#101-1000

It’s the sweet relief of quiet that has the Master leaning into the Doctor’s hands.

“There we go,” the Doctor murmurs. There’s nothing but silence and him, and the Master hasn’t felt so relaxed in his entire life.

He was upset earlier. He can barely reach the feeling through the liquid comfort filling his mind. Something about what the Doctor offered him to drink, and the thick feeling of his tongue, and heavy weight of his limbs as he clambers into the Doctor’s lap. He tries to call the anger back, but all he can feel are pleasant waves lapping around his mind again and again.

There’s a beat on the edge of his awareness, growing louder. Returning.

The Doctor squeezes the back of his neck. His eyelids fall shut, leave him in the dark with the Doctor’s touch and the Doctor’s voice to hold onto.

“They’re persistent,” the Doctor says, frustrated. “Fine. Let me take some more out. We’ll see if that gets rid of them.”

He’s too slow to think or react as the Doctor’s mind presses into his. For a moment, he has the energy to fight, but not the means. His body tenses as the Doctor shushes him. He presses the Master down, down, down, under the water. It’s calm and quiet below. He melts under the Doctor’s hands as he holds him, in his mind and in reality.

Something flows out of him into the deep water. He frowns against the Doctor’s shoulder.

But it’s so quiet. It doesn’t matter what he’s lost as long as it’s quiet.

His thoughts come slower. Every feeling turns into relaxed joy. He tries to remember who he is. The Doctor drowns him gently and only draws him up again when he’s satisfied. The drums are gone again, even above the surface.

“All better, Koschei?” the Doctor asks. The name sinks into him, remembered and accepted.

(Wasn’t there something else? Hadn’t he made himself into someone-)

Koschei leans into the Doctor, the source of his peace, always his friend, the only thing in the universe he thinks about or needs. All these things become perfectly true, and he doesn’t notice the Doctor’s mind curled around his own to whisper them to him while he’s so empty of his own thoughts.

He’s never been more happy than he is lazing under the Doctor’s hands as they pet down his spine and through his hair. His touch makes Koschei’s skin tingle, drawing his attention to the Doctor’s hands and away from what the Doctor’s doing to his head. It’s all so easy.

Vibrations at the back of his skull. He whines into the Doctor’s shoulder.

“Back again?” the Doctor says, but he sounds a little too pleased. Koschei can’t remember if he should be worried about that. Why he would be. The Doctor only wants to help him. He can keep the drums away, if Koschei lets him do anything he wants. Though, Koschei’s not sure that there’s a choice, or if he’d even be able to make it, so maybe it’s best that the Doctor doesn’t ask, only plunges him back down into the water in his head and all that’s left of the Master slowly drains away.

Koschei blinks sleepily into the Doctor’s shoulder. He’s not sure who that is that he’s feeling slip from his fingers. Someone important? He’s not sure who he is, either, but the Doctor’s most loved friend.

It doesn’t matter, he decides. As long as it’s quiet. He lets his mind be washed out to blissful emptiness.

There are many things the Master does not care to hear from the Doctor, but he's not aware that 'Yaz got me pregnant' is at the top of the list until it spills out of her mouth.

After a very, very, very long discussion about how is that his problem and how he owes her, or their whole species, or both and how maybe, if he's responsible for a new swarm of little Time Lords, it'll fix him, the Doctor's pregnancy with Yasmin somehow turns into the Master's pregnancy with the Doctor and Yasmin, and he would be a lot more irritable about being bloated with the Doctor's eggs if it didn't make her so obsessively attentive (which he does not need or want, he doesn't, he just thinks it makes her seem pathetically clingy, something he's never been in his life.) Someone has to be able to settle down long enough to brood, and out of the two of them, the Doctor's never carried for long, so he's resigned to putting off any future diabolical plans until he isn't half so round.

Susie swears she was trying to start a pillow fight.

