Chapter 13: The Punishment
"Why, hello there, dear. I hope I'm not too late for my doctor's appointment. I've got a blazing headache." Missy swooned, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead mockingly with a false pained expression.
The Doctor stirred from his half-frozen half-asleep daze as best he could against the time locks and growled. Missy had left him there all night, trapped between a dying Dalek and the freezing snow where she knew he would be able to witness and feel much of Clara's torture.
Hot fresh anger coursed through his veins as he recognized the figure before him. Suddenly forgetting the cold and the sharp icicles dangling from his nose and wings, the Doctor snarled menacingly at Missy's turned face.
"You didn't have to torture her! It's me you want!" he bared his teeth and lunged at Missy as far as he could against the invisible restraints. Many icicles became dislodged from their holds on his body and were thrown roughly to the ice-packed ground, shattering into tiny glinting shards like miniature daggers of glass. "Take me! Torture me! You don't even need her. Let Clara go!" he shouted venomously, his snowflake-covered eyebrows in full rage mode.
"Let her go?" Missy gasped in mock surprise, ignoring the pissed Time Lord's threats. She placed a hand over her hearts gingerly and crooned sweetly, "Oh, but my dear Doctor, I do need her. She holds your leash, and if I hold her, you have no choice but to follow after her like some mangy hound." Missy snickered.
She twirled her favorite umbrella around the crook of her arm and continued with a balanced tone, "Clara Oswald is the only being in the universe who can control you. If I control her, I control you." Missy smirked at her own twisted logic, though the Doctor knew it did have some truth to it.
"So what do you want?" he grated out, his voice dipping dangerously low with pure fury. Adrenaline set his every muscle on alert, and he knew that he was more than capable of tearing Missy limb from limb without hesitation had he not been restrained. He could still sense Clara in the back of his mind, sleeping fitfully. In shallow bursts, he could feel her pain sporadically arching through his nerves, only fueling his anger further.
"I need you to trust me, Doctor." Missy declared darkly, dropping all silliness from her tone.
"Why should I ever trust you?" he seethed, unconsciously pulling so hard at the time locks that he was sure bruises had found their way up his body by now.
"Because the two Tardises must be piloted with exact precision. I can only pilot one at a time. You must give me a key to your Tardis so I can turn off the telepathic anti-Angel field for you." Missy said with a shrug as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, uncaringly studying her perfectly manicured nails.
The Doctor considered her proposal and its intentions cautiously for a moment before sighing and lowering the pitch of his voice to a saddened baritone. "No. I will not help you end countless innocent lives. Not again. Not for Clara. Not for Gallifrey." he said forcefully, but not without a sharp pang to his hearts. Clara would never let him do something like ending the universe by strangling the flow of time just to save her. Missy or the Daleks will probably kill her within the week anyway, whether or not he does what Missy wants.
But every pang of agony, every ounce of fear that Clara felt fighting her nightmares as she slept in that cramped cell, and every fleeting emotion in her mind amplified itself tenfold in his hearts. He ached to rescue her. To gather her in his arms and fly her out of this hell. He couldn't just let her die.
Perhaps that is why Missy picked Clara when she gave her his number. Perhaps that is why she made sure they stayed together through thick and thin. Missy knew that Clara would be perfect for him, and that they would bond strongly together. Had Clara just been leverage all this time? Had Missy only selected her to use her someday to get to him? She would, the Doctor reasoned.
'But if I have to pilot my own Tardis, then what would prevent me from flying off and saving her?' he suddenly realized.
"Well, I'm sorry to hear about that, dear." She cooed, snapping him out of his train of thought, "You always were so negative. Looks like I'll just have to persuade you." Missy said in a huff, lifting her wrist to speak through a communication device built into her watch. "Dalek sweeties-"
"No! No, that won't be necessary." the Doctor shouted, cutting Missy off. "I'll do it! I'll do it! If you lay a finger on Clara, I will not help you."
Missy raised her eyebrows in genuine surprise, but the look quickly melted into a victorious toothy grin. She lowered the watch and placed the hand on her hip coyly. "Well, I'd say that was quite an abrupt mood swing. I didn't think it would be that easy to get to you, Doctor. I should have kidnapped Clara ages ago."
The Doctor growled lowly, but refrained from saying anything that would provide her with boasting ammunition.
