#WIDOW!MASTER ARC ALONGSIDE WIDOW!TARDIS ARC. HIS DOCTOR IS GONE. HER THIEF IS GONE. THIS IS WHAT'S LEFT.

[quietwingsinthesky]

i think one of the other appeals to me of my spymaster/thirteen roleswap au is that the doctor being off playing with the matrix and the master being the one with her tardis while thinking she's dead means that. maybe for the first time, he actually has to. mourn her. and i think that's a oddly scary thing for him to contemplate, there's like this unspoken agreement between them that, sure, they fuck each other up, but they come back. you know? it's never going to keep them down forever. the doctor leaves the master on skaro with a bunch of daleks, and he's not even that surprised to see she's still alive later. the fact of their existence parallel each other is a given.

i mean, that's why him refusing to regenerate in last of the time lords is such a betrayal. it's not just him forcing the doctor back into being alone, it's that the doctor's instincts would be right, even the time war ending itself couldn't keep the master down. but now he's choosing death. he's not supposed to do that.

so here. here's a world where the doctor is gone to him. just gone. didn't win, didn't survive. they're gone. and the master is still here. i want to know how he mourns his friend. if he can, even, if he knows how to. if it doesn't twist into denial and mocking mimicry that is, still, it's own way of perpetuating their memory through time and space. s11 is about grief, damnit, and i want to see the master wrecked with it as the days turn and turn and the doctor doesn't show up, doesn't take her tardis back, doesn't thwart him using their name and running around with companions.