-/-
The twin suns were warm on her face, somewhere far in the distance the bells in the citadel began to chime the beautiful delicate melody that was once as familiar as breathing and yet somehow The Mistress had forgotten it. There was the scent of newly blooming flowers in the air and a warm breeze carried their perfume causing her nose to twitch as she drew in a lung full and held it, held it until it burned...
There were long dexterous fingers threading through her hair, stroking it gently enough not to pull and yet they tugged on her curls and ran soothingly back and forth caressing any lingering cares away. Releasing her held breathe Missy relished the way those strong fingers stroked and tugged her head back and in an unusually obliging mood she allowed herself to be guided, her reward was the teasing press of lips against her forehead. Warm breath with a hint of sweet mint brushed her skin and The Mistress felt a smile tug at her lips.
Thete
It wasn't a question; Missy knew the one whose embrace she was languishing in as well as she knew herself. She knew that touch, that particular warmth that only her former lover could bring to the dark recesses of her mind.
Whom else's embrace could bring her such simple joy? Soothing away any flicker of fear or doubt or...pain...
There was pain, lingering for a moment on the edge and The Mistress frowned there had been men with bats and for a moment she could have sworn she heard...
Shush just relax I've got you. I won't let anyone hurt you ever again
Frowning for a moment as she struggled to catch hold of that fleeting thought Missy finally allowed it flee unpursued as sweet warm lips descended once more this time teasing her twitching nose before finally latching down on her own waiting lips.
Oh my love Missy all but purred as she breathed him in, down and drowning in him but there was no other way she would rather finally leave this mortal coil than in his arms. She could feel him now, his arms around her, his mouth claiming her own stealing her breath, his mind sinking into her own faster and deeper and with more skill than Missy had given him credit it for. Like roots the tendrils of his thoughts burrowed down and Missy found other thoughts and memories suddenly sparking and flashing across her consciousness.
Running and burning...fighting and loving...blue...the silvery blue of her Doctor's latest eyes and the bright cloudless of blue of an earth sky in summer.
Deeper and deeper he burrowed and Missy began to squirm in discomfort. It was too much...too deep...like Thete wasn't just inside her he was everywhere.
Stop
It wasn't a request it was a command and The Mistress was used to being obeyed.
No...More...Need...
Was the hungry demand that echoed back in her mind, the voice losing some of its earlier sweetness. The precious illusion shattering in her mind as she finally felt the wolf shed its sheep's clothing and bare its hungry teeth.
Show me more
All pretence of calmness was dropped and like a wild ravenous beast it savaged her memories, at first there was no discernible pattern but all too soon The Mistress realised what it was looking for...Colour...Sensation...Happiness. She relived blond curls running through her fingers, brown eyes tilted up at her with innocent delight as sweat pooled on a top lip still speckled with the downy fluff of youth, the overwhelming pleasure of that first sweet possession.
No
Somehow she forced it out; protectively hovering over those precious memories like a lioness would protect her cubs from a ravenous pack of hyenas.
You are us and other, you must share
Not him
Missy all but growled back growing her own claws as she lashed out, this was her mind she had home court advantage even if she was unable to match the invader for pure psychic power she wasn't going down without a fight.
Why fight, we are one, you can be us, we can be him
You can never be him only a pale imitation
Missy countered unable to reassemble her battered shields she opted for the last resort available to her, attack.
-/-
As she watched Missy vanish beneath the surface Osgood couldn't help but scream out her protest.
"No you can't...you don't understand..." Osgood spluttered as beneath her the mud pool began to churn. "You have to get her out of there or we're all as good as dead!"
"What did you do?" Sil's voice demanded as he hid behind his large guards watching in growing horror as the mud began to roll and surge, like sudden tidal waves had caught it it surged and rushed towards them and dashed itself on the edge of the pool.
Crawling up as high as her bounds would allow Osgood couldn't help the squeak of panic that escaped her lips as the mud seemed to surge up towards her before crashing back down and swished out in turbulent ripples in all directions, surges that knocked into the panicking slaves and sucked their screaming forms back under before surging back up again towards Sil and his guards.
"It's your monster!" Osgood spat back brown eyes raking the turbulent pool for any glimpse of The Mistress, yet it seemed the time lady had sunk like a stone and Osgood could only imagine that she was already completely encased. Someone had to get her out of there, to get them all out of there.
