I needed to write some kind of Twissy fluff and decided to mix it in with some nice post-TWF drama. Enjoy!
After Skaro, Clara stays in the TARDIS for a few weeks. It's nice to have her near him after having thought he had lost her, to reassure him that she's still there and that she's okay. Losing her isn't an experience he wants to repeat. He likes not feeling as though his hearts have been ripped from his chest.
Still, in the end she needs time to be human and go teach a few classes, so he sends her off with a wave and tells himself rather reasonably that he can see her again as soon as he likes.
Something holds him back from skipping ahead to the next Wednesday, though. Remembrance of the physical ache he had felt when he thought Clara was dead, or rather, the thing that had been alongside it.
Missy.
He had seen the Master die so many times. It was such a complicated thing, so melancholy but also sometimes a relief, and every time he would sit down when he got the chance and try to work out how he felt about what had happened. Every time he could never be sure.
When it became apparent that the Master really didn't stay dead, that against all odds or logic they always survived, it hadn't been so hard to develop a sort of immunity against worrying about them. After all, they were always alright in the end. And they always come back to him.
This time is different. He'd seen the absolute proof that she was still alive before he had been able to think over how he felt about her apparent death. And she had tried to make him kill Clara.
He has no idea if he is relieved, livid, or just plain confused. All he knows is that something about how he had left things with Missy feels unfinished. More so than usual. But every time he thinks about trying to contact her, the image of Clara's face as the Dalek opened comes into his mind and that fury comes rushing back.
So he just drifts on his own for a while. Unsurprisingly, Missy is the one who finds him.
When someone slides into the bar stool next to him, his first instinct is to tell them to find a different seat further away from him, but his second one - which sounds oddly like Clara - tells him to be more polite and to just let the person sit there.
Besides, he's in an alien dive bar and there is a moderate chance that being rude to the stranger could be dangerous.
But when a familiar Scottish voice orders a fruity cocktail, his head snaps to see Missy sitting there with her legs crossed and jacket draped across the back of the chair as if it's just a regular Thursday.
"I see you're losing a staring contest to that glass," she remarks, only glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, but doing so while very deliberately fiddling with the fabric of her skirt.
"What are you doing here?" He asks, not due to any real curiosity on his part but because he's not in a particularly good mood and it's an easy question to get out. .
Missy sighs. "Well, I was fully intending to be not speaking to you for a good while after that debacle on Skaro, I really was. But then I got bored. And an apology is in order. So, here I am."
The Doctor straightens up and turns to look at her properly, not bothering to hide his shock. "You're here to apologise?"
She blinks at him, those pale blue eyes wide with genuine surprise and indignation. "What? No. I meant you apologising to me!" Her accent puts extra emphasis on the word in a way that in any other situation might been delightful or amusing.
He stares at her, with disbelief that he rationally knows he probably shouldn't be feeling. "Me? You tried to make me kill Clara. What could I possibly have to apologise for that compares to that?"
Missy stares back at him, completely frozen in an expression of confusion. Then she hops off the chair and starts striding away, an expression of anger and hurt on her face that leaves him bewildered in her wake.
He has little choice but to chase after her, out of the bar to where the TARDIS stands tall against the barren backdrop of black sand and a starless sky. One of the wooden doors is open. He hurries inside and shuts it behind him.
The Mistress stands in his console room, tense, a viper coiled and ready to attack, her hands planted on her hips. He has a perfect view of her profile on the angle she's standing on, but it makes it impossible to read her face when she can be so good at concealing how she feels.
"Is this what you do now?" He asks quietly. "I thought I was the one who does the running away."
She just rolls her eyes, the only motion in her otherwise still body.
"Now, not that I'm promising to apologise for anything, but you know I definitely can't apologise when I don't know what it is I did," he continues as he steps closer, never taking his eyes off her even though hers are pointedly focused anywhere but him. "So just tell me, tell me what I did that was apparently so bad that-"
She whips around to meet his eyes, her own filled with the most raw emotion he's ever seen in her, as she shouts, "You ignored me!"
He goes still, and just stares. But now she's burst her top and isn't going to stop.
"After all we've been through," she says, her face twisted into a hateful glare, "After sending me your confession dial of all things, after intending to leave me alone in this stupid bloody universe, after watching me be apparently exterminated, you see I'm alive and all you can do is ask after that snivelling monkey of yours!"
"Clara-"
"Oh, Clara!" Missy snarls with great disdain, advancing on him. "Always Clara, Clara, Clara. You know, I wasn't even going to kill her. I was going to let us all waltz away in the sunset for once, but then you had to go and ruin it. You had to treat me like I was worth less than the dirt on your shoe."
The Doctor can only gape, stunned. "That's why you did it? You almost had me kill my best friend because I was too busy worrying about her to get sentimental over you? This coming from you?"
