Skaro
The battlefield was a nightmare of mud and corpses and stank of hatred and death. At this point in history, neither the Kaleds nor the Thals could even remember why they were fighting or how it had begun. Decades of war had so ruined their planet that - while once they had been advanced, civilised races - now they were fighting each other with rocks and sticks and bare hands.
Clara watched from the TARDIS viewscreen as the Doctor walked across the muddy battlefield with the boy who would someday become the progenitor of the Daleks. He looked ordinary. An ordinary, scared child. It was difficult to reconcile the present reality of him with the creature that had lured them all to Skaro yesterday, centuries in the future. The Doctor spoke to Davros, while Clara listened from inside the safety of the TARDIS.
"I'm not sure that any of that matters; friends, enemies," he was saying. "So long as there's mercy. Always mercy."
And she knew. She knew what he was going to say when he came back. Rage bubbled up inside her, hot and thick like boiling tar until she thought she would choke on it. "Don't you dare," she growled dangerously as soon as he opened the doors. He looked almost sheepish, she noticed, but the line of his jaw was set.
"I have to," he said.
Clara looked away from him sharply, breathing through her nose. "She tried to kill me," she ground out. "She tried to make you kill me!"
To her surprise and extreme annoyance, the Doctor choked out a laugh. "Come on, did you really think I was going to buy that? Do you really think she did?" He waved his hand in the air in front of him as if swatting away the betrayal like an irritating but harmless gnat. "Didn't you hear her?" He affected a high pitched voice. "'Oh Doctor, I'm so glad you didn't have to see that!' Please. She knew I wasn't going to kill you."
Clara's face twisted into a sneer. "So what the hell do you call what she did back there?" she demanded, her hands on her hips. She had the horrible feeling she looked like a tantruming child, but she was too far gone to care. "Banter?"
The Doctor was already at the controls, making the calculations that would allow him to home in on exactly where he wanted to go. "Not banter, I'm anti-banter," he said. His eyes softened as he looked up at her. "I call it inertia."
Clara opened her mouth to reply, stopped, closed it again. A breath and a frown. "What?" she snapped.
The Doctor shrugged. "It's like the Titanic," he said. "Big massive ship, wee tiny rudder, you try to change its course and it fights you all the way and then before you know it you've got Kate promising to never let go - while letting go, by the way - and Leo floating off to become fish food."
Clara's expression had not changed. "What?" she said again, her tone identical.
"Inertia," he replied. "Even if you want to change course, the universe pushes back. So much easier to do the things you've always done."
Clara shook her head. "What, you think she actually wants to not be an evil, murderous bitch and trying to kill me was just a teeny little setback? Force of habit?" Contempt dripped from every syllable.
His brow furrowed. "Maybe," he said. "She did save you, before. Twice. Then again, maybe I'm just a stupid old man desperately clinging on to the hope that the only other being in the universe remotely like him...isn't irredeemably evil."
Clara swallowed. "She's nothing like you."
There was a pause, and then the Doctor smiled sadly and looked away. "So what do you do when the Titanic crashes?" he continued, as if she hadn't spoken. "You make sure you've got enough lifeboats to deal with the fallout. Let's go and be a lifeboat."
Clara's eyes filled with angry tears that she furiously blinked away. "So what, we just go and save her? After everything she's done?"
"Yes," he said simply. "Yes, after everything she's done. Because of everything she's done." He held out his hands, palms up. "You can't forgive someone who never did you wrong."
Clara laughed bitterly. "Forgive her?" she said. Then again, louder. "Forgive her? She killed Danny!"
As soon as she said it she knew it was wrong, that it hadn't actually been her. Missy had used his death to trap them, had stolen his body and violated his memory, but his death had been so much more prosaic. Hit by an old man who'd never informed the DVLA about his cataracts. An ordinary, pointless death.
The Doctor walked over to her and put his hands on her shoulders. His voice was soft, gentle. He didn't need to tell her she was wrong, so he didn't. "I have to go and get her," he said.
A tear slowly tracked down her cheek. "How can you?" she whispered. "How can you forgive her? She doesn't deserve it."
