Next chapter should be on the 5th of May.


For a moment Bill just stares at her.

"You. How?" She stutters out, eyes wide, hand raising again to point at her, "How did you get that?" The human asks, brows furrowed in confusion.

"And how do you know it will work?" She follows up, frowning.

The Mistress stiffens.

Her fingers clench into fists by her sides and she feels the bite of her nails into her palms, the tightness over her knuckles.

"I don't." She says, chin tilted up and lips pressed together.

She misses not feeling uncertainty.

The heat's rising in her cheeks and she turns to hide it, striding around the perimeter of her cage.

"It was on a piece of paper with my last meal." The Time Lady admits. She ignores how hopeful- how childish- the words sound.

There's another pause as Bill waits for some kind of further explanation.

"You mean-" She begins, looking at Missy incredulously, "You got a piece of paper with some numbers on with your food and you automatically presume that it's something that might help you?" She asks.

"You do realise there's millions more things that the number could actually be?" The human prods, tilting her head in confusion.

The Time Lady bristles, shoulders raising as she turns her head.

"Yes but that doesn't mean that it isn't." She snaps, voice tart.

And Bill just raises her hands in response, puffing out her cheeks and stepping back.

"Okay. Okay. I'm trying it." The human says.

Missy sniffs and turns away again, hands clasping in front of her and squeezing tight.

Rassilon- she hopes that the code is what she thinks it is.

Rassilon- she hopes that the Doctor- her Doctor- isn't as gone as he might seem.

Rassilon- she wants her friend back more than ever.

She can hear the tapping of the human's shoes as she moves to the door and the breathing, loud in the quiet.

"What were the numbers again?" She asks.

The Mistress recites them, lips almost tingling with the nervousness of what it means if they work.

Missy feels her hearts beat fast in the silence as she watches the reflection of the human in the glass in front of her, hands obscured by a reflected metal beam.

Then there's a brief click and Missy sees the glass door move, reflected again.

Her knees feel weak suddenly and she locks them, unlacing her fingers and placing one hand on the small table to prop her up.

Bill is silent.

"Well it worked." She sums up.

The words make the whole thing sound anticlimactic though the expression of sheer bewilderment the Mistress sees on her mirrored face betrays her voice.

"How did you say you got it?" Bill asks after she's regained control of her face, somewhat suspicious.

"I." Missy stops short, head turned to the side again, eyes dropping to the floor as her mouth hangs open.

She almost doesn't want to say. The implications are clear and part of her wants to keep it to herself, inside where the words don't have as much weight.

The only problem is that she can't lie to Bill and she can't say nothing to her. Not when she's helping her like she is.

"They were on a slip of paper in the bottom of the bag which my food was delivered in, underneath the boxes. Handwritten." Missy states the facts.

Bill is pacing outside the Time Lady's cage, fingers dragging across her scalp as she follows through, clearly just as horrified and worried as Missy feels.

"But that- anyone could have written them. Right? We could just be really lucky, couldn't we?" She asks, clearly not believing her own words as the thoughts travel directly from her head into the air around them.

"Someone was just playing some kind of joke and it worked in our favour, right?" Bill declares.

"I know his handwriting." Missy tells the human, "He wrote the numbers." She says, voice solid and cold. It feels heavy coming from her mouth, like the air should mist with it.

"It can't- he can't be putting us through this- he wouldn't-" Bill keeps talking, filling the air with words which buzz with anxiety until Missy interrupts.

"I know his handwriting, Bill! Not his motives!" She snaps, fists at her sides as she turns to glare at Bill through the glass.

There's silence again as Missy keeps staring at the human.

Bill is almost collapsed on yet another end table scattered around the rest of the room, caught with her hands in her hair, eyes wide and fixed on her, lips parted slightly.

There's shock on her face but of a different kind than the Time Lady was expecting. Colour rises in her cheeks as she realises why. She looks away again.

"I don't know why he's doing it but I choose to believe that the Doctor is good and he is trying to be good." She says quietly, softly, eyes tracing the tiles outside her box as the fingers of one hand run up and down those on her other hand in a way which only somewhat calms her.

"Okay." Bill replies and the word is enough even if Missy knows they'll be discussing this so many more times.

"We should. We should get to getting you out of there then." She says, closing the conversation for now.

Missy sighs, standing a little taller.

"Yes." She agrees as they both move towards the glass door again.

They both reach for the door and Bill pulls back at the last moment, gesturing loosely to Missy.

The Mistress pulls a breath into her chest and closes her eyes briefly as she pushes open the door.

The glass is cold beneath her palm and it moves easily on its hinge.

Eyes still closed Missy takes a single careful step and then another.

She hears Bill move a little closer and lets her hand fall. The pane of glass stays put,

The Mistress opens her eyes and grasps the hand Bill offers from just the other side of the glass to her right.

Holding her breath she steps onto the top step down from her prison.

Bill smiles at her encouragingly, the other hand offered to her too if she needs it.

The Time Lady raises her foot, biting her lip hard at the quaking as she wills it to stop and places it down hard on the next step, firm. The other foot follows onto it and her hand is tightening possibly a little too much on Bill's arm but the human isn't complaining.

Instead Bill moves in front of her, meeting her eyes as she lets the Mistress take both of her hands and pulls lightly.

"You're doing really well." She says reassuringly. Missy feels a ghost of a smile on her own lips despite the nausea rising in her again.

Her eyes are fixed directly on Bill's as she descends another step and then the last to stand on the tiled ground in front of the human.

"You're doing very well today." Bill repeats, words a warm murmur.

The Mistress can't help the hum of a chuckle strangled by the tension that runs through her or the way her lips quirk again at the words or even the curious feeling that they give her of wanting Bill to say them again.