Look, Kris has a nice bed! Big, fluffy pillows! Great for smashing into someone's head and exploding with feathers! So, obviously, Susie had jumped on top and gone for one to do just that. Kris had rushed after her, and they'd fallen into an impromptu wrestling match. Kris was wriggly, but Susie had reach, strength, and most importantly, no shame in dropping her whole body weight on top of Kris to squash her competition.

Kris wheezes. "Ha! Give up?" Susie taunts. All her teeth are on display. She's still getting used to that happening because she's smiling, not because she's going to snap them at someone. Kris huffs.

"Um, Susie?" Ralsei pipes up, and Susie and Kris both crane their heads to peer at him. Kris seems to think this will be their moment to escape, but Susie's onto them. She noogies them good, until their blue-black hair is even more of a mess than usual. "Maybe let Kris up? They might be… squished?" Susie snorts.

"No way. Kris loves this. Don't you, Kris?" She's expecting more wriggling, some kicking, maybe even a call for Ralsei's help. The two of them working together could probably pin her down instead. If they've got the balls to try it.

Instead, Kris folds one arm under their head like a pillow and gives Ralsei a thumbs-up. Susie blinks.

Come on, it can't comfy. Kris is this scrawny… Susie's not going to call her best friend a loser, because Kris isn't one, but it's still the first word that comes to her. Whatever. Kris is smaller than her. Light enough to pick up and toss around. Why would they want to lie there and be crushed under her?

"If you're sure, Kris," Ralsei chirps, and then he just… stands there. Susie shifts, since Kris isn't trying to go anywhere now and she doesn't need to hold them down. She can feel them breathing under her. She's only paying attention to that to make sure she isn't actually suffocating them, not because it's slow and calm and as easy to match her own breathing to as it is to listen to Kris in a battle. And Ralsei's still staring.

Does he really plan on just standing there this whole time? Not that she's doing anything with Kris, and definitely not cuddling them—ugh!—but. If she was. If that's what they were doing. It would be weird for Ralsei to not be a part of it, like he's a part of everything else.

Or at least weirder for him to watch.

"Hurry up!" Susie growls, slapping the empty part of the bed with an open palm. Ralsei startles. Susie rolls her eyes like the invitation's been open the whole time and he's been making them wait. Kris tips their head to watch Ralsei approach. He scrambles onto the bed, not touching either of them until Susie reaches out and gets her claws in his dress. She yanks—not hard enough to tear, she knows her own strength, just hard enough to make him tumble—and Ralsei collapses in between where Kris's upper half is poking out from under Susie and where she's curled on top of them.

Ralsei makes a very quiet, very soft noise. Susie's not sure what about it hurts, and she tries not to think about it.

She noogies Ralsei, too, for good measure. "This bed's infested with nerds now." She doesn't want to ever leave it.

"You're both very warm," Ralsei mumbles. Susie squints at him as he stumbles over his next words, "because you're Lightners, I mean! I don't really need to be warm to survive like you do. It's… It's nice, though." That's definitely a bright pink blush where the fur on his cheeks is thinnest.

Susie's tail wags a little faster. She's not sure when it started. She's just glad it's staying hidden under the sprawl of her coat.

"I guess we have to do this more often, then. For Ralsei," Susie says, and she pretends to yawn so they know she's only doing this for them, even though she's obviously not enjoying it.

"For Ralsei," Kris echoes. It sounds like they're smiling.

Hey, if Susie knows what it sounds like when Kris is smiling without being able to see it, do they know what her voice sounds like, too? Does Ralsei? When did that happen?

Her tail wags away. Stupid tail.

Susie keeps meaning to get up. She never does. She expects Kris to shove her off. They don't move either. She thinks eventually Ralsei will tell them they have something more important to do than curl up in bed together. Instead, he starts bleating softly.

It takes Susie a minute to realize he's fallen asleep.

