My Magician

The second we landed I punched Missy, hard, on the shoulder. I was furious that she’d brought me along. I’d done my part and I was planning to go back to the life I’d created for myself, where she’d left me the last time. I did not want to see the Doctor. After everything, I didn’t feel prepared to face him. I hated that my hearts raced. I was beginning to realize I might have no choice. She only whooped and hollered like she was having the time of her life.

“Whoo, Mummy! Do it again!” the crazy woman cheered. I ignored her and reached a hand down to Clara, who hadn’t landed on her feet. She took it, using our combined strength to pull herself up.

“Vortex manipulators,” I explained, “Ours are slaved to hers.”

“Cheap and nasty time travel,” Missy rallied.

“Face me, Magician!” We heard a man’s voice yelling.

“You probably wanna throw up, don’t you?” Missy teased Clara as I led them to look between the parapets that lined the stone wall we had landed on. From up here, maybe we’d be able to see him coming. “Pick a local,” she encouraged, gesturing to the crowds seated below us. “According to you, this is where the Doctor is.”

“Okay,” Clara nodded, still recovering from the jump, “How do we find him? How do we know what we’re looking for?” As she said this, reality began to sink in. I was about to see him for the first time in ages. I stared into the fog filled pit, wondering if he was just out of sight.

“Anachronisms,” Missy stated firmly, “The slightest, tiniest-” An electric guitar screeched and shivers ran up my spine. “Anachronisms…”

The air reverberated with the guitar riff as the arena below us continued to fill with the smoke that had been billowing in from a large archway. His outline began to show through the fog, before anything else. I had never seen this body before, I was sure, but I recognized him the second that I saw his silhouette.

I truly hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him until that moment. There was something thrilled and terrified yet excited crawling from my stomach into my mouth. Despite everything that I had wanted to feel, all the rage of the last few centuries, I found every bone in my body to suddenly fall weak. A weariness I’d been ignoring ran up my spine and my instincts told me home hadn’t been so close in an era.

As he finally broke into a full lick, playing as if he’d done so for all of his lives, his figure began to emerge from the clouds. His dark coat and silver hair were the first things to catch my eye. It made sense, I supposed, that he was a performer. He’d been musical in regenerations, before, I considered. Although, I was reminded of his second body and that ridiculous little recorder that he’d carried around. How did we get here?

It soon became clear that he was on a military tank that couldn’t have been from earlier than the 21st century. The tank rolled into the arena, with him still playing his rock melody on top of it. He seemed to think he was a star, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, regardless of the fact that it was currently dark out. I found that I was smiling, despite everything. After all, I had ended up at the show too, hadn’t I? The crowd went wild for his antics, as if he really were famous, banging tambourines and screaming.

The man who it seemed was supposed to be battling him looked increasingly frustrated as he waited for his opponent to finish. After a few concluding strokes, the Doctor gave one last, rather impressive shred. Then, as the last notes reverberated out, he held up a peace sign to the audience. A dramatic bow followed before he was done.

“Dude!” the barbarian spoke up, an axe slung over his shoulder, “What is that?”

“You said you wanted an ax fight,” the ridiculous man responded. I pretended that I didn’t feel a deep desire for him to keep talking so that I could hear that accent, again. There was a moment where the audience whispered to each other in confused mutterings. Missy’s eyes burned into the back of my skull but mine were locked on him. “Oh, come on,” he complained, like a child, “In a few hundred years, that will be really funny. It’s a slow burner…” He jumped down from the tank, guitar still strapped to him. He was acting like a child.

He was acting like the Doctor.

“A musical instrument is not an axe,” his competitor complained.

“Yes, and a daffodil is not a broadsword,” the Doctor was facing the audience, “but I still won the last round!” Again, he incited cheers from the masses. “What do you think of my tank?” he asked them. “Don’t worry. It isn’t loaded.”

“I don’t like it,” the guy responded.

“No, neither do I,” the Time Lord agreed, “I bought it for my fish.”

“Your fish?” Clara and I shared a look.

He was just as unbelievable as I remembered him. It was nice to see him outside of the war. He was more himself when he wasn’t fighting. There was something about the hoodie falling over the back of his blazer that awoke a fondness in me.

