You never quite believed that the Master who had organised the Year That Never Was would regenerate into Missy. You watch him go down to the bottom floor of the spaceship and turn into an unfamiliar man with a freckly forehead and that damn moustache he always gets, one way or another. Then, you return to Missy, directing the TARDIS with a precision your twelfth self doesn't have yet – River was always the better driver, after all and she taught you all the tricks you'd forgotten, when you first learned.
"Laser to the back," you crouch beside her, meeting her eyes. "Not a good way to go. The future is always female, however and women are always prepared for the worst."
Missy sighs and sits up, as if nothing had happened – as if you were both at the executioners again and she'd just faked dying.
"Who are you?" she questions, accent stronger than you remember. Then, of course, she sees the TARDIS and raises an eyebrow, tilting her head. "Oh." Her eyes flicker to you. "I did not expect that, my dear."
You smile flatly. "You only served seventy-eight years of your sentence, Koschei. Time to return to that – though understand that I'm changing the terms of your imprisonment."
"And do I get any input?"
"No," you say, voice cold. Pulling her to her feet, you both make it into the TARDIS before the floor blows, the doors shutting to a reign of fire. "K9 will be your babysitter when we're not inside the TARDIS. He will be with you at all times and if you go further than fifteen feet from him and or out of his sightline, you're grounded to the TARDIS until he's satisfied."
"You're assigning me the dog? Really?" Missy complains, before dropping down on a sofa tiredly, K9 making his way over to her.
"Mistress."
"Dog. Go fetch."
You pilot the TARDIS off the spaceship, a small smile growing on your face as Missy and K9 bicker.
Life with Missy is obviously difficult. She does her best, however and you take on more human companions, preferring older models nowadays in comparison to students and teens. You're an older model yourself now, if only mentally. Missy likes to point out how you always pick up twenty-first century homosexual men and have a tendency to aromantic or straight as hell women.
"Falling in love with humans is easier than you'd think," is your reply. Missy scoffs – and then promptly falls head over heels for a sarcastic bitch of a man who likes to make fun of Missy's sense of dress, despite his snappy suits and borrowed Nikes. He has a heart-attack some two years after your travels, laughing the entire time that Missy apologises, faking his death – faking his death after having a heart attack – and prompting Missy to actually cry, causing him to let the act up. You think it's somewhat cruel, but he does say sorry to Missy when he leaves a few days after, to live out the rest of his days in twentieth century Tokyo.
When Missy asks you why you picked him up rather than a gay man, you shrug.
"Humans change all the time. He was self-labelled gay when we picked him up. He was queer when he left. Take that as you will."
Glasgow GSD Pride 2117 is fun. Missy goes out in a blue, yellow and hot pink swimsuit and daisy dukes with a pink and blue umbrella that you both share when it starts to rain.
"It's Scotland, what do you expect?"
"It's also July, which means actual heat – I think we missed the heatwave by a week," you grumble, before inviting Missy to dance randomly. You waltz over to the ice-cream vendor and smile at the edible rainbow glitter, before getting Missy a sorbet. "I'm lactose intolerant in this body, don't you dare," you glare at her as she starts complaining, looking at the actual ice-cream wistfully.
Of course, the next day when you're touring the city, cybermen invade the Conservatoire of Scotland. You are listening to a jazz performance in one of the classrooms when Missy sends you a telepathic message saying that K9 ordered her to inform you that said cybermen had started setting up conversion booths in the new auditorium. You set off the fire-alarm discreetly and keep it blaring as you head to the new auditorium, trying and failing to stop them.
Missy comes to the rescue.
You're very proud.
So proud, in fact, that it demands you show your satisfaction and you kiss her, then and there, when she's holding up a disruptor meant to short out cyberfunctions. Unfortunately, this leads to her being captured and the device destroyed – but oh well, Missy has a spare. She always has spares.
"Are you in wuv with me, Doctor?" she asks in a baby voice after, pouting, sliding around the TARDIS console to you, dragging her hands. You brush your thumb over her chin and a bright light appears in her eyes as she watches you contemplate something infinitely more complex than friendship. "Doctor…"
"I've always loved you, Missy. Am I in love with you? Far from it. I love you," you start and subsequently finish in High Gallifreyan, as Missy kisses you, hands slipping up to your head as she enters your mind and you enter hers. Breath escapes you as that beautiful complexity comes to life, shared and reciprocated by your oldest of friends. Missy isn't your wife – she isn't River. Missy isn't a maybe, a thing to be attempted and enjoyed for a short time, like Andra'ath, either.
Missy is your best friend and you love her with enough feeling that you should have transcended years ago into the universe as pure consciousness.
"We're endgame," Missy murmurs into your mouth when you part, her hands falling to your collar, resting gently there, on either side of your neck. "Don't think I wasn't watching, when you were travelling with that wife of yours. You loved her so freely as a man, but as a woman…she was me."
"No, she was River Song. Nothing could replace either of you."
Missy hums. She doesn't believe you and she won't ever, you don't think, because maybe, River could be replacing Missy in another universe. Logic and statistic possibility dictate it's happening, somewhere in the multiverse, or in some parallel world. No, that's not right. Your eyebrows draw together and you stumble backwards, away from Missy as your memories clutter, your brain- expiring?
Oh.
Oh.
"Doctor?"
You sit down, feeling that- that old, familiar sensation of regeneration energy reaching up through your body that you haven't felt in thousands of years. You smile at her.
"Expiring. I think my body is used to using up regeneration energy much faster than this. It's gotten very determined, or maybe it has a life of its own now. I'm millions of years old, after all. Only Twelve was older than me – oh, this is very strange – though Twelve cheated."
Missy comes to your side, crouching in front of you, "No, this you is good, it should stay."
"Twelve wanted to stay, too and Ten. So many want to stay." You smile at her, welcoming the regeneration energy. "The thing is though, Missy, I'm still the same person, every time. See you on the other side."
And then you die and the you that takes your place is still the person who saves worlds and is millions of years old and who loves every damn human who steps into your TARDIS.
Except, the first face you see, this time around – it's Missy.
