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Crash landing is hard on any body, even a Time Lord’s. The locals put the Doctor in a bed, soft pillows and quilted blankets. Very rustic. Missy sits by his bedside and tries to decide if she should put one of those fluffy pillows over his mouth and nose and hold it for the long hours it would take before he began to starve for air. Or she perhaps she should hold his hand.
"Missy," says the Doctor, when he's recovered enough from his injuries to speak, "can I trust you?"
"Yes," says Missy. "Yes, of course."
"Of course." The Doctor closes his eyes and momentarily, unbearably, looks like he might fall asleep. His voice is a whisper. "But what can I trust you to do?"
It’s a very good question. Missy doesn’t try to answer.
---
Missy watches herself pace up and down the little porch. The Master is very good at pacing. He clasps his hands behind his back, leans forward a little, lets his coat billow. He never looks where he's going, but he never runs into the rails. Missy’s pleased that his visuo-spatial ability only improves with dramatic tension.
"See something you like?" asks the Master. He still doesn't look up.
"Not really," says Missy. The Master snorts.
Missy's never had a very good relationship with herself. She feels...tender toward her younger selves, that's a good word for it. Tender in the affectionate way, wanting to pinch their cheeks and offer them a poisoned sweet. Tender in the raw way, wanting them to shut up and stop exposing their soft vulnerable underbellies to the world.
"Why aren't you doing anything?" snaps the Master.
Missy shrugs. "The Doctor has a plan. I'm just along for the ride."
The Master's eyes flash with outrage, and then his head goes back down. Pacing, pacing. Missy never liked her future selves either. Prissy, condescending prats, so sure that they know more by virtue only of age and repeated failure.
"I don't like the name Missy," says the Master.
"I don't care." Missy revels in the high ground for a moment, then decides to come down and fight bare-knuckled. "Also, your hair looks ridiculous."
"My hair is perfect.” The Master brushes a strand back into place. “The name is infantilizing. It's a pet name, a pet’s name. It’s not my name.”
"Yes, I know. It's mine." Missy looks for something else to insult, but she really does love that coat. And the eyeliner. There's the garish personality, but she's not especially inclined to go down that rabbit hole for the third time today.
"Did you choose 'Missy' because you want to be underestimated?" asks the Master.
"Yes."
"Is that why you regenerated as a woman?"
"Stop enforcing your gender roles at me." Missy thinks about it and corrects herself. "Stop enforcing your genders at me."
"Is that why you look at the Doctor like that?"
"Like what?"
The Master makes a hideous and wholly inaccurate face, all simpers and big eyes.
"Yes," says Missy.
"Or is it because you're trying to be nice?" asks the Master.
"Yes," says Missy. "Yes, yes, yes to this tedious interrogation."
The Master understands. Of course he understands. He's old enough to have learned that they don't survive by making only one plan. By committing to one way of feeling. It doesn’t mean he likes it.
"You'll have to decide, soon," he says. "The Doctor's going to die on this ship. You'll have to decide if this" he gestures at her face, her hair, her beautifully overdone gown, "is real or a facade."
"It's always a facade, darling," she says. "You know me."
The Master laughs, fortuitously frightening a child who was considering climbing the steps. Missy waves at it, smiling tight-lipped and wide-eyed, and it scurries away.
“You’d kill everyone here if it bought us ten minutes of life,” says the Master, “wouldn’t you? Tell me I can still believe in myself.”
“Of course,” says Missy. “How could you ever doubt me?”
---
"Will you keep an eye on yourself?" asks the Doctor. "I can't be everywhere at once. There's Bill, and the children, and the adults, and the Cybermen, and it's all too much."
"Yes," says Missy. "You forgot about Nardole."
"I didn't forget." The Doctor coughs, deep and racking, and Missy fusses. Plumps his pillows, fetches a glass of water, slaps his back, that kind of thing.
The Doctor yelps in pain. "Are you trying to knock the lungs out of my chest?"