“I may have ordered online,” he delivered, waiting for laughter that never came. “Oh, come on,” he complained, again, “Fish, tank, honestly, this stuff will be hilarious in a very few hundred years. Do please stick around.”

“What’s the matter with him?” Clara muttered beside me, “He’s never like this.”

“Oh, you really are new, aren’t you?” Missy sounded amused. The entire place seemed to go silent as the Doctor hesitated where he stood. I blinked at the lack of motion.

“You don’t think he knows we’re here, do you?” I asked, watching him as I spoke. He turned our way, briefly pushing his sunglasses down his nose. Missy snorted, at that.

“Hang on… Did he just hear that?” Clara asked, squinting at him.

His glasses were pushed back up and the first few chords of Oh, Pretty Woman by Roy Orbison rang out through the stadium. Summer 1965, I couldn’t help remembering. That was a good summer, I recalled. We spent most of that time chasing down the Beatles, until we annoyed them into letting us watch them record Yesterday.

“I think it’s safe to say he knows you’re here,” Missy told me. I could hear the wolfish grin in her voice, but I couldn’t look away from him. Her amusement was something I had practice ignoring. He continued to riff out the first few bars of the song, never turning away from where I stood. There was a moment where, across all that space, I knew he was looking right at me, too. He was playing his stupid, little guitar for me. He was telling me, without telling me, that he’d been hoping for this moment.

There was an occasion, long ago, in our youth, that I was taken hostage by a rouge group of angry Silurians. The team he’d constructed, at that time, had considered me likely to be dead. Despite their protests, the Doctor had insisted, talking the ears off every UNIT soldier he could find. In the end, they’d given in and decided to make an attempt at extraction. He’d been right, to their dismay, and he’d saved the day, like he always loved to do.

I’d crooned over him like he was a hero, just to watch him blush. When we returned to the TARDIS after that adventure, though, I asked him how he’d known that I was alive.

I just would have known, he’d told me, I would have felt it.

I wondered if he’d known I was alive this whole time.

“Now, you lot,” he spoke, as he suddenly turned back to the crowd, “I have been here all day, and it’s been a great day!” The spell he’d cast on me was broken, with this, and Clara was quick to take my hand, tugging me toward the stone stairs off to the side. I followed her, wishing that people would stop pulling me along behind them.

“You’ve been here for three weeks,” I heard someone correct him as we started our descent, leaving Missy where she stood, watching. I didn’t hear his response from the stairwell, but Clara and I quickly found our way to the opening at the side of the stage.

“Well, we’ve partied,” he continued his show, “I helped you dig a well, with a first class, child-friendly visitor’s center!” The crowd erupted, yet again. He was blatantly showing off, at this point. “I’ve given you some top-notch maths tuition in a fun, but relevant, way! And I’ve also introduced the word ‘dude’ several centuries early!” He practically danced around the space as he spoke. “Let me hear you!”

“Dude!” the crowd called back to him.

“Are you a Renaissance…”

“Dude!”

“Are you a Medieval…”

“Dude!”

“I am a dragon slaying…”

“Dude!”

“Where are all the young…”

“Dudes!”

“I like it!” he concluded, excitedly. I was sure that he heard the small chuckle this managed to pull out of me. He was too pleased with himself. Clara was marveling at him like she’d never seen this side of him before. “But I’ve got some sad news for you, dudes,” he continued, “Tonight, I’m going to have to leave you.” The people in the stands booed him when he said this. “But before I do, I’d like you to meet,” he turned to me, again, eyes hidden behind those lenses, “A couple of friends of mine.”

As if he knew what I’d been thinking, he knocked the glasses down his nose so I could see him. Silently, those ancient eyes asked me if I would come out to play. There was a hint of nervousness that lingered. He was worried I would be angry with him. I did have questions of my own, I wanted to tell him. My eyes could never have conveyed everything I needed to say.

The glasses slid back up, covering the vulnerability he had just revealed to me. It was like he was teasing me with it, telling me that if I wanted more, I would have to come get it. I only glanced at Clara for a second, looking for her confirmation that we were doing this. We had come this far, together, and I was not about to face him, alone. She smiled brightly at me and took my hand. We stepped into the arena, waving at the audience like the spectacle that we were.

