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Vislor Turlough.
He's a stranger not fit for this world, literally.
He knows it, feels it, deep in him. He yearns for home, his people, his planet. But most days he can push that down, turn the longing into annoyance.
On the nights he cannot do that, the nights when it all gets too much, you can find him in one place.
He walks out in the middle of the nights when he really misses home and stares at the sky, trying to pick out where his planet is.
He finds it sad he doesn't know anymore, which direction is home. But he thinks he has a favourite star, he's not sure if it's Trion but he hopes it is.
So he points up at the sky when people ask and say, "That one there, the one right between the moon and the branch, that's my favourite star. That will guide me home."
Of course no one takes him seriously when he says that.
They think it childish and silly, so he's stopped saying he has a favourite star and now he sits alone when he does not know the time but knows the stars and how they move, flickering in small ways that he probably imagines.
A shooting star once passed next to the full moon and he had to wonder if that was his planet, if something had happened. He knew nothing did, he would have felt it, but he still scrambled up and tried to chase the star until he couldn't run anymore.
They are alone, at least he finds comfort in the way they seem so.
They are so far away from each other and yet to him they make a beautiful tapestry of blues, pinpricks of white and swirls of purple, all together in something he wishes he could carry with him.
The grass is cold, dirt hard as the trees around him frame the sky, reaching towards it as he does, just to touch it.
It's amusing that they can get closer than him to the sky, a small irony. They are closer to his home than he will ever be from now on.
He finds at the darkest part of the night his vision gets hazy, the wind holds him tight so every sensation is sensitive and raw, trying to tell him to sleep.
He doesn't need sleep.
He needs to go.
Whatever that entails.
.......................................................
Tonight the Doctor sits with him, staring out at the darkness of space.
Tegan and Nyssa follow after him, both staring out and silently wondering why Turlough would risk dangling his feet out the edge of the TARDIS to stare at twinkling lights.
Nyssa asks him where his star is, but Turlough can't see it. So he lies.
Turlough points at a random one, says "that's it", and hears the others "wow" and stuff.
They must think it's cool, that he can see home in the sky.
And he just sits in quietly sadness.
Eventually Tegan and Nyssa leave.
The Doctor must know he's lying. He always seems to.
Yet Turlough had hoped the timelord wouldn't speak up.
His hope is misplaced.
"Do you think you'll come home?"
Looking at the abyss, as it slowly swallows the light, leaving very little to illuminate the Trions expression they ask, "How can I?"
"You could try." The Doctor tries, understanding he shouldn't have, Turlough's face growing bitter.
"Does my home exist or have I been away too long."
"What do you mean?"
"Will I have a home again? My home might have changed, I long for it but what I long for might be long gone." He explains, watching as the universe dies and lives, ends and begins all anew, made of the same stuff and yet different, rearranged. It's all empty.
"What a situation that would be." The Doctor says.
"I would be nothing, have nothing." Turlough states, breathing in the new universe, staring out at it with old eyes made for the old universe and useless in this new one, just al lost at the rest of him.
"You have me, us."
"I have nothing. No place that I love and loves me, no relaxation or calm. No familiarity, just an echo that I hold close to me to hear it beat with a heart that is long dead. A mirage is still a mirage no matter how much you believe it isn't."
"..." The Doctor doesn't think he can say anything, nothing comes to his mind and he knows there is too much on Turlough's mind.
"I miss the little things. I miss the direction I use to sleep facing, the windows, the noises as I walked, the paths I was forced to walk. I miss them."
"...I know." The universe starts to define itself as the Doctor swallows his own sadness because he's use to it. He still feels what Turlough does, it doesn't go away, he's just got use to it.
"I miss a dream that never was, don't I."
"..." It's too painful to answer because there is none. There is no question. That's the true sadness that closes the throat and chokes the victim.)
...............................................................................................
When the Doctor leaves, Turlough still stares at the sky.
He walks for miles, away from the city on Trion, to a quiet place, almost as cold as his place on Earth.
He looks up at the stars, looking between each one and wondering if the TARDIS is there now. He wonders if the Doctor is there.
His wife calls him silly, walking this far when he could simply take the car. Yet he finds that idea silly.
It's because he always walks.
He walked from Brenden to look at the stars, wondering which one was Trion and praying it made him less homesick.
He walked from his room to the doors of the TARDIS to stare out and try and guess which direction Trion was, promising he'd return some day.
Now he walks from the city to here, staring up and silently talking to the countless planets up there when he misses the Doctor.
If tears fall and he sobs, only the stars know.
It's a sad thing but Turlough knows deep in him he's not home.
Home is somewhere he's now endlessly going to, never somewhere he will be. Not until he closes his eyes and looks up to see nothing there.