Chapter Text
It doesn’t surprise the Doctor at all when she feels the Master claw his way back into this dimension – it screeches through their bond (it may have been stupid to reopen it, but she isn’t exactly known for making smart decisions 100% of the time). What does surprise her is the amount of time it takes for him to actually tell her he’s back.
It takes something like a month in her timeline before her phone buzzes.
Guess who’s back, love.
Shove off, the Doctor shoots back, fingers flying over her phone screen with a speed that has Yaz glancing over her way, eyebrow raised.
“Didn’t know you could text that fast,” she comments. “Most of the time, you text like an old granddad – no offence, Graham.”
“None taken,” Graham grumbles.
I text like that so you forget who I am, she doesn’t say, and also, I’m ancient, not too old to know how to use predictive swiping.
“I’m full of surprises,” she settles for, turning back to the TARDIS console and pretending she can’t see Yaz’s gaze on her.
Her phone buzzes again.
The Doctor doesn’t respond till she’s dropped them all back home for the month. Probably a bit too late for Graham to make dinner down at the pub, or for Ryan to get to the house party he insisted he should go to, or for Yaz to see her sister before she goes on holiday to Barcelona.
At some point over the millennia, she’s decided to not think about why exactly her TARDIS can manage unerring precision in every other instance except for when it comes to letting her companions have normal lives. The answer is bound to say more about her than the Doctor particularly needs to know at the moment, when there’s always something else to worry about.
Like the message burning through her pocket as she runs through some quick maintenance, despite her best attempts to ignore its niggling presence in her mind.
“Ugh, fine,” she exclaims finally, halfway through opening up a concerning-looking valve. The TARDIS makes an inquiring sound. “Don’t judge me,” she grumbles, pulling her phone out of her pocket.
R U D E, he’s responded, because of course he has.
Not like you don’t deserve it.
Took your time responding there, Doctor.
Took your time escaping, didn’t you? Getting sloppy, are we, Master?
As if you didn’t feel it the moment I got back to this dimension.
Well, you certainly took your time getting in touch.
Aww, were you waiting for me to text you? How pathetically sweet of you.
She isn’t sure if it’s the pathetic or the sweet (neither of which are true, at all) that has her turning off the phone and shoving it as deep as possible into her pocket again.
The TARDIS console beeps, rather pointedly.
“You can shove off too,” she grumbles.
When the Doctor finally turns her phone back on a couple of days later, she’s hit by conflicting waves of guilt – at Ryan’s curiosity and slight despondence, Yaz’s persistence and concern, Graham’s kindness and worry – and annoyance – at the three unread messages from a contact whose name she really needs to change.
She procrastinates from those. Starts by firing off quick voice messages to her fam – I’ll pick you up as planned, sorry for not responding I’ve been neck-deep in maintenance, I’m alright I promise.
But once that’s done…
“You literally threw him out of the dimension a couple of months ago,” she tells herself aloud, leaning against the TARDIS console with one hand rubbing her neck in an attempt to relieve her own tension. “What’s the worst he can do? Say something mean?”
It’s slightly worse than that.
Oh, struck a nerve have I? You don’t have to be embarrassed, Doctor, it’s very cute of you.
Now, love, this is getting childish.
You know, ignoring me is one thing, but worrying your companions like this? Reminds me of that time with Clara.
Don’t you dare.
Ah, she speaks! Still a sore spot, is that one?
Insofar as tearing herself apart with the knowledge that Clara is still out there with Me, still heading back to her death on Gallifrey (though does that even exist, now? Did saving Clara come to nothing when the Master burned Gallifrey to the ground, or is she safe now?) – yes, it is a sore spot. Sore enough that it takes the Doctor a whole half hour before –
Leave my friends alone.
Took you a while to catch on there. You’re getting slow in your old age, Doctor.
Master.
Relax, love. I’m a tad too busy at the moment to bother with your…fam. Stupid name, that.
You’re stupid, the Doctor shoots back before she can even stop to think. Oh, she thinks, exhaling heavily, I’m not having a good day.
How old are you, sixty?
Just leave me alone.
…As you wish.
And that’s it. As Yaz calls her, voice thick with concern. As she puts the phone on speaker, eyeing her screen for incoming notifications.
That can’t be it.
She picks Graham up first, notes and dismisses the slight tremor of relief in his shoulder as he tells that it’s all clear, Doc. No cancer. Ryan is carefully trying to avoid talking about an awesome girl he met at the party. Yaz is coming down from serious sibling irritation.
No notification from O.
The Doctor caves three days later, because of course she does. She can’t not, not with him. Despite everything, always.
So how did you escape, anyway? she sends as she sits cross-legged on the floor, the comforting hum of the TARDIS beneath her. It’s the most casual way she can think of reopening conversation (not that she had many other ideas), and the fastest way to get over his gloating.
Some fast talking and a dimension hopper I managed to put together over seventy seven years.
Huh. No gloating about her messaging him, and a straight answer. Either he’s taking over a small civilisation and is a bit distracted, or…
Nope. Out of options there.
That’s…a bit impressive.
Wasn’t much else to do in the twentieth century.
Especially once I escaped from Dachau. Turns out that turning a perception filter back on just doesn’t work with Nazis.
Guilt clogs the Doctor’s throat when she reads that second message. For a moment she freezes, fingers poised over the keyboard, brain scrambling for something to say.
I can feel you agonising from all the way over here. Stop, it’s painful.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry, she thinks as she presses send, hard.
Oh, don’t be. It was wonderfully cruel, Doctor. The sort of thing that I’d think of, really, he whispers over their bond, voice gleeful as she shivers at its echo. And if it was the only way that this was going to reopen…worth all the torture and more.
Why? she asks, because she’ll always ask the questions he wants her to.
Oh, he responds, isn’t it obvious? Easiest way to get your attention.
So, he asks, sliding casually into her head a couple of days after the Tesla affair (and the Doctor is still buzzing at that), when are we going to meet up?
It’s not the best timing, what with her currently being handcuffed in a prison cell awaiting sentencing by a rather enraged feudal monarch (so she may have told Henry II to stop cheating on his wife, a couple of years before Eleanor was actually supposed to find out – that couldn’t be an executable offence, surely?)
Still, it’s a good distraction.
What is this, Tinder?
If it is, he replies, disappointingly unimpressed by her reference, you’re the one who swiped right first.
…He has a point there.
The problem with meeting up is that you generally try to kill me. Which I’m not a fan of, thanks.
There’s a pause for a moment. The Doctor uses the time to continue struggling for her sonic screwdriver – big pockets are great most of the time. Not when she’s handcuffed and trying to somehow wriggle it out of them.
Then,
What if I promise not to? Not forever, he adds. Just this time.
…Why?
Would you believe that maybe I just miss you? Enough to hold off on killing you?
She can, if only because she misses him some of the time.
(All of the time, with an ache in both her hearts that never quite leaves.)
…You destroyed Gallifrey.
And you’ll find out why, one day. When you discover the truth.
But you’re not going to tell me.
Not this time, he says, ridiculous and enigmatic, and Rassilon she misses him.
Her fingers wrap around her screwdriver, and as she looks at the cell around her, she makes some quick calculations. Give me an hour to avoid being executed by an angry English monarch, and then we’ll talk locations. Alright?
She can practically see his smile through the bond. It’s a date.