Six Months Later…
Bill's life hadn't been great for a while. Her clothes were all wrong, her flat was all wrong. Everything about her life had been wrong. If, just for a moment, she closed her eyes and let her mind wander then she felt herself fall further and further underneath the Monks' spell. She had to reinforce the memories of the time before the Monks, and it was hard, and tiring, but she did it. She held onto that part because she believed that the Doctor could save them. She'd seen him do it before, she knew it was going to happen again.
When Nardole had turned up and she had realised that she wasn't making it up she had been ecstatic. Seeing the Doctor on television hadn't been enough to sway her doubts, and there was no sign of Danni anywhere. Seeing the robot man had just been enough to cement the idea that she wasn't going crazy in her head, and soon enough they were on another adventure, this time to save the Doctor.
When she stepped into the small room the Monks were keeping in him, she felt so relieved. It finally felt like everything was coming to an end. That the world would go back to normal and he'd be back being her eccentric tutor.
He didn't look up from the papers he was reading, so she called over to him. "Doctor? Doctor, it's me."
The Doctor took one look at her and shot up out of his chair. "Guards!" he cried. Immediately eight armed guards rushed in and pointed their guns at the pair.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded of the pair.
"What does it look like? We've come to save you," Bill replied, bewildered.
He turned to Nardole. "This is your doing, isn't it?" he accused. Nardole looked annoyed, but Bill still didn't quite understand what was going on. She thought he would be happy to see her, but he obviously wasn't. "You shouldn't be here. I'll have to talk to the Monks now."
He walked back over to the desk, picking up the phone. "Doctor…" Bill tried to follow him but he held his hand up. The guards raised their guns, aiming pointedly at her.
"Stop. Don't," he instructed harshly. "Don't move. They will kill you. Stay where you are." He turned to the handset. "Epsilon. Fire. Jupiter. Lily," he muttered into it before putting it down. "The Monks are on their way. When they get here, let me do the talking."
"Wait, what was that? Did you actually just call them, you nutter?" she exclaimed angrily.
He looked over at her, looking very tired. His clothes were becoming raggedy, and she was sure his hair had grown. He looked as tired as she felt. "You deserve an explanation," he said. "Human society is stagnating. You've stopped moving forward. In fact, you're regressing."
"This isn't exactly much better," she pointed out.
"It's safer."
"Not so much for the people the Monks are killing."
"The Romans killed people and saved billions more from disease, war, famine and barbarism."
He obviously believed everything he was saying and it broke her heart. "No, wait," she cried, stopping him from sitting down as she moved a step closer. "What about free will? You believe in free will. Your whole thing is… You made me write a three-thousand-word essay on free will."
"Yes, well, I mean, you had free will, and look at what you did with it. Worse than that, you had history. History was saying to you, 'look, I've got some examples of fascism here for you to look at. No? Fundamentalism? No? Oh, okay, you carry on'." He jabbed a finger in her direction. "I had to stop you, or at least not stand in the way of someone else who wanted to, because the guns were getting bigger, the stakes were getting higher, and any minute now it was going to be goodnight, Vienna. By the way, you never delivered that essay, anyway."
"Because the world was invaded by zombie Monks!" she exclaimed.
She really didn't understand. She had seen the Doctor time and again save everyone. He'd even saved her in the middle of space, almost dying and losing his eyesight to make sure she was safe. And yet here he was, tired and giving in. Nothing about what was happening was right. This can't have been what she'd agreed to when she had said yes to the Monks. Maybe it had been a bit selfish of her to think the Doctor could save them all, but to not even protest and do as they were saying didn't align with anything she had seen before. And it made her angry.
She grabbed a gun from one of the guards and pointed it straight at him. "Bill, put, put, put the gun down," the Doctor told her.
"I'm serious, Doctor. We'll think of something else. But you'd better tell me now, because if you help the Monks, then nothing will ever stop them. They'll be here for ever."
"It's not a trick, it's not a plan. I have joined the Monks," he replied plainly. "Whatever it takes, I'm going to save you from yourselves."
It really didn't feel like something she would do, but she fired at the Doctor. Five bullets straight into his chest and he dropped to his knees as she dropped the gun on the floor. She watched, horrified, as he began to glow golden and she wondered if he was going to explode, and if that was how Time Lords died. Had she just killed the Doctor? She hadn't meant to; she just didn't know what to do and she felt so let down.
