Archive of Our Own ^beta

River Song was quite a stunning sight to see — from her burgundy lips, curled in a triumphant smirk that was an obvious mask for her hurt — to her voluminous curls which lacked any of the frizz you’d expect on a convicted felon (Missy certainly hadn’t used her hair routine in the Vault, but then, she didn’t need to look sexy to get the Doctor’s attention). River had solid thighs and a curvy frame, with a cropped leather jacket which hung from her shoulders the exact same shade of tan as her practical combat boots. Her weight was shifted to one hip, the smoke of her saving shot still trailing from her blaster. Because of course, the Doctor’s perfect psycho prison wife was armed in her maximum-security Stormcage cell.

Rassilon, the Doctor was superficial.

And yet, there was something about River’s eyes — quite young but nearly not so young as a pitiful human lifespan — that was notable to Missy, something that sparkled with that thrill-chasing something that reminded her of every renegade from Gallifrey. Adventure and longing and trauma and pain, and the whole of Time Vortex itself.

Hmm. The Doctor thought he could have it all, did he? The adoring naïveté of one of his human pets and the equal footing of a Time Lord, all rolled into one? With the 'raised to kill him' backstory to make it spicy?

Honestly, the Doctor’s kinks were tempestuously funny.

Missy had seen images of her, of course — the Doctor kept a locket with her photo inside his jacket pocket and close to his heart. It was mawkishly sentimental of him, but she couldn’t deny she had wondered, on occasion, what kind of woman it would take for the Doctor to willingly settle down on one planet for twenty-four years. The only other person she knew of to make the Doctor willingly slow down once he’d started running was herself, when he guarded her in the Vault. And that was to save her from execution.

That was how the Doctor and Missy rolled! She’d spent an obnoxious amount of her time on Earth for him too, when the Time Lords had exiled the Doctor there, and plotting to take over the boring little planet in increasingly convoluted ways was the only way to keep near him. Good times.

But to stay one one planet for River? His own beautiful brainwashed assassin? Well, it was difficult to understand.

It didn’t even help that, in a moment of vulnerability, the Doctor had told her a lot about River Song. A moment of Missy’s vulnerability if they were keeping track — this whole ‘being good’ thing was ridiculously taxing at times — but it still hadn’t been clever of him to give her extra flesh-bag ammo she could use against him.

It had been the dead of midnight. Alright, it might as easily have been noon, Earth days were relative and the Vault didn't let in sunlight, but it felt like midnight. The silence had been so profound, and filled only by stray details of the nothing-persons she had killed in her long life.

It was times like these that Missy got lost in her head. Times like these when the Doctor told stories about the years they had been apart, about the life events she had missed, the pets he had picked up, how much he’d thought about her when she was away.

Missy was pretty psycho, so it happened a lot.

When she would forget where she was, drowning in the echoes of the Drums which had been technically removed from her brain but could never leave her mind after having being guided by them her entire life past the age of eight — the Doctor’s compassion would seep into nostalgia, and he would share things that he shouldn’t because she could absolutely use them against him, but… she found she didn’t want to.

It had been midnight, sitting together in the Vault in one such moment — Missy’s head on his shoulder, his arm wrapped around her back — and for the first time, he had gone into detail about the woman he loved.

The woman who knew more about him than he knew about her. The assassin who was brainwashed to be obsessed with killing him and had fallen in love as a natural result. The devotee who had sacrificed her life for him the day he had met her. The child of his TARDIS, custom made in the Time Vortex to be exactly his type. The daughter of his two then-pets. The people who made him feel like he was part of a family. So much so that he had spent years on Darillium.

All the heart-eyed fawning adoration of a human pet, all the intellectual capability of a Time Lord equal? Yeah. She got it.

She'd tried to kill the Doctor's first wife on Gallifrey for being an intolerable bore. It was at the wedding, where Missy had just given her best man speech, and was feeling annoyed by her best friend's (short-lived, granted) attempts to be respectable.

Rose Tyler had been the first person to break through the hardened, defensive exterior the Doctor had built around himself after the Time War, the first person who had made him feel something again, anything — and so he had assumed he loved her, even though she was so young, because the alternative would be numb and empty. He’d told how he’d tried to rebuild his identity around this twenty-year-old child, and that was why he'd remained broken, until Missy had freed him by bringing back the Time Lords and resulting in his regeneration.

