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!
A/N: This chapter is dedicated to Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Michelle Gomez and John Simm for their fantastic performances in the series 10 finale. I actually felt like I'd been sucker-punched in the gut during a certain scene. The sentiments of my disclaimer have never felt more apt…
Summary: The situation looks bleak for the Doctor, Missy and Clara, confronted by a power beyond anything they've ever faced. But perhaps it's someone else's turn to save the day for a change…
The rustling of fabric and clay punctured like needles into the Doctor's overwhelmed consciousness. The pain was excruciating, making it hard to breathe, to blink, let alone to think. He didn't need his telepathy to sense the sadistic glee rolling off the creature holding them captive, her will holding theirs prisoner as effortlessly as her arms plucked Clara carefully from the ground and bore her over to the obsidian block.
Nevertheless, he fought. The Doctor fought Death's will and raised his head. A small victory.
The Eternal chuckled. "You always were the stubborn one, Doctor."
"W-what…do you…want with us?" he groaned, his limbs struggling with the effort it took to fight her influence. His limbs felt like lead weights had been attached to them and he could barely summon the will to breathe.
For the moment, Death ignored his question, instead taking her time settling Clara onto the block, tucking her hair back from her face and smoothing her clothes down. The tenderness in her gestures disturbed him, as a possessive instinct had him snapping, "Don't touch her!"
He was punished instantly; a sudden spike of psionic intent directed his way which had him writhing in agony on the floor. "Tut, tut, Doctor. Didn't anyone ever teach you not to speak unless spoken to?"
The brutal assault ended almost as quickly as it came, and the Doctor lay panting and weak in the aftermath. Beside him, Missy knelt; cradling her head as the music of the drums rose and intensified, drowning out any possibility of defiance. He could feel the echo of it through their bond, a mere shadow of what he suspected the Mistress was experiencing, but that was bad enough.
"I was always a slow learner," he grunted, with effort. Rather than punishing him again, this last seemed to amuse their captor as she chuckled and turned back to Clara. Seizing the opportunity while her back was turned, the Doctor tried to reach out to Missy, both physically and psychically but she just flinched from him with a whimper.
"I wouldn't bother, my Disciple," Death drawled sardonically, not even bothering to turn around as she hovered over Clara. "She's good for nothing but a padded cell now."
"What have you done to her?" he asked hoarsely.
"Simply returned my gift to her," Death replied with all the air of shrugging nonchalance. Missy's agony meant nothing to her. "She was promising at first, but now she has no finesse, no restraint, like a child in a sweet shop. Useless."
"You didn't put the drums in her head. That was Rassilon and the High Council," the Doctor replied, desperate to keep their captor's attention on him. Because despite how Missy had flinched away from him physically, knelt with her head cradled in her arms, rocking like a child beset by nightmares; telepathically her mind was tentatively stretching back towards his. Because Death underestimated her ability to fight the drums.
"True," Death shrugged. "But where do you think that dry old stick got the idea, hm?"
The Doctor shook his head. "Alright then, since you're so chatty, tell me this. Why?" he continued, determined to keep her attention now he had it, and get some answers while he was at it. Just until he could figure a way out of this mess. Or Missy regained enough of her faculties to help. Together they might just be able to overpower the Eternal, long enough to get back to the Tardis…
"Why what?" the Eternal echoed his question derisively. "Did I really scramble your brains that much?"
"Why have you brought us here? Why did you come here in the first place? Why did you flee the Time War? Thought it'd be right up your street…" he replied.
The Eternal snorted. "You still have no idea what you unleashed, do you? The arrogance of your kind, playing with forces you could not control. My brethren fled because you unleashed the one creature who could destroy an Eternal utterly, unmake us until nothing remained of us. We fled out of sheer self-preservation."
"The nightmare child," the Doctor sighed. "I am so sorry, so, so sorry but what are you doing here? Where are the rest of your…brethren?"
"Fled to various dimensions, caterwauling as they did so," Death continued, seemingly pausing her unceasing stare at Clara's somnolent form and looking up at the Void above their heads. "I was…trapped here. Unable to move, forwards, backwards or sideways."
"But…" the Doctor struggled to concentrate through the pain in his head. She was an Eternal, what force was powerful enough to trap an Eternal? It took an astronomical amount of force to destroy one, so to keep one contained and… "You were injured."
"I must have scrambled your brains," the Eternal muttered wryly. She gestured in his direction, as the Doctor and Missy collapsed under a fresh bout of mental agony.
"I-I'm…r-right…aren't I?" he gasped between grunts, clutching his head. "T-that's why…y-you can't…leave. Your power's diminished. You're s-stuck here."
"Oh my dear Doctor. You always work it out eventually. You're nearly there," their captor turned to face her captives once more, turning her back on Clara. She lay unmoving and white on the block.
