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colorofmymindposts · 5 years

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Could We Start Again, Please?

Fandom: Doctor Who

Pairings: Twelfth Doctor/Missy (implied), Bill Potts/Heather

Warnings: Major Character Death, Alternate Ending to series 10, Major Canon Divergence

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Status: Complete but part two of my The Doctor Falls series (You don’t have to read part one to understand what’s going on)

Word Count: 2800

Summary: When the Doctor falls, Missy rises.

Tags: Heavy Angst, With cute lesbians, While Missy is sad

I don’t know if the tagging system is still messed up, but you can read this work on ao3 under my username colorofmymind! Kudos and comments will be much appreciated!

With a gasp, all the air rushes into her lungs. Everything at once feels completely at rights and out of control, her hearts beating at a pace she knows goes against their natural rhythm, but they should not be beating at all. A calculation taking the span of a nanosecond tells her she needs her hearts going at least eighty beats per minute if she is going to survive, so she simultaneously counts her breaths and adjusts their volume to achieve this rate. Simply put, it’s a manual override of her basic biological functions. Her eyelids had fluttered open with the sudden rush of air, but she’s only managed to blink stupidly, frustratingly, as her eyes operating at full capacity— unlike her hearts, lungs, and other vital organs—are not necessary for her to stay alive.

Staying alive, surviving, carrying on. With all her experience, so innately a part of her core, Missy has a more complex and nuanced knowledge than any other creature in the universe on the most universal want: the perpetual avoidance of death, of end. At one time, that came at any price. In this case, however, there is a discrepancy even her beautiful, brilliant brain can’t account for. Perhaps it’s because her brain is functioning at the level of a 21st century backup generator, but that is really besides the point right now.

She should not be alive right now.

There had been no contingency plan in place because in no scenario had she considered her past self’s somewhat deserved retaliation. There are no Time Lords who could have saved her this time; she is the last Time Lady they would ever spend their resources on now. Yet, unmistakably, she lay on the same ground where she flirted with death once more and had somehow been revived, like a debtor of a long overdue payment miraculously having escaped the clutches of his dreaded collector.

Logic rules that there can only be one other alternative, an impossible one but so is he (irritatingly and incredibly so). The thought of Doctor flashes to the front her mind, and she sits up faster than she had fallen. She cries out immediately upon doing so, her hands arresting the spot where she’d been shot with the Laser Screwdriver, which flares as if in a hot rage. Gritting her teeth, she casts about for her umbrella and finds it quickly enough. Her body and voice cry out once again in resistance as she uses her umbrella to leverage herself to a standing position, the pain from the shot still as intense as it was before.

That answers one question. She hasn’t been healed, something has merely enabled her hearts to restart, so it is likely that she has very well lost the ability to regenerate. Whatever she does now, she’ll have to do with trepidation and care. Still, it’s certainly not the worst body she’s been stuck in, and at that she laughs to herself. She’s done this entirely to herself, a thought that has often crossed her mind over the last 70 years. While her past self has probably long since reached his TARDIS and regenerated into her current incarnation, there is some irony in his actions. His plan having failed at ending her life, she’ll be stuck in this state for the foreseeable future, a Time Lady who has realized the errors of her past and wants to do what’s right, everything he despised and feared becoming.

With that she sets off through the forest to find the Doctor. The trees thin as she traces her path back to the settlement, and the distinctive scents of fire and burning metal begin to assault her senses. Missy quickens her pace, trepidation and care forgotten as she spots the Cybermen bodies by the dozens littering the ground around her, the smell of ash and smoke and death clinging to the air like petrichor after a storm, one she knows the Doctor has brought down on this land.

“Doctah!” Her shriek echoes in the barren wasteland. She’s running now without abandon, eyes scanning the area for any sign of him when she notices the girl, Bill her memory supplies, standing besides her curiously wet companion, but that can’t be possible, she looks undoubtedly human again—

The next thing Missy knows her face is in the dirt and the ash, and every part of her body aches with acute degree. She drags her feet over the Cyberman body she must have tripped over in her distracted state. Her umbrella probably had been flung some distance away from her fall, so she sticks her right hand out, latching onto an arm, that should be enough to support her into a sitting position at least, when a sickening realization hits her. The arm isn’t metal. She snaps her head upward to look, to prove it isn’t true, it can’t be.

