Missy panicked when she realised that the Tardis had assigned her the same room from her future travels with the Doctor. It was exactly as she'd left it – a floppy hat tossed on the chair and a royal robe, several shades too orange, dangling on a coat hanger next to the door. There were shells from Triychi scattered over the floor and a collection of alcohol vaguely hidden in the corner, most of it wine from his cellar. That was an ongoing project.
"You better hope the Doctor never sees this…" She cautioned the Tardis. For a creature that feared paradoxes she sure loved to hover near them, like Icarus and his pension for stars. All was forgiven when Missy found a new set of clothes laid out. One for working on the Tardis engines and one for tormenting the Doctor. "Well in that case, I guess we can be friends."
The Doctor hadn't told his little pets about her yet. Missy could tell. He'd locked the front door and taken up a defensive position in the control room in case she tried to nick his Tardis and fly off. Oh… how little he knew her. Of course, he'd be more effective as a doorstop if he held his book the right way up.
"Doctor..." Missy drawled, ramping up her playfulness so they weren't confronted with the aching memories of the previous night. They'd not discussed what happened in the vault. He'd bounded on with life and she'd let him. Things were easier when they didn't talk and this Doctor wasn't ready for the words that needed to be said before the end.
"I thought I stole a Timelady, not a corner store car mechanic."
"You get both – same price." Overalls, sturdy boots, white shirt already ruined, hair in pigtails – yes, she did look like she'd been dragged out from under a car but something about the Doctor's darkening eyes told her that he rather fancied that. "Oh!" Missy paused at the foot of the stairs, not daring to climb them yet. He was perched above in one of the comfy chairs close enough to the fragmented shelves to make pilfering books easy. "Found your sonic specs!?"
He was wearing them protectively on his head. "Yep. Left them under a book." Missy smirked darkly and he had no idea why. Why did she do that?
"Having a bit of a lie in today?" She continued, slightly softer. Missy inched up one of the steps but stopped when she noticed him tense. He looked grey and she didn't mean the wild abomination of hair.
He was feeling the disconnect between his hearts today. They weren't quite beating right and it made the world around him spin. Or that might have been Missy creeping up the stairs with her nails scratching over the rail. It was difficult to tell. She was blurring into the background thrum of the Tardis. No. She wasn't blurring. Everything was -
Missy swore sharply in Gallifreyan as the Doctor's arm flopped out from his lap and dropped the book onto the floor with an alarming crash. His head went back next and the sonic sunglasses slipped free. She took the last stairs three at a time and lurched forward to catch him before his skinny, stupid, idiot arse fell out of his chair.
"You're a lousy prison guard!" she hissed, using her weight to set him back in his chair. Missy wondered if the Tardis had brought her on board to fix her engines or the Doctor. If it was the latter she was facing failure.
The book beside them had fallen open. It caught Missy's eye and she reached for it with her free hand, dragging it over the metal floor. "Sentimental old fool..." She sighed. He wasn't reading upside down, he was pressing her Amethyst Rose between the pages before it died. Missy could not process that information so she closed the book and nudged it safely to the edge of the room.
Missy tried her best to fold his limbs back into the safety of the chair. They touched so rarely because he was terrified of her but all her displays of hostility were empty threats – fireworks… Loud, scary and she thought beautiful. It had never occurred to her that he was the little boy with his hands over his ears, cowering from the light.
Missy hesitated.
She did kill for the sake of it.
She ruled planets because she could and burned them when she was bored.
She was not so different from the stars themselves.
What were they but beautiful traps? All warm and loving until their violent ends.
There was melody at their finish. Colour. Ferocious cataclysm. A promise of something new. That was all she'd hoped for at the end of each face and for her last she'd been given this. A little less mania. A touch more hope. Her anger was still there but it felt distant, washing with jealousy, abandonment and fear somewhere at the edges of her mind. Not enough to overwhelm her any more.
Missy laid her head on his chest to listen to his hearts. The rhythm was wrong – bouncing about all over the place. No wonder he'd passed out. Flickers of golden light seeped out from her fingertips. The glow reflected in her eyes as she gifted him a little of her time energy. Enough to snap his hearts back into tune.