The glowing stopped and he grinned, clapping his hands together. "Good girl," he praised, and once again she was chucked into a brand-new confusion as the guards laughed. One even gave her a thumbs up, as if she was in on the big secret that they were keeping from her.
"Regeneration a little bit too much?" he asked Nardole, who shook his head.
"No, I thought it was a nice touch. Too much was Richard asking for our identity papers," he replied pointedly as one of the guards just laughed heartily.
"I couldn't resist it. Your face," the guard replied.
Bill stared for a moment, arms by her side, frozen until she realised that something bigger was happening.
"Er, hello? Could somebody tell me what the hell is going on?"
The Doctor turned to her, still grinning like she had won some sort of prize. "You did it. You did it! The Monks are using some kind of, you know, something, to control the population. They must be, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to hold on to power for this long. Now, they don't trust me yet, not completely, and I had to just check that you weren't under the influence and testing me."
"So you, you, you haven't, you haven't turned. You're not working for them."
"No, of course not. I've spent the last six months planning, and also recruiting all these chaps. Deprogramming them one by one, talking some sense into them. And there's loads of them. I could do with a Strepsil."
He turned to Nardole as Bill stuttered, utterly and completely baffled by the entire charade. "How did it go?" he asked. "Did you find her?"
Nardole shook his head. "No, nothing yet, sir," he replied. "There's no sign of her on Earth, and the TARDIS hasn't been forthcoming with her whereabouts."
He pointed at the walls. "Not on any of the ships?"
"Not one, sir. Wherever she is, she's hiding well."
The Doctor grinned, patting Nardole on the arm. "That's my Danni-Girl," he praised. "She'll be fine, hiding away and trying to take the Monks down from somewhere else. We'll find her once we get off this blasted boat."
Bill looked between the two. "Were you in on this?" she asked Nardole, who nodded proudly.
"Oh, it was partly his idea," the Doctor replied and she stormed over, fist raised.
"Oh. My. God. I am going to beat the sh…"
The Doctor rushed over, wrapping an arm around each of them. "No! No! Oh, come on, come on, we've got the band back together again," he encouraged happily. "Now, lovely as it is to have you on board, literally and metaphorically, we need to find Danielle. And we're going to need some help to do so."
"So, who're we going to get?"
"The only person I know who would look as hard as me."
Nardole frowned for a moment before he pieced it all together. "Oh. Oh, I see. Blimey. Has it really come to that?"
The Doctor nodded solemnly. "It has really come to that."
~0~0~0~
Bill had been wondering, from the first time she had seen the Doctor and Nardole enter the basement, what was hiding behind the metal door. She had seen that it made Danni nervous, and the Doctor had seemed protective over its contents, but up until now she'd had absolutely no clue what was inside it.
What was even stranger was the fact that the Doctor seemed so nervous himself to open it up. He'd been agitated all the way back to the University. Understandably so, as none of them knew what had happened to his wife and of course he'd be worried. Still, it was a strange pitstop to take. She knew he knew what he was doing, though. She hoped.
"Move into the containment field, please," he whispered through the door before opening it up. She assumed that there was a weapon on the other side that could help them stop the Monks, something the Doctor didn't want to fall into the wrong hands. She had not expected the grand room that it opened up into, nor the woman in the middle at a piano behind what looked like a glass box.
He strode in purposefully towards the middle as the woman playing a gentle melody on the piano. "But it's… it's just a woman," Bill exclaimed, bewildered as the Doctor came to a stop just in front of her. "God, the way you and Nardole have been carrying on, I thought you had kind of monster in here or something."
"I do," the Doctor replied lowly. "Missy, Bill. Bill, Missy, the other last of the Time Lords."
"Wait a sec," Bill started, brows furrowing. "Why have you got a woman locked in a vault? Because even I think that's weird, and I've been attacked by a puddle."
"She's going cold turkey from being bad," he explained and Missy pouted. "I need your help."
"Oh, is that why you've come?" she retorted. "We've been waiting the best part of six months for you to turn up again and all you want to do it make demands."
"It's not a demand, it's a…" he trailed off. "'We'?"
