She turns around and gathers her skirts - one of those few things she actively dislikes about this look, and it isn't even the fault of the skirts as much as the trees and forest that the ship is trying to emulate, catching in them - fully intending to go back, to stand with the Doctor like she'd just been saying was where they had always been headed, her and her past self.

Missy pauses just slightly at the sound of something - no, she knows exactlywhat this is - of him, rustling around down there.

She even knows what he's doing, too.

"Where is it?" Oh, she does so love being right. "MISSY! What have you done with it?!"

A smile touches her face - just so, just a quirk of the lips, a heady rush of I wondered when that'd come - before turning back to face him.

"What, this little thing?" Her umbrella rests, hanging on one arm. The knife she'd stabbed herself - her past self - in the back with, still making an impression on her hand where she held it. And in the other hand, a small device she remembered so well. "Well, really, now. What was it you said just earlier? That we 'aren't that self-destructive'? You? You're the one of us who refused to regenerate out of spite, and- do I even need to bring up the fact that I've just been pushing all of your buttons? No?" What had been an expression almost of pity turns cold. "Did you really think I'd let myself go that badly?"

Her past looks up at her with a smidgen more respect than he had been before, but that isn't saying much. What had been there when she'd turned around had been all anger and rage both at her and at the fact that she'd denied him the ability to kill the future he didn't like the look of, like an unruly child not liking the idea of what the word adult means.

"I thought you were saying that you were going back to stand with the Doctor.Do I need any other reason?"

Was that disgust she saw in the way he was looking at her now? Possibly so. Possible too that it'd been there before, but he'd just not been able to believe his ears yet.

"And I'm your future, you idiot."

He rolled his eyes, wincing and trying to find a new position that, knowing the injury she'd given him, wouldn't help much either.

"Oh, really. And what kind of future am I going to have going down into the bottom of a ship filled with Cybermen? In case you hadn't noticed, you just took away the only thing I could defend myself with!"

"You were going to kill me. Me. I'd kind of say that's the opposite of defending yourself, wouldn't you? Besides, we're smart - you'll figure something out, don't worry. I wouldn't still be here if you don't. And I always do end up losing these things. I ended up having to settle for making an umbrella into a sonic device, would you believe. Now, you know how it is - people to be, places to go and all that."

She could hear him as she walked away, laughing until the the lift doors closed again and took him down, far away and further into the time dilation once more. The next time any of them would hear from him, she'd be fixing up an army of Cybermen out of the dead for the Doctor to command, only for him to begin to show her that just because he constantly thought he was right, didn't mean that he fitted what she thought he'd do with the idea.

She'd use an army, she'd thought to herself back then, if she thought she was right. She'd simply figured that since they were so similar, the Doctor simply had to want one himself, or that he'd find it hard to resist.

…

Now found her walking back up to the quaint facsimile of a farmhouse, as though she hadn't just broken the one thing she'd been trying so very hard not to do, and killed someone.

"I thought you'd gone off with him," the Doctor said, still wary at her approach even after all this time, and she sighed.

"What part of 'I was always on your side, Doctor' was so hard to understand? Me and the ex had a bit of a disagreement. Just a bit. I'm fine, thanks for asking - oh, do you think laser still suits me? Or should I just stick with the sonic? The umbrella suits me, don't you think?"

"You know me," the Doctor said, slowly. "I've always preferred sonic."

His eyes never left the laser screwdriver she now had in her hand - and she couldn't quite figure out what was going through his head, she never could, now. Was he wondering how she'd got hold of it? She probably shouldn't explain that she'd pickpocketed it in one hand while slicing open her other self with almost surgical precision with the other. Or was he wondering if she was going to use it on him, or the humans he'd somehow gathered around him yet again?

She made an effort to make her shrug look as purposefully noncommittal as possible, and pocketed the laser screwdriver again.

"Mm, you know what? I think I'll just keep both."

…

AN: I kept having this go around in my head, and it's been years since my last (real) DW fanfic, but the finale was literally begging for fix-it fics, and I haven't even been able to find any that aren't shipping someone with someone, so this had to happen. Largely in order to help me cope, to be honest…