"Where are the keys, Doctor?" Missy asked, and he felt as if he were about to sell the devil itself his very soul. Missy could just break in and steal the Tardis. Maybe she didn't really care to save the Time Lords. Maybe this was just an elaborate ruse to steal the very last possession he owned from home to amplify her power.
Or she could be telling the truth. Surely she knew that he would try to run off once he gained access to the Tardis. Missy was definitely bananas, but not an idiot. There must be some kind of catch involved.
But he had to take that risk. He promised to Clara that he would never let her die under his protection ever again. Missy may break his promise, but he sure as hell was not going down without a fight. He was not going to let Clara go that easily. He was going to try to protect her until the very end.
"Clara's apartment. Third floor. Under a tear in the carpet in the back left corner of her closet. Can't miss it." he mumbled out, regretting his decision immediately. If he had misjudged Missy's intentions, then the whole of time and space was at risk. With two Tardises, who knows what she could do?
Missy was slightly taken aback for a moment that he had actually told her. She grinned widely and pecked his cheek, leaving a blood-red lipstick stain on his face like a bruise. "Thank you, dear. You've been so cooperative. Be back in a tick!"
Missy giggled and skipped away down the alley, leaving the Doctor to wonder briefly how she didn't slip on the ice wearing those heels. He hoped she would. A twisted ankle or a fractured skull would not be unwelcome at this point, if not satisfactory. He grumbled in disgust, desperately trying to rub the lipstick stain from his face with the rough fabric covering his shoulder.
Missy returned nearly twenty minutes later, brandishing the small key triumphantly to glint in the winter sunlight. "I never imagined it would be so ordinary-looking." she grinned, turning it around in her hand. "You really are one for minimalism these days."
She flicked it in the air like a coin and caught it deftly, shoving it into her pocket. "Well, Doctor, she's all yours. I've turned off the anti-Angel field."
Now it was the Doctor's eyes that widened in surprise. She hadn't tried to run off with his Tardis. Hope began to course through his veins as he imagined all the things he could now do with the console back under his hands. He forced his face into a neutral scowl to avoid betraying his true emotions.
"Now, you've got to promise me you'll behave." Missy wagged a finger at him as if he were a dog, "No running off, no tricks. I'm going to release you from the time locks and escort you to your Tardis. If you try anything, my watch is integrated into my nervous system and will immediately order the Daleks to kill Miss Clara if you so much as touch me."
The Doctor grunted in acknowledgement, nodding slowly. Missy raised the cane of her umbrella and pressed an orange button. The Doctor immediately felt the invisible weight dissolve from his limbs. He attempted to stretch, trying to gain purchase on the slippery pavement with numbed legs.
Unfortunately, the damaged Dalek was released as well.
Reanimated, the Dalek screamed in agony from its wounds where the Doctor had crashed into its side, flailing around desperately. It locked eyes with Missy, staring deep into the soul of its new leader with a large pleading eye.
"Help...me..." it croaked out pathetically, hoping that its master would take pity and save its life. Blue Dalek blood spilled out to darken the snow around the robot and the Doctor as it continued to scream.
"Sorry, dear." Missy wore her best sympathetic face, zapping the poor Dalek with the same energy she had used on Clara the day before. The familiar bright orange lightning arced from the tip of the umbrella and lanced into the Dalek's damaged armor. The unforgiving bolts curled around its metal body in jagged electrical branches while the Dalek shrieked in surprised agony. The snow that had sneaked into the chinks of the metal overnight melted instantly, dripping to the reflective ice below with sizzling hisses.
"MERCYYYY!" the Dalek begged, uselessly attempting to fend off the attack with its plunger-like appendage.
Missy merely smirked in sadistic glee, "Oh, I just love the sound of that word, don't you, Doctor?"
The Doctor continued to stare wide-eyed at Missy's absolutely merciless torture of the Dalek merely a few meters away from him. He had been wise enough to shuffle back to the wall to create distance between them before Missy had launched her attack, otherwise he might be facing the same fate as the unfortunate Dalek. Bearing witness to her cruelty, he never thought that he would ever feel sorry for a Dalek.
Missy increased the voltage cruelly. The Dalek screamed horribly one last time before its bright eyestalk finally darkened and lulled downwards. The agonized screaming halted abruptly, filling the air with a stark silence except for the lingering electric crackle in the air.
