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The first time it happened, Clara was in the kitchen. She’d just finished putting together a sandwich. Her head was in the fridge trying to find a drink to go along with it when she heard the sound of the time vortex spitting someone back onto solid ground. A part of her already knew what she was going to see before she even turned around, but that didn’t make the confirmation any less frustrating once it was confirmed.
“Oh, perfect!” Missy exclaimed, spotting the sandwich. “I was just feeling a bit peckish. Such a day I’ve had, you wouldn’t believe it.” She hopped herself up onto the counter and took a big bite out of the sandwich. “I’ll tell you all about it in a minute,” she added, mouth full.
C lara slammed the fridge and slowly turned around, arms crossed. “Missy!”
Missy swallowed the sandwich and smiled widely at her, ignoring the aggression in her voice. “Yes? What is it, Clara, dear?”
“You’re in my flat.”
“Oh, so I am. Must’ve hit something wrong. So sorry, dear, hadn’t realized.”
“And don’t call me ‘dear’!”
“Goodness, I was only being polite. You’re my dear, sweet Clara after all!”
“I’m really not.”
Not bothered in the least, Missy carried on eating Clara’s sandwich, while Clara was left at a loss as to what to do about the unwelcome guest. She’d just about settled on ‘push her off the counter’ as a solution when Missy hopped back down to the floor.
“Well, it’s been a hoot, and we really should do this more often,” she said as she walked away from Clara’s glare. “But I must be off now. Don’t miss me too much!” With that, Missy did a dramatic twirl and disappeared with her skirts were still swirling.
Clara let out a groan of frustration and shook her head. What was that all about? She cleared away the remains of the sandwich Missy had stolen from her and got to work preparing a second one.
The second time it happened, Clara was at the school. She’d elected to stay late, hoping to get through her backlog of grading with minimal distractions, and had papers spread all across her desk. If you had asked Clara at any point during the afternoon what the worst thing that could happen to her in this scenario was, she would not have told you it would be somebody’s dirty boots suddenly landing on her desk, because of course she had no reason to believe that was a likely outcome in the least. Unfortunately for everyone, but especially for her students, that was exactly what happened.
She heard a noise she recognized . It wasn’t familiar like the TARDIS, mind, but she knew it meant trouble. Suddenly there was a pair of unwelcome high heeled boots right in the middle of the pile she’d just been staring at, and to make matters worse they seemed to be covered in ash, mud, and what Clara really hoped was not blood. As she shifted her gaze upwards she saw the mess was not just contained to the boots either.
“What the hell have you been doing , Missy, get off my desk!”
Missy looked surprising disoriented as she obliged Clara’s demand. “Where am I?” she mumbled, barely coherent.
“Never mind that, are you tracking blood all over my students’ work?”
“Don’t worry, pet, it’s not mine,” Missy answered. She was swaying on her feet like one wrong move would have her face first on the floor.
‘Oh, that’s just great ,’ Clara thought to herself, exasperated, but she vacated her chair and guided Missy into it instead. “ What happened ?” she demanded, perhaps a little over-aggressively to compensate for the whole chair thing.
Missy took some time to compose herself before replying, following only the most minimal definition of ‘answering’. “Ran into some trouble. Just need to sit for a while and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Yeah, it’s probably better I don’t know what you’ve been up to, isn’t it?” Clara muttered. She started cleaning up her desk, trying to salvage what she could of the trampled papers. She’d address the Time Lady further after she’d dealt with her mess. She didn’t know why she put up with this at all, but the universe was full of enough mysteries without taking a close look at that one.
“Hold on,” Missy called after a while, voice already sounding a lot stronger. “Am I in a classroom? Why am I in a classroom?”
Clara sighed loudly. “Yeah, this is my classroom, actually. As for why you’re in here, I suppose God only knows. Considering I was going to ask you that.”
“ Huh. I was expecting something a little more- oh, you work here, don’t you? How adorably boring! Well, that explains something at least.”
“No Missy,” Clara snarked back, “I like to spend my free time hanging out in empty schools just for fun .” She considered the rest of Missy’s words. “And are you planning on sharing whatever explanation you’ve apparently come up with?”
