Chapter Text
DOCTOR
It’s just her luck that the proximity alarm goes off when everyone is in the console room.
The Doctor is underneath the floor, having pulled up a few of the hexagon-shaped panels to climb beneath the console. Yaz had lost an earring between the steps.
Beep beep beep!
“Uh, Doctor?” Ryan asks. “Please tell me we aren’t crashing again.”
Beep beep beep!
The Doctor finally spots where Yaz’s tiny flower-shaped earring has fallen. Cursing herself, she grabs it and rushes back through the mess of wires and tubing.Graham helps her pull herself up and onto the floor.
Beep beep beep!
The Doctor bounds over to the console and flips a switch, silencing the alarm. The hodgepodge tracking device that she had hooked up to the console is still blinking red.
“What was that?” Yaz asks.
“It’s nothing,” the Doctor says, trying to shrug it off. “Just need to do some maintenance. I might’ve knocked a few wires loose while I was down there.”
Yaz and Ryan share a look.
“Doctor –“
“How about a quick trip home, to Sheffield?” the Doctor asks with a big smile, circling the console and hitting a few buttons. The small console scanner pops up. Lines of Gallifreyan text scrolls across the screen.
“You can visit for a few hours while I tinker,” the Doctor continues, eyes still glued to the scanner. “Probably just need my 50,000-year oil change.”
“You don’t have to lie to us,” Yaz says, “we know what you’re doing.”
The Doctor’s mouth is a thin line. She hands Yaz her earring. Yaz looks down at it.
“You’ve found something, haven’t you?” Yaz asks. “Is it him?”
For a moment, the room is silent but for the grinding of the engines.
“It would be safer if you’d let me handle it,” the Doctor says in a low voice, looking back at the screen, unable to meet any of her friends’ gaze. She almost feels ashamed of herself.
“It would be a lot safer for us all if we weren’t time travelers,” Graham says with a little humor, “but we’re all here, aren’t we? You know we’re happy to face it alongside you, Doc.”
The Doctor smiles a little. “Maybe not this time, Graham,” she says sadly. “It’s the Master. The TARDIS has found him.”
Ryan frowns. “But you said he was in another dimension, yeah? That… dark place where he sent you and Yaz?”
“No, now it looks like he’s in London, in 2013 – so he’s found some method of time travel. That means I have no idea what I’m walking into,” the Doctor says. “I don’t like it.”
“And I don’t like the thought of you going alone,” Graham says. His eyebrows are knit together in worry. The Doctor feels a pang to see how genuinely concerned he is for her – how they all are.
“This isn’t your battle,” the Doctor protests. “None of you signed up for this.”
“Yeah, we did,” Ryan says. “We’re your friends.”
Behind Ryan and Graham, Yaz smiles at the Doctor. It’s a worried, tight smile, and the Doctor knows it’s loaded with more than Yaz will say in front of these two. The Doctor smiles weakly back at her. She pulls a lever on the TARDIS and they’re off through the vortex.
*
YAZ
“So you’re saying, the Master could be anywhere on this street? In Chiswick?” Graham says, looking down the busy street with its shops, restaurants, and flats. “What? Crouched behind a bodega, rubbing his hands together, cackling to himself about his evil plans?”
Yaz laughs. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, elbowing him.
“Sounds like him, yeah,” the Doctor replies seriously. She scrunches up her nose. “If you listen in close enough, he’ll probably reveal his evil plot.”
“Very Scooby Doo,” Graham says, “So maybe it’s time to split up. You take this side of the street, we’ll take the other one?”
“We should stick together,” the Doctor protests, but Ryan and Graham are already walking away from her and Yaz.
“Don’t worry, Doctor, we’ll bring you back some Scooby Snacks!” Ryan calls over his shoulder.
“Fine, but if you see anything weird, go right back to the TARDIS,” the Doctor shouts back. “And be careful.” She huffs and crosses her arms as she watches the boys cross the street. Yaz waits at the Doctor’s side. She’s been in this odd mood since that alarm had gone off.