Missy didn't reply, instead she nodded towards the corner behind him. He spun around and felt his blood run cold. Danielle was sat in the corner, surrounded by the cushions she'd taken off the chairs. She was curled up into herself, hands on either side of her head and her eyes squeezed shut.
~0~0~0~
Every part of Danni immediately started to tell her that she had made the wrong decision to open the Vault door. Missy was staring at her, a happy and surprised smile on her face and seeing her look almost friendly was terrifying. It was if she could hear the million ways Missy was working out the best way to escape and take her with her. It made her skin crawl and she stepped back away from her.
"I-I—" she annoyingly stuttered before turning to the door to leave, but paused. If what she thought was happening outside was indeed happening, then she really was better off in the Vault. Reality with Missy was a horror she didn't want to relive, but at least it was true reality. No one knew the true strength of the Monks and she didn't want to find out by being pulled under it. She needed to keep her head until she could work out what to do next.
"Does the Doctor know you're here?" Missy asked, pressing her to talk.
She swallowed, pulling her nerves together. "You'll have to stay in there," she warned Missy with a firmness she really didn't feel. "If you come out then I'm going to leave."
Missy flicked out her skirt before sitting purposefully at her piano. "He doesn't, does he?" she replied. "What about the little robot potato?"
"Nardole is not just a robot," she snapped. "You've been wanting to see me. Here I am."
They stared at each other for a moment, with Missy looking too calm for Danni's liking, especially considering she felt like she was about to explode with the anxious energy she was feeling. She couldn't exactly leave, not without knowing what was waiting for her outside.
She cleared her throat again. "Have you ever encountered the Monks?" she asked. "Really tall, really old, like to simulate invasions of planets to make themselves feel important?"
With a cross of one leg over the other, Missy leant back against the piano with a thoughtful look. "You're coming to me for information?" she asked in reply. "You've spent the last age trying to get rid of me. In fact, when we met back up again, you very much wanted me out of the way."
Danni shook her head. "No, I wanted you dead," she corrected. "Do you know or not?"
"I might," she replied before smiling, leaning forward again. "Do you remember when you met me for the first time? On the Valiant? When I was the Prime Minister of this dismal little group of countries?"
"Of course I do," Danni retorted. "You drove me insane and took full advantage of the fact. Then you tried to escape with me. Why?"
"We made a deal there, perhaps we could do something similar," she replied. "You do something for me and I'll give you information."
"Nope, not happening. This was a bad idea. I should have known you'd never be helpful," Danni stated.
Missy waved her hand at the door. "You're more than welcome to leave, my Pet," she replied. "If being under their control is really what you want."
Danni tried hard not to growl in frustration, instead settling on clenching her teeth together and letting out a breath through them. She really didn't want that, but why did she feel like she was going to fall under Missy's if she followed down this path? "What do you want?"
Missy moved across the bench and patted next to her. "Play the piano with me."
Danni's brows furrowed. "I don't know how to play the piano."
"Doesn't matter. Come. Sit down."
Danni didn't know what to do. On one hand, Missy obviously knew something about the Monks, which was going to be useful because she had absolutely no knowledge of them. On the other hand, though, it was Missy and she didn't trust her in any capacity. The last time they'd made a deal like this hadn't ended well, and ultimately was the reason Missy was scaring her so much right now.
She looked back behind her once again. She really wished that the Doctor was there, or that she was in a position to contact him to ask him what to do. She normally felt sure when it came to dealing with the other Time Lady, but she knew that she'd never be able to even ring him from inside the Vault, and leaving wasn't an option.
She sighed heavily and walked over to the containment box, trying to ignore the gleeful look on Missy's face. She let herself in and sat down as close to the opposite edge of the bench as she could. "I still don't know how to play," she pointed out grumpily.
"Oh, don't be such a grouch, Danielle," Missy retorted. "Put your hands on the keys." Danni didn't move. "Now, Danielle, otherwise how do you see this going?"
Danni sighed yet again but did as she asked. "That's it. Now, just stay there and I'll do the rest."
Missy began to play a piece that Danni didn't recognise. It was slow, and very pretty, but she couldn't really enjoy it. She kept her hands rigid on the keys and waited. She knew, from experience, interrupting Missy didn't end well and it was hard not to fall into old habits. She hated that she was so good at doing as she was told. When she'd first met Koschei she hadn't been afraid of him, and in fact had only done her duty as a maid because she knew that she just had to bide her time until the Doctor and Martha saved the day. What happened to that Danielle? She wouldn't have been scared of Missy, or of the Master emailing her. She'd have told them both to piss off.
