Silk & Sleight- A celebration of the Master's 50th Birthday

I- Shelter

There’s a distinct hammering outside where specks of rain are hitting the pavement and trickling into the drains below. Here, under the University’s main campus, it is impossible to tell the noise from a bombing raid- unless you had been caught in the downpour and were subsequently dripping onto the basement floor. In the grounds outside, the trees of St Luke’s are baying and tossing their green manes, riding into the sleet upon sodden saddles of grass and dirt.

The pressure hadn’t broken for days, weeks even. The Met Office had said otherwise before it had ceased operations, forecasting blue skies and bright, sunny weather for what was shaping up to be the country’s hottest summer on record.

The weather is worsening as the minutes tick by, a midsummer storm, forecasts be damned. It had been the coldest night. He should have remembered that.

The Master has been here before, in this very same position not so many years ago and yet the scene is unfamiliar. From his place at the door, the cellar looks more like an art gallery than a jailor’s. Home to exquisite objects a gentleman might retire to once in a while whilst marvelling at how still they were, how he could afford such exhibits, how lucky he was to own such a collection. The Master does not feel like an exhibit. Not anymore.

Fresh air has little presence here. Instead of the howling winds outside, each breath is marked by an intake of stale brick dust and the slightest touch of damp. It’s grounding, a reminder that he is, in fact, still breathing. Surely, he can turn back to the stairs at the end of the room whenever he chooses? He knows the exit mechanism to the door, the route out of the grounds. He knows because she knows.

The light from the outside flickers like a stage effect, accompanying a clap of blinding thunder. At the storms low grumble, The Master raises his fist to the cold metal of the prison door and knocks.

The sound echoes around the dark room, clashing with the sky’s percussion. It’s enough to send a shiver jolting down his spine. Not a lot of things can do that anymore. Has he committed? The rap of his knuckles against steel and engraving sealing a contract he hasn’t even read through. A zero-sum game without base, without reason that he cannot ever win.

The roaring lulls, an unnatural quiet overtaking the basement. When it occurs to him that there has been no reply, he knocks again. Three raps. Safely away from the four already in her head.

The response is almost immediate. A cacophony of bangs and crashes resound from the door, making it quake against the floor. Missy is screaming with her mind, pushing into the dark with such force that he staggers back a little on the hardened ground.

“I don’t want to talk to you.” Seethes the voice.

The Master swallows back a retort and knocks a third time, receiving a loud scream from the occupant in return. When the wail dies down, he begins to work on the door’s locking system. A glass smashes on the other side. He wonders if this was a bad night. There is still the luxury of rescheduling and pretending the occupant inside does not exist.

“I told you to go away.”

The Master bypasses the third layer of security.

He could do that.

“I want to be alone.”

Lucky me.

He could still walk away. Live miserably for a few more months under a world dictatorship. Then he’d be able to walk the streets of Bristol knowing that Missy was no longer here and that there were only three more years to his sentence. At least he was guaranteed to miss 2020.

“Leave me alone.”

The pressure on the door eases with a satisfying hiss as he finishes his work on the lock. It’s a moment he shouldn’t feel so good about, finally being able to push open those doors for the first time from the outside. Finally in control.

All he needs to do is push. Push forward and he’ll be in the place he was meant to lie dead so many years ago. It hasn’t even been a thousand years. He is still under oath. Still masochistically waiting to be punished. It’s why he’s back here, isn’t it? She’s his own personal torture.

Inside the box is another six months of captivity, avoiding the truth and desperately trying to find a scrap of hope to cling on to. It will- and has already been- his own personal hell.

The Master pushes; the door swings open and for the first time in well over a century, he steps inside the Vault.

The first thing he notices is the dead air, the quiet so permeating that it shuts out the sound of the storm outside. Everything in the room, as far as he can see, has been torn to shreds. Even the small piano stool Missy had taken eight months to build lies in a wreck of parts on the floor.

She is in the middle of the prison, stance loaded with confrontation on the raised platform in the room’s centre. He takes in his own appearance, framed in a chaotic light by the pit of shattered objects that line the circumference.

Her eyes are red-rimmed, penned heavily with smudges of black mascara. The usual sophistication of her blouse and corset is offset by the crumples and tears which line the edges.

“Oh.”

“Hello Missy.”

Missy stares rabbit-in-the-headlights style at the space beside his head. He hadn’t known his own eyes to be so piercing but the blue in them glares out light a search-beam.

“You aren’t The Doctor.”

The Master smiles.

“No.”

The two of them stop still, frozen in the headlights of each other. Only the electricity of the artificial windows crackles around them

“I know you then.” She says slowly.

“Almost.”

Missy frowns and takes a few tentative steps forward, squinting as she examines him. The Master scolds himself for feeling so self-conscious.

After a long pause, her eyes fall to his beard and she lets out a shaky wolf whistle. The noise catches, the voicing strained. “Crossing our own timeline. Why now?”

He casts his eyes down to her still shaking fists and decides quickly that he cannot be honest.

“I suppose in this case I could tell you but then I’d have nothing to hold over your head.” Her eyes narrow, “You know how it is, dear.” He adds quickly.

The Time Lady in front of him shuffles uncomfortably in place, stance shifting from attack to defence and back again. “You’re here to ruin it. I can’t make you go away so I can see I’m just going to have to tolerate whatever this is.”

“Believe me,” The Master steps one foot on the steps leading up to where the forcefield lies fractured and tilts his head upwards to meet her gaze. “You’re going to need the company.”

Missy’s shoulders sag in resignation and she forces a weak smile. The skyline of broken furniture around the Vault tells the story for her. Most prominent is the bed now slanted against the wall, pillow stuffing in messy piles around it. He doesn’t need to look much further to see the evidence of her rage, it is held tightly within her- them- as her petite form breathes and shudders.

“Tea?” She asks, voice tired. “Please.”

He watches as she sleepwalks past him, sidling towards the small kettle he remembers trying to dismantle to make fireworks. In fact, it is the only item still mostly intact within the room. That and the dwindling pile of herbal teabags sat on top of the teapot beside it.

They stay mostly in silence whilst the machine boils- him, inspecting the oddities around the room he had once become so accustomed to; her, standing in the flight path of the kettle’s hot steam.

The room is smaller than he remembers, though he supposes that is a side effect of his exile on Earth; after having moved from the open skies of vast deserts, cities, jungles to the suffocating four walls of a prison. The empty floor space does little to give the impression of spaciousness, everything on it seems plucked from the bustling shop floor of an antiques store, still carrying with it the air of twee museums and sweaty goods auctions.

Everything about the Vault had been designed to diminish its contents. As a traditional execution device, it worked efficiently to break down the materials inside. A plank of wood, for example, might last a week before showing signs of rot. Many an attempt had been made by The Doctor to install bookcases along the walls, all ending in dramatic failures when the shelves had collapsed over themselves. This pattern repeated itself time and again with anything Missy asked for.

The ecosystem in which he had functioned for over seventy years had in fact not been suited to support even the tiniest biological lifeforms. A human would die twenty years younger, a cat might sicken as its bones grew brittle, an insect would be crushed the very instant it breached the chamber’s energy field. A Time Lord’s presence in the very room was a contradiction. Endless life versus death, youth versus age, intellect versus crushing neutralisation. Missy’s very existence in this place- and his own, he supposes- was very much an uphill struggle, one they would always lose.

He looks back to the kitchen counter where his younger self is humming quietly. She is trying to get the kettle to lift from its holder but her grip keeps slipping, leaving the device still stuck to the worktop. After a dozen or so tries, the vessel lifts and he can see her hands shaking as she moves it through the air, finally letting it hover above the teapot.

Missy tips the kettle and water begins to pour out, the stream only barely hitting the porcelain and shaking as it travels through the air.

The Master realises that he really needs to ask something.

“Are you okay?”

Missy’s hand pauses mid-air but the stream of boiling water continues, flooding over the sides of the pot and onto the counter of the small kitchenette. She curses, yanking her fingers away from the drink and shaking them in the cool air.

“Sorry.” She murmurs, following the drip of water as it spills over the side and onto the floor.

Where the water had hit, he can feel the faint throb of scorching heat on his own hand. The Master sighs.

“It’s fine. I’ll do it.” He drains the teapot first, then takes the kettle from its small charging station and gently pours it over the tea, letting it brew for a short time before closing the lid on the teapot and pouring again. “Sit down. I can hear you panicking.”

Behind him, Missy shuffles timidly backwards onto one of the small armchairs and begins to tap out a jumbled rhythm with her two heels.

The Master transfers the china onto a kitsch looking tea-tray and lifts it carefully over to the small quasi-wood table between the two chairs. He sees her flinch a little as he sets it down, chipped fingertips gripping tightly at her pale skin.

“If I wanted to, I would have hurt you already.” Missy’s eyes flit to his and then back towards the floor as she fiddles with the skin “You don’t need to panic. I need the company, I’m not a threat.”

He sits, hands rubbing at the corduroy as he settles into a calculated slump. The tea is steaming, so hot it distorts the air just above it.

“You know where he’s gone.”

The Master nods, taking hold of his cup and saucer before blowing on it and bringing it to his lips. The tea is so decaffeinated, it makes his eyes droop when he takes a sip. Missy smiles weakly and raises her own mug in understanding. The sudden flightiness of her would be unnerving if it weren’t for the strong walls surrounding his psyche.

“He loves to play the hero, Missy. One of his pets triggered the apocalypse out there and now they’ve gone primal, tommy guns and big statues. It’s not difficult to stop but he’s making a big deal out of it.” He leans forward. “Remember Spiridon?”

“The princess and the volcano?”

“Mm.” He hums, quirking his eyebrow at her. “The Monks. Not the meddling kind.”

“He’s coming back, then.”

The Master doesn’t answer, knows that she will be too fragile to contest it.

“How long has it been for you?” He asks.

“A week.” Missy drags her gaze across the door’s large frame. “He was blind, I know that. Asked for my help and disappeared. You know how he monologues.”

The storm must have stilled by now, the artificial windows of the vault are displaying the muted grey of a cloudy sky but the sleeves of his jacket have dried, now leaving the slight prickliness of newly dry fabric to chafe against his skin. The Master forces his eyes to the windows.

“About that.” He clinks his nails against the cup, he swears the sound echoes around the room. “I need to stay with you for a while.” He fiddles, smoothing his thumbs against one another on top of the handle.

“Won’t the Doctor notice?” Missy asks with a small voice.

A pause. A pin drops. The Master chuckles guardedly into the silence. “Believe me, he won’t.”

“He is okay? Promise me that, I’ll forget when you’re gone.”

“The Doctor is fine. They’re doing the things they want to do and not giving a damn otherwise.”

The two Time Lords exchange a knowing look. The understanding is so enveloping, it is painful to break.

The Master eyes flit to the wall beside her head and he slaps his knees. “So, staying?”

Missy shakes herself.

“Yes, well. You know I’m going to have to make up some rules first.”

He smiles. She is clearly relishing the chance to have any sort of control over her life and it is frightening yet so endearing to watch.

“One. My bed is my bed. Sleep on it and I will kick you where the sun don’t shine.”

The Master raises his hands in mock surrender. More sofa-surfing then.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Two.” She continues, “If you at any point quote Kant, you relinquish all rights to talk to me for one week.”

Oh, he had endured years of Kant before. There must have been something about the late 90s that made greying old men want to wax lyrical about other greying old men; in particular, renowned Prussian prudes. There was something about the way the Doctor explained it that made the tiny brain cells in your head die off one by one until the two you had left were trying so very hard not to clock him round the head with a large axe that nothing else seemed to register.

Little did Missy know, his Satre phase was just around the corner.

“I suppose there’s number three?”

“Three.” Missy pauses and draws the cup and saucer just underneath her chin, letting the last trails of steam rise through the air in front of her face. “Don’t leave.” The Master looks at Missy, taking in the tears on her dress he was sure hadn’t ever been there before, and uncrosses his legs. The door is only ten steps away. “We have an agreement, capiche?”

After a moment’s pause, he sighs and lets his lips curl into a guarded smirk.

“I suppose we do.”

“Good.” She sings and kicks her legs like an excited toddler. “Be a dear and loosen my corset for me, it’s absolutely killing.”

The Master sighs and hauls himself off the chair. Missy squeals in delight and almost drops her cup on the adjacent table.

“Stay still.” He mutters, bending down to face the offending attire. It is surgical the way he unlaces the front of her corset, making sure not to mix up the various ribbons that cross over one another.

It takes him a while but by the time he has finished, Missy is slumped happily back on the chair, her sleight frame rising and falling more freely than before. His is probably the only friendly touch she has had in a long time.

The Master returns to his chair and falls into it with a huff.

“What do you think of my crib?” She gestures with her free hand to the ruined room around them. He thinks he sees the ire of earlier flash in her expression, but it is quickly masked.

“Neat, isn’t it.”

“What were you aiming for, shabby chic or junkyard grunge?”

Missy scoffs but bites back a laugh all the same. “Abandonment deco?”

“Very 2120s. Presumably it’s your own design?” He points to the plant wall on the opposite side, the trellis in two broken pieces and soil covering the floor. She shrugs in response.

“Well, you see my handler doesn’t answer his phone. A girl gets creative.”

He takes another sip of the tea. It tastes like somebody with no taste buds had tried to replicate a lemon but aborted mid-mix and replaced the mixers with puddle water. The armchair is giving a little beneath him, it is hard to imagine whether the springs will hold for much longer if they are even there at all.

“Decoupage usually works for me.” He sighs, “Biscuit?”

The Master rummages in his pocket for the small packet of custard creams he had stolen on the way over- surprisingly easy to swipe in an apocalypse. He doesn’t miss the way Missy’s face lights up when he offers them to her.

They sit together in agreeable quiet for a moment whilst Missy takes the top off the custard cream and licks at the filling underneath.

After she’s finished hers, he takes one himself and dunks it in the tea, waiting a few seconds before bringing it up. The biscuit hangs for a moment before breaking off and landing with a splash in the lukewarm pool below.

