Chapter Text
There are certain things that you don’t realise are important until after the fact. Long after, sometimes, especially when it comes to fear. Fear stews deep down, unacknowledged. Little fears here and there knitting together into something insurmountable. Once you’ve seen it – once you’ve noticed – there’s no going back to blissful blindness. No ignoring it.
You don’t realise just how tall things have piled up until they collapse, and you’re left in the middle of the wreckage.
It’s usually easy for Ryan to put fear out of his mind, because with the Doctor, they’re always moving. Onto the next place, the next monster. They reel through adventures faster than ever before, wearing themselves out at each stop so that all they want to do upon returning to the TARDIS is make a beeline for their beds, and wake up to the next distress call, or strange energy signal, or idea for a getaway from the maestro herself. There’s no time for fear. Time for adrenaline, maybe, but not that deep, paralysing sort of fear. The kind that eats at you.
No time to mull over things like the dregs, things like his own planet, reduced to dust and monsters. Things like the look in his best mate’s eyes when he talked about how hard things had been for him without Ryan. He’s not the sort of person who runs away, or at least, he always told himself he isn’t. When things get bad, you don’t just leave people to deal with it alone. He knows what it’s like to be the one left behind to pick up the pieces, to get on with normal life. To be left alone. His Dad did it to him, after his Mum, and after his Nan. Now he’s done the same thing to Tibo, been so tied up in his own rosy ambitions of adventure that he didn’t notice his best mate spiralling. Now he’s leaving again, and as usual, he doesn’t know when he’ll be back – or if he’ll be back.
He hasn’t told Yaz exactly what he saw in his nightmare, same as she hasn’t told him hers. He talked to her, after they’d all said their goodbyes and slunk back off to the TARDIS, ready to run again. He doesn’t think she understands what he’s feeling, like he’s missing out on life, abandoning everything and everyone. He’s not like her, he can’t just drop back to Earth to the same time he left and pretend like nothing’s changed, like he hasn’t changed. Before the conversation could go anywhere, however, the Doctor butted in with a brand new idea for an adventure. Frankenstien, she’d said, though she got distracted by something else halfway through the journey, so she promised to put that particular idea on the back burner. It would be fun, their adventures always are. Brilliant, fun, distracting. Running. He knows the Doctor wants them along for the ride, because the longing in her eyes whenever she drops them off is palpable, like she’s barely holding herself back from smothering them all and begging them to stay. He thinks she’s scared of being alone. He can relate to that.
He’s been wondering about that lately – just what the Doctor’s scared of. They’ve been trying to get her to open up for so long that the effort sits between them in every conversation, ignored, unacknowledged. Her, hoping they won’t pick it up again, and them, hoping she might for once give them something . She never does.
So he wants to try again.
Graham has already made an effort of his own, opening up about his cancer. Yaz and Ryan listened in upon that conversation, and it was frustrating to witness.
In truth, Ryan has been grappling with disillusionment ever since their trip to Orphan 55, perhaps ever since a man on a plane revealed himself with a wicked grin to be the Doctor’s oldest enemy. It only intensified as the Doctor continued to grow cold and distant, snapping at him with her true age, and the true state of their relationship. She was right; they don’t know her, not even a little bit. She won’t let them, and yet she expects them to stay. A year ago he would’ve reminded himself that he was lucky to be travelling with her at all, that it was a privilege, but that feeling is beginning to fade. He thinks he deserves more, they all do.
He corners her in the console room while the other two are in their rooms. She’s busying herself at the console under muted orange lights, the engines humming and whirring, sounds populating the mechanised drone.
“Hey Doctor,” he says, stepping up onto the central platform, “whatcha doin’?”
“Hiya Ryan,” she calls, turning to look at him with wide eyes. Panicked eyes, maybe, but he can’t be sure. She’s nothing if not difficult to read, despite her overeager expressions. Always animated, though you can never be sure with what. “Just doin’ some maintenance.” She says that a lot; maintenance, correspondence, correspondence about maintenance. It’s transparent, like she’s reaching out a hand for them to take.
“Important stuff?”
“Very,” she nods importantly.
He hesitates, shuffling his feet, “oh, umm, should I go?”
