Series 9: What We Deserve

Warnings: dark themes, violence, torture, m/f, f/f & m/f/f relationships, explicit scenes.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. If I did…damn you, Moffat!

Summary: Wherein the Doctor warns Missy off Clara, things become heated, and Clara struggles to understand both the bond between them and her own past. (Bisexual!Clara is my head canon. Screw you, Moffat!)

A/N: This is where the Twissy really comes into play. Big time. You're welcome…Oh and spot the Green Wing reference if you can.

"I've finished programming the new algorithms into the Tardis data matrix," Missy's voice pierced the heavy silence of the console room, aimed at the impenetrable planes of the Doctor's back. "I managed to decrease the spatial limitation factor so it won't take more than a week to calculate each set of dimensional co-ordinates, and a week to travel between each universe."

The Doctor continued to ignore her. Missy pouted, placing her hands on her hips with a huff.

"You could at least thank me!" she snapped. "Without me, you'd have taken at least a year to travel between each universe. A little appreciation might be nice!"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Was I lacking in rapture for your little temper tantrum?" he snapped back, sarcastically. "Forgive me for not getting the brass band out."

"Oh, out with it. What's wrong? I know something's wrong, your eyebrows have gone all sharp and angry," Missy turned to face him fully, her icy eyes searching his visage. "Did you get out of bed on the wrong side this morning? I could help with that, you know…"

The Doctor ignored the suggestion in her voice, reining in his temper. "I don't know what you said to her, but if you've hurt Clara…" he began fiercely, stepping into her personal space as her eyes lit up. She laughed wildly.

"Hurt Clara? Hah!" she scoffed derisively. "What's the matter, Doctor? Are you actually afraid your darling companion is capable of murder?"

"Shut up!" he snarled, already turning away from her as his control frayed further. For the past three days, Clara had avoided the console room, and him, and she barely spoke. She wandered around the Tardis, or sat in the library, with a distracted, thoughtful look on her face. But the sorrow and confusion in her eyes told him that whatever she was thinking, it wasn't good. And if the Mistress and their little chess game had anything to do with that…

Clara had suffered enough already.

"I merely told her some home truths. About you and her, and you and me," Missy continued, seemingly blind to the growing tension in the Doctor's form. And that was the other problem.

She was too close. She was always there, in his space, in his Tardis, in his thoughts. She gave him no rest, the familiarity of her telepathic signature buzzing warmly at the back of his mind. His friend, his nemesis, his tormentor. His Mistress.

It brought back memories the Doctor would rather prefer lost or forgotten. It brought back memories the Doctor desperately yearned to hold onto. Hope and bitterness in equal measure filled his every thought in regard to her.

And desire. Troubling, uncontrollable desire as he'd not felt in eons. He'd always exercised supreme control over his physical urges, as every Time Lord was trained from birth to do. Admittedly, it had taken him, and Missy, centuries to hone such control. But it had rarely broken in his two thousand years. It was within a knife's edge of doing so now.

It was all her fault. Clothed in clinging black cambric that moulded to her form like water, her dark curls and hypnotic eyes, those red lips she'd taken to biting provocatively around him. She was doing it on purpose, he was certain.

"There is no you and me," he growled. Liar…

The thought reached him, slamming into him like a physical punch, yet it was whispered as softly a sigh. Damn her and her telepathy.

His head snapped towards her, and she smiled unrepentantly. "I was always the better telepath, honey…" she breathed tauntingly. He moved towards her again, threateningly, but she didn't flinch away from him. She knew he'd never harm her. This was just yet another plane to their eternal battleground.

"I don't know what you're doing…" he began coldly, but she tossed her head back in wild, rapturous laughter. She hopped up to sit on the console, and the Doctor was momentarily distracted by wondering if he'd remembered to lock the controls while they'd worked, but then she twined her legs around his, forcing him forward against her, hips nestled comfortably between her thighs.

