DW -- Syzygy
Title: Syzygy
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Simm!Master/Ten; Harry Saxon/John Smith
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 9,538
Warnings: some language; mental illness; narrational instability
Prompt: À la BTVS "Normal Again," either the Doctor is having hallucinations that he is actually a normal human in a mental hospital, whose husband dearly wants him to get better, or he actually is a human in a mental hospital and the whole damned Whoniverse is the product of a troubled mind. (at the best_enemies anon meme)
Summary: Worlds cross, and lives twine, and the ground gives way. Oh, yeah, and there's a stampede and stuff.
Author's Note: Originally, I wrote this all in one go the day after Thanksgiving, and it was 7,600 words long, with an ending that was depressing and kind of predictable. More importantly, eltea would have hated it, so when I figured out how to fix it the next week, I did. Then eltea read it and suggested I add more, so the next week after that, I did. XD Please just pretend that canon timelines are irrelevant; that aspect's not meant to be important, and many other things are. I was just willing to twist the whole of time and space so that Donna and the Master could have sibling!fights - can you blame me? XD Aaaaand, credit where it's due: the My Chemical Romance song "S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W" factored heavily into this piece, particularly tonally.
SYZYGY
“John-”
The quaver to the voice is unfamiliar, but the tones he would know anywhere-on any backwards planet; at any cold, forgotten corner of the universe; he would hear it spilling down any cornucopia of stars spread out above him, and he would start running. Sometimes he would run towards it, and sometimes he would run away.
He opens his eyes. He recognizes the face, but not its expression-the skin, but not its pallor; the forehead, but not its creases; the hair, but not the gray at the temples; the eyes full of foreign, slowly-welling tears. He knows the shaking hand that’s held out to him, knows it as he knows his own hands, as he knows his limits, knows his soul, knows the beating of his-of-
Wait-but-
“John, please.” The shaking hand lays itself against his cheek, palm so hot that he recoils. That’s not right; he knows that part’s not right; but the hand sets its wrongness on his neck instead, spreading its fingers, rubbing gently at a harsh tension in his shoulder. This part isn’t right, and the heat shouldn’t help, shouldn’t relax the aching muscle just a bit in spite of him.
He swallows. Breathes. Slides his eyes to the left, to the right; he needs to get his bearings on this place in order to get a grasp of the situation, doesn’t he? White walls-no, off-white. Sort of pinkish, really; slightly pinkish. Blushing. There’s a bed with a gleaming metal frame and cream-colored sheets; it’s got one of those trays attached to the headboard, the kind on a hinged pole, so that you can pull it closer or push it away, but it always stays in reach. That’s all he can make out around the Master, who’s crouched before him, whose thumb trembles as it strokes down his jaw, grating just a little on-stubble? Really? That part’s definitely not right either; what in the living hell is…
He’s wearing white-almost more of a tunic than a shirt, and trousers to go with, and he’s holding his arms over his head, like he was hiding from rampaging Ch’lukthri, and the noise of their stampede was deafening.
Well, then. That explains that; he was. He was a minute ago, anyway; he was ducking into a crevice just off of the valley that they thunder through at the exact same hour every day; he’d squeezed his eyes shut against the dust and held his ears against their trumpeting and hoped for the best.
And now he’s here, and there’s a rational explanation; he just has to sort it out. Right. Sorting. That’s what he does; that’s what the Doctor always does. That’s what the Doctor is. The Doctor makes comprehension out of chaos.
“John,” the Master says, more softly than the Doctor has ever heard him say anything. His beautiful green-brown-golden eyes are searching for something, and the Doctor wants to give it to him-yearns to. “Have I got you now?”
“Why are you calling me that?” the Doctor asks, lowering his arms, touching the Master’s wrist, his knuckles, his fingernails. Is this-? It all feels perfectly-but there are still so many discrepancies; there must be something-
The Master shuts his eyes and tilts his head back. Fluorescent lights burn coldly from the ceiling, digging shadows into the strange lines on the Master’s face, illuminating the flares of downy white hair just above his ears, white that creeps like a poison into the brown.
“It’s your name, John,” the Master says, and his voice is so heavy and so pained and so full that the Doctor blurts out the words he knows too well:
“I’m sorry-I’m so sorry-”
“Don’t be sorry, John.” The Master looks at him again, and there was hope in it before, but it’s fading now. The Master smiles a little, and the Doctor can see the effort it takes, see how it drains him, how it hurts. “Just-just come back. Please. We’ve been trying, and-and they say you’re doing better, and they didn’t get those certificates on their office walls for nothing, did they?”
It’s such a weak, harmless stab at humor that the Doctor stares, disoriented now. This-is this even-
And then he feels his mouth smiling lopsidedly, and his voice says, “Nothing but their daddies’ money, anyway.”
He doesn’t even know what that m-
The Master makes a soft sound like choking, and his eyes fill again as he smiles so much more genuinely now, a smile and then a grin, and then another sob-laugh, and he floods the room like starlight. Before the Doctor can ask what brought this on, where they are, what they’re even talking about, the Master throws both arms around him and pulls him into the tightest hug he can remember. It’s still too warm, and he wants to pull away, but the Master’s fingers are sliding through his hair, and he’s just so tired of hurting everyone-
“I miss you, John,” the Master says, into his shoulder, into his neck, into his hair-dropping little kisses as he goes. “Oh, God, I can’t-I need you, John. I need you more than-anything, and it scares the hell out of me, because I’ve always just gone on, made it work, figured it out, but I can’t now. I can’t do it without you. So-so you have to come back to me, John; please. I-love you. It feels like I can’t fit it all in my chest. Having you like this-when you’re here, right in front of me, but you’re gone-I can’t do it, John. I can’t take it. Whatever I have to do, I will, but please come back.”
The Doctor feels dizzy. The Master’s much too warm; it makes him sleepy and maybe a little feverish. And he’s figured it out now, to his deep, resonating dismay-the Master’s delusional. The Master thinks they’re people they’re not. He thinks something strange is going on, which is so patently untrue that the Doctor flinches inwardly at the very thought of trying to tell him otherwise. The drums have finally completed their work. It’s so gut-wrenchingly terrible, so inconceivably, numbingly wrong that the Doctor can’t bear not to give him something. The Master has been through enough. What would it hurt just to play along for a little while?
He lays his head on the Master’s shoulder. They still fit together perfectly after all this time; puzzle pieces or binary stars or Velcro. The Doctor loves Velcro. He had Velcro trainers once, but they got ruined because of that volcano on the planet with the blue palm trees.
He closes his eyes.
“Oh, for the love of Jelly Babies; next time, I’m going to knock him out and carry him home.”
“You could at least buy him a drink first.”
“Right. Get out your canteen.”
“‘Ikthior’s lovely,’ he says.” Rustling, and a rattling. “‘We’ll see the Ch’lukthri migration,’ he says.” He manages to push his eyelids up a sliver. It’s dark, and the air is gritty. “‘Come on,’ you say. ‘You can sit around and paint your nails some other time,’ you say-charming as ever, might I add.”
“I was always more persuasive. Will you hurry-right, go on. Just dump it on him.”
“Charming, like I said.”
Groggily, he fumbles towards some measure of understanding, and he struggles to sit up, forcing his raspy voice past his leathery tongue. “Wait, don’t-”
He receives a canteen’s load of cold water directly in the face.
It is significantly easier to sit up after that, albeit sputtering and rubbing at his eyes.
“Stop that, idiot,” the Master seethes, grabbing his wrist and slapping the back of his hand for good measure. “You’re filthy. We’re all filthy. And not in the way I like.”
“Oi,” Donna says loudly. “Bedroom talk stays in the bedroom; that’s the deal. Otherwise I’m leaving the both of you on the next habitable asteroid.”
The Doctor rubs at the lump on the back of his head instead, blinking. He can’t see anything but vague shapes of shadows, and he needs to be sure this time-
He fumbles in his pocket-yes, the coat; the suit; the tie; the trainers; it’s all here-and clutches the screwdriver so tightly at first that his fingers start to cramp. In the beautiful, wonderful, perfect blue-purple light, Donna and the Master are having a glare-off again. Donna is winning.
The Doctor grins, and then he starts laughing. Both of them turn to him, startled, and he reads the unspoken agreement to resolve the contest another time.
“Oh, fantastic,” the Master says. “He’s finally lost it. This is your fault, Noble.”
“How the hell do you figure?” Donna fires back. “You’re the one who shoved him in here and made him knock his head.”
“All right, Gingersnaps-what would you rather, that he hit his head, or that he get it crushed under the hooves of some four-horned wildebeest? Because we have a time machine, you know, so you can have it both ways if you like.”
“Ooh, I’ve got it: let’s take the TARDIS back and get your head crushed.”
The Doctor manages to get the laughing under control with a final wheeze, and they remember why they were fighting, twin flashes of guilt passing through their expressions.
“Let’s get him back to town,” the Master says. “Their physician probably can’t do much for him, but we can take some scans in the TARDIS and make sure he didn’t muck up anything he’ll want later.”
For once, Donna doesn’t argue.
“I’m fine,” the Doctor says as they all clamber out of the cranny of a cave he’d spotted as they ran. The Master keeps trying to grab his elbow and support him, but he keeps shivering at the coolness of the touch, and it makes him less stable instead of more. He tries to be gentle when shaking off the next attempt, but the Master gets that closed-off look, the shutters slamming down behind his eyes. The Doctor’s hearts lurch in unison; it’s going to take days of carefully-timed affection to bring him back to the baseline now. Hoping to do a spot of damage control, he reaches for that familiar hand, but the Master moves away.
He opens his mouth to offer an explanation wrapped up in apology, but the dust reintroduces itself to his lungs, and he coughs so hard his bones shake. It’s very undignified, actually; he’s bent double hacking, his hands on his knees. Donna pounds good-naturedly on his back, and he stares down at the dust and realizes it’s not white, it’s off-white-sort of pinkish, really. That must look bizarre all over the inside of his trachea.
The Master takes the Doctor’s other arm as he straightens again, panting, and the Doctor leans on him, partly for the wordless message it sends, partly because he’s completely winded and needs the help.
“So,” he manages. “I’m a little hazy on the details. Someone remind me why we ended up in front of the stampeding herd?”
“We were hired by the intergalactic ‘Lion King’ reenactment society,” the Master says.
“Or,” Donna says, “if you weren’t on cocaine when we arrived, we got a distress signal from the town, came down, and got our ears talked off about some cache of stolen goods with its door on a timer. A door which just so happens happens to be right on the cattle run-pardon me, the migration route. Naturally, the first words out of your mouth were ‘Sign us up.’”
This sounds just about implausible enough to be his life. He would also have believed the reenactment society thing, but only if the Master had produced a lion mask.
His life. This is his life. This wild, half-nonsensical, wholly-mad string of loosely-connected escapades is the sordid, splendid tale of his existence.
“Stop smiling,” the Master says. “You’re starting to look deranged.”
“‘Starting’?” Donna asks. “He wears a brown suit with blue stripes.”
“Be glad you’ve never seen the clothes on Gallifrey,” the Master says. “Doctor, my dashingly handsome face is over here. Doctor-Doctor-”
The sand-the dust-the ground is blurring, and then it folds, and strips of pink-white and sky-blue turn like a pinwheel. The center is a white spot, whiter than white, blazing fierce and hot and pulling him in, irrevocable and irresistible in equal measure, and the whole of the universe warps around his trajectory-
He’s so warm-tangled in warmth and softness both. He coaxes his eyes open, which isn’t easy, because they want him to keep dozing for a while.
Harry has both arms wrapped around him; he looks exhausted even while asleep. Carefully, trying not to shift, John disentangles one hand and lifts it, brushing the hair off of Harry’s forehead, sliding a fingertip slowly through the streaks of white.
They’re his fault.
The revelation hits him like a lead fist to the abdomen, and he’s trying so hard to cry quietly that he probably just makes it worse.