The pain lifted enough for the Doctor to weakly raise his head and defiantly glare up at those yellow eyes, gleaming with sick satisfaction from the folds of the robe. "I am not yours. I have fought for millennia against everything you are. I stand against you!"
"Oh my sweet, silly child," Death chuckled, tipping the Doctor's chin up further with one skeletal finger. "You are right; you do stand for all that is good and right. But you leave a wake of destruction behind you. So many lives, thrown away to protect you, to fight for you, to stand with you. You might fight the good fight, but you will always belong to me."
The Doctor opened his mouth to retort furiously, but she cut him off contemptuously. "Oh, don't bother denying it. If you were so selfless and righteous in the first place, we wouldn't be here now. Your so-called friend, who you killed for and abandoned to me, kneels beside you, lost in her own agony. Your latest acquisition lies behind me, her mind barely clinging on to sanity and life, because of you. How much more powerful you'd become if you would only accept that, Doctor."
"Never," he snarled defiantly, as the skull's head sighed in a mockery of life.
"Just when I think you might be getting interesting in your prime, there you go being all boring and maudlin again," the Eternal said, flicking one skeletal hand in his direction, as he collapsed in agony again. "Now be quiet like a good little boy and let Mummy work."
Osgood was fairly certain the fall had badly strained a ligament or two in her arm, the pain roiling through her like a tidal wave with every pull of her overstretched muscles.
She had fallen for what had felt like an eternity, though she suspected that was merely her terrified mind playing tricks on her, before her sudden drop into nothingness had ended as abruptly as it began, as she collided with a shelf in the white rock of the island they were trapped on, and had clung on with what little physical strength she possessed. Perhaps her terror had lent an edge to the adrenaline rush pumping through her, as she had painfully and slowly pulled herself back over the edge of the shelf, legs kicking at the empty nothingness, and then to relative safety.
She panted, frantically drawing in air that tasted stale and metallic to her tongue, but at that moment, inches from death, it had never tasted sweeter to Osgood. Her arms burned, most especially the one she had used to grab and cling to the rock to stop her fall, and her heart thundered, terror and adrenaline-spiced blood rushing through her veins.
With a groan, she pushed herself upright enough to sit up, hands clutching her knees tightly against the dizziness brought on by the Void around her. Trying to distract herself, she looked back up the pitted rock face she had fallen down, brows knotted as she took in the distance she had fallen, a question burning in her mind.
Why had she survived? From what the others had said, this Eternal was pretty much omnipotent in this dimension, or whatever the hell the Void actually was. It…she had created this place for them, given them air to breathe, and brought them here with the Tardis. If she wanted Osgood dead, it followed that she should have died. The rock face should have been sheer and smooth, with no handholds and no shelves to grab onto. So if she wanted Osgood dead, why wasn't she dead?
There was really only one solution Osgood's logical brain could offer: the Eternal's control over this realm wasn't as complete as they thought it was. Which meant, surely, that it could be interrupted, or disrupted entirely? Long enough to leave…?
'Whoa there, Osgood,' she said firmly to herself. 'No getting ahead of ourselves.'
She still had to get back up the cliff.
With a shudder, Osgood closed her eyes to the sight of the Void all around them, and began to climb.
Boom-boom-boom-boom…boom-boom-boom-boom…boom-boom-boom-boom…
Beneath the never-ending reverberation of that infernal drumbeat, Missy was thinking.
It was true, the drumbeat was agony, but she had long ago learned to compartmentalise it, just enough to function. If she hadn't, she would have been reduced to a curled ball of insanity, fit for nothing but a padded cell, long ago.
Like many who had met unpleasant fates at her hand, that Eternal bat had underestimated the Mistress. And Missy was going to enjoy every second of her revenge.
Beside her, she could feel the Doctor's mind reaching out to her through his agony even as his hand reached for hers.
Once, long ago, she would have scorned it. Now she grasped it with all the strength left in her weakened fingers.
No one hurt Missy. But just as importantly, no one harmed what was hers, and that mean no one hurt her Doctor or her Impossible Girl.
'Ha, would you look at that? The first decent iota of character growth I've experienced in millennia…'
Osgood hauled herself up and over the edge of the precipice she'd fallen off previously, huffing a relieved gasp as she collapsed onto her back. Closing her eyes to the Void, she just lay there for a few seconds, getting her breath back and trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her shoulder.
'Well, come on Osgood. Lying around isn't going to get much done, is it?' she thought, breathing hard through her nose as she tried to put weight on her injured shoulder. With a groan, she pulled herself to her feet once more, gritting her teeth against the fresh wave of pain battering her strained ligaments.
Up ahead she could see the path they'd been following when the ground had given way beneath her. It glimmered with the noisome corpse-light, silent and empty. It gave Osgood the creeps just looking at it.
