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For all of the countless traumas that the Doctor has been through, this is one that has been mostly healed over for centuries. For millennia.
Perhaps it hits her so suddenly because she is already off-guard. It doesn't affect her anymore. Nothing does; the Doctor is always alright. And the Doctor has been alright in this particular manner since she was so unbelievably, achingly young.
Perhaps it comes on because the Doctor is standing ankle-deep in a warm river, and the Master is on his back, fallen at the edge. Perhaps it comes on because the Doctor has bloody hands and the Master is injured and there is a dead body three and a quarter yards away.
Perhaps-
The Doctor is rapidly losing her train of thought.
Her boots are soaked and overly warm from sun-heated water. The water is off-blue, and steadily seeping orange where it meets the body. The body.
Her hands are scraped and raw, and her own blood is the right color. The body- their blood had been almost the same. Not a Time Lord, not even close, but their blood was a sickly, deep orange. Their blood is on her hands, too.
The Doc-
Thet-
The Doctor. She’s here. It’s not the same. It’s not the same.
It’s not the same, but her hands are raw and bloody and there’s a non-breathing not-beating body in the river and Koschei is hurt and unconscious just behind her. She had-
She’s heaving for breath.
It’s not- It’s not the same.
Time has passed, so much time; that happened so long ago, her entire lifetime- It’s not the same, time has passed-
But time has never behaved properly, not around her. She could be back, they could be back there, how would she know-
And it’s not the same, but it is exactly the same because her hands are bloody and raw and Koschei is hurt and she is stood in a river.
She hadn’t been able to breathe the first time. She cannot breathe now.
This man was not a Time Lord. This man was not Gallifreyan. He was only vaguely humanoid, and mostly lizard-shaped. He’s not much bigger than her.
He had been hurting Koschei.
Before, the boy was Gallifreyan. He’d been a boy, still, not a man yet, not really, but he’d easily been bigger. A foot and a half taller, twice as heavy. He had bled orange-red and the river water had been too-warm over ankles, shins.
He had been hurting Koschei.
It’s not the same.
The D-
Thet-
Thet-
Her knees sting, and when her wide-open eyes briefly unblur enough to see, she notices she has fallen to her knees. She’s making the water turn orange-red.
She can’t possibly breathe. How could she ever breathe like this? How had she, last time?
The overly, painfully vivid memory of a small hand over hers, of a small boy tugging another to him, of pressing their foreheads together. The memory of her first friend, her first person , the never-forgotten image of a boy with dark hair and bloodied skin and wild, desperate, terrified eyes. Of a voice too-young and too-shaky pleading to breathe, please, Theta, of-
Of-
She’s gagging.
She is twelve years old and hardly anything at all- she is two thousand, she is four billion, she is however old she is when she gets too tired and begins to count-
She is eight years old and meeting Koschei, and she is twelve years old and just a baby and killing a boy to protect Koschei.
She screams.
Of- Theta, please, we need to take care of this, please just look at me-
Of-
She had held a rock, before. She had been so much weaker than him, so much smaller. She had needed a weapon. It had scraped her hands raw and bloody, and his blood had sprayed all over them, too.
She hadn’t needed a rock, this time. She was stronger and bigger and so much angrier, and she hadn’t needed a weapon to kill him.
Her throat burns and her eyes sting and she can’t breathe. The water is too warm.
Of-
“Doctor, what- what is-”
A sharp intake of breath that is not hers because she cannot breathe and is not the body’s because she has killed him.
She’s still trying not to puke and she doesn’t know why because she’s fine, she has killed countless (not really, not countless, she knows exactly how many and the number is still rising) people. But she’s curled up in a too-warm river with orange-red water and scraped hands and she’s gagging and-
And she is twelve years old and has never been more scared in her entire life, not even about the Untempered Schism. She has never been more scared, because Torvic had been hurting them for years, but he had been hurting Koschei, he had been hurting Koschei so badly-
And she had grabbed a rock and hit him, and then hit him again and again and again-
And her hands had gotten scraped and red and raw and Koschei had been behind her, trying to catch his breath at the edge of the river.
“No,” someone breathes behind her, sounding far-away and scared. “No, this isn’t-”
She had been so little and she had needed two hands to hold the rock and bring it down and down and down-
She had been so scared of losing Koschei. So, so scared.
