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“Call me by my name.”
”Master.”
”Beg your pardon?”
”Master.”
”Can’t hear you, love.”
”Master.”
The Master shuddered, the unadulterated glee of this small victory over the Doctor better than any drug the universe could offer to him. He took his time relishing in the moment, making sure she could see just how much he was enjoying this chance to gloat.
Then-
“I want everybody out of here, NOW!”
No one moved, too stunned. Humans. They were so utterly worthless, with the self-preservation instinct of a rabbit caught in car headlights.
“I said, NOW!” He lifted his ‘shrink ray’ (such a baseless name, but certainly effective at causing fear) into the air, and every human in the place fled for the exits. One woman stayed, hovering by the Doctor’s side for a moment, and the Master saw the two of them exchange a look before she hurried on out of the room with the rest of her people. He’d have to keep an eye out for her- the Doctor had a habit of making annoyingly loyal friends.
“Much better,” he said. “You’ll notice I didn’t kill them all.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed?” The Doctor raised an eyebrow at him. She was still kneeling. The threat of killing everyone in the room was now null and void, but she was still kneeling.
There were a dozen ways the Master could have answered that question. Yes, please, was one that came to mind immediately. To see her face looking up at him, genuinely awed...the thought was enough to make him salivate.
Instead, he knelt down opposite her, slowly. He lifted the tissue compression eliminator, tucking it under the Doctor’s chin and using it to lift her head up. She met his gaze, still frowning at him. If the Master had a softer heart, he’d find that frown cute. Instead, he wanted to wipe it off her face. A rush of anger prickled through him; he gripped the TCE tighter. He saw the Doctor flinch- just barely, imperceptibly, but it was there. Beautiful.
The Master closed his eyes. He didn’t have to reach out far, the Doctor’s mind was right there in front of him. Closed off, right now, but he was sure that wouldn’t last long. He pressed himself against her defences, feeling her shock as she registered what was going on, and then a cautious retreat, a section of her walls lowering and granting him entry.
“What are you doing?” She spoke in his mind, and her voice echoed through him in ways the Master had forgotten even existed.
“Say my name again,” he demanded. “Say it.”
There was a long pause. The Master could feel the Doctor’s irritation at his game, some parts of her mind that he couldn’t access ticking away as she thought.
“Say it,” he insisted again. “Or I’ll go out there and just start firing on humans in the street until you beg me to stop. You know I mean it.”
Still, she hesitated. The Master was about to give up, about to go make good on his threat (as much as he didn’t want to break this telepathic contact, he’d do anything to prove a point), when a word echoed in his mind.
“Koschei.”
The Master stilled, the sensation of time slowing down around them almost physical. It had been years, centuries, millennia since he’d heard that name. And- oh, he wanted to hear it again. But- this moment couldn’t last. He had a plan to carry out, the Doctor should be dead by now, and- who was he kidding? He didn’t want her dead. Putting her on an exploding plane was his way of flirting, and never had he wanted it to work more than in this second.
“Theta,” he said back. The Doctor’s tone had been firm; she knew saying his name would rattle him, and she had been right. The Master’s voice was soft, yet rough; almost broken. He felt her surprise, and then something...something else. A rush of longing no less powerful than his own.
He sat back on his heels, the emotions suddenly flooding between them enough to affect even his physical form. The Master couldn’t bring himself to care even slightly. He was lost already, swept up in the headiness of another Time Lord- of the Doctor. His Doctor. His Theta.
“I missed you, Theta.”
“I missed you too. I missed us.”
The mindscape was a strange place. Shifting, swirling colours, waves of sensation that knocked one’s consciousness around like a ship on a grey ocean. He could feel the Doctor’s consciousness there too- a lighthouse in the storm. The Master pushed closer to it, and he felt the Doctor gasp, the sound echoing like wind.
Suddenly desperate, he reached out again. There were no walls this time, just the Doctor, her soul in its very purest form. Every action he took, he could feel her reciprocate, until there was nothing between them, nothing separating them from every inch of each other’s consciousness. It felt...holy. The Master had never gone in for religion, but it seemed appropriate that they were both on their knees right now.
“We used to do this as students, Koschei. Do you remember? Skive off our studies, spend hours buried in each other’s brains.”
“You talk about it so inelegantly. Like we were humans, having their messy physical relations. This...mm, this was art.”
“You’ve just got pretentious in your old age.”
The Master didn’t deign to respond to that, but he didn’t need to. Every emotion of his was the Doctor’s too. He could feel their closeness, he could feel heat; like a star being born between them, blazing bright with the ferociousness of centuries spent apart from each other. No more stormy ocean; just the Doctor, just himself.
“Koschei-“
“Theta...Theta, I-“
A sudden, icy pain tore through him, and in an instant the connection was broken. The Master sprung to his feet, shaking off his daze- that damned human woman from before was in here again, and she’d shot him. A human. Had shot him. Were he not still half-stunned, he’d be offended.
The Doctor’s eyes snapped open too. He saw her look up at him, saw her face go through about fifty emotions in the span of half a second- regret, lust, longing- before he had to wrench his attention away and duck another storm of bullets aimed at him.
“Doctor,” he growled. She was on her feet now, and she had one of those ridiculous grenades in hand as though it was just...back to business as usual. Her human friend got there first, tossing the damn thing at him before he had a chance to say a word more. The Master took his chance; he ran for it, getting out of the building before he could make any more of a fool out of himself.
Had the Doctor just done that to buy her human friend time to attack him? Surely not- words couldn’t even express how much he hoped that wasn’t true. Anger boiled within him; she couldn’t have fooled him after he’d planned this all so carefully. Could she?
But...he’d been inside her mind, completely and totally, and he’d felt no deviousness, no indication that she was doing this as a distraction. Ducking into an alleyway, the Master pressed his head against a cool brick wall. The bullet wound in his arm hurt, but that was barely even on his mind now. He wanted the Doctor. Wanted more than her attention- always had done, if he was honest with himself.
He was utterly fascinated by her, and he was going to get a chance to finish what they’d started. Even if he had to chase her down across the entire universe, across the whole of time...no matter what it took.