Yin and Yang

[scripsi]

Title: Yin and Yang
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: G
Genre: Angst
Word Count: 243
Characters: The Doctor (any)
Warnings: None
Summary: If it ever happens that the Doctor thinks about the Master.


If it ever happens that the Doctor thinks about the Master, which he will have to admit is more often than he would wish it was, he sometimes muses that they are like yin and yang. Forever the opposite of each other, but still unable to be apart. The universe is so vast and still they end up at the same place and time, over and over again.

True, it has often been of the Master’s machinations. No one was ever fooled when he just couldn’t stop coming back to Earth when the Doctor was stuck there, but it is not always because of the Master that they meet. Or himself. They just do, suddenly flinging their minds at each other so hard one would think that they would one day meld together and form a whole.

Always the mirror images of each other, never able to let the other one go. There is even, the Doctor knows, a touch of darkness in himself. Choices he regrets, those that did not spring from the will to do the best for everyone. The thing inside him that can be selfish and cruel and sometimes wins.

There is just one thing that doesn’t balance out, that the Doctor can’t grasp. He can confess to his darkness, but where, in that case, is the Master’s light? Try as he might, the Doctor can’t (or is it won’t?) see that there is anything in the Master that is good.

Comments

[nenya_kanadka]

The Keller machine was hella slashy, man, and gives us the canonical fact that what the Master is most afraid of is the Doctor laughing at him!

They're so clearly intertwined, for all the Doctor calls the Master inherently evil and the Master tries to torture or kill the Doctor every now and then. Even managed it once or twice, and yet...still.

[scripsi.livejournal.com]

Goodness yes! And you almost feel sorry for the Master when he looks so devastated, at least until you remember that it was he who put the Doctor through the torture in the firt Place. And I really love the scene were they are working together to neutralise the machine and they just do it so well.

[nenya_kanadka]

Yes, the Master is really of the "No one but me is allowed to kill my best enemy!" school of thought!

I love when they work together. You can clearly see that they know each other's minds from long acquaintance, and it's really fun to watch. Makes me tempted by Master redemption arc stories, even though I can almost never really believe in them. ("Cafestrovalva" by x_los is one of the few that does work for me.)

[scripsi.livejournal.com]

I have to check that fic out. But no, redemption stories rarely work. I think that's because what makes someone dark or evil often are so much of a character that if you remove it, what is left becomes unbalanced and toothless. You need some skill to make a redemption work without robbing a character of what makes him/her special.

When I first started to write fanfic it was in Peter Pan and I got so fed up with all the redemption stories where Captain Hook find true love and instantly stop killing off children and fairies that I wrote a patody on it. I'm still amazed that no one flamed me. XD