“They’ll be fine,” Yaz laughs, trying to dissolve the tension. “They couldn’t spot the Master if he popped up right in front of their noses.”
The Doctor pouts. She pulls out her sonic screwdriver and begins waving it around. It sounds like a horde of angry bees to Yaz. When the Doctor checks the readings, she slouches and frowns.
“Anything?” Yaz asks.
The Doctor shakes her head. “Well, let’s start looking,” she sighs, leading Yaz into a nearby chippy to look for anything suspicious. (And to possibly get a snack.)
As they queue up to order, the Doctor buzzes her sonic screwdriver a few times, attracting a few odd looks. Yaz sighs fondly as the Doctor picks up a bottle of ketchup and complains that it’s gone out of date. They order, Yaz pays, and the two of them wait for their chips at the pick-up counter. The Doctor is still glowering (perhaps because Yaz had made her relinquish the ketchup).
Every time Yaz opens her mouth to speak, she stops herself and bites her lip. She knows she’ll regret saying this. The Doctor is staring awkwardly out the window, as if she knows Yaz is about to say something, and is willing her to stay silent. Yaz makes up her mind.
“You know,” Yaz starts, “I’ve never seen you act so… weird before.” She pauses. “I want to ask you if you’re alright – but – Why do I get the feeling that you’re embarrassed more than you are scared?”
The Doctor sucks in a deep breath.
“It’s complicated, Yaz,” she says, a little dismissively. “The relationship I have with the Master is very, very complicated.”
“Is that what it says on your Facebook profile?” Yaz asks wryly.
The Doctor presses on. “Everything from Barton, to the aliens and MI6: it was a trap to reel me in. It’s personal. And he did it all just so he could deliver a message to me.”
“Why are you still looking for him, then? Isn’t that asking for trouble?” Yaz asks. She takes their chip orders from the counter and hands one to the Doctor.
“I have a lot of questions that need answered,” the Doctor says vaguely. They leave the shop and head back out onto the bustling street.
“And you think he’s going to...? What? Talk to you?” Yaz asks.
The Doctor blows on a piping hot chip to cool it down.
“Maybe,” she says. “I was hoping I could rescue him from that dimension and convince him to talk.”
“You think that’ll actually work?” Yaz asks skeptically. She opens the door to the next building, a small grocery boasting cheap wine and low money transfer rates.
“Eh, it’s fifty/fifty, really. Last time –” the Doctor starts, before she abruptly cuts herself off.
Yaz frowns. The Doctor busies herself by checking behind a magazine rack. She doesn’t look like she’s about to elaborate. Yaz is starting to feel slightly guilty for pestering her.
“I’m sorry if I’ve pushed you to talk about something painful,” Yaz says. “I know he hurt you – and you obviously don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry.” She looks down at her chips, breaking one of the crispy burnt bits in half.
The Doctor swallows. There’s a long silence before she speaks.
“I – I think you’re right,” she says, “I am embarrassed. Maybe it’s because I keep giving him second chances, and he keeps failing them. Or because he knows me just as well as I know him, and that means that we’re more alike than I’d like to be.”
“You’re nothing like –“
“I am, Yaz,” the Doctor interrupts, “I haven’t always been a short woman with a gift for gab and a cheerful disposition. I was so much different when I was younger. I’ve been so many different people. Soldier, prisoner, exile, grandfather, student...warden.”
“But don’t you always say, it’s who you are now that matters? Not your past?” Yaz protests.
“Maybe that’s what I’m telling myself, to feel better about it all,” the Doctor says, “and maybe that’s why I’m looking for the Master. Because I want to prove to myself – and to him – that I’m better. That I can change.”
“I think we’re all always changing,” Yaz says.
The two women lapse into silence as they walk out of the little store and into the next one, a cafe whose teller immediately tells them off for bringing in outside food. They leave. On the street outside, the two of them finish up their chips in an awkward silence.
Yaz’s phone chimes with a text from Ryan.