His hands were gentle as they cupped her face, his thumbs brushing away her tears. "People don't understand about forgiveness," he said. "It's not something you can earn. It's not a flash of inspiration or a blessing falling from the sky." His eyes were sad and lonely and ancient. "It's a choice. A decision. A gift . It's a gift you give when you realise that the only one being harmed by all the hate is yourself."
He pointed at the viewscreen which still showed the muddy battlefield with its crop of corpses; some fresh, some in various stages of decay. "This is the sort of thing that happens when you don't."
The lights of the TARDIS shone around them as they stood close together for a moment, Clara's face a mask of pain; the Doctor's, a quiet appeal.
Clara took in a deep, shaky breath. "Fine," she said at last. "Just...don't expect me to…" She trailed off.
"I won't," he replied. "I won't." He stroked his thumbs over her cheeks one last time, then turned away to handle the controls that would take them into the future, to Missy.
"Did I ever tell you about the time I was on the Titanic by the way?" he said as the engines kicked in and they began to dematerialise. "Well. Space Titanic."
Missy's hearts thundered as she ran, like the drumbeat that had been with her since she was a child, the drumbeat implanted by Rassilon to anchor the worst of Gallifrey to the worst of her. Driving her mad had been collateral damage, the broken eggs thrown away after the omelette was made. That neverending, inexorable sound had haunted her thoughts, waking and sleeping, for centuries. Every body, every face, even her human alter-ego, Yana. None had been spared the merciless pounding of the drums.
Until now.
She couldn't exactly remember the details of her regeneration into this form. A black hole had been involved somehow, and Cybermen perhaps. It had happened inside her TARDIS, the one she'd stolen away from Gallifrey at the first possible opportunity. While the rest of the Time Lords were busy broadcasting their pointless question to all of time and space, she had simply slipped through the crack and gone her own way. Or rather, his own way. Pronouns were so confusing for a gender-swapping time traveler; she had no idea how those Time Lords who routinely mixed and matched ever kept it straight in their heads.
The Master had escaped Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS, but the sound of drums had followed him. Until he died and Missy was born and somehow - she didn't know how - the inside of her head had been quiet for the first time since she was eight years old.
Silence. Nothing in there but her own thoughts. Freedom and relief and sweet, blessed quiet .
And she wanted her friend. When she regenerated, the Doctor had already been in her head.
She began to laugh, running and weaving and twirling as Daleks surrounded her in a macabre dance of death. She could hear them screaming out their hate, working themselves into a frenzy.
At last there was nowhere left to run. They crowded round her, their guns pointing at her hearts. She pursed her lips, sharpening her already razor sharp cheekbones. "You know what? I've just had a very clever idea," she said.
"EXTERMINATE!" the Daleks screamed, at the exact same moment that she dropped to the ground. Half a dozen energy bolts passed through the space above her head and the smell of singed hair filled her nostrils before the aroma of melting metal and shredded crispy Dalek took its place. She shrieked with laughter and began to run again, not paying attention to anything except her own hearts and the pounding of her boots on the ground. No wonder the Doctor ran so much, if it was always this much fun.
She saw the blur from the corner of her eye an instant before it barrelled into her and they both tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Somehow she ended up on her back with the other person on top of her. She gazed up at her, confused and amused.
"Puppy!" she exclaimed. "You know if you wanted to get closer to me you should have said. We could have spent a little longer in that cell back there." She grinned ferally and leaned up to nip at Clara's neck. Clara reared back before her lips made contact, her nostrils flaring with a mix of anger and fear as she scrambled to her feet. Missy laughed. "No need to pretend poppet. Don't think I can't hear your little heart racing."
"Get up," Clara snapped. "The Doctor's in trouble."
Missy immediately sobered. "Where?" she demanded, climbing lithely to her feet more gracefully than one might expect from a woman of her apparent age, though, of course, her appearance was deceptive in more ways than one. Slight, yet powerful; feminine, yet dangerous; intelligent, yet insane.
Clara thought all that in the millisecond it took her to take off running, Missy hot on her heels. "Back here," she said as she ran. "He came back for you because he's an idiot with a pathological saviour complex but we ran into some Daleks and got separated."
As if on cue, a Dalek came spinning round a corner, its gun flailing wildly. Missy could see traces of decomposing Dalek leaking from its access ports, but it wasn't too far gone to fire.