"The Monks are a nasty bunch, aren't they?" Missy spoke up and Danni jumped slightly. "Ugly buggers."
Danni nodded slowly. "They look like corpses. It's just to put people on edge."
"And it works, doesn't it?" Missy replied. She wasn't even looking at Danni as she watched her own fingers dance across the keys. "I can see the little humans running around like headless chickens. How many of them died?"
"A chunk," she said vaguely. "What do they want?"
"The same as every evil species out there; to rule. They don't need a reason, they just want to be powerful and have all the little people running around, doing their bidding."
"Have- Have you met them before?" Danni asked. "Or did you work with them?"
Missy stopped playing for a moment to look at her. "Danielle, I am offended," she retorted. "Do you really think so low of me that you'd think I'd work with something so horrendously ugly?"
"Yes, I do," she replied shortly.
"Well, I did not. I actually defeated them, if you must know." She started playing again. "I can teach you to play, if you like."
"Defeated them? You?"
Missy sighed again. "Yes, me. You once called me the greatest engineering mind in the universe, is it so hard to think I could defeat them on my lonesome?"
Danni frowned. "That really doesn't sound like me."
"That was on the Valiant as well. When you wanted me to take off that infernal device on your arm." She nudged Danni, who jumped in surprise at the touch. "Which I did do, didn't I?"
"Actually, it was…" She trailed off, the blonde-haired man who had been on the other side of her emails flashing through her mind. She hadn't had a chance to read his latest emails, and from inside the Vault she couldn't. She had so much more to worry about than that right now. "Doesn't matter. How did you defeat them?"
Missy watched her own fingers dance across the keys. "Let me teach you how to play the piano," she replied instead.
Danni growled. "Tell me now, Missy."
"Not with that attitude I won't," she said with a shrug.
"I thought you were trying to be good to prove to the Doctor that you're no longer the monster you were?" Danni countered. "Goodness doesn't come in bargaining; it comes in helping others just to help them."
"I was trying, but it's obvious that you'll never change your thoughts about me." She changed song to something a little more cheerful. "I'm sure there's a book on them in here somewhere. Why don't you try and work it out for yourself?"
"Fine," Danni said through gritted teeth and she stood up and left the glass box. She walked over to the book shelves that the Doctor had installed to keep Missy occupied, running her finger over the first ones to read the titles. Most of them were fiction and she closed her eyes with a heavy sigh.
This was going to be hard work.
~0~0~0~
Danni's head slipped off her hand, startling her out of the daydream that she had fallen into. Sometimes she just wanted to be back on Darillium, back with her mum and dad, where life had been just a little easier. Instead, she was trapped in almost a living nightmare, where she had the choice to spend all of her time trapped in a room with Missy, or outside where she wasn't sure if she wouldn't fall under the control of an invading race of corpse monks. She didn't even know if her husband had fallen under their control – she hoped not, he was normally better than that – but she had to find a way to be able to keep herself from falling under their spell so she could save him. And everyone else, of course.
But the Doctor first. Maybe Nardole.
She shifted in the seat she'd made herself in the corner of the room to try and wake herself up. Luckily the Vault was like the Two Streams facility and she didn't need to eat, or drink, but it didn't stop her being tired. Apparently, that wasn't something that the creators had thought about when creating a vault for a dead body. Amateurs.
It didn't help that all she had done in the last week or so was read. She was making her way through the collection of books that the Doctor had given Missy to keep her occupied in the hopes that, maybe, she hadn't been lying and there was a book about the Monks somewhere and she wouldn't have to resort to asking the Time Lady for help.
"Mmm, mmm," Missy hummed from the other side of the cage she was sat in. She had been doing that a lot over the last couple of days. "Hey Missy you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind."
Danni growled and looked over at her, glaring angrily. She was getting to the end of her wits listening to her constantly making noise. She really didn't want to engage Missy in any way, but the woman had been doing an excellent job irritating her to no end. How did the Doctor survive an entire year on the Valiant not telling Koschei to shut up?
