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Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-Robert Frost
Bill didn’t know how she was still alive.
She had stayed on floor 507 with the Doctor, knowing—hoping, even—that she would sacrifice herself to destroy the Cybermen.
And yet her eyes were open, and there was something wrong, a feeling that shouldn’t be there.
It took Bill a moment to identify the anomaly as pain.
Though the explosion had apparently spared her somehow, it must have broken whatever it was that kept her from feeling pain.
And oh, could she feel the pain.
It was like her body was on fire, like every single cell in her body was crying out in agony. Her right leg hurt especially, and her head throbbed like someone was beating it with a hammer.
Why didn’t I die? she thought to herself, tears forcing their way through the netted eyes of her Cyberman body. Her fingers curled into fists at her sides. I should have died. I wanted to die.
She considered just lying there, waiting until she wasted away. But there was one thought that pushed through the pain, a thought that gave Bill Potts enough effort to stand up.
The Doctor.
“Doctor,” she said out loud. She surveyed the now barren land and saw Cybermen bodies strewn everywhere. The world was still and silent. Darkness covered the land and there was nothing, not even stars, to light the way.
Bill turned slowly in a full circle. Now that the entire floor was a flat wasteland, she couldn’t tell in which direction the Doctor had gone earlier.
But she was going to find him. Either that, or die trying.
Bill took one step and a wave of pain shot up from her legs, forcing tears from her eyes. She pressed forward and took another few steps, trying to step lightly on her right leg.
I have to get to the Doctor. The thought steeled her determination and she pushed through the pain to walk a little faster.
And so Bill began limping through the ashen fields of floor 507, checking every body she came across for the telltale silver glint of a Cyberman. Every breath felt like death, every step sucked the very life out of her, but she persisted. She had to see the Doctor.
After hours of torturous walking for what felt like miles, the sky gradually grew lighter. Bill felt her heart sink. The pain began to take over and she paused, leaning against the blackened trunk of a tree.
What if the Doctor isn’t here? If he were alive, wouldn’t he have left?
And yet Bill knew that she couldn’t rest until she had covered every inch of this floor. She had to know, whether it was by not finding him at all, or discovering his body…
Bill pushed the thought from her mind and groaned as the pain worsened. She straightened and kept going. She still had a lot of ground to cover.
Ages passed before Bill saw his dark clothes and the red lining of his coat on the ground. She tried to speed up, but her legs refused to go any faster. Fear seized her heart as the Doctor didn’t move. Surely he would have heard her approach by now.
She dropped to her knees at his side. His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open. His body was very still.
Bill rested her hands on his chest and looked at his face, riddled with blood, scars, and bruises. She seemed to remember every time he had smiled at her, every time his face had lit up when he had saved the day.
She curled her fingers into the fabric of his vest.
No. No.
Her body shook with sobs as she began to cry. He couldn’t be dead. No, not the Doctor. Not her best friend. He just couldn’t be.
She half-expected him to wake up and beam at her, telling her a joke to ease her suffering. But she knew very well that it wasn’t going to happen. This wasn’t a dream, but sheer, cruel reality. She was a Cyberman. The Doctor was dead.
And hope was such a distant thought that she never even saw it coming.