Author's note: Happy Valentine's Day!
"This is an ancillary power station. It's not a dungeon cell," the Doctor wanted to say, but couldn't, because he had been gagged with a strip of duct tape over his mouth. Gagged, and bound with wrists tied behind his back. The rope pulled relentlessly upwards: he was strung up to a metal beam, his feet a few inches above the floor. Classic strappado technique, he noted through the excruciation of his dislocated arms. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he was finding it hard to think clearly. He forced himself to concentrate.
Looking to the right, he saw a medieval-looking wooden rack. Looking to the left, he saw a Catherine wheel. Someone had replaced the furniture in the room with torture devices. He didn't have to ask who was responsible.
She was standing right there, back turned to him, fiddling with the music box the Doctor had fetched from the other universe. The moment he had stepped out of his TARDIS to meet her, Missy had stunned him with a shot from her device, the one that resembled a 21st century human's smartphone (except with additional offensive options). She had changed out of her zybanium/zero-matter armor into something closer to her Mary Poppins, Queen of Evil (et cetera) outfit, complete with umbrella (currently propped up against a wall) and elaborate hairdo. Evidence enough that the Doctor was able to guess even in his pain- hazed state that he must have been unconscious for quite some time.
The outfit wasn't surprising: even the Doctor wasn't sure of the contents of his wardrobes after a few millenia of trawling through all of spacetime. But where had she found torture equipment in the Doctor's TARDIS, items he was fairly sure he hadn't stocked himself? Either she had bullied the TARDIS architectural circuits into reconfiguring the room, or worse, the TARDIS was upset at what the Doctor had done, in which case this was deliberate punishment. He sent a query through his link with the ship, but her only response was a sulky silence.
Perhaps sensing his thoughts, Missy turned, leaving the music box plugged into the power station. She picked up her umbrella and strolled over to the Doctor, circling him once, twice, before reaching up with her free hand to rip the duct tape off his mouth.
The Doctor's lips and face stung. He worked his jaws experimentally, then tried, "Missy - "
She jabbed him in the chest with the tip of her umbrella. Pain stabbed between his hearts, intense enough that the Doctor had to squeeze his eyes shut and breathe carefully for several seconds before he recovered his equilibrium. She had fitted a pain inducer onto the umbrella; it was obviously calibrated for Time Lords in that it was impossible for him to ignore. That was the point of pain: you couldn't evade it and you just wanted it to stop.
It was Missy's way of holding his attention. Like the archaic torture equipment, it was theatre. The Doctor knew that if she wanted to take him apart cell by cell, she could. If she wanted to hurt him, she could cause him far more anguish than this. And she had. When they had met again for the first time after the war, the Master had been - extreme - in his anger. He had laid waste to the Doctor's favorite planet, decimating the human race with a paradoxical army of their own descendants. He had tortured the Doctor and his friends through a whole year of captivity.
But however harsh the punishment, it wouldn't be satisfying until the Doctor understood why. In all that time, the Master had never let slip the true reason for his rage.
How often were they punishing each other for things the other had not yet done?
Now, at last, the Doctor had caught up to his own guilt.
"I should wrap you up with a ribbon and send you to the CIA," said Missy conversationally. "I'm sure they'd have you vaporized. Wouldn't that be fun?"
"You know that I had to - " The Doctor began, when Missy cut him off with a stab of her umbrella to his lower back. He gasped, forcing himself not to struggle and dislocate his arms further.
"Narvin," she hissed, still standing behind him. "Trap me (jab), kill me (jab), fair enough. But you handed me over to that imbecilic worm Narvin." She held the point of the umbrella against the Doctor's spine and twisted. He went numb with agony. It was a long time before he could speak again.
"Web of time," he managed to say. "Already happened." He knew she understood. She had waited until now to say anything. And even remembering what had happened, she had sent him back along her timeline for his inevitable betrayal. In an odd way, Missy had a greater respect for the integrity of the web of time than the Doctor did. After crossing his own timeline so often and indulging in so many ontological loops, he had become cavalier.
She shut him up with a savage jolt from the umbrella. "Web of time! What did you care about the web of time when it came to saving your precious Ace? Or Charlotte Pollard? Or Clara Oswald?" She punctuated each name with another spike of pain.
"..." The Doctor struggled to piece together his thoughts. It's not like that. The Master always survived, but the Doctor's human friends were fragile. "I had a duty of care."
