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The turbulence itself is not even bad.
But she has fallen asleep during a turbulence while flying at night, and that’s bad.
She’s not afraid of turbulence, or of flying, or of the darkness, or of flying during turbulences at night, or any given combinations – in her line of job, it would be impossible to be so.
But she has always avoided falling asleep while flying during a turbulence at night – that’s when the nightmares came back, and there is no way of stopping them.
Not because she hasn't tried – she has seen psychologists, and psychiatrists, she has had all the necessary examinations, she still attends the office of a private specialist in addition to the obligatory periodic visits to UNIT, because sometimes the nightmares come back, and she has to be at her best given her role. But she has never got over the terror that the nightmares about Boat One cause her.
Message to Geneva. Tell them…
The air gap is sudden, as all air gaps are, and the plane plummets for a few interminable seconds, and just as sudden is the memory of the Cyberman's face outside the window closest to her, icy and immortal, devoid of any feeling, the perfect monster –
She hears a gasp escape her lips, and she hates herself.
Boat One is going down.
“Ma’am, are you okay?”
Kate could recognise his voice everywhere. Could recognise him everywhere, the way he moves, the way he stands, she knows he is in a room even without seeing him, especially in the recent weeks, with their newfound… affinity.
“Yes,” her voice comes out in a whisper and even a person less trained than Colonel Ibrahim would recognise the lie, “I’m fine.”
She is motionless, her eyes planted on the screen in front of her, but she sees nothing, she only remembers the rain swirling around the plane as the Cybermen attacked it, their silver faces outside the windows, while dismantling the aircraft, the dark clouds around them.
We don’t anticipate survivors.
And she remembers her staff and her colleagues, and Colonel Ahmed, dragged out of the cabin by a window by two Cybermen – and his funeral with no body, the empty coffin, his husband and children, and the beautiful but empty speech she herself gave – and Osgood, pulverised by Missy, and Missy and the explosion, and the hatch flying off its hinges sucked out by the pressure vacuum, and herself falling, falling, falling...
Their aircraft banks to the left, abruptly – on Boat One, the turbulence was not a natural occurrence, it was a targeted attack by a ruthless army aiming to free their leader and kill them all, and this should be enough to make her realise that the situation is different and that she is not in danger, but in those few minutes that she has just slept the nightmares have come back stronger than ever, and it had not happened for so long that she could no longer remember how to react.
She does not want to think that what has just escaped her lips, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, is a sob.
“Kate?”
The worry in his voice, him using her first name, make her shoot a pleading glance in his direction, a fraction of a second, but she knows that with him it is enough.
“I’m most definitely not okay.”
“I didn’t know you were afraid of flying,” he’s trying to keep his voice light, but Kate can feel the worry creeping – it’s not good, her second in command should not be worried about her being afraid, should not see her in this condition, and –
“It’s not that,” another jolt, and her eyes snap closed, “It’s the turbulence.”
“You’re afraid of turbulences?” if possible, his voice is even more puzzled now, “We’ve already flown together into turbulences.”
“No, it’s —” cursed the moment she fell asleep, blessed the moment when the term together began to might be able to mean something else, “I fall asleep during the turbulence.”
“I see.”
He doesn’t, but Kate knows she needs him to understand her, not to think she is fragile or weak – it is a disservice to think such a mean thing about him, but they are in that period when they both just want to make a better and better impression on each other – and she really needs him to see her fear, and to help her out of it.
“It is the memory.”
If he is confused, he does not show it. Without opening her eyes – will she ever manage to do so, will this hellish flight ever end, but to keep her eyes closed is to see the hatch of Boat One explode off its hinges again and again, and –
"The memory?"
"Boat One," the name of the Doctor’s former presidential plane escapes her lips without her realising it, and she regrets it immediately, for she hears his short intake of breath. She tries to inhale slowly, as the psychologist taught her, but it’s a shuddering attempt, and she can barely open again her eyes – her fogged vision reminds her of what she saw of the sky as she fell, Boat One farther and farther up in the sky, and she faster and faster towards the ground, the scream that was ripping out of her throat inaudible in the sound of the wind and rain in her ears as she fell…
“This remembers me of Boat One. It was –”
“Bad. I read the mission file when I got hired. No need to say anything if you don’t want, Kate.”
