River Master
888
Missy sat at her piano, head braced against her hand as she stared at the paper in front of her. In scrawling Gallifreyan text it was in all effects a statement of her life, lives, the enumerated acts across time and space. Some were good, most were not, or at least weren't in the eyes of the Doctor. She heard the vault door open and close, its heavy locks clanking conclusively. She took a deep breath a small smile played across her lips.
"So, I see you've found your way down here by yourself, this time." She said quietly, blankly looking down at the paper, as if to give the impression she was only passively noticing the newcomer. She smirked and gave a half chuckle. "Which means you're either very clever, very brave, or-" She spun around lifting her legs over the piano bench and looked directly at the young woman in front of her. "Very naughty…and I know which of the three I want it to be."
The woman in front of her crept forward, nervously, in a rather surreptitious fashion. Missy kept her eyes locked on her.
"I just, I have questions." The woman asked.
"What makes you think I'm inclined to answer your questions?" Missy replied, crossing her legs and resting her chin on the palms of her hands as she braced her elbows against her knee. "Bell-"
"Bill." The woman corrected.
"Right-Bill, short for Bilma, or Bilhemina?" Missy replied, cocking her head to the side.
"Right no, this was a bad idea…just forget it…" Bill said turning, walking towards the doors.
"If you leave you won't know if I'll answer your questions." Missy said in a sing-song fashion. "I can answer a lot of questions…"
Bill froze, stopping midstep and then pivoted spinning on her heel. "Why?"
"That's a broad question, I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific, my dear."
"Why are you doing this?" Bill asked, walking forward, not quite reaching the perimeter of the dais that the piano was sat upon. "Why help the Doctor fix the TARDIS; why this whole thing with being good?"
"Oh, let's not get hopeful." Missy said rolling her eyes, turning again to the piano and started playing it softly an old sonata. "I'm obviously scoring points to be on parole…"
"The Doctor won't let you just go." Bill retorted. "And you said you could escape whenever so….why don't you? Or are you lying about that?"
Missy continued to play softly for a bit and then stopped suddenly in the middle of a crescendo.
"The flow of a river can be changed by a single footstep." Missy said, looking off into the distance of the vault's interior.
"What?"
"Time my dear; it flows, like a water running the course of the river of history." Missy said in a frustrated tone, turning to her. "There are many ways to control history. The high and mighty of the Time Lords opted to observe it into obedience, others decided to take a more hands on approach. Like me and the Doctor."
"Yeah, he mentioned that-" Bill said, Missy could feel her eyes burning into the back of her head.
"Let me guess, there was a pact or a challenge or a rivalry, between him and me, back when we were boys, or girls, or whatever," Missy turned and affected the wide sweeping hand motions of the Doctor, "Every star in the sky, we were going to see them all. Except I was too busy burning them to see them, and he, well, he wasn't."
"Something like that, yeah-" Bill said, swallowing slightly.
Missy stood up, walking up to the edge of the dais, down to the last step and bent forward and looked Bill straight in the eye.
"Ever consider that maybe, the Doctor was wrong." Missy said, with a fear-inducing combination of venom and ice. She turned and walked around the piano. "I saw all those stars, I had to, I burned them, the Doctor is the one that never looked at the stars, too busy fleeing, running away after swanning in like a dandelion seed." Missy stopped at the side of the piano after making three quarters of an orbit of it, and leaned against it. "I burned those stars to change history, to control it, to form it into the version of history I wanted…just like the Doctor did, by doing his little tiptoes on the edge, creating little eddies and new paths of flow by politely walking animal trails. The difference is the Doctor never looked back, not once, he never looked back. I always ALWAYS looked into the inferno I created…laughing maniacally for the most part, but I saw what I was doing, I owned it, I was proud of it."
"And you are here…though." Bill said, looking at Missy with a tinge of incredulity.
"Yes, well, it's always the geniuses that they martyr." Missy said in faux tragic self pity. She took a deep breath. "I tried to show the Doctor that he was like me, I set him up to do exactly the sort of thing I would do…and I saw him, reject it. Sacrifice himself…and, well, let's just say I have had a bit of an existential awakening, being nearly executed, jarred loose some memories…loosened some cobwebs." Missy returned to the bench and sat down. "Maybe it's time to try things the Doctor's way."
"If you think I believe that for one min-"
"I don't, nor do I think the Doctor believes me." Missy said straightening her dress. "I honestly am not sure I believe it, if I am true to myself." Missy took a deep breath. "This isn't easy for me. It goes against every instinct I have. I look at you, for example, and already can imagine fifteen different ways I could absolutely destroy you, fifteen, four of which are purely hypothetical, and it's taking an awful lot of willpower not to you know…science those four out." Missy squinted her eyes at Bill. "And yet, I find myself deeply not wanting to kill you. Not wanting to see you dead…."
"Well, I'll try to be gracious-"
"You ought to be…" Missy said shooting a dangerous glare at Bill, which made the young woman flinch.
"I still don't understand though, what you mean about controlling time." Bill said quietly. "The Doctor doesn't control anything."
"Oh honey, dear, come here, sit down, let Aunt Missy explain a thing or three." Missy said lavishly extending her arm and patting the bench next to her. Bill cocked her head, squinting and shook her head in declination. Missy rolled her eyes and sighed. "Fine, time flows like water through history, history is complex but tends towards a cohesive inertia. You can control history by observing it, binding it at its weakest points by watching the beginning and end of things. Or you can control history by directly interfering."
