvenient when not desired, he found.
Without preamble she produced the ring and held it toward him.
He watched her. "Oh, you're clever. No, no, wait. Don't tell me. He's taught you how to rig it so that when I touch it I burst into flames. Or turn into a frog. Rather nasty, that last one, truly would not want to do it again; I can't tell you how long it took to get the taste of flies out my mouth."
She shook her head. "It's not mine to have. I can't get it out of my head, can't stop the noise, II simply can't. You must take it. You're the only one who could take it far enough so that I might escape it."
"What does it do?" he asked, eyeing it warily. He'd had a year to observe the Master, to memorize every detail of his body and voice and presence, but he had never once observed that this accessory had any purpose.
She smiled darkly. "Nothing overt. But it will not let me forget. Doctor, all I want is to forget. Take it a million years into the future and bury it on some deserted planet, I don't care. Just take it."
So he did, feeling like a widow receiving her late husband's effects.
*
The Doctor quite literally forgot about the ring not long after. He had to forget about the ring in the same way he had to "forget" about Rose, the Master, and his past, which is to say he buttoned it up deep down, flipped some levers on the TARDIS console, and pushed onto the next adventure.
Stopping and thinking were not often on the Doctor's to do list.
Stuck on the moon of some forsaken planet populated by tiny hairy creatures that did not appreciate being called space monkeys, thank you very much, the Doctor was forced to make some hasty repairs in order to escape. The not at all space monkey creatures had frighteningly developed sonic technology and he had no intention of sticking around to experience it firsthand.
He had a torch out and was about to melt the ring down for a bit of metal to mash two panels together when he remembered what it was. Feeling a pang of emotion, he slid it into his pocket and went on madly about the control room until all was ready to go.
Three time jumps later he changed jackets and the ring was forgotten again. It appeared in the next piece of clothing he grabbed for despite the fact that he was positive he had not put it there. Intrigued, he found himself transferring the ring to each outfit he put on, simply because the alternativeaccepting that it was bloody following him on its ownwas too bizarre and problematic to cope with.
*
The Doctor rarely forgot anniversaries no matter where or when he was. He carried out rituals related to them, visiting associated places and people like clockwork.
One year to the day that he lit the Master's funeral pyre, he visited that spot and sat calmly there for an entire evening.
He retired to the TARDIS only when there was nothing left to ponder, no guilt left to dole out, feeling sore and tangled inside, and let his eyes map the interior of his ship, recalling the blood red mess the Master had made of it.
He allowed himself to recall the moment when the sky had opened and rained death, beginning a year of Earth history that would later be forgotten by all but a select few. And yet at the end of it all, he had forgiven the Master. He had clung to him and shamelessly begged him to stay.
True, the Master would have been a prisoner, would have lost, if he had chosen to regenerate, but the Doctor had not cared about the arrangement so much as the end result. He had wanted more than anything for the Master to stay with him. Knowing what the vortex could do to a child, how could he not forgive? When there are only two of one species left in the entire universe, how could one not want to love the other, no matter what the cost? No matter what the sacrifice?
The Doctor wiped his face dry and sat at the TARDIS console, fingering the ring in his pocket. He had never felt a thing from the object itself. Nothing the Master did or produced was ever useless, but the Doctor could find no meaning in the symbols and no sense of life or technology about the metal itself. Perhaps it was the one sentimental piece of some past experience that the Master had allowed himself.
And then the Doctor did a simple thing, the very thing that any average person might think to do upon being given a ring and the very last thing that came to his mind. He slipped it onto the fourth finger of his right hand.
The TARDIS went dark.
*
When he managed to get the power up again, he was not surprised to find the Master, naked and unconscious, in the TARDIS.
It was so frighteningly simple, this: the Master had had endless amounts of time and just the right technology and knowledge to bind himself to objects so that he might be brought back without wasting a regeneration.
Instead of just putting his essence into a fob watch, he'd put his secondary Time Lord genetic code in, the whole damned thing, so that all he'd needed was a bit of fellow Time Lord and a dash of TARDIS power to reform.
He had the same face, the same body.
The Doctor shuddered, bound him, and locked him in a guest bedroom that had suddenly sprung up where there had been a storage closet just days before.
This was planned, of course, but something wasn't right.
What good would it do the Master if he were to reform exactly where the Doctor had intended to imprison him, anyway? What sort of evil plot was this? Not a very good one. He felt oddly disappointed.
All the other things he felt, he kept hidden away.
*
He brought food and water and sat at the foot of the bed. The Master was reclined like a prince, blankets casually tucked up around his hips. He seemed relaxed, if a bit tired.
"She gave it to you, then?" he asked, ignoring the tray.
The Doctor's throat worked thickly. "Yes."
"I'm going to kill her," the Master said, softly.
"No, you're not." The Doctor paused. "How do you feel?"
"Tired," the Master admitted. He closed his eyes and then opened them, staring at the Doctor. "She was supposed to slip it on you aboard the ship. Then help me steal the ship again. That was always the contingency plan. Though I suppose that went out the window when she shot me. Ah well. I was so looking forward to seeing you in a cage again, Doctor."
"Well. You could still steal it, I suppose. And lock me up, wouldn't be too difficult."
"It's only a matter of time until I am presented with some opportunity. Will you give up all your heroic adventures just to watch me day in and day out?"
"Yes," the Doctor said hoarsely. The Master stared at him, lips twitching. "But, you know, I don't think that will be necessary. For a variety of reasons. Shall I list them?"
"Do go on."
"One, I've made some additions to the TARDIS. She won't fly for you, no matter how you try to make her. Two, I make a fabulous toasted cheese sandwich. Three. Hm. Well, three. Oh, I suppose, this counts." The Doctor took off the ring and the Master disappeared instantly. Grinning, he slid it back on and the Master reappeared, coughing and twisting.
"You bastard," the Master growled, straining against his bonds.
"And you, what, did you skip that day of lessons? You can't just bind yourself to a specific Time Lord energy pattern and break the bond whenever you feel like it. I thought you were cleverer than that, Master."