“’No luck, but I found a new pair of kicks,’” she reads out loud with a fond sigh. The Doctor doesn’t laugh.
“Hey,” Yaz says, nudging the Doctor’s arm with hers, “Thanks for, you know, talking to me. You don’t have to be so stoic and mysterious all the time, alright? You’re my mate, not my mum.”
The Doctor raises an eyebrow. “I told you I was a grandfather, didn’t I?” she says, smiling a little in spite of herself. “Come on, Yaz, we’ve got work to do. Let’s get a shift on.”
*
RYAN
Ryan glances up from his phone when the pub erupts into cheers. The dusty telly on the wall shows an instant replay of the football spinning into the net.
Graham appears from the midst of the crowd, looking cheerful and holding two drinks. He slides Ryan’s cider across the table towards him, and raises his own pint of bitter in a toast.
“Cheers,” Graham says as they clink their glasses together. “I can’t tell you the last time I sat down in a proper pub.”
“What about that tavern on Peladon? That was nice,” Ryan says.
“It don’t count as ‘nice’ if we end up chased out by aliens before I can finish my drink!” Graham protests. “Nah. You only say that ‘cos the bartender was flirting with you.”
“It’s a big universe,” Ryan shrugs. “Don’t you want great-grandchildren?”
Graham stops mid-drink and splutters, spraying a mouthful of ale over half the table. “Great-grandkids?!” he gasps.
“I’m only joking!” Ryan laughs, breaking into a smile. “You should have seen your face.”
Graham narrows his eyes and starts mopping up the table with a napkin.
Ryan’s phone buzzes with a text message from Yaz.
if i have to buy another pack of gum out of politeness while the dr pokes around some dinky newsagent, i’m gonna scream. :crying: 😭
“The Doctor and Yaz still at it?” Graham asks, shaking his head and frowning.
Ryan can tell that Graham thinks their search is futile – and he can’t say he disagrees. Personally, Ryan hopes it’s futile, too. He can’t shake the image of the Doctor’s face on the plane when O had revealed his true identity. Nothing’s been the same since then.
The Doctor has been distant and cold, quick to anger, and slow to answer their questions. Yaz is always trying to figure the Doctor out, but sometimes Ryan thinks he can read the Doctor all too well. He knows from experience – she’s grieving.
The pub suddenly bursts into jeers at something happening in the match. Ryan turns back to the telly to see what’s going on.
“2013...” Ryan says thoughtfully. “Do you remember watching this match?”
“I dunno, honestly,” Graham shrugs. “We made the semi-finals that year, but I was doing chemo. Give me a Saturday afternoon match and a cup of tea, and I was out like a light.”
“Nan’s out there, somewhere,” Ryan says, glancing out the pub window as though he’s going to see her standing out there on the street. “Can you imagine? Probably yelling at me to put down ‘Call of Duty’ and go get some fresh air.”
“You know what the Doc told us, so don’t go getting any ideas,” Graham starts, suddenly looking stricken, but Ryan shakes his head.
“I know,” Ryan sighs, “I just… it makes me feel better to think that, no matter where I am, she’s still out there somewhere. In time. Everything she ever did or said is still happening, in that great big web of time and space. Same for my mum.”
Graham looks lost for words. He reaches out and covers Ryan’s hand with his own, just for a moment.
“Grace would be so smug if she saw us here today,” Graham says. “’I always knew you two would get along,’ she’d say. We’d never hear the end of it.”
Ryan laughs. “How do you think the Doctor stands it? Knowing she can travel in time, that she could change things or visit someone she’s lost?”
“You know what?” Graham raises his eyebrows. “I don’t think she can stand it. I think it eats her up, sometimes, and I bet she’s made her own mistakes. Caused one of them paragons.”
“You mean paradox?” Ryan smiles.
“Yeah, that’s the one,” Graham says. “Paradox! Look at you, you know the lingo! You’re practically a professional time traveler.”
“Nah, it’s all in Back to the Future,” Ryan laughs. “No paradoxes on my watch!”
