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English
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Extreme Timed Challenge Gift Exchange 2025
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Published:
2025-09-01
Words:
465
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
1
Kudos:
7
Hits:
52

[fic + web weave] enemy. lover. best friend.

Summary:

The Doctor let her fingers pass onto the neck of her favorite guitar, feeling the strings shake beneath her calloused skin. Each note was her own creation, something that came into the universe and then left as if she had never made it in the first place, except for in her memory.

Time Lords — Time Ladies, Missy would say — had a different kind of memory from humans, and sometimes, she could touch the chords even when she was a world away from her instrument. But for now, she finished playing a song she had learned so long ago that she'd forgotten where she learned it. She stretched her limbs wordlessly and made for the vault.

Notes:

Work Text:

The Doctor let her fingers pass onto the neck of her favorite guitar, feeling the strings shake beneath her calloused skin. Each note was her own creation, something that came into the universe and then left as if she had never made it in the first place, except for in her memory.

Time Lords — Time Ladies, Missy would say — had a different kind of memory from humans, and sometimes, she could touch the chords even when she was a world away from her instrument. But for now, she finished playing a song she had learned so long ago that she'd forgotten where she learned it. She stretched her limbs wordlessly and made for the vault.

Missy greeted her at the door, impeccably dressed as ever. Her critical gaze roamed down the Doctor's ensemble, if her outfit could even be called that, and she tsked as the Doctor followed her into the room. The Doctor was here to change Missy, but already she felt herself being changed again instead, thinking of what she might have worn that wouldn't have provoked this reaction. Then again, she was herself, so she also imagined the garish and bland things that Missy would surely hate in equal measure.

"Would you care for some tea?" Missy gestured to a tray some twenty paces behind them.

The Doctor wasn't, because the tea here was stocked to Missy's taste and not her own, but she found herself drawn to agree, anyways.

Missy poured, manners impeccable, and the Doctor checked the tea with her sonic out of habit. Poison again.

"Poison, really? You can do better than that."

The Doctor couldn't help taunting her and one of these days it might get her killed.

"Things get rather dull in here," Missy lilted unapologetically. "At least you don't have to ask if you're a good man anymore, if you're a lady and dead."

"Poisoning attempts mean the party's over, Missy," the Doctor spoke quietly. "I'll see you next time."

Missy didn't walk her to the door.

Twelfth Doctor's Guitar

missy guards

"...calculations that would beggar your soul. What is it that villains always say at the end of stories? You and I are more alike than you think. Well "- the Marquess

"Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.”

A Ship's Wheel

I spend too long looking ahead, like an old woman wearing sweaters in summer

I feel like a time traveler / June, July, August. Summer dissolves in my mouth and I can't remember what it tasted like

Like orpheus I am not strong enough to look at what I want'

black flower

holding hands, unable to reach

the moon understands dark places, the moon has secrets of her own, she holds what light she can

[text ID: In what disorder we lived, how many fragments of ourselves were scattered, as if to live were to explode into splinters.]

to be whole, to be holy

missy with teacup

"I am a humble tea merchant, pouring out the elixir of life to the world."

play

let us be beautiful on our own terms

She always says the Doctor’s late though

Sonic Sunglasses

poison bottle

Between them, Missy is the one who is supposedly captive, and yet she is free.

 

Twelfth Doctor's Guitar (Doctor Who) / Missy and Guards, Doctor Who (source) / Fairyland (Valente) / On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Ocean Vuong) / Ship's Wheel, Museum of History and Industry (source) / Louise Glück, from The Wild Iris / erasure, zoë lianne / filmnoirsbian (source) / Black Flower from Unsplash (source) / Hands from Unsplash (source) / Lucille Clifton, from “Moonchild." / Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child / Patti Smith / Missy with Tea Cup (Doctor Who) / "I am a humble tea merchant, pouring out the elixir of life to the world." - Kakuzo Okakura / Euripides, Herakles, tr. by Anne Carson / H. Melt, from “Take Me to the Trans Spa,” There Are Trans People Here / Dancing to a Song Already Gone by Melime (source) / Sonic Sunglasses (Doctor Who) / Photograph from Unsplash (source) / To Follow Her Star by septemberbells (source)