"You don't know me anymore," the Master replied, death in his eyes.
"I know this," the Doctor said. "It's gone, and you haven't even noticed."
The Master narrowed his eyes and then, when the realization hit him, when he turned his mind inward and heard nothing other than the beat of his hearts, when he understood that the terrible drumming that had driven him to madness and war and death was gone, he knew the rules had changed.
"Eat," the Doctor said. "Rest. The one thing we do have now is time."
*
Thus began the strangest traveling the Doctor had ever done. He bounced them round from planet to planet and at every step of the way the Master evaded him, thwarted him, defied him, and tried to team up with their enemies. He was rude and irreverent and everything that made time travel unbearable.
But he never quite reached it. His previous level of madness, that is. He was cantankerous and quite evil, but his plans to imprison the Doctor and steal the TARDIS never seemed to go anywhere. The Doctor always found the half-built weapons and cheap traps ages before they became real threats.
On one trip, the Master suggested something that actually helped. It involved calling the Doctor a very rude name and punching him in the chest, but it helped.
Trip by trip, he loosened up, just enough to allow his intelligence and wit to show through his insanity. He never wanted to save the day and he didn't care about the people the Doctor helped, but he didn't go out of his way to stop the Doctor, either.
The Doctor balanced several strips of tubing, the sonic screwdriver, and a pair of tweezers, and the Master was reclined on the couch in the control room, one leg on the floor and one bent on the edge of the couch.
"I suppose you think you've won," he said, head tilted. "You think of me as your manservant. You regularly expose me to your sugary do-good lifestyle. You think eventually I'll give a damn or bask in your glowy greatness or some such nonsense."
The Doctor's head popped up from between the grating. "No, I don't." He chucked a bit of string across the floor, talking maniacally to himself for a moment before coming back up for air. "I told you already. I have to take care of you."
"And in what way, exactly, do I need your care? I could run laps round your ridiculous logic, your philanthropic dalliances. You just enjoy holding me captive, that's all. You won't admit that, because it makes you like me."
"You are the one who put yourself into that ring," the Doctor growled, stalking across the room and dragging a loop of cords back with him. He stopped and leaned against the console, holding up his hand. He drew a fingertip around the circular design of the ring. "I thought I would never see you again. I thought you were gone for good this time. Imagine that, a world without the Master. I couldn't. I can't."
The Master's face went pink. "Why do you refuse to acknowledge the fact that I hate you?"
"Why do you refuse to acknowledge now what you have so easily in the past: that you can't imagine me gone forever any more than I can imagine you?" The Doctor gently worked the ring along his finger, up and down, and the Master's face gave a tiny flinch with every shift. "You can feel that, can't you? When I...you feel it."
The mask of annoyance that the Master wore so effortlessly at all times seemed to shrink and crack just a little. "An unfortunate side effect."
*
They were on a planet with a tropical climate, sitting on the deck of an anti-gravity craft. The Doctor had his nose buried in a tome half the size of the table between them. There was some trouble with the local flora and he'd reason to believe that it had something to do with a hybrid plant that was introduced into the wild not long ago.
Something about food supplies and breathable air, blah blah, and the Master considered for the hundredth time impaling himself on something sharp and unforgiving. He cared nothing for the Doctor's obsessions and the Doctor himself was the only obsession that the Master could now claim as his own.
The problem was, on top of all that, the game had already been decided: he had not only won, he had rid himself of the drumming, and each moment he spent with the Doctor proved that he had control. The Doctor could at will be rid of him but he never even threatened it. He couldn't bear the thought of life without the Master in reach and so with every passing second the Master achieved another stunning victory.
So the war was won and the call was silent and the Master truly had nothing to strive for.
*
The Doctor was across the hall in a room full of spare parts and space junk, searching for something that would allow them to enter the world outside the TARDIS safely.
In his room the Master was drinking tea and preparing some marvelously witty insults to spout once they got started. He set his tea aside and leaned back, peering across the hall.
The Doctor's hair was standing up in a million different directions and he gave a frustrated snarl, tapping his fingers against a shelf rapidly. His face screwed up in intelligent contemplation. The Master watched neutrally. The Doctor's fingers went still, and then came down again, tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap.
The Master frowned and sat up.
The rhythm brought up a barrage of terrible memories. Chalking it up to coincidence, he turned away, only to turn back again when the tapping refreshed itself. The Doctor's face was full of pain for a brief moment, and then all at once he exhaled and forced his arm down to his side. He touched the ring and turned his back to the hall.
The Master felt his pulses race.
*
Darkness found the Master at the TARDIS console, running his fingers over switches, levers, and buttons. He watched the read-out on the screens and analyzed the wiring. He noted the haphazard layers of repairs. He did this often, coming out in the middle of the night in his robe and fantasizing about overriding the mechanics that kept him from piloting the TARDIS.
It never worked, and he tried often; each time he woke hours later with a fantastic headache, thrown halfway across the ship. All he had to do was flip a switch and it knocked him out cold. He reclined on the couch and crossed his ankles onto the console.
He felt the Doctor behind him long before he spoke. "When were you going to tell me? Were you waiting for the right moment? Were you going to use it against me? Somehow twist it so that I might be your slave forever?"
The Doctor sits.
"It's useless to you unless it's a weapon."
"That's not the point."
"Why are you doing this? If it's not a weapon, then for what purpose exactly are you playing the martyr? Why bear it? Why, Doctor?"
"I bear it," the Doctor said, standing and coming very close, "because you can't."
The Master felt a rage bubble up inside him and he stood, grabbing the front of the Doctor's robe. "You couldn't possibly stand it and go on as normal. And even if you could, why?" His face screwed up, ugly. "I hate you. I hate"
"Tell me the truth. What do you truly hate? Tell me."
"I never thought you could do it, take the drumming away. I never believed you. In the end I made sure I wouldn't have to find out whether or not you could. I would rather have kept it than been in your debt. But now that it's gone, I feel everything."
