The sweat-soaked sheets brought Lucy Saxon back to reality, reassuring her she was still in prison. Ridiculous to think that was reassuring, but prison was better than being with Harry. She shuddered as the nightmare ripped at her mind, reminding her of his laugh as he took what he wanted. He always smiled that way, pure self-indulgence as he reveled in the suffering of others. She never thought he would turn it on his wife. She supposed she should think of him as Harold Saxon, for she had long stopped thinking of him as her Harry, but to call him by his more formal name was to give him too much power.
For all his grand titles and his status as a Time Lord, underneath it all he was just another man who thought he was entitled to his every want, no matter the women that suffered for it. Perhaps that was why she had been drawn to him. Her father, Lord Cole of Tarminster, had been such a man, and he treated her mother like Harry had treated her. The only true difference between them was the power that Harry had managed to achieve over the entire Earth, while her father had remained the patriarch of a far smaller portion of the population. Having been on the receiving end of men's greed for so long, Lucy had wanted the privilege of being at such a man's side, beloved by him rather than scorned.
She wouldn't try to make excuses or claim to have been hypnotized; she had gone along with her husband's plans with little guilt until he had inflicted himself on her. Well, she had suffered. Not as much as many (the Jones family came to mind), but she had suffered. There were no peaceful nights now; she was tormented every few hours by nightmares, and during the day, the little time she could enjoy while in prison was taken up by relentless flashbacks.
Lucy lay back on the bed, determined to fall asleep and perhaps catch a few peaceful minutes before being tormented once more. Then she froze. Someone was in her cell.
Being with Harry, and before that her father, had trained her body to be aware the moment someone moved. Had a prison guard entered without her knowledge? She didn't want to look, so she kept her eyes closed and her body still as she prepared for whatever he was going to do to her. But it was a Scottish female voice which spoke. "I'm not one of those chauvinist pigs, so sit up."
Lucy opened her eyes and stared at the woman. The stranger wore a dark dress and lazily twirled an umbrella at her side. She wore an outwardly smug, confident expression, but her hand was gripping the handle of the umbrella just a bit too tight. Lucy didn't know who she was, so she kept herself tense, ready to claw and bite if she had to.
"Oh relax. I'm not going to kill you no matter how much you get on my nerves." Lucy swallowed, not daring to speak. The stranger huffed. "Hello, I'm Missy," she said. "And I'm…" The woman winced as if she was going through physical pain. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry?" said Lucy, finally allowing herself to speak. "What are you going to do to me? I don't care, you know. I deserve all of it."
"I'm not going to do anything right now, it's what I've done before."
"To me? I don't know you."
"Well I was a lot uglier then, when I was Harold Saxon."
Lucy froze once more. This woman had to be mad. "I don't understand you."
"Flashback time! Harold Saxon, mortally wounded by you, dying in the Doctor's arms. The Doctor whines and begs him to regenerate."
"But he didn't regenerate! I saw him die!"
"Spoiler alert, I came back. Or I'm going to. Not as my best self at first, I've got to do a whole other adventure before then, but eventually I'll become me." She spread her arms as if inviting Lucy to take in her full glory.
Lucy's first instinct was to rise to her feet, to kill this new version of Harry, but after a moment she sunk back and her eyes hardened. If he had come back after his death at her hands, he would always come back. There was nothing she could do.
At least the Doctor would be happy. He was another one she hated. She had thought him a hero at first, but in the end he was just another man, quick to judge a female killer. As if she had done something wrong, ridding the world of that menace. Not that her actions had been selfless; she wanted Harry dead for her own sake. To not have to live in the same universe as her abuser.
And the Doctor, who hadn't had to endure the fear of men his whole life, got to have the moral high ground. Well, he had won, and so had Harry. Lucy grit her teeth and spat out her next words. "What are you here for? To taunt me with an apology?"
Missy lost her look of pure confidence for the first time and lowered her gaze. "No. This is a true one."