It is him. Undeniably. The Doctor lays in ash and debris like a forgotten soldier, the red inner lining of his coat splayed out by his sides as though he lay in his own pool of blood. She stares in silence, gathering herself to sit besides him and take one of his hands in her own to feel for anything, a pulse, regeneration energy, even a device to feign the appearance of death.

Nothing.

She stops breathing for several seconds herself; it’s an uncontrollable response, out of respect for her fallen friend who long since took his last breath. His sonic screwdriver is gripped in his other hand, which she lifts out of his grasp, inspecting it for an answer, something, that might restore him. The last action performed by the device had been a sonic pulse, causing a mass explosion of the Mondasian Cybermen but also must have rippled across the entirety of Level 507. This was the catalyst for her hearts restarting. He had saved her one last time, without even knowing it.

“Missy!” A voice she faintly recognizes as the human girl’s shouts at her. “What the hell are you doing here? Where have you been?! We thought you’d run off!”

She lets out a shaky breath before replying, never tearing her gaze away from the Doctor. “Is that what he told you?”

“I,” Bill starts and falters. After a moment or so she answers, “He didn’t say anything about what happened with you. Either version of you.”

Missy blinks away the tears forming in her eyes and finally looks up and away from the Doctor. Here and now is not the place for her grief, at least not in front of his companion and...whoever this other girl is. Missy actually has no idea where she came from.

“You’re...human again,” she comments lamely.

“Oh! Well, sort of, not really,” Bill denies bizarrely and incomprehensibly. “I’m in a body that looks like the one I was in when I was a human, but I’m still technically dead. That’s actually me over there.”

She points over to a fallen Cyberman a few meters away. “Heather saved me,” she finishes with a beaming smile with eyes only for the wet blonde girl Missy presumes to be Heather standing to Bill’s right.

“How romantic,” Missy says, trying not to sound sardonic. These humans and their happy endings. The universe has none to spare for her. That’s probably right.

“The Doctor would have been glad to see you’ve found happiness, as am I.” Bill looks at Missy curiously, the disbelief transparent on her features. “I was the one who caused you to become a Cyberman in the first place, no matter which incarnation caused it. Perhaps it was both of our faults. In any case, it should have never happened. I’m glad to see that this is one of my mistakes that has reversed itself,” she explains.

Bill looks back to Heather, seeming to wordlessly reaffirm that she had in fact heard those words come from Missy. In all fairness, Missy had been introduced to this companion of his as a “monster” and she even self-admitted to throwing a little girl down a volcano. A little skepticism of her goodness is to be expected, healthy even.

“I can’t believe it. I thought you were a monster, and the last ten years only made me more sure of that,” Bill confesses, the weight of those ten years visible in the set of her shoulders, the intensity of her gaze and the pain behind it. “But, even after all that, and everything you did to me, which was awful and cruel, I’ve realized maybe he wasn’t wrong. The Doctor, I mean. You have turned good. At least enough of you has.”

Missy opens her mouth to speak but nothing comes out. Just a short time ago, she would have laughed and scoffed at a human attempting to give her wisdom and judge her character, in fact she had done so in the past.“No, I’ve not turned good,” Missy had said to Clara after her accusation of the contrary, killing two men in the square to prove it. One of them had been a married man with a child, she recalls. She had held onto that for so long, the belief she was bad, irredeemable and revelled in it. Her time in the Vault has taken care of that last problem at least, but she could never be sure of the former two. But if a woman who has been tortured by her for ten years can see a glimpse of morality in her, then perhaps...perhaps that is something.

“Bill, I think it’s time to go,” Heather says.

Ah, that does bring up a good point. She is alive but still requires transport. So does the Doctor. They had left each other to die on battlefields before, this is true, but it was different then. It was their battleground, the center stage, one or none of them left as the curtain drew to a close on that adventure, always the promise of rage, the game, of return. This is and is not her battleground. Yes, her former self in a way created and enabled it, but he’d abandoned it, no final climactic fight with the Doctor. The Master and Missy reserved that honor for each other. She was not here, either version, to battle the Doctor or protect him, and for that very reason alone, he must certainly be dead.

She thinks briefly back to two weeks ago, when she flippantly vowed “If somebody kills you and it's not me, we'll both be disappointed.” That was the planned end, always, scripted from the day they’d broken their pact to travel the universe together and faced each other as best enemies. But it was theoretical at best, they always survived one way or another, and it all started again. She wonders what he must have thought, possibly what he said, before he died. Missy cards her fingers through the Doctor’s mess of grey curls, only for smoky ash to lodge under her nails. She instead opts for holding his hand, once warm in her own just hours ago, turned cold.

