I apologise for the three month wait for this, but... better late than never?? You left choice of Doctor and Master to me, and I was going to go old-school with Three and Delgado, but somehow Ainley and Five took over when I wasn't looking.
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The deepest and darkest of fears aren’t always the obvious ones – not the monsters, nor the defeats, nor the vastness of time and space, but hidden, insidious things that live coiled inside. The Master will never admit, even to himself, that with the Doctor what he fears the most is not losing, but winning.
What would there be left for him after his enemy’s death at his hands? A cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about; it’s hardly worth conquering.
He pulls his enemy back from death – again – letting him out of the rapidly flooding dungeons. “You mustn’t die, Doctor,” he says. “Not yet, not before I’ve finished with you!” He always has an excuse.
And the Doctor – the Doctor fears both forgetting and remembering. As the Master hauls him out, it might be too easy to forget the evil he’s caused, to remember what he once was.
A cosmos with both in alliance doesn’t bear thinking about, either.
Doctor/Master, the dark things you fear, 160 words
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The deepest and darkest of fears aren’t always the obvious ones – not the monsters, nor the defeats, nor the vastness of time and space, but hidden, insidious things that live coiled inside. The Master will never admit, even to himself, that with the Doctor what he fears the most is not losing, but winning.
What would there be left for him after his enemy’s death at his hands? A cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about; it’s hardly worth conquering.
He pulls his enemy back from death – again – letting him out of the rapidly flooding dungeons. “You mustn’t die, Doctor,” he says. “Not yet, not before I’ve finished with you!” He always has an excuse.
And the Doctor – the Doctor fears both forgetting and remembering. As the Master hauls him out, it might be too easy to forget the evil he’s caused, to remember what he once was.
A cosmos with both in alliance doesn’t bear thinking about, either.
***