Chapter Text
I - The price of my love’s not a price that you’re willing to pay
The Vault - 1940s
She looks at him like a painter would look at their muse.
The Doctor only wishes she would be painting him. He’d be more inclined to indulge her if she was painting him. He’d put on any silly clothing she wanted. Hell, he’d pose nude if she requested.
“Now dear, I won't tell you again, stop moving.”
“I said I'd get you a piano,” he retorts, twisting his wrists on straps that are already digging into his skin.
“But it won't arrive soon enough and I’m bored now ,” Missy answers with a pout, adjusting her posture.
“Or we could play Scrabble.”
“Doctor, dear, if you suggest a human game again, I'll aim at your head .”
“Missy…”
“Oh, come on, you old grumpy fool. It’ll be fun!”
The Doctor doubts she’ll actually try to kill him. After all, it would just cause him to regenerate and the energy of it would mess her entire Vault up - just when she’d found furniture she liked, too. Also, she had taken the deal, hadn’t she? She was going to try and learn how to be better. Less homicidal.
And yet, Missy looks particularly homicidal weighing throwing stars with a perky smile and a glint in her eyes.
She had convinced the Doctor to let himself be tied to a spinning board so she could perform a little circus trick. Then she procured the set of throwing stars out. He has no idea where she’d found them, but he had been quite lenient with her requests for the first five years. Grief over River and guilt over having Missy imprisoned had kept him distant and distracted. She would give him a list of requests and he would send Nardole off to acquire everything with little more than a glance to cross out anything deadly. Once things improved in their relationship, he became more careful. He even asked her what she had done with certain things, like the hot air balloon, but her answer was always “don’t worry about it, dear.”
“Ready?” Her smile is infectious. How could such a murder-inclined smile be so endearing? The Doctor makes sure to keep his own lips in a tense line before nodding, lest she thinks he condones or approves this game.
The act is complete with circus music, stage lights and paper decoration. The Doctor can only wonder what Nardole will make of the entire affair. Although after the mechanical bear incident, he’s probably learned to stay out of hearing distance whenever the Doctor goes down to the Vault.
The first three throws are fast and precise. None of the stars are even close to his body, but he knows Missy is just warming herself up.
“I’m not very sure that this really helps to cultivate a more benevolent nature in you.”
“Well, I need to let out steam in some way, don’t I?” The next star pins a flap of his coat to the board. “Now stop talking, you’re distracting me.”
By some trick the Doctor can’t see, Missy makes the board spin faster. It’s making him dizzy, but he doesn’t want to complain. She'll just mock him for being too weak to handle some motion. Maybe she is right and this will help her be calmer. He’s probably being overly cautious.
The next star gets stuck between two of his fingers.
“Not the guitar hand,” he complains.
“Maybe it wouldn’t be such a great loss.”
“Then we would never play duets.”
She ponders his words and agrees.
“That piano better get here soon.”
He nods. He would break and enter a music school to steal one if he needed, but he’ll get Missy her piano. The Doctor can imagine her playing already. Her slender fingers dancing across the board as nimbly as they handle the throwing stars.
The thought makes him remember Gallifrey, of young Koschei singing during music lessons. His first body wasn’t one for musical instruments, but the way he could carry a tune… He wondered if Missy would-
“Stop reminiscing. I can smell it from here.”
“I’m not. And you can’t smell my thoughts.”
“Maybe I can. You wouldn’t know the amazing new skills I picked up in this body.”
“Do you think you could sing?”
He speaks without thinking, but Missy’s movements show him his mistake. The star she throws next grazes his cheek, leaving a paper-thin cut before setting angrily on the board.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t mean-”
She throws another star. This one takes out a lock of his hair.
“Don’t talk to me about Gallifrey, however idyllically you remember us there.” Her voice is calm, playful even, but he doesn't miss the sharp edge underneath it, the bitterness of thousands of years. “It wasn’t fun. We weren’t happy, we never were.”
The board stops moving and she walks towards him, like a predator.
“And do you know what I was doing the night you left me there?”
She gets a dagger from somewhere in her dress - of course she’d have one, he knew that before he even saw the glint of the blade - and places it on his neck, pressing hard enough to draw blood.
“I was singing. Vansell had organized a lovely party and it was so boring I wanted to blow my brains out. My best friend wasn’t even there so we could make fun of people together. Oh, but they asked me to sing. Doesn’t Koschei have the most beautiful voice? Even your brother and your wife were there and both agreed.”
He can’t apologize for things that happened over a thousand years ago, when they were barely more than children. So he just looks at her. Into her deadly blue eyes. Koschei-blue.
“But no Theta. No, he was the Doctor already and he had left.”
The Doctor swallows, his Adam’s apple bobs dangerously close to the dagger.
“You wouldn’t kill me.”
“Of course I wouldn’t, dear,” she says with a smile a touch more murder-y than before. “Then I’d be stuck here with Nardole lecturing me until your regeneration sickness passed. I can think of thousands of gentler forms of torture.”
She retrieves her dagger and walks back towards her throwing place.
“Now stop talking! You’re distracting me!”
She throws the dagger. If a tear rolls down the Doctor’s cheek, it probably has to do with how it nicked his neck. No other reason for it. Not at all.