"UNAUTHORISED HUMANOID! YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!" It turned its gun on Clara who froze. Missy pushed past her without thinking.
"Hey, hey, you. Know what I am?"
There was a pause while the Dalek scanned her. "YOU ARE A TIME LORD!"
Missy rolled her eyes. "How many times - Time Lady." She pouted and pushed her shoulders back, bringing her hands up to cup her breasts. "Honestly, I thought these were fairly conspicuous when I first got them but are they actually invisible?" She turned to Clara, thrusting her chest towards her. "You can see these, right?"
"Uhm, yeah, sure can," replied Clara, her eyes dropping down to Missy's chest without her conscious consent. She blinked when she saw the Time Lady's hand slipping inside her suit jacket to palm her pointy stick.
"See?" said Missy, whirling round again to face the Dalek. "You know I'm starting to think you guys are actually trying to insult me." Without warning she lunged forward, thrusting the pointy stick into the Dalek's eye stalk. There was an ear-piercing squeal, followed by a bang, a flash of electricity that passed completely over the Dalek's casing and a hiss of acrid smoke. Missy smirked. "Or maybe you've just got something in your eye?"
"Should've gone to Specsavers," Clara muttered.
Missy turned her head, flashing her a smile that was - for possibly the first time ever - lacking in any sort of malice. "That was actually quite good, Clara," she said, before turning back to the Dalek. She gripped the end of her pointy stick while bracing one foot on the metal casing. With a heave of effort, she sent the dead Dalek spinning off down the corridor, leaving the stick in her hands. "Wheeeee!" she giggled, and twirled on the spot. Clara found herself smiling despite herself as Missy reached out and grabbed her hand. "Come on my little canary," Missy trilled. "Let's go get Eyebrows and leave these fellas to their dying, hmm? They've got ever so much to do."
They ran, Missy in the lead, Clara a step behind, hands linked in the air between them. "You just killed a Dalek with a pointy stick," Clara gasped, her mind still racing to keep up with everything that had just happened.
"And with a broach!" Missy laughed. "What can I say, I'm the MacGyver of murder."
"Ha!" Clara barked impulsively, before adding: "it's right!"
"Oh, I know," Missy replied. "And I'm so good at it."
"No, I mean turn right," Clara grunted, hauling the other woman round the corner she'd been about to run past and into the corridor where she'd last seen the Doctor.
He was still there, surrounded by four dead Daleks, eyes unreadable behind his sonic sunglasses. "How the hell did you do that?" Clara demanded as the two women skidded to a stop.
"He's the Doctor; just accept it." Missy was breathing a little hard but there was laughter in her voice.
Clara glanced over at the Time Lady, realised she was still holding her hand and dropped it abruptly, wiping it awkwardly on her skirt as a flush rose up from her chest to her neck to her cheeks. Missy's lips twisted into a leering smirk, but she said nothing which somehow made Clara's face burn hotter than before.
The Doctor stared at them both, sliding his glasses down the bridge of his nose to give them a look that Clara recognised from her own dealings with miscreant children. "Problems?" he asked blandly. Clara frantically shook her head.
"Just me saving your little pet's life, yet again." Missy curtseyed. "No need to thank me."
"Good, I won't then," he replied, showing all his teeth in a wide grin. "Now, shall we make tracks 'cause I don't know if you noticed, we're in the middle of the collapse of the Dalek empire."
They took off down the corridor together, the Doctor bringing up the rear. "I'm not a pet," Clara grunted.
Missy laughed. "Oh, puppy," she said. "It's so cute you believe that."
The TARDIS hummed as it dematerialised, the Doctor having programmed them to arrive somewhere in deep space, far from Skaro and, indeed, far from anywhere. Missy and Clara were circling each other around the main console, Clara with hackles firmly raised; Missy with sadistic amusement painted all over her face.
"Puppy," Missy purred. "You really are so pretty when you're angry. You could turn a girl's head."
"Fuck you," Clara ground out through clenched teeth.
"What, here and now?" Missy glanced around the TARDIS control room. "I mean, I'm fine with him watching but I wouldn't have thought that was your particular fetish."
Clara flushed. "God, you really have no...no…" She trailed off, unable to think of a word that didn't sound stupid when applied to an ageless, timeless, amoral alien who was 90% insane.