He grabbed the Doctor by the back of the neck and pushed their foreheads together, then rocked his face and pressed them cheek to cheek, left right left. He brushed their noses together. "I feel you like needles under my skin. I feel every breath you take, every pulse of blood through your veins." He flattened his hands, one on either of the Doctor's hearts. "I feel the food in your mouth, the air in your lungs. I feel every emotion that goes through you like fingertips across my skin." His hands tightened to fists around the Doctor's unruly hair. "I don't want to feel these things."
The Doctor had rolled himself gently into each motion and sway. His hands fell to the Master's face. "Does any of that matter, when we are all that's left?"
The Master groaned and tried to pull away, only to be drawn back in, closer still. He flailed his arms, which were held fast. Like two unwilling predators they touched; hands on skin, faces brushing, hot breath rushing push-pull as if it were in short supply.
"I don't want you for a subordinate," the Doctor whispered, nudging their foreheads together. He kissed the Master's slack mouth once. Then again. And again, opening him up with the tip of a tongue.
"That is how I want you," the Master replied, lunging forward and kissing him roughly.
"No." Another kiss, wet and greedy, and the Master followed the Doctor's mouth as it retreated. "You want to know that no matter where I am, I will always be alone if you are out of reach."
The Master recalled the Doctor begging him to stay. He had taken such pleasure in denying the Doctor at the eleventh hour, at finally being able to escape the drumming and crush the Doctor all in one blow. The ultimate revenge, indeed.
But if the call that had driven him all along was gone forever, what did it matter? If there was no empire to be had, no place the Master might steal or create that would be complete without the Doctor, then what was the point of having one?
*
Drained by this shared reality, they moved about in a daze for weeks. They would land, putter about a bit, go back to the ship, talk about the time period they'd landed in, and then be off again. They didn't fight much, though they were just as awkward with each other as ever. The Doctor tried to bring up their very young days back home, before madness and rebellion and confusion, but the Master wasn't keen on reminiscing, and in the end it was enough just to be in the company of another Time Lord.
There were bad moments, as well, moments when the Master's madness would resurface. He would rail against his situation, cursing humanity and Gallifrey and time and the Doctor. He would ramble about control and empires and mass-murder of whole planets as the tool by which he would begin his world. He would explain exactly how he would torture the Doctor if he were free to do so.
Through all this the Doctor would listen, head tilted, sometimes sat right next to the Master on the couch in the control room.
"Who will you share it with?" he would ask. "Who will care? Who will remember?"
To this the Master had no answer.
There were all sorts of moods in between mad and affectionate and sometimes the Master was even gentle, but only when he was feeling scared or tired.
They sat in the Doctor's bedroom sometimes and the Master would pick books off his shelves and read, sometimes sharing tidbits and sometimes not. The Doctor would even relax enough to doze off with the Master in the room, though the hand that bore the Master's ring was always kept protectively against his body.
"What does it sound like to you?" the Master asked one evening. They were sitting on the floor at the foot of the Doctor's bed.
The Doctor raised an eyebrow questioningly and the Master lightly tapped his temple.
"It's low. Like an extra heartbeat just below my own. Very distracting, sometimes unpleasant. Not as bad as it was for you."
"Even though you took it from me," the Master said, "I still remember the complete terror. The summons that came afterward. The rage it brought. It will always be a part of me, Doctor."
"Perhaps so," he replied, putting an arm over the top of the Master's knee. A tension sprung up between them. The Doctor removed his arm. "I know why you kept me as you did all that time.”
The Master looked away, annoyance ticking at his jaw.
"Deny it all you like," the Doctor said. "You kept me decrepit so that your hands might not be tempted. You could have had me any way you liked, any night you chose. But if you'd had me, you wouldn't have been able to ignore the way it made you feel."
"I wanted to," the Master admitted, but it wasn't tender. "I wanted to change you back long enough to rip you open. Make you cry, beg. But the way you held me after Lucy shot me, begging so prettily all on your ownI knew I could finally break you then, just by refusing. It felt so good, Doctor. So good to fade, knowing I would be free and you would be alone, even if my war had failed."
"All that just to deny me? Well," the Doctor replied, smiling, "I must be very special to you, then."
*
The Doctor came very close to his next regeneration on a trip to Saturnia 48/49. The Master dragged him half alive back to the TARDIS. They had natives on their heels and the Master fired off a stolen blaster over his shoulder until the blue wooden doors slammed behind them. It was touch and go for a few days, but a week later the Doctor was whining about being shut up in his room. He fished his sonic screwdriver out of the pocket of his torn jacket.
"Liked that jacket," he sighed, and joined the Master in the control room. A few moments of awkward silence and he coughed. "Thanks. For the, you know."
"Right," the Master said, shrugging, and that was that.
They passed in the corridor that night, the Doctor in his robe and the Master in a pair of trackies. The Doctor turned as they passed.
"Tea?"
"Sure," the Master said.
"So," the Doctor said, passing the sugar bowl. "Nursemaid. New vocation for you."
"Do not doubt my ferocity."
"Not for a second. You do make a mean mug of broth, though, I will say."
"I will cram this spoon down your esophagus if you imply that I actually enjoyed mending your sorry arse."
The Doctor's eyes ticked up and down the Master's torso in a way that was not entirely argumentative. He laughed. "Embrace your multitude of talents, is all I'm suggesting." He stirred his tea. "You didn't have to. You could've chucked me in the nearest closet."
"Only to be poofed back into the beyond the moment you woke and found me gone? Not bloody likely."
"Would you go?" the Doctor asked. "If it weren't for the ring. Would you go whenever you liked?"
The Master looked at him. "There's little point in being a Time Lord trapped on some backwater planet without a TARDIS."
"True enough." They rinsed their mugs. "Do you remember what you said, about feeling everything?" Without waiting for a response, he continued. "Can you tell me what I'm feeling right now?"
"Must I?"
"Please."
"You've got a ball of tension in your belly. Your hearts are beating erratically. This started when you passed me in the hall and saw"
The Doctor raised his eyebrows.
"And saw my skin. Your thoughts are all raw, red and pink and swollen, like they can't control themselves though they want to."
