Chapter Text
The vase flew across the room, smashing against the wall and littering the ground with hundreds of pieces of ancient Gallifreyan glass.
“So, which one of you ladies called for me?” the Doctor asked with a grin and a bounce in his step.
He strode into the room, oblivious to the scene before him. There he found his two favourite Time Ladies – not that he’d ever admit they were his favourites... well, he’d concede for one of them – at opposite ends of the room. The younger stood with her arms folded, fury in her eyes, although they softened at his approach. The elder lay curled up in a ball at the other end, quietly sobbing in the most dramatic fashion possible. A battlefield of destruction lay between them.
“I sent the polite request for your company,” said the younger of the two before nodding her head roughly towards the other distraught woman. “She’s the one who sent the screeching and the nonsense.”
Unable to contain her enthusiasm, she reached out to hug the Doctor, holding him close and squeezing him tightly. She had missed him; she always did. He accepted the hug, begrudgingly, and patted her awkwardly on the back.
“I’m not surprised,” the Doctor observed once there was a suitable amount of distance between them again. Even after all this time he still didn’t do the hugging. “I believe there were some not so subtle death threats in there as well.”
“Well of course there were,” Missy spat from her position on the floor, uncurling herself slowly and slinking towards them. “How did you think I would take it?”
The latter part was directed towards both the Doctor and his young Time Lady friend and said with as much malice as she could conjure up.
The Doctor looked back and forth between the two, trying to discern what had occurred. Judging by what was going on in front of him, things were bad. Missy wouldn’t even look at him.
“I want to take you up on your offer,” explained the youngest Time Lady. “I want to travel with you.”
The Doctor’s eyes lit up.
“Oh the horror,” Missy wailed, choking slightly as she failed to keep her composure.
“You do?” the Doctor responded, ignoring his friend’s dramatic response. He didn’t have to ask what Missy thought about this. It was written plainly on her face.
“It’s not happening,” Missy interrupted, stepping between the spitting image of herself, a few decades younger, and the man who always seemed to be at the root of her problems. “You’re not getting her.”
“But Muuuuummmmm.”
Missy spun around to face her daughter, fury ablaze in her eyes. She was electric, wave after wave of anger rolling off her. The Doctor took a step back.
“Absolutely not!” Missy argued back, her tone indicating that it was final. “Now go to your room and practice shooting those baby rabbits I got you for your birthday.”
The young girl’s response was to fold her arms, challenging her mother. ‘Make me,’ her defiant eyes said.
The Doctor knew this was a standoff that would not end well if it was allowed to play out. He had to intervene.
“Lemmy, give your mother and I a moment alone, will you?” he requested.
The young Time Lady sulked but relented. He always had a better chance than Missy at getting her to do what she was told, thanks largely to her infatuation with him. She gave him her best pleading look before throwing her mother a filthy glare and storming off. She would let the Doctor try to talk Missy around. He had always had a way with her. Luckily, for the ladies, he was oblivious to the fact that he could have both of them eating out of the palm of his hand with very little effort on his part.
“Teenagers,” Missy scoffed once her daughter had left the room, knowing as she did that the Doctor would understand. He had to nod in agreement.
“What’s the problem,” the Doctor asked, hoping he could help to lessen her worries.
“She can’t go off with you,” Missy said point blank. “I won’t allow it.”
She would give the Doctor anything and more just to see him look at her again like she mattered, like she was his best friend and he couldn’t imagine life without her, but she wouldn’t give him her daughter.
“You know I’d take care of her,” he replied, reaching out to touch Missy’s arm in a reassuring gesture, “like she was my own.”
Missy scoffed. The Doctor’s eyes darkened at her implication. He pulled away.
“Missy,” he warned.
She met his gaze and challenged him, knowing that she’d won and holding onto it for just that moment extra to celebrate her victory before she sighed and looked to the ground. For once, this wasn’t all about beating the Doctor.
“She’s gone...” Missy paused and let out a strangled gasp, almost unable to even say it. “She’s gone... good.”
At this, Missy began to wail, sobbing into her handkerchief as if this was the worst possible news anyone could get. Once again, the Doctor found himself on the giving end of an awkward back patting.
“I tried to bring her up well,” she lamented, registering just the smallest amount of pleasure at him comforting her. “I tried to do the right thing. I tried to raise her to be an intelligent, evil, scheming young Time Lady. I tried my hardest, I really did, but she kept getting these ideas of being good and saving people instead of killing them.”
She sighed dramatically before looking at him with disdain. “This is all your fault.”
“Come on, Missy,” the Doctor tried to reason. “I...”
“No,” she argued matter-of-factly as if this was a debate over an indisputable fact. “It’s not my fault. I did my part. My only mistake was letting you near her so you could fill her head with all your silly ideas of helping people and saving them.”