She couldn't go that way, the way the others had no doubt gone. Even if the entity that had trapped them here had dismissed her, as Osgood suspected, then that way would be too obvious. The Eternal would see her coming a mile off and get rid of her with time to spare.
Osgood eyed the ground off to the left of the path, as it rose in steep cliffs to the mountainous edges of the bowl-shaped indentation where she guessed the others had gone. Steep, but not insurmountable.
Fear rose for a moment to choke her first step, as dread rose like a palpable cloud in her blood, paralysing her. 'What are you doing?' a little voice demanded slyly in her head, 'Do you really think you're gonna take on an Eternal!? A being that even the Doctor and Missy are scared of? You'd be better off getting back to the Tardis and hiding…'
Osgood looked again at the cliffs, and felt her heart quail. But even as it did, the thought of the Doctor and Clara, trapped, possibly dying or being tortured in this forsaken place, rose up in her mind's eye. It stiffened her spine, brushing the fear aside with something like bravery. Osgood began to suspect, in that moment, that being Dauntless wasn't about being fearless, but about not letting fear rule you. She was still scared, but she couldn't leave the others to whatever dark fate awaited them. Not even Missy.
Ignoring the pain in her shoulder, Osgood once again considered the steeply rising steppes before her. Despite her initial assessment, they weren't impassable. High, but with natural handholds and footholds, and plenty of plateaus and ledges for her to rest if she needed it.
What she would do when she found them, Osgood still didn't know. But as she took the first step forward, with fear making her heart race and her hands clammy, she reflected at least she wasn't running away.
She would find them, and she would help them. Somehow.
"Doctor!" Clara screamed, sitting bolt upright as consciousness came rushing back. To her horror, as she frantically searched inside herself for their bond, she couldn't feel them. Neither Missy nor the Doctor. They were gone.
Panic made her scared as a hand reached out and grasped her arm, comfortingly, but Clara was in no mood to be comforted. Not now…
But as she turned to face the owner of the arm, she stopped in her tracks, jaw falling open.
"Danny…"
It was then she noticed, as the panic receded just a touch, that she was, or had been, lying in bed, in her favourite ratty old set of pyjamas, with Danny sleeping by her side. She was in her bed, in her room in her flat in London, and the early morning sunlight was filtering in through the lightly coloured curtains.
But it couldn't be. It wasn't real. Danny wasn't real.
"Hey, hey Clara," not-Danny said soothingly, as he sat up in bed beside her, arms reaching for her. At that gesture, Clara scrambled from the bed, arms raised to fight him off, eyes narrowed.
"What the hell is this?" she demanded. "Where am I? Who are you?"
The not-Danny in the bed sighed, looking down at his hands. "You had another nightmare, didn't you?" he asked, before leaving the bed himself. "Was it a bad one?"
"Don't play this game with me," Clara snarled, striding up to him and glaring fiercely. "You are not Danny Pink and this is not real. I didn't have a nightmare."
"You almost took my head off after the last one too," not-Danny replied. "Wait here, I'll go get your medication."
Clara eyed him narrowly as he passed her, giving her a wide berth, sending a sad smile her way that made her heart clench even as her face hardened. It wasn't real…
As he went into the bathroom, Clara closed her eyes, willing her bond with the Doctor and Missy to come back. Where are you…? Doctor? Missy?
It was delicate, fiddly work, this plan of hers.
She hadn't been exaggerating when she'd boasted of her skill in anything to do with the mind, whether it be telepathy or hypnosis, but this was taxing even Missy's extensive skill-set.
The Eternal idiot hadn't been paying much attention when she'd placed the drums back into Missy's head. She probably thought the pain would be too much for the Time Lady to handle, let alone counteract, and so hadn't worried about the back door she had left for Missy to exploit. The back door into the Eternal's own mind.
It took some work, but Missy had confirmed that the connection between her mind and the Eternal's, built by the drums, was two-way. She could attack, if she could focus long enough to give Death a taste of her own medicine.
Oh, and how sweet that taste would be. For Missy, that is.
But first things first. She needed an ally.
Missy wasn't stupid, she knew she alone couldn't take on an Eternal, even an injured one. She needed the Doctor, fully functional and on side. And as soon as possible.
She could sense the psychic pressure the Eternal was exerting on Clara, her mind walled off from their bond so Missy couldn't reach her, not without alerting Death to her plan and ruining it.
Carefully, Missy extended a tendril of her own psychic power, inching cautiously into the Eternal's mind. It was labyrinthine and vast, dwarfing her own and the Doctor's in a way that made her breath catch and the rhythm of her hearts falter. It was dark and cold, devoid of life or colour, of original thought or creativity, just control, power and icy rage, so cold it sent chills down Missy's pain-wracked nerves.
'And people call me mad…' the thought made it through the morass of pain obscuring the Doctor's end of their bond, evoking a twinge of amusement even as he sent a reply tinged with his usual harsh burr.