She looks very much like she wants to say yes, with the way she’s hunching her back over the console, pressing her face close to the machinery she’s fiddling with. She pulls her head up out of the recesses of circuitry and glances over her shoulder. “Very important, unless you wanted something, in which case, it’s not important at all,” she beams.
He nods, smiling politely. “I wanted to ask you something, actually.”.
She winces; a minute twinge of the lips, a twitch of the eyelids. She straightens up and brushes her hands off against her coat, rocking on her heels. “Ask away,” she says.
“You remember what you said when we got back from... err,” he can’t bring himself to say Orphan 55, now knowing what it really was, “Tranquility?” he says instead. “About time not bein’ fixed, that the future could be different?”
“Yeah,” the Doctor nods. She’s all smiles, but there’s a flash of reluctance behind her eyes, and her hands are worrying at a loose strand on her coat sleeve. “And it is,” she adds, trying to reassure him, “just one possible future, nothin’ to worry about.” The Doctor said that a lot, that there was nothing to worry about, most often when there most definitely was.
“But, I mean, it definitely seems to be the way things are goin’,” he presses, trying to lock her into eye contact. Instead, her eyes dart towards the console, as if itching to get her hands on the machinery. “No one’s really doin’ anythin’ about the world bein’ on fire,” he chuckles. The sound is heavy in his gut. “Look, it’s just that, err,” his turn to look down, because now she’s looking at him. Her gaze is inquisitive, mouth slightly agape and turned at the edge into half a smile. Maybe she thinks it’s encouraging, but the way her eyes are blazing and her muscles are twitching, he can tell that she’d rather be doing just about anything else. “In the whole finger-induced nightmare state, that’s what I saw. Just fire, everywhere, like the whole planet burnin’.”
The thread on her coat snaps off in a harsh jerk of her fingers, which now have nothing left to do except burrow hungrily into the folds of the fabric, gripping at her arms so tight that her fingers quiver. “Just a nightmare, Ryan,” she assures him. It’s whispered, and she’s staring over his shoulder with a dark sheen over her eyes.
“Yeah I know, just really freaked me out that’s all. The dregs were there too, walkin’ in the flames.” Caught up in the thrill of the chase, he hadn’t really taken the time to consider the dregs during their time at Tranquility. There was a moment when he and Yaz were running through the deserted corridors – a horde of snarling, skeletal monsters pouding out scraggly, clawing steps against the polished floors – that he allowed the truth to catch up with him. They were humans. People like him, twisted over time, shaped into callused, bone-carved beings over millennia of toxic air and arid soil. Skulls swollen and elongated into pointed masks, fangs splayed and sharp with ferocious hunger. He tried to ignore that image for a long while; the shapes of their heads turning through the air, sniffing them out, the sound of their ragged breaths beneath bent, jutting ribs. “I think they really got to me, you know, because they used to be us. I thought they were just like any other monster at first, but I just couldn’t stop thinkin’ about them.”
“I understand,” she says, grip slacker on her arms, coming back to the present. “I’m sorry you had to see that.” Maybe she means well, she usually does, or at least seems to, but her comment only serves to irritate Ryan. The Doctor had known the truth about Orphan 55, and that was the worst part. Her lies were obvious, hanging bitter in the air like an awful aftertaste following that righteous speech of hers. As if she knows what it was like to see her entire race reduced to monsters, her planet to dust. Maybe she does. It isn’t as if they know her. She isn’t sorry that his planet was destroyed, she’s sorry that they saw something she wanted to keep hidden. She’s sorry she didn’t stick to her well-known tourist hotspots where she could show them what she wanted them to see, and nothing more. “It was only a possible future, promise. Some worlds,” and her grip tightens, white-knuckled, on her arms again, “they can be saved. Sometimes… Still –” she exclaims, suddenly bright again, though her fingers are still wrapped tightly around her forearms, “you lot go on survivin’, spreadin’ out across the stars, the great and bountiful human empire!”
“Yeah,” he shrugs, trying not to appear frustrated. The uber-rich packed on shuttles to the stars, while the rest of humanity are left behind in the waste to slowly evolve into dregs. Not exactly great and bountiful, though he supposes that’s how most empires are built. “There’s something else as well,” he adds, determined to quell his anger. Part of him wants to confront her about their trip to Orphan 55, tell her that they’re not stupid, that they all know she was lying. He doesn’t, because he wants to keep going along this path. He feels like he might be getting somewhere. If he shares enough, maybe she’ll feel inclined – obligated, maybe – to share as well. It hasn’t worked so far, but maybe this time will be different. He has to tell himself that, all of them do, lest they stop trying altogether.