Missy released the button, and the onslaught stopped. Smoke billowed from the hole in the Dalek's side. The smell of burnt flesh and melted plastic permeated the air. Thin azure blood ran in rivulets down the hot metal and formed rivers in the cracks of the cobblestone pavement to run slowly down the alley.
"Well, that was annoying." Missy complained nonchalantly, returning the umbrella to the crook of her elbow as if nothing had happened. "Get up, Doctor. Let's go." she beckoned him.
The Doctor rose to his feet and followed behind her down the alley, taking a moment to glance back at the murdered Dalek. He sighed heavily in the frosty air and stared at Missy's back. He clenched and unclenched his fists, barely preventing himself from ripping her apart. He longed to reach out and send her so far into the future that any alarm sent to the Daleks would arrive centuries too late, but she still appeared to be covered in that nearly-invisible shimmer which prevented all kinds of time displacement.
He grumbled inwardly. She had thought of everything down to the last detail, and it frustrated him to no end that he still hadn't been able to gain the upper hand once since their encounter. He was stumped, and was now left with no choice but to follow behind his master like a trotting dog.
Having successfully tuned out Missy's annoying humming, the Doctor was struck with a sudden terrifying thought as they approached the bend to the alley where the Tardis stood. What if Missy hadn't turned off the field and was leading him here to be frozen for all time under the gaze of the Tardis? Then he and Clara would truly be helpless, and he could only pray that her evil intentions to use him to reset the flow of time were sincere.
They rounded the bend, and thankfully Missy had been true to her word.
The Doctor laid eyes on his beloved Tardis for the first time in over a year. Her paint had chipped off badly in many places, graffiti and mud were spattered across the wood, and many of the windows were now either cracked or missing. The interior was dark, one of the doors had begun to come off its hinges, and soggy litter beneath the dirty ice was piled up by the corners.
The Doctor choked back a small sob of happiness to see her and sadness for her state of disrepair. She had been left alone for centuries before and had never allowed herself to end up like this. After the death of her beloved thief, the ancient ship finally gave up, gradually decaying while she grieved for all eternity. Even with Clara working hard to maintain the old time machine throughout the past year, nature had eventually taken its course on the old box.
The Tardis suddenly noticed her thief, standing there before her, unfrozen in her sight. At least she had known he was alive when he contacted her mind a few weeks ago, but actually seeing her beloved Timelord again, in the flesh, was almost too much to bear. It was true. He really was alive. Unbridled happiness filled the old ship once more, and the light on the top flickered to life brightly. A joyful series of chirps and whirrs emanated from the broken windows as she flooded his mind with her presence.
"Hello, old girl." The Doctor beamed, stroking the faded wood affectionately. He could feel her dancing in his mind, bathing him in a year's-worth of love and sorrow. She flung open her doors and practically swallowed him up when he stepped inside, slamming the doors in Missy's face.
Missy huffed at the doors. "Rude…" she mumbled, pursing her lips and placing her hands on her hips, "No, 'thank you for turning off the telepathic field, Missy'? Humph." she twirled her umbrella a bit more forcefully than usual in agitation and made her way back to her own Tardis.
The Doctor ran up to the dark console, nearly tripping over something in his rush to get everything ready in order to escape from Missy and rescue Clara. In quick succession, he flipped the lights and environmental controls on. The dusty console shuddered to life, the ship whirring contentedly. The rotors began to spin once more after a long metallic shriek, and the Tardis groaned. She was a little rusty, but more than ready to jump into the stars once again.
The Doctor threw the lever, and there it was. That groaning, wheezing sound the Tardis made that he realized he had missed dearly. The ship dematerialized out of the alley, sending snow and litter flying everywhere.
The Tardis entered the Time Vortex and stabilized. "Looks like you haven't given up on me yet, old girl." The Doctor smiled and patted the console affectionately. He stretched out his wings, still sore from the time locks. He froze, suddenly noticing what he had nearly tripped on earlier.
His jacket. His old crombie with the red lining- the one he had bundled up Clara in on that fateful night- laid crumpled up on the floor in a heap. It was thoroughly saturated in blood, their blood- stiff with the dried liquid. A dried, flaky puddle of it surrounded the torn jacket, and copious splatters of the crimson fluid dotted the ground from his mad dash to the sickbay that night. Little pits and potholes had formed in the floor as well from where the acid had sporadically dripped, most of them also caked with darkened blood.