'Focus, Missy! I don't know what you're doing, but the slightest slip up and she'll sense your intrusion…'
'As if I hadn't worked that out for myself, Captain Obvious,' she mentally rolled her eyes. 'Give me some credit here, love.'
He subsided at that, leaving her to her work but observing closely, in that strange mental space in their heads that signified their telepathic bond. Outwardly of course, they were still rocking and clutching their heads in agony as the creature who'd brought them there played havoc with their unconscious human's mind.
With a rush of excitement that she took pains to suppress, lest it attract the Eternal's attention, Missy made out the shape and extent of the injury, the weakness the Doctor had sensed before.
Her control over this little nightmare rock wasn't as absolute as she'd made out, or even believed. Put simply, Death was in denial about exactly how weak she had become. 'Ha, Death in denial, has a nice ring to it…'
All it would take was a good enough distraction, and Missy and the Doctor would be able to use their combined mental strength to unravel the Eternal down to the very fibre of her being. It would be risky, and they wouldn't have much time to implement their plan before Death realised what they were doing and started to countermand it.
Worse, she could hurt Clara in retaliation for their attack.
Something in Missy quailed, even as another part of her sneered at the weakness she felt at the thought. Still another part of her coldly dissected the image and came to the conclusion that Clara would rather die herself than let the Eternal win. She was rather human like that, depressingly sentimental, if rather admirable for how single-minded she could be in her complete lack of concern for her own safety when faced with the death of those she cared for.
The Doctor felt her concern as well as her growing resolve, offering his own tacit approval.
'Stand with me…' the thought echoed across their bond, stronger than the pain. Another followed it. 'It's all I ever wanted…'
"Sentimental old fool," Missy mentally sighed. "But…me too."
"Then when you're ready, give the signal. And stand with me…"
Together, they would save Clara. Together, they would stop Death and if Missy happened to wreak a little revenge for the pain the Eternal had cost her, then for once, the Doctor wasn't judging her for it.
Clara waited impatiently for the not-Danny to return. She'd inspected her surroundings thoroughly, searching for anything which might expose the illusion for what she was sure it was.
Sceptical and critical, the Doctor had once said. Even if it breaks your heart.
Clara's heart wasn't in danger of breaking this time. If anything, the fact that the Eternal had apparently taken Danny's form for some twisted reason of her own only severely pissed her off. It was almost insulting that she thought this would work.
As she heard footsteps coming back towards the bedroom, Clara crossed her arms over her pyjama vest, wishing for something more substantial to wear than just pyjamas. She felt horribly vulnerable, cut off from her bond with the Doctor and Missy, stuck in some kind of dreamscape and apparently being held captive by a facsimile of her dead boyfriend.
'If I ever make it back to Earth, I am seriously going to need to consider therapy…'
Though, she reflected, it was quite possible that after an hour with her, the therapist would be the one needing therapy.
Not-Danny entered the room, clutching a small prescription bottle in his hand and a glass of water. Clara eyed him narrowly.
"Come on, Clara," he started cajolingly. "I know you hate them but the doctor said twice a day to keep the nightmares away. You can't keep skipping doses."
"Nightmares, is that your play?" Clara demanded sarcastically. "Trying to convince me that 'this' is the real world, and I dreamed up the Doctor and Missy?"
"Clara, it was just a nightmare," not-Danny started forward, hands raised to offer comfort but Clara was having none of it. She moved back, eyes narrowed into a glare.
"I'm not buying it, so try another tack," she replied archly. "You are not my boyfriend and this world isn't real. Danny died, he died saving the world and the last thing I remember is…"
Abruptly, Clara felt the sudden return of the song in her head, beautiful and terrible. But this time she clung to it, letting it overtake her and using it as an anchor.
"Clara, it's just a nightmare-" not-Danny tried again, but this time Clara's calm veneer broke. She slapped the bottle and the glass from his hand, before throwing herself into a punch that sent not-Danny flying.
"You'd better stop playing this game with me right now," she snarled threateningly, stepping into the not-Danny's personal space and glaring up at him. "It won't work on me."
"Clara, please," not-Danny pleaded. "It's just the nightmares. You left the Doctor three years ago after that incident with the Moon. And who's Missy?"
Clara laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, very good. Once upon a time, it might even have worked. So you try to convince me with this whole hallucination that I never went back to the Doctor, you never died and Missy never made the Nethersphere. But why? For what purpose?" she demanded heatedly. Her eyes dropped to the broken glass and the prescription bottle, her stomach bottoming out as she considered the possibilities. "And you're ever so keen for me to take that medicine? Why?"
"Clara-" not-Danny tried one last time. Clara had had enough.
Her bond with her Time Lords might be blocked, but she wasn't defenceless. Not anymore.
"Enough!" she shouted, closing her eyes and focussing on the singing, let it drown everything else out. She felt the world around her shake and ripple, the illusion faltering as not-Danny stumbled.
