Missy's tongue hung out the side of her mouth as she ran the black polish over her little fingernail. Her movements were precise and planned, the bare nail was soon washed in a dark coat. Missy hummed considering her work and hesitantly placing the brush back in the pot. One done, nine to go.

"Have you only finished one nail?"

Missy looked up and over her shoulder from the vanity table, noticing the Doctor for the first time, and nodding. The smell of Chinese filled the Vault and she felt a wave of sickness wash over her.

"I'm not hungry. Don't bring that near me or I will vom."

She held her hand out and examined the one nail that caught in the light and glistened. It looked rather splendid.

"I'll vom so much that I'll chunder more than Cressida and Eugenie did at Glasto last summer."

She's been practising her accents again. Today it's her low voiced, plum in mouth attempt at estuary English. It's got nothing on her shrill Queen's- or should that be in this moment of time King's? -English. It's certainly not her thick Glaswegian burr that never fails sends to send a shiver down his spine. It is, however, better than her overdone French accent and slightly less disconcerting than her cockney one. She always reminds him of an East End witch when she speaks like that, voice just crying out to cackle at the end of every sentence.

"Bit early for Glastonbury. About thirty years too early" the Doctor responds, knowing she's talking nonsense but choosing to start with that and then work his way up to an actual conversation.

He hadn't stopped by in over two days after inadvertently helping when some London evacuees turned out to be from an all-together different London. No, not the London in Ontario but one from several planets and several thousand years away.

Missy's hand gripped the edge of the vanity and The Doctor instantly realised his mistake. He hadn't been telling her how long she had been in the Vault. Time moved differently there and she was cut off from being able to process it in her normal way. It was kinder he thought. After all, living in a linear time frame was a struggle for them both; he at least had relative freedom while she was quite literally locked away.

"So, it's what?" She questioned, voice clipped as her Scottish base accent seeped into every word. "1940?" It hadn't even been five years, Missy realised with a growing dread.

"1941, actually." The Doctor said meekly, as if it made the blindest bit of difference.

There was a heavy, expectant silence in the air for what felt like hours. It couldn't have been more than a minute. Time was funny in the Vault in more ways than one.

"We'll meet again. Don't know where, don't know when" Missy started to chorus abruptly, swinging her legs around her chair and standing, pacing the inside perimeter of the containment field in time with the rhythm in her head.

The Doctor watched her elegant movements and resolved for the third time that month that he'd bring her a musical instrument as a treat as soon as she showed a little more improvement. She'd always had an affinity for music.

"There'll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover" her voice didn't quite reach the notes in the way they should but they remained melodic enough.

The Doctor looked up, drawn from his thoughts and catching sight of her piercing blues examining them as she hummed the verses. He was suddenly aware of the forcefield dividing them.

"That's a different song," he commented not sure if she had realised.

She often just missed the bar with her human references. If human cultures had been a course at the Academy, it would have been the one class he achieved a higher grade than her.

"I know that" she protested, nose scrunching up in distaste at his assumption that she didn't know something. She was lying and they both knew it.

He smiled. Her nose always crinkled when she'd been found out on something small. Koschei's nose had crinkled the same way when he'd been found with his hand on Ushas' biology notes before their final exams in first year. Come to think of it, it was a twitch the Master had had even when big deceptions had been found out. The Doctor felt his mind leading him down a dark route and forced himself to stop.

"It's our song," Missy chimed head tilting as she observed the Doctor's faraway glance.

"The White Cliffs of Dover?"

Missy scoffed.

"We'll meet again," she corrected with a roll of her eyes. "They are different songs, you know. We'll always meet again. We don't know where and we don't know when but we always will" She trilled, pleased with a correct reference.

"You're idealising us," the Doctor says gently. "We usually know where we'll meet again. It's in the ruins of some planet you've destroyed."

"Well it shakes it up a bit. Me the idealist, you the realist" she coos. She's tracing a slim finger along the blue beams and the Doctor knows it's only a matter of time before she gets a warning zap. She knows it too and it bothers him how much she seems to want it to send electric currents through her.