Thankfully, the smell had long since gone, but the artifacts remained. The Doctor felt a lancing pang at the horrible memories those simple objects represented, and wondered briefly why the Tardis had never bothered to clean those up. She must have kept them there as a reminder. A somber memorial for her lost thief, and, although she would never admit it, for Clara too.
The Doctor shook himself to scatter the darkening thoughts and memories threatening to suffocate his mind. He thrusted his fingers into the Tardis's telepathic goo, asking desperately, 'Where is Clara? Take me to Clara.' Missy surely would have anticipated this move, and is probably already hot on his heels.
The Tardis groaned and shifted course for the Dalek Camps. Hopefully, he could materialize around Clara in her cell and whisk her off to safety. So far, there was no sign of Missy, and the Doctor was beginning to doubt his luck. The Tardis was taking much longer than usual to transport, probably due to her condition. After a few endless minutes, the Doctor glanced around and found a new change of clothes not-so-subtly draped over the leather chair.
"Oh, come on." he chuckled, smoothing down his tattered Angel's gown, "The gown isn't that bad. It's quite comfortable, really."
The Tardis let out a long disapproving hum which could easily be translated as a huff of disgust.
"Fine." The Doctor rolled his eyes, hesitantly parting from the console in his anxiety to land. He was grateful for the momentary distraction and the promise of clean clothes. He threw off the old gown, tossing it down the stairs carelessly. He jumped into the fresh outfit and sighed contentedly, buckling the belt. "You have no idea how good it feels to wear pants again."
The Tardis chirped in amusement as if to say, 'Why didn't you send Clara shopping for some when you while you were staying at her flat?'
The Doctor's face blanked and he blinked slowly in realization. 'I never thought about that.' he admitted sheepishly, pulling on his favorite holey jumper. Two large additional holes had been hemmed in the back to accommodate for his new limbs. He stuffed his wings through the holes and zipped up his also-modified hoodie. He smiled in thanks, patting one of the banisters for his faithful ship's thoughtfulness. He slipped on a pair of socks and shoes and promised to himself to never take proper clothes for granted ever again.
He flew down the stairs, leaping for the console. He grabbed the screen and shook it slightly. "Come on, old girl, we're in a hurry."
A sudden crash lurched the Tardis roughly and tossed the Doctor violently across the room to slam against the railing. He gasped in pain, blinking against his swimming vision.
"Shields up! Shields up!" he shouted once the breath returned to his lungs. He winced, clutching his side where the unforgiving metal had impacted with his ribs.
'The shields are up.'
"What? Then how? I don't understand. Nothing should be able to get past those shields." he panted. Using the railing, he hauled himself up and made his way back to the console. He gripped it tightly, and another jerking crash slammed into the Tardis. The console sparked, and a small fire started somewhere. The entire ship groaned dangerously. The Tardis whirred in surprise and desperately attempted to right herself.
"Hello, dearie!" Missy's image flickered to life on the glitch if screen, her sicky-sweet voice permeating the depths of the Tardis. The Doctor froze into stone instantly under her piercing gaze. "Ooh, I like the outfit. It's a nice change from that ugly old night-dress." she snickered, biting her lip, "Did you really think that I'd just let you go? Silly Doctor." she cooed, carelessly throwing some unfamiliar lever on her console.
"No." Missy looked away and the Doctor sighed in despair, though he was mostly unsurprised. Of course Missy wouldn't just let him go. He had been stupid to even believe for one second that he was free. She had him on a leash, that was for sure, and now she was yanking it.
Another deafening blast sounded just before the Doctor was shaken off his feet again. In his fruitless attempts to keep his grip on the console, he nearly dislocated his shoulders with the force of his ship lurching around him. He shouted in a mixture of fear and pain, but his cries were easily drowned out by all the emergency alarms sounding across the ship at once. All kinds of colorful strobe lights blared in warning, and the Tardis found herself fighting for her life.
A fire had started down one of the corridors and had begun eating its way up to the control room. Smoke billowed from the hall and quickly filled the room. The Doctor frantically twisted dials and pulled levers, using every trick he knew to hold his ship together. "Extractor fans on! Delete the damaged sections! Hold together, old girl!" he ordered, raising his voice, hoarse from the smoke, above the sound of the blasting alarms and Missy's cackling laughter.
