𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑.

***

The man was slippery like an eel, already getting under Trish’s skin in a way that made it crawl. She couldn’t pinpoint what it was about him, but Trish had dealt with enough scheming men to know one when she saw one. The problem was, he might be one of the few that could get information on Kaz Brekker’s suspicious activities. “As a concerned citizen, I was hoping you could shed some light on Kaz Brekker and his expansion of the Lounge.” It was a harmless segue into the deeper issues.

.

Harold linked his hands together on the desk in front of him -- the typical “politician” pose he usually saved for interviews with the media -- and smiled. He expected this to be a quick, dull, conversation, perhaps about his plans for the observatory in the local park, or his thoughts on the new body in the woods. What he was not expecting, however, was for her to ask about Kaz bloody Brekker. He raised his eyebrows, but stayed where he was.

~*~

He wasn’t sure what had prompted him. It wasn’t unusual for John to offer to help – he was famous for it among the other teachers, the librarian called him a ‘darling’ for it. He enjoyed helping people, lending a hand wherever he could. But that usually extended to tutoring or grabbing a book off a very high shelf, and once oddly enough chasing down a very wily duck. Now here he was, offering his services to the mayor, and with an enthusiasm he couldn’t explain. He felt a kinship to Harry, which after that night under the stars was hardly surprising. The fact that they’d had that night was the real surprise. This connection, whatever it was, it had begun the instant the two men set eyes on each other. 

So when Harry brushed him off, John couldn’t help but feel a wave of disappointment wash over him. “Right, course,” he said quickly, grin faltering for just a second. He shoved his hands into his pockets, started to turn away, but then Harry spoke again. John turned on his heel, grin back in full force. “Let’s take a look shall –” He stopped short, head tilted. “Huh,” he whispered. “Now would you look at that.” He reached out for the watch, leaning forward to study it. It wasn’t the exact same markings, but similar. Like different phrases written in the same alphabet. “Afraid I don’t, mate,” he said, slipping a hand into his pocket. “Otherwise, I’d know what to do about this.” He pulled out his own watch, and dangled it from the chain in between them. 

.

Harold hated everything in this poxy town. His wife was a shell of her former, sparkly, self; his job made him want to hang himself with his own tie; his colleagues were idiots; and always there was that nagging sensation that there should be more than this. But all of that fell away when he saw John Smith again. He couldn’t explain why -- it was ridiculous -- but there was just a connection there, a warmth he didn’t feel with anyone else. He didn’t have friends in this town -- he could’ve used the excuse that his job didn’t allow it, but even Boris bloody Johnson had people he called friends. Harold just didn’t click with anyone in Echo Springs. But here was John Smith, nothing more than a high school teacher, and Harold felt like he’d known him for years. All they’d had was that chance meeting in the park, but it was still there. That childish but familiar sense of comradery.

He watched John turn away, and he felt, immediately, like he had to make him stay, so he’d blurted something out about the watch, simply because he had it on him, and it had been bothering him. He held it up, and John turned back, grinning eagerly. Somehow, Harold had known he would want to help. Here was a man who made people better. He had no idea where that phrase came from -- it just popped into his head, nestled around the quiet, steady, sound of drums. And then, as John looked at the watch, his smile faded, and he tilted his head to the side.

Harold didn’t know what to say, so he just waited, until John pulled something out of his pocket. He looked down, and saw exactly the same watch in the other man’s hand. Well. Not exactly the same -- he could see from a quick glance that the markings were slightly different, those strange circles on the front. Harold frowned, and squinted at it. “Blimey, they’re... they’re almost identical,” he muttered, and he reached out with his free hand, and took the watch from John, staring down at it as he held out his own watch for John to take, if he wanted.

SEND ME A QUESTION FOR A HALLOWEEN THEMED ANSWER!

LUNAR ECLIPSE - name the darkest or most damaging trait they possess. is your muse aware of this part of themselves?

Naming just one trait is tricky! He has a lot of dark and damaging traits, so I'm going to do an "honourable mentions" list before getting into the nitty gritting of what I think the most dark and damaging trait of his is.

To get a bit cliche, I'm going to say that he embodies every single one of the seven deadly sins. He treats Lucy awfully during the Year That Never Was, which could show Lust, he's shockingly egotistical, which of course is Pride, endlessly wants to rule everything, which is Greed, is very violent (Wrath), begrudges the Doctor his youth in Utopia (Envy), literally goes on a crazed c*nnibalistic frenzy in The End of Time (Gluttony), and, when he finally gets to rule the world during the Year That Never Was, seems to spend a lot of the time hanging out on the ship like a spoiled teenager, letting his soldiers and the Archangel Network do a lot of the hard work (Sloth).