"No it's never behaved like that before...You did something!" Sil accused her, jabbing one shaking claw in her direction. "You make it stop or I'll drop you in too!" He added his fingers closing around a lever on the arm if his hover chair warningly.
"No you did something!" Osgood spat back her brown eyes filling with tears as she stared down the Mentor. "You fed it the only other Time Lord in the universe!"
"You...You...Lied..." Sil was so angry he seemed to literally shake, either from rage or from fear or from both as the ground beneath their feet back to rumble ominously.
"You did this. You've doomed us all." He added as the valves that had pumped the pure mud into the room suddenly began to buckle and more mud began to spray out.
Screaming as the bubbling mud made contact with his skin Sil lost not a second more, he activated his hover chair, knocking into several of his guards in his blind panic to escape not even caring enough to pause as they were knocked into the surging mud pool. Horrified Osgood could watch as the being that had caused all of this managed by some sick sort of luck to make it around the room to the only exit.
"No you can't..." Osgood began watching and knowing that it was too late as the wounded mentor turned back to smile through his burnt flesh his free hand hovering over the lever on his chair that controlled her prison. Then with sadistic glee he pushed it down and Osgood felt the ground drop away.
-/-
Seb's wonderful feeling of bliss had been shattered by a scream, Osgood's scream.
Then all around him the soothing mud began to churn and Seb felt his still queasy stomach flip in a most disconcerting way. Fighting against the tide and the heavy chains that weighed him down the A.I tried his best to battle to the side only to slip and be dragged under. Fighting against drowning in the heavy mud Seb fumbled awkwardly in his tunic, his bound wrists knocking against the weapon he had kept hidden...if he could just get it free...
For a moment he was so close his fingers trailed along the edge of the sleek handle as he came up choking for air. Yet it seemed victory and defeat were merely a hairs width apart as just as Seb's fingers were closing around the handle something heavy crashed down onto him and the damn thing slipped out of his grasp lost. Unable to even scream his frustration Seb was trampled over, this old flesh suit unable to hold its footing as the heavy weight on his back tried to climb and crawl...away from...
As his head disappeared once more under the surface Seb had to wonder if his eyes were deceiving him entirely...that couldn't be...When was that damn woman going to stop ruining his life?
-/-
It could have only been a few minutes or it could have been a hundred years The Mistress had lost all flow of time which for a time lord felt a akin to having a limb ripped away. She had pursued her quarry around the Medusa Cascade, Orion's belt and down into the caves of Trisk and it/they had counter attacked driving her to flee to the temporal schism and the barrier she had created around it, the last place in the universe she would normally visit even if it was only in her own mindscape.
Wincing as if winded Missy backed away feeling the gnawing tug of the rip in time behind her pulling and dragging her backwards, the ever open festering wound in her mind. The one part of her mind she had always fled from yet no matter how high she built her walls around it there was no blocking it completely. The drums had always found a way to seep through. Now her mind was silent of their four beat rhythm yet the sheer barrenness of the surrounding landscape caused even Missy to shiver. It was dead much like she would be if she couldn't win this battle.
Once this part of her mind had been lush and green, it had housed the memories of her childhood, of her life before her initiation and the introduction of the fracture in time and space that was now housed within her very mind had decimated this part of her mindscape. Rassilon had forced that fissure and over the years the drums had steadily widened it, allowing The Mistress an unnatural affinity for time, unnatural even for a member of her own species and yet in reality it had stolen from her for more than she had gained.
Empathy...Love...Compassion...Sanity...
Once she had been able to feel these things strongly now they were muted or simply non-existent. Her memories of her parents and loom siblings were equally stripped bare; the essentials were there but little more remained the Schism had sucked them dry.
There had been a time during her incarceration and torture at Rassilon's hands when The Mistress had seriously considered taking down those shields around the Schism and throwing her consciousness through. Yet there had always been the slim hope of escape or rescue and suicide had never been an answer for The Master, not when there was no established back up plan for her resurrection. Yet there were times when Rassilon would break both her mind and her body that Missy had been sorely tempted to escape by any means.
You cannot leave us...we are many you are one...
Mentally sneering as she gathered what remained of her energy Missy would have been panting if she needed to breathe. Trapped between an invader and the Schism she barely had the energy to maintain a basic shield.
I will never surrender, I have defeated Death do you really think I am going to let some primordial slime conquer me?