"Hey, Kris, do you think we could find some whipped cream to prank-" Susie starts, but her voice is low. She doesn't want Ralsei to stop making that noise.

Kris is very still, face buried in their pillowed arms. Susie feels them breathing, so slow and steady.

"Really?" Susie whispers. "What am I supposed to do, wait until you're done napping?" She doesn't try to wake them up. "Fine. If I have to." She curls closer around them, drawing her knees up to nudge into Ralsei's side and laying her snout over the back of Kris's shoulder. Kris's hair smells like apples. Ralsei turns over and puts his arm around Susie's waist. He snore-bleats against her stomach.

She wonders if they'd all fit in her bed, too.

She wonders if they'd all fit in Lancer's bed. With Lancer on top like the cherry on a sundae.

She turns her head so that when she laughs, it rustles Kris's hair.

“Castiel,” says Raphael, in an unforgiving voice, “you are free to sit at any other table.”

The club is dim and full of noise, a piano and brass—a cornet, Castiel needs a second to note, because he hasn’t had much cause to pay attention to human music in the past few centuries. Perhaps he will take up the hobby.

The live music is too vibrant in its swells and dips; nowhere in it is he allowed the safe muffling barrier of a radio’s faulty transmission. Perhaps not.

“I have demands to make of you,” Castiel says, not budging from his seat. He feels gazes linger on him from the other patrons, little stabbing pinpricks of attention, though he can’t think of why. He is either over- or under-dressed, and this is something humans take very seriously. Unthinkingly, he straightens his tie. It falls crooked, in the other direction. Raphael puts their borrowed hand around their glass. It’s empty.

“Do you.” It rankles Castiel—their unimpressed tone of voice, the glare they level at him, the million ways they do not yield when his choice has been given their Father’s favor. Raphael lost before this war began; God only saved one son on the eve of the Apocalypse.

“You will give up your control of Heaven. You will let go of the angels who follow your commands. You will…” Castiel launches into the speech, but Raphael’s eyes drift away from him and to the stage. The music crawls onto Castiel’s back, and he tries to shake it off. Raphael’s finger circles the rim of their empty glass in time with the crooning horn. “Are you listening to me?”

“No,” Raphael says. “Say something that concerns me.”

“I don’t want to fight you, brother.” Raphael tips their head back and sighs like smoke expelled from the lungs.

“Good,” they say. “Leave.”

“But for the sake of Heaven-”

“Gabriel was out here for so long, wasn’t he?” Raphael says. “I don’t know how he did it. There’s so much to grieve.”

The idea of Gabriel grieving is not one Castiel can give weight to. Not the Gabriel he had met, in the end. He’s not sure what Gabriel has to do with anything.

“Call off the war,” Castiel orders. Raphael looks at him the way a planet looks at a comet, the way a mountain looks at the rain, the way a man looks at a spider.

“What war?” they say, irritated.

Castiel snaps. “The one our siblings are dying for. They fight me in your name.” Raphael blinks.

“I thought that’s what you wanted,” they say. “You are the champion of free will.”

“And you-”

“Have lost all three of my brothers in the course of a single year. I’m tired. I won’t be going home.” The dim lights provide a sanctuary for their grief, hiding in the depths of their eyes and the lines of their face, as deeply woven beneath the skin as their own grace. Raphael shuts their eyes, and the music shoves past Castiel to reach them. “I thought I’d mourned them already, but this is what the rest of existence will be like. You took my peace from me, Castiel. I will never forget that.” They lift the empty glass to their lips. It doesn’t seem to surprise them to find nothing in it. They set it down after a few long seconds.

“So you won’t surrender.” Castiel hears the important part of what they’re saying.

“Someone should have taught you that freedom is more than a series of rebellions,” Raphael says, “but I’m the wrong creature to do so. Not that you ever listened to me, Castiel.”

“You were wrong about everything.”

“I was wrong that God is dead. He’s made that very clear.” Raphael gives no further quarter. “Fly away, Castiel. Make your war. Your siblings believe it is their freed choice to kill you; you should respect that.”