"This isn't just a species connection," the Doctor said, softly vindicated. "You used my energy pattern to reform. Ever since we've been connected in ways we weren't before."
"Are you looking for an excuse?" He came closer, then closer still, until the Doctor was backed up against the edge of the table they'd just been sitting at. "Some scientific babble to talk it away?" He pressed their bodies together. "Shall I tell you what I see in your mind, Doctor?"
"Stop. That's enough"
"You prance around as if you could command the whole world and yet you can't even control your own thoughts." The Master pushed a hand inside the flaps of the Doctor's robe, flattening a palm over one of his pounding hearts. He closed his eyes. "You thought about my shoulders as you passed me in the hall. You pictured them under your hands. You pictured them above you, moving with the rhythm of a thrusting body. You pictured me at your back, rutting against you like a beast, cursing and sweating. You wanted me to make you hurt, just a little, just enough to wear away the constant ache you feel when you look at me. You feel that you shouldn't want these things or, rather, that life would be much simpler, caring for me would be easier, if you didn't constantly want."
The Master's fingers had been gently working at the Doctor's nipple as he spoke and by the time he paused, the Doctor was breathing shallowly and clutching the edge of the table behind him.
"You've not wanted for hundreds of years and now that there is something that calls to you, to the very stuff your muscle and bone is made of, you can't stop wanting and you don't even know how to slow it down. Humanity has so dulled your senses that from the moment I opened my fob watch you've thought of nothing but having me in your skin." He dipped his head, kissed the Doctor's throat. "In your body. Working you open. Oh, don't stop." The thoughts faltered, tried to hide. The Master bit at the Doctor's earlobe, feeling the whole of his lanky, thin body twitch and press forward.
"Is this the only way you'd have me? Lording it over me? What are you afraid of, Master?" The Doctor slid one hand down the hot expanse of the Master's back, dipping fingertips into the waistband of his trackies. "Let me see you, then. Let me in."
No part of the Master wanted to share or to allow the imbalance that he had created so carefully even out, but the reforming of his body through the Doctor's energy had indeed opened some channel between them. He didn't have much choice.
"You never need consoling, not for anything. At least not for a long time. Not since you were betrayed. You never let anyone get close enough to even care after that. If they did you hurt them to prove that you shouldn't be cared about, that all you could offer was pain. But you can't hide from me. You are my responsibility, though you may take a million more lives." All the while the Doctor's mouth had brushed the Master's as they spoke. Now he leaned back, and they stared at each other. "You want to fuck me right here, right now. What's stopping you?"
The Master growled and spun the Doctor around by his shoulder. He shoved at the Doctor's back and pushed the cloth of his robe upward. There was no romance in it, just a need to respond to the slightly mocking challenge in the Doctor's voice. He spat in his palm, hiked his trackies down, and half a dozen pushes later he was buried inside the Doctor's tight body. It ended abruptly not many minutes later, both men gasping and nearly rocking the table off its legs. The Master left wet streaks behind as he pulled out. He whipped the Doctor around again and grabbed blindly for his cock.
"Yes," the Doctor sighed, and came all over his thighs and the Master's hand. They breathed together until the Doctor went soft, and the Master instinctively pulled away, only to be dragged back in. "Don't. Stay with me. Your feelings are not wrong."
"I don't want them," the Master spit, twisting away.
"Just stop. Stop and think. You can't hide your feelings from me and that's what scares you, but it doesn't matter whether you're frightened of it or not, don't you see? No matter what you do, no matter what's in that insane head of yours, you're still"
"I can't," he muttered. "I can't bear you knowing."
"There's nothing we can do. Even if we went to opposite ends of the universe we would still feel drawn to each other."
The Master stared. "Take off the ring."
"What?"
"Take it off. It's the simplest solution. I serve no purpose here. You don't need me; you've got your eternal white hat quest of goodness or whatever it is and that's done much better when you haven't got a black hat in tow."
The Doctor pulled the Master close by his hair and kissed him. "It's not about what I need. It's about what we need."
*
They didn't speak for a week after, and then one evening the Doctor crawled into bed with the Master and the Master didn't punch him in the face. They woke up tangled the next morning and the Master rolled on top of him and took him for half a day, slow and wet until they were both practically liquid against one another.
"We could do this for all of time," the Doctor murmured huskily against the Master's chest, all sweaty skin and spike-crazy hair. "Go back in time one day for every day gone forward and just repeat it over and over again."
"No," the Master said, "we can't. No, listen. I'm not being a brat at the moment, so enjoy the respite. Listen. We aren't made to be a duo, you and I. We bounce off each other like electric currents, fantastic and bright but also out of sync and opposite." He runs a hand down the Doctor's long torso. "There is going to come a time when we are going to need to separate and fight our own battles."
"Or start them?" The Doctor smiled, tipping his tired head to one side and cracking open an eye. "I'll come after you and stop you. I'll figure out what you're doing and waltz in and crack it into a million pieces with one hand tied behind my back."
"You would let me go?"
"Yes. Because you're right. The universe is big enough for the two of us, just barely, and I think my life wouldn't mean much if I didn't know you were out there somewhere about to cause me loads trouble."
The Master smirked and pulled the Doctor close. "You must promise me something." He waited for the Doctor to nod. "There will come a time when I shall ask you to take off that ring. Not because I'm desperate or lonely or mad, but because I'm going to mean it. I am not made as you are, Doctor. I need to know that when I ask it of you, you'll look into me and see that it must be so and that you will take it off and never wear it again."
The Doctor smiled, eyes bright, tracing the outline of the Master's face with steady fingers. "But not for a long while?"
"Perhaps."
"In that case, I promise. I promise to look out for you. I promise to stop you when you need stopping. And I promise to release you when you must be let go."
The Master nodded and sighed, pulling the blankets up around them.
Pairing: Doctor/Master
Rating: NC-17
Notes: I wrote this to make myself feel better. ;_;
*
It was an unremarkable day, the day Lucy found him and gave him the ring. She'd cut her hair and dyed it brown and he almost passed her in the crowd, completely unnoticed.
She cornered him in a shop.
