She was going to die alone. Truly alone, not like all the other times, when she'd had the promise of the next regeneration who would only ever be brighter and better. Death, in other words.
Missy was afraid of dying. Oh, and wasn't it funny that it was all because of fuss with some Cybermen? Hadn't this been what she'd fought against when she'd utilised them herself?
She'd been oh so desperate to prove that she could do whatever the Hell she wanted because she was Missy and she didn't have time for dull little things like logic or morality, but here she was.
Her eyes fell on the lift. The Master was gone, along with the laughter that had filled the awful space between them. Her male twin would be stumbling to his ship, trying to fend off the inevitable regeneration into her, into something vaguely resembling goodness. When the time came for him to fall one final time, Missy would arrive, bright and beautiful, ready to take centre stage and prove that she was always better than her last performance. Oblivious. She'd be led through every tightly strung word and motion until, again, she ended up... here. Pain compressed into a well kept outfit. It was just a shame she'd misplaced her hat.
Lower your arms. Raise your right. Lower your right. Turn on the spot!
Look at me, she'd thought, I've brought the dead back to life and now they dance for me. I can teach you to make them pirouette for you too, if you'll just admit you're like me. If you'll just admit you like me.
But she'd been wrong, hadn't she? The Doctor was not like her, she was like him. She liked him, too, that was the horror of it. Missy loved the way he'd clung so fiercely to the notion that the good in her hadn't already been thoroughly scorched by the rage that bubbled and burst out of her and ate her insides, no matter how many times she was corteous enough to prove him wrong. Strange, she couldn't feel it now.
He would never know. Her oldest, dearest friend would never know that she had listened to him when he'd asked them what they would die for. Missy tried to laugh, but pain was rippling through every sparking, dying atom, so for once she let it be. If only she could see him one last time to tell him she'd done it! Missy had finally been kind.
Without hope, without witness, without reward.
He would die believing that letting go of his hand had been her last intended goodbye, that she'd vanished back into the darkness of her mind and abandoned him again, learning nothing just like all the other times.
If he'd known he'd have been proud of her, she knew it. He'd have smiled and held her, maybe even cried a wee bit. Then she'd have rolled her eyes and told him not to be so dramatic. That was never going to happen.
Without hope, without witness, without reward.
Missy did not regret it. In a way, more than the literal time loop she and the Master were caught in, this made sense. She'd die defying expectations, she'd die doing the right thing, one last surprise right at the end. Perhaps the Master had been right about one thing, then. This really was their perfect ending.
Her eyes slowly drifted back up. Missy saw nothing and was nothing.