Fic: The Trolley Problem (Adult, 1/1)

[nonelvis]

Title: The Trolley Problem
Characters/Pairing(s): Twelfth Doctor/Missy/Simm!Master; brief appearances from Bill and Nardole
Rating: Adult
Word count: 7,131
Spoilers: through "The Doctor Falls"
Warnings: none
Beta: platypus
Summary: Two weeks and four ethical dilemmas in the life of Missy, Queen of Evil.

::xposted to dwfiction and dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and Archive of Our Own



The room Hazran found for them was worn but tidy. Daylight winked through the wall's wooden slats, the floor had been recently swept, and though the window overlooking the eastern fields was cracked, it was still clean and sparkling. An elliptical spiral of braided blue rags formed a neat oval pool by the foot of the double bed, itself covered with a pinwheel quilt laid flat and wrinkle-free. Even the lone wooden side table held a bouquet of dried strawflowers and bulrushes, carefully arranged within a coiled earthenware jug.

It was quaint enough that Missy wanted to throw up. Her counterpart, she was pleased to see, was already making a gagging motion with his finger.

"This is our only spare room," Hazran said. "I hope you don't mind sharing. I might have an extra straw tick if you need it … but that" – she twitched her head towards Bill – "can't stay in here."

"Yeah, thanks for that, really," Bill said, and possibly it would have sounded bitter were it not for the CYbeRmoDUlatIOn of HeR VOice. She carefully laid the Doctor on the bed, where he stirred briefly, blinking at her.

"Bill. And … the rest of you."

"You're going to need to rest, sir," Nardole said. "Don't worry, Bill and I'll take care of you. And I'll mind these two."

"Yes, I'm sure that will work out just dandily," said the Master. "I hope you weren't expecting us to return him to you in one piece, Doctor. Six or seven should do it, I should think, depending on how many fit in the oven."

"Don't mind him, Doctor. I've got my ways."

"I'm not worried … Nardole … Bill … come here." The Doctor raised a hand, touched Bill's forehead, or what passed for one now. "You … saved me … now it's time … for us both … to rest."

Bill stumbled into Nardole, who simply nodded at the Doctor. "Your barn have a nice comfy bed of straw, does it, Hazran?" Nardole said. "I can bring Bill over for a little nap, and I'll bunk there, too. We won't be any trouble, you'll see."

After they were gone, Missy and the Master watched the Doctor. He was flat on his back in the centre of the bed, passed out and breathing so shallowly his body must have gone into a healing trance. His face was slack and unworried and speckled with the tiniest thread of drool.

"And this is why you want to be good, is it?" the Master said.

"Well," replied Missy, "'good' is all relative, don't you think?"

* * *

What Floor 507 lacked in electronics and modern entertainment it made up for in well-tended fields and gently sloping hills, if one were the sort of person who cared about such things. The human woman who ran this floor had brought Missy and the Master bean and tomato soup and hunks of brown bread, and as food went, it was edible enough, though far from the sort of thing that would endear her to them. After all, Hazran was still merely human and therefore little better than hamburger on the hoof.

"How long do you think it'll take him to recover?" the Master said. "Not that we can't amuse ourselves in the meantime, somehow. Do you think he'll mind if he wakes up and they're all dead?"

"Look, just take out the soft-boiled egg in the barn – it's easily justifiable homicide – and I'll argue the rest were simply collateral damage. Really, have you ever listened to his endless stories? No, of course you haven't, I'm the only one of us fortunate enough to be blessed with 'I really miss that third hand sometimes' and 'Did you know, my strawberry and aubergine tart was voted fourth-best in the Petronian System,' presumably by a species entirely without tastebuds."

"Not unlike whoever prepared this soup," the Master said, scowling at a broad bean on his spoon.

"I'm sure they're doing their best. Tiny insects marking time until they die alone and forgotten, like every other human."

"How poetic. I suppose my brain goes soft along with" – the spoon sketched an airy circle over Missy's bosom – "the rest of me."

"I'm not going to apologise for that little bump on the head. It was a triple-bluff, darling; I can't believe you of all people don't understand that."

"Don't patronise me."

"You assume I'm on his side, but how many times have we played a long game? How many times have we let him believe we're his ally, when we'll stab him in the gut in the end?"

"Don't you think I know better than to trust you? If anyone would know that, it'd be me."