He should adjust the locks and let her out but he's stuck on the spot, captivated by her baby blues and melodic tongue. Before he knows it, the conversation has escalated tenfold. It always does with her.

"Not that long ago that you were cradling me in your arms, begging me to regenerate." She pauses here, does that little gasp where she looks like she's stopped breathing all together and is frozen in that second.

Bringing her hand to her cheek, she lowers her eyelids halfway as though she is dreaming.

"I can still feel your tears on my cheek."

"Missy."

Missy throws her head back, grinning with eyes full of mirth. A messy curl falls loose and dangles down the back of her neck as she looks at him over her shoulder.

"Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run" she sings eerily. "Don't let the Master have their fun fun fun."

Those aren't the words and he knows it's a deliberate mistake this time.

"Missy."

"That's more our song, isn't it?"

"Stop it now." He can feel his blood boiling.

Why can't she try harder to be good? She's playing him and he's let it go too far. There'll be no musical instrument for her if this manipulation carries on. Shame. He already had the piano he wanted to get her in mind.

"Okay, okay dear keep your lovely head of hair on" she smirks. "You have to admit it though who was idealising us back then? It was you and we both know it." Her lips turn up into what she thought was an endearing smile. It wasn't. "You said such pretty things to me. You asked me what you'd be without me. You forgave me. You idealised everything we have and had."

He's at the containment field in second, glaring at her.

"Enough. I forgive you now," he reminds her. Arms opened wide as he looks around the vast Vault. "That's what this is. This is me helping you and forgiving you."

Missy's jumped back towards her vanity table, grimacing. Had he scared her? The Doctor wonders momentarily as he tries to read her. Or had she been zapped harder than she expected? It would certainly act as a warning to her in the future if she had got a bit of a shock.

"I said" Missy drawls, "keep that food away from me. I wasn't kidding when I said I would be sick."

The Doctor looks up and catches her paled expression and the way she was holding the bedframe for support. Her adrenaline levels were playing up again and he hadn't noticed. She'd been in his care for nearly five years and he still failed to notice when her moods were excessively up and down, he realised grimly.

It was why she'd only had the concentration levels to paint one finger nail.

It was why she'd been doing those stupid accents.

It was why she'd been singing and winding him up so much.

And it was why she felt sick.

"Get that grease bag away from me," Missy seethed eyes now closed as she took a deep breath.

"Sorry, sorry" he hissed, stepping back and walking to the make shift kitchen unit. Opening the fridge, he placed it inside and walked back to the containment field. Holding his sonic out, he adjusted the settings and the walls fell away. To his surprise, Missy stayed where she was, not leaping out of the caged area as soon as possible as she normally did.

"Missy," the Doctor held his hand out. "You can come out of there now."

She really was being left there far too often for long periods of time. They were going to have to make some changes. No. He was going to need to make some changes. Despite the occasional jarring word, she had been relatively well behaved. Relative to her, that is. There must be a way he could let her out of the containment field and into the wider Vault while he wasn't there.

"I just felt a tad peaky," she sighed and returned to her plum in mouth accent. She couldn't understand why she was feeling so on edge but could tell she wasn't processing things right. She was on edge.

"You're restless," the Doctor offered her a label for what she didn't understand. "You've got a lot of pent up energy and I shouldn't have left you in there for so long."

"Yes. Yes, I suppose that's it." Missy turned her head and looked at the still opened pot of nail varnish.

"Bring that with you," he suggested as he watched her eye the nail varnish. "We'll sit by those windows, by the light and have some fruit tea while you finish your nails," he smiled and waited a few seconds. "You'll look silly with only one nail painted."

Missy swallowed and nodded quickly.

"I will." She agrees, screwing the lid shut tight and pocketing it.

"They aren't real windows."

"I know but I've made sure they project the closest thing to real sunlight. It'll be good for you."