“Ah.”

“Casualty!” Yells Missy, suddenly launching herself off the armchair like a loaded spring, whooping like an ambulance.

“We’re going to need an air crew!” He gasps, shaking the tea into a mulch of liquid and wet biscuit. “Casualty soggy and unresponsive. Condition deteriorating. Over.”

His younger self extends her arms like a plane and zooms forward. The mug is quickly seen to, hugged tightly against Missy’s chest. “Reviewing condition now. Patient in bits. Suggest emotional support! Over.”

The Master curves his hand over his mouth and makes a sound like the hiss of a walkie talkie. “Roger that Alpha-One. Over.”

“Extraction impossible!” She cries, clutching the mug possessively. “Suggest tactical sieving.”

“Co-ordinator to Alpha-One. Response: Ew.”

The two of them watch mournfully as the remnants of the custard cream dissolve into a yellow mush. Dying- quite literally- in Missy’s arms. The last of the packet.

“Master.” She grins.

“Yes?”

“I think we’re going to have a lot of fun.”

II- Food

“So, flavour?”

“Toothpaste. And mushroom.” Says Missy confidently.

“How can you tell it’s mushroom?”

“It’s grey.”

The Master slowly lowers his head into his hands and tries to keep in the frustration out of the sigh that follows.

“Let me get this straight.” He starts, freeing his hands to hold up the small packet of Mentos Missy has placed on the counter in front of them. “We have a teabag, two bags of expired lettuce and some mints.”

Missy considers for a second, counting imaginary items on her fingers before turning back towards him, mouth curved into a sheepish grin. “Make that one bag.”

The Master has to screw his eyes shut to block out the urge to scream.

“Midnight snack?” She offers.

He points to the wall opposite where the remnants of a small morning alarm lie in disarray, springs and metal panels making up an ugly pile that litters the floor. “Midnight? We don’t have a clock.”

“It was really dark. In my head it was midnight, does that count?”

The Master ignores her and begins to carefully place the items back into the fridge. Without one of them leaving, their supplies would quickly deplete. Eventually one of them would have to suggest resorting to cannibalism- and in this situation, he didn’t much fancy his chances.

Even a Time Lord couldn’t survive for long on half a bag of lettuce.

He shuts the fridge and takes a moment to breathe. Tries to focus on the dark behind his eyelids, the sensations in his body, the slight noise of fresh oxygen being pumped into the room…

“Could I moot an idea?” Missy begins. Behind his tightly shut eyes, he swears the outline of her is still visible, all purple and brown against the dim black of his eyelids. “Do what the Doctor does, get a takeaway.”

His stomach does a somersault. In his time at St Luke’s, The Master has eaten every menu-item from every takeaway within a fifty mile and hundred-year radius. The idea of eating anything ever again from Rajan’s Tex-Mex Kitchen makes him physically nauseous. Luckily, he can think of at least ten problems with Missy’s suggestion, one of which is staring them in the face.

He opens his eyes, blinks.

“My dearest. The phone.”

He gestures to the corner of the Vault where a small old-fashioned landline is bolted to the wall. In seventy years, the phone had never moved. At the beginning it had seemed more like a pleasantry, to give Missy the idea she wasn’t completely isolated, but over time she’d grown to use it- more for nuisance calls than anything else.

The phone called three numbers; The Doctor’s office, The Doctor’s TARDIS and the small outpost in middle-of-nowhere-ville Scotland he had visited once for a faculty field trip. Any other number dialled would cause the phone to short circuit and trigger a small alert somewhere in UNIT’s Geneva headquarters.

They’d have to deconstruct the phone and reprogram its circuits for even the smallest chance at success. He begins to explain this to Missy before realising that she knows exactly what he’s going to say before he says it.

“It would take two people at least, something we don’t have right now.” The Master says as he begins to pace.

“You’re right.” She hums. “There would have to be one person holding the phone together whilst the other did the talking.”

The two of them orbit each other, one’s hand stroking their beard in thought, the other stroking a bare chin wishing they had something resembling facial hair instead. After a while, Missy stops, hand pausing mid-stroke. “Dearest, a wonderful idea has just come to me.”

“What?”

“There are two of us.”

The Master looks back at Missy, stares for a few seconds and then blinks slowly. “So there are.” He says.

They get to work after that. Without any equipment it’s a struggle, but the Master finds his hands are surprisingly well-adapted to squeezing (the life out of) things.

It takes them a little under an hour to deconstruct the phone, arguing every step of the way. The Master insists he’s done it before, Missy says otherwise- though he supposes he has done this before, just not yet.

By the time they have the wires disconnected, only half of the phone is still on the wall. The longest wire is almost the length of the wall and it takes the two of them a good five minutes to unroll it without it breaking in two.

Once they have everything in position, The Master plucks a random takeaway menu from Missy’s stash behind the cupboards- he makes a mental note to repair the damn thing later- and makes a note of the telephone number.

“Okay. We’re finished. All we need to do is put the number in and keep the wire steady.”

“Right.” Missy huffs, the receiver already halfway to her ear. “I’ll do the talking. Pretty boy, on the floor, now.”

The Master groans and tries to pull Missy away from the phone, earning himself a smack on the arm in return. Eventually he relents, retreating back to sit on the steps.

“Great, Missy. Brilliant idea. Just two major drawbacks.” He starts and Missy grumpily lets go of the receiver. It bungees once before bashing against the back wall. The Master winces but continues. “A. You haven’t spoken to anyone besides the Doctor and robo-egg in seventy years. B. There’s a major alien incursion going on outside and I’ve lived through it once already. You’re holding the wire.”

Missy glares at him, considering it for a second before rolling her eyes dramatically. “Sure thing, teach.” She hisses and sticks out her bottom lip.

“Hey!” Snaps the Master. “I’ve never taught a thing in my lives and you know it.”

Missy shrugs innocently but drops to the floor regardless, splaying her figure in the most sensual way possible across the concrete.

“Could you be any more distracting?” He shoots her a look of exasperation.

“You’ll only encourage me.” She preens. “Did you know the Greek national anthem has one-hundred and fifty eight verses-“

“Yes.”

Missy begins to whistle, the pitch somehow both above and below what it actually needs to be. “Se gnorÍzo apó tin kópsi…. Tou spathioú tin tromeri-“

“Missy.” He warns. At the tone of his voice, his younger self erupts into barely contained giggles. The Master has to purse his lips together to stop himself from joining in.

“Ahem. Yep. Shutting up.”

Together they manage to start up the phone’s dialling system, breathing a sigh of relief when familiar ringing sounds from the receiver. It doesn’t take long for someone to pick up. The dial tone stops abruptly and the voice of a chipper Cockney man cuts through the hiss of the phone line.

“Greetings. This is Spice Express, Davey speaking. All praise the love and guidance of our benevolent Monk masters. What can I get you, sweetheart?”

The Master hopes Missy can’t see the blood rush to his face.

“Two Chicken Jalfrezis, some Pilau and uh- a ton of Poppadoms please.”

The man on the end of the line pauses and there is some indistinct muttering followed by a large thump.

“Er… We’ve got Nutrition Pack A or Nutrition Pack B, the second one’s curry flavoured so we put it on Buy One Get One Free.”

Missy shoots him a puzzled glance from the floor. Nutrition packs? She mouths. The Master nods uneasily.

Food had been considered an infringement on the Monk’s control of Earth. Especially the right to eat anything with the tiniest hint of spice for the risk that it may stir revolutionary ideas in it’s consumer. Treacherous coriander. Thinks the Master.

“We’ll take five-hundred of both.” He says confidently.

There is a pause on the other end of the line. “You’ll be wanting a family discount with that?”

“Yes, yeah, sure. Got to keep the kids happy, yeah?”

Missy visibly cringes, the wire nearly falling from her grip.

“Little buggers are at Correction School, Monk supremacy and all that, you know?”

The Master forces out a laugh. “Yeah. Mine are… uh… little buggers. Yeah.”

Beneath him, his younger self is choking on silent laughter. The man goes quiet for a few seconds.

“Can I take an address?”

Ah.

About an hour passes but the Master has kept the line open.

“You will bypass the security gate at the top of the stairs.”

Through the phone-line, a small click sounds. There is a creaking noise, like a metal hinge swinging and then a slight bang.

“Good. Now, take the first entrance on your right. Continue down the stairs until you enter a large cellar-“

There is a large crash and the phone goes dead.

“The trolley’s stuck.” Says Missy.

“The trolley’s stuck.” Echoes The Master.

“Ring again. He’s probably dead.”

He punches in the number for the takeaway a second time and presses the call button.

Bringgg bring. Brinng bring. Brinng-

“Entrance on the right… Entrance on the right…” drones a voice from the other side of the call.

“Davey.”

“Master?”

“Don’t touch your head, you aren’t bleeding. Get up off the floor and keep walking until you see a large metal door.”

“Yes Master.”

He can hear footsteps, even through the thick metal of the door. They are uneven, palpitating, but getting louder and very close.

There is a thump from the outside of the Vault as something crashes against the other side of the door.

“Delivery?”

Score.

They empty the bags together. The Master has to crack open the Vault door and stick his hand outside to feel for where the parcels have been dropped. Missy stays well away and refuses to leave in any way. It’s only when he drags in the body that she perks up, arranging the now very limp Delivery Man on the barstool in the corner to look like a scarecrow.

After all the bags have been dragged inside, the two of them make light work of organising the nutripacks, ordering each pile by size and flavour until the entire kitchenette looks more like a warehouse than a cooking area.

Once opened, each pack contains a bag of what look like rice cakes and a nondescript packet of brown coloured powder. After a few failed attempts, the Master finds a way of cooking the rice cakes to an edible standard. He gives Missy a plate to try first and then settles down with his own, a disgustingly domestic apron still slung around his neck.

“Well?” The Master probes, “Not exactly fifth century Constantinople, but nothing will ever compare to that Sundae.”

“It’s… chewy?” She frowns, making tiny disgusted sounds as she eats.

“Yeah. That’d be the uh- never mind, you don’t want to know.”

“Are you sure the Doctor hasn’t just sent you to torture me? If so, well done, I surrender.”

He makes a miniature finger gun and aims it at her. Missy grasps at her chest and pretends to be shot. She slides off the chair, skirt crumpling over her chest and they both burst into hoots of laughter.

“This version of them still thinks I work for MI6. Sweet little desk-analyst ‘O’. Make a note of that, you’re going to need it later- oh, and the reveal is amazing. She doesn’t suspect a thing.”

“She?” Missy’s eyes light up from over the top of a crumpled plume of skirt.

The Master smiles devilishly. “Yeah, did I forget to mention that?”

They talk for a long time after that, mouths stuffed full of ‘rice cake’. Missy tells him about the past few years, the arrival of the piano and surviving 2016, the time she managed to send a psychic projection of herself into the lecture theatre as a Halloween prank.

He notes how she skims over the breakdowns, the episodes, the banging-on-the-wall-until-someone-came-down-to-tell-her-to-shut-up.

The Master remembers the worst of them; Christmas 2015. All the students had fled from campus for the holidays and The Doctor had gone too. He hadn’t come back until the new term started. Missy had found his bag still in the Vault, but, unable to bring herself to touch it, she had starved.

The Doctor had come back eventually- tinsel round his neck, smelling of mulled wine and expensive chocolate- only to find her sprawled, non-responsive, still in the confines of her enclosure.

“I thought you would have escaped.” He had said, dumping a cheap bottle of red wine beside her as she lay crying on the bed. Missy hadn’t replied, just sunk her head deeper into the pillow. The smell of alcohol had disappeared after that. Later when she’d woken up, the pantry had been fully stocked and a large cake had been left on the counter. Chocolate and cherry, The Master’s favourite since they’d been kids.

Like it made up for anything.

She’d eaten all of it in one go of course, just to fill the gap, then thrown most of it up again. Stupid Doctor, stupid, stupid.

The Master is broken out of his trance by a particularly loud crunch. In remembering, he’s crushed the little remaining supper he had left and the crumbs are spilling out over his lap.

To her credit, Missy doesn’t comment. He sees her lips quirk in a small understanding smile.

Change the subject, he wills.

“Any reason for the one-thousand?” She asks and the tension drains from his shoulders. Time to pretend again.

Three nutripacks a day for each of them at most, eighty-three per month, five-hundred for almost six months. The number hadn’t been random, she must know that. He’s given her a release date via a takeaway. The Master will be gone by the time the packs run out, well into the final stretch of his long wait on Earth. So close to seeing the Doctor again. Maybe he’ll tell her this time. He hopes he can. It’s going to be a rough ride home.

“Nah.” Says The Master.

III- Water

The decision to flood the bathroom had been taken embarrassingly quickly over a game of Mandrathian Scrabble- and no, the word ‘Z’vvnehsek’ had been outlawed centuries ago, the use of it as a Triple-Scorer was frankly ridiculous.

‘Ithy’weh’ too. Surely the grand dictionary of Scrabble lore had never made allowances for personal threats, especially those against the opponent’s left elbow.

The idea had first been raised at a match-point, Missy’s fifty-eight points versus The Master’s commendable sixty-two, that the pair of them do something in order to ‘cool off’. Hot Yoga had been the first idea, suggested by a suddenly very cunning looking Missy and rejected in turn by The Master.

The second had been to get a couple’s massage. Then, upon the realisation that a third-party may have to be involved, promptly called off. Any other suggestions of ‘a night out on the town’ or ‘joint counselling sessions’ were also mournfully shelved.

After a few minutes of argument, Missy had sniffed the air and sighed, proceeding to say something along the lines of “if only I still had the pool” before sitting bolt upright and gasping melodramatically.

They had taken all of ten seconds to discuss it, then, without a word further the two of them had gone about fortifying the bathroom walls and figuring out how best to flood the small room without it seeping into the Vault’s central chamber.

The Master had turned on the bath, watching carefully as hot water overflowed into the rest of the room whilst Missy picked them bath salts from her secret stash.

