Christmas Day, 2006
The Doctor crept down the stairs to the dark and dusty basement.
He checked around, making sure he hadn't been followed.
He had given Nardole the slip again. He had to be careful, though. Pull too many disappearing acts, and he'd get suspicious.
The Doctor approached the majestic doors of the vault, forged from an alloy primarily containing an incredibly dense metal only found in the heart of a neutron star. Once constructed, an object made from this material was virtually indestructible.
He walked up to the door, pressing his ear to the metal, running his fingers across the Gallifreyan symbols etched into the surface.
He knocked, but there was no response.
Backing away, he pulled out the sonic screwdriver, and offered it to the door. The buzz of the device echoed through the otherwise silent tunnels. The sonic processed a thousand complex locking mechanisms, and solved each one.
Four control panels emerged from the centre of the vault doors, each utilising a different entry system, to stop the wrong person from getting in – and to stop the vault's occupant from getting out.
Only he and Nardole had access to the vault. No-one except them ever came down to this basement beneath the university.
Of course, it wasn't 'beneath the university', as such. It had already been here for hundreds of years. The university had been built on the site. And, as it was more convenient to do so, the Doctor moved in, posing first as a caretaker, and then as a lecturer when he got bored of sweeping the floors. He had been teaching here for the past hundred and fifty years or so. He wasn't quite sure which subject he taught, but that never got in the way of his lectures.
He pressed his thumb onto a biometric scanner, which processed his DNA.
Of course, in the unlikely event he'd have any accidents whilst he was hiding away on Earth, living quietly throughout the decades, he'd have to reprogram the vault door with the new DNA that would be written into all of his cells during regeneration. Other than that, it was a pretty foolproof authentication system.
Next, he entered a seven digit code, and then twisted a combination lock – a rotating dial, which always felt as though he were breaking into a safe each time he went in.
In a way, that is what this was – a giant safe, to keep his old enemy locked away.
Finally, he turned a key in a very simple deadlock – something so low tech, it couldn't possibly be hacked from the inside.
There was a loud clunk. The vault doors, towering ominously above him, began to open.
The Doctor's hearts beat faster for a moment. It was a moment of dread, where he always feared that his nemesis might have escaped her prison, somehow, or she would attempt to.
His mind was set at ease, when he saw Missy sat in the chair placed in the centre of a containment field.
She remained in the chair, her legs crossed, as the vault doors slammed shut behind the Doctor.
She appeared to have been waiting for him; her eyes were locked on him as he walked across the room.
Missy, the Time Lady formerly known as the Master, had a cold, calculating gleam in her eyes. A look of steely determination, enhanced by silver eye shadow; a look which often hinted at some devious plan Missy was cooking. A plot to escape from this prison.
"What's going on?" Missy asked, although her tone indicated that she already had a good idea, and didn't care anyway, "I felt a shockwave... I'd say a hundred and twenty miles away... this morning. Like a spaceship entering the atmosphere."
"That's right," the Doctor replied, keeping his distance from Missy's prison. "It's Christmas Day, 2006."
"Oh, is it?" Missy muttered indifferently. "Have you brought me some Christmas presents, then? I'm bored. There's nothing to do, except tease the bald one. Not that he ever bothers to drop by…"
"Nardole," the Doctor insisted.
Missy ignored the Doctor's attempt to associate a name with a person, and persisted.
"Well? This room's empty! Has the television been invented yet? Can I have one?"
The Doctor looked around, at the bare walls of the containment chamber. The room had been decorated to look like one of the halls in the university, all wooden panels and tall windows, looking out to a blank, white void.
"You've got a chair," he replied with a shrug.
"What can I do with a chair? I can only sit in it, or not sit in it." Missy demonstrated by standing up, and swept around inside her cell, dancing to some inaudible music.
"And if you turn that chair into another weapon, you won't even have those two options," the Doctor warned her. "You're not getting a Christmas tree, either. Not after last year."
Missy shrugged innocently. "What did I do wrong?"
"Exploding baubles! Where did you even get hold of them? I'd confiscated all of your toys!"
"I once made a gun out of leaves..." Missy quietly reminded him, smirking with a faint glimmer of pride.
"Yes, I know. You keep telling me."
"Well, I'm bored," Missy grumbled. "Do you know what it's like being incarcerated in the perfect prison?"
"As it happens, yes," the Doctor muttered with a sigh, casting his mind back to Stonehenge in 102AD, and the events surrounding the opening of the Pandorica.
Hopefully, she wouldn't escape like he did. It wasn't as though another incarnation of the Master would come and rescue her.