“Missy,” he started again. He just didn’t see why she was acting like this was the end of the world.
“And now she thinks she wants to be good,” Missy continued to rant, “all because of you. Are you happy, Doctor? Are you? Because, let me tell you, I,” she paused to wave her finger in the air, “am not!’
“It’s not the worst thing that could happen to her,” he countered, ignoring her questioning. “It’s not so unexpected; she is part hum-“
“Don’t say that!” Missy snarled as if he’d just insulted her in the worst way possible.
“She’s not you,” the Doctor said, reaching out for her again and stepping closer. “Like it or not, she is not a completely identical copy of you.”
“She was supposed to be,” Missy argued, dabbing at her tears as she did. “My Little Evil Mistress. My daughter. My heir. My little ball of evil. My tiny baby psychopath. My mini me-“
“But she’s not,” the Doctor cut in, his voice soft, trying to soothe her.
“My failure,” Missy spat.
“Don’t,” said the Doctor. She didn’t mean it. He didn’t want her to.
“I should have destroyed her when I had the chance,” she continued, her words coming from that angry place in her heart.
A part of the Doctor didn’t want to believe her, didn’t want to believe that she meant it, but deep down he knew that there was nothing she could ever say or do, no matter how evil or cruel, that would ever surprise him. For some reason, he still cared for her anyway. He couldn't help it.
“You know why she wants to travel with you,” Missy cautioned, switching tactics.
“The same reason you keep trying to kill me,” the Doctor accused bluntly.
He knew. He was oblivious to many things, but not this. It had taken him a while, centuries and centuries, but after a fair few kisses, countless attempts on his life and a very observant companion, he had figured out why Missy did the things she did to him.
“It’s just an absurd teenage crush,” Missy retorted, brushing off his accusation. “We time ladies should be above such things.”
“She’s not you,” he repeated. He wasn’t sure if he meant it as a confirmation of their differences or as a reassurance that the young girl did not suffer the same extreme infatuation for a certain Time Lord that her mother did.
Missy glared at him a little harder.
“And you know I’d never...” he stumbled over his words, wishing he could get his intentions out with some degree of eloquence. “I’d never do... I mean... Look at me.”
Crushes and flirting with pretty, young women were for another time, another face. He had other priorities. Besides, this face had more dignified tastes.
“Mum, please let me go,” the young Time Lady interrupted, sneaking up silently and unannounced. “You can’t stop me. Don’t make this difficult. I don’t want it to be like that.”
“Little Evil Miss, you are the Princess of Evil,” Missy said in a last attempt to stop her daughter from leaving. “You are meant for so much more than this. You could have the universe, rule it. I can give it all to you.”
“I don’t want to rule the universe,” she replied quietly. “I just want to see it.”
Missy deliberately avoided the Doctor’s gaze. It was wrong. All wrong.
“Mummy,” she called softly, sounding very much like the young girl she was. “Say something nice, Mummy. Please?”
“You never had it in you,” Missy accused, spitting out each insult like it was an arrow to a heart. “You’re contaminated. A hybrid. Tainted.”
Her face fell a little more with each of her mother’s words. Then she felt something rise up inside her. She steeled herself, squaring off her shoulders and let a mask of indifference sweep over her features. She had to rip the bandaid off.
“I’m sorry, Mum,” she said, stepping forward to kiss Missy softly on the cheek. She knew her mother’s words were coming from a place of hurt, not wholly hate. “I hope you can understand some day.”
The Mistress’ face remained stony as she watched her daughter, her own DNA, walk towards the Doctor’s TARDIS. Then, second by second, millimetre by millimetre, her expression began to slip and the hurt took over.
“You could come with us, you know,” the Doctor said in an attempt to ease her pain. “I think Lem would like it.”
He couldn’t stand to see her looking like that. Alone. Defeated. Lost.
“I know this really nice planet with a quaint little tea shop that you would just lo...” he trailed off; her woeful expression told him everything he needed to know.
“I can’t play by your rules, Doctor,” she said forlornly. “You know that.”
“The offer’s always open.”
He turned to walk away, knowing his new companion was probably ready to leave and his old friend was a lost cause. His hearts were heavy with many regrets.
With his back to her, he didn’t see her face crack.
“Please, Doctor,” Missy begged, rushing after him and clutching at his jacket as he turned, falling to her knees in front of him. “Please don’t take my daughter from me.”
“I’m not taking her from you,” the Doctor said, wishing that things between them weren’t always so painful. For both of them. “I’m helping her to become the person she wants to be.”
He didn’t bother saying that she should be providing the same support. The time had come to leave.
“You always were the worst friend,” she accused to his retreating back.
He didn’t deny it.
“I’ll never forgive you for this,” she yelled.
“I know,” he whispered.
He didn’t turn back to her again. He couldn’t.