"Of course, my dear." Missy laid a hand on his wrist, casually brushing a finger past his pulse and noting it had increased by 2.5%. "We know how we think. So we can gamble on when we're lying, and when we're telling the truth, and when we're telling just the teensiest little fib, and we can place educated bets on how we'll go. It'll be the most fun we've had in years."

The Master sniffed at her and finally swallowed the undercooked bean on his spoon. But there was a hint of a smile on his face.

* * *

"Mental discipline," the Doctor had said to Missy in the vault. "Being good isn't just rescuing children and puppies; it's understanding why you rescue them."

"Because if I don't, you'll be very cross with me. Ah, well, nothing new there."

"Ideally, you'll internalise a better rationale than that. Which you can do with these ethics questions I've had Nardole print out for you." He'd handed Missy an inch-thick stack of paper, each page in single-spaced Comic Sans. "At least one a day. We'll run drills on them later."

She'd rolled her eyes and curtseyed, and after he left, had tossed the stack of papers over her shoulder in a flutter of A4-sized wings. They'd lain there, unremarked-upon, for a week before she'd grown bored enough to look them over and modify them to suit her own needs.

Now they were a habit. A form of meditation, which of course like every Time Lord she'd mastered practically in the nursery, but which was meant for self-improvement instead of calming the mind.

As if you need improvement, her restless brain always told her right before she reminded it of its new mission in life.

You are driving a train. The brakes have failed. You can take the right fork and kill the five idiotic teenagers walking drunkenly along the tracks. Or you can throw the switch, take the left fork, and kill the one idiotic teenager moping in the middle of the tracks even though he's a certified genius likely to discover a future cure for Phraxian spotted fever. Do you:

1. Throw the switch. Killing one person is better than killing five.


2. Don't throw the switch. Killing five people with little potential is better than killing one who may save millions of lives.


3. Decide this is a stupid and irritating thought exercise you wish that man hadn't assigned you as part of his futile attempt to teach you to be good.

"D) Rewire the train's steering system to take out all six of the imbeciles who should have known better than to walk along train tracks," Missy murmured. She turned her head to face the Doctor, still unresponsive beside her on the bed other than the slow, even breathing of his healing coma. "That's not the answer you were looking for, was it? You're thinking 'sonic the magnetic resonance frequency of the wheels so the train levitates off the track and kills no one at all,' or 'throw the switch, then throw yourself at the idiot teenager so that he's saved and you're squished, because self-sacrifice is noble and heroic and not in the least bit egotistical." She poked him in the chest. "Where's the fun in that, honestly."

The Master had slunk away hours ago, leaving Missy to watch their mutual friend as he did precisely nothing of interest. The Doctor continued his tedious lie-in when he should have been awake for conversation instead.

"You could at least wake up and tell me how wrong I am," she said. "We could debate whether your death is worth it if it saves some tiny human's life." She laid her hand on his chest and settled herself beside him. His hearts beat slowly but steadily beneath her fingers, and she tilted her head to rest against his shoulder.

"It's not, you know. No matter how many times you do it, including the times it was because of me," she whispered. "And damn you for putting the thought in my head that it might be."

* * *

The Doctor slept through the entire next day. The Master returned from his mystery jaunt long enough to assess whether the Doctor was still alive or Missy had found an escape route, and finding that the first was true and the second aggravatingly not, sat on the farm's rock wall and sulked.

"It's an entire floor of a colony spaceship," Missy said. "Even with our sonics, it's going to take a bit of time to search. You could help, you know."

"True, I wouldn't want to miss all that valuable time chit-chatting with the Doctor's pets while I painstakingly scan every blade of grass in this hillbilly hellscape."

"The fat one tells me the toaster will be out of commission for some time yet. And I've told him I've got you for comic relief now, so he can go collect bright, shiny pebbles or masturbate to internet pornography or whatever it is he does in his spare time."

"Comic relief? Me?"

Missy blew him a kiss. "Come along, then. The sooner we search, the sooner we find an exit, the sooner we see that delicious look on his face when we betray him. Again."

"Ooh. Talk dirty to me some more."

"Later, darling. If you're lucky."

* * *

When the Master slipped out of their room that night, Missy followed. If she'd remembered being him here, now, she could have simply met him wherever he was going – though probably she hadn't, since she didn't remember meeting herself there, wherever there happened to be – so instead she followed as quietly and carefully as she could, listening for his psychic signature in her head. At least it no longer sounded like drums. If anything, it might have been a Pussycat Dolls B-side from 2006.