Bill protests, “But the Doctor—and Missy—we can’t just leave them.”

Missy looks up once again, surprised. While Bill has obviously somewhat reevaluated Missy’s character, she was not expecting an offer for help, at least not for herself.

“Of course we can’t. And we’re not going to,” Heather grins back.

Before Missy can properly register it, she’s travelling with incredible speed through time and space, until she’s greeted with the warm psychic presence of the Doctor’s TARDIS. Simple as that, she’s back within these walls. So is the Doctor, still beside her, his hand held by hers. Bill and Heather stand to the side.

“I suppose this is the only place he’d rest in peace. If there’s any place he’d do that,” Bill remarks.

Missy notices the blonde one starting to move for the controls, and with that she’s up and blocking the girl’s path, although with much more difficulty than she’d like. (She really must look into what the TARDIS has in terms of pain medication.)

“Oi! What do you think you’re doing? This is a very complicated sentient space time capsule that requires a careful and knowledgeable hand to guide her. She may just seem like a second-hand gas stove at first, but she’s really like a sweet, unreliable old dog, and only a few people know how to take care of her,” she explains with a silly if strained simile. Humans seem to respond better to that than just her shouting she’s superior, even if it’s true.

“I want to pilot us away from the spaceship, and I know how to fly her,” Heather insists, pulling the lever to start dematerialization. “I’m the Pilot. I can fly anything.”

“Really!” Bill exclaims.

“Yeah,” Heather replies with a wink. “You’re not an exception either.”

Rolling her eyes, Missy takes this opportunity to continue piloting them away while the lovebirds chatter away with their innuendoes and desires and promises. At least, she thinks that’s what they’re doing at any rate.

“So I’m like you now. I’m not human anymore.”

“I can make you human again. It's all just atoms. You can rearrange them any way you like. I can put you back home, you can make chips, and live your life, or you can come with me. It's up to you, Bill, but, before you make up your mind—” Heather rushes to the doors, opening them before Missy has any time to stop her. Luckily for all of them, they are in Quadrant 3 of this galaxy and not the time vortex. A single blue supergiant illuminates the blackness of space. Any protests she had formed quickly fail her, instead captured by the beauty of the star. She cannot remember a time before now where she could admire something like this; a star burning, something she could always appreciate, but of its own accord, a master to none like her. And that’s okay now.

Missy realizes that she has long tuned out the ongoing conversation until Bill is suddenly in her line of sight. Bill has her lips pursued, clearly about to say something she’s conflicted about but has deemed important enough to share.

“Missy, I’m leaving—with Heather. A lot of things have obviously changed since we got on that spaceship together: you, me, Nardole, and the Doctor,” Bill declares, casting a glance at the Doctor lying still on the console floor. “I think somehow I still want to travel the universe after all this, but that’s going to happen with Heather from now on. I’m also okay with leaving because I really believe you can take care of yourself now and the TARDIS. You have before anyways. Just really try not to be like that bloke that came before you, alright?”

Missy has no idea how to respond. Of course, it’s not like she wanted Bill and her gal pal crowding up the TARDIS, but she also has no clue as to where to go next with the Doctor’s TARDIS and his lifeless body on her own.

“Oh and another thing, yeah? Whether the Doctor’s dead or not, I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. You have to take care of him. Promise me,” Bill’s voice shook.

It doesn’t take her a second to respond. “Of course.” In any scenario, she would always be there for the Doctor. A memory she’d not been trying to recall, of “Love is a promise” in his voice spoken in a graveyard, reverberates in her brain suddenly. She forces down it, down below the endless layers of freshly surfaced regrets, where she hopes to never recover it.

Bill nods and then turns away, walking in a semicircle until she reaches the Doctor’s side and kneels beside him.

“You know what, old man? I'm never going to believe you're really dead. Because one day everyone's just going to need you too much. Until then,” Bill bends down to kiss his cheek. “It's a big universe, but I hope I see you again.Where there's tears, there's hope.” Her voice cracks at the last sentence, and Missy cannot find it within herself to chide the human’s sentimentality even in her own head. Bill stands finally, going to join her star-eyed lover.

