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The Doctor was walking on the middle level of the console room. He thought all the others had gone off to do whatever it was they did after adventures. That was when he saw Missy. He nearly kept walking, but she turned to look at him and he saw the tear-track glisten in the TARDIS lights.
A part of him wanted to run. He was good at running and he was bad at conversations like this. Instead, he moved his lips together as he debated if he should say something or not. Missy turned to face him, clearly a bit embarrassed to be caught crying again. Once she composed herself, she spoke. “I don't even know why I'm crying. Why - why do I keep doing that now?”
The way she looked at him was as if she expected him to have all the answers for things like this. He didn’t. Why would he? He barely understood why he cried in the rare times it happened in this body. So he gave the only answer he could. An honest answer. “I don’t know.”
He paused for a moment. This conversation was turning far more serious than he could handle, especially after all that had happened with the Celts. He had his own issues to deal with that were serious enough, so it was time to lighten the mood just a bit. “Maybe you’re trying to impress me.”
Besides that would give her an out, wouldn’t it? She was embarrassed to be crying and now she could allow it to mean something different. She tried to smile, but it was clearly forced. “Yes, probably some devious plan. That sounds about right.”
He realised that she tried and failed to meet his level of humour. Okay. This would have to be addressed. He was rubbish at this sort of thing. He walked closer to her as he thought of how to answer. “Well, the alternative would be much worse.”
Missy couldn’t think of anything worse than this. “Really?”
The Doctor hated being confronted with her emotions like this. It took him a moment to remember what he was going to say. He took a long pause before he answered. He wasn’t sure he should give this answer. But then ‘Time and Relative Dimension in Space means “What the hell”’. “The alternative is that this is for real. And it's time for us to become friends again.”
“Do you think so?” Missy felt a surge of hope she hadn’t felt in the longest time. Nothing in the universe would have prevented her from reaching out to the Doctor and taking that step closer to him.
He stepped back from her before she could touch him. That was a mistake on her part. The other two were wrong. He didn’t trust her. She hung her head for a moment.
He paused, though. He didn’t run away. He returned to her. And then he actually wrapped his hands gently around hers. She gasped softly at his touch. He touched her in a gentle manner. It was nearly more than she could handle.
He waited to speak until she met his eyes. “I don't know. That's the trouble with hope.” He released her hands. “It's hard to resist.” And with that, he walked away.
She didn’t realise how much she had craved for the touch of another until he let her hands go. Then it was like all the stars in the universe winked out of existence. Her world was suddenly twice as dark as it had been. She started to cry again. At least this time, she understood why.
The Doctor made his way through the TARDIS towards the kitchen. He expected to be confronted by Bill or Nardole or even both of them together. He was grateful when he didn’t encounter either of them. He set about making some tea. His head still hurt from where he had been clobbered. He hadn’t slept the past few days; he should probably take a nap. When the tea was ready, he decided to take it back to his bedroom with him. Now that he thought about sleep, he was actually feeling pretty tired. As he moved to exit the kitchen, Nardole was standing in the doorway with his arms cross and blocking his view.
“I feel I have to remind you of your oath and what they’ll do to you if they learn you’ve broken it.”
The Doctor wasn’t in the mood for this. “Have you been taking listening lessons from Rafando? Because I am keeping to my oath.”
“No you’re not, because Missy is out of the Vault! Oh, I knew it’d be trouble when we figured out how to open it.”
He sighed heavily. The lie had been good enough for himself. Maybe it would be good enough for the other man. “Look, Nardole, everything is fine. I’m keeping my oath. Just like I never said I’d watch over a dead body, I also never said I’d watch over the body in the vault. I can keep a much better eye on her if she’s with me all the time.”
“The TARDIS isn’t very happy about it.”
The Doctor frowned. “The TARDIS is part of the reason why she should perform the maintenance.”
Nardole looked confused. “Why?”
“Because in another time, when we both had different bodies, she kidnapped my TARDIS and cannibalised her.”
Nardole gasped. “No. You don’t mean….” The Doctor nodded and Nardole continued. “A paradox machine?”
The Doctor nodded again and rested a hand fondly against the wall. “By making her take care of the TARDIS, I hope that she will learn what she did was wrong and how painful it was for both of us.”
“Both of you?”
Oh. He hadn’t realised he had said that out loud. “You know how it is. The TARDIS and I are psychically linked. Everything she feels, I feel.”
“Oh, sir, that must have been terrible.”
The Doctor nodded, but said nothing more. After a moment of silence, Nardole continued. “I still object to this.”
“Noted.”
“But I think I understand now why you’re trying it.”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”
“Well, yeah. If the TARDIS can learn to accept and forgive Missy for the things she’s done, maybe you can too. Since you’re psychically linked and all.”
He narrowed his gaze at Nardole. “Not just me.”
