Tumblr Drabble Series: Every Miner Needs A Canary
Disclaimer: Yeah, I own nada. Otherwise Twisswald and Missfle would be canon.
Warnings: Well…one of the main characters is Missy so that should give you a clue. Oh heck, fine I'll spell it out. Explicit content, slightly creepy behaviour, some violence, and morally ambiguous relationships that I do not endorse but are ridiculously fun to write about.
A/N: So I've decided to do all 49 of those prompts for that Tumblr drabble challenge, all Missfle, with some other pairings mentioned or implied but Missy x Clara is the main pairing. Some will be canon-compliant, others AU etc, some long, some short, some smutty, some angst-y, some funny, some romantic as the fancy takes me. But all Missfle.
So admittedly…this turned into an angst-y one. Mea culpa :P
Prompt# 3: 'Please, don't leave.'
Clara could barely believe it. She couldn't believe it, she refused to believe it. But the evidence was there, the complete, utterly incontrovertible evidence was right in front of her eyes, and she couldn't deny it, however much she wanted to.
The Doctor was dead.
And she was alone.
He'd died doing what he always did, doing what he was born for. He saved a planet, a people, who truly had no idea of the cataclysm that had occurred the moment their defender fell dead, his enemy vanquished but only at the cost of his own life.
And Clara's.
Once, she'd dimly recalled the Doctor explaining how a Time Lord should be buried, that their bodies couldn't be allowed to remain or they would become an open schism in the fabric of space-time. Clara had seen that for herself, on Trenzalore, and the damage it could do.
She wouldn't let that happen to him. If nothing else, she would ensure his life, his mad, wondrous life remained sacrosanct. No one would ever touch it.
While the aliens piled up kindling to make a pyre, Clara cried beside his body.
When the preparations were complete, and the Doctor's body arranged on the pyre, Clara emerged from the Tardis. The tears had dried, leaving salty trails on her cheeks, her eyes haunted by the things she'd seen. In wordless understanding, the aliens left her to it, one handing. Clara the torch that would set the pyre ablaze.
The moor they stood on was bleak, cold and silent, but above them the sky glistened with an infinity of stars. Their light fell on Clara as she watched, and waited.
Behind her, she sensed the sudden rip in space-time, the fissure re-sealing as quickly as it had been opened, the taste of ozone acrid on Clara's tongue. Hauling in a shuddering breath, she spoke. "You got my message then."
The new arrival stepped up beside her, cold blue eyes fixed on the pyre and the body it held. "What happened?" Missy breathed in a pained whisper.
"What always happens," Clara replied, with an equal pain in her voice. She shrugged. "He saved the day."
"But not himself," Missy finished for her. "Not this time."
Clara wanted to cry at that brutal, but so characteristically Missy-ish, observation. The hand that held the torch trembled. She didn't, she refused to cry. Not in front of her.
"I'd thought you'd want to say goodbye," she stated, calmly despite the maelstrom of grief that still waited to suck her back down. She felt the Time Lady's gaze on her face, but she refused to look at her.
"Thank you," Missy replied softly, as she stepped hesitantly towards the pyre. With an agile leap up, she ascended it and knelt beside the Doctor's body. For one wild, hateful moment Clara envisaged thrusting the torch into the pyre and watching Missy burn along with the Doctor. She imagined watching the Last of the Time Lords left in this dimension burn.
But then she'd be alone.
She couldn't kill Missy. She was all she had left of her friend. She was all she had left, period, full stop.
So instead she just watched calmly and intently, as Missy drifted a hand over the Doctor's aged face, soothing away the wrinkles and the cares of two millennia, before she leant down and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
Clara looked away at that. Some goodbyes, no one should witness. The sheer devastation in Missy's eyes was another.
Clara waited until Missy clambered down from the pyre and once again stood at her side, silently. Clara knew the moment was now, that she should do it now, but her hand was still. Paralysed, she couldn't do it. To do it was to give up, to admit the Doctor was gone with all the finality of a death knell.
A hand suddenly appeared in her field of vision, gently caressing Clara's as it folded over the top of hers. "Together," Missy whispered, gently guiding Clara's hand forward as the human met the Time Lady's eyes.
A heartbeat. Then, "Together," Clara agreed, with a pang.
Together, Time Lady and Impossible Girl thrust the torch into the pyre and watched as the flame leapt high into the radiant night sky.
Hours later, Clara sat on the jump seat in the Tardis console room. The ancient ship mourned her pilot too, it seemed, since the lights were dim and the old girl made no noise. It made Clara want to scream.
"I'll take you home," Missy stood at the console, staring at the screen. "One last favour for the old man."
"Thank you," Clara breathed, eyes still fixed on the floor. Suddenly, two shiny black boots appeared in front of her, and an icy, inexorable hand tilted her chin up, not cruelly but firmly, brooking no disobedience.
"His confession dial," Missy said gently. "Do you have it?"
Clara frowned in confusion. "No," she whispered, shaking her head. "This wasn't exactly planned."
"Nevertheless, the Doctor would have always been prepared," Missy corrected her. On a normal day, her gentleness and tenderness would have been unnerving. But it wasn't a normal day. "Even if he thought he was going to win, he would have always been prepared."
That reference to their conversation, so long ago on Skaro, sent a shudder through Clara. "I don't know…" she breathed, before a memory made it through the morass of grief in her mind and nudged her. Wordlessly, she got up and left the console room, Missy on her heels.
Clara went to the library, eyes scanning the shelves carefully. Only three days ago, she'd caught the Doctor in here, glancing through an old book of hers. 101 Places to See, her mother's book.
She found the old tome, her heart pounding when she realised it wasn't quite put back in its proper place. It teetered slightly on the edge, sticking out from the rest of the books. It seemed a little bit thicker than before.
With trembling hands, Clara reached up and pulled it down, holding it reverently in her hands. Beside her, Missy was quiet and patient, another reminder of how very not normal a day it had been.
Her heart in her throat, Clara let the book fall open. There, nestled within its pages where her mother's leaf had once rested, was the Doctor's confession dial.
Clara picked it up gingerly, wondering if she'd suffer another energy charge from it but it did nothing. It was heavy and solid in her palm, as she carefully set her mother's book on the ledge once more, and she turned back to Missy.
"Do you-?" she started, holding it out to Missy. The Time Lady shook her head, a wealth of pain in her eyes.
"I have a feeling the Doctor will have changed it since our last encounter," she replied softly, her eyes nevertheless betraying her hunger and her grief. Unsure what to do, Clara sat down in one of the library chairs, eyes fixed on the bronze-hued dial.
With a click, it began to open.
Clara heard movement and looked up sharply. Missy was about to leave, and she called out, without thinking. "Don't!"
Missy paused, obviously torn and hating it. "I really don't need to see yet more proof of how much he loved you more than me-" she started, with a kind of resigned fury that tugged at Clara's heart.
"Please," Clara tried again. "Don't leave."
Speechless, Missy stared at Clara. Beseechingly, Clara held her gaze.
The Mistress took another step, then another, until she stood by Clara's side. Clara placed the dial down on the floor, as a familiar face flickered into being and that grumpy, harsh brogue filled the air one last time.
Clara wasn't surprised when she felt Missy perch on the arm of the chair, next to her. And she didn't recoil as Missy's hand suddenly and abruptly entwined with hers. It felt right, and good. They were the Doctor's two oldest friends, it was right that they should be here together.
As Clara let the maelstrom of her grief take her at last, as she sat listening to his greatest and final secret, she felt Missy's cold hand in hers and clung all the tighter.
Prompt #4: "Do you…well…I mean…I could give you a massage?"
To be continued…