Chapter Text
"Oh, I know. I most definitely know. I only barely stopped mine exploding an entire galaxy last week."
The Doctor's voice drifts through the TARDIS's corridors. The Master wanders towards the sound, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, trying to establish some order in the chaos of his short hair.
The Doctor laughs at something his inaudible conversation partner has said. "Yes, it is worth it—but don't tell either of them I said so. Good work on Peladon, by the by. Oh, and if you get reports about trouble on Logopolis, let us handle that one, all right? I know only too well that it's not in your nature to let anybody else take care of things, but you'll know it's in the best of all possible hands." There is a pause. "Oy! Remember who it is you're insulting....yeah, I ought to be getting back myself. Kiss yours for me. Oh, now, don't pretend you won't like it, you can't possibly hope to fool me. None of these skimpy pecks, either—plenty of tongue. Don't pretend you won't like that either."
The Master reaches the console room just as the Doctor switches off his viewscreen. He's sitting in his chair, trainers propped up on the console. The Master presses his face into the crook of the Doctor's neck. "You'll make me jealous talking like that, Doctor. And hasn't anybody ever told you that talking to yourself is a sign of insanity?"
"If that's the worst sign of my insanity, I've got much saner since yesterday—and I think they might make an exception in this particular case, anyway. Your nose is freezing, Master."
The Master rubs his nose in a little deeper, just to make a point, and wishes he had a beard to scratch with. "How are you, then, Doctor? And how am I?"
"We're much the same as always. Saving the universe. Driving each other crazy. I get the impression there's another spat on about companions. I don't think you and Sarah Jane are exactly hitting it off."
"Mmmm." The Master kisses into the Doctor's neck, working his way upwards. "I still don't see why you insist on keeping such a crowd around, Doctor. If Miss Noble weren't visiting her grandfather, I couldn't do this..." He slides his hand over the Doctor's chest and down, towards the waistline of his pinstriped trousers.
"Oh, don't pretend, Master. I know you like Donna, no matter what you say about it. You've always liked the ones who're willing to stand up to you."
"It's good to hear we're up to our usual tricks." The Doctor lets the Master steer the conversation back where he wants it. The Master thinks that oversight may have something to do with what his hand is getting up to underneath the Doctor's waistband.
"That'll never change, Master," says the Doctor, leaning back in his chair. "You, and me, and a whole wide universe of battles to fight and wonders to see and miracles to do. For..."
"Ah!" cautions the Master. "None of that."
The Doctor turns his face towards the Master's. "For now," he says, smiling.
"For now," replies the Master, and smiles back.
Many years earlier
To a Time Lord, 'forever' is a perversion. Nothing is forever. Even what is bounded only by the limits of the universe is bounded, and pretending it isn't is an inexactitude unforgivably gross. They are cautioned again and again that to promise each other forever is to guarantee disappointment, but their many mutual talents don't extend to listening. They are young and invulnerable. What applies to other people isn't true for them. They can promise each other anything—from the great secrets of the universe to their own souls—in full expectation of fulfilling what they pledge. And so they promise each other forever, savoring the wrongness of it, certain beyond doubting that they two can make it right.
*
They never give up on their dreams of rebellion, not exactly. But, as every Time Lord learns by age three, the entropy of a system only ever moves forward.
On the day of their graduation from the Academy Theta and Koschei earn their true names, and the next morning the Doctor and the Master are married. The following month is spent blissfully honeymooning, rarely venturing out of each other's minds, much less their bed. After that, life calls them back to their appointed spheres and keeps them there. The Doctor lectures on galactic geography and xenosociology and interspacial geometry—the only classes in which his marks ever reflected his genius—to groups of eager young Academes. His constant requests for the use of a TARDIS, on the grounds that he ought actually to see what he is teaching, are delayed and denied again and again, and he takes to sneaking off to the shipyards to spy on the design teams who construct the vessels that represent so much freedom. None of them see him as anything more than a nuisance, but he does befriend an old type forty rusting in a dusty corner—if 'befriend' is the right word for being subjected to slightly less of her gruff, creaking moodiness than anyone else who comes near. The Master, meanwhile, ever the better able to navigate the system, is impressively well-placed in the government laboratories for a Time Lord still inside his first skin, but he makes no secret of his political ambitions.
"And when I'm President," he tells the Doctor, kissing his husband's neck, "you can be my Ambassador Extraordinary, and do all the tearing about the universe you like so long as you're home by tea-time. How does that sound?"
"Perfect," replies the Doctor, laughing, every time.
*
They're married three decades before they begin to be willing to share each other—but, as always, their hidebound society looks on them as fools rushing in. They ought to wait until their next bodies, they are told, until they're older and surer of themselves, but they've always taken 'ought' as a dare. They can't safely direct the artron energy to give life to a new body until they're more practiced in the psychic arts, they are told, but they've always laughed at 'can't.' It's true that they both feel physically wrung dry for weeks after pouring out so much of themselves at the de-looming, but how steep a price is that to pay for something so perfect? They spend the first day curled up together in one big bed, one on either side of their tiny daughter, running chaste, sweet, reverent fingertips over each other, over the three of them. They both resist the urge to slow down time, letting it run its normal course. They have forever, after all. In an infinity of time, even utopia can be counted on to come around again.
