Chapter 7

"RUN, THE DARLEKS ARE COMING!" Shouted the Doctor as he woke up suddenly and sat up with a jump.

"Hello to you too!"

The Doctor blinked a few times, visibly confused. He was still in his Tardis. He started the conference mentally: the beeps sounded low, no suspect airborne visible, lights blinking at the usual pace, no light or flapping signal pulsating Intensely. Everything seemed okay.

Beside him, sitting on her knees was Bill, not cyberBill, flesh and blood Bill.

"BILL, YOU'RE HERE!" Unable to hold himself, the Doctor pulled her into a tight hug.

"Yeap, here I am Doc."

He released her quickly when she looked a little tense. The hug caught her totally off guard.

"You look good." He said after taking a look at her

"So do you. I thought you were about to explode but whatever that glow was it did a great job on you."

His grin was gone immediately. Was not he himself? But he felt himself. Taken by a natural reflex he touch his face to check the first changes, but his bone structure was still the same and his eyebrows were still there (thank God for that). His feet still fit perfectly inside the shoes and the sleeves of his shirt were still at the right height.

Mentally he still felt the same. Still tied to the confused feelings about Missy, still clinging to the idea of saving Nardole, Clara was still there, on the bottom of his thoughts.

He leaped to his feet feeling full of energy, but essentially the same. Well, he was himself, maybe with a little more muscle mass, cheeks and hair (now black), but it was still him.

"That's incredible! I've been through it twelve times already and this never happened. Didn't know it was possible." He brought his face close to the reflection, running his hands over his cheeks. "Easier to shave."

"What are you talking about?"

"My regeneration. You see, I was dying. When that happens Time Lords regenerate themselves but we change. Somehow I didn't, I'm still me, younger, but me."

"Seems to me you've got upgraded."

He laughed, turning his attention to the girl.

"What happened to you Bill?"

"Do you remember Heather? My crush who's now an alien life form?"

He nodded.

"She showed up after the explosion, turned me back into girl Bill and together we brought yyou back to the Tardis. You were out then, I thought you were.. you know…" Bill said in a sad voice and it died before she could force herself to speak the word.

"Dead."

It was her turn to nod.

"We traveled through time and space for a while, but then I felt something was missing and I decided to get back." By something she meant him and he knew it.

"You shouldn't had done that."

Bill smiled at his seriousness. "Don't worry, Doctor. I just found out I'm not really ready to travel without supervision. "

The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds and smiled at each other. Like him, Bill still had outstanding business and stories to be lived before following the natural course of her existence.

"So, now what?"

"Now we go back for Nardole and then we have some hunt to do." He said as he turned to the consoles and began to make his changes inexplicable, pressing a series of buttons and changing levers.

"Hunt your psycho girlfriend?" Bill asked mockingly.

"She aint my girlfriend."

"Right. If you say so."

Xxxxx

After three years and twelve months of work the ship was structurally ready. In spite of the meager resources and the recycled material that they had used, the ship had personality and it was enough pleasant to the eyes. How could they not be proud of seeing a large part of their project completed? Impossible.

As for the technological part, there was still a lot to be done and they estimated another one or two years of work ahead of them.

Beatrice, despite her young age, had a remarkable intelligence, even by time lords standards. She read, wrote and mastered the basics of mathematics. Nardole managed to make some connections with the ship's central database so that the children could have access to study materials, but even so Missy sometimes found herself preoccupied with the girls education. So every night when the two of them gathered in their room, Missy taught her about the customs of their people and their native language. Eventually they would leave that ship and nothing would prevent a day when the little girl might want to join her own kind to deepen her scientific knowledge.

Sometimes Missy laughed inwardly at these thoughts. She thought as if Gallifrey were still in the same place, completly accessible to them. More than that, who would ensure acceptance of the daughter of a planetary enemy and an exiled at the Academy? In the end, she was always convinced that with the parents Beta had, she would never need any other training than living with them.

'How much more we'll need to wait for you, dear Doctor?' She kept asking herself.

To think that a few years ago she was a prisoner inside a vault on Earth, enjoying a chance to prove herself to her oldest friend. To think she'd been lying on the grass, watching the fake clouds pass slowly through her eyes as life fled from her body.

She had overcome her deeds, her previous selves, and found peace there, in a bucolic setting out from The Waltons, spending her days working on a ship to save strangers and caring for a child she had never, in any case, thought she would have. That limited and restricted life became satisfactory to her and at last she had found the peace she needed.

'You gonna be so proud, my love'.

"Look, mommy." Beta, as she liked to be called, stood next to her mother, holding out a piece of paper. "For you."

They were drawn next to Nardole, the big house and Alit. There were also Tardis, the Doctor and Bill, all smiling happily. This was not the first time she'd drawn them and Missy knew she'd seen them at her own thoughts. Sometimes she broadcast her thoughts unintentionally and the girl capped them. Beta's telepathy developed more and more each day and Missy sometimes felt like an open book to her daughter. That idea frightened her and made her always keep her mental barriers up, almost always, to be absolutely honest.

Missy took the girl by the armpits and sat her on her lap to look at the drawing.

"It's wonderful, pet. Thank you." She planted a soft kiss on the top of the child's head, lightly stroking her black hair, tied in a loose braid. "I just think you need to put some more white in here." She laughed as she pointed to the Doctor's hair.