But now that she's started talking about it, and especially to him, it's like a river in flood, and she can't stop.
“The explosion blew off the plane’s door. Colonel Ahmed had already been thrown out. They got him out by a window. Osgood was dead. It was raining, but the clouds weren’t real. The Cybermen. She blew the hatch away, and I was… out,” she feels like she’s gasping for air, but it’s the first time she’s talked about it with anyone other than the specialists, and it’s crucial that he is the one listening to her, “I screamed, but no one could hear me. And it was cold. And there was a lot of noise. I –” her voice cracks and there are tears in her eyes, still firmly shut, and the panic is almost engulfing her, but then his hand slides up her forearm as if to let her know that he is there, and that she is safe, “– I screamed.”
Talking to him somehow feels good,but that does not mean what she’s saying is making any sense.
“Kate…”
“Dad saved me.”
“Your father. But he’s –”
“Dead. I know”
She acutely remembers the terror when she had seen the lone Cyberman coming towards her, the minimal struggle she tried to put up against the metallic body – she preferred to die from falling, thank you, not at the hands of a Cyberman – the voice she hadn't heard in years emerging, barely metallic, from the Cyberman's voice synthesiser – Katie – and the endless darkness when she had lost consciousness before waking up in the UNIT hospital with the Doctor there.
“He was one of the Cyberman. One of the two still somehow human, apparently. The Doctor and I redacted the mission file so that Dad was not present.”
“Ah! It explains that single paragraph blackened out,” hard as he tries, he cannot completely concealed the satisfied tone in his voice, “I’ve spent years trying to understand what was so mysterious to be kept so secrete – or how you survived for the matter. Classified, I see.”
Kate wants to laugh at his happy, almost smug surprise, because sometimes he's so endearing in his enthusiasm - like when he spoke with the Doctor about working out, not that she had noticed - it causes her heart to flutter – the only bad thing about thinking of him in certain terms is how cheesy she's become – but the plane skids sideways, and she closes her eyes tightly, and the world goes black as the endless night Missy threw her into after blowing the hatch and –
“I’m so glad your Dad saved you.”
She is almost able to turn and smile to him, because it's exactly the kind of thing he might say, direct and honest and so dear, but there a loud bump somewhere in the hold, and the flying hatch is back in her mind.
She know she should not ask. He’s her second in command. She’s his direct superior. And yet… things have changed imperceptibly – their fingers touching a little more than they should when she hands him his cup of tea, his hand barely resting on her back in a gentle caress when they are at her desk and checking a few files, the peculiar smile they exchange, shyly, when they are in private – not that anything more has ever happened, but… – in the last few weeks.
“Christofer?”
If he is surprised that she calls him by his first name – and it is the first time in the many years that they have worked together – he does not show it, still crouched at her side, his hand on her forearm.
“Yes?”
“Stay with me?”
She is not even looking at him. She is not looking at anything, her eyes still pressed shut, her hands clutching the seat armrests so hard she can imagine her knuckles turning whiter with every passing second.
The plane makes another jump and she whimpers, remembers again the sound of the hatch jumping off and the vacuum that dragged her out of Boat One to certain death and the Doctor screaming and her own voice lost in the sky and –
Her right hand is forced from her spasmodic grasp on the cushioned armrest. In the back of her mind, something, a feeling, a warm sensation in her stomach, tells her he has just took her hand, sat next to her, and kissed her temple.
And he shouldn't, because he is her second in command, and she is his superior, and they are colleagues, and anyone in the cabin could see them, certainly has seen them – a small part of her mind, crazier than the others, leaves her with the impression that the rest of their team – Rose, Morris, Mel, oh, dear Lord, let Mel not have seen all of this – would be happy for them, and she herself would be so happy –
Another air gap, another soft cry, another kiss on her temple, his lips gently caressing her skin.
“Always.”