Harry mumbles, stirs, and blinks. He smiles-weary but well-meaning-and then he sees the tear streaks, and it’s gone again, all the hope. But the love stays; there’s more of that, and that’s terrifying somehow.
“John,” Harry whispers, “John, come here, come on-”
“I did this to you,” he gets out. “I did this; I did all of this; I’m sorry; I-”
Harry kisses him to shut him up, like he always does-isn’t that how they started out? It was the middle of January, and they were going to go back into the pub in just another minute, as soon as John was done gesturing up at the wash of stars and explaining his theory about multiple universes coexistent in parallel planes, and Harry grabbed his scarf and dragged him into a freezing kiss just as he got to the part about decisional forks and multiplicity.
That had been one of the weaker parts of the theory anyway.
“We-we met in school,” John says when they pull apart, just an inch or two, Harry’s breath still warm and moist against his lips. “Sort of, anyway-Oxford and Cambridge, me and you. Only your dad taught my best class-”
“Theoretical Astrophysics,” Harry says softly, and there’s a different hurt in his rapt eyes now, an older one.
“And I was such a suck-up-”
Harry almost laughs-just a huff of amusement and a curling at the corners of his lips, but it peels half a decade off.
“Well, I was!” John says, trying at a grin. “I practically followed him home after class. I think he only invited me to that presentation to get me to leave him alone.”
“He only invited me because I’d told him I was sick and tired of hearing about how brilliant you were, and I’d said I wanted to spend time with him.” The old hurt’s back. John starts to wonder, and then he starts to fear-
“Harry, your dad-your dad, he’s not-”
Harry’s fingers tighten in the hair at the nape of John’s neck, and he looks away. His voice, when it comes, is quiet and low.
“You’ve been in and out for two years, John. Dad-there was a woman on the Tube with a gun, and-you know Dad. He couldn’t just-and she panicked, and… I told you just after, but I don’t think you were-awake-then. I just needed to tell someone, and-it’s still you. It’s always still been you.”
It sounds like something he’s said a thousand times, trying to make it true.
The words spiral slowly downward, carving out a hollowness in John’s chest. He’d been about to quit astrophysics for good when he took Yohann “Yana” Saxon’s class, and then it was all new and real and right again, and he thought he’d been crazy for wanting to stop. Yana polished the constellations, gave him his passion back, and then surrendered him into the hands of the only human being who had ever inspired him with as much idolizing adoration as the stars. Yana was the reason he loved anything and the reason he was loved by anyone.
“When?” he asks, because Why won’t help.
“Last year,” Harry says. “Right before I made MP.”
“But you were Prime Minister,” John says, and then feels sick.
Harry tries to smile again. “Only in my sad, egotistical dreams, John.”
John’s fingers are tingling. He curls his hands in the front of Harry’s coat and swallows hard. The question takes most of the strength he has.
“What am I like?”
Harry’s lips part. “Wh…”
“When I’m not ‘awake,’” John says, fighting the bitterness and losing out. “When I’m not here. When I’m ruining your life.”
“Stop that,” Harry says, softly with a worn edge of defeat. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is!” John tightens his grip on Harry’s coat, twists it in his hands, struggles not to breathe too fast to be understood. “It is; you know that. You try not to think it, but you do. And that’s fine; I don’t care; it’s your right. I haven’t done shit for you in two years except-what? What do I do? Sit here and stare at the wall and ignore you no matter what you say? Shut you out and go off to-to fantasy-land, where I’ve got a time machine and a magic wand?” Harry tries to interrupt, but he’s never been a perfect politician, because he cares too much, and what he’s thinking always shows. “That’s it, isn’t it? I just sit and stare at the wall, and you come in every week-”
Harry’s voice sticks. “Every day.”
“Every fucking day, Harry, and you keep trying, and it never works, and your life’s falling apart, and it’s my fault.” John’s crying again. He wishes he wasn’t; it’s not like it fixes anything, and it gives him a headache, but it’s all just- “And your hair’s going gray.”
Harry looks at him for a long moment. Everything, every possible emotion in all of John’s parallel-plane universes, slides across his face, like light flashing off of the little waves in a stream.
“It’s shit, isn’t it?” Harry says. “My hair.”
John forces out a wet laugh. “I think it’s sexy.”
“Yeah, you’ve always been a loony.”
“That’s what you l-love about me,” John says, and he buries his face in Harry’s shirt and tries so hard to make the other world he lives in go away.
He can’t.
“I love everything about you, idiot,” Harry says. “Just the loony bit in particular.”
John runs his fingertip up Harry’s collar, then up his neck, and lays it over the pulse point.
“Tell me about when we met,” he says.
“I was twenty,” Harry says. “You were nineteen. I was sitting with my dad trying to brace myself for another two and a half hours of astrophysics jargon when he saw you walk in, or maybe the cat dragged you, and he jumped up and waved, and I was going to kill him for ruining our night out. He introduced us, and you thought I was a prat-because I was-and I thought you were a space-case. You had these square glasses that kept sliding down your nose, and I was pretty sure you were going to blind me with your big, dorky grin. When we were talking at the half, you told me to get into theater to improve my public speaking, because I’d make a pathetic barrister without the confidence. For some reason-still haven’t figured this one out-I listened to you, and you took the train and came to every single stupid show, even though they always cast me as the villain and put me in a rubbish beard. I’d make you stay overnight so that the vagrants wouldn’t kill you on the train back, and you’d tell me I was paranoid, but you’d always stay anyway, and after a while I started making up excuses for you to come even when I didn’t have time for the plays anymore. And then I got really stupid and started paying for your dinner all the time, pretending it counted as asking you out on a date. And then I started paying for your drinks, and one night you got so smashed that you did a striptease for me when we got back to my room-”
“We agreed never to speak of that again,” John says, but he’s smiling, and it feels so warm in here, even warmer than before.
“Tough shit,” Harry says contentedly. “You said to tell, so I’m telling. Then I took you to that dodgy pub with the second-floor balcony and made the mistake of asking you to explain what you were working on, and we made out until the waiter came to find us and ended up traumatized for life.”
“I think we have that effect on most people,” John says.
“Then,” Harry goes on pleasantly, “we spent an inordinate amount of money on lousy train tickets, each almost flunked out because we were so distracted by infatuation, and moved in together when we graduated, at which point I learned that the reason you only ever wore that horrible brown coat was because it was the only thing in your entire wardrobe remotely suited for winter. I bought you nothing but clothing that Christmas; you did not think it was funny. I bought you a telescope for New Year’s, and you forgave me.”
“’S not horrible,” John mumbles into Harry’s chest. “Janis Joplin gave me that coat.”
At the silence, he realizes what he just said-what he just did. What he does to Harry Saxon-to the man who has captivated him since they were children-every single moment of every single day. John denies him. John forsakes him. John chooses Neverland instead.
“I’m tired,” he says weakly. “I think I’m just… I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, John. Just sleep. It’s fine.” Harry kisses his forehead, smoothes his hair. “I’ve got you.”
John-
No.
The Doctor-the Doctor, the Doctor, the Doctor-opens his eyes. Rough-hewn beams crisscross and intersect above his head; very rustic cabin, this place.
He shifts. He’s in a bed. Cream-colored sheets-
He fights his hands free and reaches for his shirt collar, for his tie; they’ll be damp and crusted with dust-
He’s wearing some kind of soft shirt with a scoop neck, and it’s completely dry.
No, no, no, no, no-
He buries both hands in his hair; he’ll pull it all out at the roots if he has to, but he’ll think of someth…
It’s damp.
His hair’s damp. Damp from-he lowers one hand and licks his palm; it’s freshwater. His hair’s damp from Donna’s canteen.
“Hey,” a voice says, and a hand presses on his arm. “Slow down, Spaceman. If you lose it, you’ll prove him right, and I’ll have to do that Sudoku thing.”
“Seppuku,” he says faintly.
Donna grins. Her copper hair is streaked with pink-white dust. “Welcome back, Doctor. You have a nice trip?”
The Doctor picks at the plain white cotton that has replaced his preferred accoutrements. “Where’re my things?”
“The Other One’s got ’em all,” Donna says, because Donna knows no master, especially not one who’s self-proclaimed. A ferocious wave of love sweeps through the Doctor’s hearts. “He put you in that, too; I didn’t want to cut my hands to ribbons on your ribs, see. It’s all right-I made sure he didn’t feel you up while you were out.”
The Doctor gets the feeling that the Master was more concerned with panic than with perversion at the time, and he gets the feeling that Donna knows he knows.
The other voice rings out: “He’s-?”
The Master rushes over. His face is striped with the dust, and he has a black bag slung over one shoulder.
“Stop passing out,” he reprimands, scowling to enforce the point. “For your information, you’re significantly heavier than you look.”
“Thank you,” the Doctor says, trying not to grin. “I’ll file that away.”
“You’re in the physician’s office,” the Master says before he can ask. “Second floor-again, I think your body mass is dimensionally transcendental, too.”
The Doctor glances around. It’s a small room, but a cozy one; there’s a short dresser with a mirror on the top, and he sees a small, colorful rug crumpled up in the corner, presumably because the Master kicked it there to clear a space for pacing like a tiger in a cage.
“’S nice,” he says. “Much better than a hospital. I hate hospitals.”
He’s startled by the tears that prickle in his eyes. He presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets before the others can see, holding in a shuddery breath.
“Bit of a headache,” he invents.
“He’ll be coming back soon,” Donna says. “Physician, that is. He had to fetch a couple things.”
“Such as an exorcist,” the Master offers helpfully.
Donna rolls her eyes. “Such as his special book on concussions, is what he said.”
The Doctor smiles at the pair of them, and then he reaches for one of each of their hands and holds tight. The Master’s double-pulse beats against his fingers; Donna’s single one is strong and quick and proud. He never wants to move, and perhaps he never will. Not until he gets hungry, at any rate.
Something crashes mightily downstairs.
The Doctor is torn between sighing heavily and leaping out of bed, so he does both at once.
“Take it that’s not the physician,” he says.
“Probably the thieves whose stockpile we compromised,” the Master muses, holding the Doctor’s trainers out to him by the laces.
The Doctor takes them. “Wait, but-”
“Hold that thought, Doctor,” Donna says, extending a hand towards the Master. “Gimme the whatsit, boyo.”
“You’ll have to be a little more specific,” the Master says drily-except apparently she won’t, because he rummages in the bag and hands her what appears to be a crossbow, which he follows up with a wooden bolt embellished with a barbed metal tip at one end and a long length of thin rope at the other. She shoves the drapes aside, leans out the open window, fits the bolt into the bow, and takes aim.
“Um,” the Doctor says.
Donna fires.
The bolt whistles through the air, rope whipping after, and embeds itself in the wall just above the second-floor window of the house across the way. Donna tugs hard, then feeds their end of the rope through the arcing prod of the crossbow. She sets her jaw as the sounds from downstairs increase in volume and in violence, ties the rope securely to the drapes’ rod, grasps the stock of the crossbow, and jumps out the window.
The Doctor is going to find a way to make this woman immortal.
In the meantime, the Master is pushing him towards the window, shooting glances at the very frail-looking door to this room. There are furious, slamming footsteps on the stairs.
The Doctor looks down at his trainers in his hands, and then it clicks, of course-he tosses one set of laces over the rope from either side, clamps them in his hands when they line up, hopes avidly that the Master was exaggerating about his weight, and throws himself off of the windowsill.
Blessedly, the laces hold, and he soars through the dusty air, following the curve of the rope towards the window Donna’s already kicked in on the other side. The rope hisses with the friction, and he thinks he might smell smoke, but he can’t angle his body enough to slow down-and, rather, continues gaining speed as he nears the very solid wall of his destination. The barbed arrow buried in the stucco trembles worryingly, the whole rope dipping as it moves, not that it makes a difference, since he’s about to splatter on the wall in three meters, two meters, one, one-half-
He yelps, releases his left hand’s death grip, and sails feet-first through the window, skidding across the floor and colliding with a chair.
