Soulforged

Chapter 1

-/-

Blood...there was something unique about the smell of it especially when it was her own. Reaching down Missy could feel it trickling over her fingers, thicker than water, less glutinous than oil and yet it coated everything in an equally fine film.

Pain like the smell of blood was something that The Mistress had come to know intimately yet this was a pain she had never felt before, not even in the throes of whatever torture Davros had devised for his latest amusement. No this pain had a purpose, even if felt like it was about to rip her in half.

Laying back in the mist dampened grass, Missy stared up into the overcast sky as she absorbed what little of the positive ions the Eye was giving out. It was out of season, not that a graveyard really had a season any more. Once upon a time, it had been impossible to come and visit the Eye of Orion without tripping over a tourist or a Timetraveller. Missy preferred it now, abandoned almost rejected by the rest of the universe, like a once popular resort now decidedly out of fashion.

Still, a Dalek experimentation lab disguised as refugee camp would put off all but the most serious explorers; some species were just so sensitive...

Speaking of sensitive...Even Missy had to grit her teeth to stop herself from screaming this time.

Now she understood, curse of infertility aside, why her people had moved to loomed based procreation. No one would chose this if they had a choice, she certainly hadn't. If she ever had the displeasure of seeing Davros again, Missy wouldn't stop with poking the Dark Lord of Skaro in the eye. Picturing the agonies she would make him endure carried Missy through the next bought of pain.

Fists clenched in the damp grass, Missy cursed Davros, cursed The Doctor, cursed the little parasite that seemed to want to rip her apart on its way out. She may have known nothing of childbirth, but Missy knew a tonne about dying and this felt...there was too much blood...something was wrong. She could feel it prickling in her fingers, the little golden sparkles of regeneration...her last.

So often, whilst enjoying the hospitality of the Dalek's, Missy had felt that shimmer under her skin yet she had fought it back, had forced her body to endure and heal the hard way. Then Davros had stumbled onto his brilliant idea, and had found another use for his captive other than mere amusement, and bait for The Doctor. The fruit of his brilliance squirmed inside Missy's body, causing her to bite down on her lip, the taste of blood filling her mouth.

Part Time Lord...Part Dalek...The Ultimate weapon...

Missy had hated the parasite at first, hated the drugs and the prodding, the failures that she had been forced to endure, until finally this one took; this one foetus had survived, whilst the others had been rejected from her body for being too alien...too Dalek...

Crying out this time, as the pain ripped her in two, Missy slid bloodied fingers down, her fingers tracing something hard and wet and hairy...the parasite had hair...that surprised her.

All through her pregnancy, even when the first whispers of consciousness had reached out to her, an unformed mind innocent of the crimes of its progenitors. Missy had pictured it as wrinkled and bald and ugly, a monster foisted upon her. She had raised her mental shields, and kept her own mind hidden, from the tentative explorations of the being forming inside her. Yet even with her shields raised, she could still hear it, could feel it moving under her hearts, it was part of her, and even with her formidable abilities, The Mistress couldn't make that go away.

So perhaps she didn't hate it the way she used to.

Even if it was ugly, it would still be part of her, the shining mental presence confirmed that much, it would be strong like its mother, and for some reason that filled Missy with a sense of something. Something more than simply the pleasure, of depriving Davros of his latest genetic weapon, no Missy had sworn she would kill it herself first.

Clenching her teeth, Missy pushed with muscles she didn't even know this body had, and she felt the hard mass between her thighs shift slightly, another push, and there was a smooth expanse of what felt like a forehead.

Out out she wanted it out now...it burned and ripped at her insides...this was unnatural , how could any species choose to do this, it was unthinkable...yet The Doctor's favourites seemed to procreate at whim, and if a pathetic human female could manage this...

Screaming out her frustration and fury The Mistress pushed, and pushed, her insides burning, then suddenly, what had seemed stuck only a moment before slid loose, and she caught it with her grasping hands...wet and slippery and silent...

It shouldn't be silent. Missy knew that much about primitive childbirth, the child normally came out squawking.

With shaking hands Missy lifted her offspring into her lap, bright blue eyes widening in surprise, as a people looking child lay before her...dark curls smeared with blood lay across his forehead, a scrunched up face, that looked squashed, and yet no outward sign of the Dalek contamination could be seen...yet those ears...and that nose...oh she had seen those before, and not in a mirror, and Missy had a revelation, about how Davros had finally stabilised the genetic code to allow this foetus to survive, and to stop her body rejecting it, the introduction of a third parent.

This was her son, and The Doctors offspring, Davros was a mere genetic throwback, that could be ignored or suppressed. And he wasn't breathing...

"No."

The denial was ripped from her throat. Missy pressed her fingers against the child's face, but no wisp of breath could be felt, and his lips were blue.

The tingle in her fingers was growing now, but all Missy could see was the lifeless creature in her lap, her child. She had been prepared to end its life herself, prepared herself to murder a monster, but this was no monster, this was her child, and she had killed it in the birthing of it. She hadn't meant this, hadn't meant to hate, or curse this child to death.

"Please...Please...just breathe." Missy pleaded, her glowing fingers tightening around the tiny body, channelling the energy out of her own ailing body, and into the infant.

It was a desperate attempt, the child was too young to regenerate, and it was her last in this cycle, yet this body was dying, and she had little choice but to try. The burn of the regeneration energy washed over her, and Missy threw back her head and screamed, her eyes rolling back in her head as it felt like the universe itself was ripping her apart.

-/-