*
"She'll be brilliant."
"I should have thought that was abundantly clear."
"She'll be more than brilliant. She'll be a genius."
"Once again, Doctor, you have a remarkable capacity for stating the obvious."
"She'll be the greatest genius Gallifrey has seen since Rassilon."
"Now there you're quite mistaken."
"Are you demeaning my daughter, Master? Because I may have to...become thoroughly cross."
"What do you take me for, Doctor? I merely think it should be pointed out that her achievements will far exceed those of that old fogey who called himself the founder of Time Lord society."
"Ah. And quite right, too. You know, you're no more than half-bad when it comes to brains yourself, Master."
"Of that, my dear Doctor," replies the Master, "I am very well aware."
*
They name her Rosamaracandrasalcha, because the Doctor remembers his mother's stories, and knows that there is nothing lovelier than a Rose.
*
Parenthood changes them both. The Doctor becomes more settled, calmer, his desire to run diminished by the certitude that nothing could be better than what he already has before him. It's the Master who grows restive, his ambitions expanding slowly, and then faster, and then faster still as he watches his daughter grow. He wants to give her everything. He wants her to be proud of him. He wants her never, never, never to know disappointment. And he has a plan.
"It's dangerous," the Doctor insists, adamant. "Surely you can see how easily this could be weaponized! You could destroy stars, galaxies with that kind of power!"
"It's not meant as a weapon," the Master argues. "Think of the good it could do! Planets that could never have supported life, transformed into positive paradises. Inter-universal travel, quick, painless and safe. Suns and moons rearranged, perfectly positioned for the health of their systems. A power source this advanced could even sustain a paradox! Surely those kinds of goals aren't worth giving up on just because progress can be misused?"
When the Doctor hesitates, the Master snakes his arms around the Doctor's waist from behind, splays a hand over the Doctor's stomach, nestles his chin into the Doctor's shoulder. "It'll win me the kind of immediate recognition that a millennium of faithful service could never buy. Within six months of unveiling the plans I'll be President of Gallifrey, the most powerful man in the universe, if I play my cards right. We'll have everything we ever wanted, for ourselves and for each other and for Rose. Can you really say no to that?"
The Doctor turns his head to meet the Master's eyes. "There's so much that could go wrong," he says seriously. "Isn't what we have now enough? We've got each other and our little girl. Within a century or two they're bound to finally give one of us a TARDIS, and then we can go traveling, like we've always wanted. Isn't that..."
"I'm tired of waiting to be given what I want," the Master snaps. "We'll never have anything unless we take it, and that's what I intend to do." Catching the Doctor's fleeting worried look, the Master relaxes his sneer. "Do we have to talk about this now? It'll be decades, centuries maybe, before I've worked out all the details. Right now it's just a science project, a hobby to tinker with." He smiles his most winning smile. "I may just have an opening for a charming assistant, to hand me tools and make me tea." He slides his hands possessively over the Doctor's body. "Are you interested in the position?"
The Doctor twists in the Master's embrace, turning them face to face and slipping his arms around the Master's waist. "Have I ever lacked an interest in any position you proposed?"
"Not that I recall," the Master smirks, pressing his body into the Doctor's, "but I certainly wouldn't mind refreshing my memory. Would you object, for example, if I wanted to..."
A high wail drifts in from the other room. With a quick, regretful kiss, the Doctor bustles off to see to the baby, leaving the Master alone with his plans.
*
Three years later, the Master is forced to acknowledge that 'hobby' is less the right word than 'fixation.'
It's the end of a full day in his lab. He's been engaging in a very techy and delicate experiment, trying to resolve a conflict between his anti-gravity and poly-temporal stabilization fields that threatens to set him back to square one. The calibration has to be pinpoint accurate, and he can barely move while the anti-gravity field is operating for fear of sending the whole thing flying. He's so close to resolving the issue, he can feel it in his bones, when the lab door slides open, sending in a current of air from the hall. The fragile, floating experiment he's been working at is instantly blown against the wall, and shatters into a dozen irreparable pieces. He turns to the doorway, furious, his eyes flashing fire.
"Damn it! That was hours of work! What the fuck did you do that for, Doctor, why can't you ever bloody knock?"
A tiny blonde head peeks out from behind the Doctor's knees. "Your daughter would appreciate it if you could pull yourself away from your test tubes for long enough to read her a bedtime story," says the Doctor, in a dangerously quiet tone. "Might you perhaps be persuaded to grant that humble request?"
The Master blanches. "Rose," he says, hurrying over to kneel beside the Doctor and gather his wide-eyed daughter into his arms. "I'm sorry if I scared you, sweetheart. I didn't mean to scare you."
"I'm not scared, Papa," she lies bravely, over a wibbling lip. "That would be a very irrational response."
"Yes, it would," he says, smoothing her hair. "We both know what a softie I am, don't we? A good breeze could blow me over. Go ahead, try." He indicates a spot on his cheek. Rose, after a tentative moment of hesitation, puffs out her own little cheeks and blows, and the Master collapses dramatically onto the carpet, dragging his giggling daughter with him so that she lands on his chest. She props her elbows on his collarbone and looks down at him.
