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Missy is, in the broadest of terms, minding her own business.
Well. She’s reading a tourist brochure for a planet that’s several systems over, to see whether it might be worth staging a takeover or starting some silly little war there in a bid for power, but other than that, she’s generally feeling rather unthreatening. Her TARDIS has this effect on her – it’s warm and cosy and safe, and she doesn’t have to keep up the pretence in here of being the Queen of Evil, or at least not all of the time. Her ship has seen her softer side, and that’s alright; there’s the unspoken threat of the scrapyard hanging over the time machine lest it ever give up her secrets, although there’s also the implicit understanding that this is, as far as Missy is aware, one of the last three Type 40s in existence. (She supposes she could always borrow Thete’s again, or there’s the option of going and bothering the Puppy into giving hers up.)
She’s busy cooing over the jewel-bright cities of Site-Of-A-Possible-Invasion (she could learn to pronounce its real name, she supposes, but she’d only rename it when she took over anyway) when there’s the distant, ominous sound of a bell ringing. Her immediate thought is of the Cloister Bell, but that can’t be right – that’s usually accompanied by an insidious, pervasive sense of danger as the symbiotic relationship between herself and the ship alerts her to its risk of mortal peril, whereas now she can feel only a thrill of excitement about the maybe-invasion, so the risk of a crisis is somewhat averted – and probably for the best, too; she’s taken her bra off for the evening, and the miles of petticoats. She’s clad in a purple hoodie and brown high-waisted jeans, and that’s as dressed-down as she ever really does.
No, this bell is different. It’s almost tinny in its chirpiness, and it takes her a moment to realise that it’s the doorbell. Strictly speaking, she shouldn’t have one; it only invites trouble, but then sometimes trouble is precisely what a girl needs to get her out of the house-slash-TARDIS, or further into the house-slash-TARDIS, or out on the prowl. She gets to her feet with a sense of mild irritation, wondering which world could possibly be demanding her attention, and starts the arduous trek towards the console room as she flicks through the possibilities in her mind.
Her TARDIS is not, thank you very much, anywhere near as confined to the singular physical realm as the Doctor’s. She’s done enough biomechanical hacking in her time to remove some of the maddeningly silly little constraints which her people had insisted on installing on their ships, and so she has – strictly speaking – four doorbells, one on each of her physical front doors. Wherever her TARDIS may go, should she have the inclination, she can simply spin a dial on the console and step out onto a planet of her choosing, at a fixed abode that is almost laughably human-like in its permanence, but still somewhat… well, fun. There’s the red door, which takes her out onto a charming little fire planet she colonised some time ago; the green door, which takes her to one of the largest shopping centres in this galaxy or the next; the black door, which goes somewhere she doesn’t much like to speak about; or the blue door, which opens onto a quaint little street in London. A rather dull choice, but when dealing the Doctor or her pretty little pets, a sad necessity; besides, what easier way to keep an eye on Thete than to pop up on her favourite, most boring planet?
She reaches the console room and the light beside the dial is flashing blue. This, in itself, is unusual; after vaporising the last four carol singers and Jehovah’s Witnesses who’d had the misfortune to bother ringing the doorbell, she’d hoped she’d developed a sufficient reputation to keep foolish humans away and discourage them from bothering her. She sighs theatrically, already anticipating an impending murder, and spins the dial around, then strides over to the door, fixing her hair as she goes, and prepares to fling the door open with a look that could kill.
Grasping the handle, she yanks it open and freezes, her hearts stopping in unison as she catches sight of the figure stood unsteadily on the doorstep.
“I…” the Doctor is soaked to the skin, shivering so violently that it makes Missy feel cold just to look at her. A torrential downpour is hammering onto the street behind her, and the Doctor’s hair and clothes are plastered to her skin from the force of the deluge, water running in rivulets down her ankles and pooling in her shoes. This would be an entirely unconcerning development – after all, the Doctor has always been the one of them who preferred to get their hands dirty – only there’s a faint tinge to the rainwater that’s dripping from the Doctor’s trembling frame, and even in the gloom, Missy can tell it’s red. As she tracks her attention back up the Doctor’s frame, paying considerably more attention now, she notices a purple bruise blossoming across her friend’s face, a wound along her hairline that’s oozing blood sluggishly, and a split lip that’s trickling blood over the Doctor’s chin with each breath she draws. Now sheltered from the driving rain by Missy’s neatly-kept porch, the blood instead seeps into the Doctor’s hair, and Missy reaches out instinctively for her friend, who recoils as though she’s been burned, although the effort of doing so leaving her visibly unsteady and she clutches at a nearby trellis for support.
