Prompt :Indignantly

He was self-righteous enough that indignation was next to a norm. Childish behavior, fanciful whims, playful indulgences – such things were beyond his pride. If a thing did not serve him, there was little chance for him appreciating it. The exception to the rule, of course, being if the thing challenged him.

And even then, he might still find cause to feel indignantly.

Then it doesn’t make sense. He watches the windows sometimes when he knows that no-one is watching him, and when he knows the Doctor cannot see him. Sometimes he simply stands on the grasses and looks up toward the skies, and sometimes he sits cross-legged so that dirt adorns the seat of his trousers, and sometimes he even runs barefoot as though he were a child again. None of these things present anything resembling modesty or dignity but at a certain point, it stopped mattering so very much.

In the meantime, the physicians make fewer and fewer appointments to check upon his body. His second heart stopped once. There had been a great affair about it and they had approached him with that frantic and even calm that was so characteristic of the Time Lords. They had made him live and put him back into captivity and they had watched him more closely than ever, for a time.

He decided that day that they hated him. He was becoming more and more sure that he did not want to die – not even if he would never wake up and never have to die, again – but the day they saved his life, he hated them. He stopped answering their questions and they had to pry his mind open or tie him down on the few appointments that followed, but he would allow them nothing. These people who thought they could decide his life – he gave them nothing.

It takes time. He does not reveal himself at first, but he slowly slips closer to the windows.

And there was another day, a quiet little night. He does not like to sleep, to start, but he was kept up by a sound he had heard, one that was so distant and unfamiliar to him that he felt the urge to search it out.

The Doctor had never seen the Master in the doorway of his room. He would have had no way of knowing what the Master had seen that night. And in all great honesty, the Master had left only a few seconds to watch the goings-ons.

He did not think the Doctor would like it, to know that this broken man, this old man, this man who had died too many times—he thinks, the Doctor would not like to know, that the Master had seen him crying for his captivity.

It is not long after that, that the Master comes as far out as the patio. Never far enough to be seen.

Except once. There is one day that he stands out on the patio and the Doctor is running, laughing, and he tries to reconcile the day that he saw the Doctor crying with this moment. The shorter man turns and pauses as he notices the Master’s eyes meeting his own.

The Master stands there for a second. He hardly feels it within himself to do so, but his chin tilts and his eyes narrow above an indignant little sneer. He turns away.

And he will never be able to explain it. But he returns the next day and for all the indignation, he stands and he watches the Doctor smile.