"Hello again!" he chirped cheerfully, rounding a stack of clothes and coming right against her side. "What an entirely random meeting."
"There's no need mock me," she said, tiny white hands tightening on her purse.
He softened. "I suppose not. Won you over in the end, didn't I?" His eyes sparkled. He hoped against hope she hadn't found him because she wanted to travel with him. Or kill him. Equally inconvenient when not desired, he found.
Without preamble she produced the ring and held it toward him.
He watched her. "Oh, you're clever. No, no, wait. Don't tell me. He's taught you how to rig it so that when I touch it I burst into flames. Or turn into a frog. Rather nasty, that last one, truly would not want to do it again; I can't tell you how long it took to get the taste of flies out my mouth."
She shook her head. "It's not mine to have. I can't get it out of my head, can't stop the noise, II simply can't. You must take it. You're the only one who could take it far enough so that I might escape it."
"What does it do?" he asked, eyeing it warily. He'd had a year to observe the Master, to memorize every detail of his body and voice and presence, but he had never once observed that this accessory had any purpose.
She smiled darkly. "Nothing overt. But it will not let me forget. Doctor, all I want is to forget. Take it a million years into the future and bury it on some deserted planet, I don't care. Just take it."
So he did, feeling like a widow receiving her late husband's effects.
*
The Doctor quite literally forgot about the ring not long after. He had to forget about the ring in the same way he had to "forget" about Rose, the Master, and his past, which is to say he buttoned it up deep down, flipped some levers on the TARDIS console, and pushed onto the next adventure.
Stopping and thinking were not often on the Doctor's to do list.
Stuck on the moon of some forsaken planet populated by tiny hairy creatures that did not appreciate being called space monkeys, thank you very much, the Doctor was forced to make some hasty repairs in order to escape. The not at all space monkey creatures had frighteningly developed sonic technology and he had no intention of sticking around to experience it firsthand.
He had a torch out and was about to melt the ring down for a bit of metal to mash two panels together when he remembered what it was. Feeling a pang of emotion, he slid it into his pocket and went on madly about the control room until all was ready to go.
Three time jumps later he changed jackets and the ring was forgotten again. It appeared in the next piece of clothing he grabbed for despite the fact that he was positive he had not put it there. Intrigued, he found himself transferring the ring to each outfit he put on, simply because the alternativeaccepting that it was bloody following him on its ownwas too bizarre and problematic to cope with.
*
The Doctor rarely forgot anniversaries no matter where or when he was. He carried out rituals related to them, visiting associated places and people like clockwork.
One year to the day that he lit the Master's funeral pyre, he visited that spot and sat calmly there for an entire evening.
He retired to the TARDIS only when there was nothing left to ponder, no guilt left to dole out, feeling sore and tangled inside, and let his eyes map the interior of his ship, recalling the blood red mess the Master had made of it.
He allowed himself to recall the moment when the sky had opened and rained death, beginning a year of Earth history that would later be forgotten by all but a select few. And yet at the end of it all, he had forgiven the Master. He had clung to him and shamelessly begged him to stay.
True, the Master would have been a prisoner, would have lost, if he had chosen to regenerate, but the Doctor had not cared about the arrangement so much as the end result. He had wanted more than anything for the Master to stay with him. Knowing what the vortex could do to a child, how could he not forgive? When there are only two of one species left in the entire universe, how could one not want to love the other, no matter what the cost? No matter what the sacrifice?
The Doctor wiped his face dry and sat at the TARDIS console, fingering the ring in his pocket. He had never felt a thing from the object itself. Nothing the Master did or produced was ever useless, but the Doctor could find no meaning in the symbols and no sense of life or technology about the metal itself. Perhaps it was the one sentimental piece of some past experience that the Master had allowed himself.
And then the Doctor did a simple thing, the very thing that any average person might think to do upon being given a ring and the very last thing that came to his mind. He slipped it onto the fourth finger of his right hand.
The TARDIS went dark.
*
When he managed to get the power up again, he was not surprised to find the Master, naked and unconscious, in the TARDIS.
It was so frighteningly simple, this: the Master had had endless amounts of time and just the right technology and knowledge to bind himself to objects so that he might be brought back without wasting a regeneration.
Instead of just putting his essence into a fob watch, he'd put his secondary Time Lord genetic code in, the whole damned thing, so that all he'd needed was a bit of fellow Time Lord and a dash of TARDIS power to reform.
He had the same face, the same body.
The Doctor shuddered, bound him, and locked him in a guest bedroom that had suddenly sprung up where there had been a storage closet just days before.
This was planned, of course, but something wasn't right.
What good would it do the Master if he were to reform exactly where the Doctor had intended to imprison him, anyway? What sort of evil plot was this? Not a very good one. He felt oddly disappointed.
All the other things he felt, he kept hidden away.
*
He brought food and water and sat at the foot of the bed. The Master was reclined like a prince, blankets casually tucked up around his hips. He seemed relaxed, if a bit tired.
"She gave it to you, then?" he asked, ignoring the tray.
The Doctor's throat worked thickly. "Yes."
"I'm going to kill her," the Master said, softly.
"No, you're not." The Doctor paused. "How do you feel?"
"Tired," the Master admitted. He closed his eyes and then opened them, staring at the Doctor. "She was supposed to slip it on you aboard the ship. Then help me steal the ship again. That was always the contingency plan. Though I suppose that went out the window when she shot me. Ah well. I was so looking forward to seeing you in a cage again, Doctor."
"Well. You could still steal it, I suppose. And lock me up, wouldn't be too difficult."
"It's only a matter of time until I am presented with some opportunity. Will you give up all your heroic adventures just to watch me day in and day out?"
"Yes," the Doctor said hoarsely. The Master stared at him, lips twitching. "But, you know, I don't think that will be necessary. For a variety of reasons. Shall I list them?"
"Do go on."
"One, I've made some additions to the TARDIS. She won't fly for you, no matter how you try to make her. Two, I make a fabulous toasted cheese sandwich. Three. Hm. Well, three. Oh, I suppose, this counts." The Doctor took off the ring and the Master disappeared instantly. Grinning, he slid it back on and the Master reappeared, coughing and twisting.