It had been the worst thought possible, more terrifying and more real than any other imaginable idea- she had come so close to it. She could feel it rewriting her, could feel the too-real terror and agony wrap around her as it happened-
Had wondered so many times why it was that she never regretted killing Torvic nearly as much as she regretted letting him go so far before she had.
“Doctor,” the maybe-real too-not-present voice says again, and Theta flinches.
“Doctor,” Master says again, voice shaky. “It’s not- stop that, we aren’t-”
A hand wraps around her wrist and starts tugging. Too tight and too scared and too-
Please, Theta, please look at me- Theta, please, we need to- we need to hide this, please just look at me.
A hand over hers, both of them shaking so much that it was a miracle that the slow-moving water lapping against their shins didn’t knock them right over.
Please, Theta, we need to go. We need to- we need to burn him, Theta, please wake up. I’m here-
I’m here-
She’s forced upright, and her knees go out on her the second that there’s any weight on them. She’s already not breathing, so she’s not worried about falling face-first into the river, but instead she hits something solid and cooler than the water.
“Theta, please,” Koschei says, and Theta sobs because she can’t tell which version of him is saying it.
It all echoes too loudly in her head.
“We need to go,” Koschei says, and she still can’t see even though she’s sure her eyes are open, but she can feel his panic and dread and too-long-ago fear. “Thet- Theta, we need to go, there will be more of them. And- and neither of us can fight right now, so we need to go, Theta-”
We need to go, Koschei is saying, because they’ve been gone too long and had walked so far away to keep smoke from being seen above the trees, so it will be a long walk back, too-
The water is warm on her shins- but no, she’s not that small anymore, it’s warm on her ankles-
And Koschei is grabbing her hand, making his own skin orange-red, and pulling.
And she is-
And Koschei is grabbing her hand, making his own skin orange-red, and pulling-
“We need to go,” he breathes, and she can hear the forced determination in his voice. He’s keeping it together because she can’t, just the same as when they were twelve years old and hardly alive and trying to drag a heavy body into the woods.
They had been so young.
The aftermath had been so easy. It should have been harder. They should have had to lie and fight their way through. After all, they had just killed a Time Lord. But, no-
Not they. Theta had killed a Time Lord; bashed his head in until it was destroyed- messy and bloody and visceral and horrid. And they had dragged him miles into the woods and set him on fire and then had just left. And it had been easy, afterwards, to pretend it hadn’t happened.
That night- It had taken months of intensive planning and several schemes and plots stacked on top of each other, but the two of them shared a dorm since their second year. That night, the second they were behind closed doors- Koschei had refused to let go of her hand, and Theta had refused to let go of his. They had laid in Koschei’s bed. Theta had pushed Koschei until he sighed and let Theta move him to the corner of the bed, against the wall. Theta had laid between him and the door. Theta held on so hard and for so long that his hands ached and cramped and the scrapes were bleeding again. Koschei pulled Theta to him and curled around him and refused to move his gaze from the door all night.
It had taken weeks, months, years, for the two of them to truly begin accepting that they weren’t going to get caught.
They hadn’t ever really stopped sharing a bed. They hadn’t ever really stopped holding hands, or curling around each other in bed. They’d never really closed the telepathic bond that had exploded into existence as soon as the two of them realized what had happened with a corpse at their feet.
That bond… had never closed.
It had weakened, undoubtedly. It used to be so intense, so intertwined and entangled in each other that neither of them could really tell where one began and the other ended. Time had weakened it. Theta leaving had. Koschei hurting people had. The Time War had.
But neither of them has ever closed it. For a long time, it had resided so deeply in the Doctor’s mind that it was truly not even noticeable- and why would he ever reach for it, when he believed the Master dead? And, most of the time they are so far apart from each other in the Universe that the link is all but extinguished.
But, whenever the two of them are together- it bursts back to life. They can both hide things from each other, now, can both block sections off and prevent others from leaking. But it’s still established, and it still forms no matter what, no matter which of them is furious about it at whatever time.
It’s open now, too.
And part of her is thankful for it- it’s him. It’s Koschei, it’s proof he’s alive and living and right beside her. A real living and feeling thing.
But it is so thoroughly ungrounding her.
He feels so much like twelve year old Koschei.
He is filled with terror and dread and the memories of thousands of years ago. He is remembering the first thing that had truly broken the two of them, and unable to stop the memories from transferring to her, too.
And Theta is already-
The Doctor is-
She knows where she is. Logistically, realistically, rationally- She is being pulled on weak feet and wobbly knees away from a river that has a lizard-like corpse bleeding orange blood into the water. There is no rock on the ground.