“Knew I should’ve moved that,” a familiar voice sighs.
He lies dazed for a moment, trainers still clutched in his right hand, and wonders why the ceiling is undulating like a Bruvaxi kaleidoscope.
“Allons-yyyyyy,” another of his favorite voices whoops, and then something cool and very heavy stumbles across the floor and lands on top of him. “Oof.”
“Get off of him,” Donna reprimands. “And give me your purse-”
“It’s a bag, Noble; we’ve been through this fifty-seven times-”
“I don’t care what it is; you’re squishing him!”
The Master’s weight lifts off of the Doctor’s torso, which he does have to admit is something of a relief. Hazily he watches the Master toss the black bag to Donna, and she takes out a Bowie knife, hops onto the windowsill, and cuts the rope.
“Are they coming?” he asks, and his voice slurs a bit.
“If he didn’t have a concussion before,” Donna snaps, elbowing the Master hard as she kneels next to the Doctor, “he certainly does now. Why don’t you watch where you’re landing, dumbo?”
“Why didn’t he?” the Master snipes back, his grip on the Doctor’s arm tightening. “Stay with us for five minutes, would you, idiot?”
“I’m tired,” the Doctor says, distantly. “I think I’m just…”
He wakes up and fights the shirt off of his body, because his skin’s on fire. He shoves the blankets, kicks them, tears them off and hurls them aside, scrambling out of the bed and dropping to the floor as his knees give way. The room is empty.
“Master!” He claws at the edge of the mattress, trying to pull himself to his feet. “Master, where-I-”
The floor is cold; he lets go of the bed and sinks down, curls up, presses his cheek against the linoleum tiles. He must be having an allergic reaction to something-and then he knows what. He’s reacting to the extremely rough traveling device that’s brought him here again, dragged him kicking and screaming-fairly literally this time-back to this unorthodox, unbearable prison cell-
“Master!”
And then the Master races in, smelling of cheap coffee; there’s a splash of it on his sleeve, but the door slams shut before the Doctor can see whether he dropped the paper cup that held it as he ran. The Master crouches down and holds him, rocking slowly back and forth; the Master shushes him and cards his fingers through the Doctor’s hair and holds him tighter.
“It’s me, John-”
“Don’t.” The Doctor buries his face in his hands. Maybe he can make it change, make it disappear. “That’s not-it’s a fake name, it’s an alias; I use it because some people won’t accept just ‘the Doctor,’ you know. People are skeptical these days, and it’s an uphill battle getting them to trust me at all-” The words won’t stop pouring out of his mouth; they taste metallic, like he’s holding a magnet underneath his tongue. He digs his fingernails into his forehead-if he can just scrape off his skin, he’ll know who’s really there-
The Master catches his wrists and pries his hands away. “Stop it. What are you-you’re bleeding, John, for Christ’s sake!”
“I want to go home.” The Doctor presses his unrevealing face into the Master’s shoulder. “But it’s gone, Gallifrey’s gone, and you’re all I’ve got-”
“John,” the Master says, slowly and unsteadily, drawing back to look him in the eyes, “you’re all I’ve got. So-please, John, please, stay with me. I can’t do this alone.”
“Do what?” the Doctor asks uncertainly. He’s probably building a death ray, or planning a takeover, or-or-
“Never mind,” the Master says softly, thumbing a hot, wet dribble off of his forehead. “Tell me-tell me about what you see. The other place you go. Can you tell me, John? Maybe we can work from there.”
The Doctor’s tired again. He leans in, laying his head on the Master’s shoulder, stroking his hand up and down the Master’s lapel.
“It’s you and me,” he says, “and my best friend-Donna. She’s called Donna; she’s brilliant. As brilliant as you and I are, I think, but in a different way.”
“I’m there?” the Master asks, sounding surprised.
“Of course you are,” the Doctor mumbles, smoothing down his rumpled tie. “I couldn’t leave you. Doesn’t matter what you did; we’re in this together, you know. Well… I think you do know, now. You’re different than before. And I love it; I just love it. I love it more than anything, the three of us like that. It’s what I was always looking for, the balance of it. You and me and Donna, somehow perfectly aligned.”
“What do we do?”
He’s playing Devil’s Advocate. That’s all right; the Doctor can play, too. He’s tired, but the Master must be tired, too, after the day they’ve had, and he probably feels even worse than the Doctor does, what with how they keep getting slingshotted back and forth…
“We fix things,” the Doctor says. “We make things better, as much as we can. And it’s such a huge universe that there’s always something else to fix, but… that’s what we’re for. That’s what Time Lords are for. They didn’t realize-you remember how they were, all talk and no action, nor much of anything else-but that’s what we’re about. That’s what the power’s for.”
“We… save… the universe?” the Master says.
The Doctor smiles, ever so slightly mischievously, and kisses his neck. “You’re warming to it. I can tell. And you love being in a TARDIS again-I can tell that, too.”
“A-a what?”
“It’s all right; she’s warming to you, too. She might let you drive her soon.”
“She’s a spaceship?”
The Doctor nuzzles contentedly at the Master’s ear. “Time And Relative Dimension In Space. That’s the best bit. No, it’s all the best bit. Well, maybe the running is the best bit. I love the running.”
The Master runs a hand slowly down the Doctor’s back, silent, soft.
“You go to this place,” he says quietly, “and you have adventures with this woman Donna and some alternate version of me?”
“A less-amnesiac one,” the Doctor confirms, hugging him to soften the joke.
“Is that what you want, John?” the Master asks, and the Doctor draws back in alarm, because it sounds like he’s going to cry. “Adventure? I mean-we can-we could travel more; it’d be difficult with the new schedule, but if that’s what you need, you just have to ask…”
The Doctor kisses him-vigorously, sucking on his bottom lip.
“I have everything I want,” he says, setting his forehead against the Master’s, looking into his eyes and breathing softly on his reddening mouth. “Come to bed with me, Master?”
Except it goes all wrong-there’s no smirk, no suggestive quirk of the eyebrow to accent it. The Master looks… desolate.
“It’s me, John,” he says miserably. “It’s Harry. You know me. You knew me ten minutes ago.”
The Doctor swallows. He’s trapped again-he can’t insist on truth; the Master’s hurt enough on his account. He has to let it go.
“Of course,” he says. “Of course I do, Harry.” It’s getting cold. Was it always this cold? “Can we go to bed, Harry? It’s chilly in here.”
The Master nods. He stands and takes both of the Doctor’s hands, helps him to his feet, and climbs up into the bed with him, toeing off his shoes.
“I’m tired,” the Doctor mumbles into the Master’s chest. Something’s wrong, but exhaustion’s setting in again, stealing his faculties, and he’s too slow with sleepiness to pull them back. Something’s wrong; something…
“Me, too, John,” the Master murmurs, and the Doctor sleeps.
“…zapped him pretty badly-who knows what neurons burnt out on the spot?”
“I’m going to do worse to you if you don’t stop talking like that.”
He groans and rolls over, trying to block the voices out. Who is he this time? Who’s he trying not to wound by living the wrong life?
A hand falls on either of his shoulders, one warm, one cool. “Doctor?” the voices say in unison.
Ah. This one.
He rolls back and looks up at them.
“Why were they even after us?” he asks, and they stare at him bewilderedly. “The-whoever they were, the thieves. We would never have had time to get into their treasure trove and take anything, not before the Ch’lukthri came.”
“We didn’t have to,” Donna says, sitting back on her heels but keeping her hand on his arm. “You and Mr. Prime Minister broke the timer and the lock. Then we had to run.”
The Doctor rewinds in his head. “In the process of which I barbecued my brain again?”
The Master pauses, licking his lips. “There was an electrical field as a safeguard. You went first.” He pauses again. “Because you’re a dolt.”
“He just wouldn’t have noticed if he’d walked into that thing,” Donna says crisply, “given the state his brain’s in anyway.”
The Doctor tilts his head. He needs to get his bearings, and then-and then-
“It’s another bloody cave,” the Master says. “Her idea, of course.”
“They’re not going to expect us to hide in ‘another bloody cave,’ Time Lout,” Donna retorts. “We had to get you somewhere safe while we figured out how to contact the town sheriff.”
Somewhere safe. Donna’s probably right, and they are safe-so why are his hearts pounding like pistons, battering his ribs?
And then he knows.
He scrambles to sit up and reaches out, planting one hand on each side of the Master’s chest.
Two hearts.
He lets himself collapse to the dusty ground again, lets the shadows cinch in around him, lets the darkness take him back.
“To what do I owe-” the Master starts.
“Leave it,” Donna says sharply, and he does.
“John.” Harry kisses his cheek just under his eye. “Earth to John.”
He shakes off the cobwebs of the most recent dream. Harry is the first thing he sees. God, that’ll never get old.
“John to Earth,” he says, convincing his sleep-numbed face to smile. “John would like to know how you can possibly manage to look so good under these lights.”
Harry looks so happy-and so surprised to be-that John doesn’t want to ask, but he needs to know.
“There’s just one thing…”
Harry pushes his hair back from his face, smiling warmly at him. “It’s yours, John.”
John smiles back. “Where’s Donna gone?”
Silence falls-hard. Harry isn’t smiling anymore.
“I just-” John tries to think of what to say. They’re never jealous of each other; it can’t be that. “I’m happy here with you-I just want to be sure that she’s all right, that’s all.”
Harry runs his knuckles up and down John’s cheek. Up and down, up and down, like he can’t stop, or something terrible will happen if he does-like he can’t let go.
“John,” he says, slowly, hesitantly now. “I… you’re still awake?”
John nods, leaning into Harry’s hand.
“You had a friend,” Harry says, quietly. “When you were a kid. You had a friend named Donna, your best friend, this little girl with red hair. When you were fifteen, she had a brain aneurysm in the middle of the night, and she died. Nobody knew there was anything wrong until it was far too late; sometimes these things just happen, out of nowhere.”
“But-” John begins. He’s going to cry again. He has to have Donna; he needs her as much as-
“We went to that little town outside of Belfast where you grew up. It was for your birthday seven years ago-do you remember? We were walking by the church, and I demanded that you marry me, even if we had to go to the Netherlands to do it. And you told me not to be stupid, because we’d be together until England legalized it anyway, and I taught you how to waltz right in the middle of the street. And that night when we were lying in bed at the hotel, listening to the faucet drip and trying to figure out if we were too tired to care, you told me that that was the church where they’d buried her.”
John thinks he might throw up, except his throat’s too tight.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “It’s all-it’s all tangled up. She’s-she lives in Chiswick. Or she did, except we had this adventure when she was getting married to this deceiver in league with the Racnoss, but she didn’t want to come, and then later she did, and she didn’t mind that I wouldn’t let you out of my sight after what happened in the year that never was-”
“John,” Harry says, and John thinks he was kinder to the Racnoss, all told.
He wraps his arms around Harry’s neck, holds him close, breathes in the coffee and the old cologne.
“I’m killing you,” he says. “And now I’m killing him.”
“Don’t you dare.” Harry grabs his shoulders and pushes him away, and for the first time, he looks like-himself. “John Smith, don’t you fucking dare.” Harry shakes him hard. “Don’t you ever say that, do you hear me? You can talk about-about TARDIS and Donna and whatever you want; call me Master; I don’t care, John, but don’t you ever even think that. I love you, John. And I’m not letting go as long as there’s something to hold on to.”
He’s right.
But John is, too.
He runs his fingers through the comet-tail of white in Harry’s hair, stroking it back, smoothing it down. Somewhere-somewhere real-the Doctor is in danger because of him. Because he’s holding on to the dream.
He knows. He wishes that he didn’t, but he knows where he has to go from here.
“I’m sorry,” he says, pressing his cheek to Harry’s chest, laying his ear over Harry’s heart.