Halfway into the forest now. The pungent scents of singed fur and charred meat drew her closer. She pressed herself behind an oak and stole a glance towards the swirl of shadow in firelight that was the Master.

"I know you're there," he said, voice muffled, as if his mouth were full. "Naughty girl, skulking about in the dark."

"I never skulk. Skulking would be completely inappropriate. I'm lurking, like a proper lady."

"Oh, well, that makes all the difference." A crunch of teeth on bone. He gestured to her to take a seat beside him on a granite boulder. "Here, have a leg, I'm in a good mood. A little meat will do that to a man."

Missy raised an eyebrow, but took the roasted leg. Rabbit, charred on the outside and practically raw on the inside, but she supposed she wasn't going to get sous-vide and a nice pan-sear in the middle of the woods.

"Another bowl of bean and tomato soup and I'd have butchered that woman for stew," the Master said. "Just our luck to land on the vegetarian floor."

The rabbit was good. Greasy, gamey, full of savoury glutamates. Lick-your-fingers satisfying. Missy dropped the bones to the ground and cleaned her fingers thoroughly with her tongue.

The Master was mid-bite, staring at her.

Missy nodded slightly at him and waited.

He chewed carefully, ripping flesh from bone with his teeth, picking fragments with thumb and forefinger and popping them between his lips. He tossed the bones aside and rested back against the granite boulder he sat upon, rubbing thumb and fingers on the rock.

Missy rose, knelt between the Master's knees on the moss and fallen leaves on the forest floor. She unbuttoned his coat and trousers and held up his hips, tugging his clothing down far enough to expose his cock, already half-hard despite the cool night air.

"I'd been hoping we could try this," he said. "All the years we've lived, and this is the first time we've met."

"That we remember," Missy reminded him. She licked her finger, dragged it down the edge of his cock, and was pleased to hear him hiss. "Not that I remember this, either. Possibly the mindblowing intensity of the climax simply wiped my poor memory."

She dipped down, took the head of his cock in her mouth, swirled her tongue round it until his full length hardened. "I do have some vague memory of enjoying things like this," she said after withdrawing. "Is that right? Could just be my mind playing tricks on me, I suppose."

The Master dug his hand into Missy's hair and pulled her towards him. "Let's. Find. Out. Now."

"Not without the magic word."

"Oh, for … really?"

"Really."

He gritted his teeth. "Please, Missy."

"Please, Missy, Mistress of all she surveys, clearly superior to me in every womanly way, suck my very manly cock."

"Yes. That."

Missy shrugged. "Close enough." She drew him back into her mouth, deeper now, rolling her lips and tongue along him while his hips slowly rose and fell. He breathed shallowly, nearly panting, and Missy recalled all the times she'd had this done to her in other bodies. The days he'd made Lucy kneel in a filthy public toilet to suck him off; when he'd leant back and let the Doctor do it to him in that lean blonde body of his, or that fluffy-haired dandy, or their first encounters, back when they'd been naïve and inexperienced bunkmates at the Academy. A warm mouth sliding slickly over his cock, sucking more insistently the harder he grew; sometimes, as now, a palm teasing the inside of his thighs and cupping and fondling his balls. And always, that thrilling buildup as a tongue swept swiftly over him and his balls tightened and his thighs clenched in desperate tension, until at last he'd spill and stutter to a halt in that patient mouth.

Missy withdrew a handkerchief from a pocket and daintily wiped her lips. The Master slouched back on the rock, dazed and shaking his head.

"Damn, we're good at that," he said. "I suppose you'll want me to …" He waved a hand. "You know. You could stick around. Plot some murder and mayhem. I could diddle you with my fingers, or whatever it is you girls like."

"Actually, I'm a bit worn out. Busy day and all. Might go back to our boudoir and take a few minutes' kip before we get back to work. Actual work, that is, not this."

"Fair enough." He tucked himself away. "Squab tomorrow night? Squab and … whatever else happens?"

She winked. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."


* * *

The Doctor was still asleep when Missy crept back at dawn to wash up and get ready for another day's search for escape routes. The Doctor seemed not to have moved at all; even his breathing rate was exactly the same as the two days before, plus or minus a few milliseconds.

