| Characters: The Master, The Doctorchar/
Link to IJ: thread #75440.4617904 |
 The Master was late. Deliberately. Contrary to his usual instinct, he didn't want to make too much of an entrance.
Also unusually, he hadn't changed his outfit. He didn't want to stand out. The only addition was the white rose pinned to his lapel. Might make things go more smoothly... |
 He'd finally dragged his ass out of his TARDIS. Just in time to see a notice of a party. There was no way he was going to miss that much activity, not for anything. Besides, being left on his own for a bit might have done him good, but there was a limit to how much of his own company he could handle. He spotted the Master, with a white rose, had no doubt that it was his, and made his way over.
"How's your head?" he asked, casually and pleasantly, once he was there. |
| Strange that amongst all the versions of the Doctor he could see here, he instantly knew this one was his.
Annoyingly, it seemed to work both ways. He shrugged. "Can't get anything past you, can I? My head's fine - right now." He narrowed his eyes, looking the Doctor up and down. "I didn't expect to see you here. I thought you'd found a way home." |
| "Were you trying to get something past me," he asked, a bit blankly. He had no idea. He did know he wasn't fond of that look. He shrugged, very casually. "No, just been a bit wrapped up elsewhere. Still stuck too, then?" |
| "The rose? Thought I might pretend to be the less-evil me for the evening, stop people trying to lynch me, that sort of thing. And yes, I'm still stuck. Obviously."
He wouldn't still be here if there was any possible way out. He gave the Doctor a small, lopsided smile. "Want to get a drink? I think I'm going to need one." |
| "If you want to pretend to be less than evil, I won't object, and I'm certainly not going to stop you drinking but I'll skip the alcohol." He returned the smile, but it was a sort of automatic thing. He gestured vaguely. "Lead the way." |
| The Master led the way to the bar, but glanced back at the Doctor over his shoulder several times as he did. Partly to make sure he was following, because now that he'd finally found him he wasn't going to let him disappear if he could help it, and partly because... something wasn't right. His conversations with the other Doctor and Master came back to him with a jolt.
"You all right?" he asked, as they approached the bar. He made the question as casual as he could, because he didn't want to frighten the Doctor off. |
| The Doctor looked increasingly bewildered with every look back. By the time they made it to the bar and the Master asked if he was all right, he was just utterly baffled and showing it. "...Yes. Any reason I shouldn't be?" |
| He grinned, fondly, and let it go. (For now.) "No, not really. I'm glad you're all right."
He poured himself a whisky. "What do you want to drink?" |
| "Water," he said, like it was obvious. He still looked confused. He'd get over it. |
| The Master raised his eyebrows. "What, have you turned into Jack now? There are more interesting non-alcoholic drinks, you know."
He got a glass of water nonetheless and handed it over before picking up his whisky. "Cheers." |
| He lifted his own and clinked it into the Master's before he drank. "Not turned into Jack last I looked. Water's easy." |
| "Easy's boring." It came out automatically. He grinned at the Doctor, starting to relax. "It's good to see you again. I've missed you." |
| "Sometimes. Often. Usually." He worked his way toward agreement, and took another drink. "Your aim's not going is it?" |
| "My... aim?" |
| "You missed me? Apparently your sense of humor's gone missing, too." |
| The Master rolled his eyes. "That was an appalling joke, Doctor. Not that I'm not used to that, but..."
He grinned, and asked with real curiosity, "Anyway, what have you been up to that's been keeping you so busy?" |
| "Not that you're not used to it, but apparently you forgot and it went zinging right over the top of your head?" There was a quick smile, there - very quick. "Oh, bit of this, bit of that. A lot of the other." |
| Oh, the Doctor was so annoying when he wouldn't answer questions straightly.
Which was nearly all of the time. "I spent a lot of time looking for you." |
| "Why?" |
| The Master looked away briefly. "I - it was after I first came across the other version of us, the ones who actually get along," he said evasively. "It feels like a long time ago now. A lot's happened."
He wasn't sure he wanted what he'd wanted before. Except that he did, a lot. But he wasn't sure. The drums - the fucking, infuriating drums - began to pound out a low beat. |
| "I've met them. Nice couple. Little domestic for my taste but interesting people." |
| "I know you've met them. They've talked to me about you. A lot." |
| "Oh, well that's lovely of them. Remind me to see them later and kill them." |
| The Master was a little confused. "I thought you'd be pleased." |
| "Why would I be pleased that they're talking about me a lot?" |
| "Because they're talking about you to me. I've been spending time talking to relatively sane versions of us about how we might be able to do things better. How I might be able to do things better."
Shit, this was harder than he'd thought. Coming anywhere near admitting that he might not have been right every step of the way through their entire lives... yeah, that was hard. |
| "Oh, well the only subject matter you mentioned was me. If you've been talking about how to be better, then of course I'm pleased." |
| He finally got it. "Oh! You thought I was complaining to them about you or something?" |
| He drank more water and nodded. "That's about the size of it, yep." |
| "Well, I did complain, a bit." The Master grinned wickedly. Of course he had. |
| "Of course you did," the Doctor said, pleasantly. |
| He gave the Doctor an odd look. "They said I had to be nicer to you." |
| He cocked his eyebrow. "Pardon?" |
| The Master raised his eyebrows in return. "Gone deaf in your old age?"
