The Master's Game (Doctor Who)

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"Huh, what happened?" Roka asked confused.

"I probably woke you up," the Master pondered. "Hard to say. Remembering the last minute is always almost impossible." Then he shrugged and leaned back, folding his hands behind his head with a yawn and, obviously, leaving it to Roka to move away or stay there.

But it was hard to move at all, now that all those past memories had been dug up again. She felt the weight of them pressing down on her. So all she did was pulling her legs closer and burying her face in her arms, suddenly shaking. All those years she had done her best to forget about all this, to pretend it never happened.

But it had. There was no running away from it anymore.

"It's really a pity," the Master mused from behind. "All you did was killing a few bad guys. Getting rid of them likely helped people... You can't even be properly evil." He then leaned forward and wrapped an arm around her throat, pulling her back at him again. "So stop whining already."

"But... what if I hadn't stopped there?" She stared up and saw the answer in his amused glimmering eyes, and lowered her head again. Her chin dropped on his arm that was still around her throat, but not very firm. It didn't bother her much and for some time she just stared into the flames.

Would she really have become like him? None of her actions would ever have had consequences for herself. This... power... it was scarier than anything she ever experienced before and also after.

"Where there is light a shadow follows," the Master murmured suddenly and his voice was deep. "And in the blackened night we see, where sunlight only blinds the eye." His other arm wrapped around her shoulders. "If you want only stories, then move towards the warming fire, but if what you seek is truth... your way leads further into the darkness ahead."

With a sigh she sunk against him and closed her eyes. "I know... That's the path I took and the name I chose. Roka means crow in old Swedish. The bird that roams the blood stained battlefields. The bird of night and shadows." She felt him chuckle silently and smiled herself.

And then it stopped bothering her altogether. Her past, her future, all she had and could have done. The only thing that mattered was the steady, soothing, doubled heartbeat at her back, the arms around and the bone-numbing weariness inside her. It overtook her consciousness, making her head foggy and her thoughts slow.

"Can I... stay for a while?" she asked sleepily.

He hummed confirming, sounding as tired as she felt. And it was all it took to let her fall into the darkness of her mind again. This time not dreaming at all.

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After that incident things changed and also didn't. It was as if there had been an invisible wall between them all the time, and now, all of a sudden, it was just gone. Leaving a weirdly casual and subtle familiarity behind.

It wasn't as if the Master suddenly would be any friendlier to her and a few days prior she would have cursed at him for ignoring her personal space even more than before. Now though it didn't bother her when he used her head as an arm's rest, or when he sat unnecessarily close to her, or when he propped up an arm onto her shoulder, casually chatting about how he had stolen half the population of the planet they were on right now.

It especially didn't bother her, when they had to await the end of a sudden storm in a city filled with neon lights. While people rushed buy under umbrellas they hid under the small roof of a closed down store. Without a warning he had grabbed and pulled her back at him and then wrapped his jacket around them both, until the storm was over. And maybe a little bit longer than that.