“I don’t want this,” Castiel says, leaning close.

“You’re a good liar,” Raphael says, leaning closer. “You get that from our Father.”

The lights flicker. The piano player, younger, pauses and looks up. The cornet player, as old as his instrument, wouldn’t stop for less than their absentee creator Himself, and even then, he would wait until the end of the song. Raphael tilts their head, and the light fades into a warm dark wave of blues and purples once more.

“When this is over,” Castiel tells his enemy, “then there will be peace.”

“Do you plan to kill me?” It’s a simple question. It has a simple answer.

“If you make it necessary.”

Raphael eyes him. They touch their empty glass again. The music slows.

“I haven’t been alive for a very long time,” Raphael says, “and there is no one left to mourn me.” To Castiel, that sounds like permission. They will not give in to his will. The war will continue. Heaven will bleed until he wins, and he will win.

Raphael doesn’t watch him leave. They look upon the stage, and for a brief moment, the cornet player meets their eyes. They don’t know that they entertain angels here tonight, but he understands the lamentation that Raphael would sing if they could and he plays. It is the most holy thing Raphael has let themself inspire in centuries.

It's not easy living with this face. It has far too many ghosts.

He has to live slowly now, and he's never been any good at that. Despite it all, this body wants to run, and all that keeps him grounded is promises. They've never been easier to make and never heavier to bear.

They don't talk about it, him and the Master. It sits between them like an old, walled-up secret, and maybe that's what the Timeless Child should have stayed. He'd have lived with the illusion that he was ever young, ever fleeing because he loved the chase and not because his bones knew chains too well.

"Stop looking so morose," the Master says, poking him in the ribs. "Your niece is visiting today."

"Our niece," the Doctor says without thinking. The Master stretches lazily across their bed.

"Don't tangle me up in your domestics."

"Koschei," he says, "what comes next?" They're wearing the faces of an unkind past, trying to imbue them with gentleness. But faces come and go. The Doctor doesn't know how many more he will have. How few the Master will get.

The Master shuts his eyes. "I haven't thought about it," he lies.

"Doctor, get off," the Master says as he shoves at the Doctor's side and makes no progress in rolling him off of his chest, "you're heavier than you look."

"And you can't do anything so long as I keep you in bed," the Doctor muses, mushing his face into crook between the Master's neck and shoulder and exhaling one long, warm breath against his skin, "no evil plots, no running away, no dying on me..."

"That was one time and and it didn't even stick, so I don't know why you won't let it go," the Master grumbles, but he's the one wrapping his arms around the Doctor's back and shutting his eyes again.

There’s a million places they could go. A million people they could see. And a handful, total, who would know this face and what it means.

And she wants to go to Donna. It ties around her hearts like an anchor. She wants to sit on Donna’s couch and curl against her and listen to her voice. Then, she remembers that she already did, and already is, and if that version of her sees this face—this face with that face, a hall of mirrors—she’ll ruin a good thing she had going for her. She did that once- twice- She’s done that today already.

They won’t open their eyes. Did she know about this? Build herself anew with mirrors and shining surfaces so that one day her Doctor would have to choose between blindness and seeing- They didn’t know until they came inside. They had only the vaguest hints of who they were—Blonde? Blonde again, don’t like it- Familiar feelings here and there, oh, humans are going to call me a woman again- I know these hands. I know these hands. I held these hands. Don’t.

Don’t.

She hauls herself from the floor to her feet. She touches the TARDIS console gingerly. Her skin still burns.

Like golden light and golden goddesses and golden girls-

Their skin prickles and tingles like a burn, down through the layers, down to nerves still being rebuilt. Their hair is too heavy around their head. Their clothes don’t fit. They have nowhere to go, unless they feel like being cruel. (Show up to Donna’s, scare themself to death. Show up at Ruby’s, dump even more on her shoulders and look away when she might crumple under it. Show up wherever in the universe Jack is, torture him, it’s what they’re good at, hurting him and leaving him behind.) But not with this face. Can’t with this face. Because she was kind.

