"It's like two emotions at once, like you're malfunctioning."

Malfunctioning

Exploding sparks singed the hair on his knuckles as he bashed them into the nearest console panel over and over again. His fists were already raw and wet, his rusty orange blood beginning to smear across the metal surface. His jaw clenched. Ignoring the sharp jabs of pain shooting through his wrists, he brought both hands together and slammed them repeatedly upon the console. There was no denying the satisfaction he felt when it finally dimpled under his force.

As he feared, the Doctor had lost himself.

His mind was on fire, his normally reserved emotions a tumultuous mess. He couldn't stop- mustn't stop- wouldn't stop. His ever evolving thoughts twisted and turned in so many different ways even he had trouble tracking it all. And then... everything stopped. Without so much as a warning, his knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor of his TARDIS, his head nestled between his arms and the surface of the console he just destroyed. The trance dissolved, and everything became devastatingly vivid. His hearts were heavy weights, pulling him down.

He wept bitterly as he heard his ship- his first and last true companion- crying in agony through their mental bond. After a moment of reflection he joined her, an animalistic scream that even he didn't recognize tearing through his throat. He didn't stop until his vocal cords were wrecked and he had no tears left to give.

Motionless, the Doctor gazed out at the endless, pristine rolling green hills, the entire landscape dusted with large stones and trees. The Eye of Orion. Good for relaxation, isolation, and an exceptional place of temporal tranquility for newly regenerated Time Lords. He always intended to bring Clara here back when he was more bouncy and sentimental, but the idea must have since slipped from his mind. Oh, well. It was no bother, really. He figured she'd much rather travel to planets with a bit more excitement in the air.

He pulled his red-lined navy coat tighter as a chill breeze blew past. The Doctor continued to meditate in the calming environment for a long while, and waited outside until the small planet's sun disappeared behind the mountain range at the horizon. When it was over, and purples and oranges and blues had all but disappeared in the sky, he began to amble back to the TARDIS.

In hindsight, he had no idea why he didn't notice the extra pillar loitering by the monument behind the TARDIS in the first place, or how his door was unlocked when he was sure he remembered locking it before. He supposed the relaxing effect of the Eye of Orion might have relaxed his mind too much.

The Doctor opened the wooden door and walked up to the console- still battered from the events of last week. Lovingly, he rest his hand on some of the broken components, having already sworn to fix them.

"Oh! Hello, Doctor," her familiar Scottish voice churned suddenly.

His hearts dropped to the lowest extreme, definitely not the first time in the past few days. He turned, and saw her- the Mistress- lounging in the leather chair he'd set up at the side of one of the bookshelves. She still wore her hair out of her face and that ridiculous purple Mary Poppins get-up. Her legs stretched out over the chair's arm in a playfully suductive way, but only exposed a petticoat and the thick metallic heels of her boots. Worst of all, she still had that sardonic grin etched on her red lips.

"Missy!?" he hissed in surprise, eyes wide as saucers. "What are you doing in here?"

"It's about time you returned, love," she replied, dragging out her words for unnecessary dramatic effect. "You made me wait for hours!"

The flash of mischief in her eyes was what did it. Confusing emotions boiled up deep inside him, so quickly they turned to foam and threatened to overflow. Did she even know the hell he'd been through? After all this time, after all the anguish and terror and fury he'd suffered through because of her glorified birthday present, did she honestly see it all as a joke? In a flash of anger, the Doctor bounded towards the chair on the upper platform and grabbed her by the wrist. He began dragging his old childhood friend towards the door.

"Get out of my TARDIS!"

Before he could throw her out, the Mistress tapped something on her other wrist and disappeared entirely. The Doctor pulled at his hair and was just about to groan, when he spotted the crafty woman in the doorway of one of the corridors behind him. Her dark purple skirt rustled as she strut into the console room. Pointedly, she raised her arm to show off the wide leather band fastened on it. Somehow, she'd gotten her hands on a vortex manipulator.

"Oh, how predictable," she said, clicking her tongue. "A simple 'nice to see you, too' would have sufficed, you know..."

His anger and frustration slowly began to melt into confusion as he circled her around the console.

"I thought you were dead!"

"I teleported, dear. I thought it'd be obvious, since you seem to know everything. Your brain must have turned to mush. Too many years mucking about with your little human pets," Missy said, visibly cringing at the word 'human.' She grimaced then, running her fingertips over the dozens of dials and buttons on the console. "Now where the hell did your coordinate controls go? You've moved it all around on me since the last time, haven't you?"

The Doctor brushed her away from the console, not trusting her with his beloved ship amid sudden memories of her last incarnation turning it into a paradox machine. "Why are you even here? To mock me? To lie to me, again? Is that it?"