He’d met River and her parents, and they had gradually shown him how to be a person again. River was the first person he had truly loved in so long, loved enough to be vulnerable with, in a way he was vulnerable with so few people — not even Rose. Missy was one of those few, obviously, but their love was different.

She'd assumed the Doctor was being hyperbolic (a nicer word than delusional) when he went on about how wonderful River was, to be honest. It was obvious River meant a lot to him — twenty-four years on Darillium was considerable — but surely, she was just another coping mechanism to feed his ego and distract him from the parts of himself that were a bit too much like Missy.

A very understandable coping mechanism, to be sure.

Because that was then, and this was now, and at this moment, Missy was quite cognizant that she was no longer in the Vault drowning in the absence of the Drums. No, she was on a very important mission (test. it was a test), and the magnificent River Song was putty in her hands. And yet, there was no way the Doctor would have planned their meeting. Not with the way he talked about River. No way in hell.

Which made this a unique opportunity.

River’s annoyance was clearly growing as Missy and the Master (the one who roughhoused with his Third incarnation between games of five-dimensional chess) bickered in hushed whispers, keeping step slightly behind the much exalted River, who was obviously trying to listen in between straight up complaints. The Masters did have a mission to accomplish, with much duplicity and deceit, courtesy of her own Doctor.

She was getting a kick out of his plan for her to pretend to be him, though. Letting her past self think she was the Doctor was funny; letting River labor under this deception was downright fun.

The power Missy felt, being greeted with fondness by this woman, followed by earnest hurt at Missy’s dismissiveness — the sheer thrill of having River’s eyes unabashedly trace her body, lingering on the curves of Missy's cinched waist — it made her want to laugh in megalomaniacal victory. Unfortunately, the Doctor wasn't one for villain laughs, and it really was in her best interest to keep pretending to be the Doctor right now, so… she carried on.

River was downright somber by the time they reached the TARDIS. She was flirting, but it wasn’t the fun, bantery kind. No, it was the suffocatingly intimate kind: laden with purported decades of affection and inside jokes, topped with unconditional acceptance of faults and strengths alike. She was obviously trying to get Missy to reciprocate. Even Lucy hadn’t been that bad; at least she’d had the perk of healthy fear.

Honestly, Missy would puke, if this wasn’t the Doctor’s wife, who was gorgeous, and fascinating, and competent, and who would probably do anything Missy asked.

But Missy would not ask. Because ‘blah blah be good,’ and because the Doctor would be very angry at her if she did… but mostly because they were in a hurry, and Rassilon, what did River intend? To hang around in Stormcage flirting until another wave of guards showed up?

“Finish with your dalliance so that we can leave this hideous place,” the Master sulked, trying to open the TARDIS, but Missy was completely certain he was trying to bang up the door out of spite. If she wanted to break into the Doctor’s TARDIS, even back then, she would have a more interesting way of going about it. “We have far, far better things to do.”

“You aren’t leaving without saying goodbye, are you?” River caught Missy’s hand, curls — not to mention everything else — bouncing, and her playful airs weren't as smooth at disguising her grievance as she must think — though it may work on the Doctor, he never did understand women. “Come here, sweetie.” Just like that, she took Missy by the hand, and pulled her in close with a twirl.

Oh my, this is intriguing, Missy thought, as River cupped her fingers over stray strands that fell from beneath the duck-themed bonnet Missy had adorned in the Doctor's 'quirky' style. Her fingers felt very human against the nape of her neck.

So this was River Song. Ruthless assassin. Handy with a plasma pistol. A body to kill for. Hopelessly in love with the Doctor.

According to the Doctor, River had lived long enough and suffered deeply enough to understand a fraction of the loneliness that his assortment of twenty-year-old Earth girls never could — yet she still fulfilled the Doctor's 'twisted' (his word, he'd confessed it with the restrained pain he always spoke to her in the Vault) need to be seen as a good man. (When in reality he was… an idiot, with a box and a screwdriver, just passing through, helping out, learning! YAWN.)