She should have left things there – abandoned him in the chair for a few days until he woke but Missy couldn't. She closed her eyes instead and settled against him protectively like a lioness guarding her cub. Her greatest acts of rage had always been reserved for those that hurt the Doctor. He never saw the carnage she created in his wake – villains he thought he'd spared were strung up to satisfy her whim. The worst she reserved for the ones that damaged his soul. Ashilda… Yes – now that had been a work of art scattered through every beat of time.
Worse, she'd do it again. Even now.
The Doctor woke to a mess of frizz brushing under his chin and a weight on his chest. He blinked back sleep and realised that Missy's head was on his chest and her hand wrapped carefully around his waist. The rest of her was knelt on the floor beside where his book had fallen. He'd not found her like this since the academy and he had the bone-shaking fear that she'd come full circle in her lives. If they were back where they started, as friends, did that mean this was all fading to black? He had the sudden, rash desire for her to return to her evil ways. He could do that – hurt her so badly that she retreated into the darkness. At least then he'd know that this wasn't over.
That was possibly the most selfish thought he'd ever had and he was ashamed of it but not sorry.
Learn from your mistakes.
The Doctor couldn't tell if those thoughts were his or hers… Was she listening in?
He ran his hand through her bizarre pigtails first. They were all frizzy and a nightmare but he has a soft affection for them. Besides, he has no concept of style. Perhaps that's all the rage right now and she'd been trying to impress him.
"I thought you were meant to be fixing the engines?"
Missy isn't asleep.
She'd been kneeling on the floor so long the patterns in the metal were etched in her knees. "I am." Missy replied. "The Tardis lists you as an interface with faulty circuitry." She felt the shudder of his chest beneath her cheek as he chuckled softly.
The Doctor frowned. Sat up carefully, giving Missy time to slide off. He ran his hand up and down, undoing the buttons at the top of his shirt in his frantic exploration. "What did you do?" He turned on her sharply.
Missy was on her knees, hands playing with his sonic sunglasses that she'd rescued from the floor. There was no need to answer. "These were on the ground," she replied instead, leaning up so that she could slip them back onto his cross face.
He snatched them off at once, seeing straight through her ploy. "This is not what we agreed at all."
"Feeling better?" Her tone turned harsh to match his.
"That really isn't the point. Missy – you can't go around wasting time energy like that. I don't need you to save me. I never asked you to."
"I'll do what I like!" She swiped the book from the grounded and shoved it into his chest a little harder than she'd meant to. Not that it mattered. His hearts were fine. A moment later she was gone, bounding down the stairs, vanishing into the depths of the Tardis to work her frustration out on a well deserving scar. Fixing things had become her therapy. The tangible proof that she could be a force for good did more to her psyche than his melodramatic gazes.
"Bugger..." The Doctor hissed at himself, when she was gone. He set the book carefully on the shelf and spun around so that he could rest his head between his knees. He didn't know how much time energy Missy had gifted him but his hearts were beating stronger than before. Maybe it was even enough to repair them. "I know you did this..." He lifted his eyes to the Tardis. "You're supposed to be looking after her not manipulating her into favours."
Missy didn't stop until she reached the heart of the Tardis. The dome and all its lies distracted her from the future. Her clipboard laid on the floor nearby with a list of tasks the Tardis had set out for her to complete. The worst part was the length of the list. That old girl, with all her wisdom and years didn't realise that efficiency could be the cruellest brush stroke. There were only a few items left. Just enough for her to finish before…
"Was that what you brought me here for?" She asked softly. It was written there, plain as anything else on the list.
Fix the Doctor's hearts.
Easy. All it cost her was the future.
The dome shivered. Fell into a sunset hue. Then did something it had never done before.
A hologram rippled into existence several feet from Missy.
She reached for the wall to stop herself falling.
"No..." Missy begged the Tardis. "I don't want..."
The little girl's eyes were blue like hers – wild and dangerous.
"Too much." Missy didn't even cry. She couldn't. Those feelings were buried too deep for even her to reach. If this was the Tardis' idea of a 'thank you' it was severely miscalculated. Missy's whole body started to shake. Her daughter. She was lost and a beautiful lie couldn't bring her back.
All of a sudden the lights went out. The Tardis plunged into pitch around Missy and a moment later she heard the Doctor's footsteps enter the room.
"What the hell..." He muttered to himself, as he stumbled about in the unexpected dark. "Are you fussing with the lights? Missy? Are you in here?"
The Doctor never found her.