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The Doctor didn’t expect her to like it.
In fact, he fully anticipated some level of ridicule.
He had installed the artificial night sky in the Vault as a kindness - one of many small mercies he had offered Missy during her imprisonment. She never acknowledged them. Or, if she did, it was with a quip or a sneer, something sharp-edged designed to deflect any real gratitude.
So, when he activated the projection for the first time, he braced himself for her response.
“There,” he said, stepping back and tucking his hands into his pockets. “Something to look at other than stone walls and that miserable little cot of yours.”
A field of stars had unfurled across the ceiling, stretching vast and endless over her head. It wasn’t a perfect replica - hard to get the vastness of space into a glorified bunker - but it was convincing. He had spent hours adjusting the hues, fine-tuning the movement of the constellations. The stars twinkled faintly. The nebulae pulsed. A swirling aurora ghosted across the ceiling, shifting between rich blues and deep purples. He had even programmed in the occasional shooting star, for the rare moments she might look up and wish for something.
She stood with her arms folded, weight shifted onto one hip, watching it with an expression caught somewhere between amusement and irritation.
“Oh, how sentimental,” she drawled. “And here I thought you were keeping me locked up for my own good, Doctor, not redecorating my prison to make it comfier.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I just wanted to see if I could get you to shut up for a few minutes.”
That earned him a sharp little smirk. “Oh, you do know how to make a girl feel special.”
He rolled his eyes, already regretting the effort. “Forget it.”
He turned to leave, expecting her to mock him all the way out the door. But she didn’t.
Instead, she went silent.
Not just the kind of silence where she was plotting something, either. A deeper silence. A kind of stillness.
He turned back, just slightly.
She was staring up at the stars.
Not laughing. Not sneering. Just looking.
The smirk had faded. Her lips had parted slightly, and for a moment - just a fraction of a second - there was something almost vulnerable in her expression. A ghost of something old. Something lost.
He thought, perhaps, that she might say something real.
Instead, she blinked, shaking herself out of whatever memory had tried to claim her, and huffed.
“You do know it’s not real, right?” she said, voice light and mocking again. “You didn’t actually sneak me outside like some rebellious teenager breaking curfew?”
He shrugged, already moving toward the door. “No, but I can turn it off if you hate it that much.”
Missy didn’t answer.
Not in words, at least.
She didn’t ask him to switch it off.
And when he checked the Vault’s cameras later that night, expecting to see her pacing, plotting, or doing something equally dramatic - he found her lying on the floor instead.
Not asleep.
Just watching the stars.
It became a habit.
He never brought it up. Never asked her about it.
But every night, when he left the Vault, she would settle herself onto the cold stone floor, hands folded across her stomach, eyes fixed on the endless field of stars above her.
He didn’t know what she was thinking.
He didn’t ask what she was thinking.
Because Missy, for all her theatrics, for all her flamboyance and noise, never said the things that mattered. Not really.
She had a way of filling silence with words - loud, obnoxious, biting words - so that no one ever noticed what she wasn’t saying. But here, in the Vault, under the illusion of a sky that didn’t belong to her, she finally let the silence settle.
She let it breathe.
And so did he.
One evening, several weeks later, he lingered a little longer than usual before leaving.
He stood in the doorway, watching her. She was on the ground again, limbs loose, gaze locked on the sky. Her expression was unreadable.
“I could change it,” he offered, voice quiet in the vastness of the Vault. “If you’d rather see something else.”
Missy blinked, slowly, as if dragging herself back to the present.
“Hm?”
“The stars,” he said, nodding upward. “I could program in a different sky. Earth, maybe. Or Skaro, if you’re feeling particularly nostalgic. Even Gallifrey. Not our Gallifrey, but one of the earlier star charts. I could-”
“Don’t.”
The word came quickly. Too quickly.
He frowned. “Don’t…?”
“Change it.” Her voice was softer than usual. “Just leave it.”
That was the moment he realized - she didn’t know where this sky was from.
She hadn’t recognized it.
It was familiar enough to be comforting, but vague enough that she could project whatever she wanted onto it. A sky from a world she had never ruined. A sky from a life she had never lived.
“Alright,” he murmured. “I’ll leave it.”
She nodded once, then looked away again, fingers curling against the fabric of her sleeve.
He hesitated, hovering there in the doorway.
He didn’t want to ruin whatever moment she was having. Didn’t want to push her into speaking if she didn’t want to.
But as he turned to go, he heard it - so soft that he almost thought he had imagined it.
“…Thank you.”
The Doctor stopped.
For a moment, he wasn’t sure if he had actually heard her or if his mind had simply filled in the gaps.
“Missy?”
She didn’t look at him. Didn’t repeat herself.
Just lay there, eyes half-lidded, the stars reflected in her gaze.
He exhaled, slow and quiet.
“You’re welcome.”
And for once, she didn’t mock him.
She just watched the stars.