Clara gasped for breath as she opened her eyes, a smile lifting her lips as she felt the walls surrounding her mind weaken, and she could sense the Doctor and Missy again. They were in pain, but they were still there.
The illusion of her flat was still there but it was weak, shimmering like a mirage. Not-Danny stood upright, but he was changed. Gone was the veneer of boyfriend-ly concern, and in its place was cold calculation as he considered her, eyes an intense, noisome yellow rather than the warm brown she recalled of Danny's eyes.
"Ah, nice to see you at last," she quipped. "The boyfriend routine wasn't exactly convincing."
Not-Danny's mouth opened and a female voice came out, glacial and sinuous. It made Clara's skin crawl. "Interesting. You're even less human than I expected."
"Cheers," Clara retorted coolly. "Now please, drop the act. I think I found the skeletal look far more creepy."
Not-Danny smiled, a vulpine grin that made Clara want to throw up at the sight of it on Danny's face. "As you wish."
Not-Danny's features blurred and shrank, the dimensions of its body shifting and changing, until a new figure stood where he had been. And Clara was met with a copy of herself, a nightmarish recreation of the evil version of her she'd faced in her fear landscape.
"Is that better?" she asked, with an innocent smile that made Clara's mind cringe with horror.
"I can't fault your taste, but really? Get your own body," she snapped, crossing her arms, summoning all the defiance she was capable of.
"But yours is so nice," the Eternal replied, running a teasing hand over her own curves, clad in clinging black leather. Clara shuddered at the sight.
"Thanks for the compliment, but that is so gross. And clichéd," she breathed.
The levity left the Eternal's stolen face she stepped closer, into Clara's space as she eyed her derisively. "Do you really think you can stand against me?" she whispered. "It could have been so easy, I would have been merciful. Given you this illusion, this dream of a life with your Danny Pink. Wouldn't you want that?"
Clara hesitated for a moment, thinking it through. Once, she would have given anything to be with Danny. Now… "No," she replied firmly. "The girl who wanted that is long gone. And this won't work on me."
"I could erase your mind," Death stated nonchalantly.
"Then why haven't you?" Clara asked, mind racing. "Having trouble with that? Or is there more to it? What do you want with me anyway?"
"Your body, of course," Death replied, as she turned away to walk around the shimmering room, eying various knickknacks and ornaments curiously. "My people were notoriously reliant upon your kind for existence but none ever dared to do what I will."
"You want my body to live," Clara breathed in realisation.
"Nothing personal, Clara. You were just in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time. Depends on your perspective," Death smirked, delighted at her own joke. "Already, sharing your mindscape has invigorated me. So many new ideas, so much potential. I shall enjoy being you."
"But then…why aren't you already?" Clara asked, as one brow arched on her double's face. "You can't erase my mind. You can't kick me out by force…" she mused, as her eyes once more fell to the prescription bottle. "You need me to agree to it. You need me to give you my body."
"So, so quick!" Death clapped her hands delightedly. "I can see what they see in you."
Clara stiffened at the oblique reference to the Doctor and Missy, but she couldn't afford to show it. Death would exploit it as a weakness. "So that's why you sent the signal, to lure us here…"
"Oh, not I," the Eternal interjected. "No, that signal was not of my devising. I merely…requisitioned it for my own purposes."
"But if you didn't send it, who did…?" Clara frowned, disappointed that the mystery hadn't been solved. Death shrugged.
"Haven't the foggiest. I'll make sure to find out as soon as you relinquish control to me," she replied.
"So what's your plan? Take my body and…what? You think the Doctor and Missy would just let you go?" Clara asked derisively. Death returned her scorn with another vulpine grin, so much more terrifying on her own features than Danny's.
"Oh, I know they wouldn't. Their possessiveness of you is quite…titillating…" Death sighed, biting her lip provocatively. Clara shuddered in disgust. "It almost makes me want to sample it, before I leave them behind."
"So you want the Tardis too. But you're an Eternal, why can't you just-" Clara started to ask, before the Eternal cut her off again.
"Thanks to the Time Lords' arrogance, I cannot," she conceded, her voice slow and begrudging, as if reluctant to admit it. "Thanks to them, I am…diminished. I cannot escape the Void as I am."
Clara scoffed. "If this is the part where you appeal to my compassion, don't waste your breath. I will never agree to give you my body, and you can't take it from me by force," she said, her voice as cold as an iceberg and twice as hard. "So let's see what I can do…"
Clara called up the singing to the forefront of her mind once more, and using the connection the Eternal had created between their minds for the transfer, she fed it back through.
"Here. Let's see how you like it…" Clara snarled.
