Chapter Text
There’s no one guarding her. Endless silence is never once broken by the sound of footsteps on the other side of the door, no one ever stopping by to check she isn’t trying to escape. It’s that, not the thirty-seven deadlocks between her and her freedom, that makes the Doctor certain there’s no way out.
She’s never been good at being still. Stasis and stability have never come naturally, whereas running is something the Doctor’s always felt like she’s made for. It’s linear, it’s constant, it’s distracting.
This prison cell in the furthest corner of the most looked-over galaxy, buried within an even more uninteresting section of the universe and hidden behind a cluster of stars and gasses is far too small for her.
Knees are drawn to her chest, back pressed against the wall with the comfort of the universe casting a pale glow through the barred window above her head. She hasn’t moved from that spot in days.
It’s been 18 months, on the dot. She’s been ticking off the passage of time by the second with the tapping of her fingers against her palm. Even on those rare, blissful occasions that she manages to achieve slumber, she still keeps track. Wakes up with a number in her head - how many seconds she’s been unconscious, and it’s never enough.
She’s tapped out over 47 million seconds against her palm, and her hand is only just now beginning to cramp up.
Another ticks by. Another after that.
And same as the 47,304,051.8 million previous, no one comes.
She’s had 18 months to find a way out of this cold, quiet, horribly dark holding cell, but all her plans are half formed. Catching a snag on step two, or three. Her record is four, but she’s never seen step five. She dreams of step five. She’s beginning to forget what it feels like to be successful; to win.
It’s been 18 months of no sound, no stimulus, and the same image before her eyes over and over and over, and she’s so tired of looking at it. So tired of the dark, the quiet, the emptiness, the loneliness, and she has been since day one.
The Doctor doesn’t like small spaces. She doesn’t like not being able to move freely. Here in this cell she’s got enough room to stand, pace around a bit, stretch her legs enough to keep them in working order, but not enough room to run.
She tried, on night one, and a few dozen nights after that. She remembers feeling a bit like an animal, let loose from it’s cage into a space not much larger. Not enough room to run, to find relief from the thunderstorm of everything she’s learned banging ruthlessly inside her skull, and it very nearly drove her mad.
She ran anyways, on that first night. Flinging herself from one end of the cell to the other, taking small steps but moving as fast as she possibly could only to smack straight into the opposing wall. She did it over, and over, and over, without enough space to reach full speed, to obtain any level of satisfaction; relief, familiarity. Running allows her to feel like herself.
It was so frustrating. So very frustrating, not having the ability to release those endorphins. All that pent up energy squeezed her hearts painfully, brought a permanent tremor to her hands. She hasn’t managed to calm them since.
Now, she’s used to it. She’s discovered new defenses, new coping mechanisms that her mind took the liberty of developing when it began running on fumes from lack of stimulus when she’s accustomed to everything but.
So she locks herself away in a safe corner of her mind. There aren’t many of those - the vast majority of her subconscious is a polluted sea of nightmares and unanswered questions. She spent so many nights huddled in the dark, curled in the middle of her cell with the stars beyond the single window dancing in her field of view as she wondered, despaired, cried out into the indefinite silence that she doesn’t know who she is. The quiet always played its given role, and never gave an explanation. She doesn’t know if the answers she seeks even exist, but she’ll never find them here in the dark. The deep and lovely dark . We’d never see the stars without it.
The safe, peaceful, yet loud and vibrant corner of her mind becomes the only thing keeping her head in one relatively stable piece. There, when she closes her eyes and concentrates very hard, she’s with her fam, showing them everything she never got the chance to. Taking them to various places and planets deep in her memory because there was so much more she wanted them to see. They’re happy there, in her safe place, the four of them. She’s happy. She’s so content in their presence.
The adventures her restless consciousness creates are realistically never without danger, also never without victory. She’s entirely in control, when she’s there. Fizzing with ideas and fully formed plans that always work on the first go. They escape, they seize the day, they save everyone, every single time, and it’s exhilarating. She almost feels alive.
But only when her eyes are closed.
She misses it. She misses them, impossibly, more than anything, and it never hurts any less to open her eyes and find her friends absent.
The Doctor hasn’t budged in two days, because she, Yaz, Ryan and Graham are in the middle of a bit of a tricky one this time. Her subconscious has taken to challenging her on their last few fictional adventures; a new tactic at keeping her cogs turning, perhaps. Keep her stimulated. Or maybe, finally, she’s simply beginning to slip. Losing her touch, her quick-thinking, her box full of ways out no longer bottomless, and running dangerously low.