In another lifetime – for example, the one currently sharing floor 507 with her – Missy might have seated herself calmly beside the Doctor, taken the pillow below his head, and smothered him to death by now. He was weak, possibly permanently insensate from electrical shock, possibly curable only through regeneration. Completely at her mercy. She shivered. "Gives a girl all sorts of ideas, that does," she said.

Missy brushed her teeth, spat, rinsed, turned about when she heard the door creak open. The Master was now flopped on the bed beside the Doctor, gently poking him in the face.

You are a physician. A friend is brought to hospital in need of lifesaving treatment, and you are one of the only people qualified to provide it. However, you also know your friend would refuse the treatment you provide because it's so risky. Do you:

1. Respect your friend's autonomy. It is their choice whether to seek lifesaving treatment.


2. Secretly administer the treatment. You can mitigate the risks, and your friend will thank you for it later.


3. Ask a colleague to discuss treatment options with your friend, so that your personal relationship is kept out of the decision-making process.

"He's so boring like this," the Master said. "Can't we make him less boring? I could go torture the blancmange in the barn, but it's just not the same without the Doctor to beg for his life."

"Funny you should mention that. Well, the making the Doctor less boring bit; we can get to torturing robot-boy later. Anyway, I've had a splendid idea." Missy edged herself onto the sliver of bed on the Doctor's opposite side. "Regeneration energy. He might not need much to heal."

"Or he might need all of it. I did not cheat death fifteen different ways for you to give our remaining lifespans to him, of all people."

"Sixteen, darling."

"Whatever. My point is, if he's going to die, let's just kill him and at least get some enjoyment out of it."

"And my point is, we might be able to save him at minimal cost to ourselves and get even more enjoyment out of him."

The Master narrowed his eyes and slouched deeper on his pillow. "It might work," he finally said.

"Good. Just keep an eye on me. Make sure I don't lose enough energy that I can't regenerate."

"What? Afraid you won't be able to be a man again?"

"I'd simply like to make sure I've enough energy left to work up a cock that doesn't list to one side, my dear." She unbuttoned the Doctor's collar and placed a hand at his chest. "Oh! Here we go."

Energy pulsed through her, shimmering from her fingers to the Doctor's chest. Beneath her hand, she felt his hearts speed up to match the rhythm of her glow, a thump-thump, thump-thump that strengthened the longer her hand rested on his skin. The energy halo around her hand spread, diffused along her wrist and forearm. She blinked, wobbled, blinked again.

"Ah!" she cried as the Master pushed her off the Doctor. She tumbled to the floor. Dammit, she'd bruised her coccyx, noticeable even through several layers of attractive and necessary undergarments. "Was that really necessary?"

"Did you not tell me to stop you if you used too much energy? Make up your mind. Ugh, just like a woman."

Missy clambered to her feet and laid her hand against the Doctor's chest. Perfectly normal breathing now, the sort for which he should be entirely awake, which meant either that something was still wrong, or he was playing possum to see what she and her counterpart were up to.

She slapped him. Not hard, not as much as she'd have liked in other circumstances, but enough to get his attention.

He blinked at her slowly, then opened his eyes. "Excuse me, but it's 5:43am, and I requested an alarm call for 7," he said. "Did room service at least leave me the porridge I requested? Blueberries, almonds, and a splash of milk?"

"Good morning," said Missy. "Breakfast will be whenever the hell we feel like it. Could I not at least get a moment of gratitude? I only just saved your life."

He shifted on the bed, wriggling as if he wanted to sit up, then groaned and lay still again. "Thank you, Missy. And thank you," he said, turning towards the Master, who smiled sourly. "How's Bill? And Nardole? Nardole! Where's my porridge?"

"He's probably out doing something pointless like hardening defences against the Cybermen," said Missy. "Me and meself have been doing something more useful: looking for an escape route."

"There isn't one," said the Master. "In case you were wondering."

"Well, there might be one we haven't found yet," Missy said.

"Or we could just prepare to die in battle. Or leave him to die in battle while we miraculously save ourselves with an explanation he'll never get to know."

"Now, that's an idea so good I wish I'd thought of it myself."

"We did." He swung his legs off the bed and headed for the door. "I'm going back out. I'll see you both later."

"Toodle-oo!" Missy called. "I'll leave off the unmentionables tonight."

"Ooh, promises, promises."