Clara's eyes closed as the Eternal started to scream…
Finally, after what felt like hours of climbing, Osgood managed to reach the top of the cliffs that hugged the bowl-like indentation where the others had gone. She cautiously scrabbled down the scree slope below her, trying her hardest to avoid dislodging too many pebbles, or worse, triggering an avalanche.
Eventually she managed to make it down the slope and hid behind one of the torches, it's concave base draping her in shadow. Carefully, Osgood peeked out from behind it and towards the onyx slab a few feet away.
With a shock, she realised the two figures huddled on the ground were the Doctor and Missy. They made no sound, but they looked like they were in total agony, pain so complete they couldn't even move, yet alone speak. Osgood tore her eyes away from them and looked to the other figures in their little tableau, standing slight to the side of the Doctor and Missy, and directly to the left of Osgood's hiding place.
She couldn't see the face of the cloaked figure who stood, hunched over Clara's unconscious form lying on the block, like a sacrificial lamb awaiting slaughter. Considering the dread and horror that made her skin crawl just looking at the cloaked being, Osgood was suddenly very glad she couldn't.
The cloaked Eternal suddenly stiffened, the phalanges of her skeletal hands going as rigid and unmoving as a statue, fingers curled into cruel, ivory hooked claws. She made no sound, but as Osgood glanced at Clara, unmoving, skin deathly pale and sickly-looking, somehow she sensed that this wasn't going Death's way.
But what could she do to help? She had no weapons and she couldn't fight worth a damn anyway. She also had the sinking feeling that an Eternal wasn't a being one could fight in any conventional way. No, she had to be smarter than that…
As Osgood's gaze drifted towards the corpse-green flames above her hiding place, she recalled her realisation just after she'd pulled herself to safety after her fall. If Death had failed to kill her, that meant, possibly, that she didn't have quite the control over this construct that she thought she did. What was more, the lack of further attempts on Osgood's life meant she obviously thought she had succeeded. More proof that Death wasn't omnipotent as she believed she was. Which meant her control could be disrupted….
It was a hypothesis that Osgood suspected she'd only have seconds to test. And if she failed, she doubted she would get another chance to test it again.
Osgood felt eyes on her, as panic struck her, making her go as rigid and unmoving as a deer in headlights. But it wasn't Death staring at her, she was too intent on her victim. It was Missy's glacial blue eyes that stared at Osgood with feverish intensity, trying to communicate something, seemingly unsurprised by her survival.
She had no telepathic bond with the Time Lady, but as those cold eyes drifted from the torch nearest to the Eternal, and then back to her, Osgood didn't need one as she realised Missy wanted her to do exactly what she had already planned to.
'Great minds think alike…' she thought idly, though she had no intention of ever saying that to the Time Lady's face. She was fairly certain she wouldn't survive that particular encounter.
Gingerly, she edged out from her hiding place, moving slowly and warily, hyper-conscious that if her foot so much as crunched on the rough clay under her shoes, it would be over before she could even try. It felt like a lifetime passed, her heart racing and terror trying to force her breath to come faster, giving her away, but she refused to let it. She couldn't, her friends were counting on her.
At last, she reached the shadow of the next torch, eyeing the wide bowl sceptically. She wasn't sure she would have the strength to push it, but she had to hope fear, and adrenaline, would give her a boost. Either that, or they'd be dead pretty damn soon.
She glanced one last time towards Missy and the Doctor, who were still bowed and seemingly broken beneath the mental control over the Eternal, but even as she watched, she saw Missy's hand inch out and cover the Doctor's, their fingers entwining tightly.
'We stand together…'
To Osgood's shock, she heard Missy's voice in her head, tinged with pain and straining to be heard, rippling across her nerve endings like an electric shock. She instinctively shied away from the connection, her human mind all too aware that this was not for her. Reeling, she nodded.
Then stopped, dread turning to terror.
Osgood looked up, and into malevolent yellow eyes that bored into hers. They paused, human and Eternal, poised on the brink of action. Osgood felt the creature seemingly gather herself, the tendrils of her mind reaching out to ensnare Osgood's, her rictus grin exposed as she turned away from Clara and towards her hiding place.
'Come out, come out little mouse-y…" that horrific voice she recalled from the Tardis echoed through her mind, her fear congealing like cold sludge in her heart. Then, with the final desperation of prey about to be butchered, she moved.
With a scream, Osgood shoved against the torch's base with all her might, her fear and desperation lending her strength, as the stone groaned with the bowl striated against its base, teetered and then fell with a great crash.
Flames leapt and jumped, catching hold of ancient cloth as a terrible, keening scream filled the air and Osgood stared in horror at what she had done.
The moment the flames caught on the Eternal's robe, Missy seized their chance. With the mental equivalent of a whistle, she tore open the connection between her mind and the Eternal's, feeding back the drum beat into her mind, unleashing it from its box in her head.