He shrugged. "It's pretty obvious, I suppose. I couldn't be much less nice to you than I had been. I ought to have seen it coming myself." |
| "That you ought to be nicer to me than feeding me out of a dog bowl? I'd think so." |
| The Master shifted uncomfortably. "I... thought you could take it. They said you couldn't." |
| "Feeding me out of a dog bowl?" |
| He flicked his fingers impatiently. "I don't believe the specifics ever came up. We were talking rather more generally than that." |
| "Generally how?" |
| "About how you were kind of at the end of your tether and I might just possibly have pushed you that little bit too far," he said awkwardly and in a rush, not looking at the Doctor. |
| "Oh, like you weren't at the end of your rope." |
| He... stopped and stared at the Doctor, drums rat-a-tat-tatting away. That wasn't how it was supposed to go. "What?" |
| "You were at least as bad off as I was." |
| The Master stood very still because it felt like his world was falling away from beneath his feet.
He swallowed. "You're not supposed to understand," he said uneasily, wishing the bloody drums would shut up and let him think. "You're supposed to hate me." |
| "You let yourself die. That makes it a little hard not to understand." |
| He rubbed a hand across his eyes, still feeling dizzy and disoriented. Emotions were roaring round his head and not least among them was anger. Because here he was, making his big magnanimous gesture, trying to hold together a Doctor he'd been convinced was about to fall apart, and instead he'd got a Doctor who seemed to be only too together and actually condescending to understand him.
His hands clenched into fists. "So you're fine with it all now, are you?" he said tightly. "You forgive me everything because you understand?" |
| "I tried to forgive you then."
He wasn't actually holding it together particularly well, but that had not a thing to do with the state of his intellect and memory. |
| The Master sneered. "So you did. How silly of me to have forgotten. Such a saint, aren't you, Doctor? Such a fucking Martyr."
And he really should have realised that after his recent encounter with the other Doctor. He really was a bit slow sometimes. |
| He stared, and stared hard. "I'm not you. I've never claimed to have never been wrong and I've never died for my principals or to spite someone," he said, simply. |
| The Master gritted his teeth and fought the drums and the impulse to walk away now, because he'd been waiting too long for this chance to just throw it away because the Doctor was being his usual infuriating self.
"I'm not claiming to have never been wrong now," he hissed. "I'm trying to make things right." |
| "Oh." Confused? Oh yes. He was being insulted, sneered at, hissed at, and called names. He did all of that quite well on his own, yes, and there was truth there, but that didn't mean he knew how to put them together with 'make things right'. |
| The Master was really crap at this sort of thing, mainly because he had absolutely no personal experience at it.
He rubbed his forehead and looked awkwardly at the Doctor then away again. "I'm trying to say, things got a bit out of hand and away from me and - hell - I don't even know exactly what happened between us in the time between where I'm from and where you're from but there is a slight possibility that, well, I might not have been quite as sane and in control of myself as I thought I was. And I might have seemed to be pushing you away even though actually I was trying to do the opposite. Um." He looked at the Doctor hopefully, words running out on him. |
| The Doctor opened his mouth to respond and ended up laughing. It wasn't an amused sound, closer to barking than anything, and he actually looked kind of startled. His hand tightened on his glass and after a second he managed to choke it down before it got really out of hand. "I'm sorry I didn't realize." His voice sounded strangled, but he managed to get it out and he did mean it. Completely. |
| The Master squinted at him suspiciously.
"Are you laughing at me?" he asked dangerously. |
| That tone meant business and the Doctor knew it. He leaned against the counter, looked down and tried to calm himself down by taking a deep breath. It sort of worked. His tone was still off, though. "No. No, of course I'm not laughing at you." |
| "Good," he said dryly. He was still suspicious. He knew that look, that tone.
He rubbed a hand through his hair. "Because I mean it. Whatever I've done - whatever I will do - back in the real world, I don't want it to be like that any more here, with us. I... I can see now what I'm like when I'm actually in control - what I could be like if I was in control - and I don't want to be that mad guy anymore. I want to be me." He found he was staring at the Doctor intensely, hand clenched round his glass, almost trembling, terrifying himself by coming out with this to the Doctor and absolutely expecting to be laughed at again. Or shoved away. Or something. |
| He abruptly didn't feel like laughing anymore, even hysterically. "Good," he said, simply and meeting the Master's eyes and the intensity there easily. "I'm glad." |
| The Master didn't know what to do with that. He stood there, looking at the Doctor, trying to collect his thoughts through the battering drums.
At last he said, in a low voice, almost shyly and definitely not looking at the Doctor, "Thing is, it seems I can't do it on my own. Seems the only way I can get any control back is if you're there to help me." |
| He should have stayed in the TARDIS.
"I don't think I can," he said, frankly. "I can try, but I don't know what's going to happen if I do." That wasn't a rejection, it was definitely a warning. Though in truth mostly he didn't know what was going to happen to him. Like he could say no, though. |
| "You can't what?" Ridiculous for a 900 plus year-old Time Lord to feel tears of disappointment prick at his eyes like a fucking child who'd been turned down by his best friend. The drums hammered at him. "Can't bear to even try and help me, even a little bit?" |
| "I didn't say that," he said, as firmly as he could manage. "Did you even listen to the rest of what I said?" |
| "You said you didn't know what would happen. Which is a fucking awful excuse. You never know what's going to happen, what the result of any action is going to be. You can't. But I don't see that you helping me get control again would be likely to lead to anything bad happening."
He glared at the Doctor. "You're just scared to try in case you end up actually caring for me like he does for his Master. In case we get too domestic." |
| He blinked, several times in a row. Then he finished his water and put his glass down with a thud. He did not say what he actually thought, and yeah he was that easy to manipulate.
"All right, come on then." He inclined his head back toward the door, turned on his heel and walked. |
| "Come on what?" the Master called after him. But he followed. |