The round man nodded. “Noted.” He paused briefly. “Do you want me to take a look at your head? They’re good people, but it doesn’t mean they’re not savages in how they attack.”
The Doctor was about to refuse him, but realised he’d probably never leave him alone unless he did this. “As long as I can bring my tea.”
“I’ll even refresh it after we run the scans.”
The Doctor knew that was about as close to a compromise as they would get tonight so he nodded and started to walk towards the medical bay. Nardole ran his scans until he was satisfied with the results. He hummed in disappointment. The Doctor was confused. “What?”
“You’re not cheating are you?”
“Cheating?”
“Healing yourself with regeneration energy.”
“Of course not. It’s only to be used for proper healing and cheap parlour tricks.”
Nardole glared at him for a long moment and decided he was telling the truth. He then refilled the Doctor’s mug with fresh tea and sent him on his way. The Doctor made it to his bedroom without running into Bill. He was grateful for that. He entered the room and closed the door. He waited for a minute resting his head against the door as he used to do against the Vault doors. He just needed a minute.
That was when Bill cleared her throat behind him. He nearly dropped his tea. Luckily he was leaning his head against the door so he was able to stop himself easily. He composed himself and turned around.
“Bill! What are you doing in here?”
She had crossed her arms. “Normally I would say a female student in the room of her male tutor is a little weird, but I’m making an exception.”
He really wasn’t in the mood for this conversation, but for Bill to be either so comfortable with him that she felt she could enter his bedroom or so disrespectful of his privacy, well, either one showed how serious she was right now. “‘Exception to the rule’ is me all over.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
He moved over to the bed and sat down. “What’s the other?” He asked the question, but he really didn't want the answer.
"Idiot."
"I'm sorry?"
"'Idiot' is another way to put it. Do you have some death wish or something? Because you keep wanting to sacrifice yourself when there's really no reason to."
The Doctor shrugged. "When you've lived and died as many times as I have, you lose sight of things like that."
Bill didn't understand what she heard. "No, but seriously. Because I'm starting to think that you don't want to protect Earth any more. At least not here."
He sighed and pulled a hand down his face before he took a sip of his tea. "Bill, Nardole already cornered me and so did Missy. Please say what you need to and leave."
Bill pulled that smile she uses when she didn't understand something. The Doctor smirked. She took a long breath. "Look, I get it. You've been here a long time. For so long, that you don't even want to admit it. And maybe you're tired of everything. That's understandable. But what I don't get is all the self-sacrificing you want to do. First when you gave me your helmet, then you were blind in the lab, then with broadcast monk, and now with this."
"I told you, it's who I am."
"It doesn't have to be."
He considered her for a moment. His head tilted. One thing was true about both of them: they constantly reminded each other of who they needed to be. "Thought you said that being who you are is part of free will. And because of that you theorised that I wrote The Veritas as a message to myself."
"You never responded to that."
"Because I don't know. Any number of scientists who studied quantum mechanics would have been able to write the Shadow Test. But I knew myself well enough to email the computer simulation to myself, so it's a possibility that in one of the simulations, I wrote it and found a way to send it to others."
Bill smiled at that. "Well, if anyone could have done it, you could have."
The Doctor nodded once. "None of this is my job, Bill. But it's not your job to stop me either."
She shook her head. "Wrong again, Doctor. If I didn’t stop you, you’d be dead by now.”
He couldn’t really argue with that. The explosion in the lab would have certainly done him in. But he was tired and he just wanted to rest. “Bill what do you want?”
“I want you to know that you don’t have to take the burden of saving planet on your own. There are plenty of people around who want to help.”
“I thought I said I couldn’t stand it when people are brave.”
Bill glared at him. “Doctor, it’s not about bravery. It’s about letting the people who live on this planet have some opportunity to protect it themselves. We’re not slugs any longer. We can think for ourselves.”
“That’s often what gets you into trouble.”
Bill nearly smacked him, but decided his head probably still hurt, so instead she curled her fingers into a fist to stop herself. “Doctor, you need to focus on the big things that we can’t do and let us take care of the things we can. That’s part of free will too, or did you not get that far in my paper.”
The Doctor nodded his head to show he had read it. Bill nodded in return. “Good. Now about Missy.”
The Doctor couldn’t stop the groan of disappointment that escaped him. Bill shook her head and shrugged. “I’ve had time to think about it. And I don’t think you trust her. But this is another step. Another test for her. Your version of good is sentimental. So this is how you need to help her learn the next step.”
The Doctor took a sip of his tea but gave no other reaction. Bill smiled. “Right then, I’ll check on you later.”
With that, she turned to the door. The Doctor called out before she left. “Bill?”
She paused to look at him. “Yeah?”
“When did you become the tutor?”
She smirked. “When we started to talk about human things rather than space and science.”
The Doctor nodded and with that, Bill left the room.