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Comm: Bad Company Muses
Prompt: Deprivation
Verse: A Damned Kind


He is in a world with no sky.

Scarlet sunlight barely filters through thick smog, casting shallow light over crumbling buildings and splintered streets.

This city was built from the mountains, and slowly but surely, the ravaged planet takes it back.

It is like this across the world.

It is as it is meant to be.

"You could change it, you know." A murmur in his ear, deceptively soft, his voice cloaked too in his precious velvet. "You could change it all."

He had chosen this planet, blamed the TARDIS for their late arrival as they wandered through grim scene after grim scene; dead-eyed urchins stained with blood, desperate strays gnawing on their own flesh, tiny corpses abandoned in the grime.

Now, they stand away, apart, as they have since returning from paradise; outside of Time.

"All of these forsaken children." A broad term, for a Time Lord. "You saved yours, after all."

Erimem. Adric. Sara. Katarina. (They could have done so much and now they can.)

He could feel time twist near to breaking each time, hear it screeching inside his head, and ignored it so that he could see their smiles again.

This, though, this is an entire planet. (Where the people used to laugh and the smoke used to sing.)

It is dangerous, he says, and he hasn't the right. (Didn't he say that once, and regret it a life later?)

There is always a price. (Who decides if the cost is too high? How does one weigh life against life?)

"Noble Doctor, always sacrificing to the Web of Time. Do you suppose they would understand?"

Of course they wouldn't, and he wants to say that isn't the point, but that isn't true anymore.

He doesn't know if this makes him weaker or stronger.

He sees another child fall and be forgotten (he had wide ocher eyes in a narrow face, with hair the colour of ash and skin the colour of moons, and he spoke in chimes).

He is tired of watching.

The Master smiles.
thecricketer: (Default)
Comm: Muses With Remotes
Prompt: "There are certain people who are not meant to fit in your life, no matter how much you want them to."
Verse: Troubles the Dark


One upon a time, there were two best enemies.

In his home, chaos rests.

Peri thinks he's insane.

"The Master? The same one who destroyed an entire planet so he could be a real boy again? The same one who held me at gunpoint and dragged me around like a rag doll? The same one who used poor Kamelion up until he died?"

He can't begrudge her that.

Erimem thinks he's irresponsible.

"This man is obviously dangerous. Why are you letting him endanger the entire universe when he ought to be dead?"

He can't disagree.

Peri thinks he should burn, and Erimem need only learn a fraction of what he's done for her to concur.

They will content themselves with being wary, because he has asked, and because they trust him.

Because Peri saw his eyes when it happened the first time. Because Erimem has learned the value of mercy.

The Master cannot hurt them, nor anyone else.

For now. He never does stay trapped forever; it's admirable, in a way.

Physically. He knows exactly what to say; he always has.

The Doctor has risked friends and future and freedom (not only his, that would be easier to bear), twisted Time in knots (he can feel it tugging at his mind).

All to save a proud portent of death itself.

All to save the friend he executed.

He'll never find peace this way.

"Am I to be your absolution, my dear Doctor? You should know better."

This isn't how it's meant to work.

"You're not supposed to heal the monsters, Doctor, did you forget?"

This isn't who he's supposed to be.

"The Oncoming Storm, reduced to a keeper. Shall I call you the Jailor now?"

It doesn't matter.

Once upon a time, there were two best friends.

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