"You're very silly, Papa," she informs him.
"The ultimate in irrationality," he agrees. "Now, what's this I hear about a bedtime story?"
"Well," she says, "I could read the book myself, of course, but you're much better at doing the voices."
"Anything for my princess," he declares, and gathers her up, heading for her bedroom. "Trans-temporal physics tonight, or something more in the fairy-tale line?" As he stands, the Doctor catches his eye, and rests a hand on his arm.
A very neat save, the Doctor says, telepathically, vinegar in his tone even without using his voice.
You know I wouldn't have snapped like that if I'd known she was there, Doctor.
And would it have been all right, if she hadn't been there? What's happening to you, Master?
This is the wrong time to have this discussion, Doctor, the Master reminds him.
It always is. Within an hour you'll be pretending nothing's happened, coddling me exactly the same way you just did Rose, all sweetness and light.
Wouldn't you prefer me all sweetness and light?
I would prefer to have my husband back, not just a charming mask that sometimes slips.
"Daddy, are you going to stay and hear my story? Papa does a very good Big Bad Wolf."
"I know he does, honey," says the Doctor. "I know he does."
*
The Project, which certainly deserves the capital, grows slowly to consume ever more of the Master's attention. The Doctor doesn't complain about the time they aren't spending together, or about the perfunctory, distracted nature of the sex they're having so much less of now. The Master knows that the Doctor resents both of those, but he channels his frustration into pestering the Master incessantly about the time he isn't devoting to Rose. The Doctor pushes so hard that the Master agrees to set aside his research for a year once Rose turns seven, to savor her last months at home. He honestly tries to make good on the promise, but within six weeks the Doctor releases him from his pledge.
"It's no good your body being here, if your mind is still bent on that thing every waking minute," the Doctor says primly, his lips set tight with disappointment, not even looking over as he busies himself with changing out of his clothes for the night.
The Master feels his own expression sour. Why can't he make the Doctor understand? He's tried so many times to explain that he's doing this for love of them. He's giving every single ounce of himself for the Doctor and their little girl, and this is the thanks he gets. The Doctor is going on again, lecturing, hectoring, doubting him. They've had this fight again and again—different words, different moments, but the same substance. "You can't just push everything else to the side indefinitely..." the Doctor is saying, an oft-quoted refrain, and the Master is just so fucking sick of it, why won't the Doctor just stop, why can't he see it, why can't...
Something jackknifes sharply in the Master's hearts. He feels their beat pounding in his head, a throbbing rhythm. Before he's quite sure what's happening the Doctor is underneath him, and he's grinding their hips viciously together.
"Shut. Up. If you won't understand, then just shut up," he growls, and bends down to take an unmerciful kiss, biting the Doctor's lower lip soundly, pushing violently into his mind without any warning. The Doctor's look when they part is one of utter shock, but the Master sees arousal in the Doctor's eyes, feels it in the cock stirring against his belly, tastes it in the Doctor's neurons fizzling through his mind. That's how the Doctor should look at him, the Master thinks, with rich satisfaction. Needy and needed, thinking only of him.
The Doctor tries to sit up, and the Master pins him down again, hard, one of his hands capturing the Doctor's wrists over his head. The Doctor's hips buck sharply at that, but not in anything like resistance. The Master kisses him again, again, harder, more demanding, his tongue giving no quarter. They're already shirtless, and it only takes his one free hand to strip off the Doctor's trousers. The Master doesn't bother to remove his own, just pulls them open, and he can feel the Doctor's desire bleeding through their coupled minds as he watches the contrasting colors, stark black trousers and his own pale thighs and the dusky red of the Master's cock. There would be something almost businesslike in the Master's efficiency as he spits into his hand, coats his cock, and thrusts himself into his husband, except that they're both shaking all the time.
Nothing about this is gentle; nothing about this is sweet. It's hard and it's angry, and the bright sparks of frustration and pain and lust that leap between their minds like static electricity leave the both of them panting and grinding and moaning and aching. The Doctor feels himself drowning in the Master's need, and the Master fosters that sensation, intensifies it, until the Doctor is so completely enveloped in the Master's mind that they form an endless loop of desire, the Master encased in the Doctor's body and the Doctor wrapped inside the Master's head. It's so good, and then again it isn't, painfully strong, but there's no time for the Doctor to think about that because every bit of him is being taken, consumed. All he wants to do and all he can do is surrender, give himself up entirely. When he willingly relinquishes the last resisting corner of his headspace it's what the Master didn't realize he was waiting for, and he cries out, thrusts hard, shoves into that last bit of the Doctor's mind, fills him up right to the brim.
It's never been quite like this before. They've been so psychically tangled up in each other they can't tell who's who, but this is something else again. It's a victory, a conquest, a zero sum game that the Master has won, and he's so high on the sensation that he can't see straight. The Doctor is his, quite literally a part of him. His primal joy of ownership is equaled only by the Doctor's pleasure in being possessed, which illuminates every corner of the mind that is now the Master's as much as the Doctor's. It's far too much, but all either of them wants is more—the Master taking more, the Doctor giving more, more heat, more pressure, more friction, more need. It's all so impossibly, impossibly intense, so acute it hurts, and they only keep whittling that sweet agony sharper and sharper until they can't possibly take it any longer, until they've gone beyond the bearable and then some, until the climax that finally tears through them both is so violent that it feels like the end of all things.