She was also furious, and petty, and ferocious. But never cruel. The Doctor might fail to do a million things she should have in her name, but she will not desecrate her face like that.

Selfish, though? Selfishness they had in spades, both of them, and that was the beauty of it. That they learned to want again because she wanted so much from the universe, from them. Selfishness, its hands are on the controls. The TARDIS scolds them. After all, she loved her Wolf, but she was not like the Doctor, did not lose people when they left but held them inside her heart forever, especially that one. She loved her Wolf, but she loved the one who came after just as much.

Selfishly, the Doctor lands her. Selfishly, she walks out of the TARDIS’s protesting exit. Selfishly, she makes it to the door.

They freeze. Rain pours down on them, drenches through their ill-fitting clothes. They smell like fresh life, a sweetness near to rotting.

Selfish. Not cruel. She shrinks to the doorstep and huddles against the ground, blonde hair a wet tangle that she wants to rip out of her scalp. She’s having to breathe with these lungs now, having to move with these legs, having to live in this body. She can’t do it. She can’t.

They’re not going to knock or ring the doorbell. She probably isn’t even home, if this is the right place or time. Martha Jones has the world to walk, to look after. They crouch against the doorstep and heave in breaths, humid air trapped in their lungs and choking them. The suggestion of their voice terrifies them.

She needs to leave. She’s gotten as much as she deserves.

They rise, and turn, and feel nothing like a god at all. They’re cold and wet and alone-

Alone but for the woman standing between her and her TARDIS, with a raincoat on and groceries tucked into a plastic bag to keep them dry.

“Did you want to come in,” Martha says, “or are you going to scratch at the door and run away afterwards?” And then, because Martha, clever Martha, knows best, she doesn’t let the Doctor open their mouth to answer, but steps up next to them and puts an arm around them. “Doctor,” she says, quietly, “the rain’s going to make your hair a nightmare once it dries. You could have come when it was sunny out.”

She’s avoiding it. The way she pronounces the Doctor’s name, with hard intention. The Doctor doesn’t blame her. She almost apologizes, but between the raincoat and the curve of her jaw is a warm, dry span of Martha’s neck, and the Doctor nuzzles her face into it, getting Martha soaked in the process.

“In,” says Martha, pushing them towards the door and trying to get her keys out without dislodging the Doctor currently wrapped around her and refusing to let go. “We’ll deal with this when you’ve changed into something dry.”

The Doctor lets her go, though she never wants to. Martha looks like a good thing, and she’s afraid she’s going to ruin it.

Martha takes their wrist, her face falling. “You could have come any other time,” she says, and this time doesn’t mean the weather.

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor answers and means it.

Martha squeezes her wrist. Her pulse separates her from the face she wears. “You owe me the story. The whole story. Inside, go.”

The thing about prisons, past or future, is they really only ever innovate in one way: torturously.

Jack really thought he'd already had the worst of solitary confinement, but this room he gets shoved into—so he's no model prisoner, maybe they should get guards with thicker skins—is like sitting in death. He'd be the only person in the universe to know what that is, to live with the knowledge. The silence covers his skin in heavy sheets as he paces the perimeter of the room. His ears are beginning to ring with his own pumping blood.

He opens his mouth to give himself relief, shout until he's hoarse, but despite the vibration he feels in his own throat, nothing escapes. No sound returns to him.

He stumbles. He keeps himself upright against the wall as his head begins to spin. Even louder, his heart starts to pound, every turn of his head sending a sickening grind of bone up into his eardrums. They're starved for sound, self-cannibalizing. The silence presses him down, down, down under its weight until he's forced to his knees. No one comes to let him out. Time forgets him easily when he cannot scream.