Lucy laughed. "Why? Did you finally develop a conscience?"
Missy took out a device and fired it at the wall. A horrible scream came from the cell connected to Lucy's, then a thud, and finally silence. "Hope that wasn't a friend of yours. Actually, I definitely do. Oh it's so fun proving I'm evil."
Lucy backed against the wall. "Kill me then."
"Even I have standards. And what I did as Harold Saxon was below them. I know that now. Ever since I've been a woman, I've seen what it's like. Even the Scoundrel Club rejected me." She smiled sinisterly. "They learned to never mess with a woman."
A chill rushed down Lucy Saxon's spine. Missy understood the thrill of getting revenge on a man. Then her expression hardened once more. It didn't matter that she was a woman now, she was still the same Time Lord as Harry. Lucy didn't fully understand how regenerations worked but she knew Missy contained the memories of her predecessor.
"I used to be just like those men," Missy said softly. "Something came over me in that incarnation. Time Lords don't care about gender or race, but I was so enraptured in my power that I adopted those human qualities." She huffed. "I'm an unrepentant mass murderer, but choosing my victims based on sex or race is for the boring, lesser villains, not for one as grand as me."
A moment passed, and her egotistical look faded into an almost pleading expression. She shuddered as she looked Lucy Saxon in the eyes. "I'm so sorry for what I did to you, Lucy. And I know I can't heal you, but I will hold that regret in me forever. It will be my one bit of goodness, just like the Doctor wants." She scoffed. "But he doesn't understand either, does he? So full of himself, convinced he's the righteous man who can do no wrong."
"It wasn't his place to forgive you."
"No. But it is yours, for what I did to you."
"What made you change your mind?"
"Experiencing it for myself. Realizing how misogyny felt. Feeling that helplessness in the face of patriarchy. I see it now. If there's anything I can do to make up for this, even a little bit -"
"There isn't."
"What?"
"There's nothing you can do to make up for it. It's done."
"I want to make things better."
"You can't," Lucy said. "You can't make this better. This is my life now. I'll rot here in this prison because I shot that villain, and you'll go on to new adventures and forget this ever happened."
"I won't forget. I've never forgotten."
She stood to face Missy. "Go back to your Doctor. I know you love him. Go back and return to your world above the rest of us. I'm not going to let you feel better. I'm not going to make you feel okay about what you did, or make it seem like this apology makes up for any of it." "Then, what -" "You want to do something good? Leave. You've done enough to me. It's too late to fix it. The best thing you can do is leave me alone. Get out of my life and let me die knowing I'm finally free of you."
Missy didn't say a word. Lucy turned from her, and after a few moments the atmosphere in the room changed, and she knew Missy was gone. Lucy dug her nails into her palm.
She wanted this to be a triumphant moment, but even as she was satisfied with her words, the awful truth crept in. She was just like Missy. Most people had forgotten what she had done, but Martha and Jack remembered. Here she was pretending to be righteous, when she had gone along with the murder and enslavement of humanity. She desperately wanted forgiveness, just as Missy did. Even her reasons for realizing her wrong were the same. Missy had realized what she did only after becoming a woman and experiencing it herself. And Lucy hadn't regretted her actions until Harry had started turning his wrath on her.
Martha Jones's face appeared to her, and even though she still sat in a cold cell, the rough stone indenting the skin of her knees, she could imagine what it would be like to face Martha and apologize. She could never be forgiven. Swallowing a lump that felt like a large, sharp object, Lucy looked over to where Missy had gone. She could never forgive Missy, just as she was sure no one could ever forgive her. Maybe that wasn't the point. Maybe she shouldn't be so focused on getting forgiveness, like Missy was. If it was the point, she could give up now, which a large part of her desperately wanted to do. But that wasn't a true change, was it? What was the point of her realization then?
Standing, she leaned her forehead against the cool stone, exhaled, and promised that she would look for at least one last action she could do to help heal the world she had played such a large hand in breaking.