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. I’ll be going now, but thanks for the sit.” Clara could see, as Missy stood and dusted off her skirts, that she was still in no state to be going anywhere, but before she could protest (and why would she protest, anyway?) Missy was already disappearing as suddenly as she’d appeared.
Clara threw the papers she’d collected into the air. If that’s what she was going to get for trying to catch up on her work she’d just as soon not bother in the future.
The third time it happened, Clara was out on a date. She had been gazing out the front window while her date was in the restroom. There was no sound this time, at least not one that Clara could hear, though she could imagine it when she saw Missy appear out of thin air onto the sidewalk outside. She didn’t give it too much thought at first, particularly because her date returned shortly after.
She was eventually forced to consider it when, after several minutes of the occasional glance towards the window showing Missy doing increasingly ridiculous motions in her general direction, she finally caught her pressed right up against the window glass, pulling faces.
She politely excused herself from the table, feeling guilty as she went outside to confront her... whatever it was that Missy was to her. By the time she made it outside, however, Missy had already disappeared.
After returning to the table Clara found herself distracted for the rest of the night, constantly checking the window to see if Missy had returned or if anything else looked amiss. When her date told her that things weren’t working out she just suggested that maybe tonight was not a good night after all.
She spent almost an hour past when her date at left, sitting at the same table and looking out the same window.
The fourth time it happened was really not Clara’s night. She’d been told off and brutally rejected while trying to schedule a second date, she was up to her ears in overdue grading work, and she’d had a fight with the Doctor.
Clara knew she had coworkers who were known to spend their Friday nights slumped over the counter at bars, but she never would have said she could have been one of them. Tonight, though, she was making an exception. She was feeling utterly miserable, and at that point in the night she really just wanted to go home, but she was certain if she stood up straight that the floor would drop right out from under her. So there she sat, surrounded by music and chatter and laughter and absorbing none of it.
When she heard the by-now-vaguely-familiar sound of the vortex manipulator over the hubbub of the bar she didn’t even bother to move. “Missy?” she called out in no particular direction, although she couldn’t think who else it could have been.
She felt a hand on her head, ruffling her hair. “Aren’t you in a sorry state?” came the voice she’d recognize anywhere, vortex manipulator aside. “Is it my turn to ask what’s happened to you now?”
“Only if I can be as obtuse as you when I answer,” Clara replied. She was far from smiling, but somehow she was already feeling a little bit less miserable.
“Aren’t you at least going to look up at me? I could kill you right now, you know. And I’d be totally justified, you’re being rude .”
“Go ahead then, if it’s so important to you.” Clara still didn’t move.
“ You’re no fun.” The hand on Clara’s head disappeared. “Move.” This last word was apparently not directed at Clara, as she heard whoever was occupying the stool next to her quickly vacate the premises with a fearful squeak. Missy sat down in the stranger’s place and called for the attention of the bartender. “I’ll have whatever she’s having.”
Clara finally lifted her head, just enough to see the other woman. “Why are you here , Missy?”
“Why are you here?” she countered.
Missy received her drink, and the two of them sat in silence as she sipped it. She placed her empty glass down on the counter and stood up, clapping her hands together. “Alright, that’s enough of that! Time to go, pet.”
Clara shook her head, then immediately regretted it.
“What, don’t tell me you’re comfortable like that ? Or is my presence really just so unbearable that-”
“Not that,” Clara whispered.
“Sorry pet, didn’t quite catch that.”
Even softer than before, Clara forced out an admission. “Don’t think I can walk out of here,” she said.
“Is that all ? Why didn’t you say so sooner? Come on!”
Clara quite suddenly found herself being pulled to her feet, her arm being flung around Missy’s shoulder, and her feet practically being dragged across the floor. “Not so fast,” she mumbled, and Missy paused to allow her a minute to actually get her footing. Even with that, she found herself leaning heavily on the other woman for support as she forced her feet to get walking. It crossed her mind that it probably would have been easier on both of them to just carry her, but she found herself completely unwilling to voice that thought.