Lemongrass salt for him, Missy had chosen something fresh to offset the permanent smell of bonfire that seemed to drift from his clothes. He didn’t have the hearts to tell her why. She’d picked out Sweet Orange for herself, saying that because she was already so sweet he’d have to hold his nose to keep from being overwhelmed.

She’s standing in front of him now, a blaze of purple and skirt, grinning from ear to ear like a toddler with one hand in the cookie jar. “So.”

The Master doesn’t know what to say. They’re standing facing each other, the noise of the bath thundering from the adjacent room. Mexican standoff style, without guns- though he wishes he had one right now.

Missy raises an eyebrow and reaches for her neck. “You know, clothes don’t typically go well in baths.”

She flicks open the top button of her blouse, opening the collar up just enough to reveal the slightest hint of skin.

The Master splutters and scrambles to turn around, almost tripping over himself in the process. The sound of buttons popping continues and he can’t help but think he’s walked into some private moment.

“Dearest.” Says Missy, accompanied by the sound of a garment hitting the floor. “I applaud your gentlemanly concern but you have- and I mean this in the most literal sense- seen it all before.”

The last item hits the floor. There’s muffled footsteps and then a chair rocking as something is taken from it. He turns around slowly. Missy is smiling at him from underneath the guise of a bathrobe, collarbone poking innocently from beyond the fabric. She pats the armchair where the second robe is draped, flashes him a wink then turns.

He watches as she stalks towards the bathroom, purple robe trailing behind like a wedding veil.

“Darling?” She calls, form hesitant as she stands before the door. “Take your clothes off.”

The Master watches as she disappears inside. It takes him a moment to collect himself before hiding behind the piano. There’s nobody to watch him, just the paranoia of being in a cell again.

He strips, folding each item of clothing neatly over the back of the chair. The TCE is gone from his jacket pocket, having been safely stowed away months earlier- same as all the other little titbits picked up in seventy years exile. If Missy had found anything of use on his person, it had been put there deliberately.

The Master discards the last item of clothing, finding himself suddenly very naked in the middle of a room he hadn’t realised was so spacious before. Realising Missy had taken the only towel, he waddles sheepishly towards the bathroom. Even from the outside, the smells of various different bath salts are strong, leaving little air untouched.

He arrives at the door and opens it, immediately feeling the blast of hot air on his face. There is a single step down onto the bathroom floor where a lake of water is already rising. Missy is humming from somewhere near the bathtub. As he pulls the door shut, she mewls, splashing a handful of warm water across the room towards him.

He flinches, reaching to cover himself before realising the futility of it.

The floor is already hidden under an inch or two of water and the Master has to take baby steps just to keep from slipping. More liquid is surging in from the tap, making the surface of the flood bubble with frantic movement.

The air smells like the scents and potions at a health spa though the Vault quite the opposite. Even in the midst of a hot-tub, cells are decaying, the two of them are dying twice as fast.

The Master feels a little too exposed, even with the curtain of steam that separates them. It’s not the sudden awareness of his own biology- he’s dealt with that before- but the reality of facing her, without the façade of his clothes or the accompanying ease in which he slips on a mask.

Whatever discomfort the Vault sparks in him is offset by the sudden, bare embarrassment from being around her. That and the heat of the room, water steadily rising.

“Welcome, darling. Don’t be shy, take a seat.” Her voice coos from across the room.

He wades further in, gravitating towards the tiled walls of the room to steady himself. Eventually, his shins bump against wood and the Master looks down at what looks like a sauna bench, already wet from the heavy steam in the air. He sits, the chair is unfamiliar. The Doctor must have brought things in whilst Missy had been sleeping, or, more likely, having a meltdown.

He finds her in the mist, just a few metres across the room. The top of Missy’s head is just about visible in the middle of the steam, he can see the curls of her hair falling loosely over the side of the overflowing bathtub. She’s awake but there’s something about the warmth that makes her quiet.

The Master’s own hair is a much sorrier sight, strands stick wetly to his forehead. It used to be glossier, like a fifties rockstar’s. Nowadays it seems permanently dirty, littered with the soil of whatever ground he’s been walking on.

“Look up.” Says the figure behind the steam. He looks up.

There, resting on a rack, is the Doctor’s black and white electric guitar. The same as the day he last saw it, strapped across the shoulders of his best enemy. Its gorgeous ivory white body is layered with hot droplets of steam.

The Master wants to play it.

He takes the guitar down from its rack, cradling it gently as he sits.

In the late seventies, he’d joined a punk band- and through osmosis, learned how to play. He forgets most of the concerts, they had been lost a long time ago with every other semi-drunken misadventure. Though, in the space left behind there sits a haze of muscle memory.

The Master positions his hands on the guitar and strums. The chord reverberates in brash, earthy tones around the room. There’s something deep and powerful about the way the sound settles in his head, seeping right into the bones of him.

The bathroom rings with the aftershocks for a few seconds before fizzling out.

Missy whistles appreciatively. “Compensating for something?”

“No need, my love.” He purrs in return, somewhat apprehensively.

He tries a few more, lower this time. The chords to ‘Smoke on the Water’. When they are met with unappreciative silence he tries again, this time Lulu’s ‘To Sir With Love’. Missy whoops and sloshes a tidal wave of water over the side of the bath.

By the end of the song, the water is up to his groin and the Master has to reposition himself at the top of the bench to keep the bottom of the guitar out of the water. After a haphazard rendition of ‘I Don’t Need a Man’ by the Pussycat Dolls, the water stops rising and settles at about half the height of the room. The surface is still, nothing but the slight tremor in his hand sends tiny ripples across it.

His previous self doesn’t speak. Only the slight drip of the tap fills the room.

The Master strums, watching as the sound makes waves ripple across the surface of the water. Playing the guitar, he notices how unnaturally smooth the hot air makes it’s body. Under the heat, another thin layer of condensation has settled, wrapping each limb of the instrument in a delicate film of moisture.

Though it had been a while since they got in the bath, the air is still hot, the water still like a full body massage. The scent of Sweet Orange seems to have died back, overtaken by the slight sharpness of the lemongrass. The guitar plays on.

“I did something horrible.” He says into the steam. “Irredeemable.”

The steam swirls in response, his breath making it dance in circles through the clouded air.

“I undid everything you stood for in the end.” The Master picks, small staccato notes. “They don’t know, I haven’t shown them yet.”

This is just the rehearsal, he doesn’t say.

“There was a human for them to fall in love with, a stupid plot to end the world, a plane, a bomb…” He trails off before looking down at his guitar. “I don’t regret it.”

The weight of the confession hangs in the air with the steam. He thinks about saying more but stops. The truth is exhausting. She doesn’t need to know.

It’s a while before the heat of the room overtakes him and the Master falls into a half-conscious doze. Missy wakes him a while later, the water now a lukewarm puddle around his feet. She’s more relaxed than before and almost polite to him as they dry off, humming quietly as she finds him a bathrobe, nodding appreciatively as he models it around the Vault.

They settle down quickly, him on the armchair with the Doctor’s electric guitar, her perched daintily on the piano stool, hair still dripping a wet puddle onto the floor.

The Master suggests something by Nick Drake, one they can play with the piano and the guitar at once. Missy pretends she hasn’t heard and bangs away clumsily at the keys instead.

“Missy.” He sighs.

“I’m practicing, dear.” She replies, jamming loudly at a punky-sounding version of ‘Für Elise’. The Master shoves a wave of annoyance her way and Missy holds her hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay. Performing monkey mode, on. Show me how to play it.”

He transmits a set of chords and scales to her, playing the tune until he gets some sign of recognition.

They jam for a few minutes, working out the structure of the song and the lyrics until there is a natural lull in the music. The piano falls silent and they each take a deep breath.

The Master plays the intro, concentrating on each string as it thrums under his fingers. The song is beautiful, so melancholy. He had met the composer once in a folk club during a particularly bad year, the music had made it better, patched some tiny little hole he didn’t even recognise that he had.

So, he plays the chords like they are silk, stoking the song into a dwindling flame. The intro is ending, the first lyric bursting into existence. Right…. Here.

“I could have been a sailor, could have been a cook-” Missy bursts into fits of giggles, her hands drop from the piano as the tune tumbles into a shrill caterwaul. When it’s clear she’s not going to keep on singing, the Master drops the guitar onto his lap and lets out a pained groan.

“What.”

Missy keeps on giggling, water coming off her in drops like a dog shaking itself.

“Any line to start and he chose that one.”

“It means something, Missy. To him.”

“Could have joined the Navy.” She snorts. “Just saying.”

The Master shoots her a tired expression, lifting the head of the guitar to play again. “Just… focus, okay. You’re good so prove it.”

She sighs, relinquishing the fight. “You sing it then.”

His eyes narrow and he considers it for a minute. No one but himself to judge, quite literally. It could be horrible and not a single soul, anywhere would ever have to know.

“Okay.”

Missy cheers and whistles.

“I’m so proud of me sometimes. Go on then. Pinky promise I won’t laugh.” She giggles, flashing him a mischievous look before swirling back to the piano.

The Master counts them in and the intro comes round a second time, the notes swirling around them like they are the eye of a quiet tornado.

Taking a deep breath, he begins where Missy had fallen apart. “I could have been a sailor, could have been a cook. A real live lover, could have been a book…”

When she doesn’t laugh, he sends a small ember of gratitude her way. She beams in return. Support.

“I could have been a signpost, could have been a clock. As simple as a kettle, steady as a rock…”

They play on, the sweet sound of the keys falling over the thrumming of the guitar. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. Two players in swinging waltz time. The chorus comes and goes, the Master finds himself falling into the pattern of it. His voice sounds rich, earthy almost, even though he must hear it differently as the singer.

“I could have been your statue, could have been your friend…” He sings softly. “A whole long lifetime.” A pause. “Could have been the end.”

The words dry.

“I could be yours, so true. I would be, I should be…” He trails off, the lyric is swallowed by the tune. Suddenly, the Master finds himself unable to sing anymore. His younger self doesn’t say anything.

His vision goes glassy after that and the song winds itself into a trance. Even Missy seems to lean further into the piano, the notes flowing as freely as the water. Eventually, the song finishes but the Master keeps playing, strumming the same pattern of notes over and over. Missy stops playing at some point and just watches him. The notes come for a long time after that.

IV- Fire

The Master is a little disoriented when, after three months in the Vault, his stubble has not grown even a millimetre. Missy’s hair too has stayed stubbornly the same length, though she rarely wears it down.

He has kept to her rules so far, sleeping in the armchair at ‘night’ and staying well away from books by infamous Prussian moral relativists. It is becoming an almost domestic routine. Nothing could ever be dull between them but The Master suspects this is the most docile the two of them have been in their entire lives. If a voluntary imprisonment twice isn’t against their Modus Operandi then he doesn’t know what is.

It’s fortunate then that halfway through his stay, something happens that turns the rules of their game upside-down.

It’s the middle of the night when the Master wakes with a start, the soft furnishings of the armchair uncomfortably cold against his clammy hands. He doesn’t know how it’s so dark but he can’t see further than a few metres away. Presumably the lighting from the artificial windows has failed, leaving the room in a chilling, asphyxiating darkness.

“Missy?” He calls, hearts racing faster than he wants them to.

When there is no answer, he rises tentatively from the chair, steadying himself with the armrests. There’s a silent hum of white noise in the background, presumably from whichever fuse had blown- or been blown by it’s inhabitant.

He tries reaching out with his mind but is met with electric resistance. The fuses operating the lights must also be controlling the psychic shielding, making it sting to reach anywhere but inside the four metal walls. Beyond that; silence.

Wherever Missy is, it is not inside the Vault.

The Master takes his jacket from the back of the chair and pulls it on. In one of the pockets is a small torch, though it has been used so many times that the batteries are dangerously low and the beam flickers tempestuously in the dark. How appropriate.

He edges forward, trying to cover the immediate area with the spotlight. It’s going relatively well until his foot bangs against the edge of the piano. A discordant clang rings out across the room. The Master lets out an undignified yelp and hops clumsily onto one foot.

In a dozen or so limps, he is down the steps and at the door. Under the torchlight, he can see the locking system is in two broken pieces. What little is left of the magnet that held the door closed has been torn from the wall and shattered in pieces on the ground.

Whether Missy has built herself a tool or used her bare hands, the damage is impressive. Of course, he can’t remember breaking the lock but he supposes that makes sense. She won’t retain the knowledge, the timeline will reset and Missy will be led to her death.

The Master gently shoves at the door; it swings open a little reluctantly, creaking awkwardly against the concrete. Once the frame has jammed open an adequate amount, he slips past into the dusty cellar beyond.

The basement front of him is the same as when he had arrived, aside from what looks like a trail of purple cloth leading to the stairs. He recognises it as scraps of purple bathrobe, torn awkwardly to resemble the lines on a treasure map.

“Where are you.” He mutters into the darkness before taking a step over the threshold.

Something inside him still feels wrong to be doing it. Like he has ‘cheated’ somehow, that he should be ashamed. Though crucially, this time, he has one thing Missy won’t have. Nothing to lose. The Doctor isn’t here now, she won’t ever be again. Not really.

The Master uses the torch to shine a path along the treasure trail of purple scraps, squinting down at the path as he goes. On closer inspection, the fabric is dry. She can’t have needed it to dry herself then. Maybe, a message then. ‘Come find me’.

He reaches the stairs on the opposite wall and begins to climb. The air is chilled, stony even, and the walls are damp with condensation. Parts of his time-sense are beginning to return, events from the outside skimming across his consciousness like stones over a lake. It is odd, he thinks as he climbs, how little he had missed it. The way time passed in the Vault was dismal at the best of times yet there was a sense of museum-like tranquillity to it, like just by being in there you were preserving some ancient artefact.

The staircase comes to an end, opening into another smaller room with a tall stone archway leading to the University lawn outside. Each wall has intricate little engravings carved on its surface, like a precious piece of pottery

The Master climbs up the last stair and cranes his head to look.