"Yeah I got that."
"I very much doubt you have but onwards." Missy said. "I am more interested in very directed action usually for my benefit. I engineer the river, with dams and locks and canals and spillways and reservoirs. Yeah a few towns get flooded upstream, farms destroyed but the rest of the river runs exactly where I want. The Doctor affects change by a thousand little acts, footprints at the headwaters, planting marsh seeds on the slow runs, etc. He wants to play moral ecologist, I want to be a river master-" Missy froze for a second before a broad smile played across her lips that evolved into an excited "O" shape and she lifted a finger to Bill. "Wait a second." Missy turned to the piece of paper on the piano. She started writing, and looked back at Bill. "Apologies for, I think you kids call it, pogging. I needed to write that one down, that's a good one, in case this all goes sideways."
"But the Doctor doesn't control anything-" Bill reasserted.
Missy looked at Bill as if the young woman had dribbled on herself. "Dear, you can't possibly believe that. He's the President of Earth, he's a hero across the seven galaxies, he's nearly been deified on Karfel, actually the guy he got his current face from literally deified him. Heck you guys took his name to be that of teachers and medical persons. And you think he doesn't control anything, his ethos has infiltrated so many worlds and changed the outcomes of so many civilizations."
"But he doesn't have any control over any of that, that's just-"
"A winning strategy, plausible deniability, soft power." Missy said quietly, with an elated grin on her lips. "My dear, I have known the Doctor longer than your entire civilization has existed. When your ancestors were first figuring out how to apply pigment to rock to tell hunting stories in France, we were out and about, dancing the stellar fantastique. The things I know about him, the things I've seen him do; it would make your hair curl so hard you'd turn straight."
"So, this has nothing to do with being good, it has everything to do with what, being better at controlling the universe?" Bill asked, shaking her head.
"No," Missy said fidgeting uncomfortably. "Honestly, truthfully no, like I said, that last attempt at executing me, looking him in the eye as he pulled the lever…" She looked Bill in the eyes, her blue eyes, normally so glacially frigid, were now warm, nearly tear filled. "The game has to end sometime. We've played it so many times, and maybe it's time."
"Then why does it sound like it isn't that?" Bill asked. "Why do you always sound like this is just some plan?"
"Old habits, like Time Lords, are hard to kill." Missy said, she turned from Bill, largely to hide the tears that were starting to well up in her eyes. She started scribbling on the piece of paper in front of her. "You can go now, I'm bored of you."
"That's not how this-"
"Go, before I let my instincts take over and I find out if I can turn your skin into hydrochloric acid by altering the resonance frequency of a piano string…" Missy said, growling through tears, as she aggressively gripped the pen. Missy heard Bill's footsteps walking away heard the vault door open.
"I don't trust you, you know." Bill said quietly. "But for his sake…I hope you're telling the truth."
The vault doors closed, clanking resolutely as they did.
"I do too…" Missy said quietly.
8888
AN: This is a longer more rambling vignette. Vaguely in response to Path to Hell I suppose. Apologies to those who thought maybe the title of this one was an interaction between the Master and River Song…
River Master
888
Missy sat at her piano, head braced against her hand as she stared at the paper in front of her. In
scrawling Gallifreyan text it was in all effects a statement of her life, lives, the
enumerated acts across
time and space. Some were good, most were not, or at least weren't in the eyes of the Doctor. She
heard the vault door open and close, its heavy locks clanking conclusively. She took a deep breath a
small smile played across her
lips.
"So, I see you've found your way down here by yourself, this time." She said quietly, blankly looking
down at the paper, as if to give the impression she was only passively noticing the newcomer. She
smirked a
nd
gave a half chuckle. "Which means yo
u're either very clever, very brave, or
" She spun
around lifting her legs over the piano bench and looked directly at the young woman in front of her.
"Very naughty…and I know which of the three I want it to be."
The woman in front of her crept forward
, nervously, in a rather surreptitious fashion. Missy kept her
eyes locked on her.
"I just, I have questions." The woman asked.
"What makes you think I'm inclined to answer your questions?" Missy replied, crossing her legs and
resting her chin on th
e palms of her hands as she braced her elbows against her knee. "Bell
"
"Bill." The woman corrected.
"
Right
Bill, short for Bilma
, or Bilhemina?" Missy replied, cocking her head to the side.
"Right no, this was a bad idea…just forget it…" Bill said
turning, walking towards the doors.
"If you leave you won't know if I'll answer your questions." Missy said in a sing
song fashion. "I can
answer a lot of questions…"
Bill froze, stopping midstep and then pivoted spinning on her heel. "Why?"
"That
's a broad question, I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific
,
my dear."
"Why are you doing this?" Bill asked, walking forward, not quite reaching the perimeter of the dais that
the piano was sat upon. "Why
help the Doctor fix the TARDIS;
why this who
le thing with being good?"
"Oh, let's not get hopeful." Missy said rolling her eyes, turning again to the piano and started playing it
softly an old sonata.
"I'm obviously scoring points to be on parole…"
"The Doctor won't let you just go." Bill retort
ed. "And you said you could escape whenever so….why
don't you? Or are you lying about that?"
Missy continued to play softly for a bit and then stopped suddenly in the middle of a crescendo.