Missy moved straight onto playing the piano again, which Danni was starting to find a little bit of a relief. She turned her attention back to the old book in front of her and realised that she'd not been paying attention to any of it for a while and had just been flipping the pages when it felt like she should have finished reading.
With another sigh of annoyance, she turned back to the beginning of the chapter and started to read again. The particular book she had picked up was about mythology and she really hoped one of them would relate in some way to the Monks. So far she'd had no such luck, but as none of the books were titled 'Monks: what are they and how to stop them', she had to try anything that seemed even mildly appropriate.
"You know, I could just tell you," Missy called over in a singsong voice as she continued to play the piano. "I am a fountain of knowledge that you are severely underutilizing."
The issue was that Missy was entirely right. The reason Danni wasn't asking for her help was pure stubbornness at this point. She really did just want to get out of the Vault and find her husband, but without any sort of plan she knew that was foolish. Missy had dealt with the Monks before; Missy had beaten the Monks before. All she had to do was sit by her and learn to play the piano. Was it really that hard?
Yes, yes it was. But when was anything worth doing easy?
She stood up and walked over, stepping into the holding pen and sitting next to Missy. "Alright, show me," she stated. "I have absolutely no musical skills, so you're going to have to start from scratch."
"Don't put yourself down so much, you're more capable than you think," Missy scolded lightly and, for a brief moment, Danni genuinely thought she was paying her a complement. "Now, most Earth pianos have 88 keys. 52 white keys and 36 black." To demonstrate, she pressed on each. "Each key is grouped into a set of 7. These go from A to G." She glanced at Danni. "Keeping up so far?"
Danni nodded so she turned back to the piano. "Excellent. These repeat up and down the keyboard. A good way to find where a set of notes start is to find a group of three black keys, and go to the white key to the right of it." She pressed the key a couple times. "This will always be A."
"So, find the group of three," Danni repeated, placing a finger on the black key in the middle of the group. "Then, to the right." She slid her finger down and pressed it a couple of times. "That means that this goes…"
As she played the next notes, going from A up to G, Missy smiled at her. "That's right," she praised. "You're already getting it. Now, we should probably talk about hand positioning."
~0~0~0~
"So, let me get this straight. The Monks use a willing, uncorrupted mind, to gain consent to take over a planet," Danni stated as she paced back and forward in front of the box Missy was sitting in. The piano was sat silent, as is had done for a while now. Missy, in fact, was laying against it, as comfortable as one could be in a box they couldn't leave.
"Correct."
"And they use this poor moron to project compliance into everyone else because they, themselves, are truly compliant because they let them in to begin with?"
"And then they use their brainwaves to psychically link with the rest of the populous. Which, usually, works."
Danni paused in her step. "Usually?"
"Well, there's always a few uprisers in any invasion. I've certainly come across many in my time," Missy explained. "By inserting themselves into history, most people are bound to look the other way when the link doesn't fully take hold and ignore the occasional person who raves on about how they've only been here a couple of months."
"What do they do to the dissidents?"
Missy made a slashing motion over her throat as well as an exaggerated dying noise. Danni grimaced at the thought of even more people being killed by the Monks. "Nice," she replied sarcastically. "But how do they use the person to keep everyone else at bay? On a more advanced, psychic race I'd understand, but they're only human. Most don't even have the potential for power like that."
"They artificially amplify the noise. Send it across the world, beacon to beacon, keeping the power going. Then, when the original person dies, their offspring take the mantel. Most don't even remember that they consented in the first place. They just live happy, mundane lives, keeping the bloodline and therefore the link going."
"So they're projecting the obedience into their heads?" Danni summarised. "Like the Archangel network?"
Missy crossed her arms. "I like to think that I had a bit more class than some stinky, old Monks," she grumbled.
"You did," Danni agreed. "So, in theory, I should just be able to go out there and find the TARDIS. I'm normally rather good at finding reality in fiction."
"Normally, I'd agree. However…"
"However?" Danni pressed when she trailed off.
"You're rather susceptible to the attack to begin with," Missy explained, sounding apologetic.
"That's not true!"
To demonstrate, Missy began tapping a beat of four on top of the piano. Danni waved her hands. "Alright, alright, I get the point!"
Missy stopped. "You don't know how long you'll be trapped under their spell before you can break free. By which time who knows what damage they've done. To you or the Doctor."