All at once, there are too many things to process. The sound of quiet sobs mixing with the patter of rain, a slight smell of old books and sodden grass, the frostbitten, cold air nipping at his fingertips.

Missy is sat, slumped against the archway, the corner of the lawn just touching the edges of her skirt. She is heaving with the effort of sobbing, each lurch making her head lull back and forth over the grass.

The Master taps the wall gently to signal his presence, Missy flinches slightly in response but keeps her gaze fixed on the outside.

The rain is like a curtain, he can see the wall and the trees behind it and the vague grey-black of the night sky. Somewhere around here there should be Monks patrolling but he is not in the mindset to care.

“Hey.” He says softly, climbing the last step into the doorway and slumping against the opposite wall. From inside the alcove, only the tiniest speckles of rain hit his skin. It’s nice, ticklish. It reminds him of the early morning dew that would collect in the air at Colditz, the peace at sunrise just before the day.

“You broke the rules.” Missy sniffs, head bowed. Her skirt is lightly sodden at the edges, though he doesn’t think it’s from the rain. “I said to not leave.”

She sounds hurt but there isn’t a thing the Master can say to make it better. “Technically I had already left.” He murmurs, gesturing to her.

His counterpart sniffs pointedly, eyes sinking shut. The pit-patter of the raindrops makes their surroundings sound crisp and new, everything sharp and too in focus.

“It’s so cold. Since when was the air this cold?” She murmurs, voice cracking with the newness in the air.

“Since somebody stuck us in a vault for seventy years.”

Missy nods and smiles weakly as another tear slips down her cheek. It would look more like a Renaissance painting if not for the wall of scaffolding outside, banners from various construction companies blowing against the poles in the slight breeze. He spots one, hanging from the lowest pole. ‘Monk and Sons’.

She parts her lips, sound coming and then stopping again before committing to words. “He doesn’t see us.” The words stick and crack and break open. “I hurt all the time and he just can’t see.”

“Yeah.” Says the Master. “I know.”

“I can’t stay here. I’ll die if I do.” Missy sniffs.

He winces. Spoilers.

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

She shakes her head, smiles knowingly at him.

They sit together in silence, watching the rain fall into the gutters. It’s quiet out, like the quiet has been there forever. There’s not a great deal to see but Missy drinks it in anyway, eyes running over and over the trunks of the Sycamore trees and their newly golden leaves. Early autumn shrubs are crawling around their roots in tangled, unkempt sprawls, just beginning to climb the walls either side of them.

He wonders if the Doctor had ever gazed so desperately at rain- or whether they had even needed to. ‘Petrichor’, they had told him once[KS1] , ‘the smell of dust after rain’. A lazy, natural scent that he knows will be coming around at dawn. It is the smell of the things they cannot reach, things that are old and things that are free. Like the Doctor, he supposes.

The Master pulls out a small box of cigarettes from his pocket and offers it to her, feeling a little like a shady street trader as he does it. “Smoke?”

She pulls one out of the packet, hands trembling, and he lights it. They bring their hands up to their mouths, letting the cigarettes burn a little before breathing in the chemicals. Missy is sitting upright now, head rested against the stone behind her. She blows a lungful of nicotine and tar towards the sky before looking back at him, eyes shining in the dark.

“Tell me.” She says softly.

“Tell you what?” He smiles.

“What happened to us?”

He traces the line of tears down her cheeks, the now slight wet patch staining her blouse. The Master shakes his head slightly and takes a drag on the cigarette.

“I die, and this doesn’t work.” Missy says and blinks headily into the night air.

He looks down at his hands, scratched and worn by the Earth, and turns them over. Then, wearily, under the gloomy pallor of the moonlight, the Master flicks open the lighter. A stripped flame rises. Hot.

“There are bad people and there are better people. Then there are people so high in the stratosphere you die trying to reach them.” Another flick, a second flame. “We aren’t even on the ground. In the end we’ll die a hundred times over just to get through the first step.”

Missy eyes train to the ground, pupils flicking over sodden dirt. “Did they keep you too?”

The Master turns his attention to the rain and slides a foot out of the archway. A small puddle of water begins to flood the dent in the middle of his shoe.

“My version doesn’t keep. They leave.”

“Oh.” A pause. “So you’re stuck.”

He chuckles, but it’s hollow.

“I’m stuck.”

“Here’s to ‘stuck’.” She murmurs, tapping the butt of her cigarette against his. “Please, though. Tell me what happens. I won’t remember, I just want to know.”

He rolls his toes inside the water-sodden shoes, they squelch as the moisture soaks through.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The Master takes a calculated breath in and lifts a half-hearted hand to the cuff of his sleeve, traces the crumpled cotton there and begins to roll. The rain soaks the shirt as it climbs, getting tighter and tighter till he can feel the throb of a double pulse running through it.

She’s watching, puzzled. Smoke flows around the two of them, too thick to breathe but still too thin to drown.

He holds out his arm, turning it so it catches the light and shows her the numbers tattooed there . Uniformly scraped with industrial black ink and cruel, cruel needles.

Missy gags, covering her mouth only a fraction before retching into the grass. The rain falls, soaking the back of her blouse. She flinches back, neck almost disappearing as water hits it.

A cigarette stub smokes in the space between them.

“How-“ She rasps, voice an almost silent wheeze. “Long?”

“A year.”

“Didn’t you- why couldn’t you?-“ Another barely contained gag.

The Master smiles thinly. The cigarette in his hand has burnt to a stub, the sting of the heat so intense that it takes all he has to keep it in hand.

“I thought she would come. I thought I could escape, maybe trick them somehow. All of the above.” The stub burns his hand, white hot as it spits a trail of orange embers. “They did things to me. Besides the pain, all I could think about was the grin on her face as she let me go.” He squeezes his fingers together, extinguishing the smoke. “I want to crush the smile from her face. I want to make it hurt and I want her to understand.”

Missy’s gaze falls back to meet his, features broken with the sickness of knowing. The Master looks back at himself and sees the same blind hope that had led him here. Those wide blue eyes, so sick of being alone, are drowning.

“The first night.” She says quietly. “When they carried me in there. I could feel their arms around me, just holding. Like I would never fall again.”

The rain persists, a little more heavily, bouncing hard into their little archway. There are few traces of light now, apart from the embers of the cigarettes on the floor, sparking between them. If there had been any clear path from the arch to the gardens just beyond, it has fallen behind a bitter shower.

“But they left.” She blinks. “I lay there for days and the feeling of their arms never went. I was so hungry but it didn’t even matter.”

“I remember.” He says softly.

“He came back to look at me. Just that- and their stare was so cold. Like I was a punishment. Like a project. Like they were bored with me. So bored.” Missy’s eyes flood again. She tries quickly to smear away the tears but the drops roll over the back of her hand. “And then one day, they waltz in with a smile I've never seen on them before, smelling like human. I’m not an idiot.”

“No, you’re not.”

She sniffs louder, tears dripping slowly onto the stone as her head lulls forward. “They look at me and they don’t see me. Do you know how hard that is?”

The Master leans forward from his position against the wall, shuffling his legs so they fold under him, and gently, ever so gently rests his hand against hers.

“Yes.”

At the touch of him, Missy’s small form collapses forward, her chest heaving. “Please.”

It’s cold out when they wake, bodies tangled in awkward shapes inside the doorway. It feels altogether too familiar, like the crumple of a body after a bullet. The light of the morning sun is so dazzling that the Master can only see white behind his eyelids. He is sure she can see it too, the bright feather-white of the morning.

Birds twitter over the thrum of their hearts, swooping and diving around the trees and.. It’s enough, it’s just enough, if they listen closely, to form a song.

V- Sleep

“One Cybermat, two Cybermats, three Cybermats…”

The room is tinged a deep purple, royally coloured like a chocolate wrapper. Over on the counter, two mugs of hot chocolate let out puffs of chocolatey steam. It smells like citrus, and not the sort you’d find in a wash powder. Outside, he is certain of this, the moon hangs in a clear sky. Through the artificial windows, there are no clouds. Occasionally the silhouette of a bat will fly past, its striking wings shadowed against the velvety black-purple of the sky.

“Four Cybermats, five Cybermats, six…”

Missy is in her pyjamas, a full piece night set the Doctor had given her at Christmas one year. They’re purple, naturally, and made of gossamer silk the texture of eiderdown . The Master had been allowed a single stroke of them before Missy had retired to the bed in the corner of the vault.

The cost of admission to the world of Missy’s two layer duvet is a bottle of port, a price Missy herself had set before pointing at the Master’s own measly bed set in the lap of one of the armchairs. The Master does not have a bottle of port, nor does he have the energy to create something that resembles it at this hour of the night.

“Can I show you something instead?” He asks.

Missy rolls her eyes at him, snuggling further into the comfort of the duvet.

“Go on.” She mutters.

The Master digs around in his pocket, fingers dancing around a gallimaufry of mostly stolen things. Eventually, his fingers curl around a small box. He fishes it from his jacket.

“I take it back!” Missy squeals, hands flying over her eyes before the cards are even halfway out. “If I see another card trick this regeneration, I swear on Rassilon’s crusty knickers you won’t live to see the morning.”

The Master puts the cards back.

She breathes a sigh of relief. “Name your price.”

“The joy of my company.” He mutters.

“Oh go on then.” Missy huffs and shuffles to the other side of the bed. “You can sit. I allow it.”

He smiles at her and sinks down onto the plush bedsheets next to her, the mattress bends a little under the weight.

“Talk to me.”

“Alright. You’ve heard you’ve it all before.”

“Do it anyway.”

The Time Lady huffs and scrunches her nose at the ceiling. There is a long pause.

“I want to do so many things when I get out.” She says, eyes fixed on somewhere in the middle distance.

“Yeah?” The Master prompts. “What things?”

His counterpart shoots him a look, something desperate lurking just underneath the surface. “You’ve done them.” She states matter-of-factly. “Tell me what they’re like.”

“Sure.”

“Paddle in the Lagoon of Cerantzis 5.” Says Missy.

He sighs appreciatively, recalling the planet and the strange, strange creatures that had served him cocktails made of steam. The crystal caves had been so bright that day, reflecting gleams of cold sunlight onto the lagoon’s surface. “Wetter than you think. Managed to sunburn- not sure how, it was the middle of winter. It was gorgeous though. So beautiful.” And after his visit, so very, very burnt.

A little excited gasp escapes Missy. He can see her slowly turning in bed to properly face him, eyes trained on his.

“Lovarzian chocolate.”

Now that had been a night. One holiday with a Lovarzi sorceress and the sweetest mug of hot chocolate the Master had ever tasted. He’s not going to mention being captured the following morning and put in the stocks for stealing it.

“So, so sweet. Look forward to it. It’s amazing.”

Her face lights up, there’s something sparkling in her eyes now.

“Hypervodka binge on the Doctor’s grave?”

Ah, right. Trenzalore. It’s a good job his own remains hadn’t been there or else there would have been some serious grave envy. There had been drink and some very rude graffiti involved.

“Mm. Whisky seemed more appropriate. Hell of a cemetery.”

She giggles and clutches the duvet in closer. There’s hardly a hesitation between the next item on her list.

“What about that massive Matrix hack we always wanted to do? Go in with the big guns and make Rassilon suffer?” She woops.

The Master winces, swallowing hard. “No.”

“Aw.” Missy deflates and lets out what sounds like a ‘harumph’. He sees her turn back over, dragging the plush duvet with her. “And here I was thinking you were Mister Cool.”

“Nah.” He says.

There’s a silence where neither of them say anything. The Master looks back at the armchair where he will be spending the night and feels his back twinge in anticipation. So much for sharing with yourself.

“Are you going to keep that suit on all night?” Missy grumbles from the other side.

He raises his eyebrows at the back of her head. “Are you suggesting I take it off instead?”

“Don’t be grotesque. The sheets would chafe.” She scolds.

The Master chuckles and shuffles closer to her in the dark.

Outside, it must be well into the early hours. Bedtime for young humans, wakey wakey time for some others. They should really be getting to sleep. In separate beds. Obviously.

Beside him, Missy shuffles under the bedcovers and sits up, icy blue stare fixed powerfully on him.

“Take me somewhere.”

The Master frowns. “We can’t. You said-“

“Not that, silly. I meant in here.” She taps her fingers to the sides of her temple and shoots him a mischievous smile. “Let’s do something.”

His mind sends him a convenient picture of the armchair and the Master realises how nice it would be to just stay on the bed. Telepathy can be his free duvet pass, just for tonight. “Okay.”

“Your place or mine?” Says Missy.

Yours, he wants to say but the thought is selfish. Missy has spent so much time in her own mind these past decades that it would be unfair to trap her there again.

He remembers his and the Doctor’s connection from Paris and how it lays dormant in the back of his head. Sharing thoughts with, well, yourself could be either the worst thing in the Universe or the best.

On one hand, there is the opportunity to share memories and feelings and ideas with the only other person who understood him best in the universe. On the other is the spiralling dread the Master feels at the prospect of letting down his walls. Missy can’t see that yet.

Out of the two of them, he is the one that has to try.

“Mine.” The Master smiles reassuringly. “I’ve been… practicing.”

“I suppose I’ll let you up then. Come on.” Missy pats the space next to her on the bed and gestures for him to lie down. He doesn’t hesitate. “Let’s rock and roll.”

Contact.

Contact.

The first thing the Master pictures is a planet, or a very accurate simulation of one at least. He recognises some of the features from the odd heist or adventure but none of them seem to fit together into one he can name. It’s Earth-like, probably a reflection of the seventy years he’s spent on it, but still alien enough to send a shiver of excitement to his hearts.

A thin layer of blue grass covers the ground from the top of the hill they are standing on to the outer edges, where a small patch of trees lies swaying in the distance. In the distance, there are houses, each with a plot of farm land beside them. The soil is a dark blue, strange animals flit through the air and all around them is the smell of crème caramel.

