-/-
For the longest moment all he could do was stare, she was real after all. On the way down here The Doctor had almost convinced himself it must have been some group hallucination or perhaps a dream crab or two. Yet standing here a mere three foot away from The Mistress's cell The Doctor couldn't deny what his eyes and his nose was telling him. It really was her.
"Do you want to take a picture honey it will last longer?" Missy's teasing drawl caused The Doctor's jaw tense yet he couldn't stop looking at her.
At her loose dishevelled hair, those manic blue eyes of hers and the smears of dried blood that marred her otherwise porcelain skin; at her split lip and the well abused leather armour that encased her form…
"What's the matter love do I have something on my face?" Missy taunted her grin wide showing her teeth, not caring if it split open her barely healed cut, as The Doctor continued to stare at her mutely …The taste of blood in her mouth and The Doctor's scent in her nose, it was almost enough to send a girl into a swoon.
"Is this all I am going to get after saving your life, hmmm, the silent and moody treatment?" Missy added before crooking her bloodied fingers in a come hither gesture. "Why don't you come a bit closer love, hmm, you can be a bloody mute if you like I am sure I can find another use for those fine lips of yours."
"You are hurt?" The Doctor finally gasped out, his eyes following the droplet of blood that gathered at the corner of her mouth, a droplet that Missy caught with her tongue before it could fall.
"So are you but I see your little human friends have done their best for your little owies." Missy sniggered her gaze dropping to the hospital gown that The Doctor still wore under his jacket in place of his ruined. "Shame their hospitality towards their other guests is not so accommodating. I really must remember to mention that in my review of this place."
"What through megalomaniacs anonymous?" The Doctor snorted. "Or is there a site reviewing the jails of the galaxy?"
"If there is you should get an account sweetie, Omega knows you have spent more than your fair share locked up, we could compare notes."
"Don't call me that." The Doctor hissed wincing as that particular endearment struck a little too close to something still bruised and tender. "Use whatever ridiculous little pet names you want but never call me that again?"
"Oh of course the little woman…or ex little woman." The Mistress sniggered. "Deny it until you are blue in the face Thete but you really do have a type don't you?"
"Do not in your delusional state ever imagine that might include you!"
"Oh really what else am I supposed to hypothesise when you had your tongue down my throat and were grinding a hard on against my stomach?" Missy laughed, the look of complete bewilderment on The Doctor's face cutting short her fun. He really wasn't faking this. Something somewhere had gone horribly wrong and Missy was only just beginning to catch on.
"What did the human's do to you?"
"Nothing." The Doctor replied with confidence he didn't completely feel. Tugging at the collar of his gown he exposed the top of his bandaged chest. "This however has your signature all over it!"
"Wrong…Wrong…Wrong…Wrong!" Missy mocked twisting her head from side to side. "You are honestly telling me you don't remember anything?"
"If I did do you think I would be here asking you?" The Doctor spat, lifting his hand to viciously smack it against his own forehead. "It's like there is some sort of block and I can't make sense of it all." He added, blue eyes narrowing in disgust at The Mistress who was staring at him thoughtfully.
"Well that is unexpected." Missy muttered mainly to herself yet The Doctor's sensitive hearing caught her barely whispered words.
"What did you do to me?" He demanded all righteous indignation.
"If you must know I really was trying to help." Missy answered, her blue eyes unusually soft as she looked at him, not that The Doctor cared he could barely discern anything but the rush of blood through his pounding head.
"You weren't yourself Thete, too…" Broken, beaten, grief stricken…any and all of the above were accurate.
It was something The Mistress had dreamed of seeing for so long; The Doctor losing control, the proof that they really were the same after all. Yet like so many things the wanting had proved so much sweeter than the having "…I only gave you a little nudge."
"And your idea of helping me is to gouge bloody great gaps out of my memory?" The Doctor demanded his fingers clenching as he resisted the urge to reach out and shake sense into her…yet even the flicker of that impulse caused his head to burn.
"No I didn't they are still in that block head of yours you idiot. I only went in and…lessoned the emotional resonance of a few tiny things; just enough to stop you from going off the deep end. You're the great clot who took it further and have clearly tried to suppress the memories entirely!"
"You admit to messing with my head and I am supposed to believe that I did this to myself? You will tell me everything you took!"
"No."
It was a simple answer, spoken without the Mistress's usual gloating and yet there was nothing that infuriated The Doctor more.
"You will or I swear I will…"
"Beat the answers out of me?" Missy taunted. "Hmm call me sentimental but I think I prefer the bruises you already gave me…" The Mistress drawled her fingers picking at the buttons around her slender neck, pulling the heavy material away and exposing her long swan like neck, delicate collarbone and the sickening red and purple marks around her neck.
Marks that The Doctor refused to believe came from him…She was lying…She was always lying…
"…Leave you here to rot!" The Doctor finished, warming to his idea when The Mistress flinched. "Stuck on earth with all the apes you despise."
"You wouldn't." Missy insisted her fingers tightening on the bars. "Stop trying to pretend otherwise Doctor. You wouldn't dare leave me behind, not on earth, not where I can harm your little pets."
"Wouldn't I? I will just have to show them ways to keep you out of harm's way." The Doctor taunted, enjoying the very real look of panic in her eyes. "Or you could tell me what I need to know? I am sure you will find a cell on the Tardis to be more comfortable than whatever UNIT can come up with."