“Honestly, John,” Harry sighs softly. “I forgive you.”
John closes his eyes, listening to the gentle rhythm, holding on to the most wonderful man in the universe, and knows what the other piece of him would say.
This is going to be harder than he thought.
The Doctor wakes up in the TARDIS.
The connection’s gone-broken, severed, closed. He expects the worst, but he hopes, hopes, hopes for something better. Perhaps it’s that capacity that’s kept him alive this long.
“Come on, John,” he whispers, for the infinitesimal chance. Isn’t the impossible most likely in his world?
Donna and the Master are on either side of him before he can close his eyes again.
“What do you need?” Donna asks.
He takes a deep breath and holds it until he feels the reassuring tickle of the respiratory bypass, waiting in the wings. Well-in the lungs. He’s never had wings. He’s not sure what he’d do with them if he did.
“Donna,” he says, “that is a ridiculous question.”
She looks hurt until he holds his hands out-one for hers, and one for the Master’s.
“You,” he says. “Both of you. Does it need saying?”
The Master smirks. “I think that’s a moot point, since you just said it anyway.”
The Doctor frowns at him. Donna gives an unconvincing cough.
He knows they’ll humor him for a few hours yet-all night, perhaps. At least until the Master thinks of something more entertaining to do, and Donna leaves the room in a flood of threats and protestations, as if they don’t all hear the fondness underneath.
“Don’t let go,” the Doctor says.
So they don’t.
Harry wakes up alone in the bed.
What… His eyes are gritty, and his tongue feels like a wad of used chewing gum. As soon as he’s a little more awake, he will put that simile in the mental bin and slam the lid. He stretches an arm out for John and finds nothing more or less than wrinkled sheets and residual warmth.
He’s awake now.
He sits up, eyes darting, probing the corners, gauging the space behind the door-as if John would hide, as if he remembers or understands what’s in this world to hide from. Harry scrambles off the bed, kicks his shoes out of the way, and moves towards the lavatory, bracing himself-freezing his heart, tightening his shoulders, crafting his spine into a steel girder. He can take it. He can take it; whatever’s behind this door; it can’t be worse than…
But it can. He knows it can.
He flings the door open, his heart in his throat and melting now, but the tiny half-room’s empty.
That’s not enough. That’s not good enough. He can’t let himself sink into relief; not yet. Maybe not ever. Where in the bloody fucking hell is he?
Harry jogs out to the hall. The hurriedness of the motion stirs the panic in the pit of his stomach, and then he runs-he runs for his life.
He’ll try the roof. The lift’s in the lobby; he’d take the stairs, but it’s a tall building, and he fucked his knees up so badly playing rugby that-he’d never-
He skids around a corner in his black socks, slides too far, slams into the wall. The jarring flash of pain shakes him out of the terror, steadying him, and he takes a deep breath and tries to focus. Roof. John. PleaseGodno.
He has much more control of his trajectory as he skates into the lobby, flying on the linoleum; he’ll have to get John to try this sometime, because it’s exhilarating. John’ll love it. John-
He fights the feelings down. He has to turn them off until he knows; they’ll just hurt him more, every fragment of hope another silver needle in his wounds. He bangs his fist against the button by the lift doors, watching the numbers on the little screen above it counting down.
“Mr. Saxon?” the girl at the desk asks tentatively.
He half-turns; she’s always been nice to him, but what in the hell could she possibly want-
She points out the front doors. “I just… let him,” she says.
He sees the slender figure all in white-halfway down the steps, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched for warmth against the chill that the night drew in.
Harry presses a hand over his heart; the one he’s got doesn’t feel adequate for this job. He tries to breathe, tries not to cry. The lift dings. He repositions the hand over his mouth and goes outside.
John has his head tilted back as far as it’ll go. The stars reflect impossibly brightly in his eyes, and his angular profile stands out starkly as he starts to turn; he’s an island of white against a parking lot cut only by orange streetlamps. For a moment, he studies Harry sidelong, and Harry stops dead.
John smiles at him nervously and then looks up at the sky.
“That’s it, then,” he says.
Harry swallows and takes a few steps closer. “Yeah?”
John nods sagely once. “That’s it.” He gestures upward. “This is as close as we’re ever going to get to them.”
Harry can hear the significance, but he doesn’t know what it means.
John bites his lip and then nods again. “But I think… I think that’s all right.”
The pavement is frigid under Harry’s feet, rough through his socks; he glances down and sees that John’s feet are bare, the trouser legs trailing, pooled at his heels.
“Come inside, John,” he says. Maybe he shouldn’t have used the name. Sometimes- “Isn’t it cold out here?”
“I don’t want to come inside,” John replies, and Harry’s heart drops like a stone. His head hurts from the fear and the running and the insidious spread of the ache in his knees, and it’s pounding in rhythm with the blood dragging itself through his veins. Today has been endless, and he just wants to shut it out and close his eyes and pretend that none of this… He just wants a cup of tea and a book with no breaks for political news; he wants his bed-their bed-and John’s nine-hundred-year-old duvet and the lamp that buzzes after half an hour. He just wants sanctuary. He just-
“I want to go home,” John says.
The blood rushes in Harry’s ears.
“What?” he says.
John wraps his arms around himself, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, looking at his toes. “I know I’m not supposed to… run… And I’m probably not-ready-but-I just want… to go home. Do you think-” He looks up at Harry now, eyes uncertain, chewing on his chapped lip again. “Do you think maybe you can talk them into it? I mean, you’ve always been…”
The persuasive one. His father used to say that.
“I think I have a better idea,” Harry says, and he fishes out his keys.
John blinks. “We can’t just-leave.”
Harry smiles faintly, holding a hand out to him. “Oh, yes, we can.”
John seizes it and hangs on, grinning, shooting glances back at the doors as Harry leads him down the steps and towards the car. “Allons-y,” he says.
“Seulement avec toi,” Harry says, and unlocks the door. He will recover his shoes and his coat and the paperwork tomorrow. Or next week. Or never.
John doesn’t seem to care that he’s walking barefoot on Gower Street at one in the morning, but he balks when he sees the front door to their flat. “Has it always been-?”
Harry gives him a long look. “It’s always been blue, John. You insisted on one of the ones with the blue doors-remember?”
“Right,” John says shakily-he’s lying. “Yeah, that’s right. I’m sorry.”
Harry kisses his temple on the way to let them in. “I told you, you don’t have to be.”
“I can’t-” John halts mid-sentence as he steps into the foyer. He turns in a slow circle, just looking. There are details that have changed-the coat rack broke, so Harry bought a new one; he kept knocking into the end table when he came home tired and eventually just moved it-but it’s essentially the same as it was two years ago. “I can’t always sort it out,” John says, faintly. He hesitates, and then he crosses to the new coat rack and reaches towards the old brown coat that Harry walks past every single morning and every single night.
John moves to touch it, and then he recoils as though his hand’s been burned. Before Harry can catch his wrist, he’s starting for the kitchen. “You have to get rid of that thing. Just-get rid of it.”
Rarely has Harry been assigned a task that sounds more pleasant.
John makes a circuit of the kitchen, putting his hands on things: the microwave buttons, the oven dials, the bronze saltshaker. He pauses when he sees the newspaper that Harry disemboweled all over the tabletop during breakfast.
“What?” John says. “What?”
“What’s wrong?” Harry asks bewilderedly, and then John has snatched up the front page and is shoving it in his face.
“Since when are you Minister of Defence?” John demands, stabbing his finger repeatedly at the picture beneath the headline. It’s an awful photograph; Harry looks far more exhausted than triumphant.
“Since this morning?” he attempts.
John blinks, then stares, then lowers the paper and looks at it, clenching it between his hands. He skims the text.
“Due to illness,” he reads, and his voice trembles again, “Mr Saxon’s partner of over fifteen years and husband of five, a Dr John Smith, has unfortunately missed most of Saxon’s public appearances during his meteoric rise to political fame.”
Harry forces himself to swallow.
“It’s a crap piece,” he says. “They don’t talk about policy at all.”
“I’ve been gone,” John says, staring at the black ink on the gray page. “I’ve been gone a long time.”
“I’d have waited forever,” Harry says, trying hard to smile.
John puts the paper down and drifts past him without acknowledging that he’s spoken. The cold, familiar fear snakes through Harry’s veins, and he follows closely, desolate at the prospect of losing him again so suddenly, when they’ve come so far.
John steps into the bedroom, pauses, and looks around. Harry turns the light on and mentally starts counting down towards when it will begin to hum.
John turns and looks up-lucidly. He takes Harry’s hand and leads him over to the bed, then pulls both of them down among the sheets that Harry threw back at dawn and never bothered straightening. He fingers his ancient duvet with his free hand, and then he curls in and buries his face in Harry’s chest.
Harry draws the blankets up over them and wraps both arms around John Smith-his John, the only John he cares about. The only one there is.
“I love you,” John whispers. He fists his hands in Harry’s shirt. “Don’t let go.”
“Never will,” Harry says.
And he doesn’t.
-and that is an unpleasant sound for a white tiger/wild boar creature to make, even by the Doctor’s rather rigorous standards for monster noises.
“Donna!” he calls, careening past her and reaching out a hand.
“Honestly!” Donna shouts back, but she pauses in working the screwdriver at the seal on the door and throws it in an elegant arc, from which he snatches it out of the air. One well-aimed blast of sonic energy later, the weak chains supporting the chandelier squeal and then snap, and a masterpiece of steel and obsidian crashes down between the tiger-boar and the Master, whom it had backed into a corner as he ran.
The Master takes up running again, skirting the edges of the small crater in the marble floor, skipping deftly over the shards of volcanic glass.
“Remind me why we have to be the distraction?” he asks.
“Because if we get skewered-” The Master raises a hand, and the Doctor tosses him the screwdriver. “-we come back.”
“We come back different,” the Master points out, aiming the screwdriver at one of the gas lamps on the wall, which promptly explodes in the tiger-boar’s extremely off-putting face. Trust the Master to find something to blow up while they’re fighting for their lives. Well-for their regenerations, anyway.
“Nothing wrong with different,” the Doctor says.
“Oi, Time Losers!” Donna yells, and the Master hurls the screwdriver right to her waiting hand-without looking, because he’s busy fixing the Doctor with a sardonic expression.
“Come on,” the Doctor says, grinning, then cringing as the tiger-bear gives another ear-splitting, hair-raising, bone-rattling roar and bounds towards them. It shakes its bristly mane, and he grabs the Master’s hand. “Live a little.”
“As long as I don’t have to die a lot to do it,” the Master sighs, curling his fingers around the Doctor’s all the same.
“Oh, bugger,” Donna says.
There’s a tremendous crack that seems to emanate from everywhere at once, and then the whole of the marble floor gives way.
“I told you so!” the Master howls as they and the tiger-boar and innumerable massive chunks of marble all fall together.
John opens his eyes. He peeks over Harry’s shoulder and sees that it’s just before five-thirty in the morning, which is why the alarm hasn’t rung quite yet, and the gorgeous man beside him is still in bed.
In the light of the oncoming dawn, John looks at Harry for a moment, memorizing him-his nose, his cheekbones, his eyelashes, his hair. There are deep, dark circles underneath his eyes, but when John traces one with his fingertip, as softly as he can, it feels like something that can be healed, even if it can’t ever be undone.
Harry doesn’t even stir. John makes sure that his touch stays light enough to keep it that way, running his finger slowly down Harry’s jaw; the shadow makes him look like one of those deliberately scruffy movie stars, but warmer, and more real. John smoothes the collar of the wrinkled dress shirt below, embracing the smallness of the stab of guilt from the recollection that Harry hates sleeping in his clothes.
But John’ll make it up to him. He will, a thousand times over-starting today, even if it requires figuring out how to make a breakfast that doesn’t involve cold cereal.
