Author's note: This was never actually supposed to have more than one chapter and I have virtually no idea where it's going, or if it's going anywhere. I'm open for suggestions, concerning directions as well as proper titles, because since it was never supposed to be a story I never bothered to find a title either. And may I just add, Missy did NOT do what she was supposed to in this chapter at all. She was supposed to be disgustingly sweet and annoy the hell out of the Doctor, and instead, she got pissed off at him.

Chapter summary: The Doctor is uncomfortable, Missy wakes up, nobody is happy and things go everywhere except where they're supposed to go.

It didn't take long at all for the Doctor to become uncomfortable. He'd arrived hopeful but cautious, and with no small portion of doubt regarding his own sanity (hope could be a horrible thing), half expecting to become entangled in some sort of battle any second, and now he had ended up just… sitting. He had seen the newspaper and the cup on the table – the only thing out of place, and the remnants of tea weren't yet dry, so obviously someone had left it behind not long ago, and seeing as there was no one else in this house, this someone was currently sleeping in front of him, and hadn't been doing so for very long at all.

And, damn him and his soft heart that he would never admit to, since he wasn't going to wake her up, he was now left sitting in a stranger's house, watching a stranger sleeping in a stranger's bed, and he was going to abandon that train of thought right now since he had no desire to have to start calling himself a creep.

Rassilon, this was absurd.

He double-checked the readings, just to be certain, sonic screwdriver whirring much too loudly in the quiet atmosphere, but the woman didn't stir at the sound, and he pocketed the device again after a few seconds. There really was no need to check anything, not when he could physically feel the remnants of regeneration energy tickling his skin. He most certainly was not watching a human stranger sleep in their own house. Clara would never let him hear the end of it if he were. Not that he'd tell her anyway.

But if she indeed had broken in – and she had, he needed to stop doubting that – there was no telling when the rightful owners would show up. He decided he was pretty certain that she hadn't killed them – he hadn't seen any signs of a fight, nor any corpses, and she certainly wouldn't have taken the time to hide them somewhere if there were any, since she obviously wasn't expecting anyone to show up, and had been tired enough to just throw herself on the bed, feet hanging over, without even removing her slippers. Oh, and if she was who he he thought – knew – she was, then he was going to risk his life just by teasing her about those slippers, he just knew it. He wouldn't be able to help himself once she was awake.

He hoped she would be awake soon. It wasn't like the Master at all to sleep through someone entering the room and bustling about. Suddenly concerned, the Doctor jumped to his feet again, already half about to lurch forward before he stopped himself. No use in startling her awake either, rather the opposite. Slowly, keeping a grip on himself, and pretending he didn't feel like an utter moron, he approached the bed and cautiously leaned over the motionless form sprawled on the mattress.

Still breathing, deeply and regularly. Everything alright. Well, now he just felt even more like a git. Sitting back down, he was very glad that she was too asleep to have noticed his act of idiocy.

Or was she? The Doctor narrowed his eyes. It could be a trap. She could be wide awake, feigning sleep, waiting for the perfect moment to… to do something. It would be just like the Master, after all, to lure him here and into a false sense of security, only to attempt to get rid of him at the best opportunity...

The Doctor took a long look at the damp, tousled hair, at the oversized white and pink dressing gown, and the pink, fuzzy slippers, one of which had slid off her foot and landed on the floor, and firmly told himself to stop being an idiot. He should probably also stop thinking through all the remote possibilities of this being the strangest trap he'd ever encountered, and start thinking about what to do once the Master woke up from her post-regenerative slumber.

-D-W-

After two hours, thirteen minutes, and four point seven seconds of sitting, staring, leg twitching, and eventually slowly walking up and down the room for lack of interesting reading material nearby, he wasn't any closer to knowing what to do beyond waiting for her to wake up, and had a disproportionally panicked reaction when suddenly he heard the sound of movement coming from the bed. He jumped and turned around, eyes wide, to stare as the Master gripped the pillow and pulled it a bit closer and snuggled into it and this was suddenly becoming very, very uncomfortable for him. He had felt somewhat creepy before but had justified his behaviour with the necessity of keeping tabs on the Master, and it was necessary of course, it was, but now he felt like he was intruding into someone's privacy. Perhaps he should just have detained her right away, taken her into his TARDIS and left no doubt about the state of affairs, because now he didn't even know himself what the state of affairs even was and he really should have figured out a plan by now, and surely she wouldn't just wake up now, would she?

The first thing that registered in the Master's mind was a rare feeling of what could almost be called safety, which paradoxically instantly prompted her into a state of wariness. Her fingers tightened minutely around the soft fabric they were clutching. Still otherwise unmoving, she took a moment to recall everything that had happened – detecting a means of escape from the time lock, throwing several aborted plans together into a makeshift idea to take what might be her only chance, running into someone, fighting, regenerating, stealing a TARDIS, forcing it through, landing here, and –

And she wasn't alone anymore. A quiet rustling sound was coming from beside her, opposite of the direction she was facing. And there had been no sign of pets in this house, she was certain. But whoever it was didn't seem to be yelling at her or threatening to call the authorities, so she doubted they belonged in this house any more than she did. Which only served to make them creepy since they appeared to be doing nothing but simply standing around in a sleeping woman's bedroom. Well, then.