Irrationally, fearfully, young- they are nothing more than frightened, lonely children, standing in the river Lethe. Water staining orange-red and a rock between them. A Time Lord dead beneath them, and Theta stands there and stares at him and wonders why her hands are stinging.
Theta, please just look at me, please- We need- I need your help, Theta, please, we need to fix this! Please wake up-
“You need to breathe,” says Koschei, says the Master, who is shaky and pale and still doing his best to keep a lid on his mind-
You need to breathe, says Koschei, because Theta hasn’t for too long and his vision is getting hazy.
-Says Koschei, and Theta still can’t see anything other than shadows of color as they keep moving.
He stops suddenly, too suddenly, and her momentum sends her right into Koschei’s chest.
“You need to breathe,” he repeats, more seriously. She blinks, harshly, once and then twice, and manages to focus just enough to meet his eyes. They’re wide and dark and watery. Her stomach churns. “You’re running out of your respiratory bypass, and if you pass out, we won’t move fast enough.”
She blinks at him. She hears him, she knows what he says, but the words aren’t-
She isn’t-
Breathe, Theta, please- just one breath, please, c’mon-
And it was hard enough with just her mind looping it, but even with her slowly calming, Koschei is awake and remembering, too-
He knocks their foreheads together, childish in the overestimated force used, in the reckless need for connection-
And she’s too far away to focus and follow what he does, but he presses some button, activates some instinctual neural pathway-
She sucks in a startled breath and it feels like sand and fire down her throat.
She gags.
A distant part of her is expecting him to push her away. He doesn’t. He just keeps holding her hand tightly, and steps so close to her that he can pull her against him- shoves his nose into her neck, uses his other hand to guide her head to his shoulder.
She can hear him swallow, can feel the tension in his muscles. He’s shaking. She’s shaking.
They’re twelve years old and stumbling back to their dorm with hands raw from scrubbing them and robes carefully folded to hide the dirt and water at the hems. They’re shaking.
They’re thousands of years old and clutching each other with as much desperation as they did as children. They stand tucked together in a forest and pretend for just a moment that they have the time to stand together, to take comfort in the other.
She gasps into his skin, feels her chest rise and fall exaggeratedly.
They’re thousands of years old and they’re twelve and they’ve fought and killed and hurt each other so badly- they’re twelve and Theta has killed a man to protect Koschei, they’re thousands of years old and Theta has killed to protect him again. There was a too-warm river again, and there was too-orange blood again, even if there was no rock.
Master swallows again. His hands tighten compulsively around her, and she holds him as tight as she possibly can. “I’m sorry,” he says, and she flinches. “But I need you to move. We have to go before they find us.”
She trembles. Stares unseeingly at nothing. Her hands ache from the scrapes, from clutching to him so ungivingly. She trembles, and nods. Loosens her grip. Master nods, too, without meaning, just unconscious mimicking.
They keep their hands firmly together as Koschei leads her further into the woods.
He pulls her upright when her vision blurs and she trips over rocks. She squeezes his hand tighter every time his mind spikes in old panic and his grip begins to accidentally loosen.
The rest of the walk is mostly silent. Koschei reminds her once more to keep breathing when Theta gets stuck in a loop of Theta, please, it’s okay, it’s okay, we need to go-
Theta takes a clumsy stride forward and wraps her arms around his chest when Koschei suddenly gets lost in I’m sorry, Koschei, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay-
But they make it to her TARDIS without their enemies catching up. Without the Doctor passing out. Without Master getting annoyed at her and leaving her.
She presses a hand against the door, and feels something heavy in her chest relax as soon as she’s entered her home. Master follows, closes the door behind them. They keep holding hands.
The Doctor stares at the console for a long moment before she finally remembers what to do, where she is. She takes heavy steps forward and Master is brought along. Starts pressing the right levers and buttons, typing in the write numbers. Koschei seamlessly accommodates for her lack of her right hand- makes it even easier than normal to take off.
She breathes out slowly once they’re in the Vortex. Master breathes out slowly.
The Doctor tries to remember what they need to be doing. Tries to focus on anything other than the dripping of her pants (not just her ankles. All the way up to her thighs. When did that happen?) or the way that their footsteps both sound too loud, too heavy.
“Medbay,” she recalls eventually. She tugs Master’s hand, does her best to focus. Guides the two of them to the hall, and then the first door on the left, because her TARDIS is brilliant.