*
DOCTOR
The afternoon is turning to evening by the time the Doctor stops at the second-to-last shop on the high street.
It’s a tiny discount mobile shop, one of the kind with loud signs broadcasting pay-as-you-go plans, cracked screen repairs, and even refurbished laptops. A bell rings as they pop inside for a quick look. The Doctor walks past the front counter and heads straight to the back of the shop, her eye caught by a display of pre-paid mobile phones.
“We’re closing in ten minutes, love,” the bored-looking shopkeeper tells Yaz.
“Thanks.”
“I haven’t bought any minutes for my phone in ages, Yaz, d’you think I need to?” the Doctor calls over her shoulder. “I’m not sure how this works.”
“What kind of phone do you have?” Yaz asks, examining a pre-paid minutes card.
“I dunno, it’s one of the flippy ones.”
“Oh my god, that’s ancient,” Yaz pulls the Doctor over to the smartphones. “Get one of these. They’ve got touch screens now, look, and you can play games on them.”
A few minutes later, the Doctor strolls up to the till, clutching her chosen smartphone proudly.
“It’s about time,” the shopkeeper says in a thick cockney accent “I’m just ‘bout to close up, aren’t I?”
The Doctor drops the box on the counter in surprise.
She’d been playing with the controls of the TARDIS, trying to track down the Master, and she hadn’t realized...hadn’t thought –
“Oh, I know that expression,” the shopkeeper says. She smiles and drops her cockney accent.
“Gets me every time. Look at that mouth drop. And that’s a new mouth, isn’t it? Not one I know – although clearly, you know me...”
Missy smiles, showing her teeth for a moment.
“Doctor –” Yaz starts, unsure whether to be frightened or amused. The Doctor throws up a hand to silence her rudely.
“What a marvelous surprise,” Missy says, picking up the smartphone box and throwing it over her shoulder. “I was expecting the boy in the bow-tie to show up, not a dish in a dress. Congratulations, I might say,” she grins.
The Doctor just frowns. “Chiswick, 2013… Clara. How could I be so stupid?” she asks herself, smacking her own forehead. “Sorry, my mistake. I’ll be going, now. Don’t mind me.”
She wheels towards the door, pushing Yaz ahead of her.
Missy jumps over the counter like it’s a hurdle, black skirts swishing around her. She stops in front of the door.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Missy smiles, leering, “I’ve thought very long and hard about how I would greet you in your new regeneration.”
“Then save it,” the Doctor snaps, “I’m not here for you. I’ve crossed my own timeline – I’m not the Doctor you’re waiting for. I’m looking for your future incarnation.”
“Oh my god,” Yaz interrupts. “Is this the Master? In a woman’s body?”
Missy glances at Yaz disgustedly. “Oh, please tell me I’m not a man again. That seems rather boring.”
“I love to disappoint,” the Doctor says, pushing past Missy and opening the door. “Maybe you missed the beard. Personally, I’m not really sure of the appeal.”
The Doctor sets a fast pace as she walks down the street, Yaz running behind her. Missy keeps up, even though she’s in heels.
“You know, we’re not really breaking the Laws of Time, not really,” Missy says, “not even a little bit. I think they rewrote them, actually, for you and dear Professor Song – “
Yaz interrupts, “Who?”
“When did you run into River?” the Doctor frowns.
“Oh, a few times,” Missy smiles sweetly. “I spent three months stranded with her in the time vortex. She’s a lovely singer, you know.”
“I don’t care about the Laws of Time,” the Doctor says. “You aren’t who I’m looking for. You can’t help me. So I’m moving on.”
“Oh?”
“It’s what I do.”
“You’re – you’re mad at me, aren’t you?” Missy cackles with glee. “My goodness, I am flattered. You’re raging! Absolutely seething! Hey you, faithful companion, do you have a phone I can borrow? I would love a picture of the face she’s making right now. What on Earth did I do to deserve this honor?”