"Right," the Doctor said, closing his eyes, "back to the coma, then."

* * *

In the week or so Missy and the Master had spent carefully scanning different sectors of the floor for escape routes, they'd yet to check the barn. It had seemed too close and obvious for a lift shaft, and then there was the close and obvious reminder of what they'd both done to Bill.

Missy seated herself on a wooden crate and kept a watchful eye on Bill, quiescent for now but entirely lethal should she wake. Not that Missy had known many of the Doctor's companions with enough guts to try to kill her, but the previous one had been tricksy; game-players were fine as long as you knew every one of their tells, but that one hadn't always been as perfectly manipulated as Missy had hoped. This new one … she was young, clearly turned by a pretty girl's face, but not Missy's, not yet, and not ever now. This one had had so little time to adjust to her new body that she could easily lash out, and then there'd be a hole in the barn where a Time Lady had once been, and we couldn't have that, could we?

So Missy waited, and watched, and spent a half-hearted, fruitless ten seconds scanning the barn for the lifts, and breathed in deeply before meditating.

You are an all-powerful being who has deliberately harmed a human to cause profound pain to an old friend. Ethically, you are already severely compromised. If your species believed in Hell and it really existed, you'd be there already, frying like a sausage for your countless but frankly spectacular crimes.

Your friend is hurt and upset. Do you:

1. Revel in his misfortune. That was the whole point of this little exercise, wasn't it?


2. Explain why what happened was for the best and that you'll both be stronger friends for it. After all, you're both practically immortal, and that little human – well, she had her charms, but her lifespan is half an eyeblink compared to yours.


3. Apologise and try to make things right, even if that isn't fully possible. It's never too late to change.

Bill slept on. It occurred to Missy how very tedious it was to watch people sleep even if they weren't exactly people anymore, and how she'd spent entirely too much time doing this in the past several days.

"I apologise, Doctor," she said. "I apologise that you're the most delightful target. I apologise that collateral damage is so much fun. I apologise that I couldn't mutilate the round one while I was at it."

Wrong. Try again, said his voice in her head, and who was he to do that to her now, anyway? Just because she'd said she wanted to be friends. Just because he did, too.

And fine, yes: just because she'd sworn she'd try to be good, and most of her had meant it.

She took another deep breath, inhaling through her nose, letting air fill her chest, exhaling slowly through her mouth. Again. Again, until the pale red scrim behind her eyes rose and folded itself away.

If she looked closely at the Cyberman tucked up on a straw bed on a dirt floor in a grubby barn, she could almost see Bill's face. Those round brown eyes, the puff of hair haloing her head, the full lips, full and lush and – wait, no, wrong direction there. No distractions now. Focus on the girl inside the cyborg, the shreds of humanity that obstinately clung to a metal skeleton, and how desperate and full of faith in the Doctor she must have been to transcend the process like this. It was miraculous, really, when you thought about it, and that wasn't a word Missy often wanted to use when it came to humans, unless it was in the context of them doing something so blessedly stupid it worked to her advantage.

Dammit. How dare she make Missy feel for her?

Behind Missy, the metallic ratcheting of an iron latch being slid back, the knock of handle against wood, the creak of a door being pushed sideways along its track. A shuffle-thump on the dirt floor: the Doctor, out of bed, testing his surroundings with a walking-stick and a halting step.

"Still asleep, I hope," he said. "I put quite the whammy on her. Well, a cyber-whammy. She's got another week before that wears off."

"They look so sweet and harmless when they're asleep, don't they?" said Missy. "Adorable little tin canisters, only with laser death instead of shaving foam."

"Can't say I've had much opportunity to observe Cybermen's sleeping habits," the Doctor said, clomping over to a wooden box beside Missy and carefully seating himself. He stretched out his gimpy leg, rubbed his knee, and let out a breath. "So, this is how you spend your downtime now? Observing my companion? I'd thank you, but I think you and your previous self still owe her an apology. At minimum."

"I'm … I …" Was that a tear? No, not quite, but her throat was tight and her voice more quivery than usual, and it wasn't right that any of them could do this to her now, not right at all. "Would you believe me if I said I felt a responsibility?"

"I would. I've been there. Guilt … we all feel it, now and then."

"No, not guilt. Not yet. But maybe … a wee twinge of regret. Which I suppose is a start." She rose, patted dust off her skirts. A start, yes. Maybe she couldn't be good, at least not how he'd define it, but she could be better.