“Just one thing. I've been through a lot since the last time we met, so I'll show you around.”

They clasp hands, and jump out of the TARDIS, flying on an unknown path, sure to include a variety of attractions and dangers with it. Plenty of love and kindness as well. As the TARDIS doors slam shut, Missy knows they will be more than fine.

She is left alone with the Doctor and his TARDIS.

#my writing #fanfiction #twissy #best enemies #space spouses #bill x heather #immortal space lesbians #space girlfriends #missy #the master #gomez!master #twelfth doctor #the doctor #bill potts #heather #doctor who #hope y'all enjoy angst #and cute lesbians #next part should be coming soon

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truesportsfan · 4 years

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WWE’s Liv Morgan on Elimination Chamber, the Riott Squad and finding herself

Liv Morgan will need to beat Shayna Baszler, Ruby Riott, Sarah Logan, Asuka and Natalya at WWE’s Elimination Chamber pay-per-view on Sunday (7 p.m., WWE Network) to earn a shot at Becky Lynch’s Raw women’s championship at WrestleMania 36. Ahead of stepping into the Elimination Chamber for the first time, the 25-year-old, who grew up in Elmwood Park, N.J., took a go at some Q&A with The Post’s Joseph Staszewski.

(This interview has been edited for brevity)

Q: How important is this Elimination Chamber opportunity for you? It’s a big pay-per-view and a major chance to advance things with your character.

A: The Elimination Chamber match, I feel like, is the biggest opportunity I’ve gotten so far in my career. I’m taking it very, very, very, very, very seriously. I just came back from a nine-month hiatus where I got a makeover and did a lot of self-discovery. I feel like I need this win more than anyone. I need this win more than anyone else in this match. Not only that, we have Ruby and Sarah. Our friendship pretty much blew up. So there are a lot of factors in this match.

Q: During that nine months that you were away from WWE, what did you do? You talked about some introspection that went on.

A: Just figuring out what I wanted from me. I was in the Riott Squad and I was very, very immature and I was loud. You know, I needed attention. I needed people to look at me, so I dyed my hair pink and made my tongue blue. I did all these things that definitely made me stand out, but were they really me? Is that really who I was at the core of the character? I don’t think it was, especially being with these two other women. And now I’m by myself. It was just finding myself on my own. So I spent nine months, a lot of self talk, a lot of watching old footage of myself and just finding out who this grown woman is now.

Q: Were you happy with the way that you were reintroduced? You got thrown into the Lana-Rusev-Bobby Lashley wedding storyline.

A: I am happy. I think it was very shocking. I think it came out of left field and no one expected it, and I think maybe that was the goal.

Q: Sonya Deville (the first openly lesbian wrestler in WWE) took issue with how the lesbian relationship between you and Lana was presented. Have you talked to her at all?

A: I have a very close friendship with Sonya Deville, so I spoke to her, and the details of those conversations I’m politely not going to share with you, Joe (laughs). But everything’s fine. Everything’s cool. We talked about it. She’s still a very good friend of mine, and I can’t be mad at anyone for how they feel and how they react to things. Everyone is gonna feel how they want to feel, so I’ve just got to allow that. At the end of the day, this is business, this is work, and I’m doing what I’m told and supposed to do, you know.

Q: In your mind is that angle dead or do you think there’s a chance it gets brought back again?

A: I don’t think anything is dead in WWE. I can’t really answer that, but I do think the door is open for it to be touched on again.

Q: What do you want people to take away from the version of you we are seeing now?

A: Just that I’m confident, I’m comfortable within myself, by myself. I don’t need to do these extra things to get people’s attention. I can get attention on my own with my work. I don’t need these extra factors to get noticed anymore. I’m not shuffled in with other people.

I’m still growing. You don’t just grow and stop growing in nine months. I’m still figuring out my footing and my placing, and it’s just a work in progress.

Q: Do you miss any of the aspects of playing the Harley Quinn-type character?

A: It was very fun. It was very easy for me to portray. It was very just … let out the most immature side of myself that I possibly can. We were the Riott Squad, you know, causing chaos.

Q: You were kind of the high school bullies.

A: Yeah, and I was not a bully in high school, so it was just so fun to play and I just dove right into it. I was surprised how it all ended up working out, just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. A blue tongue ended up sticking. I was so wild. I had so much fun.