River had just pulled her very close — their noses inches apart, close enough to taste the warm breath and pumping of arteries and the Tiro blossom cologne that proved that Stormcage could stand to improve their full cavity search practices when it came to Vortex Manipulators. River’s eyes were half-closed, but she was studying her from beneath full lashes, as if taking in every detail of Missy’s features. There was a particular keenness to her gaze.

How romantic. She had to try hard not to laugh.

Missy had never loved anyone. The closest she'd come to love was with the Doctor, but that was a different kind of love, and she’d never marry him.

He mattered far too much to her for any of that.

That agonizing midnight in the Vault, when Missy was drowning in her own mind and the Doctor's poeticism faltered into heartsick emotion into her shoulder, she had carded her fingers through his gray hair and told him that while human-tainted wives may die — explodable, fleshy things — he would always have her. And she meant it.

Of course — then Nardole had come knocking and the Doctor had leapt up and pretended he was a distinguished prison warden who didn’t break down in his prisoners’ arms, and Missy had played along with all her dramatics, just so that he would feel indebted enough to keep confiding in her.

Could she really betray the trust she was trying so desperately to rebuild by messing around with his dead wife while pretending to be him?

“Huh,” River said quietly, and for someone with so much human in her, her eyes were oddly difficult to read.

What was more understandable was when she kissed her — and the question of what Missy would and wouldn't do was answered, because how could she not respond enthusiastically? The kiss was instantly passionate, on both their parts — the muggy push of lips, the rough pull of hair, the circulating sea as if of faulty artificial gravity as they fell into one another, bodice against jacket, skin against skin, roaming hands and eager mouths.

The prison guard Missy had allowed to flee had surely sent backup in greater numbers. Let them come! Their time was at her discretion. As she laid claim on what was the Doctor’s, Missy felt her bonnet topple off of from her styled updo — not for the first time this day, either — but she paid no mind, running a hand behind River’s muscular thigh that started a quick-succession chain reaction that had them crashing into the wall of the prison.

Her heart was racing, and she didn’t know how much of that was the breathless kissing and how much was trepidation at her bestie’s reaction, but if a time would come for her to regret it, that time was not now.

Like the Doctor, she lived for cheap thrills.

The Doctor couldn’t blame her. It was his fault for sending her here as a stupid exercise under ridiculous pretenses. If he tried to blame her, she would tell him River was clearly hurting for the attention and it was all his fault.

He probably wouldn’t take well to that.

River was laughing as they toppled to the floor, finally breaking locked lips; Missy half on top of her supple, warm body, combat ready and flushed with heat. All of the tension was gone as River pressed a playful peck on Missy’s cheek, sitting up and tossing her blonde curls from her eyes. “Before we take it any further, I hate to say we should probably take this somewhere else.”

Missy cackled, half hoping levity would ease the horrible dread that was knotting up her hearts. It would be much more interesting to play around with River and see what she would let Missy do to her, but Missy was on a schedule, and…

The Master was stomping around angrily somewhere, but his wants didn’t matter right now. He only had several hundred more years to wait, and he’d get his turn to fuck up.

All she’d wanted was her friend back. And he would hold this against her, and…

River leaned in, nuzzling her ear for a moment before laughing again. “Calm down, I know you’re not the Doctor,” River murmured. “I realized when I pulled you close. I’d know the Doctor’s eyes anywhere. Looking into his eyes is like staring into all of time and space.”

“Now now, don’t say that so loud,” Missy hissed with a glance towards her past self — although clearly, River had never actually looked into the Untempered Schism — then frowned, picking up her skirts as she got to her feet. She cocked a brow, holding out a hand as she leaned down, voice lowered so the angry young Time Lord wouldn’t overhear. “You knew I’m not the Doctor, and you still went through with the kiss, eh?”

River took Missy’s hand, letting her pull her to her feet as if they were actually a couple. “I love the Doctor very much, but we aren’t monogamous! I do as I please, he does… Zygons.” She smiled so fondly it made Missy reconsider her stance on puking.

River ran a couple of light, sensuous fingers along Missy’s arm. “I can see you are a Time Lord,” she stepped closer to Missy, her eyes dancing. “Excellent endurance, I’d love to see you make use of that stamina in my cell. You may not be my husband, but I can see in your eyes… some form of eternity. An abyss?” she teased.