"Oh, don't tease me." Missy lets her hand linger on the Doctor's nape. If she concentrates, she can feel his blood pumping under the thin papery skin. Her nails are long, and if she scratched she could spill it. What would the Doctor say? Would he shout or scream or whimper? What would she do next?
"You’re too much." The Doctor's eyes flutter closed, and he forces them open again, too wide. "You'll keep yourself out of trouble for me?"
"Ye-es," says Missy.
---
They fuck exactly once, just once, just to satisfy curiosity. Outside, in the dark, against some haybales. Missy’s skirts rucked up and the Master’s coat flapping against his bare arse. It's exactly as good as Missy expected. Their anatomy fits together like a firm throbbing hand in a tight and supple glove, and the Master's hips move to a steady, pulsing beat. He cries, when he's close. The eyeliner runs down his cheeks in thin black streaks, and Missy catches it with her finger, fascinated. She remembers, but she's never seen it from the outside.
"Beautiful," she says.
"Go on," says the Master. His nose is starting to run, but his hips are still shoving her against the haybale and his eyes glitter, daring her. "Tell me I'm pathetic."
"You're pathetic," she says. "But very beautiful."
Once goes on for a very long time, until straw is in every crevice and Missy is beginning to wonder if either of them will be able to walk back to the house without limping. She doesn't want to stop.
The Master doesn't say either of their names when he comes.
"Stop laughing," he groans, and pushes himself to the side so he can flop on his back.
Missy honestly can't. She tries to catch her breath if only to mock her other self, but the sound of the Master brokenly crying Doctor rings in her ears. She laughs high and free, head tipping back against the torn bales.
"You're hysterical," says the Master, and tries to slap her.
Missy catches his hand, twisting his wrist until the Master’s mouth twitches with pain. "You know the cure for hysteria, don’t you?" She gestures pointedly at her groin, the dark curls slick with their fluids.
The Master rolls his eyes but doesn't waste time with words or light touches. Just his hands angling her hips up and his mouth where she wants it. Hedonism is one of their rare virtues.
Missy's not sure about the beard, but she does like the tongue. And the fingers. She gets her hands in the Master's hair, and the noise he makes when he pulls is gratifying in at least three ways.
"That's it," she murmurs, letting her voice roughen, deepen. "You're a good wee lad when it suits you."
The Master tries to jerk away, but it's easy to hold him in place when he doesn't really want to go. He twists his fingers hard in retaliation, but that just squeezes Missy’s arousal higher and higher, until it abruptly crests. Missy yanks on the Master's hair and comes all over his face.
"Don't do that," says the Master, furious and sticky.
"Do what?"
"You're the one who wants the Doctor to like you." The Master scrubs ineffectually at his face. "Who wants to be good. You. Not me."
Missy can feel her face tightening, her cheekbones hard and sharp under her skin. "You made friends with his human."
"I was saving her for the knife," said the Master. "Until the very last second, until I knew it would hurt the most."
"You could have locked her in a cage," says Missy. "Or a boiler room, or a closet, or whatever you had handy. But instead you fed her and clothed her and let her watch the Doctor on the telly for years and years and years."
"Because it made the betrayal more agonizing," says the Master. “That’s it. That’s all.”
Missy wonders when she stopped lying to herself. Perhaps she hasn't yet.
---
The Doctor's up and around at last, up and hobbling at least. He’s working on their defenses, and Missy’s watching his back. His backside, if you want to be technical.
She tries not to flinch when she hears the metal clanging of Bill walking up behind her. She mostly succeeds.
"I do not like you," says Bill, in that ugly mechanical voice that sounds like a synthesizer played with dental picks.
"Good," says Missy. "That's very sensible."
"Why did you do this to me?"
Missy shrugs. "You should ask the other me."
"I do not want to talk to him." Bill audibly whirs, and her vocalizer resets twice. "I do not want to damage another building."
"They're not very good buildings. Go on. Let off some death rays, it’ll do you good.” Missy pauses, just in case Bill takes her excellent advice. No explosions, alas. “All right, you can bottle it up. You’ll go off harder when you’re shaken.”
“Tell me why,” says Bill.