"Scruples," the Doctor supplied.
Missy's face became a pantomime of confusion. "Oh scruples, scruples, are they those new low fat Kettle crisps?" She rolled her eyes and pointed at herself with her thumbs. "Queen of Evil, has that somehow escaped you?"
The Doctor shook his head. "Well, except you're not though are you?" He continued on past Missy's offended look and Clara's incredulous one. "You're just chaotic. You just do whatever the hell you want with no regard for the consequences. And sometimes - sometimes - the thing you do is good! Like saving Clara three times in the last twelve hours."
"Don't forget the trying to get me killed as well," Clara interjected.
"Oh, are you still harping on about that? You threatened me with a deadly weapon, you don't see me holding a grudge."
"That was a pointy stick!"
"Which was deadly enough to kill a Dalek."
Clara opened her mouth, then abruptly closed it again. "Well...fair point, actually."
Missy made an elaborate bow. "Your beneficence is legendary, little puppy."
Clara blushed furiously while Missy smirked. "Oh just...just shut up!"
Missy scoffed. "Erudite as always poppet; you must be amazing at that job of yours."
"I feel like we're getting off the point here," said the Doctor, dragging both women's attention back to him.
"Well, I'm not really sure what your point was Doctor, except that for some deluded reason you seem to think she's, like...chaotic neutral instead of chaotic evil."
The Doctor frowned. "What?"
"It's a Dungeons and Dragons reference," Missy supplied, then, when the other two turned to look at her in surprise, pointed at herself again and added: "Queen of the Nerds."
Clara turned and stalked off, before seeming to realise she had nowhere to go and stopping, feeling stupid and frustrated and overwhelmed with impotent rage. Her hands gripped the metal railings behind the console until her knuckles turned alabaster.
"Don't you want to know why we came back?" she asked. Her voice was strangely calm, despite the torrent raging just beneath her skin.
Missy shrugged. "I can guess," she said, tossing her head back in studied nonchalance.
"Mercy," the Doctor said, his face dark and shrouded.
Missy grimaced. "Language, please: there are ladies present." Her eyes flashed dangerously. "You think your little trick with Davros is going to work on me? You think you'll show me a little mercy and I'll see the error of my evil ways and I'll cry and I'll beg and I'll...I'll…" She trailed off, turning towards Clara. "Excuse me, have I said something amusing, nanobrain?"
Clara was laughing, low and soft, her back to both Time Lord and Lady who were staring at her with various degrees of incredulity on their faces. "That's not why he did it," she said quietly.
"No?"
"No." Clara turned. "He did it because he's lonely," she said.
Missy rolled her eyes. "Obviously."
Clara ignored her. "He did it because he's him and you're you. Because you're the companion of his first adventures. Because he held you in his arms once as you lay dying and when you refused to regenerate…" Clara paused as Missy gasped, her head rearing back as if she'd been struck a physical blow. "When you refused to regenerate, you broke both his hearts."
Missy took a step towards the Doctor. "You told her about that?' she demanded, then stopped in her tracks when she saw the truth in his dumbfounded face. "No, you didn't." She rounded on Clara. "How can you know about that, hmm?"
Clara's face was dark. "I know many things," she said. Her eyes met Missy's. "Koschei."
Suddenly, everything seemed to happen at once. Clara's eyes rolled back in her head and she began to fall forwards. The Doctor moved too late, seemingly glued to the spot for a few precious seconds as Clara fell. He stepped towards her but before he could reach her Missy was there, sweeping the falling woman up into her arms. She was stronger than she looked.
The moment halted and stretched as Missy stared down at Clara's unconscious face. Time seemed to take a step back as her mind whirled. "Impossible," she muttered, then looked up at the Doctor. "Impossible!"
He looked nearly as surprised as she felt. "Yes," he agreed. "It should be impossible." He stepped forward, holding out his arms to take Clara from Missy. The Time Lady held on tighter for just a second or two, then released her, stepping back with what almost looked like fear on her face.
"What have you done?"
The Doctor looked away from her. "I need to get her to the infirmary," he muttered. "Look, there's a vortex manipulator in a cupboard round here somewhere, show yourself out, will you?" He walked away, heading into the bowels of the TARDIS, the Time Lady seemingly completely forgotten.