If we keep going with Christianity imagery, then he could also be seen to embody each of the Four Horsemen too. Death, Famine, War, and Conquest. Not only does he kill a lot of people, but the humanity under his rule suffer from droughts and starvation (and again, he himself gets an unnatural hunger as he burns energy when he comes back to life), he wants to wage war across the stars, and literally subjugates humanity as a dictator.

To take a less symbolic approach to his worst traits, he is shown to be incredibly sadistic with the torment he inflicts on Jack Harkness (it's implied but never outright stated that he keeps him chained up in the basement of the Valiant to kill him over and over again), he beats Lucy, and psychologically tortures the Doctor, once he's incapacitated him. He is incredibly selfish, egomaniacal, and self-absorbed (who else would build literal statues of themselves across the world?)

But his worst trait is probably more tragic than all of that. He is self-destructive. When the Doctor offers to travel with him, in The End of Time, the Master almost looks like he's going to agree. He has literal tears in his eyes as he doesn't reply for a few seconds, but he doesn't agree to go with the Doctor. In Last of the Time Lords, he would rather die than be a prisoner of the Doctor's, and he lets Lucy (of all people) shoot him. He refuses to regenerate, which (given his track record of being desperate to escape death) is a shockingly out of character thing to do. But what's in character about it is that it causes suffering to the Doctor, and it is a tragically, dramatically, self-destructive thing to do.

Even Steven Moffatt (my nemesis) understood this. The Master in The Doctor Falls shoots his female incarnation (Missy) in the back when she tries to stand with the Doctor. And he says this to her:

MASTER: You see, Missy, this is where we've always been going. This is our perfect ending. We shoot ourselves in the back.

SEND ME A QUESTION FOR A HALLOWEEN THEMED ANSWER!

KATABASIS - have they ever died before? which part of them died? did they ever fully return?

Like I said in my last meta, the Master not dying is an in-universe cosmic joke. He's been shot (Last of the Time Lords) stabbed (The Doctor Falls) and exterminated by Daleks (the 1996 TV movie). And those are just the ones that I can think of off the top of my head! I'm sure if I looked at the Doctor Who Wiki page, I'd see a lot more of the Master's deaths listed there, but for the sake of this, I'm going to keep the answer short: Yes, the Master has died before. And come back to life. That's what is different about him, compared to say, the Doctor. The Doctor has almost died, but then used the Time Lord cheat of regenerating. The Master has actually died, and then been brought back from the afterlife.

As to which part of him died, I'd say, of everything, his sanity is what's never fully returned. He's existed as a burnt husk, stuck in a body that couldn't regenerate, he's existed as a ghost snake (thanks, 1996 TV movie!), a child version of himself (if we take the comics as canon), and a human version of himself, to name but a few. The way the Master uses regeneration, and bodies, is very interesting. I've talked about this before, but the Doctor learns from each of his lives. He becomes a different facet of himself, learning and growing from each new life. But the Master doesn't learn. Not only does he stay relatively the same (selfish, egomaniacal, and evil), but his core drives are always the same: domination, control, and power.

A lot of fans have complained that the Master being more insane New Who is a betrayal of the suave, Bond-villain-esque portrayal of the Master in the '70's, but I'd say it actually speaks a lot to the character. If we assume that the order we've met the Master in is roughly the chronological order in which he's regenerated (which is hard to say, since we don't know what number of regenerations he's had. Also, to note: I refuse to believe that Sacha Dhawan's Master comes after Missy. Missy is the final regeneration of the Master, in my mind) then we have to assume that, as we've seen him change, we've actually seen his mental state deteriorate.

With every new death, and every new body, the Master loses more of his already fraying sanity. That's what he loses, every time. He loses a sense of self, a sense of reality. Yes, he was once a moustache-twirling classy villain in the form of Delgado, but now he's the unhinged, capering, lunatic villain in the form of John Simm.

SEND ME A QUESTION FOR A HALLOWEEN THEMED ANSWER!

ABYSS WALKER - what do they hope is waiting for them on the other side? do they believe in a set afterlife, or do they imagine it’ll be something different?

Bless you for sending me this question. If there's one thing I love, it's meta about Doctor Who, and this is going to let me talk about so much meta. Strap in, anyone who dares read this - you're in for a wild ride! I'm going to be drawing mostly from New Who, and RTD's Who in particular, since that's what I've seen the most.