The Master doesn't know how long it is before he comes to himself again, and finds, oddly, that he can't seem to care. He has more serious worries once he finally opens his eyes. The Doctor is lying so still, eyes glazed, that a bright stab of terror careens madcap across the Master's mind, down his spine, through his nervous system.
"Doctor?" he croaks. The Doctor gives no better answer than a languid blink. "Doctor?" The Master hates the edge of panic in his own voice, hates even more the Doctor's unresponsiveness as the Master pulls him into his arms.
"Theta?" he whispers urgently, desperate now. The Master isn't sure why he resorts to the childish nickname, but when the Doctor's eyes finally grow clear and lucid he can't resent the solution, nor the "Koschei" that the Doctor murmurs back against his lips. One and a half centuries of shared memories, as subtly unstoppable as the tide, wash over the Master all at once. He sees the boy he fell in love with, with his soft dark eyes and fine pale hair and the small body that was never strong. He remembers their first wildly innocent kiss, exchanged in chaste childish play before even their school days, when Theta had tasted of apples and honey, and their second first kiss, not innocent at all, when Theta had tasted of apples and honey and desire. They had been nineteen years old then, wild for each other to a degree that defied understanding and surpassed classification. It didn't matter what they or anyone else called it, this thing between them that only ever grew; it only mattered that it was, that it was mutual, and that it meant they belonged to each other. Theta had been afraid of it, at times, but Koschei had never doubted. He didn't mind Theta being afraid—in fact, he was almost glad. It was so good to take care of Theta. Koschei knew that was what he was meant for, that Theta's very existence made Koschei necessary. Soft, sweet, unworldly Theta was his to keep safe from the hurts of the universe, and that was what Koschei intended to do.
The Master comes back to the present with the taste of acid in the back of his throat, sick with self-recrimination and giddy with relief. "There you are," he murmurs gratefully, and kisses the Doctor's forehead, his eyelids, his temples, his cheekbones, his lips. The Doctor pushes back, just right, against the Master's worshipful lips, and touches the Master's chest and arms and neck with gentle fingertips. The Doctor shows no sign of reproof, makes no complaint for the unkindly handling he has just received. On the contrary, he mumbles an adoring, "Oh, love," as he's falling asleep in the warm compass of the Master's arms.
The Master is sore tempted to give in to the sweetness of the sound, and mark the evening down, in point of fact, as something of a success. But he swears to himself before he falls asleep—swears to himself every day for months to come—that he isn't going to take the Doctor's unthinking pardon as an excuse to forgive himself. The Master won't let himself forget that using the Doctor that way, submitting him to psychic and physical handling so rough as to qualify almost as violence, was wrong of him, nor that he cannot ever let himself do such a thing again.
He only wishes he could forget how absolutely unbelievable it had felt.
*
"Doctor..." says the Master next morning, as he watches the Doctor dress.
"Hmmm?" The Doctor turns to look at the Master. While he stands like this, unmoving in his long robes, the Master cannot see the bruises on his arms and hips from fingers that held him like vices, cannot detect the slight stiffness of his walk, finds no remnant of the mental shock that had left him trancelike for so many terrifying seconds last night. The Doctor's cheeks are pink, his eyes bright with good-humor and their perpetual hint of mischief. He looks fine. He looks more than fine—he looks happy.
"Nothing," says the Master, pressing a quick kiss to his husband's cheek as he sidles out the door.
*
The Master is so confused and frightened by his own outburst that it's nearly a decade before he so much as touches the Project again. For nine years, he devotes himself to his family and his official work, telling the Doctor that his researches have stalled. It's mostly true, anyhow. Translating the unimaginable quantities of organic power produced by the Heart of a TARDIS into something cold and sterile and mechanical is a process so unintuitive as to be functionally impossible, but it's an absolutely necessary step if the Master is to achieve the stable predictability he'll need for his energy device. The Master has the preliminary designs for a containment reservoir that might reasonably be expected to hold the excess energy a TARDIS produces, but any method of directing that energy in or out of storage is evading him. Some sort of absorbent spherical cage around the TARDIS's Heart might perhaps do for collection, but he can't even begin testing until he can devise some sort of cabling strong enough to channel such enormous power. It'd have to be converted somehow, first...and that's where the Master's thinking seems to fail.
He pushes the problem around casually for years, toying with it at odd moments, occasionally even soliciting the Doctor's help. But as the time without progress grows longer and longer, the Master thinks of it less and less, until the Project becomes one of many childish dreams that he has stopped expecting to come true.
Many, many years later, the Master will decide that the great rule of life is that absolutely nothing goes according to expectation.
*
The breakthrough happens on a Tuesday night.