Missy knows, in that instant, what has happened. The effort required to suppress her rage for long enough to be able to maintain control of herself is superhuman, but she concentrates on her friend’s needs first and her own thirst for revenge second, and brings herself back to the present.
“Easy, now,” Missy says softly, holding her hands up in a gesture of surrender she has seen enough times to be able to mimic. “Easy. You’re going to fall, love.”
“I…” the Doctor begins again, blinking slowly, and it’s then that Missy notices how unfocused her eyes are. “Missy?”
“That’s right,” she says in a low, reassuring voice; sadness and anger pooling in her chest. “It’s me. It’s Missy.”
“…didn’t know where else to go,” the Doctor mumbles, trying to take half a step towards her and crumpling forwards in a dead faint, Missy catching her before she can hit the floor.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she murmurs, lifting the Doctor into her arms with ease and stepping back into the safety of her TARDIS, kicking the door closed with one foot to deter any idiotic, vile humans from wandering inside. “You’re safe. You’re safe now.”
She looks down at the unconscious Time Lady and cradles her closer to her own chest, shifting so that the Doctor’s head is resting against her shoulder. There’s something oddly reassuring about the familiar, heavy weight of her friend in her arms; she tries to tell herself that regardless of how soaked or injured the Doctor may be, she’s still alive; her hearts are still beating and she’s still breathing, albeit with rapid shallow breaths that make Missy wince. She knows she ought to go straight to the medical bay, but instead she sinks down on the floor, pressing her cheek against the Doctor’s wet hair and clinging to her friend, trying to will some of her own body heat to span the millimetres of space between them and bring her a degree of comfort.
“Hold on,” she says under her breath, holding the Doctor awkwardly with one arm as she carefully peels away the silly, sodden, sky-blue coat she has grown so fond of. “That’s better. Wet clothes don’t h-”
She sucks in a breath as she sees the bruises ringing the Doctor’s wrists, and the dried blood staining her knuckles. She’s tried to defend herself, and that means something to Missy; for the Doctor, celebrated pacifist, to fight back, her attackers must have been particularly brutal.
“Oh, Thete,” she breathes, sorrow crystallising into fury in her chest. “What have they done to you?”
The Doctor stirs then, turning her head towards Missy’s shoulder, and Missy is struck by a sudden, burning desire to cry.
“You’re safe now,” she says again, her voice tight with unshed tears as she gets to her feet again and starts towards the medical bay. “I promise. You’re safe now.”
With each step, she feels the anger rising inside her. Humans have done this; there can’t be any other explanation. Humans have hurt her friend; humans, who her friend always so naively trusted to be her companions, and to help her. Humans have made her bleed; made her scared; made her confused.
Arriving in the stark whiteness of the medical bay, she sets the Doctor down on one of the bunks, wondering how best to proceed. She’s loathe to try and remove any of her friend’s clothing lest she wake up, terrified and panicking, so she instead settles for turning up the heating, ignoring her own sweaty discomfort as she watches steam evaporate from the Doctor’s clothes and some of the colour return to her cheeks. She unlaces her friend’s boots and slips them off, setting them carefully to one side, and searches through cupboards until she finds a soft cloth and then soaks it under a tap.
“It’s alright,” she says quietly, beginning to dab at the wound on the Doctor’s forehead. She remembers doing this before, lifetimes ago, with her children when they were sick; some of her old maternal instincts stir now, and she directs the associated tenderness and empathy towards her friend. “You’re alright. I’ve got you.”
The words sound silly and hollow, but she can’t find anything more meaningful to say; can’t find a way to express her anger or her concern more eloquently. She simply sits and dabs gently at the blood as it wells up, until the Doctor’s eyes snap open and she struggles into a sitting position, hyperventilating as she tries to get off the bed and pushes Missy away.
“I…. no… need… no…”
“Shh,” Missy says soothingly, holding up the cloth in the same calm gesture of surrender as before. “It’s me. It’s Missy. You’re hurt, I need to look after you.”