John smiles to himself, settling a hand on Harry’s waist, tucking his head under Harry’s chin. He drifts back to sleep and dreams of something different.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Simm!Master/Ten; Harry Saxon/John Smith
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 9,538
Warnings: some language; mental illness; narrational instability
Prompt: À la BTVS "Normal Again," either the Doctor is having hallucinations that he is actually a normal human in a mental hospital, whose husband dearly wants him to get better, or he actually is a human in a mental hospital and the whole damned Whoniverse is the product of a troubled mind. (at the best_enemies anon meme)
Summary: Worlds cross, and lives twine, and the ground gives way. Oh, yeah, and there's a stampede and stuff.
Author's Note: Originally, I wrote this all in one go the day after Thanksgiving, and it was 7,600 words long, with an ending that was depressing and kind of predictable. More importantly, eltea would have hated it, so when I figured out how to fix it the next week, I did. Then eltea read it and suggested I add more, so the next week after that, I did. XD Please just pretend that canon timelines are irrelevant; that aspect's not meant to be important, and many other things are. I was just willing to twist the whole of time and space so that Donna and the Master could have sibling!fights - can you blame me? XD Aaaaand, credit where it's due: the My Chemical Romance song "S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W" factored heavily into this piece, particularly tonally.
SYZYGY
“John-”
The quaver to the voice is unfamiliar, but the tones he would know anywhere-on any backwards planet; at any cold, forgotten corner of the universe; he would hear it spilling down any cornucopia of stars spread out above him, and he would start running. Sometimes he would run towards it, and sometimes he would run away.
He opens his eyes. He recognizes the face, but not its expression-the skin, but not its pallor; the forehead, but not its creases; the hair, but not the gray at the temples; the eyes full of foreign, slowly-welling tears. He knows the shaking hand that’s held out to him, knows it as he knows his own hands, as he knows his limits, knows his soul, knows the beating of his-of-
Wait-but-
“John, please.” The shaking hand lays itself against his cheek, palm so hot that he recoils. That’s not right; he knows that part’s not right; but the hand sets its wrongness on his neck instead, spreading its fingers, rubbing gently at a harsh tension in his shoulder. This part isn’t right, and the heat shouldn’t help, shouldn’t relax the aching muscle just a bit in spite of him.
He swallows. Breathes. Slides his eyes to the left, to the right; he needs to get his bearings on this place in order to get a grasp of the situation, doesn’t he? White walls-no, off-white. Sort of pinkish, really; slightly pinkish. Blushing. There’s a bed with a gleaming metal frame and cream-colored sheets; it’s got one of those trays attached to the headboard, the kind on a hinged pole, so that you can pull it closer or push it away, but it always stays in reach. That’s all he can make out around the Master, who’s crouched before him, whose thumb trembles as it strokes down his jaw, grating just a little on-stubble? Really? That part’s definitely not right either; what in the living hell is…
He’s wearing white-almost more of a tunic than a shirt, and trousers to go with, and he’s holding his arms over his head, like he was hiding from rampaging Ch’lukthri, and the noise of their stampede was deafening.
Well, then. That explains that; he was. He was a minute ago, anyway; he was ducking into a crevice just off of the valley that they thunder through at the exact same hour every day; he’d squeezed his eyes shut against the dust and held his ears against their trumpeting and hoped for the best.
And now he’s here, and there’s a rational explanation; he just has to sort it out. Right. Sorting. That’s what he does; that’s what the Doctor always does. That’s what the Doctor is. The Doctor makes comprehension out of chaos.
“John,” the Master says, more softly than the Doctor has ever heard him say anything. His beautiful green-brown-golden eyes are searching for something, and the Doctor wants to give it to him-yearns to. “Have I got you now?”
“Why are you calling me that?” the Doctor asks, lowering his arms, touching the Master’s wrist, his knuckles, his fingernails. Is this-? It all feels perfectly-but there are still so many discrepancies; there must be something-
The Master shuts his eyes and tilts his head back. Fluorescent lights burn coldly from the ceiling, digging shadows into the strange lines on the Master’s face, illuminating the flares of downy white hair just above his ears, white that creeps like a poison into the brown.
“It’s your name, John,” the Master says, and his voice is so heavy and so pained and so full that the Doctor blurts out the words he knows too well:
“I’m sorry-I’m so sorry-”
“Don’t be sorry, John.” The Master looks at him again, and there was hope in it before, but it’s fading now. The Master smiles a little, and the Doctor can see the effort it takes, see how it drains him, how it hurts. “Just-just come back. Please. We’ve been trying, and-and they say you’re doing better, and they didn’t get those certificates on their office walls for nothing, did they?”
It’s such a weak, harmless stab at humor that the Doctor stares, disoriented now. This-is this even-
And then he feels his mouth smiling lopsidedly, and his voice says, “Nothing but their daddies’ money, anyway.”
He doesn’t even know what that m-
The Master makes a soft sound like choking, and his eyes fill again as he smiles so much more genuinely now, a smile and then a grin, and then another sob-laugh, and he floods the room like starlight. Before the Doctor can ask what brought this on, where they are, what they’re even talking about, the Master throws both arms around him and pulls him into the tightest hug he can remember. It’s still too warm, and he wants to pull away, but the Master’s fingers are sliding through his hair, and he’s just so tired of hurting everyone-
“I miss you, John,” the Master says, into his shoulder, into his neck, into his hair-dropping little kisses as he goes. “Oh, God, I can’t-I need you, John. I need you more than-anything, and it scares the hell out of me, because I’ve always just gone on, made it work, figured it out, but I can’t now. I can’t do it without you. So-so you have to come back to me, John; please. I-love you. It feels like I can’t fit it all in my chest. Having you like this-when you’re here, right in front of me, but you’re gone-I can’t do it, John. I can’t take it. Whatever I have to do, I will, but please come back.”
The Doctor feels dizzy. The Master’s much too warm; it makes him sleepy and maybe a little feverish. And he’s figured it out now, to his deep, resonating dismay-the Master’s delusional. The Master thinks they’re people they’re not. He thinks something strange is going on, which is so patently untrue that the Doctor flinches inwardly at the very thought of trying to tell him otherwise. The drums have finally completed their work. It’s so gut-wrenchingly terrible, so inconceivably, numbingly wrong that the Doctor can’t bear not to give him something. The Master has been through enough. What would it hurt just to play along for a little while?
He lays his head on the Master’s shoulder. They still fit together perfectly after all this time; puzzle pieces or binary stars or Velcro. The Doctor loves Velcro. He had Velcro trainers once, but they got ruined because of that volcano on the planet with the blue palm trees.
He closes his eyes.
“Oh, for the love of Jelly Babies; next time, I’m going to knock him out and carry him home.”
“You could at least buy him a drink first.”
“Right. Get out your canteen.”
“‘Ikthior’s lovely,’ he says.” Rustling, and a rattling. “‘We’ll see the Ch’lukthri migration,’ he says.” He manages to push his eyelids up a sliver. It’s dark, and the air is gritty. “‘Come on,’ you say. ‘You can sit around and paint your nails some other time,’ you say-charming as ever, might I add.”
“I was always more persuasive. Will you hurry-right, go on. Just dump it on him.”
“Charming, like I said.”
Groggily, he fumbles towards some measure of understanding, and he struggles to sit up, forcing his raspy voice past his leathery tongue. “Wait, don’t-”
He receives a canteen’s load of cold water directly in the face.
It is significantly easier to sit up after that, albeit sputtering and rubbing at his eyes.
“Stop that, idiot,” the Master seethes, grabbing his wrist and slapping the back of his hand for good measure. “You’re filthy. We’re all filthy. And not in the way I like.”
“Oi,” Donna says loudly. “Bedroom talk stays in the bedroom; that’s the deal. Otherwise I’m leaving the both of you on the next habitable asteroid.”
The Doctor rubs at the lump on the back of his head instead, blinking. He can’t see anything but vague shapes of shadows, and he needs to be sure this time-
He fumbles in his pocket-yes, the coat; the suit; the tie; the trainers; it’s all here-and clutches the screwdriver so tightly at first that his fingers start to cramp. In the beautiful, wonderful, perfect blue-purple light, Donna and the Master are having a glare-off again. Donna is winning.
The Doctor grins, and then he starts laughing. Both of them turn to him, startled, and he reads the unspoken agreement to resolve the contest another time.
“Oh, fantastic,” the Master says. “He’s finally lost it. This is your fault, Noble.”
“How the hell do you figure?” Donna fires back. “You’re the one who shoved him in here and made him knock his head.”
“All right, Gingersnaps-what would you rather, that he hit his head, or that he get it crushed under the hooves of some four-horned wildebeest? Because we have a time machine, you know, so you can have it both ways if you like.”
“Ooh, I’ve got it: let’s take the TARDIS back and get your head crushed.”
The Doctor manages to get the laughing under control with a final wheeze, and they remember why they were fighting, twin flashes of guilt passing through their expressions.
“Let’s get him back to town,” the Master says. “Their physician probably can’t do much for him, but we can take some scans in the TARDIS and make sure he didn’t muck up anything he’ll want later.”
For once, Donna doesn’t argue.
“I’m fine,” the Doctor says as they all clamber out of the cranny of a cave he’d spotted as they ran. The Master keeps trying to grab his elbow and support him, but he keeps shivering at the coolness of the touch, and it makes him less stable instead of more. He tries to be gentle when shaking off the next attempt, but the Master gets that closed-off look, the shutters slamming down behind his eyes. The Doctor’s hearts lurch in unison; it’s going to take days of carefully-timed affection to bring him back to the baseline now. Hoping to do a spot of damage control, he reaches for that familiar hand, but the Master moves away.
He opens his mouth to offer an explanation wrapped up in apology, but the dust reintroduces itself to his lungs, and he coughs so hard his bones shake. It’s very undignified, actually; he’s bent double hacking, his hands on his knees. Donna pounds good-naturedly on his back, and he stares down at the dust and realizes it’s not white, it’s off-white-sort of pinkish, really. That must look bizarre all over the inside of his trachea.
The Master takes the Doctor’s other arm as he straightens again, panting, and the Doctor leans on him, partly for the wordless message it sends, partly because he’s completely winded and needs the help.
“So,” he manages. “I’m a little hazy on the details. Someone remind me why we ended up in front of the stampeding herd?”
“We were hired by the intergalactic ‘Lion King’ reenactment society,” the Master says.
“Or,” Donna says, “if you weren’t on cocaine when we arrived, we got a distress signal from the town, came down, and got our ears talked off about some cache of stolen goods with its door on a timer. A door which just so happens happens to be right on the cattle run-pardon me, the migration route. Naturally, the first words out of your mouth were ‘Sign us up.’”
This sounds just about implausible enough to be his life. He would also have believed the reenactment society thing, but only if the Master had produced a lion mask.
His life. This is his life. This wild, half-nonsensical, wholly-mad string of loosely-connected escapades is the sordid, splendid tale of his existence.
“Stop smiling,” the Master says. “You’re starting to look deranged.”
“‘Starting’?” Donna asks. “He wears a brown suit with blue stripes.”
“Be glad you’ve never seen the clothes on Gallifrey,” the Master says. “Doctor, my dashingly handsome face is over here. Doctor-Doctor-”
The sand-the dust-the ground is blurring, and then it folds, and strips of pink-white and sky-blue turn like a pinwheel. The center is a white spot, whiter than white, blazing fierce and hot and pulling him in, irrevocable and irresistible in equal measure, and the whole of the universe warps around his trajectory-
He’s so warm-tangled in warmth and softness both. He coaxes his eyes open, which isn’t easy, because they want him to keep dozing for a while.
Harry has both arms wrapped around him; he looks exhausted even while asleep. Carefully, trying not to shift, John disentangles one hand and lifts it, brushing the hair off of Harry’s forehead, sliding a fingertip slowly through the streaks of white.
They’re his fault.
The revelation hits him like a lead fist to the abdomen, and he’s trying so hard to cry quietly that he probably just makes it worse.