Rose is as stubborn as her fathers, and her teenage years prove a difficult time for all concerned. This time their fight, about her proposed areas of study, becomes spousal as well as generational when the Master ill-chooses a few words on the subjects of ambition, practicality, and a ridiculous affection for races other than their own. Insulting his husband's mother's species earns the Master a tongue-lashing from his headstrong offspring, and an icy evening with the Doctor once Rose has returned to her quarters at the Academy.
The night's bitterness translates to long sleepless hours, to a fuller mental expression of the constant low hum of dissatisfaction that the Master has never quite managed to shake. His life is so stable, so hopelessly stuck. What has happened to the daydreams of his childhood, or the ambitions of his younger life? All his plans, from the smallest to the grandest, seem to have gone astray. Even his Project, which had seemed so promising...but the Master has nothing to blame but his own apathy. The Doctor has a talent for avoiding habit, altering his life in little ways that prevent him stagnating even in the oppressively unvarying world of the Citadel. It seems impossible, but he still surprises the Master almost every day with the workings of that endlessly leaping mind. The Master rolls towards his husband, intending to kiss and caress his way into a reconciliation. His hand is actually in the air, reaching for the Doctor's shoulder, when it comes to him in a flash, from whatever fantastical realm houses ideas as yet unthought.
"The neutron flow," the Master gasps aloud.
The Doctor stirs, mumbles, only half-awake. "What?"
"The neutron flow," the Master repeats. "If I reverse the polarity of the neutron flow...yes, yes!"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," the Doctor grumbles, burrowing deeper into the blankets.
The Master's first instinct is to dash straight off to his lab. But he spares a moment to let his joy spill over into affection, rolling the Doctor over and kissing him so enthusiastically that his eyes fly open under the onslaught.
"I love you," the Master tells his husband, a sentiment they don't often bother to voice.
The Doctor fights a smile. "Tell me again, and I might consider forgiving you."
The Master grins, unabashed and unrestrained. "I love you, Doctor," he murmurs, with another, slower kiss. "Forever."
The Doctor's lips quirk against the Master's. "Well, then," he concedes. The Master grants the kiss the Doctor leans up to take, but when the Doctor's arms move to wrap around him, the Master pulls away.
"Hold that thought," the Master whispers into the Doctor's mouth, and vanishes so suddenly that the Doctor can do nothing but gape at the fluttering tail of his nightshirt as it whips around the doorframe.
Six hours later, the Master awakes at the workbench in his laboratory, the Doctor's hand on his shoulder. "You have less than half-an-hour to be at work," the Doctor says quietly.
The Master notices the hint of disappointment and something almost like fear in his husband's tight lips. But before the Master can do anything about it the Doctor has pulled a vanishing act of his own, and there is nothing for it but to turn and face the day.
*
The Master makes up for his lapse that evening, making the Doctor keen with pleasure as payment for the Master's sins. He makes amends for the next night when he widows the Doctor for his laboratory, and for the next time, and the time after that. Then the inspiration is flowing too quickly, the pieces falling too neatly into place, and he spends two consecutive nights in drawing diagrams and scribbling equations and designing plans before returning to his own bed. Before he knows it he's spending whole weeks on his experiments, emerging only for work, food, and an hour or two of exhausted slumber before beginning it all over again.
One evening the Doctor sneaks up on him in the lab, and the Master nearly jumps out of his skin. He pulls on his mental armor, anticipating a passive-aggressive not-fight at the very least, but the Doctor's voice is cheerful and easy, only the tiniest hint of strain sounding through.
"I don't suppose you're still in the market for an assistant?" the Doctor asks, settling himself next to the Master, half in his lap. "Of course, we both know that it's a terrible waste of my genius to be an assistant to anyone at all, but I might just be persuaded to stoop to being an underling, if the job came with the right sorts of perks. Working under such a devastatingly handsome boss, for example."
The Master keeps his face as blank as he can, but is tone is hopeful when he asks, "You really want to help?"
Conflict is writ plain across the Doctor's features. "I still don't think you can hope to contain that kind of power safely," he says finally. "But as you're determined to do this anyhow, the only thing I can do to protect you is help." The Doctor reaches up a hand, slides his fingers along the Master's cheekbones and into his hair. "You need someone sensible on your side."
The Master snorts. "And how precisely is your presence going to change that?"
The Doctor raises his eyebrows, more flirtatious than truly annoyed, beginning to move away. "Well, if that's how you feel about it..."
The Master tugs the Doctor back to him, sprawling him fully across his lap this time. "I'd be honored to have your help," he says solemnly, smiling. "True, my intellect is more than up to the challenge," he grins, "but such mental powers as yours aren't to be scoffed at either. Between the two of us, we'll have the thing finished inside a month."
"I think your estimate may be a touch over-optimistic."
"Nonsense. We'll have made the greatest breakthrough in modern science within thirty days, or I'll know who's to blame for it," the Master teases, tugging the Doctor around so his knees rest on either side of the Master's thighs, sliding his hands down to cup the Doctor's arse. "Punishments—and rewards—will be dispensed accordingly."
"I'm quite certain they will," the Doctor murmurs, thrusting his tongue between the Master's lips.
The greatest breakthrough in modern science certainly isn't made that evening, but neither of them consider the night wasted.