Q: It sounds like your new character is about you growing up as a person. You feel this is somewhat of Liv Morgan growing up, but it’s playing out on our screen?

A: That’s exactly how this makeover felt. It’s just very funny how synonymous it felt with me outside of the ring just going into that next phase of life, that next phase of womanhood, and just it’s playing out on TV in front of millions.

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Q: You got your break in WWE going through Joe DeFranco’s gym in New Jersey. What made you walk through that door one day and say, ‘I’m going to give wrestling a try?’

A: I loved the WWE since I was 5 years old. So I was just a super, super, mega fan, and I was working at Hooters and I watched WWE during my shift on one of the TVs. Everyone assumed I was the wrestling chick. … I got Joe DeFranco’s contact number, so I gave him a call and he invited me to come to the gym.

He felt that for someone who had no athletic background that didn’t really play sports, he felt that I held up pretty well. Because Joe DeFranco, he’s training NFL superstars.

I walk in the gym, and there’s a bunch of NFL players. I don’t watch football. I’m just a little girl like, “Hey! I want to work out.” (Laughs) And I don’t even realize that I’m surrounded by all these professional athletes. I just jumped in their workout and I kept up. He was gracious enough to put in a good word with WWE, and that’s how I got my tryout.

Q: You grew up in a single-parent household with older brothers and a younger sister. How did that experience shape you growing up?

A: I grew up kind of not being told what was right and wrong. In the long run, I grew up seeing for myself what I believed was right and wrong. My father had passed before I was born, and the rest of my family had seen it happen. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know how that affects the mind and the brain and just a child. It took a couple years for them to get their bearings again and just try to live a normal life again.

Growing up in my family, it was just a little bit chaotic. It was a little bit damaged, and I saw that and I wanted to change it. I wanted to help my family and I wanted to help myself, and I knew that really, really young. I knew that at 5 years old. I was going to be the one to help change it.

Q: How much pressure do you feel to deliver now when WWE has put so much TV and vignette time into reintroducing you?

A: There is definitely pressure there, but I’m just trying to do my best and not think about failing or not doing well. It’s do what you do and do what you know. What I know is how to go out there and perform and entertain and put on the best match I possibly can.

Q: Take me through that dive at Ruby during the Elimination Chamber contract signing? You got pretty high and straight at her.

A: And I had heels on, too. I wasn’t planning on that. I was just going to sit and be a grown, mature woman. I’m not going to attack this human being. But once I saw everything going on between Asuka, Nattie, Shayna, I was like, “OK. OK. Me too.’ I saw my opportunity. She was distracted by the other chaos, and I just pounced on her.

Q: You talked about your friendship with Ruby and Sarah. What’s it been like to work with them, but in very different roles?

A: It’s weird. It’s different. It’s not something I was expecting when I first came up on Raw and SmackDown. I didn’t see myself as a tag-team competitor. I viewed myself as a singles competitor. Then I got put in with the Riott Squad, and I just became best friends with these two girls that I didn’t even speak to before, best friends, sisters. I think I needed that. I needed that coming up, and I didn’t even realize. Just for this situation [of Ruby attacking me] to play out how it has, it’s shocking and it’s upsetting, but I’ve got to keep it moving.

Q: Why do you think the Riott Squad didn’t reach the heights maybe the three of you had hoped?

A: I think about that, too, and, um, I don’t know. At that time, they went from like no tag teams in the women’s division to all of sudden having all these tag teams in the division, and then we had the [women’s] tag team titles introduced. And I personally felt like when we were at our height, we were just following up on all cylinders. We were so fluid and we knew what we were doing. We knew our dynamic, but just unfortunately it wasn’t our time.

Q: We are in WrestleMania season and we are seeing the NXT women, whether it be Bianca Belair or Shayna or Rhea Ripley, worked into WrestleMania-level storylines. How is that taken by the women who are there every week on Raw and SmackDown?

A: I feel like they’re the top women in NXT, they’re full of talented girls, but I think Bianca and Rhea are the head of the pack right now. I think they earned the spotlight. Whether it be WrestleMania or just Raw or SmackDown, I think they’ve earned to see a different audience see them and bring the spotlight on NXT. I’m personally not mad. I can’t speak about how everyone else feels.

source https://truesportsfan.com/sport-today/wwes-liv-morgan-on-elimination-chamber-the-riott-squad-and-finding-herself/

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