"Oh yes, you do," she purred seductively, now pressed against every inch of him. "You remember this, don't you, Theta? We were such deviants, right from the outset…it was no wonder, really."

"Stop it!" he growled, unnerved by the use of his old Academy nickname, his voice reduced to a harsh bark with his body betraying him.

"Do you want me to stop, really?" she replied, her own voice deepened into a husky purr. The purr of a predator. Her figure was petite and curvaceous underneath him, and her familiar warmth was beckoning him. Bringing back memories he'd buried long ago…Her breath huffing gently across his lips as she laughed softly, brought him out of his thoughts as her eyes burned with blue fire. "I'll stop if you ask me to. I'll always stop…"

"You're delusional," he muttered as she bent her head to his neck, nuzzling it above the line of his collar. He arched with a moan, as she chuckled. She brought him in tighter against her, her powerful thighs holding him in a trap of steel covered by silk-warm flesh and fabric. Enticing. Damning.

"Am I?" she whispered, reaching up one hand and raking it down his chest, blood-red nails pressing cruelly into his skin. "You have loved many but you never let yourself get close to any of them, did you? I know you didn't, because you will only ever see me. Because, you see, I was the one who broke you first. Wasn't I? And you've never succeeded in getting me out of your head."

His hearts were racing and every nerve in his body screaming. She was just so close and so warm and…forgive me, Clara…

"Ah, ah, ah," she tutted, like he was a naughty child. "Much as I wouldn't mind some fantasising in later encounters, this time is just for us. For now."

He frowned, mind racing. "What d'you mean-" he began to ask, but he found his mouth suddenly vigorously occupied. She kissed as she'd always done, wildly and with abandon, giving herself over to the physical sensations with an enthusiasm their kind deplored. But they'd never cared much what their own kind thought of them.

His objections wiped clean from his mind, he fell into the kiss, letting her set the pace. She moaned into his mouth as their tongues twined and duelled together, with an alacrity that had been missing in the mausoleum. Their kiss in the graveyard had lacked the intensity of this too, and the Doctor was struggling to remain sober as he was steadily becoming drunk on the taste and feel of his Mistress, back in his arms once more, after thousands of years apart.

Oh, they'd duelled and danced together in endless battles across the cosmos, but never like this. Not since their younger days, before they'd joined the Academy, before he'd left, before she descended into insanity.

She broke the kiss abruptly, pressing her forehead against his. "Stop thinking," she gasped, hands plucking at his shirt buttons. His hand slid into her hair, disturbing the long, luscious black curls eagerly, letting them fall down her back and shoulders freely as he bent his head to her neck, feeling the pulse of her four-beat hearts under his tongue once more. Different body, certainly, but the desire was the same, the mind pressing lasciviously yet tenderly against his was the same, her hearts the same. Always the same.

"Fascinating," she gasped as he nipped at the line of her throat, hands leaving her hair to undo her blouse and jacket, revealing the wispy chemise and corset beneath.

"What is?" he found the mental acuity to mutter into her neck, inhaling the scent of her curls in deep.

"Us. This," she moaned, pressing herself into him wantonly. Her legs tightened around him, forcing their hips together and he groaned in reply. She laughed. "Just look at us. The last male and female Gallifreyans left in the universe, and all those millennia of genetic repression and self-discipline straight out the window," she explained, breathlessly.

"Are you really trying to explain this away as a biological imperative?" he asked, staring at her. She giggled and shook her head, pulling him back against her tightly.

"Oh no," she whimpered. "I'm not letting you wriggle out of this now. We've neither of us been conformists in any of our lives."

He ripped her blouse away, spreading her coat underneath her to provide some cushioning from the surface of the console. He briefly felt relief that this regeneration was so tall, that he could do this without effort, as he bent over her on the console, pressing her into the controls. Their lips met again without another word, and he let her into his mind with a sigh and a moan.