“It was probably to hurt the Doctor,” guesses Missy. “That's usually the reason."
She looks again at the Doctor, now gesturing wildly at a group of the locals. He’s wheezing a little, still not fully recovered. The locals are developing the glassy-eyed optimism that always seems to follow prolonged exposure to the Doctor. Bill takes a step forward, and Missy glances sideways at her. Bill’s eyes have been dissected, but the delusional belief that things should turn out all right practically wafts off the metal. They always get angry when they realize that should isn’t will.
"The Doctor says you are his friend," says Bill. "His oldest friend."
"The Doctor says lots of silly things," says Missy.
“What kind of friend—” Bill cuts herself off. There’s a revving noise, and the air around her fills with heat.
“Just take out a scarecrow,” says Missy, kindly. “Tell them it’s target practice.”
“I do not want anyone to be afraid of me.” Bill is getting hotter and hotter. “They are afraid enough already.”
“They won’t stop being afraid.” Missy looks out at them, the ants that the Doctor is trying to shield from the magnifying glass. The weak, fragile lives, the people who were sent up out of the dying city and decided to stay in the manufactured sunlight. Do they still remember their abandoned cousins? Or are the memories abandoned too?
“They never stop.” Missy pats Bill’s elbow and burns her fingers. “It’s better to just do what you like. Who cares what the ants think?”
“Are you his friend?” asks Bill.
“Of course,” says Missy. “His one and only.”
---
They're not naked, because it was only once. They are lying half on top of each other, because space is limited and the Doctor refused to let Missy room with Bill, Nardole, any of the humans, or himself.
"Do you really want me in bed with myself?" Missy had asked.
The Doctor hadn't turned red, but he had twitched engagingly, like a mouse with its tail caught. "I'm making the best of a bad situation."
"I’m not a bad situation." Missy deployed the finger quotes, which made the Doctor twitch again.
"Anyway," he said loudly, "I can trust you, can't I?"
And Missy had said yes. Och aye. "You could supervise, if you're not sure," she'd added. "He'd love the attention."
"I can't believe he didn't take you up on it," says the Master. "I mean, look at all the sexy evil plotting he's missing."
Missy glances at him. "Don't you wax? I remember I used to wax."
"I was in disguise as an unkempt hospital orderly," says the Master. "There's such a thing as committing to the part."
Time Lords don't really need to sleep, but they do need time to themselves. Time to relax. Missy is in her shift, hair loose on the lone pillow. The Master is shirtless, one leg thrown over Missy's thigh as he tries to squirm close enough to steal the pillow back.
“I’m glad we’re roomies,” murmurs the Master. “I don’t like Nardole. He keeps trying to tell me about some woman, Brook or Ocean or something ridiculous. Trying to make me jealous. Trying to make me think I’m not enough.”
“I don’t care about Nardole.” Missy tries to stretch and fails, half-pinned under the Master. “We need a bigger bed.”
“I like this. It’s cozy.”
"Do you think there's a version of us," asks Missy, "in some parallel dimension, you know, where we actually get along?"
"I thought we were getting along." The Master inches closer, his breath tickling Missy's ear.
"Not you and me, don't be absurd. I mean us and the Doctor."
"I'm sick of talking about him."
"I don't care." Missy brushes her knuckles against the hair on the Master’s belly and considers plucking it out. "Do you think there's a universe where we're friends?"
"No," says the Master.
She slaps his thigh. The Master fakes a moan—god, he's so annoying it's almost endearing, she wants to be sick—and then laughs.
"Think about it, come on," she chides. "Me and him, traveling the universe, seeing the sights, making love in the cold heartless void—"
"We did that once." The Master's brow wrinkles. "My second regeneration? Fourth? The one with the beard."
"They all have beards," says Missy.
The Master raises an eyebrow.
"I shave," says Missy. "Also, one-time hate-fucks do not count."
"Really more like three times," says the Master. "If you're only counting the cold heartless void."
"You know what I mean," says Missy. "It doesn't count if he didn't mean it."
