"Well." Alright, that got more depressing than he'd meant for it to be. "Don't worry about it. You're still young." He tried an encouraging smile and, after a moment's hesitation, even a pat on the Master's shoulder. There, there. Some day he'd discover something aside from megalomania, he was sure. "Everyone needs a hobby. Even all important men."
"I have hobbies," Marcus snapped and, in spite and nothing else, he reached out and purposefully slapped a hand on the Doctor's back. Not too hard, he didn't want to open the wounds or anything, he just wanted him to hurt. For being like this and bringing up these kind of topics. He didn't want to discuss these kind of things. "I don't need you here to judge me, I'm perfectly fine. You're the pathetic one, you're nothing but a slave. What kind of life is that? What kind of achievement? You're absolutely nothing and you're trying to judge me?"
"I don't judge, Master." At least he knew he shouldn't, so there was that. "I'm the Doctor. I just try to help." And right now he pulled his hand back and looked down at it and vouched not to reach out to the Master again any time soon. Seemed entirely too risky. However, he did look up, his expression curious rather than offended. "Does it make you feel better? To see me as pathetic?" For all he knew, it probably did. He could relate to that more than he'd strictly like to admit to. Sometimes they had entirely too much in common.
"You're not trying to help me, you're trying to play headgames with me. I know men like you, you act like you care but you don't," With a long exhale, he bit back his anger because he knew he was prone to doing impulsive things. Like executing his new friend over a small argument. It was exactly what he'd done before, split decisions that only served to isolate him. Like when he exhaled his wife, boy did he regret that.
"It doesn't make me feel better because I feel fine as it is," Marcus insisted as he climbed back onto the bed and lay there, clearly not pleased by this doctors company any longer. Maybe he should just send him off to the prisons to rot. Get infected and die slowly for being such a boring pitying creature. "But you do belong like this. I feel that in my bones. You, John, are not the kind of man who should be without a master."
"Mhm." There would have been a time he'd have argued that more vehemently, but that was before the time they were the only two left, before he'd realized that in some ways the Master was all he had. It also was before he got whipped so hard he could hardly move, so there was that.
"Maybe you shouldn't be without me, either." Cheeky and stupid and he shouldn't have said it, but here he was, smiling anyway.
It was easy to debate just how the Master would react to that, especially when human and so easily provoked. But instead of sulking or getting annoyed, Marcus just laughed. On John, the doctor, would get so cocky that he could say something like that to his master, the ruler of Rome. Shaking his head, he leaned over the bed and grinned slightly. "Perhaps you're the hobby I'm seeking after all?"
"Who knows! Might be. Might just be." Well, this was going splendid. Now they just needed to get the fobwatch and go on board of the TARDIS and everything would be set. More or less. "I can be entertaining, at least." Outside of the Master and similarly amoral people, he only very rarely got accused of being dull, that much was for sure.
"I've seen so far, you are awfully amusing. And a little annoying actually. I was hoping you'd scream and weep earlier and you didn't. Disappointing but I'm impressed. You're a strong and unusual man, John," Marcus confessed as he watched the Doctor for a moment before offered his hand out to him. "Come up onto the bed, let me help you. We can talk more about the stars you like so much. And I promise, just for now, I won't try to steal them from you."
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"It doesn't make me feel better because I feel fine as it is," Marcus insisted as he climbed back onto the bed and lay there, clearly not pleased by this doctors company any longer. Maybe he should just send him off to the prisons to rot. Get infected and die slowly for being such a boring pitying creature. "But you do belong like this. I feel that in my bones. You, John, are not the kind of man who should be without a master."
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"Maybe you shouldn't be without me, either." Cheeky and stupid and he shouldn't have said it, but here he was, smiling anyway.
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