Beside him, Missy cranes her neck to the sky and whistles appreciatively. Instead of clouds, there is a canvas of glittering stars. The colours of the stratosphere flux from purple to blue to rosy pink.

“It’s big.” She whispers, a gentle breeze nudging her hair against her forehead. Missy is open mouthed, eyes blinking in the soft warmth of his mind.

“Shall we walk?” He asks, offering an arm to her like a gentleman at a formal dinner.

They promenade down the hill. Somewhere between the crest of the hill and the first farmhouse, a straw hat appears on Missy’s head, the hair underneath it curled and glossy. In fact, very much like the model on the front of one of the New Scientist magazines he’d found in the vault earlier.

The Master has not imagined people here before but as he walks, he can see figures working the land. Tall, built men ploughing furrows into fields with children strapped to their backs. Babies cooing softly in the distance as their parents toss carrots into stove pots. Each face has an odd ambiguity to it, like there is detail there but when he tries to look it slips away.

“Who are they?” Asks Missy.

The Master looks at one of them, a small farm boy wheeling a wheelbarrow full of odd-looking crops across the path. Freckles. Blond hair. A hand-me-down brown waistcoat scuffed at its edges.

“Us. I think. People we know.”

They walk past a few houses. Most look weak enough to blow over, wood splintering off the walls at janky angles that look sharp enough to scar.

Another villager stands at the side of the road, an older woman in a rocking chair, knitting a long pink scarf. The Master recognises the eyes from somewhere, an advert perhaps, or an old TV show he had watched?

No. More than that. The woman is old in human terms. Old enough to need looking after. The Master remembers her. She had been a waitress at a club he and his bandmates had played at in the seventies. The Master remembers the night had ended with them booting out a drunken skinhead, his wandering hands had got too close and too far. The woman had bought them a round before skulking backstage with the guitarist.

Now her face sags with wrinkles. Sad, pained wrinkles, worn in by a lifetime of frowns. He had imagined her that face would be happier. Better, somehow.

Missy tilts her head inquisitively. “I don’t know them, do I?”

“No.” Says the Master. “Not yet.”

“I’ve never thought about people before.” She mutters. “What would happen if I talked to them?”

“Try.”

They stop in the middle of the dirt track. He shrugs, casting an eye over the fields beyond the village. Beyond a certain point, the landscape fades to white. The Master presumes that, if they ventured far enough, they’d reach somewhere profoundly more painful.

A pinching sensation brings his attention back to the present and he realises, a little belatedly that Missy is treading on his foot.

“Wakey wakey.”

“Ow.” He pouts. “Let’s go then.”

She smiles and tugs on his elbow.

The two of them turn towards the wood cabin where the woman is sitting. Around the rackety entrance, there is a pile of rocks and mud shaped like cannonballs. As they pass, one dislodges from the top and rolls pathetically down into the dirt below. Kaboom. He thinks.

“Hello.” Says Missy from beside him. The Master feels a sharp elbow at his ribs and splutters out a greeting in turn.

The old woman pauses her knitting and looks up. “Hello.” She smiles at Missy. “You have pretty eyes, my dear.”

His younger self frowns and turns to face him.

“You think I have pretty eyes?”

The Master flashes a toothy grin in return. “Big fan of self-love.”

“Preener.” She smirks.

They look back to the cabin. He had almost expected it to disappear but neither the shack nor the old woman has moved an inch.

Missy’s face is suddenly serious.

“Do you feel safe here?” She asks. “Can anything hurt you?”

“Everything is dangerous here.” The old woman croaks, kind eyes crinkling at the edges in a warm, full-faced smile.

Missy frowns.

“Come in.” The woman beckons. “My daughter is cooking pastries.”

They look at each other, hesitate for a few short seconds, before following their host inside.

The inside of the cabin is just large enough to fit a dining table and a few chairs, three for the occupants and one each for both Missy and The Master. Along one of the walls is a makeshift kitchen; old-fashioned stoves and rustic counters protrude outwards, wood splintering from their frames. Working at the counter is a young girl, twisting lines of pastry into neat plaits.

He sniffs as he passes. The crème caramel scent from outside has transformed into a vivid mix of soil, dirt and the smell of horrid depravity. It clings to the house like a bad deodorant.

They take a seat. Missy has to gather her skirts to avoid trapping them under the chair legs. From the table, they can see out into the garden where a stocky man works, his cheeks full and face scruffy, he looks entirely too well fed to be toiling in a field.

“How many sugars?” Asks a voice.

“Three.” Answers Missy.

“None.” Says the Master simultaneously.

“I could ask them anything.” She murmurs “I could ask them about you.”

“I control them.” He replies.

“Do you?”

The little girl at the counter finishes what she is doing and begins to slide the plaits onto a large baking tray. Her hands are covered in mud. From the other side of the room, he can see the old woman standing in the doorway watching a man working on the blue soil outside. Though his features are lost to the distance, he can make out a familiarity about the face. These are people he has met before, maybe ones he’s killed.

“Do you know who we are?” The Master asks the girl.

“Guests.” She grins, head tilted comically towards him. Parts of her face come into focus, too sharp against the warm wood background.

Her hair is a dark, dark brown, messily tied back. She’s small but her muscles look far too developed for a girl her size. On her fingers are tiny gummy rings like sweets taken from Haribo packets. It jars with the scenery. Their colours pop. It’s very nineties, he thinks, though which part of his brain is doing that?

The girl finishes scrabbling around at the counter and walks over to the table. He looks over at Missy as two plates appear in front of them, on each is a large pastry. It’s different from the plaits on the counter; these are spherical, shaped like tiny worlds.

“Tuck in.” Says the girl, sliding the Master a knife.

He picks up the handle warily, holding it deliberately away from himself- to Missy’s amusement- and cuts. The knife sinks through the middle, melting through the pastry like it were a hot flame through ice. There is no crunch, no sound at all as he peels it open.

Inside the casing are shapes. Long, stringy, protruding parts that glisten and shine in the sunlight like they have been glossed over for a magazine. It takes him a second to realise what he’s looking at.

One of the shapes moves.

Missy gags.

“Special recipe.” Says the girl. “Momma’s.”

Inside the pastry case, a tiny hand flexes its fingers, goo sapping from each digit. Beside it sit limbs; bony wings, tongues, fleshy parts he does not want to name. Species that do not exist any more.

“Eat up.” Smiles their baker.

“I’m not sure we’re hungry.” The Master says before adding quickly- “Thank you.”

“It’s from my Momma.”

“Where is your Momma?”

The girl giggles, tossing a strand of hair from her eyes and poking a fork absentmindedly into the pastry. Missy winces. He sees her push away her plate slightly.

“Let’s get more salt. It’s better with salt.” The girl says, nodding to the old woman.

The old woman on the other side of the table rises and plods over to the door. Outside, the man still works, ploughing potatoes into the blue soil, a rosy glow to his cheeks sprung from hard work.

“Salt!” She calls, voice creaking.

The man’s face lights up. He drops the plough into the soil and jogs over.

“My esteemed guests. Masters.” The plougher grins, something akin to a Welsh accent in his timbre. “Should only take a minute.”

He rounds the table before grinning at the old woman. Then, the man plunges a hand into his mouth and yanks out a tooth. The Master chokes.

“Salt for our guests!” A voice laughs.

He feels Missy tug on his arm.

“Stop.”

“Look at them. What craftsmanship!” The man points, grinning. There’s a hole in his smile.

The Master looks again at his plate. A dark liquid is gathering, soaking the pastry crimson. It’s then he realises. The limbs aren’t just limbs.

Silurian, Azbentian, Karaketite, Pilonderes, Suxshwion, Logopolitan. The bodies of millions upon millions. Species he had killed without a second thought. Their limbs twitch, each pulsing along to a separate heartbeat.

The girl lifts a forkful to her mouth and bites. Crunch.

“I can’t-“ He manages. She takes a second bite.

Everyone is looking at him. Missy, the girl, the old woman, the farmer.

“Eat!” They scream. Mouths too wide, features melting. They’re changing in front of him, into different shapes and sizes and species.

The girl’s face twists and blurs, her hair colour bleaching to a butter toned blonde, smile widening, face shortening into a perfect caricature. He opens his mouth to speak.

“Eat it.” Says the Doctor.

A wave of hot, un-tempered, claustrophobia begins to push upwards through his throat. Everything in the cabin feels stuffy and oppressive.

Her golden eyes bore into his, full of depth, full of so much more.

“It’s all yours.” The Doctor gleams.

“STOP!”

The Master’ eyes jolt open, his body hitting the Vault floor like a sack of bricks. Across the room, Missy is panting, hands clenched into tight fists.

“No-“ He gasps. “No- I can’t-“

There’s something pressing down hard on his lungs, forcing the air out in tiny bursts. His palms are slippery as they scramble for grip on the cold ground, grappling for purchase. Some distant echo of the drums thunder in his head. Cannon-fire and bullets ricochet layer themselves on top. It’s so loud. It’s so-

“Master.” It’s Missy, somewhere ahead, voice trembling. “What was that.”

The Master squeezes his nails into fists, like they can burst through the percussion in his head.

“Can’t-“ He inhales, the air hurts as it travels through his throat. “I cant-“

The air in the room disappears.

“-Forget-“ The Master chokes.

Breath is going now, he knows he’ll have to engage his respiratory bypass soon-

A hand touches his shoulder.

The Master freezes.

“It’s okay.”

He is still here.

“You’re safe.”

He uses what little strength there is left to turn his head. Missy is crouched beside him, the long strands of her hair tickling the edge of his shirt. Her face is warm, smile so comfortable he almost forgets the racing of his hearts.

“I’m here. I’m not going to leave you.”

“I’m sorry.” He whispers.

“Well I don’t accept it.” She smiles, hand pressing softly on his shoulder. “Don’t apologise for yourself.”

The Master sniffs, the pounding still so loud. The image of the Doctor’s face replaying and replaying.

“Do you want-“ Missy lets out a deep breath. ”-to sleep on the bed tonight?”

Please.

It is only a second before he feels his body leave the floor. Some gentle force is carrying him up into the air, protecting him, letting him curl against it. The Master closes his eyes.

“The Doctor isn’t here.” She says. “You’re safe here. You’re safe.”

Safe?

And as the Master’s body sinks down into the mattress, there isn’t a thing in the Universe he wants to be more.

VI- Air

It is, by all accounts, a good day.

A simulation of the beaming midday sun shines across the room, bathing each nook and cranny of the place in a shower of golden light. Every object inside has taken on a happy shine, one that lifts the mood of the room considerably.

Missy is in high spirits, calm too, as she sits twirling a paintbrush in the corner of the Vault. As of late, his counterpart has taken to watercolours; painting any subject she can remember the face of- and some landscapes too.

Her latest is a scene depicting the ice age of Villengard, a lake of frozen lilies surrounded by the skeletons of trees. The picture is beautiful, there is a misty quality about it that makes the Master’s eyes glaze over for a second when he looks. The paints too, have a lucid flow to them, thin, organic. Every shade, they had made together from only what they could find on the shelves and in the cupboards. It had been fun for a few days, watching the ingredients bind together into every colour of the rainbow. He is proud of them.

Today they have naturally fallen apart from one another, finding different things to do at either end of the room. Whilst Missy paints, the Master tinkers with the inside of a television set.

The mechanism of the thing had been easy to hack open but it’s insides are a mess. He thinks how easy it would be to have his TARDIS and a functioning tool kit, even just an Earth screwdriver would do.

He’d had a lab in the 70s. A janky, scrapheap pile of bits but a lab all the same. A place he could go ‘home’ to and lie amongst the carnage. It had been the first time on Earth someone had offered him a job. A captain from the Russian branch of UNIT had taken him for a drink and paid such a ridiculous sum of money that he’d had to accept, most likely alarmed by how many invasions British UNIT was suddenly getting. The headquarters had long since disappeared now. Gone with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A small waterfall of springs slip out from the back of the TV.

“Damn!”

Missy doesn’t look up but he thinks he sees her paintbrush waver slightly.

The Master holds in a string of curses as the rest of his project tumbles onto the floor. What little is left of the wiring still inside looks tattered and messy. There’s not a lot he can fix without materials from the outside world and there’s no way Missy will allow him out now.

Maybe he needs a distraction.

“Let’s talk about something.”

His past self shoots him a withering glance.

“How about you talk and I put on my best listening face?”

“I can’t get the mechanism to stay together.” He grumbles. “As soon as I slot the components in, they lose magnetism. I need some kind of magnet.”

Without taking her brush off the paper, Missy gestures towards the fridge at the side of the room.

“Magnets.”

The Master raises an eyebrow and follows the direction of her finger. On the other side of the room is the kitchenette, the counter looking just as messy as they had left it. Just to the side of the clutter, however, is a tall, white fridge.

Ah.

He brushes the pile of loose components onto the floor and saunters over.

Across the front of the fridge is a clustered mess of magnets of all different shapes and sizes. They take up nearly half of the door space and, the Master notices, are shaped into something resembling Venusian genitalia.

The magnets are mostly from earth, though he can see a few have oddly shaped rocks stuck to them. Magnets saying things like: ‘my friend went to Sengeva and all they bought was this lousy magnet.’. Another reading ‘my other fridge is a Rutan hypothermic compressor.’ and one that simply says, ‘Shoes’ in ancient Gallifreyan.

He opens the door slightly, letting a blast of cold air crawl blow across his arms. The shelves are as empty as they’d left them, only half a Twix wrapper remains floating ominously at the back. For a second he contemplates putting it in the bin but stops at the thought of the Doctor’s face souring at the mess.

The Master pushes the fridge shut again and peels a magnet from its front before parading his spoils triumphantly back to the pile of springs and wires in the centre of the room.

“Splendid.” He announces.

The front of the magnet peels off easily- a twee looking clay mural of a British seaside town he remembers had been Nardole’s best attempt at a Secret Santa one year- leaving only the small circular magnet at the back. After a few taps from the screwdriver, it is enough to hold the springs in place long enough for him to fasten the TV case shut and carry it over to where Missy is sitting.