"You bastard," the Master growled, straining against his bonds.
"And you, what, did you skip that day of lessons? You can't just bind yourself to a specific Time Lord energy pattern and break the bond whenever you feel like it. I thought you were cleverer than that, Master."
"You don't know me anymore," the Master replied, death in his eyes.
"I know this," the Doctor said. "It's gone, and you haven't even noticed."
The Master narrowed his eyes and then, when the realization hit him, when he turned his mind inward and heard nothing other than the beat of his hearts, when he understood that the terrible drumming that had driven him to madness and war and death was gone, he knew the rules had changed.
"Eat," the Doctor said. "Rest. The one thing we do have now is time."
*
Thus began the strangest traveling the Doctor had ever done. He bounced them round from planet to planet and at every step of the way the Master evaded him, thwarted him, defied him, and tried to team up with their enemies. He was rude and irreverent and everything that made time travel unbearable.
But he never quite reached it. His previous level of madness, that is. He was cantankerous and quite evil, but his plans to imprison the Doctor and steal the TARDIS never seemed to go anywhere. The Doctor always found the half-built weapons and cheap traps ages before they became real threats.
On one trip, the Master suggested something that actually helped. It involved calling the Doctor a very rude name and punching him in the chest, but it helped.
Trip by trip, he loosened up, just enough to allow his intelligence and wit to show through his insanity. He never wanted to save the day and he didn't care about the people the Doctor helped, but he didn't go out of his way to stop the Doctor, either.
The Doctor balanced several strips of tubing, the sonic screwdriver, and a pair of tweezers, and the Master was reclined on the couch in the control room, one leg on the floor and one bent on the edge of the couch.
"I suppose you think you've won," he said, head tilted. "You think of me as your manservant. You regularly expose me to your sugary do-good lifestyle. You think eventually I'll give a damn or bask in your glowy greatness or some such nonsense."
The Doctor's head popped up from between the grating. "No, I don't." He chucked a bit of string across the floor, talking maniacally to himself for a moment before coming back up for air. "I told you already. I have to take care of you."
"And in what way, exactly, do I need your care? I could run laps round your ridiculous logic, your philanthropic dalliances. You just enjoy holding me captive, that's all. You won't admit that, because it makes you like me."
"You are the one who put yourself into that ring," the Doctor growled, stalking across the room and dragging a loop of cords back with him. He stopped and leaned against the console, holding up his hand. He drew a fingertip around the circular design of the ring. "I thought I would never see you again. I thought you were gone for good this time. Imagine that, a world without the Master. I couldn't. I can't."
The Master's face went pink. "Why do you refuse to acknowledge the fact that I hate you?"
"Why do you refuse to acknowledge now what you have so easily in the past: that you can't imagine me gone forever any more than I can imagine you?" The Doctor gently worked the ring along his finger, up and down, and the Master's face gave a tiny flinch with every shift. "You can feel that, can't you? When I...you feel it."
The mask of annoyance that the Master wore so effortlessly at all times seemed to shrink and crack just a little. "An unfortunate side effect."
*
They were on a planet with a tropical climate, sitting on the deck of an anti-gravity craft. The Doctor had his nose buried in a tome half the size of the table between them. There was some trouble with the local flora and he'd reason to believe that it had something to do with a hybrid plant that was introduced into the wild not long ago.
Something about food supplies and breathable air, blah blah, and the Master considered for the hundredth time impaling himself on something sharp and unforgiving. He cared nothing for the Doctor's obsessions and the Doctor himself was the only obsession that the Master could now claim as his own.
The problem was, on top of all that, the game had already been decided: he had not only won, he had rid himself of the drumming, and each moment he spent with the Doctor proved that he had control. The Doctor could at will be rid of him but he never even threatened it. He couldn't bear the thought of life without the Master in reach and so with every passing second the Master achieved another stunning victory.
So the war was won and the call was silent and the Master truly had nothing to strive for.
*
The Doctor was across the hall in a room full of spare parts and space junk, searching for something that would allow them to enter the world outside the TARDIS safely.
In his room the Master was drinking tea and preparing some marvelously witty insults to spout once they got started. He set his tea aside and leaned back, peering across the hall.
The Doctor's hair was standing up in a million different directions and he gave a frustrated snarl, tapping his fingers against a shelf rapidly. His face screwed up in intelligent contemplation. The Master watched neutrally. The Doctor's fingers went still, and then came down again, tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap.
The Master frowned and sat up.
The rhythm brought up a barrage of terrible memories. Chalking it up to coincidence, he turned away, only to turn back again when the tapping refreshed itself. The Doctor's face was full of pain for a brief moment, and then all at once he exhaled and forced his arm down to his side. He touched the ring and turned his back to the hall.
The Master felt his pulses race.
*
Darkness found the Master at the TARDIS console, running his fingers over switches, levers, and buttons. He watched the read-out on the screens and analyzed the wiring. He noted the haphazard layers of repairs. He did this often, coming out in the middle of the night in his robe and fantasizing about overriding the mechanics that kept him from piloting the TARDIS.
It never worked, and he tried often; each time he woke hours later with a fantastic headache, thrown halfway across the ship. All he had to do was flip a switch and it knocked him out cold. He reclined on the couch and crossed his ankles onto the console.
He felt the Doctor behind him long before he spoke. "When were you going to tell me? Were you waiting for the right moment? Were you going to use it against me? Somehow twist it so that I might be your slave forever?"
The Doctor sits.
"It's useless to you unless it's a weapon."
"That's not the point."
"Why are you doing this? If it's not a weapon, then for what purpose exactly are you playing the martyr? Why bear it? Why, Doctor?"
"I bear it," the Doctor said, standing and coming very close, "because you can't."
The Master felt a rage bubble up inside him and he stood, grabbing the front of the Doctor's robe. "You couldn't possibly stand it and go on as normal. And even if you could, why?" His face screwed up, ugly. "I hate you. I hate"
"Tell me the truth. What do you truly hate? Tell me."