Harry mumbles, stirs, and blinks. He smiles-weary but well-meaning-and then he sees the tear streaks, and it’s gone again, all the hope. But the love stays; there’s more of that, and that’s terrifying somehow.
“John,” Harry whispers, “John, come here, come on-”
“I did this to you,” he gets out. “I did this; I did all of this; I’m sorry; I-”
Harry kisses him to shut him up, like he always does-isn’t that how they started out? It was the middle of January, and they were going to go back into the pub in just another minute, as soon as John was done gesturing up at the wash of stars and explaining his theory about multiple universes coexistent in parallel planes, and Harry grabbed his scarf and dragged him into a freezing kiss just as he got to the part about decisional forks and multiplicity.
That had been one of the weaker parts of the theory anyway.
“We-we met in school,” John says when they pull apart, just an inch or two, Harry’s breath still warm and moist against his lips. “Sort of, anyway-Oxford and Cambridge, me and you. Only your dad taught my best class-”
“Theoretical Astrophysics,” Harry says softly, and there’s a different hurt in his rapt eyes now, an older one.
“And I was such a suck-up-”
Harry almost laughs-just a huff of amusement and a curling at the corners of his lips, but it peels half a decade off.
“Well, I was!” John says, trying at a grin. “I practically followed him home after class. I think he only invited me to that presentation to get me to leave him alone.”
“He only invited me because I’d told him I was sick and tired of hearing about how brilliant you were, and I’d said I wanted to spend time with him.” The old hurt’s back. John starts to wonder, and then he starts to fear-
“Harry, your dad-your dad, he’s not-”
Harry’s fingers tighten in the hair at the nape of John’s neck, and he looks away. His voice, when it comes, is quiet and low.
“You’ve been in and out for two years, John. Dad-there was a woman on the Tube with a gun, and-you know Dad. He couldn’t just-and she panicked, and… I told you just after, but I don’t think you were-awake-then. I just needed to tell someone, and-it’s still you. It’s always still been you.”
It sounds like something he’s said a thousand times, trying to make it true.
The words spiral slowly downward, carving out a hollowness in John’s chest. He’d been about to quit astrophysics for good when he took Yohann “Yana” Saxon’s class, and then it was all new and real and right again, and he thought he’d been crazy for wanting to stop. Yana polished the constellations, gave him his passion back, and then surrendered him into the hands of the only human being who had ever inspired him with as much idolizing adoration as the stars. Yana was the reason he loved anything and the reason he was loved by anyone.
“When?” he asks, because Why won’t help.
“Last year,” Harry says. “Right before I made MP.”
“But you were Prime Minister,” John says, and then feels sick.
Harry tries to smile again. “Only in my sad, egotistical dreams, John.”
John’s fingers are tingling. He curls his hands in the front of Harry’s coat and swallows hard. The question takes most of the strength he has.
“What am I like?”
Harry’s lips part. “Wh…”
“When I’m not ‘awake,’” John says, fighting the bitterness and losing out. “When I’m not here. When I’m ruining your life.”
“Stop that,” Harry says, softly with a worn edge of defeat. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is!” John tightens his grip on Harry’s coat, twists it in his hands, struggles not to breathe too fast to be understood. “It is; you know that. You try not to think it, but you do. And that’s fine; I don’t care; it’s your right. I haven’t done shit for you in two years except-what? What do I do? Sit here and stare at the wall and ignore you no matter what you say? Shut you out and go off to-to fantasy-land, where I’ve got a time machine and a magic wand?” Harry tries to interrupt, but he’s never been a perfect politician, because he cares too much, and what he’s thinking always shows. “That’s it, isn’t it? I just sit and stare at the wall, and you come in every week-”
Harry’s voice sticks. “Every day.”
“Every fucking day, Harry, and you keep trying, and it never works, and your life’s falling apart, and it’s my fault.” John’s crying again. He wishes he wasn’t; it’s not like it fixes anything, and it gives him a headache, but it’s all just- “And your hair’s going gray.”
Harry looks at him for a long moment. Everything, every possible emotion in all of John’s parallel-plane universes, slides across his face, like light flashing off of the little waves in a stream.
“It’s shit, isn’t it?” Harry says. “My hair.”
John forces out a wet laugh. “I think it’s sexy.”
“Yeah, you’ve always been a loony.”
“That’s what you l-love about me,” John says, and he buries his face in Harry’s shirt and tries so hard to make the other world he lives in go away.
He can’t.
“I love everything about you, idiot,” Harry says. “Just the loony bit in particular.”
John runs his fingertip up Harry’s collar, then up his neck, and lays it over the pulse point.
“Tell me about when we met,” he says.
“I was twenty,” Harry says. “You were nineteen. I was sitting with my dad trying to brace myself for another two and a half hours of astrophysics jargon when he saw you walk in, or maybe the cat dragged you, and he jumped up and waved, and I was going to kill him for ruining our night out. He introduced us, and you thought I was a prat-because I was-and I thought you were a space-case. You had these square glasses that kept sliding down your nose, and I was pretty sure you were going to blind me with your big, dorky grin. When we were talking at the half, you told me to get into theater to improve my public speaking, because I’d make a pathetic barrister without the confidence. For some reason-still haven’t figured this one out-I listened to you, and you took the train and came to every single stupid show, even though they always cast me as the villain and put me in a rubbish beard. I’d make you stay overnight so that the vagrants wouldn’t kill you on the train back, and you’d tell me I was paranoid, but you’d always stay anyway, and after a while I started making up excuses for you to come even when I didn’t have time for the plays anymore. And then I got really stupid and started paying for your dinner all the time, pretending it counted as asking you out on a date. And then I started paying for your drinks, and one night you got so smashed that you did a striptease for me when we got back to my room-”
“We agreed never to speak of that again,” John says, but he’s smiling, and it feels so warm in here, even warmer than before.
“Tough shit,” Harry says contentedly. “You said to tell, so I’m telling. Then I took you to that dodgy pub with the second-floor balcony and made the mistake of asking you to explain what you were working on, and we made out until the waiter came to find us and ended up traumatized for life.”
“I think we have that effect on most people,” John says.
“Then,” Harry goes on pleasantly, “we spent an inordinate amount of money on lousy train tickets, each almost flunked out because we were so distracted by infatuation, and moved in together when we graduated, at which point I learned that the reason you only ever wore that horrible brown coat was because it was the only thing in your entire wardrobe remotely suited for winter. I bought you nothing but clothing that Christmas; you did not think it was funny. I bought you a telescope for New Year’s, and you forgave me.”
“’S not horrible,” John mumbles into Harry’s chest. “Janis Joplin gave me that coat.”
At the silence, he realizes what he just said-what he just did. What he does to Harry Saxon-to the man who has captivated him since they were children-every single moment of every single day. John denies him. John forsakes him. John chooses Neverland instead.
“I’m tired,” he says weakly. “I think I’m just… I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, John. Just sleep. It’s fine.” Harry kisses his forehead, smoothes his hair. “I’ve got you.”
John-
No.
The Doctor-the Doctor, the Doctor, the Doctor-opens his eyes. Rough-hewn beams crisscross and intersect above his head; very rustic cabin, this place.
He shifts. He’s in a bed. Cream-colored sheets-
He fights his hands free and reaches for his shirt collar, for his tie; they’ll be damp and crusted with dust-
He’s wearing some kind of soft shirt with a scoop neck, and it’s completely dry.
No, no, no, no, no-
He buries both hands in his hair; he’ll pull it all out at the roots if he has to, but he’ll think of someth…
It’s damp.
His hair’s damp. Damp from-he lowers one hand and licks his palm; it’s freshwater. His hair’s damp from Donna’s canteen.
“Hey,” a voice says, and a hand presses on his arm. “Slow down, Spaceman. If you lose it, you’ll prove him right, and I’ll have to do that Sudoku thing.”
“Seppuku,” he says faintly.
Donna grins. Her copper hair is streaked with pink-white dust. “Welcome back, Doctor. You have a nice trip?”
The Doctor picks at the plain white cotton that has replaced his preferred accoutrements. “Where’re my things?”
“The Other One’s got ’em all,” Donna says, because Donna knows no master, especially not one who’s self-proclaimed. A ferocious wave of love sweeps through the Doctor’s hearts. “He put you in that, too; I didn’t want to cut my hands to ribbons on your ribs, see. It’s all right-I made sure he didn’t feel you up while you were out.”
The Doctor gets the feeling that the Master was more concerned with panic than with perversion at the time, and he gets the feeling that Donna knows he knows.
The other voice rings out: “He’s-?”
The Master rushes over. His face is striped with the dust, and he has a black bag slung over one shoulder.
“Stop passing out,” he reprimands, scowling to enforce the point. “For your information, you’re significantly heavier than you look.”
“Thank you,” the Doctor says, trying not to grin. “I’ll file that away.”
“You’re in the physician’s office,” the Master says before he can ask. “Second floor-again, I think your body mass is dimensionally transcendental, too.”
The Doctor glances around. It’s a small room, but a cozy one; there’s a short dresser with a mirror on the top, and he sees a small, colorful rug crumpled up in the corner, presumably because the Master kicked it there to clear a space for pacing like a tiger in a cage.
“’S nice,” he says. “Much better than a hospital. I hate hospitals.”
He’s startled by the tears that prickle in his eyes. He presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets before the others can see, holding in a shuddery breath.
“Bit of a headache,” he invents.
“He’ll be coming back soon,” Donna says. “Physician, that is. He had to fetch a couple things.”
“Such as an exorcist,” the Master offers helpfully.
Donna rolls her eyes. “Such as his special book on concussions, is what he said.”
The Doctor smiles at the pair of them, and then he reaches for one of each of their hands and holds tight. The Master’s double-pulse beats against his fingers; Donna’s single one is strong and quick and proud. He never wants to move, and perhaps he never will. Not until he gets hungry, at any rate.
Something crashes mightily downstairs.
The Doctor is torn between sighing heavily and leaping out of bed, so he does both at once.
“Take it that’s not the physician,” he says.
“Probably the thieves whose stockpile we compromised,” the Master muses, holding the Doctor’s trainers out to him by the laces.
The Doctor takes them. “Wait, but-”
“Hold that thought, Doctor,” Donna says, extending a hand towards the Master. “Gimme the whatsit, boyo.”
“You’ll have to be a little more specific,” the Master says drily-except apparently she won’t, because he rummages in the bag and hands her what appears to be a crossbow, which he follows up with a wooden bolt embellished with a barbed metal tip at one end and a long length of thin rope at the other. She shoves the drapes aside, leans out the open window, fits the bolt into the bow, and takes aim.
“Um,” the Doctor says.
Donna fires.
The bolt whistles through the air, rope whipping after, and embeds itself in the wall just above the second-floor window of the house across the way. Donna tugs hard, then feeds their end of the rope through the arcing prod of the crossbow. She sets her jaw as the sounds from downstairs increase in volume and in violence, ties the rope securely to the drapes’ rod, grasps the stock of the crossbow, and jumps out the window.
The Doctor is going to find a way to make this woman immortal.
In the meantime, the Master is pushing him towards the window, shooting glances at the very frail-looking door to this room. There are furious, slamming footsteps on the stairs.
The Doctor looks down at his trainers in his hands, and then it clicks, of course-he tosses one set of laces over the rope from either side, clamps them in his hands when they line up, hopes avidly that the Master was exaggerating about his weight, and throws himself off of the windowsill.
Blessedly, the laces hold, and he soars through the dusty air, following the curve of the rope towards the window Donna’s already kicked in on the other side. The rope hisses with the friction, and he thinks he might smell smoke, but he can’t angle his body enough to slow down-and, rather, continues gaining speed as he nears the very solid wall of his destination. The barbed arrow buried in the stucco trembles worryingly, the whole rope dipping as it moves, not that it makes a difference, since he’s about to splatter on the wall in three meters, two meters, one, one-half-
He yelps, releases his left hand’s death grip, and sails feet-first through the window, skidding across the floor and colliding with a chair.