The Doctor stops so suddenly in the middle of the pavement that Yaz almost runs into her.
“Yes, I’m angry,” the Doctor says through gritted teeth, turning on Missy. “You have no idea what you – what he has done, this time ‘round. So you cannot tell me a single useful thing. So get on your,” the Doctor stammers angrily, “Your, your daft brolly, and float away like a disappointing Mary Poppins, and leave me alone!”
The Doctor stalks away, alone.
“Is that the best insult she could come up with?” Missy mutters dryly.
*
DOCTOR
Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor heads to the console and furiously begins to adjust the controls. She’s being none too gentle, resulting in a slight static shock from the TARDIS.
“Ow!” she says, popping her thumb in her mouth.
“Bad luck, then?” Ryan asks sympathetically. The Doctor looks up to see Graham and Ryan sitting on the far end of the console room. Clearly, their football match was over.
“Us too,” Graham says, “Although I swore he would be in that pub, watching the footie.”
Yaz had closely followed the Doctor back to the TARDIS. She’s quiet, but she had been full of questions earlier. When Ryan shoots a questioning glance at her, she shakes her head. Not now.
The Doctor knows they’ll gossip later, but right now she can’t bring herself to care. She doesn’t want to talk, or to think. She just wants to dematerialize and send the TARDIS spinning through the vortex, as far away from 2013 as she can.
The TARDIS doors creak open again before she can finish her thought.
Missy strolls right in, her heels clicking on the crystal floor.
“You still keep a spare key above the ‘P,’ then,” she says flatly, tossing a key at the Doctor, who catches it and blushes. “I’m surprised you can reach that high,” Missy chuckles, as though she’s any taller than the Doctor.
“Who the hell are you?” Graham says, stepping forwards protectively. Missy turns in his direction.
“Get out,” the Doctor says sharply, pointing back towards the doors.
Missy just smiles at her. “If you really didn’t want me here, the TARDIS wouldn’t have let me in. Now, why would she do that? Especially if you’re so angry at me?”
The Doctor’s face stills. She glares wordlessly.
“Option number one, she’s forgiven me, because I’ve done nothing wrong,” Missy says, dramatically clapping a hand over her chest. “Option number two – you let me in when I was here last in this regeneration. And you let me pilot the ship.” She sets a hand on the console, which doesn’t shock her. “Hmm,” Missy smirks, “I like option two.”
“I can’t tell you what happens in your future,” the Doctor says. “You know I can’t, so I don’t know why you’re asking.”
“Not even a tease?” Missy pouts. She strokes the TARDIS console slowly, sensuously, and bats her eyelashes. “Please, I’m being so good.”
“You’re being inappropriate,” the Doctor snorts. “Can’t you tell I want to be left alone?”
“Yes,” Missy says, “that’s what’s so intriguing. Usually you’re overjoyed to see me, even if you pretend you’re not. But you aren’t playing along this time.” She pouts.
“You know how this has to go,” the Doctor says softly. “I’ll see you again, soon. Maybe.” She swallows. “I always do.”
“You’re no fun,” Missy frowns, dodging the Doctor to smack a button on the console. The TARDIS begins to dematerialize.
“Hey!” the Doctor yelps, jumping for the controls. “Stop it!”
“Shan’t,” Missy shrugs, flipping another lever and a few buttons as she dances around the console. The time rotor speeds up. “You should’ve turned isomorphic back on.”
The Doctor follows her, flipping switches back into place until she catches up with Missy. She grabs Missy’s wrist as her hand goes for the helmic regulator. Missy turns to pull away, but the Doctor holds her there for a moment, keeping her within reach.
All at once, the Doctor remembers Graham, Yaz, and Ryan standing there, watching in stunned silence. She can feel their eyes on the back of her neck, and finds herself flushing.
“What do you want?” the Doctor asks Missy in an undertone. “What can I do...that you’ll leave me alone? So we can head back to our respective time streams?”
“Hmm,” Missy tilts her head, considering. She yanks her arm from the Doctor’s grip. “Dinner. Your treat.”