"Best friend?" She repeats, growing more enraged by the second. "She's a puppy, she's nothing compared to me-"
"Enough," he tells her, with enough edge in his voice to actually make her shut up for a second, "She is everything to me. So just stop."
And she does. She steps back to lean against the edge of the console, eyeing him with something akin to betrayal. Some brand of horrified devastation that it pains him to look at for even a second.
"And you're nothing without me," she whispers, and the quietness of her is somehow so much more gut-wrenching than anything else, "You asked me that once. What you'd be, without me. That's the answer."
A part of him knows she's right. But he can't quite admit to it out loud. Instead he just watches her, his hearts aching for his friend that he has hurt. His Koschei, so wrong in every way but still undeniably his after everything.
"Have you killed for her?" Missy asks, not quite looking at him. "Clara. Was she the first person you killed for? Was it her that you protected when you picked up that stone and bashed in Torvic's head, when you were just a wee thing?"
He flinches. "No."
"No," she repeats, a glint of steel back in her eye, "That was me. You did that, for me, for that scared little boy who was your whole world. You're nothing without me because I made you. And you made me."
His head falls and he lets out a sigh of defeat. "I know."
"You don't get to decide you're going to leave me alone in the universe and then act like it's nothing," she says, and he looks up again, this time unable to tear his eyes away from hers, "And you definitely don't then get to act like my dying meant absolutely nothing to you!"
It clicks into place. She had been scared to lose him, when he had sent her the confession dial. Afraid of being abandoned by her friend. And then when faced with the reverse, when he had been presented with the possibility of losing her, he had brushed it off like it was inconsequential.
The Doctor takes a step towards her, his expression softer now. She watches him, warily, like she's worried he's going to try something.
"I understand now," he murmurs, holding her eyes with his all the while, "And I'm sorry, Koschei. I'm so sorry."
A brief flicker of surprise crosses her face. It's soon replaced by annoyance. "Yeah, well, I should think so," she retorts, bitterly, "Took you long enough."
"But you have to understand," he continues, "I've watched you die so many times, I've had to build up an immunity for it!" He chuckles a bit, even if it's not really funny. "I couldn't just be having a meltdown of grief from losing my closest friend every time you decided to show up! It's gotten to the point where I just assume that you've survived! The humans have to come first. They always will. But I know you'll always find a way."
Missy tilts her head at him, frowning, like she's not sure at all what to make of that.
"That's why it seemed like I was indifferent," he explains, coming closer so that there is less than a foot of space between them. "I never really thought you were dead. Not properly."
She sniffs. "Well. That's something, I suppose."
"When the Time War ended, and when you were thrown back into the Time Lock, it was different," he admits, his hand coming to brush against the curve of her waist, "I was sure I'd never see you again. I realised why I'd made myself assume you'd always survive. It was because the alternative was just too terrifying."
A tiny small curls her lips, and there's something almost innocent about it. It warms his hearts. But there's one more thing that needs to be said first.
"But if you ever try to hurt Clara again, I'll hunt you down through the known galaxy and throw aside every piece of morality I possess to make you regret it."
It isn't pleasant for him to say, but he means every word and can see that she knows it.
Her hand comes up to touch his cheek, those long manicured nails tracing across the lines in his skin. "Oh Thete," she whispers, "You say the sweetest things sometimes."
She kisses him then, hard, her other hand pulling him down by his lapel while she gets on her tiptoes for the sake of more leverage. He gives in without a second's hesitation, having been done with fighting his affection with her at least half a minute before.
They will always be two halves of the same whole, and he can only keep her at arm's length for so long.
The Doctor pushes her against the console and then lifts her up onto it. She is busy peppering his face with kisses, no doubt leaving traces of red lipstick all over him. Then she stops, pulling away to look at him oddly.
"So, I'm your closest friend, but Clara is your best friend," she muses, lifting an eyebrow at him. He thinks about it.
"Yes, I think so."
"Oh, good, I was hoping it wasn't going to be confusing," she says sarcastically, rolling her eyes at him again.
The Doctor just shrugs. "She's my best friend because she is the best. Better than me, and certainly better than you." Missy snorts with obvious disagreement, but he presses on all the same. "And I rather think your own title needs no explanation."
"Of course not."
There is a small silence. On a sentimental whim, he cups her face in his hands.
(He does so delicately, like she's fragile, which is probably the most absurd thing he's done all day but he just can't help it.)
"I don't think I ever said before," he says, his eyes locked with hers, which are unusually soft as they watch him, "But thank you for coming back to me."
Missy smiles, and for a moment looks like the boy from his youth that he had fallen for so hard. "We'll call it your other birthday present," she says, and he laughs and kisses her because there's little else for him to do. She is mad and wrong and awful and beautiful and shining. And his.
She will always be his. And he will always be hers. Long after any humans have left, and they both know it, even if they don't say it.
Tomorrow they may well be fighting across the cosmos again. But today they are still, and content to just be.
Thanks for reading, hope you liked it! Let me know what you thought!
-MayFairy :)