*
No matter how slowly things seem to be moving at times, the Master knows that the following century is a busy one.
Age mellows their daughter, in a way it never did either of them. She has the Doctor's kindness and the Master's cutting sense of humor and both of their brilliance. She's as unconventional a thinker as either of them, and not lacking for a certain impish streak, but possesses a practicality to which each of her fathers attempts to lay claim, and which each secretly wonders where she could possibly have come by. Her schoolmates adore her, her professors dote on her, and the Doctor and the Master love her with such a fierce pride as neither of them has ever known. Shortly after her hundredth birthday comes graduation day, and no one is surprised to see her at the top of her class, with marks which the Master is only too happy to admit are even better than his were. Rose accepts a position as assistant to one of the minor members of the High Council, a very impressive achievement for a Time Lady just out of the Academy. No matter what happens to her fathers, her future seems assured.
The Master and the Doctor are no less busy than Rose during her years at the Academy. The Device—which never needs any other name—is so radically different from anything that has come before it that virtually every component, every bit and bob and spare part, needs to be designed and built from the ground up. A TARDIS capsule itself is, of course, made to run on power absorbed by its living Heart from the Eye of Harmony. But the Heart of a TARDIS is far more than a storage vessel. It's an incredible organic machine, multiplying the energy it consumes exponentially via processes that even the most advanced temporal engineers on Gallifrey can only pretend to comprehend. The academics of their world, the Master comes to realize, don't know nearly as much as they think they do about vortex or even artron energy, and certainly not about the trace huon particles present in a TARDIS's heart. It is, however, a truth universally acknowledged that a TARDIS produces far more power than it needs simply to jump into and out of the Vortex.
While the official credit for the discovery, cultivation and domestication of TARDIS Hearts and the design of the first functional TARDIS capsule are all laid at Rassilon's door in the official histories, the Doctor's researches in the dusty arcana of the Academy libraries establishes otherwise. Only the engineering work that permits a TARDIS to draw power from the Eye is genuinely Rassilon and Omega's, though that's an impressive enough feat. The other steps that led to working time capsules were made piecemeal, by a large number of scientists of varying talent and fame, and often enough during the initial stages of design the right hand had no idea what the left was up to. The one goal all shared was the discovery of time travel. Once that had been achieved, most alternate researches were dropped instantly, and those few divergent lines of inquiry that remained active fell by the wayside once their originators passed on. By a few hundred years after the first TARDIS took off, it was an accepted fact that the Heart of a TARDIS could only be used as it was already, its energy only harnessed via a single wildly inefficient system to power a single variety of vessel. It's that complacent mindset that the Master intends to challenge, with the Doctor's help, but it means forging an entirely new path, which neither the technology nor the science of their own age is well-suited to encourage.
Fortunately, they both thrive on adversity—and doubly so, when the end result will be the thumbing of their noses at millennia of their fellow Time Lords.
As the decades pass them by, the Doctor and the Master take up and discard approach after approach, design and unmake and remake part after part, use and abandon any number of new technologies that Gallifrey has never seen before. As so often happens in the pursuit of science, their tinkering leads to discoveries they could never have expected and results they cannot predict. Occasionally, when his paranoia will stretch to permit it—when he's absolutely certain that no one else could use his research to reach his ultimate goal ahead of him, or guess what he's really trying to achieve—the Master shares one or two of these lesser finds with the laboratories where he is still employed, and manages to retain and even advance in his position in spite of the somewhat lackluster performance that comes of his head remaining perpetually somewhere else. But it's not long before he grows disgusted by the way even these minor discoveries are mishandled and ignored.
"Once they realized the process wasn't reversible, they decided there was nothing more to be done with it, and abandoned the whole idea," the Master sighs. "Just because they'd got it through their thick skulls that the best use for a beam that compacts organic material was to shrink goods for shipping, ready to be expanded again once they'd reached their destinations. Don't they realize how much more it could do?"
"You had something better in mind, naturally," smiles the Doctor, from the other side of the dinner table.
"It'd make one hell of a weapon. 'You will obey me, or I'll shrink you away to nothingness,'" the Master points his fork at the Doctor, miming a menacing pose, "not such a bad threat."
"Not actually to nothingness," the Doctor points out. "Only to a hundredth of the original size."
"Still, that's bad enough, don't you think?"
"Very fearsome." The Doctor fakes a yawn. "You know what I think, is, I think they might have taken it a bit more seriously if you'd given the thing a better name. 'Tissue Compression Eliminator' indeed. It doesn't eliminate compression, it causes compression!"
"'TCE' is an excellent name," says the Master, a bit defensively.
"You might have called it the 'Sonic Shrinker.'"
"I might, if I were willing to ignore the facts that that's a ridiculous name, there's nothing sonic about it, and you're obsessed."
"I am not obsessed. There's good reason to believe that a sonic modulator operating in tandem with the alluvial damper..."
"Will do no good whatsoever, Doctor, and have a decidedly negative effect on the rate of heat exchange."
"Well...well, that is to say...all right, yes, probably. But all the same, I think it would be worth a try, if only to help stabilize the output from the gravitic anomalyzer..."