“Time Lady, if you please,” Missy curtseyed — one of the benefits of this extravagant Earth outfit she pretended she wore to mess with the Doctor, but that actually made her feel wondrously elegant. “You may run around in poorly tanned leather, but some of us embrace our womanhood.”

River pursed her lips, shaking her head. “And Gallifrey is gone, so you must be the Master.”

“Again, dearie, not so loud! You might give poor mister still-thinks-a-goatee-looks-endearingly-evil an identity crisis. Not to mention,” Missy lowered her voice till it was barely a whisper, becoming very serious, “the Doctor will become dreadfully cross if I severed the vocal cords of his favorite bimbo and he found your intestines all over my skirts. Even if you did provoke me.”

“Dear, all I do is provoke,” River murmured, without any hint of fear. Ah yes, that was another thing the Doctor liked: a lack of self-preservation instinct. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. It’s not often you get to snog your lover’s greatest nemesis.”

Missy wrinkled her nose just a fraction. “Yes, well it’s not often you get to snog your nemesis’… current fascination.”

Yes, being here now and looking at the woman, she understood how River may perhaps be a little more than a fascination. There was something about her — the cocked brow, the airs of aptitude and perception — such that, even if her starting point wasn’t the same as that of a Gallifreyan Time Lord, she had come very close to matching them.

River knew him, the Doctor had told Missy. She didn’t hesitate to call him on his crap. And yet — she liked him, even though she had every reason to hate him, after all the Silence had done to her in his name. It had been a long time since she was that traumatized young girl who enrolled in Luna University's archeology program to track him down. She was better than him in many ways, and that was okay.

Missy disagreed. And yet, she was still here, enjoying her in-person look at the famous River Song.

River raised her eyebrows, swaying back on the wedges of her boots. “Current fascination? Come on, I called you his greatest nemesis, you could at least do me the honor of referring to me as his wife. And I thought the Doctor was stubborn.”

“Do you know how many wives that deviant has? I am showing you the greatest of respect! Those other humans he travels with are pet poodles… but you’re definitely more of a Cerberus. I mean, you’re what, as much as a tenth of his age? That’s definitely an improvement after all the twenty-year-olds. Clara. Martha. Jo. Bill. Elizabeth the First, or somesuch like that. Don’t get me started on Rose Tyler.”

“Are you done?” Missy’s younger self kicked loudly at the floor, his arms folded as he leaned sulkily against the TARDIS door. “The longer you give the Stormcage guards to make their unwanted return, the stronger are making the case that you enjoy being hounded.”

“Don’t be such a grump, you might get to kill one of them this time.” The assurance rolled off Missy’s tongue — a recollection of the self-soothing mechanism of squashing bugs — and she closed her eyes, cursing silently. Acting was hard! “That is, if you manage it quietly while I’m distracted kissing River Song. Because killing is very naughty and I will still stop you if I’m paying attention!”

“I won’t kill them if I don’t have to,” the Master sneered. “Because I prioritize a ride in your TARDIS over transient pleasures. Which makes precisely one of us!” His tone increased drastically as Missy cupped River’s cheek with one hand. He sighed, in pointed, frustrated, exasperation. “Doctor! I thought you needed my help with a vitally important mission?”

“You should go,” River said quietly, looking mildly disappointed. “That is certainly the Doctor’s TARDIS, and I’m not quite willing to go frolicking with his arch nemesis in his own vehicle.”

The Master was kicking the TARDIS again. Missy hoped the Doctor wouldn’t hold that against her.

“A pity,” Missy said, and the genuine sting of regret surprised her. She ran a thumb along the soft skin of River’s cheek, and pressed a brief kiss on her lips. “You taste so wonderfully good, I really was tempted to cook you into a candlelight dinner. Very romantic-like.”

River’s lips quirked. “That would be the hypnotic lipstick, dear.”

“Oh, clearly. Raspberry, is it? Those flavored poisons are so tacky. Not a strong enough dose to affect a Time Lady.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t want my husband to become too out of sorts while I’m kissing him.”

“For Rassilon’s sake, if you don’t finish up now, I will stop pretending I am incapable of breaking my way into your TARDIS, and leave you to your fate,” The Master said loudly.

“You can be a real bitch sometimes, you know that?” Missy sharpened her accent with a sharp nasal drawl, then gave River a look that said, this guy, amirite?. River raised her brows. Missy gave one last curtsey, one last dip, and twirled away, like a psychic pollen on the temporal winds.