She wasn’t quite sure how, but Missy managed to get her back into her flat. She even helped her all the way to the couch before disappearing off into the universe somewhere. Before she went, she had told Clara frankly, “I did consider using the vortex manipulator to get you here. Lucky for you, my desire to point and laugh at you in an even worse position than you are now was outweighed by my desire for you to not puke on my clothes.” Then Clara was alone again.
‘She really could have killed me if she wanted to,’ Clara realized belatedly as she was falling asleep.
The fifth time it happened, Clara was at home again for once. She’d been reading on her couch one minute, and the next she found herself with a Time Lady in her lap. Instinct took over then, and she pushed her straight onto the floor. “Aren’t you ever going to stop ?” she shouted.
Missy pouted up at her, making no immediate effort to get off the floor. “I just like to visit my friends,” she said casually, as if a) her and Clara were friends, b) her visits were in any way pre-meditated or consented to and c) she hadn’t essentially just broken into Clara’s home. Again.
“Oh, right , and I suppose you do the same thing to the Doctor then? Just showing up in his TARDIS or whatever?” Clara laid the sarcasm on thick, pretty sure she knew the kind of response she was going to get.
“Heavens no! I never do this to him , he’s got much better protection. Nearly impossible to get ahold of him, sometimes.” Seeming to realize for the first time that she’d been dumped on the floor, she got to her feet and started dusting off her skirts. “I guess that means you’re just special ,” she told Clara with a wink before plopping gracelessly onto the couch. She kicked her feet up into Clara’s lap, who promptly pushed them off again (albeit not as forcefully as her initial shove-off).
Rather than deal with her uninvited guest, Clara went back to her book, hoping her problems would simply work themselves out. They didn’t of course, but Missy didn’t bother her for almost a whole five minutes. Then the feet were back in Clara’s lap. “Missy,” she said with a fake smile on her face.
“Yeeeees?”
She gathered as much vitriol as she thought she could muster into a single word while still smiling, and let loose. “ Leave .”
Missy made a move to activate her vortex manipulator but Clara grabbed her arm before she had the chance. “Use the door this time, I know you know where it is.”
Missy stood up, as slowly as she possibly could, and made her way out. “Party pooper!” she called back over her shoulder as she reached the door, and then she was gone again.
-----
Clara stepped out of her TARDIS to wards where Missy was lying on the ground, looking half-dead already. Or was she just plain old dead? Clara couldn’t find it in herself to believe that. “ You look like you could use a doctor,” she called out. “Unfortunately for you, it’s just me.”
“Go away, I’m fine,” came the snappy answer back.
“Alive, then. That’s a start.” She ignored Missy’s directive, crouching down and pulling Missy’s arm over her shoulder. She tried to pull Missy to her feet, but Missy didn’t have enough strength left to even manage that and they both fell back to the ground, limbs tangling together. She extricated herself from the mess, realizing she’d need a new approach. She couldn’t exactly just pick her up like she was nothing. “Can you at least sit up?” Clara asked. Missy grunted something in response, and after a team effort they got her leaning against a tree, more or less upright. Clara crouched down again, this time in front of her. “Wrap your arms around my neck,” she instructed, then added as an afterthought, “and no strangling.” Missy complied without any snarky comments, and Clara was able to boost her into a piggy back position. “Alright, in we go,” she said cheerily, though she really wasn’t sure that Missy was going to make it even if they did get into the TARDIS.
“Don’t worry about me, I’m still going to regenerate. He’s an idiot, doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Clara wasn’t sure if Missy was referring to whomever had left her like this, or to someone else, but she figured that wasn’t exactly the important part. She got Missy into the TARDIS and lowered her as gently as she could to the ground. The doors closed automatically behind them. “You didn’t have to bring me here,” Missy protested, repeating again, “I’m going to regenerate. I’m not disappearing.”
Clara sat down beside the woman who had once had the nerve to call her a friend. She put a hand on her knee, trying to give some amount of comfort before she started exploding into a whole new body. “Just because you’re not going to die,” Clara said gently, “doesn’t mean that you need to be alone.” Missy didn’t protest anymore to Clara’s presence after that, but she wasn’t sure if it was because she didn’t want to or she just couldn’t. Whichever one it was, Clara wasn’t going to leave until she saw that her friend was properly alive again. It was the least she could do.