So I was going to do a quick warm up exercise by putting a song on and writing to the mood but instead this thing happened and I had a fifteen minute nosebleed because of the emotional stress- enjoy!


It feels like she's been fighting forever. The dirt at her feet is thick with blood, tugging endlessly at her boots laced tightly up to her knees with worn ties as she moves- cuts a path of sorrow through the violence around her. Her arms are shaking and the tears have dried streaks down her cheeks as she turns, fires again- turns- and another. Bullets lodged in the eyepieces of those who would kill her.

It's been years here.

Decades and centuries of fighting condensed into seconds, minutes, days, weeks-months-years.

So many people who have died and regenerated and forced themselves up to fight again- friends, family, enemies, bodies, corpses.

She turns, roaring out her pain and cracking off another eyestalk before she falls too. Immediately she brings up her guns- shoots twice, once with each gun and feels the kick in her screaming muscles she can just about feel over the howling of pain in her mind.

Wind shrieks around her as she ducks to the ground, reloads and fires under her arm under the cover of red dust from who-knows-where.

This whole planet should be covered in blood by now- there's so much- in her hair, on her skin, thick between her palms and her guns.

Some of it must be his.

And she screeches in anger, thrusting a dark-star alloy toe-capped boots through a dalek's casing and watching the blood ooze sluggishly from the hole in the armour.

Some of it must be his.

There's nothing left near her- friend or foe.

She tears off the plunger and smashes it into the redundant shields, shrieking out her hatred and pain with each crash.

He'd looked so peaceful.

Missy falls to her knees, declaring war on the sky with her broken voice- no enemy left to fight. Nothing left to break except herself and she passed the point of being fixable oh so long ago.

Her arms drop to her sides as her cries give out entirely.

He'd looked so peaceful!

She shrieks again- a warbling, flighty noise which leaves her too.

He'd fallen where he stood- fighting for their planet- both of them.

His eyes had closed and she had killed everything around them- no discrimination- he was her everything and they had allowed him to die- but oh! He had looked so peaceful- there in the dirt back when it wasn't clogged with blood and heaving with gore over cracked shielding.

He hadn't stood again.

Missy sobs silently, guns stuck in her cramped hands as they impact her face, trembling, too hard.

She doesn't feel the force anyway with the ringing of his loss in her mind.

He had looked so-

His face- so happy- a smile- he thought he'd-

So peaceful-

And blue-

His eyes were blue!

She thinks-

Peaceful-

He's gone-

More daleks-

Stop killing these people-

There's an enemy he had died facing-

Do it for him-

Kill-

Hate-

Kill-

For him-

It's been so long- so long-

And there's the blare of the siren calling for more- it screams to the sky as Missy manages to remove a hand from her gun and roughly scrub at the dirt on her face and drag her ruined nails through the dried filth in her plaited hair.

Her lips are dry as she swallows, throat burning despite the fact she can't feel it.

"Come get it you fuckers!" She screeches, shooting at their ships- too far for her to reach, "I'm going to kill you all! Tear you apart- piece by piece! Even if it's only me left again and again and again I will kill you all !" Missy roars at them.

She picks herself up and feels the prickle of minds- reinforcements again.

"Come at me!" She screams, thumping the battered armour over her chest.

And the daleks are down and everyone is running and roaring too and she shoots and ducks and grabs and snaps and spins and turns as she fires and crouches down and reloads and shrieks and cracks and runs and runs and runs and runs.

She falls over a chunk of dalek casing, sent sprawling below a dalek beam and fires automatically, taking it out and going to stand.

Her ankle gives way and she cries out more in shock than pain as she goes down again into the filth.

She claws her way across the floor, somehow dragging herself to the shelter behind a dalek casing and shivering uncontrollably at the exhaustion ripping at her as she forces her hands open and fumbles again and again with the laces of her boots, tight over her brown uniform trousers, stiff with the debris of war.

Her twisted fingers work at the knots and eventually they come undone, her shaking doubling the time it takes to tug each loop of the lace free.

She picks up her gun and fires- less than a second- instinct taking down the creature before it can get close enough to truly spot her.

The gun goes down immediately, sinking a little into the mess of blood and mud and burned lives.

Her hands go back to work on peeling back the layers of clean- had it really ever looked like that?- trouser and rolling down her ribbed socks.

The whole joint is swollen- broken- she knows and already bruising deeply.

She laughs, a deranged sound.

Well- she's dead now. It's the only thing left.

No medics in these fields and no hope.

Peals of laughter spill from her chapped lips as her hands clench- cramped into their position long ago- around her ankle, nails biting at the purpling flesh which should have hurt.

A dalek trundles straight forward- towards her.

She barks out another laugh, eyes vicious and bright upon it.

Mad.

"Oi! Tin-foil hat!" She calls out, teeth bared.

Gallifrey's mad dog.

"Oi! Dustbin! Pepper pot! Oi!" She yells out, joyous.

The dalek keeps on coming towards her, eye stalk scanning her.

"YOU ARE AN EN-E-MY OF THE DA-LEKS!" It croaks.

The Mistress grins, leaning forwards despite the shaking.

"You're right I am!" She hollers, "I'm the mad bitch of Gallifrey you piece of shit- bet your daddy would be so proud of you for killing little old me!" She taunts, glee evident in her tone.

"DA-LEKS DO NOT CA-RE FOR PRI-DE!" The light flashes as it talks.

"Oh- whatever! Just kill me you stupid-"

There's a flash of light and Missy gasps, slumping back against the casing behind her, lips slack and hands releasing her ankle a little.

"I'm sorry. I can't let that happen." Says a happy voice, sweet to the poisoned air.

The dalek is a ruin of shrapnel and blood.

"You see- I- I thought you had died." The voice begins to tremble.

"Doctor." Her voice sticks in her throat, heavy with exhaustion and dirt and love, "Doctor." Missy says softly, tears working at the gore on her face.

The Doctor lifts a hand through the dust, gently sweeping blonde hair aside.

The hand is small Missy notes- smaller than he's been for a long time.

The Doctor is crying too- trembling in the same uniform.

"Missy. I thought you had died." She whimpers, wetting her lips as she steps forwards through the filth- a beacon of light and purity in hell.

"I thought you had died too." Missy cries, holding out her arms as best she can though they quiver, "Doctor!" She begs.

The Doctor runs through the war, across fields and fields and years in those few moments and falls down into the other woman's arms.

"Missy!" She cries, holding her tight to her chest, "Never again- never again! Stay with me!" She pleads, tears streaking from red-rimmed eyes as she grips to the other as hard as she can.

"I will- don't leave! Don't leave me please!" Missy cries, arms wrapped around the woman enveloping her.

"No- never!" The Doctor agrees, hands tangled in the mess of Missy's hair- caught in the braid as she presses her cheek to the Mistress' as hard as she can- trying to imprint her on her skin.

"Never!" She sobs.

"Never, never, never, never, never!" She affirms, fingers clutching desperately at Missy who clings to her just as needfully.

"Never." The Time Lady whispers, trembling beneath the smaller and smiling through the waves of pain and joy and happiness and love.

"Never."