It took a moment for the cheering to die down. The screams were deafening from the middle of the makeshift stadium, but we made our way to the Doctor.

“How did you know I was there?” I asked him as I approached, letting go of his companion’s hand, “How did you know it was me?” He was supposed to think that I was dead.

“When have I ever not known you?” he asked, in place of an answer, stepping closer than was necessary. I was suddenly acutely aware of the solid six inches of height that he had on me.

“One face in all that crowd?” I was dubious. Missy might have told him. He might have already seen an older version of me, for all I knew. I had no idea how old he was.

“There was a crowd, too?” he asked, softly, like he was actually confused. The heat on my face had nothing to do with knowing that he still had eyes for me, I assured myself.

“Wow,” Clara balked, reminding him that we weren’t alone. She looked me up and down like I was a riddle she couldn’t solve. “Was that flirting?” she raised her eyebrows, looking back at him, “You’re doing charm, as well, now, are you?” She laughed, like she couldn’t believe he was capable. He shared her smile.

“Aren’t you supposed to be dying?” I teased, just to make him look at me, again.

He paused at my choice in words, hesitating just a few seconds too long for it to be meaningless. Then, with no warning, he pulled me into his arms, burying his face in my neck. My own went around him by reflex, holding onto his shoulders. I was shocked at how openly affectionate he was, without having spoken since our last argument.

I didn’t push him away. There was something that I’d needed so badly that I hadn’t allowed myself to consider it, in that embrace. He was pressed as close to me as he could get. He was holding onto me like I might turn to ash. He must really believe he’s dying, I realized, with a jolt. My anxious eyes met Clara’s over his shoulder.

“Doing hugging now, too?” she spoke, uncomfortably, as she watched us, arms crossed, “Doctor, you always say hugging is just a way to hide your face…” My hearts skipped a beat at her words. Neither of us could see his expression like this. His grey hair tickled my face where the edge of his cheek was brushing mine. He was warm, like I remembered, and I could feel the strangest combination of grief and relief soaking through his skin into mine. It occurred to me that, even if something had implied my survival, at some point, this was likely the first time that he was seeing the evidence of it. I waited to pull away from him, thinking that I understood why he needed this. In the most devastating way, I still needed it too.

“We guessed a party,” I told him, speaking more softly, “But not like this…” Slowly, hands still resting on his shoulders, I moved back far enough to see his face. His eyes were still hidden by shades. “What is this?”

“This isn’t you,” Clara commented from beside us, drawing his attention.

“I spent all day yesterday in a bow tie,” he told her, one hand leaving my side to tilt his glasses down as he spoke. Turning back to me, he added, “The day before in a long scarf.” I smiled fondly at that. His eyes were so blue. The glasses went back on, and he finally stepped away from me. I found myself subconsciously making the decision that he wasn’t allowed to die without holding me like that, again. “It’s my party and all of me is invited.” Backing away from us, he spun his strap around and started to play a sour melody on the guitar. I followed his eyeline to see Missy finally making her way into the center of the stadium, with us. Clara was giving me that look, again.

“What the hell are you up to, man?” Missy asked, projecting her voice. She was ready to resume the performance. She had brought me along to handle the sappy, emotional side of things, I was sure. For some reason, she’d decided we were on a mission to save him, and she knew exactly what she was doing to him by bringing me here.

“It’s the wicked stepmother!” he called to the audience, “Everyone, hiss!”

The crowd shouted their boos as the Doctor struck another sour note.

“Apparently, you think you’re going to die tomorrow,” Missy challenged, raising his confession dial, openly.

“Well, I’ve got some good news about that,” he told her.

“Oh, yeah?” He wandered over to her, leaning in as he delivered his punchline.

“It’s still today!”

“Oh, that’s very good,” she mumbled, sarcastically. He played a ‘wah wah wah’ noise on his strings, still acting the fool. No matter how dark things got, he would always be trying to make me and the children smile.

Suddenly, our attention was drawn to the man the Doctor had been pretending to fight, earlier. The medieval man was choking, hands on his throat like he was trying to tug something off.