“Ta da.” He says triumphantly.

She whistles appreciatively as she inspects it and hugs the sketchbook a little closer into her body, he notices, to obscure whatever scene it is from his view.

“Fancy a chat with Vladimir Putin? It should do FaceSpace.” He prods.

“Time.” Groans Missy, flicking her paintbrush at him. “Keep up Grandad.”

“What?”

“FaceTime.” She says slowly.

“Whatever.” He rolls his eyes. “I want to watch Teletubbies.”

She snorts, gaze not leaving the sketchbook as he fiddles with the buttons on the front of the set. Right now, there should be the Doctor beside him, wide eyed at his own genius. Perhaps a grovelling human too. On their knees, obviously.

“I rerouted the comms signal through my TCE. Five hundred channels, look!” The Master grins.

He turns the set on. It's old, chunky, like something from the early 2000s and the screen appears to be about two pixels wide. The first images that pop up are of what looks like the surface of the moon, a cloaked Monk strides across the cratered surface, greyed hands clasped around an alien looking flag.

Okay, perhaps not the outcome he’d expected.

He pushes the buttons hastily, each channel pinging with either grey static or the stare of a Monk.

“You didn’t think about that, did you?” Says Missy beside him.

In his exasperation, the Master almost flicks past it- but there, clear as day, on the screen is a TV studio with a blue clock. A group of panellists sit either side of an intimidating looking chairperson. There’s a ticking noise in the background and the sound of something like a xylophone plinking alongside it.

“Ah!” He exclaims. “Countdown. I know that one.”

“What are they counting down to?” Asks Missy, puzzled.

“World domination?”

“But that’s our job.” He pats her gently on the arm as she pouts. “Odd though. Nothing’s different about it? No Monks, no pyramids. Nothing.”

“Maybe they just like Nick Hewer.” The Master shrugs, prodding at a second button on the display. The picture skips, omitting different pitches of static noises for each channel it lands on.

Eventually, he skips onto a channel with no static.

The picture is impossibly clear. A higher resolution than he’s sure the screen can handle. On it is a triangular logo, the silhouette of a Monk reaching out of it and out of the screen. There is a montage of images in the background: the bare ground of Amazon rainforest, a gaggle of starving children, a teddy bear with stuffing leaking from its side.

A waltz of some sorts is playing in the background, electronically generated and a little eerie to listen to. He can see a bottom row of subtitles too, captions describing the ‘benevolence of the Monks and their generosity to all’. Then, something about a representative, a leader and truth-teller the Monks had appointed as a mouthpiece. Just about to broadcast.

“And they said daytime television was draining.” Missy quips. “Thank you for trying though, it was funny whilst it lasted.”

His counterpart tilts back in her chair, and with the serenity of someone not currently imprisoned/executed for war crimes, continues painting.

The Master sighs and looks down at his hands. There’s been so many things to do over the past few months, almost enough to make him forget the locked door behind him. The one thing left he has of the outside world is his hands. The calluses and the dirt never really leave, even after all this time.

He is just about to turn the screen off when it changes, the image flickering onto the picture of a man smiling.

“Hold it.”

Missy’s shoulder collides with his and the Master finds himself being shoved unapologetically to the floor.

A hiss.

“Bastard.”

He growls in complaint and is about to hit her back before he notices what’s happening. Missy’s face is millimetres from the screen, eyes glaring furiously.

“The bastard.” Missy hisses. “He’s cut his hair.”

The Master feels as if part of his brains have just been run over by a freight train. The image in the centre of the screen is the Doctor, grey hair almost neat on top of his head and a shapely suit. Of course, this is where he’d been. Six months making propaganda whilst Missy could have starved.

“Praise be to out benevolent Monk masters.” Says the image on the screen.

Missy’s eyes narrow. There’s a clear irritation behind them and not just because of his haircut.

“Who does he think he is?” She hisses again and taps an accusing nail to the top of the Doctor’s oddly trimmed hair.

“Through their gracious guidance and wise counsel, I invite you all to give praise. Praise to this glorious captivity.”

They both snort simultaneously.

“That’s not even beginner’s level evil. It’s like he’s not even trying to monologue.” He scoffs. “Talk about second-hand embarrassment.”

The Master reaches forward and turns off the screen.

“I never want to see that again.”

The two of them exchange a sombre glance. She nods.

“He’s gone way too far this time.”

Missy trails back over to the chair and begins where she had left off. He watches as she tries to make sense of the page, frowning as the colours don’t quite mix as she wants them to.

It’s midday still. The light hasn’t shifted from the time he picked up the TV set; it is the same faux sun that assaults his eyes, the same simulation of clouds just outside. The Master needs something to fill his head so he paces, thinking aloud.

“How’d he do it?” The first thought. “Ingratiate himself with the Monks, I mean. We tried that and we’re charming.”

She spares a glance this time, looking practically villainous in the light of it all.

“We did have fun though.”

“The girl and the volcano?” He probes. Missy snickers, tickling the brush along the paper.

“She thought it was a daytime prank show. We would have cried laughing- if we had functioning eyelids.”

“Ouch.” He grimaces. “Don’t remind me.”

The two of them share a pained glance, remembering the pain of a dishevelled body long past.

“We are good. Aren’t we? Our plans work most of the time?” She hums, stroking the brush over a pool of orange paint and swirling it lightly together with the yellow.

The Master, caught a little off guard, shoots an offended glare in her direction before deciding to take her seriously. He puts a hand to his beard, and strokes.

“Ninety-nine, ninety-eight percent of the time. The only time they fail is when we want them to.” He says confidently, fingers prickling from the unruly stubble. Missy’s mouth quirks upwards and she raises an eyebrow.

“Or when the Doctor shows up. Or the times we accidentally kill ourselves. Or-“

“Okay!” The Master holds up his hands in mock surrender. “Ninety-seven.”

A quiet ‘clunk’ noise comes from the fridge as it depressurises and his smile falters a little. He’s in the middle of a plan, one that’s so close to fruition he can almost picture the look on the Doctor’s face. But there are years still left.

“What’s your all-time favourite though?” Missy says suddenly. The Master huffs.

“I can’t do that. It’s like choosing a favourite child.”

“I don’t know. I think the Nethersphere was some of our best work. We got cosy for years in that thing.”

“You say that but I always think Jodrell Bank.” The Master preens.

Missy’s eyes widen and she breaks into a wide grin.

“Now that was classy.”

“You’ve got to admit though, he had it coming.”

“Striding around the place-“

“In that body-“

“With that ridiculous scarf and that stupid metal dog-“

“Don’t get me started on Romana.”

Missy makes a little throwing up noise and blows up her cheeks for dramatic effect. “You’ll make me ruin my painting, darling.”

The Master smiles wickedly.

“We have excellent taste.”

They both nod in agreement.

For a few quiet minutes, he watches his younger self play idly with the paintbrush like a child with a chopstick. It’s a key sign the painting is done when somebody as pernickety as them can no longer find anything wrong with it. He envies her ability to let go.

Almost on cue, the artist breaks into a grin.

“There!” She proclaims. “Finished.”

Missy turns the piece of paper around and the Master is all of a sudden confronted with his own likeness staring back at him

“It’s you and your stupid little face.”

He edges closer and regards the painted mirror.

It is his face but the lines on it shine red and orange and amber. There is a fire in his eyes, and a quizzical gleam underneath. The line of his lips is curved into a cocksure smirk, the gleam on them reflecting the yellow of the page. The same yellow glow that the artificial windows beam in streaks around them.

The image seems to move as he blinks, the strokes filled with the energy of flight. Even the shape of his own face has a direction, curves and blank space jarring together in restless motion.

The Master shifts closer, eyes adjusting to the shimmer. Something changes in the painting, a different angle perhaps, and a new shine reveals itself. Under the subtle brown of his skin is a sparkling, glowing gold. The same colour as gloaming skies, the shine of thrones and the fire, the scorching gold fire of regeneration.

Missy smiles at him from the top of the paper.

“One day, I’ll look like you.” She hums.

At her words, the painting ceases to reflect anything of him. The mirror snaps and the same tugging hollowness returns.

“Yeah.” He says quietly. “You will.”

VII- Light

Time passed. Time passed and passed and passed.

In all regards, it was Autumn- past the changing of the clocks and into the season’s last days before the frost of early Winter. There should have been rain, a few clouds and some drizzle but today the sky was a gleaming, sunburnt orange.

All around the world, the skies had changed. There had been a storm in the Sahara Desert, he had heard, huge hoards of sand picked up by the wind and carried over the equator to little England. Whatever traces of blue from a bright day before had gone and even in the night, the stars had disappeared. Slowly, one by one, until there was nothing left. Just orange.

“My name is Ozzymandius.”

Says the voice.

“Look upon, ye mighty, and despair.”

--

Missy has been gone for over an hour and the Master is beginning to wonder whether he should call in Missing Persons.

The morning had started as usual; the two of them rose from a pretence of sleep, swapping insults as they chowed down on a Nutripack. He had dedicated most of the morning to reading, as had she, sitting leisurely on the armchair opposite poring over a battered copy of HG Wells. Then, she had got up to make a cup of tea. The kettle had boiled and both the mugs filled, even the last of the custard creams had gone. He had ignored it, eyes too busy skimming over lines of academic sounding poetry to notice, but when he’d next looked Missy had gone.

After a short time, the Master had got up and taken his mug from the counter. The steam had been tepid against his face, the same drowsy blend of odd lemon and barely distinguishable spices. The other mug was still there. It had been the Doctor’s, but after so many uses the words had rubbed off. Only ‘N, ‘O’ and ‘D’ remained.

Following a quick sweep of the room, he’d started to panic. Missy hadn’t been in any of her usual spots and the locking mechanism on the door was still intact. Unless his roommate had been spontaneously cremated, the Master knows that there would have been no way for her to exit without him noticing.

He tries picking up the landline before promptly putting it down again. What numbers are there to call? The police? Responding to a call with a bedraggled woman locked in the cellar and him as the only witness was something even he as a skilled hypnotist wouldn’t be able to weasel out of.

Perhaps this is Hide and Seek, a test for him before he leaves. Find her and win the mystery prize of ten gazillion cuddles per day for all eternity. Maybe it is something else. A trial. He has done something wrong and now he’ll pay with her silence.

No.

There is something about the air inside the room, an uncomfortable humidity that crawls across his skin, that creeping feeling that something has changed and he has missed it. It’s not a test.

“Marco.” He tries.

The Vault is silent, returning no sound but the light buzz of the electricals.

“You’re supposed to say ‘Polo’.”

Okay. Not playing then.

Missy can’t be dead or else he wouldn’t be here to feel it. She can’t be hurt either, their telepathic bond is too strong to let each other’s injuries go without a sting.

Maybe it’s right to let her have time to herself. They have been in each other’s faces and at each other throats for almost six months in a way neither of them are used to. He will wait for her to come out when the time is right and make the Vault as comforting as he can in the meantime.

On the first day, the Master takes stock of the Nutripacks. Out of the thousand they had started with, there is only a small pile left. The bin beside the kitchen counter overflows with their loose packaging- all industrial white plastic and neatly packed cardboard. He spends a few hours translating the labels on them into Latin, quasi-Martian, Ancient Gallifreyan and back again.

When watching Countdown repeats gets too boring, he tries strumming along to some David Bowie. Eventually, he gets to ‘Life on Mars’ and takes to the piano. It’s almost unnoticeable when the day slips into night and even less so when the dark makes way for the bright blue of the morning sky.

On the second day he looks a little more, checking through all the spots he had searched last time for a stray arm or leg. He finds nothing except crumpled blankets and messy pillow arranging. Missy is nowhere to be seen. Again. After playing the piano, his fingers cramp and ache when he flexes them so the Master takes a bath. He tries a different jar of bath salts this time, Orange and Cardamom. It reminds him of the spice markets he’d found in Mumbai post-partition though the smell is artificial and a little irritating.

In the afternoon he thinks about stealing her bed before scolding himself and making a makeshift one out of the armchairs instead. The cramp in his fingers is too distracting to drift off to sleep so he thinks instead. About the number of Nutripacks left on the shelf, about the Monks outside, about the Doctor.

The morning of the third day arrives without ceremony. The pack of cards in his pocket makes for adequate entertainment as he stacks them into a miniature replica of the Kremlin. The whole thing takes only a few hours before he is back to staring at nothing. Still no Missy.

The Master wonders if the Doctor would mind him stealing the electric guitar before concluding that, yes, it’s a stupid question and that his time would be better spent defiling it with kids TV themes.

The first down sounds something like Fraggle Rock but he forgets the lyrics halfway through and it segues into a bastardisation of Teletubbies. Then he gets into Muppet territory and the tunes start coming thick and fast.

“Sunny day.” He sings. Strumming the chords for the Sesame Street theme as he swaggers around the Vault. “Sweepin' the clouds away. On my way to where the air is sweet.”

A pause. He casts a vaguely enigmatic look to the side, off into an imaginary camera before singing again.

“Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame-“

There is a loud crash from the other side of the room. The Master stops strumming.

A large cupboard is lying face down on the Vault floor, just below a set of shelves he had fixed the other day. By the looks of it, the screws holding the frame to the wall have fallen out and the damn thing is loose again.

He lays the guitar down on the armchair and hauls himself to the crash-site. There are screws littered across the floor and under the cupboard and the piece of furniture has clearly splintered on its way down. Even the quasi-wood varnish has chipped off from the edge, leaving a bare and ugly scar.

He manages to haul the draws upright and pick up some of the debris though his arms more than ache from strumming.

“My singing isn’t that bad.” The Master grumbles.

The pile of screws roll in protest when he sets them down on the side.

“Let’s see if you still work.” He takes hold of the draw handle. “Open sesame.”

The noise that follows is like nothing he has heard in his seventy years on Earth. Something behind the cupboard seems to roll off its hinge and, with almost comedic timing, creaks exactly like the TARDIS door.

