"I told you you're getting old," Missy chides.
"I am not," the Doctor gruffs.
"Your memory is as good as a knife in a gunfight."
"So I'm sharp?"
"You're as dull as they come, darling."
The Doctor grumbles some more inaudible things and winces as Missy adjusts one of the neural connections currently adhered to his temple.
They're under the control deck— all Missy's idea really. She had deducted that if the child was left along his timestream, he ought to be able to remember where and have it all taken care of in a jiffy. The only problem is that he can't remember a thing. They've tried mind to mind, hand to telepathic circuits, and even a good slap, but nothing so far has sparked a memory. Missy's most recent idea happens to be the most painful one, and has the Doctor in some mess of wires equivalent to a torture device. He's starting to wonder if it is one, though they haven't got passed the setup yet.
"Is this going to hurt?" He asks.
"Do you want to find the twat or not?"
"That's not an answer," he sighs though he knows very well that it will.
"Not my fault your brain is rotting."
"Watch it."
"Hold still," she orders, grabbing his chin. He doesn't meet her eyes lest she see through his Scottish scorn. They both know it never fooled her in the first place. "If this doesn't work we're going to have to do it the old fashioned way."
"Hitting me over the head with a brick?"
"The TARDIS, you twit. Good old time travel."
"You realize that could take— " He's cut off before he can say anymore as Missy activates her wire creation. Where MIssy was hoping for a good shout, the Doctor goes straight to passing out.
There was a knock on the door. By all circumstances, there shouldn't have been a knock. He was parked on an unnamed asteroid in a cluster galaxies away from any civilization.
The knock on the TARDIS door came again.
The Doctor straightened himself up, taking a cautious step away from the console. He was alone though he wasn't sure why. It was too fuzzy when he tried to remember where Liv and Helen were.
The knock on the TARDIS door came again.
"Hello?"
Whose voice was that? Oh, just his. Not the one of the baby face, certainly. No, no that hadn't happened yet. Had it? There was another voice. A crying sort of whine and this one was coming from the outside of the door.
"Your TARDIS was hideous," Missy mutters, flipping through a newspaper from 1957. Where did she get that?
The Doctor doesn't answer, trying to catch up with himself. There is a pillow behind his head and blankets on his body. Oh, a bedroom. His bedroom.
Missy sits in a chair he's never seen before reading. She's still going on about him being old.
"I'd like you to give that a go," he groans, "and then tell me I'm old."
"I'm not the one with mental blocks three planets thick sitting in my head."
"More like on not in. My head is killing me. Did you get anything?"
"Besides an ugly console room, the names: Liv and Helen."
"Liv and Helen?"
"That's what I said, isn't it."
"They were my friends."
"One of your disposable sets, yes I gathered that on my own, Doctor. But which face."
"Missy… it was from before the war."
"She had to pick an easy one, didn't she?"
The Doctor tries to sit up and falls back again. He tried again, this time managing a small bit of success. "Elaborate," he says breathlessly.
"Well," Missy sits up a little straighter. "We've got a time, but no place. No coordinates. We've narrowed down your very, very long life to a lovely span of, oh, 300 years or so?"
"What's your point?"
"My point is, do you really want to continue?"
"What? Of course I do! What kind of question is that?"
"It's not a question, it's sparing you, Doctor." She raises a hand before he can interrupt again. "It's in your past. So maybe we figure out where the baby is. Maybe she's fine. But maybe she isn't. Because you can't remember for the lives of you what happens next. Here's a simple question for you, if you already had her, then where is she now? And why did you put so much work into blocking those memories?"
He doesn't answer.