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Mr. Razor was a weird comrade to spend your time with – For starters, he insisted on the “Mr.”. No forename, no shorting allowed. It was Mr. or nothing.
Bill asked him about that quite a lot. It wasn’t that she needed to know, more of a pure boredom thing. She loved asking questions when bored – It made her find out a lot of things that were far more interesting. Things, nobody else thought to ask about.
But that was just another thing that was weird about her time on the ship – She learned more and more not to ask questions, because the answers kept on frightening her.
Mr. Razor had a way of answering her questions in the most terrifying manner of casually dropping awful truths on her. Just the other day, when she had asked him why it’s always so dark, he hadn’t said, “Oh, you know, it makes me feel safer,” no, he had answered, in that unsettling accent of his, “Dark good. Why you think monsters always hide in dark? It’s safe!”
He didn’t seem to want to hear anything about how monsters weren’t all that safe, though.
Mr. Razor also made awful tea. What was even more fascinating – He drank his without even flinching once, while heavily insisting Bill wasn’t allowed to make better one. She was growing the rising suspicion that he only screwed her tea up.
She was too polite to tell him though, most of the time. They spent a lot of their days watching the monitor, where the Doctor and Missy were arguing in slow motion. Every move, every sentence seemed to take ages, and what was even worse – They did a LOT of them. Of course, she hadn’t expected anything less. That was just typical for the Doctor – While explaining to everyone that every second they’re wasting below, she’s trapped in a year above… he kept on wasting seconds.
Mr. Razor didn’t seem too concerned by any of this. He laughed a lot about her remarks over the Doctor’s behaviour, which was nice. She missed having a laugh and she appreciated that he was always amused, always keeping it light. That man always had a giggle on his lips, as if he’s living in a constant joke only he understood – It did Bill good, who felt mostly scared and worried about her current state.
The thing was – No matter how many suspicions you have about a person, no matter how weird he was… Once he’s your only safety in a world gone mad, you learn to look past all these and trust him anyway. He was her only friend, helping her out whenever she needed to, offering explanations whenever she made the mistake of wanting them – He was her safety net.
And so, one evening, they sat by the TV once more, eating food that Bill had yet to grow used to, watching the Doctor and Missy… well, really, when did they ever not argue?
“Quick woman!” Mr. Razor called, sounding very energetic. “Quick woman, drawing weapon!”
“Yeah, I don’t think she is, mate.”
Bill grinned as she saw his face, somehow this was the first time she ever saw him frown and it made her giggle.
“Ever heard of a ‘dab’ before?”
Mr. Razor was grumpy the whole evening long. She wasn’t sure what exactly offended him so much about Missy dabbing, but it was rather funny to watch. He kept on shouting, No! No, no, no! No dab! Weapon!” but the frown kept on burrowing deeper the more the picture shifted.
Finally, he admitted defeat, getting up to make more horrible tea.
At this point, Bill was sure it was him getting back at her in the only possible way – She drank it anyway.
“This woman!” he asked one night, as they both lay on the sofa in comfortable silence, staring at the screen. Bill had had an awful day, feeling hopeless and wary of waiting for the Doctor. She knew he was coming eventually. She knew he would fix whatever they had done with her chest. Help her leave again. But it felt so far away, he was still on that screen, seemingly forever trapped in a movement she had long anticipated, she was tired of seeing.
“This woman! What she like?”
Bill shrugged.
“Scary.” She turned towards him, giving him a serious look for a minute. “I warned him, you know? Told him, this wasn’t a good idea. And it wasn’t. He takes her out, gives her the lead, for one day, just one, and I end up with a hole in my chest, trapped on a space ship. She’s no good, that woman.”
“She dangerous, yeah? She murders much?”
Bill supressed a laugh. “Murders? I don’t know, mate. The Doctor said she’s dangerous. But the Doctor’s an idiot, you know? I told him I was scared of her, know what he said? ‘She’s the only one in the universe even remotely like me.’ It’s ridiculous. She’s nothing like him. He makes people feel safe. I always feel safe with him.”
Suddenly, Bill had to fight the urge to cry. She missed that naïve little idiot. She missed his speeches, his snide remarks, his evil glare that wasn’t evil at all, the dork smile that was so much more who he really was…
And god, did she miss his tea. Sweet, sweet, always over sugared tea. She couldn’t believe that she ever complained about that.