It's like this every night, and the Master loves every second of it. The Project is engaging, fascinating, a challenge far beyond anything he's ever attempted before, but with the Doctor on his side every step is enjoyable. When one of them does or says something brilliant, he's got the other to shoot him adoring looks, and make the next leap of logic; when one of them does or says something exceptionally brilliant, it tends to lead to hot, hungry, marvelous sex on the laboratory floor (or up against the walls, or over the lab tables, or, on the rare occasions they manage to wait so long, down the hall in their own bed). With the arrival and departure of their mutual two-hundredth year, a few signs of age begin to creep in on them—there is grey at the Master's temples, and silver strands wriggle through the Doctor's blond—but it does nothing to dampen their ardor for each other or their work. By the time Rose has been a year out of school, they've got what seems like a solid preliminary design—on paper. But between the actual construction, working out the details of a dozen minor parts they'll need to engineer themselves, cannibalizing and adapting another dozen that exist already in some form, testing and experimenting, they've got years of work yet ahead. And they've finally run up against the snag they always knew was coming.
All this time, they've been operating on an almost purely theoretical level. True, they've built dozens of prototypes and components, but they're missing the most crucial ingredient: an actual TARDIS.
*
The Master has concocted at least sixteen plots that cannot fail to win them the prize they require. The Doctor soundly vetoes the fifteen that have a greater-than-ninety-six-percent probability of provoking an interstellar war, and proceeds to gently remind the Master that the sixteenth is bound to fail because the Master has forgotten his own allergies to raspberry jam and reptiles of greater than forty-foot length.
"Ah." The Master chews on the end of his pen. "Well, we might try..."
"Just asking your superiors at the lab? We wouldn't even need a capsule capable of flight. It shouldn't be so very difficult to get their permission to requisition a decommissioned TARDIS."
"And risk the labs trying to lay claim to my findings, or some clever colleague getting ideas and beginning their own experiments?" the Master scoffs.
"The labs needn't know you've discovered anything until it's too late for them to do anything about it, and the only person on this planet clever enough to challenge you as a scientist is sitting right here, Master." The Doctor leans back in his chair, gesturing down his own body. Then he very nearly overbalances, catching himself only just in time. The Master considers pretending he hasn't seen, but that's much less fun than smirking. "I know just the TARDIS you need," the Doctor wheedles. "It's been junked for decades now. Nobody wants it. Just try asking about it, Master. If they say no, then I'll consider backing you up on your scheme to slip mind-control drugs into the water supplies of the entire Corps of Temporal Engineers, as well as their families, neighbors and friends."
The Master sighs. "If it'll humor you, Doctor. Honestly, the things I do for you."
The Doctor strives to hide his grin, very ineffectually indeed. "Spoiled rotten, is what I am," he agrees.
"Thoroughly spoiled," purrs the Master. "One might even say debauched."
"Clearly, I'm the debauched one here."
"Oh, there's more than room enough for two."
"Really? If there's so much room, then why are you suddenly sitting so close?"
"Guess, Doctor. Just guess."
"You're afraid of Vashta Nerada in the shadows?"
"Not quite."
"Aiming to conserve body heat, in case of a sudden drop in temperature?"
"Guess again."
"Might it be because you're planning to do that thing to my ear that I...hmmm...well...I can see that it..."
"Honestly," says a dry, amused voice from the doorway, "among a species that prides itself on being practically asexual, how did I happen to be born to the only two Time Lords who're completely insatiable?"
The Doctor's grin is of a wattage bright enough to light up a black hole. "You'll thank us for the good genes when you're older," he says, bounding across the room to pull his daughter into his arms. "Very much older, I hope. A vast, tremendous deal older. You're far too young to be thinking of such things yet."
"You were already married by my age, Daddy."
"And look how that turned out," says the Master. "He got stuck with me. We both know you can do much better." He cups Rose's cheek in his palm, and she leans in to kiss his cheek.
"Not in a million years, Papa," she grins. "Or so I've been hearing all my life. False modesty doesn't become you."
"Any member of this family is, by definition, superior to the rest of the universe. But any Time Lord or Time Lady you marry will become a member of the family, and thereby earn the right to surpass even your father and I—though not you, as you happen to be unsurpassable. All that is basic logic, sweetheart."
Rose laughs. Her laugh is a thing of beauty, brightening every corner of her face. She's dressed in the red and orange robes of the Prydonians, in as simple and frill-less a style as fashion will stretch to permit. The colors suit her warm brown eyes and the golden hair cascading in waves down her back. She looks like the fire goddess of some primitive religion. "To what do we owe the very distinct pleasure of this visit?" the Doctor asks her, once her mirth has faded away.
"As a matter of fact," Rose says, sobering, "it has to do with new members of the family."
The Doctor and the Master stare at Rose, and then at each other, and then back at Rose. "No, I'm not getting married! Or planning on looming a baby, either. That is, not exactly. But...well, we'd better sit down, I think."
They do. The Master and the Doctor watch their daughter inquisitively. She's far too calm and self-contained to fidget, but it's a mark of her nervousness that she looks as though she wants to.