The Doctor took a seat in the only other chair in the room, and sat there in silence for a moment, his fingertips steepled as he watched Missy.
She stared back, as they played some silent game, some shadow of a conflict.
The only other piece of furniture in the room was a small wooden coffee table. There were a couple of books resting on it, which the Doctor had carefully selected, and would occasionally read to his old friend.
The Doctor and Missy had been friends, once – a long time ago, mind.
Centuries of rivalry had broken that bond between them. In all that time, they still held a certain amount of respect for each other; a sentiment they both shared.
The Doctor hoped he could tap into that sentiment – find a grain of goodness of her cold hearts.
And what a Christmas present that would be! To have his childhood friend back. Together, they could travel the stars, two Time Lords, out to see the universe and all the wonders it could offer.
But he couldn't trust her yet. He could see the fires of malice burning through her eyes, smoking through a cruel twist of her lips.
Given the chance, she would still burn a world on a whim, or dominate a civilisation through force, or kill an innocent being just because it stepped on her shoes.
"I will change," Missy promised. It seemed she had read his thoughts. She had seen the melancholy expression on his face, which had betrayed his doubts about her.
"I just…" Missy's mouth twitched for a moment, as she took a breath, "don't know how…"
A series of loud thuds interrupted them.
"What's all that noise?"
"The students are on the roof," the Doctor stated.
"Why on Earth would they do that?" Missy uttered with mock-surprise. "Humans are so strange. I really don't know what you see in them."
"It's Sycorax blood control," the Doctor rubbed his eyebrows, hoping that today, Missy would take his lesson seriously.
"I see. You've been here before?"
"I have."
"I feel there's a story to be told here. One that you're just dying to tell me."
"It's the start of a very good one," the Doctor admitted.
"You know, I think I've been here, too. I saw it on the news…"
The Doctor realised that she might well have done. She had been hiding on Earth for quite some time before one of her attempts to become Master of the universe.
Missy rolled her eyes.
"Well, it's not like I have anything better to do. Poursuivre," she uttered with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Well, go on! Tell your story."
"Empathy, Missy." The Doctor's tone was sharp.
She looked at him with a blank stare. "...What?"
"If you want to care about someone – anyone. If you want to be better, you need learn empathy."
"I don't think I've ever experienced this… emotion."
"You have, deep down. I know you still care."
Missy's eyelashes fluttered for a moment, as if deliberating this for a few seconds, before pushing the idea away.
"What would you do?" the Doctor posed the question. It was a test. One of many. He wanted Missy to see the error of her ways. And how? Not just by listening to stories, but understanding them, and learning to do better.
"The Sycorax are invading. They want human populace for slaves. They'll trick the planet's leaders into surrendering. What would you do?"
"I don't know. Go out for dinner, if the fancy took me."
"No. Humanity is a level five civilisation. The population can't call for help. They can't protect themselves, and they don't have a clue what they're up against."
"I know all this!" Missy grumbled, "I know what the Sycorax do."
"I know you know. Use that brilliant mind of yours to solve this problem, Missy."
Missy snorted. "Fine, I'll play along. The Sycorax are relatively advanced for a species that travel about in rocks. They're also incredibly superstitious, so I'd probably just show them a magic trick. A spot of light diplomacy."
"Really?" The Doctor was pleasantly surprised by her sensible answer.
"Or blow up their spaceship," Missy shrugged, "Same difference."
"Blowing up a spaceship isn't the same thing as a peaceful negotiation at all!"
"Well, what would you do?" Missy retorted. "What did you do?"
"I'll tell you my story then. A new me, finding my way in the world. Finding my feet after losing my way in the Time War. I had the deaths of every Time Lord on my conscious – even yours, at the time.
"I recovered, I got better, with help from my friends."
Missy groaned. "Oh, it's not another educational one, is it?"
The Doctor rubbed his eyes, irritated. "There's swordfight in it," he promised.
"That'll have to do, I suppose."
So the Doctor told his tale. The story of a Christmas Invasion; of satsumas and rekindled friendships, of courage against all odds.
The Doctor had once been a man who gave no second chances.
Now, he was willing to bend the rules, because sometimes, people change. At least he always hoped people could change. Right now, he was willing to give Missy her second chance.
Author's Notes:
As something a bit different, I had this idea for a couple of one-shots, exploring what happened while Missy was in the vault pre-Series 10.
The Doctor had been guarding the vault for quite some time - so he would have been around for all of his past adventures on Earth. Perhaps his stories might inspire Missy to change for the better...?
Do let me know if you'd like to see any more Twelfth Doctor and Missy vault adventures.