Mr. Razor seemed to sense that something was off – He didn’t ask her any more questions about Missy’s murder tendencies, instead stared at the screen, that weird frown of his back in place. He looked positively lost for words, completely sunken into thought – She wasn’t sure where his fascination with Missy came from.
“I mean, who keeps a woman locked up in vault for years? Underneath a university? He kept on talking about it like it’s normal, he’s a bit… I don’t know. It reminded me that he’s alien, you know? He sometimes seems so human to me, I almost forget and then he does something very weird but very great and he… he just becomes this superhero for me.”
Mr. Razor gave her a puzzled look.
“Super… hero?”
“Oh, you know? Like Superman. Wears weird outfits. Flies through time and space to save people and beat the bad guys. Has a weird thing for phone booths.”
She laughed at Mr. Razors expression, which startingly looked less confused and more annoyed. He probably hated not knowing what she was talking about, but Bill thought it was only fair – She didn’t know what he was talking about almost every day.
“So, woman lives with him in phone box?” he asked, sounding slightly less cheerful than usual.
Bill frowned.
“You know, I like women. Like…. Like them. But I sensed she was trouble the very first time I met her. Now, for the Doctor… No problem. That man loves trouble. But you should really… be careful around her. I know she’s beautiful, like reeeeally beautiful. But be careful, mate. I don’t have a good feeling about her.”
Mr. Razor just stared at her.
“Aw, come on, you can tell me,” Bill laughed. “I know you have a bit of a crush on her.”
“Crush?” Mr. Razor replied in a confused voice. “I don’t want crush woman.”
Well, Bill was rather relieved to hear that.
Mr. Razor seemed reluctant to bring Missy up again. They still watched them on the monitor whenever they had nothing to do. Bill was drained from the day, having had a lot cleaning up to do, and so she just lay on the shabby sofa, her feet tangling over the backrest, her head propped on a pillow and watched the Doctor with half-open eyes.
“I miss him, you know,” she said quietly, knowing that Mr. Razor was behind her, as she could her him hum while working in the kitchen. “I don’t even remember my life on Earth, my friends, my school, but I miss him. I’ve only just met him.”
“He looking bit annoying,” Mr. Razor called from behind her, which was a fair objection, if Bill was being honest.
“Well, yeah… he can be. But he’s also quite amazing. You should hear him speak.” She turned her head around and smiled, lost in thought for a little while. “He can make you feel things you didn’t even know existed.”
Something crept over Mr. Razor’s face, but it was gone so quickly, Bill hadn’t been able to identify what it was.
After a few seconds, he just shrugged. “Old man,” he muttered, while brewing more – unquestionably – awful tea.
Bill was no absolutely sure it was his way of paying her back for several things she said to offend him, however it seemed to her that his offense came utterly random – There just wasn’t a system, nothing to avoid.
One day, he laughed loudly at whatever she said about the Doctor, the next he made her three cups of tea and told her to drink up with a wide smile.
He handed her a cup and Bill supressed a sigh as she took it, sipping without even pulling a face.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she whispered, looking into the dark, bitter substance in her cup. “You’ve never met him, you just can’t understand what’s it like to miss him.”
Mr. Razor didn’t say anything, just turned back around, looking at the kitchen wall. She didn’t hear him hum again all evening.
It was two nights later, that he caught her crying in her bed, when she thought he had long fallen asleep and that the pillow would muffle her sobs.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to wake you up…” she started, voice hoarse, but to her endless surprise, the man that hated hugs pulled her into a tight one, holding her to his chest as he sat down next to her.
Against her will, Bill’s sobbing increased, and she buried her face in his chest, weeping wordlessly for a few minutes.
“The Doctor will come for you,” he told her, and Bill was far too upset to notice that his accent had vanished – Or how sad he sounded.
It was much later, after Mr. Razor had turned into the Master, after he had mocked her and laughed in her face, that Bill began to really be confused by it all.
At night, when the Doctor gave her company because no one else would, she asked him about him, all the questions she had never asked about Missy.
It was that night, some of the rage inside of her faded. She knew she could never forgive him, but in understanding why he had betrayed her like he had, she felt more at peace with herself and what she had become.
Because Bill had began to slowly realize, that with all the things she had said to him, all the things the Doctor had proven by coming for her like he had never come back to the Master, that maybe, just maybe, tea hadn’t been enough to get back at her.