A LIVING PARADOX

This was a mistake, and he knew it. He didn't know Dylan terribly well, but if he was a friend of the Master's, then chances were he was just as unstable. If he wee to press his old friend like this, it may have ended with a few things on fire, with lives lost just to prove that they could be. What would happen if he pushed Dylan over that edge? Would he snap like the Master? He didn't know. Maybe he should stop before he found out.

But he never had before, and he probably wasn't going to now. He would tell himself he was trying to help, trying to unlock something, free him from the man's grip, but really? Was he doing anything more than satisfying his own curiosity?

So far, though, Dylan was answering. He was telling him the truth, and he didn't seem like he was going to lash out. But maybe it was bad enough to set the idea brewing. Something like that could still come back some day after festering. And things like that, they could be dangerous.

"Well," he said, his voice steady, almost uninterested. He was, though. He was terribly interested. "If he doesn't want to tell you something, he won't. He likes to hold things over you if he can. Make himself the smartest thing in the room." Maybe it's more than that, probably, but maybe not.

"He normally is the smartest one in the room." A plain and simple response, but one that was at the very least truthful. Honest... from his own point of view.

There was debate on how accurate that was, but in most cases? It was correct. That was all that mattered. All that did matter.

"You may be right," something that Dylan hated. "He may never tell me. He may keep me near him until he gets bored." His eyes rolled at that. He hated the thought of it. He hated the very idea of it. That the Master would one day get bored of him. That one day the Master would just leave him.

It was possible. Anything was possible in the end. Even Dylan knew that, but accepting it? Not something he wanted to ever do.

"Thankfully, we can assure that never happens." He said we, not simply himself.. odd.

The Doctor thought constantly about what might go wrong. Not only with Dylan, but with everything, so to say that he worried about what might happen in the here and now was an understatement. He would always try for peace, but he saw every possibility, not through any second sight, but through experience, and he would prepare for them.

It was fair enough, he supposes, that his Cybermen are people. The Doctor's objection had never been with their sentience, but with what they chose to do with it. He worried what Dylan would do with it, about what he would show them.

"So we'll treat them as people." As much as he may not want to, he could accept that. They weren't entirely machines, they never had been. The Doctor knew what they were, and so did Dylan. For whatever else he might be able to say, he was not stupid. "Then we should get them under control."

Dylan didn't know how far his own creations had gone. Cybermen were always volatile. They always had the possibility to do more and no doubt evolve far beyond their expectations originally were. It was one - although not the only reason that Dylan enjoyed tinkering with them.

Granted, when it came to cleaning up his own messes? That was far more complicated. He didn't want to destroy what he'd assisted in making, but he also knew that if they went too far out of control? He would no doubt have to do so either way.

It was a very.. very complicated situation. One that he hated being in, but couldn't exactly leave either.

"Agreed." It was all that he truly could say on the matter, a singular word as he rubbed at his chin. "We need to." Because if they were allowed run free? It would be very very bad for... everyone.

He wasn't at all surprised by Dylan's answer, because he felt the same. He wouldn't want his technology anywhere around the TARDIS, and the Doctor didn't want his TARDIS anywhere around Dylan's Cybermen. He'd let that go, as much as it was a simple, easy answer.

He wanted to know the answer to his question, of course, and maybe he was pressing trying to find a fault in the relationship, but, really, why? What difference did it make to him? Should he not want the Master to have a friend? Maybe because he wasn't sure he had friends. Not anymore. Pawns, possessions, but not friends. He was right, though. This face did love showing off.

"He does like an audience." He should just hope it didn't end like Lucy Saxon. He didn't suppose he could really blame him for not talking about whatever he'd seen. Paradoxes could do a number on the human mind. He was terribly curious, though. "A fixed point paradox," he repeated. "The two of you are wrapped up in something serious, aren't you?"

"A bit." That was all that Dylan was going to say. Not all that he could say, but all that he believed needed to say in all reality. For Dylan had been through quite a few things with the Master and he didn't know how much was real and how much was just in his head.

Time itself was odd, weird. He knew that more then anyone, honestly. More so because some things that he knew happened didn't. Or some were not the way he remembered. It was always something - he hated it, but there was no way to change it.

"We've been through alot," Dylan bit his lower lip for a moment, "all considering." He didn't know how long he'd been at it. He didn't know why it mattered in truth, but the fact of it was that not even Dylan knew where he was from or how long he'd been gone. Just years..dates... assumptions.

He wouldn't have liked that at all, the idea that he was known for a lecture. It was entirely correct, of course, but that didn't mean he would like it. He was of the opinion that what he said was necessary, and it wouldn't be necessary if people stopped disappointing him. Would it really be so terrible if they just stopped disappointing him?

"Oh, yes, you slaughtered a few to save the many. Pat yourself on the back, if it makes you feel good about yourself, go ahead." But, of course, his tone was dripping with disdain. "I don't accept that. You sacrificed all of these people, and I will not let you sacrifice more. There has to be a way to do this without starting a riot." He wasn't opposed to revolution when it was necessary, but he didn't think this had to happen. He was so tired of people dying, and maybe it made him lash out, but he didn't think it was irrational. Everyone deserved a right to live. "They're not toys to me. They're people. They have lives. If you want me to be honest, that's the truth."

"I want you to be honest, yes. Instead, you go into details. Details." Eyes rolled hard at that. "That I am not living up to your expectations. That what I have done isn't what you have done." Dylan understood it. He knew why the Doctor was that way, but he didn't have to like it. He didn't have to agree with it - still, he was willing to give him one thing.

"And you're right. You won't let me sacrifice anymore." Something that he hated, but . . . at the end of the day? It was what it was. There was no denying that.