“Bors!” the Time Lord called, running up to him, “Is it a marble, again? Did you swallow one of the marbles I gave you?” My stomach dropped and I knew something was wrong. This was no simple marble. The man fell to his knees as the Time Lord tucked his sunglasses into his breast pocket. “Don’t swallow marbles!” Despite the commentary, the Doctor pulled a snake from around the man’s neck, tossing it to the side as soon as it was loose. It hissed at him, slithering off toward a cloaked figure at the edge of the ring.

A robed man who appeared to be made of snakes had arrived, unnoticed, during our reunion.

“Doctor,” he hissed, “Your friends have led me to you.” Missy and I looked at each other, alarmed. We hadn’t known we were being followed. “You will come.”

“Says you and whose army?” I finally got a good look at this Doctor’s whole face, uninhibited, as he backed away from the interloper. His eyes were wild and bright. I still found him more handsome than I was willing to admit. Of course, the person in front of us dissolved into a pile of snakes that quickly advanced on the crowd. I watched, undaunted, as a small few slithered past me.

One large, aggressive looking boa emerged from the center, holding itself as tall as a man. People ran screaming as it bared its teeth and hissed. The Doctor ran directly up to this beast, calling out to it, “Nobody dies here! Not one person! Not one of my friends! Do you understand?” He was certainly not exponentially attractive as he risked his life for us, I assured myself, despite the lurch in my chest.

“Davros, creator of the Daleks, Dark Lord of Skaro,” it spoke the names of an even more terrifying monster, “is dying.” How he wasn’t dead already eluded me, but I was glad to hear the news, anyway. That man was responsible for the massacre of billions of my own people.

“So I hear,” he acknowledged.

“He would speak with you again, on the last night of his life.” Something about this whole situation clicked into place, for me, at the revelation. The Doctor believed his life was going to end because one of his oldest enemies was meeting his own extermination. As much as I didn’t want it to be my problem, I was starting to believe that the Doctor didn’t need to die, at all. The way things were, saving him was far from impossible. Nothing seemed to be fixed. Time wasn’t demanding anything.

“Then you will harm nobody in this place,” he negotiated, “Not one person. Are we very, very clear?” The snake hissed, retreating back into its cloak. The smaller snakes all found their way back to him, piling on top of each other to give the appearance of unity.

“Are you so dangerous, little man?” it asked him when it was whole, again.

“You wanna know how dangerous I am?” the Doctor asked, turning to glance at me. I had been there during the war. I knew better than most that he had the capacity to be a very dangerous man. “Davros sent you,” he told the figure, “You know how stupid you are? You came.” He laughed, turning his back on the creature and walking to his tank like he was unbothered. The monster hissed at him, again. “Is that supposed to frighten me? Snake nest in a dress?” he challenged, “Now, explain politely, Davros is my archenemy. Why would I want to talk to him?”

“No, wait, hang on a minute,” Missy cut in, clearly bothered, “Davros is your archenemy now?”

“Hush,” the Doctor scolded her.

“I’ll scratch his eye out,” she claimed.

“Davros knows,” the Monster told him, “Davros remembers.” He tossed something across the space between them. It landed in the dirt I couldn’t make out what it was from where I stood, but Clara seemed to recognize it.

“That’s yours,” she pointed out, looking to the Doctor. Missy put her hands on her hips, examining the Time Lord closely. Seeing this, I started to do the same. She must have noticed something that I hadn’t.

“Uh, it was,” he admitted.

“Was?” I asked. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. I hadn’t known this face for an hour, yet, but I felt like I could read him so easily.

“It was my screwdriver. I don’t have a screwdriver anymore.” The Doctor’s screwdrivers had always been precious to him over the years. Not only that, but it was a Time Lord tool. It would have taken a serious pressure for the Doctor to leave such an important relic of our people’s technology in the hands of Davros’ associates.

“Ooh,” Missy called, intrigued, “Never seen that before. Doctor, the look on your face… What is that?” She smirked at me as she circled to his other side, essentially leaving him surrounded. He was caught, bordered by the women who cared about him and his enemy.

“Shame,” I told her, instantly. My gaze never left his face. “You’re ashamed.” I walked closer to him, trying to catch his eyes. “Doctor? What have you done? Tell me…” He stared off into space for a few moments, clearly lost in the memory of whatever had happened. There was some distant longing behind that gaze, like he wanted to change something. The laws of time were different for Time Lords, as I had learned long ago, and there were three of us, now. Nothing was fixed in time yet.