So, Doctor Who actually has a rather uplifting message about the afterlife. One episode that comes to mind is Voyage of the Damned. The Doctor's brief companion Astrid Peth dies at the end of the episode, and the Doctor tries desperately to bring her back to life. He can't do it, and in the end, he has to let her go, and this happens:

THE DOCTOR: Now you can travel forever. (He points sonic screwdriver at a window, which opens. Astrid turns into specks of light.) THE DOCTOR: You're not falling, Astrid, you're flying.

And Astrid flies out of the window and into space, and it's implied that she goes on, existing among the stars, the way she always wanted to in her life.

One could even take an example from an eleventh Doctor episode, The Doctor's Wife, where the TARDIS's soul is put into a human body, allowing the time machine sentience. At the end of the episode, her body expires, but the soul of the TARDIS floats before the Doctor in glowing light, looking very much like an angel. She and the Doctor have this conversation:

IDRIS: I've been looking for a word. A big, complicated word, but so sad. I've found it now. THE DOCTOR: What word? IDRIS: Alive. I'm alive. THE DOCTOR: Alive isn't sad. IDRIS: It's sad when it's over. I'll always be here, but this is when we talked, and now even that has come to an end.

They go on, but that's the important part in reference to the topic of the afterlife on Doctor Who. She eventually fades away, but it's shown that the TARDIS is still "alive", in some way, even if her physical form is gone.

It's a lovely, uplifting message, perfect for the philosophy of a children's show like Doctor Who. While the Doctor himself seems to fear and outrun death (literally changing his whole body and personality to escape it, with the tenth Doctor's last words being I don't want to go) I'd say that the overall message of the show is that there is something better out there, some life after life on earth.

Conversely, Torchwood takes a very different, darker, look at the afterlife. And, since both shows exist in the same universe, and Torchwood includes several characters who have died and come back to life (most notably, Captain Jack Harkness) then we have to assume that Torchwood's philosophy on existence after death is the correct one within the universe of Doctor Who (A.K.A. the Whoniverse).

JACK: Why are you doing this? SUZIE: Because life is all, Jack. You should know. I'd do anything to stay. Anything.

Suzie Costello is an ex-member of the Torchwood team, and a recurring villain in two episodes of the show. In her second appearance, she is raised from the dead, and, in an effort to escape death, she drains the life out of Gwen Cooper. When asked why by Jack, she replies the above line. Because life is all. But, unlike the Doctor's eternal life, his ever-changing attempts to outrun a final death, Suzie's quest to keep living is shown as wrong, and selfish. Even though, it seems, she has every right to fear what comes next. She says the following, of existence after death:

GWEN: So when you die, it's just -- SUZIE: Darkness. GWEN: And you're all alone? There's no one else? SUZIE: I didn't say that.

And, later, another member of the Torchwood team dies (Owen Harper), but he's also resurrected (it's a crazy show, seriously) so everyone can have their final goodbyes. The team believes he only has a minute or so until he dies again, so Jack's by his side, trying to prepare him before he goes again.

JACK: Sorry, I had to [bring you back] to help you prepare. I know what death is. I want you to be ready. OWEN: There's nothing. Just darkness.

To cut a long story short, Owen doesn't die again, and he sticks around, as a living corpse. Martha Jones asks what it's like after death, and Owen says that there was nothing, but that "[Suzie] said there was something beyond life. Something in the darkness, something moving."

This is never disputed within the canon. All characters who have died and come back to life (Jack, Suzie, Owen, and a few minor side characters) talk about the same thing -- darkness, and nothing, except the sense that something is out there.

Interestingly, any character's quest to escape death across both shows is framed as immoral and selfish, or a literal abomination against nature (unless you're the Doctor, in which case never dying is actually good). Suzie is shown as selfish, draining the life from someone else to stay alive; Owen is seen as a freak of nature, existing beyond his natural life; the Doctor himself is literally afraid of, and repulsed by, Jack Harkness, who simply cannot die. Jack is an offence to the natural order of the universe, a fixed point in time and space that even the Doctor can't heal.

Which brings me to the other character whose main drive is to escape death: the Master. The Master not dying is actually an in-universe running joke at this point, so much so that at one point, Missy just says to Clara Oswald "Death is for other people", and gives no explanation as to how she survived a supposedly fatal encounter. Even John Simm's incarnation of the Master uses a secret cult with a magic ring to bring himself back from the dead, and just somehow survives being trapped in the Time War in The End of Time.

But, unlike the Doctor, the Master's quest to escape death is shown as evil, wrong, and even perverse. He steals bodies (as Geoffrey Beevers) lives through painful disfigurements (as Peter Pratt and Beevers again), drains the life out of others in order to live (as Simm), and even becomes a snake-like ghost thing in order to keep living (as Eric Roberts -- the 1996 film is such an experience) all to escape death. He’s resorted to possession, cannibalism, and witchcraft. Unlike the Doctor, who is simply given extra regenerations in The Time of the Doctor, the Master has blagged, stolen, cheated, and murdered his way through countless bodies, all in a bid to stay alive, or come back to life.

