Work Text:
The Master knows it isn’t him that’s mad. That’s a stupid misconception held by the entire rest of the universe. A stupid, blind, dangerous misconception.
He isn’t mad. He is very, very sane. So sane that it hurts.
The Doctor, now, he’s mad, and it takes a special kind of mind to be as far-gone insane as him. Him with his ridiculous morality, his sense of ethics, his desire for universal justice. His belief in hope and kindness and – ha! – good. No, not good; Good. The Doctor’s strength of faith is enough to earn it the capital letter. But where are hope and kindness? What does Good look like, feel like, taste like? What’s the atomic mass of a particle of justice?
Insanity is believing in things that are not real.
No, it isn’t the Master who is insane, if you get the definition right.
He explains this to the Doctor one night in winter. He sits on the edge of his bed, his back to the Doctor, and tells him all about the universe. The Doctor knows already, but he pretends not to. He’s been to the end of life in the universe, and he still thinks there’s a world to save. He needs educating. The Master will teach him.
He explains about time and space and science as though talking to a child. The Doctor could recite this stuff in his sleep, but he shuts his mind to it on the only level where it really matters. The Master explains about forces and laws and particles, about mathematics and quantum mechanics. He explains it carefully, thoroughly, patiently. He insists the Doctor acknowledges every fact and piece of information as true. He wants to be corrected on anything the Doctor disagrees with.
They agree on everything. This is basic physics. There’s not much room for debate.
The Doctor lies behind him, still and quiet, speaking only when prompted. He’s not tied to the bed, not even bound at the wrists and ankles. Not this time. He’s kept there by his own twisted mind, his own belief in second chances, his own hope that so long as they are talking, there’s a chance he can coax the Master round.
That isn’t going to happen, because the Master knows something the Doctor doesn’t. He’s going to explain it to him. And then they’ll never have to fight again.
But first he explains black hole theory, a subject the Doctor knows far more about than him. The Doctor corrects him on nothing. He explains parallel worlds and the thousand different theories on the nature of space and matter. He talks in the language of mathematics, which the Doctor speaks more fluently than him. And still the Doctor agrees.
And then he moves onto time. They both know all about this. He’s explaining things at a level they covered during their first years at the Academy, and the Doctor lies there, taking it all in, nodding, agreeing. Trying to work out where this is going.
Once he’s covered the mechanics of time-travel and the complications of paradoxes and the immutable laws of moving a body through time and space, he turns and lies down beside the Doctor.
The Doctor turns on his side. They face each other across the white cotton sheets.
“Did I miss anything?”
The Doctor makes a face. “Sounded like a pretty good description of the entire universe and everything in it. You should write a book.”
The Master is silent for a while. He stares into the Doctor’s face. He can see something swirling behind his eyes, swirling like the time vortex, swirling like the galaxies and stars, like the universe itself. It’s no wonder, he muses, that everyone seems so dizzy all the time.
“That’s it,” he says. “That’s all there is.”
“Yes.”
A spasm of anger passes through him, the familiar anger the Doctor always manages to trigger with his brilliant brain and his pathetic mind.
“That’s all. Just particles and space and lumps of rock. That’s all, that’s everything.”
The Doctor smiles a stupid little smile. He breaches the gap, touches skin.
“Yes,” he says. “I know.”
He doesn’t know. How could he? He doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand, can’t see his own raging insanity. The Master can see it. He shuts his eyes when the Doctor touches him, tries to take them, in his mind, back to a time when they were both blinded by ignorance. He can’t get through the Doctor’s defences, can’t penetrate his shell of bloody-minded delusions. Can’t open him up to the truths that the Master sees all around them.
He feels vulnerable. The Doctor pushes himself up, leaning over him, studying him like a specimen in a jar. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. The fear seeping up his spine wasn’t part of the plan. The room is locked, there are no weapons, and the Doctor’s physical youth is subject to the Master’s whim, but he feels his handle on the moment slipping away.
He struggles to keep a grip on the certainties that maintain him, but the Doctor is stroking his hair, his expression filled with concern, and nothing in the universe could distract him more. Such compassion, such – there’s no other word for it – such love from the man he has spent the last six month systematically tormenting. He can feel himself falling again. That old feeling, ancient, primeval, that hasn’t tormented him since he saw the truth.
The Doctor kisses him, then. There’s no anger in it, none of the fury-driven lust of their previous encounters. There’s nothing in it but honesty and empathy, and hope and affection and kindness.
He tries to fight it. He fights against those stupid, petty, make-believe ideals the Doctor clings to, imposing them now upon the Master, trying to make him as mad as he is.
He pushes up, but the Doctor grips his arms. They struggle for a moment, the Doctor still kissing him. One knee between his thighs, holding his body down with hip and shoulder. The Master fights it for as long as he can, twisting and writhing in the Doctor’s embrace.
The Doctor waits him out, holding on, kissing his face and throat, and eventually he falls against the bed, panting, sweating. The Doctor wipes moisture from his forehead, mutters soothing words in a language dead beyond this room.
“You’re mad,” the Master says. “All of you. And you can’t see it.”
“Probably,” says the Doctor.
“You don’t understand.”
“I do.”
