Mindwipe

Chapter 19

"Seb?" Osgood gasped in surprise, reaching up to brush the mud from the face of the former A.I. who for the first time looked at her with something other than contempt in his expression.

"It...hur..."

"Shush don't try to talk I'll get help." Osgood insisted, surprised when Seb shook his head and gestured with his fingers like he wanted her to talk his hand.

"I'm...scared..." Seb confessed his old eyes filling with tears as the pain in his chest robbed him of further breath.

How could he make this silly slip of a human understand? There was only one thing Seb was frightened of, far more terrifying than this new experience of pain, fear of oblivion. He wasn't really human; he had no soul, no claim to any afterlife. He wasn't even convinced that there was such a thing, not after the Nethersphere, but for him there wasn't even the hope. He would simply cease to exist and everything that he had experienced and learnt would be lost. And when she returned to her Tardis The Mistress would probably pull a backup version of him out of storage and then it would be like this version of him, of Seb, had never even existed.

The Mistress wouldn't be hampered by a little thing like sentiment. Only this human that he had railed against, had lashed out at in jealousy would ever remember him as he was now.

"I'm...sorr..." Seb managed to force out relieved to see in Osgood's face that she understood what he was trying to say.

Blinking back tears Osgood could only watch as Seb closed his eyes, as his barely discernible breaths finally stopped. Yet she didn't have time to grieve for him now. Retrieving the gun she half shuffled half slipped back over to The Mistress who was still laying there, breathing all by herself now but those blue eyes remained closed. Gripping the gun in her trembling hands Osgood pressed the pointy end to Missy's chest and waited.

She didn't have to wait long. The Mistress's eyelashes blinked open and a fond sardonic smile tugged at her lips as her bright blue gaze met Osgood's own.

Relief...it was overwhelming...like a rush of adrenaline Osgood could have cried with it as a familiar sarcastic drawl demanded.

"Why aren't you dead?"

Dropping the weapon Osgood ignored the likelihood of being vaporised for her impertinence, her hands gripping hard at Missy's torn jacket as she half dragged the horrified Time Lady into her arms venting her fear and relief and frustration in hot tears on the Time Lady's shoulder. Perplexed and more than a little disturbed Missy endured the human's pawing, only wrinkling her nose a little in disgust at the prospect of all that human mucus smeared all over her. Well her jacket was ruined in any case and if it made her pet feel better...

Yet Missy would deny till she was blue in the face that even for a moment she tilted her head and rested it against the human girl's, or that she sent any sort of comfort telepathically. It wasn't out of any sort of sympathy. It was just a means to an end, and that end was to stop Skip's silly bawling.

She wasn't going soft in her old age and certainly not over a human.

-/-

It was strange being back on earth. Stranger in that nothing here seemed to have changed and yet she had changed so fundamentally that Osgood couldn't help but find it jarring. Did she matter so little to the energy and balance of her own planet that her absence and then return meant nothing? That family and friends, such that she still had, had probably gone about their own lives in happy oblivion to her absence, or worse that they had realised but that it was a mere inconvenience.

"You have no messages." Her empty answer phone was telling and Osgood couldn't help but blink back tears, trying to convince herself that it was because everyone would have phoned her mobile which was still in UNIT custody and that UNIT would have probably contacted everyone who mattered to tell them of her defection.