Their hips rocked together, and even still mostly clothed, the need was becoming too much. Her red nails raked through his silver hair, as he teased her silky sensitive skin with teeth and tongue.

He felt her mental plea like a kiss against his neck, as he trailed down to her thighs, lifting her skirts. He wasn't surprised by the lack of underwear, and the smell of leather from her calf-length lace-up boots filled his senses as they twined over his shoulders.

"Ah, ah, ah!" he teased her, as she glared at him and growled, her grip growing painful in his hair. "Don't tell me the almighty Mistress is begging now?"

She responded with a telepathic feedback loop that almost had him falling to his knees from the strength of her need and desire. It compounded his own, and he bent his head to her without complaint after that, the scent of leather replaced by the scent of her, musky and warm against his tongue. She moaned and writhed above him, and he heard a slap as one of her hands shot out to press against the rotor for balance.

The telepathic link she'd established between them quickly exacerbated things, feeding their mutual desire like an inferno is fed by oxygen. The pleasure, sparked by the hungry mouth of the Doctor between her legs, ran through Missy's veins like blood before filtering back into him, and soon his grip on her thighs turned bruising, and she almost tore his hair from its roots in her desperation.

"That's cheating!" he accused her hoarsely, obeying her unsaid command to rise and kiss her, not bothering to wipe his mouth clean beforehand, and she kissed him eagerly, hand turned gentle around the nape of his neck. The hard boning of her corset dug into his chest, and she smiled like a feral cat when they broke the kiss, one fine brow arched sardonically.

"Since when do I ever play by the rules?" she asked. Her hand slid down his chest to his belt, undoing it one-handed with quick, nimble movements. He swiped her hand away and undid his trousers himself, not certain he could retain control if she got her claws on him. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he slid into her, thrusting in gently as that gentle warmth, that warmth that reminded him of home, of belonging, of days spent running through fields the colour of blood, washed through him and into her. "Oh, Doctor…" she whispered, her voice soft and devoid of calculation or ulterior motive, just pure tenderness and need.

"I hate you," he told her truthfully, as he began to thrust, and her eyes widened with every movement. She moved with him effortlessly, one hand still splayed against the time rotor, the other twined with his hair, her red lips swollen and parted, her icy-blue eyes transmuted to black with arousal.

"The feeling is entirely mutual," she promised him with a breathless giggle, pressing her forehead against his.

It was also a lie. He knew it, she knew it, and both knew the other knew it too. Their relationship went so much farther than simple hatred or love, so much more complex than mere lust or revulsion. It always had been and always would be.

Unable to bear the knowledge of that in her eyes, the Doctor closed his eyes and lost himself in her instead, feeling her body convulse around him with each thrust. The feedback loop between their minds intensified each burst of pleasure, each thundering beat of their hearts, and it wasn't long before she was crying out beneath him, and he was gritting his teeth against the same.

Trust her to make as much noise as possible. She'd never been the quiet one…

The thought filtered through his mind and into hers, prompting her to bite his lower lip in retaliation. He gasped, his eyes snapping open, as she soothed the hurt with a kiss.

Clara watched the two figures entwined on the console with wide eyes. She'd come looking for the Doctor to ask a question and walked in to find…this.

Her eyes trailed over the partially-clothed pair, taking in lithe limbs twined around familiar black linen, red nails buried in silver curls. The Tardis hummed with the strength of the mental union between them, and she wasn't immune either. She could feel it, like a throb in her blood, four beats in quick succession. A soft singing murmured in her head, but this time were was no pain, not even a whisper. Just an entrancing, haunting melody that accompanied the drumbeat in her blood.

She was drawn out of her mind by the soft cry of the woman lying beneath the Doctor, and as she turned her head from the Doctor's, her eyes met Clara's where she stood in the shadows of the console room. There was no shock, no consternation there, and Clara almost wondered if she even saw her. It was obvious the Doctor was still oblivious to her presence.