The Doctor inclines her head in invitation for him to speak. It seems that, at this point, she can no longer control herself, so she bends over the console with an intent expression on her face, fiddling with a spindly golden mechanism extruding from the surface. “Well, it was my mate Tibo, I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned him before you met him today.” He definitely has, but the Doctor doesn’t always listen when you tell her stuff, just like she isn’t listening now. She hums an affirmative but doesn’t elaborate. It’s very clear that she wants the conversation to be over, but Ryan’s not about to let her off that easy. “He’s been havin’ a hard time without me, I think. I mean, we used to do everythin’ together, have done since we were little kids. Me nan always used to say we were joined at the hip, used to go runnin’ about town all day long.” A wistful smile tugs at his lips, though the Doctor’s expression is hard and flat, staring down at the console, grip stiff on the rim. Unmoving. He falters, but presses on. “Well, anyway, with all this travellin’ I’ve been doin’, he’s been feelin’ alone. In a bad way, you know? At least he knows now why I was away, but I just feel like I’m missin’ out sometimes. Like I’m livin’ faster than everyone back home. These adventures – they’re brilliant, yeah? Don’t get me wrong – but they’re my whole life. I nip back home, catch up with me mates, and then it’s back out again. I quit the warehouse job, and who knows when I’ll ever go for me NVQ… sorry,” he mutters, “ramblin’. Thought that was your job,” he nudges the Doctor playfully, still staring rigidly down at her frozen hands.
“Do you want to leave?” she murmurs, straightening up, examining him. Her eyes are sharp, penetrating. He feels the need to defend himself.
“No, no,” he assures her, because the hint of vulnerability in her voice is jarring. He feels like he needs to stamp it out. It’s something that he isn’t supposed to see. “It’s just tricky, you know? Havin’ two lives, keepin’ track of time. I’m worried I’ll go back and they’ll all have moved on without me, or I’ll have changed so much that I don’t fit in anymore,” he pauses, voicing a deeper fear in guise of a joke: “sometimes I worry I’ll get back too late and they’ll all be dead,” he chuckles. He expects the Doctor to reassure him then, to make some indignant comment about her time machine piloting skills and how they’re very good, actually. She doesn’t. Her muscles go stiff, arms pressed to her sides like her lips, pressed together. Trembling. They quiver into a smile.
“No need to worry about that, Ryan Sinclair,” she tries for her usual energy. All it does is make her seem tired. “I’ll get you home whenever you need. Seventy-seven minutes out, tops,” she grins. “Well, I say tops, there was this one time when I was twelve months out – but that was a long time ago!” she cries, at the sight of Ryan’s horrified expression. She’s lucky Yaz isn’t here to hear her say that. It’s one admittance he’s heard from the Doctor that he won’t relay to his best friend, because she stresses out about enough already. “I’m a way better pilot now,” she assures Ryan.
“Err, Doctor,” he begins, because clearly the conversation isn’t going to get there without a little push. Organically, it’s wrapping itself up – or, perhaps, entirely by her design. “Are you doin’ ok? It’s just that, you’re a bit stiff,” he gestures vaguely towards her clenched fists and tensed shoulders.
“Oh yeah,” she says, making a show of rolling her shoulders and slumping back into her usual lazy posture, “totally fine, yeah.”
“It’s just that, I know you probably saw somethin’ too, when we were all captured on that ship. I just thought maybe… I don’t know, if you wanted to talk about it?” His voice softens throughout the sentence, trailing off into a murmur. He’s looking down at his shoes. He wonders inwardly why he’s so worried about meeting her eyes, standing his ground. Worried about what he might see in her eyes, maybe, like what he saw when she told him she’d lived so long she’d lost count.
“Thanks Ryan,” she says. He finally looks, and sees her staring up at him with a weary smile. “But it was nothin’, really, only a couple seconds before I shook off the connection. I’m good with psychic stuff, got good defences.” She taps this side of her head with her finger, winking at him. He almost asks her to elaborate, but has a feeling she’s just trying to steer him off track.