"Do you happen to remember my friends Margra and Thomax? We were quite close during my first three quarters at the Academy, but they didn't stay on to do graduate work."
The Master has a very vague recollection. Rose collected friends easily all through her school years, and this would all have been twenty-five years ago.
"They've been married some few years now, and their daughter was due to be de-loomed yesterday."
"'Was due to be?'" asks the Doctor.
"It went wrong," says Rose softly. "The artron loss was stronger than they could control."
Artron energy is a Time Lord's life-force. Normally, it is held in reserve, carefully conserved against the possibility of death; a Time Lord too drained of artron would be unable to regenerate. Only for a few very special purposes does a Time Lord actively use his or her artron energy, the most important and taxing of which is to give life to a loomed child. Usually, birth is a significant strain on the parents, but not dangerous. But occasionally very young Time Lords, whose control over their own artron is limited, have been known to push themselves too hard, draining themselves dry. And such accidents are particularly horrible because they come without the possibility of rebirth.
"Both of them?" the Master asks. That's often the way, with de-looming incidents. During the process the parents are tied to each other, as well as their intended offspring. If one spirals out of control, the other is usually dragged along too.
Rose nods, tight lipped. The Doctor rests a hand on hers, and she leans her head onto his shoulder for a moment. Then she straightens up. "But that isn't the end of the story. Their daughter lived."
"What?" The Doctor looks flabbergasted. "But...that's impossible, isn't it?"
"Very, very rare," says Rose. "It's been centuries since a child survived an unstable artron transfer."
"I'm sorry about your friends, sweetheart, but what has this got to do with our family?"
"She wants to adopt the girl," says the Doctor, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Don't you?" he asks, turning back to Rose.
"I knew you'd understand, Daddy," she smiles. "Are there any secrets of dealing with babies that I ought to know?"
"Well, you'll need a good set of röntgen blocks for the nursery. And lots of diapers. And one of those bits of ribbon that sort of clamps a dummy right onto a Time Tot, so they can't fling it out of their crib no matter how hard they try. I can't tell you how much I wish someone would have told us about those before the week you woke us up six times every night yelling for..."
"Wait just one minute," the Master splutters. "Rose, you're only just out of school! You're not old enough to raise a child, particularly not on your own. And I'm definitely not old enough to be anybody's grandfather!"
"Now, that last one is entirely true," she says, scooting over to his side of the sofa. "You don't look a day over a hundred and fifty."
"Flattery will get you nowhere at all, young lady. Who is this child, anyway? You said her parents didn't take full degrees at the Academy. Is she even a Prydonian?"
"Don't be a snob, Papa. You sound just like Uncle Brax." Rose rolls her eyes. "He was at the hospital—I have no idea why they called him in, but he does tend to pop up everywhere. I asked him about the legalities of adoption procedure, and he gave me a twenty-minute lecture on precisely how his niece taking up with a lower-class baby would conclusively ruin his presidential ambitions, and how I was forbidden from doing anything remotely so foolish."
The Master pauses, thoughtfully. "Braxiatel is against the idea?"
Rose bites her lower lip, stifling a grin. "Very much so."
"Only think how annoyed he'll be," puts in the Doctor, laughter dancing in his eyes. "It'd drive him positively batty to see you standing up for her."
It's horribly tempting. The Master looks from his husband to his daughter, and then shakes his head. "You both know how to play me far, far too well."
"She needs me, Papa," says Rose, seriously. "She needs a mother."
The Master studies his daughter, trying to imagine her with a daughter of her own. "You're too good for this world, little girl," he says finally.
Rose wraps her arms around the Master's neck, snuggling against his shoulder. "Thank you, Papa."
"So," says the Doctor, "when am I going to meet my granddaughter? And does she have a name?"
"As soon as the loom specialists are certain she's stable. And yes," Rose wrinkles her nose, "unfortunately."
"Unfortunately?"
"Her parents left it for her. It's an old family name, apparently."
"Well?"
"Well...Sausannagrokantaladungorkan."
"...say again?"
"No," says the Master, hurriedly. "Please, please don't."
"Susan," announces the Doctor, with decision. "Definitely 'Susan' from now on."
*
The day Rose brings Susan to meet her grandfathers, she is followed into their quarters by a team of men carrying what appears to be a large glass-fronted bookcase. The Master smiles calmly at the baby, chucks her under the chin, and makes an approving remark about dimples. Then he turns to their new TARDIS. His eyes flare and then settle into a smolder. Oh, this is beautiful. It doesn't matter that she can't fly. He's been wanting this for so, so long. He can practically taste his victory. They'll have to start testing right away. If they hurry, if they're diligent, perhaps they can finish it in only a year or two. No—less than that. Within a few months, his name will be on every Time Lord's lips. Within a year, he'll be head of the first family of Gallifrey. Everyone will acknowledge his brilliance. Everyone will do as he says. He'll be made President, and he'll rule so wisely that Gallifrey will be in a new golden age before he knows it. He'll rule so well they never want to let him out of office. He'll have all the power he could ever want, and then some.
The Master is too distracted to see the Doctor look at him, over Susan's head of dark curls, with the expression of a man who has been ill before, and feels the symptoms coming on again.