One of the doors flew open to reveal harsh outer space, and the Doctor could only be grateful that the atmospheric shell around the Tardis was still functioning against the unforgiving expanse of nothingness. Large yawning cracks suddenly split the metal floor apart with a horrible screeching groan as if an earthquake had ripped it in two.
The Tardis whirred and hummed laboredly, obviously in excruciating pain. The Doctor could feel her in his mind, screaming in agony. He continued to punch buttons and commands into the computer, but nothing was responding. "I'm trying my best!" he shouted, barely keeping his footing, "I'm so sorry!"
Suddenly, a thick purple smoke curled its way into the Tardis through the open door. It glowed as bright as the galaxies surrounding them, equally beautiful and dangerous. It swirled around the room, mingling with the fire's smoke, preparing to strike.
"Your old Tardis belonged in a museum from before you were born, Doctor! I possess the broken souls of a thousand Tardises, all young, advanced, and thirsty for conquest." Missy cackled hysterically, bracing herself against her console for support against her laughing fits.
"You seriously thought that you could just run away? Do you take me as an idiot, Doctor?" she asked, placing her hands on her hips and attempting to put on a pouting face between bouts of incredulous laughter.
"I think you need to be taught a lesson in obedience." Missy smirked evilly, pressing some unassuming button.
The Doctor felt a new presence in his mind. An enormous angry void, threatening to swallow both he and the Tardis up in its vastness. The purple smoke, the clumped-together haunted souls of the half-eaten Tardises from House's Asteroid, screamed at them all at once in their minds. The Tardis cried out, clawing at her thief's mind for support desperately.
The Doctor could only watch, petrified with awe, as the glowing smoke drew out the golden essence of the Tardis herself from within the console like poison from a wound. The Tardis fought back, using her bountiful time-energy to blast the smoke back. She curled around the control room like a whimsical serpent of light. The smoke recovered quickly and loomed over her. It flickered as if chuckling menacingly before it dived suddenly- piercing the Tardis's very soul.
The decrepit old ship was no match for the sheer viciousness of her younger opponent. She screamed in a shrill whirr, her golden light exploding everywhere. Any of the windows that still remained were blasted out with the shockwave of the collision of the two rival souls. The Tardis whirred jaggedly in wounded distress, desperately trying to fight back with anything she had.
The smoke pounced again, seizing the Tardis telepathically. It caught her in a crushing hold, squeezing the life out of her. The Doctor felt the battle raging on in his mind, and desperately tried to slam up blockades around his beloved ship's spirit. The smoke charged through every blockade like paper, and the Doctor had never felt more helpless in his life. The Tardis screamed in his mind for help as she was mercilessly beaten over and over again.
The console erupted with a loud wrenching roar, live wires dropped from the ceiling, spitting out harsh blue sparks. Fire snaked its way up the bookshelves, hungrily devouring everything in its path. Missy's sadistic laughter crackled out in broken segments across the ship. The doors blew off their hinges and into outer space. The Doctor was tossed deep into the depths of his ship, becoming pinned underneath a collapsed beam. A loud horrible screech of metal marked the death rattle of the beloved old time machine.
And the Doctor could only gaze in horror as his Tardis split in two. His cries and angry shouts were lost beneath the cacophony of the dying soul in his mind. The Doctor attempted to stand, his leg caught between a beam and the wall. His face contorted in agony. He pulled at his leg desperately. If only he could put the Tardis into siege mode, then they might have a fighting chance.
Hot adrenaline-fueled anger burned deep inside the Doctor. He yanked at his trapped foot, prepared to burst out, blast into the other Tardis, and strangle Missy. "Call it off!" he demanded angrily over the sounds of wrenching metal and blaring alarms. "She didn't do anything! You need both Tardises to reset the flow of time, remember? You can't just kill her, you still need her." The Doctor seethed, holding onto a groove in the wall for dear life as the ship split open around him.
Missy grinned widely and leaned back. "What was that thing that I mentioned before? Oh, yes." she crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out. "Bananas!" She pressed a second button with a flourished twirl of her fingers and smirked knowingly.
A loud boom that followed was left unheard in the vacuum of space. The Doctor gasped in horror, the Tardis vanished from his mind, and Missy threw her head back in victory.
The Tardis was dead