"I never thought you could do it, take the drumming away. I never believed you. In the end I made sure I wouldn't have to find out whether or not you could. I would rather have kept it than been in your debt. But now that it's gone, I feel everything."
He grabbed the Doctor by the back of the neck and pushed their foreheads together, then rocked his face and pressed them cheek to cheek, left right left. He brushed their noses together. "I feel you like needles under my skin. I feel every breath you take, every pulse of blood through your veins." He flattened his hands, one on either of the Doctor's hearts. "I feel the food in your mouth, the air in your lungs. I feel every emotion that goes through you like fingertips across my skin." His hands tightened to fists around the Doctor's unruly hair. "I don't want to feel these things."
The Doctor had rolled himself gently into each motion and sway. His hands fell to the Master's face. "Does any of that matter, when we are all that's left?"
The Master groaned and tried to pull away, only to be drawn back in, closer still. He flailed his arms, which were held fast. Like two unwilling predators they touched; hands on skin, faces brushing, hot breath rushing push-pull as if it were in short supply.
"I don't want you for a subordinate," the Doctor whispered, nudging their foreheads together. He kissed the Master's slack mouth once. Then again. And again, opening him up with the tip of a tongue.
"That is how I want you," the Master replied, lunging forward and kissing him roughly.
"No." Another kiss, wet and greedy, and the Master followed the Doctor's mouth as it retreated. "You want to know that no matter where I am, I will always be alone if you are out of reach."
The Master recalled the Doctor begging him to stay. He had taken such pleasure in denying the Doctor at the eleventh hour, at finally being able to escape the drumming and crush the Doctor all in one blow. The ultimate revenge, indeed.
But if the call that had driven him all along was gone forever, what did it matter? If there was no empire to be had, no place the Master might steal or create that would be complete without the Doctor, then what was the point of having one?
*
Drained by this shared reality, they moved about in a daze for weeks. They would land, putter about a bit, go back to the ship, talk about the time period they'd landed in, and then be off again. They didn't fight much, though they were just as awkward with each other as ever. The Doctor tried to bring up their very young days back home, before madness and rebellion and confusion, but the Master wasn't keen on reminiscing, and in the end it was enough just to be in the company of another Time Lord.
There were bad moments, as well, moments when the Master's madness would resurface. He would rail against his situation, cursing humanity and Gallifrey and time and the Doctor. He would ramble about control and empires and mass-murder of whole planets as the tool by which he would begin his world. He would explain exactly how he would torture the Doctor if he were free to do so.
Through all this the Doctor would listen, head tilted, sometimes sat right next to the Master on the couch in the control room.
"Who will you share it with?" he would ask. "Who will care? Who will remember?"
To this the Master had no answer.
There were all sorts of moods in between mad and affectionate and sometimes the Master was even gentle, but only when he was feeling scared or tired.
They sat in the Doctor's bedroom sometimes and the Master would pick books off his shelves and read, sometimes sharing tidbits and sometimes not. The Doctor would even relax enough to doze off with the Master in the room, though the hand that bore the Master's ring was always kept protectively against his body.
"What does it sound like to you?" the Master asked one evening. They were sitting on the floor at the foot of the Doctor's bed.
The Doctor raised an eyebrow questioningly and the Master lightly tapped his temple.
"It's low. Like an extra heartbeat just below my own. Very distracting, sometimes unpleasant. Not as bad as it was for you."
"Even though you took it from me," the Master said, "I still remember the complete terror. The summons that came afterward. The rage it brought. It will always be a part of me, Doctor."
"Perhaps so," he replied, putting an arm over the top of the Master's knee. A tension sprung up between them. The Doctor removed his arm. "I know why you kept me as you did all that time.”
The Master looked away, annoyance ticking at his jaw.
"Deny it all you like," the Doctor said. "You kept me decrepit so that your hands might not be tempted. You could have had me any way you liked, any night you chose. But if you'd had me, you wouldn't have been able to ignore the way it made you feel."
"I wanted to," the Master admitted, but it wasn't tender. "I wanted to change you back long enough to rip you open. Make you cry, beg. But the way you held me after Lucy shot me, begging so prettily all on your ownI knew I could finally break you then, just by refusing. It felt so good, Doctor. So good to fade, knowing I would be free and you would be alone, even if my war had failed."
"All that just to deny me? Well," the Doctor replied, smiling, "I must be very special to you, then."
*
The Doctor came very close to his next regeneration on a trip to Saturnia 48/49. The Master dragged him half alive back to the TARDIS. They had natives on their heels and the Master fired off a stolen blaster over his shoulder until the blue wooden doors slammed behind them. It was touch and go for a few days, but a week later the Doctor was whining about being shut up in his room. He fished his sonic screwdriver out of the pocket of his torn jacket.
"Liked that jacket," he sighed, and joined the Master in the control room. A few moments of awkward silence and he coughed. "Thanks. For the, you know."
"Right," the Master said, shrugging, and that was that.
They passed in the corridor that night, the Doctor in his robe and the Master in a pair of trackies. The Doctor turned as they passed.
"Tea?"
"Sure," the Master said.
"So," the Doctor said, passing the sugar bowl. "Nursemaid. New vocation for you."
"Do not doubt my ferocity."
"Not for a second. You do make a mean mug of broth, though, I will say."
"I will cram this spoon down your esophagus if you imply that I actually enjoyed mending your sorry arse."
The Doctor's eyes ticked up and down the Master's torso in a way that was not entirely argumentative. He laughed. "Embrace your multitude of talents, is all I'm suggesting." He stirred his tea. "You didn't have to. You could've chucked me in the nearest closet."
"Only to be poofed back into the beyond the moment you woke and found me gone? Not bloody likely."
"Would you go?" the Doctor asked. "If it weren't for the ring. Would you go whenever you liked?"
The Master looked at him. "There's little point in being a Time Lord trapped on some backwater planet without a TARDIS."
"True enough." They rinsed their mugs. "Do you remember what you said, about feeling everything?" Without waiting for a response, he continued. "Can you tell me what I'm feeling right now?"