Danni sighed and sat down on one of the chairs in front of the box. "What do you suggest?" she asked. "How do we save humanity?"
"Well, first, let's focus on saving the Doctor and your little robot friend," Missy suggested. "We need to find where he is so we can work out a way of getting you to him."
"Which I don't have. The Vault is impenetrable from both sides. We can't receive any signals or put any out."
"Can't we?" Missy shot back. Danni leant forward, intrigued.
"You have an idea?"
"Of course I do. But it's gonna take a bit of work. A bit of engineering. And a couple of things from out there in that basement of yours." She nodded towards the door. "Think you can get what we need?"
Danni smirked, smug. "Easily."
~0~0~0~
"That's it," Missy praised as Danni placed the last bit of solder on the chip. "You're rather good at this."
"It's not my first time creating a receiver," she replied before biting her lip again, concentrating hard as she looked over the phone she had taken apart. She had to be very careful when putting it back together again otherwise she might end up with another fire and, in such a small space, that definitely wasn't something she wanted to do.
One good thing about the Vault was that it was in a basement full of junk. Over the years anything the University had chucked away that the Doctor deemed useful, or interesting, ended up in one of the boxes or crates that scattered the floor. Or, in some cases, just tossed to the side and left to gather dust. Occasionally Nardole did try and have a tidy up, but usually it just meant a move around and never actually any tidying.
Danni had ventured out a couple of times. One time she had just wanted to see what it was like in the 'real world' but the moment she had felt the oppressive psychic field the Monks were projecting she had rushed straight back in and it took a couple more weeks for her to try again. When Missy had given her a list of items and tools they'd need to contact the Doctor she had dashed around the room, grabbing anything that was useful before she darted back in with the pieces she could find. Leaving was not an option, so they needed to find out what else was happening. And that involved trying to get the News in the Vault.
With a couple of taps on the screen her phone flared into life and she grinned from ear to ear. "That's how you do it!" she cried happily. She held her hand up and Missy finished the high five with a clap. "Right, let's see what we can find."
She began swiping her finger across the screen, flipping through the broadcasts she was picking up. The first few were nothing out of the ordinary, but then she found on of the Doctor.
"How lucky Earth is to have an ally as powerful and tender as the monks, that asks for nothing in return for their benevolence but obedience."
The overwhelming happiness that she felt at just seeing his face, his eyes and his wonderful hair, knowing that he was alright was immediately crushed by what he was saying. The dread filled her as she realised that he, too, seemed to be under their spell. They'd taken over her Theta and she had just let it happen. She'd just left him to face the Monks on his own.
"Well, that's just clever, that is," Missy spoke up.
"What is?" Danni asked quietly, devastated.
"He was always such a clever clog, and it was always just as irritating," Missy continued. Danni looked away from the horrifying grin her husband shot at the world before the feed began to loop again, and up as Missy.
"What do you mean?"
"The Monk use the brainwaves of one consenting person on the planet as an anchor, projecting the message and keeping the gormless masses docile," she reminded. "Each species has a different brain wave pattern, otherwise they'd just be able to take a group of people and plop one on each planet. No, the reason they needed a willing human is because the overwhelming infestation on this planet is, in fact, human. And him on there, well, he's Time Lord, isn't he?"
Danni looked back at the screen, watching her husband read what appeared to be a script in a calming voice. There was no hint of a hidden message, to her or anyone else, in his words. But Missy was right. The Doctor wasn't human. It was her that had a bunch of species mixed up her blood, that was the reason she couldn't go outside, because while she wasn't fully human, they had no idea how much would it would affect her. "You're saying he's alright?"
Missy scoffed slightly. "Of course he is," she dismissed. "If he hasn't come for you yet it's only because he appears to be trapped by them. I mean, what an amateur move!"
Danni couldn't help but let the grin spread on her face yet again. "He's alright," she whispered. "He's alright!" She turned to Missy. "Oh, I could kiss you!"
Instead, though, she chucked herself forward and hugged the other Time Lady tightly. Missy froze for a moment, startled by the voluntary contact, before patting her on her back. "Yes, yes, I'm glad he's not got himself killed as well."
"If he's alright, then Nardole must be as well," Danni continued as she pulled away. "They'll have a plan; it's probably just taking some time. I mean, I waited decades for him, what's a few months?"