I was close enough to see every crease and groove in his skin. It was rare that his age showed on his face so obviously. Something fond stirred in my gut, driving me forward.

I placed a hand on his cheek, gently, guiding him to look at me. He only met my eyes for a fraction of a second as he finally seemed to come back from wherever he’d been.

“Is your ship in orbit?” he asked the enemy. I pulled my hand away, but my eyes still searched for his as Missy rushed in from the other side.

“It’s a trap,” she pointed out. The Doctor didn’t seem to care.

“Prepare yourself for teleport,” the snake man told him.

“Doctor, listen to me,” Missy insisted, getting in his face, “I know traps, traps are my flirting! This is a trap!”

“I am prepared,” he said, ignoring her.

“You sent me your confession dial,” she ranted, “You threw yourself a three-week party. You know what this is!”

“Yes,” he acknowledged, “Goodbye.” He nodded to his friend, “Goodbye, Clara.” He met my eyes and finally held them as he backed away from all three of the people who wanted to help him. He was acting like his fate was predetermined– like there was no way to escape. “Goodbye, Sapph,” he bid me farewell with that old nickname. He crossed his hands behind his back and allowed one of the snakes to slither up, wrapping around his wrists like handcuffs. I took a deep breath, looking to the other women. We were all glancing at each other, all thinking the same thing.

“We’re coming with him,” I announced, “All three of us.” Without hesitation, we marched to line up beside the Doctor, crossing our hands behind our backs in preparation for our own arrests.

“No! No, no, no!” he protested, looking rapidly between all of us, “Under no circumstances!” His wild eyes looked at the creature, fearing he would accept our offer. “What are you doing now?”

“Voting,” it told us, wiggling and shifting where it stood, “We are a democracy.” After a few moments, the thing nodded. “It is agreed.”

“No, no, no!” The Doctor looked at me, panicked and desperate, “I forbid it! No!” I smiled, softly, at that. His attempts to forbid something had never stopped me before. “No! No!” He was still protesting when I felt a snake curling around my wrists. His voice echoed as we were teleported up to the small craft above us.

…

His arm was pressed against mine as we rode through space the old-fashioned way, being driven along by a snake man at hyper speed. Our wrists were still bound, as were those of Clara and Missy, seated across from us. There was an awkward silence hanging between the four of us, as we waited. There was so much that was unsaid between the people in this vehicle that it was deafening.

“So,” it was Missy who finally spoke, kicking her feet up onto the platform between us, like it was a foot stool, “The gang’s all back together, huh? Just like old times. You two, me, and…” She glanced at Clara, giving her a slow look up and down, “A stray human girl to follow us around.”

“Stop it,” the Doctor scolded, clearly seeing that she was just trying to get under Clara’s skin. Missy just laughed to herself, pleased enough with the Doctor’s reaction. I felt his eyes digging into the side of my skull. He was furious that we’d come along but there was something else lingering underneath that.

“So, you’re all Time Lords?” the human girl tried to clarify. It was clear that she didn’t enjoy feeling out of the loop. She was used to being in control of the situation.

“Yes,” I answered, needing something else to focus on, anyway, “We all attended the Academy together, when we were young.” Missy laughed at the simplicity of the statement.

“And then battled across the stars for the subsequent, oh,” she considered it, glancing at us for confirmation, “I dunno, eight? Nine? Ten centuries?” Clara was considering this, carefully.

“Doctor,” the human girl finally diverted his attention, “Why didn’t you tell me about any of this? What else don’t I know?” There was a pause where he said nothing. “If you think you’re dying I need to know, Doctor, I need to be ready. Who is Sapphire?” She looked right at me as she asked this. There was a half second where I knew his gaze was back on me, but he said nothing. “Who is Davros? Where are we going?”

“Davros is the child of war,” he carefully chose which question to answer. Clara still hung on his every word. “A war that wouldn’t end, a thousand years of fighting, ‘til nobody could remember why.” It was an eerily familiar image that he conjured. “So, Davros, he created a new kind of warrior, one that wouldn’t bother with that question,” he told, “A mutant in a tank that would never, ever stop.” My stomach churned just thinking about the creatures. I had spent a quarter of my life planning for or locked in combat with them. Daleks, as fact, were the most vile, heartless, horrible monsters in the universe.