Missy stood in the empty control room for a long moment, staring at the place Clara had started to fall. Then she started, shaking her head, and began to look for the promised vortex manipulator. After a moment she found it and strapped it onto her wrist, programming it to return her to the little square somewhere in Tuscany where she had left her TARDIS disguised as a closed espresso stand.
"Impossible girl," she muttered, and then she was gone.
Clara slowly swam back to consciousness through darkness that felt like thick treacle. As her awareness returned, so did memories; sights and sounds flickering inside her mind like grainy old film reels. Not her own memories but something close...running along a crowded street chasing a man with a long scarf, making souffles with imaginary eggs, watching snowmen coming to life next to an achingly familiar face with untidy brown hair…
"Clara…" came a voice, calling out to her through the mess of overlapping, conflicting thoughts. "Clara?"
And she snapped awake.
"Yes!" she gasped. "I'm here, I'm okay!" She looked around, breathing in sharply as she realised where she was. "Why am I here?" she asked. "Did she do something?"
The Doctor frowned as he helped her to sit up. "Missy's gone," he said slowly. "What do you remember?"
Clara paused for a moment, confusion colouring her features. "We were in the control room," she began. "Missy was there. She was joking about being the Queen of the Nerds, like the whole discussion of her obvious lack of morality was massively hilarious. I was so angry, I couldn't even look at her. Or you." She stopped. Frowned. "And then…" She stopped again. Shook her head. "I can't...I…"
"It's all right," the Doctor interrupted her, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, you just fainted." He paused for a moment before continuing. "You don't remember anything else?
There was something in his face, something unreadable and strange that somehow made her mind shy away. Whatever it was, she didn't want to know.
"No," she breathed. They stared at each other for a moment, then the Doctor grinned.
"Good! Well, that's all right then. Best not to try to think about it; you're obviously, you know...overtired. I mean, you've been in four different time periods on two different planets. That's a long day in anyone's book."
Clara was still frowning. "Missy's gone?" she asked.
"Yeah," the Doctor replied. "I don't think we'll be seeing her again. She knows when she's pushed her luck."
Clara nodded, then slumped a little as tiredness overwhelmed her. "Will you take me home?" she asked, her voice small.
The Doctor nodded, then held out his hand to help her up. Leaning against him for support, she trudged back to the control room where she switched to leaning against a railing as he worked the controls. The familiar sound of dematerialisation filled her ears and before she knew it he was opening the doors and leading her out into her own flat. It felt like weeks since she had been there, but the half full cup of cold tea and plate of toast crusts on the coffee table told her he'd brought her back to the late afternoon of the day the planes had stopped.
"You'll be all right now, yeah?" he asked, seeming distracted. "I just need to, you know...do some Time Lordy stuff."
She nodded absently and waved as he got back into the TARDIS. She didn't even wait for it to fully disappear before she yawned and shed her leather jacket, heading towards her bedroom. Her head was thumping and she felt grubby and stained with the dust of two worlds, but a shower would have to wait until she'd slept. It took a supreme effort of will not to just fall into bed with her clothes on, but she managed to pull off her shoes and jumper and skirt and bra before she collapsed face down onto her duvet. Her eyes rested on her bedside table for a second before they drifted closed.
And then she was wide awake again.
Her heart thundering in her chest, she sat up, staring at the object that had taken up residence on her bedside table next to her alarm clock and bottle of water and framed photo of her mum.
It was a pointy stick.
She reached out and picked it up, feeling its strange weight and texture. She stroked it, this relic of Skaro, made from the wood of an alien tree that had grown and lived and died on an alien world.
Her mind raced with questions. When had she left it there? Why had she done it? What did it mean? She had no answers, except one.
The Doctor was wrong. They would be seeing Missy again.
Author's notes
I haven't written anything in about seven years and I feel rusty as hell. This is the beginning of what I'm planning to be a series which will eventually become proper Missy/Clara femslash, because I haven't been able to think of much else since I realised that was a thing. Oh, Missy's scruples line is blatantly lifted from a Malcolm Tucker line from The Thick of It. I feel like Missy is what would result if Malcolm Tucker and Sue White had a baby.