As Missy replied with her own thoughts on the Doctor and his hairbrained plans, Danni's hearts froze painfully in her chest as she realised just what had happened. Everything that she ever feared, everything that had kept both her and the Doctor up at night, came crashing down on her as she realised that she'd fallen headfirst straight into it.
She was sat with Missy. She was trapped with Missy, in a box where no one knew that she was there, and she was happy.
~0~0~0~
"Danni!" the Doctor exclaimed, rushing over to the other side of the Vault and falling to the floor in front of her. She didn't even flinch at the sound of his name and he looked at Missy, furious. "What have you done to her?" he demanded.
"Nothing, nothing," Missy quickly replied, standing up from the piano and moving to the very edge of the containment field. "She saw your face on the television a couple of days ago and hasn't moved since." He turned back to his wife, horrified at how she seemed to have completely closed in on herself. His hands hovered on either side of hers, like he was too scared to touch her. "I did good, though, didn't I?" Missy called over. "I kept her safe, just like you would have wanted."
"Shut up," he snapped over at her. "Just-Just shut up." With a deep breath, he placed his fingers on Danni's temples and closed his own eyes.
In an instant he was inside her head, looking around in more confusion than he had been beforehand. She appeared to be in a dark room, sat behind a desk, with feet up on it. It also appeared, in her head, she dressed more like her father than she had done in real life. The black coat she was wearing overflowed on either side of the chair and the black boots she was wearing were very military. She didn't seem to notice his appearance as she looked at blackboards that sat all around her. White chalk writing was scribbled on each of them and as he quickly read them over he realised that it was information about the Monks. Stuff that he'd not even found out himself, like linking the statues that had appeared to the continued servitude of the human race. He'd just thought the Monks liked the look of their own faces; that was a bit of an oversight on his part.
"No, no, that's not going to work," she was muttering to herself. "I have no idea how many broadcast beacons there are, and I can't destroy them all at once." With a wave of her hand, a line was wiped off one of the boards. "What about Jack? Did we discuss UNIT and Jack? Perhaps we could get their help?"
There was a pause before she nodded. "Yeah, you're not wrong. UNIT is probably under their control as well. Kate is good, but would they be that good? Most of them are just grunts after all. Getting into contact with any of them brings up the same issues as before." With another wave of her hand, another line was wiped from another board. "Alright, what else have we got?" She waited for a moment. "No, no, we're not killing the source of the projection. That is definitely not an option." Another pause. "Yes, I know that's how Missy did it. That's why we're not doing it. Scratch it off."
The Doctor looked around but there appeared to be no one else except for him and Danielle, but perhaps he just couldn't see who she was talking to. "Danni?" he asked, concerned, as he stepped a little closer.
She looked over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. "No, no, we've discussed that before," she stated. "We can't use the Doctor method. He had a whole year to align himself with the Archangel network, I just don't have that long."
She swung her legs off the desk and stood up. "Which one of you was it?" she asked before pointing at one of the boards. "Was that you? You've been coming off very sentimental during this. One more stunt like this and I'll replace you with a tablet. Don't think I won't."
He looked at the board but still saw no one there. "Who are you talking to?"
She ignored him. "We need to stay focused. We have to save the Doctor. I need a plan. I need a way to contact him without being noticed, and a way to find Nardole that doesn't involve me leaving the Vault. One of you bloody braincells must have an idea."
She turned to him and smirked slightly. "Unless you're my way of telling myself I need a break," she purred, stepping closer still. "I've been in my head for a couple of days, now. I could use a distraction."
She leant forward and kissed him, much to his surprise. He didn't kiss back, and he didn't wrap his arms around her. In fact, as she pulled away with a frown on her face, she seemed rather confused by everything as well. "Theta?" she asked. "Are you—" she poked him. "Are you really here?"
"Of course I'm really here," he told her. She looked him up and down again.
"Usually you disappear when I try to distract myself," she admitted. "How are you talking to me? Did you manage to bypass the Monks before me?"
"Is that what this is?" he asked and she nodded, turning back to the blackboards.
"This is everything Missy has told me about the Monks," she explained. "I was trying to work out a way to save you, but you I'm sure you know all of it by now."
"No, not a thing," he admitted freely. "How about we wake up and you can tell me all about it?"