Missy still hovered in the containment field, hand lingering over the stuffed cat he'd bought her during her first year in captivity. She had become attached to it far more than he had anticipated and had spent the better part of the third year begging him to bring her a real kitten. He'd put his foot down firmly against that idea, there was no way she was ready to care for a sentient being. She would probably kill the feline in a fit of rage and then regret what she had done as she begged for replacement.

He had, however, added some features to the cat that made it more realistic. Thanks to a robotic heart and voice box, it now purred and meowed like the real thing. Recently, he'd added an artificial emotional and physical needs system. This meant that it responded to Missy's touch in a positive or negative way depending on whether she was doing the right thing. It would also let her know when the cat was hungry or thirsty or need something from her. It was a way of helping her understand and learn how to care for something without risking her hurting it.

She'd been getting better at looking after the stuffed cat but it had taken her several weeks. The smile on her face when the cat purred in her lap, or nuzzled against her was enough to make up for him regretting to install an off button and spending several hours trying to silence the cat while Missy had shoved her head under her pillow and shouted at it to be turned off.

Missy seemed to need the soft affection that the toy cat (and on the odd occasion, the Doctor himself) gave much more than her previous incarnations had. It made him wonder how much she'd been deprived of any kind-meaning physical contact. She had started to talk a bit more openly about what had happened to her in the events leading up to her attempted execution but they were never more than off-hand comments.

"I don't want beans," she had said one evening as he had been preparing a jacket potato for her tea. "That's all they would give me, once a day, every day. It's easy to hide the drugs in the sauce."

"Who's they, Missy?" he had asked, placing the can opener down. "No one," she had replied.

Another time, the Doctor (not yet trusting her with sharp objects) had been helping her cut her nails. They had been having a heated debate over an academic article he'd just published and he'd teasingly waved the scissors at her as he stressed his points. Missy had scrambled away from him faster than he thought possible, put herself into the containment field and demanded he left instantly.

The Doctor was drawn from his thoughts as he heard Missy start humming to herself again. She was still hovering by the bed, eyes lingering on the cat and clearly trying to level out her emotions. She was getting better at that than she had been even a month ago.

"Bring Yana with us," he reassured as he tried to coax her out.

Yana was the name she'd eventually settled on for her prized ball of fluff, after changing it every day for six months. The Doctor hadn't initially liked it, thinking it was a deliberate attempt to hurt him. One night, though, she had sleepily confessed the reasoning behind the name choice.

"I called myself Yana to reassure you that you weren't alone. Now, this Yana reminds me that I'm not alone, even when I think I am and you've been gone for days."

The Doctor had said no more on the name choice after that.

Missy stepped tentatively out of the confinement field, holding Yana to her chest and scratching him behind the ear. "Good boy," she murmured to him as she placed a gentle kiss to his head and made her way to the Doctor.

Wrapping his arm around her waist, he guided her to the two leather seats by the windows. Yana's artificial emotion settings kicked in and a low whine-like noise filled the room. The Doctor recognised it but wanted to see if Missy was starting to decipher the different moods.

"He's hungry," Missy said in a quiet voice that didn't hold her usual certainty. She could lecture confidently for hours on the properties of a black hole, but lost face when it came to identifying an emotion- whether it was her own or his or a pretend cat's.

"That's right," the Doctor beamed. "Sit down and I'll get us some tea and some of those biscuits for Yana."

Those biscuits were tiny batteries that kept Yana working. Missy had come up with that idea herself.

Missy sat in the chair, restless energy still coursing through her as she moved her legs about and stomped each foot into the carpet. The Doctor watched silently as he set up the fruit tea in paper cups and sprinkled a handful of cat biscuits-come-batteries into a plastic bowl.

Setting it all on the tray he walked slowly over to the seats, careful not to spill any as he set it down on the coffee table. Yana repeated the same low-pitched whine and Missy immediately reached for the biscuits. Holding each one up to Yana's robotic mouth with thought and tenderness until the very last one was gone. Even though her hands trembled, it was clear she was starting to calm down.