“Knew I should’ve moved that,” a familiar voice sighs.
He lies dazed for a moment, trainers still clutched in his right hand, and wonders why the ceiling is undulating like a Bruvaxi kaleidoscope.
“Allons-yyyyyy,” another of his favorite voices whoops, and then something cool and very heavy stumbles across the floor and lands on top of him. “Oof.”
“Get off of him,” Donna reprimands. “And give me your purse-”
“It’s a bag, Noble; we’ve been through this fifty-seven times-”
“I don’t care what it is; you’re squishing him!”
The Master’s weight lifts off of the Doctor’s torso, which he does have to admit is something of a relief. Hazily he watches the Master toss the black bag to Donna, and she takes out a Bowie knife, hops onto the windowsill, and cuts the rope.
“Are they coming?” he asks, and his voice slurs a bit.
“If he didn’t have a concussion before,” Donna snaps, elbowing the Master hard as she kneels next to the Doctor, “he certainly does now. Why don’t you watch where you’re landing, dumbo?”
“Why didn’t he?” the Master snipes back, his grip on the Doctor’s arm tightening. “Stay with us for five minutes, would you, idiot?”
“I’m tired,” the Doctor says, distantly. “I think I’m just…”
He wakes up and fights the shirt off of his body, because his skin’s on fire. He shoves the blankets, kicks them, tears them off and hurls them aside, scrambling out of the bed and dropping to the floor as his knees give way. The room is empty.
“Master!” He claws at the edge of the mattress, trying to pull himself to his feet. “Master, where-I-”
The floor is cold; he lets go of the bed and sinks down, curls up, presses his cheek against the linoleum tiles. He must be having an allergic reaction to something-and then he knows what. He’s reacting to the extremely rough traveling device that’s brought him here again, dragged him kicking and screaming-fairly literally this time-back to this unorthodox, unbearable prison cell-
“Master!”
And then the Master races in, smelling of cheap coffee; there’s a splash of it on his sleeve, but the door slams shut before the Doctor can see whether he dropped the paper cup that held it as he ran. The Master crouches down and holds him, rocking slowly back and forth; the Master shushes him and cards his fingers through the Doctor’s hair and holds him tighter.
“It’s me, John-”
“Don’t.” The Doctor buries his face in his hands. Maybe he can make it change, make it disappear. “That’s not-it’s a fake name, it’s an alias; I use it because some people won’t accept just ‘the Doctor,’ you know. People are skeptical these days, and it’s an uphill battle getting them to trust me at all-” The words won’t stop pouring out of his mouth; they taste metallic, like he’s holding a magnet underneath his tongue. He digs his fingernails into his forehead-if he can just scrape off his skin, he’ll know who’s really there-
The Master catches his wrists and pries his hands away. “Stop it. What are you-you’re bleeding, John, for Christ’s sake!”
“I want to go home.” The Doctor presses his unrevealing face into the Master’s shoulder. “But it’s gone, Gallifrey’s gone, and you’re all I’ve got-”
“John,” the Master says, slowly and unsteadily, drawing back to look him in the eyes, “you’re all I’ve got. So-please, John, please, stay with me. I can’t do this alone.”
“Do what?” the Doctor asks uncertainly. He’s probably building a death ray, or planning a takeover, or-or-
“Never mind,” the Master says softly, thumbing a hot, wet dribble off of his forehead. “Tell me-tell me about what you see. The other place you go. Can you tell me, John? Maybe we can work from there.”
The Doctor’s tired again. He leans in, laying his head on the Master’s shoulder, stroking his hand up and down the Master’s lapel.
“It’s you and me,” he says, “and my best friend-Donna. She’s called Donna; she’s brilliant. As brilliant as you and I are, I think, but in a different way.”
“I’m there?” the Master asks, sounding surprised.
“Of course you are,” the Doctor mumbles, smoothing down his rumpled tie. “I couldn’t leave you. Doesn’t matter what you did; we’re in this together, you know. Well… I think you do know, now. You’re different than before. And I love it; I just love it. I love it more than anything, the three of us like that. It’s what I was always looking for, the balance of it. You and me and Donna, somehow perfectly aligned.”
“What do we do?”
He’s playing Devil’s Advocate. That’s all right; the Doctor can play, too. He’s tired, but the Master must be tired, too, after the day they’ve had, and he probably feels even worse than the Doctor does, what with how they keep getting slingshotted back and forth…
“We fix things,” the Doctor says. “We make things better, as much as we can. And it’s such a huge universe that there’s always something else to fix, but… that’s what we’re for. That’s what Time Lords are for. They didn’t realize-you remember how they were, all talk and no action, nor much of anything else-but that’s what we’re about. That’s what the power’s for.”
“We… save… the universe?” the Master says.
The Doctor smiles, ever so slightly mischievously, and kisses his neck. “You’re warming to it. I can tell. And you love being in a TARDIS again-I can tell that, too.”
“A-a what?”
“It’s all right; she’s warming to you, too. She might let you drive her soon.”
“She’s a spaceship?”
The Doctor nuzzles contentedly at the Master’s ear. “Time And Relative Dimension In Space. That’s the best bit. No, it’s all the best bit. Well, maybe the running is the best bit. I love the running.”
The Master runs a hand slowly down the Doctor’s back, silent, soft.
“You go to this place,” he says quietly, “and you have adventures with this woman Donna and some alternate version of me?”
“A less-amnesiac one,” the Doctor confirms, hugging him to soften the joke.
“Is that what you want, John?” the Master asks, and the Doctor draws back in alarm, because it sounds like he’s going to cry. “Adventure? I mean-we can-we could travel more; it’d be difficult with the new schedule, but if that’s what you need, you just have to ask…”
The Doctor kisses him-vigorously, sucking on his bottom lip.
“I have everything I want,” he says, setting his forehead against the Master’s, looking into his eyes and breathing softly on his reddening mouth. “Come to bed with me, Master?”
Except it goes all wrong-there’s no smirk, no suggestive quirk of the eyebrow to accent it. The Master looks… desolate.
“It’s me, John,” he says miserably. “It’s Harry. You know me. You knew me ten minutes ago.”
The Doctor swallows. He’s trapped again-he can’t insist on truth; the Master’s hurt enough on his account. He has to let it go.
“Of course,” he says. “Of course I do, Harry.” It’s getting cold. Was it always this cold? “Can we go to bed, Harry? It’s chilly in here.”
The Master nods. He stands and takes both of the Doctor’s hands, helps him to his feet, and climbs up into the bed with him, toeing off his shoes.
“I’m tired,” the Doctor mumbles into the Master’s chest. Something’s wrong, but exhaustion’s setting in again, stealing his faculties, and he’s too slow with sleepiness to pull them back. Something’s wrong; something…
“Me, too, John,” the Master murmurs, and the Doctor sleeps.
“…zapped him pretty badly-who knows what neurons burnt out on the spot?”
“I’m going to do worse to you if you don’t stop talking like that.”
He groans and rolls over, trying to block the voices out. Who is he this time? Who’s he trying not to wound by living the wrong life?
A hand falls on either of his shoulders, one warm, one cool. “Doctor?” the voices say in unison.
Ah. This one.
He rolls back and looks up at them.
“Why were they even after us?” he asks, and they stare at him bewilderedly. “The-whoever they were, the thieves. We would never have had time to get into their treasure trove and take anything, not before the Ch’lukthri came.”
“We didn’t have to,” Donna says, sitting back on her heels but keeping her hand on his arm. “You and Mr. Prime Minister broke the timer and the lock. Then we had to run.”
The Doctor rewinds in his head. “In the process of which I barbecued my brain again?”
The Master pauses, licking his lips. “There was an electrical field as a safeguard. You went first.” He pauses again. “Because you’re a dolt.”
“He just wouldn’t have noticed if he’d walked into that thing,” Donna says crisply, “given the state his brain’s in anyway.”
The Doctor tilts his head. He needs to get his bearings, and then-and then-
“It’s another bloody cave,” the Master says. “Her idea, of course.”
“They’re not going to expect us to hide in ‘another bloody cave,’ Time Lout,” Donna retorts. “We had to get you somewhere safe while we figured out how to contact the town sheriff.”
Somewhere safe. Donna’s probably right, and they are safe-so why are his hearts pounding like pistons, battering his ribs?
And then he knows.
He scrambles to sit up and reaches out, planting one hand on each side of the Master’s chest.
Two hearts.
He lets himself collapse to the dusty ground again, lets the shadows cinch in around him, lets the darkness take him back.
“To what do I owe-” the Master starts.
“Leave it,” Donna says sharply, and he does.
“John.” Harry kisses his cheek just under his eye. “Earth to John.”
He shakes off the cobwebs of the most recent dream. Harry is the first thing he sees. God, that’ll never get old.
“John to Earth,” he says, convincing his sleep-numbed face to smile. “John would like to know how you can possibly manage to look so good under these lights.”
Harry looks so happy-and so surprised to be-that John doesn’t want to ask, but he needs to know.
“There’s just one thing…”
Harry pushes his hair back from his face, smiling warmly at him. “It’s yours, John.”
John smiles back. “Where’s Donna gone?”
Silence falls-hard. Harry isn’t smiling anymore.
“I just-” John tries to think of what to say. They’re never jealous of each other; it can’t be that. “I’m happy here with you-I just want to be sure that she’s all right, that’s all.”
Harry runs his knuckles up and down John’s cheek. Up and down, up and down, like he can’t stop, or something terrible will happen if he does-like he can’t let go.
“John,” he says, slowly, hesitantly now. “I… you’re still awake?”
John nods, leaning into Harry’s hand.
“You had a friend,” Harry says, quietly. “When you were a kid. You had a friend named Donna, your best friend, this little girl with red hair. When you were fifteen, she had a brain aneurysm in the middle of the night, and she died. Nobody knew there was anything wrong until it was far too late; sometimes these things just happen, out of nowhere.”
“But-” John begins. He’s going to cry again. He has to have Donna; he needs her as much as-
“We went to that little town outside of Belfast where you grew up. It was for your birthday seven years ago-do you remember? We were walking by the church, and I demanded that you marry me, even if we had to go to the Netherlands to do it. And you told me not to be stupid, because we’d be together until England legalized it anyway, and I taught you how to waltz right in the middle of the street. And that night when we were lying in bed at the hotel, listening to the faucet drip and trying to figure out if we were too tired to care, you told me that that was the church where they’d buried her.”
John thinks he might throw up, except his throat’s too tight.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “It’s all-it’s all tangled up. She’s-she lives in Chiswick. Or she did, except we had this adventure when she was getting married to this deceiver in league with the Racnoss, but she didn’t want to come, and then later she did, and she didn’t mind that I wouldn’t let you out of my sight after what happened in the year that never was-”
“John,” Harry says, and John thinks he was kinder to the Racnoss, all told.
He wraps his arms around Harry’s neck, holds him close, breathes in the coffee and the old cologne.
“I’m killing you,” he says. “And now I’m killing him.”
“Don’t you dare.” Harry grabs his shoulders and pushes him away, and for the first time, he looks like-himself. “John Smith, don’t you fucking dare.” Harry shakes him hard. “Don’t you ever say that, do you hear me? You can talk about-about TARDIS and Donna and whatever you want; call me Master; I don’t care, John, but don’t you ever even think that. I love you, John. And I’m not letting go as long as there’s something to hold on to.”
He’s right.
But John is, too.
He runs his fingers through the comet-tail of white in Harry’s hair, stroking it back, smoothing it down. Somewhere-somewhere real-the Doctor is in danger because of him. Because he’s holding on to the dream.
He knows. He wishes that he didn’t, but he knows where he has to go from here.
“I’m sorry,” he says, pressing his cheek to Harry’s chest, laying his ear over Harry’s heart.
“Honestly, John,” Harry sighs softly. “I forgive you.”