Maybe it was only a few moments in reality, but dreams happen much faster. The perception of days or weeks or even years all pressed into minutes, flickering away behind the eyes. It wasn’t just Tibo he saw in the fire, there were other friends too. Mates he played basketball with, colleagues, friends from high school – all of them old and worn and screaming at him for leaving them to burn. The light of the fire cast the dregs in shades of pale gold, flames licking at their tough, ridged skin, smoke swirling around their sharpened claws. They stalked him, and he ran, feeling the heat of the flames intensifying, heaving smoke into his lungs in choked gasps, feeling ash settle on his lungs. He looked down at his hands and saw that his skin was bubbling, hardening to callussed, marble white. Nails sprouted and twisted into gnarled and blackened claws and he felt his bones shudder and shift, sprouting from his back like roots from the Earth. He felt his skull swell and press against his head, his teeth stretch from a muzzled mouth into greying fangs. It was agony. He wandered the grey wastes, crying out for help with a mouth that could only roar, reaching with hands that could only rend.
The Doctor must have seen something too, but he’s wary of pressing the subject any further. It might only cause her to retreat deeper into herself, or to snap at him, remind him how old she is, and how insignificant he is compared to her. He doesn’t need reminding of that.
“Yeah.” He chokes out the acknowledgement. She waits a tense moment before smiling, spinning on her heels, and getting back to work. She’s breaking apart one of the sheets of metal plating covering the TARDIS circuitry – completely separate to the one she was tinkering with before, hands seeming to rest upon the first patch of untouched metal they could find. Ryan rolls his eyes, and trudges back up the stairs, trying to ignore the sensation of heat swirling at his ankles like licks of flame.
…
She didn’t lie, it really had only been a few seconds that she’d spent in the nightmare, though she thinks that Zellin and Rakaya (or Voldemort and Elsa, as she and her friends had nicknamed them) could have lived off the fear they captured in those fleeting moments for a very long time indeed. It was perhaps her greatest fear, and the most universal of all, patterned across just about every race. Death and the dark – in short, the unknown. She hates not knowing, always has. It’s far worse when others know, and she doesn’t. Worse, still, when the one who does know laughs in the spaces between her thoughts from somewhere far away, so quietly she can’t be sure whether or not he’s there at all. In the nightmare, she saw something wrenched deep from her subconscious, a sharp, white tower channelling violet spirals of energy, and a child, dwarfed beneath the structure, the shape their shadow cast across her mind achingly familiar… It was the secret that had set her best friend back over the precipice, and set her planet on fire. Supposedly, it was the most terrible secret ever discovered, and sometimes she thinks that finding out herself would be worse than the unknown.
The Doctor dreams of fire. It’s why she doesn’t let herself sleep very often, because these images always have a way of finding her when she’s alone in the dark. It blends in streaming stokes against the orange sky, weaving amongst dark, crumbling structures and clouds of white ash. There are bones poking out amongst the rubble, and voices screaming at her from inside her head, psychic remnants of the dead. It brings tears to her eyes, the sight of the ruin, and the sound of them crying out. ( We waited for you). But she was too late to save them. Their whole lives they waited for their hero to return, and she never did. ( The planet is burning, and you weren’t there). Now the ghosts of their minds are scattered to the ether, growing twisted and monstrous and vengeful with every passing moment, like dregs, wandering the wasteland. If she stays here long enough, she’ll become one of them too.
There’s a figure standing amongst the ruins, and for a moment the Doctor thinks it’s him, the one who did all this, but he’s too tall and too young. Too tiny.
“I think you forget how powerful you are,” Ryan says, sarcasm wrought in every syllable, a smile curling his lips. “Lives change worlds,” he reminds her, like an echo turned sharp and chiding on the return. Words spat back. He takes a step closer, towering over her. “People can save planets, or wreck them,” he sneers. “That’s the choice.” With a grin, he disappears, and she’s standing in an orange haze. All around her, a barn is burning, the wood charring, blackening to soot and falling like snow, streaking her coat with grime. Before her, an ornate box sits, a jewel-like red button sitting tantalisingly un-pushed. She never could resist a big red button. She pushes it, and beneath her, the ground shudders and splits apart. In a haze of white and pain, the planet ceases to exist.
At least,
she thinks,
it isn’t burning anymore
.