Her body stiffened at his question. Her features became cold, unreadable.

"You looked for Gallifrey, and there was nothing there. I would know. I felt it. But I didn't lie about the coordinates," she insisted, her expression more serious than he'd ever seen it. "I know you think I did, but for once I didn't, I swear. Gallifrey's disappeared, again! And if any hostiles were to get to Gallifrey before us, well..."

The Doctor's brow furrowed, suspicious. Before Missy could so much as protest, he had already bridged the small space between them and placed his hands on either side of her head. As his index fingers brushed against her temples, he closed his eyes and entered his childhood friend's mind.

Sure enough, she wasn't lying; Gallifrey sat at its original position in the stars when she escaped. If it moved since then, she wouldn't have known. He recognized this instantly, but knew it wasn't enough. The Doctor didn't trust the Mistress' own subconscious to tell the truth. He needed to search deeper, to see for himself...

Her memories were foggy and somewhat vague, stacked up in dark corners in no particular order. He pushed through the mess of recollections- gently, so as to not cause any damage. As he searched deeper, the Mistress' subconscious automatically began to form a construct for him to interact with easier. The dusty stacks of memories reformed, and he soon came to a familiar wooden path, winding through a thick forest of silver leaved trees. Two small figures ran past through the fog, holding hands and giggling. Two boys, one dark haired, one blonde. As he passed under the first branches, he began to hear recent voices of the past.

"Why would you bother killing me? I'm not even important."

Osgood.

"Oh, silly. Why does one pop a balloon?" he heard the Mistress reply sinisterly. "Because you're pretty."

The stray memory caused a spike of anger to shoot through his veins, but he stifled the emotion, not wanting it to burden his concentration.

As he edged further into the forest, he heard the faintest echo of a drumbeat. Brief flickers of history flashed in front of him: Missy kissing him, the months she spent setting up her little digital world in the data Matrix slice, how she first knocked Clara into his path, creating Seb, stealing a TARDIS from the cardinals' landing bay...

Then, the recent memories began to unfold vividly. He sat hugging his knees in Gallifrey's dungeons, frail and tiny and lonely and still wearing the black hoodie he'd attained from Earth. Every few hours, they would enter with blades and whips and torture him. Every lash against the Master's bare back, the full extent of his hatred towards the Time Lords, his screams when he finally gave up and regenerated... the Doctor experienced it all. The Doctor experienced it so strongly that his emotions began to tangle again, twisting together until it became impossible to know what he felt like at all, like the emotional sectors of his brain were malfunctioning.

The Doctor broke their mental bond and stumbled backwards, mouth agape. He didn't find what he set out for, but something far worse...

"They... the Time Lords, t-t-the-they-" he stumbled over his words, finding it impossible to even vocally address what he witnessed in the Mistress' memories. He blinked hard, not allowing himself to say the word. He gestured towards her, his brow wrinkling in confusion. "And somehow, even past this, you actually care about Gallifrey's fate."

She squinted at him. "I don't want another time war, and neither do you," she said quietly. "For once, we're on the same page."

He considered this for a moment, and thought he understood now. The only assurance a time war offered? The one thing the Master always feared and hated more than anything, even more than a Time Lord's torture- death. All those years spent trying to evade the universe's ultimate consequence, all those attempts at stealing his regenerations only to crawl a few years further... No matter what they all tried, no permanent escape existed. Even when her last incarnation did submit to death he couldn't accept it, and set up a cult to reawaken himself.

Suddenly regretful for his fury towards her earlier, the Doctor thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and slowly met her eyes. Missy's gaze wasn't kind or welcoming in the least, but for once, it was sincere. For now. After looking into her mind, he didn't know how or what he felt about her. Once more, his emotions were impossibly jumbled. He couldn't possibly manage to hate her- but he also couldn't bring himself to forgive.

"So, what exactly are you suggesting?" he began cautiously, stepping forward. "That we-"

She stepped forwards as well, meeting him halfway. Their pale faces edged closer, close enough that the heat from her breath tickled his nose as she spoke with a crooked smile. "Find Gallifrey. Together, just Theta and Kochei, like the old days."

"I still don't trust you," the Doctor said, partially unsure if his childhood friend's motives were the same as his. "Not completely."

In one beat, her hopeful expression plummeted into a grimace.

"Then don't," Missy hissed, cold. "Distrust keeps one alert, I suppose." She averted his gaze to look at the controls, and began to enter coordinates.

The two Time Lords moved to separate sides of the console and adjusted the needed dials and levers silently. They weren't friends, yet now... he didn't think they were enemies, either.

No, the Doctor realized with growing clarity. After this last incursion, we've landed somewhere in the middle.