John closes his eyes, listening to the gentle rhythm, holding on to the most wonderful man in the universe, and knows what the other piece of him would say.
This is going to be harder than he thought.
The Doctor wakes up in the TARDIS.
The connection’s gone-broken, severed, closed. He expects the worst, but he hopes, hopes, hopes for something better. Perhaps it’s that capacity that’s kept him alive this long.
“Come on, John,” he whispers, for the infinitesimal chance. Isn’t the impossible most likely in his world?
Donna and the Master are on either side of him before he can close his eyes again.
“What do you need?” Donna asks.
He takes a deep breath and holds it until he feels the reassuring tickle of the respiratory bypass, waiting in the wings. Well-in the lungs. He’s never had wings. He’s not sure what he’d do with them if he did.
“Donna,” he says, “that is a ridiculous question.”
She looks hurt until he holds his hands out-one for hers, and one for the Master’s.
“You,” he says. “Both of you. Does it need saying?”
The Master smirks. “I think that’s a moot point, since you just said it anyway.”
The Doctor frowns at him. Donna gives an unconvincing cough.
He knows they’ll humor him for a few hours yet-all night, perhaps. At least until the Master thinks of something more entertaining to do, and Donna leaves the room in a flood of threats and protestations, as if they don’t all hear the fondness underneath.
“Don’t let go,” the Doctor says.
So they don’t.
Harry wakes up alone in the bed.
What… His eyes are gritty, and his tongue feels like a wad of used chewing gum. As soon as he’s a little more awake, he will put that simile in the mental bin and slam the lid. He stretches an arm out for John and finds nothing more or less than wrinkled sheets and residual warmth.
He’s awake now.
He sits up, eyes darting, probing the corners, gauging the space behind the door-as if John would hide, as if he remembers or understands what’s in this world to hide from. Harry scrambles off the bed, kicks his shoes out of the way, and moves towards the lavatory, bracing himself-freezing his heart, tightening his shoulders, crafting his spine into a steel girder. He can take it. He can take it; whatever’s behind this door; it can’t be worse than…
But it can. He knows it can.
He flings the door open, his heart in his throat and melting now, but the tiny half-room’s empty.
That’s not enough. That’s not good enough. He can’t let himself sink into relief; not yet. Maybe not ever. Where in the bloody fucking hell is he?
Harry jogs out to the hall. The hurriedness of the motion stirs the panic in the pit of his stomach, and then he runs-he runs for his life.
He’ll try the roof. The lift’s in the lobby; he’d take the stairs, but it’s a tall building, and he fucked his knees up so badly playing rugby that-he’d never-
He skids around a corner in his black socks, slides too far, slams into the wall. The jarring flash of pain shakes him out of the terror, steadying him, and he takes a deep breath and tries to focus. Roof. John. PleaseGodno.
He has much more control of his trajectory as he skates into the lobby, flying on the linoleum; he’ll have to get John to try this sometime, because it’s exhilarating. John’ll love it. John-
He fights the feelings down. He has to turn them off until he knows; they’ll just hurt him more, every fragment of hope another silver needle in his wounds. He bangs his fist against the button by the lift doors, watching the numbers on the little screen above it counting down.
“Mr. Saxon?” the girl at the desk asks tentatively.
He half-turns; she’s always been nice to him, but what in the hell could she possibly want-
She points out the front doors. “I just… let him,” she says.
He sees the slender figure all in white-halfway down the steps, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched for warmth against the chill that the night drew in.
Harry presses a hand over his heart; the one he’s got doesn’t feel adequate for this job. He tries to breathe, tries not to cry. The lift dings. He repositions the hand over his mouth and goes outside.
John has his head tilted back as far as it’ll go. The stars reflect impossibly brightly in his eyes, and his angular profile stands out starkly as he starts to turn; he’s an island of white against a parking lot cut only by orange streetlamps. For a moment, he studies Harry sidelong, and Harry stops dead.
John smiles at him nervously and then looks up at the sky.
“That’s it, then,” he says.
Harry swallows and takes a few steps closer. “Yeah?”
John nods sagely once. “That’s it.” He gestures upward. “This is as close as we’re ever going to get to them.”
Harry can hear the significance, but he doesn’t know what it means.
John bites his lip and then nods again. “But I think… I think that’s all right.”
The pavement is frigid under Harry’s feet, rough through his socks; he glances down and sees that John’s feet are bare, the trouser legs trailing, pooled at his heels.
“Come inside, John,” he says. Maybe he shouldn’t have used the name. Sometimes- “Isn’t it cold out here?”
“I don’t want to come inside,” John replies, and Harry’s heart drops like a stone. His head hurts from the fear and the running and the insidious spread of the ache in his knees, and it’s pounding in rhythm with the blood dragging itself through his veins. Today has been endless, and he just wants to shut it out and close his eyes and pretend that none of this… He just wants a cup of tea and a book with no breaks for political news; he wants his bed-their bed-and John’s nine-hundred-year-old duvet and the lamp that buzzes after half an hour. He just wants sanctuary. He just-
“I want to go home,” John says.
The blood rushes in Harry’s ears.
“What?” he says.
John wraps his arms around himself, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, looking at his toes. “I know I’m not supposed to… run… And I’m probably not-ready-but-I just want… to go home. Do you think-” He looks up at Harry now, eyes uncertain, chewing on his chapped lip again. “Do you think maybe you can talk them into it? I mean, you’ve always been…”
The persuasive one. His father used to say that.
“I think I have a better idea,” Harry says, and he fishes out his keys.
John blinks. “We can’t just-leave.”
Harry smiles faintly, holding a hand out to him. “Oh, yes, we can.”
John seizes it and hangs on, grinning, shooting glances back at the doors as Harry leads him down the steps and towards the car. “Allons-y,” he says.
“Seulement avec toi,” Harry says, and unlocks the door. He will recover his shoes and his coat and the paperwork tomorrow. Or next week. Or never.
John doesn’t seem to care that he’s walking barefoot on Gower Street at one in the morning, but he balks when he sees the front door to their flat. “Has it always been-?”
Harry gives him a long look. “It’s always been blue, John. You insisted on one of the ones with the blue doors-remember?”
“Right,” John says shakily-he’s lying. “Yeah, that’s right. I’m sorry.”
Harry kisses his temple on the way to let them in. “I told you, you don’t have to be.”
“I can’t-” John halts mid-sentence as he steps into the foyer. He turns in a slow circle, just looking. There are details that have changed-the coat rack broke, so Harry bought a new one; he kept knocking into the end table when he came home tired and eventually just moved it-but it’s essentially the same as it was two years ago. “I can’t always sort it out,” John says, faintly. He hesitates, and then he crosses to the new coat rack and reaches towards the old brown coat that Harry walks past every single morning and every single night.
John moves to touch it, and then he recoils as though his hand’s been burned. Before Harry can catch his wrist, he’s starting for the kitchen. “You have to get rid of that thing. Just-get rid of it.”
Rarely has Harry been assigned a task that sounds more pleasant.
John makes a circuit of the kitchen, putting his hands on things: the microwave buttons, the oven dials, the bronze saltshaker. He pauses when he sees the newspaper that Harry disemboweled all over the tabletop during breakfast.
“What?” John says. “What?”
“What’s wrong?” Harry asks bewilderedly, and then John has snatched up the front page and is shoving it in his face.
“Since when are you Minister of Defence?” John demands, stabbing his finger repeatedly at the picture beneath the headline. It’s an awful photograph; Harry looks far more exhausted than triumphant.
“Since this morning?” he attempts.
John blinks, then stares, then lowers the paper and looks at it, clenching it between his hands. He skims the text.
“Due to illness,” he reads, and his voice trembles again, “Mr Saxon’s partner of over fifteen years and husband of five, a Dr John Smith, has unfortunately missed most of Saxon’s public appearances during his meteoric rise to political fame.”
Harry forces himself to swallow.
“It’s a crap piece,” he says. “They don’t talk about policy at all.”
“I’ve been gone,” John says, staring at the black ink on the gray page. “I’ve been gone a long time.”
“I’d have waited forever,” Harry says, trying hard to smile.
John puts the paper down and drifts past him without acknowledging that he’s spoken. The cold, familiar fear snakes through Harry’s veins, and he follows closely, desolate at the prospect of losing him again so suddenly, when they’ve come so far.
John steps into the bedroom, pauses, and looks around. Harry turns the light on and mentally starts counting down towards when it will begin to hum.
John turns and looks up-lucidly. He takes Harry’s hand and leads him over to the bed, then pulls both of them down among the sheets that Harry threw back at dawn and never bothered straightening. He fingers his ancient duvet with his free hand, and then he curls in and buries his face in Harry’s chest.
Harry draws the blankets up over them and wraps both arms around John Smith-his John, the only John he cares about. The only one there is.
“I love you,” John whispers. He fists his hands in Harry’s shirt. “Don’t let go.”
“Never will,” Harry says.
And he doesn’t.
-and that is an unpleasant sound for a white tiger/wild boar creature to make, even by the Doctor’s rather rigorous standards for monster noises.
“Donna!” he calls, careening past her and reaching out a hand.
“Honestly!” Donna shouts back, but she pauses in working the screwdriver at the seal on the door and throws it in an elegant arc, from which he snatches it out of the air. One well-aimed blast of sonic energy later, the weak chains supporting the chandelier squeal and then snap, and a masterpiece of steel and obsidian crashes down between the tiger-boar and the Master, whom it had backed into a corner as he ran.
The Master takes up running again, skirting the edges of the small crater in the marble floor, skipping deftly over the shards of volcanic glass.
“Remind me why we have to be the distraction?” he asks.
“Because if we get skewered-” The Master raises a hand, and the Doctor tosses him the screwdriver. “-we come back.”
“We come back different,” the Master points out, aiming the screwdriver at one of the gas lamps on the wall, which promptly explodes in the tiger-boar’s extremely off-putting face. Trust the Master to find something to blow up while they’re fighting for their lives. Well-for their regenerations, anyway.
“Nothing wrong with different,” the Doctor says.
“Oi, Time Losers!” Donna yells, and the Master hurls the screwdriver right to her waiting hand-without looking, because he’s busy fixing the Doctor with a sardonic expression.
“Come on,” the Doctor says, grinning, then cringing as the tiger-bear gives another ear-splitting, hair-raising, bone-rattling roar and bounds towards them. It shakes its bristly mane, and he grabs the Master’s hand. “Live a little.”
“As long as I don’t have to die a lot to do it,” the Master sighs, curling his fingers around the Doctor’s all the same.
“Oh, bugger,” Donna says.
There’s a tremendous crack that seems to emanate from everywhere at once, and then the whole of the marble floor gives way.
“I told you so!” the Master howls as they and the tiger-boar and innumerable massive chunks of marble all fall together.
John opens his eyes. He peeks over Harry’s shoulder and sees that it’s just before five-thirty in the morning, which is why the alarm hasn’t rung quite yet, and the gorgeous man beside him is still in bed.
In the light of the oncoming dawn, John looks at Harry for a moment, memorizing him-his nose, his cheekbones, his eyelashes, his hair. There are deep, dark circles underneath his eyes, but when John traces one with his fingertip, as softly as he can, it feels like something that can be healed, even if it can’t ever be undone.
Harry doesn’t even stir. John makes sure that his touch stays light enough to keep it that way, running his finger slowly down Harry’s jaw; the shadow makes him look like one of those deliberately scruffy movie stars, but warmer, and more real. John smoothes the collar of the wrinkled dress shirt below, embracing the smallness of the stab of guilt from the recollection that Harry hates sleeping in his clothes.
But John’ll make it up to him. He will, a thousand times over-starting today, even if it requires figuring out how to make a breakfast that doesn’t involve cold cereal.
John smiles to himself, settling a hand on Harry’s waist, tucking his head under Harry’s chin. He drifts back to sleep and dreams of something different.