Work Text:
This was supposed to be simple. Go to this asteroid belt, see if there really were Daleks there, kill the Daleks.
He found the Daleks. They haven’t found him yet. He also found someone else, and hasn’t been so lucky on the “not being found” part.
“Don’t you have a wife to go back to?”
The Doctor stares at Missy. She looks like she doesn’t care.
He knows better than believing what she looks like.
“Are you jealous?” He hears a note of incredulity slip into the last word and resonate around them. If he’s lucky again, she’ll hear scorn in its echo.
She glares at him. “No.”
They have been enemies for two thousand years and still, he doesn’t think he ever heard her sound quite so venomous. Even when killing him, or telling him how she will kill him, or fantasising about killing him, or –
His hearts quicken in anger. “You also had a wife. Remember Lucy?”
“I am not jealous,” she denies unconvincingly, too late, smoothing out her skirts. “Why would I be jealous. I don’t care. Go see your wife or something. Pick up another.”
The Doctor crosses his arms, looks flatly at her. This time, it’s his turn to simply say “No.”
Missy doesn’t need him to go all through his story with River and why he can’t go see her.
Even if somewhen, she is still alive. Just out of his reach, even with all of time and space. The Doctor feels something tightening in his chest, ignores it, keeps his eyes unflinchingly on Missy in something he might judge a childish eye staring contest if he was in the mood, and it was someone else doing it.
He isn’t in the mood, and in any case he wins. She looks away and sniffs with delicate disdain. “Why are you here? I was here first.”
“I heard rumours of Daleks. I thought I should check it out.”
“And get yourself killed?”
The Doctor ignores her. “Why are you here?”
She visibly sulks before admitting “I heard rumours of Daleks. And I wanted to kill some things.”
“And get yourself killed?” he mimics her, and she sticks out her tongue.
“I would have managed.”
He feels the itch to argue about this, just for the sake of fighting, even if she does have a gift for surviving.
But after all, there’s the Daleks.
“We can kill them together,” the Doctor says, feeling he’s being reasonable. “We’re Time Lords. We kill Daleks. We can be normal Time Lords for this.”
“Fine. I’m keeping count. The one who kills the most Daleks wins.”
Missy cheats, of course, but the Doctor is also keeping count. It’s exhilarating, the danger, the chase. Working together with someone who knows him that well is like a dance. He hasn’t forgotten, she hasn’t either, they just work seamlessly together, their minds linked lightly, just enough to work as one.
They’re terribly, horrifyingly efficient. And it’s terribly, heartswrenchingly familiar.
He hates that he likes it. It’s a beautiful killing dance – but it’s beautiful. But it’s killing Daleks.
Missy’s laughing, and she’s graceful, and her mind is ice-cold on the edge of his and it’s – he can’t quite stop himself from thinking the word, tantalising.
They kill all the Daleks (he thinks, he’s never sure), and they hover their TARDISes near the asteroid field, as they once dreamed they would do. Each their own, but you can go from one TARDIS to another, if you’re careful, if you position them just so. They had made the calculations once, and neither of them is very good at forgetting.
She’s the one who reaches out her hand to him, and he jumps from his TARDIS to hers. Which is reckless. But he’s the Doctor. He always recklessly manages.
“I won,” Missy says, cocky. “I counted.”
“I counted too,” he says. Her hand is soft and cold. She feels nostalgically inhuman, he can’t quite let go. “And I’m not so sure you did.”
She tightens her fingers in his. “I won,” she repeats, smiling. “This has been fun. We should do this more often, my dear.” He moves his hand to her wrist, feels her pulse. Fast. She looks calm, and he knew it was a façade. Her pulse is so very fast. “Don’t you have some place else to be? I do know you have a wife.”
Ah, yes, the jealousy she pretends she doesn’t feel.
“I don’t have only one wife,” he says quietly. “And we were never exclusive. Missy.” He hesitates. “Master.” The more familiar name, the one he called her for hundreds upon hundreds of years, also feels nostalgic. Dangerously so.
“Doctor,” she says, unblinking.
“Why are you so hung up on the fact I married River?” Her pulse is fast, but she’s not running away. “Exclusivity is not a Time Lord thing.”
She purses her lips, annoyed. She showed too much. “It’s not that.”
“What is it?” he asks, just a touch more annoyed than her. He can win in that, too.
She presses her forehead to his and he lets the ice of her mind engulf his.
After all, he wants to know.
“Ah,” he breathes out, half-surprised there is no mist coming out of his mouth. Her mind got so much colder, as the centuries passed. It’s terribly beautiful.
She’s alone, too. Lonely, sometimes, even if he wasn’t supposed to feel that, he just knows her mind slightly too well for perfect control, and he buries this awareness before she notices.
Maybe she does notice. She forgives him magnanimously, because she’s just that nice.
The Doctor untangle this last one from his own thoughts. “Missy,” he sighs tiredly, and she smiles.
He doesn’t actually know what his mind feels like, from the outside. But he is also Missy right now. She’s surprised she got so much colder, and so proud that she is terribly beautiful. And the Doctor’s mind is bright. Terribly bright. Dangerously bright. So much brighter than long ago.
And he wants to be caught in the avalanche that is always coming, with her.
It would be more worthwhile than killing always less than all Daleks.
“Come, then,” Missy says, stepping deeper into her TARDIS, her wrist still in his hand.
The Doctor doesn’t follow. He just steps over the threshold after her.
It’s the difference between getting caught in the avalanche, and venturing willingly inside the avalanche.
They can dance again, just this time. They can be lonely together.
And under his hand, her skin feels so hauntingly cold.