Well this quite got away from me- another oneshot from the Florence Collection for the anniversary of Missy's not death.


His love was always pure.

Even in the depths of their intimacy there was a purity to him. A shining, burning light. An innate goodness and kindness, however flawed.

Instinctively he was kind to her.

Instinctively he was good.

No matter how she clawed at his embrace and spat at his softness he still blinded her with his simple-minded care for her.

She had learned this long ago and it was something that never changed with him- she made sure it didn't.

They were fated.

Or so she believed.

Tied together more tightly than those star-crossed lovers who stare up at the same moon every night, seeing the other in its waxy complexion.

Shakespeare- though brilliant- could only ever be human.

She saw him in every leaf, every burning sun, every ice covered planet, every atom of her heart. She felt him tied around her every thought like a bow- forgotten and even overlooked by his constancy.


They had always tried to reciprocate his kindness.

Their gestures always fell short, gifts causing him to push them away and kisses causing him to tense.

(Most of the time- and those that didn't- the Master lived for them, relived them on lonely nights.)

And then eventually they gave up.

There's no use giving to one who won't receive even if they deserve it.

So they became an opposite, driven by the fate that connected them to stand apart from him forever, spiralling in orbit, never to connect.

The Master, then the Mistress, countless times swapping names and faces, takes on the darkness that he sheds, will not acknowledge. They know it intimately, wrap it around themselves, their mantle from him. It tells them who they are, who they belong to.

Him. Him. Him. Always. Always him.

They build themselves around that darkness, destroying and conquering and burning up a path which burns with a cruel flame which doesn't warm as the light from him does but blisters up the paths between them, wrecking any bridges either dared to set.


It smells of smoke and ash between them, stars burning up and dying, dying, dying, while he shines still bright and she's completely in shadow and her hands are burned too, painted red and clutched to her, wreathes of blackness like manacles for slim wrists made of smoke and she too- once- had been smoke.

She had drifted, choking and spiralling and spinning to the rhythms of the universe and it had brought her to now, opposite him.

She wants to reach out to him but her fingers are claws now from a monster so all she can do is beg as a monster might for kindness and redemption.


An expression crosses his face and she gasps, kneeling before him, recognising that darkness.

He was here.

He knew.


She hears his hearts beating as he checks on her and her own scream back;

"We're the same- we're the same!"