She didn't look convinced, but he held his hand out for her. "I'll be there when you wake up. I promise."
Suspicious, but hopeful, Danni took his hand. As his fingers interlaced with hers the blackness faded away and she blinked, opening her eyes as she found herself back in the Vault. The Doctor was crouched in front of her but he didn't remove his hands from her face. He'd been waiting six months to finally see it again, and now he wasn't worried about her he could take a moment to appreciate it.
"Theta?" she whispered, almost as if she was afraid that he wasn't real.
He nodded. "Hello again, my Pet."
She hugged him tightly, pulling him closer. "I missed you so much," she told him, resting her head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry I didn't come save you, I didn't know what to do."
"You gathered all that information, which is exactly what I needed you to," he promised, placing a kiss on her hair before pulling away and jumping up into a standing position. "We know that the Monks are controlling the planet into submission. How are they doing it?"
She stood up as well. "They've got beacons around the world that are connecting to the source, the one that gave them consent. That pure consent is what is projected into their heads, making them docile so they don't notice the history change around them."
"Alright, that's good," he replied encouragingly. "So, we destroy the beacons. Which, if I take a stab in the dark, are the giant statues that have been placed on every street corner."
"Except that won't work, because the moment they start coming down they'll either stop us or put more up," Danni pointed out.
"This is, annoyingly, a very good point."
"You don't need to destroy the transmitters. All you have to do is find the original pudding brain who started this whole mess off," Missy called from the other side of the room.
"You've dealt with the Monks before?"
"Where do you think I got my information from?" Danni asked him. He looked surprised.
"You talked to her? Willingly?" he asked. She shifted, a little uncomfortable.
"We traded information," she muttered. "She told me about the Monks and I- I had to learn how to play the piano."
"Danielle!" he exclaimed. "What were you thinking?! Did you not learn from last time?"
"I had to," she protested. "It's not like I could have just gone outside and had a look for information, is it?"
He frowned. "Why not?"
"Because of the Monks," she reminded. "The beacons blast out brainwaves that match humans. I couldn't risk being taken under their spell. Who knows how they would have reacted to my mashup of brainwaves? I couldn't risk not knowing what was true and what was a lie."
The Doctor stared at her for a moment, a calculating look on his face. He knew that she was terrified for not knowing reality from fiction, and he couldn't blame her at all for that. He also knew that she wouldn't have, willingly, stayed in the Vault for six months of her own accord. Someone had planted that information in her head and it had stuck to all of the little doubts that he'd spent so long trying to soothe for her.
He turned to face Missy. "What have you been telling her?" he asked.
"Nothing strictly untrue," Missy promised. "I really didn't know what would happen if she stepped out of this stupid little box. Maybe she would have been taken under, she is highly suggestable at times. I just wanted to keep her safe."
There it was again. That want to keep Danni safe, even if her version of safe wasn't the same as the rest of the universes. He wasn't sure where it came from, or how it had become so twisted, but he really didn't have time to delve into it right now. He would, though, at great length once the Earth was back to its normal, pudding-brained self.
Missy rushed to the edge of her containment field. "What if I told you I knew how to stop the Monks?" she tried. He must have looked as sceptical as he felt because she was happy to give up the information freely. "All you have to do is find whoever opened the door to the Monks in the first place."
He couldn't help his little happy grin. "Say I already have," he pressed, knowing that Bill was stood right behind him.
"No," Danni cut in she walked forward to him. "We need to find another way."
"Why?" he asked, confused. Danni nodded at Missy.
"Ask her."
"Just kill them," Missy offered, to his horror. "That weakens that Monks' grip on the world."
"No, no, that can't be right," the Doctor replied. "There are planets that the Monks have ruled for millennia."
"It's passed through the bloodlines," Danni explained for her. "That's why I was trying to work out another way. Her answer works, but it's not right." She looked at Missy. "She can't see that, and she never will. That's why trying to fix her is pointless. She'll never try and find the third option because the first two are so much easier."
Missy looked a little crestfallen before she sat at her piano. "Your version of good is not absolute. It's vain, arrogant and sentimental. If you're waiting for me to become all that, I'm going to be in here for a long time yet."
"You're never leaving here," Danni swore. "Finding the third option is not arrogant, it's what the universe needs. The universe is arrogant and cruel, we have to be better than the void we're floating in."