Missy didn't answer at first. Then, still standing behind him, she said, "They sent me into the war. I was so scared. Time falling to jagged pieces. Everything in flux. It hurt, Doctor."
"I know." The Doctor shut his eyes. He knew the pain she meant; he had felt it, too. It was the pain of having your timeline twisted out of recognition, the pain of burning in and out of existence, over and over beyond the point of insanity. It was the pain of time itself, broken and suffering without beginning or end.
Neither spoke for awhile. Then the Doctor heard a sharp hiss. The smell of burnt rope filled the air. The pressure on his arms lifted and he dropped heavily to his feet. His muscles screaming and stiff from being strung up for so long, the Doctor was unable to keep his balance and toppled over onto the floor.
Missy moved around behind him and took hold of his arms and torso, expertly manipulating his joints back into place. The Doctor bit back a cry at the spike of pain. When she was done, she walked away without another look at him, sitting down on the edge of a bed of nails. The bed of nails was the closest thing to a chair left in the room. It wasn't the kind of densely-set bed of nails used in physics demonstrations, but rather a surface sparsely populated with vicious metal teeth. Even so, the wooden rim of the bed was just wide enough to sit on without impaling yourself.
Missy sat in silence, leaning forward with her hands resting on top of her umbrella.
The Doctor stretched out cautiously, easing himself into the least painful position he could. His thoughts drifted off as he entered a healing trance. He didn't know how long it was until he woke himself again. Turning his head, he saw that Missy had not moved.
The Doctor clambered to his feet, wincing as residual aches shot through his body. He went over to the bed of nails and sat down next to Missy. "I'm sorry."
After awhile, she leaned towards him, her head resting against the Doctor's shoulder. He eased an arm around her. She said softly, "I know."
Her thoughts touched his, and he saw that she had forgiven him a long time ago. A memory welled up: her memory, his memory, shared between them. The Doctor, two lives ago, stepping without hesitation between the Master and Rassilon when the latter was about to unleash his gauntlet of death upon the former.
Everything after that had been obfuscation. It was always the two of them, together or apart, had always been, since they had been children. Yet as they grew older, the Doctor felt a bottomless chasm open between them. To reach across it was to risk a step into infinite darkness. A moment snatched here or there, that was all he dared.
He didn't feel that brave today. Not even when her touch woke in him, as it always did, a longing for closer contact, physical as well as mental intimacy. He suppressed the longing ruthlessly. It was too dangerous. Too perverse.
"Coward." Missy mocked him fondly, without rancor. "Is that why you love your human pets so much? Because they're safer?"
It's not that. I don't, thought the Doctor. Not with them. Celibacy was the default for most Time Lords, most of the time.
And is that what you aspire to? Missy let the question rattle through his mind. Why do you travel with humans, then?
Do you remember when our world was new and full of hope? When the future held all our dreams? The Doctor's thoughts bled into Missy's mind. He felt too weary to speak aloud. Sometimes, through human eyes, I can see that again. The universe awash with wonder.
"And then we learned what horrors this wonderful universe contained, Doctor," said Missy. And prophecy turned the future into another monster to dread.
Another memory surfaced. His own voice, justifying his interference in that universe.
There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things...
The Doctor echoed his own long-ago words, whispering, "They must be fought."
"They must be mastered," countered Missy.
And from that, everything else inevitably followed. Until they arrived at this point where they were unable to do anything other than hurt each other. The Doctor grasped in vain for their lost innocence, thinking, what have we done to ourselves?
"We won, Doctor," said Missy. "Look at you. Enough power to change whatever you want. Remake the universe itself. But you can't throw it away fast enough. Didn't we prove that, that day in the graveyard?"
The Doctor flinched at the truth of her words. And her? She had the power to dominate any world she liked. Rule the Earth, rule the galaxy. Then what?
I wait for your opposition, came Missy's reply. Isn't that always the best part?
And how many people do we kill along the way? thought the Doctor. How many dead already? How many more before we're done?
What's gone is gone. We're not killing anyone now. Do you understand "now"? We can be enemies yesterday and enemies tomorrow, but "now" is its own moment. Missy's umbrella clattered to the floor as she wrapped both of her hands around the Doctor's head and turned him to face her. For a moment, their eyes met. Then she pulled him close and drew him into a kiss. This is what now tastes like.
