#anyway. time lord victorious ten. my silly little god complex guy <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[quietwingsinthesky]

1 or 34 for the master pls thank u :333!!!!!!!

extremely funny to me how quickly this got away from me alsjfjfkskkdj. i started thinking too hard about okay but Who could bring the master to his knees. the doctor? hey wait remember that time ten had a god complex for a little bit. what if he got worse about that, actually. and then it just kept going-

This is not the Doctor whose arms he died in.

Oh, the face is the same, but the eyes are all wrong. Still ancient, as old as the Master is, but they’ve gone hard like bone. He doesn’t spare a glance around the room at the cowering scientists or the politician that wanted to use the Master, who gave him such easy access to a perfect plan before the Doctor landed his TARDIS on top of the machine and crushed it. Only to one human, the one assigned to hold the Master’s leash.

“Give him to me,” he says. The Master curls his fingers. A step closer, and he’ll let the Doctor taste lightning again.

His assigned guard all but throws the leash at the Doctor. (They’re all terrified. Something’s… wrong, there. Not a misplaced sympathy of his own — let them fear their betters — but it’s the Doctor, it’s how he ignores them, how he holds himself like. He looks every bit a Time Lord.) The Doctor catches it, turns it in his hand, and yanks. The Master feigns a stumble, energy surging through his skin and bones, rattling up dangerously until-

The Doctor pulls harder, knocking him off-balance and to his knees. He twists, but there’s a hand in his hair, painfully dragging his head back until his neck screams in pain. The pinprick of a needle is barely a whisper above it, but the sluggish cold that spreads from the injection spreads no matter how he struggles. The Doctor grips his hair tighter.

“There. You’re stabilized,” the Doctor notes. The Master pants, his limbs growing heavier. “And sedated. You have to be so difficult.” For the first time, the Doctor’s voice falters from the detached tone he’s taken so far. It’s harsh, as thick with accusation as with self-reproach, “I asked you to come with me.” The Master is having a hard time ordering his thoughts. They stretch too far for him to see the whole of them, his sense of time and of himself going numb.

“How?” he lands on, more important than any other question. The Doctor’s grip begins to loosen, letting his head sag forward. His body wants to follow. His vision of the floor he’s kneeling on blurs.

“You were living on borrowed time,” the Doctor says. “I have all of it to work with at my fingertips. When I saw you again…” There’s the absent trail of fingers through his hair. The Master recoils from it instinctively, though that sends him further down, barely holding himself up on his hands. The collar draws tight around his throat when he falls, forcing out a gasp, but it loosens again. “It only took a few decades. I’d have given more to you.” The Master lifts his hand, slowly, and forces it out in front of him. It’s humiliating to crawl, but his limbs can barely keep his weight. He barely moves himself forward a few inches before the collar is a hard barrier against his breath again, and this time, he doesn’t receive any slack. He has to scoot back towards the Doctor.

“You’re going to live,” the Doctor says, without mercy. He steps around the Master, the leash dragging along the floor with a mocking hiss.

“And the rest of you,” the Doctor’s voice grows louder. It becomes a proclamation, a warning. “I won’t hurt you. It’s a stupid and dangerous thing you were doing, but that’s… that’s what you love most, humans. Stupid, dangerous things.” Where’s the sickening fondness, the Master wonders. Where’s the disappointment, even, in his favorite pet species? All he can hear in the Doctor’s voice is carefully controlled anger. “I’m not going to hurt you for putting the whole world in danger,” he repeats, as though he’s reminding himself of that fact, and then, the Master can hear him smile. Regeneration after regeneration, and the Doctor always talks different when he’s smiling. “I don’t have to. If you ever try anything like this again, you won’t have existed in the first place to come up with the idea. I will take you out of this timeline.” He pauses. “Or maybe I’ll just make you kinder. Buy you a coffee on a bad day and change your life forever. You can exist, just not like this.”

He sounds powerful, and worse, he doesn’t sound scared of it. The Master uses the last of his strength to drag himself back up to his knees. The Doctor is surveying the room, memorizing faces, lost in thought about time to tamper with. The Master puts a hand around his own leash. He tries to pull.

All that does is get the Doctor’s attention.

His eyes. The Master is afraid of his eyes.

“Sorry,” the Doctor says, “I’m not going to carry you. You’ll have to crawl.” The Master is searching for anything familiar in him. And what there is, what little there is that he recognizes, is only because of how easily he could have seen it in a mirror instead. “If you pass out, I’ll drag you,” the Doctor offers like a compromise. He turns away from the Master, snaps his fingers, and the doors to the TARDIS burst open.

He takes the Master prisoner. He saves the world. They are both, after all, the Doctor’s alone to decide what to do with.

[whump prompt]