"Must I?"
"Please."
"You've got a ball of tension in your belly. Your hearts are beating erratically. This started when you passed me in the hall and saw"
The Doctor raised his eyebrows.
"And saw my skin. Your thoughts are all raw, red and pink and swollen, like they can't control themselves though they want to."
"This isn't just a species connection," the Doctor said, softly vindicated. "You used my energy pattern to reform. Ever since we've been connected in ways we weren't before."
"Are you looking for an excuse?" He came closer, then closer still, until the Doctor was backed up against the edge of the table they'd just been sitting at. "Some scientific babble to talk it away?" He pressed their bodies together. "Shall I tell you what I see in your mind, Doctor?"
"Stop. That's enough"
"You prance around as if you could command the whole world and yet you can't even control your own thoughts." The Master pushed a hand inside the flaps of the Doctor's robe, flattening a palm over one of his pounding hearts. He closed his eyes. "You thought about my shoulders as you passed me in the hall. You pictured them under your hands. You pictured them above you, moving with the rhythm of a thrusting body. You pictured me at your back, rutting against you like a beast, cursing and sweating. You wanted me to make you hurt, just a little, just enough to wear away the constant ache you feel when you look at me. You feel that you shouldn't want these things or, rather, that life would be much simpler, caring for me would be easier, if you didn't constantly want."
The Master's fingers had been gently working at the Doctor's nipple as he spoke and by the time he paused, the Doctor was breathing shallowly and clutching the edge of the table behind him.
"You've not wanted for hundreds of years and now that there is something that calls to you, to the very stuff your muscle and bone is made of, you can't stop wanting and you don't even know how to slow it down. Humanity has so dulled your senses that from the moment I opened my fob watch you've thought of nothing but having me in your skin." He dipped his head, kissed the Doctor's throat. "In your body. Working you open. Oh, don't stop." The thoughts faltered, tried to hide. The Master bit at the Doctor's earlobe, feeling the whole of his lanky, thin body twitch and press forward.
"Is this the only way you'd have me? Lording it over me? What are you afraid of, Master?" The Doctor slid one hand down the hot expanse of the Master's back, dipping fingertips into the waistband of his trackies. "Let me see you, then. Let me in."
No part of the Master wanted to share or to allow the imbalance that he had created so carefully even out, but the reforming of his body through the Doctor's energy had indeed opened some channel between them. He didn't have much choice.
"You never need consoling, not for anything. At least not for a long time. Not since you were betrayed. You never let anyone get close enough to even care after that. If they did you hurt them to prove that you shouldn't be cared about, that all you could offer was pain. But you can't hide from me. You are my responsibility, though you may take a million more lives." All the while the Doctor's mouth had brushed the Master's as they spoke. Now he leaned back, and they stared at each other. "You want to fuck me right here, right now. What's stopping you?"
The Master growled and spun the Doctor around by his shoulder. He shoved at the Doctor's back and pushed the cloth of his robe upward. There was no romance in it, just a need to respond to the slightly mocking challenge in the Doctor's voice. He spat in his palm, hiked his trackies down, and half a dozen pushes later he was buried inside the Doctor's tight body. It ended abruptly not many minutes later, both men gasping and nearly rocking the table off its legs. The Master left wet streaks behind as he pulled out. He whipped the Doctor around again and grabbed blindly for his cock.
"Yes," the Doctor sighed, and came all over his thighs and the Master's hand. They breathed together until the Doctor went soft, and the Master instinctively pulled away, only to be dragged back in. "Don't. Stay with me. Your feelings are not wrong."
"I don't want them," the Master spit, twisting away.
"Just stop. Stop and think. You can't hide your feelings from me and that's what scares you, but it doesn't matter whether you're frightened of it or not, don't you see? No matter what you do, no matter what's in that insane head of yours, you're still"
"I can't," he muttered. "I can't bear you knowing."
"There's nothing we can do. Even if we went to opposite ends of the universe we would still feel drawn to each other."
The Master stared. "Take off the ring."
"What?"
"Take it off. It's the simplest solution. I serve no purpose here. You don't need me; you've got your eternal white hat quest of goodness or whatever it is and that's done much better when you haven't got a black hat in tow."
The Doctor pulled the Master close by his hair and kissed him. "It's not about what I need. It's about what we need."
*
They didn't speak for a week after, and then one evening the Doctor crawled into bed with the Master and the Master didn't punch him in the face. They woke up tangled the next morning and the Master rolled on top of him and took him for half a day, slow and wet until they were both practically liquid against one another.
"We could do this for all of time," the Doctor murmured huskily against the Master's chest, all sweaty skin and spike-crazy hair. "Go back in time one day for every day gone forward and just repeat it over and over again."
"No," the Master said, "we can't. No, listen. I'm not being a brat at the moment, so enjoy the respite. Listen. We aren't made to be a duo, you and I. We bounce off each other like electric currents, fantastic and bright but also out of sync and opposite." He runs a hand down the Doctor's long torso. "There is going to come a time when we are going to need to separate and fight our own battles."
"Or start them?" The Doctor smiled, tipping his tired head to one side and cracking open an eye. "I'll come after you and stop you. I'll figure out what you're doing and waltz in and crack it into a million pieces with one hand tied behind my back."
"You would let me go?"
"Yes. Because you're right. The universe is big enough for the two of us, just barely, and I think my life wouldn't mean much if I didn't know you were out there somewhere about to cause me loads trouble."
The Master smirked and pulled the Doctor close. "You must promise me something." He waited for the Doctor to nod. "There will come a time when I shall ask you to take off that ring. Not because I'm desperate or lonely or mad, but because I'm going to mean it. I am not made as you are, Doctor. I need to know that when I ask it of you, you'll look into me and see that it must be so and that you will take it off and never wear it again."
The Doctor smiled, eyes bright, tracing the outline of the Master's face with steady fingers. "But not for a long while?"
"Perhaps."
"In that case, I promise. I promise to look out for you. I promise to stop you when you need stopping. And I promise to release you when you must be let go."
The Master nodded and sighed, pulling the blankets up around them.