River stood where she was left, lifting her pistol casually from her holster as if she could hear the second wave of guards on their way, just as the Master predicted.

“Come by again sometime, won’t you?” River invited, as Missy began to unlock the TARDIS for the grumpy young Time Lord.

Missy paused. That was a tall ask — given the Doctor tracked her every move, and if she really wanted to earn the Doctor’s trust, she really doubted fornicating with his wife would be the way to do it. Open relationship or not, she doubted he would have no strong feelings.

And yet… maybe?

“We’ll see,” Missy gave her a charming smile and a wink, as Doctor-like as could be. “Be good, River.”

“Never,” River laughed, and waved, as Missy flung open the TARDIS doors. The Master stormed in, his eyes roving critically over the desktop theme. She couldn’t blame him. The Doctor had gotten carried away in his post-war neuroticism, and he hadn’t gotten better since.

“Alright, then,” Missy took long, sashaying strides towards the console — she loved this bit — “what do you need to calm down? Violent video games? A pony ride? A soothing acapella of All Your Hate? A few drops of brandy in your milk bottle?”

“My dear Doctor, I’m perfectly fine now that you’re taking your share of our slice of responsibility,” he side-eyed her, which was rich. “I’ve come a long way since the Academy days,” he added more quietly, and the unexpectancy of the memory made her heart hurt.

The Vault, of course, was far from the first location of the familiar dynamic — Missy sitting on the floor, utterly adrift in the terrifying vortex of her own mind, with the Doctor curled up beside her, holding her as he rambled comfortingly about nothing, everything, or somehow both.

In the early days, especially…

The Doctor had struggled academically, but for Missy, the Academy had been hell. It had taken her into her triple-digits to muster enough focus that she would qualify as functional. Everyone had said she was mad, and she’d believed them — but she’d also known just as fiercely that the Drums were calling her. She just didn’t know where from.

The Doctor had called to her too, Koschei, right next to her as he held her in his arms, softly urging her to hear him, as if making wilder and wilder speculations about the swashbuckling future they might share when they ditched their snotty planet might drown out the noise in her head.

It had sometimes worked. He’d done his best.

The Master right next to her still could hear those Drums — the torturous, necessary, ever-constant call to war. He could hear them right now.

She had a wild, unhinged thought of reaching out psychically for the Drums that were still his.

She turned away bodily, disturbed.

“And you will come even further yet, I’m sure,” she said, and tried to put levity in her voice that she did not feel.

“Why precisely are you in a physical relationship with the woman who kills you?” the Master said scathingly. His condescension made her snort, but at least it was enough to make her feel somewhat present again, pushing down the horror that she would even be tempted to break her cover over the nostalgia for the torment that had ruined her life.

“Sweetheart, being murdered is what turns the Doctor on.” She gave him a look that she knew would make him uncomfortable. “You should know that better than anyone. Isn’t that literally our dynamic?”

“You’re incorrigible,” the Master rolled his eyes, but she remembered the way her lips used to purse when suppressing a smirk. “What we have is so much more complex than your assorted dysfunctions.”

Missy laughed. “I don’t disagree, bestie.”

“My dear Doctor, you know if you ever do get over this sentimental stubbornness and decide you’d like to rule the universe by my side, the offer has not closed for me to cease all active plans to stab you in the back,” his lips quirked smugly.

Missy put on her most Doctor-ish airs. “And if you wanted to peacefully, non-murderish-ly, explore the universe by my side, I would acquiesce.”

“How pitifully small-minded.” The Master shook his head with a sigh. “Well, are we going to get on with this Key to Time business, or not?”

“That is the plan,” she sighed, and punched in some of the console knobs. “Tally-ho! Allons-y! And other such quirky catchphrases.”

The Master rolled his eyes, and gripped onto the console with one hand, preparing for his best enemy’s trademark ‘rough’ steering. Missy appreciated the cue. She cranked the thrusters extra high, just for authenticity.

“Adieu, River,” she blew dramatic a kiss towards the screen, flipping it on as they dematerialized — the Third Doctor, after all, existed before he had decided he was too cool to look at exterior cameras —

Geronimo!

This wasn’t so bad at all.