“And they never did,” I added, solemnly.

“The Daleks,” she clarified.

“How scared must you be,” the Doctor posed, “To seal every one of your own kind inside a tank?” I wasn’t sure that Davros was capable of feeling fear. I often doubted that he felt anything at all. He was a monster who sought the destruction of anything that wasn’t of his own creation. He was the cause of uncountable genocides and the reason for the fall of our own people. That the Doctor could empathize with him in any way was mind-boggling to me. “Davros made the Daleks,” he confirmed, “But who made Davros?” It was a strange perspective that made me wonder just what it was the Doctor had done. Clearly, it was something that had affected his own timeline.

“Great,” Missy spoke up as the window at the front distracted us with a change in speed, “Coming out of hyperspace.” A small silver station hovered in front of us, floating aimlessly through space. The view of the stars was wonderful, I considered, having lived terrestrially for decades. However, this was a rather unimpressive final resting place for the creator of that mighty and horrible species. Missy was onto something when she told us that this was going to be a trap.

“That’s where he ended up?” I found myself asking, with distaste.

“What is that?” Clara asked.

“I don’t know,” the Doctor answered, “A hospital?”

…

The Doctor was pacing back and forth at the side of the room. The other women sat along the wall, lined up beside me, watching him. We had been placed in a holding cell the moment that we landed and it didn’t appear that anyone was in a rush to collect us. At first, we had been calmly waiting, thinking that our presence would be a priority. It seemed that this was not the case. Our adventurous minds were rotting in this cell.

“Doctor,” Clara tried to get his attention, not for the first time. He was lost in thought, seemingly caught in the odd sensation of the gravity in this space station. “Doctor?” Time stretched on and I grew impatient.

“Doctor,” I finally spoke up. He froze in place at the tone of my voice, instantly meeting my eyes. I tried not to be too satisfied with the response. “We need to talk about this,” I told him, knowing they were words he dreaded. We had him trapped in a cell with us, though. I knew I would either get answers or he would find us a way out of this room as quickly as he could. I would have been happy in either case. His eyes went wide and wild again.

“Now?” he was glancing at Clara and Missy as if their presence affected something, “You want to talk about this, now?” I blinked at him.

“What?” The implication of his words slapped me across the face. “Oh,” I shook my head, exhausted by how childish he could be, “No, Doctor.” I sighed, “About the fact that you think you’re going to die.” He had the decency to look a bit red.

“Oh!” He ignored the amused looks he was getting from the other girls. “Look,” he approached me as he spoke, “Davros is sick. He asked me to come, so I did.” My eyebrows went up. “I’m the Doctor, it’s kind of my thing,” he attempted to joke.

“But why does that mean you have to die?” I just couldn’t understand it.

“Well, obviously, he’s going to kill me,” the Doctor bolstered. I could have smacked him.

“And you’re just going to let him?” I scoffed, finally rising to my feet. I still had to look up at him, but I could properly meet his gaze. “You’re just going to lie down and accept it?” His eyes were shining with something new as he looked at me, staring straight into me. He was seeing me, as he always had.

“There it is,” Missy commented, quietly, leaning into Clara to gossip, “That’s why she’s called Hope.”

“I’m not called Hope,” I snapped, turning back to them, “I’m called Sapphire.”

“Right, whatever you say, dear,” she dismissed me. I tried to ignore the way she mouthed something I couldn’t make out to Clara.

“Sapph,” he instantly had my attention, again, “This is something I’m going to have to face alone. This is a monster of my own making.” I squinted, still not understanding what he could mean by that. “The war, I’m responsible for it all,” he admitted to me, “The cruelty and the misery and the escalation; I’m responsible for it. I didn’t think. I’ve made poor decisions, Sapph. I know I have. I’m the reason for that endless pain and suffering that sucked you up and turned you into a soldier-”

“Talk, talk, talk,” I mocked him, too many feelings building in my chest at the way he spoke about the war, “You’re like a child throwing a temper tantrum because things haven’t gone exactly the way you want.” He gaped at me, but I held his eyes. “You have no idea if you’re going to die, nothing here is fixed,” I told him, “But you’re standing here asking me for my forgiveness– for me to absolve your sins– like it’s certain that this is our last conversation. Why?”