“No…”
The Master knows it isn’t him that’s mad. He has no illusions of good and evil, no inexplicable sense of justice, nothing but a cold, hard sense of survival in a passionless universe. What he feels for the Doctor isn’t affection, and it certainly isn’t love. These things don’t exist. They are make-believe. He’s never felt them, never wanted to. Doesn’t want the lies to hide behind. He’d rather the mental agony of knowing the universe for what it really is, than spin stories into webs of deceit for his own well-being.
He tells the Doctor all of this.
The Doctor’s expression does not change. He continues to touch him gently, all softness and comfort. His prisoner, trying to calm him, sooth him.
Finally, the atmosphere in the room is still and placid again. The Master finds himself responding to the Doctor’s hands and lips. Just biology, he tells himself. Nothing more.
The Doctor kisses him with a strange passion, as though the two of them were lovers. Resting half on top of him, the Doctor cradles him fondly. He wants to push him off, slam him into the mattress, teach him the value of his pathetic ideals, but the thought never makes it any higher than his subconscious.
This isn’t about winning, for once. The Master can’t work out what it is about, not yet, but there’s something here he needs. Something physical, perhaps, in the touch of his own species, or in the defiant confidence of the Doctor’s lips and tongue and fingers. His wife doesn’t dare touch him without permission; perhaps it is the Doctor’s presumption that thrills him.
Or, perhaps, it’s the memories that come alive at the Doctor’s touch. The repressed and neglected scenes of a youth abandoned long ago on a dead world. Emotions and ideas stirred up from a time when things were not so clear and definite, when the suns-rise still inspired him, and the star-scape still thrilled him. When the Doctor did not love the Master, and the Master did not hate the Doctor.
The Doctor is infuriatingly gentle with him, stroking and kissing and soothing him still, but his face has changed distinctly. His eyes cloud with lust, his features grow sharp and determined. There’s a flicker of something feral in him when his skilful fingers draw a hiss of pleasure from the Master.
The Doctor doesn’t fuck him, because that’s precisely what he wants; for someone to remind him what it is he does to others, because there’s no point if you can’t feel it yourself. Or maybe it’s more personal than that. Maybe it’s not the sex that matters, but the man himself, because he’d like that, to see the Doctor dominate him, to see him fall, to physically take from him without giving back. He’d like to know the Doctor is capable of hurting him still, of humiliating him. He wants to know the Doctor can still give as good as he gets. Otherwise, there’s no point.
The Master keeps his eyes closed. His fingers in the Doctor’s hair, his breath ragged and unhealthy, his moans deep and desperate, like those of the damned. He’s has been to hell. He knows what that sounds like.
And the Doctor is steady and vigilant and constant. He uses his hands, keeps his face level with the Master’s. Sometimes he kisses him. Just once, he bites the soft flesh of the Master’s lip, pinching it between his teeth, tugging, almost coaxing, like he wants something.
He comes slowly, in a heavy, drawn-out, black-and-white moment. Pushing into the Doctor’s hands and against the mattress, his mouth agape in a silent, breathless scream. He digs his nails into the Doctor’s arms, his eyes snap open, his feet scrabble against the sheets, and for the space of four heart-beats, he thinks he’s lost his mind.
***
The Doctor talks now, and the Master is still, and quiet. They lie back to back, touching at the shoulder and hip. It isn’t a discussion any more, or a lecture. The Doctor’s voice is calm and strong, not deep, but masculine. It’s a solid certainty in the Master’s head, where everything else is a scrambled mess of edges and sheer drops.
There’s a little light now. Outside, dawn is rising. The bedroom is cast in greys and blacks, grainy like old film.
The Doctor talks. The Master doesn’t really hear the words. He just clings to the sound, a lost boy hanging onto a stranger’s hand; or the Doctor’s voice is a bit of driftwood, and if he stops speaking, the Master will drown.
He’s telling stories. Nothing profound, nothing new. He tells the old stories of Gallifrey, all the tales they knew as children, the nursery rhymes more akin to old, comfortable jumpers than cautionary tales. The words evoke memories, when he hears them, memories he thought he’d lost. His family, his home. Stone paths over-grown with weeds. Blankets and armchairs on stormy nights. The smell of tea and something cooking, far away.
The Master thought it wasn’t him, never him, who was mad. He thought he could see though the lies. Thought he knew the truth.
He didn’t think the Doctor understood. He knows, now, how wrong he was.
The Doctor talks of things from ancient myths, tales of heroes and villains, of princesses and dragons and monsters. Some of them are real. Most of them are lies. And all of them tell of a universe that’s impossible to survive in unless you are just a little bit insane.
Slowly, inevitably, the room fills with a pinkish glow, and with the coming of the dawn, the Doctor’s voice grows heavy. The words slow, there’s a hum to his tone, a vibration like dry grass in the breeze. He speaks of real things now. Things the two of them have done. Things they heard or saw back home. Grounding them both in reality.
It won’t last long, this moment of calm, but it’s enough. Naked and cold and real, touching skin against skin, holding off the time when they’ll have to rise and resume the bizarre routine of the Valiant.
Neither of them wants that yet.
The Doctor’s words stopped making sense long ago. He speaks languages long forgotten, and ones that won’t exist for millions of years. He’ll carry on talking until he’s told to stop.
And the Master is silent, his face wet, his limbs heavy and alien to him. He lies on his side, trembling, and wonders, distantly, where he can find an atom of hate, or a molecule of revenge, or an equation for regret.