She was pleasantly surprised, beneath the pain she felt from allowing the drums free rein in her head again, that Clara had retained the presence of mind to do the same, as she detected that eerie, achingly beautiful, lonely voice echoing in the empty, desolate void of the Eternal's mind, weakening her further. 'Great minds think alike…'
However, Clara was too much a novice to do much else, and Missy could sense her weakening with the strain. She could feel the Eternal's rage and fear, trying to lash out at them all but with the weakness she carried, it was too much for her and the attack bounced off Missy's and the Doctor's combined mental shields.
With a mental nod, the Doctor turned his focus to maintaining that shield while Missy went to do battle. This was her arena, her forte, always had been. The Eternal would be her greatest challenge, the mind of such an ancient, immortal being so intricate and unending that Missy could never hope to crush it completely.
So she didn't try. Instead, she sought out the threads of her mind, the tapestry of her being. In her mind's eye, she saw it even as she saw the Doctor's and Clara's. The silver storm and the sapphire twilight.
Death's mind was more akin to hers, dark and poisonous, but unlike Missy's, it retained nothing of light, of life or of originality. Death's mind was a black hole, seeking to devour everything and it took all of Missy's power to avoid being sucked into it. Nevertheless, the tide plucked at her psychic anchors, sinking icy cold claws into her mind and tugging with increasing desperation and rage. Death was afraid, and that made her even more dangerous.
Missy worked with all the speed she possessed, even as the flames ate away at Death's robes, and the bones underneath, suddenly as mortal and brittle as any Ephemeral's. It was delicate, fiddly work and she went as fast as she dared. With a flare of triumph, she found what she was looking for. A single thread, the weakness Death had confessed to in her conversation with the Doctor, and suddenly the entity's mind was laid bare before Missy.
What she saw just made her angry.
All these millennia, all that death and war and blood shed, for her amusement, for the Doctor's cowardice, for Missy's desperate search for a control that been torn from her before she'd been aware she had lost it, on the banks of that river, cradled in Theta's boyish arms.
And it if there was one thing Missy hated above all, in all of her lives, it was being manipulated. Being controlled.
'The control freak and the man who should never be controlled…and the woman who never had any choice. Until now.'
As that thought reverberated in her head, alongside a memory of a plane being ripped apart, desperate screams and vicious pleasure at watching her oldest friend helpless to stop her, Missy grasped that threat tightly. And tugged threateningly.
She felt Death's sudden terror, her uncertainty and fury, as the prospect of defeat suddenly occurred to her, her contempt fading as she considered her discarded pawns with new consideration.
Missy blocked out the attempts to whisper to her, tempting her with power and freedom. As she stared at that now naked skeleton of Death, yellow eyes wide with fear and loathing, Missy's own eyes open and stinging with unshed tears, she smiled a vicious, predatory smile.
"Payback's a bitch ain't it? And revenge is ever so sweet!"
With that one last barb that Missy just couldn't resist, she yanked on that thread with every tithe of psychic strength she possessed, bolstered by the Doctor's own, the singing in Clara's head and the drums that echoed still in her own.
And Death…unravelled.
That horrific keening continued, rising in pitch until Missy was sure her ears would begin to bleed. It was a terrible thing to witness, the unmaking of an Eternal, but oh-so-satisfying. Missy smiled through the pain, refusing to shut her eyes as the flames consumed the skeleton, as Death offered one last assault.
"NO! No, you cannot do this! You belong to me, my Disciples, my Children, my Pawns! You cannot do this to…me…"
The blow was glancing and Missy shrugged it off contemptuously, her hearts racing in concert with the drums as they reached a breathless crescendo, Clara's song offering a hypnotic counterpoint, as Death screamed.
"I am the Mistress, and I belong to no one," Missy stated coldly, as icy as her revenge, slowly unfurling from her position on the ground, standing upright slowly as Death's hold on her mind lessened with every second. With one final scream, the skeleton turned to ash and the scream ended abruptly, cut off as quickly as if someone had cut the Eternal's vocal chords out.
And the drums stopped.
Silence fell, pervasive and blissful, as Missy took a trembling step towards Clara, her body feeling as weak as a newborn's, as the Doctor levered himself upright with a groan.
On the block, Clara stirred, groaning.
But they had no time to rest, as the first sounds of cracking broke the silence around them, and the ground began to shake.
"What's happening!?" Osgood shouted, rushing to their side.
"Death's will was the only thing holding this place together!" the Doctor shouted back, as they stumbled towards the block, hands reaching for Clara even as the first fissure appeared nearby. "Without her will to sustain it, it's breaking apart!"
Clara looked terrible as she tried feebly to stand upright, dark bruises under her eyes like she'd been punched, and she leaned heavily on the Doctor as he pulled her into his side. "We have to get back to the Tardis," she breathed laboriously, obviously exhausted. Missy could still sense the echo of the singing in her head, through their bond. Clearly, Clara hadn't been so lucky as she had been, which also meant that the Eternal hadn't been the source of the signal to begin with. Interesting…
Missy filed that thought away for later, as she looped Clara's arm around her neck, supporting her as they began to half-drag, half-lead her away, Osgood trotting along in their wake.