“I don’t expect your forgiveness,” he was quick to clarify.

“What, then?” I almost laughed, “My hatred? Do you want me to blame you?” I shook my head as he stared at me, not understanding. “You already have my forgiveness for anything you did under the pressures of the War,” I told him, quietly, surprising myself with the honesty behind it. We all did what we had to do in those years. His wide eyes seemed like they might pop out of his skull. “What I can’t understand is what you’re doing now, Doctor. What is this?”

“I-” He was at a loss for words. It was very rare that I managed to leave him in such a state, searching for something to say. He wouldn’t tell me that he was planning to let Davros kill him. This was a suicide mission and it had been from the start.

“Well, well,” Missy’s voice cut in, reminding us that we weren’t alone, in this cell, “Now it really feels like old times.” I closed my eyes, cursing her inside my head, not caring if she heard me. Without even meaning to, I was doing exactly what she’d wanted me to.

“How long have we been here?” Clara asked, finally starting to seem like she felt in over her head.

“Who knows?” the Doctor finally found his voice, spinning on his heel and pacing away from me, “It’s always the way with hospitals.” It was just as he said this that the door opened with a strange type of decompression. The robed snake man returned, slithering into the room at his own pace.

“You will come,” he told the Doctor, who had moved to stand in the center of the room, back to the rest of us, “You will stay.”

“Doctor,” Clara finally got his attention before he left, “You sent Missy your confession dial.”

“Well,” he paused, unsure of what she meant, “We’ve known each other a long time… She’s one of my own people…”

“My point is, we both saw her die on Earth, ages ago,” Clara expanded, “And obviously you knew that wasn’t real, or worse… hoped it wasn’t.” He looked ashamed, again. “Either way, I think you’ve been lying.” I was starting to love Clara Oswald and the way she stared him down.

“I’m sorry,” he responded, flat.

“Don’t apologize. Make it up to me,” she challenged. I smiled at this. “There, see, ha!” she grinned, “Now you have to come back.” Stone-faced, he began to step away from her and toward his fate. I could see the tears brimming in Clara’s eyes when he turned and made his way to the door. Missy made her way to my side, elbow knocking mine as we watched him go.

“Gravity,” he hinted, our way, just as he was about to duck out.

“We know!” Missy and I responded, together. We shared a look of ancient exhaustion before the doors closed behind him. The other Time Lady began kicking the ground and dancing around, excitedly. She was testing the gravity, as the Doctor had suggested, anyway. We could all feel that it was off. Well, all of us except the human.

“Gravity?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Missy affirmed, “You know what’s wrong with the gravity in here?”

“No.”

“Nothing.” Missy gave a few small hops in a circle, as an example. “It’s perfect.”

“But this is a space station,” I expanded for the human’s sake, “Or so we were told.” The mad woman was smirking at me. “So, the gravity should be artificial.”

“All coppery-smelling ‘round the edges,” Missy attempted to express, “And a tiny bit sexy.” She made her way to the window, glancing out. “But this feels real, man,” she spoke in an American accent, like she was talking about a high, “Like a planet.”

“How can you and the Doctor be friends?” Clara asked Missy, marveling. It seemed clear to me from the conversation we’d had over tea that Missy murdered the human’s boyfriend in a fit of passion or as a scheme for the Doctor’s attention. “Are you and the Doctor even friends?” she aimed at me. Missy and I shared a glance. She was still smirking.

“Why shouldn’t we all be friends?” Missy asked, having enough mercy to not make me answer.

“You spend all your time fighting,” Clara informed us.

“Exactly,” the mad woman agreed. A shock ran up my arms as she electrocuted the snake that had been wrapped around my wrists. The thing dropped and slithered away with a hiss. I hadn’t even realized that she’d gotten her own hands free. She had managed to open the panel on the wall next to the airlock, accessing the wires. I rubbed my sore wrists, absentmindedly, as Missy turned to the still restrained Clara. “You know what this airlock is?” she asked the human, “I’ll tell you. It’s pants.”

“What do you mean?” Clara asked. I moved closer to inspect the technology, seeing what she meant, immediately. The other Time Lady shocked the girl while she was focused, forcing a small yelp out of her as the snake dropped.