"Please... do on about what you're going to do." He would listen. He would hear what the other wanted to do, but beyond that? He could promise nothing else.

#promo #self promo #/please love the man who is 10xworse then dylan

kalvaertar

❝ I’ve been called many titles in my lifetime. In one system, they call me The Destroyer of Worlds. Either way, my name is Lieutenant Grant Lancaster and if I were you . . . I would start running. ❞

Grant Lancaster | Runs off Queue | Penned by André

Knowledge, he knew, was difficult. There was a reason that it was said that ignorance was bliss. The Doctor knew everything, and while he would not want to turn from things, he understood that there was an exchange. If ignorance was bliss, then knowledge was torment, and the Doctor was living proof of that.

He couldn't force Dylan to know anything that he himself couldn't tell him. There were, unfortunately, many things that he had no control over.

And it seemed that there were many things that Dylan lacked control over, too. He was there because the Master wanted him to be. If he ever didn't, then Dylan would be tossed aside like a toy that a child had grown tired of, which he thought of as a very good comparison. "It's complicated," he repeated. "Then what's keeping him from telling you?" It was less of a question for Dylan, more of a thought aloud, but it did stick out, didn't it?

It did stick out. More then Dylan believed it would. Not because he didn't know the answer. No, he made some assumptions - great ones at that, but it always came down to what was known and what was not known. Dylan knew much about the Master. How he worked. How he few the TARDIS. Their TARIDS and how his moods could fluctuates, but he did not know much about the man besides what he was allowed to see.

There was much he did not know. Maybe he would never know.

Dylan hated it all.

"I don't... know." It was a keen admission, but one that was necessary all the same. "I really... don't." And that was it... he didn't know why he was kept around. He didn't know just why he wasn't allowed to leave. He didn't know why he couldn't remember his past.

He did know that it was very uncomfoetable thinking about it, however. Strange.

What he felt was not anger, not any righteous fire that he may normally have felt, but sadness. The inevitability of it all, the fact that, just like the Master, it was made clear that there was no path forward for them but one of animosity. But he would be ready, of course. He would not let regret keep him from doing what he had to do. "So we will be."

Until then. Until then, what? They would prepare? Rally their troops? Well, he supposed that was exactly what Dylan would be doing. The Doctor, though...he knew it would come, and when it did, he would face it, but until then...he would live as he always did. "Neither do I. Only a fool looks forward to conflict."

"Perhaps we are both fools then," Dylan says, a grin spreading across his features for a moment. "You may not want it, but it will happen. Not today or tomorrow, but eventually. That is something unavoidable when it comes to us." If only Dylan believed those words. If only he truly believed them, but then again? He was going by being realistic. Nothing more and less. Conflict between them was unavoidable. That was the short and long of it.

"Don't you agree, Doctor?"

I came back from the dead for one... reply, that is all.

#( ooc. )

itsthebrigadier

Alistair didn't understand it, what Dylan saw in the Master. He understood even less what it was that drew him to Dylan, but he knew he couldn't stand to see him like this. He knew very well what it was like to be left, be abandoned. Well, that was more or less his fault but this, from what he knew of the Master, was not Dylan's fault.

He gabbed a hold of Dylan's hand. "Like I said, it's his loss. You deserve much better than to be tossed aside." Alistair let go of his hand and put an arm around him. "Look why don't we go have a pint or anything else you may want to do to get your mind off of this."

Dylan hated that he was abandoned. Forgotten about. Again. It wasn't the first time, but it was the first time in the last three years. It was painful because he wanted so badly to have gotten back in the Tardis. If he was sooner. At least five mintues? Maybe ten? Maybe... maybe... he could have.

His hand was grabbed at Dylan glanced away, but then the Brigadier's arm was wrapped around him. Without meaning to, Dylan leaned into it and then moved to hug the man tightly. "Why...." he trailed off, still shaking, "was I not enough?" he asked. "Did I do something wrong?" He wasn't sure... it had to have been something. "Did I finally piss him off enough?" Was he abandoned? Left behind? Dylan didn't know. He quite frankly was unsure and that alone was something that he quite honestly disliked in all reality.

"---- yeah, a pint." He needed something to drink, heavy... enough to make him breathe. So that maybe... maybe he could focus and figure out where to go from here.

#itsthebrigadier

galacticshame

February was a long month due to you know... the water going out and electricity and crap. Now im dealing with the new expac + leveling + WFC is coming up next week. I HOPE things settle down by then.

They did not settle down.

#( ooc tag. )

#( promo. )#( self promo )

❝ The only difference when traveling with the Master is that we walk away. ❞

Dylan Evans | The Master's Companion | 18+ | Penned by André

galacticshame

#( ooc tag. )

jewishjanetandco

"Tall....?" Kate echoed, quirking a brow. She considered the Time Lords she'd met--various incarnations of the Doctor, the male-presenting ones nearly all being taller than her--but, again, Dylan wasn't one of the Doctor's companions.

The Monk? No, he was her height.

"...two options come to mind," Kate said after some moments. "Either the Eleven, or..." She narrowed her eyes. "The other one isn't who I would consider tall--their latest incarnation is shorter than I am."

Dylan could have said more, he could have said a fair amount more, but he also knew the Master changed their face often. Not too often, but enough that sometimes? It was difficult to tell just what they looked like.

"Well, height changes from times to time, doesn't it?" He asked. "I mean, I have met several versions of the Doctor. However, I tend to like the lower numbers every now and again. Some are quite decent to be around and then you have .. . others." he trails off.

"How much shorter?" Dylan asked. "Because if it's who I think it is? I'd like to call him... a friend. Most days."

#jewishjanetandco

Five...thousand dollars later. We believe our pipes are fixed. But uhh... we were told the entire house could have flooded eventually.... if it wasn't caught.