AudioChallenge, fic: To be or not to be [mine]

[bakaknight.livejournal.com]

Title: To be or not to be [mine]
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: Uhhh... PG? -is guessing-
Wordcount: 1115
Summary: The Doctor tries to ignore Death, who just won't leave him alone.
Disclaimer: I hold no ownership of any part of Doctor Who, in any way, shape, or form. This is just for the sheer fun of it.
Spoiler warnings: BFA Master, DW Journey's End
Characters: Death, Ten
Notes: I freely admit that this is reworked from the epilogue of one of my longer fics - one actually based more in Torchwood than in Who. But as it's an epilogue, I'm willing to cut it out of the fic entirely.
Story warnings: Well, Death kinda maybe hits on the Doctor. In that a non-entity abstract being is capable of hitting on anyone.

--

"The last time I saw you, you were a woman," the Doctor said, giving Death a sharp look.

"And I liked games and I liked toying with you and I seemed to delight in knowing how you'd react and causing you pain because of it," Death responded listlessly, leaning against the alley wall. "But then, your Seventh Self did have a fondness for understanding the world around him and knowing how it would react. Death is but a mirror up to life, and you do try so hard to be of Life, ignore the shadow of me you cast behind while you stand in the doorway that leads to light and you think it leads to salvation."

"I never set out to cause pain using what I knew."

"But you could have as your Seventh. Far more easily than any other of your selves, even your Ninth. And he was fire and brimstone and so very nearly accepted me, Doctor. But that is in the past now, and neither here nor there."

"Cruel," the Doctor mumbled, but he couldn't summon up heat for the word.

"It is in my nature to take away the ones that others love, just as it is within yours to sense the movements of time. I could no more cease to be 'cruel' than you could cease to be yourself, even under the guise of a human or through the changes of a regeneration." Death sniffed, looking up to the sky. "He told the woman, made the inspector confess his crimes to her and the members of the simple little police service that were later arranged to be present, and the penalty for all those deaths he'd committed was death itself; even a knifepoint confession was enough for this. That young girl's parents were out for blood. So you see, he did kill the man, and he did become mine once more."

"And Jacqueline lived?"

"She lived. And John killed himself before her, and she died soon thereafter - the doctors ruled a broken heart, but to truly break a heart must be stabbed through, and that was precisely what she did. So you see, Doctor, they all died, and they all became mine, one way or another."

"The Master died? But how-"

"John Smith died. Doctor John Smith, the healer of thousands, the man you freed from my grasp, he died with a single deliberate wound to the head. The Master was already free to be mine, for unlike you he keeps his bargains."

"Free to be yours and you to be his, I suppose."

"Jealousy does not become you Doctor." A sly look from almost fully-human eyes. "You were right, you know. Love could easily have saved him, but not the love of that foolish woman. Another missed opportunity, I suppose."

The Doctor looked at the ground as he walked away.

Death caught up to him easily, and stretched up a warm hand to the Doctor's face, stopping him in mid-stride.

"It's almost a pity that you do not like me, Doctor. I could be anything you've ever imagined, everything you've ever wanted or looked for. I hold him, I could give him back, all and only for you."

"Let go of me," the Doctor whispered, and Death smiled lightly.

"I don't want to, and you know I can't," he answered, stroking lightly at the Doctor's neck, tugging slightly at the brown tie and winding the silk through his fingers. "You're mine, you know. This you, and all the ones that come after this, and all the ones that came before it. You have always been mine, even though he traded himself for his precious new friend. Because you worship life, you are mine."

"And if I chose to worship you, would I be Life's?" the Doctor's throat clenched on the words, but he forced them out between his teeth, because he had to know... And was this perhaps the why the Valeyard-?

"That is not a question to be asking me, that is one to ask a different aspect of yourself." Death trailed his fingers down to rest above each of the Doctor's hearts, drummed his fingers idly with the beat.

"So many that you come into contact with die, or they kill, Doctor. Your Miss Noble, she killed before she met the Daleks - she didn't know, of course, how could she ever know? She killed herself to save the universe, but even that was after. But with your brain and her own joined? She realised then and knew. In a way, you gave her grace from regret, but that is not what she needed. Not what she still needs."

"Then what did she need?" the Doctor whispered, though he wanted to growl, to demand, to yell at the creature who stood before him disguised as a mere child and get the answers he required.

"She needs you, but she needs her mind more. Without either, she is less than half of what she could be, and a wasted potential is another kind of death entirely."

Death stood on tip-toe to say the next part, his hands on the Doctor's shoulders now and he was amazed that he couldn't feel the pressure of a scythe against his back, though that was an all-too human assumption on the way of Death.

On Gallifrey, Death was a woman. And on the world where the Master had been sent to live out his death, Death was green. And here on Earth, Death was male, often skeletal (strange that this boy was not), and bore a scythe. But Death itself? A universal constant.

"And you need others. He shall be waiting for you when you find him. All you need to do is say the word..."

"...no," the Doctor breathed out, and Death reached up higher to tangle fingers in his hair.

“Be mine, Doctor. Trade your life for his, let it be the way it was meant to,” the boy whispered against is ear, and it was so tempting, so very tempting, to free the Master from the prison he himself had constructed with a mere two words. There was a good man in there, when free from this influence. Surely that man deserved to live?

But could he take that chance?

“No,” he repeated, stronger this time, yet hoarse. Death chuckled, a vibration he could feel all the way down his spine.

"Not yet, perhaps, Doctor. Not yet. But eventually, you will be mine, one way or another. All come to me, with time."

And the Doctor was at last alone, standing before his TARDIS, and trying to shake the feeling that something extremely odd had just happened.