SEND ME A QUESTION FOR A HALLOWEEN THEMED ANSWER!

NIGHTSTALKER - they’re staring into the abyss, is anything staring back? if so, what is it? what does the abyss look like and why does it stare?

This question is very ironic to me, since the Master did stare into the abyss. Literally, looking into the Untempered Schism (a gap in the fabric of reality) is what drove him insane as a child. And what stared back? It's difficult to say, since it was only represented as a swirling vortex, but I'd say, if this is a literal abyss, then all of time and space stared back -- everything that was, and is -- and he was just a child. That's what drove him insane. Even as Harold Saxon, he's still as unhinged as he was in his canon "real" life.

She still had a little while before she needed to be at work so she figured wandering around would kill some time. It was better than sitting at home and waiting for time to fly by, right? Rose truly wasn’t living the life or anything like that. She had hoped the move here would allow her more opportunities but she had yet to fully explore them. 

Her brows raised a little in surprise to have the mayor speaking to her, he was practically a local celebrity at this point. “Sure thing!” The blonde mused as she bent down to pick up the sheet. “Looks like you’ve got your hands full.” Rose nodded and handed the paper back towards him.

“Don’t you have an assistant to help you with this sort of thing?” She asked it before she really thought about it too much. “Sorry, bit of an odd question.” Rose shrugged her shoulder. 

For a moment, Harold felt like he should know this girl. Like he recognised her from... somewhere. It wasn’t as startling as when he’d met John Smith, but it was still a nagging, irritating, sort of recognition. He blinked at her, and then smiled, the façade of the friendly mayor falling into place instantly. “Thanks,” he said, reaching out with one hand to take the paper, and adding it to the teetering pile in his arms. “I sure do!” he agreed, laughing a little.

Raven shrugged, and slid back on her headphones. The guy looked vaguely familiar - maybe he’d been on a bus ad, or something? One of those park bench slimy lawyers? They always gave her the creeps - usually because they were the type who backed her father when he got into trouble in business. The ones who ended up getting bad people out of prisons. 

She heard him talk again and slipped them off, sighing and acknowledging that she was going to be making - shiver - small talk. She’d meant to show she didn’t really care where he sat, but apparently he wanted to sit and talk, not just use the bench. “Yeah? Where’s your office?” She asked, trying for more polite than she felt as she picked around at her takeout, glancing around to see if maybe she could see the office. 

Harold was remarkably good at small talk, considering he hated it. But most of his life here consisted of talking to his colleagues, talking to the media, and talking to his wife. So, when it came to a total stranger, it was mildly interesting, since he couldn’t second guess everything she was going to say. And she didn’t seem to know who he was -- at least, she didn’t hurl an insult at him immediately, or talk about politics. He pulled a sandwich out of his paper bag, and glanced over his shoulder at the mayor’s office building behind them.

for the first time, in a long time, i’m all on my lonesome. || @saxons​

“Your lonesome…” she said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. How many hoops had Trish jumped through to get a chance to meet with the mayor? “Well, I hope you don’t mind my interruption.” Trish gave her best Patsy smile to Harold Saxon, trying not to cringe externally. Everything about the man set her on edge. The man had power in the town though, and Trish needed his kind of access if she was going to figure out what was going on with Kaz Brekker.

.

“That’s right,” Harold said, smiling. He put down his pen, and gestured to the seat opposite. “Of course I don’t, Miss Walker. Please, take a seat.” He was used to addressing large crowds of the media, swarming like insects, but this one to one was easier. It was much more his style to discuss things on a person level, and this woman was going to be easy enough to fob off with the usual we’re doing everything we can speech. Platitudes were second nature to Harold Saxon. “So, I understand you wanted to ask me some questions?” he said, prompting her to continue.

Kate is practicing her archery outside somewhere she needs to keep her skills sharp there where targets step up, looking around at all of them she knew it was not hard for her to hit all of them at the same time when she was getting ready Kate hears a noise then takes one of the arrows and points it in the direction. “Come out before you catch an arrow between your eyes.” she said.

.

Harold needed to get away from it all. The press were crawling all over him because of the newest death, Lucy was a drugged up zombie. He needed some space. And the woods was the only place where he could get some peace. So, he wandered through the trees, feeling ridiculously out of place in his suit, trying to put all the media rubbish out of his mind. But then he heard a voice, and spun around quickly to see a teenaged girl holding a bow and arrow, of all things, pointing it straight at him.