Missy insisted feeling the other hesitate, its confusion washing over her. Unable to believe that this wasn't a trap Missy allowed one or two memories of her bittersweet victories to surface, the memory of her standing victorious over the earth as its children screamed was a particularly potent one and one that caused the Doctor wearing other to shiver and recoil.
No not conquer...join
Its plea was almost...almost tender and The Mistress staggered under the sudden wave of fear and longing and confusion that seemed to surge out and over her.
Alone...so alone...loneliness and abandonment on a scale that The Mistress could feel resonate deeply within her. She knew what it was like to feel like that, isolated...abandoned...without hope...Other minds had come before her but they weren't compatible and in the end they poisoned them...The other had tried to reach them to sustain them and sustain themselves but they had failed and the strangers had vanished into the void.
Yes
There was relief as well following so quickly on the wave of the first that Missy actually buckled under the weight of it. She was a powerful telepath but in the past she had used her powers to shut out the emotions of others. They were undisciplined and intrusive, Missy couldn't understand how The Doctor could stand it, even with his defective telepathic abilities and the relative psi null status of most humans they were still noisy creatures. All bubbling away, emotively reacting to everything as they oozed and sweated and stank up their pathetic little planet.
What do you want?
Missy demanded shivering as the Doctor wearing other fixed those blue eyes on her pleading, his hands outstretched just like she had always dreamed of him being.
Join...Join...Stay with us...Don't leave...Please...Don't leave us all alone again...
Then it was sending again, a strong sense of loss...of a hazy species memory of being full and content and loved and then the gradual encroachment of hunger and fear and then suddenly the absence of the other entirely, of the slow march of death as one by one the other shrank as it starved and decayed. Yet worse horror was yet to come as parts would suddenly be lost, like limbs or organs removed without anaesthetic and the mud screamed out it's terror into the universe; a scream loud enough to carry across the stars.
Its distress was almost palpable as was the way it seemed to cling and plead at her thoughts like a terrified child would its mother's skirts.
Missy could feel the other reach out and capture that image, watched it as it warped itself and wrapped itself around it, quickly shedding the image of The Doctor as it shrank and familiar blue eyes now stared up at her from a cherubic face that was a perfect mix of her and Thete. Tauntingly perfect and Missy could only shrink backward unsettled by this new form of attack.
Please stay
It pleaded up at her with his eyes and her lips pushing out its need like an unstoppable psychic wave.
Sinking to her knees as her last shield buckled Missy couldn't so much as lift a mental muscle to push it away when the imaginary child moved and sank down into her lap. Tender little fingers reached up to brush tears from her cheeks as Missy was forced to confront the very vision of what she might have had if Rassilon hadn't planted the drums or The Doctor hadn't destroyed the very looms that offered them both a second chance.
Love...acceptance...compassion...
The very things she had never again expected to feel directed at her, not the destroyer or worlds. The Mistress now could feel them flowing over her like a warm comfort blanket that was ever so slowly suffocating her. Using what little strength she had left she gathered this little changeling child close, her fingers reaching up to stroke its hair gently as it sank into her consciousness and feasted ravenously upon her memories, its hunger insatiable. And yet as it took from her it gave back too and Missy could feel the regurgitated positive emotions pouring back into her in stomach churning proportions.
Yet it wasn't just the unprecedented influx of positive emotions that was causing her hands to shake...
She was dying.
Missy was still aware of her physical limitations even so deep within her own mind and she could feel the connection with her mortal form growing weaker with every second that passed, as the changeling absorbed more and more of what made The Mistress a time lord in an effort to sustain itself. She didn't have the strength to rid herself of this parasite and as her fingers raked through imaginary dark curls Missy found she lacked the will to even try it was such a sweet illusion...and yet...
There in the darkness she could something...someone crying...someone calling for her...
Was it Thete, could he somehow sense that she was close to leaving him the last living time lord in this universe?
Would he even care enough to stop her? After all her death at another's hand would free him of the guilt and the responsibility.
As she cuddled the changeling child close, soaking up the total acceptance and unconditional love that she could never remember feeling from anyone else in the entire universe, Missy could feel the pieces of her fragmented soul and the barrenness in her ravaged mindscape once more grow lush and green under its care. She could just let go, could become one with the hive mind that called out to her and she'd never be alone again.
-/-