No, instead those eyes darkened by desire were…inviting, enticing her, almost daring her. Like they'd been in the graveyard. A reckless part of Clara wondered what would happen if she emerged from her shadows and ran her hand down the Doctor's naked back.

Watching them, for the first time, she thought she could understand the bond between them. Despite everything, the deaths, the battles, the rivalry, they simply belonged together. They were bound beyond anything her human mind could comprehend.

She'd thought she'd known love with Danny, and she had. But there was nowhere near the scale of such as this. This was fire and death, hate and love, need and dependency. There was no Mistress without her Doctor, and the Doctor was so much less without his Mistress. They were each other's opposite, the mirror image, the future that could have been, if they'd each taken different paths.

Clara looked up once more, meeting Missy's half-lidded gaze. That invitation was there again, and the visceral tug in her abdomen at the image that began to take shape in her mind shocked her like an electrical jolt. Before she was seen, other than by Missy, she retreated, mind full of confusion.

For the past few days, she'd been replaying the chess game in her head. What Missy had said about her, about the Doctor, and the implied similarities between her and Missy…all struck a little too near the nerves singed by the graveyard and Danny's death. A year ago, she'd have laughed scornfully if anyone suggested she was anything like Missy. Now…

With an effort of will, Clara pulled herself away from that line of thought. It didn't do her any good, and while yes she had a dark side like everyone did, she would never be like Missy.

But that scene in the console room…somehow Clara sensed that Missy had planned for her to see them like that. But why? To torture her? To tempt her?

The thought brought her up short. She'd always known her feelings for the Doctor ran deeper than friendship alone, but they'd been buried after his regeneration. Before, he'd been tactile and flirtatious, albeit in a flustered, shy way, like a schoolboy with a crush. When he'd regenerated, she'd been more drawn to him than ever, moved by his trust in her and attracted by those long, slender hands and the leashed power in every movement of his body. But he'd been so averse to something as simple a hug…she'd never wanted to push it. She didn't want to lose him.

So she'd buried those feelings, and Danny had come along. Strong, brave, ordinary Danny. Danny who loved his life for what it was, never yearning for more like she had. Danny who'd trusted her implicitly and given her everything. Danny, who she'd loved, but not well enough. Never well enough.

Maybe that was why. She'd been looking for an escape from her emotional impasse with the Doctor and found one, one she could love. Danny had been so easy to love. But even that hadn't been enough to break the Doctor's hold on her heart. It never would, as she'd said in the graveyard. He was in her blood, bound to her as tightly as Missy, by their shared history.

As for Missy…

Clara had once experimented with girls in secondary school. She hadn't known what to make of it, her strange attraction to both boys and girls. So she'd done what she always did. Jumped right in at the deep end, regardless of the consequences.

Until she'd been caught snogging Nina Thompson behind the bike sheds at school by a teacher. The headmaster had sat down with her and her parents, and explained it was just a phase, that while some girls liked other girls and other unnatural things like that, she couldn't like both. It was just a phase, she'd been told. She'd shrugged her shoulders and moved on, but as she grew up and matured, that phrase had stuck at the back of her mind, echoing with all the force of a foghorn whenever she so much as looked at another woman.

That little voice was surprisingly quiet now. The woman had a kind of sensual allure to her, like a prowling panther in the jungle. Dangerous and insane, but oh so enticing. Until she got her claws into you.

Another image popped into Clara's head, imagining her hands buried in ruffled black curls, tangled and twined around her fingers. She could almost feel red lips and sharp teeth nipping along her throat, as cool fingers trailed down her hips, a signet ring flashing on one of them. She caught herself with a gasp, her eyes snapping open. Shock and self-disgust overwhelmed the arousal sparking in her belly, and she shuddered. She wouldn't let Missy win whatever twisted little scheme she'd concocted for her and the Doctor. She couldn't let her seduce her into complacency.

She could never forget who and what the Mistress was. She just hoped the Doctor wouldn't either.

To be continued...