The Master straightens up. There, sat snugly in the wall of the Vault, are the doors of a blue police telephone box. Tingling like a tiny galaxy around them is the sparkle of a perception filter.

A vein almost pops in his forehead.

He clicks his fingers.

The doors swing inwards like they have just been hit with the force of a snowstorm and hit the other side with a loud ‘bang’. Inside, over the hum of the console room, somebody yelps.

It is the same as the day he left it. The same glow, same stupid lights, the same arrangement of books littered carelessly on the bookshelves. Past the controls is the landing he and the Doctor had stood that day, tears beading in her eyes as she had taken his hand. When there’d been so much hope.

He steps over the cupboard and inside the ship. The air hits him like an electric fan, so rich and full of bitter metal tang. Every particle fizzes with barely contained movement, buzzing against his bare skin like tiny jolts of static.

Cautiously, he edges forward a little more. The pure energy of time is a heavy storm of gold on the edge of his mind. In contrast to the Vault’s musty air, the Doctor’s TARDIS rushes with life.

The Master takes a deep breath in. His hearts pound with new adrenaline, new senses, new time.

“You’ve been here for a while.” He says.

There’s a shuffling noise, the sound of a book falling from a shelf and the smell of new panic in the air.

“How did you find me?” Asks Missy. “Why are you here?”

It’s almost impossible to spot but he can see the tangles of her long hair poking over the top of the balcony railings. She’s sitting in their favourite spot, books toppled over in a messy pile on the floor. There’s a low light up there, almost like Missy has broken some of the bulbs.

He lets out a lungful of air, the tension evaporating as quickly as it had appeared.

“I looked for you, you know. For days.”

Another book falls, crashing against the railing and toppling to the hard floor.

“I watched you.” She says quietly. “I wanted to come out but-“

Missy cuts off. A pair of eyes peek from over the railing, joining the bird’s nest of hair on top. They look sore and wet in the light.

“I understand.” He smiles. “It’s okay.”

Her eyes narrow, fresh moisture threatening to spill out. The Master should be furious, livid with her after being missing for so long. He should be screaming, voice hoarse.

“Aren’t you angry?”

“No.” He says softly. “Do you want to come down, Missy?” His younger self’s head emerges and he can see the sheen on her cheeks where tears have died. Missy stares at his face, puzzling out the lines of his expression, looking for any sort of trap he might spring on her. “It’s okay. There’s nobody here who wants to harm you.”

Slowly, little faster than a snail’s pace, she shudders upwards. The pile besides her slides a little at that, books teetering off one another and spilling over onto the ground. She untangles herself from them, eyes scanning for the safest place to plant her heels, and clings tightly to the railing.

“It’s warm here.”

He feels small wrinkles form at the edges of his eyes. “Yes. Toastier than a toasted marshmallow.”

When Missy is halfway down the stairs, he offers up a hand and guides her steadily down. Any sign of a tremor is buried in how tightly she grips to him, like he is a lifeguard and she is drowning.

“I want to stay.” She says.

“We can stay.” A squeeze of her hand. “Just not forever.”

She looks at him with dazed eyes.

“Don’t you want to go?”

“I never have.” He says.

The light in the room dips. The engines purr softly underneath them.

The Master looks to the console and then out of the doors

“How is this here?” He asks her. “Did you know?”

She fidgets at that, eyes flitting to the floor.

“I worked it out. The Doctor’s gone but-“ There is a pause as she considers the words. “The recall settings. They bring the TARDIS back here in an emergency, you know that.” He nods. “There’s a wee noise it makes when it lands. The Vault is so quiet, I heard it.”

The ship chirps in delight at being acknowledged and The Master takes a moment to stroke the underside of the console. Curious, almost as if the damned thing likes him this time around.

“I like it here.” He says.

“Me too.”

“More than the latest one. It’s too distant, all column-y and cold and-“ He makes an awkward gesture with his hands.

Missy scrunches up her nose, a small smile creeping onto her face. “Let’s take a walk.”

They raise their eyebrows at one another.

“What he doesn’t know won’t harm him.”

“Back here for supper?”

“You’re on.”

The two of them smile and join their hands as they leave behind the console room, stretching their legs for the first time in a very long time. For once, the Master isn’t thinking about pain but the comfort of her skin against his. Missy doesn’t think about anything, it’s enough.

Back in the Vault, there are two Nutripacks left.

Morning doesn’t arrive on the TARDIS. Instead, Missy wakes to the yellow-ish glow of the time rotor. Beside her, the Master dozes in and out of quiet thought, stirring only when the engines hiss. As one of them shifts, the other frowns at the disturbance, eyes peeking open.

The ship registers their open eyes with a quiet chirp, brightening the lamps and candles and glowing little buttons into a warm daytime light. It’s peaceful. Around the room are tiny reminders of books left open and candles burnt out. Some of the cupboards to the side have been hurriedly left open, tools and tiny mechanisms strewn out in front of them. The Master surveys it all calmly, taking in the beauty of still things. There is comfort here in stillness, even if the air fizzles with the opposite.

His younger self is a grounding weight on his lap. They had fallen asleep slumped over one another inside the console room, like they had under the archway and now their backs ache from the stretch of it.

“I need to ask you a question.” Missy says against the warmth of his skin, hands stroking gently over the parts of him still exposed like her touch doesn’t make a thousand cells inside him scream with the paradox. “If you had one day left, what would you do?”

The Master looks at her, brow furrowed.

“Why do you say that?” He asks.

She closes her eyes and sighs. There’s something so final about it, so resigned, that he almost doesn’t catch the tremor in her lips as she speaks. “Because I feel like everything is going to end.”

The lights flicker, the ship laughing. Fine.

“Let’s not waste it then.” The Master sits upright and grabs onto the railing to pull himself up, gently pushing Missy’s head off the comfort of his lap. “One day left and everything to see.”

He looks down at her and sees the grin of someone so old in her face. So old but so, so ready to just see.

“One rule.” Missy says, now sitting stretched across the seat. “We can’t leave so-”

“-forwards or backwards?” He completes. “All of time, the same space.”

“Too far back and we’ll end up in a grotty old basement.” She cringes. “Forward.”

“Forward.” He nods. “Let’s go.”

The Master grabs her hand and they bound down the stairs, dancing onto the floor beside the console. His hand reaches for the stabiliser, twisting it as Missy does the same on the other side. So they won’t crash into the Vortex, whenever it is they end up. Then, almost simultaneously, their hands fly over one another to the visualiser.

“Years.” Says the Master, eyes squinting at the Gallifreyan on the screen. “How many years?”

Missy reaches out, fingers already swiping at the controls. “One-thousand.”

He lays his hand on top of hers and they pull at the slider together, dates mashing together on the screen until there is a shimmer of resplendent gold. She raises her hand, taking his with it, and dances away. He twirls back, the spin making his coat flare. The levers go in order: Time, space, date, coordinates, universe. He pushes each down one by one.

“Flight-ready captain.” The Master salutes.

Her head peeks out from the side of the time rotor, eyes narrowed in determination.

“Then, fly.”

With the final command, his hand shoots to the lever and pushes down.

The TARDIS begins to move. The central column beams as it rises slowly up and scrapes back down again. Steam pumps from the engines, sifted by the holes in the floor into a fresh heat that envelops them both. It would be almost mechanical if it weren’t for the unmistakable accompanying smell of lemon drops.

The ship’s familiar groaning, creaking noise fills the air. It sends deep earthy vibrations through the console, making the controls buzz with new life.

Missy is laughing, hair tossing as she moves. There is a burst of energy within her now, lighting up the captivity-tired weight in her eyes so they shine out like stars.

The two of them cling to the machine, letting it’s movements become a part of them. The vortex is so fast around the TARDIS that they can hear it howling outside, fluxing with gorgeous colour.

It is all so much. So much light and sound and mechanical music that when it slows, the two of them are left shaking in a still console room.

“We’re here.” Says the Master quietly.

Missy looks at him, mouth hanging open as she pants. “Yeah.”

“Wanna take a look outside?”

“Only if you do.”

Their mouths break into feral, open grins and they cackle together.

The two of them walk round to meet in front of the door, chests heaving.

“Take my hand?” He asks.

“I don’t need to.” She replies.

“I wasn’t asking for you.”

Their hands reach across the gap and, like a strange jigsaw, slide together. The Master feels her squeeze his knuckle as they stride towards the doors.

It is Missy that reaches to open them- with a confidence that has always befitted her more than him. Her manicured fingers clasp around the handle and with butter-like ease, the door clicks open.

The first thing they are confronted with is the smell. Outside, a horrible, pungent smell of dust and decay permeates through the air. Wherever they are can’t have been opened in years, maybe centuries.

Missy screws up her nose next to him. “Eugh.”

“I’m not that bad.” He jokes. She whacks him on the arm.

The Master edges forward. From what he can see, the room they have landed in is broken. If the Vault had been a perfect morgue then wherever they are now is the exact opposite.

Directly before them is a mess. It is clear that whatever the space used to be has been lost, overruled by a mass of discarded Earth junk. In the very middle sits the door of a shuttlecraft, torn from its ship by the electric hinges- the side reads in blocky font, ‘Magpie’.

Pieces of charred black debris have been gathered into a makeshift four walls although they are half-finished. Instead of neat bricks, there are shards sticking into the air. Behind them, large pillars of stone are still standing, bracketing a junkyard of broken objects.

He lets out a long breath. “Brave new world.”

“This isn’t human.” Says Missy. “Whatever this is, it can’t be human.”

The Master nods, eyes glancing from one piece of junk to another. It is like somebody had tried to condense the Universe’s spare machinery and dump it, unceremoniously, into a melting pot.

“Let’s go and take a look.”

He tugs at her hand and they walk out of the TARDIS doors, out onto the bitten black ground. The rubble shifts as they step onto it. Missy has to tread lightly to prevent her heel from sinking in the mess as they edge gradually further into the wreckage.

“This isn’t the Vault.” She mutters. “The dimensions are all wrong. There’s too much-” She pauses, bringing a finger to her lips. “-burn.”

“So, what happened to it?”

“It got… lost?”

Still holding hands, they stride over the rubble and through the wreckage. The Master picks out items along the way and identifies them out loud. Abacus, camera, staser gun, ammo packets, neptunian wine, Amalian scythe, kettle, shuttle door, energy gems.

The items don’t look connected but they are stacked together in distinct, awkward piles. Some are even melting into each other, some sort of heat bonding metal against metal.

Just ahead of him, Missy stops.

“Look.” She tells him, finger pointing towards a gap in the wall. He steps forward to meet her. Between two shards of pointed rubble is a skeleton, hanging frozen in the air.

“Human.” He scans it again. “Must be.”

“No.” She says, finger dropping. “Gallifreyan.”

A stone drops into the Master’s stomach. “That’s impossible.”

“Not impossible.” Missy mutters. He feels her apprehension rising against the boundary of his mind. “It’s not mine, you’d wouldn’t be here if it was. Can’t be yours either, the frame is too small.”

“No.” He chokes.

“How did it get here?”

“Fluke.”

His counterpart shrugs. He knows she doesn’t feel the same knot forming in her throat, she can’t feel the weight of it pulling her to the ground. “A straggler? The Celestial Intervention Agency monitors this planet like a baby, they’d need operatives to come take a look every once in a while.”

“No.” Says the Master, feeling the cold sweat begin to gather on his palms. “This isn’t right.”

Missy looks at him and blinks.

“Morally? Never stopped us before.”

He shakes his head. “This isn’t our timeline.”

Her mouth opens a little at that, a cloud of confusion passing suddenly over her mind. The Time Lady frowns. He can feel her reaching out her mind, searching for information.

“It feels right to me. How can you tell?” She says guardedly.

“I can’t say. I just know.“

Missy lets go of his hand and he can feels the walls of her mind closing to him once more.

“I don’t understand. What aren’t you telling me.”

Her eyes are searching his for explanation and, for the first time in their time together, scrutinising.

The Master swallows down the knot and takes a deep breath.

“I destroyed Gallifrey.”

Missy’s face drops. The haggard black of the room is so dark that as her eyes widen, two gaunt shadows take their place. The eyes of a skull, dark circles framing their place do not drop from his

.

“Missy.” He tries but it comes out as a hiss. The Time Lady stood in front of him doesn’t move. “There was nothing I could do. I had no choice.” The Master reaches his hand across the space between them before thinking better of it. She doesn’t even flinch. “You haven’t been yet, you don’t know what they did to the- to us.” He takes a deep breath. “It was right.”

Missy takes a step away from him.

“You aren’t like me.” She whispers.

“I am you.” He smiles softly. “I am always what you’re going to become. It’s me.”

Missy shakes her head again and turns away from him, hand moving to tug at the button on her blouse. “No.” She says, head bowed. “You don’t get that right.”

Before he can think to react, she is walking away from him and into the wreckage. A wire snags at her skirts but she doesn’t reach down to free it. Instead, it tears as she clambers further and further in.

“What are you doing?”

She doesn’t stop. “Walking away from you.

The Master feels a new type of discomfort settle in his gut.

“Where?”

Missy looks around her and seems to spot something. She turns from her path and clambers in another direction, heels clacking as they meet ground each time. The items get larger, the more she walks. Each jagged edge below tears more and more messily until the skirt is more like a mass of fabric than an item of clothing. He hadn’t seen it before but there is a chair in the middle of it all, sat upright despite the overturned junk around it. She slows as she reaches it, stretching a heeled leg over one side and sinking down into the battered upholstery.

“Here.” She says blankly

“Can I just show you?”

He lets down the barriers around his consciousness, leaving it open, and immediately feels the stone dead radio silence of being shut out.

“Missy please.” He tries and nudges tentatively at her walls. There is no response.

The image of a closed door presents itself to him, an articulate shielding mechanism locking it tight. Maybe knocking would work.

Open sesame. He thinks, humourlessly.

