The Woman In The Shop
timeladytoyou:
His honesty was unexpected. The more he spoke, the slower her fingers tapped until they stopped altogether. For once, she couldn’t meet his eye. He wasn’t playing the game right anymore. Missy began to doubt that he was playing at all.
Memories she’d shut out for so long started to unravel. How angry she had been to hear him call someone else his best friend. The overwhelming desire to make him feel a trace of the pain that coursed through him in that moment was too strong to control. How desperately she’d wanted to prove something, anything, to him. How she’d gotten it wrong. How she’d been broken apart and put back together so many times that she couldn’t see more than the cracks when she wasn’t running her own race against the universe.
Fingers still and shaking came into focus as the silence between them grew. They were her own this time. Despite the abyss between them, she felt a twinge in her chest that she couldn’t ignore.
“All I wanted was my friend back.”
Just like that, the mirth in her tone was gone. She felt smaller for the sake of it. Vulnerable didn’t set well on her shoulders and she tensed all the way to her toes.
“How was I supposed to understand? You show me what you think is good in the universe and don’t bother to tell me how or why it works, just expect me to accept it for what it is. Of all people, you should know better than that.” Her eyes flickered up to him, wide and clear. “Where would I have learned about kindness, hmm? You were my only example. My only true friend. And you left.”
Sometimes the Doctor was terribly slow when it came to understanding. He latched onto brilliant ideas and solved the greatest puzzles, but the simplest things could escape him. What was she talking about? He had tried time and time again to get the Master to listen, to stop what he was doing and experience things the way he did. Then when it had seemed like he finally might budge, when there was nothing else left, he had hurled himself into the past to save him and his precious Earth. The Doctor hadn’t gone looking for him, because he was sure he was dead and lost.
Was he sure, though? Was the ugly truth that he had wanted it over, that a part of him enjoyed the grandeur of being the last, the only Time Lord? It was all too painful to keep so why not bury the Master again with Gallifrey and so many terrible secrets?
Or was she speaking of another time, a wrong so much longer ago? In the end he supposed it didn’t matter whether Missy meant the most recent abandonment or the night he had first stolen the TT capsule. There were so many excuses he could give, but he owed her better than that.
“I was afraid.”

