Pushes lightly at him until he allows her to sit him down on the edge of one of the beds. She goes to unbutton his shirt (her hand instantly feels too cold, too light without his in it), but-
She tries again-
“My hands are too- take this off. Please.”
Master blinks at her. Nods jerkily. He brings his hands up to start unbuttoning his shirt. The Doctor busies herself by grabbing a bunch of disinfectant wipes and the dermal regenerator.
Not too much damage. Some bruising she won’t be able to do much for. She might have some salve, up in the high left cabinet. Some gashes from thick claws, but mostly shallow. She had stopped the lizard from doing any real damage, she thinks dimly. That last attack, the furious lunge that would have taken out his stomach if the claws had connected- the Doctor had stopped it in time.
She probably hadn’t needed to kill him. She- she maybe could have stopped him otherwise. She could have aimed for his leg, taken him down that way. His shoulder. She hadn’t needed to shoot the head. Probably. She- she should feel guiltier about that, she thinks.
“You were protecting me,” Master tells her. His voice is even despite the unrest she can still sense from him.
She nods. She was.
So she would never feel too guilty about it, would she.
Master hisses when the disinfectant stings, and her hands are shaking and- and-
I’m sorry, Koschei, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, are you okay? Please-
“I’m sorry,” she gasps out, and her knees go out from under her.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-
“S-So-”
Koschei, Koschei, Kos- I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I should have- I should have been faster, I’m sorry, are you okay? I’m so sorry, I didn’t-
She isn’t even sure who it’s coming from.
Koschei slides off the bed until he’s on his knees in front of her. He brings his hands to hold hers, and presses them against his chest. She trembles, and leans forward until their foreheads touch. Tries to calm herself down by feeling his hearts beat under her palms.
Theta, Theta- Theta!
They’re faster than normal, but steady.
Master is very intentional in how evenly he breathes. She sets a timer by it, feels her own lungs finally start properly cooperating. She keeps feeling his pulse. He keeps sending small waves of forced calm and reassurance across their bond. It helps tremendously.
She sends back a heavy rush of love-affection-gratitude-acceptance.
His even breathing stutters for a moment, but he leans into her harder afterwards, and squeezes her hands.
Eventually, she has to pull back. She grabs the wipes again. She works more carefully this time. Koschei never once complains or does anything other than slightly tense. She runs the regenerator across the worst of the gashes, and he winces but doesn’t let her lean away from him.
They have to stand up, then. The Doctor shoves at him until he sits on the bed again. Searches around for the bruise salve she thinks she has, and then starts applying that to the spots where his skin is already turning purple.
It takes a while, this whole process. Her legs are shaking by the time she’s finished, but it is for once not because of emotion.
She’s exhausted. She’s terrified. She still has blood on her hands and her pants are still wet, though no longer warm. Koschei is still hurt, but not as badly.
“Switch with me,” he says, and she listens.
“Why?” she asks, as she forces her body to hold her upright on the bed.
“Your knees,” he murmurs. “They’re all torn up from the ro- the bottom of the river.”
Oh. She glances down. Yes, they are. She hadn’t really noticed, but she must have sliced them open when she had fallen. On the rocks at the bottom of the river.
She takes a breath.
They work together to get her sodden trousers off. He hands her a blanket that the TARDIS has conveniently set just to the side.
His lips quirk upwards as she wraps herself up in it, and she feels her own twist into a smile. She lets him wipe away the dirt and gravel stuck in the skin. He’s painstakingly careful, and she sends him another wave of gratitude.
“It’s so strange,” he says after a while, voice quiet. “How after all we have done and seen, after all that has been done to us, this one thing is still so…”
The Doctor nods.
“I didn’t…” she tries. “I hadn’t realized just how… how well I remembered it. We remembered it. It was so long ago, but…”
He rests his forehead against the edge of the bed, exhausted. His hands linger just below her knees, contact for the sake of contact.
“Yes,” Master agrees. “Even with everything since- I suppose that there’s something to be said for trauma in your formative years, hm?”
Her laugh is dry and humorless. He snorts in response.
“Yeah,” the Doctor agrees. And then, because neither of them wants to be any further than arms reach away- “Help me into the shower?”
He sends her affection-love-gratitude-relief. She basks in it. “Of course,” he murmurs, and helps her stand.
They lean on each other the entire walk to the bathroom.