"You really wouldn't thank me for it love." Missy sighed pushing herself away from the bars and wandering over to her hard bunk, throwing herself down on the bench and glaring up at the ceiling of her little cell.
"Since when do you know or care about what's best for me?" The Doctor demanded, his frustration growing as Missy didn't answer and continued to ignore him. "You will tell me Mistress…"
Yet The Mistress was either immune to his threats or was certain he was bluffing. When she dared to actually turn her back on him The Doctor knew she wasn't going to crack…not yet at any rate.
The Mistress loathed confinement of any sort, and the idea of being imprisoned on earth would disgust her. Eventually the prospect of a change of prison would be more appealing than this power trip she currently had going on. He could wait and in the meantime he could work on releasing the repressed memories himself. The Mistress may have been the star pupil when it came to matters of the mind and sheer telepathic strength but The Doctor was no mewling babe….
Yes that would be a more fitting solution, to find a way to recover them all by himself and then return here when she was ready to capitulate only to refute all her lies in person. Only then when she had realised she had no more cards left to play would The Doctor generously agree to transfer her to the Tardis.
Not that he really wanted her there
Resisting the urge to smack his still healing hands against the cells bars The Doctor swallowed down his frustration, refusing to allow the timelady the satisfaction of knowing she had rattled him. Instead he turned on his heel and stormed out of the cellblock, even going so far as to use his sonic on the outer door of the complex when it seemed to take forever to open; relishing the sudden rush of cool air as he stepped out of the air locked prison and back into the real world.
A world where a scowling Kate Lethbridge-Stewart was waiting for him…
-/-
"That was unexpectedly nice of you." Osgood managed half sitting in the awkward silent aftermath of The Doctor's exit.
He hadn't even noticed her…no he had, but he had chosen to ignore her, deemed her to be irrelevant when compared to interrogating The Mistress. And it stung…it stung far more than Osgood had expected, and she had bitten down on her bottom lip to keep the tears at bay. The Doctor, the alien who she had spent her whole life trying to measure up to, had dismissed her as unworthy of his attention…spoiled goods through her associated with Missy.
That was assuming she had ever had been? Perhaps it had all been some little fantasy she had made up in her head? Thinking she could ever really be good enough to be a companion.
Looking back now with rose tinted specs removed it was possible to examine their interactions from another perspective. He had only made an offhand comment about all of time and space and even then it had been in front of…Missy…
They had been having their whispered little spat and Osgood had tried so hard not appear to be eavesdropping and yet it was The Doctor how could she not listen in? Had he only come over to talk to her as another way to one up Missy; to rub the timelady's nose in it as he offered a place on the Tardis to mere human instead?
Osgood had read all of UNIT's notes on The Master and it had recorded in all of the interviews conducted with the survivors of the year that never was The Doctor's repeated offers to his fellow timelord to leave Earth and travel the universe together. It must have been a slap in the face for Missy when instead of repeating his offer The Doctor instead offered it to Osgood? Missy may not genuinely want to travel with The Doctor, she had her own tardis after all, but The Mistress was proud and she would have taken offence at the slight…perhaps enough to kill because of it?
And now The Doctor had slighted her again. Leaving Missy behind on Earth was a grave insult to the timelady and Osgood could only dread the consequences.
"I mean you could have told him what happened, there was no gain to you by not telling him." Not that Osgood had any real understanding of just what had transpired in the time between Missy shutting off the communicator and the timelords sudden reappearance in the Doctor's Tardis.
The Doctor had been hurt by someone, badly hurt, Osgood knew that. She also knew that whatever else had happened that it had traumatised him badly. The unhinged timelord who had lashed out so violently towards Missy in Clara's flat was not the bitter yet seemingly sane man who had just left and somehow that was down to The Mistress.
"He won't really leave you here." Osgood tried again, staring across into The Mistress's cell at the back of the silent timelady.
"Yes because you know The Doctor and I so well. You have no idea what that timelord is really capable of, if you did all you apes would cower in under your beds at night not laud him with adulation." Missy's bitter comment had teeth and Osgood winced a little at the derision in her tone. Yet at least Missy was talking back and no longer ignoring her.
"And who says I did it to be nice? Hmm I might have done it just to mess with him?"
That was a possibility, it was certainly the story that most people would believe, and The Doctor clearly thought so and yet Osgood had seen the way Missy had cradled The Doctor in her arms until the UNIT soldiers forced them apart. She might enjoy the side benefit of The Doctor's frustration of his lack of memories but somehow Osgood doubted that had been her primary motive. Sometimes The Mistress just did things without the need for an evil mastermind motive…like catching someone falling from a computer generated skyscraper.
She wasn't good; Osgood doubted she was even capable of that. Yet to write Missy off as pure evil was to miss the shades of grey she kept so fiercely hidden beneath that figurative black cloak she wore.
"He'll be back…"
"Do shut up Skip be a good girl."
"I was just trying to say I don't think you'll really be stuck here that long." Osgood forged ahead ignoring the warning tone in Missy's voice. "I'm the one who is really stuck here."
"Neither of us are staying here!" The Mistress all but growled, rolling off of her bench in one sudden movement and like a predator she struck, arm suddenly reaching through the bar and seizing what looked to Osgood like thin air.
Thin air that suddenly rippled and filled as The Mistress grasped what looked like a cord and a dangling key and wrenched it free, revealing an all too familiar sight, one that Osgood had hope never to see again.
"Now are we Seb?"
-/-