"I should have come for her sooner," he said softly. "I should have listened when she said she was scared of you."

"I can be quite dreadful when I try. It's one of my many talents."

"I suppose that's one word for it."

"If I were less dreadful …" Eyes on the Cybergirl now, a damage easier to contemplate than what might reveal itself on the Doctor's face. "Perhaps there's a way to fix her. Perhaps after we find a way off this deathtrap, you and I, together …"

"I'm going to sit and watch over her for a little while. I owe her at least that much," he said. "Also, I'm not relishing the idea of getting up again."

"Would you …" She counted every stalk of straw on the floor before her at a glance, estimated how much of it took up a square metre, calculated how much there had to be serving as that poor girl's bed, all in the awkward three seconds before she was ready to finish her sentence. "Would you like to join me for a picnic tomorrow? I'll invite the other me as well, of course. I think we could all use something fun for a change. Take our minds off the bleak and miserable prospect of imminent death."

"Missy …"

"I know, I know. We need to focus on saving ourselves. All of ourselves," she added, nodding in Bill's direction. "Never mind, it was a silly idea from a silly and hopeful girl."

"I appreciate the thought," he said. "I'll consider it."

"Good," she said. "I'll be in touch with the details. Time, location, dress code, the usual. Until then, Doctor."

She swept out of the barn, tall and regal, swung around the corner, and leant against an old wagon. She could just make out the children playing in the fields, shrieking and laughing as they swirled between the ghastly scarecrows.

She watched them until dusk fell and Hazran called them in, and then Missy, scowling, plunged into the woods in search of her other self.

* * *

Missy waved open the stiff flannel picnic blanket and laid it carefully on the ground, holding the corners in place with stones she'd gathered in the woods after her nightly excursion with her counterpart. He was stalking up the hill now, periodically turning back to watch the Doctor limp forwards, and probably hurling a barb or two about old men and their walking sticks.

While she waited for them to arrive, Missy laid out the contents of the hamper Hazran had kindly prepared for her – shockingly kindly, considering how poorly they'd been treating their host, though not quite to the point where Missy had sniffed the boiled eggs for traces of injected poison. Apples Missy herself had plucked from a tree; a hard cheese with a washed rind that smelled of brine and cider; a fresh loaf of sprouted wheat bread whose crust thumped when she flicked it.

"I brought Uncle Gimpy," the Master said, seating himself at the opposite end of the blanket. He pulled two tall brown glass bottles from his coat pockets, along with some stoneware cups. "And cider. Loads of it in their cellar. Hopefully what they don't know about meat, they've made up for in fermentation." He pushed back the swing top and took a deep swallow. "That's … not bad." He took another swig, then poured out splashes in the cups. "Humans do have their occasional uses, I suppose."

"Come sit down, Doctor," Missy said. "I promised you a lovely picnic, and a lovely picnic we shall have. We've food, and drink, and the very best company, and a fine array of executions afterwards. Oh! Silly me, I've gone and spoiled the surprise."

The Doctor stiffly lowered himself to the blanket and laid his stick behind him. He sipped the cider and stared silently at the horizon. "Nice to see your sense of humour hasn't changed," he said.

"How sweetly naïve that you assume she's joking," said the Master.

"By the way," said Missy, "I was joking. But did you bring Nardole, just in case? It really isn't a proper picnic without one little execution."

"Nardole's busy," the Doctor replied. "He's building barriers and strategising defences. And I think he's organising classic cinema night. If we're back by sunset, we can catch Spice World."

"Lucy always loved Baby Spice," the Master mused. "Completely ridiculous. Everyone knows Ginger's the most shaggable."

Missy tossed the Doctor an apple, which he caught in midair. At least his hand-eye coordination was still up to snuff. "Perhaps," she said, with a glance at the Master she knew the Doctor would notice as well, "though I may already have plans for later."

They ate largely in silence, trading the knife Hazran had lent them to slice up the food. The Doctor ate slowly and deliberately, consuming less than Missy thought he probably should have for a man recovering from such grievous injuries, but he was a grown adult and could make his own unintelligent choices. She and the Master should have saved some rabbit for jerky, she thought. It would have only taken a night as the fire dwindled from flame to smudge, and perhaps the daylight after that, and then they and the Doctor would have had some extra protein.