“Fine,” the Doctor says. “Dinner. And then you’re back to 2013, and up to no good.”
“As always,” Missy flashes a smile. “I’ll get changed, then.”
She struts off towards the rest of the TARDIS, giving the Doctor’s friends a haughty, smug look. The Doctor turns away, just listening to the echo of her heels clicking in the halls.
*
MISSY
Missy makes her way through the TARDIS, going so deep that the walls are the boring white roundels and the floor is smooth and plain. The TARDIS doesn't feel organic at this level, although she knows it is. The Doctor's TARDIS has grown wild over the last few hundred years, Missy thinks. She’s growing coral and crystal, and getting larger when no one is looking.
After a few moments, Missy finally finds what she's looking for. The door is the same heavy, bulky TARDIS default, but the interior is much different.
The TARDIS closet. It’s still set on the coral desktop theme, just as it had been when Missy had turned it into a paradox machine. The Doctor probably hasn't used it in years. Maybe she thinks she’s lost it.
The racks and racks of clothing before her aren't particularly promising. Missy takes one look at the Doctor's tie collection and almost gives up entirely. She climbs the spiral staircase to a second level and walks past a rack of clothes, running her fingertips over them as she passes. She hesitates at the touch of velvet.
It's been over a thousand years. It should have crumbled to dust by now. But the TARDIS is nostalgic, and keeps things frozen in time when they're out of sight.
The black velvet jacket is exactly how she remembers. Ornate collar. Horrible, tacky, puffy sleeves. She remembers the night she left it on the TARDIS. It's been cleaned since then and carefully hung up.
She tries to imagine what kind of face the Doctor would make if she returned to the console room in this. Not just a reminder of that night, but of so many others. The guilt, the shame – the trepidation. She can still feel the Doctor's shaking fingers unbuttoning her collar.
No. Maybe another time.
She returns the jacket to the rack. Whatever her future self has done, it's not good. She should be delighted, really: this means that she wins in the future. And not only that, but it obviously has the intended effect on the Doctor. Her rage is delicious.
Missy snaps her fingers. She knows the perfect place to take them – she hasn’t been in centuries, but it’s a lovely little moon, out of the way, filled with restaurants and bars and casinos...
"New Bavaria. Dinner and excellent wine," Missy murmurs to herself. "Perfect."
With a discriminating eye, Missy looks around the closet once more. She spots a section from the appropriate century and smiles.
She's feeling very feminine, so she might as well...
*
DOCTOR
As soon as Missy is out of sight, the Doctor sets the TARDIS controls on isomorphic and adjusts the scanner. While her ship has changed over the years, it’s still the same when you go down far enough into the old rooms. Missy will find her way to what she wants soon enough.
The Doctor feels her shoulders tense up while she waits for one of her friends to break the silence. She isn’t sure if they’ve been too scared or too shell-shocked for the past thirty seconds to say a word. The Doctor keeps her head down and pretends she’s adjusting the controls.
“You can tell them who she is, Yaz,” the Doctor sighs. “You’re right.”
Yaz hesitates. “I’m not sure I even understand what just happened,” she says.
“Me neither,” Ryan says.
“I do,” Graham says cheerfully. “That’s your ex-wife, right?”
The Doctor looks up. “What?” she says, horrified. Yaz grimaces.
“Knows where your spare key is, walks in like she owns the place, and asks you to dinner? That’s textbook ex, that is,” Graham says, like he’s proud of himself.
“Time travel is wild,” Ryan says, “how do you manage to stay married when you meet at different points all the time?”
“No, no, no, no!” the Doctor shakes her head. “I think you’ve got her mixed up with someone very, very different.”
“So you have been married?!” Graham asks, delighted.
“I did – I do – it’s complicated –“
“She’s the Master,” Yaz spits out suddenly, a little bitterly. The Doctor frowns at her. “The signal the Doctor found was the right person, but also the wrong one.”