The Doctor watched from the corner of his eyes as he blew on the fruit tea and took a long slurp. He grinned at the delighted noise Missy made as Yana purred and curled in her lap.

"Look," she gushed- her tone now more even and controlled as she started to balance out. "I did it. You should get me the real thing."

"Maybe in a couple of decades, Missy. It was only last week you'd placed him in a pillow case because he wouldn't stop making that whining sound."

Missy conceded with a shrug of her shoulders and went back to petting Yana. The Doctor finished his tea and resolved to give her five minutes before reminding her to drink her tea.

"You like me having Yana so that I learn to care for something other than myself, don't you?" She said when not quite five minutes had passed.

"That's one of the reasons."

"Maybe you should give me a baby. We both have all the right parts now," she gestured over her middle vaguely. Her lips were drawn back in a playful grin and she was much more stable than she had been earlier.

She was teasing him but getting the right balance.

The Doctor nearly choked. "I think that is one of the worst ideas you've ever had. And there've been a few."

"Spoil sport," she pouted and went back to petting Yana in repetitive motions. "If you carry on like this, I might bring you a plant in next week."

Missy turned to face him with a grin and he held his hand up to stop her quickly. "Not one with teeth."

The rest of the evening passed smoothly, the Doctor marking essays while keeping a watchful eye on Missy as she drank several cups of tea and eventually managed to stomach a few pork balls. The projection cycle started to dim to dusk as he watched Missy let out a yawn and rest her head on the arm of the chair. Yana remained cocooned up in her skirts as she pulled her legs up and sank into the chair.

"I was in a strange mood today, huh?" She asked contemplatively as she turned and propped her chin on her arms, staring at him.

"A little bit. Your adrenaline levels and emotions were a bit out of whack." The Doctor placed the stack of essays down and turned to face her fully. The last light from the window projections caught the dark shadows under her eyes. "Did you sleep while I was gone?" He asks, knowing the answer.

She shakes her head, curls tumbling loose. "You need to start sleeping while I'm not here."

"I can't."

"Missy, you're safe here."

"Not from my nightmares."

The Doctor sighed and ran his hand over his face. "I'll try and get something to help you sleep, okay?"

Missy nodded, suppressing a yawn.

"Want to tell me what the nightmares are about?" Missy shook her head.

"You're going to be here for a thousand years, Missy, we're going to talk about this stuff sooner or later."

"It's going to be later," she said in a heartbeat as her eyes drifted shut.

"What did you do when you had an episode like you did today- where your emotions and your adrenaline are all over the place- and you were on your own?"

"That's a thinly-veiled 'what did you ever do without me?' question. You're a walking ego sometimes" She mumbled, head back down and resting against the crook of her arms.

Saliva started to form in the corners of her mouth and dampen the fabric on the inside of her elbow. She was minutes away from sleep.

"I mean it Missy. You were anxious and uptight and all over the place. You didn't understand what was wrong and I know it's not the first time you've felt like that."

"I did things you wouldn't have liked. Things that have ultimately led me here."

"Okay," the Doctor replied simply, seeing she was tired and not really knowing what else he could say. Watching the steady rise and fall of her shoulders, her saw her breathing slow as she eventually gave into sleep.

Slowly, he walked over to her and undid her jacket. As he eased it off her shoulders, the tiny pot of nail varnish rolled out her pocket. The Doctor held his breath, expecting her to wake up from the noise echoing around the Vault. She simply let out a snore and curled up smaller.

The Doctor examined the small pot and looked down at the one finger nail she'd managed to paint.

"Well we wouldn't you to look silly now, would we?" He whispered to himself, smirking as he remembered this was the woman that had styled herself after Mary Poppins.

Pulling up the footstool, he sat down and started to carefully paint the rest of her nails while Missy remained fast asleep. Humming his approval, the Doctor looked down at her bare feet that drooped over the edge of the seat.

"In for a penny, in for a pound." He mumbled to himself as he moved to her feet.