The artificial sun wandered towards the horizon line, and the floor number shifted iridescently from pale grey to light charcoal before it would shift back at night. The children in the fields, playing their usual inscrutable game that mixed "catch" with "target practice," hurled a last few apples at the scarecrows and trudged towards the house.

"It's good, isn't it?" said the Doctor around a mouthful of boiled egg. "We three here, just like old times? Although there was only one of you back then, I'm reasonably sure."

"We won't survive this, you know," said the Master. "They're coming for us. Unless we get incredibly lucky."

"Wouldn't be the first time," the Doctor said.

"Could be the last time," the Master replied.

"Hush, you two," Missy said. "I'm enjoying the sunset."

"You really have gone soft, haven't you?" the Master said. "Here's what I see: another night on this miserable ship, marking time until our cyberfriends figure out where we are and introduce themselves by congenially ripping out our lungs. And since for some unknown reason I'm apparently not allowed to murder anyone, I'm going to have to fortify myself by killing and eating a small animal in the woods, after which perhaps you and I will … what's the word …"

The Doctor swallowed the last bit of egg. Missy noted his lips were parted, as if unable to fully form the next syllable.

"Well," the Master continued, "I suppose you and I will shag in the forest like delicious bunnies."

Missy patted her lips delicately with a gingham napkin. "Why wait?" she said. She clambered over the Doctor's legs, straddled them with her skirts pooling over his thighs, paused there with her hand cupping the Master's chin. "You're here. I'm here. He's here. Think of all the fun we could have." She drew him closer and ran the tip of her tongue across his lips until they parted, allowing her in for a kiss.

"Excuse me," said the Doctor. "But if you don't mind …"

"Don't mind what?" Missy relinquished the Master and leaned over the Doctor, hands braced on either side of his head. "Don't mind that you're here? Don't mind that I can't quite kiss both of you at once? Don't mind that" – she unbuttoned his collar, twirled a finger over the slim triangle of skin she'd exposed – "in all the years we spent with me entirely at your mercy in the vault, we didn't fuck more than a handful of times? Because rest assured, Doctor, that I did mind."

"Missy!" he hissed. "He doesn't need to know – we don't need to discuss –"

"Oh, but you absolutely do," the Master said, lying down beside the Doctor. "I'm going to want all the details. Take your time." His hand wriggled inside his trousers. "Please."

"In that case …" Missy began, unbuttoning the Doctor's trousers and sliding down the zip, "… this is all right, isn't it, Doctor?"

"Do I get a choice?"

"Of course! I'm trying to be good, remember?" She shifted above him, her hips circling slowly. "I can be ever so good if you'll let me try."

"Ah. Can we … can we at least be a little more private about this?"

"So fussy." She reached past him for her umbrella, making sure to grind into him again, and opened the umbrella facing the fields below. "There, I've increased the reflective qualities of the air molecules surrounding us. I suppose we could get more coverage if someone set his laser screwdriver to supplement my sonic brolly, but I wouldn't want to interrupt his very important wanking time."

"Excuse me, but I have not yet begun to wank," the Master said with immense dignity. He thumbed a button on his screwdriver and tossed it beside the umbrella. "Now, let's discuss the wanker. And wanking."

"Right," Missy said. "As I was saying, we didn't get to do this nearly often enough while I was his helpless captive. But the first time was after I threw a wee tantrum because the bed didn't have enough pillows. Can you even call it a bed if it's got less than six pillows? I don't think so."

"Do we really have to–" began the Doctor, but Missy placed a finger over his lips and rubbed harder against him until his eyes closed and he let out a faint groan.

"Yes, we do," she and the Master said simultaneously.

"Anyway," Missy continued, "we had quite the row about exactly how much of a prison this vault had to be, and next thing you know, we're all tangled up on the bed – still not enough pillows, mind you – but I'm sitting on his face with all of its marvellous angles, and he's got his tongue halfway inside my –"

"Missy!" The Doctor's eyes flew open, and he grabbed her wrist before she could quiet him again. "That's enough."

Beside him, the Master let out a breath. "It's not even close to enough, old man."

"Fine," Missy said, waving a hand dismissively. "You want a perfectly ordinary shag, you'll get one. Well, as ordinary as anything with me can be." She shifted backwards just enough to remove the Doctor's cock from his underwear and slide him inside her. "Oh, yes. Mmm. I suppose if we have to forgo the retrospective, this will do." To the Master, she mouthed, I'll tell you later and wriggled her tongue at him.