The Master opened her eyes, stretched her stiff limbs with a demonstratively innocent little sigh, and turned around. When her gaze fell on the room's other occupant, she let out a shriek and, eyes wide, scrambled into an upright position. "What are you doing in my house?!"

The other, a tall, grey-haired man in a suit and with a face like a permanently disgruntled owl, first appeared startled at her sudden movement, but recovered quite soon and looked less than impressed once her righteously indignant words hung between them. That wasn't the reaction she had been going for.

"Do you make a habit of breaking into your own house and wearing clothes two sizes too big for you?"

Yes, definitely not a normal reaction to being discovered creeping around in someone's bedroom. The Master tried to shake the faint dizziness out of her thoughts and wished she could go back to sleep. "I don't know what you're talking about." Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she glared at him. "I'm going to call the police." For some reason, he looked amused by that, and she wondered if she had made a mistake. Earth's law enforcement was still called police in this century, wasn't it?

"Please, do go ahead," he said, entirely unconcerned, and she was about to give a sharp retort when it dawned on her. Either this was the rightful homeowner, and he had remarkably strange ideas about how to deal with burglars – or, more likely, he was here as unlawfully as she was. And what were the chances of someone just happening to break into the very same house that she had, coincidentally, broken into a few hours before? And of that person, upon seeing her, deciding to stay and watch her sleep for no reason? Add to that the owl man's evident amusement, the lack of surprise, the condescending attitude, and the fact that the place had to still be practically crawling with all kinds of energy traces…

She blamed the impulse to rage loudly at the universe's twisted sense of humour on regenerative trauma and the fact that three hours of sleep weren't nearly enough after everything she'd been through.

"I thought you wanted to call the police."

She glared at his twitching lips.

"In fact, I happen to have a box right outside that might be of help. Even says police on the tin."

There didn't seem to be much use in keeping up the act. It really wasn't fair. Did he have to stop her plans before she even had a plan?

Brushing a loose curl out of her face, she abandoned her glare for what she hoped was a sweet smile. "Ah, well. Good morning to you too, Doctor. May I ask the reasons for your presence? I assume you didn't just pop by to say hello."

She had not yet gotten up from her seat on the bed, nor was she planning to do so anytime soon – she hadn't intended to even be awake already, for one, and then she was all too aware of how glaringly obvious their height difference this time around would become the moment she stood next to him. So, just sitting there, it was easy to concentrate solely on him, which provided her with the pleasant sight of him becoming momentarily flustered before he found an answer.

"I'd just have woken you up if that were the case."

"How impolite." She held back a smirk at his obvious evasion. As if in all his lives he had ever actually had a plan that went beyond perhaps two steps into the future, on a good day.

Her fingers idly twirled around a lock of hair as she leaned back a little, the perfect picture of relaxed attentiveness.

The Doctor, rather presenting the opposite impression, let out an explosive breath through his nose and stepped around the bed's corner towards her. "What are you doing here?"

"Now really. Did you give me an answer when I asked you that question a few minutes ago?"

"Master."

She grinned. Her name sounded nice in his new accent. "Sleeping. Or I was, before you annoyed me into waking up."

"And that's all?"

The Master rolled her eyes and finally did get to her feet, since it seemed unlikely that the Doctor would leave and let her go back to sleep so she had to get up at some point anyway. "No, of course not," she jabbed irritably. "I was planning to hypnotise all of England and take over the planet through humanity's dreamscapes, all happening from right here while lying in this bed. What did you think?"

She vaguely recalled having noticed a rather pretty letter opener on the dressing table earlier. Maybe she could use it to stab him.

"Don't pretend it wasn't the energy traces that led you here, you know I haven't exactly had time to plot much. But of course, my first priority right after regenerating is naturally my next evil scheme, what else would I do."

The Doctor had removed the letter opener. Typical. Didn't make her want to stab him any less.

"Well, if you remember last time..."

"Entirely different situation, my dear Doctor." Scowling at the dressing table, she didn't quite know what to do with herself. Stabbing the Doctor with eyeliner probably wouldn't work, and her brain was still too sluggish to come up with a proper plan. Somehow, she almost felt she was letting him down by not having one, but she really hadn't had the time to figure things out yet.

Her jaw tightened a little at a spike of pain flashing through her head, reminding her that it wasn't even fully over yet. A few more hours until all synapses and neurons and whatnot had settled in the proper places, until every single organ was in perfect working condition and she could properly get to know her newest self.

The Doctor was shaking his head in something akin to exasperation and stepped towards her, lips parted to say something else that wouldn't get them anywhere, and some of those synapses chose that moment to malfunction, or simply short out. Instead of just keeping him at arm's length, letting him talk and using the time to gather information and formulate a plan, she ran, took off abruptly and pushed him aside and was flying down the stairs before she even knew she was doing it.

Well, that had gone all kinds of wrong. What sensible person even woke up obviously, stupidly soon after regenerating, preventing him from even deciding on an idea of how to handle the situation? No sensible person did that, that's who, and he should have known, because the Master had long ago strayed from anything even hinting at sensible, and now he'd have to chase after her to make sure she didn't hurt anyone, herself included.

With a curse, he righted himself from where her sudden push had made him stumble against the bed, and took off after her.