All around them the ground began to crumble, the mountains falling behind them, as they rushed as quickly as they dared on the suddenly unstable rock, the dizzying depths of the Void reaching for them, and Osgood almost fell again as they raced the collapse to the Tardis.
Osgood felt the ground beneath her foot fall away, and opened her mouth to scream. The Doctor thrust Clara's weight fully onto Missy, before reaching back and pulling Osgood to safety, a fiercely determined expression on his face, eyebrows a sharply delineated 'V' above his flashing eyes.
Her arm contained in his vicelike grip, he pulled her forwards, not giving her time to thank him, as the Tardis finally came into view, tall and blue and oh-so-wonderful. The Doctor snapped the fingers of his free hand, as the doors slammed open, as if the Tardis was echoing the haste and urgency of her pilot.
They tumbled inside, as the Doctor leapt over them all to slam his hand onto the dematerialisation lever and pulled it down. To their delight, the Tardis engines sounded above the roar of the collapsing ground, disappearing from sight and into the Void.
Silence fell in the Tardis, punctuated only by the sound of the rotor rasping in its rise and fall at the centre of the console, as the quartet caught their breath.
Missy rolled onto her back and crawled towards Clara, barely conscious, hand reaching for her even as her mind did. But it was alright; she was still there, still alive, and their bond was intact. As was theirs with the Doctor.
They had survived. They were free.
"Well, that was a first," the Doctor rasped.
"What d'you mean?" Osgood asked weakly, from where she'd collapsed on the gantry steps.
"We're the first ones to attempt to unmake an Eternal and live to tell the tale," Missy answered for him, begrudgingly turning to consider the young human doppelganger of the woman she'd murdered.
"I promise I'm much more useful to you alive!"
The final words of their universe's version of Osgood rang in her ears, as she reluctantly inclined her head to the human. If she hadn't distracted the Eternal by pushing over that torch, then Missy would never have had the opportunity she needed to force her way into Death's mind. She'd played her part, Missy could respect that. For now.
She turned away from Osgood, not wanting to see the human's bemused but beaming face, lest it test her newfound resolve not to kill her in the near future, and looked to the Doctor. "Is it over? Is she gone?" she asked.
The Doctor met her gaze squarely. "You can't destroy an Eternal through sheer psychic force alone. You're many things, Mistress, but the Nightmare Child is not one of them," he said. "But you unmade her down to the very fibres of her being. It'll take millennia for her to rebuild herself, if she ever does at all."
"Can she hurt us again?" Osgood asked.
"No, her presence is gone from the Void. For now," the Doctor replied, as he looked to the human woman who he'd thought he had failed once more. "She underestimated you. She underestimated all three of you, and she paid the price."
Missy smirked, even as Osgood huffed a disbelieving, relieved laugh. But nevertheless, she stood a little straighter despite her obvious tiredness and the pain of her strained shoulder.
"Yay, go girl power," Clara added weakly, from the floor as Missy looked back to her. "Nice trick with the drums."
"Right back atcha, girlfriend," Missy replied in a drawling American accent, prompting a tired laugh from Clara as the Doctor pushed away from the console and approached Osgood. Missy reached out a hand and pulled Clara upright, despite the complaining of her own muscles, the physical effects of their psychic battle beginning to take their toll.
"With the Eternal gone, the Tardis has resumed course for the next universe," the Doctor declared, after briefly checking the scanner, "Come on, medbay for all of us!"
Taking Osgood's arm, he helped her limp down the steps and out of the console room, Missy and Clara following slowly in their wake.
To be continued…
A/N: So this chapter needed a bit of explaining. Basically, I got the writing equivalent of stage fright, since it's such a big, important chapter. Originally, it was just going to be Osgood alone who saved the day, distracting Death long enough for them to get away.
But then I thought Death would still be there, in the Void waiting. I mean the Void's not like the layers in a sandwich, the fillings between the bread, is it? I conceived of the Void as being more like a vast space which is everywhere and nowhere, with the universes being layered the same way. So travelling through it isn't like travelling through layers of Void space between universes as such, but rather it is the epicentre they enter every time they make the jump from one to the next. It is constant and everywhere. Does that make sense…? I'm not sure it does even in my own head…
So it made more sense for Missy and Clara to have some hand in it too. Especially Missy, after how much the Eternal had interfered in her life. She deserved some sweet, sweet revenge. So this turned into a bit of a girl power chapter.
Hope you enjoyed, and the next chapter won't be so heavy or action-packed. Or rather, action-packed in a different sort of way…;D. After Saturday's finale, and this chapter, our OT3 deserves some downtime…