There is a bang from somewhere inside the room. The Masters hearts stop. Missy's head whirls, her eyes glazed.

“What was that?”

It is at that moment, his head decides to scramble. The psychic frequency he is picking up from Missy flares and a burning hot pain seats itself inside his mind. There is something here that is still alive.

“What are you doing to me?” She whimpers quietly.

He turns on the spot, eyes scanning over the debris until-

In the corner of the room, something has changed. Lying against the back wall is a sarcophagus. Its doors are wide open, still trembling against the blackened wall of the junkyard. A cloud of dust streams from the door, thick and choking and putrid.

The Master almost doesn’t see the hand that stretches out of the coffin until it is too late. The doors shudder and the hand grips tighter, clawing at the wood with jagged nails that make the surface splinter.

He opens his mouth to warn Missy.

“Hello.” Says the voice of an old woman. “How may I assist you in your death?”

Missy jolts, turning so quickly that the chair gives way underneath her.

The crash that follows is accompanied by two near identical shrieks. In the corner, the sarcophagus seems to teeter. The hand that grips it pushes forcefully at the casing and the entire thing swings over onto the ground.

Where the doors had once been, a figure stands crookedly. Framing her face are gaunt cheekbones so sunken that the bulges of her skull poke through. Her grey hair is matted, the texture of bent straw against wizened skin. Just below where her neck sags into loose skin lies a silk scarf; so touched by time that, as the figure steps forward, it sways like cardboard.

“Missy.” Whispers Missy.

The being made of straw and bone turns its head, but not to her, to him.

“Doctor?” It says, haggard hand stretching forward.

“No, I’m not-“

“I was so good, Doctor.” The thing says. “I waited for so long.”

The Master watches in horror as it begins to move, in an imitation of a slow soldier’s march. The sarcophagus creaks against the wall where it has fallen. He steps backwards, edging carefully across the charred ruins.

“Can’t I fly, Doctor? Let me fly with you.”

Something catches against his feet and he stumbles back, colliding with a pile of debris. The thing’s mouth twitches and he can see it’s hand grasping at the air for a hold. The march speeds up. It’s dress is stiff, instead of ripping, it clunks against the obstacles with a hollow ‘thump’.

“I am not the Doctor.” He tries to grab onto something, a handhold, but there is nothing there to grip. “The Doctor isn’t here.”

“You’re a liar.” It croaks, voice low and rasping. Close to him now, half a dozen paces away. “Lying is bad, Doctor. Lying is evil.”

A piece of ruin gives way underneath him and the Master slips further down, legs scrambling for purchase on something, anything. “I’m not lying.” He pants. The thing takes another marching step towards him, head cocked. “I can prove it. She can tell you.” The Master points. In the place where the chair had been, there is nothing. Missy is gone. “Please-“ He chokes.

It is so close, one pace away. Feet standing only a few inches away from where his own feet wrestle with the ground.

“Please what?” It demands.

“Please Master.”

Silence. The edges of the thing’s mouth curl upwards. He tries to blink the sight of it away, eyelids fluttering so fast it is like there is a hand round his neck. With one last, sickening movement, the thing’s lips form into a smile, skin cracking into scissor-cuts. The foot next to his lifts, and with one smooth movement, plants its heel into his calf.

The Master screams.

It roars.

The heel pierces skin. He can feel the rush of it to his head as the thing enters, moving indescribably deeper. There is no way he can turn that she cannot hurt him, the blade is already sunk too deep inside.

“Missy!” He cries, the breath stopping in his throat.

“Doctor.” It gleams.

“I am not the Doctor.” He shouts, voice cracking as the pain burns onwards. Her talons are clawing at every inch of him, scratching and tearing with violent prejudice.

“I want to be with you, Doctor.” The creature smiles wider, the tiny cuts around its mouth opening and pouring out.

“I am the Master and you will-“ The heel presses down. He screams again. There is blood trickling out, a steady stream pooling around the top of the shoe.

“None of that now.”

As he looks up at it’s face, his face, he sees the years of grief etched into it. Missy’s face has been warped by neglect, deep wrinkles cutting so fiercely into the skin that she must feel them cut. The face that will not become him, never destroy Gallifrey or find out its secrets.

“Contact.” The Master rasps.

The face above him stills into one of puzzlement but the heel keeps pressing.

“Old-school.” It says.

“Contact.” He tries again. Contact. Please.

“I don’t want to play.”

The pain is becoming blinding. Where the thing touches him there is only burning, the nauseating static of two timelines jarring together. It must be able to feel that. Feel sickened.

There can’t be much more time left before a paradox. Then reapers, angels, a crack in time space ripping their futures apart. Something infinitely worse than this.

“I surrender!” He screams.

The heel keeps on pushing. “Yield.”

There is moisture collecting in his eyes now from the strain of it.

“Mind and body. Please.” The Master’s voice is ragged as it begs. “I submit.”

The pushing stops but the blade is still buried deep.

Contact. Missy’s voice sounds in his head. From somewhere else, the trace of the same mind flares.

Contact.

The Master closes his eyes, tries not to feel where her shoe still digs into his leg.

I’m not them. He projects. See me. I’m not.

A wave of irritation flashes on the periphery of his mind.

This is a game. It says. I know you’re the Doctor.

The Master peers closer into the blackness of it.

Let me in. I want to show you something.

To his surprise, there is a hesitation. The creature on top of him hums and lowers its shields a fraction. I’m not going to hurt you. He reaches out and strokes the border of her mind softly. It has been years since anyone has touched it, the fire inside of it is dwindling at the strength of a single, raw flame.

What are you doing? Asks the other mind.

I’m showing you everything we’re going to do together. Would you like that?

The thing stills. Thinks.

Yes. It says. Show me, Doctor.

Okay. Says the Master.

He starts with the earliest memory he can find, waking up on the colony ship in a too-tight corset and a pounding headache. The feeling of the forest floor beneath his back where his previous self had burnt a hole. The sound of the wind blowing through the leaves, spreading them over his body like a shroud.

Another. The first time he had returned to Gallifrey. The auburn and orange spires dwarfing him as they towered from within the dome of the capital. His back alley into the Matrix, still intact after all these years. Wading through memory upon memory of him and the Doctor growing up. Memories of them as children taken from their classmates. Watching the Doctor grow and marry, the first time he had seen his granddaughter with the Master by his side before-

Doctor. Says the thing from within his mind. Stop that.

He lets the memories of it carry him away. The Matrix stopping, glitching as he chanced upon a fresh set of data. Decrypting it, unravelling scenes that didn’t make sense. Watching back as a child took the Founder’s place and laid down before her mother. Watching as she died and was reborn again and again and again, the organs inside him pumping with the same blood.

What is this?

Later, when he had broken out, throat so tied that he could not roar as he set Gallifrey ablaze. Making each of them pay as they burned, bright hot, into death. Stumbling out onto Mount Perdition and watching as they paid for it.

Stop.

Coming to Earth, fresh from the ruins of his home planet. Dressing like he had a desk job so no one would recognise him, the last of his own species. One day, seeing them all dressed up. Two humans by their side, eyes dazzled by every word. How O had smiled that day. How the Master had screamed.

Get out of my head.

The moment she’d realised. His hand around her throat as the soldiers climbed up to

take him. She had grinned then, she had grinned in his head as the Nazis had whipped stripes into his back. Every day, every hour, every minute that he breathed was her breath, her lungs, her heart. All hers. He was hers, the Timeless Child’s.

Blood stolen from her, muddied like a hybrid’s. How she was more. How she was so much more.

Stop! The thing screams in his head. The force of it knocks him away, back into opening his eyes and feeling the pain of her all over him. Calf open now, the heel kicking him wherever it can reach.

The Master doesn’t hold back this time. He screams with the weight of his creation, of his debt. The creature’s roars blend with the pounding in his ears, driving a chisel through his brains and out the back.

“Stop!” It screams. “Stop! Stop it! Stop! Stop-“

Suddenly, the voice falls silent. The Master’s cries quieten as he blinks away the coarse dust in the air. The pressure is gone.

Missy is standing over him, shoe raised in her right hand. She pants, eyes cast downwards over the body of the thing now slumped at his feet. There is no longer a heel stabbing at his leg nor a hallowed face over him.

“Headshot.” She says simply.

“Yeah.” He breathes.

Their eyes meet.

A beat passes.

“I can’t carry you like this. You’ll have to walk.”

The Master nods and begins to test the weight on his arms. Blood is still streaming from the wound. “Thanks.”

Missy shrugs, unblinking eyes still fixed on his.

“Was that true? What you showed us.”

He doesn’t pause this time. “Yes.”

She nods.

“It’s not my place to process that for you.”

“No.” He smiles a thin smile, his hand finding a hold on the handle of a discarded fridge nearby.

“But I understand now.”

“You weren’t supposed to know.”

“I was going to find out eventually.” His younger self gestures to him. “Besides, I won’t remember any of this.”

“You’ll get there eventually.”

“You can’t stay.” She utters, face numb.

“No. I can’t.” He finds a foothold with his legs. “Timelines.”

“She had a TARDIS.” Missy points to the sarcophagus. “Take it and skip through whatever you need to.”

The Master looks over at the collapsed coffin and sees now, the glint of something shining in the darkness. There could be life, a working engine. Perhaps something to escape with.

Then, he moves his leg, pushing upwards from the debris as the wound stains his trouser leg. It’s excruciating. If he’s lucky, the wound will take a few years to fully heal over. There is a faster way to heal it but-

“No.” He says as he stands up.

She nods. There’s a sadness as she speaks. A weariness that wasn’t there before.

“Come back with me. One last time.”

He nods.

The two of them hobble back to the Doctor’s TARDIS, away from a freshly aborted timeline. The doors swing open by themselves and allow the two of them inside. The wound on the Master’s leg bleeds. Neither of them say anything.

Missy pilots the ship with automatic ease, trudging at a slow pace from control to control. They arrive within the minute.

The Vault is exactly how he’d left it, guitar still out and a pile of cupboard screws littering the floor. In the middle of the room is the makeshift armchair bed and a pile of old sheet music.

“Messy.” She says blankly.

“Surprised?” The Master grimaces.

His question goes unanswered.

Missy isn’t looking at him anymore. Her eyes are somewhere in the middle distance, glazed now with the knowledge of a future she is going to have to face.

She offers him a weak hand to climb the stairs of the containment field. He takes it but the stillness of it is too much to offer any real support. When they reach the top, he leans onto the first available chair. His leg howls at the change.

His counterpart stays standing, gaze still fixed on something only she can see.

“When will I know?”

“A while. But not a long one.”

Her eyes drift from their spot as she turns, lagging a little behind her body until they fall on him. The length of a body stands between them.

“Tell me how it ends.”

The room is cold around them both. Though there’s red sky shining through the windows, the chill in the air is hard and biting.

“Hopefully.” He tells her but there is no smile.

Missy nods.

“It’s time then.”

“Yeah. I guess it is.” He pushes down on the arms of the chair, swaying upwards. The hole in his leg gapes. “Places to go, worlds to see, civilisations to conquer…”

The Master hauls himself to the edge of the platform, pausing to look at the steps below. He looks back.

Her eyes lose focus for a second at the contact before sharpening suddenly back into focus. “Wait.” She says and her body unfreezes. There is suddenly a haze of movement and she is over by the table, grasping for something.

Eventually, Missy’s hand lands on a book. The cover is tattered and stained but the pages he can see inside are covered in beautiful script, corners folded with the ribbons of various bookmark hanging out. “Take this with you.”

A memory resurfaces. He blinks. How many times had he heard those words? Poems and soliloquies read out loud to a room by a dramatic Scottish voice- lessons of life, of morality and ethics he had always claimed to find boring.

“It’s the Doctor’s.”

“They won’t notice.” She smiles weakly. “Take the food too.”

The Master pulls a face.

“I’ll leave it for you, dearest.”

He edges forwards. Missy’s eyes are trained on him now but this time, she doesn’t reach out.

“Don’t make this sad.”

He chuckles, legs managing the first step down. “Okay.”

“Read to me. I don’t want to look.”

“What, a bedtime story?”

“No.” She says quickly. “A quote. So I can remember it. You. Something melodramatic.”

The second step comes, then the third and fourth. As painful as the wound driven through his leg.

“Okay.”

He reaches the bottom of the stair and turns, raising the broken book to reading height. She grins down at him.

The Master gently opens the cover and unfolds the torn pages, thumb rifling through to a random spot. The paper is well worn, scuffed especially badly around the edges where it has been turned over. An English poet. Long dead now, drowned.

He waves his hand at her.

“Turn around.”

Missy does a brief show of faking offence but, with one final fleeting glance, she slowly turns. He sees her head lower.

The Master begins his procession.

“Tell that its sculptor well those passions read. Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things.” He reads softly.

The Vault air behind his back is cold, the frost biting bitterly. He is leaving behind a ruined place, where a storm has hit and devastated.

“The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.”

Halfway to the door. If, he thinks, it is possible to see his own undoing then he has seen it here. With her. The promise of death pressing in on them whilst they played and talked and lived despite it all.

“And on the pedestal, these words appear.”

He limps the last few steps to the large chamber door and sees a small galaxy of lights,

each for a different lock or firewall. So intimidating a colour that the actual unlocking mechanism is unnoticeable, a tiny switch in plain sight. Missy’s last test. Of cold, brutal restraint.

All he had ever needed to do was flip it.

“My name is Ozzymandius.” He says. Watching as the metal slides open. “King of Kings.”

As he steps over the threshold, the pressure in his leg releases. On the other side of the door, the air is rich.

He takes a deep breath, filling his lungs, and looks down at the last line.

“Look upon, ye mighty, and despair.”

The Vault door clicks shut. Missy is gone, the truth with her.

He looks at the empty grey of the basement in front of him and feels the heavy weight of time return.

The Doctor is out there. She needs to know of what he has done.

The wound twinges as he takes a tentative step forward.

This time it’s not going to be so easy.

The Master walks away.