He could drown in now.
Now was the moment in which he held his old friend again. They could be those innocent youths again.
She pulled away abruptly. Her thoughts were sharp-edged inside his skull. We can't. We're not.
Come back. Don't stop, he begged, reaching out for her. He needed her more than he could say. Another moment, and this now would be lost forever.
Missy twisted free. I don't make love to ghosts.
"I'm not a ghost. I'm an idiot." He let his hands drop to his sides and he slumped off the edge of the bed of nails until he was sitting on the floor. A lonely, lust-crazed idiot.
"All right, then, Doctor Idiot. But I have to tell you, self-pity isn't your most attractive attribute." She turned to face him again, smiling slightly. A genuine smile, not the one she used to deceive or to intimidate.
It wasn't beautiful and perfect. The floor was uncomfortable. The lighting in the ancillary power station was too harshly bright. The Doctor's tortured limbs still hurt. Their clothes had too many fasteners and snagged annoyingly.
Even so. It was the now that belonged to both of them.
And that was enough.
There was a moment, afterwards, while he disentangled himself from her (both physically and mentally) that he froze at the sight of her face. Because she looked so peaceful. Content. And the Doctor couldn't help but remember the version of her he had met in the other universe, where she had been Hades. He wondered about the Master's relationships there, the wife he had mentioned, and the others. Had his lovers seen him like this and thought they were safe?
Missy saw the change in his expression. "What?"
The Doctor shook his head. He retrieved his clothes and began pulling them back on.
Missy's clothes were more complicated. "Here, help me with this," she ordered.
"Isn't this taking authenticity too far?" The Doctor complained as he fumbled with Missy's Victorian corset, which had to be laced up the back. "How did you get it on in the first place?"
"It's possible to do it alone. Just tedious and difficult," said Missy.
"Speaking of difficult," muttered the Doctor. "Your daughter. Would you really have killed her?"
"How many people have I killed, Doctor? Do you need to ask?"
The Doctor sighed and turned away, letting her finish dressing herself. He busied himself on the other side of the room. "So, this magic music box of yours. I take it you were experimenting with the other universe's equivalent of anti-time."
"Something like that," said Missy. She pulled the last remaining pins out of her hair, shook it out, then used a brush she had found somewhere to straighten the resulting tangle. "More of a devouring darkness. They called it the 'Nyx'."
"Goddess of night?"
"Went with the Greek theme. If I had still been doing Norse, it would probably have ended up as Fenris."
The Doctor grimaced. "Not a name I'd pick."
"What, because of old Time Lord legends?" Missy came over beside him, checked the readings on the music box.
"Not just a legend," said the Doctor. "I met Fenric before. Didn't like him."
"What does it matter, so long as you beat him? Which I'm sure you did." Missy adjusted a setting. "And you can do the same to these Neverpeople. With the power boosted and the parameters tuned to this universe, this music box can trap any anti-time creature inside and hold it securely. You just have to aim it accurately."
"First we have to get close enough. How were you planning to find the Neverpeople?"
"I thought you had the plan. How did you track down the anti-time before?"
"My TARDIS had a link to Clara's TARDIS. That's not going to help us now."
"I'm sure we'll think of something."
Two days later (relative time), they still hadn't thought of anything. The TARDIS scanners simply didn't have the range. They took random samples, but it was worse than trying to find one drop of water in the ocean. The Doctor had been ridiculously lucky often enough in his life before, but not this time.
"All of space and time. They could be anywhere," said the Doctor.
"You could de-synchronize our timestreams. Then just look for the area of disruption," suggested Missy.
"No," said the Doctor, as he had said when she suggested the same thing before. "We can't risk that much damage..."
"...to the web of time," finished Missy. "I know, I know."
"I've already lost one planet," said the Doctor grimly. "I won't let that happen again."
"If we knew what they wanted, we could make an educated guess as to their location," said Missy. "You spoke to one of them, Doctor. What did he say?"
The Doctor shrugged. "Nothing much. He was probably a Time Lord once. Wanted to steal my life. The usual. I remember the last lot of Neverpeople wanted to invade Gallifrey."
"We've checked Gallifrey already," Missy pointed out. "Nothing."
"If not Gallifrey, then where?" The Doctor let the question hang in the air.
The Doctor and Missy stared at each other. The answer occurred to both of them simultaneously. "Skaro?"