“I mean that today might be the day,” Missy turned to me with a dramatic pose.

“What day?” I humored her, as Clara recovered.

“The day I finally kill you,” she said as she gave me a soft smile. She pressed the release on the airlock.

“What are you doing?” the human panicked, “Are you opening it?”

“Yeah, of course,” Missy teased.

“Missy!” Clara protested, “We’ll get sucked out!”

“All of us together, off we go!” she said with intensity.

“It’s okay, Clara,” I tried to comfort her, “Let her do this.” In the next few seconds the door was open and we all stood exactly where we’d been, looking at each other. We weren’t being pulled out as we would have been if that were truly a vacuum. Of course, there was always a chance that there was only an atmospheric shell keeping us alive. The three of us approached what looked like empty space, with caution. Missy was the first one to stick her hand out, reaching into the vastness before us. She was smiling when she turned back to me.

“It’s warm, isn’t it?” she pointed out. I could feel what she was talking about. I was feeling sunlight on my skin, where there was none. After a moment, I reached my hand out as well, feeling the dry air. If I didn’t know any better I would have guessed that I was in a desert.

“For deep space,” I confirmed. Missy carefully secured one hand on the doorway, grabbing mine with the other. She laced our fingers together, gripping more tightly than was necessary. Grounded, she cautiously stuck a foot out, searching for solid ground.

“What are you doing?” Clara asked.

“Treading softly,” she mumbled, placing her foot the rest of the way down. After finding something solid, she let go of the doorway and stepped out with her other foot. She stood on the empty space, tethered back to the station only by her hold on my hand. Clara poked her head out when she saw this, finally beginning to feel safe.

Suddenly, Missy yanked on my arm, pulling me from the space station completely, into the emptiness with her. She never dropped my hand, catching me in her other arm as I stumbled with the momentum. I gave her a half hearted glare when the other hand fell to the small of my back. She held me like we were ballroom dancing.

“Hands,” I warned her.

“There’s a floor?” Clara asked, watching us.

“No, there’s ground,” Missy corrected. She spun me around once, twice, before finally letting go of me, to wander farther away. She danced and skipped a bit as she meandered. “This is the ground.”

“It’s safe,” I assured Clara, prompting her to step out with us. Each soft step made the tiny smile on her face a bit larger. She was as fascinated as we were. We all wandered a bit farther out.

“We’re on a planet,” Missy confirmed what we had both been suspecting, “And that is not a space station, that is a building, and the rest of the planet, the whole thing, is invisible.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Clara posed, joining Missy, spinning around in the empty space. I couldn’t help the thought that it was beautiful out here, walking in this.

“Yes, it is,” I agreed, “I mean, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“How would you ever find your glasses, or the little girls’ room?” Missy asked, now a fair distance from the building we started in, “And what if you kissed an ugly?” The Time Lady suddenly froze in place, looking around her. “Unless, when you’re part of the atmosphere, you start syncing with the spectrum.” Just as she said this, the world around me began melting into place. Colors flickered in and I was able to see the distant city on the other side of us.

“Why would anybody hide a whole planet?” Clara asked, just as Missy and I began to realize exactly where we were.

“That would rather depend on the planet, dear,” Missy commented, but I couldn’t spare her a glance. I was stuck, breath caught in my throat, looking at a revitalized version of a planet that I had spent centuries fighting to destroy. They always rebuilt. Like cockroaches, they always survived and regrouped. I was grief-stricken, staring at this old city that was operating at full capacity, in front of me.

“No!” I whispered, in a gasp, “They built it again. Missy, it’s back, they brought it back!” My panic was only rising.

“No, no, no, no…” she muttered to herself.

“What?” the human asked, confused. I should never have allowed her out onto this planet. I told her it was safe. “What is it? Where are we?”

“Skaro,” I told her, my voice nearly breaking.

“What’s Skaro?”

“The beginning,” Missy told her, simply, “Where it all started.”

Tears welling in my eyes, I turned to Clara, “This is the planet of the Daleks.”

“Correct,” an unmistakable mechanical voice called out, in response. I spun around, hearts racing in my chest, to see a colorful dalek flanking us, from the side. Already, we were hostages. As hard as I fought to escape it, running, it seemed that the war would never end.