The Doctor, still recovering from his injuries, wasn't as active or rhythmic as Missy liked, but he was trying to make up for it with his fingers, hands pushing her skirts aside to roam up her inner thighs. His thumbs at her centre, rubbing her as she moved above him. She leaned forwards to kiss him, angled over to do the same to the Master and give his cock a friendly brush or two with her own hands. She knew, of course, how he'd be touching himself right now: how tight his fist would be at each stroke, how he'd start off slow to stoke the fires, what points in the fantasy he'd speed up and ultimately let himself go. He'd be thinking of her with him, and her with the Doctor, and though she wasn't entirely certain a mental link would work with her counterpart, given the memory interference they were already suffering, she laid two fingers to his temple. The afternoon in the vault, her skirts puddled on the floor and her in a petticoat, her arms braced round the Doctor's body while he licked her. Her tongue swirling over the head of his cock before she swallowed him in. Her fingers pressed into his hips so she could take him in as deeply as he was taking her.

If the link with the Master wasn't working, whatever visions shimmered in his head clearly were, because now Missy could see how much closer he was: the sweat on his brow, the frantic pumping of his hips. And she had to admit, it was working on her, too, or at least the Doctor's thumbs were as they rapidly slid across her clit. Her thighs tightened and her grip on him faltered and when he suddenly shifted to a swift set of circles, she cried out as the tension in her body gave way all in a rush. Below her, the Doctor gave a few more pushes, a grunt of effort, and then one more as he thrust into her a final time.

"You can't be done," the Master said, panting. "I'm not ready –"

"Come here," said the Doctor, reaching over to draw him in for a kiss Missy wished she remembered: how her beard would have rubbed across his skin, how his tongue would taste in a different mouth, how his hands scraping her scalp would feel on close-cropped hair instead of the mare's nest on her head. Next time, she vowed, shorter hair along with the breasts and cunt, and possibly a cock, too; they were quite fun, after all.

The Master's hips rocked against her thigh, so she slid off the Doctor to give him the full access he really wanted. Now the Doctor could reach inside the Master's trousers as well, his hand still slick from Missy and roaming over the Master's cock. The Master thrusting against him quickly, a lovely sight, though Missy slightly regretted that she only had a view of her previous self's splendid bottom and not the Doctor's equally splendid model. There'd be other days, though, if she were lucky. Many other days, if extremely so.

Beside her, the Master's rhythm stuttered, a long stroke, another one, and then an abbreviated staccato as he shuddered to a halt. The Doctor continued to kiss him, his lips moving from face to throat to forehead, then released the Master entirely.

"You naughty children," the Master said. "Fornicating like wild beasts while one of you was being held captive. It's so perverse I wish I'd thought of it. Well, I probably did."

"And that," Missy murmured, "was just the first time. Let me tell you about why he had to buy me a new piano –"

"Missy!" the Doctor cried, but by then, she was already halfway on top of him again, her mouth on her other self's lips, her hand creeping back to the Doctor's waist.

* * *

They'd been there nearly two weeks, and still the Doctor needed nightly sleep. He grew stronger every day, well enough to visit Bill and chat with Nardole and, occasionally, engage in extracurriculars with Missy and the Master, but he wasn't yet at full capacity.

Realising that they'd almost killed him was both thrilling and terrifying. They hadn't done it since his fourth incarnation, positively ages ago, and whenever they'd tried, it had always been a difficult balance between desperate need for that satisfying frisson of success, and horror that their oldest, dearest frenemy might no longer be around for a good, solid kicking.

She still visited her counterpart in the woods at night, but that left her a few hours near dawn to watch over her friend and meditate.

You have done terrible things in your past. Terrible, awful things, the sort of which, as previously discussed, would send you straight to Hell if you believed in such constructions.

You have the opportunity to make things better. To excise the part of you that's most full of hate, wanton destruction, deliberate cruelty. Once that's gone, you can move forwards.

But to do that, you might have to literally kill someone.

Do you:

1. Murder the person in question. The end justifies the means, and "good" is a relative term.


2. Don't murder the person in question. You can't be good unless you acknowledge that killing is wrong in every circumstance.


3. Look for a third way.
   
   After all, he would.

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