The Master is quiet for almost two entire minutes. Bliss.
"There was that whole year on Earth," he says.
"Doesn't count."
"Doesn't—of course it counts! Me, the Doctor, the pet play, our army of murderous robotic children-"
"Doesn't count!" Missy slaps his thigh again, digging her nails in until the Master's performative gasp has a tinge of real pain in it. "Duress doesn't count. Keeping him in a dog kennel doesn't count, tying him to a chair doesn't count, being locked in a vault that he's sworn an unbreakable oath to guard doesn't count—"
The Master chokes on air. "Really?"
"Oh, yes.” Missy smiles, remembering. “He brought me a piano. Takeaways. Everything. He was so guilty, so trapped."
"Our own personal prison? The Doctor as our personal jailor?" The Master sounds lost in the idea of it. Missy injects a healthy dose of smugness into her smile.
Blissful silence for nearly a minute, and then the Master ruins it again. "How long before he got bored?"
Missy stops smiling. "The point is that it has to be willing. Us and him, in a TARDIS, sharing the galaxy."
"No," says the Master.
Missy sighs.
"You know what I like the least about you?" asks the Master.
"I'm prettier than you."
"You're an optimist." The Master's head is half on the pillow now, and his lips brush against her hair when he talks. "The Doctor’s gotten to you. You want things to be better."
"We've always been an optimist." Missy closes her eyes. "A visionary. So many things just beyond our grasp. Control, power, another life. Never say die."
"There's a difference between persistence and sentiment," says the Master. "And you've fallen off the deep-end of schmoop."
"Look at you," says Missy, stung despite her infamously placid nature. "My edgy little mid-life crisis. Skinny jeans, bleached hair, too cool to care."
"I'm not wearing skinny jeans."
"You wish you were." Missy shifts on the pillow, incidentally getting her hair in the Master's eyes. "Tight black skinny jeans, with lots of unnecessary zippers. Like... what was that Earth band we used to listen to? Like them."
"Let’s not fight," says the Master, brushing futilely at the hair. "It's sad to listen to you flail."
Missy shrugs. "There was—I think this was an alternate dimension, but maybe I just haven't got to that point in my timeline yet—there was a version of him with gray hair. And I was a robot. Do you remember?"
"I ran into them on... Mondas IV?" The Master bites his lip. "Yes. I liked the robot. I'm not sure if he was me, but it was a very good attempt."
"They seemed happy."
"And the robot was sealed to the TARDIS and could never leave," says the Master. "And it might not even have been a proper Master, just a toy for a sad lonely man in a box. So it doesn't count."
Missy makes a very rude gesture.
"Hey, baby, you made the rules." The Master grins. "Hate the game, not the player."
"I'm perfectly capable of hating both."
"But you will have to choose," says the Master. "Soon. The game or the player? Him or us? Persistence or sentiment?"
The Master's skin is warm, and his breath is loud. Missy lets him have half the pillow.
---
The Doctor is outside at night, watching the darkness, waiting for the Cybermen. Missy doesn't bother to be quiet; he knows she's there.
"What did you think would happen?" she asks. "When you let me play at being you?"
"Not this." The Doctor’s eyes shine in the dim light of fake stars. "I told Bill I wouldn't get her hurt."
"Really?"
The Doctor shakes his head. Of course not, he's not completely delusional. "I told her I'd do my best."
Missy puts her hands on his shoulders. He shakes, but she thinks he was shaking already. Is she making it worse or better? Which does she want? "Did you think it would be nice? Did you think we'd have fun?"
"I hoped—" The Doctor cuts himself off. "It doesn't matter."
"You're an optimist," says Missy. "A visionary, or a fool."
"No," says the Doctor. "No. Probably. Go away, I'm trying to think."
Time Lords don't sleep, but they do need time alone. To relax. Missy wants to pester the Doctor into pushing her away. She pries her hands from his shoulders instead.
"Are we friends?" asks the Doctor.
"Yes," says Missy.
"What does that mean?"
It’s a very good question. Missy lets her actions speak for themselves.