“You’re all a little bit right,” the Doctor sighs. She glances at the empty corridor that Missy had disappeared into. “Remember what I told you, about how I can regenerate my body into a different person? The Master has had a fair few of those, and the last one was Missy. That’s what she called herself.”
“Missy?” Graham repeats.
“Oh, like Master/Mistress,” Ryan says, then makes a face. “Yuck.”
"The Master is a time traveler, like me," the Doctor explains, "and a Time Lord. Generally, the rule with other time travelers is to keep yourselves straight on the same timeline, so you don't spoil the future and cause a paradox. That means no interaction with an earlier or later version of yourself, and no messing around with someone's past or future."
"Don't you break those rules all the time?" Ryan asks, sharing a wry glance with Graham.
"Hey!" the Doctor says, "a little rule-bending doesn't hurt anyone!"
"Then how is this different?" Yaz asks. She crosses her arms over her chest.
"It's more than just bending the rules," the Doctor says. "If the Master and I are two threads running through time, then I've circled back and tangled them up. I’m at the risk of crossing my own path. I know why she was in that shop, and what she does there." The Doctor frowns. "If she doesn't get back and carry out her plan, I never meet – well, someone important to me. Someone that saves my life."
Yaz blinks a few times, confused.
"But you're here now," she says, "so surely that's still going to happen?"
The Doctor shrugs. "At any moment, a small decision could change the course of her path through time. I can’t tell her what happened – why the TARDIS controls worked for her, why I’m looking for her future self, or what is happening in my timeline. One slip up and there’s a paradox, or my personal history changes. If she changes her mind, or doesn't make it back at the right moment, or dies, or breaks a nail... poof! We're all gone. This timeline never existed."
"But you're both time travelers, so how do you ever know that you're doing things in the right order?" Graham asks. "How do you know if you meet her in France in February, and on Mars in March, that one really came before the other?"
"Because Time Lords can sense it," Missy drawls, strolling into the room. "We can smell it, practically, and our TARDISes keep us on the right track. Which is the mistake she made when she butchered the tracking mechanism." She walks up to the console and paws at the tracking controls. The TARDIS shocks her lightly.
"Isomorphic controls are back on," the Doctor says smugly. Missy sticks her shocked fingers in her mouth, playing up the hurt.
Her simple, modern black skirt and shirt are gone. Missy has exchanged it for the style that the Doctor knows her in – a high waisted dark purple skirt and jacket, a white shirt buttoned up tightly to her neck, and a pair of patent leather heels with intricate laces. And –
“That hat isn’t period-accurate,” the Doctor frowns, snatching it off her head. Missy frowns.
“Is that just a top hat, with a watch chain and goggles on?” Ryan asks.
“It’s steampunk,” Missy says spitefully. “I thought we could go to New Bavaria. There’s a lovely restaurant I know on that moon, a few years before…well. That was a tragedy, wasn’t it?” She smiles venomously.
“What’s ‘steampunk?’” Graham asks, “and why are you letting her pick the planet, anyways – you didn’t want to do this. What if it’s a trap?”
“It’s a moon, seriously, don’t you listen? Where do you find them these days?” Missy tuts. “Used to be, your assistants had spark. Jo Grant, Martha Jones, Purple-whattem...”
“Excuse me, I’m not an assistant,” Graham protests. “I don’t – assist – with anything.”
“Well, you make that pretty clear, dearie,” Missy mutters, eyeing him up and down.
“Can’t you say anything nice?” the Doctor asks.
“Make me.”
The Doctor grits her teeth and turns away. She’s a little more aggressive with the controls than she needs to be, slamming down a lever and popping a button loose. The TARDIS creaks in response, engines reluctantly taking them to the highly inhabited moon of New Bavaria, year 5,000,000,029.
“One trip, one meal,” the Doctor says, crossing her arms sternly. “My treat. That’s all you get. Any questions?”
“Well, Doctor,” Missy says, exasperated, “are you going to change for dinner? Please tell me you aren’t planning to wear that.”
*