“Missy?”
“Yes, you daft thing.”
“How did I…”
“You rang my doorbell.”
“Oh,” the Doctor sinks back against the pillows, still eyeing Missy blearily. A thought seems to occur to her, and she looks around in a panic, sitting bolt upright and patting herself down. “My coat… where’s my… where’s my coat?”
“In the console room,” Missy says calmly. “Drying off. It’s just as safe as you are.”
“Oh,” the Doctor says again, stilling and leaning back against the bed, and she looks over at her friend with some difficulty, the effort tangible. “What are you doing?”
“Looking after you,” Missy fights the urge to roll her eyes. “Cleaning you up.”
“Why are you cleaning me up?”
“Because you’re bleeding.”
“Why am I bleeding?”
“I don’t know,” Missy swallows her anger, and continues quietly: “I think someone attacked you. Your pupils aren’t dilating properly, so they might have drugged you.”
“How did I get here?”
“I don’t know,” Missy says with infinite patience, watching as the blood wells up on the Doctor’s temple and threatens to trickle into her eyes. “Please can I go back to cleaning you up now?”
“Oh,” the Doctor frowns. “Yes. I think so.”
Missy nods and goes back to dabbing away the blood, and they lapse into silence as the wound slowly clots over, and Missy starts to dig through cupboards in search of butterfly plasters and bruise gel. As she works methodically over the injuries she can see, she realises that the Doctor’s eyes have closed, and by the time she’s finished, her friend is sound asleep, lulled into slumber by the sound of the ship’s engines and Missy’s gentle ministrations.
Missy smiles softly and retrieves a blanket from the cupboard, laying it over her friend with the utmost tenderness, and then settles into a chair beside her and eventually allows herself to fall asleep.
“Missy?”
Missy blinks hard, trying to remember where she is and why she’s so uncomfortable and who, exactly, is whispering her name.
“Missy?”
Her eyes snap open as the previous evening comes back to her: the Doctor bleeding on her doorstep, and then bleeding in her medical bay. Ah. The medical bay. That explains the smell and the uncomfortable chairs.
“Yes?” she mumbles, still half in the throes of sleep.
“Where am I?”
“My TARDIS,” Missy gets to her feet and casts an eye over her friend, noting that the bruises appear to be fading and feeling a faint stirring of relief at this tiny improvement. “Medical bay."
“How did I…”
“You rang the doorbell.”
“Oh.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
“I…” the Doctor tries to sit up and winces, but perseveres nonetheless, reaching a vaguely vertical sitting position with considerable effort. “I was with the team, and… we were in a pub and there was this man…”
Missy feels her hearts sink.
“He bought me a drink and I drank it and it tasted proper weird and I felt all funny so I went outside with Yaz, but she went back inside to get her coat, and this bloke came out and he said we should go for a walk, and like… I don’t know, it seemed like the best idea in the whole world, so I went, and he…”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Missy says quietly, reaching over and taking the Doctor’s hand in her own. Her friend looks down at their entwined fingers, but doesn’t move to pull away, and for that Missy is grateful; she needs this physical reassurance just as much as the Doctor. “Not if it’s hard.”
“No, he… he tried to kiss me, and then there were these other men, and I didn’t want to kiss any of them; I didn’t know them and I kept saying that but they got really angry, and then they started hitting me and my arms didn’t work properly so I couldn’t stop them, and then… I don’t know, something must have scared them because they ran off. They just… I don’t know, they just legged it, and I remember trying and trying to get up, because I knew I needed to find my friends; I needed to find Yaz or Ryan or Graham and get them to help me, only I couldn’t get up, and when I finally managed it, my body seemed to have had other ideas, and the next thing… I just remember you.”
“Did they… you know, did they do anything?”
The Doctor catches her gaze and seems to understand the insinuation. “No,” she says at once. “No, they just… there was lots of hitting and kicking. I think they got my ribs; something doesn’t feel right on my right-hand side.”
Missy nods once, relieved. It’s strange to be relieved by such a violent piece of information, but the alternative would have been far worse.
“Missy?” the Doctor asks tentatively. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“Because you’re my friend,” Missy says at once. “And you need me.”
“Oh.”
“Is there anything I can get you? Anything you need?”
“No,” the Doctor decides after a moment. “I think for now, this is good.”