The Doctor continues to tap out the passage of time with one hand flattening and closing repeatedly, automated, as she drops her forehead to her knees and forces herself deeper into her delusions.
The ventures played out by her subconscious are often broken apart and not put together properly, like a dream. And same as a dream, her imagination fills in the blanks, makes them make sense, and doesn’t question anything.
“Yaz, stay calm.” In her head, the Doctor’s voice is collected and confident, piggybacking off of the trust she sees in Yaz’s eyes as the security camera zooms in on her face.
“I’m calm.” She quips back, and the Doctor believes her. “It’s Graham you should be saying that to.”
“Doc, I think it’s close.” Graham’s voice comes through her earpiece as an urgent whisper, and from her place on the monitoring platform she sees his head poke out of his hiding place and into the spaceship’s corridor.
“Should probably shut up, then!” Ryan’s just outside of his closest camera’s range of view, but his words come through crystal clear.
“Graham, get back in the broom closet.” The Doctor orders over Ryan’s snicker.
“Yeah, Graham, back in the broom closet.”
She’s forgotten why she’s standing there, flicking through live security feed on a monitor in the ship’s control room and guiding her friends through it’s corridors from a safe distance as… something stalks the three of them. Seems like every time she blinks the adversary takes a different form, a different piece of a different memory or multiple memories being used to create a monster to fit the story. Her mind can’t make its own mind up on which one suits the current scenario best.
“ You’re fine, you two, just stay where you are.” When static crackles in her ear, the Doctor raises a hand to make sure the piece is secure. “Yaz I’m telling you to stay calm because it’s just round the corner from where you’re hiding. Keep quiet, keep still, it should walk right past you.”
She can hear Yaz’s steady breathing loud and prominent. She’s calm, and far too at ease, even when the creature comes to a stop outside her door.
The Doctor’s never experienced anxiety in this place before, but her movements are hitched and hurried with doubling nerves as she taps and swipes the screen to examine Yaz’s surroundings.
“Yaz, don't say a word, walk very quietly to the door behind you. It’ll take you to the engine room, there’s a lift in there that’ll get you back up to the main level and I’m two lefts and one big step away after that.”
Yaz does as she’s told, and the Doctor feels a tad calmer. Right, there we go. There’s always a way out. Almost there now…
The creature hasn’t moved on. Instead it’s taken increased interest in the door separating it, and the human it’s now loudly sniffing out. The Doctor doesn’t remember heightened sense of smell being a known fact of the creature a few moments ago, but accepts it, and fears it.
“It knows you’re in there.” She warns, to Yaz’s immediate dismay as she tries the door she’s directed to.
“It’s locked. I can't get out.” Her voice should be broken up with fear - she should be afraid right now, but the Doctor seems to be absorbing it all, concern for her friend spiraling into something on the edge of panic.
Yaz’s eyes, emphasized through the camera’s high definition and the monitor’s easy blue tint, are trusting. Expecting. Waiting.
Plan? They ask. Still confident, still blissfully faithful.
“I… er...” The Doctor stammers, hands braced the sides of the monitor as she leans in close, searching for another way out.
“Doctor?”
There’s always a way out.
But the creature is now digging violently at the base of the door, and small as it is, the Doctor somehow knows that it’ll break through in a heartbeat.
The Doctor yanks the earpiece off her head and sprints out of the control room, calling Yaz’s name, because Yaz is calling hers.
She runs, and runs, and runs. Those two lefts and a big step are now a much farther distance, and after ages of running she wonders if she’ll ever cross it. Good thing that here, she’ll never run out of breath, though it’s starting to feel like she might, for the first time. Fear is quickly tightening her chest.
The lack of control is suddenly overwhelming. The point of getting lost in her own head is that she has full control, but hard as she tries, she can’t change the story.
An ear-splitting crash reverberates through the darkness, and it yanks her back into the real world like a fish on a hook.
It’s the first sound she’s heard besides her own footsteps, her own voice when she tells herself stories, in eighteen months. That’s not her biggest shock of the hour.
Bright, positively blinding artificial light attacks her vision through the hole that’s been blown through the wall. A figure steps between her and the source, and the Doctor lowers the hand shielding her squinting eyes to adjust to the contrast.
Captain Jack Harkness stands with his hands on his hips, slack-jawed in exxagerated awe. “Now, inevitably, I knew you were gonna be gorgeous -”
“- Jack?” She’s not entirely convinced the man standing over her isn’t simply her mind’s new efforts at preserving itself. She was in need of an update.
His eyes crinkle with an excited grin, and he looks so pleased to see her that it’s enough to confirm reality.
“But Doctor, you’ve outdone yourself.”